Lizzyville

Mp3 | Miike Snow - "Burial"

Determining Whether The xx's xx Is Good or Great and If Great, How Great

Romy Madley Croft and Oliver Sim, lead singers of The xx.

“Someone, somewhere, was so moved by this band that they couldn't stop talking about it,” Mike Conklin wrote of The xx in last week's L Magazine. “It's neither that person's fault, nor the fault of the band, that other people have knee-jerk reactions, positive or negative, to the excitement of others. The onus is on us, now more than ever, to be diligent about making sure our opinions are fully formed before we share them.”

In other words, The xx—any band—are whatever you want to make of them, but it may take you several weeks or months to decide. Unfortunately, the Internet wants you to make snap decisions and share them in a jiffy, either because other people are counting on you, because you feel you have to in order to be “in,” or because you want to get people to start counting on you. I think a lot of us writers feel we're in all three of those categories. So, on that note.

Photos & Show Recap | Florence and the Machine - Bowery Ballroom - 10.27.09

CMJ Day Four | Photos & Show Recaps of Glasser + Cymbals Eat Guitars + Phantogram + The xx + School of Seven Bells

See more of my CMJ photos on Flickr.

CMJ Day Two Recap: Lia Ices + Beast + Think About Life + Cymbals Eat Guitars

Think About Life (Photo: Richmond Lam)

Day 2 of CMJ I chose to catch the first set at the Windish Agency showcase at the Mercury Lounge, where Lia Ices started the night, followed by Javelin's boombox-stacked stage and goofy, tropical jams and The XX's bedtimey pop. After Lia, I headed down to Arlene's Grocery to catch the "M" for Montreal Showcase, then went to Santos to see upstairs headliners Cymbals Eat Guitars. I was using a little Lumix, and it died about five photos into Lia Ices' set. It came back for Beast's set at Arlene's then died completely. It turned out to be a blessing, because taking pictures of Think About Life with a point-and-shoot would have been virtually impossible, and there was too much dancing to care about photos. So here's a recap of the shows, with links to photos by a few talented photogs.

GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS | Roundup of 'Album' Reviews

So the twood (mood on Twitter) this morning was pretty funny. Peeps were seemingly blindsided by the late-breaking Girls onslaught in the form of Pitchfork's trotting out of the gate on a Friday morning with a Tom Breihan-curated Best New Music for the San Francisco band's debut album, Album.

Self-Titled magazine told Breihan it agreed with him and wanted to put them on its next cover waaaay before FADER (ahead of the curve on a lot of things) decided to do so.

Rob Mitchum wished he had come out disliking Girls "before Girls Backlash Day."

Chris Weingarten (@1000TimesYes) said the album is "just pretty good," reminding his twaudience of the 7/10 he gave it in one of his 140-character reviews.

Breihan replied, "Bring it on, kids!," adding that he tried to give Separation Sunday a 9.2 back in the day.

Mitchum clarified: the bad on Album outweighs the good.

I said the three great songs carry the weight of the bad ones.

Weingarten replied: Or the one great song.

Burn.

Meanwhile, PopMatters doesn't care about Album.

Tiny Mix Tapes doesn't care either UPDATE: a 4/5, but not really enough actual words to do it justice.

Coke Machine Glow digs it 81 percent.

Rolling Stone (who cares?) gave it its favorite designation ever, a 3.5. Yawn.

And finally, I gave it a 4/5 over at Baeble.

Thanks to Idolator for inspiring this format of blog entry (a revue of reviews).

Photo: Nicole Leighton via Girls' MySpace.

Photos | Animal Collective - Prospect Park - 08.15.09

Photos by me. See more on Flickr.

See also: Flavorwire's post featuring some of the pics.

For a pair of Animal Collective shows at Prospect Park -- the final Celebrate Brooklyn events of the summer -- the first night featured Black Dice and the second XXXCHANGE (with DJ sets by Dam-Funk both nights). Saturday's (above) was a lengthy and flawless set (isn't it always?) under a cloudless sky. The crowd was intoxicated, some more than others, and thankfully the humidity had dissipated by 8 pm.

They may have saved the best for last: "My Girls" came late in the set and "Lion In A Coma" and Panda Bear's "Comfy In Nautica" came in the encore. The set decoration was stunning and rather kid-friendly (Panda Bear is a father, after all), except for the shark that ranged through the waters every few songs.

Here's a setlist compiled by an anonymous Brooklyn Vegan commenter:

01 - Grace
02 - Summertime Clothes
03 - Leaf House
04 - Guys Eyes
05 - Slippi
06 - #1
07 - Also Frightened
08 - What Would I Want Sky
09 - My Girls
10 - Fireworks
11 - Brother Sport

12 - In The Flowers
13 - Comfy In Nautica
14 - Lion in a Coma

Bat for Lashes - Webster Hall - 08.12.09

Read my review at Spinner.

Check out some gorgeous photos by Bao Nguyen at Brooklyn Vegan.

Get a load of her costume/the general atmosphere of the show with this video of her performance of "Sleep Alone" on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon earlier this week:

Dean & Britta Open Window into Andy Warhol's World

Photo: Colin Clark

At last night's Celebrate Brooklyn show in Prospect Park, husband and wife team Dean and Britta (Dean of Galaxie 500 and Luna, Britta of Luna) performed their soundtrack for a new DVD called 13 Most Beautiful...Songs for Andy Warhol's Screen Tests. The screen tests are simple time-lapse films of some of the key players in Warhol's world in the 1960s, including Nico, Edie Sedgwick, Lou Reed and a California fellow by the name of Paul America.

The films, which in many cases seemed to have required the subjects not to blink, were hard to look away from. But the type of music that the couple played - Luna-tinged, inspired by the Velvet Underground, Dylan-covering - is really perfect as a soundtrack. They saved the real rocking - a pair of Luna and Galaxie 500 numbers - for the encore. The best part was the storytelling between each song: mini-bios of the strange and interconnected lives of the films' subjects. One guy painted the walls of his house silver. Warhol was so impressed with the scheme that he invited the guy to come do the same at the factory. He ended up moving in there. Another character, a Sedgwick lookalike, hung around for awhile before disappearing into thin air, leaving only her false teeth behind.

 The Crystal Stilts were the jolly openers, with the keyboardist making fun of their lead singer for looking so much like Bob Dylan (evident above left) and good naturedly admitting that his keyboard was quite tiny. The band's hooky rock songs recall contemporaries Saturday Looks Goods to Me, BOAT and the Shout Out Louds. But the lead singer has a voice like Stephen Merritt that doesn't entirely jive with the melodic cheer.

Florence + The Machine

"Kiss With A Fist," the Florence + The Machine single that many of us heard long before her debut, Lungs, dropped, was nothing to speak of. It's a White Stripes song. It's a Hives song. It's a rock song. Placed on the end of the lengthy Lungs, which at 13 tracks features two covers - "You've Got The Love" and "Girl With One Eye" - and 11 originals, "Kiss With A Fist" makes little sense, because the rest of the album is all Patrick Wolf, Annie Lennox, a smidge of Neko Case and a lot of gospel influence. There's definitely some Hayley Williams in there but I'll refrain from referencing solely other redheaded singers. It's a heavy album. It's a loud album. Florence Welch's voice will pierce your eardrums. You won't always love its consistent need to shout and get the feelings out, but the melodies for the most part make up for it.

At 22, she's a young lass. She hails from Ireland and as the story goes, was discovered in a club bathroom while singing in the stall. She had been writing songs for some time, but didn't do anything with them. That bathroom trip did wonders. So did getting into the studio, where the results seem to be just what Welch likes: the power of a "big, fat choir": big drums, vocal layering, heavily manipulated keys and the occasional (and unnecessary) guitar. Her lyrics are quite accomplished, which you'll observe in the track I've included below. She sings about "guilt," according to one interview, about love, about "air," about a bird that does something wrong and then bequeaths his guilt to the human who eats him.

Her own songs are never timid, never cute, and never without reference to countless forebears. Blame the producers: Welch is on Island Records, which hired Paul Epworth (Muse, Bloc Party, Goldfrapp, Annie...the list goes on) and James Ford (Mecury Prize-winning Klaxons album Myths Of The Near Future, a member of Simian Mobile Disco, and currently the drummer for The Last Shadow Puppets) to work their magic. The result is that there are some clear hits on this album and some clear non-hits. Drowned In Sound's early track-by-track assessment is worth reading to see what kind of "huh?"s the overproduction inspires.

Do not listen to the craptastic and lazy reviews that have listed Kate Bush and Tori Amos as influences of Welch's as if those two women are the only creative female singer-songwriters in the history of mankind. Also as Bat for Lashes said in a recent Pitchfork interview - why do women musicians have to be compared with women musicians? Awful. Those reviewers never should have been hired (inevitably on the basis of one capable piece of writing) and I'm not even going to grace them with a link.

Explore the intense vocal power in the video for "Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)":

Now here's a track, my personal favorite:

Florence And The Machine - "Cosmic Love"

Album Review | Bat for Lashes - Two Suns

Syke! You'll have to read my review (which I began writing in February!!) at Tiny Mix Tapes, where my music criticism has taken up residence for the foreseeable future. CLICK ON IMAGE or here.

Other reviews of Bat for Lashes for comparison purposes!

PopMatters - 6/10 - includes really cute pic of Natasha that perfectly captures the mood of the album.

The Guardian - 4 stars - short and sweet and overly complimentary.

Paste - 84 - the album "demands attention," apparently. I say at least "Siren Song" does.

Neko Case's "Middle Cyclone" Remains High on Billboard Chart

Neko Case's album, well-received by everyone from Sasha Frere-Jones in The New Yorker to Paste Magazine, Pitchfork, SPIN, The Guardian, and The Onion, debuted on the Billboard album chart at 3, slipped to 17 in its second week, and is now at 28. Well, with bands like Twiztid now in the mix, what do you expect? Also, Kelly Clarkson flew in to the number-one spot last week, with that lollipop-like cover begging a purchase, or at the very least a stream. But I imagine it's one of those albums that was recorded too loud and gives the listener a jump upon first listen. From the 30-second samples on iTunes, it sounds like it has about three quality pop numbers on it.

"Middle Cyclone," meanwhile, has many more great tracks, but squarely none of them is a pop song, so it is a triumph that the album is swimming so strongly in the mainstream. I would go as far as Frere-Jones did in saying that it is her best album yet. But its trajectory to the listener is the opposite of its trajectory on the Billboard chart, as these things often go. The more experimental instrumentation--namely a bunch of old pianos, the saxophone on the stunning "Red Tide," a dulcimer and traditional strings--hit you first, followed by the complex arrangements. Yes, the traditional song structure lies skeletally there on every track, but she leaps out of the constraints frequently.

Listen closely for the way "Fever" transforms itself into a march of powerful vocals halfway through. "People Got A Lot of Nerve" manages to be both intrinsically Neko, but melodically bold. "I'm An Animal" is randomly this modern classic rock ballad, a pleasant, energetic rhythm full of strong but simple chord strums. "Prison Girls," which follows it, returns Case to her drawling guitar howling, but surprises with pepperings of pizzicatto strings, an oddly confident exploration of a confused identity, and a nice little assonant refrain that alternates with the chorus, "I love your long shadows / and your gunpowder eyes." Case is intrinsically herself a lot, primarily because her time signatures all verge on, or simply are, a waltz. But there is enough else going on that this becomes unimportant on subsequent listens.

In the past few week's flurry of new albums to listen to including the (overrated) "It's Blitz," "Living Things," "Fever Ray," and "Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix," "Middle Cyclone" got tossed aside after a couple of weeks of concentrated intimacy. But there are so many more layers to peel off this onion.

What I liked about "Fox Confessor Brings the Flood" (2006) was how diverse and sort of uncompetitive it was. "Hold On, Hold On" is still one of my favorite songs of hers and is one of many that seem quickly forgotten. But then, Neko Case isn't about hits, whether she's on the Billboard chart or not. Each fan has their own hits on their own chart.

Photo credit: Neko Case's Myspace page.

Phoenix: Pop That's Simple Without Being Simplistic

It's indicator enough that people with picky, sophisticated, very discerning music taste like Phoenix, but can't stand the sound (and sight) of a band like Peter Bjorn & John, who, in 2006, witnessed in their fans the kind of spiritual orgasms you see on televangelism shows. It's a pity that the majority of the spasms were devoted to "Young Folks" (which I keep lamenting; see previous post about "Living Things"). The song promotes the pompous arrogance of two people in love, the video is so kitsch it hurts, and the rest of the album is better.

Peter Bjorn & John's new album stinks. It took me a mere two days to shirk off its melodies into iTunes oblivion, possibly the Recycle Bin if free space gets tight. It was all downhill from the first listen; being overly excited about an album on first listen is seldom a good sign.

A little neuroscience: the brain takes longer to adapt to truly great albums because of the novelty of their sound. The same may be said for books, people you just met, etc. "Boy, this author/band is doing something really fancy here," doesn't always turn into "I loved that book/album." What's more common is for something great to slip behind your ears or eyes unnoticed, then hit you in the forehead hours or days later. For example, "Fever Ray."

"Writer's Block" definitely gave a little smack. I saw it as a celebration of pop past and present. But it's all over now.

"Living Things" can be distilled down to "Blue Period Picasso," whose premise (the awful title metaphor) Jessica Suarez rightly said she "can't get past." The lyrics, which begin "I'm a blue period Picasso / Stuck on a wall / In the middle of a hall" (don't make me go on), actually ruin any worth the song has, i.e. its deeply echoed synth melody, which actually only caves to a whinging chorus ("You just kindly stole my heart.")

Fun with ESL! Nobody does it like Nabokov, speaking of books that smack you in the face. Being excited that you've made something doesn't mean what you've made is any good (a favorite axiom of writers and writing teachers). Yes, English is great; we all do it to some degree. Unfortunately there's so much of English that it behooves you to do something that will get our attention. Who said it had to be a metaphor?

Unlike Peter Bjorn & John, the French pop band Phoenix are not simplistic; they're simple. Their production has not changed much in four albums -- it's warm, bassy and fast-paced -- and despite the fact that E is also their SL, they don't brandish what they've learned in an embarrassing way. I wouldn't go so far as to say Phoenix's new album "Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix" is physically abusing me with its genius, but it is an enjoyable album and is better than their past LPs. Its uniformity shows the band's comfort and satisfaction with what they're doing. That doesn't mean they won't create an incredibly catchy song like "1901" to try to swim upstream in a current of rather samey numbers.

Samey may be safe, but it's better than stupid.

On First Listen: Peter Bjorn & John - Living Thing

On First Listen, also known as OFL, was a series in Stylus Magazine that ran from 2005-2007. It was really about artists that the writer came late to, or just came to and eventually shared the experience of having done at the Stylus domain. I can't say that about Peter Bjorn & John; I actually wrote the Stylus review of their highly acclaimed "Writer's Block," which many people known simple as "Young Folks." I, too, acclaimed it [sic].

But I've never seen them live, only heard several sad and atrocious things, including that they had sound problems at SXSW09 and can't whistle, (a crucial component of the stupid "Young Folks," and it's really fine if they can't whistle and in that flustered state forget how to play the song forever).

They have identity problems on "Living Things," their upcoming album, but as Jon Pareles once taught me via a generous e-mail, pop absorbs everything, and PB&J are pop, pure and not simple and Swedish.

Standout tracks are the Paul Simon-y (see what I mean? although most of "Seaside Rock" had this affinity too) "I Want You!", "Living Things," which is a crazy little ebullient trip; "Blue Period Picasso," with a ridiculous premise that quickly gives way to a romantical synth-backed cry for help that permits the listener to forget most lyrics but "You just kindly stole my heart / a world-famous art thief"; and the delightful "Lay It Down," which could have been written by The Streets or Lily Allen's people, and has the subject matter to match: it's an ode to a terrible guy. If you hear reminiscences of Lykke Li, you best check yourself, because Bjorn Yttling is her producer. He may have shot himself in the foot with that one, because that album came out last season, as it were. Too soon. Or is it ever—for pop?

D.M. Stith

Is there ever going to be anyone like Thom Yorke again? We're okay for now because Thom Yorke still exists and works. But I've always yearned for his virtuosic, sad, shy vocal rivulets and cryptic little poems in someone else. Could his shtick exist in someone else, somewhere else, and be owned by that person? Or would it be derivative, subject to endless comparison and bashing? I suppose I just want someone to have that drive and courage, new yet familiar, promising and stunning.

D.M. Stith, a visual artist otherwise known as David Stith, is a worthy candidate. (So is Grizzly Bear--see previous post.) According to an interview on WNYC, Stith, who has worked with My Brightest Diamond, apparently promised Asthmatic Kitty a record. I don't know how many artists can say their musical career began in such a way. In any case, he made it, spending a year trying to figure out what the hell he was doing while probably knowing deep down he was capable of doing well at whatever it was, or at least, enjoying the project. Stith describes the album as a reflection of this search process. He would sit down at his computer every day and have no idea what was going to come out. Like his "bad poetry" from high school, which he started with a single word, "one foot in front of the other, one word in front of the other," the album came through a series of little tinkerings and utterances. It is wonderful that such tentativeness yielded such a brilliant work.

Stith likes creating cacophonic vocal lines that swirl like an angry pack of ghouls around your ear. He employs piano, acoustic guitar and small orchestra to lend weight and fear to this already powerful mixture. Crackling percussion fed semingly by nature does fine work decorating more readable vocal lines like on the much-discussed "Pity Dance." I see witches dancing in front of a cauldron, a Greek chorus of wolves baying in the background. On "Creekmouth" he uses a powdery artillary of drums to roll the rhythm forward, wild vocals egging them on. This is the kind of stuff Mystery Jets has tried to do. And of course, there are some sleepy moments, like "BMB," but even those are carefully woven, instrumentally varied and ultimately just as memorable. Another standout track is the Jolie Holland-like "Thanksgiving Moon" and the Andrew Bird-like "Fire of Birds." Andrew Bird is definitely Stith's kindred spirit.

The album is out now. Check D.M. Stith out on MySpace, and prepare to suddenly have a fondness for the end of winter.

D.M. Stith - "Fire of Birds"

Album Review | Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest

Coming to Grizzly Bear late, and in a silent room in order to hear each of the nuances raved about by my peers, "Yellow House" was striking from song to song. Given undivided patience, no song could be mistaken for another. So the desire to rush to the first and gnarliest copy of "Veckatimest" available was, despite the year I spent without care for Grizzly Bear at all, hard to resist. Throwing out my first copy for a new version, and then another, gave a chink to the armor of critical meditation, but the modern music critic is an addict and a champion of his idols; the addict's impulse dominates.

"Veckatimest," named for an uninhabited island in Massachusetts, is a wallowing, aquatic experience at times and is less instrumentally and rhythmically diverse than "Yellow House." No bit rate upgrade will change this, but it doesn't entirely matter. Rarely is production, or its being garbled by a bad rip, so distracting as to change a critic's rating. Even on the roughest tracks, such as "About Face" and "All We Ask," I saw each instrument, each embellishment as lovely little organic presences expressing themselves endearingly and non-verbally. Like Beach House, Grizzly Bear hinge a lot on atmosphere; that "Veckatimest" isn't having Ed Droste sing in your ear so intimately you can feel his breath is no problem. What we get instead is a sweet choir adding urgency to rumination and glittery guitar adding patience to pop.

On "About Face," there is a little squeak of something, not to mention some billowing flutes and a few hair-tosses of drums, that add such delicacy to an otherwise skippable song. It's more Annuals than Grizzly Bear (and Annuals take a certain kind of heart to enjoy, so it's a good thing not every song on this album is like this. When a friend said on first listen of this album, "Snooze city," I suspect they were talking about "About Face.")

The biggest surprise on the album is "Two Weeks," an anchor track firmly gripping the seabed of "Leno," the radio, and any other apparatus that can spread a virus. It is, as you might imagine from that designation, an undeniably great song, a cheerful welcome mat at the foot of the album, that I suspect will compel hugs and dances and a kind of "Hey Ya!" exuberance in every listener. The slowly creeping "Dory," on the other hand, sees the band returning to the companionship of "Yellow House," with eerie guitar strokes and a group of voices' ghostlike melodic descent as the song spins slowly out of pleasing keys and into a darker order.

"Ready, Able" is perfection. The song that starts prettily enough, but turns at about two minutes into a haunting merry-go-round blur of organs shimmying and manipulated keys and voices wallowing ominously, with a guitar entering late to direct all of them through with solemn urgency. As almost always with this band, the lyrics are private and sparse. Droste only hints at the music's colorful woe by turning the title of the song on its head. "Ready, Able" is not as optimistic in the song as it is in theory:

"Time is cast once; and far alone.
Hope I'm ready, able to make my own;
goodbye."

As the song descends, he dolefully exclaims, over and over: "They go we go, I want you to know, what I did I did." The guitar strikes out strongly, though in pain, as a kind of counterpoint, a competitor.

In the tension-building "I Live WIth You," there is some of Dirty Projectors' theatrical choral work, anchored as if by David Longstreth's jerking between the cute guitar/dirty guitar and meek voice/angry voice dichotomies. This stunning song only suffers for being such a clear denouement and coming so headily into our midst after so many calm songs. It reveals itself as such by being protractedly chaotic and exhausted at turns.

The final two tracks of the album are in my mind inextricable and, as one, feed the listener with so much of the album's skill and well-sharpened sadness. "Foreground," the final track, comprises the facts that appear before the mess of "I Live With You," something far more monstrously beautiful than "Foreground"'s emotional flat earth, full of acceptance and somber normalcy that the moodiness and instrumentally violent "I Live With You" wouldn't understand. "Foreground"'s melody is almost stupidly simple. That is to say, the listener, dissecting its simple see-saw melody, feels stupid for being so deeply affected by it. But it's Droste's entrance, his response to the piano melody, that makes the song so arresting. Its chilly atmosphere is a relief from the previous storm, but tests our emotional endurance with its own unique assertions. That a handful of distinctly beautiful songs can coexist so rebelliously yet so comfortably is worthy of the highest praise. This band is the whole package: intelligent composers, revisionists, and good curators of their body of work.

Live | David Byrne at Radio City Music Hall | 2.28.09

Above: how I would sum up the musical collaboration that prompted 11 to 40 individuals to dress in white, don tutus, and perform at a historic venue for thousands of crazed, technologically enabed fans.

He began three minutes late, at 8:18 pm, on his second of two nights in New York and at the end of his tour for the Eno-produced Everything That Happens Will Happen Today; or, Everything That's Released Will Stream Free Today, be Payable by Cash or Credit in a Few Weeks. For the tour, David Byrne added a ten-piece ensemble of musicians who can dance and dancers who can strum a guitar. Chastising TicketsNow in his introduction, Byrne also informed us of the lawsuit involving this "essentially scalping website" north of the border: "Hang on to your tickets or your receipts, because it looks like that case is going to make its way down this side of the 49th Parallel." Cheers followed boos for the two most notorious companies beginning with "ticket."

The dancers, clad as Byrne in all white, made for a kind of Bahamas-ready nose-thumb at standard orchestra dress code. Fidgety and chaotic, they announced all eyes should be on stage left, right and center. Their choreographed but loosely executed moves seemed fit for an educational musical about cell parts or an Of Montreal music video. They were, as beginnings of concerts tend to be, distracting. Like channel-surfing when you first turn on the TV, the first few minutes of a concert are about the brain absorbing the set, then getting to work on relaxation and neural pruning, or in my case, note-taking.

As pieces from the late collaboration with Brian Eno gave way to pieces from the early collaboration with Brian Eno and key pieces of Talking Heads, dancer wiggles gave way to audience wiggles. That is until they outdid us with vaults over David Byrne's shoulders and a wonderful use of rolling desk chairs that saw the three dancers and singer seated and spinning dreamily as the music played. As the song ended, the sole male dancer flamboyantly steered himself off stage as if on a speeding ship.

They gave us three encores, the first of which began, lights up, with Byrne's keyboardist suddenly appearing before the venue's famed organ. His playing was pretty yet cacophonous, meandering in a way that fit with the material of My Life in the Bush of Ghosts.

Throughout, Byrne's mic seemed turned up a little too high--his voice, in its upper registers, is its own megaphone. To that end, he seemed most natural an in tune with the older material, which is vocally rougher, more gyrating, more spasmodic. But he chose a perfect ending, the title track of "Everything," which served as a lullaby to send around three generations of fans home to bed. After the powerful bang of "Burning Down the House" that saw some 40 smart-casual ballerinas join the core on stage, "Everything" was a nightcap; Byrne had tired himself out enough to approach the song with the lulling vocals it requires.

After one encore ended, the lead male backing singer strutted off stage left with his right hand in a peace sign. The trite gesture was given new life by this noncelebrity musician, this participant in the peaceful demonstration that music is.

Album Review | Handsome Furs - Face Control

Ah, marriage. It's tough for a 25-year-old like myself to admire a lifestyle that doesn't regularly allow for solitary sprawling in a queen size bed. But when a marriage is between two twenty-something Montreal residents who have their own band, Handsome Furs, and are half in Wolf Parade, half out, marriage takes on the sheen of an Donald Draper ad campaign. The Furs have a stage presence conveyed simply by standing next to each other, one controlling the battlax, the other the beats. The wife is curvacious, save for her choppy bob hairstyles and wigs, and her husband is a tall rail with a penchant for taking a razor to parts of his hair. He thrashes like a fish out of water; she nods her head and focuses on the control panels of the sequencer/drum machine/synthesizer, a model for her elaborate and surprising outfits. For photo shoots and videos, the couple have previously lounged bemusedly on a motel bed, or jumped onto a railroad track for a few Terry Richardson-inspired night shots. Above, in what I can only assume is a promo photo for the new album, the band looks ravishing in the throes of 50s decor and sex. It's a stunning picture.

 

Their music has improved. "Plague Park," released in 2007, came sort of in the midst of the tour of the other Wolf Parade side project, Sunset Rubdown, and seemingly while Wolf Parade was working on "At Mount Zoomer," released in the spring of 2008. "Plague Park" was good, it was underrated, it was in some senses lost in a great year for music. I came at the album's final song, "Snakes On A Ladder," first, and was impressed and found the rest later. The rest is better. "What We Had" is so clear and sharp in its dreariness and nostalgia; many tracks employ the same kind of kicking, snapping synthesized beats and guitars that hang their heads and hum, and yawn, and cry out in pain.

Mrs. Boeckner (Alexei Perry) doesn't sing, which is a shame, but her vocals would inevitably add a sweetness that the band only exhibits in those sad old dog guitar licks, Califone-like, but less hopeful. On the second album the band is clearly more pumped, happier, and inspired by something other than relationship hurdles. On the opener and first single, "I'm Confused," a fast-paced Beatles-inspired guitar loop drives the rhythm dancibly forward, and the beats plug along obediently. It's a perfect opener, but it's not incredible enough to foreshadow mediocrity down the line; several of the tracks stack up to the creativity and color of the first. There is inevitably a bit of Springsteen in Boeckner's shtick; he sings from the stomach and infuses his lines with echoes and metallic drones, and the song's poppy rhythms, which can all sound homogenous on second listen, draw him back a little into the 80s. Exempli gratia:

Handsome Fur - "Talking Hotel Arbat Blues"

This is an impressive album that requires the focus of headphones and several listens. From far away, the album passes too quickly and the gems can't all be discerned. But close to the ears on a relaxing wintry day, the album is sure to stand strongly among the best of 2009.

Photo credit: Handsome Furs (via their Myspace page)

New Band: Hit Factory

Most of the time, heading to a band's MySpace page and seeing that their songs have only been played a couple hundred times yields a knee-jerk, "Oh no, this can't be good." But when you happen upon some young relatives of yours from Cambridge and jam with them during a wedding weekend, as my friend did, you're likely to listen to their MySpace tracks regardless of how many times they've been played. When it turns out that this band has an infectious, pretty sound, like Okkervil River without the pretentiousness, and Morrissey without the dire sadness, and Vampire Weekend without The Congo, well, it's exciting, and you share it with all your friends and music industry insiders and mp3 bloggers. That's where I come in.

Hit Factory, pictured here, have kindly released their EP, "Party Animal," for free via a blog hosted by one of their student Web pages at Princeton (so cute). Here's the link:

Hit Factory - Party Animal EP

At the page footer, the guys implore you to "Support Indiependant Musics." Do it.

Recommended tracks: "Divider," "Judas" and "Delicate Army."

The Black Ghosts

The Black Ghosts' eponymous debut album came out in the summer but I missed that boat so I'm listening to it now. It's sounding very promising. The first track, "Some Way Through This," is pretty glorious. Here's the video. Yes, lego is involved.

Their first single, "Any Way You Choose To Give It" (give what? Don't answer that) was sucky, and so were the remixes. But it was misleading.

UPDATE: The rest of the album is pretty weak. But the track mentioned above remains really Prince-y and awesome. Exceptions are "I Want Nothing," "I Don't Know" and the Phoenix-like "Something New."

The Black Ghosts - "Some Way Through This"

Remixes, in their own right

Does anyone take remixes seriously? Well, yes, you'd be surprised. Search around music blogs using elbo.ws or Hype Machine and the vast majority of what you'll find is remixes.  Search MGMT (dunno why you would)  and you'll find remixes of their tracks "Electric Feel" (I thought it was 'eel'??) and "Time to Pretend" by Tronik Youth, Justice, James Rutledge, and some more. In this case, it means the original songs aren't really that good. Same goes for New Young Pony Club, who has also been remixed 5 million times. Why is this? In many cases, at least this year, it's because people just wanna dance, which I also claimed in a review of Martina Topley-Bird's terrible second album.

Many times the original tracks were half-obliging, and the remixes go full throttle, amping things up, speeding things up, chocking electro house up to Misshapes and a Samantha Ronson set.

A case where the original song yields something incredible is Beck's "Missing," from Guero. Air's remix virtually changes the key, or at least turns something vertiginous and set in a jungle to something wistful and elegant. Air's sparkly space stuff lays down a foundation, a solid, firm-footed beat for the floaty, unresolved wanderings of Beck's orchestration. I first heard the remix in the Virgin Megastore in Union Square. Considering every time I walk in there they're either playing Coldplay or U2, this was kind of refreshing. It comes from an entire album of remixes you might have heard of called Guerolito. But contrary to the title's meaning, some of the remixes are bigger and bolder than the originals. At base, the song still isn't going to go entirely where you want it to; it gets monotonous halfway through. But the triumphant beginning is worth a listen.

Here it go:

Beck - "Heaven Hammer (Missing) Remixed by Air"

Dare I add "Ignition (Remix)" to this list? Does anyone even know what the original "Ignition" sounds like?

Holding Out for a Hero

Not sure it's ever going to be necessary to rehash Footloose for any reason, but the singer Doveman decided to do just that, with varying degrees of success. He covered the movie's entire soundtrack as a kind of favor for his friend, and the piano-heavy, mostly acoustic result is some eerie, down-trodden, and occasionally awesome remakes. Here's my favorite.

Doveman -  "Holding Out for a Hero"

Visit Doveman's site to stream the whole thing.

Record-breaking # of posts about Radiohead

Actually, this is about Thom Yorke on Henry Rollins performing "Cymbal Rush" with the use of an ondes maronet. This version is awesome, and moderately less depressing than the version on The Eraser.

More Arthur Russell

When I say 'more' I mean I wrote a post about Arthur Russell last year that I'm too lazy to link to. Sasha Frere-Jones described Arthur Russell in a 2004 New Yorker article:

"This story begins, as many good ones do, with a gay man from Oskaloosa playing cello in a closet in a Buddhist seminary. It ends with a gentle and brilliant musician dying in New York long before his time. In between, the cellist, Arthur Russell, wrote orchestral music, produced disco hits, and recorded a body of solo cello-and-voice songs that fit somewhere between lullabies and art songs." (more)

These solo cello-and-voice songs are like homeopathic Xanax. I keep coming back to them. I don't care that most of them are unfinished, or that Russell was seldom happy with them and often moved on, leaving cuts like these two:

Arthur Russell - "Lucky Cloud"

Arthur Russell - "A Little Lost"

They're perfect the way they are.

"What a day
As the sun peeps around the cloud
That's in the way
Like a two way, two way street
The weather at a point will show me
What you will say"

Becky-poo

I know, we are supposed to have given up on Beck after Guero. But he's the type of musician you keep coming back to curiously. It would be rude not to. And I actually kind of liked The Information. Now we have the Zombies-y Modern Guilt, with a cover that resembles like, a quarterly journal on photography, and has all but one track produced by Danger Mouse. Is it better than the Gnarls Barkley record? Probably. Are any of the tracks memorable? Yes, probably three: "Modern Guilt," "Gamma Ray," and "Profanity Prayers," which is so Radiohead c. 2007 it will drive you nuts. Ok, here it is, suckers.

Radiohead bits begin at 0:28 and last til about 0:49, but that chugging guitar lick is all Radiohead!
Radiohead bits resume in a big way at 2:08 and end at 2:31

Beck - "Profanity Prayers"

P.S. Don't you think Kate Hudson's son looks like Beck? I do.

Lonelyville

Cafes are an instrumental part of my life and career, so I thought I should tribute Lonelyville Coffee, situated in Windsor Terrace across the street from Prospect Park. A photo selection below includes i) the exterior ii) the back yard iii) a Google image result for the term 'lonelyville' and iv) one of the baristas modeling in front of a sign on the counter.

There is no live music here, but "Adam Miller's Playlist" in my iTunes list of shared libraries is entertaining our ears with selections like "Bastian and the Boar" by the Brooklyn band Think About Life. There is certainly baby-o-rama here, which I discovered on a rainy Sunday when I came here to finish (and start) a review for Pitchfork. I was sure there would be no children here. What I found was four tables of kids and parents playing board games. That's what your basement brownstone apartments are for!! I told them silently. Eventually they left. Just in time for me to plug in my laptop.

There are a few tiny, habitual soap operas that play out for the coffee shop writer: 1) How to provide oneself sustenance throughout the day without raking up a $20 tab on lattes and muffins 2) Where to plug in laptop!?!? 3) Ratio of strollers to laptops 4) Temperature of venue. Lonelyville gets a four-star rating. Things like strollers really aren't too much of a problem here. There isn't any breastfeeding circle or wailing. There is no air conditioning but it's not really a problem. The drinks are expensive, but they're also good, and we only have Starbucks to blame for the inflation.

People-watching is a necessary distraction at Lonelyville. The crowd ranges from children who come in and steal candy out of the jars by the door to triathletes meandering downhill after a long ride. The stream of runners/joggers is a constant reminder of what I will be doing later tonight. No, not jogging.

Kleerup - s/t

Kleerup, famous Stateside for his collaboration with Robyn on "With Every Heartbeat," has an album out. It's interesting, though perhaps too full of collaborations that don't all make sense side by side and sound rather homogeneous. I'm more intrigued by his solo efforts, including "Tower of Trellick," which I've ever so kindly provided a link to below. Trying to find something else indicative and legal online, I came across this acoustic performance of Kleerup from a Swedish TV show. It suggests that his last name is actually Kleerup. Which I find funny, even if that sounds insensitive. Anyway, Andreas is chiefly an electronic/dance artist. So this video may weird you out. But it's actually quite nice. It's called "Longing for Lullabies" and features the vocal artist Titiyo. Yeah, so it's basically "With Every Heartbeat"'s little sister. After this acoustic is the original version. Compare and contrast! If your job seems to allow for, or require, soundscapes, as mine does, you might enjoy the below. I fear it may fall into the "too slow for treadmill and too uniform to listen to recreationally" category.

Kleerup - "Tower of Trellick"

New Booka Shade Album: Meh; Useful at 4:30 on a Monday

I am on the 28th floor of an office tower overlooking the West Side of NYC. The clouds are outlined by the sun's gold Sharpie pen. Ooh, now it's raining. I don't feel anywhere close to Booka Shade's world, but I accidentally realized they have a new album out, so I thought I'd give it a try.

iTunes tells me "Charlotte" is the most popular track. 30-second sample is not convincing, though I imagine it could get me through this politically challenging article about Orientalism. I will explore others without paying for any of it, then return to Boards of Canada's Music Has the Right to Children - "Pete Standing Alone," "Turquoise Hexagonal Sun," "An Eagle in Your Mind," et al. Here's a little cheat sheet. (Where were you in '98?)

Boards of Canada - "Pete Standing Alone"

What decade does Alphabeat think it's living in?

I feel like I'm in New Jersey and it's 1985 and I'm watching "Today's Special" or listening to the "KIDS Incorporated" sountrack ("K...I...D...S...YEAH!") I do like "The word is on your lips / say the word" segment at 1:50. But are these people for real? I can't believe it's legal to be this happy and colorful and sort of knowledgeable about the English language.

Cross Tegan, Sara and Karen O. with M.I.A., and you get...

Ms. Santogold!

The Side Effects of Tommy Mottola

I can't believe the guy still gets a shout out in Mariah Carey's songs. I mean, really. She even has the audacity to say, "Forgive, but I can't forget" near the end of the song "Side Effects," as if she's decided she'd been too cruel in the first two verses, claiming that he had her under his thumb / was trying stifle everything she wanted to become / do you think she's dumb / no she's never going to succumb / to your balding head again.

Those aren't the real lyrics. Anyway, this pop song and future hit for Ms. Carey and Mr. Jeezy is one of the saddest most addictive pieces of sour bubble gum ever. In my opinion, better than the butterfly- or rainbow- or dreamcloud- or dolphin- or kitten-themed album singles of 2005 that got stuck to every radio and took several Backstreet Boys comebacks, American Idol singles, and a Beyoncé album to scrape off.

Why do I keep listening to it? It makes me so goddamn depressed. I just love the breakdown (no pun intended), where she sings,

When I space am I still dreaming 'bout them violent times
Still little protective 'bout the people that I let inside
Still little defensive thinkin' 'bout me tryin' to run my life
Still little depressed inside, I fake a smile and deal with the side effects.

When you think about it (please don't), it's really identical to the breakdown of "We Belong 2Gether":

Who else am I gon' lean on when times get rough
Who's gonna talk to me on the phone 'til the sun comes up
Who's gonna take your place there ain't nobody better
Oh, baby baby, we belong together, baby!

Except far less hopeful. I try to relate "Side Effects" to my life, but unfortunately I've never dated a balding music mogul twice my age.

Mariah Carey ft. Young Jeezy - "Side Effects"

Rewind

I seem to be terminally diseased with nostalgia for the London of the late '90s. Over there, it wasn't so much about Britney Spears (who, in a speedboat with the British TV presenter Andy Peters, once celebrated her boob job, before quickly erasing the footage from everyone's memory forever). It was all about Craig David, So Solid Crew, the Artful Dodger, and European dance acts like Rui Da Silva. Here's a two-track tribute. These two songs were immensely popular around 1999, and you couldn't spend time in a club (or, for that matter, a bar with a dance floor) without hearing each one at least once a night. "Rewind" features possibly one of the best sound effects ever used in a two-step song. And my best friend Beth and I lived for it, and the rest of the song.

Artful Dodger feat. Craig David - "Rewind"

So Solid Crew - "21 Seconds"

 

Still Obsessed with You

Online Videos by Veoh.com

Pazz & Jop 2006

Village Voice's critic-run fun run has established the Best 15 Albums of 2006.

1 Dylan, Bob - Modern Times 1123(95)
2 TV on the Radio - Return To Cookie Mountain 1109(99)
3 Ghostface Killah - Fishscale 1031(96)
4 Hold Steady, The - Boys and Girls in America 983(81)
5 Gnarls Barkley - St Elsewhere 791(71)
6 Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not 718(63)
7 Clipse - Hell Hath No Fury 673(63)
8 Case, Neko - Fox Confessor Brings the Flood 645(64)
9 Newsom, Joanna - Ys 626(59)
10 Waits, Tom - Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards 608(51)
11 Cat Power - The Greatest 566(57)
12 Sonic Youth - Rather Ripped 500(49)
13 Decemberists, The - The Crane Wife 440(42)
14 Belle and Sebastian - The Life Pursuit 423(39)
15 Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins - Rabbit Fur Coat 366(37)

What is hunger?

It's fine to ask people like Bertrand Russell to explain to us in the terms of dozens of others why we might feel a certain way.  Or what way we should feel.  But there is a complex science behind the desire of everything, including music and food, which are two of my favorite pastimes.

I don't know much about science, though I love articles in the Times that essentially could start out, or be summarized by the words, "They did a study on..."

'They'!  It never fails to amuse––our complete naivety and trustfulness of sciency Thems everywhere.

The hunger for music is the same as the hunger for food.  It's just as biological.  You could compare it to a nicotine habit; an alcohol habit; a coffee habit; a person habit: the brain controls the desire.  The brain controls the hunger for food, as the hunger for anything else.  That's pretty obvious. 

But––so––is music a habit-forming drug?  Generally, it is, and specifically, it is.  The desire to listen to (or play) music as much as possible, to color the experiences of everyday life (commutes, work, sleep) with melodies and howls and noodling noise, is habit-forming.  But there is also a specific desire to listen to the same seven songs for an entire week, which puzzles and entertains me the most.  Often it's a whole album, or back in the day it was, and I've started to do this again recently.  But usually it's a select handful of mood-setting pieces that replicate a time/place as many times as I want them to (162, currently). 

The thing about the brain is: it's really not that clever.  It likes ingraining information into itself twofold, tenfold, googolfold.  It likes routine.  It outright adores routine and can't live without it.  Sure, there are adventurers out there who never do the same thing twice.  But they still eat, they still love music, and they still obsess over albums and songs for weeks. 

What prevents us from just...stepping back and leaving the music alone for a few days?  Letting it simmer?  Trying something new?  Because our brain gets sort of...stuck.  Hooked on a feeling.  Nostalgic for something that happened, like, yesterday. 

And if y'all want to know what exactly the music is that I currently refuse to leave alone:

"Fists Up" - The Blow
"Muscle n' Flo" - Menomena
"Regulate" - Warren G
"Parentheses" - The Blow
"Wet and Rusting" - Menomena

And somewhere in there, the entire Vision Creation Newsun album by the Boredoms.

Also the new Klaxons CD Myths of the Future. 

And also some of RJD2's new one, with its scary amount of singing.