November 19th, 2014 3:20pm
I saw Thee Oh Sees for the first time last night, and I came away from the show feeling like I truly understood the band in way I hadn’t before. My grasp on the band’s dynamics were pretty hazy going in, to the point that I had assumed a woman sang a lot of the parts that John Dwyer actually sings in falsetto. But beyond that, witnessing Dwyer in action makes everything about the music click into focus – it’s all very physical and joyful; the act of playing music as this tactile, athletic expression. Dwyer plays his guitar the way I always wish I could, with this loose-limbed nonchalance and that thing where a guitarist will just do some cool gesture than results in a cool sound and it doesn’t totally make sense. Just like Stephen Malkmus, he makes playing guitar look extremely easy, and also totally unfathomable. Dwyer’s natural ease is crucial to the band’s entire aesthetic – even when the songs are very structured, it all feels very intuitive and alive in the moment.
November 18th, 2014 1:34pm
The New Pornographers @ Hammerstein Ballroom 11/17/2014
Brill Bruisers / Myriad Harbour / Moves / War on the East Coast / Sing Me Spanish Techno / Crash Years / All the Old Showstoppers / Jackie, Dressed In Cobras / Another Drug Deal of the Heart / The Laws Have Changed / You Tell Me Where / Testament to Youth in Verse / Wide Eyes / Marching Orders / Adventures in Solitude / Jackie / Sweet Talk, Sweet Talk / Backstairs / Silver Jenny Dollar / Champions of Red Wine / Born with a Sound / Mass Romantic // Challengers / Dancehall Domine / The Bleeding Heart Show /// Use It / Slow Descent Into Alcoholism
This was an excellent show but I don’t really have anything to say about it other than that I have seen The New Pornographers many times since 2001, and their always-strong harmony game has reached a new level. The pure vocal power in this show was impressive, enough to feel like a big punch in the set’s most bombastic songs. They are incredible, and you should go see them.
Carl Newman’s lyrics have always walked a thin line between crypticism and open emotion, so in most of his songs you can get a good sense of his sentiment even if some lines, however evocative, are mystifying in their specificity. You definitely get that in “You Tell Me Where,” the grand finale of Brill Bruisers, and one of the most impressive songs the New Pornographers have ever made. To a large extent the power of the song is due to its vocal arrangement, which alternates the lead between Newman, Neko Case, and Kathryn Calder before ending with a full-on choral blast at the climax. The lyrics address some sort of falling out, and each of the singers convey a different sentiment – Newman’s parts are bitter and passive-aggressive, Neko is melancholy, and Calder is chilly but diplomatic. It’s Calder’s part that gets under my skin, and reminds me too much of bad emotional situations I’ve been in, where the idea of compromising yourself to please someone else seems like a more valid option than making an effort to have anything you actually want. But there’s a twist in here, where the acquiescent tone shifts to sarcasm, and the big climax – “I think I could change and become what you want me / to think, we could finally be done” – only reads as defiant. It’s a big “fuck you” of a song, and ends the record on this huge feeling of catharsis and relief.
November 17th, 2014 1:20pm
Caribou @ Webster Hall 11/14/2014
Our Love / Silver / Mars / Leave House / All I Ever Need / Bowls / Second Chance / Jamelia / Back Home / Odessa / Your Love Will Set You Free / Can’t Do Without You // Sun
I went into this show thinking that it’d be cool to see Caribou but not really knowing how the music would feel in live setting, and came away from it thinking that they’re one of the best live bands I’ve seen in some time. The songs sound more or less the same in concert, but the power of the live musicians – especially the drummer, who plays a mostly electronic kit – really pushes everything to the next level. The physicality of the music is multiplied several times over, and tracks that feel more chill on record feel urgent or ecstatic in the show. They leave you on the best possible feeling too, with “Sun” extending into a long multi-peak finale that was so exciting and satisfying that I don’t think anyone would’ve minded if it went on another five or ten minutes.
November 13th, 2014 1:28pm
Sloan @ Bowery Ballroom 11/12/2014
Forty-Eight Portraits / Keep Swinging (Downtown) / Unkind / 13 (Under A Bad Sign) / You’ve Got A Lot On Your Mind / Three Sisters / I Hate My Generation / Carried Away / Suppose They Close the Door / You Don’t Need Excuses To Be Good // If It Feels Good, Do It / C’mon C’mon / Misty’s Beside Herself / Take It Easy / Who Taught You To Live Like That / Ready For You / The N.S. / Blackout / Love Is All Around / On the Horizon / Someone I Can Be True With / Ill Placed Trust / Cleopatra / The Other Man / Money City Maniacs /// We’ve Come This Far / The Marquee and the Moon / 500 Up
Sloan’s current tour is very generous, with two full-length sets full of songs mainly taken from their new record Commonwealth, and cuts from the middle period of their career, from Navy Blues through Never Hear the End of It. It is not generous if you’ve come to see them play anything from One Chord to Another – it seems they’ve put set staples “The Lines You Amend,” “The Good In Everyone,” and “Everything You’ve Done Wrong” on hiatus for a while, maybe until they get around to doing a 20th anniversary tour for that record around 2016. As a person who has seen Sloan a bunch of times now I was kinda happy to get a break from those songs, and to get more from that middle era, which is definitely my personal favorite chunk of their catalog. I believe this was my first time seeing them play “The Marquee and the Moon,” and it was a major highlight of the show for me, as gorgeous and dramatic as I would’ve hoped.
The first set of the show was presented in the style of Commonwealth, with each of the members playing a three-song mini-set, except for Andrew, who did his side-long “Forty-Eight Portraits” in its entirety at the start. This was pretty much the only place in the set they could get away with that song – it’s sooooo long and meandering that it’d kill momentum entirely if put in the middle somewhere. Jay’s songs from the new album came off the best live, and pushed them into a space that’s a lot more elegant than the three other songwriters in their default positions. I was particularly impressed by the lead guitar parts in those songs – it’s so smooth and pretty on record, but jumps out at you more in person.
November 12th, 2014 1:24pm
Here we are with another project by a former member of LCD Soundsystem – this time it’s Al Doyle, who is also in Hot Chip. It’s interesting to me how all these records seem to run with one element of the overall LCD sound, so you can tell it’s all coming from a similar aesthetic space while all being distinct. In this case, Doyle and his Hot Chip bandmate Felix Martin are working with cold keyboard tones and very precise programming and sequencing to build atmospheric, subtly poignant synth pop. It’s not too far off from what these guys normally do in Hot Chip, but there’s something about the way a track like “The Sunlight” gradually unfolds and opens up that strikes me as far more emotional than that band, but very in line with the big-hearted music of James Murphy. (Who is notably the one core member of LCD we haven’t heard from this year.)
November 11th, 2014 1:33pm
I don’t think I’m actually invested in the Foo Fighters enough to be properly disappointed by a new Foo Fighters record, but I do think most of the songs on Sonic Highways are kinda dull, especially compared to the material on their previous album, which I’d say is one of the better records of their career. The second half of the album feels like a slog to me, and while I think it’s interesting for Grohl to let his songs sprawl out a bit, the melodies lack a spark. “The Feast and the Famine” is the one cut on Sonic Highways that seems like a classic Foo tune, but that’s in large part because it sounds just like several other classic Foo tunes. But this is the kind of song Grohl does best – urgent and aggressive, but also highly sentimental and very catchy in a sleek and dynamic way. It’s a song about growing up in D.C. and falling in love with hardcore, and while it integrates traces of D.C. punk, Grohl’s impulse to self-mythologize seems a bit at odds with the ethos of that culture.
November 7th, 2014 12:37pm
I feel like you drop Kendrick Lamar into most anything and he’d figure out how to make it work, so I’m not surprised that he’d be good on a Flying Lotus track. It is cool, though, how much they complement each other. Kendrick brings out a warmth and humanity in Flying Lotus’ music that can get buried beneath a trebly clutter, and Flying Lotus pushes Kendrick toward a pensive, melancholy tone you hear on a lot of Good Kid, mAAd City, but has been missing from a lot of his features work in the time since.
November 5th, 2014 2:29am
I can’t remember how often I listened to “Handshake Drugs” three years ago when the lyrics were basically my life, or if I’m only noticing that now. The sentiment of the song is extremely passive, with pretty much every line being about something happening to Jeff Tweedy, or someone or something influenced his actions. It’s a feeling of disconnection from who you are, and just floating through life hoping for something that makes you feel like a person. It’s a very specific kind of depression, where every feeling just flattens out and the ego gets vague. You’re willing to be shaped by someone, because you just figure they know better than you. But that’s terrible, because anyone who wants to change you so much that you’re basically someone else doesn’t like you at all. It’s not a great feeling, and yet this song always feels so comfortable and pleasant. There can be a lot of pleasure in feeling neutralized sometimes.
November 4th, 2014 1:50pm
There’s a lot for me to love in “Cruel World,” but the part that really gets me is the way Lana sings “You’re young, you’re wild, you’re free / you’re dancing circles around me / you’re fucking craaaaazyyyyy” with this genuine sense of anguish and dread. Part of what makes it work is in the vocal production – the particular tone of the reverb brings out a cold, metallic quality in Lana’s voice, which has an interesting contrast with one of the most emotive performances of her career. But it’s also in the words, and the way she sets up this structure in which the pensive verses take place in a present where she wants to get away from a poisonous man, and the chorus flashes back to scenes that are thrilling, terrifying, and confusing all at once. There’s so much alienation in that chorus, and it’s a feeling anyone with introverted tendencies will recognize – knowing that you’re in a situation that’s meant to be fun, but only fills you with crushing anxiety.
November 3rd, 2014 1:06pm
It’s been a very good year for DFA Records, with a lot of the former members and miscellaneous associates of LCD Soundsystem putting out strong music that lives up to the high standard set by James Murphy. Museum of Love, a band featuring LCD drummer Pat Mahoney, is the most interesting and moving thing that’s come out on the label this year, in part because he’s the guy who is really running with the element of the LCD sound that made the band as big as they were: introspective balladry set to beautifully layered, rhythmic music. “And All the Winners” would’ve fit in pretty well on This Is Happening, really – it’s got a similar tonal palette, and Mahoney sings it with a feeling of resignation that matches up well with where Murphy was at on “I Can Change” and “Home.” This is a song about having a deep ambivalence about the ideas of “winners” and “losers,” and how being on either side of that depends on someone’s point of view. But despite that, there’s no mistaking that this is a ballad for all the underdogs out there.
October 31st, 2014 12:22pm
This is such a simple, sweet, and empathetic song. It’s sung from the perspective of a broke Mexican immigrant who is just trying to make things work, and praying to god for any sort of blessing. The melody feels so warm and familiar; I’m sure I’ve heard it before somewhere before. The part that really kills me is how David Lowery sings stuff like “I’ll be a good boy for the rest of my life.” Something about that, maybe the way it’s something you’d literally think as a child, gets me in the gut.
October 30th, 2014 12:37pm
The second Run the Jewels album is pretty great, but it’d be even better if Gangsta Boo was on all of it except for just this one song. Killer Mike and El-P have amazing chemistry, but this is like finding out one of your favorite foods is even better if you add another less obvious ingredient. Gangsta Boo’s badass femininity is the ideal foil to these guy’s extreme masculinity, and while her lyrical approach is intended to undermine their words in this song, her presence doesn’t undermine them at all. After hearing this, the rest of the Killer Mike/El-P songs feel like they’re off balance and need this female energy to seem truly complete.
October 28th, 2014 12:29pm
I feel like the vast majority of songs about the dangers of gossip in the media come from famous musicians who obviously have a personal stake in the matter, but here we have a spirited attack on it from a band who are only famous in very, very small circles. I think this song works a lot better because of that – the lyrics aren’t poisoned by bitterness or disingenuous self-interest, and have a more clear-headed take on people’s petty fixations with strangers’ lives. I think this perspective also lends itself well to the style of the song too, which feels rather perky and light-hearted. It’s a song lightly mocking a common foible, not a shrill, paranoid rant.
October 27th, 2014 4:59am
Have you ever had a hazy memory of a song you haven’t heard in a long time, and then heard the song again and noticed that it wasn’t quite as cool as the version that was there, half-formed, in your memory? “Mr. Noah” sounds like a vague memory of some ‘80s rock song, the super cool version that’s all fuzzed out and blurry because you probably heard it that one time from a bad radio signal in a moving car with the windows down. It’s not common to hear Panda Bear get as rocking as this, but it really works for him – his melodies can sometimes drift away without a strong rhythmic tether, and this vamping distorted riff provides a sturdy structure and lends a sense of momentum to one of the best vocal hooks he’s ever written.
October 23rd, 2014 12:43pm
A lot of songs that are built around a post-punk type of bass line end up having that part completely overtake the rest of the composition, and every other sound is just some decoration for this huge, thudding thing at the center of the track. But that’s not what’s going on in this Andy Stott piece at all – in fact, it’s pretty easy to not really notice it’s there since your ear is more likely to focus on the keyboard tone, the jittery and trebly drum programming, or Alison Skidmore’s lovely ghost-like vocals. The bass just sinks to the back, subtly adding this flat, depressive feeling that isn’t quite the dominant mood of the song, but kinda pulls you down with it, like an undertow.
October 22nd, 2014 12:31pm
This song starts off in a fairly ordinary place – an R&B song in which a girl is telling a dude about how she wants to chill him out with sex that’ll be better than what he’d get with anyone else – but then makes a hard shift into astrology and paranoia about the government and media. It’s not as though those ideas can’t naturally fit together in the same conversation, but in context it’s a very welcome dose of eccentricity in a song that would’ve been pretty by-the-books if it kept going from the first verse and chorus. I feel like it earns its stoned, slo-mo vibe more by making that jump.
October 21st, 2014 12:21pm
The majority of Gerard Way’s first solo album sounds like Britpop filtered through alt-rock and grunge, and you’d think I’d be the biggest mark for that. But as it turns out, my favorite on the record is the one that sounds the most like his old band, My Chemical Romance. “Brother” is a big theatrical power ballad that sounds distinctly mid-‘00s to my ears, and it dramatizes the feeling of hesitantly reaching out for help after every self-destructive thing you’ve done to deal with a deep depression has left you at rock bottom. The dead giveaway that this song is set in the past is in how grand and triumphant it feels, especially as it builds to a climax – that’s not the feeling of being at bottom, but recognizing later on when you’ve had the strength to make a decision that saves your life.
October 20th, 2014 12:17pm
I’ve spent enough time listening to Thurston Moore over the past 20 years that his particular rhythms and tics are burned into my mind, enough that I can hear a new song by him and accurately anticipate his every move. He’s basically been on autopilot for a long time now, but I don’t really hold that against him, since I think a lot of great musicians just sorta become more and more themselves over time, and lose interest in “reinvention” and focus more on what they can do within the boundaries of their style. In this way, he’s a Neil Young type.
Unlike his last few records, which pushed him to acoustic and punkish extremes, The Best Day basically sounds like the songs he probably would’ve brought to a new Sonic Youth album, if Sonic Youth was still going at the moment. Since Steve Shelley is pretty much always his drummer, it’s at least half a Sonic Youth song, but the ringers on second guitar and bass aren’t really bringing much to the table, certainly nothing on par with Lee Ranaldo’s inherent grace or Kim Gordon’s rawness. A song like “Forevermore” scratches an itch for me, but I’m too familiar with how all the players in Sonic Youth fit together to have it feel like the same.
And look, I don’t begrudge Thurston Moore’s happiness with his new girlfriend, but there’s just no way I can hear a song like this, which is all about how much he loves her, and not have it feel weird to me. It’s just too much like a dad trying to sell his children on his new lady after splitting from mom.
October 17th, 2014 12:53pm
One of my friends made a joke that Foxygen’s …And Star Power sounds “like disc 47 of the Their Satanic Majesties Request sessions box set,” and yes, it definitely does. (With a bit of Todd Rundgren in there too, I suppose.) This isn’t surprising – a lot of the best stuff on their previous record was flagrant Stones mimicry – but the thing here is how much it all feels like outtakes. This isn’t a slight on the songwriting, which is often quite strong, but rather the sense that everything is being recorded at the point where the musicians either haven’t fully clicked on a song, or have long since moved past the point of exhaustion. There’s a feeling of looseness on the album that feels like hearing a band that doesn’t care about sounding perfect, but is getting a lot of “feel” on the tape. You really get a sense of a room, and people interacting, and a performance that is lacking in self-consciousness even if it’s otherwise rather affected.
October 14th, 2014 12:44pm
Prince’s music over the past 20 years doesn’t have a good reputation, and there’s good reason for that – he’s spent a LOT of that time being very indulgent and making records that satisfy his creative urges but test the patience of even his most devoted fans. You really do need some kind of sherpa to guide you through all that music. But despite this, Prince periodically shows us that he can still do exactly the kind of music he’s loved for, and that he can do it with a real spark of commitment and soul. “This Could Be Us” is one of those songs. It’s a slow jam that breaks no ground for him whatsoever, but it’s lovely and sexy and his voice is gorgeous on it. There is no shortage of other artists who have attempted to mimic Prince in this mode in the past, but when you hear him do a track like this, you get how effortless it is for him. A lot of other music he does – certainly a bunch of other tracks on the Art Official Age record – seem like he’s working, but this is just what Prince is like when he relaxes and goes to a default setting.
