The Antlers - Hospice

Put this in a box with Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver, Iron & Wine, maybe your Grizzly Bear. These slow, contemplative, pulsing, ambient, echoing tracks are made for rainy days and dark nights of the soul. Haunting vibrato, long fermatas - there is some clear reference to Radiohead in here as songs bounce from soft and brooding to hard and fast. Let's be clear - this album is not named Hospice by accident. Songs are about illness, death, not exactly happy topics, and the music matches the prevailing sentiment. That said, it's extremely provocative emotionally and musically - you occasionally hear those albums that physically tug on your heart strings and this one definitely slips right into that arsenal. They remind me a lot of Broken Social Scene in the best possible way - big full sounds, evocative lyrics, you can hear the heart in the record.

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Late Night Drinkin' Music - "Loan Me A Dime"

         Feeling the urge to put on a good late night drunk, but just can’t decide on the perfect musical accompaniment?  In a “Best Songs” special issue of the UK magazine Q, the editors offered Jeff Buckley’s “Last Goodbye” as the best song “for being alone at 2 AM with a bottle of red wine.”  If you aren’t feeling that brokenhearted and prefer, say, bourbon as your drink of choice, try “Loan Me A Dime” from Boz Scaggs’s eponymous debut.  (Note: This song does not sound like the softy rock “Lowdown,” “Lido Shuffle,” or “Harbor Lights".  None of ‘em.  I promise.)  This epic down-on-your-lady-luck blues cover validates your besotted melancholy with forlorn organs and a plodding beat, but then swings you out of the dumps with the rhythmic flex of the Muscle Shoals session players and Duane Allman’s screaming guitar.  Unlike most songs that last over ten minutes, this one also plays pretty well to the late-night crowd in your favorite dive bar.  

        The original by Chicago Blues guitarist Fenton Robinson is equally great (and much shorter) in its own right. It’s got some killer drumming and Robinson’s voice blows Boz’s out of the water.

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No One's First and You're Next

My personal feelings about Modest Mouse have, um, evolved over the years. From full-blown obsession to nostalgic afterthought, I will always have a soft spot for this band. When lead singer Isaac Brock is at his best, few are better. Their latest album is actually a collection of B sides, singles, archives etc. Most have been released previously, but they are compiled here. As with Everywhere and His Nasty Parlor Tricks and Building Nothing out of Something, these B sides are naturally pretty scattershot and that translates into some album ADD. I still maintain Everywhere and His Nasty Parlor Tricks is some of the best 40 minutes on record, but this one is more clearly a compilation of left overs.

The first track, Satellite Skin, is straight from the We Were Dead era of bigger, slicker sound/production and layered harmonies. Radio-friendly and a little more market savvy, it's good but it's hardly where Modest Mouse began. But there are some throwbacks on here - namely Guilty Cocker Spaniels and the Whale Song with some serious meandering guitar and Brock's notorious lyricism. They get back to some of those southern, countrified tunes as well (see: Perpetual Motion Machine). All in all, it's a solid effort from a solid band, but not a standout. If you're a fan, there are a few that are surely worth hanging onto. For people who simply don't care, this probably won't change your mind.



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Aaron Neville with Allen Toussaint - "Hercules"

Brandon's post in late July got me listening to a lot of Allen Toussaint, so I thought I'd post one of my favorite Allen Toussaint produced songs, Aaron Neville's "Hercules".  ("Last Train", which a commenter so rightly highlighted, is a close second.  Oh and all of Rock of Ages by the Band; Toussaint did the horn arrangements.)  Aaron Neville is on his A game here - he floats out the falsetto (you know: the touuuchh, the feeeel of cawwwtonnnn) when the music calls for it, but otherwise reigns in his voice for some cool and clipped wisdom about the feats needed to survive in a hostile, mixed-up modern world.  Neville is great, but Toussaint's mellow production steals the show.  The bass line is downright infectious, and the way Toussaint folds in swelling horns, cool jazz guitar, timbales fills, and piano harmonies is masterful.  Wait for the point around 2:30 with just drums and rhythm guitar; so good.  Street life is hard, but Neville and Toussaint know how much it helps if you can just keep it funky. 

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Washed Out will hyperextend your summer

Being 24 years old, Ernest Greene aka Washed Out's autobiography is pretty short, and would probably go something like this:

Hi, I'm one of the hottest musicians in the world right now, and my name is goddamn Ernest. I've spent my whole life in South Carolina and Georgia, living mostly on my parents' peach farm. I have a makeshift studio in the attic where I started making music a few months ago with virtually no training, experience, or money. My style, a dumbfounding combination of Californian pop, Italian disco, and John Hughes films, is basically Coppertone in sonic form and you really have no choice but to become obsessed with it. Other things about me that kick ass: I only release my records on cassette, my band name so perfectly mirrors the aesthetic of my music that all other descriptions fail in comparison, and I have a new album, by which I mean tape, coming out in a week. Did I mention I spent my entire life in rural Georgia?





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Numero Group

This post is really more informational than anything I think. In 2003, a couple of buddies got together and founded a record label - and I don't mean a recording label, I mean a record label. They started digging up old 45s and lost soul records and compiling them into new LPs. The result is Numero Group, a small, independent label with a terrific collection of old records. The first, linked below, is a new LP set drawn from the local, original recordings of Columbus-based Capital City Soul record company, founded by Mr. Bill Moss. Numero Group has since compiled dozens more LPs based around similar local record labels from back in the day. Excellent compilations of singles you would likely otherwise never get a chance to hear.

The guys who run this label are serious music nerds. Their business plan was essentially to cater to folks who like the idea of digging through record crates and discovering old gems, but don't actually enjoy the practical reality. So it's small, it's niche, but it's for all those folks who like good, soulful music, regardless of where it came from. These tracks are worn, raw, a little unfinished, and extremely fun to listen to - they call it "eccentric soul."

I'm not going to post any of the songs for download because I like these guys and I like what they're about, so I encourage you to actually pay for it. They're available on iTunes, or you can get a double LP for about $20.

Here's a taste - check out the second track by Marion Black. Their myspace page is pretty entertaining as well.

Mayer Hawthorne will kill you softly

If the barbershop quartet didn't tip you off, I'll just come out and say it: Mayer Hawthorne is almost completely unoriginal. His voice is a whiteboy version of Smokey Robinson's, his songs are straight out of the Motown playbook, and his lyrics consist mainly of the word "girl" with various verbs around it.

As anybody who's listened to Blueprint 3 knows, though, originality is overrated. Particularly when you're trafficking in 60's soul, whose template for success is as narrow and exacting as it is fucking perfect. The genius of Mayer is that he doesn't so much push this old template forward as nudge it a few inches over - the drums a little louder, the falsetto a little smoother. The songs, too, never stray too far from the Sam Cooke/Marvin Gaye 3 minute blueprint, where there's nothing extra, and no second is wasted. And some of them, like "Just Ain't Gonna Work Out" and "Make Her Mine", are actually brilliant in their own ways, managing to add to the deep soul canon rather than just borrow from it. Chalk Mayer up with groups like Menahan St. Band and El Michels Affair as dudes who get the throwback-to-the-future steez correct. And if you don't believe that, believe this: your girlfriend will love it.

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Are you having a laugh? Is he having a laugh?

The title refers to the choice catchphrase of the show-within-the-show on Ricky Gervais' HBO sitcom Extras, with which I am completely obsessed. Its closing credits song (covered by Chris Martin in one of the most brilliant television cameos of all time) is the title track to this Cat Stevens record. I've always been a big fan of the album. Harold and Maude, which you might recognize as the movie that both Mary and Ted agree is the "greatest love story of our time," used several tracks from Tea for the Tillerman in its score.

For the most part, the album stands by itself. Each song flows into the next one. Although it's a fairly prototypical pop/folk record, not quite what I'd call "unique" in any sense, its wisdom lies in its simplicity. It's the album that made Cat Stevens, aka Yusuf Islam (See "A is for Allah" if you're unsure of the quickest way to ruin your career) a household name in America, mostly on the strength of the single "Wild World." Released in November of 1970, the album was ranked #206 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. "Father and Son" is truly a touching tune.

What Stevens lacks in wit is more than made up for with hauntingly pristine vocal melodies, carefully orchestrated guitar layering and the kind of delicate vocal sap unseen absent Paul McCartney. Enjoy. And go watch Extras.

YACHT - See Mystery Lights

YACHT - Psychic City (Voodoo City) from Jona Bechtolt on Vimeo.

After learning that the main creative talent of YACHT is a founding member of the Blow, well you know I had to check this shit out. It sort of starts out where the Blow left off - half spoken-word, half Moldy Peaches and nursery rhymes - but somehow extremely charming and catchy. I just love how simple these songs sound, but once you really pay attention, you realize how layered and intricate they are - the initial appeal is the simplicity and then they sort of draw you in slowly on each song to something far more complex. It moves quickly into something more ambitious, adding some fucking sweet loops to poppy, catchy tracks and throwing all kinds of synth and abstraction over some very maudlin singing. Knowing where Bechtolt began makes some of these dancy, discoed out, edgy electronic songs extremely surprising, and perhaps even more awesome. Because people who brood like to dance too apparently.

Quick post-script - saw them in Chicago a couple nights ago. Killer live show. Again, like the Blow, verging on performance art with audience banter, a very personalized power-point presentation/interactive video. But for a small gig, very high energy and extremely fun. Highly recommended.


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Chum Onah - A Michael Jackson Tribute

It's been a surprising display of collective good taste that the amount of post-mortem MJ covers has been kept to a minimum. What him and Quincy put together is just unfuckable-with to a degree not even the Beatles attained. As long as there is still a habitable earth 100 years from now, "Billie Jean" will still be getting played somewhere every Friday and Saturday night and people will still freak when it comes on. I don't even need to convince you of this fact, it's something we all know together. That's what MJ means.

But let's put that aside for a second and engage in a quick thought experiment: what if you had to put together an MJ tribute album? What would it sound like? Well, for one thing, there's no beating Quincy at his own game, so you'd have to forget about topping his glossy production. You'd also want to engage artists from a whole bunch of different genres, to underscore his impact on nearly every type of popular music. A lo-fi mishmash, ideally - capturing the blissful essence of MJ's songs, but in a way that brings their monumental status down to size.

So good news: the bloggers over at BUTTERxFACE have done exactly that, assembling 12 lo-fi luminaries to deconstruct some of the world's best known compositions. The crystal clarity of the originals is swapped for smooth patina, the loss of precision resulting in an underlying warmth. When the songs works best, as on Toro y Moi's "Human Nature" and Family Portrait's "Will You Be There", they seem less like Important Pop Music Covers and much more like a version of a seemingly eternal song, like an "Amazing Grace", one that's sung around campfires by memory and has no discernable birth or death or beginning or end. As they should be.





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Oldie But a Goodie

Say what you want about Uncle Jesse. He handled himself well when the Japanese teleprompter ran out, he made an Extreme-ly cheesy music video, he exploited his children to further his career, etc... The fact remains, the man had good taste in music and hence, of course, his love for the Beach Boys.

It's no secret that Pet Sounds is/was cited by Paul McCartney as the Beatles' inspiration for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. I will say no more about it except to say that if you don't own this album and you consider yourself a music fan, most critics (Lester Bangs included,) would be shocked and appalled.

Congrats to the Bangers. Hopefully the new site traffic isn't too pissed off by this obvious of a classic album choice...

Black Math Horseman - "Wyllt"

With their first album “Wyllt”, slow-burners Black Math Horseman provide a brooding and cathartic addition to the doom metal/post-metal landscape. A big part of stoner rock and doom metal’s appeal is, of course, the almighty monolithic riff. BMH don’t ride out monstrously fuzzy riffs like Kyuss or Melvins, but the album boasts its fair share of nasty, wall-shaking, low-register guitar work (see “Deerslayer and “Origin of Savagery”). While it would be easy for these powerful musicians to riff first and ask questions later, BMH set themselves apart with really deliberate songwriting and production. “Wyllt” is meticulously constructed in terms of song structure, dynamic shifts, and orchestration. Restrained and razor-sharp guitars peel off doubled guitar-bass lines and float above singer Sera Timms' entranced vocals; drum fills are well-placed and never feel extraneous. These layered atmospherics (which recall Mouth of the Architect) are complemented by a tight and unyielding rhythm section (the first lines of “Tyrant” follow a drum-and-bass mind-meld that immediately evokes Al Cisneros and Chris Haikus from meditative doom grandmasters Om) that shifts from background groove to primary pummel to great effect in the songs’ rumbling crescendos. The vocals are generally ambient and monotone, but pair well with the lead guitar’s lilting eighth-note agitations. (To be completely honest, I can’t understand many of the lyrics, but they sure sound creepy).

All of these components come together to make some darkly satisfying rock music, but some of the tracks would benefit from a little less control and a little more raucous abandon. When Timms finally looses her throaty wail on the final track “Bird of All Faiths and None/Bell from Madrone”, it sounds singularly gnarly, operating as an explosive conclusion to the preceding tracks’ dark, controlled build-ups. Despite any slight shortcomings, this is consistently compelling heavy music – by turns, mysteriously slinky and impressively forceful. (If you don’t listen to the album in its entirety, try “Deerslayer” and the portentous “Torment of the Metals” which sounds like the musical equivalent of saying, “Enemies whom I am pursuing slowly but surely, pee thy pants in fear of my calculated rage during the next seven minutes and four seconds.”)

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The Temper Trap - Conditions

The latest from Australia is a band called Temper Trap. I found them because their song Sweet Disposition was in the movie (500) Days of Summer that I finally caught yesterday ( I recommend the movie -- not incredible, but an interesting angle that a lot of people might benefit from seeing. Also, screw Zooey Deschanel and her doe-eyed, pale-skinned, 1960s-haired self. She's dumb. And annoying. That is all).

Anyway, I could tell you a bit about their collabo with Jim Abbiss (of Arctic Monkeys & Sneaker Pimps fame), or I could tell you how different tracks remind me of Bloc Party, MGMT, Passion Pit, and (dare I say) Coldplay... OR you could just check it out for yourselves HERE

Delorean & Mount Kimbie: the new poptronica

The last decade has been one wild ride for techno. Remember trance? Remember Sasha & Digweed, Paul Oakenfold, or DJ Tiesto? Doesn't it seem like those guys should be dead by now? Seriously, thinking about the progression that took us from Fatboy Slim to Daft Punk to Girl Talk, it seems less like an evolution of a genre and more like electronica swallowing all of popular music whole. Bands like MGMT and Passion Pit only reinforce the point - synthesizers are taking over the world.

Delorean and Mount Kimbie's EPs are two of the more interesting explorations of these still-wild poptronica frontiers. A 4-piece out of Barcelona, Delorean combines the beat atmospherics of Cut Copy with the piano stabs and power chords of U2. I'm not quite as entranced by their Ayrton Senna EP as Pitchfork is, but at the same time there's no denying that "Seasun" is on some sweet "Chemical Brothers mate with Animal Collective" tip. This album is meant to be played at 80 mph with the sun out, and I'm really jealous of those of you who have the ability to do that.



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Mount Kimbie resides on the total opposite end of the musical spectrum, drawing much more from the genres of dubstep and postrock than anything overtly pop. A London-based duo, their single "Maybes" from the same-titled EP has been blowing up on the blogosphere for a few months now. Sparse and gritty yet retaining a gleaming, boisterous melody, it's an incredible balancing act that's one of the few really essential songs of the year. The rest of the album might be a little atmospheric/out there to merit repeat spins, but these guys will never fail to hold your attention.

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Tron Legacy

NO FUCKING WAY!!

Those were the words that immediately went through my head when I learned that not only are they making a sequel to one of my favorite childhood movies, Tron, but that Daft Punk will score the entire film. After listening to this little snippit, I suggest everyone go and check out the actual movie trailer for an awesome sneak peak.

Side note- Jeff Bridges is returning to play his old role, and looks as badass as ever.

Allen Toussaint

Even if you've never heard of the name, you've heard the music - think of a certain chocolate-themed deodorant commercial. Like Nick Drake and Volkswagen, my man Allen has been getting serious shine from his incidental inclusion in a TV ad. And for good reason - this album is a perfect snapshot of 70's New Orleans R&B. The rhythm here is incredible - every instrument popping with an organic snap that modern throwback bands just seem unable to recreate. And beyond that distinct voice, Toussaint was actually one hell of a pianist. The last 5 tracks of this are instrumental, and far more interesting to me than the pop songs that come ahead of them. This dude is funky elegance personified, and his laidback style should fit in perfectly with some lazy summer afternoons.





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The Who's on First

Pete Townshend, lead guitarist/principal songwriter for The Who, although not really known for his solo work apart from "Let My Love Open the Door," is actually fairly prolific in this regard. Who Came First, (get it?) was his first major label attempt at a solo record. It's definitely no Nebraska. It's got some fun, guitar-driven synth-rock on it, including "Pure and Easy" and "Let's See Action." Many of the songs on this album were going to be on Lifehouse, another of the Who's classic rock operas, abandoned in the 1970's and 1980's and eventually released in the last several years.

The album cover is kind of well known in its own weird way. I'm curious to know if any of you recognize it from something or other. None of these songs are really classic rock radio staples, with the lone exception being "The Seeker." An alternate demo version appears on the remastered + bonus version provided here. "Evolution" is the only song which Pete doesn't sing, with a guest appearance by Ronnie Lane from the Faces (Hot Rod Stewart's original band.)

Thoughts? Who's on First!

Bibio

Two sentence review: Boards of Canada disciple listens to Madlib, J Dilla, and Flying Lotus and likes what he hears. Using that stuttering urban glitch as a filter over his own pastoral folktronic sound, he produces an album as schizophrenic as it is refined, exploding with textures and flavors like I imagine a fine French wine does.





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New Iron & Wine, kind of

It's odd approaching a b-sides and rarities collection from a guy whose initial recording budget was approximately the cost of a fifth of Jack Daniels. It's not like Sam Beam had to find a place for all those house remixes he commissioned. So no, there's nothing revolutionary here - just music by dudes with beards for dudes with beards. But here's the thing that hits you somewhere along these 23 tracks - this outtakes collection is better than most of the regular albums you'll ever listen to.

The 2 CDs are split up between the whisper quiet strumming of the "Creek Drank The Cradle" years on the first and the more robust "Shepard's Dog" sound on the second. I think the second CD is much better than the first, but that's of course all about which side of Sam Beam you prefer. And although I wouldn't substitute most of these songs for their counterparts on I&W's proper albums, the unquestionable quality across the board serves to underline what a remarkable musician this one man is. Finally, the closing track "Trapeze Swinger", which is essentially a 9 minute repeated refrain, might be the best thing Sam Beam has ever done. Listen while stroking your beard, real or imagined:



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I also have a bit of blog news to share, check this out:
http://www.websiteoutlook.com/www.strictlybangers.blogspot.com

Estimated blog worth of $1380??? Not too shabby, friends and colleagues. Give it a few more months and we'll start talking IPO...

I've got a ton of new music I'm excited to get out there, so I'm going to try to post more often - roughly every other day - to try to keep up. Thanks for dropping by, and I hope you all keep tuning in.

RIP MJ

In honor of the late great (twisted and quite possibly pederast) Michael Jackson, I wanted to throw up a little known track. Manu Dibango's B-side single, "Soul Makossa," was considered by many to be among the first disco tracks to find its way into the mainstream. Named after the Cameroonian dance makossa, Dibango's single has a now familiar snappy backbeat. Dibango successfully sued Jackson for copyright violations on "Wanna Be Starting Something." The now infamous "Ma ma se ma ma sa ma ma coo sa," can be heard nearly verbatim on Dibango's song. Dibango is actually suing both Rihanna and Jackson for the same copyright violation on her recent single. Anyway, I'm always curious to hear influences and particularly afro-pop, so have a listen.