Revl9n “Walking Machine” – “Walking Machine” is ostensibly a dance pop song, but its beat seems nervous and agitated, as though Revl9n are attempting to simulate motion sickness rather than stimulate physical motion. The icky discomfort is contrasted with some melodic and dynamic sweetness, but you just can’t shake the dread — it seeps into every lyric, note, beat, and flourish. The singer distances herself from a masochistic acquaintance, but she does seem to agree with the notion that pain brings us in touch with our humanity, and keeps us from becoming dull, unfeeling automatons. (Click here to buy it from Amazon. This song was originally posted back in July of 2004.)

Elsewhere: If you email a request to the people at 33 1/3, they will send you a PDF of the first two chapters of Carl Wilson‘s Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste. I’ve only read those two chapters, but so far, it’s as good and interesting as I had expected.

Also: The Very Last Fucking of Steven Tyler.

Muscles “Lauren From Glebe” – One of the things that I like about Muscles, aside from obvious things like his hooks and beats and knack for layering his own voice into dense harmonies, is how his lyrics are peppered with incredibly specific details that neatly complement his broader sentiments. His music always has this wonderful sweet and sour quality, as though he’s doing his best to include hints of the sadness, loneliness, and frustration that compel us to seek out moments of pure pleasure. His synths often sound like the work of a guy who has several pages worth of Happy Hardcore compilations in a big cd binder with each album cover tucked neatly behind the disc, but he can’t help but include a melancholy melodic undertow in all of his tracks, or sing without sounding as though he’s pleading or forcing a grin. (Click here to pre-order it from Amazon.)

Elsewhere: My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site with mp3s from Electric Six, Coin-Op, and Linfinity.

Also: I will be filling in for Dan Kois on New York Magazine’s Vulture blog today.

Theya Hermann “Champagne and the Starlite” – This song is so deeply obscure that it’s like the only evidence that Theya Hermann ever existed. Who is she? Did she record other songs, and did they also sound as though they ought to be covered by the Scissor Sisters? (Like, RIGHT NOW, Scissor Sisters!) “Champagne and the Starlite” may very well be the most cheerful and romantic song ever written about the gas crisis or any other sort of shortage of consumer goods. It’s peppy, effervescent, and adorably flirtatious, especially when Hermann reassuringly declares “don’t despair, cutie baby loves you and she’s always gonna be there!” on the giddy lead up to the chorus.

Michel Polnareff “Fame a la Mode” – It’s usually a bit tedious to listen to pop singers complain about the pitfalls of their profession, but Michel Polnareff’s “Fame a la Mode” successfully avoids getting sent off to the Dept. of Tiny Violins by contrasting its melodramatic moments with jolly bits that convey the singer’s love of performing, and the repeated admission that “when you are the show, then you know the show must go on.” If anything, Polnareff just makes the melancholy and feelings of isolation seem sexy and glamorous, almost encouraging the audience to fantasize about rescuing him from himself.

Von Südenfed “The Rhinohead” – Mark E Smith has a tendency to dominate the flavor of any song he sings, but “The Rhinohead” is a rare exception, a track with a bounce so aggressive and gleeful that it keeps pushing Smith out of its way. Smith’s voice can be heard throughout, but his words seem shattered and scattered by Mouse On Mars’ stomping beats, as though he’s too distracted and overwhelmed to form a coherent thought, much less utter a comprehensible sentence aside from the distant and tentative exclamation “I was feeling…fascinated.” (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Boys Noize “Oh!” – All of the songs on Boys Noize’s first full-length sound more or less the same, and though that can be a bit numbing if heard from start to finish, the quality of the non-stop onslaught of riffs is terrifying consistent. I really need to emphasize the word “riffs” — every song is based on a motif that sounds like a badass guitar hook transposed into computer error signals, electronic screeches, and synthetic noise. This isn’t far off from what Justice and the rest of the Ed Banger crew have been up to recently, but it’s more obsessively focused on achieving an overwhelming heaviness. (Click here to buy it from Juno.)

Elsewhere: Sharon Jones reads passages from Douglas Wolk’s Live At The Apollo book from the 33 1/3 series.

Also: Mark Pytlik interviewed Daft Punk for Pitchfork.

And: Drive XV, Stereogum’s tribute to Automatic For The People, launched today, and you really ought to check it out. In addition to free mp3s of covers of every track on the record by a range of indie rock acts, the mini-site includes an essay about the album written by myself, along with comments from Mike Mills on each of the songs. I conducted the interview with Mike last week, and a longer Q&A about the new live dvd/cd set and the forthcoming album will appear on Stereogum in a couple weeks. A big thank you is due to the guys at Stereogum for making this happen, and to David Bell, Bertis Downs, and Mike Mills for being so great about getting that interview together.

Jonathan Fire*Eater “The Search For Cherry Red” – Like a lot of people who grew up with modest means, I have an attraction to stories about very affluent characters. I suppose that the reason for this is the same as why people write about wealthy people to begin with, or why any of us would desire to be rich ourselves — an absurd surplus of funds gives a person license to pursue most any whim. It’s not true freedom by any stretch, but it sorta seems that way from a distance, or in certain types of stories.

It’s not exactly a surprise that Wes Anderson is constantly making films about rich people. Above all other things, Anderson is obsessed with aesthetics, and logically, his taste in scenery limits him to stories in which his characters must either possess a lot of money, or enter the context of wealth. Unlike a lot of artists and producers in this decade, Anderson’s fixation on wealth has little to do with the glamor of expensive objects and tacky nouveau riche style — think about this year’s MTV awards, Entourage, The Hills, Kanye West — but rather the tossed-off everyday comfort of having no major financial limitations. You can’t buy the lifestyle Anderson is selling — you have to be born into it. You can try to talk your way into it, like Max Fischer or Eli Cash, but it won’t work out. You can work hard, make a lot of money, and enter a higher tax bracket like Herman Blume or Royal Tenenbaum, but your drive and working class roots will always set you apart from those whose ambitions have been stalled by the inertia of excessive comfort.

The three main characters in Anderson’s new film The Darjeeling Limited are the sons of a successful businessman, but their wealth is mostly downplayed throughout the film despite the fact that it is crucial to the context of their story. On one hand, Anderson and his collaborators are making an effort to make it easier for audiences to like and relate to the characters as human beings, and on the other, it is a very effective way of showing how rarely their characters think about their privilege, either because they’ve simply taken it for granted, or don’t believe themselves to be as rich as other people they might know, or are just lost in a haze of self-absorbed oblivion. Their tastes are not extravagant, but they are very whimsical, affected, and every so slightly toxic in their entitlement. The prequel short Hotel Chevalier depicts the youngest brother living in a Parisian hotel room for at least a month while sulking through a pathetic bout of depression, and the film proper follows the boys as they take a trip through a foreign country and mostly just stroll through the scenery whenever they aren’t half-heartedly taking in some “spiritual” destination or forcing nameless faceless others to — literally — carry around their emotional baggage.

It’s worth noting that Wes Anderson co-wrote The Darjeeling Limited with Roman Coppola and Jason Schwartzman, which goes a long way towards explaining why the film essentially plays out like the dude version of Sofia Coppola’s Lost In Translation. What is it about the Coppola family that compels them to make highly stylized films that beg the viewer to take the emotional pain of extremely privileged young adults very, very seriously? Is this simply narcissism in the form of self-critique? Schwartzman’s character in Darjeeling is an author who is amusingly incapable of writing a story that isn’t a very thinly veiled version of his own life — are we meant to take that as a sort of self-deprecating joke? It certainly seem as though both films drop their whiney leads into a country that they fetishize but do not understand as a way of deliberately highlighting the way both the characters and the filmmakers value aesthetics over content or human connections. The weird tension of The Darjeeling Limited comes from how Anderson’s restrained enthusiasm and deadpan melancholy clashes with the self-pity and disengagement of the Coppolas, resulting in some of the film’s most appealing moments, but also a larger feeling that Anderson has reduced all of India and its people to a cutesy diorama playset to accompany the Coppolas’ sullen miniatures.

Since I saw The Darjeeling Limited on Saturday night, I’ve been wondering why I feel a bit bothered by its low key depiction of wealthy characters, and I’ve settled on an answer: While I am all in favor of fiction that portrays affluent characters as three dimensional human beings, I chafe at stories that are entirely or seemingly uncritical of wealth. I love Jonathan Fire*Eater‘s dark, stylish songs about debauched rich kids, and the hilariously grotesque Bluths of Arrested Development. I adore the snobby primness of Richard and Emily Gilmore and the gleeful capitalist sleaziness of Jack Donaghy, and I’m intrigued by the promise of creepy decadence in ABC’s new Peter Krause vehicle Dirty Sexy Money. However, aside from Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan and, uh, maybe Batman, I’m drawing a blank on rich characters that I enjoy who are not meant to seem at least somewhat distasteful and untrustworthy to the audience.

Am I being unfair? Is this how my classism manifests itself? Am I really just after stories that are there to tell me that I’m better off and more authentic because I grew up in and will likely always remain part of the American middle class? Why do I need to be told over and over again that money fucks you up? The Darjeeling Limited more or less arrives at that point, but without any sort of certainty or conviction. It just shrugs it off like “uh, I don’t know, maybe, whatever…” and that grates on me in the worst way.

Jenny Hoyston “Send The Angels” – Not every song on Jenny Hoyston’s new solo record strays as far from the sound of Erase Errata as “Send The Angels,” but even the most angst-ridden tracks seem relaxed compared to the non-stop tension of Nightlife. Whereas Hoyston favors sharper, more aggressive tunes with her EE rhythm section, she loosens up considerably when left to her own devices, resulting in a set of songs that occasionally recall the odd balance of emotional distance and musical intimacy found on Liz Phair’s Girlysound tapes. “Send The Angels” is lyrically direct and somewhat warm in tone, but even though it is essentially an apologetic folk song, it seems too ragged and tough to seem soft and light. (Click here to buy it from Southern.)

Bruce Springsteen “Girls In Their Summer Clothes” – Everyone is saying it, and everyone is right — this song sounds quite a bit like the Magnetic Fields, to the point that it’s impossible to imagine that Springsteen wasn’t trying to write his own mid-tempo Stephin Merritt drone-ballad. Nevertheless, he can’t stop being The Boss, and so his rich, hyper-masculine voice lends the piece a chivalrous tone that would seem jarring on an actual Merritt record. Similarly, despite lifting the cold, measured style of the Magnetic Fields, the band still manages to go a bit over the top with the sentiment and the melodrama, resulting in a track that sounds like a lonely, unseasonably chilly late summer night on the Jersey shore. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Elsewhere: Here’s the best thing on the internet this week month year: A clip from Rambocky, starring “Philly Boy” Roy Ziegler and Patton Oswalt.

Also: My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site with mp3s from Pistol Pete, Gameboy/Gamegirl, and Freezepop.

Coin-Op “Ex Models” – Though he’s clearly indebted to the likes of Mark E Smith and Andy Falkous, the singer from Coin-Op is not nearly as venomous and antagonistic, and so his songs end up seeming more playful and silly in their punky petulance. It’s a charming mixture — one part bile, three parts syrup — that lends itself nicely to their perky rhythms and understated, keyboard-centric noise. Most of “Ex Models” is based around an insistent keyboard riff, but the piece really hits its peak when it transitions into a clanging mechanical racket on the chorus. (Click here for the Coin-Op MySpace page.)

Michael Ian Black “Satanic Messages” – Even though Michael Ian Black is a somewhat foppish metrosexual type, it’s still somewhat surprising to notice how effeminate he seems when you can only hear his voice. He amplifies and distorts this quality throughout his first stand-up album, and later comments directly on the fact that many of his fans suspect that he’s gay. Black’s routines mainly play on his strengths, i.e., his slick, suave delivery, and a persona that blends smug vapidity with self-aware erudition to the point that the two become weirdly, uncomfortably indistinguishable. “Satanic Messages” begins with a fairly shopworn premise, but the bit goes off on a tangent about PR that somehow concludes with a frighteningly accurate impression of the B52s’ Fred Schneider singing about the Nazi party. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Elsewhere: Jancee Dunn revisits the horrors of the 1975 JC Penney catalog.

Also: “I mean, it was basically, with the Markers writing songs, ‘Let’s let a couple of defectives reinvent the wheel and see if we can make the car go on four squares,'” Ambrogio explains. “It can go, but it takes a lot more power and destroys more.” Plus, she adds, “It was also written out of straight frustration. When you look at most of the vapid, soulless douches currently writing songs and making records, do you not think with even the slightest effort you could do better?”

Nina Hynes and the Husbands “Wow and Flutter” – No, sorry, this is not a Stereolab cover. Even still, the song feels extraordinarily familiar and comfortable without seeming at all stale. I only heard it for the first time last week, but it seems like I’ve known it for half my life and just misplaced it sometime around 2000 or so. (Click here to buy it from Kitty Yo.)

Cannonball Jane “Take It To Fantastic (DJ Downfall Remix)” – John Downfall doesn’t change all that much about Cannonball Jane’s song, but he does streamline it considerably and place a greater emphasis on the snappy, cymbal-heavy, Rich Harrison-in-miniature backbeat, which in turn makes the composition seem bigger, bolder, and brighter. (Click here to buy it from Cannonball Jane.)

Elsewhere: Historical note: ‘record shops’ are an old fashioned version of DVD emporia like HMV and Virgin. In times gone by, people who enjoyed a song or collection of songs (‘an album’) by a singer or band would walk to one of these ‘record shops’ and pay money in exchange for the music. Of course, these days music is free, meaning that it is possible for teenagers to spend money on more important things like drugs and shoes with wheels in them.

Also: The Office’s Mindy Kaling went to see Arcade Fire and LCD Soundsystem in Los Angeles.

And: R.I.P. Megan Matthews.

Junior League “Charm” – I swear to you that I’m not making this up, but maybe the third time that I heard this song, I was walking up the street and I saw a monarch butterfly slowly gliding through the air, its orange wings contrasted with a perfect, cloudless blue sky. Pretty, yeah? Prettier still because that’s exactly what this song is like — it’s just floating along with a natural beauty and grace that almost seems shocking and unreal. It fit just as well in the car yesterday, rolling through the mountains of Vermont, its seemingly infinite forests just beginning to turn red, orange, and yellow.

I listened to “Charm” several times over the weekend, each time trying to figure out what it was about this bluegrass pop tune that felt a bit off but also slightly familiar, and I think I found my answer while searching through their website: As it turns out, the singer Lissy Rosemont is a HUGE fan of Pearl Jam. Rosemont’s voice sounds nothing at all like Eddie Vedder, but her approach to singing the song reminds me quite a bit of early Pearl Jam (think “Breath” and “Yellow Ledbetter”), particularly in the way she fills the open space in the track with a free flowing melody that conveys the potent emotion of the piece more so than the lyrics, which mostly exist to guide her through the piece, and provide the listener with hints and cues. (Click here to buy it from Junior League.)

Pistol Pete “Make ‘Em Pop” – Pistol Pete’s tracks are increasingly frenetic, to the point that just hearing a few seconds of “Make ‘Em Pop” or his brilliant Clipse remix immediately triples my pulse and triggers movement. This cut is almost too much — it plays like a frantic, stylized chase scene, building up to a catchy but totally incoherent chorus of chopped-up hums and shouts. (Click here to buy it from Turntable Lab.)

Letters Letters “Want To” – The beats bubble up like carbonation in soda water, the electronic textures float in and out of the mix like free-associative thoughts, and the woman’s voice whines, moans, and whispers as though no one is listening. At certain moments in the piece, it sounds like the ghost of Arthur Russell producing a Gwen Stefani song without her even knowing about it. (Click here to buy it from Type Records.)

Scout Niblett “Let Thine Heart Be Warned” – It’s kinda hard to deny that Scout Niblett sounds a bit like Chan Marshall — there’s a similarity in vocal timbre and style, and they share a taste for spartan arrangements that keep the listener hanging on their every syllable — but you’re never going to find Niblett making a brunch album like The Greatest. She’s too busy spiking her songs with stark, primitive percussion, bizarre lyrics, and hard rock outbursts that provide a weirdly incongruous feeling of emotional release in songs that almost always revert back to the sound of open-ended frustration. “Let Thine Heart Be Warned” is a perfect example of her Sysiphean brand of indie rock — when that chorus hits, she sounds righteous and victorious, but just a few seconds later, she’s totally crushed. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Elsewhere: My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site with mp3s from Future of the Left, Parts and Labor, and A Place To Bury Strangers.

Also: I had no idea that there was so much CGI used in David Fincher’s Zodiac. Really, isn’t that the way it always should be when it comes to these things?

Hot Chip “Shake A Fist” –

It Begins…

Matthew Perpetua: Oh, this Hot Chip song you sent over sounds good!
Matthew Harris: Did you get to the middle?
Perpetua: Not yet, just put it on.
Harris: The “sounds of the studio” part?
Perpetua: This is great — his voice is still dispassionate, but the music isn’t as emotionally flat. Oh, wow, just got to a really good part.

Soon…

Perpetua: OH MY GOD!!! Now I know what you’re talking about, the middle part! WOW! What got into them? They improved a LOT rather suddenly!
Harris: I think they are totally trying to take this into more of their live show. Their live show is definitely more uptempo. The last time I saw them, Alexis sang lines from “Temptation” and “Is It All Over My Face” over the loudest, most manic beats. It was like he was trying to seduce me.
Perpetua: These guys have seriously stepped up.
Harris: I just love that middle part. I keep listening to it like some Pavlovian dog wanting treats. It’s like, “La de dah, regular old Hot Chip, nothing that exciting … HOLY SHIT!!!”

Later…

Perpetua: Wow, that Hot Chip song just keeps getting better somehow.
Harris: Haha.
Perpetua: It’s always exciting when it makes that shift in the middle
Harris: You can hear the structure better after the first few listens.
Perpetua: I also love the first time the beat switches up and gets stronger. I thought that’s what you were talking about at first. But then it just gets so much more exciting! I’m so proud of them.

(Click here for the Hot Chip official site.)

Kanye West “The Glory” – Just like “School Spirit” and “Gone” before it, “The Glory” is Graduation‘s version of The Song On The Kanye West Album That Is Obviously Superior To The Rest And Basically Sums Up The Major Themes Of The Record, But For Some Reason Will Never Be Released As A Single. Graduation is one long victory lap of an album, but its rampant self-regard and perky, opulent sound is slightly off-putting — at times it’s like being unable to fall asleep in an overly comfy bed, or sitting through a slide show of someone’s fabulous vacation and trying to feign enthusiasm for their good fortune.

Weirdly, the best track on the record happens to be the one where this sort of ostentatious bragging hits its saturation point, and I start to wonder “Hey Kanye, it’s really awesome that you’ve got all this success and money, but uh, is there anything more to you these days than working hard and buying stuff?” I guess his answer to that could be “Well Matthew, I do claim to spend a lot of time with lesbians, primarily of the blonde variety,” which just makes me wonder why the hell he’s so sexually obsessed with women whose sexuality excludes him from play. (I realize that he’s probably talking about bi girls, but c’mon, he consistently uses the word “dyke,” and that has its connotations.) Nevertheless, “The Glory” hits all the right marks, and every second of the track balances out its ecstatic boasts with a profound sense of relief that suggests what a horrible mess the guy would be if none of his plans ever worked out. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Elsewhere: Hillary Brown is totally OTM about Hot Fuzz.

And: Dragons fucking cars. Self-explanatory, totally ridiculous, not safe for work unless your boss is cool with you checking out drawings of enormous scaled beasts double-teaming automobiles while on the clock. It’s really funny though, mainly because it puts you in the position where you have to think that the inclusion of the dragons is kinda sensible, like “okay, yeah, dragons are sexual creatures…” But the cars! It’s dragons fucking CARS.

Iron & Wine “Pagan Angel and a Borrowed Car” – Previous Iron & Wine records were lost on me, but The Shephard’s Dog is a pleasant surprise. The songs are more relaxed than melancholy, and benefit greatly active arrangements that imply a sense of movement without distracting the listener from taking in the details of the sound and the virtual scenery. Whereas older Iron & Wine records simulated intimacy, the new songs, “Pagan Angel and a Borrowed Car” in particular, stretch out the scale without losing the sense of space, like an overwhelming panoramic view of a tiny stretch of land. (Click here to buy it from Sub Pop.)

Thurston Moore and Christina Carter “Honest James” – Left to his own devices, it’s easy to see just how many of Sonic Youth’s signature moves are actually the habits, ticks, and natural rhythms of Thurston Moore. It also becomes clear what the other members bring to the sound — Moore’s new solo record is long on melody, but it is light on rhythmic tension and textural richness, and so the material often sounds like a nearly weightless version of what the band has been doing since Murray Street in 2002. “Honest James” is the most gorgeous and surprising cut on Trees Outside The Academy, and one of the few that sounds like something other than an unfinished Sonic Youth song. Its pretty, unembellished acoustic rhythms would never make much sense on a Sonic Youth record, and the duet with Christina Carter is lovely and earnest in a way that would have been impossible if it had been performed with either Kim Gordon or Lee Ranaldo. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Elsewhere: I think Lou Reed has a little crush on Amanda Petrusich. I wonder if Lou Reed would like my name. I almost want to send him a letter: “Dear Lou Reed, do you like my name? Please let me know, I’ve included a SASE…”

Also: Xenomania are auditioning female singers in NYC! And they are going to work with Franz Ferdinand!

And: A new Daniel Clowes comic strip debuted in yesterday’s issue of the New York Times Magazine. It’s kinda minor and formulaic for him, but hey, it’s been three years since the last issue of Eightball and I’ll take what I can get.

Yelle “Tristesse/Joie” – I listened to this song about ten times on the way home from Brooklyn tonight, and all I could think about was how I met this really awesome girl and talked to her for an hour or two, but I got pulled into other conversations and she disappeared before I could get her number/email. Since I only kinda sorta understand what Yelle is singing, the meaning of the song has become tied in with this event, and the music kinda nails the mix of excitement and regret that I feel as I type this. Anyway, I feel extremely lame for writing this in public, but it totally bums me out to think that I might not get to talk to this super rad girl ever again. So hey, Katie (Katy? Caity? Katee? K.T.? Ceighteeee?), if you happened to remember the name of my site when I mentioned it and looked it up and found this post and do not think I’m a total weirdo, please do email me, the address is the bottom of the links column. (Don’t use the Fluxblog one.) We should totally hang out sometime. The rest of you can mock me in the comments or listen to this song or whatever. (Click here for the official Yelle site.)

Electric Six “Fabulous People” – Just as the Electric Six promised, I Shall Exterminate Everything Around Me That Restricts Me From Being The Master is an excessive album about the excesses of contemporary American culture. Actually, that description accurately describes all of their records, but crucially, Exterminate makes a point of foregrounding the lyrical themes that come up in all of the work but is usually ignored or misunderstood by audiences and critics whose minds implode when faced with irony and satire in the context of a dance rock band. The lyrics are still riddled with odd non-sequitors and dark humor, but there’s much less in the words to distract the listener from what Dick Valentine is trying to convey, and the relative clarity creates the illusion of a more focused album even if in reality, it’s pretty much business as usual for the band.

If anything, the strength and consistency of the record has more to do with the songwriting — the stylistic range is greater, and the hooks are plentiful, resulting in a sprawling work with no obvious peak, a la “Gay Bar,” “Jimmy Carter,” or “Mr. Woman.” It wasn’t easy to pick only one cut, but “Fabulous People” gets the nod for its suave Robert Palmer-ish grooves and lyrics that express mock incredulity at the possibility of being sexually attracted to people who are not celebrities, and the way Valentine inexplicably suggests that the late Red Skelton, Don Rickles, and race car drivers Dale Earnhardt Jr and Dick Trickle are in on a plot with Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and David Beckham to destroy the lives of the “dirty little people.” (Click here to pre-order it from Metropolis Records.)

Maxi Geil! & Playcolt @ Luna Lounge, 9/12/2007
Can’t Get You Hot Enough / You Can’t Kill Us, Man! (We’re Already Dead) / That’s How The Story Goes / Teenage Extreme / Making Love in the Sunshine / Your Best Won’t Be Good Enough / I’m In Love With You / Artist’s Lament

Maxi Geil! & Playcolt “That’s How The Story Goes” – The last time I saw Maxi Geil, the group played to a densely packed, dance-happy audience at Tonic. This was sort of the opposite — the turnout wasn’t so great due to the gig being late on a Wednesday night and announced on rather short notice, and the thinness of the crowd was exacerbated by the rather large size of the club. Nevertheless, the band played as though they were headlining a much bigger space, and they got people dancing either way. “That’s How The Story Goes” was especially great — it’s a bit too big for every room I’ve ever seen them play it in, but its graceful progression from a stately Bowie-esque ballad to its sleek disco section and stadium pop conclusion never fails to impress me. (Click here to buy it via the Maxi Geil site.)

Elsewhere: My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site with mp3s from Ze Frank, Jonathan Coulton, and Flight of the Conchords.

And: Jane Espenson takes the media to task for butchering Sarah Silverman’s Britney Spears joke by quoting it with flagrant mispunctuation.

The Smashing Pumpkins “7 Shades of Black” – My initial impression of Zeitgeist was rather unfavorable, but I’ve come around to liking about half of the record, but only because I’ve been listening to it with much lower expectations. That’s not the same as having no expectations — instead of comparing it to the Pumpkins’ back catalog, I’m thinking of the music in the context of rock music in 2007. At this point in time, Corgan can barely compete with his younger self, but he and Jimmy Chamberlain are still capable of blowing away the majority of a younger generation whose version of hard rock is either laughably tepid or suffocatingly stiff. “7 Shades of Black” may be a poor man’s version of “Bodies” from Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, but it’s still a strong piece of work with a sharp hook and an urgent momentum, which is a lot more than what most bands can pull off these days. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

The Smashing Pumpkins “Frail and Bedazzled” – The most basic appeal of the Smashing Pumpkins comes from the way Billy Corgan strips out the dull machismo from hard rock and replaces it with sensitive androgyny and ecstatic spirituality. Like a majority of the rock stars of the early ’90s, Corgan rebelled against the dude-ness of his own genre, but thanks to the unavoidable femininity of his voice and his soft baby face, he was able to depart from tradition more dramatically than the more obviously masculine likes of Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder. Unsurprisingly, one of the most dramatic, joyous, and definitive moments in the entire sprawling Pumpkins catalog comes on “Frail and Bedazzled” when he declares “all I wanted was to be a man / but since I gave up / I FEEL FREE! / I FEEL FREE! / I FEEL FREE! / I FEEL FREE!,” which each iteration of those last three words seeming increasingly emphatic and liberating. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

The Smashing Pumpkins “Geek USA” – So why is that the Smashing Pumpkins have so little in the way of a legacy, at least in terms of influencing a younger generation of rock acts? I can hear some traces of the more histrionic, teen-centric Mellon Collie incarnation of the band in some mall emo acts, but given its former ubiquity, it’s very rare to hear any bands now that noticeably borrow from the distinct aesthetic of the Pumpkins circa Siamese Dream. Sure, there are bands that rock out in the interest of “spirituality,” but those are usually either Christian acts who mimic the trappings of genre rather than fully inhabit and subvert them, or po-faced clowns running with the uplifting, non-denomination grandeur of U2. The Pumpkins’ most successful rockers tapped into something sublime, but also a bit ridiculous and fun in its whole-hearted embrace of adolescent emotional turmoil and unapologetic bombast. The songs may have been meticulously crafted in the studio, but they feel remarkably spontaneous and alive, capturing the sheer pleasure of rocking out in a small room despite a billion overdubs. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Elsewhere: Two teenage girls were engaged in a fierce battle to the death, high atop the Empire State Building. Their names were Lyric and Grace, and both were famous on the internet.

Kate Nash “Merry Happy” – Kate Nash’s songs primarily deal with minor relationship drama, but more specifically, the way teenagers and young adults must learn to interpret these events in their lives when they haven’t got much first-hand experience, but are overly familiar with how these sort of things play out in books, television, and pop songs. Nash deliberately calls attention to the banality of her situations, but doesn’t ever discount her emotions, resulting in jaunty yet melancholy pop tunes like “Merry Happy” that are simultaneously self-effacing and self-absorbed, i.e., the typical mindset of a lovesick student. When Nash reaches an epiphany — “I can be alone” — it’s a little bit funny because it isn’t at all profound, but it’s also a bit sad and sympathetic, as most people can relate to having the same moment of self-revelation and feeling that sudden, somewhat illusory sensation of emotional strength. (Click here to buy it from Amazon UK.)

Future of the Left “Manchasm” – A.K.A. McLusky with a new bass player and a different name. Andy Falkous continues to be Andy Falkous — witty, bitter, venomous and cryptic, kinda sorta like an aggressive Welsh punk rock version of Dan Bejar. The only major difference between the bands is the presence of a synthesizer, but even when that element is prominent, the songs play to Falkous and his partners strengths. “Manchasm” begins with a manic organ vamp, but it moves on to a series of abrasive, repetitive hooks, an eyebrow-raising reference to disgraced Republican paedo Mark Foley, and a creepy round at the end that recalls the brilliant finale of “She Will Only Bring You Happiness.” (Funny, if you watch that video, you can hear that they changed the “our old singer is a sex criminal” line to “our old singer is an ex-criminal” for the single version!) (Click here for the Future of the Left website.)

Elsewhere: Ben fucking Foster, ladies and gentlemen.

And: Mike Barthel has a (better) idea on how to commemorate 9/11 with car headlights.

I’ve been doing this MTV VMA “play by play” thing for five years, and though I don’t know why I keep doing it, I’m going to keep it going because it’s the closest thing this site has to any kind of tradition. I guess that’s the same reason MTV does it too — their identity has shifted so much over the years that it’s hard to say what the brand means to its hopelessly splintered target audience, or what it has to say about a pop cultural landscape that is increasingly driven by the internet yet requires television’s big-tent audience to actually sell records in quantities large enough to qualify for any reasonable claim of mainstream success. When I was a teenager, MTV more or less dictated what was popular and cool, and the ceremony actually seemed to be a meaningful thing, in as much as the Best Video category tended to stand for some sort of artistic achievement and cultural relevance. Nowadays, they seem passive, and this show is just an awkward game of catch-up for both the network, and an audience that cherry picks whatever interests them from the mainstream, and totally ignores the rest, so you get a lot of “Really? That’s popular?” and “Wait, what, those guys are still around?”

9:00 Britney Spears is trying pretty hard to remember her own choreography. Everything is slow and obviously half-hearted. She’s barely trying, every movement is like a shrug. Her body appears to be airbrushed, but in fairness, this is the best she’s looked in a long time. Rihanna just gave a reaction shot to the effect of “Ha ha, I can blow this shit off the stage!”

9:04 Wow, this is the best Sarah Silverman has been in five forevers! Great stuff.

9:09 Alicia Keys is looking slick. Like, coated in salad oil.

9:11 Best Single About A Monster goes to………”Umbrella,” with 9% of the vote. Fun fact: Rihanna has the same haircut as Storm from the X-Men circa the late 90s, but y’know, not all white and stuff.

9:17 “You just saw Britney phone in her new single on the VMAs, and now you can phone in and get it as a ring tone…”

9:23 Quadruple Threat = Sing, Dance, Fuck, and Snort Cocaine?

9:24 Hey, Justin Timberlake does all of those things! Good for him!

9:26 So I think the idea is that big stars like Kanye West, Foo Fighters, Timbaland, Fall Out Boy, and uh, Mark Ronson are doing all these little cutaway performances in lieu of one big appearance in order to have a more pervasive presence throughout the broadcast, and thus boosting the number of “impressions” on the audience. It’s the same idea as having a Pepsi ad every commercial break.

9:33 If 50 Cent and Kanye West kissed just now, America would have been a new nation overnight.

9:42 Chris Brown is aiming for Charlie Chaplin, but I’m afraid most people are just looking at this and thinking “spazzy black Hitler.”

9:47 And yes, Rihanna blew Britney (and honestly, everyone else) off the stage within 10 seconds of emerging from her Op Art vortex.

9:55 By staging the event at The Palms Casino in Las Vegas, the VMAs have showed not only a tremendous lack of creativity, but are fully giving into the consumerist American ideal that they once at least pretended to reject by proudly holding a carrot at length from their impressionable and primarily middle class audience. When I was a young teenager it seemed as though their message was “fuck the carrot,” but now they are decisively imploring, “you better get on that carrot.”

9:57 I would stop hating Timbaland for five minutes if he and Justin Timberlake announced that they just got back from getting married in Massachusetts.

9:58 Justin Timberlake is getting old, you guys. He’s part of the Older Generation On MTV.

10:06 Shia Le Beauf. Do we all like this guy? Or do we just like saying “La Buff”? Okay, no we don’t like him cos he’s shilling for George effing Lucas. Kingdom of the Crystal Skull — Indiana Jones has to infiltrate a ring of LARPers?

10:09 Unlike Britney Spears, Kanye West can rock a stairwell.

10:13 Kanye West would win if he had arrived at this wearing a t-shirt reading “George Bush doesn’t care about the VMAs.”

10:16 Can we talk about fucking offensive these Chevy ads are? “If you want to save the environment, you can smoke pot and eat granola and practice free love you FUCKING FAGGOT HIPPIE? WHY DON’T YOU GO COMPOST YOUR TOILET, HUH?” Ending with the assertion “Chevy: We’re thinking about making a hybrid, someday, once we find that legal pad with all our notes on it. We’ve got something called ‘wireless crapability.’ You’ll love it.”

10:18 “Who is Eugene Montross?” Sorry bro, but I’m not Googling that!

10:19 Here’s our “maestro,” Timbaland. I cringe so hard whenever I see people refer to Timbaland as being ahead of his time or whatever because that’s so not true! No one is more OF HIS TIME than him, and frankly, that time was in the late 90s/early 00s and he’s been coasting ever since. The reason he can get anything remotely weird on the airwaves is simply because his formula became mainstream and now it’s just something expected, the way the shitty post-grunge stuff like Nickelback and Daughtry is expected on rock radio.

10:23 You know, Linkin Park, this is the VMAs. You definitely want to bring your A-game. This isn’t the VMB or C’s.

10:24 Here are the guys from Entourage. You know, I’ve seen every single episode of Entourage, and I don’t even know why. I have HBO, and I watch it. It’s not even a guilty pleasure, it’s just a guilty…thing I do.

10:31 Rihanna is doing “Shut Up and Drive” with Fall Out Boy in a hotel suite. It’s cool despite the obvs lip-synching gaff. I like Rihanna a lot more than usual tonight!

10:37 I was totally zzzzzing through this Alicia Keys performance, and then she started singing “Freedom 90,” and though it’s not that great or anything, it’s a step up for sure.

10:45 Jamie Foxx just spit in Jennifer Garner’s eye, ladies and gentlemen!

10:46 Wow, I thought they were just about to play the severely coked-up Foxx off the stage just now with that beat! Unfortunately, no.

10:47 Listen Jamie, when you’re being called out on your unprofessionalism by Jennifer Garner, it’s time to really take stock!

10:49 Note to New York Times ombudsman: Now that 50 Cent has made the vast majority of his fortune from Vitamin Water, please delete all references to “hip hop star 50 Cent” and replace them with “beverage magnate 50 Cent.” Thank you.

10:57 Dr. Dre is either really effing strong, or wearing a heavy kevlar Batman suit under his shirt.

11:00 Rihanna wins Video of the Year, and Kanye West is already pouting about it. One of the Daft Punk robots is knocking at Kanye’s bathroom door with a message scrolling along its LED visor: KANYE…NOT COOL…PARTY WAITING.

Okay, so a few hours later, it’s pretty obvious that the definitive moment of this year’s show came within the first two minutes.

In this still, a limp Britney Spears is being helped up a small flight of stairs by one of her back-up dancers. From this moment, there was no saving her performance, or her career. In this moment of tragically forseeable laziness, Britney set the tone for a night that was two parts apathy and one part toxic entitlement.

Beverage magnate 50 Cent is stunned!!!

Rihanna’s friend: “Can you believe this shit?”

Rihanna: I WIN

This post was co-written with Chris Conroy, Erik Bryan, and Heather Rasley.

A Place To Bury Strangers “I Know I’ll See You” – If you think the A Place To Bury Strangers album is loud, then I’ve got to warn you — its most abrasive moments are just a shadow of what they sound like in person. However, as impressive as they are with insane volume and inescapable physical sensation, the endearing mixture of shoegazer guitar tone, industrial beats, goth gloom, and new wave melodies evident on their studio recordings gets lost in the din. At their best, the group sounds like the contents of a mopey college kid from 1989’s record collection pureed, poured into a cup, and served with a bowl of broken jewel boxes. If there was any justice in the world, there would be a maxi-single for “I Know I’ll See You” backed up with a bunch of cheesy late 80s/early 90s style dance mixes, just like the Cure or Nine Inch Nails. (Click here to buy it from Brainwashed.)

Elsewhere: I’m looking for some rooftop brooding advice.

Celebration “Tame The Savage” – The first few times I heard Celebration, I did not realize that the singer was a woman. This is not to say that Katrina Ford has a particularly butch and masculine voice, but rather that she sings more like a hard rock guy with feminine affectations, and aside from a few Karen O-ish moments, she barely resembles any of her female contemporaries. She reminds me a lot of Robert Plant in particular, especially on this track from their new album, which basically filters the aesthetic of Led Zeppelin through their sultry, organ-based indie psychedelia. “Tame The Savage” is a lusty slow-motion stomper with a grand, sprawling chorus and a slowly ascending guitar riff sounds as though it’s climbing up the first few flights of the “Stairway To Heaven.” It’s sort of amazing, really. (Click here to pre-order it from Amazon.)

Elsewhere: My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site with mp3s from St. Vincent, Aesop Rock, and International Pony.

Also: My review of the Nanny Diaries is up on the Movie Binge.