Bis

Return to Central

(spinART)

Bis built a notorious reputation on its purposely infantile attitude and a somewhat haphazard fusion of riot grrl and disco-pop. With this new album, the band manages to accomplish what few expected, filing away the childlike antics and eschewing the rough-hewn punk aesthetic for more complex arrangements, thus fashioning a mature update of their distinctive sound. Whether they are ultimately successful, however, is less certain.

Return to Central starts out promisingly. “What You’re Afraid Of” is one of those perfect pop songs, with swirling synths and surprisingly warm vocals from singer Manda Rin building anticipation before the guitar crunch and insanely catchy chorus bust everything up in a climax of euphoria. Backed by cinematic strings, “The End Starts Today” is a positively grandiose affair, indicative of the major change Bis have undertaken. The raw immediacy of their past has been displaced by an apparent craving for a deeper sound—exemplified by the expanding bass-drone and movie strings that occupy “Chicago,” imbuing it with an almost oppressively romantic quality. The same song represents Bis’ new approach at its best, boasting a multi-tiered structure and intriguing ending, which, with its cut up breakbeats and 303 acid pulses, resembles—of all things—a darkside rave anthem from the early 90s.

For all their newfound sophistication, however, Bis seem to have trouble forging a new niche for themselves. All the charm of their earlier releases has been smothered in the beefier production, which edges quite close to (God forbid) generic alterna-rock. Rin’s vocals on “Two Million” even emulate perfectly the faux seductive swagger of Garbage’s Shirley Manson. Even when Bis try for vintage synth-pop revival, as on “Robotic,” their approach is heavy-handed, unremarkable and obsolete—newcomers Ladytron have already perfected the sound. Still, the album’s final track, “A Portrait From Space,” offers hope with an utterly original mesh of strings, Nintendo bleeps and epic guitar work. Transcendent work such as this leaves the door wide open for a follow-up, hopefully more consistent than this one.

—Ryan J. Kuo

Brian Gottesman

Pardon My Mess

(Shelley Court)

The debut solo release from Brian Gottesman, the former frontman of much-lauded local funk band Chucklehead and Rype, spins an endearing story of heartbreak, the messy road to recovery and the possibility of new love—Pardon My Mess closes with “Find Our Feet,” a cheery upbeat number with echoes of mop-haired Beatles in its trumpet-lead optimism. Mess as a whole is often as polite and nearly as self-effacing as its title: It is sometimes a little hard to imagine the earnest, woeful voice that sings, “If I ever look up to find you on my doorstep / I’d die,” funking out and shaking his thang as he did with Chucklehead (maybe if he sang, “you’ll die…”). But if this is nice-guy music in the best tradition of Coldplay or even the great white Dave Mathews, there is an infectious personality to most of the songs that makes the occasionally disorienting shifts in style worth the ride.

The late Jeff Buckley’s name gets bandied about too much these days, but on the opening track “Nothing I Can Do,” Gottesman genuinely captures Buckley’s sense of spooky drama and effortless beauty, without the prima donna histrionics that accompany many falsetto rock divas. Not one to ride on other’s coattails, Gottesman is soon on the move, via a couple of slightly sticky ballads, to an almost self-consciously Zeppelin-esque riff on “Survive.” This brings the element of hope back into the album, as Gottesman sings with his chorused self, “Got a new life to survive, survive / Here I am / Breathing and alive.” The bouncy “I Got Something” is possibly the best cut on the album: It is bluesy and clearly owes a smidgen to Gottesman’s time in a funk band (though someone clearly managed to restrain the bassist). The understatement of the obligatory wah-wah pedal is characteristic of the album, and is one of its charms, allowing the most juicy elements (such as the finely wrought chorus on “Into the Morning”) stand out in the light they deserve. An album for sensitive guys of all cloths and sexes.