Doug Hoyer

Songs From Grand Marquee

(independent)

3 stars

Nobody gives bassists enough credit. Just because the instrument has only four strings doesn’t mean you can dismiss all bass-wielders as stage-fillers. Doug Hoyer’s new EP, Songs From Grand Marquee, is perfect proof that a bass player can pump out on the treble side of a tune, not to mention pen a pleasant ditty or two.

The album is a clever collection of Hoyer’s minimalist ukulele-strumming and polished accordion-squeezing, with bass left this time to the likes of Calvin McElroy. Each track opens a window into Hoyer’s offbeat, wandering life—you can’t help but feel you’re falling in love as you listen to “Emma” (maybe not with a girl, but at least with the song’s appealingly earnest sound), and the purely instrumental “Asleep in the Back Seat” compresses all the sentiment of an entire Wes Anderson score into less than two minutes. Although there’s a pretty laid-back feel to most of the album, “Runaway Love” takes easygoing to new extremes. Compared to Hoyer’s other local projects, like indie-poppers Illfit Outfit, the candy-coated emotions on display here make a stark contrast. 

Songs From Grand Marquee is light, fun, and doesn’t take itself too seriously, with a breezy vibe that makes it a great little gem for summer listening. The sunniness wears thin after a while, but Hoyer’s ambitions (like approaching Jacob Stalhammar to master the album), shine happily through.

CHRIS LEWIS 

Flight of the
conChords

Flight of the Conchords

(Sub Pop) 3 stars

Well, it’s nowhere near as funny as the TV show. 

Should I be more constructive with my feedback? Fine: Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie’s HBO sitcom about “New Zealand’s fourth most popular folk-comedy duo” would be a minor masterpiece of deadpan comedy even without the dead-on parodies of everything from David Bowie space-rock to ’60s French pop; this disc is merely a collection of funny songs.

On its own merits, Flight of the Conchords generates enough chuckles to be worth buying. “Hiphopopotamus Vs. Rhymenocerous,” their most famous track, now feels a little stale, but their Pet Shop Boys parody “Inner City Pressure” holds up well, as does “Think About It,” which is what What’s Going On might have sounded like if Marvin Gaye were a white guy whose awareness of violence was limited to a few episodes of Kojak. And it’s hard to resist a band whose idea of a seductive lyric is “You’re so beautiful, you could be a part-time model.”

PAUL MATWYCHUK 

Meshuggah

Obzen

(Nuclear Blast)

4 stars

Swedish tech-metal outfit Meshuggah has been making inimitably ferocious, complex music for nearly two decades. On the band’s previous album, Catch 33, their drive for density and convolution got the better of them when drummer Thomas Haake put down the sticks and programmed the album’s ever-shifting beats, producing a mechanized sound the band could barely reproduce live. Obzen returns Haake to his rightful place, fashioning malformed grooves out of the heaviest materials at hand. Gut-churning bass, kaleidoscopic rhythmic patterns, and tightly meshed guitars churn and buck under Jens Kidman’s throat-shredding atonal yawp like some machine-reptile writhing through a primal/futuristic rite. Just listen to the tortuous riff that powers “Pineal Gland Optics,” careening forward even as the band chops it into countless chunks of sound. If that sounds like it’ll float your boat, you have to check out Meshuggah, the only band that fits the description.

SCOTT LINGLEY 

Does it offend you, yeah? You Have No Idea What You Are Getting Yourself Into (Red Ink) 1 star

I don’t understand young people. When they aren’t wearing earrings in their face or lensless nerd glasses, they’re listening to the worst music ever made. No Idea sounds like it was recorded by two different bands—one a group of unwashed South London hipsters who worship The Cure and Bloc Party, and the other a posse of ironic New York trustfunders in V-necks and purple jeans snorting coke and making jive-ass disco with vocoders.
At least the first band uses guitars. Try as I might to understand this witless Brit-dance phenomenon, I can’t understand what attracts people to music that positively revels in its own softheaded silliness. If I discovered this in my son’s record collection, he would be forced to listen to Dire Straits until he remembered what music is supposed to sound like, then submit to the spanking of a lifetime. Yeah, I spank my fictional kid. If that offends you, you’re probably the reason shitty bands like this become famous in the first place.

TRAVIS SARGENT