Kate Miller-Heidke “Can’t Shake It”

There are so many songs that encourage people to dance, or go on about how totally awesome dancing is, and relatively few that express a powerful nervousness about dancing, and feeling horrible about one’s inability to loosen up and move in a way that is not thoroughly embarrassing. This is particularly odd given just how many people feel awful about their body, or have no idea what to do with themselves when confronted with loud, beat-centric music. If you fall into that category, Kate Miller-Heidke feels your pain, and she’s singing about it too. “Can’t Shake It” is all self-deprecating humor and cute irony, and though it touches on valid, potent anxieties, the song keeps a clear-eyed, light-hearted perspective on the problem.

Buy it via Kate Miller-Heidke’s official site.

Polly Scattergood “Nitrogen Pink”

“Nitrogen Pink” plays out like an epic story, like a Kate Bush variation on “Born To Run,” but the lyrics side-step any sort of narrative in favor of vivid, disconnected imagery, and a dramatic build toward an abstracted catharsis. Despite its stadium-sized grandeur, most of its sounds are atypical or counter-intuitive, contributing to the sense that the piece is like a replica of something that maybe does not exist. Scattergood’s voice carries the song through each new dramatic plateau, emoting convincingly while occasionally lapsing into a cracked, cynical tone that recalls the singing of Dan Bejar.

Buy it from Amazon.

Fol Chen “Cable TV”

The protagonist of “Cable TV” is dead broke, but has just enough money to treat her sweetheart to an day of relative luxury at a cheap motel in the middle of the desert. The song is delivered in a familiar sort of flat, cool-girl deadpan, but it’s less about conveying a condescending distance from the character and her situation, and more about communicating something along the lines of “Hey, I know this is ridiculous, but let’s make our own fun, even if it involves watching television in a place other than our apartment.” If anything, the ironic humor only makes the song sweeter by contrasting tight financial limitations with the genuine comfort and affection of the couple, particularly when they start dancing in their underwear to old Janet Jackson hits. In other words, fun and love trump glamor and wealth.

Pre-order it from Asthmatic Kitty.

R.E.M. “Harborcoat” (Live in Toronto, 1983)

I’ve already written about this song at length, so let’s just for a moment focus on sound of this particular recording, and by extension, the entire concert included with the new reissue of Murmur. One of the most appealing elements of R.E.M.’s earliest recordings is the way Peter Buck’s chords and notes ring and chime with this sort of disarming clarity, as if you are hearing something precise and impossibly clean in contrast with the muddled, unmistakably human quality of Michael Stipe’s voice. That sound comes through in this live performance, but it is filtered through the energy and urgency of being young dudes playing in a rock club, resulting in slightly mutated versions of by now incredibly familiar songs. Today, Murmur and Reckoning seem like records that have somehow always existed despite belonging to a particular time and place, but this live disc is a good reminder that they were the work of a hungry young band who just happened to become brilliant craftsmen only a few years into their career.

Buy it from Insound.

Also, as a bonus for you, I’ve set up a little R.E.M.-centric contest with the people at Insound. Basically, if you go here, you can enter to win a copy of the new R.E.M. coffee table book Hello: Photographs by David Belisle, which is one of the featured items in their holiday gift guide. There’s never been a better time to support indie retail, so go check that out.

Marnie Stern @ Music Hall of Williamsburg 11/28/2008 and Santo’s Party House 11/30/2008 (same setlist both shows)

Transformer / The Crippled Jazzer / Shea Stadium / Steely / Precious Metal / Vibrational Match / Prime / Ruler / Grapefruit / Vault / Every Single Line Means Something

When you consider the fact that a lot of rock and roll musicians don’t play with very many other musicians, and often spend most if not all of their career working with players who they stumbled into by chance — childhood friends, local acquaintances, people who answer ad listings — actual creative chemistry can be sort of miraculous. I’m not talking about just getting along and being able to play together competently — I mean, like, needle-in-a-haystack, artistic soulmate, complete-each-other chemistry. I’m talking about what Marnie Stern and Zach Hill have going for them.

In an alternate universe, Marnie Stern plays with some musicians who aren’t up to her level, and it drags her down. She has to compromise a bit, or maybe it’s the same, and it’s sloppier, or just less nimble. In another alternate universe, she’s paired with players who are just as good or better than she is, but their vibe is more uptight, and it saps some of the joy and thrill power from her songs. In yet another alternative universe, Marnie Stern never gets it sorted with other musicians, and she never really gets anywhere on her own. In our universe, she works with Zach Hill, and he matches her creativity, energy, and spirit without overshadowing her personality.

In concert, they lock in with their second guitarist Mark Shippey on some tight compositions, but despite the demanding nature of the individual parts, they never seem to be working hard. In fact, if you watch their body language, they seems almost freakishly casual. Hill in particular has an exaggerated looseness to his movement that disconnects somewhat from the precision of his performance. At many times through each of the shows, he looked more like a guy hanging out around a drum kit than a dude mercilessly pounding out fills and switching up beats. Stern’s on stage persona is a wonderful blend of silliness, enthusiasm, and intensity. Even when she’s clearly sick, as she was in the Manhattan show, she communicates this pure excitement for rocking out that in my experience is surprisingly rare. It’s so nice to watch a band have a good time, and to be fully aware that what they’re doing is awesome, and that it’s even more awesome that they get to do it.

(This is totally embarrassing in light of how I wrote this review, but uh, that actually wasn’t Zach Hill. Check the comments.)

Marnie Stern “Transformer”

For about two hours after the show in Brooklyn, I couldn’t get the main hook from “Transformer” out of my head: “I cannot be all these things to you, it’s true.” The lyric is terrific in print, but as with any good song, the music adds a meaning words alone could never convey. It’s all in the way “iiiiit’s truuue!” extends out slightly, as if climbing a steep incline and dropping like a roller coaster. There is anticipation and thrill, but also this maybe-unintentional nod to Sisyphus rolling a boulder up a hill, and having it roll right back down. The thing is, “Transformer” is a song that confronts futility and limitation head-on, and in doing so, sorta games the system, and finds a way toward triumph. In other words, when she sings “it’s true!,” you kinda get the sense that this time, against all odds, Sisyphus wins, and the boulder doesn’t just stay in place at the top of the hill, but instead rolls down the other side and becomes someone else’s problem.

Buy it from Amazon.

Architecture In Helsinki “That Beep”

“That Beep” is overflowing with immediately enjoyable hooks and melodic turns, but it’s far from overstuffed. The track is clean and spacious, and it moves gracefully from one bit to the next in a way that never seems even remotely fragmented. The connecting thread, and I suppose it is technically the dominant hook, is the “beepbeepbeepbeep” chorus, but to my ears it works more like a mellow refrain bracketing the more expressive moments in the song, particularly the sections that slip into this sort of neo-80s ersatz gospel mode. Kellie Sutherland’s voice is wonderful on this song,

especially in the way she comes off as assertive while shying away from extreme feelings, and leaning more on very nuanced phrasings that subtly shift her meaning and emotional context from line to line, or even from word to word.

Buy it from Architecture In Helsinki.

Lil’ Wayne and The Game “Red Magic”

I don’t really spend a lot of time with hip hop mixtapes, mainly because I just get so totally annoyed by the voice overs and/or audio clips that get mixed all up and through them. In the case of this new Lil’ Wayne mixtape, you have to deal with these stupid, highly aggravating clips of some guy saying stuff like “The Empire!” and “Holy s–t, where’d you get this?” In most cases, it totally ruins the song, and renders them unlistenable. Thankfully, whoever was charged with editing in those announcements in this particular number at least had the sense to slip them in so that they were mostly on the beat, and didn’t get in the way of music so much. It’s lucky, really — “Red Magic” is certainly the best cut on the mixtape, not simply for its abundances of hooks, but for its sharp guest performance from The Game, and it’s definitely good enough that I can deal with this Empire douchebag.

Get it from this Sharebee link.

Kanye West “Paranoid”

I’m going to be honest with you: My first impressions of 808s and Heartbreak were pretty bad. At one point only a week ago I was throwing around hyperbolic phrases such as “aesthetic abomination” to describe it. Despite being put off by its abundance of autotuned vocals, it was immediately apparent to me that it could easily be someone’s favorite album, and so I resolved to give the record a fair shot. I kept with it, and it won me over gradually over the course of a few days, and then suddenly all at once as my ambivalence transformed into full-on love in the span of a couple hours.

It happened like this: At first, it all seemed very homogenous, but then I started flicking through and gravitating to interesting bits of sound, particularly in tracks like “Street Lights” and “Robocop.” Then I began to notice the variations in vocal effects, and realized that West was not just slipping into a standard T-Pain autotune autopilot, but was instead employing carefully considered tones and effects in order to achieve specific results of a piece with the goals of the entire arrangements. It’s so easy to think of autotune as being this crass, ugly production fad that seems to pop up almost exclusively in terrible songs, but West does so much on 808s and Heartbreak to redeem the very sound of it, and exploit it in ways that owe a debt to other artists who have toyed with vocal effects, but also seem specific to himself, and the particular, highly defined aesthetic of the album.

Ultimately, the thing that unlocked the album for me was the presence of warm, unfiltered vocals on the tracks “Paranoid” and “Street Lights.” They are crucial for both context and contrast, and sit on the far end of a very deliberate continuum of vocal expression on the record. In “Street Lights,” West’s vocals are recognizably human, but are shadowed by a particular grain of digital distortion that somewhat emulates the persistent ambient wash of white noise in a shoegazer song. That sound is complemented by an array of similarly woozy keyboard textures that leave the arrangement sounding like a cross between U2 and My Bloody Valentine before adding in some absolutely gorgeous gospel harmonies. West’s voice becomes more stiffly rhythmic and melancholic as the song progresses, contrasting dramatically with the passionate, largely wordless vocalizations of his backing singers.

“Paranoid” has a similar vocal dichotomy, but the composition is far more colorful and upbeat, thanks in part to keyboard parts straight out of French house music and inspired, nuanced synth-pop drum programming that owes a clear debt to the likes of Erasure, Depeche Mode, and New Order. “Paranoid” is a moment of relative levity in the middle of an otherwise down-hearted and bitter set of songs, and though it touches on the running theme of romantic distress and dissolution, its tone is more easygoing, conciliatory, and self-assured than its neighboring tracks. This comes across in the tones of keyboards and drum machines, but also in the way West’s largely rapped vocals slip casually in and out of autotune flourishes, and sit comfortably alongside some rather stunning R&B backing vocals on the chorus. The song gives off the aura of supreme confidence and style familiar from West’s previous records, but it does not contradict the sadness and confusion at its heart, or avoid the compelling yet occasionally appalling self-absorbed pettiness that comes through in nearly all of the record’s tracks.

In genre terms, “Paranoid” is a queer mutant, but it flows so naturally in these crisp, clean waves of pleasure that its distinctive arrangement is sort of a non-issue. The very presence of the autotune effect on the song seems very matter of fact, just one more particular and carefully selected sound among many, and then, boom, suddenly the entire album falls into line. Even the most drastic usage of autotune, often employed as a sort of distancing device, seems natural and brilliant rather than gimmicky and lame.

Buy it from Amazon.

Wiley & Daniel Merriweather “Cash In My Pocket”

Musicians, take note: It is probably a very good idea for you to write catchy songs about being broke and/or desperately wanting money right about now. They don’t have to be miserable, mind you — it’s probably for the best to lean in the direction of this Wiley single, which balances out the frustration of insolvency with a perky, can-do optimism. Wiley’s verses are energetic and enjoyable, but his lyrics are largely beside the point — he’s basically just doing a hip hop stock move, i.e. “I come from nothing, but I’ve made some money from my music, and so I will flaunt it a bit without forgetting my roots.” The real action is in Mark Ronson’s musical arrangement and Daniel Merriweather’s chorus, the latter providing the bulk of the song’s emotional resonance, and the former lending the track a jolting sense of urgency. When the galloping beat overlaps with Merriweather’s white boy soul — actually, his voice sounds more than a little bit like that of Damon Albarn — the song just sparks, and kinda zaps you into its hustling state of mind.

Visit the Wiley MySpace page.

Anjulie “Love Songs”

“Love Songs” is a pretty straightforward admission of susceptibility to stock romantic narratives and iconography, particularly when the fantasy is tied into wealth and social position. It’s not a critique, mind you — it’s a sweet song about being sentimental and wanting affection and lovely things — but there’s certainly an awareness of class and privilege that bleeds into its wistful longing for the easy drama and happy endings of post-Hollywood fiction. That awareness is key to the song’s appeal — it keeps it feeling humble and non-demanding, and the bit of distance makes it all feel a bit less sad, and more like the work of a person familiar with — and wary of — the concept of aspirational branding.

Buy it from iTunes.

Electric Six @ Webster Hall 11/22/2008

(Flashy intro) / Flashy Man / It’s Showtime! / We Were Witchy Witchy White Women / Down At McDonnelzzz / Gay Bar / Night Vision / Lenny Kravitz / Dirty Ball / Rock and Roll Evacuation / Improper Dancing / Danger! High Voltage / The Future Is In The Future / Your Heat Is Rising / I Buy The Drugs / Dance Epidemic / (Reggae skanking with banter) / Germans In Mexico // Gay Bar Part Two / She’s White / Formula 409 / Dance Commander

Some notes:

* Dick Valentine came out for “Flashy Man” wearing a red cape with the word “Flashy” in silver, glittering script. When they finished playing the song, he removed that cape to reveal a purple cape with the word “Showtime” on the back, which led to them going into “It’s Showtime!” Ah, the old double-cape trick!

* Ever since Barack Obama was elected to the be the next president, I had been wondering what Valentine was going to do about “Rock and Roll Evacuation,” an E6 concert staple that climaxes with the lines “Mr. President, make a little money sending people you don’t know to Iraq / Mr. President, I don’t like you — you don’t know how to ROCK!” Valentine addressed these concerns before performing the song, saying that they are still going to play it, and that in his mind, the song was always going to be about Bush. He then bellowed “Bush!” a few times, sorta like Captain Kirk shouting “Khan!” in the second Star Trek movie, and the band launched into the tune.

* As per usual, the Electric Six audience is a rowdy bunch. In this particular show, there was a lot of stage diving, though mostly from this one woman who must’ve gotten up on stage about 15 times over the course of the set. Later in the show, a big dude tried to get up there, but was promptly taken away by some security guards. After that, a skinny, confused-looking Asian girl in high heels got up there, and Valentine took her and placed her in the corner behind the drums. She came back out, and Valentine put her back there again.

* I very much wish that I could have a recording of every live rendition of “The Future Is In The Future” over the course of an entire Electric Six tour just so I could hear all the variations on Valentine’s mid-song breakdown banter. It always seems to follow the same basic formula — Valentine claims that his drummer was born someplace in the vicinity of the venue and makes some sort of comment on his class relative to that place. At the Bowery Ballroom last year, his drummer was a rich kid from Westchester County who had been given the best drum lessons money could buy, and this time, he was a working class guy from Asbury Park, New Jersey who was buying up real estate on the Lower East Side. I’m definitely underselling these bits in describing them — they are totally hilarious, pointed, and strange.

Electric Six “Flashy Man”

Alexyss K. Tylor’s Atlanta-based public access Vagina Power shows are often concerned — nay, obsessed! — with a sort of absurd hyper-masculinity that is perfectly simpatico with the Electric Six’s long-running satire of grotesque manliness and all its corresponding or conflicting neuroses. The concept of the “Flashy Man” is lifted directly from quotes and samples from Tylor’s most famous clip on YouTube, in which she describes a supremely confident, highly promiscuous, and sexually talented man who seems to exist only to shame and cuckold milder men, and to satisfy women physically, but not spiritually or emotionally. The “Flashy Man” is essentially a soulless man of action, and though we may find a vicarious thrill in his exploits, the undertow of the song comes in realizing that we do not and cannot have his swagger, and that his very existence triggers insecurity and doubt. The inner life of the “Flashy Man” is almost entirely irrelevant — he may bury, obscure or drown out his emotions, but in the song, that’s mostly just a projection of a desire of the non-flashy man, who is hobbled and emasculated by his own humanity.

Buy it from Amazon. Also, pssssst…

Jensen Sportag “Power Sergio”

There’s very little in “Power Sergio” that doesn’t feel familiar, which is kinda the point. It’s a warm, comforting disco cocoon, a place to hide out when everything feels hopeless and wrong. Disco music is very often pitched as escapist fare, but the tension in “Power Sergio” is basically, what happens to that music when it’s always the same escape? When the place you go to get away from trouble becomes home, and the distinctions between the good and bad parts of your life begin to blur there? The melancholy at the heart of the song doesn’t recede at all — if anything, the awareness of the sadness is intensified by the self-conscious attempt to dance it all away.

Buy it via Jensen Sportag’s MySpace page.

Appaloosa “The Day We Fell In Love”

The day a couple falls in love is split into the time before and after that moment, and so this song emulates that in its structure. The opening section is fragile and slightly awkward as it tiptoes around feelings, unsure of how to articulate powerful emotions. The second section is blissed-out and relieved as it drifts off, repeating a mantra that’s more like a subtitle to the emotional action: “Two hearts unchained, flying.” In other words, by the end of the song, we have all feeling, and much less thinking.

Buy it from Kitsune.

Takka Takka “Everybody Say”

If the music of “Everybody Say” had to be translated into punctuation, it’d be something like a long set of ellipsis contained within parentheses. The composition is gorgeous, particularly in the way it balances taut rhythmic motifs with delicate accents and shimmering leads that come together to imply an expanding yet nevertheless confined space. The emotional content of the piece primarily comes from the tension of having a focus and goal, but feeling totally adrift, and unable to make sense of the space between where you are, and where you want to be. The entire song is like being lost in thought, trying to process conflicting bits of information and emotion, and attempting to figure out how to suss out some sort of mature, adult response.

Buy it from Amazon.

Boston Spaceships “You Satisfy Me”

“You Satisfy Me” falls into a line of Robert Pollard compositions that are catchy and ingratiating throughout, but essentially put off their best hook until the end of the song. In some cases, like “Portable Men’s Society,” it’s a matter of building up tension and creating a foreboding atmosphere, and in others, like “Psychic Pilot Clocks Out,” certain thoughts and emotions have to be articulated before Pollard can deliver the big pay off — “I feeeeeeel life passing on by us!” “You Satisfy Me” is more like the latter, but it is certainly understated in comparison. Not to diminish the fine melodic turns in the middle of the song, but the number is really about its conclusion, in which the guitar hook is paired with a twinned vocal part, and Pollard makes one of the simplest, boldest declarations of his career as a lyricist: “You satisfy me!” He sounds surprised, a bit resigned, and fully aware of the fact that there’s something a bit hollow and distinctly unsatisfying about being on the receiving end of this statement. He could be saying more, he could be framing his feelings in a less self-absorbed way, but he’s not, and he knows it.

Buy it from Amazon.

Marit Bergman and Titiyo “300 Slow Days In A Row”

As far as songs about breaking up with a long-term partner due to severe ennui go, “300 Slow Days In A Row” is almost entirely devoid of bitterness and resentment. It’s a sweet, old-fashioned tune, particularly in the way it casts aside the sort of pettiness and egoism that tends to define this type of song in the past decade or two in favor of a clear-eyed, kind-hearted assessment of a bad situation set to a heart-melting AM radio ballad in the vein of, say, Dusty Springfield or Dolly Parton. I’m especially fond of the way Bergman sings the word “slow” in the chorus. In most contexts, “slow” would not be such a damning word, but in that moment, she sounds totally consumed by heartache and frustration, not just about the quiet death of her relationship, but for the fact that she doesn’t have a more dramatic, urgent reason to walk away from it.

Buy it from Marit Bergman’s music subscription service.

Hemme Fatale “Peryglus Lucifer”

Judging by this song, there are strict rules governing the behavior of Lucifer at house parties. Specifically, he can only dance if you dance with him. He can drink wine, make noise with pots and pans, and have fun with your friends, but no matter what, he cannot dance unless you accompany him. You could be blasting Daft Punk or the B-52’s, and the guy would be stock still. Apparently, Lucifer is a man of honor. At least someone can be decisive in this song — both the male and female vocalists seem apprehensive about their desires, waffling between acting on their impulses, and standing around passively, confused by one another’s actions or lack thereof.

Visit the Hemme Fatale MySpace page.

Beta Satan “Party On The Death Star”

Beta Satan’s K.R. Hansen has a voice ideally suited to expressing bemused exasperation, which in turn lends itself to complaining about bad parties. This is at least the second song he’s done thus far to date that touches on that subject matter, but it’s really more of a starting point for venting larger frustrations about humanity. As the song bounds and bops along, Hansen vacillates between desperately wanting fun and a release from his anxiety, and getting annoyed with himself or the people around him or the contrived rituals of “fun.”

Buy it from Beta Satan.

The Pretenders “Almost Perfect”

The song syncs up perfectly with the weather: Grey and chilly; slow steady guitar rhythm and hushed drum hits mirroring the beat of rain drops; pedal steel notes reverbate in the negative space like ripples in puddles on the pavement. Chrissie Hynde sings words of realistic, clear-eyed, unconditional affection in a voice that’s sweet and low, but just emphatic enough to get across that she’s dead serious. It’s the sort of song that drifts along in a way that feels lazy and effortless, but the composition is careful and deliberate, with each instrument providing a subtle bit of flourish along the way.

Buy it from Amazon.

Junesex “Boy With Your Tongue”

“Boy With Your Tongue” feels very Prince-ish to me, not just for the cartoonish bounce in its grooves, but for the way it is absolutely filthy in a way that is playful, enthusiastic, and appreciative rather than nasty, demanding, and entitled like too many overtly sexual songs from recent years. This tune is good, silly fun, and on top of that, very inclusive — both men and women are congratulated for their oral skills in the chorus, opening it up for listeners of any orientation in a rather matter-of-fact sort of way. Whereas a song like this could easily just come across as raunchy and mechanical, there’s a very convincing, humanizing warmth in its neon tones, and the somewhat child-like voices deliver the lyrics in a way that makes the singers seem wide-eyed and totally wowed.

Deerhunter @ Bowery Ballroom 11/8/2008

Cover Me (Slowly) / Agoraphobia / Cryptograms / Never Stops / Backspace Century / Spring Hall Convert / Nothing Ever Happened / Little Kids / Octet / Microcastle / Vox Celeste / Twilight At Carbon Lake // New Animals / Hazel Street / Calvary Scars

Deerhunter “Little Kids”

In the time since my first Deerhunter show about a year and a half ago, the band have shifted from provocateurs to professionals. In some cases, this could be a bad thing that signals a descent into bloodless careerism, but the reality is that Deerhunter are just becoming who they are, and getting comfortable enough in their skin to focus completely on performing their music up to a very high standard. In terms of Bradford Cox’s approach to rapidly accumulating songs in his discography, he’s turning into his generation’s Bob Pollard, but in the way his main band performs live, they run a strong chance of becoming something on par with Radiohead or Sonic Youth. Just like those bands, Deerhunter play their songs with stunning accuracy, but also a charge of energy and emotional commitment that amps up the power of the material, and keeps them from sounding rote and over-rehearsed.

Cox has become an increasingly subdued presence onstage since last year, which has its ups and downs. I would appreciate more of his banter — he’s such an effortlessly charming and funny guy, I don’t think anyone would mind him talking a bit more between songs. On the other hand, since he’s abandoned his old antics in favor of throwing himself into playing his guitar, it is easier to focus on the music itself, and make note of the nuances and parts that make the songs so remarkable. For example, Lockett Pundt’s chiming, ascending riff at the end of “Little Kids” is even more magical in concert, and Cox’s finger-tapped lead at the end of “Nothing Ever Happened” is even more mesmerizing as it accelerates along with the slightly faster bass and drum parts.

One of the more encouraging things about this show is that the audience was mostly quite young and enthusiastic — my friend and I were right behind a pack of guys who could best be described as “alt-bros” — which bodes well for the group’s future, provided they all don’t just abandon the group the minute they veer away from songs like “Nothing Ever Happened” and “Never Stops.”

Buy it from Kranky.

The Smashing Pumpkins @ United Palace, 11/7/2008 (White Crosses)

Ava Adore / Cupid de Locke / 1979 / 99 Floors / Owata / Sunkissed / Soma / Cherub Rock / Zero / Bodies / Crestfallen / I of the Mourning / Song For A Son / Landslide / Disarm / Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness / Galapagos / Gossamer / As Rome Burns / The Sounds Of Silence + Little Red Riding Hood metal dirge medley / The March Hare / Suffer / The March Hare (reprise) / Age of Innocence // That’s The Way (My Love Is) / I Am One, Part Two

The Smashing Pumpkins “Soma” (Live in 1993)

This was much more like it, though there were still some problems. The band wisely got the audience on its side right away with strong, faithful versions of three old classics before settling into a handful of mellow and nondescript new numbers. Following that, they just totally killed it from “Soma” through “Bodies,” which, as you can probably imagine, made the audience go bananas. “Soma” in particular was exactly as amazing and powerful as you’d hope, and thoroughly brought the house down. Why it was not saved for the end of the show is beyond me. In both nights, Corgan’s logic appears to be “I’m going to give you some songs you want, but then the rest of show will be very taxing and questionable in terms of quality,” and I think it would be wiser to have those more challenging moments followed up by the reward of a mind-blowing fan-favorite like “Soma” or “Zero” rather than to burn through all of those songs by the 90 minute mark. (That said, I got a lot out of “Age of Innocence,” which is one of my own sentimental favorites, but I don’t get the sense that a significant number of people share my affection for that song.)

A few notes:

* Before “Landslide,” Billy had some guy from the audience come on stage to tell him that the previous night’s show sucked, but that he didn’t want his money back. While Corgan was unreasonably gracious to give this dude a voice, he followed it by mocking the guy in a way that was obnoxiously defensive and somewhat homophobic, something to the effect of “Oh, I loved that song you wrote. “Take Your Dick Out Of My Ass And Stick It In My Mouth,” that was a big hit in Europe.”

* Of the new material, the reprise section of “The March Hare” is the most interesting, if just because it goes off in this sorta quasi-Afrobeat zone that is genuinely different from music the band has done in the past. Ultimately, the trouble with much of the new tunes is that they generally seem like uninspired versions of archetypal Pumpkins songs. “Gossamer,” for example, aspires to be this grand, epic psychedelic ballad, but it lacks anything in the way of an ingratiating hook, and so it just comes off like 15 minutes of aimless riffs and noodling. “As Rome Burns” recalls the heavier songs from the Mellon Collie era, particularly the outtakes that ended up on the “Zero” EP, but Jimmy Chamberlain’s drumming is overly busy and prevents the piece from gelling into something strong and cohesive. The group’s extended metal take on “The Sounds of Silence,” which has virtually nothing to do with the Simon & Garfunkel hit aside from retaining its opening lyrics, was a distant cousin of “X.Y.U,” but was utterly devoid of that song’s brilliant dynamics and momentum.

* More to the point, I found myself thinking about whether or not Corgan is noticing, as he plays the songs, that his compositions from the early to mid 90s are far more sophisticated and well constructed than his latest work, which mostly seems rather lazy and tossed-off. “99 Floors” and “Owata” are pleasant, but desperately need to be tightened up, as both go on too long, and just plod from part to part in a way that robs the chord changes and nice bits of melody of any impact. His work has become increasingly undisciplined, and it breaks my heart because he’s capable of such great things.

Buy it from Amazon.

The Smashing Pumpkins @ United Palace 11/6/2008 (Black Sunshine)

Roctopus / Everybody Come Clap Your Hands / Tarantula / G.L.O.W. / Siva / Eye / Mayonaise / Tonight, Tonight / Speed Kills / Transformer / Superchrist / United States / Once Upon A Time / Again, Again, Again (The Crux) / The Rose March / Today / Bullet With Butterfly Wings / The Beginning Is The End Is The Beginning / Heavy Metal Machine (horrible new version) / Glass’ Theme / Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun // We Only Come Out At Night / Everything Is Beautiful

The Smashing Pumpkins “Superchrist”

At the end of this concert, Billy Corgan put himself in the mind of his audience and wondered aloud: “Did I pay for this shit?” He was, of course, mocking us, but that was very much the consensus opinion of the few thousand bitter, heartbroken fans who exited the United Palace theater as if on a death march. Really, how else were people supposed to feel about a two and a half hour show that mostly emphasized new material, generally avoided old classics, and included at least 40 minutes of formless prog-metal dirges and artless, atonal drones?

I want to make something clear: I don’t mind the Smashing Pumpkins playing new songs. That is totally fine, as they are a living band who still put out records, and it is their prerogative to perform recent material. In fact, some of the new tunes ended up being highlights of this show — “G.L.O.W.” is a good, catchy rocker, and “Superchrist” is by far the most successful and enjoyable product of the band’s recent fixation on over-the-top prog metal. I can’t say I love “The Rose March” or “The Crux,” but they are nice enough, and I don’t think anyone was bothered to hear them in the acoustic mini-set, though, you know, I think most everyone would’ve preferred to hear, say, “Thirty-Three” or “Muzzle” or “To Sheila” or…you know, the list goes on and on.

These are the big problems with this concert:

1) Not enough non-hit oldies. Yes, we got to see them play “Tonight, Tonight,” “Today,” “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” and “Siva,” but that amounts to a very small chunk of the actual set time, and the versions were somewhat rote. “Mayonaise” was the only song in the show that really qualified as a major fan-favorite, which is pretty ridiculous when you look at setlists from other legs of their tour in which the band leaned hard on a variety of classics that would thrill casual and hardcore fans alike. The band has not performed in New York City for nine years, and made New York fans wait a year and a half for a concert following the group’s reformation. It’s rather unfair of them to finally make the time to come to the biggest city in the country and kinda dick us over, especially when a good chunk of the audience were people like myself and my friend Bryan who had never had the opportunity to see a Smashing Pumpkins show before despite being fans for over fifteen years.

2) The new version of “Heavy Metal Machine” and their cover of “Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun” are just flat-out awful. “Heavy Metal Machine,” which is a pretty good tune in its original incarnation from Machina, has been transformed into a chugging, tuneless, seemingly endless dirge that excises virtually every appealing element of the song. “Set The Controls…” starts out as a vaguely intriguing take on the Pink Floyd song, but ends up becoming an interminable bore that marries the absolute worst of prog theatrics with the most tedious elements of art-noise. Both are cases of Corgan abandoning his strengths and embracing his most questionable impulses. These are the sort of things that may be fun to play in a rehearsal room, but translate poorly in front of an audience. Corgan is convinced that what he’s doing in these selections is art, but the problem is, it’s not at all successful art. It’s tacky and boring and not aesthetically or technically interesting. It’s just self-indulgent, and lacking in showmanship or tact. I cannot overstate just how much these two songs ruined this show — if they had simply not performed them, the show would’ve been just sorta okay. If they had omitted them and replaced them with a few songs regularly performed in previous legs of the tour such as “Starla,” “Drown,” “Where Boys Fear To Tread,” “Porcelina of the Vast Oceans,” “Hummer,” or “Set The Ray To Jerry,” the show could’ve actually been pretty good.

3) Now, it’s bad enough to subject your audience to about 40 minutes of abrasive, deliberately off-putting music, but it’s even more uncool to come back for an encore that mocks them for not being 100% with you, and feeling disappointed for not hearing more of what they expected to hear from a show billed as a 20th anniversary concert. In conventional show biz logic, if you’re going to go that far, you should at least leave the audience with a crowd-pleaser. In Billy Corgan logic, you come out and perform one of the lesser songs from your best-selling album, and then finish off with a song that mixes disingenuous hippy-dippy “everyone is beautiful!” lyrics with improvised sarcastic rants that outright diss the city you’re playing in, mock the fans for paying to see your band, and tell your visibly disappointed audience that you’ll see them in hell. It was full-on douche-tastic passive-aggression. It’s as if he set out to do this heel turn, and purposefully alienate as much of the audience as possible. Well, it worked. Believe me, unless you’ve witnessed other shows on this tour, it’s unlikely you’ve seen a more defeated audience exit from a rock show.

So here’s the thing: This is the first of a two-night stand, and tonight will be a totally different concert, with no repeated songs. Since this is exactly the same setlist as the first night of a similar deal in Toronto earlier this week, we are almost certain to see this setlist tonight. It’s not perfect, but it’s much closer to what I’d want to see in terms of song selection. Let’s just hope he doesn’t fuck this one up too, okay?

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White Hinterland “Lindberghs & Metal Birds”

Casey Dienel’s best songs have a slightly amorphous quality despite her clean arrangements and elegant compositions. “Lindberghs & Metal Birds” bops, skips, and sighs for nearly four minutes, deftly navigating an emotional terrain that is superficially homogenous, but defined by minute shifts in tone that cycle through feelings of dread, levity, resignation, and sorrow. The song is understated, but potent, and its seamless mix of emotions is specific and evocative, capturing a space in the mind where concepts and concerns have not yet congealed into a coherent position, but are just on the verge of tipping into certainty.

Buy White Hinterland records from Dead Oceans.

R.E.M. “Living Well Is The Best Revenge” (Live)

Michael Stipe wrote the lyrics to this song well over a year ago. It’s perfect for this day.

don’t turn your talking points on me

history will set me free

the future is OURS and you don’t even

rate a footnote now

so who’s chasing you, where did you go?

you disappear mid-sentence in a judgment crisis

I see my in and go for it

you weakened shill

you, savor your dying breath

I forgive but I don’t forget

you work it out

let’s hear that argument again

camera 3. go! now!

all your sad and lost apostles

hum my name and flare their nostrils

choking on the bones you tossed to them

now I’m not one to sit and spin

but living well is the best revenge

and baby, I am calling you on that

When it became clear that Barack Obama had won the election, I felt what a majority of Americans felt — elation, pride, hope. I also felt something a bit darker, a bit more shameful: The bitter, smug satisfaction of REVENGE. What happened yesterday was an unequivocal repudiation of the Republican party, and of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and Karl Rove. I’ll be honest with you: I can barely contain my glee in watching this hideous, cancerous version of a once-honorable party crumble. It’s going to be fascinating over the next several years to observe as the GOP fight amongst themselves and scramble to reinvent their party. My hope is that they can find a way back to being a party with whom I do not agree on a vast majority of issues, but can respect. But in the meantime, they’ve been defeated and humiliated on nearly all fronts, and that is incredible. It took a long time, but we’ve had our revenge.

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The Kills “What New York Used To Be”

There’s a lot of nostalgia in this song, but it’s all for memories of things that happened before one’s own time. It’s an idealized version of the past; this construct of representation and fantasy that only serves to highlight the perceived inadequacies of the present. The lyrics fixate on the past, but it’s a song about living right now, and being overwhelmed with disgust for what can seem like an all-permeating lack of vision, creativity, pleasure, purpose, you name it, and desperately wanting to reshape the world to match your expectations. There’s a feeling of intense concentration in the song, as if the two members of the band are actually attempting to build their version of the world with only a handful of sounds, and the sheer force of their will. Jamie Hince’s guitar textures, so brilliant throughout all of the Midnight Boom album, reach their pinnacle here, alternating between mechanical clanging, hints of synth pop, and a chugging, dense fuzz that evokes the image of slow-burning flames. By the end of the track, Alison Mosshart chants the title phrase with increasing intensity as if it were an incantation, and in that moment, it feels as though her vision of the city could just magically return, and be nothing at all what like New York actually used to be.

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