Spiritualized “Come Together”

Is there anyone else who can self-flagellate with as much elegance, wit, and grandiosity as Jason Pierce? “Come Together” is a masterpiece of over-the-top self-loathing, a thunderous mass of shrieking guitars, blaring fanfare, and gospel bombast all at the service of a scathing lyric sung by Pierce in the first person, tearing himself apart for being a junkie. As always, Pierce’s vocals are a shell-shocked deadpan, but he can barely hold back his self-directed venom when he spits out lines like “Little J’s a fucking mess, but when he’s offered, he just says yes.” On other tracks from Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are Floating In Space, the waves of sound are comforting and numbing, but in this, it pounds down on you, like he’s trying to beat some sense into himself. It’s futile, though — as the song tapers off and bleeds into the woozy opening section of “I Think I’m In Love,” it’s like slipping back into a stupor.

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Spoon “The Mystery Zone”

What is a mystery zone?

1. It’s a liminal state. Neither here nor there, but on the threshold of something new. Everything is uncertain, opportunities abound. It’s exciting and terrifying.

2. It’s the period of time before you really get to know someone, but you’re aware of each other’s existence. You had no idea you’d be significant to one another. It’s back when all there was to it was attraction, curiosity, and possibility.

3. It’s everything that goes on in everyone else’s life when you’re not around, or when you’re lost in your own head.

4. It’s an alternate universe version of your life in which you made totally different choices.

5. It is the realm of the “information troll”.

6. It’s the moment before physical impact. What will it feel like?

7. It’s before you kiss someone, before you have sex with them. It’s all of the things you can’t know about a person just by talking to them, and everything you can glean by touching them.

8. It’s anywhere except for where you are or where you have been.

9. It’s the love you’ve never received, and the love you’ve never given.

10. It is whatever happens next.

Buy it from Amazon. Here’s my review of Transference on Pitchfork.

Wild Beasts @ Music Hall of Williamsburg 2/28/2010

The Fun Powder Plot / We Still Got The Taste Dancing On Our Tongues / Vigil For A Fuddy Duddy / This Is Our Lot / Two Dancers I / His Grinning Skull / Two Dancers II / Please Sir / Brave Bulging Buoyant Clairvoyants / All The King’s Men / Hooting & Howling // The Devil’s Crayon / The Empty Nest / Cheerio Chaps, Cheerio Goodbye

Everything I wrote about Wild Beasts in concert a few months ago still stands. If anything, they’ve only gotten better and more confident with American audiences. Let’s talk about a song, shall we?

Wild Beasts “This Is Our Lot”

There’s a lot of violence and romance in the music of Wild Beasts. Sometimes the violence is very literal, as in the brutal gang rape described in “Two Dancers I” or the loutish behavior of the thugs in “Hooting & Howling,” and sometimes it’s more subtle or metaphorical, hidden in the peculiarities of social ritual or a character’s callous entitlement. Even when the band sing from the perspective of aggressive men, there’s an odd passivity in their language, as if their bold, selfish actions are something thrust upon them due to their relative status or physical power. Two Dancers in some ways seems like an album-length argument that humanity is doomed to both perpetrate and suffer violent action because we’re always living out some narrative based on our status relative to other people. We’re always stronger than someone else, and weaker than someone else. We push on other people as much as they pull on us. It’s all a vicious cycle, and sometimes it gets very grotesque.

“This Is Our Lot” is one of their more romantic songs, but it’s got a very potent sense of dread. The setting seems to be formal ball, the mood is celebratory but anxious. Sexual tension is everywhere in the room, but it’s all hemmed in by custom and ritual, making the character frustrated and agitated. The song builds to a climax in which he exclaims “I couldn’t be more ready!”, as if he’s about to burst. It stands out on the album as a moment in which aggressive desire is trampled by culture, and a character suffers for not being transgressive in his behavior.

Buy it from Amazon.

Quadron “Buster Keaton”

They used to call this sort of thing “sophisti-pop”, right? Immaculate, subtly synthetic versions of classic soul, with a bit of ironic distance contrasted with polite earnestness. “Buster Keaton” is a hard song to pin down — from moment to moment, the band is referring to totally different eras of R&B and pop, and though the basic structure and melody of the piece scans normally, it has an oddly vertiginous quality. I’m especially fond of the way the vocals and the horns in the chorus seem to swing like pendulums just out of synch with each other, though I could maybe do without the spoke “girl…” bit, though it is fairly cute.

Pre-order it from Amazon.

Mark Richardson is the managing editor of Pitchfork, and in my opinion, one of the site’s best writers. He’s consistently fair and thoughtful, and has a gift for writing about complex, arty works in layman’s terms, both humble and erudite. In other words, he’s the polar opposite of the worst stereotype of a “Pitchfork writer.” Mark’s first book, a volume about the Flaming Lips’ 1997 album Zaireeka for the 33 1/3 series, was just recently released. It’s one of my favorite books in the series, in part because it gets to the heart of what makes the Flaming Lips such a special and inspiring band, but also in that Mark goes on some very thought-provoking tangents about the way we engage with recorded sound as technology advances and how we are conditioned to listen closely to music alone. We get into some of that in this interview, but rest assured that this conversation only scratches the surface of what’s in the book.

Read the rest of this entry »

Serena-Maneesh “I Just Want To See Your Face”

“I Just Want To See Your Face” is basically a brief, catchy indie pop song, but its production and arrangement lend the piece an exaggerated depth of field implying that clusters of sound in the recording exist on overlapping physical planes. In some moments, you get the sensation of elements rushing suddenly into the audio equivalent of your field of vision, and in others, a sense of distance from musical elements that relate to and complete each other. The most dramatic overlaps remind me of how when you’d manually record television to VHS tapes, two different recordings would bump into each other, resulting in a fascinating and unique audio/visual glitch. The general effect of the recording makes the sentiment of the lyrics that much sweeter — it’s like trying to recreate a memory of someone, but not quite having your emotional impressions and visual recollection line up exactly.

Pre-order it from Amazon.

Pantha Du Prince “Bohemian Forest”

The brightest notes in this piece all sound like circles to me. Spheres in three dimensions, floating on their own, or in clusters of bubbles through the air. It’s almost impossible for me to hear this any other way, though the title suggests a dark, dense landscape for the circles. Maybe it’s like glowing orbs hovering through the woods at night, like unknown, otherworldly insects. You could see it, and it would seem peaceful and beautiful, but a little uncomfortable and vaguely menacing because you’d have no idea what it is.

Buy it from Amazon.

Dum Dum Girls @ Mercury Lounge 2/21/2010

Hey Sis / Catholicked / I Will Be / Don’t Talk To Me / Yours Alone / Brite Futures / Play With Fire / Bhang Bhang, I’m A Burnout / Jail La La / Rest Of Our Lives

Dum Dum Girls “Jail La La”

I didn’t expect to love the Dum Dum Girls’ debut album as much as I do, but quite simply, their songs are very difficult to resist. In aesthetic terms, they are working in well-mined territory, but Dee Dee’s songwriting is a cut above and the production has this ideal balance of lo-fi grit and professional sparkle. They’re going for a classic sound, but unlike many artists who attempt to ape a reverb-heavy style, the material goes beyond recreating a surface. The best of these songs have an evergreen quality, and would be just as good if recorded in a variety of styles.

In concert, the band is sharp and focused, but not overly rehearsed. There is a bit of awkwardness to their set, particularly as Dee Dee pauses to tune her guitar between every song, and her band mates mostly stand around in silence. Near the end, she explained that she thought we’d rather hear the songs in tune than very quickly, and while that is true, they may want to figure out a way to work around this in the future. (Maybe they can get successful enough to have their own guitar tech!) The set was also a bit too brief. I understand the notion of “leave ’em wanting more,” but the band have at least another five absolutely amazing songs on their album that they did not perform, and they could have easily played another ten minutes or so. While it’s true that I now just want to go see them again in the hopes that those selections will become part of their regular set, I am a bit confused why they’d opt not to play songs as excellent as “It Only Takes One Night” and “Everybody’s Out.” At least they played “Rest of Our Lives”, though — that’s the one that melts my heart, and it was lovely in concert.

Pre-order it from Amazon.

Happy Birthday “Girls FM”

I have not heard any of Happy Birthday’s studio recordings besides “Girls FM”, so I was a bit surprised by their live performance last night opening up for Dum Dum Girls. This recording suggests a cleaner sound owing more to latter day Sub Pop acts, but their show is more early Sub Pop, with obvious roots in early ’90s indie rock and grunge. At their best, they came across like a bubblegum version of Royal Trux, or a K Records take on Dinosaur Jr. I’m curious now to hear how this album came out. Did all the grunge elements get cleaned up? Are they more indie-pop and less rockin’ in the studio? They’ve certainly got some charm and hooks; we’ll see where this goes.

Pre-order it from Amazon.

These New Puritans “Three Thousand”

These New Puritans aren’t breaking new ground for apocalyptic grimness in music, but they are quite good at synthesizing very different strains of doom pop into something that sounds rather fresh. “Three Thousand”, for example, is the midpoint between the A Frames’ dead-eyed, deadpan monotone punk and the chilly, broken-machine clunk of Def Jux-style hip hop production. The sound throughout their new album Hidden is consistently shiny and immaculate, which makes its loud martial rhythms sound as though they’ve been freshly minted for destruction. Somehow the rigid order and cleanliness of the music makes it seem much, much more creepy and paranoia-inducing.

Buy it from Amazon.

Fight Like Apes @ Mercury Lounge, 2/17/2010

Something Global / Digifucker / Lend Me Your Face / I’m Beginning To Think You Prefer Beverly Hills 90210 To Me / Do You Karate? / Jake Summers / Tie Me Up In Jackets / Knucklehead / Lightsaber Cock Sucking Blues / Battlestations

Fight Like Apes rock out. They’re funny. They chat with the audience, and make sure that everyone in the room participates. They do goofy theatrical stunts in concert. Every song is super catchy. Basically, they are ridiculously entertaining. They should not be playing to small crowds in America. This is a band that should have a rabid cult following. There should be hundreds of teens and college kids totally losing their shit at their shows. Yeah, they play with irony and come out of indie, but they should be playing to emo and mall punk kids. The people who might really appreciate them. Can we get them to tour with Paramore or something? Can I convince anyone in NYC to go see them play Union Hall tonight? Who knows.

Fight Like Apes “Something Global”

So yes, Fight Like Apes are fun and goofy, and they indulge in some ironic humor, but what makes them so appealing is how earnest they can be. May Kay may sing some nonsense, but the emotional content of these songs always rings out loud and clear. “Something Global” is especially straight forward: They feel out of step with music culture, but they love it and hate it and love it and hate it. It’s a statement of intent — they want to get people excited and they’re not afraid to be pop. It’s a bit “take us or leave us,” but it’s mostly “you’d be a fool not to love us.”

Buy it from Amazon. The price for the mp3 download is very low!

The Knife featuring Lærke Winther “The Height of Summer”

The Knife’s Tomorrow, In A Year is a difficult album in several ways. It is an opera about the life and work of Charles Darwin, which would be enough to make it a challenging experience for many listeners, but on top of that, it’s a rather distinct and atypical opera incorporating several abstract sequences and elements of dance music. Its most bizarre moments are often brilliant and evocative, but are not “listenable” in the way most people engage with music, and demand a very high level of attention, investment, and benefit of the doubt. In addition to all that, the advance mp3 for the album, “The Colouring of Pigeons”, was so impossibly brilliant that it was almost inevitable for me to feel let down by the full opera. I had expected an entire record on that wavelength, what I got was a lot more impressionistic and scattered. This isn’t a huge problem, though — I accept and appreciate Tomorrow, In A Year for what it is. It’s a bold, original work that does its own thing, and I have faith that it’s more impressive when actually staged as an opera rather than as a studio recording.

“The Height of Summer” is the final song on Tomorrow, In A Year, and it serves as something of a narrative coda. It is not an opera song or some impressionistic composition, but instead a pop ballad very much along the lines of what is typically expected of the Knife. It’s a strange, beautiful piece of music that has an unlikely yet graceful balance of flutter and bounce. The tone is wistful and nostalgic; it is essentially a piece of correspondence set to song. Lærke Winther’s voice is cool and understated, but she comes across as thoughtful and imaginative, like a person who spends a great deal of time in her head, but is making the effort to check in on the outside world. Darwin the man may be a distant, fond memory for her, but his ideas still resonate for her in the seemingly minor details of life, and in how she imagines a world without her.

Buy it from Amazon.

Peter Gabriel “Street Spirit (Fade Out)”

I’ve been getting sent a steady stream of terrible, mediocre, or forgettable records for many years now, and I think it has given me a pretty decent frame of reference for how bad and boring music can get. In most cases, instinct kicks in and I immediately get a feeling of “Yeah, this is not for me” or “I need to turn this off right away.” Sometimes something will be bad in a way that is amusing, and I’ll share it with a friend for a quick laugh before moving on and forgetting all about it. I tend not to dwell on the bad music.

Peter Gabriel’s new album of covers, Scratch My Back, is one of the most mesmerizingly awful records I have ever encountered. It is terrible in a way that seems unique and special; hideous in a way that is possibly quite profound. His selection of material is fine, but his execution is horrendous, to the point of obliterating the appeal of every song.

Gabriel is a man who has written and recorded many good songs with thoughtful arrangements in his life, but his approach to this material is that of a pompous buffoon who has no understanding of why any of these songs worked in the first place. His bombast is flat, his phrasing is awful, his instincts are poor. He eliminates rhythm and melody from his Talking Heads cover, strips the wit from the Magnetic Fields and the levity from Paul Simon, and performs David Bowie’s “Heroes” in a way that ignores its essential dramatic restraint. There are two modes on this album, and sometimes they intersect: Bloated melodrama and/or clinical depression.

Gabriel’s version of Radiohead’s “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” is a great example of just how much he doesn’t get it. The reason why the original is so moving has to do with the way the guitar parts fall together into gorgeous harmony with Thom Yorke’s lead vocal. It sounds like clockwork, specifically like a Doomsday Clock ticking away. It’s a very delicate piece of music. Gabriel’s version is a morose tuneless mess, with every bit of subtlety, melody, and beauty wiped out completely. It seems as though he thinks these songs are just lyrics arbitrarily paired with music, and that if you just recite the words with any old thing, it’s still the song. NO, PETER! THAT’S NOT WHAT MUSIC IS!!!! You don’t need to be totally slavish in replicating a song to produce a good cover version, but you have to on some level recognize the basic elements of what the song is, and carry that over to your interpretation.

The abysmal arrangement would be bad enough, but his vocal performance is truly appalling, especially for such an accomplished vocalist. Did he take a gun shot to a lung while recording this? Was he bleeding out as it recorded? Is this his death rattle? Is this a posthumous release?

Buy it, if you must, from Amazon.

Thrushes “Crystals”

There are a lot of songs about being rejected by someone that you adore who would rather be with some other person, and to some extent, Thrushes nod in the general direction of a bunch of them, keenly aware that they are treading on familiar territory. “Crystals” is a real gut puncher. It’s sweetly romantic and eager to please; it’s like a sad puppy face getting stared down by indifferent eyes. Anna Conner sounds wounded but not quite defeated, there’s still a lot of hope in her voice. The thing that really breaks my heart, though, is how she keeps singing “Who will I find to talk to? … I wish it was you.” It doesn’t sound like she’s asking for a lot, but she’s still being denied. So much loneliness, so much frustration, so much love to give. Happy Valentine’s Day, everybody.

Buy it from Thrushes.

Scout Niblett “Duke Of Anxiety”

The Calcination of Scout Niblett is a lonely and anguished sort of album, with most every track sounding like a very introverted woman going through some kind of public catharsis. “Duke of Anxiety” fits into the album nicely, but it’s also something of a reprieve, at least in that it’s more of a “pop” song than anything else on the record, and it seems like it’s coming from a different perspective than the other songs. The skeletal arrangement, bitter wit, and concrete details in the lyrics reminds me of early Liz Phair and her talent for sketching out characters in bleak vignettes that hint at larger narratives and deeper problems than what is being expressed in the song. Niblett’s frail, expressive voice is well-suited to giving voice to a desperate woman sinking into alcoholism, acting out, and considering some kind of escape from her circumstances. Every moment of this is heartbreaking, but there’s a few notes of optimism in here, even if it’s a bit misguided or delusional. That’s part of what makes it all feel so vivid and real.

You can read my review of The Calcination of Scout Niblett on Pitchfork today.

Buy it from Drag City.

Massive Attack featuring Martina Topley-Bird “Babel”

It’s nice to have Martina working with good people again. Her two solo albums weren’t bad, but are bland in a way that strongly suggests that she is the kind of artist who needs a good collaborator to yield interesting results. Her chemistry with Tricky is perhaps one of those once-in-a-lifetime things, but Massive Attack at least get what is so captivating about the sound of her voice, and what kind of rhythms and textures flatter her distinctively slurred purr. In “Babel”, she’s the cool, calm center of a composition largely composed of tense, fidgeting beats and metallic clanging. It mostly sounds like regret and dread, like some bad decisions have been made and we’re just bracing for the aftermath. She sounds like an observer, or someone who has stepped outside of themselves enough to gain perspective on a situation, but at the same time losing perspective on their place in the mess. Ahhh, romantic gloom and cryptic subtext…Martina Topley-Bird’s bread and butter!

Buy it from Amazon.

Inlets “In Which I, Robert”

Robert is a nervous, uncomfortable guy, and that could translate into seeming a bit creepy. That much is clear in the first few measures of “I Which I, Robert,” before the vocals come in. The song kinda lurches and skulks around with an odd grace. You can picture the guy’s body language as an ugly awkwardness so lived-in that it appears natural, almost beautiful in a way. The lyrics add dimension to the character, and makes him rather sympathetic, but so much of this is in the way they sketch out this person and his interior life with instrumental parts that work much like the gestural lines of a cartoonist.

Visit the Inlets MySpace page.

Hot Chip “Thieves In The Night”

I’m not sure if there are many pop songs that I would describe as rational, generous, and thrilling in equal measures, but that’s pretty much what is going on in “Thieves In The Night”, on on Hot Chip’s new album in general. They’ve always toyed with presenting warm emotions with a chilly affect, and though that sometimes results in merely lukewarm results, their gems have a wonderful balance and tension to them that is more nuanced and human than flat and robotic. “Thieves In The Night” is one of the band’s finest compositions to date, a steadily building opener that has the bright tonality and calculated precision of Kraftwerk, but the warm soul of a polite gentleman. It’s basically a song about the blurry line separating needs and wants, and the difficulty of going through life without finding satisfaction, or knowing what path may lead to real happiness. There’s nothing smug or condescending about the sentiment. Joe Goddard sings “happiness is what we all want / may it be that we don’t always want” on the chorus, and he couldn’t sound more genuine in wanting the best for us all. Coming back to that chorus after a surprisingly excellent guitar solo, the song seems to glow in pulsing waves, like some kind of beacon of hope and goodwill. It keeps moving forwards, as if to sweep the listener up and carry them along to some better, happier point in the future.

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Slow Club “Giving Up On Love”

Well, these two sound awfully cheerful for a couple of people singing about abandoning their hopes and dreams! Still, as much as they’re expressing frustration with unrequited love and loneliness, it’s very apparent that they’re having a lot of fun with the drama of it all. Why else would this song sound like such an unironic thrill? On the face of it, Charles Watson and Rebecca Taylor are shouting “That does it, I quit!”, but it’s obvious to anyone that they’re actually sweetly proclaiming “I’m ready! Love me! Love me!” The best moment in the song comes when Rebecca sings “I’ve been tired and hopeful for far too long now” on the bridge to the chorus, and despite the negativity in her words, she couldn’t sound more forthright and optimistic. This isn’t really about being sad and desperate, it’s about having a lot of love to give and getting impatient waiting for someone who deserves it all.

Buy it from Amazon.

Field Music “In The Mirror”

The Brewis brothers of Field Music excel at crafting neat, orderly songs that come across like character studies of mild-mannered, repressed men struggling to deal with stress and anxiety like some kind of mature adult. Some of their compositions deal with faint conflicts rendered in tight yet essentially breezy music, but the most affecting numbers, like “In The Mirror”, foreground nervous tensions without letting them entirely crack through the song’s highly polished surface. In this track, the steady trebly ringing of a piano is contrasted with rock instrumentation so mannered that it plays almost like classical music, like a bit of loose scrawl on a rigid grid. The lyrics are subtly gutting: “I wish I could change and make new rules, and love myself better,” delivered plaintively, but rather matter-of-fact. It’s like a struggle to contain earnest, potent emotion, and to attempt to rationalize every problem. Some music works for us because it allows us to indulge in thoughts and feelings we can’t really allow ourselves to freely express. This has a different function, either giving us insight into someone else, or serving as a mirror for our own repressed anxieties.

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Malachai “Snowflake”

I wonder if anyone can listen to this song without the phantom sensation of smelling smoke or imagining men with big bushy mustaches. Malachai’s music is a skewed kind of retro, sounding just enough like lost records from the ’60s and ’70s while allowing for just enough room for modern touches that their aesthetic scare-quotes are apparent to the listener. This could be tedious if the band didn’t have any real songs, but cuts like “Snowflake” have big, burly déjà vu-inducing hooks that grind their way into your skull just as well as the “real” thing. The vocals are notable for their full commitment and slightly odd resonance: This guy sings most of the song with a macho growl that’s more peevish and perturbed than alpha-male commanding.

Buy it from Amazon.