All Things, Forests is Palomar's 2007 release on Misra records, recently merged with bay area indie poster child Absolutely Kosher. In fact, my discovery of Palomar is due entirely to the inclusion of a Misra sampler alongside the usual Absolutely Kosher sampler from my Get Him Eat Him / Bottom of the Hudson order of last month.

Singing duties belong to Rachel Warren, and a press blurb on their official site says "Rachel Warren's singing is simple and tonally pure, with the same mix of velvety sweetness and skyscraping grandeur that makes boys swoon for Jenny Lewis." Leaving aside for the moment my disagreement with the word "skyscraping," this review gives the wrong impression. "Velvety" I suppose must mean "like shouting, but quieter," and I suppose "skyscraping" means "sometimes just shouting." "Tonally pure" sounds like someone was trying to find a nice way to say "boring."

Now I feel like I've corrected too far. Her singing isn't bad, her voice just isn't very distinctive¹. However, the rest of the band makes up for that. The arrangements are unusual but never jarring, and the songs are fun, sometimes catchy. The first six tracks are strong and varied, including the song "Our Haunt" included on the aforementioned Misra sampler, and "How to Beat Dementia." There is a fantastic little guitar line in the chorus of "Beats Beat Nothing," that should have been repeated another couple times, but that may be my fascination with echo. The weaker songs that occur here and there on the back half of the record aren't actually bad, they just aren't going to make any mixtapes. Stronger tracks on the back half include "Woah!" and the last song, "Alone."

So where does it fit on a scale that runs from OMC's How Bizzare to the Wrens The Meadowlands? Right about Speakerboxxx. It's a good album, but you can't help but think of The Love Below. Listen to it, enjoy it.

1. I can't help wondering at this point whether this criticism is unfounded. I like relatively few bands with female lead singers, and I am always comparing their singing to that of Kim Deal, which is unfair. There is only one other singer who sounds like Kim Deal, and that is Kelley Deal. When I hear some female singers I am tempted to say "she's trying too hard," or "who told her to sing like that?" and yet here I am criticizing a voice as "not very distinctive.

Arms Down is Get Him Eat Him's sophomore offering on Absolutely Kosher. I'm a huge fan of Get Him Eat Him's first record, Geography Cones, and I've even been known to comment favorably on their demo, Casual Sex. This album isn't going to make any converts, but that isn't necessarily bad. If you like Get Him Eat Him, you will like this. If you don't, skip it. I think it's fantastic. I've realized what it is about GHEH that draws me in. If you listen to their songs, you will spend the first minute or so, usually the verses, saying, "OK, this is a rock song," and it's easy to tune out there, but you shouldn't, because, what Get Him Eat Him does that I haven't experienced anywhere else is to hide one perfect musical moment, one brilliant chord progression or verbal trill, in an otherwise very ordinary song.

That sounds like a criticism, but it isn't, because when you hear that one perfect moment in each song, a chill runs down your spine, and on a per song basis, I don't think any other band delivers as many chills. They have a high chill ratio.

Fantastic Hawk is the latest release on Absolutely Kosher by Bottom of the Hudson. I had their Riot Act EP, which I think I got as part of a "every album we released this year" package a couple of years back. It was good. Good enough that with only six songs, they're sitting pretty at #41 on my last.fm profile with 136 listens (compare with GHEH's 335 to see just how much I love Geography Cones). So the band had enough currency with me to assure that I was going to get it, but I fully expected it to be the side dish to a Get Him Eat Him main course. In fact it was the opposite. While Arms Down is a great record, Fantastic Hawk blows it away. As far as I can tell, there isn't a dog on the record, and I consider that high praise–my all-time favorite record, The Meadowlands (The Wrens) has two tracks I normally skip. There is something… hard to place exactly, but there is a Psychedelic Furs quality to the vocals on the record that really compliments the guitar work.

The only downside I can see from the record is that the consistency of the songs means that there just aren't any standouts (at least no early favorites have emerged in the week I've had it), so it's hard to see what I will integrate into heterogeneous playlists. It may be that tracks from Fantastic Hawk only get played while I am listening to the whole record.

Now, some unpleasant business:

I didn't want to mention this until I had reviewed the record, because it dominates the actual review, but Absolutely Kosher is reporting that Bottom of the Hudson had a serious accident in their tour van on Sunday night, and unfortunately, bass player Trevor Butler lost his life. Drummer Greg Lytle is also still hospitalized, though as of the latest update, he has stabilized. Absolutely Kosher has set up a fund accepting donations for the band (it is important to remember that they are an indie rock band and no millionaires), and you can help out at http://absolutelykosher.com. Of course, buying the record would also help out.

Bishop Allen released their second full length album this week, called The Broken String, and I was excited to pick it up, and then somewhat disappointed to discover that 10 of the 12 songs were new versions of songs from their monthly EPs of last year. In fact, including the live versions on the August EP, I have some of these songs 3 times, and I think "Butterfly Nets" 4 times.

Fine, I guess, if these were the definitive versions of the songs, but I don't feel like I can make that statement with a clear conscience. While the songs are all arranged differently than on their original EPs, I'm not prepared to say that they're arranged better, with one caveat: I think the bass guitar is better on this record than it was on most of the EPs. Read into that what you will.

I'm especially worried about the new version of "Corazon," which may have been my favorite of the month songs (from January). It's about a piano, and the original featured a banged up old piano. That piano is somewhat lost in the new arrangement.

But the question that really needs to be asked here is "why?" It's one thing (and I think many would say still a shameful thing) for an artist to release new versions of old songs at the end of a career, as a retrospective–but these songs just came out. The EPs were ambitious, following hard on the first record, Charm School, but this is the opposite of ambitious. It's resting on laurels, and it's too soon for that.

Skip it.