Author Archive for Joe O.

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First Listen: Fang Island

Joe O., February 19, 2010 in Initial Response and Music Reviews. 0 Comments Tags: , .

fangisland_cover

I just listened to Fang Island’s self-titled debut and what the hell just happened there? That was something like Crosby, Stills, Nash & W.K. It all happened so fast, except for the parts where it was all slow and gospel-like. They might have been singing in tongues half the time.

I can say for sure that Fang Island commanded my attention. What I can’t say for sure yet is if I’ll give it the full 10 Listens. Part of me is thrilled by the possibility to finally use the term “influenced by Andrew W.K.” in a music review. Another part of me wonders how quickly the novelty will fade. If I had to bet, I’d say yes, I will give Fang Island a closer look, because heaven knows that when it’s time to party, I will party hard.

Surfer Blood: Astro Coast

Joe O., February 18, 2010 in Music Reviews. 2 Comments Tags: , .

Surfer Blood’s Astro Coast is so good that the first time I heard it back in November, I thought I’d ration my listens. I heard the sunny hooks and sweet riffs and the crisp, lush, beachy textures of its guitar-lover’s paradise, and I knew that this album needed to be a cornerstone of my Summer ‘10 soundtrack. Therefore, I didn’t want to burn myself out on it sooner than August. Then, because Astro Coast is so good, I had trouble rationing. Now it’s mid-February and I’m already well past my 10th listen.  No matter, though: Astro Coast is so good that it only gets better, and I’m nowhere near sick of it yet.

Nostalgia might have something to do with this. Surfer Blood obviously loves early Weezer even more than I did when I was 13. (Note: at 13, when I made a CO2-powered model race car in shop class, I painted this car Blue Album-blue and emblazoned its nose with a mighty winged W.) But Astro Coast is so much more than just a must-have album for people who miss Weezer’s glory days. Otherwise, I wouldn’t keep running back to it. It’s ultimately a stellar debut by a band who should enjoy a bright future playing lovably dorky, arena-guitar power-pop.

Seriously, there isn’t a song on Astro Coast I don’t dig. Each one chills me out and kicks my ass simultaneously.  Some hit me with their greatness right away.  Opening track “Floating Vibes” sets the tone nicely, as its hard rock intro riff segues seamlessly into a breezy tune that belies its slightly snarky sentiments.  Tunes such as “Take It Easy” and “Twin Peaks” add some tropical rhythms which still feel natural within their power-pop surroundings; it never sounds as if the band just listened to Sandinista! the night before and thought, “Dudes, we should totally tack on some Afro-Caribbean flavor in this joint.”

Other songs sounded decent at first, then revealed their greatness gradually, as I discovered more of their secrets (”Harmonix,” “Fast Jabroni,” “Catholic Pagans”). Two songs are over six minutes long and I didn’t even realize it until after several listens (”Slow Jabroni,” “Anchorage”). One is a short instrumental that sounds like The Stone Roses covering Dick Dale (”Neighbour Riffs”).

Then there’s “Swim,” which is one of the raddest songs I’ve heard in the past few years and without a doubt the Champion of Astro Coast. The awesomeness of “Swim” not only makes me wish summer would get here already, but it makes me wish I were 17 again. It also makes me want to sign up for some kind of swimming race, solely so I can blast “Swim” from a boombox on the side of the pool while I train.

Now, most other albums might have to place as song as big and climactic as “Swim” near the bottom of their tracklists. Astro Coast doesn’t have to worry about that. It can place “Swim” all the way up at track 2 and then live up to that for 35 more minutes. You know, like if you heard The Blue Album for the first time and at the end of “My Name Is Jonas” you thought to yourself My goodness, how are they gonna follow that one? And then you found out…it’s kind of like that.

Efterklang: Magic Chairs

Joe O., February 15, 2010 in Music Reviews. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Efterklang’s Magic Chairs tells me a couple of things by the end of its first track: one, it’s a record of divine and immaculate beauty, and two, it wants to elevate my soul.  The pianos of “Modern Drift” twinkle like sunlight reflecting off a frozen waterfall.  The trombones and violins glide like satisfied eagles.  Bass drums punctuate phrases like ellipses in God’s thought bubbles.  The voices shimmer in harmony, possibly while the singers close their eyes, drape their arms around each other’s shoulders and sway.  This should be at the end of a trailer for some Best Picture nominee about the triumph of the human spirit.

It’s all so lovely that I wanted Magic Chairs to elevate my soul as much as Efterklang did.  But after 10 spins, we still haven’t made that transcendent connection we were both hoping for.  Is it because my soul is too stony and stubborn?  Or is it because Efterklang’s music and sentiments are about as dynamic as a June zephyr?  Maybe if my soul were more like a kite, Magic Chairs and I really would’ve taken off.

I don’t mean to belittle kite-souls.  Some of my dearest friends have kite-souls.  I’d probably be a much happier guy if my soul were more kite-like.  Then I could totally lose myself in the wispy cloud of melancholy, hope and humility that surrounds not just the opening track, but tracks 2, 3, 7, 9 and 10 as well.  The melodies, rhythms and arrangements may vary, but the lukewarm religious-experience vibe remains, and its impact becomes diluted after 40-plus minutes.  On top of that, the lyrics are usually too vague to add much flavor (”over the top and it all comes down”; “I can go without a weapon or a dream.”).  I’d probably be more enamored with Magic Chairs if Efterklang eschewed lyrics altogether and sang in mysterious Sigur Ros-style gibberish.

A few tracks in the album’s midsection try to broaden and deepen the emotional palette.  “Harmonics” and “Scandinavian Love” approach fanciful joy, albeit the kind of fanciful joy that might soundtrack the main menu of a Wii game.  “Full Moon” feels somewhat haunted, but the song’s ghosts appear distant and harmless, trapped inside faded black and white photographs.  Similarly, the jittery guitars and entrancing, erratic rhythms of “Raincoats” resemble a benign anxiety attack.  It’s as if Efterklang’s uncomfortable confronting their darker places, preferring instead to peek at them from behind a crack in the bedroom door.  For instance, whenever the guitar plays a few dissonant notes after each chorus, the moment lasts barely more than a second, almost as if the band’s afraid that the slightest bit of excess disharmony will utterly destroy the pristine fabric of everything else.

Not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with weaving a pristine fabric with your music.  Efterklang does that quite well on Magic Chairs, and I admire that.  But if their aim is also to uplift their audience, they shouldn’t be so hesitant to plunge a little further into the darkness first.

First Listen: Harlem’s Hippies

Joe O., February 4, 2010 in Initial Response and Music Reviews. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Hippies is the second album by Austin-based rock trio Harlem, and the band’s first release on Matador Records.  I haven’t heard Harlem’s debut, 2009’s Free Drugs ;-) , but I think I can safely assume that Hippies sounds a lot like it.

It’s not that I didn’t enjoy my first spin through Hippies. It’s perfectly good garage- loose but not too sloppy, catchy but not terribly generic, confident but not insufferably cocky.  I just didn’t hear anything unique about Harlem’s style.

I’m sure I’ll listen to many of the songs on Hippies again.  The album’s just much too long (16 tracks) and samey for me to want to listen to the whole thing 10 times before its April 6th release.  But I probably wouldn’t skip any of these tracks if they came on while my iPod was shuffling.

First Listen: Broken Bells

Joe O., February 3, 2010 in Initial Response and Music Reviews. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Broken Bells is the self-titled debut of a collaborative project by The Shins’ frontman James Mercer and Gnarls Barkley’s multi-instrumentalist/producer Brian “Danger Mouse” Burton.  Initially, the project appears to offer the best of both worlds in refreshingly new contexts, without feeling forced; Mercer’s bewitching folk-rock melodies seem right at home among Burton’s futuristic soul soundscapes.

Though the second half of Broken Bells didn’t immediately grab me as strongly as the first half, this is definitely a record I’d like to spend some time with.  Burton’s productions usually reward repeated listens, and I didn’t get much of a chance to absorb Mercer’s lyrics, which tend to be mysterious and multi-faceted.  Expect a full review sometime around Broken Bells’ March 9th release date.

The Magnetic Fields: Realism

Joe O., February 2, 2010 in Music Reviews. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Stephin Merritt of The Magnetic Fields doesn’t write songs quite as much as he writes “Songs.”  Kind of like how Quentin Tarantino makes “Movies” and The Simpsons is a “Sitcom,” Stephin Merritt compositions rarely have just one level; practically every artistic choice he makes works as a wry comment on songs you’ve heard a thousand times before.

So anyone familiar with Merritt’s work will already know not to take the title of the new Magnetic Fields album literally.  It’s called Realism not because it lacks the irony, the extended metaphors and other self-aware artistic conceits that the band typically relishes.  If anything, the title of the almost-all-acoustic album may just be a swipe at pretentious folk musicians who think their style is any more “authentic” than the rest.  In fact, with its abundance of autoharps, toy pianos, campfire sing-alongs and studied medieval minstrelsy, Realism is one of the most frivolous and artificial Magnetic Fields records to date.

That’s not necessarily a criticism.  Realism certainly contains a fair share of moving “Songs” that reveal profound and heartbreaking truths about human nature, and in typical Merritt fashion, they do so in ways that remind us to take a step back and think about how fucking silly it all really is anyway.  (At one point, a jilted lover/new parent sings, “Seduced and abandoned, and baby makes two/ I think I might drink a few,” before stoically adding, “…and maybe the baby will too.”)

The album opens with “You Must Be Out Of Your Mind,” arguably its best and most accessible track.  It’s so good that at first, a casual Magnetic Fields fan might think the band’s ripping off one of their past hits.  But “You Must Be Out Of Your Mind” clearly has its own great melodies and its own righteously catty attitude (”I want you crawling back to me/ down on your knees, yeah/ like an appendectomy/ sans anaesthesia”).  In 15 years, when the masses have finally (I hope) embraced Merritt as one of the most brilliant songwriters of his generation, “You Must Be Out Of Your Mind” will surely be one of the songs sung by American Idol contestants on “Stephin Merritt Night.”  (Of course, Idol won’t stay on the air for the next 15 years; it’ll be cancelled after this season and resurrected as soon as nostalgia for the 2000s becomes marketable.)

The songs that follow don’t always pop as potently as the opener, but they all have their charms.  On “Interlude,” “Always Already Gone,” and “Painted Flower,” Merritt enlists the band’s most sincere singer, Shirley Simms, to add warmth and pathos to lyrics of haiku-like brevity (”I’m just a painted flower, a frozen bloom/ left alone in some forgotten room/ a fly in amber, I pose in my tomb”).  When the lyrics get too nasty or depressing, like on “I Don’t Know What To Say,” “Seduced And Abandoned” and “From A Sinking Boat,” Merritt tempers them with his own deadpan bass-baritone.

Some of the most delightful moments of Realism come when Merritt playfully lampoons the tight-assed Caucasians that make up much of his audience.  I always get a kick out of Claudia Gonson’s performance in “The Dolls’ Tea Party,” where she sings as a WASPy woman suffering from arrested development- or perhaps a precocious little girl who will soon grow into such a woman: “At the dolls’ tea par-tee, we twit-ter along/ we prat-tle and tat-tle on who’s done whom wrong.”  It’s not exactly a song I’d ever crave to hear on its own, (and it almost sounds like it might have been an outtake from Merritt’s ingenious score for the off-Broadway musical version of Coraline), but I smile every time it plays.

I feel the same way about the songs where whole gang sings together, as they do in “We Are Having A Hootenanny,” “Everything Is One Big Christmas Tree,” and “The Dada Polka.”  These tracks are the most “Song”-like on the album- note the way that “Hootenanny” tries to sound like the lamest, least rambunctious hoe-down in history, and how the singers deliberately over-enunciate their zzzzzzzees.  As a result, their replay values aren’t quite as high as the other tracks on Realism- but they make listening to the entire album a hell of a lot more “Fun.”

Short Cuts: Charlotte Gainsbourg’s IRM

Joe O., January 25, 2010 in Music Reviews. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Given her award-winning and hyper-passionate performance in last year’s Antichrist, I expected a little more feeling from Charlotte Gainsbourg on her latest record, IRM.  Then on second thought, I figured it makes perfect sense for an actress who just starred in a Lars Von Trier film to retreat into a womb-like world of whispered emotions and detached eroticism.

Of course, an album with such subdued vocals and modest pop melodies needs a good producer to keep the audience stimulated, and IRM is fortunate enough to feature some inspired work by the inimitable Beck.  Most of the time, he surrounds Ms. Gainsbourg with gentle acoustic guitars, simple piano chords and throbbing bass drums, creating the sensation of a lover absentmindedly caressing your skin as pent-up lust pulsates through her veins.  Sometimes he has fun inserting his uber-European muse into extremely American genres, like in the White Stripes-lite blues rocker “Trick Pony,” or the horse-walkin’ country of “Dandelion.”  On a few tracks he also seems to get a kick out of suffusing the atmosphere with haunted bordello orchestras, as if to remind us that the lovely lady singing was the very same child conceived by Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin during the magical Melody Nelson sessions.

Most of IRM is pleasantly sensual, tailor-made for heavy petting on a quiet Sunday afternoon.  A couple of songs (the nasal “Greenwich Mean Time” and the lyrically clunky title track) are almost annoying enough to belong in iPod commercials, but they’re kind of redeemed by their playfully mechanical productions.  And though the record often drifts awfully close to aloofness, it does contain one must-own instant classic that justifies its existence: the bouncy, brassy “Heaven Can Wait,” where Beck drops in for a duet and helps lay down a tune worthy of The Kinks’ late-’60s golden age.  For those 2 minutes and 41 seconds, purgatory has rarely felt so alluring.

Short Cuts: Kurt Vile’s Childish Prodigy

Joe O., December 15, 2009 in Music Reviews. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Kurt Vile’s Childish Prodigy provides an ideal soundtrack to a 42-minute train ride for someone with plenty to think about.  The songs chug forward with steady locomotive rhythms, and the album as a whole encapsulates that Zen-like railroad-riding state of mind- especially if you’re still buzzed from the night before and in desperate need of sleep.  Thoughts flow in a muddy stream of nebulous consciousness; recurring flashbacks drift into internal rehearsals for future conversations, grievances not yet aired, true feelings still hidden; gut-scraping anger and disgust yield to resignation and tenderness, and back again, and back again, resonating with daydream reverb against the walls of inner space; time seems frozen under an Impressionistic magic hour sky, even as the outside world zips across the window.

It’s an absorbing soundscape, particularly through headphones.  The deft mix of apparent influences is equally enchanting: the endearing, spontaneous amateurism of Robert Pollard bathed in Tom Petty’s Southern jangle and topped with a splash of Iggy Pop’s bile.  Throughout most of Childish Prodigy, the gorgeous and gritty formula works wonders.  I was hooked from the start by rockers like “Hunchback,” “Freak Train” and “Monkey,” while more tranquil songs like “Dead Alive,” “Overnite Religion” and “Blackberry Song” grew on me more with each spin.  Too bad the album loses most of its steam toward the end.  Despite some neat flourishes- the heartwarming trumpet in “Amplifier,” the train-whistle harmonica of “Inside Lookin Out”- the record’s uninspired final third has little to offer.  By the end of it all I feel restless and frustrated, like when you zone out and miss your stop and now you’re stuck on the express for 15 more minutes.  Then you think to yourself: oh well, at least the scenery’s still pretty.

Lady GaGa: The Fame Monster

Joe O., December 8, 2009 in Music Reviews. 8 Comments Tags: , .

If we can define good pop albums the way Howard Hawks famously defined good movies- that’s three great scenes and no bad scenes- then Lady GaGa’s The Fame Monster is certainly a good pop album.  At least three songs are great, the rest aren’t bad, and at only 34 minutes long it never threatens to wear out its welcome.  It’s shamelessly sleek, glossy and digital, but with enough heart, humor and horror that it is far from soulless.  The only significant problem I can hear is that its tracks are in slightly the wrong order.

It starts with the current mega-hit “Bad Romance,” a move that might have made more sense if not for the last track, “Teeth.”  One of the album’s fun n’ catchy fillers, “Teeth” throbs with four-on-the-floor stomp and neo-burlesque brass as Lady GaGa entices the men in the house to show their proverbial fangs.  It sounds like a slow-burning fuse that’s supposed to psyche us up for a big-ass pop explosion, and for some reason it’s anti-climactically placed at the very end of the record.

So after my tenth spin through The Fame Monster, I shuffled “Teeth” to the top of the order and it worked much better.  Besides, a song as show-stopping as “Bad Romance” deserves at least one opening act.  The profusion of succulent hooks, the Amazonian-cyborg lust and the near-operatic drama would have been enough to cement this song’s status as an instant classic, yet Lady GaGa goes the extra inches when she delivers one of the most deliciously reprehensible lyrics that will ever infect the Billboard Top 40 (”Want you in my room/ while your baby is sick.”)  (UPDATE: Looks like I mangled this lyric. See comments below).  If “Bad Romance” has any warts, they’re the moments when she insists on reminding us in plain English that she’s “a freak bitch, baby.”  Well duh- she made that crystal clear with that sick baby lyric.  I’m nit-picking, though.  Criticizing Lady GaGa for her lack of subtlety is kind of like complaining that Andy Warhol didn’t use enough earth tones.

“Alejandro” comes next, and its tropically-tinged melodies are hard to resist, even as they unabashedly rob Ace Of Base to pay ABBA.  The third track (or fourth on my playlist), “Monster,” is the closest thing the album has to a dud.  It’s perfectly listenable and hummable 21st Century bubblegum, but the chorus hook is a bland disappointment after such a catchy verse. Also, coming from the freak bitch who drenched herself in blood live on MTV, I expect lyrics a little juicier than “that boy is a monster/ he ate my heart and he ate my brain.”

Then we come to the album’s centerpiece, “Speechless,” a lighter-waving power ballad where Lady GaGa takes off her costume and reveals that there is in fact a heart on her sleeve (although even that heart still comes with a sprinkle of Ziggy Stardust).  Dropping such an earnest song in the middle of such a shiny album could have easily backfired- and perhaps it feels a bit calculated and out of place- but the song’s a hit.  It’s especially refreshing in the wake of “Monster,” where the vocally gifted GaGa mysteriously and gratuitously used Auto-Tune.  (Are pop stars now legally obligated to use Auto-Tune in at least one song per album now?)  On “Speechless,” she really shows off her powerful pipes without resorting to Aguileran melismatic overkill.  Prediction: by the end of 2010, karaoke bars across the planet will be sick to death of this track.

“Dance In The Dark” brings the party roaring back to the dance floor, although some folks might miss a step and scratch their heads when our Lady name-drops JonBenet Ramsey during the “Vogue”-style rap in the bridge.  The second-to-last track, “So Happy I Could Die,” offers a pleasantly chill comedown, which is why it stays at #7 in my custom-made sequence.

I end my version of The Fame Monster with “Telephone,” the dynamite discotheque duet with Beyonce.  I’d think an entertainer with Lady GaGa’s sense of showmanship would want to leave her audience breathless and spent, and “Telephone” is exactly the kind of fierce motherfucker that could do that.  In fact, I feel pity for any song that has to follow “Telephone” on a club DJ’s set list.  As the sixth track on the proper album, it upstages everything that comes after it.

I suppose criticizing the sequencing of a Top 40 pop album is a tad overbearing.  After all, Howard Hawks apparently never specified how the great scenes should be distributed among the not-bad scenes.  The bottom line is that The Fame Monster is pretty good, and should be a tough act to follow- not just for Lady Gaga herself, but for her pop-star peers.

The Fiery Furnaces: Take Me Round Again

Joe O., November 30, 2009 in Music Reviews. 0 Comments Tags: , .

In theory, The Fiery Furnaces’ Take Me Round Again ought to have a “FOR DIE-HARD FANS ONLY” warning label on its cover.  For one thing, pretty much every other Fiery Furnaces album is for die-hard fans only anyway, as the band’s esoteric brand of whimsical chaos generally makes for some challenging entertainment.  Furthermore, Take Me Round Again is a download-only release featuring radical re-arrangements of songs that first appeared on I’m Going Away, a record the band dropped just four months earlier.  Yet despite the apparent preemptive strikes against its potential accessibility, Take Me Round Again actually achieves a noteworthy feat: it distills the essence of an experimental and often polarizing rock act into something palatable enough for wider consumption.  Whether you love The Fiery Furnaces, or hate them, or have never even heard of them, their newest album should pleasantly surprise you.

If you are familiar with the band, you’ll notice right away that Take Me Round Again finds siblings Matthew and Eleanor Friedbeger in a much mellower mood than usual.  Matthew takes the lead on the opening track with his remake of the break-up song “I’m Going Away,” the first of several weary, semi-ironic ballads here that lie between Tin Pan Alley and some early-70s Bowery gutter.  (Seems he’s been spinning Lou Reed’s Transformer pretty heavily in recent months.)  Underneath it all you can still hear the kind of unorthodox keyboard melodies that typically dominate the Friedbergers’ music, but now those riffs whisper instead of clamor.

On the second track, Eleanor does her own version of “I’m Going Away,” and like most of her contributions on this record, it becomes an upbeat folk ditty.  Over a hushed yet peppy guitar, she sings the same lyrics her brother just sang (”Get away from my window/ quit knocking on my door/ I got another man now/ I can’t use you no more”), but she infuses them with joy and warmth.  She’s a little sad and a little angry, sure, though for the most part she’s just happy to be liberated from her good-for-nothing man.

By the end of this song, the band has aptly set the tone of Take Me Round Again: not only by the juxtaposition of Matthew’s gloom against Eleanor’s glee, but by the quality of the tunes themselves, which have been crafted with the elegant simplicity of popular American standards.  My personal favorite would be Eleanor’s coffeehouse-chanteuse-channels-The-Ramones version of “Cut The Cake,” but really, there isn’t a single number on this album that I wouldn’t want to hear at least ten more times.

Although The Fiery Furnaces embrace traditional songwriting more tightly this time around, traces of their oddball idiosyncrasies still turn up periodically.  For example, there’s the duet of impeccably out-of-tune guitar solos in Eleanor’s “Cut The Cake,” and Matthew’s 54-second instrumental “Drive To Dallas,” which sounds like a Sega Genesis theme song on fast forward.  Such touches should keep the long-time fans intrigued, and yet they’re fleeting enough that they probably won’t tempt casual listeners to reach for the skip button.

Speaking as one of those long-time fans (fell in love over five years ago, less than halfway through my first listen of their Blueberry Boat album), I’m especially grateful for Take Me Round Again.  I don’t get to listen to The Fiery Furnaces often, particularly around other people, most of whom don’t care for music bombarded by schizophrenic synthesizers and vocals that sound like shy, precocious, possibly autistic teenagers sing-speaking post-modern fiction.  Frankly, I’m not always in the mood for it myself.  But I can listen to the gentler sounds of Take Me Round Again in virtually any situation- going about my morning routine, getting through a stressful day at work, sipping red wine after midnight- and it always hits the spot.