Friday, January 29, 2010

Good Shoes - No Hope, No Future

Album Review
Pitchfork
January 29, 2010
Link
5.8













In late 2006, Good Shoes cracked the UK singles charts with "All in My Head", a quintessentially British-indie slab of neurotic, spiky punk-pop. Further singles and chart appearances culminated in 2007's Think Before You Speak, a charmingly heartfelt album somewhere between a less insular Arctic Monkeys and a less caffeinated Futureheads-- romantic insecurities you could dance to in your trainers. When sharply accented singer/guitarist Rhys Jones sang, "Things were better when we were young," the future still sounded bright.

Now-- No Hope, No Future. The world has changed a whole lot since the mid-2000s, musically and geopolitically, and Good Shoes are probably being at least half-serious about their sophomore album's title. The London four-piece are confronting the same boring bummer as so many others in this "new 'normal'" economy. Success isn't as successful it used to be, you start growing old before you stop growing up, papa don't preach. What results is an album that sounds like the 00s even as its themes are solidly turn-of-2010. A darker album, a slightly clumsier album, but an album with strong unifying themes and a few songs worth stepping away from the bar for.

"Time may change me," sang Bowie, "but I can't trace time." Guess who was taking notes. Good Shoes are obsessed with permanence and flux, what's innate in a person and what might eventually turn sour: relationships, careers. No Hope, No Future's first single, "That's the Way My Heart Beats", bouncily blames the narrator's ongoing girl problems on something in his nature. By contrast, evocative finale "City by the Sea"-- as close as UK indie gets to power ballads-- is right there with Death Cab for Cutie's "Meet Me on the Equinox": "All I want's a little more time/ To feel your heart beat next to mine." Everything-- everything-- ends.

After a debut record wrapped up in girls and going to shows, Good Shoes deserve credit for continuing to sing about what they know even as that gets darker. "Times Change", an assault on cranky oldsters, has guitars neatly uptight enough for Field Music, and it's refreshingly difficult to figure out where to put the air quotes on tense relationship-ender "Then She Walks Away": "I know I should be the one to say those words/ Like, 'Times change, but I want you to stay.'" But gloomy quarter-life crisis songs leave less room for error, and even on the latter track, Jones sings contrived-sounding words about how his words sound "contrived."

When No Hope, No Future isn't staring glumly into the void, Good Shoes could be a whole other band-- the band of their debut, only more seasoned. There's the Chic-chic disco-funk of "Under Control", which would resemble Art Brut if Eddie Argos sang about sex addiction rather than impotence. There's also the sprinting release of "Thousand Miles an Hour", which functions almost like a surf-rock instrumental. On "I Know", Jones attacks zealots of all stripes with a sanctimonious certitude that would make Billy Bragg sound like Ghostface Killah if not for the half-winking title. It's been said the only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing. Yeah, but it's also been said, "Know thyself."
 

Monday, January 25, 2010

The Delta Mirror - He Was Worse Than the Needle He Gave You

Track Review
Pitchfork
January 25, 2010
Link
8













A certain strain of recent indie rock seems to be taking an unusual interest in illness and death. You could blame Arcade Fire, the sad loss of whose family members only happened to lead to one of the most universally acclaimed independent releases of the past decade. Last year, the Antlers' Hospice focused an entire album on the subject of a man with terminal bone cancer. Now L.A. trio the Delta Mirror's upcoming Lefse debut, Machines That Listen, sets each of its nine songs in a different room of the hospital.

This slow, layered ballad "He Was Worse Than the Needle He Gave You" stands out not for its pathos-ridden subject matter-- I'm still not sure I know exactly what it's about-- but rather its restrained emotional gutpunch, which it achieves with a simple but catchy tune and dramatically expansive production. Imagine the Big Pink's electro-shoegaze explosions sounding vulnerable. "I've got too much time on my hands," goes a gothy male vocal, and before long we find out the reason why-- and the guy responsible won't fucking be held responsible. The next time the Delta Mirror sing those words, at the end of the song, their meaning has changed. Damage done.
 

CFOs Identify Top Risks for 2010

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January 19, 2010
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Citi Director Deutch Quits, Calls for Others to Join Him

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January 19, 2010
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Columnists: SEC Should Look Beyond BofA

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January 19, 2010
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SEC Issues New Guidance on Proxy Disclosure Timeline

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January 19, 2010
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Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Recalls Depression-Era Panel

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January 19, 2010
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What Dodd’s Exit Might Mean for Financial, Governance Bill

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January 19, 2010
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Big Pay Consultants Losing Business to Independent Boutiques

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January 19, 2010
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Post-Crisis Issues Top Audit Committee Priorities for 2010: KPMG

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January 19, 2010
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Friday, January 22, 2010

Various Artists: Diplo Presents: Free Gucci (Best of the Cold War Mixtapes)

Album Review
Pitchfork
January 22, 2010
Link
5.9













"Who need be afraid of the merge?" When Walt "Leaves of Grass" Whitman wrote that, in the 1855 debut edition of the poem that would become "Song of Myself", his subject certainly wasn't Wesley Pentz. But the Philadelphia DJ/producer known as Diplo-- alongside such fellow global travelers as DJ /rupture-- has been among the 21st century's most dauntless joiners of disparate musical cultures. Whether Baltimore club (parties starting in 2003 at Philly's Ukrainian Club), baile funk (2004/2005 Favela mixtapes), Alabama hip-hop (2008's Paper Route Gangstaz mixtape), or Jamaican dancehall (last year's Major Lazer album), Diplo has a musically unimpeachable track record of taking the world's streets' worthiest sounds out of the neighborhoods and into your earbuds.

With Free Gucci (Best of the Cold War Mixtapes), a freely downloadable mixtape of remixes for Atlanta gangsta rapper Gucci Mane, all that jet lag may have finally caught up with him. Never mind the usual point-missing accusations of cultural tourism-- "Having white kids talk about race on the internet is the dumbest thing in the world," Diplo told Pitchfork's own Tom Breihan in a 2007 Village Voice interview. When it comes to the MC born Radric Davis, "the merge" already happened. After a prolific series of high-profile guest appearances (Mariah Carey, Black Eyed Peas, Big Boi) and mixtapes (his Cold War trilogy flooded the blogs one day last November) all but guaranteed Lil Wayne comparisons, Gucci Mane's Warner-sponsored The State vs. Radric Davis debuted in December at #10 on the Billboard albums chart. The New York Times hailed the rapper as "one of the most vigorous and exciting in recent memory". I mean, sure-- B'more club, baile funk, Alabama rap, and Jamaican dancehall each existed for years before Diplo got them in his crates. But he introduced them to listeners who probably wouldn't have been exposed to them otherwise. Gucci Mane needs no introduction.

Compared with Diplo's past projects, then, Free Gucci has little reason to exist. In fact, despite the title, most of the tracks here weren't on the Cold War mixtapes at all-- the bulk come from last year's superior The Burrprint: The Movie 3-D. Anyway, all that stuff would be just as academic as arguments about cultural appropriation if the music itself banged. And that's the problem. Yeah, Gucci's slurry, word-drunk absurdism is a huge part of his appeal. And Diplo's remixers have picked some of the rapper's signature tracks. But Atlanta producers such as Drumma Boy and Zaytoven, with their pin-prick synths and sweaty lurch, are also crucial to Gucci's sound, as even Warner must've recognized by sticking to them and other Southern producers on the new studio album. The indie-friendly mergers Diplo brokers in their place have their moments, but by and large they're no more accessible-- and definitely less complementary-- than their originals.

The most significant connection Diplo makes here isn't between Gucci and casual hip-hop fans. It's between today's various underground styles of woozy, stoner-friendly electronic music. There's glo-fi/chillwave/whatever: Memory Tapes gives Burrprint's gloriously shameless jewelry boast "Excuse Me" some icy, extraterrestrial counterpoint (space abhors a bare neck). There's post-dubstep blippiness from Zomby, who adds a different kind of trunk-shuddering low-end to Guccimerica threat "Boi". There's also Warp-signed hip-hop instrumentalist Flying Lotus, fogging up 2008's "Photo Shoot" with siren wobble and extra mush-mouth. Unfortunately, gloomy lo-fi duo Salem have done much better Gucci remixes than this rotely ominous rework of another Burrprint highlight, "My Shadow". Overall, though, Free Diplo shows that some of the most notable home electronic producers right now have more in common than their fan factions might like to admit.

The link between Gucci's intoxicated flow and Diplo's chosen remixers should be obvious, but bringing them together isn't always so seamless. French producer Douster puts post-"A Milli" bass mumbles beneath Burrprint's (relatively) introspective "Frowney Face". OK-- but why did Philly's Emynd think his uptempo version of the same track needed irritating percolator bubbles? DJ Teenwolf, of Brooklyn's Ninjasonik, bur(r)ies Great BRRitain's "I'm Expecting" ("What you expect? I expect another check, man") in constantly hammering kick drums and skidding sound effects. The same mixtape's "I Be Everywhere" gets an Asian motif and pitch-shifting from English producer Mumdance on one fairly solid remix, then burbling dubstep clichés from San Francisco's DZ on another. Austin's Bird Peterson replaces the mock-gothic sweep of one more Burrprint cut, "Dope Boys", with expansively conceived bass-synth grandeur that should please fans of Memory Tapes; still, it's an odd fit for such a playful song ("I'm paraplegic/ Where's my paralegal?"). Anyone reading this review can get a better sense of Gucci's weird charms by going straight to the source. Which you can download almost as easily.

As for Diplo himself, the Mad Decent boss can take credit for a few of the mixtape's better tracks-- especially a stomping, synth-slithering "Excuse Me" ("He do all that lame stuff/ I just keep it gangsta") that wouldn't be too far out of place on one of Gucci's own albums. Snares bustle and synths bend on Diplo's "Break Yourself", a much fuller production than the Burr Russia original. His Mariah Carey-sampling remix of Guccimerica's outlaw manifesto "Dangers Not a Stranger", with its satin-y keys, might be too precious for some, but it-- like DJ Benzi and Willy Joy's Daniel Bedingfield-sampling trance-rap take on 2008's "I'm the Shit"-- uncovers enjoyably unexpected similarities between otherwise vastly different tracks.

So Free Gucci isn't great. But even a mixtape without any duds would arrive at a time when Diplo's target audience no longer needs someone like Diplo to help them meet rap halfway. Washed Out, whose gauzy synth-pop isn't included here but shares the same spirit, came to his current sound after working on instrumental hip-hop tracks. Salem have been informed by chopped'n'screwed music since the beginning, and their remix of Jeezy diss "Round One" beats anything here, easy. Newest Warp signee Babe Rainbow, aka Vancouver-based producer Cameron Reed, calls his style "surf-step": lo-fi beach-punk goes dubstep? Reed is also a huge hip-hop fan. Diplo need not be afraid of the merge, but Free Gucci is too little, too late.
 

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

jj - let go

Track Review
Pitchfork
January 20, 2010
Link
4














"Summery," we said? Ha! The cold Swedish winter is right outside! As if to make good on Sincerely Yours' past promise of "no fantasy, no stupid escape," jj's latest leaves behind Balearic beaches for a desert of the real. The Swedish duo's still quasi-anonymous (What? Free health care and no TMZ?!) female singer mentions the change of season in her earnestly intoned lyrics to "Let Go", the first mp3 from the forthcoming follow-up to my favorite album of 2009, but she wouldn't have to. Suspiciously Nebraska-esque harmonica gets her point across immediately. Fragile guitars, icy keys, and Knife-like blots of percussion all second.

jj n° 2 stood on a lofty precipice between naïveté and cyncism, sensitivity and machismo, Saint Etienne and Flo Rida. "Let Go" breaks on through to the other side. A little bit more New Age now: As my colleague Eric Harvey alerted me, the melody to the synth-glistening chorus bears a more than incidental resemblance to Sting's "Fields of Gold", which maybe shouldn't be surprising-- have you ever tried listening to "Fields of Gold" in jj's usual state of mind when it's perpetually dark and freezing outside? "All I have is my soul," the new song begins; a drug reference, a Boss reference, and a reference to label bosses the Tough Alliance later, we're told to free ourselves, let the jealous sun burn our skin anyway. Huh. I was ready for other people to be puzzled by jj. I just wasn't ready for it to happen to me.
 

Yes, I 'Actually' Like It

Feature
Village Voice
Pazz and Jop
January 19, 2010
Link













"There should never be guilt in pleasure," John Mayer wrote this year to his nearly 2.8 million Twitter followers, in reference to a Miley Cyrus song. The 32-year-old singer, songwriter, and bluesy guitarist has also taken aim at jaded souls who acknowledge liking a popular song by saying they "actually" like it—the implication being, I guess, that you wouldn't have expected such a tasteful person to like that song, and thus that it's still, on some level, a guilty pleasure. To me, "Who Says"—the first single from Mayer's fourth major-label studio album, Battle Studies, which entered the charts at #1 to mixed reviews (or, among the circle of critics I'm friends with, no reviews at all)—isn't "just" a song about getting high. It's the anti-guilty pleasure. And yes, I "actually" like it.

Marc Hogan
Des Moines, IA

  

Monday, January 18, 2010

Perot Systems Affiliate Ex-Employee in $8.6M SEC Settlement

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January 11, 2010
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Wells Fargo Top Execs Get Stock, Not Cash, Incentives

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January 11, 2010
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Impact of New Comp-Risk Disclosures to Vary by Industry

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January 11, 2010
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Judge Finds Ex-Deloitte Executive Liable in Trading Case

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January 11, 2010
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Hospitals Hit Execs With Outside Board Pay Cap

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January 11, 2010
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Sen. Dodd’s Exit Threatens Financial Legislation

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January 11, 2010
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BofA Judge Blocks News Reports as Testimony in SEC Case

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January 11, 2010
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Continental’s New CEO Waives Salary, Bonus

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January 11, 2010
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2009: The Year of Risk Management

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January 11, 2010
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AIG to Award Executives Stock Units, Not Common Stock

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January 11, 2010
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Judge Approves Schering-Plough’s $165M Investor Settlement

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January 11, 2010
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Friday, January 15, 2010

Ceremony - Someday

Track Review
Pitchfork
January 15, 2010
Link
7













Before Stephin Merritt decided orchestral folk-pop songs for Eric Cartman's next tea party constituted Realism, he cranked up his copy of Darklands and titled the Magnetic Fields' 2008 album Distortion. For these former members of Virginia-based Skywave, a band that also spawned A Place to Bury Strangers, that album title could've summed up an entire career. Instead, Paul Baker and John Fedowitz chose to call their post-Skywave duo Ceremony, a moniker that hearkens back to a certain New Order song title (also, probably less relevantly, a short-lived band fronted by Chastity Bono). Aside from vocals recalling Merritt's tired monotone, "Someday" doesn't sound like anything you might not be able to imagine from those reference points-- thunderously romantic Factory Records guitar/bass interplay, lo-fi drum machines-- but as far as what it sets out to do, it succeeds. And did I mention that it's really fucking loud?
 

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Rogue Wave - Good Morning (The Future)

Track Review
Pitchfork
January 14, 2010
Link
3














If Rogue Wave sound underwhelmed by the way the Great Recession has downgraded our collective prospects, consider the couple of years these Bay Area rockers have had. Two days before Christmas 2007, then-bassist Evan Farrell died in an apartment fire. Guitarist Gram LeBron lost his father. Drummer Pat Spurgeon survived a years-long quest for a new kidney, as documented in a recent PBS documentary, D Tour. And frontman Zach Rogue spent much of last year bed-ridden and partially paralyzed. Rogue Wave would've been forgiven for throwing in the towel.

Instead, they're bringing happy back. "Good Morning (The Future)", the first mp3 from the quartet's fourth album (second for Brushfire), marks a dramatic shift from the melodically tricky folk-pop that once made these guys such natural Shins labelmates. "The future isn't what it used to be/ I'm not surprised," their new song blithely begins, but its "future" unfortunately sounds like a more irritating version of the recent past. It's got the sensitive-guy choruses and peppy synth programming the Postal Service delivered to Owl City and lockstep post-punk guitars the Killers might've used to crash a Bloc Party. And, on the bridge, the sort of warped alien voices that haunted the Flaming Lips' Yoshimi. Bland political pronouncements ("Do you think that we like to take our orders from fools?") don't make this awkward electro-pop embrace any less clumsy. "Love machine"? Really?
 

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Fiveng - Jonah

Track Review
Pitchfork
January 12, 2010
Link
8













Less Jonah and the whale, more David and Goliath. Nicholas Ng has the kind of story that became increasingly common in 2009, when the most intriguing new psychedelic bands often weren't bands at all. A couple of months ago, Ng started sending out mp3s of his Fiveng bedroom pop project, in hopes that maybe somebody out there would hear something they liked and post them. A few local Bay Area blogs did. From there, Ng's aquatic lo-fi productions somehow found their way to Switzerland-based blog Delicious Scopitone, and then to Dallas-based Weekly Tape Deck. Now you're reading these words. And deservedly so.

Amid so many lame attempts to jump the recent "chillwave"/"glo-fi" phenomenon with summer-themed songs and "mysterious" secret identities, it's thrilling to know there are still undiscovered talents like Ng out there, tapping that zeitgeist of wooziness in their own refreshing ways. The fact that "Jonah" uses nature samples, exotica percussion, heavily reverbed guitars, streaky synths, and Panda Bear-style harmonies shouldn't come as much of a shock. That the arrangement is so accomplished, though-- the song so melodic and well-constructed-- makes Fiveng one of those rare pleasant surprises. "Jonah was a boy who didn't give a damn," Ng sings, over strummy chords that cry out for a mashup with the Exploding Hearts' "Throwaway Style"; "All he ever wanted was a bowl in his hand." As much Here We Go Magic as Washed Out, Ng just wants to see you underwater.
 

Monday, January 11, 2010

SEC Charges Ernst & Young Auditors in Fraud Case

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January 4, 2010
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U.S., European Antitrust Regulators Get Back in Sync

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January 4, 2010
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Dodd Reaches Out to GOP in Financial, Governance Overhaul

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January 4, 2010
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Companies Hold Off on Proxy-Access Bylaws

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January 4, 2010
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'Say on Pay' Advocates Predict More Voluntary Adoptions

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January 4, 2010
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Activists Take Aim at CEO Succession After Rule Change

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January 4, 2010
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Thursday, January 7, 2010

Elliott Smith - Cecilia/Amanda

Track Review
Pitchfork
January 7, 2010
Link
7













After three discs of posthumous songs, most musicians don't have a whole lot of gold left in the vault. Elliott Smith's spiritual brother in intimate, depressive folk-pop, Nick Drake, made it to one rarities collection before lapsing into mediocrity. John Lennon got one half of a studio album and a couple of barrel-scratching Anthology tracks. Jimi Hendrix, for whatever it's worth, was releasing unreleased songs to some critical acclaim well into the second decade after his death (though I gotta admit I haven't heard many of them). So there's no reason Smith-- who recorded songs constantly, and, judging by some of his latter-career creative choices, wasn't necessarily the best judge of his own talent, anyway-- might not still have a couple of worthwhile recordings that haven't yet found a home.

"Cecilia/Amanda" is one, though it's not exactly greatest-hits material. With bleak but rich imagery that evokes the deadly "party dress" of Elvis Costello's "Alison" almost the way XO's "Baby Britain" turned over Revolver, Smith sings of a damaged female duo and "a place where lonely men pay to make their opposites match." It's still unclear who exactly belongs to whom, but a baby is definitely involved. Remastering by Tape Op editor Larry Crane nicely cleans up the keyboards and acoustic strums from the muddled version that has been floating around for a few years. Given that the tune dates back to Smith's high school band-- he recorded this take with Crane in 1997-- it's a good bet Smith didn't consider it one of his best. You won't need him to tell you that, but you'll be happy to hear another reliably well-constructed folk-pop song from the late singer/songwriter just the same. Even if part of his romantic charm was that he always strived for something more.
 

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Kurt Vile - I Wanted Everything

Track Review
Pitchfork
January 6, 2010
Link
8













This Philly home-taping head got his biggest break with the 1970s FM-rock dreams of Matador debut Childish Prodigy last fall. But delve deeper into Kurt Vile's work, and you hear a folk troubadour off in his own Another Green World. "I Wanted Everything", from a 7" titled Meet the Philly Elite (tongue, no doubt, halfway in cheek), is Vile in downcast acoustic-totin' slacker mode. The outer-space production flourishes of his best album so far, God Is Saying This to You, must've gone back to their home planet, but Vile's earthy moan and rusty guitar arpeggios pass through lo-fi reverb that should please devotees of Atlas Sound, Ariel Pink, and, hell, early My Morning Jacket. One minute, Vile is dusting off American clichés to promise eternal love. The next, he's bumping up against deeply contemporary quandaries involving work-life balance-- and impending mortality. You can't always get what you want.
 

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

The Tough Alliance - Prison Break EP

Album Review
Pitchfork
January 5, 2010 
Link 
7.6














"We have a world of pleasure to win, and nothing to lose but boredom." That manifesto shows up a few times on the Tough Alliance-run Sincerely Yours label's website. As is the Gothenburg, Sweden-based electronic pop duo's habit, the words are borrowed, in this case from Belgian author and Situationist International member Raoul Vaneigem. You could think of TTA's music as sort of a living shrine to pleasure: unabashedly catchy, defiantly emotional, with gaudy synthetic beats and fuck-you bravado. But nobody can stave off boredom forever.

In fact, TTA have been conspicuously quiet lately. Since releasing A New Chance, their second full-fledged album, in 2007, co-conspirators Eric Berglund and Henning Fürst have put out precious little new material under the TTA name: a pair of covers, a remix of Victoria Bergsman's Taken by Trees, and various remixes by other people of their own songs. The six TTA remixes collected on the mp3-only Prison Break EP are uniformly solid and occasionally revelatory dancefloor fare, well worth any Swede-head's $5.35. But Prison Break is an exceptionally weird release. As good as it is, this EP should have the duo's fans growing only more and more impatient for the next album or single-- unknown pleasures, still.

In early November, Sincerely Yours mailing list subscribers received a typically enigmatic message, with one link to a new track by jj, and another to information about this EP. "Better late than never," the linked page says; digital music seller Klicktrack lists Prison Break's release date as Oct. 31, 2008. The fuck? What's more, these remixes don't change the title of the original track, a naming convention that's usually standard for the Sincerely Yours crew ("Now That's What I Call Indulgence", not "Indulgence (The Tough Alliance Remix)"; "The Sweetness of Air France", not "Sweetness (Air France Remix)"). One possible clue: Two of these remixes, a ravey "Neo Violence" by Dutch DJ/producer Laidback Luke (grab his remix of Robin S.'s "Show Me Love" with Sweden's Steve Angello) and a dubby space-disco "Neo Violence" by L.A.-based DFA/Rong signee Woolfy, came out in 2008 on Modular-- not Sincerely Yours. Regardless, rounding out a trio of "Neo Violence" takes here is a fine Daft Punk-style electro-house reworking by Perth-based Shazam.

Whatever Prison Break's origins, the people you expect to be the heavy-hitters pretty much are. Barcelona's El Guincho is a TTA kindred spirit, sharing their yen for sunny globe-trotting, but his chiming, euphoric "First Class Riot" gets overshadowed a bit by jj's absolutely radiant "touch of jules & jim" version. Taking a name from 1962 French film Jules & Jim, jj's remix puts a hushed female voice alongside TTA's, which jj chop up and toy with like marionettes (or like that Grateful Dead sample on "What Would I Want? Sky"), making TTA shout out "touch of you" and then a sublimely dumb "da da" melody atop girlish giggles and John Williams-grandiose orchestration. The Juan MacLean's "A New Chance", meanwhile, remains near perfection, ensconcing the original in the finest techno-house marble for future generations to marvel upon.

"It's not a question of understanding it, man. If you feel it, you feel it, stupid." That quote, from a John Cassavetes film, shows up more than once on this EP, and it's still the best encapsulation of the Sincerely Yours spirit. We could quibble about the absence of Brooklyn duo Tanlines' highlife-meets-Whigfield "A New Chance" remix, or California krautrock-disco duo Windsurf's "Neo Violence (Windsurf's Neon Violet Dub)", or other DJ-ready TTA remixes by Alvy Singer and Stevie Tech Nicks. But those are all pretty easily downloadable at this point. More urgent: The Sincerely Yours catalog description for Prison Break mentions that TTA are "on short term leave." We have no new(-ish) TTA to listen to but this. Until the next random-ass listserv email.

Surfer Blood - Astro Coast

Album Review
SPIN
January/February 2010
Link
8/10


 





Scruffy indie rock with cheap-seats aspirations

"Take it easy on me," frontman John Paul Pitts sings on two different songs from these South Florida blog favorites' wonderfully fuzzy debut. But Astro Coast can stand up to online scrutiny -- it's girls that keep Surfer Blood's reverbed indie rock jumping out of its skin. Not that you need notice the angst for all the crunchy riffs, sunny harmonies, inscrutable humor, occasional strings, and Afropop touches. Adolescent anthems like "Swim (to Reach the End)" and "Catholic Pagans" show latter-day Rivers Cuomo who's daddy.

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