Here's the Manager Picks, NOT including any various artists compilations, singles collections or REISSUES. The Reissues are their own category. But if you missed any of these picks this year, stock up while we're in the new releases doldrums! Happy New Year!!!!
#1 The Horrors--Skying
#2? Polly Jean Harvey--Let England Shake
#3 Lady Gaga--Born This Way (I know you guys are gonna barf, but hey, we need 1 pop LP)
#4 St.Vincent--Strange Mercy
#5 LCD Soundsystem--London Sessions
#6 The Field--Looping State of Mind
#7 Wagonchrist--Toomorrow
#8 M83--Hurry Up, We're Dreaming
#9 Battles--Gloss Drop
#10 Cut Copy--Zonoscope
#11 A Tie!! Thee Oh Sees' Castlemania and Carrion Crawler/Dream
Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings are probably one of the best current bands that are making soul music today. Whenever someone would cite Amy Winehouse in the beginning of her huge success, I would always turn them in the direction of Sharon Jones. Few singers as skilled as Sharon Jones at stuffing notes with ache and meaning might be willing to invest in a sound so fully occupied by the likes of Bettye LaVette and Tina Turner in the Ike years, too. She was born in Augusta, Georgia, sang in her church choir and with the support of her community she got the nerve she needed to move to Brooklyn with her family and there she immersed herself in 70's disco and funk and planned to make her own record. She got steady work as a backup singer for gospel, soul, disco, and blues artists, most of it uncredited. In the '80s, however, Jones' sound was deemed unfashionable, and instead of pushing ahead with her soul diva's dream she went back to church singing. She also took a job as a corrections officer at New York's Rykers Island.
It wasn't until the late 90's that Desco Records would discover Jones and she released several singles with the labels' house band, the Soul Providers. During this time she began to be known as the "Queen of Funk". It wasn't until 2002 that she released her first full length release, Dap Dippin' with Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings. Since then she has toured extensively and made follow up albums, 100 Days, 100 Nights and Learned the Hard Way.
There is nothing modern about Soul Time!, yet it sounds both refreshing and contemporary. The exceptional musicianship and impeccable vocals may not be to everyone’s taste, but for 40 very happy minutes, you can revel in SJDK’s very discrete world.
Just how does one pick a soul track? I went by the title, which was unexpected for me, to find the band jammin' out to some current events and getting political. I didn't think someone could sing a song about taxes since the Beatle's Tax Man. Lend me your ears!
Buy your copy of Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings' Soul Time! here.
French producer Mr. Oizo has been kicking techno's ass since 1997, getting his start directing the video for Laurent Garnier's "Flashback" single, as well as the long-form video Nightmare Sandwiches starring and featuring music by Garnier. That year, he also moved into music production, with his debut single "#1" appearing on Garnier's F Communications label. After the video, he was tapped to direct the commercial that launched Levi's vaunted non-denim line of trousers. The eccentric advert -- featuring a puppet named Flat Eric maniacally bobbing his head to the music in the passenger seat of a Chevelle while a nonplussed human driver concentrated on the road -- soon became famous across Europe, and the single (also on F Communications) hit number one all across the continent. The rest, as they say, is history, as his debut album, Analog Worms Attack came out the following October.
If I had to categorize Mr. Oizo's newest album, Stage 2, into a genre, perhaps tech-house would be an apt suitor. I tend to think of it as whacked out, glitchy, tongue-in-cheek techno, A.D.D.-addled and quick to jump onto the next thing. It's unlike anything out in the mainstream and has a lot of frenetic qualities. I am quite amused by "Douche Beat", the featured track. For those that do not know, I am (not so) secretly plotting to overthrow Skrillex and Deadmau5 someday...and here's Mr. Oizo beating me to the punch with a song that sums up a lot of the current club scene.
Have fun with this.
Email me, marta@alternativemusic.com to special your copy!!
The Black Keys are back and this time they have enlisted the help of super-producer Dangermouse!!! Ah yes, that's why it sounds less bluesy-soulful like Brothers and more polished and with added flair containing layers of cheap organs, fuzz guitars, talk boxes, backing girls, tambourines, foot stomps, and handclaps. 'This is not the Black Keys I know and love', you say, but alas, the distinguishable retro vibe is still there amidst all the bells and whistles that Dangermouse brings.
Upon first listen, I really wasn't so sure about this one. My reaction was "ehh" as it has been with their previous albums. Yet as I hear it more and more within the shop, the pop "fungus" created by Dangermouse grows on me and I can't help but to hum along and sing a word or two, even when I think I am not paying attention. I can't help but to notice the arrangements of the songs--they seem to be arranged in groups of threes that go together. The mini-groupings within the album seem to sound the same and then they move onto something else; some organ, some 80s rock, something a bit more like a ballad. There is some sort of bygone era pastiche going on here, like playing like a collection of 11 lost 45 singles, each one having a bigger beat or dirtier hook than the previous side. All that sad, this is an addictive little album. I wanted to avoid it amidst its hype, but I can't get some of these buggers out of my head. Watch out!
Here's one to get stuck in ye olde noggin:
Buy your copy of El Camino at the shop or here (the booklet features all pix of, you guessed it, El Caminos!)
While this is not new material, I still feel the new Gorillaz Singles Collection is worthy of this week's pick. It has all the jamz, in chronological order, which I like. We can trace their steps from "Clint Eastwood" to "Dare" to "On Meloncholy Hill". Gorillaz is far and away the most successful of Damon Albarn's side projects, selling millions of records worldwide, headlining Glastonbury and Coachella, and holographically sharing a Grammys stage with Madonna. The group's artistic success has also kept pace with its commercial success, giving Albarn a way to combine most of his musical distractions into an oddly cohesive whole. In retrospect, the key to the project may have been enabling Albarn to abandon the frontman role and become the man behind the curtain, both figuratively and (up until recent live shows) literally. If you don't think that hiding place isn't therapeutic for Albarn, consider that Think Tank, the 2003 Blur album that essentially became an Albarn solo joint, also attempted to blend all of these interests, to less satisfying results.
The oldest songs don't even sound dated. That's why I've selected "Tomorrow Comes Today" as the featured track; it's just as great today as it was back then, cruising around with the windows rolled down.
Buy your copy of Gorillaz Singles Collection here.
!!!! Thee Oh Sees make me wanna scream !!!! But seriously, this prolific San Fran band is headed by frontman John Dwyer,keyboardist/singer Brigid Dawson, bassist Petey Dammit, and drummer Mike Shoun. With unspeakable chemistry and an instinctual bond that borders on telepathic, the band has taken its wildly cacophonous and setlist-free live show to must-see status, turning music venues populated by arm-folding spectators into anarchic riot scenes. In fact, they just played the Bug Jar this past Monday! An Oh Sees show is a place where combing the floor for your shoes when the house lights come on becomes ritualistic, where getting kicked in the face by a renegade crowd-surfer provokes a shit-eating grin instead of a scowl. Most of the band's best albums serve as recorded documents of their live sets; you can practically hear Dwyer swallowing microphones and spitting upwards to the rafters.
2011's Castlemania was the poppiest and most melodic we’d heard Thee Oh Sees yet, but Carrion Crawler/The Dream completely flips the script, capturing the range, energy, and freedom of their notoriously raging live performances in a way none of their previous records have. Recorded in June around the time of Castlemania’s release, this could be attributed to the addition of Lars Finberg (the Intelligence), who joined the band on tour as second drummer and makes his recorded debut on this release. And while Castlemania begged speakers to bubble over with eccentric effervescence, the assault of driving double-drum rhythms and scuzzy bass riffs on freakouts “Contraption/Soul Desert” and semi-eponymous “The Dream” threaten to blow them clean out.
Please rock out to Chem-Farmer below and take a peep at a video while yer at it!
Buy your own copy of Carrion Crawler/The Dream by stepping into the shop or emailing marta@alternativemusic.com
King Midas Sound is a collaboration between Kevin Martin (God, Techno Animal, the Bug) and vocalists Roger Robinson and Kiki Hitomi. They came out in 2007 on the Soul Jazz Records compilation, Box of Dub. KMS linked with Kode9’s Hyperdub label, where they made their proper debut in October 2008 with “Cool Out,” a relatively rugged A-side backed by remixes (of tracks that had yet to be released) from Dabrye and Flying Lotus. Another 12”, Dub Heavy: Hearts & Ghosts, came in June 2009, containing dub versions of tracks that -- once again -- had not been released in original form. The despondent “Meltdown” led off October 2009’s 5 Years of Hyperdub compilation and previewed Waiting for You, King Midas Sound's debut album, released the following month. For me, this was quite a distinctive album of the time due to its throbbing bass (in a non-cheezy dub-step kind of way), vocal treatments and how it sounded like hip hop or R&B of the future.
Now we have Without You, a remix album two years after the fact. It's not really a track-by-track revisit, and there's a deep focus on some songs in particular-- like the Kiki Hitomi feature "Goodbye Girl", which gets three different reinterpretations from three different remixers. Each mixer brings a special treatment--either minimizing the song even more, such as with Flying Lotus' version of Lost, which also features the record player static featured on his own songs. I really dig it when I can hear the remixer's touch or even a complete reconfiguration to the original, rather than just as extended version of the song, as we used to hear with 80's 12 inch dance singles. It's another ball game entirely on Without You. There are "remixes" and "revoices" by the likes of Flying Lotus, Scritti Politti's Green Gartside, Ford & Lopatin's Joel Ford, Gang Gang Dance, Cooly G, D-bridge, and Kuedo to name a few. This album is a bad-ass, I highly recommend it. Then you should go back and listen to the original. Nothing else really sounds like this at the moment in the shop.
Listen to Joel Ford's revoiceing of "Say Somethin'" here
Buy your copy of Without You here. or email marta@alternativemusic.com
Bradford Cox is an interesting fellow. When he is not busy with Deerhunter, he sings atop his solo project, Atlas Sound. Parallax is the third official release and in case you were wondering, refers to the visual phenomenon that affects the perception of objects’ relative positions depending on the viewer’s distance from them, a term typically used when speaking about stars. Yet, it seems like an appropriate title; Cox references distance, motion, and emotion on this set of songs, oscillating between the sparkling pop he does so well with this project as well as Deerhunter and the hazy experiments that are all Atlas Sound. He seamlessly moves between blurry edges and glorious pop. I was already getting the inkling that he is the next Sparklehorse (Mark Linkous) and on this record, I hear it even more, but sans precious xylophones and 4-track hiss. But that tenderness, that vulnerability and vocal experimentation between light and affected, sneers and melody that Linkous characterized can be heard through Cox. I don't know what his official position on Sparklehorse is and for my purposes it doesn't matter--the similar vein alone is enough to fulfill my interests and to see Bradford Cox as someone special amidst the many trending musicians now.
Parallax feels like a more complete work than any other Atlas Sound record, with the differences between the songs less distinct and everything flowing together more naturally. There are no such loose strands here, and the closing "Lightworks" ends the album wonderfully with a tremoloed guitar shuddering against Cox's hankering vocals. There's no kraut-rock-y jam this time, like the one from the last album, with Laetitia Sadier, which kind of disappointed me, but, to have another song like that just for the sake of it wouldn't be a good move either. That lightness of touch is on display throughout this album, bringing the listener closer to Cox's brittle self-examination. I don't know what it is about Cox that seems so small, alone, and cut adrift from the world, but the way these songs breathe suggests he's more comfortable in his own skin, allowing him to draw his audience closer than ever. It's that artist-created inner world that gives the work a sense of authenticity and honesty. You just can't fake that tenderness.
Picking a stand apart track doesn't seem right, but hey, take a stab at "Angel Is Broken".
M83's Anthony Gonzalez is back with Hurry Up, We're Dreaming, a delightful synth pop gem, spanning more sounds and moods than any of M83's previous work, resulting in a collection of impressionistic moments rather than a grand statement. My first impressions of it were somewhat blase, a bit too heavy handedly ripping off the 80s, particularly Men At Work, but upon subsequent listenings, I found it to be an album channeling our inner child, trying to tap our psyche and get us to feel both exaltation and melancholia, focusing us on memories of when we were young and felt optimism towards the world and that anything was possible. Surprising to me, I read that this album was heavily influenced by Smashing Pumpkin's Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness! We still hear the familiar vocal stylings that Gonzalez sings and Zola Jesus' Nika Rosa Danilova sings on the opening track, "Intro". He also takes us through tender piano, slap bass, sax solos (so Clarence Clemens!), and children's choir. Somehow it works across this double album because it is polished and it is clear that Gonzalez has honed in the sounds he has already given us and he has settled into a clear artistic vision.
More than any of M83's other albums, Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming feels like a destination to explore; while it may not be quite as striking as Saturdays = Youth, it delivers a welcome mix of classic sounds and promising changes.
Listen to"Raconte-Moi Une Histoire", or tell me a story, about a magical frog. Some might consider this a throwaway, but I am fascinated with songs that turn the absurd into a delight.
Tom Waits--that bastard, wild-eyed, character of an uncle we all wish we had is back with his first album in seven years, Bad As Me. Alongside Mr. Waits is his longtime collaborator and wife (and saint!), Kathleen Brennan, his son Casey on drums, Keith Richards, Flea, and Charlie Musselwhite, amongst a few others. As a whole, this album is filled with short songs, the longest being just over four minutes. Long time fans will find nothing terribly new here, which is not a bad thing at all. Waits is characteristically weird, tender, gruff, bluesy, and woozy. He has has formula down, however idiosyncratic it is. Most of these songs are slower love songs that trace a lineage back to his earliest material. There is less strange vaudeville akin to Frank's Wild Years than one might expect but when he caters to his more sensitive side, we see what a gem of a songwriter he is. Don't get me wrong, this is not typical songwriting, however, he sounds less like a muppet and more of an old blues singer. There's enough variation here that all that oldness and weirdness-- all those frantic, busted melodies, all that carnie growl never gets tiresome. For all his indulgences, Waits never lingers too long; these tracks are concise and expertly edited, and Bad as Me feels as new as it does ancient. It's the kind of music we're all gonna be glad we have come winter. I guarantee listening to this album is like drinking a fine bourbon.
Take a listen to the third track, Talking at the Same Time here. Get a load of Waits' take on the state of the economy set to a blues backdrop.
Kompakt's super producer Axel Willner is back, as The Field, with Looping State of Mind. I get very excited when there's a new release from this German label, as it has a pretty reliable track record of quality output. His first singles and debut album, From Here We Go Sublime, were like ambient records disguised as both experimental techno and luscious pop. On his third release, Willner orchestrates very dense soundscapes that pluck from shoe-gaze, deep house, noize, and of course, techno. It's not entirely the same repetitions one would expect from him. The rhythms on are more varied than anything the Willner's done before. He's come so far as to make his earlier albums seem like a warm up compared to level of integration and complexity he has achieved currently. On Looping he packs all seven tracks with curveballs, and each new direction feel successful, vital, surprising. I find this is an album that I need to hear played really loudly. I can't wait to get my copy and rock out to it at home!!
Listen to this jam, It's Up There.
Buy your copy of The Field's Looping State of Mind here. or email marta@alternativemusic.com
Finally!! DJ Shadow seems to be back in his skin, with The Less You Know is Better, his latest release. My initial reaction was that it sounds like someone put their arms around him and shook him the crunk out of him and now he is back to his old self. The only travesty is that it took so long to get there...several albums have passed since The Private Press, the last album I bought. Less You know picks up where the Private Press left off, as it is reminscent of that sound and also of his collaboration with James LaVelle with UNKLE. Pitchfork panned this album, giving it only a 4.5, but then again, I am assuming that the average age of the reviewer is about 23-25 and they wouldn't have been really into the emergence of Shadow back in 1996. In 2011, every new band has to be hip, cool, a throwback to what young 20-something can understand. For all of us who are in our thirties and beyond, this might be the album for you!
In case anyone needs a refresher, DJ Shadow, nee Josh Davis, was a key figure in developing the experimental instrumental hip-hop style associated with the London-based Mo' Wax label. His early singles for the label, including "In/Flux" and "Lost and Found (S.F.L.)," were all-over-the-map mini-masterpieces combining elements of funk, rock, hip-hop, ambient, jazz, soul, and used-bin finds. There was nothing really like in the early 1990's. When his sound began to mature, Mo Wax released the 40 minute opus, "What Does Your Soul Look Like" in 1995, a heady concept for a hip hop instrumental, yet topping the British Charts!
Davis grew up in Hayward, California, a suburb of San Francisco. He had already been fiddling around with making beats and breaks on a four-track while he was in high school, but it was his move to the Northern California town of Davis to attend university that led to the establishment of his own Solesides label as an outlet for his original tracks. There he hooked up with b-boys and Blackalicious and Lyrics Born, and through college radio his mixtapes were heard and began spreading around the hip-hop underground. Shadow's first full-length, Endtroducing..., was released in late 1996 to immense critical acclaim in Britain and America. Preemptive Strike, a compilation of early singles, followed in early 1998.
Fast Forward to 2011, Shadow is back on his turntables, scrounging up countless bits and pieces of vinyl history. The Less You Know...is his first studio album in five years and sounds closer to his humble beginnings than the past couple albums. This is quite a contrast from the previous album, which was heavily rap based. Instead, Shadow focuses on plumbing the depths of his record collection, occasionally flashing and scratching like in his salad days, but just as often pulling slabs of forgotten wax -- metal riffs, piano balladry, bygone acid-rock burnouts, crystalline female folkies -- to state his case for him.
One such vocal, "Scale it Back" features the sultry voice of Little Dragon's Yumiki Nagano. Take a listen here.
The first time my coworker heard me put in Twin Sister, he said, "Is this Feist?" Noooo, definitely not. Long Island's dream pop quintet Twin Sister makes music that's meant to feel comfy and lived-in, with a good amount of subtlety. Their first EP, Vampires with Dreaming Kids, was self-released that year. After their first live show out of town, at SXSW, they toured with tUnE-YarDs and Xiu Xiu before putting the final touches on their second EP, Color Your Life, which followed in 2010. In 2011, Twin Sister signed to Domino Records and released their first full-length, In Heaven, that September.
Twin Sister keep the songwriting focus small and detailed. More interested in documenting life's minor moments than the big, transformative ones, they sing about things like recommending movies to friends or having an awkward crush go unspoken. Little stuff, but meaningful in its way. Take "Stop", for example, a track breathily sung by guitarist Eric Cardona and featuring a sultry R&B thump. It reads heavy romance on first listen, but that's actually not the case. "I keep telling myself to stop, to feel if I like it," Cardona sings, describing a new relationship he's trying to be responsible about. It seems he doesn't want to rush into sleeping with this person-- someone's feelings could get hurt that way.
Get dreamy with me and take a listen to Stop here.
San Francisco's Wooden Shjips play a minimal, droning brand of garage-styled psychedelia with a noticeable '60s Krautrock influence. Immediately I think of local bands The Priests or the Veins. The band's vocals slip beneath waves of throbbing minimal rhythms, while fuzztone guitar and shrieking organs jump to the foreground. When bandleader Ripley Johnson assembled the group in 2003, he wasn't interested in playing gigs or becoming famous; rather, his original intention was to find a group of non-musicians for the purposes of creating innovative music. On their Thrill Jockey debut, engineer Phil Manley (who handled the recording and mixing chores for Johnson's side project Moon Duo's latest album Mazes) was brought in, making this the first WS record to be cut in a proper studio. Mastering was farmed out to Sonic Boom and Heba Kadry. The end result is the most expansive Wooden Shjips album yet,full of the fuzzed-out, murky, and distorted excesses that are the band's trademarks. The San Francisco psychedelia that Johnson claims as his biggest influence takes a back seat to both the MC5 and Loop.
Wooden Shjips are very much sticking to their signature sound on West. Even with its increased focus on classic-rock virtues, the album isn't really a collection of riffs and wails and choruses; it's more a muscular sort of vibe-out-- badass ambient music, if you will. As hard as the band can rock, expansive nod-out music is still its focus, and the album works best when you give yourself over entirely to its pounding grandeur. Frontman Ripley Johnson sings in a narcoleptic mutter that never displays the slightest bit of feeling, and his numbed monotone never disturbs the mood by leaping out of the mix to grab you.
If you're as much a vinyl fetishist as I am, you'll be interested in getting a copy, as LPs straight from Thrill Jockey are a beautiful aqua hue!
Before she began composing and performing her own quirky, intricate pop songs, Annie Clark proved her musical prowess as part of Glenn Branca's 100 Guitar Orchestra, as guitarist and background vocalist for the Polyphonic Spree (on their third album, Fragile Army), and as a member of Sufjan Stevens' touring band. Contrast has always been a major part of her music, and Strange Mercy's juxtapositions of harshness, softness, truth, lies, cruelty, and kindness feel especially pointed and potent. Most apparent is her use of opposing sounds; working with producer John Congleton, she focuses on luxurious strings and woodwinds that float above wobbly keyboards and ugly, distorted guitars that emphasize that these songs are under pressure. Less obvious are the emotional shifts many of these songs undergo, and how they blur the album’s contrasts.
On the title track, Clark goes from vulnerable to protective to violent as she sings “I’ll tell you good news that I don’t believe/If it will help you sleep,” and on “Champagne Year,” she confesses and deceives at the same time. “Cruel” is Strange Mercy's definitive track, putting inspired lyrics like “They could take or leave you/So they took you then they left you” atop strings and woodwinds straight from a vintage musical and a messed-up, fuzzed-out guitar solo. The song gets increasingly anxious as it closes, a pattern Clark repeats throughout the album; indeed, while these songs are some of her most fragmented, each song on Strange Mercy is tied to another.
Strange Mercy is St. Vincent's most reflective and most audacious album to date, and Clark remains as delicately uncompromising an artist as ever.
Take a listen to "Cruel" here.
Buy your copy of St. Vincent's Strange Mercy here (get it while it's hot!).
It's kind of hard to believe that New York's Rapture have been around since 1998. Once hailed by some writers as the second coming of Gang of Four, the Rapture were the flagship band of the post-punk revival that swept through the indie underground during the early 2000s. They debuted on Sub-Pop with an EP, added keyboards, were produced by DFA, and blew up with "The House of Jealous Lovers", an infectious punky dance anthem of 2003. The album Pieces of the People We Love followed, which had a couple of top 40 singles in the U.K.Pieces of the People We Love, was released three years later by Mercury and involved production input from Ewan Pearson, Danger Mouse, and Paul Epworth. Tapes, a stylistically broad mix album, came out through !K7 in 2008. Safer left the following year and it would be two more years before the band would release another studio album.
In the Grace of Your Love is a more mature Rapture than we have seen before. The opening track, "Sail Away" makes me think of "Come Sail Away" by STYX, a concern initially. However, it features singer Luke Jenner straining to hit the high notes, completely unlike STYX. Yet I kind of like that aspect of that song. Nearly a decade after "Jealous Lovers", they're a patient, skilled rock band unafraid to look uncool.
Listen to How Deep is Your Love? and get sucked into their piano-driven tour de force here.
Buy your copy of the Rapture's In the Grace of Your Love here.
Such campy titles can come from none other than Brian Jonestown Massacre's Anton Newcombe. Anyone who has followed the band knows that they have been no stranger to dischord. They have broken up several times and gone through members frequently over the past twenty one years. Despite a continued lack of major distribution, the Brian Jonestown Massacre earned the largest profile of their career in 2004, when the band became the unlikely focus of an award-winning documentary, DIG!, which charted the trials of Newcombe and those of his rival, Courtney Taylor, leader of the Dandy Warhols. In 2008, the band reinvented itself with My Bloody Underground, featuring yet another lineup and a hint of shoegaze and noise pop. Who Killed Sgt Pepper? followed shortly after, being made available in streaming format at the end of 2009 and receiving an official release on January 1st, 2010. Currently, Anton is distributing their music himself through his label, The Committee to Keep Music Evil. For vinyl fanatics like myself, this makes buying their records challenging because the price point is through the roof!!
While The Singles Collection (1992-2011) is not as essential as Tepid Peppermint Wonderland, it is a nice alternative that delivers a wide spread of Brian Jonestown Massacre material. The band’s music will always be overshadowed by Anton Newcombe’s debauchery and tantrums, and there are so many albums that it’s not easy to dive right in (although, the five albums from 1996-1998 are all excellent), but this compilation provides a nice starting point. The 22 remastered tracks are taken straight from vinyl 45s and cover a range of styles, from ‘60s influenced psych to gnarled garage rock, and in later work, shoegaze -- including two drone-based songs that Newcombe released under the name Acid. Fourteen of the tracks were previously unavailable on CD, and some suffer from fidelity issues, but that doesn’t make them any less appealing.
Get yer ya ya's off to "If Love is the Drug then I want to OD" here.
You may have heard Little Dragon before, making a guest appearance on Gorillaz's Plastic Beach. One could say that Damon Albarn was out to showcase their best qualities; the serene voice of Yukimi Nagano adding serene touches while Håkan Wirenstrand's keyboards give the album super-saturated textures. Little Dragon originate from Sweden, debuting in 2007 with their self-titled album.
Ritual Union, the band's third album, does not stray from the sexy, futuristic sound of their previous record, Machine Dreams, or their team-up with Albarn. They are crafting moody synths, nearly subliminal bass lines, and impossibly crisp snare hits. A few of the songs, like the sleek title track and the brisk, funky "Nightlight", rank among the group's finest work. All through the record, Little Dragon are extremely effective in delivering the most attractive elements of their style, resulting in a set of songs that come across like the ideal soundtrack to a night on the town in some exotic sci-fi city.
I think this is a pretty good album from start to finish and picking just one track was a challenge. Take a listen to "Brush the Heat", with its haunting harmonies.
My favorite new shoegazing, black-clad British gentlemen, with teased out hairdo's are back with Skying, their third full-length album. The Horrors were fortunate enough to burst onto the scene in 2006 as critic's darlings thanks to NME. Their debut single, Sheena is a Parasite/Jack the Ripper generated a ton of buzz that summer. They DJ'ed at the Troubled Minds club night, had to reschedule in-store appearances because of crowd concerns, and released their second single, Death at the Chapel. They also reissued Sheena Is a Parasite as a limited-edition DVD single. The song's startling video was directed by Chris Cunningham and featured actress Samantha Morton as Sheena. Late that summer, the band signed to Stolen Transmission in the U.S. and released a self-titled EP that fall.
Flash forward to 2009, with their mixed shoegaze, post-punk, and goth album, Primary Colours, which was released by XL that spring and earned several critical raves, including NME's Album of the Year. I happen to think of that album as the offspring of the Cure mixed with the Chameleons and My Bloody Valentine. That The Horrors' sound can be heard as a catalogue of influences is nothing new for this band. They've routinely been tagged as "record collector rock" for their unabashed aping of influences from the Cramps to Can-- and indeed their well-selected covers indicate a group that has spent some time in record shops. I think these kids are quoting responsibly and taking their influences and working in their own sounds.
In Skying, I think they are blending the sounds of Psychedelic Furs with Simple Minds, if I had to make comparisons. I enjoy them so it is not a problem for me. The album is a bit lighter, more atmospheric, slightly less melancholic. It's more melodic and more pop. Yet somehow the Horrors' chameleon act seems more cohesive and convincing -- or perhaps it’s just less shocking to hear them give their music another complete makeover. The main remnant of Primary Colours is that album’s production, which the Horrors embellish further with dense layers of synth, guitars, and vocals. Skying's centerpiece and lead single, “Still Life,” defines its approach, with sparkly mid-‘80s keyboards and brass that only strengthen the feeling that Jim Kerr sang this song over the credits of some long-lost John Hughes movie. Though “Still Life” isn’t as striking a salvo as Primary Colours' “Sea Within a Sea,” it’s just as striking in its own way, and even if nothing here quite matches their previous flashes of brilliance, Skying reflects the Horrors' growing abilities. Not only do the bandmembers stretch the muscles they developed on Primary Colours with workouts like “Moving Further Away” and “Oceans Burning”, they also turn in some downright poppy moments like the towering “I Can See Through You” and “Endless Blue.” While the Horrors' main skill still seems to be embodying whatever styles catch their fancies as completely as they can, they put more of their own stamp on these sounds. Regardless of where they end up next, the Horrors have already traveled much further than most listeners would have imagined.
Listen to my track pick, Moving Further Away here.
Tis the season of reissues and deluxe editions of pre-existing albums. Everybody's cashing in, both new and old bands alike. Despite this, I am pleased to see the Archers of Loaf getting attention again with the reissue of their first album, Icky Mettle, originally released in 1993 (gasp!). In the heyday of indie rock, the early to mid-nineties, they were critic's darlings and most people I knew were cranking their CDs in their cars during roadtrips and while cruising around town. The Archers hailed from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, a scene also boasting of Polvo and Superchunk. They met while attending UNC.
Their music was frequently likened to a more intense, raucous version of Pavement's postmodern pop, and indeed they shared key elements: fractured song constructions, abstractly witty lyrics, clangy guitars, and lo-fi production. More rooted in punk and noise rock, however, the Archers took the dissonance, white noise, and angularity to greater extremes, and played with more enthusiasm in concert. Icky Mettle was a well received then several more accomplished albums followed before the group called it quits in 1998.
Perhaps I am a bit nostalgic for the original days of indie rock, or it's just a quirky connection I have to their lyrics, but "Plumb Line" had to be my track of the week, despite other good releases. "She's an indie rocker, nothing's gonna stop her, her fashion fits...": these are words I have sung under my breath in relation to myself over the years many, many times.
Hailing from the small town of Svelvik, located just southwest of Oslo, Norway -- an unlikely but proven city to breed and export influential electro artists -- Joachim Dyrdahl, otherwise known as diskJokke, makes acid house beats perfect for moving dancefloors and lays down chilled cinematic pop ideal for lounging. After going to school to study mathematics in a Trondheim university, he relocated to Oslo and started combining his classical and electro-disco backgrounds as a producer. He met up with Prins Thomas, who released two of diskJokke's tracks as 12" singles on his Full Pupp label.
Sagara was commissioned by Norway's Øya festival, which provided Dyrdahl the resources to travel to a place of his choosing and study music. After sampling musicians in Bali and Java, Dyrdahl abandoned the idea of a dance album and instead focused on incorporating the tones and modalities of Gamelan music into pillow-soft mood pieces. The album travels in a slow build towards my favorite track, Panutup, the most transcendent song which lifts the tonal haze, meandering into Vangelis-esque synthesizer pop and then, unexpectedly, into a few blissful minutes of full-on 4/4 beat that feels, on arrival, like the aural equivalent of a tropical sunrise. Dyrdahl spins this sudden percussion into an uplifting Balearic anthem before fading it out again. Which is not to suggest that the rest of the album feels like it's missing anything, or is in any way inferior to Diskjokke's dance-oriented output.
Zomby’s Dedication is not your garden variety dub-step. It’s not the sound that’s peppered into the latest Britney Spears album, nor a Katy Perry remix. Yet, it is not a carbon copy of Burial, and it’s not wobbly or dirty like an album by Distance. What we have here ladies and gentleman is stripped down dub. While the overtones on the album are somewhat melancholic, and hey, that’s kind of what the pioneers of the genre were going for, after slowing down U.K. styles of Two-Step and Garage (not your father’s garage rock), they’re not enough to be outright depressing.
Zomby as a producer has extracted from many electronic music styles—synthy 80’s sounds, electro, video game soundtracks, and ambient music. Prior to Dedication, he had released a number of EPs in which one could say served as sketches for his experiments. If you visit his Myspace page, for instance, the varied songs you will hear are pretty different from his current output. That is exactly what lured me into Zomby—seeing that he has roots in mixing classic raver kid club cuts, all the way to synthy gems that signaled to me that Zomby was interested more in craft and not trend; beyond someone trying to make a name for himself in the latest hip subgenre in techno, which by the way, has been around for nearly a decade. Since Dedication isn’t as wobbly or grimey as other albums within the genre, it might seem subcategorized as comfy ambient music. However, it’s too jittery and restless and rhythmic to work. Yet it’s not quite the album one might buy if one is a hardcore dubstep fan. This is precisely the quality I like about Zomby—not tightly fixated to the expected parameters of the genre, bringing instead crunchy beat experiments with ethereal sound-washes, the kind made by a studio loner stringing together little oddities. It’s definitely headphone music—so many nuances that you want to be able to hear every last snippet.
I believe that the songs on Dedication build up to a moment of dark euphoria, as oxymoronic as that may seem. He alternates between average length songs and some which are under a minute long. It’s definitely a journey, with the denouement being “Mozaik”, the sixteenth and final song. While this appears on other blogs as the single, it makes the most sense after hearing the fifteen tracks before it. Enjoy and shake your booty a little!
Thievery Corporation's Rob Garza and Eric Hilton are back with Culture of Fear, their sixth studio album. By now, most people are familiar with their sophisticated, impeccably crafted musical soundscapes that reflect not only their broad appreciation for diverse styles of music (everything from Brazilian bossa nova and Jamaican dub reggae to vintage film soundtracks and psychedelic space rock), but also their take on the complicated times in which we live.
Despite its pointed title, Culture of Fear is not quite as politically minded as Thievery Corporation's previous studio album. While dubwise tracks such as “Overstand” and “False Flag Dub,” along with the Mr. Lif feature “Culture of Fear,” continue the themes of 2008’s Radio Retaliation, a higher number of cuts -- including “Take My Soul,” “Where It All Starts,” “Is It Over?,” and “Safar (The Journey)” -- feature the duo’s heavy-lidded grooves with seductive female vocals, particularly Rochester's own ex-pat, LouLou. “We’re probably more radical in our political beliefs than most of the hardcore punk bands,” Hilton says, “but at the same time, we’re realistic about what we can actually do. We feel like our role is to be commentators.” Adds Garza: “The best thing we can do is try to open people’s minds.” For both Hilton and Garza, the seeds for their shared philosophy were sown while growing up near the nation’s capitol, which has spawned an abundance of progressive punk bands over the years, such as Bad Brains, Minor Threat, and Fugazi. “We’re influenced by that mentality, but the music doesn’t need to be about super aggressive guitars or hard-charging beats to convey that feeling,” Hilton says. Their musical palatability serves as a means of more subtly purveying their ideologies without turning a potential audience off to them.
Thievery Corporation is my brand of "easy listening". It does not make them weak, nor unimportant or a duo to write off. Rather, it's what I put on when I want a consistent, mature, and intriguing journey as I am working.
Take a listen to Take My Soul, featuring LouLou here.
The Montreal-based duo Handsome Furs formed in 2005 around the talents of Vancouver transplants Dan Boeckner (frontman of Wolf Parade) and Alexei Perry. The husband-and-wife team released the atmospheric Plague Park in 2007, utilizing drum machines and world-weary melodies to distinguish the band's debut from Wolf Parade's own output. Plague Park earned accolades for its electronic twist on indie rock, with Rolling Stone likening the band to "a dingy version of the Cure rocking some hipster dive bar," and the growing buzz prompted Handsome Furs' return to the studio in late 2007. The inspired duo recorded Face Control drawing upon its recent Eastern European tour for lyrical cues. I got a kick of placing Vladimir Putin on the back cover and a snarling, frothing at the mouth doberman pinscher on the front.
On Sound Kapital, they return with a naked lady with tattoos on her naughty parts. I don't know what this has to do with the album, but it's deviously attention-getting. This album differs from the previous one in that they drop some of the more obvious 80s sounding synths and the songs are more varied. It's also cohesive from start to finish and a real head-bopper. It's fun and the perfect soundtrack to the start of summer!
Take a listen to What About Us, a deep cut that catches my ear here.
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