Archive for Music Reviews

Forgive Durden – Razia’s Shadow: A Musical Review

January 25, 2009 at 2:46 am · Filed under Music Reviews ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Forgive Durden - Razia's Shadow

Note: Max here. Not sure how I let this get so long. Please read it anyway. It’ll crack you up. I think it’ll be more enjoyable if you are listening while you read it, so try to make that happen.

I never got around to making a top albums of 2008 list. I think it has quite a large sum to do with personal laziness, but I’m going to take the time to write a couple short reviews for some albums from last year that I think deserve mentioning.

Let’s start with Razia’s Shadow: A Musical, by Forgive Durden, which is easily the dorkiest record I heard last year, and unabashedly so. It’s an album inspired by immense theatre geekery, but also a good heap of fantasy. Razia’s Shadow is a concept album to the extreme. It’s essentially the soundtrack to a musical too elaborate and dorky for anyone to ever put on, and it’s awesome. It’s by a band called Forgive Durden, whose previous work I’m completely unfamiliar with. I heard of the project because of the many guest vocalists on the album, a myriad of emo/pop-punk stars, all of whom play a certain character in the story. Aaron Weiss of mewithoutYou (whose upcoming album is eagerly anticipated by this critic) narrates with a brilliant, croaky charisma.

The plot is difficult to decipher without a little effort– Thomas Dutton, who wrote the thing and plays the main character in both halves of the story, spared us the exposition– but wikipedians came to my rescue, and a quick read of that page made the listening experience much better, once I figured out what was going on. Most of this review is plot summary, because I think it’s kind of needed in order to parse this album and appreciate its awesomeness or its silliness.

Like I mentioned, there are two halves of the story. In the first, a God-like character named O The Scientist (Casey Crescenzo of The Dear Hunter), creates the world. An angel named Ahrima (Thomas Dutton) feels like he’s not given enough credit for his skillz (which are never really made clear) and gets pissed off. Then, a spider called Barayas (Max Bemis of Say Anything, altogether cool raspy-voiced guy who pulled a similar emo-guest-party on his album In Defense of the Genre) lands on his shoulder, and I guess he’s some kind of would-be terrorist, because he convinces Ahrima to “bring those lamps back to me, don’t leave them in one piece” to gain everyone’s respect. The thing is, destroying “those lamps” for some reason pretty much destroys the world. It doesn’t make sense to me either, but it works, and this is one of the best songs on the album.

Despite the world being burned down, everyone’s okay. They just move somewhere else. I don’t know, whatever. But Ahrima must be punished, so Toba The Tura (Chris Conley of Saves The Day) arrives to fuck him up. Conley rocks the song, starting out as a sort of understanding, sweet-voiced guy, and building to a frenzied condemnation. Everyone moves to a new, “light” world, separated from his “dark” one by a mountainous wall of stone.

And then the plot skips ahead a century. Now the world is split in two, and this is symptomatic of the lack of love in the world or something. It’s silly. It’s fun. Let’s go with it.

The two songs that mark the jump are The Oracle, in which it’s prophecized that someday there will be two people whose “true love will be strong enough to erase the wrong we’ve done, the dark and light will become one” and “A Hundred-Year, Minute-Long Intermission” whose title I kind of adore. Both feature Danny Stevens of The Audition, who I’ve never heard but have me sold on the strength of their singer.

When the plot picks up, both the light and dark sides of the world have developed their own societies of people. The new main character is Adakias, again played by Thomas Dutton, who grew up on the dark side, which is later described as “forever shaded, where the jaded are never wrong.” He wants to be the one to fulfill the prophecy and restore the world via his ability to love. Other people who live on the dark side laugh at him, because obviously they’re dicks, they live on the dark side. When his brother Pallis (Brendon Urie of Panic At The Disco, who I submit to be underrated) learns of his plan to leave and search for love, he sings, “You are so foolish. The Dark has been your home. If you elope, I’ll hunt you down, through suffering you’ll atone.” Fucking yikes.

So he leaves for the Light side to search for love, and in the next song he finds it in Princess Anhura (Greta Salpeter of The Hush Sound). This song, “It’s True Love” is so silly and schmaltzy. She sings, presumably not long after meeting him, “I never would guess your touch could fill me with such thoughts to marry you, have your babies, too.” I love it. The duet builds to a powerful and, somehow, believable height. Salpeter here deserves loads of commendation for being committed to singing these lines with the conviction she does, especially when she needs to sing the name “Adakias” with affection.

The couple meet with Anhura’s father, the king (Nic Newsham of Gatsby’s American Dream, who I saw open for Bear Vs. Shark years ago), who is suspicious of Adakias and seems to suspect that he’s from the dark side (oh yeah, he’s hiding that fact). The king opens with one of my favorite lines, the absurd, “So you’re the boy I’ve heard so much about from my daughter’s open mouth.” He doesn’t approve. Adakias probably doesn’t help things when he sings, “I just want your daughter’s heart, you fool.” Dutton and Salpeter’s voices are really wonderful together here again, when his simple plea of “I love your daughter and she, well, she loves me back” builds to “All we have is love, my King, so let’s sing ‘la-da-da-da!’ You probably have to hear it to believe it, but it’s a magical moment.

Without his approval, they decide to elope in secret. However, Anhura begins to fall sick. Adakias knows this is because he’s from the dark side. Uh oh. His love is gonna get her dead! We learn this from the narrator, and the next song is poorly sequenced, as it takes a detour from the revelation we just learned, but it’s a visit to the Bawaba Brothers (John Gourley of Portugal. The Man, lending his new found Alaskan soul vocals and Kris Anaya of An Angle, AKA the most transparent rip off I’ve ever heard; he sounds just like Conor Oberst). I’m not really sure who the Bawaba Brothers are, but they tell Adakias that he’s a descendent of the guy that separated the world, and that story is more than mythical lore, which gives him confidence that he’s destined to fulfill the prophecy and restore the world. This song is one of my favorite musically, it’s just gorgeous, but probably should have happened a couple tracks sooner.

Back to our dying princess. They go see the doctor (Shawn Harris, The Matches, who are a kickass band), who is probably my favorite character here. Harris is just absurd here, he has so much fun. His Dr. Dumaya is absolutely insane. He starts out laughing maniacally and then starts coughing… maniacally, obviously. He informs them “Now what you got ain’t no quick fix, it ain’t no common cold. What you need’s a bona fide doctor’s miracle.”

What follows is so ridiculously dumb and ridiculous that I don’t know what to do besides laugh and love it. He tells her he’ll heal her on the condition that she stay with him forever. “I promise to take care of her, well rather, she’ll take care of me for the rest of her life in the Dark, fulfilling Doctor’s fantasies.” I can imagine that, but not what follows. Anhura resists, but Adakias makes her! He says “it’s the only way.” So she consents. Jesus.

So the doctor heals her…. and just then, Pallis bursts in! In the likely case that you forgot who that is, it’s Adakias’s brother who promised to hunt him down if he eloped.

This is the final song, and it is fairly epic. There is some kind of hilarious but well-written wordplay in this encounter. I just gotta quote it.

Adakias: Casanovas have charmed with chiffons, so chichi. Chased her with conceited coteries.
Anhura: Maharajahs have magniloquently mouthed their love for me through their menageries.
Adakias: She’s been propositioned, propounded by every pompous prince. Given panniers of peerless pears and plums, polished.
Anhura: I’ve been seduced with shimmering, sparkling stones. Squired by suitors to sizable chateaus.
Adakias: And I’m the one she chose.

These tongue twisters are belted out confidently to a jazzy bounce. Pallis, however, sees fit to reveal that Adakias has been lying about being from the Dark, and he’s the reason she’s dying. Of course it comes out like this. It’s kind of a tired plot contrivance, but we’ll let it go for now, because right after Pallis reveals this, he sings, “But I suppose it’s in vain, since her life is ending, when I thrust this blade into her heart-a-thumping.” Ahh!! And then comes the most gloriously, theatrically emo moment on the album, as Adakias sing-screams, “Brother no!!!” and, as we soon realize, dives in front of the blade.

This sacrifice demonstrates his true love, and the two parts of the world reunite in a showstopping, cheesy fucking display as we’re reminded that love and sacrifice conquer all. The narrator takes us out, and the curtains drop.

It’s hard to say what we just experienced. What’s great is that the melodramatic theatrics of the emo genre match perfectly with, well, melodramatic theatre. It’s a surprisingly perfect fit.

-Max Jacobson

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THE LISTS, part 2 – Top Albums of 2008

December 15, 2008 at 3:10 am · Filed under Lists, Music Reviews ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Ugh.  I began to write this entry while procrastinating a week’s worth of hell, and I finished it doing the same thing.  Only this time it was a different week.  Regardless, this list took a lot longer than the last, for obvious reasons, and only makes me dread making part 3 (the movies list) sometime in later January in ways that still somehow allow me to look forward to it.  Either way, it’s a nice feeling of relief to know I’m done with this, and I like my picks.  I’m eager to see how different mine are from Pitchfork.  After all, that’s the only reason I wanted to put this out so soon – to beat Pitchfork and to prevent myself from being influenced.  Anyway, here goes.

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THE LISTS, part 1 – Top Songs of 2008

December 2, 2008 at 4:15 am · Filed under Lists, Music Reviews ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I was thinking that I should stop at 25 as far as top songs go, otherwise I would have three or four songs from each of my favorite albums of the year, and that would kind of get pointless.  But then I realized when compiling the list that all of that happened within the top 25 anyway, so I expanded to 40, and here we go.  Unlike last year, for those who remember, I will give a short explanation for each track.  I won’t compare, because that would be ridiculous, but I hope that my synopses are appropriately glowing for each place in the list.  In it are The Walkmen, Born Ruffians, TV On The Radio, Beach House, Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes, the Dodos and much more, but this post is huge – you’ll have to hit the jump for it all.  Plus, you wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise immediately, would you?

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Death Cab For Cutie – Narrow Stairs

November 24, 2008 at 2:03 pm · Filed under Music Reviews ·Tagged , , ,

Death Cab For Cutie - Narrow StairsI think the first time I heard Death Cab For Cutie was in the OC. That show was pretty good for a while, and there was that season where one of them worked in a bar so that they could have bands playing in the background. Looking back on it, it seems like kind of a blatant way to emphasize their role as a tastemaker, but blatantness aside, I guess I’m thankful for the introduction. Death Cab isn’t really a mainstay for me, but they are consistently enjoyable. Narrow Stairs keeps that up.

(I tried to find a youtube video of them playing The OC to link to, but all I could find was a german dub. It’s pretty surreal. Enjoy.)

The first single for this album is called “I will possess your heart.” It has maybe 4 minutes of build up before Ben Gibbard starts singing, which some might find excessive, but I think is worth being patient for. When the song kicks in proper, it doesn’t feel unnecessary. I don’t know what it does exactly, but I like it. It makes the song seem more important, even though without the long opening it would be just another pretty good song on the album. Okay, maybe it’s unnecessary.

“Cath…” is the next single (why am I focusing on the singles?) and it’s pretty pretty, if a little beentheredonethat. It’s a song with a story to tell about a gal named Cath who’s having second thoughts at the altar. I really like this lyric:

As the flashbulbs burst
She holds a smile
Like someone would hold
A crying child

Awww, right?

“No Sunlight” was an early favorite for me, what with its general bounciness and specific sense of being an actual rock and roll song from Death Cab For Cutie, which is weird, but pretty rad.

But now I have a new favorite.

Absolutely essential to comment on is the song “Grapevine Fires.” For me it’s the clear standout of the album, and worth buying just for it. The first comment on that youtube video is “Ok, now THIS is music!” I was going to say something about the song, but I guess that’ll do. No, that would be lazy, here you go: it’s so gorgeous, and gets the fuck away with the lyric “There I knew it would be alright. That everything would be alright.” I’m dying to hear a playlist of songs that contain that lyric and variants on it. They’re fucking endless, and the more you notice them the more trite it gets, but here Gibbard and co. totally sell it.

The rest of the album kind of blends together into something very pleasant but sort of bland. Sometimes that’s what you need to listen to. That’s a niche isn’t it? The production is really great. That Chris Walla fellow deserves credit beyond having a really cool name. The way the guitars sort of burble on “Your New Twin Sized Bed” is pretty and hypnotic. The opening shimmer of “Bixby Canyon Bridge,” the album’s opener, gives way to to a jarring ratatat of loud fuzzy notes which build to a great height, all the instruments coming together with the common goal of rocking out. I guess it’s just on songs like “Talking Bird” and “The Ice Is Getting Thinner”, these ballads with these slow, long notes without a lot of melody that lose me. They sound great, but the fidgety thirteen year old in me needs some kind of payoff for sitting through them.

How do you end a review again?

–Max Jacobson

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Speaking of bullshit; Jaylib review

November 24, 2008 at 3:10 am · Filed under Music Reviews ·Tagged , , , , ,

So remember what I said about no more music this year? Yeah, that wasn’t true.  What I actually meant (hey! I’m serious!) was that I’m not going to review any more current music until the year-end list is done.  What is making that harder is my curiosity.  I’m having a hard time with sticking to review.

Last night I went on a downloading binge (legal, if anyone asks, I guess), focusing on Madlib and J Dilla, two hip hop producers that got hot around the mid- to late-90’s, and started making their own music in the early 2000’s for the most part.  Their production is really interesting and a joy to discover, but they collaborated once before J Dilla died of a rare blood disease in 2006.  That collaboritive team was called Jaylib (get it?) and they released one album in 2003, titled Champion Sound, bred from each of them rapping over each other’s beats.  That album has become my favorite hip hop album of all time in the space of hearing it twice over the past two days.

When it comes to hip hop, I guess I cheat a little bit when it comes to how I approach listening to the music.  Because my primary interest in music is rock and things resembling it, I tend to take a step back when listening to something and try to take in as much as possible.  Most of my “effort” with listening comes from trying to absorb the piece as a whole (probably the reason why I like complicated music like Animal Collective, but have a harder time with noise and stuff).  As a result, I have to really concentrate hard to listen to the lyrics of something unless they’re really prominent.  Which means that when I listen to hip hop, I get more preoccupied with production than most.  That’s why I love Spank Rock so much – it’s so interestingly put together.  And that’s why I love J Dilla and Madlib so much.

Which is why Jaylib is mindblowingly good to me.  Now, reviewing hip hop is almost as much of a challenge for me as reviewing things like dubstep – it makes me insecure not being tapped into the greater culture, because I fear having some guy who’s like, “I know hip hop, and you’re a stupid asshole.” I know that would probably never happen, but then again, that’s why it’s an insecurity.  But the way I see it, having a visionary producer rapping means that that rap has a finely tuned ear for how to flow with the production.  As I noticed (and as was pointed out to me by some other reviews I read), the lyrics here aren’t all that deep or all that interesting – they’re fun, but pretty shallow, not dumb, but not at all contemplative or declarative either (except as far as declarations of Jaylib’s prowess or simply, their new existence).  But their production.  Oh, their production.

It’s not exactly like nothing I’ve ever heard (it seems to take influence from instrumental hip hop producers, most notably [and most famous] DJ Shadow), it’s put together so interestingly that it’s this whole new animal when combined with the vocals.  It’s just, music.  It’s hip hop by every defining definition, but if you’re someone who’s heard too much absolute shit blasted at you by top-40 stations and mixtape rappers who have great rhymes but couldn’t care less what it’s over, it doesn’t sound like hip hop.  It sounds like something too fully formed.

The whole album has this laid back, but still energized vibe to it that’s really engaging for me, and it’s really conducive to full-album listening.  When your production is good enough, your only worry is overloading the listeners, and they do a great job of not doing much.  But their first proper track, after cool intro “L.A. to Detroit” (each of their hometowns), is “McNasty Filth” (cool name, right?), and it blew me away entirely.  They loaded so much into it and it’s not fast-paced, but extraordinarily high-energy.  It’s definitely a statement track – the duo saying that they are a force to be reckoned with.

Some other highlights are “The Heist” and “The Mission,” back to back, and for the same reason – their ability to keep downtempo hip hop interesting and fresh is absolutely astounding to me.  But really, after “McNasty Filth”, Champion Sound tends to maintain about the same level of laid-back awesomeness.  And that’s good enough for me.  Honestly, this is the best thing I’ve heard all year, and I’m seriously considering putting it in my all-time top 20, but I feel like it would kind of decrease the stature of the list if something could break into it after two days.  I’ll wait a while with it.

Thanks for the feedback on the changes, guys.  And keep those comments coming, it’s nice to know I’m still relevant in some way or another.

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Musical Genitalia; Eagles of Death Metal review

November 12, 2008 at 3:09 am · Filed under Music Reviews ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

So I saw a brilliant performance tonight.  Dan Katz and Raghav Goyal, formerly named the Aristokatz, but forced to switch to the Aristogoyals because of Disney copyright issues, they are the new Disney music cover band on campus here at Oberlin.  Tonight was their debut concert, and I have to tell you, it was genius.  It was probably the worst official performance I’ve ever heard musically, but it was bad like Neil Hamburger is bad at comedy (only actually funny).  I couldn’t really explain it except that it was like musical dadaism, only gleefully lighthearted.  For whatever reason, it was pure comedy genius to me.  I mean, everyone at the Cat in the Cream (for the non-Obie readers, the campus coffeehouse) was laughing and enjoying the hell out of it for at least a half hour, but I was still dying by the end of the show’s hour, and I couldn’t wipe a smile off my face for a good hour after that.  If they hone their craft either way (towards the musical end or towards the comedy end), they really could be something special, and I’m totally serious about that.  Much love.

And of course, they’re both on the Oberlin Horsecows Ultimate Frisbee Team Organization, Esq.

Now, I know that i said I was going to do a rap roundup for my next review, but then the Eagles of Death Metal released a record, and that’s a drop-everything moment for me.  I haven’t given their first album, Peace Love Death Metal, much of a listen, but their sophomore effort, 2006’s Death By Sexy, is one of my absolute favorites.  It rocks so hard, and is so much fun.  When trying to describe their visceral appeal to others, I often fall back on the expression, “It’s like music with a giant cock.  Like, huge.”  And I think that’s fairly accurate.  You can feel the machismo ooze out of their music.  Frontman Jesse “The Devil” Hughes is cocky with a capital Cock, and he’s famed(ish) for his outlandish attitude with fans at shows, and his mustache, which is a lady tickler of the highest degree.  This guy still lives the life, as it’s obvious.

I first got into EoDM when Morgan showed me them saying they reminded her of Queens of the Stone Age, a band I had shown her.  It turned out she was unwittingly prophetic – Josh Homme, lead singer of Queens of the Stone Age, is the drummer for EoDM and the secondary creative force.  Since then, it’s been a constant love affair between the band and me – whenever I want some hard-ass rock that is more contemporary than Led Zep and things of that nature, EoDM is almost always the first place I turn.

Heart On, EoDM’s third album, is less super-kinetic than their first two, and as a result is a step behind as far as pure fun, but this is easily their most musically well-developed album.  This band is no longer my version of Top 40 (meaning music that I can listen to just because it’s fun but lacks any real depth).  Now they’re just a damn good band.

Eagles of Death Metal is by no stretch of the imagination a death metal band; it’s not really a joke name, just really a “you had to be there story”.  Whatever.  There are worse band names out there. (I’m looking at you, Portugal. The Man.) They’re a blues/roots rock band to their core, with the hard-charging guitars and their fairly constant set of chords that just beeeeg to be air-guitar’d.  Jesse Hughes adds that final bluesy piece – even though it’s bluesy, not blues, since, you know, he’s white and sounds white.  There’s no grit to his voice, just a lot of confidence and just as much strong falsetto.  Hughes used to spontaneously break into an “Elvis From Hell” impersonation mid-song (see “Chase the Devil” off of Death By Sexy), but that’s left behind on this album, sadly.

As far as musicianship goes, it’s rare you see a rock band this in sync with such a high level of play all-around.  Both guitar parts, bass and drums are all on fucking fire throughout the whole record.  In a way, it reminds me of Led Zeppelin or Cream – yeah, more like Cream, actually – because no part of the band ever really chills out.  Sure, one instrument will have the most attention drawn to it at a point, but multiple listens reveal that every part is still playing its ass off.  Really great stuff.  I especially noticed it in the last song, “I’m Your Torpedo.”

That song title brings me to another point that I didn’t mention back when I was talking about the band’s masculinity.  A lot of this music’s power along that vein is in its bare sexuality.  This is “I’m-a sex you up” music, only not in a romantic way – in a fantastically egocentric way.  The courtship is all about the grandstanding, not about the end result.  Pure, brash masculinity.

If you consider that the ideal of the band, then “(I Used to Couldn’t Dance) Tight Pants” would probably be your favorite track.  The guitar work is ultra-sexy here, and really, there’s not much more to say about it than that it rocks out ultra-hard.  It’s really ditto for the rest of the album, so I’m going to spare readers more song-by-song analysis at the risk of getting even more repetitive.  I’m actually surprised this album is so consistent; even Death By Sexy had one amazingly horribly annoying song (“The Ballad of Queen Bee and Baby Duck”), and Heart On doesn’t have it.  This is a surprisingly unified album, and works fantastically as a continuous listen.  I now know at least one album that’s getting played in the car rides home for Bump and Thanksgiving.

I’m going to see Zack and Miri Make a Porno tomorrow, so expect a review of that up pretty soon.

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Fall break – a quick retrospective; Flying Lotus review

October 29, 2008 at 4:41 pm · Filed under Music Reviews ·Tagged , , , , , , ,

I ate sooooo well.  I thank the Thompson family for this profusely.  I ate really damn well.  I also did another thing a lot, and it was better than it is at Oberlin.  I won’t get more specific than that.  I also found hard copies of Pinetop Seven albums (my two favorites to be exact), which had previously been mysteriously erased from my hard drive.  A quick look at my favorite albums ever will tell you that my two favorite Pinetop Seven albums are two of my favorite albums ever.  This was important.  I can not tell you how surprised I was to find these CDs (used! someone else has listened to this band!) in a store in Dallas.  Thank you, Dallas.

I also got a chance in Dallas to do a lot of listening to music, so I’m all set for a little while as far as subject matter for the blog goes.  First up is a CD that’s been growing on me steadily for a few weeks, after I got my hands on it much earlier(it was then ignored for a long while).  It’s called Los Angeles and it’s by this guy who calls himself Flying Lotus, which sounds both like an emo poem and a karate technique.  But neither of the two have much to do with the music, which is kind of like dubstep (a genre that I touched upon in this review, in which I linked to this Wikipedia article that attemps to explain it), but since no one really wants to come out and just call it dubstep, I don’t think I’ll rock the boat.  I think it may be that this album has a little brighter feel than the generally overpowering dread that powers dubstep.  It’s instrumental hip-hop at its core, I guess.

A quick way to decide whether or not you will enjoy this album is to think to yourself: do I mind almost constant, sometimes-subtle, sometimes-not static as an instrument in music? Because it’s used basically the whole way through, and if you’re going to be annoyed by something like this, small as it is, then it’s best you skip it and ignore what’s going to be a positive review from me.

Of course, that’s only a first test.  If you don’t mind static, then the rest of the music is still left.  Like all instrumental hip-hop, it’s focused on the beat, which goes beyond just drums.  As far as I know, the drumbeats here are all drum machine or samples, which is fine.  But there’s also the prominent sub-bass, which is what makes me think it’s a lot like dubstep, and some auxiliary percussion like the bells in “Camel”.  That means that to get the full effect of this music, don’t listen to it on crappy laptop speakers.  These beats are simple and cool, and they subtly progress in each track like a good little instrumental track should.  But the tight packaging of each track, as opposed to painfully long techno songs, make this a very accessible record for the electronoob.

Above the beats, all bets are off, as the (electronic) instrumentation is different on each track and is always super-cool, though there’s a very strong common thread throughout the record.  That’s how I would describe this whole album – just plain cool.

To get a little bit more specific, a few of my favorite tracks are “Comet Course,” a bit more uptempo than the rest of the album, and a bit more cosmic, as the title suggests, but still in the overall milieu and an awesome beat, “GNG BNG,” which has two separate and completely awesome beats which I always bounce too, and “RobertaFlack,” which seems a lot like just an electronic version of a cool jazz track.  Very mellow, very groove-oriented, and with some wispy female vocals snuck in there (that happens more often as it gets towards the end of the album – still, we call it instrumental because the voice is just part of the mix – wholly an instrument as opposed to that term being lauded upon just a great singer, ahem Fleet Foxes).

P.S. – Did I mention that Flying Lotus, real name Steven Ellison, is Alice Coltrane’s great nephew? Alice Coltrane was John Coltrane’s wife, don’tcha know.

P.P.S. – Thanks to the one person who voted in my last post’s poll.  I know it’s only been a couple of days, but really, guys? I thought somebody read this blog.  I guess it’s just a little more masturbatory than I thought.

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Yo Mama; TV On The Radio review

October 27, 2008 at 10:57 am · Filed under Music Reviews ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

What? Me, get sidetracked? Me, forget about my own blog? Yeah, well, yo mama’s so forgetful, she…well, I’m bad at coming up with those jokes.  Anyway, the point is, I’m a little mad at myself for my being lax with this blog, and I think I’ll be doing more of it from now on.  The obvious choice for the beginning of my revival is the new album by my boys, TV On The Radio.  Their birthday present to me (hey, it did come out the right week) was at first titled Dear Science,, but they did drop their comma, apparently because it complicated sentences like this.  But after Dear Science, I’m not quite sure what to review.  I’m positive I’m going to have one more review out of stuff I watched/listened to over fall break, which I spent in absentia in Dallas, but I’m not sure what it should be.  Should I find some new music to review that I’ve been getting into, like London Zoo by the Bug or Los Angeles by Flying Lotus, or should I review one of the movies I saw (Choke or W.), or something else?  I’m going to use the poll feature that I just discovered to see if I can leave it up to you yabbos, as Menick would say.

Dear Science may wind up as my favorite album of the year, and even so it’s a little disappointing.  That’s just a function of the ludicrous expectations an album like Return to Cookie Mountain creates, especially when it’s just the second album by a band, especially a dynamic band like TV On The Radio.  I think that a lot of die-hard fans like myself have reacted like myself – initial shock and ambivalence, followed by a gradual warming.  This is not an album like TV’s first two, but then, Return to Cookie Mountain wasn’t like Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes either.  The third album by any band gives you a sense of what they’ll be in the future, and TV On The Radio have told us here that they’re going to keep changing and keep surprising.  Thank fucking god.

Dear Science is not really a rock album.  Not at all.  The closest genre I can pin it on is funk, but only because it’s so funky.  It’s not really funk either, more like where funk wants to be in 20 years (maybe post-funk? Yeah, I like that).  But this album isn’t so uniform, so I think I’m just going to go track-by-track, like a real fanboy.

  1. “Halfway Home” – Damn catchy, the most memorable song of the bunch (though not really the best).  The beat is almost as propulsive as “Wolf Like Me,” but the vocals keep it more snakelike and soulful as opposed to charging like its predecessor.
  2. “Crying” – One of my three favorites on the album.  I like the little tight guitar figure, something that we really haven’t heard from TVOTR much.  This is the closest to funk or soul that they get throughout the album, and I think it really colors the rest of the whole piece.  Kyp Malone establishes himself here as on almost equal footing with Tunde Adebimpe as a singer, and he sings just about the same amount on this album.  Their voices are subtly different, Malone’s a bit more versatile, Adebimpe’s a bit stronger.  He sings all three of my favorite songs on this album, but that’s not Tunde’s fault.  By now though, we know that Kyp’s a better songwriter.
  3. “Dancing Choose” – Okay, Tunde raps here.  That’s cool enough.  But if you need more, a) he can really do it, b) his lyrics are really clever, c) the chorus is really catchy, and d) like on nearly every track, the horn section is badass.  There.
  4. “Stork & Owl” – Least memorable track on the album.  Kyp Malone does some great work with vocals, and the production is all there and cool, but something doesn’t mesh with me.  I think this is what separates Dear Science from You & Me, meaning that You & Me is better by just that much.  Not a lot, but I don’t have any bones with any song there, and this is just a little bit off.
  5. “Golden Age” – And just when Dear Science was about to lose momentum, here comes another off-the-wall-in-its-funky-awesomeness track.  TVOTR loves itself some Track 5 – “Mister Grieves” from Young Liars, “Ambulance” from Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes, “Wolf Like Me” from Cookie Mountain, and now this.  There’s nothing really eloquent to say here, just listen.  I can only say that this is the most immediately appealing (read: mainstream) song they’ve ever done, and the second of my three favorites.
  6. “Family Tree” – The only real mellow track on the album.  “Stork & Owl” and “DLZ” are both downtempo, but they have a lot of angst that they work with, whereas this reminds me a little of Coldplay, except, you know, better.  There’s delicate piano throughout, but the minimalist percussion (drum machine? Jaleel Bunton, what say you?) keeps the pace slowly going.  This is not TV On The Radio, but it’s very lovely and nice.  It works.
  7. “Red Dress” – And back to the awesome funk.  The best lyrics of the album open this track, and it only stays awesome from there: “Fuck your war/’Cause I’m fat and in love/And the bombs are fallin’ on me/fo sho/But I’m scared to death/That I’m living a life not worth dying for.”
  8. “Love Dog” – This is more like the TV On The Radio I know.  A little shuffle with some vibes, some “ooh”s from Tunde, and you have just another very good TVOTR song.
  9. “Shout Me Out” – Straightforward, catchy, relaxed pop.  Constant guitar triplets in the first half add depth and keeps the song moving forward.  And then it breaks loose and we get the classic “Amen break” drum beat, scientifically proven to be the most propulsive beat in music.  Really good song.
  10. “DLZ” – Tunde’s voice owns this track.  The way he growls the word “nevermind,” turns a word that normally is the most passive into a war cry.  Jesus.  Deep, dark funk.  The production can be credited for the dark feel, with the drums’ echo and the horns section.  I love this goddamn song.
  11. “Lover’s Day” – This song is the third of my three favorites, and it’s an “I’ma sex you up” song in the classic vein of “Sexual Healing”.  The only twist here is that it’s a celebration, a rejoicing of carnal sex on an epic scale.  The song just gets bigger and bigger, even though the lyrics stay ludicrously intimate, like “I’m gonna take you/I’m gonna shake you/I’m gonna make you cum/Swear to God, it’ll get so hot/It’ll melt our faces off.” Yeah.  That other C-word was used, in a non-smutty and non-ironic way.  Did it just blow your mind? No? Well, it’s cool anyway.

The star of this album throughout is unquestionably David Sitek’s production.  As Sam Walker told me when we geeked out to each other about this album, this production is unbelievably immediate.  The music isn’t clouded in haze like Desperate Youth or the way prog-rock seems to be going these days.  It’s catapulted into your face, but in a very unique way, because that’s the only way Sitek knows how.

I will now wipe the fanboy semen out of the inside of my pants, and hope that you will forgive me and continue to read this blog, because it won’t happen again on our second date, it’s just that it was just so hot, oh god, oh god…..

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What kind of summer has it been; Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson review

August 13, 2008 at 3:22 am · Filed under Music Reviews ·Tagged , , , , ,

With Helena’s arrival today, I will be marking the final phase of summer vacation, this last week in town.  This summer shot by like a bullet – a hot, thunderstormy, musical, bloggy bullet.  I didn’t get to hang out with my friends as much as I wanted because my schedule was the opposite of everyone else’s except Ben, who had the same schedule, and was just as drained as I was at the end of work, but we hung out a reasonable amount anyway.  He’s cool.  He’s a cool guy.  With everyone else, it feels like I missed an opportunity.  Sad face.  I don’t think it was this blog’s fault, because I wrote almost all of my entries after 2 AM, so it didn’t really take away from anything but sleep.

The reason I felt the need to sum up was because I think I’m going to take a break until I get to Oberlin, which is August 19th.  This next week’s going to be very crazy, and this blog would complicate things too much.  But I will check up every so often to see if anyone else wrote reviews to fill the void (hint, hint).  But once class restarts, I will be in a creative writing workshop, so get ready for creative writing pieces to start becoming a bigger part of this site.  I don’t know if they will take the place of reviews the day they post them; I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

I knew Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson first when he opened for TV On The Radio at their free awesome concert at McCarren Park Pool last summer, and I thought he sounded a lot like Alec Ounsworth of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, but he seemed really cool and he was as good as any opener-for-an-opener I’ve seen.  So when I saw Pitchfork review his debut album, and I found it available online, I wanted to give it a try.  Wouldn’t you?

Well, having given the album a really good listen or two, I can say that my comparisons of MBAR to Ounsworth were not as accurate as I had thought, but not completely off.  His self-titled album (Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson, for those keeping score) is at once classic singer-songwriter fare and anything but.  Listeners can tell that his studio recordings are just beefed up versions of songs originally meant for one man and his guitar, and his songs are very personal (and fucking DARK); but his influences of Grizzly Bear and TV On The Radio (GB’s Chris Taylor produced the album, and TVOTR’s Kyp Malone contributed to it as well in ways that I’m not exactly sure about, but I’m guessing they at least included backup guitar) take the songs to a shambling, ethereal place reserved for the aforementioned bands that have such a clear idea of their own sound that they can do anything within it.  And speaking of shambling, ethereal places, I should mention that this album is entirely about drug use and depression, using personal experiences which are way more intense than I anticipated.

Well, not every song is chiefly about drug use, but it’s all at least inspired by it and tangentially having to deal with it.  Album opener “Buriedfed”, also the best track on the album (why does that always happen? Have some place to go, people!), is a story about a man who kicks open the casket at his own funeral and the crazy things that happen to him after.  But there’s also an aside about drugs, in which MBAR slurs, “Reckless ruin is killing high/A great, fine victory we’re still alive/My, my, what a surprise/I got home late, I don’t care/Better late than never, dear.”  It starts out contemplative and mournful, and turns into a rousing anthem (though I don’t want any anthems to exist for drug use or kicking open caskets) and campfire chant.  It’s also one of two songs whose lyrics I could get in their entirety; the only other one was second track “The Debtor,” which is more directly, and more poetically, about, ahem, drugs.

In it, Miles mumbles, “Tried to stop the bleeding/It’s a shame that you failed/The red fell so hard, it hailed/Tried to kick on Tuesday/But I didn’t succeed/The air was too thick to breathe.” I don’t want to imply that MBAR is unintelligible, he just acts like the druggie he portrays in his songs, and was before and after this album was recorded back in 2006, though he, if you read the article I linked to, is clean now, meaning he smokes a ton of weed, but nothing else.

After reading that article, I found that MBAR fascinates me.  If his success grows, he will have lived the rock star life to its fullest, in the best and worst ways.

As a whole, this album is very compelling, and musically interesting, but it lacks charisma after the first few songs, which means that even at a reasonable length, this album drags.  But then again, that’s the difference between MBAR and bands like Grizzly Bear and TV On The Radio: they’re more developed, more confident, so they know what to do with their sound.  So I can’t give this album a positive review, just a pretty good.  But that doesn’t mean I’m not looking forward to his next.  I think Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson can go places, especially if he finds something better to call himself.  Jeez.

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“His ideal six piece rock machine;” This Is My Suitcase review

August 11, 2008 at 2:22 am · Filed under Music Reviews ·Tagged , , , ,

this-is-my-suitcaseSo there’s this band called This Is My Suitcase, right? They’re from Ohio and they play homemade pop music with lots of acoustic guitar, piano, and references to cats. They’re a young band, but they’ve already put out an album (2006’s “Missent to Thailand”), a handful of EPs (“The C EP” and “The C.R.E. EP” from ’06 and ’07 respectively), and an album of assorted covers (If you do check out their myspace, most of the songs in the player are covers right now). I’ve decided rather than pick one thing in particular to review, I’ll just rave about it all. I don’t have the covers album, but I do have a couple of assorted songs from their myspace that they enabled downloading of, and the total adds up to about an hour anyway.

So okay. Joe Camerlengo (“boy vocals, acoustic guitar” as he credits himself on their myspace) has kind of a strange, effeminate singing voice (“He pretends he knows how to sing, but he knows he knows how to pretend to moonwalk.”) that might turn off listeners who prefer their frontmen manly (I’m pretty sure he’s studying to be a nurse), but it really is quite good and fits the songs perfectly. And these songs are just absurdly cute, witty, and uplifting.

I first heard their album “Missent To Thailand” in 2006, and at first I just didn’t know what to make of it. I kept thinking that it sounded so sloppy, but I couldn’t stop listening to it. It felt like a guilty pleasure, but then I just succumbed. Particularly to the song “L-O-V-E” which is so adorable and catchy and sort of inspiring. This is one of the 3 songs that was re-recorded in a studio by a professional producer Mike Green for free. The new version loses some of the DIY charm, but is probably more palatable to most. In any case, “Missent To Thailand” is a wonderful way to pass a half hour with pop songs that sound so warm that it’s a wonder so much other music of its ilk comes off sterile and crunchy (whoa, I just used the word “ilk.” What the hell?). Ultimately though, it was recorded with a “cheap computer mic” and now and then it does get a little in the way. But not often. Of it, they write, “it sounds different than we do now.”

And I am okay with that, because since then they’ve released a bunch of wonderful songs marked with higher production values, more diverse and accomplished instrumentation, and I haven’t thought of them as a guilty pleasure once since. In fact, I really appreciate those things most of all now which originally I wasn’t sure about. The band is kind of a great role model on the whole equality front, with two of the band members being girls, the frontman being uninhibitedly and unabashedly girly (one song is called “Obviously, doctor, you’ve never been a 13 year old girl”, another “Cute boys are for kissing.” Another has the lyrics “What’s a girl like me doing in a place like this? What’s a pretty girl like me doing in a place like this? I don’t know. I’ll have what he’s having.”) and making great, really positive music.

And when the song “L-O-V-E” builds to this moment, it’s kind of impossible to be a cynic or pessimist about life and love. You might need to hear it to believe it, and it’s not on their myspace or purevolume but there is a rendition of it on youtube, so check it out at the end of the post. This is kind of a weird review, but I’m not sure what else to say except maybe I’ll do a more proper one when “Keys to Cat Heaven” comes out.

I’m seeing stars
And cartoon birds circling my head
Like an anvil wrinkled me
So this is love

All I’ve got up my sleeve is love
And I know it’s good enough for you (for you for you)
For us

-Max Jacobson

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