What would happen if you took the pop rock magic of The Strokes, added the thin, reedy voice of Thom Yorke of Radiohead, and topped it off with lyrics steeped in political overtones?
Answer: You would have Koufax, a band that takes its name from enigmatic ex-Dodgers pitcher Sandy Koufax. Formed in 2000 out of the ashes of several bands, Koufax's line-up has changed with each passing album. The only constant member has been lead singer/songwriter, Robert Suchan.
Synthesizers and pianos ran amuck on their debut album, It Had to Do With Love, leading to a monotonous sound and mixed reviews. The band took the hint. Starting with 2002's Social Life, guitars, drums, and bass began to figure more into Koufax's songs. With Hard Times Are in Fashion, they fine-tuned their sound further to encompass elements of rock, blues, and political ballads.
Koufax's latest album, Strugglers, picks up where Hard Times left off, spinning out more songs dealing with war, freedom (or the lack thereof), and our flailing economy. The band dials the fear and paranoia up here, making Hard Times look pleasant by comparison. The sense of discomfort can be credited to a few things.
First, Strugglers is replete with songs that rock more than anything else the band has done before. Second, Suchan's nasal voice set one on edge. And no wonder since he's singing about things that come straight from living in America today. The band also adds horns to their arsenal of instruments. On opening track "Any Moment Now," the horns wail and wheeze, creating a wall of sound that reminds me of the times in my life I've felt naesous or queasy.
The horns create a feeling of impending doom, of walls closing in on you. The horns capture the agony, fear, and uncertainty of living in America after 9/11 and the decline of the once muscular economy of the late '90s. Koufax unveil the horns on only a few tracks, which is unfortunate since they fit perfectly with the album's blistering look at America.
With this album, the band continues to diminish the role synthesizers and pianos play in their songs. On "Drivers" and "What I'm Saying," synthesizers take a backseat to guitars and drums. That's not to say the synths are pushed to the back of the line. Learning from the mistake they made on their debut, the band exercises more discretion over when to let the synths sing and when to let them murmur. The result is Koufax's most well-rounded and pleasing album to date.
Simply put, Koufax's Strugglers is "indie pop for the Police-State Generation." The words indie pop and police-state may sound like they don't belong in the same sentence. Just listen to the album, though, and it'll make sense.
The times in which we live are confusing, chaotic and complex, but the things that have always been important in life are still important, and those are the subjects Joshua Radin addresses on his second album, Simple Times (out digitally Sept. 9 and in stores Sept. 30). These songs, he says, are about "falling in and out of love. Making friendships, having friendships fall apart. Experiencing different parts of the world, seeing other cultures and getting a better perspective on how we live in our country. Everything that people generally go through."
The means he employs to deliver those ideas to the world is also pretty simple: He picks up a guitar and sings his heart out.
"It's a personal account of my life through music," says Cleveland-born Radin. "They're all true and honest songs. When I meet people after shows, sometimes they think they know me because of a certain song—and in a sense they do, because I write about what's going on in my life. It is scary making yourself vulnerable like that to a bunch of people you don't know, but it's also very therapeutic."
"I was always trying to find some medium to express myself," says Radin, who had previously studied art and spent six years writing screenplays. "When I started writing songs, I thought, 'This is as honest as I can be: getting onstage with my guitar and my voice and singing for people.'"
Radin proved an extraordinarily quick study. A friend gave a demo featuring his very first composition, "Winter," to a TV producer — who promptly used it to score a scene of the sitcom Scrubs in early 2004. Other Hollywood types found his music just as evocative, and soon various Radin songs were being heard in other TV shows (Grey's Anatomy, Brothers and Sisters, American Idol, One Tree Hill, So You Think You Can Dance, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Eli Stone), as well as movies (The Nanny Diaries, The Last Kiss, Catch and Release) and ads.
Having captured the public's attention, Radin set about keeping it with the release of his debut album in 2006. We Were Here drew critical acclaim and passionate listener response, establishing him as an artist in the tradition of greats like Nick Drake and Elliott Smith — confessional folk-pop craftsmen who could say more with a whisper than most can with a scream.
Still, We Were Here presented the first batch of songs Radin ever wrote. Simple Times is drawn from a much deeper well. "These last two years I spent writing and writing and writing," he says. "I did feel this pressure on myself to top the first record."
To help him do that, Radin enlisted highly regarded producer Rob Schnapf (Elliott Smith, Beck). "I still wanted to keep an intimate sound, but I also knew I had to grow as an artist," Radin says. "So I opened myself up to Rob's production, and he had a lot of great ideas. We both had a really clear vision of what we wanted."
Radin spent seven weeks at L.A.'s legendary Sunset Sound studio working with a cast of musicians including Patty Griffin, who dropped in to sing the exquisite harmony on "You Got Growin' Up to Do."
The completed Simple Times offers the next step in the evolution of an artist whose talent is flourishing, whose skills have grown and whose vision is broader than ever before.
"I feel like right about now I'm starting to hit my stride, which is cool," he says. "With this record I feel like I can come out and say, 'OK, I'm a fully formed artist now.' I just hope that other people like it as much as I like it."
Last summer, not long after Ra Ra Riot released a promising EP, their drummer John Ryan Pike drowned drowned in the ocean after a show in Massachusetts. His death weighs heavily on their excellent full-length debut, much of which he co-wrote. Taking its name from a bar close to Pike's home in Gloucester, Massachusetts, The Rhumb Line abounds with death and water imagery, vividly evoking loss in a seaside town. But if the music is funereal, it's also triumphant: Ra Ra Riot combine Arcade Fire's orchestral reveries with Vampire Weekend's pop sensibility for an album that's both effervescent and heartbreaking.
"Ghost Under Rocks" starts as a mournful cello reverie, then boils over into a punchy industrial groove with stuttering drums. "St. Peter's Day Festival" banks on jumpy dub rhythms as Wesley Miles sings, "If I go to Gloucester, I will wait there for you." "Can You Tell" folds organs and explosive strings into a Sixties girl-group beat. (Vampire Weekend keyboardist Rostam Batmanglij co-wrote an earlier version of the song.) Even the macabre "Dying is Fine" sounds optimistic when Miles coos a few lines from an E.E. Cummings poem over a power-pop melody: "Dying is fine/ But maybe I wouldn't like death ... even if death were good."
Part of what makes The Rhumb Line so engaging is that it's ultimately life-affirming: It's not only a requiem for a lost friend, it's a tribute to the ones who stuck around through the worst times. As Miles sings on "Oh, La," "We've got a lot to learn from each other/ We've got to stick together." By the album's end, he's declaring, "I've discovered all I've got to do" — a simple but compelling reason for moving on.
After more than two years of touring for their debut release, and having gained and lost a few members, Land of Talk retired to their hometown of Montreal to roll tape on a batch of new songs.
Singer/songwriter/guitarist Elizabeth Powell set about making an album that could encompass a great deal with very little, an aesthetic in stark contrast to the orchestral pop and digi-tweaked indie chic. With bassist Chris McCarron and drummer Andrew Barr (The Slip), the band set up in an old converted church outside of Montreal and recorded nine songs with the helping hands of Justin Vernon (Bon Iver). The tenth and final track "Troubled" was recorded in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, at Vernon's parents' home.
The album opener "Yuppy Flu" and the two songs that follow, "Death By Fire" and "The Man Who Breaks Things (Dark Shuffle)," are stealthy nods to Land of Talk's much ballyhooed debut EP Applause Cheer Boo Hiss. Powell is as unrelenting in her appraisal of the world as she's ever been, and it's a world as pitiably venal as it is lovingly rendered. These songs might easily have sat in tandem with the urgent rawness of the EP tracks, but with Powell's sense of story and Vernon's fresh perspective they find better use on the new album. Here they set a perfect bridge from the jangling dissonance and ferocious doubled voicings of the debut, towards the road-weathered clarity and reflectiveness she has now begun to own so fully — a narrative string from there, to here, and beyond. When the titular track hits four songs in, it's clear why "Some Are Lakes" is the album's anthem call, as much a nostalgic tramp through summers past and love unending as a backhand ode to the very album it appears on. It's a statement of intent with a sea change at its heart.
"It started at a summer lake / a sentence and a name / If only for a moment's sake / We called it and it came," Powell sings. The fierce spotlight of Powell's attention points inward and has begun exposing a more private side of the nascent iconoclast. There's nothing fragile in it. The honesty makes it steel. That in itself is a kind wonder. Where once one might have questioned whether Powell was shielding herself under the gauze and frenzy of her music, songs like "It's Okay," with its Afghan Whigs-inspired soul, and the alt-country amble of "Troubled" prove that she is ready to strike at the heart of even her own cherished conceits, and come out of it fresh, fighting fit and game for putting herself on the line in the spirit of true musical confession.
As a portent of things to come Some Are Lakes is nothing short of inspiring. On its own merits, it's simply striking. The simplest things are the hardest to make.
Nux Vomica's cover perfectly reflects what's inside — a moody shot of singer Finn Andrews smoking a cigarette, wearing a black suit on a black background. Like the record, it's dark and classy and there's a slight physical resemblance to Nick Cave, who along with The White Stripes is one of the few noticeable influences on the music.
Like many a classic album, too, the track listing is spot on. Opener "Not Yet" is not the strongest song here but it makes a fine introduction. Like music from some kind dark David Lynch western, the lyrics obliquely evoke a childhood psycho drama out on the prairie fields. "Not Yet" is an enjoyable listen though a little heavy, but immediate relief is provided by "Calliope" which is entirely different; the heaviness replaced by a less abrasive, melodic quality with some lovely trilled piano parts.
"Calliope" is really a warm up though for the wonderful "Advice for Young Mothers to Be," on which Andrews sings a fine melodic tune, accompanied by swooning female backing vocals. In the same vein is "A Birthday Present," a treat indeed, again sprinkled with piano gold dust. Andrews' lyrics are impressive indeed — classic, full of religious imagery and nay a modern reference, a ringtone or an iPod, to be found. Written down in the CD sleeve they look very much like poems.
Everything is wrapped up with "House Where We All Live," a world weary track where Andrews imagines the modern world, or at least the male aspect of it, as a crumbling old country pile full of dysfunction and angst-ridden occupants, sighing, "I'm not sure God knows we're here." This is a really fine, assured album — ambitious, dark and poetic yet totally accessible.
A notorious homebody, Chad VanGaalen is well known for rarely leaving his basement in Calgary, endlessly drawing, recording, and making art. Fortunately, he has an uncanny knack for creating music that is sweepingly beautiful and undeniably genuine, and with his third full-length Soft Airplane (due September 9), this celebrated multi-talented artist has created his most complete album to date.
With 2005's Infiniheart and 2006's Skelliconnection, Chad displayed an innate understanding of simple pop melody and a penchant for intellectually playful arrangements. Compiled from years of hidden back-catalogue and lo-fi CD-R releases, both albums went on to receive critical acclaim from across the globe. While his first albums hinted at musical reference points (that even Chad seemed to be reluctant to embrace), Soft Airplane reveals an artist utterly in stride — confident enough to span genres, while working with a determined and deliberate focus.
Freed somehow from expectations or restrictions, Chad's musical expression seems both focused and unfettered. While elements might recall Neil Young (On the Beach), touch upon Sonic Youth (Sister), or even evoke the electronic meanderings of Raymond Scott, Soft Airplane manages to soar above musical reference points. The songs trace stories of birth and death, reflecting changes in his life over the two years since Skelliconnection, and cocoon the listener in a distinctive and unique world. Layered with a lush and complex mix of found sounds, vibraphone, corrupted synthesizers and drum machines, accordions, cello, clarinet, guitars and many others, Soft Airplane remains spacious and surges with pop-informed sophistication despite its lo-fi recording origins.
The album opener "Willow Tree" showcases Chad's seemingly wise and fearless understanding of death amidst sweet banjo rhythms, swells of accordions, and resonating vibraphone; from first listen, the song captures the overwhelmingly compassionate human spirit that defines Soft Airplane. In "Bones of Man" and "Bare Feet on Wet GripTape," Chad pays tribute to the slack vocal styling of Thurston Moore, while on "Molten Light" or "Rabid Bits of Time" his voice trembles with his distinctive vulnerability. When electronic experimentation comes into play on "Phantom Anthills" and "TMNT Mask," Chad toys with literate quasi dance-pop songs, but in characteristic irreverence with broken glitches from circuit-bent toys recorded to old tape machines. In fact, "Cries of the Dead" debuts a mechanical drum machine of Chad's own design, a handmade robotic device that strikes out an awkwardly fallible and surprisingly human rhythm.
As Soft Airplane closes, Chad allows the fragile, ascending, "Rabid Bits of Time" to greet the thunderous synth spasms of "Frozen Energon" through the stereo field-recordings of a passing freight train, and a psychedelic nightmare suited to cartoonist Jim Woodring brings the album to a shuddering halt. Sometimes the most powerful of musical expressions come from the most hushed and unassuming sources; with Soft Airplane, Chad VanGaalen has created one of these rare, heartfelt and gripping moments from the depths of his cluttered basement. Fortunately for him — and us.
Thankfully Friendly Fires haven't been too tarnished by the endless glow stick paradigms associated with the now dreaded nu-rave tag, and their laboriously recorded, self-titled debut only serves to confirm the burgeoning distance from a world of garish neon and questionable colour combinations.
Eschewing the acid revivalism of Klaxons, Friendly Fires are the laidback older sibling to their snotty, demanding, attention-deficit little brother. They make music with dancing in mind, and while they're more than happy to expose an electronic underbelly, disco sirens are replaced with pernickety percussion. Falsettos serve more than a novelty purpose and the end result is a lean, trim ten track hit of blessed-out halcyon pop and shifting shoegaze.
You might be surprised to know they used play in a hardcore band. You probably already know that the purveyors of 2008's slickest, disco punk filth don't hail from New York, but St Albans. Despite the lack of cultural kudos, Friendly Fires don't just pull it off, they revel in it. It's a debut that bubbles with elements of DFA's cooler-than-thou production and the house party inclinations of The Rapture, riotously polished off with Ed McFarlane's vocal.
Now ten tracks might initially represent a measly return for two years of toil, but apart from a brief Epworth dabble on album opener "Jump in the Pool," it's a self-produced, heartfelt debut that's been tinkered and trimmed to dizzying effect.
Last year's single "Strobe" fleetingly slows the album tempo to a glistening electro lullaby, "Lovesick"'s bass slide and incessantly catchy chorus screams single potential and "Photobooth" runs with the angular, self assured attitude that might see it grace a Kitsune compilation.
An album brimming with stand alone tracks; it's as comfortable and capable of gracing dance floors as it is commandeering mainstream radio playlists. Swathes of rapturous synth and punchy, rhythmic basslines are twisted into an immediate melange of daytime friendly anthems and itchy indie disco floor fillers designed to get your feet moving independently of your body.
Porn star guitar skitters over bongo snaps and pan pipe blasts in the thoroughly restless "In the Hospital," "Paris" briefly takes up the itchy rhythm challenge before enveloping itself in colossal washes of synth, before the epic, choral stomp of "White Diamonds" slow burns itself to a thunderclap close.
Assured, short and ultimately sweet, Friendly Fires is a glib reminder that you don’t need an M6 underpass, New York penthouse or guestlist to have an all night disco party, and remind us there's no shame in getting your groove on.
March 1, 1999 — A question I got a lot of last year was, "Hey, see any good grunge bands?" Having spent a little over a year in Seattle and spending more than one night at a club, the answer is a resounding no. I've seen the sultry '70s revived in Huge Spacebird, been entertained by Smokelahoma's mix of Grateful Dead and George Jones, swooned under the tragic ballads of Joel R.L. Phelps, and gotten down with the funky groovemeisters who pack the Art Bar. But grunge? Nope. Saw a shitty punk band at the Off Ramp by accident. That's as close as I got.
To answer that question, I throw back a short version of the above paragraph, which inevitably leads to, "So, what are the bands like?" A glance above should give you an idea of what I've been liking, but Death Cab for Cutie is something different. These guys came out of nowhere (Bellingham, Washington) and immediately, tongues were wagging. Their debut album disappeared from record shelves. The audience grew. Children were born and old people died. Life was good again.
As Beatles fans might surmise from the name (lifted from a Bonzo Dog song that appeared in Magical Mystery Tour), there's a little Liverpool going on here. There's also a serious Built to Spill vibe soaking up the spilled beer on the bar. The result is terrifically catchy power-pop. After the opening acoustic guitar and cello-laced "Bend to Squares," the band kicks into high gear with the super infectious "President of What?" Deceptively simple at first, the hook digs a lot deeper than you'd think. I've been humming this song every day for six weeks, and that's six weeks I'd spent without the CD. (Pitchfork procedural bureaucracy. I could make a joke, but Ryan would edit it out.)
Almost as catchy is "Your Bruise," which makes really nice use of echo on the traps. And any band that can make a song called "The Face That Launched 1000 Shits" and not make it sink under the weight of its title, much less make it sound like the Radiohead knockoff it vaguely hints at being... well, that's just downright cool. As is the rest of Something About Airplanes. You can take my word for it — whether or not they ever get huge, they're awfully good.
Ray LaMontagne, one of the most distinct and recognizable voices in music, announced his first North American tour in support of his new album Gossip in the Grain, due out October 14 on RCA Records. The six-week tour starts September 30 in Indianapolis. Originally set to drop in September, the release date for the album was pushed back as LaMontagne, struck by inspiration, went back into the studio to record additional material.
Recorded with returning producer Ethan Johns in Box, England, and touching upon a range of styles and musical settings — spanning pastoral folk, railroad blues, front porch country, and plangent balladry — Gossip in the Grain proves to be LaMontagne's most creative and emotionally expansive collection to date.
Whereas LaMontagne's two previous albums, Trouble (2004) and Till the Sun Turns Black (2006), were largely solo affairs with Johns serving as multi-tasking instrumentalist, Gossip in the Grain sees LaMontagne joined by members of his touring band, bassist Jennifer Condos and guitarist Eric Heywood, with Johns largely handling drum duties. Along with his band members, LaMontagne is also joined on two tracks ("A Falling Through" and "I Still Care For You") by singer/songwriter Leona Naess, who will be the opener for the entire tour in support of her new album Thirteens, out September 23 on Verve Forecast.
Listening to One Day as a Lion's self-titled debut EP, it's easy to forget that Zack de la Rocha has been absent from the national spotlight for, oh, I don't know, eight years.
Yes, it's been a long time since Rage Against the Machine faded away with the covers album Renegades, but that doesn't mean its outspoken frontman has forgotten why fans all over the world listened to him in the first place.
Without skipping a beat, One Day as a Lion storms out of the gates with "Wild International," quite possibly the most Rage-like song that doesn’t feature Tom Morello, Tim Commerford, and Brad Wilk. While those guys are missed — despite all of us suffering through Audioslave — de la Rocha's new partner in crime, former Mars Volta drummer Jon Theodore, helps cook up enough ferocious "bombtracks" (complete with the fervent political activism we've all come to expect) to ease the pain.
From front to back it's a solid release, but "If You Fear Dying" leaves the biggest impression: "Time is coming / Rising like the dawn of a red sun / If you fear dying, then you're already dead."
In this day and age of color-coded fear levels, de la Rocha's words are hard to argue with.
Joan Wasser experienced nearly every high and low that the music industry and life in general has to offer en-route to the release of her debut album, Real Life, in 2006. The ups hit their pinnacle when she played an integral part of Antony and the Johnsons' success in 2005, the downs descended to their lowest point when her then-boyfriend, Jeff Buckley, tragically died in 1997. Little wonder, then, that Real Life was an album of extreme emotion, topped off with the simply stunning and utterly heartbreaking "Eternal Flame."
So the making of the traditionally difficult second album must have seemed a little less daunting to Wasser. Indeed, her only problem seems to have been finding time to actually get into a studio to record it, as the gathering momentum around her career has seen her tour Real Life for the best part of 18 months.
Thankfully, time was carefully managed, and To Survive is everything that a fan of that delicious debut could have hoped for — a piano-led exploration of love and life, that drips with sophistication.
The lead single, "To Be Loved," is typical of what's on offer, a slinky downbeat number that slides around your soul, leaving you more than satisfied.
It is, by no means, the only beauty on offer. "To Be Lonely" is a subtle splendour, Wasser's voice curling around a simple piano melody, while the title track picks up a similar thread, its delicacy adorned with a lick or two of luscious strings.
Elsewhere, "Magpies," with its breezy brass and references to Joan of Arc, is a gentle revelation, as is the equally impressive Hard White Wall, a meandering delight that peaks and troughs in thrilling style.
But it is the closing "To America" that really bursts out of the collection. An opus to her homeland which is at once both indignant and celebratory, it features Rufus Wainwright and could easily stand as a sister piece to his own "Going to a Town."
Joan Wasser had plenty to do to equal the brilliance of her debut, but in To Survive, she has done just that, cementing her status as as an intriguing and compelling artist.
The shore may appear familiar, but the waters run deep on "Lost Coastlines," the lead single from Okkervil River's upcoming The Stand Ins. If the new record is the second part of a double album begun with last year's great Black Sheep Boy follow-up The Stage Names, it's possibly significant that this song appears in the same slot on The Stand Ins that "Unless It's Kicks" occupied on its predecessor. On that song, Will Sheff's intensely self-reflexive lyrics urged a "mid-level band" on to greater heights; "Lost Coastlines" is a darker, more metaphorical take on the same theme, exploring the uncharted regions of a mid-level band's continuing journey, with another set of free-flowing lyrics.
Sheff trades vocals here with multi-instrumentalist Jonathan Meiburg, who recently left Okkervil River to focus on Shearwater, as the band stretches out its ragged folk-pop to include the ostinato basslines and bouncing rhythms of Northern soul. Interestingly, it's Meiburg who sings, "Jonathan says we sail out on order of him / But we find that the maps he sent to us don't mention lost coastlines," possibly a reference to himself. For all the lyrics of self-doubt, the arrangement betrays a growing confidence, rough edges melting away beneath swaying strings as Sheff repeats the song's final, fuck-it-let's-just-rock "la la la." One thing remains certain: You better look out for love.
Los Angeles gets even sunnier on the latest from L.A. band The Broken West. "Perfect Games," the first mp3 from their forthcoming Merge sophomore LP, Now or Heaven, sounds like it's aiming for, if not heaven, then at least a city of angels and palm trees — straightahead backbeat, thrumming bass line, chiming guitars, more of the same from the keyboard, and a bright melody sung with double-tracking so clean and sparkling it takes a few listens to notice there are lyrics. They're warm-weather lyrics, too: "We sit around, looking for flaws in the diamonds / We sit around, spilling our ice cubes on the lawn," begins singer/guitarist Ross Flournoy. There's a post-Joshua Tree sheen to the Broken West's power-pop this time that wasn't as evident in the handclaps and wheezing keyboards of 2007's I Can't Go On, I'll Go On. By the end, "Perfect Games" sounds like it could belong to the fantasy city of a Southern California band longing for home. "We kick around, sticking it out in the darkness," Flournoy sings, adding, "We waste our time, when we could be righting every wrong." It's a subtle shift, but then, this is power-pop, not hair-metal.
Though few outside of the indie circuit recognized Verbena, critics and fans hailed the group as the second coming of Nirvana. The comparison was easy to see — and not just because former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl produced the band's 1999 major-label debut, Into the Pink. When Verbena emerged from Birmingham, Alabama, in the late '90s, its sound was dark, powerful, and based on a foundation of big pop hooks. Lead singer Scott Bondy in particular came across as very Kurt Cobain-esque, with his lazy, marble-mouthed singing style, snarky attitude, and bleached-blond hair. These days, Bondy is all grown up and no longer playing the role of snotty rock kid. Performing solo under his birth name of A.A. Bondy (the initials stand for Auguste Arthur), he composes enchanting, elegantly sparse indie-folk music. The songs often feature just his voice and an expertly strummed guitar, with the occasional hint of mournful harmonica and handclaps used as percussion. When he tries to explain the difference between the louder Verbena and his current stripped-back project, Bondy confesses via phone, "I don't really know what I was doing before."
He's certainly figured out what to do on his solo debut, American Hearts (which was re-released on Fat Possum Records in April). Hearts is a bewitchingly beautiful album that's been embraced as an impressive contribution to the world of nü-folk, largely because the songs don't sound like the "unplugged" indulgences of a former rock guy. They're not stripped down; they're just not decorated with unnecessary wrapping. The songs overflow with unflinching sincerity, and the tiniest details — like the delicate noise of fingers sliding across guitar strings — stand out and seem purposeful.
The way Bondy constructed Hearts reflects this simplistic style: He recorded it in a rickety old barn next to his house in New York. ("It's a really good-sounding barn," he says with a chuckle.) Perhaps as a result, Hearts' lyrics are also unadorned and straightforward, relying heavily on the polarities of good vs. evil, apathy vs. love and God vs. the devil. Still, Bondy finds plenty of room for shrewd statements ("Love, it don't die/ It just goes from girl to girl") and optimistic observations ("The barroom is filled with the joy/ Of making old friends.")
Many of Hearts' songs also carry a twinge of the '60s protest vibe — meaning that the Bob Dylan comparisons are inevitable. It's no surprise that Bondy has absorbed a penchant for clever lyrics; he cites Tom Waits, Nina Simone, and Tom Petty as classic favorites. But of these influences, he fondly explains, "You can't really speak to the nature of what makes things special. But whatever does make things special doesn't really matter. I guess for a listener you just know it is special to you — and that's all that matters. "During live shows, Bondy is frequently accompanied by his wife, Clare Felice, who plays the organ. She's from the same family that produced the up-and-coming Americana band the Felice Brothers — a group Bondy lovingly refers to as his brothers and source of inspiration.
It is getting more and more difficult to get attention in the swelling mass of female singer-songwriters. In the age of Amy Winehouse and Lily Allen, it might be best to try not to get attention at all. Such is the path that singer-songwriter Jessie Baylin takes on her unassuming label debut.
Baylin's sound is undeniably pop. There are shades of folk, country, and jazz intertwined throughout the songs, but this is a grown-up's version of a pop album. Though the album slides around from one genre to the next, to her credit she sounds incredibly comfortable at all times. Her vocals have a slightly smoky twang that gives everything an easy romantic glow. It is the kind of easy-going album you throw on for a lazy Sunday morning and let float through the house as you go about your day.
She aims for velvety chanteuse on the moody piano ballad "Lonely Heaven," and pulls it off with a track that sounds like the personification of a rainy autumn day in New York. Things get a little sloppy on "Want," where the muddled production buries the sexy hook in a pile of horns, guitar, and strings. There is a jazzy edge to the acoustic breeze, "I'll Cry for the Both of Us," but Baylin's vocals lack the sultry tones to pull off the Norah Jones vibe the song aims for. She fares better when turning up the tempo just a bit. The more driven pace of "Not a Day More" fits her tender voice well, as the rumbling riffs seem to melt into the vocals rather than drown them.
The dusty acoustic backdrop of "See How I Run," with just a pinch of twang, puts her comfortably in Kathleen Edwards territory. It is a fantastic start to the album, and delivers one of her best hooks. Country-fried "Tennessee Gem" is a glistening ode to her fiancé, Kings of Leon frontman Nathan Follow. The jangling "Was I On Your Mind?" features a heartbreaking melodic hook where she fears the worst but pleads, "I don't want to be right / I want a good lie / I want a new truth / I want your fight / Tell me I'm wrong, instead."
Firesight does not deliver the immediate "wow" that grabs your attention straightaway, but that actually works in its favor. Rather, it is a grower that blossoms and deepens its roots into you with each listen.
Most of the time, the speed with which this Florida fivesome graduated from basement-show anonymity to major-label renown works to a band's disadvantage. But in Black Kids' case, the group's rocket ride appears to have preserved its more appealingly eccentric tendencies: frontman Reggie Youngblood's ridiculous yelp of a singing voice, for instance, or Dawn Watley's ultra-cheesy synth lines, which quote pretty much every new wave hit of the '80s. Produced by Bernard Butler of Suede, Partie Traumatic could be Junior Senior covering The Cure; like Robert Smith, Youngblood describes the exquisite torment of having his heart broken again and again, while the other Black Kids (including Youngblood's sister Ali on keys and backing vocals) throw down delirious disco-pop grooves that mock the singer for being so down in the mouth.
The daughter to a composer and a native of California, singer/songwriter Holly Conlan eschewed the austerity of an education in classical composition in order to write songs that haunt, amuse, and linger. Her lack of pretension, surfeit of graceful confidence at a piano, and a lyricism which belies her age make her recent EP Bird easy to admire and difficult to forget. When not performing with her own band at Los Angeles venues such as Tangier, The Roxy, and the venerable Hotel Cafe, Holly can be heard singing back-up with Hollywood stalwarts Buddy and Gary Jules. She also cut her teeth at 2007's CMJ festival. The Bird EP was produced by Al Sgro (Meiko, Buddy, Gary Jules), mixed by Bryan Cook (Inara George), and mastered by Roger Siebel (Death Cab for Cutie's Plans).
For ones so young, Bombay Bicycle Club seem to have been around for ages. Still only 18, the North London quartet already have a fearsome live reputation spread mostly by word of mouth. After two years of hard gigging, "Evening/Morning" is their third single.
The song twists and turns in on itself, mixing up all kinds of strange time signatures and boasting some terrific guitar riffs. Lead singer Jack Steadman has obviously been studying hard at the Paul Banks school of vocal phrasing — and while there are a fair few bands around at the moment that sound like Interpol, there's always room for a couple of others.
B-side "You Already Know" couldn't be more different, sounding almost summery and folky. It's two sides of a band who could well become very big news soon.
While most music fans are familiar with The Watson Twins from their 2006 collaboration with Rilo Kiley's Jenny Lewis, Rabbit Fur Coat, sisters Chandra and Leigh have a blossoming career of their own. While the Twins occupy the same slice of Americana-inspired indie folk pop as the aforementioned Rilo Kiley, they've quickly establishing themselves with their 2006 EP, Southern Manners, and their aptly-named full-length debut, Fire Songs, released this summer on Vanguard Records.
Fire Songs was recorded completely in analog to capture a higher level of intimacy, something that comes through on the peppy, soul-tinged opener "How Am I to Be?" the ballad "Fall," and the country-infused cover of The Cure's "Just Like Heaven." Though now based in L.A., the Twins draw from their upbringing in Louisville, Kentucky on songs like "Dig a Little Deeper" and "Sky Open Up," which spring from a rootsier background, all harmonica and acoustic guitar. The Twins keep the listener entranced all the while with their dulcet, chanteuse vocals, reminiscent of Natalie Merchant or a younger Emmylou Harris. The Twins' music winds it way into your ears, deploying subtle hooks and utilizing the sisters' sweet, intertwining harmonies to weave a web of warm, folk-pop gems.
Port O'Brien has stirred up quite a lot of press coverage in a few short years, thanks in part to being name-checked by M. Ward as his favorite new band and exposure on tours opening for Bright Eyes, The Cave Singers, and Modest Mouse, among others. The group, based in California when not working in a cannery off the coast of Alaska, also garnered a place on several "Best of 2007" album lists. If you happened to see any of those tours, you know that all the accolades are not empty hipster hype. If you had the misfortune to miss them, a new release offers another chance to get on board.
All We Could Do Was Sing opens with "I Woke Up Today," which also appeared on the 2006 EP Nowhere to Run and on 2007's collection The Wind and the Swell. The previous two recordings were very similar, just founding members Van Pierszalowski (guitars, vocals) and Cambria Goodwin (vocals, keys and mandolin) playing acoustically. The re-recorded song here is the first single from what is actually the band's first full-length studio album, and features newer members Caleb Nichols (bass and vocals) and Joshua Banhart (drums, vocals, and autoharp). There's a lot more instrumentation to this version of "I Woke Up Today" — including a cacophony of seemingly "found" percussion and a string arrangement (Robe Banhart) — but most importantly it comes delightfully close to replicating the excitement of the live Port O'Brien experience.
"Stuck on a Boat" reflects the other Port O'Brien experience, the one endured through long, lonely days on an endless ocean. In fact, Port O'Brien's music shares many characteristics with the sea that dominates much of its material. It's beautiful. It is ever-changing. It can move from a peaceful calm to an impassioned squall in a matter of moments. It's exciting, enveloping, awe-inspiring, and often overwhelming.
"My feet weren't made for the sea / They were made for running free / It don't make much sense to me / To be stuck on a boat at sea," laments Pierszalowski as the music pitches and lurches around him like a ship on the swell. "Fisherman's Son" continues this theme of seafaring isolation with Pierszalowski's tale of his place in the world, but it's a softer perspective, complete with strings and a bittersweet sense of longing for the waves when he's away from the water.
"Pigeonhold" is a rambling, ramshackle indictment of trend-conscious, preening, posing neo-hippies. It's one part Neil Young, one part Nirvana, and comes off completely unaffected. "The Rooftop Song" brings back a bit of the Neil Young vibe, but with a much more sophisticated song structure than "Pigeonhold." As it ebbs away, we hear shipboard reports of an approaching storm.
"In Vino Veritas," sung by Goodwin, is a quaint little ditty, a sing-along drinking song about how nights in the cannery can be just as much like living exile as days being tied to the tide. "Close the Lid" returns to the big, full-band sound of "I Woke Up Today." It's another raucous hint of Port O'Brien's powerful live presence, but it's not lyrically cheerful like the opener. One imagines it was written at the end of the season, when cabin fever had taken its toll.
All We Could Do Was Sing's coda is "Valdez," a quietly simple, yet earnest entreaty to Exxon suggesting that the corporation still owes something for its sins against the sea. The song's theme may seem a bit out of place, perhaps, certainly a little out of time. However, it's a wholly appropriate ending to an album by a band that makes its own experiences with distance and isolation into something that is, whether sad or celebratory, at once as changeable and as constant as the sea.
Caroline Polachek, whose voice is one part of the strange power of Brooklyn trio Chairlift, knows exactly why her band has such a dreamlike sound: the band's relocation two years ago from Colorado to Brooklyn.
"I feel like the music we're making is not just a response, but is actually an antidote to living in New York," said Polachek. "I think living in a place like Colorado — where everyone moves slower, where there's more space — people desire more aggression in their music, because they have all the relaxation built into their normal daily lives. So when kids want to go out and experience a really cool thing at night, they want to be messed with; they want to get sweaty; they want to get angry; they want to see something really out there and crazy and really loud and abrasive."
Conversely, she continued, "Living in New York, you experience that all day, every day. You're packed in together with a lot of other people; you're exposed to a lot of ambient noise all the time with the transportation, with the sirens and the streets and everything. At the end of the day when you want to go out and relax and have an interesting experience, you don't feel so much desire to go get messed with. You instead want to be hypnotized, or be drugged, or be transported, or escape from the conditions via the music that you listen to at night."
Chairlift's antidote, their path to hypnosis, is their first album, Does You Inspire You, which will be released this fall on Kanine Records. It's chock-full of a sense of idyllic youth and innocence. "Evident Utensil" is a celebration of a pencil, and "Earwig Town" sounds like an imaginative fairy tale ("they'll chase you down, in Earwig Town"). When backing vocalist Aaron Pfenning sings "somewhere around here there are witches" on "Somewhere Around Here," it's instilled with excitement rather than fear. Then there's "Planet Health," where there's a "food pyramid in the desert of vitamins."
These dreamlike, childlike images help make Chairlift's music a soft cushion to ease the tension of a city like New York, but even more than that, Chairlift surround these lyrics with synthesizer sounds that immediately conjure up memories of '80s pop. Some moments, like the ending bridge of "Home Alone," sound right out of the soundtrack to The NeverEnding Story, while others could have been outtakes from The Cure's The Head on the Door, cousins to Wham!'s "Everything She Wants," or tracks off a long-lost Pet Shop Boys record.
Strangely enough, the members of Chairlift aren't big '80s music fans. "None of us really listen to that much '80s music," said Polachek. "Our memories of '80s music as kids have gotten filtered through the music we listened to during the '90s and 2000s. ... All the music we listen to gets melded together into an intuitive blob."
Chairlift began when Polachek and Pfenning began playing music together in Colorado. The initial idea, said Polachek, was to blend folk music and electronica. "It was a combination of sort of an acoustic sound with lo-fi electronics like Casio keyboards and really basic synthesizer sounds with a folk-pop song structure," explained Polachek.
Once in New York, they added Patrick Wimberly, a friend from Colorado who had moved to New York separately — and the city's influence began to take hold.
"We started getting a lot of other influences into our music, everything from prog to classic rock and experimental noise (and) free jazz," said Polachek. "So that kind of deconstructed the way we were looking at writing. Now we're after more of an ambiance in our music, a mood instead of a structure or thematic. It's a way of making people feel that we're after."
Continued Polachek, "The last five songs (on the album) kind of blend together as being one piece that I think you can kind of lose track of really easily." For Chairlift, this is entirely the point: The mood they create is like being caught in a memory — not necessarily a good or a bad one, but something quiet and peaceful that is stowed way back in the recesses of your consciousness, like the memory of what '80s music sounded like as you were listening to it in the '80s.
"I just want to make people feel something," says Eli Reed of his band, The True Loves. "You've got to get the audience emotionally involved and make people feel what you're feeling. That's the whole point of soul music." Amen to that.
The Paperboy, so called because of a dapper flat paperboy cap of his grandfather's he used to don, seemingly has an understanding of this music that far surpasses his 24 years of age. With an impressive vocal range, some vintage threads, a solid band backing him up and some bang-on-the-money production, this is a refreshing tip back to some good ol' fashioned R&B and soul circa 1967. From the heartfelt ballads (with a nod to Otis Redding and Van Morrisson) to the pitch perfect falsetto screams over dancefloor stompers, Eli Reed socks it to 'em and then some.
What sets him apart from other artists in this genre is his songwriting and the production, retaining an authentic sound true to the music — a true love of the music to roll with. So let it roll with you: "If a record comes on and makes you want to dance right away, then you're doing a good job," he says. "If a record comes on and makes you want to cry right away, then you're also doing a good job. I think this album does both." Not that he wants to blow his own trumpet or anything (he plays guitar anyway).
In classical music, recording is supposed to be nothing but a transparent transmission of this event. The focus is on the work rather than the process. Not so with Muhly, the latest New York wunderkind composer come to save classical from the bore it's been. After his first album, Speaks Volumes, Muhly went whirlwind with pop avant-gardes from Björk to Antony, and scrapped the overhead live mike of the classical world for a smarter studio technique. The result is more like film music in production, even if classical in form and unclassifiable in texture. The title three-movement work "Mothertongue" floats by as a mix of Glass-shimmer strings with deep-space keyboard bass lines and disembodied chirps of text scripted straight from the soprano's mental address book. Muhly's love of the English macabre appears as Renaissance vocal music in odd, stately harmonies grounded by Wicker Man pastoral harpsichord and the occasionally offside sample for the episodic "Wonders." It is on the final suite, "The Only Tune," that Muhly reveals his greatness. A folk song about a girl drowning her sister gets retold in three voices by singer Helgi Hrafn Jónsson. Each setting twists the story further, with help from Jónsson's excellent flexibility. The tune ends in a cool Sufjan-like moment of folk-pop reverie, a miniature wonder unhinged from genre expectation and comfortable in its realized ambitions.
Radiohead shook up the music industry when they released their latest disc for digital download only. The band had no idea their two-part plan might forever change music sales. They sold their seventh album, In Rainbows, only through the Radiohead website, and allowed fans to pay however much they wanted. Although industry execs scoffed, the plan worked; Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke bragged that In Rainbows earned more than any of their previous discs.
Mash-up genius Girl Talk noted Radiohead's success, and followed a similar route for the release of his new disc. Girl Talk, the stage name of Pittsburgh DJ Gregg Gillis, released his fourth full-length album, Feed the Animals, this summer through the Illegal Arts website.
Following Radiohead's lead, Girl Talk allowed listeners to "pay as you like" for the disc; those who pay less than $5.00 can download the MP3 at 320kbps, those who pay between $5.00 and $9.99 get the higher-quality FLAC files, and those who pay $10 will receive the disc in the mail sometime after its September 23 release date.
So, is Feed the Animals worth downloading? Without a doubt.
Girl Talk's music is vastly different from anything you're probably used to: it's almost entirely sampled from other artists. A typical Girl Talk track is a mash-up of over twenty different tracks. The song "Play Your Part" starts with a Outkast sample, dips in and out of songs by Roy Orbison, Huey Lewis, Lil Mama, wrapped up with a line from Jay-Z's "Big Pimpin." The rest of the disk follows the same pattern.
Mash-up as a music form isn't for everyone, but if you're looking for something to bump at a house party, you can't go wrong with Girl Talk.
Breaking from tales of death row and a father's alcoholism, Cold War Kids are finally looking inward on the first-person stomper "Something is Not Right With Me" from their sophomore full-length, Loyalty to Loyalty, due Sept. 23 via Downtown. Initially impressing with a set of EPs that revealed a scrappy and hungry bunch, the Kids banged on broken cymbals and egg crates, slipping into onstage clapping conniption fits as they powered through jangly, tent revival indie rock, culminating in their 2006 EP-compiling longplayer, Robbers and Cowards.
But unlike scores of other blogged about bands for which backlash kicked in, Cold War Kids kicked backed... and stayed on beat. On "Something," a step-worthy, pounding bass line chugs alongside driving drums. When the Stones-styled bluesy licks pick up, they direct the groove to nestle perfectly underneath singer Nate Willett's speak-to-yell, self-aimed vocal tirade.
Conor Oberst, a founding member of Saddle Creek Records best known for vocal temper tantrums and orchestral lulls, quickly became a guiding voice for troubled 20-somethings while still a teenager, as critics aligned his name with Bob Dylan's thanks to his lyrically heady albums under the BrightEyes moniker. And with his new eponymous disc, Oberst opts to momentarily ditch his label, longtime stage name, and friend/producer/guitarist Mike Mogis to form the Mystic Valley Band — essentially a crew of sometime collaborators Nik Freitas (guitar), Jason Boesel (drums), Macey Taylor (bass), Taylor Hollingsworth (guitar), and Nate Wolcott (trumpet).
Tapping into the same spiritual curiosity he sought in a town full of psychics on Bright Eyes' Cassadaga, Oberst seeks solstice in the footsteps of Mexican lore, ditching longtime producer Mike Mogis' genius for an unadorned, hee-haw Americana jam session; a far enough departure from Bright Eyes' decade-plus formula for the Omaha native to dub his new project a "solo" affair. Set amidst a "mystic valley," Conor and his new crew — aptly dubbed the Mystic Valley Band — sling crunchy electric guitars and country yelps, from the Tom Petty power strums of "Moab" to slower moonlight fingerpicks of "Lenders in the Temple." And though certainly a genre-based hootenanny, the new set is full of the troubadour's trademark cathartic wit.
Recording locale Tepoztlán, Morelos, México, is known by locals as a "Pueblo Mágico" for its history of Aztec magic and UFO sightings. And the temporary studio Conor and crew constructed in its valley, rightly dubbed "Valle Mistico," a.k.a. "Mystic Valley," stuck with the songwriter's team of musicians, hence their adopted collective christening.
THIS WEEK: BANDS I'LL SEE ON FRIDAY AT THE 'PALOOZA "Reckoner" from the albumIn Rainbows
2007 iTunes
The breakthrough for Radiohead on "Reckoner" — a song that underwent multiple incarnations on its way to In Rainbows — came by way of what Jonny Greenwood calls a "big percussion fest."
Recording in an English country house, all five members of the group make a loud, cathartic racket — a habit-busting trick the band has practiced since primary school, says bassist Colin Greenwood.
"And I'm happy to say that success hasn't changed us at all," joked Jonny Greenwood, who would rather leave the percussion to Phil Selway's drums and Thom Yorke's rhythm guitar.
Whether through the primal release of a "big percussion fest" or by severing ties with its record label, Radiohead is giving the distinct impression of a band that has exorcised something.
Since self-releasing In Rainbows as a pay-what-you-want digital download last fall, Radiohead has moved quickly with the tilt of innovation. They surprised fans with intimate webcasts; they offered one track, "Nude," in stripped down audio pieces for anyone to remix; they held a surprise concert so crowded that police insisted they move along.
On their seventh album, particularly on songs like the falsetto-rich R&B ballad "House of Cards" and the languorous "Nude," the music reflects the same sense of freedom. The prevailing tone of the new material is — gasp! — a melodic warmth.
And this is a drastic change for what many consider the gloomiest band on the planet.
Meet the born-again Radiohead.
***
In a recent two-part interview with the band — first with the Greenwood brothers and Selway, second with Yorke and guitarist Ed O'Brien — a lightness was unmistakable. Much funnier than you'd expect, the quintet bemusedly contemplate wearing Speedos while shuffling into a Washington, D.C. hotel room.
They had just performed in nearby Virginia, where torrential rain caused flooding and enormous traffic jams around the Nissan Pavilion. In the apocalyptic downpour, Radiohead functioned as a hearth, exuding their newfound glow.
Five shows into the first leg of their North America tour, they played confidently. At one point, Yorke urged the soaked crowd to "cuddle," an unthinkable prospect for a Radiohead concert.
Tuneful beauty has always been part of Radiohead songs (like the "rain down" climax in "Paranoid Android"), but such moments have seldom been allowed to linger. Asked the origins of the new mood, Yorke is as clueless as anyone.
"I don't know where it came from, to be honest," said the 39-year-old singer, laughing heartily. "I think (In Rainbows) has its moments of fraught tension, like 'Bodysnatchers' obviously. But it ends up in a good space. It starts off pretty anxious, but the end of 'All I Need,' by that point, everything is like, 'Ahhh' — getting it out of your system."
When the band completed 2003's Hail to the Thief, they essentially got what O'Brien calls the "machinery" of the music industry out of their system. Their six-album deal with EMI Music Group expired and they declined all suitors for a new deal.
The band was at a crossroads and low on energy. They were disappointed by Hail to the Thief, which they felt was unfinished.
"What was great about Kid A was that it heralded a new period and it meant we went off in some cool new places," said O'Brien, 40. "But the downside was that in the whole period up until the end of Hail to the Thief, we picked up some nasty habits."
The band, of whom all but O'Brien still live in their hometown of Oxford, had progressed steadily into more experimental territory after their 1993 debut Pablo Honey and the classic guitar rock follow-up, 1995's The Bends. The unparalleled OK Computer (1997) elevated them to worldwide fame, but didn't tame them. 2000's Kid A and its companion piece Amnesiac followed.
The outwardly political Hail to the Thief, something of a return to guitar-based rockers, was the first sign that Radiohead's path had become confused. Afterward, the band members occupied themselves with their families. Yorke released a solo album, The Eraser, in 2006.
"We were going along in a certain trajectory and then suddenly with Hail to the Thief, it was: we can't carry along in that way anymore," said Yorke. "To me the hardest thing was finding a reason to carry on."
***
As unified as In Rainbows sounds, it took years to complete. The band began recording it with producer Mark Stent, the first time in years they didn't work with Nigel Godrich.
The attempt was futile and Radiohead set out on tour to help bring the new songs into shape. When they returned to the studio, they went back to Godrich, considered the unofficial sixth member because of his importance in helping refine the group's sound. (Colin calls his wealth of gear "like Aladdin's cave.")
"The key thing in actually propelling it forward was Nigel coming back into the process," said Selway, 41. "The reality when we got in there was it still wasn't good enough. We really had to raise our standards quite a lot."
Typically, songs begin with Yorke writing something on piano or guitar with vocals and fleshing it out with the multi-instrumentalist Jonny Greenwood. Then the band works together to find the right arrangement, a process that can be tortuous. "Videotape" underwent, Yorke jokes, hundreds of versions before finding the right minimalist sound.
"We still sometimes get overawed by the songs," said Greenwood. "We'll get very attached to a song as an idea in its very basic form, but we also know we can't really leave it like that. So that's what we spend our time talking about and planning and thinking about. Thom will sit and play 'Pyramid Song' on piano, for example, and it's obviously not finished. It needs a rhythm to propel it along. But what do you do with it and yet not mess it up? So that's the sort of enjoyable pressure we like to be under."
Though the method of release overshadowed the music of In Rainbows somewhat, it's been almost universally hailed as a masterpiece. Yorke has been quoted as calling it "our classic album, our Transformer, our Revolver, our Hunky Dory" — a statement he said is a misquote: "I do talk some ... but I didn't say that."
His point, he said, is that they strove to make a similarly concise work as those albums.
In Rainbows may be a departure, but it's unmistakably Radiohead. Yorke is still singing about disconnection between people, which he cheerfully acknowledges: "It's part of my repertoire. It's what I do. Some people go and work at something they don't like, others talk about disconnection a lot."
But the album still feels apart from the old Radiohead story line. For the first time, they don't sound self-conscious. The band says it all starts with being free of a record contract. (The album was also released traditionally on January 1 by ATO imprint TBD Records, topping the sales charts that week. The band has declined to release sales figures for the download.)
"When we weren't signed to EMI and didn't have a contract, that threw up all this mad(ness)," said Yorke. "In a way, your possibilities are endless and limitless and meaningless. You actually suddenly have — I don't know why, it doesn't make sense — but there was a complete lack of connection with our past."
***
The band has called the digital giveaway a "one-off" experiment, but they've also re-examined other ways they conduct business. They last year commissioned a report from the company Best Foot Forward to judge the carbon and ecological footprint of their touring.
Any adjustments are in the early stages, but the band has posted messages on their Web site urging fans to car pool to concerts. They caution that music is at the heart of any new endeavors.
"The truth of the matter is that none of those rethinking things would be occurring if we weren't vibed up on the fact that we finished something. The energy always comes from an excitement about what one has done."
And as might be expected for the ever forward-looking Radiohead, new songs are already in the works, though they are still just "on guitars," says Jonny Greenwood. He only hints that the songs explore "absurd musical ideas."
"When you hear Thom and Jonny in the soundcheck and they've come up with something and start playing it, it's good to hear," said O'Brien.
The process of finding the right instruments for the songs will soon begin. Greenwood would like to even throw a banjo into the mix, but said he gets "level looks" from his bandmates whenever he brings it out. "There's a ban on banjos," said his 38-year-old brother.
"What's interesting to me is very old technologies like orchestras and pianos and things and how they meet modern recording and treatment techniques," said Greenwood, 36, who also does classical work on the side, including the buzzing, unforgettable score to "There Will Be Blood."
Radiohead toured Europe in June and July before returning for the second leg of their North America tour, which will kick off today at the Lollapalooza Festival.
Meanwhile, Yorke — who said he still considers the album "the most satisfying format" — has already envisioned the next innovation to deploy when they have new music to release.
"Let's leave it on the street corner with a little sign," Yorke jokes as excitement sweeps over his face. "Now that's a good idea! I like that idea. With a little photo on the Web: 'It's here.' A couple of clues. A little doggie bag."
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.
