Bear in Heaven: Beast Rest Forth Mouth

Artist: Bear in Heaven
Album: Beast Rest Forth Mouth
Date Released: October 13, 2009
Genre: indie rock, neo-psychedelia, progressive rock, alternative rock
Rating: 7.9

Beast Rest Forth Mouth is the sophomore release from Brooklyn's Bear in Heaven, a band that incorporates influences from prog, psychedelia, electronica and krautrock. Thanks to bands like Mew and Muse, prog-rock is no longer a dirty word -- but as far as Bear in Heaven goes they're much more like the former than the latter. Where Muse wears its pretension like a badge, Mew and Bear in Heaven take a more subdued and ethereal approach to their music.

Beast Rest Forth Mouth is a prime example. It's an album of steady and hypnotic beats, synthy and spacey rhythmic sequences and dreamy vocals. The tracks are paced and have a shoegaze element to them at times, while frequently coloured with power-chords and some very heavy synth pulses.

Sonically, the album is gorgeous from start to finish; but stronger tracks and a clearer commitment to melody would have propelled this album from good to great. Track highlights include "Beast in Peace," "You Do You," and "Lovesick Teenagers."

Porcupine Tree: The Incident

Artist: Porcupine Tree
Album: The Incident
Date Released: September 15, 2009
Genre: progressive rock, hard rock
Rating: 7.4

Porcupine Tree's The Incident is by no means their best work, but as many PT fans will acknowledge, they're still light-years ahead of most bands working in the prog genre. Though the songs often feel hurried and not fully realized, Steve Wilson's magical studio touches and his ability to weave gorgeous melodies from thin air contribute to a very listenable and hooky 2-CD album.

The Incident's tracks are at times overly sentimental and derivative ("Time Flies" borrows a little too heavily from Pink Floyd's Animals for my liking), but it's hard to not get caught up in the thought provoking lyrics and the teasingly infrequent but infectious chugga-chugga guitar riffing. Track highlights include "Black Dahlia," "The Incident," "Octane Twisted," and "Circle of Manias."

If These Trees Could Talk: Above the Earth, Below the Sky

Artist: If These Trees Could Talk
Album: Above the Earth, Below the Sky
Date Released: March 11, 2009
Genre: post-rock, progressive rock, instrumental rock
Rating: 7.2

If These Trees Could Talk is an instrumental post-rock group from Akron, Ohio. Above the Earth, Below the Sky is the follow-up to their critically acclaimed 2006 self-titled debut. The new album features much of the same elements found on their debut; ITTCT are emblematic of the post-rock genre, skillfully integrating elements from such artists as Explosions in the Sky, Mogwai and even Tool (check out "Rebuilding the Temple of Artemis" for a taste).

Above the Earth, Below the Sky is a solid and listenable effort, but the production values sound frustratingly thin and uninspired. If These Trees Could Talk are a very talented group of guys who have yet to reach their full potential. The best is still yet to come.

Caspian: Tertia

Artist: Caspian
Album: Tertia
Date Released: September 15, 2009
Genre: post-rock, progressive rock, instrumental rock
Rating: 8.3

Massachusetts's Caspian hits the mark with their third studio release, Tertia. The tracks have the usual atmospheric and dreamy Caspian touches, but this album is blessed with a particularly strong melodic sensibility. Sonically, Tertia features moments of grandiose and richly textured soundcapes (including choral elements) that are often intermingled with softer touches, such as solo piano, acoustic strummings and clean electric guitar pickings (all laden, of course, with generous amounts of doubling, reverb and digital delay). The album will at one moment sound as heavy as post-metal Isis but at other times sound like Joshua Tree era U2. This is a beautiful and dynamic album.

Russian Circles: Geneva

Artist: Russian Circles
Album: Geneva
Date Released: October 20, 2009
Genre: post-rock, post-metal, progressive rock
Rating: 8.7

Geneva is the third full-length album by the Chicago post-rock three-piece, Russian Circles. This album comes only one year after their excellent and transitionary Station, and it finds the band continuing to explore new sonic spaces and possibilities.

Geneva features a broader arrangement than their first two releases, namely the addition of cello (Allison Chesley) and violin (Susan Voelz). The tracks are still epic and fiery, as exemplified by the goose-bump inducing "When the Mountain Comes to Muhammad" -- but now, with the added emphasis on more nuanced pacing and song-progression, the band is able to create sprawling and often meditative tracks.

Russian Circles, once regarded as being purely about the post-metal, is clearly moving away from sheer heaviness and the cliched progressions that have often marred the genre. Sounding much less like Pelican and more like Evpatoria Report, the band is continuing to evolve. And with Geneva, Russian Circles have produced their most realized work to date.

maudlin of the Well: Part the Second

Artist: Maudlin of the Well
Album: Part the Second
Date Released: May 14, 2009
Genre: progressive rock, indie metal, avante-garde
Rating: 8.5

Five years after their transmutation into the ponderous and esoteric 'chamber-metal' ensemble Kayo Dot, band leader Toby Driver reunites maudlin of the Well (abbreviated motW) for Part the Second [free download], an exuberant, fan-funded effort that is both a maturation and culmination of their unique 'bricolage' compositional style. Like Kayo Dot, motW revel in dream imagery, lush, dense arrangements and a seamlessly through-composed approach to writing. But unlike Kayo Dot, who, especially in their most recent work, tend to entangle listeners in lengthy, free-time, atonal jazz-rock enigmas, motW conjure melodically rich and inviting explorations of genre, providing vistas that are at once familiar and yet, like all of Driver's work, wonderfully strange and ephemeral.

By all appearances, Kayo Dot has had a strange and difficult road in the past few years, chiefly for having survived a reconstruction that began with the loss of all their personnel apart from Driver and violinist Mia Matsumiya. As a listener, it's difficult not to psychologize by drawing some comparison to the band's equally strange and difficult music. With that in mind, it's heartening to hear something so unencumbered, so pure and playful born from this reunion. Take "Clover Garland Island", which begins with stabbing drums and sinister chords and then innocently morphs into a laid-back funk groove overlayed with guitarist Greg Massi's wah-fueled explorations. Or "Rose Quartz Turning into Glass", the early part of which is borne on a piano riff evoking Steve Reich. This slowly trails off until it is only Matsumiya's violin, which is eventually joined by somberly strummed guitar and Driver doing his best impression of a wraith skulking through a graveyard. And then, well, it starts to sound a little like Floyd. You can almost see the smiles creeping onto everyone's faces during recording.

Admist all of this there are moments of stirring beauty, especially manifest on the final track "Laboratories of the Invisible World (Rollerskating the Cosmic Palmistric Postborder)". The song begins with a lone, meditative guitar and then Driver's wistful voice adds "We are bound together by a current of electricity." And then a voice seems to call to him from somewhere far away: "I want you to think about '93". The rest of the track is a breathtaking flurry of ideas building to a sprawling amphitheater of sound. And just when it all seems through, a piano shimmers in to deliver a brief, stirring epilogue to the album.

Part the Second is likely to be motW's swansong. And though their spirit continues on in the form of Kayo Dot, it has been clear since their second album Dowsing Anenome with Copper Tongue that Driver has very different and very ambitious designs for that moniker (Kayo Dot's first album, Choirs of the Eye, serves as a bridge between the bands' styles, and is considered by many to be Driver's finest moment). Hopefully, then, Part the Second will draw listeners to seek music from motW's earlier incarnation, who were, in their own time as they are now, as complete a musical anomaly as anyone is likely to hear.

Reviewed by Jayar La Fontaine.

Mew: No More Stories Are Told Today Sorry...

Artist: Mew
Album: No More Stories Are Told Today Sorry...
Date Released: August 25, 2009
Genre: prog-rock, space-rock, dream pop, space rock, indie rock
Rating: 8.4

Review: Who says prog has to be pretentious? The fifth studio album from Denmark's Mew is a meticulously crafted and challenging album that reveals itself only after repeated listens. Fans of Muse will enjoy this release.

The Mars Volta: Octahedron

Artist: The Mars Volta
Album: Octahedron
Date Released: June 23, 2009
Genre: experimental rock, prog-rock, neo psychedelia, post-hardcore
Rating: 7.6

Review: For their 5th studio release, prolific neo psychedelic rockers The Mars Volta have decided to take a deep and cleansing breath -- a welcome change after their spasmodically frenetic but brilliant The Bedlam in Goliath. Octahedron still features their characteristic power and trippiness, but the pace is taken down a considerable notch. The end result is a more listenable and intricate album where the band can showcase its song-writing talents. It's also an opportunity to hear Cedric Bixler-Zavala's vocals in a more intimate atmosphere (check out "With Twilight As My Guide" which features some gorgeous singing alongside an acoustic guitar and spacey guitar effects) . The Mars Volta remain one of the most fascinating and distinctive bands in the world.