It Ain't No Surprise - Leopold and his Fiction (Native Fiction Records, 2009)

Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man is without doubt one of the coolest, darkest films about the wild-west ever made. In the opening sequence, a meek accountant, played by Jonny Depp, finds himself stranded in the frontier town of Machine - a place not entirely dissimilar to hell on earth.
Machine is the complete antithesis of Mill Valley - the wild-west version of Marty McFly's hometown, depicted in Back To The Future III (possibly the weakest link in one of the greatest trilogies of all time). Even Bufford "Mad Dog" Tannen would not survive long in a town like Machine.
Which, in a round-about-way, brings us to Leopold and his Fiction - a very fine rock 'n roll band who hail from present-day San Francisco. Their sound is grounded in American roots music - blues, country, and healthy doses of garage rock. However, there is an edge to their music, a darkness at the edge of town that leads one to believe that they would be the perfect house band for the Machine Tavern - surely not a place for the faint of heart.
The band's debut album (featured here in 2008) revealed a band with a lot of promise, and Ain't No Suprise firmly delivers on that promise. In the louder moments (hear the excellent Sun's Only Promise), the band gives themself space to stretch out - crashing cymbals punctuating the howling guitar and organ leads. The quieter moments are more reflective, an acoustic slide-guitar accompanied by a plaintive, almost wistful voice, as on the gentle Tiger Lily.
Ain't No Surprise is one of the great new albums of 2009 and should serve to bring Leopold and his Fiction to a much wider audience. Here at In(High)Fidleity HQ, we are only to happy to do our part to help make that notion a reality.

Check Out: www.leopoldandhisfiction.com

Bon Iver - Blood Bank (Jagjaguwar, 2009)

At times, I am prone to making hyperbolic comments such as "I think the world would be a better place if everyone took the time to listen to Bon Iver at least once a day." However, is it hyperbole if I genuinely believe it to be true?
With their debut album, For Emma, Forever Ago, Bon Iver more-or-less took over my stereo in 2008. I bought the album on CD and then upgraded to vinyl. I proceeded to buy copies for friends and family, imploring anyone within earshot to immerse themselves in the restrained emotional beauty that was sure to pour forth from the speakers.
Blood Bank is a four-song EP that builds upon the foundation set by For Emma, Forever Ago, and while the sound isn't a grand departure from the earlier album, I am certainly not complaining. The EPs final track, Woods, is a beguiling piece of music, on which Bon Iver main man, Justin Vernon, builds an entire song out of a single couplet, that is multi-tracked time and time again and manipulated with the studio tool of the day: auto-tuning. Woods is strange, fantastical and fantastic all at once.
If I had to make one criticism of Blood Bank, it is that with only four songs, it is over all too quickly. That is a pretty piss-weak criticism, though. If you have not yet discovered Bon Iver, wait no longer.

Check Out: http://www.myspace.com/boniver