Ira Grace and The Bible Belt Prophets

‘Big Tent Whiskey Revival’

Independent

There are a few bands in town for which the magical alchemy of male/female harmonies mean everything. The High Crest and Dustin Smith and the Sunday Silos immediately come to mind as prime examples, with the former setting a particularly high bar against which to measure local acts. Sara Williams of the Bible Belt Prophets isn’t the same caliber of singer as The High Crest’s Kat Darling, but in a way that’s kind of the point. Williams’ voice certainly isn’t bad. She’s got a charisma to her delivery and just the right amount of twang in her voice to be pleasant. But if “Big Tent Whiskey Revival” were just Williams singing for an hour, it would be largely forgettable. It’s the points where her voice is counter-pointed by band mate Marc Bailey where the album takes off and becomes something really worthwhile. CV

Deerhunter

‘Monomania’

4AD

Deerhunter is a mess of a band. Of course that’s completely intentional in their case, but the danger there is this: The fact remains that if you take a dump on someone’s chest and totally mean to do it, that doesn’t stop it from being a pile of shit. Monomania is indie navel gazing as viewed through cracked-and-smudged, noise-rock lenses. The band can grimace musically as well as most any other around, but its influences are always a little too apparent. And here’s the thing about that: The band is good at what it does but not as good as the others that do similar stuff. So while you can very easily listen to “Monomania” once or twice and have a good time, eventually you’ll start finding the similarities to The Black Keys or Flaming Lips, and that’s when the album will start to suffer by comparison. CV