Summertime Sadness

Oh Lana Del Ray, I did not want to like you. But after seeing your miserable, kafka-esque performance on Saturday Night Live, I felt for you, a little. If any of you haven't heard, critics and celebrities alike have panned her appearance on the show a couple weeks ago. It could have just been nerves or as she admits, that she's just not a good performer. Take a look. It's pretty painful, but I get a kick of the awkward holding herself and hair flipping.



Lana del Ray was born Elizabeth Grant. Born to Die is her major label debut on Interscope Records. Up until a few months ago, no one knew of her. Part of the reason Del Rey inspires so much ire is that her persona is somewhat made up. Three minutes of Internet browsing will tell you a few things: She had once been a struggling singer-songwriter from Lake Placid, where her father was in the domain-name business. It is not clear whether she was a trust-fund baby or she really lived in a trailer park, which is what she later told Complex magazine.

But, most controversially, she looked quite different as Lizzy Grant. She used to wear her hair short and bleached it blonde. She did not wear ball gowns. Her lips were considerably thinner. (She has denied getting lip injections.) She did not look like the gangsta Nancy Sinatra—which is how she describes herself. She looked more Mary Ann than Ginger.

But then her new music, now produced by Emile Haynie of Kid Cudi fame, stole a dash of Mazzy Star’s heroin slumber, fused it with so-called sad core soul, and paired it with mournful, poignant lyrics about a lovelorn girl. And her vocals were being sung several octaves lower. The result: Lizzy Grant had turned herself from sweet and airy to sultry and dark. The first comparisons that came to my mind were Shakespeare's Sister meets Portishead.

For the tastemakers, learning about Lizzy Grant was “the beginning of the backlash,” she says. It was almost intensified by the fact that they were being swindled by a pretty young woman. The interesting thing is female singers invent their personas all the time,” she says, citing Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, and Beyoncé.

The key difference between someone like Katy Perry and Lana Del Rey is that it’s understood and accepted that the former is the invention of a bigger image-making machine. But someone like Del Rey dredges up those age-old questions around authenticity in art: Can she really sing? Is she a true artist with a real vision? Is she just a puppet of the record label? Did she write her own lyrics?

After listening to the entire album and comparing it to her performance on TV, it is my estimation that her sound is made "in a lab", as I like to call it--lush strings, heavy-handed production that's layered in a way that's incredibly noticable. I'm not inherently against such things, but I warn you, this isn't an "indie" album. There is nothing lo-fi about it. And yes, there isn't anything denoting a "struggling" singer-songwriter.

However, it's definitely worth a listen.



Buy your copy at the shop! It comes with a free 7" Single and she is on our listening station for the month of February.

Email marta@alternativemusic.com if you want to special order a copy.

Nate Will Not Return

This week I have selected The Fall's Ersatz GB. It was released late last year, but as a fan, I must include this as this week's pick. While it may not be their best album, they still have a few very rockin' tracks that get yer foot a'stompin. At this point, the legacy of Mark E Smith outshines the music. He has been notorious for firing his band every couple of albums so the fact that they have made 3 or so albums together is something worth mentioning. I hope to see them live someday, as I have only heard remarkable things.

For fun, I have included a lengthy review of this album. I have never deferred to a second reviewer but I think Tjames Madison succinctly and very entertainingly tells the tale of the new album. I don't think I could have said it any better myself:

Rock your ears off with Nate Will Not Return here:


Buy Ersatz GB here.

I Know

If you don't know who David Lynch is, well, I don't know what to tell ya. He's only one of the most fascinating people of the twenty first century! His album, Crazy Clown Time has received many reviews last year and it made my top twenty of 2011 list. In honor of his upcoming birthday on the 20th, I have selected his album as my pick of the week. It's like a soundtrack to a non-existent film. The single that people have heard, "Pinky's Dream" with Karen O is misleading, as there are not many female vocals on the album nor is it a rockabilly album. This isn't like listening to the Twin Peaks soundtrack or Julee Cruise. However, if you are versed in some of Lynch's films or have watched him on Twin Peaks, then this output should not be that surprising of an album for you. There is plenty of tense, repetitive bluesy music permeated by reverb and echo. His interest in transcendental meditation comes through in the spoken word track, "Strange and Unproductive Thinking"and even in "Noah's Ark" and "Football Game". They might seem like strange ramblings through some kind of vocoder but they are worth a listen. His lyrics are more or less what you might expect: simple, fragmented, and a bit dull on the page, but threateningly voiced in his high, twanging pitch. There is definitely nothing else like this album at the moment.

Check out the ethereal grooves of "I Know" here.



Watch my favorite Lynch segment from the Twin Peaks Series!



Buy your copy of Crazy Clown Time here.

We Are Back!!

Happy New Year! It's time for the first selection of the year and while I have no new release to report, I do a re-issue that I am pretty psyched about. It's LFO's debut album from 1991 (yikes!), Frequencies, which came out late in 2011. Rereleased on Warp Records, this takes us back in time to when techno felt like a new genre, when terms like "Acid House" and "Dance Music" were pretty concrete terms.

Sheffield's techno duo of Mark Bell and Gez Varley have only released only two records and not many more singles while they worked together, the pair's apparently meager contribution would hardly seem to bear out the claim that they were one of British techno's most important, agenda-setting groups. Nonetheless, early singles have indelibly marked British techno with Detroit's progressiveness, electro's funk, and an unflinching, uniquely British experimentalism.

Taking their name from the foundational component of the synthesizers -- the low frequency oscillator (kind of like calling a rock group "Power Chord") -- the pair were approached by Warp in the late '80s after tapes the pair had put together on some junky, second-hand equipment caught the ears of local DJs and the dancefloors of local clubs. Both Bell and Varley admit to roots in the early- and mid-'80s hip-hop and electro invasions, as well as the more obvious British acid house explosion, and their affectation for thick, electronic breaks, vocoder samples, and sparse, modal melodies derived largely from that source. (LFO were also one of only a few -- with 808 State and Coldcut -- to find domestic reissue through the New York-based hip-hop label Tommy Boy, making obvious a connection between British experimental techno and American hip-hop and electro-funk.)

Releasing their bass-heavy debut in 1991 to universal acclaim, the pair were silent for the next five years, with rumors of a follow-up surfacing from time to time failing to produce anything. LFO finally resurfaced in 1995 with the ironically titled "Tied Up," followed several months later by Advance. The group also remixed tracks for Björk and the Sabres of Paradise, but dissolved the partnership soon after. Varley went on to a solo career, while Bell began an intermittent production career, working on tracks for Björk's Homogenic LP of 1997 and Depeche Mode's Exciter from 2001. After resolving what Warp called his mid-range crisis, Bell returned with the third LFO full-length, Sheath, in the fall of 2003 (officially, it was the first without Varley).

So take a listen to "We Are Back", an apt selection for both the resurgence of this classic album and for the first blog of the New Year! Get your headphones on, this jam is bassy!!!



Buy your copy of LFO Frequencies here.

Top 20 of 2011

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




#12 Tom Waits--Bad As Me




#13--Little Dragon--Ritual Union



#14 Brian Eno--Drums Between the Bells




#15 Disk Jokke--Sagura



#16 Tim Hecker--Ravedeath, 1972




#17--Bjork--Biophilia




#18 Gil Scott-Heron & Jamie XX--We're New Here




#19 Holy Ghost--Holy Ghost




#20 David Lynch--Crazy Clown Time

What if We All Stopped Paying Taxes?

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.

Douche Beat

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!!