Archive for November, 2006

11/30/06

Nothing But All That I Want

Gwen Stefani "Now That You Got It" - This song asks no questions; it's a list of demands. Those demands, however, raise a question: At what point does right-on assertiveness tip over into selfishness and petulance?

On one hand, Gwen Stefani's needs as expressed in the lyrics are reasonable and what any self-respecting person should ask for from a serious relationship, but on the other, she's also asking for unyielding submission to her will without offering any sort of reciprocation. The gist of the song is basically: I am unfathomably great, and if you want to maintain a relationship with me, you'd better display selfless obedience to me from this point onward. Like all too much pop art from this period, it confuses self-respect with entitlement and domination, and conflates comfort (ie, a total lack of personal sacrifice or compromise) with mature, adult relationships.

I could have anyone, so what I want / perfect, get it right, never wrong / so you gonna step it up or you gon' be gone

This line from Gwen's mid-song rap isn't a far cry from the chorus of Beyonce's current hit "Irreplaceable":

You must not know 'bout me / I could have another you in a minute /matter of fact, he'll be here in a minute

Of course, there's a key difference in the context -- Beyonce's song is about a bitter break-up, and her character is attempting to build herself up to dig at the confidence of her ex, and Gwen's song is from the point of view of someone who is in a stable relationship, presumably not unlike the one she has with her husband, That Handsome Guy From Bush. People say all kinds of cruel things in order to salvage their self-esteem and get back at someone who has hurt them, and it goes a long way toward making Beyonce's line come across as something sympathetic rather than arrogant and cruel, but what is Gwen's excuse? Her words don't seem immediately harsh, but that could just be due to the fact that her disposition is so sunny and that Swizz Beatz' brilliant track overflows with snappy beats and good vibes in the service of a chorus melody that implies girlish swooning, tipping the listener off that maybe she's only browbeating this dude because she really loves him and doesn't want any reason to give him up. (Click here to pre-order it from Amazon.)

Elsewhere: My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site, with mp3s from Cannonball Jane, Maps, and A Place To Bury Strangers.

11 Comments

11/29/06

Dreaming Of An Awesome Girl

The Specific Heats "Are You For Real, Mehgan O'Neill?" - I have never dated a musician, but I reckon that hearing the words "I wrote this song about you" from a significant other must be one of the more nerve-wracking musical experiences that a person could have. The odds that the song will be awful are very, very high, and even if the song is good, what if the lyrics about you are just totally creepy or steeped in unrealistic expectations or maddeningly vague or sort of inaccurate, as if they just don't know you at all? Also, God help you if you're dating an emo boy.

Mehgan O'Neill, who is proven to be "for real" and closely connected to the Specific Heats if you run a cursory Google search, has kinda lucked out in this area. This song isn't mindblowingly great, but it's solid and smart and above all else, totally totally sweet. It's charming and cute in an old-fashioned sort of way, but not over-calculated, and though the singer hides his words and his chords behind a wall of reverb and distortion, the effect is closer to blushing shyness and discreet sentimentality than embarrassed evasiveness. (Click here to buy it from Total Gaylord Records.)

Elsewhere: Preview two songs from the forthcoming new Au Revoir Simone album on their MySpace page. I am especially fond of "Fallen Snow."

Also: Said The Gramophone's Jordan Himelfarb ain't too proud to beg.

5 Comments

11/28/06

Forget What The Future Brings

Soul Mechanik "Never Touch That Switch (Freeform Reform by the Freeform Five)" - The Freeform Five created this mix for Soul Mechanik, but since Robbie Williams covered the sci-fi funk tune on his new album, all plans to officially release this version were scrapped. This is a curious situation given that Soul Mechanik are the authors of the original, but I suppose that Robbie has got some ace lawyers. Unsurprisingly, the Robbie Williams and Freeform Five versions veer off in opposite directions. Williams' recording emphasizes the woozy vocal hooks and plays out in under three minutes, and this mix stretches out to nearly eight as it bounces along on a bass line that will very likely tempt you to sing "hey Dirt-ay, baby I got your mon-ay, don't you wor-ray" over the top until the song builds up to an impressive release of tension in its middle section. (Click here for the Freeform Five's MySpace page.)

Pet Shop Boys "Bright Young Things" - Continuing on with today's unintentional theme of rejected music, the Pet Shop Boys recorded this song as a theme for the movie of the same name, but it was ultimately cast aside for the fact that its style did not match the period of the film's storyline, which was adapted from Evelyn Waugh's novel Vile Bodies. Though its removal from that project is perfectly sensible, I find it very baffling that the Pet Shop Boys did not choose to include the track on this year's Fundamental, on which it would have been the best selection along with the Eurodisco protest tune "Integral."

The formal party described in the song may be "a port in a storm" for its young socialite characters, but that does not keep them from slipping into loneliness and desperation as the track shifts from its still, melancholy opening verses into the angst-ridden dance beat of its remainder. The characters hide from themselves and the world around them in ritual and the promise of safety and romance, but they aren't fooled by their own illusions, and every choreographed gesture looms large in their lives just as it rings very false. The chorus is not the focal point of the song in terms of its composition, but it burns with nuanced yet potent emotion like the all-time best Pet Shop Boys tracks. (Click here to buy it from Amazon UK.)

6 Comments

11/27/06

You’ve Got Heaven Inside

Velella Velella "Brass Ass" - Velella Velella was pitched to me by my friend as an "indie Funkadelic," but that's not quite right --their slick grooves actually sound more like a live band hell bent on simulating the polyglot funk compositions of artists such as DJ Shadow, Luke Vibert, Daft Punk, and Prefuse 73. "Brass Ass" leans heavily on the after-midnight mood of DJ Shadow's Entroducing, but as with all of the tracks on Velella Vellela's MySpace page, it's not so much a direct homage as much as the product of musicians who very likely came to funk indirectly via sample-based music, which is the case for a vast majority of people under the age of 30. Rather than get hung up on untangling the knot of infinite quotation and recycling of their genre in the post-sampling age, the band embrace impurity to tap into something deep by proxy. The vocals can be a bit candy-assed, but thankfully they err on the side of the extremely white soul of Phoenix more often than they drift into the imperialistic tweeness of the Go Team. (Click here for Velella Velella's MySpace page.)

Jim Jones (featuring Max B) "Bright Lights, Big City" - Jim Jones' best tracks tend to showcase the subtly plaintive quality of his voice, and deliver his garden variety street lyrics with a tone that suggests fearfulness rather than fearsomeness. "Bright Lights, Big City" sounds like a guy trying to find the silver lining in his paranoia, relishing the thrill of his stakes life as a way to balance out a sense of being trapped and overwhelmed by circumstances. The beat bears down him, and the half-whined, half-sung chorus by Max B reinforces the cycle of rationalizing the environment of menace that pushes him to become menacing himself. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Elsewhere: Oh, Zarf! Is this how you impress Mike Patton?

Also: I don't mean to spoil things for anyone, but this is what I'm getting for everyone on my Christmas shopping list this year.

5 Comments

11/22/06

Words Will Never Hurt Me

Panda Bear "Carrots (excerpt)" - At this point in time, openly aping the Beach Boys is just about the most boring and least imaginative thing an indie musician can do aside from becoming a Dylan-ish troubadour with an acoustic guitar. Even the best faux-Beach Boys songs devalue the currency of Pet Sounds, and every time an artist either mimics the ornate, tacky arrangements of Van Dyke Parks or hires him to do his thing on their records, Smile is made to seem just a little more mundane. That said, it's sort of amazing to me that Panda Bear has managed to present a vocal performance strongly indebted to Brian Wilson and his partners in the context of an arrangement that otherwise strays far from the Beach Boys aesthetic, thus avoiding the icky reverence that taints the vast majority of music created within this tradition.

"Carrots" begins with a sequence that sounds like Mike Love wandering through the Animal Collective's sonic wilderness, but the composition eventually shifts into two other discrete sections -- a gently galloping groove built up from a piano loop, and a final passage that melds music box samples to a reggae rhythm. The vocal melodies for the latter two parts are gorgeous and carry the listener through the morphing musical landscape of the piece, but they are also presented with a heavy reverb that implies a distance from both the instrumental track and the audience. There's nothing insincere about the vocals, but they are just one more element of pastiche in a larger composition that is rather forthcoming about its cut-and-paste nature. (Click here to pre-order the Panda Bear/Excepter split 12" from Paw Tracks, to be released in late January. The Excepter side is pretty damn amazing too.)

Elsewhere: My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site, with mp3s from K-the-I, Shimura Curves, and Justus Köhncke (via Michael Mayer).

18 Comments

11/21/06

Make The Most Of Modernity

Wild Beasts "Brave Bulging Buoyant Clairvoyants" - Artistic originality is most often the result of a compelling individual attempting to mimic something beyond their capabilities, and so I can only wonder what stew of influences yielded the singing style of Wild Beasts' Hayden Norman Thorpe. You can suss out some similarities to other vocalists, but there are no solid leads -- everything you can find in his voice is fractured and warped, and may be a mutated version of some other thing. In the chorus of the single "Brave Bulging Buoyant Clairvoyants," he's shifting between a faux-operatic falsetto and a cartoonish growl, and sliding from feminine to masculine extremes in the space of a few nonsensical words whilst also conveying some kind of inexplicable thrill. He sounds by turns overwhelmed and overwhelming, and it's somehow one of the most romantic things I've heard all year. The arrangement of the music is just as strange and joyous as its vocal, tweaking familiar sounds and structural conventions from rock and soul into something that is immediately engaging and vaguely alien. (Click here to buy it from HMV UK.)

Elsewhere:

Fluxblog comment box mainstay Pageblank writes a bit about Girls Aloud and feminism and J. Edward Keyes recaps the single worst episode of the Gilmore Girls to date.

6 Comments

11/20/06

Nobody Wanted To Dance When I Had A Lot Of Time On My Hands

Outkast "PJ & Rooster" - Four reasons why it is totally baffling to me that "PJ & Rooster" was not the lead single for the Idlewild soundtrack, or released as a single at all:

1) It's the only song on the album that comes close to the crossover appeal of "Hey Ya" or "Roses." It's a jaunty pastiche, sure, but similar to Prince's "Jack U Off," its fluorescent electronic funk keeps it tied to poppy kitsch rather than crusty old-timey reverence. It's a beautifully constructed song, and Andre 3000 sings it well as he swings from hook to hook with his familiar tossed-off grace. He soft sells the chorus, but only because that element is there to provide a sound structure -- you may be humming that part tomorrow morning, but the most exciting bits only pop up once in the composition.

2) It's one of the few songs to feature both Andre 3000 and Big Boi. This is no small thing since no matter how much you may love either of them separately, their chemistry as a duo is magical and profound. It's almost sort of amazing that they found each other to begin with -- you could search the world over to audition partners for either man, and you'd never find a better compliment to the other's style. Andre may dominate this track, but Big Boi's verse on the bridge is a brilliant and lively detour on the way to the climax and outro, which seems energized by his very presence. It's tragic to see the two of them drift apart as they have over the past four years as they are stuck in a loveless marriage mandated by record contracts and the commercial reality that they both need the Outkast brand name to sell their music, but it would be worse if they never collaborated again.

3) "PJ & Rooster" is the best part of the movie. Idlewild isn't awful, but its storyline is weak and little more than a loose framework for the grand cinematic ambitions of Outkast and their frequent collaborator Bryan Barber, who directed most of their best-known videos. Even though the three spend the majority of Idlewild stretching beyond their capabilities, they do find time to play to their strengths as Andre 3000's character performs "PJ & Rooster" in a sequence over the end credits which boasts some rather brilliant choreography, art direction, and cinematography. If only the rest of the movie had been so exciting!

4) "PJ & Rooster" is a better version of the movie. Even if its lyrics are slightly cryptic to those who are not familiar with the film, "PJ & Rooster" conveys the major plot points and themes of Idlewild in a far more compelling and succinct manner than the overlong, meandering screenplay. In the same way that too many trailers are more satisfying than the movies they are promoting, "PJ & Rooster" boils Idlewild down to its essence and replaces the film's awkward pace with an urgency and economy of language that would be nearly impossible to replicate in cinema. Andre 3000 and Big Boi are musicians and not filmmakers, and so it's only logical that they would find a better way to express the same set of ideas in their native artform. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Elsewhere: Kicking K tells us all about that new LCD Soundsystem album.

3 Comments

11/17/06

Contradiction In Disguise

K-The-I "Go-Go Girls" - As he raps a complicated, somewhat conciliatory love letter to a woman who is either already estranged from him or on her way there, K-the-I sounds like a man making his way through a hostile environment on this track. The mood is stormy from the start, but by the middle of the song, it's as though he's chasing a beat being blown away by a windstorm, and dodging scratches that come off like downed power lines sparking on wet pavement. (Click here to buy it from Mush.)

Soccer Team "Say Forever" - By nature or nurture, Soccer Team's Melissa Quinley's voice bears a strong resemblance to that of Liz Phair, and this song's direct lyrics and soft-focus lo-fi ambiance only emphasize that impression. Of course, this is no bad thing given that Phair's first two LPs still stand as two of the previous decade's best singer-songwriter efforts, and that Phair herself isn't about to record anything as low-key and intimate as this any time soon. Soccer Team's debut album overall isn't nearly so Phair-ish, but it's a smart, unassuming record that makes a strong case for spare indie-pop songwriting of the same lineage as Unrest, Barbara Manning, and the Young Marble Giants. (Click here to buy it from Dischord.)

3 Comments

11/16/06

Everyone Hears Every Little Sound

Modest Mouse @ Webster Hall 11/15/2006
Paper Thin Walls / Black Cadillacs / Ocean Breathes Salty / Fire It Up / We've Got Everything / Float On / The View / Breakthrough / Bukowski / Missed The Boat / The World At Large / Lucky Me (jam?) / Tiny Cities Made Of Ashes / People We Know / Bury Me With It // Dashboard / Dramamine

Modest Mouse "Paper Thin Walls (Live, with bonus rant about "Freebird")" - Before last night, the only other time that I had seen Modest Mouse perform was back in the spring of 1998 when they were touring for The Lonesome Crowded West and I was only a freshman in college. Obviously, quite a lot has changed for them since then. In addition to that whole sordid fiasco involving Isaac Brock getting accused of rape back in the late '90s, the band have become one of the most influential and commonly mimicked indie rock acts of the past decade, recorded an unexpected but well-deserved mainstream hit, and have expanded from a ragtag power trio into a highly polished sextet including, somewhat inexplicably, Johnny Marr from the Smiths.

Modest Mouse has always been a strange band for me, probably in part because they were the first band that made me feel a bit out of step with the direction of indie rock in general. Whereas the indie rock of my teenage years was arty, cosmopolitan, colorful, and often self-consciously political, Modest Mouse were unapologetically blue collar and semi-rural, with a body of work that focused on the vast wasteland of depressed middle-of-nowhere towns that make up the bulk of modern America. I don't directly relate to the places or characters in most Modest Mouse songs, and I don't find much to romanticize in them either, and so their music has always been slightly uncomfortable for me, though not necessarily in a bad way. Either way, it is easy to see why so many people have connected with Brock's music, and it's also not too difficult to understand why his most recognizable vocal tics and songwriting quirks have been aped by a small legion of (mostly quite horrible) new bands.

Modest Mouse were always a tight band, but their current incarnation perform with a slick professionalism that seems at odds with their core appeal. Whereas the performances on their first two albums sounded like the work of some guys who rehearsed constantly for a lack of anything better to do, the band on stage at Webster Hall last night seemed stuck in fixed positions and unwilling to stray into anything remotely spontaneous. They nailed the songs for sure, but I get the impression that I could listen to recordings of every show on this tour and each song would sound nearly identical from night to night, which is quite a difference from that show at the Black Cat in '98 when it seemed as though they were making it all up on the spot. The most exciting selections in last night's set allowed the band room to expand on themes and step outside of the album arrangements -- the jammy song that flowed out of "The World At Large;" the extended version of "Tiny Cities Made Of Ashes;" the lonely, wandering instrumental passages of "Dramamine."

I'm not sure what to tell you about the new songs. They were alright for the most part, and a couple of them sounded like viable singles, so it seems possible that they can hold on to a portion of their new audience. (Who mostly suck by the way -- I was stuck in front of this terrible couple who insisted on chatting at top volume about inane bullshit through every goddamn song and ignored everyone else's disapproval for a majority of the show, and there were kinda goony fratboys all over the place.) Also, if you're expecting the new tunes to sound anything remotely like the Smiths, you're going to be very disappointed since Marr is either playing music that Brock has written, or adding his own parts in a style that suits Brock's compositions. (Click here to buy it from the Sony store.)

Love As Laughter "Dirty Lives" - Hey, this is a pretty cool song, right? It's got a good groove, clever lyrics, and a bit of deadpan humor. It might lead you to believe that Love As Laughter would be a fun band to see live, but as I learned last night, that assumption is totally, totally wrong. Aside from this number, which was played with a weak country-rock state fair sort of arrangement, Love As Laughter did nothing but long, boring, hookless fake classic rock songs that mostly sounded like a Dire Straits album with all the fun and catchy parts removed. Their set was just baffling; leaving me to wonder why the hell they were actively trying to sound like the sort of obscure album cuts that inspire people to hit the bathrooms and concession stands at actual dinosaur rock concerts, and if anyone in the band would have actually broken out with a severe allergic reaction if they were to perform a song with a real chorus. (Click here to buy it from Sub Pop.)

Elsewhere: My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site and features mp3s from Colleen, Richard McGraw, and the unfortunately named duo Qwel and Meaty Ogre.

15 Comments

11/15/06

I Never Learn The Title Of The Song I Always Sing

Silver Apples "Walkin'" - I feel silly to say this, but I didn't realize until recently that the Silver Apples even had a third, unfinished album. For whatever reason, I just assumed that the cd with the first two albums that I bought back in the late 90s was the sum total of their discography, but I'm quite glad to have been wrong about this. Whereas the mood of the first two Silver Apples albums was mostly quite heavy and bleak, there is a lightness of spirit in The Garden that comes across in the lyrics as well as the arrangements. The band sticks with their distinct homemade synth + live percussion template, but the songs are far less dense, allowing the music to either stretch out or float freely through the air. The synths in "Walkin'" sound nearly as carefree and aimless as the cheerful flâneur in its lyrics, especially at a point in its final third in which the lead line simulates the sound of escalating laughter. (Click here to buy it from Turntable Lab.)

Ut "Evangelist" - After more than a decade of seeing Ut used as a reference point for way too much music that I enjoy, it's good to finally actually hear them thanks to the kind people at Mute who have recently reissued their two obscure, previously out-of-print albums. I'd always assumed that Ut would be sort of weird and extreme, but that's not quite the case. Perhaps even more so than Evol and Sister-era Sonic Youth, Ut represent the most pop iteration of the No Wave aesthetic that I've encountered, and their approach to guitar and vocals bears a striking resemblance to what Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker were doing on the first three Sleater-Kinney records, especially when the sheer force of their passion threatens to break down the fragile construction of their arrangements. "Evangelist" in particular sounds like an act of self-immolation with its wobbly bass line implying a structure about to collapse as it burns from the top down. (Click here to buy it from Mute/Insound.)

8 Comments