Snap

Bold Displays of Cowardice by Easy Tease and Set the Woods on Fire by Art In Manila

These two alternative albums snap with creativity and exhuberance. For example, listen to "The Headless Horseman Rides Again" or "Set The Woods On Fire" and you'll understand the way these two bands focus their fantastic imagery around a point. The stories aren't allegories, but there's truth in these songs nonetheless.

The Easy Tease create carnivalesque jazz and folk with many instruments mixed for optimum creative output. Listen to "Blizzard a-comin'", and you can hear the soft snow falling from the piano keys while in the background the horns warn of the torrents that will fall. On "Father's Sonata" the horns play a more central role, guiding the mood of the song and twisting around each other and the rest of the instruments. "The Mad Scientists Break Into the Laboratory to Steal Solanine" is the most appropriately titled long song I've ever heard (take that Fall Out Boy!). If the hysterical hooting that takes place behind the vaudeville sounds isn't connected to a mad scientist, then I'll have to rethink my whole worldview. The whole album is rough patchwork, cobbled together with some of the oddest sounds in the musical arsenal, but forming a nice quilt.

Set the Woods on Fire accomplishes a similar final product, but the pieces that form this product are less obscure and varied. There's a lot of crooning from Orenda Fink (Azure Ray), and the lyrics are the crowning achievement of the entire album. Because of the central role of the lyrics, the songs sometimes sound like the female rock music of the '90s: sweet and sad. However, there are definite highlights on this album that make it more varied than most of the music put out by say Sarah Mclachlan. "Our Addictions" rockets back to the '80s a little, with obvious synth-influence (obvious, but not egregious), and the Orenda Fink's voice really soars on this song. "Set The Woods On Fire" adds a magnificent strength to despairing sounds, while "Spirit, Run" is a definite celebration of spiritual freedom with ghost sounds. "Anything You Love" would have been my choice for a grand finale, but is situated nearer the middle of the album. Despite its poor placement, this song is my favorite with a little Spanish guitar and a Victorian opening statement: "Believing in the living can be a dangerous thing" (by Victorian, I mean macabre). This album is spiritual, the question is whether it's celebrating the spirits of the living or of the dead.