For their third album, the Kills found an obscure source of inspiration: Pizza Pizza Daddy-O, a Sixties documentary about inner-city schools. After listening to the spunky playground tunes featured in the film, the duo's Florida-bred singer Alison Mosshart and British guitarist Jamie Hince built new tracks around the same sing-song rhythms. Their dark, sexy electro-rock sounds sharper and more memorable as a result: "Sour Cherry" is syncopated ear-candy built on click-clack percussion, drum-machine beats and hand claps, and "U.R.A. Fever" rides throbbing synths that suggest a more D.I.Y. Nine Inch Nails. Though Mosshart's shadowy lyrics about white drugs and bad mornings are tough to parse, her minor-key coos and PJ Harvey-style yelps seem carefully crafted -- especially on "Cheap and Cheerful." A bass-pumping dance tune that could light up hipster dance parties everywhere, its chorus sounds like something a goth cheerleader would chant: "I want you to be crazy / 'coz you're boring baby when you're straight."
"Long, Long, Long" is one of the most underrated songs in the Beatles' large discography, getting overshadowed by the flashier John Lennon/Paul McCartney songs that preceded it on side three of the original double-LP The Beatles release. The White Album made all sorts of crazy incongruous juxtapositions between endings and beginnings of many of its tracks, and "Long, Long, Long" -- which closed out side three of the album in its first incarnation -- was one example. This plaintive George Harrison ballad followed the bedlam of "Helter Skelter," a contender for the scariest, noisiest song the Beatles ever recorded.
"Long, Long, Long" was so quiet, indeed, that many original White Album listeners had to run over to the turntable and boost the volume to be sure the song was really there. In that context, it could have been thought of as a necessary respite from the madness of "Helter Skelter." On its own terms, though, it was a lovely if very low-profile song, as a supremely wistful Harrison number with a hushed atmosphere, ghostly organ, well-placed responsive guitar riffs, eerie high harmonies, and dramatic Ringo Starr drum fills.
As for the lyric, though it might on the surface seem to be a relatively conventional document of romantic (you guessed it) longing, as the late critic Nicholas Schaffner rightly pointed out in The Beatles Forever, it's "the first of dozens of Harrison love songs that are ambiguous in that he could be singing either to his lady or to his Lord." The just-on-the-verge-of-audibility tension gets heightened by a brief bridge that raises the volume slightly and ups the beat to a middle tempo, adding a bluesy piano and rising harmonies before beatific calm is restored for the last verse.
Lots of Beatles songs from the late '60s have weird endings, and the one for "Long, Long, Long" might be the downright creepiest this side of "Strawberry Fields Forever," with what sounds like a rattling train, joined by indefinable high organ notes and piercing wails. As The Beatles Recording Sessions documents, these unusual effects were produced by a bottle of wine on top of a Leslie speaker cabinet that began vibrating when Paul McCartney hit a certain organ note. When that fades away, it isn't quite the end of the track: a guitar chord is faintly thwacked, followed by a slam-the-coffin pair of drum beats.
It's been reported that "Long, Long, Long" was influenced by Bob Dylan's "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands," with a melodic similarity in the ends of the verses of both songs.
One of the key tracks on Revolver, "She Said She Said" is John Lennon's major contribution to the album (apart from the magnificent closer "Tomorrow Never Knows"). It's a vital, scathing track, reputedly inspired from a conversation Lennon had with Peter Fonda*. With it's clearly Acid-inspired lyric, Lennon sneers "She said she said / I know what it's like to be dead" with a contempt that is rare within his work with The Beatles. Harrison's guitar is similarly jarring and brittle. The song is quite different to anything The Beatles recorded previously, yet there's no denying its brilliance and enormous importance in the development in Lennon's song writing.
* = John Lennon is said to have got the idea to "She Said She Said" after tripping on LSD with actor Peter Fonda and members of the Byrds. The Beatles rented a house at 2850 Benedict Canyon in Los Angeles during their U.S. tour in August 1965. One night they held a massive party at the house, and Fonda and the Byrds were among the guests.
Apparently this was the first time John and George deliberately took the drug LSD. Fonda later said he remembered sitting out on the deck of the house with George, who said he thought he was dying. Fonda tried to calm him down by telling a story about when he was ten years old and sent to hospital after accidentally shooting himself in the stomach. He had lost so much blood that his heart stopped beating three times while he was on the operating table.
"I know what it's like to be dead," he told George, and right then Lennon passed by. Lennon heard what Fonda said, and allegedly replied: "You're making me feel like I've never been born. Who put all that shit in your head?"
It took the Beatles about 9 hours to record "She Said She Said," and they spent most of the time rehearsing through at least 25 takes. Paul McCartney later said that he wasn't sure if he actually played on the recording of "She Said She Said," and that it was perhaps Harrison who played the bass.
The Lennon/McCartney songwriting chops were already intact on their first album, and they were on fire from the steady gigging and fueled by the wild success of their initial conquest of Europe in 1963. "It Won't Be Long" is the opening track on With the Beatles and it's a damn good song, where the verse, chorus and bridge are all totally memorable. Paul's ever-fluid playing, Ringo's sloshy swing and peerless fills, and George's cascading guitar riff converge to concoct a feel that stands as a hook unto itself and perfectly supports John's searing double-tracked wail.
This number's got guts, soul, yearning. It's fierce, man, exciting as hell. And the "yeah yeah yeah" motif gives it a moptop-shakability that conjures the spirit of Beatlemania as much as anything they played on The Ed Sullivan Show. And of course, there's those aeolian cadences. It sounds like nothing else that came before it or after. It's one of my very favorite Beatles recordings.
What is John singing about anyhow? Bloody hell, who knows? Was he really feeling "so alone" or could it be that he was intuitively addressing America, soon to "belong" to him, along with the rest of the Fabs?
It is written that "It Won't Be Long" was originally intended to be the Beatles' follow-up single to "She Loves You." And though it never saw life as a 45, it was deemed sturdy enough to snare listeners as the leadoff number on their sophomore LP in late '63. For my money, it's every inch a hit, and would have stood the test, given the chance.
"Within You Without You" was the only George Harrison composition that made it to the Sgt. Pepper album, despite the fact that he had written several new songs at the time (including "Only a Northern Song," which was recorded during the Sgt. Pepper sessions, but released on the Yellow Submarine album).
Harrison began to study the Indian sitar in 1965 under the master Ravi Shankar (father of modern songstress Norah Jones). He introduced the instrument for the first time on John Lennon's "Norwegian Wood" from the album Rubber Soul that same year. The sitar appeared frequently on Beatles recordings after that.
"Within You Without You" was Harrison's second Indian composition, with the first being "Love You To" from 1966's Revolver.
Harrison started writing "Within You Without You" after a dinner party at the home of Klaus Voorman, a German artist and musician he first met in Hamburg. Voorman had designed the cover of Beatles' Revolver album, and he also played bass in the band Manfred Mann.
Harrison had gone into an adjoining room to play on Voorman's harmonium (an organ adapted for Indian music), and by the end of the evening the song "Within You Without You" was beginning to take shape.
The lyrics are inspired by Hindu religion, and the conception that all people are as one. It also reflects on the battle against materialistic values, hence the lines:
The people who gain the world
and lose their soul
They don't know, they can't see
Are you one of them?
One interesting fact about "Within You Without You" is that the song blends Eastern and Western classical instruments together. Musicians From Asian Music Circle were hired (but not credited) for the recording, and producer George Martin wrote a score for the strings. The combination of classical European and Indian instruments is highly unique, and although Martin was a bit unsure about the recording back in 1967, he recognizes it as a good song today.
John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and Ringo Starr were not present during the recording of "Within You Without You," but Lennon later said it was one of Harrison's best songs.
The balladic "Things We Said Today" separates four John songs on A Hard Day's Night with a love song from Paul. Both of McCartney's bittersweet ballads on the record are in minor, tempering the cheerful persona that normally excels in major positivisms (even for goodbye songs) like "P.S. I Love You" and "All My Loving." (This typically British underside will evolve into "Eleanor Rigby" and "For No One.") "Things We Said Today" is wistful and nostalgic, and it's one of the first from either Paul or John that takes on the issue of time in an explicit manner, even though it just skims the surface of the issue. Lennon's temporalities can be ominous ("Not a Second Time," "In My Life," "She Said She Said," "A Day in the Life"); McCartney's concern with time is less pronounced in "Yesterday" and more humorous in "When I'm Sixty-Four."
The assertive acoustic guitar intro sets up an atmosphere of impending departure ("You say you will love me / If I have to go"), and the middle eight bars go batty with head-over-heels delirium. The melody is the sound of romantic longing: it has the roll-on flow of a constancy that is approaching change, as well as the swells of hope that greet the inevitable ("Someday when we're dreaming...") -- Paul's voice is complemented beautifully during those moments. But the middle section, all rumble-tumble in major, stirs up the enchanting life of love itself, not renouncing the impending sadness but resting beside it with a completely different tone:
Me I'm just the lucky kind
Love to hear you say that love is love
And though we may be blind
Love is here to stay and that's enough
Musically, the bridge kicks optimism in where the verse plaintively accepts separation. With his eyes on the distant future --
Someday when we're dreaming
Deep in love, not a lot to say
Then we will remember
Things we said today
-- he can't help but revel in the present information with love he feels as he sings. Goodbye heartache is assuaged with bottomless affection.
The Strangest Colored Lights is the fourth full-length release from Birmingham, Alabama's 13ghosts. Since originally forming under another name in 1989, the band -- focused around songwriters and vocalists Brad Armstrong and Buzz Russell -- has endured or incurred break-ups and breakdowns, additions, subtractions, and infringement infractions, useless degrees and youthful distractions, guest performances, drug dependencies, and death. Though all of these things undoubtedly influence the band, it's the degrees and death that shape the songs (Armstrong holds an MFA in poetry; 13ghosts reformed after founding member Thomas Rhodes committed suicide in 1998).
A regular roster of band members plays a part as well. While the previous album, 2004's Cicada, employed the talents of a score of supporting musicians, including Birmingham area notables John Strohm, Taylor Hollingsworth, and Maria Taylor, The Strangest Colored Lights pares down the line-up to its now current, consistent core of Armstrong (piano, guitar and vocals), Russell (guitar and vocals), Sammy Boggan (bass guitar), Jason Lucia (drums and other percussion), and Andrew Vernon (effects, loops and other sounds). As a result, this record is more thematically cohesive, and stylistically comprehensive, than its predecessor.
"Lonely Death of Space Avenger" has the depth, distance and dimension implied in its title. Ethereal, echoing, effects-laden vocals by Brad Armstrong are set against a spacey strumming that adds to the sense of alienation the track describes, and foreshadows 13ghosts's persistent preoccupation with the proximity of death and the puzzle of life after it.
"Soft Houses" is a somber composition with a heartbeat rhythm. It stirs memories and ghosts and guilt, but does so with heartfelt harmonies, plaintive picking, and soft, sustained strumming. "Beyond the Door" has a sweeping expansiveness reminiscent of The Church. The ringing, swirling guitars bring to mind Will Sargeant, or perhaps Johnny Marr. Buzz Russell sings insights on the afterlife:
Here is a key as a gift to the door
And if you believe after death there is more
The horror and fear disappear
Were you really frightened?
Nobody's here there's just you
And the corner of a dream
The band may be haunted by the past and by things which are lost, buried, or hidden, but the creativity recorded on The Strangest Colored Lights assures that 13ghosts will not languish unheard and unseen. It's more than a whisper. It is alive.
Audio streams of "I Will Possess Your Heart":WM | Real
Clocking in at an epic eight minutes and 35 seconds, Death Cab for Cutie's new single "I Will Possess Your Heart" has been released, and you can stream it above. Somewhat like an extended trailer for a film, the song gives an in-depth preview of Death Cab's highly anticipated sixth full-length album.
The first half of the single is a lengthy jam, leading to where presumably the radio edited version will begin with Ben Gibbard's vocals. The band is presently in Los Angeles filming the video for the song.
"I hope this album is a bit of a surprise for those out there that think they have us all figured out," bassist Nick Harmer told NME. "We can't wait to share these songs with the world."
As previously reported, Narrow Stairs is set for release on May 13, and was produced and mixed by Chris Walla, who has also produced for Nada Surf, the Thermals, and the Decemberists.
Death Cab will appear at a handful of festivals and venues this summer.
Joesph continues to be one of the most prolific songwriters currently in America. This EP is the first of five releases in this coming year alone. In a increasing scene where singer/songwriters are cropping up at what seems to be every second it is just always refreshing to hear new Arthur material as this man knows how it is done. "Rages of Babylon" starts off with a sweet little harmonica but finishes with a powerful and painful lyric. "Morning Cup" features a really beautiful acoustic guitar riff combined with another strong lyric. "Could We Survive" is a tender piece that shows off Arthur really emotional and powerful voice with just the tripped down sound. "King of the Pavement" has this really cool echoed voice feature going on which makes it sound like it was recorded in a tin can first and then cleaned up a bit. Could We Survive is a simply must-own as Joesph has delivered another strong outing that always sets him apart from the rest of the pack.
The subject matter of most records is, let's face it, pretty inconsequential: getting high or getting your heart broken. Businessman John DeLorean's colourful life banged into both of these things, yet there was so much more to him too. This album -- by Boom Bip and Super Furry Animals' Gruff Rhys under the guise of Neon Neon -- is all about the late DeLorean, and he was such a fascinatingly conniving critter that they really couldn't go wrong.
It's not an education lesson per se. You can get fragments of his story from listening to the lyrics, but what you get more than anything is the sense of the man: his womanising, his competitiveness, his charismatic drive, his love of cars and, er, more of his womanising. Born in Detroit, DeLorean became infamous for launching his DMC-12 sports car, which featured iconic gull wing doors.
He built the cars in Ulster, but the fact was they were lemons: poorly made by an enthusiastic but incapable workforce. There was the whiff of corruption, too, as the UK government bailed his company out with an awful lot of subsidies. Facing bankruptcy, DeLorean played his final hand: he tried to make a million on a coke deal but was caught by an FBI sting. His reputation was destroyed.
All fascinating stuff, and the resultant album is a fitting testament: exciting, yet flawed like the man himself. Rather than going back to the future, Stainless Style dredges up the sounds of the past. In fact much of it consists of songs which sound like they were made in the '80s -- the era of DeLorean's downfall.
"I Lust U" is a sleazy electro-pop concoction with dirty lyrics licking their way slowly over some filthy keyboards. "Belfast" works too: a love poem written as if from DeLorean to the city where his beloved car factory briefly stood. Hip-hop fans will be disappointed to learn that the beats ratio isn't as high as you might imagine: "Sweat Shop" has a seat-of-the-pants bassline tailored to being played through a fly car stereo after dark and "Trick for Treat" ropes in the talents of Spank Rock.
Ra Ra Riot violinist Rebecca Zeller fondly recalls the rocky circumstances of her band's first gig during the winter of 2006. It was in the basement of her off-campus house in Syracuse, before the fledgling group even had its first rehearsal. When Ra Ra Riot's affable, easy-going drummer John Pike hadn't materialized by show time, the band went on "stage" with a drum machine.
"He thought it was a practice and showed up an hour late," Zeller says over the phone from New Orleans, where later that night Ra Ra Riot would open for Tokyo Police Club. "He had no idea it was a show, and when he arrived, there were probably about 200 people there and we were already playing. So he just stood there in the crowd and watched us, like everybody else. That was classic John."
Zeller's use of the past tense in talking about Pike is illustrative of the sad, jarring truth of the 23-year-old drummer's tragic death, apparently by accidental drowning, last summer after a postshow party with friends. On June 1, Ra Ra Riot had played a show in Providence, previewing songs from its buzzed-about self-titled debut EP. Upon retiring to Fairhaven after the show, Pike vanished around 3 the next morning. A search party found his mobile phone on a nearby beach, and on June 3, officials and rescue teams dredging Buzzards Bay discovered Pike's body.
Ra Ra Riot has decided to continue in the wake of his death, having booked a tour last summer and having been encouraged to do so by Pike's family. Still, band members remain profoundly shaken by the loss of their drummer and friend who was, by their account, a gregarious presence who provided comedic relief to the sextet's chemistry, both onstage and off.
"Obviously, there's nothing I would rather have more than having John back and no success whatsoever," says Zeller, 23. "It's been crazy because as a group, we've only been together for a year and a half and there was so much good happening. And then all of a sudden, the worst possible thing that could ever happen happened, and it completely shattered our world. I don't even know how to describe it except to say that I wish we could exchange everything we've had for John coming back. There's not a day when we don't think about him."
Ra Ra Riot guitarist Milo Bonacci, 24, also wrestles with the reality of Pike's absence but says the loss has strengthened the band's bond and its resolve to pursue the plans its members hatched together. "We've used that whole incident as inspiration to keep going in some ways, and we've been trying to turn it into a positive thing, however we can," Bonacci says. "Obviously, it's very difficult doing something that you only know about doing with a close friend -- and then suddenly not having them there anymore. At the same time, it seems like the only option. We were all convinced that this is what John would have wanted, and his family had been urging us to continue on. So we know it's the right choice."
Rarely has such triumph, and tragedy, struck a young pop band in such a ridiculously short span of time. Bonacci says he started the band in January 2006 with five friends and modest goals: "I wanted to do something that would be fun, where we could play around campus and play at house parties -- and that sort of nurtured this upbeat, danceable style of music, I suppose. I wanted to gather as many instruments as possible and was thinking that the more of those there were, the more opportunities there would be for experimentation. I was curious about strings" -- cue up violinist Zeller and cellist Alexandra Lawn -- "and it all came together within a couple of weeks."
Almost immediately, Ra Ra Riot, which also includes singer-keyboardist Wesley Miles and bassist Mathieu Santos (and, for now, Santos's friend Mike Ashley filling in on drums), began getting noticed for its fiery, free-wheeling performances. The band soon had more shows than rehearsals. It opened for Art Brut and the Cribs and was tapped as the opening act on Editors' US tour in the fall.
British music publication NME hailed Ra Ra Riot as one of the 10 best bands to appear at the South by Southwest music conference and compared its live show to "Dexy's Midnight Runners playing R.E.M." In a May 20007 "On the Edge" column, Rolling Stone picked the group as an emerging artist, and described the debut EP as being "full of violins, cellos, and songs about not being afraid of death" -- which, in hindsight, seems somewhat prophetic.
In fact, only one of the EP's six tracks, the frothy, strings-and-percussion-driven "Dying is Fine," explicitly contemplates mortality. But given the powerful emotional responses that music can trigger, it's not uncommon that audiences and critics alike might read deeper meanings into Ra Ra Riot's songs in an attempt to make sense of such an incomprehensible catastrophe as Pike's death.
"Because John was such a huge part of the songwriting process, some of the songs do remind us of everything that's happened, and 'Dying is Fine' does take on a different meaning now," Bonacci says. "But speaking for myself, everything we do as a band reminds me of John, and most of those things are happy, friendly reminders. Because it's something we all had fun doing together."
One of 2005's unexpected successes, We Are Scientists have had the unusual luxury of three years to record the "difficult second album." However, their follow-up to the 150,000-selling With Love and Squalor seems unduly indebted to their peers: fellow New Yorkers the Strokes and particularly the Killers. Lead single "After Hours" is so close to the latter's "All These Things That I've Done," you half expect Brandon Flowers to leap out of the stereo. We Are Scientists fare much better when imposing their guitars on the less predictable ends of 1980s pop. "Lethal Enforcer" has the kind of strolling bassline once heard on Paul Young records, but a chorus to die for. "Spoken For" nods to Joe Jackson, of all people, for a haunting anthem about fidelity. The metallic "Chick Lit" seems to have stumbled from a goth club circa 1987 -- but it's another guilty pleasure from an album that sacrifices identity in a scramble for catchy tunes.
The 26-year-old Jaymay, a.k.a. Jamie Seerman, vividly crafts series of vignettes that play like a novel, illustrating the intensity and incredible emotion that come with the highs and lows of an involving relationship in a setting as alive as New York City. With "Gray or Blue," the songstress boldly declares the sum of her strengths: "I'm winning you with words because I have no other way." Gracefully singing atop the intimacy of acoustic guitars, xylophone taps, and egg shakes, Jaymay also embraces accompaniment from organs and strings on standouts like "Blue Skies." With the lyrical dexterity of Bob Dylan and a stylish scat reminiscent of Madeline Peyroux or Billie Holiday, Jaymay also arrives with her own brand of introspection and intonation that fills the gaps and truly sets her apart from the pack.
It's been famously noted that 'hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,' but heartbreak has never sounded so heavenly on Jaymay's full length debut, Autumn Fallin'. And with her unmistakably undulated vocals channeled through cute but crushing catharsis, Jaymay may be set to revel in the crowning glory of pop-rock chanteuses past. After performing with the likes of other similarly soul-bearing songsmiths from Bright Eyes to Beirut to Okkervil River throughout the UK, Jaymay is all set to make a big splash stateside. Catch Jaymay at Austin, TX's SXSW March 15 at Hit Sheet Magazine's Quirky Somethings Party (3:00 P.M. at Maggie Mae's).
Jaymay's lyrics are powerful and utterly poetic, and create a consistent flow in her songs, so it was nothing short of a shock to have some of her selections -- in both verse and haiku form -- kindly rejected by The New Yorker in December 2007.
It's a secret, and they're dragging their feet. They don't want to tell me. Ben Davis, lead singer of the audiophile Cincinnati duo Bad Veins, is looking at the wall, trapped in a booth at a downtown New York diner not wanting to reveal the meaning behind his group's moniker. "People figure it out," he assures me. As soon as the words are out of his mouth, I've solved the riddle on my own. I tell him, and he confirms that I'm right. He's glad he didn't have to give it away for free.
Davis, along with Bad Veins drummer Sebastien Schultz, strives to maintain the dignified mystery that he assigned to the recording project when he started it in 2006. They are the only band at festivals not attempting to shove their demo into the unwelcoming hands of industry types. In fact, they are slow to identify themselves as even being in a band.
The duo's twin commitment to discretion runs the gamut; they are understated in appearance, opting for drab olive and aqua soldier uniforms onstage, and their music fades and builds in a way that doesn't immediately draw attention to itself. But the antique tableau created by their slowly spinning tape machine, military garb, and blood-red roses they've painted on their P.A. and bass drum is too jarring to look away from for very long. As wallflowers, they pop out. Their visual aesthetic and music are so hypnotizing that they are impossible to ignore.
At a Bad Veins show their tape machine, or more specifically their 1973 Pioneer reel-to-reel tape recorder, serves as the focal point, and they often give her (not only is it a she, but she has been dubbed "Irene") center stage while they play on either side. "We embraced it instead of trying to hide it," explains Davis. "We're not playing all of it; it's right there, you can see it spinning." Schultz adds, "For us, as music fans, we figured that makes more sense. If I go to a show, and the band is going to use a backing track, I would like to see more than just some guy tap an iPod."
Because their booming symphonies require more instruments than two musicians can play at one time, Bad Veins is reliant on an intricately rigged set of old- and new-school electronics: a painted box houses dozens of crisscrossed cables linking the P.A. to Davis' keyboard, guitar, mint green analog telephone-turned microphone, a second mic Davis sings into through a megaphone, the reel-to-reel, and Schultz's drums. The setup is precarious and stressful for the band; one bad wire or plug in the wrong place can ruin the entire chain. But Davis loves the wires, seeing them as symbolic of both Bad Veins' aesthetic and humanity in general. "There's something intuitive about the name Bad Veins and our flowers that we have on everything. The anatomy of a flower is similar to the anatomy of a person. They are both complex and delicate, intricately connected inside, like electronics and wiring are. The idea links us and our gadgetry together."
Coming from the Midwest, where garage rock is king (Cincinnati gets the Detroit spillover), makes Bad Veins an anomaly as much for their sound as for their aversion to self-promotion. "My old band was a sloppy, indie Pavement sound. I just hear orchestras in my head," Davis confesses. "After the band broke up there was a click. I just started hearing music that was very complicated, which Bad Veins is not. It sounds snobby to say it's complicated. I hear heavily layered, lush things in my head, and I try to recreate them."
With no release on the market for over a year, Bad Veins drew crowds to a handful of shows through curiosity and word of mouth. This year saw their first set of four tracks available as free digital downloads on RCRD LBL and as a vinyl EP through Dovecote Records. So far RCRD LBL has posted Bad Veins fan favorite "Gold and Warm" as well as "Afraid," with the other two songs soon to follow.
The night before our diner interview, I went to see Bad Veins at White Rabbit, a tiny club on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Acoustics there are huge, which made it even more obvious that there were only two skinny guys in combat uniforms making a ton of noise with just a PA, tape machine, some keys and guitar, a megaphone, and a telephone receiver. Something about the big sound they were making cemented the audience in place. No one walked away or even so much as looked away for the entire half hour set.
Though erstwhile Broken Social Scenester Jason Collett states that Kris Kristofferson and Bob Dylan are his primary songwriting influences, his solo output to this point has been characterized by its occasional lapses in internal editing and a weakness for stunt writing. But his latest effort, Here's to Being Here, is far and away his most streamlined record and, as such, is the one that draws the most obvious parallels to his idols. Bringing in far fewer guests from Broken Social Scene than on his previous efforts and writing lyrics that surprise for being so concise, Collett's focus shows a greater control of his craft. That he affects a throaty drawl on tracks like "Roll on Oblivion" and "No Redemption Song" makes the album's Dylan homage all the more obvious (in many ways, it sounds like a lo-fi version of The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter), but it's to Collett's credit that his songwriting generally holds up to the direct comparison. While he's able to turn an indelible phrase ("Out of Time" boasts the stellar couplet, "On a rainy day highway/ In the melancholic autumn/ I got the most nostalgic feeling/ I'm gonna hit rock bottom"), Collett is at his best on songs that toy with straightforward narratives like "Sorry, Lori" and "Nothing to Lose." Even though the album's production aims for and achieves a vintage AM radio sound, Collett's willingness to subvert the conventions of songwriters like Dylan or Kristofferson makes Here a definitively modern record and perhaps the first of Collett's solo albums to sound like a real classic.
One interpretation of the "heavy circles" of the album title and group name here might be the circles of heavyweight talents associated with this effort. Specifically, the Heavy Circles are a duo consisting of singer/songwriter Edie Brickell, who has a history going back to her platinum-selling work with the New Bohemians in the late '80s, and her stepson, Harper Simon, a son of Paul Simon, Brickell's husband, by his first wife. The apparent generational divide doesn't really exist: as of the release of this album, Brickell was 41 years old, Simon 35. They were joined in the studio by friends of Simon's including other famous progeny, such as Sean Lennon and Martha Wainwright. For all that, however, the disc might as well have been billed as an Edie Brickell solo album, since Brickell co-writes and sings lead vocals on every song. The band is given greater prominence than might be the case with a solo album, as it plays rhythmic pop/rock arrangements clearly influenced by '60s and '70s rock, and Brickell is mixed a little lower than she might be if this were her record. But her voice is sufficiently distinctive that anyone familiar with her work and hearing this album simply would take it as an Edie Brickell record. As Edie Brickell records go, it is a pleasant but modest effort. The songs are well-crafted, but not particularly impressive; the playing meanders in places; and Brickell seems a bit hemmed in, not able to express herself in as individual a way as usual.
If you follow Flight of the Conchords on their HBO television show, you can probably make a pretty good stab at a track listing for the act's upcoming full-length.
The kind-of imaginary band will make its full-length debut April 22 via Sub Pop with Flight of the Conchords. The 15-song album features completely re-recorded tracks laid down with producer Mickey Petralia (Beck, Ladytron), and follows up last year's EP The Distant Future.
Irony, detachment, self-awareness -- all pretty typical traits of (usually white) indie-rock types toying with hiphop, electro, or R&B, but tricky ones to pull off. At best, as with Hot Chip's Coming on Strong, these emotional stances can provide lyrical grist and some good punch lines. At worst, such distance can come off as condescending or minstrely, the sense of cultural otherness -- whether guilty or transgressively thrilling -- eclipsing the actual music.
Which is why No Kids' Come Into My House is so refreshing. The Canadian trio of Julia Chirka, Justin Kellam, and Nick Krgovich (three-fourths of the critically lauded P:ano) touch on cooled-down, robotic R&B, but they approach such sounds as just another source on their sonic palette, with no hand-wringing about appropriation, only sincere investment. They sample from Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis as casually as they might from Jan & Dean; the band's odd, baroque pop suggests the symphonic ambitions of Sufjan Stevens and the nu–Arthur Russellisms of Kelley Polar as much as they do the aloof drum-machine funk of early Hot Chip.
T-Pain-esque Auto-Tune and a faint echo of Renee Scroggins's eerie "UFO" guitar appear on the chorus of the sighing "Listen for It/Courtyard Music." "The Puddle" is a lilting, palpitating hybrid of show tune and soul. There are shades of new jack on "The Beaches All Closed," while "For Halloween" is slightly screwed chamber pop. Everything is fair game, and everything is fully absorbed into No Kids' peculiar, rarefied, but ultimately persuasive musical vision.
Central to that vision is the setting of a vacant or dormant house, some chilly beachfront property only occasionally inhabited, a getaway built for Great Gatsby–style leisure-class ennui. This place is especially prevalent on dour opener "Great Escape" and the swooning, subtropical "Old Iron Gate." If any distance is acknowledged here, it's the longing gap between these songs' singers and their subjects.
No Kids' eclecticism sticks because the songwriting is smart, subtle, and full of careful details; their singing is up to the task as well, their voices clean and clear -- when that Auto-Tune appears, it's remarkable because, unlike with T-Pain, here the technique tints voices that you know are capable of the melody without technologic aid (see the agile melisma on "Neighbour's Party"). Come Into My House is a studied synthesis of forms, a sweetly sad song cycle about loneliness and domesticity, and a totally singular pop record.
Tokyo Police Club's still a young band and already they've given us two releases -- the wave-making A Lesson in Crime EP, the sturdy Smith EP -- but given TPC's penchant for two-minute tunes, really it's only fair this next platter come with more than four-to-six cuts. Saddle Creek snapped up the precocious post-punkers a while back and, yes, finally an LP is on its way, "In a Cave" being its first serving. Under three minutes (still), fuzzed-up bass (as always), handclaps (again), group chants (of course), but this time out TPC doesn't sound like they're in such a rush, allowing their uncanny knack for pop tracks to brush by a little more smoothly, to expand a bit more patiently. "Cave" has got nothing on our favorite TPC moment, but it is a fine look at what's creeping out of their Elephant Shell.
Madison, Wisconsin, U.S.A. Jonk Music encourages you to buy your favorite music. If you like the sample you hear, please support the artists by purchasing their work and attending their shows.
