The Drums - Portamento

Album Reviews
SPIN
October 2011
Link
7/10



With a foppish yodel and a jaunty guitar shuffle, this Brooklyn band's self-titled 2010 debut LP slotted easily alongside descendants of the Smiths and the Strokes. Maybe too easily. Guitarist Adam Kessler's exit makes room for a more overtly expansive approach on the Drums' just as solid sophomore outing, with chopped-up vocals, burbling synths, and cooing harmonies that should place them firmly in the sophisticated-yet-naive pop tradition of Saint Etienne or Swedish labels Service, Sincerely Yours, and Labrador. The Drums was as sunny as new romance, though; emotionally conflicted and at times misanthropic, Portamento is about finding out that only love can break your heart.

Toro Y Moi - Freaking Out EP

Album Review
Pitchfork
September 12, 2011
Link
8.0

Now that there's little choice but to treat chillwave as an actual genre, it's at risk of the same kind of restrictive codification that's strangled so many of its predecessors. The word has come to mean a specific style-- glowing electronic pop that calls to mind faded photographs. But what initially drew comparisons between such groups as Washed Out, Neon Indian, and Memory Tapes wasn't such an easily identifiable set of musical signifiers. As with most category names that stick, chillwave was a feeling.

There's no better example of the genre's catholic origins than Toro Y Moi mastermind Chaz Bundick. Last year's Causers of This established Toro Y Moi as one of the mini-scene's leading figures, with the post-crash economic reality of lead single "Blessa" ("I found a job, I do it fine/ Not what I want, but still I try") aligning the album with Neon Indian's "Deadbeat Summer" and Washed Out's High Times-- and Bundick's full-length debut had a warmly nostalgic electro-R&B aesthetic, to boot. But by then he had already released 2009's Body Angles tape, which, yeah, presaged Causers with synthy closer "Timed Pleasure", but mostly emphasized scuzzy guitars. And Bundick has said he actually recorded this year's garage-pop "Leave Everywhere" single in 2006. In the meantime, he's given us straight-up dance (his Les Sins project) and an album that expands on the atmospheric funk of Causers using a lusher, more organic instrumental palette (this year's Underneath the Pine).

The definition of chillwave may have to expand yet again. Memory Tapes' solid if disappointing follow-up to 2009's zeitgeist-capturing Seek Magic had more in common than with the sound of this Internet-born subset, but Bundick, along with Neon Indian and Washed Out, continues to embody its spirit, which was always more body-oriented than detractors would care to admit. With the Freaking Out EP, Bundick moves from vaguely funky 1980s-tinged makeout jams to more explicitly funky 80s-tinged dancefloor jams-- think Chromeo. The change isn't as successful as his best work, but it still makes for a plenty rewarding between-albums EP.

Advance mp3 "Saturday Love"-- a cover of a 1985 Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis production for R&B singers Cherrelle and Alexander O'Neal-- is the highlight here, with its sweetly catchy days-of-the-week hook, tinkling two-finger piano, and thwacking neo-new jack swing drum programming. Yearning, bass-limber opener "All Alone" and finger-snapping dance finale "I Can Get Love" even share the strobe-like keyboards present on much of Causers-- the last song has that post-Dilla crackle, too. And "Sweet" applies the chopped up vocals and hazy incandescence of that album to further 80s-style R&B. "Take it easy," Bundick soothes on the title track, another uptempo floor-filler. "Don't worry anymore... Calm down." I mean, how much more chillwave can you get, right?

Jacuzzi Boys - Glazin'

Album Reviews
SPIN
September 2011
Link
7/10



If these goofy Miami garage punks ever come to your town, be there with beer money. After a 2009 album, assorted seven-inch singles, and a recent live recording for Jack White's Third Man imprint, Jacuzzi Boys have taken their place among the best sloppy racket-makers bashing out easy-boogie soundtracks to your next drunken night at the local rock dive. Led by singing guitarist Gabriel Alcala, the trio does little on its second album to reward closer, repeated listens. But between chugging good-climes opener "Vizcaya," scrappily Led-en stomper "Zeppelin," and spaced-out acoustic closer "Koo Koo With You," you won't be disappointed.

Stephin Merritt - Obscurities

Album Reviews
SPIN
September 2011
Link
7/10



Stephin Merritt never has lacked for ideas. Under various guises, but mostly as the Magnetic Fields, the wittily morose indie-pop maestro has issued or reissued a dozen or so records. This well-curated compilation dusts off a few more previously unreleased tracks that play like castoffs, but the rarities -- including an unintentionally moving Patsy Cline parody, a Moog-warped "I Don't Believe You," and an alternate version of "Take Ecstasy With Me" sung by longtime cohort Susan Anway -- are prime Merritt. Perfect for Magnetic Fields fans let down by 2010's concept-heavy Realism.

Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks - Mirror Traffic

Album Reviews
SPIN
August 2011
Link
8/10




"No one is your perfect fit / 
I do not believe in that shit," Stephen Malkmus confides over lightly distorted electric guitar on "Forever 28," from the 45-year-old father of two's fifth album since his former band, Pavement, split more than a decade ago. Then, coloring those chords with jazzier notes, he warbles, "Don't you know that every bubble bursts / Kill me." His current band, the Jicks, soon join in with a sunny bounce that recalls Electric Light Orchestra's "Mr. Blue Sky."

It's a moment that epitomizes Mirror Traffic, a patient, inviting album that feels like a fresh start from a guy whose recording career spans multiple boom-and-bust cycles, both for indie rock and the economy. Pavement's best-of compilation and globe-trotting reunion tour last year left the perennially underachieving group finally resembling what some critics had been calling them all along: the preeminent band of the '90s. Produced by another of that decade's so-called slackers -- Beck Hansen -- Malkmus and the Jicks' latest responds to all that success, in true Malkmus fashion, not with blatant nostalgia, nor with some pathetic stab at timeliness, but with a thoroughly beguiling roll of the eyes.

Malkmus and the Jicks may reside in Portland, Oregon -- where, per Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein's Portlandia, "the dream of the '90s is alive" -- but unlike, say, Billy Corgan, both Malkmus and Beck have continued to evolve since their Clinton-era commercial peaks. Over the course of his four post-Pavement albums, Malkmus has toyed with electronics (2005's Face the Truth) and explored 1970s gnarled-guitar workouts (2003's Pig Lib, 2008's Real Emotional Trash). And Beck? Since wrapping up his major-label deal a couple of years ago, the 41-year-old Los Angeleno has been in the full bloom of a career revitalization, most recently producing Thurston Moore's superb Demolished Thoughts.

Where Real Emotional Trash began on a quasi-autobiographical note, Mirror Traffic opener "Tigers" leads with a farcical scene worthy of Will Ferrell: 
"I caught you streaking in your Birkenstocks / 
A scary thought / In the 2Ks." And where that last album was Malkmus and the Jicks' most stylistically unified, Mirror Traffic is both more varied and more focused. Malkmus dismisses sit-ups as "so bourgeoisie" over Wes Anderson-ready chamber pop, revels in "putzing 'round the Internet" over spidery guitar and warm keyboards that inexplicably crackle with cellphone distortion, and condemns himself as a mortally doomed "one-trick pony" over pedal-steel-drenched, Updike-referencing alt country.

Millennials who chafe at Generation X's shrugging anti-dominance and Pavement's mocking of arena-rock idols, take note: Malkmus and Co. are not half-assing it here. Pavement, even at their best, never had anything like the Jicks' adroit nonchalance. Captured here mostly over two days in L.A., after the completion of a 2009 world tour, 
the band have the punchy, relaxed assurance of a group of pros who know exactly how many beers they can drink and still hit 
their marks.

If Mirror Traffic has an overriding theme, it's not the coming-of-age goose bumps of new-school '90s acolytes Pains of Being Pure at Heart or Yuck. It's impending death. "I know what everyone wants / What everyone wants is a blowjob," Malkmus howls on stoned romp "Senator." How can he be sure? "You are fading fast / You are fading fast / You are gone." The album's last words are "fall to dust." At least Malkmus prefaces them with a blaze of ragged guitar glory.

Fool's Gold - Leave No Trace

Album Reviews
SPIN
August 2011
Link
6/10



Not to be confused with Fool's Gold Records, this Los Angeles quintet distilled a refreshing blend of African influences and Hebrew-language vocals on their 2009 self-titled debut. Featuring three members of indie-rock vets Foreign Born, Fool's Gold sidesteps here toward shiny '80s pop -- sung in English -- on their sophomore album. Synths glimmer on "Street Clothes"; the title track has that Smiths/R.E.M. jangle. Though still sunny and hooky, Leave No Trace lacks the enigmatic spark of its predecessor, especially now that the words are more readily understandable.

Soft Metals - Soft Metals

Album Review
Pitchfork
August 3, 2011
Link
7.5



All pop music is love and theft, and Soft Metals are particularly upfront about both. The arty Portland electronic duo formed in early 2009, with singer Patricia Hall and keyboardist/programmer Ian Hicks becoming a romantic couple not much later. The two recently did a mean cover of Throbbing Gristle's 1979 "Hot on the Heels of Love", a techno-predicting cult classic that mixes robotic arpeggios and steamy vocals (recalling Donna Summer's rapturous "I Feel Love" from a couple of years earlier) with the industrial pioneers' own creepy foreboding.

Soft Metals' self-titled album extends that combination of lovers' intimacy and retro-futuristic ominousness, which Hall and Hicks previously introduced on the 2010 EP The Cold World Melts. With Hall's detached, often-indecipherable vocals over Hicks' pulsating configurations of vintage synthesizers and drum machines, Soft Metals bears traces of virtually every bleakly gliding descendant of Kraftwerk's O.G. synth-pop grooves, from gothic early-1980s new wave to house, techno, and electroclash. But it's somewhat telling that this blurrily beguiling debut-- which reprises two tracks from the EP, plus eight new ones-- arrives on Brooklyn-based Captured Tracks, a label better known for the lo-fi noise-pop of Blank Dogs, Beach Fossils, or Wild Nothing.

As with their labelmates, Soft Metals' aesthetic is born not of lavish studios but in the bedroom. The songs on Soft Metals have a foggy, surrealistic shimmer rather than the clear-cut precision of many of their electronic forebears. Where Ariel Pink cohort John Maus uses like-mindedly retro trappings as a jumping-off point for experiments with ideas about art and artifice, Soft Metals concentrate instead on the type of subtly evolving textures you might be more inclined to play when you're drifting off to sleep than when you're throwing a dance party. Even the most lucid songs here, whether echo-besotted EP cut "Voices" or swelling first-meeting reminiscence "Do You Remember", stake their appeal on their glistening, ever-changing surfaces, not traditional songcraft.

Still, just because your brand of old-school electronics has more in common with mood-oriented Italians Do It Better producer Johnny Jewel (Glass Candy, Chromatics) than with song-driven nu-disco princess Sally Shapiro ("I'll Be By Your Side") doesn't mean the wordless repetitions of "Celestial Call" or "Hold My Breath" fully reward our attention. Then again... Soft Metals might wince at this comparison, but it's not such a leap from their album's prelude-to-a-kiss cover art to the Cosmo-copped sex scene (speaking of love and theft!) that adorns Washed Out's latest. Soft Metals' "Eyes Closed" may have a faster tempo, a more dangerous charge, and one fewer title syllable than languid Within and Without opener "Eyes Be Closed", but they're both headed toward a similarly sensual place.

If Soft Metals are nostalgic, however, it's less for lost innocence than for a lost idea of the future. Where are the flying cars? The album's use of analogue synths isn't a regression, but an attempt to find a new way forward. On instrumental finale "In Throes", they finally do, as eerie buzzes and disjointed rhythms chart a course somewhere near the Knife's still-unmatched 2006 dark-electronic landmark Silent Shout. In the end, the more important love on Soft Metals isn't necessarily between Hall and Hicks; it's between them and three-plus decades of synthesizer music. And wherever that leads next.

Mike Simonetti - Capricorn Rising EP

Album Review
Pitchfork
July 28, 2011
Link
7.1



Earlier this year, Mike Simonetti released a limited-edition picture disc of disco re-edits called I'm Getting Too Old for This Shit. Age has nothing to to with it, but the New Jersey-based founder of the labels Troubleman Unlimited, Italians Do It Better, and, most recently, Perseo, has without a doubt enjoyed a lengthy and meandering role in the world of relatively underground music. For all the many releases Simonetti has overseen at his labels, ranging from hardcore to Italo disco, Capricorn Rising is the first record of original material to appear solely under his own name.

On the evidence here, Simonetti is definitively not too old for this, though like many artists with full creative control he can sometimes be a bit indulgent. At nearly 39 minutes, the EP is longer than plenty of albums, but 21 of those minutes are given over to a single song, advance mp3 "Third of the Storms", which appears in three separate instances. Mesmerizing chill-out disco that sets an innocently chiming melody atop handclaps, driving krautrock bass, droning washes of synth, and occasional idyllic sound effects, the song makes a fine bookend to the record: On the opening, vocal version, Australian electro-R&B smoothie Sam Sparro adds multi-layered, chant-like repetitions conveying a sense of joyful fatalism, while the closing, instrumental take leaves more room for the track to breathe; each is excellent depending on your mood, though as with disco singles like this since time immemorial, you probably won't want to listen to both cuts in the same sitting (that's not a criticism). As a centerpiece, though, "Third of the Storms (Acapulco)" disappoints; more or less five minutes of Sparro's already-familiar incantations over sparse, monotonous backing, it almost could have been called "Third of the Storms (A Cappella)".

Elsewhere, Capricorn offers another four cuts in a similarly hypnotic, synth-based mold. The best is the title track, with pulse-raising electronics and wisps of breath that suggest a mechanically precise jogger; Blade Runner would be too obvious a reference point for a crate digger like Simonetti, but given this track's sci-fi synthesis of chilly electronics and thriller suspense, a comparison to that classic film (and its equally classic score by Vangelis) can't be too far off the mark. Just as seamless is pounding synth workout "Song for Luca", the longest non-"Third of the Storms" piece here, building to a climax that belies its Balearic calm. Simonetti also detours into humming ambient textures, on "Dust Devil", and a mournful keyboard reflection, "Renko's Theme", which has a rich, yacht-friendly pomp. The end result is a worthwhile stepping-out EP from a longtime behind-the-scenes player, and if its worst crime is excess, well, we're talking about a record with an ice cream sundae on the cover.

Iceage - New Brigade

Album Reviews
SPIN
August 2011
Link
9/10




By the time you read this, Iceage will be here. Before kicking off their North American summer tour, the Copenhagen four-piece were already generating the kind of awed praise a noisy young guitar band just can't buy anymore. The group's thoroughgoing blog, with its images and videos from bloodied, chaotic live shows, certainly helped. But so did this jagged, visceral debut album, now receiving a proper U.S. release after emerging last year on Danish label Escho.

From its trudging ambient intro to a cathartic shout-along finale, New Brigade is a 12-song, 24-minute call to arms. On behalf of what cause nobody seems to agree. Early online reaction has been intense and wide-ranging, from highbrow (The New Yorker) to hipster (Vice) to DIY punk (Maximumrocknroll). Comparisons have spanned Wire's inspired punk clatter, Joy Divison's splintered post-punk brooding, the bipolar post-hardcore of San Diego label Gravity, and even Liars' ethereal art-scrawl -- plus lesser-known European genres such as D-beat and anarcho-punk.

Whatever. Equal parts dizzying and galvanizing, New Brigade is a dissonant cry to seize the moment, though the band seems to acknowledge that moment will soon be gone. The English-language lyrics take time to decipher, but they're still stirring, delivered in a brusque, boyish bellow. And with their ingeniously disjointed almost-anthems ("Broken Bone," "Remember") Iceage shouldn't lack for recruits, among either punk devotees or rubbernecking dilettantes.

Cults - Cults

Album Review
eMusic
May 23, 2011

Link 

Cults aren't the first group to rise from anonymity to buzz-band status, and they certainly won't be the last. More remarkable than how Madeline Follin and Brian Oblivion crashed the major-label party, however, is the distinctive neo-retro pop style they've brought along with them. Born partly out of a youth spent listening to an especially eclectic oldies station and a nine-hour drive bonding as a couple over an iPod stacked with Lesley Gore, Jay-Z and Justin Timberlake, Cults' aesthetic is one of the most refreshing developments in pop music since the aggro-bubblegum of Brooklyn's own Sleigh Bells a year ago. Put simply: Nothing else sounds quite like this.

Self-produced with only minor polish from engineer Shane Stoneback — who worked with Sleigh Bells, and with Vampire Weekend, too — these 11 songs make good on the substantial promise of last year's sole single, "Go Outside." Follin's lilting, girlish voice soars over blithely chiming glockenspiel, trebly guitar, shimmery synth, funk bass and computer-sculpted beats, a slight patina of lo-fi haze still intact throughout. Equally integral are the sampled quotes, which include disturbingly resonant words from cult leaders and psycho killers.

Stylized samples aside, though, Cults can always fall back on songs that effortlessly capture a rich palette of coming-of-age feelings. The previously released material still sparkles: "Go Outside" embodies millennial ambivalence about offline existence; "Oh My God" longs for a life less humdrum and "Most Wanted" explores why we crave what hurts us. The new songs match the quality of their predecessors, from Stockholm syndrome romance "Abducted" to "Walk at Night," which is "Killing Moon"-bleak, on through to "Bumper," a lovers' duet that's something like the "Give Him a Great Big Kiss" by way of "Irreplaceable" by way of "Young Folks."

"So fuck you," Follin enthuses cheerfully, rejecting self-improvement advice amid a squall of shoegaze guitar noise on "Never Heal Myself." Running away from other people's expectations leads Cults someplace wonderfully their own.


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

Richard Buckner - Our Blood

Album Reviews
SPIN
August 2011
Link (byline corrected in September issue)
7/10



"I guess I'm the one they warned you about," Richard Buckner acknowledges on Our Blood, summing up in one long-suffering moan his entire discography of dangerous romance. Brooding and oblique, Buckner's first album in five years again seeks its pleasures in the shadows beside the bar, framed by desolate electronics far removed from the singer-songwriter's '90s alt-country roots. With pedal steel by Buddy Cage (Dylan's Blood on the Tracks), ominous percussion by Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley, and Buckner's usual subtle craftsmanship, he creates wasted-night rhapsodies that demand you lean in close -- however warily.

Richard Youngs - Amplifying Response

Album Reviews
SPIN
August 2011
Link
7/10



During more than two decades spent honing a fiercely individual approach to minimalist, off-center folk, this Glasgow-based Englishman has amassed a small but steadily growing cult. Richard Youngs' 11th solo album on Indiana indie Jagjaguwar ditches the keyboards of his recent releases, instead relying on disjointed guitars, eerily overdubbed incantations, and the rich, multihued drumming of Damon Krukowski (Galaxie 500, Damon & Naomi). Evoking the moonlit tumbleweed vistas of an acid Western, Amplifying Host is unsettling but rewarding. "This is the time of fulfillment," Youngs exults. Right on schedule.

Holy Other - With U EP

Album Reviews
SPIN
August 2011
Link
8/10




Indie rock, R&B, electronic dance music, and hip-hop have all been converging in pretty fascinating ways lately, but Holy Other is on some whole other planet. With pitch-shifted vocal samples, yearning synths, and shuddering bass, this Berlin-via-Manchester producer's debut EP blasts through not only genres, but the divide between the otherworldly and the physical, too. Imagine if the flickering techno of the Field, the foggy rumblings of Burial, and the warped R&B of How to Dress Well or the Weeknd all headed toward someplace new. Your move, James Blake.

The Verve - Urban Hymns

Album Review
eMusic
May 18, 2011

Link 

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

Link 

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

Link 

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

Link 

"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.

Buzzcocks - A Different Compilation

Album Review
Pitchfork
June 10, 2011
Link
6.5














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

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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.

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