Monday, June 27, 2011

The Verve - Urban Hymns

Album Review
eMusic
May 18, 2011













A messianic sense of purpose has driven Richard Ashcroft throughout his career. During the Verve's early years, he led the band through improvisational epics that combined shoegaze shimmer with Glimmer Twins swagger. On 1997's Urban Hymns, better songwriting helped "Mad Richard" make good on his globe-conquering ambitions; to date, the Verve's third album has sold more than 8 million copies worldwide. Most responsible for the record's success was "Bitter Sweet Symphony," an overpowering anthem that sweetens its disenchanted brooding with a majestic string sample from a forgotten orchestral version of the Rolling Stones' "The Last Time." After legal wrangling, Stones manager Allen Klein would receive all songwriting royalties for the track, but Urban Hymns had moments no less bittersweet: twangy, string-draped ballads "The Drugs Don't Work," "Sonnet" and "Lucky Man," plus turbulent psych excursions like "Catching the Butterfly" and "Come On." Guitarist Nick McCabe, whom Ashcroft enticed to rejoin the Verve in time to finish Urban Hymns, would quit during the band's 1998 U.S. tour, and the band split a year later. Still believing in his own shamanic powers, Ashcroft has continued to release solo albums, and reunited the Verve for a brief tour followed by 2008 album Forth. Still, although some will argue for 1995 sophomore effort A Northern Soul, Urban Hymns was where Ashcroft's spacey dreams became reality.

courtesy of eMusic.com, Inc., © 2011 eMusic.com

Mazzy Star - So Tonight That I Might See

Album Review
eMusic
May 18, 2011













Mazzy Star's second album was a sleeper hit in more ways than one. Roughly a year after the record's release in the fall of 1993, sumptuous opener "Fade Into You" cracked Billboard's Hot 100. Pairing singer Hope Sandoval's distant sighs and guitarist/producer David Roback's languorous pedal steel in a David Lynchian roadhouse waltz, it was the finest moment of a core duo that sounded perpetually on the brink of unconsciousness.

In another way, though, Mazzy Star's unlikely breakthrough had taken even longer. After all, So Tonight That I Might See barely modifies a signature style the band had defined on its 1990 debut: narcotic slow jams, haphazardly chasing the dark psychedelia of the Velvet Underground and the Doors into the desert night. Fragile, violin-accented Arthur Lee cover "Five String Serenade" evocatively addresses the group's occasional lack of memorable tunes, while "Mary of Silence" adds distorted freakouts over descending organ chords, and the guitar-grinding title track drones until dawn.

It was a sound also very much in keeping with Roback's prior work in California's Paisley Underground scene, as well as with the loose, rambling dream-pop of contemporaries like Galaxie 500, Slowdive and Cocteau Twins. "We don't have much to say," Sandoval murmurs on shaky acoustic reminiscence "Unreflected," then says less: "We don't have much." It was enough; the album's hazy echoes have lived drowsily on in 2000s acts as varied as Lisa Germano, the Concretes, Beach House, Grouper and Tamaryn.

courtesy of eMusic.com, Inc., © 2011 eMusic.com

Death Cab for Cutie - Codes and Keys

Album Review
eMusic
May 17, 2011












Somewhere along the line, Death Cab for Cutie got huge. The unassuming rockers from Bellingham, Washington, went platinum with 2005's Plans (a milestone even Arcade Fire haven't matched), topped the charts with 2008's Narrow Stairs, and even contributed the lead single (over Thom Yorke, the Killers and Muse) to the Twilight Saga: New Moon soundtrack. Oh, and Ben Gibbard, the group's lovelorn boy-next-door frontman, married actress/She & Him singer Zooey Deschanel a couple years ago.

It turns out hugeness becomes them. On Codes and Keys, the instinctively self-effacing band appears, for the first time, at ease with their steady, organic success; the result is the best Death Cab record since 2003's Transatlanticism. Where the bleak Narrow Stairs telegraphed its gestures toward adventurousness too obviously, here atmospheric electronics and foreboding bass lines lock together seamlessly in songs that find indie rock's quintessential Smart, Sensitive Guy finally coming to terms with everything he's secretly been afraid of: domesticity, comfort, Los Angeles.

A lot of that is thanks to the band's guitarist and longtime producer, Chris Walla, who — with mixing help from alt-rock luminary Alan Moulder — has created a space for Gibbard's melodies that's as vast and conflicted as Southern California. When Gibbard played a stalker over motorik propulsion on Narrow Stairs' eight-minute first single, "I Will Possess Your Heart," he was stepping out of his comfort zone, and it didn't entirely work. When this still-recent honeymooner rejects womanizing on potential future single "Some Boys," tweaking the Rolling Stones' "Some Girls" while subtly incorporating elements of 1970s art-rock, he's playing to his strengths. It's a refreshing change.

Gibbard sounds most at home on joyful finale "Stay Young, Go Dancing," where he giddily embraces waltzing the years away with his wife in a city he once dubbed "the belly of the beast." The lyrics have a casualness that rings true — a touching contrast from the cloying self-deprecation of Narrow Stairs love song "You Can Do Better Than Me." There's even a quick nod to the Supremes in the line "When she sings, I hear a symphony."

Gibbard's lyrics will always make or break the deal for many listeners, but what distinguishes Codes and Keys is its Walla-led emphasis on electronics. An extended keyboard meditation opens album centerpiece "Unobstructed Views"; on the penultimate "St. Peter's Cathedral," Gibbard murmurs over a minimal whir, with bum-bum backing vocals replacing a guitar line. Both songs do a good job of setting the concept of home life within an existential context: No God, no afterlife, only love. Love and song. An album obsessed with the concept of home, Codes and Keys sees Death Cab sounding at home within itself. On the title track, Gibbard repeats "We are one/ We are alive," through rickety keyboard and aching strings. It's unclear whether he's addressing his wife, the band, the listener, or all of the above. Till-death-do-us-part rock: It could be huge.

courtesy of eMusic.com, Inc., © 2011 eMusic.com

Hooray for Earth - True Loves

Album Review
eMusic
April 19, 2011














"Rock 'n' roll" is how Noel Heroux described one of these eMusic Selects alums' songs at a recent Brooklyn show captured by NYCTaper. The Hooray for Earth frontman's choice of words was counterintuitive; ever since forming in Boston six years ago, this now-New York-based band has actually been moving away from what's typically considered rock music, downplaying the grungy guitars found on their early releases in favor of warm, woozy synths. Last year's fine Momo EP was a case in point. And on their debut LP, True Loves, Hooray for Earth's metamorphosis from mere rockers-with-synths achieves its fullest realization yet.

As the likes of MGMT, Passion Pit and Yeasayer have shown, electronics-inflected psych-pop has become the starting point for rock 'n' roll with crossover appeal these days. True Loves steps right to the edge of that festival-friendly movement, setting the chillwave microgenre's washed-out keys and mournful vocals atop pounding, clattering percussion and rumbling bass. Though the lyrics are often indistinct, what sets True Loves apart are its soaring melodic hooks, some of which are bolstered by sister duo Zambri. The title track has a reggae lilt, "No Love" blasts horn samples and "Sails" dons goth lipstick, but each of them could inspire fist-pumping multitudes. Plus, if these guys ever get the girl in an '80s movie, the triumphantly cheesy love anthem "Bring Us Closer Together" could play over the end credits.

courtesy of eMusic.com, Inc., © 2011 eMusic.com

Little Dragon - Ritual Union

Album Reviews
SPIN
June 2011
Link TK

7/10

And yet another slab of great Scandinavian pop

Since this Swedish electro-soul quartet's slinky 2009 album, Machine Dreams, singer Yukimi Nagano has emerged as a Nicki Minaj for pop's smart set, stealing the scene with various guest spots (Gorillaz, Raphael Saadiq, Maximum Balloon). Little Dragon's third full-length deepens the group's down-tempo mix of icy techno and smoldering R&B. If Ritual Union does moody ambiguity better than meaningful hooks ("Wonderin' of a white dress"? Me, too!), well, Nagano's smoky, pillow-soft purr speaks volumes.

Bank Boards Demanding More of Risk Function: Survey

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June 20, 2011
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HP Shuffles Veteran Exec Livermore to Board Seat

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Auditor Rotation, Data Protection Laws, Singapore Governance

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Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Danish Punks Iceage Slay in U.S. Debut

Live Reviews
SPIN.com
June 20, 2011
Link















The number of minutes that Iceage's set lasted Friday night at Brooklyn's Public Assembly was greater than the ages of any of the quartet's members, but only barely. In just about 22 minutes, the hotly tipped Copenhagen quartet made sure their first American show was one of shrill, brutal efficiency: They played, they saw, they conquered.

In recent weeks, Iceage have become one of the most passionately talked-about bands in the online music press, largely on the strength of their full-length debut, New Brigade (which gets a proper U.S. release June 18 via What's Your Rupture?). "I'm not going to be playing when I'm old," singer and guitarist Bender Ronnenfelt told The New York Times on Friday. "I don't know any bands that have careers we envy."

Drawing heavily on the darker, more discordant sides of punk, post-punk, and their noisy stepchildren, Iceage were in good company at Public Assembly's international showcase, joining such similarly bleak-minded acts as Prurient, the Men, the Cult of Youth, and the Lost Tribe. Playing before a sweatily packed crowd at the 450-capacity venue, with onlookers tweeting from outside the windows, the young group stayed true to a less-is-more live aesthetic; Ronnenfelt limited his stage banter to a few casual, tough-to-decipher asides, while shedding his guitar and lifting his mic stand were as close as he came to stage tricks, aside from a quick plunge into the audience. (One or more members of the crowd, however, clambered onto the stage and then tumbled back down again.)

But the songs sounded every bit as rousing as on record. Dan Kjaer Nielsen's furious drumming stood out even more, particularly during a whirling break on "Broken Bone," one New Brigade track rapidly making the MP3-blog rounds. By the end of opener "White Rune," an apocalypse of lacerating, uptempo angst, at least one couple by the bar were making out frantically, which continued throughout the set.

The album's finale, "You're Blessed," was also the show's closer, and the moment its introductory guitar chords hit, the air filled with raised fists, and there was no doubting this band's potential reach, which extends not only to music obsessives who know their Killing Joke from their Joy Division, but also to any dude-bro who enjoys a testosterone-soaked guitar anthem.

Yes, Iceage is helping to teach more than a few indie kids how to mosh again -- "It's getting kind of claustrophobic in here," one guy was overheard saying on his way out -- but if you came expecting the sort of live-show brutality documented on the group's blog, you would have been disappointed. With Ronnenfelt in a blue polo shirt, and the rest of the band -- Johan Wieth on guitar and Jakob Tvilling Pless on bass -- wearing standard band T-shirts, Iceage looked every bit like what they are: Young men who just graduated from high school (or, in Ronnenfelt's case, not quite yet), playing in an awesomely loud band, just like so many others in every way except for the devastating precision of their attack.

And the music does feel like an "attack," no matter how fresh-faced the personnel playing it. On New Brigade's title track, there's a moment when all the other instruments fall completely silent, and the guitar bashes out a vaguely martial melody. Those notes hung in the humid air Friday night -- technically, Saturday morning -- like jagged descendents of a military bugle. By the time Iceage returns to New York, August 20 at Manhattan's Cake Shop and August 21 at Brooklyn's Secret Project Robot, expect a small army ready to serve.

Buzzcocks - A Different Compilation

Album Review
Pitchfork
June 10, 2011
Link

6.5


A Different Compilation












Buzzcocks were a different kind of punk rock band. Though inspired by the savage fury of Sex Pistols, the Manchester-based quartet founded by Pete Shelley and future Magazine leader Howard Devoto directed that energy toward explosively melodic songs that located their punk politics not in universal slogans or transgressive gestures but in personal anxieties. And Buzzcocks are still different today. The buzzsaw-sharp songs from the band's late-1970s peak have aged better than most, continuing to influence new generations of musicians. The group's more recent reunion albums and tours, moreover, have done nothing to diminish that formidable legacy.

A Different Compilation, which brings together new studio recordings of 24 of Buzzcocks' most vital songs, can be seen generously as another example of the band's willingness to stand apart. "The original records now sound like demos," Shelley explains in the press materials. "These new versions, honed by years on the road, showcase the songs as we know they should be, the way we know audiences love to hear them." On the other hand, there's a reason the originals have grown so beloved, and anyone unfamiliar with the band would still be better off starting with 1979 classic Singles Going Steady; diehard fans wanting to hear newer recordings of the old songs, meanwhile, might already be content with 2007's 30 or other Buzzcocks live albums. Plus, there's a whole mixed history of artists re-recording their hits, from the unfortunate K-Tel oldies remakes to Bonnie "Prince" Billy's more imaginative Greatest Palace Music. Just in 2008, also on Cooking Vinyl, college rockers Camper Van Beethoven had to re-record a few songs for a best-of compilation due to label conflicts.

Hand-wringing aside, this is a well-chosen set of compelling songs, and if new recordings can probably never match the charm of Buzzcocks' originals, there's still a certain modest appeal to hearing one of punk's most celebrated catalogs given a brawny, contemporary treatment. Where Singles sets out iconic singles like "Orgasm Addict" and "Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've)" next to their B-sides, A Different Compilation also delves into Buzzcocks' often-underrated album tracks, from Ralph Nader-nodding Another Music in a Different Kitchen opener "Fast Cars" (here shorn of its introduction quoting the 1977 Spiral Scratch EP's "Boredom", ostensibly because that track now precedes it) to guitarist Steve Diggle's Dookie-predicting "When Love Turns Around", originally from 1993's Trade Test Transmissions.

Then again, though these hard-hitting versions of such memorable punk-era nuggets as "Harmony in My Head" and "Why Can't I Touch It?" start from only the strongest source material, A Different Compilation lacks the adventurous spirit that helped make the band so worth compiling in the first place. Buzzcocks are often credited with inventing punk-pop, but that genre's modern-day conventions weren't so solidified then-- think of the difference between early disco records and the disco of Village People and Saturday Night Fever-- and there's little here musically you might not hear from some of the band's lesser descendants. And, too, it's not exactly as if there's a huge audience clamoring for re-recordings of late-70s and early-80s Martin Hannett productions (Joy Division, New Order), which is what we're given here in the form of "Boredom", fellow Spiral Scratch track "Breakdown", and Diggle-fronted former B-side "Why She's a Girl From the Chainstore".

So while A Different Compilation definitely isn't a starting point for newcomers to Buzzcocks, it's nothing more or less than a novel document from one of punk's defining bands-- and one of the few from punk's first wave that's still a going concern, at that. "When people put punk rock records on in 1976, 77, they had to rethink their whole lives," Diggle told Pitchfork's Patrick Sisson in a January 2009 interview. "It changed your consciousness, the way you looked at the world, just like powerful records should." This latest compilation probably won't do that, but it might help point you back to the records that did-- and could again.

The Beta Band - The Three EP's

Album Review
eMusic
May 2011

Link 















Nothing could suit the Beta Band's music better than the truth that their greatest album isn't an "album" at all. The Scottish group's defining characteristic was its overabundance of ideas, and if some of them were half baked, well, that was still a contrast to the stultifying conservatism of late-'90s rock radio. Compiling a trio of four-song records issued over 1997 and 1998, The Three E.P.'s brilliantly establishes the Beta Band's initial sound: a genre-blending hodgepodge of dusty breakbeats, pastoral guitars, monk-like chants, cosmic grooves and oddball instrumentation.

Arriving a year after Beck's Odelay, with endorsements from Oasis, Radiohead and the Beastie Boys, The Three E.P.'s did something still nearly impossible: unite fans of Britpop, indie rock, electronica and jam. Despite a member devoted to turntables and samplers, these guys were at their best when their loping rhythms and hazy textures were met with equally compelling melodies and lyrical concepts — see the twangy, trumpet-kissed reassurance anthem "Dry the Rain," or the didgeridoo-based swell of psych-pop love song "She's the One." Encompassing ramshackle folk-pop, ambient abstraction and even goofy rap, The Three E.P.'s raised the stakes for what pop could be, whether or not the group could ever live up to that potential. For these indulgently generous 78 minutes, they almost did.

courtesy of eMusic.com, Inc., © 2011 eMusic.com

Massive Attack - Blue Lines

Album Review
eMusic
May 2011

Link 















Released several years before critics coined the term "trip-hop," Massive Attack's 1991 debut is a classic late-night album — part of a long line of records that reconfigured boisterous, uptempo styles into restrained, introspective headphone listens. Where a younger group like the xx transforms the club-friendly strains of funky house into an intimate indie-pop dialogue, Blue Lines conjured its heady atmosphere from vintage hip-hop breaks, laid-back dub rhythms, brassy soul-diva vocals, noir-ish film scores and drawling, English-accented rapping.

As for how this all fits into the scene Blue Lines helped spark, trip-hop isn't necessarily a bad phrase to convey the blunted B-boy sensibility on display here — it's just too limiting. "Unfinished Sympathy," in particular, stands apart from any specific historical context, with its tear-jerking strings and Shara Nelson's delicately powerful vocals recalling the orchestral soul of Isaac Hayes and Gamble and Huff. The free-association dialogue between 3D and Tricky (then known as Tricky Kid) on "Daydreaming" would be just as casually hypnotic even if it hadn't preceded Snoop Dogg's blazed nonchalance on Dr. Dre's The Chronic by more than a year, and the Streets' U.K. rap landmark Original Pirate Material by more than a decade. Reggae singer Horace Andy's supple tenor adds a further timeless quality to loping songs like "One Love" and the dub-driven "Five Man Army."

There are a few reasons we're still talking about Massive Attack and not, say, Faithless or Groove Armada, and Blue Lines is one of the biggest.



courtesy of eMusic.com, Inc., © 2011 eMusic.com

Many Forced-Out CEOs Still Sit on Boards

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June 13, 2011
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Governance News Roundup

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June 13, 2011
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More US Companies Vie for Presence in Africa

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June 13, 2011
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How Risky Is Director Service? Not Very, Column Says

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June 13, 2011
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No End in Sight to Dodd-Frank Rule Debate

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June 13, 2011
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Beleaguered Boards Take Annual Meetings on the Road

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June 6, 2011
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Bank Hit With Suit Over Say-on-Pay Vote

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June 6, 2011
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Wednesday, June 8, 2011

John Maus - We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves

Album Reviews
SPIN
June 2011
Link
8/10


Cover Art: John Maus, 'We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves'









Mighty, Modest: Ariel Pink pal finds human blood in android veins

Before he attended CalArts, before he befriended Ariel Pink and Panda Bear, John Maus grew up in Spamtown, USA. This iconoclastic one-man synth-pop band's roots in canned-meat capital Austin, Minnesota, bear consideration when approaching his deconstructed DIY new wave. From chintzy keyboards to karaoke-style performances, Maus exaggerates the stereotypically artificial to tap into something real.

On his first album for Ribbon, Maus does more than stay true to his bros. Watery analog fidelity and reverb suggest chillwave, but only on the surface. With bleakly detached baritone, anxiety-ridden bass lines, and vintage electronics, Maus works more like a steampunk novelist, imagining a cityscape where the discarded technologies of the recent past shed light on the present. Or, as he puts it on "Quantum Leap": "Heart to heart, mind to mind, we are the ones who seem to travel through time."

Reminiscent of obscure electroclash grand-daddy John Foxx, these retro-futurist trappings allow Maus to be scandalously, absurdly, and sometimes movingly honest. Noncover "Cop Killer" out-incites Ice-T, though its surreal coldness is more Grand Theft Auto than South Central. Stormy "Matter of Fact" describes what "pussy" isn't and "Hey Moon" waxes wryly on lonely hearts like Magnetic Fields. Between the baroque church-organ breakdowns of "...and the rain," Maus insists, "Somebody tell the truth." On transcendent finale "Believer," he sets you free.

Various Artists - Rave on Buddy Holly

Album Reviews
SPIN
June 2011
Link
8/10


Cover Art: Various Artists, 'Rave on Buddy Holly'








They don't sound much like him and that's okay

Rock'n'roll pioneer Buddy Holly was no stodgy purist, an idea the best of this all-star tribute adopts gracefully. Florence and the Machine's slinky, horn-spiced "Not Fade Away" seduces, Kid Rock's retro-soul "Well All Right" grooves brawnily, Justin Townes Earle's blue-collar "Maybe Baby" rollicks, and Lou Reed's psyched-out "Peggy Sue" floats downstream through orchestral fuzz. Modest Mouse's "That'll Be the Day" goes a twitch too far, but then there's Cee Lo Green 
ebulliently belting out "(You're So Square) Baby, I Don't Care," which is so good it'll give you hiccups.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

The Coathangers - Larceny & Old Lace

Album Review
Pitchfork
June 7, 2011
Link

7.6


Larceny & Old Lace












When the Coathangers formed five years ago, as something of a party joke, the band's four members had little musical education to speak of. But they're no joke now, having since released a pair of riotous albums, plus about a half-dozen trashy, cheeky, shrieking 7" singles. They're also grizzled road warriors, headlining bars from Fargo, N.D., to Allston, Mass., in between supporting gigs with the likes of the Thermals, Mika Miko, and These Arms Are Snakes.

Somewhere in all that, the Coathangers must've learned how to play. Larceny & Old Lace, the quartet's third album and second for Seattle-based Suicide Squeeze, carries over the chaotically hooky vitality of their previous records. But here, they've added more varied songwriting, (relatively) tighter instrumentation, and-- for the first time-- a real studio, the Living Room in Atlanta, where the band reunited with producer Ed Rawls (Deerhunter, Black Lips, Zoroaster). Named after a Mickey Rooney-guesting "Golden Girls" episode that was itself named after playwright Joseph Kesselring's screwball comedy Arsenic and Old Lace, the Coathangers' latest finds a notorious must-see live band finally capturing some of the energy of its shows on record.

Just because the Coathangers are taking their game more seriously doesn't mean it isn't still a game. With all four members trading off idiosyncratic vocals-- ranging from guitarist Julia Kugel's Victoria Jackson chirp to drummer Stephanie Luke's full-throated roar-- there's still plenty of jagged, playful aggression, whether that involves damning the titular jerk of "Johnny" over gloomy post-punk or tearing off faces between stabbing guitar and whirligig keyboard on "Chicken: 30". But the Coathangers now pay more attention to detail, starting with first single "Hurricane", which veers from raspy shouts and brittle guitar riffs to zombie-apocalypse cheerleader chants and ominous whispers shaded by clacking drumsticks. They also try on more styles: Where "Call to Nothing" pledges ill-fated devotion through scratchy guitar and heavy bass recalling the Slits, "Well Alright" rides a demented roadhouse blues and "My Baby" slows down to a loping love groove-- for stalkers. These might not be the furthest-out ideas, but they're new for the Coathangers, and they're executed with badass charisma.

Still, from the band behind such shrill yawps as "Don't Touch My Shit" and "Gettin' Mad and Pumpin' Iron", there's no bigger left turn than a soft, sentimental ballad. "Tabbacco Rd." sees the Coathangers making the shift with surprising ease, poignantly following a relationship from its first Tom Collins to the wedding chapel, and finally to the last goodbye. Speaking of goodbyes, the kitschy-scary keyboard and cathartic howls of "Jaybird" make it a fine memorial even if you don't recognize the lyrical reference to the Coathangers' former tourmate, the late Jay Reatard. Most impressive of all, though, and a should-be single, is "Go Away", a perfectly structured midtempo rocker that turns the tables on every dude who ever sang a whiny song about wanting to be more than just friends. It may have started as a simple gag-- "Hey, I like you/ Go away"-- but it's as serious as you want it to be.

Marissa Nadler - Marissa Nadler

Album Reviews
SPIN
June 2011
Link
7/10

Cover Art: Marissa Nadler, 'Marissa Nadler'








Eerie hymns that won't leave you in the morning

This New England painter turned songstress has distinguished herself from other neo-folkies with dark gothic imagery and hypnotic, reverbed arrangements, but the refined results often have felt too coolly distant. Nadler's fifth album benefits from a newfound directness. Over acoustic fingerpicking, splashing cymbals, and languidly twanging steel guitar, Nadler inhabits her strongest set of songs yet, pining in a barely adorned soprano for both lost loves and a conjoined twin ("Daisy, Where Did You Go?"). Despite casting herself as an "Alabaster Queen," Nadler exudes vitality.

The Vaccines - What Did You Expect From the Vaccines?

Album Review
Pitchfork
May 31, 2011
Link

6.2


What Did You Expect From the Vaccines?












Late last summer, months before the Vaccines had gone on to grace the front of the NME above a cover line heralding "The Return of the Great British Guitar Band," the magazine's website was already reporting concerns about the London band getting over-hyped. After the feverish debate that quickly ensued in the UK music press, such talk has come to sound like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Among the Vaccines' detractors, meanwhile, hardly a review deadline goes by without some pun on the quartet's debut album title, What Did You Expect From the Vaccines?


The Vaccines, much to their credit, are savvier about expectations than their champions and critics alike. Led by singer Justin Young, who previously played indie-folk under the name Jay Jay Pistolet, and guitarist Freddie Cowan, whose older brother is in the Horrors, these guys know firsthand how hype can be a double-edged sword-- one that has already propelled their meat-and-potatoes pub rock near the top of the UK album charts, to uncertain impact on their long-term reputations. The real joke of the album title, after all, is that it raises the same question the band posed of "Post Break-Up Sex" on their bombastic, pleasant-enough second single.

The answer, on that song, is that we should expect a chance to forget our past loves for a little while, followed by a sense of overwhelming guilt. For better or worse, there's nothing here that warrants either such reaction, let alone the paroxysms of hyperbole going on in the British press. Sure, the band's buzzing guitars, thick reverb, and bouncy rhythms lack any particular spark of originality that might help listeners avoid compulsively thinking of names like Ramones, the Jesus and Mary Chain, or, yes, the Strokes. Then again, there's no shame in catchy, concise, sharply executed tunes that communicate mildly fresh takes on relationships, either-- and this album has more than a few.

The Vaccines are at their best when they're upbeat, flecked with surf, and surprisingly hard to get out of your head. Take "If You Wanna", which bops likably along like a somewhat higher-fidelity Best Coast as Young warbles about an ex he'd take back in a second, or "Nørgaard", a playfully loutish ode to a Danish model. But there's also "Blow It Up", which borrows from the Beatles' "I Should Have Known Better" a little too blatantly to enjoy in its own right. "Under Your Thumb", for its part, appears to take critic Ellen Willis's argument that the Rolling Stones' similarly titled tirade actually isn't sexist as a challenge to write a song about a man completely submitting to his (presumably, female-- name's Eleanor, anyway) lover.

It's easy enough to imagine the Vaccines' slower songs going over well with an outdoor crowd drunk on sun and beer. Previous NME favorites Glasvegas already have the "swooning anthems with girl-group beats" thing pretty much covered, but the Vaccines do it here twice: over droning organ on "Wetsuit", which again recalls the U.S. beach-pop crowd, and then another time on the dreary "All in White", which occupies much the same U2-echoing expanse as lesser bands the Temper Trap or White Lies. The most awkward moment is slo-mo finale "Family Friend", which builds to an embarrassingly neutered wall-of-noise crescendo. In a final possible reference to Best Coast, Wavves, and their stoned sunshine set, Young wonders aloud if everybody really feels "as high as a kite": "Well, I don't really know if they do, but they might." An old "MADtv" sketch comes to mind: "Lowered Expectations".

Blue Sky Black Death - Noir

Album Review
Pitchfork
May 24, 2011
Link

7.5


Noir












Blue Sky Black Death may want to do without guest vocalists for a little while. West Coast producers Kingston and Young God teamed up with a different low-key singer on each of their last couple of albums, but the real allure was still in the duo's layered, expansive instrumentals. Then there was the drama a few years back over Jean Grae team-up The Evil Jeanius; the New York MC went on Craigslist and MySpace to protest the "unauthorized" use of her rhymes (she said it wasn't the beat-makers' fault). BSBD have collaborated with plenty of other indie rappers, most recently including tourmates CunninLynguists, but their latest album suggests they can acquit themselves just fine on their own.

As Clams Casino's first beat tape earlier this year demonstrated, some of the best rap instrumentals these days can work equally well as moody electronic music, drifting naturally between the worlds of hip-hop or R&B and ambient, post-dubstep, or chillwave. Noir has a similar way of wringing strangely affecting emotional grandeur from the rudiments of sound, though BSBD's style relies less on glitch or drone and more on starry-eyed orchestral vastness. Using an impressively naunced deployment of strings, piano, and guitar as well as drum loops and hazy synths, the album has a patient, steady beauty, ranging from glowing panoramas evoking M83 to the classical-informed abstraction of Anticon acts like Dosh and Son Lux.

The duo's acronym is apparently skydiver slang, popularized in the 1994 thriller Drop Zone. It implies, "Sure, appreciate the majesty of nature all you want, but if something goes wrong you'll leave a grisly corpse." If Noir can't quite fully embody that essential paradox-- it's not particularly noir-ish, either-- it still succeeds in communicating incomprehensible hugeness through sonically detailed tracks with an almost narrative-like structure. There are several standouts, but a good place to start is "Sleeping Children Are Still Flying", which uses a humid Southern-rock guitar solo and languidly triumphant drum programming to support a string section, a children's choir, and a snippet of dialogue from classic 1986 coming-of-age drama Stand By Me: River Phoenix is talking about dreams, and missed chances. While the kids and the symphonic elements would have no trouble fitting in on an indie pop beach fantasy by Air France, those blues-drenched licks could just as easily soundtrack one of the Weeknd's dangerous liaisons.

Noir isn't completely instrumental, then, and in fact uses sung samples as well as the spoken-word variety. But the strongest voice here is BSBD's own-- wide-screen and Technicolor, to mix sensory metaphors. An aching soul vocal from Solomon Burke's "Don't Give Up on Me" is secondary to a sighing, silvery arrangement and pulsing bass on brief interlude "Falling Short"; Dusty Springfield's version of "The Windmills of Your Mind" complements the hypnotic repetitions and emotional anguish of "Farewell to the Former World", which despite its melancholy theme has a snare-heavy rhythm track fit for blasting through car windows on hot days. Or for rapping over: Three years after BSBD's last proper instrumental album, Babygrande release Late Night Cinema, Noir again proves the duo don't need singers or rappers to make their music felt. But that doesn't mean an aspiring MC or two might not be able to make use of their services anyway.

Music Critics Pick the Last Song They Want to Hear Before They Die

Feature
Flavorwire
May 20, 2011
Link




Gladys Knight & the Pips — “Midnight Train to Georgia”

I figure if I’m going to be dead anyway, I’m not going to remember what I listened to for my sonic last meal, so I might as well just pick a song I really like. I have “Midnight Train to Georgia” on a musty 45 I bought on a corner back in my old neighborhood in Brooklyn, and it always just sounds great. And if I have to go… wherever we go… who better to urge me on my way than passionate, passionate Gladys and her guardian-angel Pips? Alternate selection: Any version of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.” (California Raisins not included.)

Sonny & the Sunsets - Hit After Hit

Album Review
eMusic
April 2011
Link

Hit After Hit












Truth in advertising, and they just might stop to check you out


"Girls, don't despair, 'cause soon, I'll be there," Sonny Smith sighs almost exactly halfway through Hit After Hit. It's an apt midpoint for the San Francisco singer-songwriter's second casually stunning album with his band, the Sunsets. Filtering non-specific 1950s and 60s beach-party rock 'n' roll through the so-hip-they're-square minimalism of Jonathan Richman, early B-52s or Violent Femmes, these 11 tracks artfully plumb the teenage libido submerged just below every movie sock hop ever.

Though Hit After Hit lacks an obvious standout like last year's "Too Young to Burn," it lives up to its title with a cadre of songs that operate at nearly that same high level. There are songs about girls who are confusing ("She Plays Yoyo With My Mind"), girls who leave with some other dude ("Don't Act Dumb"), girls from the past ("Reflections on Youth"), girls who are up for a one-night stand ("Heart of Sadness"), and the scary tough guys who may be competition for girls ("Teenage Thugs"). Whether a heart-tugging ballad ("Pretend You Love Me") or a stormy instrumental ("The Bad Energy From L.A. Is Killing Me"), Sonny & the Sunsets nail it all with wry charm, never schmaltz or coldness. "I wanna do it," goes the hook from the first single. Girls' response: "Oh, yeah."

courtesy of eMusic.com, Inc., © 2011 eMusic.com

Lenka - Two

Album Review
eMusic
April 2011



Two












Cutely catchy Aussie finds love, doubles her fun


For pop songwriter Lenka Kripac, former singer and keyboardist with Sydney post-rock band Decoder Ring, good things really do come in pairs. On her second solo album, the recently-engaged Brooklyn resident savors couplehood, with enough sweetly hooky tunes to please fans of Kate Nash, Regina Spektor or even Adele.

Not that Two is just a lovey-dovey rehash of Lenka's self-titled debut. That album's big song was "The Show," a Broadway-ready production that compared life to a performance. By contrast, first Two single "Heart Skips a Beat" uses robotic vocal shadings to wrestle with a new love's anxieties. Lenka's latest not only ditches its predecessor's mild melancholy, it also sheds most of its theatricality, embracing electronics like a beaming fiancé. If Lenka was meant for the stage, Two feels like it was meant for the radio.

Lenka's Australian-accented voice still chirps winsomely over jaunty ivories, and sometimes the strings do stretch toward Phil Spector's Wall of Sound. But the production team here — which includes guys who've overseen albums for Bat for Lashes and Björk — rarely shies away from sleekly emotive electro-pop. Take late-album highlight "You Will Be Mine," harp-inflected Eurodance halfway between Saint Etienne and Britney Spears. For sure, Lenka's lyrics have little on her countrymen — and past collaborators — Darren Hanlon or the Lucksmiths. And she's hardly breaking new ground. As bubblegum-tinted pop goes, though, Two is pure Doublemint.


courtesy of eMusic.com, Inc., © 2011 eMusic.com

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