Under Review: Yeasayer – Odd Blood

Experimental music has sure come a long way.  Even within the past few years, bands have been struggling to settle on what level of weirdness they can embrace without being so ‘out there’ that their music is rendered ignorable.  Yeasayer’s 2007 debut, All Hour Cymbals, was an interesting if not completely thought-out introduction to the band.  Since then, though, they’ve tightened up their sound and incorporated more straightforward pop structures to create Odd Blood, a record that might not be as avant as its predecessor, but is infinitely more exciting.  Instead of shambling, quasi-tribal atmospheres, Odd Blood’s abundance of bona-fide songs makes it an immediate, engaging and downright fun record (the kind with which Yeasayer should have led their career).  All that can be extracted from the album is guarded, though, by opener “The Children,” a messy track with eerie distorted vocals that recalls Animal Collective’s head-scratcher “#1.”  While AC saved that track for Strawberry Jam’s second half, Yeasayer puts it right up front, marking the first and last unfriendly aspect of the album.  As “The Children” gurgles to a close, in comes “Ambling Alp,” an infectious pep talk of a song that contains uplifting messages for everyone, boxer or otherwise.  Trading off lead vocals throughout the album are keyboardist Chris Keating and guitarist Anand Wilder (joined occasionally by bassist Ira Wolf Tuton).  Wilder’s first appearance is on “Madder Red,” a soulful interplay between Wilder’s mellow baritone and Keating’s falsetto coos.  The dynamics between their voices and the kinds of songs they each lead gives Odd Blood both the diversity and continuity that All Hour Cymbals lacked.

What truly stands out on Odd Blood are the sounds that Yeasayer makes.  In “O.N.E.,” a playful synth loop brings to mind some lost new wave hit, and “Rome” combines a nagging, jittery beat with more falsetto shouts to create a song reminiscent of legendary bluesman Taj Mahal’s jazz-funk exercise, “Squat That Rabbit.”  Odd Blood remains strong throughout its rather brief running time, with the house-influenced “Love Me Girl” and the jumpy “Mondegreen” keeping the second side a-swinging.  With only ten songs to it, Odd Blood still has a few hold-ups, like the “Mellow Yellow”-interpolating “Strange Reunions” and closer “Grizelda,” which serves as an equally inauspicious bookend to the aforementioned “The Children.”  Still, it’s unwise to damn Odd Blood’s superb middle section just to spite a few throwaways.  The leaps that Yeasayer has made show how a band can effectively streamline their music (and themselves) without giving up too much in the area of weirdness.  They may not be as elusive as they were in their earlier days, but Yeasayer are wiser, odder and more creative than ever.

Y-Rock On XPN playlist 2.5.10!!

Under Review: The Hotrats – Turn Ons

I’ve made no secret of my love for covers.  As great as it is to hear brand new songs, the reinterpretation of classics never ceases to entertain.  It’s become commonplace for even the strongest songwriters (Cat Power and Robyn Hitchcock are particularly notable) to pepper their albums with some of their own favorite songs, at once showing off their influences as well as their imagination and creativity in putting their own spin on the songs.  What remains a novelty (and not always in a bad way) is the all-covers record.  Tributes to individual artists are one thing, as they quite vividly show one musician’s reverence for another.  The all-covers records that feature songs from a variety of eras play like jukeboxes, and take skilled creators to pull them off suitably.  Madness have done it, and so have The Beautiful South, but it’s David Bowie’s 1973 album Pin Ups that serves as the most overt influence on the style of The Hotrats’ debut, Turn Ons.  The members of The Hotrats, like the songs they perform, aren’t exactly newcomers; Gaz Coombes and Danny Goffey are better known as the lead singer and drummer (respectively) from Britpop favorites Supergrass.  Their new project also features the work of producer Nigel Godrich, who’s produced the heck out of a lot of mid-‘90s British pop.

Turn Ons features songs by bands and artists who are ostensibly some of Supergrass’ greatest influences.  Some of the choices are pretty self-explanatory: Elvis Costello, the Sex Pistols, The Kinks and, yes, David Bowie are represented with both well known (“Pump It Up”) and deeper (“Big Sky”) cuts from their catalogues.  The versions of songs by bands whose influence on Supergrass is less evident is where Turn Ons gets interesting.  The Doors’ “The Crystal Ship” and Squeeze’s “Up The Junction” are pleasant if not groundbreaking.  For the most part, Turn Ons plays like a bunch of demos or B-sides, with the covers never really approaching the quality or character of the originals.  When Gaz and Danny try to rearrange the songs, the results are iffy at best (the acoustic take on “(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party!)”) and lifeless at worst (the joyless, too fast take on “The Lovecats”).  These versions, in particular, show that The Hotrats are ambitious enough to mix up some of their favorites, but are perhaps too afraid to make a cover that’d trump the original.  If nothing else, though, Gaz and Davy sure sound like they’re having fun, which was probably the whole point of this venture anyway.  Still, I’m not entirely convinced that this hero-worship needed to be committed to record.

Under Review: Midlake – The Courage Of Others

In “Roscoe,” from 2006’s stellar The Trials Of Van Occupanther, Midlake’s Tim Smith alludes to wishing he’d been born in 1891.  While the Texas quintet’s image at the time wasn’t really that Victorian, they have since adopted a style more befitting of 1491.  Midlake’s third album, The Courage Of Others, shifts the influences from its predecessor across the Atlantic (not to mention a few centuries), and comes up with a striking and bewitching set of madrigals, dirges and chants.  Those looking forward to the moody melodicism of Van Occupanther are likely to be disappointed at first, although the close harmonies that so strongly identify Midlake are hardly absent.  In the 4 years that it took for The Courage Of Others to be made, Midlake have embraced the organic, progressive folk sound forged by bands like Renaissance, Steeleye Span and the Pentangle.  Themes of changing seasons (“Winter Dies”) and mysterious encounters (“Rulers, Ruling All Things”), as well as trust and devotion course through the album at a meticulously controlled pace.  No, this is not a rocking record, but it is a fantastically slow one.  Aside from the earthy lyrics, the instrumentation on The Courage Of Others indicates a shift towards the more elegant and baroque.  Guitars are plucked like lutes and harpsichords blend seamlessly with the electronic keyboards that are yet another defining characteristic of Midlake’s music.  It’s not that the band has abandoned its sound in favor of a new one.  Quite the contrary, in fact; they’ve skillfully adapted and integrated new/old elements into the style they’ve already established.

Parts of The Courage Of Others suggest that this album contains ideas originally planned for a number of different records.  Indeed, Midlake spent a good lot of the time after Van Occupanther recording, mixing, scrapping and re-recording a lot of material.  What makes The Courage Of Others so impressive is that it combines all of those ideas expertly, so that electric-infused songs like “Children Of The Grounds” feel at home alongside the pan flutes of “Small Mountain.”  Tim Smith’s voice carries the record through its movements, and the combined voices of the rest of the band add an eerie, ‘people of the forest’ kind of quality.  It will be easy for naysayers to take shots at this album, given how much potential Midlake showed on their last outing.  I would counter that by pointing out how, by releasing an album like The Courage Of Others, Midlake have more than lived up to expectations: they’ve subverted the whole idea of what a breakthrough’s follow-up should sound like.  It’s as though they were just waiting to get themselves noticed before they decided to throw such a curveball.  Admirable moves like that, not to mention the fact that they’re paradoxically making fresh music that sounds inherently old, Midlake maintain their place as a band that both exceeds and defies expectations and explanations.

Click HERE to stream The Courage Of Others (via NPR Music)

Streets Of My Town: Cold Cave

Wesley Eisold is an unusual guy.  A few years ago, I doubt I would have ever heard of him based on the kind of music he was making and the bands with whom he was making it.  As recently as 2005, Eisold was part of the hardcore pop-punk scene that spawned countless 7″ records and t-shirts at Hot Topic.  A musical turning point might have come when the scene’s poster-band, Fall Out Boy, allegedly cribbed some of Eisold’s lyrics in a number of songs on their 2007 album Infinity On High.  In the end, Eisold was given songwriting credit, just in time for him to relocate to Philadelphia and found his most un-teen friendly project yet.

Joined by a slew of collaborators (this time from the experimental and electronic music worlds), Eisold’s Cold Cave is as much of a turnaround as you could want.  Moving away from the thrashing, screaming and overall musiclessness of Eisold’s previous bands, Cold Cave embraces both bouncy sythpop and more ethereal noise.  Their debut, Love Comes Close, features equal doses of each, with ex-Xiu Xiu instrumentalist Caralee McElroy providing playful balance to Eisold’s new-found brood.  Rounding out the core lineup is Dominick Fernow, whose noise generators add a dark and often punishing edge to the band’s songs.

Eisold’s journey could be seen as an inspiration, showing young musicians that they shouldn’t be limited to making the kinds of messy and juvenile sounds that everyone else makes.  With a little time (and some like-minded cohorts), you too can make some seriously classy and catchy music.  Perhaps all that’s holding you back is a trip to Philadelphia.

Watch: Cold Cave – “Life Magazine” from Love Comes Close (2009)

Under Review: Los Campesinos! – Romance Is Boring

You might expect a band that releases its debut and sophomore albums in the same year to quickly run out of ideas.  Looking back on those two releases, Los Campesinos! showed that they’ve got a lot of creativity in them.  In particular, the second album, We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed, presented a much wider range of emotions than its predecessor, hinting at a more introverted direction in the band’s future.  True to that supposition, the septet’s latest, Romance Is Boring, begins with “In Medias Res,” a slowly-building vamp that hardly kicks the album off like “Death To Los Campesinos!” or “Ways To Make It Through The Wall” did.  Still, with 14 more tracks to go, the record’s bound to pick up sometime, right?  Well, not in the way you might hope for.  The band quickly reverts to its tried and true formula of complicated and wordy lyrics over a wall of violins and glockenspiels.  Unfortunately now, that formula comes off as much more formulaic than before, and songs like “There Are Listed Buildings” and “Straight In At 101” are fun but ultimately forgettable.   Even the slower songs, whose counterparts gave the previous records some dramatic variety, fall dishearteningly flat.  “The Sea Is A Good Place To Think Of The Future” simply plods and “Heart Swells/100-1” is far too short to live up to the similarly-titled standout from We Are Beautiful.  Snippets of unfinished tunes and lengthy song titles try both my patience and willingness to accept the songs on their own merits.  If there’s anything to be learned from Romance Is Boring it’s that you can absolutely have too much of a good thing.  I was pretty sure that Los Campesinos! figured that out after their debut, but I guess I was mistaken.  Romance Is Boring is a disappointing retread that comes far too early in the band’s career.  I had hoped for the best for Los Campesinos!, and I would still like for them to be remembered as more than just the “You! Me! Dancing!” group.  But with tracks as aimless as “Who Fell Asleep In” and as grating as “Plan A,” it’s clear that Los Campesinos! weren’t skipping over the sophomore slump with We Are Beautiful, they were just putting it off.

Y-Rock On XPN playlist 1.29.10!!

Let Me Entertain You: Nouvelle Vague @ World Cafe Live 1.22.10

I’m all for novelty in music.  I love kitschy and unusual songs, especially if they’re cover versions.  Some of the best covers are those that render a well-known song in a completely different style.  Nouvelle Vague have made a career (and have earned quite a following) for doing just that.  While the simple description is that they do bossa nova style covers of punk and new wave songs, the band has recently started to expand their sound while keeping the quirk alive and well.  So, can an essentially one-joke band hold its own for an entire evening?  Well, maybe.

First of all, there was the opening band, Brooklyn-based Claire & The Reasons.  The trio was nothing if not well-versed in the excruciatingly cute.  Combining every typical “aww”-inducing trick (including, but not limited to whistling, French horn, glockenspiel and songs about being a sleepyhead), listening to this band was like snorting a Pixie Stick while getting your cheeks pinched.  Needless to say, they did not exude the effortless cool that I assumed Nouvelle Vage would.  As it turned out, Nouvelle Vague had plenty of its own shtick, though they could turn to Claire & The Reasons for some organizational lessons.

Here’s the main problem with Nouvelle Vague’s set: once I recognized what song they were interpreting, I gave it a good chuckle and impatiently waited for whatever was next.  Sure, the versions were enjoyable and very impressively arranged (along with the two lead singers, the band was made up of a four-piece ensemble), and tunes like “Road To Nowhere” and “Human Fly” were some of the definite standouts.  What the band needs, or, more specifically, what singers Helena Noguerra and Karina Zeviani need is a choreographer.  When not singing, they shuffled and flailed about haphazardly, breaking the veneer of smoothness that bossa nova music so strongly creates.  Karina did “God Save The Queen” while seated next to guitarist Olivier Libaux, one half of the core directors of the band (keyboardist Marc Collin being the other).  This playful aside was a highlight, as was the eerie, bowed bass-led encore of “Bela Lugosi’s Dead.”

What makes most of Nouvelle Vague’s albums enjoyable is the variety.  The first album was great in that no one would ever have thought to combine such disparate genres.  The second, Bande à Part fell flat under more of the same.  With 3, they gathered some of their covers’ original vocalists to mix things up.  No, I wasn’t expecting more than just a handful of singers (and certainly none from the new wave era), but Nouvelle Vague’s concert was just a lot of the same over and over again.  With a few illusion-wrecking nods and winks (the original concept was that the singers weren’t familiar with the songs they were covering), Nouvelle Vague left me badly wanting to hear the original versions of the songs they performed.  Entertaining as they were, Nouvelle Vague is not a band you need to see more than once.

Click the picture above to see more pictures of Nouvelle Vague in concert!!

Under Review: Charlotte Gainsbourg – IRM

Even before you hear a note of her music (or see one scene of a movie she’s in), odds are your speculations of Charlotte Gainsbourg’s style are going to be rather accurate.  A few contributing factors to her predictability: the name, the family, the nationality, the adorability.  Because of, or more accurately, despite her own perceived persona, Charlotte has made some recent career turns that both reinforce and subvert the image that’s been bestowed upon her.  In film, she co-starred in Antichrist, which gained notoriety for its unwatchable, savage violence even before its limited release.  Musically, she has partnered with Beck to create IRM, an album with as many sides as the artists behind it.  Inspired by Charlotte’s experience inside an MRI machine, IRM evokes the duality of using cold machinery to peer inside the human body.  Opening track “Master’s Hands” places Gainsbourg’s voice right up front, much in the way her father’s records were presented.  While she certainly possesses a measure of femininity, Gainsbourg’s voice is closer to her father’s than her mother’s.  Her unaffected, breathy voice pairs very well with Beck’s own, and the inevitable duet “Heaven Can Wait” offers a death-fixated compliment to the legendary “Je t’aime…Moi Non Plus.”  Speaking of, there’s plenty of French to go around on IRM, from the Gary Numan-y “Le Chat Du Café Des Artistes” to “La Collectionneuse,” which is really only half-sung in French.  The main musical theme of IRM is unclear, but the title track and the stomping “Trick Pony” show the breadth with which Gainsbourg is ready to establish her musical identity.  Though Beck’s production gets a little overbearing (many tracks sound like female-fronted leftovers from Modern Guilt), his songwriting and arrangements make up for and over-wrung motifs.  The one thing that makes IRM and, by association, Gainsbourg herself so interesting is that it doesn’t strive to play catch up with the iconic music of Charlotte’s father.  I imagine that she has struggled to escape the constant ties to her father’s legend, but Charlotte has proved that she’s more than just a knockout Frenchie.  And while she has yet to settle on a definitive character of her own, Gainsbourg’s self-searching experiments make for intriguing and poignant records.

Aural Fixation: Syd Straw

I’m sure that, at one point or another, you’ve heard someone referred to as a “musicians’ musician.”  That’s usually a (backhandedly) polite way of saying that, while they may never achieve critical or commercial acclaim, someone’s music will forever resonate with other (and ostensibly more famous) musicians.  As if that offers any real consolation.  However, by that definition, Syd Straw is one hell of a musicians’ musician.

Syd got her start singing with, of all people, Pat Benatar, as well as in one of my favorite amorphous supergroups, The Golden Palominos.  As the Palominos’ music started to wander away from the outsider Americana that Syd’s voice so strongly evoked, the time seemed right to go solo.  Syd’s debut, Surprise, featured many of the prominent contributors to the Golden Palominos, including founder Anton Fier, Richard Thompson and Michael Stipe.  Her next album, War And Peace, didn’t arrive until 1996, and in the years in between, Syd made herself productive and provided vocals for Grant McLennan’s fabulous Horsebreaker Star, working with Rickie Lee Jones and Leo Kottke, and covering “Blue Shadows On The Trail” for the Stay Awake: Various Interpretations Of Songs From Vintage Disney Films collection.

Aside from music, Straw spent some time acting, although it was most likely her music that attracted her to the crew of ‘The Adventures Of Pete & Pete,’ where she portrayed the bass-playing math teacher Miss Fingerwood.  Though she has only released three proper albums (including 2008’s self-released Pink Velour), Syd Straw remains an unmistakable voice (literally) in the alternative pop community.

Listen: The Golden Palominos (feat. Syd Straw) – “Diamonds” from Blast Of Silence (1986)