What I’m Listening To: The Casual Lean, Swears

• Listen at: www.myspace.com/thecasuallean
• Available on: Amazon MP3, eMusic

Swears is the first album from Massachusettes five-piece band The Casual Lean, and it’s a raucous, swaggering piece of work. The album has the same ironic tone as Ghosts from The Gay Blades, but rather than TGB’s almost acoustic feel, The Casual Lean’s sound is complex and almost lush at times.

Swears opens with “The Bride,” a song that invokes every indie-rock tradition in the book and still manages to be awesomely original. The Casual Lean’s strongest asset is their storytelling ability, and even on songs where they may not be telling their own stories they deliver enough intensity that Swears feels personal. The lyrics are delivered with conviction and range, stacatto bursts on “The Bride” and a melodic croon on “The Deer.” Swears meanders a bit as the band plays with different styles and sounds, but is a remarkably cohesive piece. Lyrics and music both are delivered with enough conviction and pure ability to carry the core of the sound through the band’s experiments.

Standout tracks are “Third Degree Burns,” “The Blackout” and “The Deer.”

What I’m Listening To: Toby The Fugitive, Proxima Distort

• Listen at: www.myspace.com/tobythefugitive
• Available on: Amazon MP3, eMusic

Toby The Fugitive is a four piece band out of Clarksville, Tennessee that has neither a Toby nor a fugitive, but does have a whole lot of awesome. Although the band draws heavily on pop-punk tropes, the end product is a highly stylized rock album that has been stripped of most of the overwhelming sentimentality that has defined pop-punk lately.

On first listen, it would be easy to ignore the truly outstanding musical work and focus almost entirely on Casey Carstens’ vocals. The opening track, “Lab Rat,” is delivered with so much intensity the lyrics are almost incomprehensible. On the rest of the album Carstens dials it back a bit, but even on Proxima Distort’s slowest song (”Demi Moore”) the vocals emphasize style and intensity over melodic conventions. The album is split by the title track, “Proxima Distort,” an instrumental piece a bit too long and way too aggressive to be a called an interlude. The song gives the rest of the band a chance to take over for a bit and show off. I’m the wrong person to really analyze guitar and percussion work, but the sound is definitely bigger than a band this size has any right to. Despite the album’s stripped down feel, the arrangements are quite complex.

Standout tracks are “Burning Bridges,” “Description Of Sadness” and “Demi Moore.”

What I’m Listening To: Ghost Buffalo, The Magician

• Listen at: www.myspace.com/ghostbuffalo
• Available on: Amazon MP3, eMusic

Ghost Buffalo is a four-piece band out of Denver. The line-up on The Magician is their second incarnation - the band is anchored by Matt Belinger, formerly of Planes Mistaken For Stars, and vocalist Marie Litton but drummer Jed Kopp and bassist Ben Williams are new additions.

The Magician is Ghost Buffalo’s second album. It has a distinctly 90s-circa-Smashing Pumpkins retro feel to it (christ, are the late 90s already retro? I feel old.). The album hangs on the vocals, delivered in a smoky alt-country style. The pace is on the mellow side, but even on the faster songs where you can really hear the band’s punk influences (”The Latest Wonder”), Marie’s vocals keep the tone of the album relaxed. Musically, the album is very much country influenced guitar rock with bits and pieces of punk thrown in to shake things up. The Magician manages to be coherent without becoming ten versions of the same song, despite the almost constant mid-tempo pacing.

Standout tracks are “The Latest Wonder,” “Fire Walk With Me” and “Just A Thought.”

What You’re Listening To: May 4th - May 10th

I go away, I come back, and you have a whole new set of favorites. This week’s most viewed albums are:

• HTR, Let It Die
• Forcefield ON, Llipspill
• Spiraling, Time Travel Made Easy

What I’m Listening To: HTR, Let It Die

• Artist website: www.holytrinityriver.com
• Listen at: www.myspace.com/htr
• Available on: CD Baby, iTunes, previous EP on eMusic

HTR (Holy Trinity River, I’m a bit confused about whether they use the initials or the whole name) is a three-piece band out of Brooklyn, via Texas, and boy does it show. Let It Die is their second EP and it is stripped down and country-fried guitar rock. HTR channels the same alt-country influences The Honorary Title or The Meadows, but Let It Die foregoes the emphasis on pop melodies and really digs into the blues roots of rock music. The result is gritty, no-frills rock that would be just as at home in a backwoods bar fifty years ago as it is in Brooklyn today.

Standout track is “The Shaker.”