TrapJaw Affiliates: ‘TrapJaw Affiliates, Vol. 1’

Any rap group that dares to start an album with a track titled “A Few Words From Skeletor” is sure to be outside the ordinary realm of rhythm and rhyme, and the TrapJaw Affiliates’ first compilation does not disappoint. After a strange, remixed clip from the cartoon He-Man, in which Skeletor addresses his evil minion Trapjaw, the album launches right into a bouncy, brass-laden beat that provides the foundation for “Show Me the Way.” The song is essentially an ode to the Affiliates, as members introduce themselves on their debut album. It’s chock full of priceless rap lines, like “We ain’t the worst or the best, but we better than you.”

The second track continues the old-school meets new-school feel established by the previous beat, with brass screams blaring behind deep organ chords that bring to mind a kind of space-age Dracula, with a syncopated, catchy bass line. The lyrics for this song, called “What We Do,” quickly establish the group’s territorial pride, and the Affiliates do a remarkable job of making their home state of New Hampshire sound like a hip-hop Mecca. DC the Midi Alien yells “Chea, Granite State!” after the first few measures, and the song ends with LB guaranteeing any skeptical sucka that “ya couldn’t have no Queen City rap wid’out me.”

The album progresses through songs with titles like “All On My Nutsac ’07” and “Second Nature,” featuring beats dripping with funk. The lyrics criticize annoying fans or explain the ease with which the Affiliates compose their raps. 

Seven songs after we first hear from Skeletor, up comes a track titled “Aiiight Chill ’07,” another creative idea that involves the Affiliates being recorded on their answering machines and putting these snippets (all of which end with “Aiight, chill”) over a quiet, crisp drum beat. You can’t really dance to it, but it’s an interesting idea, and it gives the Affiliates some character. After a few slower beats that sound like Booker T and the MGs, with lyrics that carry a persistent drone that reminisces a little of Aesop Rock, the album launches into loud grooves with trumpet and trombone choruses. The near absence of audio effects gives Vol. 1 an old-school feel all the way to the end. The latter tracks feature a heavy dose of record scratching by DJ Illogix and liberal use of the chorus effect, making the voices sound fuller and louder each time they accentuate a rhyme. The album ends with “Keep Ya Hustle Up” (just two tracks after “Get Ya Hustle Up”), a song detailing the many difficulties that rappers face these days and just how hard it is to get to the top of The Game. It’s a slow tune with a slow jazz beat that doesn’t quite close the album with a bang. I’d recommend skipping back to “Invincible, Trap Remix” before shutting off the stereo, thereby ending your TrapJaw session with the Granite State pride that characterizes much of the album’s lyrical content: “Chea, we da kings of da 603.” Find out more about TrapJaw by visiting www.myspace.com/trapjaw603.

Shagbark: His Master’s Tuba

These guys can really lay down a groove. The songs on “His Master’s Tuba,” which came out of the band’s RPM challenge 2007 effort, aren’t fancy or flashy. After the first track, “Larry Sings,” you’ll probably be tapping your foot to Gary Gemmiti’s sparse, snappy drumbeat while knocking out Chip Brindamour’s bass line on the tabletop. With just four members, including a vocalist, every nuance of each musician’s rhythm and tone is further defined by its isolation from those of the others, the result being that you feel guilty taking any sound for granted.

After the second track, “What If I Were You?,” which showcases Brindamour’s slap bass line grinding along with Spidey’s sustained guitar chords, Shagbark moves into a honky-tonk blues tune called “Shotgun,” with Brindamour on tuba instead of bass and Mickey Blanchette singing about escaping his sweetheart’s gun-toting father. The lyrics are funny, and the funky marching band feel imbued by the tuba is an effective way to change up the sound between solid grooves.

After two songs that sound almost like toned-down Red Hot Chili Peppers tunes, the album launches into “Now You’ve Really Done It.” It’s as if Shagbark decided to mock a punk garage band for a few minutes, just to see what would happen. There are three chords in the entire song, and as Spidey plays one single note for 20 seconds straight, backed by sixteenth note snare fills and crunchy bass lines, it becomes clear that the band is out of its element. Thankfully, it’s a short song, and the following tunes are quieter, more syncopated and less worthy of spastic moshing and headbanging. “Snowstorm,” an instrumental, distorted guitar jam in 7/8, brings to mind a heavy Phish groove, especially when Shagbark ends the song by moving the progression up through the key chromatically, speeding up constantly before crashing to a halt. The album finishes with “54321,” a tune that reminisces even more strongly of the Chili Peppers, both in the raw tone of the instruments and the rhythmic, almost rap-like quality of Blanchette’s lyrics. The track ends the album with a bang, but perhaps not with the band’s best foot forward. The songs that seem the most polished and practiced on “Tuba” are the slower, funkier grooves, rather than the growling heavy tunes. It’s these sparse but catchy jams that you’ll want to pay most attention to when listening to Shagbark’s latest effort.  Find out more about Shagbark by visiting www.myspace.com/shagbarkinfo.


Palefighter: Swan Dive Bomb

From the opening notes of “Swan Dive Bomb,” with the lead track “We’ll Crush You With All That We Are,” it’s hard to believe that singer-songwriter Matthew Carano started the band while playing guitar in the rock-rap group Solid8. This is anything but rap. The guitar’s tone during the intro sounds something like the righteous distortion effect used by Pete Townshend on The Who’s “Baba O’Riley.” You can almost picture Carano windmilling each chord change into existence. It quickly becomes clear, however, that Palefighter doesn’t fit under The Who’s genre heading. The song fluctuates between pulsing rock grooves during the verses and poppy, Third Eye Blind-ish melodies during the choruses. Carano’s voice is difficult to place, sometimes leaning toward a melancholy Peter Gabriel sound while also pulling off pitch changes that you’d most often hear in a Broadway tune, and often altered by a stadium echo effect. At other times, however, the vocals reminisce of Limp Bizkit—an intriguing mixture of styles.

Palefighter demonstrates a wide range of sounds throughout the album, proving that it’s perfectly comfortable with most any tempo and level of intensity, and capable of blending these into compositions. From “SoLow,” an acoustic guitar waltz with synth pads in the background, to “Drive On Empty,” an intricate interplay of guitar melodies with an almost Middle-Eastern feel, the members of Palefighter compliment each other’s parts and make each song entirely different from the last. The variety continues with the quiet, contemplative “Song for a Wedding” straight into “The Barbarian Invasion,” which is driving and heavy but still melodic, especially when Robert Ziminsky joins Carano with harmonies for his vocal part.

A few songs even make use of electronic drumbeats integrated seamlessly with a real acoustic set, perhaps harkening back a bit to Carano’s rap group experience. But, few bands can manage an entire album without reusing a little of the same style and material, and Palefighter is no exception. Parts of “Scarface” sound a lot like segments from a few preceding tracks, and the final song, “The Light Fantastic,” is yet another acoustic guitar waltz, the album’s third. But, while the album ends on a somewhat redundant note, Palefighter is good at these slow, floating tunes. It’s not surprising that the members chose to write more than one. 

Overall, “Swan Dive Bomb” lives up to its MySpace claim: “as explosive and exact as its title denotes.” Palefighter provides a great mix of rock, ambient and acoustic styles coupled with complex and often cryptic lyrics. The album is set to be released this fall. For more information, visit www.myspace.com/palefightermusic.