Free stuff is sweet. Free music is even better. But like, free-free, artist-endorsed free. Especially when it’s killer art-rock. Portland duo Experimental Dental School is offering their album Forest Field for free at their website here. Forest Field is like giving Deerhoof a more discernible goal while dabbling in the Blonde Redhead male/female vocal dynamic. It’s like Pretty & Nice’s Get Young in that it makes you think about what you’re listening to, with super dense guitar-rock arrangements; angular leads flying over-head while a revolving door of synth and bass pours out churning subsections. It’s a record to go insane to, it’s a record to fall asleep to, and it’s probably a record to make really awkward love to.

“Square Wave Cave” progresses with an ominous guitar squeal reminiscent of Menomena’s “The Pelican.” As the fifth track on “Forest Field,” it acted as my first flashbulb moment of the night. The riff hit, the chorus sank, and something huge resonated. Two songs later, “Vicious Cycle of Life” opens with a sharp, arpegiated guitar and hushed female vocals. It’s the album’s only real come-down moment, before dropping into the reverbed drive of “Argentine Pears.” That resonance I mentioned from “Square Wave Cave”? It exploded with “Argentine Pears,” particularly due to the strange time and the chord change at 1:20. I’m a sucker for inexplicably captivating chord changes.

I’m sort of writing this on the fly, because I don’t want to think too hard. I think it might permanently hurt my brain. Get into it.

From Forest Field:

XDS – Square Wave Cave

XDS – Vicious Cycle of Life

XDS – Argentine Pears

I first discovered the Decemberists when Picaresque went big. Eleven, self-contained pop odysseys, each one casting the previous in shades of grandeur I had yet to experience with music. (It didn’t help that it coincided with the heyday of my fantasy-novel indulgence.) I moved back from there, absorbing Her Majesty and Castaways and Cutouts, obsessing over the Tain EP and sort of enjoying the Five Songs EP. Listening to the Decemberists became an event, almost a hobby. They were something I could move to out of boredom, disappearing for ten minutes with the high-seas treachery of “The Mariner’s Revenge” or dissolving to the Fievel Goes West solo in “Chimbley Sweep.” So when The Crane Wife hit, and the brilliant pop songwriting behind “16 Military Wives” was replaced with twelve minute prog-rock escapades a-la Animals-era Pink Floyd, I was disappointed. And with Hazards of Love, they’ve further indulged their penchant for long-winded guitar solos and sparse riffage.

The reason Picaresque was so absorbing was that the instrumentation propelled the story-telling. There was a give and a take between plot and musical action. As a whole the story is lost, and despite its concept album status and the high-arching, grand drama of the plot, it somehow lacks cohesion. It melds in controlled spurts, like on “The Wanting Comes in Waves/Repaid,” where Colin Meloy and some lovely lady trade dialogue over sharp, early seventies hard-rock riffs. But at the end of the album, I’m lost.

After several listens, I’ve gathered only the following:

1)That Love is Hazardous. But vaguely so.
2) Thistles Whiste in Bistly Mistle Histle Kistle
3) Judging from the bass tone, the Decemberists totally dig Hounds of Love-era Kate Bush
4) Chris Funk is still a guitar legend, despite any of the mean things I said above. That dude kills it.

From The Hazards of Love:

The Decemberists – The Hazards of Love 1 (The Prettiest Whistles Won’t Wrestle the Thistles Undone)

The Decemberists – Won’t Want For Love (Margarelt in the Taiga)

From Picaresque:

The Decemberists – 16 Military Wives

From Her Majesty:

The Decemberists – The Chimbley Sweep

Cymbals Eat Guitars is a Staten Island four-piece that plays some pretty sweet indie-rock. End generic intro. Their album “Why There Are Mountains” plays like a slideshow – each track has it’s own flow, it’s own personality, it’s own definite chronological place, yet it retains the cohesion of a purpose-built album. The songs flow through valleys, high into peaks, and descend on the other side, guided by squealing guitars into a loopy haze (perhaps a literal interpreation of the album title?).

I’m dropping two tracks today, representative of two different sounds.

Spacey-keyboards start “Share” before giving way to the slow, industrial trudge on guitars channeling the axe-saw grind of My Bloody Valentine’s “To Here Knows When.” The requisite haze shimmers over the vocals and bass plods along, roughly mirroring the melody with several notes. The song plateaus as horns enter the mix, bellowing triumph over crushing guitars, and a screeching, Malkmusian guitar solo. Victory.

Cymbals Eat Guitars – Share

And here we have the opener. A see-sawing harmony teetters over screaming synths and guitars before the songs mellows, and the vocals enter atop softer, prettier instrumentation. It’s a six-minute joy ride. I’m pretty tired, and this album is now lulling me to sleep. So instead of half-assing the rest, I’m just going to tell you to listen. So do it.

Cymbals Eat Guitars – And the Hazy Sea

Also, if you dig this, you might be into All These Kings, a Boston based band and good friends of mine. Check em out.

All These Kings – Pay No Mind

MySpace

The Drones are a grizzled, straight-up hard-rock band from Australia. I’ve been stuck in a twisted post-rock/hard rock cycle after downloading the top 25 releases from Touch & Go last week (Slint has haunted me since high school, the Jesus Lizard is further eroding my sanity). I haven’t slept much, and my dreams have been sinister. The Drones have not helped my predicament.
This isn’t typical IndieMuse material, but this album has hit me hard. Singer Garret Liddiard sings, screams and growls his way through the songs, following loosely constructed guitar narratives that are as gnarled as they are melodic. The more grizzly segments are punctuated by fluid, post-rock instrumental breakdowns and intense, cross-panning guitar solos; a shining light lent to the chaos. Their crescendos reach drastic heights, only to immediately plummet into paced, segmented arpeggios, an approach that mirrors Liddiard’s overwhelmingly bleak lyrics. But where the album is universally downcast  – failed marriages, broken friendships, and a general disdain for the human race – it’s a contextual down.  It’s an accessible heartbreak, because while his stories sound far more wretched than anything encountered in my own life, I’m totally with him when he wails at the end of “Nail it Down”: “Cause I’d try anything if I could only get along with you.”

On “Luck in Odd Numbers,” random double drum hits, spaced throughout the song, propel warbling guitars into the cosmos, backed by a spindly, walking bass lead that sounds like a corrupted John-Paul Jones. Each drum hit lends Liddiard more confidence, an increased gait as he spits his story. And deep into the song comes the requisite hard rock solo – squealing leads and layers of fuzz, a massive guitar and drum attack; the complete, visceral discharge of the previous seven minutes. Check the lyric sheet here.

From Havliah:

The Drones – Nail it Down

The Drones – Luck in Odd Numbers

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qwi9hnCYDXA[/youtube]

The Drones | MySpace |