El Michels Affair - Enter the 37th Chamber

Alright, enough of the electrohippy nonsense, lets get back to hiphop. I've posted about El Michels Affair before here - they are an instrumental funk band from Brooklyn with a very laidback, Sean Connery-era Bond film kind of vibe. So, given that, an album of Wu Tang covers is a bit of a weird choice. If you are, like me, a Wu Tang enthusiast, I should tell you up front that the weirdness doesn't really go away...I wouldn't take one of these covers over the RZA originals they mean to imitate. That being said, the direction that the band takes the songs in approaches a similar level of badassitude.

Even though they are almost note-for-note copies of the original beats, the atmosphere is distinctly the band's own, turning the thump of "C.R.E.A.M." into a bluesy strut, or "Can It All Be So Simple" into a breezy jam that wouldn't be out of place in a Caribbean tourism video from the 60s. Ironically, this adaptation might actually make this collection better for people who've never heard the Wu before, and can just appreciate this as dope music. Whatever, I'm just waiting for some DJ to drop the acapellas over these so they'll feel whole again - get on it internet.





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Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest

Grizzly Bear - Two Weeks (official music video)
by WeeRezZ

It's nice to hear a band that isn't really trying to sound like something, which is what I get the sense of when I listen to this album. There are a ton of MGMT/Hot Chip wannabes running around and a thousand more Brooklyn indie bands doing their best Vampire Weekend with fast-paced guitar riffs and stripped down production. It's also extremely nice to hear a lead singer with an actual voice, though to be fair all the members of Grizzly Bear contribute to the excellent vocals on this album.

The singing gives a hint of the Smiths (lead singer is a pretty good ringer), the ethereal sounds and experimental instrumentation give you some Interpol mixed with some of the soul and dissonance of the Cure (at least in a few songs). Another nice surprise on this is the songs frequently don't end up where they began, and you often find yourself craning your neck at the end of a tune because it's gone somewhere you didn't expect at all. The album makes an interesting progression and by the end it's practically fully choral, nearly entirely stripped of instrumentation and you just about feel like you're in a church, finishing services.

Veckatimest

Empire Of The Sun

It seems like MGMT is going to be one of those bands, like Nirvana in 1991 or Air in 1998, that every other remotely similar band is going to be compared to. Kind of inevitable really, and it makes sense - the easiest way to describe just about every album this year is to use the formula MGMT + _____. Merriweather Post Pavilion? MGMT + sheets of acid and some African tribal recordings. Veckatimest? MGMT + Fleet Foxes and merry-go-round music. Give me long enough and I could probably connect the dots between MGMT and Rick Ross. It's fucking cake, really.

But that's exactly the problem, because we've now reached the point where MGMT take up way more space than they actually deserve to. Case in point: Empire of the Sun, who are a really good electropop duo from Australia. They happen to have a few songs that sound similar to something I could see MGMT doing. The rough equation would be something like MGMT + "Discovery"-era Daft Punk and The Cure at half-speed - in other words, a musical combination at least as interesting as MGMT themselves. Yes, they're clearly digging in the same 80s backyard, and yes, you could throw "We Are The People" on Oracular Spectacular and I probably wouldn't even notice. I'm alright with not all music being subjectively "new" - it just has to work. And though this rant has said nothing about the actual music they make, I think you'll agree that the Mediterrean-yacht cool that Empire of the Sun adds to the equation happens to work pretty well.

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The New Girl

Dancing Japanese-style:

http://www.myspace.com/fujiyaandmiyagi

Pharrell plus Lupe plus JUT-esque beats, all wrapped up in one East-African-born Virginian:
http://www.myspace.com/kenna

Radio radio radio:

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/radio/services/the_current/streams.shtml
http://www.radiodos.com/paginas/audio.php (strictly long-lost 90s tunes, Costa Rica-style)

My idea of what loungey would be if loungey were better than it is:

http://www.myspace.com/theavalanches

Really good dance mix from my DJ friend:

http://www.mediafire.com/?4eymtmi4wwd

What guys who wear skinny jeans, flannels, and keds dance to:
http://www.myspace.com/thevirginsnyc

Some of my favorite early 90s jams:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFAhwS-NeNo&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOKd_et0A4o&feature=related (this is my all-time favorite)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0tNO3QFoOE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBVlwRS6Nrc (not only is this one a total jam, but the video brings back the pop-up video)

"All I need is one mic."

Since I'm posting this, you gotta know this will have nothing to do with Nas. Rather, I'm referring to legendary songbird Paul Simon's debut LP The Paul Simon Songbook. The Songbook was recorded using only one mic. These are what most musicians today would call mere demo-tracks, released as a full length LP with the single "I am a Rock."

After "The Sounds of Silence" and subsequently The Graduate blew up, most of these songs were eventually re-recorded by Simon with that fuckface Art Garfunkel. (Note: that was a joke. I actually like Art and am fond of his work as an actor for Mike Nichols in both Catch 22 and Carnal Knowledge with a sexy Murphy Brown and creepy Jack Nicholson.)

This album is cool for its simplicity. Just a man and his guitar. On a few of the tunes, you could hear Paul Simon (who prior to this was going by the pseudonym Paul Kane <--can't imagine why that didn't catch on) tapping his foot in time to the tune.

A Simple Desultory Philippic (or How I Was Robert McNamara'd Into Submission) is one of my favorite songs ever. The song is Simon's tribute to/critique/satire of Bob "The Bard" Dylan. It's also, er...kind of a rap song, which brings us full circle to Mr. Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones himself.

Go forth and download.

Passion Pit

I won't try to play it cool - Passion Pit are a band from Boston that sound like the Frankenstein of most of my favorite bands stitched together. They've got the shouty/synthy edge of MGMT, the perfect choruses of Phoenix, and seriously bombastic production dreamed up by Hot Chip, Chromeo, and Ratatat after days of pounding Beverly Hills Cop. Then, because apparently that's not ambitious enough, they brought in a Staten Island Children's Choir to add backup vocals. The culmulative effect of all this cutting and pasting is impossible describe, except to say that I've never heard a band that can both glitter and stomp at the same time like they can.

Clearly Passion Pit aim to overwhelm, and "Manners" is an album custom-built for that purpose. Like the first time you heard Justice or Animal Collective, there's so many new ideas going on here that it drowns your brain. And while the first spin through the CD brought me to a level of musical intoxication I haven't experienced in awhile, you can only be overwhelmed so many times before it becomes grating. Will it reach that point? Unfortunately that's probably the fate of music this accessible and this well-constructed - it's just too needy. For now, though, "Manners" is the summer album to beat (and "Little Secrets" is THE JAM).

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M. Ward and Camera Obscura

First up Camera Obscura's latest - My Maudlin Career. To me they sound exactly like Belle and Sebastian crossed with the Beach Boys. Strings, lush harmonies, wa-wa guitar, and lovely vocals. Great summer tunes from this Scottish band - they've been around for a while, but this is my first taste.

My Maudlin Career




This is M. Ward - Matt Ward - a singer-songwriter from Portland. He has a really nice blend of sounds going on in his utterly simple, harmonic and melodic music. He oscillates between country, blues, folk, a hint of reggae, with some rock thrown in for good measure. Mostly though he puts together some excellent harmonies and his haunting vocals are pretty compelling. I keep trying to peg what who he reminds me of, but he's sort of a shape shifter, so it's no one sound - Joe Henry is as close as I can get. Regardless, it's nice listening.

Hold Time

Heroes in a Half Shell

Without a doubt the most enjoyable show I've been to this year.  Trampled by Turtles are a bluegrass/folk band made up of musicians who are so technically spectacular with their instruments they seem to challenge themselves to play faster and faster and faster until your feet tire from dancing and your legs ache from jumping.  The experience is a precise frenzy of banjo, ukulele, fiddle, two guitars and vocals that are all so quick yet so coordinated you can't help but move your feet.  They do slow it down a bit on occassion, but the full sound always has that upbeat, exuberant spirit.  I had only heard their music live until I bought the CD last night to share with you wonderful people.  Of course the energy of seeing their fingers fly around the strings can't make it to the CD, but the tracks are just as vibrant with many gems including two of my favorites White Noise and Truck.  This music is feel good music; so throw it on and dance your way down the street.

Enjoy "Duluth" by Trampled by Turtles

Bite Sized Bon Iver & Fleet Foxes

EPs are to albums as rebounds are to girlfriends - they are an opportunity for bands to cleanse themselves and begin anew. Unfortunately, as rebounds they are often also impulsive, confused, and shortlived - necessary detours that we'd all rather forget about.

Case in point: "Woods" off of Bon Iver's Blood Bank EP, which is solely Justin Vernon HARMONIZING IN AUTOTUNE. Like T-Pain "buy you a drank" autotune. A potentially career-killing idea if ever there was one. And though I won't be able to convince you if the move was startlingly brave or heartstoppingly retarded (I go with brave), there's no questioning that, far from a detour, the four tracks that make up Blood Bank are completely essential listening for any Bon Iver fan. Which should be all of you. Here's the title track, which is as good as anything off of "For Emma":



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Ditto for "Sun Giant", the Fleet Foxes EP released only months after their how-is-this-so-perfect debut. The crazy part is, pound for pound, "Sun Giant" is actually an even better album than 2008's album of the year, which I didn't really believe was possible. Let me prove it to you with one track, "Mykonos", a lovechild of Queen and Neil Young that makes fireworks explode in my head:



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The New New Folk: Horse Feathers, The Middle East, & Frontier Ruckus

Isn't it incredible, after all these years, that dudes are still finding something original to do with acoustic guitars? There are, after all, only so many chords and so many melodies...and yet every year there seems to be a band who comes along and rewrites the formula of what a folk song should be. 2009's best candidate so far is Horse Feathers, a duo from Portland who walk the invisible line between faintly nostalgic and groundbreaking. The songwriting, to be honest, is unsurprising - nothing you haven't heard on a Nick Drake or Iron & Wine album. And that's fine, because the genius of Horse Feathers is in the arrangements. An almost complete lack of percussion lets Aaron Copland strings swell and spill over stuttering fingerpicks, a kind of musical naked swagger. It's Appalachian-rustic that insists on being timeless, and its gorgeous.




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Here's the crazy thing: there's no way you or I should know about The Middle East. They were an ultra obscure band from Queensland, Australia that broke up a week after this album was made last April, and they have little more than an incomplete Myspace page left to prove they ever existed. Miraculously someone somewhere dug this album up and off it shot through the internet, exploding all over the blogosphere like a brilliant post-rock firework. References have been made to Sigur Ros, Mogwai, and Arcade Fire, but I find them pretty hard to pin down...all I know is that hearing the power of the slow-build chorus to "Blood" for the first time is yet another victory for the internet

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Orion (pronounced OR-ee-un, not o-RY-un), the place that Frontier Ruckus calls home, is a small farm town just outside the reach of the urban decay of Detroit. While the hometown of most bands these days is inconsequential, Orion and the impending death of the city that supports it explains the totally unsentimental, fierce folk that Frontier Ruckus creates. The first thing you'll notice about FR is lead singer Matt Milia's voice - like Jeff Mangum from Neutral Milk Hotel, it creaks and quivers and pushes. It's a love/hate thing for sure, but for me it's got that kind of perfect imperfection I fiend for in this age of the vocoder. The songs on Orion Songbook are songs of endings - of relationships, of communities, and of identities - both for better and worse. More than the story of any specific place, The Orion Songbook is an exploration of our new fragile interconnectedness - urban and rural, past and future - and in that, these stunningly original and honest tracks crafted out of banjos, saws and fiddles are the hymns of now.






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Leaks

Take two...click on the album cover to download

The Vega Star

I bumped into The Vega Star at our neighborhood Beat Kitchen. They were the one shining star of the show. Out of Milwaukee (Algonquin for the Good Land), I believe this was their first foray to Chicago, meaning definitely a fresh face on the scene. They describe themselves as Folk Rock/Rock/Psychedelic on their myspace page, and I agree. Their sound almost comes across as lethargic, however you don't feel that way listening to it. My concert-mate used the word languid which I, and John the drummer who chatted with us for awhile after their set, think very aptly captures the tempo. It is slow, yet alive with talented driving guitars, both acoustic and electric, a supportive bass that lays the ground work and drums that often accent with hats and snares that help keep the sound fresh despite its pace. The vocals are dark, adding to the brooding feeling, but they hit their notes, harmonize on occasion and help create a very unique sound.

Enjoy "The Night" by The Vega Star.  Over and Out.

Wave of Adulation

I have chosen to go from one of the most ubiquitious, well-known names in classic rock history in Pink Floyd to one of the most underrated, yet perhaps equally influential in The Pixies. This is Doolittle, their seminal 1989 masterpiece which many have credited as singlehandedly responsible for the early 90's grunge revolution. It was also ranked #226 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, #36 on Spin's 100 Greatest Albums from 1985-2005 and #2 on NME's 100 Best Albums of All Time.

Many of these songs might be familiar at this point, from movies, Rock Band, etc... I won't go on too long about it, but I will say this. Listen to the first few songs and I don't think you'll have a hard time seeing how Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl created "Smells Like Teen Spirit" in a similar vein.

Standout tracks include the breakneck "Debaser," the tender "Here Comes Your Man," the song the Strokes wish they could write in "Wave of Mutilation," and the oddly surreal "La La Love You." I won't lie; this is one of my favorite albums of all time. It's incredibly visceral, powerful and is a nice mix between surf-rock, new-wave and punk rock. I'll even go so far as to guarantee you'll like it...unless you're a Bolshevik.

Shatner on the Twilight Zone: "There's some...Pigs on the Wing"

While most people tend to revere Pink Floyd for its more ambient (Dark Side of the Moon), more iconic (Wish You Were Here) or more overtly conceptual albums (Dark Side, The Wall), 1977's Animals holds a special place in my heart. It's the first Pink Floyd album, nay, maybe the first album period, that I ever really listened to from start to finish. I was at sleepaway camp in upstate New York the summer before sixth grade when our counselor finally got fed up with Adam Sandler, Green Day and The Offspring LPs (as though we were listening on vinyl...God, I'm pretentious.)

I think everyone was pretty instantly hooked. Floyd was the new "It" band that summer. In some way, I really feel like Pink Floyd is that rare classic rock band that would sound as fresh today as I imagine it did on January 23rd, 1977 (which, for this post's useless trivia nugget of the day, is the precise day Roots debuted on ABC.)

It's my understanding that this is the first Pink Floyd album where Roger Waters really became the colossal egomaniac of wide repute. He wrote all of the songs himself, only sharing a writing credit on "Dogs" with underrated guitar virtuoso David Gilmour. The recording process for Animals is widely attributed as the start of Pink Floyd's breakup...

Nevertheless, it's awesome for several reasons.

1. It's apparently a giant allegory of George Orwell's Animal Farm. Dogs are the men (Ask a feminist,) Sheep are the masses (seems pretty standard) and Pigs, well, I'm not really sure, but I guess Snowball Stalin and Napoleon Trotsky might help you with that interpretation.
2. It has some of the most incredibly biting, vicious, searing guitar lines of any album of which I'm aware. Credit Gilmour on that one.
   
3. When Waters says "Ha Ha, charade you are," I never really understood why he doesn't say "sha-raid;" is it a British pronunciation?
4. The animal sounds always weird me out...

Thoughts on this latest classic rock posting?

VA - Dark Was The Night Comp

As a rabid music fan, I am by nature severely allergic to compilation albums, and subscribe to the belief that the number of "Best Ofs" you own is inversely related to how interesting and engaging of a person you are. For example, if the only Bob Marley album you own is "Legend" or the only Jimi album you've listened to is "The Ultimate Experience", chances are we'll disagree on a lot of other topics and our approach to life in general. And honestly, the "Best Ofs" aren't even the worst kind of compilation album. Think of all the Radiohead cover comps, the Christmas comps, the Now That's What I Call Musics of the world...they are everything that is bad and cheap and ignorant conveniently condensed onto one disc.

"Dark Was The Night" is the best comp ever made because it breaks all of the dumb rules that make compilations suck. There's no theme or tribute behind it, no artificial structure to prop up bad songs or bad bands. The Red Hot Organization (the AIDS fund behind this) assembled a bunch of the most progressive bands playing right now and just let them be themselves. Sometimes the result is unlikely collaboration (Dirty Projectors + David Byrne), sometimes its a great cover song (The Books and Jose Gonzalez on Nick Drake's Cello Song), and sometimes it is a really big weird idea that couldn't live anywhere else (Sufjan's 10 minute ridicu-symphony). Regardless, the results over the course of this 31 track double-disc are always totally untethered and fascinating - Bon Iver goes electric, The National goes Beck, My Morning Jacket goes 80's saxpop...the whole thing is an absolute blast. Granted, Disc 1 is far better than Disc 2, and as albums they don't really hold together at all...but being children of the internet it's not like we've ever cared about that kind of thing. The key is that Dark Was The Night doesn't try to be any kind of capital-S Statement, so it gives these bands the freedom to shoot off into any and all directions. What we're given is a well of awesomeness you can keep coming back to again and again.





Since this is an AIDS benefit album and I really don't feel like stealing from people with AIDS, buy from Beggars here or ITunes here - it's worth it

PWRFL Power

I went to the oddest concert last night. It was basically a series of musicians playing in this dude's living room. But lo and behold they introduced PWRFL Power aka Kazutaka Nomura. From Seattle by way of Tokyo. I don't think the recordings really do him justice.

First of all, this guy is a phenomenal guitarist. He did some deconstructed, atonal, arhythmic stuff that I have never really heard before to start off. It was like Monk started playing guitar. He said he's been touring without a guitar because he hates lugging it around so he just borrows guitars wherever he goes. Last night he played on a super jazzy Ibanez that suited him quite nicely but I am curious to hear him again in a different setting with different equipment. But that is neither here nor there.

Then he launched into his material - it is hard to tell what is improvised and what isn't. His songs are incredibly idiosyncratic and a little precious with extremely amusing lyrics ("I am Google. I know everything."). They're short and frequently are introduced with hilarious little anecdotes. I have immediately dubbed this guy the Tom Waits of indie/hipster rock. But the songs themselves are quite good, for all their cynicism and hilarity, they're quite earnest and rocking. When he lets himself go on the solos, it's fucking brilliant, which is unfortunately why the recorded stuff falls short - it's light on the guitar solos.

So to conclude, I will post his myspace link, but if you have the chance to go see this guy live, absolutely take it, he's oddly mesmerizing.

PWRFL Power

NASA - The Spirit of Apollo

NASA (standing for North America/South America) are two DJs with ridiculous connections. Seriously, check out this tracklist:

1. Intro
2. The People Tree (feat. David Byrne, Chali 2na, Gift of Gab, & Z-Trip)
3. Money (feat. David Byrne, Chuck D, Ras Congo, Seu Jorge, & Z-Trip)
4. NASA Music (feat. Method Man, E-40, & DJ Swamp)
5. Way Down (feat. RZA, Barbie Hatch, & John Frusciante)
6. Hip Hop (feat. KRS-One, Fatlip, & Slim Kid Tre)
7. Four Rooms, Earth View
8. Strange Enough (feat. Karen O, Ol Dirty Bastard, & Fatlip)
9. Spacious Thoughts (feat. Tom Waits & Kool Keith)
10. Gifted (feat. Kanye West, Santogold, & Lykke Li)
11. A Volta (feat. Sizzla, Amanda Blank, & Lovefoxxx)
12. There's A Party (feat. George Clinton & Chali 2na)
13. Whachadoin? (feat. Spank Rock, M.I.A., Santogold, & Nick Zinner)
14. O Pato (feat. Kool Kojak & DJ Baboa)
15. Samba Soul (feat. Del Tha Funkee Homosapien & DJ Q-Bert)
16. The Mayor (feat. The Cool Kids, Ghostface Killah, DJ AM, & Scarface)
17. NASA Anthem

Is it as good as that sounds? Well, no - probably about half as good...but still, when it clicks, like on the Karen O/ODB track, you just need to get out of the way son. Other highlights include the Kanye/Santogold/Lykke Li collabo (alt title: "what 808 should've sounded like"), the RZA/Frusciante joint that miraculously finds the middle ground between Portishead and Wu-Tang, and the Spank Rock/MIA/Santogold baile funk monster that feels like it could go on for 2 hours and you wouldn't care. Maybe wildly inconsistent isn't that bad after all.

NASA - The Spirit of Apollo

Cold War Kids

It occurred to me as I began writing this that I really don't listen to much modern rock n roll. I listen to lots of hip hop, electronic, funk, soul and combinations thereof...but I only really listen to 3 or 4 modern "rock" groups and that includes Radiohead, if you can really classify them as any single genre. There just isn't that much of it around that I really feel is worth my time. Most of it just misses the mark. You don't want to turn it up really loud and drive down a highway to it. Actually most of it makes you want to turn the lights off and cry.

That said, these guys started popping up on my Pandora and it made me want to hear more. I dug up their first album from 2006, Robbers and Cowards. It's solid. Strong vocals, satisfying guitar, all around good stuff. They're from California so there's a little bit of surfer soul mixed in with the usual NYC trying-to-be-cool indie rock sound. It makes for a nice balance and it's a pretty straight up rock album - the first four or five songs are particularly good. They released a second album last year, Loyalty to Loyalty, which I think kind of sucks, but others might be interested - if so let me know.

Robbers and Cowards

Rodrigo y Gabriela

Rodrigo y Gabriela are like some music bloggers wet dream: Mexican black metal bandmates get jaded with the scene and, penniless, decide to move to Ireland to rock flamenco-style on acoustic guitars. It's a story that begs to be wrapped in dumbass labels like "acoustic metal", "gypsy grunge", or "mariachi Metallica" or something even more terrible I lack the ability to create. And just like that, music that's totally original and groundbreaking gets reduced to a gimmick. So let's not play that game, and instead focus on how awesome this is. I mean check out Gabriela's hand in the video...I don't know anything about guitar and it blows me away, like a hummingbird flying between the strings. The badass factor of this video outlines the logic of doing flamenco covers of metal songs - the frenetic rhythm remains, but now electricity is created with melody lines instead of power chords. It's not a new genre or a sign of globalization. It just kicks ass.

Also, probably the best "Stairway" cover I've ever heard

Rodrigo y Gabriela - Rodrigo y Gabriela

When Experimental Music Goes RIGHT

I am sad and embarrassed to admit, I kinda hate The Clash. A lot of their music just gets on my nerves. Sorry, I respect them, I know I should like them as a respectable music fan. But Rock the Kasbah Makes me want to put puppies in microwaves. (EASY... I didn't say I would turn them on. If I did defrost tops, I swear.) Anyway, I am a huge music doc fan, and as I respect them, I netflixed The Furture is Unwritten: Joe Strummer. Fuck man, what an awesome dude. I really wish I could have met him. PLEASE SEE IT FOR YOURSELF. Truly genius, riveting, devastating, and inspiring. After that, I went on a hunt for everything non-Clash Joe Strummer related and fell in love. This is Global A Go-Go an album he did with the Mescalaros shortly before he passed away. World, Rock, Folk, Punk, Latin, Electronic... Again a guy that just did what so many others try to do and fucking wreck, he does authentically and masterfully. You will love this record now... almost as much as you will after you see the film that inspired me to check it out.

Joe Strummer and the Mescalaros - Global A Go-Go