Archive for 2007

Birds Fled From Me “The Resisted” – Rachel Williams recalls Fiona Apple at her most spare and wounded on this heartbroken ballad, but her voice skips Apple’s soulful inflections in favor of a more fragile reading that nods in the direction of early Cat Power without aping that singer’s affectations. Like Apple, her song and her vocal performance work precisely because she so thoroughly owns her emotions, and expresses the pain of her unrequited love not so much for the benefit of whomever it is she is addressing, but rather to understand and affirm her own experience. This is the sort of song that could shatter you to pieces if you heard it at the right moment, so beware if you happen to be in love with someone who does not love you in return. (Click here to buy it via the Birds Fled From Me MySpace page.)

Kate Nash “Pumpkin Soup” – For the first few weeks that I knew this song, I heard the final line of its bridge as “I hate that you don’t think I’m unkind,” which I find a bit more interesting and appealing than the actual lyric, which is more grammatically sensible but less emotionally complicated: “I hope that you don’t think I’m unkind.” It doesn’t really change my feeling about the music — I love the way every anxious moment of this tune sounds as though it is punctuated by a half dozen exclamation points, and the way she seems to relish her chance to play the drama queen — but my misheard version adds an extra bit of insecurity that isn’t quite as obvious as the rest of what she’s singing. I like the idea that she’s frustrated by the fact that this boy would think that she’s too sweet, even when she’s going out of her way to keep things purely physical and emotionally distant. He’s smitten, and she can’t even convince him that she’s capable of cruelty! The song doesn’t land far from that mark, but it could stand to be a little more twisty. (Click here to buy it from Amazon, but keep in mind a domestic version will be out in the US in January.)

Stephen Malkmus and the Million Dollar Bashers “Ballad of a Thin Man” – David Edelstein’s review of Todd Haynes’ new film I’m Not There in the most recent issue of New York Magazine may be positive, but in complaining that Haynes is more concerned with deconstructing Bob Dylan than getting inside his head, he clues us in to just how little he understood what the movie is actually about, i.e., not the guy who sleeps and eats and DJs on satellite radio. It’s about the cultural representation of Dylan, and as such, it’s more about us than it is about him. Not to undersell the film’s substance, but when you boil down all the things that I’m Not There has to say about Dylan in particular and art in general, it’s essentially about how we turn artists into icons, and the way the mythology that we create around them can take on a life and meaning that is far greater than the person, and sometimes even the work itself.

Haynes splits Dylan into six characters, none of whom are called Bob Dylan. (The name is never once uttered in the film.) Only half of the actors resemble the man, and the one who is most clearly evocative of his actual style and mannerisms is a woman in drag. It’s important that it’s drag, by the way. Cate Blanchett’s performance as the Dylan of Don’t Look Back is meant to be an over-the-top, fabulous caricature of the artist at his most iconic, and it’s the representation that is most charged with transgressive sexuality — both his own, and what Blanchett claims for herself as she occupies his persona. Blanchett’s Dylan is my favorite, mainly because she is standing in for the version of the man I appreciate the most: The “pop” Dylan; the cynical, frustrated young artist who fought against being pigeon-holed by the media; the iconoclast who stood up to the smug, self-righteous conservatism of the folk movement at the Newport Folk Festival and the Royal Albert Hall. The events of those two concerts are represented in the film with a great deal of humor, surrealism, and melodrama. It’s a folk story, passed down through generations, and that’s the point. It isn’t about the truth of those events, it’s about the cultural resonance of his actions, and the way we tell and internalize the meaning of the narrative — it’s the moment where Dylan ceases to be a folk singer, and becomes a folk hero.

Unsurprisingly, my second favorite Dylan in I’m Not There is the one played by Marcus Carl Franklin. Unlike the fairly representational versions of Dylan portrayed by Blanchett, Ben Whishaw, and Christian Bale — or the glamorous post-modern/meta representation of Heath Ledger, who plays an actor playing Dylan in a biopic — Franklin’s character is purely metaphorical, and stands in for the young Dylan eager to cast off his past and reinvent himself on his own terms. The scenes with Franklin suggest that the singer’s transforming persona is an intrinsic part of his character, and of his art — from early on, he understood the power of becoming a character, of becoming something else for the benefit of his art, his audience, and himself.

The film does not follow a linear path, but it’s important to note that the story begins with Franklin since it establishes the central conflict of the picture, i.e., the complications of reconciling the differences between the artist’s embrace of affectation, and the premium placed on authenticity in folk music, and the culture at large — or at least up until the end of the 70s, since its worth noting that Dylan’s life after his conversion to Christianity in 1979 is not acknowledged in any way by the film. (It makes sense — nothing else after that moment in his life has any particular mythic resonance, and so Dylan the legend effectively died when his life ceased to be a story.) Even though there are six incarnations of Dylan in I’m Not There, there’s really just two versions of his myth on display, and they are at odds with one another — he’s either the idealistic truth-teller, or the guy who forces us to look beyond objective truth of biography and dig into the complicated mess of life via fiction, poetry, and reinvention of character. You don’t really have to pick one or the other, but I’m pretty sure I only really have use for the latter version.

Oh yeah, and doesn’t Stephen Malkmus sound like he’s on his very best behavior on this version of “Ballad of a Thin Man”? When I first heard his three cuts on the I’m Not There soundtrack, I was kinda shocked by the reverence in his voice. I mean, I wasn’t expecting him to goof off or rewrite the lyrics, but after seeing the film, the straight, somewhat mannered vocal take makes a bit more sense — he’s providing the singing voice of Cate Blanchett, and he has to bend to her performance. Well, that, and he’s a Dylan fanboy, and I imagine he was just trying hard not to fuck it up. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Girls Aloud “Black Jacks” – The intensity is dialed down a bit, but there’s no mistaking this for anything other than a Girls Aloud song. That said, there’s a few melodic turns in “Black Jacks” that remind me a little bit of Oasis, but I guess I shouldn’t be so surprised. After all, though there’s some pretty obvious differences between the two, they both specialize in producing unstoppable hook machines that scramble sentimental cliches and total nonsense into inscrutable lyrics that somehow make sense in the context of a gigantic chorus. (Click here to buy it from Amazon UK.)

DRI “Inspiration” – Life moves forward as it always does, but suddenly we’re in the Christmas zone. The lights go up, the same old songs are in rotation, and the sky always seems to be either black or gray. All the mundane drama in your life gets mixed up into the Christmas aesthetic somehow, and it’s hard to avoid. Songs that aren’t about Christmas start to sound a bit like it, whether it’s an accident of the arrangement, or the way it just feels like time slowing to a crawl in a crowded mall parking lot after an afternoon of gift shopping, or some sad moment from an office holiday party stretched out until it becomes nearly abstract. (Click here to buy it from Range Life Records.)

Electric Six @ Bowery Ballroom 11/16/2007
It’s Showtime! / Dance Commander / Rock n Roll Evacuation / Down At McDonnellzz / Infected Girls / White Train / Electric Demons In Love / Randy’s Hot Tonight! / Dance Pattern / Improper Dancing / Danger! High Voltage / Future Is In The Future / Feed My Fuckin’ Habit / I Buy The Drugs // When I Get To The Green Building / Dance Epidemic / Gay Bar / Germans In Mexico (with a tiny bit of Everything Counts by Depeche Mode)

1. This is probably just an irrational phase, but lately, I think I’m starting to kinda hate people who are openly dismissive of the Electric Six. I know this makes me sound awful and condescending, but when people write them off as a joke band, it makes my blood boil and I just can’t stop myself from assuming that they just aren’t very smart, even though I should know better. I mean, if it’s not your type of thing, fine, but c’mon, is it that hard to recognize quality satire? Is it that hard to realize that music can be ironic and funny and exciting and dead serious at the same time? Quite simply, the Electric Six make music that reflects (and reflects upon) this era of American pop culture more effectively than any other rock and roll band working today. It’s a mess of contradictions; an orgy of depraved excesses and base impulses. The characters in Dick Valentine’s songs are obsessed with sex, but confused by sexuality, and terrified of love and responsibility. They are nihilistic hedonists, and dogmatic narcissists. They live and die by junk. It’s absurd, extreme music for an extremely absurd era.

2. This show wasn’t as insane, rowdy, or unforgettable as their concert on the boat a few months ago, but that’s understandable, since few things can be that transcendentally awesome. The audience was still pretty crazy, and more or less entirely comprised of people who either danced or moshed for the entire duration of the gig.

3. You should see the Electric Six in concert if just to hear Dick Valentine’s banter, which is as ridiculous, funny, and clever as the music itself. My favorite bit from this show was when he was berating his drummer for being a privileged rich asshole from Westchester County in the middle of “Future Is In The Future.” It probably doesn’t sound all that amusing in print, especially since I can’t remember what he was saying well enough to quote it, but believe me, it was great.

Electric Six “It’s Showtime!” – You become an artist because you want to be validated. You want to leave your mark on the world, and to make people come around to appreciating your style and vision, and you want their adulation and approval. And then you get it, and you start to notice that people treat artists like a commodity, or like a service. The way some people act, you begin to wonder if there’s any real qualitative difference in their mind between yourself and a cheeseburger. You begin to resent your audience, but you still want and need their love, so the show must go on. You become more aware of their motivations, and you get cynical: Hey, give ’em what they want! You put on a cape, you give them a little dance, and you embrace everything about you that is a cheeseburger. You’re going to be the best cheeseburger ever! (Click here to buy it from Metropolis Records.)

Tender Forever “Well I Can Take It” – The song starts out with a bit of relationship angst — she’s with someone who backs away from expressing themself for fear of freaking her out, but she needs that person to know that she can handle it. It’s a fairly normal sentiment, but Tender Forever pull it off without making it seem dull or hackneyed. Even better, she moves on from that talking point rather quickly, and the song shifts into more concrete details of their day together, reminding us that these emotional flashpoints almost always happen in the context of otherwise normal days. (Click here to pre-order it from K Records.)

Sons & Daughters “Gilt Complex” – “Gilt Complex” sounds as though it’s been around for decades, but Sons & Daughters stand too firm in the present tense for it feel particularly retro. They play the song with such urgency and determination that it just sort of plows towards you like a freight train, and you’re like a damsel tied to the tracks. (Click here to buy it from Bleep — provided that you live in Europe.)

Elsewhere: The Ten Video Games That Should Be Movies (and the Directors Who Should Make Them) — I co-wrote this list with Lane Brown, and I’m pretty happy with how it came out.

Plumtree “Scott Pilgrim” – Today is a very special day, you guys. Not to get too hyperbolic, but in my little world, the release of Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together is undoubtedly the biggest cultural event of 2007. Since I started with the series around the time volume 3 was released last year, this is the first SP book that I had to wait a year for, and the anticipation has been very refreshing in the sense that aside from maybe a few tv shows, I don’t have much of an opportunity to get into the mindset of an excited fan impatiently waiting for a release date anymore.

Unfortunately, I reallllllly don’t have the time today to do this post as I’d originally planned (I’ve got to get through a lot of paid work if I have any hope to get out of the house and actually buy the book), but to catch up on things, I recommend reading my interview with Scott Pilgrim creator Bryan Lee O’Malley from last year, checking out the full-color preview of Gets It Together on the Vulture, or the excerpts from all four volumes on the official Scott Pilgrim site.

Sonic Youth “I’m Not There” – Most of the selections on the I’m Not There soundtrack find the artists either going out of their way to do an impression of Bob Dylan as they sing his songs (resulting in atrocities like that goddamn Hold Steady track, which manages to make Craig Finn come across as being more punchable and unlistenable than usual), or performing his music on their best behavior, as if they could be struck down by a bolt of lightning if they approached his material with even a touch of playfulness. Both strategies yield strong results on the compilation, but the single best cut is most certainly Sonic Youth’s take on the long-unreleased title track. The band edit and tighten up Dylan’s rambling original, giving the piece a slightly more urgent pace and a more linear progression from verse to chorus.

I’m fairly convinced that this is one of Thurston Moore’s greatest performances as a vocalist, mainly because the song’s lyrics allow him to play up this thing that’s always been in his voice; this sound of a totally cynical guy getting stunned not just by some amazing thing, but also by the fact that he’s so amazed in the first place. The crucial moment here is when Moore sings the words “her smile is contagious, I was born to love her” with this beautiful, confused sincerity that is totally heart-breaking every time I hear it. It hardly matters at all what he felt when he actually sang it, but it sounds like pure sonic truth to me. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Elsewhere: Teenage Girls (And Their Mothers) Line Up To Meet, Potentially Defile Pete Wentz

Katy Rose “Rosemary” – Katy Rose put out her first album when she was 17. It had a pretty good single, and it became a minor hit, though it wasn’t enough to keep her album from being a commercial disappointment. As is usually the case in the harsh world of teen pop, her label ditched her when it became clear that the record buying public wasn’t actually looking for a darker, weirder, more authentic version of Avril Lavigne who primarily wrote about mental illness, sex, and drugs. Whereas a lot of people would feel crushed by this scenario, it seems that Rose was liberated by getting derailed from her career track. She self-released her second album earlier this year, and left to her own devices, her music has become a strange, somewhat unmarketable mix of slick ’00s teen pop and warped ’90s alt-rock. Aside from a gentle, cautiously romantic tune based upon the chords for “Sweet Jane,” the songs on Candy Eyed feel sick and delirious, and mostly come off like fun-house mirror versions of familiar pop forms. “Rosemary,” the album’s best track, sounds like a 4AD-ized version of Britney Spears’ “Toxic,” with Rose’s deadened voice floating through layers of guitar fuzz and synthetic noise, propelled by a jagged, violent electronic rhythm. The chorus hits a gorgeous crest, but its beauty is distorted, creepy, and uncomfortable, especially when Rose’s ghostly moans are contrasted with her own girlish whispers. (Click here to buy it from Katy Rose.)

Cam’ron “Calm Down” – Cam’ron’s new double cd mixtape is inevitably diluted by its sprawl, but at least half of it is comprised of some truly inspired work. At first it’s like “wait, why is he wasting so many of these fantastic songs on a semi-official release?” but then it becomes clear that like a lot of the best mixtapes of the past few years, this relaxed, confident music is the direct result of the freedom that comes when you don’t have to cater to the mass market or worry about the high cost of securing hot producers or clearing top-drawer samples. The best songs on Public Enemy #1 build on the strengths of previous successes like “Oh Boy,” “Get Down,” “I.B.S.,” and his verse on Kayne West’s “Gone,” but move into a looser, more soulful zone that emphasizes the pride, humanity, and playful wit in Cam’s raps. (Click here to get it from Mixtapemonster.)

Elsewhere: I kinda love this post on Carrie Brownstein’s new blog in which she all but says “I FUCKING HATE THE DECEMBERISTS!”

Also: Which albums would you like to see covered in the next wave of 33 1/3 books?

Hank “You Are The Child Of Betrayal” – Though the new EP by Hank may lack the lo-fi “wait, was this recorded live at some crazy party in a basement someplace?” quality of their How To Prosper In The Coming Bad Years album, the songs remain spare, concise, and catchy, with an emphasis on contrasting Cab Williamson’s deep, droll monotone with the expressive voices of his female bandmates. “You Are The Child Of Betrayal” is a grim title, but the song itself is rather optimistic. The singer seems a bit surprised by her own happiness and good fortune, and though she’s calling up her friends to let them know, she’s obviously a bit worried that she’s about to jinx herself. I especially love the way her voice pitches up slightly each time she sings the word “up” (as in “things are looking up!”), conveying an excitement and enthusiasm tempered by doubt and cynicism. (Click here for the Hank MySpace page.)

Elsewhere: I’ve been a bit busy and so I’m coming to this a tiny bit late, but I highly recommend Amanda Petrusich’s interview with PJ Harvey. It’s a really great example of how good the interview format can be when the writer steps out of the standard talking points, has some interesting ideas of her own, and engages with the subject as something more than a celebrity promoting a new product. It’s always so much better when the interviewer is asking the subject questions and they genuinely want to know the answers, you know? At certain points in this piece, it seems like Amanda is searching for some good advice on the topic of writing in general, and she totally gets it.

Also: Joel Turnipseed interviews Jennifer Love Hewitt and “noted information liberator” Cory Doctorow.

ESG “Six Pack (Original Version)” – Pretty much every ESG song is dominated by a stark bass groove and nimble percussion, but “Six Pack” is one of the few to fill its abundant negative space with a bit of guitar. The track still feels extremely loose, and there’s no mistaking the fact that the rhythm section is the main attraction in the piece, but the tingling, distant notes seem to drizzle down like trebly raindrops, and serve to echo the restlessness and subdued melancholy expressed in the song’s lyrics. (Click here to buy it from Soul Jazz.)

Michael Showalter “The Apartment” – High school poetry is pretty much always good for a laugh, especially when the writer is attempting to make the reader believe that their work is Serious and Mature, largely by way of aping the tone of Important Writing without much understanding of its subtleties, flaws, or its context in either the past or the present. There’s always humor to be found in clueless pomposity, but there’s a special, unmistakable innocence to terrible high school poetry, mainly because its writers are so earnest and eager that they fail to notice that they are totally inept at conning anyone besides themselves. In this clip from his first comedy album, Michael Showalter revisits an extremely pretentious poem that he wrote for his high school literary magazine. The gritty observations in “The Apartment Building” may be laughably inauthentic, but there’s nothing phony about the blend of bemusement, self-deprecation, and outright shame in his voice when he reads the poem’s most cringe-inducing lines. (Click here to pre-order it from JDub.)

Spektrum “Cedar (Yamwho Mix)” – The original version of “Cedar” is a slow-burning banger that delays but does not deny the full intensity of the pleasure in its chorus. It’s all a piece with its lyrics, which connect and conflate physical/sexual exertion and spiritual communion. The Yamwho remix from the newly released Death at the Gymkhana Club downplays the stark contrast and rhythmic tension in the original in favor of a track that pushes a sound of luxury and sensual overload to such an exaggerated extreme that I occasionally feel like I’m far too dumpy and poor to be listening to something like this. (Click here to buy it from Bleep.)

Elsewhere: Starting today, I will be filling for Dan Kois on New York Magazine’s Vulture blog for the rest of this month. This blog will continue along with it, but forgive me if my brain starts to liquify sometime around the middle of November.

Also: Fluxblog was nominated for Best Music Blog in the 2007 Weblog Awards.

The Fiery Furnaces @ Hiro Ballroom 11/3/2007
The Philadelphia Grand Jury / Navy Nurse / My Egyptian Grammar / Evergreen / Duplexes of the Dead / Automatic Husband / Ex-Guru / Black-Hearted Boy / Bitter Tea / Right By Conquest / A Candy Maker’s Knife In My Handbag /48-23 22nd Street / Seven Silver Curses / Slavin’ Away / Japanese Slippers / Widow City / Restorative Beer / Clear Signal To Cairo / Inca Rag (incomplete, Eleanor can’t recall the words) / Whistle Rhapsody / Blueberry Boat / My Dog Was Lost But Now He’s Found / Single Again (with a bit of Smelling Cigarettes) / Don’t Dance Her Down

The Fiery Furnaces “Duplexes of the Dead / Automatic Husband / Ex-Guru (Live on KCRW)” – Remember a couple months ago when I was really let down by that terrible Fiery Furnaces concert in Astoria where they basically spent an hour or so ruthlessly butchering their own material? You know how I was all “man, they really need to get back to actually playing the songs instead of trying to shoehorn them into entirely different pieces of music”? Well, I got my wish.

The current incarnation of the band is mostly the same (Eleanor on vocals, Matthew on keyboards, Jason Loewenstein on bass, and Bob D’Amico on drums), but this tour marks the first time since around Gallowsbird’s Bark that the group has performed in a relatively conventional manner, i.e., adapting the songs from the new album to streamlined live arrangements (keyboard/bass/drums) without warping their structure or melodies. For the first time since the final stages of the hard rock tour for Bitter Tea, it seemed as though the Friedbergers actually enjoyed performing their own songs, and weren’t trying to turn them into something else. Next to the Blueberry Boat medley show at Webster Hall in early 2005, this was the best set I’ve ever seen the Furnaces play, and a lot of that had to do with the fact that the band opted to play up its strengths — Matthew’s skill with keyboards, the subtleties of Eleanor’s voice, the fluid melodies of the Widow City songs — rather than indulge in a passive-aggressive game with the audience. They definitely took liberties with the older material, but it was never at the expense of the tunes. The medley of Rehearsing My Choir songs in the middle of the set was a revelation, with the band slipping into Dave Brubeck-ish jazzy versions that highlighted an elegance in the material that was buried beneath the deliberate ramshackle quality of the original studio recordings.

If you’d like to actually hear this concert, the lovely man who runs the NYCtaper site recorded it and has it up on his site right now in flac format. It’s kind of a hassle to decode those flac files, but it’s totally worth it. If you would like to hear the remainder of that KCRW studio session in the always delightful and convenient mp3 format, I refer you to The Smudge of Ashen Fluff.

Pit er Pat “Skeletons” – Though a majority of my taste in music is fairly well documented on this site over the years, there’s certain things that fall through the cracks, either because I feel that it’d be boring for you if I were to start writing at length about finally grasping the greatness of Led Zeppelin at the age of 26, or I simply don’t have much to say about it, which is the case for pretty much any of the vintage Studio One and Trojan reggae compilations that I have on my shelf. When I put that music on, I’m not thinking about it, and that’s kinda the point. It’s all feeling — most often a cozy, warm feeling — and though it’s lovely to hear while reading or falling asleep, it’d be torturous for me if I tried to write about it at length.

Before having seen this show on Saturday night, I’d never really heard Pit er Pat, so I had no idea what to expect from them. I mean, I knew they were on Thrill Jockey, and that’s something of a hint, but I wasn’t quite ready to be blown away by this ridiculously talented trio who picked up elements from reggae, jazz, indie rock, and Middle Eastern and Mediterranean music and transformed into something that was simultaneously comfortable and a bit alien. I was especially knocked out by their second song, a longish instrumental that married a elaborate, winding guitar melody to a dubby, in-the-womb bass line straight out of classic Studio One. (Seriously, it sounded VERY familiar.)

Unfortunately, it seems as though a majority of the songs that the band played are new, and that their available studio recordings are not quite on the level of this show. This isn’t to say that they aren’t good — the tracks on their 2006 record Pyramids lean heavier on jazz and indie, and have a different sort of charm for the most part — but believe me, I’m extremely eager to hear how their next record will turn out, and I’m hopeful that it will turn up sometime in 2008. (Click here to buy it from Thrill Jockey.)

Holy Ghost! “Hold On” – This is city music. Specifically, this is New York City music. Holy Ghost! don’t even try to hide that in the lyrics. It’d be like putting a rubber George W Bush mask on a large house cat and trying to fool a visiting dignitary that it was, in fact, the president of the United States. (I CAN HAS EXEKUTIVE POWERZ?) This is smoothed out, urban disco angst, drawing heavily from the past, but lustfully ogling the future. We always build new stuff on top of history here; there’s only so much space. We can always make new history, and at the end of time, the entire city can be like a giant layer cake of cultural significance. (Click here to buy the mp3 release from Bleep and here to buy the 12″ from Midheaven.)

T2 featuring Jodie “Heartbroken (Radio Edit)” – T2’s track is effervescent and immediately engaging, but it wouldn’t work quite as well without Jodie’s girlish, slightly wounded vocal performance. This is about a young sort of heartbreak, something that stings because it’s lacking in context, and so minor consequences seem enormous. There’s some awareness of that in her voice, but she conveys too much in-the-moment angst for it to come off like emotional nostalgia. (Though that’s exactly how we’re supposed to respond to it.) Her voice skips over T2’s bouncy bass and beats like it’s a jump rope, and the coy playfulness keeps the track from falling too deep into melancholy. (Click here for the T2 MySpace page.)

Elsewhere: How bad can comic books get? REALLLLLLLLLLLY BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD.

The B-52’s @ Roseland Ballroom 10/31/2007
Party Out Of Bounds / Mesopotamia / Pump / Private Idaho / Ultraviolet / Give Me Back My Man / Strobe Light / Julia of the Spirits / Roam / Funplex / Hot Corner / Channel Z / Keep This Party Going / Love Shack // Planet Claire / Rock Lobster / Love in the Year 3000

I promise you that the fact that I posted about both the B-52’s and the Rapture just recently was a total coincidence — I didn’t even know that this show was happening til the morning I wrote up that remix of “The Sound.” It’s just a really lucky thing for me given that I just happened to be listening to the B-52’s quite a bit lately, apropos of nothing at all.

The B-52’s are about as rad as you might imagine in person. Sure, they’re older now and can’t quite muster the full-on energy on display in footage of them in their prime, but they still bring it hard. It should come as no surprise that they were at their best on the seven new songs in the set, all of which were instantly enjoyable and very B-52’s-ish without sounding as though they’ve been locked in a time capsule and hidden away from the influence of the past twenty years of pop music. Clearly they have a lot of confidence in the new material, or at least enough for unheard material to take up nearly half of last night’s set, squeezing out classics like “Dance This Mess Around,” “52 Girls,” “Hero Worship,” and “Quiche Lorraine.” The oldies that were performed were just as fun as I’d hoped, though “Love Shack” was a tiny bit disappointing with its slightly slowed-down arrangement.

The B-52’s “Give Me Back My Man” – This song, though — wow! Understandably, they weren’t able to recreate the particular brittle, hollow sound of the original studio recording that I love so much, but the wounded feeling of song was intensified by the thicker sound of the live guitar, and a bold vocal performance by Cindy Wilson that made the most of the fact that her voice is not nearly as girlish as it was back in 1980. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

The Rapture @ Roseland Ballroom 10/31/2007
Don Gon Do It / Down For So Long / Get Myself Into It / Sister Savior / The Devil / Piece of the People We Love / Whoo! Alright – Yeah… Uh Huh / House of Jealous Lovers / First Gear / Olio

The Rapture “Pieces of the People We Love (Live in SoHo 2006)” – Sure, the audience may have been a lot more nuts for their show at Webster Hall almost exactly a year ago, but this was definitely the best performance by the Rapture that I’ve witnessed. It was the sort of thing where you just have to be in awe of how completely they control those songs, and how much joy and effort they put into them even though they’ve been playing them over and over for the past year or two. All that, and the sound was fantastic, and LOUD. It’s become pretty obvious to me that the band deliberately mix the drums much louder than what would be considered normal, and the effect is very powerful and visceral, though it’s also potentially quite dangerous to the hearing of anyone in the audience. (My ears are still ringing and I was in the middle of the hall.) (Click here to buy the original version from Amazon, and here to buy the full session from iTunes.)

Feu Thérèse “Nada” – Sometimes a language barrier can be a good thing. Without understanding the bit of French being sung at the start of this moonlit ballad, the song’s mysterious, romantic quality is intensified considerably. When the piece shifts into a wordless chant, it becomes even more magical, and the gorgeous textures of the bass, keyboards, and percussion take center stage until it all just sort of evaporates into the night. (Click here to buy it from Constellation.)

Poni Hoax “Antibodies (To The Bones edit)” – There are other mixes of “Antibodies,” but this is only one you really need because it retains the basic shape, vocal performance, and rhythm of the original version while trimming out the fat from its arrangement. Without getting clogged up with funk guitar and redundant keyboards, the track comes off as far more spooky and decadent. The spareness suits the throbbing bass line, and the grandeur and elegance of the piano and synthetic strings on the chorus is increased tenfold. (Click here to buy it from Juno.)

White Magic “Very Late” – Her piano notes may rise and fall throughout this song, but Mira Billotte’s voice seems eerily calm, still, and matter-of-fact. She’s carrying a great emotional weight, but she underplays it, reflecting the stoicism of a person who can’t bear to give too much away but still needs to express something, anything. “Very Late” takes place within a relatively quiet moment, but she hints at drama in the subtext of her words, and the gravity of her vocal delivery. (Click here to buy it from Drag City.)

Sarah Blasko “For You” – From the beginning to the end, “For You” is dominated by the slow hum of an exceptionally frigid synthesizer tone. Even as the song progresses, it can never quite shake off the desolation and loneliness implied by that incessant buzz, and so when Blasko sings about traveling across the ocean for someone, it’s hard not to imagine her swimming across a vast expanse of icy water, and falling still in the darkest, emptiest spot between two continents. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Velella Velella “Flight Cub” – Velella Velella are the musical spawn of Warp, Mo Wax, and Quannum; a live funk band who arrive at the genre via a generation of crate-digging DJs and electronic musicians sampling, interpolating, and mimicking the grooves of old records. Rather than freak out about authenticity, the band carries on with the new aesthetic, and rightfully so — the reason any of us ever cared about the likes of DJ Shadow, Squarepusher, Luke Vibert et al in the first place was that there was a particular sound to those records that was fundamentally different from the artist’s source material. Whereas it seems that most people view late 90s downbeat electronica as an aesthetic cul de sac or a form of musical necromancy, Velella Velella seem intent on using the previous generation’s manipulation and recontextualization of classic funk recordings as a blueprint for a new sort of music that never had to be specific to artists dependent on laptops, samplers, and turntables.

Most of the elements in the arrangement of “Flight Cub” seem to be floating around, and though the bass line seems to be the track’s center of gravity, even that part feels as though it is hovering just above the ground. Despite its calm, loose feeling, the song is rather tightly composed, with its duet vocals, smooth melodies, and relaxing textures flowing up and through the piece with the subtlety and grace of an expertly performed magic trick.(Click here for the official Velella Velella site.)

Elsewhere: Erik Bryan offers some erroneous biographical info about Sissy Wish on the Morning News:

Rocketing to stardom in the mid-’50s by meat magnate, famed producer, and then-husband Leland “Porks” McLaughlin, Sissy Wish (born Sally Hope) was able to hide her socially unsettling condition (she was born without a face) from all but her closest friends and family until an ill-advised performance on The Steve Allen Show in 1959 where she was set to perform her hit song, “Beauties Never Die,” but could not due to an ensuing riot after Allen himself declared her the “worst abomination a vengeful God could muster.” She proves her song’s rule by celebrating her 70th birthday this year.

Also: In light of discovering the epidemiological term “John Henryism,” Jack Feerick wonders: What other previously unidentified conditions might be found within the bars of our folk and pop songs?

And: This is why I love Jezebel and hate American Apparel.

The Rapture “The Sound (Ben Trucker’s Back To 95 Mix)” – Before I get into the remix, I need to mention straight away that I think the original album version of “The Sound” is one of the most perfectly arranged, recorded, and mixed songs of the past few years. Really, all of Pieces of the People We Love sounds amazing, but “The Sound” is the song where the Rapture’s intelligence about their craft, skill level, and knack for working with top-notch producers and engineers yield a track that seems to burst forth from the speakers and attack the listener’s central nervous system. It’s bold, visceral, and dynamic in a way that makes me wonder why it seems like everyone else is recording their albums in 2D and black and white.

On top of all that, Matt Safer’s lyrics are kinda brilliant. Most of the words come from the perspective of label people and producers, all of whom are doing their best to help his band make an album, even if they can sometimes seem silly or condescending. Though that may seem like a recipe for irksome petulance, “The Sound” is remarkably even-handed and mature. There are moments of parody, frustration, and excitement, but no one gets demonized for making the group scrap old sessions, rework material, and work overtime to develop potential hits. If anything, Safer seems grateful for being pushed harder, and pleased with the results. He ought to be.

Ben Trucker’s remix seamlessly mixes the most crucial aspects of the song — Safer’s vocals and hooks, the particular sound of the processed guitars — and seamlessly folds it into a straight-up house banger that would be compelling all on its own. The song can’t help but toss you around, but Trucker has smoothed it out, and made it less aggressive without losing much of the adrenaline. (Click here to buy the original version from Amazon, and here for the Throne of Blood MySpace page. People in NYC should note that the Rapture are playing a show with the B-52s next Wednesday at Roseland. OMGWTF, right?)

Bonde Do Role “Solta O Frango (CRSTBL Rmx)” – Not unlike Ben Trucker’s Rapture remix, CRSTBL leaves the vocal hooks of Bonde Do Role’s original completely intact, and switches out their dense beats for a sparse rhythm that props up a sharp keyboard riff that serves to sweeten up their melodies. It’s not as though they weren’t already plenty sweet — CRSTBL’s remix comes off a bit like pouring a cup of syrup on a bowl of Skittles. (Click here to buy the original version from Amazon, or here for CRSTBL’s MySpace page.)

Elsewhere: My final Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site with mp3s from the Fiery Furnaces, White Williams, and the Junior League.

Also: Prepare to get [oRiFIcE]fReAk3d by Criss Angel.

The New Pornographers @ Webster Hall 10/24/2007
All The Things That Go To Make Heaven and Earth / Use It / Myriad Harbor / Electric Version / All The Old Showstoppers / Jackie Dressed In Cobras / Challengers / The Laws Have Changed / The Spirit Of Giving / My Rights Versus Yours / Mass Romantic / Adventures In Solitude / Testament To Youth In Verse / Unguided / Twin Cinema / Go Places / Sing Me Spanish Techno / The Bleeding Heart Show // Jackie / From Blown Speakers / Slow Descent Into Alcoholism /// Streets Of Fire / Letter From An Occupant

The New Pornographers “Adventures In Solitude” (MPR Session, 10/17/2007) – My initial reaction to Challengers was something a little bit like this, but within a couple weeks and over the course of the past few months, my estimation of the record has grown considerably. I’m not ever going to love it as much as their first three albums, but I don’t think that was ever going to be an option given that the songs on those records are inextricably tied to a lot of happy memories and key moments from the past seven years of my life. I can’t expect that group to be frozen in amber, stuck in that moment for me, and if they don’t change, I don’t think I would have as much use for them beyond nostalgia.

A crucial realization that I had while watching them play last night was that the songs I got the most out of were new favorites like “Myriad Harbor,” “All The Old Showstoppers,” and “Adventures In Solitude,” and not as much the oldies burdened with my sentimental baggage — “The Laws Have Changed,” “Sing Me Spanish Techno,” “Twin Cinema,” “Letter From An Occupant.” Don’t get me wrong, I loved the hell out of them, but it more like muscle memory than a direct emotional response. Dan Bejar singing “all I ever wanted help with WAS YOU!” in “Myriad Harbor” and Kathryn Calder’s lead vocal on the second half of “Adventures In Solitude” moves me in the 2007s the way “I refused my call, pushing my lazy sails into the blue flame” hit me in 2005, and “form a line to the throne!” was something worth shouting in 2003.

(It’s worth noting that just as on Challengers, Bejar and Calder totally stole this show from Carl and Neko. As they become more confident and distinct, the overall quality of the band improves. At this point in time, I think Calder nearly rivals Case as a vocalist, and she’s still so young!)

I think that first freak-out moment upon hearing Challengers had little to do with the music, and everything with the perception of what the band, and Carl Newman in particular, seemed to be doing. For one thing, there was a worry that they’d moved away from something they did better than any of their contemporaries — bombastic super-charged pop rock — in favor of something softer and limper in an attempt to chase the commercial success enjoyed by the Shins. Also, there was a sense of “oh no, they are trying to be mature!,” which often doesn’t work out for people, mainly because they, well, aren’t actually mature songwriters.

The reality of Challengers is that band actually can pull this stuff off, and it’s a fairly organic progression from what they were doing on Twin Cinema. I think that Newman certainly has some healthy ambition and a desire to sell some records, but I think this is sincere music that flows naturally from his current taste and personal life, not to mention the considerable skill level of his band. The music isn’t even all that different from what came before it — even the gentlest, prettiest numbers hit dramatic crescendos, and the group’s knack for harmony is never wasted. (Click here to buy Challengers and the other three New Pornographers albums from Matador.)

Elsewhere: For those of you who enjoyed the comments box from yesterday’s post, Eric Harvey has written a very intelligent essay about the culture of Oink.