ARKLIGHT “Vows” (Fall Break Records)

 I am a lifelong indie rocker. I can live with that, even though I haven’t been a full-fledged, card-carrying member for several years now. But when I was on, I was on: I essentially listened to nothing but indie or its offshoots throughout my college years, well into my late twenties. Pavement was my favorite, still is. Silver Jews were up there. Beat Happening existed. My point is, if you like any of these bands, as I did, and do, you should be ready for Arklight’s Vows.

This Brooklyn band has consistently popped up on my radar over the past year or so, releasing a few things here and there, some of which I covered right here on good old #CASSETTEGODS! It was all in fun, made with a bracing sort of garagey-ness and delivered with a brashness that belied the players recording prowess. Vows continues down the same stylistic path, but perhaps with a nod the seriousness of the title (a “vow” constituting a “solemn promise,” one not easily brushed off), the songs are more somber and sober. The Kolm brothers (and Monsieur Kostaras) are growing up, right before our eyes!

Vocals are still very much in the territory of Calvin Johnson/David Berman, and I like that. It’s an unusual timbre and one that’s not easily pulled off with success. Here they lend Vows some extra weight, as if the deepness reflects heaviness of spirit. Who’s to say there isn’t? Not me. Everything warbles and lilts. Melancholy pervades. “We sing out of tune” is extolled on “For the Better Sometime Soon,” as if there’s no strength left to sing properly. The more I listen to it, the more I think the Silver Jews comparisons are the most apt – there’s a dusty Nashville-ness that pervades this tape, as if the floor of the recording space was perpetually covered in sawdust and peanut shells.

And it all works, fundamentally, with heads low and guitars slung – I imagine the Arklight fellows sitting as they record this one. The tunes are wise beyond the years of their creators. Vows is a keeper, that’s my solemn promise to you.

Fall Break Records

Vows Bandcamp page

Find Arklight on Fartbook

--Ryan Masteller

ARKLIGHT “Calling Them Out [Kerrchingle #3]”(Kerchow! Records)

Are you feeling like an ass, hazed over from bad booze, bad food, maybe a bit too many games of Trivial Pursuit with your wacky family? Arklight is here to help, because once you crack your eyelids at the morning sunbeams, you only have about six minutes or so to listen to music before you have go back to sleep. Just enough time to hit play, take a leak, grab a handful of Advil, chug a huge glass of water (for rehydration), and hit stop again. You don’t want anything you need to think too hard about, you just want that old, fuzzy Yo La Tengo vibe, like the one on that 7-inch where they cover the Velvets. Or early Dump, or something. It’s all good, all four-tracky, all hazy. No harsh tones or crazy rhythms.

Side A, “Calling Them Out,” allows you to muster enough energy to move. It’s fever pop. Speaking of fever pop, side B is called “Fevered Dream,” which is what you were having before you woke up, and are about to have again. The music mirrors the mood perfectly – it’s like Arklight is in the room with you, but off in the corner, not playing too loudly, because they worry about your well-being. They’re not even interested in properly packaging this single, they just want you to have it immediately, they care about you that much. Plus, it smacks of effort to put the thing together anyway. So no case, no j-card, just a cassette wrapped it in paper, text scribbled in Sharpie, and stapled tight enough so that the tape doesn’t fall out. Ta-daa! Home run, as the Kerchow! cats say. And a home run for everybody. For Arklight, a grand salami, walk-off, back to bed, yank covers, snore.

https://kerchowrecords.bandcamp.com/album/calling-them-out-kerchingle-3

https://kerchowrecords.bandcamp.com/merch

--Ryan Masteller

ARKLIGHT “Decadence and Paranoids” C40 (Faux-Pas Recordings)

In another time, pioneers of lo-fi Tascam recording methods wowed their friends with their brilliant navigation of fidelity. Luminaries such as Sebadoh and Guided By Voices are always mentioned in sentences following those containing the phrase “pioneers of lo-fi Tascam recording methods,” and this review is not going to buck that trend in any way. Lou and Bob are the poster children for utilizing what they had to achieve the greatest possible ends. And while I’m sure their friends, upon hearing a freshly dubbed Maxell pump out their basement anthems, were super stoked enough to elevate them to local god status (Akron, Ohio, and Amherst, Massachusetts, aren’t fooling anyone – small ponds!), Lou and Bob had bigger ambitions, and they became bona fide, groupie-embracing rock stars. As the prophecies foretold.

Arklight clearly hopes to follow in their forebears footsteps, and they’ve at least got the greasy lo-fi chops to attempt to take down the defending champs. (As usual, I visualize the struggle for audience reception as a fistfight to the death, in front of cheering crowds thirsty for blood. Is that just me?) A guitar/drum/vocal trio from NYC (using very few, if any, overdubs), Arklight wallow in the tape hiss inherent in the genre and embrace it as part of their sound. And, as one would expect given those constraints, it pretty much works out OK for the band.

Decadence and Paranoids doesn’t mess around – it gets in, it gets out, it does stuff in the middle, and it excels at it. It features fourteen short songs, all of which hover in a mid-tempo rock structure. Whoever sings – Danny Kolm, Gregory Kolm, or Max Kostaras – sounds like Lou Reed, another point of success for your average lo-fi rocker. It gets a little tedious by the end – there’s not a ton of variation here – but tracks like “Rosewood,” “Embryo,” and “Time Travellers” stand out as groovy signposts. (Kolm/Kolm/Kostaras really sounds like Reed on the latter.) If I lived in New York, I’d check out Arklight at some dingy venue. I bet they really blast PA systems to smithereens.

…I just wouldn’t expect the second coming of GBV here or anything. Temper those expectations!

fauxpasrecs.blogspot.com

--Ryan Masteller

Arklight - "The Callow Summit" (Faulkner Tapes)

Not enough labels these days are named after classic American writers, allow me that editorial...Faulkner Tapes are both the sound AND the fury. The label's fourth release, Arklight's The Callow Summit, was a commissioned work. The label approached Arklight with the request of producing a "world music" piece. They delivered a strangely wonderful amalgamation of soundscapes and rhythms that defy typical associations one has with the loaded term "world music." Beats are cut and pasted atop skanky fuzz and blurgg. It's as if the dial has been set in between frequencies on several radios all blaring in a small room. Multiple rhythms shuffle in and out of these compositions, while genuinely beautiful melodic (samples?) strings and tones weave betwixt the beats. This tape could be called "tribal," I would call it highly evolved sound art. 

Side Note: On the label's page they describe the cassette packaging perfectly with this statement, "The tapes come with hand-cut "j-cards" of pseudo-"World" fabric, painstakingly made using a highly sophisticated method consisting of binder clips, scissors and a Michael Bolton j-card. I guess the band liked them, so maybe you will too." Order this tape because it is one of the better conceptual art projects you will hear this or any other year.

Buy HERE.