Archive for 2011

Cliffie Swan “Dream Chain”

Sophia Knapp, the lead singer of Cliffie Swan, has a very old-fashioned sort of voice. It’s overtly feminine but not remotely wispy and light, and confident without being particularly brassy or bold. It’s just this lovely, right-down-the-middle tone, with phrasing that perfectly articulates the melody without embellishment. She sounds like the kind of lady who takes karaoke very, very seriously and decided to write an album full of the type of tuneful, wistful 70s soft pop, classic rock and country that she loves to sing. “Dream Chain” is particularly great as a showcase for her voice, and very well crafted. It feels immediately comfortable and familiar, but the dynamic shifts are clever enough that it doesn’t come across as flat or predictable.

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Sebadoh “Punching Myself in the Face Repeatedly, Publicly”

1. “I was “way into” Tara [Jane O’Neil] from Rodan and followed her around smitten for a while until she remembered that she was a lesbian. Oops.” – Jason Loewenstein, in the liner notes to the reissue of Bakesale.

2. It’s pretty obvious that this title was applied retroactively. Even if I didn’t know that this song is being addressed to a lesbian and that things definitely didn’t work out, there is no way I could listen to this earnest outpouring of crushed-out enthusiasm without knowing that the singer is doomed, doomed, doomed. It’s not that he’s got a crush — obviously that works out for people. It’s in what he says, how he says it. All the signs are there but he’s blind to it, even though the lyrics indicate some degree of self-awareness. I recognize too much in this song; listening to it is like watching a horror movie.

3. Or maybe it’s more like reading someone’s email. It’s so specific, so naked. I feel like I’m invading his privacy by listening.

4. What really makes this compelling is how nervous and excited he sounds. It’s all so genuine. I just listen to this and think “Noooooooo, Jason, nooooooo!”

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Shabazz Palaces “Are You…Can You…Were You? (Felt)”

“Are You…Can You…Were You? (Felt)” doesn’t sound much like a rap track at first. The first minute is pure atmosphere, a contemplative instrumental that sets up some subtle musical themes for the remainder of the piece. From there, the song moves along in a slow, lateral progression pushed along by a shifting series of keyboard samples. In most rap songs, there is a rigid structure to facilitate rhymes — 16 bars verses, a chorus, maybe an intro and an outro. Maybe once in a while you get something like a bridge, but it’s usually quite utilitarian in form. Shabazz Palaces don’t follow these usual patterns at all. Ishmael Butler’s raps follow the tangents of the music — his words and presence are crucial, but he’s not necessarily the focal point of the track. Rap is a genre that tends to emphasize ego, but there’s a great humility in how Butler interacts with the music on Shabazz Palace’s Black Up. He doesn’t crowd anything out, he follows the lead of the other “players,” so to speak. He knows when to keep quiet. None of this is unprecedented, just sort of rare. Black Up is a record that truly embraces the possibilities of rap in a way that isn’t stuffy or ostentatious. It just does its own thing and leaves you wondering why there isn’t more hip hop out there that is similarly adventurous in form. Particular to “Are You…,” I wonder why there isn’t more rap that be accurately described as pensive and meditative.

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Inc. “Swear”

You know how sometimes when a headphone plug is only partly in the jack you can hear a hollowed-out, ghostly version of a song? Inc.’s “Swear” sounds a little bit like doing that trick with a late ’80s Prince or Jimmy Jam/Terry Lewis track. The biggest difference is in the vocals — the phrasing is about what you’d expect from the music, but it comes out sounding extremely shy. It’s like a My Bloody Valent version of the Minneapolis sound — accompaniment is foregrounded, and the voice becomes a textural element that suggests intimacy and intense yet muted emotions.

Pre-order it from 4AD.

Austra “Shoot the Water”

Austra’s Katie Stelmanis has a theatrical, gothy affect, and so it’s pretty much impossible to hear her sing “I want your blood” without thinking of lusty vampires and sexually charged occult ceremonies. This is fine by me. I love the way “Shoot the Water” revels in its spookiness; it’s like an elaborate masquerade party or an arty horror film that finds more thrill in sexual transgression than in straight-up violence and gore. The lyrics just barely sketch out some ideas and themes, but that’s not necessarily a problem — in terms of mood and emotion, this comes together rather intuitively.

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Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks “Senator”

Stephen Malkmus has never been the type to write “political” songs, though he’s flirted with the notion in the recent past, most notably on the Real Emotional Trash bonus track “Pennywhistle Thunder.” When politics come up in his songs, it’s mostly a tongue-in-cheek comment on corruption and foibles. That’s certainly the case for “Senator,” a tune that hints at some heavy concerns but comes to a cynical conclusion in its big hook: “I know what the senator wants / what the senator wants is a blowjob.” And then, later: “I know what everyone wants / what everyone wants is a blowjob.” In other words: We all just want our own petty gratification. The assholes in charge aren’t any different from the rest of us, for the most part. The song is basically a smirk and a shrug set to a miniature rock epic.

Pre-order it from Matador Records.

Cults “Bad Things”

Madeline Follin’s voice is high and extremely girlish, Brian Oblivion’s arrangements are perky, bright and obviously indebted to a more innocent era of pop. Their first album as Cults can get extremely twee, sometimes aggravatingly precious. What makes the record work is that the two find ways to subvert their youthful sound, or at least add a touch of darkness to songs that would be little more than adorably melodramatic in lesser hand. “Bad Things,” my favorite song from the album, really creeps me out. It’s very catchy and sounds sweet, but when I hear it, I just expect something incredibly bad to happen to its protagonist. There’s something very portentous about this track — that I can’t quite piece together a narrative but feel sure of the subtext only intensifies my feeling of “ahhhh, no!” when I hear Follin’s tiny voice sing “I’m gonna run away and never come back.”

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Lovelle featuring Lady Chann “Uh-Oh”

“Uh-Oh” is a loud, busy, aggressive track, but there’s still enough space within the composition to allow for a pleasant lightness at the center of the clatter. This is the type of song that hops from hook to hook so seamlessly that it makes other pop songs seem like they aren’t giving you as much. If you think of a pop song as a pleasure delivery system — and a lot of them are basically just that — “Uh-Oh” offers a ridiculous amount of value in just over three minutes. I love this as-is, but I find myself wishing that Rihanna had recorded it instead so it had a chance at being a big hit in the United States.

SebastiAn featuring Mayer Hawthorne “Love In Motion”

I think of this track as being like a freebase version of Prince and Michael Jackson. The subtlety is lost and everything is intensified — sexuality becomes sleaze, rhythm and bass is exaggerated to the point of sounding monumental, structure is reduced to a steady series of overpowering highs. The amazing thing isn’t just that these guys can take this familiar pop feeling and distill it to its most potent features, but that in doing so they still hold on to elegance and grace. This is some wonderfully sexy and luxurious dance pop.

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My Morning Jacket “You Wanna Freak Out”

“You Wanna Freak Out” is a musical argument against stoicism that nevertheless sounds rational, composed and even-tempered. It’s like some serene therapist goading you on — express what you feel, let it on out, you need this catharsis! And maybe you do, but this composition is so graceful and lovely that letting go seems more like weightlessness, like floating away in a stiff breeze. Well, that is, until the song does actually freak out a bit in a burst of static-y overdriven guitar at its climax. The band nails this dynamic shift — the swing from swooping elegance to self-conscious fit feels natural but also sudden and slightly unsure. It nearly drowns out the gentle, delicate parts of the arrangement but I like that those bits are still there. Oddly, the sound that feels like having your head in the clouds is what grounds the track.

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Donovan “Season of the Witch”

I probably listened to this song about 30 times this weekend. One of those times, when I was walking down Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn — basically the hipster epicenter of North America — it made the most sense. “Beatniks are out to make it rich!” would be “hipsters are out to make it rich!” if the song was written in the past decade instead of the mid-Sixties. In either era, the lyric would be paranoid but funny. “Season of the Witch” isn’t an angry song, but it’s definitely bugged out. Despite the superstition and paranoia in the words, Donovan is mellow and playful. The music itself sounds very relaxed to me — a good song for a pleasant stroll on a nice day. I like the way this defuses the alienation in the words. It’s like the song is smart enough to know that the line that rings out with the most truth is the one that acknowledges that identity can be a rather fluid thing.

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Planningtorock “I Am Your Man”

The conceptual conceit of “I Am Your Man” is ironic — its singer and composer is a woman — but its sentiment is entirely earnest. This is a song about being forthright and aggressive in pursuing someone, and having the firm belief that you’re the right person for the one you want. This could be creepy, but in context, it’s not — Janine Rostron sings this with a noble sweetness, it doesn’t come off as overly intense or creepy at all. This is a song that makes love and devotion sound absolutely fantastic. I hear this song and envy the character. The big question here is: Is this the person that Rostron wants to want her, or who she wants to be? I think it’s probably a little of both.

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Fleet Foxes “Bedouin Dress”

Fleet Foxes make very pleasant music, but despite gesturing in the general direction of deeper ideas and some kind of spiritual resonance, I find their songs to be lacking in substance. I’m not complaining about that, really — I don’t get mad at candy for having no nutritional value, after all. The appeal of “Bedouin Dress” is purely musical, it totally crumbles the second I try to pay attention to the words, which are mainly neo-hippie drivel tossed in with a possible allusion to Yeats. The pleasure is in getting swept away in its breeziness and not thinking at all. It’s beard folk bubblegum.

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Battles with Kazu Makino “Sweetie & Shag”

“Sweetie & Shag” sounds like an elaborate Rube Goldberg device built specifically to yield this song. There’s a lot of moving pieces, and it all sounds connected and precise. I love the use of rhythm in this composition — every beat seems to have a cause and effect, the hooks bounce as if on metal springs. Kazu Makino, the lead singer of Blonde Redhead, is remarkable on this track. Her voice amps up the energy, pushing the chorus to ecstatic heights while being only barely comprehensible. The words don’t quite scan, but the feeling is easy to intuit: Excited, a bit lusty, a bit scared. I’ve been bored by recent Blonde Redhead records, and frankly she sounds bored on them. Her performance here is thrilling and alive and I hope that she makes more music with Battles because they really bring out the best in each other.

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Sloan “Laying So Low”

“”Laying So Low” is kind of an earnest number, I don’t know if there’s a real joke in it,” Chris Murphy says in an EPK clip on YouTube. “It’s not often that you get any sentiment from me, I replaced sentiment years ago with wordplay.” Murphy seems to be kidding around somewhat in these clips; he’s a got a bleak, self-deprecating wit. Even still, it’s clear that this self-criticism is something he’s grappled with as a songwriter. The thing is, I don’t think this is something that would have ever crossed my mind if he didn’t bring it up himself. In fact, I can think of a lot of Murphy-penned Sloan songs that are poignant and emotional, even if they may include some clever wordplay. I love a lot of songwriters who definitely favor wordplay over expressing anything obviously personal, but no one in Sloan really belongs in that crowd.

“Laying So Low” may be my favorite Sloan ballad. It’s melancholy, beautiful and somehow manages to keep to a very small scale while feeling a bit majestic. I suppose that’s the point here — Murphy is singing about hiding in the background, biding time while he waits for someone to decide if they want him or not. It’s a song of passive passion, of hoping that someone can get it together and decide what they want before you have to move on. It’s a dim hope, though. No matter how lovely and graceful this song gets, it’s hard not to pick up on that defeated feeling.

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Lady Gaga “Government Hooker”

“Government Hooker” is a bit out of step with the rest of Born This Way. It’s more of a Fame Monster song, really — harsh industrial dance music with dark, cynical lyrics at odds with the big-hearted affirmations on the rest of the record. It does makes sense that this one is sequenced back to back with “Judas,” which is just as bleak and intense. It’s like a little island of goth angst and pounding beats on an album that is otherwise focused on ecstatic, campy grandeur.

The track, written by Gaga along with producers Fernando Garibay and DJ White Shadow, is a harsh, sleek banger. It reminds me of KFMDM, Basement Jaxx and Goldfrapp in “Strict Machine” mode. It gleefully steals — and amps up — the best bit from New Order’s “Blue Monday.” The lyrics approach some kind of point about politics and sexuality and commerce, but it doesn’t quite connect. That doesn’t bother me, really — this song is all about the menacing vibe, and the words end up serving that feeling by suggesting ideas about identity, kink and power dynamics that you can fill in yourself.

My favorite detail in this track is the very sound of the male voice. As it turns out, the guy saying “back up and turn around” et al is one of Gaga’s bodyguard. There’s something incredible about this dude’s voice and it’s totally appropriate for his role in the song’s dynamic. He sounds smug, hyper-masculine, somewhat detached. He creeps me out and I love it, especially in direct contrast with Gaga singing, with a touch of longing, “as long as I’m your hoooooker!”

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tUnE-yArDs @ Music Hall of Williamsburg 5/21/2011

Hatari / Do You Wanna Live? (Party Can) / You Yes You / Gangsta / Powa / Riotriot / Fiya / Bizness / Real Live Flesh / Es-So / Doorstep // My Country /// Killa

tUnE-yArDs “You Yes You”

In my previous experiences with tUnE-yArDs in concert, they were playing to audiences who were not familiar with them, or maybe had heard the first album and had no idea that they were in for one of the very best live acts in music today. Part of the thrill in those shows was the shared discovery of Merrill Garbus’ phenomenal talent and charisma — that “oh my God, who is this woman and where has she been all my life and holy shit this song I’ve never heard before in my life is amaaaazing” thing.

Part of the fun in this show was that it was a sold out room full of people who had fallen in love with w h o k i l l and could not be more excited to be witnessing the great Merrill Garbus in action. This was a loud, excited and deeply reverent crowd. Every so often, when the audience would get particularly intense, bassist Nate Brenner would get this look of bemused pride on his face like “Merrill, you’ve done it again.” That guy complements her so perfectly — his bass playing is brilliant and rises to the level of her voice and those songs, but he’s also this cool, relaxed character who casts her enormous personality in sharp relief.

I could gush about this show endlessly. Everything about this performance is impressive, thrilling and life-affirming. It made me feel inspired glad to be alive. The only thing I can say about this show that is even close to a criticism is that the sequence of the set frontloaded a lot of the most thrilling songs, so that I think the peak of the show — the ecstatic climax of “Powa” — came a bit too early. That’s such a minor complaint, though. I was smiling the whole time. I’m smiling right now just thinking about it. Go see this band play live.

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Thurston Moore “Illuminine”

Thurston Moore’s third solo album Demolished Thoughts is a good, pretty record but it doesn’t move me. Though it is nice to hear him trying something new after a solid decade in which Sonic Youth has been in a stylistic holding pattern, I think the acoustic-guitar-and-string-ensemble approach here is better in theory than in practice. The problem isn’t in the execution — this is lovely stuff, especially “Illuminine,” and Beck did a fine job in producing this music — but in that Moore ends up sounding sorta drab in this musical setting. One of the things that makes Sonic Youth one of the very best rock bands of all time is that they have an incredible skill for creating sounds with guitars that are incredibly specific and evocative. I don’t hear guitars and drums in the best Sonic Youth songs; I hear images and places and melodies and rhythms abstracted beyond instrumentation. This music, though quite pleasant and aggressively tasteful, puts Moore’s distinct and familiar melodic tics and cadences into a context where the sounds don’t do much but signify the instruments being played. This might not concern me much if it were a different singer, but when I hear Thurston’s voice I expect a bit more poetry in the sound.

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Friendly Fires “Hurting”

This reminds me of Phoenix’s excellent 2004 album Alphabetical. Friendly Fires go for a similar sort of immaculate funk, but they aren’t quite as tentative about embracing the romance in their music. Phoenix has always kept the listener at a distance, hinting at glamor and sexiness in the elegance of their sound while Thomas Mars sings evocative lines tossed in with cryptic gibberish. I love that sort of thing, but at the same time it’s nice to hear Friendly Fires’ Ed Macfarlane put his heart on his sleeve and deliver this straightforward crush pop. “Hurting” is a perfect expression of infatuation — heightened and blissful, while also vulnerable and anguished.

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Purity Ring “Ungirthed”

The arrangement for Purity Ring’s “Ungirthed” — probably the best song with a terrible title that I’ve encountered in some time — comes out sounding like a modern rap track that’s gone “wrong” somehow. Its bounce is a bit off center, its tonality is a bit too bright. But for what it is, it’s brilliant and lovely. As striking as the track can be, what really makes this work is the particular tone and cadences of singer Megan James, who sings these clipped, slightly incoherent lines full of apocalyptic imagery in a voice that I find very cute, though not particularly cutesy. The world is crashing down around her, but she doesn’t sound panicked. Somehow she sounds optimistic.

Visit the Purity Ring website.