The Lemon of Pink originally was recorded in 2003, but 2011 marks the remastering of this sophomore effort from the Books. This album combines experimental collage technique with an organic, folky mixture of banjo, guitar, violin, simple vocal melodies, and snippets of conversation. The featured track, "Take Time," takes a simple phrase and turns it into an unphased minimalist backdrop for experimentation. It isn't often that one finds an American artist with such a mastery of collage technique and a desire to incorporate traditional folk instruments and melodies. Like the Notwist or Badly Drawn Boy, the Books open up territory for relaxed electro-acoustic listening without compromising their creative process.
Australian indie band Cut Copy are easily one of my favorite groups that have come out within the last decade. Their songs sound like sonic bliss--at the same time futuristic and nostalgic, capturing the laissez-faire feeling of summers off from school when all you have to do is cruise around with friends and laugh at life. Hello Winter, they’re back!!!
Zonoscope opens with a blast of woozy ecstasy in the form of "Need You Now", the sort of track where you don't even realize how much tension the group has built up until they release it, and ends with "Sun God", a marathon 15-minute groove that slowly morphs into a tranced-out Giorgio Moroder thud. In between those two tracks, Cut Copy build a long-form piece of work that moves between genres and ideas and moods without ever sacrificing its dancefloor momentum.
Compared to the last two albums, Zonoscope has precious little guitar crunch, which makes it hard to even call Cut Copy a dance-rock band anymore. And that's for the best-- not just because that combination seems like a less thrilling prospect in 2011 than perhaps it once did, but also because Cut Copy have the architecture of dance music down perfectly and the confidence to execute the genre's moves with absolute precision. Even in the dead of winter, Zonoscope does its job beautifully. Imagine how it'll sound when you don't have to layer up to go outside.
Since they’re all great songs, why not start at the top of the album with “Need You Now”?
With a name like Smith Westerns and an album title called "Dye It Blonde", I thought this would be a band that I would dislike. Yet, lo and behold, I find a good pop sound and melodies that hit you the first time as if they were songs you already knew irresistable. I got sucked in by the midtempo ballads with singalong choruses, pounding piano, and swooping organ, and a loose, frayed-around-the-edges, feel. The production by Chris Coady plays up the strengths of the band like the boyish lead vocals, the super hooky choruses, and the great guitar work. Everything blends together perfectly without sounding glossy or overcooked, and the guitar tone is especially nice, totally overdriven but super compressed with plenty of punch. Of course a sound without songs is like a pretty homebaked cake that tastes like Dolly Madison, and the band deliver a batch of them here that make the total package quite tasty. The rockers like "Weekend," "Dance Away," and "Imagine, Pt.3" have a pleasing swagger, the midtempo tracks (like "Fallen in Love" and "End of the Night") bounce along happily, and the ballads have all kinds of ragged soul. Sounding both end-of-the-night epic and heartbreakingly sad, these songs provide some depth that the first record didn’t have.
For me, much of the album is reminiscent of Electric Light Orchestra without the strings. Dye It Blonde may be a step away from the lo-fi bedroom sound toward the mainstream, but it’s a small step, and they retain more than enough of the songcraft and attitude to keep things interesting. Anyone who liked the debut and was filled with apprehension about what would happen next will be pleasantly surprised, and might even end up liking this record more.
Take a listen to "Still New", a song so sweet that it makes me involuntarily sway and feel that inner happy.
LCD Soundsystem. What more can I say? The creative genius of James Murphy takes us into the studio, with London Sessions, perhaps an album resulting from extensive touring in 2010, thus honing their live sound into a single studio session. The track listing reads like a greatest hits compilation and it would have been quite easy to produce just that, regurgitating the same versions of the songs we have come to love. But no, this album is even more playful, funky, and rambunctious than usual, with more cowbell!
When you put Murphy’s unusually elastic and inspired vocals, which range from insistent to hilarious, on top of the band’s sound, you’ve got the 2000s equivalent of Talking Heads when they expanded the group and became a huge force of oddball funk. It’s a more intense and synthesized version, and Murphy is no David Byrne (since he’s more likely to be in a dirty T-shirt than a big suit), but this wouldn’t work half as well if he were. His hopped-up hipster everyman with a bruised heart style is perfect for the band’s small-club intensity, and the album proves that the streamlined sound can translate into more than machine like bleeps and drum machine loops; it’s a vital addition to their already near-perfect catalog.
Take a listen to Pow Pow, a stand out track featuring Murphy's sense of humour with the lyrical stylingists and a penchant for getting funky!!
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