February 10th, 2011 1:00am
I like when punk bands get away from standard aggression and instead project undiluted dread and nihilism. Disappears do just that — imagine the steady melodic bass groove as a center, and the rest of the arrangement as a sound that pushes you away from it, or up against it. The vocals are what really push this over the top. He is so monotone that he barely sounds like an actual living human being, and the indifference he conveys is, in its way, far more hostile than yelling and screaming. This is the sound of being totally checked out of live, and it’s kinda terrifying.
February 9th, 2011 1:00am
Even as a long term Fiery Furnaces nerd, I was a bit apprehensive about Matthew Friedberger’s series of solo albums. I consider his combo-pack solo debut Winter Women/Holy Ghost Language School to be a low point in the extended Furnaces discography — there’s some good songs in there, but it’s just too much, and the best stuff is still somehow a bit timid for a guy who typically just goes all out. The first two records in this series are another story. To some extent, Napoleonette is roughly what you might expect from a piano-centric Friedberger record, but his experimentation with prepared piano gives the set a fascinating tonality and surprising physicality. Meet Me in Miramas is more of a curveball — hypnotic grooves, insistent rhythms, guitar used more for clanging texture than riffs or melody. “The Sainte-Barbe Triangle” opens that album, and it was immediately startling and engrossing. Through Matthew’s voice still has the cadence particular to himself and his sister Eleanor, everything else about the track comes closer to krautrock than what you’d expect from the Fiery Furnaces. I have no idea what is coming next in the series, but I’m excited to find out. Even after nearly a decade of music, this guy is still finding ways to surprise and challenge me.
February 8th, 2011 1:00am
Yukimi Nagano has a wonderful voice that conveys style and soulfulness, but I don’t think it would be as powerful in Little Dragon’s music if the group was not as masterful in its use of keyboards. “Stå Upp” is a fine example of the way they balance delicate atmospheric parts with melody lines that have this remarkable tonality that always reminds me of colorful artificial light. The sound has this slick, sophisticated quality, but it’s not overly tasteful — there’s a seediness to it, like some bar that’s intended to be classy but has aged into becoming a dive anyway. Also, I love the springiness of their beats, it adds to this overall lightness in the sound. If you imagine the beat as something that keeps a song grounded, the percussion here never seems to touch the floor for very long.
February 7th, 2011 1:30am
When it comes to James Blake, it can be easy to get distracted by his context. I think it’s a lot better to into his debut record without thinking too hard about the electronic music scene he comes from or how he relates to various strains of popular music. To get the full effect, you just have to listen and feel it, because really, that’s what matters here. It’s all raw, intense emotion, but written and arranged in a way that allows for lyrical gaps and silences that add a touch of mystery. The songs feel so intimate, but at the same time there’s this distance. On one hand it’s like being with — or just being — a person who can only let someone in so far before putting up some kind of defense. On the other, he gives you plenty of room to fill in the blanks with the details of your own emotional life.
February 3rd, 2011 1:00am
There had to a be a point in the process of writing this song when Dan Whitford realized that his lyrics needed to directly state exactly what the music was communicating, and that anything else would feel like a cheat. When you write a song that sounds exactly like you’re heading off to a brighter, better, happier world, you have to let everyone know it and invite them all along for the trip. This is very much a “journey, not the destination” thing too — when I hear this, I don’t even care about where we’re all going, I just want the joy, the adventure and discovery to last forever. This is the kind of upbeat pop song that actively makes life more enjoyable.
February 2nd, 2011 1:00am
Dance pop music is typically an expression of extroversion, or at least aspires to that state of mind. “Do It Again” is atypical in that respect — it’s sung from the perspective of a guy who starts off making a case for wanting to stay in by himself. Once he’s convinced to get out of his house, he’s not any less bored. The rituals and rhythms of bars and dance clubs are just as predictable as being alone in an apartment. He’s not complaining, though, just observing. It’s at that point when the DJ saves his life, or at least makes a ho-hum night a bit better than it would be otherwise by playing some exciting music. These lyrics could go one step further in any direction and be really obvious, but Holy Ghost! stick to understatement, if just to offset the sound of the track. This is some bouncey, colorful stuff. Also, I love the way it sounds as though the singer is about to break into Roxette’s “The Look” on bridge but he catches himself and shifts up the melody before he can get sued.
February 1st, 2011 1:00am
The original version of “The City” is quite good, but it pales in comparison to this remix by Richard X. Without doing much to alter the basic character and structure of the song, X pushes everything in Wolf’s song to an ultra-romantic extreme. It’s faster, more danceable. It sounds like a city made of sparkles and it feels like a nonstop cinematic climax. It’s like Wolf and X got together and did their very best to answer the question “What’s so great about dancey pop music, anyway?” This makes me smile, it makes my heart race. If only life always could feel just like this song.
January 31st, 2011 1:00am
Though Lazarus is a name with some very specific associations, it’s not entirely clear to me why Sam Beam is using it in this song. The best I can come up with is that the singer is envious of his friend’s ability to redefine and transform himself — in a sense, resurrected like the Biblical Lazarus. It could just be something that sounds nice in the melody, which is fine by me, especially since the main feature of the song is it gorgeous melody and relaxed arrangement. The sound is rich and comforting without seeming heavy, smothering or overdone. The emotional tone is muted and polite, but there’s a complex set of mixed feelings being articulated in the melody and texture. I hear bemusement in the way the melody climbs upward at the end of the verses, resignation in his wordless “oh-oh-ohs,” caution in the slow walk of the bass and assertiveness in the saxophone leads that weave in and out of the composition.
January 28th, 2011 1:00am
Is there anyone better at writing sober, emotionally distant songs about feeling betrayed and aggrieved than Wire’s Colin Newman? “Please Take” is prime late-period Wire — icy, unforgiving and very direct in its sentiment, but so aloof that the kiss-off seems more brutal than if he’d conveyed even the slightest bit of emotional investment. This is the sound of a guy who is making sure that you know that he is totally finished with you and is not bluffing for a second. The music is tuneful and serene, but it can’t sweeten the incredible bitterness of this piece.
January 27th, 2011 1:00am
I recommend that everyone love this and get as much as they can from it before it starts turning up on the soundtrack of every borderline television show, movie and ad campaign that requires a song that immediately signals romantic yet edgy sexiness. Not that the song would necessarily be diminished by such a thing — actually, it could be enhanced if it ended up in a truly inspired scene — but there’s just something about this that is so immediately powerful and evocative that it’s hard to imagine it not getting snapped up by eager music supervisors. This is a brilliantly realized track. Anna Calvi’s voice has both the ferocity and the restraint of a young Polly Harvey, as well as a natural flair on guitar. The atmosphere of this song is thick from the start but the transition into the second half is totally inspired. It’s like a big puff of colorful smoke that somehow turns into delicate metallic clanging.
January 26th, 2011 1:00am
Lia Ices has a frigid, brittle sound that suits her name very well. When I hear “Little Marriage” I imagine an elaborate sculpture of incredibly thin icicles — beautiful, perfect and extremely delicate. But even if the music conveys fragility, the emotion of the piece seems a lot more resilient. The song is mournful in tone, but Ices does not seem shattered by heartbreak and trauma. If anything, she sounds as if she’s found a way to harden her heart to compensate for an outward vulnerability.
January 25th, 2011 1:05am
A lot of indie rock music is based on contrasting highly expressive guitar parts with deadpan or understated vocal performances, but Deerhoof push that dynamic to an absurd extreme. The guitar parts are always extremely flamboyant and tied in with rhythms that bounce all over the place. The music carries all the emotion, while the vocals by Satomi Matsuzaki are like a blank slate. She can be rather playful, but it’s hard to get a read on her. Emotionally illegible, totally unknowable. This throws the music off in a way that is sometimes fascinating and exciting, but more often than not, I find it frustrating. Their songs are packed with musical ideas that I admire and sometimes envy, but I don’t know how to connect with it. A song like “The Merry Barracks” is incredibly satisfying on a cerebral and physical level, but there’s this important part of me that feels left out of the fun.
January 24th, 2011 1:00am
She took me aside and said
“Look, I don’t do this every day,
you’ve got style…
All you’ve got is style,
I can see it from a mile away
There are probably a thousand unnameable emotions and anxieties that cluster up in the ten second pause between “you’ve got style” and “all you’ve got is style.” You seem to pass through the feelings in slow motion, slower at least than it would take for someone to actually say it. It’s a split second rendered in great detail before snapping back into what can be understood as “real time” within the song’s loose narrative. The songs takes about a minute to recover from that blow, but once the shock waves dissipate, the groove kicks in and Dan Bejar’s bohemian swagger returns. It’s beautiful, really. This is a truly gorgeous and affecting piece of music, and I don’t think I have ever heard anything quite like the graceful dissatisfaction in the sound of this, though I suppose people like Stephen Malkmus and Bob Dylan have spent a lot of time in this zone over the course of their careers.
None of this is exactly new for Bejar either, but there’s something magical in this song and the rest of Kaputt in comparison even to previous triumphs like Destroyer’s Rubies or “Myriad Harbour.” The album announces itself as a very special record — an instant classic! — in the way that it so perfectly conjures an immediately recognizable but totally ineffable set of feelings, images, concepts and arguments without seeming familiar. It’s so specific but it resists description. Really, a lot of why this is so moving is because it’s articulating complex thoughts and emotions that just do not make sense when you type them out.
January 21st, 2011 1:23am
I don’t really remember why, but I never got around to writing about Pearl Jam’s last album Backspacer. I suppose I just wasn’t up for it at the time it came out, things were kinda rough and it didn’t connect. I did like “The Fixer” more or less immediately. It’s undoubtedly one of the group’s best latter day singles, an energetic, compact composition that showcases their generally underrated gift for pop songwriting. (Has any other band written so many memorable radio hits while rarely getting credit for writing catchy, well-constructed songs?) A lot of what makes “The Fixer” work is the way the song plays off of the heroic quality of Eddie Vedder’s voice and stage persona. In this song, he’s an earnest, old fashioned guy who wants to save everyone and everything, and to preserve cherished things from the past that he fear may be lost forever. There’s a sense of humor in this, a touch of self-parody, but for the most part, this is the sound of the guy proudly owning his character, messiah complex and all.
January 20th, 2011 1:30am
There are countless love songs, but tough love songs are kinda rare, especially when they have nothing to do with sex and romance. “Not Good Enough” delivers a harsh message with a cheerful, friendly tune: “If you feel like you’re not good enough then you’re probably not, and you never, ever will be.” Ian Svenonius sings the words with no particular malice or venom, he mostly comes across like someone who respects the listener enough to not sugarcoat a hard truth. It’s important to note that he’s not telling anyone that they can’t do something, only that it’s impossible to accomplish much without believing on some level that you can do it.
January 19th, 2011 1:04am
“Marine Fields Grow” is slight and airy, but it has an intense gravity to it. It’s the kind of song that reaches out and pulls you into its sad, weary, romantic emotional zone. The vocals sound pained and impossibly sad as they echo within these circular, hypnotic melodic patterns. It sounds like she’s singing around a void, or singing to something that is no longer there. It’s horrible to realize when something or someone is gone, and that you suddenly need to restructure the way you live to avoid falling into this hole that cannot be filled. Other songs are about moving on from that loss, but this one feels like it’s only about the pain of realizing that it’s there in the first place.
January 18th, 2011 1:30am
Scott Miller was the frontman and primary songwriter for two great indie pop bands — Game Theory in the ’80s, and the Loud Family in the ’90s. I’m especially fond of the latter, mostly because the Game Theory albums are kinda hard to come by and so I’ve just spent a lot more time with the Loud Family. His aesthetic is consistent over the course of all those records: Sharp melodies, unusual song structures and chord changes, and carefully composed, postmodern, often very witty lyrics. If you’ve never heard his music, I strongly recommend listening to this mix I made collecting highlights from the Loud Family discography.
Miller began writing about music on the Loud Family website sometime in the late ’90s. Music: What Happened?, his first book of music criticism, was just released and I can’t recommend it highly enough. As it turns out, Miller is just as clever and insightful as a critic as he is as a lyricist. The book is pretty simple: He selected 20 favorite songs from every year between 1957 and 2009, and wrote a bit about every song. The format is actually very close to what you get on this site, but without the mp3s. I loved it, and I think that if you enjoy what I do, you’ll get a lot out of Scott’s writing.
Read the rest of this entry »
January 14th, 2011 9:20am
R.I.P. Trish Keenan.
My name is not Michael, but it’s very common for people to think that it is. It’s not far off from Matthew, I suppose, and it’s a nice enough name, so I’m never very offended. (I mean, if people were accidentally calling me Mike or Mikey or Mickey, I might take some issue.) The only time I ever wish that my name was actually Michael is when I hear this song. Trish Keenan sings the name with a quiet grace and gentle authority – Michael could just as well be her child as it as a lover, a brother, or a best friend. Lyrically as well as musically, the track is intimate and woozy, like a disjointed half-asleep late night conversation set to song.
January 13th, 2011 6:36am
I think she’s singing about animals dancing, but it doesn’t really matter. Like most Yelle songs, this is about the bounce of the beats, the brightness of the synthesizer tones, and this particular quality to her voice that is very captivating but sorta hard to explain. I love her assertive style, the way she kinda declares every line, but what really excites me is something in the very timbre of her voice. I like the way her vocals are treated here — it’s mostly her natural tone, but at some points it’s warped and extended. I imagine her voice hardening, becoming something like a force field. Everything just bounces off it, you know?
When I saw this title on the back cover of this CD, I really wanted to like the song because like most any reasonable person, I have a major soft spot for girls with English accents. Thank goodness this is a fitting tribute. The sound of it very mid-60s British rock, but filtered through a loose, stoned, free-wheeling American vibe. When they sing about wanting to visit England, they seem as if they’ve spent all their time listening to British Invasion records fantasizing about the bands’ groupies.
January 12th, 2011 6:57am
The harmony in the chorus of “Weekend” is so perfect, so familiar, so gentle and sweet. The rest of the song is like a shiny, sparkling frame for that gorgeous swoop of melody. The words mostly just narrate the vibe — the spiritual lift of minor excitement and the bummer of slight disappointment tied in with an earnest but low key infatuation. Like a lot of the best indie rock and power pop bands, Smith Westerns are good at evoking the magic in a small moment. Chances are, you either hear this and immediately identify with it in the moment, or you hear a bit of yourself from the past. I’d be sad for anyone who hasn’t ever felt some variation on this feeling. It’s a nice thing.
