Archive for October, 2006

The Rapture @ Webster Hall 10/30/2006
Heaven / Get Myself Into It / Sister Savior / The Devil / Out of the Races and Onto the Tracks / I Need Your Love / Killing / Pieces of the People We Love / Whoo! Alright, Yeah...Uh Huh / House of Jealous Lovers / The Coming of Spring / Echoes / The Sound // Down For So Long / Olio

As you can see by the setlist, the Rapture were not fucking around. Fifteen straight bangers, no slow songs, no duds. A solid, relentless block of the best dance punk music of this decade, performed with spirit and intensity by four guys who seem far more comfortable in their skin than when I saw them on an early leg of their tour for Echoes.

The Rapture "The Sound" - A major part of the Rapture's excellence, aside from simply being a lot more talented, tasteful, imaginative, and intelligent than the vast majority of their peers (let alone their copycats), is that the band have a keenly developed sense of dynamics that comes through in their live performance, but more remarkably, is both preserved and enhanced in their studio recordings. In an era in which too many records (regardless of merit) suffer from flat, matter of fact production that levels out even the most physically stimulating songs, the Rapture have the good sense to work with producers that recognize that the music needs to be recorded in ways that compensate for the immediacy of the band's presence and enhance the dynamics of the music rather than just imply what you might hear if you happened to be there in the room with them. The Rapture and their collaborators made Echoes and Pieces of the People We Love with the understanding that on some level, the tracks had to have a basic utilitarian effect -- they had to demand physical movement by emphasizing every textural and rhythmic shift, to make every moment in every song work with very precise intentions. That's why "The Coming of Spring" sounds like a matter of life and death; that's why "Whoo! Alright - Yeah...Uh Huh" drags you by your collar into its climactic reverie; and that's why the blasts of noise in "The Sound" feel like concentrated adrenaline shot into your body via headphones. (Click here to buy it from Sound Fix.)

Presets "Are You The One?" - Presets, a duo from Sydney who opened for the Rapture last night, illustrated my point about quality sound engineering rather nicely with their set. Their album so badly represents what they are capable of doing live that it's sort of ridiculous. In person, their songs are urgent and physical, with deep electronic basslines tugging bodies into motion along with heavy beats from both a live drummer and/or a loud, well-mixed drum machine. They clearly understand the dynamics of modern dance music, and they bring it in a live context, like a streamlined though far less flamboyant version of what I saw Basement Jaxx do at the same venue a few weeks ago. However, even the best songs on their album seem a bit hollow, and the beats sound neutered and drained of energy. "Are You The One?" hints at the potency of the live show, but it's simply recorded all wrong. The song is there, and it's a good one, but it's a only a fraction of the feeling. (Click here to buy it from Insound.)

Also:

Dreamdate "Monster Mash" - I have not actively participated in Halloween in about a decade. Well, to be more clear, I have not dressed up since the mid-90s, though I have had awkward experiences at a few events in which most everyone else was in some sort of costume. I don't dislike the day at all, it's really been a matter of not being engaged with any social function that would require me to participate like a normal, fun-loving person. That said, I am indeed pro-fun, and I hope that this cute, faithful cover of the Halloween classic "Monster Mash" by a trio of Californian girls can help to psyche you up for whatever festivity you may be involved with tonight. (Click here for the Dreamdate MySpace page.)

Brakes "On Your Side" - The Brighton-based punk band Brakes dress up more than half of their new record in country and western drag, but aside from a few tracks that jump into the deep end of predictability, they mostly play with the genre's signifiers whilst keeping their identity intact with a brisk tempo and a taste for sharp dynamics that distance them from the alt-country crowd. At its core, "On Your Side" is a simple pop song that could easily be nudged into several styles, but faux-country is the outfit that suits it best, though the genre is mostly just implied by guitar tone and minor instrumental cues. After all, your song can only sound so country if your singer just happens to come across like a friendlier version of Ade Blackburn from Clinic. (Click here to buy it via Brakes' official site.)

The Good Good "We Go" - Since they don't seem to be directly appropriating or referencing other works and there's an implication of depth and contour, the Good Good's approach to songwriting is closer to decoupage than collage, but in either case, it's nearly impossible to engage with their songs without an awareness of their process. "We Go" holds together as a somewhat conventional rock song, but the band foreground texture and push the listener to imagine it as a physical work transposed to sound, with its obscured, whispered spoken word passages reading as cut-up diary passages smeared into an illegible blur by a clear gel medium. (Click here to buy it from Midheaven.)

Elsewhere: Dan Beirne's entry on Said The Gramophone today is one of the best and most creative reviews that I've ever seen on an mp3 blog.

And: Sorry that this got up a little late today. It was completed around 10 AM EST, but there were some technical difficulties.

Lismore "Far Off And Away" - "That's me in the corner, that's me in the spotlight, that's me crying by a bus stop in St. Paul..." -- The structure of this song is both epic and vaguely disjointed, seeming something like an emotional travelogue tied together with brisk snare hits and a voice that shifts from an enchanting siren call to a bitter sing-song and back again. There's an implication of physical distance and space, but it all seems to be taking place within one woman's mind. (Click here for the official Lismore site.)

Imitation Electric Piano "I Mean Wow" - There are three distinct phases in this song. The first being a rather lovely mix of lullaby and slow jam, the second is an up tempo British folk ballad as sung by a woman who sounds as though she dropped in from the English countryside circa 1972, and the third is the part when Simon Johns seems to shrug and say "well, I am a member of Stereolab," and shifts into a part that could have been on any one of that band's records from Dots and Loops onward. Nevertheless, the composition comes together nicely, especially in the way that the beat is just a bit too quick and restless alongside the placid vocals of the middle section. The beat seems more immediate and emotionally true, revealing her cool amazement in the lyrics to be quite an understatement. (Click here to buy it from Newbury Comics.)

Elsewhere: Cortney Harding on the thinly veiled conservatism of the Killers' Brandon Flowers in The Huffington Post.

Also Elsewhere: Rbally, which is unfortunately about to shut down for good, has a wonderful parting gift: A kick-ass Pavement show from Cologne, Germany circa 1994 with very good sound and a setlist featuring rare performances of "From Now On" and "5-4=Unity" as well as pretty fantastic versions of "Hit The Plane Down" and "Forklift."

Oasis "Rock 'n' Roll Star" - There's a sentiment, and I suppose it is particular to the British music press since they care about Oasis far more than anyone else, that "Rock 'n' Roll Star" is one the great album openers of all time, and I don't disagree. It kicks off their debut album with an exciting rocker that sums up their appeal without being one of the big hit singles ("Live Forever," "Supersonic," "Cigarettes & Alcohol") or the best song on the record ("Columbia"). More importantly, it does a fine job of setting up the major themes of Definitely Maybe, as well as the rest of their discography.

People usually take "Rock 'n' Roll Star" as a fantasy borne out in the reality of Oasis' massive, instanteous success, but that level of appreciation is shallow and only enjoyable if you happen to be a triumphalist superfan who gets off on a song that can be read as self-fulfilling prophecy specific to Noel and Liam Gallagher. The beauty of "Rock 'n' Roll Star," though, is that it's not about actually being a rock star, but rather about being a fan who recognizes the power dynamic of an artist and their audience and desperately wants to feel the rush from the other side. Even though sensible, pragmatic people tell the character in the song that the art he loves is not important, he is adamant that the communication between the audience and that art is key to all the pleasures that he knows, and the resentment for those people who diminish both sides of the spectacle only fuel his ambition to break out of his boring life of passivity.

It's helpful that the sound of the song gets across exactly why the guy cares about the music in the first place. "Giddy rush" may be one of my most overused and hackish expressions, but that's exactly what the song is, and really, no other singer besides Liam Gallagher could possibly do it justice.

Liam's voice is a highly specific and wonderful thing; this weirdly elastic instrument with a child-like tone that mixes gleeful brattiness with a simple, guileless conviction that should not be be mistaken for po-faced earnestness. He elongates and mutates words in a way that wrings poetry from banal phrases, and his drone never drags down the pace of the fast songs, instead implying the musical equivalent of speed lines in manga.

Not every lyric is a gem, but as with most every song from Oasis' prime (1994-1996, along with about half the songs from the Be Here Now period), Noel Gallagher displays an understanding that pop lyrics need not be consistently good as long as the emphasized parts have the proper resonance, whether it is literal ("you might as well do the white line!," "you and I are gonna live forever," "I can't tell you the way I feel because the way I feel is oh so new to me") or inspired gibberish ("someday you will find me caught beneath the landslide in a champagne supernova in the sky", "flash your pan at the song that I'm singing," "I know a girl called Elsa, she's into Alka Seltzer") that just sounds right.

Noel's guitar style tends to favor a thin yet overbearing sort of heaviness that can make listening to too many of his songs on end a bit of a chore, similar to how you might not want to eat an entire meal of rich, buttery pastries. The sound suits "Rock 'n' Roll Star" and the rest of Definitely Maybe well, but lately I've been thinking about how great it could be if many of its songs were made over with nimble dance arrangements. I am certain that "Columbia" in particular would sound brilliant in this way -- after all, stick around to that song's fade out and you can clearly hear the baggy dance beat buried underneath those dense layers of distorted shoegazer guitars. It's not usually the beat that makes me imagine the songs in this way, it's mostly in the melody and the spirit of the recordings. There's some sort of continuity of tone, if not direct stylistic compatibility. (Click here to buy Definitely Maybe, and here to pre-order Stop The Clocks, both from Amazon.)

Elsewhere: My new Hit Refresh mp3 column is up on the ASAP site, and features a mutated version of "Galang" by Mico, an especially pretty song by +/-, and one of the best songs from the new Sloan record, which is slowly shaping up to become one of favorite albums from this year.

Andrew W.K. "Don't Call Me Andy" - It's not such a weird thing for Andrew W.K. to try his hand at what is essentially a beefed up girl group song, if just because there isn't a huge stylistic leap from Phil Spector's Wall Of Sound to his own pummeling WALL OF ROCK. The entire song sounds as though it is being run through a studio filter called the POWER SWOON, and the resulting track feels like the sweetest thing he's penned since "She Is Beautiful," even if most of the song is just the guy begging you not to use the diminutive version of his name. (Click here for the Andrew W.K. website.)

Diving With Andy "Andrew" - As the delicate, pastoral arrangement and sweet melody simulates an overwhelming sense of infatuation, the lyrics provide tension as the singer's overactive superego attempts to talk herself out of the crush. By the end of the song, it seems clear that her insecurities have tripped her up if just for that one day, though the feelings have yet to disappear. (Click here for the Diving With Andy website.)

Oh, Yeah: I have a list feature in the new issue of the British magazine Plan B, which is a fine publication featuring a couple of my favorite UK writers - Miss AMP and Kicking K, as well as the somewhat legendary Everett True. CSS is on the cover, and it comes with a cd featuring Sonic Youth, The Gossip, Animal Collective, Electrelane, Love Is All, Chicks on Speed, Black Dice, and others.

Scissor Sisters @ The Grand Ballroom at the Manhattan Center 10/21/2006
Take Your Mama / I Can't Decide / Tits On The Radio / She's My Man / Laura / Lights / Paul McCartney / Kiss You Off / Everybody Wants The Same Thing / Mary / Comfortably Numb / Music Is The Victim / Land Of A Thousand Words // I Don't Feel Like Danson / Filthy/Gorgeous

Scissor Sisters "Making Ladies" - The Grand Ballroom, a relatively luxurious (well, it's sorta pretty and carpeted...) banquet hall seven floors above the Hammerstein Ballroom is a very strange place to have a pop concert, and not just because of the fact that an emergency evacuation would've been a total nightmare. Though it was a pleasant place, there was something a bit off about the vibe of the room, and the muted, not-quite-loud-enough acoustics seemed to exaggerate the problems of a show that occasionally seemed to lose its connection with the audience. As with every other Scissor Sisters show that I've seen, the crowd was enthusiastic, and the band worked hard to uphold a standard of performance and spectacle well above that of most other contemporary acts, but in comparison to those other shows, something seemed dialed down in this gig, and I'm relatively certain that it wasn't just my own skewed perception.

For one thing, the band seemed a bit exhausted from having played the same setlist a few too many times in a row on an international tour that's been in progress for a few months now. Though the song selection was strong, the pacing of the set was often a bit stiff and predictable, and sometimes awkward, as when the band tacked the gorgeous "Land of a Thousand Words" on at the end of the set following a rowdy and climactic "Music Is The Victim," making the latter song seem like an afterthought rather than the melodramatic finale that it could have been. Personally, I would've just slotted "Land of a Thousand Words" as the first song in the encore, since jumping straight into "I Don't Feel Like Dancin'" didn't feel quite right either.

It would also be a good idea for them to reserve a spot in the set where they can loosen up a bit and play something a little less expected -- perhaps a cover song, or maybe a quick number with just Babydaddy and Jake, or a pass at the delightfully campy and bizarre "Making Ladies" from the Ta Dah bonus disc. The band are always fun and lively, but they ought to be more playful in the performance, and not just with the stage banter, which is always very humorous and involving. Of course, since they dedicated "Lights" to this girl, I'm probably always going to associate the tune with dismemberment, which is a pretty strange thing for a homoerotic Beegees-ish disco number.

Though some selections didn't quite connect with the audience -- "Mary" in particular was received with widespead indifference -- the ones that did were absolutely wonderful, especially the extended version of my new favorite "Paul McCartney," and my old favorite "Laura," which has become more of a singalong anthem over time. "Everybody Wants The Same Thing" was almost too big for the room, but was more fun than any other time that I've seen them play it now that pretty much everyone knows the song. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

My DJ set @ Brooklyn Peace Fair Benefit, Supreme Trading 10/21/2006
Klanguage "Never Over" / Scissor Sisters "Paul McCartney" / Beyonce "Get Me Bodied" / Muscles "One Inch Badge Pin" / MSTRKRFT "She's Good For Business" / Goldfrapp "Ride A White Horse" / Of Montreal "The Party's Crashing Us (We Are The World Trade Center remix)" / In Flagranti "Genital Blue Room" / The Rapture "Whoo Alright Yeah Uh Huh" / Basement Jaxx "Where's Your Head At?" / Andrew WK "Party Hard" / The Knife "We Share Our Mothers' Health (Trentemoller remix)" / Bossanova "Rare Brazil" / Maxi Geil & Playcolt "Making Love In The Sunshine"

"We I played a show and (almost) no one came stayed / we I came and played it just the same / if there's no ears then there's no sound / if there's no tree then there's no ground."

A Place To Bury Strangers "My Weakness" - The best thing about being at Supreme Trading on Saturday night was witnessing a set by A Place To Bury Strangers. If you can imagine a world in which nihilistic no wave and shoegazing drone was the dominant strain of rock music, A Place To Bury Strangers would be its version of a particularly great bar band. They opened with an intense cover of "Death Valley 69" that was nearly as good as seeing the song performed by Sonic Youth themselves, and ended with a compelling free form passage involving some kind of homemade device that made some of the most amazing noises that I've ever heard. Interestingly, their studio recordings don't sound much like what they played live at all, trading an overwhelming din that was like the audio equivalent of a painting made of thick, shiny layers of black oil for something that comes off more like an aggressively bleak version of the Jesus & Mary Chain. (Click here for the A Place To Bury Strangers website.)

The Bird and the Bee "I'm A Broken Heart" - In the best possible way, this song by the Bird and the Bee sounds like a Hollywood remake of Broadcast's brilliant second album The Noise Made By People. I don't mean to say that it sounds focus grouped to death or dumbed down so much as that it takes the general sound and emotion of that album and streamlines it into something far more sparkling and glamorous. Whereas Broadcast's record feels like a slow moving black cloud of dread, "I'm A Broken Heart" seems to take a vain pleasure in its melancholy lyrics and melodramatic tone. It's nearly cheerful in its sadness and romantic angst, as though the character enjoys playing the role of the broken hearted girl a bit too much. (Click here for the Bird and the Bee MySpace page.)

They Must Be Russians "Don't Try To Cure Yourself" - I imagine that eventually every obscure single ever released in the heyday of punk will be out on a cd compilation one way or another, which is certainly no bad thing when it means we have slightly easier access to pleasant little oddities such as this a-side featured on Crippled Dick Hot Wax's 7" Up collection. As the lead vocalist of They Must Be Russians delivers a deadpan yet informative primer on a variety of venereal diseases, the backing vocalist repeats and underlines some key lines for comedic effect. (Click here to buy it from Crippled Dick Hot Wax.)

Also: I will be doing a DJ set at Supreme Trading in Brooklyn on Saturday night as part of the Brooklyn Peace Fair benefit. I'll be on at 1 AM, and the bill will also include: Lolita Bras, The Shapes, Mon.Key.Pod, Taigaa!, Bunny Rabbit, Outputmessage, Jealous Girlfriends, The Epochs, and A Place to Bury Strangers.

Joy & The Hit Kids "Run Away" - Bless the good people who assembled the second In Kraut compilation for unearthing this brilliant late 60s German soul gem. The song moves at such a brisk pace that it sounds impatient, as though the drummer of the Hit Kids just couldn't wait to get to all the best parts, and believe me, there's no shortage of them in this song. Can fans should note that the In Kraut 2 comp also includes the only single by The Inner Space, an early incarnation of the band about a year before the release of Monster Movie. (Click here to buy it from Marina.)

The Blood Brothers "Street Wars/Exotic Foxholes" - It would seem that the new Blood Brothers record is doomed to being misunderstood in its time if just because it can be so tricky to figure out exactly what the hell they are trying to do a lot of the time, especially when they step away from their shrieking gimmick long enough to give us tracks like this. "Street Wars/Exotic Foxholes" cycles through a bass groove not too far removed from "Emotional Rescue," a chorus that sounds like their version of an anthemic power ballad, and ends on an extended psychedelic instrumental section that I assume is the "Exotic Foxholes" portion of the program. The band are at their best when they get ambitious and mix their gut-punching rage and unrestrained anguish with arrangements that aren't an obvious match, setting up appealing tensions and venturing well beyond the monochromatic musical palette of most hardcore acts. (Click here to buy it from Insound.)

Elsewhere: My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site, with mp3s from Teddybears & Annie, 120 Days, and the Evens.

Shrag @ Cake Shop 10/17/2006
Intelligent Theft / Mark E Smith / Cupboard Love / Intro / Talk To The Left / Lost Dog / Hopelessly Wasted / Pregnancy Scene

Shrag "Hopelessly Wasted" - The Brighton, UK based quintet Shrag made their first appearance on this site back in February of 2004, and in the time since have slowly transformed themselves from a one-off project into a proper indie punk band that can, y'know, come and play a few shows in North America when they are all on holiday. They are still bit rough around the edges as a live act, but only in the most winning way possible -- old school DIY spirit and self-deprecating banter goes a long way when you've got tunes and unforced charm. Most of their set focused on bratty, brittle punk tunes that were sweetened up by the voices of the female members of the band, most especially lead singer Helen, whose demeanor and appearance onstage resembles that of a shy yet visably annoyed middle school girl. The group saved the bitter break-up ballad "Hopelessly Wasted" for the end of the set, revealing a softer, more vulnerable side of themselves before kicking into a particularly vicious reading of their best-known song, "Pregnancy Scene." There was no "Punk Grammar," but in spite of my sentimental connection to that song, I didn't really miss it that much, especially not when the catchy new song "Talk To The Left" is nearly its equal. (Click here for the Shrag MySpace page. Readers in Toronto should note that they are playing the Silver Dollar Room on October 20th.)

Elsewhere: Chunklet has some extremely rare live tracks by Chavez, including a pretty fantastic version of my favorite song in their catalog, "The Guard Attacks."

The Long Blondes "You Could Have Both" - Alright, this is the one. Every Long Blondes song that I'd heard up to this point ranged from quite good to totally great, but they all seemed to be hinting a potential that is borne out on this cut from their forthcoming full length debut. In very basic and reductive terms, "You Could Have Both" sounds like the perfect midway point between Elastica and Pulp circa 1995, i.e., it's a dynamic and potent cocktail of sexuality, wit, urgency, menace, drama, style, and overwhelming Britishness. Vocalist Kate Jackson comes off like the female version of Pulp's Jarvis Cocker on this track, most especially in the spoken word breakdown that drags the tune through a lyrical territory not far removed from the bleak monologues of Different Class and This Is Hardcore. It's not all as derivative as I'm making it out to be, though there is no question that the band is working within an established tradition. What sets their best material apart from lamer Britpop revivalists is the sheer will and tunefulness of the band, and Jackson's considerable charisma and lyrical gifts, which is actually on par with the best stars of the subgenre's mid-90s heyday. (Click here to pre-order it from HMV UK.)

Omnikrom "Achète-Moi" - Electro hip hop from Montreal, lyrically impenetrable to me aside from the chorus (en anglais: "buy me, buy me, buy me"), but energetic and forceful enough for that to be a non-issue. They seem to be equally influenced by Missy Elliott and Dizzee Rascal, rhyming in speedy, melodic verses that indicate a playfulness that is offset by the heaviness of the beats and aggressive yet colorful keyboard tones. (Click here to buy it from Omnikrom.)