SebastiAn featuring Mayer Hawthorne “Love In Motion”

I think of this track as being like a freebase version of Prince and Michael Jackson. The subtlety is lost and everything is intensified — sexuality becomes sleaze, rhythm and bass is exaggerated to the point of sounding monumental, structure is reduced to a steady series of overpowering highs. The amazing thing isn’t just that these guys can take this familiar pop feeling and distill it to its most potent features, but that in doing so they still hold on to elegance and grace. This is some wonderfully sexy and luxurious dance pop.

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My Morning Jacket “You Wanna Freak Out”

“You Wanna Freak Out” is a musical argument against stoicism that nevertheless sounds rational, composed and even-tempered. It’s like some serene therapist goading you on — express what you feel, let it on out, you need this catharsis! And maybe you do, but this composition is so graceful and lovely that letting go seems more like weightlessness, like floating away in a stiff breeze. Well, that is, until the song does actually freak out a bit in a burst of static-y overdriven guitar at its climax. The band nails this dynamic shift — the swing from swooping elegance to self-conscious fit feels natural but also sudden and slightly unsure. It nearly drowns out the gentle, delicate parts of the arrangement but I like that those bits are still there. Oddly, the sound that feels like having your head in the clouds is what grounds the track.

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Donovan “Season of the Witch”

I probably listened to this song about 30 times this weekend. One of those times, when I was walking down Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn — basically the hipster epicenter of North America — it made the most sense. “Beatniks are out to make it rich!” would be “hipsters are out to make it rich!” if the song was written in the past decade instead of the mid-Sixties. In either era, the lyric would be paranoid but funny. “Season of the Witch” isn’t an angry song, but it’s definitely bugged out. Despite the superstition and paranoia in the words, Donovan is mellow and playful. The music itself sounds very relaxed to me — a good song for a pleasant stroll on a nice day. I like the way this defuses the alienation in the words. It’s like the song is smart enough to know that the line that rings out with the most truth is the one that acknowledges that identity can be a rather fluid thing.

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Planningtorock “I Am Your Man”

The conceptual conceit of “I Am Your Man” is ironic — its singer and composer is a woman — but its sentiment is entirely earnest. This is a song about being forthright and aggressive in pursuing someone, and having the firm belief that you’re the right person for the one you want. This could be creepy, but in context, it’s not — Janine Rostron sings this with a noble sweetness, it doesn’t come off as overly intense or creepy at all. This is a song that makes love and devotion sound absolutely fantastic. I hear this song and envy the character. The big question here is: Is this the person that Rostron wants to want her, or who she wants to be? I think it’s probably a little of both.

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Fleet Foxes “Bedouin Dress”

Fleet Foxes make very pleasant music, but despite gesturing in the general direction of deeper ideas and some kind of spiritual resonance, I find their songs to be lacking in substance. I’m not complaining about that, really — I don’t get mad at candy for having no nutritional value, after all. The appeal of “Bedouin Dress” is purely musical, it totally crumbles the second I try to pay attention to the words, which are mainly neo-hippie drivel tossed in with a possible allusion to Yeats. The pleasure is in getting swept away in its breeziness and not thinking at all. It’s beard folk bubblegum.

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Battles with Kazu Makino “Sweetie & Shag”

“Sweetie & Shag” sounds like an elaborate Rube Goldberg device built specifically to yield this song. There’s a lot of moving pieces, and it all sounds connected and precise. I love the use of rhythm in this composition — every beat seems to have a cause and effect, the hooks bounce as if on metal springs. Kazu Makino, the lead singer of Blonde Redhead, is remarkable on this track. Her voice amps up the energy, pushing the chorus to ecstatic heights while being only barely comprehensible. The words don’t quite scan, but the feeling is easy to intuit: Excited, a bit lusty, a bit scared. I’ve been bored by recent Blonde Redhead records, and frankly she sounds bored on them. Her performance here is thrilling and alive and I hope that she makes more music with Battles because they really bring out the best in each other.

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Sloan “Laying So Low”

“”Laying So Low” is kind of an earnest number, I don’t know if there’s a real joke in it,” Chris Murphy says in an EPK clip on YouTube. “It’s not often that you get any sentiment from me, I replaced sentiment years ago with wordplay.” Murphy seems to be kidding around somewhat in these clips; he’s a got a bleak, self-deprecating wit. Even still, it’s clear that this self-criticism is something he’s grappled with as a songwriter. The thing is, I don’t think this is something that would have ever crossed my mind if he didn’t bring it up himself. In fact, I can think of a lot of Murphy-penned Sloan songs that are poignant and emotional, even if they may include some clever wordplay. I love a lot of songwriters who definitely favor wordplay over expressing anything obviously personal, but no one in Sloan really belongs in that crowd.

“Laying So Low” may be my favorite Sloan ballad. It’s melancholy, beautiful and somehow manages to keep to a very small scale while feeling a bit majestic. I suppose that’s the point here — Murphy is singing about hiding in the background, biding time while he waits for someone to decide if they want him or not. It’s a song of passive passion, of hoping that someone can get it together and decide what they want before you have to move on. It’s a dim hope, though. No matter how lovely and graceful this song gets, it’s hard not to pick up on that defeated feeling.

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Lady Gaga “Government Hooker”

“Government Hooker” is a bit out of step with the rest of Born This Way. It’s more of a Fame Monster song, really — harsh industrial dance music with dark, cynical lyrics at odds with the big-hearted affirmations on the rest of the record. It does makes sense that this one is sequenced back to back with “Judas,” which is just as bleak and intense. It’s like a little island of goth angst and pounding beats on an album that is otherwise focused on ecstatic, campy grandeur.

The track, written by Gaga along with producers Fernando Garibay and DJ White Shadow, is a harsh, sleek banger. It reminds me of KFMDM, Basement Jaxx and Goldfrapp in “Strict Machine” mode. It gleefully steals — and amps up — the best bit from New Order’s “Blue Monday.” The lyrics approach some kind of point about politics and sexuality and commerce, but it doesn’t quite connect. That doesn’t bother me, really — this song is all about the menacing vibe, and the words end up serving that feeling by suggesting ideas about identity, kink and power dynamics that you can fill in yourself.

My favorite detail in this track is the very sound of the male voice. As it turns out, the guy saying “back up and turn around” et al is one of Gaga’s bodyguard. There’s something incredible about this dude’s voice and it’s totally appropriate for his role in the song’s dynamic. He sounds smug, hyper-masculine, somewhat detached. He creeps me out and I love it, especially in direct contrast with Gaga singing, with a touch of longing, “as long as I’m your hoooooker!”

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tUnE-yArDs @ Music Hall of Williamsburg 5/21/2011

Hatari / Do You Wanna Live? (Party Can) / You Yes You / Gangsta / Powa / Riotriot / Fiya / Bizness / Real Live Flesh / Es-So / Doorstep // My Country /// Killa

tUnE-yArDs “You Yes You”

In my previous experiences with tUnE-yArDs in concert, they were playing to audiences who were not familiar with them, or maybe had heard the first album and had no idea that they were in for one of the very best live acts in music today. Part of the thrill in those shows was the shared discovery of Merrill Garbus’ phenomenal talent and charisma — that “oh my God, who is this woman and where has she been all my life and holy shit this song I’ve never heard before in my life is amaaaazing” thing.

Part of the fun in this show was that it was a sold out room full of people who had fallen in love with w h o k i l l and could not be more excited to be witnessing the great Merrill Garbus in action. This was a loud, excited and deeply reverent crowd. Every so often, when the audience would get particularly intense, bassist Nate Brenner would get this look of bemused pride on his face like “Merrill, you’ve done it again.” That guy complements her so perfectly — his bass playing is brilliant and rises to the level of her voice and those songs, but he’s also this cool, relaxed character who casts her enormous personality in sharp relief.

I could gush about this show endlessly. Everything about this performance is impressive, thrilling and life-affirming. It made me feel inspired glad to be alive. The only thing I can say about this show that is even close to a criticism is that the sequence of the set frontloaded a lot of the most thrilling songs, so that I think the peak of the show — the ecstatic climax of “Powa” — came a bit too early. That’s such a minor complaint, though. I was smiling the whole time. I’m smiling right now just thinking about it. Go see this band play live.

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Thurston Moore “Illuminine”

Thurston Moore’s third solo album Demolished Thoughts is a good, pretty record but it doesn’t move me. Though it is nice to hear him trying something new after a solid decade in which Sonic Youth has been in a stylistic holding pattern, I think the acoustic-guitar-and-string-ensemble approach here is better in theory than in practice. The problem isn’t in the execution — this is lovely stuff, especially “Illuminine,” and Beck did a fine job in producing this music — but in that Moore ends up sounding sorta drab in this musical setting. One of the things that makes Sonic Youth one of the very best rock bands of all time is that they have an incredible skill for creating sounds with guitars that are incredibly specific and evocative. I don’t hear guitars and drums in the best Sonic Youth songs; I hear images and places and melodies and rhythms abstracted beyond instrumentation. This music, though quite pleasant and aggressively tasteful, puts Moore’s distinct and familiar melodic tics and cadences into a context where the sounds don’t do much but signify the instruments being played. This might not concern me much if it were a different singer, but when I hear Thurston’s voice I expect a bit more poetry in the sound.

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Friendly Fires “Hurting”

This reminds me of Phoenix’s excellent 2004 album Alphabetical. Friendly Fires go for a similar sort of immaculate funk, but they aren’t quite as tentative about embracing the romance in their music. Phoenix has always kept the listener at a distance, hinting at glamor and sexiness in the elegance of their sound while Thomas Mars sings evocative lines tossed in with cryptic gibberish. I love that sort of thing, but at the same time it’s nice to hear Friendly Fires’ Ed Macfarlane put his heart on his sleeve and deliver this straightforward crush pop. “Hurting” is a perfect expression of infatuation — heightened and blissful, while also vulnerable and anguished.

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Purity Ring “Ungirthed”

The arrangement for Purity Ring’s “Ungirthed” — probably the best song with a terrible title that I’ve encountered in some time — comes out sounding like a modern rap track that’s gone “wrong” somehow. Its bounce is a bit off center, its tonality is a bit too bright. But for what it is, it’s brilliant and lovely. As striking as the track can be, what really makes this work is the particular tone and cadences of singer Megan James, who sings these clipped, slightly incoherent lines full of apocalyptic imagery in a voice that I find very cute, though not particularly cutesy. The world is crashing down around her, but she doesn’t sound panicked. Somehow she sounds optimistic.

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Wild Beasts “Bed of Nails”

“Sensual” is a very tacky word, but in the very best way, it is appropriate for describing Wild Beasts’ third album Smother. The band’s previous records were more obvious in their charms, but this album is very subtle in its pleasures. It lures you in, it gradually seduces you with its luxurious, wonderfully complex melodies, rhythms and textures. Even more so than Two Dancers, Smother is a feast of elegantly crafted sounds. It feels wrong to try to pick this music apart on a technical level — this is such delicate, evocative stuff that it’d be a shame to spoil the magic.

As on the last two Wild Beasts records, the most striking element of the band is the contrast of singers Hayden Thorpe and Tom Fleming. This time around, Fleming’s voice conveys patient lust and vulnerability — he mainly sings about being broken and lost, and needing someone to fill a void within himself. Thorpe, the more flamboyant and operatic of the two, is the aggressor. He’s still obsessed with the grotesque aspects of masculinity and the primal, violent aspects of sex.

In “Bed of Nails,” the album’s finest song, he splits the difference between he and Fleming’s lyrical concerns and arrives at the thematic center of the record. Thorpe makes two allusions in this song: First, to Shakespeare’s mad, beautiful Ophelia, and then to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. I’m especially fond of how he works in the latter. As the song reaches its climax, he characterizes the love between these two broken people as Frankenstein’s monster, i.e., when they come together, this awkward, strange creature comes to life.

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Sleigh Bells @ Webster Hall 5/11/2011

Crown on the Ground / Tell ‘Em / Kids / Treats / Riot Rhythm / Infinity Guitars / Holly / Rill Rill / Rachel / Straight A’s / A/B Machines

Sleigh Bells “Holly” (demo)

The last time I saw Sleigh Bells they were doing a small show at some kind of VFW hall-type place in Brooklyn on the day their album came out. That was a fun show, but it had nothing on this. They’ve both grown comfortable with their rock star moves, in part because it’s no longer a theoretical notion, and the band now put on a full-on rock spectacle complete with comically oversized amps and a light show that perfectly matches the super-saturated sound of the music. Even better, the audience has had time to live with the music and so every song gets the response of a huge hit. They were exciting before, now it’s just off the charts. I was thrilled pretty much every moment of this show.

CSS @ Webster Hall 5/11/2011

Art Bitch / Off the Hook / ?? / Air Painter / ‘Hits Me Like A Rock’ / Music Is My Hot Hot Sex / ‘I Love You’ / Move / ‘In the Big City Nothing Hurts’ / Beautiful Song / Let’s Reggae All Night / ‘All Dressed Up’ / Let’s Make Love and Listen to Death From Above / Alala

CSS “Alala”

CSS lost me with Donkey, but I’m happy to say that they 1) remain a very entertaining and joyful live act, thank mainly to their wildly charismatic frontwoman Lovefoxxx and 2) their new songs are all terrific, immediately enjoyable and clever. The selections from the debut were very fun and cathartic, but the major highlights were new tunes, most especially the ones I’ll call “All Dressed Up” and “In the Big City Nothing Hurts,” since I don’t know what they are actually called. I’m dying to hear them again, most especially the latter. But it’s nice to have something to look forward to, you know?

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Mr. Dream @ Webster Hall 5/11/2011

Knuckle Sandwich / Crime / new song / Scarred For Life / Trash Hit / Winners / Knick Knack / Croquet / Learn the Language

Mr. Dream “Scarred For Life”

Mr. Dream have the look of clean-cut, handsome young men, but they deliver some of most brutal yet tuneful hard rock that anyone has produced in the past decade. There’s something amusing and subversive about how heavy these guys get while lacking the visual signifiers of the hard rockin’ dude — singer/guitarist Adam Moerder seriously looks like an alternate universe John Mayer who grew up on the extended Steve Albini discography rather than Stevie Ray Vaughan. Like Nirvana, the Pixies and McLusky before them, the secret to the band’s intensity lies in the nuts and bolts of simple pop hooks, but what really sticks with you is how hard Nick Sylvester hits those drums and how fully Moerder and bassist Matt Morello commit to screaming their lines. They’re not hedging any bets up there.

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James Rabbit “Glimmer On Down”

Tyler Martin, the primary songwriter of the Santa Cruz band James Rabbit, has always had a major romantic streak. It’s one of the most charming things about him, really — he comes off like a starry-eyed sweetheart who believes in true love and grand gestures, even in spite of persistent anxiety and awkwardness. “Glimmer On Down” is his most elegant expression of this romantic streak. There are some moment where the band’s characteristic wired angst comes through, but this is mostly graceful and lovely, complete with tinkling piano, old movie strings, swelling brass and a female backing vocal part that seems as it if it just wandered in from a Dirty Projectors rehearsal. In print that may seem a bit overstuffed, but the arrangement is so careful and thoughtful that every sound has its moment and it all comes out sounding light and swoony.

Get it for free from James Rabbit’s Bandcamp page.

Veronica Maggio “Finns Det En Så Finns Det Flera”

As best as I can tell from a Google translation, this song seems to be about the excitement of meeting someone new. The title loosely translates to “there is one, there are several,” and the phrase is repeated like a mantra. I love the sound of this phrase in Swedish, particularly the way Veronica Maggio’s voice rises up sharply on “det flera,” implying a cheerful exclamation point. I also quite like the English translation of it, though I wonder if it correct or if it’s a mangled version of some Swedish idiom. Given the contextual clues I have — including the very sound of the music — I’m inclined to understand this as someone being totally thrilled by possibility and realizing that they have a lot more options that they have previously considered. There’s a wonderful positive charge to this music and I recognize it as the sound of empowerment and discovery. You can tell me I’m wrong in understand the precise meaning of her words, but I’m definitely not wrong in hearing joyful curiosity in this track.

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Tyler, the Creator and Hodgy Beats “Sandwitches”

The first minute of this track sounds so frustrated and lonely. It’s just this kid alone in a room leading a chant, willing his audience into existence. Tyler could get some other people on mic, fake a crowd, but he doesn’t. He’s made an active decision to make this intro sound uncomfortable and awkward. He wants you to think about him being alone in that room. It makes sense of what comes afterward: Spilling bile, acting out, raging against anyone with a happy life. These words come out of feeling bitter and isolated, so yeah, he should sound lonely and pathetic.

A lot of Odd Future songs don’t rise above sounding ramshackle, childish and hateful, but “Sandwitches” is excellent and hints at a greater potential. Tyler and Hodgy both have excellent voices for rap — the former has a surprisingly gravelly tone for someone so young, the latter has more treble and expressive range. Tyler’s lyrical style and cadence remind me a lot of Eminem — their sense of humor is similar and they bot tap into that angry-boy-acting-out thing that people eat up. (It never moves me; I just wasn’t that kind of kid.) Hodgy is more exciting to me. He’s more nimble in his phrasing, less predictable in his wordplay. If Odd Future is indeed the second coming of the Wu-Tang, then he’s the Ghostface of this crew.

They’re a long way from touching that first wave of Wu records, though. Tyler’s Goblin is set up to become most people’s first real album-length exposure to Odd Future, and it’s kind of a mess. A lot of the songs are straight-up awful. Others are marred by cheap, stupid lyrics. He’s deliberately hateful and trollish, but then sulks when people call him out. The entire record sounds depressed. It can be too much to take, particularly when he gets very indulgent both lyrically and musically, but overall, it’s a fascinating document of a particular type of anger and misery.

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The Fiery Furnaces @ Rockwood Music Hall 5/5/2011

Doctor in the Dungeon / Smelling Cigarettes / The Garfield El / Here Comes the Summer / Pricked in the Heart / The Vietnamese Telephone Directory / Even in the Rain / Blueberry Boat / Philadelphia Grand Jury / 1917 / Single Again / Cousin Chris / Widow City / Nevers / South Is Only A Home – Evergreen / Wolf Notes / Keep Me in the Dark / Uncle Charlie / Restorative Beer

The Fiery Furnaces “Nevers”

On their current tour, the Fiery Furnaces are performing as a duo — Eleanor on vocals, accompanied by Matthew on a grand piano. (He also sang a bit.) I’ve always really loved the band in this configuration and so it was a thrill to see them play a full set with this arrangement. A lot of songs that would’ve made sense with this presentation — like, say, “Bow Wow” or “Take Me Round Again” — were out of rotation in favor of Widow City and EP deep cuts. The emphasis was placed on Matthew’s tongue-twister songs, maybe because it’s easier for an audience to hear all the words without a rock band blaring. Either way it worked — a lot of funny lines that may have gone right by in a regular show got laughs. As always, the Friedbergers’ memory and diction is amazing to behold, and their talent for understated melody and stunning lyrical detail is astonishing and yet horribly underrated. I get that this band may be impenetrable for a lot of people, but more folks should try to meet them halfway. This current tour is definitely a good time to give them (a/another) chance.

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Thao & Mirah “Rubies and Rocks”

Mirah sounds great when she seems to be confined within a rigid yet funky groove. That tension brings out a defiant edge in her voice — firm and assertive while overtly feminine. In “Rubies and Rocks,” that isn’t a contradiction, though it’s very different from the same impulses and desires filtered through traditional masculinity. The horns are a brilliant tonal and melodic counterpoint to her voice in this arrangement. That part sounds very Afrobeat to me, very Fela. Melodically, but also functionally — the beat and bass are like a cramped, overheated room. The horns come in like a gust of cool, fresh air that ends far too soon.

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Cass McCombs “County Line”

There was a time, very long ago now, when a song like this could’ve been a radio hit. Now that seems inconceivable — it’s far too delicate, way too slow, much too subtle. As far as new music goes, we’ve banished all that from the airwaves. Even still, this sounds like something you should hear in a car at night moving along some long stretch of nowhere. It sounds like something that just comes on, and you surrender to its mood. You might not even notice it at first. Maybe it’s McCombs’ gentle falsetto that gets you, or the atmospheric, nearly subliminal organ drone that carries throughout the song. It could be the way these perfectly toned guitar notes ring out at just the right moments but are otherwise entirely silent. For me, it’s the precise tone of the lead organ. That sound is sparingly used too, but its character nearly defines the entire song for me. It’s like falling in love with a painting for the perfect hue found in just a few brush strokes.

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