The Kills “DNA”

The first two songs released from the Kills’ forthcoming album Blood Pressures have been rather subdued numbers — good and interesting, but not exactly compelling as standalone singles. They recede rather than explode, they don’t attract attention. “Satellite,” the first single, grafted the duo’s mecha-blues on to a nodding rocksteady beat. “DNA,” the second, comes across as a slightly looser and more organic version of their usual sound. The song is tense, but it sounds more lonely than sexual. (Maybe this is because there is more negative space in the arrangement, and Alison Mosshart sings the song mostly by herself.) “DNA” gets deeper and more interesting as it becomes more familiar. The intensity and desperation builds gradually over the course of four minutes but it never breaks, Mosshart ends the piece sounding steadfast in her resolve. The song is like building a wall — by the end, nothing gets through it.

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This video comes courtesy of R.E.M. and Warner Bros. Records. It’s “exclusive” to this site, but by all means, put it on your own site and spread it around. It’s a lovely performance of a terrific song and people should hear it.

One of my favorite things about R.E.M. is how much of their catalog is devoted to expressions of empathy. When you think of it, it’s not all that common in pop music. “Every Day Is Yours To Win” belongs to a long line of Michael Stipe pep talk songs. “Everybody Hurts” is the most famous, but others include “Find the River,” “Why Not Smile?,” “Imitation of Life” and “Get Up.” “Every Day…” echoes themes from the band’s previous songs in this vein — there’s a world out there for you to experience and discover; your misery is valid but hold on — but its sentiment is spiked with some words that acknowledge that “winning” in life isn’t very easy, and we might not notice it when we do come out on top. The lyrics also touch on the running theme in Collapse Into Now, ie, that finding the strength to carry on after a major trauma is a form of heroism. You have to fight hard to be optimistic. Its own gentle, muted way, this song is saying that if you can manage to hold off negativity from within and without, you are a hero and you are winning.

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Rainbow Arabia “Without You”

There’s no sense writing around this: Rainbow Arabia sound a lot like the Knife. Not just like the Knife, mind you — just enough that it’s hard to avoid the reference point. It’s in the vocals, it’s in the keyboard tones, sometimes it’s in the sort of melodic quality to the percussion. They go to a different place with a familiar template. They’re more physical, less programmed. More sparkling, less goth. More island, less tundra. Oh, and sometimes there is guitar! “Without You” is a standout, and actually one of the least Knife-ish tracks. It does, however, sound like the kind of early to mid 00s dance pop that has a massive sentimental value to me, so my response is sort of complicated: I instinctively love it, but my critical side wonders how much of this is a Pavlovian thing. But yeah, it’s better to trust instinct on these matters.

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Superchunk @ Radio City Music Hall 3/8/2011

Learned To Surf / Crossed Wires / Detroit Has A Skyline / Seed Toss / My Gap Feels Weird / Like A Fool / Hello Hawk / Digging For Something / Slack Motherfucker

Superchunk “Like A Fool”

I went to this show on fairly show notice; someone got sick blah blah blah. I mainly accepted a ticket because I wanted to see Wild Flag and because the venue happens to be directly across the street from where I work these days. Wild Flag were good and interesting, but I don’t want to write anything about them until I hear their album. I left after Superchunk finished their set, about a half hour before Bright Eyes took the stage. (You might remember that I’m not a fan of Conor Oberst.)

Anyway, Superchunk. I’ve always liked Superchunk but never really connected with them. I feel a little weird about that — they belong to a cohort of 90s indie bands that I love, and their drummer happens to be one of the two funniest men on earth. I wasn’t sure what to expect from seeing this show, but I figured I’d have fun and it’d be low pressure and I had no obligation to writing about it.

Well, I was right about the fun. They’re a sharp band, and very energetic. Mac McCaughan is particularly impressive — it seemed like he was hopping up and down for most of the set, and never seemed to flub a note or get winded while he sang. Superchunk has very straightforward songs — I think I’ve mistaken this no-frills aesthetic for them being a bit bland and basic in the past — but their charm comes in how they deliver their tunes with great force and precision. This is a band that could easily coast on being pleasant, but they really go for the extra oomph.

Lucky for me, the band only played songs I knew in their brief 40 minute set. I generally prefer seeing live music when I know the material, that’s just how I’m wired. That said, the song that really hit me was “Like A Fool,” an oldie I only kinda half-remembered and probably had not listened to on purpose in ten years. It’s a huge, majestic number, and very well-suited to a big, classy room like Radio City. The chords felt right in that moment, I spent a lot of the song with my eyes closed just appreciating the strumming and the way the music hits this crest that feels both melancholy and exhilarating.

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Lykke Li “Youth Knows No Pain”

Lykke Li writes a lot about being young, it’s kinda her thing. To some extent it’s a “write what you know” situation, but in songs like “Youth Knows No Pain,” she’s singing from a more distant and knowing perspective. It’s a somewhat self-conscious exhortation to delight in the passion and energy of youth, and the tension in the piece comes from trying to figure out whether she’s being totally earnest about it, or if there’s a touch of irony to this Dionysian front. I tend to think it’s a little of both. Her voice is trebly and metallic in this track, which has a way of hardening her tone and concealing emotion. It works for the song — the rest of the production is very treble-heavy too, with busy cymbal crashes and a groovy 60s-style organ part taking up most of the space in the mix. All that treble sounds like an armor to mask vulnerability, and really, so does the call to sexy, reckless action. The title phrase ends up sounding like wishful thinking.

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Telekinesis “I Cannot Love You”

When this song begins, the angst and drama is already over. It’s all verdict, no deliberation: “I cannot love, I cannot love you.” The music carries some leftover negative emotion, but the vocals mostly convey the relief of finally coming to a firm conclusion and the eagerness to move on from a painful romantic mess. It’s not emphatic or mean spirited, just clear-headed and self-respecting. It’s even better that this song is a tightly-constructed two minute rocker — this is the kind of thing you need to say quickly and economically and then shut up.

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Dum Dum Girls “He Gets Me High”

I’ve seen the Dum Dum Girls in concert twice and both times I left thinking that Dee Dee’s voice was much better live than on record. That issue has been addressed on the band’s new EP, a set of four tracks that find the band embracing a glossier, more confident sound. It’s a smart move. Unlike many of their peers, the Dum Dum Girls never needed fuzzy production and heavy reverb to improve upon their material or mask their inadequacies as performers. If anything, that sort of thing kept people from noticing Dee Dee’s remarkable craft as a songwriter. It’s hard to miss that in “He Gets Me High,” the EP’s title track. The hooks are simple but expertly composed, and the lyrics are straightforward but precise, suggesting a fair amount of psychological depth and emotional turmoil with blunt, direct language. She sounds wonderful too, like a more demure Chrissie Hynde backed up by louder guitars.

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Adele “I’ll Be Waiting”

If you take the lyrics of “I’ll Be Waiting” at face value, it’s a “baby please come back I’ve changed for the better” kind of song. But if the sound of it changes its meaning a lot — it’s upbeat, brassy and assertive in a way that makes it seem like the possibility of Adele’s ex taking her back seem like a foregone conclusion. She’s making a great case for getting back together, or at least it sounds like one. The tension at the heart of this piece is that trying to get this failed relationship to work again may in fact be a terrible idea and the singer’s intense optimism about this may be misguided and possibly quite pathetic. But it’s also sweet, especially when you realize that she’s probably working even harder to convince herself.

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The Dirtbombs “Sharevari”

The Dirtbombs’ new album Party Store has an excellent high concept: Detroit rock band covers Detroit techno classics. It’s a very cool idea, but also a recipe for disaster. As it turns out, though, the most surprising thing about Party Store isn’t that the band decided to interpret these songs in the first place, but that they do it so convincingly without changing their standard instrumentation. Some songs work better than others — their 21-minute take on Carl Craig’s “Bug in the Bass Bin” is a noble experiment with fairly unlistenable results — but when they nail it, it’s like a scrappier version of Liquid Liquid and ESG’s minimal funk magic. Their version of A Number of Names’ “Sharevari” is my favorite, and not just because it’s a very faithful rendition of the song. I think the composition gains an exciting tension from live instrumentation and, well, I just really love the sound of the female vocals in this recording.

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MNDR “Cut Me Out”

I wasn’t surprised to learn that MNDR’s Amanda Warner had originally planned to become a professional songwriter before becoming a performer. Her songs are economical and seem very precise and methodical — frankly, I’d be shocked if “Cut Me Out” isn’t the product of several thoughtful revisions. Everything about this track, from the very structure of it to the sound of the arrangement and her distinct, charismatic vocal performance, is in perfect balance. This song hits my dance pop sweet spot in a big way: The music is assertive and forceful, but the words, the voice and the tension at the center of the piece conveys vulnerability and confusion.

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Guided by Voices “Alone, Stinking and Unafraid” (Live in Dayton, 2001)

The “classic line-up” of Guided By Voices got back together last year. It was cool and I enjoyed the show I saw in Manhattan. But here’s the thing: If you were actually a big GBV fan and went to a lot of their shows during the years when the band was actually a popular touring act, this “classic line-up” wasn’t classic at all. Yes, they were the guys who backed Robert Pollard up on the band’s most acclaimed and beloved albums, but they were long gone by the time GBV got around to building its reputation for drunken, goofy marathon sing-along shows. This was the “classic line-up” if you’re either a super early adopter, a sentimental pedant or a Pollard dilettante. If you love Guided By Voices and went to the shows and followed the regular flow of new records and “side projects” — the actual experience of being a GBV fan in the late 90s through the mid 00s — the real classic line-up is Pollard, Doug Gillard, Nate Farley, Tim Tobias and whoever happened to be playing drums at the time.

As far as I am concerned, Live in Daytron ?6 is the definitive Guided By Voices record, at least in the sense that it has the highest concentration of top-shelf Pollard songs and represents the band in the form that I loved them most. I saw GBV at least 14 times between 1999 and 2004. For me, the band isn’t about any particular album so much as the accumulation of great songs. Like I always say, you never really get how amazing Pollard is until you realize that he has written 100 of your favorite songs.

The GBV setlist was a regularly mutating thing — it had a solid foundation of regularly played hits, but also a rotation of deep cuts, music from whatever album was new at the time, and songs from records that were not released under the GBV name but were definitely GBV songs. This live record includes a lot of classics from that category — “Pop Zeus,” “Tight Globes,” “Submarine Teams,” “Stifled Man Casino,” “Waved Out,” “I Drove A Tank,” “Get Under It,” “Psychic Pilot Clocks Out,” and “Alone, Stinking and Unafraid,” which became one of the band’s most enduring live anthems despite being originally released on a small-run EP under the name Lexo and the Leapers. It annoys me when this stuff gets edited out of the band’s legacy. The same goes for post-Mag Earwhig gems like “Teenage FBI,” “Chasing Heather Crazy,” “The Brides Have Hit Glass” and “Things I Will Keep.” Like I said, that reunion show was nice and all, but it was just weird for me to seeing the band without hearing a lot of these songs since they were so essential to the GBV experience.

Anyway, if you want a solid introduction to Guided By Voices or a good sense of what myself and many others loved about them back in the early 00s, I strongly recommend this live record.

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Patrick Stump “Spotlight (Oh Nostalgia)”

I find it very easy to embrace the idea of post-Fall Out Boy Patrick Stump. He’s very charming and talented, he has great taste and a huge amount of ambition. I want to like this guy’s music and I think he has the potential to be a good pop artist outside of his old band. That said, I don’t think he’s there yet. His first EP has its moments, but for the most part it suffers because Stump seems so eager to play it straight and prove his legitimacy as a pop/R&B act that a lot of his personality gets lost in the gloss.

Specifically, there is not enough tension in this music. Fall Out Boy worked because Stump’s technically impressive, R&B-inflected voice was spitting out these verbose, snarky lyrics in the context of jumpy mall rock arrangements. (Truly, that band does not get enough credit for being as weird and distinct as they were.) Stump thrives when his voice is just slightly out of place, but too much of his EP puts his voice in its most expected musical context and it comes out sounding generic. This is frustrating because some of this material is right on the edge of being quite good.

For example, “As Long As I Know I’m Getting Paid” could really be something if the lyrics were just a bit edgier and the arrangement wasn’t so overworked and airless. It comes out sounding like a mildly experimental Maroon 5 song. If you watch him perform the song in this Rolling Stone acoustic session, it comes off much better. I think the difference is mainly in that the acoustic version implies a lot of musical ideas whereas the studio recording executes all of them in the most obvious way possible, leaving nothing to the imagination.

“Spotlight (Oh Nostalgia)” is the one song on the EP I consider to be an unqualified success. It plays to all of Stump’s strengths, giving him plenty of room to display his vocal chops in a catchy tune that allows for moments of bombastic rock while also providing some less likely dynamic shifts. It’s a hybrid weirdo pop song, and it’s exactly the sort of thing he should be doing. If Stump truly wants a place in mainstream pop, he’s more likely to get it by embracing the tensions that make him interesting, not by making second-rate versions of the music he admires.

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Toro Y Moi “Still Sound”

I’ve come to the conclusion that the more I try to understand my response to Toro Y Moi’s second album Underneath the Pine, the less I get it. I have found that my natural inclination is to zone out during large portions of the record, and I’ve found that it’s not a bad thing. It may in fact be the point. My attention doesn’t stray because I’m bored and disengaged — if anything, I find that I’m more connected to this record when I’m not focused on it, when the sound and beat become part of my surroundings and the mood of the music becomes indistinguishable from my actual emotional state.

Not all of the album is straight-up musical wallpaper. A lot of the reason why the record works is because it does periodically snap together into tighter, more pop-oriented forms. “Still Sound” is my personal favorite, and I think it’s the most impressive piece of music Toro Y Moi has produced to date. There’s a touch of Arthur Russell in this one, not just in the tonality, but in the way the arrangement keeps shifting without seeming restless. (I was listening to my favorite Russell piece “Tell You (Today)” recently and was totally in awe of how drastically it shifts while seeming totally intuitive from moment to moment, I couldn’t fathom how it was composed.) “Still Sound” has the deepest groove and the most coherent emotion on the record, though I’d be hard-pressed to describe exactly what it is. I just recognize the feeling every time I hear it, and am always pleased to his this sound that always reminds me of little bubbles rising up in a glass of soda water.

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Psychic Friend “Once A Servant”

If I didn’t know this song was written and performed by Will Schwartz before I heard it, I might not have realized it. I’ve been a fan of Will’s singing and songwriting in Imperial Teen and Hey Willpower for years, but though this song with his new band Psychic Friend is within his wheelhouse of melodic pop, his voice is noticeably different. It’s less bratty and less wispy, and a lot more direct in projecting earnest, kind-hearted emotion. This is a beautifully constructed pop song, the parts are simple but very emphatic. It basically lingers on the same romantic feeling for three and a half minutes, but there are subtle dynamic shifts through the whole thing. The bridge is what really sells this one for me — there’s something so angelic and lovely about the way it ascends toward its climax.

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Radiohead “Separator”

I think that The King of Limbs is a good and interesting record, but there’s no question that it’s also Radiohead’s weakest album. (Yes, Pablo Honey is better.) But you know, they don’t all have to be masterpieces, and it’s about time Radiohead deflated audience expectations a bit and loosened up enough to put out a relatively minor record. As far as I am concerned, this band has put out more than enough major works that if they want to spend the rest of their career releasing just-okay experimental albums, I am totally fine with it.

The King of Limbs is basically the opposite of In Rainbows. In Rainbows is so melodic, so easy to enjoy, so well rounded. Limbs has its moments of beauty but it mostly rejects pop structure and hooks. It emphasizes rhythm, but its beats often sputter or clang together in awkward ways. It’s heavy on atmosphere and mood, but the mood isn’t especially pleasant. The album mostly evokes the feeling of being a bit out of it on medication for a nasty head cold. To some extent, we’ve heard Radiohead toy with similar musical ideas in the past, mostly on non-album tracks, but it’s still very much an experimental work for them. One thing is very clear: All of the members of Radiohead are taking risks on this record, but none of them are playing to their strengths as musicians.

The King of Limbs reminds of those times when an established actor takes a part that is outside of their range and it doesn’t quite work. (Especially comedians taking SERIOUS roles.) You’re watching them thinking about how good they are when they do their regular thing, and only notice the stretching on screen, not the character they are portraying. It’s admirable as an artistic endeavor in some ways, but it’s often just the narcissism of a performer who wants more respect or to prove that they can do anything.

Melody isn’t absent from Limbs, it’s just not emphasized. The prettiest, most melodic tracks come at the end — “Give Up the Ghost” and “Separator.” When the latter song comes on, it feels like you’re suddenly snapping out of the record’s weird daze. The beat is more assertive, the melody is much bolder, the arrangement seems brighter and more colorful. The lyrics match the sound, with Yorke singing about waking up from “a long, weary dream.” He sings that he is free from a weight that he’s been carrying and he sounds genuinely relieved and relaxed. Maybe in the future we’ll look back at this song as a meta commentary on his career: It’s the sound of the band shaking off the weight of being such an Important Band, and moving on as a band that’s actually encouraged to explore, stumble and sometimes fail.

Buy it from Radiohead.

Lady Gaga @ Boardwalk Hall, Atlantic City, NJ 2/19/2011

Dance in the Dark / Glitter and Grease / Just Dance / Beautiful Dirty Rich / The Fame / LoveGame / Boys Boys Boys / Money Honey / Telephone / You and I / So Happy I Could Die / Monster / Teeth / Allejandro / Poker Face / Paparazzi // Bad Romance /// Born This Way

My main takeaway from seeing Lady Gaga in concert is that she’s a fantastic rock star. She’s working in the context of pop convention for the most part, but her vibe and style on stage is pure rock star. I think this is part of what makes her so great, and different from her peers in the current pop landscape. I think this rocker thing will be more obvious when her next album comes out. Before this show, I got to hear a handful of tracks from Born This Way, and those songs were much more overtly rock without losing any of her dance music sensibility. She’s found a way to merge it all, and I’m excited to see how the world responds. (You can read my preview of these new songs at Rolling Stone.)

Lady Gaga “Born This Way”

Yes, this song echoes Madonna’s “Express Yourself,” and yes, a lot of what Lady Gaga does is essentially an updated version of Madonna’s paradigm for pop stardom. If you’re the type of person who thinks either of those points are equivalent to a valid negative criticism of Lady Gaga, I’m here to tell you that you’re an idiot and almost certainly a hypocrite too.

For one thing, it probably doesn’t take much digging into your record collection to find music by rock bands who are working within some easily identifiable tradition, or may directly call back to a specific artist. We, as a culture, have no problem with this, and if anything, we expect and desire familiarity from rock acts. (This is also true of rap and R&B to a large extent.) So why the double standard for pop acts? Is it because pop is more overtly market-driven, we feel compelled to overstate its cynicism and neglect its similarity to everything else in contemporary music?

Second, how can anyone get up in arms about borrowing ideas from Madonna when Madonna is the Queen of the Magpies? Like Madonna and David Bowie before her, Gaga’s genius isn’t profound musical originality so much as it’s about writing high quality pop songs that fit into a larger aesthetic framework that includes high concept fashion, theatrical performance and interaction with the media at large. Gaga is all about how it all fits together in the big picture, the sum of the parts. She makes the most sense in concert because that’s where it all comes together — the music, the singing, the dancing, the fashion, the setpieces, her interaction with the audience. The audience is very crucial to Gaga; her “little monsters” complete her performance with their physical response and by bringing their own creativity into the mix by showing up in costume, et al. This is a key difference between Gaga and Madonna — Madonna has always presented herself as being removed from her fans, Gaga encourages communication and intense identification. She’s very much of her time. Madonna never had to work with social media in her prime, but Gaga has found a way to seamlessly integrate the aesthetics of the Twitter era into the style of pop stardom that the Material Girl pioneered in the 80s.

I love “Born This Way,” but of course I would — “Express Yourself” has always been my favorite Madonna song, and I just love this sort of pop song. We don’t get that many of them, really. Even without the heavy handed self-help message, this would feel thrilling and inspiring. It’s a joyous, exciting, delightfully cheesy song. It really comes alive in concert, ending her show as a communal celebration of personal empowerment and self-acceptance. If you’re the type of person who feels like the world doesn’t need this sort of message, well, I’m glad you feel so great about yourself or that you’re comfortable in your self-loathing. I’m all in favor of it, though, especially since this song gets into specifics that most other songs with similar messages gloss over in the interest of playing it safe.

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Scissor Sisters @ Boardwalk Hall, Atlantic City, NJ 2/19/2011

Night Work / Laura / Any Which Way / Running Out / I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’ / Filthy/Gorgeous

Scissor Sisters “Night Work”

About halfway through this 22 minute set, Ana Matronic told the audience “If you haven’t heard of us, you’re probably not gay or British.” And yeah, a lot of people in the audience were clearly unfamiliar with the band, but of all the arena shows I’ve seen, this was the best response I’ve ever seen for an opening act. The room was at least two thirds full when they went on at 8 PM sharp, and I saw a lot of dancing on the floor. Gaga’s little monsters are a good, enthusiastic bunch. As far as Scissor Sisters performances go, this was fun but not full power. It sounded like Jake Shears was holding back a little bit, but the back up singers and Ana pulled some extra weight and it came out totally fine. The band routinely plays these kind of venues overseas; it was nice to finally see them play to this kind of room even if it wasn’t their crowd.

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Gene Defcon “Liz”

It’s actually hard to tell whether this song is being addressed to an actual girlfriend or an unrequited crush, but given the hyperbolic nature of the lyrics, I wonder if a love like this is even requitable. “Liz” is big-hearted and sugary, but also sort of frantic and urgent. Gene Defcon’s voice is thin and boyish, and his words betray a naive and unrealistic notion of romance that veers back and forth between over-the-top fantasy and bleak melodrama. He sounds extremely desperate to will his concept of a perfect life with Liz into existence, and to drown out his doubts and fears. He’s mostly successful, though every now and again, the negativity reveals itself.

Buy it from Amazon. Originally posted on April 4th 2007.

Eagle & Talon “In Manila”

Kim from Eagle & Talon sings in a way that always reminds me a bit of Mary Timony, and so when I first heard this song, a line from a Helium song came to mind: “Cos we’re going out without our guitars…” The band played around with keyboards a bit on their previous record, but that sounded a bit tentative to me alongside their guitar-centric tracks. “In Manila” is all cheap keyboards and thin beats, but it also has the urgency and tunefulness of their best work. I like the way the vocals and the music seem slightly at odds — it sounds as if she’s going through some serious emotional drama while stuck in some environment that’s meant to be very cheerful and innocuous.

Buy it directly from Eagle & Talon.

PJ Harvey “In the Dark Places”

PJ Harvey’s Let England Shake conveys a relentless, overbearing grayness in its sound. I imagine gray buildings, gray clouds, grayish light that stings your eyes and dulls your mood. As on previous albums, Harvey contrasts the bleakness of her arrangements with vocal performances that are passionate but slightly muted and boxed in by the tonality of the music. She’s brilliant in the way she balances unhinged emoting with varying degrees of repressed feeling — she always comes across as a fully formed character with a rich subtext. She typically uses this technique for character studies, but in “In the Dark Places,” she suggests a vivid story about young soldiers from a group perspective, and with only a few lyrical details. There is so much sadness and wounded humanity in the way she sings this song, but it doesn’t get away from the central feeling in the music, which is this resignation to grim obligation.

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Yuck “Shook Down”

I get the sense that this band was shooting for an Elliott Smith sort of vibe here, like “The Ballad of Big Nothing” or something. It’s not far off, but I think the result is actually closer to “melancholy romantic ballad that gets played during a wistful moment on a teen drama.” And don’t take that the wrong way: That is pretty much exactly why I like this song so much. It’s sad but not depressive; it’s pretty but just a bit rough around the edges; it’s full of intense, idealized affection and longing. You hear this and it makes you want to have some romantic drama in your life — either you want to be the person singing these words, or to have them sung to you. A lot of people try to write songs like this, and a lot of them are mawkish and terrible. Yuck nailed it.

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