Deerhoof – Breakup Song September 4, 2012
Posted by gwyoung in Album Reviews, Music.Tags: deerhoof, experimental, noise, rock
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Artist: Deerhoof
Album: Breakup Song
Release: Polyvinyl, 2012
Genre: Experimental
RIYD: noise jingles for parties
“Breakup Song” is an extremely fitting title for the new Deerhoof record (though let’s all keep our fingers crossed that it’s not the literal end of the group) not only because of the signature quirky use of improper English (using the singular to refer to a collection of songs) but also because of the apocalyptic feel of the album. Deerhoof have always been a band to experiment with various influences, instruments, and musical styles, but here they sound as if they gathered up exotic instruments from all corners of the Earth into one place and dropped an atomic bomb on the whole thing, exploding bits and pieces of melodies and sonic experiments in all directions at once. Satomi’s sweet melodies playfully dance around the rhythmic din of sharp guitar stabs, erratic percussion, and harsh synthesizer bursts, resulting in an aesthetic even noisier and more chaotic than 2007’s Friend Opportunity or last year’s Deerhoof vs. Evil could have ever predated. As usual, Deerhoof eschew forward progress by sidestepping the direction those albums have been hinting at, and though certain family lineage could be traced between songs like “There’s That Grin” and “Kidz Are So Small” or the semi-titular track “Breakup Songs” (again note the misuse of plural) and “The Merry Barracks” or even the track “Flower” and the OTHER Deerhoof song “Flower” (off of 2005’s Apple O’), there are no good words to describe Breakup Song besides “completely and utterly bizarre”.
Even more appropriate, however, are Deerhoof’s own words. The tag-line on the sticker slapped onto that beautiful, blurry image of a garbage truck that is the inexplicable album cover describes the songs as “noise jingles for parties”: I don’t know what kind of parties Deerhoof have been going to, but I doubt this is the first album I’d think to put on at my housewarming get-together a few weeks from now. And yet, the phrase matches the tone of the album almost too well. These little ditties are definitely noisy, are often comprised of multiple “jingles” stitched together haphazardly, and in spite of themselves are actually surprisingly danceable. I can’t help but bounce my head along to the bumpin’ “There’s That Grin” or wiggle my hips in my chair to “Mario’s Flaming Whiskers III”, and Deerhoof’s playful energy pulses and overflows throughout the album’s short 31-minute runtime.
A certain online media critic described last year’s instant classic Deerhoof vs. Evil as a “transitional album”, but made no attempt as to identify what the band was transitioning from or toward. What that reviewer failed to understand is that Deerhoof’s identity is based around flux, i.e., that none of their albums can be called a transitional album because every single one is transitional. Each album stands apart from those that precede and those that follow, all the while struggling to contain more musical ideas than most contemporaries have in their entire discographies. Though Deerhoof fans should be well aware of this by now (it being their 11th full-length in their 15-year career), Breakup Song provides further evidence (by knocking the listener over the head with it) to the group’s tremendous abundance of creative ideas. The fact that their rather intense ADD prevents them from sticking to one and developing it to its full potential is not a weakness but one of their greatest strengths.
Dirty Projectors – Swing Lo Magellan June 28, 2012
Posted by gwyoung in Album Reviews, Music.Tags: dirty projectors, experimental, folk, rock
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Artist: Dirty Projectors
Album: Swing Lo Magellan
Release: Domino, 2012
Genre: Experimental
RIYD: Dirty Projectors before Bitte Orca
Before Dirty Projectors released their 2009 breakthrough, Bitte Orca, the “band” was more of a solo project for Dave Longstreth’s outsider folk and abstract rhythm recordings. The contributions from the now-lead females Angel Deradoorian and Amber Coffman were mostly constrained to the background “ooh”s and “ahh”s, while the songs themselves were mostly hit-or-miss experiments with various sounds, styles, and recording techniques. One of the main reasons that Bitte Orca was so impressive was because it combined all of these disparate aspects into a sonically tight and conceptually cohesive whole that served as a perfect culmination of the various directions the group had been taking over the years preceding its release. It seemed to rise out of the messy and often discordant back catalog and into its place as a bright and shiny magnum opus of experimental rock, and people took notice.
As such, it’s only natural that listeners are going to compare Dirty Projectors’ latest with its immediate predecessor, and unfortunately that means it’s going to fall short to many ears. Swing Lo Magellan, like a rebellious little brother who is constantly trying to overcome its older sibling’s greatness, pretends as if Bitte Orca never existed, picking up right where 2005’s The Getty Address and 2007’s Rise Above left off. Though most of it isn’t as rambunctious as Rise Above or as bizarre as some of The Getty Address, the album consists of a range of vastly different tracks, each with its own unique perspective that doesn’t fit in with any of its neighbors.
Attracted by the promise of the subtle genius of lead single “Gun Has No Trigger”, I couldn’t wait to devour this album as soon as it leaked. But on the first listen, I couldn’t shake the immediate thought that “Gun Has No Trigger” was a fluke. Now, after giving the rest of the album time to sink in, I’ve come to realize that all twelve of these tracks are flukes. The irony of Swing Lo Magellan is that nothing on it seems to fit into the album’s sound, but because of this the album doesn’t even have a consistent sound that they can fit into. The “outsider” element of the band has returned, as all of these songs feel out of place in terms of time and context. Magellan is filled with false starts and missteps, starting with the surprisingly rocking “Offspring Are Blank” before moving into gentler, lazy folk material embellished with queasy electronic effects and strange recording decisions (such as the incorporation of vibrant studio chatter into the chorus of “Unto Caesar” and the right-fading of entire verses of “Just At Chevron”). Whereas Bitte Orca felt like more of a collaborative effort, Longstreth takes back the reigns on this one, promoting his uncompromising artistic ideas while singing lead vocals on eleven of the twelve tracks (with the exception of the gorgeous Coffman-fronted “The Socialites”), cracking his voice trying to hit the high notes on many occasions along the way.
As usual for the pre-Bitte Orca Dirty Projectors, some of the ideas work while some just don’t. Swing Lo Magellan’s ironically subdued restlessness pays off big-time on some occasions and tanks elsewhere (see “Maybe That Was It”), but that willingness to try new things seems to add to its charm. Fans of Bitte Orca are sure to be disappointed with its clear lack of the epic and masterful qualities of that album, but for those that can see past those obvious shortcomings and hear Swing Lo Magellan as a product of Dirty Projectors’ now decade-long career, Swing Lo Magellan actually fits quite well into their discography, serving as a delightfully playful album of quirky folk melodies.
Liars – WIXIW May 29, 2012
Posted by gwyoung in Album Reviews, Music.Tags: electronica, experimental, liars, rock
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Artist: Liars
Album: WIXIW
Release: Mute, 2012
Genre: Experimental
RIYD: Radiohead, that song where Wilco sounded like Radiohead
A few years back, in response to a hacked email scandal in relation to insatiable buzz over an impending music leak, Bradford Cox (of Deerhunter and Atlas Sound fame) had this to say:
“Back in the 90′s when I was first starting to make 4-track tapes I had a game where I would make a fake version of an album I was anticipating. If Pavement’s Brighten the Corners were coming out soon, I had to wait till release day to hear it. I would record a set of songs that I would want the Pavement album to sound like. Some of those songs ended up becoming Atlas Sound and Deerhunter songs years later.
My advice to those who are so desperate for AC’s album to leak is to pick up instruments and make your own version of what you would want it to sound like. Respect the BANDS wishes and wait till release day. Then you can compare your new songs with theirs. Who knows. Maybe your album will be the one people are wanting to leak next year.”
Though I don’t usually appreciate Bradford Cox’s blogosphere sass, he presents an interesting idea. Granted, we don’t all have the means, patience, creativity, and skills involved with making an album, but I can get on board with the sentiment, and apparently, so can Liars. WIXIW (pronounced “wish you”, as in, “I wixiw were here with me”), the band’s “electronic” sixth album, finds them experimenting with a variety of synthetic textures, and the result sounds just like Radiohead. It’s as if the band followed Bradford Cox’s advice to the letter, writing and recording what they had hoped last year’s The King Of Limbs would sound like and finally releasing it as a Liars album just a year later. In fact, some preliminary reviews are going so far as to call WIXIW “the best Radiohead album since Kid A.”
I understand that many fans were disappointed with The King Of Limbs (though I don’t understand why) so maybe those reviews speak the truth when they claim that WIXIW is comprised of the songs that disappointed Radiohead fans wished had been on it, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s the next Kid A. I will admit, though, that the resemblance is uncanny. Especially on tracks like “Ill Valley Prodigies”, “His And Mine Sensations”, and “Who Is The Hunter” where frontman Angus Andrews whips out his weary falsetto, it sounds as if the band is intentionally mimicking Thom Yorke and his crew.
This is not surprising, given that both bands have cited each other as influences, toured together, and traded remixes over recent years, but what is surprising is how well Liars pull it off. Drawing comparisons to a band like Radiohead is treading very dangerous waters, but luckily Liars have the experimental approach, the musical talent, and the balls to tackle it head on. They wanted to make a Radiohead album, so they did, and it says something about their abilities that the result sounds just as good if not better than most of what’s on The King Of Limbs.
Though it’s hard to talk about WIXIW without that direct comparison, the album is actually just as much Liars as it is Radiohead. For instance, I doubt Radiohead would ever make a track as thunderous and blearily discordant as the visceral title track, “WIXIW”, and the distorted noise-dance-punk of the penultimate track “Brats” could only come from a band who has a They Threw Us All In A Trench And Stuck A Monument On Top in their back catalog. Though the album represents a departure from the harsh dynamics of the 2007 self-titled and 2010’s Sisterworld, tracks such as “Proud Evolution” have hinted at this new direction for quite some time, making it seem like the next logical step for the band as opposed to a direct copy of someone else’s sound. Just as Bradford Cox incorporated his versions of Pavement into Deerhunter songs, Liars incorporate their versions of Radiohead into Liars songs, and not the other way around. The tracks on WIXIW are definitively Liars, and they add themselves to quite an impressive discography of intriguing rock experiments.
Tall Ships – “T=0” May 24, 2012
Posted by gwyoung in Music, Track Reviews.Tags: rock, tall ships
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Tall Ships‘ latest single, “T=0”, is “math rock” at its finest, and not just because of the algebraic equation-solving title or the fact that its lyrics include a line about space they fill being “infinitesimal”. The loop-based, arpeggiated guitar stabs that drive the song sound at once both chaotic and precisely controlled, while the gradual layering of washed-out reverb, ghostly voices, and eventually verse and chorus shows a clear, logical progression from start to finish, forming together a brief but powerful song perfectly representative of the paradoxes inherent in mathematics. “T=0” is a song full of contradictions, just as the zeroes confront the infinities in the world of calculus, and thus serves as an excellent example of the philosophical essence of this sub-genre of rock & roll.
Mastodon – “A Spoonful Weighs A Ton” April 26, 2012
Posted by gwyoung in Music, Track Reviews.Tags: mastodon, record store day, rock, the flaming lips
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Mastodon’s cover of The Flaming Lips’ “A Spoonful Weighs A Ton” (off their classic 1999 album, The Soft Bulletin) is unusual for a cover in that it doesn’t seem to stray far enough from the original. I had expected that a metal band like Mastodon would make the precarious, strange world constructed by the song much heavier, or possibly throw in a few screaming vocals here and there, but it seems like they had a different goal in mind. Instead of offering a new perspective on the song, the cover sounds like Mastodon trying to sound like the Flaming Lips. The result is actually more exciting than you would think, as it’s just different enough to feel new and interesting, but also just close enough to the original to be as supremely enjoyable. Listen below and re-experience the magic of one of the Flaming Lips’ best:
The “A Spoonful Weighs A Ton” single was one of the best of this year’s multitude of Record Store Day releases. To commemorate that, this video features a record spinning.
Here We Go Magic – A Different Ship April 26, 2012
Posted by gwyoung in Album Reviews, Music.Tags: folk, here we go magic, rock
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Artist: Here We Go Magic
Album: A Different Ship
Release: Secretly Canadian, 2012
Genre: Rock
RIYD: Paul Simon, Talking Heads, The Sea And Cake
Here We Go Magic’s albums up to this point, including their self-titled debut and 2010’s Pigeons, have consisted of a variety of disparate styles and sonic experiments ranging from psychedelic folk to krautrock to ambient noise. While those albums had some excellent tracks (see “Collector” and “Only Pieces”), most of those gems were buried between heaps of all-over-the-place songs that were relatively unlistenable. The appropriately-titled A Different Ship, however, is a horse of a completely different color. Here it seems as if Luke Temple has abandoned his experiments in favor of creating a consistent record of simple, powerful rock songs, and the result is something that exceeds anything we could’ve expected after our few tastes of this band’s greatness.
Whether it’s because of the solid songwriting and steady flow between the tracks or if its due to the various stylistic influences that Temple & co. have finally made their own, there’s something about A Different Ship that makes it feel like an instant classic. The album wouldn’t be too out of place in the 60s or 70s, as its lazy psychedelic folk-rock qualities evoke memories of The Byrds in tracks like “Made To Be Old”, Paul Simon in “Miracle Of Mary” and the stellar “How Do I Know”, and even Talking Heads in lead single “Make Up Your Mind”. These stylistic choices were hinted at on the whimsical January EP released back in 2011, but nothing could have prepared us listeners for this next step in Here We Go Magic’s career. The sense of musical restraint and the polish in Temple’s vocals and lyrics also show a giant leap forward in maturity for the group, and while their playful vibrance still appears in the swirling electronic echoes and harmonies, it takes a backseat to the more direct human qualities imbued in the album’s warmth.
After hearing A Different Ship for the first time, Fleet Foxes frontman Robin Pecknold stated that he felt “humbled” by it, and I can understand why. Unlike most of its contemporaries, Here We Go Magic’s latest appears to transcend the musical culture that birthed it. While most music today is a product of the ever-changing popular trends, A Different Ship was birthed from a much larger time scale: the album is a gorgeous fermentation of styles from the past fifty years, reminding us that it’s not just electronic gimmicks and studio wizardry that make music so pleasing to hear.
Ramona Falls – Prophet April 26, 2012
Posted by gwyoung in Album Reviews, Music.Tags: experimental, menomena, ramona falls, rock
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Artist: Ramona Falls
Album: Prophet
Release: Barsuk, 2012
Genre: Rock
RIYD: Menomena, St. Vincent
Though Brent Knopf recently split off from the Menomena trio to focus more on his solo work as Ramona Falls (a tragedy akin to the dissolution of The Books), it seems from his sophomore effort that he’s moving in parallel to his former band. Ramona Falls’ debut in 2009, Intuit, found him and his collaborators constructing twinkling, looping pop melodies akin to those on Menomena’s Friend And Foe from 2007. Now, just as Menomena shed their cuteness in favor of a darker, grittier, more rock & roll sound on 2010’s Mines, Ramona Falls follows in step with the release of Prophet.
This is no big surprise, however, as tracks like “I Say Fever” foreshadowed this change in sound, and the difference is that now they’re the norm instead of the deviation. Keeping the same loop-based approach (and likely with the help of Knopf’s “Deeler” invention), the band is still making mildly psychedelic experimental rock, but the sample material is changing. Instead of the whimsical and lighthearted bells and whistles, Knopf more often uses heavy guitar power chords and drum hits. This is especially evident on tracks like “Sqworm” and “Brevony”, which push the thrashing of Menomena hits like “TAOS” and “BOTE” to the next level.
This is not to say that Ramona Falls abandon their softer side completely. The gentle folk feel of “Proof” rivals the beauty of Intuit-closer “Diamond Shovel”, while the twinkling embellishments and orchestral arrangements on opener “Bodies Of Water”, lead single “Spore”, and “If i equals u” gleam with the same charm as the best of Knopf’s work. Prophet also shows off some of the new tricks that Ramona Falls have up their sleeves in “Archimedes Plutonium” and closer “Helium”, including some catchy, jangle-pop riffs and elegant strings thrown into some unexpected compositions.
While it is a shame that Knopf split off from his main band (as his presence will surely be missed on their releases to come), Menomena fans can at least temporarily rejoice in the fact that Ramona Falls is delivering the same goods and following in the same evolution of sound. Prophet excels in the same way that Mines did back in 2010, and it’s exciting to think of all the great music that will come from the future of both bands.
Bear In Heaven – “The Reflection Of You” April 3, 2012
Posted by gwyoung in Music, Music Videos, Track Reviews.Tags: bear in heaven, electronica, rock
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This single’s been out there for awhile, and by now it’s probably old news for today’s fast-paced music blog standards. But after listening to it for the umpteenth time today I felt a sudden urge to write a post it here, and I guess it’s good timing considering Bear In Heaven’s sophomore album I Love You, It’s Cool officially dropped today.
2010’s Beast Rest Forth Mouth had plenty of great tracks showcasing Bear In Heaven’s unique styles and talent, such as “Lovesick Teenagers” and “You Do You”, but nothing then or now compares with the sheer brilliance of “The Reflection Of You”. At first it may sound like any old Bear In Heaven track, as it keeps in step with the swirling psychedelic rock and dizzying synth textures of all the rest of their work, but after a few listens its surprising subtlety will break through the stylistic facade and bowl you over with the true greatness of this song. I can’t really place what’s so excellent about it, though I could cite the sentimentally sincere yet somehow estranged lyrics, the atypical danceability of the beats and hooks, or the dynamic textures and structures as prime examples, but it may be that the song’s charm lies in just that elusive allure. Its refusal to be pinned down is what intrigues further listens, and those further listens allow it to latch onto the listener and nestle its way in. We won’t soon be forgetting about this one, even if the rest of the album falls short.
The Big Pink – “Stay Gold” & “Hit The Ground (Superman)” January 11, 2012
Posted by gwyoung in Music, Music Videos, Track Reviews.Tags: laurie anderson, rock, the big pink
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The Big Pink have a new album out in the near future, and though these first two singles may be old news by now, they deserve to mentioned here, especially because they’re pretty much the only good tracks on the album (though I guess “The Palace” and “1313” can hold their own.) I haven’t listened to their debut, but from what I’ve heard the band has eschewed a lot of the shoegazey production that blanketed A Brief History Of Love in favor of tighter, crisper, and more direct pop songs, and it works quite well for the band. Opener “Stay Gold” has an especially good hook:
And just when you think the fun has ended, they move right into the second track, another hit with a catchy, universal chorus that efficiently samples Laurie Anderson’s breakthrough single, “O Superman (For Massenet)”. I’m especially fond of the latter half of the video, where random people blow raspberries with their lips in slow motion:
Finally, just for good measure, I’ll throw in the original Laurie Anderson track. If you haven’t heard it, give it a listen. Her ground-breaking spoken word vocal experiments are definitely worth any music-lover’s time:
Gayngs Ft. Glasser – “Faded High” October 3, 2010
Posted by gwyoung in Music, Music Videos, Track Reviews.Tags: gayngs, glasser, rock
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Seeing Gayngs live is a wonderful experience, not only because they sound even fuller and richer than they do on the album, but also because you get to see which member is responsible for each part of the song. I hadn’t realized that there were so many different vocalists involved in each track, and it was really cool to see how easily and smoothly they moved from part to part. While all the guys involved in the group crooned through the full album, the female vocalists, Dessa, Channy Moon-Casselle and Katy Morley, were conspicuously absent. Luckily, when they got to the standout “Faded High”, they brought out Cameron Mesirow, of Glasser, to fill in, and fill in she did. This video the group made with her doing the song perfectly demonstrates the experience of seeing them perform:
safer in the dark 