Cups To The Stars: 2013 in Review – The Songs

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

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

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

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

1. Neko Case: "Man"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4. Caitlin Rose: "Menagerie"

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

5. Little Daylight: "Overdose"

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

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

6. Dungeonesse: "Soon"

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

7. Chvrches: "Gun"

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

8. Cayucas: "High School Lover"

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

9. Lindstrøm & Todd Terje: "Lanzarote"


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

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

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

11. Vampire Weekend: "Unbelievers" 

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

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

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

13. Kacey Musgraves: "Follow Your Arrow"

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

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

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

15. My Bloody Valentine: "New You"

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

honorable mention:

Bibio: "À Tout à l'Heure"

Bleeding Rainbow: "Waking Dream"

Neko Case: "Nearly Midnight, Honolulu"

Foxygen: "San Francisco"

Kalabrese: "Purple Rose"

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

Saint Rich: "Young Vultures"

Sophie: "Bipp"

Stornoway: "The Bigger Picture"

John Wizards: "iYongwe"

Review Round-Up: October 2013

Cass McCombs
Big Wheel and Others

Two years ago, Cass McCombs gave us two distinct, intriguing but oddly opaque albums; each a mere eight songs long.  At twenty-two tracks and eighty-five minutes, Big Wheel and Others (note the typically coy titular understatement) feels like a deliberate reaction against those records' mincing concision, although, as double-sets go, it's loose but hardly ragged.  Neither a conceptual epic nor a sprawling White Album-style smorgasbord, but a genial stretching-out a la Exile and Blonde on Blonde; an album to put on and just live in for a while.  Stylistically, it's somewhere in that ballpark as well; a rootsy ramble from the truckdrivin' title track's musclebound motorik to the dusty folk surrealism of "Unearthed," via pretty pedal-steel ballads, slinky beatnik blues, and jazzy yacht-country instrumentals – all gorgeously performed – plus three slightly bewildering interview clips (taken from the 1969 documentary Sean) with a four-year-old who probably could've penned off-color nursery-rock goof-off "Satan is My Toy."  Throughout, McCombs hits a brilliantly unpredictable songwriting stride, like a wry, wandering Silver Jew, peppering his romantic and socio-political ruminations with twisted neo-hippie logic ("I believe in littering: waste should not be hidden but seen") and tersely quirky quips ("what's it like to shit in space?") [8/10]

Kwes.
ilp

Now here's what I call a kaleidoscope dream.  Like a bookish limey Miguel with zero of the bravado and a flair for woozy, Floydian whirr, Kwes is a man of modest but nostalgia-rich pleasures.  The first vocal appearance on his long-simmering Warp debut (which comes ninety seconds in, once the sound-dust settles from the album's startlingly queasy initial eruption) finds the low-key Londoner listlessly "walkin' in the park, chuckin' bread to swans, hearin' em honk."  Soon he's picking berries while fending off butterflies; later he's reminiscing about a lover who once invited him rollerblading ("back in '93"), and someone else who suggested riding a cable car ("today," though the time difference feels somehow negligible.)  Words are feeble, fleeting things on ilp, but these at least offer some tangible, redolent images amid the album's hazy, paisley swirl.  Likewise, despite the occasional gummy refrain – like the burbling stutter-soul of previously aired highlight "b_shf_l" – Kwes' pop instincts typically prove incidental to his synaesthete's bent for structureless head-trip meanderings.  But it's hard to mind once they've gotten you in the door: rarely does one stumble into a world so richly realized and so warmly, curiously inviting. [7.5/10]

Schneider TM
Guitar Sounds

Dirk Dresselhaus is a man of surprises.  He slyly prefigured the micro-house boom with his 1998 Schneider TM debut LP, Moist, before shifting gears entirely to the (similarly prescient) Beach Boys-infused lap-pop of 2002's Zoomer.  Last year's Construction Sounds returned to the alias for an unprecedentedly abstract and experimental effort incorporating field recordings from building sites.  And while it bears substantial common ground with that work, Guitar Sounds essentially finds the Berliner broaching yet another new genre: per the title, it's a set of guitar-based electro-acoustic improvisation (or as he'd have it, "instant composition.")  It's a far cry from the playful humorousness of his early days (unless, arguably, you squint at just the right moments – say, the gently sputtering "explosions" toward the end of "Landslide.")  But his curiously organic approach to electronica and close attention to sonic detail remain, somewhere, among these meandering drones and tones, grindings and scrapings (and brief, occasional bouts – as on "First of May" – of actual guitar playing), which are warmly enveloping in many stretches and, even at their least palatable, still rather pleasantly unpleasant. [6/10]

originally published in Magnet Magazine

Dirtbombs
Ooey Gooey Chewey Ka-Blooey!
[Rock/Pop]

It's not every garage-punk band that follows up their Detroit techno covers record with an exuberant, party-starting homage to vintage bubblegum.  Okay, The Dirtbombs are probably the only one – but they're also the best.  Not just any ol' '60s pop re-hash, Ooey Gooey Chewy Ka-Blooey (In The Red) stomps and shimmies, sugar-shocks and sha-la-las like the Archies gone pleasantly feral.  While these ten three-minute wonders are technically all Mick Collins originals, he's not above bolstering the project's authenticity by lifting a lick (or an entire vocal melody) from the classics: "Mony Mony," "Yummy Yummy Yummy," even "Good Vibrations."  Remember kids, only the greats steal.

Haim
Days Are Gone
[Pop/Rock]

Notwithstanding the Haim sisters' long-haired, shade-sporting LA rockstar image, their duly touted instrumental chops, legitimately ass-kicking live show and ample use of twitchy, palm-muted guitar licks, the songs on their long-awaited debut LP are no less technologically-abetted studio creations than those of that other red-hot hype-riding trio of the moment, Chvrches – though neither are they any less perfectly-formed pop.  And despite the Fleetwood Mac RIYLs that have been persistently trailing them, Days Are Gone (Columbia) lands a good deal closer to Thriller than Rumours.  Just remember which one of those had Van Halen on it.

Devon Sproule + Mike O'Neill
Colours
[Singer-Songwriter]

Devon Sproule and Mike O'Neill met singing Beach Boys duets on Youtube – like you do in the twenty-teens – and crafted the collaborative Colours (Tin Angel) long-distance, between Austin and Halifax.  But there's nothing new-fangled or logistically strained about the topics traversed here – family life, human goodness, ceiling fans, a minor boating accident, love – nor the album's unhurried, loosely jazzy folk-pop.  All of this reflects Sproule's usual open-hearted, modestly idiosyncratic milieu, which O'Neill slots neatly and effortlessly into.  His voice is high and pure like hers, and the results, colored by Sandro Perri's sympathetic, synth- and horn-flecked production, are rarely dazzling but consistently comforting.  The Wilsons should be proud.

Glasser
Interiors
[Electronic/Art-Pop]

Cameron Mesirow's gonna have a tough time shaking those chronic, facile-seeming Björk comparisons with her second LP as Glasser, and not just because of certain heavily reminiscent contours in the soaring, otherworldly acrobatics of her voice (which, to be fair, shares at least as much with the sweet, artful detachment of St. Vincent's Annie Clark.)  Even while Interiors (True Panther) remains undeniably Mesirovian, its architecturally inspired yet organically fluid techno-pop shapes evoke the exploratory, hypercolor digitalia of Homogenic more than anything Björk herself has touched in well over a decade.

VV Brown
Samson & Delilah
[Electronic/Pop]

VV Brown emerged in 2009 as a perky, playful retro-pop songbird, but we've barely heard from her since, as the intended follow-up to her delightful debut was first delayed, then permanently shelved for artistic reasons.  Her actual sophomore release may offer some explanations: Samson and Delilah (YOY) represents an almost complete aesthetic overhaul; a dramatic left turn into gothic, quasi-operatic electronica that's as magnificent as it is unexpected.  Brown's voice, all but unrecognizable, weaves across frosty industrial synthscapes, deep distorted machine grooves and imaginative, darkly glistening dance-pop, compensating for its somewhat diminished personality through sheer emotive potency.

Machinedrum
Vapor City
[Electronic]

Much as Machinedrum's 2011 breakthrough, Room(s), refitted and streamlined the frantic antics of Chicago footwork, Vapor City (Ninja Tune) appropriates the floor-friendly architecture of drum'n'bass and skittering digital dancehall for much more shadowy, diffuse, wistfully atmospheric purposes, loading on the sonic detail – sleepy/spectral vocal fragments, brooding synth pads, infinitely divisible rhythmic tracery – to render a meticulously misty, greyscale urban moodscape.  (The title scans as flatly, almost blandly descriptive.)  Barring passable detours into chillwave, dappled Boards of Canada-isms and abstract ambient fuzz, the results tend toward theoretically danceable tracks which in practice are more ideally suited for deep, sullen vibing.

Trentemøller
Lost
[Electronic/Eclectic]

Unerringly proficient, if increasingly inscrutable, Anders Trentemøller continues to distance himself from the coffee-table tech-house and elegantly tailored club fare on which he made his name.  The Danish producer's third full-length, Lost (In My Room), is split evenly between instrumental curios – everything from noir-ish mood pieces to sludgy psych-rock to the occasional, dazzling display of programmed-synth kineticism – and mild, suggestible vocal features for assorted indie rock notables (members of The Drums, Blonde Redhead, Lower Dens, etc.)  It's an amiable mess strewn with captivating moments – plus, kicking things off with seven heavenly minutes of Low's unimpeachable Mimi Parker is gonna win you plenty of points around these parts.

Diplo
Revolution EP
[Dance/Electronic]

Once upon a time, Diplo made an album.  It was 2004, and it was a pleasantly low-key, trip-hoppy affair entitled Florida.  Since then he's hardly even sat still long enough for anything so laidback or long-format – these days he keeps a feverish, turbo-boosted pace of 140-character blasts, 130 BPM, and (per Forbes' 2013 highest paid DJs list) a cool $13 million per annum.  We'll still claim him as a de facto local, but his jet-set lifestyle and restless, rootless musical m.o. are about pan-global as it gets.

Last year's Express Yourself EP was a rare dispatch from the hedonistic heart of that one-man whirlwind – his first (ostensibly) solo production jaunt in eons – offering a typically delirious but uncommonly focused burst of twitchy, ass-twirling equatorial ghetto-tech.  Hard at its heels comes Revolution (Mad Decent), re-upping with another six cuts (four originals, two workmanlike remixes) of gregarious gutter-funk abandon.  These 23 minutes are more hyper-stuffed than ever, flaunting two to four collaborators per track and cramming in buckets of stutter-step machine claps, bass-rattling horn blurts, twinkly rave synths, tacky pop'n'B diva warbling, EDM screw'n'grind and a slew of quick and dirty rap verses from the game's finest young turks.  And if you can keep pace with all that, there's another drop coming any second now.

Drake
[Hip-Hop/R&B]
concert preview

For what was effectively a coronation pageant, 2011's Take Care hardly felt like a joyous occasion; compared to Nothing Was The Same (Cash Money/Universal Republic), though, it's practically a party record.  "I'm on my worst behaviour," Drake snarls – Canadian spelling, of course – over ominous, disjointed rattles and synth throbs, and he's not kidding: he's rarely sounded as crass, petty and angrily, needlessly defensive as he is at certain points on his third full-length.  As for his persistent emotional ineptitude (and crippling nostalgia for past romantic failures), well, that's been covered before, and it remains as perversely compelling if increasingly tough to sympathize with.  Mostly though, he's just awfully, inexcusably morose.  Noah "40" Shebib keeps on building him these sumptuous luxury suites – weird, staggering, adventurously modern moodscapes – and all he wants to do is mope around in them.  But he's still got that nagging, hard-to-define charisma; a knack for absorbingly intimate confessionals, even if it clearly stems from some serious boundary issues.  Also, it must be said that to see Drake in concert is to witness Aubrey Graham in his element: he really is a born performer, and if we ever finally get sick of listening to his elegantly-appointed sulking, he can totally fall back on that acting career.

Deltron 3030
[Hip-Hop]
concert preview

It's been 13 years since the release of Deltron 3030, the sci-fi comic-book hip-hop concept opus which paved the way for the improbable sci-fi comic-book hip-hop crossover success of Gorillaz (involving many of the same key players) – although apparently only ten have passed in the album's peskily dystopian, technocratic futureworld: according to Joseph Gordon-Levitt's ponderous spoken intro to Event II (Deltron Partners), it is now "Stardate 3040."  But – despite the efforts of our trusty hero, renegade rap-battle freedom-fighter/disenchanted "mech soldier" Deltron Zero (alias Del the Funkee Homosapien) – not much has changed.  Narrative specificity and conceptual coherence still take a definite backseat to the generally bad-ass, swashbuckling atmosphere created by Del's twisty, jargon-flourishing raps, turntablist Kid Koala's skittering scratches and producer Dan the Automator's lavish, widescreen sample-sourcing and adrenalized breakbeats.  While it's almost certainly better than we had a right to hope, this guest-star-studded sequel is probably best taken as an overdue victory lap; a gleeful exercise in warp-drive retro-futurist nostalgia.  But even if it's no more than an excuse for the triumphant triumvirate to head out on tour, with a sixteen piece orchestra in tow no less – and if Kid Koala's deliriously fun Vinyl Vaudeville shows from last year are anything to judge by – justice will be served right here in the present.

Bill Callahan/Lonnie Holley
[Singer-Songwriter]
concert preview

Through his dozen or so albums as Smog and, especially, the handful he's made more recently under his own name, Bill Callahan has etched out a reliable, dependably unhurried furrow for his quietly affecting musings.  But it's rarely felt as cozy as his latest, Dream River (Drag City), which settles into a loose, surprising seventies soul-jazz vibe: Callahan's laconic, iconic baritone drifting overtop congas, claves and electric piano like Leonard Cohen moonlighting with Gil Scott-Heron's band; his roving ruminations sharing space with fragrant flute and fiddle leads and guitarist Matt Kinsey's subtle atmospheric heroics.  The title befits Callahan's typically cryptic, trancelike stream of cast-off observations, cock-eyed profundities, corny jokes and come-ons, which circle here around familiar themes but with a cautiously more sanguine outlook, finding mundane beauty and savage splendor in the natural world and solace in the smallness of human relationships.  Lonnie Holley – an Alabama-born African-American artist who has, arguably, actually lived the kind of outsider's perspective Callahan often adopts in his songs – arrives at a similarly thoughtful optimism amidst markedly stranger circumstances in the surreal pronouncements on Keeping A Record Of It (Dust-to-Digital), with a decidedly more dynamic, colorfully expressive voice and to considerably chintzier musical accompaniment.

John Vanderslice
[Indie/Singer-Songwriter]
concert preview

John Vanderslice is one of indie's surest bets; a steadfast, sure-footed songwriter who's never made a bad record, even if he's never turned out a clear masterpiece.  (I'd probably point to 2005's Pixel Revolt as his finest hour, but each entry in his discography has its partisans.)  All of his albums seem to create and inhabit their own private, often insular worlds, but Dagger Beach, his ninth full length, feels especially personal; less for its songs than its archetypical array of warm, gritty textures – overdriven acoustic guitars, woody synths, brightly chunky drums, free-floating analog dribbles of uncertain origin.  A crowd-funded, self-released project following a stint on Dead Oceans, it was recorded – computer-free – at his own Tiny Telephone studios, and particularly knowing that it came in the wake of a significant break-up, it's easy to imagine JV sitting alone at his Neve console, finding solace and focus in meticulously building up layers of atmospheric sonics.  As much of a studio rat as he is, though, the quintessential way to encounter Vanderslice is in person at his shows, where he flashes a legendary chatty affability at odds with his understated, often elusive songwriting.

Franz Ferdinand/Frankie Rose
[Rock/Pop]
concert preview

Franz Ferdinand have always been as much a dance band as a rock band, coaxing the sharp, jagged lurch of post-punk into the plumped basslines and signature crisp, feline strut that fueled both the deathless "Take Me Out" and an impressive string of worthy successors.  While the seedy nightclub trawl of 2009's Tonight was their most overt, mildly experimental dalliance with "proper" dance music, morality-teasing fourth album/reset button Right Thoughts Right Words Right Action (Domino) drafts in some of the finest minds in electro/pop – Hot Chip's Joe Goddard and Alexis Taylor; Scandinavian sooperproducers Todd Terje and Björn Yttling – yet results in the band sounding utterly like their own waggish, swooningly metrosexual selves.  It's their tightest, leanest effort since their debut, and it's great to have them back.  In the support slot is Brooklyn linchpin Frankie Rose, whose latest opus, Herein Wild (Fat Possum), weds the glorious layered-vocal luminosity and Cure-cribbing beat-beds of last year's great, quantum-leaping Interstellar to the spunkier garage-pop grit of her debut, and throws in the occasional string section.

The Dismemberment Plan
[Rock/Pop]
concert preview

The Dismemberment Plan were one of the most fiercely beloved bands around before their 2003 break-up, so it's understandable that there are a lot of feelings surrounding their recent return to the active column – a brief, triumphant tour in 2011, and now the curiously misspelled Uncanney Valley (Partisan), their first album since 2001's masterful Change.  A lot of excitement and eager anticipation, but also a lot of wariness and skepticism, especially surrounding the record – protectiveness, perhaps, toward the band's cherished memory and established catalog.  Well: the new disc doesn't sound much like, say, 1999's timeless Emergency & I.  But then again, neither did any of their other records.  They've always been a band in motion, and they return now evolved once more – as righteous emo diehards will be miffed to discover – into a looser, goofier, less existentially pensive and altogether more jovial (and synthesizer-happy) iteration of themselves.  But there's no mistaking Joe Easley and Eric Axelson's sparky, jittery math-funk grooves, nor Travis Morrison's densely geeky, reference-strewn lyrics; smirky and earnest in equal measure.  From the gorgeously whirring workaday introspection of "Invisible" to the sweetly unabashed affection of "Lookin'" to propulsive party starters like "White Collar White Trash," the band has never sounded so contented or so celebratory.  Truly, what's not to celebrate?

Saint Rich/Wild Belle
[Rock/Pop/Reggae]
concert preview

If post-rockers could talk, what would they say?  Here's your chance to find out: Monday's double-bill pairs two new song-oriented projects from musicians better known for their instrumental-only affairs.  Steve Marion makes curious, captivating wordless guitar-pop with/as Delicate Steve, but he's switched over to drum duties behind bandmate (and North Jersey high school buddy) Christian Peslak in the recently-minted duo Saint Rich.  Their debut Beyond the Drone (Merge) is a rollicking, rootsy, riff-tastic rip through '60s rock and '70s boogie that feels a bit like Foxygen without all the anxious posturing (and with notably witty lyrics.)  Meanwhile, jazz-steeped saxophonist/experimental tinkerer Elliot Bergman made his name fronting (too-long dormant) avant-afrobeat heroes NOMO, with whom his sister Natalie has occasionally featured as a touring member; now the siblings are slinging globally-conscious indie-pop as Wild Belle.  Their predictably groove-rich, sonically adventurous Isles (Columbia) sets them up as something like a worldbeat She & Him, pulling from African pop and Motown but with a particularly emphasis on Caribbean rhythms which make it well-suited to help pass the time before the reemergence of summertime, and/or Santigold.

Fuzz
[Rock]
concert preview

Ty Segall has made a lot of records – let's just say that's a significant understatement – but he's never made anything quite so epically colossal, and at the same time so lean and laser-focused, as Fuzz (In The Red)  The obliteratingly self-evident self-titled debut from the West Coast scene-leader's latest collaborative venture spotlights the amped-up blooze riffs and brain-scrambling solos of guitarist Charlie "Moonheart" Moothart and the appropriately hefty underpinnings of bassist Roland Cosio.  Segall's still singing lead, but he's jumped from strings to skins here to show off some breezily ferocious, Mitch Mitchell-style dexterity behind the kit.  While this is a new project, these dudes have also been playing and starting bands together since high school, and there's a purity of purpose here that seems to stem from the spirit of those days, channeling fellow San Francisco outfits like the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Blue Cheer.  Accordingly, Fuzz strips away the garage-bound shagginess and punkish snarl that typically characterize these guys' output to focus on heavy, heavily-Sabbath-indebted psychedelic proto-metal that makes this a power trio in the most classical, primal sense.  In other words: just what you'd expect from the awesome, fiery blue elemental space-demon on the cover.

Cayucas
[Indie-Pop/Rock]
concert preview

While obviously not as uncommon as the eponymous shaggy forest-dweller, it's still a rare and precious thing to encounter an indie-pop debut as sharp, succinct and perfectly formed as Bigfoot (Secretly Canadian), which breezes through eight great, unimpeachably summery tunes in just about a half hour.  The Santa Monica outfit, whose name is slightly modified from the beach burb of Cayucos, a little ways up the coast, have caught considerable flak for their nagging similarity to a certain East Coast band likewise beloved of 1950s archetypes, plaid button-downs and lilting, tropical-tinged guitar lines.  But while the Vampire Weekend-in-California call-outs are certainly apt – down to the literary details of their collegiate travelogues and sun-bleached romances, enthusiastic use of onomatopoetic yelps, and Futura-enabled album design – it's hard to see why that's much cause for complaint, especially now that Koenig and crew have moved on to decidedly less simple pleasures, and most especially when head Cayuca Scott Yudin can churn out something as instantly and persistently indelible as the snazzily syncopated "High School Lover," which I'd contend equals or betters anything on the first VW album.

Fuck Buttons
[Electronic]
concert preview

In theory, Pitchfork-annointed electro-noise auteurs Fuck Buttons make a reasonable fit for the Making Time demographic.  But its troubling to contemplate what might actually happen when the assembled party-ready masses at Voyeur encounter the Bristol duo's portentous, magisterial sound barrages.  Probably the best bet is to hope they bust out some of the old stuff: 2009's relatively populist Tarot Sport at least boasted appropriately movement-friendly four-on-the-floor underpinnings on most of its tracks, plus a twinkling, major-key bent to its awe-inducing anthemics that rendered them rapturously uplifting.  (Enough so that they served to score part of last year's Olympic opening ceremony.)  As for the stark, soul-crushing monoliths that make up most of this year's negative-inverse offering Slow Focus (ATP), they seem markedly less well-suited to soundtrack a scene of happy revelry than to accompany the queasy aftermath of rubble and devastation following, say, the invasion of a popular hipster dance night by an army of demonic, emotionless alien cyborgs.  Maybe if you escape to the basement "bear den" the haze of sweat and stoner rock jams will drown out the screams.

Raime
[Electronic]
concert preview

Raime – the British abstract electronic duo of Joe Andrews and Tom Halstead – record for a label called Blackest Ever Black, and it's hard to get around the aptness there: their music is just really damn dark.  The sounds they favored on last year's intoxicatingly potent full-length debut, Quarter Turns Over A Living Line, as well as several preceding EPs, include rumbling cavernous drones, gnawing, unblinking metallic tattoos,  and the occasional, muffled irruption of amorphous sonic violence.  But while it's easy enough to sum up their approach as purely and simply evocative of bleakness and dread, wholly subsumed by gloomy negatives, there's something oddly neutral about it too: a subjective, malleable emptiness.  There are shades within shades here: those creeping industrial heartbeats have a subtle, dubby, Burial-esque lilt that might be sensuous or sinister, depending on your angle.  Those churning streaks of cello could be savage or serene.  One person's gaping, ominous void may be another's womblike sanctuary.  After all, the blackest black is really no different from eternal, blinding sunshine once your eyes have time to adjust.

Holy Ghost!
[Electronic/Dance]
concert preview

Holy Ghost! don't do very much to justify that exclamation mark.  The NYC production duo are more apt to induce sly, slow-building smiles than sudden ecstatic surges; the pleasures to be found in their sleek, shiny updates of 1980s electro-disco are, perhaps unusually for a dancefloor-oriented act, those of comfort, familiarity and expertly executed craftsmanship.  The title of their second album, Dynamics (DFA), suggests a broadened range, and it is indeed a more varied, well-rounded affair than their rather same-sounding debut, but it delivers that breadth via a further smoothing and softening – an occasional uptick in melancholy emotionalism; a generally plusher sound palette (including a string arrangement from the great Kelly Polar) – rather than any great deviation from their standard-issue mid-tempo template.  The exception proving the rule is "Dumb Disco Ideas" – easily their best single to date – an extended, multi-part cowbell'n'clavinet dance-funk jam that solidly cements their DFA bona-fides and probably warrants at least a little punctuation.

originally published in Philadelphia City Paper

SXSW 2013: Day Two [Wednesday]

Kitten in action

Going good!  Here's how I'm feeling SXSW this year: None of the nearly twenty bands I saw today had I ever seen before; about half I hadn't even heard of until the last day or so, or in several cases until they started playing.  And those couple turned to be probably the best things of the day.

Kitten at Cheer Up Charlies, 1:10

Awesome awesome awesome wake-up surprise.  Poppy thrashy glammy punk band from L.A., whose front-lady (Chloe Chaidez) is very obviously the source of their moniker.  It suits her in just about every sense – she's tiny, frisky, young and restless, also damn near feral, a non-stop ball of energy in shiny skin-tight jeggings and bronze glitter eyelashes (plus a complicated multi-layer lacy top scenario.)  Vamping, gyrating, flailing her hair, sinking to her knees, shaking her ass at the photog, jumping off the Marshal stack.  The rest of the band did their darnedest to match her energy too, not that it was any contest.  I could try to remember more about what they sounded like, but clearly that wasn't the point.

 Cayucas at Cheer Up Charlies, 1:30

This is who I'd actually come to see.  Fresh-faced, Vampire Weekend-looking (and -sounding) sunny guitar-pop guys.  Some nice polyrhythms in their vaguely tropical-ish self-titled set-opener [self-titled songs: always a good idea], and the other couple they played were nice and bouncy enough, but nothing really stood out like the NPR-endorsed earworm that got me there, the super-catchy "High School Lover."  Which they didn't play because they ran out of time after three songs (they keep 'em short 'n' sweet at Cheer Up.)  Then again I have the mp3 so I guess that's okay.

Body Parts at Cheer Up Charlies, 1:50

Another happy discovery...this LA five-piece had everything you'd want from a standard-issue dancy indie-pop outfit, but even more on top of it: nifty three-part harmonies, an extra-tight, extra-funky rhythm section, amusingly deadpan yet friendly banter, thoughtful song structures and maybe most unusually (at least for something to notice upon first blush) smart and intriguing lyrics.  Made me think of both of Montreal and Talking Heads at various points.  Could get interesting.

Braids at The Jr. (Brooklyn Vegan Party), 2:15

Pretty much all of their songs seemed to be heavily influenced by "Ideoteque."  (Not that that's a bad thing.)  Except, more soothing, not quite so post-apocalyptic.  

Caitlin Rose at The Jr. (Brooklyn Vegan Party), 3:00

Nashville up-and-comer with an appealing, no-frills rock-country sound, a sweet, down-to-earth stage presence, "mom jeans," and a solid and entertaining crack seven-piece band of, presumably, Nashville pros.  (And also a personalized leather guitar strap, though her pedal steel player had an even spiffier leather name-plate on his axe.)  It took a few numbers before her voice started to open up, but there were some glimmers of Neko in there once she did.  Real, real nice.

Jacco Gardner at The Parrish, 3:30

This Dutch youngster has come out of nowhere (well, okay, Holland) with a record of the uncanniest circa-1968 loopy psychedelic verisimilitude since at least The Dukes of Stratosphear back in the '80s.  So it was sort of a disappointment to see that his live setup involved some suspiciously post-1968-looking electronic keyboards, a bunch of digital thingyboxes and a highly futuristic MacBook laptop.  Of course, what can you do when you've only got three guys in denim shirts backing you up and probably none of them play sitar and your mellotron and harpsichord and mondo 16-channel mixing desk probably wouldn't fit onto the plane.  Still, sounded great and also the drummer had a triangle so that's cool.

Ducktails at Fader Fort, 4:30

The guy behind me was trying to assert that these guys are more interesting than Real Estate (for whom primary Ducktail Matthew Mondanile plays bass, and whose simple, clean-lined guitar pop this side project is increasingly coming to resemble), but this didn't do much to convince me; even less than their record, maybe.  Matthew putting on a floppy white sunhat was cute, but you know what was really ridiculous?  The bassist wearing a black turtleneck sweater.  Pfft!

Ratking at Fader Fort, 5:15

Fine, not immediately impressive NYC hip-hop; another recent WTF 4AD signing.  One guy had cool spiky hair, almost like a crown.  And I could see how the other MC could be the "rat" part.  Will withhold judgment.

FIDLAR at Scoot Inn, 5:30

One of the brilliant things about SXSW is how you can go and, for instance, be in hardcore punk mosh pit for ten minutes or so, and then leave and do something else.  Shouldn't life be more like that?  FIDLAR are great – fun-loving Nashville scuzz punks who rant about drinking cheap beer, being stoked and broke, how it sucks to be 22, etc.  The songs hit hard and fast, but there's a surprising amount of blues in there too.

Sky Ferreira at Fader Fort, 6:00

Wasn't sure what to expect here.  Sky is sort of like a punkier, surlier Lana Del Rey – in presentation and, at least in this live incarnation (quite a ways from her earlier dance-pop material), in sound too – she's got the pout, the fashion sense and the (bleached) blonde locks, but she doesn't quite have the swagger or the voice.  Her signature tune, and by far the best song in her set, is "Everything Was Embarrasing," and it sort of seemed like that's how she actually feels.

Brooke Waggoner at Bar 96, 8:00

My fourth Nashville act of the conference.  (No relation to Porter, I guess.)  She plays slightly dark, moody piano-based rock, a little bit Fiona.  Pretty cool.  She also has an elaborate wooden case to make her keyboard look vaguely more like an upright piano, elaborately stenciled with the name of her new album ("Originator.")

Little Daylight at Club DeVille, 9:00

Super-new indie-electro-dance-pop band from New York – this was apparently their second-ever show.  Full disclosure: I went to high school with the lead singer (who is also in the also-great band Xylos.)  But that doesn't make them any less awesome!  Their claim to fame (and presumably the reason they drew an unreasonably healthy crowd for a second-ever-show) is a song, "Overdose," which was recently the top spot on Hype Machine's most-blogged-about chart, or something like that – and it's easy to hear why, cuz the thing is about 300% hook.  (I actually think the verse melody is the best part).  The rest of their set was nearly as strong, and made excellent use of the obligatory front-of-stage bonus tom-tom, although Nikki, I must admit, doesn't quite have her world-conquering-pop-star stage attitude down just yet.  Still, no reason these guys couldn't be the next, say, Chairlift.

Andy Stott

Allah-Las

Andy Stott at Elysium, Allah-Las at North Door, Cazzette at 1100 Warehouse, Emma Louise at Lustre Pearl, 9:45-10:30

Did a bunch of bouncing around this hour.  I enjoy Andy Stott on record, but his bleary, nodding thump wasn't really fitting the bill in a live setting.  Allah-Lahs looked more promising, with their sunburned L.A. retro vibe and super-hip vintage instruments, but their lightly surfy semi-acoustic retro-rock (something a super-chilled-out King Khan, with all the menace and schtick removed?  Does that even make sense?) was mostly just pleasant.  

Tiga at Bungalow, 11:00

Figured I'd catch the tail end of Azari and III's set again, part of the Richie Hawtin-created "CNTRL: Beyond EDM" showcase, though it turned out to be a DJ set.  Same deal with Montreal electro-goof/crooner Tiga, who kicked off his set with Depeche Mode and kept it electro from there.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, there is way more electronica at Southby this year than ever before, but it's unclear to me how well DJ sets, which tend to work best when they get to evolve over a longer stretch of time, fit the general SXSW mode of short'n'sweet, quick-impression-making sets.  I danced for a bit, and it was great to see Tiga up close for a minute, but it didn't feel like the best use of time.

Autre Ne Veut at Empire Continental, 11:00

Still a little bit on the fence about this guy, but he's definitely a satisfyingly intense performer, throwing himself physically into his singing every bit as much as you might imagine.  "This is my first PBR&B show!" quipped the dude behind me, but there was no need or space for ironic distance in the music, which was convincing enough to work as R&B full-stop.  I liked the minimalist live set-up too: one back-up singer, one drummer, leave everything else to the backing track.  Unfortunately the set was cut maddeningly brief, so I only caught two songs (and he apparently didn't even do monster jam "Play by Play.")

BOY at Central Presbyterian Church, 11:30

Decided to call it an early night, finishing up with a chill set – church shows, mercifully offering the chance to sit down, are always appreciated – from this harmonizing German folk-pop group, another unknown gleaned from NPR's "Austin 100" mp3 playlist.  It was less poppy than the preview mp3 suggested, but nice enough.