Umphrey's Mcgee - Anchor Drops
|
List Price: Our Price: $8.27 You Save: $3.71 (31%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $7.98 (click here) Category: Music CD See more new music releases 
|
|---|
Buy this Music CD at online store in your country
Canadian Music Store
Canadian Music Store
Free Music Notes for Anchor Drops
Free Music Review: decent guitar-heavy pseudo-prog
Hit: 4 Stars
Vaguely nostalgic guitar-heavy pesudo-progressive rock. This recording is not really jazz or jam or improv anything, though the group may be. Pretty good guitar work (both acoustic & electric) by Jake Cinninger. The lyrics are only fair, and the guys could all use voice training -- just to hide Brendan Bayliss's off-key, uneven, thin-voiced lead vocals! Still, I won't sell my copy. The most comprehensive & accurate review here is entitled "Strong and diverse, but has its downsides". Read it.Free Music Review: Strong and diverse, but has its downsides
Hit: 3 Stars
Umphrey's McGee is a Chicago-based American (jam) band. From what I read on the internet, they've been around since the mid-90's and they've released a bunch of studio and live albums as well as a DVD. I haven't heard any of those recordings before; Anchor Drops is their first European release and the only one I've heard from them so far.
Initial spins of this album revealed that Umphrey's McGee are a fairly impressive jam band with heavy emphasis on improvisation, challenging and jazzy song structures, complex and funky rhythm work, bluesy guitar grooves, etc. Their style is certainly varied and quite unpredictable. After listening to this disc a good many times, I read a few interviews of the band which made it clear that Anchor Drops actually sees them playing a relatively more restrained form of music compared to their previous records. If that's the case, one can only say this band may want to go into a more defined style music-wise, as I believe they tend to branch out a bit too much during some moments. It's great their songs offer so much diversity and blend myriad of styles, but some songs being developed entirely by improvasation techniques sound a tad direction-less if you know what I mean. Other than that, the musicianship is extremely tight displaying interesting tempo changes, colourful cymbal work, complex drum patterns and melodically charged guitar solos, plus competent vocals from four out of the six members.
The songs on this 64-minute disc are deeply rooted in freeform jazz enhanced by various instruments including a separate percussion player named Andy Farag who adds tribal rhythms from South American music as well as funky beats. The first set of songs are more energetic sonically. Take the speedy opener "Plunger", it's full of gigantic guitar riffs, plodding bass lines, unison solos, and alternating rhytms between complex harmonies and improvised polyrhythms. The second half of the CD is more varied, both in style and tempo. "Uncommon" and "Jajunk Pt.1" are slow tracks with great piano melodies, tribal rhythms and interesting percussion. "Walletworth" sounds almost like a country song with female back-up vocals, whilst "Robot World", as its name suggests, contains a technically crazy funk intro carefully blended with intricate drumming (the drumming is tight throughout the whole disc and perhaps the most powerful element on this disc) and analog moogs played by guitarist Jake Cinninger. There is even an electronic piece, "Mulch's Odyssey", with small doses of electronic beats to widen the album's scope. "Wife Soup" is one of the better songs on the CD as it greatly impresses thanks to the frantic instrumental passage that runs through it. This track is contrasted by the bluesy tune, "Pequod", starting with sorrowful vocals and shifting to a groovy metal drive. All of this is backed by silent piano notes. The album ends with an all acoustic instrumental. The final result is certainly worth listening to, but a bit too broad. It's a given this band is pretty involved in instrumental improvisation and might be doing a splendid job on stage, but when put on CD, I think some of the magic is gone. Who knows, maybe my opinion will change with repeated listens or as I check out their previous albums.
Free Music Review: We're not in Kansas anymore.....
Hit: 3 Stars
.... or are we? One of the hallmarks of any band from the Midwest is the flat vocal accent of the singers, and that goes back to Pete Cetera & Robert Lamm in Chicago, and whoever that singer was in Kansas. Which brings me to the point here: in citing various progressive bands as their influences, they left out the one that seems to have had the most impact: Kansas. Sure, it's a jazzier version, but only a jazzier version. They are a breath away from delivering a dust in the wahtever type of tune. The drummer, Kris Myers, has studied The Bruford Tapes well enough to approximate the master, the band has a quasi-early Yes (pre YES ALBUM) dexterity to their jazzy noodling (have I mentioned they are jazzy? versus jazz?), the lyrics are on the prog-fusion naff side, but after going through all the gyrations, the shortcomings are singing and the lack of melody and narrative or impressionistic songwriting.
And while it seems easy, what Adrian Belew does with Crimson is infinitely more of a dangerous effort than just pasting abstract ideas together. Straddle his haiku with the polyrhythmic explorations of the greater Crim, and it ain't for amateurs. UM aren't amateurs, but approximating an influence versus creating an identity are two separate things, as ex-Crim members have discovered (wonder what Greg Lake is up to these days...). In any case, the short of it is this band needs to focus on better lyric writing and they desperately need a standout singer. Bayliss and Cinninger are adequate back up guys, but haven't the vocal presence to make you stop and listen. Jon Anderson they aren't. Nor David Byrne.
Oddly, the most affecting track on the disc is the alt-country, neo Jay Farrar styled "bullhead city." The simplicity, the woman who sings harmony all take this much farther along than all the nimble digiting that infuse the rest of the compositions. And the acoustic closer, with no vocals, "the pequod" is perhaps the most memorable tune of all. Hello?
One of the many things to hate Dave Matthews for is the incessant noodling at the expense of creating music. He has cast an insidious shadow, much as the aforementioned prog-rock poseurs of the seventies, over too much of the soundscapes of modern music. If there is a musical God, said deity will have decided that's enough, even if you were born in South Africa. It obviously didn't have anything to do with your musicality. Bands like Umphrey's would do well to cast off that nonsense and find their own path.
And lose the YES impressions. "Miss Tinkle's Overture" is a pale imitation, and even YES doesn't write like that anymore, well maybe Wakeman. I keep waiting for them to break into "Every Little Thing", but this band wouldn't have thought of that.
So all this carping delivered, it's still a listenable CD. I doubt I'd buy another record from them. For example, BADGER and THE BUGGLES were interesting enough, but I wouldn't follow their careers either.
For all the rest of the hype extolling their virtues, well, it's your money....
Free Music Review: Good Listen
Hit: 3 Stars
To me, Umphrey's McGee sounds similar to an upbeat jazzier version of Ben Folds Five meets the Allman Brothers. The music blends rock, blues, jazz, country, and a splash of prog so there is variety for all to enjoy. The disc is loaded with blazing guitar solos and quality music played by proficient musicians. If the label "jam band" refers to turning a three-minute song into a ten-minute tune due to extended improvising, or just making up tunes on the spot, then this would be a great band to see live.Free Music Review: True and trite
Hit: 3 Stars
Smart enough to retain its academic melodics but overly quirky to the point of drowning some compositional ambitions into showmanship, UM always walked the fine line between inspired and insipid.