But This Year I Ended Up Streamlined

It's more than a bit ironic that Charleston-based songsmith Michael Flynn admits that the soundtrack to 1983's "The Big Chill" is one of his early influences. After all, the Motown-heavy compilation that paved the way for every thematic movie score since served as the backdrop to a script about children of the 1960s who are coming to terms with the death of their idealistic youth. While Flynn's 2004 release "No Disassemble" deals with the perils of growing up and is replete with themes of love gone sour and death, its creative architect is still chasing his dream of making a living singing the songs he's written.

Growing up in Greenville, Flynn went to the College of Charleston before attending the well-respected Berkelee College of Music in Boston to further his abilities on the ivories - a skill his parents began cultivating when he was in third grade. At Berkelee, Flynn received both honors for his songwriting and began to chafe against the academic setting he found himself in. Eventually moving back to Charleston, he took with him collaborator Josh Kaler, who has played either drums or guitar for his friend ever since. They collaborated on Flynn's debut "Music for the Flood," which was the thematically expansive result of his dammed-up songwriting and arranging sensibilities, and hinted at the much tighter 2004 recording.

"No Disassemble" was written and recorded during a year in Charleston, and shows the movement Flynn has made away from the academic confines of the music establishment and into the emotional deep-end of personal experience. Flynn said that while "Music for the Flood" was written from a narrative perspective, "No Disassemble" lacked the filter that kept him from putting himself more fully into the compositions.

Recorded primarily in his bedroom, the album never ducks into the muddy instrumental depths that were the hallmark of "Music for the Flood," nor does it sound like the lo-fi effort of a beginner or an indie snob that's grown too big for his britches. Instead, Flynn uses room noises and a veritable palette of Casiotone electronic flourishes and handclaps to accent the piano, guitar and drum lineup that would otherwise be unremarkable. Sounding like a product of the IDM revolution in pop instead of a child of grunge that similar-sounding North Carolina native Ben Folds was, Flynn's literate writing and inherent sense of timing work together on "No Disassemble" to result in an understated masterpiece. Feeling never gets left behind in exchange for musical flourishes, though, and tracks like "The Sea is Never Full" and "Streamlined" show Flynn knowing when to leave out elements or extend instrumental passages in a way that is atypical of the current crop of independent artists.

"You're in Luck" finds Flynn announcing to a past love that "I know the way to your heart, you're in luck," tempting her to return to a convenient relationship. On the album's most evocative track, "Don't Let Them See Me Like This," a hollow percussive line drives the moody organ and soaring guitar that punctuate Flynn's narrative of a hospitalized love one and the helplessness he feels watching their suffering.

Although Flynn has yet to garner the critical acclaim or regional following that are stepping stones to widespread success, the building blocks are in place. "No Disassemble" is waiting for a major label to snap it up and repackage, leaving the artist and his entourage with little to do other than tour incessantly to support better promotion efforts.

When many artists dream of their faces on MTV or singing to sold-out stadiums, Flynn remains a bit more modest in admitting that his five-year plan is to make a living doing what he is now, just hopefully with a few more people in the crowd. There is already at least another album's worth of material in place, but that can wait for a more expansive touring schedule, something that might include a jaunt to the UK, Flynn said. Indeed, it seems he is finally at ease with the lineup of his band and its ability to buoy him to new creative heights. "Now I can make all the sounds I want to," Flynn said in reference to his collaboration with Josh Kaler.

Even his Charleston base seems unlikely to offer a budding artist like himself much support, but Flynn says it lacks many of the negatives common to more musically literate towns like Austin, Portland or even Boston - ease of booking shows and getting promotion in the local media. Indeed, Charleston has its own tight community of artists like The Films, Cary Ann Hearst and Bill Carson that Flynn credits for giving him creative support and encouragement. "Seeing good music like that pushes me to want to be better," Flynn said.

No longer working random day jobs like the one at Kinko's he quit in December, he plans to avoid the "black hole" that the Southeast can be for artists that manage followings here but are virtually unknown outside the region by a following stiff touring schedule. The various iterations of his band have played Columbia many times during the past three years, and fans have another chance to see him with Josh Kaler in support at Jammin' Java on Wednesday at 7 p.m. Don't pass up the opportunity to see arguably South Carolina's best songwriting talent before stardom takes hold and his perennial visits cease.

www.michaelflynn.com

You can feel, but you can't grab it

Kasabian: s/t
1 out of 5 stars

It's hard not to do well in the UK when NME, the Isles' leading music publication, goes out of its way seemingly every month to convince people that you're the next thing since Oasis to start a new British invasion of the American Billboard charts.

Despite wrapping itself proudly in the seamy side of being lads in the industrial midlands of England, Kasabian has managed to ride a wave of critical praise to platinum record sales in its home nation, and a (barely) top-40 radio appearance here on the other side of the Atlantic. But if anything is clear from its debut album, it's that the British press is suffering from the Stockholm syndrome - Kasabian is well-known for its brash and abusive responses to interviewers' queries, inflating their hype by bashing American music as "scuzzy garage rock." Even their name is a roundabout fist in the air to the establishment that has created them, as Kasabian is the last name of Charles Manson's pregnant getaway driver.

Musically, Kasabian grew out of '90s British hardcore and the raves where trance and drum 'n' bass got their start as the refuge of disaffected teens who felt they had no stock in the pop prevalent on the airwaves, eventually flourishing into an entire underground culture. While incorporating electronica flourishes and production into their lineup of keyboards, drums and a dual guitar attack, their self-titled debut falls into the trap of being nothing more than a derivative of previous work, something Kasabian claims to avoid. Locking themselves away in an abandoned textile mill on a farm, Kasabian synthesized the last 30 years of rock 'n' roll in a way that contributes nothing more than an arrogant swagger to the genre.

Their album reflects this inability to find a unique sound, with the first track "Club Foot" nothing more than a shout-out to U2's 1997 single "Discotheque." Except where the giants of Irish rock managed a clean track that had a driving bass line, Kasabian's dissolves into siren-like strings.

"ID" manages to evoke Radiohead, as lead singer Tom Meighan does his best Thom Yorke impression, while the backing samples muddy the emotion that the band is trying to squeeze out of the swells. Meighan shows his vocal manipulation in evoking The Verve in his phrasing on "L.S.F", while the use of organ and strings fails to make the impact of "Bittersweet Symphony." Much of the rest of the album is little more than iterations of The Stone Roses and Primal Scream, proving that Kasabian could learn a thing or two from the movements in American rock instead of staying stuck tuned into 10-year-old Radio One.

If anything, Kasabian can foist its album off as the soundtrack to the next edition of Electronic Art's FIFA Soccer a la Moby, since it seems the band set out to make little more than an ambient background to slide tackles and football hoodlum fights. At its best, the album evokes Guy Ritchie's similarly unintelligible film "Snatch," encouraging bloody noses and all-night parties at the club throwing back pints and pills. Perhaps it's worth noting that its name is also Armenian for "butcher," which aptly describes how your ears will feel after a listen.

And if you don't love me let me go

JRodDecemberists, originally uploaded by lotifoazurri.

John Roderick as the history teacher in the Decemberist's new video for 16x32

My lede sucks, but I stand by the rest of the review. I can't wait to see them at the Orange Peel in May:


"Picaresque: adjective. Of or relating to rogues or rascals; also, of, relating to, suggesting, or being a type of fiction dealing with the episodic adventures of a usually roguish protagonist."

The album title of The Decemberists third full-length album title gives listeners a clue as to the subject matter that the Portland, Ore.-based five-piece chamber indie-pop group explores during the 11 tracks that encompass its most ambitious work to date. Ranging from narratives about the passion between international spies to seafarers swallowed by whales, "Picaresque" manages both high arrangement afforded by having an upright bass, accordion, piano and theremin in addition to the usual rock complement of guitars and drums, and simple, stripped-down melodies that allow frontman Colin Meloy's literate writing to shine through. On the bombastic end of the spectrum is the full-sounding track 'Espionage', which features a swell from simple voice and guitar to a crescendo of strings, plus the band's unobtrusive rythmn section, that remains largely out of the way but important to the album's mood.

In much the same way that Meloy's lyrics evoke the best of western fiction and the sepia-toned world that yellowed book pages connote, The Decemberists' history is a chronology of the Northwest's evolution as the epicenter of American indie-rock. First signed to Portland-based Hush Records, which has nurtured other notable underground bands such as Kind of Like Spitting, the band made the jump to Olympia, Wash.'s Kill Rock Stars label in 2002 for the re- release of "Castaways and Cutouts" before putting out a second full-length entitled "Her Majesty The Decemberists" in 2003. Never resting on its laurels, the band saw the release in 2004 of "The Tain EP," which was based on an 8th century epic Irish poem, and had musical nods to epic '70s bands like Deep Purple.

While these previous efforts have showcased Meloy's promise, culled from his degree in creative writing, "Picaresque" is in many ways the most complete and even work the band has produced to date. Recorded in a converted church with the help of Death Cab for Cutie guitarist and producer Chris Walla, whom the band worked with on "The Tain," the album moves with each literary flourish to the denouement of each mini-story of love, loss and death as the band gives decibel weight to the song's intended emotion.

Meloy avoids the affliction of his musical compatriots and expresses emotion through the stories he tells instead of culling material from thinly veiled personal experiences. While it is hard to pin down the influences that might immediately pop out of another band's sound, Meloy admits freely in news releases that the tapes of '80s college rock music his uncle sent him and his parent's reasonable listening habits played into his tastes for the more literate, if not less approachable, side of music.

Although Meloy may have missed his calling to teach as a English professor, fans of Dickens or Melville will appreciate the way that "Picaresque" unfolds during repeated close listening, with previously unheard swells, accents and layers of detail making their presence known. Equal parts folk, orchestra and lush pop, The Decemberists' newest effort will ensnare anyone with a pair of headphones and the willingness to be led into a world that is both apart from our own and at the same time a product of a culture at war.