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Album Review: The Arcade Fire – The Suburbs [Merge]

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On 08/03/2010

In album review, BNM, lollapalooza 2010, music

“If you say city to people, people have no problem thinking of the city as rife with problematic, screwed-up people, but if you say suburbs – and I’m not the first person to say this, it’s been said over and over again in literature – there’s a sense of normalcy.” – Eric Bogosian

In its first couple seasons, the TV show “Weeds” had an opening credits sequence that was pure brilliance. It starts with a map of open land that quickly develops into the twisting roads of subdivisions with houses lined up right next to one another like a mouth full of teeth. Looking down those fully developed streets you notice that all the houses look similar, all the cars look similar, and even the people jogging around the neighborhood look similar. All of this backed by the Malvina Reynolds song “Little Boxes” from the 1960s which features the lyrics “Little boxes on the hillside/Little boxes made of ticky-tacky/Little boxes on the hillside/Little boxes all the same”. The song was written about the homogenization and conformity of middle-class suburbia, a place where the houses (“little boxes”) were made cheaply (“ticky-tacky”) and uniformly (“all the same”), and the people living there all followed the same life path to continue the cycle. And while that credits sequence along with Reynolds’ song wrap up in under 90 seconds, The Arcade Fire are now coming in decades later to dive headfirst into that same subject matter, but across a 64-minute album appropriately titled “The Suburbs”.

“Everybody’s youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

Win and Will Butler grew up in Houston, TX, a city that author Nigel Goslin once called “six suburbs in search of a center”. Calling that sort of environment home serves as a strong inspiration for much of the material on “The Suburbs”. The opening title track sets the theme and overall mood of what’s to come, sketching out ideas about “suburban war”, the follies (“we’re still screaming and running through the yard”) and perils of ADD-riddled youth (“by the time the first bombs fell/we were already bored”), along with the temporary nature of things (“all of the houses we built in the 70’s finally fall/meant nothing at all”). This suburban struggle is in stark contrast with how the band started their careers, opening their debut album “Funeral” with the exuberant “Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)”, in which two kids talk about breaking out of their snow-buried homes and living free among nature. The way it plays out, timeline and all, you could look at “Funeral” through the hopeful eyes of youth while “The Suburbs” serves as the sequel in which that same narrator is much older and after a hard life now views things from a darker and more pessimistic viewpoint. They may be different thematically, but they’re cut from the same relatable cloth that speaks to our times and empathizes with the good and bad moments of our lives. It’s for that same reason “Neon Bible” and its darkly-themed condemnation of religious zealots wasn’t as effective.

“Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope.” – Aristotle

One of the challenges that “The Suburbs” faces is the lack of massive and explosive choruses. That’s almost to be expected given the subject matter, but it does make the full album a little tougher to swallow than you might expect even though the individual songs are among their most accessible to date. The Arcade Fire don’t really do “small” songs, but the fair amount of restraint shown on tracks like “Modern Man” and “Deep Blue” is somewhat admirable. It’s about building towards something, and those calmer tracks are needed, and songs like “Wasted Hours” and “Sprawl (Flatland)” also fit that bill well without getting too bogged down in somber Neil Young-ian folk. There’s a whole segment on the second half of the album that starts to blend together if you’re not careful, and the loud and brash “Month of May” seems almost purposely inserted in there to break that up, with somewhat mixed results. But the track sequencing is actually more important than ever on “The Suburbs”, and aside from a few big highlights such as “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)”, “Half Light II (No Celebration)” and “Empty Room”, the rest of the album makes the best and greatest impact when listened to from beginning to end. Within that full album context, there’s very little that seems like it could be cut while maintaining the overall thematic arc.

“You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt, as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope and as old as your despair. In the central place of every heart there is a recording chamber. So long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer and courage, so long are you young. When your heart is covered with the snows of pessimism and the ice of cynicism, then, and then only, are you grown old.” – Douglas MacArthur

In this single song obsessed society however, it’s unlikely that most of the people purchasing this album will ever hear the entire thing in one sitting more than once or twice. Our society’s impatience and constant push for instant gratification is largely tackled on “We Used to Wait”. Butler begins the song by talking about the now old school art of letter writing, and how “now our lives are changing fast/hope that something pure can last”. In the final minute, he mentions what music is like today, stating, “We used to wait for it/now we’re screaming ‘sing the chorus again'” before indicting himself as well by changing the “we” to an “I”. Funny then how the song closes out with the chant “wait for it” while the chorus never does reappear as the song fades out and is replaced by the sound of cars speeding down the highway – another reference to our fast-paced society. There are other small indications that lyrically read like Butler has a problem with hipsters as well, which is amusing considering how many of them are Arcade Fire fans. The entirety of “Rococo” seems to be a pointed insult, with lines like, “Let’s go downtown and talk to the modern kids/they will eat right out of your hand/using great big words that they don’t understand” and making light of the unending blog hype cycle by saying “They build it up just to burn it back down”. Perhaps he was just being ironic.

“To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.” – Oscar Wilde

Sonically, “The Suburbs” is close to your average Arcade Fire record. There are plenty of things going on in each song to make them seem busy, but never TOO busy. You’ve got some standard big-time orchestral fare with tracks like the Owen Palett-arranged “Empty Room” and “Sprawl (Flatland)”. There’s the introspective folk of “Wasted Hours” and “Suburban War”. The plodding piano and guitars of “The Suburbs” and “We Used to Wait” are also familiar territory, as are the high energy electric guitars of “Ready to Start” and “Month of May”. Where the band switches things up are mostly on the two “sequel” songs of “Half Light II (No Celebration)” and “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)”. It’s there that they get heavy with the synths and push towards an 80s vibe. You can hear bits of Depeche Mode and Blondie pushing through, and there’s little coincidence that the album’s best song “Sprawl II” comes nearly face to face with the classic “Heart of Glass”. While an album with plenty of synths might work on some level for the Arcade Fire as the pipe organ did on “Neon Bible”, they were far better and smarter to blend their various trademarks together here, as it keeps things interesting across the 16 tracks and 64 minutes.

“It is an illusion that youth is happy. An illusion of those who have lost it.” – William Somerset Maugham

Those looking for The Arcade Fire to repeat their mindblowing success that was “Funeral” will more than likely come away from “The Suburbs” a little disappointed. Given that the two records are spiritual cousins however, there’s plenty to still get excited about. It’s wonderful to hear the band come out of the funk that “Neon Bible” put them in and return to something a little more basic. The concepts on “The Suburbs” are very much broad-stroked, and that’s on purpose to give you the easiest route to grasping and relating to the material. So there’s plenty of the old ideas, a touch of the new, and a maturity that’s necessary in these tough times. This may not be an album to get lost in given how steeped in reality it is, but what it lacks in escapism it more than makes up for with high, sweeping drama that reminds us, as George Bernard Shaw once said, “Youth is wasted on the young.” Living in the suburbs among the mass-produced houses and carefully planned subdivisions was never really as great as we seem to remember it. Win, Regine and the rest of the band spend “The Suburbs” trying to remind us of that, with the hope we’ll avoid making the same mistakes with our children as our parents made with us. Most of us have lived long enough to realize that life typically doesn’t go the way that we plan, and as life passes you by, so do many of your dreams. Depressing as that may be, we owe it to ourselves and to future generations to keep on trying each and every day to make this world a better place. If you’re looking for one, perhaps this record will be the wake-up call you need to avoid being drafted in yet another “suburban war”.

“Slums may well be breeding grounds of crime, but middle-class suburbs are incubators of apathy and delirium.” – Cyril Connolly

Stream the full album at NPR for a limited time

Buy “The Suburbs” from Amazon
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Album Review: Autolux – Transit Transit [TBD/ATP]

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On 08/02/2010

In album review, BNM, mp3, music

Before we get started, I’d like to take a brief moment to talk about the role Autolux has played in my life up to this point. In the fall of 2004, I was the Music Director at a radio station that played alternative/indie rock. At one of our weekly meetings, a new guy at the station asked me if I’d ever heard of the band Autolux. He was from California, and they were really starting to make waves out there. Their debut album “Future Perfect” was set to come out a few weeks later, and he played the song “Here Comes Everybody” for me. I was instantly charmed by the band, to the point where “Future Perfect” became something of an obsession. Not only did it become my favorite album of 2004, but also it ranks among my 10 absolute favorite records of the 00s. It was one week ago that I received word the guy who introduced me to Autolux had died, and investigators are saying it was most likely suicide. Sad as that is, especially since he was a good guy, I can’t help but wonder if he had the chance to hear the new Autolux record before his death. This review is dedicated to him, in memoriam.

Being told that your band sounds like a mixture of My Bloody Valentine, Sonic Youth and Can can’t be easy. In one sense that has to bring a sense of pride, but on another you’ve got to be wondering about the intense pressure that comes with the territory of such comparisons. Such is the burden that the trio known as Autolux have been forced to bear these past several years, all riding on the wave of their 2004 debut album “Future Perfect”. Also stemming from that debut were words of praise and support from such notable artists like Trent Reznor, Thom Yorke and Geoff Barrow, who invited Autolux to play the Portishead-curated UK All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in 2007. Though the band spent the majority of 2005-07 playing shows around the world, problems started when their Sony-owned record label DMZ went under and they were moved to Epic. It wasn’t long before budget concerns caused Epic to drop a number of artists, Autolux included. They had reportedly finished their second album in early 2008 but had no label to properly distribute it. The album’s first single “Audience No. 2” was released in May of 2008 to both help the band earn a little money and generate interest from other labels. The tough economy didn’t help either, and after whispers of deals being negotiated and album release date after album release date being set, Autolux’s sophmore record “Transit Transit” FINALLY lands in stores this week thanks to TBD/ATP Records. It’s only been 6 years since they first impacted around the globe, surely everyone still remembers them, right?

You’re forgiven if you have forgotten about Autolux, because it has been awhile and they weren’t the highest profile band to begin with. Given their penchant for densely ominous atmospherics blended with blasts of fuzzy electric guitars, Autolux can be forgiven for not attracting the masses. Part shoegaze, part dream pop and part eerie electronica, in 2004 their sound was a novelty and for the most part very backwards-leaning a la the influences mentioned at the beginning of this piece. That’s partly what made “Future Perfect” so exciting when it was released. Since then, the dream pop/shoegaze scene has really taken off into a full-blown revival, and suddenly Autolux is no longer standing relatively alone. Still, this band has massive talents and if anybody can pull off a brilliant resurrection it should be them. This is why the old adage “if you liked it the first time, you’ll like it again the second” pretty genuinely applies to “Transit Transit”. Even if it was recorded in 2007-08 as the band suggests it was, many of the songs that made the final cut have been around since at least ’04, as they were played live back then. Chances are they’ve evolved since their initial inception, but given their relative similarity to the band’s earlier work, one has to wonder exactly how much.

While sonically similar, one of the biggest issues with “Transit Transit” is the number of easily likeable, hook-filled songs. Where “Future Perfect” had moments like “Turnstile Blues”, “Subzero Fun”, “Sugarless” and “Here Comes Everybody” to stick in your head for extended periods of time, there’s little to none of that on “Transit Transit”. “Census” makes a little bit of an impact after a few repeated listens along with “Kissproof” and “Audience No. 2”, but none of them really grab you the same way the earlier stuff does. Part of that has to do with the band’s purposeful avoidance of traditional verse-chorus-verse son structures. In some senses though, this is for the better. The lack of marketable singles is instead replaced by pure atmosphere, which may be dark and moody but is also endlessly compelling. Listening to the album from start to finish is highly recommended, and each individual track sounds better when paired with what comes before and after it. In crafting a tone of such dread, Autolux rely less on the healthy mixture of quiet and noise as they did on “Future Perfect” and choose instead to restrain their louder impulses. Eugene Goreshter’s disaffected vocals play a smart role, as does Carla Azar’s always brilliant drumming and occasional sweet-as-sugar singing. Anytime Azar has the spotlight on her, as with the 6-minute album closer “The Science of Imaginary Solutions”, the album is better for it. But everyone’s contributions are exceptionally strong here, and that’s what keeps this record from being a sharp step down from Autolux’s debut.

After all the delays and trouble Autolux has gone through to bring us “Transit Transit”, you may be left wondering, “Is this it?”. Well, it is, and it will have to do. You’d fare best just pretending that this was any other sophmore effort and forgetting about the timetable. With Autolux’s old school shoegaze/dream pop sound mixed with the wild array of instrumental oddities and electronic skitters, many of the songs have a timeless sort of quality to them anyways. Sadly, without a fair number of captivating hooks or the quiet-loud dynamic of their first album, “Transit Transit” doesn’t quite succeed as well as most might expect. Yes, the mood is perfect all the way through, but in terms of repeat value this can be a little challenging. If “Future Perfect” was one of the better records of the last decade, “Transit Transit” will be lucky if it’s remembered once December’s year-end listmaking season arrives. It’s most definitely worth any time and money you spend on it, but this is ultimately a record from a band looking towards the next evolution of their sound. In other words, as the title itself hints, transition is the name of the game. Whether it’s the seamless movement from one track to the next or from record label to record label, Autolux is moving on. Let’s hope the next album doesn’t take 6 years to be released, and that it marks the start of a bold new era for a band that makes the comparisons to other legendary acts almost entirely justified.

Autolux – Supertoys

Buy “Transit Transit” from Amazon

Album Review: Jaill – That’s How We Burn [Sub Pop]

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On 07/29/2010

In album review, mp3, music


The Milwaukee-based band Jaill has been around for 8 years, though chances are you’ve never heard of them until right now or at the very least earlier this year. They’re freshly signed to Sub Pop Records after years of paying their dues and making crappy bedroom recordings. What finally served as the foursome’s big break was their 2009 album “There’s No Sky (Oh My My)”, which they were particularly proud of and decided to promote as best they could. That meant getting copies out to bloggers and radio stations in addition to going on a national tour. The hard work paid off, as somebody at Sub Pop got a copy of the record and expressed interest in the band. Why did it take them several years to finally get signed? There seem to be a number of factors, from the exceptionally lo-fi (poor recording quality) of their earliest material to a band lineup that was constantly changing to general laziness when it came to self-promotion and touring. All the while they were in obscurity, Jaill had been building a more than solid catalogue of jangly guitar pop songs. Thanks to their Sub Pop debut “That’s How We Burn”, the band is out to prove they deserve every scrap of attention that’s come their way in the past year.

Jaill aren’t going to reinvent the wheel. They’re playing in a sandbox where so many have been before and are exploiting a sound that’s all too common among up-and-coming indie bands these days. It takes a special kind of band to break free from the pack and establish a solid following. With “That’s How We Burn”, Jaill may have done exactly that. As an introduction to the band and album, “The Stroller” has the band leading off with a muscular number that’s got a solid hook and a little bit of a psychedelic edge to it. Impressive as it may be, the next track “Everyone’s Hip” is pure guitar pop with a bouncy melody that gets even better if it’s sunny and warm outside while you listen to it. “Thank Us Later” has a sly surf rock edge to it and even recalls The Walkmen a little bit thanks to the guitar work, though Jaill singer Vinnie Kircher’s vocals sound nowhere near the lackadaisical wail of Hamilton Leithauser’s. Though it’s remarkably sparse with primarily an acoustic guitar and vocals, “Summer Mess” is one of the album’s highlights thanks to how it shakes things up stylistically. It’s one of the few moments on the record where bouncy electric guitars aren’t the norm, which can start to feel a little blended together after awhile. Still, the middle half of the album has a great streak of highlights from the early R.E.M.-like “She’s My Baby” and the positively rocking “Snake Shake” which at nearly 4 minutes long is the longest song on the album and also the most complicated – in a good way. There’s a distinct 60’s pop vibe about “Baby I”, which slows things down a half step before the pulse-racing excitement that “How’s the Grave” provides that’s reminiscent of a Pavement song on speed. Finally the title track ends the album on a typically bright and upbeat note with another solid jangly guitar melody. The whole thing is over and done within a mere 30 minutes, and though it does start to blend together for a bit on the second half, the speed at which it passes keeps it from really harming your overall impression of the record.

One listen to “That’s How We Burn” and you should be convinced that Jaill are a band that’s going places. All that time spent in obscurity has left them with enough time to hone their craft and come out swinging. Not every track quite hits with the force that’s needed to bring this band success on a massive level just yet, but there’s a whole lot of promise that makes it fully understandable as to why they were able to get a record deal with one of the best indie labels around. The hooks are dynamite, and lyrically Kircher is pretty brilliant in the way he blends the lighthearted music with words that are anything but. Perhaps if they shake up their sound a little and work harder to incorporate more bits from other genres then they’ll really start to make waves. A couple ballads wouldn’t hurt either, instead of charging straight through every song like a punk rock band on a mission. Whatever the solution, Jaill are definitely worth checking out in the here and now, as “That’s How We Burn” makes for yet another great album that’s ripe for soundtracking summer fun whether it’s hanging out with friends or simply driving around with all the windows down and a cool breeze in your hair.

Jaill – The Stroller

Buy “That’s How We Burn” from Sub Pop

Album Review: Menomena – Mines [Barsuk]

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On 07/28/2010

In album review, BNM, mp3, music

The way Menomena records music is a little different compared to how almost every other band does it. In an effort to develop their songs as organically and democratically as possible, the band builds their songs one piece at a time, using a looping program to improvise a riff or a drum part or whatever other instrument strikes their fancy. Each member of the trio takes a turn recording a snippet before passing the microphone onto the next guy, who then builds from that. If you’ve ever seen an artist like Andrew Bird perform solo, the way he pieces together his songs via the use of looping pedals is similar to what Menomena does, only their style is far more improvisational. It’s led to some fascinating creative choices, first brought to light via their 2004 debut album “I Am the Fun Blame Monster” and more recently on 2007’s “Friend and Foe”. It’s been yet another 3 year gap as a testament to the band’s arduous recording process, which means that Menomena owes us another album. “Mines” fulfills that imaginary debt, and it turns out to be their most realistically composed and beautiful record to date.

With so many bands releasing compelling debut albums and then falling by the wayside with follow-ups that don’t live up to the hype, Menomena are working on an opposite track, learning from their past albums to evolve. Not to say that their previous efforts weren’t good (both are great in fact), but it’s the little things, the things you don’t always notice initially, that proves the band is growing little by little. The songs on “Mines” are tighter, smarter and better crafted than anything they’ve done previously. It’s also a quieter album, choosing to rely more on sheer nuance and evoking a certain emotion rather than attempting to be particularly catchy or easily digestible. You need to give it a few listens before many of the songs really start to sink in and reveal their depth, and considering it’s a pretty gorgeous ride from the get-go, hopefully racking up the repeat plays won’t be too cumbersome. Picking out the individual instruments as they weave in and out of each song is part of the fun, and you’ll find everything from saxophones to trumpets and piano and xylophones, often within the same track. It’d feel random if it wasn’t so gorgeous and natural at the same time.

Outside of the aesthetic value “Mines” provides, there’s also plenty of fascinating lyrics to keep your mind occupied. Trying to determine some sort of logical meaning behind what’s being said might prove to be an impossible challenge given that much of the lyrics are probably just various phrases shoved together. But even if there’s no specific pattern or storyline you can easily catch onto, either the word arrangement or simply the way they’re sung is wholly compelling. The band will sometimes take a singular phrase and repeat it several times in a row in different ways that gives it a new strength every time. “Dirty Cartoons” features a chorus of “I’d like to go home” that seems plain reading it on paper, but given Menomena’s dynamite harmonies combined with the forceful instrumental, it hits mighty hard. The same goes for the nuance of a line like “All this could be yours someday” from “Five Little Rooms”, which makes it one of the more memorable and catchy tracks on the album. Equally great is also the brash and sheer energy of “Taos”, a track that’s probably closest to the Menomena of old and makes for possibly the best song on the entire album.

Speaking of memorable and catchy, certainly one of the complaints about “Mines” will be that most of the songs lack the hooks previous Menomena albums have had. There are fewer verse-chorus-verse songs than in the past, and the record is generally slower which can strip away much of the band’s poppier side. But like any piece of great art, the austere beauty is what keeps you coming back, not so much because of how fun or immediate it is. Sigur Ros never takes any flak for crafting epic, 7-minute songs with no choruses, so why should Menomena get different treatment just because most of their songs are about 5 minutes and only sometimes have choruses? Perhaps it’s because Menomena has proven with songs like “Wet and Rusting” or “Evil Bee” that they can deliver incredible pop-leaning songs, and that they’re not doing as much about it on “Mines” can be frustrating for some.

Fans of Menomena from their previous albums shouldn’t have much trouble liking “Mines”. The band has been around long enough to create certain expectations with each one of their songs, and thankfully that’s something they continue to deliver on. There’s still the army of different instruments played by each of the band members in a rotating fashion, that pop up at moments that might seem so wrong but feel so right. That’s part of Menomena’s brilliance, and they have it on full display with this new record. Most everything’s improved on some level or another from what they’ve done before, though that’s also caused many of their songs to be that much more impenetrable. It’ll probably take some work to buy into what’s being sold here, but like some of the best things in life, the reward is worth the trip. Yet again Menomena have crafted another gem, and one worthy of being remembered at the end of the year. Buy a copy and discover the magic of “Mines” for yourself.

Menomena – Five Little Rooms

Buy “Mines” from Amazon

Album Review: Best Coast – Crazy For You [Mexican Summer]

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On 07/26/2010

In album review, BNM, music

When searching for the ultimate summer album, the key components to keep an ear out for are sunny, upbeat and fun melodies that are filled to the brim with hooks and never get too obtuse or complicated. Should be simple enough, right? After all, there’s got to be a reason why Katy Perry and her “California Gurls” are so popular at the moment. The issue with pop music like that though is how it’s spoon-fed to the masses using the “tricks of the trade”, forcing songs on you via radio and video exposure rather than letting the public choose for themselves what’s good. It’s a tragedy, and it takes away from other great artists that might be making even better music. Robyn is one person who comes to mind. The other is Bethany Cosentino. She’s the frontwoman for a little trio known as Best Coast, and their debut album “Crazy For You” is perhaps the hottest thing to come out of this summer and that’s despite soaring temperatures.

What makes “Crazy For You” so attractive is the sincere charm it oozes out of every musical pore. Cosentino is quite the personality as evidenced by both a highly entertaining Twitter account and a live show that’s simply a blast to watch. She writes songs that tend to deal with four basic subjects: boys, weed, summer, and her (awesome) cat Snacks. Her lyrics are immensely straightforward, as you learn from the very first track “Boyfriend”, where the deceptively simple line “I wish he was my boyfriend” gets repeated enough that it stuck in your head less than halfway through the 2.5 minute song. That’s the sort of thing that happens not just once, but several times across the entire record. Over half of the dozen songs on “Crazy For You” are catchy and light enough to be singles, even as they traverse through various stylistic shifts. Guitarist Bobb Bruno is responsible for many of the melodies that move anywhere from surf rock to garage rock and through classically informed 60’s pop. It’s a little bit of an adjustment from the first couple Best Coast EPs released last year, which pushed pretty hard on the fuzzy lo-fi aesthetic. Now that lo-fi has all but been shown the door and Best Coast has a record label’s financial backing to actually record something with clarity, they jump at the chance and the results have turned out better than most might have anticipated. By placing Cosentino’s vocals front and center on close to every song, she moves up into a league with notables like Liz Phair and (pre-drugs) Courtney Love, both of whom have established strong reputations for emotionally affective and tonally strident singing. Blunt honesty also comes along with that territory, and though you can’t imagine Cosentino writing a song like “Fuck and Run”, she doesn’t mean it any less when singing a line like “I want you so much”.

The barbs thrown Best Coast’s way largely have to do with a lack of sonic and subject matter diversity. Apparently writing a bunch of songs about hook-ups, break-ups and make-ups gets stale rather quickly, despite the fact that there are already millions more tracks that deal with that exact same subject matter. Hell, leveling that complaint about Best Coast is like saying The Beatles weren’t very good because of all those damn songs they wrote about love. Besides that, “Crazy For You” is a mere 31 minutes long, with only one track barely scraping above the 3 minute mark. You’re not going to get a full length album much shorter than that, so the same-ness of the record bothers you, take comfort that it will be over in the amount of time it takes you to sit through an episode of your favorite sitcom.

At this point in time we’re about 1/3rd of the way through the official summer season. Temperatures are scorching hot more often than not, and you can feel free to hang out at the beach provided it doesn’t rain too much. It’s somewhat telling that the cover art of “Crazy For You” features a beach-like animated scene of water and palm trees and sun, with Cosentino’s cat Snacks hanging out in the middle of it. This is the perfect sort of album to listen to in one of those sunny, oceanside situations whether you have a cat with you or not. In other words, it’s THE summer record of 2010. It’s also one of the year’s best. Please do yourself a favor and pick up a copy. With the weather like it is right now, the sooner the better.

Buy “Crazy For You” from Amazon

Album Review: Mountain Man – Made the Harbor [Bella Union/Partisan]

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On 07/22/2010

In album review, mp3, music

Some albums are just best listened to alone. Find yourself a quiet environment, be it a bedroom or an uncrowded park, and strap on the ‘ol headphones while you mentally “check out” for awhile to enjoy the music. If you choose the right record for the situation, the results can be transcendent and revealing. On the flip side of that coin, you can completely ruin an album if you listen to it in the wrong context. Such is the case with the new album from the East Coast trio of ladies known as Mountain Man. Their second album (the first with halfway decent distribution) is titled “Made the Harbor”, and it demands a silent room and a calm demeanor to be fully appreciated.

At first glance, Mountain Man has the sound of a female version of Fleet Foxes. They’re all folk melodies and intense, 3-part harmonies. When Amelia Randall Meath, Molly Erin Sarle and Alexandra Sauser-Monnig put their voices together, beauty happens of the highest order. They’re so confident in that, many of the songs on “Made the Harbor” are performed completely a capella. When there are instruments, an acoustic guitar or two is about all you’re going to get, but that’s really all you need. It’s rather exciting to have songs so sparsely composed yet sounding so rich and refined. More than anything else, the album feels like a throwback to the all-girl groups of the 1950’s, when times were far different and more innocent than they are today. The lyrics are also pretty old fashioned as well, talking about animals, nature and young maidens. Helping to complete that portrait is the fact that the album was recorded at an abandoned ice cream parlor from the early 20th century. And even smarter was the move to produce it completely roughshod, leaving in all the little imperfections that come with avoiding a traditional studio. So if you listen carefully you’ll hear the occasional shuffle of feet or background noise. It’s relentlessly charming and austere, which is part of what makes it so unique and worthwhile in today’s digital age.

Perhaps the best thing about “Made the Harbor” is how timeless it is. The album could just as easily have been a “lost recording” from the past just recently discovered as much as it is something that was made yesterday. These girls know how to write a compelling folk song that can stick with you if you let it. Of course that partly requires the ability to sit still and give this record your attention and patience. This isn’t an album for everybody, and it runs into the occasional problem of a song feeling only half finished, but for those who can fully appreciate the sweet siren call of Mountain Man, it’s the sort of delight that only comes around once in a blue moon.

Mountain Man – Soft Skin

Buy “Made the Harbor” from Amazon

Album Review: The Books – The Way Out [Temporary Residence Limited]

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On 07/20/2010

In album review, mp3, music

The duo known as The Books have always been composers of the highest order. Nick Zammuto and Paul de Jong first met a little over 10 years ago when they lived in the same New York apartment building. One night over a neighborly dinner de Jong showed Zammuto a project he was working on, which involved mashing up various bits of recorded audio and video into one massive collage. It was out of that experience the band was born, and together they’ve been picking up interesting recordings wherever they can find them (mostly in thrift shops) for the purposes of chopping them up and placing them in the stew they like to call songs. By the time 2005 rolled around, The Books were ready to release their third album of original music with found sounds on top, like sprinkles on a delicious sundae. It has now been 5 years since we’ve heard any new material from the band, and the extensive delay has been the result of both taking time off for family along with going out on tour for the first times in their lives. After nearly 2 years of sporadic recording, this week sees the release of the new Books album “The Way Out”. If you’ve heard a Books album before, this is by no means a radical departure from their older material, but it does mark a progression.

It’s easy to get the impression that The Books are merely slapping wacky audio bits together and then playing quiet instrumentals underneath them. They are working on an abstract concept all their own, so one would be forgiven for suggesting the guys are just haphazardly throwing shit against a wall and seeing what sticks. No, their process is far more refined and carefully motivated by the mood and tone of their instrumentals, the samples being conscious choices with similar themes and matched to evoke certain reactions from the listener. Take the track “I Didn’t Know That”, which strings together a number of children and adults all saying the title with varying degrees of enthusiasm. The skittering drums and jazzy guitar brim with the excitement of freshly gained knowledge and also the innocence of youth. Equally fascinating is “A Cold Freezin’ Night”, which loops a quickly picked acoustic guitar with African-style drums while samples of little kids describing how they’re going to kill someone run over the top. Is it intended as a social commentary with a darker instrumental, or is it more about how silly the harmless yet vivid threats we often made in grade school are today? One thing you can count on with The Books is that they’re not going to tell you what to think or how to think it, but instead like the audio samples they piece together, there’s more than one right answer. Of course that’s not always the case. One listen to “The Story of Hip-Hop” tells you virtually all you need to know, with an old man telling a children’s story about a jumping bunny rabbit backed by a beat that might work well in a rap track. It’d be pretty funny if it weren’t so on the nose.

Even when they miss their target or play down to their audience, The Books still provide plenty of challenges in their songs. Between the multitude of samples and the variety of instruments they play on every track, you discover something new on almost every listen. They may not be the catchiest things in the world, but what they lack in easy memorability they more than make up for in sheer creativity and originality. “The Way Out” features the band taking things farther away from the acoustic-based instrumentals of their previous albums in favor of a more electronica feel thanks to an assortment of manufactured beats, synths and digital trash. It gives the entire record a more unified feel, and that leads to stronger melodies and better accessibility than The Books have ever had before. Call it a step in the right direction. While it’s tempting to call this the band’s best to date, there are a few flimsier moments towards the end of the record that fail to fully connect. The additional electronic elements also don’t do them any favors when it comes to crafting emotional warmth, though the harrowingly beautiful acoustic number “All You Need Is A Wall” is certainly an exception. Of course that’s also the only track on the album that doesn’t use samples liberally and primarily focuses on Zammuto’s hushed vocals. At this point it would seem that what The Books really need is a sonic balance, where they can continue to use their new wider palette of instrumental exploration with their loads of samples to craft a record that’s weird, complicated, fun, and sensitive from moment to moment. “The Way Out” comes close, but needs just a touch more refinement before it’ll be a genuine home run.

The Books – A Cold Freezin’ Night

Buy “The Way Out” from Amazon

Album Review: Mystery Jets – Serotonin [Rough Trade]

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On 07/09/2010

In album review, mp3, music

Mystery Jets are a difficult band to pin down. They’ve had a sketchy history thus far, appearing to make large inroads across Europe but failing to ignite in America. Of course their U.S. album release history has been an odd one, with Dim Mak releasing a compilation of their early material in 2007 and nothing after that. Prior to that U.S.-only compilation, the band had released a full length in Europe. Since then, they’ve released another album “Twenty One” in 2008 via 679 Recordings. It did not receive official U.S. distribution. Now, thanks largely to a fresh deal cut with Rough Trade, Mystery Jets are officially poised to reach a full worldwide audience with their new record “Serotonin”. It’s out Tuesday, and the hope is it will satisfy fans of the band’s previous work while grabbing a whole new collective that’s never heard of them before.

Over the course of their first couple albums, Mystery Jets’ sound has somewhat changed. They’re now better at finding hooks and putting them to their best use, but the cost has been to take away some of their weirder quirks to head in a much more mainstream direction. The band’s last album “Twenty One” was the first strong step in that more standard pop direction, and it left fans of their debut “Making Dens” scratching their heads a little bit. The early stuff was so creatively fulfilling and had an air of true originality about it. The last record pulled back sharply on the psychedelia, along with some odd time signatures, to be replaced by verse-chorus-verse tracks with an 80’s synth flair. “Serotonin” continues that same pattern, maybe even on a larger scale than before. There’s a large number of songs that sound like a whole lot of fun and contain choruses that soar and bury their way into your subconscious whether you want them to or not. The lyrics also cover that one topic everybody can relate to – the ups and downs of love. Opener “Alice Springs” features a chorus where singer Blaine Harrison lists the things he’d do for a girl (stand in the line of fire, bend over backwards), because “I don’t have nothing if I don’t have you”. On “Too Late to Talk”, things are a little down and Harrison is wondering why his girl walked away from their relationship. It also contains the pretty brilliant line, “You were the apple of my eye/my Phoebe Cates from Ridgemont High”, which is only half a cliche. There are a fair share of lines across the album that use common phrases like “apple of my eye”, and while they can be associated with lazy songwriting, if they’re coupled with something smart it balances out the problem. Harrison only manages that about half the time.

“Serotonin” may not be the best record Mystery Jets have ever made, but what it lacks in creative brilliance it more than makes up for with fun and memorable songs. To put it another way, Mystery Jets have proven they can write majorly successful songs that audiences love, the question is whether or not U.S. audiences will be exposed to and embrace them or not. Europe has never been a problem for these guys, and hopefully this time around they’ll push harder for success in America. This record has the sort of content that will make fans of the first MGMT and Killers albums very happy. It’s 80’s nostalgia flavor put together in a very modern way. There’s hypithetically 4-5 legitimate singles on “Serotonin”, all that’s needed are a few forward-thinking radio people to put them on the air. Most music blogs will probably either ignore or get overly critical when talking about the album because it does sound like a lot of what’s already out in the marketplace. What sets Mystery Jets apart is their uncanny ability to write and compose songs that are more structurally sound than their peers. Coming up with a single smart hook is tough enough, but this band pulls it off half the time and shines above the rest because of it. Your mind may not be blown, but at the very least it’ll be distracted for awhile. It is summertime after all, and we need a break from the really “next level shit” now and then.

Mystery Jets – Flash A Hungry Smile
Mystery Jets – Dreaming of Another World

Preorder “Serotonin” from Amazon

Album Review: M.I.A. – /\/\/\Y/\ [N.E.E.T./XL/Interscope]

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On 07/08/2010

In album review, BNM, mp3, music

Tres provocateur! Nobody’s ever accused M.I.A. of being subtle. If you honestly believe she ever has been, well, you really don’t know Maya Arulpragasam. Her first two albums “Arular” and “Kala” both proved that she most definitely doesn’t shy away from topics she feels are important, primarily when it comes to war and famine and genocide. Compared to other artists at the forefront of the hip hop, R&B and the laundry list of other genres that somehow fit into her complex music, M.I.A. doesn’t buy into the whole “money, guns and hos” standards of everyone else. It’s one of the big reasons why she’s risen above the fray to gain respect among music bloggers and critics across the globe. The mainstream success of the song “Paper Planes”, with its strategic placement in movies such as “Pineapple Express” and “Slumdog Millionaire”, has now catapulted M.I.A. to a whole new level of popularity. And despite the weight of expectation and record label investments on her shoulders, M.I.A. hasn’t backed away from anything or anyone. When the New York Times ran a piece on her in preparation for her new album, they weren’t exactly kind to Maya. In addition to misquoting her and saying she has some sort of vendetta against Bono, there were also words suggesting that today’s M.I.A. is a rich, upper class woman who only uses the poor and war-torn people as props in her songs. As it did seem to reflect poorly on her, M.I.A. took to writing angry missives against the article and even provided enough evidence to cause the NYT to issue a small retraction on a portion of what was written. Call it just another day in the life of Maya Arulpragasam. Well, her third record, painstakingly titled “/\/\/\Y/\” (henceforth to be referred to as “MAYA” for obvious reasons), is out next week, and no matter how controversial her personal life may get, many are waiting with nervous energy to hear if M.I.A. can keep her streak of brilliant and progressive records alive.

If you’re not living steadfastly in the digital age only, you may have taken notice of the cover art for “MAYA”. It features an apparent cut-and-paste job of a number of YouTube timeline bars, with M.I.A.’s face buried behind them, her eyes being the only thing clearly visible. Below that fray is M.I.A. written in stacked gold bars and surrounded on both sides by brick walls that are falling apart. The reason the cover is worth paying attention to is because it says so very much about what this album has in terms of content. Unlike her first two records, which were made under severe financial constraints, M.I.A. now has plenty of money and producers begging to work with her after “Paper Planes” came off huge. Whether or not this success has changed her is up for debate. What “MAYA” is, to many degrees, is a record about technology and how our world is affected by it. This theme is apparent right from the get-go, when on the opening track “The Message”, she claims that Google is being used by the government to spy on people. There’s paranoia like that surrounding technology all over the album, and while much of it can seem crackpot and flat-out wrong, that doesn’t mean it’s not fascinating or good. Additionally, to back all this up, much of the record is comprised of electronic samples, strung together by her various producers (Diplo, Switch, Rusko, Blaqstarr). Compared to the world music and tribal elements which so dominated her first couple albums, this evokes a sharper contrast with the very technology M.I.A. is railing against being the same things used to help make her songs. This metaphor extends even beyond the context of this album, and between her controversial personal life, also shows how M.I.A. herself is a contradiction in so many ways. It’s also in this same way that you get tracks on typical M.I.A. subject matter such as terrorism and genocide in Third World countries while later on you’ll hear her go on about her iPhone or the amount of money she has in the bank. All of these things are quintessential Maya Arulpragasam, while at the same time they are not. And looking back to that technology-stricken cover, not only is there a computer cut-and-paste mess everywhere along with the bars of gold, but simply examining the way her face is framed with only her eyes peering out at you both suggests she’s hiding behind these elements while at the same time making a reference to the Muslim world in which a face-covering Burka is traditional garb for women. Whether or not any of these ideas splayed out on the cover are actually intended to function as such is a topic for debate. After all, it could be just some slapdash attempt to look cool – though that’s never really been M.I.A.’s style.

Specifically speaking for the songs and how they sound overall, things are darker and heavier on “MAYA” than they’ve ever been before. After the fuzzed out and dark minute-long intro of “The Message”, the first noises you hear on the track “Steppin’ Up” are that of chainsaws and power drills mixed with some heavy bass drum beats. It’s the start of what will eventually be an industrial-heavy record with occasional splashes of pop in between. Compared to the world music and African-based sounds of her previous two albums, this is a big change. While that could be viewed as a positive thing that prevents M.I.A. from continuing to play off a unique sound that might have started to get a little stale, plenty of others might not see it that way. Combine these hard-hitting new sounds with a number of songs that use beats you’d hear in your average hip hop record today and suddenly it’s easy M.I.A.’s originality into question. Of course she’s not the one crafting these beats, her producers are and she’s just writing lyrics off of them. But a track like “XXXO” functions as a perfectly marketable pop song, complete with Jay-Z on the remix, because it’s got a hook that’s easy on the ears. That’s not something you would have expected on a record like “Kala” or “Arular”, so given that slice of disingenuous pie you have to wonder what else doesn’t work as expected. Perhaps the biggest risk that M.I.A. takes on “MAYA” is with the song “Lovalot”, which is by most accounts a terrorism love song. To be clearer, the song isn’t about a love of terrorism, but rather about two terrorists that fall in love. This sort of controversial topic is nothing new for M.I.A., but between the unique sound the song brings forward combined with her vocal stretching of the oft-repeated phrase “I really love a lot” so that it sounds closer to “I really love Allah”, it’s understandable why it’s getting so much attention. The good news is that despite the extreme challenges that track presents, it’s also probably the best song she’s done since “Paper Planes”. Elsewhere towards the end of the album you get a few rip-roaring guitar cuts in the form of “Born Free” and “Meds and Feds”. Suicide’s song “Ghost Rider” is sampled on “Born Free” and originally debuted as a very controversial music video you can watch online should you know where to look. Many are saying the song loses quite a bit when the context of the video has been taken away from it, but if you haven’t seen or refuse to watch said video, you should like it just fine. As far as “Meds and Feds” goes, it samples a guitar riff from the Sleigh Bells song “Treats”, and much like that track, this one’s also a delight. It’s fascinating to hear M.I.A. get so dark and gritty in these instances, and not only is it something she’s never done before but it’s something that few hip-hop related acts have the balls to even consider attempting. That she pulls it off quite well is testament to her strengths as an artist. “MAYA” ends on the anti-gravity relaxant of “Space”, which sounds just like the area outside of our planet’s atmosphere. Freed from all the noise and prying eyes of today’s technology, M.I.A. gets a moment to finally relax and take some personal time. It’s as if she’s cut loose the tethers we’ve all become attached to and has returned to a simpler time when all of life’s burdens weren’t thrust upon us by our own nature. For a record that so rabidly attacks the digital age, “Space” functions as the calm after the storm.

There’s a strong reason to believe that “MAYA” will sharply divide M.I.A. fans, that is if her dischordant personality hasn’t already. Her music has always been challenging, and though in some aspects this new album relies on old hip hop and pop stereotypes at times, this could be her most difficult record to date. From a purely compositional perspective, there’s plenty to like about it, and it’s definitely easier on the ears than much of the obscurist world music fare that was pushed forwards on those first two albums. Lyrically, the frequent criticisms of technology may very well provoke anger among the many technophiles that are certainly fans of hers, but that anger can probably be taken with a grain of salt. After all, M.I.A. is all about her Twitter account, and she almost assuredly owns an iPhone, so to say that she’s technology-averse because her lyrics say so is just another one of those big contradictions that defines Maya Arulpragasam. She’s a woman of many layers, and “MAYA” is able to present another bit of that to those who will listen. There’s not exactly another crossover hit like “Paper Planes” on the album, but in the darker, more industrial-based corners there’s still plenty compelling about it. You’d be wise to sample it and make your own determinations as to if it’s worth your time.

Non-Album MP3s:
M.I.A. – Tequkilla (Lost my fone out wiv Nicki Minaj Remix) (ZIP)
M.I.A. – Haters

Preorder “/\/\/\Y/\” from Amazon

Album Review: School of Seven Bells – Disconnect From Desire [Ghostly International/Vagrant]

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On 07/06/2010

In album review, mp3, music

The band School of Seven Bells is comprised of twin sisters Alejandra and Claudia Deheza (formerly of On! Air! Library!) and Benjamin Curtis (formerly of Secret Machines). Their 2008 debut album “Alpinisms” was an immensely compelling piece of shoegazey dream pop that smartly used each members’ specific talents to their collective advantage. Thanks to songs like “Half Asleep”, “Connjur” and “My Cabal”, there were also plenty of hooks to go around amidst the haze and fuzz the guitars and synths often brought to the table. Throw in some stellar vocal harmonies and it’s a winning combination that earned the group the right sort of buzz and year-end praise from the right kinds of people. After spending the last couple years touring relentlessly, School of Seven Bells took what little time off they had and used it to craft their sophmore effort “Disconnect From Desire”, which will be available everywhere next week.

From the very first notes of opening track “Windstorm”, there’s a noticeable difference in the band’s sound compared to their debut. The vocals are no longer shoved into the background, wrapped in effects or overdubbed to give them more heft. Instead, the Deheza sisters come in more clearly than ever and interweave with one another with all the beauty and grace you might expect. The synths are also much heavier on this new album, maintaining the darker dream-like state of affairs but lightening up on the shoegaze guitar work. And as for drums, the trio continues to use a drum machine, though they’ve recently recruited a drummer to play with them at shows. These adjustments serve the band well when it comes to maintaining a cohesive sound across the entire album. Many of the songs blend into one another and there are large segments that feel like continuations from the same sonic palette and lyrical themes. All these changes are big enough to get your attention, but small enough that it doesn’t affect the overall sound/mood the band has previously established. In other words, if you liked the sound of “Alpinisms”, there’s still a high likelihood that you’ll also enjoy what the band is doing on “Disconnect From Desire”.

That doesn’t mean the album is without problems though. Where “Alpinisms” had its greatest successes, “Disconnect From Desire” doesn’t quite deliver. The presumably smart move of creating a more cohesive sounding record also works against the band in this case, as there are large sections that fail to stand out or stick with you for an extended period of time. Earworms like “Iamundernodisguise” or “Prince of Peace” that followed the standard verse-chorus-verse structure could effectively stick in your head for days at a time. They were also well within the boundaries of your average pop song, averaging 3-4 minutes in length across the album, save for a couple tracks. On “Disconnect from Desire”, the average track length is 5+ minutes, and the choruses come around less frequently in favor of atmospherics and general beauty. In other words, it sounds really nice, but there’s a chance you might wind up bored by it after awhile. The album may only span 10 tracks and about 60 minutes, but don’t be surprised if you start checking your watch after 30 minutes wondering exactly when things are going to wrap up. Of course the shortest stuff is also the easiest to swallow, from first single “Windstorm” to “Bye Bye Bye” (which is NOT an N’Sync cover). It’s in these moments that School of Seven Bells sound their richest and most engaging – in other words, like they did on “Alpinisms”.

So “Disconnect From Desire” isn’t quite the home run that the band and many others had hoped for. It is still a largely fascinating album that does well by itself in crafting a solid and cohesive soundscape to get lost inside of. In other words, it’s a good record to put on when you’ve got enough free time to commit to listening start to finish with little to distract you. It’s when you don’t have that time and are looking for only the highlights that you might have a little trouble. Ultimately the lack of highly memorable songs is what hurts this sophmore effort, but not as much as you might reasonably expect. With all the talent this band packs vocally via the gorgeously unique harmonies of the Deheza sisters and instrumentally via the smooth and hazy soundscapes that Benjamin Curtis plays a large part in crafting, there’s too much they’re doing right to call this album anywhere near bad. Instead it plays out as only slightly weaker than their amazing debut. If you’re new to School of Seven Bells, “Alpinisms” is still probably your best bet for an introduction, but “Disconnect From Desire” continues to pay lip service to those looking to journey a little further down the rabbit hole.

School of Seven Bells – Windstorm

Preorder “Disconnect From Desire” from Amazon

Album Review: Lissie – Catching a Tiger [Columbia/Fat Possum]

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On 06/30/2010

In album review, mp3, music

The singer-songwriter simply known as Lissie is geographically challenged in more ways than one. First off, though she’s lived in Illinois for more years than she hasn’t, Lissie no longer calls the state home. Shortly after she was expelled from high school several years back, she took off for the West Coast, eventually settling in California but with a brief detour in Colorado to do some college there for a couple years. When discussing Lissie, many writers either say she’s an Illinois girl while others will call her a Californian. Where she prefers to be from officially is up to her. Secondly, despite writing songs in the tradition of great American songwriters and incorporating elements of folk, blues and country into her songs, Lissie has yet to make it big in the U.S. Instead, she’s blown up huge in Europe, in particular England, and that’s just a tad fascinating. Here in America, Lissie is just another struggling girl with a guitar, though she was one of the opening acts for Lenny Kravitz when he toured the country in 2008. Lissie’s music has also been used in a number of television shows including “House” and “Grey’s Anatomy”. Whether you know it or not, chances are you’ve heard at least one of her songs in one capacity or another. Now it just so happens that Lissie’s debut album “Catching a Tiger” was released in the UK very recently, and before the momentum catches up on this side of the pond, here’s a review for you.

Lissie’s sound is far from revolutionary. There are hundreds of other female singer-songwriters across the world doing something similar right this very second. They’ve got guitars and a bedroom and think that if they play enough coffee houses, perhaps a record label executive will walk in and they’ll get “discovered” one day. The thing about that dream and the challenge it provides is that most of these young women either don’t fully possess the talent to make it big, or the ones that do manage to find a way to screw up their big chance. Thankfully Lissie is none of these things, because you don’t rise up above your peers by being simply ordinary. What sets Lissie apart from the heaps of other ladies out there are a couple things. One of the first things you notice about her no matter what song you listen to is her voice. It’s smooth enough to be glass and has a wider range than the most unpopulated areas of Texas. There’s also a certain degree of emotion that shines through her voice, winning you over and convincing you that she truly does long for home or that some guy treated her poorly. To put it a different way, Lissie has a voice that projects and connects with the listener as much as it impresses. Because of her singing along with the occasional alt-country bent her songs can take, Lissie often evokes comparisons to Neko Case and Martha Wainright. That’s completely understandable, but on “Catching a Tiger” she displays more of a stylistic juggling act that pulls the easy references back and increases her accessibility to a mass audience. But the other big thing that separates Lissie from the pack is her songwriting. Her lyrics display a sharp maturity that certainly suggests they were written by somebody with a lot of life experience. Of course leaving high school, packing up your car and driving to California with all your possessions can get the wheels on the road to adulthood spinning pretty quickly. Really it’s admirable that Lissie moves beyond your typical female singer-songwriter cliche of failed relationships to tell stories about family, friends and the open road. And of course she does it all with smart wordplay that’s as wise as it is fascinating.

So as a debut album, “Catching a Tiger” turns out to be an excellent listening experience. Those who’ve been paying attention to Lissie in the past year or two have hopefully heard her 2009 EP “Why You Runnin'”, which served as a good precursor to what this new record is like. The three best tracks from that EP have been transplanted onto the twelve track album, and the nine brand new songs are almost all equally great. From the opening notes of the bouncy folk jaunt “Record Collector” through the country-tinged “Little Lovin'” five songs in, you get the feeling that there’s something fresh and exciting going on with this record. It’s front-loaded in the best sense of the word, and it’s both stylistically varied while cranking out memorable choruses that have a tendency to stay in your head longer than you could reasonably expect them to. The 60’s AM pop of “Stranger”, while still fun, somehow feels a little weaker than what’s come before it and it’s the start of a small string of tracks that feel relatively plain and homogenized. Perhaps the best way to describe it is to say that it veers into Sheryl Crow-like territory for a time and it’s a little distracting. The ballad “Everywhere I Go” recovers the album’s earlier momentum of great songs and brings a sharp emotional resonance that was missing in the couple tracks before it. “Look Away” is immensely beautiful in both the lyrical and compositional senses, adding bits of violin and piano to the guitars which really assists in conveying the dramatic nature of the words. Closing song “Oh Mississippi” feels like an old gospel song that’s been around for generations, almost in the vein of a “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”. The piano matched with Lissie’s vocals sell that idea, along with the subject matter being perhaps America’s greatest river, the mighty Mississippi. It’s the perfect way to end a record so stylistically varied and emotionally bare.

By all accounts, Lissie has set herself up to be one of the next great women to achieve success with her music not only in England where she’s breaking out, but around the world. Once “Catching a Tiger” is finally released in the U.S. on August 17th, don’t be surprised if she starts to make a sizeable impact on these shores. Between the number of potential hits on the album and that remarkable voice, Lissie has a whole lot to offer those who are willing to listen. She may not be attempting anything revolutionary or different from the great women that have come before her, but she’s using her strengths to her advantage and it seems to be working out. Though such comparisons are a little one-sided, fans of Neko Case, Cat Power, Feist and Stevie Nicks among others should find Lissie right up their alleys. And even if you don’t like them, maybe you’ll like Lissie anyways. There’s only one way to find out, and “Catching a Tiger” is a great introduction to a woman who will hopefully be on all of our radars for many more years to come.

Lissie – Everywhere I Go

Preorder “Catching a Tiger” from Fat Possum

Album Review: Wolf Parade – Expo 86 [Sub Pop]

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On 06/29/2010

In album review, mp3, music

Wolf Parade should be the toast of the indie world right now. Not only did they arrive on the scene with 2005’s “Apologies to the Queen Mary” and introduce us all to two of music’s most formidable songwriting talents in Spencer Krug and Dan Boeckner, but that singular album also brought forth their two main projects separate from one another – Sunset Rubdown and Handsome Furs. Given the way both of those bands subsequently broke out as a result, it wouldn’t be that much of a surprise if Wolf Parade never made another album. Still, 2008 brought Wolf Parade’s sophmore record “At Mount Zoomer”, and while it failed to reach the dizzying heights of its predecessor, the general praise for this band and the two main talents behind it remained largely intact. Now with one more Sunset Rubdown and Handsome Furs album apiece released last year, Krug and Boeckner apparently haven’t nearly run out of material as evidenced by the third Wolf Parade record “Expo 86” being released this week.

The most interesting thing about how Wolf Parade works is the way these two great artists work with one another. Both Krug and Boeckner have their own individual songwriting styles, and they tend to split the albums down the middle when it comes to who writes what. Boeckner was clearly the weaker link on “Apologies to the Queen Mary”, but of course he was also the one with less experience. Krug played the moody and wordy poet while Boeckner evoked the punk rock ethos and came up with quicker and sharper melodies as a smart contrast. There was a remarkable cohesion between the two guys anyways, and that’s what made the album so special. “At Mount Zoomer” lost a little bit of that intermingling perhaps mostly because everyone was keeping a close eye on exactly who was writing and singing what. The dynamic was still there, but it felt like both guys had retreated to their own corners and didn’t quite meet in the middle for their sophmore effort. Where “Expo 86” comes in is somewhere right in between those first two albums.

One of the biggest pluses “Expo 86” has to offer is the exceptionally improved songwriting by Dan Boeckner. He sounds as inspired as he did on “Face Control”, the Handsome Furs record released last year that showed remarkable progression from a guy who seemingly always favored energy over words. This new Wolf Parade album has him competing toe to toe with Krug, and that brings the cohesion back which made them such an exceptional band in the first place. Unless you’re looking at the songwriting credits, there are moments when it is challenging to determine exactly who wrote what, and with an increased reliance on vocal interplay between Krug and Boeckner, at times you can’t even fully be clear who’s got the lead vocal. And so for the first time it really sounds less like Wolf Parade are a collection of great talents and more like a fully formed and functional band. Also beneficial is the return of the nervous energy that dominated their first album in a really good way. The material here may be a little darker in general, but the synths play it off well to add warmth and avoid turning this into an all-out depressing affair.

The worst part about “Expo 86” is that many of its biggest strengths are also its biggest weaknesses. What with Boeckner’s much stronger presence on the album and the songs all coming off on equal footing more or less, there’s little to nothing that truly stands out. Everything sounds pretty great, and it is for the most part, but in terms of hard-hitters like “I’ll Believe In Anything” or “Shine A Light”, there’s a lack of distinction on the new album. “What Did My Lover Say (It Always Had to Go This Way)” is probably the closest thing to a legitimate hit on the record despite it being nearly 6 minutes long. But in this case Wolf Parade leave the absolute best for last, as “Cave-O-Sapien” is a slice of energetic and fun brilliance that’s one of their finest moments not only on this album but across the band’s entire catalogue. Once those 6+ minutes have finally expired along with the album itself, you come away with the feeling that everything was just left on the table and this band has nothing left to give. It’s just a shame that there aren’t more of those sorts of songs on “Expo 86”. Instead much of the record takes a middle of the road approach and satisfies in that regard. It partly begs the question of whether or not Krug and Boeckner are really delivering their best material on this album, or if they’re purposely saving most of it for their individual projects Sunset Rubdown and Handsome Furs. However things are working out, Wolf Parade remains a band to keep a very close eye on. “Expo 86” may lack the sharp step forwards this band needs to place them at the top of the indie cred pile again, but it does earn them back a bit of the mojo they lost on their last record.

Wolf Parade – Ghost Pressure
Wolf Parade – What Did My Lover Say? (It Always Had to Go This Way)

Buy “Expo 86” from Sub Pop Records

Album Review: Maps & Atlases – Perch Patchwork [Barsuk]

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On 06/28/2010

In album review, chicago, mp3, music

The boys in Maps & Atlases may officially call Chicago home, but they consider themselves more of a regionally located band rather than a city specific one. The four of them met in Chicago while attending art school, but hail from such far-off places as Texas, Pennsylvania and Hawaii. School is over for all of them, but they’re continuing their musical education by sticking together as a band. To date they’ve released two EPs in 2007 and 2008 via Sargent House, and are now signed to Barsuk just in time for the release of their debut full length, “Perch Patchwork”.

The early Maps & Atlases material focused largely on guitar work, specifically in playing a form of math rock. They seemed to be the heirs apparent to Minus the Bear’s speedy guitar-picking sound matched with dynamite hooks, but there comes a time when every band needs to grow, and in the past couple years, Maps & Atlases have done just that. “Perch Patchwork” sees the band moving away from that sound and more towards a layered and complex indie pop that’s easy on the ears but far from conventional. While a band with such an instrumentally sound background could very well have used their first album to show off their chops, Maps & Atlases instead chose to focus on songcraft in general, creating strong and vivid overall structures that intrigue as much as they delight. Yes. there’s still a little bit of intricate guitar, particularly on the second half of the record, but there’s also so much else to focus on. Percussion is one of the many things to pay close attention to on “Perch Patchwork”, and there’s a handful of moments where the beats go from simply keeping background rhythm to booming tribal punches. “The Charm” is a great example of that, along with being a great showcase for Dave Davison’s unique singing voice. He’s got an almost frog-like warble that could hypothetically be annoying for some, but carries a tune well and proves as much on the occasions when melody goes away and he’s left to his own devices. The stark reality that Maps & Atlases do bring to the table however is that while each band member might have their own individual moments to shine, this is at its core a wholly collaborative effort. The majority of the time, and this may be in part thanks to the production work, all the instruments and pieces of the musical puzzle hold equal footing, so that one element isn’t taking precedence and you get enraptured by the song itself and not just a singluar piece of it. That’s one of the biggest things that helps this record to distinguish itself from the bands with a similar sound.

While folk or layered indie pop might be the easy way to place “Perch Patchwork” into a category, it’s clear that Maps & Atlases also like the idea of diversity in their sound. This is why they’ve taken only small bits from their earlier EPs and pieced them in amongst bigger drums and violins and a host of other elements. They’re experimenting outside of their comfort zone just a little bit and it’s refreshing, while never getting to the point where there’s too much diversity to make for a cohesive record. It’s like the elemental differences between bands like Yeasayer, Dirty Projectors and Animal Collective – Maps & Atlases have elements of each in their music, and you come to realize that at their core there’s not an ocean of separation between them. But where “Perch Patchwork” fails to deliver is on originality and hooks. This is far more lighthearted and easily digestible music than what many critically acclaimed bands have been releasing recently, and in some senses Maps & Atlases are playing it safe. They take chances, but not nearly enough to make a big name for themselves. Additionally, while avoiding risk, they fail to strike hard by leaving their lightest and most predictable songs without strong hooks. A highly memorable chorus would have taken away the sting of relative blandness a couple of the tracks exude. Otherwise though, “Perch Patchwork” is a relative delight, and serving as strong evidence that Maps & Atlases will be a band to keep a close eye on for years to come. They seem to have all the right parts towards becoming indie superstars, they just need to find the right combination of things to make that happen. As time continues to give us wisdom, hopefully this band takes it in stride and makes another significantly strong leap on their sophmore effort.

Maps & Atlases – Solid Ground

Buy “Perch Patchwork” from Amazon

Album Review: The Roots – How I Got Over [Def Jam]

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On 06/24/2010

In album review, BNM, mp3, music

The Roots are without a doubt the best band to ever work in late night television. That, after 20 years as a band they chose to sign a contract to become the house band for Late Night With Jimmy Fallon is just a little bit surprising. Their star has been on the proverbial rise in the past several years, and given their ever-increasing popularity, it’d make sense if they just kept at it and continued the recording and touring cycle they’ve done for so long already. Of course given the challenges of working in the music industry these days, and that most everyone in the band has families they should be spending time with, agreeing to a job that has decent hours, a steady paycheck and doesn’t require travel must seem like a good idea. When they did agree to work in late night, they also said that they were done writing and recording new albums as their entire focus would be on the TV show. It turns out they lied to some degree, and in their spare time were able to piece together a new record that due to a number of different issues was delayed multiple times in the last year. At long last, “How I Got Over” is finally out this week, and if you know The Roots, chances are you know what you’re in for.

The surprises on “How I Got Over” come in the form of guest artists playing with The Roots this time around. While they are very much a band (or more of a collective, given their large numbers) that plays their own instruments, The Roots have rarely worked with other actual bands on their albums. Instead, because their songs are largely hip hop in nature, you get a number of rappers and R&B stars making guest appearances. This time around, perhaps informed by some of the groups they’ve seen perform on “Late Night”, they’re diversifying a bit more than usual and incorporating some notable indie artists into their songs. Opening track “A Peace of Light” features guest vocals by Amber Coffman, Angel Deradoorian and Haley Dekle of Dirty Projectors. The Roots collaborate a little with Monsters of Folk (or more likely just Yim Yames) to give the song “Dear God (Sincerely M.O.F.)” a little hip hop edge in what becomes “Dear God 2.0”. They also do a track with Joanna Newsom, which samples her song “Book of Right-On” along with new vocals to become simply “Right On”. Aside from those rather interesting guests, there’s also some more familiar faces for Roots fans in the form of Dice Raw, Phonte, P.O.R.N. and the great John Legend.

In terms of pure musical interest, long-time fans of The Roots will feel pretty comfortable with how this record sounds. It’s very much in line stylistically with their last couple albums “Game Theory” and “Rising Down”, though with a couple notable exceptions. First and foremost, “How I Got Over” is very much the sort of record that you want to sit down with and listen to from start to finish. The track sequencing is incredibly important in this case, though if you happen to stumble upon a song from the album while on shuffle it probably won’t feel too out of place. Really what might bother some people is how long it takes for things to really get going and settle into a groove. The first few tracks may be slow, but they’re also dark and immensely intriguing. Listened to in order, they blend into one another effortlessly and from the “do do do” harmonies provided by the ladies of Dirty Projectors through the piano-and-drums over hip hop of “Radio Daze” there’s some intensely deep and smartly composed moments along the way. The second half of the album also boasts some serious highlights as well, and the string of tracks from Joanna Newsom’s “Right On” through the seriously hard-hitting hip hop of “Web 20/20” feels particularly brilliant. Sandwiched in between those are two songs in a row with John Legend which are exactly as great as they need to be. Really there’s not a weak track on the album, and special credit goes to the two main players in The Roots, Questlove and Black Thought (Tariq) for their work both performing and producing the record. Tariq’s extremely smart, if occasionally politically motivated rhymes and Questlove’s rock-solid drumming make for the absolute best things about this album, whether guests are involved or not. The Roots refuse to be outshined on their own record.

Whatever the actual reason(s) for the multiple delays might have been, “How I Got Over” almost seems worth the wait. It may not be the band’s best album, nor their easiest to like, but it’s still highly interesting and holds firm their reputation of being one of the best hip hop acts out there today. Whether or not there will be another record beyond this one is still a huge question mark given their late night duties, but if this is the last original material we’ll hear from The Roots, they’re going out on a great note. Those completely averse to hip hop probably won’t find much if anything to like here, but for the indie kids who haven’t heard a Roots album before, this is as good of a place as any to get started. Virtually all the collaborations turn out well, and it’s particularly nice to hear a Joanna Newsom or a Yim Yames popping up between the smartly written rhymes. Hopefully there will be more of that in the future. For the time being, it’d be a good idea to buy a copy of “How I Got Over”, and to witness the incredible skills of The Roots, watch them weeknights on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon. Not only do they have the right entrance song for every guest (they had Heidi Klum on the other day and did a play on The Go Go’s “Our Lips Are Sealed”, renaming it “Her Lips Are Seal’s”), but every now and then they’ll improvise songs about audience members using various musical styles. It is nothing short of incredible, and proof positive that not only are The Roots the best band in late night, but also one of the best bands working today.

Follow link to download “Dear God 2.0” free from RCRD LBL

Buy “How I Got Over” from Amazon

Album Review: Kele – The Boxer [Polydor/Wichita/Glassnote]

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On 06/23/2010

In album review, mp3, music

Kele Okereke is the frontman for dance rock group Bloc Party. When the band bust onto the music scene in 2005 with their debut album “Silent Alarm”, many hailed them as brilliant innovators on the forefront of something incredible. Well, time passed, hype died down, and after two follow-up albums that didn’t quite capitalize on their initial record’s promise, Bloc Party decided to take a little bit of a break. It’s been during this short hiatus that Okereke has taken it upon himself to experiment with some new sounds and make a record on his own, calling the new project simply Kele. The solo debut is titled “The Boxer” and it’s out this week.

Given Bloc Party’s propensity for making dance music that’s driven by guitars and strong beats, you had to figure that Kele would dive in one direction or the other when it came time to going solo. It would seem a little odd though if he chose the rock direction instead of the dance one, which is why he smartly made a beeline towards electronica. Bloc Party’s last album “Intimacy” all but spelled that out for you anyways. The beats on “The Boxer” tend to come fast and furious, seemingly setting you up for a really fun dance party, all backed by that familiar voice of his. Guitars are almost entirely absent across the album, though they do make appearances here and there, perhaps most notably on “The Other Side”. That and “Unholy Thoughts” are probably the tracks that sound the most like the Bloc Party stuff you’re familiar with – the latter so much so that you’ve got to wonder if it was a leftover from the “Intimacy” sessions. But primarily you get a whole lot of swirling electronica that, while great for the clubs, has to make you wonder exactly how different it is from the thousands of other electro artists out there. Kele is no innovator, at least not in the sense that somebody like Flying Lotus or Aphex Twin have been. Though he may be relatively new at trying to do all this on his own, for somebody with a decent track record as part of Bloc Party, you’d expect him to stumble less than most others might. Well, throw out those expectations, because Kele has stumbled out of the starting gate.

When it comes to experimenting with sounds and trying things outside of his own comfort zone, Kele seems to do okay. You get a song like “On the Lam”, wherein he turns up the helium pitch on his vocals to the point where if you didn’t know any better, you might suspect that a woman has taken over singing duties. That combined with some solid beats draws your attention to what might have been a relatively pedestrian song otherwise. Similarly, a song like “Rise” starts off pensively with some xylophone work that sticks around just long enough to get boring, but then transforms into a massive build-up and release that’s one of the most cathartic and exhilarating moments on the entire record. It’s just too bad those kinds of moments are so few and far between on “The Boxer”. What also comes too few and far between? How about the hooks. There’s barely any to be found, as Kele apparently thinks he can skate by on some decent beats sustained through much of a song. Either that, or he was so busy crafting these songs that he just plain forgot that sometimes you need an oft-repeated chorus to stick in peoples’ heads. So because of the lack of hooks, there aren’t any singular tracks you’ll remember easily and want to go back to. Sure, you may come away from the album thinking it was a good time, but beyond that there’s little to keep you invested in repeat plays. Add that to the gloomy lyrics on this record that most Bloc Party songs have as well, and there’s something else to not waste your time on. But if you really want to hear sad, turn on the pair of ballads the album has to offer in the form of “New Rules” and “All the Things I Could Never Say”. Kele gets super emotional and wears his heart on his sleeve for those songs, and the results are more whiny than they are elegantly sad poetry. Yes, he’s upset, but we could do without the self-aggrandizing platitudes, most of which don’t help us identify with the turmoil he’s going through.

Since we’re talking about “The Boxer”, let’s spar with some wordplay for a minute in an attempt to wrap this whole thing up. With the martial stomp of “Walk Tall”, Kele comes charging out of his corner seemingly ready for a fight to knock our senses off balance. While he does land a few good punches initially, especially heading into “On the Lam”, we quickly come to realize that though this is a horse of a different color, we’ve faced this opponent in some capacity before as part of Bloc Party. In that respect, we’re able to get a better grasp as to where he’s coming from and what moves he might make. The words he’s throwing at us are the same as they’ve always been, so we can defend against that pretty easily. And then after the first round the coach in our corner tells us that Kele is having some severe problems with his hooks. He can jab just fine, but seems mechanically unable to bring a strong punch around any other way. The times he tries to force a hook on us, it’s something we can easily dodge and counter with brute force. That’s his main weakness, and we can exploit it for the rest of the match. After a couple rounds he’s in much worse shape than us, despite having the occasional trick or engaging melody up his sleeve. Kele then takes his love of the dramatic to new heights, looking to give the crowd more of a spectacle than an actual victory. He slows down the tempo and wears disappointment on his face in an effort to convince us to take it easy on him. It’s not that we’re heartless, it’s just that his display sounds and feels manipulative, which it most likely is. So we don’t let up. Kele goes down, and the match is quickly over. Our moral victory, in this case, is that we don’t have to listen to “The Boxer” again if we don’t want to. Will Kele fair better when/if he returns to Bloc Party? There’s only one way to answer that question: probably.

Kele – Tenderoni (Punches Bring the Horns Remix)

Buy “The Boxer” from Amazon

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