20 April 2008

colors and colours and cullers . . .


dan 'flava' flavin, marfa-style: hot like neon fucking neon. photo credits: c. hoffman, g. bear, d. byrne.

sigh - another post of 'prefatory remarks' that ended up getting unintentionally entangled and, er, long. well, the point of bringing all that up was mostly just to say:

1.) i saw hot chip last week. it was pretty great. the best part was the crowd, who were way into it, dancing more enthusiastically from the get-go than any audience i've seen in a while. it was a concert, but it felt as much like a party. (my friends and i were up front for the first third or so, then split to the back where there was more room to move.)

i was especially amused by joe goddard, the keyboards/electronics guy off to the side. he looked just slightly out of place - a bit portly, and dressed in a goofy colorful t-shirt unlike his bandmates more 'tasteful' attire (though two of them eventually took their shirts off, in frontman alexis taylor's case to reveal a wendy's wifebeater) - a jovial average joe in a band of twerpy hipster nerds - although he's actually one of the two main songwriters. he does the spoken-ish bits of the vocals ("i'm in no fit state..."; "bendable, poseable..."; the list of moves in "wrestlers") and he delivered them so gleefully and emphatically, and deliberately off-rhythm, that i had to laugh. ("bend away...bend a-fucking-way.")

they did the bulk of the new album (11/13, omitting a couple of ballads), one oldie ("crap kraft dinner" - pretty nice), and only three from the warning, which was a little disappointing, since i've only grown to adore that album in the last year or so. serves me right, though, maybe, for dismissing them when i first saw them (fall '05, opening for four tet.) i remember they played "colours" and i'm like "what is this dopey crap? colors and colors and colors and colors? right..." then it took me a year or something to get around to their album, which i now feel that stylus was apt in ranking as #2 of the year, and this time i was disappointed that they didn't play "colours." but it's okay. (at least they did "no fit state," the album's semi-secret best song.)


my initial response to made in the dark was that it's essentially a very similar album to its predecessor, right down to the curiously jerky opener and rather blah ballad closer, (with plenty of better stuff in between), but that it pales substantially in comparison. having taken more time to process and reflect, i recognize that the last album did have a couple of somewhat lesser songs (well, at least two: "arrest yourself" and "won't wash"), while the new one has has plenty of highlights, if nothing to compete with the run of obvious singles that is tracks 2-5 on the warning ("ready for the floor" is the only no-brainer, with its two neighboring tracks probably the closest behind.)

most of the other dance tracks don't really do it for me (yet?) - not quite sure why; "touch too much" for instance seems like it should be great, but the melody and phrasing kind of annoy me. "one pure thought" is the big exception, the closest this album comes to a "no fit state" and maybe the best song on here. "wrestlers," which is reminiscent of "the warning" both lyrically and musically, is a great, quirky, catchy album track. then there are the ballads, none of which i've found as affecting as the gorgeous "look after me" and "so glad to see you," though the title track is certainly pretty.

hot chip's best songs tend not to feature just a single arresting hook or an extended melody line, but rather several fairly simple and repetitive melodic motifs, alternating and interspersed throughout, modularly, over shifting sections of the groove, and sometimes eventually layered together, in an expansion beyond straight verse/chorus structure. ("colors" is maybe the clearest example.) my sense is that a lot of new album's songs are more straightforward in their construction, and hence not as colorful and satisfying. i'll keep listening though.

2.) i been listening to neon neon. specifically their debut album stainless style.

it's a collaboration between gruff rhys of super furry animals - once one of my favorite bands, in whom i have lost a substantial amount of interest (though i'm curious to hear their latest, eventually...the last two albums were pleasant enough but ultimately pretty watered-down, save the transcendent "slow life") - and quasi-hip-hop (right?) producer boom bip, whom i've liked scattered tracks by, but never really delved into. it's something of a surprise, and total treat.

a surprise because i wouldn't have expected a full-length collaboration from these two, i wouldn't have expected it to sound like this (gleaming neo-80s electronic disco-pop, with occasional sleaze-rap interjections), and i wouldn't have expected to be this into it. on the other hand, it's not so surprising that it's pretty great. the leftfield nature of the duo had me fearing a strained, pointedly eclectic mish-mash of a collabo record by a self-consciously oddball pairing, plus novelty rap guests (like gorillaz but with a less-infallible britpop-ringleader, or - worse - the rudderless gnarls barkley), but this is pretty straight up: a synth-pop record made by a dependably tuneful '60s-loving indie pop songwriter and an accomplished, musically savvy electronic producer, which sounds more like the postal service (a good thing.) (although stainless style doesn't, really - it's much richer-sounding, dancier, sillier and more poignant at the same time. if anything, a lot of it recalls some of the more inventive tracks from the great rings around the world, a path not taken by SFA in 2000s.)

the album's wikipedia article explains a lot: it's an intentional break from the artists' previous work, and its channeling of the 1980s on multiple levels, which is much deeper and more integral to the proceedings than your average '00s '80s throwback, is very deliberate and was carefully developed from a production standpoint and otherwise. it's also a concept album, about "playboy engineer" and '80s archetype john delorean, though that's loose enough notto get in the way of the songs. but it's also just a really fun, upbeat, and paradoxically modern-sounding (see!) pop record.

the biggest standouts (for me, so far) are "raquel" (a funky, melodic ode to ms. welch, whom i'll always associate with the rather perverted, sex-obsessed forrest gump - the book, not the movie - whose melodic hook bears some similarity to lennon's "oh yoko"), the slightly dark, twitchy italo-style duet "i lust u," and "belfast," an epic-sounding new wave disco jam (which, in keeping with the album concept, is probably not really an ode to the city per se, though it is addressed to it - i was trying to make a list: mirah's "jerusalem," lcd's "new york i love you," the pogues' "london you're a lady." of montreal's "little rock.") but it's really pretty consistent in quality, with a handful of other songs that could work equally well as singles. even the three or four rap tracks, featuring the jokey likes of spank rock, yo majesty, har mar superstar, and fatlip, aren't as obnoxious as they seem like they should be. superficial on the surface but deeper underneath, this could easily make my top ten for the year.

3.) i got the new cut copy record, on semi-impulse.

my first listen was through headphones, walking to the subway for a gig, as the sun was setting on one of the first gloriously summery april days, and not surprisingly i was mesmerized and swooning. "instant album of the year (?) (!)" i thought, as the caribou-style psychedelic swirls of "feel the love" gave way to crystal-clear indie-pop acoustic strums, bouncing italo synths, an immediately hummable melody, vocoded background vocals, and a laid-back but distinctly dancy electro-organic groove, all in the same song... i also thought, how the hell does he have all of this stuff going on without this sounding like a total mess? and: can the rest of the album possibly keep delivering the goods at this level?

yes, as it turns out, the whole album is pretty damn seamless, and indeed remarkably consistent in both quality and quality, er i mean in terms of both sonics and goodness. and it remains a befuddling mystery of alchemy. it's hazy but it's bright. it's languid, but it's propulsive. it's indie pop/rock, but it's electronic/dance. it's unabashedly derivative, but it's uncannily fresh. it sounds like the '60s and the '80s, and, okay, it really sounds like the '00s. it sounds like new order, but i like it.

a lot. or maybe i just like it pretty well. i'm still having a hard time figuring that part out, because i could see myself going either way - continuing to listen and finding more to enjoy and bring me back, or setting it aside as a pleasurable trifle with diminishing returns. in some ways it is a very surfacey record; sounding great, nay awesome, and with some solid hooks to be sure ("far away," and the singles "lights and music" and "hearts on fire" - that's as far as i've got), but possibly somewhat lacking in truly durable songwriting, and also somewhat formulaic. of course, a good formula is worth milking, and i've definitely got nothing against surface pleasures. so we shall see.

16 April 2008

hot like neon fucking neon

there is a certain kind of music - one of the most definitive and popular kinds of the 2000s, and arguably one of the few truly new ones - which does not have a name. (not unlike the decade itself, come to think of it.) i know, it seems veritably impossible for this to be true, but it is.

sure, people have had to try to come up with things to call it, inevitably sweeping trans-genre portmanteaus like "electro house", "dance rock", "disco-punk," "indie/electronic", "electro-pop" and perhaps most promisingly, but ill-fatedly (too belittled, too late), "new rave." but none of these really come that close to hitting the mark. in each case these terms most properly designate something too specific for them to stand in comfortably for what must by now be accepted as a full-fledged, albeit hybrid and certainly multivalent, genre of its own.

the making time folks - who are the kings of this thing here in small-town philadelphia, end up making up their own endless, goofy, hyper-hyphenated (orjustshovedtogether) descriptors for every new party flyer.

when i've had to call this genre anything i've usually resorted to "hipster dance," which at least seems vague enough not to alienate large swaths of what i mean to talk about - and then there's the recently vogueish "blog house," which is somewhat more imprecise than it maybe suggests (is it actually supposed to refer to house music? not as far as i can tell - it seems to be used in pretty wide-ranging and indiscriminate ways.) but there are some serious problems with defining music in terms of its primary/perceived/intended audience - hipsters; bloggers (each of them more or less a stand-in for "music fans," anyway) - notably that they don't tell you much about the music, and they almost inevitably take on a derogatory tone. see: "teen-pop," "mallpunk," "yacht rock," "handbag house," "bubblegum," and "anorak pop" (if that's a term), (possibly: "backpacker hip-hop," "stoner rock" and "beardo disco." "college rock" on the other hand isn't derogatory, just meaningless.)

"blog house" has the additional problem of being sort of self-defeatingly oxymoronic, um, by which i mean that dance music (which, above all, is what this is) is by definition social music, not intended for sitting around the house (yeah, i know) and listening to on the internet. that sucks!! besides, "blog house" doesn't even have a wikipedia entry (shocka!) so it must not really exist. (i've certainly never heard it!)

anyway, it's pretty clear what the genre is: roughly, the point of intersection between pop, rock, dance, and electronic music. those are all nice broad umbrella terms, perfectly useful for what they are. (though "dance" is often vague nearly to the point of uselessness; it being basically, as i've argued before, a doublespeak substitute for "disco") and it's okay to use three or four of them in combination to describe an artist, as i've found myself doing on numerous occasions recently. but given the large and growing set of artists who are setting up shop in the considerable, roomy overlap between these four ultra-expansive genuses, owing allegiance to no one of them in particular, it would really be handy to have shorthand for the region of that intersection, which could at least serve as a starting point for further hyphenated neologisms.

for starters, you could try to identify which are the artists who trend more to one side or the other: the rapture, phoenix, mgmt and !!! on the rock side; junior senior, the go! team, the tough alliance, and maybe datarock slanting pop; simian mobile disco, mylo, justice and soulwax holding it down for electronic dance, while junior boys, royksöpp, goldfrapp, and the knife kick it electronic pop. whew, that was hard to do, and definitely imprecise, even as an example, and some of these are just the fringe cases; artists towards the outer edges of this territory i'm staking out, though definitely significant contributors to its development. you could also throw in folks with more overt hip-hop elements (m.i.a., spank rock, diplo - certainly very much a part of the same cultural milieu) and go further in the dance-pop vein (annie, robyn, erlend øye, lykke li) or the indie-pop vein (architecture in helsinki, of montreal, los campesinos!), and not forget the scene's immediate electro-clash forebears (felix da housecat, tiga, fischerspooner, adult.) there are the djs (optimo, a-trak, girl talk, dave p), producers (playgroup, maurice fulton, calvin harris, joakim), labels (modular, kitsuné, vice) bands (bonde do role, ladytron, scissor sisters, css, out hud), visionary/iconoclast solo acts (peaches, jamie lidell, muscles.)

and, of course, there's the james murphy, aka lcd soundsystem, aka 1/2 of DFA (plus tim goldsworthy) - both the remix/production team and the would-be genre-defining record label - pretty much the godfather/figurehead of all of this activity, who fits into every one of the above categories. and just might be the most important/pivotal/whatever, awesome, musical person of the decade.

and those or just the people i know and like. i haven't listened very actively to chromeo, new young pony club, klaxons, ghostland observatory, or the presets. and i'm just starting to digest the most recent crop: teenagers, crystal castles, does it offend you yeah?, hercules and love affair, neon neon.

blah blag blog. okay, so why am i bringing this up? (well, it is pretty interesting isn't it? i mean, i'm sure that this has been discussed before, given the prevalence of these artists in - it cannot be denied - the blogosphere. but i haven't really read an attempt to taxonomize or analyze in an overarching, big-picture way, what's going on here.)

for a couple years now, i've had this section of my cd shelves (er, back when i had cd shelves), which started as a small hodge-podge (le tigre, dopo yume, some dfa stuff, couple of electroclash things, whatever) wedged in somewhere abutting and imprecisely connecting the sections of mainstream dance-pop and dance-oriented electronica of yesteryear and today. as i found myself repeatedly forced to stick things in there that didn't fit anywhere else, it gradually grew into an extremely colorful (lots of pink spines!) and unruly shelf or two which was nevertheless impossible to deny a certain sense of cohesion. at this point i'm experimenting with 'alternative' methods of music storage, and have accepted a stalemate in the ongoing game of arraying my music collection as a visual/physical representation of my mental musicographical organization scheme. but it's still fun to talk about genre.

without feeling any compulsion to make explicit definitions or draw strict boundaries (you can put them wherever you like, but as usual they won't help too much), i'd reflect for a minute on what the specific qualities this music are, apart from the broad strokes of its adjacent mega-genres. certainly pastiche - an accumulation of multiple and various distinct stylistic sources - in a sense, a specific aesthetic of derivativeness - is a central (not quite defining) feature of many of these artists. yknow, yr basic postmodern schtick.

but there was pastiche-pop in the '90s too, if not, maybe, in quite the same way, too too much before that. cornershop, the beastie boys, st. etienne, pizzicato 5, cibo matto, and maybe most especially beck, among others have plenty in common with all of this stuff - dance-focused (or at least beat-based) artists who incorporated pop, rock, hip-hop, electronica and r&b, generally in a sunny, fun-loving vein. i've talked about this milieu before; no need to rehash much here.

in contrast to more recent stuff though: those '90s artists are more cutesy, even "jokey" in a fairly self-aware way. even the campiness of junior senior or the go! team feels unabashed in a way that can't be said for the arty stereolab or dimitri from paris or even shibuya kei (deee-lite is another matter, but they're of a slightly earlier epoch.) which doesn't necessarily mean that one era's music is more authentically fun than another, but there is a straightforwardness to the current stuff, especially in terms of its relationship to danceability (significantly, the culture surrounding this stuff in '90s was not really dance culture - which was more focused instead on somewhat segregated strains of electronica; raves, etc. - but rather alt/rock culture - britpop; the college rock c. the indie revolution; new york "downtown" art music scenes, among other things.)

another distinction of the '00s corpus i'm discussing is that a lot of it rocks, hard, with big stupid guitars. with the exception of garbage (pioneers, as i always maintain), it's hard to think of any '90s groups that fused pop and dance music with real rawk guitars, despite their popularity as sample fodder for big beat artists like fatboy slim and apollo 440. this could certainly be related to my point about straightforwardness, as rock often entails an earnestness and assuredness that doesn't really work aside winking cuteness. (unless it's a wink that specifically references rock, a la electric six or the darkness, who may or may not be that winky anyway.) (something could also be said about 90s and 00s eclecticist dance music in relation to the electronica of its era - trip-hop, IDM and big beat vs. the more unilaterally house-inspired 'minimal,' micro-house, techpop, neodisco and what have you.)

also, the reference points for '90s artists tended to be the 1960s, and especially what i like to talk about as an 'internationalist lounge aesthetic,' if you glean my meaning. (though straight-up '60s pop/rock too, though girl-group and motown would have to wait a bit longer for true resuscitation.) these days, on the other hand, it's all about the '80s - mostly, as mr. murphy said and i love to quote, "borrowed nostalgia for [an] unremembered" probably reductionist version of that decade - post-punk, new wave, synthpop, fringy/mannerist disco excess, etc. in the '90s, apart from obviously being too recenet to revive, one might argue that some of it was still feeling the brunt of disco backlash, a couple decades on. the 60s>90s/80s>00s dichotomy is evident all over the place, in pop culture, politics, american society in general, and this isn't the place to get into that (it's been discussed before too, for sure.) (what happened to the '70s? well, lots of things. mostly that people get that confused with the '60s a lot. also punk.)

to be honest, "pastiche" isn't all that good a word for talking about '00s hipster dance music and culture. it skews appropriationist, to be sure, but the synthesis is smoother than that (the collage aesthetic of mashups and quick cuts and endless remixes notwithstanding), and plenty of groups stick within one relatively defined style or sound (even if its a hybrid one), rather than flaunting their eclecticism. in fact, the primacy of sound and style, over compositional/lyrical content - beats, grooves, riffs, and hooks (easily snatched and recontextualized for a bit o' the ol' thrill of recognition) over memorable songs or even melody per se - is a rather curiously defining feature of 00s dance music. consider the canon: "house of jealous lovers," "losing my edge," "galang," "let's make love..." "d.a.n.c.e," "hustler," even "move your feet" and "over and over." who are the songwriters in this scene? you might point to james murphy, again, but we can't really expect the man to do everything for us, now can we?)

finally, there is truly a recognizable "scene" surrounding all of this, which i'm not sure (i guess i wouldn't know?) can really be said about that '90s stuff. there was a lot of bellyaching in the late 90s and early 00s about kids not dancing - something that has surely changed (tho, i dunno, the rapture were still whining about it two years ago in "wayuh," but who cares about the rapture anyway.) there's just critical mass. these artists are constantly remixing one another, touring together, putting each other on their curated mix compilations, etc. etc. in philly, anyway, most of them play dance parties rather than proper concerts - new rave, indeed! and sure, there's plenty to dismiss and dislike about the spazzy/dayglo myspace aesthetic, the rampant disposability of plenty of this output (many of those aforementioned remixes, to be sure), the hyperactive, compulsive download/messageboard culture, and the weirdly unconvincing brand of hedonism that accompanies a lot of it. also, who asked for an '80s revival in the first place?

thing is, stuff gets tagged eighties-throwback so often these days that it's become all-but-meaningless, if not inaccurate. i don't pretend to really remember the eighties very well (much less do i feign nostalgia), or even the earliest nineties (though i probably should.) but if it sounds like it's from the eighties, it's probably going to sound like the 2000s. and, somehow or other, that's still managing to sound pretty good. more on this to come...

hold on, the wait is over

while you have, of course, been diligently enjoying my handily compiled collected works: january 2008 edition, and awaiting review round-up vol 3: february-march (it'll be around the same length, since i was basically m.i.a. for march) - expect it soon, and henceforth they'll probably be monthly and promptly, but i've gotta at least intersperse with some original mincxlusive content, doncha think? - i have somehow written a total of fifteen bios and reviews in the last twelve days (!)

but also, during that period, as sure as the springtime, it's gradually dawned on me that 2008 in music is, like, totally upon us; exploding like the trees all over this silly city, blossoming, burgeoning, already well past the verge of shifting from a distraction into full-on brain-drain on my attention-resources. and does feel like an emphatically recent explosion too, well-past post-sxsw (where, perhaps chagrinably, i mostly stuck to old 'n knowns rather than 'bout-to-break buzz-bombs), though that's kinda a function of perspective.

i was largely checked out of new music in january-march, inundated with piles of (mostly backcatalog, mostly scandinavian, mostly c. 2004-2007) promos; playing catch-up to some extent, like you do; only occasionally encountering bona-fide '08 releases in the line of duty (white, hukkelberg, yokota if it counts, and i'll say it does.) at least once, somebody asked and i couldn't even bother to remember the single actual new album i'd purchased, attended to, and enjoyed so far this year - the mountain goats' heretic pride, on which i'll have to do a fanboy-lowdown at some point. (bottom line: took a sec to remember not every darnielle song needs to be brilliant - this might be the spottiest, which is not to say the weakest, of his hi-fi period albums, but that won't keep it from my top ten.)

plus i just haven't cultivated a desire for some that new new until now, april, as i'm back to being in philly and plugged inter the net and, after nearly a six-week lacuna, perusing a.k.a. and thereabouts (newsflash! there's a new record store in westy! actually it's a satellite of the beautiful world syndicate, which i still haven't actually been to. d'oh! well, i've got my turntable setup in my room now, so we'll see...)

actually to be honest i don't so much have the desire to be hearing new music as the sense of obligation not to fall behind. and downloading torrents only goes so far to quell the sense that that's happening anyway (luckily so far it seems to be about far enough.) why am i saying all this? why am i up at 4:01 rambling in way over-meticulous diction about ... not music, really, anyway? (and listening to the new m83 - quite nice, 'tis!) is it because, although i am certainly in the process of familiarizing myself with a hefty handful of c. 4/08 new releases, three of which i actually purchased, new, this weekend (and two of which three i've listened to - they're the ones bolded at the top of my sidebar list which if you haven't figured it out is the major primary source document for this post), i don't feel up to saying anything concrete about any of them yet, save for the ones i've already dissected for amg (most recently retribution gospel choir and the sally shapiro remix album, both of which are awesome - no surprise since they're both, to an extent, reworkings of two of my favorite albums of 2007 - and both of which i turned around in 48 hours or less)?

yeah, maybe. i do have something i want to say about hot chip (whom i saw last week) and cut copy (whose new album is either rather quite good or TOTALLY AMAZING, i haven't decided) and neon neon, and (here's the tricky part) the like...but it appears that i don't actually have the impetus to say it, just quite yet. [so that'll be next time, we hope.]

and, however, relatedly, also, i've just just as-if-inadvertently plunged back into rock-crit-o-sphere, by which i mean thinking about it. and it has nothing to do with EMP, which happened last week and i didn't even notice or know about until i looked up the dates just now. it's just, really, that i happened across posts on both simon reynolds' blog and franklin bruno's blog wherein they discuss what they've been listening to recently (well, like you do) - in the former case it's a mega-post covering some twenty-five or so items, of which i'd heard two, heard of maybe five more, and would like to hear well over half, in the latter, it's the whole blog-project of trying to review/comment on 365 albums in elevenish months. in both cases, i was struck and inspired to equal-parts envy and admiring enthusiasm by how breezily, off-handed(-seeming?)ly witty and well-worded the writing is, how engagingly, unpretentiously knowledgeable the writers, and how free and nonchalant their approach to their wide-ranging subject matter. the envy part is maybe to some degree irrational - age, experience, fame, and promo-influx-rate aside, those guys probably don't have anything on me, particularly - but the enthusiasm part is the more salient and prominent, and it's a good thing. to be excited about criticism, about the potential for critical engagement, about the value of what casual critical comment can achieve. hyeah. that's about it. also, how much these writers allow their idiosyncratic personal relationship with the music to inform and even overtly factor into their writing about it. (again, like i don't do that? well, at amg i don't, much, but that's different?)

meanwhile, my peerless peer dave bedbugs has been doing his thing over at his place - without an external writing gig at this point, he's been able to engage with (mostly new) music in (accordingly) quite different ways - and recently published a major, excellent post, characteristically epic post, both helpfully recapitulatory and considerably revelatory, titled notes on the death of rolling teenpop (r.i.p.!), which is, among other things, no less than a detailed (personalized) history of a specific (if very likely the only) strain of teenpop criticism, c. 2005-2008, which gets at many of the concepts and contradictions which were central to that conversation, and some more that should/could have been. it seems unlikely that anybody reading this who isn't already familiar with bedbugs and that history would be inspired to read it on my say-so - and i'm not quite sure how much of it is accessible to the uninitiated - enough, certainly, though it does have something of necessarily insider stance. but...read it. it's
a great piece of writing and relevant in all kinds of ways.

apropos of that, i'm currently eagerly awaiting the forthcoming ashlee simpson album, due in two weeks, which i have requested to cover for allmusic; likewise the aforementioned cut copy - on the one hand i feel it's somewhat unlikely that i'll be granted either assignment, and i'm prepared to accept that (after all, they are outside my 'officially sanctioned' purview), but it would be a thrill to do them, and i think i would bring a fairly unique and useful perspective in both cases (the ashlee particularly.) sigh. if not, it'll just give me more to write about here.

so that's what's been going on, for the most part. some things are gonna have to change around here, possibly including the entire layout of this blog - especially now that i've got the URL on my nifty new business cards, i want to make things a bit more user-friendly and explanatory - specifically in terms of the sidebar - and i also want to start including information on my dj appearances, and possibly set up info on my mixtape activities differently.

and maybe i otter get with the 2008 and start muxtaping. (or is that so the-first-week-of-april?) i've been enjoying the ones i've checked out, and unsurprisingly i love the concept, although i'm having a bit of trouble conceiving of them as mixes/mixtapes, as opposed to extremely easy-to-use streaming mp3 playlists (much better than the things i was toying around with for my 'podcasts' last year.) it's maybe a little too easy to pick and choose your listening experience in this format. also, perhaps predictably, i'm rather whelmed that the potential for actual 'mixing' and transitions is very limited, essentially nil. still, will be good for talking about songs. whenever i feel like doing that.

13 April 2008

AMG review round-up, volume II

just a (hopefully) handy dumping ground/teaser sampler/link collection for the writing i've done at the wonderful all music guide. since 1) nobody who's interested would ever be able to track down my pieces otherwise, 2) it's a lot easier for me to access them this way, should i ever need to, and 3) just perhaps you'll take some interest in the insights and recommendations conveyed in this writing (if so, please do click through to read the full reviews!)

these are most of the artists and albums about which i wrote this january. the first installment (covering november and december) is here.

Sugababes: Three and Taller in More Ways reviews

"Sugababes' straightforwardly titled third release may have lacked a single quite as striking as "Freak Like Me," the tremendous electro-clash/mash-up cash-in smash from their breakthrough sophomore set Angels with Dirty Faces, but otherwise it improves on that album in many respects. Following the same essential template -- tuneful, R&B-inflected dance-pop with fresh-sounding but accessible productions, along with a healthy smattering of big droopy ballads -- with an expanded stylistic range...

[...] It may seem incongruous for such unabashed sentimentality and frankly conventional arrangements to coexist with electronic dance-pop so thoroughly modern in sound and sensibility -- and indeed it's easy to imagine listeners attracted by one aspect of Sugababes' pop-craft being turned off by the other. But ultimately they are two sides of a coin -- timeless if sudsy ballads and flashy novelty dance tunes -- both very much in keeping with the great interpretive pop tradition, of which Sugababes are among our most consummate and sophisticated modern exponents."

Linda Sundblad: bio and Oh My God review

"Oh My God sounds like a bit of a throwaway as an album title, but it works perfectly to reflect the handful of recurring lyrical topics (religion, sexuality, and teenagerhood) and to allude to the '80s influence that pervades the album -- the most obvious touchstones being early Madonna and Cyndi Lauper, both of whom Sundblad bears a substantial resemblance to vocally as well as visually. "We're the babies/Born in the '80s," she sings in "Pretty Rebels" -- Sundblad was born in 1981, which means she was eight when Like a Prayer was released, and 26 at the time of this recording. Even if the generational math doesn't quite add up, there's a compelling sense of nostalgic juvenilia that informs both the music and lyrics, most of which deal with love and relationships. It's standard pop subject matter, of course, but Sundblad approaches it with a uniquely teenaged sensibility, alternating between enthusiasm and desperation..."

Aberfeldy: Do Whatever Turns You On review

"In 2007 they landed the distinctly '00s-style promotional coup of having one of their songs (the infectious "Summer's Gone") featured in a widely seen commercial (in keeping with a time-honored rock & roll tradition, it was an ad for Coke), but even as like-minded Europeans such as Peter Bjorn and John and I'm from Barcelona were racking up stateside accolades, Aberfeldy's 2006 sophomore album still failed to see a U.S. release. And it's a crying shame, because Do Whatever Turns You On is, if anything, more immediate than its predecessor: it's bigger, bolder and shinier, without sacrificing a single ounce of charm -- a larger recording budget meant they weren't limited to a single microphone this time out, but it still sounds wonderfully intimate and welcoming -- and most crucially, without losing their penchant for endlessly hummable indie pop melodies."

Sally Shapiro: bio and Disco Romance review

"The cover photo for the North American edition of Sally Shapiro's Disco Romance depicts the Swedish singer in winter, her cheeks rosy, her blond hair and eyebrows dusted with snowflakes, smiling to herself in spite of the chill. It's a fitting image for this undeniably wintry album, conjuring not just the glacial sweep and frosty twinkle of producer Johan Agebjörn's synthesizer fantasias, but also the faint but glowing presence in the heart of the blizzard: Shapiro's soft, fragile voice, which is so thin and devoid of inflection that it ought to be impenetrably icy, but is somehow instead as warm and enticing as a cozy fire in the dead of February. A closer examination of that cover image reveals that what look like snowflakes are in fact tiny stars, computer-generated pentagrams (though they almost look hand-drawn) that could be read as a subtle reminder that the intimacy and poignant sincerity of these songs came about, in a sense, only through layers of artifice."

R. Kelly: Double Up review

"Yes, Kelly's familiar, almost cartoonishly overstated brand of sex-obsessed misogyny is as rampant here as his increasingly eccentric humor -- more so than ever, on both counts. So if you're not of a disposition to stomach the 40-year-old (whose still-pending child pornography trial was set to commence several months after the album's release, before being delayed yet again) boasting about his plot to seduce a pair of "freaky" first cousins for a ménage à trois (in the title track), or warning listeners to steer their girlfriends clear of his restlessly prowling libido (in "Flirt": "the moral of this story is 'cuff your chick'"), this could be a painfully long and humorless listen, or worse. But cut the man a little slack, at least on record -- or allow him the indulgence of his already comically blatant perversity (at least he doesn't present himself as someone who expects to be taken very seriously) and it's either an absurd explosion of standard R&B tropes (nightclub bangers, baby-makin' slow jams, overwrought breakup songs) or simply a treasure trove of questionable-taste comedy gold."

Lucky Soul: bio and The Great Unwanted review

"Pitched somewhere in between the Pipettes' campy, winking co-optation of 1960s girl group pop and soul and Camera Obscura's more understated, less mannered evocation of same, Greenwich sextet Lucky Soul's debut album represents an exemplary model for retro revivalism in the context of modern indie pop. It hardly shies away from its readily apparent stylistic touchstones -- the timeless, immaculate popcraft of Phil Spector and Motown; the Anglified sophistication of Dusty Springfield and Sandie Shaw -- but neither is it slavishly imitative. Crucially, the style never overwhelms the substance, which is to say that as extravagant as the lush, period-appropriate orchestrations get -- and they're pretty extravagant, with all the horns, handclaps, strings, and auxiliary percussion (bongos, tambourines, cowbells, castanets) one could hope for -- it's all in the service of some top-notch songwriting."

Candie Payne: I Wish I Could Have Loved You More review

"In a year when everything 1960s was hip again -- at least when it came to female-fronted semi-indie pop music -- from Amy Winehouse's stylized, Motown-appropriating crossover R&B to Lucky Soul and the Pipettes' peppy girl group revivalism to Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings' pedigreed retro soul, Liverpudlian singer Candie Payne emerged with a debut album that drew from an under-plundered side of that golden decade's pop landscape: the arch sophistication of British soulsters Dusty Springfield and Petula Clark and the cinematic decadence of Nancy Sinatra and Shirley Bassey. [...] Curiously, just as the scrupulously clean production approach nevertheless yields a beguilingly murky atmosphere, the profusion of '60s signifiers -- never obtrusive but always apparent -- winds up sounding unexpectedly modern, a potent cocktail of classic sounds with contemporary indie rock and electronica flourishes: the strangely familiar and the familiar made strange. For the most part, the songs themselves, while pleasant enough, don't quite hold up to the intriguing potential of their constituents, making this something of a victory of style over substance; an album that still sounds great with repeated listens, but doesn't necessarily grow much deeper."

Billie the Vision and the Dancers: bio and Where the Ocean Meets My Hand review

"Yes, the cutesy index is predictably high -- it's not irretrievably cloying (it doesn't quite reach I'm from Barcelona levels, for instance), but it's certainly pervasive enough to dissuade most anyone with a weak stomach for twee (you know who you are). Unless they're particularly good at ignoring lyrics: much of the cutesiness comes through in lead singer/songwriter Lars Lindquist's [(not Billie, though he is unmistakably a vision: a statuesque transvestite with blue eyes and shocking, fiery red-gold hair)] story-songs, most of which revolve around real or imagined encounters with fellow musicians -- the Pipettes, Erlend Øye, the Ark's Ola Salo, Jeff Buckley -- or possibly invented characters named Pablo and Lilly."

Nôze: bio and How to Dance review

"Parisian techno knuckleheads Nôze serve up a barrage of outlandish but propulsive dancefloor workouts on their second long-player.... How to Dance...offers at best a somewhat unconventional outlook on its titular concern. Its herky-jerky, mechanistic grooves -- slightly demented strains of what might broadly be termed minimal electro and microhouse, though they seem unlikely to concern themselves with subgenre niceties -- are just nervously funky enough for the floor, but they're unlikely to assuage the tentative.

...the gruff, muppet-like sprechtstimme of "Tulip Schnaps" and "Kitchen" is in a class unto itself, though in the latter case the goofy kitchen-seduction narrative and inane refrain are merely the jumping-off point for some psychotic overdriven synth and inside-the-piano mayhem."

The Ark: We Are The Ark, In Lust We Trust, State of the Ark, Prayer for the Weekend and Racing with the Rabbits reviews

"Like Scissor Sisters and the Darkness (both of whom the Ark predated by several years), they took considerable inspiration from the theatricality of '70s glam rock, especially in terms of visual styling, but musically too, with their gleaming guitar leads, frequent falsetto vocals, and liberal use of choral and orchestral accompaniment. [...] Sure, it all smacks of the ridiculous, and usually more than faintly. Salo acknowledges as much in "It Takes a Fool": "If you think I'm corny then it will not make me sorry; it's your right to laugh at me." In a sense, the Ark's willingness (and ability) to embrace that silliness, without sacrificing either their consummate musical artistry or their profoundly personal content -- their insistence on having it both ways -- is what makes their work so daring and so effective."

"Lyrically, In Lust We Trust moves beyond We Are the Ark's somewhat introspective focus on self-exploration and assertiveness for a more outward-looking but no less personal approach that effectively amounts to -- as the title suggests -- a political manifesto on sexual and romantic themes. As with Canada's similarly oriented Hidden Cameras (it's no coincidence both groups were featured on the soundtrack to John Cameron Mitchell's polysexual, controversy-mongering Shortbus), the sexual-personal is the socio-political for these guys, and even if they're not quite as graphic about it, they're certainly just as enthusiastic. Sometimes it's topical: "Father of a Son" is doubtless the highest-charting -- and most ebulliently self-vindicating -- song ever written about homosexual adoption rights, and if the gorgeous, unabashedly romantic "Disease" is truly not about AIDS (as Ola Salo, the band's openly bisexual lead singer and songwriter, has claimed), it sure sounds like it. [...] But as the spirited summing-up of the album's concluding track reminds us, even these commonplace romantic pursuits can take on a political significance: "The Most Radical Thing to Do," Salo croons, "is to love someone who loves you." If that's a sentiment you can get behind, and as long as you're amenable to hyper-meticulous, hyper-melodic post-ironic pomp-pop of a somewhat histrionic persuasion, it would be practically treasonous not to fall for this album."

"State of the Ark is a tour de force from start to finish, and one of the most perfectly-crafted pop or rock albums, Swedish or otherwise, to appear in the 2000s."

[also: "one of the finest pop albums of 2004, 2005, or 2006 -- depending on where you live and how closely you follow glitzy, chart-topping Scandinavian dance-rock"]