Links:
Yeasayer: http://yeasayer.net/
Secretly Canadian: http://www.secretlycanadian.com/
Purchase at IndieRocket

When Yeasayer released their debut CD, All Hour Cymbals, in 2007, I was pretty quickly won over by their neo-hippy, earnestly arty prog-rock persona. “2080” was a genuinely terrific single, even though it’s world-a-come-crashing-down sentiment was almost comically dire. Vampire Weekend’s debut was released around the same time, and I remember constantly pitting the two bands (specifically, the singles: VW’s “A-Punk” and “2080”) against each other in my head – two up-and-coming lightweight boxers sparring in a ring, jabbing back and forth at each other and idling around the ring in looped circles. Who would win this epic battle of the ambitious world beat hipsters?

Well, within a month or two the outcome of the imaginary bout was apparent. Vampire Weekend faded from my memory like a Kylie Minogue tune – quickly, leaving a vaguely pleasant but hollow aftertaste – while All Hour Cymbals wound up on my year-end Top Ten list.

And here we are two years later. Between now and then, Vampire Weekend’s played Saturday Night Live. “A-Punk” is included as a selection on my son’s edition of Lego Rock Band. Contra, VW’s sophomore CD, hit Number One in Billboard. Yeasayer? Well, they played a triumphant set at last summer’s Pitchfork Festival. And last fall they released “Amblin’ Alp,” one of the finest singles of 2009 or any other year. A song about fascists. And self-actualization, I think.  And Depression-era pugilists.  My metaphor turned out more apt than I could have ever known.

When I say “Amblin’ Alp” is good – I mean it’s really good. It has one of the most infectious choruses I have ever heard, one that practically begs you to sing along, loudly, emulating the little vocal tics that make it so irresistible. Lyrically, the song is masterful: “If anyone should cheat you, take advantage of or beat you…” unravels in your ear like the solution to a clever verbal labyrinth. It’s delicious.

I assumed there would be no way the rest of Odd Blood could stand up to a song as good as “Amblin’ Alp.” Even All Hour Cymbals was a showcase for two great songs (“2080” and “Sunrise”), padded with a bunch of better-than-average album filler. There was just no reason to expect something this good.

I’ve listened to Odd Blood at least 30 times, straight through, end to end, in the last three weeks. That’s exactly 29 times more than any other record I’ve listened to in that time period. I think there’s one very simple reason I’ve been so enchanted: Odd Blood jettisons me back in time to the Summer of 1984, and in so doing elicits a rush of nostalgia for a period in my life when I was hearing music – really hearing it –  for the very first time.

Somehow, when I wasn’t looking, Yeasayer evolved from a serious art school-style musical project into the finest ‘80s synth-pop revival act since M83 released Saturdays = Youth. If I didn’t know any better (the members of the band hadn’t even been born yet!), Yeasayer got ahold of my old high school cassette case. Then they dug out all the synth-pop: Heaven 17, Yaz, Howard Jones, OMD, The Human League, Men Without Hats – Yello, for goodness’ sake! – and incorporated elements of each one into this album. As stylistic surprises go, Odd Blood is similar to The Dandy Warhols’ underrated Welcome to the Monkey House. Except here, Yeasayer is clearly enjoying itself.

More importantly, Odd Blood demonstrates Yeasayer could be this generation’s musical chameleons, seamlessly shifting genres from album to album on a whim. I cannot wait to see what they have in store for us next.

Link: http://www.owenpalletteternal.com/

Onstage, Owen Pallett seems dangerously vulnerable. He stands alone, with a laptop, a microphone, and his violin. His voice is improbably delicate, even as it eminates from such a slight, spindly figure. You almost want to rush up there, throw your jacket over his shoulders, and usher him someplace safe, away from the judgmental gaze of the audience.

He is, of course, fully aware of how he appears on a stage. His fragility is part of the act. It draws the audience in out of an almost morbid sense of curiosity, all the while rewarding them with his quirky, sometimes playful, often deeply personal compositions.

Heartland, several years in the making, is Pallett’s third full-length album, but the first to be released under his own name. Until now, he has called his act “Final Fantasy,” after a video game in which the player fights bad guys, acquires party members, levels up again and again and again, yet never seems to actually achieve anything.

Seemingly not content to spin his wheels, Pallett expands his “palette” a bit on Heartland. There’s more percussion here than we’ve heard on any Final Fantasy records, for instance. Some background singers lend their voices to the mix. And he throws in some synths, too (the album’s best song, “Lewis Takes Off His Shirt,” sounds a bit like Chemical Brothers mixing Steve Reich). It’s still recognizably an Owen Pallett record. That pretty, fragile voice gives it away every time.

I like the two Final Fantasy records. I purchased a hand packaged copy of Has A Good Home from Owen himself after seeing his act prior to a 2005 Arcade Fire show. And “This Is the Dream of Win and Regine,” from the horribly titled He Poos Clouds was one of my favorite songs in 2006. Problem is, I never want to listen to them. I never seem to be in the mood.

Such will likely be the fate of Heartland. It’s a good album – one that gets better with each spin, as its nuances start to become less subtle. But it’s too dramatic to function as effective background music. And, despite the occasional disco flourish, it’s not consistently toe-tappy enough to be good for driving (though on the aforementioned “Lewis,” and “Tryst With Mephistopholes,” it’s almost danceable). It’s another thoughtful, delicate Final Fantasy record I just won’t listen to all that often.

I bet it would be great to see Pallett perform Heartland live, though. That would be awesome.

Link:
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/wehaveband

As a teenager, I discovered Manchester – through headphones attached to a cheap Panasonic cassette player playing a freshly-purchased copy of New Order’s Power, Corruption and Lies. And here I am now, some twenty-seven (ahem) years later, with in-ear phones attached to my Palm Pre, rediscovering Manchester (which I seem to do on at least an annual basis) via We Have Band’s WHB-EP. Appropriately, the first song is called “Hear It in the Cans.”

On their 4-song digital-only release, WHB-EP, We Have Band serves up three self-produced singles and a Pet Shop Boys cover for curious American listeners, as a teaser for a full-length allegedly due in Q1 2010. It’s best described as cool, detached post-punk influenced disco; Human League meets Hot Chip. It’s not entirely groundbreaking stuff – Delorean, for example, is doing a Basque-flavored version of more or less the same shtick – but We Have Band does what it does quite capably.

“Hear It In The Cans” is the best of the original tracks included here. It’s a catchy throwback to leftfield mid -80s synthpop (think Comsat Angels, remixed by Yello). “Oh!” is pure minimalist disco, built around a single repeated phrase and (well, duh) a bunch of “Oh!”s. You’ll probably hear it in a movie some day. “You Came Out” marries bratty vocals with a catchy little guitar riff – then layers a “Young Folks”-like whistle riff over the top. Like the other three cuts, it’s simple and it’s catchy – if a bit unfinished (all three cuts are appended “DIY Version,” so I suppose that’s to be expected).

Folks will probably find themselves most naturally drawn to We Have Band’s faithful cover of “West End Girls.” I find it a bit too faithful (i.e., it doesn’t really sound much like the other three songs on the EP, most notably in the lack of female vocals), though not necessarily inappropriate for inclusion here — they are trying to win over US listeners, after all. It is, however, almost completely devoid of the irony that was a Pet Shop Boys hallmark. In that sense, anyway, it’s a pleasant-sounding failure.

We Have Band (including “Hear It in the Cans [DIY Version]”) has been included on two Kitsuné Maison compilations to date. Insofar as there is such a thing as a Kitsuné aesthetic, We Have Band fits right in with it. That is to say, the trio comes off as willfully detached – and as French as any British band can be. They’re easy to like, but tough to love hard. And they’re perfectly OK with that.

Me, I’ll wait for the full length to decide how I really feel about We Have Band. For now, I think I’ll love them like the 2009 Beaujolais Nouveau – with greasy food and low expectations.

To the people who say cover art doesn’t matter when the majority of media people consume these days don’t even have covers on which to put art, I have a challenge for you. Before you listen to Technicolor Dreamer, stare at the artwork above for 30 seconds and try to quantify the degree to which your excitement for the record has waned in that half minute. See? I’ve proven that – at the very least – bad cover art matters. It matters a lot.

So, before I even got it loaded up on the iPod, Technicolor Dreamer had at least one strike against it: it just plain looks unappealing. Could the music be as bad? I really didn’t want to find out.

So I procrastinated. In the two weeks I avoided listening to Scott Hardkiss, I did a lot of things. I took flying lessons. I played with my kids. I got caught up on Curb Your Enthusiasm. I wrote a review of the new Tiesto CD for this very web publication. Finally, in a moment of desperate ennui, I gave in and decided to give Hardkiss a spin. So I plugged my headphones into the laptop and searched my digital music library for “Hardkiss.” I was surprised when, alongside Technicolor Dreamer, The Flaming Lips Fight Test EP was listed. And right there, next to “Do You Realize??,” the words: “(Scott Hardkiss Floating In Space Mix).”

This guy, Scott Hardkiss, hangs with The Flaming Lips? One of my favorite bands, ever? Really? Who knew?

My enthusiasm for Hardkiss suddenly and unexpectedly renewed, I dived in head first. But first I turned off the cover art. No sense ruining the record any more than necessary.

Alas, I needn’t have bothered. Technicolor Dreamer isn’t very good, with or without the bad cover art.

It’s tough to figure out what Hardkiss was trying to accomplish with Technicolor Dreamer. Is it a joke of some sort? If I listen to it like a novelty record, it comes off like a Was Not Was album – but without the laundry list of A-list contributors, the impeccable production, and without the… well, without the jokes. If I try to take it seriously, it reminds me a bit of Beck’s Midnight Vultures, but without the musical depth (or the jokes, frankly). Even its best songs are blatantly derivative – “Hey Deejay” sounds like a rejected demo for Len’s “Steal My Sunshine,” and “You’re the Star” is like a late-1970s K-Tel watered-down cover version of Daft Punk).

I also went back and listened to his Flaming Lips remix. Turns out I didn’t remember it because it’s not very good, either – stuttery and overlong in the way most ‘80s “extended remixes” were, ditching nearly everything that made the original record wonderful for the sake of a relentless and ill-matched beat.

Maybe I’m being too hard on a guy who’s clearly got some talent and some ambition, but who just doesn’t quite have what it takes to bring those two things together. Or maybe he’s a misunderstood genius & I just don’t get how he thinks.

One thing I know for sure: every once in a while, you really can judge a record by its cover.

Ah, Tiesto. I’m on to you.

I can see you, your hair slicked back, skin flawless, pleather jacket, magical dragon-sword-guitar print shirt, smelling of freshly-applied Givenchy Pour Homme, locking eyes intently with and speaking in low tones about your new project to the indie stars of today, one by one: first Jónsi, then Emily, then Tegan, then Sara, then Nelly, then Kele, all of them, one at a time. “I will make you sound ten years younger..!” Your spell cast upon them, they blindly follow you into the studio, these hipster chanteurs and chanteuses, position the lyrics sheets beside the windscreen, and lend their voices to your electronic musical mélange.

And then you work your magic, Tiesto! It is a fantastic, wonderful Dutch magic borne of mystery and technology that changes shape in horrible, grotesque ways before becoming Kaleidoscope. “Voila!,” you exclaim when you finally emerge from the studio, your hair slicked back, skin flawless, pleather jacket, magical dragon-sword-guitar print shirt, smelling of freshly-applied Givenchy Pour Homme. “The sound of ten years ago!”

And indeed it is true! Kaleidoscope sounds like it was recorded exactly ten years ago! Both enchanted and intimidated by your feat, and facing down any suggestion they consume electronic music that could be considered “challenging,” or even “interesting,” your fans will respond with ebullient praise and healthy digital sales – while your critics grumble bitterly to themselves.

Yes, Tiesto. I know what you’re up to. And I don’t like it one bit.

Thinking back on it, I should’ve seen this coming.

I first heard the Twilight Sad in 2006, when I came into possession of their self-titled 5-song EP — the one on which “That Summer, At Home I had Become the Invisible Boy” was included. That song in particular, with its spot-on articulation of the hopelessness of adolescence, defined the band in my mind. Positioning themselves square in the middle of the Arab Strap ↔ The Proclaimers continuum, The Twilight Sad merged gloomy lyrics with ambitious anthemic bombast and a comely lyrical lilt. They could be huge, but they were going to get there on their own terms.

Then, with their first proper full-length, 2007’s Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters, they threw a bit of a curve. Even though three of the five songs on the EP were included on the full-length, the album’s opening track, “Cold Days In the Birdhouse,” with its incessant plinking piano and thick accented vocals, my impression of the band changed: The Twilight Sad were following the Bloc Party career-building template, establishing an infectious arena-ready sound that evolved from a darker, edgier place. They were, it seemed, readying themselves for the masses.

Oh, how wrong I was.

They were ready, as it turns out, to be the next Interpol. Forget the Night Ahead establishes itself that way right off the bat, with a big drumbeat over a muted guitar screech. The deep, articulated bassline recalls vintage Joy Division (which, you’ll recall, was the band Interpol was once described as the “next” version of), and James Graham’s thick-accented voice conveys the despair of profound loneliness. “There’s people downstairs, I’m more than a fighter” he intones, and you get the impression he’s describing some sort of irrevocable equilibrium — a chasm that can never be bridged.

The album art should have been a clue. I am looking now at their first few records and EPs. What initially seemed to me to be mildly sarcastic (but cheerful) satire of 1950’s-style marketing artwork now strikes me as just plain morbid: children aflame; a masked child smothering his sleeping mother with a pillow, another one being rebuked by his mother while threatening her with a large knife, etc. The cover art for Forget the Night Ahead displays the same exceptional feel for graphic design, but even more so reflects the emptiness and despair of the characters that haunt the album it “contains.” In that sense, it’s damned near perfect (even if I can’t figure out just what, exactly, it depicts).

Music like this frequently induces a superficial monotony on the casual listener — by which I mean it’s so dense and initially impenetrable as to allow only a shallow penetration of its surface. Visualize a sea of people jammed so tightly, shoulder to shoulder, all you can see is the soft, vaguely fuzzy carpet made up of the tops of everyone’s heads. A man could walk on top of those heads and shoulders and know nothing of them aside from the treacherous lumpiness they impart to his walking surface. Forget the Night Ahead demands to either be listened to repeatedly, very carefully, so it can reveal its depth, or to be set aside as too “difficult,”

Difficult or not, the most surprising effect Forget the Night Ahead had on me was to force me to reconsider the rest of the band’s work. Suddenly, as if by some sort of dark magic, I realize this is what the band’s been like all along. And I think I like them even more for it.

Links:
The Twilight Sad on MySpace
The Twilight Sad at Fat Cat Records

Mister Pop, the latest album from seminal Kiwi rockers The Clean, opens with the languid “Loog,” in which a female vocalist (I have no idea who it is) “ba ba ba”s over a Ray Manzarek-style organ riff. Sounding a bit like a half-tempo shoegaze version of The Stranglers’ “Golden Brown,” it’s a subtle introduction to a record that deserves more attention than it demands – one of the best (and most stylistically varied) records I’ve heard this year.

The album’s second cut, “Are You Really On Drugs,” provides its most memorable lyric, delivered alongside an infectiously subdued melody that lingers long after the record concludes. “In the Dreamlife You Need a Rubber Soul” is equal parts country-punk twang and poppy tunefulness – it has a sort of a Beatles by-way-of The Mekons feel. “Asleep In The Tunnel” sounds like it could be an outtake from The Feelies The Good Earth; one could imagine Peter Buck (wearing sunglasses and a leather vest over a white tunic, of course) behind the boards for it, too.

“Back in the Day” conjures a simple Velvet Underground vibe, with David Kilgour’s sing-talk recalling Lou Reed at his most jaded. “Moonjumper,” a meandering five and a half minute instrumental psychedelic hoe-down, arrives like a downpour on a hot summer day, leaving the air behind it thick and syrupy. “Factory Man” plays like a Robyn Hitchcock single: cute and precious (dare I say “twee”?), and socially relevant. “Simple Fix” sounds like a filler instrumental track lifted from a Dandy Warhols album, replete with burbling bongwater sound effects and lazy day whistling.

The record’s high point is “Tensile,” which sounds a bit like a Kraftwerk cut performed by a New Order tribute band. Its clean, propulsive rhythm and whimsical keyboard riff are perfectly complemented by an odd-but-appealing vocoder track. The song has a certain timeless quality – no surprise from a band whose career has touched four different decades now.

If Flight of the Conchords has taught us anything, it’s that being “New Zealand’s fourth most…” anything results in a less than whelming commercial reception in the United States. The Clean could lay claim to being New Zealand’s fourth most widely known musical export (behind Crowded House, Split Enz, and the aforementioned Conchords), but judging from the blank stares from some of the most knowledgeable music fans I know, might as well be New Zealand’s foremost manufacturer of fine timepieces. Mister Pop is a pretty strong little (just 35 minutes long) record, but it might be a bit too understated to expand the band’s audience in the U.S.

Something tells me they like it that way.

Mister Pop is currently streaming in its entirety at the Merge Records website: www.mergerecords.com

From the first few seconds of the opening track (“Percussion Gun”) of White Rabbits’ It’s Frightening, you know exactly what you’re in for: a good old fashioned rock and roll record. One that happens to sound a lot like Spoon record.

That’s no coincidence. Spoon’s Britt Daniel twisted the knobs and gave It’s Frightening the same distinctively effortless swagger and precise sheen that characterizes his own band’s sound.

It’s Frightening is, essentially, a “formula” record. It follows a blueprint developed in the 1970s, when artists like Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen, and Bob Seger ruled the airwaves and the charts with a gritty working-class sound that incorporated a singer (or two), a drummer, a guitarist (or two) a bass player, and a piano (maybe) on exuberant, catchy sing-along tunes. Somewhere along the way the formula was further refined while, at the same time, artists that followed it were marginalized to independent labels. Bands like Spoon, The Hold Steady, and The Black Lips have traded sales for critical praise — and the devotion of a small but fervid fan base, built slowly and deliberately by a nurturing independent record label.

Unfortunately, the “formula” doesn’t seem to be the proper aesthetic choice for White Rabbits, a band whose 2007 full-length debut, Fort Nightly, was much more stylistically scattershot – and much more interesting. While the songs on It’s Frightening are good (particularly the three songs that open the album), they don’t stick around for long once the record’s stopped playing.

Imagine the material performed live, however, and it’s the kind of stuff you’d expect to hear performed at a local dive bar late on a Friday night, the air fragrant with draft beer and cigarettes, ceiling fans ineffectively cooling the gathered masses. Good, old-fashioned rock and roll.

If White Rabbits can capture that sound — instead of Spoon’s — their next album should be one hell of a record.

Links:

White Rabbits: http://whiterabbitsmusic.com/
Music Essay on Fort Nightly: http://www.zaptownmag.com/2008/12/white-rabbits-fort-nightly

It takes some balls to step up to the plate and take a big swing. Everyone’s watching you, and you’re more likely to fail than you are to hit it over the fence. Yet, there’s a steady line of folks willing to have a go at it. And even if you nail it, the glory’s fleeting. You’re nearly forgotten by the time you round third and head home. You can even see the next guy warming up in the batters box.

A labored baseball metaphor for indie rock… Yeah, I went there. If it was winter, you’d be dealing with hockey metaphors. Believe me, this is better.

Alligators is the latest Seattle band to take their turn at the plate, offering up their debut, Piggy and Cups. They swing hard, they even manage to make good contact, but do they hit it out of the park?

It took a while for me to figure out where Alligators were going with this one. The first two tracks evoke enjoyable (if not overwhelming) early-aughts indie pop rock, in the vein of Nada Surf or, maybe, The Sleepy Jackson. They are pleasant, slickly produced, well written songs destined to be enjoyed while being played, but not to linger too long on the palate.

The third track, “Original Fear,” amps up the prog a bit, intersplicing pleasant-but-punchless vocal harmonies with a screaming chorus that would sound right at home on a Mars Volta record.

About four and a half minutes into the fourth track, “If You Want To,” Alligators shifts its focus a bit. At that point, the song reaches a multi-instrumental crescendo (think The Beatles’ “A Day In The Life,” from which it draws an obvious inspiration) and has pretty much faded out. All of a sudden, from somewhere in the back of the studio, the band launches into a soulful 30-second a cappella chant: “That’ll be the best!” – with handclaps. (Personal bias revealed: I love handclaps. I believe handclaps, along with “woo!”s and “doot doot”s, are the single highest-value elemental contributors to any pop song I wind up liking.)

By the time “Conqueror” rolls around, the stage is set. “Conqueror” is the album’s best cut, and every song up to this point has been rather masterfully sequenced to prepare the listener for its impact – which, like Midlake’s “Roscoe,” stands out from the rest of the record with a sort of timelessness: shades of Neil Young, perhaps; some hints of Fleetwood Mac around the periphery.

“Conqueror” is a pretty great song on a pretty good debut record. Alligators may not have hit it out of the park with Piggy and Cups. But like a rookie up for a late-season tryout with the big league team, they had the hit that drives in the game winning run in an otherwise meaningless game. It may not mean much now, but it definitely qualifies Alligators as a band to keep an eye on.

Alligators

The album kicks off with a spare and mournful adaptation of modern classical composer John Tavener’s “The Lamb,” a piece that would be well suited scoring a bleak art film about a lonely man driving across a vast, lifeless desert. It’s an unconventional way for a bunch of hipster cellists to introduce the listener to a collection of pop songs, but at the same time it drives home the point: the Portland Cello Project are classical musicians. Serious classical musicians.

But, wait! They’re playful pop musicians, too! As soon as they’ve lured you into a palpable sense of melancholy with “The Lamb,” they snap you out of it with the best pure pop song of the collection: Thao Nguyen’s “Beat (Health, Life, and Fire).” This one hits like an ice cold beer on a hot summer day; a refreshingly upbeat song that has Thao slinging her syllables with the kind of gusto we became accustomed to on last year’s excellent We Brave Bee Stings and All. The PCP (plus a percussionist or two) proves itself perfectly comfortable alongside Thao’s distinctively yelpy intonations.

Local Portland troubadour Justin Power rounds out the opening triptych with the somber “Cut the Rope,” a slightly menacing, nautically inspired piece that demonstrates explicitly how quirky the PCP want you to think they are. It’s a beautiful song, delivered with an enormous amount of heart, but it feels out of place here — especially after the refreshing uplift of the Thao song.

And it’s at this point, after the first three songs, that we begin to realize the album’s biggest problem: The Thao and Justin Power Sessions feels, in total, like a randomly-sequenced mix of material from three distinct four-song EPs:

• On the first of these EPs, a bunch of cool cats with cellos flash their chops with “novel” adaptations of modern classical (“The Lamb”), tango (Carlos Gardel’s “Por Una Cabeza”), indie (Norfolk and Western’s “Turkish Wine,” the only instrumental cut that fits comfortably alongside the vocal tracks), and heavy metal (Pantera’s “Mouth for War,” which is every bit as toothless and dreadful as it sounds on paper). Two and a half stars.
• On another EP, earnest newcomer Justin Power delivers his own heartfelt brand of emo-folk alongside a competent string ensemble. The album closer, “Travel,” is, arguably, the best of this bunch — a lovely road song stylistically reminiscent of orchestrated Iron & Wine. Three stars.
• And on the third EP, rising Kill Rock Stars artist Thao showcases her distinctive voice with the support of some soulful and adept classical musicians (some of whom sound like they’re playing guitars and banjos and drums instead of cellos, but I suppose that’s the point). Four stars.

Had Kill Rock Stars marketed this as separate EPs, I would have recommended the Thao EP to just about anyone who likes distinctive female singer-songwriters. I would have recommended the Justin Power EP, with some reservations, for those who have an eye for developing indie talent. And I might have suggested the PCP EP as a gift for your teenage niece who plays cello. And, since the album is available digitally from several on-line retailers on a song-by-song basis, perhaps these are real options.

Otherwise, for those who have a fetish for hard media or who (like me) have to own the whole album: Three stars.