SFNEWSHUB:
Through The Lens of SF Chronicle Music Critic Joel Selvin: http://www.sfnewshub.com/?p=622
Audience Cruising The Free Way: http://www.sfnewshub.com/?p=787
EXPERIMUSIC:
Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion: http://www.experimusic.com/altrock-animal.htm
Bauhaus - Go Away White: http://www.experimusic.com/altrock-bauhaus.htm
Black Mountain - In The Future: http://www.experimusic.com/altrock-blackmountain.htm
Caribou - Andorra: http://www.experimusic.com/altrock-caribou.htm
Cut Copy - In Ghost Colours: http://www.experimusic.com/altrock-cutcopy.htm
Dalek - Gutter Tactics: http://www.experimusic.com/rapreviews-dalek.htm
Death Cab For Cutie - Narrow Stairs: http://www.experimusic.com/altrock-deathcab.htm
El Guincho - Alegranza! - http://www.experimusic.com/altrock-elguincho.htm
Fucked Up - The Chemistry of Common Life: http://www.experimusic.com/altrock-fuckedup.htm
Gang Gang Dance - Saint Dymphna: http://www.experimusic.com/altrock-ganggang.htm
Have A Nice Life - Deathconsciousness: http://www.experimusic.com/altrock-have.htm
Islands - Arm's Way: http://www.experimusic.com/altrock-islands.htm
Jedi Mind Tricks - A History of Violence: http://www.experimusic.com/rapreviews-jedimind.htm
Nine Inch Nails - The Slip: http://www.experimusic.com/altrock-nin.htm
The Notwist - The Devil You And Me: http://www.experimusic.com/altrock-notwist.htm
Opeth - Watershed: http://www.experimusic.com/altrock-opeth.htm
The Sea And Cake - Car Alarm: http://www.experimusic.com/altrock-caralarm.htm
Sigur Ros - Med Sud i eyrum vid spilum endalaust: http://www.experimusic.com/altrock-sigur.htm
Titus Andronicus - Airing of Grievances: http://www.experimusic.com/altrock-titus.htm
Vetiver - Thing of The Past: http://www.experimusic.com/altrock-vetiveralbum.htm
Wire - Object 47: http://www.experimusic.com/altrock-wire.htm
Xiu Xiu - Women As Lovers: http://www.experimusic.com/altrock-xiuxiu.htm
Read more...
Wednesday, January 1, 2020
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Burning Man Music For Dummies
With Burning Man hitting Nevada right now, sapping San Francisco of half of its population (not to mention matching the cities' yearly drug usage in a week), those of us left here might be wondering what the big deal is. Don't get me wrong, anyone who has lived in San Francisco even a month probably has already developed enough of a closet-hippie instinct to appreciate the utopian principles and free-love doctrine of this annual event (that originated in our very own Baker Beach by a colony of nudists, might I add), whether we can afford the vacation time and money to go or not.But when surrounded by a multitude of more immediately obvious incredible lineups from festivals littered all throughout summer, the sad fact of the matter is that, with the exception of The Crystal Method performing this year, many of the best musicians on Burning Man's bill are overlooked and overshadowed by the enormous amount of countless similar, but much more generic, acts. After all, many of the sub-genres featured at the festival rank among some of the easiest styles of music to make (Dubstep and Trance, I'm looking at you). Everybody and their grandmothers are getting a hold of free audio programs and making intoxicated young people dance.
Thankfully, Burning Man doesn't make music the primary appeal of the event, instead choosing to find its niche in costumes, art installations, pyrotechnics, acrobats and general bat-shit insanity. However, for the people who value music a little more than all of that combined and need a little more convincing to get their asses out to the desert next year, consider just this small handful of artists on the 2010 lineup who, for one reason or another, manage to separate themselves from the large pool of unidentifiable electronic drivel.
Rabbit in The Moon
Confucious and Bunny mix and match styles in an enveloping coat of swirly atmosphere, similar to Pretty Lights or any other number of modern DJ's that are beginning to blur the lines between various Electronic genres in super accessible ways. Their tracks are heavy in the sort of ghostly, swelling voice samples that you would find on countless downbeat compilations, but with a more rhythmic break-beat borrowed from Trance, Trip Hop and House. More importantly, their live shows include the sort of deranged fashion show that could have only come out of a state as strange as Florida, featuring everything from full body light suits and crowd-surfing body bubbles to fire playing belly dancers and...well...good luck finding the words to describe whatever this is.
Mimosa
If the first wave of Dubstep could be compared to the first wave of hip hop (minimal, primitive, kinda goofy, and innocent...see artists like Skream and Benga), then artists like Glitch Mob and Mimosa represent the "gangster-step" phase of the genre. Like Dr. Dre before him, Mimosa duels West coast attitude and modern technology off in intensely deep grooves, fat synths and instantly lovable hooks. Some of his songs share more in common with Flying Lotus (appropriate since this style of bass-driven beats came from the same region of LA) than with Rusko, complete with clipped up samples and jagged, stuttering percussion, but Mimosa manages to make that style of bass-driven beats in your face enough to work on the dance floor.
Treavor Moontribe
To outdoor festival junkies, Treavor Moontribe belongs to an elite class of people. One of the major founders and resident performers of the Moontribe Full Moon Gatherings, an all-night DJ event that takes place once a month in various scenic locations of So Cal, he's also spent 14 years perfecting his spacious soundtracks for deserts and snakelike progressive house and techno movements. The best way to listen to Treavor is to get lost in the hypnotic repetition of it all. His tracks drift slowly and change gradually enough to ease listeners into a gentle trance, but the creeping buildups have knee-shaking pay-offs - one of the organizers of The Moontribe Full Moon Gatherings recalls how he once witnessed a girl lose control of her bowels while watching Treavor perform.
Neurodriver
The human mind is basically an extremely complex and glorified super computer. We process and store information, receive and send electrical signals to get stuff done, and run tasks through pre-programmed processes (learned through repetition, the same way all of the programs on our computer were created). A common criticism of "laptop" music is that it requires no real instrumental talent, but once you realize that our minds work just like macs anyway, there's not much of a difference between learning the ins and outs of a computer program, and developing guitar or piano skills. The line is especially blurred when, all around us, technology is increasingly becoming extensions of ourselves. All too often, the phrase, "I feel naked without my cell phone," flutters above crowds, as if these mobile devices were appendages of ours. We interact with each other more and more each day through the internet, filling out Facebook profiles and pimping out webpages and blogs as if they were integral parts of our identities.
Artists like Neurodriver create music that reminds us of how we have helped technology evolve and how technology has influenced the way we are evolving, which is often a huge underlying theme of many Burning Man events and tents. This is the sort of electro-thrash that should be played while reading cyberpunk novels and pondering how much longer before cyborgs take over; think Amon Tobin reading a ton of Ghost in The Shell and then going to the clubs. Dancing may appear to be a human trait, but Neurodriver's plunging lockstep grooves and glitchy breakdowns make the mechanical nature of your body's movements and responses difficult to ignore. The same can be said of most Electronic music.
The entire Burning Man 2010 stage guide can be downloaded in pdf format from Rock Star Librarian’s awesomely useful website.
Read more...
Rabbit in The Moon
Confucious and Bunny mix and match styles in an enveloping coat of swirly atmosphere, similar to Pretty Lights or any other number of modern DJ's that are beginning to blur the lines between various Electronic genres in super accessible ways. Their tracks are heavy in the sort of ghostly, swelling voice samples that you would find on countless downbeat compilations, but with a more rhythmic break-beat borrowed from Trance, Trip Hop and House. More importantly, their live shows include the sort of deranged fashion show that could have only come out of a state as strange as Florida, featuring everything from full body light suits and crowd-surfing body bubbles to fire playing belly dancers and...well...good luck finding the words to describe whatever this is.
Mimosa
If the first wave of Dubstep could be compared to the first wave of hip hop (minimal, primitive, kinda goofy, and innocent...see artists like Skream and Benga), then artists like Glitch Mob and Mimosa represent the "gangster-step" phase of the genre. Like Dr. Dre before him, Mimosa duels West coast attitude and modern technology off in intensely deep grooves, fat synths and instantly lovable hooks. Some of his songs share more in common with Flying Lotus (appropriate since this style of bass-driven beats came from the same region of LA) than with Rusko, complete with clipped up samples and jagged, stuttering percussion, but Mimosa manages to make that style of bass-driven beats in your face enough to work on the dance floor.
Treavor Moontribe
To outdoor festival junkies, Treavor Moontribe belongs to an elite class of people. One of the major founders and resident performers of the Moontribe Full Moon Gatherings, an all-night DJ event that takes place once a month in various scenic locations of So Cal, he's also spent 14 years perfecting his spacious soundtracks for deserts and snakelike progressive house and techno movements. The best way to listen to Treavor is to get lost in the hypnotic repetition of it all. His tracks drift slowly and change gradually enough to ease listeners into a gentle trance, but the creeping buildups have knee-shaking pay-offs - one of the organizers of The Moontribe Full Moon Gatherings recalls how he once witnessed a girl lose control of her bowels while watching Treavor perform.
Neurodriver
The human mind is basically an extremely complex and glorified super computer. We process and store information, receive and send electrical signals to get stuff done, and run tasks through pre-programmed processes (learned through repetition, the same way all of the programs on our computer were created). A common criticism of "laptop" music is that it requires no real instrumental talent, but once you realize that our minds work just like macs anyway, there's not much of a difference between learning the ins and outs of a computer program, and developing guitar or piano skills. The line is especially blurred when, all around us, technology is increasingly becoming extensions of ourselves. All too often, the phrase, "I feel naked without my cell phone," flutters above crowds, as if these mobile devices were appendages of ours. We interact with each other more and more each day through the internet, filling out Facebook profiles and pimping out webpages and blogs as if they were integral parts of our identities.
Artists like Neurodriver create music that reminds us of how we have helped technology evolve and how technology has influenced the way we are evolving, which is often a huge underlying theme of many Burning Man events and tents. This is the sort of electro-thrash that should be played while reading cyberpunk novels and pondering how much longer before cyborgs take over; think Amon Tobin reading a ton of Ghost in The Shell and then going to the clubs. Dancing may appear to be a human trait, but Neurodriver's plunging lockstep grooves and glitchy breakdowns make the mechanical nature of your body's movements and responses difficult to ignore. The same can be said of most Electronic music.
The entire Burning Man 2010 stage guide can be downloaded in pdf format from Rock Star Librarian’s awesomely useful website.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Electric Six - "Danger! High Voltage"
Electric Six really wants everyone to know how dance music keeps starting fires. Fire in the disco, fire in the gates of hell, even fire in the taco bell (apparently)! As "Danger! High Voltage" compels you to give into that toe-tapping, booty-bumping fire with its funky guitars, steady hump-inducing bass and searing saxophone solo, you might start to realize that this single from seven years ago offered a pretty interesting meta-commentary on why dance music has always been one of the most prominent and common threads in popular music: at the heart of it all is sex. In the same way that songs with obvious lyrics about love sell like mad, so do songs with musical textures that force the body to replicate the movements, motions and groove of the dirtiest of private, two-person dances. Both love and lust are emotions that literally every single human being can relate to, and so, unsurprisingly, they're the most marketable.
If you find that hard to believe, look at the way dance trends gotten increasingly sexual in the past 30 to 40 years. Look at how the ass-shaking, rhythmic bass of disco (When the dance floor was just posing the question), the not-so-subtle innuendos of funk (Was there ever a moment where George Clinton wasn't standing on the verge of getting it on?) and the tenderly erotic grooves of soul (Isaac Hayes wants all the women to crowd around!) infiltrated pretty much everything in the aftermath of the 60's sexual revolution. Among other things, Prince made his name in the 80's telling his infamous story about Nikki while an (admittedly, more than likely unintended) obsession with masturbation seemed to bubble under the surface, with several chart-topping singles telling us to "beat it," "whip it," and "turn japanese".
Look at how instantly popular Nelly got when he decided to tap into the sub-conscious desire in all our minds and compel us to take off all our clothes when it starts to get too hot in the bars. Britney Spears began with her career a pretty enormous fan base by dressing as a scantily clad schoolgirl but insisting on a profile of innocence. She went on to tell us a year later, dressed in a skin-tight, hot red catsuit that she actually wasn't that innocent, tripling her audience. Finally she was barely wearing anything, saying that she was a slave for us, resulting in a tenfold audience increase and making even critics praise her club-friendly singles. Plus, there's freak-dancing, which is basically an excuse to dry-hump in public. One can go on and on, but the bottom line is that there's a fire at the heart of how easily the public falls for these and "it's our desire".
There's a danger here, of course. How far into depravity and overt hypersexuality will we go? The way the two main characters of the music video in question have been joined by a taxidermied Moose by the end seems to suggest the possibility of our cultural obsession with sex breaching and embracing fetishism in the near future. We've already fully integrated mysogyny into most popular hip hop and when someone like Soulja Boy tells us to "Superman that ho" he gets huge. And how else, in this context, has something as abrasive, rough and filthy as Dubstep gotten so insanely popular, in the dance shoes of fans from pretty much every genre of music? I'm curious to see if a graph could be made charting the correlation between increases in both viewership of increasingly hardcore porn and listenership of Cragga. The fact that we have come to describe the high quality of a song in that genre as "dirty" could be more than a little revealing. I can see Rusko's newest single in a year sampling and warping sounds from "Two Girls, One Cup". What would be more filthy than that?
Okay yes, the dubstep examination is probably a stretch. Hell, this whole article might be. It's hard to avoid thinking about a song this much when the music video of is this hard to turn away from. There must be a relationship between dance and fire and sex and music and it must be vital because Dick Valentine and his girlfriend are staring pretty intensely at us. Between that and its monstrous hooks, the song invites enough repeat listens to start to seriously ponder about it more than this type of music usually warrants. At the end of the day, the enjoyment of dance music comes down to something that doesn't need to explained or examined. That's why the frontman's psychopathic vocal delivery here is so appropriate. It's primal, spontaneous, uncontrolled and the enjoyment of this song should be just as primitive. The circular guitar riff is hypnotic and mesmerizing as it should be to the joints in your muscles on the dance floor. As much as some groups of humans can try to act civilized and intelligent and highbrow, the bottom line is we're still animals and maybe that's why animalistic songs like this sound so damn good to us. The instinct to dance is as ingrained in us as the instinct to breed or eat or survive. To deny that would be as unnatural as denying sex.
Song and video after the jump: Read more...
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Surfer Blood - Astro Coast (2010)
3.5 ★/7.0 - 7.9[Kanine]
A band like Surfer Blood has no place in Florida. In case you didn't know, the Sunshine State is without a doubt one of the strangest places in the country. Last year, an overweight man from Florida tried to argue in the court of law that he was too fat to kill his former son-in-law, while another man whose computer contained over 1,000 child porn images blamed his cat. Just this past week, some guy thought he could put up a ransom for stealing someone's potted plant. There are nymphomaniacs, truck fighters, fish-wielders and diaper dudes. Jew kickers and door-to-door breast doctors run rampant, Hooters lies to their employees and grandparents hire hit men.
Surfer Blood know where they live (One of the tracks on Astro Coast was titled "Twin Peaks" for a reason) and must feel pretty uncomfortable about it because all they seem to want to do is sound as normal as possible. They must cling to their copies of Vampire Weekend and The Blue Album every night shivering in fear of all the weirdos and bizarre events they're surrounded by.
Their debut album seems to function as a sort of desperate last attempt to get out of their environment, capitalizing on a unique mix of every popular indie pop trend ever made. Sonic Youth guitar tones do Strokes covers. Weezer power pop sections alternate between Krautrock influenced instrumentals. Surf music and The Shins, Bradford Cox and The Sea and Cake, etc. Astro Coast will have you playing the name game for hours.
But really, who cares when the songs are this well structured and fun to follow? Rolling waves of grunginess give way to guitar heroics and handclaps on "Floating Vibes". "Take it Easy" shifts back and forth between jittery and groovy, always reiterating its namesake. "Harmonix" begins cutesy but gets otherworldly with disorienting haziness in each chorus.
Surfer Blood offers a nice alternative to Vampire Weekend haters everywhere. Both bands are shameless about their stealing and aim to create something distinct and, above all, fun in their mixing and matching of indie-fluences, but Surfer Blood sounds far less conscious about it. They're more lo-fi, more garage, more laid-back and with those Rivers Cuomo vocals, far more geeky and humble. Identifiable, easy to listen to and enjoyable even after multiple listens, Astro Coast has the potential to become a huge hit.
Read more...
Their debut album seems to function as a sort of desperate last attempt to get out of their environment, capitalizing on a unique mix of every popular indie pop trend ever made. Sonic Youth guitar tones do Strokes covers. Weezer power pop sections alternate between Krautrock influenced instrumentals. Surf music and The Shins, Bradford Cox and The Sea and Cake, etc. Astro Coast will have you playing the name game for hours.
But really, who cares when the songs are this well structured and fun to follow? Rolling waves of grunginess give way to guitar heroics and handclaps on "Floating Vibes". "Take it Easy" shifts back and forth between jittery and groovy, always reiterating its namesake. "Harmonix" begins cutesy but gets otherworldly with disorienting haziness in each chorus.
Surfer Blood offers a nice alternative to Vampire Weekend haters everywhere. Both bands are shameless about their stealing and aim to create something distinct and, above all, fun in their mixing and matching of indie-fluences, but Surfer Blood sounds far less conscious about it. They're more lo-fi, more garage, more laid-back and with those Rivers Cuomo vocals, far more geeky and humble. Identifiable, easy to listen to and enjoyable even after multiple listens, Astro Coast has the potential to become a huge hit.
Beach House - Teen Dream (2010)
3.5 ★/7.0 - 7.9[Sub Pop]
With Teen Dream, highly acclaimed lo-fi dream pop duo Beach House continues their gradual embrace of higher production values, but that was probably to be expected. The more significant and surprising shift for their third LP, however, is that of mood. Teen Dream is a noticeably lighter affair than its two predecessors. Whereas Devotion was an album made for haunted houses and unsettled spirits, Teen Dream mines the duo's sleepy keyboards and Victoria Legrand's ambiguous moans for soundtracking the spirit of...well...teens.
From the cymbal crashes and rumbling drums of "Zebra" to the kaleidoscopic shuffle of "10 Mile Stereo", Teen Dream is constantly reinforcing the imagery of wide open fields, walks in the park and the wild nature of animals as metaphors for youth and freewheeling lovers. 'Beasts' and 'hunters' lurk under the lazy guitar figures and shimmering psychedelia of album highlight, "Norway", but Legrand suggests that the push and pull of these violent mates contains something sacred and beautiful; something that opens the "billions of stars to your fate". Even if she still sounds like she's lonely and lost, the brighter textures emphasize the hope in her isolation this time around, rather than the heartbreak.
Nostalgic romance is the star of the show. "Better Times" sways through snapshots of American Graffiti with its vintage guitar riff and gentle rock. "Real Love" gets stuck swooning over just the opening of "Don't Stop Believin" for maximum emotional punch. Gorgeous album closer, "Take Care" employs baroque touches to recreate a long carousel ride with your first true love. There's always been a dusty element to Beach House's music that could make listeners think about old photo albums, but the fondness emanating on Teen Dream will probably make you actually break them out.
But however satisfying it may be to see Beach House realize their potential in some ways, it also sort of reveals just how unremarkable the core elements of their sound have always been. Devotion and even Beach House might have been transitional works, but their mystery and dark underbelly translated for much more replay value. When certain songs got boring, the atmosphere carried the album. On the other hand, Teen Dream is far more open about its intentions, which is to stun you with its beauty before...actually, that's it.
The buzz-n-fuzz of "Silver Soul" may initially catch your ear, but the trick quickly runs thin. On "Lover of Mine" the duo seems to suffer from the same problem, getting so lost in the tone and texture of their keyboards that they forget to craft a song that does anything other than drift beautifully. Ultimately that's the thing that keeps Teen Dream from being as flat-out stunning as Devotion; it's remarkably well-painted, but that doesn't change the fact that you're looking at wallpaper. After all the advances and evolution made in genres like Electronica, Hip Hop and Dubstep that other sub-sections of the indie pop world have already thoroughly integrated and embraced, you have to wonder where that leaves sleepy and fairly simple artists like Beach House. There's no denying that Teen Dream is one of the first good albums of the new year, but what's questionable is whether or not it's that important.
Read more...
Nostalgic romance is the star of the show. "Better Times" sways through snapshots of American Graffiti with its vintage guitar riff and gentle rock. "Real Love" gets stuck swooning over just the opening of "Don't Stop Believin" for maximum emotional punch. Gorgeous album closer, "Take Care" employs baroque touches to recreate a long carousel ride with your first true love. There's always been a dusty element to Beach House's music that could make listeners think about old photo albums, but the fondness emanating on Teen Dream will probably make you actually break them out.
But however satisfying it may be to see Beach House realize their potential in some ways, it also sort of reveals just how unremarkable the core elements of their sound have always been. Devotion and even Beach House might have been transitional works, but their mystery and dark underbelly translated for much more replay value. When certain songs got boring, the atmosphere carried the album. On the other hand, Teen Dream is far more open about its intentions, which is to stun you with its beauty before...actually, that's it.
The buzz-n-fuzz of "Silver Soul" may initially catch your ear, but the trick quickly runs thin. On "Lover of Mine" the duo seems to suffer from the same problem, getting so lost in the tone and texture of their keyboards that they forget to craft a song that does anything other than drift beautifully. Ultimately that's the thing that keeps Teen Dream from being as flat-out stunning as Devotion; it's remarkably well-painted, but that doesn't change the fact that you're looking at wallpaper. After all the advances and evolution made in genres like Electronica, Hip Hop and Dubstep that other sub-sections of the indie pop world have already thoroughly integrated and embraced, you have to wonder where that leaves sleepy and fairly simple artists like Beach House. There's no denying that Teen Dream is one of the first good albums of the new year, but what's questionable is whether or not it's that important.
Friday, December 11, 2009
Tom Waits "Big Time" Screening
In celebration of Tom Waits' 60th birthday, the continuing Magic Bus Movie Night series hosted his classic concert movie, Big Time, last night.
Sponsored by the San Francisco Bay Guardian, The Magic Bus screens music-related concerts, clips and documentaries on the first Thursday of every month at the 9'th St. Media Center.
David Smay, author of the Continuum Press 33 1/3 for Swordfishtrombones hosted the event, inserting little tidbits of Tom Waits knowledge into every other sentence he spoke, and opening the movie with trivia, and a bunch of infinitely entertaining, miscellaneous Tom Waits-related clips including his cover of Daniel Johnston's nararration of King Kong set to clips of the film, an animation for the track from Orphans of Waits reciting a chldren's story (note: don't let Tom Waits near your children) and a dog-food commercial Waits did in one of the more "down-and-out" moments of his career (Is there anything that wouldn't sound cooler with Waits narrating? He's like the Morgan Freeman of hipsters).
Sponsored by the San Francisco Bay Guardian, The Magic Bus screens music-related concerts, clips and documentaries on the first Thursday of every month at the 9'th St. Media Center.
David Smay, author of the Continuum Press 33 1/3 for Swordfishtrombones hosted the event, inserting little tidbits of Tom Waits knowledge into every other sentence he spoke, and opening the movie with trivia, and a bunch of infinitely entertaining, miscellaneous Tom Waits-related clips including his cover of Daniel Johnston's nararration of King Kong set to clips of the film, an animation for the track from Orphans of Waits reciting a chldren's story (note: don't let Tom Waits near your children) and a dog-food commercial Waits did in one of the more "down-and-out" moments of his career (Is there anything that wouldn't sound cooler with Waits narrating? He's like the Morgan Freeman of hipsters). As for the movie itself, Big Time captures what was quite possibly the greatest touring band Waits has ever had, with the barbed and harsh guitar stylings of Marc Ribot, San Francisco wind-instrument guru Ralph Carney and Greg Cohen of John Zorn fame on bass. If those names aren't familiar, all you have to know is that the performances prominently feature the output of Waits at the peak of his career (the Swordfishtrombones/Rain Dogs/Frank's Wild Years trilogy of the 80's).
A carnivalized version of "Rain Dogs" finds the whole band slowly congregating into the center of the stage for a gypsy-groove celebration bridge while Waits shows off his dancing chops, "Down in The Hole" finds him eerily echoing Daniel Day Lewis from There Will Be Blood and classics like "Clap Hands" and "Time" are delivered with even more body, texture, lushness and flow than their studio counterparts.
Performances are intercut by Tom Waits' character-features, involving hilarious on-stage rants about used erotica featuring girls without skin, a woman getting pregnant through a bullet previously pierced through the testicle of a soldier and a dire need for wigs and novelties in Indiana (cigarette lighters the size of encyclopedias!), as well as surreal shorts with Waits' alter-ego, Frank, as the main character, no doubt a product of the fruitful collaboration at the time between Waits and his wife, Kathleen Brennan.
Big Time does the best job possible of summing up exactly what was so special about Waits in the 80's, from his dark humor and oddball-avant characterization to his incorporation of technical proficiency in the realms of completely American forms such as blues and folk. A Tom Waits performance is not only a musical event, but a sort of "fusion" art engagement between stage-acting, comedy, art and sounds. Concert movies don't always justify their existence, but for those who've never had a chance to see Waits live, this is well-documented argument for his nomination as the greatest performer alive.
Read more...
A carnivalized version of "Rain Dogs" finds the whole band slowly congregating into the center of the stage for a gypsy-groove celebration bridge while Waits shows off his dancing chops, "Down in The Hole" finds him eerily echoing Daniel Day Lewis from There Will Be Blood and classics like "Clap Hands" and "Time" are delivered with even more body, texture, lushness and flow than their studio counterparts. Performances are intercut by Tom Waits' character-features, involving hilarious on-stage rants about used erotica featuring girls without skin, a woman getting pregnant through a bullet previously pierced through the testicle of a soldier and a dire need for wigs and novelties in Indiana (cigarette lighters the size of encyclopedias!), as well as surreal shorts with Waits' alter-ego, Frank, as the main character, no doubt a product of the fruitful collaboration at the time between Waits and his wife, Kathleen Brennan.
Big Time does the best job possible of summing up exactly what was so special about Waits in the 80's, from his dark humor and oddball-avant characterization to his incorporation of technical proficiency in the realms of completely American forms such as blues and folk. A Tom Waits performance is not only a musical event, but a sort of "fusion" art engagement between stage-acting, comedy, art and sounds. Concert movies don't always justify their existence, but for those who've never had a chance to see Waits live, this is well-documented argument for his nomination as the greatest performer alive. Thursday, December 10, 2009
Yeasayer - "Ambling Alp"
If music is any indication, Brooklyn has been in a state these past ten years that can only described as "everlasting-dance". This is a sociological community-state that the Brooklyn of the 00s has defined and is similar to how we would refer to Flint, Michigan as"impovershed", L.A. as "polluted" or anywhere in Florida as "really fucking weird". Brooklyn is "everlastingly-dancetastic". The streets are littered with easy-to-use wires, pedals, and electronics that, when touched, create randomized futuristic sounds and everyone wears face paint and is on acid all the time and speaks only in mystical pseudo-philosophical tongue. As Yakov Smirnoff would put it, In post-9/11 Brooklyn, drugs take you!
And where do they take you exactly? We gotta wait for Odd Blood, due February 9, 2010 on Secretly Canadian to find out, but the album's first single, the warm, inviting "Ambling Alp", suggests it's somewhere you'll want to go.
The track opens in an ambient Animal Collective influenced (let's get that obvious reference point out of the way and move on, shall we?) collage of tweets and atmosphere before rising and climaxing into the playful verses; an acutely structured sequence of percussional noises and sound effects leading the way for a whistling keyboard and bouyant bass to remind the listener that this bizarre combination of sounds is intended to be fun, not terrifying (and with a music video like this, I imagine most people will need that reminder). Cue Horns and falsettos in the chorus to do the same. On a certain level, Yeasayer aren't doing anything new, but the great thing about the Brooklyn futuro-tribal fusion movement is that it seems like it's going to take a long, long time before different combinations of the same thing stop being interesting.
Song after the jump: Read more...
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Vampire Weekend - "Cousins"
Vampire Weekend clearly don't care about the indie-community backlash that's been steadily growing against them because, if they did, they would've never chosen "Horchata" to open their new album. "Horchata" seems to streamline every single element of their sound that the typical anti-VW personality hates into one piece of music: cutesiness for the simple sake of being cute, a hook that could fit comfortably into Kids Bop, and an element of upper-class sterility that occasionally seems to be trying a tiny bit too hard to sound "worldly".
The true lead single from Vampire Weekend's upcoming Contra, however, is the complete opposite.
"Cousins" is "A-Punk" if the song had any replay value whatsoever. The overplayed single from 2 springs ago was frantic, but that's more or less all it was. The brilliant thing about "Cousins" though, is that it doesn't just settle for being excited; it aims for batshit insanity. No one would dare accuse "Cousins" of being shallow because it doesn't give you enough time to even think about the song in those terms. As if the simplistic, jagged guitar riff opening the song didn't sound spastic enough already, the constant rapid-fire drum fills, snake-like bass and Ezra Koenig frantically switching between monkey noises and quick-paced, clearly enunciated, yet completely meaningless rhymes ("Dad was a risk taker! his was a shoe maker! You! greatest hits! 2006! list maker!"), only heightens the frenzy. The unhinged snarl of the verses bring Vampire Weekend down to earth in a way that will make the most devoted Vampire Weekend doubters give a double-take.
What pulls "Cousins" together from a fun racket into a genuine song, however, is the glorious instrumental chorus where twin guitars break into a contest to see who can pick out descending notes the fastest. Surf music, post punk and indie rock attitude hasn't been combined this effectively since The Pixies, but even they never sounded like they were ever having this much fun.
Song after the jump: Read more...
Monday, December 7, 2009
Smashing Pumpkins - "A Song For A Son"
There are two types of people in the world: the rationalist skeptics and the faithful believers. There are many tests to determine which one you are, but the one I like to use these days is the Teargarden by Kaleidyscope test. This test is simple. Just ask the subject how they reacted when they heard that The Smashing Pumpkins' (or more accurately at this point, The Billy Corgan Experience's) next studio album would be composed of 44 songs released one by one over the course of 3 years. Both types sighed, of course, but if you are a Rationalist it was probably a sigh of exasperation. The faithful on the other hand...
These are the same people who believe there was once a time when Billy Corgan's pretentiousness was a source of intrigue. Whereas the rationalist probably looks at most of Corgan's work as worthless teenage angst, the faithful know that there was something genuinely magical about the art in the liner notes of Mellon Collie. When spun, those smiling moon and sun illustrations covering both discs told dense, engaging fairy tales and painted pictures as fantastic and transportative as any myth Robert Plant was once able to spin.
These two camps are almost equally separated when it comes to the Machina albums. The rationalists will hate it on principle alone, and won't give either of them much of a bone. But the faithful, regardless of how much they liked or disliked them, will always at least commend Corgan's vision throughout it; a complicated conceptual story involving a rock star named Zero, the voice of God, and uncountable amounts of eye-liner.
With Zeitgeist, this distinction disappeared. Everyone hated it.
But what "A Song for A Son" represents is the moment from which the two camps have finally broken off again. The rationalists will undoubtedly write it off as more childish Corgan-penned melodrama. But the faithful will pick up on the prominent use of harpsichords, mellotrons and atmosphere, embrace the prog-rock structure, rave about the dramatic classic rock guitar solo midway throughout the song, and find themselves as excited by the prismatic art that comes with the download as they probably were when they first saw the video for "Tonight Tonight". Do you hear that? A sigh of relief.
So before listening to Corgan's first of many chapters in what will either become the best 90's Alternative (or 70's Classic Rock?) revival album ever or just an excruciatingly long descent into a your average Rock Star ego trip, ask yourself what kind of person you are. Because as much as "A Song For A Son" should be hailed as a refreshing, swoon-worthy, totally awesome return to form, the bottom line is that it's a song made for the faithful.
Song after the jump: Read more...
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