Review Round-Up: September 2015

Lou Barlow
Brace The Wave

Lou Barlow is a legit legend – if, as he’d probably prefer it, of the little-“l” variety – and every bit as much of an old-guard indie-rock lifer as Malkmus or Pollard or, say, his old nemesis J Mascis.  If he lacks much of those dudes’ cachet and practically any of their mystique, put it down to his unassuming, emphatically casual persona, as reflected by his preferred aesthetic modes, both aural and visual: low-key, low-strung, lower-case (and hand-written) – and, naturally, lo-fi.  Historically speaking, at least.  Brace the Wave, like the two previous Lou Barlow LPs, is a notably more polished and considered affair than his erstwhile Sentridoh offerings, though it captures a comparable sense of intimacy and immediacy.  (Elliott Smith’s Either/Or is a decent reference point, sonically and otherwise.)

Given the prolificacy (and, y’know, lenient self-editing) of Barlow’s home-taping decades, it’s telling that, even trailing his last album by six years (which saw the continuation of successful reunions for both Sebadoh and Dinosaur Jr.) this outing contains a mere nine songs.  Frill-free cover on down, this is a deliberately small record: trim, but hardly slight.  Each song boasts a strong, memorable melody, buoyed as always by Barlow’s familiarly resonant, expressive, pliable voice, and there’s an appreciable dynamic range within its generally understated, drum-free palette – from the poppy, burnished near-rocker “Boundaries” to the sweet, gentle acoustic picking of “Repeat.”  Early standout “Nerve” – one of many self-critical ruminations here, with Barlow staring down fifty, haunted by memory and sleeplessness – builds from a gruff, jagged off-kilter march into an unexpectedly lush, harmonized chorus: “What’s wrong with wanting more than I deserve?”  As usual, he’s selling himself short.  Go get it, Lou!

HeCTA
The Diet

Kurt Wagner – Lambchop mainbrain and inveterate Nashville weirdo – is not entirely a newbie to beat-based music (peep the early experiments and remixes cached on 2001’s Tools in the Dryer comp) but he’s probably one of the last people you’d expect to find making an, er, electronica album in 2015.  As opposed to, say, 1997, when basically everyone was messing around with dubious bleeps and drum loops.

HeCTA, Wagner’s amiably befuddled new project, evokes some of the what-the-hey knob-twiddling spirit of that happily bygone era, layering his familiarly laconic musings (and, in one instance, a sliced-up old Buddy Hackett routine) atop an assortment of dense, not especially subtle (nor, incidentally, very danceable) beatscapes.  It’s pretty weird.  Not necessarily any weirder than your average Lambchop record, although it is, for the most part, considerably less gorgeous.  (Perhaps tellingly, The Diet is best at its mellowest – the warm, poignant synth-pop of “Sympathy for the Auto Industry”; the almost Books-ish chamber-glitch “We Are Glistening.”)  Decidedly – and by design – a curiosity, but worth seeking out for those who enjoy such things.

originally published in Magnet Magazine

Yo La Tengo
[Indie Rock/Folk]
concert preview

Stuff Like That There (Matador) is our darling Yo La Tengo’s gentlest, sleepiest album; a significant distinction, considering stiff competition from 2013’s understated stunner Fade, 2003’s underrated Summer Sun, and 1990s Fakebook, the curveball fan-fave whose template – an acoustic, country-tinged smattering of covers, self-covers, and a couple new originals – they’re blatantly revisiting here.  Ira Kaplan has called this move the crassest thing they’ve ever done, but retracing familiar footsteps – complete with Fakebook-era guitarist Dave Schramm – makes it, if anything, all the more endearingly personal.  So lay back, relax, enjoy this “an evening with” business, just don’t get too cozy – they’ll totally bring the blazing feedback-solo epics next time around.  Right??

Bad Bad Hats/Mynabirds
[Indie Pop]
concert preview

Lovers Know (Saddle Creek), Laura Burhenn’s atypically glossy third Mynabirds album, marks a further stride away from her debut’s rootsy, gospel-tinged stylings in favor of familiarly synth-kissed mid-tempo/mid-budget mid-‘10s “indie”, while retaining her sturdy, world-weary anthemism.  Nobody’ll mistake her for Dusty Springfield this time out – Florence Welch is more likely.  I get a little Sundays/Blake Babies vibe, meanwhile, from Psychic Reader (Afternoon), the debut by Minneapolis’ Bad Bad Hats; its jangly sweetness tempered by pleasantly spiky power-pop moves and Kerry Alexander’s lightly raspy, Lana Del Rey-ish alto.

Thee Oh Sees
[Rock/Psych]
concert preview

Mutilator Defeated at Last (Castle Face), this year’s Oh Sees episode – they've reliably issued one album (or more) annually since 2006, last year’s putative “hiatus” notwithstanding – sure sounds victorious.  And it is indeed a triumph: one of the band’s strongest outings yet, despite (or perhaps due to) representing a significant retreat from their typically coarse, blistering garage-psych assault.  Fear not: John Dwyer and co. still bring the flamethrowing guitar-scrawl and regular bouts of gnarly, contortionist punk-scuzz – they’re just tempered here by atypical levels of moody, kraut-blues nuance and (relative) polish; even, on murky seven-minute centerpiece “Sticky Hulks,” some downright pretty organ playing.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor
[Post-Rock]
concert preview

These ineffable Quebecois cranks – the po-faced agitprop mystics with the goofball moniker – came juddering out of semi-retirement in 2010, still nine strong, the fury, passion and esoteric allure of their towering instrumental manifestations undimmed by the typical reunion rock hokum.  This year’s Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress (Constellation) is a continuous full-album suite that traverses familiar tropes (dramatically building, buzzing drones) and some curveballs (unexpectedly sanguine opener “Peasantry” lurches toward a drunken, folksy jam-along) in satisfying, if admittedly succinct fashion.  This is their first Philly show in over a decade not to sell out months in advance, if only because it now seems clear they’ll be around for awhile.

Sturgill Simpson
[Country/Psych]
concert preview

Sturgill Simpson’s gently genre-muddling 2014 breakthrough, Metamodern Sounds in Country Music (Thirty Tigers), introduced just a dropperful of psych into its earnestly reverential honky-tonk.  Lead single “Turtles,” despite flanger-dosed references to psilocybin and reptile aliens, sets a tone with its Elvis in Memphis guitars and Waylon Jennings twang that mostly hold sway throughout the spirited boot-scootin’ shuffles (plus one tear-stained synth-pop cover) that follow.  It’s not until the backmasking, cavernous reverb and resplendent fuzz-tones of the LP’s mini-epic closer kick in that things really start getting wooly and “meta-modern,” though one senses that might happen more quickly in a live context.

Jenny Hval
[Experimental/Art-Pop]
concert preview

This year’s Fringe Festival is bringing us several opportunities to experience challenging, high-concept Norwegians, and Jenny Hval should fit right in.  Even more than her previous work (notably 2012’s mini-breakthrough Innocence is Kinky), the recent Apocalpyse, Girl (Sacred Bones) offers an exquisite juxtaposition of pleasure and discomfort, with Hval’s airy voice as likely to whisper discomfortable, deadpan semi-absurdities – poetic pokes at political, gender-troubled and/or bodily squirminess – as it is to soar sirenically atop serene, transporting art-pop shimmer. 

Madonna
[Pop]
concert preview

What is to be said?  In her words: bitch, she’s Madonna.  What exactly that means in 2015 is a subject explored exhaustively, if hardly conclusively, across the twenty-five or so tracks comprising Rebel Heart (Live Nation/Interscope)’s bewildering assortment of editions.  It’s an archetypically sprawling, messy affair, encompassing ballads and bangers, glorious throwback house-pop and edgy, almost-au-courant dubstep twerks, heartfelt triumph and utterly embarrassing silliness, familiar themes (sex, religion, rinse, repeat) and uncommon stabs at introspection – all adding up to easily her most vital work in a decade.

The Internet
[R&B/Hip-Hop/Soul]
concert preview

The Internet started out as an Odd Future satellite side-project – initially, the low-key duo of singer-songwriter Syd the Kid and producer Matt Martians; now, as of their excellent third album Ego Death (Odd Future/Columbia), a fully operational, delectably funky live band – but their output pointedly lacks the confrontationalism – or, indeed, ego – of that collective.  Rather, they emanate a graciously grooving, loosely jazzy, distinctly Soulquarian vibe – Syd’s airy, mellifluous voice, in particular, is deeply reminiscent of Jill Scott.  So Philly should know just how to get down.

Earl Sweatshirt
[Hip-Hop]
concert preview

He couldn’t really spell it any more clearly: the title I Don’t Like Shit I Don’t Go Outside (Columbia), slapped against a flat, tattered black field, makes for a pointedly un-enticing cover image, and the contents of the latest full-length from Odd Future’s most gnomic member – a one-time prodigy turned bitter, disillusioned veteran at age 21 – follow suit.  It’s a deeply dour, insular affair, an old-school-style half hour/ten tracks of little but bleakly minimalist post-El-P beats (mostly self-produced) and Sweatshirt’s dogged, deliberate, ticked-off rhyming.

Recondite
[House]
concert preview

The word that Germany’s Lorenz Brenner chose for his production alias – one I personally will never encounter without hearing Gang Starr’s Guru discuss Thelonious Monk, though that’s another matter – means “abstruse” or “little-known.”  It’s a nifty name, sure, but not especially applicable to his music, which is decidedly straight-ahead, if particularly elegant minimal tech-house, garnished with warmly seductive bass tones (as on his recent Iffy LP (Innervisions) –another top-notch adjective) or subtle tweaks of 303 (per 2012’s breakthrough On Acid.)  Nor, at least in certain circles, does it apply to the man himself, considering that scene-defining electronica website Resident Advisor named him as the most popular live act of 2014.

Lindstrøm
[Space Disco]
concert preview

His buddy Todd Terje may get all the shine these days, but Hans-Peter Lindstrøm remains the original impishly irreverent Norwegian cosmic synthesizer-disco maestro.  Ever since his excellent, wildly divergent 2012 LPs – the concise, scintillating dancefloor bomb Smalhans and the sprawling, demented screwball-prog fantasia Six Cups of Rebel – his work has been increasingly bifurcated, and his 2015 output follows suit: a couple majestically buoyant dance-pop singles with female vocalists – Maya Vik’s “YMD (Young Michael Douglas)” and piano-house stomper “Home Tonight” – plus the utterly loopy, tripped-out Todd Rundgren collaboration Runddans.  Who knows which version of Lindstrøm we’ll get tonight; either way, cosmic euphoria is a pretty safe bet.

The Orb
[Electronic]
concert preview

For anyone who may have lost the signal sometime in the quarter-century since Dr. Alex Paterson first kinda-sorta launched the concept of ambient house: yes, the Orb are still orbiting; still blithely bouncing around the cosmos; still grooving along in their lush, trippy, gently whimsical fashion.  And they may quite well still be doing so 688 years hence.  Or such seems to be the promise of Moonbuilding 2703 AD (Kompakt) – somehow, improbably, the outfit’s first overtly moon-oriented LP – whose four typically languorous, extended bliss-outs, apart from the titular trip-hoppy funk-a-thon, mine an enjoyably fluid, slowly-morphing minimal techno vein.

Optimo
[Dance/DJ]
concert preview

It’s been ten years since JD Twitch and JG Wilkes devised the mashup-era apotheosis that was their brazenly eclectic, almost obnoxiously tasteful How To Kill The DJ – a psychedelic/techno/post-punk/worldbeat whirlwind that remains, for what it’s worth, easily the highest-rated DJ mix in Pitchfork’s cache – and five since the shuttering of their storied, eponymous Glasgow club night.  But while times have changed and tastes have streamlined, the duo’s reputation as adventurous, dependably unpredictable party-starters hasn’t waned.

originally published in Philadelphia City Paper

Blanck Mass
[Electronic/Noise/Dance]
concert preview

Blanck Mass, a.k.a. Benjamin John Power (an exceptionally apt surname), is only one half of Fuck Buttons, but by pretty much any other measure – drama, magnificence, sheer intensity – his music readily equals that of his better-known electro-noise project.  Plus it’s a good bit easier to dance to.  Terrifying and exhilarating in equal measure, Power’s body-troubled concept-opus Dumb Flesh (Sacred Bones) is a miasma of throbbing, towering industrial grooves; writhing sheets of cyborg sound wrapped around thunderously funky drums, with squealing, distended melodies that splice the difference between disco-diva wails and haunted-house screams.

originally intended for publication in Philadelphia City Paper, until the show was cancelled.

Cups To The Stars: 2013 in Review – The Songs

I've been reviewing 2013 for quite a while now.  I wrote my first for-publication Best of 2013 albums list (for Magnet) back in October; then another, substantially different one (for City Paper) in early December.  I (just) missed the Pazz'n'Jop deadline (again), but anyway my list has again seen more fluctuation and rejiggering since then.

Basically it's either been a highly competitive year for albums or a highly confusing one – or possibly both: sometimes it's hard to tell if all the reshuffling is due to there being a ton of really strong albums vying for the spots, or a dearth of albums strong enough to really assert their place.  In other words, 2013 was definitely not a 2012 or a 2010 (i.e. a year with a huge, unassailable top 5+ – or possibly just a year with a new Hot Chip album), but it wasn't exactly a 2011 (lower key, smaller scale, off-cycle) either.  Or, maybe it was in terms of absolute great greats: ultimately, nothing stood out as an unmitigated 10/10; a fully satisfying #1 – Kacey Musgraves has held steady in that spot for a while, but it feels a bit like a default, and in any case it's not really representative of my actual year in listening.

Anyhow, there were unquestionably many really good albums that came out last year – enough that I've been inspired to make my list relatively long-form.  I've listed 24 of them below in the next entry, with some commentary (including my blurbs from the CP list), and you can find a whole bunch more over on the sidebar: numbered up to 100, just for fun, and subject to revision whenever I feel bored.  (oh yeah – and I totally reserve the right to list BEYONCÉ in 2014.)  (Actually, screw that...while I'm being revisionist anyway I'm sneaking it in now...no higher than #25 though.  Don't feel like search for any more jpgs plus I'm honestly not that sold on it.  Though maybe I'll live eat those words.)

First though: some songs.  2013 was an exceptionally good year for songs (or, if you like, tracks), but more specifically it was a truly great year for anthems.  Not every song on the list below was even a single, and many that were didn't exactly permeate broader consciousness (even on an indie level) to the extent that plenty of other great, probably equally list-worthy hits – by folks like Daft Punk, Disclosure, Drake, Haim [**big ups especially to the Lindstrøm remix of "Forever"**], Skye Ferreira, Paramore, Robin Thicke, Miguel [er, as featured by Mariah Carey and Janelle Monae] and Rhye [a few year-of-release quibbles there] – but almost every one of them feels, in its own way, powerfully, personally and specifically anthemic.  And, for sure, none more so than this one:

1. Neko Case: "Man"

"Night Still Comes" was the instantly familiar, deftly melodic, perfectly formed gospel-soul stunner that already felt like a pre-ordained cozy campfire classic from the first time we heard it (in my case, live at WilcoFest.)  "Nearly Midnight, Honolulu" was the quietly staggering, heart-rending emotional centerpiece whose startlingly unadorned a cappella form precisely matched the stark, searing poignancy of its content.  But there was nothing on The Worse It Gets, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You that compared to "Man."

Maybe it's partly because I heard it several months before the rest of the album, but "Man" stands defiantly apart from the record surrounding it – and really, from Case's entire career.  (Her work with the New Pornographers only grudgingly excepted, because this feels like something else, something emphatically more forceful, even if it certainly takes a few pages from that book.)  It has a directness, a thundering force – like an electric jolt – that she's never really attempted otherwise, and it comes across with an unambiguous, surging certainty – those drums, those cymbals, the teeth-grinding violence of guitars on guitars on guitars – that's very tempting to equate with simplicity.

But as with the brilliant, seemingly baldly self-explanatory lyrics; even given the delicious, pivotal reveal that – no, it's not about gender, and she's not playing a role this time: "Man" is just what kind of animal she is – I get the sense that there's still a little more going on here than she's quite letting on; some evasion or elision in the pronouns and syntax.  (That's the animal part, maybe: just because Neko is, like all of us, a man, doesn't mean she's not still as mysterious as any other beast)  Still, who cares what kind of sense it makes or doesn't; there were few more inexplicably desirable states of being in 2013 than "dipshit drunk on pink perfume," and few assertions more satisfying or self-evident than the Neko-logical corollary to such a situation: "I AM THE MAN IN THE FUCKING MOON"

2. Classixx ft. Nancy Whang: "All You're Waiting For"

In which Classixx – two L.A. electro-scene gadabouts with a handful of quite good remixes to their credit, and little else to speak of – suddenly, shockingly live up to their name, x's and all.  "All You're Waiting For" came a title that was hard to take seriously – oh sure, another synthy, disco-ey burst of upbeat electro-dance blog fodder is exactly what we've been missing – but somehow became self-fulfilling, and undeniable.  This track does absolutely nothing new, but it does absolutely everything it needs to do.  It is a 100% pure, clinical-grade distillation of the ever-beguiling but so often lackluster 21st century dance/pop/house/electro axis – that nebulously shiny, blandly stylish domain of stock neon visuals and endless goofily-named remixers.  Every so often, though, somebody just gets it right.

It doesn't hurt that they enlisted Nancy Whang, who for reasons I have never really been able to understand, let alone articulate, is pretty the undisputed queen of this stuff.  What she does here is not much different from what she's done in the past for the likes of Soulwax, Juan MacLean and LCD Soundsystem (and again on a forthcoming banger from DFA also-ran Shit Robot), which is...not much, really.  Sing the words.  Maybe her voice just functions like a sort of seal of authenticity by this point.  But it does the trick – managing to invest some legitimate drama into the most banal lyrical imagery imaginable ("...got my bags packed, waiting on the driver curbside...")  On the other hand, the synths – inexplicably both crisp and pillowy – have the whole job pretty much sewn up before her voice even enters the scene.

3. D E N A: "Cash, Diamond Rings, Swimming Pools"

Nobody heard this.  Nobody cares about Kitsuné any more (if they ever did), which is only fair because most of what they put out really isn't very interesting.  But somebody should really start paying attention to D E N A, or Dena, or however she wants us to write it, because she has mad swagger like M.I.A. back in '05 and because this song is amazing, hilarious both conceptually and musically (that doorbell sample?!? – and that's not even mentioning the video) but without actually seeming like a joke, brilliantly deadpan, and also extremely banging.  And the EP has a bunch of really solid remixes on it too.  I like how, despite the titular mantra, she seems to be interested in the swimming pools far more than the other two items.  And not even because she's hot; most of the song is about how it's too cold in Berlin (and/or Bulgaria) and she'd rather be anywhere else.  I also like how it's a direct appeal to the listener: "If you're listening to this in a hot country, please come rescue me."  If you have a swimming pool, she promises "then we can be hanging."  Hey Dena, I've got a three foot deep inflatable one... does that count?

4. Caitlin Rose: "Menagerie"

Another head-scratcher of a non-hit (indeed, non-single), and this was on an album some people actually heard (and liked.)  I found the bulk of The Stand-In to be fine: well-produced but generally unexciting tasteful, all-purpose Americana.  But this song – for sure, the most power-pop thing on the record, almost but not quite to the point of being unrepresentative – hit me hard the first time I heard it (live at South by Southwest, which was also my first exposure to Caitlin Rose period) and I've been smitten ever since.  It's got a terrific thumping, thundering, shimmering production job (love that slightly grimey electric piano – really the texture of the whole thing are just great), the kind of riff that you can't imagine not having been around forever, and a brilliantly stinging kiss-off of a lyric built around a nicely understated Tennessee Williams allusion.  Simply said: a beautiful thing.

5. Little Daylight: "Overdose"

Another song I first heard at SXSW; more great thumping and thundering; another bone-simple but beautifully-deployed riff.  This is from the new band/project of my high school friend Nicole, formerly of Xylos, and while I still haven't heard much else they've done (and sadly their tour with the stacked line-up of Charli XCX and Kitten got reshuffled, although I did therefore get introduced to LIZ) but they have been playing shows with Bastille, which seems to augur well for their future.

Sort of like the Classixx track, this feels like an archetypal, Platonic ideal of a certain stripe of synthy, catchy, kind of gleefully dumb indie-pop.  (Particularly the oh-oh-ohs doubling the synth riff.)  And it is pretty dumb.  But it works.  What really makes it is how the arrangement keeps switching around to highlight different parts and keep things fresh, and especially the chorus that breaks down to just handclaps and funky bassline.  Plus the kind of unnecessarily epic drums, which push it into anthemic territory and make it especially great for biking to.

6. Dungeonesse: "Soon"

'90s-urban revival-core synth-pop; a semi-slow/sad ballad jam but still with a funky breakbeat, almost freestyle groove.  This one's really all about the vocals, particularly the floaty, self-harmonizing bits when the beat drops out.  Just gorgeous.  Also heartbreaking, in a way that goes beyond standard break-up song tropes ("half a love's not enough for the two of us to live on...soon we've gotta give it up.")  Sort of puts me in mind of Kylie/José's "Hand on Your Heart," another aching, reluctant plug-pulling.  Plus Jenn Wasner sounds so much like Tracey Thorn here and I'm just always gonna be a sucker for that.

7. Chvrches: "Gun"

Could have gone with any of several Chvrches jams really, but this is the first one that really got to me, and besides the other big singles actually came out last year, right?  (Was confused about why they were on the P4k list.)  Everything about this is so perfectly chiseled into place, every build-up and break back down (maybe my favorite is the live-sounding snare drums in the ramp-up to the chorus, as if all the synth instruments in the world just weren't enough to convey the requisite urgency.)  I keep thinking I've gotten sick of it – in some ways it is less sonically/structurally inventive/more pro forma synth-pop than some of their other hits – but then I try biking to it again and I can't help but smile.

8. Cayucas: "High School Lover"

Another big smiler.  More kinda-dumb but effective indie pop.  Sweet bassline, interesting percussion groove, understated surf chords and overall beachy vibe, and I like the syncopated vocal rhythm, with each line relaxed so far behind the beat so that it almost wraps around to the next bar, especially in the chorus.  Which is also really fun to sing.  They probably could have come up with something more interesting to finish it off than just repeating  the title phrase a bunch of times – also, the guy's voice is not the greatest – but whatever.

9. Lindstrøm & Todd Terje: "Lanzarote"


Comedy single of the year!  Travel agency commercial of the millennium!  (And the most durable, versatile "insert-your-own" 2013 running joke between me and E, applicable basically any time one of us mentions "going" anywhere.)  Also, how handy that it comes with a bonus seven minutes of typically immaculate LinsTerje synth-disco squiggles and arpeggios and crazy left-field harmonic shifts tacked on to the beginning.  They had to put that part first because otherwise they would have just kept on naming four-syllable destinations for all eternity, making each one sound more enticing than the last (...Santa Barbara! ...Mississippi!  ...North Dakota!  ...Mogadishu!  ...Sarajevo!  hmm...Purgatory!)

10. Veronica Falls: "Waiting For Something To Happen"

"Everybody's crazy – what's your excuse, baby?"  I probably unfairly underrated this album when it came out.  Yes, it's probably true that all the songs sound more or less the same.  But if they all sound like this, how is that really cause for complaint?

11. Vampire Weekend: "Unbelievers" 

Was this the most boring, most boilerplate-VWs track on Modern Vampires of the City?  Maybe so... at least it felt like the simplest, most straight-ahead pop song.  Which may be why it's the one that ultimately did the most for me.  ("Obvious Bicycle" a close second, just because it's so darn pretty.)  I'm all for musical ambition, but give me three chords, a largely repetitive, ambivalent lyric about religious relativism, and a surprise incursion of vaguely Celtic-sounding pipes and I'm a happy guy.  Also, more people should take inspiration from Buddy Holly generally (and "Peggy Sue" specifically.)  Oddly, the usually annoying and off-the-mark Paul Simon comparisons feel almost appropriate here.

12. Tegan & Sara: "Now I'm All Messed Up"

Gotta love back-up vocals that argue with (and/or straight-up contradict) the lead singer.  See also: "Shame" by Randy Newman; "Hypnotised" by Aberfeldy.

13. Kacey Musgraves: "Follow Your Arrow"

I think my favorite part is the "Or don't!" in the first chorus: wherein she encourages people whose their hearts tell them not to smoke pot to just go right ahead and not smoke pot.

14. Superchunk: "Me & You & Jackie Mittoo"

This feels like the first rock song on this list.  That may or may not be true but anyway this is maybe the purest rock'n'roll song of the year, in spirit and in substance.  So much indie-punk everyband evocation crammed into two short, sweet minutes – crammed into the back of the van, feet on the dash, half an hour at the record exchange..  I feel like it could have been even shorter though; what's all this business about Jackie Mittoo?

15. My Bloody Valentine: "New You"

2013: wherein I tried in vain to take away the pain of being a Loveless unbeliever, by seeing if I could get into MBV's follow-up record instead.  results: decidedly mixed.  but this swoony floaty gooey loveliness is clearly the best song Stereolab never made.

honorable mention:

Bibio: "À Tout à l'Heure"

Bleeding Rainbow: "Waking Dream"

Neko Case: "Nearly Midnight, Honolulu"

Foxygen: "San Francisco"

Kalabrese: "Purple Rose"

Lucius: "Tempest"
Paramore: "Still Into You"

Saint Rich: "Young Vultures"

Sophie: "Bipp"

Stornoway: "The Bigger Picture"

John Wizards: "iYongwe"

2012 Review Round-Up: November

it's december! here's the plan: as i work my way toward year-end musical festivities (listing! mixing! feasting!), i'm rounding up all (or nearly all) of my writerly output from 2012 with a series of posts, one per day, one for each month, over the next eleven (or twelve?) days. or bust!

now for november...home stretch...lotsa good stuff here, and hey look who's back already!

Lindstrøm
Smalhans

Hans-Peter Lindstrøm threw devotees of his shimmering cosmic disco productions for a loop in early 2012 with the release of Six Cups of Rebel, a wild and wooly joyride through nutty, prog-flavored excess – complete with bizarro cartoon voices – that was by turns campy, grotesque and sublimely gorgeous. It earned a swift and not entirely undeserved appraisal as Lindstrøm's "difficult" third album (not that his earlier work – say, the epic peregrinations of 2008's exalted Where You Go I Go Too – made for instantly digestible listening either.) It also set up a somewhat pat preordained narrative for Smalhans – which was recorded immediately after Cups and released a mere nine months later – as a much-needed back-to-basics corrective. It's certainly true that there's something of a pendulum swing in effect here, but it's also reductive (and unfairly dismissive of the extraordinary Cups) to label this a simple return to form. For one thing, this is almost equally foreign territory for the producer, who has never before turned his hand to dancefloor material quite this focused and streamlined, especially in such a straightforward presentation: the six cuts on Smalhans, each named for a traditional Norwegian foodstuff (from sausage to waffles), each sitting tidily within the four to six minute range, all set up their groove (florid disco; thumpy tech-funk) and ride it out, snugly and surely. At the same time, while it's hardly as overtly eccentric, there's nearly as much complexity, waggish humor and dizzying invention on display here as on Cups, made all the more dazzling by how neatly it fits into such a tight framework. The album was mixed by Lindstrøm's pal and countryman Todd Terje (who also created extended single mixes for several Smalhans tunes), and there are clear parallels with Terje's recent, highly melodic analog-synth fantasias like "Raygsh" and "Inspector Norse" – but there's really nobody out there who shares Lindstrøm's compositional knack for combining melody and misdirection; layering on the time-stretched hemiolas and side-stepping modulations, cycling through keys and textures with a masterful handle on tension and release. "Vōs-Sākō-Rv," in particular, stretches this approach to wonderfully delirious extremes, with each circuitous, contrapuntal build-up growing more daringly suspended than the last until a final, impossibly constrained moment of tension lunges back to earth with two massive snare thwacks. While each of these six pieces adds its own kernel of flavor – from the moody, incrementally shifting shuffle of "Lāmm-Ęl-Āār" to the triumphal, heaven-seeking "Vā-Flę-R" – and each is more than satisfying as a stand-alone bit of celestial dance euphoria, Smalhans is, like its predecessors, ultimately its own complete, unified statement; one that is, in its deceptively humble way, as ambitious and assured as anything he's done.

Bay Blue
s/t

For a while there, around the turn of the millennium, you could've built a small fortress (or at least a swanky bachelor pad) out of all the jazzy sample-based cut-up records filling record bins, from French House types like DJ Cam and St. Germain to Madlib's Yesterdays New Quintet, plus what seemed like half of the Ninja Tune stable (Mr. Scruff, DJ Food.) But it's not an aesthetic or approach that was getting much play a decade later on, which is partly why Bay Blue – the eponymous debut of Oakland-based producer Matt Chang (who's previously provided beats for Sole and Pedestrian, and collaborated with Sixtoo, under the moniker Matth) – is such a refreshing delight. Essentially doing for jazz what Ninja Tuner Kid Koala did for the blues on his similarly time-out-of-joint 2012 release, Twelve-Bit Blues, Chang carefully constructs wholly new compositions out of untold dozens of samples. And while his hip-hop background shines through on occasion with a touch of sly boom-bap, the focus is on squarely on instrumental interplay, which is organic and improvisatory enough (in feeling, at least) that Bay Blue can be classified as a "proper" jazz record about as easily as it can be called anything else. It's hardly beholden to any one era or style, spanning Frankensteined be-bop ("Don't Clap On The One And The Three"), recombinant Dixieland ("Postcard From New Orleans") and throwback Cuban jazz (the roiling "Ulises Takes The Silent Cinema By Storm"), along with the growling, Mingus-like "Take It Back Time" – maybe the most impressive thing here – and the musty, cinematic 78 RPM swing of "To The Cornerstore," which recalls early-period Daedelus at his dandiest. "Only A Sin If You Lose" tops a bossa groove with fluid guitar filligree and playfully mismatched vocal snippets, cut-and-pasted into a light-hearted gambling blues, while the seemingly more straightforward vocal cut "Fish Fried, Birds Blue" welds some vaguely unsettling field recordings onto a straight-ahead country blues stomp, complete with wailing harp. And a few pieces deviate substantially from the general jazz/blues template, landing closer to the winsome, organic IDM of ISAN or Plone ("Bumpin' in A Quiet Way"; the banjo-led folk-hop of "Fundamentals.") It'd be easy for a record like this to succumb to formula or gimmickry, especially given Chang's somewhat tokenist approach ("the Latin one," "the New Orleans one," etc.), but there's enough evident craft and inventiveness on display here – not to mention humor and charm – that Bay Blue stands as far more than a retro-flavored bauble, the album's bland, unconvincing "Blue Note-style" cover art notwithstanding.
originally published at AllMusic.com

Pop Levi
Medicine

"Sound is my first love!" proclaims future-retro space-monkey Pop Levi amid gyrating laserbeam synths and beefy acoustic chugging, and a quick 'n' dirty listen to Medicine's impeccably manicured rock'n'roll mess – whip-tight and righteously ragged in all the right spots, with a zippy sprinkle-topping of digital age mixing tricks – will attest that his passion ain't misplaced, though I've gotta divulge that he's getting some pretty heavy action on the side from Swagger and Groove. A return to the guitar-stroking glam-bam glory of Pop's debut after the crisper plasticine pastures of 2008's (hideously overlooked) Never Never Love, album number three bursts out the gate with the feverish wail and cheerleader-stomp drumbeat of demented dance-craze "Strawberry Shake," and pretty much keeps its pedal to the hard-strutting, hip-swinging boogie from there on out. There's a bit of a mid-album lull, with lower-octane tracks flanking the sole, merely decent ballad (a shame, as he's usually pretty good at them), but on the whole this is the fuzz-popping party-starting pan-galactic prescription you forgot to remember you were waiting for. [7.5/10]

Emeralds
Just To Feel Anything

To reference an earlier Emeralds album (their Editions Mego debut, albeit merely one of the dozen or so they issued between 2006-2010): What Happened? It's not that the Cleveland trio have made any specific, overwhelming alterations to their basic approach or well-established timbral palette – well, except the sudden preponderance of drum machines, which populate over half of these forty-two minutes, generally undergirding the sort of burbling Gavin Russom/Tangerine Dream arpeggiations introduced on 2010's Does It Look Like I'm Here? – but the sheer quantity of musical content, the amount of variation within a given track, is – by their standards – staggering. It's like Emeralds exploded, leaving shiny little shards all over everyplace. "Adrenochrome" is, hitherto unthinkably, actually aptly named; tense, archetypal chase-scene music featuring Mark McGuire's searing guitar leads, while the title track simply sparkles – the brightest, poppiest and most vital thing they've done, perhaps best described as chiptune Balearica (but better than that sounds.) Even the more characteristically droning, beatless pieces cover considerable ground in their collective sixteen-ish minutes. They'd probably appreciate me saying this: it's easily Emerald's least utilitarian album yet. [7.5] originally published in Magnet Magazine

Diamond Rings
Free Dimensional
[Pop]

T-dot pop-bot (and part-time punk) John O'Regan, aka Diamond Rings – he of the burnished baritone and rainbow eye-makeup – ups the glam and the gloss (and occasionally the gothiness) for his second album, Free Dimensional (Astralwerks), and it's probably the feel-good-est thing I've heard all year. Between Robynesque rapping, black-leather-jacket Cars guitars, and synthesizer settings stuck fast on Depeche mode, he gives us party anthems, empowerment anthems and aw-shucks sweetie-pie love anthems, plus, in "Day and Night," a pop-dance counting rhyme that ranks up there with Bill Haley, Feist and Lou Bega.

The Crystal Ark
s/t
[Dance/Electronic]

LCD Soundsystem may be dead, but DFA dances on. The label's latest party platter, The Crystal Ark, is the full-length debut from synth wizard/LCD mainstay Gavin Russom's new-ish project alongside artist-singer Viva Ruiz: an adventurous, bilingual punkfunk fiesta spiked with oscillator weirdness, tribal flourishes and trippy disco. There's a lot going on in these grooves, which share a loose, sprawling multi-culti flavor all their own, even when they also have a curious tendency to make you want to sing "Us V. Them" on top of them.

Ryan Leslie
Les Is More
[Hip-Hop/R&B]

Ryan Leslie wants to be Kanye so hard. The photogenic producer-turned-singer-turned-(evidently)-rapper fills Les is More (released via his own absurdly-named NextSelection Lifestyle Group) with a determined mixture of Watch the Throne-style conspicuous consumption (dubiously convincing, although he can certainly name lots of designers) with 808s and Heartbreak's wounded defiance and dopey hashtag flow (when not aping a higher-voiced, PG-13 Rick Ross) atop fully serviceable lite-funk and silky pop-R&B. Boastfully pretentious though he is, he can hardly touch Yeezy's supreme ego-eccentricity – which just might make him the game's most extravagantly delusional self-promoter.

Brandy
Two Eleven
[R&B]

Melisma is one thing, but Brandy's voice is really all about texture: luscious and creamy, with just the slightest, tangy hint of grit. It's a subtle thing, and almost unfailingly sublime. With a current R&B climate perhaps friendlier than usual to her perennial brand of moody, mature mid-tempo jams, Two Eleven (RCA) offers an especially vibrant set of songs (including one Frank Ocean writing credit); feistier than 2008's gorgeous and ignored Human, that navigates between classic and contemporary, from full-throated balladry to Timbaland-style bangers (and even a dodgy Chris Brown feature) without ever really pandering.

Taylor Swift
Red
[Pop]

Taylor Swift is (feeling) 22, and playing dress-up. Her fourth album tries on Unforgettable Fire-with-banjos anthemics; a couple slices of prime, Max Martin-guided girl-pop; a yawny Snow Patrol duet-ballad; even T-Swizz goes dubstep (for a few seconds.) Red (Big Machine) is too long by half, bogged down by weepy strummers that are neither as catchy nor personal as the ones she wrote at 15 (and it misses a fine opportunity to rhyme "stay stay stay" with "okay, Tay-Tay") but it skirts – at all costs – the mortal pop sin of being boring.

El Perro Del Mar
Pale Fire
[Indie/Pop]

Much like her pal and countrywoman Victoria Bergsman (Taken By Trees), El Perro Del Mar's Sarah Assbring has taken to cushioning her frail melancholy with warmly gauzy synthetics and surprisingly forward, clubby grooves. Which isn't to say that you can necessarily dance to all (or even most) of Pale Fire (Control Group), but its swaying soft-touch house, trip-hop and Swedish reggae grooves definitely help coax an unprecedented fullness and sensuality from the waifish singer, and it's a great look – best embodied on "Walk On By," the album's luscious, Massive Attack-cribbing high point.

Bat For Lashes
The Haunted Man
[Pop/Witchcraft]

We've had more Kate Bush-alikes than you can wave a wand at, from Tori to Florence, but none have matched the art-pop faerie queen's emotional complexity and sonic expanse quite like Bat for Lashes' Natasha Khan. The Haunted Man (Capitol), her typically ambitious third outing, finds Khan and a cast of dozens enacting an opulent pageant of windswept pagan rituals, dark electro-gilded reveries, and heart-stoppingly majestic ballads; it's a big-screen sweep that's at once a richly wrought and seductively intimate.


Brian Eno
Lux
[Ambient]

Not many genres can legitimately claim to have been invented by a single person, but Ambient comes close. Lux (Warp) – seventy-five reverberant minutes of discrete (and discreet) notes that arrive and linger, swell and recede in variable, pleasingly unpremeditated-seeming fashion – is a strong reminder that Brian Eno's contributions to the field go well beyond mere conceptualization, to the point of mastery. "Lux" means light, of course, and very aptly so, but here it also seems to connote luxury: despite its modest means, this music manages to feel gossamer, almost insubstantial, and yet somehow sumptuous.

Tim Maia
World Psychedelic Classics 4: The Existential Soul of Tim Maia: Nobody Can Live Forever
[Soul/Funk/Brazilian]

With The Existential Soul of Tim Maia: Nobody Can Live Forever, Luaka Bop Records revives their intermittent World Psychedelic Classics series in tremendously groovy fashion, paying tribute to a Brazilian icon who was his country's answer to Sly Stone in more ways than one. (Think acid, though, rather than cocaine.) Culled from his extensive 1970s output but leaning heavily on the two volume Racional – cult albums in a very literal sense – this comp is bursting with righteous, Tropicalia-infused soul and searing organ-led funk, sung – in both English and Portuguese – with varying degrees of coherence but unflagging, infectious sincerity.

Andy Stott
Luxury Problems
[Electronic]

With a spaciousness and sophistication recalling fellow 2011 breakout producer (and b&w photography enthusiast) Nicolas Jaar, Andy Stott's Luxury Problems (Modern Love) is subtle enough to make a fine coffee-table soundtrack. But its grayscale expanse also invites deeper, not-so-easy listening; evoking a burnt-out, post-industrial landscape in concrete slabs of foreboding, low-BPM house; torpid dub techno; ambient field recordings and a stray drum'n'bass detour. The chill is tempered, just slightly, by the vocal presence of Alison Skidmore (Stott's former piano teacher), ranging from sultry to airily operatic; forlorn solitude to thrumming, Julianna Barwick-like layering.

Ital Tek
[Electronic]
concert preview

Engaged in a similar sort of naggingly diffuse thinking-feller's future-bass to his Planet Mu peers Machinedrum and Kuedo, Brighton beatsmith Alan Myson prolongs the label's love affair with the buzzed-up beat-rates and jittery micro-loops of Chicago footwork on his third full-length as Ital Tek, the almost-aptly named Nebula Dance. Almost, because while Myson certainly knows from nebulous, swaddling these tracks in lush yet mildly ominous grayscale soft-synths, his dedication to dance in its less abstract, more terrestrial form – the lowly business of working actual feet – seems slightly more contingent. When he does deign to let it bump – with flecks of electro typically filtered through the ragga end of jungle and/or hints of Ninja Tune-style turntablism – it becomes a dance of both cerebral and corporeal dimensions.

Matthew Dear
[Electronic/Pop]
concert preview

Emerging inconclusively from the grime and sleaze of 2010's nightmarish Black City, Matthew Dear blazes a funny kind of light on Beams (Ghostly International), circling back to the elliptically alluring avant-pop of 2007's Asa Breed while sinking ever deeper into mechanistic murk and terse, Talking Heads-y art-funk. The one-time microhouse poster boy's fifth full-length opens in aberrantly sunny fashion: a burbling pseudo-tropical groove, complete with samba whistles – but just as you're thinking he could probably give this a few tweaks, sell it to Rihanna and retire early, in comes that ineffable, dead-eyed monotone – Dear's distinctive double-tracked creepy crooning – intoning characteristically inscrutable-yet-unsettling couplets, as if to underscore the unique if rather uncomfortable interstice he's carved out for himself between techno and pop, and assert that he'll hardly be relinquishing it anytime soon.

Icona Pop
[Pop]
concert preview

Several singles in, 90s bitches Aino Jawo and Caroline Hjelt exploded into heavy rotation this summer with the unstoppable, Charli XCX-penned "I Love It," which might be the most euphoric break-up song of all time: a sawtooth sugar-rush shout-along that's too busy reveling in reckless release to even bother sounding spiteful. (The titular "it" has no referent more specific than the liberation of crashing your car into a bridge. Not that it needs one. I don't care!) Excepting the screechy bro-step (sis-step?) of "Ready for the Weekend," The Iconic EP (Atlantic/Big Beat) mostly finds the Swedish duo displaying a touch more subtlety – not that that's saying much – while remaining just as ingratiating. Touchstones include The Knife's vocal warpage and burbly electro-tropicalia and Robyn's bubble-disco populism, but the Nordic-pop princess whose spirit they most evoke is the stylishly sassy, too-long-absent Annie.

Men Without Hats
[Pop/Dance]
concert preview

They may be most readily associated with the frolicking dwarf jester of "The Safety Dance" video, but Men Without Hats were, at least, two-hit wonders (remember "Pop Goes The Word"? It will become fleetingly relevant again in approximately one month!) Granted, there probably weren't many clamoring for the Canadian synth-poppers' resurgence, but that's part of what makes delightfully superfluous Love In The Age Of War (Cobraside) – the product of the band's second "reunion" in twenty years (with frontman Ivan Doroschuk the sole original member) – such an unexpected blast. For all the '80s-rehashing of our young century, MøH's trademark sound – those chintzy, ultra-precise synths; dogmatically rigid new-wave rhythms; Doroschuk's vehement, comically stern delivery – remains instantly recognizable and emphatically their own.

R. Kelly
[R&B]
concert preview

Robert Kelly's had a productive 2012: issuing his spectacularly-titled memoir (Soula Coaster: The Diary of Me) in June; providing the inspired opening to Kanye's otherwise spotty posse record and, most recently, re-upping his tireless Trapped in the Closet saga for a promised eighteen new episodes. Meanwhile, Write Me Back (RCA), his twelfth album in twenty years, continued the retro-minded vein of 2010's Love Letter, drawing inspiration from the silky-smooth 1970s disco-soul – blatantly hearkening to Teddy, Smokey, Barry and Songs In The Key-era Stevie – along with two of the corniest '50s-rock pastiches this side of Smokey Joe's Cafe. (All suffused with that ineffable Kellsian wit, complete with outlandish extended metaphors like "Fallin' From The Sky"; essentially the anti-"I Believe I Can Fly.") Hard to say whether tonight's setlist will favor the family-friendly sincerity of this recent mode or look ahead to the forthcoming, presumably self-explanatory Black Panties (due next year), but it's rather curiously dubbed the "Single Ladies Tour," which could constitute a clue.

Nas
[Hip-Hop]
concert preview

Holding true, perhaps, to his Jay-Z-decreed "one hot album every ten year average," Nas dropped his eminently enjoyable tenth album this summer, close to two decades after his much-beloved debut. And now I'll stop alluding to Illmatic, as it's an unfair and irrelevant reference point in this and most other contexts: nobody but nobody makes rap albums with that kind of single-minded concision anymore, and Life is Good (Def Jam) is no exception. Rather, it's a gleefully disparate mish-mash: hardened-thug tough talk, Hallmark-card sentimentality, "back in the day" chin-stroking (both musical and lyrical), a summery pop-leaning trifle or two, plus an assortment of vitriol and fond remembrance for ex-wife Kelis, and noteworthy posthumous contributions from both Heavy D and Amy Winehouse. Nas' storied verbal skills are in greater evidence here than they've been in a while; even if he falls off again, here's looking forward to 2022.

A$AP Rocky
[Hip-Hop]
concert preview

Hailing from Harlem, but professing an aural and lyrical allegiance to Houston, A$AP Rocky may be the most preternaturally poised among the recent crop of net-abetted underground-to-worldwide rap stars. He ain't saying nothing new – but he says it with the waggish nonchalance of a smirking, perennially faded playboy who's still got a hint of baby fat between his French braids and gold-crusted grill; in easy-flowing, sometimes Spanish-tinged rhymes; atop woozy, artfully lavish productions from a who's-who of right-now beatmakers (Clams Casino, Hit-Boy, 40, Burn One); broadcasting unbounded confidence, style for days, flawless curatorial instincts – swag, however you wanna slice it. We'll wait a few more months for the (ironically?) delayed LongLiveA$AP (RCA/Polo Grounds) to properly follow last year's similarly-titled banner mixtape, but its eponymous tour rolls right on, folding in the six-deep A$AP Mob – complete with Ramones-style matching monikers – and West Coast homeboy Schoolboy Q, whose Habits and Contradictions (Top Dawg) pairs a comparable syrup-addled smoothness with deeper-pitched gangsta gravitas.

Kid Koala
[Blues/Turntablism]
concert preview

Eric San isn't much of a kid anymore, but he's definitely still a whiz – one of the most playfully expressive (and jaw-droppingly talented) turntablists out there, and an impishly clever musical and visual humorist to boot. For 12 Bit Blues (Ninja Tune), his first proper full-length in six years, the perennially sweet-natured Montrealer cobbled countless crackly moans, wails, harmonica peals and blue-note piano licks into a dozen slices of (literally) warped, shambling hip-hop blues, folding woe into whimsy and back again. It's quite a feat, but the accompanying "Vinyl Vaudeville" stage show should offer more than just a technical scratchmaster nerd-out: besides the koala-suited Kid recreating his tracks on three turntables and a pair of classic/archaic 1987-vintage SP-1200 samplers, we've been promised puppets, dancing girls, comedy, parlor games, "almost life size" robots, and a giant functional cardboard gramophone.

Tame Impala
[Rock]
concert preview

Influential as they obviously are, it's truly rare to encounter a record that actually, legitimately sounds like the Beatles. Strictly speaking, Lonerism (Modular), the fantastically swirly second full-length by Perth's Australia's Tame Impala, doesn't either – they'd never issue an LP so relatively monolithic in sonic texture and coloration (that's no knock; by any other measure it's practically kaleidoscopic) – but it's a remarkable facsimile of what might've emerged had the Fabs stuck it out through '74 or so, dropped deep into a Floyd-ian trip, returned to their formative Germany to dig the nascent Krautrock/Kosmiche groove, retained Lennon on all lead vocals (Kevin Parker's laconic, often-Leslie'd voice is a dead ringer) without sacrificing McCartney's preternatural melodicism (in the bassline and everywhere else), and taught Ringo some killer slow-motion psych-funk fills.

David Wax Museum
[Folk]
concert preview

David Wax Museum's terrific fourth album, Knock Knock Get Up (self-released), finds the Boston-based outfit expanding and enriching their already exuberant brand of hybrid Mexican-American folk-pop to practically transcendent proportions, slathering on the horns, organs, sparkling synthesizers, accordion and tubular bells for a big, boozy NPR-approved party. But even stripped to their core duo – the debonair Mr. Wax on assorted jaranas (five-string Mexican chordophones) and guitars; the fantastically-named Suz Slezak on fiddle and her ever-popular quijada de burro (donkey jawbone) – they're still capable of raising plenty of righteous ruckus, while offering helpful bon mots and romantic advice: "Don't trust lovers who fail to recognize you from a distance/they should know you better than to need visual assistance."

Cold Specks
[Folk/Soul]
concert preview

The music of Cold Specks – 24-year-old Canadian songstress Al Spx (not her real name either) – feels as remote and, well, cold as her native Etobicoke sounds like it must be. (Actually it's just a part of Toronto.)  I Predict A Graceful Expulsion (Mute) embodies the epic, enigmatic weight of its quasi-biblical title: a collection of sparse, dark, modern-yet-timeless folk hymns, rife with a bluesy fervency that's at once shadowy and soothing – thanks mostly to Spx's astonishing, craggily soulful voice. It's the sort of startling, ear-turning sound that might prompt the coinage of entire new genre contrivances, like "gothspel" (or Spx's own description, "doom soul") if that didn't feel so pointlessly, imprudently flippant around music this nakedly elemental.
originally published in Philadelphia City Paper