REASONS TO LIVE
Nightmare Air, High in the Lasers (Saint Marie). Los Angeles trio Nightmare Air is still the best noise-rock band you’ve never heard of, but I suspect that’s about to change now that there’s an actual record with which to woo the masses. And what a fine record it is. High in the Lasers is a pretty good aural approximation of what it must feel like to throw yourself off a 900-foot cliff on a hang glider and eddy down toward the Earth on a cushion of warring air currents. “Thrilling” is the only word that really does it justice. This thing just comes at you full-tilt from the moment “Escape” and “Icy Daggers” kick off the album with two searing shades of slightly sinister shoegaze until “Wold in the Wood” finally flames out in a flickering buzz of feedback. Nightmare Air is cousin to fellow noiseniks A Place to Bury Strangers in that they’ve taken your favourite New Wave records — maybe a Jane’s Addiction disc or two, too — and charged them with punishing volume and aggression, but this crew is the dreamier of the two. Songs tend to race forward at a breakneck pace set by the nimble New Wave rhythm section of Swaan Miller and Jimmy Lucido, but guitar ace Dave Dupuis (formerly of Film School) fills the rest of the space with mountainous riffs and peeling streaks of pure white noise that space out as much they assault. Miller’s shy coo, meanwhile, provides a nice counterpart to Dupuis’s unhinged howl in the vocal department. I love this band. You should, too.
The Highest Order, If It’s Real (Idée Fixe). Yet another group splintered from the membership of One Hundred Dollars, the Highest Order finds vocalist Simone Schmidt, guitarist Paul Mortimer and bassist Kyle Porter joining forces with drummer Simone TB of Ell v Gore for a spooky night ride into country music’s more psychedelic nether regions. If It’s Real is dedicated to Eric’s Trip/ Elevator auteur Rick White, and while he didn’t oversee this recording directly you can definitely hear his cosmic influence all over the thing, from the airy shuffle of “Lonely Weekends” and “Offer Still Stands” to the tripped-out “Cosmic Manipulations” that occasionally break up the track listing. The bleak atmosphere is a perfect complement to Schmidt’s world-weary croak and bottomless catalogue of intensely human hard-luck tales, while the repetitive, occasionally Velvet Underground-esque arrangements provide Mor- timer with ample opportunity to show off his fleet-fingered guitar prowess. Perhaps he should show off a bit more. Dunno what’s going on with One Hundred Dollars at the moment, but between the Highest Order and Fiver there appears to be no lack of creativity within the camp.
Dark Skies. Malicious aliens terrorizing the perfect suburban family? Sign me up! Dark Skies already has a foot out the door of its theatrical run but it’s actually a decent little low-budget creepout from the crew that brought you Insidious, Sinister, Paranormal Activity and Rob Zombie’s still-unreleased (but awesome) Lords of Salem. It’s a little loose with its UFO lore if you’re nitpicky about such things — and I am — but it does pick up a loose thread of connection between extraterrestrial encounters and poltergeist activity and runs with it gleefully. So, yes, it’s a lot like Poltergeist with “Grays,” but there is genuine horror to be found in the thought of another species terrorizing unsuspecting humans for reasons completely unknown — or maybe just for the pure pleasure of it. Some good jolts and the aliens themselves are impressively evil. Give it a chance