Extra Golden – Anyango
From Thank You Very Quickly: Thrill Jockey [Released March 2009]

Download free 320kbps mp3 of “Anyango” from Thrill Jockey Records

Extra Golden is a band that, on paper, displays all the hallmarks of an experiment: “A unique blend of Kenyan Benga music with American Rock and other, assorted African guitar stylings“. And yet on headphones it all sounds like the most natural thing in the world.

Perhaps these two musical streams sit together so well because both rock and benga are primarily guitar-based genres. The band is made up of American D.C.-based guitarists Alex Minoff and Ian Eagleson (whose experience doing doctoral research into benga was the ursprung of the band); alongside monster drummer Onyango Wuod Omari and guitarist Onyango Jagwasi.

If anything, Extra Golden leans further towards East Africa than the Eastern Seaboard – most lyrics are sung in Luo, and the only time (to my ears) when the music sounds somewhat dépaysé is when the odd verse is sung in English.

The music is Kenyan in focus, so are the bands’s politics and lyrical interest. Ukimwi deals with the scourge of AIDS sweeping through the country, and Thank You Very Quickly is an acknowledgement of the friends and fans who helped protect band members during the post-election violence in Kenya last year.

Thank You Very Quickly is Extra Golden’s third album, and it sounds like the band has solidified through touring. While their previous effort Hera Ma Nono, revelled in reverb and melody, (including a tribute to then-candidate Obama), TYVQ seems to groove more. The track Gimakiny Akia is effortlessly funky, its insistent and relentless bass guitar recalling Michael Henderson on Miles’s early 70s albums.

When talking about current indie bands that gain sustenance from the great sinkholes of African pop, perhaps some comparison to Vampire Weekend is inevitable. But Vampire Weekend’s whole schtick is that they’re gawky white college kids appropriating somebody elses’ music – ironic artifice is part of that band’s appeal.

By contrast, Extra Golden is rooted firmly in a single tradition and sounds like a more honest musical effort. The band are touring the UK in March with Senegal’s Baaba Maal and Zimbabwe’s Oliver Mtukudzi. But I’m thinking that some scintillating benga guitar would got down well in the heat of the 2009 festival circuit in Europe…

Arbouretum – False Spring
From Song of the Pearl : Thrill Jockey [Released March 2009]

2009′s first love affair with an American indie guitar band has struck early, in the form of Baltimore’s Arbouretum. Their third album Song of the Pearl is released in March and the lovely people at Thrill Jockey threw a preview copy over the fence at me (yes, some people still think that I only blog about music!)

Normally I’m not one for big crunchy guitar-scapes unless they’re framed by good arrangements  and attached to great tunes. Song of the Pearl has this in spades. Arbouretum is built around the writing of David Heumann:  to judge by his other projects Television Hill and Human Bell, Heumann is a songwriter (and photographer) to be reckoned with.

If Heumann’s songs hold Song of the Pearl together, the disc is underpinned by Heumann and Steve Strohmeier‘s guitars, whose interweaving textures recall (for me at least) the best moments of Sonic Youth or Neil Young with Crazy Horse.

Song of the Pearl sounds like an album from another age.  Perhaps intentionally, its eight songs and 40 minutes fit nicely on a 33rpm record. The dirge-like ballad Tomorrow is a Long Time has the sort of relentless melody that could have floated out of the Appalachians on a log. And the epic psychedelic folk-blues that informed Led Zep’s No Quarter haunts songs like Down By the Fall Line.

Arbouretum’s  previous two albums seem worth checking out too. Here’s the video for Mohammed’s Hex and Bounty off their 2007 album Rites of Uncovering:

Sebadoh was a band you started to like when you had passed through your Nirvana/Pearl Jam/Soundgarden stage. Your hormones had started to settle down, so you bought smelly $2 second-hand shirts from charity shops made from ghastly polyester blends banned back in 1974 because of the fire hazard.

Pavement – the original American Idols

Sebadoh, alongside Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr and Pavement bestrode the local university radio station playlist like shaggy philosopher-kings. They seemed to offer intellectual street-cred when you hadn’t quite yet discovered John Coltrane. They made us dream of becoming bass players and singing like J Mascis.

We played Unwind by Sonic Youth while we tried to write a movie script that never got past the first scene. It rained all that summer of unrequited love, we read Kerouac and a cheaply-bound commentary on the Bhagavad-Gita given to us in a kebab shop on Queen Street.

Gold Soundz was my favourite Pavement song, thanks mainly to the final line of the first verse: “And they’re coming to the chorus now!” We didn’t care what the song was about, and it didn’t matter that Stephen Malkmus couldn’t really sing. Because it all sounded so damn cool.

As well as these usual American indie suspects, there were a bunch of New Zealand bands that belonged to this same era of musical education. None of those bands exist anymore – but since it’s New Zealand music month I’ll write about a few of them over the next few days…