Archive for February, 2008

Cloudland Canyon “Krautwerk” – Really, they couldn’t have called this anything else. It’s as if they had been arguing in their practice space about whether they wanted to play a cover of Neu!’s “Hallogallo” or Can’s “Halleluhwah,” and compromised by figuring out a way to play them both at the same time, with a few nods to Kraftwerk and Faust along the way. Question: What is it about this type of music that always sounds totally rad, even when it’s a straight-up genre exercise and there’s not much more to it than aping the sound of records from 30+ years ago? Is it an issue of exoticism and relative scarcity? It’s not as if I’d be so pleased if I just heard some random band jamming on generic blues riffs. (Click here to buy it from Kranky.)

Todd Barry “Fridge, Audience Member’s Tab, Best Celebrity Sighting” – Barry’s dry, low key delivery is ideally suited to this sort of gag, in which he takes a pretty standard stand-up joke — “Hey, you know what totally mundane thing fills me with irrational anger?” — and flips it into an unbelievable scenario that highlights the ridiculousness of unreasonable pet peeves. Bonus: This mp3 answers the question “What magazine would the bass player of the Spin Doctors read on a park bench?” (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Meanwhile, on Fair Game: Yesterday I talked with Faith about “Mt. Rapmore” and Journey’s new lead singer.

Lykke Li “I’m Good. I’m Gone.” – Lykke Li is on her grind. She wants you to know this, so she wrote this song, which tells you just how hard she works for your adulation, and to err, make butter for her piece of bun. (In Sweden, butter is very expensive, and families are known to split buns between up to six people.) The track has a steadiness and intensity that says “hey, I’m working hard over here, pal,” but it shifts into a chorus that floats above the mechanical thwack of the groove to evoke a sense of sense of cool confidence and a feeling of distance and perspective. It’s not a moment of relaxation and reward, but rather a few seconds to envision the desired outcome of her work, and of her life. She holds that image in her mind, walks around inside it for a bit, and then gets right back to work. (Click here to buy it from Lykke Li’s official site.)

Pacific “Sunset Blvd.” – Optimism is easy when you feel as though you have opportunities. Then it just seems to fall into place somehow — as Pacific sing, it’s a natural high when you just get it right. And why is it right? Why do you feel so alive? Because you really don’t care at all whether or not you fail, but you’re in it to win it. “Sunset Blvd.” sounds just like this weird emotional balancing act in which the most joyful sensations are felt, but are kept in check by reason, maturity, and patience. (Click here to buy it via Pacific’s official site.)

Basia Bulat “Before I Knew” (Single Version) – The version of “Before I Knew” on Basia Bulat’s debut album is extremely brief and disarmingly intimate, a tiny, gorgeous sketch of a person looking back on their first love with equal measures of embarrassment, regret, and nostalgia. This full-band take is nearly triple its length, and leans heavier on the nostalgia. Maybe it’s the perkiness of the rhythm, maybe it’s the context of additional lyrics that pull the song into the present tense, maybe it’s the way the recording has a vague Christmas-y sound to it, but even when Bulat is singing “I always find a way to fall apart,” she sounds totally at peace with her reckless romanticism. (Click here to buy the album from Beggars.)

The Magnetic Fields @ The Town Hall, 2/22/2008
California Girls / I Don’t Believe You / All My Little Words / Come Back To San Francisco / Old Fools / Xavier Says / Walking My Gargoyle / Too Drunk To Dream / Til The Bitter End / The Night You Can’t Remember / I Thought You Were My Boyfriend / Water Torture // Lovers From The Moon / I Wish I Had An Evil Twin / Give Me Back My Dreams / Grand Canyon / Papa Was A Rodeo / Drive On, Driver / The Nun’s Litany / The Tiny Goat / Smoke And Mirrors / Zombie Boy /// Three-Way / Take Ecstasy With Me / The Book Of Love

Despite the loud sound of their most recent album, the Magnetic Fields remain an extraordinarily mannered live act. Their concerts are seated recitals, and are almost completely devoid of rock show conventions. Though some may grumble about a lack of power and physicality, I think this plays to the strengths of Stephin Merritt’s songs, and his ensemble. In this context, the audience have no choice but to focus all of their attention on the nuances of the melodies and the lyrics. Even without the sharp between-song banter (mainly provided by the lovely Claudia Gonson), the emphasis was consistently placed on the wit of Merritt’s words, and so the feeling of the show was closer to that of a musical revue or a comedy performance than any sort of indie rock or singer-songwriter gig.

The Magnetic Fields “The Nun’s Litany (Live on Fair Game, 2/20/2008)” – Two days earlier, Stephin Merritt performed a short session for Fair Game, which will air later this week. This isn’t exactly how the song sounded in concert — here, he’s accompanied only by his ukulele, and in the show he played a bouzouki and was assisted by at least two other players — but the important thing is that he’s singing the song, and not Shirley Simms, though she sang on several other tunes. The humor becomes more obvious — it’s pretty hilarious to imagine the small, Eeyore-ish Merritt as a Playboy bunny — but the sadness of the song is deepened. Whereas Simms’ version comes across as a tongue-in-cheek interior monologue of a desperate single girl, Merritt’s take sounds like a gay man who longs for the options of that desperate single girl, wishing that it could be so easy to attract the attention of handsome men. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Excepter “Any And Every” – Half euphoria, half nightmare. It sounds like you’re walking through an extremely loud and crowded dance club with severe vertigo. You can barely tell where your feet are, the sounds blur so that it sounds less like music, and more like shapes of sound swirling around your head, and nudging your movement. You might feel paranoid if you didn’t feel so passive. The beat holds you down like an enormous thumb, your brain feels like a squished cherry tomato at the bottom of a shopping bag. (Your face feels like the shopping bag.) (Click here for the official Excepter site.)

The Ting Tings “Great DJ” – The best thing about this song is the way it seems like this knowingly futile attempt to hold perfect, ephemeral moments in the mind, to just live in them for a couple seconds longer, at the very least. It’s there in the way the indie guitar chords just sorta hang in the air, and the dry, quasi-mechanical repetition in the chorus — the drums the drums the drums the drums the drums the drums. In a way, it’s about that failure, that acknowledgment that the human mind is a terribly flawed recording instrument, but also respecting/loving the way nostalgia can transform a somewhat mundane evening into something far more magical. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Meanwhile, on Fair Game: Here’s that full Yelle segment with the other song!

Duffy “Mercy” – Things to listen for:

1. Duffy’s instruction to “hit the beat and take it to the verse now” only five seconds into the song. I like to think that without her direction, the keyboard player would have vamped on that part indefinitely, and the rest of the band would have just sorta stood around with slack jaws.

2. “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” repeated in the general direction of Amy Winehouse, with a bit of a knowing smirk.

3. That sure sounds like a farfisa organ on the chorus! Farfisa is always welcome, but it sounds particularly good in contrast with the colder, more modern rhythmic keyboard part from the start of the song.

4. A bit of giggling at the 1:27 mark — it’s either a direct response to the notion that someone would be so foolish to have someone on the side whilst dating Duffy, or some girl just being a bit silly in the studio.

5. 1:35 mark — “Yes, I do!” You have me, Duffy. I’m sold. This is one of those magic moments that make a song sound real and alive, like a person that you could know and love.

6. Suddenly she’s overlapping: A quiet, coy quasi-rap laid over the top of her most insistent vocal for maximum contrast. It comes up to the edge of not quite working, but somehow she pulls it off. If it was possible to drop a few dollars into the tip jar of whoever it was that mixed this track, I’d totally do it.

7. Oh, hey, by the way, there’s some strings in this thing. Better yet, they sound like a strings setting on a keyboard, which actually suits the balance of warm and cool textures than something that came across more “live.”

(Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Yelle @ The Knitting Factory 2/19/2008
Tristesse/Joie / Mal Poli / 85A / Dans Ta Vrai Vie / Je Veux Te Voir / Jogging / A Cause Des Garcons / Mon Meilleur Ami // Je Veux Te Voir (heavy “rock” version)

1. You might be thinking, “oh, I bet she probably just sang and danced around to some music on a laptop.” Well, she did sing, and she did dance, and there was a laptop on stage, but this was very much a full-on, athletic concert, complete with live keyboards and a kick-ass drummer. There was no fucking around, just 50+ minutes of bubblegum pop crossed with quasi-rock French dance music. It was rather intense.

(Photo courtesy of Trent Wolbe.)
2. Also intense: The audience. Despite being packed into a tiny, oversold room, the crowd flipped out to almost every song, but most especially “Je Veux Te Voir.” Seriously, I have been in many audiences, but only a few shows match this room’s level of collective enthusiasm. If you were on the floor, and you were losing your shit during this set, I just want to say that I love you. And I envy you — I was stuck in the balcony.

3. Yelle is a joy to behold. She’s one of those performers who makes it all look so easy, as if any skinny, pretty girl with a Chicks On Speed frock and an album’s worth of ridiculously catchy dance pop songs can get on stage, shake it up, make some rock faces, do a bit of air guitar, and pull it off. If only the world was overcrowded with people like her, my job would be so much easier.

Yelle “Tristesse/Joie” (Acoustic version for Fair Game, 2/19/2008) – Speaking of, Yelle recorded a session for Fair Game only a few hours before this show. It was a mellow, acoustic performance — in other words, the radical opposite of the relentlessly up-tempo dance show at the Knitting Factory. “Tristesse/Joie” has an entirely different character in this arrangement — if the album version is like a collision between two distinct strains of modern French pop music, this take owes more to the Francophone pop of the ’60s and ’70s. It lacks that glorious, euphoric kick at the end, but makes up for it with a lovely, muted melancholy. The Yelle segment is set to air on the show on Thursday — a different song with be making it into the broadcast, but I’ll let it be a surprise. Please tune in, or get the podcast. (Click here to buy Pop-Up from Amazon.)

The Ruby Suns “There Are Birds” –
MCP: this is the other one I think I’m doing for tomorrow
RZLY: listening
RZLY: i dig
MCP: what is your impression?
RZLY: airy and drony are words that come to mind
RZLY: but that’s ’cause all words i think of to describe music end in “y”
RZLY: reminds me of broadcast
MCP: if this song is a person, how would you describe that person?
RZLY: a little depressed, but honest and earnest
MCP: who would this person date, what is her love life like?
RZLY: probably a lot of different people, each for a very short period of time. wants commitment but can’t quite get it. too complicated
MCP: (I ask cos I kinda have an idea)
MCP: see, I had the other idea
MCP: to me, this song is like a person who has been in a relationship with one person for a really long time and just wants a bit of space, some privacy, some tiny bit of time when she’s herself, and not part of a unit
MCP: (did you just describe yrself btw?)
RZLY: haha. umm… maybe.
RZLY: god i project a fucking lot
RZLY: but the person i pictured was a lot prettier and sadder than me
MCP: okay, so…RZLY = not as hot, but more chipper than the girl in the song
(Click here to buy it from Sub Pop.)

Avenue D & Phiiliip “Totally In Love” – Avenue D spent the better part of this decade trading in raunch, but here they are, sounding more like smitten schoolgirls than over-the-top porn starlets. Nevertheless, even when they were playing faux-naïf, they couldn’t help but to push things to the extreme: This is so incredibly cutesy and twee that it borders on the ridiculous. That said, the girls convey a very genuine crushed-out affection in the song that cuts through the song’s thick, syrupy irony. (Click here to buy it from Avenue D.)

Goldfrapp “A&E” – What happens if you feel desperate and alone, and you go about doing the things that your culture suggests that you do to correct your situation, and you still can’t make it happen? You can’t get him to call back, you derive no pleasure from going out, and the drugs just make you feel worse. You come in late from another boring night, and everyone you know has paired off, but you fall into your bed alone. You lie there half-awake as the morning light floods your room, and you’re still clutching your cell phone, hoping for some impossible moment of affirmation and affection. You start to wonder how it is that you came to need someone so badly, and if the person you’re pining for means much of anything, or if he’s just another arbitrary attachment. There’s no answer, no reasonable explanation, just this immense void of longing and doubt, and this horrible fear that things will never change. Other people can connect, other people can be loved, but all you can do is crumble and weep. It’s not fair. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Beckett & Taylor “World Of Me” – The grooves seem to be orbiting some central point, but that point has no fixed position. Maybe that’s the point — the “me” is always changing, and so the world around it must always shift, even when it’s spiraling around an empty space. The music mutates, but the character remains the same — “me” may be hard to define, but it’s there. It’s a knowable thing. (Click here to buy it from Bleep.)

Hercules & Love Affair “Hercules’ Theme” – When I was on my way to work yesterday, I was standing in a packed subway car about two feet away from a girl who was really, really, really loving the music she was listening to on her iPod. She was not being obnoxious about it; she was not trying to make a show of herself — it came across like a natural, perhaps involuntary response to whatever she was hearing. Her eyes would flutter, her hand occasionally tapped the metal pole as if to play chords. Her neck would arch back slightly, and she’d sway to the beat just enough not to knock into the next person over. A few times, she just smiled this huge, beatific smile that seemed totally out of place in the context of a densely packed train at 8:30 in the morning. Given that I was basically locked to a position opposite her for about eight minutes, it was hard not to look at her, but still, it can take some effort not to notice someone who appears so totally joyful. I actually felt a bit self-conscious, as though I wasn’t enjoying my music well enough. I wondered what it was that she could be hearing — it had to be something kinda groovy and cheerful, that much was clear from her body language. Maybe it was something like this Hercules & Love Affair song, something that struts along without a care while still seeming grounded (tethered?) to reality; something that seems to say “I can’t ignore my problems, I can’t ignore this world around me, but most of all, I cannot ignore my own pleasure.” (Click here to pre-order it from Amazon UK.)

Hey, NYC Readers! Yelle is playing a show at the Knitting Factory on Tuesday!

The Violets “Co-Plax” – It’s hard to pull the Violets outside a few points in time — early ’80s Siouxsie, early ’90s industrial alt-rock, early ’00s post-punk revivalism — but the band triangulate their influences nicely, resulting in dynamic pop tunes with a thin, shiny veneer of flamboyant gloom, like an M&M coated in black nail polish instead of a candy shell. “Co-Plax” in particular is more sweet than sour, and its visceral rhythmic shifts seem deliberately athletic, as if it were meant to be the soundtrack to a goth workout tape. (Click here to buy it from Amazon UK.)

Envelopes “Freejazz” – Just so you have some advance warning, this song isn’t any more free jazz than Bette Midler’s “The Wind Beneath My Wings” would thrash if it had been titled “Scandinavian Death Metal.” Even the bits that approximate horn skronk are far too composed — the title is kind of a self-deprecating joke at the expense of the band’s casual indie-rock-circa-1994 catchiness. This is not to say that Envelopes are playing it straight here — the hooks are plentiful, but every other moment knocks things a bit off-kilter, particularly when the singer seems to be attempting to make it sound as if her voice is being played in reverse. The song sounds active, playful, and curious, which suits the lyrics just fine: “Make things happen…PROVOKE THEM!” (Click here to buy it via the Envelopes site.)

Meanwhile on Fair Game: We had Michael “Ben Linus” Emerson on the show yesterday, and it was very awesome.

School of Language “Extended Holiday” – Whether he’s with Field Music, or effectively recording as a solo artist on the School of Language album, David Brewis’ meticulously crafted music gives the impression of being on the inside of a tightly-wound psyche. There’s joy and pain in the songs, but it’s mostly washed out by neuroses, and a nearly paralyzing level of self-awareness. This isn’t a complaint, mind you — the beauty lies in just how accurately Brewis can convey these muted emotions, and the thrill that comes when he pushes back on them, and attempts to escape the narrow confines of a super-socialized, overdeveloped super-ego. “Extended Holiday” is one of Brewis’ finest structures, but the song is at its best when his voice lifts up and threatens to knock it all down, as if to say “I know I have an id in here, somewhere!” (Click here to buy it from Thrill Jockey.)

Elsewhere: I wrote a “premature evaluation” of the forthcoming R.E.M. album Accelerate for Stereogum.

Meanwhile, on Fair Game: I totally forgot to mention last week that we had Bob Mould in session. Sorry about that.

Tall Dwarfs “Nothing’s Going To Happen (Wall of Dwarfs version)” – This is song is a small battle in the war against inertia, but it’s a fight the singer doesn’t really want to win. The words are a self-fulfilling prophecy, and even when he sounds like he’s trapped, panicked, and flailing around, there’s no sense that he’d ever try to break free of this monotonous situation. By the time the full band kicks in, it seems like a full-blown celebration of limitation and futility. It doesn’t even matter what is not going to happen — escape, success, love, sex, an epiphany, a creative breakthrough, the apocalypse. It’s just not going to happen, and that brings a certain safety and peace of mind. (As far as I can tell, pretty much the entire Tall Dwarfs catalog is out of print. That’s kinda ridiculous, don’t you think?)

Elsewhere: Marcello Carlin wrote a terrific review of James Rabbit’s album Coloratura. Seriously, you should get a copy.

Sunny Day Sets Fire “Wilderness (CSS Remix)” – The original version by Sunny Day Sets Fire is fine enough, but the CSS mix plays up the immediately ingratiating melodic turns of the vocal while streamlining the arrangement into something that is urgent and elegant in equal measures. There’s no shortage of musicians aping ’80s synth pop these days, but too often the results are little more than uninspired tributes to poorly-written shlock. This song, however, is rather successful in approximating for the oft-unheralded craft and slick sophistication of the most enduring British one-hit-wonders of the era. (Click here to buy it from IAMSOUND.)

Meanwhile, On Fair Game: Faith and I talked about the new 3D concert movies by U2 and Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus.

Cat Power @ Terminal 5 2/6/2008
New York, New York / Rambling (Wo)Man / Don’t Explain / I Believe In You / Aretha, Sing One For Me / Lost Someone / Silver Stallion / A Woman Left Lonely / Lord Help The Poor and Needy / Metal Heart / The Moon / (instrumental) / Where Is My Love / The Greatest / The Tracks Of My Tears / Could We / She’s Got You / Naked If I Want To / Song To Bobby / Dark End Of The Street / Willie // Lived In Bars / I’ve Been Loving You Too Long

Cat Power & Dirty Delta Blues “Aretha, Sing One For Me (Live Black Session)” – Let’s put it right out there: Terminal 5 is a fucking terrible venue. It’s in a very inconvenient location, and getting out of the place is a total hassle. Unless you manage to squeeze into the densely packed front of the floor or get a prime spot on the balconies, your sight lines are going to be horrible. I have no idea what the optimal usage of that place might be, but it sure as hell is not for concerts. To make matters worse, the sound is shoddy, and you end up with a show like this in which the musicians are consistently on point, but plagued by seemingly elementary sound issues — mysterious buzzes, unintentional feedback – that are never resolved in the span of a 90 minute set. I only recommend going to the venue if you want to see a band that is unlikely to play any other show in the area for the foreseeable future.

Chan Marshall, a woman who not so long ago would stop a show dead in its tracks for a lot less than a lousy sound mix, just sorta rolled with it. I hesitate to say that she has become a polished professional — there’s an unpretentious rawness to her that’s probably (hopefully) never going to disappear — but she’s at least become more of an extrovert on stage, and there’s a clear awareness of the fact that she’s got to put on a show, and that the audience is willing to follow her where ever she goes. She displays a lot of nervous energy on stage, but it’s mainly evident in her physicality — she’s never still, and she spends a lot of her time on stage pacing around aimlessly. On the other hand, her vocals are careful, focused, and invested with emotion. Her voice isn’t quite as devastating as it once was, but even when she’s very low key, she’s selling the songs with soul. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Robyn @ the Highline Ballroom, 2/5/2008
Cobrastyle / Crash and Burn Girl / Who’s That Girl? / Bum Like You / Handle Me / Keep This Fire Burning / Konichiwa Bitches / Be Mine! / With Every Heartbeat // Show Me Love / Jack U Off / Be Mine! (Ballad Version)

Robyn “Be Mine! (Ballad Version)” – Here’s an understatement: The audience was very excited to see Robyn play her first real concert in the United States. Here’s a statement: Robyn is a ridiculously charismatic performer who ought to achieve mainstream popularity on the level of, say, Fergie. Here’s an overstatement: That probably won’t ever happen because American pop culture is really, really unfair. We can settle for cult stardom though, and that’s certainly what she’s got: As far as the crowd was concerned, nearly every song in this set was a gigantic hit, and Robyn herself was a badass, super-sensitive, adorable, unstoppable superstar. The dance and hip hop songs were the most fun — how could “Konichiwa Bitches” and “Crash and Burn Girl” not steal a show? — but the ballads near the end were the most evocative and revealing. The full-band version of “Be Mine!” was melancholy and gorgeous, but the unadorned piano version of the song at the end of the encore was like a concentrated shot of heartbroken vulnerability, with the singer stripped of all her defenses and left to feel alone, awkward, and slightly defiant. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Kelley Polar “Entropy Reigns (In The Celestial City)” – Form follows content: The surface is almost unbearably, inhumanly slick, and so the lyrics portray the inner life of a man who has been poisoned by aesthetics, and left to wander around a world of glamor with a broken, nihilistic soul. The song is structured like a “Don’t You Want Me”-style “he said/she said,” but it’s worth noting how oddly inconsequential the female parts seem in context — it’s impossible to escape the gravitational pull of his self-absorption, and at it often feels as though she’s just there to prove to himself that they are both real, and that there’s something in the world aside from his glassy-eyed disaffection and self-pity. Weirdly, this all comes off as a sympathetic character study, perhaps thanks to the warmth buried beneath Polar’s synthetic textures and the precise enunciation of the vocalists. (Click here to buy it from iTunes.)

Santogold “L.E.S. Artistes” – The Lower East Side was once an area mainly reserved for the immigrant population, but has since become a super-gentrified playground for the city’s hipster population. That said, it still thrives on a well-heeled variation of the immigration narrative — artsy people from around the world come to it (and other similar neighborhoods) in the hope of reinventing themselves and achieving some form of success and upward mobility. The character in “L.E.S. Artistes” is one of those people. Her ambition and competitive streak exacerbate her feelings of alienation — she’s surrounded by hacks and phonies, she’s paranoid about being exploited, and mindful of the fact that the odds are stacked against her potential success. Nevertheless, it is not a song about freaking out. If anything, it’s an expression of muted courage, and working nonstop, and desperately hoping that there’s a payoff to the relentless grind. Basically, it’s a sympathetic ballad for the “creative underclass.” (Click here for the Santogold MySpace page.)