Archive for 2010

Beach House “Silver Soul”

I’m very glad that I kept giving Beach House’s Sub Pop debut Teen Dream a shot. I knew that the record was interesting and good from the start, but too many of the songs were blurring together and I just was not connecting with the material on an emotional level. I heard the potential for that, and keeping in mind that a similar thing happened for me with Bat For Lashes’ Two Suns last year, I kept the album in rotation long enough for many of the tracks to sink in.

It’s easy to get lost in Teen Dream, in good and bad senses of that word. The individual songs have dynamics, but the album as a whole does not. It lingers in the same emotional and musical place, and so unless you pick up on the internal shifts in mood, rhythm, melody, and texture, it’s easy to shrug off. It’s the kind of record you have to learn and live with to fully appreciate, but it’s not some hassle. The melodies are low-key but gorgeous, and the arrangements somehow pull off the trick of sounding simultaneous stark and lush. It’s a very seductive set of songs, and once you get pulled in, it’s almost too cozy to get out.

The music has a melancholy tone, but it’s not miserable or dark. There’s an emotional spectrum, but every feeling on it is vague and poorly defined. Complacent is not a word that is generally used with a positive connotation, but in the best possible way, that word suits the vibe of Teen Dream. It’s not apathetic or numb, but it conveys a fragile stability in the face of strong emotion and potentially negative circumstances. Michael Azerrad and Nitsuh Abebe have been throwing around the phrase “smart and serene” to describe a certain strain of indie music that has caught on in recent years, and this record is like the epitome of all that. It’s cool and restrained, and fiery emotions are kept in check, but it’s not dumb or repressed. It’s just the sound of complex feelings mitigated by maturity and responsibility.

Buy it from Amazon.

Man/Miracle “Back of the Card”

“Back of the Card” spends a lot of its time in a zone mined by post-punk fans and Talking Heads disciples, but even after a decade’s worth of that sort of thing, it still comes out sounding fresh and fun. Some of that comes from some clever twists: A vague hint of country twang early on, and a sudden yet somehow kinda gradual meltdown into clattering, droning noise at the end. It hits a comfortable sweet spot, but it doesn’t settle for giving you exactly what you expect. Nicely done.

Buy it from Man/Miracle.

Past Lives “Don’t Let The Ashes Fill You Eyes”

It’s not a huge surprise that when the Blood Brothers broke up, their two lead singers started new bands in which they never had to scream. After all, one must assume that non-stop hysterical shrieking is a young man’s game. What is kinda surprising is that Johnny Whitney and Jordan Billie have gone in rather similar directions with their respective bands, Jaguar Love and Past Lives. Whereas the former nudged his punk roots in a more glammy direction, Billie and Past Lives’ version of pop owes more to new wave and post-punk. “Don’t Let The Ashes Fill Your Eyes,” a highlight from their full-length debut, comes rather close to the sound of Wire circa Chairs Missing and 154, presenting catchy hooks with a cold tonality and harsh austerity. They really pull it off. It’s all very hummable yet totally severe, with every chord change and word spat out by Billie sleek and sharp enough to draw blood. The real trick, though, is how when they allow a bit of warmth in the form of “sha la la la la” backing vocals, the subtle shift in temperature is just enough to make you realize how frigid the rest of it really is.

Buy it from Amazon.

Owen Pallett “Midnight Directives”

I listened to Owen Pallett’s new album Heartland at least five times through before ever coming across the phrase “ultra-violent farmer.” I appreciate Pallett’s sci-fi meta-fiction conceit, but at least early on, I find it difficult to pay much attention to his lyrical games when his arrangements are so dazzling on a purely musical level. “Midnight Directives” is an agile, flamboyant tune that builds from a hum to a symphonic sweep without losing an essential lightness. Pallett is working with a broad palette, but he’s a deliberate, decisive arranger, and he employs sound in a gestural manner that reminds me of the way great cartoonists imply a lot of information in simple, well-placed lines. Even without the high concept, this is incredibly ambitious pop music that deftly avoids the typical traps of symphonic indie music.

Buy it from Amazon.

Los Campesinos! “Romance Is Boring”

I realize that there is a lot of dark wit in Los Campesinos!’ music, but I’m not sure if the things I find amusing about them are always the things they intend to be funny. They’re a knowing self-parody, pushing the envelope of overly precious, vainly articulate youthful melodrama in a way similar to emo titans Fall Out Boy and Say Anything, but there’s something about them that seems a lot more…sincere? Is that it? Whatever it is that makes their anger seem more real, that is what makes them kinda unintentionally hilarious but also very relatable. The words spill out, but nothing sounds much like what you’d actually say out loud, and either more like l’esprit de escalier stuff that you think after you’ve had your little confrontation, or the sort of shit you’d spew out on a friends-locked Livejournal entry or a bitter email that you should probably keep saved in the draft folder. “Romance Is Boring,” by far the best Los Campesinos! song I’ve ever heard, is essentially a mid-90s indie rock song in the vein of Archers of Loaf remade with 00s indie aesthetics, i.e. over-stuffed meters and waaaaay too many people playing and singing at once. That’s not a problem, though, because part of what makes this song so appealing is hearing a whole crowd of Welsh kids scream at each other for wanting to fuck each other.

Buy it from Amazon.

Stereolab “The Noise Of Carpet”

Could this be the greatest tough love song of all time? Even if you’re not exactly the type of smug, lazy person Laetita Sadier is railing against, each lyric stings because on some level you probably feel like maybe you are being implicated, and that you are too bitter, cynical, and apathetic. Part of what makes this work so well is that Sadier is so calm and measured as she sings these stern words, but there’s an obvious tone of disappointment in her voice, like a disapproving parent or authority figure. She makes you feel bad for letting her down, and for not living up to your potential. This is not a dismissive song, it’s not a matter of “Ugh, kids today.” It’s about wanting people to be better, and not giving in to the worst of humanity. She makes it clear that it’s not easy to “apply your leading potential and be useful to this planet,” but it’s worth the effort. After all, as she sings, “the world would give you anything as long as you will want to.”

Buy it from Amazon.

Electric Six “One Sick Puppy”

Dick Valentine has mentioned in a few recent interviews that his method for writing the lyrics for the Kill album was to build a stockpile of lines and then later on work them into songs. This is a fairly standard approach for lyric writing, but the result here is like a musical equivalent of a Dick Valentine Twitter feed. He’s always churning out bitter one-liners and grotesque absurdity, but songs like “One Sick Puppy” feel violent, overloaded and disconnected, a free-associative stream of cynical jokes and pithy disgust set to a slashing rhythm. This could be the band at their darkest, dialing down narrative and empathy, and diving deep into disappointment, aggression, and hopelessness with a maniacal grin.

Buy it from Amazon.

Bullion “Say Goodbye To What”

I knew from the start that this track sampled Klaus Nomi, but it took me a while before I figured out the main vocal sample. As it turns out, it is a section of Buffy Sainte-Marie’s “The Bells,” a song penned by Leonard Cohen and later rewritten and recorded as “Take This Longing” on his album New Skin for an Old Ceremony.

Two interesting things about that:

* When Cohen revised the song, he omitted the sections that are sampled in this piece, i.e., the catchy bits. Fair enough — Cohen is really more of a poet than a pop songwriter, but I prefer the catchy bits, thanks.

* I had assumed that whatever voice I was hearing in “Say Goodbye To What” was in some way processed and altered. Well, no, not really — Sainte-Marie actually sings “The Bells” as if her voice naturally ran through some kind of tremolo effects box.

“Say Goodbye To What” does not transform its component parts, but the shift in context and shape is dramatic enough to completely change the character of the Cohen/Sainte-Marie snippet. There’s still a bit of melancholy to the melody, but the brittle sound is traded for a colorful, bouncy psychedelia that owes something to virtually everyone who has ever tried to make their own Magical Mystery Tour. Sainte-Marie is recast as a groovy cosmic spirit, now totally on the same wavelength of Nomi, the campy space diva. It’s cute, it’s hooky, it’s a counterintuitive connection that makes perfect sense.

Buy it from Bullion.

Pit er Pat “Water”

Pit er Pat roughly approximate the sound of Missy and Timbaland circa the late 90s/early 00s in this track, but it’s not a straight rip. Their own style of melody and rhythm is intact, but filtered through modern R&B sensibilities, resulting in a weird mirage of a song in which the various rhythmic and textural elements seem to blink in and out of mix, implying a shape and structure without ever feeling particularly solid. True to its title, “Water” is a rather fluid piece of music, and the atmosphere it creates is rather humid. Whereas this general aesthetic is typically employed to convey sexuality and anticipation, Pit er Pat come across vaguely asexual and totally impatient. It’s a strange effect, really: Uncomfortably groovy, but still pleasure-oriented.

Pre-order it from Thrill Jockey.

Toro Y Moi “Blessa”

There’s some interesting movement in this piece — circular motions, lateral progressions, synthesizer washes that seem to rise up like mist — but the thing that stands out is how bits of sound seem to get knocked from their course, as if the lines run into a force field and either bounce off or immediately disappear into the ether. The ending is a surprising digression, far more tactile and anxious after the mellow mood blinks out entirely, and all that’s left is an emotional void.

Buy it from Amazon.

Julianna Barwick “The Highest”

This is aesthetically closer to a whale song than an R&B tune, but I hear some swing and groove in this, lost somewhere in the waves of sound. It could be the echo of something I’m half-remembering, some phrasing or texture that’s mutated as memory fades. This would seem to be the goal of a lot of atmosphere-oriented music these days — reconstructing memory from fragments of feelings. I’m not sure if that’s where Barwick is coming from, but it’s certainly how this works for me.

Buy it from Julianna Barwick.

Elaine Lachica “Tumbleweed”

To think of this music in terms of visual representation: The piano is the tumbleweed, the rest is either the breeze blowing it along, or the empty, wide-open scenery. Lachica’s voice is mannered but highly expressive, fluttering and contracting as the melody swirls around the contours of the chord structure. As much as this song has that quality of direct representation, it’s also an odd, abstracted thing. Listening, I feel like trying to trace its lines, follow them around to find the beginning and the end, but I get lost somewhere, or my attention shifts to some small detail that has me chasing that to its logical conclusion. The song is all a tangle, but it moves so gracefully.

Visit Elaine Lachica’s official site.

Tune-Yards “Powa” (Live 4AD Session version)

I don’t know much about Merrill Garbus’ life, but I feel like I know a lot about her voice, which might be a separate thing. Garbus sings like a person who, at some point in the not-too-distant past, stopped caring about holding herself back. “Powa” starts off sorta gentle and demure, but as it progresses, there’s a clear physicality to her vocals — a startling, defiant swagger. Unlike a lot of “swagger” you hear in modern pop music, it’s not a put-on or thinly veiled insecurity. It doesn’t sound like control or a desire to be controlling either. It’s more about self-possession, and making a clear decision to be exactly who you are and go for what you want, and take what you deserve after years of feeling unworthy. “Powa” is a song about sex, and it feels triumphant and glorious, like a long-earned reward. There’s still conflict and angst, but it all disappears in moments of pure pleasure, as when Garbus’ voice shoots up into into high notes, yanking us up with her into her giddy stratosphere. You feel her pleasure along with her, but you know that it’s an abstraction. If you really want it, you’ve got to get it for yourself. You’ve got to be more like Merrill.

Watch the Tune-Yards 4AD session.