Tram - Heavy Black Frame (320)

It's been said countless times before, but I really dislike some of the terms people use to come up with names for genres. It seems like genres used to have interesting names like "jazz" (which was a west-coast slang term for Chicago music), but now people only use other genres and adjectives to describe music now. Not very original. Such is the case with "slowcore."

But in any case, Tram are an amazing "slowcore" band who use an interesting mixture of emo and folk lyrics to create emotionally engaging albums that make for an incredible listen. They are often atmospheric in tone and some songs are borderline shoegaze.

I'm really digging these guys, you should check them out. Heavy Black Frame is a definite keeper. It's been on heavy rotation in my library for a while now, and they never disappoint.

Download here and buy here.

Brand New - The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me (320)

Brand New didn't exactly start out on the right foot, their first album being pretty mediocre and nothing quite special. Their second album, while being a vast improvement and a very good album it still felt like there was something missing. Then, they released this gem.

The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me is such an emotion driven piece that you can't listen to it without having your mood being grabbed by the wrist and dragged along for the ride, no matter how you were feeling before you started. The vocals here are incredibly essential, it's leading the pack so to speak. The passion behind the lyrics and the way they're being sung is so good at times it gives me goosebumps, and then the instruments back it up perfectly to make it twice as powerful. What you get here is the whole package. There are some incredibly depressing songs that can be termed as "emo," some general alternative rockers with fairly catchy guitar riffs, and some with a mix of the two. There's also plenty of acoustics strewn about, with whispering quiet vocals not unlike Connor Oberst of Bright eyes that will make the song feel very personal, as if it's being sung to you from a few feet away. The entire first half of the album by itself should leave you not knowing what to think. The second half gets less emotional and more guitar driven, and will loosen it's grip on your heart by a bit. You'll feel like you just got your heart torn out and the person who did it is just standing there holding it in front of you while you wait for them to kindly give it back. They give it back eventually, but ultimately you're left confused and wanting to know more, kind of like after an open ended movie. Or at least, that's how I felt.

Personally this album has sky rocketed into my favorite albums list in just a mere two weeks or so. I'd suggest this album to anyone who likes emotion and vocal driven music, along with alternative fans. I leave this album with an incredibly high recommendation, but don't expect it to lift your spirits at all. You're in for something that will tug at your heart strings, especially if you focus on the lyrics.

Highlights: Millstone, Degausser, Luca

Download here.

Ameris - Chapter 1 (192)

So one day I happened to somehow stumble upon this, a 6 track demo for a band called Ameris.

The past decade has killed the credibility of the lo-fi sound of cheap homemade recordings. It has taken a lot blunt hits to its once pure face thanks to plenty of bands that have been using it to try and make themselves sound more honest or more authentic or less like the arrogant perfectionists they’ll portray themselves to be(while they really aren’t perfectionists at all, they’re actually just genuinely incompetent). This isn’t me saying that the lo-fi compressed sound should be only kept for those that really have no other option than to go for the cheaply produced album, but I’m saying that making your album in a compressed tape recorder/home recording format doesn’t make you authentic. At one point it may have seemed like it did, but that was because the bands that used it WERE the real thing, they meant what they said, they weren’t playing to appeal- they were just playing.

In this same spectrum is where Ameris lies, playing just for playing. There is something special though that the murky production has on emotive hardcore, like in Sunny Day Real Estate’s debut album Diary, (where the production, while not being in any way low quality was still closer to the lo-fi sound of Pavement’s Debut than it was of a clear cut “I know exactly what is going on” recording) the slight darkness on the recordings make the songs stand out so that it’s not a single instrument that hits the listener, but the entirety of what’s going on- the intensity of what’s around them. In the same way, Ameris’ sound is only further intensified by the mixing, the vocals taking the entire lead throughout this six track EP and leaving the instruments to provide more of the scenery than an event. The band obviously gets a lot of its influence from SDRE though, taking the same feeling of Diary and pushing it with the modern emotive hardcore method.

The EP’s best characteristic and what gives it its entire personality is the piano used in the songs because there’s nothing that really sets contrast to the moods given than the sound that the clear, barely audible (but still there) piano keys hitting down on sweet higher notes as the distorted guitar riffs away, and the drums stick to their crashes.

This is something good, and something you’ll rarely find in this day, a band taking what’s been beaten to death and bringing it back to life, all while it’s still being beaten.

Download here.
Support Ameris at their MySpace.