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.

day-glo degenerettes

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

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

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

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

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



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




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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

fascination!

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

"it's just the way we feel"

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

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

borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered '80s

robyn hitchcock at the world cafe live.

i've already seen three robyn concerts this year (so many that i didn't even write about one of them, apparently.) tonight, muchas gracias a sñr uvawitz (hm, grape-brain?), made it four, if you squint: much like the other one, this robyn has shockingly silvery hair that frequently drapes over his face. (if i were at all photoshop-savvy, i'd probably just go ahead and paste ms. carlson's signature tresses over alfred hitchcock's bald pate - in fact i'd be surprised if nobody's done it before.)

similarities mostly end there though; a more fruity comparison would be to the concert i reported on two weeks ago. both rh and db could rightly be called foundational figures of alternative (rock) music; both are not infrequently labeled eccentrics, though rh is decidedly one of the peculiar english variety whilst db, though apparently still not a u.s. citizen after fifty-some years of living here, ain't. jonathan demme filmed both of them (storefront hitchcock, added to netflix queue - check.) and like mr. byrne, mr. hitchcock is touring with some legacy material: here and elsewhere, he performed the music of his excellent album i often dream of trains, originally released in 1984, the same year, if you want to get technical, as stop making sense.

though that's mostly a technicality from perspective, seeing as how i grew up on stop making sense before i even started to in the first place, while i hadn't heard i often dream until about three years ago, and hadn't really digested it much until i bought yep roc's reish of it last year. not so my companion this evening, who, as she told robyn after the show, listened to his music throughout her childhood (this prompted a nearby fan to relate that her kids had "seen him in utero," which took him somewhat aback.)

not sure what to think about this thing of re-creating old albums/eras on stage, which seems to be happening increasingly often these years (i saw liz phair do it, for instance, and she's barely even a "veteran.") it's obviously a great gimmick to draw a crowd, even for still-active performers like david and robyn, and it is legitimately exciting as a fan. but it's somewhat worrisome as a trend, though perhaps i shouldn't worry so much.

in any event, moreso than byrne, (and certainly more than phair,) the performance hitch gave tonight felt no less refreshingly loose and natural for being under this semi-formal constraint. he disregarded the track sequence, for one thing, which is smart - knowing the setlist in advance always kills a bit of the excitement. and he didn't even play all the songs from the album, although i don't really know it well enough to be sure at the time. (it's trick too since various versions and reissues have had unusually variable tracklists for such a "classic," with substituted bonus cuts and whatnot.)

the memorable "i wish i was a pretty girl," for instance, only turned up briefly, playing over the loudspeakers before the show started, from, as it turned out, a cassette player which robyn carried on stage and then proceded to manually mangle to enjoyable audible effect. (one gets the sense that he doesn't care much for the song these days - although at one point it sounded like he was about to start playing it on guitar, before realizing it was a misstart.) he also skipped "furry green atom bowl" and maybe a couple others, but he played all of the truly essential and wonderful numbers from the album, of which there are many many greats, and also a bunch of related b-sides.

"it sounds great when you're dead" was the one i'd had in my head of late (so great to be able to hear something live the same day you'd been singing it to yourself) - he introduced that as "the good news" after the painstaking psychiatric self-inspection of the "very slow" "cathedral." but the wry-yet-touching post-break-up ballad "i used to say i love you" was the one that stuck with me afterwards. "trams of old london" was gorgeous; ditto the solo title track, which is also just a tad creepy. the hilarious atheist piss-take/group-singalong "ye sleeping nights of jesus" and jaunty fan-fave "my favorite buildings" (complete with shaker-egg and pocket trumpet!) were super-swell, and of course "uncorrected personality traits," in a cappella three-part harmony around a single mic, brought the house down.

gah, gotta get out of record-reviewing mode! what was really great about this show was how simple and low-key it was (just robyn and two dapper confederates, one of them apparently the guy from the band departure lounge; three guitars traded amongst them, a piano, and a few necessary toys) while still feeling impeccably crisp and clearly well-rehearsed (robyn writes some deceptively complicated guitar parts, and he's a killer at executing them.) his strangeness is very tidy and approachable, neatly contained in nonchalantly-delivered poetic tirades of absurdist quasi-nonsense in convolutedly perfect syntax and sometimes uncanny philosophical depth (prepared or spontaneous? it's hard to tell) and in snazzily screwy sartorial (the name of his buddy's label) choices: top hat (removed to reveal aforementioned silver shock), purple skinny jeans, jacket removed to reveal black and white polka-dot shirt, to match his black and white polka-dot stratocaster (larger dots on the shirt though, creating dizzying op effect.)

approachable guy too, a kindly old cynic, but a romantic too (he's pretty happy about the new president, one "who doesn't have voices inside his head.") t and i stuck around after to have him sign, uh, a silly flyer we found advertising the gig, and he was quite friendly about it. all told, just a lovely presence, and a truly good songwriter on quite a few levels.

the whole thing made me want to go and dig further into his catalog. and those nifty, completist-baiting reissue box sets are making it just too easy and tempting too... ah, pre-packaged nostalgia. if you don't have your own, you can always borrow it. and if not, you can probably buy it on amazon.

mixtube: girlpop earworms '08

i was gonna do a post with embedded youtube video clips (as a low-hassle alternative to mp3-sharing) but then this came along: mixtube, an excellently-named successor to muxtape (r.i.p.), admirably resourceful and utilitarian-minded, which lets you create and share mux-styled playlists using the audio from any video on youtube. brilliant! (and seemingly relatively riaa-proof, though, we'll see...) (it's especially clever how there are no accounts associated with the playlists; if you want to revise a mix you've made, you don't log in to edit it, you simply make a new one "based on it.")

so here's my first stab, a guided tour through some of my favorite girlpop tracks these days. expect to see most of these show up on a forthcoming installment of ladies love (although one was already on the last one.)

cue it up and listen along!

i must say i haven't been bowled over by too many girl-pop songs this year; unlike '06 the year of synths and sirens (and heiress-pop) or '07 with its uk-chart and disco-soul retro-diva glut, the female artist i've been most excited about in '08 slings a ukelele and lives in my neighborhood (bertine zetlitz comes in a close second, but that was all back-catalog catch-up.) as the year draws toward a close (it's already half-past november - shocker! - and i'm feeling the itch to switch into critical-review mode), the big guns have started coming out of the woodwork (britney, xtina, beyonce, pink), and they've all been more or less misfiring, not so much spectacularly as perfunctorily.

meanwhile, perhaps the clearest contender for my favorite song of the year - if it counts - is cassie's "is it you?," which i first heard late last year. i liked it enough then to slot it first in my 07 year-end mix (which probably disqualifies it.) i still like it now, a hundred or so listens later, and it still hasn't even been released as a single (in this country - it went top ten u.k. r&b, which may not be very impressive), let alone on cassie's still-AWOL second album (the wiki article for which has apparently been deleted seven times in the last year.) it was on the step up 2 the streets soundtrack, which just so happened to launch the year's longest-running #1, a song ("low") which i enjoy a lot less than i enjoy the name of its artist (flo-rida).

"is it you?" was featured in the movie itself (which cassie starred in) over a montage sequence, although the shots of her character performing didn't make the final cut (you can see it as one of the dvd bonus features - which i highly recommend - and, of course, on youtube.) that version was just piano and vocals, featuring producer/rising star ryan leslie on the ivories, but i haven't been able to find an mp3 (or decent-quality youtube audio) of it. instead, this is the "piano version," which is only different for the first thirty seconds before the beat of the "normal version" butts in and it turns out more or less the same. beats me why this hasn't been a smash. maybe next year.

meanwhile, cassie's been doing other stuff - my favorite "new" song of hers is "official girl", which has a great slinky, fresh-sounding beat-displacement beat (can't wait to hear it in higher quality) produced by "danja.... and the.... clutch," as they inform us in probably my favorite producer-id bit ever (it's so cute!) i really like how the weirdly herky-jerky, rushed and overlapping vocal phrasing of the verses (it sounds like she's trying to squeeze in more words than quite fit) contrasts with the relatively languid, drawn-out delivery of the chorus ("i'm tired, i'm tired, i'm tired...") also, ultimatum/verbatim is a pretty sick/silly rhyme. lil wayne does nothing for this one...

another candidate for my fave song of the year is solange knowles' "sandcastle disco", which has, similarly, mysteriously failed to become a massive hit (while her big sister b is ruling the charts with so-so re-hashes of her past glories.) well, not so mysteriously in that it hasn't actually been released as a single yet, which is the only reason i can forgive the u.s. listening public (though i thought they weren't supposed to care about technicalities like that anymore.) literally every time i've played it for somebody they have been remarkably enthusiastic, so i know that it's not just me (it is possibly about a DJ, which might have swayed me a bit.) damn, just listen to it. how can you not swoon? [eta: according to wkpd it's not going to get a u.s. single release. d'oh! also, btw: evidently produced by danes soulshock and karlin, of "leave (get out)" fame, among other things.]

otherwise, the only new girl to really catch my ear lately has been jazmine sullivan, whose album i'm still digesting. it's not quite what you expect from '08 r&b, which in this case is a good thing. shades of jill scott c. 1999 - especially on the willie-hutch-sampling "my foolish heart" - which almost makes me feel old. "dream big" samples daft punk, which is getting obvious but it's in a quite different (and much less obnoxious) way than "stronger," if equally shameless. and the results are pretty irresistible. apparently the missy "suckas!" call-out is really part of the track?

madonna's album this year fell pretty flat (though i actually liked the single ok), but her long-since-eclipsed contemporary cyndi lauper put out a dance-pop album that was, in striking contrast, remarkably tasteful (not surprising) and remarkably decent (not sure), though also not as great as i'd hoped. i haven't decided yet whether i prefer her "lay me down," produced by kleerup, or his mostly-instrumental version of same, "thank you for nothing," allegedly so-titled in churlish response to cyndi not allowing her vocals to appear on his album. anyway, i think "echo" is my favorite track - sleek minimal glide, not too much going on, but lush and lovely nonetheless, and kinda funky.

my hands-down favorite girl/pop full-length of the year, though, was the almost entirely overlooked debut by cloetta paris, which continues to impress and delight me. she deserves a full post later on, but check out "broken heart tango" if you haven't heard her yet.

i've still got some more 2008 to sift through (including the new taylor swift), but apart from a few outliers like ashlee simpson's "boys" and rihanna's "disturbia" - and let's not forget "no air" and "shorty get loose" - that's about the best of it so far. pretty slim pickings indeed. man, what happened this year?

i'll finish up with a few songs from 2007 have been worming their way back around to my brain lately. i never really gave much of an ear to "bottoms up" when i was first listening to keke palmer's album last year, but it is pretty great. big stupid electro crunk'n'b dance jam, with finger-snaps and tweety tweets, an awesome/unfortunate semi-entendre of a title, a rotating parade of quasi-referential hooks, and an utterly charismatic vocal performance from miss keke p. i love her little kelis impression. (completely with MIMS-esque arrangement-quote.) i heard it at a basketball game last week, strangely enough, as part of the half-time cheerleader-dance medley, which also included a mash-up of pink's "so what" (already?) with rihanna's "s.o.s." (i hope it's called "s.o. what." oh, yes, it is.)

i've probably talked about the veronica's "this love" before, but it's been in my head and i thought i'd air it again. apparently their album actually came out here a little while ago, not that anyone noticed (but good because it means i will find a used copy eventually.) this one is pretty near perfect. it pops, it rocks, it dances. and it's way sentimental - and sure, completely melodramatic - but it's damn effective. still tears me up a little, particularly when the v's actually show a bit of vocal restraint on the a capella bits. and the "take on me" snatch at the end is just inspired.

dragonette made an album last year that just came out here, and which i've been listening to a bunch. i'll have more to say later, like that you should probably watch the "take it like a man"
video, which requires some forewarning but is actually much tamer than the song itself.

in the mean time, enjoy the title track from marit larsen's new album, the chase, which i'll get around to reviewing one of these days...

david byrne at the tower theater.

hooray. after several weeks of impulsively refreshing http://philadelphia.craigslist.org/search/sss?query=david%20byrne and a handful of fruitless e-mail negotiations, we scored a pair of face-value pit tickets, row CCC (i.e. third row, 4 and 5 seats from the center aisle) from a guy who posted this afternoon, that put us about ten feet from the stage, in (as nava promptly noted) the first row of stadium seating.

david david david. not to recount our long history, as i've done a bunch of times, at least once on this site; though it is striking that it's now been over ten years since i first saw him, with my parents, at a rochester venue (water street r.i.p.?) about 1/20th the size and grandeur of this one. since then i can't remember if it was one or two shows in 2001 at the tla (but i think two), one at the lovely count basie theater in red bank n.j. in 2004, one at carnegie hall last winter. a bunch of great and varied shows, and quite a progression of venues (the tower admittedly a step down from carnegie, but not all that far down.)

was thinking about how much db's stature has changed over those years, as an established musical luminary and general cultural luminary (and also a-list gotham arts-world celeb?) it's not that his (solo) music has gotten all that much more popular since feelings (1997) initiated my interest in (love for) his contemporary career output. (certainly one reason why this tour is so large-scaled is that he's specifically reviving a lot of talking heads material, even though he's also done that every other time i've seen him.) and i doubt anyone expects everything that happens will happen today (2008) to sell especially many more copies than his last bunch of albums, even though it seems, much more than his others, to arrive with a ready-made sense of historicity attached.

yeah, i get that it's about brian eno too, or at least about their collaboration... okay, that's fine. but frankly, if you ask me, this is a david byrne record. eno's a record producer, albeit an extremely big-deal one - to me and many people, he's never been anywhere near as popular or fascinating or exciting as david, but that's another matter - but these are clearly byrne's songs (he wrote the "words and melodies," or something like that), even if eno is responsible for their (less than luminous) compositional underpinnings.

basically, db's cachet seems pretty much unimpeachable in the mid-to-late 2000s, as a combo result of his assorted slate of recent artistic activities and (more significantly) the increasing canonization of talking heads, from various angles, as influential and innovative and otherwise essential. q.v. the whole 1980s new york punk-funk underground hoo-hah, also just the fact that in the '90s the heads had been together less than ten years ago. plus his signing to nonesuch (who reissued the first byrneno alb last year, etc etc.) y'know.

all of which makes this tour (the songs of david byrne and brian eno tour) feel a good bit more of an event than others, or than is usually conducive to transcendent concert-going experiences. which isn't to say it wasn't totally awesome, for sure. also complicating is that i'd heard a fair amount of advance press - this was almost the last date out of two months (though that's just the first leg of a six month world tour), at least the fourth or so in easy driving distance, and the pesky interweb had pre-warned me that this would probably be the closest i'd ever come to experiencing my fabled pop mecca, the whole 1984 stop making sense shebang/panithiopliconica. which of course meant it couldn't possibly live up to it (not that i'd have expected that anyway.)

anyway, it was clearly cut from similar rock-show-as-performance-art/scripted-spectacle cloth, but this ain't no nostalgia trip, at least it's much better not to take it that way (like i said, he's been performing plenty of these songs all along, which makes it kinda cloying that we're seemingly supposed to treasure them so especially dearly this time around.) there's more thn plenty rock show and spectacle on its own here without needing to lean on any reflected glory. the gang on stage (db+11 - among them marc d.g.a. from soul coughing and g+m muldaur's daughter - including 3 dancers and 3 singers, who also occasionally sang and danced) were a relatively young and energetic bunch, with a median age probably at least twenty less than the 56-yo byrne (he's my mom's age), who still has as much youthful energy as any of 'em, and looks like a silver-haired angel-demigod to boot.

so yeah. the new songs are good - mellow, but not overly so (the set-closing "i feel my stuff" got downright fierce); gospelly as promised (via soul and/or country), big simple swoony group-harmony vocal hooks. haven't digested the lyrics all yet, but they nod pleasingly to his younger, angrier, output, and his style hasn't changed all that much (from "world moves on a woman's hips" to the world as "my big nurse" and "the milk of human kindness/from the breast we all partake"; "everything that happens will happen today" vs. "heaven is a place where nothing ever happens.")

similarly, the choreography of the sleek modern dancers (they were on stage about half the time, it seemed, doing everything from contact lifts to twirling on office chairs) occasionally winked at db's heads-era movement vocab - most notably some subtle quotations from the "once in a lifetime" video, and running during the break of "life during wartime." can't speak to whether the "new ography" for the twyla tharp excerpt "big hands" had anything to do with the original, probably not, but it's a good reminder of how fitting it was for there to be modern dancers (db's been working with them for a long time) - a worthy replacement for the string section he had on the last couple tours.

remain in light, never my favorite album, though it may still be growing on me (is that allowed?) got four of its eight songs aired; the obvious ones (since "born under punches" always seems to get short shrift these days) including a totally awesome "great curve" and, my favorite, "houses in motion," which had some of the best choreography (and lighting work) and i wish had come later in the set so i'd have appreciated it more. fear of music actually had four selections too, though i always forget to associate "heaven" and "wartime" with that album (since they're on sms i guess), and the always-punchy i zimbra was slotted second before the new-mellow-one/old-dancy-one rhythm got smoothly established (there was a bit too much up-and-down in our seats over the course of it.) best - and most surprising thing in the show - though was "air," in the second encore. what a crazy, ridiculous, paranoia-perfect song. ("some people say not to worry 'bout the air/some people don't know shit about air!") (and a better representative of what i think of as the utterly weird core of the album.)

would have been cool to hear more more songs songs (i guess eno was less involved? i almost said they're less poppy, but that's...not true.) they did "take me to the river" though, and that is a good good good good-ass song. they backup singers were especially having fun on that one. and he "snuck in" "burning down the house" (as if somebody would complain?) (web tells me they've also done "don't worry about the gvmt" - now that would've gotten me in the gut.) furthermore, there was the catherine wheel bit and, awesomely, "help me somebody" from my life in the bush with db singing/speaking the part of the sampled evangelical preacher.

a fair amount of material, though it was not, as it turned out, a particularly lengthy show. the set proper was over in a bit more than an hour, and there were three encores (five songs? six?) that didn't make it all that much longer, and (from perspective) mostly failed at creating the illusion of an indulgently long show such as the kind that usually has three encores. maybe it's because i sort of knew to expect them, but the encores felt annoyingly obvious/scripted - as is always true with encores these days (you just keep clapping until they one when turn on the lights, and then you leave right away) - but it seemed like with a show as conceptual as this (not heavy-handedly so, but still) they could have come up with a more interesting way to bring it to a satisfying conclusion. it reminded me most of the ritual leavings and enterings and multiple bowings at an orchestra concert.

ah well. i hope it doesn't sound like i'm complaining. some perspective may be in order - suffice to say, of all the various accolades i could lay on him, david byrne remains one of the most soulful, and inspiring performers - or artists, period - that i have ever seen or encountered.

citizen up!

Elx Day Special!

title: Get Out The Fuck!
format: CD
date: October 29th, 2004
packaging: jewel case with canvassing map, masking tape dispenser inserts, and a little propoganda card that makes the spine say THE BUSH-CHENEY RECORD

tracklist (courtesy reminced):
1. the laws have changed • the new pornographers
2. rapture rapes the muses • of montreal
3. lies • the knickerbockers
4. burning with optimism's flames • xtc
5. this will be our year • the zombies
6. rebellion (lies) • the arcade fire
7. this is our emergency • pretty girls make graves
8. 1976 • rjd2
9. simon says • pharoah monche
10. get up • the coup f/ dead prez
11. the end starts today [tommie sunshine mix] • bis
12. making flippy floppy [live] • talking heads
13. nothing can stop us now • st. etienne
14. nothingsevergonnastandinmyway(again) • wilco
15. mr. president • clinton
16. electioneering • radiohead
17. bedlam • elvis costello and the eating pastas
18. i am a tree • guided by voices
19. parade • garbage
20. wake up everybody • harold melvin and the blue notes

wow, four years ago! so long ago! back when i had just moved to philly, back when we wanted john kerry to be president. back when i liked the arcade fire! back when new elvis costello albums were still exciting! back when i was just discovering of montreal, and nobody else had yet! back when i listened to hip-hop (?) back when i was burning with optimism's flames, (unlike now, where optimism just seems realistic and reasonable, and "realism" seems pessimistic.) back when i was a tree for halloween (hence track 18.)

so this was my election day mix, obv. for listening to on election during GET OUT THE VOTE funtimes, titled in reference to our canvassing director's campaign to get us all to hook up (which worked in my case), and also to "simon says" (aka get the fuck up), the semi-title track.

still a very exciting and inspiring listen, even though i was too sick-feeling today to do much more than get out and vote myself... lots of great tunes that i don't think of much anymore. canniest inclusion is probably "making flippy floppy," even though i just put it on for the kerry flip-flop reference and didn't even realize until after the fact how apropos it is:

"the president's crazy - did you hear what he said?"

incidentally, i got an email from david byrne urging me to vote because he (as a green card-holding immigrant) can't.

also, the "laws have changed" brilliance: "all hail what will be revealed today"...

"form a line to the throne!!"

this will be our year!

♥ girls ♥ girls ♥ girls ♥

title: Ladies Love [vols. 1-3]
format: CD-Rs
date: spring 2006; summer 2007; winter 2007
package: various. red and pink (and black) lettering, hearts, flowy letters, etc. folded notebook paper passed-note envelope for delux compendium version.
made for: martha, my sister, the opposite of hallelujah. 3-disc omnibus edition prepared for rebekah 10/08

Ladies Love
1. 4ever ♥ The Veronicas
2. Don't Say You Love Me ♥ M2M
3. Overprotected ♥ Britney Spears
4. L.O.V.E. ♥ Ashlee Simpson
5. I Will Be There ♥ Rachel Stevens
6. Behind These Hazel Eyes ♥ Kelly Clarkson
7. Whatever ♥ Brie Larson
8. First ♥ Lindsay Lohan
9. Round Round ♥ Sugababes
10. What's In It For Me? ♥ Amy Diamond
11. Stars Are Blind ♥ Paris Hilton
12. Like Wow ♥ Leslie Carter
13. Hypocrite ♥ Skye Sweetnam
14. Sweet Temptation ♥ Lillix
15. Graffiti My Soul ♥ Girls Aloud
16. Pull Shapes ♥ The Pipettes
17. LDN ♥ Lily Allen
18. Don't Let Me Get Me ♥ P!nk
19. All About Us ♥ t.A.T.u.
20. Pieces of Me ♥ Ashlee Simpson
21. Rush ♥ Aly & AJ
22. Hand On Your Heart ♥ Kylie Minogue
23. Should Have Known ♥ Robyn

Ladies Love Double Deuce [22nd birthday edition sequel]
1. Lip Gloss ♥ Lil Mama
2. So Do I Say Sorry First ♥ Stephanie McIntosh
3. Lose You ♥ Linda Sundblad
4. Potential Break-Up Song ♥ Aly & AJ
5. Never Again ♥ Kelly Clarkson
6. Everything Back But You ♥ Avril Lavigne
7. Crazy Chick ♥ Charlotte Church
8. Can't Behave ♥ Courtney Jaye
9. Love Story ♥ Katharine McPhee
10. Never Stop ♥ Hilary Duff
11. Me and My Imagination ♥ Sophie Ellis-Bextor
12. Don't Save Me ♥ Marit Larsen
13. Gunpowder and Lead ♥ Miranda Lambert
14. Because I'm Awesome ♥ The Dollyrots
15. I Get Around ♥ Dragonette
16. The Initiator ♥ Fefe Dobson
17. East Northumberland High ♥ Miley Cyrus
18. Headstrong ♥ Ashley Tisdale
19. Shut Up And Drive ♥ Rihanna
20. Will You Remember Me Tomorrow ♥ Margaret Berger
21. That's Life ♥ Amy Diamond
22. Teardrops On My Guitar ♥ Taylor Swift
23. I Want To Have Your Babies ♥ Natasha Bedingfield
24. Girlfriend (Lil Mama Remix) ♥ Avril Lavigne

Ladies Love 3
1. Music Is My Boyfriend ♥ Skye Sweetnam
2. He Said She Said ♥ Ashley Tisdale
3. Ah-Ah ♥ Bertine Zetlitz
4. Nobody's Perfect ♥ Hannah Montana
5. Gotta Work ♥ Amerie
6. Stay My Baby ♥ Amy Diamond
7. About You Now ♥ Sugababes
8. Revenge Is Sweeter (Than You Ever Were) ♥ The Veronicas
9. If I Could Have You Back ♥ Aly & AJ
10. The Math ♥ Hilary Duff
11. Our Song ♥ Taylor Swift
12. One Step At A Time ♥ Jordin Sparks
13. Music Box ♥ Keke Palmer
14. Is It You? ♥ Cassie
15. Pretty Rebels ♥ Linda Sundblad
16. Movie Star ♥ Roisin Murphy
17. Radar ♥ Britney Spears
18. Misery Business ♥ Paramore
19. Getting Ready ♥ Miranda Lambert
20. Blow My Fuses ♥ Lambretta
21. Breakin' Dishes ♥ Rihanna
22. Outta My Head ♥ Ashlee Simpson
23. Get You Off ♥ Fefe Dobson
24. Hot ♥ Avril Lavigne
25. I Like A Boy In Uniform (School Uniform) ♥ The Pipettes [unlisted bonus track]

chronicling, obviously, for anybody who cared to listen (which turned out to include a few people beyond me and my sister, though not many), my discovery and exploration of teenpop, specifically girlpop, which have been almost entirely coterminous for my purposes. (if these comps weren't gender-exclusive, i would have wanted to include the backstreet boys' "just want you to know" and a couple of songs from the jonas bros' debut, but probably not much else.)

these were a good bit influenced (at least the first one) by dave bedbugs' teenpop mixes for stylus: confessional jamz and the five-disc bluffers guide, even though i never had copies of either and i still don't know about half of the songs on there... anyway, that's where i got the m2m>britney opening sequence.

vol. 1 is vaguely historical, covering 2000-06 as viewed from my then-unfolding sense of so-dubbed "confessional" teenpop historiography as filtered through/created by the ilx rolling teenpop crowd and specifically dave, who was my gateway to most of this stuff in the first place. the song that started it all out for me was the veronica's "everything i'm not," which i have very vivid memories of listening to in my carpeted attic bedroom at 6th and fairmount on my grade-school boombox, although the song doesn't stand out to me nearly so much now except as a smashing pumpkins faux-rip ("4ever" is clearly the more distinctive, tho i had forgotten until tonight that "when it all falls apart" was the one that really broke as a hit in the states.)

some of the stuff - the british electropop - comes from a slightly different place for me; i was into it earlier (starting with kylie's fever, though when i made this i had started delving back into her early days, when she was actually a teen herself, hence the inclusion of "hand on your heart," from 1989 though also recently notable famous by josé gonzalez.) i'd have hardly thought to include lily allen, or at least the pipettes, now, since they so clearly have an "indie" rather than "pop" audience, but at the same time they equally clearly fall into the rubric of "girl-pop." (though so do rilo kiley and hello saferide, i guess.) no r&b here, though there's no reason a bit of blu cantrell or nina sky wouldn't have fit right in.

vol. 2 is semi-strictly limited to just the year roughly preceding its creation, and perhaps as a result (though not necessarily) it suffers a bit in quality. actually, the only real issues i have with it (apart from tracks 4-6 turning out to not be very good songs, after all) is that it's somewhat rock-heavy, and the lil mama and rihanna inclusions feel slightly tokenistic. whatever. still great. "east northumberland high," "so do i say sorry first" and especially "can't behave" (though i know nothing at all about courtney jaye) are all great songs that i rarely think about otherwise.

vol. 3 is similarly trying to keep it strictly '07, though there are some obvious exceptions/concessions (scandi-pop retro-grabs bertine zetlitz - even though she's really too old - and lambretta, which is linda sundblad's old band - i'd just written them up - and hilary duff deep cut "the math," i guess because i was saving "dreamer" for new years, and plus it's an awesome track that fits perfectly coming out of the aly & aj.) not sure why i picked all of those and nothing from the new kylie. in any case i think this is a strong mix even though it starts of kind of weird ("music is my boyfriend" is an obvious opener but an uncomfortable one, and the next three tracks don't really find a groove)

"if i could have you back," "our song," "hot," and of course "is it you?" are all utter brilliance. "gotta work" and "misery business" not far behind. girl-pop was alive and well last year.

this year? well... i'll save that rant for a future post, when i will hopefully compile and document two more volumes of ladies love - one current (07-08) and one catching other historical loose ends (00-06-ish) and just good songs that have not made it to the series so far... should be good!

AMG review round-up, volume VIII

this time around - covering my review output from september, mostly, along with a few stragglers - we've got a bit from column "A" and a bit from column "B". first up, five assorted and generally quite enjoyable records of electronic dance hoo-hah (from abstractest to poppiest and roughly in order of goodness.) then, an eclectic quartet of singer-songwriter types, only three of them scandinavian. and for dessert, one of the most perplexing albums i've encountered in a while, the self-titled debut of Dominique Leone, which is perhaps somewhere in between the previous categories; perhaps somewhere else entirely. i think i finally figured out what is going on with it, but that took rather a while, making it one of my proudest recent record-reviewing accomplishments. before we get to that, though, another one that, as previously discussed, took me a minute to pin down...

Pink Skull: bio and Zeppelin 3 review

Pink Skull main man Julian Grefe has spoken in interviews about wanting to make a record in the vein of the Chemical Brothers' Dig Your Own Hole, citing its dynamic diversity and cohesive album-length arc as elements lacking in most contemporary dance music. It may not be the first thing that comes to mind when listening to the Philadelphia band/DJ collective's sprawling, perplexing debut album -- for one thing, it's gotten distressingly difficult to think of the Chems as radical and experimental these days -- but that 1997 landmark is an entirely apt reference point. Zeppelin 3 certainly doesn't sound much like the vast majority of electronic music produced this decade, with a rough-edged, acid-washed sensibility that evinces little of electro-house's garish, '80s-refracting gleam or minimal's streamlined polish. And it doesn't sound anything like Led Zeppelin's III (Grefe's all-time favorite album) either, although like the Chems before them, Pink Skull don't shy away from manifesting their love of rock music and stadium-sized excess -- Grefe's a veteran of several Philly punk bands, and there are plenty of guitars here although they're employed not so much for righteous riffage as for steady, Kraut-like slow burns ("Zing Zong," "El Topo") and ambient smears ("Ssilt.") There's also a bit of deviant hip-hop -- an enjoyable, "Apache"-cribbing remix of Plastic Little's "Crambodia," featuring Amanda Blank, Spank Rock, and, improbably, Ghostface Killah -- and a smidgen of indie folk, in the oddly truncated Mirah guest-spot "Take Me Out Riding," which mostly feels like a missed opportunity (particularly in perhaps unfair comparison with the Chemical Brothers' brilliant work with Beth Orton.) Otherwise, most of the album consists of highly abstract, restively mutating, groove-based tracks that land somewhere in between breakbeat and acid house, overlaid with squelching psychedelic synths, percussion breakdowns, snatches of saxophone, and tortured, unrecognizable vocal fragments, and embellished with a dizzying array of effects. In other words, it's not far off from the bulk of Dig Your Own Hole, although this album lacks the equivalent of a "Block Rockin' Beats" or a "Setting Sun." There are few apparent bankable hooks, although the abrasive, insistent fuzz bass lick of the break-happy "Gonzo's Cointreau" (the album's most straightforward stab at big beat revivalism -- there's even a siren!), comes close. Partly for that reason, but also because it's not quite as eclectic or as cohesive as Grefe and co. perhaps hoped, Zeppelin 3 can be somewhat daunting and draining to listen through in its entirety. But taken in smaller doses (the ten-minute kitchen-sink workout "Bubblelog Aftermath," for instance), it can be quite effective, and it's definitely a worthwhile and promising step in the ongoing exploration and integration of dance music's interconnected past and future.

Midfield General: General Disarray review

Where has Damian Harris been for the last eight years, you're unlikely to ask? It turns out the Big Beat architect/Norman Cook chum/Skint label boss is alive and well and spent at least a chunk of the time since his late-to-the-party debut LP living in Paris, partying it up with the likes of the Ed Banger and Kitsuné rosters -- labels whose output arguably represents the closest trendy dance music has come to the bombastic, rock/hip-hop/electro-fusing spirit of big beat since the genre fell into disfavor around the turn of the millennium. In fact, to judge by General Disarray's extensive liner thank yous, he's been making friends with virtually everyone who's anyone in the 21st century dance world, but those French connections in particular led to a role executive producing Justice's massive 2007 single "D.A.N.C.E.," and in turn to that group's Xavier de Rosnay's contributions to the Midfield General comeback single, "Disco Sirens." For a song celebrating (and prominently featuring) big beat's most obnoxious secondary trait, it's surprisingly delightful, thanks in part to de Rosnay's funky-struttin' bass work, which nods just slightly to Daft Punk's "Around the World," as well as cheeky rap-styled vocals by Vila of Modular's Bumblebeez 81. That track (it was also mixed by Soulwax, giving it quite an impressive blog-house pedigree) makes an auspicious calling card for this highly unanticipated return, and the guest-heavy General Disarray doesn't disappoint, although it can't help but live up to its title...

diskJokke: Staying In review

Joakim Dyrdhal's fanciful electro-disco productions bear some commonalities with...Hans-Peter Lindstrøm, arguably the Scandinavian electronica scene's de facto figurehead, with whom he shares a label (the increasingly buzzed-about Smalltown Supersound), a strong focus on melody and musicality, and a knack for compositions that feel simultaneously playful and majestic. Though they definitely evince a certain airiness, laced with starry-eyed synths and the occasional woozy swell, his tracks stop short of Lindstrøm's furthest-out, spacy excesses, rarely stretching beyond the six-minute range and maintaining a more or less consistent foundation of sturdy, midtempo disco beats (although he's not afraid to break it down and built it back up mid-song.) Those grooves help ensure a base level of dancefloor functionality without hampering the sense of restless creativity which is perhaps Staying In's most notable quality, though it also turns out to be something of an Achilles' heel. Somewhat paradoxically, the internal variety and subtle complexity of many of these pieces, which seem to unfurl a dizzying array of melodic and textural ideas over their gradually fluctuating beats, can leave them feeling somewhat formless and even faceless.

Nôze: bio, How To Dance and Songs On The Rocks reviews

For all the contributions the French have made to electronic dance music in the past ten years, from Daft Punk's era-defining filter-house to the more recent bangers of Justice et al., it's striking how little of it has been overtly, recognizably French in attitude or musical aesthetic. Parisian duo Nôze go a fair distance toward amending that discrepancy, displaying a (stereo)typically Gallic ability to maintain an air of sophistication and vague superciliousness while indulging an utterly bizarre and often vulgar sense of humor, à la the paradigmatically Frenchy Serge Gainsbourg. Songs on the Rocks, their third full-length and highest-profile release to date, appears on the German imprint Get Physical, which is hardly inappropriate, given a rhythmic drive that's closer to that label's teutonic tech-house than French Touch neu-disco... Nevertheless, it's easily their Frenchiest outing to date, featuring prominent vocals, either in French or heavily-accented English, on every track save one, and making explicit their connection to the long-running chanson tradition, the classic pop likes of Gainsbourg, and more recent inheritors like Arthur H. Essentially, they've made good on the promise of "songs" -- as suggested by the album title and foreshadowed by the popular singles "Kitchen" and "Remember Love" -- while mostly jettisoning the rangier experiments of their earlier releases, thereby making this also their most accessible album yet. It's still a far cry from conventional though, especially when Nicolas Sfintescu unleashes the full power of his distinctively, er, froggy voice, an absurd and sometimes frightening growl that can range from comical to unbearable, depending on your tolerance for unhinged Tom Waits-isms and vichyssoise-thick shtick. On the album's pair of demented quasi-epics -- "Childhood Blues" and the "cinematic" "Slum Girl" -- that voice is just obnoxiously overbearing, dripping with (respectively) caricatured anguish and spy movie sleaze, and likely a deal-breaker for many listeners, but it's a good deal easier to take in clipped, chipper bursts, and in conjunction with other voices, on twitchy, light-on-their-feet groovers like "L'Inconnu du Placard" and the aptly named "You Have to Dance." And then there's "Remember Love," the undeniable standout here, built around a simple but maddeningly effective Chicago house piano figure and an effortlessly funky skip-step groove, with lyrics that touch on barroom infidelity, talking zebras, and the universality of love. That track's simplicity and classicism might have led fans to expect even more of a departure from Nôze on this album, but while it does trend in a more broadly palatable direction, Songs on the Rocks is more of a progression than a wholesale change from their typical oddball antics. Still, listeners drawn in by "Remember Love" (which would be worth the price of admission on its own) may well find the rest of the album nearly as enjoyable, in its own quirky way. Particularly if they have a taste for Époisses de Bourgogne.

Rex The Dog: bio and The Rex The Dog Show review

The Rex the Dog Show is an unusual combination of debut album and career retrospective, collecting five tracks from Rex the Dog's much-loved 12" releases and two remixes for other artists, along with six new productions. The approach is all killer, no filler -- the 12" sides have been smartly edited down, in some cases to nearly half of their length, to yield a concise, pop-friendly 45 minutes. As for the new tracks, not all that much has changed in Rex's basic production template -- he's still almost monomaniacally fixated on vintage '70s synthesizers and thumping electro-house percussion -- except that all but one of the six feature vocals of some sort (as opposed to only one of the five older tracks), in keeping with the poppier direction signposted by the short track lengths. Actually, as good as the vocals are, they tend to lessen the immediacy of these tracks, deflecting attention away from the rapturous, constantly mutating, elemental synth hooks which are Rex's greatest strength. One could argue that nothing measures up to the delirious heights of the previously released inclusions, but it doesn't really need to: none of the older pieces have lost an ounce of their charm, and the newer material helps to enhance their effectiveness by fleshing out a varied, listenable full-length experience very much in the vein of Mylo's similarly excellent Destroy Rock & Roll. Simply put, it's hard to deny the sheer quantity and quality of visceral enjoyment this album offers -- at his frequent best, which is handily compiled here, Rex the Dog makes (in the words of fellow electro-genius Richard X) "pure 21st century synth-pop": bombastic, euphoric, and beautiful.


Montt Mardié: Clocks/Pretender review

David Pagmar's second album as Montt Mardié is, for all intents and purposes, actually two albums, packaged (quite beautifully) as the two-disc set Clocks/Pretender. Although the 20 songs contained here clock in at just over an hour, and could easily fit onto a single disc, each half has its own distinct character and conceit, and each is entirely satisfying on its own terms. The loosely conceptual Clocks could be considered the "proper" follow-up to Mardié's debut, Drama, although it takes most of its cues from the classic songbook pop of the pre-rock era, rather than the 1980s, and eschews synthesizers in favor of stylish brass and string arrangements, fabulously rendered by a 20-piece big band-cum-orchestra. These musicians provide the buoyant, swinging backup for an authentically brassy rendition of the 1941 Frank Sinatra standard "Let's Get Away from It All," and help make nearly every other (original) song feel just as classic and ageless. Each song deals, in different ways, with the central themes of romance, nostalgia, memory, and world travel, and helps to evoke a vague but potent sense of historical time and place -- the album opens with a thunderclap and a snippet of 1920s bandleader Jean Goldkette, and has an over-arching pre-war vibe, but references to the '60s also abound in the lyrics as well as the music, from the Apollo moon landing and Holly Golightly to the title of the achingly lovely "How I Won the War" and the bouncy pop-soul flavor of "Birthday Boy."

Pretender, meanwhile, feels somewhat scattershot compared to the cohesion of Clocks, but it's nearly as enjoyable on a track for track basis. Each of the ten songs is a duet and a collaboration, all written by Pagmar but roughly tailored to the style of each collaborator and in most cases featuring their instrumental work or production. To some extent this offers a chance for him to demonstrate even greater range, but since his partners are all mostly standard Swedish indie pop types the results can generally be categorized as wistful, acoustic ballads, earnestly melodic synth rock, or effervescent dance-pop. Not that that's anything to complain about. Taken together, [these discs] offer a bounty of tuneful and inventive pop music as rich as any that's emerged from Sweden, or anywhere, in recent memory.

Morten Abel: bio, Here We Go Then, You And I and Being Everything, Knowing Nothing review

Although the core of his fourth solo outing is tasteful, tuneful, upbeat singer/songwriter pop/rock, Morten Abel proves too idiosyncratic to adhere strictly to such a familiar template -- he strays frequently and sometimes quite liberally, to intriguing and generally successful results. Along with plenty of full-bodied guitar work and some particularly lovely female harmony vocals, there are touches of instrumental color that help to liven things up -- banjo; whistling and slide guitar; some horns and subtle synthesizers. There are stylistic flirtations with Primal Scream-esque psychedelia and erratic, reggae-tinged funk-rock. And then there are the real curve-balls, abrupt diversions into hip-hop, a bizarre electro/diva-soul pastiche and, strangest of all, the sing-song story rap of "The Birmingham Ho," a sort of updated "Lola" featuring a saga about a transvestite, some music hall piano on the bridge, and the cryptic refrain "You don't have to be gay to make a friend feel good, OK." For all its playful genre experimentation -- which may explain the "being everything" part of the title -- and general goofiness, however, there's a stronger undercurrent of sentimentality and earnestness that comes through to make the album much more than a novelty; ultimately the introspection and emotional sincerity most evident on the relatively "normal" songs stand out as perhaps album's most essential and appealing qualities.

Britta Persson: Kill Hollywood Me review

Britta Persson may have inherited the Swedish national knack for melodic hooks, but her intimate, decidedly idiosyncratic singer/songwriter approach has little in common with the demure twee and melancholic pop fare most often associated with her native land. Kill Hollywood Me offers a blend of arty pop, indie folk, and smart, gritty rock that recalls the '90s alternative likes of Liz Phair, Tracy Bonham, and Tanya Donelly, with a mix of whimsy and sentiment akin to Regina Spektor and Nellie McKay. Lead track and first single "Cliffhanger" starts things off on a particularly tough, rocky note -- it sounds surprisingly angry for a song about a promising relationship, although that's somewhat tempered by the melodic sweetness of the chorus, which fantasizes about parenthood and domestic bliss, years down the line. Persson has explained the phrase "kill Hollywood me" in reference to her wish to take herself less seriously, to focus on simplicity and happiness instead of a cinematic glamorization of love and relationships -- "memories and fantasies are to be seen as enemies," she sings on the title tune -- and that struggle is evident throughout the album's frequently lovelorn, self-doubting lyrics, which find her alternately renouncing and half-heartedly succumbing to the vicissitudes of modern romance. "If you're scared of goodbyes, don't say hello all the time" she reminds herself in "U-Turns," vowing to stay home at night and pursue "healthy love with healthy people." But "Can I Touch?" finds her out playing the field again, somewhat fatalistically wooing a prospective one-night stand with the come on "Who needs a head when you've got a heart?," which becomes an oddly triumphant group singalong. Ultimately, as much as she may strive not to let her romantic tendencies get the better of her -- "to invest and not get obsessed," as she puts it on the gentle, country-ish "In or Out," which features the unconvincing assertion that "this is about as fun as it gets/between happiness and unhappiness" -- she makes the alternative sound a good deal more gratifying, especially on the upbeat "Happy Hour," whose easygoing folk-pop lope and Sophie B. Hawkins-referencing refrain (or not; after all, there's a certain universality to the phrase "damn I wish I was your lover") make for one of the album's most engaging moments. Admittedly, untangling the album's textual intricacies without a lyric sheet can require some close listening, what with Persson's distinct accent and sometimes bizarre phrasing, but that's hardly a prerequisite for enjoying its richly textured, unconventional arrangements, and it shouldn't stop Kill Hollywood Me from appealing to listeners who don't mind a refreshing dollop of originality in their songwriter pop.

Jeff Hanson: Madam Owl review

As always -- for better or worse -- the most immediately striking feature of Madam Owl, at least for Hanson newcomers, is his unearthly singing voice: ethereal, gossamer, and yes, undeniably feminine. It's not simply that Hanson's falsetto is high, it's also impossibly delicate; tender but confidently solid; poignant without a hint of strain, with a resigned sweetness that recalls a certain (male) late, great labelmate. Madam Owl does little to discourage the reductive but apt (and inevitable) "female Elliott Smith" tag, although it has as much in common with the ambitious, classicist pop of Figure 8 and XO as the sparse, deft acoustic picking of Smith's earlier work. On the other hand, Hanson's music has always been polite in a way that Smith's is not -- less emotionally urgent, less rough around the edges -- and here it sounds positively urbane, with elegant chamber arrangements that give the album an understated Baroque quality, while still leaving plenty of space for his voice and folky guitar work to take center stage. The orchestration also helps to distinguish his otherwise often faceless songs, whose consistent prettiness and emotive but forgettable lyrics can render them somewhat interchangeable. If "Maryann" happens to echo the phrasing of "No Name #1" from Elliott Smith's debut, while the lyrics of "This Friend of Mine" ("I lost this friend of mine so very young/his wishes we would carry out/but know one seemed to know about them") are nonspecific enough that they could conceivably have been written about Smith, it's nothing worth complaining about -- not when he can make evoking his influences sound this effortless and heavenly.

Dominique Leone: Dominique Leone review

Considering the litany of literate talking-point touchstones that filter their way through the twisted pop phantasmagoria of Dominique Leone's self-titled debut, the inaugural release on Hans-Peter Lindstrøm's Strømland imprint -- for starters, the big-league melodicism (and restlessly conceptual thrust) of Brian Wilson, Todd Rundgren, and XTC; the whimsical arcanity of the Canterbury scene; the brutalist cacophonics of Boredoms; and over a decade's worth of post-IDM exploration and electro-dance rejiggering, from Cornelius to Matmos to Ellen Allien, not to mention the conspicuously cerebral residue of a pedigreed classical background -- it's perhaps a no-brainer that it ends up sounding like very little except for itself. What's more surprising is that it's also remarkably cohesive -- despite a seemingly limitless outpouring of ideas and a penchant for sudden stylistic left turns (including jarring noise barrages) comparable to the convoluted neo-prog of the Fiery Furnaces (and, at times, Of Montreal) and an occasionally manic, giddy energy that recalls the day-glo pastiche work of Dan Deacon and the Go! Team, the album generally avoids merely refracting its cripplingly broad influence roster into a formless, indulgently esoteric hodgepodge. It's held together in part by a consistently dense, garishly glossy sonic aesthetic that layers buzzy, metallic keyboards and guitars around Leone's grittily processed voice, which is often multi-tracked into high, queasy, saccharine harmonies in a malformed take on his beloved Beach Boys, with frequent electronic disruptions of varying obnoxiousness. That may not sound very appealing, and, admittedly, it's not a style that makes for particularly easy listening, but it's an effective, intriguing, and distinctive one nevertheless. By juxtaposing such a willfully "difficult" approach with the surprisingly traditionalist popcraft that lies at the heart of most of these songs (and they are songs, albeit often encumbered as much by bizarre structures and knotty harmonies as they are by textural zaniness), Leone isn't just screwing around with thwarted accessibility for its own perverse, limited ends, but seems rather to be genuinely striving for new ways to integrate pop melodics, unorthodox compositional structure, and avant-garde sonics into a workable whole.

The album presents a range of approaches to this project, with varying degrees of success: "Duyen," the cheerily chugging "Goodbye," and the unexpectedly gorgeous closing piano ballad, "Conversational," are relatively straightforward pop songs, and quite lovely ones too, with little or no structural disruption, though they're in keeping with the rest of the album production-wise. On the other end of the spectrum, "Kaine" and "Claire" are so structurally disjointed as to verge on sonic collage, their through-line melodies all but obscured by shards of noise and shifting rhythms. Epic-length centerpiece "The Return" attempts to bridge these two approaches with only middling success -- it has a decent enough recurrent refrain that passes through untold iterations before descending into an extended miasma of mindless frippery, but as a whole feels plodding and pedantic. Quite the opposite is true, however, of "Nous Tombons Dans Elle," the album's weirdest, poppiest, and by far best track, an utterly baffling, utterly infectious multi-part bundle of boundless cutesy energy that packs in pretty much every sound we've heard along the way, helped along by a couple of killer dance beats. Oh yes, dance beats. Given that electronic dance music is routinely allowed far greater liberty in sound and structure than any comparably popular style -- somehow dance beats seem to make a lot of things more palatable -- this may be the most viable solution to the particular quandary Leone seems to be investigating here. Perhaps he'd consider it a cop-out on the experimentation front, but it would be great to hear him take some cues from his label boss and just do a lot more like this. In any case, this is a striking, accomplished debut that hints at whole new realms of possibility, and an album that should prove absolutely fascinating to anybody able to tolerate it.

is't a prat?

in NYC for a minute, not for CMJ but i did go to this showcase, co-put-on by the fine folks at it's a trap!, featuring three swedish artists i quite fancy and have been bumpin' a lot lately. firefox ak i reviewed two albums by last week (tho the reviews still aren't up, c'mon pokies!); juvelen i've already repped a bunch both here and on amg, and still adore; hello saferide i have warmed up to more recently, after being somewhat indifferent to her/them at first (part of it is the truly awful bandname), but have a new album that i look forward to checkin' out.

ffak was up first; short and sweet (both she and her set.) leaned heavier on the first alb than i might have expected ("habibi" and "love to run"... so actually only two; but out of six...), but then it is by far the guitarier of the two, so those songs gave her more to do on stage (it was just andrea k, without her usual band, but she played a lot of guitar.) she didn't do my faves from the new album either, except for "techno tears" (the others were opener "where are we going," "once i was like you" and "river" with saferider annika on b.vox.) but no matter, it was nice just to hear her, and she's clearly got a wealth of really good songs to choose from.

the crowd was kind of sparse for that set, but it filled in nicely by the time juvelen took the stage, in possibly the same grey tank top and ski cap he wore last time. he played about the same six-song set too (the five bangers from the album, plus opener "a dream" - not my current fave "facts of life.") and i danced, just like that time - the only one at first ("thanks for the dancemoves" he said to me "you win. i mean, it's kind of a ... walk-on victory..[?]..at this point, but still. congrats"), and later on a few others joined in ("rock it like the fellow in the striped sweater.") and we kind of accidentally/spontaneously hugged as he got off stage. he's so cute!

then hello saferide, whose music i knew the least well - the only songs i'd heard before were current single "anna" and her cutesy signature song (ish?) "the quiz." the one she started with was about how people are like songs ("you're the only one i know who's 'god only knows'" - the problem being of course that "god only knows" is too short.) some of the others surprised me with their relative seriousness, and made me almost feel bad for calling her "overly cutesy" in my maia hirasawa review (not that i think that's a bad thing...) - in particular the idea of a song from the point of view of the parents of a neo-nazi (shades of "no thugs in our house"?), although that song turned out to be pretty cutesy anyway (a duet with her pianist/producer andreas mattson.) ditto, duh, the one about wanting to crawl back in her mom's womb. hmm. (she seems to have parenting on the brain.)

annika herself doesn't look especially cutesy - she's taller and tougher and more, i guess, womanly, than i might have imagined from listening to the girly early songs... and i guess she's 'maturing' now, or whatever, in her songwriting as well. anyway her smart-but-rugged flannel-wearing aesthetic fit in well with the enjoyably rootsy-rockin' band (which sometimes made her lyrics - crucial - hard to hear) and the rural overtones of her closer (complete with onomatopoeic noises for winds and trains and snow - cutesy alert!), which she introduced as being about the north of sweden: "i guess a lot of you are from sweden, but i bet nobody here is from arjeplog." "what!?" said lillie. too bad billie and the visions weren't there to sing about her.

chemical colors

blog block, where to start. some concerts i've seen lately...

cut copy (& the presets) @ the troc, 25 september
the band who made my ostensibly maybe favorite album of 2008 (?), in ghost colors, (except that i haven't really listened to it all that much), and who i'd previously narrowly missed seeing, more or less, twice so far this year (once at sxsw, once at making time.) was in a kind of a bad mood going in, and by myself. openers/bill-sharers(?) the presets were almost-danceable, but not quite enough for enough of the time, and were just way too dark and intense for me, at least at that moment. they kept reminding me of devo, but not in a good way. some of their songs seemed kind of good. (and they definitely had some serious fans in the audience.)

between sets they played steely dan's "peg," which was much more fun to dance to than the presets. before cut copy i jostled my way forward to get a good spot, but wound up too focused on the crowd manoeuverings to enjoy the music at all, so after several songs (including my fave, "far away," way too early) i drifted to the back of the room and finally started to actually enjoy it a little bit, when they played, i think, "strangers in the wind." the next song, dan (main guy) said something like "ok, here's the part of the show where it gets really good." then towards the end of the song ("saturdays," maybe?) he said "ok, here's the part where everybody goes completely crazy," and he counted off, 1, 2, 1 2 3 4. and it wasn't even necessarily the greatest part, but suddenly the whole room really got lighter and freer, and we were all bouncing and floating as one giant mass, the way it sometimes happens, all smiles, and that was brilliant. then, i think, "feel the love" and "out there on the ice," the brilliant 1-2 that opens the album. and i even hugged the girls i had been bedgrudgingly dancing to the presets with, and we reached out to each other for "hearts on fire." okay, happyfuntimes after all. still, they're sort of just a band, you know. hmmm.

stereolab, back @ the troc, 1 october
at that show i signed up to win tickets to see stereolab the following week, and somehow i kind of knew i would end up winning them, which i did. which is great, because i definitely wouldn't have gone otherwise, even though i've vaguely wanted to see stereolab for a long time now. what a fun show!

totally different vibe from the cut copy/presets gig a week prior - much sparser crowd, and a good deal older and less excitable, which is not a bad thing. not enough of them were dancing, but sara and i and some other folks near us made up for it, gettin silly and rocking out. the band really seemed to be enjoying themselves too - laetitia sadier is about as charming as you might expect, but in a very understated way, and unfortunately i couldn't really hear what she was saying half the time (quiet+accent.) for some reason i never expect them to be a normal rock band, like with a drummer and bassist and everything, but of course they are - they just happen to also have two full-time keyboard players (plus laetitia, sometimes.) some old stuff (opened with "percolator" from emperor tomato ketchup, and also did a handful of others i recognized but couldn't necessarily place - incl. "ping pong") and lots of new stuff, probably mostly from their new chemical chords, which i totally should have gotten there, and need to get sometime. very poppy, very sixties, soul/motown influence. yum.

fleet foxes @ starlight ballroom, 2 october
and the very next night i somehow found myself in another crowd, checking out [the] fleet foxes [as they seem to be called a lot], whom i hadn't really heard thus far. i could definitely understand the appeal... i would probably enjoy it a fair amount myself listening to an lp record... but being exposed to it for the first time in at least that particular live context, i couldn't really get into it as much more than entirely pleasant. pretty harmonies (though they kind of use the same ones a lot, no?) and a couple of melodies that stuck out - also nicely structured songs. but you know, it's just hard to get too excited about that way. clearly, they are related to crosby stillsenash.

i was actually more interested by the opener, frank fairfield, a totally anachronistic old-timey young man, who seems to be very much "for real," whatever that means. does period/style-appropriate dress/hair-styling (marked without being so pronounced as to really fall into novelty/parody schtick) make him more authentic (it seems like it does) or less? would be curious to learn his real story, how he comes to this stuff. of course there's no myspace blog bio. hard one to puzzle out. he walked on stage carrying four stringed instruments (i think?) - fiddle, banjo, and two guitars - and proceeded to play about six songs, and then carefully picked them all up again and carried them off. hum. good stuff.

and then,

jonathan richman @ the sanctuary of the church, 12 october.
eve of my birthday - it felt right. brought some pals. sat on the floor. this was i guess my fourth time seeing jojo - after rochester in high school, san francisco in 2001, the khyber in 2005. i kind of thought i'd seen him at johnny brenda's (and josh marcus opened for him there so i know he's played there) but i don't think i actually did.

he seemed more with it than the last time i saw him and got vaguely depressed by it, though he didn't quite sparkle the way he does in my memory and on the take me to the plaza dvd i'd watched a few nights before and got really excited by. frankly, a lot of it was that i didn't think the new songs were quite up to his best - mostly kind of too-typical takes on his familiar themes ("because her beauty is raw and wild") though he's got an interesting, very strongly-felt humanist/anti-conformist argument going in "when we refuse to suffer" and "our drab ways," which are sort of lifestyle protest music. he did a song about how he doesn't [want to] have a cellphone, which was bratty and snotty in a way that felt like a big throwback to early modern lovers style, pretty funny. and, of course, he did "picasso" and "lesbian bar" (got us all up and dancing, though he only did about a verse and a half.) and closed with "that summer feeling," interspersed with some stories from his earliest childhood, which was truly sweet.