The Dead Science “Monster Island Czars” – This is very unusual. The Dead Science are part prog, part modern classical, part no wave/noise rock. The singer not only sounds quite a bit like Craig Wedren from Shudder To Think, but Wedren actually has a guest appearance on the album. (Katrina Ford of Celebration also turns up, and there’s certainly some similarities to her band as well.) A majority of the lyrics are either about comic books or the Wu-Tang Clan. (The album is dedicated to the Wu-Tang Clan, and when you open the gatefold of the packaging, it reads “It’s Yourz.”) The music is jagged, violent, dramatic, cinematic, and perversely romantic. It draws on all these things that are familiar to me, and yet it still sounds somewhat alien. “Monster Island Czars” is particularly compelling in the way it slashes, collapses, rises, and burns through so much ground in less than four minutes without sounding the least bit disjointed. (Click here to buy it from Constellation Records, and here for the Dead Science’s official site.)

Pearl Jam @ Madison Square Garden 6/24/2008
Hard To Imagine / Save You / Why Go? / All Night / Corduroy / Faithfull / Elderly Woman Behind The Counter In A Small Town / Down / Unemployable / Given To Fly / Who You Are / Whipping / 1/2 Full / Even Flow / Present Tense / Daughter / Do The Evolution // Love Reign O’er Me / W.M.A. / Leash / Spin The Black Circle / Wasted Reprise / Porch /// No More / Crazy Mary / Comatose / I Believe In Miracles (with CJ Ramone) / Alive //// All Along The Watchtower / Indifference

I’ll have a different, more show-focused review of this concert over at Stereogum later in the day, but for now, I’m going to be indulgent. (It’s up now, with lots of great photos by Maria Tessa Sciarrino.)

This was my first Pearl Jam concert in a little over ten years. That last show was a brief festival appearance, and so it’s really my second full Pearl Jam gig, the first being a stop in Connecticut on the No Code tour back in 1996. Looking over this setlist, three things come to mind:

1. Wow, I got really lucky. They played my favorite rarity right at the start, and then threw in “Faithfull,” “Corduroy,” “Whipping,” and “Unemployable,” all of which would be near the top of my personal wish list. (“Wishlist,” however, was not, but that’s not really a comment on the quality of that song.) Aside from “Even Flow,” which you’re definitely going to see no matter what, Pearl Jam setlists are very random, and really, any song from a pool of about 200 could pop up in any given show. Sure, they didn’t do “I Got Shit,” “Grievance,” “Not For You,” or “Breath,” but I think I made out pretty well. Bonus: They did not play any songs that I actively dislike, like, say, “God’s Dice.”

2. I kinda wish I could send 13 year old me a letter telling him “Hey, be patient. You’re going to see Pearl Jam play “Hard To Imagine” in 15 years, and it’s gonna rule. Also, believe it or not, they’re actually going to do “W.M.A.” too, but with a slightly different arrangement.”

3. The teenage version of me would’ve known a little over half of the songs played in this show, i.e. all the songs written and in the group’s known repertoire before 1997.

I wasn’t sure what to expect to feel at this show, but I’m glad that what I did feel wasn’t just a lot of distanced nostalgia. I may have significantly toned down my Pearl Jam fandom over the past 15 years, but it never really went away. I may not listen to the band with any sort of regularity now, but I never stopped loving any of those old songs, and I never lost interest in their newer material. I felt very present at the show, and part of that comes down to the intense, unanimous enthusiasm of the audience, and most of it comes out of the fact that the band are effortlessly compelling. Eddie Vedder has got his showman tricks, but he doesn’t lean too hard on them, instead just sinking himself deep into the songs, and letting his natural charisma do the rest. Their show is totally no-frills — standard lighting, no real backdrop. It’s just the band on stage, playing songs for nearly three hours. It sounds so simple, but how many bands can pull that off in a room of that size, pretty much anywhere on the planet, and have pretty much every single person in the room totally pumped and singing along the entire time? It’s extraordinary.

Pearl Jam “Hard To Imagine” (Live @ Van Andel Arena Grand Rapids, MI, 2006) – This is wrote about “Hard To Imagine” three years ago…

When I was a teen, I was very obsessed with Pearl Jam, a condition that was exacerbated by the intense fandom of many of my friends at school, some of whom had been buying cd bootlegs featuring unreleased songs that the band had been playing live. At that point, half of the fun of being a Pearl Jam fan was being amazed by how much excellent material the band was willing to relegate to b-sides and soundtracks, or just not release at all. I had a live version of “Hard To Imagine” dubbed to a cassette from my friend Steve’s cd, and I would listen to it over and over again, totally baffled as to why the band would just abandon what was clearly one of their very best songs. I’d dub copies for friends, and talk it up with any Pearl Jam fan who would listen, totally confident that the band would put it out on their next record. Vitalogy came and went, and I rationalized – it just wasn’t right for that record, it would obviously pop up later on. When the tracklisting for No Code was announced in Ice, I convinced myself and others that the song “Present Tense” HAD to be a retitled version of the song. I mean, isn’t it obvious? The chorus is “things were different then, all is different now” – like, it’s the present tense!!! But no. Though I liked No Code and still do, my interest in Pearl Jam fell off sharply around 1997, and has only dimmed with time.

A studio version of the song was finally released in 1998, tossed off to the soundtrack of an obscure movie called Chicago Cab. At that point, it was hard for me to muster much enthusiasm. I never bought the soundtrack, and eventually just downloaded it from Audiogalaxy. It’s a lovely version of the song, though not quite everything it could have been. It still sounds lonely, nostalgic, and majestic, and the guitar at the beginning still evokes wet snow on the ground and the scent of smoke from wood burning stoves mixing with crisp air (probably just my sense memory from when I first heard the song, but whatever). I maintain after all of this time that it is certainly one of the best songs the band has ever written, and when I was looking at the band’s recent setlists a few weeks ago, I couldn’t help but to feel extremely jealous of the audiences who’ve seen them play it, as it has become a semi-regular song in their rotation following the release of their b-sides collection, Lost Dogs. I’m pretty sure that there was one show in Canada where they played this, “Breath,” “I Got Shit,” “Not For You,” and “Release” all in the same set, something that would’ve totally blown my mind when I was sixteen. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Oh, by the way, maybe someday I’ll tell you all about the Vitalogy book I wanted to write for the 33 1/3 series. Not today.

Architecture In Helsinki “Hold Music (Max Tundra Remix)” – Given the explosion in remixing over the past decade, I reckon we’re at the point where something like 98% of all remixes are totally unlistenable and awful. The bad remixes are usually either glitchy, self-indulgent garbage that amounts to some idiot making some terrible new composition out of fragments of the source material, or someone taking the source material and finding a way to dumb it down or otherwise strip it of its original appeal. Max Tundra’s Architecture In Helsinki remix is one of the 2% that get it right. His somewhat cartoonish style is immediately apparent, but it doesn’t eclipse the personality of Architecture In Helsinki or their song: The two aesthetics blend harmoniously, as if they had collaborated on writing and arranging the tune from the start. Tundra did nothing to change the basic structure of “Hold Music” — pretty much everything that worked well in the song is intact — but he adds more color and bolder dynamic shifts to the arrangement. The result is bouncy and restless, and filled with a nearly overwhelming variety of textures. Better yet, Tundra makes some sense of the title by setting the chorus sections to bits that actually sound like hold music. (Click here to buy it from Polyvinyl Records.)

Sloan @ Bowery Ballroom 6/20/2008
Believe In Me / All I Am Is All You’re Not / Don’t You Believe A Word / Everything You’ve Done Wrong / I’m Not A Kid Anymore / The Dogs / Sensory Deprivation / Burn For It / Ready For You / Witch’s Wand / I Am The Cancer / Ill-Placed Trust / Emergency 911 / Down In The Basement / Something Wrong / I’ve Gotta Try / Living The Dream / Take Good Care Of The Poor Boy / Friendship / The Other Man / Money City Maniacs // Flying High Again / Who Taught You To Live Like That? / Deeper Than Beauty / She Says What She Means / The Good In Everyone

Elsewhere: I was on NPR’s The Bryant Park Project to talk about Girl Talk’s new album.

R.E.M. @ Madison Square Garden 6/19/2008
Living Well Is The Best Revenge / These Days / What’s The Frequency, Kenneth? / Bad Day / Drive / Hollow Man / Ignoreland / Man-Sized Wreath / Leaving New York / Disturbance At The Heron House / Houston / Electrolite / (Don’t Go Back To) Rockville / Driver 8 / Harborcoat / The One I Love / Until The Day Is Done / Let Me In / Horse To Water / Pretty Persuasion / Orange Crush / I’m Gonna DJ // Supernatural Superserious / Losing My Religion / Begin The Begin / Fall On Me / Man On The Moon

* OMG “Disturbance At The Heron House” and “Harborcoat”! I actually don’t even have anything to add to that, it was just a really lovely fanboy experience to get those two songs in the set.

Glam Chops “Tell Us, Are You Ready, Eddie? (Eddie, Are You Ready?)” – Following the apparent dissolution of Art Brut, Eddie Argos has re-emerged as the frontman of Glam Chops, a band that sounds more or less exactly like Art Brut, but with a horn section and back-up singers. As you could’ve guessed by their name, there is a thin “glam” conceit to the new band, but obviously, it’s glam as applied to Eddie Argos’ shtick. Basically, this is a song about a guy who has been self-consciously toying with a glam aesthetic, but has come away from the experience feeling extremely neurotic about what other people think of him, and insecure about his masculinity. In other words, it’s all backfired on him, and in playing the part of a sexually liberated rocker, he feels even more pathetic and repressed than ever before. Of course, this being Eddie Argos, it’s rather low on angst, and high on silly, self-deprecating humor. (Click here for the Eddie Argos Resource.)

Wild Beasts “The Devil’s Crayon” – Given that the main attraction of the Wild Beasts has been the distinct singing voice of their frontman Hayden Thorpe, their latest single “The Devil’s Crayon” is something of a curveball: It’s a duet between Thorpe and his bandmate Tom Fleming. Thankfully, Fleming’s voice only serves to enhance the band’s ragged yet enchanted aesthetic. In contrast to Thorpe’s femine affect — the last time I wrote about him, I described him as singing like a hobo who is convinced that he is Maria Callas, and I stand by that — Fleming presents a heroic, elegant masculinity. The song is yearning and romantic, and plays out on a grand scale that suggests that despite their inherent weirdness, the Wild Beasts may eventually be well-suited to large venues. (Click here to buy it via the Wild Beasts’ official album site.)

Be Your Own Pet “Black Hole” – When it was announced that this song was cut from the American edition of Be Your Own Pet’s second album out of concern for the violence in its lyrics, it was more than a little bit confusing, mainly because it’s so hard to imagine that anyone could hear it and not immediately grasp that Jemina Pearl was not being very serious.  Make no mistake: “Black Hole” is 100% over-the-top adolescent hyperbole. It’s about being bored, and wanting to devour junk food, and cause some mischief. It’s specific to post-50s America, but I suspect that it’s tapping into a universal human impulse to goof around and fuck shit up. The band express this impulse with remarkable clarity and style — the guitars stab and slash, the beat hurtles forward, and Pearl’s lyrics hit this ideal balance of idiocy and brilliance: “Eating pizza is really great / so is destroying everything you hate!” Yes! Yes, that’s true! (Click here to buy it via Be Your Own Pet’s official site.)

R.E.M. @ Jones Beach 6/14/2008

So, yeah. This was kind of a disaster, but thank goodness, the show went on. I don’t want to get too much into whining about the weather, or gnashing my teeth about how the rain delay forced the band to cut several songs that I desperately wanted to see them play. In spite of everything, this was a pretty amazing show, and Michael Stipe in particular was very on. All of the new songs were exciting, and the performances of “So. Central Rain,” “These Days,” “Ignoreland,” and “Let Me In” were outstanding. That said, I’ll be writing more about the actual concert later on, so for now, let’s talk about Accelerate.

If the links in the setlist above were not enough of a hint for you, I want to make a point of mentioning that I’ve nearly completed my Pop Songs R.E.M. discography project. (I’ve finished about half of the albums now, and I’ve got about nine or ten more entries to go as of this writing.) If you haven’t been reading it, I humbly ask that you look it over, especially since it was designed as an argument for the band’s work directed to lapsed fans, and people who never gave them much of a shot despite their canonization. (I’m looking at you, North Americans Under The Age Of 26.)

Wire “One Of Us” – Even when writing a straight-forward pop song about the messy dissolution of a relationship, Wire can’t help but seem entirely cold and dispassionate. It’s actually easier to hear this as being a song about the end of a professional partnership, and not simply because Bruce Gilbert has apparently left the band. Colin Newman betrays very little emotion in either his lyrics or his voice, aside from perhaps an eagerness to tidy up loose ends and cling to some semblance of decorum. In the chorus he sings “one of us will live to rue the day we met each other,” and despite his apparent grievances, I’m inclined to think it’s going to be the person on the other side of this song. (Click here to pre-order it from Wire’s official site.)

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists “The World Is In The Terlet” – This song was written and recorded on the June 3, 2008 episode of the Best Show on WFMU. Basically, Tom and a few of his listeners came up with the lyrics, and Ted Leo and the Pharmacists put it all together and recorded it before the end of the show. It ought to be a fun curiosity, but it actually might be one of Leo’s best tunes. The song is essentially a string of punk cliches with lyrics about some sort of hipster apocalypse, but it all snaps together so nicely that it’s like hearing all the old tricks for the very first time, especially when the songs collapses into a racket after Leo announces that “the western world will perish in fifteen years!” (Click here for the official Ted Leo site, and here for the Best Show On WFMU.)

Quitzow “Better Than Ever” – It’s kind of a rare thing that I get to get to feature an artist who is from more or less the same region where I grew up. This isn’t to say that there aren’t many musicians in the Hudson Valley of New York, but rather that they either just are not to my taste — there’s always been a lot of earnest folky stuff, especially as you get further up into hippie country — or the artists don’t really do much in the way of self-promotion, and you just never really hear about them in the first place. The one major exception is Mercury Rev, who are terrific and kinda perfectly capture the aesthetic of the upper Hudson Valley and the Catskills, i.e., about an hour north of where I’m from.

Like Mercury Rev, Erica Quitzow lives and works somewhere up in the north of the Hudson Valley — New Paltz, I think? — but unlike them, her music doesn’t really have much to do with the upstate aesthetic. She specializes in a blend of live, acoustic strings and electronic pop, and her voice superficially resembles the cool, reserved tones of Metric’s Emily Haines. If anything, the music sounds European, even when she’s messing about with throbbing Timbland-style synth lines. Her greatest asset is her gift for writing strong, simple yet elegant hooks for strings. In particular, “Better Than Ever” glides along with a sort of menacing grace that contrasts with the track’s hesitant bass groove and stuttering percussion. (Click here to buy it from CD Baby.)

Hemme Fatale “Animal Lover” – The most obvious touchstone for Hemme Fatale would be the Human League in their prime, but there’s something about their take on classic boy/girl electro-pop music that comes out sounding subtly skewed and mildly disorienting. All of their songs are informed by a ridiculous, deadpan sexuality that, when combined with the off-kilter funk of their tracks, result in something close to actual sexiness. In “Animal Lover,” the group mess around the listener’s expectations by taking a fairly standard lyrical conceit — she’s an animal in bed! — and twist it by alternating between taking the title phrase very literally (i.e., “I know a girl who says / she wants to take me to an owl sanctuary / the second biggest in the country”), or pushing the sex talk to deliberately awkward territory. (Click here for the Hemme Fatale website.)

Lil’ Wayne “Dr. Carter” – “Dr. Carter” is essentially an advice song in which Lil’ Wayne — starring as a doctor in a hip hop emergency room — offers words of wisdom to rappers who lack his skills and originality. Taken at face value, it’s very amusing and his craft is dazzling, but really, this is more than just a goofy, boastful skit extended to a full-length track; it’s the sound of a genius who is totally exasperated by the people who ought to be considered his peers. Throughout Tha Carter III, Wayne repeatedly suggests that he belongs in the company of acknowledged greats — Biggie, Tupac, Jay-Z, Andre 3000 — and he’s not wrong. He’s an absolutely brilliant MC who can make even terrible songs sound good simply by gracing the track, and he has a persona and gift for lyricism that is unmatched by anyone else in his age group. This is the frustration at the heart of “Dr. Carter” — Wayne isn’t bagging on anyone but the rappers of his generation, and in every moment of the song, you can hear his disappointment. This is a man who wants competition, and not just from guys ten years older than him. He seems desperate for a challenge, but more than that, he comes across like a person who just wants more good music, and for everyone else to raise their standards. When the track picks up at the end of each verse, Wayne sounds as earnest as an evangelist, and his intensity conveys a deep, passionate love of hip hop that totally eclipses the requisite egomania of a top MC.

Also, oh my GOD, this track. I already loved Swizz Beatz and have been wondering for some time why he doesn’t get the awe and respect he clearly deserves, but “Dr. Carter” takes it all to the next level. It’s not quite like any other Swizz composition — there’s no synths, the beat isn’t non-stop euphoria. It’s low key and organic, with a jazz-funk swing in the verses that shifts into a cinematic, symphonic grandeur as Wayne’s rap builds up to a crescendo. Swizz makes Wayne sound brave and heroic, and altogether, the piece is incredibly inspiring. Whether you’re a rapper or not, “Dr. Carter” will make you want to do better, and to aspire to its greatness. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Annie “I Know Ur Girlfriend Hates Me” – Wow, Jezebel is right — this is a really good song! It’s hip-switchin’, gum-snappin’, tit-perkin’, and everything! (I love it when songs are tit-perkin’!) Anyway, even though Slut Machine is pretty right-on about the song — gee, it’s just like that thing Tyra Banks says! — some of the folks in their comment box are a little off-base.

For example:

Gundam_Halo: That video was hypnotic. I’m a sucker for choreography. Damn, I’m a self-loathing, depressing person. I’m not supposed to entertained by something as pop (or whatever the label is) as this.

Awww! I’ve got good news and bad news for you, Gundam_Halo — you’re not wrong to enjoy well-crafted pop songs or music videos with choreography! Unfortunately, the bad news is that if you have successfully convinced yourself that somehow pop music and dancing are inherently shameful things, you actually have a good reason to be depressed and loathe yourself!

CreoleSugar: Isn’t this woman a bit old to be singing about how someone’s girlfriend hates her?

Maybe? Probably not?

goodcheapfun: This is the perfect genre for an entertainer long on looks and short on talent.

Really? Because this is pretty much the same genre as Prince, and there are melodic turns in this that rival some of his finest work. But in fairness, that little fucker was always getting by on the strength of his ‘stache.

There’s actually about 30+ iterations of this point, but I’ll go with this one —

Miss Smith Drank Your…: I’m glad y’all are posting about the ugliness of the lyrics. As soon as I saw the title I did an eyeroll. Enough of the girl fighting over man! Srsly. And Avril/others – if “her” BF really wanted you, he would be with you and not her.

Okay, so you know how Europeans are always like “ugh, Americans don’t understand irony,” and it’s really smug, and you want to get defensive and say “hey, I can process irony, and I can tell when someone is kinda taking the piss, especially in a pop song!”? Well, as it turns out, for the most part, they’ve got a good point. I understand and relate to feeling a great deal of fatigue with regards to the sentiment of the song, but is it so hard to tell that the song is not 100% serious? And that, maybe just maybe, it’s a parody?

Sigh! I could keep going through these all day, but you know, whatever, it’s the internet.

(Click here for the Annie MySpace page.)

Douglas Armour “Fall Apart Again” – The character in “Fall Apart Again” is desperate to express himself to his partner, and trying very hard to get on the same page, but something isn’t working. No matter what he says, he’s left wondering if they even understand what he means, and if they’ve somehow gone reverted from sharing a close rapport to being little more than strangers in familiar bodies. You may expect a song with that theme to have a fairly anxious sound, but instead, the gently bouncy synth-pop groove and Armour’s airy voice conveys a feeling of calmness and resignation, and maybe even a bit of optimism and relief, as if the singer is realizing this situation is really for the best. (Click here to buy it from The Social Registry.)

Low Motion Disco “The Low Murderer Is Out At Night” – This is for stumbling around in the wee hours, or for being half-awake in the passenger seat of a car, watching neon signs and street lights pass by in abstractions of colors and lines. This is for passing out, and waking up and not knowing where you are. This is for being up to no good, but not actually doing anything wrong. (Click here to buy it via Low Motion Disco’s MySpace page.)

Weezer “Troublemaker” – I’ll never understand why people are so hard on Rivers Cuomo. Since Weezer emerged from their post-Pinkerton hiatus, the guy cannot escape the constant bitching of his fanbase, and it’s just ridiculous given the fact that he can be relied upon to knock out at least two or three full-on power pop classics on every Weezer release. Granted, any complaints about the quality of Weezer’s records since 1996 are valid — they’ve all been uneven, but to focus on the consistency of the band’s albums misses the point in an enormous way. As I wrote back in 2005:

Weezer is a singles band. It doesn’t really matter if they put filler on their albums because it’s all about the songs that will end up on their greatest hits collection, and that will inevitably become the best record in their discography. Watching their career unfold is basically like getting the best power pop cd ever slowly doled out over an installment plan.

The other thing that people seem to forget is that Weezer is never supposed to be cool, and that since day one, their brand has been about embracing whatever might make “cool kids” feel uncomfortable. Their tactics shift with the times: You’re all gonna be rockers? Well, we’ll be dorks. You’re all gonna sing cryptic lyrics? Well, we’re gonna overshare about our obsession with young Asian girls. You’re all gonna be dorks? Well, we’ll be rockers. You’re all inching up to your 30s and feeling anxious about adulthood? Well, we’re gonna embrace aging and do the whole “rock and roll dad” thing. That contrarian attitude is crucial to the band’s enduring commercial success — by rebelling against hipness, they tap into a mutant strain of populism.

So yes, The Red Album is uneven. Of course it is. The first three songs — “Troublemaker,” “The Greatest Man That Ever Lived,” and “Pork & Beans” — are absolutely amazing, and rate in the highest percentile of Weezer tunes. “Dreamin'” and “Everybody Get Dangerous” are solid, respectable album tracks. “Heart Songs” is on the fence — it’s dorky, sappy, and insipid to such an extreme that it seems purposefully designed to make Pitchfork readers cry tears of blood, but it’s sorta pleasant. The big problem is that — FOR SOME REASON — Cuomo decided to let the other guys in the band write and/or sing their own songs, and they are just so so bad. So so so so so so bad. Nevertheless, it doesn’t really change anything about that opening trio, and why should it? They are essentially a mini-album unto themselves; a song cycle about rock stardom, or perhaps more specifically, Rivers Cuomo’s rock stardom. It starts off with a number that comes across as the secret origin of Weezer, climaxes with a deeply ironic multi-part rock epic about the joyous arrogance of fame set to the tune of a Shaker hymn expressing a profound humility, and resolves with a self-deprecating rocker about recommitting to the notion of embracing a dorky non-conformity. It’s a pretty awesome 1-2-3, and really, any more Weezer songs of that caliber on the album would be surplus to my requirements.

Like many songs before it, “Troublemaker” imagines success and fame as a way out of stifling conformity, but it is skewed by the singer’s acute self-awareness and a naked desire for validation. Though most of the lyrics are focused on insisting that he’s a bad-ass maverick, it’s really a song about a guy who feels some pretty intense sexual anxiety, and is willing to do whatever it takes to make himself feel attractive. He doesn’t even seem to be all that interested in sex as anything but a stepping stone to validation: “I’m gonna be a star / and people will crane necks / to get a glimpse of me / and see if I am having sex.” Unsurprisingly, the song ends with the singer imagining a life as a glamorous recluse, with all the privilege, excess, and recognition of stardom, but without any of the, y’know, human interaction. It’s a ultimately a funny light-hearted song, but mainly because it’s easy to recognize the crazy ol’ Rivers who pops up in interviews and magazine profiles in its words. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Hercules and Love Affair “Athene” – Even without lyrics and vocals, “Athene” would feel like a wish for inspiration, and for escape from dreariness, complication, and tedium. Lyrically and musically, the song looks wistfully to a magical past, but whether it’s Greek Classics or late 70s New York disco, Andrew Butler desires to invest the present tense with the power of mythology. Kim Ann Foxman may be singing to the Goddess of Wisdom, but with this track, Butler may as well be beseeching the wisdom of Larry Levan or Arthur Russell. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

The Cool Kids “What It Is” – The Cool Kids are undeniably retro, but unlike a majority of artists who lean hard on the sound of 80s hip hop, they are neither aggravating or boring. The music is entirely matter of fact — they come across like a couple of guys who are so in love with a particular tradition that they would dismiss anyone who might tell them that their style died out around the time they were born. And they’re right — fashion may have moved on a few times over in the past two decades, but just the same with classic rock or Motown soul, the appeal of old school hip hop is evergreen, and comes down to a brilliant, primal simplicity crossed with loud charisma and largely invisible craftsmanship. The Cool Kids make it work because they are just as interested in craft as affect, and can effortlessly kick into the perfect contrast of crisp, dynamic beats and playful party-dude vocals. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Elsewhere: My early impressions of some songs from Of Montreal’s forthcoming album Skeletal Lamping.

The Ting Tings “That’s Not My Name” – The Ting Tings’ debut album is a peculiar balance of chart pop style and indie affect, and as such, it seems like something that ought to make a select group of people very happy, and completely alienate pretty much everyone else. Aside from the single “Great DJ,” the duo are most successful when they lean hard on their slick pop influences, and end up with tracks that come off like a leaner, less brain-smashing version of Girls Aloud. “That’s Not My Name” is particularly strong with its ridiculously catchy staccato chorus melting into a softer refrain that eventually overlaps with two more vocal hooks when the song hits a crest in its final third. Aside from the basic thrill of the rhythm and melodies, there’s something very appealing just in the way Katie White spits out the names in the chorus — Stay-CEE, Mary-JO-Leee-suh! It’s fun. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Prototypes “Synthetique” – You know, it’s actually kinda hard to imagine that understanding all of the words in this song would improve it in any way. In fact, even though the Prototypes are from Paris, their French-ness seems like something of an affectation, sorta in the same way that American country singers play up their drawl, or the way guys like Jarvis Cocker, Damon Albarn, and Morrissey trade on their extreme British-ness. This song is a song, but it’s also like this very well-executed concept of vaguely rocking French hipster disco music. (Click here for the Prototypes’ MySpace page.)

Portishead “We Carry On” – Just about two weeks ago, a few minutes into the daily morning meeting at work, I found out that I, along with all of my co-workers, was about to be out of a job. It only took a few seconds to break the news, but the meeting kept going on and on, explaining why it was all happening when all I wanted was to get out of that room and that building as quickly as possible. I needed to process it; I needed to be alone; I needed to freak out. I had to stick around and stew in a silent panic for a few more hours, but sometime around 2 PM, I went home. It was an exceptionally dark and rainy afternoon, almost too perfect for my dreary mood. When I got back to my apartment, I couldn’t do much more than put on the new Portishead album, get in my bed, and attempt to sleep it off.

At that point, I had owned a copy of the Portishead’s Third for a while, but hadn’t really given it much of my time. I was never in the mood for it. I flicked through it a couple times, settled on “Nylon Smile,” and thought “okay, maybe I can do something with that on the site,” and pretty much ignored it for weeks. The choice to put the album on in that moment was somewhat arbitrary — I didn’t actively think “oh, I’d better put on that really bleak Portishead record,” it just happened to be one of the cds sitting in front of the stereo. At any rate, it was just about the most ideal album I could have heard under these specific conditions.

The sound of the record is a reward in and of itself — each song has its own set of specific tones and textures, and many of them are quite odd. Every so often, I’d be pulled out of myself just to notice a particular sound: The clanging horror movie guitar contrasted with the Silver Apples pulse of “We Carry On;” the eerie staccato drum machine hits of “Machine Gun;” the sudden, disquieting horn skronk in “Magic Doors.” The entire album is a paranoid lull, and its sustained feeling of impending doom seems infinite, even when some of the songs end in abrupt silence. It’s ideally suited to moments of doubt and fear, serving to both exacerbate that mood, while also offering a sort of solace, perhaps from a sense of implied solidarity in the face of loss and loneliness. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

I should know by now that the Fiery Furnaces are never going to do anything the “normal” way. I had assumed that when the band got around to releasing a live album, it would be very simple: Each tour has a different line-up of instruments and/or musicians, and corresponding arrangements and medleys, so they could just release a disc from each period. Blueberry Boat medley tour? Check. Four-piece hard rock combo circa 2006? Got it. Groovy keyboard-centric combo, circa now? Rad! But no, they went another way, and shock of all shocks, it’s unlike any other official live record that I’ve ever encountered. Remember is less like a document, and more like an audio documentary that culls recordings of various sound quality from a range of shows and cuts it all into a very odd sort of mixtape.

Weird things about Remember:

1. As I said, the audio is of varying quality. That would be strange enough, but several songs cut back and forth between very nice, professional audio, and clips that sound as though they were taken from a B+ audience bootleg recording. It’s extremely jarring at first, but in some cases, it has an interesting dynamic effect, and keeps the listener aware of context.

2. Though the band is known for performing medleys, several of the medleys on Remember were created in post-production. In some cases, it’s a matter of keeping the flow through the record. In others, such as the string of Widow City fragments at end of disc 2, it’s just baffling, especially since “Navy Nurse,” “Philadelphia Grand Jury,” and “Clear Signal From Cairo” have only ever been performed in full to the best of my knowledge.

3. There are totally frustrating cuts. The most egregious example is “Chief Inspector Blancheflower,” which starts off with the typical art-punk version of the opening section, before having the second section start and cut off immediately and gracelessly clunk into the seldom-performed “bakery” section of the piece. This is a totally maddening thing, especially since the second and third parts of the song are the crowd-pleasers.

4. A majority of the album is taken from the band’s worst period as a live band, i.e. the 2007 Bitter Tea tour with the extra percussion. Granted, a lot of that stuff comes across better on this album, but that doesn’t change the fact that many of the older songs performed on that tour were butchered horribly. Seriously, whenever I hear this version of “Name Game,” I wonder how it is that they were able to take one of my favorite songs in the world and make me hate it. However, I didn’t have any nicely recorded shows from that tour, but I do have top-quality recordings of every other era, so maybe they were just trying to fill a gap there?

5. They make Frankenstein versions of the longer songs.

The Fiery Furnaces “Blueberry Boat” (Remember version) – For example! Though it is a multi-part song, the band only ever performs the verses of “Blueberry Boat” that are sung by Eleanor on the album. This epic version of the song is in fact composed of bits and pieces of the song in slightly differing arrangements from various shows. You can really get a sense of the varying sound qualities in this track, especially since you’re essentially hearing the same thing over and over, but from different takes. It holds together as a track with its own internal logic pretty well, but it’s still quite bizarre and questionable. I mean, it sounds more like something an obsessed fan would make, and less like the opening track of a double live album.

The Fiery Furnaces “Forty-Eight Twenty-Three Twenty-Second Street” (Remember version) – The most exciting and enjoyable section of Remember is its run of radically re-arranged numbers from Rehearsing My Choir. In concert, the band tends to downplay the spoken word sections of the songs, and emphasize the grooves that were often only implied in the album arrangements. Some of the make-overs are so drastic that the songs are nearly unrecognizable compared to their studio incarnations: “Forty-Eight Twenty-Three Twenty-Second Street” has so many elements added or removed that it may as well be considered a new (and superior) draft of the composition.

(Click here to pre-order it from Thrill Jockey, or buy it at the merch stand on the band’s current tour.)