AMG review round-up, volume IV

got enough of a backlog now that i can put these up in semi-thematic installments; this volume comprises much of my output from april, but also some pieces from march and may, covering wispy, dreamy, mellow ambientish music, plus a little bit wispy dreamy punk rock. mostly new(ish) releases [incl. several featured on my friendsoffriends mux, and my best-of-08-to-date lists] but also a couple of overlooked classics:

Keith Fullerton Whitman: bio, Playthroughs review

"The entire album consists of nothing but processed guitar tone, though since the guitar is all but imperceptible as a point of origin for this music, the emphasis is squarely on "process" and "tone." The process, which involves running a guitar-generated signal (not the actual guitar sound) through a carefully arranged sequence of programmed Max/MSP modules, effects pedals, and other signal processors, is described in loving detail by Whitman, at heart a true academic, on his website. For the vast majority of potential listeners, of course, the explanation is just that -- academic -- but, unlikely though it may seem, this is an album that richly deserves many listeners, because the tones it contains are nothing short of breathtaking in their beauty and simplicity.

It's difficult to qualitatively distinguish Playthroughs from much of the ambient, drone-based music that's out there, although it does have a conspicuously unpretentious and inviting quality -- a sense of openness that must be ascribed to the unabashed consonance it retains (there are strikingly few instances of true dissonance to be found here) in spite of its constantly shifting harmonic content, which creates the sense of a continual unfolding or blossoming. It's equally hard to comprehend the evocative and emotional effect of this music, and harder still to describe it: it seems to function on a fundamentally different, precognitive level. But simply put: this is some of the most soothing, stimulating, and spellbinding sound that has ever been put to plastic. Without doubt, a masterpiece of modern minimalism. Emphatically recommended."

The Mountain Goats: Get Lonely review

"Thematically at least, Get Lonely is the sparest, bleakest record in the Mountain Goats' discography. Much was made of the unprecedentedly autobiographical content of The Sunset Tree and We Shall All Be Healed, and it is true that they conveyed a sustained emotional potency that was largely new to Darnielle's repertory, but both contained so many lyrical loose ends, disjointed perspectives, and ambiguous imagery that it was difficult if not impossible to glean any consistent context in them, let alone a coherent through-line. Get Lonely, on the other hand, is practically monotonous in its lyrical focus. Every one of its songs features a first-person narrator in a state of desolation, near-desperation, solitude (always), and grappling, more or less explicitly, with the psychic effects of recent loss: extreme listlessness, emotional paralysis, intermittent attempts at deterministic redirection; nightmarish delirium. In most of them, almost nothing happens; the plot of "Wild Sage" consists of its protagonist leaving the house, walking outside, falling down by the side of the highway, and lying there. Sometimes he can't even leave the house. It's a break-up album -- an almost uncharacteristically straightforward conceit for Darnielle -- the chronicle of a person dealing (or attempting to deal, at least on his best days) with loneliness, grief, and the pangs of memory. Whether or not it's a literal chronicle of a period in Darnielle's life (he had, at the time of its release, been married for many years) is irrelevant; forgiving a slight turn for the phantasmagoric towards the end of the album, it's hard to deny the fundamental, emotional truth contained in these songs, especially as conveyed by his uninflected, almost painfully restrained delivery. "

Retribution Gospel Choir: bio and Retribution Gospel Choir review

"Less a side project than a sort of alternate reality version of Low, Retribution Gospel Choir allow Alan Sparhawk, guitarist and songwriter of that legendarily quiet, minimal slowcore outfit (along with bassist Matt Livingston, a recent addition to Low's lineup) the chance to play music that, while still pretty minimalist, conceptually anyway, and often fairly slow, is definitely not quiet. Make no mistake, this is capital-R Rock music through and through, of the gruff and gloriously hazy variety typically associated with the stoner '70s and alternative nation '90s -- dense and thorny, with pummeling drums and grungy guitars galore. But at heart it's not particularly far removed from Sparhawk's primary concern: Low are a quintessentially '90s band after all, initially conceived as a nonconformist response to the grunge explosion but certainly not a wholly contrarian one, and the Low of the 2000s have amply demonstrated their propensity for rocking out in a flannel-flavored vein, at first on 2001's Trust but most notably on 2005's The Great Destroyer, which would have blended right in had it appeared ten years earlier. (Meanwhile, Sparhawk's status as a closet guitar god was well established on 2006's free-form one-man band turn Solo Guitar.) So fans of Low will find plenty to embrace here, especially those who have relished those recent developments; by the same token, Retribution Gospel Choir could well still try the patience of nonbelievers, as turning up certainly hasn't purged Sparhawk of his searing intensity or his elemental, no-frills songwriting style."

Dräp en Hund: bio and Be Yourself review

The two Swedish girls who make up Dräp En Hund were thirteen when they released Be Yourself, although playing dress-up in frilly ruffled blouses and cloche hats on the cover they could have passed for half that age. You might contend that they're playing dress-up here musically as well, precociously imitating their punk-rock heros - PJ Harvey, The White Stripes, Sonic Youth - with utterly rudimentary musicianship and songwriting - but that's selling the duo short. What have the great classic punks been if not a bunch of kids playing at being in a rock band? (Most of them just weren't quite this young.) Make no mistake, Alva (bass) and Gabbi (drums) own the attitude - they chug and clatter their way through the choruses of the aptly-named "God Damned Destroyed" with uncompromising abandon, there's a blank-eyed disaffection in the vocals on "Hate You" that's downright chilling, though otherwise the whole record splutters with sloppy enthusiasm. They do show their youth somewhat in the lyrics, with a certain wide-eyed positivity in the title track and "We Are We" ("we are going to be friends forever/the whole life/a very long life") that is nevertheless infectiousness, and references to sex and drinking that (thankfully) don't quite carry the ring of true experience (though the pummeling, stone-faced "Don't Drink" could be a vintage straight-edge anthem: "you destroy your life/ you destroy your dreams/ and all you want is more.") But while they may at times (inevitably) come off as cute - they are thirteen-year-old girls, after all - they're hardly cutesy. Even so, Be Yourself might not have much value beyond its undeniable novelty, if it weren't for the considerable amount of melody in their slow, simple, rough-hewn songs, all of which were composed by the duo save for a typically bled-raw thrash through "Seven Nation Army" that makes the White Stripes' raucous original sound prissy by comparison. As it is, it makes for surprisingly listenable sludge, performed and recorded with an almost adorable crudeness that fits its unabashed, youthful energy.

Hanne Hukkelberg: bio and Rykestraße 68 review

"Recorded after six months spent living in Berlin (and named for a street address there), the second album by Norwegian songstress Hanne Hukkelberg may be moodier and more mature than her endearingly light-hearted debut, but it's nearly as sweet and, in its way, just as playfully inventive. The occasional electronic elements of Little Things are absent, and the "noise" quotient is relatively subdued, but there's still plenty of atmospheric clutter and clatter: clinking bottles and kitchenware; a bouncing ball; "tea-strainer guitar"; an excellently played typewriter on "The Northwind"; Obelix the cat purring on his own ode (which can't help but recall likeminded noise imps -- and Hanne's former Leaf labelmates -- Psapp); and the Rykestraße itself providing urban ambience on the languorous opener, "Berlin." This bevy of found-sound sources commingles seamlessly and invitingly with the array of "real" instruments -- piano, accordion, prominent double bass (both bowed and plucked), glockenspiel, bass clarinet, and so forth -- to create an impressionistic, Old World Continental vibe with echoes of cabaret jazz, sea shanties, and the fusty, haunted soundscapes of Tom Waits. The effect, though evocative, is kept understated, never overshadowing Hukkelberg's resonant voice, a magnificently versatile instrument that evokes the high lonesome clarity and playful warble of Jolie Holland or Regina Spektor as well as the intoxicating swoops of Billie Holiday, and contributes as much as anything to the richly imbued charm of this album. (Her voice itself creates some of its most memorably personable moments, including the layered speaking and self-harmonizing on the creaky, slightly spooky "Fourteen" and extemporized-sounding passages of wordless a cappella noodling on "Berlin.") Rykestraße 68 is occasionally reminiscent of those artists musically and compositionally as well, blending as it does strands of folk, pop, and jazz, but a closer point of reference would be Fiona Apple's work with Jon Brion, particularly the defiantly idiosyncratic art pop of Extraordinary Machine -- it's equally visionary and emotionally flush, though if anything more accessible."

Silje Nes: bio and Ames Room review

"Even though many of the pieces on Silje Nes' debut album feature prominent melodies, delivered in her wispy, winsome sing-song voice, it seems somehow imprecise to think to them as 'songs' in the conventional sense. Uncomplicated, but not overly simplistic; fragmentary though not unfinished; individually distinct but clearly kindred, they're more like exploratory meditations on texture, ambience and deregulated musicality, some of which occasionally happen to take song form. By Nes' own description, the process of recording is central to - in fact, inseparable from - her compositional method, and [all but one of] the selections here are solo bedroom creations spanning from over a period of four years, presented, with rough edges intact, as an remarkably fluid whole. Incorporating a wide array of instruments and sounds, from delicately plucked and strummed guitars, cello, glockenspiel, melodica, and trumpet to warm keyboards, toy-like sound effects and all manner of drips, clicks, burbles and chimes, with Nes' breathy, muted vocals often serving as just another layer (or several) of sonic texture, Ames Room often recalls the gentle, whimsical folk-electronic hybrids of Psapp, Múm, Juana Molina, and even Four Tet in his calmer moments. The dreamy art-pop of fellow Scandinavians Stina Nordenstam, Anja Garbarek and, in particular, Hanne Hukkelberg is another relevant point of comparison, as is classicist lo-fi indie rock, a la the quirkier aspects of early Liz Phair, Mirah, or Lisa Germano. But while this barrage of comparisons hopefully conveys some sense of what Ames Room sounds like, it risks overcomplicating the album's endearing idiosyncrasies and overshadowing its artless sweetness and intimacy, the rare, ineffable qualities which make this a truly singular release - one that's all the more precious considering that Nes originally created much of this music without necessarily intending to share it with a wider audience."

Theodore: A Summer She Has Never Been, A Winter She Fears review

On his cryptically-titled Lo Records debut, Greek-born sound-impressionist Theodore weaves together sampled morsels of organic instrumentation and natural sounds with subtle electronic inflections to create hazily sweet, gently somnolent music reminiscent of Iceland's Múm, Japan's Lullatone, Britain's Plone, Norway's Silje Nes, and perhaps especially France's Colleen, with whom he shares a fascination with music boxes and antique-sounding instrumentation. To a great extent, Theodore forgoes the more straightforward folk and pop tropes of most of these artists, though there are subtle hints of Eastern European folk harmony, and decent amounts of acoustic guitar and other plucked string instruments here and there - including what sounds like a bouzouki on "Madam Ortance" - as well as a lusty sea-chanty accordion waltz underpinning the seedy-sounding "Montmarte." On the other hand, he's just as likely to evoke Western classical music as familiar ambient electronic forms; the album is rife with lush, lugubrious orchestral strings, and (recalling all of the artists mentioned above) all manner of bells and chimes. Overall though, the effect of the album is too diffuse and rarefied to sum up with any set of specific stylistic reference points, despite a constant, almost cheeky tendency for allusive arrangements and melodic borrowings. "Every Garden Has A Corner For Children" loops a polyphonic music-box snippet of "Auld Lang Syne" atop a bed of gently static white noise; "Mia Bella Fiorentina" distills the famous aria from Bizet's Carmen into a supremely languourous, murky wash of sound; "After Silence" sneaks in an arhythmic fragment of "Edelweiss" alongside its solemn, oddly chromatic, strummed folk dirge, and perhaps most unexpectedly, opener "I Dreamt I Was Throwing Stones At The Sea" treats Andrew Lloyd Weber's "Music of the Night" (from Phantom of the Opera) with a stately, almost classical reverence, as a sweetly chiming lullaby over lapping digital waves. Curiously, while these assorted, practically canonical melodies aren't extensively disguised, the settings they're presented in are sufficiently tweaked and removed from their original contexts as to make them nearly unrecognizable on a conscious level, at least at first listen, making them appear instead as haunting but unobtrusive shards of memory within a mysterious, transporting dream. Very much like a dream, A Summer She Has Never Been... can be whimsical and sweetly nostalgic, but it's too strange and otherworldly ever to become cloying - and at times it grows downright unsettling, even without rising above a serenely submerged whisper.

Rothko: bio and A Place Between review

"A thoroughly ambient work, not unrelated to but notably more placid than Rothko's early output as a three-pronged bass guitar post-rock group, and sparser too than Mark Beazley's "solo" work under the moniker, if only by virtue of the fact that he collaborates here with just one other musician, the singer and multi-instrumentalist Caroline Ross, instead of all of the members of her group Delicate AWOL. Ross contributes vocals, either hushedly sung or spoken in a near-whisper, on many tracks, as well as diaphanous flute clusters, occasional (or extremely unintrusive) guitar work, and pen scratching sounds on "Divided Lines." Apart from several instances of sweetly simple, Satie-esque piano, the rest of the luxuriously uncluttered sound field consists of Beazley's bass, whether engaged in deep, extended, gradually shifting tones or lithe, melodic upper-fret filigree or distant, unhurried overlapping parts; often it's a multi-layered combination. Even at its densest and most richly textured, the album never rises above a whisper. Though underpinned by adept musicianship, careful compositional structure, and inventive arrangement and recording choices, A Place Between is utterly unfussy, warm and inviting, content to drift blissfully subsumed in a humble glorious haze."

Susumu Yokota: 1998, Symbol, Distant Sounds of Summer, Wonder Waltz, Love or Die, and Skintone Collection reviews

"Possibly the most unique item within Susumu Yokota's highly idiosyncratic oeuvre, Symbol finds the multifaceted Japanese electronica master defying and muddying genre distinctions to create sui generis compositions of considerable beauty and strangeness. That's not exactly new territory for Yokota, but this time there's a gimmick: the album is consists primarily of fragments taken from classical pieces, many of them highly familiar, if not always readily identifiable, by the likes of Debussy, Rachmaninov, and Beethoven -- with a particular reliance on Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker" and Saint-Saëns' "Carnival of the Animals" -- as well as bits of more recent works by John Cage and Meredith Monk, whose unearthly voice becomes a focal point for several of these tracks. But while Yokota cuts, pastes, and plunders the world of art music with a palpable exuberance akin to the mash-up artists, his contemporaries, who were doing similar things with pop, the results are more nuanced than merely novel. Nor is it entirely out of step with his previous work -- it's not as serenely ambient as the beloved Sakura (though it is generally quite soothing), and it certainly has little to do with his various dance-oriented releases, but it retains the meticulous, multilayered compositional approach of albums like Grinning Cat and The Boy & the Tree. And although the presence of electronics is kept relatively understated, the elements with which Yokota weaves together his mad grab-bag of orchestral motifs, frolicsome fragments of flute and piano, and stately string passages (there are sometimes as many as seven classical samples in a single four-minute piece) will be immediately familiar to his listeners: subtly burbling beats, wordless ethereal vocals, vaguely Asian-sounding percussion loops (as well as a marimba ostinato that could pass for a Steve Reich sample). Indeed, without the obviously recognizable nature of his sample sources (which, depending on your perspective, could be a source of distraction or a point of engagement), it would be difficult to distinguish many of these pieces from "standard" Yokota compositions -- a feat which is in itself quite an accomplishment. That it's also a fascinating and rewarding listen, and an undeniably gorgeous bit of craftsmanship, arguably elevates Symbol to near the level of its inspirations, or at least positions it as a curious bridge between too-often estranged musical worlds."

"Without relying on an obvious gimmick, like 2005's Western art music pastiche Symbol, or an overtly conceptual approach, like its immediate predecessor, Wonder Waltz, Love or Die simply offers another reshuffling of Yokota's familiar assortment of musical fascinations, and the result may be the clearest encapsulation yet of his unique, multifarious vision. Love continues Waltz's conceit of using exclusively triple-meter time signatures, but while that album was a fussy, stylistically sprawled collection that sounded like it was trying desperately to explore as many rhythmic iterations and textural juxtapositions as possible, these tracks are far more fluid and cohesive, and somehow less rhythmically overbearing even though they have possibly the most prominent beats of any of his ostensibly "ambient" albums. Eschewing vocals (and collaborators of any sort, for the first time in a while), and generally limiting percussive content to a single looped phrase per track (be it a jungle-esque breakbeat, a stately, minimal jazz groove, or a straightforward three-legged disco glide), he hones in instead on lush, consonant sonorities and lyrical melodic structures not unlike the classical music he vivisected to create Symbol. While attending closely to musical and textural nuance, Yokota allows his compositions ample room to breathe, making for a record that feels more relaxed, and is easier to relax to, than anything he's done in years, even if it has little in common with the minimalism of his earlier ambient work. For that matter, it has little to do with most of what is typically thought of as "electronica," even though it features as many synthetic instruments as "real" ones (pianos, most notably) -- you might find parallels in the more melodious end of Aphex Twin's output, or Boards of Canada's pastoral reveries, but it's closer in effect to a sort of futuristic chamber music, one unabashedly fixated on sweetness, purity, and beauty. The ponderous track names may be rather ridiculously bombastic (if appropriately flowery and evocative), but the music itself is appealingly unassuming and gentle, making Love or Die less of an emphatic declaration than a strong understatement."

[also of note - Colleen et les Boîtes à Musique review]

friends and friends of friends

this is about the music that you can hear here, which was made by friends or friends of friends, mostly, mostly recently, mostly mellowly.

Joe Kille - $uccess
please don't take this as a true representative of the fabulous mr. kille's work...i guess you can hear summa that over at hisspace...it's just a little quick-recorded snippet he gmailed me a few weeks ago, a solo-guitar scramble through a tune that, as he said, had happened to pop into his head. it's a song that we played in a band we were in together four years ago that may have been called, at one point or another, "success," "brunchfest," and/or "zanzibar buck-buck mccandlish." (or just "buck-buck.")

i pretty much wrote the song, with some help from dave mcc if i remember right - it does have words (about an old woman losing her ability to distinguish the past from the present, more or less, though you probably couldn't glean that from the lyrics alone) and a melody too, and another bit that he doesn't play, but nevermind that. (also, that's not what the song's called, though i can't remember the actual title.)

anyway, i just thought i'd include this as a succinct intro bit and an indirect reminder (to myself) that i used to be involved in making music too - writing it, even. and maybe, soon, maybe, again. it's been good to see joe a bunch of times recently, performing in various contexts at the (semi-)weekly revues at special agent dale cooper house here in west philly, often on his funky hybrid phonograph-fiddle (er, it's a stroh violin), tho maybe best of all with the bluegrass harmony outfit "jew moon of kentucky." sadly i missed his recent record release show there (in tandem with ben bradlow's) for his first solo album, rough river, and i haven't seen him since to find out about acquiring the records. hopefully i'll get my hands on a copy soon, and will report back.

Emily Bate - Greyhound
current major music-friend crush on emily bate. it's even better than that time i was(/am?) in love with devon sproule, b/c emily is also my neighbor, a fellow west philly'n, which means we actually are friends, or at least we're planning to be soon. so far i've only seen/met her a couple of times, while i have listened to her great great new album, the fever in the feast, more times than that by a factor of maybe a dozen.

somewhat reminiscent of ms. sproule in that she plays folk music, essentially - acoustic and songy and writerly - but stretches out beyond that in refreshing and unexpected ways, in e's case not so much rootsy/folksy/appalachian ways as indie/quirky home-recording found-sound ways, and sometimes also quasi-euro-folk ways (á la beirut, if you like.) but also in that her songs often venture outside of traditional, readily definable structures. (something like the ways and ideas that i was struggling to grasp my hands around a while ago trying to make an overly conceptual, poorly grounded argument or explanation about songwriting styles...) not that they're overly complex - indeed, at least at first brush, her songs feel understated and straightforward, with an appealing, unassuming lightness. but on closer inspection they are often notably atypical, at least in structural terms. most of them don't have choruses to speak of, for instance, though they do have melody in abundance, and memorable repeated musical and lyrical phrases.

which, to cut myself mercifully (somewhat) short, makes the album a joy to listen to but sometimes a puzzle to fully take in and process, as the songs go blissfully by while you listen, forming an entirely enjoyable whole, but often evading easy individuation, even though there's plenty of musical and sonic variety. at least, that has been my experience. as the individual songs come into sharper focus though, with repeated and focused listens, they are all the more striking.

the one that's been ruling my headspace the most lately is the opening track, "girls with my same name," which has four distinct melodic sections, all of them distinctly catchy - at first it sets up a seemingly straightforward verse-chorus pattern, although there are no repeated lines in the chorus, just repeated rhyme-schemes. then there's a bridge ("don't bully me...") which is vaguely similar to the chorus, but not really. then there's another verse, but instead of moving to the "chorus" chords it keeps on with the same insistent minor-key fingerpicked progression, but with a new, simpler, melodic idea that carries on through the end of the song, with the titular phrase (introduced here for the first time), repeated (with variations) like a mantra or an anthem. [like so: ABA'B'CA''D] that final piece is the first time the lyrics shift from a position of wary, beleaguered aloneness to a recognition of a shared something, in this case, evidently, shared outsiderness - and, accordingly, emily's solo vocal is joined for the first time by tight harmonies, which made me think of the roches on first listen. [eta: speaking of whom...i shoulda wangled jenny's roche/wainwright connection into this piece somehow...]

and that's not even really getting into the actual content of the song, the stunning, evocative lyrics and hooky melodies (well, they're doing it for me) without which there wouldn't be much reason to dissect the structure in such detail - after all, it's nothing necessarily amazing in and of itself...actually i'm not really sure why i just spent so much time writing about the compositional structure instead of the lyrics, which are much more interesting. and also, this isn't even the song i put on the muxtape. (oops.) but you can listen to it here (at least most of it) and read the lyrics here.

the song on the mux is "greyhound," which is shorter and simpler, sort of. (actually...it only seems shorter - the track is the same length, though the song itself is shorter, since the last minute is instrumental.) it has, i suppose, two verses, which have only their final (semi-a cappella) refrain in common ("getting chased out of town on the greyhound") but share a lovely, circular internal repetition scheme; then another section (which also has a bit of loose internal repetition), and then the instrumental bit.

when i first heard the line "where are we headed/and is that a place you can get to on the bus?" (without catching any of the other lyrics) i thought this was a political song advocating public transportation, which would be awesome. actually, it's (at least mostly) about other things, though it's not entirely not-political, at least as i hear it. it has a nice balance between an apparently specific setting (looking at detroit through a bus window - songs about detroit always make me think about "papa hobo") and broad, variably-interpretable metaphors and sentiments (the feeling of being on a sinking ship; the questions at the end, which could be either practical and literal, or figurative and universal.) it also has some cute kid talking bits, and glockenspiel, and funny wordless backup vocals, so you maybe get a better sense of the varied, often whimsical, sound of the album.

[btw: web research reveals that e.b. has two earlier albums, and connections with a suspiciously hip-looking art collective thingy, and an all music guide entry - perhaps not entirely due to her having an ann arbor-affiliated associate? - which although it's currently lacking in content (hm...) does accurately identify her, in endearingly quasi-helpful amg fashion, as "alternative singer/songwriter." i guess i'll get her to tell me about those things sometime.]

emily, sorry if i'm embarrassing ya with all this scrutiny. you did say you needed a music reviewer. on to other stuff...

Andrew Rose Gregory - Anything At All
i have other friends. andrew's a friend. (ooh looky) even if i don't know or can't remember the five "top secret" reasons he changed his middle name to rose. he's more of a straight-up folky folkie, but that's cool too. you might wonder, you might, why so many of my musical friends and "friends" are folk-y, in disproportion to the music that i more generally like and listen to. i guess that's a good question, but my tendency would be to say that friends are folks, and folk is friendly, and folks play folk music. (also, folk is one of those words that starts to look really weird when you type it a lot.)

i was gonna put up andrew's song "when we closed our eyes," from his last album the lost year, because it's pretty and catchy and that way i could talk about how he lifts an entire stanza from "cheek to cheek" almost verbatim except for the crucial change of "vanish like gambler's losing streak" instead of "lucky", which subtly, albeit superficially, alters the meaning and wittiness of the line, and wonder whether that could have been an intentional transposition... but i figured i should feature something from his new album instead. (you can hear the other one, and in fact all of his albums, on his website - glad to see somebody is still using myflashfetish players, and classily.)

so, here's "anything at all," which is maybe not the most impressive or distinctive song on the album, but is pretty and sweet and is a waltz (and a duet, like the whole album pretty much) and has some nice quick rhymes. i suppose a more fitting song to go with the 'friend' concept might have been "west coast time."

Devon Sproule - Dress Sharp, Play Well, Be Modest
likewise, "stop by anytime" might have been a more apt pick from devon sproule, whom i reckon still not enough of y'all have listened to, partly as i've been doing a better job of writing about her glowingly (again) than actually playing her music for too many folks. last we talked, i invited her to come play a house show in west philly, and make some steps toward setting that up, but i have been lax and not responded to her most recent email, mostly because i'm starting to doubt whether a house would actually be the best place for her to play in westy, what with all these performance venues that have been opening recently. so maybe i'll make some more friendfolk and then get 'em all together to do a show with devon.

of course, she's got her own friends aplenty. i met her through andrew, above (he was opening for her at the tin angel, over two years ago now), and then through her i didn't-quite-meet carsie, whom i can now say i know, but whom i don't quite feel like friends with, despite having been to her house twice and danced with her a few times. so, she's not on the mux, except really that's because i don't have any of her music. this is cool though - i like "closer to him" and "baby can dance."

oh wait, yeah. "dress sharp, play well, be modest." great title, great song, relatively understated, certainly musically, but a massive grower - amg called it the album's centerpiece, and it does feel luxurious and sprawling, longer than its four-and-a-half minutes. not gonna really get into the lyrics right now, but i do love the casual, off-handed lifts from "take me out to the ballgame" and "home on the range." also how she's drinking dark and stormies ("with a whole half a lime.") oh, dev...

Jim's Big Ego - Cut Off Your Head
the segue here goes: like the previous two artists, i saw jim's big ego most recently at the tin angel, about a month ago now. a place for friends. right. and jim is now my facebook friend, so there. also, dan is my uncle. wtf, dan? i've probably seen them upwards of a dozen times, in boston, bryn mawr, and elsewhere (and even booked them once), but they haven't been around in a couple years, so it was great to see them again, and hear some new songs and olds. their records have plenty of good stuff, but i really enjoy them much more live (that's part of the thing about folk.) and they don't put out many records.

"cut off your head" is from the last one, they're everywhere, which is five years old now. (new one coming soon, supposedly, possibly to be entitled free*, which is a pretty great title.) it just might be my favorite of jim's songs; at least it demonstrates a lot of the best things about his songwriting. jbe are probably more noted for their upbeat, jokey songs, and those are certainly fun, but many of them ("lucky," "stress," "in a bar") are a little too simple and short on ideas to be really effective in my opinion - the best are those which have slightly more content or are at least a bit more nuanced, with slightly more complex humor ("asshole," "she's dead," "boston band.") but what i really love, maybe surprisingly, are his serious, introspective songs ("better than you," "love what's gone"), which tend to be actually more clever, and touching at the same time. [also, the political ones on the e-EP that i still don't have.]

"cut off your head" combines both sides of that effectively, taking a seemingly jokey premise but addressing it in a surprisingly straight-faced, if satirical, manner, and juxtaposing it with three very different, unexpected near-stream-of-consciousness lists in the verses, and creating some actual achieving some emotional resonance. also has some of the band's best "na na na"s, and nifty subtle lifts from "somewhere over the rainbow."

The Mountain Goats - September 15, 1983
john darnielle isn't really my friend, but i have talked to him. (and come to think of it he knows my friend jesse.) still, i've been through a fair amount with him, and he's enough of a folkie (deny it though he might) that i feel he's been there with me too. "september 15, 1983" is not my favorite song on heretic pride - oh, probably "sax rohmer #1" or "autoclave" though the title track and "lovecraft in brooklyn" are both pretty awesome as well as ridiculous - but it is the one i was most anticipating, not because it's about me being eleven months and two days old but because it's about the death of a reggae singer. the last time jd wrote a song about the death of a reggae singer it turned out to be maybe one of my favorite songs ever...

this one is not quite as stunning as "song for dennis brown", but it's still very good. i think i like that it's actually a reggae song. oddly, the lyrics are both more straightforward (it tells one story of one incident instead of several, apparently unrelated ones, although in equally imagistic, evocative language) and harder to understand, unless you already know what the song is about (it describes the death of prince far i in uncharacteristically straightforward, factual detail, but it took me a while and some googling to figure that out.) when i first heard it (live, at nyu, last fall) i took it to be less literal and more fragmentary, like "dennis brown" (partly because i misheard the opening lines as about a dinner taking place in 'portland'), and i took the first person voice of the chorus to be john himself, mostly because i thought that "israel" was what the "i" stood for (maybe it is, i don't know; i hope so, because that would make both readings work) and he was singing about wanting to preserve his memory. then i thought that it would be better, and more clever and darniellian, for the chorus not to be the same each time, but i didn't realize it was a reference to a psalm, which in itself is relevant to far i. actually i now think it's a better song than i thought originally. good one john.

of note: jeffrey lewis illustrated a very cool publicity one-sheet for the album including descriptions of all the songs, including a good explanation of this one.

Jim White - Jailbird
i'm really not friends with jim white (though i guess he is friends with his label head/my former boss yale), but we did have an extended conversation one night, two days before my 21st birthday, when i was trying to get into a bar to see him (he got me in by making me his merch salesman for the night.) and honestly, although i've reviewed them thoroughly
and approvingly, i've never connected with his more recent albums nearly as much as i did with the first one i heard, no such place, which is still way up there for me. (the song "corvair" has been haunting me of late.)

"jailbird" is maybe my favorite from his new one, the awesomely-named transnormal skiperoo though i freely admit that that's mostly because it sounds the most like his older work. it's awful languid and melancholy, and lush and smooth and lovely. drink it in.

Hanne Hukkelburg - The North Wind
i checked on marit larsen's myspace on the whim that it's about time for her to have some kinda new news going on, and sure enough, an adorable little note from about a short while back all but confirming that her second album must be well on its way to completion by now, which is an announcement full of wonderful and exciting. "good news for anyone with ears," as i saw someone comment on a similar post of joan['s?] as police woman['s?]. so no new music yet, but.

marit was my utter infatuation at last year's sxsw; this year there was nobody really comparable, which is not because i had a girlfriend in tow. (i do for sure love robyn, but not quite in that way.) i guess hanne hukkelberg came closest, or might have, except that neither she nor her music is even close to matching marit's appeal. although she is currently third in marit's top 8. honestly, the biggest similarity, besides their age and nationality, is that i had distinctly embarrassing (for me at least) interactions with both of them, specifically while trying to give them hugs.

anyway, hanne's music is quite lovely, if far moodier and less pop. i've been intrigued since i first heard her debut playing in a record store in chicago, and i'm glad to have gotten the chance to get to know her more closely since. i picked "north wind" because i'm a sucker for a good typewriter part.

Silje Nes - Ames Room
Rubies - The Truth and the Lies
Jeffrey Lewis - Punk is Dead
Retribution Gospel Choir - Easy Prey
i have not met or talked to any of the other artists on this mux. i've only even seen jeffrey lewis, and 2/3 of the retribution gospel choir (a.k.a. low.) silje nes, who was in marfa, tx just two days before me, make music that is almost uncannily similar to hanne hukkelberg's, although i underplayed that in my review of her album ames room, which does not have an apostrophe in its title. (the main difference: nes' stuff is slightly more 'out there' and 'experimental' and less song-based; but it's warmer and more inviting.) the title track is pretty representative, even though it sounds like a song.

rubies were 2/5 of call and response, who made one of my favorite songs ever, "the fool," as well as two very nice albums. rubies' album isn't terrible, but it's fairly mediocre by comparison. i don't know why i picked "the truth and the lies"; it's pretty in a somewhat vapid way, and it reveals that they don't sound all that good singing solo. but whatever, it's mellow and nice enough, i guess.

"punk is dead" is maybe the simplest and best thing on 12 crass songs, which i haven't ended up liking as much as my first listen suggested. it's funny now, but it's even funnier to think that the song was probably written in, like, 1979. it's pretty hard to believe that he's singing it with a straight face. i mean, he's obviously not. but an album's worth of this stuff? is this what they call taking the piss? we're supposed to accept it at face value, i guess. also amazing, that this used to be a punk song, and it's so a folk song now. q.v. will oldham williamsburg horror, which could practically be called "folk is dead."

[and i think i'll let rgc speak for themselves.]

reminced*

so...new design! welcome to the new mincetapes. hopefully it looks okay on your computer...i haven't done too much quality control for that (let me know if there's a problem or even better a solution, k?) it's best if your browser recognizes cooper black - all the headings are supposed to be in that face (a la in the hot pink letters of the title banner.)

by the way, the images in that banner are scans of my handy-dandy new letterpressed business cards...pretty much the inspiration for the whole redesign. (they were the cue to the font and color choice too.) it remains to be seen whether they lead to increase an increase in dj bookings or blog readership, though i'm guessing chances are decent that one of them led you here (!) question now is whether you'll stay...

well, i'm trying to make it as cushy as i can, and at least explain what's going on a little better and make it seem organized even if the underlying intellectual disarray remains. hence the spiffed-up expandable-collapsible sidebar. with (this-just-in!) bizcard-imitating color coding - pink for business, blue for external resources, yellow for site navigation, green for record-keeping (ahem), ornj for musixes.

speaking of which, mayhaps you not know about muxtapes? don't feel bad - by the time i first heard about them, maybe few weeks after they debuted, there were supposedly people already claiming they'd jumped the shark. whatever. i present my first muxtape, slightly tweaked from its original incarnation, vaguely designed in part (but only vaguely) as an accompaniment to my recent isolated, off-the-mark discussion of 00s-style-dance, and attendant album-remarks:

The Hot For May Sound

brief notes?

Juvelen - Watch Your Step
it's swedish electronic dance-pop, natch. but sung by a boy, for a change. albeit a boy who's trying his hardest to sound like a girl. or maybe just prince. trying too hard for something, anyway... his intensely strained singing style definitely takes a bit of getting used to. which is too bad, because his music is kinda flawless in most other respects. you will definitely be hearing more from this guy in the future, or at least, more from me about him.

Neon Neon - Raquel
Cut Copy - Far Away
probably my favorite cuts on probably my favorite albums of the year so far... (as previously discussed.)

Sally Shapiro - Hold Me So Tight (Cansecos Remix)
at first i thought it was a bit of a relative throwaway mix, but it sounds less clunky than it used to (maybe since i realized that it's uncannily similar to the original version of annie's "heartbeat.") was also recently big-upped by my man tim sendra. woot!

Bertine Zetlitz - Ashamed
from her recent best-of, which i'm working my way up to reviewing (by first reviewing the rest of her catalog, naturally.) but i actually first heard it a while earlier, thanks to this blog post by former fellow styjuke contributor brittle lemon, which dissects the song and its lyrics quite revealingly, making it more or less redundant for me to say anything more here. except that bertine is amazing.

Ashlee Simpson - Outta My Head (Grinehouse Mix)
not sure where this remix came from, but it's pretty good. a good deal more menacing than the original, which is definitely a good thing.

Spiss - My Slang
very goofy noveltyish hip-hop thing that i discovered while researching bloodshy and avant's recent projects. seems like a bit of a mystery/secret at this point exactly what this thing is. probably works better with the video, which is probably better than the song anyway.

TTA - Koka-Kola Veins
maybe my favorite tta track, and the best encapsulation of what they're about. omg that bassline!! i love the lyrics too.

Owusu and Hannibal - What It's About
i heard this on dj dixon's body language 4 mix and was instantly smitten...blown away...sounds like scritti politti (quite a lot in fact) but, like, even more so - more soulful, more funky, more pop. so pop. great bo diddley schoolyard beat to go with the awesome awesome hilarious naughty schoolyard pubescent confusion sex-fantasy lyrics. i have been listening to this a ton for the last few months and it does not get old. so chill too, and yet still so funky. man. i just got the album from which it came, o&h's (they're danish) debut. and...so far i am disappointed to report that the rest of it doesn't seem to be anywhere near this good, or even to sound that much like this. but we'll see, i need to give it some more listens.

Don Armando's Second Avenue Rhumba Band - I'm An Indian Too
from the very cool, if confusingly titled, kid creole comp going places: the august darnell years just out on strut, one of those so-hip european reissue labels whose releases are always way too expensive, and have a nasty habit of going out of print (i still keep kicking myself for passing up a used copy of their disco (not disco) comp once)...but which i happened to find as a used promo. anyway, i'd been meaning to investigate kid creole, so this is handy. man, ze records. also home to was (not was.) more research necessary. the previous version of this mux had but the kick-off track, "sunshower," whose chorus was straight-up lifted for the m.i.a. song. this song is just preposterous. it's from annie get your gun, btw.

Hot Chip - Wrestlers
somewhat surprisingly, this is the song that's been in my head the most from the new album. also, "one pure thought" is apparently the next single, so i thought i'd swap it for something a little more off-track. with some excellent work from my boy joe goddard.

Susumu Yokota - That Person's Hearsay Protects My Free Spirit
from his new album LOVE or DIE, which is practically worth it for the track titles alone.

ok, enjoy. new mux coming soon too.

*would you believe i never thought about that title sounding like "remixed" (even though the mincetapes-mixtapes connection was obviously intentional) until somebody mentioned it the other day? speaking of reminced...i might post there sometime.

AMG review round-up, volume III

Still running about two months behind myself with these; not that that's a problem. A large chunk of my AMG output for February was on the artists of Gothenburg, Sweden's excellent, eccentric Sincerely Yours label. Much of the rest of it was on low-key, and even ambient, music of somewhat indeterminate genre, mostly electronic hybrids of some sort or other (jazztronica, folktronica, kindertronica...?) look-see:

The Tough Alliance: bio, The New School, Escaping Your Ambitions, and A New Chance reviews

"The Tough Alliance's first album is a pure joy; a decidedly summery, nearly perfect pop album. It doesn't sound overly much like anything else of its time, or any other time for that matter, partly thanks to the duo's oddly unrefined, amateurish (but enthusiastic!) singing style, although its day-glo sheen and abundance of synthesizers hearkens knowingly to the 1980s, the first golden age of electronic dance-pop. (In many ways the goofily charismatic duo uncannily resemble a two-decades-younger version of Wham!, with their equatorial overtones and hedonistic irreverence recalling, in particular, the satirical "Club Tropicana.") Theoretically, there's some sort of high-minded aesthetic and political concept behind the Tough Alliance's work - it's gestured at in the dramatically worded pronouncements on their website and sometimes vaguely confrontational interviews, and alluded to here in a spoken word sample of Situationist thinker Guy DeBord - but it's hard to discern, or at least care much about, when they're making music this blissfully melodic and carefree... there's an unambiguous and vital positivity running through its grooves, making The New School a celebration of humanity and life that's about as powerful a political and aesthetic statement as you could hope for."

"Through [their] label [Sincerely Yours], whose web site assigns a catalog number not only to actual releases, but also to every music video, MP3 post, blog entry, and unique, limited-run article of clothing or other merchandise (including spray-paint stencils), the Tough Alliance cultivate a childlike aesthetic of simple beauty, travel, and exploration (including frequent maritime motifs) and, of course, sincerity. Somewhat at odds with this image (though perhaps just demonstrating another sort of "childishness"), their flippantly audacious live performances -- which sometimes include the duo lip-synching to pre-recorded music and swinging baseball bats on-stage -- project a devil-may-care disposition that has resulted in accusations of glorifying violence and hooliganism (not unrelated to their love for and self-conscious appropriation of hip-hop culture)."


A New Chance: "Awash in balmy, neon grooves and exultant, kaleidoscopic scraps of melody, The Tough Alliance's U.S. album debut and second proper pop full-length is neither a dramatic change of direction nor an astounding leap forward from the already quite excellent The New School - but it is a revelation nevertheless. As effortless, and effortlessly enjoyable, as it is perplexing to define, its remarkably fresh-feeling fusion of dance music and classic pop has all the omnivorous eclecticism, bright-eyed playfulness, and epic emotional earnestness of St. Etienne's Foxbase Alpha and Primal Scream's Screamadelica.

It's also more than a little reminiscent of those landmark albums in sound and style, grounding its blend of (among other things) dub, sixties pop, reggae, new age and synth-pop in a foundation of early-90s club beats and hip-house. Those dusty grooves, along with the preponderance of '80s-style synthesizers (though by this point they ought to be as strongly associated with the '00s as the '80s) and an outmoded production gloss, give A New Chance a curiously faded, antiquated quality, one that doesn't feel tired so much as refreshingly anachronistic, though it might be more accurate to say it feels removed from time entirely."

The Honeydrips: bio and Here Comes The Future review

"Here Comes the Future is a succinct, engaging effort that establishes the Honeydrips - essentially a one-man project centered around Mikael Carlsson - as proud proponents of the indie pop tradition, in the most classicist sense; inheriting the lineage that originated in 1980s Britain and includes Orange Juice, Felt, The Field Mice, St. Etienne, Belle and Sebastian, and, more recently, many of Carlsson's fellow Swedes and particularly fellow Gothenburgers like Jens Lekman and Sambassadeur. It may not introduce much in the way of innovation to separate him from his fellows and their forebears - if the title is to be credited, the future will mostly consist of more of the same - but that's not necessarily a shortcoming in a genre founded on fidelity to the timeless principles of melody, sweetness and simple, sturdy, songcraft."

Air France: bio and On Trade Winds review

"This all-too-brief debut release from the mysterious Swedish electronic duo Air France distills the vaguely Caribbean good-vibes of fellow Gothenburgers (and label heads) the Tough Alliance into a smooth, streamlined confection of impressionistic, almost imaginary pop. Imaginary, particularly considering that although it arrived in the heart of Scandinavian winter, it's an indelible evocation of balmy, equatorial summers. There are words to these songs, most of them appropriated...but they're subtle enough not to distract from the lush whirlpools of sound at the core of the tracks; hazy blends of washed-out synths, reverb-drenched pianos, tropical percussion, and summery sound effects."


Jonas Game: bio and ADHD review

"Game stands out as the most musically straightforward act on Sincerely Yours ... hearkening back to both classic British punk -- most notably the Clash -- and big-hearted American roots rockers like Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen, which makes him something like a Swedish version of Ted Leo."

"ADHD is yet again something entirely new for the label: a good old-fashioned rock album. In many ways Jonas Game represents a marked contrast to the rest of the Sincerely Yours roster: he's unassuming and musically organic where the Tough Alliance are perplexingly conceptual and hyper-syncretist, and his songs and lyrics are as vibrant and life-affirming as the Honeydrips' Mikael Carlsson's are wistful, tentative, and resigned. Still, ADHD is rooted as firmly in the Swedish pop tradition as anything the label releases, which is to say it's infused with that spirit even if its substance may veer elsewhere."

Lullatone: Computer Recital, Little Songs About Raindrops, and Plays Pajama Pop Pour Vous

"Needless to say, there's a considerable amount of cuteness and whimsy on display here -- but that's not to suggest that this music is simplistic or overly precious. [...] If the song titles and instrumentation make the childlike qualities of Lullatone's music inescapable, and perhaps suggest a whiff of gimmicky novelty, the music itself reveals that essence to be much more fundamental -- even performed entirely on "adult" synthesizers and classical instruments and given banal, non-descriptive titles (which these pieces are both abstract and accomplished enough to accommodate), the music's simple beauty and sense of wonder would remain undeniable."



Psapp: Tiger, My Friend review

"Tiger, My Friend impresses first with its whimsy: it's rife with the sounds of toy instruments (xylophones, pan flutes, accordions, music boxes), toy-like noisemakers (typewriters, door hinges, alarm clocks), and straight-up toys. Actually, who knows where they got all these squeaks and blips and whirrs and burbles and scrapes; the credits list a cat and a beer can, while the album artwork depicts mysterious keyboard-like devices with labels including "strum press wigglers," "surprise noise buttons," and "spectral weasel." For all their imaginatively goofy sound-harvesting though, Psapp's substance lies in their sophisticated and strangely sober songs, which are generally built on fairly traditional foundations -- softly plucked acoustic guitars, parlor-room pianos, stately string arrangements -- with some additional electronic tweaking and trickery, and always buoyed by Durant's honeyed, understated vocals."


Triosk: bio and The Headlight Serenade review

"Triosk continue to wander and explore in a hazy territory that's probably best described as post-jazz. At times, they flirt with the semblance of a relatively straight-ahead modern piano jazz outfit -- opener "Visions IV" in particular evokes the muscularity of the Bad Plus, with only a couple of minor electronic flourishes. More often they sacrifice nearly all of the fundamentals of jazz (and, for that matter, most music) -- melody, all but the most basic chordal harmony, in some cases all but the vague suggestion of rhythm -- in the single-minded pursuit of texture. It's this conceptual minimalism, the absence of jazz-like forms and structures, more than the actual sound of the album, that nudges The Headlight Serenade from jazz toward the ambient/electronic category."

Adrian Klumpes: bio and Be Still review

"A deliberately plotted and executed project involving a combination of intentionality and improvisation, this solo debut recording by the pianist of avant-garde jazz outfit Triosk is the result of a brief three-week compositional period, a single five-hour recording session (it was all the studio time he could afford) conducted with a single piano and microphone setup, and a few months of post-production processing. Comparable in tone and texture to Adrian Klumpes' work with Triosk, his approach here is even more rarefied, with little if anything connecting it to jazz in any coherent sense, and not much more relating it to the classical tradition (though both musics inform the delicacy and expressiveness of Klumpes' playing). Instead, it's largely indebted to the processes and precepts of minimalism. Each piece tends to linger and explore a small number of sonic effects or a single compositional idea; there's very little sense of progression from one end of a track to another (and certainly never in harmonic or melodic terms), which may explain the stillness of the title."

Jim White: Transnormal Skiperoo review

"Jim White tends to take his time between albums -- Transnormal Skiperoo was only his fourth in over a decade, arriving an ample few years after 2004's Drill a Hole in That Substrate and Tell Me What You See. By the time of its release, the Southern-souled transplant and perennial wanderer, who was then fifty, had settled down in a backwoods Georgia farmhouse and was reportedly experiencing "a strange new feeling...after years of feeling lost and alone and cursed." His name for that sensation is the endearingly off-kilter title phrase of the album, but judging from his description it sounds suspiciously similar to contentment. And Skiperoo is certainly his lightest, breeziest record to date, a turnaround from the frequently melancholy Substrate, musically as well as lyrically. That's not meant to imply a dramatic alteration in sound or style: since both sorrow and serenity translate into relatively understated, mellow musical terrain; the shift is a subtle one. Besides, White's always been a philosophical sort, the kind to pick up on the lighter sides of life's tragedies and portray the bitter with the sweet -- there's always a glimmer of redemption in his darkest tales of desperation; skepticism and hope commingled in his homespun gospel mysticism."