FRESH BAKED
in NYC
Class Actress
Journal of Ardency
2009 | Terrible Records
B

Brooklyn group Class Actress’ debut album opens with an inviting electronic shimmer, drawing listeners into the polished pop of “Careful What You Say,” a perky dance track strewn with keyboard riffs mined from familiar ’80s territory. Fortunately, instead of a computerized drone at the controls, there’s Elizabeth Harper and her stunning voice, which soars breathily over the 808 handclaps and retro bleeps, smoothing out the rough bits for a mix of harmonies that sits comfortably above cheap imitators. Harper is also the band’s songwriter, and the seamless interplay of voice and instrument is no accident.

The title track is the album’s best, all ominous synthesizer bubbling and agile lyrical delivery full of defiant emotions from Harper that would otherwise be lost in translation if merely read off a lyrics sheet. The surging keyboard chords behind the chorus hint at a power that she’s only controlling with her voice because she doesn’t want to hurt you yet – like a cat toying with her prey, she’s simply waiting with infinite patience for the right moment to strike. In between verses, juicy keyboard interludes swell lushly in the speakers. What exactly is a “journal of ardency”? Just a pretty metaphor, but hearing her say the words conveys a spine-tingling thrill amid the icy beats and predatory sweetness.

“Let Me Take You Out” is a breezy, smooth ride, upbeat and poppy, but the breathy vocals start to grate quickly, especially during the chorus. Harper sings sweetly, but there’s no edge at all – the seductive whispers have turned sedative. Overproduction turns her blissed-out “oohs” into yawns, and the next track, “Adolescent Heart,” continues the downward slide. Pleasant, woozy lyrics and twinkly synth swirls are anchored by only the most minimal percussion track, with more elongated vowels piled on like shovelfuls of Ambien.
More on Class Actress | Journal of Ardency

FRESH BAKED
in NYC
Acrylics
All of the Fire
2009 | Terrible Records
C+

Acrylics are pleasant. The Brooklyn quintet’s debut EP, All of the Fire (released October 28 on Terrible Records) features clean production, charming boy-girl harmonies, and light songwriting. Characters cross county lines, sail across oceans, and miss their subway stops, all in the name of adventure and introspection. The adorably cathartic opener, “Lil Ivy,” rides a gentle guitar line, a careful drum roll, and near-spoken verses about a female protagonist who heads out to California and whose interests include “skinny dipping with a bottle of wine.” It’s sort of like that Shawn Mullins song from 1998 (please pardon the awful advertisement.)

While their lyrics may rely on tried-and-true topics, Acrylics’ (for the most part) understated delivery keeps the songs catchy. On “Lil Ivy,” guitarist/vocalist Jason Klauber rhymes “messenger sack” with “never looked back” and it actually works. But when he belts it out over a wobbly guitar and plodding drums on “Conselyea,” Klauber no longer sounds modest; he comes off as desperate and self-pitying. Listening feels like the sort of chore that Lil Ivy ran away from home to avoid.

The band’s other guitarist/vocalist, Molly Shea, sounds best when she isn’t singing backup. Her slight drawl on the title track is so confident it doesn’t matter that what she’s saying doesn’t really mean anything (“He who sails the ocean/ Is he who fails to drown”).

Acrylics do manage to move out of their comfort zone on the closing track, “Honest Aims.” The messy garage jam is a much-needed release to a pretty prim record. Not that there’s anything wrong with a band being polite; it doesn’t stop Acrylics from being enjoyable. But it does get in the way of them being memorable.

You can stream “Honest Aims” below, and read our interview with Acrylics here.

by Kyle McGovern

Acrylics - “Honest Aims”

Upon meeting Josh McIntyre, creator and frontman of Toronto’s Little Girls,  I was surprised to find that the man behind all that ominous noise was so friendly and accommodating. But I was even more surprised to watch him jerking and thrashing onstage, stirring up a wild live show at Chris Taylor’s Terrible Records Showcase at CMJ. No mean feat for someone whose band started as a solo, bedroom-recording side project. We caught up with Josh to talk about the Little Girls blog explosion, his new album, Concepts, and the well-warranted love he’s been shown in New York City.

JM.com: You have sort of a blog-era fairy tale. I read about it, but I want to hear from you.

Josh: Basically what happened was I was in another band called Pirate Rock. In my spare time or whatever, I’d go to my bedroom, had my equipment and I’d start recording these songs just on my own. Some of the songs I didn’t even know if it was possible to play live. Just for my own personal music collection I guess. So I made a little Myspace, called it Little Girls, whatever, I didn’t post any photos of myself or anything, just wanted to keep it like a weird little project. Then I used to go to this blog, Gorilla vs. Bear, and just for fun, I was reading something completely irrelevant, and just on the comment section I wrote the little Myspace URL for the band. And you know, at that point, the Myspace had like thirteen plays. Then I went to work and came home and went to check it and it had like a thousand and I was like, “What happened?” So then a couple hours went by and I checked that website and I saw that they posted a little article and then after that every other blog started writing about my stuff and it just went on. And then all of a sudden two labels had offered me records. Paper Bag were like, “We want to hear some more – we’re putting some stuff out.” And it just kind of snowballed.
More on Little Girls

Class Actress

LIVE JOURNAL
JezebelMusic.com @ Pianos
October 23, 2009 | Terrible Records CMJ Showcase

Brooklyn band Arms opened Saturday night’s Terrible Records CMJ Showcase with a breezy, blissed-out pop set, their casual tone clashing distinctly with frontman Todd Goldstein’s jagged movements and nervous between-song banter. Though clearly uncomfortable under the spotlight, his guitar playing was effortless; unfortunately, like the rest of the set, it was also somewhat passionless. The band seemed to be in a hurry to finish, neglecting to put emotion into the music – there was a lukewarm smiliness that persisted even through a song that was, according to Goldstein, “about the end of everything,” and while the lyrics were crisp and audible on the venue’s excellent sound system, they were delivered in a nasal monotone. The music was pleasant enough – barring an irritating excess of ooohs and aaahs in the backing vocals, sung in stock harmonies that wobbled off-tune occasionally to turn the dreamy pop into the stuff of nightmare – but quite bland, and easily forgettable.

Arms

The next set was all too brief. Toronto act Little Girls wasted no time in creating a stormy atmosphere, sending whorls of dark noise over ominously simple minor chord progressions that teetered on the edge of control. Frontman Josh McIntyre’s vocals wove skillfully in and out of the noise, shouting and singing with equal effect. The thrashing guitars piling up over the main chords threatened to descend into total anarchy at any moment but never did, drummer Anthony Gerace’s speedy yet metronomic percussion keeping them in line. Even when McIntyre started flailing around the stage, savaging the keyboard and then jumping into the audience, no one missed a beat, merely speeding up to match his convulsive dancing. The legendarily-jaded CMJ audience was surprised, to say the least, when this energetic tornado with his weird brillo-pad haircut landed in their midst, and he helicoptered around shouting his way through the last song all too briefly before crashing to an end and taking the set with him.

Little Girls
More on CMJ 2009: Terrible Records @ Pianos | 10.23.09

LOCAL SPOTLIGHT NYC
It’s hard to find peace and quiet in the Lower East Side on Friday night, period. But during the CMJ showcase put on by much-talked about Terrible Records, and with Brooklyn band Acrylics – extra busy since their upcoming EP has been underscored by a steadily increasing media buzz – it’s an especially difficult task. After much wriggling through the weekend crowd and slinking through corridors, I managed to hide away in the basement office of Pianos with Jason Klauber and Molly Shea, both guitarists and vocalists for Acrylics. (Travis Rosenberg, who plays keyboard and pedal steel, snuck in a little while later.) Acrylics’ upcoming EP, All of the Fire, (out October 28) is one of the first releases from Terrible Records, the brand new label founded by Grizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor and Lust Boys’ Ethan Silverman. We talked about what it was like to work with Taylor as producer, how Acrylics in its current incarnation came to be, and about Jason’s not-so secret love of 1960s free jazz.

JM.com: Will you guys tell me how you got started?

Jason: Molly and I met in college a while back and we immediately started playing music together.

Molly: Had a couple of different bands over the past seven or eight years.

Jason: At a certain point those bands dissolved and at a certain point we just looked at each other and said, “Let’s just do this on our own.” We did it on our own for some time and then we realized that we needed a band again.

Molly: Cause we were writing songs at the time.

Jason: So after recording a lot of tracks together and looking for what kind of sound we were going to be moving towards, we targeted the right band. We played with a lot of different people, had a lot of excellent experiences, but ended up with the band we have now, which is Sam [Ubl] on drums and Travis on pedal steel – and that was very essential having someone who could do pedal steel and keyboard. So Travis Rosenberg came in and did that. He was like a godsend. And Jake [Aron] and Sam were already friends and had been playing together – Jake’s our bass player. So we all knew each other from around the way, had crossed paths before.

Molly: We had a bunch of songs and we decided to record them so we went into the studio, and we had a bunch of friends come in and play with us and we eventually said we wanted to get a live band together so we’ve been playing together for like a year now with these guys.
More on Acrylics

THIS WEEK IN SHOWS

It’s time for CMJ again, which means the same New York bands you can see all the time in will be playing alongside some touring bands – who would’ve all come to New York at some point anyway – in marathon-length shows full of semi-interested badge-holders and grumpy photographers who get angry when you accidentally bump into them while rocking out in the front row. (Except our photographers, who are very cool and friendly.) We tend to complain about CMJ, but since it’s here, we might as well embrace it. It IS really fun to see ten of your favorite bands in one night, and, exhausting as it may be, it’s fun to do that five nights in a row! As usual, these are my totally subjective and incomplete recommendations for the coming week. You can flesh this out by telling us who you’re going to see… Send us some photos if you go. Or boycott CMJ; that’s totally respectable too. As for us, we’re just excited for a reason to shirk our other responsibilities for a week and rock out in the name of journalism.

TUES, OCT. 20

PANACHE/NEW YORK NIGHT TRAIN CMJ SHOWCASE
Upstairs: Heavy Trash, Golden Triangle, Lovvers, Harlem, Surfer Blood, K-Holes
Downstairs: The Stalkers, Unnatural Helpers, Flexions Dinowalrus, Julianna Barwick, SCREENS
Santos Party House
7:00 PM, $10/$12, 18+
It seems that every other show I get excited about is somehow connected to Panache Booking or New York Night Train (or both), and Tuesday night’s bigass blowout is no exception – just check out the lineup!!! I just need to figure out how to be upstairs and downstairs at the same time. I’ve yet to see Heavy Trash, though I’ve heard good things about their show, but Stalkers deserve some props too. They don’t seem to get much press, but they’re one of my favorite live bands: their songs are totally fun and anthemic, and besides, I’ve seen them throw cymbals, get naked, dribble vomit, and last time I caught their show, lead singer Andy Animal was tossing firecrackers into the crowd with a menacing glee. Alright!
More on This Week In Shows: CMJ EDITION!

DAILY NEWS PICKS

Former Replacements Frontman Paul Westerberg Releases Surprise EP, P.W. & The Ghost Gloves Cat Wing Joy Boys; Buy It! It’s Probably Got Songs About Youth! [Pitchfork]

Keyboardist From the Now-Defunct Harlem Shakes (Two News Stories at Once!) Records Entirety of Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Fever to Tell, Using Only a Beat-Up Piano, a Drum Machine, and a Case of Sparks; Dude From Harlem Shakes Is Unquestionably The Fucking Man (Download It Here) [Brooklyn Vegan]

Watch New Flaming Lips Video For Embryonic Cut, “I Can Be a Frog” Featuring Karen O (It’s Pretty Standard Lips – Girl In Bikini, Girl Laughs, Girl Gets Animals Drawn Over Her With the John Madden Pen); Embryonic Released October 13 [Gorilla vs. Bear]

Watch Thom Yorke Perform In Rainbows Highlight “Reckoner” at The Age of Stupid Premiere; All Conclude Song Should Have Been Recorded Completely Acoustically – This Shit is Gorgeous [Stereogum]

Stream Of Montreal Covering Diana Ross’s “Love Hangover” Live in New York (This Is Pretty Sweet Even If You Actively Despise Of Montreal) [You Ain’t No Picasso]

Jay Z Says No One Is Afraid Of 50 Cent; Jay Doesn’t Speak For Me, Or My Gangly, Indie Rock Brethren, As Mr. Cent Is Significantly Bigger Than Us [Prefix]

Fucked Up Wins Polaris Music Prize For Chemistry of Common Life (You Made the Right Choice, Canada); Read Frontman Damian “Pink Eyes” Abraham’s Provactive and Heartfelt Response in the Torontoist [Brooklyn Vegan]

Grizzly Bear Multi-Instrumentalist Chris Taylor Launches Record Label, Terrible Records; Pitchfork Runs Headline: “Grizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor Launches Terrible Record Label (No, Really)” – I Steal Pitchfork’s Joke, As No Other Joke Immediately Available [Pitchfork]

compiled by Max Sebela