Bedhead - Listless Rock for Melancholy Hearts

The story of Bedhead isn't really all that original: a cult name, often considered a minor one, brought back into fashion by the subsequent project (The New Year) of its two main figures (brothers Bubba and Matt Kadane). An already-familiar narrative that, on the one hand, offers the pleasure of (re)discovering a band with far more depth than many celebrated contemporaries, but on the other confirms the biased attitude of press and public alike. In the years when slow-core and post-rock were all the rage, Bedhead positioned themselves halfway between the two genres: as rarefied as Codeine (though without quite the same desperate inability to communicate) and fond of restrained crescendos that would later find kinship in bands like Windsor For The Derby. Added to this was a disposition not far removed from the territory of Cowboy Junkies, via a dilated approach in which the songs, even if not in any conventional sense, managed to reach completion with disarming precision.

The band's official debut came between 1992 and 1993, with the 7" singles "Bedside Table" and "The Rest Of The Day", both released on Direct Hit Records. In truth, their first real work is What Fun Life Was (Trance Syndicate, 1994), which revisits some songs written by the Kadanes years earlier. They're joined by Tench Coxe (guitar), Kris Wheat (bass) and Trini Martinez (drums). The band's genetic code is plain to see: the opening "Liferaft" (the same will hold true for "Crushing", "Powder" and the sweet, moving "Unfinished") begins with delicate arpeggios over which Matt's voice timidly settles. The other instruments gradually join in, and the impact grows exponentially, overcoming its initial reticence to regenerate into a palpable emotional languor. It's a tension still taking shape, one that only once fully realized makes room to breathe ("Wind Down"). "Haywire" is a manifesto of this: more impetuous, yet just as melancholy in its interplay between guitars and drums, destined to explode into a therapeutic, delirious finale similar to that of "Bedside Table". The sum of these two attitudes is the utopian anxiety of "Living Weel", a tormented instrumental opening that spills into a (grimy) melodic purification. The subdued, nostalgic streak, with stronger ties to a particular indie scene, also comes through in the affable transience of "The Unpredictable Landlord" and the whistling gait of "To The Ground", while "Foaming Love" canters along like Modest Mouse immersed in the night.

Following the album, two EPs were released: 4 Song CD EP 19:10 (Trance Syndicate, 1994), recorded in a church between 1990 and 1991, and Dark Ages (Trance Syndicate, 1996), on which the band plays some of its best cards. A pained introspection, verging on incomprehensibility, surfaces in the title track and reaches sublime heights in the instrumental "Inhume" (the work closes with the underrated "Any Life").

The second album, Beheaded (Trance Syndicate, 1996), confirms the band's worth. Still restrained, the Kadane brothers shed some of their impulsiveness in favor of a slow, spiritual journey. The new version of "The Rest Of The Day" is among the finest examples of their slow-core side: the vocals, pitched at a near-whisper, delicately dissolve into repetitive guitars that, without warning, bloom into what is perhaps their most definitive emotional crescendo. Keeping it company are shadowy, subdued episodes (the title track, "Burned Out"), intimate ones (the apathy of "Losing Memories") and, only rarely, less anguished moments (the pop attitude of "Withdraw", the near singer-songwriter feel of "Smoke", the usual march-like "Felo De Se"). The strongest tie to the past is the gently forward-leaning drive of "Left Behind", along with the soft intensity of "Roman Candle" and "Lares And Penates", while the purity of "What's Missing" comes as a surprise, its arrangements seeming to offer a consolation that remains, nonetheless, gloomy.

On August 3, 1998, the Bedhead saga came to an end. Transaction De Novo (Trance Syndicate) was released and, right after it came out, the band broke up. Three years would pass before a Kadane band resurfaced (the aforementioned New Year, whose shape can already be glimpsed in "Half-thought"), but the farewell was delivered in grand style. The communicativeness remains as tormented as ever, with fragile impressions placed front and center, needing no excess to frame them. "Exhume" flows like a litany, with bells laid over narcoleptic textures heightened by the forgetfulness of "Forgetting". Unlike Codeine, Bedhead never push resignation to its extreme, instead making it more bearable and accessible. So the false serenity of "More Than Ever" pairs up with the Lou Barlow-like openness of "Extramundane". The finale moves from "Lepidoptera" (a dusky fable, skillful enough to win over even those who don't enjoy wallowing in excessive gloom) to "The Present", a lullaby with a music box that represents the night that had fallen on the band.

The Kadane name resurfaces on Macha Loved Bedhead Bedhead Loved Macha (Jetset, 2000), a production by Macha, the Athens-based outfit led by Joshua McKay. Starting from unfinished Bedhead tracks, the Georgia band adds eccentric touches smudged with often-minimal electronics. The rarefied quality remains, but it's viewed from a different angle. Among the six tracks, an intriguing cover of Cher's "Believe" stands out, where the main instrument is a phone keypad. This marks the band's last official appearance.

2001 is the year of the comeback in new clothes. The debut album by New Year, Newness Ends (Touch And Go), is thunderous: an electroacoustic guitar immediacy builds genuine songs, comparable in their weightless momentum to the Velvet Underground of their self-titled album. Joining the brothers are Mike Donofrio of Saturnine on bass and Chris Brokaw (Come and Codeine) on drums. The album was recorded at Steve Albini's Electrical Audio Studios. Ten songs, potentially ten singles given their emotional force and drive. A short album (around thirty minutes) that thrives on essentiality and inspiration. The colors are muted, streaked with a sterile melancholy crushed by the idea of utopia. "Half A Day" is a plunge into deep waters, occasionally broken by refreshing waves ("Reconstruction", "Gasoline"). The connection to slowness remains ("Alter Ego", "One Plus One Minus One Equals One"), but it's transported into the kind of venues certain singer-songwriters (Oldham, Papa M) haunt on autumn evenings. The sheer delicacy of the compositions ("Great Expectations") loses none of its dreamlike quality even when a subtle Built To Spill-style noisiness ("Carne Levare", "The Block That Doesn't Exist") peeks through, highlighting a growth that's invisible yet always palpable. The title track, placed as the closing episode, is the perfect summation of an album drenched in a relentless downpour of emotion.

In 2004, Matt and Bubba first dabbled in Music From The Film House (Pleximusic), then completed New Year's second effort. The End Is Near (Touch And Go) is the natural continuation of the previous album, steeped in a more cerebral dimension. A heavier grime, soaked in the usual melancholy (in "Chinese Handcuffs": "I've come to face myself in a staring contest in the mirror, where there's more chance of victory than in an argument with you..."), settles over sparse, distinctly American atmospheres that only occasionally make room for emotional swells ("18", "Age Of Conceit"). Albini, called in once again by the band, is—rarely for him—not overbearing; in fact, he tends to recede, letting the melodies' heartbeat come through without being smothered by an ever-looming suffocation ("Start"). Today New Year stand as the ultimate example of a band baring itself without fear of its own fragility, indifferent to fads and trends.

Fifteen years spent drifting across genres and musical climates, chasing a melancholy-steeped shyness that led them to shun appearances and even the visibility that the far too overlooked (and too rarely cited) Bedhead would have deserved. It is a fate lived in the shadows, that of brothers Bubba and Matt Kadane, who, having shelved their first band prematurely, now arrive at the third album under their new name, The New Year, releasing this brief self-titled record (thirty-four minutes long), which is nonetheless the product of four full years of writing and a year of recording.

It's precisely the wide time gap since the previous The End Is Near that attests to the creative ease the Texan band can now afford itself, free as it is from any expectation or pressure beyond that of an inspiration still centered on the classic post-adolescent themes of time passing and the fallacy of desire, now handled with a maturity far removed from any rhetoric.

Thus, this third New Year record once again presents the band's familiar blend of swaying melodies and refined guitar work, occasionally rippled by bursts of noise. All of it is filtered, indeed, through a maturity evident in both the themes and the sounds; consider that nearly half the tracks are piano-driven, while even the sharper electric elements (which surface mainly in "The Door Opens" and the closing "The Idea Of You") almost always come out softened, flanked by oblique melodies and steady rhythms, supporting a soft, seemingly detached atmosphere.

Alongside traces of feverish guitar work and hints of persistent rhythmic fragmentation, the album takes on a mostly composed tone, elevated by the piano's presence even in tracks that unfold in a more electric guise, as happens in the excellent "The Company I Can't Get" and in "MMV". There's no shortage of moments of outright romanticism either, building through meticulous instrumental work, nor of slowed-down rough edges morphing into something close to southern rock, not unlike what Geoff Farina has done with the later work of his band Karate and, more recently, with Glorytellers.

Whatever the makeup of their songs, The New Year maintain a quiet imperturbability in the face of a subtle suffering, expressed without excess, through a shadowy sensibility rendered in fluid harmonies of slow, meticulously crafted allure.

The Kadane brothers no longer have an edge, nor would they have good reason to today, and yet, detached and indifferent to trends and musical contexts, they still manage to leave their mark with songs that are entirely unpretentious, yet accomplished and flawlessly written.

Nine years on from the previous self-titled album, the Kadane brothers seem to have turned back the clock, to when Bedhead had run its course through its overwhelming slow-rock trilogy, leaving only the question of what to do with a pair of arms that mainly knew how to hold an instrument. Snow is perhaps the album many fans would have wanted as the debut release of their new musical project, The New Year: intelligent, refined, probably even more faithful to a nineties aesthetic than the reluctant adolescence of indie-rock temptations found on the project's first records (the real ones).

Proud piano flourishes, arranged like a jazzy accompaniment to an open-mic poetry night ("The Last Fall"), guitar lines steeped in bittersweet nostalgia ("Homebody", "Mayday"): especially in the first half of the record, a reunion unfolds that will surely raise goosebumps on fans' arms, in what turns out, a bit too quickly, to be a nostalgia lever that's perhaps a touch too easy to pull.

Too little daring and too much craftsmanship are the real weaknesses of an album that is, in truth, far from unworthy, one that genuinely seems to bring an era back to life, with the insistent, mumbling-yet-crystalline resonance of "Recent History", and with the existential quiet-loud dynamics of "The Beast".

Inevitably on-the-nose, Snow nonetheless benefits from a performance of genuine heartfelt commitment and from the Kadane brothers' compositional talent, which carries Bedhead into a chamber-rock singer-songwriter territory bordering on alt-country (especially on the title track, the best song on the record) — arguably the natural and desirable destination of the duo's second career.

Contributions by Raffaello Russo for “The New Year” and by Lorenzo Righetto for “Snow”

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