Joseph Arthur feature (Orlando Weekly)

“It appeals to the ADD in me,” says singer-songwriter and visual artist Joseph Arthur regarding his decision to release five records in 2008, and the Ohio native is only half-joking. Arthur has never been one to hold a precious enough opinion of his own work to dole it out to listeners in well-paced portions. His last full-length album (Let’s Just Be) was released less than a year ago; its predecessor hit shelves only seven months prior. He’s experimented with a year’s worth of EPs before: In 2002, his Junkyard Hearts project entailed four EPs released two weeks apart from one another.

But given the series of Arthur releases on tap in 2008 – four EPs and a full-length album, all of which find him exploring different stylistic aspects of his music – it seems he’s become acutely aware that the current landscape of the industry favors artists who keep the attention of their fan base by narrowing the time gap between creation and product.

“I feel like I’ve been trying to get to this point for years now. It just makes sense to get things out closer to the impulse,” says Arthur. “Up until the EP goes to mastering, I’m still working on them. [The songs] can be a week old by the time they go to mastering, but some of them are a year old.”

With two EPs mastered and a third compiled – “I haven’t made the fourth yet,” he says; “I made a lot of spoken-word tracks with [frequent Gutter Twins guitarist] Dave Rosser that I’d like to do something with” – Arthur has already covered considerable ground.

The Could We Survive EP is well-rounded and sonically diverse. Starting with the anthemic acoustics of “Rages of Babylon” and revisiting some of the territory Arthur explored with his recent rock-oriented band efforts, the six songs feel less like a mini-album than a collection of top-shelf material that was inadvertently left off several hypothetical full-lengths.

Crazy Rain (the second EP, set to be released in April) is more cohesive. More electric and electronic sounds color it, and the collision of drum machines, distorted vocals and fuzzed-out guitar lines gives a sense of dyspeptic experimentation. As for the third record, Arthur says it’s “more stripped-down, more acoustic and slower … it’s more of a late-night type of music.”

With so much material being released in so little time, the question is whether or not Joseph Arthur is selling his own work short. Instead of a proper album that can be praised (or critiqued) for its variety, don’t these short-form releases make him seem a victim of musical graphomania?

“I think it fits in with these times,” says Arthur. “I could have put out a double or a triple album, but people have shorter attention spans. It just makes sense to get things out closer to the impulse. I think I’m more from the Jack Kerouac school of ‘first thought, best thought.’ There’s a risk, because the lack of time can make for mediocrity: sometimes you can undercook something. But you can really overcook things too.”

First appeared April 3, 2008 in Orlando Weekly.

Dengue Fever: Venus On Earth CD review (Broward-Palm Beach New Times)

Dengue Fever call themselves a “Cambodian pop band,” but as astute observers have likely noticed, the only obviously Asian member of the L.A.-based band is singer Chhom Nimol. The tunes the group creates, however, are well within the pop music tradition that aficionados of underground international music have become accustomed to through compilations like Cambodian Rocks. It’s a sublime mix of garage pop, swingin’ surf-rock, and that particular sort of mellifluous high-octave singing favored by Asian girl vocalists. Having garnered serious acclaim among hipsters and world-music intelligentsia — so much so that a documentary on the group’s climb within and beyond the L.A. scene has been made — the stakes are pretty high for Dengue Fever’s third album. Not surprisingly, there’s not much on Venus on Earth that veers too strikingly from the stylistic corner they’ve staked out for themselves. And while that style is admittedly unique to Western ears, the progressive and occasionally abrasive approach that Dengue Fever takes to its pop would also be likely to shock those who grew up on the same music Chhom Nimol did. The singer’s gentle voice is still the glue that holds this sound together as she croons over her bandmates’ occasionally noisy outbursts.

First appeared April 3, 2008 in Broward-Palm Beach New Times.

Buy this CD at Amazon.com.

Caribou show preview (Broward-Palm Beach New Times)

For a guy with a PhD in Math, Dan Snaith sure knows how to find the human warmth inside a machine. Over the course of four albums — his latest, Andorra, was released last August — Snaith (AKA Caribou, formerly known as Manitoba) has coaxed some elegant and ethereal dreampop out of an amalgam of computers and live instrumentation. Without disparaging the creativity and talent that goes into those records, though, it must be noted that there’s an entirely different standard to meet when presenting music like that live. As fans of electronic music are more than aware, a “concert” that features a dude, a stool, a table, and a laptop is usually neither visually intoxicating nor musically invigorating. Unless it’s Otto Von Schirach. Caribou is certainly no Otto Von Schirach, but that PhD-sized brain of Snaith’s led him to the obvious conclusion that the expansive tones of his music might be better served up in a live environment by actual musicians. To that end, a Caribou concert is exactly that, a concert, no snark-quotes necessary. Though he brings along the necessary human accompaniment to deliver his swooning tunes out of the bedroom and onto the stage, Snaith nonetheless bounds around from drums to guitars to keyboards to samplers, making for a live show that gets to the lively core of his otherworldly music.

First appeared April 3, 2008 in Broward-Palm Beach New Times.