Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Owen Pallett “Midnight Directives”

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

Buy it from Amazon.

Los Campesinos! “Romance Is Boring”

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

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Stereolab “The Noise Of Carpet”

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

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Electric Six “One Sick Puppy”

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

Buy it from Amazon.

Bullion “Say Goodbye To What”

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

Two interesting things about that:

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

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

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

Buy it from Bullion.

Pit er Pat “Water”

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

Pre-order it from Thrill Jockey.

Toro Y Moi “Blessa”

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

Buy it from Amazon.

Julianna Barwick “The Highest”

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

Buy it from Julianna Barwick.

Elaine Lachica “Tumbleweed”

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

Visit Elaine Lachica’s official site.

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

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

Watch the Tune-Yards 4AD session.

I wrote a story for The Awl’s End of the ’00s series, and you can read it here. I’m very proud of it, but I don’t want to tell you too much before you read it. Let’s just say that you’re in for some serious carnage at the end.

Also, while I’m writing about what I wrote elsewhere: In case you only read this site via RSS, you might want to check out the Fluxblog best videos of 2009 tag on tumblr.

DJ Quik & Kurupt “Hey Playa! (Moroccan Blues)”

I feel so dumb for having missed this until just recently, but it seems like the DJ Quik & Kurupt album took just about everyone who has heard it by surprise. BlaQKout is an absurdly pleasurable hip hop record; a tight set of songs that hover in a lovely middle ground between “Wow, they don’t make ’em like this anymore!” late ’90s/early ’00s nostalgia and “What the fuck are they doing?” ingenuity. “Hey Playa! (Moroccan Blues)”, the album’s dizzying centerpiece, drifts between solemn devotional chants and carefree summer jam bounciness, with the emcees deftly negotiating the chasm separating thoughtful intensity and glib hedonism in their verses. The track is a seamless blend of darkness and light, but the result is anything but gray — if anything, the things comes out sounding more like fluorescent day-glo without losing any sense of gravity. This is the work of men who have been working hard at their craft for years, and have reached the point where they can make this elegant music seem totally relaxed and easy. If you need a parallel to another album from 2009, you can think of this as hip hop’s answer to Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix.

Buy it from Amazon.

The Long Blondes “You Could Have Both”

You could just choke on the bitter disappointment and desperation in this song. Kate Jackson’s character is well beyond caring about anything at this point, let alone herself. She just wants some kind of return on her emotional investment, all the while trying to mask her raw emotions with a jaded front. She’s long past reserving her contempt for her rival — she hates herself for wanting someone so badly and being strung along like an idiot. She knows that there’s no winning in this situation, and there is no way having “both” can be a positive thing for anyone at all. She’s driven herself crazy with compromise and there’s only one way out of the problem, even if she hasn’t realized it yet. Until then, you have this mess of anxiety, ego, loneliness, and fear. Frankly, it’s sort of amazing that the Long Blondes could make a feeling so awful and pathetic sound so exciting and sexy.

Buy it from Amazon.

The Long Blondes “The Couples”

The character in “The Couples” has had it. She’s been coming to this same old bar, playing the game, but she always loses. The only men who seem interested have already paired off, and she can’t rationalize being the other woman — or at least, not anymore. It’s not clear whether or not she actually wants to be half of a couple, but she’s certainly fed up with not having the option, and even more annoyed when more fortunate people condescend to know how she feels. It’s all set-up for a truly brilliant chorus: “These people have the nerve to tell me that they’re lonely…you’re not lonely; I am, baby.” Jackson sounds a little bit exasperated, but mostly resigned, particularly when the chorus gives way to a disheartened sigh, or a breakdown in which she imagines her isolation on a cosmic scale.

Buy it from Amazon. Originally posted 5/19/2008.

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I made a Christmas/holiday mix for you! Enjoy!

The Waitresses “Christmas Wrapping” / August Darnell “Christmas On Riverside Drive” / Brenda Lee “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree” / Akim and the Teddy Vann Production Company “Santa Claus Is A Black Man” / Casey and His Brother “Christmas Wish” / Ed Shepp “Ed Shepp’s The Christmas Story” / Go Home Productions “Christmas On The Block” / Ella Fitzgerald “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve (Mangini Vs. Pallin Mix)” / Bob Dylan “Must Be Santa” / Cotton Top Mountain Sanctified Singers “Christ Was Born On Christmas Morn” / Zooey Deschanel and Leon Redbone “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” / The Walkmen “New Year’s Eve”

Doom “That’s That”

Doom’s mush-mouthed delivery has a way of putting his sharp lyrics in soft focus, but that’s not exactly a big problem when his voice recedes into the warmth of casual, lived-in tracks. For all its grime and grit, Born Like This is a rather cozy album, and that ends up making Doom’s densely constructed lyrics come off as spontaneous and intuitive rather than ostentatious and overly obscure. A lot of the best rappers have a way of making it seem as though they communicate entirely in rhyme, and you kinda get that here with Doom — he’s not exactly conversational in his flow, but his muttered verses sound entirely organic, as though rapping is as much of a comfort zone for him as regular speech. I suppose this is what you’d want from any rapper, but really, just think of how even some of the best emcees can sound very fussy and over-composed.

Buy it from Amazon.

Real Estate “Beach Comber”

Real Estate are mellow, low-key in their tunefulness, somewhat lo-fi, and obsessed with nostalgia — in other words, they are very much keyed into the general vibe celebrated by a lot of my Pitchfork peers in 2009. There’s something else going on here, though, but it’s tricky to figure out what it is. The sound is chilly and brittle, the vocals are more outgoing and generous than what you’d expect from “glo-fi” or plain old lo-fi acts. There is no haziness, just brisk percussion, crisp melodic leads, and a voice surrounded by what seems like a mall parking lot’s worth of empty space and open sky. “Beach Comber” is a song that feels as though it’s right on the edge of loneliness, but has a dim awareness that it’s exactly where it wants to be in the moment. It’s got a lovely faded sweetness, and a gentle swing. It might refer to the summer, but it sure sounds like the winter to me.

Buy it from Amazon.

The Big Pink “Dominos”

So here’s the question: Is this song a jerk, or is the singer a jerk? I don’t know a lot about Robbie Furze, so I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he’s written a song about a creep who is just a little too into stringing girls along and callously breaking their hearts. He wouldn’t be the first person to write a song about this sort of thing, and certainly not the first to do it in a bragging sort of way, but there’s something about the phrasing in the lyrics that make this guy seem especially sinister. This seems rather deliberate, especially in the context of an arrangement that sounds like someone thinking that they are the most awesome person that has ever lived. The chorus rises and explodes like fireworks celebrating this guy’s heartless ego, and as much as this can be read as a fantasy, the over-the-top nature of it all points in the direction of bitter irony. Either way, “Dominos” has a killer hook. It’s up to you to decide whether or not that is enough to embrace a rather goony lyrical sentiment.

Buy it from Amazon.

HEALTH “Die Slow”

The big problem with My Bloody Valentine as a standard musical influence is that it’s pretty obvious that a lot of musicians don’t really have any idea what made Loveless so effective and evocative. Reducing Kevin Shields’ music to blaring rhythm guitar and murmured vocals cuts out the dynamics and omits the sexuality, resulting in an expression of passive-aggression and shyness rather than blissful sensuality. “Die Slow” is one of the few songs I’ve ever heard that sounds like a best-case scenario of where My Bloody Valentine could have gone if Shields et al had ever bothered to finish another record. The song has a solid groove like “Soon,” but it is a denser and busier piece of music, accented by bursts of concentrated noise that form genuine hooks. The arrangement feels tense and violent, but the vocal performance is pure sweetness, which is turn makes the entire song feel less dangerous and more defensive.

Buy it from Amazon.

Charlotte Gainsbourg “Looking Glass Blues”

Charlotte Gainsbourg is not exactly lacking in personality, but I’m not sure what her personality actually is. She’s an odd presence, a weird question mark in the middle of groovy, atmospheric pop songs. Her new album is a collaboration with Beck, an enigma in his own right, and I think a lot of the reason why it works is because he on some level acknowledges this odd not-quite-there quality in her voice and knows how to make it an asset. As on his most recent albums, he builds warm riffs and busy rhythms around Gainsbourg’s cool and aloof singing voice. It’s not so much about a jarring contrast as it is about highlighting the character and expression that’s already there in her performance, and drawing her out of her shell. “Looking Glass Blues” is especially successful in heating things up without melting the iciness that makes her alluring in the first place. As it turns out, psychedelia suits her rather well. There’s a nice coziness to the sound of the guitar and bass, and the subject matter allows her to slip into a role that is simultaneously authoritative and slightly silly.

Buy it from Amazon.

James Rabbit “A Closer Look”

There is good anxiety, and there is bad anxiety. Tyler Martin has a way of making the latter sound like the former, and somehow turns every nagging question mark in his head into buoyant songs that come across like rows of exclamation points in a large bold font. Even the calm moments in “A Closer Look” feel manic and over-excited, but the music is not spazzy or unfocused. Just the opposite, really — the song bursts with enthusiasm and inspiration, but it’s a controlled, deliberate portrait of a mind overflowing with thoughts, concepts, neuroses, and urges. As in many of his songs, Martin sings about what he wants from his art and what he’s trying to express, but that doesn’t get in the way of actually saying something of value. He’s a guy who lives in his head, but desperately wants to connect with other people, and this music perfectly captures the nervous thrill of just nearly making that sort of meaningful connection, one way or another.

Buy it from Insound.

Beak “Backwell”

The first three minutes of “Backwell” is all drone and subtle throb, sloooowly building up a tension that breaks suddenly into an intense, panicky groove. From there on out, a busy synthesizer riff takes the lead, as a crisp beat keeps the piece moving toward an endless horizon familiar to anyone that’s heard a bit of Krautrock. Beak is a side project for Portishead’s Geoff Barrow, and it’s already had a direct impact on the work of his main band, yielding the impossibly brilliant charity single “Chase The Tear.” The Beak material doesn’t quite hit that high standard — Beth Gibbons’ presence lends a certain magic, obviously — but it’s excellent work on its own terms, and an intriguing peak into Barrow’s process as he toys with new methods of working and gets some Kraut-y pastiche out of his system before coming up with something more fresh and distinctive with his regular collaborators.

Buy it from Amazon.

The Fiery Furnaces @ Bowery Ballroom 12/12/2009

Rub Alcohol Blues / Charmaine Champagne / Duplexes of the Dead – Automatic Husband – Ex-Guru / Chris Michaels / The End Is Near / Keep Me In The Dark / Up In The North / Staring At The Steeple / Drive To Dallas / Evergreen / Crystal Clear / Cut The Cake / Ray Bouvier / Worry Worry / Wolf Notes // I’m In No Mood – Candy Maker’s Knife In My Handbag / Two Fat Feet / Asthma Attack / Single Again / Chief Inspector Blancheflower (first part) – Japanese Slippers / Even In The Rain / Here Comes The Summer

I wonder if the Fiery Furnaces are going to stick with performing crowd-pleasing rock shows for the foreseeable future, or if they’re just dying to go off on another strange tangent as soon as they get a chance. The simple, straight-forward approach is obviously well-suited to the relatively straightforward material from I’m Going Away, but there are still enough traces of Matthew Friedberger’s perversity in the live arrangements — I’m thinking about the bizarre rhythm and time shifts dropped into “Drive To Dallas” in particular — that the show feels as though it can go wonky at any moment. For the most part, though, this was a lean and tight performance with a loose and groovy vibe, especially as the band breezed through several numbers on the fly during a generously long encore. This was the Fiery Furnaces at their best — dynamic and fun, with an emphasis on the quality of their songs rather than their sui generis style or contrarian impulses. A lot of the oldies were rearranged, but pretty much always in a way that flattered the melody and revealed a side to the song, as with the ballad version of “Single Again” or the quasi-arena rock take on “Here Comes The Summer.”

The Fiery Furnaces “Keep Me In The Dark”

It would be interesting for the Fiery Furnaces to further mine the territory established on “Keep Me In The Dark.” They’ve done some groovy, danceable bits in the past, but it’s never been a focus, especially as Matthew seems like the sort of guy to either lose interest midway or flip your expectations once he’s got you moving. The verses are fine, but the chorus is top-notch, vaguely echoing Motown in both form and substance without veering into pastiche. The lyrics kill me, by the way. The verses are typical high concept Furnaces fare, but when Eleanor sings “please don’t tell me nothing, keep me in the dark with the opposite of anything,” it’s clear that she’s talking about something far more emotionally potent than antiques, receipts, and per diems.

Buy it from Amazon.

BOAT “Lately”

Near the start of this song, David Crane says that New Jersey is a “state without a hero,” which strikes me as a rather weird thing to say, since I can’t think of a state in the country without a greater desire for a pantheon of its own homegrown cultural heroes. For one thing, Bruce Springsteen’s career is at least partially based on being a hero for New Jersey’s working class. That’s the most obvious one. But what about Jon Bon Jovi, the Springsteen of the shore? Frank Sinatra? Jon Stewart? On a smaller but no less potent level, what about Tom Scharpling and Ted Leo? (And what of Brock Peuchk?)

Anyway. I came to BOAT because people were telling me that they sounded like Pavement. BOAT doesn’t actually sound like Pavement though, but they do sound like the indie rock of the ’90s. And you know, Pavement is synonymous with that. I don’t need or want anyone to be like Stephen Malkmus, but I am glad that the pendulum of indie fashion is swinging back to his sort of merry, melodic looseness. Still, I want to be careful in the coming years. I don’t want to just like things because it triggers Pavlovian responses in me, because it reminds me of the music I listened to when I was a teenager. I also don’t want to be too hard on artists for not living up to actually being Pavement or Pollard or Sonic Youth or whatever. BOAT is charming, BOAT has some terrific songs. Their identity needs to evolve beyond “I love the ’90s” if they’re ever going to graduate from good to great, but you know what? I love the ’90s too. I can live with this.

Buy it from Magic Marker Records.