Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

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.

Wild Beasts “Bed of Nails”

“Sensual” is a very tacky word, but in the very best way, it is appropriate for describing Wild Beasts’ third album Smother. The band’s previous records were more obvious in their charms, but this album is very subtle in its pleasures. It lures you in, it gradually seduces you with its luxurious, wonderfully complex melodies, rhythms and textures. Even more so than Two Dancers, Smother is a feast of elegantly crafted sounds. It feels wrong to try to pick this music apart on a technical level — this is such delicate, evocative stuff that it’d be a shame to spoil the magic.

As on the last two Wild Beasts records, the most striking element of the band is the contrast of singers Hayden Thorpe and Tom Fleming. This time around, Fleming’s voice conveys patient lust and vulnerability — he mainly sings about being broken and lost, and needing someone to fill a void within himself. Thorpe, the more flamboyant and operatic of the two, is the aggressor. He’s still obsessed with the grotesque aspects of masculinity and the primal, violent aspects of sex.

In “Bed of Nails,” the album’s finest song, he splits the difference between he and Fleming’s lyrical concerns and arrives at the thematic center of the record. Thorpe makes two allusions in this song: First, to Shakespeare’s mad, beautiful Ophelia, and then to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. I’m especially fond of how he works in the latter. As the song reaches its climax, he characterizes the love between these two broken people as Frankenstein’s monster, i.e., when they come together, this awkward, strange creature comes to life.

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Sleigh Bells @ Webster Hall 5/11/2011

Crown on the Ground / Tell ‘Em / Kids / Treats / Riot Rhythm / Infinity Guitars / Holly / Rill Rill / Rachel / Straight A’s / A/B Machines

Sleigh Bells “Holly” (demo)

The last time I saw Sleigh Bells they were doing a small show at some kind of VFW hall-type place in Brooklyn on the day their album came out. That was a fun show, but it had nothing on this. They’ve both grown comfortable with their rock star moves, in part because it’s no longer a theoretical notion, and the band now put on a full-on rock spectacle complete with comically oversized amps and a light show that perfectly matches the super-saturated sound of the music. Even better, the audience has had time to live with the music and so every song gets the response of a huge hit. They were exciting before, now it’s just off the charts. I was thrilled pretty much every moment of this show.

CSS @ Webster Hall 5/11/2011

Art Bitch / Off the Hook / ?? / Air Painter / ‘Hits Me Like A Rock’ / Music Is My Hot Hot Sex / ‘I Love You’ / Move / ‘In the Big City Nothing Hurts’ / Beautiful Song / Let’s Reggae All Night / ‘All Dressed Up’ / Let’s Make Love and Listen to Death From Above / Alala

CSS “Alala”

CSS lost me with Donkey, but I’m happy to say that they 1) remain a very entertaining and joyful live act, thank mainly to their wildly charismatic frontwoman Lovefoxxx and 2) their new songs are all terrific, immediately enjoyable and clever. The selections from the debut were very fun and cathartic, but the major highlights were new tunes, most especially the ones I’ll call “All Dressed Up” and “In the Big City Nothing Hurts,” since I don’t know what they are actually called. I’m dying to hear them again, most especially the latter. But it’s nice to have something to look forward to, you know?

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Mr. Dream @ Webster Hall 5/11/2011

Knuckle Sandwich / Crime / new song / Scarred For Life / Trash Hit / Winners / Knick Knack / Croquet / Learn the Language

Mr. Dream “Scarred For Life”

Mr. Dream have the look of clean-cut, handsome young men, but they deliver some of most brutal yet tuneful hard rock that anyone has produced in the past decade. There’s something amusing and subversive about how heavy these guys get while lacking the visual signifiers of the hard rockin’ dude — singer/guitarist Adam Moerder seriously looks like an alternate universe John Mayer who grew up on the extended Steve Albini discography rather than Stevie Ray Vaughan. Like Nirvana, the Pixies and McLusky before them, the secret to the band’s intensity lies in the nuts and bolts of simple pop hooks, but what really sticks with you is how hard Nick Sylvester hits those drums and how fully Moerder and bassist Matt Morello commit to screaming their lines. They’re not hedging any bets up there.

Buy it from Amazon.

James Rabbit “Glimmer On Down”

Tyler Martin, the primary songwriter of the Santa Cruz band James Rabbit, has always had a major romantic streak. It’s one of the most charming things about him, really — he comes off like a starry-eyed sweetheart who believes in true love and grand gestures, even in spite of persistent anxiety and awkwardness. “Glimmer On Down” is his most elegant expression of this romantic streak. There are some moment where the band’s characteristic wired angst comes through, but this is mostly graceful and lovely, complete with tinkling piano, old movie strings, swelling brass and a female backing vocal part that seems as it if it just wandered in from a Dirty Projectors rehearsal. In print that may seem a bit overstuffed, but the arrangement is so careful and thoughtful that every sound has its moment and it all comes out sounding light and swoony.

Get it for free from James Rabbit’s Bandcamp page.

Veronica Maggio “Finns Det En Så Finns Det Flera”

As best as I can tell from a Google translation, this song seems to be about the excitement of meeting someone new. The title loosely translates to “there is one, there are several,” and the phrase is repeated like a mantra. I love the sound of this phrase in Swedish, particularly the way Veronica Maggio’s voice rises up sharply on “det flera,” implying a cheerful exclamation point. I also quite like the English translation of it, though I wonder if it correct or if it’s a mangled version of some Swedish idiom. Given the contextual clues I have — including the very sound of the music — I’m inclined to understand this as someone being totally thrilled by possibility and realizing that they have a lot more options that they have previously considered. There’s a wonderful positive charge to this music and I recognize it as the sound of empowerment and discovery. You can tell me I’m wrong in understand the precise meaning of her words, but I’m definitely not wrong in hearing joyful curiosity in this track.

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Tyler, the Creator and Hodgy Beats “Sandwitches”

The first minute of this track sounds so frustrated and lonely. It’s just this kid alone in a room leading a chant, willing his audience into existence. Tyler could get some other people on mic, fake a crowd, but he doesn’t. He’s made an active decision to make this intro sound uncomfortable and awkward. He wants you to think about him being alone in that room. It makes sense of what comes afterward: Spilling bile, acting out, raging against anyone with a happy life. These words come out of feeling bitter and isolated, so yeah, he should sound lonely and pathetic.

A lot of Odd Future songs don’t rise above sounding ramshackle, childish and hateful, but “Sandwitches” is excellent and hints at a greater potential. Tyler and Hodgy both have excellent voices for rap — the former has a surprisingly gravelly tone for someone so young, the latter has more treble and expressive range. Tyler’s lyrical style and cadence remind me a lot of Eminem — their sense of humor is similar and they bot tap into that angry-boy-acting-out thing that people eat up. (It never moves me; I just wasn’t that kind of kid.) Hodgy is more exciting to me. He’s more nimble in his phrasing, less predictable in his wordplay. If Odd Future is indeed the second coming of the Wu-Tang, then he’s the Ghostface of this crew.

They’re a long way from touching that first wave of Wu records, though. Tyler’s Goblin is set up to become most people’s first real album-length exposure to Odd Future, and it’s kind of a mess. A lot of the songs are straight-up awful. Others are marred by cheap, stupid lyrics. He’s deliberately hateful and trollish, but then sulks when people call him out. The entire record sounds depressed. It can be too much to take, particularly when he gets very indulgent both lyrically and musically, but overall, it’s a fascinating document of a particular type of anger and misery.

Buy it from Amazon.

The Fiery Furnaces @ Rockwood Music Hall 5/5/2011

Doctor in the Dungeon / Smelling Cigarettes / The Garfield El / Here Comes the Summer / Pricked in the Heart / The Vietnamese Telephone Directory / Even in the Rain / Blueberry Boat / Philadelphia Grand Jury / 1917 / Single Again / Cousin Chris / Widow City / Nevers / South Is Only A Home – Evergreen / Wolf Notes / Keep Me in the Dark / Uncle Charlie / Restorative Beer

The Fiery Furnaces “Nevers”

On their current tour, the Fiery Furnaces are performing as a duo — Eleanor on vocals, accompanied by Matthew on a grand piano. (He also sang a bit.) I’ve always really loved the band in this configuration and so it was a thrill to see them play a full set with this arrangement. A lot of songs that would’ve made sense with this presentation — like, say, “Bow Wow” or “Take Me Round Again” — were out of rotation in favor of Widow City and EP deep cuts. The emphasis was placed on Matthew’s tongue-twister songs, maybe because it’s easier for an audience to hear all the words without a rock band blaring. Either way it worked — a lot of funny lines that may have gone right by in a regular show got laughs. As always, the Friedbergers’ memory and diction is amazing to behold, and their talent for understated melody and stunning lyrical detail is astonishing and yet horribly underrated. I get that this band may be impenetrable for a lot of people, but more folks should try to meet them halfway. This current tour is definitely a good time to give them (a/another) chance.

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Thao & Mirah “Rubies and Rocks”

Mirah sounds great when she seems to be confined within a rigid yet funky groove. That tension brings out a defiant edge in her voice — firm and assertive while overtly feminine. In “Rubies and Rocks,” that isn’t a contradiction, though it’s very different from the same impulses and desires filtered through traditional masculinity. The horns are a brilliant tonal and melodic counterpoint to her voice in this arrangement. That part sounds very Afrobeat to me, very Fela. Melodically, but also functionally — the beat and bass are like a cramped, overheated room. The horns come in like a gust of cool, fresh air that ends far too soon.

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Cass McCombs “County Line”

There was a time, very long ago now, when a song like this could’ve been a radio hit. Now that seems inconceivable — it’s far too delicate, way too slow, much too subtle. As far as new music goes, we’ve banished all that from the airwaves. Even still, this sounds like something you should hear in a car at night moving along some long stretch of nowhere. It sounds like something that just comes on, and you surrender to its mood. You might not even notice it at first. Maybe it’s McCombs’ gentle falsetto that gets you, or the atmospheric, nearly subliminal organ drone that carries throughout the song. It could be the way these perfectly toned guitar notes ring out at just the right moments but are otherwise entirely silent. For me, it’s the precise tone of the lead organ. That sound is sparingly used too, but its character nearly defines the entire song for me. It’s like falling in love with a painting for the perfect hue found in just a few brush strokes.

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EMA “Anteroom”

There’s a lot of alt-rock DNA in this song — the style of melody, the guitar style, the tone of the lyrics — so it’s disconcerting when the drums kick in and sound totally awful. I mean, the performance is fine, but the recording is horrible and inept. In my mind, I can hear very clearly what this would have sounded like if it had been recorded by, say, Steve Albini, and the gap between that ideal and what is actually on EMA’s record is enough to aggravate me and make me like this record less than I would otherwise. (Which is to say, a LOT.) Everything else about this song is clever and wonderful. Why would anyone choose to undermine their composition with such a pathetic excuse for drum engineering? I don’t think it adds anything to the atmosphere, it just sounds shoddy and limp. There are moments in this song that should have some cathartic power, and here it just seems like that impulse is thwarted. I can only hope that was precisely the effect she was going for, but even then I think that could have been more fully realized by a skilled engineer. So frustrating!

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Tom Vek “A Chore”

British accents are very good for conveying boredom and petty annoyance in pop music without actually sounding boring or annoying. In his new single “A Chore,” Tom Vek sings about soul-crushing routine, though the perspective is a bit unclear. I prefer to hear this as sung in the second person — it’s better as an expression of disassociation from oneself than a harsh judgment of someone else. Vek’s voice gets across an angry self-loathing, but there’s a wit to it. It’s not simple self-pity. It’s more like gallows humor, tied to a track that’s heavy and lurching, but stops just shy of overbearing.

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Anni Rossi “Candyland”

Anni Rossi has been a strange artist to watch develop over the past few years. She started off violently slashing at her viola and singing in a wildly expressive style punctuated with wordless, orgasmic bleats. Then she rerecorded her material, toning down her quirks and dialing down her manic energy. Now she’s mellowed out even further, to the point that she hardly sounds like the young woman who made the Afton EP. The songs on her new album Heavy Meadow are rigid and minimal, with melodies that seem to connect between tightly snapping beats like taut, thin wires. Her early material seemed totally unhinged, but this is all about deliberate restraint. “Candyland,” the opening track set the tone — light but uptight, sweet but aloof. She comes close to the glassy-eyed bliss of Talking Heads’ “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody),” but Rossi still has too much fire in her to seem that disassociated and blank.

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Eleanor Friedberger “My Mistakes”

There’s something very particular about the Friedbergers — an unmistakable cadence, a distinct sensibility. Even still, you can tell when a Fiery Furnaces song was primarily written by Eleanor — the lyrics and meters aren’t so overstuffed; her voice shows more softness and vulnerability; the words seem more personal and much less academic. “My Mistakes,” the first song to emerge from Eleanor’s first solo album, plays out like a thoughtful diary entry over a lightly bopping arrangement that leaves plenty of open space for her voice. I find the specific qualities of Eleanor’s voice so endlessly charming and so difficult to describe — I love the depth of character that comes through in her tone, enunciation and rhythm. She has one of those voices you hear and you can intuit so much, a whole person contained in a specific timbre. The best vocalists have this presence, this particular humanity. She’s unquestionably one of my all-time favorites.

Visit the Merge Records site.

Paul Simon “The Afterlife”

Paul Simon’s version of the afterlife sounds a lot like the life we already know: A lot of mundane encounters and tedious bureaucracy broken up by moments of sublime, confusing beauty. You don’t get any answers, no greater purpose is revealed. You still have to deal with everyone else and jockey for status. And, of course, the closest you get to communing with some divine force is hearing the melody of some silly pop song.

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Hauschka “Radar”

I saw Hauschka in concert at Joe’s Pub in Manhattan on Saturday, and it was remarkable. Haushka — aka Volker Bertelmann — performed as a duo with Samuli Kosminen, a Finnish percussionist who was just as inventive with rhythm as Bertelmann was on the piano. Bertelmann is amazing to behold. There’s a theatrical element to watching him alter his piano with various objects and devices, but even beyond that, his physicality is fascinating. Like a lot of truly great players, his body language appears to be loose and fluid — it all looks intuitive and easy. They played a fair amount of material from Salon des Amateurs, stripping down the arrangements while building the rhythms up to something more thumping and visceral than what is on record. The version of “Girls” was especially great; I wish I could share that with you instead of this studio version. Bertelmann and Kosminen were on to something really special here — the specific tonalities of prepared piano, complex neo-classical melodies, a touch of improvisational energy, the rhythmic intensity of house music. The music on Salon des Amateurs is very close, but a bit mannered. This performance went further. It sounded wild and fresh, like something that could breathe new life into classical, dance, rock, whatever. I recommend that you go out of your way to see Hauschka, especially if you happen to be a musician.

Buy it from Amazon.

Tune-Yards “Powa”

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. (Originally posted on January 4th 2010)

I’ve lived with “Powa” for a while now, and I’m pretty confident in saying that it ranks among my favorite songs of all time. I feel like I could gush endlessly about it — in addition to what I wrote over a year ago, I know I could go on and on about every detail in the structure, performance and production of this piece. But the thing that really blows me away is this: “Powa” is a song about love and sex that factors in insecurity about one’s body. When you think about how common it is for people to feel awkward about their bodies — if not outright disgusted by them — it is shocking to realize how rarely this comes up in songs about love and sex. Sex tends to be idealized and abstracted in music, in a way it’s not that different from Hollywood or pornography. “Powa” is astonishing not only because it presents the singer as a fully-formed person with body image issues and stress and real world problems, but because it expresses genuine love and gratitude for someone with whom she has true intimacy. Aside from Carole King’s wonderful “(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman,” I can’t think of many songs on this level of quality that articulate this sort of feeling.

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Foo Fighters @ Ed Sullivan Theater 4/12/2011

Bridge Burning / Rope / Dear Rosemary / White Limo / Arlandria / These Days / Back and Forth / A Matter of Time / Miss the Misery / I Should Have Known / Walk / All My Life / Times Like These / My Hero / Learn to Fly / Cold Day in the Sun / Big Me / Stacked Actors / Monkey Wrench / Everlong / The Best of You / This Is a Call

Foo Fighters “Back and Forth”

In the time since The Colour and the Shape, the Foo Fighters became a band that could be relied upon to produce a few quality modern rock singles with each new record, but not a lot more. And this was fine: Dave Grohl is his generation’s equivalent to Tom Petty, and being Tom Petty is no bad thing. Wasting Light, the band’s seventh studio album, breaks this cycle. It’s a solid rock album, one of the best straight-ahead mainstream rock records of the past few years. Almost every song on the thing sounds like it should be a big hit. This resurgence will probably be lost on a lot of people though, because mainstream modern rock is pretty much the least cool genre going right now. I totally get why people have blinders to this stuff — a huge amount of it is total garbage, and even a lot of the decent stuff basically sounds like going to the mall. But Grohl is a master of this genre, and his band delivers simple thrills with remarkable clarity, precision and power. As a critic it is kinda hard to put a thoughtful spin on this music — there’s no clever concept, no novelty factor, and Grohl’s lyrics are so vague that pretty much any song could either be about the death of Kurt Cobain or a conflict with anyone ranging from the love of his life to someone who cut him off in traffic. It’s not easy to frame this music, but framing it is beside the point: It’s catchy and it rocks and sometimes that is all you need.

Buy it from Amazon.

Here’s the full concert from last night, by the way:

Panda Bear “Last Night at the Jetty”

What is Panda Bear singing about here? Let me paraphrase: Did we have a good time? I think I had a good time but maybe we didn’t? Didn’t we want to enjoy ourselves? Maybe we did? How can we deny that maybe we had a good time? Etc, etc. If you look at a transcription of the lyrics, it seems like a very bad translation from another language. That said, I like how this slippery, confused emotion is expressed in this sweet, earnest, boyish melody within this icy, pretty arrangement. I love the way this track is just shy of feeling entirely graceful, as if there’s some slightly mechanical glitch keeping this from perfection.

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Sebadoh @ Bowery Ballroom 4/9/2011

Too Pure / On Fire / Skull / Ocean / S. Soup / Mind Reader / Got It / Drag Down / Dreams / Magnet’s Coil / Rebound / License to Confuse / Sister / Drama Mine / Nothing Like You / Crystal Gypsy / Love to Fight / Bird in the Hand / Careful / Together Or Alone / Not A Friend / Beauty of the Ride / Forced Love / Sixteen / Give Up / Junk Bonds / New Worship / Brand New Love // Not Too Amused / Willing to Wait

It’s probably for the best that Sebadoh released their best work before phrases like “TMI,” “emo” and “overshare” became commonplace. Lou Barlow and Jason Loewenstein are indie rock’s all-time beta male shame spiral champs, a duo of songwriters rivaled only by Fleetwood Mac’s Lindsey Buckingham in their skill for articulating neurotic relationship drama from a straight male perspective in song. Their current tour is focused on the band’s mid-90s peak, back when they were basically the rocked-out male equivalent to Liz Phair’s music from the same time.

Okay, but here’s the thing: Whereas I think a person can gain a lot of strength and wisdom from listening to Liz Phair, it’s better not to relate to Loewenstein and Barlow’s songs. Their music is a catharsis for unflattering feelings — pettiness, jealousy, neediness, foolishness and passive aggression. These are valid feelings, but…ugh, you know? I hear these songs and remember a lot of awful things. Worst of all, I hear similar situations repeating over and over.

Sebadoh “Give Up”

“Give Up” overflows with self-loathing. Each line comes off as self-condemnation: He’s a burn out man, typically bitter, locked into a vicious cycle, a helpless slob in a dead-end day job, a codependent self-styled nightmare. Not long ago, I shifted my perspective on the words and starting hearing it as a sketch of someone else rather than something to be directed inward. Either way it’s totally brutal.

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Sebadoh “Nothing Like You”

I love the way the descending, plodding bass line in this song sounds like the body language of a morose, brooding guy pacing around with slumped shoulders. “Nothing Like You” is about trying to make sense of a complicated, painful relationship that is already over. It’s broken, you barely get along, but you want to salvage it somehow, if only to justify the time and emotion you’ve poured into it. The simultaneous attraction and repulsion is perfectly articulated in the double meaning of the chorus: “There’s a lot of girls in the world that are nothing like you.”

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Hauschka “Cube”

Hauschka’s latest album Salon Des Amateurs finds the German experimental pianist playing with rhythms and structural ideas inspired by dance music. I can hear it in some of the tracks for sure, but as usual, the main appeal of Hauschka’s work is not a formalist appropriation of ideas from another genre but rather the striking, elegant beauty of his compositions and the distinct, remarkable evocative tones created by his manipulation of his piano’s strings and hammers. “Cube” is an especially gorgeous piece. I can’t hear much techno influence on this one, but it could be in there somewhere — I find I get too caught up in its ever-shifting melodies, rhythms and tones to get hung up on trainspotting.

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Katy B “Movement”

“Movement” has the sound of cool sophistication, but that barely conceals its feeling of restlessness and eagerness to break free from an aggravating stasis. Katy B’s vocal performance gets the tone just right, conveying a mild anxiety without overselling it and seeming like a wreck. The sadness in this song is manageable, and possibly even constructive — she sounds like a person with agency who is going to do what she has to do in order to get out of a rut, but is just finding the right moment to act. It could be that she’s waiting for the right beat.

Buy it on import from Amazon.