Archive for 2007

The Victorian English Gentlemens Club “La Mer” – Not a Debussy cover! It’s a punk song, and a fine example of how no one on earth can convey disaffected contempt better than female British punk rockers. The lead singer on this track sounds as though her voice has been filed down into a blunt shiv, and it stabs the deepest when she’s not even forming words — da, da da, da da, da da da! Come to think of it, everything in the song seems to either made of sharp edges, or set at severe angles. (Click here to buy it from Norman Records.)

Elsewhere: My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site with mp3s from Lee Perry, Caroline Peyton, and the Michael Garrick Trio.

Also: “There are a handful of ancient, immutable laws, written in stardust across the heavens, and one of them is that if you find yourself dating a porn star, you don’t cut and run at the first sign of trouble. No: you dig in, do the heavy lifting, and make the relationship work.”

Studio “Self Service” – “You do it to yourself, you do, you and no one else.” That’s the gist of this song, but in context, it seems like a lot of projection. The singer seems rather self-absorbed, and the “you” only seems to exist in relationship to himself, as though they were just a body orbiting his position. The sleekness of the track only emphasizes that impression — it’s so shiny and perfect that it seems like he’s wearing a suit made of mirrors. (Click here to buy it from Information.)

The Chemical Brothers “We Are The Night” – Why am I surprised that I like so much of the new Chemical Brothers album? They’ve always been pretty good, and besides that whole “electronica is going to take over music!” thing was ten years ago, and it’s not as though they were the ones going around proclaiming that they were going to kill/replace rock and roll or remake the mainstream. They were simply a couple guys who were slightly ahead of the curve, and now people can ride their coattails and be considered modern or cutting edge. Basement Jaxx have their cult, Daft Punk have their hits sampled by hip hop stars, and they somehow get lumped in with the likes of the Prodigy. It’s just not fair, especially when they can make this sort of sinister space groove sound sorta timeless and totally effortless. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Elsewhere: My review of Steve Buscemi’s new film Interview is up on The Movie Binge.

Early Impressions Of The Fiery Furnaces’ Widow City

The Fiery Furnaces “Navy Nurse”

1. I am so tired of trying to either turn other people on to the Fiery Furnaces, or defending them from those who find them difficult or annoying or overly precious. I get why people don’t like them, I really do. Once in a while they totally aggravate me too, like when they play shows and deliberately butcher their own exquisitely crafted material for no reason other than to be contrary. But seriously, if you hate this band, or have no desire to put in the effort required to get the most out of their albums, I DO NOT CARE. Go enjoy whatever it is that you enjoy in whatever way that you want to enjoy it, and I’ll look the other way.

2. The thing is, the Fiery Furnaces aren’t that difficult. Every song they’ve ever done is basically a pop tune, and most of them include at least one strong hook, if not several. The problem of the Furnaces is that their work tends to be incredibly dense, and the albums often feel like the musical equivalent of enormous, intimidating Russian novels. (EP is more like a pocket-sized collection of short stories, and so it’s not exactly shocking that most people find that record to be the most accessible despite being an odds-and-sods compilation.) The songs generally work as discrete compositions, but every album is designed as a piece, so it can be hard to separate the twists and turns of the individual songs while trying to get a sense of the big picture. I prefer to navigate small portions at a time, getting to know some songs better before attempting to work out the appeal of trickier sections. That strategy has already worked out fairly well vis-a-vis Widow City — the first side was instantly appealing and has an exceptional flow, but the second half is more an uphill climb with its occasionally craggy rhythms and languorous melodies. My initial impression was that the album would have been perfect if it had ended with “Navy Nurse,” but the charms of Side B are slowly revealing themselves over listening sessions concentrated on that part of the sequence.

3. Widow City is an important record in the Fiery Furnaces discography because unlike its predecessors, it is not an attempt to stake out new aesthetic ground, but rather a consolidation of their singular style. At this point, it is abundantly clear what a Fiery Furnaces melody or song structure is like, and we know all of Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger’s ticks and quirks. They hardly exist in a vacuum — a lot of their music makes deliberate reference to other songs and styles in the interest of serving their narratives — but no one else on the planet sounds anything like them.

That said, they seemed slightly uncomfortable on their last two albums, as though they were trying too hard to avoid being a part of the indie rock mainstream and doing whatever they could to make the songs “interesting” as Matthew has put it in some interviews. This usually means that he goes way overboard in the studio, slapping on far too many overdubs, or insisting on arrangements that either distract from or nearly derail the most attractive elements of his songs. (The most egregious example of this are the deliberately obnoxious versions of “Benton Harbor Blues” and “Nevers” that appear on Bitter Tea before the infinitely superior “normal” takes tacked on at the end.)

The arrangements on Widow City are considerably more refined and streamlined, resulting in an album that feels lighter and more fluid than its predecessors. The songs on the first side in particular have an airy sound — the floating riff at the start of “The Philadelphia Grand Jury,” the weightless acoustic guitars of “Duplexes of the Dead,” the delirious quasi-funk of “My Egyptian Grammar.” This is all very reassuring. I was worried that Matthew would continue to embrace excess as an essential component of his style, but it seems that he’s more interested in telling his stories with greater craft and clarity.

4. “Duplexes of the Dead,” “Automatic Husband,” and “Ex-Guru” are actually one long piece, a set of distinct songs that form a suite not unlike “Chief Inspector Blancheflower” or “Mason City” from Blueberry Boat. So why are they split into three tracks and given individual titles? I suppose it might have to do with the lyrics, but I haven’t really put a lot of time into paying attention to those just yet. Maybe it’s a desire to make the piece more accessible, at least on a superficial level? All three are rather excellent, most especially “Duplexes,” but they sound absurd on their own — they end abruptly just as you need to feel them shift into the next section.

5. The Who-isms of the previous Fiery Furnaces albums seem to have been replaced by nods to Led Zeppelin throughout Widow City. Most obviously, the riffs of “Navy Nurse” deliberately recall Jimmy Page on “The Ocean,” but many of the lighter moments emulate the crisp stomp of John Bonham or the sleek yet ornate arrangements of John Paul Jones.

6. Eleanor Friedberger’s voice hasn’t changed all that much — she always seems unflappable and self-possessed, but perhaps now, a bit more so? Weirdly, her performances on Widow City tend towards a greater dynamic and emotional range, not to mention some seriously impressive feats of diction, but there seems to be a greater distance between Eleanor and the lyrics. There was a lot of sentimentality in her characters on Rehearsing My Choir and Bitter Tea, but her roles on this album are more along the lines of the adventurers of Blueberry Boat and Gallowsbird’s Bark.

Neko Case “Buckets Of Rain (Live In Austin)” – I saw Neko Case play a free show in Central Park on Friday night, and it was lovely. I haven’t spent very much time with Neko’s solo material, mainly because I’ve spent a lot of time thinking of her as being best-suited to being a weapon in Carl Newman’s pop arsenal, which I admit is a very ridiculous notion given her talent as a vocalist. The show made one thing very clear — I’d be happy to hear Neko Case sing just about anything. Her originals ranged between “quite good” and “just okay,” but the simple fact that she was singing made gave them all a significant boost, most especially this Bob Dylan cover that came towards the end of the main set. I could only half-remember “Buckets of Rain” — I knew I knew the song, but I was thoroughly stunned by Neko’s version, and suddenly quite desperate to find a recording. Luckily that wasn’t too hard. There’s a studio recording available, but despite including a very nice piano solo, it’s not quite as simple and gorgeous as this take from her live album, which has more or less the same arrangement as the show in Central Park. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Michael Garrick Trio “Sketches Of Israel” – As I listen to this song, and as I write these words, it is raining in New York City. It’s dark and cool and the rain is coming down in heavy diagonal streams, hitting the ground with an even force that produces a perfect ambient hum of constant light percussion. I feel like I could just go back to sleep, or lie down on my couch and watch something stupid on television all morning, like a sick day from school. This music exacerbates the feeling with its gentle, fragile rhythm and slow, delicate melodies. It’s all in the details — the brief, soft series of staccato notes that indicate a moment of hesitation at the 1:03 mark, the way the trebly piano notes seem to burst into sparks around 2:36, and the way the bass solo pulls the composition closer to the earth near the end of the composition. (Click here to buy it from Trunk Records.)

Elsewhere: More discography blogs are popping up, including Solar Prestige a Gammon (Elton John), I Can’t Sing It Strong Enough (Pavement), Spring Sprang Sprung (T-Pain), Music From The Bachelor’s Den (Pulp).

Electric Six @ The Temptress (A BOAT!!!) 7/19/2007
I Buy The Drugs / Gay Bar / Feed My Fuckin’ Habit / Dance Epidemic / I’m The Bomb / Mr. Woman / Bite Me / Night Vision / Infected Girls / Rock and Roll Evacuation / She’s White / Pulling The Plug On The Party / Improper Dancing / Danger! High Voltage / Future Is In The Future / Germans In Mexico / Dance Commander / Synthesizer // Naked Pictures

Electric Six “Night Vision” – Yeah, that’s right. I saw the Electric Six play on a boat, and it was awesome. It was one of the most intense concert experiences I’ve ever had — the interior of the boat is kinda cramped, but 75% of the people on board were dancing and moshing and crowd surfing non-stop. You’d think it was pretty crazy, and then they’d do something like play “Danger! High Voltage” and it’d reach a new level of insanity. People who were there with me who had seen the band several times in the past told me that they had never seen an audience get that wild for them, so maybe it had something to do with the boat? Like, I guess you can’t get wishy washy if you’ve spent $30 to see a party band rock out on a cruise.

This was certainly the most fun I’ve ever had at a show where I couldn’t actually see the band. The sight lines on the boat are horrendous — you really can’t see anything unless you’re in the first two rows — so you either danced, or went and hung out on the deck. Win/win, basically. In a way, I’m glad that I couldn’t see Dick Valentine. His appearance is a little bit disconcerting, and I guess I prefer to picture some burly guy with a mustache whenever I hear his voice.

Also, a lesson learned: If you and your friends decide to arrive at a concert on a boat wearing matching paper top hats, everyone is going to want to talk to you.

(Click here to buy it from Amazon, and here to find out more about other Rocks Off concert cruises.)

The Cansecos “Juiced – Side B (excerpt)” – The Cansecos have the melodic style, energy, and fresh-faced charm of the United State of Electronica, but they dial down the day-glo in favor of a relatively chilled-out, classy piano-and-strings disco sound. The piano in this excerpt from a version of their forthcoming album is absolutely gorgeous — the tone sparkles like a diamond whether the chords are being pounded out rhythmically, or trickling out in quick, zippy solos. The bass bubbles underneath, and the percussion settles into a crisp, understated disco beat that leaves plenty of negative space in the composition for the chords to resonate. (Click here for the official Cansecos website.)

John Vanderslice “Tablespoon Of Codeine” – The centerpiece of John Vanderslice’s new album also includes a lovely, reverbed piano part, but its role in the song is very different. The song is mainly carried by a subtly shifting electronic drum pattern and Vanderslice’s plaintive lead vocal, and the piano cuts through the piece like a sharp diagonal line that crisscrosses with icy synthesizer drones. It’s an excellent composition, evoking a paranoia that slowly mutates into bitterness and impotent anger. (Click here to buy it from Barsuk.)

Elsewhere: My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site with mp3s from Scharpling & Wurster, Patton Oswalt, and Paul F. Tompkins.

Justice “D.V.N.O.” – Aside from having the sort of punch and power of a typical Justice track, “D.V.N.O.” plays around with the implied dimensions of a pop song. The “surface” of the song seems to shift from moment to moment, giving the listener the impression that they are moving through and around its “planes,” and occasionally hearing the song from reverse and sideways perspectives. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Jurgen Paape + Boy Schaufler “We Love” – The beat bops with a small measure of nervous energy, but not enough to tip the emotional baseline of the track away from the cautious enthusiasm of the vocal. The effect is cool and dreamy, owning up to its pleasure and romance while backing away from it just enough to be self-aware about every thought and movement. (Click here to buy it from Kompakt.)

Elsewhere: Hau Hsu on LCD Soundsystem’s “All My Friends.” Best bit:

Things begin well enough—”We set controls for the heart of the sun,” Murphy sings, a tiny lift in his voice. But eventually the moment evaporates (as it must), and life settles into a dreaded plainness. One day you arise from bed, contemplate your job, apartment, and the person next to you, and wonder where the time has gone. Friends are off somewhere else—it is always somewhere more fun—and you think about how great it would be to see them all at once. The lyrics are delivered in a Didion-like calm: We dance and do drugs, in lieu of falling apart.

And: Todd Serencha on One To Another. He has a real gift for recapping a plot:

When Pierre goes missing on the motorbike he bought with his orgy-money, and eventually turns up beaten to death, Lucie becomes a determined, slutty Nancy Drew on a quest to fuck her way to the truth, all the while offering up such quintessentially French musings like “deprived of youth, man becomes accomplice to his own death.” A broad array of rightwing boogeymen are offered as suspects, including secretive old queens, nihilistic young rough trade, fag-bashing neo-nazis, thieving gypsies, sister-protecting Algerians. Lucie tries to coerce a pre-mature ejaculating police detective and the aforementioned mystic retard into helping her solve the mystery, but hot snatch freely given can only do so much.

I didn’t see every artist at the festival, and I didn’t see all of most of the sets that I saw, but here are my thoughts, impressions, observations, etc.

Slint – Spiderland was more of a background thing for me, though I made sure to pay close attention to “Good Morning, Captain,” which I’ve always loved. I was standing at a position that allowed me to see both the band and the audience, and so when the band hit the climax, I could see all these people in the front of the crowd screaming “I missed you!” along with Brian McMahan, which was pretty awesome.

GZA “Swordsman” – GZA’s performance of Liquid Swords was slightly shambling in the way that most rap concerts can be, but despite the gaffs of his DJ and non-rapping members of his entourage (ie, the white guys on stage), he was characteristically focused, intense, and verbally nimble. Unshockingly, my favorite songs from the album were the highlights — the grim rocksteady of the title track, the conspiratorial “Living In The World Today,” and most especially the bitter melancholy of “Swordsman.” After he finished the album, he threw in “Crash Your Crew” from Beneath The Surface, plus “Reunited,” “Triumph,” and “Shimmy Shimmy Ya.” Ghostface did the same thing both times I saw him perform last year, so this makes me wonder if there’s a mandate from the RZA that all Wu shows must include those songs no matter who is on stage. (Click here to buy it from Amazon. Shouldn’t this album be on midprice by now?)

Sonic Youth – I’m going to come back to this at the end of the month because I’ll be seeing them perform Daydream Nation again in NYC, but a few things: I went into this most excited about all the songs from the record that I had never seen before in concert, and while those were all totally amazing, I had the most intense emotional response to “Eric’s Trip,” which I’d seen six times before, and “Jams Run Free,” which was an unexpected surprise in the encore. (The other two encores were the considerably less exciting “Incinerate” and “Reena.”) In the best way, this show wasn’t about nostalgia for me — it was more about the way a song I’ve known for 13 years has taken on a brand new meaning for me, and my sentimental bond with one of their most recent compositions. Also, I totally made the right call by getting up to the front of the audience for this set. People were flipping out, and it allowed me to be a lot less self-conscious than I would have been if I were around most anyone else.

Grizzly Bear – I only caught about 30% of their set, but I was pleasantly surprised despite my general indifference to their music. That said, they seemed to cycle between really good ideas and very drab moments.

Beach House – If I didn’t see them with my own eyes, I’m not sure if I would have noticed they were there. They were so quiet and ethereal that their music just seemed to float out with the breeze.

Battles – I wanted to see “Atlas,” but I skipped out on their set early due to distraction and boredom. Maybe some other time.

Fujiya and Miyagi – Not bad, marred by weak sound. I was talking to William Bowers through some of this set, and we realized how fun it can be to sing bits of other songs that steal the groove from “Hallogallo”– “Spiders (Kidsmoke),” “Be Sure To Loop,” “Jenny Ondioline” — over their little motorik tunes. Also, there was another song in their set over which you could sing most any INXS hit.

Mastodon – Yeah, I’m just not ever going to get into this stuff.

Clipse “Keys Open Doors” – Clipse were by far the highlight of the otherwise kinda blah second day of the festival. The duo were incredibly sharp and charismatic, and their set came across like the work of men who weren’t about to settle for being just okay. That’s kinda the core of their appeal — they go above and beyond in terms of effort and quality control, and care deeply about their craft in a way that resonates with me far more than a lot of other more mainstream rappers who act as though their starpower is a fait accompli instead of the foundation on which they build a catalog of airtight songs. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Cat Power & the Dirty Delta Blues Band – I feel like a creep for saying this, but I liked Chan Marshall so much more before she cleaned up and started making brunch music. This set could barely hold my attention, though I should say that I was mildly alarmed by the way her new arrangement for “Satisfaction” seems to horribly misunderstand the reason why the one from The Covers Record was so fantastic in the first place.

Yoko Ono – A lot of people hated her set and left early. I had to leave early too, but I promise that it had nothing to do with Yoko. The intro with the flashlights was a bit tedious, but once she got going, it was pretty groovy and cool. I think I heard her doing “Walking On Thin Ice” from the El platform.

Deerhunter @ Pitchfork Music Festival 7/15/2007
Cryptograms / Wash Off / Dr. Glass / Spring Hall Convert / Hazel Street / Strange Lights (with guys from Grizzly Bear)

Deerhunter were quite good, but more than a little bit out of their element. They seemed even more frail and ethereal than usual, which wasn’t such a bad thing, though the most aggressive moments of the first two songs were certainly the highlights of the set. I’ve been trying to figure out who Bradford Cox reminds me of, and I think I’ve got it — he’s like a cross between Marilyn Manson and Courtney Love. If you doubt me, I refer you to this interview on Pitchfork in which Cox desperately tries to get Stephen Malkmus to talk about gay stuff because he’s basically a narcissist with a one-track mind.

Brightblack Morning Light “Star Blanket River Child” – Brightblack Morning Light’s album came to me at a time when I was definitely not interested in hearing anything quite so mellow, but it’s grown on me a lot in recent weeks. Their set at the festival didn’t seem to include anything from the record, though I did skip out after 20 minutes or so of something that sounded a bit like Herbie Hancock scoring a nature documentary. (Click here to buy it from Insound.)

Junior Boys – I really didn’t expect anything from the Junior Boys other than laptops and some passive droning, but they really stepped up and put on a strong show, mostly thanks to their ace drummer. I need to go back to that last record now.

Jamie Lidell – I missed most of this set, but I did get to see him do “Multiply,” albeit from the opposite side of the park. Nice.

Stephen Malkmus @ Pitchfork Music Festival 7/15/2007
Heaven Is A Truck / Blue Arrangements / unknown song – “find a place to build my home,” “you want to be free” / Us / Extradition / Loud Cloud Crowd / Spit On A Stranger / Walk Into A Mirror / Trigger Cut (with Bob Nastanovich) / In The Mouth A Desert (with Bob Nastanovich) / unknown song – “edge of infinity,” “suits of charcoal gray,” “shamrock justice” / We Dance

Pavement “Funky Bob/Heaven Is A Truck” (Live at the Palace, Hollywood, 9/16/1994) – There is no possible way that anyone who attended this festival enjoyed this set more than I did. It felt like a full-on endorphin blast, and I think I’m only just now coming off of that high. I’m actually quite glad that I never got a chance to speak to anyone else about this set, because I think that if I heard anyone say anything remotely negative about it, I would’ve gotten very, very angry and it would’ve ruined the experience a bit. I kinda figured that he would play some Pavement songs because he was alone and that’s how he usually handles that sort of thing, but I never knew what to expect from one moment to the next, and every song in the set aside from the two I’d never heard before came to me like the biggest, happiest surprise in the world. And then Bob Nastanovich came out! There’s a word for that, and that word is SKWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! Aside from making me manic with joy for several hours after it ended, this set provided me with a bit of important self-knowledge — I love Malkmus/Pavement more than anything else in music, and even a weekend that also included performances by Of Montreal, one of my favorite members of my favorite rap group of all time, Clipse, the New Pornographers, and the entirety of Daydream Nation could come anywhere close to the mind-exploding euphoria I experienced watching Malkmus and Nastonovich kick out a relatively half-assed version of “Trigger Cut.”

Of Montreal @ Pitchfork Music Festival 7/15/07
Suffer For Fashion / Bunny Ain’t No Kind Of Rider / Softcore / She’s A Rejecter / October Is Eternal / The Past Is A Grotesque Animal / Heimdalsgate Like A Promethean Curse / Chrissie Kiss The Corpse / Faberge Falls For Shuggie / The Party’s Crashing Us // All Day and All of the Night

Homoerotic Star Wars football, Rocky Horror Picture Show costume changes, gold catsuits, Kevin face-balloons, red applesauce. Of Montreal’s shows are always a freaky spectacle, but they ran wild with the potential of a large festival setting. The set itself was slightly awkward in terms of pacing — I was thrilled to finally get to see “The Past Is A Grotesque Animal,” but its length nudged out several songs better suited to an audience comprised of several people who aren’t already fans of the group. I had a great deal of fun, but unfortunately this came immediately after Malkmus’ set, and couldn’t quite compare even though Hissing Fauna might be my favorite album from this decade.

The New Pornographers @ Pitchfork Music Festival 7/15/07
All of the Things That Go To Make Heaven and Earth / Use It / The Laws Have Changed / All The Old Showstoppers / Jackie Dressed In Cobras / The Spirit Of Giving –> We Will Rock You / Mass Romantic / My Rights Versus Yours / From Blown Speakers / Mutiny, I Promise You / Twin Cinema / Sing Me Spanish Techno / The Bleeding Heart Show // Slow Descent Into Alcoholism

No Neko, no Dan, no additional players. I guess the band likes NYC better? I probably would’ve been more into this set if I hadn’t just seen them two weeks ago, but c’mon, I’m always happy to hear “The Laws Have Changed,” “From Blown Speakers,” and “Sing Me Spanish Techno.” The thing is — well, I think somewhere along the line, the New Pornographers stopped being a fun party band, and just became a bunch of professionals who play great songs. There’s a magic spark that’s missing, and it’s been gone for a little while now.

Spoon @ Rockefeller Park 7/11/2007
Eddie’s Ragga / Don’t Make Me A Target / My Mathematical Mind / Small Stakes / The Underdog* / Stay Don’t Go* / I Turn My Camera On / Black Like Me / Rhthm & Soul / Chicago At Night / Take A Walk / You Got Yr Cherry Bomb* / Jonothon Fisk* / I Summon You (* = played with four-piece horn section)

1. I almost gave up on going to this show. The weather was pretty harsh in the hours leading up to the event — some serious torrential downpour stuff, and I got caught in it. If it weren’t for my friend’s optimism, I would have just gone home. We got to the park around 7:00, and the rain tapered off, and the place was at 1/3 capacity. It was pleasant, actually. More people filled in, but it wasn’t nearly as crowded as it would’ve been under normal circumstances. Also, hey, it wasn’t disgustingly humid anymore after all that rain.

2. Aside from the person I went with, all of my friends who were going to the show bailed or assumed the gig was cancelled. This includes my fellow Movie Binger Meg Deans, who ended up seeing the new Harry Potter movie at a multiplex a few blocks away from Battery Park City. After the film was over, she found out the show had gone on and walked over to see if she could catch an encore. Instead:

It was over, and as I texted sad things I realized I was standing next to Britt Daniel. This annoyed me for some reason so I walked away. I paused to photograph a sign and found myself suddenly surrounded by Mr. Daniel and about fifteen hangers-on. This time I thought it was funny particularly since he was discussing Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga‘s iTunes rank as I wove among them to get to the train station.

3. Spoon performed with a four-piece horn section on four of the songs. Britt only referred to them as “these guys.” “Cherry Bomb” and “The Underdog” felt looser and more energetic than the album recordings, and the arrangement for “Stay Don’t Go” gave that song this subtle, soulful drag that I quite liked. “Jonothon Fisk” was the best of the four, and I feel that we should all get together and politely petition for the band to commercially release a recording of that version because it might actually be superior to the one from Kill The Moonlight. Interestingly, even when the band were performing as an octet, they still sounded incredibly lean and sleek.

4. The person I went with told me a few times before that she’d been mildly traumatized by a crowd of fratty assholes at a Spoon show in Florida circa 2002, which is why she hadn’t seen the band play since despite being enough of a fan to get the cover of “Jonothon Fisk” tattooed on her bicep. The thing is, the audience actually was full of fratty dudes. I mean, they weren’t the worst kind, but they made frat dude noises and gave off that particular macho vibe. Also, I’d say that a majority of the men at this thing were more like that, and the typical “indie guy” type were in the minority. I don’t know what this means. Maybe that indie types wuss out when the weather sucks? Fun fact: fratty Spoon fans looooooooooooooooove “I Summon You.”

5. There was a woman to our left who was cracking me up because she’d start clapping at seemingly random points in the songs, and she was pretty much always off beat. She was so happy, though!

Spoon “Black Like Me” – For the first month that I knew this song, I didn’t understand what Britt was singing. He garbles a lot of his words, and so the most crucial line in this song, and possibly in his entire discography gets a bit slurred: “I’m in need of someone to take care of me tonight.” It’s so perfect, so simple, so gutting. Then I noticed the name of the girl he keeps mentioning, and I realized that if this song came out three or four years ago, I wouldn’t be able to handle it, and I would’ve had to have delete it from my computer to keep myself from listening to it. Even without any particular pain to hang it on, the song still manages to sting a bit. I listen to it over and over, and I zero in on the way he sounds so hopeful even though everything has gone wrong, and it’s mostly his fault. He spins his pathetic situation into something romantic and weirdly dignified, and just as things seem to be looking up, the song suddenly cuts out, or passes out, or vanishes into the night. (Click here to buy it from Merge.)

Elsewhere: My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site with mp3s from William Parker Quartet, Deerhunter, and Of Montreal.

Speck Mountain “Girl Out West” – This song is nearly nine minutes long, but it feels as though it’s nothing more than a few steps on a pilgrimage by foot from New York to the edge of California. The progress is maddeningly slow, but with every moment, you’re closer to the destination, or at least closer than if you never made the crazy decision to start walking in the first place. (Click here to buy it via Speck Mountain’s MySpace page.)

Sissy Wish “Yayaya” – Sissy Wish’s best songs also feel like stops along the path of some incredible journey, but close enough to the end point that there’s a sense of excitement and imminent fulfillment. It’s the feeling of almost having everything you need, and at least half of the things you want, but still needing to work out so much before it’s all set. It’s also the half-conscious awareness of the reality that once you get there, you need to continue to work twice as hard to stay there. “Yayaya” keeps rising to new plateaus, but each shift to the next level has the feeling of a brand new all-time high. (Click here to buy it from Sissy Wish.)

Old Time Relijun “In The Crown Of Lost Light” – The singer sounds like he’s about to shake apart so hard that his body will crack open and let loose a burst of light so intense that it’ll burn out your eyes so quickly that your mind will never actually “see” it. The song is on the edge of ecstasy; but holds back if just because we’re not ready for that white hot radiance. (Click here to buy it from K Records.)

Thrushes “Loyalty” – The song barely needs lyrics, and so the singer keeps her words to a minimum. She sketches in her doubts and insecurities, and fills in the gaps with washes of sound, soft moans, and subtle shifts in inflection that hint at the tiniest, most subtle shifts in mood and intent. She wants an answer to a question. She wants parameters for her love. She wants to know what she is to the person she’s singing about, but she’s singing the words to herself. (Click here to buy it from Thrushes.)

The Slits “Newtown” – Last weekend I moved in to a new apartment. If I’ve seemed distracted or disengaged any time in the past month or so, that’s more or less the reason — first it was the stress of finding the place, then getting everything in order for the actual move, and now that I’m here, I’m overwhelmed by all the things I need to buy to make this place feel like a home, and all the additional work I need to do in order to afford my new, more expensive lifestyle. Also, I’m living alone, which is definitely something I’ve wanted for a while now, but I’m discovering very quickly that I need to schedule waaaaaay more social time for myself or I’ll probably go crazy. I’m very optimistic about the change in status quo, but the adjustment stage has been more awkward than I’d anticipated. Hopefully things will be better next week after the cable/internet is finally set up (there was an obnoxious complication — thank God for whoever has the password-free wireless set-up around here, they totally saved my ass this week) and I’ll have, y’know, a living room. But the internet thing has been a real pain — I haven’t been able to download much of anything, and all the upheaval in my life has made me focus on old, familiar music, and so doing this site has been a bit tricky lately. Also, sorry if the posts have been a bit self-absorbed and emo recently.

Anyway, this Slits number — well, to be honest, aside from loving this song for years now, it was selected almost entirely because my new cross-street is Newtown Road, and every time I see the sign, I think of all the different ways Ari Up sings the name in this song, sometimes shifting from cool and collected to wild and aggressive in the span of one syllable. It seems right. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Elsewhere: My review of Ratatouille is up on The Movie Binge.

The New Pornographers @ Battery Park, 7/4/07
All The Things That Go To Make Heaven And Earth / Use It / The Laws Have Changed / All The Old Showstoppers / Jackie Dressed In Cobras / Challengers / The Spirit Of Giving / Mass Romantic / From Blown Speakers / My Rights Versus Yours / The Jessica Numbers / Go Places / Mutiny, I Promise You / Twin Cinema / Sing Me Spanish Techno / The Bleeding Heart Show // These Are The Fables / Testament To Youth In Verse / The Slow Descent Into Alcoholism

Quick show review: The weather was bad but not horrible (dark, intermittent rain); the audience seemed slightly removed and disengaged (and I count myself in with that); it barely felt like the 4th of July. Neko Case was with the band, and so were some other people playing strings and horns, and both of those things made the show a bit better, especially on “Go Places,” which very beautiful and moving. Also, Carl Newman has a beard now.

The New Pornographers “Myriad Harbour” – Given that Dan Bejar was not present, I was actually a bit relieved that the band opted not to perform “Myriad Harbour,” my favorite song from Challengers. More than any other song Bejar has written for the New Pornographers, “Myriad Harbour” greatly depends upon his charisma and persona. Kurt Dahle and Carl Newman can approximate his peculiar affectations on the other songs, but this one seems way too particular to his character, to the point that it basically just sounds like a slightly more magnificent version of Destroyer.

“Myriad Harbour” stands in stark contrast with the rest of Challengers — whereas Newman pushes towards lushness and grandiosity with your standard strings, horns, and assorted “respectable” instrumentation, this song evokes widescreen panoramic beauty without much fuss. I’m not sure if “understated” is exactly the right adjective given its level of production value, but it feels very airy and effortless when heard in the same sitting as Newman’s comparatively overwrought numbers, especially when you focus on the song’s elegant lead guitar refrain. All through Challengers, Newman seems like a guy desperately trying to articulate an overwhelming feeling that makes him feel a bit self-conscious, and Bejar just slides along, casually tossing off pithy one-liners, thoughtful asides, and quick non-sequitors that somehow carry the weight of an entire album’s worth of tunes. (“All I ever wanted help with was YOU.” For me, right now, that line is like getting shot in the heart with an arrow of EMOTIONAL TRUTH.)

In the song, Dan Bejar plays himself as a hipster flaneur visiting Manhattan and casting about in search of entertainment, culture, and beauty. It’s a song about observation, really — look at the sunset, the pretty girls, PS1, the local art kids, the “Myriad Harbour.” There’s the pleasure of appreciating these moments, these places, people, and things, but there’s also a distinct sense of emotional detachment. He’s just passing through, it’s all a distraction from someone he can’t get out of his head.

PS: I’ll talk about Carl’s songs on the album another time, okay? I have a lot to say about them, but I’m still figuring it all out. I was very disappointed at first, but now I’m not. I like Challengers a lot, but it’s a tricky thing because on one hand, the new direction seems neurotic, like he has to prove that he and the band can do something other than their specialty, and on the other, the more “classic” style songs on the record are the least inspired and emotionally involving. (Click here to buy it via Matador’s Buy Early Get Now site.)

Elsewhere: My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site with mp3s from Matthew Dear, Misha, and Chromeo.

Imperial Teen “Everyone Wants To Know” – They’ve been out of the game for five years, but Imperial Teen remain one of the most clever and underrated pop bands in the world. I mean, who else is going to write this freakishly calm rock song that combines the tragic conclusion of Titanic with the inane chatter of “Undone (The Sweater Song)”? Somehow it all fits together — the verses are full of vague concern, the chorus mixes its helplessness with gorgeousness, and the girls on the bridge are abstract and bored. Their neurotic declarations — “I never know what he’s thinking,” “I don’t really like this party” — have roughly the same emotional weight as when Will Schwartz wonders “when will help arrive?” and sings about “holding on for life” as his character slowly freezes to death. For the girls, it’s just a melodramatic metaphor, and somehow all the pain in the world is conflated and equalized, for better or worse. (Click here for the Imperial Teen MySpace page.)

Elsewhere: David Hasslehoff’s Game of Sexual Jungle Cat.

Holger Czukay “Blessed Easter” – I’ve wanted to post this song at least six times in the past five years, but I can never find the right words to describe it. It’s a collage; it’s a mirage. It’s dawn, it’s dusk, it’s the wee hours of the night. It’s the world standing still. It’s a cathedral; it’s a prayer; it’s got Pope John Paul II on lead vocals. Czukay finds beauty in the rituals of religion, but keeps himself at a distance. I used to put this on tapes next to Spiritualized’s “No God, Only Religion” because sometimes subtlety is boring. I’ve put this song on so many tapes and cds since 1998, it’s actually sort of amazing that it took me so long to put this here. It’s one of most magical and peaceful pieces of music that I’ve ever heard. (Click here to buy it from iTunes.)

Beck “Think I’m In Love” – Did everyone just forget about this last Beck album? It wasn’t even a year ago. Did no one care about it? Did everyone just move on to downloading the next new thing? Is it all just an endless loop of anticipation, gratification, and disposal now? The Information was not built for the new online music culture — it’s long, dense, subtle, and in terms of its musical content, it has no gimmick.

The fifteen tracks on The Information pass by in a muted haze that can be easily confused for a lack of feeling. However, it’s not an album of small emotions, but instead visceral sensations that are diluted, buried, obscured, confused, and distorted by a never-ending stream of facts and fictions. The character in “Think I’m In Love” is so removed from himself that he can’t even be sure whether he’s in love, or if he’s just playing at it. His neuroses dull down his heart, and the thrill is replaced by the perverse comfort of paranoia. He makes his life a narrative, and he follows the plot. “I think I’m in love.” Well, yeah, guess so. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Pavement “Old To Begin” (Live in Amsterdam, 4/4/1997)

1. In my senior year of high school, I took weekend classes at Pratt. Though Pratt’s campus is located in Brooklyn, the class met at the Puck Building. (People outside of NYC might recognize it as the building that was used for exterior shots of Grace’s office on Will & Grace.) Anyway, I had to commute into Manhattan on MetroNorth, and then take a brief subway ride down to Bleeker Street, and for some reason, I got into the habit of always listening to this particular song while on the subway. (I think it’s because I’d start the album as soon as the train pulled into Grand Central, and I would catch the 6 train right around the time “Date With IKEA” was over.) The first few times it was probably an accident, but it became a ritual, and ten years later I can’t hear the song without thinking about that period when I was so happy and optimistic and the weather was always weirdly perfect.

To provide a bit of context, only six months later, I’d be stuck in a depression that wouldn’t fully lift for two years, but everything in the spring of 1997 was just about right. I can never relate to people who had a hard time in high school — I only have happy memories from that period. I was happy mainly because I felt like my future was bright and wide open, and that certainty made me confident and enthusiastic. When I was in college, I felt disappointed by virtually everyone and everything, my confidence mutated into arrogance, and circumstances made me feel trapped and isolated. The sunny, easygoing music that defined my spring of ’97 — Pavement’s Brighten The Corners, Blur’s self-titled album — gave way to the epic misanthropic angst of the two records I heard the most in the second half of that year — Radiohead’s OK Computer, and Blur’s The Great Escape. (Sleater-Kinney’s Dig Me Out and The Fall’s 458489 A Sides kinda fall halfway between those two extremes, I guess, but I associate them more with the earlier period.)

2. Even after all this time, it still makes me laugh when I think about how easy it can be to mis-hear the title phrase as “Ode To Bacon.” It’s not even very funny! Similarly, I am overly amused by how you can substitute the “we need secrets, we need se-crets-crets-crets” line in “Gold Soundz” for “Ryan Seacrest, Ryan Sea-crest-crest-crest.”

3. I can think of very few lyrics about breaking up with someone that are more mature, kind-hearted, and thoughtful than “time came that we drifted apart to find an unidentical twin.”

4. I’ll always associate Brighten The Corners with being 17, but I think that I’m only just now growing into the “holy cow, dude, I’m a grown-up and so are all of my friends” sentiment of the record. Spiral Stairs throws himself into the trappings of suburban stability, and Stephen Malkmus does his best to search for alternatives, but with his mind set on responsibility. They are both a little bit cynical about their choices and options, but they’re both earnestly trying to figure out who they want to be for the rest of their lives.

(Click here to buy the original studio recording on the Brighten The Corners album from Matador.)

Elsewhere: My review of 1408 is up on The Movie Binge but, ah, it’s not exactly my best work. However, I strongly recommend checking out some other recent posts on the site, most especially Erik Bryan’s hilarious take on Evan Almighty, Meghan Deans’ witty assessment of Lady Chatterley, and Bryan Charles’ very personal account of watching You Kill Me alone on a lovely Sunday afternoon.

Also: My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site with mp3s from the Sea and Cake, Arthur & Yu, and My Teenage Stride.

Kelly Clarkson “One Minute” – I can safely say that when I watched the first season of American Idol, I never considered the possibility that the girl who kept singing Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” would eventually embrace stadium rock, much less entertain the notion that she would ditch her penchant for melisma in favor of a sleek, intense style of emoting that is increasingly similar to that of Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker. I can totally understand why a music industry person with taste as horribly bland as that of Clive Davis would be worried about Kelly Clarkson’s new album My December — she’s taking cues from all sorts of bands who exist on the periphery of the mainstream, and backing away from anything that might go over well on an adult contemporary radio station. That said, it’s a terrifically accessible mainstream rock record, and the best songs transform indie/alt-rock sounds into full-on pop juggernauts. A lot of this type of bombastic pop music is carefully crafted to express or trigger some kind of massive emotion, and the singer doesn’t really have to do much other than go with the flow of the song, but Clarkson consistently invests her material with a potent humanity that can be exceptionally gutting. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Elsewhere: PRI’s Fair Game has a never nice studio session with A Sunny Day In Glasgow available for download as individual mp3s. The live version of the new song “Hugs and Kisses” is especially pretty.

Tegan and Sara “Back In Your Head” – This song is an enormous pile-up of neuroses, but its issues are stacked neat and deliberately, just like the “wall of books” mentioned in the very first line. It’s an internal tug of war: You want intimacy, but it’s terrifying. You love someone, but you push them away, in part because you never let yourself believe that they love you. You want the comfort of familiarity, but things get boring if they never change. You get frozen by indecision even when you know exactly what you want. The song feels light and casual; it fits into the smallest, stillest moments while quietly (almost silently) freaking out. (Click here to pre-order it from Amazon.)

Of Montreal “Vegan In Furs” – For some reason, the songs that speak to me the most usually make the least amount of literal sense. “For some reason.” I mean, yeah, I kinda know the reasons — I’m responding to a feeling and a sound, and the words fall into place around my experiences. I don’t need every line to be applicable to my life as long as a few have some kind of resonance, even if it’s something inscrutable like “their brains are like porcupines and mine’s a paper ball.” I tried to figure that line out a few months ago and my friend Grant offered this interpretation — “the brain that is spiked by things rather than spiky and/or written on rather than accumulating via impalement” — and though that makes some sense, I’m still not 100% certain why I feel like I’m definitely on Team Paper Ball.

I listen to “Vegan In Furs” all the time, usually at least once per day for the past four months. (It’s the first song on an Of Montreal playlist that I play quite often, and so I always expect “My British Tour Diary” to come on immediately afterwards.) It seems like it might be the theme song for my year thus far. At first, it may have been something from Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?, but I guess things have been a lot more cheerful and optimistic for me lately than anxious and freaky. And that’s where the song gets very literal — “I’m peaking in so many ways / the gloom is in retreat / the dark epoch is over.” There’s also something very conspiratorial about the lyrics — “we both despise all the academic swine…,” “I know they don’t understand, they don’t get us at all” — and I suppose I need that too, the excitement of feeling like I’m in on something, part of something, with someone, connected, connecting. It feels new to me, and sometimes I forget how much I like new things. (Click here to buy it from Polyvinyl.)

Siobhan Donaghy “Ghosts” – I wonder if Siobhan Donaghy wrote lyrics for this song. All of the vocals are backmasked so that her voice is pure, wordless melody, but she’s definitely singing something, and I wonder if it was just some random phonetical thing concocted to keep the shape of the tune, or if she’s singing secret words for herself. The song certainly sounds like a secret, anyway. Going on the title, they may have been aiming for something sort of ethereal and spiritual, but to me it feels more like drifting around in a stranger’s head, and being able to pick up on the emotions without being able to read their mind. (Click here to buy it from Amazon UK.)

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? “That’s A Good Question” – Nervous thumping, brass bumping, synth buzzing, circus thudding. They Shoot Horses, Don’t They make paranoia sound like a such a good time. Hey everybody, let’s go out tonight and get worried! (Click here to buy it from Kill Rock Stars.)

Elsewhere: Matthew Harris is 100% correct about the National and ASAP has a fun interactive feature with Dan Deacon giving a “tour” of his customized soundboard instrument thing.