Review Round-Up: September 2015

Lou Barlow
Brace The Wave

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

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

HeCTA
The Diet

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

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

originally published in Magnet Magazine

Yo La Tengo
[Indie Rock/Folk]
concert preview

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

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

Thee Oh Sees
[Rock/Psych]
concert preview

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

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

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

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

Madonna
[Pop]
concert preview

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

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

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

Earl Sweatshirt
[Hip-Hop]
concert preview

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

Recondite
[House]
concert preview

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

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

The Orb
[Electronic]
concert preview

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

Optimo
[Dance/DJ]
concert preview

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

originally published in Philadelphia City Paper

Blanck Mass
[Electronic/Noise/Dance]
concert preview

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

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

in january it's so nice

mostly it's a month for playing catchup, or in whatever sense to deal with old music. because in januarys there is more or less no new music. few if any big deal new releases to speak of

[this year no bright-eyes, no strokes, no shins and of montreal; i guess the big stories were the magnetic fields' predictably accurately-titled non-return-to-form distortion - not too impressed yet, though (i hate) "california girls" is nice enough, but maybe i need to go listen to some jamc and come back to it - and vampire weekend, who seem very nice, but also seem to have enough people liking them for the time being; i'll be glad come back and like them some more in a little while. of course the biggest album released in january 2008 was radiohead's in rainbows, which i recently purchased for $9.99 - it's very nice, with cool and pretty if confusing packaging - but as we all know it's very much old news]

and even anything released in december is officially old because it's just gotten finished being endlessly included on year-end lists and recaps, or more likely not included on those things because people didn't have a chance to process it yet. so basically january is a chance to discover the music that other people were excited about the previous year, even though your enjoyment of it will inevitably carry a sort of tarnished feeling, since it will be decidedly, emphatically so last year.

in my case (and for more than a few, i'll reckon), i took a gander at that there pitchfork best of 2007 list and gaggled, huh-what is this "swedish" "pop" musics of which you speak? am i aware of these "fellow swedes" who were busy "concocting anthems for sunshine-soaked shorelines this year"? and wait whaddayamean "it was a balearic year"? uh-oh, was i listening to the wrong 2007? no, i just wasn't paying attention to p4k, rlly, what with stylus ceasing to publish and all.

anyway, so i just found out about this band the tough alliance. they took me a number of listens to "get" - and it's still sort of hard to describe their music (i said it's the intersection of swedish indie-pop, swedish synth/dancepop, and swedish spacey electronica - except they sound like they're pretending to be caribbean, or they're in the caribbean) - but they really are something pretty great and unique. i immediately wrote the official definitive biography about them, as per my job as authoritative expert on scandinavian pop music, which i mostly researched by looking at everything on the amazing sincerely yours website (that's the label they're on and run), where they assign a catalog number to everything, including mp3s, music videos, weird one-off merchandise items, and oh yeah records too. i kontakted the label and told them i liked their website, and they sent me a lovely gorgeous package with a sticker claiming it had been lost and/or damaged in the mails, but in fact that was not true, it just had copies of the tough alliance's a new chance, the honeydrips' here comes the future, air france's beach party, and jonas game's adhd. all of which are great, and which i will review soon. see, i'm as cool as pitchfork!

there's also this group studio, whom i had already heard of, and whom i haven't been listening to - in fact i passed up a copy to buy their album used (which i now regret), having heard them a bit and decided they were nothing special; fine but dispensable, atmospheric and jazzy and organic and groovy in a kind of jam band way that i have not much use for. honestly i think this is my problem with appreciating jazz; it's not that it's indulgent, i just feel like there's so much of it around that i don't need to worry about it - it's easy to come by, more of it can be easily generated, without the kind of investment and craft that goes into, for instance, pop songwriting (not that jazz doesn't involve craft, it's just a sort of craft that involves endlessly renewable well-springs), so that its value becomes hopelessly watered down. that said "life's a beach" is actually pretty sweet. (and by the way it's not jazz at all.)

mgmt, who i first encountered opening for of montreal lo these many years ago (august of 2005!), have finally grown up and released their debut album (on columbia records no less, and the first of a reported four-album deal - that's crazytalk!) i'm not sure what i think of it yet, but it does at least reprise two highlights from their EP that i bought way back then: everyone's favorite hit "kids" (made famous on my october is eternal mix) and p4k best-of-'07 inclusion "time for pretend," which has an unbelievably awesome video (seriously, one of the greatest music videos i've seen, which may not be saying too much) made by a friend of somebody who lives with my friends, that i was lucky enough to see at a weekly variety revue at their house two weeks ago. apparently, amazingly, that video is not available on the internets yet, but i will let you know when here it is (embedding disabled by request, don't wanna figure out how yr supposed to get around that.)

ingrid michaelson, whose album was wxpn's cd of the month this month, and whom i saw perform at "free at noon" a few months back, and who gets photographed eating food creepily often (each with literally hundreds of comments about how beautiful she is - u have to be signed into myspace to see though), and who supposedly is emblematic of a new model of indie music success (i.e. song placements in tv shows and commercials), has this song, her "big hit", "the way i am," which is so minimal and slight that it's barely even there, with short simple verses (with lyrics that are banal, and worse, embarrassing - liz always talks about how it mentions rogaine) and even shorter, simpler choruses - the whole song is basically this tiny nugget of melody, 1-2-3-2, which is fit into a single syllable in its first three iterations ("i" "love" "you") and then stretched out to four words ("take me the way.") it's kind of brilliantly economical, and annoyingly catchy in a really obvious but understandable way. by the way, we don't think we like ingrid michaelson.

i heard the song on the radio and it made me get, in succession, regina spektor ("better"), natalie imbruglia ("torn"), and the cranberries ("zombie") in my head. not sure what to say about that.

meanwhile, i've been thinking about kylie and madonna. i was out somewhere recently and heard a song that i vaguely recognized, then realized was from madge's maligned 2003 album american life (i think it was "nobody knows me") - it sounded pretty good and it reminded me very much of blackout and the corresponding recent glut of vocal-twerking electro-pop productions (most of them by bloodshy/avant), and i wondered whether american life might have been ahead of its time, prefiguring that recent wave of innovation (if that's what it is) and unjustly dismissed as uninventive. relistening to it a little bit... well it's not a great album, mostly because the songwriting is somewhat wooden and of course the rapping is just embarrassing, and as appealing as the acoustic guitar + electronics formula is, it mostly sounds like it's attempting to recapture the glory of "don't tell me" and never quite hitting it. still, it's probably better than it's remembered as. "nobody knows me" is probably the best song.

this is totally weird: it is the only album in history to provide seven top-ten hits on the hot dance music/club play chart. (from wikipedia.) (even though it only included one #8 single on the hot 100, the bond theme "die another day," which barely counts - though it does also feature some of that bloodshy/avant steez.

you know what album's even worse though? kylie's body language, which is also from 2003. i remember being tremendously excited for both albums when they came out - i bought a bootleg copy of the madonna in the ny subway for $5 (only time i've ever done that), and waited and waited to order the kylie online at a halfway-reasonable import price - having totally swooned over their respective predecessors (i actually loved music when it came out in 2000, but fever was still a belated revelation for me when i first heard in '03 - it was the turning point for me in terms of embracing mainstream pop.)

but i never warmed to body language, as much as i was determined to, and it's obvious why - it's just not that interesting. apart from "slow," which is pretty nifty and unusual, but never got me that excited, i don't understand the singles choices at all. to me the obvious standout would be the rather blunt but funky (at least) "sweet music" or perhaps "obsession." otherwise i can't even remember how any of the songs go, looking at the track list, although upon listening i remember that "still standing" is pretty cool and catchy (though i would never have remembered that it's called that.)

but on the whole it's an astounding and inexplicable disappointment as the follow-up to fever, which was not just one of the greatest dance-pop albums ever made, but also among the most successful. it's probably relevant to note that almost none of the same songwriters return: cathy dennis and the duo of stannard/gallagher, who each had a hand in three of fever's standouts, get one co-credit apiece, on the two fine but unremarkable closing two tracks; and then there's kylie herself (who has four co-credits here rather than five.) it's certainly stylistically coherent (as fever was), but it's just nowhere near as compelling.

if you ask me, her two stand-alone singles from 2005 - the glistening, scissor sisters-produced futurism of "i believe in you" and the simple but effective pumping disco of "giving you up" (orphaned except for their appearance on the double-disc ultimate kylie) - are far superior to anything from body language.

and then there's x, the actually-not-that-interestingly-titled 2007 album, which is a "return" after kylie's succesful battle with cancer hoo-rah! and also after four years which is actually not that much time in blockbuster pop diva album terms (she's on course with madonna, for instance.) and, from what i can tell, it seems to be getting a sort of middling reception from critics for being stylistically scattered and unfocused and not projecting a clear persona that's recognizably kylie.

i guess if those things are true enough, if they bother you, but to me they overlook the fact that this album is just so much more vital and vibrant and fun than, for instance, (the generally well-received) body language. i mean, fair enough to have your specific preconceptions of what you expect a given popstar to deliver musically, but what with this recent glut of (especially english) diva-pop full-lengths (kylie, sophie, roisin, natasha, mutya, siobhan, sugababes, girls aloud) to work through, i'm just trying to stay focused on who's actually bringing the goods, and to my ear (and maybe my surprise), kylie's got this round covered (roisin maybe a close second, that'll take some more listening.)

i've been listening to x a bunch, and it's just tremendously listenable. that may be because pretty much every track stands out in some way or other, from the obvious highlight of guitar-based glam-schaffel lead single "2 hearts" to the jaunty, serge gainsbourg-sampling "sensitized" to the sparse, boom-bappin' "heart beat rock." sure, much of it is - obviously, gleefully - derivative, including "2 hearts" (shades of goldfrapp, though of course it goes further back than that), "speakerphone" and "nu-di-ty," which are cut from the same whole cloth as blackout (and yeah, recall "technologic" too), and slightly slight but appropriately immediate second single "wow," which is a second-hand "love at first sight." and whatever's not specifically derivative is generically derivative - hey, it's electro/disco/pop.

my current crush/favorite is "all i see," which is just a sweet lil love song written and produced by cutfather and jeberg, who also did "one step at a time" on the jordin sparks album that i blogged about somewhat randomly and intensively and which has exhibited considerable staying power ("no air" has really grown on me too, though i still haven't paid enough attention to determine why/whether the central metaphor makes sense.) and the two songs ("all i see" and "one step") are extremely blatantly similar, with the same step-step groove, very similar harp figures, and almost identical chord progressions. they've been playing off one another in my mind all the time - i never know which one is stuck in my head, since it's pretty much a trick question to begin with.

the thing i can't decide is whether this is a problem. is it okay for writers and producers to recycle their own material? what's the line between "sonic signature" consistency and unethical self-plagiarism? (do ethics even enter into it, or is this purely an aesthetic debate?) obviously if both songs were on the same album it would be pretty obnoxious (kylie is nearly guilty of this herself on fever, with "come into my world" following soundalike "can't get you out of my head" up the charts just a little facilely), but most kylie fans are unlikely to even encounter this random jordin album track, and vice versa. which may make it even more insidious. personally, i'm just interested in hearing more of what jeberg and cutfather have to offer, to find out whether it's more than this one particularly captivating, sentimental pony trick. (even as i consider that the seductive familiarity of "tattoo"'s opening synth-strings probably owes a little too much to the benificent omnipresence of the likewise stargate-produced "irreplaceable.")

hm. is that what i have to say about january? guess so.