Archive for October, 2011

PJ Harvey "The Words That Maketh Murder" (iTunes Session Version)

It's startling to see the words of this song in print – the tune is so jaunty, it can be easy to tune out the grisly imagery. But once you know what she's singing, you can't unhear it, and the horror sits uncomfortably with the rhythm and her odd, high-pitched tone. Of course, the real kicker here is the "What if I take my problem to the United Nations?," delivered with just the right balance of hopeful naïveté and bitter irony. All the little disconnections in this song make perfect sense -- it is, after all, essentially about processing grotesque atrocities and looking both within and without for some way of classifying and understanding what it all means. Is there a context where any of this terrible violence makes sense? Buy the album version from Amazon.

Bell "Meaninglessness"

Olga Bell has a slippery, wildly expressive voice -- she's all bright notes, and her melodies kinda spiral and swirl around through her compositions. This approach is well suited to "Meaninglessness," a perky, restless number about trying to keep up with adult life's endless distractions and demands. I love that this is a happy, upbeat song. A lot of people write about this sort of thing, but they come off as unpleasant, easily overwhelmed cranks. Bell, on the other hand, has an optimistic point of view, and the music is like shrugging off morning grogginess to greet the day with genuine enthusiasm. Buy it from Amazon.

Shudder to Think "X-French Tee Shirt"

The first time I ever heard "X-French Tee Shirt" I was 15-years-old and listening to a local alt-rock radio station in 1994. The station was doing this thing where they would debut a song and listeners could call in to say whether or not it should go into rotation. I was immediately impressed by the tune. Even after all these years, a lot of the charm in the song lies in how it sounds like a big arena rock number thrown off balance, but to my young ears it seemed especially alien. The song ended up becoming a very minor hit, and the video on MTV only emphasized the off-kilter weirdness of the group, with singer Craig Wedren looking like a pervy goateed glam Charles Xavier. I probably bought Pony Express Record a week later after playing the snippet of "X-French" that I taped off the radio dozens of times over. "X-French Tee Shirt" is a perfect example of a song that is effectively pop in its sound despite having an asymmetrical structure and a peculiar sense of rhythm. The big chorus at the end is very accessible and undeniable in its appeal, but the first half of the song is more interesting and exciting for me, as Wedren's voice delivers a slinky, effeminate vocal performance at odds with the spiky, brutal staccato thud of his guitar. He's negotiating a break up, but his words bend into abstraction. He doesn't tell you very much, but the betrayal, anger and jealous come through loud and clear, particularly when Wedren's voice drips with dismissive bitchiness as he sings "So what'd you have to do that for? Him?" He's incredulous at the thought of returning "to us," and he's heading out. When the chorus outro comes in, you feel a weight lift off the song – he's free. Buy it from Amazon.

Though the lyrics on Atlas Sound's forthcoming album Parallax aren't particularly concerned with sex, the sound of the record is very sensual and seductive. A lot of this comes down to Bradford Cox's voice, which has reached a new peak in terms of confidence technical range, emotive power. Though he typically writes from a passive perspective, he has moved away from romantic pining and embraced this persona that seems at ease with being an object of desire. With this in mind, the title of the record makes some sense – he's writing about a variety of topics, but his confidence has shifted his perspective on everything. He still sounds like the Bradford Cox we know, but you immediately sense the difference.

Electric Six "Psychic Visions"

Heartwaves and Brainwaves, this year's new Electric Six album, is basically the band's Depeche Mode record. This isn't a huge surprise – Dick Valentine often sings a bit of "Everything Counts" at the end of "Germans In Mexico" in concert, and there's already a precedent set for dark, keyboard-heavy material in the larger Valentine catalog. "Psychic Visions," the opening track on the album, is delightfully seedy – it's like "Nightclubbing" cut with "Personal Jesus," with Valentine's hyper-masculine voice taking on a weathered, resigned tone. He sounds defeated but bemused by the world around him, and when he sings about psychics and tarot cards, you can hear the pessimism in his voice, but also a willingness to play along with other people's banal eccentricities, if just for a brief distraction. Buy it from Amazon.

Dum Dum Girls "Coming Down"

I saw the Dum Dum Girls perform a few times last year, and each time I found myself wondering why Kristin "Dee Dee" Gundred under-sang on the band's recordings though she sang beautifully and confidently in concert. This is not an issue on Only in Dreams, the group's second full-length album. There's no holding back on this record; she sings with total commitment and presents the songs with crisp, clean production that pushes the band outside of the indie rock ghetto and into, at least, a theoretical mainstream. This is direct, big-hearted music. "Coming Down," in particular, is a revelation – Gundred's voice is bold but delicate, approaching a sort of tough-girl sensitivity that you mostly encounter on old Pretenders records. She's a bit guarded, but she knows when she has to really go for it -- there's a moment in this song where she aims for an emotionally devastating high note and nails it without seeming the least bit ostentatious. Buy it from Amazon.

DJ Shadow featuring Yukimi Nagano "Scale It Back"

I recently interviewed DJ Shadow for a Rolling Stone video thing. At some point in our conversation, I made a point of asking him about this song. At the time we talked, I had the record but not any liner notes, so I was curious as to how much of this composition was made up of live instrumentation. By his reckoning, this track is about 90% samples pulled from a variety of sources. This sort of blows my mind, but it really shouldn't – a lot of his best work comes out of this incredible ability to take bits and pieces from all over the place and making it sound like a live, organic performance. "Scale It Back" truly sounds like an excellent band playing live in a room, with Little Dragon's Yukimi Nagano right there with them, turning in what could be the best vocal performance of her career to date. Even aside from pulling off this incredible compositional/production trick, there's something really magical about the sound of this song. It's low key but overwhelmingly romantic – there's this sort of sinking feeling to it. It makes you feel as though you're literally falling in love. Buy it from Amazon.