Bill Direen & the Builders, Divine Comedia (side A)

Bill Direen is one of the less-remembered figures from the early-80s in New Zealand. While Flying Nun reissued his early work on CD, the original vinyl seems to have been self-released on his South Indies label.  And while his music is lo-fi and generally catchy, it borrows from slightly different influences than seems typical of the early Flying Nun releases.  Direen introduced more confusion by varying the name on his releases (the identities Bilders, Builders, and Bill Direen all seem to have been used), and through extreme stylistic diversity.  The 1988 compilation Divine Comedia assembles songs that he originally released between 1981 and 1987.  The compilation kicks off with 1985's "Black Doors", which vaguely resembles the Minutemen, then leaps to a stripped-down acoustic song, "Clifford Flat".  Both songs execute their styles well, but, apart from Direen's recognizable voice, it's hard to find much in common.  The third song, "Do the Alligator", falls closer to the proto-indie style that is usually associated with Flying Nun.  Perhaps the most amazing part is that these three dissimilar tracks all originally appeared on the same LP, 1985's CoNCH3.  This incongruous approach continues through the rest of the album.  Divine Comedia assembles a set of great tracks from an overlooked songwriter, but listening to it definitely gives little insight into the creative vision of an artist who makes frequent stylistic leaps.  The cheap photograph and design of the cover also fail to give any insight into this oddly-arranged compilation.

The Bats, Free All the Monsters (side A)

All Bats albums will naturally be compared against 1987's Daddy's Highway, which is generally considered their best.  Like that album 2011's Free All the Monsters captures many of the band's best qualities.  It manages to focus on their simple, strummy songs without seeming too same-y.  Tempos and arrangements vary just enough to stay interesting, without relying on production tricks or complex arrangements that distract from the band.  The recording is simple in the style of Daddy's Highway, even when noting that I prefer that album's analog primitivism to the limitations of the cheap digital system used here.  The melodies here are generally a bit subtler than "North by North" or "Block of Wood", but the songwriting is impressively consistent and memorable.  There are even qualities of Free All the Monsters that display impressive, if still subtle, growth over 25 years — Kaye Woodward's backing vocals and Malcolm Grant's drumming feel impressively confident and self-assured, without having changed at all in style.  The cover photo immediately illustrates the comfortable confines of the Seacliff Asylum where the album was made, without feeling at all heavy-handed or distracting.

Acid Birds, Acid Birds III (side A)

Acid Birds is the trio of Andrew Barker and Charles Waters of Gold Sparkle with Jaime Fennelly of Mind Over Mirrors, and 2011's Acid Birds III is entitled to appropriately reflect its place in their discography.  Reflecting the two approaches of the members, Acid Birds move between a dronier, electronic style and a percussion-forward aesthetic that borrows loosely from jazz traditions.  "Red Beak, Yellow Eye", the long track on side A, alternates between the two styles, with sharp turns that indicate a compositional hand driving its improvisational elements.  The album begins with the drums, especially the resonant kick, very far in the foreground.  The two tracks on side B are neatly divided, with a shorter and somewhat drone-based electronic piece followed by a longer, groovier track with live drums.  While the performances mesh nicely, the sonic elements sometimes seem to have come from different recordings, with the organic instruments recorded in an open room and the electronics preserving all of the brittleness of a direct feed.  The intricate and colorful cover painting hints, to me, that a psychedelic and perhaps droning album would be inside, only a few shades removed from the actual contents of Acid Birds III.

Mecca Normal, Flood Plain (side A)

My favorite Mecca Normal album is 1992's Dovetail, because it perfectly captures the duo's live dynamic.  The awkwardly structured songs perfectly pair David Lester's cutting guitar with Jean Smith's narrative vocal tales.  For such an abstractly conceived group, the songs on Dovetail are surprisingly consistent in style and approach.  A year later, 1993's Flood Plain finds the duo expanding its stylistic reach.  For example, "Current of Agreement" layers many of Smith's voice, rich with reverb, on top of a folkier sound — it resembles Linda Perhacs as much as Mecca Normal.  At another extreme, Smith adds guitar to the dense and distorted soundfield of "Greater Beauty", which pulls it vaguely in the direction of Charalambides.  At other times, songs begin to pull more toward pop forms.  Flood Plain continues to employ the raw and vaguely primitive sonic approach of earlier Mecca Normal albums, with thick midrange and little content in either frequency extreme.  I have trouble reconciling Jean Smith's gray cover painting of a bird and flowers with the music contained here, but the blocky font used for the band name feels perfect.

Country Joe & the Fish, Electric Music for the Mind and Body (side A)

Country Joe may be best remembered for his solo acoustic rendition of "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag" at Woodstock.  Compared against this unintended iconic event, Country Joe & the Fish's early band albums surprise with their garage rock qualities.  While the group never veers into the heavier side of 60s garage, much of 1967's Electric Music for the Mind and Body resembles Dylan-esque groups like the Hombres, who are traditionally grouped in the garage genre.  The loud and brittle electric organs, which were obviously recorded direct, may be the loudest thing in the mix, and their timbre gives the music an edge of immediacy.  The drums, on the other hand, fall clumsily behind the beat and are placed low in the mix — this quality pulls the group closer to the experimental folk groups of New York like the Fugs and the Godz.  The crisp electric guitars and tight vocal harmonies, on the other hand, reflect professionalism and talent that's somewhat incongruous with these other elements.  The songwriting is also more complex and skillful than most garage or folk-rock groups of the time employed.  The mixes are surprisingly thin and bright for their era, and the cover design associates the group more closely with a mainstream psychedelic rock idiom than the music contained inside.

Alastair Galbraith, Morse (side A)

It's easy to group Alastair Galbraith's solo songwriter albums of the 90s under a simple description of "introspective', and their are a lot of similarities between these albums.  Listening back to his first solo album (not counting 1990's never-reissued Hurry on Down cassette), 1991's Morse often conveys emotions more overtly and directly than the albums, like Talisman and Mirrorwork, that followed it.  Drums make an occasional appearance, and many of the electric guitars are often distorted, but the most frequent source of Morse's emotional accessibility is the rhythm guitars, which explicitly welcome the listener with energy and structure.  Galbraith's lead vocals reference his background in Plagal Grind, with a rock-like expressive style that would appear less frequently on his later albums.  Galbraith's melodies on Morse are quite pretty too — despite the rough recordings and odd arrangements, an accessible side peaks through.  The cover's blurry photo of the simple recording setup emphasizes Morse's raw and lo-fi side, which may have felt appropriate at the time, but 20+ years later, the image feels more jarring than the music inside.

Don Cherry, Complete Communion (side A)

While there was a several year break between Don Cherry's work in Ornette's quartet and his first solo record as a leader, the stylistic evolution is gradual and subtle.  With 1966's Complete Communion, Cherry's melodies and compositional explorations pick up where Ornette's quartets left off, complete with Ed Blackwell on drums.  The biggest structural difference is that while discrete tracks are identified on the record, they flow into each other to create sidelong pieces with continuity between movements.  The other big leap from Ornette's work is the introduction of Gato Barbieri on tenor — where Ornette's alto playing could grow shrill and slightly harsh, Barbieri employs a much smoother sound to soften the entire sound of the quartet.  After Complete Communion, Cherry developed a more personal compositional style, beginning with this album's successor, Symphony for Improvisers.  The glossy paper used for my recent reissue copy does not flatter the packaging design as much as the original matte outside, but the mastering of the vinyl sounds surprisingly impressive.