Stereolab @ Irving Plaza 10/3/2008
Percolator / Neon Beanbag / Eye of the Volcano / Mountain / Chemical Chords / Valley Hi! / Ping Pong / Double Rocker / Ecstatic Static / Lo Boob Oscillator / Two-Finger Symphony / Three Women / French Disko / Cybele’s Reverie / John Cage Bubblegum // Silver Sands / The Emergency Kisses / Stomach Worm

Stereolab “Neon Beanbag” – When you think about Stereolab, your first associations are probably “keyboards,” and then probably “vocals sung in French.” If you’re more familiar, maybe you think about Tim Gane’s penchant for vamping on chords. All of those are certainly crucial to the band’s identity, but the aspect of the band that comes most into focus in concert is the drumming. Andy Ramsey, who has been with the band since the Transient Random Noise-Bursts era, is a remarkable player who has not always been well-served by the mixes found on the groop’s studio recordings. Ramsey lays down his beats with impressive power and ease, which allows the band to come off as far more urgent and danceable in concert, but without sacrificing the elegance of Gane’s compositions, or drowning out Laetitia Sadier’s delicate vocal performances. 

Here is the final part of my interview with Amanda Petrusich, author of It Still Moves: Lost Songs, Lost Highways, and the Search for the Next American Music. Thanks again to Amanda for doing this!

Amanda: Well, virtual communities are such a new phenomenon, sociologically speaking — like the last fifteen years, tops. I wonder what kind of long-term ramifications it will have, both for art and just for humanity, in general.

Matthew: I definitely see a huge impact on music. I think online communities totally shifted how people think of musicians.

Amanda: Elaborate!

Matthew: Where things have moved towards appreciating styles, and embracing things that conform to certain expectations for whatever genre, and genius figures have been devalued or discouraged somewhat. I think the 90s was really focused on genius figures, this whole pantheon of larger than life icons.

Amanda: You’re right. I actually had an interesting conversation with David Berman about this — no new heroes, all that.

Matthew: I really think you see the sharp drop right around the time Napster kicks in.

Amanda: Which circles back to the disposability of music and, thus, the decline of the hero figure…

This is my favorite part of my interview with Amanda Petrusich, author of It Still Moves: Lost Songs, Lost Highways, and the Search for the Next American Music. Enjoy.

Matthew: I think people use music in more utilitarian ways now.

Amanda: How so?

Matthew: Music gets prescribed to different roles — I listen to this to work out, this works well for doing homework. Which makes perfect sense a lot of the time. But it also can be weird in how it excludes things that don’t quite mesh.

Amanda: Oh right, I do that too. But it causes problems. Like, when do I listen to Sigur Ros?

Matthew: Yeah. There’s a few records this year that I’ve liked a lot and I rarely feel like I can put it on.

Amanda: Ooh, which ones?

Matthew: Well, the one that springs quickly to mind is the new Portishead, which I love but now associate closely with the day I lost my job and it was dark and raining. So, yeah.

Amanda: Oh no! I remember that shitty, shitty day. I can see why you’d want to shelf that one for a bit.

Matthew: And then there’s things like, say, Jaguar Love which I think is a good album but just rarely want to hear.

Amanda: Right. I get that. Have you heard the new Metallica record?

Matthew: No, I haven’t. I’ve never really been a Metallica guy.

Amanda: I was 100% uninterested in Metallica until I saw Some Kind of Monster, and then I got a little bit obsessed. But it’s one of those records I have a hard time finding proper context for; when I bought it, I was literally thinking to myself “When am I going to put this on?”

Matthew: Oh man, I love that movie. I don’t know how anyone could not love that movie!

Amanda: Right? It’s remarkable.

Matthew: It’s probably one of the very best films of this decade. It has so much to say about long term interpersonal dynamics.

Amanda: There are some scenes in that film that I find positively heartbreaking — like when Lars sells his art collection? THE SUBTEXT! Or when he plays the new songs for his father, who’s totally unimpressed — I mean, I wanted to die. Really, just the ways in which it captures the idea of being stuck — of trying, so hard, to make good, worthwhile art, and coming up with stuff that sucks, and you kind of know it sucks, but what do you do? There’s just so much going on in that film. I mean, talk about brave. Releasing that film took balls, man.

Matthew: Yeah. I think it’s good for people to have insight into this sort of unique situation that isn’t unique at all, really. It’s something most artists go through, and they go through it in the most bombastic and cinematic way possible.

Amanda: Exactly. I watch it all the time. I think anyone who does anything creative for a living could stand to watch it weekly.

Matthew: What’s your favorite Metallica song?

Amanda: Ooh, good question. Maybe “Whiplash” from Kill Em All. That’s a weird choice.

Here’s more with Amanda Petrusich, author of It Still Moves: Lost Songs, Lost Highways, and the Search for the Next American Music.

Matthew: How are you doing talking about the same thing all the time now? In doing interviews, I’ve found that you get asked the same things a lot and it’s easy to just zone out and answer automatically, like you’d rehearsed it. I did that on NPR at one point and impressed/freaked myself out.

Amanda: You know, it’s funny, because the book is very personal in some ways, and I felt quite comfortable, at the time, with writing in the first-person. But you spend two years alone with this thing, and then all of a sudden it’s out in the world and people are asking questions about it, and you feel naked and silly. I’m hoping it gets easier. I need to memorize some answers that make me sound way more together than I am.

Matthew: Do you think you could just snap and be like “No more Americana! I’m listening to classical or hip hop for a year!”

Amanda: Oh man, it is already getting to that point. That’s the danger of writing about something you really love. I still can’t listen to “Pink Moon.” Do you ever feel like you just need to shut music out for a bit, kind of cleanse the palate?

Matthew: Oh man, yeah.

Amanda: It’s the worst thing about this job, I’d say.

Matthew: The weird thing for me just recently with finishing the R.E.M. project was that I figured “that’s it, no more R.E.M. for a good long time!” But then I ended up listening to some songs that I simply had not heard in a year or so because of the way I was doing it, I’d finish writing up a song, and then put it away. I think that was kinda motivated by having Michael Stipe do the q&a though. I’m probably done with them for a while coming up soon.

Amanda: Well, that was such an incredible project — you should write a book about fandom.

Matthew: My listening habits tend to rotate things in and out, while dealing with a stream of new things. Part of the motivation for doing the R.E.M. project had to do with their music having been out of my rotation for a while.

Amanda: Yeah, that’s inevitable. I regret not being able to spend more time with records, to memorize every note and breath and beat like I did when I was 15.

Matthew: Yeah, I think that’s it too, I find I write pretty well about stuff I’ve known a long time.

Amanda: It’s really transporting to go back to songs that meant a lot to you at a certain point in time. I mean, people say that about smells, but music gets the job done, too. That perspective is priceless! And rare.

Matthew: Yeah, it’s funny to get a new sense of where you were at some point. And realize why certain things worked in a way you were maybe too close at the time to grasp.

Amanda: Well put. That’s also part of why I loved Rob Sheffield’s book so much.

Matthew: Yeah. I’m still kinda amazed by how much it must have taken to dive into those really dark periods. I guess I can’t really relate to having dark periods. I have bad periods, boring periods, but no really major traumatic events in my life thus far. Knock on wood.

Amanda: I can’t even conceive of it. It’s brave and honest, and I think that’s what people responded to in the writing. Today is my third wedding anniversary, incidentally. I remember trying to read Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking on my honeymoon, and I couldn’t make it through. And then with Rob’s book, I couldn’t finish the first time through, either. I actually just read the whole thing recently. I mean, it is just so devastating.

Matthew: So where are you going from this point? Are you working on anything now?

Amanda: I’m writing an article about hill country blues for Preservation Magazine, which is published by the National Trust for Historic Places. I’m actually heading back down to Mississippi in early October to do some field research. I’m also working on a project about 78 collectors. I got in cahoots with some of these guys while I was researching It Still Moves, and it’s just this incredible subculture — a real oddball fraternity. But the work they do is so priceless. We wouldn’t be able to listen to Skip James “Devil Got My Woman” if it weren’t for 78 collectors. We wouldn’t have The Complete Works of Charley Patton. They’re driven by some mysterious (maybe neurological? definitely uncontrollable) urge, and it yields tremendous results for the rest of the world.

Here’s more with Amanda Petrusich, author of It Still Moves: Lost Songs, Lost Highways, and the Search for the Next American Music.

Matthew: So you went all over the country, you visited all these major hotspots. Was that something that was totally necessary for you? To have some first-hand experience?

Amanda: I thought this book made the most sense as a travelogue. On a really selfish level, I wanted an excuse to drive around listening to old records and eating barbecue sandwiches — that always seemed like something fun that boys got to do. I’m a sucker for that whole canon of road literature, from Kerouac to Bryson to McPhee to William Least Heat-Moon. But I was also really interested in the relationship between art and place, and how Americana music reflects specific landscapes. This is going to sound both terribly pretentious and way cheesey, but I do think I understood Delta blues better — or at least I understood it differently, or on a more concrete, visceral level — once I’d spent just a week in Clarksdale. Americana music is so tied to place, it just didn’t seem like there was any other way to tell its story.

Charley Patton “I’m Goin’ Home”

Matthew: How did things change for you in Clarksdale?

Amanda: Clarksdale is an incredible place. In some ways, it feels unchanged, it feels stuck — it’s still impoverished, it’s still struggling, it’s still 1935, to an extent. It’s hard to be there and not feel the blues in your gut, your heart, your teeth. It’s a tough place. But the spirit of the people who live there is humbling.

Robert Johnson “Ramblin’ On My Mind”

Matthew: That’s quite a contrast with visiting Graceland.

Amanda: Oh, for sure! I love Graceland, too, though. I love the ridiculous, stupid commercialism of it, I love the 300 gift shops, I love the souvenir shot glasses, I love that they sell fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches. I love the Jungle Room and its carpeted ceiling and fake waterfall and monkey statues. The really haunting thing about Graceland is that Elvis is buried there, in the backyard — it’s like this whole hilarious circus of memorabilia and glitz, and then you get to the end of the audio tour, and you’re standing there in your T-shirt and headset, taking dumb pictures of yourself doing a thumbs-up, and all of a sudden you’re in a graveyard.

Matthew: Did you end up going anywhere that didn’t get into the book?

Amanda: There were lots and lots of small stops along the way. I spent a lot of time driving around Mississippi hill country, trying to find fife and drum bands. I also got really caught up in the history of the civil rights movement in Memphis. I made several visits to the National Civil Rights Museum, which is in the Lorraine Motel, which is also where MLK was assassinated. There’s definitely a whole other story out there about the way in which history is memorialized in this country and what we do with our sacred sites, whether it’s the Lorraine or Graceland or whatever.

Matthew: Yeah, I was just thinking about how these things either end up commercialized, neglected, or recede into the background.

Amanda: Exactly. There’s a gift shop or there’s nothing.

Matthew: So, as you said, you ate a lot of food, and it figures into the book somewhat. What really knocked out? What do you think people really have to go for if they’re in the vicinity?

Amanda: Oh man, in my secret life I’m a food writer. I actually don’t eat much meat normally, but that idea kind of imploded the minute I arrived in Memphis. Actually, asking people for restaurant recommendations is a great way to break the ice in an interview, and obviously cuisine can communicate a lot about a region. In Memphis, I would recommended Charles Vergos’ Rendezvous, which is a pretty well-known barbecue place, but it’s awesome. In Clarksdale and the surrounding Delta towns, you’ve got to try hot tamales (and sing Robert Johnson’s “They’re Red Hot!” while you’re cramming one in your mouth) — almost any stand on the side of the road will be good. In Nashville, Prince’s Hot Chicken is mind-altering (literally, it is crazy-hot) and the Loveless Cafe has the best biscuits and preserves I’ve ever had. Oh! And a hot brown in Louisville, Kentucky. For sure. At the Brown Hotel.

Matthew: Do you think there’s kind of an alternate version of your book that’s all about food, and its place in culture? It seems like in ways, bbq and so

ul food are going through a similar sort of revival, particularly in more urban areas where the food is desired, but the tradition doesn’t exist in the same way.

Amanda: Well, it’s hard to have a real barbecue pit or smoker in the middle of New York City. I think we’re seeing a lot of inherently unfancy food gussied up and served on a china plate and given a big price tag, at least in New York, right? There’s definitely a huge trend towards American comfort/soul food being reinvented as gourmet here, which is weird but also really interesting, from a cultural standpoint. In some ways, it feels ornamental — I mean, look what happened with PBR five years ago — but I also think that southern food is just uncommonly delicious. It’s also time-intensive, which is maybe where the comfort comes in — when it’s made right, you know it took a lot of time and effort.

Matthew: Yeah, I agree that in many cases, it’s one more exotic food to get a make-over, to get pulled into this unrelated magpie tradition. It doesn’t seem like much can exist in the context of NYC without being integrated and changed.

Amanda: Absolutely. That says a lot about New York City, doesn’t it? It’s like one big vacuum.

Matthew: Did you feel it as much when you were growing up? We’re from more or less the same area, and I know that I always felt really compelled toward the city. I wrote about this one the site recently, that living relatively close to the city and always seeing NYC media, it made me feel like maybe the more rural/suburban area I was from didn’t matter as much.

Amanda: Yes — compelled and terrified at the same time. I remember taking the train into Grand Central and the subway down to St. Marks Place to buy Manic Panic and Sex Pistols t-shirts and Fugazi records. I was overwhelmed and transfixed. There’s nothing like the suburbs to instill that sense of being from a noplace. Not that I feel that way about my hometown, necessarily, but it was within commuting distance so it did feel like a support system for New York, in a way.

Matthew: Yeah. I mean, you’ve been to my hometown! It’s a really specific place and yet it still had that feeling.

Amanda: New York casts a pretty big shadow, is the thing. Even now when people ask me where I’m from, I always define it as being X miles north of New York.

Matthew: Yeah. Sometimes I fudge the details somewhat — my hometown is basically the first town out of Westchester in Putnam county, but people know Westchester, and I’ve been known to just use that as shorthand. Or I say “across the river from West Point,” and people either know that or they don’t.

Amanda: Yup, I do that, too. I just say “Westchester,” which is ridiculous.

Matthew: I think the thing I try to get across in addition to proximity to the city is that I’m not from Long Island or “upstate.” I think upstate begins once the Hudson Line is up. Once you’re beyond Poughkeepsie, you’re upstate.

Amanda: Ha! That’s a good barometer, actually. I wonder how actual upstaters feel about saying they’re from New York.

Matthew: Yeah, the state really changes a lot the further north you get. I mean, there’s a pretty big change just going from Rye and White Plains to Peekskill and on to Beacon, Duchess County.

Amanda: Sure, it’s really quite rural in spots, and the demographics totally switch.

Matthew: And then you have bits that are basically Canada, or New England.

Amanda: If I learned anything driving up and down the east coast, it’s that this particular stretch of America is tremendously varied, geographically and otherwise.

Matthew: I think that’s kind of a microcosm of something that’s clear in the book — that we’re just living in this loose collection of disparate regional cultures, and they come together just as much as they have nothing to do with each other. But the regional cultures are something to be proud of.

Amanda: Right. Of course, regionalism is being challenged in a lot of ways — the internet takes a lot of the blame for that, culturally (things are less insular now, so they spread faster, meaning there’s less time for a movement to take on real regional distinctions) but things are also getting commercially homogenized (every town has it’s Chili’s, etc.). I do think the pendulum will swing back, and people will get tired of that sameness and re-embrace local things. I think that’s already happening.

Matthew: Where do you see that happening?

Amanda: It’s a collection of vague impressions, honestly. I think there’s a Michael Pollen-led/environmentally-conscious trend towards eating locally, for sure. And then in terms of art, I think we’re seeing a little bit of a resurgence in the notion of the regional scene — like what’s happening around the Smell in LA or Wham City in Baltimore. I do think human beings require a certain amount of community. Obviously, that’s something that’s always existed for religious groups, but even for people who aren’t religious, it’s important to feel like you’re part of a place, I think.

If you read about music on regular basis, you are no doubt familiar with the work of Amanda Petrusich. She’s written criticism and features for Pitchfork Media, the New York Times, Paste, the Onion AV Club, Spin, and a long list of other well-regarded publications. She’s the author of the book about Nick Drake’s Pink Moon album in the 33 1/3 series, and her latest tome — her feature-length debut, if you will — is It Still Moves: Lost Songs, Lost Highways, and the Search for the Next American Music. In the book, Amanda travels throughout the United States — primarily the south — pondering the meaning, evolution, and future of “Americana” music. It’s a remarkable book, not simply for its insight into the music and culture, but also for Petrusich’s prose style, which I’ve described to some friends as being like “a friendly Joan Didion.”

Over the course of this week, I’ll be publishing a conversation that I had with Amanda. We begin talking specifically about the book and her subject matter, but as we move along, we go on a number of tangents. Stay tuned — we’ll eventually touch on some thoughts about how digital music has changed the way people collect and respond to music, shifts in the notion of community, the greatness of that Metallica documentary, and the ill effects of schadenfreude, among other things. Along the way, there will be mp3s relating to the conversation, most of which have been selected by Amanda.

Matthew: I’ve been reading your writing for a while now, and though the subject of your book makes sense given your taste, I’m curious about how you came to the project of the book, and finding some kind of definition for the notion of “Americana.” How did that develop?

Amanda: It’s a really slippery descriptor, and that’s part of what excited me about the project — the challenge of trying to dissect this really nebulous, different-things-to-different people notion, and how it applies to both music and culture. The book began as a magazine feature that I wrote for Paste. I was always a huge fan of “Americana” music — which I understood as rural, indigent, early 20th-century southern music, Delta blues, Appalachian folk, that kind of stuff — and I was beginning to hear it reemerging, in interesting ways, from the underground. There have always been Americana revivalists (artists like Gillian Welch and Steve Earle), but this was a different kind of reinvention, and one that felt more contemporary (and more compelling) to me.

Matthew: Was it exciting because it was less about being part of a tradition, and more in finding a more personalized path?

Amanda: Yeah, definitely. And that music also made sense to me in a really literal way. Take a band like Califone — to me, Califone’s music really accurately reflects a new kind American landscape. When I look out my car window in rural Virginia, and I see the peaks of the Blue Ridge Mountains interrupted by, like, a giant Target sign, it’s a mixing of the organic and the synthesized — which is essentially what Califone does.

Califone “Pink & Sour”

Matthew: Through the book there’s a lot of tension between this sort of revivalism and reverence for authenticity, and this sort of invention that comes out of specific times, specific places, whether it’s delta blues or what you’re saying about Califone. Is that invention and evolution part of how you’d describe Americana?

Amanda: Sure. I really wanted to position the story of Americana music as one single narrative — one sound that’s constantly being reinvented and updated and perverted and tweaked. Ultimately, I was more interested in the ways in which it was changing than the ways in which it was staying the same. You know, is it still functional? Is it still alive?

Matthew: Why do you think some people are inclined not to see that narrative? I find that people can be overly eager to see musical traditions as these things that die or must be preserved, instead of something that lives and adapts to people’s needs over time.

Amanda: I find that kind of thinking problematic, obviously, but I also kind of get it, too — when someone’s holding on to something so tightly, it’s usually because they love it too much, you know? Bluegrass and folk fans can be really militant about the “rules” of those sounds, which to me is counterintuitive and boring. But I think that impulse to preserve “authenticity” comes from reverence, mostly — and you know, that age-old fear of change. People get really wrapped up in false nostalgia for a time when things were “simpler.” The good old days and all that.

Matthew: It’s just like with punk and metal.

Amanda: Absolutely!

Matthew: It seems that even though a lot of people hold on, the culture always seems to move on, and the more traditional things don’t do as well in commercial terms. Like, the whole Nashville/Music Row scene is such a peculiar iteration of this music, and though it’s firmly entrenched as an establishment with its own rules, it’s still not all that strict, they borrow whatever works. So there’s a conflict between that and the alt-country people, and though I think the alt-country people make music more to my taste, I can’t help but feel the Music Row people are being more progressive in their way.

Amanda: Yeah, whether you like it or not, Nashville country is a really interesting example of how a genre can adapt over time. Country music changed enormously in the 1950s with the advent and rise of rock n’roll, and in every decade since then, it’s absorbed changes in its fan base and also changes in the culture itself. Of course, how those changes manifested artistically drives some people bananas. It’s not an artistic value judgment, though — it’s like, I may like Waylon Jennings or Hank Williams way more than, say, Tim McGraw, but Tim McGraw is still real and relevant to zillions of people. Say what you want about Nashville country, but it isn’t stuck.

Matthew: It definitely speaks to a certain American experience, which is what it’s supposed to do. Do you think people in areas of the country that aren’t commonly associated with country, folk, etc, get excluded from a lot of people’s understanding of Americana? You’re from New York, did you ever feel like it wasn’t quite “your” music?

Amanda: I never felt that way, but I’m sure a lot of other people probably thought I was stepping out of bounds, or that I couldn’t or shouldn’t lay any claims to this music. Obviously, people get really proprietary about this stuff, but I never wanted my journey to be exotifying (is that even a word?) in any way — I never felt like an anthropologist, I never felt like John Lomax. I felt like this music was as much mine a

s anyone’s. Dana Jennings, who’s an editor at the New York Times, wrote a really great book about country music called Sing Me Back Home, and it’s about growing up in rural New Hampshire and being in love with country music, with feeling like it spoke to his American experience, even though he was living (way) up north. I do think there’s a cartoonish sense of Americana’s audience being, like, people in overalls, dancing around a moonshine jug in Alabama, but I don’t think it has to be geographically exclusive.

Matthew: Right. I think there’s definitely a sense that certain music speaks to different experiences living in this country. I mean, the Velvet Underground and Sonic Youth and the Notorious B.I.G. all speak specifically to New York City, and have a similar sort of role in feeling out the culture and physical space as a lot of the Americana you wrote about in the book, but no one would ever seriously confuse that stuff with Americana, it’s still very rooted in the south and more rural areas. But this is where things get nebulous — do you think there kinda has to be some sense of non-urban space in Americana?

Amanda: Yes. To me, it’s definitely rural music — that’s just part of the definition as I understand it. But just like kids in rural Kansas can be genuinely moved by the Notorious B.I.G., I think this music can be meaningful beyond the farm, as it were. I should say, as I understand it historically — I mean, obviously now, Americana also lives in cities.

Fluxcast #13 – Here’s the new podcast. By now you should know the drill — the playlist will be up on the Fluxcast site in a few days, but you can find that information in the meta data of the mp3.

Here’s the deal for this week: I’m going to be filling in for Lane Brown on New York Magazine’s Vulture blog. This means I’ll be writing the lion’s share of whatever goes up over there this week. If you don’t ordinarily read the site, please do come and check it out.

In the meantime, I’ll be running an interview with Amanda Petrusich, the author of the excellent new book It Still Moves: Lost Songs, Lost Highways, and the Search for the Next American Music. The interview will be broken up into five segments, each going off in a different tangent. It may be a bit tl;dr for some readers, but I think the rest of you will enjoy it a lot.

TV on the Radio “Golden Age” – This song is a collision of nerves, caution, faith, and optimism. The groove is tensed up, like a jittery version of “Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough,” but the chorus hook is nothing but hope, and a true, unwavering confidence that there is some kind of salvation just around the corner. It’s excitement for the paranoid, the cynical, and the idealist. I can’t imagine this song being commercially released in a more appropriate week. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

One-Two “Something In My Mind” – The singer in “Something In My Mind” is totally lost within himself, but he’s doing his best to figure out just what keeps him stuck in his insecurities, and unable to get with the object of his affection. Yes, he’s neurotic and lonely, but he’s also earnest and excited, and he seems right on the verge of a breakthrough as he searches for the exit signs in the back of his mind. (Click here to buy it via One-Two’s MySpace page.)

Weezer @ Madison Square Garden, 9/24/2008
My Name Is Jonas *@ / Pink Triangle / Perfect Situation @/ Say It Ain’t So / Susanne #/ Keep Fishin’ / King @ / Undone – The Sweater Song (with Tom DeLonge from Angels & Airwaves and Blink 182) / Pork and Beans / Dreamin’ / Dope Nose @ / Troublemaker / Automatic */ Hash Pipe / El Scorcho # / Morning Glory (Oasis cover) * / The Greatest Man That Ever Lived // Island In The Sun (with hootenanny players) / Beverly Hills (with hootenanny players) /// (Rivers comes out and dropkicks a turntable that is playing “Heart Songs”) / Sliver (Nirvana cover) / Buddy Holly
lead vocals: * = Pat, # = Brian, @ = Scott, all others Rivers

As you can tell from reading the legend on the above setlist, Rivers Cuomo handed over lead vocals on a number of his songs to other members of his band. This might seem like a terrible thing, but the truth is, you don’t really notice it all that much because a) they are competent singers with voices not tremendously different from the general timbre and range of Cuomo and b) everyone is singing along, so it doesn’t matter all that much who happens to be on mic so long as they didn’t totally screw up. The only time the relative inadequacies of the non-Rivers members became apparent was when they sang their own compositions, and the enthusiasm level in the room flatlined. (Fair enough — Pat Wilson’s “Automatic” may be pleasant yet generally unremarkable, but Scott Shriner’s “King” can be most charitably described as being like a very good Nickelback tune.) 

Golden Silvers “Magic Touch” – As I see it, there are two ways to be old-fashioned: You can either be a slave to tradition, and end up with music that sounds stiff, airtight, and fussy, or you can lean hard on old ideas until they tip over into the present tense. The Golden Silvers are doing the latter. The melodies, harmonies, and beats in “Magic Touch” feel like something I’ve known my entire life, but the band pull it off in such a way that it nevertheless feels flashy, fresh, and firmly rooted in the present. I’m hard-pressed to tell you exactly why — maybe it’s in the details of the production, maybe it’s in the way the band seem so entirely inside of the moment, maybe it’s a spark in the groove that just wouldn’t sit right 20 or 30 years ago. Any which way, this is a minor triumph of craft and style. (Click here for the Golden Silvers’ MySpace page.)

DJ Downfall & Gene Serene “Seven Dials” –  Like all good duos, Gene Serene and DJ Downfall play to each others strengths — Gene sings songs about shaping one’s own identity and summoning personal strength, and Downfall creates tracks that dramatize a burst of confidence and creative energy. “Seven Dials” comes from a place of insecurity and instability, but as it crests, the singer is right on the verge of getting her emotions all sorted out, and moving onwards and hopefully upwards. There’s bitterness and confusion in the song, but more than anything, there’s a lot of optimism. (Click here for the DJ Downfall MySpace page.)

Dressy Bessy “Do You Whisper?” – The great thing about Tammy Ealom’s voice — aside from that she sounds a bit like a shinier, crisper variation on Kim Deal — is the way she invests her peppy, girly pop songs with a gentle authority. She always comes off as being assertive, but in a friendly, supportive Big Sister sort of way. That certainly comes across in this brisk, instantly ingratiating number, in which she plays the part of the bemused observer of a charmingly awkward courtship. (Also, please note the terrific “kiss/her, kiss/her” backing vocals in this track. So simple, but it really makes the song.) (Click here to buy it from Transdreamer.)

Luomo featuring Jake Shears “If I Can’t” – Jake Shears is a fairly versatile singer, but he usually pushes himself to ostentatious extremes — giddy rave-ups, soaring power ballads, Gibb-y disco falsetto. He’s good at taking a song to a logical stylistic conclusion, and that goes for his more understated work just as well as the campiest numbers in the Scissor Sisters repertoire. Shears’ new collaboration with Luomo finds him complementing the Finnish producer’s low-key, nuanced grooves with a hazy, restrained performance that gets across his pleasant vocal melody without distracting from the details in the arrangement. The resulting track is full of restless energy, soothing tones, and a nearly subliminal anxiety. (Click here to buy it via Luomo’s MySpace page.)

Fluxcast #12 – This very special episode of the Fluxcast features nothing but string quartet arrangements of well-known pop and rock songs. Enjoy! The tracklisting will be on the Fluxcast site later in the week, but if you’re feeling impatient, that information can be found in the metadata of the mp3. 

Populous with Short Stories “Porcelain” – “Porcelain” hovers about in a state of indecision, but there’s a bit of pressure within the song to actually go ahead and commit to an emotion, a project, a way of living. It’s a gentle pressure, for sure, but it’s there and it is leaning towards embracing some kind of positive expression and creativity, rather than apathy, cowardice, or emptiness. The music has a slight melancholy tone, but the beat and the sound of the vocals give the piece a cautiously optimistic sound before trailing off into an emotionally ambiguous instrumental coda.  (Click here to buy it from Kompakt MP3.)

Frida Hyvönen “Scandinavian Blonde” – It seems fair to say that this song is a celebration of blonde Scandinavian women, or more specifically, the cultural archetype of the Scandinavian Blonde, and their place in the world’s imagination. However, despite its cheery, deliberately ABBA-esque sound, the lyrics are critical, if not particularly judgmental. In the first verse, Hyvönen describes a broader iconic vision of the Scandinavian Blonde, and in the second, she zeroes in on specifics, such as her “melodic,” “childish,” and “harsh” accent, and her use of “experimental” language. In the final verse, she’s ambivalent — her appreciation of the archetype is apparent, and she clearly understands her appeal, but there’s a sense that she’s somewhat alienated and removed from that experience, and envies the self-assurance that seems to go along with her effortless desirability. (Click here to pre-order it from Secretly Canadian.)

Terry Lynn “Streetlife” – Terry Lynn’s music is mostly comprised of harsh, overbearing tones, but it also has a thrilling bounce and throb that adds excitement and physicality to her unrelentingly bleak lyrics. It’s not a revolution in sound — many others in dancehall, hip hop, and other genres have hit a similar balance — but rather a perfect calibration of style, persona, and texture. “Street Life” comes off like a cage match between the singer and the song, with the music ratcheting up its tension and putting up an abrasive front as Lynn strikes with her confident, venomous voice and mechanical precision. (Click here to buy it from Terry Lynn.)

Elsewhere: In case you missed it the first time, or maybe didn’t believe me, but Michael Stipe is still answering questions about his lyrics on my Pop Songs site. If you have any questions for him, send them on in — he’ll be doing this through the middle of next week.

Pit Er Pat “Trod-A-Long” – About a year ago, I saw Pit Er Pat open up for the Fiery Furnaces, and was totally knocked out by their peculiar, groove-oriented music, and the way they were able to seamlessly blend recognizable elements from a variety of ethnic musics from around the world into a sound that was simultaneously familiar and skewed. The group lean hard on reggae in particular, but the music itself isn’t quite reggae, but rather some mutant strain particular to the musicians. “Trod-A-Long” is perhaps the most overtly reggae number on their forthcoming album High Time, and also the most upbeat and immediately ingratiating. Its mood may be ideal for today, as we seem to enter a period of severe economic turbulence — the song’s pulse is somewhat jumpy and jittery, but its emotional core is peaceful, resulting in a cool, patient equilibrium. (Click here to pre-order it from Thrill Jockey.)

Fluxcast #11 – The new episode of the Fluxcast is ready for you. This one features music from Sun Ra, Neil Young, Bell, Annie, and others. The tracklisting is included in the metadata, and will be posted in full on the Fluxcast site later this week.

Morgan Geist “City of Smoke and Flame” – Geist’s song seems to concern some sort of middle class guy who must travel regularly for work, leaving him alone in his head as he spends far too much time in his car, and in strange yet generally uninteresting places. Between the mildly paranoid, spaced-out tone of the arrangement and his cool, fragile vocal tone, Geist portrays his protagonist as a nice, ordinary guy who is just beginning to disconnect from his world and his own emotions. The lyrical focus is placed on specific, mundane images — a flick of the wrist that turns out the light, shaking a leg to keep awake in the car — but the detail is mostly between the lines, as the feeling of aloofness sets in, and it becomes more and more clear that the character feels passive and helpless. (Click here to buy it from Environ Records.)

Simon Bookish “Synchrotron” – Simon Bookish sounds like a cartoon professor in a musical theater production on his latest record. There’s this great, manic thrill in his voice as he sings about science in a tone that is half conspiratorial, and half child-like enthusiasm for the coolest stuff ever. The main body of “Synchrotron” is a peppy, nervous number driven by synthesizer grooves, but accented by brief, clean horn bleets, but the arrangement eventually melts into an extended instrumental coda that seems to abstractly dramatize the workings of an actual synchrotron. (Click here to buy it from Tomlab.)

Chad VanGaalen “Phantom Anthills” – Maybe one in four Chad VanGaalen tracks features keyboards and/or electronic textures, but he really ought to consider upping that average because the sound suits his melodies and the plaintive tone of his voice rather well. In “Phantom Anthills,” the beat and cool textures seem to shift around his voice and guitar, leaving him sounding grounded and firm amid the fluxuations in his environment. It’s not drastic enough to make the track feel totally unstable, but there is certainly a feeling of uncertainty through the piece that makes the earthy, folky elements in the arrangement seem more gentle and reassuring. (Click here to buy it from Sub Pop.)

Exciting Pop Songs Update!: Michael Stipe has volunteered to answer questions about specific R.E.M. songs and lyrics on Pop Songs! If you have a question for Michael, the information is in this post!

I am ridiculously excited about this, and flattered beyond all belief.

Obi Best “What It’s Not” – There is a crispness to this track that suggests a focused, clear-headed state of mind, but that’s not quite where the song is coming from. The singer is trying to make sense of her life after a break-up, but she’s having a rough time transitioning to being on her own. She mostly comes across as sober, composed, and mostly ambivalent about the split, but she’s breaking into some defeatist, melodramatic language too: “I always lose without you!” The tone of the piece is just right — even if she’s wrong, or she gets over it before too long, this is is a song that captures a particular kind of emotional certainty built upon deep-seated insecurities that can feel like hard facts at a low moment. (Click here to buy it from Obi Best.)

Marnie Stern “Ruler” – “What I need now is a gut feeling to let me know.” Oh, tell me about it, Marnie. I know exactly how you feel. Especially right now.