Archive for April, 2006

Get Your Damn Pause Off Of Me

Due to technical problems, medical issues, and a backlog of work that I need to complete by the end of the day, Fluxblog is still on hiatus, possibly through the end of the week. I might get back into it tomorrow, but it's more likely that things will be back to normal on Monday. I'm sorry about the interruption - I take a certain pride in keeping this site daily on weekdays, so this sort of thing probably bugs me a lot more than it does you, who have a choice of, I don't know, five thousand other music blogs these days. In the meantime, I suggest these posts in particular.

Eppy discusses modern pop's roots in novelty in this Stylus "The Aesthetics of Pop" podcast.

Marathon Packs has very early Talking Heads demos from 1975.

Green Pea-ness revisits Dexy's Midnight Runners.

Ghostface meets Eugene Mirman at the Riff Market.

Sasha Frere-Jones offers astrological advice to pop stars, and gets me very worried about that next Walkmen album.

Get Ready To Become Ultra-Fuckable

Eugene Mirman "Revolve" - I'm still slogging through an obnoxious combination of aggravating tooth pain, the daze of medication, and poorly-timed technical issues, so please forgive me for not doing more with the site today. In the meantime, please enjoy Eugene Mirman's very funny riff about Revolve, an ill-advised repackaging of the Bible's New Testament in the form of a magazine for teenage girls. (Click here to pre-order it from Sub Pop.)

Please note that the mp3s for yesterday's post are still unavailable, but will be soon. Or soon-ish.

My Arts Is Crafty Darts

Please be patient with me. I am having problems with the new mp3 server, and it may take a day or so for things to be exactly right. I understand that there is a problem and I do not need to be reminded of this.

Scissor Sisters @ Bowery Ballroom 4/23/2006
Take Your Mama / I Can't Decide / Tits on the Radio / She's My Man / Laura / Paul McCartney / Everybody Wants The Same Thing / Kiss You Off / Mary / The Other Side / I Don't Feel Like Dancing / Comfortably Numb / Music Is The Victim / Land of a Thousand Words // Filthy/Gorgeous

Scissor Sisters "I Can't Decide (Live @ Mercury Lounge 2005)" - The Scissor Sisters are such a fun and dependably entertaining live band that even though I came into this show with a raging toothache and stoned on vicodin, I was still able to have a pretty great time. Compared to previous Scissor Sisters shows that I've seen in NYC, this was a slightly mellower crowd than usual, but those last two shows that I saw were basically two of the most energetic audiences that I've ever been in, full stop. As you can see, the band is focusing on material from their forthcoming album, and I'm pleased to tell you that it's going to be a pretty great record. Most of the new songs are holdovers from last summer's gigs, but three of the selections were brand new to me. "I Don't Feel Like Dancing" is like the ultimate Scissor Sisters song, maintaining an ideal balance of disco and Elton-ish pop. It's a pretty obvious single, as is the rather Richard X-ish Ana Matronic showcase "Kiss You Off." My favorite of the new songs is still "I Can't Decide," which has a melody so instantly ingratiating and comfortable that it feels like I've known it all my life. The live version that I've posted here is rather rough in terms of sound quality, but you should be able to the get the idea. Unfortunately it is just an audio track, and so you can't see the adorable little jig that Jake Shears and Del Marquis perform at the end! (Click here for the official Scissor Sisters website.)

Ghostface Killah @ Nokia Theatre 4/22/2006
This is not in order, and incomplete: Be Easy, Back Like That, Ice Cream, Nutmeg, Apollo Kids, One, Child's Play, We Made It, Mighty Healthy, Stay True, Cherchez La Ghost, Iron Man's Theme, Wildflower, Fish, Biscuits, Run, Holla, Metal Lungies, Wu-Tang Clan Ain't Nuthin To Fuck Wit, Triumph, C.R.E.A.M., Shimmy Shimmy Ya, I Want Pussy

Ghostface Killah "The Champ" - Though there were some changes in the setlist, this was more or less the same show that I saw at the Fader tent at SXSW in terms of flow and performance. All of the cool little things that seemed spontaneous to me in that show is now revealed to me as shtick, though it's a damn good one. My main frustration with this set is that it only contained two songs from Fishscale, and neither of them would make my top ten on that album. My guess is that the DJ simply did not have the instrumentals for anything but the singles, but man, all I know is that if I wrote a song as ideally suited to opening a show as "The Champ," I'd do everything in my power to make sure that it was in the set whether the vinyl was available or not. The same goes for "Shakey Dog" and "Kilo." (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Papoose "Alphabetical Slaughter" - This was quite a bill, with performances going pretty much nonstop from 9 PM up til they cut out the power on Ghostface around 12:30. Non-Phixion started the show with a single song before making way for a harmonica-playing rapper whose name I can't recall. After that, M-1 from Dead Prez came out to do a set focusing on his new solo record, most of which were heavy on R&B choruses and sounded like him trying to get on the radio circa 1997. Unsurprisingly, the highlights of his set were "Hell Yeah" and "Hip Hop." After that, DJ Premier played a crowd pleasing set with a guest spot from Jeru The Damaja, who was pretty damn amazing. I would have much rather have seen fifteen minutes of Jeru than that harmonica guy. Mix tape star Papoose followed that up with a somewhat uneven set, but kinda wowed me with the opening "Alphabetical Slaughter," an epic of alliteration that is like the hip hop cousin of The Fiery Furnaces' "Sullivan's Social Slub." Slick Rick was the last of the opening acts, and was predictably charismatic and entertaining, though his hit-heavy set was a bit too brief. (Click here for Papoose's MySpace page.)

Tom Breihan has a much better write-up of the show on Status Ain't Hood.

When Every Fake-It Decides To Make It

Robert Pollard @ Irving Plaza, 4/20/2006
Gold / I Surround You Naked / Blessed In An Open Head / Get A Faceful / Light Show / Dancing Girls and Dancing Men / Supernatural Car Lover / Mute Superstar / Flowering Orphan / The Right Thing / Make Use / Hammer In Your Eyes / Kick Me and Cancel / U.S. Mustard Company / Dolphins of Color / Boxing About / Maggie Turns To Flies / The Numbered Head / Serious Birdwoman (You Turn Me On) / I'm A Strong Lion / 50 Year Old Baby / Fresh Threats, Salad Shooters and Zip Guns / Conquerer of the Moon / I Feel Gone Again / Choking Tara (Creamy Version) / I'm A Widow / A Boy In Motion / Love Is Stronger Than Witchcraft / Look At Your Life / 7th Level Shutdown / Get Under It / Kingdom Without / Recovering // Girls of Wild Strawberries / Game of Pricks / Sad If I Lost It / Gold Star For Robot Boy / Little Lines / My Valuable Hunting Knife / My Kind of Soldier / Don't Stop Now

Robert Pollard "Love Is Stronger Than Witchcraft" - In most ways, this was not very different from seeing a Guided By Voices show. Unlike a GBV show, this set was relatively light on oldies and beer-fueled singalongs. Also unlike a GBV show, the band was tight from start to finish, and the sound mix wasn't murky and Bob's vocals were crystal clear. Jon Wurster is by far the best drummer to ever play with Bob, and his performance over the course of two and a half hours was consistently heavy-hitting, energetic, and dynamic. He does wonders for the material, especially on tunes like "Dancing Girls and Dancing Men," "The Numbered Head," "Maggie Turns To Flies," and "The Right Thing." The latter was almost certainly the single best live performance I've ever seen by a Pollard-fronted band, both for the inspired performance, and the band's low-key theatrics. Tommy Keene's presence is very positive as well, especially for his contributions as a keyboard player, something I think Pollard's desperately needed for quite some time. Though I don't have anything against Doug Gillard or Tobin Sprout, Keene seems to be a much better influence on Bob in terms of trying to broaden the range of sounds in the show.

After six years of pining, I finally got to see Pollard play "Choking Tara," and with the full-band arrangement no less! I suppose that's what I get for being very patient. I was quite glad to see them do "Sad If I Lost It," "Little Lines," and "Mute Superstar" as well, though it does make me wonder why he's all of sudden playing so much from the Mag Earwhig album after ignoring it for so long on GBV tours. (Click here to buy it from Merge Records.)

Aren't You Curious? I Think You're Curious

The Fiery Furnaces @ Bowery Ballroom 4/19/2006
Chris Michaels / Crystal Clear / Straight Street / Police Sweater Blood Vow / Benton Harbor Blues / Slavin' Away / Rehearsing My Choir / In My Little Thatched Hut / I'm In No Mood / Black Hearted Boy / Bitter Tea / Teach Me Sweetheart / Waiting To Know You / My Dog Was Lost... / Evergreen / Single Again // Asthma Attack / Bow Wow / Blueberry Boat

The Fiery Furnaces "Bitter Tea" - They're still playing without keyboards. They really, really, really, really, realllllllllllllllllllllllllllly need to bring the keyboards back. Some observations, comments, complaints:

* Though the heavy rock band thing works very, very well for "Chris Michaels," and the current live arrangements for "Slavin' Away," "Police Sweater Blood Vow," and "Benton Harbor Blues" are quite excellent, for the most part it results in the band utterly demolishing the nuances of their songs. This is just as well for the up tempo rock songs, but it makes a brilliantly composed gem like "Bitter Tea" seem like a garbled mess.

* "Teach Me Sweetheart" was totally butchered. Rather than go with the simple, amiable acoustic version from the KEXP session, or make an attempt to recreate the meditative beauty of the studio recording, they just plowed through it with Eleanor singing over riffs that didn't quite match the vocal melody. They seriously should rethink this, especially since it has clearly become one of the most popular songs in their catalog.

* However, "Police Sweater Blood Vow" is fabulous in its new arrangement, and I can only hope that a) a high quality live recording of it surfaces soon or b) they do the right thing and release this version as a single. Everything wonderful about the song remains intact, but the guitars are bolder, the drums are groovier, and Jason Loewenstein's bassline is very Motown-esque.

* "I'm In No Mood" comes off much better live, but I don't know if I'll ever be able to love that song. It's good, but it just sorta bugs me.

* Even in a messy live version and transposed to guitar, that main pizzicato-ish keyboard motif on the verses of "Bitter Tea" gets me excited like few other bits of music in 2006.

(Click here to buy it from Insound.)

A Boy Who Plays House And A Girl Who Plays Dead

Persephone's Bees "Way To Your Heart" - As the spring kicks in and most everyone's hormones are on full blast, it's good to have a song that captures the upside of a crush as well as this, with its arrangement flip-flopping between light-hearted cabaret piano and melodramatic rock guitar, and its coy lyrics about the singer's scheme for seducing the objection of her affections. She's clearly having fun with the infatuation, but she wouldn't mind taking a shortcut, and so she pleads - show me the way to your heart! (Click here for the official Persephone's Bees site.)

Pony Up "Only Feelgood" - Lyrics about mixed feelings and quiet paranoia are a perfect match for these rainy day chords and bittersweet leads, especially when they throw in that droning accordion keyboard setting, which may as well be the official musical shorthand for ambivalence. Most interestingly, the fear in this song is of miserable domesticity, as stories and scenarios play out in the singer's head, forcing her to confront whether she's actually unhappy with her relationship, or if she's just afraid of it limiting her options later on. (Click here to pre-order it from Dim Mak.)

Elsewhere:

Marathon Packs has an mp3 of the Village People's painfully catchy "Sex Over The Phone," as well as a YouTube embed of its brilliant, incredibly hilarious video.

Who Needs Radio has a very pretty song from Italy's Tanakh.

Rip Through The Curtains And There I Am

The Passionistas "Going Gay" - Normally, I'm not very fond of getting large folders full of artwork and papers along with cds that I get in the mail, but there was something very intriguing about the spiral-bound book full of abstract marker drawings scanned out of another spiral-bound book that came with The Passionista's cdr. It also came with a note describing how they came to reject rock and roll only to realize that rock and roll had rejected them, and that they have embraced pop and hip hop, and have become a "free band." So as you can imagine, this set up some very strange expectations, and so I was quite surprised to find out that the cd was full of catchy, silly, weird songs that were most certainly rooted in old school rock and roll. It was as though they had rejected the culture of nostalgia around rock only to tap directly into the spirit of that music. "Going Gay" is a highlight, a sorta Alex Chilton-ish tune that seems to be about a guy who is apparently becoming gay because...well, gay guys sing better? It's not very clear, but you'll probably be singing "the girls they sing in just one key / but the boys they sing in harmony" for the rest of the day. (Click here to buy it from the Passionistas' MySpace page.)

The Peachwaves "Too Much Shit" - When I first encountered the Peachwaves on Shirley Braha's New York Noise show, their music did not make as much of an impression on me as their video, which looks like a low budget indie rock clip made with the aesthetics of an American Apparel ad. It's....distracting. And not just in the sense that I spent half the video thinking "Oh no, did American Apparel start a record label?!?" The good news, however, is that outside of the context of that video, the song stands up very well as a lo-fi pop tune about initiating a relationship to alleviate boredom. The music echoes the sentiment of the lyrics nicely, with its grey, gloomy tones contrasting with moments of very forced enthusiasm. It sounds a little bit like the moody, self-destructive little sister of Tegan & Sara's excellent "Speak Slow." (Click here for the Peachwaves' MySpace page.)

Elsewhere: At long last, my cartoonist pal John Cei Douglas has finished his website. Point your peepers at SHOT FOR MEAT! Hire this guy!

What Could Be More Beautiful Than Truth And Freedom?

Sonic Youth "Do You Believe In Rapture?" - If I hadn't heard Thurston Moore talk about the somewhat political nature of this song's lyrics on Marc Maron's radio show, I'm not sure if it would have been tremendously obvious to me. This is one of, if not the, most gorgeous songs in the Sonic Youth discography, and when I hear it, I'm so caught up in its gently plucked chords, its Velvet Underground-ish tangents, and Thurston's sweet choirboy vocals that the lyrics seem more romantic or spiritual in the context, as opposed to coming off as critical or judgemental. It's a searching, questioning sort of song. It's the sound of a tolerant man interrogating intolerant ideas, and it is one of the most beautiful, humane songs that I've heard all year. (Click here for the official Sonic Youth site.)

First Nation "Female Trance" - If the Animal Collective are living in the boys dormitory at Camp Paw Tracks, First Nation are just across the lake in the girls' quarters. Occasionally, their rhythmic chants and messy folk psychedelia can sound nearly identical to that of Avey Tare et al, but when the music gels into more familiar songforms, the result is a very different sort of folk music. The snakey melodies, pretty harmonies, and bumping rhythms in "Female Trance" make the song's title seem like an appropriate genre description. If the vocals were not so demure, I would feel more comfortable about comparing it to The Slits, but I wouldn't want to trade the sweetness of the girls' voices on this track for anything else. (Click here for more info on the Paw Tracks site.)

Art School Confidential - This film is pretty much guaranteed to become a cult classic for most anyone who has ever been to art school, or has been involved with the art world. Set at a fictionalized version of Pratt, Daniel Clowes and Terry Zwigoff build a thoughtful, highly critical movie about art and artists from the comedic blueprint of the art class scenes in the Ghost World film and the original four-page "Art School Confidential" strip from Eightball. Art school is such a largely untapped comedic oilwell that it never seems like a retread for Clowes, especially when the archetypes of the art world are rendered so accurately that they often inspire cringing recognition along with giggles and guffaws.

The story is about a young artist named Jerome who earnestly wants to become "the greatest artist of the 21st Century," but enters school with classic ideas about art that are entirely at odds with the (post-)modern sensibilities of his professors and classmates. As with many other Clowes protagonists, Jerome is the only character in the film who fully owns his taste, and as such, he is made to suffer for that. When he calls out bullshit work in class critiques, he alienates his classmates, who respond to his carefully crafted realist drawings with near universal disdain. After his dream girl Audrey poses nude in his drawing and painting class, Jerome manages to attract her attention by drawing the most beautiful portrait of her in the room, though her fickle nature is revealed to him when she becomes involved with a hunky rising star in his class who specializes in faux-naif "outsider" art. Jerome's disillusionment grows until he finally snaps and gives in to his worst impulses, leading to a spectacular downward spiral that eventually results in a very twisted happy ending that I will not spoil for you. However, I will say that the film ends with a wonderful shot that foregrounds the profound emptiness of Jerome and Audrey's relationship. She only cares about associating herself with fame and satisfying her vanity, and his interest in her is entirely superficial and symbolic. They belong together.

There Is No Time At All

Shimura Curves "I'm Not Afraid" - Video treatment: The lovely girls of the Shimura Curves are pop scientists. You see them checking data, making measurements, working at computers, and conducting experiments in their laboratory. The lab's decor is somewhere between Apple's current design aesthetic and 60s sci-fi. The band should appear serious and diligent, but also quite beautiful and stylish. When they make declarations like "I'm not afraid of infinities" on the choruses, they make eye contact with the camera, looking both noble and matter-of-fact. There should be a certain mid-20th century propaganda art aesthetic to the entire video, though there should not be any direct appropriation of famous images. The video should end with the girls standing together at night, staring off into the night sky and pondering the cosmos. (Click here for the Shimura Curves' MySpace page.)

Luff "Maybe It's Just Sleeping" - The quiet parts of this song move along in a drowsy haze, evoking a feeling of rest, but not of peace. The body must rest, but the mind does not cooperate, and so it goes off on paranoid tangents that explode into full-on panic when the music gets to its rocking release. The best part of the song comes after one of these explosions, as a gentle bassline guides us back into the mellow groove. (Click here for Luff's official site.)

You Knew I Had To Do This!

Curtis Vodka "Hey Girl" - This is a remix of Chris Brown's "Ain't No Way (You Won't Love Me)," and if you listen to the original recording after hearing this, it suddenly sounds very plodding, as if the vocal melodies are swimming against the tide of that amazing synth line. Curtis Vodka chops up the best bits from the a cappella and reorganizes the track into something far more intuitive and exhilirating. The lyrics are mostly excised, but the fragments that do come through as the vocals swirl around through the mix still manage to get the main talking points of the song across in a slightly abstracted sort of way. (Click here for the Curtis Vodka MySpace page.)

WhatNow? "Flip Flops" - Though it is not nearly as polished as Curtis Vodka's remix, this track by WhatNow? gets by on its goofy, ramshackle charm and some gleefully inane hooks about...flip flops. It basically sounds like the coolest advertisement for flip flops ever. Flip flops at the beach! Flip flops at the club! I hate wearing flip flops, and now I almost want to go buy a pair. (Click here for WhatNow's MySpace page.)