Julianna Barwick “Choose”

Looping and layering vocal tracks is nothing new, but Julianna Barwick’s compositions are so effective in subtly shifting familiar sounds that the soothing waves of her voice are at once comforting and vaguely alien. There is a strong minimalist influence in her work, and this track in particular sounds like it could be Steve Reich conducting a women’s choir, but the music is not stiff and academic. Quite to the contrary, it is difficult to escape the emotional pull in these songs, even when it is nearly impossible to accurately identify what feelings are being expressed. She’s tapping into something nebulous but potent, primal and mysterious, and you’ll understand it right away.

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Handsome Furs @ Music Hall of Williamsburg 7/8/2009

Legal Tender / Talking Hotel Arbat Blues / All We Want, Baby, Is Everything / Evangeline / I’m Confused / ? / White City / Nyet Spasiba / The Handsome Furs Hate This City / Radio Kaliningrad // Dead + Rural / ?

Handsome Furs “Talking Hotel Arbat Blues”

It’s probably difficult to watch a Handsome Furs show without feeling a bit of envy for Dan Boeckner and Alexei Perry: They are clearly doing their favorite thing with their favorite person, throwing themselves fully into the moment and enjoying every second of it. Boeckner’s body language is loose and relaxed, contrasting with the nervous energy in his voice. Perry is restless and spazzy, kicking and falling dramatically through the set, and being about 400% more physical than her task as a keyboard player and drum machine operator requires. The songs and the performances are intense, but in watching the show, your mind doesn’t go to a dark and desperate place. Instead, you just marvel at this couple’s wonderful chemistry, laugh at their banter, and smile when they display a deep gratitude for the very fact that you showed up to see them play in a city with a myriad entertainment options. Not everyone gets to live the dream like these two, but it’s pretty obvious that they deserve it.

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Chicks On Speed “Girlmonster”

I think that most everything that I love about Chicks On Speed would be the top reasons why most people would find them to be incredibly off-putting: Hooks so aggressively catchy that they may as well be jingles, over-the-top campiness, relentless sloganeering, an unapologetic obsession with modern art and feminism. I’m also rather fond of their voices and the way their accents contrast, particularly in a song like “Girlmonster” that shifts between them at a dizzying pace. You can dismiss this as pretentious fluff, but it’s your loss — if people are going to be so ostentatiously arty, why not also be silly and fun? I love these women.

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Cam’ron featuring Byrd Lady and 40 Cal. “Woo Hoo!”

Cam’ron is on this track, but he’s on a lot of songs, so nevermind him for now — I’m a lot more interested in his guests. Byrd Lady is a young MC from Harlem who is making her recorded debut on this song and the single “Cookies-N-Apple Juice,” and I’m very impressed by her performance on both cuts. Her voice and delivery reminds me a bit of Lil Kim, but she’s clearly her own person, and her verses ring out with a lot style, charm, and humor. She comes on authoritative and strong, but also quite playful, ending on a spoken bit punctuated with stifled laughs that kinda melts my heart. Apparently she’s working on a mixtape right now — I’m definitely interested.

Byrd Lady is followed by 40 Cal., a Diplomats rapper who turns in a vaguely odd verse that bounces between ostentatiously speedy rhyming and moments when he pauses for a few beats before finishing a thought. This is most amusing when he asks “What’s your favorite number?,” and in the few split seconds before giving an answer, your mind just stops cold, thinking “Wait, what is my favorite number? Should I know this? Is this slang? Am I old? Too square? What’s going on?” And then the answer: “40!” Oh, right! Of course. His name is 40 Cal.

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Sonic Youth @ United Palace 7/3/2009

Sacred Trickster / No Way / Calming The Snake / Poison Arrow / Tom Violence / Walkin’ Blue / Anti-Orgasm / Leaky Lifeboat / Antenna / Catholic Block / Malibu Gas Station / Massage The History / The World Looks Red // What We Know / Pacific Coast Highway /// Brother James / Death Valley 69

The last four Sonic Youth shows that I have seen have either featured all of Daydream Nation, or a large chunk of it, and so it was quite a relief that the band opted not to play anything from that record at the United Palace. The other notable thing about this show was that it was indoors, which has become something of a rarity for NYC-area Sonic Youth concerts in recent years. It was a nice change of pace — United Palace isn’t exactly my favorite venue, but it suited the darker, more intense oldies selected for this setlist. Aside from the meandering “Massage The History,” this show clearly favored tight, tense numbers with a lot more grit than the lighter, more sprawling songs favored during the Rather Ripped era. I’d prefer for the band to head off more in this direction — I’ve had my fill of beach blanket SY, and I have always had a great love of their more sinister material.

Sonic Youth “Calming The Snake”

Of all the songs from The Eternal, “Calming The Snake” is most certainly the best in concert, and I hope that they keep it around for years to come. The studio recording is excellent, but it does not fully convey the deepness of its slithering groove, or the urgency of its rhythm, particularly in its most jarring moments. I like the new album fine, but I would absolutely love it if it was more in the mode of this song — sweaty, sexy, scary, violent, unhinged.

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R.E.M. “Letter Never Sent” (Live in Chicago, 1984)

Like most everything else in the R.E.M. catalog, I have already written about this song. The thing is, even if you’ve decided very long ago to like a piece of music, it may not mean very much until some aspect of it somehow resonates with the circumstances of your life. This is the case for “Letter Never Sent,” a perfectly lovely number that I had always classified as a relatively minor album track, and still kinda do — obviously, I think very highly of a great many R.E.M. compositions. Either way, listening through the bonus live record with the new reissue of Reckoning, the song caught me by surprise. “Letter Never Sent” has a light, sunny bop to it, which serves to understate the loneliness at its core. It’s a song about missing people, and wishing that people could just be with you whenever you want them around, even as you come and go as you please. The line that rings out for me the most is in the chorus: “Heaven is yours where I live.” Well, yes, of course it is! Even if it’s a bit condescending, it’s always true from your perspective. Come here and make me happy, and of course you’ll be happy too! Ha, maybe that’s why Michael is knock, knock, knocking on wood.

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Grizzly Bear “Cheerleader”

The first several times I heard this song, I misheard the lyrics slightly, and the result is that I’m making the song mean something to me that it’s not actually saying. That’s fair game, though, especially when I’m responding to the melody and the sound of the chords more than anything else. The phrase I’ve inserted into the song is “I shouldn’t make it matter,” which is actually the opposite of what they are singing, but precisely what I need to keep in mind, particularly when in the sort of mellow emotional drift suggested by the arrangement. I need to keep reminding myself that while it is perfectly reasonable and totally human to have feelings of petty resentment, jealousy, and disdain, it is foolish and self-destructive to dwell on them, and to make those feelings matter more than what is actually good, meaningful, and relevant. The sound of “Cheerleader” fits into this sort of minor, blindingly obvious epiphany — there is tension, but it slowly dissipates, shifting from shrugging resignation to a sense of calm and security.

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Amazing Baby “Smoke Bros”

I’m pretty sure Amazing Baby do not want you to think too much while listening to this song. If they did, they probably would’ve at least spell-checked the word the singer is spelling out in the chorus. But really, why bother when the hook is so catchy and every other line is entirely inscrutable? It’s all surface and sensation, and that doesn’t have to be a problem. It’s sexy without being skeevy; it’s somehow rather smart about being very, very dumb. The song is like a very attractive person who could say anything at all, and you’d just nod along, smiling just to have their attention in the moment.

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Michael Jackson “The Way You Make Me Feel”

It would be a profound understatement to say that Michael Jackson had a very strange life. In fact, the man led perhaps the single most unlikely and bizarre life of all time, every step of the way entirely removed from what anyone could consider anything like a normal existence. This is a large part of his tragedy, but it is also something that highlights his uncanny gifts as a musician and entertainer: Somehow, despite being so totally estranged from the ordinary, he was capable of evoking and articulating the essence universal emotions, and not just in broad strokes. I am certainly not an expert on Jackson’s love life and would not ever want to be one, but I think it’s fair to assume that the scenario in “The Way You Make Me Feel” probably doesn’t match up with his own experience — the line “I’ll be workin’ from 9 to 5” is a give away — but the man could sell the sentiment of the tune without flaw, nailing the nuances of his character’s infatuation, excitement, and confidence. His musical skill was clearly innate and miraculous, but it would not have meant that much without this incredible gift for interpreting, simplifying, and at times totally abstracting emotional experience into something so potent and primal that it could be instinctively understood across nearly all cultural boundaries. The man probably never felt normal a moment in his life, but it really seems like he understood humanity, or at least enough to synthesize his observations into these brilliant, intuitive performances.

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Kid Cudi with Kanye West, Common, A-Trak and Lady Gaga “Make Her Say”

Since it is fair to assume that famous rappers do in fact get a lot of groupie action, it is also reasonable to believe that songs like this are in some way non-fictional, and the girls described in the lyrics are actual people, or at least composites of women the rappers have been with. (You know, like in New York Magazine!) So with that in mind, what do you reckon it’s like for these ladies when these sort of sex tunes come out? These guys are probably quite prolific, so is there maybe some doubt in their mind whether they are actually rapping about them? Even if you’ve done something as specific as give head to Kanye West in a college library, how do you know that’s not some fetish of his, and he’s been getting BJs in the stacks of every university on his tour route? If you’re certain that the rapper is talking about you (“YES! I was born in 1988 and Kanye boned me! It has to be me!”), do you tell everyone, or keep it as a more private source of pride? Do you get a little annoyed when Common quotes you in a somewhat unflattering way? Are you bothered by the fact that you get mentioned in a song that loops the best hooks from a Lady Gaga song built around the thinly-veiled phrase “poke her face”? Did you want something more romantic? If you’re the subject of the least-famous rapper’s verse, are you jealous of the chicks who got with the bigger names? So many questions!

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Fight Like Apes “Tie Me Up With Jackets”

One of my favorite things about MayKay’s lyrics is her perverse penchant for mentioning unlikely food and beverages in her songs, with a particular emphasis on the way they smell. In my experience, odor is rarely evoked in music, and when it is, it’s usually a casual reference to something that smells very good. MayKay, on the other hand, seems interested in grounding emotional moments in unflattering contexts, suggesting that our most romantic experiences and dramatic epiphanies cannot exist in a vacuum devoid of the junk of life. “Tie Me Up With Jackets” is full of meatballs, apple schnapps, odd in-jokes, and disses of obscure bands, but no amount of clutter can obscure the big passionate heart beating at the core of the song. The sentiment comes out all weird, but there’s no mistaking her love and desire.

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God Help The Girl “Act of the Apostle II”

The Life Pursuit is one of my favorite albums from this decade, and this fact complicates my enjoyment of Stuart Murdoch’s latest project God Help The Girl in two big ways. First, it’s been quite a while since that record came out and my expectations for new Murdoch material is quite high thanks to that album, and so even the best tracks feel disappointing to me, even putting aside the fact that I generally don’t want to hear anyone but him singing his songs. Second, the songs that I enjoy the most on God Help The Girl happen to be reworked versions of numbers from The Life Pursuit, and that makes me feel as though I’m being somehow unfair to the other material. Though I do have mixed feelings about the new take on “Funny Little Frog” — I just don’t think it makes sense for the gender roles to be swapped on that one — I have no reservations about this new take on “Act of the Apostle II.” I enjoy the swing of this new arrangement, and the way Catherine Ireton sings the tune with a subtle balance of wryness and sincerity. Best of all, the new version delivers the kicker at the end of each verse with a sly grace, particularly on the line I enjoy the most: “I don’t think I could stand to be stuck, that’s the way that things were going.”

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The Vitamin String Quartet “The Bleeding Heart Show”

I’ve heard plenty of Vitamin Records’ string arrangements of well-known songs, and the best of them tend to bring out something in the melody of the piece that was always there, but not quite so evident in the original recording. In the case of this New Pornographers song, the quartet pushes much further into heart string-tugging melancholy than Carl Newman and company, and the result comes off like a sad love theme from some corny movie. That’s not a bad thing, or at least, it’s not if you can appreciate that sort of thing, or have some fun imagining extremely overwrought dramatic scenes that it could accompany.

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Discovery featuring Angel Deradoorian “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend”

I want this beat to snap a lot more that it does, but that’s a minor complaint. The synths in “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend” gurgle, throb, and sigh just as they should, and even with more digital manipulation than is totally necessary, Angel Deradoorian’s voice has an airy sweetness akin to late-period Mariah Carey. It’s a cute song too, maybe to the point of being slightly off-putting. If you want to be someone’s boyfriend, this is great. If you want someone to want to be your boyfriend, it might be even better. If neither thing pertains to your life at the moment, you may be inclined to think something like “Will you please stop pouring syrup into my ears?!?,” but fuck that.

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Teengirl Fantasy “Portofino”

There are a few really nice sounds in this composition, but the one that really gets me is the first keyboard tone you hear. Some of it is the melody of the figure, a lot of it is just the timbre, but it hits this perfect spot in my brain that makes me feel calm, cool, and safe. It’s not exactly soothing, per se — there are other keyboard washes that achieve that effect — but there is a friendly brightness to the sound, and in its tone I recognize something that makes me smile, but I can’t place it. It’s like a pleasant memory I keep forgetting, over and over, forever.

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The Gossip “For Keeps”

Beth Ditto has a huge and impressive singing voice, but it seems to have a limited application. She thrives on songs that express some kind of grievance, and allow her to play the part of the strong woman standing up for herself and speaking her mind. Whereas other singers communicate their anxiety, it’s clear that Ditto is trying to obliterate hers though sheer force of will. When she’s in this mode and paired with an inspired arrangement, she is unstoppable and incredibly empowering. “For Keeps” is one of her band’s best songs to date, particularly in the way that it plays up her strengths while pushing into a more sophisticated pop sound that adds a bit of textural nuance and elegantly composed chorus to their established quasi-primal rhythmic aesthetic. It’s sort of mystifying to me that this is not their new album’s first single, but we’ll see what happens down the line.

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Rachel Taylor Brown “Susan Storm’s Ugly Sister”

Susan Storm is the Invisible Woman of the Fantastic Four, and her superpower is that she can become, well, an invisible woman. Susan Storm’s Ugly Sister, an invention of songwriter Rachel Taylor Brown, did not need to be bombarded with cosmic radiation to acquire a similar talent — she’s simply found that her homeliness allows her to escape the notice of most everyone. The character is bitter and disturbed, and indulges in revenge fantasies in which she uses her “invisibility” to her advantage in murdering oblivious men. Brown’s arrangement and vocal performance is brilliant, emphasizing her character’s extreme discomfort and ethical conflict, as well as projecting a sort of sullen placidity that is periodically interrupted by tiny outbursts of simultaneous rage, angst and guilt.

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Jeffrey Lewis “If Life Exists (?)”

This song is essentially a shrug of resignation: There is no logic to our emotions, our intellect is at the mercy of our brain chemistry, and we live moment to unpredictable moment. Nevertheless, it is not wholly negative or even sorta sad. If anything, there is a calm in this song, as though simply admitting that being human is fairly difficult, and that disappointments are frequent and crushing, and that no matter how hard you try you cannot control everything, just takes this huge weight off your back. It’s a relief, and it’s true. It’s easier to be hard on yourself and expect too much than to be calm and relatively free of neuroses, but it’s also less productive. That’s the trade off: Would you rather have the drive to always feel that you need to improve and have it motivate you to actually gradually become a better person, or do you want to be mediocre and content? I know what I choose, but if you read this site regularly, you probably have a sense of just how anxious I can get.

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Fiona Apple “I Know”

Maybe there is something a bit weird about how one of the most beautiful and unbelievably painful love songs ever written is about David Blaine, but then again, it’s probably for the best that we don’t know anything about the people most songs are written about, right? I reckon the more emotionally wrought the song, the more likely it was written about someone lame, awful, or otherwise unworthy. This is where biography gets in the way of art — even with some specifics relating to stage performance, this is a song written about a very common experience. We never need to think of Blaine when listening to it.

(Edit: Okay, apparently it’s actually for Paul Thomas Anderson, but you know, same difference.)

“I Know” is a song about suffering through patience, and waiting, perhaps in vain, to have your love for someone validated and fully reciprocated. Its sentiment is gut-wrenching, but the lyrics and vocal performance are not particularly melodramatic. There is agony and sadness in nearly every moment, but the thinking is very pragmatic: I’ll help you out of your mess, I’ll support you, I’ll love you, I’ll swallow my pride and deal with my jealousy and stifle my desires, and….well, maybe there’s something good for me on the other side of all that.

It’s the hope that makes the song so devastating, and the way she clings to her faith that it will all be worth it in the end. But she can’t know what will happen, and the doubt drags her deep into melancholy. She feels a bit used, and she struggles to understand why he can’t just be straight with her.

The ending is brutal: “If it gets too late for me to wait for you to find you love me and tell me so, it’s okay, you don’t need to say it…” The title is implied but never uttered, and the song concludes on the equivalent of her casting her head down, and slowly walking off in the opposite direction, crestfallen and totally defeated.

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The Fiery Furnaces @ Le Poisson Rouge 6/11/2009

Here Comes The Summer / Leaky Tunnel / Chris Michaels / I’m Going Away / The End Is Near / Charmaine Champagne / Cut The Cake / Ray Bouvier / Staring At The Steeple / Even In The Rain / Keep Me In The Dark / Lost At Sea / Cups and Punches / Take Me Round Again / Drive To Dallas / Duplexes Of The Dead / Automatic Husband / Ex-Guru / Worry Worry / Wolf Notes // Single Again

I kept thinking about boxing during this show. The Fiery Furnaces were performing in the round under stark, dramatic lights in a relatively small room, and they played their songs in the leanest, most rhythmically taut ways possible in a guitar/bass/drums arrangement. This was particularly true in the opening trio of oldies, in which the melodies of the songs were foregrounded and unchanged, but the tone of the music was far more menacing and intense than usual. I was initially quite surprised that the performance was entirely focused on guitars given that I’m Going Away is such a piano-centric album, but for the most part, transposing the parts to guitar worked just fine, and in some cases (“Ray Bouvier,” “Even In The Rain”) improved the song in general. The new numbers were played fairly straight for the most part, but the old Friedberger perversity came around in some questionable decisions in playing the two best songs from the new record, “Drive To Dallas” and “Take Me Round Again.” They didn’t mess those tunes up, per se, but you could sense their restlessness with the material.

The Fiery Furnaces “The End Is Near”

Eleanor kept mentioning how most of the new songs were about ex-boyfriends, and at one point was almost apologizing for that fact, joking that they were now out of ideas. She shouldn’t be so concerned. I love the more obscure and whimsical topics that have come up in past Furnaces releases, but I welcome this more straightforward, emotionally driven material. They’ve done it before, but it’s never been as bittersweet as this, nor as neat and soulful. It was time to shift gears, and they made exactly the right decision — their melodic sensibility is front and center, the preciousness is dialed down considerably.

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Bat For Lashes “Pearl’s Dream”

The past four days have been nothing but darkness and rain, and it’s done a number on my brain. I’m not sure if I was always so sensitive to these sort of things, but I am pretty sure that a lack of sunlight is directly effecting my mood and productivity, and entirely for the worse. There is scientific basis for this, sure, but I still feel horrible admitting to it because I feel like I’m not taking responsibility for myself. Either way, in this negative lazy state, I find that I can’t enjoy a lot of music that I normally love. When I feel like this, so much sound becomes aggravating in and of itself, and what does stick is either so keyed into my emotional state that it is painful to hear, or provides some sort of comfort. Bat For Lashes’ “Pearl’s Dream” falls into the latter category. There is a dark gravity to Natasha Khan’s music, this irresistible pull into a grim yet magical world, and despite the gloominess that pervades her songs, there is something peaceful and calm in it, this noticeable lack of anxiety. If this is what feels right in this moment, it may speak well of me — perhaps I am moving toward this type of grace.

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