Before he delivers his debut full-length, A Love Extreme, Benji Hughes gives a little preview with A Little Extreme EP. The North Carolina singer/songwriter employs a funny, winning attitude with some interesting song styles to wet appetites.
Little opens with the interesting "Tight Tee Shirt," which combines a disco-shuffle and a high twinkle. But what's most remarkable is Hughes' wry nature, which is just enough of a straight-faced smirk to never dominate but always be present. The bigger "So Well" is still personal, but Hughes' cock-eyed outlook keeps it from getting too emo. The slower "Waiting for an Invitation" is more of a relaxed alt-country piece, but the sadness isn't ever overwhelming.
The disco-esque nature returns with "You Stood Me Up," and, of all the stylings Hughes tries out on Little, the disco-ish ones are the best. "Stood" has a tongue-in-cheek disco-grand that is reminiscent of famed indie mulit-aspected singer/songwriter Beck. "All You've Got to Do is Fall in Love" employs a piano-man low-key charm, but the slow and soft finisher "How Many Birds?" is a little too heavy in its air.
Luckily, "Birds?" is the one Little track that's not going to be featured on Love. Currently on tour with Rilo Kiley and Thao Nguyen & The Get Down Stay Down, A Little Extreme EP is on sale there (and soon in stores). Whether from Little or live, Hughes is sure to win over some new fans.
This young Pennsylvania to Los Angeles singer-songwriter possesses an unusually restrained and mature minimalism in her lyrical economy, her smart, concise melodies, and instrumentation that supports but never suffocates the material. Credit producer Joey Waronker for protecting Priscilla Ahn and keeping the arrangements at a tasteful distance. Priscilla Ahn's voice is simply too delicate. She has a light, airy, youthful quality that's genuinely optimistic, even if she's delivering something as dire as Willie Nelson's "Opportunity to Cry," the one well-chosen cover amongst her own notable originals. It's no coincidence that Priscilla Ahn is frequently concerned with flying and escaping her restless present. From the album's first-rate opening cut, "Dream," she traces her life to a conclusion with a strong desire for an outer body experience. "Astronaut" views the world from space. "Lullaby" is a prayer of hope for children stuck in small towns where their dreams go unanswered. Though Priscilla Ahn uses few words, she has much to say and a breath-taking voice for saying it.
"It was the most intensive work I've ever done on anything," Beck says the day after finishing his new record, sounding slightly dazed. For his tenth studio disc, Beck worked with Brian Burton, better known as Danger Mouse — who's overcommitted as both a producer and a member of Gnarls Barkley, which just released a record of their own. "It was like trying to fit two years of songwriting into two and a half months," Beck says. "I know I did at least ten weeks with no days off, until four or five in the morning every night."
Burton remembers Beck's stamina during their late-night sessions: "He's like a machine. I always got tired before he did. I stayed pretty late, but I'd usually hear the next day how late it went." The resulting album, Modern Guilt, is full of off-kilter rhythms and left-field breakdowns, with an overall 1960s British vibe. Beck's vocals float over the music as if he's singing along to some mystical radio station in the next room. The title track has the groove of a good Zombies single, while the twangy guitar and uptempo beat of "Gamma Ray" make it sound like Beck's cruising at maximum speed down Route 66. The lyrics include lines about the ice caps melting down (and "the transistor sound"), but there were many earlier versions. "I can't tell you how many times I wrote and recorded a complete song," Beck says, "and then just took everything away but the drumbeat and wrote a whole new song."
Beck and Danger Mouse knew each other casually before making the record — some of Beck's former musicians ended up playing with Gnarls Barkley — but they were both surprised at how naturally they worked together. "It felt like we could have been making our fourth record together," Beck says. "It did help that we share a lot of musical references. We spent the first week just talking about different records. His knowledge is pretty deep, especially with some of the obscure late-Sixties, early-Seventies rock."
The original vision for Modern Guilt was ten short tracks. "I was hoping all the songs would be two minutes long," Beck says, "but then I got rid of all the short songs." Each song started with Beck playing acoustic guitar over a drumbeat: If it made the cut, they'd flesh out the music, usually with Burton playing keyboard bass and Beck playing most of the other instruments. There were just a few guests: Joey Waronker added drums to the epic "Chemtrails," which would have fit in nicely on an early Pink Floyd record. And Cat Power's Chan Marshall added backing vocals to a few tracks, including the melancholy "Walls," which includes the lyric "Some days are worse than you can imagine."
Modern Guilt's release date is set for July 8 (Beck's birthday), rushed out much like the recent blitzkrieg of releases from Gnarls Barkley and The Raconteurs. For Beck, always eager to shake up music-industry practices, the disc marks the end of his major-label contract. "I've had this deal since my early 20s," says Beck, 37. "I don't have any plans at the moment. It's anybody's guess where things are going week to week with the music business."
Paper Rival might be one of the Nashville rock scene's most commercially promising acts — even if a lot of folks in their hometown have yet to hear (or hear of) the band. But before the scenesters start grumbling, consider that the band, formerly known as Keating, didn't exactly land a record deal overnight. The musicians just haven't been at home that much.
Not long after they got together, they recorded an EP, got a booking agent and, in early 2006, piled into a van and hit the road for an epic six-month stretch, landing opening slots for big-name bands including 30 Seconds to Mars.
Two years and change later, they're touring behind their full-length debut Dialog (released earlier this month via Photo Finish Records, a division of Atlantic).
"We maybe did four local shows (before our first tour), one of those being Chattanooga," front man Jacob Rolleston says. "We love Nashville, but it's a rather pretentious city musically, and deservedly so. People who live in Nashville and play music are better than anywhere else in the world. So trying to play music in Nashville, for it to be enjoyable is kind of hard sometimes. It's not like we're trying to disown our hometown. We just want to go to other places."
On that 2006 tour, the then-Keating played its earliest tunes — punchy emo/punk numbers that were noticeably sophisticated but easily palatable for an all-ages crowd. By the end of the six-month run, the musicians had made scores of fans, but it was all in a musical scene that Rolleston, who was closing in on 25, felt they had outgrown.
"We knew we wanted to change," he says. "We're all getting older, and we wanted to really throw out our influences and add in everything that we could."
Around that same time, the band was looking into getting its name trademarked and discovered a Canadian band already held the rights. After receiving a stern letter, the band decided to change its name to Paper Rival (a reference to the other Keating).
The name change provided an opportunity to switch gears, and the band began venturing into slower, subtler and more organic territory. Rolleston, a Tennessee native, says much of the new sound came from exploring the players' musical upbringing: equal parts '90s alternative and the work of rootsy rockers such as Jackson Browne, Van Morrison, and Creedence Clearwater Revival — music heard when "our moms had to drive us to baseball practice."
They pull off the mix remarkably well on Dialog. Folky ballad "Cassandra" casually cribs the melody of The Shins' "One by One All Day" for its chorus, augmenting its hook with Southern flair: fiddle passages and loose-but-limber strums.
The group maintains a modern, slightly emo edge in its songwriting, as Rolleston finds himself drawn to confessional lyrical fare, but he keeps drama to a minimum.
"For me, writing songs that are extremely personal, I don't know why, but it's a lot easier than writing songs that try to generalize the subject," he says.
That approach comes to a head on "Bluebird," easily the track with the most emotional heft. It's about Rolleston's best friend from high school, who murdered his parents and is serving life in prison.
"That was probably the toughest song lyrically," Rolleston says. "Not because it was an emotional experience, but because I didn't want to just beat it into the ground that my friend made this terrible mistake. I still love my friend and I think about him every day. So now it's like I have a song that I've written about him, and I feel like if our record is successful, that's going to be the way that people will see this person."
Making the best out of bad experiences seems to be a pervading theme of Paper Rival's career. The name change — an action that can let all of the air out of a young band — allowed Paper Rival to head on a different track, perhaps the one they should have been on all along.
"As soon as we found out we had to change our name," Rolleston recalls, "we were like, 'OK, well, now we can really experiment — and have fun.'"
The torrent of guitar notes tumbling out at the start of "It Was Everything. Everything!" tells you that you're in Telecaster heaven. The second album from the dual-guitar Swedes owes a massive debt to The Stokes and Television but the effect is as exciting as listening to either of those bands. Strokes-like hurtling guitars mark out "Miss You" while the prickly "Yes (I'm Coming Out)" offsets guitars with keyboards for a more restrained effect. Joel Lindström's vocals are always high in the mix apart from on the instrumental "Kamelen" where the guitars spank out a honeyed jangle. It's not a huge departure from the self-titled debut — a little more minor-key melancholy perhaps — but they carry off that New York guitar sound with style. Did I mention there were lots of guitars?
With the possible exception of the three people who look back fondly on Bruce Willis' recording career, we're well acquainted with the eardrum damage that can occur when actors live out their rock-star fantasies. But don't shy away from She & Him's debut just because the female half of the team is Zooey Deschanel. After all, she's not that famous: Though she was great during a limited run in Weeds, most people know her as "that cute girl in Elf." And besides, her partner is M. Ward, a distinctive performer who ensures that Volume One's abundant charms are balanced by quirks. Deschanel's reedy voice perfectly suits material that ranges from cabaret airs like "Sentimental Heart" to an echo-laden duet on Smokey Robinson's "You Really Got a Hold on Me." As for the concluding "Sweet Darlin'," it's a Wall of Sound wonder that whets appetites for Volume Two. Good actors know you've always got to leave 'em wanting more.
"Mother, When's the Judgement Gonna Come?" from the EPMouthoil
2008/Unreleased
By now the fairy tale success story of Bon Iver's Justin Vernon has become well-documented and perpetuated by romantic writers embellishing Vernon's trek into the woods as "some story that isn't there." What most people who are familiar with the Bon Iver story may not know is that Vernon has been a strong presence in the Midwest music scene for some time, recording with many local artists and mixing and producing records for others.
The Shouting Matches is another of Vernon's various side projects, this one with drummer Brian Moen. Vernon proves he is as comfortable growling through the dirty blues of The Shouting Matches as he is crooning in his haunting falsetto as Bon Iver. Vernon's raw vocals and gritty guitar work seem to be more at home with the vintage blues of Memphis, Tennessee than the sparse acoustic sounds of winter in Northwestern Wisconsin.
But Moen, the other half of The Shouting Matches, should not be overlooked. An accomplished musician himself, drumming for bands Amateur Love, Laarks, and most recently Montreal-based Land of Talk, Moen provides energy and momentum to Vernon's soulful stylings.
In an extremely impromptu interview with Vernon (I almost literally ran into him at one of his hometown haunts), all I could coax out of him about The Shouting Matches was that the project is "alcohol-fueled fun." If that's truly the case, order these two another round.
As the overwhelming chart success of the British female singer-songwriter has now officially reached the point of saturation (and for some, nausea), what with Lily Allen, Amy Winehouse, Kate Nash, Adele, Duffy, it's time for a revolution.
Meet the revolutionary: Florence and the Machine. Or should I say, the fiery, freckled "enchanted skeleton" who signs her cheques Florence Welch. Eschewing the customary sass and/or prettiness of her contemporaries, Florence instead is all about spittin' some blues with her Machine (a.k.a. Dev Hynes of Lightspeed Champion and Test Icicles fame) hacking away at the guitar.
Flo's contribution is the vengeance-seeking "Kiss With a Fist," a scornful anthem that has attracted the attention of some who are considering it the new wave of feminism. With rackety percussion and filthy blues riffing, the 20-year-old drops a set of soon-to-be-quoted-by-everyone lyrics denouncing her abusive lover: "You smashed a plate over my head/ Then I set fire to our bed/ My black eye casts no shadow/ A kick in the teeth is good for some/ A kiss with a fist is better than none."
Expect Amy, Adele, and Kate to come storming back with similar fight songs as soon as this hits number one... on the indie charts, that is.
Still widely viewed as little more than an offshoot of Okkervil River — a band with which it bears virtually no sonic resemblance, and with which it now shares zero members — Shearwater has been making brilliant records for more than long enough to stand on its own. Mixing the swoony grace of Jeff Buckley with the inventiveness of Talk Talk, singer Jonathan Meiburg and company made 2006's Palo Santo a tenderly masterful powerhouse.
Now that a 2007 reissue of Palo Santo has brought Shearwater a bit of national attention, the band is ready to assert its rightful place as more than a mere word-of-mouth sleeper. And darned if the new Rook doesn't actually live up to that promise: The disc is dark and graceful, intermittently rocking, and uniformly excellent, making it an ideal showpiece for a band five albums into its career, yet still largely unknown on a grand scale.
Best of all is the sort-of title track "Rooks," which mixes Shearwater's slow-burning intensity with a welcome dose of chiming pop charm. For all the drama inherent in Meiburg's yearning falsetto and doomstruck words — "And we'll sleep until the world of man is paralyzed" — "Rooks" is, at its core, a propulsive, infectious, and utterly beguiling little rock song.
After years of careful consideration, former Black Cabbage member Michael O'Connell presents jaw-droppingly great songs as Toronto's Culture Reject. With his arresting voice and unique compositional instincts, O'Connell brings friends into the fold but ultimately lets his eclectic tastes rule the roost. "Ain't It On the Floor" resembles a classic Jim Guthrie lo-fi experiment, with Guthrie himself providing a loose, swinging percussive foundation for the quirky guitars. "Inside the Cinema," however, is its own perfect example of irresistible lyrics, phrasing, and melodies coming together to form one of the most infectious, accomplished Canadian singles of the year. There's an overarching open ambience to every arrangement, as layers of tasteful sounds infiltrate the songs with subtlety. Just as Apostle of Hustle infuse forays to Cuba into their sound with pinches of bombast, O'Connell casually taps into the swing of other cultures, including familiar rhythms and gorgeous horns that add much texture to the Sade-esque "Overflow" and intricately mesmerising "Oh Remain." Built for summer nights at the cottage, Culture Reject's debut is a majestic achievement.
Not to be outdone by his Broken Social Scene partner in crime (Kevin Drew), Brendan Canning has decided that it's high time to do up a solo release of his own, as one of the "Broken Social Scene Presents" series. The album, titled Something for All of Us, was produced by Ryan Kondrat and John La Magna.
"This record, for me, is not a huge departure from what we do as BSS," says Canning. "It's a natural progression really, and these songs will certainly be a part of the live performances to come, as Broken Social Scene."
As with most Broken Social Scene-oriented releases, there are plenty of guest spots with BSS people (as well as others), including Kevin Drew, Justin Peroff, Jason Collett, Amy Millan, Andrew Whiteman, Ohad Benchetrit, Lisa Lobsinger, Kevin Hearn, Liz Powell, James Shaw, and Liam O'Neil.
Something for All of Us will be released on Arts & Crafts on July 22. It will be the second release under the "Broken Social Scene Presents" series.
It's hard to imagine finding much to fault in an album that professes a serious devotion to the likes of the Thompson Twins and Kate Bush, but it's also hard to imagine taking such an album seriously. Credit M83, then, for gazing back at the '80s and escaping the revivalist void that traps so many different acts with so many different intentions.
In an ethereal bit of illogic, Saturdays = Youth sounds entirely and nothing like the '80s. There's no mistaking songs such as "Skin of the Night" and "Graveyard Girl" as being rooted in any other time, from their hooks to their moods to the ways their guitars jangle in service of synthesizers at work in the foreground. But then, there's no mistaking anything on the album as having been recorded any time other than now. M83 has fancied big sounds since rising up in France as a strange sort of sensuous post-rock act in 2003, but Saturdays = Youth boasts a more expansive sense of space, by a lot. And it serves in terms of songs as much as sound design: For all the awe kindled by the effectively perfect sound in a transcendent highlight like "Kim & Jessie," the real triumph is that M83 uses such a setting for more simple melody and emotion than ever before.
According to Dr. Dog co-founder Scott McMicken, the band's prior albums were all about the experiment of making music, an "anything goes" approach. Now, he says, "We sound like a real band. We really hashed out the songs. In a way, this will be the first true Dr. Dog record."
McMicken is referring to Fate, due July 22 via Park the Van Records. The title is indicative of the album's theme, which entails lyrical patterns, repeating motifs like trains and clocks and the band's perspective on how the songwriting process flowed. It's also sequenced like one long unending track, with the songs bleeding into one another.
"We've always made what we'd call concept records. It's only recently that I haven't been embracing the term 'concept' as much," McMicken, aka Taxi, tells Billboard.com. "When people hear that term, they think Dark Side of the Moon or some far-reaching lofty fantasy. In our case, it's much simpler."
The group — which also includes guitarist Frank McElroy, drummer Juston Stens, bassist Toby Leaman, and organ player Zach Miller — once again returned to its own analog studio in Philadelphia to record the set, but did dip into ProTools for some effects.
"It took us six weeks to record this one, and two weeks to mix it. It's the fastest we've ever made a record," McMicken says. "It was out of our own self-imposed race against time. We'd like to keep albums coming out a lot faster."
The quintet's 2007 album, We All Belong, earned it its first Billboard chart ink, entering at No. 30 on the Heatseekers chart.
The band hopes to tour "equally, if not more" than its busy road schedule last year. "There's going to be a lot of changes live that will come out of Fate. We'll probably bring along a piano and more acoustic guitar. We're trying to get away from the two electric guitar sound," McMicken says.
What's more, Dr. Dog may keep the Fate theme going with potential performances on moving trains from its base in Philadelphia to New York.
No one likes to say goodbye. But love ain't for keeping, and after a decade and a half as a local lighthouse of relevant rock, Minneapolis' The Plastic Constellations have executed a fine exeunt, bidding adieu to their dear devoted with We Appreciate You. The farewell release is a fugue of many voices united, a gracious and gripping goodbye that proves parting to be the sweetest sorrow after all.
The first act makes a grand showcase of the camaraderie that the album art illustrates. "Stay That Way" is a Snap Pop, nervy and combustive, in which gang vocals chant from the rear of the house and Aaron Mader's and Jeff Allen's guitars effortlessly journey hand in fist from blaring count-offs to singing tandem solos. In "Floated Down and Flew Around," ethereal guitar tones gleam around house party "woo"s like powdered light in a mid-song ascent that is sure to cause a pause of reflection on the dance floor. For its first 15 minutes, the album is a tremendous party.
Its middle passage finds the album temperamental and chimeric — "Black Market Pandas" strides from quiet repose to crushing mania, plunging drummer Matt Scharenbroich into a double time that foreshadows "Heat Knocker," the album's bipolar savant. A tantrum of guitars carry the song into cacophony and drag it into a panicked, poppy last-minute finish while "We Are Genius Millionaires," with its overdriven drums, haunting piano hook, and the plinkety-plunk of Fischer Price music makers, evokes the days when Elephant 6 was a relevant pop force, before Jeff Magnum went crazy and Robert Schneider started mailing it in. The guitar melodies are pure steel filigree on "Phantom Canyon," a rocker that crackles like crushing aluminum. Its final line, "We'll stay by your side till sound don't apply," streams poignantly into "So Many Friends," a closer that finds TPC fully nude, their songwriting whittled to its marrow. "We're not here to change things," goes the chorus over claps and lonesome acoustics. "We're here to survive."
And with that, they depart. Saying a proper goodbye is a high art. This is one that leaves us at the train platform lonely, fulfilled, and fond.
A few years ago, the multi-instrumentalist Alan Wilkis wrote a song about Williamsburg that's full of the ironic affection that defines hipster/anti-hipster attitudes about the place:
Tell me all the bands that kinda sound like other bands
That we kinda sound like
Tell me something witty and ironic
That references some other thing
Oh Williamsburg, you are my love, I'd do anything for you
Though he now lives in Williamsburg, you don't hear much about that hipster lifestyle explicitly on Babies Dream Big, his debut solo album. Rather, Wilkis has what most young musicians can only hope for - that genuine and wholly unpretentious appeal of the very cool.
What's unusual about Babies Dream Big is that it does this without hardly ever dipping into what we might think of as "experimental" or "non-traditional" or "Brooklyn" sounds. In fact, Wilkis's musical referents spring not from artists at the edge of today's sound, but directly from yesterday's mainstream. "I'm trying to take familiar sounds and textures from the '60s through the '80s and re-imagine them, hopefully presenting them in refreshing and unexpected ways," Wilkis explains.
Think of well-known masters of R&B (Prince), soul (Stevie Wonder), classic rock (Boston), and soft rock (even Phil Collins). You can hear flashes and unusual combinations of all of these through much of Wilkis's music. But each strain is strongly tied together through their creator, a performer with a big, inclusive personality. Comparisons to Jamie Lidell come to mind, though in this case Wilkis is drawing from a wider cache of pop history that merely blue eyed soul.
At Harvard, where he attended college, Wilkis played in a hip-hop group called Witness Protection Program. It was the campus's premier party band, though you could always hear the different musical sensibilities of the members straining to coexist — the melodic, 2001-influenced synths of Nick Britell, the Beastie Boys-influenced raps of Jacob Rubin and Benny Peterson, and in the background, Wilkis's barely contained classic-rock guitar. (On the rare occasion that he was allowed the room to expand into solo mode, the songs came alive.)
For a few years after graduating, Wilkis played in a duo with WPP's drummer, Pete Kennedy, in small clubs in downtown Manhattan — places like Pianos, ACME Underground, and Arlene's Grocery, where you find ambitious young musicians playing to small crowds of friends every night of the week. The group self-produced a record, Rocks, that, though a bit inconsistent, hints at the influences that pervade Wilkis's solo work. From the straightforward blues of "The Optimist" to the self-conscious referencing of "Williamsburg" mentioned above, A Plus P was Wilkis, entertaining as always, but still in finding-his-voice mode.
Well, the songs on Babies Dream Big make a strong case for Alan Wilkis having found his voice. Though there's still a fair amount of genre-hopping throughout the course of the album, there is also a strong sense of unified artistic identity.
Once or twice, Wilkis and another talented musician from the class of '04, Matt O'Malley, hosted impromptu dance parties in the library of the Spee club at Harvard, making up simple beats and messing with computer and guitar effects in real time. They even reprised the act at Don Hills in New York once. Each time, the little experiments became an unexpected, don't-want-it-to-end pleasure. The point is, the guy knows his way around the business end of a MacBook Pro, and has a firm sense that what's most important to him is not necessarily the "cool factor" of innovative or experimental sound, but the manipulation of classic elements of pop songwriting with modern tools.
His recorded songs use this to their advantage, and come across as refreshingly modern as a result. Think of Zach Condon on "After the Curtain" or "My Night with the Prostitute from Marseilles," but in an infinitely happier place. There's a lightheartedness to much of the material on the album, a tongue-in-cheek sense of humor that has him singing about girls with tattoos "on the lower back up to the sky," riding around on bicycles. And then there is the trio of songs recently used to soundtrack GOOD Magazine's entertaining candidate profiles. Listen to them and you're likely to be hooked on Alan Wilkis. "I'm Famous" should be on an iPod commercial. "Milk and Cookies" will have you singing the chorus ("Ooh, they're so nutritious") for days and days.
A few musicians helped with the making of the debut record. Eric Biondo, who's in Beyondo and has played and recorded with many bands around NYC, including TV on the Radio and Massive Attack, plays trumpet on "I Wanna Know." Jason Treuting of So Percussion plays live drums on a couple of tracks. Wilkis is full of enthusiasm about working with these musicians (he calls Biondo "incredibly talented" and Treuting a "percussion monster"), but the album's character and personality is overwhelmingly Wilkis's own. And the self-produced beats and simple drum machines that are often used suit the organic, carefree nature of the music. Only on relatively straighter soul fare like "I Love the Way" could Wilkis potentially benefit from a slicker, more professional producer's touch.
Wilkis has said that his main priority in making this album was "to make a fun and happy record that is a bit more complex than it seems on the surface." In this aim he's certainly succeeded — Babies Dream Big has you hoping with crossed fingers that some happy chance allows Wilkis's own big dreams to become a reality. If you've ever been left a bit cold by the recommendations of music websites that seem to be championing bands for the sake of their newness alone, you'll appreciate what Alan Wilkis is trying to do with his music. If you find yourself occasionally suspecting that "experimentalism," or willingness to stray away from recognizable forms, is used by many of the "Brooklyn bands" as a cover for mediocre songwriting, you'll be refreshed by this one's straightforward and optimistic retro-pop sound.
One day, when he is, the curling, gleeful shout of "I'm famous!" will still be an inclusive, uplifting reminder that not all Brooklynites make their music memorable by exclusion. Now hear this: infectious Brooklyn retro-electro-pop for everybody.
Just two years ago I was asking myself what on earth had happened to The Stills. When they appeared in 2003, they were a fresh breath of air, representing Canada in the gloomy, atmospheric '80s aping rock sound that was headed up by Interpol. Their debut album, Logic Will Break Your Heart, was a sparkling first effort filled with all sorts of hooks, slinky bass lines and iridescent guitars. And then something happened. They fell for the sophomore slump and completely blew their follow-up, the steadily weak Without Feathers, which immediately rubbed me the wrong way with its uninspiring switch to MOR rock. I can't speak for everyone, but The Stills left my mouth with an unsavoury taste in it.
But all things must pass and the band have found a new home, moving from Vice to a much better fit in Arts & Crafts, which is set to release their third album, Oceans Will Rise, on August 19. Already I see improvement in their coifs — check the pompadour on Tim Fletcher — and their cover art, which is splendidly macabre. It's not a sign that they've gone goth, but I can proudly say that the band have made remarkable strides to return to the form that first caught our eyes and ears five years ago.
Lead single "Being Here" builds with a warm ooze of feedback and group harmonies, which then yield to a familiar drum beat and the entrance of chiming guitars and Tim Fletcher's emoting vocals. Deciding to stick with the semi-muscular rock sound, the boys have re-discovered the hooks found in past glories "Lola Stars and Stripes" and "Still in Love Song." While it's not as immediate as either of those, there's no denying the anthemic scale of "Being Here," from the memorable riff on the chorus, to the comforting titular chorus itself. And how about that subtle tangent inserted before the third verse? Nicely done.
The Stills have kept it simple, and it's paid off for them. Good to have them back.
By all published accounts, The Strokes haven't even begun to work on their fourth album, but devout fans are offered one hell of a conciliation prize: Albert Hammond, Jr.'s solo material. And "GfC," a tune off his forthcoming sophomore set ¿Cómo Te Llama?, out July 8, will certainly ease the potentially long wait.
With unadorned, meat and potatoes instrumentation, "GfC" opens with starry guitar twinkles, which segue into pop-smart slashes and hip-shaking bass, and soon, an all out chorus in which Hammond Jr. stretches his vocals like never before. A sliding mess of Beatles' White Album-like guitars seal the deal.
Amos Lee has shared marquees with some pretty big names — Norah Jones, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Paul Simon — but he still manages to keep a low profile. The Philadelphia schoolteacher-turned-Blue Note staple attests it's all about the music, and his new single "Ease Back" from his third album, Last Days at the Lodge (out June 24), finds the singer-songwriter much more mature. Perhaps Bob and Paul gave him some pointers?
The slide guitar and gentle mandolin strums matched with his emotive lyrics and richly soothing baritone come off as a tad more serious, but still manage to remain organically pure. Like a young James Taylor, Amos continues to evolve as a musician and storyteller, infusing the traditional soft folk of past records with soul, jazz, and a just a dash of country.
It's barbecue season again. Make sure to stock up on supplies: Enough patties, brats and, if you're rich, steaks, to cover the grill? Check. A wading pool full of iced drinks? Check. Light entertainment in the form of lawn darts, beer pong or croquet? Check. The summer-song of the year? Uh ...
The Ting Tings swoop in just in time to make their bid as this season's not-so-guilty pleasure. The pop anthem that everyone will be blasting at every pre-concert tailgate, rooftop patio bar and, of course, just might come from this stylish British garage-banging duo. That's a bit of a mixed blessing -- when was the last time you shook the house with Justin Timberlake's "My Love," Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" or Outkast's "Hey Ya"? -- but for the time being, that's about all The Ting Tings could ever hope for.
With not one but two summer-slam single contenders on We Started Nothing, the wonderfully sassy "That's Not My Name" and the less forceful "Great DJ." After those two tracks play themselves out (they're the first two on the album), The Ting Tings quickly lose momentum, but, that's not really the purpose of these single-shifting summer albums is it?
Just sit back and enjoy the rather brief ride. "That's Not My Name," the frighteningly catchy lead single, is the sort of cut you'll be powerless to resist, even when you erect your best defenses. Singer/guitarist/bassist Katie White gets her sass on in the face of dismissive man-things, exerting her independence and identity on guys who can't remember what to call her. Riot grrrl it's not, but it's got a lot more girl power than your typical swooning pop single. While she's at it drummer Jules De Martino bangs out a shuffling, staccato beat that's so direct and simple it's no wonder the duo put it at the center of the track's mix.
"Good DJ," the album's other contender, blends pure pop vocals, classic guitar work and a thick, stomping beat. It's halfway between the vocal charms of The Pipettes and the giddiness of Robyn. That's not a bad place to sit, even if its half-life is about three and a half weeks.
On the heels of those two tracks, the rest of We Started Nothing goes a little flat. "Shut Up and Let Me Go" and "Impacilla Carpisung" take on a slightly Brit-garage (that's electronic, not rock) take on chart pop that's as forgettable as it is unimaginative. Other songs grasp at modern-day styles a little more eagerly, as the pair mixes a shadow of art-punk and Top 40, coming off as a strange, not entirely satisfying halfway point between The Long Blondes and teen-beat pop.
For now, though, just enjoy The Ting Tings' best cuts while the nights are short, the temperatures are warm and we're all in the mood for a silly, but darn catchy, pop tune.
"Gobbledigook" from the albumMeð suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust
2008 iTunes
"Gobbledigook" may sound like something Quagmire from "Family Guy" would say before walking into a cathouse. But it's actually the name of the new single from Sigur Rós, which is available for free download at sigurros.com.
Clocking in at a very un-Sigur Rós-like three minutes, the moderately uptempo track is a bit of a departure from the deliberate, ethereal whale-mating sound that has made the epic Icelandic sonic mavens the country's biggest export since puffin meat. It's even — dare we say — catchy.
Sigur Rós' new album — titled Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust, which translates as With a Buzz In Our Ears We Play Endlessly — comes out June 23 in the United States. But fans can get an early listen now that it's streamed in its entirety at sigurros.com.
The album marks the first time vocalist Jon Thor Birgisson sings in English; "Hopelandic," the made-up language from previous albums, has gone the way of the viking in favor of everyday Icelandic lyrics.
Með suð í eyrum was produced by Flood and recorded in New York, London and Reykjavik. One track, "Ara Batur," was recorded live in a single take with the London Sinfonietta and London Oratory Boys Choir. The song features 90 people performing at one time: Only Sigur Rós could get away with such grandiosity.
There's something naive about The M's, even three albums into the band's catalog. It's this unabashed hopefulness that gives the Chicago quartet its warmth, its starry-eyed pleasantry that other 1960s revivalists lack.
The mid-60s were a magical time for contemporary rock 'n roll, and Real Close Ones is the closest that these four Midwesterners have come to recapturing the essence and inexperience of that era. It was a time that bands such as the Beatles, the Kinks, and the Rolling Stones were leaving the boogie woogie blues behind, but not quite ready to abandon their R&B undertones completely. It was a moment when musicians first thought that there might be studio sounds they'd never heard before, and a time when fans had built up a loyalty that allowed for experimental growing pains. The music was confident, but not yet arrogant. It was wild, but not reckless. It was developing a voice but wasn't aware that it soon would speak to — and for — a generation. It was a golden age when an entire art form grew up on radio dials around the globe, without a precedent or songbook to follow. It was genuine, as well as genuinely great.
It's this era that so many '60s revivalists forget, opting to cop the end and not the means, as they delve into their own takes on the cynicism of that decade's latter-year protest songs or drug-fueled trickery. While countless acts pay homage to what those British Invasion bands would become, The M's remember how their predecessors got there. By embracing both psychedelic tendencies and fundamental pop structures, Real Close Ones recalls a cautiously exuberant era.
From the anticipatory "Trying to Keep" to the wistful "Day in the Sun," the foursome barrels through track after throwback track reminiscent of a time when rock's forefathers realized that there was life beyond the doors of dingy pubs, but before they discovered that the outside world was a turbulent and violent place.
It's a shame Vaudeville died out nearly half a century before Tim Fite was born: He would have been a natural. The Brooklyn musician sings, he raps, he plays instruments, uses samples from obscure bargain-bin records and has been known to wear seersucker pants, with matching suspenders, pulled up well past his waist. Fite also has a searing wit and a strong sense of irony, which he combined to brilliant effect on last year's scathing take-down of rampant consumerism, Over the Counter Culture. In keeping with the sentiment of the album, he made it available for free on his website.
Fite is back to a label release on Fair Ain't Fair, a riotous carnival of sounds that finds his street-smart drollery in full effect on songs about consequences: of actions, of ideas and, ultimately, of being willing to apologize. Samples abound, but Fite uses them judiciously on what is his most musical, even pop-leaning, effort yet. There's still plenty of his strident, often funny observational ranting — "I need to play more shows/ So I can buy more clothes/ So I can look like them folks who buy clothes," he declares on "More Clothes," a deadpan anti-consumerist relapse. But he shows a more tender side, too, singing in subdued tones over a simple guitar part on the folksy, elegiac "Harriet Tubman."
The album is loaded with arresting musical touches. A woozy, carnival-esque waltz wheezes through "The Barber," and percussion crashes on "Trouble." Piano bobs gently on "Yesterday's Garden," while "Big Mistake" finds an electric piano vamp playfully circling the steady acoustic guitar at the heart of the song. That song, in turn, is the heart of the album, for its backhanded message of forgiveness. Fair may not be fair, it seems to say, but don't worry too much: Everybody screws up at some point. It's what you do next that counts.
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.
