Fluxblog

Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

7/8/11

Crumble In The Sunshine

Gardens & Villa “Carrizo Plain”

I’m not usually into this sort of slow, sad, cinematic cowboy music but I find myself entranced by the way this unfolds over five minutes. The guitar, percussion and keyboard parts hang loosely in place, but suggest a heavy gravitational pull. The vocal melody winds around gently until it seems to knot like a noose on the repetition of the line “you and I are intertwined.” A lot of bands try and fail to capture this sort of desperate, desolate vibe, but this is exactly right. It sounds sorta like the Shins dying slowly in the middle of an endless desert.

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7/7/11

You’re Just Electric Blue

Charli XCX “Stay Away”

It’s funny. Only a few months ago I was thinking about how T’Pau’s “Heart and Soul” was rich enough with ideas to provide the basis for several other songs, and here comes along “Stay Away,” a single that wears that influence on its sleeve with great pride. It goes to a darker place, though – whereas the T’Pau song is all about trying to draw in a big, big love, Charli XCX is pushing it away. It’s pouty and a bit goth, but as much as it tries to put on a chilly front, the chorus can’t help but betray some warmth.

Buy it from Amazon UK.

7/6/11

Charged With Insults And Flattery

Elvis Costello “Beyond Belief”

The lyrics of “Beyond Belief” undoubtedly rank among the finest ever penned for a rock song; Costello’s words are so finely chosen and edited that a novel’s worth of character and nuance gracefully unfold in just over a couple minutes. It’s a miracle of lyrical economy and precision. I’ve been obsessing over this song for a few weeks, replaying it incessantly and alternately dissecting lines and taking in the seedy, desperate ambiance of the music.

Costello’s pick-up artist is bereft of soul but he’s not a shallow caricature – more than anything, he seems bored senseless by the empty ritual of his predatory routine. The intensity of his self-loathing has totally soured whatever pleasure he gets from scoring with these women. The pick-up is equally ruthless and half-hearted; he’s distracted during the actual sex act.

One of the most stunning aspects of Costello’s composition is that when the sex arrives in this narrative, the pace suddenly picks up and the sound builds to a brief, frantic peak. In a clever turn, all of the singer’s metaphors contain vaginal imagery – fault lines, vaults, canals. But he’s so lost in his angst and self-awareness that he seems even more alone. His voice changes in this section: more pinched, more hollow. The treble in the arrangement surges and then climaxes: “I come to you beyond belief.” Climax, come. You get the idea.

The song shifts back into its primary mode. It’s like snapping back into reality. After that night’s “Alice” is discarded, the character takes in the scene for a moment before getting sucked back into his head. The chorus finally comes at the end and repeats into fade-out, suggesting an endless loop. That’s when you get a sense of consequence. This time the phrase “beyond belief” takes a slightly different meaning: “Once this seemed so appealing, now I am beyond belief.” It could be the low moment that inspires him to change. Or he could just loop back to the start: “History repeats the old conceits.”

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7/5/11

Across The World

John Maus “Believer”

I love the way John Maus gets the keyboards in this song to sound as though he’s spraying the listener down with some kind of sparkle hose. The sparkly keyboard part nearly drowns out the rest of the arrangement, which seems to be the point – it’s like how shoegazer bands foreground distorted guitar in order to simulate an overwhelming sensual experience. But whereas the best shoegazer music push the raw sexuality associated with guitar rock into soft focus, Maus’ keyboards ring out with great clarity. He’s not changing the way we think of this keyboard sound, only amping it up so that the dreamy romance we associate with synthpop is totally overpowering.

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7/1/11

Well Upholstered Times From Another Day

Sloan @ Knitting Factory 6/30/2011

Follow the Leader / The Answer Was You / Unkind / The Marquee and the Moon / Snowsuit Sound / 500 Up / Shadow of Love / Everything You’ve Done Wrong / Who Taught You to Live Like That? / Anyone Who’s Anyone / She’s Slowin’ Down Again / Something Wrong / Traces / On the Horizon / It’s Plain to See / Your Daddy Will Do / Don’t You Believe A Word / I’ve Gotta Know / Coax Me / Beverly Terrace / Losing California // People of the Sky / C’mon C’mon / Underwhelmed / The Good in Everyone

Sloan “Beverly Terrace”

A lot of music culture, particularly music criticism, thrives on artists having some sort of narrative. I think that Sloan have suffered for this over the course of their career – they’re consistently very good and entertaining, but it’s surprisingly hard to sell people on “oh, this is a good rock band!” these days. You need an angle. So, with this in mind, Sloan are wise to emphasize their 20th anniversary as a band this year. It makes an asset of things that get taken for granted very easily: Longevity, having a large quantity of great tunes, somehow having the collective temperament to balance out the egos of four distinctly talented songwriters.

This show at the Knitting Factory in Brooklyn was, like all Sloan gigs, a no-frills rock party. But it was also a celebration of back catalog – they played a bit from most of their albums and dusted off a bunch of songs that had been out of rotation. Each of the band members went “off list” at some point in the performance and played a song they had not rehearsed. Patrick Pentland proposed at one point that their next tour in the fall should be entirely “off list,” which is kind of a cool idea for them that takes advantage of their deep back catalog. I just hope that if they do that, it doesn’t come at the expense of material from The Double Cross, which all comes across really well in concert. I was particularly impressed by “Beverly Terrace,” which was a bit less refined, but emphasized a Spoon-like tension I had not really noticed up until just then.

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6/30/11

Another Bee’s Been In That Honey

Lloyd featuring Andre 3000 and Lil Wayne “Dedication to My Ex (Miss That)”

When Lloyd was recording this, it must have crossed his mind at least once that if Cee Lo could score a smash hit with a song called “Fuck You,” he may as well push the envelope for vulgarity and create an equally irresistible neo-soul song that repeats the word “pussy” a couple hundred times in four minutes. Cee Lo cleaned up his song by switching the title phrase to “Forget You,” which barely makes sense. I figure Lloyd can swap out “pussy” for “lovin'” and the song will still mean the same thing. (I’m not sure what he can do about the verse in which he describes the fit of his ex’s vagina in graphic detail, though.)

There’s a lot of angst in this track, but it’s comical. Even though Lloyd’s lyrics are all about getting mad at his girlfriend for cheating on him, I don’t really pick up on negative vibes when I hear this song. The music and his voice mostly conveys a deep thrill, like he’s focused all of the song’s power into communicating just how amazing and satisfying it was to have sex with her. It’s like the song is his way of getting back to that feeling.

Also, bonus points to Andre 3000 for dropping the phrase “Uncanny X-Men” into his verse.

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6/29/11

My Life Is Like A Symphony

The Last Hurrah!! “The Ballad of Billy and Lilly (parts one and two)”

There is a strange Rorschach-blot quality to the Last Hurrah!!’s debut album Spiritual Non-Believers. I’ve been listening to the record regularly for two weeks, and every spin reveals a new detail or association. It’s a record that somehow manages to be rather simple and straight forward — it is basically a collection of catchy Norwegian folk songs — and wonderfully complex and ambitious. There are only three cuts on the album: An obscure Norwegian psychedelic pop cover at the start, a 31-minute suite about a doomed love affair at the center and a gorgeous bossanova-shoegazer-surf-twee-krautrock melange at the conclusion. It’s all fascinating and engaging, but the main attraction is the epic, which cycles through dozens of hooks and musical ideas in a way that is both surprising and intuitive. At various points I hear echoes of Joanna Newsom, Wilco, Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin, Joni Mitchell, the Fiery Furnaces and Animal Collective, but the overall effect is ultimately rather distinct in its style and charm.

I’ve been obsessing over this record for days, and I still feel as though I’m only just scratching the surface in my understanding of it. I heard the album finale at least a dozen times before noticing it was not sung in English. I heard the second part of the “Billy and Lilly” suite even more times before I fully registered this brilliant line in its chorus: “Hit me, hit me, with a bottle or a stone / as long as you are physical I’ll know that I’m not alone.” I’m still picking up on the nuances of transitions between sections, interesting rhythms and tonalities, bits where harmonies seem to fall slightly out of phase. This is a rich, immensely rewarding record and I hope to write about it in greater detail down the line. For now I’m still just enjoying the fact that I still haven’t fully learned all its twists and turns.

Buy the full album for $2.99 from Amazon.

6/28/11

BOOF BOOF RIDIN’

Beyoncé “Countdown”

A lot of songs have a “best part” that grabs you, that compels you to rewind to hear it again right away. “Countdown” is a track comprised entirely of these moments. It’s so densely packed with hooks and interesting flourishes that it’s actually sort of amazing that it holds together so well as a composition. The construction is very clever and dynamic — it’s overwhelming, but not overbearing or incoherent. It’s an expertly crafted pleasure delivery system.

Or, more accurately, it’s a Beyoncé delivery system. I cannot imagine anyone else singing this song. So much of what is exciting here is specific to the sound of her voice and the force of her character: “Me and my BOOF and my BOOF BOOF ridin’ / all up in the black with his chick right beside him.” Can you imagine anyone else singing that with the same charm and authority? And that’s just a small portion of this song! I’ve spent a lot of time just focusing on this loop of the BOOF BOOF part; I feel like I could spend just as much time obsessing over other bits in isolation: “London speed it up, Houston ROCK IT!,” “Griiiiind up on it, girl, show him how you ride it!,” “My girls can’t tell me nothing, I’m gone in the brain!,” the countdown sequence with the Boyz II Men sample. And that’s just the vocal stuff — the drum fills, horns and keyboard parts are just as worthy of focused attention.

But really, as much as each part is thrilling, what makes this one of the best pop songs of the past several years is the way these thrills are strung together, and how it breezes from highlight to highlight so quickly that it kinda zooms right by you. It’s like being on a roller coaster, but you don’t have to wait in line to get back on and relive the thrill. You can just put it on repeat.

Buy it from Amazon.

6/27/11

It’s Too Bad That Your Music Doesn’t Matter

Archers of Loaf @ Webster Hall 6/26/2011

Strangled by the Stereo Wire / Wrong / Plumbline / Nostalgia / 1985 – Fabricoh / Dead Red Eyes / Let the Loser Melt / You and Me / Might / Revenge / Smoking Pot in the Hot City / Greatest of All Time / Lowest Part is Free / Freezing Point / What Did You Expect? / Web in Front / Slow Worm // Step Into the Light / Audiowhore / Harnessed in Slums / All Hail the Black Market /// Scenic Pastures / Form and File

Archers of Loaf “Let the Loser Melt”

The weird paradox of Archers of Loaf is that Eric Bachmann’s lyrics were mostly focused on music scene politics and being the subject of a major label bidding war, and yet somehow the songs come out sounding like relatable anthems. All these years later on the band’s reunion tour, the social context for these words has either changed a lot or vanished completely, but the “we’re all in this together” thing has an even greater resonance. It’s funny how the lyrics of certain songs — “Let the Loser Melt,” “Nostalgia,” “Greatest of All Time” — seem as if they were written to have maximum ironic value when sung on a reunion tour, but when they actually performed them, it seemed more triumphant than funny-ha-ha-the-joke’s-on-them.

I never saw the Archers the first time around, but I was a fan in high school. I had no idea Bachmann was such a hulking, imposing dude. (Or that he seems to have the same stylist as present-day Bob Mould.) I like the way that physically amplified the aggro quality of some songs, and in other cases, displayed more of a gentle giant thing. He seems to have grown into his voice and character rather well. With that in mind, I don’t feel cheated by never having seem the younger version of the band.

Buy it from Amazon.

Mr. Dream @ Webster Hall 6/26/2011

Knuckle Sandwich / Crime / ? / Trash Hit / Holy Name / Croquet / Unfinished Business / Winners / Scarred For Life / Learn the Language

Mr. Dream “Unfinished Business”

Another excellent set from Mr. Dream. This time around, the band was joined by Matt LeMay on guitar, who added a bit of additional noise and treble to the band’s muscular, bottom-heavy sound. I’ve met Matt a bunch of times socially over the years, so it was a revelation to see him up there manhandling a guitar. It was a little like how when you see Ira Kaplan play and he’s playing the instrument like he’s trying to strangle the life out of it. Matt doesn’t seem as murderous as Ira, but he’s still pretty intense.

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6/23/11

Here Come The Future

Handsome Furs “Memories of the Future”

A few days ago I got a vinyl copy of Sleater-Kinney’s The Hot Rock in the mail. It’s one of favorite records, it was something I listened to quite a lot during some very miserable times in my late teens and early 20s. I put it on for the first time in a while and it felt very comfortable and worn-in. I knew every note and every word. I thought about how that album is connected to a lot of bad memories, but I can’t really remember any of them. The lyrics still have a lot of resonance — the “It’s not real / you don’t need to tell me that it’s not real” part in the title track will probably always make my heart sink in bitter recognition — but I don’t remember many details of the personal context I had for this music. I have a hard time remembering a lot of my past, really.

This is part of why “Memories of the Future” clicks with me. I sorta nod in agreement when Dan Boeckner sings “I don’t remember anything at all.” And the part of me that hates to be sentimental will gladly sign off on a hook like “nostalgia never meant much to me.” I think that particular line works because Boeckner sings with the sort of passion that is rooted in some kind of sentimentality. You can definitely be sentimental about not being sentimental. At the song’s climax, he sings “I throw my hands to the sky / I let my memories go,” and that rings true to me too. It’s nice not to carry this baggage around. Memories can be overrated and unreliable. Forgetting is underrated and sort of beautiful.

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6/22/11

Stay Here For A While

Unknown Mortal Orchestra “Little Blue House”

I love how Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s music sounds like it’s coming from a specific time and place, but I can never really figure out when or where. To some extent they’re playing some of the same déjà vu tricks as Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, but while I think that band goes for more of a kitschy “period piece” sound, UMO seem like something lost to time but not necessarily from the past. It’s sorta like how I can walk about ten blocks away from where I live in Queens and end up on a block where everything on the street looks as if it hasn’t changed since 1968 or 1985. I always really love those pockets of the city, in part because one of my greatest fantasies would be the ability to time travel to various parts of New York City at different points in the 20th Century and just walk around. I’m veering off from actually talking about the song — which I should mention has a great subtle bass pulse and some very nice lead guitar — but that whole idea of the relatively recent past living in the present is a big part of why this music resonates with me.

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6/21/11

I Want To Feel At Home

WU LYF “Heavy Pop”

I’m sure this will come across as a pithy, dismissive joke to some people, but I like WU LYF because they sound like a caveman version of U2. Both bands lean hard on delay, grand gestures and the implication of a vast, wide open space, but WU LYF’s style is primitive and aggressive. Ellery Roberts howls like a maniac, his words are incomprehensible but his emotions are naked and blunt. The album version of “Heavy Pop” begins with the sound of piano chords echoing through empty space, but once that passage is through, it’s all wailing and smashing. It’s raw and intense, but not formless. The vocals and percussion are balanced out by the delicate, pretty sound of the guitar, which shifts through the piece — changing direction at one point, or seeming to lift up when the singer sounds as if he’s collapsed in exhaustion.

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6/20/11

They Got Characters That Play You

Gang Gang Dance “Sacer”

It was somewhat shocking for me to realize that this song has proper lyrics, and in English, no less. Lizzi Bougatsos’ voice on this track is high-pitched and just about incomprehensible — she conveys of feeling in her melody, but words don’t quite form even though they are apparently in there somewhere. The approach to the vocals is very Cocteau Twins, but the mood of the piece is harder to peg. (Sean T. Collins compares the song to T’Pau, but I don’t really hear that. He’s right on about the “secret language of adult glamour” thing, though.) I like that the song doesn’t really give you much solid ground and manages to be very specific and maddeningly vague at the same time. This music evokes a feeling of great relief, so why do I find myself thinking a lot of anxious thoughts every time I put it on?

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6/16/11

In The Center Of A Star

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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6/15/11

A Hungry Soul Like Mine

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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6/14/11

Underneath The Subtlest Inflections

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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6/13/11

Your Face In The Mirror

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.

6/10/11

Silence Speaks For You

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.

Buy it from Amazon.

6/9/11

Baby Steps Up Everest

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.

6/8/11

Coming For Me

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.”

Buy it from Amazon.


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