Remember how in the film Clash of the Titans, Zeus and his crew would take the little clay action figures of mortals off the shelf and screw with their lives by physically placing the tiny version of Harry Hamlin on a beach, or right in the path of a giant scorpion? (It’s still really cool.)
As a kid, I don’t remember worrying too much about the implications of the gods controlling human lives. I think I was preoccupied with being freaked out over Zeus’s robot owl and how the snakes kept slithering after Medusa’s head was severed.
But lately, I have been thinking about fate, in the sense that there is so much that us mortals don’t have control over in our day to day lives. For one example, there’s the scene in the video above for Washington D.C. singer/songwriter Meredith Bragg’s latest song. It’s just one step this way, instead of that, then big change. [CORRECTION: Turns out I don’t know my Broadcast videos. The original of the one above belongs to that band’s tune “Tender Buttons” (Go see. It’s longer and still really rad!), and this one here is just some inspired overdubbing by a YouTuber going by the name of Spaceship Steve.]
That’s the hardcore stuff, and though it fascinates me, I try and not think too much about it. I’ve been digging on the kind of fate that happens when I prune back the weekly schedule of stuff I’m always scheduling and let an hour here or there (or even a day or two when I’m being really kind to myself) just happen. Given just a little extra room, my day can take on hues that are not on the palette of my usual agenda, and it’s nice to open myself up to being surprised (and nice to take a break from wrestling with every minute of the day).
For his upcoming solo album (out Dec. 11 on The Kora Records), Bragg made a deal with the Silver Sonya recording studio the CD takes its name from–he provided the tunes through only his voice and acoustic guitar, and the studio dudes then “pulled, filtered, shifted, butchered, looped, [broke], and mended” as they saw fit. In a note on Bragg’s website, Silver Sonya’s Chad Clark elaborated: “The music generally had a wistful, melancholic tone. Our job as the producers was to make the music just a little bit less pretty and tasteful. Nothing radical, mind you. A tiny red smudge in the corner of an otherwise blue painting.”
The touch is pretty caring and gentle here (more like Zeus to Perseus than Zeus to Calibos)–doubled-up vocals, maybe some fingers tapping on wood, and sleepy chorus at the foot of the bed where our narrator is repelling vipers in the night. The idea of Bragg just letting the songs go is beautiful. He’s worked with these guys before. He trusts them. Why not?
You can pre-order Silver Sonya beginning Nov. 6, but to tide you over till then, Stereogum has this one for download, and you can get “Twin Arrows” at The Kora Records site.
[ website ] [ myspace ] [ The Kora Records ]
The Pack - “In My Car” [ buy ]
I dig this for basically the same reason I dug yesterday’s song. At first blush, that might seem like a nutty thing to say. But this new one from the Bay Area’s The Pack (new disc, Based Boys out today on Jive) might just be more bubblegummy than MIKA’s “Lollipop.”
“I’m in my car. I’m standing in my car. You know I’m in my car. I’m standing in my car. My car.”
You would be right to say, “That’s pretty thin” and “There had better be a nasty hook to hang that dead bait on.” But there isn’t. Actually, the bass drops out, and it’s mostly just a monotone chant over drums. But let it slide up to you a couple times, throw it’s arm around your shoulder and bop it’s head in your face. Feel it? C’mon! There you go. See, now you’re bouncin’. Good for you!
For fans of last year’s summer-est summer jam, you’ll be glad to know The Pack has held-over “Vans” for the new disc as well (and for those who haven’t yet heard, go get it), and though it dials up the energy significantly, “In My Car” retains that same muted, squishy bass undertow that helps the candy go down smoothly.
This song is so fun so that I’m mapping out imaginary dance routines in my head. What totally bites is that I am feeling defensive about it. There was a time in my life when campy (and vampy) primitive pop tunes were my and everybody else’s favorite songs, but in the U.S. at least, our pop stars have become fearful of standing out too much from their crowd these days. I think we’re missing out.
I fully admit that it could just be me. I could be the only one who remembers fondly those 15 minutes when Wham! had our attention and I became convinced eye-liner was a good move (and it was! that freshman-into-sophomore-year transition was the ONLY time the ladies paid any attention to the chubby kid), but maybe not.
Maybe this Lebanese-born Londoner seems a little too self-conscious in his approach to the average jaded music fan, but maybe he’s just a prancing drama queen with an opera-trained voice who uses those powers to punch out bubblegum dance-pop that will stick to your lips. If you’re feeling a little jaded, then come back tomorrow. This will not cut through.
However, if you dig yourself some “Antmusic” or Queen or even those modern disco-makers the Scissor Sisters, and you’re not too hung up on “who-came-first” arguments, then you’ve probably already added MIKA to that “Sweet-Ass Jams” mix you’re burning right now. Since you’re working on it, if you don’t already have these others from Life in Cartoon Motion, go seek out some seriously tight Freddy Mercury riffage on “Grace Kelly” and the pulsing disco pop-rocker “Love Today” .
I feel better now. Don’t you?
[ website ] [ myspace ] [ itunes ]
I gotta get a message to you: “It’s really your guts that let you breathe.”
How will it make it that far? We haven’t spoken for days. The road is busy, your inbox is full and the power lines are buzzing like crazy.
“Last night on the radio I heard it trying to come through.”
I’ll tap out a code here on the piano, you clap along–don’t stop ever–and someone out there is bound to pick up the signal.
“All the kites we flew above the forest, all the haunted spirits coming clean. Sit down and listen as they tell you the truth …”
I don’t own Cheyenne’s new album, The Whale. The Brooklyn-via-Oklahoma band won’t be (self-) releasing it until Dec. 11, but you can get it through iTunes now. I’d like to say that I will eventually hold a physical copy of the gorgeously designed cover in one hand and be reading liner notes with the headphones on with a Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale in the other hand, but that’s not happening. This disc’s title track is out there, and since it’s as stunning as that cover I will not be delaying myself any gratification. This album will be bleeping and blooping into the library … now.
Eye-strain be damned! A mini gallery of some other freakin’ rad Cheyenne album covers:
[ website ] [ myspace ] [ album ]
Dusty Rhodes and the River Band - “Dear Honey” [ buy ]
If a band is telling me that their main influences are The Band and Yes (Wouldn’t it be Kansas that came out on the other end of that?), I am obviously going to be very very curious.
I was on hand last fall at one of those band-members-outnumbered-audience-members shows that my beloved hometown of Chico, Calif. inflicts on touring acts (when more than a couple good shows per month are happening), and saw the fun that Dusty Rhodes and the River Band brings. And it’s the fun (see the last 30 seconds or so of the video above for a small taste of the all-for-one fun) that made the prog dramatics and Devil-Went-Down-To-Cripple-Creek barn burning of the O.C. six-piece come together so well.
Here we have accordion, mandolin and barroom piano alternately waltzing and stamping out a sing/drink-a-long with the rest of love’s losers. And the bar is packed
The band’s full-length (produced by The Mars Volta’s Ikey Owens), First You Live came out earlier this month on Side One Dummy Records, and their busy upcoming November tour is hitting just about every city in the west (except for Chico).
[ website ] [ myspace ] [ Side One Dummy Records ]
Taken By Trees - “Lost and Found” [ listen ] [ buy ]
How do I get put in charge? Making a great pop song is too easy.
If you just put a Swedish pop singer in front of a piano and a microphone, ask her to coo over her breaking heart, and bring in the string section for the chorus? Done, done, and done.
Add a peek-a-boo tropical vacation reel of our chanteuse Victoria Bergsman (formerly of The Concretes and that second voice on Peter, Bjorn and John’s “Young Folks”) and it would just be unfair. This song wins–my new fave.
“Yeah it’s overwhelming, but what else can we do? Get jobs in offices and wake up for the morning commute?”
All right! You heard the band. The line has been drawn: Out every evening until it was light? OR No longer riding on the merry-go-round?
Speaking of carousels, this is the kind of song I think would work really well on a carousel. That is, if your conductor barker was T Rex and his conducting console was a bank of analog synths.
The Brooklyn duo originally released this fuzzy beauty as part of the Time To Pretend EP (Cantora) earlier this year, and then carried the title track over to their just-released major debut, Oracular Spectacular (Sony BMG).
“We’ll choke on our vomit and that will be the end. We were fated to pretend.”
[ myspace ]
Also, I know today’s post was very late coming, but yesterday when I said I was finished with my Rest of Best of list, I lied. But, after tracking down a hundred or so more links the whole thing really is done now. Go peruse at your leisure. Maybe when you’re jonesing for new favorite songs over the weekend?
The Go! Team - “Doing It Right” [ listen ] [ buy song ] [ buy album ]
Can there be a better way to start of any week than with a chorus of horns, a pep squad’s worth of handclaps, a pocketful of feedback and a foxy rapper named Ninja leading a chant of “Do it! Do it! All right!”? No, there cannot.
I’m feeling energized because my Rest of the Best of 2007 list if finally finished, and because I have The Go! Team’s “Doing it Right” (from Proof of Youth, Sub Pop) on repeat this morning.
(Go here for the first obsessively compiled half of the 2007 faves list. I’ll put the second half up tomorrow.)
For more getting pumped, go! see the video for “Doing it Right” and also the two-part documentary about Brighton, U.K.’s The Go! Team: [ part one ] [ part two ].
[ website ] [ myspace ] [ sub pop records ]
Los Campesinos! - “The International Tweexcore Underground” [ listen ] [ buy ] [ buy ]
You know those songs that you can’t help but love despite a glaring fault that makes the whole enterprise suspect? It is usually a Top-40 embarrassment with a pop-culture- informed choice that threatens to take down an otherwise enjoyable pop tune. Jamie Foxx impersonating Ray Charles on Kanye West’s “Gold Digger” is one very unfortunate example.
My pet peeve is pop-culture namechecking. Hip-hop is notorious for this. Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” and Outkast’s “Hey Ya” are 99-percent perfection that could’ve made heaven’s soundtrack by editing out “Mekhi Phifer,” “Beyonce” and “Lucy Liu.”
Here we have a little twist on the script. The Welsh 7-piece, Los Campesinos! and their upcoming single, “The International Tweexcore Underground” (Oct. 22 on Wichita).
Before I continue my thought, I have to stop and admit that this is my new favorite song. It’s my ideal combo: hyper pop hook meets energized stop/start dynamics. I also have to say that the band’s Sticking Fingers Into Sockets E.P. released on Arts & Crafts earlier this year is one of my favorites of 2007. I especially am in love with “You! Me! Dancing!”, one the more exciting songs I’ve heard in the last couple of years, so I’m admittedly kind of a Homer to begin with. Yet musically, this new one is even better than its predecessors. (Look at the scene in the song’s video, with the band behind a curtain down-stoking in unison its mini-orchestra of drums, guitars, bass, keys, xylophone and fiddle during the chorus. Fist pump!)
Allow me to now make my point:
“Calvin Johnson!”
“Ian Mackaye!”
“Amelia Fletcher!”
Seriously … those are the words.
You might have a feeling one way or another about this list of underground cultural legends, or you might never have heard of them. (And if you haven’t heard of them, you totally don’t understand and therefore don’t matter as a human at all!)
I think I get the story here–a boy and girl are calling out each other’s record collection and coming together somewhere in the land of International Tweexcore–but it totally sucks to come up to the awesome chorus and have only those names as lyrics to sing along with. You brats!
They’re just having laugh, for sure, and they’re certainly aware of the tune’s pretentiousness, and if we can’t get over it, then maybe we’re just too old.
If I’m going to party with these kids I’m going to have to put the bitter pill on the back of my tongue and hope I can get through it by just humming the melody, because this song is too great of an energy source to not plug into.
I do have two big questions for this song (yes, I talk to songs): 1. Is it a big deal that no one outside of the “international tweexcore underground” will be able to place your namechecks? 2. Will your namechecks stay the same? At some point, L.C. will grow weary of singing the same names and will un-tether/re-record you fantastic song with words that will allow you to last beyond 2007’s year-end best-of lists, right?
Oh well, Los Campesinos! At least You! and Me! will be Dancing! That will have to do for now.
[ website ] [ myspace ] [ Arts & Crafts Records ] [ Wichita Records ]
Vampire Weekend - “Mansard Roof” [ listen here ] [ buy here ]
I can’t help myself! This damn band is under my skin.
When we last partied with Vampire Weekend, we were hopping around to the afrobeat pop of “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa”, and for this second round with the NYC champs (and Rolling Stone magazine’s “Hot New Kids”) we have the gorgeous “Mansard Roof.”
The bounce is still there (minus so-much afrobeat) and it is so crazy–like an out-of-balance spin cycle or someone fast-walking with one leg shorter than the other. But that’s not the gorgeous part. This thing has a vocal melody … Oh, man. Girls and boys will swoon. The time is just 2:07, so we only get to sing along three times. Ready, set …
XL Recordings begins teasing the Jan., 2008 debut of VW’s first album by releasing “Mansard Roof” as a single next week (Oct. 23), and the band will be following up its short run of Europe dates supporting the Shins with an autumn trip through the midwest and the west.
And … some Mansard Roofs:
[ website ] [ myspace ] [ XL Recordings ]