Review Round-Up: February 2013

pretty good month.  pretty good year, so far.  couple of minor trends i'm noticing/tracking, though it's a little silly to be generalizing from just 2.5 months...

indie r&b (rhye, inc., autre ne veut, jamie lidell)
retro-'60s-psych (foxygen, unknown mortal orchestra, jacco gardner, christopher owens, tame impala ?darkstar?)
alt-country revival! (mount moriah, night beds, phosphorescent, the men, mavericks)
atmospheric/ambient folk (sondra sun-odeon, grouper, benoit pioulard)

and of course, there's always indie pop.  i think i may have underrated this...at least, the title track is still standing strong as probably my favorite song of 2k13 thus far.  on the other hand, i can't really speak to the rest of the album, as i've pretty much just been listening to the title track!

Veronica Falls
Waiting For Something To Happen

Veronica Falls have a sound. It's not necessarily the most original sound, as indie-pop goes, but it works, and it's theirs: a pert mix of primness and jangle; cleanly chiming guitars, a brisk, determined tambourine-on-floor-tom backbeat, and those harmonies – oh, the harmonies – open and airy, full-throated and rich but with an oddly affectless, madrigal-like austerity. When first introduced, on their early singles and excellent 2011 debut LP (wherein they sang of ghosts and graveyards, misery and other bad bad feelings, and included an honest-to-goodness Elizabethan round), it was frequently thrilling. That's still often true on album number two, which buffs their scruffier, punkier inclinations into something a bit warmer though still awfully plaintive, and scraps the goth tack (excepting one peppy plea to be buried alive) to hone in on themes of adolescent listlessness and romance. But here's where the studied monochrome consistency thing starts to plague them. Great as they can be taken individually – "Falling Out," "Tell Me" (shades of early R.E.M. in its guitar interplay) and, especially, the title track, are among the sharpest pop offerings of our young year – hearing these songs all in a row, most sharing the same basic beat and harmonic structure, can make the title feel uncomfortably prophetic. [6.5]


Sally Shapiro
Somewhere Else

Four years after a sound-alike sophomore set (2009's My Guilty Pleasure) that made for a safe, sterile follow-up to an utterly delightful debut, Sally Shapiro's ready for some variety. As advertised, Somewhere Else finds the pseudonymous Swedish chanteuse, and producer/counterpart Johan Agebjörn, inching (further) away from their studiously reverential, deliberately faceless Italo-disco reenactment, toward a more generically faceless, broadly '80s-influenced electro-pop. Not that things have really changed all that much. Shapiro's singing is as wispy and wafer-thin as ever; her limp, love-lorn lamentations (sample chorus lyrics: "you were never intended for me"; "please don't go/I love you/nevermind") just as piteously plaintive. Your call whether that's charming or cloying, but it's not exactly the most versatile approach, functioning similarly whether paired with thumping electro-house, elevator smooth-jazz or vague bucolia. The standouts tend to have a bit more spunk – the Annie-ish "This City's Local Italo Disco DJ Has A Crush On Me" (which still can't live up to its several-ways-wishful title) – and, occasionally, company: Shapiro's notoriously shy, retiring ways, notwithstanding, she's gotten downright social; teaming with Drive soundtrack stars Electric Youth for the fun (if decidedly sub-Bowie) "Starman," and, er, Drive soundtrack cash-in tour stars Anoraak for a spot of uncharacteristically warm-blooded, Phoenix-ish lite-funk. [6]
originally published in Magnet Magazine

Matmos
The Marriage of True Minds
[Mentalism/Experimentalism]

Matmos have made a career of translating highly improbable concepts into witty, astonishing, utterly singular music, and with The Marriage of True Minds (Thrill Jockey) it's fair to say they have outdone themselves.  What they've actually done is harder to quantify – the process involved interpreting "scores" gleaned telepathically from experimental subjects (including such august subconsciousnesses as Dan Deacon and Keith Fullerton Whitman); the results are by turns meditative, unsettling, absurdly goofy and (surprisingly often) funky.  It's a welcome reaffirmation that these guys are capable of basically anything, including E.S.P. (possibly?) as well as the strangest Buzzcocks cover you will ever hear (guaranteed.)


Atoms For Peace
AMOK
[Pop/Electronic]

No surprises: Amok (XL) is, at least on the surface, standard-issue latter-day Thom Yorke product.  Imagine The Eraser's mannered moodiness with an extra helping of jittery King of Limbs percussion and you've got a workable shorthand.  What distinguishes it is the extent to which Atoms For Peace are truly a band; comprising not just Yorke's left-hand soundwiz Nigel Godrich but also a trio of truly world-class groovemakers (Mauro Refosco; Joey Waronker; Flea), atop whose gorgeously sinuous and sometimes intriguingly Brazilian-tinged throwdowns Thom's familiar million-dollar murmur functions as mere, miraculous window dressing.


Darkstar
News From Nowhere
[Electronic/Pop]

Drifting beyond their early singles' post-dubstep futurism and their first LP's muted cyborg noir sucker-punch, News from Nowhere (Warp) finds seasoned bafflers Darkstar swerving even further into uncharted territory.  And the news is good: "Nowhere" turns out to be a pillowy paisley wonderland which perfectly matches the album cover's dreamlike, hypercolor pastoralism; an unexpectedly pretty patchwork with swathes of rosy electro-tinted somnambulance woven around aptly-named vocalist James Buttery's tweaked and dappled coos, and bedazzled with psyche-pop jewels like "Amplified Ease" (a suitable description of the overall effect) that suggest a better-medicated Animal Collective.


Foxygen
We Are The 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace and Magic
[Pop/Rock]

The psychedelic '60s have rarely not been a fertile fount of inspiration, but this winter's seen a particularly Aquarian resurgence, between Chris Owens' flowery Lysandre and Jacco Gardner's whole-cloth lysergic refabulations.  LA's Foxygen who hit a sold-out First Unitarian Friday with similarly tuned-in/turned-on tourmates Unknown Mortal Orchestra, are the schtickiest of the bunch, but also maybe the stickiest.  We Are The 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace and Magic (Jagjaguwar), title on down, plays like an elaborate pop-historical dress-up pageant, mix-n-matching baroque-pop brocade and bell-bottom blues; glam-Velvets jean jackets with Sgt. Pepper epaulets, a Shuggie soul-patch and a Dylanish sneer.  I know it's only po-mo indie-pop pastiche – but I like it.


When Nalda Became Punk
A Farewell To Youth
[Indie Pop]

With a goofy, impossibly twee moniker – When Nalda Became Punk – and a genre-legendary producer (Ian Catt) and label (Shelflife) behind their debut album, this Galician duo have about as solid an indie-pop pedigree as you could desire.  A Farewell To Youth, therefore, offers plenty of delights, but few surprises, except perhaps its refusal to prioritize either guitars or synthesizers, opting instead for both, full-throttle, simultaneously; festooning its classically cuddly melodies – some giddy, some wistful – with both jangles and twinkles, gleefully scrappy (and, yes, punkish) power-chord churning and equally urgent, go-for-broke drum machines.  "I wanna build a factory of happiness," croons earnest, lightly-accented frontlady Elena Sestelo; she's got her foundation set already.


Amor De Dias
The House At Sea
[Indie Pop/Folk]

Anyone still sighing softly over the dissolution of delicately refined English pastoralists The Clientele will find no shortage of solace in The House at Sea (Merge), the second full-length fruit of erstwhile retiring frontman Alisdair MacLean's partnership with sprightly Spanish-born sweetie Lupe Núñez-Fernández (of Pipas) as Amor de Dias.  It's a fuller and more assured effort than their debut, with stronger, more varied songwriting applied to the same gracefully insubstantial palette of mood and memory, lush with wispy nylon-string guitars, whispery vocals and a sun-faded bossa-based lilt.


Grouper
The Man Who Died In His Boat
[Ambient/Folk]

There are songs on The Man Who Died In His Boat (Kranky) – but only barely.  As on her 2008 high water mark, Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill (which is also being reissued alongside it), this collection of previously unheard five-year-old recordings finds Grouper (Portland-based ambient-folk musician Liz Harris) circling around an elusive melting point between song and sound – between drowsy, fingerpicked canticles and pure, purring abstraction – where her endlessly thrumming acoustic guitars and sumptuously reverbed vocals slough off any definable substance and evanesce into a ghostly, inchoate murmur, lingering just beyond conscious grasp.


Dawn McCarthy and Bonnie "Prince" Billy
What The Brothers Sang
[Folk/Roots]

Those who balked at the mild Nashville slickness of Bonnie "Prince" Billy's self-covering Greatest Palace Music record may take similar issue with his latest interpretation project, a collection of Everly Brothers duets sung with Faun Fables' Dawn McCarthy.  But while What The Brothers Sang (Drag City) is certainly earnest, it's not entirely the straightforward troubadour's tribute you might imagine.  For one thing, it largely ignores the duo's beloved '50s hits in favor of obscurities and B-sides from their late '60s output (including one particularly heartfelt, hippy-dippy John Denver cover.)  If they can't always recapture the Everlys' sublime vocal alchemy, they imbue this overlooked oeuvre with a delightfully understated back-porch looseness.


inc.
[Soul/R&B]
concert preview



Given the recent, openly flirtatious state of affairs between the indie world and mainstream R&B, the emergence of a group like inc. – two Los Angeles brothers specializing in seductive, buttery-smooth slow jams – feels like an almost preordained consummation.  Even two years ago, an indie institution like 4AD releasing an album as lustfully luscious as No World – or a Making Time performer this unabashedly well-suited for, well, making time – would've been practically unimaginable (or at least greeted with foregone presumptions of irony-mongering.)  It's not like they're reinventing any wheels here: Andrew Aged's doe-eyed, smolderingly earnest vocals could pass for any number of bedroom crooners down the decades, while his brother Daniel’s equally voluptuous bass playing, Timbaland-style electro skitters and minimal-minded stutter-step beats would've slotted right in on late-'90s radio (or, perhaps, a more organic variant of the first Junior Boys album.)  But it's revelatory – and frankly, just plain hot – to hear indie-soul this forthright and unapologetic, with none of the Weeknd's fashionably faded mumblings, How To Dress Well's arty lo-fi, nor the XX's distancing post-punk twitches. 

Autre Ne Veut
[Electronic Pop/R&B]
concert preview


Like his sometime labelmates and fellow experimental/pop line-straddlers D'eon, James Ferraro and Ford & Lopatin, Arthur Ashin – a.k.a. Brooklyn-based recovering enigma Autre Ne Veut – harbors a fondness for garishly plasticine 1980s production tropes: big soupy synth washes; blindingly bright gated snares; ersatz-new age shimmers; twinned metal-tone guitars.  But it's no good pegging him for an ironist: Ashin's singing voice, in its own way at least as excessive as his production style, is a searing, Prince-indebted falsetto that broadcasts an earnestness you just can't fake.  Cutting back significantly on the artier oddball extremes of his self-titled debut – though fear not, it's still plenty weird – Anxiety (Software) is a tight, polished and deviously hooky set of breathless electro-soul that pushes past insular leftfield-R&B tinkerers like How To Dress Well to suggest an affinity with latter-day stadium-pop contenders like Gotye and Twin Shadow.  Aside from being maybe a quarter-century late, it feels improbably convincing (though still utterly implausible) as a legitimate mainstream bid.

James Hunter Six
[Soul]
concert preview


Back when he debuted in the mid '90s – and when the burgeoning retro-soul audience caught up with him a decade later for his excellent 2006 breakthrough, People Gonna Talk – James Hunter's buttery-smooth vocal stylings and svelte, dapper '50s-style arrangements made him a double-take-worthy dead ringer for Sam Cooke.  On Minute By Minute (Go/Fantasy), his fifth album in two decades and the first to acknowledge his crackerjack backing combo (in number, at least), he sounds, if anything, even less like what you'd expect from an unassuming-looking Englishman, trying on a smokier, Ray Charles-via-Jackie Wilson vocal grittiness to match his band's harder-edged, horn-heavy throwdowns.  With Gabriel Roth, Daptone Records' soul-revival kingpin, behind the boards, Hunter and the Six dip into chicken-shack funk, "Tequila"-style Latin-tinged acoustic groovers, and the title track's hard-swinging organ-led strut, alongside their more refined, jazzier supper-club fare – all on original tunes that'd handily pass a smell test as unearthed turn-of-the-'60s chestnuts.

Mac DeMarco
[Indie Pop/Rock]
concert preview


He's got precursors, sorta – Kurt Vile, Ariel Pink, and Daniel Johnston come variably to mind – but Mac De Marco is definitely his own special, befuddling mix of defiantly casual and deceptively crafty.  He's got this impossibly tangy, crystalline guitar tone that doesn't feel the least bit fussed over, but's just too luscious and idiosyncratic not to be.  He writes seemingly knocked-off, borderline inane slice-of-life lyrics – mostly about cigarettes, boredom and girls (preferably denim-clad) – then sets them to tight, heartbreakingly winsome little melodies.  His whole presentation pretty much screams amiable goofball slacker, but in the right light he comes off effortlessly, enviably hip and art-damaged – imagine someone bridging the improbable affective disjunct between the young Jonathan Richman and his icon/would-be prototype, Lou Reed.  He's also promisingly prolific, dropping two full-lengths in 2012: 2 (Captured Tracks) was certainly the more lucid – it kicked off with the year's finest riff, with plenty more to follow – but its weirder, scruffier predecessor, Rock and Roll Night Club, was nearly as intriguing.

Bleeding Rainbow
[Indie Pop/Rock]
concert preview




Two minutes into the gently epic opening cut of Yeah Right (Kanine), album #3 from the local fuzz-pop lovelies formerly known as Reading Rainbow, the drums kick in, the pace ratchets up a few notches and there's a shift from warm organ-drone and sweetly harmonized boy-girl vocals to a growling, pummeling guitar-smear directly evoking a certain other noise-obsessed band with a blood-related (and seasonally appropriate) moniker who, hey hey, also happened to release their third album last week!  That feels like the moment, symbolically, when the band becomes Bleeding Rainbow, transforming from our vaguely cuddly neighborhood duo named for a PBS show to a sharp, aspirational four-piece with an unmitigated allegiance to the turn-of-the-'90s shoegaze-to-grunge continuum.  From there on out, it's a hearty, good-natured assault playing both sides of the noise/pop dichotomy, with Sarah Everton's charmingly plain-jane vocals channeling indie everywomen from Bilinda Butcher to Georgia Hubley to Frankie Rose.

Efterklang
[Indie/Orchestral]
concert preview


In the ten years since they first emerged as a brooding, expansive, ten-piece symphonics-plus-electronics post-rock ensemble, Copenhagen's Efterklang have slowly undergone a curious evolution, contracting in size and sound enough to resemble a more pedestrian atmospheric indie-rock band, but without fully losing the evocative majesty that earned them so many early Sigur Rós comparisons.  While last year's Piramida (4AD) still boasted a robust roster of contributors (including the Andromeda Mega Express Orchestra and the South Denmark Girls Choir), they're officially down to a trio, with vocalist Casper Clausen's burnished croon (a less melodramatic echo of Tindersticks frontman Stuart Staples' eternal baritone) now forming the clear focal point to their compositions.  And despite taking inspiration (and field recorded ambience) from a visit to the Arctic Circle ghost town that provided the album's title, these compact, sound-stuffed fantasias tend to evoke wistful domestic tranquility rather than your typical resplendent Nordic mountainscapes.  Call it Danish Modern chamber pop; in this case, it feels like it could actually fit inside a chamber.

Toro Y Moi
[Electronic/Indie Pop]
concert preview



Chazwick Bundick gets pegged as a shape-shifter; his releases indexed via such-and-such stylistic dalliance du jour, but the tonal throughline of his output as Toro Y Moi easily overshadows those dabbling shifts in musical approach, which – not unlike the music's charms – tend to be subtle ones.  So if Anything in Return (Carpark) breaks from Underneath The Pine's relatively organic baroque-pop fever-dream to revisit the synthetic mod-R&B and muted electro-funk of 2010's Causers of This (why is he so atrocious at naming things?) and boasts increasingly prominent vocal hooks that help make it his stickiest album to date, the cumulative effect is still that familiarly hazy, dappled soft-prog mood, comfily padded in a cushion of (ironic? oneiric?) distance.  While chillwave has demonstrated more staying power as a joke than a genre, Toro's assembled discography may be the strongest case for it as a specific, surprisingly versatile aesthetic; it's vaguely lush, vaguely poppy, and you can vaguely dance to it.  After all, what's French for "wave," again?

Daedelus/Salva/Ryan Hemsworth
[Electronic/Dance]
concert preview


Much as Four Tet's Kieren Hebden and Manitoba/Caribou/Daphni's Dan Snaith have traced an improbable trajectory from producing gently bucolic "folktronica" early last decade to their current status as central figures in the thriving UK/international EDM scene, Californian neo-dandy Alfred Darlington – alias Daedelus – has lately emerged from his perennial, quaintly whimsical IDM tinkerings as a similarly unlikely de facto elder statesman of LA's burgeoning beat underground.  His historically prodigious release schedule may have tapered off slightly – his last full-length was 2011's overstuffed, guest-studded Bespoke – but he seems busier than ever, collaborating and sharing remixes with the likes of Nosaj Thing, Sepalcure, Teebs and Gaslamp Killer, plus curating his own Magical Properties imprint, which has been less active as a label per se than a semi-annual live electronica roadshow/revue.  This fourth installment features SF>LA bass-head Salva, who just dropped his hyped-up, hip-hop-jacking Odd Furniture EP (Friends of Friends), and hotly-tipped, Halifax-born cloud-rap beatsmith Ryan Hemsworth.

Aesop Rock
[Hip-Hop]
concert preview


Aesop Rock's ultra-dense, symbol-strewn, sesquipedalian raps aren't for everyone, and even his truest heads may be thankful he takes some space between releases – time for him to breathe and us to digest – but the half-decade gap before last summer's Skelethon (Rhymesayers) was a rough one.  It was evidently even rougher for Aes himself, however; he spent it contending with divorce, a close friend's death, and the apparent dissolution of longtime label Def Jux.  All of this gets excavated, in typically allusive, semi-absurdist stream-of-(self)-consciousness fashion, atop a truckload of menacingly potent firework drum breaks.  But such ostensibly mature, mortal concerns get juxtaposed with (and filtered through) a recurrent focus on the smart-alecky melodrama of impish, Calvin-and-Hobbes-style kidhood – dorky haircuts, roman candles, homemade mummies, godlike donuts, carving "Zoso" into a school desk, and a particularly epic account of refusing to eat your green beans – which helps make the hyperbolic verbosity on display here unusually semi-scrutable, yielding simultaneously his funniest and most poignant work to date.

Lady Gaga
[Pop/Theater]
concert preview


Hey, remember Lady Gaga?  It's tough, I know.  It's been nearly two years since the relentless Eurothump and Glee-friendly electro-metal of Born This Way, the towering (if paradoxically somewhat insular-feeling) manifesto of unfettered inclusivity that consummated her improbably triumphant campaign of complete saturation.  After three albums in as many years, she hasn't even dropped a single since 2011.  Apparently she's been traveling: the Born This Way Ball Tour spent 2012 giant-striding its way across five continents.  (And who exactly was keeping us company in her absence?  Carly Rae Jepsen?)  So here's the victorious homecoming, fingers crossed that we haven't just forgotten her.  To be clear, this isn't really even pop music anymore; we're talking full-on gonzo, symbolist, Brechtian musical theater (-cum-Armani-appointed fashion show.)  An excerpt from Wikipedia's nearly thousand-word "synopsis" of the tour's "plot": "...she emerges from the stage sitting on a meat couch with her gun bra and green trousers.  Mother G.O.A.T. flies around the castle lip-syncing the words to "Paparazzi" until Gaga returns to kill her with her new disco stick."  Good luck.

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