2012 Review Round-Up: February

it's december!  here's the plan: as i work my way toward year-end musical festivities (listing! mixing! feasting!), i'm rounding up all (or nearly all) of my writerly output from 2012 with a series of posts, one per day, one for each month, over the next eleven (or twelve?) days.  or bust!

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

Lindstrøm
Six Cups Of Rebel

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

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


Terranova
Hotel Amour

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

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

Loops Of Your Heart
And Never Ending Nights

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

John Talabot
ƒin

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

various artists
DJ-Kicks: The Exclusives

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

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

Lana Del Rey
Born To Die
[Pop]

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

Air
Le Voyage Dans Le Lune
[Soundtrack/Instrumental]

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

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

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

Porcelain Raft
Strange Weekend
[Dream-Pop]

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


Jim White
Where It Hits You
[Folk/Americana]

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


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

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

The Darkness/Foxy Shazam
[Rock]
concert preview

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

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

Asteroids Galaxy Tour
[Pop]
concert preview

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

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

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

Ha Ha Tonka
[Rock]
concert preview

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

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

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

Marit Larsen/Teitur
[Folk/Pop]
concert preview

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

Aeroplane
[Electronic/Disco]
concert preview

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

AMG review round-up, volume IX: scandinavian singer-songwriter special

some of my current favorite practitioners of singer-songwriter (which by the way is a genre), all of them from norway (marit, ane kinda) or sweden (everyone else) except for herman dune, who are from sweden and switzerland by way of france and apparently the lower east side or something. (also, herman dune and billie the vision are technically "bands," but we'll let it slide...) so, roughly in order of how good they are (or, rather, how excited i am about them at the moment):

Marit Larsen: Under The Surface and The Chase reviews

Nordic roots-pop starling Marit Larsen scored her second Norwegian number one with "If A Song Could Get Me You, the utterly charming lead single from her sophomore outing The Chase (which itself debuted atop her country's album chart.) In a typically starry-eyed twist on the song-about-a-song concept, the tune finds Larsen proposing to write a song in whatever style it will take to win her beloved's affections: "I could try with a waltz/I could try rock and roll/I could try with the blues." There's no doubt that she's capable but, as it turns out, she doesn't spend much time with those styles on The Chase (though "Steal My Heart" and "I've Heard Your Love Songs" are both waltzes, and lovely ones too; respectively dainty and sumptuous.) Conspicuously absent from that list are pop and country, the two genres that most closely encapsulate her general musical approach. Larsen began her professional career as one half of the teen pop act M2M, and she hasn't strayed too far from that group's trendsetting brand of earnest, accessible bubble-folk - growing into her twenties may have helped her develop a satisfying emotional complexity to accompany her penchant for pop melodicism, but her intrinsic sweetness remains resoundingly undimmed. Meanwhile, her lavish sentimentality, narrative lyrical bent, and colorful instrumental choices (mandolin, banjo, harmonica, and dobro, along with more baroque, orchestral touches) suggest a link with country that was evident on her solo debut and is even more pronounced here (sometime between the two albums, Larsen started a low-profile sideline stint playing in the Oslo-based traditionalist bluegrass band Elwood Caine.)

Of course, there's not necessarily much of a gap between classicist songwriter pop and country music in its chart-friendly contemporary incarnation. It doesn't feel like a stretch, for instance, to describe Larsen as a Scandinavian Taylor Swift, considering that her differences from the rising country star have more to do with geography and vocal inflection than anything musically substantial (though she has a not-insignificant seven years on Swift, experience-wise.) Much like Swift's own sophomore album, which was released around the same time, The Chase is an expertly crafted musical statement that balances rootsiness and polish, leavens its maturity and poise with undeniable flashes of youthful energy, and displays considerable mainstream appeal regardless of genre classifications. Indeed, it exudes confidence, not just musical and writerly, but - this album's most striking difference from its predecessor - emotional as well, as Larsen chides an indecisive new lover ("Is It Love?"), announces her plans to walk out on a sleeping, unwitting partner ("Ten Steps," whose sanguine empowerment marks a complete reversal from the crippling paranoia of the debut's "This Time Tomorrow"), and reflects calmly on the existential strangeness and unsettling simplicity of post-breakup life ("This Is Me, This Is You"), all with an assertiveness and aplomb worlds away from the passivity and hesitance that permeated Under the Surface. Even as it deals with some difficult situations, then, The Chase is far from a downer; and when things are working out in Larsen's favor - as on the light-hearted title track and preposterously giddy new-love ode "Addicted" - it's absolutely effervescent.

(bad cover art alert in effect for everything that follows except maybe maia hirasawa)

Ane Brun: Changing of the Seasons review

The title track of Ane Brun's fourth studio album (only her second U.S. release), "Changing of the Seasons" makes reference to all four -- "the relief of spring, the intoxication of summer rain, the clearness of fall, how winter makes me reconsider it all" -- but there's no question that this is music for the more pensive and bittersweet of seasonal shifts: the onset of autumn, the drift into winter. As we often do when the weather draws us inward, these poetically tender songs contemplate the comforts and challenges of togetherness and solitude, reflecting on relationships with a mix of resignation and sweetness, a mature emotionalism that is no less poignant for its reassurance and composure. Brun's keenly observed relationship songs turn on touchingly deployed metaphors (love as a jigsaw puzzle; a faded daydream of tree house domesticity; the emotional armor of a reticent lover turned tangible and rusty) and moments of subtle emotional shifts: restless disenchantment dispelled by a waking lover's instinctive embrace; the difference between asking someone never to leave and realizing that the asking is irrelevant. She invests isolation with a comparable complexity, variously plucking up her bruised confidence ("Raise My Head"), honing in on the fleeting seconds of unexpected calm amid bouts of anxiety ("Ten Seconds"), surrendering to find solace in the recordings of Gillian Welch (and Norwegian ambient producer Biosphere), and offering a curiously soothing fatalism in the lovely "Lullaby for Grownups." Befitting the ruminative tone of the words, the music strikes a balance between sparsity and lushness, augmenting Brun's acoustic guitar with touches of marimba, bouzouki, and piano as well as elegant, enveloping string arrangements, many of them by rising star Nico Muhly. At the center of it all is Brun's curious and affecting voice, conveying the blend of expressiveness and restraint that these songs seem to invite, and recalling vocalists as disparate as Dolly Parton, Joni Mitchell, and Tori Amos, sometimes all at once. A thoroughly captivating work from an undeniable talent.

Herman Dune: Next Year in Zion review

Next Year in Zion reportedly marks the first album that head Herman Dune David Ivar has written while he was happy. It certainly shows, as many of these songs are practically bursting with love and good cheer. In other hands, unabashedly lovestruck fare like "On a Saturday," "My Best Kiss," and "When the Sun Rose Up This Morning" might come off trite, but the Dunes approach them with such warmth and unaffected sweetness that it's easy to be won over. Not everything here is so unrelentingly sunny, but there is an endearingly shambolic, lived-in quality to David-Ivar's sappily prosaic narratives and quirky slant rhymes that reflects a persistent, modest optimism in the face of irrational fears ("Baby Is Afraid of Sharks"), awkward roommate situations ("Afternoon Dance Party"), the fugitive criminal lifestyle ("Lovers Are Waterproof"), and even environmental devastation ("Poison in the Rain.") The music reflects that lyrical positivity with a laid-back, infectious charm that draws on American folk forms (with occasional calypso, mariachi, klezmer, and flamenco accents) and also harkens back to '50s and '60s pop in way a reminiscent of Jonathan Richman and Jens Lekman. Beyond the Richman/Lekman-esque core duo, Next Year in Zion is fleshed out with percussion from El Doctor Schönberg, girl group backing vocals by the Babyskins, the N'awlins flavor of the Jon Natchez Bourbon Horns, and electric guitar solos courtesy of the Wave Pictures' Dave Tattersall. Though it initially comes off as fairly slight, this reveals itself to be a rewarding, idiosyncratic effort that bears repeated listens; a pleasure from start to finish. [no clue about the title.]

Billie the Vision and the Dancers: bio and I Used to Wander These Streets reviews

The fourth album from the lovable misfits in Billie the Vision & the Dancers doesn't offer any significant changes from the three that came before it; it's just another easily enjoyable batch of sweet, playful, sincere ramshackle twee pop. There are still plenty of love-lorn lyrics centered around the fictitious everypeople Lily and Pablo, though Lars Lindquist also pens some particularly personal narratives, recounting his childhood move from Denmark to Sweden in "Stuttering Duckling," tenderly delving into candid sexual realism in "You're Not Giving Up on Me," and detailing an eye-opening, guilt-ridden experience in London's queer nightclub scene in the poignant "Swedish Sin." Other highlights include the bright, sunny pop of opener "Lily from the Middleway Street," the shuffle-ska "Groovy," a guest vocal from Annika Norlin (of Hello Saferide) on "I Belong to You," and a surprisingly effective Guns N' Roses interpolation on the break-up ballad "Liar and a Thief."

(from here on, we can play connect the dots from artist to artist...)

Firefox AK: Madame, Madame! If I Were a Melody reviews

As suggested by the shift from the bright yellow-orange of Madame, Madame! to muted violet on the cover of If I Were a Melody, Andrea Kellerman's second album as Firefox AK is a markedly moodier affair than her first, simultaneously darker, edgier, and more subdued. It actually encompasses a broader emotional range, from lush, mellow material like "The River" and the nearly beatless "Shero" to the aggressive thrust of first single "Winter Rose" -- a duet with her husband Rasmus Kellerman (aka Tiger Lou), who wails the chorus hook ("Give me some pleasure/Give me some joy/Just give me something I can destroy") with a blank-eyed electro-clash angst -- and the pummeling hard house of the well-named "Techno Tears." Still, the overall effect is less immediate, and more understated, than the infectiously scrappy Madame!, which may have something to do with the relative absence of gritty, rock-styled guitars. The word "mature" feels slightly incongruous, but if nothing else Melody is more accomplished and self-assured from a musical and production standpoint -- none of it was recorded in a bedroom this time out, and it shows. Kellerman and her production/programming accomplice, Viktor Ginner, spent several months in Berlin working on the album, and they clearly soaked up a lot of inspiration from the electronic dance scene there, resulting in a decidedly modern-sounding collection of more refined (not necessarily more relaxed) beats and pieces that recall the sophisticated techno of Ellen Allien and the Kompakt stable, as well as the electro-pop of the Junior Boys (whose Matt Didemus mixed the album) and Kellerman's countrymen the Knife. None of this comes at the expense of her sumptuous way with vocal hooks -- this album has plenty of them, amply showcasing Kellerman's sublime vocals, which were either much better recorded this time or else have developed considerably (probably both). They resonate with unusual warmth against the synthetic austerity of the arrangements, especially on the poignant "Pushing," with its stirring chorus shift from minor to major, and "Flutter of a Wing," which comes closest to the simple pop pleasures of the debut despite an unsettling lyric inspired by the lack of birds during Kellerman's time in Berlin. Although it may take a few more spins to sink in, Melody is a dramatic step forward from its predecessor, a complex and rewarding effort that places Firefox AK right at forefront of modern electronic pop.


Hello Saferide: Would You Let Me Play This EP 10 Times a Day and More Modern Short Stories From... reviews

Hello Saferide's second album is called More Modern Short Stories from Hello Saferide, in perhaps self-effacing but apt reference to the literary qualities of journalist/frontwoman Annika Norlin's frequently verbose songwriting. Coincidentally or not, the most inspired moments here, musically as well as lyrically, come when she dresses up her typically autobiographical/confessional mode with an injection of creative fiction: the martial "Overall," wherein she and producer Andreas Mattsson role play concerned parents fretting over their neo-Nazi son (shades of XTC's "No Thugs in Our House"); the rocking "Middle Class," which indulges in Bonnie and Clyde fantasies about a complete stranger; and standout first single "Anna," which imagines the charmed life of an overacheiving daughter she could have had with an ex. Of course, it's not too hard to hear Norlin's neuroses and insecurities playing out in these flights of fancy, but at least they offer a bit of psychological distance that's missing from slightly cringe-worthy fare like "25 Days" (Norlin as needy new girlfriend), the teenage sex diary "X Telling Me...," and "Parenting Never Ends," in which she asks her mother to take her back into the womb (Norlin clearly has parenting on the brain.) It's not that she lacks the verbal facility or pop sense to make this material worthwhile, but engaging with Hello Saferide means engaging with Norlin's personal psychodramas and emotional fatalism, and not every listener will feel comfortable or invested enough to do that. For those who are, Modern Short Stories offers a somewhat more mature, less giddy, but no less charmingly complicated version of the young woman who was introduced on Introducing, with couple of lovely Swedish folk-pop ballads ("Lund" and "Arjeplog") to boot.

Maia Hirasawa: Though, I'm Just Me review

Maia Hirasawa first gained notice as a backup singer for Annika Norlin's Hello Saferide, and fans of that band will certainly recognize a similar brand of sweet, intimate, folksy pop on the Japanese-Swedish singer/songwriter's humbly titled debut album. That said, Hirasawa does carve out a strong identity for herself here, one that's sometimes whimsical but not as overly cutesy as her former band (school children vocals notwithstanding); if anything more prone to overeager sentimentalism, but not so earnestly straightforward in her expression of it. Drawing musically from a palette of jazz and broadway-style piano ballads as well as folk and pop, she's generally inclined toward muted, wistful reflection, frequently undercutting even her bubblier, more optimistic seeming pop tunes with shades of lyrical uncertainty and ambiguity. That's especially true of the album's two biggest-sounding moments -- the bouncy full-bore pop single "And I Found This Boy" and the jazzy "Crackers," which features a brass section and a vocal duet with cabaret-pop starlet Miss Li. Some of the calmer numbers, like the string-laden waltz-ballad "Gothenburg" and the charming opener "Still June," with its intoxicatingly lush self-harmonies, offer glimmers of genuine hope, all the sweeter for being unanticipated. Throughout, Hirasawa displays an unusually versatile and expressive voice, reminiscent of Regina Spektor in its distinctive personality and emotional range, which is a large part of what makes Though, I'm Just Me so effortless and pleasurable. A quiet gem of a debut.

(and, for those who wonder if i ever write negative reviews...)

Miss Li: bio; Late Night Heartbroken Blues , God Put a Rainbow in the Sky, and Songs of a Rag Doll reviews

Miss Li's debut album introduced her scrappy, exuberant, modern take on classic cabaret-style jazz-pop. It's definitely not the sort of music you'd expect from a Swedish twenty-something, which makes this, at least initially, a very striking release, and it's undeniably a blast of energy, though there is something vaguely bland and tiresome about it in spite of its zesty exterior. The basic M.O. is established right off the bat, in the brief title track, with its handclaps, swingin' oompah rhythm, and brassily belted barstool tale of a night of boozing (the opening count-off turns out to be the number of beers she's drinking) leading to a desperate, meaningless one-night-stand, complete with spoken aside. From there on we get hot 'n' bothered torch ballads ("Give It to Me"), slinky shuffles ("Backstabber Lady"), jokey piano ditties ("I'm So Poor Won't You Lend Me Some Money"), and so forth; a survey of show tuney styles that doesn't come off as self-conscious pastiche so much as earnest if amateurish genre work. Fortunately - crucially - Li does have the pipes to pull it off, and perhaps even more importantly, the attitude: she attacks the material with a gusto that can't help but be a little infectious, clearly having too much fun to worry about whether she sounds corny. It's a perfectly apt approach for such unabashedly theatrical music, but it's a little hard to shake the notion that this is just a girl playing dress-up, and despite some seriously accomplished instrumental contributions from her bandmates, Li's rather hamfisted piano playing creates the sense that she's still in rehearsal.

Miss Li's second album appeared a mere six months after her first, and it's cut from similar cloth, with ten more songs of the mongrel musical theater pop that's this impish Swedish songbird's version of cabaret jazz. The most notable differences this time out are a couple of unconvincing stabs at political/social commentary -- the snarky "I'm Glad I'm Not a Proud American" and "Kings and Queens" (sample lyric: "Rich men in pretty suits aren't meant to make up all the rules/when all they really care about is guns and bombs and bigger boobs") -- and a few halfway decent ballads, which could almost be affecting if Li had a bit more vocal restraint. Her charm, such as it is, stems from her campy amateurism, which is infectious enough to sell hammy numbers like "I'm Sorry, He's Mine," an ode to stealing a friend's man that one could imagine Lily Allen sinking her snide little teeth into, and bouncy trifles like "All I Need Is You." But frankly, unlike the similarly precocious (and prolific) Nellie McKay, with whom she shares more than a few influences, Li doesn't really seem to have the originality, songwriting talent, or charismatic spark to make you care when she tries to get a bit more serious.

selling insights by the word (6¢ apiece)

...and now that i've weighed in on the ark, robyn's self-titled magnum opus is just about the only Pop album of the last few years that i absolutely adore, scandinavian or otherwise, which i haven't written about for amg. (though that's about to change.) it's been an immensely enjoyable process, though, as i say, a slow and painstaking one, since i seem to be compelled to explore and reconsider each album i review, even those i know and love intimately, to come up with at least one new nugget of insight - and in some cases it has substantially transformed my understanding of these albums.

so here's a round-up of some of what i have written there so far - call it round-up round one - with links to some of my favorite reviews and bios with excerpts that hopefully convey some of the insights i've gleaned. in the order i wrote them:

Margaret Berger: bio, Chameleon and Pretty Scary Silver Fairy reviews

Margaret Berger (or "Marble," as she introduces herself to us) reportedly wished her album to be "sweet but mean at the same time" -- hence the "pretty" and "scary" of the title -- a description that resonates with the balance she strikes between tones of innocence and experience. As befits a set of songs written by a 21-year-old reflecting back on her teenage years, these tunes convey a sense of carefree, youthful hope and boundless optimism that's often tempered (though never too harshly) by a more complex, knowing nostalgia.

[...] Recordings from her [Norwegian] Idol stint, as well as many tracks from her debut, reveal her to be a remarkably soulful, full-throated singer, but for the bulk of Fairy she modulates her voice into a more modest instrument. Not that it sounds thin or lacking in personality: although it would have been interesting to hear a song like "Get Physical," for instance, with a more commanding, emotive delivery, a simpler and sweeter approach is probably more germane to this mode of somewhat icy electro-pop; it also accentuates the mood of playful innocence. That Berger evidently chose to downplay her vocal abilities for the sake of constructing a sonically and thematically unified album is in itself a strong indication of her refined sense of pop craftsmanship.

Amy Diamond: bio, This Is Me Now and Still Me, Still Now reviews

Amy Diamond's tricky. She was a young teenager when this debut album was released -- a preteen, in fact, when some of it was recorded (though you'll have a hard time believing that when you hear her big brassy voice; and the cover photo makes it look like she's about six.) But her recordings are certainly more sophisticated than you would typically expect of "children's music." And - unlike the bulk of pop made by (and for) teenagers - neither do they attempt to mimic the forms and themes of "adult" pop, at least not in the familiar manner of teen-centric rock, R&B, and dance-pop. In that sense, Diamond isn't pretending to be something that she's not -- but it's still remarkably hard to determine who, exactly, she is, the album title notwithstanding: This Is Me Now may be chock-full of personality in a musical sense, but it's bizarrely lacking in identity.

Richard X: bio and Presents His X-Factor review

"The best album in the world ever! Massive tunes! All the biggest stars! All the biggest hits!" So proclaims voice-over artist and former BBC DJ Mark Goodier partway through producer/mash-up pioneer Richard X's sprawling spectacle of a debut album. It's a joke -- obviously -- and a decent indication of the cheeky, lighthearted tone with which X constructs his reverently irreverent recombinant electro-pop. But it's not hard to take the suggestion at least a little bit seriously, particularly slotted as it is just before one of the most genuinely "massive" tunes of the early 2000s (in Britain, that is): the Adina Howard/Gary Numan frisson-collision "Freak Like Me," which began its (bastard) life as a bootleg 7" on X's Black Melody imprint (as "We Don't Give a Damn About Our Friends," recorded under the name Girls on Top), before it was re-recorded by the Sugababes and debuted at number one on the U.K. singles chart.

Sway: bio, This Is My Demo and One For the Journey reviews

This debut album, which followed two rounds of "This Is My Promo" mixtapes, displays him as a fully formed and formidable talent: self-conscious and introspective (that much should be evident from his album titles), but never tediously chin-stroking or esoteric; delightfully witty and droll but almost always with a well-considered underlying message; streetwise but hardly thuggish; linguistically nimble but not ostentatious; decidedly English in rhetoric, references, and voice, but distinctive enough, and with enough sheer unqualified charisma, to transcend genre and geographic boundaries. Indeed, Sway strikes such a well-positioned balance between so many poles and potential pitfalls, offering a little something to appeal to almost any potential listener, that you'd expect him to come off as overly calculated. On the contrary, though, his casual, almost tossed-off earnestness is quintessential to his charm.

Minor Majority: bio and Candy Store review

Minor Majority's musical m.o. -- elegant, intimate, acoustic folk-pop -- remained virtually unchanged between their 2001 debut release and this 2007 compilation...the group swelled from a duo to a quintet over that period, so their more recent work is somewhat more fleshed out, or at least more likely to include drums; they've also picked up a bit of studio polish along the way.

[...] Like their similarly hushed countrymen Kings of Convenience, Sweden's Nicolai Dunger (circa Tranquil Isolation), and Iceland's Funerals, they manage to assimilate a distinctly American strain of rootsy melancholia into a style that only subtly hints at their Scandinavian origin.

The Veronicas: Hook Me Up review

The Veronicas -- who seem to be in control of their own career to an impressive extent for a pair of 22-year-old girls -- are the rare teen pop act for whom visual presentation is almost entirely incidental. (Note, for instance, that they haven't appeared on either of their album covers -- which is practically unheard of in teen pop -- and they're 22-year-old identical twin sisters.)

In fact, this album's glistening electronic trappings -- besides being enjoyable in their own right -- only serve to enhance the integrity of the Veronicas' aesthetic by elucidating the grand driving tension at the heart of confessional teen pop: the juxtaposition of adolescent angst with pop's transcendent sweetness.

Skye Sweetnam: Sound Soldier review

Since she first emerged in 2003 with the teenage rebellion anthem "Billy S." (probably the only song in history to contain a shout of unabashed glee about how much teachers get paid), self-described bubblegum brainiac Skye Sweetnam has toured summer camps, clubs, and stadiums (as Britney Spears' opening act) in support of her debut album Noise from the Basement; contributed her voice to The Barbie Diaries and her songs to The Sims; turned 16, 17, 18, and 19; emphatically protested the inescapable comparisons to fellow Canadian punk-tart Avril Lavigne (in Basement's "Hypocrite" she ironically refers to herself as "Avril-lite"; at one point her guitar sported an "Anti-Matrix sticker in reference to Lavigne's notorious production team), and amassed a reported seventy songs in preparation for her follow-up album with collaborators in Toronto, Los Angeles, and Sweden. In 2007 -- the same year that Lavigne unveiled a newly spunky, playful attitude and gaudy fashion sense noticeably similar to Sweetnam's own, and scored the first rock number one in six years with a song ("Girlfriend") highly reminiscent of her bratty, cheerleader punk-pop -- Sweetnam finally emerged with her second album (it had been delayed for well over a year since its originally scheduled release date), which turned out to have been produced and co-written predominantly by the self-same Matrix with whom Lavigne found her initial success. Such is life in the topsy-turvy, high-stakes, and jet-setting world of rock-based teen pop.

Tunng: This Is Tunng..., Comments of the Inner Chorus, Pioneers, and Magpie Bites reviews

"If it can be broke then it can be fixed/if it can be fused than it can be split" - it reads like a mission statement for resourceful sonic collage artists Tunng, who have built their career on breaking genre boundaries by fusing traditionalist acoustic folk with spluttering electronics...

It's a style that finds clear parallels in the work of New England's the Books -- in particular, the intermittent found-sound snippets and spoken word samples (that's Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso reading from their poetry in "Out the Window with the Window") make that connection unmistakable -but has few other obvious comparisons. Which doesn't mean it's hard to classify: indeed, the genre tag "folktronica," which had entered into general usage several years before Tunng's emergence, never had a more apt referent"

Marit Larsen: Under the Surface review

Her distinctive writerly voice encompasses both a sprightly playfulness and a self-consciously mature anxiety, as reflected in her penchant for outsized, almost bombastically melodic choruses tempered by more tentative, delicate verses. After the brief, sweetly understated preamble of "In Came the Light," the title tune rushes in with a frenzied swirl of schmaltzy, Disney-esque strings and bells, but its romantic exuberance is swiftly undercut by a yearning verse melody and a narrator so enraptured and yet so wracked by jealous doubt that she can barely even stand her lover's presence. This sort of crippling insecurity crops up repeatedly -- in the self-effacing unrequited lover/loner of "Recent Illusion," and the snooping, paranoid housewife of "This Time Tomorrow," a jangly waltz whose awkward second-person perspective and forced, unconvincing premise make it the album's sole lyrical weak link. In each case, it's made achingly more poignant by Larsen's resonant delivery -- there's so much warmth and sweetness in her voice that even in her most forlorn moments you can practically hear a smile determined to break through the pathos.

Rachel Stevens: Come and Get It review

Come and Get It is a marvel of pure pop craftsmanship, boasting inventive, fresh, engrossingly detailed productions, gorgeously layered vocals and synths, huge hooks, and infectious melodies... Especially in light of its lackluster reception, it comes across as a true labor of love, painstakingly constructed by and for discerning pop true believers, and destined for future pop cult enshrinement. With all this talk of craftsmanship, and all the talent that's on display, it's deceptively easy to overlook Rachel Stevens' role in all of this, to write her off as little more than a faceless, er, pretty face. And it's true that she doesn't present any sort of cohesive persona here, but that's due less to lack of charisma than to her conscious, consummate chameleonism, her own strongest point as a master pop stylist.

If this album offers us a glimpse of the "real" Rachel Stevens, it might very well be in its final track, the rather archly titled "Dumb Dumb," which belies its generic clubland groove with a ruminative third-person account of a gold-hearted, secretly despondent pinup who "sacrificed her image for her beauty." That's pure speculation of course, but it's hard to imagine Stevens tripping through the pop-star merry-go-round as she has, garnering such conspicuous potential and such compromised fulfillment, without picking up at least a touch of world-weary resignation.

Bertïne Zetlïtz: Rollerskating review

The album artwork depicts the glassy-eyed, nordicly stunning Zetlïtz wandering through a deep, dark, verdant forest improbably populated with cartoon bats, a man made out of vines, and an eerily illuminated slot machine. It's a bizarre, arresting series of images, aptly suited to the album's evocative if often inscrutable lyrics, whose dreamlike lucidity is also well captured in Zetlitz's dulcet but detached delivery. References abound to candy, butterflies, rollercoasters, and the like - but their sweetness is undercut by frequent allusions to guns, drugs, obsession, and all manner of emotional fragility and frigidity. Even the seeming reassurance of the stately, heartbreakingly poignant ballads "If You Were Mine" and "Broken" is couched in often disconcerting imagery ("it occurred to me you might be injured/cause my dress got stained from your touch.")

SxoxoxSW

PART THREE

[PART TWO] [PART ONE]

oh man, that's how i feel about my life sometimes...

day three was, like, perfect. as far as concert-going goes, non-stop thrillz - bam bam bam from show to show. so i'm going to dispense with the narrative flow.

Rjd2 [at p4k party, emo's]
in case you haven't heard, Rjd2 is no longer a dj or an electronic-producer dude. Rjd2 is now a prog-funk hard rock band. at least, that's what it seemed from this set, which included full-on band renditions of "since we last spoke," "exotic talk" and maybe a few others from swls, along with new material with a similar energy (but more singing.) some deadringer selections too ("horror" and "ghostwriter") but these required rj to get back behind the sampler to trigger the vocals. it makes some sense - rather than make sample-based music that sounds like a rock band, why not just have a rock band? the answer is that rock bands are often boring. this band wasn't - they're funky and hard-rocking and pretty technically great (at least the drummer) - but i wonder if i might have felt differently if i wasn't familiar with the more unusually-flavored original versions of their jams. either way, fun to rock out with them that afternoon

menomena [ditto]
they're not much more than a normal-ish indie rock band, but they are a very nice indie rock band, and i'm very happy to have seen them in action. hard to say what exactly it is about them, but their music stands out as being enjoyable without being identifiably all that different from any number of other (fine, but unexceptional) indie bands. another very cool drummer, with a pretty unique steez (more part-oriented than groove-oriented, but still groovy enough.)

girl talk [ditto]
i felt kinda bad - this crowd was not going to be whipped into a hedonistic dance frenzy like last time i saw him (or probably any other night-time club show he plays.) i did my best, but to be honest the set wasn't quite as inspiring as it could have been either. still, it's like impossible not to have a great time watching/listening to greg do his thing, and this was no exception. he played "c'mon 'n ride it" but didn't come down into the crowd to start an actual train until later on in the set. towards the end, he dropped his (underwhelming) "let's call it off" remix, and announced "peter bjorn and john are in the building!" - but how much cooler would it have been if they came out to do the vocals live?

i didn't take this picture, or the next one, but they were taken by somebody very close to me (the entire front two rows seemed to be photographers)
sorry, my camera died!

amy winehouse at the fort (fader/levi's party)
she was apologetic - she hadn't realized the venue would be so big, or she would have brought her full band (which somebody told me later was actually the dap-kings. pretty crazy, i wonder when/where they rehearsed. oh wait - whoa - apparently they were her band on the album too. why didn't i know that?) instead it was just her and a very suave-looking guitarist (duh, it was binky, in a silky purple shirt), doing laidback acoustic readings of her songs. which still fail to make much of an impression, except for "rehab" of course (but even that i don't think is that great. i'm kind of confused about why the album is getting such glowing press, even though it's cool that we may have a bona-fide [relatively-straight] soul hit on our hands in 2007.) still, the lady can sing. and hey how about that hair, and that makeup! and those tattoos! (look here for a better shot of amy's left arm tattoos, which was actually taken from closer to my vantage point, just at a different show.) her style's pretty intense, but it's also pretty damn wtf, no?

they told sigrid that their sweatsuits are now extremely smelly

datarock [ditto]
hell yeah. actually, not too much to say, but they put on a great show. all the faves from the album, and even the ridiculous ones (like "night flight to uranus") came off very sharp. some silly guys. after their set, "(i've had) the time of my life" came on the speakers, and they made us all sing it into the microphones.

nellie mckay [at exodus]
there are some good pictures from this set here. no way i would have been able to take anything like that - i barely even got to see what she was wearing (hey, nice shirt.) it's no great mystery why there was a lot of talking going on during this set: nobody could see her! the stage is very low at this venue, and she was sitting down, at an upright piano. before the set started, matthew and i were standing in the middle of the crowd, chatting with a chatty floridian ex-new yorker about the xpn world cafe, the three-penny opera, why pretty little head is nellie's coming-out album, and the all-important question of which is your favorite pipette ["if she were a man," she said, it would definitely be the "classic ice blonde" (that's gwenno i think) and she was mystified about why her husband and their drooling male friends all preferred rose (as do i)].

but shortly after nellie started playing, we moved upstairs to the way back so at least we could actually see her. everybody else was still out of luck though - "we can't see you!" somebody shouted after the first few songs. "oh, well...i can't see you either," she responded. "maybe it's better that way, for both of us!" i'm not sure why i never realized before that she sounds (her speaking voice anyway) exactly like judy garland. though what she says is a lot brattier. anyway. so, she did "cupcake" and "lazy river" and a couple others from the new one (but not "columbia is bleeding," which i'd say is probably the highlight, nor "beecharmer" of course.) also "suitcase song" (yaay!) and "david." (i did shout out "i want to get married!", but if she heard me she probably didn't take me seriously.)

best part was the closing medley of "doggies and kitties": jumping back and forth among "yodel" (is that right?), "the dog song," "pounce," and "ding dong," in a way that really showed off her piano expertise and smart little theory-head, as she modulated around with little impromptu interludes and laughed at herself for messing up the words (i forget what the typically self-deprecating line was that she fumbled and then added "apparently" as an aside.)

still a goof; still a lovable goof. (was she really using sheet music?)

________

marit larsen


marit larsen


MARIT LARSEN!

[at, um, uncle flirty's]

whooosh!

okay, well, i'm still waiting on nan to send me the photos of marit that i took with her camera, but i guess i'll go ahead and write about the experience. this is the only halfway decent photo from that show that i can find online - but i have better ones, just be patient. thanks nan! (videos coming soon too.)

well i got to the venue when foxy finn irina bjorklund was still playing - was very glad to catch her last four or so songs. she and her band played rootsy cosmopolitan folk, mostly in english, and a couple of chanson-style numbers in french. she has a very appealing sort of casual sophistication - wearing an antique-looking lightweight yellow dress, sitting down to perform (she pulled out her saw for the last number) like she was playing on a back porch somewhere, with one shoe on and one bare foot (hmm, looks like that's a trademark/habit of hers) - and of course the french numbers only added to her sultriness.

and then it was time for marit's set. actually it took a while for her to go on, as there were some technical problems - the doorlady later told me that a fuse had blown in the [electric] piano, which was a recurring problem at that venue because of the demands of converting the voltage for the european equipment. meanwhile marit was in the corner by the stage, pacing and occasionally stretching...

now, my excitement for seeing her had been mounting throughout the week (since tuesday night when i found out she would be appearing), and especially after the previous night with the other marit, i was hoping for a similar experience (friendly post-set interaction, free cd? - wasn't really expecting on another dance contest and t-shirt), except better because i actually know and love miss larsen's music and would therefore have more to say to her.

but it wasn't until the moment i saw her in person that i fell in love with marit larsen. in <3. is gorgeous - not necessarily in a dramatic, striking way (like striking you over the head), but like a perfectly sweet, fresh-faced twenty-two-year old girl you might meet where you can't quite believe how delicate and soft and exquisite her features are. and tiny too, so delicate she would almost seem fragile if there wasn't so much sparkle in her smile and life in her rosy cheeks. (you'd never call her a porcelain doll - she'd just roll her eyes and laugh - but it would be a warm, easy laugh, wrinkling her little freckled nose.) it's cliche but the photos just don't do her justice, certainly not the wavy-haired, styled-up press photos, which tend to subdue her brightness (and her smile) in trying to present a more mature, moodier marit. maybe her soft, glowing vibrancy can't be captured in a moment's stillness, but i'm hoping my attempts will fare somewhat better, being from that shining night - with her simple, girlish dusky-purple dress; gold barrettes holding back her lengthy, straighter hair and looking somehow fairy-like - and taken through my smitten eyes.

well. i just bounced around quietly, enjoying my giddiness, while i waited for nan to arrive and the set to start (which happened in that order.) finally the band took the stage - seven pieces including cello, banjo, several guitars and keys - there was a fair amount of swapping around throughout the set - and launched into "only a fool." at this point it's harder to recall to mind than the impression she made visually and physically, but her musical performance (and the band's) was simply outstanding as well. truly - i was of course expecting to be excited by it, but i think that even anyone unfamiliar with her music would have been impressed. it's no surprise that she's a very professional performer (she's a ten-year veteran after all), but it was especially touching to see how much fun she was clearly having on stage. she displayed ample chops on guitar, mandolin, piano, and harmonica, and sang beautifully, reinvesting familiar lyrics with heartfelt meaning. there was one fabulous new song (apparently called "steal my heart" - the line that sticks in my memory is "if you're going to break my heart, break it like you mean it.") otherwise she hit most of the highlights from the album, including of course "come closer" and the moving "solid ground" (on piano.) no airing of "under the surface," and no "don't say you love me" as i was hoping - it was a short set - but, after a spirited run through "don't save me," she closed with possibly the most exciting cover she could have chosen; "my boyfriend's back." with a spot-on, energetic folk-rock rearrangement - retaining the hand-clap rhythm but fleshing out the stop-starts with a rootsy gusto.

meanwhile i was dancing my fluttery little heart out, at least to any song for which it was the slightest bit appropriate, and mouthing/singing along with many of the words. there was a good eight or ten feet between the edge of the stage and the bulk of the crowd, and while it would have been completely awkward to stay very close to the front with all of that distance, i hovered in the forward portion of that gap, sometimes hugging the speakers along the right side of the space. so, well, it would have been practically impossible for marit not to notice me, since she more or less had to look at and past me to see the rest of the crowd, but i definitely felt us making eye contact for much of the set - especially on "come closer" (it was all i could do not to take the titular instruction literally), which is sort of a perfect song for shy eye-contact flirting, shaking our heads at each other knowingly on the "will it keep you warm at night?...(i don't think so)" clincher-line. i mean, who knows - it was mostly beautiful self-delusion, of course - but i was having fun with myself, anyway, and marit certainly seemed to be having fun as well, and i imagine some piece of that came from seeing how gleeful her music was making me.

anyway, she played eight or so songs and that was it - the sizable audience applauded appreciatively and we few giddy fans in the front clapped and cheered, but it was hardly a crowd capable of demanding an encore. still, i think her set found a very welcome reception. i was sort of too busy being smitten to pay much attention to anybody else, but i did say hello to the two other people up front who had been singing along and being excited (and joining me for a bit of dancing, though not much.) they turned out to be true marit superfans - they'd met through the fan forum on her website, and they clearly knew all sorts of things about her and her band. they'd come extremely prepared - they had posters for her to sign, presents and letters to give her, and had in fact made contact with her before, so she'd known to expect them. thanks to them, i was able to go to her dressing room (well, it was just the pool room in the back of the bar, reserved for the bands), just by sort of tagging along as they were trying to get in to give her the presents.

it was more than a little bit awkward - i'd been feeling particularly awkward since i'd initially tried to give marit a hug after she got off stage and was going around shaking hands - ordinarily i would have asked first, but i was still caught up in the rapport we'd been developing in my head while she was presumably too busy focusing on her performance to notice. she accepted the hug, of course, but it was still a bit uncomfortable - what i hadn't accounted for is that she is a good deal shyer than she seemed on stage. she's friendly and certainly polite, and she smiles a lot, but she's definitely reserved. but i have to say it was exacerbated by the two superfans, who seemed like they'd be pretty socially awkward even in a completely comfortable situation - which this certainly was not - and i'm sure me popping and tagging along didn't help much either. (after all, they are internet message-board denizens, who aren't known for their social ease - at least one of them self-identified as obsessive, and they both made comments to the effect that it was very surreal experience since meeting marit had been a long-time dream of theirs.)

by the way, you can read their accounts of the evening's events on the maritlarsen.com forum: scroll all the way to the bottom here for matt's ("Fanboy") indepth retelling; and here, scroll down past his blurry photos - that's him in the first five - for the same with sarah's ("SSrb1098") additional comments. for some reason they think my name is frank - look earlier in the thread for some of their initial gushing and first mention of me as "that guy jumping around in circles with things falling out of his pockets" (hey, it was only one thing - my camera.) i've registered on the board (as "Maritricious!") but i've not been able to bring myself to post yet.

so, anyway, we went back to the band room, and i mostly just stood there while matt and sarah alternately gushed and apologized for gushing too much. marit was certainly touched but also amused by the whole thing, saying that of course she didn't mind, that it just meant they liked her music a lot, which is the important thing to her. they gave her the presents - a lovely necklace, a stuffed texas longhorn (that makes noise), and wha twas apparently a scented candle (i only saw her smelling it, didn't see what it was) - and had her sign the posters. i didn't have anything to give her or take as a souvenir (i'd meant to snatch the setlist - which i usually don't care about - but i was distracted and sarah got it) but i did get a bit of (slightly more modulated) gushing in, and i also got to tell marit that "my boyfriend's back" is my karaoke song - and she said it's hers too! and that's why she insisted on having it in her set. so that was nice. it was all very nice.

i'll have more to say about marit later on (her name's pronounced something like MAH-reet, by the way - though i didn't really realize that at the time and may or may not have said it incorrectly when i was talking to her.) i've been listening to her album a bunch in the past week (and i finally ordered an actual cd copy of it), and i have some new opinions to spout about it. but i'll hold off for now, because this has gone on plenty long enough.

________


what happened next? well, i went by stubb's BBQ to try to get in for BDB and GBQ, but they had stopped selling tickets (even though there was plenty of space inside.) i went by antone's to try to get in for antibalas and the dap-sharons - no luck there but i had a lovely time waiting for an hour or so on the cash line ("optimists line," as i'd taken to calling it) in the warm night air, soaking in the loveliness of what had just happened, and chatting with my linemates lucinda, a former philadelphian who insisted that i wasn't in texas, i was in austin, and [never told us her name], a piano grad student at nyu, about struggling-artist life. if i had had my wits together i would have realized i could make the most of the $20 i'd spent on the nellie ticket and go back there to catch peaches (probably could have gotten in too.) but i didn't, so i just wandered back to scandinavia (er, uncle flirty's) and watched some of who i thought were grand island but now think might have been reykjavik.

whatever it was didn't really pique my interest, so i continued to wander along sixth street (a continual enveloping performance in itself - closed to traffic for the duration of the festival and mobbed every night with all sorts of interesting characters), taking it all in. i turned down an unlikely street and caught the strains of what i thought was maybe just a small, informal hip-hop show, not an official part of the conference, until the mcs started chanting "it's the pack!" indeed it was - just kicking off their set at the beauty bar patio. it's a small venue, but there was still room for me if i wanted to pay $15.

i decided to just stand outside the tent and watch for a while from near the entrance, where i had a clear view of the stage. after a few numbers i wandered on, not really engaged, past a series of venues on 7th and then back to stubb's to sit for a few minutes and listen to a couple of the good bad and queen's lovely mellow numbers ("kingdom of doom" and i'm not sure what else.) then i headed back to the beauty bar, still in a bit of a daze, thinking i might be able to catch the pack closing their set with "vans" (the stuff that i'd heard had been disappointingly conventional-sounding compared to that whispered, bizarro mini-masterpiece of skeletal hyphy.) (hmm, this is kind of interesting - article about "vans" and product-placement censorship.)

no such luck - the pack had evidently just finished their set, but the federation were starting theirs (sort of surprising that these names weren't already taken, eh?), and this time i actually stood and watched, along with a san franciscan fellow with a captain's hat who showed up soon after. they were fun - hyphy's supposed to be about being hyper and getting stupid, and though their outfits and general performance style was more or less standard hip-hop, they did do some goofy dancing and arm gestures and so on. they finished up with three songs in a row that i knew from my hyphy-downloading binge a while back - the so-so "18 dummy" and "i wear my stunna glasses at night" (or whatever it's called), and the genre-defining (i assume) "hyphy," which is really pretty great. mostly it was just nice to see a performance in a different style from pretty much everything else i'd seen at the conference - although to really appreciate the show i should have been inside the tent where it seemed like there was some serious dancing going on.

actually they might have kept going after that, but i went back to meet matthew where we had parked our bikes twelve hours earlier. we recounted our divergent evenings (he'd seen the watson twins, andrew bird, perry farrell, badly drawn, and good bad) over goodflow oj at kerby lane, then biked the rest of the way home in the wide, wide empty streets.