Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

The Mary Timony Band “Killed By The Telephone” – There’s a problem here, and no problem at all. The “problem” is that if you’ve heard a lot of Mary Timony’s music from after The Dirt Of Luck, you can predict this song’s movements from second to second — she’s operating on instinct, not so much imagination, and even the best moments feel like something you’ve heard from her several times before. However, if you’ve heard a lot of Timony’s post-Dirt Of Luck music, you probably like her style, and “Killed By The Telephone” sounds like a new old friend, or maybe even a step up from most of what she’s been doing in the past few years if just because it straight-up rocks out when it’s not floating off into a sea of arpeggiation. I guess I can’t stop myself from wishing she was re-writing “XXX” and “Pat’s Trick” instead of The Magic City, but that’s my problem and not hers. (Click here to buy it from Buy Olympia.)

C.O.C.O. “Your Own Secret Way / Sly” – The singer is hung up on someone, and so everything that person says or does seems like a code to crack, or a path to an answer — yes, no, maybe? This person is occupying so much space in her brain that she hopes and assumes that she’s weighing heavily on their mind as well, but the possibility that she’s wrong just makes it worse. (In other words: you should pay rent in my mind / say like the French say / “bon soir je regret a demain” / do you like me? / do you like me? / do you like me? / do you like me? / I guess.) (Click here to pre-order it from K Records.)

Elsewhere: R.I.P., Mike Weiringo.

Daft Punk @ Keyspan Park 8/9/2007
Robot Rock + Oh Yeah + Technologic / Television Rules The Nation + Around The World + Cresdendolls / Steam Machine / Harder Better Faster Stronger + Around The World / Burnin’ / Too Long / Face To Face + Harder Better Faster Stronger / One More Time + Aerodynamic / The Prime Time Of Your Life / Alive / Brainwasher / Da Funk + Daftendirekt / Superheroes + Human After All // Together + One More Time (approximate setlist, may be slightly inaccurate)

Daft Punk “Face To Face” – How do you talk about a show like this without gushing with hyperbole, or inadvertently making it sound dull by translating an immersive visceral, physical experience into a bunch of stupid words? Daft Punk’s show is the opposite of words, basically. If you want to get an idea of what the performance was like, watch these YouTube clips, but keep in mind that they really don’t capture the full sensation, and I can’t seem to find examples of some of the most stunning bits of the light show:

Daft Punk’s show is essentially a fusion of crowd-pleasing, disco dancing spectacle and high concept installation art. Every moment is precisely calculated to maximize the audience’s pleasure, and their submission to the moment. Though the set was mostly high energy, they allowed for several cool-down moments in which the duo gave the audience permission to slow down and get lost in the visuals before pulling them back with another round of intense beats.

It’s kinda amazing how incredibly thrilling it can be to see guys dressed like robots dancing around in a giant glowing pyramid. It’s a simple pleasure, really.

Though it seemed that everyone was most excited to hear the classic songs from Discovery, the tracks from Human After All were a revelation in the context of a large scale performance. It’s not too much of a surprise that their “rock” songs would go over well in an arena setting, but the raw excitement triggered by the likes of “Technologic” and “Television Rules The Nation” was enough to question why that album received such poor reviews a few years ago. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Elsewhere & Related: Take a look inside Daft Punk’s pyramid, learn how to make your own customized LED robot helmet, and behold the ecstatic comments thread on Brooklyn Vegan.

The Rapture @ Keyspan Park 8/9/2007
Down For So Long / Get Myself Into It / Sister Savior / The Devil / Pieces of the People We Love / Whoo! Alright – Yeah…Uh Huh / House of Jealous Lovers / Don Gon Do It / First Gear (aborted midway after keyboard failure) / Olio

The Rapture “First Gear” – I’d been really hoping to see the Rapture do “First Gear,” and until some damnable keyboard gave out in the second minute, my wish had been granted. On an album of instantly ingratiating songs, “First Gear” is a slow burner, the one that pulls you deeper and deeper if you just let go. (Weirdly, even though I’ve heard the song a few dozen times now, I always seem to expect Matty to start singing the chorus of “Warning Siren” when he shifts into the “can I ask you a question?” section.)

The Rapture were fantastic — they always are — but their songs work better in smaller places, and situations in which everyone there is there to see them. As it was, there were plenty of folks on the floor flipping out to their songs, along with pockets of people who were just waiting around for the robots. Fair enough, fun enough, but it wasn’t anything near as intense as their show at Webster Hall last year. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Tricky “Ponderosa” – Though it’s not exactly rare for couples to collaborate on music together, nearly all of the tracks produced by Tricky featuring Martina Topley-Bird on vocals foreground what would normally be subtext to the point that the sexual tension present in their work seems overwhelming and contagious. Some of this is due to the contrasting character of their voices — Tricky has a thick, creepy rasp that implies a seductive sort of alien otherness, and Martina is elegant, coy, and slightly demure in a way that suggests that she’s an innocent young girl who is slowly being corrupted by his unapologetic decadence. Though Tricky has worked with other female vocalists with a similar vocal range and timbre, none of them can come close to replicating their unique chemistry, or mimicking the subtleties of her phrasing. For example, there’s a dark, flirtatious wit in her performance on “Ponderosa” that twists a song that might otherwise be taken a self-pitying lament about one’s vices into something that underlines the pleasures of self-medication and self-destruction. Her presence on the track opens up the song’s interior monologue just enough to make it a shared experience, shifting its “I” to an exclusive “we” cut off from the outside world.

“Ponderosa” is a perfect early example of one of Tricky’s most common approaches to presenting vocals: As Martina sings a fairly conventional lead part, he shadows and/or anticipates her words with scratchy, rhythmic whispers. There’s a few different ways to interpret this style, and they aren’t the least bit mutually exclusive:

1) He’s placing a spotlight on his role as a svengali type who is putting his words into the mouth of his beautiful, young female protege. In calling attention to this, he is highlighting a sort of artifice or vocal inadequacy that can be perceived as a flaw while also arrogantly making sure that the listener is aware of his authorship.

2) He’s creating a dynamic between the male and female voices that lends a richer subtext to the work. Her vocal part can be understood as an act of submission to his will, but the result is invariably a track in which the female voice sounds confident and fully expressive, and the male voice seems sickly and weak. Tricky plays up his masculinity, but he almost always seems repulsed by it on some level, and so puts himself in the context of a gorgeous female voice in order to both highlight his flaws, and compensate for them. The women in his songs are placed on a pedestal — even when he’s cursing them out, his self-loathing trumps his persecution complex.

3) He’s splitting the song into two interlocking perspectives. Both of the characters are thinking the same thing, and on some level, one is most certainly parroting the other but is either unaware, or simply unsure where they end and the other person begins. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Tricky “Vent” – On Maxinquaye, “Suffocated Love” was a metaphor, but the opening track of Pre-Millenium Tension takes that phrase very, very literally with its lyrics about a woman who hides her lover’s asthma medication as a sadistic ploy to gain the upper hand in their relationship and/or profit from his demise. The song is sung from both perspectives, so the track alternates between Tricky’s paranoid delusion and Martina’s bitter revenge fantasy. The track is dense and claustrophobic, with its smothering beats implying the couple’s stifling proximity to one another, and its anguished, heavily distorted guitar noise standing in for Tricky’s muted screams. It’s worth noting that the song inverts the usual Tricky formula, and Martina speaks her words just before singing them, as though to clarify that she’s taking full credit for her actions. The result is very chilling, but also sexy in a very intense and unnerving sort of way. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Elsewhere: My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site with mp3s from Michael Dracula, Tiny Vipers, and Edie Sedgwick.

Also: There’s a wonderful video feature about the Fiery Furnaces on NewMusicBox that places the band in the context of “new music” as opposed to indie rock.

Midnight Juggernauts “Shadows” – “Shadows” might be a song about something. There’s words, and there is singing, but it’s all secondary to the simple snap of the beat, the relaxed bounce of the bass line, and these breezy, colorful synth parts that just sort of float through you. The song makes you passive, but it’s not the sort of tune that picks you up and throws you around. You just go with it, and it takes you someplace nice where it’s hot enough to be acutely aware of your body, but cool enough to chill you out. (Click here to buy it via Midnight Juggernauts’ MySpace page.)

Liars “Freak Out” – I’ve had a lot to freak out about recently, but it’s…okay. It’s okay, I guess. And that’s what this song feels like — oppressive heat and humidity melting worries into little ice cream puddles, nervousness mutating into boneheaded confidence because you’re too lazy to be self-aware, and the sort of dumb luck that only comes when you are not trying, at all. (I wonder if the Liars only gave themselves permission to write this sort of perfect zoned-out surf rock song because The OC is off the air now. I’m kinda serious.) (Click here to pre-order it from Amazon.)

Elsewhere: While the Nouvelle Vague chanteuses crooned in the background, I suffered through a clumsy fondling session that wouldn’t have been even note-worthy in the tenth grade. Except for the part where he looked at me lustily and said “you know… I have Jake Shears’ number in my phone.”

Jay Reatard “I Know A Place” – In other words — we all need our space, but we also need each other. We can have it both ways if we try, and if you want to try. It’s a simple thought, and a simple song, but Jay Reatard’s voice conveys the complicated tangle of emotions that get in the way of something that seems so easy in the abstract. (Click here for the Jay Reatard MySpace page.)

Freezepop “Do You Like Boys?” – “Do You Like Boys?” is almost stiflingly twee, but once Liz Enthusiasm takes the song to its chorus, her lyrics take a creepy turn, and it definitely seems as though she’s asking her suitor if he prefers “boys” and “sweet little girls” to her in a very literal To Catch A Predator sort of way. The song gets kinda uncomfortable after that first chorus, but the gentle tweaking of twee infantilization results in a richer, more sinister pop tune. (Click here for the official Freezepop page.)

Supermayer “The Art of Letting Go” – No, this is not John Mayer’s dance pop side project — you’re thinking of Benny Benassi, actually. (No kidding, it’s kind of a public secret.) Supermayer is Superpitcher and Michael Mayer, arguably the two biggest stars on the Kompakt roster forming like Voltron (or at least the Wonder Twins) for an entire album’s worth of…well, I don’t know what you should call this stuff, to be honest with you. It’s not really “minimal techno” since a majority of the tracks veer closer to pop songwriting and/or funk than what you might normally expect from a Kompakt release. “The Art of Letting Go” builds on a thick yet surprisingly light bass line with a repetitive deadpan vocal hook, distant bleating horns, and a recurring guitar sample that in context seems like the one nagging thought in the back of your head that keeps your mind from being clear and fully relaxed. (Click here to pre-order it from Soul Seduction.)

Elsewhere: My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site with mp3s from the Dirty Projectors, Yesterday’s New Quintet, and Karl Blau.

Also: My review of I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry is up on The Movie Binge. It’s a truly terrible film, but this is probably my favorite review I’ve done for that site this summer.

Interpol “No I In Threesome” – I wish the intro of this song was a bit longer, maybe another 30-40 seconds. The opening moments sets up a rather interesting and deliberately cinematic theme that could carry an entire track, but it gets immediately sidelined by the main body of the piece. That’s not an entirely bad thing — aside from the too-brief intro segment, “No I In Threesome” is perhaps the most fully realized and sophisticated composition in Interpol’s discography, or at least on par with previous highlights such as “Evil,” “Not Even Jail,” and “NYC.” The thing that’s difficult to understand is why the rest of the tracks on Our Love To Admire seem so tossed-off and forgettable in comparison. Did the group put all of its effort into this one cut? It could be. Whereas the other tracks on the album come off muddy and indistinct, “Threesome” is graceful and dynamic, gently drawing the listener through sections that balance a nervous tension with a sort of creepy, self-absorbed sexuality that is borne out in Paul Banks’ lyrics.

Though previous Interpol songs have hinted at the follies of its dim hipster protagonists, this one is most successfully in drawing out a specific scenario rather than imply a character with a loose, cryptic lyrical sketch. Banks’ character here is most certainly an opportunistic creep, but the implication is that he’s lacking in self-awareness. He proposes a threesome as a way of breathing new life into a dying relationship, but he’s really just trying to get his way, and introducing a scenario that might finally kill off a situation he’s too cowardly to abandon straight away. His logic is nonsensical, but you just know the manipulative bastard will get his way. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Superthriller “I Love You” – Superthriller’s inarticulate, disingenuous declaration of love is a very thin joke, but it holds up well in a thumping, threadbare track that nods and winks in the general direction of soft pop and white boy R&B that works despite its self-conscious irony. If you’re sympathetic to its Lite FM signifiers, the song is a bit like eating an ice cream sundae in an air conditioned space on a hot, humid afternoon. Also, the “like Tom Cruise, but better” line is very funny, mainly because it’s hard to imagine who would still want to be that guy at this point in history. (Click here for the Superthriller MySpace page.)

Onuma Singsiri “Mae Kha Som Tum (Papaya Salad Merchant)” – The title translation of this track from Sublime Frequencies’ new Thai Pop Spectacular compilation may be one of the less amusing/interesting — how could it not when compared to the likes of “You Should Die By Bullets,” “Look Whose Underwear Is Showing,” “We Both Think We’re The Best!,” and “Drinking Whiskey Til I’m Blurred”? — but the song itself is probably the best, and most certainly the selection that exemplifies the sort of dark, dank, humid grooves that dominate the record. “Mae Kha Som Tum” feels a bit eerie and detached, but entirely present in the moment, at least in a physical sense. The mind…well, that seems distracted, hypnotized, staring off into the middle distance. (Click here to buy it from Sublime Frequencies.)

Tiny Vipers “Shipwreck” – Jesy Fortino’s voice occasionally recalls the pained quaver of Sunny Day Real Estate’s Jeremy Enigk, but she’s not nearly as unhinged or bombastic. Like much of her debut album as Tiny Vipers, the music of “Shipwreck” is so sparse and subtle that it does not fully register on the first listen, but close attention reveals a brittle, heartbreaking tune that struggles to make sense of random tragedy, and to rationalize the desire to carry on and survive. (Click here to buy it from Sub Pop.)

Elsewhere: Nate Patrin rewrote the entirety of the Clash’s London Calling as a series of limericks!

Michael Dracula “Please Don’t Take This The Wrong Way” – Emily MacLaren never actually utters the title phrase in this song, but every other line sounds as though it’s already been prefaced with that nerve-wracking disclaimer. I realize that we’re supposed to identify with her, but I keep wondering how this guy is supposed to take getting dressed down like this? I take the title as a bit of a joke — she totally knows that she’s tearing some serious holes in this guy’s ego, but she’s sweetening it up, and trying very hard to convince herself that she’s being a good person when it’s clear there’s a bit of deliberate emotional sadism in what she’s doing. Would this song sound so laid back and playful otherwise? (Click here to buy it from Ze Records.)

Marmoset “(Heavy Breathing) On The Telephone” – I’d never heard of Marmoset before a week ago, but they are among the first in a long line of “Hey, you like 90s indie, right? You should listen to this one local act…” bands that I anticipate encountering over the next decade or so as the period is distant enough to warrant more reissues and compilations. Marmoset — who still exist, by the way, and have a new album out now — specialize in concise, somewhat lethargic songs that emphasize stark rhythms, stressed and tinny lead guitar lines, and vocals that most often convey a sense of helpless indecision. They are the type of band who are not only willing to indulge in a silly “a rye/awry” pun, but also to repeat it a few times over the course of a two minute song, which is far more endearing to me than contemporary acts who strain to be described as “literate.” (Click here to get Marmoset’s “greatest hits” for free from Secretly Canadian.)

Sonic Youth @ McCarren Pool 7/28/2007
Teenage Riot / Silver Rocket / The Sprawl / Cross The Breeze / Eric’s Trip / Total Trash / Hey Joni / Providence / Candle / Rain King / Kissability / The Wonder / Hyperstation / Eliminator Jr. // Incinerate / Reena / Do You Believe In Rapture? / What A Waste /// Jams Run Free / Pink Steam

I saw Sonic Youth perform Daydream Nation in its entirety twice in the span of a couple weeks, and if you really want to know, the first time in Chicago was better. Specifically, it was better for me — I’m not sure if I can actually compare the performances in any meaningful way because I was so much more emotionally involved the first time around, in part because I was alone in the middle of a crowd of people who responded with so much joy and passion that it couldn’t help but be a more visceral experience. (In comparison, the Brooklyn audience was…well, a Brooklyn audience, i.e. “extremely psyched in their own way,” as my friend very charitably put it.) The Chicago set was very special for me, not simply because the band were playing a lot of songs that I loved, and several selections that I never had the opportunity to witness live, but because I was connecting with songs in unexpected ways. In particular, “Eric’s Trip” suddenly felt like a decade and a half of memories colliding head-on with my future, and “Jams Run Free” was the saddest, happiest, loneliest, most romantic thing I’d ever heard. Both of those songs were played in Brooklyn too, and though I enjoyed them quite a bit, there was no recapturing that perfect, spontaneous emotional reaction.

(I should note that in both performances of “Eric’s Trip,” Lee Ranaldo omitted some words in the same spaces — for example, he sang “I’m over the city, fucking the future,” but “I’m high and inside your kiss” was gone — and added new lines before the “I see with a glass eye, the pavement view” verse, something very close to this: “The sky is blue / the sky is the deepest, darkest blue I’ve ever seen / and points on a globe / are just points on a globe.” It’s interesting to me that after performing the song so many times over the years, he still seems to be revising it, much more like a poet than a rock singer.)

Sonic Youth “Hey Joni” (Live in 1988) -This is not to say that the McCarren set was a disappointment, or inferior, or that I didn’t connect. “Candle” was certainly better this time around, maybe the best performance of that song I’d ever seen. Though Chicago got a much more inspired improvised mid-section of “Silver Rocket” and a seriously intense take on “Cross The Breeze,” Brooklyn had the luck of getting more polished renditions of “The Sprawl,” “Total Trash,” and “The Wonder.” “Hey Joni” was my jam, the thing that clicked perfectly, and seemed to make sense of the nostalgic nature of the show with its rapid burst of words presenting a timeline like a shoelace tied into a knot. 1988 was 1995 was 2002 was 2007 and 2012. Emotions, books, outlooks on life. Hello 2015! Hello 2015! (Oh wait, that’s another song.) (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

The Slits “Love Und Romance” – I arrived a little bit too late, and as I approached the gates, I noticed that the Slits were already on, and were playing my favorite song in their catalog, “Love Und Romance.” It was fun to see them once I got in and close to the stage, but it’s a shame I missed so much of it — there were some newer songs I didn’t know too well, and after Ari Up (dressed up like a Rastafarian cheerleader!) announced that they were about to play the song everyone had been waiting for, they performed “Typical Girls,” which was fantastic, but uh…not “I Heard It Through The Grapevine.” Did they already play “Grapevine”? I’d love to know.

Ah, “Love Und Romance”! My trusty mix tape staple! My favorite manic, cheerfully unreasonable lust song! The twisting, the turning, the giggles and chants! And the bass! It is permanently swirling around in the back of my head, surfacing in the strangest, blankest moments. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Steely Dan “Through With Buzz”

Colin: Matthew, tell me why you liked “Through With Buzz.”

me: Well, there’s a lot of things I like about it. I like that it’s really concise, for one thing. I like how strings are the central part of the song, but the string arrangement implies a rock guitar sound instead of something self-conciously “classy.” But then again, there IS a sort of fake, put-on classiness in it, implying that the guy thinks he’s this big shot. I like the way it conveys this sort of oblivious macho insecurity.

Colin: It’s a pretty funny song. Do you like Pretzel Logic?

me: Yeah, that’s definitely my favorite Steely Dan album. I really love “Parker’s Band” too.

Colin: But the song “Pretzel Logic,” a couple of tracks later. I find it thematically similar, even though it’s kind of nonsense.

me: Are you in a big Dan phase? you should talk to my friend Eric, he’s a huge Steely Dan fan. I’m pretty casual about it, I just really like some of their songs here and there.

Colin: Naw, I was just listening to it last night, and I know every second of it by heart because my mom used to listen to them.

me: My friend Jody gave me a proper introduction to Steely Dan back in 2002, made me a cd but I only really liked “Through With Buzz” right away.

Colin: It’s easy to be put off by their jazz-dude rep.

me: Yeah, but now I think it’s one of their better aspects.

Colin: It’s a put-on! It’s part of the weird, humorless joke. They are so anti-jazz! Nothing is improvised.

me: Yeah, they are more about CHOPS. That’s what they take from jazz, not fluidity and intuition.

Colin : Donald Fagen and that other guy are the Shao Lin of jazz.

me: Their take on jazz is kinda postmodern maybe, because they are only interested in jazz recordings, the signifiers of jazz rather than jazz itself.

(Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Elsewhere: I’m going to be a guest writer on Idolator today. Check it out.

The Victorian English Gentlemens Club “La Mer” – Not a Debussy cover! It’s a punk song, and a fine example of how no one on earth can convey disaffected contempt better than female British punk rockers. The lead singer on this track sounds as though her voice has been filed down into a blunt shiv, and it stabs the deepest when she’s not even forming words — da, da da, da da, da da da! Come to think of it, everything in the song seems to either made of sharp edges, or set at severe angles. (Click here to buy it from Norman Records.)

Elsewhere: My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site with mp3s from Lee Perry, Caroline Peyton, and the Michael Garrick Trio.

Also: “There are a handful of ancient, immutable laws, written in stardust across the heavens, and one of them is that if you find yourself dating a porn star, you don’t cut and run at the first sign of trouble. No: you dig in, do the heavy lifting, and make the relationship work.”

Studio “Self Service” – “You do it to yourself, you do, you and no one else.” That’s the gist of this song, but in context, it seems like a lot of projection. The singer seems rather self-absorbed, and the “you” only seems to exist in relationship to himself, as though they were just a body orbiting his position. The sleekness of the track only emphasizes that impression — it’s so shiny and perfect that it seems like he’s wearing a suit made of mirrors. (Click here to buy it from Information.)

The Chemical Brothers “We Are The Night” – Why am I surprised that I like so much of the new Chemical Brothers album? They’ve always been pretty good, and besides that whole “electronica is going to take over music!” thing was ten years ago, and it’s not as though they were the ones going around proclaiming that they were going to kill/replace rock and roll or remake the mainstream. They were simply a couple guys who were slightly ahead of the curve, and now people can ride their coattails and be considered modern or cutting edge. Basement Jaxx have their cult, Daft Punk have their hits sampled by hip hop stars, and they somehow get lumped in with the likes of the Prodigy. It’s just not fair, especially when they can make this sort of sinister space groove sound sorta timeless and totally effortless. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Elsewhere: My review of Steve Buscemi’s new film Interview is up on The Movie Binge.

Early Impressions Of The Fiery Furnaces’ Widow City

The Fiery Furnaces “Navy Nurse”

1. I am so tired of trying to either turn other people on to the Fiery Furnaces, or defending them from those who find them difficult or annoying or overly precious. I get why people don’t like them, I really do. Once in a while they totally aggravate me too, like when they play shows and deliberately butcher their own exquisitely crafted material for no reason other than to be contrary. But seriously, if you hate this band, or have no desire to put in the effort required to get the most out of their albums, I DO NOT CARE. Go enjoy whatever it is that you enjoy in whatever way that you want to enjoy it, and I’ll look the other way.

2. The thing is, the Fiery Furnaces aren’t that difficult. Every song they’ve ever done is basically a pop tune, and most of them include at least one strong hook, if not several. The problem of the Furnaces is that their work tends to be incredibly dense, and the albums often feel like the musical equivalent of enormous, intimidating Russian novels. (EP is more like a pocket-sized collection of short stories, and so it’s not exactly shocking that most people find that record to be the most accessible despite being an odds-and-sods compilation.) The songs generally work as discrete compositions, but every album is designed as a piece, so it can be hard to separate the twists and turns of the individual songs while trying to get a sense of the big picture. I prefer to navigate small portions at a time, getting to know some songs better before attempting to work out the appeal of trickier sections. That strategy has already worked out fairly well vis-a-vis Widow City — the first side was instantly appealing and has an exceptional flow, but the second half is more an uphill climb with its occasionally craggy rhythms and languorous melodies. My initial impression was that the album would have been perfect if it had ended with “Navy Nurse,” but the charms of Side B are slowly revealing themselves over listening sessions concentrated on that part of the sequence.

3. Widow City is an important record in the Fiery Furnaces discography because unlike its predecessors, it is not an attempt to stake out new aesthetic ground, but rather a consolidation of their singular style. At this point, it is abundantly clear what a Fiery Furnaces melody or song structure is like, and we know all of Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger’s ticks and quirks. They hardly exist in a vacuum — a lot of their music makes deliberate reference to other songs and styles in the interest of serving their narratives — but no one else on the planet sounds anything like them.

That said, they seemed slightly uncomfortable on their last two albums, as though they were trying too hard to avoid being a part of the indie rock mainstream and doing whatever they could to make the songs “interesting” as Matthew has put it in some interviews. This usually means that he goes way overboard in the studio, slapping on far too many overdubs, or insisting on arrangements that either distract from or nearly derail the most attractive elements of his songs. (The most egregious example of this are the deliberately obnoxious versions of “Benton Harbor Blues” and “Nevers” that appear on Bitter Tea before the infinitely superior “normal” takes tacked on at the end.)

The arrangements on Widow City are considerably more refined and streamlined, resulting in an album that feels lighter and more fluid than its predecessors. The songs on the first side in particular have an airy sound — the floating riff at the start of “The Philadelphia Grand Jury,” the weightless acoustic guitars of “Duplexes of the Dead,” the delirious quasi-funk of “My Egyptian Grammar.” This is all very reassuring. I was worried that Matthew would continue to embrace excess as an essential component of his style, but it seems that he’s more interested in telling his stories with greater craft and clarity.

4. “Duplexes of the Dead,” “Automatic Husband,” and “Ex-Guru” are actually one long piece, a set of distinct songs that form a suite not unlike “Chief Inspector Blancheflower” or “Mason City” from Blueberry Boat. So why are they split into three tracks and given individual titles? I suppose it might have to do with the lyrics, but I haven’t really put a lot of time into paying attention to those just yet. Maybe it’s a desire to make the piece more accessible, at least on a superficial level? All three are rather excellent, most especially “Duplexes,” but they sound absurd on their own — they end abruptly just as you need to feel them shift into the next section.

5. The Who-isms of the previous Fiery Furnaces albums seem to have been replaced by nods to Led Zeppelin throughout Widow City. Most obviously, the riffs of “Navy Nurse” deliberately recall Jimmy Page on “The Ocean,” but many of the lighter moments emulate the crisp stomp of John Bonham or the sleek yet ornate arrangements of John Paul Jones.

6. Eleanor Friedberger’s voice hasn’t changed all that much — she always seems unflappable and self-possessed, but perhaps now, a bit more so? Weirdly, her performances on Widow City tend towards a greater dynamic and emotional range, not to mention some seriously impressive feats of diction, but there seems to be a greater distance between Eleanor and the lyrics. There was a lot of sentimentality in her characters on Rehearsing My Choir and Bitter Tea, but her roles on this album are more along the lines of the adventurers of Blueberry Boat and Gallowsbird’s Bark.

Neko Case “Buckets Of Rain (Live In Austin)” – I saw Neko Case play a free show in Central Park on Friday night, and it was lovely. I haven’t spent very much time with Neko’s solo material, mainly because I’ve spent a lot of time thinking of her as being best-suited to being a weapon in Carl Newman’s pop arsenal, which I admit is a very ridiculous notion given her talent as a vocalist. The show made one thing very clear — I’d be happy to hear Neko Case sing just about anything. Her originals ranged between “quite good” and “just okay,” but the simple fact that she was singing made gave them all a significant boost, most especially this Bob Dylan cover that came towards the end of the main set. I could only half-remember “Buckets of Rain” — I knew I knew the song, but I was thoroughly stunned by Neko’s version, and suddenly quite desperate to find a recording. Luckily that wasn’t too hard. There’s a studio recording available, but despite including a very nice piano solo, it’s not quite as simple and gorgeous as this take from her live album, which has more or less the same arrangement as the show in Central Park. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Michael Garrick Trio “Sketches Of Israel” – As I listen to this song, and as I write these words, it is raining in New York City. It’s dark and cool and the rain is coming down in heavy diagonal streams, hitting the ground with an even force that produces a perfect ambient hum of constant light percussion. I feel like I could just go back to sleep, or lie down on my couch and watch something stupid on television all morning, like a sick day from school. This music exacerbates the feeling with its gentle, fragile rhythm and slow, delicate melodies. It’s all in the details — the brief, soft series of staccato notes that indicate a moment of hesitation at the 1:03 mark, the way the trebly piano notes seem to burst into sparks around 2:36, and the way the bass solo pulls the composition closer to the earth near the end of the composition. (Click here to buy it from Trunk Records.)

Elsewhere: More discography blogs are popping up, including Solar Prestige a Gammon (Elton John), I Can’t Sing It Strong Enough (Pavement), Spring Sprang Sprung (T-Pain), Music From The Bachelor’s Den (Pulp).

Electric Six @ The Temptress (A BOAT!!!) 7/19/2007
I Buy The Drugs / Gay Bar / Feed My Fuckin’ Habit / Dance Epidemic / I’m The Bomb / Mr. Woman / Bite Me / Night Vision / Infected Girls / Rock and Roll Evacuation / She’s White / Pulling The Plug On The Party / Improper Dancing / Danger! High Voltage / Future Is In The Future / Germans In Mexico / Dance Commander / Synthesizer // Naked Pictures

Electric Six “Night Vision” – Yeah, that’s right. I saw the Electric Six play on a boat, and it was awesome. It was one of the most intense concert experiences I’ve ever had — the interior of the boat is kinda cramped, but 75% of the people on board were dancing and moshing and crowd surfing non-stop. You’d think it was pretty crazy, and then they’d do something like play “Danger! High Voltage” and it’d reach a new level of insanity. People who were there with me who had seen the band several times in the past told me that they had never seen an audience get that wild for them, so maybe it had something to do with the boat? Like, I guess you can’t get wishy washy if you’ve spent $30 to see a party band rock out on a cruise.

This was certainly the most fun I’ve ever had at a show where I couldn’t actually see the band. The sight lines on the boat are horrendous — you really can’t see anything unless you’re in the first two rows — so you either danced, or went and hung out on the deck. Win/win, basically. In a way, I’m glad that I couldn’t see Dick Valentine. His appearance is a little bit disconcerting, and I guess I prefer to picture some burly guy with a mustache whenever I hear his voice.

Also, a lesson learned: If you and your friends decide to arrive at a concert on a boat wearing matching paper top hats, everyone is going to want to talk to you.

(Click here to buy it from Amazon, and here to find out more about other Rocks Off concert cruises.)

The Cansecos “Juiced – Side B (excerpt)” – The Cansecos have the melodic style, energy, and fresh-faced charm of the United State of Electronica, but they dial down the day-glo in favor of a relatively chilled-out, classy piano-and-strings disco sound. The piano in this excerpt from a version of their forthcoming album is absolutely gorgeous — the tone sparkles like a diamond whether the chords are being pounded out rhythmically, or trickling out in quick, zippy solos. The bass bubbles underneath, and the percussion settles into a crisp, understated disco beat that leaves plenty of negative space in the composition for the chords to resonate. (Click here for the official Cansecos website.)

John Vanderslice “Tablespoon Of Codeine” – The centerpiece of John Vanderslice’s new album also includes a lovely, reverbed piano part, but its role in the song is very different. The song is mainly carried by a subtly shifting electronic drum pattern and Vanderslice’s plaintive lead vocal, and the piano cuts through the piece like a sharp diagonal line that crisscrosses with icy synthesizer drones. It’s an excellent composition, evoking a paranoia that slowly mutates into bitterness and impotent anger. (Click here to buy it from Barsuk.)

Elsewhere: My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site with mp3s from Scharpling & Wurster, Patton Oswalt, and Paul F. Tompkins.

Justice “D.V.N.O.” – Aside from having the sort of punch and power of a typical Justice track, “D.V.N.O.” plays around with the implied dimensions of a pop song. The “surface” of the song seems to shift from moment to moment, giving the listener the impression that they are moving through and around its “planes,” and occasionally hearing the song from reverse and sideways perspectives. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Jurgen Paape + Boy Schaufler “We Love” – The beat bops with a small measure of nervous energy, but not enough to tip the emotional baseline of the track away from the cautious enthusiasm of the vocal. The effect is cool and dreamy, owning up to its pleasure and romance while backing away from it just enough to be self-aware about every thought and movement. (Click here to buy it from Kompakt.)

Elsewhere: Hau Hsu on LCD Soundsystem’s “All My Friends.” Best bit:

Things begin well enough—”We set controls for the heart of the sun,” Murphy sings, a tiny lift in his voice. But eventually the moment evaporates (as it must), and life settles into a dreaded plainness. One day you arise from bed, contemplate your job, apartment, and the person next to you, and wonder where the time has gone. Friends are off somewhere else—it is always somewhere more fun—and you think about how great it would be to see them all at once. The lyrics are delivered in a Didion-like calm: We dance and do drugs, in lieu of falling apart.

And: Todd Serencha on One To Another. He has a real gift for recapping a plot:

When Pierre goes missing on the motorbike he bought with his orgy-money, and eventually turns up beaten to death, Lucie becomes a determined, slutty Nancy Drew on a quest to fuck her way to the truth, all the while offering up such quintessentially French musings like “deprived of youth, man becomes accomplice to his own death.” A broad array of rightwing boogeymen are offered as suspects, including secretive old queens, nihilistic young rough trade, fag-bashing neo-nazis, thieving gypsies, sister-protecting Algerians. Lucie tries to coerce a pre-mature ejaculating police detective and the aforementioned mystic retard into helping her solve the mystery, but hot snatch freely given can only do so much.

I didn’t see every artist at the festival, and I didn’t see all of most of the sets that I saw, but here are my thoughts, impressions, observations, etc.

Slint – Spiderland was more of a background thing for me, though I made sure to pay close attention to “Good Morning, Captain,” which I’ve always loved. I was standing at a position that allowed me to see both the band and the audience, and so when the band hit the climax, I could see all these people in the front of the crowd screaming “I missed you!” along with Brian McMahan, which was pretty awesome.

GZA “Swordsman” – GZA’s performance of Liquid Swords was slightly shambling in the way that most rap concerts can be, but despite the gaffs of his DJ and non-rapping members of his entourage (ie, the white guys on stage), he was characteristically focused, intense, and verbally nimble. Unshockingly, my favorite songs from the album were the highlights — the grim rocksteady of the title track, the conspiratorial “Living In The World Today,” and most especially the bitter melancholy of “Swordsman.” After he finished the album, he threw in “Crash Your Crew” from Beneath The Surface, plus “Reunited,” “Triumph,” and “Shimmy Shimmy Ya.” Ghostface did the same thing both times I saw him perform last year, so this makes me wonder if there’s a mandate from the RZA that all Wu shows must include those songs no matter who is on stage. (Click here to buy it from Amazon. Shouldn’t this album be on midprice by now?)

Sonic Youth – I’m going to come back to this at the end of the month because I’ll be seeing them perform Daydream Nation again in NYC, but a few things: I went into this most excited about all the songs from the record that I had never seen before in concert, and while those were all totally amazing, I had the most intense emotional response to “Eric’s Trip,” which I’d seen six times before, and “Jams Run Free,” which was an unexpected surprise in the encore. (The other two encores were the considerably less exciting “Incinerate” and “Reena.”) In the best way, this show wasn’t about nostalgia for me — it was more about the way a song I’ve known for 13 years has taken on a brand new meaning for me, and my sentimental bond with one of their most recent compositions. Also, I totally made the right call by getting up to the front of the audience for this set. People were flipping out, and it allowed me to be a lot less self-conscious than I would have been if I were around most anyone else.

Grizzly Bear – I only caught about 30% of their set, but I was pleasantly surprised despite my general indifference to their music. That said, they seemed to cycle between really good ideas and very drab moments.

Beach House – If I didn’t see them with my own eyes, I’m not sure if I would have noticed they were there. They were so quiet and ethereal that their music just seemed to float out with the breeze.

Battles – I wanted to see “Atlas,” but I skipped out on their set early due to distraction and boredom. Maybe some other time.

Fujiya and Miyagi – Not bad, marred by weak sound. I was talking to William Bowers through some of this set, and we realized how fun it can be to sing bits of other songs that steal the groove from “Hallogallo”– “Spiders (Kidsmoke),” “Be Sure To Loop,” “Jenny Ondioline” — over their little motorik tunes. Also, there was another song in their set over which you could sing most any INXS hit.

Mastodon – Yeah, I’m just not ever going to get into this stuff.

Clipse “Keys Open Doors” – Clipse were by far the highlight of the otherwise kinda blah second day of the festival. The duo were incredibly sharp and charismatic, and their set came across like the work of men who weren’t about to settle for being just okay. That’s kinda the core of their appeal — they go above and beyond in terms of effort and quality control, and care deeply about their craft in a way that resonates with me far more than a lot of other more mainstream rappers who act as though their starpower is a fait accompli instead of the foundation on which they build a catalog of airtight songs. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Cat Power & the Dirty Delta Blues Band – I feel like a creep for saying this, but I liked Chan Marshall so much more before she cleaned up and started making brunch music. This set could barely hold my attention, though I should say that I was mildly alarmed by the way her new arrangement for “Satisfaction” seems to horribly misunderstand the reason why the one from The Covers Record was so fantastic in the first place.

Yoko Ono – A lot of people hated her set and left early. I had to leave early too, but I promise that it had nothing to do with Yoko. The intro with the flashlights was a bit tedious, but once she got going, it was pretty groovy and cool. I think I heard her doing “Walking On Thin Ice” from the El platform.

Deerhunter @ Pitchfork Music Festival 7/15/2007
Cryptograms / Wash Off / Dr. Glass / Spring Hall Convert / Hazel Street / Strange Lights (with guys from Grizzly Bear)

Deerhunter were quite good, but more than a little bit out of their element. They seemed even more frail and ethereal than usual, which wasn’t such a bad thing, though the most aggressive moments of the first two songs were certainly the highlights of the set. I’ve been trying to figure out who Bradford Cox reminds me of, and I think I’ve got it — he’s like a cross between Marilyn Manson and Courtney Love. If you doubt me, I refer you to this interview on Pitchfork in which Cox desperately tries to get Stephen Malkmus to talk about gay stuff because he’s basically a narcissist with a one-track mind.

Brightblack Morning Light “Star Blanket River Child” – Brightblack Morning Light’s album came to me at a time when I was definitely not interested in hearing anything quite so mellow, but it’s grown on me a lot in recent weeks. Their set at the festival didn’t seem to include anything from the record, though I did skip out after 20 minutes or so of something that sounded a bit like Herbie Hancock scoring a nature documentary. (Click here to buy it from Insound.)

Junior Boys – I really didn’t expect anything from the Junior Boys other than laptops and some passive droning, but they really stepped up and put on a strong show, mostly thanks to their ace drummer. I need to go back to that last record now.

Jamie Lidell – I missed most of this set, but I did get to see him do “Multiply,” albeit from the opposite side of the park. Nice.

Stephen Malkmus @ Pitchfork Music Festival 7/15/2007
Heaven Is A Truck / Blue Arrangements / unknown song – “find a place to build my home,” “you want to be free” / Us / Extradition / Loud Cloud Crowd / Spit On A Stranger / Walk Into A Mirror / Trigger Cut (with Bob Nastanovich) / In The Mouth A Desert (with Bob Nastanovich) / unknown song – “edge of infinity,” “suits of charcoal gray,” “shamrock justice” / We Dance

Pavement “Funky Bob/Heaven Is A Truck” (Live at the Palace, Hollywood, 9/16/1994) – There is no possible way that anyone who attended this festival enjoyed this set more than I did. It felt like a full-on endorphin blast, and I think I’m only just now coming off of that high. I’m actually quite glad that I never got a chance to speak to anyone else about this set, because I think that if I heard anyone say anything remotely negative about it, I would’ve gotten very, very angry and it would’ve ruined the experience a bit. I kinda figured that he would play some Pavement songs because he was alone and that’s how he usually handles that sort of thing, but I never knew what to expect from one moment to the next, and every song in the set aside from the two I’d never heard before came to me like the biggest, happiest surprise in the world. And then Bob Nastanovich came out! There’s a word for that, and that word is SKWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! Aside from making me manic with joy for several hours after it ended, this set provided me with a bit of important self-knowledge — I love Malkmus/Pavement more than anything else in music, and even a weekend that also included performances by Of Montreal, one of my favorite members of my favorite rap group of all time, Clipse, the New Pornographers, and the entirety of Daydream Nation could come anywhere close to the mind-exploding euphoria I experienced watching Malkmus and Nastonovich kick out a relatively half-assed version of “Trigger Cut.”

Of Montreal @ Pitchfork Music Festival 7/15/07
Suffer For Fashion / Bunny Ain’t No Kind Of Rider / Softcore / She’s A Rejecter / October Is Eternal / The Past Is A Grotesque Animal / Heimdalsgate Like A Promethean Curse / Chrissie Kiss The Corpse / Faberge Falls For Shuggie / The Party’s Crashing Us // All Day and All of the Night

Homoerotic Star Wars football, Rocky Horror Picture Show costume changes, gold catsuits, Kevin face-balloons, red applesauce. Of Montreal’s shows are always a freaky spectacle, but they ran wild with the potential of a large festival setting. The set itself was slightly awkward in terms of pacing — I was thrilled to finally get to see “The Past Is A Grotesque Animal,” but its length nudged out several songs better suited to an audience comprised of several people who aren’t already fans of the group. I had a great deal of fun, but unfortunately this came immediately after Malkmus’ set, and couldn’t quite compare even though Hissing Fauna might be my favorite album from this decade.

The New Pornographers @ Pitchfork Music Festival 7/15/07
All of the Things That Go To Make Heaven and Earth / Use It / The Laws Have Changed / All The Old Showstoppers / Jackie Dressed In Cobras / The Spirit Of Giving –> We Will Rock You / Mass Romantic / My Rights Versus Yours / From Blown Speakers / Mutiny, I Promise You / Twin Cinema / Sing Me Spanish Techno / The Bleeding Heart Show // Slow Descent Into Alcoholism

No Neko, no Dan, no additional players. I guess the band likes NYC better? I probably would’ve been more into this set if I hadn’t just seen them two weeks ago, but c’mon, I’m always happy to hear “The Laws Have Changed,” “From Blown Speakers,” and “Sing Me Spanish Techno.” The thing is — well, I think somewhere along the line, the New Pornographers stopped being a fun party band, and just became a bunch of professionals who play great songs. There’s a magic spark that’s missing, and it’s been gone for a little while now.

Spoon @ Rockefeller Park 7/11/2007
Eddie’s Ragga / Don’t Make Me A Target / My Mathematical Mind / Small Stakes / The Underdog* / Stay Don’t Go* / I Turn My Camera On / Black Like Me / Rhthm & Soul / Chicago At Night / Take A Walk / You Got Yr Cherry Bomb* / Jonothon Fisk* / I Summon You (* = played with four-piece horn section)

1. I almost gave up on going to this show. The weather was pretty harsh in the hours leading up to the event — some serious torrential downpour stuff, and I got caught in it. If it weren’t for my friend’s optimism, I would have just gone home. We got to the park around 7:00, and the rain tapered off, and the place was at 1/3 capacity. It was pleasant, actually. More people filled in, but it wasn’t nearly as crowded as it would’ve been under normal circumstances. Also, hey, it wasn’t disgustingly humid anymore after all that rain.

2. Aside from the person I went with, all of my friends who were going to the show bailed or assumed the gig was cancelled. This includes my fellow Movie Binger Meg Deans, who ended up seeing the new Harry Potter movie at a multiplex a few blocks away from Battery Park City. After the film was over, she found out the show had gone on and walked over to see if she could catch an encore. Instead:

It was over, and as I texted sad things I realized I was standing next to Britt Daniel. This annoyed me for some reason so I walked away. I paused to photograph a sign and found myself suddenly surrounded by Mr. Daniel and about fifteen hangers-on. This time I thought it was funny particularly since he was discussing Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga‘s iTunes rank as I wove among them to get to the train station.

3. Spoon performed with a four-piece horn section on four of the songs. Britt only referred to them as “these guys.” “Cherry Bomb” and “The Underdog” felt looser and more energetic than the album recordings, and the arrangement for “Stay Don’t Go” gave that song this subtle, soulful drag that I quite liked. “Jonothon Fisk” was the best of the four, and I feel that we should all get together and politely petition for the band to commercially release a recording of that version because it might actually be superior to the one from Kill The Moonlight. Interestingly, even when the band were performing as an octet, they still sounded incredibly lean and sleek.

4. The person I went with told me a few times before that she’d been mildly traumatized by a crowd of fratty assholes at a Spoon show in Florida circa 2002, which is why she hadn’t seen the band play since despite being enough of a fan to get the cover of “Jonothon Fisk” tattooed on her bicep. The thing is, the audience actually was full of fratty dudes. I mean, they weren’t the worst kind, but they made frat dude noises and gave off that particular macho vibe. Also, I’d say that a majority of the men at this thing were more like that, and the typical “indie guy” type were in the minority. I don’t know what this means. Maybe that indie types wuss out when the weather sucks? Fun fact: fratty Spoon fans looooooooooooooooove “I Summon You.”

5. There was a woman to our left who was cracking me up because she’d start clapping at seemingly random points in the songs, and she was pretty much always off beat. She was so happy, though!

Spoon “Black Like Me” – For the first month that I knew this song, I didn’t understand what Britt was singing. He garbles a lot of his words, and so the most crucial line in this song, and possibly in his entire discography gets a bit slurred: “I’m in need of someone to take care of me tonight.” It’s so perfect, so simple, so gutting. Then I noticed the name of the girl he keeps mentioning, and I realized that if this song came out three or four years ago, I wouldn’t be able to handle it, and I would’ve had to have delete it from my computer to keep myself from listening to it. Even without any particular pain to hang it on, the song still manages to sting a bit. I listen to it over and over, and I zero in on the way he sounds so hopeful even though everything has gone wrong, and it’s mostly his fault. He spins his pathetic situation into something romantic and weirdly dignified, and just as things seem to be looking up, the song suddenly cuts out, or passes out, or vanishes into the night. (Click here to buy it from Merge.)

Elsewhere: My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site with mp3s from William Parker Quartet, Deerhunter, and Of Montreal.