Archive for 2012

Jack White @ Roseland Ballroom 5/22/2012 Sixteen Saltines / Missing Pieces / Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground / Love Interruption / Hotel Yorba / Weep Themselves to Sleep / I Guess I Should Go to Sleep / Top Yourself / Hypocritical Kiss / new song - "I Love Your Sister" / Blue Blood Blues / We're Going to Be Friends / Two Against One / Hardest Button to Button / Freedom at 21 / Take Me With You When You Go / Carolina Drama / Ball and Biscuit // (encore with male band) Black Math / Cut Like A Buffalo / Catch Hell Blues / Seven Nation Army The main set, performed with White's lady band the Peacocks, was good, but sloppy. It was obvious that he was losing his patience for his band mates at some points, but they came together for some inspired moments, like drastically slowing down a verse from "Freedom at 21," and a particularly brutal "Hardest Button to Button." The big thrill of the night came at the end, when White suddenly appeared on a second stage to the side of the audience and played his encore with his male band, the Buzzardos. The surprise was enough to make this a memorable moment, but that band was on fire, and poured a full set's worth of energy and raw power into four numbers. The Peacocks have their charms, but White has greater chemistry with this group, or at least drummer Daru Jones. I would like to see White consolidate these two bands at some point, to attempt to get the best of both worlds.

Jack White "Take Me With You When You Go"

While I strongly respect the deliberate limitations that Jack White has placed on his music, particularly in the White Stripes, I've always wanted him to break free of that and run wild with textures, sounds and styles. He does that on Blunderbuss, and most especially on the record's best track, "Take Me With You When You Go." It may be White's best-ever composition; an ever-shifting number that flows from one loose groove to another, tossing in bits of country, Sly-like funk and piano rock before it even gets to a truly astonishing fuzz guitar solo that feels like a thousand-volt joy jolt. Also, harmonies! White shines when paired with a strong female vocalist, particularly when it draws out an intriguing sexual dynamic. In this song, Ruby Amanfu takes on a stern front, intensifying the lyric and diluting the part of Jack's voice that's a bit pleading and passive. Buy it from Amazon.

Jack White @ Roseland Ballroom 5/21/2012 Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground / Missing Pieces / Sixteen Saltines / Hypocritical Kiss / I Cut Like A Buffalo / Trash Tongue Talker / Top Yourself / Two Against One / Black Math / Hello Operator / Weep Themselves to Sleep / You Know That I Know / Blunderbuss / Ball and Biscuit // Freedom at 21 / Steady, As She Goes / Take Me With You When You Go / Catch Hell Blues / Seven Nation Army Jack White played this show with his all-male band, a group of musicians so formidably talented that it seemed that he was doing his best to keep up with them. The band, anchored by the loose-limbed drummer Daru Jones, were exceptionally loose but impeccably professional - everyone on stage clearly trusted each other, and played each song moment to moment, investing every performance with urgency and inspiration. It was great to see White genuinely challenged by the other players, and willing to give Jones – a far more dynamic and physical musician - a lot of the spotlight. It reminded me a bit of when Stephen Malkmus started playing with the Jicks - both men had spent so much time playing with friends who were not at all on their talent level that it was a relief to see them step up to working with equals, or in some cases, superiors.

Jack White "Blunderbuss"

Blunderbuss is the richest, most consistently excellent album of White's career. The title track, a gentle, ornate country pop ballad, is one of the record's most subtle numbers, which led me to overlook it somewhat in the first month or two that I had the album. There are flashier numbers, for sure, but "Blunderbuss" has a melody that burrows deep into my mind, and lyrics about longing for a relationship that exists fully in emotional sense but can go no further that stirs up bad memories for me. But as much as it stings, there's a lot of grace in White's frustration, and he articulates it all with remarkable clarity: "Such a trick, pretending not to be doing what you want to / but seems that everybody does this every waking moment." Buy it from Amazon.

of Montreal "We Will Commit Wolf Murder"

The emotional stakes on of Montreal records are through the roof under normal circumstances, but even with that frame of reference, Paralytic Stalks seems unusually tortured and hysterical. In context, "We Will Commit Wolf Murder" is a milder number, though its instantly satisfying melody sweetens the codependent sentiment and fearful misanthropy of Kevin Barnes' words, and it eventually spirals off into a violent, panicked outro. As dark as this gets, Barnes can't help but play up his surreal nightmare visions for oddball humor, or throw in lines like "I tried to understand his logic but there's just no pattern there" that could just as well be a critique of his music from a skeptical listener. I understand why, even with the benefit of gorgeous melodies and funky bass, Barnes' recent music could be too dense to handle for a lot of people, but I think if you can get on his wavelength, the pattern is there. It's fairly obvious in this one, anyway – it's hard not to notice when someone's scraping the lowest depths of their self-loathing on record. Buy it from Amazon.

Grimes "Circumambient"

Grimes is very big on splitting her voice into multiple harmonic parts that simulate the feeling of fractured thoughts that overlap, collide into one another, and sometimes totally contradict themselves. I've heard this before in different ways in other songs, but part of what makes her music interesting and powerful is in the way she seems to delight in this, and the most euphoric moments in her songs embrace this indecisive delirium. "Circumambient" is especially remarkable, with verses that form clear thoughts about a relationship in which neither side can move forward without addressing issues and a chorus that starts a thought that cannot be completed. Buy it from Amazon.

El-P "Drones Over Bkyln"

El-P has been specializing in heavy, discordant rap tracks for over a decade now, but his compositions on his new record Cancer For Cure and Killer Mike's R.A.P. Music are a new high water mark for art. There's something desperate and hungry at the core of this stuff; each beat broadcasts an angry restlessness. El-P owes a lot of his style to the innovations of the Bomb Squad and the RZA during their peak periods – the rhythms seem jagged and harsh, instrumental riffs are fashioned from scraps of recognizable instrumentation and shards of noise. El-P's production is a beat more lean, but just as purposeful, with a blunt aggression that seems connected, at least in spirit, to punk. "Drones Over Bkyln" gets its musical hook from a lifted piano part, but its soul lies in rattling cymbal hits and electronic buzz pulse that stands in for a bass line. It sounds like the aftermath of a disaster, and El-P's rap comes off like a guy surveying the wreckage. Buy it from Amazon.

Kitty Pryde "Okay Cupid"

Rap is a genre that rarely aims for or achieves an intimate sound, but that's been changing slowly thanks in large part to Drake, who has popularized a mode of drunk-dial-confession rapping that allows a context for vulnerability that happens to have a built-in layer of mediation. Kitty Pryde's breakthrough track "Okay Cupid" is a song in this mold – she raps as though she's a bit groggy late at night, as if she's spilling her guts to a crush who should be inches away, but is in fact nowhere to be found. Some people have qualms about this song because it's a young girl romanticizing and accepting the behavior of a dude who is awful to her and stringing her along emotionally, and I totally get that from a "ugh, I hate when this happens to people" perspective, but the truth is that this happens to people all the time and the words and inflections in this song sound so true and lived-in that I wince at some points. There's a lot of emotional complexity here, and certainly the sense that Kitty is aware that she's being self-destructive and shouldn't tolerate any of this, but can't help herself. It's hormones, it's insecurity, it's youth. And it's so much more compelling than Drake could ever be - he's always rapping from some position of power even when he's presenting himself as weak, but Kitty is coming from the opposite end of the power dynamic and it's fascinating and tragic to hear her try to assert some control over her emotions and the situation in her performance. Buy it from Bandcamp.

Felix "Don't Look Back (It's Too Sad)"

This is a song about how when a relationship fails, everyone close to it comes up with a narrative to explain it away. Lucinda Chua sings this song with a calm and composed affect, but you can hear a peevish tone creep in as she object to her ex's mother's ridiculous claim that "women are all cruel," and she dismisses them both for not knowing what love is. ("Anyone who knows what love is will understand.") The final verse, in which she attempts to offer her own defense, is the one that stings. "I know that I am not one to talk / as from time to time I am really hard work," she admits, her voice getting thinner as she becomes more vulnerable. She insists that she didn't keep him "under duress" or "pressured and stressed," and then trails off, as if she's wondering if, well, maybe she actually kinda did. I reviewed Felix's new album Oh Holy Molar at Pitchfork. Buy it from Amazon.

Cat Power "I Found A Reason"

Chan Marshall's approach to covers is unusual in that she seems to have very little reverence for her source material, and extensively edits songs that others might consider to be sacred in their original form. She edited Lou Reed's "I Found A Reason" to such a degree that it may as well be a brand new song – she cut out all the verses, drastically pared down the instrumentation, and put all of the focus on the most melodically beautiful and lyrically profound moment in the piece: "I do believe you're all what you perceived / what comes is better than what came before." But even in that, she edits it, simplifying the language: "I do believe in all the things you see / what comes is better than what came before." She never sings the title phrase, but it's all there in her voice. She sounds so unguarded and pure when she sings about this love; it's so beautiful and true that it sorta hurts to listen. There's a peril in this sort of love song: You hear a person so close to having their heart broken, you almost mourn the loss preemptively. Buy it from Amazon.

Killer Mike "Go!"

Turntablism has largely vanished from rap in recent years, so it actually feels a bit jarring to hear such prominent scratching in a new track by a well-known artist. The scratching in "Go!" is particularly aggressive, and the physicality of the performance transfers over to the listener much in the same way you can often feel the movements of the drummer in a well-made recording of a band. This just amps up Killer Mike's vocal performance, which is bold even for him – the syllables seems to blast out of him with great force, and every sound on the track seems calibrated for maximum implied physical impact. Buy it from Amazon.

Lower Dens "Candy"

There's an odd tension at the core of Lower Dens' new album Nootropics, as though the songs simultaneously evoke claustrophobia and the feeling of being all alone in a wide open space. It's an isolating, lonely sound, but they find beauty and drama in it. "Candy," a cut that reminds me of mid-Seventies Brian Eno, is the closest they come to a traditional rock song in terms of structure and affect, but it's far too floaty to convey corporeal physicality. Jana Hunter's voice is the key here – she sounds nearly as haunted and pained as Portishead's Beth Gibbons or Beach House's Victoria Legrand, but with less presence. That's not a bad thing, though – I like that they can imply ghostliness without getting heavy handed with reverb. Buy it from Amazon.