The Aislers Set

The Village Voice‘s Robert Christgau just included the new Aislers Set (pictured) disc, How I Learned to Write Backwards, among his Consumer Guide duds, so it’s gotta be good. At barely more than half an hour, it sure isn’t long. But the group’s minimalist approach never feels unnecessarily brief, and leader Amy Linton’s songs color outside the lines of passive indie tropisms. A solid set of record-collection references (the Kinks, Leonard Cohen) adds just enough musical ballast to the lyrics’ college-freshman profundities. “Mission Bells” (at four minutes, the Aislers Set’s “Stairway to Heaven”) adds mariachi horns to throbbing Velvet Underground organ and a Motown beat, and the otherwise silly bells-and-spaghetti-Western-guitar instrumental “The Trail #1” (which precedes the screaming, fuzz-back-driven “The Trail #2”) gets by on self-conscious, girl-with-glasses allure. A different kind of allure — or a willful lack thereof — dominates Hella‘s full-throttle-irony approach. The duo’s ugly-stepchild rock, which caused a stir at last month’s South by Southwest, seems poised for post-White Stripes hype.