Chairlift @ Bowery Ballroom 1/23/2012 Sidewalk Safari / Le Flying Saucer Hat / Take It Out On Me / Wrong Opinion / Ghost Tonight / Cool As A Fire / Planet Health / Met Before / Frigid Spring / Guilty As Charged / I Belong In Your Arms // Evident Utensil / Amanaemonesia I reviewed Chairlift's wonderful new album Something for Pitchfork. Here are some thoughts on this performance.

Chairlift "I Belong In Your Arms"

1. Chairlift are clearly confident and bold enough to skip their most famous song in concert. I don't think anyone was too upset about this. While I tend to think that artists should be generous in playing their best-known songs, they weren't wrong to place the emphasis on their very, very strong new songs and to make a case that they don't really need "Bruises" to play a good, engaging set. Audience response to songs like "Amanaemonesia," "Met Before" and "I Belong In Your Arms" suggest those songs are going to end up being "hits" with their fans anyway. 2. The band's sound is just as clean and precise in concert as it is on record. I'm a sucker for this sort of hyper-professionalism, particularly when a group projects a good, positive energy rather than rote recital. Olga Bell from Bell joined the band on keyboards and backing vocals - she nailed her parts, and served as a fine foil to Caroline Polachek, who was freed up to focus on her vocals and dancing. Polachek's vocal performance was outstanding and she was charismatic enough that her talent for nuanced phrasing and vocal restraint was not lost in the less forgiving dynamics of a stage performance. 3. A strange young woman jumped on to the stage during "I Belong In Your Arms" and tried to dance up on Caroline. A female security guard tried to pull her away, but the girl resisted, and accidentally hit the singer in the face as she tried to perform. A second guard showed up, but the girl was still flailing around, refusing to get off stage. Caroline made it through the song, but was visibly startled and laughing at the absurdity of the situation. It was a really strange thing to see, and pretty unexpected at this sort of pop show. Buy it from Amazon.

Imperial Teen "No Matter What You Say"

Imperial Teen come and go, turning up every six years or so to deliver a new set of lovely indie pop tunes that don't quite fit in with anything else out at the time. Their identity is very consistent, but the character of each record is a bit different -- in the case of Feel the Sound, their latest, they are mostly favoring keyboards over guitars. As a result, the sound is lighter and brighter, which serves some songs better than others. I like the way the simple keyboard part in "No Matter What You Say" is gently insistent, so even before the harmonies and rhythm whoosh up a bit in the chorus, you have a sense that the music is starting to pick up a light breeze. It's a great sentiment to pair with the feeling of the music too -- defiant, but politely so. Buy it from Amazon.

Sleigh Bells "Comeback Kid"

Sleigh Bells make such overwhelmingly physical music that the lyrics would seem to be besides the point of the overall sensation of texture, rhythm and melody, but it seems notable that so many of their songs are fixated on winning and losing. Notable, but not surprising: The music itself typically sounds like an expression of triumph. "Comeback Kid" is especially direct, with Alexis Krauss giving the listener a pep talk set to her most appealing melody yet. (It comes off as very Aaliyah to my ears.) Krauss' voice was more of a texture on Treats here, but in this track, she's on equal footing with Derek Miller's wonderfully blunt guitar riff. The whole song sounds as if they're willing the entire world into being a better, more exciting place. I can get behind that. Pre-order it from Amazon.

The Shins "Simple Song"

James Mercer hasn't changed his approach to melody much over the years – he mostly focuses on long phrases that curl into very pleasing shapes – but his approach to accompaniment has become more bold and brawny recently, as if he finally realized that adding a bit of weight and punch to his rhythms would not immediately shatter the delicacy of his tunes. "Simple Song" isn't even particularly heavy, but the added force sells the conviction of the lyrics, which reflect on life-changing epiphanies. I'm especially fond of his parting lines, which would be thoughtful in any context, but come out sounding like hard-earned wisdom in this context: "Love's such a delicate thing that we do / we've nothing to prove / which I never knew." Buy it from Amazon.

Lee Ranaldo "Off the Wall"

It's sorta funny that the two guitarists in Sonic Youth spent years pushing at the limits of stylized noise in rock music, but both ended up embracing folk pop when left to their own devices. "Off the Wall," the first track released from Lee Ranaldo's first-ever solo songwriter album - something I have been waiting for since 1995 or so! - is gorgeous, jangly and unambiguously pop, and has a more striking resemblance to the music of, say, the Gin Blossoms, than pretty much anything in the Sonic Youth canon. Well, not quite: While the style and form of "Off the Wall" is more conventional than most SY music, Ranaldo's guitar flourishes are very familiar, highlighting a tunefulness he's been bringing to his main band's music for three decades. Pre-order it from Matador Records.

Field Music "A New Town"

The Brewis brothers of Field Music are masters of stoic, tightly composed formalist rock. Their melodic sensibility is clearly derived from Paul McCartney (and his various musical progeny), but they replace McCartney's loose ease with OCD rigidity. This could be a recipe for musical disaster, but they own it - it always sounds like a very honest expression of a particular sensibility. "A New Town," from their forthcoming album Plumb, breaks little ground for the band - well, unless you want to focus on the inclusion of odd bubble sound effects – but it's an example of the band at their best, when their precise, meticulous execution of layered rhythms and melodies serves to illustrate the mindset of the lyrics, which approach the dissolution of a relationship with an almost ridiculous degree of forced rationality in a highly emotional situation. Pre-order it from Amazon.

Sleeper Agent "Proper Taste"

Sleeper Agent aren't exactly ground-breakers, but they're exceptionally good with dynamics, so their straightforward rockers have a charm and charge that's lacking in a shocking number of their peers. This is especially true with regards to the chemistry and interplay between co-vocalists Alex Kandel and Tony Smith, who key into different but complementary styles of being a rock badass. While Smith navigates the aesthetic ground between Jack White and Neil Hagerty, Kandel is more Joan Jett – a bit cool, aloof and biting, but outgoing and aggressive enough to avoid receding into the track. "Proper Taste" is one of their most thrilling numbers, with the two spitting lines at each other over breakneck pre-chorus before joining for a big sing-along that opens with "call me pumpkin, carve me out," a line that I find incredibly appealing though I'm not really sure why. Buy it from Amazon.

Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks "No One Is (As I Are Be)"

It's not as if Stephen Malkmus has been spending his years writing a lot of songs that make perfect literal sense, but I find this one to be particularly slippery – I can key into the central emotion here but I can't quite tell you what that emotion is, and the lines resonate with me in a major way, but when I really think about them, I am hard pressed to tell you why. And this may be part of why I love it so much, because it falls between the cracks of emotions and ideas in some distant corner of my mind. It's obvious enough that it's one of his songs about aging and maturity, but it flips the script from more recent Malkmus songs dealing with that subject matter, wherein he's the grounded guy giving someone else advice. This is more like the sound of a guy settling into the idea of settling in – discovering that he's happy to be out by the wood shed, pondering the depths of friendships, reflecting on the "never-ending nightlife that we shared." In the end, he asks "What does it mean?" and the only answer he's got is "I want to be there." And maybe that's the best summary of this song's mood we can get: It's the sound of wanting to be there. Buy it from Amazon.

Hospitality "Eighth Avenue"

"Eighth Avenue" starts off sounding like something that could've been on If You're Feeling Sinister or The Boy With the Arab Strap, but it veers slightly off that course into something a bit noisier. Not hard or heavy, but loud and abstract – there's a burst of guitar midway through this that makes me think of the amber cast of light on city streets in the middle of the night. That dovetails nicely with the lyrics, which are nostalgic for a night life that the singer seems to have found at least somewhat disappointing in retrospect. There's some interesting specifics suggested in Amber Papini's words, but this resonates because it's so easy to fill in your own early-20s dramas, or lack thereof, particularly if you're the type of person to be listening to this sort of twee indie pop to begin with. Pre-order it from Amazon.

Mr. Muthafuckin eXquire and Danny Brown "Killah Tofu"

Danny Brown and Mr. Muthafuckin eXquire have a chemistry on record that reminds me a lot of Ghostface Killah and Raekwon: A flamboyant, high-pitched guy serving as a foil to a gruff, growly dude with a more subtle rhyme style. As with the Ghost/Rae combo, it's easy to get caught up in the more cartoonish guy's raw charisma, but I'm very partial to eXquire and his talent for projecting hostile apathy. "Killah Tofu" showcases both men, and leaves no room for anything else -- it's just two verses and no chorus, a quick shot of two hungry emcees who complement each other perfectly. Buy it from Bandcamp.