Jungle/Surf

mp3: Pill Wonder "Gone to the Market"

Jungle/Surf, the new album from Pill Wonder, clocks in at a little over 18 minutes. While the record has the running time of an EP, it certainly has the arc of a conventional length album. The record is anchored by the deeply catchy "Gone to the Market" and "Wishing Whale." These are the most conventionally structured songs with (more or less) proper verses and choruses, but that doesn't prevent Will Murdoch, the man behind Pill Wonder, from toying around with lo-fi production tricks that give the album a rough but warm feeling. Throughout the album, the band weaves in ambient sounds: the cacophony of a jungle opens "What We Know," the clatter and hum of a grocery store appropriately closes out the wonderful "Gone to the Market." The record, then, is more jungle than surf. Thickets of fuzzy sound vine their way around the album. The wonderfully dense "Family Vacation" manages to not choke out all the sun from the song, which is a trick repeated throughout the record.

Jungle/Surf is out now from Underwater Peoples. Buy it here or here.

Rating: 7/10

Plastic Beach

Do you realize how fucking great a Gorillaz greatest hits record would be? The thing would be practically unstoppable: "Clint Eastwood," "DARE," "Feel Good Inc," "Dirty Harry," "Slow Country," "Tomorrow Comes Today," "19-2000," among about a dozen others. Gorillaz has always been more of a great singles band than album-oriented outfit. That being said, Plastic Beach is their most consistent album that will, nonetheless, add quite a few more highlights to this imagined greatest hits package.

Each Gorillaz album has a dual highlight: the funky go-getter dressed in flashy t-shirt and neon kicks and the sad-sack downer wearing yesterday's pajamas. On their self-titled debut, this couple was "Clint Eastwood" and "Slow Country," respectively. The pair is readily identifiable on Plastic Beach: "Superfast Jellyfish" is the album's best rave-up, while the exquisite "Rhinestone Cowboys" plays to the surprising strength of Albarn's deadpan 2-D act.

As a whole the album balances these exuberant highs and the slouching lows. After a surprisingly slow start (two introductions to the album plus a prelude to the third song!), the album takes off with "White Flag" when MCs Kano and Bashy trade rhymes over a funky flute driven beat provided by the Lebanese National Orchestra for Oriental Arabic Music. The one-two punch of "Stylo" and "Superfast Jellyfish" employ surprising guests (Bobby Womack, De La Soul, Gruff Rhys) to great effect. On the softer side, Little Dragon gives Albarn a hand with "Empire Ants" and "To Binge" to create a pair of watery dreams. Later, Lou Reed lends his trademark talk-singing to the terrific "Some Kind of Nature," a song that sounds more upbeat than the lyrics suggest. Albarn assumes solo control over "On Melancholy Hill" and "Broken," the former of which is one of the strongest tracks on the album. Late on Plastic Beach, Bobby Womack returns for the forlorn "Cloud of Unknowing." The song finds him standing on the beach at night, staring at the lonely satellites swinging in their orbits.

While the album is a near perfect 50/50 split between the upbeat and the ponderous numbers, the sequencing is a bit off. The band has stacked the deck in favor of the first half of the album; the second half lags a bit due to the number of soggy down-tempo songs. Taken on their own, however, some of these moments (particularly "Cloud of Unknowing" and "To Binge") reward patient listeners.

Thematically, the album concerns the degeneration of the environment. For Gorillaz, though, the ruthless exploitation of our planet isn't just an inconvenient truth; it's a terrific metaphor for postmodern artistry. The way that far-flung detritus ends up on a beach in the middle of the ocean is evidence of chaos theory's cruel logic. The metaphor suggests that culture is really just an ocean of unmoored trash, washing up on far shores, waiting to be reused and recycled. And from the beginning, hasn't this been Gorillaz's modus operandi?

Rating: 7.5/10

Quarantine the Past

Unfortunately, it's only a matter of time before the word slacker gets rediscovered. The word was a inspired bit of armchair sociology that was ultimately undermined by its own weaknesses as a classification. Slacker was never a convincing condemnation because slack was a virtue, a quasi-political statement of intent. Slack was never about work ethic; it was always about motivation. A slacker was an underachiever only in the sense that achieving had been defined by such narrow parameters. Superchunk got it right the first time: "I'm working, but I'm not working for you, slack motherfucker!" And Pavement were the quintessential slack motherfuckers.

This year sees the unlikely reunion of Pavement, which prompted Matador to release something of a greatest hits package, Quarantine the Past, for the band. This begs the question: who is the greatest hits album for these days? Who needs to be introduced to a band's career by means of such an antiquated method? The internet has made the quaint greatest hits package superfluous: you can download a band's entire catalog in minutes. I have a hard time imagining that this record will introduce that many kids to Pavement. I mean, most kids have cooler/dorkier older brothers or access to the internet (which is essentially the same thing). But if it does, then I think Quarantine the Past is a nearly perfect Cliff's Notes to Pavement. You get the most immediate classics in their catalog: "Summer Babe," Gold Soundz," "Shady Lane," "Cut Your Hair." But the album throws some nice curveballs your way: the noisy racket of "Mellow Jazz Docent," the punk workout of "Debris Slide." Every era of Pavement's career is covered and documented, from their bratty, smart-alecky early days ("Two States") to the elegant and earnest late years ("Spit on a Stranger").

The center of the 23-song retrospective is a three song set that define Pavement's core sound: "Grounded," "Summer Babe (Winter Version)," and "Range Life." "Grounded" showcases a band who have made layers of distorted guitars sound elegant and sophisticated. But whereas "Grounded" is tight and controlled (mainly due to West's whip-cracking drum work), "Range Life" is a shaggy dog story with a great hook. The song is most famous for its final verse in which Malkmus cracks on the Smashing Pumpkins and Stone Temple Pilots (a joke that has not aged well), but it's the impressionistic middle verse that holds all the song's charm. But the exact center of the record is "Summer Babe," the song that better than any other one encapsulates what Pavement could do with a couple of guitars, a bass, and a drum kit. The song is a towering masterpiece: every element of Pavement's sound for the next decade was present on "Summer Babe": the rusty guitars, the clever bass, Malkmus' nasal voice moving between lazy and impassioned at the drop of a hat.

When you're dealing with a band of this caliber, it's difficult not to demand a more nuanced look back. For the life of me, I can't figure out why "Silence Kit" or "Major Leagues" or "Kennel District" or "Strings of Nashville" or their awesome cover of Echo and the Bunnymen's "The Killing Moon" were left off. I could lose a few songs on the record: "Fight this Generation," "Embassy Row," or "Heaven is a Truck." Matador plays is relatively safe with Quarantine the Past, but anyone intrigued by the record will be shocked at the amount of material uncovered by the excellent deluxe reissues of the past decade. It's hard to fault Matador for the tracklist because it wasn't designed with the obsessive fan in mind. This is an entry-level record for entry-level fans.

When the tracklist for Quarantine the Past was revealed back in January, I could have reviewed it right then and there. These songs are that ingrained into me, that essential to my musical development. And if pressed, I would be inclined to say that Pavement is my favorite band of all time. They aren't the most talented band, nor as they the most important band. But with maybe two or three exceptions, there just isn't another band that I listen to as much now as I did when I was 15 years old, back I when I was a slack little motherfucker myself.

You can purchase Quarantine the Past here or here.

Rating: 10/10

High Places vs Mankind

High Places "On Giving Up"

On High Places' myspace page, their photos are now divided between "My Photos" and "Vintage High Places." This seems significant considering that the band has a new album, High Places vs Mankind, coming out on Thrill Jockey (March 23rd). The band is willfully dividing their past and their present. This begs the obvious question: why distinguish between your past and your present? The answer is equally as obvious as the question: this new record expands the band's signature sound to include some new sounds. In fact, your reaction to this album will depend entirely on how attached you are to "vintage High Places."

If you loved High Places' previous self-titled album (and the excellent singles collection 03/07 - 09/07), then there's plenty for you to continue to love on High Places vs Mankind. "The Charron" and "Drift Slayer" are classic High Places: bubbling synths percolate under washes of gorgeous sound while a tribal beat defines the structure of the song. However, at times, it seems as if the band is parodying their own style. "When It Comes, the only true weak spot on the album, actually ends with the sound of a pan flute that drips with one world consciousness bullshit.

Elsewhere, though, we get a mish-mash of styles and experiments. As an album, then, this thing is all over the place. It's hard to believe that the funk bass of "When It Comes" belongs on the same record as the ethereal "Drift Slayer." I would argue that High Places vs Mankind presents a band in the midst of an identity crisis. The pair, Rob Barber and Mary Pearson, cannot seem to decide what they want High Places to sound like anymore. From the dubby reggae of "The Most Beautiful Name" to the pretty "The Channon" to the banging "The Longest Shadows," this album is an unfocused mess of styles, only half of which are successful.

Another way of reading this album, though, is as a classic bait and switch, especially with regards to the fantastic lead single, "On Giving Up." They promise you a radical departure only for you to find out what's in the box is a re-imagining of the band's capabilities. High Places vs Mankind might not showcase an entirely new band; it's just a retooled, jacked-up, highly polished version of High Places. But I've gone back and forth about this album so many times, trying to understand the choices made by Barber and Pearson. I'm still not sure what I think of it. I certainly have my reservations, but if they could shift into making music that sounds like "On Giving Up," then I would be happy leaving the electronic psychedelia behind. But since the band seems noncommittal, then it's hard for me not to feel as divided.

Rating: 6/10

Woozy Viper

mp3: Woozy Viper "It's All Over"
Lou Reed comes in many different flavors. There's the proto-twee bedsitter who wrote "Sunday Morning" and "Pale Blue Eyes." Then, there's garage rock god who tore it all down with "Sister Ray." There's the baroque poet-cum-lounge-singer who recorded Berlin. Of course, there's the coked-out chronicler of glam sleaze in Street Hassle and Transformer. And, then there's the guy who recorded Metal Machine Music. But Reed's greatest iteration was the man who showed up for the Loaded recording sessions. This is the man who wrote "Sweet Jane" and "Oh Sweet Nuthin'" and "Lonesome Cowboy Bill" and "New Age." This is the man whose life was saved by rock'n'roll.

Woozy Viper are not Lou Reed, but I don't think they aspire to be him either. But the duo from NYC sound remarkably like Reed at his peak, circa Loaded. On their debut album, which you can grab for free here, the band present a dozen gloriously uncomplicated songs that sound refreshingly like rock'n'roll. No studio wizardry. No electronics. No arch irony. No authenticity claims. No volcanic guitar solos. No leather jackets. No nothing but rock'n'roll.

I'm tempted to say that the songs are deceptively simple. But that's not right. These are simple songs. But what was ever wrong with simple? The Ramones were simple. The Dead Milkmen were simple. Most of the best of Loud Reed was simple. Simple never steered anyone wrong. Simple is refreshing these days. Check out "Rent," a cow-bell driven jam about, um, how much it sucks to pay rent. Then there's "King Kong," an ode of sorts to, um, King Kong. Sample lyric: "He tried to steal the girl even though he couldn't fit it in the girl." And guess what "Love Scented Candles" is about. This album is so free of bullshit that it completely disarms you.

Woozy Viper trust their songwriting enough to leave everything dangerously unadorned. And most of the songs pay big dividends. "The Switchblade Swing" is a wry cinema verite tour through the hell that is modern hipsterdom ("Who you trying to be?/I'm just trying to teach you the motherfucking switchblade swing."). But it's the music that's the big draw here: it's loose and ragged with its acoustic guitars and tambourines and effective rock scatting ("That's right, that was a scat, [it] makes me feel good"). The album closes with the its highlight, "It's All Over." Our singer is breaking up with his girl, and he couldn't sound happier. It's not interested in lobbing accusations; he's not going to drag the past out to dissect. He's just telling her that it's all over. Simple as that. And what could be fucking greater than that?

Rating: 7.5/10

And thank you to the consistently great Anthony Fantano over at The Needle Drop for the lead.

Pantha du Prince - Black Noise

mp3: Pantha du Prince "The Splendour"

Like most minimal techno artists, Pantha du Prince (Hendrick Weber) requires deep listening. You cannot trust his records to passively play in the background. Unless you're actively listening to him, he's not really playing. Try to sweep up your apartment while listening to his latest album, Black Noise, out this week on Rough Trade, and you'll see that you soon forget that it's even playing. You have to pay attention to a record like this to understand its charms, its quirks, its humanity.

Talking about individual songs on a record like this seems as ridiculous as talking about a single curlicue in a filigree design. This is an album in the truest sense of the word; it's a colllection of parts that combine to make a whole artistic statement. If you start taking out individual pieces for inspection, you jeopardize the stability of the whole. The percussion on Black Noise is driven entirely by the stunningly depthless snaps and thumps of a precise machine. Icy chimes freeze to the microbeats while it all gets enveloped by misty clouds of synthesizers. The music swingings from warmly comforting ("Welt Am Draht") to vaguely menacing ("Behind the Stars"). And while most German techno sounds heartlessly mechanized, Pantha du Prince has located the ghost in the machine. The album's elegiac and urgent closer "Es Schneit" employs a frantic bell to ring out against the clouding snyth washes. Sure, there's a frightening amount of mathematical precision in the song, but the song leaves listeners spooked, jittery for the final something that never quite comes.

Of course, Black Noise is receiving so much attention because of Noah Lennox's contribution to "Stick to My Side." This makes my point about the whole being greater than the parts a little moot, but the song's worth talking about. Person Pitch was an album that took as much inspiration from techno as it did from Brian Wilson. In other words, it was only a matter of time before this happened. Frankly, the song is passable, but Lennox's charmingly frail voice just doesn't quite fit in the clinically clean rooms of Black Noise. Think about it: "Walkabout" was so perfect because it sounded as ramshackle and sweet as Lennox frequently does.

While Pantha du Prince is less adventurous than the volks over at Kompakt, he does reward patient ears. Black Noise is the rare kind of album that can make us better listeners. This isn't the horny bass and clap of house music; Black Noise requires that you pay attention before the whole thing blooms like frozen crystal in your ears.

You can purchase Black Noise here or you can stream the album here.

Rating: 7.5/10

Spirit Spine - Jungle Bridges

mp3: Spirit Spine "Slept Away"

Last January, I bought a CD-R from Joseph Denny, aka Spirit Spine. Ten dollars and a week later I received a package with a nice hand-written note and one of the best albums I heard all year. I was struck by the fact that such an incredible album was written and recorded by a 19 year old student (!) in Indiana (!!) using GarageBand (!!!). Unlike a lot blind acolytes (Blind Man's Colour, Our Brother the Native), Spirit Spine's debut took Panda Bear's aesthetic as a point of departure. The album wasn't the transcendent liturgy of Person Pitch, but it was an great album brimming with blissed-out pop that understood the power of a strong beat and repetition. Now Spirit Spine is back with a new album, Jungle Bridges. Like his debut, Jungle Bridges trades in echoed vocals, massive beats, and ephemeral walls of synthesized noise. The album isn't as immediate as his previous effort; it takes a few listens to unveil its charms. He trusts the strength of the songs to reveal themselves on the listener instead of packing every moment with a catchy new idea. And while that makes a first listen a bit of a gamble, it also makes the reward more worthwhile.

Denny can be a capable lyricist. "Slept Away" boasts some of the album's most stunning lines: "When you came to wake/Had to say go away/Just a few minutes more/Switch the lights, close the door." In his unadorned language, Denny creates a scene that throbs with the tension that defines avoidance. Elsewhere, though, we get a questionable ghost story ("Ghost Suspension") and some (satirical?) New Age speak ("Are our chakras aligning? Today's really riding on it.").

Despite those minor hiccups, Denny is clearly an artist who knows his way around a mix, pushing both ends to create his signature mammoth sound. The album opens properly with "Wicked Trick," a song that defines Spirit Spine's aesthetic: bubbling synths, relentless beats riding shotgun in the mix, addictive vocal lines that echo like memories. "Stone Wheels" depends entirely on the interplay between the mile-deep canyon of bass and the watery keyboards. Late in the album, we get the anthemic "India Electric," the only song that can rightfully be called the album's spiritual center. Exactly halfway through the song, everything cracks open, revealing a glowing core of warm synth tones and a booming heart of an 808 hand clap. Jungle Bridges is not a perfect album, but it is certainly an important album. With the release of the album, we are witness to the official arrival of a significant artist who has managed to digest and process an aesthetic that most are simply aping.

You can stream Jungle Bridges here before you decide to purchase the album from either iTunes, eMusic, or Amazon.

Rating: 8/10

The Besnard Lakes are the Roaring Night

mp3: The Besnard Lakes "Albatross"

The Besnard Lakes are the Dark Horse was a stunning record: a dark album that was equally comfortable laying down cold slabs of riffage or tending to the weak flame of a quiet melody. From the slow blooming firework of "Because Tonight" to the scalding bombast of "Devastation," the album's range and impact was impressive.

On their followup, The Besnard Lakes are the Roaring Night, shed almost everything that made them a mysteriously forceful band. Previously, the band could easily stretch a song into its 6th or 7th minute; the emotional punch of the song required that kind of build up. The length of the songs on Roaring Night, though, feels arbitrary and meaningless. In the epic "Like the Ocean, Like the Innocent Part 2: The Innocent," the band plods along for 7 minutes, padding the song with bland guitar histrionics and flat choruses ("Ooh, you're like the ocean/Ooh, you're like the innocent"). In fact, the whole album kind of plods along. About my fourth time through "Chicago Train," it occurred to me that playing the song live probably isn't any fun: there's nothing in here to hook an audience. And "Glass Printer" is a shockingly forgettable song. Literally. I've listened to the album quite a few times now, and I can't seem to remember that this one exists. Even "Albatross," the good first single, loses a little bit of its luster when its couched by glassy-eyed dead-enders.

But what makes the album all the more irritating is that it's evidently a concept album. According to Jagjaguwar, Roaring Night is a "twisting chronicle, or fever dream, of spies, double agents, novelists and aspiring rock gods turned violent. Loyalty, dishonor, love, hatred all seen through the eyes of two spies, fighting in a war that may not be real." I don't know what the shit any of those words are supposed to mean. I've tried (albeit very briefly) to listen for such a plot. Nothing. And besides, concept albums are mostly stupid.

At the end of the day, The Besnard Lakes are the Roaring Night is just boring. I hope that this just represents a stumble in the career of an otherwise great band. How an album with such an epic title, great artwork, and loads of fuzzed out guitar solos fails to dazzle is beyond me.

Rating: 5/10

Marimba and Shit-Drums

Spencer Krug is certainly going to catch hell for his newest venture. Krug as Moonface, a solo project for the hardest working man in indie rock, has just released the Dreamland EP with a single 20 minute song called "Marimba and Shit-Drums." But at this point in his career, I am down for anything that Spencer Krug is willing to throw my way.

Saying that "Marimba and Shit-Drums" is a single 20 minute song is a little disingenuous. There are really like 4 or 5 songs here that are scaffolded with the same conceptual framework: minimal instrumentation led by a marimba and, um, shit-drums (?), Krug singing the contents of his detailed lucid dream journal. As a guiding concept, it's slightly suspect. Listening to other people's dreams can be like watching a "surreal" student film directed by a burnout who spent most of his budget on the new Mars Volta and a bag of skunk weed. But Krug pulls it off because no one else in indie has access to their unconscious in the same way he does. I'm not sure that they lyrics would stand up to close critical scrutiny, but they're interesting enough to engage any patient listener. Initially, I wanted to work my degrees on the song, but I quickly learned that working over the song is like whispering into a cobweb: it's gone as soon as you talk to it.

Besides the sustained intricacy and interconnectedness of the lyrics, the most remarkable thing about the record is how listenable it is as a piece of music. Talking about the economy of a 20 minute song is patently ridiculous, but "Marimba and Shit-Drums" is thrifty. The marimba does a lot of work here: it carries both the melody and (most of) the percussion with its clear wooden tones. The titular "shit-drums" when they seem to arrive sound like electrified trashcans.A guitar riff pops up every now and then to flex some muscle on behalf of the song. Krug's voice is always at its best when he's locked into a line, repeating it, twisting the words around his mouth. Since we get a few refrains with different accompaniment, these moments stand out because they help ground the listener in something familiar.

I understand that "Marimba and Shit-Drums" will go down into the record as an eccentric side-project. It's an unfortunate fate for someone as gifted as Spencer Krug because his wildest ideas become profitable expressions of his immense talent and willingness to take risks. Not everything that Krug touches turn to gold, but everything he touches is worth listening to enough times to commit it to memory.

Rating: 8/10

You can download the entire song for the price of whatever here. You can buy the 12'' vinyl which comes with Krug's dream journal here.

Beach House - Teen Dream

mp3: Beach House "Norway"
(Courtesy of Sub Pop)

By the time you finish the harrowing and gut-wrenching "Real Love," it is apparent that Teen Dream marks the ascendancy of a great band. Not only is the album the best of Beach House's short but brilliant career, it is also an early candidate for album of the year.

Beach House, good as they are, can be difficult to write about. They don't have a thrilling backstory. They aren't working in any exotic genre. They don't push boundaries or audiences or agendas. And on paper they sound precociously cute: a pair of good looking shut-ins make dreamy, heartbroken lullabies with a drum machine, a gauzy organ, and a mournful tambourine. But there's nothing precious about this band: "You only give me what you don't want no more." There's a bitter edge to a line like that; Stuart Murdoch couldn't sing that line that convincingly. What they lack in talking points and instant hipster identification, they more than make up for in songcraft.

Among their many other virtues, Beach House's songs have a kind of dizzying depthlessness. The endless echoes, the sheer walls of organ, the guitar figures that drift infinitely into space. The steady percussion doesn't tether the band to the ground; it guides them as they float around an ether of their own making. Where the band once sounded windswept and ghosted, they sound clear-eyed and immediate on Teen Dream. Here, Victoria Legrand's voice is less swaddled by the treated haze that garnered all those (lazy) comparisons to Hope Sandoval. More often than not, her voice has a pleasant understated quality about it; she's not about to unleash any vocal runs any time soon. This flatness is actually a blessing: it allows her to remain focused on delivering the emotional timbre of the song without getting caught up in the mechanics of the delivery. But when her voice does rise, it doesn't preen or strut; it soars, conveying the depth of the ache, the uncertainty of her feelings. And a lot of the credit for the band's unique sound should go Alex Scally, the master of the band's instrumentation. He clothes Legrand's voice in arpeggios woozy with reverb.

In many ways, Teen Dream is a breakup album; Legrand is focused on describing the emotional process of separation and all its attending bitterness and relief. She tells a lover on the elegant "Walk in the Park" that "in a matter of time, it would slip from my mind/In and out of my life, you would slip from my mind." The bright tremolo of the song's chorus says everything: she's looking forward to losing these memories. But Legrand is never concerned with drumming up past recriminations. She is a fair ex-lover. Even on the most confrontational moment on the album, "Real Love," Legrand doesn't have an axe to grind. In the final verse, she allows herself to say what's on her mind: "Real love, it finds you somewhere with your back to it." It's stated as a point of fact rather than a pointed accusation.

On the stellar "Silver Soul," Legrand calls love "a sickness, a manic quickness." Love is both an affliction and a drug. And the album is very much concerned with presenting both of these sides. Legrand's ambivalence with the enterprise of love is palpable: when she appears to be falling for someone, she mourns that "it is happening again" over and over and over. By the end of the album, she promises to take care of her lover but quickly adds a pair of qualifications: "I'd take care of you/If you ask me to/In a year or two." The doubt expressed in those last two lines (the final two on the album) are devastating. But earlier, on "10 Mile Stereo," she praises her relationship's constancy: "It can't be gone, we're still right here/It took so long, can't say we heart it all/Limbs parallel, we stood so long we fell/Tear a moment from the days that carry us on forever."

Regardless of her insights into the inner workings of relationships, the thing that makes the album so great is the details. It's the sharpness of her images: "limbs parallel, we stood so long." Without that concrete image of two people literally standing next to each other, shoulder to shoulder, facing some kind of uncertain future, the listener is lost in a moment that is only clear to the singer. Most breakup albums are clouded with too many pronouns and too few antecedents. Great as Sea Change is, it feels almost too personal, too insular to the singer himself. But the best breakup records invite you into the fold. Dylan positions you directly between his wife and him on "Idiot Wind." You can feel the insults whizzing by your ears. Likewise, Legrand keeps the listener as close to the action as possible. This is maybe why the album seems more cinematic than confessional.

Frequently we think of great albums as game changers. These are your mind blowers, your critic silencers. These albums steer the aesthetic of a generation of musicians. These albums show you what can be done in popular music, they show you that the world is a wider place than you once imagined. Albums like Person Pitch or Kid A or Stankonia or Drum's Not Dead or The Cold Vein are quintessential game changers.

Teen Dream isn't a game changer. However, is the first masterpiece of the decade. Masterpieces don't reveal new terrain; they survey and map familiar territory in more detail than before. What sounds like pleasantly sedate dinner party music is actually an extended meditation on the lures and snares of love that is as soothing as it is unnerving. These 10 songs give voice to our gravest doubts and most beguiling contradictions in affairs of the heart.

Rating: 9/10

Spoon - Transference

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Tonight, as I rode home on the bus, I watched a guy play football on his Nintendo DS. Admittedly, it was kind of creepy, but I couldn't stop watching because he was absolutely killing the computer opponent. Every time he had possession, he would score and convert the two extra points. And every time the computer had possession, he would force a fumble or pick off a pass. Turnovers literally on every computer possession. I did see a pretty nice safety, too. I watched the first two quarters of the game. At the half, this guy was up 80 - 0. I'm not kidding. That was the gaudy score that flashed on his screen before it cut to some animated cheerleaders. 80 - 0. I kept wondering how this guy could derive any pleasure playing a game that he had clearly mastered.

Spoon is the guy on the bus running up the score. They will never record a bad album. They will also never record a masterpiece. (Likewise, the guy on the bus will always have a good game; he'll just never play a nail-bitter.) Much as I really do like the band, I will never get worked up for the release of a new album. I was excited to listen to the new album, Transference, on NPR. But the fact of the matter is that Spoon is merely a very good band.

They have become so adept at their brand of white boy soul that they appear almost joyless at times. While I thoroughly enjoy so many of their Spoon formula songs, I find myself attracted to the moments when they seem to challenge themselves. Think about the one or two formal experiments that they allow themselves per album: "Stay Don't Go," "Paper Tiger," "Was It You?" "The Ghost of You Lingers." These are previews of what Spoon could but will never be as a band. They will never record a full album of songs that push them as a band, even as Spoon itself. And, of course, the best moment on Transference is the experimental piece, "Who Makes Your Money." Over a repeated organ chord and the metronomic snap of a snare, Britt Daniel's voice sounds exhausted. But when the woozy chorus hits, with its titular question, he allows himself to improvise his soul man spasms. The details of the song are great: the bass rides low, throbbing darkly underneath that organ, a shaker fills out the song's rangy dynamics. What's so surprising about the song is how comfortable the band sounds in this space. They could push themselves like this more often, but I think they'd rather just opt for the play that will always end in a touchdown.

Last I checked, by the way, the score was 112 - 0 and Transference is good. Shame really.

Rating: 7/10

Yeasayer - Odd Blood

In the past 24 hours or so I've learned a very hard lesson about Yeasayer. They will probably always and forever be a disappointment to me. The root of this frustration is easy to finger but harder to justify. Basically, Yeasayer aren't the band that I want them to be.

Now, I understand that that's all kinds of unfair. You listen to bands as they are, not as they should be. But what about wanting bands to be all that they could be? That logic suggests that Yeasayer is making decisions that actively squander their limitless talent.

Exactly.

Yeasayer knows how to write patchouli-scented anthems ("Red Cave" and "2080") for hippie communes. This is the band who wrote 'Tightrope," which was arguably the best song on Dark was the Night (which an unstoppable Voltron of indie rock greatness). I suspect, perhaps unfairly, that Yeasayer could write songs like these all day long but, for whatever reason, they're choosing to write MOR indie pop. The fact of the matter is that Odd Blood contains almost nothing that made the band promising on All Hours Cymbals.

The album begins with the tuneless clunker "The Children." Chris Keating's unique voice is given the AutoTune treatment for no ostensible reason. And most of the rest of it doesn't get much better than the opener. Both "Mondegreen" and "Rome" are unsalvageable messes of half-baked ideas that are frankly embarrassing. "Madder Rose" might be the worst offender: it's getting continuous play on a new age/adult contemporary station in a Walgreen's in Sedona, AZ. The endlessly ascending melodies of Yeasayer grow tiresome very quickly. Everything can't be so reverential or glorious. "I Remember" swells and burst with the gas of its own earnestness.

So, what works? "Grizelda" bears the weight of a few listens, although its medieval referent is a morality tale about wifely submissiveness. Elsewhere, "O.N.E." percolates with bubbling synthesizers and a dynamic backbeat. And Keating actually sounds more alive on this track: he's ecstatically bitter, singing "You don't move me anymore/And I'm glad that you don't/'Cause I can't take it anymore." The only real highlight here is the lead single, "Ambling Alp." This is the kind of song that made Yeasayer so initially promising. It's a glorious pep talk ("Stick up for yourself, son!") that takes Joe Louis' career (especially his fights against Max Schmeling and Primo Carnera) as a point of literal inspiration.

This is a crushingly disappointing album, especially considering that Yeasayer participated in my absolute favorite episode of La Blogotheque's Take Away Show. The band (and about a dozen friends) was at the height of their promise, singing "2080" and "Tightrope." Watch the amazing performance right now:



Rating: 4/10

Blastoids!

mp3: Blastoids "Morning Light"
mp3: Blastoids "Kenny Winker"

The above photo is funny, of course, but it's very misleading. These guys sound nothing like Vice Magazine interns vomiting impressive jets of watery glitter. I was taken aback when I came across the photo on their myspace page while listening to their (FREE!) debut album. From as near as I can tell, they don't make music so much as unleash a cascade of blissed out synthizers and heavily treated vocals. The album, which is impressively produced, is a wonder; a free debut from an unknown band that is already a fully formed entity. "Morning Light," the opening track to Kids Hands Smell Like Glitter, is a gnashing sonic hydra: trance-like synths, four-on-the-floor bass, expressionistic cymbals crashes, chanting voices puntuated by a desparate yell off screen. The song feels both light at heavy in equal measure, delicate and strong at the same time. It's a beguiling opening to an album that offers lots more surprises. The demented Nintendo punk of "Trout Dick," only sounds more horrifying because its next door neighbor is the gauzy and frankly pretty "Mommydaddy." The sad boy dynamics of "For What It's Worth" are more effective because of some very nice percussion work. And the album's highlight is the closing few minutes of "Kenny Winker" (yes, this guy from those great Brad Neely cartoons). All the vocals get washed out in a rush of synthesizers that borders on electronic ecstasy.

Some big boys on the internet weblogs are talking about Blastoids, so these gentlemen from Murfreesboro, TN are (hopefully) about to generate some heat. Make sure you get in on the groundfloor.

Rating: 7/10

Alex Bleeker and the Freaks

mp3: Alex Bleeker and the Freaks "Animal Tracks"


Between introducing Real Estate to an unsuspecting and unprepared world and laying out a (cheap!) compilation worth both owning and listening to, Underwater Peoples had a better 2009 than you did. Of course, your house was foreclosed upon, you lost faith in your president, the war that you initially supported is now a total drag, and you probably also lost your job. You didn't stand much of a chance against a small start-up label from New Jersey. See those dudes in the pool (the bearded one is Alex Bleeker)? I'm willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that the UP dudes spent most 2009 horsing around in the pool because, for them, it was a never-ending July BBQ for the past 12 months. And in late November UP released their first full length as a label, Alex Bleeker and the Freaks debut.

I've outgrown the guitar solo. I can still worked up over J Mascis' noodling, sure, but by and large I'm more interested in guitars making weird sounds these days. Every now and then, though, someone flings out a solo that catches the ear of the 16 year old that still lives in my brain. So when Alex Bleeker flips on his wah-wah pedal for the exhilirating closing minute of "Prisoner of the Past" I'm back again hanging on every note while my algebra textbook sits open on my desk. I haven't gushed over the pure tonal qualities of a guitar since probably . . . I don't know . . . Cryptograms.

The most immediately attractive song is "Animal Tracks." The solo that begins the song is straight out of the Neil Young playbook: a corn-fed solo that manages to be lean but muscular. It took about 8 spins before I listened closely enough to see that it's actually a romantic little number about sitting on the back porch with a girl, whispering into each other's hair, drinking horsebark (?) root beer. Again, this was always Neil Young's trick, too. "Cowgirl in the Sand" is, after all, just the most massive pick up you've ever heard. In fact, Young (especially around Everybody Knows This is Nowhere) seems to be a sort of spiritual leader of the band; he guides a lot of the aesthetic of the album. It sounds indescribably country without employing any real honky tonk. It's sentimental without being sticky or nostalgic. It's brawny without being overpowering. You get the the sense that "Running Dry" has soundtracked a lot of the bands pre-rehersal meetings.

The best moment they have as a band is the album's opener, "Summer > Epilogue." After a lengthy solo that inaugurates the dozen or so throughout the album, the song quickly shifts gear, moving in big bright open chords that belie Bleeker's woeful lyrics ("Our bodies drifted further along parallel lines"). Once his heart seems sufficiently broken, Bleeker picks up his guitar, lets the feedback swell, and carries on with life by squeezing out another solo.

You can pick up a copy of the album here. Act quickly because only 1,000 were pressed.

Rating: 7/10

Surfer Blood - Astro Coast

Surfer Blood - Astro Coast (Kanine)

mp3: Surfer Blood "Floating Vibes"



Do you remember Tapes n Tapes? Remember, they were that charming little engine that could from Minneapolis. When was the last time you listened to Loons? It's been some time, hasn't it? While TnT were a perfectly fine band (who I bet sounded epically awesome in the Bryant Lake Bowl), they were not a band that was ready to release an album to be scrutinized on the national level. They needed to log some more time in the trenches, focus their disparate energies a bit more, and then record a solid B+ of an album.

Surfer Blood is in this exact same position right now. They have all the potential to be an excellent band, but this is not the album that should be garnering all the praise. At the end of the day, the parts are greater than the sum. As an album, Astro Coast is directionless, lacking even the slightest sense of cohesiveness. However, this little mess of an album is built from quite a few gems.

While "Swim (To Reach the End)," is a reverby blast of pop, "Slow Jabroni" (yeah, that's an Iron Sheik reference) carefully builds its fuzzy argument before it takes off into its loud/gentle pleas to "take it easy on me." "Neighbour Riffs" threatens to confirm some ill-conceived notion that Surfer Blood are making any kind of neo-surf music (leave that to this promising start up). The song is a wonderful 2 minutes of whirlwind, but it only gives the band one more reference point in an album otherwise stuffed with clear references. The high point of the album, though, is "Harmonix." Despite the fact that it sounds remarkably like the opening to Sonic Youth's "Do You Believe in Rapture?" the song shifts and flexes with surprising agility. John Paul Pitts' vocals are at their most versitile and exciting here, swinging from his flat talky verses to the falsetto touched choruses. It's also the most emotionally complex song on a record that is hard to center around any concrete sentiments. I guess "Swim" is channeling some kind of triump (it sure is uplifting enough), but other songs don't have any clear emotional resonence. "Harmonix," though, is at once resentful and whistful, angry and self-reproaching. It's a complex emotional stew to serve your listener, but the band digs the ladel deep enough.

In a few years Surfer Blood will be able to consistently write songs like "Harmonix," but they haven't arrived there yet.

Rating: 6.5/10