Olympic Size
You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone

The arena of indie music has often been the breeding ground for the next new thing. Subgenres come and go (emo, pop punk, garage) but a little thing often referred to as “indie pop” has remained a cornerstone in the world of anti-commercial music. Regardless of the general public’s fleeting palate, artists who indulge in a softer, more relaxed and less edgy sound than their Gibson/Marshall-based brethren will always have a home in the underground and among a continual influx of young, intelligent, bespectacled fans fortunate enough to live near a great college radio station.

Although there really isn’t a template for indie pop, Kansas City’s Olympic Size could write a manual. The drowsy, near-folkie tunes found on its debut CD, You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone, complete with male/female harmonies, could fit comfortably between The Innocence Mission and The Shins on any compilation. Even Olympic Size’s unique CD packaging on its limited release and its declarative love for analogue makes certain its firm placement outside the mainstream.

Death Cab for Cutie notwithstanding, there are no reasons why indie pop, and Olympic Size by association, shouldn’t find a wider audience. You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone is rife with smooth melodies, clean guitars, soft keys and haunting, if not quite beautiful, vocals from singers Billy Smith and Kirsten Paludan. Their style and harmonic choices are always somewhat off-kilter, yet stunning. More X than Decemberists with their spooky preferences.

Recorded with an ear for precision, You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone allows each crystalline guitar pluck and keyboard note to shine through, despite the layering and occasional use of other instruments such as trombone and saxophone. No sound ever wears out its welcome. Each instrument and melody is exactly as necessary to the song as it needs to be.

Each of the 10 cuts has its tempo range squarely planted between hammock and futon, though the calm rhythms rarely drag down a track into melodramatic territory. These are mostly just slow songs played at their correct speed. The only exception is the almost upbeat “Pills,” which makes the mistake of half-timing the chorus, thereby killing the natural momentum and changing it from outstanding to merely satisfactory.

Even if the debut CD sometimes suffers from a lack of excitement, the members of Olympic Size have chosen a sound they’re comfortable with and play with a higher degree of skill than most of their contemporaries. They put to shame with two chords (“The Hardest Part,” “Second Story”) many indie groups armed with books of theory. Both lush and stark, with any luck You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone will find its way onto the shelves and hard drives of many a shaggy-haired, vintage-cardigan-wearing freshman this fall.

-- steven m. garcia { special to ink }

Dr. Dog
Fate
Park the Van Records

Philadelphia’s Dr. Dog has spent the last nine years crafting unapologetically ’60s-influenced pop music, drawing favorable comparisons to such groups as The Beatles, The Band and The Beach Boys. And while a rigorous tour schedule and some support from high-profile friends have helped the band gain minor prominence, anyone still uncertain of the band or unfamiliar with its previous work should take notice. Fate is an outstanding record.

All of the elements from the band’s previous work –– the sense of harmony and melody, the do-it-yourself craftsmanship and the playful experimentation –– are present, only more focused, more concentrated. Guitarist Scott McMicken and bassist Toby Leaman trade off singing and songwriting duties once again, striking a near-perfect balance between Leaman’s darker, desperation-tinged songs about faith and love and McMicken’s poppier, more upbeat fare.

But what makes Fate one of the best albums of the year is the band’s ability to take all of these individually strong elements and weave them into a truly compelling whole. The album accomplishes the difficult task of sounding familiar, but new, traditional, and at the same time experimental. The songs here have a timelessness and relevance to them, present in all truly great music.

But really, everything you need to know about Fate can be learned from the album’s first two tracks. “The Breeze” is a simple, folky jangle sung by McMicken that emphasizes all of his strengths as a songwriter. Lyrically it’s direct and conversational, and it gives way to three-part harmonies and added layers of percussion, piano and a simple bass line provided by Leaman before finally being washed over with woodwinds during the song’s final movement and subsequent conclusion.

Immediately following is “Hang On,” a rougher, Leaman-sung song that makes up for its unpolished nature with added emotion. Leaman delivers a performance that is heartfelt and compelling without sounding ham-fisted or forced. Like “The Breeze,” “Hang On” benefits greatly from multilayered production that reveals itself slowly, adding additional instruments and melodies only when necessary. And the album continues on this deliberate rotation until its final song, “My Friend,” combines both styles into a single, sprawling track.

Browntown
Wrench EP
Roar Room Records

Browntown has been kicking around the Kansas City area, playing its high-energy funk-soul music to just about anyone willing to listen. Like the musical equivalent of “Where’s Waldo,” you never know where the band's going to turn up. One week it’s a CD-release party at Davey’s Uptown Ramblers Club and an appearance as the live band for the Rock N Fashion Show. The next week it’s a free show at the KC Live! stage in the heart of the Power & Light District.

But no matter where Browntown plays, its desire to play its music follows. And while the music can be more or less viewed two ways — upbeat, well-produced, instantly accessible funk-soul music or unaffecting, light jazz — the energy the band members bring to their music is genuine. They truly enjoy what they’re doing.

I Was a Cub Scout
I Want You to Know That There is Always Hope
XL Recordings 

Oreos. Chocolate. Ice cream.

There’s always an emergency stash. It’s there for when you’ve had a rough day. It’s there for when you get dumped. It’s there for those times when you need to crawl under a blanket and watch an old episode of “Seinfeld.”

Futants
Pass Me the Butter
Dino-Viking Recordings

Sometimes what an artist says is not as telling as the chosen medium. Michelangelo sculpted in everlasting marble. Christo targeted the Berlin Reichstag, a building of immeasurable historic consequence. Kansas City metal act the Futants may be the first to work with a substance that, while impermanent, could possibly lead to death. With their debut CD, the Futants deliver bleak observations on social decay smeared on a canvas of everyone’s favorite congealed dairy killer: butter.

The Futants, the future mutants, have witnessed mankind’s destructiveness and are ready to dish it back to us, covered in that rich, whipped decadence that has hastened our indulgent demise. War, greed, religion … these are all themes that are brazenly slathered on their eight-song disc, Pass Me the Butter. They see themselves as the progeny of our twisted situation, the only creatures who will have the stomach to survive the end of days. They’re not here to solve our problems. They’re content to point out the ridiculous, apathetic nature of modern society and to collect the polluted remains when we’re gone.

Trystyl
Nocab Nivek Vol. 1
SHC

Producer-centric albums toe a hard line. If the production is too subtle, the music is easily dismissible, unremarkable and, worse yet, boring. On the other hand, if the production is too prominently featured, it overshadows the artists and becomes less about collaboration and more about thoughtless attention, the hip-hop equivalent of shouting “bomb!” in an airport.

Kansas City producer/DJ/mad scientist Trystyl has managed to find the sweet spot between these poles with Nocab Nivek Vol. 1, and the result is an album that is essentially a compendium of independent hip hop in the Kansas City area. Artists such as Approach, Ben Grim, Reach and Vertigone make spirited appearances, with the only nationally known artist being MF Doom in a brief, but much-needed, appearance on “Ghost Whirl 3.0.”

Be Your Own Pet
Get Damaged EP
XL Recordings

The EP for Nashville,Tenn.-based Be Your Own Pet starts with an eccentric story song, but it’s the story behind the album that is really over the top.

The press release for the EP retells the fabulous lore of how the EP’s three songs, which together clock in at just over six minutes, were deemed too “violent” for the approaching Universal Records release of Get Awkward.

Star pop music critic Tim Finn described last weekend's Sandstone concert as Red, White & Sparks (but no Boom).

About 10,000 people showed up - mostly teens.

Here's his bottom-line take on the acts:

Last Good Night: Hooky, nicely crafted dance-pop. They all seemed like nice guys later when they did the meet/greet thing and got swarmed for autographs by teenage girls who didn't seem to know anything about them.

Ferras (fa-RAHS): Did the one-man band thing from behind a keyboard he didn't know how to man. He made the best of a tough situation: Alone on stage, the third of nine acts, trying to whip up a buzz while staring into a hot mid-day sun. I'm sure he's better with a band.

Metro Station: They are pretentious and they know it. They are like the Bravery for junior high girls. They ended their set abruptly so one of the guys could run off stage and barf.

Sixteen Horsepower
Live March 2001
Alternative Tentacles Records

Something is rockin’ in the state of Denver.

I know, I know ... the state is Colorado. But there really is something wild about the Denver music scene. Even if the rest of the world has been slow to catch up.

Firewater
The Golden Hour
Bloodshot Records

Sometimes things get so harried you gotta get out of town. Running away from your problems, or things that remind you of your problems, can sound like a great idea at the time. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but in the case of Todd A., the singer for Firewater, his spur-of-the-moment, anxiety-ridden travels prompted him to create an autobiographical album full of heartbreak about a recent divorce and anger at the politics of the United States.

The Golden Hour is a break from Todd A.'s past work in Firewater. It leaves indie rock behind and goes full force into world-beat-inspired pub rock. With a gravelly voice that conjures up The Pogues' singer, Shane MacGowan, Todd A. sings over sounds and beats ripped from the cracked earth of the Middle East and India.