1990s "Cult Status"

As most are well-aware by now, punk's version of rebellion against its corporate masters has never (okay, almost never) been expressly dangerous, but always neatly contained within the realms of lyric and performance. Some of the best and funniest punk songs have taken actively cocky approaches to the music's industrial situation, and "Cult Status" (mp3), off the debut from Glasgow trio 1990s', places the band in dialogue with the rich lineage of ironic, self-reflexive punk songs; dating back to the Adverts' and Sex Pistols' cocky-ass, anthemic "One-Chord Wonders" and "EMI," and continuing through NOFX's "Please Play This Song on the Radio" and most recently (more or less) Art Brut's "Formed A Band" and "Moving to LA," among dozens of others. "Cult Status" has a bit of fun at the expense of bands admired specifically for their lack of popular recognition, a distinction, ironically enough, that 1990s can themselves claim at this point, before they're labeled the Next Greatest Band Ever and bloggers blog about how much they suck because of it. It's interesting, actually, to consider the definition of the term "cult status" at a time when bands are often washed up before their records hit stores: has cult status's own status effectively been reversed, resulting in the pre-debut, pre-Hype period as the only time a band can be admired independent of bloggerly recognition? Or is blog recognition on the same level as cultish appreciation (especially in terms of the fervor)? I doubt that 1990s takes any of my sort of blather into consideration on this song, but they are nothing if not self-aware, however (their Myspace alerts you that the name has no "the" and no apostrophe, and just dig that album cover). To its credit, the band does the indie-rock mirror-stage really well, and in mise en abyme fashion, could well end up contributing another work to the pantheon of sarcastic punk songs about lack of fame or talent which subsequently become minor legends in their own right.

1990s' Myspace/web-site.

The Sea and Cake "Up on Crutches"

The Sea and Cake covering "Sound and Vision" (on their last full-length over four years ago) felt like one of those duh moments, when a band re-does a song that essentially encapsulates what's become its own stylistic M.O. The Cake's version wasn't anywhere near either "killing" or "owning" Bowie's untouchable original, but it still managed to feel pretty damn perfect regardless. The Sea and Cake have, with a good degree of cleverness and distinction, evolved into a group that relies on an unconscious appeal to the senses, creating impressionistic, experential, blurry soundscapes that wallow in the ("blue, blue electric blue") atmosphere created through the confluence of Sam Prekop's impossibly self-possessed vocals, guitars that smear like rain on sidewalk chalk, and drums that fizz in the manner of miniature cannon blasts. Pitchfork's Paul Thompson described them as "the scented candles of indie rock," and while that makes me giggle with its appropriateness, I'd adapt his definition to the broader and less-snarky, if not lamer, "mood music," inasmuch as the band is so great at locking into a vibe and refusing to exit a determined dynamic range. Here's the best thing, too: Everybody is clearly, without doubt, their best-yet album, crystallizing the aforementioned aesthetic tendencies started more or less in earnest 10 years ago on The Fawn. The new one opens with the just-wonderful, reluctantly cinematic "Up On Crutches" (mp3), in which Prekop's emotive vocal tics ("ahhh yessss" "ahh yeah") feel like a more debonair Britt Daniel, and seem to describe the gentle struggle between the pleasures inherent in constant motion with the irritation that comes with occasional inertia. The song progresses through three stages: the first is keyed up scene-setting, followed by the second, a disquieted interplay between thubbing floor-toms and chiming, freeing guitars, and the third, climactic section, all scattered and elevated relief. From what, it doesn't matter at all.

Order Everybody from Thrill Jockey here.

Hieroglyphics "You Never Know"

I sincerely hope, perhaps impotently, that maybe this collection of b-sides and rarites will allow the Hieroglyphics collective---the Bay Area consortium most known for supporting Del and the Souls of Mischief during their formative (and for the Souls, their most creative and productive) years---to achieve some due recognition, outside of their rather intense online fan group (which includes this mensch). When I was but a lad devloping my tastes in all things rap, both 93 'til Infinity and I Wish My Brother George Was Here lodged themselves in my dual tape-deck boombox, and aside from the equally-great debut from the Pharcyde, were the only non-West Coast gangsta representatives to enter my 15-year old canon. Hiero rappers were smart and creative, but they never fell into the trap of being resolutely (annoyingly) positive, balancing dark and anti-social themes with outlandish and cartoonish ones. The sad thing about Hiero, though, is that despite its members frequently brilliant propensity toward dense and rewarding internal rhyme structures weaving in and out of chopped-up jazz and funk samples (courtesy of the largely unheralded Domino), they never managed to find a public spot for themselves outside of the notoriously incestuous (and v. hit-and-miss, too) Bay Area rap scene. So maybe, just maybe, Over Time can serve as a corrective for this? Don't let the "b-sides and rarities" description fool you, Hiero has an incredibly deep bench, and there's no 12th men playing here: from front to back, it's a parallel-universe greatest hits collection of what a lot of people have irresponsibly lumped with backpack-rap. Time leads off with a Domino remix of "You Never Know" (mp3), a posse cut originally from 1998's Third Eye Vision. Complete with booms-bap, wikki-wikki scratching, and a diced-up cello loop, it's the collective's old-school best with a slightly avant flair, and for those interested in such trifles, the song's title ironically reflects the group's invisibility from all but the salvage-centered discourses about rap music.

Buy Over Time from Amazon here, but beware its "EXPLICIT LYRICS."
Here's Hiero's "Home-Page."

ELSEWHERE: Be sure to stop by Mike Barthel's blog to read his incisive EMP paper, which follows the trail of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" through John Cale, Jeff Buckley, the OC, and where all good songs go to be revived, Fall Out Boy. Thankfully, at the end (spoiler alert), he moves away from the notion of "definitive" versions altogether, allowing for music to move through cultures and become infused with whatever meanings alternate interlocutors deem appropriate.

Harumi "Hunters of Heaven"

The wonderful Swedish psych band Dungen's new record finally arrived in my ears a day or two ago, which normally would have caused much excitement for my head. However, it came to me the same time as Harumi, a re-released curio from the first psych era, distinguishable from many of its contemporarires by two factors: its producer (Tom Wilson, also of VU, Dylan, S&G), and the ethnicity of its creators (if you haven't guessed by the title or album cover, Japanese). And listening to these two records within close proximity to one another, I'm pretty sure, has only heightened my appreciation of both. You see, Dungen's aesthetic has become clear to me now: they're so clearly influenced by Harumi's sort of psychedelic music, i.e. sure it's folky and acidic and experimental, but more importantly, its cultural currency is largely based on unavailability and subsequent aura-acquisition. And this is the same sort of feeling that Dungen has (largely successfully) mined thus far: an anonymous psych-folk mind-meld as potent because of its mysteriousness as its (often v. good) songwriting. Mmkay, back to Harumi right quick. The band wheels through a variety of styles on its only album, but hits a stride 2/3 of the way through, starting with "Hunters of Heaven" (mp3), which revs up and passionately delivers an arsenal of organs, violins and trumpets, in the interest of getting its Orion on.

Harumi is being reissued by Fallout. Buy it from Soundlink here.

ALSO: Speaking of 12th-wave psychedelia, if you're in the central/southern Indiana area, you should come out to Landlocked Music tonight at 8pm (if not earlier) for Brightblack Morning Light, a band I've been eagerly anticipating seeing live for some time now. I wrote them up here (the mp3 is reupped too).

ELSEWHERE: If you want to hear John Cale's jowly dismemberment and fun-ectomy of LCD Soundsystem's "All My Friends" (me on same), then go here.

BUT WAIT: Go to Idolator to grab Franz Ferdinand's cover of same (huh, strange), that properly highlights the New Order-ishness of the whole affair.

Wilco "Impossible Germany"

At some point, it fell out of favor, at least among the music I listen to, for rock songs to be considered "good" if they built up toward a huge guitar solo or two as a climactic moment, or as a bridge to a song-ending chorus refrain. Enter Nels Cline, who on Wilco's new one Sky Blue Sky (color not represented on album cover at left) revisits the virtuosic color he brought to A Ghost is Born's best song "Muzzle of Bees." Where the squelchy sound effects and experimental feel of Summerteeth and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot clearly marked the studio presence of Jay Bennett, and Ghost was clearly a transitional moment for the band, Sky Blue Sky's lengthy and climactic guitar solos, best evidenced on the lovely "Impossible Germany" (mp3) are evidence that Cline is in the building, and thankfully so. Flatly put, I'm a fan of a well-executed wank-fest, and Cline is probably the exemplar of fret-flaming finger dancing among those making music today. I'm also a long-term, rather rabid fan of Steely Dan, and Cline's solo on "Germany" revisits the sublime (and often unheralded) song-ending solos of Steely's hired guns Denny Dias, Rick Derringer, and Larry Carlton, on songs like "Change of the Guard," "Chain Lightning," "Kid Charlemagne," easily some of the best guitar-rock of that decade, if not the best. Sky isn't as complete an album, and its songs aren't as instantly ingratiating, as Wilco's done in the past, but whatever. I'm fine with setting aside impeccable Tweedy melodies for an album, and just waiting the length of a song for the fun to start.

Sky Blue Sky comes out May 15th. Pre-order here.

Sparrow House "You Sang Along"

So Sparrow House is basically Jared Van Fleet from Voxtrot, and his band's Falls EP is such a nice surprise, and a pretty significant break from Voxtrot's hyper-active Smiths-isms: it's lo-fi/not lo-fi folk-pop made with all the attention to nuance and melody and atmosphere that I require from such things, in order for them to be good. Even the EP itself was cozy: hand-created and stapled, it was also really easy to get lost amongst the piles of comparatively crappy promo discs in my apartment, which is why I'm writing about this song like 6 months after I received it. I broke out "You Sang Along" (mp3) recently, and it perfectly echoes the aura that the EP so wants to give off. It starts off with some slightly sinister-sounding plucked acoustic guitar, rumbling bass and whispered vocals, but quickly give way to the refrain, which feels like the sun moving out from behind some quickly moving clouds, temporarily casting everything in bright yellow, and then retreating again and letting the browns and grays (like the cover up there) take back over. The perfect antidote for those of you less than impressed with the new Voxtrot record.

Buy the Falls EP here.

Yacht "See A Penny, Pick it Up"

See what had happen was, Matthew told me about the "Miss You" connection before I'd even heard this song for the first time, so I can't prove it, but I totally would have gotten it by myself, I swear. Not because I'm some sort of musical genius or whatever, but because the melody of the best song off the Stones' last good album is one of the most infinitely whistlable things of the past 40 years, carved in my brain since I heard it on the radio growing up, like while riding in my mom's Mustang, for instance. And what Yacht did with that timeless progression of notes and pitches is to let it serve as the foundation (or, "foundate") for this little mantra, another one of the things that gets stuck in the noodle, but for more implacable reasons---it's not like you hear it on the radio. I did a Google, though, and along with the requisite Stereogum hit about three or four down, a history of the phrase comes up; I can make no assumptions as to its historical validity, but it's fun nonetheless, especially when it brings up Wiccan rituals. So perhaps on purpose but probably not, Yacht crafted a hybrid song (mp3) that fits together two seemingly disparate earworms from the past century of American popular culture; like the result of a random Wikipedia search-as-a-songwriting-dare.

I Believe In You. Your Magic Is Real is their album, and it's really expensive on Amazon. Here's Yacht's Myspace, and also Yacht's guestlist feature on Pitchfork.

A PERSONAL NOTE, BUT SUPER COOL REGARDLESS: Forrest won the top prize at Houston's Visual Arts Alliance Juried Exhibition! For this painting.

Lil' Wayne "Ride for My N****s"

After revelling in Drought 3 for the past week or so, I'm of the mind that Lil' Wayne is on the same level of brilliantly rampant personality contradiction as Ghostface, whose Fishscale was my favorite record of last year. As far as I'm concerned, there are no American pop stars with the sort of outsize personalities even close as interesting as Ghost and Wayne. But after Drought, Wayne just might (might) have one up on Ghost. He's a relentless, prolific, often hilarious trickster figure from a city undergoing a reconstruction process that gives this mixtape its name. He's not one to make entire concept albums about the post-Katrina war zone of New Orleans, but he'll include one-off songs about it, and this one is more than enough. "Ride for My N****s" (mp3) is less a protest song than a call-to-arms, but one directed at himself. After an ominous series of pounded piano notes, the mix gets taken over by relentless synth-gusts, dark and menacing guitars, bell-tower clangs, handclaps, and synth-created choirs, like a post-apocalyptic church service. He marches around his neighborhood like an alternate-universe mayor, using his grotesquely raspy voice as a bullhorn to echo off building walls, making promises he'll no doubt keep. Not the FEMA 1/2 acre and a trailer oath, of course; more the "Most likely I’ma die with my finger on the trigger" variety. Wayne's survival kit is equally stocked with skillets and baggies as it is canned goods, and the status quo to which he's looking to return isn't the kind you'll see on CNN. As he describes it, Wayne's world is as upside-down as a refrigerator in a tree, one in which the border between water and land gets erased: "I’m probably in the sky, flyin’ with the fishes / Or maybe in the ocean, swimmin’ with the pigeons." This sort of surreal, inverted world is the perfect sort for Wayne to take over and recreate in his own image: turning those refrigerators into bizarro-vending machines, and creating a Clipsian micro-economy that only recognizes certain citizens. "The sky is the limit"---fair enough, but where's the sky?

This track is taken from the version without Birdman and Khaled, so the "official" release (ha) will be different. This one, from what I can gather (see below), will be better.

ELSEWHERE: I'm sure you've read it, but Tom's take on Drought is the definitive one as yet.

Bonde Do Role "Geremia"

I'm still trying to separate, after listening to With Lasers for the dozenth time, Bonde Do Role on CD from their amazing performance at the Pitchfork festival last year, which marked the first time I'd both seen and heard them. At the time, it was hard for me to imagine a more perfect environment for the trio's super-enthusiastic, non-stop-fist-pumping, 8-bit boombox dance music than a hot-ass tent on a 90+ degree day, with about 500 equally sweaty fans surrounding me. Okay, here's what I wrote (somewhat over-enthusiastically, but whatever):

I got the feeling that this was going to be some sort of event—one of those rare unforgettable moments where I’m part of something bigger than just a concert, more like a happening. And then the trio (two singers and a DJ) came out blaring the bassiest shit I could hope to hear outside of Miami or a nuclear testing facility, just a non-stop mass of unrelenting energy and rhythm, and they were jumping and spinning and thrusting their arms in the air like they’d just won the Super Bowl or something. The guy is thin and tall and scruffy and the epitome of youthful excitement, but the woman is just a total show-stopper. She comes out spritely and cute, bouncing around and almost breaking into the running man at points, but is soon drenched in sweat and sexy in a strange sort of way. They rapped exclusively in their native tongue over un-clearable beats from Quiet Riot and Zeppelin, and at one point even Europe’s “The Final Countdown,” for Christ’s sake. It’s the sort of music (they call it "funk carioca") that comes with no strings attached to any notion of what’s hip or acceptable. If it’s got a break, they’ll break it. And themselves, too.

I have no recollection if they played "Geremia" (mp3), or any song other than the "Final Countdown"-copping one, but for me right now, it's Lasers' most effective plasticized realization of the energy they put into that live set (and of the bass level too, which made me hurriedly run away from the speaker when I felt the first blast of air hit my ear). Of course, all of the samples are gone now, but they're mostly fittingly replaced. The kazoos and militaristic march cadence couple with the breathless chanting and pounding bass drums (very reminiscent of OOIOO's "UMO") to create a Brazilian cartoon ROTC drill, and yes, it's as fun as you'd imagine that scenario to be. Good looking out, Domino.

Get all of With Lasers from iTunes here.

HEY LOOK WHAT I FOUND ON YOUTUBE: If you've seen The Wire before, you'll probably find this funny. Or distressing. Probably funny though.

The Studio "No Comply"

This song feels like a dirty vacation. Not necessarily a bad vacation, mind you, just one that leaves a feeling of uneasiness and ickiness with the memories of warmth and relaxation, a layer of grime that no matter what, can't be scraped off the photographs. Perhaps one of those packages advertised with everything (airfare, hotel, food, rental car) bound-up in one small price. They're essentially just selling the hot weather, but you get the rickety hotel, partially digestible food, and mosquitos for no extra charge. Like A Certain Ratio, the Factory-produced chilly climate funk band that provides "No Comply" (mp3) with its clear and unadulterated stylistic bedrock, the Studio come across as long-time white employees of a resort community otherwise run by non-white locals, and who occasionally get duped into serving as the night's entertainment. Armed with only a portable stereo and shoebox full of old tapes for inspiration, the group picks up the rudiments of their instruments, and puts everything they have into trying to sound leisurely and cosmopolitan, while making the two couples fall more in love (the guy has a tan line on his wedding ring finger) and the family with the two little girls stop arguing. That old man leaning against the doorway (where the kitchen door is propped open because of the heat) probably can do it better, but his resigned grin leads you to think that he has no desire to.

Buy Yearbook 1 from Information Records here.

The Twilight Sad "That Summer, At Home I Had Become the Invisible Boy"

I actively try to stay away from over-hyperbolic championing on this site, and I also work to avoid placing songs and bands in direct competition with one another. I won't try very hard to-day. As rock music goes, Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters is stunningly majestic, sweeping and thunderous; of the same ilk as, but just fucking blowing away in every way imaginable, that dense, pretentious new Arcade Fire record. The comparison is fruitful for another reason, though; Fourteen combines the best moments of Funeral's foggy youthful recollection, re-approaches it as briny literary realism (just dig those song titles), and rocks harder (also with accordion!) than Neon Bible could if played through stadium speakers in a basement. I mean come on: with rock music, the personal is always more intriguing than the political. Even the album cover looks like a scandalously detailed melodrama of the first fifth of a life lived: that fifteenth winter marked some sort of massive scary segue into a new phase. To my ears, this record is the story of that fifteenth winter. Instead of heart-on-sleeve, though, the Sad are knife-in-chest, and James Graham's ragged, irresistable Scottish dialect is the final twist. "That Summer..." (mp3) is retroactive fury: clenched fists, directionless pacing, and half-heard mumbles through bedroom walls finally explained and explored from a vantage point benefitting from maturity. The drums throb, the accordion wheezes dramatically, then all of a sudden, the guitars just send the whole thing up in a torrent of flames. There are times when a really great song will temporarily forestall my appreciation of an entire record and I'll just keep rewinding the same song over and over, not wanting to know if it gets topped later, or stands by itself. This is just a fucking amazingly great song, so sorry for getting all bloggy about it. Come on, you know you can't resist singing along: "the kids are on fire, IN THE BEDROOM!"

Buy Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters from Fat Cat here.

Skeletons & the Kings of All Cities "Hay W'happns?"

Speaking of their very good new album, Skeletons leader Matt Mehlan says: "LUCAS is named after a small town in Kansas, where the Garden of Eden is. I started writing words for the record when we were driving through those huge states, thinking about these little places off the interstate. Sometimes just a house or two next to each other." The press release tries to qualify this by making some claims about expansiveness and sonic detail, but I think Mehlan was pulling a leg with that statement, or else he just has an incredibly strange impression of Kansas. I've driven through the state, and it's exactly the same for eight hours; the equivalent of an entire work day spent sitting and waiting for a billboard. LUCAS, on the other hand, is packed with all manner of stimuli, shifting shape every few seconds. Take "Hay W'happns" (mp3) for example; the jungle-skronk free-jazz open simmers down and exposes into a middle-Eastern funk groove, which they'll push aside then reconsider repeatedly, giving the song its central structure (and highlighting the delightful transitions with hand claps!). When Mehlman's voice slips in, he seems to purposefully sing in a register much higher than his, bending gender and musical notes in equal measure. All this while seemingly adopting the persona of a curious, hovering, godlike experimenter, playing with possible scenarios in a world that belongs to him. Okay, a little like the Garden of Eden. But Kansas?

Buy Lucas from Ghostly International here.

Air "Once Upon A Time"

In most every way, Air's "Once Upon A Time" (mp3)---the best song from the underappreciated Pocket Symphony---is a fitting counterpart to LCD Soundsystem's "All My Friends," which I wrote about here. Where James Murphy trains a worrying eye on the detrimental effect non-stop partying and single-minded careerism can have on friendships, Air, as only Air can do, fetishizes the more distant past with an unrepentantly coy appreciation for the hazy memories of childhood, like Serge Gainsbourg reciting a book of fairy-tales. LCD's version of the present is a wobbly, unsure station marked by a softly frantic undercurrent of anxiety, while "Time" is a much more placid, though equally sentimental and disquieted, approach to the passage of time. On the chorus, the chilly synth-chimes echo each syllable of Nicholas Godin's suspended-in-ether Zen-koan "Time's getting on, time's over now," as distant, Far Eastern flutes provide an appropriately hazy, vaguely spiritual atmosphere. But it's the calmly menacing, circular piano figure that most effectively connects "Time" to "Friends." Both songs rely on resonant repetition for their structure, but the frantic scramble of "Friends" turns into a echo-laden fever dream of skittish wistfulness on "Time," the soundtrack for when Murphy finally falls asleep around 4am.

Buy Pocket Symphony here. Lots of people unfairly expecting another Talkie Walkie are pre-emptively re-selling it on Amazon.

The Sleepy Jackson "I Understand What You Want But I Just Don't Agree"

For whatever reason, I never got around to writing this song up last year, or including it on my year-end mixes, even though it was an iPod staple for a good portion of the fall and winter. Maybe it's the change of weather, but today is the first day of spring, and "I Understand" (mp3) came up on shuffle, and meshed perfectly with my shock and subsequent giddiness at the wicked warm and sunny weather I was basking in on my way to class. I think my trend re: Sleepy Jackson will be to really like one song off each record, and have the rest be eh, whatever. On Lovers, it was that song, the first single, that sounded like it came directly off a parallel-universe All Things Must Pass on which George abandoned the self-seriousness for a side, probably side 8 or something, and acted like a loony, pansexual dimestore mystic for a minute. Four minutes, actually. On last year's equally spotty Personality, it was "I Understand" (both album and song titles shortened because they're annoying). More than any other song on the record, this one perfectly encapsulates the batshit, eye-popping self-loving gaudiness of the album cover. It's whimsical, ridiculous, string-laden disco, but with vocals that nail the equally androgynous Marc Bolan, with a bit of "#9 Dream" Lennon thrown in for good measure. And the lyrics? Like the aforementioned Lennon number, who the eff knows what's going on there, and who cares, really. They're only a gibberish placeholder, reflecting back on themselves like Luke Steele on the cover, making proper time for the chorus. That's when the doves are released, the curtain drops to reveal a mini-orchestra, and the Busby Berkeley-choreographed dancers, shot from above, form a series of ever-morphing concentric circles, then those circles slowly turn into rotating car tires, and then I realize that they are car tires and that now I'm apparently crossing the street.

Buy Personality here, or just take this song and be done with it.

The Field "The Little Heart Beats So Fast"

In case you haven't heard, Kompakt (you know, the label whose CD tracklistings inevitably show up in iTunes IN ALL CAPS) is back, with two stone-cold instant micro-classics to be released this year, Gui Borratto's Chromophobia and the Field's debut full-length From Here We Go Sublime. Borratto's "Beautiful Life" has been draining my iPod's battery life for the past month-ish now, and I've subsequently turned to Sublime, or from there I've gone Sublime (or SUBLIME, you get the picture). The Field is, shock of all shocks, one dude (Axel Willner) from, shock of all shocks, one country (Sweden). Sublime is chilly, non-stop mini-propulsion, the sound of an intense dancefloor from the vantage point gained by hovering over it silently, watching it happen. The title "The Little Heart Beats So Fast" (mp3) is the perfect description for Willner's M.O. on Sublime. The rhythms are intense but gentle, pulsing repetitively, slowly sliding into your unconscious and gaining your assent even though you're not aware it's happening. A clipped, harmless-sounding "uh" ticks like clockwork, like hearing sexy android lovemaking through your apartment ceiling (for reals), periodically (also clock-ish) allowing a serene, almost tender club track to take over, then recede.

Sublime drops on April 3. Pre-order here. FieldSpace here.

Portugal the Man "Ruby Magic"

The jury is still out on whether Portugal the Man's new record It's Complicated Being A Wizard is the alchemistic answer to Three-Six Mafia's "It's Hard Out Here For A Pimp." But it's fun nonetheless to imagine the group storming an imaginary Oscar stage and accepting the Best Song Award for soundtracking the Harry Potter film that decided to incorporate a minimalist dance number halfway through. For those of you not familiar with the group, it's a group of dudes from Alaska that sounds like a group of chicks from England. Wizard is a concept-type record, with each track based around some sort of gem-based magic (crystal, amethyst, etc.). The first, self-titled track is a 23-minute monster that takes more twists and turns, through bombast and whisper, than probably all of the Harry Potter movies played simultaneously, or something. The trick is, however, that, in a moment of wizardly ingenuity, they miraculously transformed the introductory track into 9 smaller subsequent tracks. Ta-da! They're kind of cheating, but it's only $5.98 on Amazon, so that's cool. The section titled "Ruby Magic" (mp3) well displays the band's tendency toward dramatic, high-register, multi-layered, faux-soul vocals overtop slow-moving shredded electro backdrops. It's shape-shifting sci-fi indie-metal that, the more I think about it, would actually sound great during Harry P.'s acid-flashback scene, like the one Martin Sheen had at the start of Apocalypse Now.

Wizard is out on Reincarnate. Buy that mug here for the change in that cup in your car.

LCD Soundsystem "All My Friends"

If, after today's release of Sound of Silver, James Murphy were still only the same hipster smartass who introduced himself to the world with the ironic "Losing My Edge," or just the guy who writes intense jams devoted to getting bodies on the floor ("Movement," "Disco Infiltrator") or even a shameless fanboy who makes mirror-image Eno pastiches ("Great Release") and also sings like Mark E. Smith, that'd be one thing. Actually, that was the thing that he was (at least to me) before Silver---someone who could certainly contextualize a scene and thus contribute to its longevity, but also tended to fall into the same cool distance that he was ostensibly documenting. Silver, however, is the record where Murphy finally starts directly addressing, nay situating, the individual within the scene with the level of detail and nuance he previously devoted to the instrumentation that colors it. Silver has Murphy's two most affecting, dare I say sensitive, moments to date within its runtime---"Someone Great," which Matthew has already properly explained, and "All My Friends" (mp3), a wonderful track that I'll try to quickly do justice to here. The stumbling and self-overlapping, and might I mention insidious piano motif, which gradually allows snapping drum machines and periodic, gradually increasing guitars to give it shape, clearly owes much to the sinuous, minimalist rhythms of New Order's "Blue Monday," but only in structural terms. Sure, it's a tightly looped piano, but it still feels real nonetheless---the resonance of the instrument (and oh, it's the most resonant instrument) is untainted by the fact that the same small number of notes is repeated incessantly. Thematically, its frenzy mirrors the feeling of an insane rush that we realize only retroactively, after we've busied ourselves to the point of distraction for so long that we've clearly lost sight of what might be more important. There's one line in this song that hit me in an autobiographical spot the first time I heard it, and has only gained potency with each listen: "you spend the first five years trying to get with the plan, and the next five years trying to be with your friends again." More than any single lyric of recent vintage, this one pretty perfectly describes my current situation, one which I'll spare you for the sake of time. Just know that it's 6 years, not 5, and I'm in the first year of the second set. The best thing about Silver is that Murphy has realized that the same types of ritualistic activities he ogled and recreated on his first record and scattered pre-Silver singles---from simple dance moves and club positioning to struggles for acceptance and the subsequent clash of sameness---can also be found in the parts of life that take place during the days and afternoons. They're lengthier, harder to spot, and don't change as rapidly, but they're ultimately much more important and have much more serious ramifications for failure. That Murphy has not only located a few of them, but can elaborate with both lyrical simplicity and emotional seriousness about them, is a good sign.

Buy Sound of Silver here.

Read a very entertaining "real-time review" of the Silver here at the always-great Green Pea-Ness.

Sapat "Dark Silver"

What a surprise this song was in the middle of Mortise and Tenon, the debut full-length from Louisville's Sapat. "Dark Silver" (mp3) is the tightest, most consistently rhythmic song on a record chocked full of lengthy, stylistically varied prog workouts (another of which is written about here). Embodying and manipulating much of what was great about Ege Bamyasi/Tago Mago-era Can (the relentless groove, the slight nod to blues and more pronounced nod to jazz, the "live"ness), "Silver" slinks by in less than four minutes, finding a vamp and toying with it, but still keeping it within its predetermined range. Layering is how they work, and Sapat gradually incorporates elements into the mix that add to "Silver"'s groove, but fall far short of overpopulating it. The ultra-primitive drumming begins by hosting the song's ghostly, short and repetitive vocal, but both soon give way to a chorus that boldly struts for a moment like the Make Up's Ian Svenonius, before ceding back to the verse. Each time the verse returns, there's something new there, something threatening to derail the song and tip it over into Trout Mask rhythmic debauchery, which finally happens as the song battles its way to its end. Mortise and Tenon is one of the coolest and most consistently rewarding LPs I've heard yet this year---always forcing issues, never doing it too forcefully. It's being issued by somewhat legendary midwestern indie Siltbreeze (known for Sebadoh, Bardo Pond, and Guided by Voices 7"s, which means something in Indiana, and the first Times New Viking record).

Bikeride "Your Lips and You"

I’ll always be the last person to imply that technology itself—specifially, the digital type that allows for consumer-level home recording/music construction—is directly responsible for the content of the music created by it. Which is a fancy way of saying that, despite the amount of software used to make music, I (perhaps naively) still preference human agency during the creative process. The alternative view is too deterministic for me to latch onto; the equivalent of saying “the machines are restless tonight, and they would like two more tracks of dog-whistle, please.” But technology has become so easy, though. Even ProTools has a consumer-level version, and Garageband has resulted in more than a few nights of layered-jam-creation experiments. And it’s hard to imagine that this method of music creation wouldn’t have at least some impact on the way music is starting to sound.

Social networking sites—mainly Myspace Music—have quickly turned musical influences and genre conventions into metadata; layering 3 more tracks of tambourine with appropriate reverb equates to a Phil Spector RIYL, and a different type of density could result in Spector’s indie heir Dave Fridmann making an appearance on the “sounds like” section. While forty years ago, Brian Wilson’s attempt to top Pet Sounds by extracting the sublime directly from his unconscious left him Indian-style in a sandbox then bedridden and severely bearded, excess is easier now, using the masonry method (stack away). A bittorrent account, an apartment, an understanding significant other and a few months to master some software could easily suffice to create a simulacrum of insanity.

And that’s where I come to Bikeride, a toybox-indie genre goulash of a band that takes as many detours within songs as between them on their forthcoming record The Kiss. The first song I heard from them, “Podiaphobia,” was directly reminiscent of early 70s Sparks (you heard it and were all OMG—Ed.) and made me seek out the album directly, which revealed subsequent nods to the Byrds (ooh), the Flaming Lips (ahh), and Phish (oh noes). The song that kept me coming back, however, was “Your Lips and You” (mp3), but for different reasons entirely. On the surface, it’s an indie(an)-pop raga-jam: tabla rhythms share space with feverishly bowed strings, resulting in something like Polyphonic Spree scoring a Bollywood flick. The first few times I listened to it though, something seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place it. It definitely wasn’t a cover, nor did it borrow lyrics from another song. Then, I figured it out, as the pulp settled to the bottom and the clearer stuff stayed up top. The tablas, as well as the strings, were pulled (I’m about 99% sure) from Soundtrack, a loop-based scoring program made by Apple, that comes bundled with Final Cut Pro. It comes pre-packaged with thousands of non-copyrighted loops that one can stack to infinity to score one’s awesome movie.

Now, the last thing I’m trying to do here is call this band out for using software presets to make music ("Photoshop filter-indie"--Ed.). I mean, if adopted as a methodology, it could certainly be a pragmatic sampling method, mindful of the current hyper-legal atmosphere of pop music, where intellectual property ambulance chasers have to firmly secure their iPods before taking flight, right? Or how about a set of competitive boundaries for a reality show competition---"here are your pieces, teams. The team with the most killer jam after 2 hours wins." Also, it must be said that The Kiss is an enjoyable trainspotting pop record---there is plenty of pleasure to be had in a 60-minute game of "name that influence." Bikeride isn’t necessarily the most inventive band in the world, but they do know how to arrange their top-8s, and they certainly have no shortage of ambition. The Kiss is what I'll call a “Mind’s Eye” psychedelic record—if you stare long enough, the “real” image will eventually make itself known.

Dig some more Bikeride at their Myspace.

FROM THE NEWS DESK: I'm certainly fond of John Edwards' choice to forego federal funding for the upcoming election season, but I have significant reservations about his physical resemblance to Kenneth, the page from NBC's "30 Rock." Compare: [Edwards] [Kenneth]

The High Llamas Hawaii

Hawaii is ethnographic indie pop; a post-colonialist concept album that explores ideas of culture, community, identity and property through stories of weekend anthropologists, local theatre companies, and frustrated book editors. The stature this album holds in my memory is rare---along with but a handful of others, I have very distinct and very positive recollections of it. I discovered the record right before I left college---a show on Bloomington's community radio station WFHB piqued my interest by merely mentioning the words "High Llamas" (as a sidenote, the bonus disc that came with the CD led to my completely accidental discovery of Nick Drake via the cover of "At the Chime of a City Clock"). The first song to grab my attention was "Campers in Control" (mp3), which takes a resident's perspective of an annual seasonal land-grab in some highly sought-after locale---the viewers take a seat and hope for a "race well-run". The langourous instrumentation and multilayered "aaaahhhhh"s sketch a picture of a man and woman sitting on their patio, sipping lemonade from sweaty glasses while wearing broad-brimmed straw hats and oversized sunglasses, just cracking up at an out-of-town father, clad in sandals with black socks, exiting the family RV and wiping his brow in exhaustion.

A few months later after graduation, I had the opportunity to jump with both feet into the strange and incredibly daunting world of broadcast documentary production. We were doing work mostly for the Discovery Networks, and the company was run by two ex-newsmen---a producer and anchor. That meant was lots of travel and small crews---shooters often edited our own footage. The 46 minute/5-segment programs we produced covered topics ranging from demolition derbies to Roswell weirdos to Army sniper training, and though I hated the 80-hour weeks, retrospectively it was easily the most interesting and second-most rewarding experience of my life, aside from teaching. Re-enactments were the biggest bitch of all to shoot: they required the longest set-ups, and required dealing with historically accurate "actors," which was an exercise in patience, to say the least. I frequently found myself humming the refrain from "Nomads" (mp3), mostly because it's so appropriate, but also because it was so soothing. The combination of trombone and guitar lend the vividly described scene the feel of a langorous circus, which would have been nice.

Buy Hawaii from Amazon here.

(This post originally appeared over a year ago, but I revived/revised it to coincide with my review of Can Cladders, my favorite Llamas record since Hawaii.)

Blonde Redhead "23"

It turns out that Misery is a Butterfly was a one-stop detour, after all. I really liked that record, and still do (to a slightly lesser degree--Ed.), but I can understand why a lot of others didn't. It was the post-Kazu Mikino-horse-related-injury album, and it reflected her significant bed-ridden life/death contemplation, resulting in a creakier, much more ethereal and decidedly less rhythmic tone that most were used to, or expected. In other words, it was their Sparklehorse album. But 23, the new album, has taken all of Butterfly's kinetic energy and channeled it into a propulsive, streamlined collection of songs---still a step forward, but in the opposite lateral direction that the last effort went (I don't know if that makes sense). Before Butterfly, the group was never fond of overly ostentatious presentations, and the best songs on 23 are tightly wound, never wavering far from the rhythm, and the melodies are sharp, efficient, and appropriately restrained. In other words, they're closer to the form the band started to suggest on the Guy Picciotto-produced Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons, from way back in 2000. It's not a regression as much as a seeming attempt to regain (or perhaps, gain for the first time) some semblance of sonic continuity---there is plenty of evidence that suggests the band's not done with some of the ideas first approached on Butterfly, for instance---and while it's not a spotless try, it's got some pretty great moments. "23" (mp3) is going to be the first single, and it certainly sounds like it. After introducing itself with a few bent piano notes, it hurtles forward on a tight, cyclical drum foundation that echoes Hail to the Thief's "Where You End and I Begin." Mikino's vocals glide atop the washed-out, guitars and low, rumbling bass like expressive detail work, but reveal the most when the song hits what passes for its chorus and she's content to go wordless.

23 comes out April 10th on 4AD.

ELSEWHERE: From the same dude behind the (actually quite loud) So Much Silence music blog comes Circa 45, on which he makes rare indie 7"s turn invisible, and then go onto the Internet, complete with "where found" and "catalog #" information for added authenticity. It's been a while, but there's finally a new music blog worth frequenting.

Field Music "Sit Tight"

For a Valentine's Day selection, how about "Sit Tight" (mp3), which manages to touch upon relationships, communication, and problem solving within its three minute run. Kind of. But before you go leading off a mix for your S.O. with this, give it a close listen---it might not be something you want to use for commemorative purposes, especially when the first verse is: "I've been sitting tight, didn't you know?/Waiting for a chance to stop dead/And open these wrists for some useless joke." Or maybe it is. Either way, "sitting tight" assumes a dual meaning here. First: impatiently waiting, in this case for some sort of never-going-to-happen interpersonal breakthrough, to the point when tension becomes so palpable that any disturbance could send it spiraling. The second meaning, however, has to do with the musical structure of the song: it's pulled about as tautly as possible without snapping in two. The first few seconds---a sinister sounding carnival organ, a woman's voice firmly yelling "no!"---set the scene for a tightly wound dialogue, but then the drums come in and take it somewhere else entirely. The drummer on "Sit Tight" fills the same rhythmic role as Paul Desmond on Dave Brubeck's "Take Five": scene-stealer. Consistently catapaulting and counterpointing (but never unnecessarily, always with an eye firmly trained on the backbone of the song), the drums poke out from inside the inflexible canvas that surrounds the couple, jabbing to get free but well-contained. Occasionally, it all ceases---deep breaths taken, senses gathered---like at the point where he tells her (his voice is all we hear btw) "Stop all your weeping and spit it all out/I'm sick of all your talk/But I want you to talk/I want you to talk." I've not been in all that many relationship squabbles in my day, but I'm relatively sure that that approach isn't the best way to spur conversation. The emotions, the contrapuntal sonic surroundings that push a lovers' discourse into the realm of the absurd---it all adds up to an archly dramatic BBC serial drama (from the 70s), yet directed by Terry Gilliam. Happy Valentine's Day everyone.

Buy Tones of Town from Memphis Industries here.

For what it's worth, this is my third (consecutive) Valentine's Day with my girlfriend Forrest. The above song expresses naught how i feel about that. This is how I feel.

Lo-Speed Brainplow "Backstabbin' Centerfold" and "Broken Mirror"

For as long as I can remember listening to music, I can remember manipulating it. As soon as I got my first two-deck cassette jambox, I started remixing tapes and shuffling their running orders, based on whatever criteria I thought fitting. My most popular methodology was to re-organize the tapes in descending order of “favorite song” to “least-favorite song.” While it was fun to do (especially for a kid with few extra-cirricular activities and like 3 or 4 friends, all of whom did), I would only listen to the remixed versions one or two times each, because they started to become a drag on the second side, which I might have well dubbed “the side with the shitty songs on it.” In retrospect, my primitive mixtapes probably made me appreciate (at least unconsciously) the fine art of album sequencing, but just recently, after coming across one of those old tapes and (ultimately, in vain) trying to listen to it after almost 20 years, it made me realize another tendency I’ve always had: trying to fool myself into liking music.

About 7 or 8 years later, the 3-disc CD changer I got as a high-school graduation gift ended up serving as a machine with which I would systematically attempt to con myself into liking albums. If there was a record I simply couldn’t get into, I would put it on shuffle with two other discs—on the setting where individual songs would play off each disc until all three were done—and see how songs sounded when they crept up and surprised me. I’ve always explained it by comparing it to a visual example (meaning, of course, an example that can be much more easily understood): certain colors (or patterns, etc.) don’t look good until you put them beside other colors that accentuate different, more appealing qualitites. Sometimes, even artist-created context can strangle an album, burying otherwise great individual moments under the weight of some big theme, or more commonly in my experience, a uniformity of tone. Plucking a song from a record that has a bold or repetitive motif, and playing it alongside with a group of other songs from other records, is like finally letting your child play with children other than his own brother and sister. But, you know, with kids instead of CDs.

Now that even the lumbering triceratops of the mainstream music industry has acknowledged that the irreversible trajectory of pop music is to the level of endlessly reproducible icon, the irony of music as information is revealing itself to me. While the listener (now increasingly called a “user”) certainly has infinitely more options for music re-contextualization, he/she also is overwhelmed with associated information about that music, which works to limit the new contexts that the listener can give the music. These days, the way I listen to music with iTunes is just an exponentially more massive version of what I used to do with tapes and CDs, and while it should thus automatically be that much more fun, it’s often just tiring. I don’t consider myself the average music listener or anything, although if you’re reading this site and you’re name’s not “Mom,” I can assume you know what I’m talking about. When I hear a new song, or a full album of songs now, one of my first instincts is to plow around the Web and find as much information about the band as I can—what they look like, where they’re from, etc.—and that ancillary information often helps me make a value judgment about the music as much as the actual music itself does (for a lot of reasons I’ll go into at some later point, I’m sure).

What I’m getting at is that even though now that I can take 20 days worth of songs anywhere with me, turning them into little film scores of my activities (a dog walk is not a dog walk until it’s soundtracked by Jean-Claude Vannier, for instance), I’m almost positive that I privilege what the musicians or their representatives say about themselves more than my self-created connections. In other words, I’m so used to seeking out “official” information about bands (and I’ve done this since way before I had this blog) that it gets massive dibs over anything I can dream up on my own (to some people, I’m buying into the intentional fallacy, but that’s their problem). However, on exceedingly rare occasions, I’ll come across music with absolutely no contextual information whatsoever, and the only meaning it will have will be that which I create in my head. It fulfills one of the contradictory (but inherent), promises of music-as-information, which is the oasis-like existence, somewhere out there, of music-with-no-associated context. Digitized, invisible music that, through its technological makeup, fools me like I used to fool myself. The equivalent of finding a cassette on the street with no label, popping it in and trying to make sense of what’s going on. Who are these bodiless people, or machines, or zombies, making this music, and why am I imagining them to look a certain way? The visual (the associated information with music) is a much, much more powerful memory-creator than the aural (the music all by itself), to the extent that when you only have the latter and have to provide the former on your own, it can be an incredibly enjoyable thing (see: Jandek).

I got an email from a random guy a month or so ago, which was actually kind of refreshing. On an average day, a blogger of my mediocre popularity level gets 20-30 messages from PR people pitching their bands, most of which I don’t like (the bands, not the PR people, of course). But this guy just said hi, and told me about his own site, which I then visited. It was more a personal website than a blog, and I eventually stumbled on a page that had a bunch of streaming music on it. The embedded player only played a single track, though, with several songs sequenced together, like on a tape. The music definitely came from some sort of home-recorded tape, that was for sure. And I found myself listening for what seemed like an hour, spacing out and making my own backstory for how the musicians looked, how they formed as a band, how their internal dynamic operated, and so on and so on. It was an experience I haven’t had in I don’t know how long (at least as long as All Music Guide has been around, for sure): hearing music for the first time with no context provided, not even a name. This guy’s website was using technology strictly for its transportive capabilities, and almost not at all for its contextual information-providing function. All I had to go on while listening was that the musicians were friends of this nice guy who emailed me.

I eventually emailed the guy back, asking for mp3s and okay, All The Information He Could Provide On This Music, Which I Like Very Much. I have no factual evidence for this, but I hope what he sent back was a bunch of made-up stories, because it all seemed so weird. But maybe it was because it simply didn’t conform to the master narrative formula that record labels and artists themselves are forced to create in order to sell music (providing genre information, RIYL, relevant autobiographical information, etc.), but was instead a personal story about an unassuming guy who recorded himself playing music (and I’m now realizing that I’m providing that narrative here…powerless…to…resist…).

Anyway, here are two of the mp3s he sent me, from I think around 1995, and recorded under the name Lo-Speed Brainplow by some friends of the guy who emailed me. They're called "Backstabbin' Centerfold" (mp3) and "Broken Mirror" (mp3). Just some people recording themselves playing music 11 years ago. Who sound like a rawer Royal Trux, or maybe a more melodic Germs. Whoops—sorry, that slipped out.

Rjd2 "Have Mercy"

Wow. When I blathered earlier this month about the Bees as the band equivalent to RJD2's record/laptop-based model of past-mining, I certainly didn't expect The Deuce to come back and prove he could do the reverse. If you haven't yet heard, The Third Hand is the album on which Columbus, Ohio's own RJ Krohn does it all, um, by hand: playing the instruments, singing the vocals, and riding the studio faders with his toes all at the same time. But while our boy makes a giant leap for a Todd Rundgren-level of studio wizardry, he manages to land squarely in solo-Matthew Friedberger territory, which isn't bad at all for a first try. He occasionally dabbles in Senor Furnace's whoosh/glitch electro-scapes, but, as with his behind-deck work, most often subsumes experimentation to recontextualization; he's still doing the neo-soul thing, in other words. RJ's voice strongly resembles Friedberger's higher-register raspy croon, but errs more toward Bobby Hebb than Bob Dylan. Which still, even though it shouldn't, brings up that pesky notion of "authenticity," especially on "Have Mercy" (mp3). You can't sing a chorus like "lord have mercy on these poor fools" without conjuring notions of What's Going On, and "Mercy" certainly does. RJ affiliates himself with the underclass, bemoaning things like waiting for the train to get to his downtown job, and "waitin' for a check all mornin.'" But it's the line after that one that sticks in my craw: "I got health care bills to get to." I simply can't get past the fact that RJ refers to them as "health care bills," which seems to come from the same vocabulary wellspring as the new Democratic agenda to help the middle class---trying relating to them, often literally, on (with) "their own terms." What's wrong with calling them "doctor bills," or "medical bills"? It's a simple point, and perhaps an overly specific one, but I can't get past the association of the term "health care" with newspaper headlines and political speeches---those that describe from a significant distance the plight of the working man. And after I heard that one line, my appreciation for Hand was tainted, only to be affirmed two tracks later on "Law of the Gods," when he suggests that enlightenment comes through "putting down the TV," although you can still "trust that (he) love(s) TV, too." OY. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not totally hating on The Third Hand (for starters, it's got some great instrumental tracks); RJ's beatmaking abilities (and Ratatat-style guitar manipulations) are still pretty-top notch, and they translate well to his one-man-band methodology. But while it's going to become predictable to smirk at his often condescending, sometimes elitist suburban soul lyrics over the next couple months, they are the point on this record where RJ shows his, er, hand (ugh, sorry).

The Third Hand sees release on XL 3/5.

Apostle of Hustle "The Naked & Alone"

There's a profo