Fluxblog

Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

8/6/15

Is The Youth Just Getting Old

Hot Chip @ Webster Hall 8/5/2015
Huarache Lights / One Life Stand / Night & Day / Easy to Get -> Forever In My Life / Started Right / Flutes / Over and Over / Alley Cats / Cry for You / Need You Now / Ready For the Floor / I Feel Better // White Wine and Fried Chicken / And I Was A Boy From School / Dancing in the Dark -> All My Friends

Hot Chip “Huarache Lights”

When I learned that Hot Chip were playing a few shows in New York, I made a point of getting a ticket to the show that was on my birthday because it just made a lot of sense to see them play “Huarache Lights” on a day when I’d be inevitably forced to think a lot about my age. There’s a lot of things going in “Huarache Lights” both musically and thematically, but the aspect of it that really gets under my skin is the way Alexis Taylor sings about aging. It’s not about aging in an “oh my god, I’m soooooo old” way, but about the shifting of cultural context around you, and wondering where you and the things you love fit into things as a new wave of youth culture comes up behind you. He’s singing about this in relationship to being a DJ, and thinking about technology and the inevitability of obsolescence, and it somehow neutralizes its core anxiety with a cool, rational acceptance of change, and conviction that living in the moment is the only way to go.

So yes, dancing to this song was cathartic. Dancing to pretty much all of the set was cathartic! I really loved this show, and being in an audience full of people who were dancing and singing along with little self-consciousness made me feel more comfortable in my skin than I’ve felt in a long while. It was a very good decision to have this particular experience on that particular day.

Buy it from Amazon.

8/5/15

This Will Be A Test

Georgia “Kombine”

“Kombine” is full of harsh, cold, clanging electronic tones, but the synth riff that opens the song is the best. The rest of the track exists in this sort of post-M.I.A. abrasive R&B zone, but that first bit is basically a sick metal riff played on a synth setting seemingly designed to induce terror and anxiety. When the track shifts into something a little more funky and less airtight, that queasy feeling remains. It’s an interesting tone for a song about sex – Georgia’s lyrics get a bit dark, but the sound of the track makes even the sweeter bits seem fraught with tension.

Buy it from Amazon.

8/4/15

Dragging You Down To Hell

Wolf Alice @ Gramercy Park Hotel 8/3/2015
Fluffy / She / Your Love’s Whore / You’re A Germ / 90 Mile Beach / The Wonderwhy / Soapy Water / Lisbon / Storms / Bros / Blush / Giant Peach / Moaning Lisa Smile

This was some kind of industry showcase gig, so I don’t feel right writing about it as if it was a real show. Not because of the band – they were as good live as I’d hoped – but because they were playing to a room full of mostly rude and uninterested people. There were two women up at the front of the stage who were clearly having an amazing time and mouthing the words to every song, but I was cut off from them, and stuck near a group of obnoxious girls who were talking shit about those women because their enthusiasm was embarrassing to them, and they were ~concerned~ that they were bad for the band’s image. (Both of the excited women were overweight.) It was a room full of awful people, and every time I turned my head there were somehow more men and women wearing expensive fedoras. I feel bad for Wolf Alice, but they’re total pros, so they just played it without any apparent problem. I’m sure they’ve played to much worse crowds. I just want to see them play to a room full of people like those two excited women up front.

Wolf Alice “You’re A Germ”

I’ve spent a LOT of time with Wolf Alice’s music over the past month or so, and I love it more all the time. They have excellent range as a band – whereas a lot of other new rock bands seem to put all their eggs in one aesthetic basket, My Love Is Cool is eclectic but coherent. Their bread and butter is dynamic alt-rock, but the ballads and more atmospheric tracks are just as good and deepen the emotional dynamics of their record as a whole. But still, even in a year overflowing with excellent rock music, heavier songs like “You’re A Germ” and “Giant Peach” stand out as being both more raw and more elegantly crafted than the rest. This is where they really show off a mastery of dynamics, and make the songs feel as urgent and physical as a roller coaster ride. “You’re A Germ” in particular sounds like a Pixies song in which Black Francis is a woman and Kim Deal is a man – not simply because Ellie Rowsell is taking the lead, but because she screams out the chorus in a way that’s both totally unhinged and wryly theatrical.

Buy it from Amazon.

8/3/15

Ticking Like A Bomb

Veruca Salt @ Webster Hall 7/31/2015
Prince of Wales / I’m Taking Europe with Me / Black and Blonde / Straight / Laughing in the Sugar Bowl / Forsythia / All Hail Me / Empty Bottle / The Gospel According to Saint Me / Eyes On You / One Last Time / Volcano Girls / Don’t Make Me Prove It / Triage / Spiderman ’79 / Seether / Museum of Broken Relationships / Earthcrosser // Shutterbug / Shimmer Like A Girl / 25

The audience for this Veruca Salt show was the kind of audience you hope for when you see a rock show: visibly excited, intensely engaged, very physical, and singing along to even the brand new songs. To some extent, the people were just mirroring the band’s energy. Veruca Salt are the kind of band that make rock music look like the most fun thing you could possibly do, and they balance out that joy with a lot of darker emotions that allow for truly cathartic moments. The thing that really stands out in my mind is when they were playing “Shutterbug” and everyone around me – including myself – were just belting out the words at each other. I love this sort of thing, where it’s like we’re all performing our love of a song and connecting by mutually acknowledging that Louise singing “I can’t change / change / change” gets under our skin.

Veruca Salt “Black and Blonde”

I was so happy that people were so into the new Veruca Salt songs because I love them too, and it was nice to share that enthusiasm. You never know how this sort of thing will go – some audiences just go in and only want to see hits and zone out for the rest. (That definitely was the case when I saw The Smashing Pumpkins and U2 in the days leading up to this gig.) But it seems like the people who love this band are very excited about them being around now, and it’s not really a nostalgia thing. It looked like about 60% of the audience was women under 30, and I think for them, this is just an iconic band who’ve had a direct influence on a lot of the best rock music coming out over the past couple years. There’s a clear sense of continuity between what they were doing in the 90s, what they’re doing now, and what’s going on in indie music at this moment. But even if there’s other bands sorta like them these days, there’s certain things Veruca Salt bring to the table that the younger bands don’t really have. Nina and Louise have a lot more old school rock swagger, and I think that’s a combination of emulating the music they loved growing up, and just having way more experience as performers. Also, they’re not afraid of going BIG, and letting a song like “Black and Blonde” be the sort of towering sing-along anthem it ought to be. They don’t hold much back, and they kinda teach you to do the same.

Buy it from Amazon.

7/31/15

The Surface Of Things

U2 @ Madison Square Garden 7/30/2015
The Miracle (of Joey Ramone) / The Electric Co. / Vertigo / I Will Follow / Iris (Hold Me Close) / Cedarwood Road / Song for Someone / Sunday Bloody Sunday / Raised by Wolves / Until the End of the World / [The Fly intermission] / Invisible / Even Better Than the Real Thing / Mysterious Ways / Elevation / Ordinary Love / Satellite of Love / Every Breaking Wave / Bullet the Blue Sky / The Hands That Built America -> Pride (In the Name of Love) / Beautiful Day / With or Without You // City of Blinding Lights / Mother and Child Reunion (with Paul Simon) / Where the Streets Have No Name / One

• This is my site and I paid to see this show, so I’m going to allow myself to be petulant about this: I am very disappointed that I managed to see the two shows of an eight show residency that had nearly identical setlists. There are four to five spots in the setlist for this tour where U2 rotate in different songs, and though they’ve been mixing it up over the past several nights in NYC, only one of those spots included a song that was not played on the first night – a cover of Lou Reed’s “Satellite of Love.” I do not care about “Satellite of Love.” It’s hard not to feel bitter about paying a lot of money for this show and knowing that the other nights had truly exciting things played in these rotation spots – “Bad,” “All I Want Is You,” “Desire” with Jimmy Fallon, “Angel of Harlem” with The Roots, “Two Hearts Beat As One,” “Gloria,” “Out of Control,” “Sweetest Thing,” “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” But nope, I get “Ordinary Love” – one of the worst songs of their entire career! – for a second time, and another half-hearted performance of “One” in which Bono has the audience sing 80% of the song. I suppose Paul Simon coming out in the encore is theoretically exciting, but he was so awkward and in such bad voice that it was not exactly an exciting moment. Siiiiiigh.

• U2 were very on when I saw them on the first night of this residency, but this show felt like they were just doing their job. I could tell that Bono’s voice was a little worn out in spots, and he seemed a little tired. They’re such pros that they give a lot even when they’re not in top form, so it was hardly a weak performance. Really, I might not have fully noticed that the energy was a bit lower if I hadn’t seen them play with such fire in the recent past.

• The audience for this show, or at least all the people in my vicinity, were not good. U2 shows feed off the energy of the audience, and are improved by the audience’s participation in the big sing along moments in songs like “Pride” and “Where the Streets Have No Name.” I was surrounded by people who seemed entirely unwilling to participate or in any way visibly react to the music, and it dragged down my experience of the show. I have no idea why these people went to see this – it’s kinda expensive, and a lot of the reason you go to see U2 is to be part of this communal experience. It sucks to see them play “Pride” and have maybe 20% of the audience tops participating in the “oh oh oh ohhhh” part when you know first hand how transcendental it feels to be there when 80% of the audience is doing it.

• Midway through the show, Bono introduced the audience to the emergency workers who saved him after his severe biking accident in Manhattan last year, and to the woman who made the 911 call when everyone else in the vicinity of the crash were simply gawking at the scene. Bono let the woman tell her story for a couple minutes, and she made the huge mistake of making a snide remark about NYC, so she ended up getting loudly booed for almost all the time she was speaking. It was really something to see the woman who arguably saved Bono’s life – or at least his career as a performer – get booed by thousands of U2 fans.

• I don’t really have much to add about the songs or the staging, but I did notice that there’s spots in the show that don’t seem to work for the audience, even if they work on a thematic level. “Iris” doesn’t seem to connect at all, and everyone seems very confused by the intermission/”Invisible” sequence. I like that part, so it’s especially disappointing that the majority of the arena barely responds to it. Most of the arena didn’t even stand up for it. “Ordinary Love” is another song that doesn’t work at all, and the piano version of “Every Breaking Wave” is another moment that people take as a cue to sit down for a few minutes. That said, I think “The Miracle,” “Raised by Wolves,” and “Cedarwood Road” go over pretty well, or at least as well as you could expect for tracks from a new record that is mostly either maligned or ignored.

7/30/15

Belief Is Just Some Faith

The Smashing Pumpkins @ PNC Bank Arts Center, NJ 7/29/2015
Cherub Rock / Bullet with Butterfly Wings / Tonight, Tonight / Ava Adore / Drum + Fife / One and All (We Are) / The Everlasting Gaze / Zero / The Crying Tree of Mercury / Mayonaise / Disarm / Landslide / 1979 / Run2Me / Thru the Eyes of Ruby / Stand Inside Your Love / United States

As you can see, The Smashing Pumpkins are aiming to please on this tour. The timing makes sense – Jimmy Chamberlain is back on drums, this is a double bill with Marilyn Manson and they’ve got to play to a lot of people who may be there more for Manson, and a reminder that while Billy Corgan is never going to stop pushing forward and making eccentric decisions, he’s not totally against giving people what they want. The Pumpkins have played a lot of oldies and hits on their tours over the past few years, but it hasn’t been as much of a hits-centric set – you’d generally get a handful of the biggest hits, but not all of them. This show felt like a power move, like Corgan’s way of being like “yeah, I can do this any time I want” and making the audience feel lucky to hear almost all the big ones at once rather than kinda bored because it’s a totally expected thing. I think there’s also a strong implication that he’s doing this now because it’s less likely to happen later – for artistic reasons, and also for physical ones. Corgan and Chamberlain are still relatively young men in terms of aging rock stars, but there may come a time when some of this material either won’t hit as hard, or just seem strange to hear from guys in their 60s or 70s. Maybe you can always pull off “Disarm” and “1979,” but I don’t know if you can play “Bullet with Butterfly Wings” and “Ava Adore” forever.

The Smashing Pumpkins “Thru the Eyes of Ruby”

I’m happy to see The Smashing Pumpkins play the big hits, but as a fan, I’m a lot more invested in the non-hits of the classic era. Seeing them play “Thru the Eyes of Ruby” for the first time after 20 years of loving that song was a very big deal for me, and more emotional than I actually anticipated. “Ruby” is one of my all-time favorites, easily, and a song that’s shifted a bit in meaning over time. I remember what this song was for me as a teenager, and how it laid out this fantasy of epic, tortured love. This is a song that builds disappointment and despair into the foundation of its grand romance, and portrays marriage as a sort of shared delusion, and love as something that’s bound to mutate into contempt. My perspective on the song is different now – its bitter and romanticism both feel like things I’ve put at a distance from myself, and the most emotional part is Corgan’s final epiphany: Youth is wasted on the young. Or, maybe more specifically – young love is wasted on the young.

Buy it from Amazon.

Marilyn Manson @ PNC Bank Arts Center, NJ 7/28/2015
Deep Six / Disposable Teens / mOBSCENE / No Reflection / Third Day of a Seven Day Binge / Sweet Dreams / Angel with the Scabbed Wings / Personal Jesus / The Dope Show / Rock Is Dead / Lunchbox / Antichrist Superstar / The Beautiful People / Coma White

Marilyn Manson gives you exactly the show you’d hope for – abrasive and campy, and with a lot of visual tricks and set pieces pulled off on a budget. Manson’s got incredible stage presence, and he and his band’s total commitment to wearing full make-up and several layers of black leather, PVC, and fur in hot summer weather is commendable. This was another setlist heavily skewed towards hits and career overview, and I felt like I definitely got a strong Marilyn Manson concert experience even if I never deliberately set out to have that experience. The band’s relationship with melody and hooks are a bit hit or miss outside of their covers, but there’s just no fucking with “The Dope Show” – that’s easily one of the best glam songs of the ‘90s, and there was no shortage of wannabe glam tunes in that era.

7/29/15

It’s My Heart’s Desire

Robyn & La Bagatelle Magique “Set Me Free”

I felt vaguely bad about not connecting with Robyn’s EP with Röyksopp last year, as if I was in some way betraying an artist I’ve loved and supported for a very long time. When this sort of thing happens, I’m inclined to feel very “it’s not you, it’s me” about the artist, and give them the benefit of the doubt. You’re not always going to be on the same page. But here we are a year later, and this new Robyn track is outstanding, and exactly the sort of thing I want to hear from her. So maybe it was really just a problem with Röyksopp? “Set You Free” is right in Robyn’s sweet spot as a vocalist – a joyful song that’s weighed down a bit by melancholy and a touch of anxiety. The sound of the track screams “Madonna remix circa ’89-92,” but that’s a great fit for Robyn and that vibe feels very fresh right now in the context of a lot of dance music that either skews more atmospheric, or bludgeons you with post-dubstep noise and intensity.

Buy it from Amazon.

7/28/15

Feel Like Sunshine

Silver Jackson “Melodies and Bass”

I am reasonably certain that this is the first artist based in Alaska that I have featured on this site in its 13 year history. Alaska is one of those cultural dead zones where even if there’s cool arts stuff going on, it just never seems to make it out of there and into the culture. Silver Jackson’s music definitely sounds like something made in relative isolation – it’s very odd and distinct, and comes across as the sort of music a person works on obsessively alone over long stretches of time. It’s not entirely sui generis – I can hear traces of artists like Gonjasufi, cLOUDDEAD, and other forms of stoned, abstracted R&B in his tracks – but it’s certainly not ordinary, and it’s so off-center that even moments of straightforward melody are disorienting. “Melodies and Bass” is essentially an R&B song, but it sounds like it’s made of rattling, broken parts, and swinging on a busted hinge. But still, despite the roughness of it all, there’s a gentle grace at the core of it.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

7/27/15

When I Thought I Would Burst

Oddisee “That’s Love”

Oddisee’s verses on this song are great and it’s a very well-made track across the board, but to be honest, I’m mostly here for that organ tone. It’s like the musical equivalent of super-saturated bright color, and I love the way this two-chord vamp somehow signals both urgency and relaxed vibes. I love the way it contrasts with that simple, elegant horn hook that drops in on the chorus, and how the lead organ part that comes in seems to skip the surface of the groove like a stone on a pond. Oddisee is rapping about love and gratitude, but I think you’d pick up on that theme just by hearing the track. It just radiates a warmth and kindness.

Buy it from Amazon.

7/23/15

Tell Me What You See

Swindle featuring Ash Riser “London to L.A.”

This is as surprising and formally strange as a song can probably get while also being very, very, very chill. Swindle’s arrangement is built around a lovely, jazzy chord progression played on guitar, but the rest of the song is constantly shifting – an early lead part that sounds very Stevie Wonder to me; a funky keyboard riff that could belong to a Justin Timberlake song; a full-on dubstep drop sequence that somehow doesn’t derail the mellow vibe. And then there’s a horn solo and a string section. It’s kinda amazing to hear him pull this off, and make everything sound like it all belongs in the same song. Even the parts that contrast the most with that central guitar part seem to just give in and go along with its flow.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

7/22/15

Fingernails Where There Should’ve Been Chalk

Titus Andronicus “Lonely Boy”

A thing I appreciate about Titus Andronicus is that as the band goes along, they seem to gravitate towards an early Springsteen/mid-period Clash sound – the strut and the hooks of glam, but rowdy and humble and aggressively working class. There’s a bunch of songs like this on The Most Lamentable Tragedy, but “Lonely Boy” is the one that really stands out, in part because it plays so well at face value while Patrick Stickles’ lyrics and vocals project a misanthropy that’s at odds with the music’s amiable, accessible vibe. Stickles is very funny here – he’s totally self-aware, and though he’s singing about very real antisocial tendencies, he sees the humor in it. This is just one part of a sprawling song cycle about manic depression, but I think it works well on its own as a microcosm of this emotional push-and-pull, and boom and bust cycle of having the energy required to get out there and live.

Buy it from Amazon.

7/21/15

You Want Bare Knuckles But A Clean Fight

Micachu and The Shapes “Oh Baby”

Mica Levi is a genius of finding beauty in ugly, atonal sounds and harsh, clunking rhythms. Her earliest work with Micachu and The Shapes had a manic, restless edge, but at this point in her career, she’s embraced slower, more loping rhythms that feel more like a stupor than a frenzy. “Oh Baby” sounds like a Alabama Shakes type song that’s been dosed with downers – you can hear a bit of dub and chopped & screwed influence in the effect of it, but the actual sound is more unsettling and disconnected. That music tends to have a warm, womb-like vibe to it, but “Oh Baby” feels brittle and cold, and like it could break down at any moment.

Buy it from Amazon.

7/20/15

Everywhere Is America

U2 @ Madison Square Garden 7/18/2015
The Miracle (of Joey Ramone) / The Electric Co. / Vertigo / I Will Follow / Iris (Hold Me Close) / Cedarwood Road / Song for Someone / Sunday Bloody Sunday / Raised by Wolves / Until the End of the World / [The Fly remix intermission] / Invisible / Even Better Than the Real Thing / Mysterious Ways / Elevation / Ordinary Love / October / Every Breaking Wave / With or Without You / City of Blinding Lights / Bullet the Blue Sky / The Hands That Built America -> Pride (In the Name of Love) // Beautiful Day / Mother and Child Reunion -> Where the Streets Have No Name / One

• This was my 9th time seeing U2. I’ve seen them on every tour from Popmart onward, and I think this may have been the best U2 show I’ve seen. It’s definitely the best in terms of staging and lighting design – this was, BY FAR, the most immersive concert experience I’ve ever had in an arena – but I think I also just got lucky to see them on a particularly good night.

• The staging for this tour, along with what Nine Inch Nails was doing on the Tension arena tour in 2013, is very far ahead of the curve of what pretty much anyone else performing in arenas is up to. U2 have always been major innovators of the arena concert – the now standard mid-show b-stage and acoustic mini-set was invented by U2 on the Zoo TV tour in 1991. But what they have going on this time around is brilliant, and the logical next step from what they were doing on the Elevation and Vertigo tours. Basically, they have a minimal main stage on one end of the floor, and a smaller round stage at the other end, and the two are connected by a runway that bisects the general admission area. The runway is sometimes just a runway, but as the show goes on, there’s also a huge screen that sometimes has video art, and other times serves as a massive jumbotron equivalent. The are two levels when the screen is down, so Bono can walk around in the center of an animated image and interact with it, or the entire band can perform within the screen and appear or disappear inside the imagery. I’m not a big fan of the animation style they are using, but the craft is impeccable and at least a decade ahead of anyone aside from NIN.

• One of the things that makes the Innocence + Experience tour work so well is that unlike the Elevation, Vertigo, and 360 tours, there is an actual reason for U2 to play their new songs aside from promoting a new record. There is a clear narrative arc to this show, and even if songs like “Iris” and “Song for Someone” aren’t necessarily the band’s best work, they are compelling and moving in this context. The latter, a sorta schmaltzy ballad about Bono meeting his wife when they were teens in Dublin, gains some emotional weight from a visual that places him in the humble surroundings of his youth. That moment of gentle sweetness transitions directly into a particularly grim reworking of “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and a dramatization of domestic terrorism just before the excellent “Raised by Wolves,” and it’s genuinely jarring. Bono singing about being a young punk fan can seem a bit indulgent, but this recollection of being suddenly shoved from “innocence” to “experience” is powerful, and gets to the core of why they’d spend an entire record looking back on this phase of their youth.

“Until the End of the World” follows “Raised by Wolves,” and the new context gives it some new meaning. This time around, it’s as though the older Bono is singing to his younger self, and it’s about becoming hardened, cynical, and defeatist in the aftermath of tragedy. It’s about the end of innocence, and in doing so, giving in to despair. The song closes the first act of the show with flood imagery, and suddenly this song that was originally written about Judas and Jesus Christ is brought back into the Old Testament.

“Bullet the Blue Sky” is back in U2’s set for the first time in a decade, which is another way of saying it was left out of the 360 tour. (You really have to see U2 when they come around, since they only seem to tour every four or five years now.) The band have a long history of reinventing “Bullet” on each tour, and making it about something else – on Zoo TV it was about racism, it was about the military industrial complex for Popmart, on Elevation it was about gun violence, and it was about violence inspired by religious extremism for Vertigo. Now it’s about money, and the Americanization of the world, and Bono imagining how a young version of himself would think of the old, rich Bono of today. It’s about feeling guilty for his wealth, and mocking his excesses. “I can see those fighter planes” from the original version is replaced with a snarky “I can see those private planes.” I think this take works really well, in large part because he’s dramatizing his mixed feelings about his success and what that means, and his complex feelings about the United States and what America is an idea vs. what the country is in reality. Bono shouted out recent events in Ferguson, Baltimore, and Charleston, and it didn’t come off as cheap. It was his way of confronting a very white and affluent audience, and pushing them to consider a grim reality that can be easily ignored if you feel safe and complacent in your own life.

7/17/15

I Belong To The Stars And The Sky

Wilco “Random Name Generator”

First off, Wilco naming their new album Star Wars is funnier than any Wilco joke you will ever make. Second, the “dad rock” thing is such a tired diss on this band, and is actually sorta infuriating when people who publicly praise extremely bland indie/folky stuff throw it at them, when Wilco has very often been a band that’s willing to be abrasive or weird. That’s certainly where they are on Star Wars, a record that has a relaxed spirit, but a frazzled, messy sound. It’s very much the sort of album you make when there’s no particular pressure on you, and you have the freedom to do whatever you want. There’s good and bad in that – on one hand, I really enjoy the aesthetic of this record and there’s a great stoned glam rock energy to “Random Name Generator” and “King of You,” but it does feel like the low stakes of this project had an impact on Tweedy’s songwriting, which is OK but not really at the level of the best Wilco material for the most part. They can get by on vibe, but I can’t imagine much of Star Wars having the enduring emotional impact of, say, “Jesus, Etc.” or “A Shot in the Arm.”

Get it for free from Wilco.

7/16/15

A New Color Of Sky

Gardens & Villa “Fixations”

In simplest terms, “Fixations” sounds like Tame Impala trying to make a Warm Jets/Tiger Mountain-era Brian Eno song, but that’s a bit unfair in that I think this is much better than the vast majority of Tame Impala material. Gardens & Villa certainly have better taste in keyboard tones, and far more interesting lyrical themes – this is basically a meditation on inspiration and trying to avoid anything that would compromise your creativity. I love the call and response part in the chorus – partly because I’m a sucker for early Eno and it’s the most obviously Eno-ish thing in the song, but mostly because it splits the song’s perspective in a way that keeps the sentiment from getting too simplified. “My whole life fixation” gets answered with “see if we can make it underneath the radar,” and I think the implied disconnect between the first and second half of the statement is important, because I don’t think the singers are entirely sure of themselves.

Buy it from Amazon.

7/15/15

Feel Your Blood Pump Hot In The Cool Dark Air

Teen Girl Scientist Monthly “Games”

The first Teen Girl Scientist Monthly record leaned fairly twee, but this time around they’ve sharpened up their edges a bit, and embraced a morbid streak that contrasts nicely with their clean-cut aesthetic. “Games” is harder and harsher than anything they’ve done up to this point, even if the core vocal melody is something that would’ve worked just as well in their sunnier, perkier material. I love the way this charming, playful melody is framed by these tight, tense rhythms, and how that contrast is echoed in the lyrics, which conflate sexual passion with violent hunger. The general feeling of the song is flirty and inviting, but that’s just the way the predator lures you in.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

7/14/15

The Night Pass Slow

The Rolling Stones “Moonlight Mile (Live 2015)”

My friend Sean often says that out of all the major “classic rock” bands, The Rolling Stones are the ones who are worst served by classic rock radio because when you reduce them down to just their biggest hits, you lose a lot of what they’re truly capable of doing. You get to hear some of that in The Beatles and Led Zeppelin’s biggest hits, but you lose most of the Stones’ grit and swing and funk and drama. You certainly miss out on a song like “Moonlight Mile,” which is as grand and cinematic as rock music gets without veering into contrived bombast. Thousands of musicians have written “lonely on the road” songs, but few come close to this, with Jagger conveying the slow drag of his journey home, the nervous anticipation of getting closer but still feeling so far away, and the pure romance of just yearning to be with the one you love again. It’s a song that comes from a place of exhaustion, but you can sense a real love for the road in the music – part of what makes “Moonlight Mile” so rich is that there’s a tension between his passions, and a resignation to this just being the way life is going to be. I mean, I am not a driver, but there are few other songs that make me want to drive around at night more than this song.

This recording is from just a couple months ago when the Stones played all of Sticky Fingers in concert; the show is now available as a live album. “Moonlight Mile” comes across particularly well 44 years after it first came out. This is partly because Jagger’s voice has aged so well, but I think more in that the sentiment and mood of the song suits the older Jagger well. There’s a lot of grace and dignity to the song, and he really highlights that in his performance today.

Buy it from iTunes.

7/13/15

The Underground Is Overcrowded

Archers of Loaf @ Music Hall of Williamsburg 7/10/2015
Step Into the Light / Let the Loser Melt / 1985 – Fabricoh / Harnessed in Slums / Dead Red Eyes / Lowest Part is Free! / Freezing Point / Mark Price, P.I. / South Carolina / Wrong / Web in Front / Revenge / Nostalgia / Smokin’ Pot in the Hot City / You & Me / Might / Plumb Line / All Hail the Black Market // Audiowhore / Greatest of All Time / White Trash Heroes

I’d seen Archers of Loaf once before, back when they first reunited for a tour a few years ago. I remember that being a good show, but this one was much better – the band were really on, and the audience was very enthusiastic. It seemed like almost everyone in the venue was passionate about this band, and was having some sort of catharsis when they played the big ones – “Harnessed in Slums,” “Wrong,” “Web in Front,” “Lowest Part is Free!,” “Nostalgia,” etc. It was exactly what I would’ve wanted an Archers of Loaf show to be like when I was a teenager, except they would’ve played “Nevermind the Enemy.” I don’t get not playing that song – if I was in a band and had a song like that, I’d play it three times in a row every night.

Archers of Loaf “Greatest of All Time (Live)”

“Greatest of All Time” has always been one of my favorite Archers songs, but I wasn’t expecting it to move me as much as it did in this show. It’s an odd song – fragile but dramatic, bitter yet sentimental, ironic but also wistful. It’s essentially a song about how easily music fans can turn on their heroes, and maybe also a bit about the absurdity of making these people into “heroes” in the first place. We elevate people to mean something, but the moment they lose their semiotic usefulness, they’re either turned into a joke or relegated to being “legends,” frozen in time and discouraged from being anything else. Maybe the song is more poignant now that Archers themselves are in that legend role, and seem to be this band frozen in amber. I’m sure none of this is lost on Eric Bachmann as he sings it, and that he probably knows that “the underground is overcrowded” has a very different resonance today than it did 20 years ago.

Buy it from Amazon.

7/9/15

Rearrange The Clouds In The Sky For You

Veruca Salt “Eyes On You”

Last year I saw the original lineup of Veruca Salt play together on their first tour since 1997 and was amazed by how much power and chemistry they have together after so much time apart. This year I’m amazed by Ghost Notes, the new album they made once they got back together, which is just as good and sometimes even better than they were in their heyday. It makes me so happy that Veruca Salt have returned at exactly the point in time when their influence would be most apparent in younger bands, and when enough time has passed that people who were around in the ’90s can really understand how painfully underrated and pointlessly mocked they were back then. Rocking well is the best revenge.

Ghost Notes is a great record in large part because the band aren’t trying to reinvent themselves, but instead tried to reconnect with the things that made them special in the first place. Chief among those things is the rapport of Louise Post and Nina Gordon, and their ability to alternate between sharply contrasting one another and blurring together like this Cool Girl hive mind. But there’s also the core of their aesthetic, which boils down to “write highly melodic pop songs, and play them with the raw power of metal.” I’ve written before about how they more than any other band epitomized the aesthetics of alt-rock, and it’s still true now. The genre is all about melody and dynamics, and in giving you the raw thrill of ROCKING OUT. The heavy parts of the best alt-rock songs aren’t just cathartic – they feel liberating, like you’re just stomping on a pedal and immediately feeling free of tension and overloaded with joy.

“Eyes On You” is my favorite song on Ghost Notes, and in another time and another place, it’d be a huge hit. The hooks are amazing, but the feeling of it is even more potent. This is basically a song about figuring out exactly where you stand with someone, and trying to make the difficult decision of whether or not it’s worth holding on to them. It’s an emotional cost-benefit analysis, and I don’t think it comes to a real conclusion. The song just lives in that moment of being totally unsure whether your passion leans more towards anger or love.

Buy it from Amazon.

7/8/15

No Real Place To Go

Bilal “Open Up the Door”

Bilal is the kind of artist who expresses himself more in his ability to successfully perform in a range of styles than claiming one of his own, and so he can be sort of hit-or-miss depending on what vibe he’s getting across. But this sort of Stevie Wonder vibe suits him very, very well, and flatters his keyboard playing as well as his voice. “Open Up the Door” is easily one of the best Stevie Wonder pastiches I’ve ever heard – it nails the way Wonder’s melodies often curl into these loose circles, and his world weary but genuinely optimistic world view. Bilal fits so well into this that the song comes across more as him channeling Stevie’s positive vibes than just playing dress-up.

Buy it from Amazon.


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