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BRANDO - PRESS REVIEW
- Delusion of Adequacy - Splendid e-zine - Lazy-I - The Independent Mind - Ink 19 - Indie-Music - Milk Magazine - Pitchfork -
On first listen, I thought Brando's latest album
was a Beatles-inspired trip back into the psychedelic pop days of
the 60's and 70's. But from listening to the band's past work, I
knew that Brando works on a level below the surface impression.
This album grew on me slowly but surely until it's currently one
of my favorite albums. It still has a definite psychedelic pop surface,
but now it doesn't feel rehashed but rather fresh and unique.
The headless Horseman is a Preacher is so good
I can hardly think straight. I've been listening to this disc so
much that I worry that I've gotten behind on all the other things
I'm supposed to be listening to. It's really that good. Derek Richey's
vocals are a perfect match for Brando's version of darker indie-pop.
Some songs ("Theories of Division") have a dreamy Galaxie
500 feel; in fact, Richey's vocals sometime sound like Dean Wareham
in his pre-Luna days. Others tracks have a Davie Bowie-influenced
tinge - particularly the Morrissey penned "Death of a disco
Dancer". However, Brando should in no way be confused with
a group of musicians so overwhelmed by their influences that they
never develop their own sound. Brando's sound is uniquely their
own, forged with bizarre yet beautifully honest lyrics, and arrangements
that help to keep them out of the "this sounds just like"
classification bin. They don't sound "just like" anyone;
rather, they seize moments from past great music and twist and turn
them until something new and amazing has been created. For The Headless
Horseman…, Brando enlisted the Smokeylung Orchestra, a string
section that adds an extra touch of melancholy to several tracks.
Often, when bands throw in such things it comes off as a bit too
contrived. In Brando's case, however, this accompaniment is subtle
and appropriate, and never overused. Lyrically, Brando's songs express
a certain vulnerable bareness, conjuring the image of a main character
who is on the verge of losing all hope, but who has not quite hit
bottom. It's the sensation that comes between the point when everything
has been lost and the realization that it's not ever coming back.
Perhaps Brando will move on to that latter feeling on their next
release. Something tells me, though, that they probably have some
less obvious ideas of their own. - Amy Leach. If this were released by a larger indie - Subpop, Jad Tree, Saddle Creek, etc. - there would be instant hype and people clammering to get a copy. Instead, it's released on tiny Smokeylung Records and the CD's underside has that distinctive, light-blue-metallic hue that screams cdr. Don't be fooled, this is no amateur job. This time out, Brando's music is more laid back, more tuneful and assured than on "The Adder", the combo's last effort. They're often compared to The Beatles, but in fact tracks here more closely resemble late-era John Lennon, specifically the quiet, shuffle-y rock stuff from his last few albums. Lead singer Derek Richey's nasal voice falls somewhere between Lennon, Pere Ubu's David Thomas and Galaxie 500 / Luna's Wareham, while their mostly laid-back, dreamy melodies resemble quieter Guided By Voices or Sister Lover era Big Star. Standouts: The angular, minimal "The Fight Club Song", the laid-back, bass-driven "Hold Me Mine" with its distinctive Lennon-esque vocals that are only eclipsed by the piano-driven "The Leaving in Ayetch", which in Brando's "n° 9 Dream". "When in Rome" which is listed but not included in the lyric sheet and credits, is a Bowie-esque sing-along with a very cool chop guitar part. "Don't triffle" and "Theories of Division" are as Guided By Voices as you can get without taking on Bob Pollard's road-hardened beer gut. At almost 50 minutes, Headless Horseman is a buffet of musical styles and influences, and it is consistently enjoyable. There is, however, something quirky about their music, in sort of a Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 sort of way. The music is straightforward, but then again, there's a strangeness about it that makes it unique and will either pique your ear or immediately turn you off. Bands like Brando never fail to amaze me in their sheer chutzpah of continually putting out cdr after cdr, getting their material to their targeted industry outlets, their apparent failure to get the break they deserve, and their perseverance to continue recording. Tim Mc Mahan Brando, of Bloomington, Indiana, finds a nice space somewhere between the Elephant Six collective and the Guided by Voices of five years ago. That is to say they play Beatles-influenced, damaged pop music and record at home. You've probably heard bands that sound a lot like Brando before, but you probably haven't heard many that do it as well as Brando . One of the biggest misconceptions about home
recording is that it all necessarily has to be full of tape hiss
with next to no instrument separation in the mix. The Headless Horseman
Is A Preacher is a good example of a very well done home recording.
It is obvious that a lot of time was put into the recording, and
even more into the mixing. The result is a record with almost professional
sounding production, a compelling mix, and an overall warm, homemade
feeling. With Brando, that feeling is as important as any other
element in the music. My first thought is a twisted cross between Rio-era Duran Duran and Death Cab For Cutie. Sometimes I wonder what's wrong with me. The packaging on this is beautiful, very D.I.Y indie, and the music fits in perfectly. There's a very glam rock feel to the emotion, to the lyrical movement of the songs. Like digging David Bowie out of a Velvet Goldmine. The music is distant and minimal, lots of keyboard grooves and moves, and some guitar that drifts mellow as waves. Then it drifts into some strange psychedelic sorrow story, making all the little children cry. Marcel Feldman.
Brando is back. And I couldn't be more pleased. Once again, the Midwest is blessed with a new recording from a band that is sometimes pieced together, but always productive, featuring the talents of Derek Richey (who also mixed and produced the disc), Josh Seib, Dan Solero, Finn Swingley (see solo record review at http://indie-music.com/reviews/finn.htm), and writing contribution by Nathan Bryant. How to describe this music. As time goes on, this remains difficult, because Brando recordings are something that are to be relished on one's own, and the experience feels almost tactile. I could say "atmospheric", "bold", "confident", "ubiquitous" and many other terms that, blended all together, might give everyone a good idea of what to expect. Think, Beatles and Bowie walk into a bar, meet up with The Smiths, knock back a few drinks, strap on some instruments left on a stage in the corner, and put on a show to leave you stunned. That's probably closer to what I mean to say and will dodge around for the remainder of this review. But it's not particularly off-putting to say that those who appreciate bare-bones, creative approaches to swinging melodies and maladies will enjoy this music. Again, it's reminiscent of the holed-up studio phases of the Beatles, moving easily from poppy rock lines to sparser introspection.What you can rely on from a Brando recording is a wide array of styles and influences, hence the reference to Bowie. I recently saw an interview with Bowie where he explained that he never liked being pigeonholed or expected to produce more material like Ziggy Stardust phase, or Aladdin Sane, just for the sake of being predictable. He said that he "just did as he pleased, letting the music and noise in his head move him forward". Brando's approach is similar, there are meanderings into folk, jazz, rock, pop, and arthouse, but what ties all of these things together is a true and honest reflection of creative artistry.Recommended tracks to ease yourself into the Brando arsenal on HEADLESS HORSEMAN include "Hold Me Mine", "Leaving the Scene of a Crime", "The Lazybeats", the Morrissey-penned musical adaptation of "Death of a Disco Dancer", and "Don't Trifle". Heidi Drokelman Brian Eno used to make much of the fact that he wasn't a musician, that his technical abilities on any instrument were quite limited. Instead, he made a virtue of his limitations by figuring out what he could do, then writing around those skills. Similarly, Eno's earliest musical experiments were carried out on thrift-shop reel-to-reel recorders that didn't work right: Eno made the machines' various failings, each of which shaped the sound it recorded in different ways, into compositional elements. The rise of bedroom recordists could provide a similar illustration of making-do, or at least, it should do so. Too many people try to record right past the limitations of their equipment and skills and end up producing poorly executed, crappy-sounding versions of the sort of music best done in real recording studios. (Or worse: they go into real recording studios and run their sound through expensive digital filters that make the music sound as if it had been recorded at home on a $20 Radio Shack cassette machine.) Derek Richey, who writes, sings, and plays most of this Brando CD, doesn't make this mistake. He recognizes that if his equipment creates hiss in the vocal track at 1000 kHz, for example, you either make sure another instrument or effect is blanketing that 1000 kHz range, or you make the hiss into part of the music - say, by blatantly cutting in and out of the vocal track so the hiss becomes another instrumental element. He also knows that if you're not able to marshal 128 tracks of power, you'd best not focus your music on huge, orchestral crescendos from one teensy triangle to three dozen each of trombonists and electric guitar players. Instead, you're making chamber music of a sort: small gestures count more, because they're proportionately more of what's there. So Richey and cohorts can build a song so that an unexpected rise in the chord progression two minutes into "Hold Me Mine" has the revelatory effect of a huge riff reverberating in a stadium-sized sound-space. You also need to make the most of tone color, so very few of what we hear on Brando's CD sounds straight out of the box: lots of effects and sound treatments to avoid monotony. Compositionally, Richey seems to be mining the same sturdy American song idiom, but filtered through eccentricities of lyrical viewpoint and sonic irregularity, as Grandaddy and (especially) Sparklehorse. The asymmetrical mix and placement of the melodic lines in "The Lazybeats" remind me of R. Stevie Moore circa Phonography, and the band displays an impressive range of musical styles. "When in Rome" whips up a platform-booted stomp like Bowie's in his Ziggy/Aladdin glam period, while "Overtime" begins with cold, gray, synthetic classical chord-columns that open into a modified fifties-ballad chord progression, rather like the experimental phase of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark on their brittle, melancholy, and sadly overlooked Architecture & Morality and Dazzle Ships.Brando, then, succeeds in making a virtue of its limitations - which suggests that those limitations are external and circumstantial, not musical. - Jeff Norman Pitchfork - Rating: 7.5 Beatlesque, Bowie-ish, and Galaxie 500-like are the synonyms that most often get thrown at the wall of How to Describe Brando's Music. And while they stick for a second, in a moment they've begun to walk their way down to the floor like those creepy crawler 25¢ toys made from that hideous adhesive gummy-rubber stuff. In other words, they're close, but only useful insofar as Brando's sound is difficult to pin down. You can make do with the creepy crawler tags, but Brando's songs are a love-it-or-hate-it sonic Teflon that you owe it to yourself to hear. It's remarkable that a band that sounds as warm and fully integrated as Brando, in reality, has its core members scattered over an almost silly geographical expanse. Some live in Indiana-- the band's originally from Bloomington-- a couple of them call Chicago home, and one is raising a family in Brazil. Derek Richey's voice does indeed recall Bowie's more nasally moments. And Brando's songs do often detour into odd glam byways that their more despondent "recorded in my mom's basement" songs leave you ill-prepared to process. Which brings up another strange thing about the band from two continents: how album-like an album they've been able to put together out of so many disparate styles. The Headless Horseman is a Preacher opens with the title track, a short but pleasant electro-shoegazer introduction. "The Fight Club Song" follows with its unnerving vocal and guitar melodies, wavering synth lines, and drumming that sounds only barely more human than the Casio beats from the previous track. Neither song is stellar, but together, they lay the mood-foundation, for what comes after "The Seed" is distinctly songwriterly indie-pop with a splinter-like melody and scratchy but brilliant guitar chords. There's something-- and you may have guessed this by now-- weirdly, well, British about this band. "The Seed," in particular, sounds like a grotesque and yet beautiful mix between the songcraft of Death Cab's Ben Gibbard and the Pale Saints. "Theories of Division" and "Pilot of This Ship" continue in much the same vein, the latter revealing Richey's Bowieisms a bit more obviously than before, and with more than an echo of post-Fab Four Lennon. "Hold Me Mine" shifts gears dramatically, with a sultry bass-driven feel that's sexy and slowly propulsive, until the spell is snapped by "Leaving the Scene of the Crime" with its Ringo snare rolls and "Strawberry Fields" background vocals. The album slumps with "When in Rome," "The Leaving of Aytech" and "Overtime," which bring out the glitter, platforms, and too-tight clothing, earning the band every unwanted Bowie comparison they ever got. Yet, these tracks are mediated through an undeniably American prism of soporific indie pop musical sensibility. The best thing that can be said about The Headless Horseman is a Preacher, other than that the first listens yield quite a few winners, is that repeated listens will reward the patient. Still, this is heavily moody, self-indulgent fare for wallowing in your own you-ness. Preferably with a succession of stiff drinks. Shelve the Spiders from Mars and your whole catalog of mid-to-late 90s fuzz-pop for a few days, and see if you can handle this strangely natural sounding hybrid of the two. -Camilo Arturo Leslie, December 6th, 2001 -
-Compact - Magic ! - PopNews - Popingays - Sefronia - Abus Dangereux - La Gazette Nord-Pas de Calais - Indiana Dreams. Voilà un groupe qui depuis
91 lutte pour se faire entendre. A la première écoute de The Headless Horseman is A Preacher, on est certainement étonné par l'originalité de ce groupe issu de Bloomington, Indiana, qui tisse des liens entre Bowie circa 1971, Sergeant Pepper, Guided By Voices et Grandaddy. Et puis très vite, ces vingt titres d'indie pop lo-fi et psychédélique, aux mélodies aussi habiles que détraquées, révèlent leur beauté complexe et obsessionnelle. On réalise alors qu'on a peut être affaire là à l'un des disques les plus fascinants de l'année, pas moins. D'une sonorité très artisanale (ce bon vieux quatre-pistes), l'album passe d'une glitter pop grésillante, poisseuse et bancale, à de bouleversantes ballades à jambe de bois, riches en claviers et cordes. A chaque instant, ma musique semble sur le point de déraper, titube entre minimalisme et grandiloquence. Le maître d'oeuvre principal de cet exploit déjanté est Derek Richey, songwritter décidément inspiré, et chanteur aussi à l'aise dans la complainte en falsetto que dans la légèreté. Il se paye même le luxe de revisiter (ou plutôt réarranger) un titre à l'origine assez moyen de The Smiths (Death of a Disco Dancer). Bon, sur les vingt morceaux que comprend cette édition européenne, il en est quand même bien cinq dont on aurait pu se passer, mais la classe brute de The Leaving of Ayetch ou Darkheart, par exemple, rappelle en tout cas que, souvent, les plus belle mélodies ne sonnent jamais aussi bien que lorsqu'elles sont interprétées aussi près possible de l'os. Gilles Duhem Popnews - Disque de la semaine 21/11/01 L'ecoute d'un disque (et son appreciation) depend
aussi de petits details : dans le cas de Brando j'aurais pu m'arreter
au premier plantage de ma chaine qui restait bloquee sur le meme
bout de phrase : travel.travel.travel.travel, mais merde, qu'est-ce
que c'est que cette musique ??? La suite : Popnews.com Troisième découverte de Talitres
Records (Label français), Brando débute en Ce disque est la troisième référence
de Talitres Records, petit "The headless horseman is a preacher" Abus Dangereux - Face 75 - novembre/décembre 01 Brando n'est pas le premier groupe à verser dans l'indie pop mélancolique et artisanal, mais reconnaissons leur aptitude à convaincre très au dessus du minimum syndical. Démarré il y a 10 ans dans l'Indiana, Brando a tout du groupe à géométrie variable, plus occupé par les courbes mélodiques d'une musique volontiers avenante que par les aléas d'un hypothétique plan de carrière. Derek Richey chante parfois comme le Bowie androgyne des early 70's, ailleurs on croirait Lennon, tandis que certains titres voguent doucement sur les eaux voisines de Luna / Galaxie 500, voire Guided By Voices sous tranquillisants, Fleets, Flying By Me est sans doute le titre le plus apaisé de l'automne 2001. Très beau, très riche ! [AF] La gazette Nord-Pas de Calais #7372 Troisième signature au sein de l'écurie Talitres, défricheur avisé de petites merveilles musicales d'Outre-Atlantique, Brando a pris naissance il y a plus de dix ans dans l'Indiana. C'est pourtant leur premier véritable album où les titres abondent (21!) dont une reprise surprenante d'une titre des Smiths (Death of a Disco Dancer). Sur les traces lointaines des Beatles et des premiers Bowie, guetté parfois par l'emphase, cet album ravira les fans de Grandaddy mais laissera perplexe les autres (dont votre serviteur), irrité par la voix revêche de Derek Richey. Patrick Beaumont
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