- 18.75% propulsive rock
- 69.44% mid-tempo meditations on napping/modernity
- 12.5% zzzzzz
Best Coast’s debut album Crazy For You is like a lot of things: Lying in the sunny spot on the shag carpet trying to pick bits of weed out from Chips Ahoy crumbs and cat fur; a bitter slice of life from the frontiers of post-feminist living; the sort of music Oedipa Maas would listen to as she journeys around California on her ultimately deranged quest. But what it’s most like is too many scoops of cotton candy ice cream in an overflowing glass of cognac and Coca Cola. Continue reading ‘Best Coast: Crazy For You’
The sad pop song has existed since pop music began in America in the 1920s and 30s, during which time virtually everyone was sad. Women have had it particularly bad. In 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment gave them the right to vote. But it wasn’t until 1925 and the publication of Irving Berlin’s “Always” that women could go out and dance, meet guys at dances, and have those guys break their hearts. When the Greatest Generation went off to fight Krauts and Nips, ladies wallowed in their own sadness by listening to songs like Billie Holiday’s “Gloomy Sunday” and “I’ll Be Seeing You.” In the 1980s, the sad pop song reached its apotheosis with synthesizer-dance numbers like “Don’t You Want Me,” “Hold Me Now,” and “Take On Me,” which, incidentally, were all written about the same guy. Every good sad pop song has since then fit into the mold cast by these songs. Of course, there are sad pop songs that don’t fit this tradition: “Nothing Compares 2 U,” “Maps,” “Since you Been Gone,” Natalie Imbruglia’s pop classic “Torn,” and many others. But they fail to realize their full potential in some one or more ways.
Robyn’s “Dancing On My Own” is one of the greatest damn sad pop songs in history. There are five reasons.
I often wake up with songs already stuck in my head. However, this phenomenon rarely involves music I’ve been deliberately sticking into my head. Even when I’m ribs-deep in an album I’m reviewing- and even if it’s an album by a Top 40 hook machine like Lady Gaga- I don’t really wake up hearing its tracks inside my brain. Usually this just happens with random cheese from the ’80s and early ’90s that I haven’t heard since childhood.
But in the few weeks since I’ve started listening to Maps & Atlases’ Perch Patchwork, I’ve awoken nearly every morning with one of its tracks spinning in my mental stereo. And I don’t mean just one of its tracks. I mean most of the album’s songs have had at least one turn waking me up. This album is that absurdly catchy. Yet these melodies aren’t merely absurdly catchy. They’re nimble and sophisticated and precise, like Eastern European acrobats. Propelled by refreshingly unorthodox rhythms, intricate riffs, and singer Dave Davison’s tastefully poignant voice, the tunes frequently ascend toward heaven like fluttering moths before trickling back down to earth like misty rain.
The quick and dirty:
- Stewart is a power-pop-rock band from New York City
- Stewart is a good reminder why Gibson guitars and Marshall stacks worked wonders for Weezer in the mid ’90s
- You probably have never heard of them
- You should listen to this band
Let’s cut to the chase, shall we? Power-pop may not be “cool” in the eyes of the music bloggers of the interwebs. I say, “Fuck them.” Kicks is an unyielding album of catchy hooks, catchy lyrics and rock ‘n’ roll prowess. After a single listen this album has reminded me what listening to music for fun is all about. For the young and young at heart, Stewart offer a solid album of 2-3 minute rock ‘n’ roll blitzes. I’m sold. ‘Nuff said.
Last year I went to an academic conference dealing with all things popular culture. It turned out that what researchers and scholars really liked talking about were popular understandings of sub and fringe cultures. One Finnish scholar now teaching at a university in North Carolina, I can’t remember his name, decided to research fans of Scandinavian and European metal in contrast to the popular understandings of these fans (which tend to depict them as disturbed, depressed, or angry/violent people). His research seemed fascinating to the head-nodding profs, but illustrated virtually nothing new to anyone who identifies as at least a casual fan of metal or “hard” music. Basically, his thesis was that metal seems “angry” to outsiders, but for fans it is a very positive experience that builds community and elicits typically happy emotions.
After that conference I silently asked myself, “Is there enough metal in my life?” The answer, sadly, was “no.” Somewhere along the way, my metal consumption waned and my record collection began to swell with folk and country records. Not that it’s a bad thing, but I decided to diversify my sonic portfolio, so to speak.
Enter Wonder, the new album by Swiss math-metal, hardcore, sludge band Knut. Now, I dropped out shortly after Botch’s We Are the Romans and my stint in Greensboro, NC. If bands continued to make records like Wonder between then and now, then I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.
Knut’s latest is a reminder why we need more metal in our lives. Wonder is a cathartic experience. Amidst the chaos of postmodern existence, Knut burst through with raw emotion, stripping away all the excesses of consumerism and putting forth just loud, heavy music. Time changes and riff progressions are everywhere. On my third listen (couldn’t stop to write after one), I’m drawn to the way that the songs evolve. Like a web or matrix, complex riffs, jud, jud palm muting, and polyrhythmic structures shift continually with each song an amalgam of at least a dozen parts held together by a unifying aesthetic theme.
While the vocals (lyrically inaudible, but for me that’s a non-issue) display excellent screaming capabilities, from low guttural to mid-pitch screams, I’m a little disappointed by the lack of diversity in cadence and delivery, which is my only criticism in this early review.
The second album from School of Seven Bells has me excited. Coming on July 13th, it might not be a summer anthem, but it will mark my discontent quite nicely. “Windstorm,” the starter to the album and the single, might the best song they’ve written in their short career. Alpinisms had the unique problem of topheaviness– I like the first three songs so much I never really gave the rest of the album enough of a chance. The sharper, bigger movements and sweeping tones of Disconnected from Desire continue throughout, though, and I am certainly impressed.
Expect a full review close to the release date or sooner. I’m liking this enough to put it at the top of the reviewing heap. You can stream “Windstorm” here. I think it is one of the best songs I’ve heard this year.
I haven’t heard any of the 4 EPs Maps & Atlases have released, but I stumbled upon their full-length debut Perch Patchwork and was pleasantly surprised. Their sound is rich with peculiar, worldly rhythms and acrobatic melodies that feel more like hooks than exercises for music theory geeks. Sometimes it gets a little too breezy for my taste, but there’s no question that I’d like to spend some more time with this record. A full review should be up here within the next couple of weeks.
Is it possible to hear the sound of approaching doom? Does approaching doom sound kind of like room tone, but darker? Can we hear approaching doom squeezing a singer’s nerves tightly in its clutches? Can we physically sense the presence of approaching doom as it plays maestro to an ill-fated orchestra?
For instance, some people seem convinced that they could hear Kurt Cobain’s demons lurking in the shadows of Unplugged In New York. Yet how many of those claims come from keen human intuition, and how many are simply embellished memories revised by tragedy? Hard to tell. Continue reading ‘Classic and Unappreciated: Cambodian Rocks’
Caw! Caw! should be more well known. Unless you were searching specifically for this review, chances are you’ve never heard of Caw! Caw!. Yet, they’ve been playing music in and around their native Chicago since 2001 and have been independently releasing their music through a 2008 EP and a MySpace music page. From what I’ve discovered in the backwaters and far corners of the internet, the band’s been winning over fans one at a time the old fashioned way: with high-energy house shows, mini-tours, and artistic sincerity. 2010’s Bummer Palace is their wildly ambitious full-length debut, a sprawling statement proclaiming the obsolescence of genre descriptors and musical boundaries.
It’s difficult to write about how Caw! Caw! move from indie rock to post-rock to pop to punk, adding flourishes of soul or ska or new wave, all with a soaring falsetto reminiscent of Sigur Ros. It’s clear that Caw! Caw! draw from an ever-growing body of influences, and I’m sure that the unfamiliar reader is probably about ready to dismiss this band as one that suffers from the sheer sum of its parts. However Caw! Caw!’s sound is remarkably cohesive and Bummer Palace is surprisingly devoid of jarring transitions. Continue reading ‘Caw! Caw!: Bummer Palace’