March 16th, 2010 |
Posted in Album Reviews by zack
The first album by Broken Bells, a self-titled collaboration between The Shins’ James Mercer and Brian Burton (AKA Danger Mouse), came out on March 9th. To my ears, it is the best release of 2010 thus far.
Let’s learn a a bit about the principles. James Mercer is best known as the lead guy in The Shins, who have been making albums since 1997. They are recognized for the song “New Slang”, their contribution to the Garden State Soundtrack. It is a crazy good track and fit perfectly with that movie. Some people like to talk smack about the Garden State Soundtrack now, but at the time it was pretty big. Grammy, anyone? (Not that Grammies really mean anything anymore. I’ll grant you that.) I still like that song, though.
Danger Mouse’s biography will take a little more time. He started out as an electronic artist in Athens, Georgia. The first thing that most people heard about Danger Mouse was that in 2004 he took the genres of hip hop, pop, and mash-ups and shattered them all. Then, he picked up the pieces and turned them into a sonic mosaic called The Grey Album. The piece was a mixture of samples culled from the Beatles’ White Album overlaid by acappella rhymes from Jay-Z’s Black Album. In addition to shattering genres, this sound piece actually broke my brain.
From there, Danger Mouse has done a lot of other collaborations and racked up production credits like a tweaked-out pinball wizard with a studio: producer on the Gorillaz Demon Days album (the good one); half of the “Crazy” popular duo, Gnarls Barkley; a collaboration with MF Doom called DangerDoom (inventive, guys); production for indie rockers The Black Keys; and production on Beck’s album Modern Guilt. To say that’s a pretty nice resume would be like saying Susan Boyle kind of looks like a dude; Susan Boyle TOTALLY looks like a dude, and that is a GREAT resume. (Parenthetically, can I just add here that it is awesome that I can type “Susan Boyle looks like a dude” into a search engine and instantly have my choice of images? Done and done. Back to the review.)
Some of Danger Mouse’s projects come off as just an album by the artist, produced by Danger Mouse. The Beck album would come to mind as one fitting in this category. Still other Danger Mouse projects turn into equal partnerships where each party brings something to the table and the pieces coalesce into something new and awesome, like Gnarls Barkley. Broken Bells would fall into the latter category.
As legend has it, the pair met backstage at a music festival in 2004 and hit it off. They wanted to work together, but it didn’t happen for another four years. The project started off as a secret, but blog world got wind of it last year and we have been waiting for the release since then. Now it’s here.
The album is essentially a pop album with extras; the songs are built around guitar and drum sounds, with layered bits of Danger Mouse magic interspersed at just the right intervals. In an interview on NPR’s All Songs Considered, the duo intimated that these sounds were influenced by the instruments in Danger Mouse’s LA studio (electric harpsichord, Hammond organ, etc.), as well as instruments they bought together, like a special Fender 6 guitar they used extensively and whose distinct sound gives some of the songs an Ennio Morricone-like quality (if you’re not familiar with Morricone, think Spaghetti Western soundtracks. He’s the one who made them.)
The song many people heard before the release of the album was the advance single, “The High Road”, released last December. It is also the first track on the album. This is a catchy song with a steady, mid-tempo beat, as well as a singalong ending refrain: “It’s too late to change your mind/ You let laws be your guide.” Actually, Mercer leaves it a bit ambiguous and sometimes I can’t tell if he says “guide” or “God,” which is cryptically cool. Danger Mouse surreptitiously scatters sounds about like so many stars, frosting the song with a trail of vapor dust.
The next great song on Bells is a doozy. “The Ghost Inside” is uber-simple and funky, with a very spare electric beat that hardly changes, a few sparse hand claps, some synthesizer, guitar, and Mercer’s terrific vocal. During this song he switches from a falsetto yowl during the verses, to a mid-range plea for the choruses, and finally to a deeper, conversational cadence during the breakdowns. This performance gives a repetitive song perceived diversity and makes it into one of the top bangers on the album.
“October” is anthemic; it reminds me of a drunken piano player in an old country western saloon. You know, the one who gets shot by a stray bullet when the card game goes awry. It’s sad like that, but beautiful at the same time, like one of those sultry fall days, when it feels like winter will never come. That’s nice imagery for one song to evoke.
Those are my favorite songs on Bells. Now for some short cuts:
The story on “Sailing to Nowhere” is the beautiful piano and string arrangement that adorns this aching waltz. You know when someone kisses their fingers and then splays them up into the air, saying “Magnifique!” like a French chef? This is the aural equivalent of that.
“Citizen” is a hipster robot, programmed to destroy. ‘Nuff said, right? Admit it, you can totally picture that song now. It’s not just lazy writing.
“Mongrel Heart” sounds like a creepy new wave song. It should have a video where the band is drawn in illustrations and then steps through a portal that turns them into real men with bad haircuts.
“The Mall and the Misery” has the epitome of the aforementioned “Morricone sound” at its beginning and then turns into an urgent car chase-type track. I would definitely play this song on the car stereo if I was ever on the run from the cops, careening down alleys and over hills, sparks and body parts flying. It sounds just like that, it really does. This one has some badass guitar riffs.
I neglected to mention a couple of the tracks, including “Vaporize”, “Your Head is on Fire”, and “Trap Doors” on purpose. I think “Vaporize” is actually going to be the next single. It’s a good song. It’s not that I don’t like these cuts, they just didn’t grab me, so they don’t get mentioned. Every album has a couple of throwaway tracks, although I’m sure the artists would object to me calling them that. It’s not that I don’t think they should be on the album, though. Every great album needs a couple of downers to accentuate the greatness of the others. That’s just the way it is.
And this is a great album, from a band that is just getting started. Although the songs from the album were done in the studio by Mercer and Danger Mouse alone, they have formed a band and are headed out on the road soon, starting with that mythical musical wonderland that I never get to go to, South by Southwest Fest. In the future they will be available for more bookings, so, Splitworks, STD, let’s make it happen!
In the meantime, you, the listener should get this album and listen to it. A lot. They even have a $40 Deluxe Edition with ultra-neato stuff like artwork and glow-in-the-dark stickers! The box of the CD plays an unreleased track when you open it, like a post-modern music box! If I still bought CDs I would so totally be there! But, I don’t! But I’m still listening! And so should you! I can’t stop using exclamation points!
I’m out!
Hear some Broken Bells music on their Myspace page.
tags: 2010 - Broken Bells - Danger Mouse - James Mercer - Pop - U.S.A.
March 9th, 2010 |
Posted in Album Reviews by zack
“We’re sleeping underneath the bed/ To scare the monsters off/ With our dear daddy’s Smith and Wesson/ We’re gonna teach them all a lesson.”
St. Vincent’s “The Bed”
This line from St. Vincent’s song “The Bed” off the album Actor perfectly sums up the contradiction that makes the artist’s work so unsettling. As you can hear on the track, the morbid lines are delivered in a sweet, breathy voice, over a serene instrumental that could be the soundtrack to a Disney movie about woodland fairies weaving a cloak of fireflies.
So many people have written about this album already; it seems like overkill to review it again. It was one of the most critically-acclaimed “indie” albums of 2009. Guitarist and singer Annie Clark, who, along with her band, is St. Vincent, has been interviewed in many online and print publications. She has also been fawned over by indie geeks everywhere. If Playboy did a “Girls of Indie Music” pictorial, she might be the centerfold (sorry, Joanna Newsom.) Of course, they would never do that. Rats.
But, despite all of this detritus littering cyberspace, let’s add another layer to the blogosphere morass, shall we? After all, she will be playing a packed show at YuYinTang on March 13th, as part of Splitworks’ JUE Festival. So maybe you want to know something about her and her music.
Clark was the niece of traveling musicians and she often accompanied them on tour when she was a young girl. That’s how she learned to play the guitar. Flash forward a few years and she began touring with former Indie Darlings Sufjan Stevens and The Polyphonic Spree. She set off on her own and recorded her debut album, entitled Marry Me. Actor is her second release and the one that has propelled her into the bright green pool of limelight. The hype is justified; Actor is a polished, chilling, ungodly gorgeous album from an artist who seems to be steadily progressing. Clark has stated in interviews that she actually “drew” the album before she ever played it. This has always confused me, but apparently she used a computer program to draw in the rhythmic and melodic parts before she actually realized them with instruments. I have never heard about this being done before, but it worked for her. For a clearer explanation, here is an email quote from the artist herself, in a piece done by The New Yorker’s Sasha Frere-Jones.
I have a precise memory of sitting in a hotel room in December of 2007 at Charles De Gaulle, absentmindedly drawing notes in on GarageBand via my laptop. No external mouse. Just me drawing notes, one by one, until they sounded how they should sound. Like a facsimile of a facsimile of music. That song became “Marrow.” Because I was not tied to my human, physical, muscular limitations (hands like to go here, ears like to hear this) I was able to make music that was smarter than I am. I sent my friend Mike Atkinson the MIDI scores and he did some cleaning up and printed them out. All new. In musical notation. A whole new language that other players could understand! A revelation! Then I learned how to play what I had written, dreamt. My hands learned the language.
Clark has has stated that she watches a lot of movies and that she thought about film scores when making Actor, especially those of Disney movies. This influence is uncannily evident throughout the album. One can picture many of the songs scoring children’s movies. It is this playful quality that makes the darker parts much eerier. The juxtaposition of “children’s” and “adult” themes is deliciously scandalous.
St. Vincent’s “The Strangers”
Many writers have called this album “enchanting.” That is an apt description, but, for me, the album is unsettling. The songs I like best seem to take atmospheric u-turns at critical junctions. My personal favorites include “The Strangers”, “Marrow”, “The Bed”, and “Actor out of Work”. When, in conventional songs we would be headed for the second verse or the bridge, instead we take a fateful step right up to the brink. You can feel the gale swirling around you and there is real danger. The lyrics do not represent your average fairy tale, more like a nightmare that sets you sweating inside a cauldron of acidic tongues.
Actor is a must-get for those who like their music to veer toward the treacherous side. St. Vincent’s show should also be a must-see, as she will be turning YuYinTang into a kaleidoscopic coven on March 13th. We can expect lots of guitar and piano, possibly played over recorded beats. I do not envision her bringing a full band, but just Annie will do.
After all, she is a saint.
tags: 2009 - Actor - Folk - St. Vincent - U.S.A.
March 8th, 2010 |
Posted in Album Reviews by zack
1999 was a long time ago, but it doesn’t really feel that way, does it? Maybe this is because The Aughts Decade never really spawned a true zeitgeist identity, but it undermines the fact that a decade has passed, a long time to continue to show and prove in the hip hop game.
In 1999, my friends and I thought the world was about to end. Maybe it did, for all we know. Maybe we just listened to too much Prince and The Isolationist.
That year, DJ Vadim released an earth shattering album for those of us who were waiting for the end. The album was The Isolationist. At that point, it was about the most cutting-edge shit you could get into. The MCs, M. Saayid, Beans, and Priest (known collectively as Anti-Pop Consortium) were off-the-wall (“Your ears are my punching bag/ Hydrogen slush), utilizing the negative space (where no raps live) as much as they did their own idiosyncratic flows. Much in the same way, the beats were spare and foreboding.
“Hydrogen Slush from The Isolationist
I bring this joint up because it was 10 years between this ground-breaking album and DJ Vadim’s last release, U Can’t Lurn Imaginashun. 10 years is a long time in the hip hop game. It was long enough for Jay Z to morph from an up-and-comer to a mogul, for De La Soul to go from top of the heap to over the hill. Long enough for Kanye West to arise from obscurity to ubiquity and back again and for Common to jump the shark completely, making an atrocious album on whose cover he wore guy-liner. Countless labels and artists have come and gone since then (Def Jux or Canibus, anyone? OK, Def Jux is still around, but it seems like they’re more of a clothing and accessories company now.) Hip hop since 1999 has become a part of the pop music template, a seemingly seamless co-option that has basically killed the genre or bestowed upon it everlasting life, depending on whom you ask.
To be sure, DJ Vadim has changed a lot since 1999, too. He got married, to Yarah Bravo, went through some loss as well as cancer of the eye (ouch), toured the world, and participated in countless collaborations. His most recent effort, U Can’t Lurn Imaginashun is a mish-mash of styles that should please everyone.
“This is something I would never have done ten years ago, let alone on my last album,” avers Vadim. “I feel like the album bridges gaps between what is eclectic and what is mainstream, as well as between genres like soul, hip hop, reggae, downtempo and electronica. It’s definitely a move towards more electronic sounds from The Soundcatcher” – maybe like Soul2Soul meets Daft Punk.”
That quote exemplifies the spirit of this album completely. It swings back and forth from reggae to dubstep, from pop hip hop to underground banger. Imaginashun holds your attention due to this genre schizophrenia, as well as the overall accessibility. The first three tracks: “Soldier,” “Imaginashun,” and “That Life” run the gamut from reggae/dancehall to a trance-like club track to a “conscious” hip hop cut with infectious soul samples. Imaginashun goes on like this, refusing to conform to the contours of its container, breaking free and breaking molds.
Maybe you can lurn imaginashun.
In 1999, I admired The Isolationist for its single-mindedness; its willful determination to conform to a style. I could see myself ridiculing Imaginashun ten years ago, calling it too pop, maybe even a sell-out. However, now I realize that there is a difference between becoming accessible and selling out. Maybe it has taken me ten years to become a more eclectic and receptive listener. Or perhaps it has taken Vadim these ten years to find the right balance. It’s like a colorblind person suddenly seeing in Technicolor.
He seems to move effortlessly between styles. In addition to the three aforementioned tracks, “Thrill Seeker” is a wriggly, slippery funk number, featuring the powerful voice of Sabira Jade. “Saturday,” featuring Pugz Atomz, reminds me of an early-90s commercial radio jam. You know, like when you used to sit by the stereo and press record when your favorite song came on, played it non-stop on your Walkman, then recorded over it two weeks later when the new flavor came out, until the tape eventually melted down to the basic carbon atoms. “Strictly Rockers” and “Under Your Hat” move to the reggae/dub realm with satisfying results. Yarah Bravo dominates “You Are Yours” with both her singing and rapping. “Maximum” featuring La Methode takes us to France with a creepy track built around old chanson samples. This cut kind of weirds me out a little bit, but in a good way. It sounds like the soundtrack to cartoons based on a trip to the haunted house. Pugz Atomz returns strong, along with Wes Restless on “Always a Lady, ” a sweet little hip hop love joint. Vadim even drops some disco on us, cashing in on the latest revival with “Thrill” and “Rock Dem Hot”. “Hidden Pleasure” plays around with ska.
“You are Yours from DJ Vadim feat. Yarah Bravo
If you had a qualm about the album, it would probably be that it is not cohesive. It is more like a great mixtape, which I happen to like. However, some people like more of an overall conceptual cohesion that is lacking here. I like to hear Vadim working in a select genre over the course of an album, like he does on The Isolationist or the album La Mami Internacional. Also, in my opinion, there are some weaker tracks that act as filler. “Beijos,” kind of a ballad-y hip hop beat; and “Game Tight,” which samples an American soap opera theme song, come to mind immediately.
Maybe there is no over-arching conceptual theme, but the omnipresent vibe on Imaginashun is fun. This can be one of those albums you put on at a party and just let it run straight through. It is apparent that Vadim has honed his craft over the years, expanded his stable of collaborators, and found a way to dabble in almost every imaginable genre. What’s next, DJ Vadim, klezmer? Polka? I wouldn’t put it past him. Judging from this album, he would probably make it super rump-shaking.
Good news for you: Vadim and Yarah Bravo are coming to Shanghai (again). This is a Free the Wax show at the Shelter on March 12th. More awesomeness: Vadim and Yarah Bravo will be putting on a workshop/show at the Source store the day before. Come down to find out how Vadim makes the tracks so funky.
tags: DJ Vadim - Free the Wax - Hip Hop - The Isolationist - UK - Yarah Bravo
February 23rd, 2010 |
Posted in Album Reviews by zack
“Expressionless War” begins and ends; this is the premise put forth by the Nanjing-based band Fading Horizon on their album Name it Yourself. An interesting concept: expressionless war. It goes on all the time, perhaps without the knowledge of many. Wars between the rich and the poor, city folk and country folk, the underground and the mainstream are ever-present and often covert. The interesting thing about Fading Horizon is that they proclaim these wars have a beginning and an end. It is a peculiarly optimistic stance from a band that sounds so damn bleak.
Just like the horizon divides earth and sky, Name it Yourself hovers in a no-world of shifting questions and polarities. This album has such an all-encompassing aesthetic that it is hard to differentiate between the tracks. Just know that all of the songs are equally dramatic, tight, well-produced, and depressing as hell, in a good way. This album is a lyrical kick in the privates to the bands that play around onstage here in Shanghai sometimes. It is a journey to the place where music matters, where expression is an art form, and where we don’t all have to windmill guitars with plastic smiles pasted to our faces. No one has to sing along, but you will be going for a ride, like it or not.
A few notes about the overall production of the album: First, it’s really accomplished. Miniless Records should be proud of what they have done on this album, LAVA|OX|SEA’s The Next Episode…, and others. What I like about the production on Name it Yourself is that it reflects the overriding theme of dirt, death, and destruction. The sounds appear to be encased in a layer of grime that adds to the negative atmosphere, polluting it even further. The bass guitar is way up in the mix, which makes the sound more heavy. The drums are also well-recorded and on point. Guitars run the gamut from straight-forward rocking chords to layers and layers of ungodly noise. One of the songs, “Rust”, features the effect of the rhythmic panning from one speaker to the other, over and over again. This is disorienting, but that’s the point. “Rendezvous” offers an apocalyptic radio voice decaying throughout the length of the song.
This is an album that will inspire strong opinions, one way or the other, the mark of a good album. I would rather listen to something that seriously disturbs me than an album I feel nothing for. This offering affects me in an adverse way, which, paradoxically, is what I am looking for. It means I am still feeling. I am alive and pissed off about some things.
I can’t, in good conscience, recommend Name it Yourself if you are currently contemplating suicide. However, everyone else is enthusiastically encouraged to get ahold of this album and blast it through your headphones like a virus inserted into your central nervous system. It will not uplift you, but it might wake you up.
tags: Albums 2009 - China - Fading Horizon - Rock
The first album by Broken Bells, a self-titled collaboration between The Shins’ James Mercer and Brian Burton (AKA Danger Mouse), came out on March 9th. To my ears, it is the best release of 2010 thus far.
