Review Round-Up: April 2013

After a somewhat monochrome March, April has been practically bursting with color, musically speaking: most dramatically, the Knife's noxious, fluorescent habit-shaking pink and green; but also the brightly shining blue and yellow of Kurt Vile's always-sunny-in-Philadelphia daze (the building is much yellower in my imagination) and the bold, somehow garish gray and, i suppose, peach of Phoenix's very entertaining, still-percolating Bankrupt! (which I'll get to soon enough.)  Plus there were the pastels'n'posteriors of Chrissy Murderbot's latest goofiness (see below); Neon Neon (in name if not cover art); and even the (sexual) chocolate and silver of Breakbot's really fantastic By Your Side, which just came out domestically and has been on repeat quite a bit around here, though it seems to have gotten more or less overlooked by the tastemakers both times around... particularly poor form, i'd say, in light of all the hoopla around Daft Punk's return (power-color: burnt orange, a good choice.)

Which...jury's out on that one. "Get Lucky" is perfectly catchy and double-plus groovin', but it's also kinda overpowered by the "guest contributors" (as others have suggested, I could do with more of the parts that don't have Pharrell, though his singing is perfectly fine.  also, what's with the "verse" being about a quarter as long as both the intro and the pre-chorus?)  will be interested to hear the album version.  and the whole album, of course.  in the mean time it already feels like there's a French Touch revival going on, between the super-stylin' Breakbot record, Phoenix, and fake-French OG Jacques Lu Cont bacque in acquetion as well (still gotta get my hands on that.)  more broadly, just around the corner in May, some sweet synth-poppin'-off from Classixx, Little Boots and the highly excellent Dungeonesse among others...basically what i'm saying is we are being well primed for another Summer of Dance-Pop - i can feel it in the musical climate almost more than in the actual weather (which is sunny and super-springy but still surprisingly chilly from time to time.)

As it turned out, my review quota for April was cut quite short – in fact, I didn't have a single review published in CP during April; I'm cheating a little bit with my inclusions below – so I didn't manage to actually write about most of the above (nor the also very worthwhile Iron & Wine, Shuggie Otis, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Kalabrese albums.)  I did write some stuff, but mostly it was on weird, lame old-people music, like jazz and punk and folk and rock and roll.  ew, who listens to rock and roll??

Marc Ribot's Cermamic Dog
Your Turn

The title of album number two from guitarist Marc Ribot's gonzo jazz-punk power trio Ceramic Dog is mostly a visual gag: the cover shows a hastily scribbled tic-tac-toe board, eight of its nine spaces scrawled with Xs.  Your Turn.  The music contained within isn't quite that perversely sadistic – most of the time – but it's at least as blackly humorous.  Vocal cuts (about half the record) find them railing with grim sarcasm against inequities political (a furious, Occupy-inspired take on labor anthem "Bread and Roses"), bodily (the pained, Morphine-esque blues "Lies My Body Told Me") and cyber-economic (sardonically self-abasing pro-download screed "Masters of the Internet.")  There's just as much caustic comedy to be found in the instrumentals, replete with Ribot's ribald, axe-throttling skronk and the equally redoubtable, amped-up frenetics of bassist Shahzad Ismaily and drummer Ches Smith: oblique, Naked City-style freakouts; an unhinged "Take 5" takedown; a squalling noise dirge pointedly entitled "Prayer."  While making space for everything from Beasties-indebted rap ("We Are The Professionals"), earnest, reggae-flecked protest folk ("Ain't Gonna Let Them Turn Us Round") and a swinging, deliciously twisted faux-standard ("The Kid Is Back"), Your Turn feels less self-consciously eclectic than 2008's Party Intellectuals; it's bolder, more focused (nothing pushes past six minutes), and just all-around more rocking.  Decidedly unlike that pathetically futile game of tic-tac-toe, it's great, great fun.

Dump
Superpowerless and I Can Hear Music

In his review of their gently majestic, habitually exalted thirteenth album this January (in MAGNET #95) Brian Howard described Yo La Tengo's perhaps-improbable perseverance as a form of quietly determined resistance.  But it's instructive to remember that their approach to music-making – pointedly personal; passionate yet decidedly low-key – was once simply a way of life, for them and many in the nascent days of "indie rock."   For James McNew, who became the band's bassist in 1991, at age 21, playing in other people's groups wasn't enough, so he initiated his own project: recording to a 4-track cassette deck under the suitably smirky, self-effacing moniker Dump.

His first two LPs, recorded in piecemeal fashion throughout the early '90s alongside myriad singles and EPs (of which, for some reason, only one – a self-titled 1992 five-song 7" – is included among the bonus tracks on these Morr Music reissues) were issued in 1993 and 1995, respectively – exactly concurrent with YLT's seminal, ascendant early Matador run (Painful, Electr-O-Pura) – and they offer a fascinating, emphatically casual alternate perspective on that era.  They're full of the spirited eclecticism that soon defined his main band – bucketloads of jangly pop butting up against droning feedback, sweetly folksy ditties, grungy rockers, sputtering "jazzy" instrumentals, churning two-chord slow-burns, and covers covers covers (which tended to receive somewhat more care than his plenty-winsome originals) – but with an almost aggressively laissez-faire attitude toward musicianship (vocal intonation included), let alone "recording quality."  The point being, as any true indie knows, that none of that stuff ultimately matters: if you can get across a song, communicate a feeling, the more efficiently the better, well, you've got something worthwhile.  Here are three hours, almost sixty tunes, and if it takes a little trash-picking to get there, there's something to treasure in nearly every one.

originally published in Magnet Magazine

Chrissy Murderbot
Greatest Hits ★★★★★
[Electronic/Juke/Future Bass]

There's not necessarily much logic to how Chrissy Murderbot operates.  The Chicago DJ/producer/dance music savant's latest release consists of seven entirely new cuts and seven wide-ranging remixes, and – for no particular reason – it's entitled Greatest Hits ★★★★★ (Murder Channel).  That gleeful, extravagant absurdity carries over into the music, which piles on the goofball catchphrases ("after the party it's the Waffle House..."), sci-fi lazer FX ("Pew Pew") and incongruously emotive soul vocals atop skittering, hyper-BPM juke and jackhammering jungle breaks.  When it comes to moving bodies, dude's as no-nonsense as they come.

Neon Neon
Praxis Makes Perfect
[Pop]

Praxis Makes Perfect (Lex), the second straight synth-pop bio-opera from Neon Neon – Super Furry Animal Gruff Rhys plus avant-hip-hop producer Boom Bip – takes on the life of Italian publisher and communist activist Giangiacomo Feltrinelli.  It's not quite as natural a fit as their eighties-steeped homage to John DeLorean – most of the sounds here post-date the subject's 1972 death – but it works, both as an offbeat lefty history lesson (check the eyebrow-raising "Hoops With Fidel") and as a sweet batch of yacht-friendly soft-pop and endearingly stiff, cheeky eurodisco.

Kacey Musgraves
Same Trailer Different Park
[Country/Pop]

Nashville newbie Kacey Musgraves' breakthrough single "Merry Go Round," while not half as clever as she probably thought, was still striking for its frank, pointedly skeptical slice-of-life storytelling.  Same Trailer Different Park (Mercury Nashville) – actually her fourth LP – confirms that she can throw together cliches with the best of 'em, often in an endearingly (even – for Nashville – radically) empowering manner, and have it come out improbably fresh; even building a hook around the word "stupid" that manages not to sound it.  Musically, Musgraves' sweet, simple country-pop – never veering too far either way – recalls Taylor Swift's first album; lyrical-maturity-wise, Swift'll hopefully get there on her next one.

Ólafur Arnalds
For Now I Am Winter
[Classical/Ambient]

Ólafur Arnalds is an Icelandic neo-classical/ambient/new age composer (the lines get pretty blurry, and who needs 'em?) and yes, his music lives up to whatever stock images and stereotypes (glaciers, ethereality, Northern lights...) that may conjure up.  But if it's predictably gorgeous, unabashedly palatable stuff – plangent pianos; alternately sprightly and keening strings; gently burbly electronic undercurrents – it's far from rote and practically never maudlin.  Titular pomposity and spectacularly faulty seasonal timing aside, And Now I Am Winter (Mercury) is an especially delicate effort; even the potentially risky incorporation of indie-pop-flavored vocals turns out typically tasteful, thanks to Arnór Dan's sweetly stoic falsetto and some downright catchy tunes.

Billy Bragg
[Folk]
concert preview

Billy Bragg opens his ninth album by declaring "I'm so tightly wound in tension."  He hardly sounds it, though: this is easily the sometime firebrand's mellowest LP to date, a warm, burnished Americana set bearing all the tasteful hallmarks of producer Joe Henry (including Greg Leisz's always-lovely pedal steel inflections.)  Continuing the newfound lyrical directness of 2008's similarly understated Mr. Love & Justice (which feels practically aggressive by comparison), Tooth and Nail (Cooking Vinyl) makes good on Bragg's longstanding Woody Guthrie fixation with earnestly populist homilies like "Do Unto Others," plus one wistfully reverent cover reading.  But despite "There Will Be A Reckoning" – the album's sole, stirred-up rocker – and a few other choice words for the "misbegotten, misanthropic merchants of gloom," the most impassioned pleas here are generally of the romantic variety.  For lefty rabble-rousing, you're better off with 2011's website-only compilation Fight Songs – or the witty, heartfelt between-song tirades that are a staple of his live sets.

John Medeski
[Jazz/Improvisation]
concert preview

In his twenty-plus years of blazing incendiary new trails for the contemporary jazz piano/organ trio alongside compadres Billy Martin and Chris Wood, John Medeski has supplied keys for everyone from John Zorn to Iggy Pop, Robert Randolph, Trey Anastasio and, most recently (wow), Coheed and Cambria.  But he's only now gotten around to cutting a record of his solo playing, displaying a radically different approach from the eclectic grooves beloved of jam-happy MMW heads.  A Different Time – the first new release on long-defunct, newly-revived classic jazz imprint/Sony sublabel OKeh – is a beautifully spacious, ruminative, largely improvised nocturnal affair in the tradition of Bill Evans and, particularly, Keith Jarrett.  While there's considerable virtuosity and classically-informed technique on display here – especially as it was recorded on a difficult-to-control 1924 French-made piano, the Gaveau – it's above all a masterclass in delicacy, expressiveness and restraint.

William Tyler
[Instrumental/Folk/Americana]
concert preview

Solo guitar records can be engrossing, meditative, gorgeously textural – and, to be sure, Impossible Truth (Merge) is all of the above – but it's rare to find one as exuberantly vivid and lush as the second full-length opus from Nashville-based virtuoso William Tyler, whose playing has previously supported Lambchop, Bonnie Billy and the Silver Jews.  Strictly speaking, it's not an entirely solo affair: pedal steel, trombone, vibraphone, bowed bass and even drums crop up in a few of these warmly expansive compositions, though they generally feel like subtle, nearly inconspicuous shadings against the foreground of Tyler's rippling, luminescent picking.  The album was inspired by a stack of weighty non-fiction texts on American symbolic geography, and you can hear reverberations of the vast, mythic West in pieces like "Cadillac Desert" and "Country of Illusion," while the raga-like drones and pedals elsewhere gesture, equally evocatively, toward the imagined East.

Goat
[Psych/Worldbeat]
concert preview

The deliberately shadowy Goat maintain an epic, absurd and presumably largely fabricated (or at least heavily mythologized) backstory involving a generations-old tradition of voodoo worship, communal living and collective music-making in the tiny, extreme-North Swedish village of Korpilombolo.  The group's three "core members" (the specific number and identities of the musicians involved are kept characteristically vague) do indeed hail from there. . . probably.  Either way the narrative feels less like attention-seeking puffery than a legitimate (if grandiose) means to sever their music from conventional contexts and expectations which would hardly suit it anyway.  Thankfully, their album, World Music (Rocket Recordings) – the title is simultaneously impish and self-evidently apt – doesn't feel the least bit pretentious or put-on.  Instead it's a total blast, a swirl of Afro-beat, droney psych-rock squalls, instrumental acoustic folk and polyrhythmic Middle Eastern grooves that does for worldbeat what fellow Swedish fantasists Dungen did for classic rock, unleashing a celebration of wailing storm surges ("Goathead"), ritual incantations ("Goatlord") and party jams ("Disco Fever," which interleaves kraut-funk and Ethiopian jazz) replete with hand-drums, hammond-organ fever-dreams, tribalistic chanting and, of course, that most universal of instruments, the electric guitar.

Jamie Lidell
[R&B/Pop]
concert preview

Jamie Lidell's 2005 breakout LP, Multiply, was something of a eureka moment, unleashing his freaky, fearless falsetto against a backdrop of IDM-reared production chops and uncovering newfound possibilities for smooshing up old-school soul with mod-podge electronica.  These days he's hardly the only electro-soul game in town (Autre Ne Veut, Quadron and Little Dragon all owe him some debt), although he remains in high demand as a vocalist (this month alone he's turned up on tracks by Atom™ and Brandt Brauer Frick.)  Under his own auspices, Lidell's self-titled fifth full-length (Warp) tightens up the technicolor sprawl of 2010's Compass into something equally elastic but more narrowly focused, even reverent: a laser-lit homage to the original electronic/R&B interminglings of 1980s synth-funk, recasting the plushly poppy, machine-abetted boogie of Cameo, Bootsy Collins, P-Funk et. al., with the electronica wayback dials set to Lovesexy-style zap'n'twitch.

Bonobo
[Electronic]
concert preview

Electronic music has changed a lot since his first forays into playful lounge-jazz chill-out back around the turn of the millennium, but British producer Simon Green – alias Bonobo – has somehow kept his music fresh and relevant without ever dramatically changing his approach.  The North Borders (Ninja Tune) continues down the moodier, more sophisticated path signaled by 2010's excellent Black Sands, displaying an increasingly masterful ear for composition and intriguing, lushly organic sounds, but also well-attuned to the recent rhythmic tendencies emanating from London, Los Angeles and beyond.  While it'd still rest mostly comfortably within the well-worn, all-but-outmoded umbrella of triphop/downtempo, this is also Green's most diverse, body-friendly work yet.  "Know You" is a gorgeously sculpted dancefloor detonator, all stuttering, slowly cresting two-step syncopations; the kalimba-studded "Cirrus" is an idealized intersection of Pantha du Prince and Rounds-era Four Tet, while "Heaven For The Sinner" invites Erykah Badu along for a deep nodding groover recalling her pal Flying Lotus – and yet, it's all patently, undeniably Bonobo.

Lianne Le Havas
[Folk/Soul]
concert preview

Is Your Love Big Enough? (Warner/Nonesuch) introduced Lianne La Havas as, by and large, a rank and file member of the UK folk'n'soul brigade; crooning like an understated Adele, fingerpicking like a calmer, bluesier Laura Marling, and generally following alongside Michael Kiwanuka and Corrine Bailey Rae in the largely forgotten footsteps of forebears like Joan Armatrading.  It's all tasteful stuff; smooth, smoky and readily gratifying if not massively memorable.  But among the dapperly dusky torch ballads (one of which has already turned up as an under-the-radar Simian Mobile Disco sample), there are glimmers of something bolder and more distinctive, particularly in the scrappy, funk-looping grit of "Forget" (produced by Dave Sitek), the Supremes-y sophistication of "Au Cinema" and the ice cream-loving title track's exuberant, 6/4-time throwback swagger.  That song, Wikipedia notes incidentally, "is considered to have sexual connotations, relating to male genitalia."  Hmm, sounds suggestive.

The Mavericks
[Rock/Latin/Americana]
concert preview

Miami's Mavericks formed back in the late '80s, and if their name has taken on an additional connotation or two since then, it still suits them perfectly as they continue operating proudly outside of Music Row conventions, or indeed any other expectations you might have of a Nashville-ensconced outfit who've scored fourteen singles on the Billboard country charts.  In Time (Valory) the re-reunited group's first studio album in ten years, dispenses with country music, per se, almost entirely.  (For one thing, Raul Malo, whose melodramatic tenor warblings are as lusty and magnificent as ever – Roy Orbison remains the singular, almost inevitable point of comparison – is singing with much less of a twang these days.)  Turning a typically blind eye to established musical boundaries, the album amounts to a vigorous, accordion-kissed aural argument for immigration reform, swirling together elements of cumbia, norteño, surf-rock, tango, rumba and ska with juke-joint swing and '50s-style rock'n'roll balladry to create a delirious, Tejano-rockabilly melting pot.

Redd Kross
[Rock]
concert preview

Between The Clean, Imperial Teen and Teenage Fanclub, Merge Records has made itself quite the respectable home for aging power-poppers over the years, and they managed an unexpected and especially sweet feat last year when Redd Kross, the long-dormant SoCal brotherhood of amped-up Beatlitude, turned up on their roster for their first album since 1997.  Researching The Blues, despite what its studious-sounding title may suggest, is no mild-mannered, reticent reemergence: it finds the grunge progenitors (and one-time suburban teenage snot-punks) still retaining plenty of the power part of the equation – check the title track's snarling punk-blues stomp, for instance – while balancing it with a bevy of bouncy, Byrdsy janglers which manage to stuff an impressive amount of melodic invention into three minutes or less.

Iceage/Metz/White Lung
[Punk]
concert preview

Hotly tipped hell-raisers hailing from points across the industrialized, socially democratic global North – Copenhagen, Toronto and Vancouver, respectively – this trifecta of neo-hardcore bruisers all share the time-honored punk value of brevity.  You could fit each band's most recent full-length – Metz's seething, brutally efficient s/t Sub Pop debut; Iceage's style-refining, nuance-courting (but still plenty reckless and ramshackle) growth-spurt You're Nothing (Matador) and White Lung's sneering, electrifying, Riot Grrl-checking blitzkrieg Sorry (Deranged) – onto a single CD-R, with room to spare.  Proceeding to actually listen to said pile-up, however, would be a bracing, pummeling, existentially exhausting undertaking – nasty, brutish and short, indeed – and it's hard to even fathom the impact of seeing them all live in quick succession, though at least you'll get the set breaks to catch your breath and wipe off some sweat.

originally published in Philadelphia City Paper

FIDLAR
[Punk]
concert preview

This Nashville punk band's name is an acronym, a sort of bro YOLO, which stands, in part, for "...it dog, life's a risk."  It's a mantra they seemingly take as an injunction to partake of as much risky behavior as possible including – just to run down the tracklist of their ass-kicking self-titled debut (Mom + Pop), cheap beer (the raison d'être espoused in their signature, sing-along rallying cry), cocaine, cheap cocaine, and smoking (presumably also cheap) weed.  Plus, waking, baking, skating, and not being able to surf – which in particular should endear them to tourmate/labelmate/San Diego counterpart and beach-scum Wavves (whose own new Mom + Pop bow, Afraid of Heights, is his most earnest slab of grunge revivalism to date.)  Along the way, the FIDLARs make their way through a couple hard'n'fast quasi-thrash bursts, but also some of the sweetest heroin bubblegum since the Ramones, and a surprising amount of their hometown's twang to boot.

Review Round-Up: March 2013

Rhye
Woman

The music Mike Milosh and Robin Hannibal make together as Rhye isn't worlds away from what each has crafted separately before – the former (as Milosh) on three solo albums of electronics-infused bedroom songwriting; the latter in a string of excellent, mostly one-off avant-R&B projects including Quadron and the sumptuously quirky Owusu & Hannibal. But there's a purity of purpose, a subtle, stirring potency to what they've achieved together on this calmly wondrous debut which sets it apart, marking theirs as a rare, richly fruitful collaboration.

Maybe it has to do with communication – there's a refreshing sense of directness, not necessarily in the words themselves (although their lyrical appeals – "stay open"; "make love to me" – are plenty explicit), but in the sound of the music which, for all its abundant, unabashed prettiness and orchestral elegance – harps, quivering strings, tenderly fragile falsetto – maintains a stripped-down, unaffectedly human scope. Simply said: this, here, is Soul – not the backwards-looking stylistic cul-de-sac of retro signifiers and disclamatory prefixes, but the living breathing music which seemed to get sidelined decades ago in favor of the more technical (if often woefully inaccurate) but nowhere near as expressive "R&B " – as though that word somehow just started sounding a bit too real. Like its necessary-not-sufficient constituents, groove and vibe (here, naturally, in spades), it's a mighty elusive thing. But when you hear it, you'll know.

The Strokes
Comedown Machine

You’re not gonna get another Is This It, alright? Be quiet; you already got two. The Strokes have long since evolved into something stranger and altogether more interesting. Comedown Machine may not quite hit the heights of the band’s masterpiece-to-date (that’d be 2006’s First Impressions of Earth), but it continues their healthy trend of finding curious new ways to twist and complicate their by-now instinctively recognizable sound, taking apart and reassembling their precision-tooled interlocking arrangements to burrow ever deeper into jittery new wave. Rock saviors or no, they’ve always (secretly?) been a pop band at heart; that’s clear here right from the “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’” groove and attendant Jacko falsetto (a surprisingly recurrent Julian Casablancas tactic here – sometimes a dubious look, but he commits to it) of “Tap Out,” which kicks off an electric four-song run to stand alongside any in their catalog. From there we get pinched-voice tin-can punk, drowsy Beach Boys harms, an oblique, ersatz-exotica closer, an electro-kissed softie with a melody worthy of a piano-bar crooner standard (“Chances”) and, in “Partners In Crime,” another fine entry “Someday”-style in their ongoing slap-dash swing-beat sweepstakes. Not bad for a bunch of dads.

Fol Chen
The False Alarms

Quirky can be a double-edged sword. On their promising if inconsistent first two LPs, Fol Chen found compelling pop in unlikely places, but undermined it with a sense of oddball overload: willfully mysterious presentation, inscrutable narrative conceits, a general whiff of cloying pretension. With The False Alarms, they've mostly dropped the conceptual schtick (and accompanying numbering scheme), keeping the focus on their actual, legitimately intriguing music. And happily so: this is their sharpest full-length yet, gaining cohesion from the (often mechanically warped) vocal presence of improbably named new frontwoman Sinosa Loa. It's still not a far cry from its predecessors – indeed, immediate album highlight "A Tourist Town" lifts its twitchy, baroque robo-funk practically wholesale from previous-album highlight "In Ruins" (hey, if it ain't baroque...) Should-be-single-wise, "I.O.U." – a twinkly, kittenish strut pit against glitch-industrial beats and a slinky, Eastern-tinged guitar figure – may be even better. From there out things get murkier, at least figuratively; the amusingly electroclashy "Boys in the Woods" aside, it's tough to slot anything here into much of a genre. But despite the improbable aural density on offer – untold electronic plinks and micro-sampled percussion, but also string sections, kalimba, timpani, harp... – they somehow maintain a sense of airiness even at their most impenetrably dark. Curiouser and curiouser...
originally published in Magnet Magazine


DJ Koze
Amygdala
[Electronic]

Hamburg's Stefan Kozalla – alias DJ Koze – titled his 2004 mix album All People Is My Friends.  Amygdala, released on his own masterfully-curated Pampa imprint, strives to prove the point, inviting like-minded pals Caribou, Ada, Apparat, Matthew Dear and Milosh (of Rhye) to join him for a leisurely joy-ride through kaleidoscopic post-Kompakt pop.  The resulting album, aptly named for the brain's emotional processing center, is a hazy fantasia, a paisley patchwork wending its way through warmly personable tech-house, daydreamy downtempo, deliciously improbable covers (Kings of Convenience? Rodgers & Hart?) and intermittent Marvin Gaye samples, all of which should win him plenty more friends.

Space Dimension Controller
Welcome to Mikrosector 50
[Electro/Funk]

Welcome to Mikrosector-50 (R&S), the first full-length transmission from Space Dimension Controller (Earthname Jack Hamill) is just your basic retro-futuristic, time-traveling, electro-fried robo-funk space opera.  The album's nutsoid narrative concept – unfolding primarily on the titular planet in the year 2357 AD – is even more of a cheeseball sci-fi goof than, say, Janelle Monae's ArchAndroid, undertaken with a truly inspired degree of commitment.  Even more impressive: somehow, the myriad computerized voices (both spoken and sung) and Hamill's freaky/cheeky, easy/sleazy Egyptian Lover-style rhymes manage not to detract one bit from his suitably epic, electric, eighties-indebted galactic grooves, which recall Dâm-Funk and Daft Punk in equal measure.

Flume
s/t
[Electronic]

A little bit Dilla, a little bit Skrillex, the self-titled debut from Flume – a.k.a. 21-year-old Australian Harley Streten – suggests a post-dubstep take on the something-for-everyone, pop-happy mentality of prime Chemical Brothers and Basement Jaxx (albeit without the dancefloor-slaying ambition.)  While Streten's shimmery, bouncily broken beats will get heads nodding, the real star of Flume (Mom + Pop) is the abundance of freely pitched 'n' spliced vocals, from "Holdin' On"'s hip-shakin' gospel-soul samples and "Stay Close"'s lovelorn robot-vox to guest spots from Dido-ish lounge-cheese chanteuse Moon Holiday, moaning rock-dude Chet Faker and absurdly-named NY rapper T.Shirt.

The Embassy
Sweet Sensation
[Indie Pop/Electronic]

Swede-pop sweethearts bumming over the relative silence of The Tough Alliance, Studio, jj et. al. should take heart in the lusty, long-awaited return of their spiritual forebears: indie-dance darlings and Gothenberg hometown heroes The Embassy.  If the cover's Spacemen 3 homage and Freestyle-nodding title didn't give it away, Sweet Sensation (International) finds the duo partying like it's 1989 (again); drifting from Madchester to Majorca on breezily unbuttoned house grooves and lusciously thick, New Orderish basslines which veer into fleeting flashes of 303 squelch, while glinting acoustic strums bring the soft-focus sunshine and singer Fredrik Lindson's wan, perennially flat intonation keeps it effete.

Panda Riot
Northern Automatic Music
[Rock/Pop]

Formerly Philly duo Panda Riot dropped their gem of a dream-pop debut way back in 2007.  They've long since decamped to Chicago and expanded to a four-piece (adding a drummer; keeping the drum machines), but it's taken them a while to dive back into that luscious headspace for a full-length follow-up.  Northern Automatic Music (Saint Marie), belying its coldly mechanistic title, is polished but still hugely personable, molding the smoothed-out squall of textbook shoegaze into intriguing, too-short instrumentals and full-blooded pop songs atop which vocalist Rebecca Scott veers between ethereal and conversational, even sneaking some Kathleen Hanna-style slackster smarm into "Good Night Rich Kids."

Lady
s/t
[Soul]

Lady is actually two ladies – big-voiced R&B vets Terri Walker and Nicole Wray – tag-teaming their way through a spunky, good-natured self-titled bow on Truth & Soul.  Their soul is unambiguously retro, but it's tough to pinpoint specific referents beyond a loose turn-of-the-'70s window; you'll hear peak-era Motown punch, Philly International polish and a touch of conga-abetted blaxploitation funk, beefed up with gleaming production and never-overstated hip-hop-indebted muscle.  Like Mayer Hawthorne and lamentably few others, they also manage songwriting that's just as potent as their grooves, resulting in a total package that sounds classic – though never slavish – but still feels modern and totally distinctive.

Swamp Dogg
Total Destruction To Your Mind/Rat On!
[Soul/Reissue]

Hyped-up unearthings of vintage funk/soul "lost classics" are practically a dime a dozen nowadays, but it's not often you encounter something as truly strange and striking as the first two long-players from Virginian soul auteur/eccentric Jerry Williams, a.k.a. Swamp Dogg.  Total Destruction To Your Mind (1970) and Rat On! (1971) – remastered/reissued on Alive/NaturalSound – make good on their gonzo titles and even loopier artwork with faintly absurd yet deeply, bitingly salient satire on war, consumerism and race politics, intermingled with some good old-fashioned horndog cheatin' ballads and a straight-up, testifying Bee Gees cover – all backed by roiling, no-punches-pulled Stax-style funk.

Chris Darrow
Artist Proof
[Country/Pop/Reissue]

"Beware of time, it can make a fool of you," twangs LA country-rocker Chris Darrow (and friends) on one of his debut LP's sharpest hooks.  But forty years of the stuff haven't blunted the ample, casual charms of 1972's lost-in-the-shuffle Artist Proof (handsomely reissued on Drag City.)  Given his resumé – co-founding psych-folk hippies Kaleidoscope; session work for a veritable Laurel Canyon-era who's-who – it's no surprise that Darrow nails that warm'n'mellow oh-so-SoCal vibe (a bucket of Bakersfield, a dash of Haight-Ashbury...), but his songwriting shines just as bright, spanning languid, raggedly rootsy pop nuggets, tear-stained ballads, Stonesy rockers ("New Zoot") and boogie-woogie yarn-spinning ("Cocaine Lil.")

Phosphorescent
[Folk/Country]
concert preview

Matthew Houck – the primary agent behind Phosphorescent – has wandered a ways over the years, from spare, narcotized one-man folk to the rangy, full-band country rambles of 2010's Here's To Taking It Easy.  Muchacho (Dead Oceans) draws a little from both sides of that fence, but it also finds Houck exploring some surprising new pastures.  The album opens (and closes) with a serene, synth-dappled choral invocation to the sunrise, and its two finest moments – each one an easy career highlight – similarly evoke the glowing comfort and reassurance of a breaking dawn: "Muchacho's Tune" with its calmly defiant, getting-up-from-the-gutter optimism and curiously soupy sonic meanderings; the glorious "Song for Zula" – a sweeping, radio-ready epic with echoes of U2's "One" and the Verve's "Bittersweet Symphony" – with sumptuous, string-suffused beat loops that make an unexpectedly effective fit for Houck's drowsy, rough-edged drawl.

Night Beds/Indians
[Folk/Pop/Indie]
concert preview

The field of mellow, well-mannered, quietly earnest indie modernism has seen no shortage of contenders over the last ten years.  Here come two more, each taking some cues from perhaps the paradigm's most exemplary recent standard-bearer, Bon Iver.  Indians, the brainchild of Copenhagen's Søren Løkke Juul, takes the expansive electronic-folk-as-quasi-ambient template of that band's eponymous second album in both spacier and poppier directions; Somewhere Else (4AD), with its dainty puffball synths and Juul's elastic, attenuated tenor, bears some timbral resemblance to Animal Collective at their most sedate.  Night Beds' Winston Yellen, by contrast, is more of a traditionalist – definitely a For Emma type – with a richly formidable voice capable of frail Vernonian falsetto, hushed Sufjan solemnity and soaring Wainwright/Buckley quaver as well as the occasional earthier barroom bluster.  Country Sleep (Dead Oceans) feels like Ryan Adams' Heartbreaker as filtered through a decade of mannered Andrew Bird/Iron & Wine chamber-indie politeness; a trifle reluctant to really rock out, but still one of the most striking alt-country debuts in ages.

Valgeir Sigurðsson/Nadia Sirota
[Classical/Experimental]
concert preview

A lynchpin of the indie-classical crossover community, both within and well beyond his native Iceland, Valgeir Sigurðsson's resumé includes arranging, engineering and production work for the likes of Björk, Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Feist and CocoRosie on one hand; Nico Muhly and the Kronos Quartet on the other.  He also founded the pioneering label/collective Bedroom Community, home to Muhly, Ben Frost and Sam Amidon.  His third outing under his own name, last year's Architecture of Loss, began life as the score for a dance piece by Stephen Petronio, but it's intriguing and evocative stuff in its own right, culling haunting, elegiac grace from an unpredictable range of orchestral and subtle electronic textures.  A central presence on the album, and along for the ride to help recreate it tonight, is violist Nadia Sirota, whose own Bedroom Community debut, Baroque, featuring bespoke compositions by Muhly and My Brightest Diamond's Shara Worden among others, is out this week.

Benoît Pioulard
[Experimental/Ambient/Folk]
concert preview

Thomas Meluch's evocative, understated recordings as Benoît Pioulard nestle neatly alongside his Kranky labelmates' in the hazy interstices between tentatively song-based (Grouper, Jessica Bailiff) and purely sound-oriented (Tim Hecker, Windy & Carl.)  Hymnal, his fourth full-length for the label, was inspired by the churches and religious iconography he encountered while living and recording in England and mainland Europe, making his appearance at the First Unitarian's chapel even more fitting than it already would be given his work's hushed intimacy.  That said, the album rarely evokes faith or divinity in any overt, straightforward sense; while certainly graceful and contemplative, it conveys none of the heavenly purity of, say, Julianna Barwick.  The ambient/drone pieces (despite titles like "Gospel" and "Censer") often feel downright grubby, conjuring a sense of dust and corporeal decay akin to William Basinski's Disintegration Loops, while the interspersed folk-flecked vocal numbers, though sweetly, wispily pastoral, carry a slightly disjointed, creepy tinge.

Sondra Sun-Odeon
[Folk/Psych]
concert preview

Of the various individuals presently fuzzing the borders between acoustic folk and dreamlike textural abstraction – Grouper, Charalambides, and Ben Chasny's 200 Years all come to mind – Sondra Sun-Odeon takes a notably dramatic approach, even if it isn't initially apparent.  Aetherea, the Brooklynite's self-released solo debut (she also makes up half of "dark-world-psych" outfit Silver Summit) is deceptively front-loaded with restrained, somnolent finger-picked dirges in which her arresting voice – a mesmeric, melancholy thing recalling the laconic drawl of Moon PIx-era Cat Power – is foregrounded against the thrumming, occasionally turbulent undercurrents of cellist Helena Espvall (of local psych-folk lynchpins Espers.)  It isn't until its stormy back half that the album reveals its full agenda, with several of those unassuming ditties swelling into epic torrents of churning, swirling, doom-laden noise-drone.  Sneaky!

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
[Rock]
concert preview

Following the boisterous rave-ups of 2008's Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! and the brief but ferocious two-album tenure of Grinderman, Nick Cave's fifteenth album with the Bad Seeds – the first not to feature career-long co-conspirator Mick Harvey – is a decidedly slower burn, seemingly a retreat to the gentler, statelier mode of contemplative mid-career efforts like The Boatman's Call.  But don't mistake the smoother sound (and relative dearth of guitars) to mean the man's getting soft in his mere mid-fifties.  Push The Sky Away (Bad Seed Ltd.) may be a restrained affair – but only in the manner of something that just might erupt if not forcibly held back.  These purring, organ-drenched instrumental atmospheres float atop an ever-lingering sense of menace and mystery, perfect shrouds for Cave's evocative, increasingly surreal storytelling – as likely to reference quantum physics and Wikipedia as ancient mythology and blues folklore – whose poetry remains as primal and libinal as ever.

Chelsea Light Moving
[Rock]
concert preview

Thurston Moore was never just a member of Sonic Youth – the guitarist's litany of outside collaborations and solo projects stretches back to the early '90s, right up through his well-received recent solo albums and last year's self-explanatory Yokokimthurston – but with the dissolution of his nearly three-decade marriage to Kim Gordon and the uncertain future of their alt-rock-defining flagship band, Moore's current affairs now seem like more than just extra-curricular dabbling.  In that light, Chelsea Light Moving (Matador) and the eponymous quartet it introduces – bassist/violinist Samara Lubelski, guitarist Keith Wood (Hush Arbors), drummer John Moloney (Sunburned Hand of the Man) – have the flavor of a carefree rebound relationship: loose, messy, playful; maybe not the weightiest thing in the world, but a whole lot of fun in the moment.   Through fuzzed-out skronk-pop, blank-eyed noise-sludge, hard-and-fast punk and smirking beat poetry, it feels like nothing more or less than an attempt to embrace the mantra of deceptively low-key album opener "Heavenmetal": Be a warrior and love life.

Tensnake
[GENRE]
concert preview

Things haven't quite unfolded for Tensnake like it seemed they would back in 2010, the year of his sun-soaked, vibraphone-enabled smash "Coma Cat," not to mention his nearly-as-ubiquitous remix of Azari & III's "Reckless With Your Love," with its memorably cheeky C+C Music Factory interpolation.  Despite a stage seemingly set for worldwide disco domination, the Hamburg DJ/producer, born Marco Niemerski, has kept things relatively quiet since then, averaging only one single per year (in 2012 it was the '90s-jacking hip-house of "Mainline"), but his steady trickle of remixes (for Little Dragon, Hercules & Love Affair and Aloe Blacc among others) and a recent session for BBC's Essential Mix series – including some tasty unreleased originals possibly slated for a forthcoming LP – attest that he's still got his finger on that mid-tempo good-times boogie pulse.

originally published in Philadelphia City Paper

SXSW 2013: Day Five [Saturday]

On Saturday night I was in a church pew and a mosh pit, within the span of about two hours.  I suppose that might not be so unusual if you're used to attending Sunday hardcore matinees.  But this was a hip hop mosh pit.  At various other points of the night, I was also at a sweaty, debaucherous Brazilian dance party, a big outdoor rock show, a big shiny auditorium pop show, an orchestral concert, a dingy basement dance club, on a gorgeous landscaped bike path at sunset and in a clothing store, eating pizza.  Such is the quick-change mish-mash and experiential overload of South by Southwest, which wrapped up for me in typically chaotic, multivalent fashion.

Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell at the W Hotel, 11am

The day started early, with this live taping for KGSR which we sort of unintentionally snuck into.  They were quite late getting started, despite it being live radio, which is probably why they only played two songs.  Somehow just two was enough, though, and it was also a treat getting to hear them talk a bit in between, telling stories about their long friendship (they've been collaborating in one way or another since the early '70s.)  Not sure if this was age or just a week full of shows, but Emmylou's voice, miraculous as it definitely still is, was getting awfully whispery in the upper registers.

Ivan & Alyosha at Peckerheads, 12:30pm

Biked across town precisely too late to catch an evidently very prompt 20-minute set by West Philly's own Waxahatchee, then doubled back to see a few songs by this very nice, spirited New York folk-pop band, who seem like they ought to do very well.  E thought they seemed like good Christian boys. 

Little Daylight at Cedar Door, 12:30pm

Then a small second helping of Little Daylight, just in time to wile out to "Overdose," which, I'm gonna call it, was my SXSW anthem for this year.  Only, I feel like it really should be performed with a battalion of at least a dozen field drummers.  Great free tacos and strawberry tic-tacs, too!

Generationals at Stage on Sixth, 1pm

Saw a bit of this upbeat New Orleans band; more rootsy folk-pop (maybe closer to folk-rock), which is more or less the default setting for several of my Austin friends.  Enjoyable enough but didn't make a huge impression, so I left them there and went off in search of free coconut water and to try to catch Wild Belle.

Feathers at The Jr., 1:30pm

No dice there (the Mohawk indoor entrace is a major bottleneck) but I did snag some promotional Zico (flavor ranking: passionfruit>natural>chocolate>mango>latte) and another free American Apparel shirt (raspberry!) and catch some of this pretty cool Australian band, another four-lady-plus-guy-drummer outfit who play somewhat dark, punky synth-rock.

Eric Burdon at Stage on Sixth, 2pm

Okay, and then it got serious.  Another day, another still-ragin' '60s legend, although this set by the one-time Animal took a bit more from his days with War, which I tend to forget about.  He and his fairly large band kicked off with "Spill The Wine" and featured a bunch of similarly grooving, bluesy tunes from his new album, including an impressively non-schmaltzy one about "when I was young."  They did rip out "House of the Rising Sun" to close, however.  ("The shortest song I ever recorded.")  His voice is hardly the pristinely preserved marvel of Colin Blunstone's, but it's still a force to reckon with, a fierce, toughened near-bark.  As Kelly Hogan remarked afterward, it was great to see his bulging neck muscles in person.

Kelly Hogan at Stage on Sixth Patio, 2:30pm

Had been really hoping to catch this Atlanta-based singer, who put out one of my favorite and most-listened-to albums last year.  She played most of the highlights from that record, I Like To Keep Myself In Pain (including the title track, written by Robyn Hitchcock, who I missed seeing but whose birthday it apparently was) and threw in a rendition of the Magnetic Fields' classic "Papa Was A Rodeo."  It all sounded pretty damn fabulous, although I couldn't help missing Booker T. Jones' organ contributions.  Hogan is clearly content to record and perform at a leisurely, almost dabbling pace, but it's really a shame she doesn't get out there more.  Nearly as good as her singing, however, was her outfit, which included a red neckscarf and matching ribbons tied just above her ankle socks. 

 

Kitty at the W Hotel Terrace, 3:30

Tried to see Detroit trio Jamaican Queens, but they were just lackadaisically soundchecking and playing improvised acoustic reggae (contrary to the name, they aren't actually a reggae band at all) for about twenty minutes before I figured out that they were merely stalling because their set had been pushed back by an hour.  So, instead, we swung back by the W to catch this red-headed ray of teenybop hip-hop Florida sunshine.  Kitty, who I saw this summer on her Tumblr-hype-fueled first-ever tour (before she unfortunately dropped the Pryde part of her moniker) is still an outrageously adorable stage presence, utterly giddy and unselfconscious, bouncing around through the crowd, peppering her garrulous banter with giggles and wooos and quasi-nervous pleas for attention ("Just joking!  Not really, I really do love attention!") – but she's also come a long way as a performer.  Whereas before she seemed to be approaching her whole so-called "career" with amused, self-mocking disbelief, she's clearly gotten a lot more serious about rapping and performing, despite never giving the impression that she takes herself at all seriously.  She pulled rapper Lakutis up from the crowd for an impromptu collab (Le1f reportedly did the same thing with Kitty at his set immediately afterwards), enlisted her brother/DJ to rap RiFF RaFF's part on "Orion's Belt" and generally endeared herself to an already fawning (and awesomely dressed) audience.

 Delicate Steve at Stage on Sixth Patio, 4:30pm

I'd seen him briefly the night before, but I'm really glad I caught a full set by this New Jersey-based guitarist (a.k.a. Steve Marion), whose music is something like Ratatat but with a full rock band instead of electronic beats backing his shiny metallic guitar leads.  He's great on record too, but it definitely took the energy several notches up to see him on stage, in tank top, jean shorts and beat-up sneakers, shaggy hair spilling out from a ski cap, and seeming to spend about half the time leaning dramatically into a battle-ready rock'n'roll lunge stance.  

  

King Tuff at The Jr, 5:15pm

Speaking of classic rock posturing, this guy's got it all: long lustrous locks, an inimitably croaky croon, scruffy bandmates named Magic Jake and Kenny, whom he ribbed with almost Butthead-ish glee about their lost voice and oversized big toe (?), respectively and – best of all – a black studded vest emblazoned with his magisterial moniker.  He's practically a rock'n'roll cartoon – but he knows damn well what to do with a couple chords and a righteous riff.

Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams

The next touring entity we encountered (right by the line for the impossible-to-even-consider-trying-to-think-about-getting-into Prince show) was not a band but an ice cream cart, staffed by a pair of scoopers who'd travelled down from Columbus, OH to rep Jeni's Splendid – now sold in pints in Austin, evidently – whose James Beard Award-winning, decidedly unorthodox ice cream cookbook I can very highly recommend.  Now I can do the same for their actual ice cream, especially their signature salty caramel and whiskey-pecan.  Mmhmm.

Angel Haze at Austin Music Hall, 6:30

Oh man – if there's one artist I saw this year who seems clearly destined for stardom, it's this upstart up-and-coming rapper (and singer) from New York City.  Apart from her impossibly rapid flow and solid singing voice, she's got a compelling back-story that she is not the least bit shy about drawing on for dramatic effect, and a strong, classically populist inspirational message, both of which simultaneously underscore one another and help balance each other out.  She has all the fierceness (and lurid sensationalism) of Azalea Banks, without the flippant/flaky goofball tendencies –indeed, if she has a shortcoming, it's that she comes off as fairly humorless, though I suppose you could say she comes by her stoniness honestly.  And she commanded the still-sparse early-evening crowd at Perez Hilton's annual one-night pop showcase – all alone on an auditorium stage that's got to be bigger than pretty much anywhere she's played before – like it was midnight at Madison Square Garden.

Bonde Do Role at Stage on Sixth, 8pm

I always look to end my last night of Southby with the best, biggest dance party I can find.  This time it started out that way.  These nutzo Brazilian baile funk schticksters – who returned after a long absence to drop probably the greatest party album of 2012, the aptly named Tropicalbacanal – stormed the Stage on Sixth (only recently vacated by a week's worth of Paste-approved singer-songwriters and tasteful roots-rockers) dressed in big furry animal costumes – a dinosaur, a penguin, a green parrot and a kangaroo (vocalist Laura Taylor, who quickly zipped down the top half of the costume to reveal a bathing suit underneath) – and started chucking blow-up dolls (both male and female, of various skin colors) into the crowd.  From that point on, all four members were in constant, frenzied motion, as were the dolls, as was the audience.  They dispensed with anything so fussy and humdrum as actually playing instruments, instead just trading off on rapped and sung and chanted nonsense vocals – except for the parrot, who mostly just ran around, typically shirtless, adding to the chaos.  They threw out the dolls, we threw them back.  They jumped offstage, ran around in the audience and came back, Taylor at one point establishing a limbo line using her microphone cable, somebody else seemingly initiating a congo line.  They energetically and inventively used the dolls, one another, the oversized head-masks and other components of the gradually disassembled costumes, and anything else at hand as simulated sex objects.  They played a bunch of faves from both albums, and then some even more rudimentary, banging Brazilian-rap tracks that I didn't recognize.  Then at some point they threw on a crazy electro revamp of "Surfin' Bird" and abandoned the stage entirely to come and party in the crowd.  Not a bad way to start off the night.

The Little Ones at Dirty Dog Bar, 9pm

Very sweet, upbeat indie-pop, with a nice rhythmic energy and some good sing-along hooks.  The lead singer has a funny, high, kinda froggy voice, and a funny habit of bending one knee behind the other (toe on the ground) while he sang.  I liked them.

The Lone Bellow at St. David's Historic Sanctuary, 10pm

It's a sort of ironic band name because they actually have three singers, who specialize in lovely harmonies.  Really lovely.  This is the kind of straightforward, generally earnest folk band that I tend not to pay too much attention to, but it was really nice to see them, and they have some strong songwriting in their corner too.  They also covered "Angel From Montgomery," managing to charm me with a song that I often find somewhat annoying.

Mac DeMarco at The Parish, 10:30pm

Was glad to finally get to see a bit of Mac – even though I'd just seen him play a fully satisfying show a few weeks ago – because I'd long since declared him to be the MVP of this year's conference.  I don't know how many shows he actually played, but he seemed to be on nearly every schedule I looked at, criss-crossing demographics to appeal everyone from the skate-punks at the Scoot Inn's Death Match to the preppy-flannel Paste types, from Pitchfork hipsterati to the brand-hawking swag hucksters behind Fader Fort and Hype Hotel.  Even without seeing him, I really enjoyed the mental image of him bouncing around here and there across Austin all week like a kind of muppet, with his wagging tongue and goofy grin and nutty, frequently juvenile banter.  By the time I caught up with him, for three gems off of 2, he'd clearly taken a beating – his speaking voice was craggy and close to shot – but he was still smiling that distinctive smile, big and dopey and just a little bit creepy.

HAIM at Stubb's, 11pm

Word on the street was that there wasn't much of a line for Vampire Weekend's big festival-closing set, which meant a good opportunity to catch their openers, this young trio of long-haired L.A. sisters (plus, again, a guy drummer.)  "Pop-rock" doesn't feel quite right for their sound; let's call it '80s-style hard rock with strong, even stadium-ready pop appeal.  There were definitely some Fleetwood Mac vibes in there; I also got Michael Jackson on a few songs.  It did take me a few songs into the set to really warm up to them, but as they went on (and got to the stronger part of the setlist, perhaps) I grew increasingly impressed, and the set ended on a high note with all three wailing away on drums at the front of the stage.

Lunice at 1100 Warehouse, 11:30pm?

Around this point somebody hung a lit pink glowstick on my bike, so I threw it around my neck and set off – only later realized that it happened to be shaped like a penis.  The huge and generally chaotic Boiler Room party was running behind so I caught a good chunk of Lunice's DJ set, though I didn't figure out that's what was going on until he dropped his TNGHT trap smash "Higher Ground" and somebody announced who it was.  

Death Grips at 1100 Warehouse, 11:45pm

Then the action switched to a different stage in the center of the space, and within minutes I was in the middle of a seething mosh pit, struggling to keep aloft two giant inflatable pills, at least six feet in diameter, which were built more like heavy-duty white-water rafts than stage props.  The unmistakeable figure of MC Ride appeared on the stage: bald, bearded, bare-chested, rail-thin and muscly and sporting some intense ski-goggles.  His crushing, rapid-fire flow was completely incomprehensible, even the transition from one song to the next was hard to completely discern, and I only stayed in the pit for maybe fifteen or twenty minutes, so not sure if they played "I've Seen Footage" or any other hits – maybe I should have stuck around, that would have been a pretty incredible release – but it was damn fun anyway.

Jackmaster at Barcelona, 12:30am

Looking for the next party (after just missing Norway's MØ at Hype Hotel) I headed to this Sixth St. basement bar, where I'd heard Jacques Green turn in a transcendent DJ set the year before.  Somewhat similarly, but far less inventively, Scottish producer Jackmaster was playing to the not-very-SXSW crowd, flipping the likes of Ludacris, New Order and Outkast.  It was all fine stuff, and well mixed, but clearly not his normal set...made me wonder what Rustie, up next, was gonna do with this place – anything close to resembling the earth-scorching set he played on Thursday would be liable to cause a riot.

!!! at Hype Hotel, 1am

Somebody earlier in the week suggested that this might be the party to beat, so we investigated... Not sure, but I wasn't really drawn in; for some reason it just seemed kind of disorienting.

Mother Falcon at Esther's Follies, 1am

So we caught a few numbers by these guys, the local indie chamber orchestra, including "Paranoid Android," which we'd missed the day before (another interesting arrangement, with the dreamy comedown section scored for saxophones rather than the more obvious strings.)  Realized that vocals are probably their weakest point – whereas they'd given some of the OK Computer parts to trained classical-style singers, to excellent effect, the main singers for their original tunes have kind of plain, uninteresting voices.  Still, a real joy to watch.  That might have been a fitting enough end to the week's festivities, but we were still itching to dance some more.

George Clinton and Parliament/Funkadelic at Empire Automotive, 1am

We'd hoped to catch the tail end of Big Freedia's set but that had wrapped a bit early, so we wandered across the street, where this funk band was playing.  This was sort of confusing...it really didn't look like George Clinton to me, but I guess it's just that, as it turns out, he actually has aged since the last time I saw him with P-Funk back in the '90s.  They did play "Atomic Dog," so I suppose that was a pretty good confirmation.  I also didn't realize that there had been some beef among the band over the last decade or so, and this was actually something of a reunion.  I guess I was just too spent by this point to appreciate what was going on.