CD reviews

Espers' new album, III

Espers
III
(Drag City)
*8.3*
Goes well with: Mary Jane Lamond, Eels, Six Organs of Admittance

Good things really do come in threes. III is Espers’ third record (duh) and their first full-length release in three years. The Philadelphia folk fusion band spent the long layoff tinkering with their sound, and the new record is textured and nuanced but has an unexpected brightness that meshes well with the vocals, particularly on the tracks featuring Meg Baird’s Celtic-sounding ballads.

On opener “I Can’t See Clear,” Baird’s vocals sound almost brittle against a lush backdrop of guitars and synthesizers. “The Road of Golden Dust” presents another contrast with Greg Weeks’ slow, dreamlike vocals working against repetitive guitar loops that ultimately give way to stridently evocative cello. What starts off as a sensual song about summer turns into something almost sinister—Espers’ go-to move. “Another Moon Song” typifies their stock in trade: spooky riffs, ethereal fills and elusive vocals. And a Mellotron. Who doesn’t like a mean Mellotron?

As befitting a band that takes its name from shorthand for extra-sensory perception, Espers has made a layered album that doesn’t give up its secrets easily. But the rewards are many and the record promotes a kind of active listening. I’m generally not a fan of the folk category, but Espers’ precise instrumentation and scrupulous attention to sound won me over.

Lifter Puller
Fiestas and Fiascos
(The Orchard)
*8.7*
Goes well with: Art Brut, The Fall, The Clash

Before there was The Hold Steady, there was Lifter Puller, Craig Finn’s lesser-known Minneapolis band that veered more toward punk and new wave than the E Street Band-style bar rock preferred by his newer outfit. Both groups bask in his garbled poetry—topics range from popping pills and getting drunk and betting on horses to getting drunk while popping pills while betting on horses. See the instant classic “Lie Down on Landsdowne” for a perfect example of Finn’s seedy imagery: “He’s in a rock band / They’re called The Wristband / And they slug it out in club land / The dancer overdid it with the liquid tan.”

The entire Lifter Puller discography was recently reissued and equipped with bonus live tracks; this disc comes bundled with a series of songs from a 2003 reunion show. Check out the crazy audience scream-along to “Manpark”—apparently these guys weren’t as underground as some may have suspected.

I’ve really grown to love Lifter Puller. Strangely, they feel like the band that should have happened after The Hold Steady—the edgier alternative outfit rising from the ashes of the rock juggernaut. Fiestas and Fiascos is commonly regarded as their masterwork, even though I’ve lately become quite the fan of its predecessor, Half Dead and Dynamite. If you like The Hold Steady’s first album, Almost Killed Me, Fiestas should be right up your alley.

—Dryw Keltz

White Rainbow
New Clouds
(Kranky)
*8.9*
Goes well with: Atlas Sound, Animal Collective, Lucky Dragons

The loop processor is arguably one of the most promising pieces of music technology to have emerged in the ’00s. And New Clouds, the second full-length by Portland-based multi-instrumentalist Adam Forkner, is one of the most inspirational loop-based albums of the decade, taking the device to an unheard dimension both technically and figuratively.

New Clouds is composed of four long tracks, most stretching past 16 minutes, and listening all the way through in one sitting can be a transcendent experience. It’s intense enough to experience the blissfully distorted tendrils of guitar and echoing vocals of opener “Tuesday Rollers and Strollers” (an awe-inspiring piece reminiscent of both Yes’ prog-rock and Basic Channel’s minimal techno) without wading through the electronic miasma that is “Major Spillage,” the glimmering groove of “All the Boogies in the World” and the melodious guitars and squirming synths in “Monday Boogies Forward Forever.”

But all of the album’s curlicues, swirls and echoes aren’t so much challenging as they are pleasant—even without the aid of mind-altering drugs, although those might help.

—Peter Holslin