My text to DB: "Bro this Eleanor friedberger album is heavy heavy heavy. Perfect parallel universe pop. Remind me to send."
That parallel universe, as DB well knows, is not necessarily one where pop is dance-y and frivolous but where the hooks, buried in skronky bass lines and hiding around unexpected left turns, are even more satisfying. Pop that resonates in your heart and provokes your mind while still preying on your impulses and demanding repeated listens.
By the way, for those of you following at home, if we the answer wasn't already clear, I think now we know which is the more satisfying, less obtuse half of her brother-sister outfit The Fiery Furnaces.
For a year that's been a little short on big time albums, the hits keep on coming! Here's what I've been gettin down with recently...
2011, Vol. 7, aka Boom Sh-Clack Clack
Gotye - Smoke and Mirrors Blood Orange - Sutphin Boulevard Phantogram - Don't Move Little Dragon - Constant Surprises Atlas Sound - Te Amo The Rapture - In The Grace Of Your Love ASAP Rocky - Trilla (Feat. ASAP Twelvy & ASAP Nast) Kanye West & JAY Z - Ni**as in Paris Kavinsky & Lovefoxxx – Nightcall Youth Lagoon – Posters Zee Avi - Concrete Wall Mayer Hawthorne - The Walk Sade - When Am I Going To Make A Living (Poolside's Tons of Drums Edit) Kisses - Bermuda Metronomy - Everything Goes My Way Jonti - Firework Spraying Moon Teebs - Long Distance ft. Gaby Hernandez Björk – Crystalline
2011, Vol. 8, aka Gabba Gabba Hey!
The Horrors - Endless Blue MGMT - All We Ever Wanted Was Everything King Krule - The Noose of Jah City DJ Shadow - Scale It Back St. Vincent - Dilettante The War on Drugs - Come to the City White Denim - River to Consider Cut Off Your Hands - You Should Do Better Future Islands - Balance The Head And The Heart - Lost In My Mind Arctic Monkeys - That's Where You're Wrong Anna Calvi - Desire Zola Jesus - Vessel Pure X - Surface Mazzy Star - Common Burn Other Lives - Dust Bowl III
Not my favorite track from this dude (that would be 'The Noose of Jah City'), but you'll see what you're gettin into. And I'm all about it. Am I being Rick-Rolled? I don't care, I think this kid slays...
You're officially on notice about Other Lives. Carefully crafted but expansive late-Beatles-meets-Grizzly-Bear chamber pop from... wait, WHAT?... apparently Stillwater, OK. Which I can tell you first hand ain't so bad but still would've been my second to last guess after Yemen. Anyway, they're lush and seductive and just right.
This one's got a Western vibe that's a little misleading, but you gotta here the chops on display here. You expect this kind of business from the vets, but not the first time you ever hear an artist. Just a mesmerizing five minutes.
I must have heard this song 'Desire' 20 times on KCRW. I thought it was... interesting... more theatre than song. I inherited a copy of her self-titled debut and stashed it away for a couple weeks. I noticed that she was nominated for the Mercury Prize, and I kinda shrugged. Finally I heard Anne Litt say it was her album of the year, and I figured, alright, I should give this Anna Calvi chick a shot. And all I needed was the intro, a noir-ish, echoing, suspense-filled guitar track to take me in its grip. Suddenly 'Desire' made perfect sense. And this album is all I've listened to for 2 days.
The sound, for one, is indulgent. I'm obsessed with the quality of the snare; the toms are big bullies; and her foreboding and fierce guitar play is excellent. But it's the unbridled force of her voice, awesome in the true sense of the word, that makes this album so compelling for me. To top it off, there's a feeling of sexual power, captured and controlled, that would make Madonna blush.
I'm not sure what it is, but I feel something of Patti Smith in her. Maybe it's the voice, although Calvi belts where Patti snarls. Maybe it's the touch of androgyny, although Calvi is more of the Annie Lennox variety. Probably it's just the commanding, I am woman, hear me roar spirit that has my utmost respect.
I got dealt a good hand this time 'round. Def my fave mix of the year...
Amy Winehouse - Valerie Fruit Bats - So Long Wilco - I Might Eleanor Friedberger - My Mistakes Okkervil River - Your Past Life as a Blast WU LYF - Heavy Pop Ikebe Shakedown - No Answer Fool's Gold - The Dive Blu - Since Kanye West & JAY Z - Otis (feat. Otis Redding) Danger Mouse & Daniele Luppi - Two Against One Little Dragon - Please Turn Cults - Oh My God Mr. Little Jeans - The Suburbs (Arcade Fire Cover) James Drake - Wilhelm's Fucking Best Washed Out - Before Austra - Lose It Shabazz Palaces - Swerve... The Reeping of All That Is Worthwhile (Noir Not Withstanding) The Cool Kids - Summer Jam (feat. Maxine Ashley)
As a little birthday treat to myself, my favorite song of the moment, maybe even the year. This new Horrors album is a straight-up statement. Darkly beautiful and refined. This one song hints at just about every stage of the Cure's career.
When those horns kick in, ooo-we! I am adrift... and then I reemerge to a timeless post-punk riff that whips me around a solitary, moonlit, ocean cliffside highway. Endless blue.
I have a correction to make. So, I wrote this whole post about Stornoway and how New Zealand was on the up. Which would have been clever enough if Stornoway was actually from New Zealand. They are not. I learned this, months later, the hard way - losing an argument with a complete stranger, who showed me up with one click on Google. Oxford!? Who knew...
So, to make it up to you, I offer two (2!) New Zealand gems, which have been thoroughly vetted for geographic authenticity. [Okay, UMO is from Portland, but their centerpiece is a Kiwi, I swear!]
Cut Off Your Hands is one of those bands that makes me wonder how they don't have a bandwagon the size of their country. What is not to like!?
And then there's Unknown Mortal Orchestra, one of - no, THE weirdest debut of the year, with a baffling cover shot of an alien fortress-looking complex, unnecessarily misspelled song titles, and a fuzzed out collection of unclassifiable guitar funk ditties. DB and I saw these dudes open for Yuck last week, and they played with little to (more often) no lights, all three lowriding their hats. Their whole operation is a mystery. What was obvious, though, was that that their frontman is an absolute criminal on the guitar, one of the best I've seen in a long time.
This one, 'How Can You Luv Me,' could be a Midnite Vultures-era Beck track, but these dudes are way deeper down the psych rock rabbit hole.
[Unrelated footnote: I wrote that line about the rabbit hole before I found the video. WTF.]
Big K.R.I.T. - Dreamin' Egyptrixx featuring Trust - Bible Eyes Sade (Feat. Jay-Z) - The Moon and the Sky (Remix) Bibio - Wake Up! Thao & Mirah - Rubies and Rocks Adolfo Echeverria Y Su Conjunto - Sabroso Bacalao Beastie Boys - Don’t Play No Game That I Can’t Win (ft. Santigold) Cut Chemist - What's The Altitude Quantic Presenta Flowering Inferno - Cumbia Sobre El Mar Diego García - Stay Club des Belugas - My Hunger Hurts Joan As Police Woman - Kiss The Specifics Lykke Li - Silent My Song The Weeknd - Coming Down
Volume 4
Nicolas Jaar - Colomb Washed Out - New Theory (RAC Mix) Elbow - Lippy Kids James Blake - Measurements Panda Bear - Scheherazade Wild Beasts - Burning Gil Scott-Heron & Jamie xx - I’m New Here Small Black - Despicable Dogs (Washed Out Remix) Radiohead - GiveUpTheGhost Antony & The Johnsons - Swanlights Mia Doi Todd - Under the Sun Bonobo - Stay The Same (Feat. Andreya Triana)
Volume 5
Generationals - You Say It Too The Kills - Baby Says The Antlers - Parentheses Future Islands - Swept Inside Fleet Foxes - Grown Oceans Julian Lynch - Terra Kurt Vile - On Tour Yuck - Get Away The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Heart in Your Heartbreak Surf City - Zombies OFF! - Jeffrey Lee Pierce My Morning Jacket - Holdin On To Black Metal The Strokes - Taken For A Fool Timber Timbre - Black Water Alexander - Awake My Body
Immediately my new obsession. DB said it right: "i like this dude's punky throat style cutting through all these beautiful guitars / crescendos / beats...."
Lotta cats recently been asking for recommendations, and being the civil servant that I am, I put together a quick rundown of some recent highlights for your listening pleasure...
Julian Lynch - Terra. Rich, mellow, medium-fi blend of strummy indie rock, atmospherics, and jazz goodness, with an Elliott Smith-esque quiet intimacy. The only thing out there that sounds like it is his excellent Mare from last year's top 10.
Wild Beasts - Smother. I have said enough about these guys that I decided not to review the album, but suffice it to say, I love it intensely. Not quite the tour de force performance of Two Dancers, but they are just as enrapturing and sexy with the new, stripped-down, electronic-heavy sound.
Future Islands - In Evening Air. So, I realized recently that I have a propensity towards unusual voices. Case in point, my two albums of the year so far - Destroyer and Wild Beasts - are fronted by two guys that would legitimately creep most people out. After that probably comes James Blake, who sounds like a heartbroken robot, and Radiohead, who, well, you know. No doubt that's the first thing you'll notice about FI, and you'll probably know right away whether you're hooked or a hater. I think he sounds like a sensitive wizard-villain exiled from the land of his glam rock warrior-people. Beyond that, though, a decent survey of the last 5 years in indie rock. I am the Tin Man!!
Diego Garcia - Laura. Argentina-via-NYC guitarist/singer-songwriter (I mean that in the literal, not the pejorative, sense - but that's another post for another day) with a golden voice and a flair for the cinematic.
Thao & Mirah - s/t. Brings out the best of both of these indie singer-songwriters (there it is again). Nice eclectic range of styles.
Beastie Boys - Hot Sauce Committee, Pt. 2. No explanation needed. Probably overrated at the moment, but certainly in line with Hello Nasty. I'm down.
Bibio - Mind Bokeh. How to describe Bibio? Downtempo dance music or upbeat driving music? Hell if I know. He's a beat maker at base, but never, ever do you feel like you're listening to a tired instrumental track. He's got a killer 70s/00s electro/funk/hip-hop dynamic going on and makes me feel like I never want to live anywhere but the heart of the city. Check out Ambivalence Avenue, too (maybe even first).
V/A - Sofrito: Tropical Discotheque. 'World Music' is just about the slipperiest music term out there, often invoked simply to signify 'the other,' without any attention to - or usually respect for - the particular cultural lineage. (I totally majored in Anthropology). But I can't help but call throw the world music label at this mix for its huge range of regional styles all cobbled together into a seamless, super fun dance party.
Big K.R.I.T. - Return of 4Eva. A worthy heir to the Southernplayalisticcaddilacmusic throne of our favorite spaced out, storytelling ATLiens.
See the side bar for everything else, including some older material...
My first exposure to the Kills was at Coachella '04 or maybe '05. They were the first band I saw all day, and it was like walking into the party and immediately having someone throw a splash of tequila down my throat.
Since then, I have always thought they were on the cusp of making a great album. Always wanted it. They are a ferocious live band and couldn't be cooler, but truth is, it just wasn't quite there in the studio.
Well, I think they finally made the leap. The songwriting on Blood Pressures is stronger and the sound fuller (see 'Future Starts Slow' and 'Damned If She Do'), but without sacrificing any of that sneering, visceral energy. The difference-maker, though, is a few well-timed curveballs to tie all the rockers together ('Wild Charms,' 'The Last Goodbye,' 'Pots and Pans').
Then there's this, probably my favorite thing the Kills have ever done.
I don't mean that as a bad thing. It's just that they have weirdly similar career trajectories, and I feel almost exactly the same about both bands.
2000, Coldplay releases Parachutes; it flies under the radar but in retrospect is a killer album. 2001, The Strokes release Is This It?; it does well but really gains stature stature over time. Both albums are front to back gems and highly re-listenable.
Again one year apart, both release good but not great sophomore albums under the weight of Next Big Thing hype. Is This It? is a better album than Parachutes, but I prefer A Rush of Blood to the Head to Room on Fire, so I say they come out a wash. At this point, both bands are pretty well overrated. They date movie stars.
Smothered with unrealistic expectations, they each drop unlistenable duds the third time around (again, The Strokes one year after Coldplay). Popular opinion turns drastically against them. The Coldplay backlash is more vitriolic (probably because expectations were loftier. That, and they're soft.), but both bands are now, generally speaking, Not Who We Thought They Were. They disappear for a while.
Here's where I get to my point. They probably stayed away long enough that nobody really cared anymore either way. Everybody sold their stock and no longer has a stake in the outcome. This mellowing gives them freedom from expectations again, and they both bang out competent, professional, polished, and generally decent albums. And we probably have enough lingering love that they still benefit from what we liked about them in the first place. I liked Viva La Vida okay, because, I don't know, I had no reason not to like it. And I'm enjoying Angles this week because I just don't need a whole lot from The Strokes right now. A couple good hooks, that unfazeable croon, and a nice pace, and y'know what, I'm good.
The lesson, as always, expectations are everything.
Anne Litt (my DJ crush) just dropped this one out of nowhere on Weekend Becomes Eclectic. Always loved this song, this video, Helena Christensen. Just salacious.
Ahhh, the first day of mix season. The smell of hot dogs and freshly cut grass; the crack of the bat in the distance.
I put in the time this winter, fine-tuned my swing and loaded up on HGH, to bring you the most competitive, highest quality, diversified musical entertainment. Enjoy.
Volume 1
Toro y Moi - Go With You James Blake - Lindisfarne II Aloe Blacc - Good Things Jamie Lidell - Enough's Enough Ghostface Killah - Ghetto (Feat. Raekwon, Cappadonna & U-God) Drake - Over (Dirty) Cassius - I <3 U SO The Roots - Right On Kid Cudi - Mr. Rager Mount Kimbie - Ode To Bear Theophilus London - Life Of a Lover M.I.A. - It Takes A Muscle Panda Bear - Last Night At The Jetty
Volume 2
Generationals - Say For Certain Peter, Bjorn and John - Eyes Working For A Nuclear Free City - Silent Times Twin Shadow - At My Heels Girls - Alright The Strokes - I'll Try Anything Once Destroyer - Blue Eyes Tennis - Marathon Timber Timbre - Lay Down In the Tall Grass Beach House - I Do Not Care For The Winter Sun Iron & Wine - Big Burned Hand Phosphorescent - It's Hard to Be Humble (When You're from Alabama) Deerhoof - Qui Dorm, Només Somia Akron/Family - I'll Be On The Water Givers - Saw You First
A girl snaps a huge bubble from her chewing gum. She sucks the shrapnel back in to her mouth, takes the ball between her fingers and stretches it awayyy from her face until it's barely a string. Then she twirls it around a finger, slowly gathering the gum back up into a whole. She skins it off her finger, gives it a chew, fills up another big one, and lets it POP!
This is what a James Blake song is like.
There is so much tension, so much time that elapses between those moments of gratification, that it always borders on driving you crazy. Last year's three EPs - The Bells Sketch, CMYK, and Klavierwerke - are experiments in teasing out little snippets of gorgeousness, a distorted R&B hook here, a couple notes of piano there, while grounding the listener in these stretchy, spacey, pulsating beats. You never know when to expect the payout, and it's usually gone before you can get your hands around it. He just has a brilliant and totally original sense of time and space that takes a little getting used to but can reorient how you expect to be stimulated by a song.
JB is movin up in the world, beyond the beats and into the traditional song format. But he brought all his tricks with him, and the result is essentially an R&B album but unlike any you've heard. The combination is bizarre but very exciting.
This Feist cover is the perfect example of what's possible. The original is rich and lovely and everything you want in a song, but by stripping it down to a few key parts and filling in the rest with little ticks and wobbles - dark matter - and a heavy dose of force-fed patience, you get something else altogether: tense and unsentimental, but beautiful in its own right. It's a style that implicates rather than tells you outright what to feel or hear or whatever it is you want to experience in music.
Austin-based, electronic ambient texture pimp daddies Stars of the Lid are the soundtrack to the vast emptiness of walking on the moon (next time you're there...) or watching the world come slowly to life as dawn breaks over a solitary garden. It's slow going, the shifts in sensations almost undetectable (this is not music you would ever want to see live), but it is massive and inspirational.
Perfect for sleeping/reading/working/yoga/meditating/i don't really do most of these things but I can imagine...
Love LOVE and Their Refinement of the Decline and The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid.
Destroyer just dropped another bomb (pun intended) in the form of Kaputt, the first great album of the year, if you ask me. Every few days, I have a new favorite song, and I just keep finding little pockets with hidden $20 bills in 'em - both hallmarks of an album with serious shelf life.
But make no mistake, Kaputt is completely weird and improbable. Sleazy lite disco rock smothered in smooth jazz sax solos. It's still somehow unmistakably Destroyer though, with Dan Bejar's warbly croon and poetic ramblings, and a sound like watercolor. And if you were lucky enough to get down with Destroyer's Rubies, you'll find everything that made that album great here.
I think this one will give you the best idea of what to expect.
At this point, I have to put these cats in the Pantheon, with a robust catalog, a couple stunners (at least Rubies and Kaputt, if not This Night), a style of their own that evolves with every album, a compelling frontman/mastermind, high relistenability, and a whole lotta artistic integrity. There just aren't that many artists that can lay claim to all that.
The thing that's missing from so much of the 80s fetishism that we've seen in the last 10ish years is the feeling of it all. Needless to say, being alive in the 80s had a very distinct, very unique feel, and it's reflected in the commercials, your favorite movies, and especially the music. Yet nobody can quite seem to bring it back, hard as they may try. An "80s party," of course, feels absolutely nothing like the 1980s.
I think that time was so outlandish that it's impossible actually to empathize with our 80s selves and understand what the f--- they were thinking! This inability to relate makes imitation difficult. In contrast, I think you can kind of step into the 1960s, for example, intellectually and feel pretty comfortable.
ANYWAY, the point is, Twin Shadow have that feeling in spades. There are some clear musical touchstones, like the drama in Morrissey's voice, Depeche Mode-ish industrial dance rock, even a little early U2 sprinkled in. Cheap synths, drum machines, dance-y, expressive bass lines (I never realized how 80s that was!), lots of twinkling. But it's the vibe, the dreamy quality to the music, which can't quite be described - some strange combination of nostalgia and the future is now - or imitated, that I find so convincing and compelling. Listening to them is a little like stepping into a John Hughes film.
One good thing about writing a music blog that approximately two people read and even less people care about is that I don't have to put any stock into my tastemaking cred, perceived legitimacy, commercial prospects, etc. DB sent me a really interesting NYT article about the hype around My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and, more interestingly, the idea that year-end lists (and, I would add, entertainment criticism at large) are not just about institutional critics honoring certain albums but also about the symbolic importance of these tastemakers being seen and understood as honoring these certain albums.
I, on the other hand, don't have any of these institutional constraints (e.g. a readership)! I don't need my picks to be projections of music's important trends or hard-line statements about the importance of originality or thoughtful placements of artists within the entire historical trajectory of music. It doesn't matter that I'm a little out of the loop at the moment. I can just list a bunch of albums that made a musical mark on my own (fantastic!) year. What fun.
SO. I give you... from top to bottom... my musical year in a nutshell...
The Mac Daddy of 'em all: Big Boi - Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty
The other alpha dogs: LCD Soundsystem - This Is Happening Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest Gorillaz - Plastic Beach
The best of the rest: Stornoway - Beachcomber's Windowsill Avi Buffalo - s/t The Walkmen - Lisbon Julian Lynch - Mare Foxes in Fiction - Swung from the Branches Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Before Today
Job very well done, but times are tight, kids, maybe next year, aka Top 11-20: The Morning Benders - Big Echo Spoon - Transference Major Lazer & La Roux - Lazerproof Janelle Monáe - The Archandroid White Hinterland - Kairos Baths - Cerulean Joanna Newsom - Have One on Me Beach House - Teen Dream Glasser - Ring Laura Marling - I Speak Because I Can
EP of the year: James Blake - CMYK
Strongest performance from last year's lot (an underrated category) / secretly my favorite album of this year anyway: Wild Beasts - Two Dancers
Biggest surprise/leap: Gorillaz
Album that would have been in my 10 if I had gotten to it earlier: Twin Shadow - Forget
Best album I just don't have an entire afternoon to listen to: Joanna Newsom - Have One on Me
Most underrated: White Hinterland - Kairos
Most interesting: Glasser - Ring
Most confusing: Broken Social Scene - Forgiveness Rock Record
Best first half of an album: The Morning Benders - Big Echo
Biggest grower: Laura Marling - I Speak Because I Can
Most overrated album that I love: Beach House - Teen Dream
Most overrated album that I like: Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
Best band name ever / EP of the year runner-up: Tanlines - Settings
Albums that I missed while I was gone but am digging in '11: Girls - Broken Dreams Club EP Kid Cudi - Man on the Moon II: The Legend of Mr. Rager Sufjan Stevens - The Age of Adz Theophilus London - I Want You Panda Bear EPs Kanye
Best archeological dig: The Avalanches - Since I Left You
Poised for a monster in '11: oh, just a little band called Radiohead!!
...And my awards in the category of Jamz...
Anthem / advice of the year: 'Dance Yrself Clean' by LCD Soundsystem
Weirdest best paranoid-inducing hip-hop space jam with a monster horn outro that we should be transmitting into outer space instead of the stupid Beatles* maybe, going out on a limb here, ever: 'The Train Pt. II (Sir Lucious Left Foot Save the Day)' by Big Boi *(just kidding)
Fave new theme dance that will never catch on because we're all a bunch of tightwads / because it's so hard, trust me, I might have tried: 'The Tightrope'
Not that guilty pleasure: 'Tik Tok' by Ke$ha
The song that caved me / Chief Ike's hammer: 'Just Dance' by Lady Gaga
Most iconic: 'Single Ladies' by Beyonce
Secretly most plays without worrying about burnout / fave song that sounds like a lucid dream: '15 Ativan (Song for Erika)' by Foxes in Fiction
Best rip off of a Funkadelic riff: 'Rill Rill' by Sleigh Bells
Best epic: 'Siberian Breaks' by MGMT
What I wished all dance parties sounded like: 'Computer Face // Pure Being' by Flying Lotus
Best Panda Bear impersonation: 'Baseball Cards' by Wavves
Best line: "Gorillaz and the Boss Dogg, planet of the apes!" - who else?
