Pitchfork Music Festival 2010

Feature
Pitchfork
July 19, 2010
Link


Friday, July 16


Liars [5:30 p.m.; Connector Stage]

Pitchfork: You guys were here four years ago. A lot's changed since-- do you have any fond memories from then?

Julian Gross: I do, I do. I remember Devendra played and had his shirt off.

Angus Andrew: Os Mutantes, that was exciting.

Aaron Hemphill: We were in the same dressing room.

JG: Yep, same dressing room. I remember the heat. It was brutal. I remember the heat on stage and feeling like I wanted to die.

AH: I think we were the only rock band.

Pitchfork: That was my other question. I guess there's Raekwon and Lightning Bolt, but [other] bands here are a summery, good vibes kind of thing. I like to think of the "The Overachievers" as the flip side of "My Girls" by Animal Collective. You're like, "Okay, we got the four walls and there's a darkness to it."

AA: I'm glad you're pointing that out because we feel in a darker corner than a lot of the other stuff that's been coming out. And so it's nice, I think, to be that one token sort of thing as opposed to sort of just being [part of] the flow.

AH: [We're glad] that distinction is communicated through our music. Because if we felt it and created according to it and failed to communicate, then I'd be sort of scared.

Pitchfork: Yeah, why do you think that is-- the good vibes thing? Things suck right now!

JG: That's why. I think it's just this cloud in your face. Like, "Oh what, what are you talking about, man? Everything's awesome. Everything's totally cool and stuff."

AA: We obviously do a lot of press out of the States. When we started making Sisterworld was when Obama got elected. I think [there] was a general euphoria that everyone felt. At the same time Prop 8 was rejected in California so there were protests on the street and I think that was a good marking point for what might be going on. Because people are still caught up in the idea that maybe we're on this higher road now because we elected Obama. But in reality it's still quite the opposite. I think that's what makes it really frustrating to hear celebratory music when on the ground or in the trenches-- as we say-- it's not quite as blimey.

JG: When music is happy and with the idea of everything being so easy to find, maybe happy music is just so popular because it's so easily attainable and if it's not happy, maybe you have to pay more attention and think about it a little bit more and maybe it bums you out a little bit. It seems like everything is geared towards this quickness.

Pitchfork: You guys are associated with so many different locations, be it Williamsburg or Berlin or L.A. Where's your guys' rehearsal space?

AA: In L.A., downtown. So we've been moving around a lot, but these guys are from L.A. so we all live there now and it's really working out quite good. It's a very interesting place.

Pitchfork: Your album, everybody harped on this, but you got the L.A. aspect. Are you guys still really interested in that dark side of L.A.?

AA: In this case what happens is you put out a record and then ideas start coming back to us and so you start to talk about more and it's a way to grow. The great thing about any art work is over time and a little bit of space, you can get another whole thing of the same one thing. It's been interesting trying to deal with this topic that we brought up, but it's good to talk about.

I think one of the things that we like to emphasize, even though we wrote it in L.A. and we were very inspired by what was going on there, I think we feel strongly that it's a universal thing and you could be living somewhere in Illinois and feeling equally isolated or alienated. I like to talk to a lot of people about that-- the connections-- in other places of the world. Because I think L.A., for us, is just this place full of people really shining off some of the things we know.

Pitchfork: You mentioned earlier you have some stuff you guys are working on that you might show off today.

AA: Why don't you talk about the cover we're going to do?

AH: Oh, we might try to do a cover and we're finding how we pull off some of the material and stuff like that. We're really into Bauhaus and stuff like that. Great band.

AA: We've always been talking about them and it's funny for us because right from day one they were a really big influence on us and it's never been talked about.

AH: You listen to their albums and how much territory they've covered and I feel that a certain degree of theatricality has prevented them from getting the sort of craze. They're notorious but I don't think that people should put them below the Cure or Siouxsie and the Banshees. I think that's terrible.

AA: It's really interesting. The Cure and Bauhaus is a good comparison because the goth thing is something that I think is troubling for people to swallow too. They've just made some fucking hit singles, didn't they?

AH: People are just getting more and more afraid of theatrical performance in music. I don't think they like the fact that it's a performance. I feel that "indie rock" prefix even uses this sincerity aspect. And I think people love shows that exclude performance or theatrical elements or ideas. Like in hip-hop, there isn't this tendency to suffocate that element. Or you have much more theatrical elements in hip-hop.

Pitchfork: There are people like Lady Gaga or of Montreal but maybe it's darker theatrics.

JG: Well I feel like there would have to be some sort of mental divide for people to accept certain theater and "indie rock," which is I guess evidence of the limitations of that name.

AH: Pavement pretty much paved the road for this type of thing with their whole stage set. Which, to me is still kind of-- they're like "Oh, we're going to dress normal on stage so it isn't a performance. It's just us being us." But that is still a stage persona. No matter what, you're telling something to these people. Whether you're dressed like of Montreal or Pavement, the idea is sort of still the same as uniform. You're on a stage, that's what that means.

Robyn [6:25 p.m.; Aluminum Stage]

Pitchfork: You're back in the U.S. What are you excited about?

Robyn: I'm excited to tour. I mean serious. I want it to feel real and authentic, even though it's pop music. I think the live thing is important for that because it brings a connection for people that I don't think a lot of times you get with pop music because you get it in big venues. But we're trying to do something more playful.

My audience is kind of the same everywhere. It's this weird mix of people. People that knew me from before, but also mixed with lots of new kinds of people. And it's the same thing here in America, which is so striking to like go to Berlin and then go to London and then go to New York and see the same kind of crowd.

Pitchfork: You were at Roskilde. I saw you there a couple years ago. They are so vocal in Scandanavia too, right?

R: That's the one place where-- actually in Sweden it's like that too. But I think Roskilde is the only place outside of Sweden where I get that kind of response, except for here. The UK, I've sold more records there than anywhere else but it's a different kind of audience. They're a little trickier but here it's just like [makes a noise] you know? Even if it's a small club, people are still into it.

Pitchfork: Recently you covered Alicia Keys. What do you like about her?

R: I like that song. It feels like she listened to Prince. I totally have those songs too where you hear Prince but she did it in this good way that I liked. So I just wanted to pick up on that you know?

Pitchfork: Can you talk at all about what's coming up?

R: I just finished mixing the next album. It's just kind of sent off to the factory. It has more of the traditional pop songs on there, but the productions are still in the same world as the first album [Body Talk, Pt. 1] so it's definitely connected. It's meant to even have a little connection back to like "Show Me Love" and stuff like that. It's not ducking from the pop thing at all. So it's full on, it's like [makes a noise].

Pitchfork: Who do you like in Sweden? Do you listen to anybody else? I mean the Knife you worked with before.

R: I listen to a lot of Swedish music actually. I'm really excited to hear Lykke Li's new album. I don't know what she's up to but I think that's gonna be really fun. There's a Swedish girl, a rapper called Mapei. She's done some stuff with Major Lazer and she's like a new-- it's always bad to compare people-- but she's like a new Neneh Cherry in a way.

There's also this production duo called Savage Skulls that I worked with on the new album. They are also kind of in that Major Lazer world. They really, like, took that into a Swedish kind of context and they're doing that kind of club dance music but it's very, very-- they're not afraid to go Euro or go kind of kitsch but in a really nice way. I really like them.

Pitchfork: What else are you excited about, being back in the U.S.? Is it different in any other way this time?

R: It's nice for me to come back and connect to what I built with the last album and the plan is to come back here and tour with every album so that it's a continuous thing. I hope to just build on what happened here the last time-- all the love I'm getting from this very natural place. It's not filtered through a pop industry that I don't feel connected to. It's really, really nice. I'm just enjoying it really.

Pitchfork: I guess that's what fascinates me, hearing you talk about it. I love, in a connection with Alicia Keys, when it feels really real but it's still accessible to everybody. There's not much music that's like that. What is it about that for you that really draws you to that kind of music?

R: I think that when that happens, when that real thing is there it isn't about the genre anymore. It's more about the sincere pop quality and I think for me that's what I always drove for when I listened to music, whether it's like the things I grew up with like KLF or Technotronic or Neneh Cherry or if it's things that are going on right now. I think that's what it is to me, and it's never about the commercial pop perspective, it's about the place it comes from and the artist that does it.
Saturday, July 20

Panda Bear [7:25 p.m.; Connector Stage]

Pitchfork: Do you feel like you're only in competition with yourself at this point as far as your albums?

Noah Lennox: Always. I mean, even before the past couple years. I think about it a lot like golf. Where you may be playing on different courses, so the terrain is slightly different, but you're always trying to beat yourself. Play better.

Pitchfork: Are you able to talk about this upcoming album, Tomboy, at all? Obviously we've heard your singles, and I guess you've talked about it a little in the past, but how are you feeling this is going to be different from Person Pitch?

NL: As far as like a stylistic shift, I'd say it's less than something like Young Prayer to Person Pitch. But I'm anticipating a lot of people kind of thinking it's crappy, 'cause it's different enough to sort of bum people out who really liked the last one, you know what I mean? I guess I feel like I want to keep the thing moving. If I was like, "I really like the last thing I did, so I kinda just want to slightly expand on that," I feel like that would be kind of like treading water, in a way. Which is fine, but at this point in time it's not really what I'm interested in doing.

Pitchfork: Everybody else is treading that same water right now, it feels like. A guy in his bedroom, using some samples and being kind of nostalgic, and pretty music. Ambient, electronic influence, you know? How do you feel about that stuff?

NL: I think the first thing I would say is that I would guess that for the vast majority of those people, maybe it's not treading water. I'm assuming it's kind of like they're doing something new for them. I feel like that's justified from that perspective. I guess I'm just not the kind of person who likes to hate on anything. I'm surely not gonna look down on something just because I feel like it sounds like somethings else, or fits into a group of things that all kind of sound more or less the same. I may not get as jazzed by it as something that just kind of confuses me. I feel like everything just kind of serves its purpose. Everything has its place, I should say.

Pitchfork: Is there anything you've been listening to lately that's worth mentioning?

NL: In high school I was really into classic rock radio, maybe just because it was the most readily available thing. That and like the Top 40 of the time, which was the 90s, I guess. In a lot of ways I feel like, in terms of life cycles, if such a thing exists, that's definitely where I am mentally. Sort of like, early high school zone for me, maybe late middle school. A lot of [the new] songs-- I doubt it's very apparent-- I feel that sort of 90s R&B.

There's this certain kind of shaker sample that was used a lot, like C+C Music Factory employed it quite a bit, and I've been really into that. You know that EMF song? With the Dice Clay sample in it? That has the same kind of drum sample I'm talking about out. I've been really into that. I feel like I just ingested that and spit it out in a way that you probably wouldn't be able to know. On "Slow Motion", for example, it's there a little bit. But certainly that zone of music is what's in my head. I said to Danny [Perez, visual artist and collaborator - Ed.], "I feel like I'm into barbecue music these days." Like really slow, mellow... Dâm-Funk is a good kind of example of what I'm talking about. It's just not high-energy music, I'd say. [scrolls through mp3 device] Robert Lester Folsom-- Music and Dreams. That's probably my most listened to record.

Pitchfork: Any plans for your birthday? [Noah's birthday was this weekend -Ed]

NL: Not really. I have to say, I'm sort of dreading what my guys have planned for me. Because I'm pretty sure they're gonna do something, gonna find some way of embarrassing me. I'm kind of bracing for impact at this point. If my wife and my kids were here, I couldn't ask for anything more. But just having a bunch of my bros around is a pretty good start, a pretty good birthday I would say.

Pitchfork: Sweet. So, for the show tonight, what's the set-up going to be? Is it just you up there?

NL: Yeah, it's just me. For better or for worse. Danny will be doing video. That's a big part of the show, as far as I'm concerned. I feel like it's not very interesting to watch, I'm not much of a showman. So having something interesting to look at, and something that works with the music. I feel like it's an integral part to my show.

Pitchfork: Any surprises up your sleeve?

NL: I would guess that the only surprise to people who wouldn't have known about my shows in the past six months or so, or maybe shows with Animal Collective, is that nine-tenths of the show will be all based on unrecorded songs. That's probably the biggest surprise.

Various Artists - Fuck Winter / Regolith Vol. 1 / Patient Sounds Sampler V. 1

Album Review
Pitchfork
July 13, 2010
Link
7.5 / 7.4 / 7.4

Cassettes are appealing to some listeners in the digital age partly because they're inconvenient. Now that listeners are used to shuffling randomly between hundreds of gigabytes' worth of downloaded audio files, the tape format offers a cohesive, analog listening experience, without the ability to skip around even the way a vinyl record allows. This summer a few of the more interesting, up-and-coming cassette-oriented labels-- Scotch Tapes, Moon Glyph, and Patient Sounds-- are making the search for quality music from the tape world a little easier by releasing compilations. Like Italian Beach Babes/Paradise Vendors label comp PVI006/IBB004 earlier this year, their efforts recall indie comps of decades past, curating a varied and occasionally inspired assortment of ramshackle artists based on a shared camaraderie that runs deeper than superficial styles.

Fuck Winter: A Scotch Summer Mixtape, the first-ever Scotch Tapes comp, is the only one of these three releases available exclusively on cassette. Fittingly, then, it's also the most in tune with the experimental and noise inclinations that kept the format alive in the underground prior to its recent mini-resurgence. Run by Al Bjornaa out of Batchawana Bay, Ontario, Scotch Tapes has put out a tape by Oneida and a 7" by Mike Watt project Al Qaeda, among other releases. Limited to 250 copies, Fuck Winter covers a lot of range in 23 tracks, each so short that if the industrial pummel of Endometrium Cuntplow or vuvuzela-esque James Chance freakouts of Tayside Mental Health aren't for you, just wait for the next track (there's no skipping, remember?). Iowa City-based Wet Hair, whose Shawn Reed runs highly regarded tape-focused label Night People, shimmer through wordlessly hooky highlight "Untitled", which sounds like a half-remembered anthem from a climactic moment in a 1990s slacker movie, while Halifax-based Fuck Montreal come across like a fascinatingly gothy lo-fi girl group on the perversely catchy "Knife Fuck". Different listeners will find different favorites amid the generally fuzzy, scrappy proceedings-- whether the English art-punk of Fever Fever, the Brooklyn post-punk of Talk Normal, or the sludgy riffage of Vancouver-based cassette regulars Shearing Pinx. As Glasgow's Divorce, not to be confused with Seattle's the Divorce, shout: "You can have it all!"

Moon Glyph's Regolith Vol. 1 marks the Minneapolis label's first vinyl record, pressed in a 500-LP edition. Accordingly, the psych-heavy, 10-track comp enjoys slightly higher fidelity, meaning slightly less homespun charm but a more headphone-friendly listening experience, emphasizing bands from the imprint's hometown. Many will want to seek this out, digitally if not on vinyl, for "Surfer Girl", a reverb-kissed, disarmingly melodic jangle-pop love song by Minneapolis sextet Velvet Davenport, featuring chillwave-circle mainstays Ariel Pink and Gary War. Still, there are just as many rewards to be found in the oscillating, bass-heavy ambience of Camden (a side project of Cole Weiland, from Minneapolis band Daughters of the Sun, also on this comp-- not the pre-Decibully emo group), the sunny power-pop guitar licks of fellow Mpls.ers Vampire Hands, or the tribal noise-disco of another area band, Skoal Kodiak. The release starts with Leisure Birds' sun-baked, organ-backed whoa-oh-ohing, and ends with the alternating Southern-rock guitar heroics and surreal sermonizing of Moonstone. "This is something you could believe in, if you believed in things," sing Magic Castles. The psych-rock underground in the Twin Cities, it appears, is alive and well.

Patient Sounds, the label run by Matthew Sage of Fort Collins, Colo., psych-rockers M. Pyres, has also issued its first comp, Patient Sounds Sampler V. 1, downloadable free from the label's blog or available for purchase on the band's tour. The release again confirms the wealth of talent making warm, gooey psych just below the average indie listener's radar. A new track from M. Pyres, "Miles & Days Ahead", is a sprawling instrumental, with crystalline guitar figures built for Built to Spill, and a bass line constantly burbling toward a release that never comes. Minneapolis-based Littoral Drift put earthy folk amid outer-space echo, recalling the acoustic work of Kurt Vile, while Greeley, Colo.-based Ambassador Engine stick to wonderfully wobbly underwater séances. Bingo Pajamas, aka Brooklyn-based Niki Smith, has arguably the comp's breakout moment, setting her murmured harmonies over an arrangement equal parts tUnE-yArDs eccentric and Ciara sensual. While the Moon Glyph and Patient Sounds comps veer more toward chillwave than the Scotch Tapes tape, all reflect the unassuming variety of slightly warped sounds currently making their way onto cassette. Most importantly, all transcend the format altogether, even when, as with Fuck Winter, they benefit from its old-fashioned quirks. The medium is the message, sure, but in this case, the songs speak louder.

Kevin Dunn - No Great Lost: Songs, 1979-1985

Album Review
Pitchfork
July 12, 2010
Link
7.5

Kevin Dunn is the latest unjustly overlooked figure to reemerge from the 1980s Southern new wave scene. A songwriter, producer, and electronically adventurous guitarist in the Robert Fripp school, Dunn co-founded pioneering Atlanta band the Fans, whose music R.E.M.'s Peter Buck later tried to release, without success. Dunn also co-produced two seminal Georgia singles, the B-52's' "Rock Lobster" and Pylon's "Cool"/"Dub", along with the latter's debut album, Gyrate. His solo work, however, has been out of print for more than 20 years.

Watertown, Mass.-based Casa Nueva Industries sets that right with No Great Lost: Songs, 1979-1985. Coming after last year's DFA release of Pylon's Chomp More and the recent Acute reissue by fellow Athens, Ga., band the Method Actors, this anthology shows Dunn made some strikingly contemporary-sounding records in his own right. Bridging effete 1970s UK art-rock and the jagged, jerky American new wave he'd helped shepherd, with clever deconstructions of rock'n'roll classics for good measure, Dunn would fit right in with the more recent Atlanta scene of brainy, bratty bands like Deerhunter, the Coathangers, and Black Lips.

In a recent interview with Atlanta's Creative Loafing, Dunn recalls making "Star Trek" jokes while a student at Cal Arts during the early 1970s, and indeed there's an endearing nerdiness throughout No Great Lost. On 1981 solo debut The Judgement of Paris, presented here in its entirety, Dunn applies his autodidactism to oblique hooks, analog synths, drum machine beats, and inventive guitar freakouts; he can sneer, "Mommy, I don't wanna be a fascist," mock a "prolix prole," and warn of "rising vampires and falling empires," right before offering a resplendently textured "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" instrumental. For all Dunn's intellect, though, he also shows balls. Surfy opener "911" doesn't get much less incendiary once you remember he's hiccuping "nine-eleven" about not the World Trade Center attack, but the Jonestown mass suicide (bands: cover this). Nearly as impressive as the music is the album's remixing by engineer Pete Weiss, who tried to recreate the sound of the vinyl from the master tapes following the destruction of Bruce Baxter's original mixes in an apartment fire-- "Bother," Dunn dryly notes in his hyper-intelligent accompanying essay.

No Great Lost can be a lot to take in one sitting, but it's worth setting aside some time as well for its inclusions from Dunn's 1984 C'est toujours la même guitare EP, 1985 sophomore LP Tanzfeld, and 1979 single "Nadine" (featuring synth by the Brains' Tom Gray-- hey, when is somebody going to reissue the band that gave Cyndi Lauper "Money Changes Everything"?). There's even one Fans song, the aptly titled "Cars and Explosions". Arriving with testimonials from Apples in Stereo's Robert Schneider and the late critic Robert Palmer, this release is a singularly warped artifact from a post-punk intellectual off in his own world. It's a world not so different from the one many bands inhabit today, and it has its own strange rewards.

The Pipettes - Earth vs. the Pipettes

Album Review
Pitchfork
June 30, 2010
Link
3.2

The 1960s girl groups went overlooked for so long in part because of their failure, often through no fault of their own, to establish successful long-term careers as album artists. We remember the young women featured on essential box sets like Phil Spector compilation Back to Mono or Rhino's more recent One Kiss Can Lead to Another not for their full-lengths or their larger-than-life exploits, but for their singles. In some cases, as with the Crystals, the artists you heard singing over your car's AM radio weren't even the same ones who came to town to perform.

Initially dreamed up as a modern girl group, the Pipettes have defied this grim logic once before. On 2006 debut We Are the Pipettes, the Brighton, England-based indie-poppers improbably managed a full-length's worth of cheeky, refreshingly contemporary, and wholeheartedly catchy songs to match their polka-dot dresses and choreographed moves. They were "the prettiest girls you've ever met." Your kisses were wasted on them. They were playful, they were divisive, but they were memorable and, to many, instantly appealing.

Four years later, the Pipettes are an almost entirely different group. Unfortunately, at least on Earth vs. the Pipettes, they're also a much, much worse one. It doesn't help that the rotating lineup of vocalists, now down to the sister act of Gwenno and Ani Saunders, trades the breezy, conversational singing style of the debut for a brassy, over-emotive approach that probably wouldn't make it far on a TV talent contest. It doesn't help, either, that what Pitchfork's Ryan Dombal called the "DIY-Spector flourishes" of We Are the Pipettes now give way to synths, disco-funk guitars, clattering bongos, and Miami Sound Machine horns, with plenty of strings and 60s sha-la-la backing vocals still there to clutter the over-crowded mix. It definitely doesn't help that the last few tracks tack on a vague interplanetary conceit, complete with robot vocals proving once and for all that T-Pain has a harder job than you might've thought.

What makes Earth vs. the Pipettes irredeemable, however, is an utter lack of what the Pipettes and their girl-group predecessors once understood so well: distinctive, emotionally affecting pop songs. Self-destructive crushes are nothing new to the girl-group genre, of course, and can be at least as artistically compelling as healthier romances, but tracks like the U2-echoing "Thank You" or redundant soft-rocker "I Always Planned to Stay" ("It's nothing less than what was expected") are full of generic, boring girls pining blandly for generic, boring boys. The rhymes, melodies, and brutally obvious key changes used to stretch weak ideas to an acceptable length-- you've heard them all before. Hell, the outer-space conceit might be fitting, after all, because there's nothing like an actual human being anywhere in these songs; it seems important that the only character with a name is the eponymous officer of the T. Rex-shuffling "Captain Rhythm".

Worst of all, Earth vs. the Pipettes sounds like not just a different group, not just a lesser group but, in sadly off-putting ways, almost an opposite group. "I don't want to hold your hand," sang the 2006 Pipettes, but on this album they ask us to give it to them on at least two separate songs (please "understand"). Where "Pull Shapes" insisted, "Just don't let the music stop," the new single begs for somebody to "Stop the Music". Speaking of "Pull Shapes", for fun slang this time we get "I Vibe You"-- about which the less said the better.

The-Dream - Love King

Album Review
SPIN
August 2010
Link
8/10

R&B hit man romances everything within reach.

“Radio killa”? Sure, but the R&B ATLien behind “Umbrella” and “Single Ladies” is also an auteur of weirdly personal, brilliantly lowbrow, and dazzlingly state-of-the-art pop  albums. As bawdy, referential, and effortless-sounding as ever, Terius “The-Dream” Nash takes his long-playing love affair to the next level on this third solo effort, fading snappy summer-jam contenders into seething urban-rock suites. Mostly, though, The-Dream loves to love, so much so that you can hear it through the fourth wall: “Know this song is over / But I can’t get up off ya.”

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