"the trusted language" by UUVVWWZ | Album Review

[Editor's note: This review previews a pair of album release shows in Lincoln and Omaha. Tonight, UUVVWWZ plays The Bourbon Theatre in Lincoln with HERS and Green Trees, starting at 9 p.m. for an $8 cover. On Saturday, UUVVWWZ takes the stage at The Waiting Room in Omaha with openers Touch People and The Renfields for a concert starting at 9 p.m. for $7.]

"No Apart" opens with an inhalation, just a few seconds of fretted notes humming through buzzing amps, before three menacing chords cut the breath short and UUVVWWZ's second album, the trusted language, begins.

Over the next 35 minutes, the quartet of musicians called "double-U" for short buries the rails it rode in on, rails laid by their self-titled debut nearly four years ago. Frontwoman Teal Gardner says it took two years for the trusted language's eight songs to take form. Through this collection's sharpened intent and meatier music, these songs outgrow those first nine UUVVWWZ wrote and later released in May 2009.

This second record's roots lead back to August 2010 when former drummer Tom Ambroz moved to Australia for a job in mineral exploration. After carefully bringing Dave Ozinga into the mix to play percussion and reform a rhythm section with bassist Dustin Wilbourn, the band started writing. Guitarist Jim Schroeder would spend hours at a time crafting the structures of songs, often with Gardner as she improvised alongside him.

UUVVWWZ Talks "trusted language" | Video Feature from Hear Nebraska on Vimeo.

The result is a set of darker, more mature songs — released on Feb. 5 via Saddle Creek — which succeed when they flawlessly switch from one personality to the next. In the liner notes, Gardner jumps from cursive to all caps in "Possible Project." The graceful italics of "Broad Sky Blues" lean below the plain but darker text of "GRIPS."

"No Apart" is a strong opener, but without the change of tempo 3 1/2 minutes in, it would be too straightforward with an anti-technology message that feels tired for millennials like me: "Thanks to them," Gardner sings, "we can learn to laugh at dust collected on the screen where I live in the house that I keep." "Open Sign" barrels down the tracks, loud and angry, but what's an out-of-control train that doesn't derail at the end (which "Open Sign" does by eventually self-destructing)?

It's a testament to UUVVWWZ's skilled songwriting and musicianship that the best tracks on the trusted language create their variety of emotional responses without very much noticeable manipulation in post-production. The guitar, bass and drums rarely shift from their place in the mix. A chorus of voices join Gardner on "Broad Sky Blues," and occasionally her own voice will multiply like it does to good effect three-quarters of the way through "Possible Project." But for the most part, Gardner shapes her single track of vocals to match the changing textures of the music.

Rarely if ever does the band play out-of-step with each other. The mix of personalities matches Gardner's own way of jumping from a sweet high note to a machine gun spattering of broken throaty syllables. She slithers from note to note, melismatic as she stretches her experimental lyrics. She might sway from the staff lines or the spaces in between, 10 cents sharp or flat. She might shape her mouth to change the timbre. Call it inability or call it intentional, the style is off-putting to some, and it's noticeable from the first line that her vocals have an extra weight to them, the only studio manipulation — or result of a cold — that can be distracting at first.

But for her "acquired taste" vocals, the band would be hard-pressed to find anything comparable were Gardner to land her own sort of Australian mineral exploration job. She almost single-handedly molds the band's stage presence with the sort of ballet she performs with her arms, eyes and then whole body. Where it's easy to examine her vocals closely on the record, on stage, Gardner explains for her style through the way she commands attention and works an audience.

Which brings us back to the band's shape-shifting performance. It's songs like "Perfect House" and closer "the trusted language" that underwhelm when the album is taken as a whole because each isn't as multi-faceted as their counterparts. Listeners might learn to crave the change in dynamics of second song "GRIPS" after its first three searing sections — intro/pre-chorus, chorus and segue — charge through 30 seconds to land on a slowly building groove. And when the rhythm of this verse is clearly defined, you try dividing it by four only to find that you'll need a calculator. The first two songs set a precedent that "Perfect House" doesn't meet.

The more languid, pastoral "Broad Sky Blues" and the more relaxed Nebraskan surf of "Charlotte's List" take from music theory the ability to know when a chord with less perfect intervals are needed to add drama. And this is part of the reason why this band is great. Most musicians want to be unchained from genre. While they call themselves avant-blues, UUVVWWZ needs an evolving definition that keeps up measure-by-measure with the music.

Forged from the melting pot of metal, jazz, indie rock, blues, folk, country and the many other elements of the Nebraska music scene, UUVVWWZ is a band that pulls together diverse elements to create an all-together awakening sound for the rest of the state and the world to hear.

UUVVWWZ is Teal Gardner, Jim Schroeder, Dustin Wilbourn and Dave Ozinga

Recorded June 2012 by J.J. Idt & Ben Brodin at ARC Studios
Additional recording by J.J. Idt at Little Machine Studios with assistance by Matt Carroll

Mixed July 2012 by J.J. Idt at Fuse Recording with assistance by Tim Kechely

Mastered November 2012 by Roger Seibel at SAE Mastering

Cover artwork by Neil Griess and Teal Gardner

Singers on the chorus of "Broad Sky Blues": Patrick Geske, Annamarie McClellan, Natalie McClellan, Kate Humphreys and Daniel Ocanto.

"No Apart"

We have run out of sense in these new tenses
Thanks to them we can laugh around the long distance
Call me up from the block of my house where I live
Or you can watch me take a walk through city center
Add the best beat fit it to my face and follow on then
Back to my house
Where I'll be

Why did you come to me talking without a machine?
You know where I am, where I live, and what I will do
Take these wires away take off their power,
So we can speak speech to speech and I know what we mean

We have run out of senses

Thanks to them we can learn to laugh at dust collected
On the screen where I live in the house that I keep
Or you could watch me take a walk through city center
Add the best beat fit it to my face and follow on then
Back to my house
Where I'll be

We have run out of senses

You know if I effort true you have to know the difference
As it's falling from me, it falls free, it's falling through me
If I effort true you have to know the difference the truth
It wants free it falls from me it's falling through me
If I effort true you know the difference is what's to be the
Truth it wants and I want these often too true things
If I effort true you know the difference is what's to be
And I try to see what you are seeing

I can sleep against the night well it's all well
Well what can we do when it's so well?
I can sleep against the night well it's all well
Well what can we say when it's so well?

I can sleep on through the morning just fine
In a war against dust I wrest the conviction to trust
I can sleep on through the hardest of times
With my teeth bared equal to our arms that spell
No apart

"GRIPS"

Blood, dart, fuck his politic
So proud, a brave venison
The blackbird song bust the pavement
You lay down, how you going to lay down? You lay down
how you gonna lay down? You lay down, how you
gonna lay down?

not use to this in twenties and teens, grabbing on the
handrail for everyone to see. do you catch yourself
smiling our way? You find that you do love wahtever/
everything/whenever you say so.

hold your little hand up, hold up, you hold hands up
to your mouth, you will be full up to lay down
how you gonna lay down? you lay down, how
you gonna lay down? to lay downhow you gonna
lay down? lucid session block one unit eight ball
unit eight, either to the black chest or that shipping
dock. you use your hands there, security
takes symbolic action against the everglades
look of the skin against look of the eye
lok of the water from out of the window
look of the self
blockade denied below the tongue declared "irrational
unit," left alone, wondering now, "what is now?"
the better we get, the blacker the water, the delicate
shore bleached to death. the better we get, the
blacker the water. the delicate shore bleached to
death, the better we get, the blacker the water,
the delicate shore bleached to death.
give her something to throw! quickly! the wall
needs a reminder in the face of what the wall
is for. seconds pinned to a stack and buried away
from desire. throw that over the headless stumling
minefield sick orchard. athena sleeping there with
no reason to wake. dense cavity of trees wrapped
with camping tarps. hooded exploding thunder
boom. i should have told you. loud loud with
the sound of it. cinder lips to the mess
of panic. when i can tell you everything.

"Perfect House"

my perfect house is mainly door and today I am full of walking
old chalk leaving sidewalk stroke by stroke just as it was laid down
add momentum to me to the thought of me
even more a mountain will rise and the rain will come

when it is dark and quiet time my walking turns in to sleeping
for hours past the creepy city lights if you'd just adjust I would just
when my skin bursts and burns with significance
maybe then there would be some rest when the dark is out

I put basil and mint into a jar and I left it there
working at last to get some where weeping into the creases of the Sunday paper

look alive very sick I do look alive very sick I do

I look alive very sick and I do is it good because it's hard?

now I never blink your face is a frame of mine
hung on the spaces we'd live for a while
you and mine and mine and yours have we found ours yet?
we walk around the night neighborhood
flashing on and off the light I trust falls from the sky
I would pull it in through you
and blow past the sound of quieting down
two little edges I would find and begin to write down

"Broad Sky Blues"

;

i walk through the sweet grass, not looking for news
trees sway as wind blows through
the birds flock their singing, i think of the bus
and lay down the broad sky blues
without moving glass & stone becoming something here
even here i wait to become clear
the city's no solid thing and i want to do everything
i can
in a way i see it now; the way i see it now:
there must be something we can use outside of power
that we can do that we can say, i beg you, i'll help
you, i'll listen to you. we can start that work
to speak and be unafraid to move

"Possible Project"

If you started to play, I'd come up from
where it is that I stay. Would you want to hold on to me
in the half-light of switched seeing? Flying across the
land, by light, by water & sound. time out of air. stark and
wasted and sad, it's not our fault that we must bury
the rail we rode in on.

YOU MAKE VIDEO, YOU WOULD WRITE DOWN
YOU WOULD PLAY A CHORD, IT SOUND
PERFECTLY TO WAKE UP ME
FROM THE INDEX BURN BACK TO "REAL LIFE"
W/ THE GLASS AGAINST ALL THE FACES INTO
PHOTOS THAT I AM TAKING IT MIGHT BE
SOMETHING MAKE YOU WORK YOUR HEART OUT, LOVE

for the future tries, tried & intentional – see? you wake up
when you know what you want, you can be. for the
future tries tried & intentional – see? you wake up
when you know what you want, you can be. for the
future tried tried and intentional – see? you wake up
but you know you haven't been there yet.

WE TRIED & WE'RE ON FIRE & WE LOOKED FOR TIME
I HAD YOU ON FIRE HAD YOU ON FIRE HAD YOU
IN THE SKY. I HAD YOU ON FIRE HAD YOU ON FIRE
& I HAD YOU ON TIME. HAD YOU BEEN ON FIRE JUST
FROM LOOKING INTO THE SKY?

"Open Sign"

I saw that fucking open sign & walking past broke up
the shop window, foot through the glass, flame to the hip
wrist wishing on… stompstomp. double language. fake off
wash off long lost kick off start up call on no, call out a
figure of a future. a certain kind of open taken.
(CHORUS)
I can, feel, you know, clear sometimes, open as a field
of poppies in the right light. there is a line i haven't
gone. crossing my mind. there's only so much time for
arrival for arrival for arrival for arrival

& ran through the lanes darkness to dust do you remember
what we called the beach then, do you remember what
we called it we called it we called it the arms
the arms the arms the arms. the arms were
always open the arms were always open
the arms were always open and we
just walked in recall

Chorus:

I saw and I saw and
I tried to get open
Run back to the beach
And I tried to get open
She writes for the
future: "A large
public poem"
with all of us in it,
and all of us open

"Charlotte's List"

You'll be changed from full to
breaking, with Charlotte's list
from when she made a grain of
sand into an obelisk, then she
quit doing it. when you say you
have hard time relating to what
the structure sang, run eyes closed
through the rain pinhold black
perfect straat, imagined
architecture

lately, spitting in my tea
collapsing spaces & sills under the fog
of london city. you'll see what
wonders come by me
my daily walks all run on
1. Paint lines on side wall pretty
wander wander wander
2. soaking leaves on wet dark steps
as the languid bus stops before
the capitol building
3. make & change what seeing being
walks weird through what streets
fit cops and shopping in some
dumb city
4. wander wander wander

(The buildings how they fit the ground
they will fall down they all fall
down the buildings they will fall
down, they all fall down.)