2012 Review Round-Up: September

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!

la la la september.  a nice hearty, rootsy, reasonably tasteful autumnal assortment, though first up we have this decided oddity which slipped fairly below the radar, unfortunately if not unsurprisingly:

Rudi Zygadlo
Tragicomedies

Scottish producer Rudi Zygadlo's 2010 debut, Great Western Laymen, was a dizzying, kaleidoscopic affair, an even more overstuffed, color-saturated elaboration on the maximalist "wonky" school of fellow Glaswegians Rustie and Hudson Mohawke. Although it could be almost as easily filed under prog and/or pop, it had a recognizable (albeit strained-to-bursting) dubstep current running through even its most iconoclastic tracks. Tragicomedies, while (thankfully) more focused, is – almost unimaginably – an even odder fish; forgoing any dancefloor pretensions (and most "beats" altogether) and drawing most of its sonic material from keyboards, voice, and strings, it's difficult even to soundly classify as electronica, let alone anything more precisely descriptive. Every bit as playful and cerebral as its predecessor, and with fellow UK eccentric Max Tundra as perhaps the only readily relevant reference point, it finds Zygadlo staking out a hitherto uncharted intersection of AM soft-pop schmaltz, classically-informed instrumentalism (Bartók, Janáček and Schnittke are among his avowed and more than plausible influences) and a sort of "interventionist" use of technology, wherein – notwithstanding the lustrous, detail-oriented synth textures and some skittering programmed beats here and there – electronics serve mostly to structure, sequence and gleefully, transparently twist and manipulate sound, rather than generate it per se.

On some deep, perhaps at times purely theoretical level, this is a singer-songwriter album, although our access to the songs themselves is rather contingent. The first, perhaps most straightforward example comes within the opening seconds of "Kopernikuss," whose quaint piano and voice chorale, all stately trills and virginal Beach Boys harmonies, starts to wobble on and off pitch – just subtly screwy at first, then in increasingly erratic, seasick swoops. Elsewhere, alongside more foreseeable squelching synths and digi-funk glitchery, we're plunged into rabbit-hole mazes of criss-crossing, quantized piano and demonic accordion ("Melpomene") or vortices of stridently bowed strings and zinging, cartoony Raymond Scott percussion ("Black Rhino.") Keeping with his oft-cited interest in post-modern literature, Zygadlo approaches composition with a puzzle-lover's mentality – as he sings on "The Domino Quivers": "it's a plot with no ending, only many beginnings." What does emerge, songwise, through all the digital manhandling tends toward a cheery, mawkish lushness reminiscent of '70s studio twiddlers like Todd Rundgren, Steely Dan and Electric Light Orchestra, with wryly earnest vocals (Zygadlo proves himself a deft, versatile singer, veering from a serviceable blue-eyed croon to dippy scatting to oddly creepy, syrupy falsetto) and bone-dry drollery to match. Viz, setting perhaps the album's sharpest hook with the words "I think I'm losing my hearing." Or the almost-title track (apparently inspired by true events), which runs, in part: "You saved my life/how embarrassing...the trauma made me a little selfish/that's why I forgot to thank you." Then there's the twinkling "Waltz for Daphnis," wherein an unusually fervent-sounding Zygadlo laments: "I'm not garish enough for your love." It's an assertion that, musically speaking, is remotely plausible only if directed at listeners single-mindedly anticipating Great Western Laymen II. Tragicomedies itself is, unquestionably, garish (not to mention inventive, befuddling and delightful) enough to be fully deserving of anyone's love.
originally published at AllMusic.com

Cat Power
Sun

Chan Marshall has always trodden her own path, and it's been a long, fraught, often circuitous one – from her boho New York early days to the Australia and ruralia of Moon Pix to her recent, extended soul sojourn in Memphis. She returns to us, after the longest recording hiatus of her career, with her first album of originals in six years, and this time she is truly on her own: save for a vocal cameo or two, and a rather unlikely mixing assist from Cassius' Philippe Zdar, Sun is entirely a one-woman affair.

Not that you'd guess that from listening to it. Even next to the relative gloss of 2006's The Greatest, this is easily her fullest-sounding, most animated record to date, dense with layers upon layers of sound: buckets of drum loops; swarming, slithering synths; some surprisingly righteous guitar work; plenty of piano (advance single "Ruin" boasts a loop of nine playing simultaneously) and copious multi-tracking of Marshall's inimitable, elusive, dispassionately soulful voice, which is richer and more versatile here than ever before. It's a bold, energetic new look, and a great one. Even if nearly all of the musical elements here have turned up somewhere in her past work, Sun is – like nearly every Cat Power album – like no other Cat Power album. (Imagine the livelier moments of You Are Free with about twice as much going on, and you're partway there.) But this also couldn't have been anyone else: Marshall's trademark starkness and intimacy are here even in arrangements that could easily have felt distractingly cluttered; so is her uncanny gift for imparting an artful intentionality through music that feels casual, almost arbitrary, in its construction.

So where has she gotten herself to now? "Saudi Arabia Dhaka Calcutta Soweto Mozambique Istanbul Rio Rome..." begins a breathless litany in the chorus of "Ruin." But while there's a vaguely discernible global tilt to proceedings, and a tendency toward lyrical universalism that scans as equally platitudinous and profound ("you've got your own voice, so sing"; "sometimes you gotta do what you don't wanna do"), this is clearly Cat Power's (Great) American album – from the opening Amerindian invocation of "Cherokee" (shades of Tori Amos' Scarlet's Walk, perhaps) to several frank, pointed assessments of our national state of affairs. Composition-wise she's still mostly a minimalist, content to stretch out indefinitely on just two chords – as on lone dud "Nothin But Time," an eleven-minute empowerment anthem that aims for epic but mostly just feels long (even with an appearance by real-life superhero Iggy Pop.) A more fitting, punchier summation comes with "Peace and Love," a post-Occupy war chant (complete with po-mo dada-rap verses) declaring "I'm a lover but I'm in it to win." It's not quite all sunshine, lollipops and motivational cheerleading ("3,6,9," for instance, rewrites Shirley Ellis' "Clapping Song" to marvelous but questionably kid-appropriate effect), but the album title is nonetheless an apt one – this is a near-inversion of Moon Pix's fatalism and isolated moodiness. If it's a call to action, Chan Marshall is leading by example.

Stars
The North

Stars started small, and while the sweetly simple electropop miniatures of their debut grew increasingly melodramatic and string-swaddled – reaching for a grandeur that, at its worst, tended to drown out the band's defining, heart-tugging dynamic pull between ardency and wimpiness – their best work has always retained a sense of intimacy. The North signals, if not a wholesale reorientation, at least a refocusing for the Montreal wimperhearts, a partial scaling back that lends a renewed punch to the rockers ("Backlines"), poppers ("The Theory of Relativity" – a synthy nostalgia trip complete with a shout-out to "the dude who sold us ecstasy") and cute, '50s-ish duets (the slightly bombastic "Do You Want To Die Together?") alike. As usual, Stars shine brightest in moments of unabashed emotionalism – from its immaculate title on down, "Hold On When You Get Love (and Let Go When You Give It)" is a soft revolutionary blood-pumping anthem nonpareil, an authoritatively grand synthesis of their finest impulses. And while not everything in the limper, bloatier back half hits its mark, they're mostly aiming in the right direction. [6]
originally published in Magnet Magazine

Jens Lekman
I Know What Love Isn't
[Indie-Pop/One Track Mind]

I Know What Love Isn't (Secretly Canadian) – which is, throughout, as witty and devastating as its title, or, as you could hope for from a Jens Lekman (post-)breakup album – may contain more perfectly-formed moments (the previously-aired "...Cowboy Boots" and "Every Little Hair..." remain sparsely immaculate), but none shine brighter than its centerpiece/microcosm, "The World Moves On," a breathless dash from infatuation to heartache to resignation set against an anecdote-filled lifescape of heat waves, wildfires, possum-feeding and bike accidents, in six minutes of punchlines and poignancy, flutes and fingersnaps. Lesson learned: "You don't get over a broken heart, you just learn to carry it gracefully."

Bill Fay
Life Is People
[Folk/Rock]

It's taken an almost unheard-of interval – forty-one years – for British songwriter Bill Fay to follow up his two little-known, cult-beloved LPs with a third, his first album of new material since 1971. But Life Is People (Dead Oceans) would be a wondrous thing under any circumstances: a collection of poignant, humbly heartfelt ruminations on existence, mortality, self-acceptance and religious toleration, imbued with the patient wisdom of a lifetime and an uncommon sense of compassion. These songs, delivered with sturdy, gospel-hued folk-rock directness (and one Jeff Tweedy cameo), are as necessary as it gets.

Firewater
International Orange
[Rock/World]

In the revolution you can dance to department, it doesn't get much livelier than Firewater's topical, tropical International Orange (Bloodshot), recorded in Istanbul and Tel Aviv amid the Arab Spring uprisings and pulsing with a boundary-defying mix of ska, maqsoum, mambo, rebetiko and good old punk rock, triggered to ignite several possible forms of incendiary social movement. Tod A. – he of the mordant humor and richly gravelly baritone – and his troupe have been infusing their party-hearty indie-punk with worldly cabaret and gypsy-music tinges since well before the last decade's balkan-rock boom, but this might just be their finest and fieriest – and funnest – manifesto yet.

Chilly Gonzales
Solo Piano II
[Instrumental/Neo-Classical]

Jason "Chilly "Gonzo" Gonzales" Beck has led a showbiz career that more than lives up to his nickname's nickname (Feist; Peaches; gag-rap; Guinness Records...oh, just Google him), but you'll hear precisely none of that on Solo Piano II (Gentle Threat.) Per its title and its 2004 predecessor, there's nothing here but some thoroughly, thoroughly pleasant ivory-tinkling: gentle yet playful; more meditative than virtuosic; romantic but not overly effusive – not unlike a slightly jazzier Satie. It is, above all, highly functional music – just the thing to accompany tea parties, silent films, bubble-blowing, ripples in ponds, etc. – but it's even nice enough to just listen to.

David Byrne & St. Vincent
[Pop/Rock]
concert preview

The rare intergenerational collaboration that feels like it was conducted on truly equal footing, this meeting of two art-rock titans – the indefatigable Byrne and alien-pixie superwoman Annie Clark – finds an amiable synthesis of two aesthetically aligned but highly distinctive voices. As predictably off-kilter as it is – full of self-consciously stiff musical settings and capricious rhythmic switch-ups, and hopscotching lyrically between domesticity and myth; paleolithic prehistory and urban modernity – Love This Giant (4AD) winds up hugely likable and almost human in its heartfelt, whimsical eccentricity. It's also rife with dense, meaty brass-band counterpoint, navigating everything from jagged party funk to hymnlike chorales. Live, expect a spirited, eight-strong horn section, plenty of playful choreography, and generous side-servings from each artists' back-catalog (how perfect would it be for them to segue from "Cruel" to "Road to Nowhere"?) Just don't show up late – there's no opener!

Anaïs Mitchell
[Folk]
concert preview

Vermont-born songwriter Anaïs Mitchell featured Justin Vernon in her 2010 'folk opera' Hadestown, casting the Bon Iver warbler as Orpheus to her Eurydice; he's returned the favor by covering her tunes and, now, enlisting her to open his current tour. It's a move that, by rights, should help expand her audience beyond the core of folkies and Ani-philes (DiFranco being her other major high-profile booster, not to mention her Persephone), much as she's been expanding her craft beyond the conventional parameters of modern folk with her epic, allegorical themes and, most recently, producer Todd Sickafoose's lush, impressionistic arrangements. (Joanna Newsom is a convenient if imprecise reference point on both counts, as well as for her striking, deceptively girlish voice.) If Young Man in America (Wilderland) isn't as expressly conceptual as its predecessor, it's nearly as ambitious and, in its way, just as steeped in mythology; rife with parables of family, struggle, death, and self-discovery set in a hardscrabble pastoral America that feels at once long past and all too present.

Azure Ray
[Dream-Pop/Electronic]
concert preview

When Orenda Fink and Maria Taylor returned to recording together in 2010, following a seven-year hiatus, it was with nary a stylistic hiccup; reviving the wispy, gently folky dream-pop they'd minted during their initial run without a hair out of place. But for their next trick – new six-tracker As Above So Below (Saddle Creek) – they decided to switch things up, citing neo-techno luminaries James Blake and Nicolas Jaar as inspirations and enlisting Fink's husband Todd, of the Faint, as their digital production advisor. This ain't exactly Azure Ray go Dubstep – as femme-tronica Rays go, it's somewhere between a kid sister Fever Ray and the sleepier bits of Ray of Light – nor is it, in truth, all that much of a departure, what with the duo's hallmark warmth and lustrous, drowsy harmonies remaining front and center. But it is a smart and successful attempt at modest modernism; plausibly Blakean even, though probably closer to a blissed-out, soft-focus Massive Attack.
 
Dragonette
[Pop/Dance]
concert preview

Like on-the-comeup mixtape rappers brandishing improbable, aspirational boasts about their success, Toronto electro-poppers Dragonette have basically been swagging like world-beating superstars since their 2005 debut EP, but despite a string of surefire shoulda-been radio killers (and notwithstanding some vaguely flukey international chart action via collaboration with French house wonk Martin Solveig) they've somehow managed to remain incongruously small-time, particularly here in these unexcited States. Bodyparts (Dragonette/Universal) [sample lyric/hook/casually offhand assertion of all-around awesomeness: "I only live in this city 'cause this city can't live without me"] could (but probably won't) change all that: nothing pops quite as hard as early singles like "Take It Like A Man," and there's no wrenching slow jam to match the still-devastating "Easy," but the band are shinier than ever, with their knack for fresh lyrical tacks and neat little melodic twists fully intact; Martina Sobrara still has the sass and style of a spikier, less bananas Gwen Stefani, and – call it wishful mixing – the whole thing just sounds absolutely massive.

Twin Shadow/Niki & The Dove
[Pop]
concert preview

This is as close as we'll get to Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush circa '86: a double-bill of drama-inclined, eighties-indebted synth-rockers behind two of the biggest-sounding, most unbearably urgent and epically Romantic records of the year. It's an inspired pairing, and quite a diptych. Twin Shadow's George Lewis Jr. transmits a smoldering, classically American machismo via his brooding baritone and louche, lovelorn lyrics – he graces the cover of glossy, semi-Springsteenesque sophomore set Confess (4AD) as a sullen, leather-clad lothario (shades of George Michael's Faith.) As for Niki and the Dove (like their sonic/spiritual kin in La Roux and Florence + The Machine, a band that's easily mistaken for a female solo act), their bold, bewitching debut, Instinct (Sub Pop), is as apt to invoke the Earth-mother totemism of fellow Swedes like The Knife and Lykke Li (not to mention faerie grand-babooshka Bush herself) as to indulge in starry-eyed teen-lust nostalgia or the Prince-worship their moniker so blatantly broadcasts.

Wild Nothing/Diiv
[Indie]
concert preview

From the Smiths to the Clientele to Real Estate, the kind of wispy, clean-lined indie guitar music tendered by these two Brooklyn-based bands – it should be called "pop," perhaps, but their melodies feel almost too diffident to qualify – rarely goes out of style. But it does come into season, and that season is now here. Diiv share both a member and zeitgeistily surfy/summery nomenclature with fellow janglers Beach Fossils (the, um, creative approach to spelling is all theirs), but the reverb-happy Oshin (Captured Tracks) – whose signature feature is that its melodies are frequently relayed via guitar rather than voice – is as autumnal as they come. Likewise their delicately New Wave-tinted labelmates Wild Nothing, whose new Nocturne ups the fidelity from their gauzy, homemade debut, and swaps real drums for machines, without losing a whit of their shy, self-possessed serenity.

Fergus and Geronimo
[Indie Rock/WTF]
concert preview

Having established themselves as goofy, irreverent, more than a bit tongue-in-cheek, and ready and willing to leapfrog genres with reckless abandon – in the grand if poorly-defined tradition of Ween, Camper Van Beethoven, and the Mothers of Invention – Denton-via-Brooklyn duo Fergus & Geronimo take it all a bit further on Funky Was the State of Affairs (Hardly Art), staging a cosmic freakout in the form of a screwball concept album involving phone-tapping, surveillance drones, chipmunk voices, an intergalactic dating service, and some very stoned-sounding aliens. Oh yeah, and Roman numerals – of course! – as in a thusly titled song listing their many uses ("Superbowl sweatshirts! Star Wars prequels! Cranial nerves!) Musically, Funky finds the twosome moving beyond their earlier doo-wop and '60s-psych fixations for a post-space-age atomic cocktail of swingin' surf music, Devo-ish robo-punk, B-52s-style kitsch rave-ups and twitchy white-boy disco-funk – basically, they're partying like it's MXCLXXIX.

Alabama Shakes
[Rock/R'n'B]
concert preview

Perhaps no location is as significant to the indelibly intertwined histories of Rock and Soul music as Northwestern Alabama's Quad Cities, home to FAME and Muscle Shoals Sound Studios, the proudly interracial operations responsible for hits from, among many, Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin, The Rolling Stones, Lynyrd Skynyrd and, most recently, The Black Keys. It's just an hour down the road from there to the Alabama Shakes' hometown of Athens, and these guys (and gal) clearly hold their allegiance to that hallowed lineage close to their battle-ragged, sleeve-stitched hearts. Their out of nowhere debut Boys & Girls (ATO) sees no need to split hairs between frontwoman Brittany Howard's soul-drenched blues yowling and the amped-up heavy rock riffage of awesomely named guitarist Heath Fogg (they came up as a Zeppelin-covering bar band) – it's all rock'n'roll to them. That is, of course, nothing new under the Alabama sun, but it's not every year you hear a group this unabashedly steeped in tradition sounding this improbably fresh.

Maximo Park
[Rock]
concert preview

Perhaps the spunkiest amongst the spiky spate of post-punky Brit-rockers that emerged around the middle of the last decade (along with their Tyneside compatriots The Futureheads), Maxïmo Park are typically at their best when delivering their precision prickle-pop with a certain degree of speed and intensity – not for nothing were their greatest early singles titled "Apply Some Pressure" and "Our Velocity" – always paired with their mannered, slightly schoolboyish (and very English) punctiliousness. (Stiff Little Fingers meets stiff upper lip, perhaps?) Or maybe that's just Paul Smith's (adorable) Geordie accent. After a lackluster third album and a few years off, they seem to have found the itch again: The National Health (V2) finds the boys in fine fettle, storming back into gear on the rip-roaring, politically-inflected title cut, and somehow still sounding fastidiously polite even when imparting an ostensibly brusque brush-off ("You better write this down/I'm gonna leave without a sound.")
originally published in Philadelphia City Paper

SXSW 2012: Friday

Had some adventures today. Having fun, getting into the zone. Saw about twice as many bands as Thursday, too. Unintentionally apropos lyric quote of the day, from New Build: "It's not good for the body, but it's good for the soul." (At least, I hope that's true.)

esc

(this is not spoek mothambo, it's just some guy who was at the spin party)

Spoek Mothambo 12:30 PM SPIN Party @ Stubbs
A friend hooked us up with passes to the hot-ticket Spin Magazine party, killer lineup but also an ideal, archetypal way to start a Southby day: free BBQ, free beer, free vodka, free weirdo space-age sugar-water. The highly amusing MC for the event ("Make some muthafucking tweets!") described this Sub Pop-signed South African rapper/artist/guy as "way cooler than you," which I guess is true on a technical level – and he did have a pretty fly jacket – but between us I think you're actually probably cooler. His set bounced around from post-punk to rap to electro-ish breaks in rather haphazard fashion, and was decent to dance to in spurts, but didn't leave much of a musical impression, except maybe his funked-up version of Joy Division's "She's Lost Control."

Dionnevox 1:00 PM @ Stubbs
From Seattle, playing this party because they won some sort of contest, but anyway they earned it, without a doubt. Nothing short of baroque in their approach to costuming, with a sort of dark fantasy steampunk burlesque look (summarized by the aforementioned MC as "if the movie Blade Runner were two attractive girls.") Lead singer lady stripped through about four distinct outfits over the course of the brief set, including a sequined harlequin bustier and black leather bodysuit with assorted diagonal zippers (she had to sit down on stage to fully remove that one), not to mention her elaborately made-up/bejeweled face and black feathered headpiece, while the dead-eyed dancer was equally striking in black and white lace tights, garter, striped faux-fur legwarmers and platforms. For some reason they didn't make the DJ/producer guys dress up at all; totally lame. Musically they followed a similar aesthetic – dark industrial electro-goth torch songs with low, deadpan vocals and solid songwriting. The standout was probably "Spoken Like a Slave," during which the singer lady repeatedly cracked her mic cord like a whip.

Escort 1:30 PM @ Stubbs
Stone killers. Escort is a fifteen-piece (at this show anyway) disco orchestra, largely composed of NYC studio pros (the drummer happens to be my cousin.) And they're perhaps the most ridiculously tight live act anywhere, not to mention the most fun. They're fronted by lanky French-African singer Adeline Michele, who's a total knockout and a sweet-smiling charmer – but really the whole band are just gorgeous to look at; about as diverse a collection of musicians as you could imagine sharing one stage. Too bad they're apparently too big a band to make touring economically plausible; there's a lot of folks out there who could use some of their pure, unadultered joy.

New Build 2:10 PM MWTX @ 1100 Warehouse
The latest in a recent string of unreasonably excellent Hot Chip side projects (following Alexis Taylor's About Group and Joe Goddard's 2 Bears – who just put out probably the party album of the decade), this group is spearheaded by guitarist Al Doyle (also of LCD Soundsystem) and drummer (in this group, bassist) Felix Martin, joined here by a Stop Making Sense-ish full band, including a killer timbale/steel pan player. With his shock of red hair and big scruffy beard, Doyle's a friendly, familiar figure from Hot Chip and LCD shows, and definitely a likable bloke, but he doesn't quite have the charisma to carry a performance like his other bands' inimitable frontmen. Or maybe this was just an atypically low-energy set – he admitted that they were exhausted, which was pretty clear to see. (And not a great sign considering they still had a bunch of shows to play.) Set-closer (and my current brain-ruling jam of the moment) "Misery Loves Company" riled up some dancing energy from the crowd, but it pretty much took that long.

Purity Ring 3:00 PM @ 1100 Warehouse
Super cool, super hotly tipped electro-weird duo from Montreal (and Halifax, apparently); almost as fresh and original in their approach to performance as to their music. I.e.: very. Set against a simple. spare pink/green/orange backdrop, producer Corin Roddick triggered sounds by drumming on a complex arrangement of paper-lantern-like color-changing lamps, while Megan James twirled and whacked a mounted bass drum that lit up with every hit. As for the music – definitely done some sonic disservice in this overly loud and bassy setting, but potent nonetheless – it is deep; twitchy; voluptuous; alien; gorgeous. I normally hate this comparison, but I would describe James' vocals, particularly her way of drawing out and rounding her syllables, as legitimately Björk-like at points. Stunning.

Nicolas Jaar's Darkside 3:30-6:30 PM(?) @ MTV Hive House
Ok, this was kind of unexpected. Not knowing what I was getting myself in for, I boarded a bus with only about eight other people, bound for an (evidently, very) intimate performance by elusive, arty-electro wunderkind Jaar (or more specifically his new, jazz-tinted "Darkside" project.) It turned out be at a house somewhere a good ways from downtown, with an expansive yard complete with stone fireplace, rusty swing set and large chicken coop. The performance was to be intensively videotaped for an episode of Yours Truly (some web thingy which I don't entirely understand), but it took almost two hours to actually happen, during which time we chilled on the porch, watched the chickens, and enjoyed some nice Belgian blonde ales, pulled pork sliders, tater tots and champagne. Not exactly how I'd been planning to spend my afternoon, but hard to really complain...

And the performance, when it happened (in the garage; windows blacked out and adorned with colored fluorescent light-bars), really was something special – Jaar on Ableton loops, keys and multiple knobby controllers, along with a clearly jazz/improv-rooted guitarist and sax/keyboard player, all three of them immensely proficient musicians, more or less improvising extended elaborations on their recent EP tracks, and achieving a true, fluid fusion of electronic and live instrumentation in a way that was pretty much unprecedented in my experience. If that sounds at all esoteric and/or heady – well, to some extent it definitely was, but it was also emotional, engaging, and surprisingly dynamic, with elements of the mix constantly shifting and evolving around a subdued but seriously grooving core.

Easily the most transcendent piece came after the brief (~20 min.) taping itself; another extended "jam" that wormed its way into a spry, funky re-imagining of the album highlight "Space is Only Noise," as we danced barefoot on the lawn...

The Rubies 7:00 PM @ Elysium
And then, for something completely different – except insofar as it was an equally demonstrative instance of SXSW's gloriously chaotic, improbable serendipity. Somehow I had it in my head that this band was a spin-off of ambient noise/drone group Emeralds (probably because it was listed as "The Rubies (from The Emeralds)," and I conveniently ignored the "from Yokohama Japan" part.)

But no. These Rubies from Japan were a bunch of preposterously manic hard rock'n'roll/power-pop nutsos, in classic bewilderingly enthusiastic Japanese fashion. They all had on matching splotchy print shirts and red pants. Except for one guy who had a tiger print shirt and red pants, who came out playing about five tambourines at once and wearing another one on his head. Then he passed them all out into the crowd, followed by a huge shopping bag full of mini-heart-shaped tambourines. Then they pulled a random girl onstage to dance and smash a cymbal, and left her there while most of the band jumped into the audience and started pulling people into a frenzied dancing circle. Then they passed out a ton of those little bottle-shaped party-popper things and instructed us to fire them all simultaneously at one of the band members. All while pounding out nonstop heavy metal surf riffs and high-octane Beatle-pop harmonies. Oh my god, it was preposterous!!

(I left, after maybe twenty minutes of sheer madness, festooned with tangles of party-popper streamers, and also with a mini-tambourine, which became an excellent accessory for my night of biking through the streets and back alleys of Austin, as well as an excellent audience-participatory clapping aid.)

The War On Drugs 7:45 PM @ ACL Live/Moody Theater
Hey, Philly band! Honestly can't remember if I'd seen these guys before or not, but anyway they did their warm, hazy, folky-rockin' thing, like they do, and it was resoundingly pleasant, especially under the pastel purple and sea-foam green lights of the new and very spiffy Moody Theater. There were a couple of other Philly(-ish) bands I'd been thinking of trying to catch around this time – the terrific folk songwriter Strand of Oaks (actually from Wilkes-Barre) and super-fun good-times rockers Free Energy (whose new single is pure radness...so psyched they're back in action these days!) But, I was here instead, mostly to make sure not to miss...

The Magnetic Fields 8:45 PM @ Moody Theater
Oh Stephin. Oh Claudia. Oh John, and Sam, and Shirley... So, I have a deep, long-abiding love/hate relationship with this band. Which I won't get into here. (Well okay, when it comes down to it, mostly love.) Anyhow, what can I say. They have reintroduced synthesizers – after a decade-plus of their strictly-real-instruments-only policy – on their (not-terrible, but predictably sub-par, and overly joke-centric) new album – but decidedly not in their live setup, which remains almost entirely acoustic. Impressively for the size of the space, it was quiet enough not to wear earplugs – per usual, Stephin Merritt did his best to enforce absolute audience silence in his typically oblique, bone-dry fashion. ("I talked at somebody else's show once.......it was Patty LuPone.......that's why I'm so short.") He seemed to be in a (relatively) good mood, though. He made jokes that were funny as well as clever. He played melodica, harmonium, kazoo, and (on a subtle rearrangement of "Come Back From San Francisco") revealed a surprisingly sweet falsetto.

I left after forty-five minutes – not sure how late their set actually went – but while I was there they probably did most of the new tunes (many of which, I'll admit, really are novelty/comedy song gold), along with plenty of 69 Love Songs "hits" and a few choice oldies (spine-tingling "Smoke and Mirrors"; oddball Holiday pick "Swinging London"; Obscurities standout "Plant White Roses") – most of which still bring chills. If only he still wrote 'em like he used to.

The Mynabirds 9:30 @ Lambert's
Totally underrated female-fronted rootsy (folk/soul/rock/country/pop/etc.) indie outfit on Saddle Creek. (The kind of band that has a deer antler resting on top of their Nord Electro synth, whatever that tells you.) Hopefully the underrated part changes with their upcoming second album. I only caught three songs but they were each pretty close to perfect: probably my favorite number from the first album (the tender, thoughtful "Ways of Looking,") and two new songs (including lead single/title track "Generals") both of which were a good deal more funky and rocking than the old stuff. Also, both front-lady Laura Burhenn and her right-hand vocal/percussion woman are total lookers, in completely different ways.

Housse de Racket 10:00 @ Malverde
Clever band name – it's French for "tennis racket sleeve," but the false cognate connotation (noisy house music) is precisely apposite. But what I caught of these Parisians' set sounded pretty generic – typical electro-rocky dance whatever. Maybe it would've helped if I could have actually seen them through the smallish but extremely dense crowd. I think there were some mustaches involved.

Mr. Gnome 11:00 @ Treasure Island
Guitar/drums girl/boy duo from Ohio, about whom I knew nearly nothing going in. Took a long time troubleshooting their seriously complex, pedal-heavy set-up. The songs I heard were pretty complex too. Hard-hitting, punkish, a bit bluesy, but structurally unorthodox and with an impressive amount of sonic activity for just two people. Would give them some more time in the future, perhaps; for now I'm mildly intrigued, but not totally sold.

St. Lucia 11:00 @ Karma Lounge
Basically, in this portion of the night, I was taking inspiration from the NPR All Songs Considered guys, whose SXSW podcasts document a fairly extreme, uncompromising approach to the conference that involves seeing a seemingly logistically impossible number of bands, as many of them as possible new and basically unknown, and generally staying for only a few songs before dashing off somewhere else. If the previous two sets were borderline strike-outs, this band – a name I'd heard maybe once and then again earlier in the day – was a grand slam.

Nothing overtly earth-shattering, musically speaking – it's basically just synth-pop, upbeat and dancy in a fairly standard way, with a definite "tropical" feel in several of the songs – not unlike Tanlines or a more coherent Delorean – and a markedly anthemic, John Hughes-soundtrack vibe. It's just that literally every song sounded like a hit single. And they look great on stage: young, fresh-faced, clean-cut (in a Vampire Weekend sort of way), super-smiley and enthusiastic. And the lead singer has a great, clear pop voice and a confident, commanding presence. Crucially, the audience was equally amped, definitely the liveliest audience I've seen so far this week, and – even though St. Lucia have released a very tiny amount of music so far – they all seemed to know every song. Somebody said they thought it was because the entire crowd was from Brooklyn. Either way, I predict we'll be hearing more about these guys very soon.

Dragonette 12:05 @ Friends
After listening to Grimes soundcheck lackadaisically for about twenty minutes (a half-hour after her set was supposed to start, mind you), from outside the stuffed-to-the-gills Clive House, I ditched and dashed across town to catch these Toronto electropop underdogs, whom I have been wanting to see for years now. (I think they've cancelled at least one if not two US tours in the last half-decade.) And they did not disappoint. Hell, I think they only played two songs that I knew (and not even a particularly great ones) – which means the set was almost entirely new material – but it didn't even matter. They've got their sound – tough, spiky, dancy synth-rock power-pop (Swedish band The Sounds are a good reference point) – and they're pretty much sticking to it; so it doesn't take much to follow along. And, predictably, Martina Sobrara – aside from being a powerhouse vocalist – is completely adorable, and nice, and funny, and basically sexy as hell. (Also, she's tiny.) Awesome, pumped-up crowd for these guys too.

Blitzen Trapper 1:00 @ Red 7 Patio
A very pleasant surprise: I wandered out onto the patio, since Niki and the Dove were still setting up, and was greeted by some gorgeous, Fleet Foxes-style harmonies that quickly morphed into blazing, riff-heavy rock complete with curly red-haired dude wailing away on a cowbell. Never gave these guys much attention before, and I probably still won't, but it was still totally righteous to rock out with them for a couple of numbers.

Niki and the Dove 1:20 @ Red 7
Hmm... Swedish newbies that (along with the aforementioned Spoek Mothambo) seem to represent a not-wholly-convincing attempt on Sub Pop's part to wildly broaden their genre purview. They've clearly got a heavily Knife-influenced kinda thing in mind, and they've got the weirdness part down (both vocal and sartorial), as well as plenty of squiggly, rickety-sounding synths. But they seem to be in serious need of some melodies. Or maybe that isn't the point?

Alice Russell and Quantic Soul Orchestra 1:30 @ Barbarella
Went in looking for Toddla T (whose set ended up being cancelled, due to general lateness I guess, wonk wonk), instead I got this lovely British soul singer – seriously, Adele's got nothing on her – plus "orchestra" (which I guess means they have a violinist.) High, high quality, sophisticated soul. Blue-eyed...whatever. Gold. And so gracious. Plus, it was her birthday! So we sang to her too.

And now, to bed. Good morning!

[reposted from Philly City Paper]

AMG review round-up, volume XXII: 2010 third quarter, -ish

gotta wrap it up. here's a bunch of records, mostly from july-september 2010 (with a few secret stragglers, including some a year or two late), roughly in order of what they're like and how much i like them.

Allo Darlin': Allo Darlin' review

Allo Darlin' are a quintessential, dyed-in-the-wool twee pop band (and a pedigreed one at that – frontwoman Elizabeth Morris plays in Tender Trap with twee icon Amelia Fletcher, while bassist Bill Botting is a member of Darren Hayman's Secondary Modern) but their potential appeal extends far beyond the typically homespun, insider-y indie pop scene, since their music conveys all the genre's sweetness and enthusiasm without (or at least without too much of) the sappy infantilism and amateurish shambling that turn off most listeners of the genre. On the basis of their self-titled 2010 debut, it's not hard to imagine this London outfit finding the kind of widespread devotion enjoyed by leading lights like Camera Obscura, the Lucksmiths, or even Belle & Sebastian. Certainly, Allo Darlin' is most reminiscent of these artists' earlier, scrappier efforts, but the sophistication is there, most crucially, in Morris' songs, which strike just the right balance of clever and heartfelt, wittily specific, and broadly relatable. And, without exception, magnificently tuneful. Vocally, she's got all the charm of, say, Camera Obscura's Tracyanne Campbell, but with a much more upbeat, outgoing personality (and her Aussie-via-London accent – even just her pronunciation of the word "telephone" – is worth melting for). The band never stray far from the Platonic template of crisp, vibrantly produced '60s-style guitar pop, with tinges of soul, country, and Afro-pop, generous use of ukulele and lap steel, and a healthy sprinkling of ba-bas and sha-la-las. The playing is consistently strong and, with a few tender-hearted exceptions, briskly bouncy and grooving – particularly apt for the first three songs, which are about going out dancing (though they're also about heavenly embraces, Polaroid photographs, and youthful cash deficiency, respectively.) Other pivotal topics covered include falling in love (in an amusement park; whilst making chili) and listening (and making references) to pop music. In the time-honored tradition of the Pooh Sticks, Morris fills her songs with canny cultural nods: lifting lines from Weezer, quoting Johnny Cash and Doris Day, citing fellow twees the Just Joans. (Meanwhile "Woody Allen" – which switches to film references for a change – is melodically reminiscent of the Magnetic Fields' "Strange Powers," while the blissfully lovely "Let's Go Swimming" lyrically echoes their "All the Umbrellas in London.") Maybe best of all, "My Heart Is a Drummer" reps for Paul Simon's Graceland: "we know it's everybody's favorite/deep down in the place where music makes you happiest." Clearly, that's a place that Morris and Allo Darlin' know extremely well.

The Books: The Way Out review

"Welcome to a new beginning" declares a voice at the start of The Way Out, and this album does indeed mark a fresh new chapter for the Books: a return to record-making five years after the fantastic Lost and Safe, on a new label, with a newly open-ended, wide-ranging approach to their work. It may not initially sound that way: opener "Group Autogenics I," one of several pieces that draw on guided meditation-style self-help recordings, feels almost like Books-by-numbers, with a gently humorous, disorienting oddness, juxtaposed with genuinely deeply relaxing sonics, that will be immediately familiar to fans of their past albums. After that, though, the duo stretches beyond its comfort zone in multiple directions at once, pushing at the boundaries of an already utterly singular style. The acoustic strings (primarily guitar and cello) that dominated their earlier output are still present, but they share space with a dizzying array of instrumental and quasi-instrumental sounds, from twinkling music boxes to a full-scale sample-generated orchestra of archaic brass and woodwinds. And while scavenged spoken word samples remain the most defining element of the Books' music, anchoring each of these cuts save for the four sung, lyric-based "proper songs" (including the gloriously geeky, math-worshiping chorale "Beautiful People," which announces, slightly disingenuously: "We genuflect before pure abstraction"), they're less concerned with constructing linguistic puzzles out of their samples here – cleverly editing them to evince a sublimely witty illogic and absurdity – than with exploring their emotional nuances and often surreal humanity. Most tracks focus on a small number of voices, creating a sense of context and resonance without necessarily allowing for full comprehension. Hence, we get a tentative, intimate series of answering machine messages; a nonsensical bedtime tale about a Peter Rabbit-like character named Hip Hop; an inexplicably prickly grammarian vehemently insisting that "I Am Who I Am." "A Cold Freezin' Night" is a hilarious, slightly chilling tour de force built around a battle of (increasingly violent) words between a young brother and sister, set to a thumping disco beat. "I Didn't Know That" is even more striking musically – the closest thing yet to a Books pop hit, and definitely the funkiest they've ever been, recalling Squarepusher's nimble bass playing and Akufen's micro-sampled funk barrages. The stated intention for The Way Out was for each track to be "its own rabbit hole," and the album does indeed manage to survey an impressively disparate set of worlds and modes. Still, each one remains readily recognizable as belonging to the Books' own unique, unequivocal universe, which, happily, seems to be expanding at least twice as rapidly as our own.

ceo: White Magic review

ceo is Eric Berglund, one half of the Tough Alliance and co-CEO of Gothenburg's Sincerely Yours label; his first solo venture is another clear winner from that inscrutable but highly dependable camp. While its brightly colorful melting pot of indie pop, ersatz tropicalia, chintzy new age, and electronic dance-pop doesn't stray far from the distinctive, neon-hued sound of TTA, White Magic feels tighter, lusher, and more polished (especially vocally) than most of the duo's output, with an earnest, romantic emotional outlook far from TTA's typically enigmatic, performative sneering. Berglund wastes no time announcing his ambitions here, starting with the swaying orchestral expanse of "All Around," over which he declares: "I'm coming home to face the demons on my own." It's a grand opening statement, but it's only one part of the ceo equation: alongside weightier material like the ruminative "Oh God Oh Dear" and a solemn, churchy rendition of "Den Blomstertid Nu Kommer" (a hymnlike ode to summertime that's traditionally sung at the close of the Swedish school year) that ends the album with the same string figures that opened it, the balance of White Magic's eight tracks consists of cheerfully melodic dance-pop. "Illuminata" and "Love and Do What You Will," in particular, are about as buoyant as they come, and "Come with Me" is widescreen Balearic pop at its glistening, tuneful best. The title track shades slightly darker, with its vaguely sinister, pulsing tribal techno punctuated by jungle noises, steely guitar flourishes, and percolating pan flutes, while TTA's recurrent hip-hop-inflected fascination with violence rears its head on the otherwise blithe-sounding "No Mercy" with an excellently deployed knife-sharpening sample (the song also features offhand lyrical references to bondage, incarceration, and smoking crack). Without shortchanging Berglund's melodic abilities and his knack for sharp, effective mood juxtapositions, ceo's greatest attribute is his fearlessly inventive, highly detailed approach to arrangement, bringing together an unpredictable assortment of sounds on nearly every track, and somehow making these largely synthetic productions feel dynamic and vibrantly alive. Phil Spector and Brian Wilson come to mind – the baroque strings and clip-clop percussion of "Oh God Oh Dear," specifically, suggest discreet nods to each – and, indeed, pace Wilson, the whole affair might be aptly summed up as a "quarter-life symphony to God." At under 30 minutes, White Magic could feel painfully brief, but it's so dense with creativity, melody, and life that it seems churlish to want more.

Clubfeet: Gold on Gold review

At first blush, Clubfeet seem like yet another of the countless faceless bands plying the intersection of rock, pop, dance, and electronic music in the early 2010s, but this Capetown-via-Melbourne trio is slightly more of a puzzle than its "sounds like" list suggests. For one thing, despite the band's floor-friendly moniker and appearance on the dance-oriented Plant label – and despite its sleek, synthy sheen and plethora of electronic beats – Gold on Gold feels too restrained and contemplative to really come off as a dance album. You could probably dance to most of these tracks if you had to, but on the whole it's more of a mood-setter than a floor-filler, recalling fellow Melburnians Cut Copy at their less vigorous (but still lushly anthemic), suggesting a sprightlier, fleshier take on the xx's darkly stylish veneer and updating the epic romanticism of early U2 (specifically their guitar textures) and early Stars. For a band so centrally concerned with tone and texture, Clubfeet's most impressive feat here – and what sets them apart from many of their contemporaries – is the amount of personality they're able to convey while maintaining a consistent dominant mood. It operates in subtle ways – never overbearing, nearly genteel – but their distinctive charm is nevertheless apparent throughout, often in the touches of humor and lightness they bring to what's largely a sober-minded affair: an oddly chipper tropical beatbox undercutting the lavish melancholy of "Fall from Up Here," a sweet, simple piano figure running through the achingly languorous "Six Days," or the spoken word group chants in both "Teenage Suicide (Don't Do It)" (which, Heathers-referencing aside, seems essentially straight-faced about its titular subject, making for a noble message of perhaps dubious utility in a dance-pop song) and "D.I.E. Yuppie Scum" (which, contrarily, is pretty plainly a gag). The latter two songs are the album's most immediate, attention-getting standouts and most likely dance jams, mostly by virtue of those chanted hooks, but ultimately neither one measures up to "Count Your Lovers," which gets by on pure melody and prettiness. Another highlight is a candy-sweet synth pop rendition of James' "Say Something" which, in addition to being a well-chosen and beautifully executed cover, is one of few moments where Clubfeet set aside their guitars entirely, meaning that perhaps the most electronic thing on the album is a version of a rock song. Who needs pigeonholes anyway?

Dragonette: Fixin' To Thrill review

It's telling that Dragonette titled their second album Fixin to Thrill, and not just straight-up Thrillin', even if it absolutely makes good on that stated intention. Notwithstanding the band's uber-stylish panache and the dangerously glitzy, fabulously sordid rock & roll lifestyle their music projects, there's no denying that the frequently fantastic fun and giddy thrills to be found here are the upshot of some serious craftsmanship. Dragonette are, above all, pop perfectionists, carefully culling all the shiniest bits from '80s new wave (from Duran Duran to the Go-Go's), '90s alt pop (they bear a passing resemblance to No Doubt, a more striking one to the sweet 'n' dirty electro-rock crunch of Garbage), and full-throttle '00s teen pop to concoct an obviously familiar but still effortlessly modern sound to match their punky-spunky energy. But that wouldn't count for much if not for the earworm-y melodies this album boasts in spades, with almost every cut packed full of naggingly catchy synth riffs, vocal hooks, and guitar lines. Fixin may lack a clear, massive standout to match Galore's "I Get Around" (the title track's a decent attempt, but it falls a bit short) but otherwise it marks a slight but noticeable improvement on the band's already-pretty-great debut, a more consistent batch of songs paced so that the highlights keep on coming. For the most part, the odd-numbered songs tend to be the strongest, including the sinuous, sinister "Liar," the goofy, superhero-themed "We Rule the World," and the irresistibly bouncy "Okay Dolore," quasi-cheerleader pop with enough (synthetic) handclaps to do Toni Basil proud. While the band's tendency for oddball stylistic detours is toned down here next to Galore's unscheduled excursions to Bollywood and Tin Pan Alley, the peppy banjos on "Gone Too Far," the kids choir breakdown on "Stupid Grin," and gentle cabaret stylings of "You're a Disaster" keep that sense of playfulness alive in a somewhat more integrated fashion. But the most striking and promising new development here may be an emotional one. "Easy," by some margin the album's best song, is an unusually tender expression of doomed, devoted love with a slinky, sparsely funky electro groove that drops out partway through for a rare moment of vulnerability from the normally all-sass Martina Sobrara: a sweetly harmonized, awkwardly phrased plea imploring her lover not to play games with her fragile heart. It's a total sucker move coming from these guys, an arresting, affecting moment regardless of whether you hear it as unfettered emotionalism or simply a top-notch example of how true pop greatness is to be found in the small details, a lesson that these crafty popsters have definitely taken to heart.

Copy: bio and Hard Dream review

Though he restricts himself to a palette of retro-sounding synths and straitlaced, reasonably dancefloor-friendly drum programming, never straying too far from the distinctive (if hardly earth-shattering) instrumental techno-pop vibe he's made his signature, Copy (alias Portland beatmaker Marius Libman) still covers considerable ground, emotionally, and stylistically. Hard Dream, Copy's third full-length, is titled after and loosely conceived as a score for an unrealized horror movie concept – for a flick about mysteriously televised nightmares – and, fittingly, it has its share of dark, moody, and menacing passages. But it's got plenty of pep and sweetness too, thanks to Libman's unrepentant tunefulness and full-color approach to composition; his synthesizers, which often manage to sound gleaming and gritty at the same time, are just as likely to sparkle and soar as to burble and brood. At the album's frequent best, he's often got multiple synthetic strands of melody going at once, layered into a dense, satisfying analog stew, as on the eight-minute opener "One Less Time"– a slow-building, slow-motion disco epic which might not quite live up to its Daft Punk-baiting title, but still finds some frothy, intoxicating territory to explore – or the sunnier, rather ornate "Breakfast." Copy also does well in sparser settings – "Real Scared," juxtaposing music box arpeggios and archly Baroque synth leads against a spare, swaggering, hip-hop beat – is a clear standout (and one of a few tracks to blatantly recall sometime-confederates Ratatat), while "Stay Away from It"'s herky-jerky, 8-bit bleep-thrash closes the album on a particularly fun, frenetically chirpy note. Only a few tracks are functionally devoid of melody, and they're the weakest links here: the murky, fairly generic dubstep foray "I Didn't Know" and the jittery, Kraftwerk-ian autopilot chase scene music of "It Could Have Been More" make for fine-enough mood shifters in the context of the album, but mostly they seem like rote genre exercises whose failings can be summed up by the latter's title. Generally, though, Libman's compositional gifts don't steer him wrong, and Hard Dream is much more nuanced and engagingly listenable than its stylistic trappings initially suggest. Deliberately or not, Copy's music tends to come off as primarily party fodder, well-crafted but essentially superficial, trading heavily on novelty and kitschy '80s nostalgia, but it's equally possible to see it in the tradition of thoughtful, palatable electronic "listening music," of the sort once peddled by µ-ziq and Plaid, and lately revived by Copy's West coast peers like Eliot Lipp and Nosaj Thing.

Restless People: bio and Restless People review

Restless people indeed, the members of this Brooklyn foursome cycled through several permutations and projects together – as three-quarters of dance-punk second-stringers Professor Murder; as the neotropical production/remix duo Tanlines – before emerging with this concise but emphatic statement of purpose, which can be seen as a synthesis of all that came before it. Taking Tanlines' lighthearted, percolating electronics as a jumping-off point, Restless People add an equally upbeat, accessible pop/rock songwriting slant, arriving at a very 2010 middle ground between the poppy, globe-trotting indie dance of Delorean, Cut Copy, and El Guincho, and the danceable, globe-trotting indie pop of Vampire Weekend, Foreign Born, and Yeasayer – think of them, perhaps, as Williamsburg's answer to the Very Best. At first blush, the album feels even slicker and poppier than any of the above, bursting out of the gate with the Day-glo synths and air horns of "Days of Our Lives," a glossy, euphoric club cut with a relentless stream of simple, continually recycling vocal hooks. "Constant Panic" is even more insistently kinetic – high-NRG neo-disco with a Caribbean lilt, canned handclaps, chopped vocals, and a couple of well-placed percussion breaks. Even the relative breather "Little Sky," which brings down the pace with a nostalgically poignant lyric ("I was born under a great big sky/Now I look up and see a little sky"), is a gleaming, widescreen synth epic that would've been a sure-fire radio staple were it released 25 years earlier, in the age of Peter Gabriel and "In a Big Country." Even with considerable rhythmic variety – "Don't Back Down" crossbreeds new wave piano pop with hiccuping ska; "Practical Magic" shapeshifts from half-time reggae to a frenetic soca jump-up – Restless People has a tendency toward sonic samey-ness: it might all seem like so much faceless, peppy prettiness if not for Eric Emm's enthusiastically earnest vocals. Though not a conventionally great singer, Emm sounds clear-eyed and charismatic, urging on the crowd with a motivational energy pitched somewhere between dancehall toaster and positive hardcore frontman. His intermittent shouts of "Ay, Restless people! Okay!" comes across as both a rallying cry to his bandmates and a sincere, if slightly lackadaisical, life-affirming call to arms for anyone within earshot. That mostly latent punkish energy comes to the forefront on closer "Victimless Crime," the album's only serious misstep (or at least misfit), whose cheerful mess of synth squiggles and incoherent chanting atop a crunched, chugging groove can hardly keep pace with the streamlined pancultural effervescence that preceded it.

Tanlines: Settings and Volume On reviews

A short list of artists for whom Tanlines have provided remix work – El Guincho, the Tough Alliance, Memory Tapes – gives an almost too-perfect snapshot of the stylistic terrain this Brooklyn duo traverses. Along with their True Panther labelmates Delorean, these acts are at the forefront of a particular late-2000s approach to electronic music that's decidedly poppy and danceable but without the formal rigidity of dance-pop proper, featuring plush, treble-heavy synths, thickly burbling percussion, and warmly layered, tropical-flavored grooves. That's a fairly straight-ahead description of what you can expect to find on Settings, a highly enjoyable release that nevertheless tends to blend into its surroundings (both aurally and stylistically) rather than asserting its individuality. The clearest standouts, or at least the most memorable moments, come with "Real Life" and "Policy of Trust," both enhanced (though not exactly dominated) by Eric Emm's appealingly low-key vocals, which ruminate on life's unknowable roads ("For a minute I was lost/I looked away/My destination was unknown") and make sideways nods to Depeche Mode. The third vocal cut, "Bees," is less melodically engaging, flirting with slightly more aggressive, calypsonian rhythm, while the closing "Z" is a lovely, more electro-leaning showcase for the glassy, wordless vocals of labelmate Glasser. At six songs and 24 minutes, Settings comes off as a reasonably generous EP, not least because it seems like about the limit for what these guys are able to accomplish without in some way broadening the parameters of what they do – any longer and its commendable cohesiveness might start to seem more tiresome. A true full-length effort from these two could be a very appealing prospect; they might just have to vary up their portfolio a bit to pull it off.

Arp: The Soft Wave review

Alexis Georgopoulos' debut as Arp, 2007's In Light, was an almost forbiddingly minimal collection of glacially paced analog synth excursions and sparse, meandering drones. The Soft Wave follows that outing with a set that's equally subdued and nearly as restrained in its compositional approach, yet feels strikingly rich in comparison to the utter starkness of its predecessor. There are a few obvious departures here, including an expanded sonic palette – featuring electric guitars and basses, pianos, beatboxes, and even (on one track) vocals in addition to the expected array of vintage synthesizers (which occasionally veer into patches of fuzz and abstract noise instead of remaining clinically pure) – and the fact that many of these pieces boast what could legitimately called melodies, or at least melodic motifs. But the biggest change is more than anything one of mood: while both albums are calm and contemplative, there's a warmth and restfulness to Wave that was distinctly absent from the sometimes naggingly unsettled, sometimes downright chilly In Light. It's right there in the track list: titles like "Catch Wave," "High Life," and "Summer Girl" evoke a pretty specific vibe, and they're not lying – the latter two in particular offer a hazy tunefulness that makes them, along with the groovily fluid guitar-looping "White Light," the first Arp tracks that could be considered infectious. You're probably unlikely to jam them on your way to the beach, but they're perfect for laying back and dreaming about summer, regardless of the actual outdoor temperature (well, as long as you don't mind the occasional squall). The same is equally true of the lengthier pieces that make up The Soft Wave's two poles: the stately, gently triumphant two-part opener "Pastoral Symphony," which is the closest this album comes to In Light's hermetic analog purity, and the blissfully languid slow-motion bossa "From a Balcony Overlooking the Sea" (the aforementioned vocal number, reminiscent of "rock album" Brian Eno and, curiously, the Sea and Cake), clearly the farthest thing here from Arp's established wheelhouse. Though these two pieces don't sound very much like one another, the feeling they create is surprisingly comparable. Much as Georgopoulos' compositions gradually evolve and mutate out of an initial sense of stasis, he's found a way to vary his approach – if only, in the scheme of things, fairly slightly – that moves it forward, slowly but surely, from simple clarity toward a rare luminescence.

Drivan: bio and Disko review

Norwegian producer Kim Hiorthøy has a knack for cobbling together small scraps of sound and melody in a careful but seemingly arbitrary fashion that can make the simple and familiar seem oddly curious and make the coarse and unexpected feel innocently sweet. Disko, the first output from Drivan – a group consisting of Hiorthøy and three female performance artists who serve here primarily as vocalists and co-architects – is the least overtly electronic recording he has been involved in, although most of its tracks do feature his typically low-key, rough-hewn, hip-hop-styled beats for at least a portion of their running time. For the most part, the album uses the melodic but not particularly song-based linear structures familiar from his solo work. Tracks tend to build from a basic rudimentary riff, melody, or chord progression, typically picked out on acoustic guitar or a slightly out of tune piano, with the vocals – exclusively in Swedish, usually solo or in unison, and tending toward a plain, uninflected tone that sometimes takes on a childlike, singsong cast – layered on top. Beats filter in and out, tracks develop and disintegrate in fluid but unpredictable ways, and Hiorthøy tacks on little bits of incidental noise and sonic detritus: the ambient sounds of talking, laughing, scuffling of papers; spectral, unidentified samples of this and that; whistling and squeaking electronic toys and synthetic strings and cheap-sounding keyboard organ solos. There's one clear standout and centerpiece in the six-minute "Det Gör Ingenting," which is the fullest-sounding and most melodically compelling piece here, its sweetly hypnotic throb suggesting an epic, pulsating dance track as performed by children, or heard from several rooms away through slightly worn-out speakers. (It's the only time the album comes close to the danceability suggested by its devious title, though it's still probably a bit too mellow for that.) Otherwise, it's all gently shambolic, mildly folky, slightly inscrutable, and generally quite likable. One gets the sense that Hiorthøy and his cohorts could easily continue turning out these strange, sweet, and satisfying songs in similar fashion for quite some time, if they so chose, and it would be hard to complain if they did.

K-X-P: K-X-P review

A good deal heavier and murkier than the electronic prog-disco fare sometimes associated with Smalltown Supersound – though far from unrelated to that aesthetic – K-X-P is the first fruit of the eponymous project fronted by Op:l Bastards' Timo Kaukolampi. Effectively a synth-bass-drums power trio – with the slight twist that the lineup alternates between a pair of drummers – K-X-P specialize in dark, elemental, monolithic grooves with an obvious debt to your typical slate of gritty, texture-oriented post-punk minimalists (Suicide, Spacemen 3, This Heat) and motorik Krautrockers (Can, Neu!). Each of these eight cuts has its own distinct rhythmic flavor – "Mehu Moments" sports a simple, steady jazz-funk beat; "Elephant Man" rides a hypnotic, herky-jerky tribal pounding; standout "18 Hours (Of Love)" is a stomping T. Rex/Goldfrapp/Battles shuffle – but they maintain a fairly consistent tone and approach, with plenty of groaning, throbbing drones, noisy squalls of synth noodling, and other bits of psychedelic electro-sonic detritus. Vocals crop up occasionally on three or four of the songs, but they're typically too distorted to make much of an impression – the exception being "Pockets," wherein they're intelligible as English and recognizably melodic though fairly grating (after grappling, largely successfully, with conventional song form, the track's second half retreats into an unexpected morass of fluttering, electro-disco synth arpeggios). As the album progresses, it grows more heavily electronic and increasingly spacy, with the gauzy soundtrack synths of "New World" offering a more subdued moment of cosmic reverie and "Epilogue" closing things out with some beatless, meandering organ drones and wispy wordless vocals. Despite its general seedy overtones and occasional moments of harshness, K-X-P is far from an unpalatable or unpleasant record; indeed, its relentless intensity can even feel oddly calming.

Eddy Current Suppression Ring: Primary Current review

Eddy Current Suppression Ring's second album is essentially of a piece with their self-titled debut, meaning here are ten more blasts of direct, primitive, tuneful punk from the bowels of Melbourne. Rough and scrappy but too giddily enthusiastic to come off as snotty or sneering, ECSR tap in to the primal, fun-loving energy of frill-free rock & roll, a spirit that feels every bit as immediate and relevant as it is familiar and timeless. Their sound may be derivative (of any number of past clatter-masters – perhaps most notably the Stooges, but also Wire, the Fall, the Feelies, and on and on), but it's not formulaic, and certainly not monotonous: Primary Colours employs a fair amount of rhythmic and textural variety within its basic template of straightforward lock-grooves and minimalist guitar shredding. So for every all-out skronkfest like "Sunday's Coming" and "Which Way to Go," which maintain a fairly steady barrage of thick guitar noise, there's a sleeker, spindlier cut like "Memory Lane" or the bored anti-media rant "Colour Television" ("Another Wheel of Fortune/Another million tortured") to keep their squalls in check for just the right moment of release. Punk love song "Wrapped Up" is bouncy and infectious with a strong, slinky riff, the Feelies-esque instrumental "That's Inside of Me" finds a herky-jerky funk groove, and "We'll Be Turned On" loosens up even further with some sloppy organ pounding and a righteously bashed-out rhythm track. That song also features a particularly goofy turn from frontman Brendan Suppression who, with his affable Aussie twang and unpretentious reflections on ordinary stuff like relationships and modern life (or, in this case, sex and television), comes across like a far more relatable version of Mark E. Smith.

Kathryn Calder: Are You My Mother? review

The most striking moment on Kathryn Calder's solo debut comes early. Halfway through the prettily subdued opener, "Slip Away," the song bursts unexpectedly free of its gently dappled piano tones and measured calm, the drums kick into rollicking gear, and Calder lets loose a joyous, irresistible, wordless vocal line strikingly like the ones her uncle, Carl Newman, used to write for Neko Case to sing with the New Pornographers. But those glorious, fleeting seconds (the eruption happens again later in the song) are the closest Are You My Mother? comes to the unbridled power pop/rock favored both by that group (of which Calder has become an increasingly active member) and by Immaculate Machine, the band of high-school chums turned indie rock pros that was until recently her primary outfit. Somewhere between a "traditional" singer/songwriter album and an exercise in one-woman popcraft à la Newman's band-based solo records, Mother finds Calder alternating between rhythmically driven uptempo numbers (the peppy, noodly two-step "Castor and Pollux"; the frantic, somewhat slapdash-sounding "A Day Long Past Its Prime") and mellower, more introspective fare. She strikes a happy medium on the folksy, metrically quirky "If You Only Knew," a jaunty singalong complete with handclaps and shambling, desultory group percussion, and on the breezy "Follow Me into the Hills," which manages to suggest both loping acoustic country and tiki-lounge exotica with its mandolin breaks, swaying tropical beat, and big twangy guitar. But by and large, in spite of Calder's rocking pedigree, Mother is generally most effective at its most restrained. With repeated listens, cuts like the autumnal, string-laden "Down the River" and the wistful waltzes "Arrow" and "So Easily" (the former a piano-based lilt, the latter stripped down to the sparsest picked acoustic guitar notes and featuring an understated harmony from Case) stand out as the album's most resonant, if only because their sparer settings allow Calder's finest gifts – the strength of her melodies and the girlish sweetness of her winsome vocals – to shine through most clearly. Despite its poignant back-story – Calder recorded the album at her family home in Victoria while caring for her ailing mother, who died a year before its release – Mother's emotional impact tends to be more indirect and evocative than specific and tangible. Its varied but always thoughtful musical character, as much as its nuanced, sometimes ambiguous lyrics, make it feel like an understated, vital reminder to bring a gentle approach to life's struggles.

Jenny Wilson: Hardships! review

The second album by this acclaimed Swedish songstress largely jettisons the appealing if skewed pop sensibility of her debut, along with most of that album's electronic underpinnings, for a prickly, nebulously political collection of songwriterly art-pop, emphasis firmly on the "art." While Love and Youth wasn't exactly light listening, it could somewhat reasonably be mentioned in the same breath as Wilson's friends and collaborators (and compatriots) Robyn and The Knife; Hardships!, though, plods a portentous path far from the Scandinavian synth-pop superhighway, evoking instead the idiosyncratic likes of Kate Bush and Tori Amos. Wilson's curious, powerfully theatrical soprano has earthy hints of gospel and soul, while the piano-led chamber arrangements offer occasional flashes of levity, particularly in the percussion department – though the album's menagerie of handclaps and xylophones can just as easily sound sinister as cheerful. But most of the interest here (human or otherwise) derives from the lyrics, which deal explicitly with domesticity and motherhood, forming a loose song cycle/concept album that addresses those topics primarily through themes of struggle, escape and disillusionment. Wilson combines narrative details redolent of rural poverty (strong-willed horses, threadbare socks, burnt soup and potatoes) with military, maritime, natural world and nursery-rhyme imagery to create vivid, uneasy juxtapositions, not unlike the rifle she wields with such impassive poise on the album's cover. The dinner-time escalation in "Pass me the Salt" is typical: "Come on now eat your food/cartridges, fried and stewed/this table has become a combat zone." The title song likewise compares the trials of motherhood to the stuff of bloody battlefields, bemoaning the unheralded heroism involved in an implacable, oddly antagonistic tone that reduces a well-reasoned feminist viewpoint to bleak, heartless logic. Wilson adopts a similarly chilly, queasily pragmatic, almost resentful view of family relationships throughout, with partners and children alike: when she wails, by way of a lullaby, "I wanna leave you baby/but our veins are entwined," you get the sense she really does want to leave her infant. The final two songs represent something of a thaw, musically as well as lyrically (one features a loose-limbed sax solo) – tellingly, they're the only ones save for the surreal memoiristic opener "The Path" ("I wanted to be born, so I crawled out of my mother") to contain the word "love." Love does not come easily in a world filled with hardships. And Hardships! is not an easy affair on any level.

day-glo degenerettes

dragonette first caught my attention over a year ago with their über-ohrwurm "i get around," which made its way onto both ladies love 3 and love is the answer. it's an irresistably hooky ode to shameless one-nite-stands (a far cry from "none of the guys go steady cuz it wouldn't be right" though, naw'mean?) which is actually a pretty perfect calling card for what dragonette are all about, but somehow i didn't really take the trouble to figure out who they were at the time; if i had, i might have realized that love's just about the last thing they have on their minds.

well, maybe. core duo martina sobrara and dan kurtz (pictured above) have been happily married for a buncha years now. the too-perfect backstory: they met at a music festival when sobrara was a singer-songwriter playing (retroactively self-described) "tampon music" and kurtz was... [oh no shhh he's was in the new deal!??! that makes so much sense thanks wikipedia!], he cheated on his girlfriend with her, and, yknow, the rest is history. how sweet. but this ain't no mates of state cutsiefest (who, btw, are even adorable when they're naked...)

dragonette are vile, reprehensible people. their debut record, galore, just came out here (it's been out in the uk and their native canada for a while), and from listening to it i get the sense that they're about the most despicable folks you could hope to meet. sure, they play delicious bubblegum electro powerpunk, just the way i like it, but all those spiky synths and sugar-guitars are just candy-coating as that slatternly minx sobrara coos her disgusting, debauched tales of promiscuity ("i get around"), adultery ("competition"), prostitution ("black limousine"), blasphemy ("jesus doesn't love me"), and just straight-up emotional abuse ("take it like a man.")

that one's a bit tricky actually - it's hard to tell exactly what's happening in the lyrics - "keep it up soldier" and the references to "the cause" suggest that there's some kind of military roleplay/metaphor going on - but it's pretty clear, even just from her disingenuous delivery, that sobrara's one cruel, manipulative drill-sergeant of a ladyfriend, constantly controlling and belittling the heck out of her poor fellow: "i've got to make you understand/you gotta take it like a man." that sounds like what we refer to as male oppression.

oh, did i mention this is one of my favorite songs in recent memory? oh man... it's really good. i got nothing more to say. as i mentioned, you really should watch the video. really well-done retro porn pastiche (i haven't decided if i think that's actually the band yet), and it suggests some novel readings for the lyrics:



[speaking of retro porn pastiche videos, you should really also watch this one, for "toejam" by bpa, which is a new project from norman cook/fatboy slim (yes! big beat return confirmed!), featuring various noteworthy people, in this case our good friend david byrne (!), and also dizzee rascal. how's that for a three-some. the video rates about even with mates of state cute nudity scale - but it's also quite clever to boot. (don't worry it's SFW.)




oh, and while we're on the subject, kinda, this is as good a time as any to mention that the so-so but entertaining-ish zack and miri make a porno, in addition to having some well-deployed '90s nostalgia music in the high school reunion scene (dj kool, marcy playground), has maybe the best-ever use of a pixies song for dramatic underscoring (sorry fight club), in the part where "hey" plays during the emotional crux of the "wrap party" scene (nevermind that having an emotional crux was probably the worst thing the movie decided to do.)]

ok, back to dragonette. so yeah, they get a lot of excellent mileage out of playing up their total shameless sleaziness. it works both as a contrast to the sweetness of their hooks and as a primordial rock'n'roll stylistic move that fits right in with their obvious mtv-era retro-rebelliousness. see also "the boys," their righteous cover of calvin harris' "the girls," available on theirspace, whose even-more-extreme libinous campiness actually makes it more palatable than harris' slightly discomfiting tho still great original (along with the gender-reversal, and better jokes - you feel like they're actually having the fun harris only wanted us to think he was having...)

none of this is especially weird. it is kinda weird, though, how the heinous hedonism of the album's dynamite first three tracks (which are almost definitely its three best songs) plays against the sappy love roles martina assumes in the next several. the verses of "true believer" find her confessing her sins:

"i've had such a wicked time
kissed the boys and made them cry
laughing while I wave goodbye
(they'd still like another try)"

but in the chorus she asserts that all that's changed now that she's met you, you her new magical spell-binding lover who makes her "better" and "sweeter" by giving her "pleasure" and "fever." the slightly worrisome middle 8 asks: "do you feel super?/I'm the new girl curled around your finger." it's basically the flipside to "take it like a man," a complete role-reversal where she is giving herself over to this guy's control - but considering how unreliable and manipulative she's proven to be in the past, it's pretty hard to swallow this newfound sentimentalism and goody-goodyness - there's gotta be a catch in there...

"another day" is a telephone love ballad, pretty enough but slight. and then comes "get lucky," which can be read, pretty straightforwardly, as either lovey-dovey sweetness or a hardly-veiled burlesque come-on (depending on whether you interpret "go all the way" as referring to marriage or sex), an ambiguity that's certainly intentional. musically though, it's a total curveball, a swingin' tin-pan-alley/broadway-styled number, complete with tinny barbershop harmonies, which hearkens back to the '30s instead of the '80s, and sounds like none of their contemporaries so much as the hammy swedeyboppers miss li (whom i kind of detest - does it show?) and amy diamond (q.v. bedbugs' intriguing discussion of the renewed relevance and skewed escapist subtext of amy's depression-era pop revivalism.)

more musical weirdness: "jesus doesn't love" is a kind of anti-gospel song, electro-blues that reminds me a lot of the eurythmics "missionary man." things tame down for a bit after that musically; no 1840s-era antiquarianisms on "gold rush," unfortunately. lyrically, "you please me" returns to familiarly wanton territory, with the post-breakup lament: "i don’t miss your company/i just want those hands on me/t o touch the places underneath."

and for their final act, saving the weirdest for last, they construct their own bollywood mini-opera (complete with boy/girl duet vocals) and/or their own in the zone-era britney eastern-music camp pastiche (no, it's definitely both), entitled "marvelous." a total wtf moment. typically, as far as the lyrics are concerned, no good will come of anyone's actions here. but its melodramatic excesses (and musical adventurousness) have a lot to say about this band's commitment to pop music theatricality - something that very much puts them in the vein of amy diamond, as well as (just off the top of my head) my chemical romance, r. kelly, and alice cooper. which, of course, means that fretting about their dubious personal morality is beside the point (as it always was)... but dissecting it is not. let's just keep an eye on where they go from here.

fascination!

as another one of my other fave '07-'08 pop-bands-qua-bands put it:

"it's just the way we feel"

or, to go back to the original source (c. 1983):

"passion burning/love so strong...
...looking learning, moving on"