“Good Love” is a thoroughly exhausting song, the kind that drags you into its dark, lonely emotional space whether you want to be there or not. The arrangement, both funereal and ethereal in tone, has a gravitational pull that is seductive and difficult to escape, but the most affecting thing is Natasha Khan’s vocal performance, which moves between heavily accented spoken passages and sung parts that convey a frustrated, incredibly painful sort of yearning. The pain seems to be the point. As Khan intones early on, her character needs sorrow like a drug, and so when she goes on to ask “Will I ever find that place they call good love?,” your heart just breaks for her, because it’s so clear that a heart addicted to misery is unlikely to ever find that love. It’s tragic. Who would need it more?
My first response to seeing that the word “champagne” is intentionally misspelled as “shampain” was to cringe, but now I think that in a silly sort of way, it was absolutely necessary. This is a song that is both knowingly preposterous and dead serious, and the spelling just adds to its brazen, super-glossy campiness. The melody sounds very anxious and the arrangement is almost absurdly taut, but it’s still a rather light song, in part because Marina is willing to go all out for a chorus as gloriously ridiculous as “drinking champagne / made by the angel / who goes by the name / of Glitterin’ Gabriel.” Oh, and that’s not even getting to the tea pun!
Visit the official Marina & The Diamonds MySpace page.
Charlotte Hatherley sounds as though she’s describing a pleasant dream — she’s in an immaculate, luxurious, impeccably designed room with a mysterious, seductive man who acts upon his attraction to her with style, and without hesitation. The lyrics are all images and sensations, provided without context but with precise, concrete detail. The song comes across like a lucid dream, with Hatherley blissfully lost in imagination and desire, but still somehow grounded in waking life. As the song slips from a dazed riff on the verses into a light disco reverie on the choruses, it feels like dancing about in a hypnagogic state, unsure of what’s real or not, but moving about in a peaceful haze. It’s an incredibly comfortable song, and perfectly evokes a kind of abstracted infatuation.
I believe that on a fundamental level, all forms of creative expression are communicative in nature, and that most of my interest in art and music comes out of my desire to understand and relate to other people. This is probably part of why I love James Rabbit so much — this notion of writing music to communicate what we cannot convey in everyday human interactions is foregrounded in the majority of Tyler Martin’s songs. At least half of the songs on his band’s new album Perfect Waves are concerned with not only expressing emotions and ideas in music, but in revealing his desire to communicate with total clarity, and for the songs to have utility in the lives of his listeners. (The opening song, for example, is “If You Can’t Talk About It, Sing About It!,” which may as well be the band’s mission statement.)
Writing about writing can often result in a tedious strain of postmodernism, but Martin is like a reverse Charlie Kaufman, using his self-awareness as a way of directly expressing his wish to fully overcome shyness and dysfunction, and his verbal prowess to plainly articulate his unambiguous love for his partners and friends, and his goodwill toward total strangers. Despite the anxieties at the core of Martin’s writing, James Rabbit make some of the most optimistic and ecstatic music you will ever hear.
In just about every song, Martin rejects childish, cowardly misanthropy, and embraces the challenge to improve himself and become a better, more outgoing person. “In Love With The Idea,” one of the band’s best compositions to date, takes on the stress and confusion of wanting to connect with strangers in public places, but comes out sounding groovy, open-hearted, and vaguely Muppet-esque in its many joyous peaks. It’s not empty perkiness — the lyrics very realistically grapple with the neuroses that keep us from making social risks, but the music makes a strong argument in favor of the thrilling rewards that can come when we have the bravery to take big chances.
I want to believe that this song exists because at least one member of the Super Furry Animals became obsessed with the word “trams,” and went out of his way to make sure that he could have the opportunity to say “trams” over and over in a song. Obviously, the sorta Krautrock vibe and campy German language interlude from Franz Ferdinand’s Nick McCarthy just came out of the tram concept — when we think of trains in music, it’s got to be a tribute to Deutschland, right? Of course! Still, I can imagine him being very cautious, and making sure that the song did not get too serious. It had to be bouncy and somewhat silly. It had to be something that perfectly captured the simple joy of saying the word “trams.” If this is the case, then they totally nailed it.
At first, the horns in “The Small Things” seem like coloring, a nice touch in the arrangement of a perky, low key indie pop song more focused on its clean rhythm guitar, sweet vocals, and warm vintage organ melody. As it moves along, it becomes clear that the horns are the heart and soul of the piece, bleating passionately as the rest of the song is more measured and mannered. The horns seem like the most articulate aspect of the song, cutting through the clutter of thought and getting straight to the emotional truth. The brief full-on sax solo at the end is surprising, but also totally logical in context — after a few minutes dominated by the superego, it makes sense that the finale would be all id.
I think it’s pretty safe to say that today is a major turning point in the history of this site. After a little over seven years of documenting my taste in music and providing you with mp3s of my favorite songs, Fluxblog is going to have to switch gears and become a blog about…well, anything other than music.
Let me explain.
As some of you may know, I’ve recently started work as a freelancer for Pitchfork. I’ve been enjoying it, and it’s nice to work with a lot of people who I’ve been friends with for years now. The thing is, I had to sign a contract, and as it turns out, it’s kinda strict. Effective today, I am forbidden to write about music for anyone besides Pitchfork Media, and that includes my own sites. This will last until April 2011, unless I choose not to re-up, or if I can manage to renegotiate the contract.
In the meantime, I intend to keep this site going. It may be a bit of trial and error at first, but I’ve got a pretty good idea of what’s coming up. For instance, I plan to write more about my political views, and open up about my personal life and my experiences as a single guy living in the big city. I’ll probably end up sharing some memes, and some cute photos of my new kitten, Mr. Adorbs. I’m most excited about a new mini-blog that will replace the tumblr on the sidebar — Fluxburgr, a site documenting my quest to find the best cheeseburgers in New York City!
If you’re going to bail on the site now, I totally understand. I think for most people, this will always be a site about music, and I’m proud of what I achieved here over the past seven years. I’m extremely grateful to everyone who has ever read this site, not to mention all the artists who have been featured on it, and all my family and friends, who have supported me in this weird OCD project of mine that somehow turned into a career. I sincerely hope that you all follow my writing on Pitchfork, if that site is not already one of your daily must-reads.
I leave you with this — a video tribute that I made to say farewell to Fluxblog: The Music Years. I strongly recommend that you watch it.
Lykke Li did a clever thing with this song. The sound of Röyksopp’s track is very sweet and sentimental but it also feels a bit mechanical and removed from reality, and so she tapped into that tension by penning lyrics about wanting to feel things intensely, but being trapped in an aloof, calculating, and emotionally muted state of mind. Her vocals are appropriately understated, but just sad enough to tug on the heart strings a bit, particularly when her most hyperbolic and dramatic lines are delivered with a flat, matter-of-fact inflection. She thinks that she feels numb, but it’s so abundantly clear that she’s overflowing with love and pain. You hear this song, and you just want to give her a hug.
What I thought this song was about when I first heard it and was not really paying attention to the words: Sex, or being sexy. That’s mostly got to do with the rhythm, and the flirty, slinky inflections in Peter Moren’s voice. Also, most songs are in some way about sex, so it’s a good guess.
What I thought when I saw the lyrics printed out: Wait, are they on some kind of Ayn Rand trip? Probably not, but the sentiment of this song is incredibly smug, condescending, and unforgiving. He’s probably singing about a bitter ex, but I think it’s pretty easy to take this as being some successful, handsome, stylish European musician demanding that the rest of the world refrain from bumming him out with negative vibes.
My impression of what the song is expressing now, factoring in both impressions: Petulant sexiness, I guess.
JD Samson’s new post-Le Tigre project comes closer to the sound of that band’s remixes than proper album recordings — think the DFA remix of “Deceptacon,” rather than “Deceptacon” itself. With its staccato vocal rhythms and neon synth tones, “Off Our Backs” actually comes close to feeling like an English language variation on Yelle, but there’s a different sort of tension in the music. Whereas Yelle songs tend to be rather brash and direct, the structure of “Off Our Backs” suggests a series of emotional and intellectual tangents. Check out, for example, the way the song builds up to a chorus in its first minute only to defer on that pleasurable catharsis and pace around for a few measures before starting another verse. It feels a bit like wanting to say something very badly, but biting your tongue, not only out of tactful consideration, but to pause and think everything through. When the chorus comes around, it feels emphatic and true, as if the thought has been revised to the point it is totally incontrovertible.
Aside from changing their name from United State of Electronic to the far less dorky acronym U.S.E., Seattle’s greatest joycore party band have not changed all that much in the time since they released their debut album in 2004. “All The World,” the first single from their forthcoming sophomore record, is essentially the ultimate U.S.E. song in that it concentrates all of the band’s strengths into a single, concise four and a half minute blast of pop euphoria. It’s almost like ticking off a checklist:
Are there colorful synths and disco beats, kinda like a rock band version of Daft Punk? Check.
Is there a hook sung through a vocoder? You got it, bro!
Got any ultra-clean skyscraper-sized rhythm guitar riffs? But of course!
Is the chorus sung by a girl with an assertive, yet super-sweet voice? Yes! Yes! Yes!
Do the lyrics imagine a utopia full of dancing and limitless joy? Dude, it’s U.S.E.! Do you even need to ask?
They’re not breaking any new ground here, but I can’t imagine that anyone would actually want these people to change.
When Trent Reznor bitches people out in his lyrics, do you ever feel — if just for a moment! — like he’s actually angry at you? Though it’s pretty clear in this song that he’s calling out a vain, formerly beloved star too deluded to notice they are past their prime, there’s something in his voice and the sheer force of the track that forces the listener to take the brunt of the attack, even if the invective is actually intended for Courtney Love, Marilyn Manson, or hell, Reznor himself. I suppose we’re all just collateral damage in the Godzilla vs. Mothra-esque battle of rock star egos.
Get it for free, along with another new NIN song and material from Jane’s Addiction and Street Sweeper from the NIN/JA 2009 site.
The wonderful thing about Patrick Wolf right now is that it’s very hard to tell where his campiness ends and his seriousness begins. “Vulture” is an excellent goth synthpop number, and exactly the sort of song that benefits greatly from a performer fearless enough to fully commit to a cartoonishly dark and depraved tone knowing full well that he’s probably going to come out seeming at least a little bit silly. It certainly helps that Wolf’s composition and arrangement is perfectly executed, from its general vibe of pervy menace on down to its exceptionally strong chorus and ruthlessly effective “80’s dance party” beat.
When I first heard this song, there was no doubt in my mind that the singer was a woman. I was wrong. It’s actually a dude, which I suppose is not totally unfathomable — I was thinking that the voice was similar to that of Celebration’s somewhat androgynous Katrina Ford, who often reminds me of Robert Plant — but I still find it hard to imagine, or at least picture. “No Fun” is floaty and relaxed, but also rather substantial and physically urgent as a result of its busy, ever-shifting percussion. The arrangement strikes a perfect balance of turbulence and tranquility, with the contradictory states leveling out enough to imply a peaceful acceptance of conflict and change.
Colin Meloy’s nasal, needling, nerd-like voice tends to miss the mark when he plays the part of the heroic protagonist in his songs, but it is very well suited to portraying villains and creeps, as he does in this atypically simple verse-chorus-verse rocker from the Decemberists’ latest album of English folk/prog/metal amalgamations. “The Rake’s Song,” a tune sung from the perspective of an effete widower recounting the way he murdered his young children in order to gain freedom from responsibility, gives Meloy full license to chew the scenery, and to allow the least attractive elements of his voice to become an asset in selling the character. He sounds perfectly smug and affected, which in combination with the unrepentant creepiness of the lyrics adds up a sort of refined menace comparable to Michael Emerson work as Lost‘s primary antagonist Benjamin Linus.
The latest Listen@MBV full-album stream is the new record from Hank, a Toronto-based band led by songwriter Cab Williamson. The Luck of the Singers is their first album in four years and though it took nearly as long to write and record, its sound is rather immediate and un-fussy. As on their acclaimed previous record How To Prosper in the Coming Bad Years, the songs have a distinct out-of-time quality that uproots the music from chronology, and leaves much of the material sounding as though it could be an authentic artifact from any year from the past five decades. Williamson’s deep, droll voice and witty lyrics anchor most of the songs, but he’s often joined by the lovely voices of his female bandmates, whose high, pretty tones complement and balance out his hyper-masculine style. The Luck of the Singers is stylistically varied, but aesthetically consistent, and so it’s very much the sort of record that’s best heard in one sitting.
There is a terror at the core of Karin Dreijer Andersson’s music as Fever Ray that is so potent and visceral that I find it difficult to listen to album with any sort of regularity. This is notable, because there was no shortage of darkness and paranoia in the Knife’s Silent Shout record, and that did not keep me from spending much of 2006 playing “We Share Our Mothers’ Health” and “Forest Families” on repeat. The difference between the Knife and Fever Ray is a matter of degree and intensity — whereas the Silent Shout songs allow for space and catharsis, the selections on Fever Ray feel extremely contained and inert, putting the listener in the uncomfortable headspace of a person who seems to be suffering from simultaneous claustrophobia and agoraphobia. Fever Ray is an album of nonspecific dread and domestic restlessness, and even “Seven,” its most pop-oriented song, offers no relief from its relentless unease. Though it starts off as a recollection of connection and friendship, it’s essentially a song about profound loneliness. The lyrics in the chorus allude to a mysterious “box to open up with light and sound,” which seem to hint at her career in art and music, but in context, it comes across more like a horrible curse than a blessing or salvation.
This Charming Man / Billy Budd / Black Cloud / How Soon Is Now? / Irish Blood, English Heart / Let Me Kiss You / I’m Throwing My Arms Around Paris / How Can Anybody Possibly Know How I Feel? / Seasick, Yet Still Docked / The Loop / I Keep Mine Hidden / The World Is Full of Crashing Bores / Why Don’t You Find Out for Yourself? / Ask / Best Friend on the Payroll / Sorry Doesn’t Help / Something Is Squeezing My Skull / I’m OK By Myself // First of the Gang to Die
Something that becomes very obvious upon seeing a Morrissey concert is that he and his band need not engage in any sort of theatrics on stage, and that it hardly even matters what they play, or if the songs are sequenced in a particularly dramatic order. Morrissey is the spectacle, to the point that anything that would distract the audience from focusing their attention on him would be jarring and wrong. Really, this isn’t much different from the songs themselves — aside from the old Smiths tunes, the music for most of the numbers would be fairly nondescript were it not for Morrissey’s dominating presence. It is probably true that he is coasting on the passion of his audience, but that just feeds into one the most entertaining aspects of his shtick: Despite the fact that he is among the most intensely beloved cult figures in pop culture, he insists that he is under-appreciated, and demands yet more love from his fans. In other words, he’s basically Miss Piggy with a pompadour. It’s brilliant.
Morrissey seems extremely comfortable in his skin these days, often coming across on stage and in the excellent covers of his three most recent albums as though he has waited his entire life to be exactly as old as he is right now. He wears his age very well, and it provides him with a bit of gravitas that serves him well, particularly when he sings his most petulant lyrics. His sex appeal now is actually quite similar to that of 30 Rock-era Alec Baldwin. Both men have a handsome, bearish quality, with substantial yet lean bodies capable of surprising grace. They both have very strong presences, and when you look at them, it’s hard not to picture a younger, softer version of their face buried just beneath the heavy masculinity of their adult visage. Maybe it’s an Irish thing?
The original mix of Shontelle’s single “T-Shirt” is pleasant but generic, basically the kind of song that provides either a functional sort of pleasure, or a neutral non-response when heard in passing. This largely comes down to the way it seems designed to sound like a half-dozen overly familiar pop hits from the past few years, resulting in something that comes off, at best, as being a severely watered-down version of Beyoncé’s “Irreplaceable.” Crazy Cousinz’ mix salvages the best elements from the original, and changes the mood, tempo, and arrangement significantly by flipping the ho-hum melancholy of the source material into a rather celebratory Latin-tinged dance number. Their arrangement is a funky, dynamic piece of music that evokes a powerful feeling of joy while at the same time feeling slick, cool, and relaxed. This is a wonderful example of the remix as aesthetic surgery — one can imagine the original song limping and wheezing its way into the OR, and just hours later prancing around cheerfully to its new and improved beat.
The Lotus Plaza album comes out in stores next week, but I’ve had a copy for months now. I’m not saying this to brag — in this era of leaked records, who could possibly care? — but to explain that I’ve been living with this music for a while now, to the point that I’ve already got nostalgic memories attached to the songs. The cd arrived in the mail on a snow day, and not long after, I remember walking around in Brooklyn at night in late December. It wasn’t quite a blizzard, but it snowing, windy, and bitter cold. My vision was blurred, everything seemed slow, and I felt perfectly in synch with the general vibe of Lockett Pundt’s solo tunes. Maybe he wasn’t going for snow per se, but I’m sure he had some form of disorientation in mind when he wrote this material.
Lotus Plaza isn’t a far cry from what Lockett does in Deerhunter, but the balance of hookiness and haziness is adjusted much more in favor of the latter. His best compositions foreground a particular bit of instrumental melody and texture while the rest of the track blurs out, sorta like a musical version of rack focus. The effect is a bit like trying to remember something, but only being able to fully recall seemingly minor details and sensations with any sort of vividness. It seems right that this music would end up associated with exactly this sort of memory in my mind — I can perfectly visualize glimpses of particular street corners as seen through wet glasses, but I kinda struggle to recall much more of the context.
For the first couple minutes of “Mr. Yeah,” The-Dream sounds smooth and confident. Or, perhaps more accurately, smug and cocky. He’s singing to an ex who is still getting with him on the side, and from his perspective this means exactly one thing: Her subsequent boyfriends are fools, and he’s the only one who can do her right. Maybe that is true, but there has got to be a reason why he’s the ex, right? He’s barely even thinking about that. As the song progresses, his cockiness fades a bit, but only to be replaced by neediness — his resentment of her current man becomes more obvious, and he openly states his desire to return to full-time boyfriend status in a shaky but certain phone-voice. After that point, the song shifts from bouncy flirtation to sentimental slow jam, sort of the audio equivalent of seamlessly transitioning from a playful club strut to getting down on bended knee in a room decorated with candles and rose petals. Thankfully, The-Dream defuses the sudden seriousness of the song’s conclusion with a boyish punchline: “Can we fuck now?”
There Are Maybe Ten Or Twelve / Miracle Drug / Like A Hitman, Like A Dancer / Prophets / Secretarial / The Heartbreak Rides / The Cloud Prayer / The Palace At 4 A.M. / All Of My Days & All Of My Days Off / Young Atlantis / Drink To Me, Babe, Then / The Collected Works / Changeling (Get Guilty) / Submarines of Stockholm / On The Table // There Was A War [Leonard Cohen] / The Town Halo
Even when he’s touring in support of his solo material, Carl Newman can’t help but to put himself at the center of a large ensemble band. To a certain extent, this is just what is demanded of his material — even his relatively quiet material requires a richness of sound, and many of his songs are just better with the collective oomph of gang vocals. Even if it takes three female back up singers to come close to matching the power of Neko Case, the band assembled for this tour compare favorably to the New Pornographers, particularly when it comes to the drumming. Jon Wurster’s approach to drumming for Newman is not far off from Kurt Dahle’s work in the New Pornographers — brisk and powerful, but with plenty of nimble, detailed fills that mirror and emphasize the graceful melodic turns within the songs. Wurster’s style tends to fall into a tighter pocket, which provides a bit more negative space than Dahle, leaving the songs feeling a bit lighter and more open. This was particularly flattering for some of the more recent up-tempo numbers, such as “Changeling (Get Guilty),” “All Of My Days & All Of My Days Off,” and “The Palace At 4 A.M.,” all of which easily eclipsed the quality of the studio recordings.
Newman’s output in this decade has been so consistently strong that it can be easy to take his songwriting gifts for granted, especially as he becomes more focused on structure and nuance. Still, his taste for bombast comes through in even his quietest tunes, nearly always in the form of an emotional crescendo in the second half of a composition. “The Heartbreak Rides,” the loveliest song on Get Guilty, follows this pattern, gradually progressing from a gentle groove and gorgeous melody on the verses to an understated chorus, and eventually to a dramatic resolution that somehow does not feel incongruous or unearned.
You Are The Hat / Do You Karate? / Digifucker / Jake Summers / I’m Beginning To Think You Prefer Beverly Hills 90210 To Me / Tie Me Up With Jackets / Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues / Lend Me Your Face (featuring Nick Minichino) / Megameanie / Battlestations
Even when they’re worn out from travel and their singer has a scratchy throat from exposure to Aer Lingus air conditioning germs, Fight Like Apes rock out with a tuneful intensity matched by very few new, contemporary bands in the best of health. For one thing, they’re quite good at making their job seem fun — they thrash and writhe about, smash keyboard stands before the third song is through, and goof off whenever they are not preoccupied with nailing their dynamic, visceral hooks. Near the end of their abbreviated set, just after belting out a rather skull-rattling version of McLusky’s “Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues,” MayKay recruited good ol’ Nick Minichino to sing the chorus of “Lend Me Your Face,” mainly on account of his highly enthusiastic dancing in the front row. He did a great job, but I still want to hear her do it. Not that I really needed another good reason to want to see this band again, but you know.
Given the current state of the global economy, it is perhaps bad form to take so much delight in a song about people getting fired. But then again, a lot of the pleasure comes from the fact that the band themselves are doing the firing, and the listener gets to feel the vicarious thrill of being in the position to sack a person, particularly one who has wronged them. Even though the song concludes with the group shouting “you’re so fired!” in rounds, there’s a lightness in the music — the waltz beat, the colorful synth tones, the smiling vocals — that keeps it from sounding too bitter and mean-spirited.
I’d previously compared the Golden Silvers to the Clash, particularly for the way Gwylim Gold’s charismatic rasp fits so smoothly into his band’s stark, fluid grooves, and here they go foregrounding all that by going full-on “Magnificent Seven” with their latest single. It’s not just a Clash rip, though. “True Romance” also bears some resemblance to David Bowie’s classic single “Let’s Dance,” not to mention traces of Duran Duran, Liquid Liquid, and the Human League. Even in spite of their obvious debts to old school post-punk floor-fillers, the band sidestep hollow imitation and soulless retro affectation by feeling like the real deal in all the ways that matter — the bass and drums lock into a tight pocket, the synths sound simultaneously trashy and glamorous, and Gold hits the right balance of intimidating toughness and sly flirtatiousness. The Golden Silvers are good enough to have fit in perfectly with their icons from the early 80s had they existed back in those days, but we’re lucky enough to have them be fresh and new in our time.
