Veronica Maggio “Gammal Sång” – Someone really needs to get Veronica Maggio to record her songs in English. This is not to say that I disrespect the fact that her music is sung entirely in Swedish — as a person who can only speak one language, I’m always a little surprised that more European pop music is not written and performed in the singer’s native tongue — but rather that it seems that Ms. Maggio would have a good shot at modest success in the UK and US. She specializes in light, peppy neo-Motown pop that sensibly trades out “urban” affectations for a sleek, colorful, cheerfully inauthentic suburban aesthetic. Many have tried for this sort of sound, but it’s rarely successful — sometimes it ends up sounding too conservative and syrupy, or it gets bogged down in superfluous modern signifiers, or the tunes simply aren’t strong enough. Even as a lyrical abstraction to American ears, “Gammal Sång” is wonderfully catchy and delightfully low-key, and its arrangement hits just the right balance of lush orchestration and economy of space and sound. (It also doesn’t hurt that the piano part sounds like the affable grandchild of “This Old Heart Of Mine.”) (Click here for the official Veronica Maggio site.)

Matmos “Rainbow Flag” – “Rainbow Flag” doesn’t belong on earth. It belong in another universe, off-register with the colors and out of sync with the rhythms that we know in our lives here in this dull, drab place. This is what is must sound like on Danny The Street — camp, magical, and both a part of, and removed from, the sepia-toned sadness of the world. (Click here to buy it from Matador Records. Click here to hear a fun interview with Matmos on Fair Game.)

Pink Skull featuring Ghostface Killah, Spank Rock, Amanda Blank, and Plastic Little “Crambodia (Remix)” – Pink Skull’s Zeppelin 3 is not a hip hop record, but maybe it should have been given the strength of this remix. It’s not just that they get to work with some spectacular guest MCs — surely we’re at the point that anything including Ghostface is going to be at least solid and entertaining — but that they craft a track that maintains a steady level of “holy shit!” excitement from verse to verse. Who knows, maybe it’s because they don’t do this all the time, and they can appreciate the opportunity to play with terrific raw material, and can transfer their fanboy enthusiasm to the very sound of the music. It’s in the shifting “Apache” shuffle of the beat, it’s in the synth buzz, and it’s in the way a recurring sample of Ghostface’s voice heralds his arrival in the song’s climax. They’re pretty psyched. (Click here to buy it from Turntable Lab.)

Au “RR Vs. D” – Video treatment: You know those big quasi-anthropomorphic balloons, the ones that are usually out along the road in front of car dealerships? The ones that sorta do a weird hippie/raver dance in the wind? They’re called “Air Dancers,” and specific models have names like “Fly Guys,” “Sky Ticklers,” and “Tube Dudes.”* Anyway, there should be a field full of these things, and they should be gently swaying around to the first half of this song. When it snaps into the jamboree section, the dancing of the balloon figures should appear very choreographed — this may be really tricky, but it’d be terrific if it could be done, especially without any digital effects. The motion should taper off with the song until the voices fade, and the balloons fall to the ground. (Click here to pre-order it from Aagoo.)

* Inevitably, one of you has a band, and you either don’t have a name yet, or your existing name is awful. Your band has a new name now — you are TUBE DUDES. Don’t let me down by sucking, okay?

Meanwhile, on Fair Game: Goldfrapp came by for a session last week. Unfortunately, you can’t download the songs as per usual, but you can hear their lovely stripped-down version of “A&E” at the end of the full segment, which you can find here.

Andrew Earles & Jeff Jensen “My Friends Call Me Ditchweed. Don’t Ask. Okay, Go Ahead and Ask.” – Andrew Earles and Jeff Jensen’s prank phone calls are very seldom mean spirited. Instead of making a fool of the person on the other end of the line, they build depressing little character studies out of the detritus of pop culture, and attempt to nudge them into someone else’s reality. Andrew Earles — a former Best Show On WFMU regular — specializes in portraying clueless sad sacks, and his best bits find his characters hitting absurd depths of misery and desperation while clinging to some unlikely hope for salvation. He and Jensen are both obsessed with grounding their characters in extremely specific cultural details, to the point that many of the calls are entirely incoherent without a frightening depth of knowledge pertaining to American junk culture circa the mid-to-late 80s. That said, they are most successful when they don’t lean so hard on trivia, and focus on vivid imagery — for example, Earles once had a character stave off boredom and loneliness by chewing on a scented candle while sitting on a wharf. I can barely recall the context, but that image is stuck in my mind forever.

Like a lot of the calls on their new deluxe Just Farr A Laugh compilation, I first heard a variation of the Ditchweed/Extreme Dad character on the Best Show. I think that in general, I’m partial to the Best Show versions, mainly because Earles was allowed to develop the character and stagger the punchlines with Tom Scharpling as a straight man in a way that is impossible when he or Jensen is dealing with a stranger who could hang up at any moment. There’s certainly excitement in that, and the satisfaction of hearing reality collide with fiction, but I miss the slow, steady build up of details, and the more gradual slide into despair.

Nevertheless, “Ditchweed” plays very well in this style — they were able to quickly sketch out his ridiculous character, and the duo had the good fortune of dealing with a hilariously gullible and curiously inept mark at a Chrysler dealership. There’s a great moment near the end of this call in which he seems to test the belief of his unwitting straight man by flat-out stating the emotional subtext of the joke, and he barely gets a response even though he’s basically spilling hit guts over the telephone line. (Click here to buy it from Matador Records. You really ought to buy the actual cd — the packaging and liner notes are terrific.)

Mudhoney “I’m Now” – Here’s a perfect mantra for the 2008s: “The past made no sense! The future looks tense!” Mark Arm starts shouting “I’m now!” immediately after that, but it sounds less like some bit of “be here now” wisdom, and more like a guy getting backed into a corner. Mudhoney have a tendency to come across as a bit too thudding and turgid, but they sound wiry and spry on this song, which is kinda necessary to pull off the right mix of anxiety and bitter humor. (Click here to buy it from Sub Pop.)

Sloan “Witch’s Wand” – The funny thing about Sloan’s previous album Never Hear The End Of It was the way its 30 track sprawl was sequenced so well that it ended up sounding like the tightest, most unified record the band had ever released. Their follow-up, Parallel Play, moves in the opposite direction — it’s brief and lean, but the group’s four singer-songwriters are on different pages, playing to their respective strengths and following their own muses. Chris Murphy and Andrew Scott favor scruffy power-pop eclecticism, Patrick Pentland continues to supply meaty yet weirdly aloof riff rockers that would do Stone Gossard proud, and Jay Ferguson refines his penchant for sleek, finely nuanced mid-tempo tunes that borrow liberally from old school R&B and lite FM groovers.

Ferguson is the most successful and consistent this time around. His friendly, low-key tenor has grown sweeter with age, and his arrangements have become increasingly spacious and graceful. All three of his numbers have a relaxed, warm vibe that sharply contrasts with the selections on Parallel Play penned by Pentland, who leans so hard on compression and studio effects to compensate for his comparatively thin singing voice that his tunes come out sounding rather crisp and chilly. The band use the drastic difference in tone to their advantage in sequencing the album — Pentland and Ferguson cuts are run back to back twice over, with the former’s tightly-wound rockers giving way to the latter’s mellow harmonies and gently floating chords. Whereas the two could easily clash, they instead work as each other’s foil, and give their album a greater sense of dynamics, if not stylistic unity. (Click here to buy it from Yep Roc.)

No Age “Teen Creeps” – I feel a little bit conflicted about No Age. I’ll try to explain.

Some people are very excited about No Age’s new album Nouns, and for the most part, they are All The Right People. This complicates things, mainly because I don’t think No Age is a fully-formed band at this moment in time, and I worry that they might get screwed over/screwed up by Certain People overrating their juvenilia, whether it’s out of genuine enthusiasm, or because it is beneficial to Those People’s brand. This rarely works out — either the artist hedges their bets, and feels no need to progress, or they develop their skill and create better material, and the audience moves on to smothering some other inexperienced band.

Anyway, it’s not hard to grasp No Age’s appeal. I’ll break it down:

1) After years of 80s throwbacks in the indie world, No Age represent the first step in a shift toward 90s sounds. However, since these trends are weirdly shackled to actual chronology, No Age deal with sounds particular to the late 80s and very early 90s. (As in, pre-1992.) There’s a lot of Dinosaur Jr., a smattering of pre-Loveless shoegazer rock, and a dab of punky proto-grunge, a la Mudhoney. (“Teen Creeps,” the band’s best song by a considerable distance, basically sounds like an especially woozy Mudhoney tune.) Sub Pop’s press release name checks Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation, but frankly, that just strikes me as extraordinary critical laziness and/or outright foolishness: Though it makes sense for Sonic Youth fans to dig No Age, No Age do not sound much of anything like Sonic Youth, no matter how noisy they get. The songs on Nouns are catchy, but they are very simple and lack the harmonic, rhythmic, melodic, or textural sophistication of anything on Daydream Nation, much less Evol.

2) No Age understand the power of a good logo, cool t-shirts, and attractive packaging. Seriously, it’s good enough that it makes me want to like them more than I do, and honestly, it’s not really even to my taste. It’s just nice and thoughtful and well-executed.

3) Apparently they are pretty good live. I am not impressed by the footage I’ve seen, but hey.

4) They fit perfectly into the current indie zeitgeist. On the up side of that, they are rocking things up a bit, and getting away from the abundance of 80s influences. Hooray for all that. But on the downside, why settle for moving into the 90s when we could move into the 20teens? Also, when it comes down to it, No Age are yet another band of faceless white guys without any charisma or musical identity particular to themselves, and their vocals are timid and consistently buried in the mix. It’s an aesthetic decision, and it’s part of a tradition, but you know what? It’s cowardice as far as I’m concerned. All of No Age’s songs would be superior if they didn’t sound so self-effacing and indecisive. There’s no personality anchoring these songs, just a sort of passive-aggressive, ethereal blankness where a distinct persona and a point of view ought to be.

5) They do have some pretty good songs, and they tend to feel very comfy after a few listens. They get into some ambient drones, but don’t go quite as overboard as Deerhunter did on Cryptograms. It’s either noise music for people who actually want to listen to music music, or pop-punk for noise dudes. That’s not bad at all, really. It’s just a question of modifying expectations, and when my peers all go crazy for something, maybe I expect too much.

(Click here to buy it from Sub Pop.)

The Kills @ Webster Hall 5/1/2008
U R A Fever / Pull A U / Sour Cherry / Tape Song / No Wow / (break) / Alphabet Pony / Wait / Last Day Of Magic / Kissy Kissy / The Good Ones / What New York Used To Be / Cheap and Cheerful / Fried My Little Brains / Goodnight Bad Morning // Love Is A Deserter -> The Search For Cherry Red / Drop Out Boogie

Between “No Wow” and “Alphabet Pony,” the Kills were forced to stop the show for about 10-15 minutes while fire fighters investigated some kind of problem high above the stage. This was a very odd experience, and obviously, it damaged the momentum and aura of their show. It snapped us out of their spell, and though they could conjure it all up again with a flick of the switch, something was lost. But hey, it’s not their fault. When they were on stage, the beats were so loud they shook the floor, and Jamie Hince’s guitar bled precise, highly stylized noise. It was brilliant, and there were many times in the set where I just felt — well, just angry and dismissive towards all the people who just don’t seem to get them, or prefer vastly inferior, and far less thoughtful bands.

The Kills “Last Day Of Magic” – The Kills specialize in conveying romance and desperation, and perhaps no other song in their catalog does that trick as well as “Last Day Of Magic.” It’s the sound of real-life drama playing out simultaneously in one’s head as a story; at least on some level it’s about an inability to shake off the expectations built into us by fiction. It’s not a critique of narrative, though — the Kills embrace artifice, and shun the mundane. In their world, there’s nothing worse than a lack of drama, and a life without romance is no life at all. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Telepathe @ Webster Hall 5/1/2008
Gee Thanks Animal Collective / Buying Equipment / Glowing Apple Logo / “You Should Get That Haircut” / Tribal Drooooooone / Why Do We Write Lyrics? / Tone Deafness / Oooooooooooh Laser Sounds / Back Issues Of Vice / Bushwick Open Mic / Baby Panda Dance / No One Needs Talent / Not Adorable / Let’s Buy More Equipment / Awkward Legs / Seriously, Let’s Just Destroy Brooklyn

Ugh. Just read this, okay?

The Child Ballads @ Webster Hall 5/1/2008
Where Teardrops Fall / “Doubles” (recital of a poem, not sure of the author) / Stewart Hassle / Cheekbone Hollows / Laughter From The Rafters

The Child Ballads “Where Teardrops Fall (The Rain In Betsy’s Car)” (Live on Fair Game) – Normally when people come in to record sessions for Fair Game, they get to use the big studio, but Stewart Lupton got stuck with this tiny little room that simply was not built to accommodate any sort of musical performance. He was wedged into a corner, and given about a half hour to knock out four songs. He couldn’t really get anything to go his way — he kept trying to explain a particular effect that he wanted on his microphone, and we had to settle for a typical sort of slap reverb. He explained that he didn’t want to sound like a singer-songwriter, a “truth-teller.” I can understand why he’d feel this way — there’s a long line of absolutely terrible male poet-singer-guitarists out there, and who would want to be mistaken for one of them? Lupton appropriates the hell out of Dylan these days, but he’s too smart, self-aware, dysfunctional and genuinely rattled by the circumstances of his life to be anything but this odd, fascinating misfit.

This was his solution for the “truth-teller” problem last night: He sang into two microphones, one with a harsh reverb, and the other with an extreme delay that warped his voice so much that at some points it sounded backmasked. He indulged in jokes and monologues that largely presupposed that the audience was aware of his existence and history. The songs were extended, and he seemed to make up much of the lyrics on the spot, particularly in the 13 minute version of “Laughter From The Rafters,” which included exclamations such as “Fuck Robert Christgau, I don’t need him to tell me I’m intelligent” and “I wanna be a pirate!” The entire set was sloppy, rambling, and probably incoherent to non-fans, but as far as I’m concerned, Lupton was thoughtful and compelling, particularly in the way his entire act is a tightrope walk on a line separating self-conscious academic irony and heart-on-sleeve gut-spilling. (Click here for the full Fair Game session, and here to buy the Cheekbone Hollows EP.)

Stereolab “Three Women” – Though formal experimentation has been the name of the Stereolab game since day one, much of the band’s work since the death of Mary Hansen has come across as overly sterile and emotionally neutral, even when they were integrating elements of sunshine pop and funky percussion on the Fab Four Suture singles. At some point, Tim Gane and company lost a certain spark of humanity, and even in spite of musical elements that qualified as hooks, the songs were not catchy or pop, but instead icy reiterations of concepts they’d been mining since the late 90s. “Three Women,” from the forthcoming album Chemical Chords, does not break new ground for the groop, but it has a light, unfussy touch and an abundance of emotion that allows its hooks to sink in rather than slip off. In a word, the song sounds inspired, and a result, it’s inspiring. It’s dynamic and groovy and full of lovely melodic bits, and most importantly, it rises up for a gentle, joyous catharsis. In the context of what they’ve been doing for the past several years, the song feels like the first truly happy day after a long stretch of inertia, indecision, and mourning. It’s the moment when the trauma finally seems to be in the past, and you get to feeling like yourself again. (Click here for the Stereolab MySpace page.)

Goldfrapp @ Beacon Theater 4/29/2008
Paper Bag / A&E / Utopia / Cologne Cerrone Houdini / Satin Chic / U Never Know / Road To Nowhere / Eat Yourself / Little Bird / Monster Love / Number 1 / Strict Machine // Ooh La La (quasi-bluegrass version) / Caravan Girl / Happiness

1. Alison Goldfrapp wasn’t feeling very well last night. She mentioned this very early on in the show, after “A&E,” and then voiced her frustration a few times over throughout the set. I can totally understand how she felt, and why she’d want to qualify her (pretty good, if not totally perfect) performance, but really, I don’t think it’s a very good idea. She sang well enough that if she never called attention to her cold, or showed any sign of aggravation, a vast majority of the audience would have never noticed.

2. This was a very odd setlist, no so much in terms of song selection, but in dynamics and pacing. Most glaringly, the encore would’ve made much more sense in reverse order — whereas the stellar bluegrass stomper version of “Ooh La La” hit the audience hard, and resulted in a sing along at the end, “Happiness” was limp and anticlimactic as the conclusion of a concert. (It would be much better suited as either the start of an encore, or put something in the body of the main set.) Similarly, “Little Bird” would have been a far more compelling opener than the quiet, ho-hum “Paper Bag,” and “A&E” came far too early to land with the appropriate impact. Also, though I quite enjoy the mellow Seventh Tree numbers, there was certainly a feeling in the pacing of this set that those sort of songs were the vegetables we must eat if we wanted to get to dessert at the end.

3. Dessert was fantastic! The audience and the band alike totally lit up with joy at the start of “Number 1,” and the enthusiasm carried on strong through “Strict Machine” and “Ooh La La.” Not to diminish the Seventh Tree songs, but it’s hard to deny that these sort of glamorous, highly stylized disco rockers are something that Goldfrapp can do better than any other band on the planet. Even when others have attempted to clone the sound of “Strict Machine” in particular, it’s never as effective. The band’s aesthetic certainly carries over into the subdued songs as well, but in those big hits, the expression is sublime.

Goldfrapp “Cologne Cerrone Houdini” – It should be noted that when Goldfrapp perform, the band is so sharp and precise that a majority of the songs sound nearly identical to their studio counterparts. This was certainly the case for the groovy, atmospheric “Cologne Cerrone Houdini,” but really, who in their right mind would mess with the delicate balance of its arrangement? Though much of the song’s charm comes from the contrast of its slinky bass line and the chilly treble of the electric violin, in concert, the acoustic guitar and gentle synthesizer washes are more apparent, and go further to establish its sweeping, romantic tone. It’s a brilliant piece of music, and among the songs on Seventh Tree, it and “A&E” are certainly the most successful in terms of conveying understated heartbreak, and in transferring the fantasy, drama, and style of their glam rockers to a more subdued mode. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Atmosphere “Like The Rest Of Us” – With this song, Atmosphere begin their new album with a gentle shrug of resignation. It’s not bitter, angry, or depressed — if anything, “Like The Rest Of Us” is about the peace that comes with realizing that you can’t save a world that doesn’t want to change and that “you’ve got to let people be hypocrites.” It’s also about the comfort of stasis, the up side of inertia, and figuring out how to adjust youthful idealism into adult pragmatism. It’s not a song without hope; it’s just a song with managed expectations for happiness. (Click here to buy it from Fifth Element.)

Kathleen Edwards “The Cheapest Key (Live on Fair Game)” – Two thirds of the way through “The Cheapest Key,” Kathleen Edwards arrives at her punchline. After two verses and choruses laying into an overly familiar lover, the song slows down and her voice goes high, just outside her comfort zone, and she sings “don’t get me wrong, here comes my softer side…and there it goes.” It’s a tiny little bridge back into chorus, but it’s crucial to the tone of the piece — it doesn’t compromise her position in terms of bitching this guy out, but it does hint that this dissatisfaction is not a permanent condition. (Click here to buy it from Amazon, and here to get the full session from Fair Game.)

The Fiery Furnaces @ Southpaw 4/26/2008
Single Again (with a bit of Smelling Cigarettes) / My Dog Was Lost But Now He’s Found / Whistle Rhapsody / Evergreen* / Duplexes of the Dead* / Automatic Husband* / Ex-Guru* / Navy Nurse / Pricked in the Heart* / Up In The North* / Straight Street* / Japanese Slippers / Benton Harbor Blues* / The Philadelphia Grand Jury / Clear Signal To Cairo / Police Sweater Blood Vow (brief, aborted after first chorus – Matthew on vocals and keys, Eleanor on drums) / South Is Only A Home (Eleanor vocal, Matthew keys, Bob on drums halfway through) / Oh Sweet Woods (Eleanor vocal, Matthew keys) / Slavin’ Away (Eleanor vocal, Matthew keys, Bob on drums) / Chief Inspector Blancheflower (full song, Eleanor vocals, Matthew keys and vocals, Bob on drums) / Rub Alcohol Blues* / In My Little Thatched Hut -> I’m In No Mood -> Teach Me Sweetheart -> In My Little Thatched Hut // Right By Conquest (All songs are the full quartet unless otherwise noted. Eleanor played guitar on songs marked with an asterisk.)

Aside from a couple bits at the beginning and the end of the show, this was not some breakneck medley, but instead a nice, long concert in which the band took their time and, for the most part, played rather straight versions of their songs. This incarnation of the Fiery Furnaces trades out Jason Loewenstein on guitar for the String Cheese Incident’s Kyle Hollingsworth on keyboards. From what I could tell, Matthew Friedberger played most, if not all, of the major themes and hooks, while Hollingsworth — a man who bears a striking resemblance to the legendary comic book hack Rob Liefeld, and has a very amusing habit of making funny faces as he mouths the sounds he makes on his synthesizer — played all the leads and goofy parts.

This was a remarkable show, maybe the second best Furnaces concert that I’ve seen, topped only by the performance of the Blueberry Boat medley at Webster Hall. Both shows included only a minimal amount of guitar, which suits the band very well — the variety of texture that comes from two keyboard players, each with an array of synths and organs, results in a much more rewarding and nuanced sound.

The Fiery Furnaces “Police Sweater Blood Vow” / “South Is Only A Home” (Live at Southpaw 4/26/2008) – Though I appreciate the tightness of the rehearsed full-band section of the shows, I’m always a sucker for the semi-improvised parts of Fiery Furnaces shows, particular those that boil the band down to Friedberger duo. This is a particularly inspired portion of the set — Eleanor switches to drums, and Matthew sings a bit of “Police Sweater Blood Vow,” one of the few post-Blueberry Boat songs with Eleanor-penned lyrics. Immediately after, the two play a loose, playful version of one of their all-time greatest tunes, “South Is Only A Home.” Bob D’Amico jumps in on the drums for the final verse and chorus to keep it from sounding too flat, but the performance still has the feeling of an informal living room recital.

The Fiery Furnaces “Rub Alcohol Blues” (Live at Southpaw 4/26/2008) – As far as I know, this tour is the first to include a full-band arrangement of “Rub Alcohol Blues,” or at least a version that approximates the arrangement on Gallowsbird’s Bark. Previously, the song was performed as a vocal/guitar piece, but with the keyboards, the song is allowed a more precise and complicated melancholy — it’s still among the most devastating tunes in their catalog, but its blow is cushioned somewhat by its layers of doubt and longing.

(Click here for the entire concert, which was recorded by the lovely NYC Taper. Click here to buy the Fiery Furnaces albums and merchandise from their online store.)

Re-Up Gang “Play Ur Part” – Here’s the weird paradox of Clipse and the Re-Up Gang: I am almost completely bored by their subject matter — at least in the context of hip hop lyrics — but they are so thoroughly consumed by their obsession with the drug trade that their quasi-autistic focus becomes a point of fascination in and of itself. Of course, it’s not just the commitment, it’s the skill. Even at the point when their coke-rap shtick ought to be exhausting, Malice and Pusha T’s verses still sound sharp and seductive. Ab-Liva and Sandman can’t match their partners’ charisma or lyricism, and so their parts tend to drag slightly, and test the limitations of the group’s narrow vision. Similarly, the Neptunes’ track feels somewhat draining, mainly because it has virtually no dynamic shifts over the course of five minutes. It sets a mood, sure, but it forces an uneven selection of MCs to carry the song, and so it’s a little too easy to zone out when the Clipse aren’t on the mic. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

The Roots featuring Dice Raw, Peedi Crack, and DJ Jazzy Jeff “Get Busy” – I don’t know why, but I totally take the Roots for granted, and I suspect that I’m not alone. Much of this comes down to Black Thought — he’s a terrific, highly competent rapper who, for some reason, seems entirely incapable of sparking enthusiasm, even when he’s doing a party song. That said, he’s less the star of the Roots than its anchor — ?uestlove’s drumming and his band’s arrangements are the real draw, and the group leans on guest rappers for contrast and charisma. Dice Raw and Peedi Crakk are frequent Roots collaborators, and both do a good job of working with ?uestlove’s monstrous beat on this track. In particular, Peedi Crakk’s high pitched voice and playful tone serves as a fine complement to Thought’s somewhat dour persona, and the gruff style of Dice Raw. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Esser “I Love You” – It’s pretty clear that the singer isn’t actually afraid of expressing how he feels to another person, but rather deeply embarrassed by his options to do so. He’s got a deep fear of artistic and rhetorical cliché, but in the end, despite all the angst and qualifications, he settled on something tried and true: A swirly, boppy pop song that repeats the phrase “I love you” in its chorus. When it’s done, you just want to pat him on the shoulder and say “See? That wasn’t so hard, was it?” (Click here to buy it via Esser’s MySpace page.)

Destroyer @ Music Hall of Williamsburg 4/22/2008
Blue Flower/Blue Flame / Rubies / Leopard Of Honor / The State / Crystal Country / Libby’s First Sunrise / Dark Leaves Form A Thread / New Ways Of Living / Trembling Peacock / My Favourite Year / Foam Hands / Hey, Snow White // Modern Painters / Self-Portrait With Thing (Tonight Is Not Your Night)

Destroyer “Leopard Of Honor” – Understandably so, there is a tendency to conflate Destroyer and Dan Bejar, but in concert there is no question that they are a band, and not simply a solo act in disguise. Indeed, Bejar has an extremely commanding presence on stage with his floppy mop of hair, carefully crafted persona, and distinct vocal styling, but last night, he was frequently upstaged by Nicolas Bragg’s gorgeous renderings of his songs’ achingly romantic lead guitar parts, and Fisher Rose’s jaw-dropping performance on the drums. Rose is a monster behind the kit; equally adept at creating a light atmosphere with sleigh bells as he is pounding out a propulsive beat for “Dark Leaves From A Thread,” or providing the vertiginous, lopsided gait of “The State.” Collectively, Destroyer is exceptionally gifted at nailing the chiaroscuro tones of Bejar’s compositions, while also pumping up their most dramatic turns for the stage. With just a slight shift in emphasis, the lovely “Leopard Of Honor” became something of a somnambulist showstopper, and “Foam Hands,” a gentle anthem. In lesser hands, much of Bejar’s work could collapse into self-parody and pastiche, but his bandmates hold it together, resulting in deliberately pretentious romantic pop ballads of uncommon grace. (Click here to buy it from Merge.)

Ladytron “Ghosts” – The chorus of this song kills — “there’s a ghost in me / it wants to say “I’m sorry” / it doesn’t mean I’m sorry” — but mainly because it’s backed up by this grim, utterly determined bass line and a beat like a martial lockstep. It’s the sound of a person doing everything they can to keep a stern face, and to avoid slipping into bad habits out of feelings of guilt and nostalgia. This isn’t a heartless song — sure, there is some clear ill will for this ex, and some slight celebration of his loneliness and misfortune, but that’s perfectly normal. The reason this works and resonates so deeply is because she has to put up this fight, and that she has to force herself to be this cold for her own good. (Click here to pre-order it from Insound.)

Meanwhile, on Fair Game: The entire James Rabbit session is available in full, and it includes two as-yet unreleased songs — “In Love With The Idea” and “Options.”

Also, we had Garth Jennings on the show — as one half of Hammer & Tongs, he’s responsible for a number of excellent videos, including “Imitation of Life” by R.E.M., “Coffee & TV” by Blur, “Help The Aged” by Pulp, “Hell Yes” by Beck, and “Jigsaw Falling Into Place” by Radiohead. His new movie is called Son Of Rambow, and it is absolutely brilliant, and I recommend listening to Faith’s interview with him; it’s very lovely and inspiring.

Jaguar Love “Bats Over The Pacific Ocean” – From the sound of it, Jaguar Love seems to be the Make -Up to the Blood Brothers’ Nation of Ulysses. Johnny Whitney’s distinct voice remains at the core of both bands, but in the context of Jaguar Love’s less aggro, more groovy (though no less urgent) music, he’s free to stretch himself beyond the confines of perpetual hysteria. Since Whitney’s voice is such a bold, overpowering thing, it’s not immediately apparent that “Bats Over The Pacific Ocean” is actually a duet, but his performance is shadowed by another, far more tame vocal take that grounds the recording, and serves to remind the audience what the song might be like with a far less compelling frontman. I mean, seriously, if you made a remix of this song that eliminated every trace of Whitney’s voice, you’d have something like an above-average Wolf Parade tune; i.e. relatively competent 00s indie without any sort of spark or charisma. In a period overrun with indie rock singers with samey, dull voices, Whitney’s flamboyant screams and willingness to commit to every cryptic line and melodic turn of his songs as if it were a matter of life and death sets him and his band apart from the wretched timidity of his peers. (Click here for the Jaguar Love page at Matador.)

The Fall “Senior Twilight Stock Replacer” – If you’re listening to this song on headphones or decent speakers with a bit of separation between them, it will be hard not to notice something a bit perverse about this song: When Mark E. Smith enters the chant on the catchy, nonsensical chorus, it sounds absolutely terrible. Not his performance, mind you — he’s just being himself, albeit on the slurred and lazy side of the MES gray scale — but rather the actual recording, which is basically one of the worst overdubs I’ve ever heard on a proper, non-lo-fi album. It sounds as if Smith was singing along to the song on a boom box and kept unknowingly hitting the red record button on and off. And here’s the thing: It kinda works, in part because his voice is this distinctly menacing, intruding thing that clashes with the unity of the chant. It also succeeds because it’s bratty, and it comes across like a nasty afterthought, like “fuck you, I’ve made over thirty albums, and I’m putting in the overdub myself!” Smith is fantastic anti-hero; it’s not too hard to imagine him manhandling a console while some poor, bloodied engineer cowers in a corner. (Click here to buy it from Amazon UK.)

The Mountain Goats featuring Erik Friedlander “Lovecraft In Brooklyn” (Live on Fair Game) – On the album Heretic Pride, “Lovecraft In Brooklyn” is a moody, dynamic rocker, but in this live studio recording, John Darnielle and cellist Erik Friedlander dial down the volume but increase the tension so that each chord change feels a bit like giant invisible hands drawing tighter around the neck of the song’s deeply xenophobic protagonist. Friedlander’s parts dart along the outside of Darnielle’s acoustic chords, alternating between low melancholy, and high pitched paranoia. The song hits its peak as the character plunges to the depths of his fevered delusion and panic — “I woke up afraid of my own shadow — like, genuinely afraid.” He goes on to describe a vision of interstellar Cthulu-ish horror, but that one small moment in which he seems to acknowledge his irrationality is riveting, heartbreaking, and brilliant. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

She & Him “Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?” – A lot of actors and actresses make a go at pop music, but nearly all of them fail for two basic reasons — first, their taste is mundane and their tunes are ordinary at best, and second, they are not successful in translating their appeal on screen to a medium in which their body is invisible to the audience. Zooey Deschanel makes it work on her first album with M. Ward mainly because good — decidely retro — taste is crucial to her aesthetic, and perhaps more than any other actress of her generation, she has developed a persona that is at once seemingly authentic, and precisely calibrated to make a specific segment of the population swoon.

This is what comes across on the She & Him record — even with your eyes closed, she fully inhabits her character: Shockingly beautiful, but incongruously modest. Cute, coy, and self-aware. A bit old fashioned, but firmly rooted in the present. Small town, with just a dash of big city. She plays the extraordinarily pretty girl next door who is inexplicably unconceited and unpretentious, and has a carefully curated vintage wardrobe, a big box of old vinyl records, and a taste for sweet, low key romance. This may or may not be the actual Zooey Deschanel, but that’s irrelevant — she’s so good at selling this persona that if it’s at all a put-on, it’s hard to spot the seams in her fabrication.

Deschanel doesn’t come to the She & Him record with a desire to reinvent herself as a rock star a la Juliette Lewis, and there’s no assumption that we’re getting anything particularly confessional or revealing. Instead, we get a concentrated dose of Zooey-ness in the form of well-crafted old school pop songs that showcase her sweetness, humor, and humility. The best songs sound like a sunny day in a perfect world, and encourage the listener to imagine that they are somehow either inhabiting the life of her character, or that she is singing to them. “Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?” in particular makes me miss Gilmore Girls in the worst way — it’s really a shame that the series ended too soon for Lorelai or Rory to stroll through Stars Hollow, completely at one with its gentle, adorable whimsy. (Click here to buy it from Merge.)

Heloise and the Savoir Faire “Po’ T” – At the start of this song, Heloise stumbles upon a familiar face from her past, and goes on to reminisce about a night of escalating sexual tension from back when she was a somewhat rebellious 17 year old, and he was a gun-toting southern roughneck who answered to the name “Po’ T.” The arrangement carries us through her shifting levels of nervousness and excitement, starting us out on shaky footing when she re-introduces herself to him, and moving on to approximate her thrill at revisiting the good times she had running with this lascivious bad boy. Clearly, much of that thrill came from feeling a bit in over her head, and that comes across in the music — even at the song’s boldest moments, she sounds like she’s trying hard just to keep up with herself, much less this dude. That said, the real tension in the song resides in the present tense, but it’s all left to the imagination — like, where did she run into Po’ T as an adult? Obviously, she has changed a lot, but what is he like now? Does he retain any of his sexual appeal? Has she thought about him much at all in the time since she was a teenager? Does he remember her? (Click here to buy it from Yep Roc.)

Britta Persson “Kill Hollywood Me” – Three of my favorite albums right now are essentially records about the relationship between fantasy and reality. Whereas the Kills’ Midnight Boom and Alphabeat’s self-titled debut yearn for the romance and drama of fiction, and attempt to create a more romantic world through sheer force of will, Britta Persson’s Kill Hollywood Me heads off in the opposite direction, fleeing from the crushing weight of expectations. As she puts it, “memories and fantasies are to be seen as enemies.” She’s not arguing against romance; she’s rebelling against narcissism, the notion that there’s a way our lives ought to be, and the sense that we’re doing it all wrong if we’re lacking in glamor or following trajectories that aren’t quite as dramatic and concise as a story arc in a television series or a film. Her words are sharp, but humble — well, the ones I can understand, anyway. Her accent and phrasing has a way of obscuring her lines, and so a refrain in this song comes out sounding something sorta like “when the fish stinks,” “when the finch sinks,” “when the face stings,” or “when life is steaks.” (Click here to buy it from Amazon Germany.)

Meanwhile, at Fair Game: I forgot to mention this last week, but our sessions with the Child Ballads and Peter Moren are both available now.