Author Archive

Klanguage “Never Over” – Is this song the beginning of the excitement, what you play on the way to the excitement, or the sum total of the excitement? Most likely the latter, because of course the journey is the most crucial portion of any adventure. The music is so crisp and perfect, but also sort of loose and seemingly simplistic, like the best cartoon art. The instrumental tones imply a bright palette of colors in fluid motion, a fully realized and highly stylized world inhabited by the charismatic and subtly sexy voice of the girlish singer. (Click here for the Klanguage MySpace page.)

Elsewhere: My new Hit Refresh column with mp3s from Edu K, Irving and the Rogers Sisters is up on the ASAP site.

Also: If you’re in Montreal for the Future of Music Policy Summit and/or the Pop Montreal festival, please do come and see this panel today moderated by Andrew Rose and featuring myself, Dan Beirne from Said The Gramophone, Carl Wilson of Zoilus, Marie-Chantale Turgeon, and the Eye Weekly‘s Helen Spitzer.

Massive Attack @ Roseland Ballroom 10/3/2006
False Flags / Risingson / Black Milk / The Man Next Door / Karmacoma / Butterfly Caught / Hymn of the Big Wheel / Mezzanine / Teardrop / Angel / Future Proof / Safe From Harm // Inertia Creeps / Unfinished Sympathy / Group Four

Massive Attack “Safe From Harm” – Massive Attack’s music is basically a utilitarian thing. They are exceptionally gifted at writing dark, cinematic mood music and they don’t muck about, providing a consistent vibe throughout both individual tracks and entire albums. They seem to have deliberately created a body of work that makes the most sense when played in the background, and so it’s actually sort of strange that they tour at all, given what is normally required to be a compelling live act. After all, what comes off as atmosphere on home speakers often translates as a shapeless dirge in a concert hall.

The group performs as revue, shuffling vocalists (Horace Andy, Elizabeth Fraser, Deborah Miller, etc) on and off stage when they are required, and largely abdicated the visual component of the concert to the lighting while the performers stood in the shadows. As is common of producer-driven UK music, the band was comprised of sharp session players who recreated the sound of the original recordings with cold precision, and looked a little like Blue Men whenever they were bathed in indigo light.

The audience never really seemed to know what to do with the music as it was being performed, and frankly I’m at a bit of a loss for suggestions. The songs from the Mezzanine album in particular have been licensed to death, and the general sound of their catalog has been so thoroughly colonized by film and advertising that it’s hard to listen to many of the songs without those associations lingering in your mind. In addition to that, Mezzanine is sort of notorious for being a stock answer to the “what music puts you in the mood” question in internet personal ads, but there appeared to be a radical disconnect between the practical usage of those songs in urban bedrooms and the not particularly sexual (or even physical) response of the audience at Roseland. It was especially strange when the group performed their biggest American hit “Teardrop” to a room of people who clearly wanted to show some sort of appreciation, but couldn’t figure out an appropriate expression and fell silent after the first minute and a half of random shouts, awkward clapping, and aborted attempts at singing along. Things worked out much better when they came closer to the dynamics of a rock band on “Angel” and “Safe From Harm,” both of which came out sounding like the live version of U2’s “Bullet The Blue Sky” slowed down and twisted into a creepy variation on Quiet Storm slow jams.

“Safe From Harm” was the clear highlight of the show, and made for a sharp contrast with the rest of the main set with Deborah Miller’s warm, emphatic vocals and an extended instrumental section that demanded more attention than the other dramatic musical gestures of the evening. Miller returned in the encore for “Unfinished Sympathy,” which was also quite good and provided a greater sense of movement than the rest of the low BPM selections from the night. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Also: My friends in Au Revoir Simone will be touring in Europe through the end of the year, but are in search of places to stay while they tour the UK. If you can offer them accomodations — it’s just the three girls, all of whom are very sweet and well-behaved — they will happily get you into their shows for free (they are playing on bills with We Are Scientists) and show you quite a bit of gratitude. The only catch is that they cannot stay anywhere with cats. They need help with the following dates:

Oct 20 Norwich UEA
Oct 21 Sheffield Octagon
Oct 22 Manchester Apollo
Oct 23 Leeds University
Oct 24 Newcastle Academy
Oct 25 Aberdeen Music Hall
Oct 26 Glasgow Academy
Oct 28 Belfast Mandela Hall
Oct 29 Galway Roisin Dub
Oct 30 Dublin Ambassador
Nov 1 Cardiff University
Nov 2 Reading Hexagon
Nov 3 Birmingham Academy
Nov 4 Nottingham Rock City
Nov 5 Bristol Academy
Nov 6 Exeter University
Nov 7 Southampton Guildhall

If you can help them, please email: info @ aurevoirsimone.com

They will also be playing a show at the Mercury Lounge in New York City on Sunday night, but obviously won’t need a hand with that since it’s a hometown gig.

Pipas “Riff Raff” – I hear this, and all I can imagine is a shy, generally reserved girl engaging in some kind of low-level late night mischief and getting a little overexcited and having her mind run this rambling interior monologue about how what she is doing barely feels like her life at all and how alive she suddenly feels and how she’s going to make a habit of this fresh new fun, but then it passes rather quickly, her pulse slows back to its normal pace, and it’s back to normal for another few months of working at the library or whatever. (Click here to buy it from Long Lost Cousin.)

Chamellows “Summerfun” – Finnish lo-fi dating back about ten years, and um, you can kinda tell. It’s so casual and tossed off that it’s hard to imagine that it was created with the public in mind. There’s a pop tune at the core of this goofy little mess, but it requires more than a little patience to get through it without wanting to hit the male vocalist with a rake every time he derails the girl’s nice little vocal hook. I wonder if they even remember making this, or if the guy just recently found the tape and had to remind her that it ever happened.

Chamellows Guy: Hey, remember all those tapes we did back in the mid-90s?

Chamellows Girl: What? Not really.

Chamellows Guy: The limited edition 7″ and those DIY cassettes. We made about 100 of them.

Chamellows Girl, examining a cassette: This one says March 1996. Wasn’t that around the time that I beat you with that rake in your father’s garage?

Chamellows Guy: I do not remember that at all.

(Click here to buy it from Fonal.)

Yo La Tengo @ Landmark Loews Theatre, Jersey City 9/29/06
Sugarcube / Pass The Hatchet, I Think I’m Goodkind / Flying Lessons (Hot Chicken #1) / The Weakest Part / Sometimes I Don’t Get You / Winter A-Go-Go / Mr. Tough / Beanbag Chair / I Feel Like Going Home / Stockholm Syndrome / I Should’ve Known Better / Watch Out For Me Ronnie / Tom Courtenay /The Story of Yo La Tango / I Heard You Looking // Oklahoma, USA (Kinks cover sung by Ira)/ Lewis / Rocks Off (Rolling Stones cover sung by James) /// Cast A Shadow (Beat Happening cover sung by Georgia) / Did I Tell You

Yo La Tengo “The Story of Yo La Tango” – I’ve seen Yo La Tengo several times before, and I’ve found them to be a frustratingly hit or miss live act. This show most definitely fell into the hit category, and was not only the best show that I’ve seen them play by a considerable margin, but also one of the best live shows I’ve seen recently, full stop.

A lot of this had to do with the venue. The Landmark Loews Theatre in Jersey City is easily one of the most spectacular concert halls in the NYC area. It’s an old school movie palace with an interior that resembles an ornate cathedral and features a pristine sound system and remarkable acoustics that presented the music with a clarity that flattered the band whether they performing quieter material arranged for the grand piano, or kicking out extended, heavily distorted jams. No hyperbole, NYC people — if a band that you like books a show at the Landmark Loews, get over any silly fear of transferring to the PATH train and going to New Jersey that you may have and buy a ticket, because they are going to sound amazing. Seriously, it’s 30 minutes from Manhattan, and I know that all of you have gone further out of your way just to get to some random part of Brooklyn at some point.

After a lengthy opening sequence of loud guitar songs, the band settled into a mini-set of piano-based selections mostly taken from the new album. Though “Beanbag Chair”, “Sometimes I Don’t Get You,” and “Mr. Tough” were played with close approximations of their studio arrangements, the remaining piano numbers were considerably altered with great results. “Winter A-Go-Go” sounded slightly more upbeat, “I Feel Like Going Home” benefitted greatly from ditching the strings that sound so superfluous and predictable to my ears on the record, and the piano-and-bass reading of the encore “Did I Tell You” was gorgeous and hopelessly outclassed the country arrangement from New Wave Hot Dogs.

The concert’s peak began with a confident, by-the-book performance of their classic “Tom Courtenay” before shifting into two extended neo-psychedelic drone rockers that showcased the trio’s musical communication and Ira Kaplan’s ability to imply an enormous ocean of sound with only one guitar. It’s always fascinating to watch Kaplan as he slips into noise mode, mainly because he has such a unique physicality to his playing. He’s very animated and theatrical, but he never goes for typical rock guitar moves, instead dramatizing an altercation between himself and his instrument that begins with some passive-aggressive slaps and shoving before escalating into wrestling, throwing, and strangulation. He’s a smallish, nebbishy guy, and so he somehow seems like an underdog even when he’s beating the thing into submission throughout the sustained climax of “The Story of Yo La Tango.” When he put his guitar down after the song, it actually seemed like some kind of victory. (Click here to buy it from Matador.)

Elsewhere: Scott has a lot of pictures from the show and a video of the band performing “Rocks Off” over on Stereogum.

Busdriver “Kill Your Employer” – Busdriver raps as if he is imagining his voice as a lead melodic line rather than a parallel rhythm, and the zippy zig zag of his verses lends itself to cartoonish changes in his timbre and absurd lyrical density, as though his primary artistic influence was the super fast enunciation of fine print in radio advertisements. His approach is at home in this busy quasi-electro arrangement, drawing him closer to the likes of the Dungeon Family than what would normally be expected of this sort of aggressively nerdy and political hip hop. The catchy (but slightly off-kilter) chorus certainly doesn’t hurt, though I kinda wish that the title was spelled “Cill Your Employer.” (Click here to buy it from Underground Hip Hop)

The Victorian English Gentlemen’s Club “Dead Anyway” – Playfully morbid, cheerfully bleak, gallows rock. McLusky with ladies, sludge with jaunt, chords like grinding metal and broken gears. Soft to loud for drama and dynamics, not out of habit. The highs feel like standing on the edge of a tall building, the lows are like the hollow feeling in the gut that goes along with imagining hitting the ground from such a great height. (Click here to buy it from Amazon UK.)

Elsewhere: My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site and features mp3s from Mixel Pixel, Brush, and In Flagranti.

Also Elsewhere: My review of Jesus Camp is up on The Movie Binge.

Beck “Strange Apparition” – It’s hard for me to tell whether Beck is intentionally exploring the middle ground of his stylistic range after playing up his extremes on Midnite Vultures (his masterwork) and Sea Change (his nadir), or if he’s simply settled into writing “Beck songs” without any masterplan. He could be playing it safe, or he might just lack the feeling to fully commit to a joyous, hilarious critique of sexuality in the context of late capitalism or an album of nonstop sadsackery given the relentlessly charmed nature of his life over the past ten years or so. His new LP The Information leans heavily on rapped verses, but lingers in a haze of emotional neutrality that can be quite appealing when the tunes are strong and it suits the subtext (this is most especially true of “Think I’m In Love”), but also emphasizes the weaknesses of the lesser tracks on an album that is at least four songs too long. The latter category lend themselves well to a parlor game you can play with casual fans — Mediocre Beck Song or Exceptional Eels Tune?

The muted tone of the album works in the favor of “Strange Apparition,” a Stones-ish rambler with an appealing, tumbling piano progression and lyrics about a man with a comfortable life and a decaying spirit. It’s difficult to tell where Beck is coming from on this song — Is he judging the guy? Relating to him? Pitying him? — but it’s one of the best tunes that he’s written since the turn of the decade, and also one of the best recorded, at least in terms of the engineering and mixing of the piano and percussion tracks. (Click here to buy it from Insound.)

The Vandelles “Lovely Weather” – I was thoroughly zoned out when I saw the Vandelles play a Beg Yr Pardon show at the Delancey on Tuesday night, but that may have been the ideal state of mind for their extremely loud but exceptionally tuneful set of arty nihilistic surf rock. They played without any stage lighting; illuminated only by diagonally projected loops of surf films and computerized psychedelic swirls of color that lent their performance both a touch of ironic humor and a bit of menace. Their demeanor fell along the same fine line, alternating between bouts of giggling and joking banter from the girls in the rhythm section, and the unforced intensity of the guitarists, one of whom often had a vaguely unsettling expression of remoteness on his face as he murmured his vocals into his microphone. (Click here for the Vandelles’ MySpace page.)

Ponies in the Surf “Slow Down Sugar” – “Slow Down Sugar” is a wonderfully appropriate name for this song, but an even more accurate title would have been “Slowed Down, Sugared.” Camille McGregor’s voice is almost cartoonishly sweet and angelic, but it’s never so gorgeous as when it’s extended into an ethereal drone that merges with a lightly humming organ. Following a brief, gently clanging middle section, the song drifts to a halt for over a minute. It seems even slower than it actually is, but it’s absolutely mesmerizing and almost seems to set the entire world in slow motion. (Click here to buy it from Asaurus.)

These Are Powers “The South Angel” – The opening of the track sounds like a stream of clipped inanities set to a backdrop of motionless, muddied but still shrill noise, as though you’re somehow being forced to listen to a loop of a few seconds of an overheard conversation outside a rock club. However, the tension escalates and the tone takes a turn toward outright panic, and it seems to retroactively transform the opening bit into something that now sounds more like pleading and less like a girl excitedly trying to tell her friend about some new whatever. (Click here for the These Are Powers MySpace page.)

Planningtorock “Think That Thought (Stringed Up Version)” – I’m not usually a person who privileges acoustic instruments over synthesizers (it’s often the other way around), but this new string-based arrangement can’t help but to make the album version sound like a home demo. The album recording compensates for its thin fakey string sound with a pleasing backing vocal that answers and counters the lead, but it’s just nowhere near as elegant. Whereas the song had been a bit lost in a track that called attention to its artifice, the string arrangement doesn’t burden it with nearly as much context. In addition to the removal of the second vocal and its attendent responsive lyrics, there’s a shift in pronouns in the first verse that completely changes the meaning of the song. In the first version, she sings about trying to dig beyond her conscious mind to uncover what is truly motivating her, and recognizing the resulting echo chamber in her brain: “When I think about that thought, that thought thinks about me.” In this take, the lyric shifts ever so slightly outside of herself, as she attempts to predict and understand the thoughts of someone else while unable to shake off the tainted filter of her own perceptions. The song becomes much sweeter, and the low key pizzicato and breezy melodies echo that sentiment while also mimicing the fluid tangle of notions and motivations within a mind.

Another great thing about this arrangement is that in cutting out some clutter, it highlights what an amazing Led Zeppelin song this would have been. Seriously, just listen to this and think about how it would have sounded if performed by Houses of the Holy-era Led Zep. She comes a bit close to Robert Plant vocalization already, but the instrumental parts definitely seem like something Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones would have written around that time. (Click here to buy it from iTunes.)

Jumbling Towers “Beggars” – Since there are some obvious and well-known touchstones in this track — Matthew Friedberger’s playful yet seasick jauntiness; Walter Martin’s late night urban romanticism; Jack White’s most over-the-top faux-old timey vocals — there is some temptation to simply list off its components and leave it at that, but it all comes together to form something rather special and unique. There’s a wonderful economy of tone in this arrangement as it rations out its limited set of textures in a highly deliberate and effective manner, with the song passing through distinct sections as though they were rooms in the same house. It’s catchy in a fairly traditional sort of way, but it’s ultimately a mood piece focused more on the specific sound of its instruments, most especially the crisp, cool tone of the Rhodes keyboard. (Click here for the Jumbling Towers MySpace page.)

Chicks On Speed Records’ new Girlmonster compilation is a treasure trove of high quality, foward-thinking music by female artists new and old, and if you’ve been enjoying a fair chunk of what’s been on offer here over the past five years, there’s a good chance that you’ll quite like it given that I wish that I could write up a majority of its 60 tracks. A number of the artists featured have been on this site in the past — Le Tigre, Barbara Morgenstern, Rhythm King and Her Pals, Kevin Blechdom, Ana da Silva, Sir Alice, Chicks On Speed, Cobra Killer, Vivien Goldman, Client, Peaches, Boyskout, Erase Errata, The Slits, Delta 5, Planningtorock, Bjork, Gustav, LiliPUT — and it’s probable that many others will pop up here before too long.

Cobra Killer “Mr. Chang” – Apparently sung from the perspective of an airline representative informing a businessman that his luggage has been lost in transit, Cobra Killer turn out what may be their most charming and catchy tune to date. They affect the sing-song tone of a disconnected person cheerfully delivering bad news, but somehow it’s hard not to be on their side or feel too badly for “Mr. Chang” or “Mr. Scarface.”

Michaela Melián “Manifesto” – The title sort of gives away the tone of the lyrics, but only so much. This song is not particularly strident, but it is strong, serious, and patient, and plays out over a subtly arranged track that is extremely calm and collected without stifling the warmth and humanity under its mostly cool textures and Melián’s thick German accent. (I am sort of ridiculous because I did not realize that this is a Roxy Music cover, most likely because I just never really liked Roxy Music very much.) (Click here to buy it via Chicks On Speed Records’ Girlmonster site.)

Boyskout “You’re Not Around (Demo)” – “Kinky” is a highly relative word that gets thrown around quite a bit and as such can be something of a devalued linguistic currency, but there’s something in the drowsy, kittenish, matter of fact sound of Boyskout singer/guitarist Leslie Satterfield’s voice that makes me suspect that she’s not overstating anything in this song, especially when she qualifies it as something that would happen with her (pretty fantastic, judging by the lyrics of this song) lover long before any clothing was removed. It’s a song full of sweaty thoughts, and the sound of the music is perfectly matched to the lyric, falling somewhere between moody Pixies-ish surf punk and the slow sultry tone of Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game.” (Click here for the official Boyskout site.)

Elsewhere: My review of the (totally, totally awful) Zach Braff/Paul Haggis team-up The Last Kiss is up on The Movie Binge.

Also Elsewhere: My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site, and features mp3s from The Blood Brothers, Pony Up, and Georgia Anne Muldrow.

The Howling Hex “Hammer and Bluebird” – Neil Hagerty achieves a focused yet thoroughly zoned-out Zen sort of rock on Nightclub Version of the Eternal, and by that I don’t mean just on this song or a portion of the selections — I’m talking about the entire seven track, 52 minute duration. The album, which is essentially a collection of lengthy grooves, zonked chants, and lateral jams, sounds as though it was recorded in a fugue state. On one hand, it’s one of the more self-indulgent records of Hagerty’s career, but it’s also one of the most natural and free, with its zombie vocals and matter-of-fact noodling seeming like the product of a man who has plugged his unconscious mind directly into the soundboard. (Click here to buy it from Drag City.)

Excepter “The ‘Rock’ Stepper” – If you can imagine a version of Girls Against Boys (oh yes, remember when you could say “GVSB” in indie circles and not mean Gorilla Vs. Bear?) that had never flamed out with that really lame faux-industrial album that they recorded for Geffen, and kept going with the creepy druggy sex vibe of House of GVSB , it would probably sound a hell of a lot like this, especially if none of the band’s members slept at any point between 1998 and right now. This isn’t the most representative track in the Excepter catalog, but part of the beauty of it, and especially this year’s Alternation LP, is that there doesn’t really seem to be one in spite of their fairly distinct aesthetic overall. (Click here to buy it from Insound.)

Marit Larsen “The Sinking Game” – On a record that overflows with heart and grace, “The Sinking Game” sneaks in toward the end and steals the show. It’s not tremendously obvious, but amidst ten other songs with hooks that put to shame virtually everyone else in pop music in 2006, this is the number that sticks in my head through the day and the one that I find playing in my head some mornings, whether I had heard it recently or not. It’s not a song about passively falling in love so much as actively jumping down into it, and it sounds just as terrifying and exhilirating as it ought to be, especially as the start to every chorus feels like an emotional swan dive. It’s not for nothing that the instrumental bridge evokes the sensation of gliding on moonlit air! (Click here to buy it via the official Marit Larsen site.)

Scritti Politti “After Six” – Scritti Politti’s Green Gartside is British pop’s switcheroo king, a songwriter who seems to derive endless pleasure from subverting the expectations of his audience with extremely meta tunes that smuggle ironic reversals and sharp critical theory into what would otherwise come across as some of the most innocuous music available anywhere. The man is fascinated by black music — mainly gospel, soul, and rap — but he can’t help but sound like one of the whitest men on the planet, especially when his sweet cooing voice and crisp production aesthetic sounds like the perfect aural expression of freshly laundered hotel bed sheets spread out on an infinite horizon. “After Six” is a variation on one of Gartside’s favorite tricks — the atheistic gospel tune — but there’s something more to this one, even if in comparison to its predecessors it is rather simple and brief. As in the past, he finds great beauty and pleasure in the expression of faith, but just can’t find it within himself, and so he haggles with no one in particular over what he can and can’t get behind. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

In Flagranti “Genital Blue Room” – Following a brief intro tune, In Flagranti begin their brilliant debut LP with a track that immediately asserts control over your central nervous system, and obstensibly casts the listener as an object of desire caught between the first-person demands of the lead vocal and a third party’s voyeuristic urging for total submission. All of In Flagranti’s exotic neo-disco tracks are fetishistic in content as well as in form, resulting in a 17 track blur of signifiers that are meant to be more exciting than what is being signified. The seduction informs the act, and the implication of the sound is crucial to its physical function. (Click here to buy it via Codek’s In Flagranti site.)

Holiday On Strings “Touch The Tiger” – The singer’s voice has the weary “how could this night possibly get any worse” tone of Lou Barlow, but the stark, atmospheric track is distinctly un-Sebadoh. True, he sounds like he’s lost and confused in an environment of creepy decadence, and there’s a sense of impending doom that never lets up, not even in the lingering acoustic outro, but it doesn’t sound as though he’s in for a bad time. In fact, it seems like this definitely could be the most exciting and romantic (in any sense of the word) night of his life, even if it turns out to be something that he regrets. (Click here to buy it via the Holiday For Strings official site.)

Elsewhere: Eric Harvey has a few things to say about music blogs.

Scissor Sisters “Paul McCartney” – Scissor Sisters fans hoping for more “Comfortably Numb” and “Filthy/Gorgeous”-style full-on disco numbers will very likely be let down by Ta-Dah, an album largely focused on 70s-style radio pop in the vein of “Laura” and “Take Your Mama.” (My taste errs toward the latter, so I’m in luck. Lots and lots of luck.) “Paul McCartney” sits in the middle of the record, and splits the difference between the two sides of the SS aesthetic by marrying its blue-eyed soul tune to a bouncey groove that sounds like the audio equivalent of the color chartreuse. Much like CSS’s “Music Is My Hot, Hot Sex,” it’s a song about loving music that closely replicates the thrills of the sort of songs that it celebrates, as well as the excited rush of fandom. Whereas CSS’s Lovefoxxx attempts to verbalize the ineffable and ends up with a strange translation that somehow gets it exactly right, Jake Shears is more analytical, asking questions he knows can’t be answered, and expressing a profound love that is simultaneously returned and unrequited. (Click here to pre-order it from Amazon.)

Elsewhere: Troubled Diva has a great song-by-song review of Ta Dah.

Excerpt from WFMU’s Aircheck – Morrissey fans on KROQ circa 1990 – This recording is taken from the most recent episode of WFMU’s radio anthology series Aircheck, and was apparently also released as an EP bonus track back in the early ’90s. As part of some sort of promotion, the famed Los Angeles radio station KROQ had Morrissey fans call in to record messages that would be sent along to the man himself. This eight minute clip is only a small sampling, but it is fascinating to hear whether you’re a fan of Morrissey or not if just because the passion and gratitude that comes through in these messages is just so overwhelming, beautiful, and a little bit funny. My favorites are definitely the fast-talking, super-enthusiastic girls who sound as though they may burst into tears at any moment, but there’s also a certain charm to the guys who spout off trivia as an awkward display of their love and dedication. (Click here to buy it as a bonus track on the Live At KROQ ep from Amazon.)

Erase Errata @ Irving Plaza 9/13/2006
Cruising / Rider / Another Genius Idea From Our Government / Hotel Suicide / (brief song that I did not recognize) / Dust / Beacon / Giant Hans / He Wants What’s Mine / Retreat! The Most Familiar / Wasteland (In A…) / Tax Dollar

Erase Errata “Another Genius Idea From Our Government” – I’m not usually so thrilled with shows that pull their setlist almost entirely from an act’s most recent record, but in the case of this Erase Errata set, it was both perfect and sort of necessary. Without the presence of Sarah Jaffe, the emphasis of their music has changed considerably without compromising the basic identity of the band. I don’t mean this to be a knock on Jaffe or their previous recordings, but Nightlife is the sound of a band that has finally found its focus, and that carried over into their performance last night. With Jaffe, their music had a constant nervous twitch that shook the songs in place, whereas the current incarnation of the group specialize in capturing a feeling of propulsion through space. “Another Genius Idea From Our Government” in particular begins with a few moments of tension before shooting the remainder of the song foward like a poisoned dart at its intended target. (Have a guess as to who that might be.) The trio were as tight as I had hoped they would be, and filled lulls between selections by linking outros and intros rather than halting for breaks. The group’s demeanor on stage is a bit hard to pin down — they are friendly and unpretentious but not at all warm, and often come across as people lost in concentration even though they play so casually that it makes their taut grooves, sharp hooks, and inspired noise seem easy. (Click here to buy it from Buy Olympia.)

The Gossip “Standing in the Way of Control” – My memory is a bit fuzzy on this, but I have not seen the Gossip play since rather early in their career when they were opening for Sleater-Kinney and had more of a scuzzy garage rock thing going on. They were fun and compelling back then, but they’ve grown into something much better. Though I’m not crazy about the explosion in rock duos over the course of the past ten years (I understand the interpersonal and economic reasons for this, but more often than not I think it leads to a poverty of texture and dynamics in the music), but Brace Paine has a talent for implying a full sound with only his bass or guitar, and Beth Ditto’s strong, confident voice is more than enough to color in the rest of the compositions. The best songs in their set were the intense dance numbers from their latest record, as well as an irony-free cover of Aaliyah’s “Are You That Somebody” with backing vocals by Erase Errata’s Jenny Hoyston. (Click here to buy it from Buy Olympia.)

Mika Miko “Business Cats” – Mika Miko seemed shy and nervous on stage, but in the sweetest, more ingratiating way possible. Between bursts of quick, shouty punk tunes largely sung via a red courtesy phone, the girls in the band occasionally addressed the audience with an obviously anxious and grateful tone, but spoke so quickly that every apparent “thank you” was almost entirely unintelligable. Though only a few of their songs were fully formed, the group was long on charm and showed great promise. I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if they eventually evolve into something quite good, just as Erase Errata and The Gossip have over the past half-decade or so. (Click here to buy it from Buy Olympia.)

Elsewhere: My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site and includes songs from Minimum Chips, Soulwax, and Viva l’American Death Ray Music.

James Kochalka Superstar “Britney’s Silver Can” – There is something so strangely iconic and resonant about the relationship and subsequent break-up of Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake, and even four years down the line, it dominates the way most of us interpret their highly publicized lives. Since celebrity gossip is really just an extension of dishing about your classmates in school, it was almost too perfect when the two were together, a perfect pop approximation of the post popular boy and girl at school hooking up and becoming something like the homecoming king and queen of pop culture for a few years. Justin was (and remains) douchey and doofy, but he is possessed of a charm that makes it easy to forgive even his most embarrassing mis-steps, and Britney is at once warm, simple, shrewd, and unknowable. They both evoke the sort of charismatic amiability of “popular” people, but also the cold calculation involved in currying such favor and maintaining their position of social power, which is alienating but also vaguely sympathetic if you recognize the emotional cost of being a public figure of such magnitude.

In this song from his latest album, full-time cartoonist and part-time songwriter James Kochalka presents his sympathetic, fannish fantasy vision of a post-break-up Britney who stumbles through her life despondently until settling into her current state of oblivion. Before the song breaks into its lengthy, majestic chorus, Kochalka’s version of Britney makes a lonely vow to become “her own best friend” before sadly acknowledging that the only person who can ever truly understand her is Justin Timberlake, Justin Timberlake, Justin Timberlaaaaaake! (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Regina Spektor “Edit” – Fragile and tense, but with moments of courage and grace, this subtle and beautifully composed track perfectly captures the feeling of confronting an extremely sensitive and volatile person, all the while editing and re-editing your words in your head before expressing them out loud. Spektor doesn’t hate the person she’s cornering, and obviously isn’t looking to burn any bridges, but that doesn’t mean she’s unwilling to dig at this person’s confidence. She will not deny this person’s talent, and so she cuts deep into their insecurity with the icy critique “you can write, but you can’t edit,” a line that ought to injure the pride of most any artist. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

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

Holy Hail “Dig My Grave With The Songs I’ve Sung” – There’s a tension in this song, this audible push and pull between what this great tune would be in the hands of other artists, and how it is performed by the people who wrote it. Holy Hail’s tiny voices and relatively anemic playing renders in miniature a song that seems built for hugeness and passion, and it’s hard to tell whether this is simply the band performing to the fullest of their potential, or the result of timid bet-hedging. I believe that they err on the side of the former, and that they are getting by on their considerable cuteness and charm when even they know the song could use more power. There’s some cleverness in scaling the song down and avoiding the obvious, and in most ways it works, as their reading lends some interesting subtext to the recording. It sounds like children dressing up in their parents’ clothing; this grasp for a maturity that’s just out of reach. (Click here for the official Holy Hail site.)

Elsewhere: My review of Andrew Bujalski’s Mutual Appreciation is up on The Movie Binge. I’m not sure if it is totally clear in the review how much I really, really like the film, but you should know that I do.

Los Super Elegantes “Where Is The Whiskey?” – I like Los Super Elegantes quite a bit – I’ve written about them twice here, and have included them in my ASAP column and in some DJ sets that I’ve done in the past year. They are a clever, interesting pop group and so it didn’t take much to convince me to see them play a free show yesterday, especially when it was early enough that I could make it home in time for the season premiere of The Wire. Unfortunately, the band happened to be playing at one of the most subtly icky and strangely uncomfortable venues that I have ever visited. There was something rather unsettling about the scene at the Starbucks Salon, and it’s difficult to express why that is without coming across as a total misanthrope. Everything about the place – a “nomadic interactive coffeehouse, gallery, and performance venue” – felt unreal and fake, as though the project was to create in real life an environment that mimicked the sort of venues you would see on tv crossed with the most ambitious fantasies of an earnest youth marketer. Imagine the coffeehouse from Friends mixed with The Bronze from Buffy, but designed with the “urban lifestyle” aesthetic of The Fader. Everyone in the place seemed as though they were cast, leaving me to feel as though I’d stumbled onto a set.

Not to put down any of the (I’m sure quite lovely) people in attendance, but to give you an idea of the general vibe in the room, you should imagine one of those McDonalds ads featuring generic affluent multi-cultural “hipsters.” All of the archetypes were present, including the skinny white guy with perfect cheekbones and blonde dreadlocks. There’s nothing very objectionable about these people, and the intention of presenting art and music is fine and admirable at face value, but it’s hard to shake off the creeping feeling that this was in fact the prototype of a future in which Starbucks and other like-minded companies could successfully colonize the live music market with thousands of bland approximations of small clubs in every desirable marketplace in the country. A lot of my discomfort in this venue is tied to feeling insecure in the presence of attractive, obviously wealthy Soho people, but there certainly is something to fear in this sort of aggressive corporate expansion into the arts. If this event yields a packed house in the middle of a city overflowing with galleries and live music, just how enthusiastically would it be embraced in a place with far fewer options? (Click here for Los Super Elegantes’ official site.)

Irwin Chusid presents Hello, Autumn’s “Never Getting Married” and Robert Alberg’s “I Been Single All My Life” on WFMU, 9/6/2006 – Between 1997 and 2002, Irwin Chusid and Michelle Boulé hosted Incorrect Music, a weekly program on WFMU in which they played an hour of what is commonly known as “outsider music.” The name of the show was quite diplomatic in that it didn’t quite condemn the work being presented so much as acknowledge that the oddball obscurities did not conform to anyone’s ideas of what music should be – mainstream, avant garde, or otherwise.

Much of the music aired on the show (some of which has since been featured in Chusid’s book Songs in the Key of Z and its attendant cd anthologies) is astounding, compelling stuff; documents of artists who seem to completely lack the sort of self-consciousness that holds most people back from either revealing too many embarassing aspects of their personal life in song, or creating music that ignores the very basics of musical composition and performance out of incompetence and/or a skewed vision. Incorrect Music was the show that got me into WFMU as a teenager, and its influence is still rippling through the world. Its aesthetic is gradually sinking into the margins of mainstream culture, most notably in the cult success of the Langley Schools Music Project reissue, which simply would not exist without the efforts of Mr. Chusid.

Though the Incorrect Music program is gone, Chusid has not completely abandoned the world of “outsider” music, choosing instead to fold the sort of tunes that would have been earmarked for IM into his regular weekly show on WFMU, where they sit in the context of a lot of relatively normal recordings. In this segment from Wednesday afternoon’s show, he plays a fairly recent song by a young woman known as Hello, Autumn whose work he sort of accurately describes as sounding “like Cat Power fed through the Jandek wringer,” though in some ways it’s probably more fascinating for being like the lyrical intent of early Liz Phair warped by the sort of whiney entitlement fostered by Sex And The City reruns and bad self-help books. In its way, it is not thematically far removed from a lot of contemporary pop sung by young women – she’s striving for empowerment and social leverage, but happens to be lacking in status, sexual charisma, and good fortune. It’s a bit hard to get through the song, but it’s undeniably fascinating in its apparent lack of self-awareness and total commitment to expressing the sort of sentiment that is often best kept to oneself if just because it is so unflattering and self-defeating. If nothing at all, recording this track and putting it out there for public consumption is evidence of some kind of bravery.

Chusid follows up the Hello, Autumn cut with a somewhat unnerving track by a troubled man named Robert Alberg that he suggests is the musical, emotional and thematic mate to her “Never Getting Married.” He’s exactly right. They seem to answer each other like a bizarre, bleak mating call that goes unheard by either. Though Alberg sounds totally insane and is in fact locked away for producing the bio-chemical weapon ricin at his home in Washington state, hearing the recordings back to back makes you want to set the two songs up on a blind date. Surely for every terminally lonely song in the world, there is another that it ought to be paired up with, if just for companionship if not a full-on love connection. However, since it’s very clear that Hello, Autumn’s song has sort of convinced itself that it’s got it going on, it may be holding out for some dreamy Conor Oberst tune, and poor ol’ Robert Alberg will continue to be single for all his life. (Click here for more music by Hello, Autumn.)

Beyoncé “Get Me Bodied” – There are many probable factors that can help to explain why Beyoncé Knowles is not widely recognized as being among the most brilliant and creative songwriters of her generation – her gender, age, race, genre, fame/success, the fact that her work is primarily collaborative – but it’s unfair, condescending, and indicative of obnoxious ingrained preconceptions about songwriting. From the beginning of Destiny’s Child on up through “Crazy In Love” and “Check On It,” Knowles has racked up an impressive catalog of songs (many of them smash hits) that combine foward-thinking arrangements, fierce vocalization, and lyrics that frankly navigate the dynamics of heterosexual relationships in the context of late capitalism. A large number of her best songs sound like contract negotiations, and it’s not meant to be ironic, it’s just how many of us live now, and the remainder of her catalog tends to deal with the ways we suffer or thrive when we treat love and sex like deals to be brokered. Knowles’ lyrics are especially fascinating given the fact that she’s most definitely not coming from a leftist position, and so her ambivalent, occasionally highly contradictory or hypocritical stances on materialism, ambition, and feminism end up mirroring the conflicts of an enormous number of American women. Intentionally or not, Knowles’ music portrays the personal effects of being a hard working, ambitious person in a culture with irrational priorities.

B-Day, her strongest and most thematically consistent album to date, finds Knowles at an inevitable low ebb, essentially the point when she realizes that living life according to a meticulous plan that looks great on paper is not exactly ideal in practice. If you read the record as a narrative, the arc is clear – she becomes serious with a man who matches her drive and high end taste (one of the few moments of emotional prosperity on B-Day comes in a duet with Jay-Z in which they offer to “upgrade” one another with expensive makeovers as part of their courtship, and though it’s well-meaning and somewhat enthusiastic, the track seems cold and stiff as though the music is fully aware that this is more of a business transaction than an emotional exchange), but he eventually cheats on her and she has to spend the rest of the record attempting to stay strong and reconstruct her self-esteem in spite of intense doubt and resentment. We’ve seen this story before, but Knowles’ execution is compelling. Her songs convey bitterness, paranoia, confusion, rage, vulnerability, ego, and desperation, often in subtle combinations that avoid simplistic broad strokes, even when the music is as bold and harsh as on the current single “Ring The Alarm.”

In context, “Get Me Bodied” is the lull before the storm, the period of avoidance and denial before the bottom drops out. She goes out for a night of dancing, approaching the entire scenario with the calculation of a military strike, and seeks to get away from her problems on the dance floor while pleading “I wanna be myself tonight” as though she’s asking herself for permission to cut loose. As the beats jump and pop, Beyoncé carries the minimal arrangement with her vocals, which shout, soar, swoop, and reach a peak in its final third that ranks among the most exciting sections of any song that I’ve heard in 2006. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Elsewhere: My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site and it features selections from J Dilla, First Nation, and Jandek.