BY TOM MURPHY BISON BONE – LEAN EP The band recorded this EP, aptly named at just three tracks. Live with few overdubs, it has a spontaneous feel with some of the sound anomalies left in like silencing the strings with a sweep of the hand at the end of “The Lucky Ones.” The commanding tone of the songs is striking but so are its various thematic resonances. The title track uses the word lean in the sense of someone who you can count on for support emotionally and likely often physically. These are songs about love and commitment which have been written about from the beginnings of popular music. But Courtney Whitehead shaves off everything but the essential sentiments and expression, letting the obvious affection and warmth with which each moment is delivered suffice as proof of sincerity. CALM. – ONLY VAMPIRES WEAR CAPES With Time’s insightful use of the semiotics of popular culture and an internationalist perspective on political economy, and AwareNess’s free association and freestyle composition and production to set the emotional timbre, each song is a brilliant treatise on American society and culture. You don’t need to know political theory or understand the nuances of referents here because the songs are written to be accessible, vulnerable and real, while offering poignant observations about life. The density of poetry is refreshingly transparent, but like a great film offers treasures on the revisiting. No. 137 CHELLA & THE CHARM – HAPPY HOUR This set of songs, as the title of the release suggests, is culled from time spent hanging out with friends and acquaintances at the bar after work and the stories people share in less guarded moments in a place where they feel comfortable and welcome. But Chella has gleaned more than just the universality of some of these stories heard over decades, though this works as an inspired and poetic retelling. Inside the incandescent guitar work and the expertly accented rhythm and cadence of the music, you hear an affection for this time so often taken for granted — of shared camaraderie for the human condition; of an implicit trust and unspoken caring for each other that can be lost as subtext, but which the band makes apparent to the attentive listener. That and the band stretches out into new realms of sound in the song “December” and its sublime keyboard line that traces the elevated sentiments and moods that have been the hallmark of the group’s music since the beginning. HOLYMOONLIGHTBLADE – FAUX CONTROL Ambient and experimental electronic artist aeonexit branches into different vistas of composition with this debut release as holymoonlightblade. Working with f-ether in the mastering of these tracks, the drones and rhythmic beat sequences produce an otherworldly tone. The piece “a glint lost” feels like breaking through layers of resistance to a new level of consciousness with the
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