All I can say is wow, this is bizarre. Antony, normally known for his stellar choice of arrangements and compositions, in a laspe of judgment decided to cover Beyonce’s “Crazy in Love”. I first heard this on his most recent show in NYC covered by pitchfork.tv and NPR and I was a little confused. You can decide for yourself:
Seriously, can someone make Marissa Nadler famous immediately? It’s a shame that she keeps popping up on “Awesome New Acts!” posts from across the blogosphere – hell even NPR who is normally above the curve just featured her on their second stage show which is normally reserved for unknown singers and bands. I guess it’s not all bad as NPR broke acts like Sufjan Stevens and Regina Spektor early in their career, but still…
I feel like the adjective “haunting” gets thrown out a little bit too much these days when describing vocals, but Nadler is pretty much the definition of the word. Although classified as “dream folk”, Nadler’s voice is more likely to be a soundtrack to a suspenseful nightmare than one filled with fluffy rabbits and candy houses. Pitchfork hits the nail on the head with their review of Ballads of Living and Dying by describing her has having “the sort of voice that you’d follow straight to Hades.” It’s difficult to pin point where the chilling feeling comes from when listening to anyone of Nadler’s albums. The tinge of vocal reverb, the casual shifts to minor keys, the dark undertones of her lyrics can all plead guilty at one time or another, but it’s the combination of these attributes with other indescribable unknowns that make up a typical Nadler song.
Her fourth LP Little Hells is arguably her best work to date for the 27 year old Bostonian. Released just a week ago, I’ve only had time now to digest it completely although I had already rendered my conclusion after the first listen: it’s amazing. From the opener “Heart Paper Love” to the closing track “Mistress”, there is not a throwaway song in the whole album.
The most troubling thing about Little Hells is the difficulty in deciding on which tracks are your most favorite. “The Whole is Wide” features Nadler’s airy voice, split into three part harmony, with only a bouncy repetitious piano line serving more as a metronome than accompaniment. This minimal instrumentation showcases Nadler’s knack for lyricism with lines like “Flowers dried along time ago my friend // And their hanging on the wall with wax and thread // When you were young, did you think it would ever end” where each line seem to float into each other. A critics favorite, “River of Dirt” has fuller instrumentation featuring a driving drum beat which doesn’t let the song sag to slow. I think I could listen to the lines “El Camino take me home” and “Back to the river of the dirt and fire” for a full 24 hours straight without any complaints. Not veering too much from the formula of past albums, “Rosary” contains a more traditional Nadler feel to it by sticking to a ¾ waltz beat and atmospheric chorus that can only be called angelic if it wasn’t so blasted creepy.
If you haven’t noticed, this album is pretty damn spectacular that should/will make some yearend lists. Although 2008 proved to be a pretty good year for music, this year might eclipse it by the end of March!
Yes, you heard correctly. After a mixed review of Young Jeezy’s drug dealing metaphor-filled album, the threesome of seniors tackle Animal Collective’s brilliant “My Girls”. Unfortunately, the elderly don’t feel the same way about the song as us whipper snappers but their review is hilarious nonetheless.
Courtesy of GvsB via Collected Animals
Sara Lov is a singer/songwriter and member of the “on hiatus” LA group The Devics. I haven’t gotten a chance to listen to her 2008 solo EP The Young Eyes yet, but I did come across a cover she did of Arcade Fire’s “My Body is a Cage” that is absolutely killer. More straightforward than the original with tempo (no interminable organ fermatas here), Lov is still able to keep the mystery with an ominous piano line and a smoky voice.
Sara Lov // My Body is a Cage (Arcade Fire Cover)
Evidently this is one of several covers that Lov has done recently. In fact, on her myspace page she is letting fans request songs for her to do that she’ll put together into a video cover series. Her most recent song is “Kissing Families” by the Silversun Pickups:
The four years since Sufjan Stevens released his breathtakingly beautiful Illinois has seemed more like an eternity. Sure we’ve had the collection of discarded tracks from the Illinois session compiled together and put out as the 2006 The Avalanche release, but there have only been a trickle of new material since. After releasing “You Are the Blood”, a ten minute masterfully crafted electronic folk track which served as the most stellar song on the dense Dark Was the Night compilation, the fervor for a new LP from Mr. Stevens has reached critical mass.
At his current pace of output, Stevens is set to complete the “Fifty States” project at the rip age of 175, which if you’re Methuselah is OK, but if you’re a normal human being it’s another story. I’m not implying that he should rush material out that he’s not satisfied with, but after hearing “You Are the Blood” you can’t help but think he’s sitting on a gold mind of talent that the public deserves to get to listen to a little more regularly.
In the hunt to fill my Stevens addition, I’ve come across some oddball recordings he has made within the past nine years. “Lakes of Canada” is a live solo acoustic performance at Judson College made in 2003 – a couple of months after the release of Michigan. “I Can’t Even Lift My Head” and “Woman at the Well” are both from label compilations (a 2001 Asthmatic Kitty and a 2000 Blue Bunny Records release respectively). Rounding out some of Steven’s older stuff I was able to find is a cover of R.E.M.’s “This One I Love” recorded at a SXSW appearance in 2004. Enjoy!
Sufjan Stevens // Lakes of Canada
Sufjan Stevens // I Can’t Even Lift My Head
Have you heard of that cool new band Crystal Castles? They’re crazy, right? With all the bloops ‘n bleeps going on everywhere and that girl who can sing but rather would yell – yeah they’re great! Wait what, there is another band like that from France that came on the scene a couple of years back? You’re joking right…
No. Kap Bambino, otherwise known as the “sound like Crystal Castles” option from every music recommendation site, has the popularity of, according to last.fm, 1/40th of their successors but packs just as much of a punch with their music. Creating the formula of electro-pulsating beats with fluttery Nintendo style noises appearing and disappearing, electronic artist Orion Bouvier is the heart of this two-person group – providing consistent high energy dance music with every track. Right before careening off a cliff with ultra-driving beats and densely layered noisy elements, Bouvier always seems to come back from the brink by interjecting brief interludes of normalcy before diving head first right back into the craziness.
On the contrary, the vocals by Caroline Martial are relentless with its auditory assault. Robotically pitched at times, looped and distorted often, and always wild, Martial reminds me of an Alice Glass hyped up on Carleton’s speed. Imagine if the vocals off of “Xxzxcuzx Me” from Crystal Castles self-title LP was played throughout the entire album, then you would have more of an idea of what Martial puts you through.
No doubt Kap Bamimbo is one of the most taxing bands out there to listen and aren’t meant for the weak. However, by possessing this seemingly endless amount of energy, they are certainly an act you don’t want to miss!
With a name more like a jumbled up collection of scrabble letters, it isn’t surprising that Anja Garbarek hails from Norway. In a place slowly becoming the “new Sweden” when it comes to excellent music acts, Anja Garbarek is smack dab in the center of it all making some of the most interesting songs I’ve heard in a while. Although categorized on Wikipedia as “jazz, electronic, and experimental”, her most recent stuff, the brilliant 2006 LP Briefly Shaking, is more Animal Collective-esque in its inability to be described.
Partly responsible for this is Garbarek’s Schizophrenic nature when it comes to developing a song’s structure—a testament to her experimental tendencies. The heart of the album and an NPR Song of the Day, “Sleep” begins as a slow ballad composed of only Garbarek’s megaphoned vocals and a scratchy bass line reminiscent of the driving force behind Radiohead’s “Idioteque”. However after about two minutes of this, the song abruptly morphs into a full-fledged orchestral overture with strings carrying the melody for the last sixty seconds in a very traditional pop song. In a similar fashion, the two opening tracks “Born That Way” and “Dizzy With Wonder” seamlessly transition into each other and essentially serve as one piece. Starting off, “Born That Way” sounds like a song off a Disney animated musical before transforming into the more mysterious “Dizzy” which moves along in the cover of darkness with the aid of a slinking bass line and trashcan slamming percussion.
However, not all songs are as adventurous, providing a much needed relief to the always demanding experimental tracks. “The Last Trick” and “Shock Activities” sandwich “Sleep” with more standard happy-go-lucky pop melodies which sounds cheerful enough until a darker element is exposed through the lyrics. “I get up and start crawling // into the same // over and over and over again” is uttered on “Last Trick” depicting a more hopeless feeling than what the chipper stringed waltz provides. Regardles, even these songs aren’t immune to hiccups of random noises generated mostly from brief injections of chaotic keyboard. The only “pure” sounding song comes in the form of a piano accompanied one-minute ballad entitled “Yes”.
In an time when Scandinavia pop music is taking over the world with acts like Robyn, Lykke Li, and Peter Bjorn and John, Anja Garbarek is a refreshing new take on a genre with an already diverse collection of artists and styles from the region. A must listen type album that I certainly can’t get enough of.
So my last Mountain Goats post got me listening to more songs from their insanely large discography. For my latest Llano Idea post, I discussed the 2002 album All Hail West Texas and how I think it’s one of John Darnielle’s best works. Here is an excerpt from the full article which you can find here:
The works of lead-singer and founder John Darnielle is about as dense as his legend. Starting from scratch in 1991 with just an acoustic guitar, a boombox to record into, and a car to tour to “exotic” destinations like Ohio, Darnielle has been able to amass a rabid fan base and a discography that can only be described as Dylan-esque. A turning point in a career chalk full of them, All Hail West Texas marks the last album recorded on Darnielle’s Panasonic RX-FT500 boombox – a style which probably originated from financial rather than stylistic reasons. Lo-fi even for lo-fi production standards, Darnielle’s extreme minimalist approach to making music is definitely a put-off for audiophiles who listen to nothing but FLAC files wired with Monster Cables through their high fidelity speakers. Equipped with only an acoustic guitar and a sole percussion loop on “Blues in Dallas”, the static of the homemade recordings further emphasize the intimate setting the sparse instrumentation helps create.
At the heart of Darnielle’s music has always been his lyricism, something that naturally happens when you strip down all other parts to a song. More aptly described as a collection of short stories than an album, All Hail West Texas opens with one of Darnielle’s better tales. “The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton” takes a seemingly lighthearted tone with the metal band in question having “never settled on a name // but the top three contenders after weeks of debate // were Satan’s Fingers, and The Killers, and the Hospital Bombers”, but Darnielle is a master at finding a deeper meaning even through the most ordinary of settings – highlighting society’s ability to crush dreams with no remorse.
If it wasn’t for those always working people up at Brooklyn Vegan, I would never had known that Efterklang, one of my favorite Danish bands, was going to make it down to Austin for a handful of dates at SXSW. Last time I checked everyone’s favorite folktronic matadors weren’t on the mega-bill for the festival, but I guess organizers are adding dozens of bands every minute – great news for everyone that’s going.
I caught Efterklang live once when they opened for The National at their second night in Copenhagen and was absolutely entranced by their live set. With a concert line-up that pushes ten members and instrumentation that include flute, horns, and yes, even saw, Efterklang certainly displayed their capacity to create beautifully textured music. The best part of the group’s stage performance however wasn’t the breadth of the odd-ball instruments but their choral arrangements that put front-in-center the beauty of the group’s harmonized whispery voices.
On tracks like “Collecting Shields” (off of their 2004 LP Tripper), the strange combination of electro-pulsed beats in the mid section and soft vocals from the male/female duet offer an interesting and original combination. Putting you more in a Buddhist meditative state than hyped-up energetic mood, tracks like “Frida Found a Friend” and “Mirador” off of their most recent LP Parades does everything that you would expect from a band which, in English, means both remembrance and reverberation.
Most songs are created in a similar vein that will definitely serve as an excellent counter to all those noise-punk bands being showcased at the festival. Calm, soothing, and peaceful would all be appropriate adjectives when describing Efterklang’s music – something that will certainly be unique at the always bustling and bombastic SXSW. So if you are in need of taking an hour to catch your breath, you can check them out on March 19th at 11:00pm at the Habana Bar. No other “official” performances are scheduled, but they will be around Austin for most of the festival so keep your eyes peeled!
Review: 8.0
After listening through the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ LP It’s Blitz, I feel like I am no more equipped to right a review than when I first heard their single “Zero” after it broke onto the scene a couple of weeks back. When asked whether or not I like the album, I think this is one of the few instances where a response of “it’s different” is probably the most appropriate answer.
No doubt, a lot of attention on the new album will be placed on Zinner’s new found love for synthesizers and electronic elements – preferring tinkering with dials in lieu of his trademarked thrashing guitar style – and will be solely credited with the bands failures or successes (depending on how you look at the album). After “Zero” was released, most critics reveled in the YYY’s ability to make rock-out dance music. However, once the next track “Heads Will Roll” leaked and it seemed that indeed the entire album would be made in the same electronic manner, the critics started backing away from their initial accolades citing reasons as their uneasiness with the group plunging headfirst into electronic while leaving guitar lines at the chopping block.
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