SOULSAVERS - BROKEN [2009]

"When Soulsavers recorded 2007's It's Not How Far You Fall, It's How You Land they were out of contract, scraping by on credit cards and had just begun working with Mark Lanegan; not known for his frivolity. Unsurprisingly, it emerged as dark and depressed. Two years, a major label record deal and mountains of ecstatic reviews later, and the duo's prospects have brightened considerably, though their sound – as their fans will be relieved to hear – has not.
Like its predecessor, Broken fuses delta blues, grizzled gospel and comedown electronica to create an atmosphere that is both grand and bleak. In fact, on initial listens the mood is so downbeat that songs blur oppressively into each other, not helped by a hoary blues vocabulary where blood is always ''cursed'', wounds ''never heal'' and bones are always ''weary.''
Understandably, many will lack the appetite for second helpings. But for those who persevere, there are enough gleams of light poking through the cloud cover, and enough slowly revealed surprises to make the effort worthwhile. So while Death Bells is too dourly self-regarding to truly love, and the long, creaky Gene Clark cover Some Misunderstanding sounds distressingly like Chris Rea, other songs see Soulsavers live up to their considerable reputation.
One is Unbalanced Pieces, where the solemnity of Lanegan's central melody is lifted by a skulking, hypnotic bass and one of the album's few big, hummable choruses. You’ll Miss Me When I Burn is far starker, based around little more than a mournful, circling piano, but is all the more moving for its simplicity.
Unusually, the album saves its best surprises for the end, when Red Ghost makes a late, strangely uplifting appearance. On the sweet, sad-eyed lullaby of Praying Ground, the Australian sings with an authority and assurance remarkable in a newcomer. Even more boldly, she more than holds her own on her duet with Lanegan, Rolling Sky, which is as menacing and unpredictable as an approaching storm.
Broken is probably too stubborn and idiosyncratic to win over many who haven't already acquired a taste for either Soulsavers or Lanegan. But those who have are likely to love it deeply and fiercely. " BBC.CO.UK

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BEDHEAD - WHAT FUN LIFE WAS [1994]

"It didn't seem like it at the time, but with the appearance of this, Bedhead's debut, and Low's own first album some months later, the zeitgeist of post-grunge indie rock started to shift toward something more reflective and restrained. Not that WhatFunLifeWas doesn't steer clear of loud moments, to be sure; many of the songs use swelling transitions from quieter to noisier performance and back, all while avoiding the abrupt soft-loud-soft cliché of the time. However, even at the band's most explosive, there's less a sense of getting ripped out of your head on sound than there is a tension between steady, careful performance (drummer Martinez especially so) and more wide-ranging power. The various comparisons to the Velvet Underground, Joy Division, and Spacemen 3 all make a certain sense, but even at this early stage of the band's life, Bedhead have much more of an individual sensibility, something that fuses and looks beyond rather than simply rehashing. Things sometimes can be a touch more playful than expected -- "To the Ground" is almost jaunty -- but otherwise the moods are calm and often blue, and a large part of that lies in the singing. Matt Kadane's soft, understated semi-drawl doesn't slot easily into comparisons, and its contrast with the band's music is often striking. "Haywire," an epic guitar blast with an almost giddy surge to music and performance, gets additional intensity against Kadane's barely-there vocals. In the quieter moments, like the openings of "Crushing" or even more so, the flat-out lovely "Powder," the intensity level is ratcheted even higher; the overall performance is not so much easy listening as it is a prompting to listeners, who must lean forward to catch everything. Add the intertwined guitar work of both Kadane brothers, who combine power and control excellently, and listeners need ask for little more." AMG

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RED HOUSE PAINTERS - DOWN COLOURFUL HILL / ROLLERCOASTER [1992 / 1993]

"Red House Painters was the name of an alternative rock group formed in 1989 in San Francisco by singer/songwriter Mark Kozelek, who is currently active in the band Sun Kil Moon, with part of the original RHP line-up.
The band is described, along with American Music Club, as one of the linchpins of the slowcore movement in alternative rock. Kozelek used this group primarily as a vehicle for his very personal and emotional songs of despair, pain and suffering.
While in Atlanta, Kozelek became friends with Anthony Koutsos, a drummer. He then moved to San Francisco, adding guitarist Gorden Mack and bassist Jerry Vessel to complete the line-up for Red House Painters.
After forming, the group played the San Francisco scene extensively, and recorded demos from 1989 to 1992, building up an impressive amount of material. Once they were signed to 4AD Records in 1992, they put out five-and-a-half LPs worth of material in two-and-a-half years—between September 1992 and March 1995, they released three LPs, one double LP, and one EP on 4AD.
Their first 4AD release was an album made up of select demos entitled Down Colorful Hill. It was a compilation of haunting melodies complemented by Kozelek’s eerie yet rich and emotional vocals. In 1993, the group came out with two self-titled records (now commonly referred to as ”Rollercoaster” or “Red House Painters I” and ”Bridge” or “Red House Painters II” (based on their cover artwork), solidifying Kozelek’s reputation as a talented songwriter with their harrowing autobiographical tales of his troubled life and errant living with no punches being pulled." LAST.FM

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CODEINE - BARELY REAL [1992]

"A six-song EP that appeared between the two albums proper, without sharing any songs with either, Barely Real essentially extends the same musical and lyrical spirit of Frigid Stars, with a couple of slight but intriguing changes woven in. Admittedly, that won't be apparent on the first song, "Realize," which fully confirms that Codeine's combination of deliberate pace and electric guitar playing both, along with softly sung rumination courtesy of Immerwahr, is pretty much its compositional mode rather than affectation. Those put off by earlier Codeine won't want to continue; those taken by its way of doing things will happily embrace it. From there Barely Real makes its careful way over about twenty-five minutes, with some guest performers popping up to leaven things. One Jon Fine adds "noisy guitar" to the mix on "Jr.," with a quick stuttering main riff to its credit, while David Grubbs contributes both piano and arrangement for "W." It's a highlight of Barely Real, essentially a Grubbs solo performance, but still sounding exactly like something Codeine would write. Other high points include the echo and burying in the mix of Immerwahr's voice on "Hard to Find" and the slightly surprising conclusion, a cover of MX-80 Sound's "Promise of Love" done in a bit of a late-night jazz club style with more typical Codeine interjections towards the end." AMG

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CODEINE - FRIGID STARS [1990]

"The early-'90s New York trio Codeine is one of the founders of the slowcore scene that includes groups like Bedhead, American Analog Set, and Low. Taking audible inspiration from the third Velvet Underground album and scene pioneers Galaxie 500, but adding a more aggressive tone and slowing the tempos down even further, Codeine sounded almost entirely unique at the time. However, their style was immediately adopted by a number of other new bands, some of which do the tense and glacial thing even better.

Codeine was formed in 1989 by bassist/singer Stephen Immerwahr, guitarist John Engle, and drummer Chris Brokaw. Their demo, a tortured version of the Pete Ham/Tom Evans classic "Without You" that stretches the four-minute song out to nine, got the band signed to Glitterhouse Records in Europe and Sub Pop in the U.S. the following year. Their debut album, Frigid Stars LP, was released by Glitterhouse in late 1990 and Sub Pop in the spring of 1991 to generally positive reviews..." AMG

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