2012 Review Round-Up: August

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!

and here we have august.  some pretty nice writing here, i think, especially in some o the citypaper concert previews down below.  but we'll start off with something a bit less riveting, although the cover's pretty nice.
Ombre
Believe You Me

In 2011, Roberto Lange "remixed" Julianna Barwick's typically lovely, diaphanous "Vow" under his Helado Negro alias; essentially borrowing a few tightly-looped clusters of dense, amorphous sound as a foundation on which to construct an entirely new song in his own free-floating electro-folk-pop style, complete with laconic Spanish vocal. While it offered a fine general indication of the aesthetic commonalities the two Asthmatic Kitty labelmates would later investigate in their collaboration as OMBRE, they manage to find a more equitable, and more rewarding meeting point on the full-length Believe You Me, which was recorded as they were just getting to know one another as friends. It feels that way: loose, exploratory, warmly generous and open-minded, eager to share and learn, but still with a slight sense of polite restraint. They're good influences on each other too. Working together seems to soften and moderate, rather than augment, each artist's distinctive qualities – Lange's playful looseness helps enliven Barwick's somewhat somber, unruffled calm just as, conversely, her penchant for almost ascetic sparsity tempers his tendency for stuffing his productions with curious sonic clutter – but they still emerge with plenty of idiosyncrasies intact. Since the ethereal purity of Barwick's solo work is probably the more singular and easily adulterated of their two aesthetics – and since Lange is already by nature a collage artist (and, relatively speaking, a mild maximalist) – the album is perhaps inevitably closer in sound and structure to an Helado effort, but Barwick's voice is still unmistakably present throughout, both literally – if at times substantially muffled and refracted – and evocatively. With its dappled, Sunday-afternoon sonics and occasional flirtations with bossa nova (on "Weight Those Words" and "Tormentas," perhaps the most straightforward things here), Believe You Me calls to mind similarly dreamy, bi-lingual collaborative efforts by the likes of Amor de Dias, Smokey & Miho and Savath y Savalas (of which Lange is a sometime member.) But this is also much more of abstract, "experimental" affair than a pop one, as friendly and approachable as it is – only a fraction of the selections could properly be described as songs, and even those tend to spiral off down unexpected textural avenues. Lange and Barwick employ an impressive array of instrumental (and electronic) means throughout the album's soundscapes, beyond judicious use of Barwick's inimitable one-woman chorale – from the muted trumpet and slow nylon strums of the bookending "Noche Brilla" to the numbing piano-based micro-loops of "Sense," "Dawning"'s billowing soundclouds and sussurrating harp, and "The Nod"'s motley assortment of plucked strings, ambient rustlings, vibraphone, slippery upright bass, and harmonium. But it all serves the same spacious, softly meditative and (as you might imagine from some of those titles) satisfyingly sleepy end.
originally published at AllMusic.com

∆ [Alt-J]
An Awesome Wave

For a group geeky enough to name themselves after a Greek character and/or a Mac keyboard shortcut (albeit erroneously: the actual keystrokes for typing ∆ are option+J – so there!) and to give their debut the horrifically dorky title "An Awesome Wave," Alt-J (as I guess we call them) play it pretty cool. Sure, the lyrics, if you catch them, tend toward bookish brainsplatters of poetic quasi-abstraction ("broom-shaped pleasure, deep greedy and Googling every corner"...?), but sonically speaking it's all smooth surfaces and achingly artful sophistication. And while much has been made, in the breathless Britpress, of their genre-hopping unpinnability, the album's sound is actually fairly constant – conjoining the elegant moodiness of Wild Beasts, the xx and TV on the Radio (particularly on slyly erotic standouts "Tesselate" and "Dissolve Me") to the acoustic earnestness of England's neo-folk throng (and anchored by Thom Green's oddly tinny jitter-funk drumming.) As with both of these camps, the Cantabridgian quartet flourish largely on the merits of their vocal prowess, which – if you can forgive frontman Joe Newman's mildly cloying, Corganish cragginess – is considerable: layered, blended and swoony in broad, cleverly-deployed harmony. Still, for all its filigree, Awesome remains firmly on the polite side of prog – it could really use more of the inspired quirkiness they flash in the OCD plainsong of the album's first untitled interlude. It's all very impressive (and, well, pretty), but that doesn't necessarily mean it leaves much of an impression. [6/10]

The Darkness
Hot Cakes

The Darkness suddenly seem a lot less outrageous than when they last put an album out, some seven years ago,. Maybe it's just the times: we've come a long way toward working out our collective irony issues – and have certainly grown desensitized to any and all '80s-revivalism ticklishness – since they and their zebra-print spandex catsuits first touched down in the early '00s. The once-inescapable line of inquiry – "Wait, are they serious?" –– now just seems irrelevant, and boring besides. Hence: Justin Hawkins' falsetto remains in full, preposterous, glorious effect throughout, but Hot Cakes – title notwithstanding – isn't really trying to be funny so much as just plain fun. And it is. Genre affectations aside – and by now they've been nailing their target aesthetic for so long that they've probably got as much claim to it as anyone – The Darkness have always been champs at penning solid, tuneful rock-pop, and they manage a small tackle-box worth of hooks here, ditching their second album's baroque (faux?) pretensions to reboot their debut's uncluttered directness. Plus, if it is novelty you're after, there's the blistering, shred-heavy overhaul of Radiohead's "Street Spirit," which succeeds, mostly, because it's hardly a stretch – it was practically a Kansas song to begin with.
originally published in Magnet Magazine

Christian Löffler
A Forest
[Electronic]

Like park-ranger-turned-beat-wrangler Dominik Eulberg and, especially, the peerless Pantha du Prince (to whom he bears a conspicuous, undeniable resemblance), Cologne producer Christian Löffler has a rare gift for collapsing the metaphorical distance between electronic music and the natural world. The modestly luxuriant productions comprising A Forest (Ki) are nothing revolutionary – dubby, wintry, melodic, essentially ambient house – but they pulse and glow almost like living, breathing things; effortlessly gliding, meticulously ordered, but with a wondrous, immersive ebb and flow that makes for an emotional balm as pure and soothing as a secluded woodland stroll.

Grasscut
Unearth
[Electronic/Acoustic]

Every bit as fragrant as their rustically redolent moniker suggests, Brighton duo Grasscut cultivate a characteristically British blend of wist and whimsy on their lush, poetic second outing, Unearth (Ninja Tune), meandering through pastures left largely unplowed since the fertile days of early-aughts lap-pop and evoking the genteel art-pop eccentricity of Robert Wyatt (who also makes a cameo), the lavender longueur of the Clientele, a smidge of the Chap's cheekiness, all refracted through a gently cinematic glitch-pop pastoralism highly reminiscent of the underappreciated Tunng (imagine a more earnest, more English read on the Books' electro-folk cut-ups.)

Antony and the Johnsons
Cut The World
[Live/Antony]

There's no applause until the very end; nothing, excepting the eight-minute Wiccan/eco-political/gender-philosophical monologue "Future Feminism" (a sui generis tone-setter if there ever was one) marking Cut The World (Secretly Canadian) as a live document. But it's evident anyhow, as the album achieves the seemingly impossible by actually magnifying the intimacy of Antony & the Johnsons' previous, studio efforts. We know the voice, of course – ineffable, indelible; as comforting by now in its familiarity as its elementality – and the orchestrations here only underscore its potency, rendering the songs (ten old, one new) both more tender and newly, magnificently expansive.

Ry Cooder
Election Special
[Roots/Protest]

Ry Cooder's second political record in as many years, Election Special (Nonesuch) is an unbridled blast of caustically satirical left-wing invective. It's also just a blast, period: his riffs are as righteous as his fury; his frets as compelling as his ever-luminous fretwork. Channeling his unsurpassed mastery of American vernacular forms – two-step country; swampy Delta blues; gloriously ragged rock'n'roll; mandolin-flecked folk – the wry ol' coot variously impersonates a frisky RNC conventioneer, a literally Faustian Charles Koch, a woe-begotten Obama, and Mitt's infamously roof-racked pooch, while just-so-happening to mention Jim Crow on roughly half the songs, and also gives us a great sing-along Occupy anthem.

Sofrito
International Soundclash
[World/Dance]

A globe-trotting crate-digging compilation from London-based Sofrito collective (DJ Hugo Mendes and producer Frankie Francis) International Soundclash (Strut) is crammed with raw, gritty and above-all propulsive grooves stemming from the Carribean to West and Central Africa and points beyond, and from 1976 to 2012 (though in most cases you'd be hard-pressed to tell which was which.) There's plenty of reliably smoking soca, cumbia, zouk and Afrobeat, but better still are cross-pollinated oddities like Bell'a Njoh's wibbly Cameroonian disco and Concept Neuf's steel pans 'n' vibraslaps take on blaxploitation funk.

Why?
Sod In The Seed EP
[Indie]

Yoni Wolf has relegated some mighty fine work to EPs in the past (check 2005's Sanddollars), and the quick six-track Sod in the Seed (Anticon) – WHY?'s rust-free, revved-into-gear re-entry after a three-year absence – fully follows suit, rife with conflicted off-the-cuff mission statements, logorrheic confessionals, and Wolf's trademarked, succulently serpentine nested rhymes ("rehearsing slow lewd winks nude at the mens' room sink") set atop some of the band's richest, most playful musical textures yet (bongos, glockenspiels, scat-sample chorales.) Makes you wonder what wonders they're saving up for their Fall-slated full-length.

Dirty Projectors
Swing Lo Magellan
[Indie Rock/Pop]

What's gotten into the Dirty Projectors? For a band that never met an "interesting," awkwardly arty digression they didn't like, Dave Longstreth and co. (whose scheduled date Saturday was scrapped presumably, annoyingly, to bolster their Made in America draw) seem to have made their peace with palatability on Swing Lo Magellan (Domino): they've hardly shed their endemic quirks (that off-kilter rhythmic twitchiness, those rickety-lush harmonies), but in embracing a newfound simplicity – cresting with "Impregnable Question"'s sublime, disarming directness: "You're my love, and I want you in my life" – those eccentricities seem suddenly, satisfyingly unforced, and take on their own sort of normalcy.

Divine Fits
A Thing Called Divine Fits
[Rock/Pop]

What is this Thing Called Divine Fits? (Merge) It's the sort of record Britt Daniel could probably knock out in his sleep: effortlessly stylish; textural and terse; flat-out terrific-sounding. Yeah, Wolf Parader/Handsome Fur Dan Boeckner gets equal writing/vocal billing and brings the (sometimes downright Baba O'Riley) synthesizer substrata, and New Bomb Turk Sam Brown mans the skins nimbly, but the Spoon frontman's tragically hip fingerprints are all over this album's steely tough-guy pop, striking all the right poses from noisy puncher ("What Gets You Alone") to pretty, acoustic one ("Civilian Stripes"), plus an atypically emo cover tune ("Shivers.")

Yeasayer
Fragrant World
[Psych/Pop]

In a world – heck, a borough – crammed with sorta-electronic, sorta-groovy bands camping out at the nebulous intersection between pop and art, Yeasayer have managed to stake out a peculiar timbre – just the right blend of groggy, squirmy synth patches and earnest, earthy vocals – that remains unmistakable despite their near-constant musical evolution. Fragrant World (Secretly Canadian) is their slyest, most satisfying work yet, a smoother synthesis of the world-beat and R&B elements that still loom in their DNA, mostly eschewing big pop moments in favor of lots of nifty little ones.

Teengirl Fantasy
Tracer
[Electronic]

Teengirl Fantasy seem to average one glimmer of dancefloor transcendence for every album's worth of woozy, implacable New Age-tinted synth-goop. 7AM had solid-gold soul/house scorcher "Cheaters"; Tracer (True Panther), for all its wibbly electro burbles, panflute presets and acid-laced jello shots (and fine vocal spots by Panda Bear, R&B thrush Kelela and weirdtronica fellow-traveller Laurel Halo) only really gets down to business on the hard-jacking "Do It"; tapping Daft Punk's "One More Time" crooner Romanthony, brashly aiming for that anthem's immortal, hedonistic euphoria, and just about nailing it.

Carsie Blanton
[Folk/Pop]
concert preview

Philly-based songstress (and local swing dance scene-queen) Carsie Blanton might not look like the type to inspire much trepidation, but when the curly-headed, "cute as a kidney bean" charmer advises a timid suitor, midway through her excellent new album, "I ain't gonna hurt you honey/I ain't even half your size," it's clear enough why he might need the reminder. This is a woman who does not mince words. Throughout the self-released Idiot Heart, Blanton waxes unblushingly frank about exactly what (and who) she wants (when not detailing the sometimes less sanguine consequences of getting what she wished for), atop a groove-rich musical landscape that spans her typical jazz-inflected folk-pop and digs deeper into loose acoustic funk but also manages to live up to maybe her least-likely avowed inspiration, Elvis Costello: "Together Too Long" could pass for one of his Blood & Chocolate kiss-offs, while "All We Got" loosely rewrites Trust's "Lovers Walk."

Alvarius B
[Folk/Absurdism]
concert preview

Now here's what I call freak folk. Alvarius B., less fancifully known as Alan Bishop of long-running weirdo kings Sun City Girls, snarls and warbles with an inspired dementia that recalls Captain Beefheart in mystical troubadour mode, or maybe Dylan at his most sneering and surrealistic, but there's really nothing that can compare to his snaggle-toothed, near-tourettic and thoroughly filthy fingerpicked phantasies. His second self-titled album, originally released as a double-LP in 1998 and now reissued on the Girls' Abduction imprint, finds him scrawling his way across the fretboard on forty-five cuts of warped, droney blues such as "Seeing-eye Latte" and "Sex cult from university," while raving about, for instance, a grandpa who "sucked all of Arabia from a herbivore's labia." It sets a pretty definitive upper limit of weirdness for music made by just one guy with an acoustic guitar.

Hundred Waters
[New Age/Neo-Classical]
concert preview

They're called Hundred Waters, but it's abundantly evident that – elementally speaking – this Gainesville, FL quintet is far better represented by Air. (In Ayurvedic terms – which feels appropriate somehow – they're clearly Vatas.)  It's in their spacious, gracefully hushed arrangements, wherein stately neo-baroque faerie folk commingles with the gentlest of lap-pop glitchery and sputtering digital twinkles; in their gauzy juxtaposition of the cerebral and the fantastical; in the effortless way they drift through nigh-unchartable time signatures; and especially in Nicole Miglis breathy, frequently choralized whipped-cream wisp of a voice (a dead ringer for Twin Sister's Andrea Estella, with a dollop of Regina Spektor loopiness and a whiff of Joanna Newsom.) And now, after initially releasing their self-titled debut on the tiny Elestial Sound, they've signed with Skrillex – a fiery, Pitta sort if ever there was one, with seemingly zero musical commonalities save that they both own computers – for a remix EP and forthcoming rerelease on his Owsla imprint. Well, here's to seeking balance in all things.

Meek Mill
[Hip-Hop]
concert preview

Meek Mill may sport the least hard-sounding moniker in the game, but he seems well-positioned to become arguably the biggest-deal rapper out of Philadelphia in ages, if not ever. He's got a name-making deal with the absurdly uncrushable Rick Ross' Maybach Music Group, a lauded string of mixtapes culminating in May's guest-studded Dreamchasers 2 – a solid showcase of his canny knack for cadence, unflaggingly exuberant if somewhat monochromatic delivery, and easy facility with the brash, aspirational tropes of modern street rap – and even a tailor-made bit of buzz-stirring beef with North Philly pastor Jomo Johnson over breezily sacreligious summer jam "Amen" (the Reverend's argument seemed relatively fatuous, though he may have had a point aesthetically speaking.) True to big-league hip-hop form, Mill's now got a delayed release date for his forthcoming Warner Bros. debut (pushed back from next week to Halloween), but album-hawking or not these hometown shows – likely his last at this intimate a venue for a while – promise to be a major event.

Big Freedia
[Bounce/Hip-Hop]
concert preview

You can read about Big Freedia – for example, in the 2010 New York Times feature that helped introduce New Orleans' gender-flouting, booty-bobbling "sissy bounce" phenomenon to the asses of the masses, or in the web's-worth of breathless testimonials that've ensued since then as she's traversed the nation setting untold behinds quivering in her wake. You can listen to her music – most recently the "God Save the Queen Diva" mixtape, which in true gutter-bounce appropriationist style slices up Little Richard, Diana Ross, and Freddie Mercury (not a bad triangulation of her onstage persona), plus the "Rocky" theme (which should play well here) atop relentlessly reupping stutter-step booty-beats. And you should absolutely watch her videos, particularly last year's epic "Y'all Get Back Now." But if you haven't experienced firsthand the euphorically sweaty spectacle of a Big Freedia show (and, ideally, gotten up to shake what you've got yourself), well... you might want to do yourself a favor this Friday night.

Kitty Pryde
[Hip-Hop/Meme]
concert preview

Thinkpiece lightning-rod, anonymous-comment hater-bait, rap game co-sign collector... – freckle-faced Daytona Beach teen Kitty Beckwith's been having quite a summer. Since inadvertently touching off a hype-wave – and backlash counter-current – back in May with the giggling, sweetly swoony "Okay Cupid" (and its endearingly homespun video), and with twitterati scrambling to pinpoint her on a scale from Rebecca Black to Lil B, the part-time salesclerk (and evidently, almost unbelievably, bio-daughter of esoterica icon David Tibet) is plainly just having fun and enjoying the improbable ride: "I just wanted a Betsey J dress/and some time off from Claire's," she spits on insta-fame shrug-off "smiledog.jpg." (FTR: she got it.) Self-conscious kneejerk preemption notwithstanding (her tumblr proclaims: "My Music Suxx"), her genuinely fluent, filter-free rhymes and very funny, smartly referential wit – and not merely her totes adorbs, "very youtubeable" awkward charm – totally justify the attention. Scoff all you want: just don't think she's not in on the joke.

Janes Addiction/Die Antwoord
[Rock/Rap]
concert preview

Jane's Addiction first broke up in 1991, but it's hard to feel like they've really left – they spent nearly as much of the last twenty years reunited as disbanded. So their second attempt at a comeback album, last year's The Great Escape Artist (Capitol), wasn't exactly the event it might have been, but it's a solid listen regardless, with moody blues and sugar-rush pop-metal trifles nicely balanced by crushing, swirling, psuedo-mystical jams. As for their fittingly misfit tourmates, South African rave-rap duo Die Antwoord – well, the world's known them only two short years, but their bizarrely grotesque, cartoonishly vulgar "zef" schtick seemed destined to wear out its welcome (and novelty value and, er, artistic potential) after a single album (besides, wasn't it supposed to be just an elaborate conceptual art project/joke anyway?) Ten$ion (Downtown), however, reveals that Ninja and Yo-Landi Vi$$er (who're actually better rappers than they get credit for) have further depths to plumb. Nothing's shocking, perhaps, but they're certainly trying.

Marina and the Diamonds
[Pop]
concert preview

Marina Diamantis attempts an odd, fraught, and rather confusing conceptual tight-rope walk on Electra Heart (679/Atlantic), endeavoring to critique the vapidity and corruption of American popular culture by symbolically/theatrically embodying those very qualities, in the guise of an overtly constructed, superficial pop-star persona – the titular character, whom she describes as "the antithesis of everything that I stand for." Anybody familiar with the fantastically loudmouthed, overreaching spectacle of her debut probably won't be surprised that she fails to pull it off with anything resembling finesse or coherence. But at least she got the archetypal pop part right: with a little help from certified pop "manufacturers" Dr. Luke, Greg Kurstin and Stargate (the architects of depravity behind the likes of Ke$ha, Katy Perry, Lily Allen and Rihanna), the result is a fizzy, brashly modern album that sounds pretty much like her first one, except with less piano and more dance beats, lashed together with her majestic, morally righteous, mock-operatic voice.

The Very Best
[African/Pop]
concert preview

The Very Best, improbably enough, managed to live up to their preposterous moniker on their early releases by fusing together some of the giddiest, least self-conscious sounds in the world – African marabi, highlife, and kwaito; Western synth-pop and electronica, and further strains of pan-global dance music – creating not necessarily the best music ever made, but a glorious, musically utopian encapsulation of humanity's greatest potential. Now down to a duo – irrepressible Malawian singer Esau Mwamwaya, whose voice still feels like a distillation of pure, liquid joy, and Swedish beatsmith Johan Hugo – they come close to recapturing that lightning on MTMTMK (Cooperative/Moshi Moshi), a technicolor funhouse of a sophomore effort that flirts with harder-edged African beats while also inching closer to chart-friendly electro pop'n'B candy-gloss.
 
Sidi Toure
[African/Folk]
concert preview

Malian guitarist Sidi Touré's first widely available recording – released last year, rather improbably, by post-rock/indie stronghold Thrill Jockey – bore the simple, descriptive title "Sahel Folk," perhaps partly in contradistinction to the "desert blues" tag applied to his countrymen like the late Ali Farka Touré (no relation) and reigning champs Tinariwen. Indeed, the album's lilting, gently droning strains were about as folksy as it gets: fully acoustic, unvarnished and intimate, all reportedly recorded over tea at his sister's house. Koïma, Touré's second outing for the label, was cut in a studio with a full band featuring sokou (folk violin), calabash, and a second guitarist, and shows considerably more versatility and rhythmic energy, but it's every bit as enchantingly homely and heartfelt.

Gruff Rhys
[Indie/Pop]
concert preview

Gruff Rhys is capricious sort of chap at the best of times, gallivanting affably from project to project with a trick in his eye and a twinkle up his sleeve. Having logged nearly two decades with the unstoppable Super Furry Animals, plus numerous collaborative side-ventures and three lovably low-key psych-pop solo albums, most recently the dappled and bubbly Hotel Shampoo (Wichita), he's now launched an "investigative concert tour" as part of his second documentary film project. Like 2010's "Separado!," this one also involves a search for a long-lost ancestor: John Evans, said to have come to America in 1792 looking for a rumored tribe of Welsh-speaking Natives, and to have led a series of adventures that are the stuff of acid-laced tall tales. Rhys is encouraging "anyone with clues regarding Evans's unknown burial place; imaginary volcanos; wandering tribes of Welsh Speakers, or lingering river reptiles" to come share what they know – presumably there will be some music as well.

Ava Luna
[Indie Rock/R&B]
concert preview

Stitching together a similar rag-bag of mismatched musical scraps to their fellow Brooklynites Dirty Projectors and TV on the Radio – '90s radio R&B, fragmentary art-rock, girl group doo-wop harmonies, stiff-limbed no wave funk – but coming up with a whole different sort of quilt, screwball septet Ava Luna spend the eight tracks and just over half an hour of their fairly blindsiding debut LP Ice Level (Infinite Best) endeavoring to derail just about any expectations you might have considered developing. It's bracing, bewildering, compelling stuff – spazz-out synth-soul? purple punk-prog? – a twitchy, unruly noisefield shot through with honeyed crooning and dense patches of groove, and laced up with the half-cornball, half-unhinged, wholy sincere soulman stylings of Carlos Hernandez.

Horse Meat Disco
[Disco/DJ]
concert preview

This disco-obsessive DJ collective, whose namesake Sunday night parties in South London – self-professedly "dedicated to the industry of human happiness" – have been drawing a legendarily diverse, pan-sexual crowd for eight years now, are purists only in the sense that they embrace their chosen genre's proud tradition of inclusivity. As evidenced by their thoroughly delightful compilation series on Strut records (Horse Meat Disco III dropped last summer; volume IV is due in November), they're perfectly happy to slot '70s-vintage cuts from Idris Muhammad, Gino Soccio and Sylvester right alongside the contemporary disco freaks like Mungolian Jetset and Tom Trago – or better yet, confound chronology with fresh re-edits (often their own handiwork) of shoulda-been-classics from the vault. More importantly, they negate any whiff of in-the-know elitism by digging up plenty of easy-to-spot, dancer-friendly cover versions – but even if you can't quite place the melody, you've probably heard that bassline in your dreams.
originally published in Philadelphia City Paper

2012 Review Round-Up: February

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!

carrying on with february, when i seem to have been enjoying plenty of mostly smooth, dreamy electronic music, although this first one (still one of my favorites from the year, even if a lot of folks might beg to differ) was a rather different sort of dream altogether:

Lindstrøm
Six Cups Of Rebel

Whoa there, Hans-Peter!  Lindstrøm's back once again with what's technically only his second "proper" solo album – implausible as that seems – and it is a feisty one. The beloved, unpredictable Norwegian discombobulater seems to be taking some cues here from his labelmates (and sometime remix cronies), the prog pranksters Mungolian Jet Set. Six Cups of Rebel (whose Mung-like, noggin-scratching title is recycled from an old, stylistically unrelated production alias) is chock full of the kind of bizarre, cartoonish sci-fi lunacy and cheekily maximalist gonzo musical odysseys they've made their stock-in-trade. In particular (and in a major departure for Lindstrøm), the album is animated by a virtual armada of goofy, muppetlike voices; most or all of which are actually Lindstrøm's own, tweaked and twisted in ways even The Knife might find extreme. It's certainly recognizable as the work of the same artist – his sense of pacing, patient and playful in equal measure, remains as masterful as ever – and features a similarly unified, suite-like structure (Cups' seven tracks are divided evenly into two seamlessly connected halves or sides), but this is a far cry from the understated elegance and monumental minimalism of 2008's Where You Go I Go Too.

It doesn't start out that, however: the album opens in relative stillness and churchlike solemnity, with a single, spiraling organ figure gradually augmented by a swelling, skyward agglutination of additional organs, until the sudden rug pull of "De Javu" launches us into full-on demento disco mode for the next twenty-odd minutes. Here's where the loopy vocal phantasmagoria really holds sway – from the bug-eyed bluesman yowling "I can't get no release" to a curmudgeonly fellow muttering "all I want is a quiet place to live" (not too likely, 'round these parts) to a chorus line of scatting space-creatures demanding "what kind of magik do you do?" – interwoven into a string of suitably capricious, labyrinthine, strutting mutant dance jams which seem to invite comparably absurdist and freewheeling dancefloor activity. After hitting reset with a quick, lurching MIDI spazz-out, the less vocally-oriented second side embarks on a slippery, percolating, arpeggio-thon that meanders between textures like an extended, prog-tinted jam session, featuring some spirited, improvisatory drumming, quoting obliquely from "Here Comes The Sun" at one point, and passing through the twitchy, zapping acid-funk of the title track en route to the glittery, expansive synthesizer fantasia of "Hina," which comes full circle with a swooning, celestial susurration of voices. This is the closest this album comes to the streamlined majesty of "Where You Go," and it's also the first time we feel, if not exactly a resolution, at least a satisfying sense of prolonged suspension. There's so much constantly happening that it's hard to notice at first, but the album is in a near-constant state of masterfully sustained harmonic and rhythmic tension – not for nothing is the first track called "No Release." And just when you thought it couldn't possibly last, that swirling organ line reappears like a devilish deus ex machina, and sends the whole thing circling around again. Ever get the feeling you've been here before?


Terranova
Hotel Amour

The highly mutable Terranova, who emerged in the 1990s as an eclectically funky pan-European trip-hop/hip-hop/techno collective, reinvented themselves for the second decade of the 21st century after a lengthy absence from the scene, signing with Cologne kingpin Kompakt for a pair of well-received 2011 12"s and following with Hotel Amour, their fifth full-length and first since 2004. Still essentially the province of Berlin-born, Paris-based producer/DJ Fetisch, now with the Ghanaian-German &ME as his primary co-conspirator (and the only other official group member at this point), Terranova remain as restless and collaboration-prone as ever, although the stylistic blueprint has shifted quite a bit.

Basically everything on Hotel Amour could be described as house of some sort, and although there's a range from the title track's swanky French coos and jazzy vibraphone plinks to the sparser, tech-y throwback of "I Want To Go Out" to the murky, clattering noir dub of "Take My Hand," it's all pretty smooth, sleek and, for the most part, fairly subdued. Except perhaps the tougher, vaguely punky electro schaffel of "Ain't No Thing" (probably the biggest outlier here), any of these cuts could fit right in on the sort of turn-of-the-century downtempo compilation evoked by the album's rather unfortunate title (which unwittingly suggests a garden-variety knock-off of Stéphane Pompougnac's Hôtel Costes series.) Which isn't to suggest that this music is utterly drab and faceless (or strictly for lounging – indeed, much of it is quite pumping.) In typical Terranova fashion, every track here features a vocalist, most of whom acquit themselves in fine style. Top marks must go to Tomas Høffding of WhoMadeWho, whose dulcet, elegantly soulful falsetto is simply a revelation on the achingly lovely, perfectly constructed "Question Mark," and who also turns in a more than passable Justin Timberlake on "Paris is for Lovers," a somewhat curious tech-house recasting of "My Love" (which bizarrely omits every other line.) Longtime out-Kraut fellow-traveller Khan shows up four times, helping to elaborate the album's shadier undercurrents with his darkly understated vocals, the best being a sinister, whispery turn on the funky, minimalist "Boogie For The Dollar." Darkest, strangest and most stylish of all, the closing "Prayer" boasts a couple of minor German media icons – a torchy vocal from actress/model Nicolette Krebitz (who also featured on Terranova's first album, thirteen years earlier) and a campy voiceover from horror/exploitation actor Udo Kier.

Loops Of Your Heart
And Never Ending Nights

Mere months after Looping State of Mind, the gently exploratory third full-length installment of Axel Willner's celebrated work as The Field, the Cologne-transplanted Swede is back with a brand new project, bundled in typically evocative language: And Never Ending Nights, his debut album under the name Loops of Your Heart. As the nomenclature would suggest, there's hardly a radical shift in tone here – this music is patient, contemplative, and calmly expansive: like The Field, but even more so. But the approach represents a considerable break with Willner's standard working methods, foregoing his usual micro-clipped samples and loops (ironically enough) for a set of largely beatless (and sometimes entirely non-rhythmic), aesthetically "pure," analog synth-based drones and pulsations. Basically, he's abandoning a uniquely distinctive (if by now rather familiar) sound and style all his own in order to explore something that's been done and done, time and again, from Germany's Kosmiche Musik pioneers of the 1970s to the most recent clutch of hipster-approved sine-wave surfers – Arp, Emeralds, Oneohtrix Point Never, and the like. Which isn't to say that Willner doesn't manage to wring some effective music out of these wheezy old synthesizers; spinning an impressively broad emotional palette from a sparse economy of means – from the woozy, pulsing amniotic warmth of opener "Little You, You Should Develop" to the yawning, forebodingly sinister "Neukölln" and "Broken Bow" (the latter of which eventually evolves the album's only proper beat: a stark, robotic tech-thump tethered to layers of restless, writhing arpeggiation) to the utter, meditative calm of "Cries." The latter – eleven minutes of slowly billowing, shifting analog drones eventually joined by distant percussion almost too faint too leave a conscious impression, like the empty, incidental thud of far-off fireworks – is both the most potent and seemingly the simplest thing here. It's hardly as remarkable or distinctive as the soft shimmering magic of The Field, or even as purely refreshing as the lovely "Riding the Bikes," Loops of Your Heart's contribution to Kompakt's Pop Ambient 2012 compilation (whose soft guitar-looping approach is almost entirely jettisoned here) – but it would still make for a fine, welcome, warming (and occasionally, slightly, chilling) soundtrack to never ending nights, or any other eternity you might have handy.

John Talabot
ƒin

Appearing a leisurely few years after his initial breakout successes – the 2009 single "Sunshine"; his remix of Delorean's "Sea Sun" – and the cresting wave of interest in "neo-Balearic" dance music they fortuitously rode, the first full-length from Spanish producer John Talabot bears the mixed blessing of being a little bit late for its moment; trading the freshness and excitement it might have had for a warm, still welcome familiarity. The sound remains mostly the same – brightly blurry, detuned synth-disco and slow-motion deep house – although there are definitely some changes afoot here. For one thing, "sun," a key component of Talabot's original aesthetic, in a metaphoric but still very tangible (and audible) sense, is conspicuously absent from the tracklist (not to mention the black, tortuous cover art), and the album's contents reflect that, coming across as almost uniformly moody – wistful, brooding, even mournful – with minor keys predominating throughout. Arriving as a singular, solitary work rather than a representative of a coherent larger "scene" (although there are certainly plenty of similar sounds buzzing in the air) allows fIN to fail or fly more strictly on its own merits, which are considerable: Talabot makes this stuff sound easier than it really is, which is probably the surest sign of his meticuluous, sophisticated craftsmanship. In any case, the delay is only fitting: patience has always been the name of the game with Talabot – those early singles and remixes would typically billow and sway at length before blossoming into full frothy flower, routinely stretching upwards of seven minutes – and patience rewards the listener here too, albeit in a slightly different manner. Save for the lengthier bookending tracks – the slow-moving, slightly sinister electro-disco of "Depak Ine," replete with jungle (not Jungle) sounds, and the lavish "So Will Be Now...," an expansive, edit-like elaboration on an anonymous rendition of "Just My Imagination" (the title is a willful slippage from "soon we'll be married") – everything is in the three to five minute range, and considerably less epic than we've come to expect. And while there's a decent amount of variety within Talabot's well-established sonic wheelhouse, there are few standouts to speak of (and even fewer of those moments of glorious, exultant release on which he made his name), so the album functions most successfully as a fifty-minute whole. But if fIN is never less than pleasant, it's rarely much more than that. It's hard to say what's wrong with anything here – and probably nothing is: the woozily soulful "Destiny" (co-produced with Madrid's Pional, as is the aforementioned "So Will Be Now") is a solid synth-pop earworm; "Journeys" (featuring Delorean's Ekhi Lopategi) is an enjoyable return to the buoyant simplicity of Talabot's past; the album as a whole abounds with effective, intriguing atmospherics. It's just that, for all its potential, fIN is merely fine.

various artists
DJ-Kicks: The Exclusives

In 2006, after ten years and twenty-five volumes of their celebrated DJ-Kicks mix series, !K7 ran a well-deserved victory lap with DJ-Kicks: The Exclusives, collecting many of the bespoke original tracks customarily included in each of the mix-makers' sets. A mere six years and thirteen (going on fourteen) volumes later, they're repeating the feat with a release confusingly also titled DJ-Kicks: The Exclusives, this time including exclusive cuts from all but one of the intervening compilations (for some reason Booka Shade's 2007 installment is shut out.) The results work somewhat surprisingly well as a full-length listening experience (the selections are simply sequenced chronologically), and less surprisingly as an excellent survey of the last half-decade of forward-thinking dance music. Moody, soulful, gently jazzy downtempo house (most evident in the Henrik Schwarz and Motor City Drum Ensemble selections) feels like the most common denominator, but we also get snappy, funky two-step grooves (Kode9, Photek), cheerily smooth vocal dance-pop (Hot Chip, Chromeo's delectably cheezy talkboxed Eagles cover), as well as Scuba's dark tech-step, Holden's lovely, meandering pastoral electronica and an extended disco/house workout from the Juan MacLean. (The latter two, in particular, are expanded considerably from the versions that appeared on their respective mixes.) All told, it's an inessential but highly enjoyable piece of work, an excellent aural scrapbook for fans of the series, and (save for the nauseous-robot voice in Wolf + Lamb Vs. Soul Clap's slightly painful "Lonely C," definitely the sorest thumb here) just a good time all around.
originally published at AllMusic.com

VV Brown
Lollipops & Politics
Kicking off your second album with the ice cream truck MIDI twinkle of "Do Your Ears Hang Low" probably isn't the best way to broadcast your maturity, but despite the chirpy "Children" (dubiously featuring career regressivist Chiddy, of Bang fame), and while still skewing decidedly toward the first half of its title, Lollipops and Politics finds the 27-year-old V.V. Brown – something like a spunkier, punkier, UK Jazmine Sullivan – fumbling towards adulthood, dropping the retro/rockabilly schtick of her charmingly clunky debut, and generally growing into her own as a capital-P pop capital-A artist. Already a maven, brazen mish-mash magpie, she filches here from all over the spectrum: "Wonderwall" strums, "Be My Baby" drums; glitch-hop squelch, headbang riffage and piano-ballad anthemism stuffed into a single track. "Tough Like Glue" connects the dots from Sesame Street to the Pussycat Dolls, while her serviceable entry in pop's endless "Heartbeat" sweepstakes pits sub-Rihanna Eurothump'n'Autotune against manic stutter handclaps a la Joe's "Claptrap." But Brown's own eminently capable voice – the throwback R&B wailing on "Be Yours" does Ronnie proud – is too often lost amidst the glitz; her signature breezy simplicity ("Shark in the Water," "Everybody") is largely absent, and sorely missed.
originally published in Magnet Magazine

Lana Del Rey
Born To Die
[Pop]

Forget the haters. Screw the hype. Lana Del Rey is a goddamn American original. Naturally she's a magpie, paraphrasing the great poets of our 20th century (Nabokov, Springsteen, Betty Boop) in languorous, honey-thick alto, atop looming, luxuriant strings and syrupy trip-hop beats; smart, funny, sexy as apple pie. Born To Die (Interscope) doesn't diversify her vocabulary much (though she does rap – no joke), but it maps, in detail, her highly stylized vision of Americana – triangulated somewhere between Hollywood, the 'hood, and archetypal Anytown, USA (imaginary spaces, all) – while plotting a familiar course across nothing grander or more mundane than the well-trodden topography of the human heart. So, why all the fuss?

Air
Le Voyage Dans Le Lune
[Soundtrack/Instrumental]

It's hard to imagine a more utterly perfect project for über-cinematic, über-Frenchy space-cadets Air than soundtracking George Méliès' groundbreaking 1902 classic Trip To The Moon – of newfound Hugo-related fame – this is a duo, remember, who actually named their debut album Moon Safari. While it may not reach those heights, Le Voyage Dans Le Lune (Astralwerks) is some of their oddest and most readily enjoyable work in a while, indulging their habitual proggy '70s jones but ditching the flimsily lightweight pop of their last few records for something a bit more cosmic and freaky.

Lilacs and Champagne
s/t
[Sampledelica/Trip-Hop]

Lilacs and Champagne – two members of the Portland band Grails, moonlighting as concocters of acid-laced sample-based noir ephemera – conjure a ripe, heady fragrance on their self-titled debut (Mexican Summer); like a musty old perfume whose sweetness grows queasy as it lingers. Somewhere in between Rjd2's monster-movie trip-hop, Portishead associates Malachai's cut-n-paste freakshow psych-rock, and the recycled-kitsch downtempo of Quiet Village, the duo weave together all manner of exhumed dollar-bin artefacts into a swampy, surreal mood record that muddles the distinction between chilling out and just plain chilling.

Porcelain Raft
Strange Weekend
[Dream-Pop]

Have there been any chillwave records of actual songs yet? i.e., songs of at least equal importance to sounds, with words you might conceivably sing, or notice (or even discern)? Strange Weekend, the Secretly Canadian debut of Porcelain Raft – Italian-born Brooklynite Mauro Remiddi – isn't that, exactly, but it suggests how such a thing could work. It's warm, wispy and woozy in all the requisite ways, but there's also plenty of lazy folk-pop strumming and Remiddi's lovably accented mumble-croon, equally recalling Memory Tapes and The War on Drugs.


Jim White
Where It Hits You
[Folk/Americana]

Much of Where It Hits You, Jim White's fifth album and first for Yep Roc, finds the vagabonding Georgia songwriter at his most stoically somber, ruminating on rural hard-luck and heartache amid suitably languid country-noir soundscapes. But he hasn't lost that twinkle in his eye, or his penchant for, as he once sang, "gleaning solace from pain" – maybe more than ever, he comes off like a slightly screwy backwoods preacher, reminding us "when life rustles up dilemmas, it's time to make dilemmanade."


Dustin Wong
Dreams Say, View, Create, Shadow Leads
[Experimental/Noise]

Guitarist Dustin Wong (formerly of Ponytail and Ecstatic Sunshine) is certainly no slouch at the six-string, but he's an absolute wizard of the looping pedal. With Dreams Say, View, Create, Shadow Leads (Thrill Jockey), he continues using these simple tools to construct music as abstract, fragmented, mystical and redolent as the album's title. Like its predecessor, though even more wildly colorful, it's a single, unified but protean piece; a kaleidoscope of bright, pointillistic sound-shards bouncing and refracting off one another in uncanny symmetry.

The Darkness/Foxy Shazam
[Rock]
concert preview

Hard to believe it's been a decade since The Darkness first splashed down, troubling the "irony-is-dead" waters of the early '00s with their zebra-print spandex catsuits and polished-chrome riffage – and swiftly nullifying any questions of taste through sheer anthemic bombast (not to mention the sky-high falsetto lunacy of Justin Hawkins' self-professed "truth larynx") on power-ballad paragon "Love is Only A Feeling" and the still-deathless "I Believe In A Thing Called Love." They'd long since splintered into a pair of pale but worthy spin-offs – Hawkins' Hot Leg; the other guys' Stone Gods – but the boys are back together again and ready to rock us. Meanwhile, across the pond, Cincinnati's Foxy Shazam have been gunning hard to perfect their own brand of reverently righteous heavy-glam excess; several promising albums in, their new, all-killer, Hawkins-produced Church of Rock and Roll (IRS) hits it out of the park. Freddie Mercury should be very proud.
Veronica Falls
[Rock/Pop]
concert preview

UK popscene cadets Veronica Falls (made up of former members of The Royal We and Sexy Kids – but you anorak types probably already knew that) are fundamental, dyed-in-the-wool inheritors of the jangly post-punk Postcard/Smiths/Pastels indie pop lineage. Their buzz-building early singles and massively buzz-justifying eponymous debut (Slumberland) shows off all the right moves: a bit of fuzz, a bit of scruff; a loose, sproingy guitar sound; insistent, almost fierce pummeling drums; winsome, girlish vocals, and shiny, sweet-sounding songs about bad bad feelings (and also, falling in love with ghosts.) But they don't just embody the sound, they manage to fashion it into something truly fresh and surprising. Mostly, it's in the way they set off the music's inherent scrappiness with the somewhat aloof, austere beauty and purity of their madrigal-like group harmonies. Of course, it doesn't hurt that they seem incapable of writing a less than killer hook.

Asteroids Galaxy Tour
[Pop]
concert preview

Since when do Danes have the right to sound this funky? There's more than couple moments on Out Of Frequency (BMG Rights), the new sunburst-in-album-form from these oddly-named Copenhagen cool cats, which give the Dap-Kings a run for their retro-soul money-maker-shakin'. They've also got the fizzy suavity of Pizzicato Five and the day-glo giddiness of The Go! Team, and a surprisingly versatile blue-eyed soul siren in vocalist Mette Lindberg. Of course, when you boil down all the paisley psychedelics and technicolor spy-soundtrack spangles, this is basically just pop music, simple and pure, and these are Scandinavians we're talking about – we probably shouldn't be too surprised that they can dole out 21st century space-age bachelor-pad party pop just as perfect as any other kind.

Explorer's Club/Honeychurch
[Indie Pop/Folk Rock]
concert preview

Back in 2008, when seemingly everybody in indiedom was falling over themselves to venerate and emulate the mid-to-late-period Beach Boys, South Carolina's Explorers Club cut a sweet little record so unabashed in its homage to early Beach Boys – the clean-cut, good-times, surf's-up edition of the group – that it bordered on outright mimicry. Their follow-up, Grand Hotel (Rock Ridge), is equally brimming with sunshine, harmonies, and adorably blatant sixtiesisms, but it's a much more wide-ranging wayback machine experience, revisiting an era when "psychedelic" bubblegum pop, blue-eyed soul, Bacharachian sophistication, and south-of-the-border exotica all rubbed shoulders along the AM dial (the Herp Alpert-style cover is a big tip-off) – all the while proving that it's never (merely) pastiche if you've got the tunes and the chops. Meanwhile, Doylestown's gentle Americana mavens Honeychurch – who've had a long, dry eight years between albums – return at last with the wonderfully warm, autumnal Will You Be There With Me?; eleven gorgeous folk-pop nuggets slathered in pedal steel, lush harmonies and stately woodwinds, which should fit snugly alongside your favorite Jayhawks and Pernice Brothers discs.

Ha Ha Tonka
[Rock]
concert preview

Funny moniker aside, Missouri's Ha Ha Tonka (who borrowed the name from a state park in the Ozarks) come across as some pretty serious-minded fellas, infusing their work with socio-political consciousness, a pervasive interest in regional identity, and an unrepentant literary streak (their ponderously titled 2009 opus Novel Sounds of the Nouveau South was inspired by a 1907 Harold Bell Wright novel.) But that doesn't stop 'em from flat-out rocking – last year's mandolin-laced, harmony-rich Death Of A Decade (Bloodshot), in particular, finds the foursome proudly waving a torch for what they used to call "insurgent country," all punk muscle, pop smarts, and roots-rocking heart.

Zola Jesus/Meg Baird
[Art-Pop/Folk]
concert preview

There are some definite tensions at play here, between world-conquering neo-goth siren Zola Jesus (Nika Roza Danilova) and humble Philadelphia folk-scene mainstay Meg Baird (our 2011 Local Artist of the Year.) The former's steely, uncompromising ultimate art-pop – distilled excellently in the skittering sweep of last year's Conatus (Sacred Bones), and the latter's timeless Brit-folk simplicity – encapsulated on her equally albeit more quietly stunning Seasons on Earth (Drag City). Danilova's thick, intoxicating force-of-nature wail and the airy purity of Baird's soprano. And yet, and yet...both women work their magic through an oddly comparable combination of intimacy and icy austerity, yielding an alchemical undercurrent of almost elemental necessity. Should be an interesting show.

Marit Larsen/Teitur
[Folk/Pop]
concert preview

Scandinavians aren't especially known for their gushy sentimentality, but both Teitur Lassen (who hails from the remote Faroe Islands – also the source of "oe," the best-ever Scrabble word) and the pixieish Norwegian Marit Larsen (who, once upon a time, was the blonde half of world-conquering teen-pop duo M2M), are big, sappy softies. Larsen – who's been known to pick a mean bluegrass mandolin on the side – continues to make like a Nordic Taylor Swift on her newest album, Spark (EMI), all Hollywood-ready pop gloss and sly country undertones; picture-perfect melodies and preternatural sweetness with a barely-disguised miserablist streak. Teitur's often pegged as the Faroese John Mayer (Mayer's a huge fan), but the charming, waggish Let The Dog Drive Home (Playground), which feels like his LA album, equally recalls Ben Folds.

Aeroplane
[Electronic/Disco]
concert preview

Though he's got an impressively wide-ranging full-length under his belt – 2010's We Can't Fly – as well as a number of top-notch DJ mixes, including last year's very fun and playful In Flight Entertainment (both on Eskimo Recordings), Aeroplane – originally a duo, now the solo-flying nom du disko of Belgian producer Vito De Luca – is still perhaps best known for remix work, including celebrated versions for Friendly Fires, Grace Jones, Lindstrøm, and Au Revoir Simone. Whatever the mode though – and certainly for tonight's live DJ set as well – the name of the game is disco, generally of an elegant, modern, European (Italo, Balearic, French touch...), sleek, synthy, and gently eclectic variety.
originally published in Philadelphia City Paper

spring-a-long hypertext mixburst

and whoosh, the time 'tis a-springing. ok, so – i brought three mixes home with me on mothers' day weekend: (3) a quick'n'dirty fun-faves'n'odd-sods cd for my sister, made morning-of for us to listen to together on the drive to rochester, (2) a very-eventual next-installment in my ongoing series of "women's music" discs for my mom, and (1) a general-purpose general-audiences mix of current and recent hot hits, intended for haphazard general distribution.

as an all-round catch-up on my recent writing and listening in addition to mixmaking activities, here's the tracklists, with links, where possible, to recent writings on the artists in question; mostly AMG reviews, as well as several CityPaper pieces, and a few other things. enjoy, and feel free to request copies!

(in order from longest to shortest gestation and intended longevity/significance):

(1)
Title: Spring Gleamings
Date: April-May 2009

1. The Palace at 4 AM - A.C. Newman
2. My Love - The Bird and the Bee
3. French Navy - Camera Obscura
4. Compilation Cassette - Darren Hayman
5. Suits Me Fine - Emily Bate
6. What Is Happening - Alphabeat
7. Every Goliath Has His David - The Boy Least Likely To
8. You Don't Gotta Run - Pop Levi
9. At Last - The Dø
10. Stronger Than Jesus - A Camp
11.Generosity - Mirah
12. When I Grow Up - Fever Ray
13. Aldrig Ensam - Jonathan Johansson
14. Bumbo - NOMO
15. I-R-I-N-A - Ryan Leslie
16. Happy Up Here - Röyksopp
17. Dancing Shoes - Montt Mardie
18. General - Buraka Som Sistema
19. Lay it Down - Peter Bjorn and John
20. Chinese - Lily Allen
21. I Couldn't Say It To Your Face - Arthur Russell
22. Hey Snow White - The New Pornographers

notes: as per the title, sort of a successor to harvest gleanings, but definitely lighter and looser in construction as well as tone. really, this is just a compiling of many recent favorites, including some that i might should/would have held on to for year-end purposes, but that gets to feel silly after a point, though i did go with a close-second for the boy least likely (q.v. my "one track mind" blurb on "lemonade") and maybe jonathan j. (though truly that whole album is mix-worthy.)

heavily indie pop/rock slanted – it's a bit of a surprise to me that that's so much of what i've been listening to, these days (wasn't i supposed to have gotten over that or something?) – with a solid slew of feel-good gtr jams, a bit of a mellow-out, and then a whirlwind dancey section that's a tad tokenistic but still flows decently.

the first five tracks go ABCDE by artist, and the next two start that cycle again (could have kept it up with camp and dø but the sequencing didn't work. the first six songs in particular have been in heavy mental rotation. "palace" has emerged as by far my favorite on the a.c. newman album (to the extent that i haven't been listening to the rest of it at all any more.) "french navy" (which likewise outshines anything else on my maudlin career except maybe that crazy string bit in "careless love") is nearly impossible to slot on a mix because it is such an emphatic track one, but this will have to do, since i'm allergic to that particular brand of reusing. "what is happening" (an '09 single!) and "my love" are strong song-of-the-year contenders, totally topping the singing-whilst-biking charts. "compilation cassette" is a perfectly springy new-love song, despite the fact that the lyrics claim it takes place in september. (but darren hayman, who's recently become my most-played artist on last.fm, deserves, and shall receive, his own post, soon enough.)

"at last" and "stronger than jesus" could have been on the chicks mix (below), but they ended up here instead, along with "generosity" which is still one of only two songs that have really stuck with me yet (along with "education") from (a)spera (i'll keep trying tho.) i'm at a loss to explain why "i-r-i-n-a" has been my #1 take-away from ryan leslie's alb, except that it came on my pod when i was running once and it's just such a fun and light-hearted hook and beat. "dancing shoes," the advance single from montt mardié's current alb (which i oughtta get my hands on already), feels like a totally textbook/generic monty tune – it's so epitomic of his style that i barely even notice the song itself – but that's hardly a bad thing. makes it a good intro to him i think. likewise the buraka som sistema song, though it's a bit of a sore thumb here. doesn't matter, it's just so good. (and, really, it's a weird concoction in any context.)

finally, "hey snow white," from the very solid dark was the night comp, is as mesmerizing and hooky as anything on a.c. newman's album this year, or the new pornographers last one, whether because or in spite of it's tossed-off simplicity. dig it.

(2)

Title: Chix IX
Date: May 2009

1. The Pharoahs - Neko Case
2. What's In The Middle - The Bird and the Bee
3. Nothing Can Come Between Us - Obi Best
4. Anna - Hello Saferide
5. My Foolish Heart - Jazmine Sullivan
6. Is It You (Ryan Leslie's Piano Version [?]) - Cassie
7. Feeling Good - My Brightest Diamond
8. Did You Give The World Some Love Today Baby? - Doris
9. Who'd Have Known - Lily Allen
10. Hey Stephen - Taylor Swift
11. Louie - Ida Maria
12. The Sweetest Thing - Camera Obscura
13. Crackers - Maia Hirasawa
14. Love Is Free - Sheryl Crow
15. My Eyes Adore You - Betty Padgett
16. Difficult Women - Emily Bate
17. Keys to the Car - Birdie Busch
18. The Well-Dressed Son to His Sweetheart - Devon Sproule
19. I Need You To Hold My Hand - Naomi Shelton and the Gospel Queens
20. Keep Pushin' - Nikka Costa
21. A Capella (Something's Missing) - Brandy
22. While We Have The Sun - Mirah
23. True Colors - Ane Brun

notes: maybe the best "chicks" installment in some time (notwithstanding that it seems to have been a good three years since i made one) – on its own terms, but especially in terms of my mom (hopefully) actually liking most or all of it. i guess either i've moved past feeling a need to showcase my poppier/dancier female artists in this setting, or else i've got enough else on my plate to more than fill it with gentler/folkier/more approachable r&b/soul stuff and not have to stray farther afield

so this is a pretty smooth ride overall, though definitely not without variety or interest. hopefully cassie, jazmine, nikka and brandy – whose album i just can't get enough of, with several fave cuts still calling out for future mixtape airing – fit the bill on the mom-friendly r&b front, and keep each other enough company not to feel out of place (with some throwback help from doris and betty p.) and that taylor swift song is probably the most low-key thing on fearless, and also among the best. the opening neko cut was by far the biggest middle cyclone standout initially (along with the covers), though the rest continues to grow on me. and "keys to the car," which was the most memorable number at both of the birdie busch gigs i've seen, remains easily the most memorable thing on either of her albums, even though it's sort of tucked away. i been singing it a bunch. (and it's one of a couple things here that about mothers, incl. hello saferide, cam.obs., and ...well i always think that devon sproule song is though actually it's not.)

(3)
Title: Proper Rock for Moofer D
Date: 9 May 2009

1. Love is Only a Feeling - The Darkness
2. Then Cities Beyond - Snake and Jet's Amazing X-Ray Band
3. Proper Rock (Radio Edit) - The Chap
4. Star Shaped - Blur
5. Lion in a Coma - Animal Collective
6. Cynical Days - XTC
7. Mexican Divorce - The Drifters
8. 8 Bit World - Darren Hayman
9. Nous Tombons Dans Elle - Dominique Leone
10. Breakout - Cash Cash
11. Wait - Matthew Sweet
12. A Lover's Concerto - The Toys
13. You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real) - Sylvester
14. Until We Die - Max Tundra
15. Swedish Sin - Billie The Vision and the Dancers
16. Run That Body Down - Paul Simon
17. California Song - The Mountain Goats
18. You've Really Got a Hold On Me - Small Faces
19. Thank You For Giving Me Your Valuable Time - Kaada
20. True - Brandy
21. Si Yo Fuera Un Chico - Beyoncé

alright, well in part this mix was about trying to make a more or less automatic/spontaneous cd mix, the way we useta do more in the days before itunes playlists and especially before cd-rs. er somethin. actually, it was a bit more premeditative than that, since i took a lot of it from my ongoing "songs for listening" playlist, which is essentially a home-listening version of the "on the go" ipod feature. meaning it's a desultory assortment of songs that, for some reason or none, had been worming their way into my head (whilst biking, or waking up, or sitting around, or whatever), unexpected head-wigglers that seemed worth sharing. (key picks on that front incl. the xtc, the paul simon, and the toys.) ended up being more recent stuff than i'd really intended (about a third is from the last year or two), tho whatever. got a bit screwy because i decided i really wanted to include the 11-minute "until we die," which might now be my favorite song from parallax error – it's the epic, proggy one at the end, but the vocal bit in the middle is really lovely and sweet. (and the rest is good too.) so that took up a lot of space and i ended up taking of some of the more unpredictably unpredictable things.

but, in another way this mix was just about being able to put "love is only a feeling" on a disc. and listening to it (loud) (in a car) with somebody (my sister) who might be properly excited about it the way i am. which she was.

because...oh man... that song has been totally ruling my last, oh, month and a half, at least. for a while there, i was listening to it first thing most mornings. not like it's new – it's from the darkness' debut, 'member?, back in 2003 – or even new to me: i'd definitely listened to it and even enjoyed it in the past, even though i wasn't otherwise that into the band apart from "i believe in a thing..." i came back around to it mostly through checking out hot leg, the new band of lead singer justin hawkins. who are pretty awesome. but, gotta be real, not nearly as awesome as this song.

(and, whoa, never seen the video before, but how perfect is that? who hasn't had that fantasy, of rocking out on top of a mountain... okay, well, i have, at least. hm, this reminds me a bit of the similou video for "all this love". anyway, it's a pretty brilliant and brilliantly simple analog for the song's awesomely ridiculous massiveness. although the video edit of the song is missing the acoustic return at the end, which is one of the greatest moments. along with all the other great moments which make up the rest of the song.....like for instance the title and concept, and the lyrics in general, and justin's accent, and the sing-songy guitar notes in the chorus, and the bouzouki/hurdy-gurdy-like bits in the verse, and the solo section, and well, obviously, the chorus hook and the singing.)

speaking of the preposterously epic, i have to say that "si yo fuera un chico" has become one of my very favorite songs of 2008, and easily my favorite beyoncé thing of recent memory (even eclipsing "radio," i guess...?) – i much prefer it to the english-language original, partly because it's fun to listen to the spanish (and understand much of it) but more so (though this is contradictory perhaps) because the translation makes it possible to ignore the song's lyrical content while removing exactly none of its melodrama, meaning that you can just feel it intensely without having to think about it or reflect on the (certainly worth-reflecting-on-at-some-point) gender/identity/relationship politics that she's driving at. so yeah, there's that. also, brandy's "true" is a totally gorgeous thing...yeah.

Bonus Tracks!
or, a.k.a., some other assorted songs that could have been on (at least one of) these mixes, but weren't (or were cut out), or could perhaps be the germ of a future (scatterschottisch) mix of some sort, or in any case are things i've noticed recently and (in most cases) have written something about somewhere too...

Cocktails - Hot Leg
as i might have mentioned, these guys are pretty fun. the problem (if it is one, which is not necessarily) is that, compared to something like "love is only..." they crank up the 'ridiculously' and leave the 'massive' part mostly out of it. still with the falsetto singing and chorus hooks thing, tho. i say an amusing thing about this song in my review.

(How Can I Keep You) Outta Harm's Way - King Khan and His Shrines
or possibly "69 Faces of Love," which is surprisingly enough one of the sweeter and more subtle (in relative terms, i guess) from the king khan disc which i ended up enjoying more, maybe not so surprisingly, than the actual show, though that might just have been because i was tired and they are rowdy and demand your physical electricity. anyway this is some sweet throwback soul, 'cept for it's rock'n'roll too. aaoooooooww!

Bits and Pieces - Junior Boys
not the best song on (the sadly underwhelming) begone dull care/caprices en couleurs (as the odd bilingual cover has it), but maybe the funniest, since, as i realized gradually but especially when they played it slower and groovier live and it was one of the more movable moments of their set, it's kind of a joke sex song, with semi-faux-über-smoove lines like "i see you better when the lights are out" and, especially, the kicker "practice is over," which really makes it seem like a counterpart to flight of the conchords' "it's business time."

Student Union - Lady Sovereign
also v. silly... i thought i liked this album more, but actually it is pretty bad. oh well. what i was trying to say, but got pretty lost in my word-count-cramming attempt at concision, is that this song's synth riff sounds a whole lot like enya's "orinoco flow." which isn't at all a bad thing to interpolate, though it could probably be used for something a lot more musically interesting. at least it's funny though, kinda, with a sorta streets-ish ranting quality against, in this case, uni students.

I'm On a Boat - The Lonely Island ft. T-Pain
okay, well speaking of funny... for some reason people seem to be giving this album some pretty substantial attention: i've listened through a few times and it's definitely entertaining, though this has been one of the only things i really cared to hear more times than that. i could still see overdoing it, easily, but so far at least it's still utterly hilarious, all the more so because you can almost imagine t-pain thinking it's somehow serious (or at least as serious as anything else he does.) and because they really didn't have to make many alterations at all to the style (epic, synthy vocoder r&b); it's preposterous enough as is, they just give it a bit of a nudge. ok, a pretty big nudge.

Yes Boss - Hess is More
i guess hess is more are/is(?) supposed to be something of a comedy/novelty act as well (albeit as an electronica act, sorta.) i haven't really figured it out yet (but i'll let ya know.) and this is definitely funny, with a sort of "step into my office baby"-style cheery sexist cheese but intercut with a strong flavor of bdsm kinkiness, with a deadpan delivery that makes for a unnerving counterpoint between absurdly goofy and slightly disturbing... all the more so because the music is legitimately slinky and sexy and creepy. hypnotic and really striking stuff. (i'd actually heard this a while ago, but recently got a forthcoming "hits" comp, so am trying to sort out the context of the rest of hess's work.)

Bugs & Flowers - Jeffrey Lewis
and yes, this one is funny too, though again in a totally different way. for me, for now, this is the linchpin of jeffrey's great new album, conceptually, as well as just a high point in general. the song does what it does so well and so straightforwardly that it's hardly worth really discussing what that is, but i do urge you to check it out... (maybe i can get a mixtube thing going here on this post soon.)

and on a totally different tip...

Yesterday and Today - The Field
title track and probably best part of the new field album, though it doesn't get really great until the last three minutes (out of ten)... the first seven are solid but standard fieldsy shuffle and swell, and then we finally level out into an unexpectedly groovy plateau which features both the "rubbery bass" and the "live drums" i reference in my preview. too bad he couldn't have stretched out da funk for another seven minutes or so. but we'll take what we can get.

Room Without A Key (Studio Remix) - Rubies
"by" rubies, but really by studio, who basically jettisoned everything except for some of simone rubi and terri loewenthal's (very pretty) wordless cooed vocals, and some of the chord structure i guess, and created a completely new track, in 3+3+3+5/4 time, with deep deep bass (as in profound) and endless effortless guitar wisps. a blissed-out gem (it's cliched but...) and maybe my favorite studio thing. and, i'm so stoked, i know own it on 12", one of my choicest amoeba finds. so so def.

Kunst or Ars - Meanderthals
it's a beautiful morning... (if this isn't the aural equivalent of a sunrise, i tell you what.)