Frankie Rose concocts a psychedelic mix of shoegaze moods, New Wave grandiosity and chorale serenity.
Frankie Rose, previously recording as Frankie Rose and the Outs, was a drummer and singer in Dum Dum Girls and you can hear the Go-Gos-style summer of electro punk joyfulness that group had, but there is a darker more shoegazer edge on her latest album, Interstellar. It’s not glistening electro-pop. Rose has an ethereal but powerful voice that stacks up against her big beats. It’s an evocative combination on songs like “Know Me,” the lead single, which is both triumphal and yearning. She loves 80s rhythms, like the alternating electro snare and bass drum 4/4 groove of the contemplative “Daylight Sky.” But even with the big beats she can drop into a delicate chorale hymn on “Pair of Wings” and the meditation of “Silver Apples for the Sun.” Could there be a touch of Enya in her listening?
But Frankie Rose always comes back to the new wave dance sound, even when it’s couched in psychedelic 60s reverb guitar and Joy Division grooves as on “Moon in My Mind.” Interstellar is a trip into Frankie Rose’s cosmic space.
You can hear an Audio version of this with Hammock’s music
There are Hammocks you swing in. They lull you into a hazy dream on a hot summer day. Hammock the band might have the same effect on you, that is until that hazy summer dream becomes a mind- altering journey into an interior space.
Hammock are Nashville-based guitarists Marc Byrd and Andrew Thompson. They’ve made their money writing country and Christian music but their hearts reside in the shoegaze sound of 80s bands like the Cocteau Twins, My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive. They were in an underrated Christian alt-rock band called Common Children that emerged from that sound. But Byrd and Thompson decided they liked the instrumental side of things and formed Hammock, releasing their first album, Kenotic, in 2005. They immediately established a penchant for recordings full of densely reverbed, layered and distorted guitars.
Hammock’s music justifies that poetic imagery. Each song is like a symphonic tone poem, but rendered in electric colors, assertive grooves and shimmering, sustain-laden guitars. They build from modal repetition: A simple guitar arpeggio is repeatedly deployed through reverb, delays and sheets of dappled distortion that moves with inevitability toward a grand crescendo.
Hammock Pedal Board @ Echoes
Although Hammock create an orchestra of sound with their guitars, they also use strings, which give their music a hymn-like quality on “In the Nothing of the Night” and “The Whole Catastrophe.” It’s as if Estonian sacred minimalist composer Arvo Pärt plugged in, tripped out and found the spirit. Guitars have rarely sounded so celestial as they do with Hammock. Long sinuous sustains, orchestral pads that shimmer in cosmic reverb and melodies that seem to be carved out of a night sky make Chasing After Shadows…Living with the Ghosts an immersion experience.
Frankie Rose, previously recording as Frankie Rose and the Outs, was a drummer and singer in Dum Dum Girls and you can hear the Go-Gos-style summer of electro punk joyfulness that group had, but there is a darker more shoegazer edge on her latest album, Interstellar. It’s not glistening electro-pop. Rose has an ethereal but powerful voice that stacks up against her big beats. It’s an evocative combination on songs like “Know Me,” the lead single, which is both triumphal and yearning. She loves 80s rhythms, like the alternating electro snare and bass drum 4/4 groove of the contemplative “Daylight Sky.” 
But even with the big beats she can drop into a delicate chorale hymn on “Pair of Wings” and the meditation of “Silver Apples for the Sun.” Could there be a touch of Enya in her listening?
~© 2012 John Diliberto ((( echoes )))
