In an iTunes age, do we need the record store?

Feature
Salon
November 20, 2011
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On Wednesday night, hundreds of people passed through the doors of Other Music, one of New York City’s last remaining record stores. Yes, there was free booze. But the young, plugged-in crowd came to celebrate, not necessarily to buy. “The World’s First Perfect Zine,” a new print publication from the author of a well-known blog devoted to reviews of album reviews, was holding a release party. Along with a contribution by the novelist Tao Lin, the zine includes writing by members of the groups Vampire Weekend, Das Racist and jj, among others.

In what could be an intriguing — or depressing — glimpse into the future of record stores, all those extra bodies in the room didn’t necessarily translate into extra business. “There was a remarkably low number of kids who came in there and said, ‘I haven’t seen this, I’ll pick it up,’” observed Other Music co-owner Josh Madell, a day after the event. The zine’s editor, pseudonymous Pitchfork Reviews Reviews blogger David Shapiro, didn’t dispute the point. “Part of the reason was that the store was so packed that browsing for CDs and records wasn’t really physically possible,” he explained, in an email response to questions. “But beyond that, of course, people don’t really buy records that much anymore — especially people in a small, hyper-Internet-savvy subset of young New Yorkers.”

The episode neatly illustrates a fundamental paradox facing record store owners in 2011. Many music fans romanticize the record store as a source of both hard-to-find culture and local community. “It was a library and a clubhouse,” as director Cameron Crowe, one of the ultimate nostalgists, told the authors of the 2009 book “Record Store Days.” At the same time, however, record stores are just that — stores — and ever-fewer consumers are choosing to buy the little pieces of plastic they sell. For record stores overall, then, the outlook appears bleak. “As an institution, it had its function,” said Alexander Weheliye, a professor of English and African-American studies at Northwestern University. But the survivors aren’t going away. They’re simply changing their tune, becoming smaller and more focused. Time will tell whether that’s enough — for some, continued existence may require a whole new arrangement.

“A record store nowadays can’t just sell records. That’s the first step to failure,” said Ben Blackwell, a longtime record collector who handles manufacture and distribution of vinyl at Jack White’s label, Third Man Records. “Record stores need to put on events. They need to host live shows. They need to do listening parties. You have to have an active way with which to communicate to your buyers. You need a mailing list, you need a Twitter account, you need Facebook pages. All this stuff that wasn’t around 10 years ago when record stores were seemingly doing fine is what you need to employ to stay in the race.” But what happens when, like at Other Music, even cool events aren’t enough?

Why I can’t hate Coldplay anymore

Feature
Salon
October 23, 2011
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This past June, in front of tens of thousands of fans at Britain’s annual Glastonbury Festival, Chris Martin balked. About halfway into a new song titled “Us Against the World,” the Coldplay frontman abruptly stopped singing or playing his guitar. “Will, can you do that verse again?” he asked drummer Will Champion with a broad grin. “I fucked that one up … We’re supposed to be professional headliners.” Luckily, they’re supposed to be the sort of professional headliners who also connect with listeners on a human level. They finished the song.

Five albums in, the British band has found an uncanny equilibrium between swooping, arena-ready pop and cheesy, down-to-earth humility. “Mylo Xyloto,” which arrives Tuesday, is the most sonically expansive record yet by Martin, Champion, guitarist Jonny Buckland and bass player Guy Berryman. But it’s also their most focused, without the overblown “anthems for anthems’ sake” of 2005′s “X&Y,” or the inarticulate self-importance of 2008′s “Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends,” their first collaboration with Brian Eno (the ambient musician who magicked U2 to multi-platinum status). If Coldplay specialize in creating the illusion of intimacy on an arena scale, then their latest effort succeeds by being bigger and smaller at the same time. Familiarity has bred admiration, however grudging.

Love them or loathe them, Coldplay are indisputably one of the biggest rock bands in the world. They’ve won seven Grammy Awards. “Viva La Vida” was the best-selling 2008 album on the planet. “Paradise” and “Every Teardrop a Waterfall,” the first two singles from “Mylo Xyloto,” had already sold more than a million downloads as of an Oct. 13 profile in the New York Times. “They’ve found a way, identity-wise, to be from everywhere,” John Mayer told SPIN in 2004, “whereas most bands come to America with ‘British’ written all over them.” Glastonbury wasn’t exactly Coldplay’s only festival headlining gig this year. Lollapalooza in Chicago? Fuji Rocks in Japan? Splendour in the Grass in Australia? These guys topped bills everywhere.

Breaking Out: SBTRKT

Feature
SPIN
October 2011
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For someone who wants to stay hidden, SBTRKT (pronounced "subtract") has a hard time staying in the shadows. The mask-wearing DJ-producer won't confirm his real name (reportedly Aaron Jerome), age, or talk about his musical background, but he has shared a stage with Drake, been tapped for remixes by Radiohead and Mark Ronson, and will be headlining a U.S. tour that launches this month. A little 
secrecy, it seems, can go a long way.

"SBTRKT is essentially about getting away from the idea that you have to talk about your music to show what it's about," explains the London resident. "For me, it was more about creating music and letting it work on its own merits -- not having to go out and say, 'I am the person behind 
this, this is where I was born, and 
this is why I make what I do.' "

Good thing his music speaks for 
itself. SBTRKT's eponymous Young Turks debut puts a sleek pop slant on dubstep, garage, and 2-step. Closer to the futuristic singer-songwriter music of fellow Brit James Blake than straight-up club fare, the album leans hard on the airy croon of U.K. soul singer Sampha, who also joins in for his boss' free-flowing shows, during which the masked man pounds a drum kit. "It can all go wrong," admits SBTRKT about embracing the unpredictability of playing live, "but it can all go right as well." Like when Drake joined the band for a Toronto performance. ("He just came and jammed," says SBTRKT.) The cameo wasn't wholly surprising -- Drake had remixed SBTRKT's moody "Wildfire," which features a feathery vocal assist from Little Dragon's Yukimi Nagano.

More often, SBTRKT is the one 
doing the remixing. Last year he 
reworked Tinie Tempah's U.K. No. 1 
single "Pass Out" and Ronson's "Bang Bang Bang." This past summer, he did the same to "Lotus Flower," from Radiohead's recent The King of Limbs, after Thom Yorke heard his music on BBC 
radio. Cultivating such a high-profile fan base may put a crimp in SBTRKT's plan to remain anonymous, but it's the stuff of fantasy nonetheless -- which is appropriate for his chosen genre. "As a basic thing," he says, "electronic music is not based on some personal life story. The majority is this imaginary universe of sound." These days, though, reality is looking pretty good.

Covers That Beat the Originals

Feature

eMusic
July 27, 2011
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Grace Jones, “Walking in the Rain” (Flash and the Pan)
Grace Jones called her 1981-82 world tour “A One Man Show.” That sly nod to her androgynous appearance and multi-faceted persona was rarely more appropriate than on this opening cut from 1981′s Nightclubbing. For her post-disco breakout album, Jones returned to the ace rhythm section of Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare, plus another set of covers (Iggy Pop, Brian Ferry) as impeccably chic as the ones on 1980′s Warm Leatherette. And then there was “Walking in the Rain.” Applying a slick dub-funk makeover to not the Ronettes, not Love Unlimited, not even old Johnny Ray, but Australian new-wavers Flash and the Pan, Jones speaks the words, “Feeling like a woman/ Looking like a man,” and they’re transformed. She forgets to add, “Sounding fabulous.”



Wilson Pickett, “Hey Jude” (The Beatles)
Before “Hey Jude,” Duane Allman was an occasional session man so obscure the credits list him as David Allman. Afterward, he was a full-time Muscle Shoals mainstay, recording with the likes of Aretha Franklin; by the end of 1969, the Allman Brothers Band was playing New York’s legendary Fillmore East. Allman’s career-launching solo is a big part of this cover’s appeal, but equally important is Pickett’s stirring vocal, peaking with a raspy howl that makes Paul McCartney’s screaming original sound like his inside voice. Take a British pop song, change it into soul, change that into guitar-blazing Southern rock — and make it better.



Saint Etienne, “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” (Neil Young)
If it’s true Neil Young wrote “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” for Graham Nash — who’d recently broken up with Joni Mitchell — then it’s no wonder someone else would make the tender folk-rock ballad their own. On Saint Etienne’s 1990 debut single, Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs turn the slowly waltzing original into a 4/4 dance-pop number driven by splashy piano, dub bass, and early singer Moira Lambert, whose fragile delivery has an innocence that eventual replacement Sarah Cracknell’s knowing sophistication could never quite share. “I was always thinking/ Games that I was playing,” Lambert repeats. If you want her, she’ll be in the club.

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

2011's Overlooked Gems

Feature

eMusic
July 29, 2011
Link

Killer Mike, Pl3dge

Though Killer Mike got his break as a tough-guy OutKast guest, he has increasingly established himself as the favorite political rapper of people who hate political rappers. The blunt-spoken Atlanta MC’s stylish, impassioned outrage culminates on Pl3dge, which samples a wrestler’s boasts one moment, calls out Jay-Z for obscuring the huge power gulf between himself and the billionaires who actually run our world the next, and never forgets to balance its pox-on-both-parties vitriol with equally furious entertainment. That it only spent one week on Billboard’s Top 200 list — at No. 115 — just reinforces Mike’s righteousness.




No Joy, Ghost Blonde

This Montreal quartet’s sumptuously shrill wall-of-noise debut came out too late in November to have a chance at most year-end lists. Coincidentally, the title of an earlier 2010 sleeper, labelmate Tamaryn’s The Waves, applies here just as well: Singer-guitarists Jasmine White-Glulz and Laura Lloyd summon up crest after dizzying crest of churning distortion, their incantatory vocals half-submerged, as elements of 1960s girl groups clash with the brutal dissonance of the ’90s rock underground. “You Girls Smoke Cigarettes?” is a cool blast; the title track a warm bath. Either way, there’s no rush surfacing.

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

One List Wonders

Feature
Pitchfork
August 17, 2011
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Freelance Hellraiser

"A Stroke of Genius"

[self-released; 2001]

When casual music fans ask me what mash-ups I like, I send them this wonderfully cheeky mind-meld between the powerfully sung come-ons of Christina Aguilera's debut single and the downtown New York down-strokes of the Strokes' "Hard to Explain". Grafting the teen-pop seductress onto the punk-descended classicists back in 2001 was a truly in-genie-us way of exploding the false barriers between chart-pop and indie-rock. More importantly, though, "A Stroke of Genius" works as an excellent pop song in its own right, cleverly predicting the guitar-driven turn that bubblegum pop would take on songs such as Kelly Clarkson's "Since U Been Gone". Created by UK DJ and producer Roy Kerr, who records as Freelance Hellraiser, the song gained mention on Xfm as well as in The Village Voice and The Guardian. Pitchfork ranked it #78 on the Top 500 Tracks of the 2000s.

Unless you have a famously insane live show like Girl Talk, however, it's tough for mash-up producers to get paid. The popularity of "A Stroke of Genius" gave Kerr a chance to do some official work, including remixes for Aguilera, Placebo, and the Verve's Richard Ashcroft. In 2005, he released a collaborative album with Paul McCartney called Twin Freaks. Freelance Hellraiser's album Waiting for Clearance arrived in 2006, featuring the tender, Fatboy Slim-like single "Want You to Know". Kerr joined with Anu Pillai a year later as Kid Gloves, and the duo has written and produced songs for UK electro-pop acts Ladyhawke and Little Boots.

The MFA

"The Difference It Makes (Superpitcher Remix)"

[Kompakt; 2004]

They called themselves the Mother-Fucking Allstars, and indeed, the first record from the UK duo of Alastair Douglas and Rhys Evans brought together the best from different rosters. Following singles from fellow British electronic musicians James Holden and Nathan Fake, the MFA's "The Difference It Makes" was the third release on Holden's Border Community label. With a crisply pulsing beat wrapped in a warm fog of hi-hat, bass, and swelling synths, eventually giving way to a robotic vocal, the track was dance music at its most reassuring. It was also a good fit for the "pop ambient" aesthetic of Cologne-based Kompakt, which wound up reissuing the single as the fifth installment on its Kompakt Pop imprint. The B-side was an extended remix by Superpitcher, aka German producer Aksel Schaufler, who had been catching ears with his own remarkably like-minded brand of glistening, melodic techno.

The two versions of the song shared the #43 spot on Pitchfork's Top 25 Singles of 2005. The track came at a time when Kompakt and a particular strain of welcoming, euphoric electronic dance music had been increasingly gaining attention, as artists like Wolfgang Voigt (aka Gas), Michael Mayer, Thomas Fehlmann, Jürgen Paape, and Justus Köhncke came to symbolize techno for a new set of listeners. In May 2005, New York magazine published a profile of Kompakt entitled "The Modern Lovers", saying the label "has gained much unlikely renown by making techno sort of sweet."

In the following years, records by Kompakt artists like the Field, Gui Boratto, and Matias Aguayo achieved similar success outside of the dance audience. Meanwhile, the MFA put out a handful of other records, culminating in 2009 single "Throw It Back (We Will Destroy You)," but they never quite captured a critical mass the way they did with "The Difference It Makes"; their blogspot page hasn't been updated in almost two years. Superpitcher followed 2004 debut album Here Comes Love with Kilimanjaro in 2010, again on Kompakt, and turned in an mp3 mix for Resident Advisor that same fall. A new Superpitcher track, "White Lightning", appears on Kompakt's new Total 12 compilation, out this week.

J-Kwon

"Tipsy"

[LaFace/So So Def; 2004]

Disclaimer: Teen drinking is still not exactly legal in the States. Yeah, but we have J-Kwon's "Tipsy". With help from production team Trackboyz, the St. Louis rapper conquered the summer of 2004 with this breakout hit from debut album Hood Hop, on Jermaine Dupri's So So Def imprint. At the time, it looked as if both J-Kwon and Trackboyz could conceivably headed for bigger things, as the single topped the U.S. rap chart and hit #2 on the Hot 100, held off only by Usher's "Yeah!", amid not only favorable coverage from the music press but also a glowing Trackboyz profile in the New Yorker. There was so much about the song to like: the goofy spoken-word intro, a clanging beat not far from Clipse's "Grindin'" or Lil Mama's "Lip Gloss", the "e'rybody" local color, the squiggling synths, and even the simplistic yet entertaining Midwestern party rhymes. The song ranked #31 on Pitchfork's Top 50 singles of 2004.

Still, those nursery-rhyme cadences on "Tipsy" indicated some of J-Kwon's shortcomings as a rapper, and he has never been able to match the success of his first hit. Follow-up single "You & Me" failed to crack the top 40, and when J-Kwon issued Hood Hop 2 five years later, it was digital-only. To be fair, that summer's Hood Hop 2.5 was available as a physical release, and it did reach #23 on the U.S. rap chart-- though maybe partly because it included "Tipsy '09". Last year's J-Kwon, which featured no singles, failed to make much of a dent in the public consciousness. "Tipsy" had already done much more, though in that song's case, "semi-consciousness" might be more like it.

Johnny Boy

"You Are the Generation That Bought More Shoes and You Get What You Deserve"

[Vertigo; 2004]

Appropriately for a band that emerged via the Internet and then almost as quickly vanished, not much is known about Johnny Boy. The Liverpool duo consisting of Lolly Hayes and the mysterious Davo released debut single "Johnny Boy Theme", which featured a voice-over from the Martin Scorsese movie that gave the group its name, in 2002. In the latter half of 2004, follow-up single "You Are the Generation That Bought More Shoes and You Get What You Deserve" began to draw attention online. The bum-ba-bum beat and swooning production by Manic Street Preachers' James Dean Bradfield garnered plenty of comparisons to Phil Spector. The memorable title suggested a vague critique of consumerism, but the song itself was pure pop, with girl-group vocals, cascading horns, and endless sea of "baby baby"s and "yeah yeah"s at the song's end (the latter of which you can hear even more prominently on a very fine, very underrated "Crews Against Consumismo Extended Mix"). The cut-and-paste aesthetic on display aligned Johnny Boy with groups like Brighton's the Go! Team and Seattle's United State of Electronica.

In August 2004, "You Are the Generation" cracked #50 in the UK singles chart, and the song eventually landed at #50 on Pitchfork's Top 50 Tracks of 2004. In 2005, the label Wild Kingdom released Johnny Boy's self-titled debut album-- aptly enough, in Sweden, ground zero for expertly sculpted but still youthfully ebullient pop. The full-length came out a year later in the UK, but aside from the two already-familiar singles, it was disappointingly scattered, lacking another track that could pack the emotional punch of the opener. And that was about the last we heard from the group. Johnny Boy's MySpace page is still online and shows the page owner's last login as recent, but for all intents and purposes, Lolly and Davo have disappeared. We were the generation that failed to make this song a world-conquering hit, and I guess we got what we deserved.

The Futureheads

"Hounds of Love" (Kate Bush cover)

[679/Sire; 2004]

The Futureheads took their name from the Flaming Lips' 1992 Hit to Death in the Future Head, but their jittery, harmony-laden sound turned out to be more influenced by 1980s post-punk and new-wave than 90s psych-rock. The UK band formed in their hometown of Sunderland, and they'd already put out three singles from their self-titled 2004 debut LP before releasing this spiky cover of the 1986 Kate Bush classic. With clockwork whoa-oh vocal rounds and brash Brit-rock guitars, the Futureheads' version converts Bush's horror-movie fear of romance into a joyful eagerness to be loved, with a springy charge that conveys that first buzzy flush of a new relationship. The song finished at #5 on Pitchfork's Top 50 Singles of 2005; it also hit #8 in the UK singles chart and was NME's top single of 2005.

Kate Bush has become only more prominent since the cover, with her style echoing through more recent artists such as Bat for Lashes and Gang Gang Dance. And the Futureheads have hardly been silent. Their strong debut album itself earned a "Best New Music" nod and subsequent albums-- 2006's News & Tributes, 2008's This Is Not the World, 2010's The Chaos-- have been mostly solid, but without the high points of the group's initial offering. Their most recent non-album single declares "Christmas Was Better in the 80s", and while Futureheads clearly have the talent to keep improving, it's hard to top that first-love giddiness.

Lady Sovereign

"Random"

[Casual; 2005]

In hindsight, Lady Sovereign's success may have been (ahem!) random, but it also marked a relatively overlooked chapter in audiences' embrace of British and/or female rappers. Known by the government as Louise Amanda Harman, Sov came up influenced by the UK garage sound of Ms. Dynamite, who won the 2002 Mercury Prize but never really caught on in the States beyond music critics. Lady Sovereign arrived as part of another UK-specific moment, the grime scene brilliantly memorialized in 679's Run the Road compilations, but she also proved she could beat the Yanks at their own game.

Following 2004's "Ch Ching (Cheque 1 2)", a rework of Sunship's 2000 UK garage milestone, Lady Sovereign's second single, "Random", announced its ambitions straightaway. "Make way for the S-O-V," Sov chirps before tweaking J-Kwon's then-contemporary U.S. rap hit and mixing it with a bit of Elephant Man: "E'rybody in the club getting tipsy/ Oh, fuck that, just wine like a gypsy," she rhymes over a steely electronic drone, neatly contrasting two sets of regional slang. The message was clear: Lady Sovereign, like the Streets and Dizzee Rascal before her, was not going to try to act American. Also: She was good, very good, even by Americans' own standards.

"Random" ended up at #8 on Pitchfork's Top 50 Singles of 2005. The single reached #73 in the UK and appeared on "The O.C." in 2006. In November 2005, Lady Sovereign released debut EP Vertically Challenged on Chocolate Industries. It was available only in the U.S. and UK. After UK-only EP Blah Blah, debut album Public Warning! followed, this time on Def Jam-- the same major-label imprint as countless hip-hop classics. But neither that LP nor 2009 follow-up Jigsaw could come anywhere close to matching the winning, immediate élan of those first couple of singles.

In the meantime, London rapper M.I.A. has become a media phenomenon on both sides of the pond, while New York's Nicki Minaj has shown a schizophrenically swaggering female MC can still burn up the Hot 100. As for Sov, she has had her troubles, including a drunk-and-disorderly arrest in Australia, a last-minute escape from a scheduled BBC political-show appearance, and the death of her mother from a terminal brain tumor. She has also come out as a lesbian, a bold move in a rap business with few openly LGBT performers. Lady Sovereign maintains an active presence on Twitter, but it's unclear when we might see her next album.

Cassie

"Me & U"

[Bad Boy; 2005]

The singer, model, dancer, and actress born Casandra Ventura hasn't had a sophomore slump, because as of press time, Cassie still hasn't released a sophomore album. Her self-titled 2006 debut-- and specifically its first single, the icily minimal electro-R&B seduction "Me & U"-- might just have been enough. Written and produced by Ryan Leslie, and released in conjunction with Diddy's Bad Boy label, the song's steamy lyrical content and flat, distanced delivery helped it sell more than 1 million digital downloads en route to becoming an international hit. "Me & U" ranked at #48 on Pitchfork's Top 100 Tracks of 2006.

Lackluster live-TV performances soon sidetracked Cassie's pop-star ascent, however. In 2006, amid rumors she had collaborated with virtually anybody who was anybody in mid-2000s R&B and hip-hop production, Cassie announced the title of her follow-up album would be Electro Love. Over the years, she has released three singles from the album: "Official Girl", with Lil Wanye; "Must Be Love", with Diddy; and "Let's Get Crazy", with Akon. In the meantime, Cassie has also appeared in the 2008 movie Step Up 2: The Streets as well as music videos for Wiz Khalifa, Kanye West, Jay-Z, and Chris Brown.

Peter Bjorn and John

"Young Folks" [ft. Victoria Bergsman]

[Wichita; 2006]

The breakthrough record from this ultra-melodic Swedish trio depicts a chance encounter-- two lonely people, strangers in the night-- that might or might not bloom into something more lasting. Which pretty much sums up the whole "Young Folks" phenomenon. Oh, sure, guitarist Peter Morén, bass player Björn Yttling, and drummer John Eriksson had already recorded two fine indie-pop albums; the second, 2004's Falling Out, received U.S. distribution on the Hidden Agenda label. But it was 2006's Writer's Block, released on Sony imprint AlmostGold, that made the three singer-songwriters an international sensation. And while their album flouted its self-mocking title with an abundance of exquisitely crafted, 1960s-leaning guitar-pop songs, the first single, "Young Folks", had the biggest impact.

"Young Folks" was both familiar and novel. The laconic lyrics-- a boy and a girl feeling each other out, interested not in the past, not in the future, but in each other-- gave it a broad appeal, while the understated, offhand vocals by Morén and the Concretes' former singer Victoria Bergsman, complete with a grammatical error or two, firmly grounded the song in a slightly exotic but firmly recognizable everyday reality. A crudely animated video, something like an urban-Scandinavian Archie! comic brought halfway to Saturday-morning-cartoon status, added a visual component, illustrating both the underlying romantic tension and the song's more broadly meta connotations. "It's a hit," a dialog bubble exclaims.

Prophetic words. Big-name producers from Diplo to Erol Alkan (collaborating with Richard Norris as Beyond the Wizard's Sleeve) remixed the song, Kanye West rapped over it on a mix CD, the German singer Nena (of "99 Luftballons" fame) had a hit with it in her native country, the Japanese singer/songwriter Shugo Tokumaru had a more modest hit with it in his, and several other artists also tried their hands at covers. The song appeared in many TV shows, commercials, and even a video game (FIFA 08). The band played it on "Late Night With Conan O'Brien" and "The Tonight Show" with Jay Leno. "Young Folks" ended up at #5 on Pitchfork's top 100 of 2006, and the iTunes Music Store named it the #1 track of 2007. For a minute there, people debated how much it borrowed from the so-called "oriental riff." The original YouTube video now has more than 20 million views.

Bergsman, who had already reached a smaller level of popularity with the Concretes, has since put out two strong albums as Taken by Trees. The first, 2007's somberly introspective Open Field, was produced by PB&J's Yttling, while she recorded the second, 2009's gracefully ascetic East of Eden, in Pakistan with local musicians, getting production from Studio's D. Lissvik; Taken by Trees' non-album 2008 single with Air France, "Sweetness", shouldn't be overlooked, either. Morén put out a lackluster solo album in 2008, followed by a Swedish-language sophomore effort two years later. Yttling has continued to produce, coming closest to another "Young Folks" in the ongoing rise of Lykke Li. As for PB&J, they first put some space between themselves and their hit with 2008's Seaside Rock, a nearly instrumental album, then embraced heavier beats and barely missed the recent trend of gleefully foul-mouthed pop songs with 2009's Living Thing; they've stayed on a fair course with this year's back-to-basics Gimme Some. Still, as the new album's first single, "Second Chance"-- which can be heard in a Bud Light Lime commercial-- observes, "You can't, can't count on a second try."

Black Kids

"I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance With You"

[self-released; 2008]

Before Black Kids became a cautionary tale about the hazards of hype and major labels, they were just five young musicians who rarely played outside their Jacksonville, Florida, hometown. Formed in 2006, the group consisted of singer/guitarist Reggie Youngblood, keyboard-playing backup singers Ali Youngblood, and Dawn Watley, bass player Owen Holmes, and drummer Kevin Snow. On Aug. 11, 2007, Black Kids played an ear-catching set at the Athens Popfest in Athens, Georgia, and they posted their four-song Wizard of Ahhhs EP for free download on their MySpace page that same month. You could also find a recording of the Popfest set for download online. With tautly catchy new-wave songs and evidence of a fun, energetic live show, Black Kids looked like the real deal: an indie-pop band with broad appeal and, of course, an unforgettable name.

From then on, everything happened for Black Kids at hyper speed. On Sept. 2, 2007, the NME's blog called them "amazing" and "the new Love Is All." In short order, Vice interviewed them, describing their songs as "The Cure vs. My Bloody Valentine", Pitchfork posted "I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance With You" in Forkcast, and London's Guardian labeled Black Kids the "new band of the day."

Soon came signs it was all happening too fast. "How does it feel to be loved, assholes?" said Reggie Youngblood, as the band began a set that same October during New York City's CMJ Music Marathon. I gave the performance a positive writeup on Pitchfork, but other observers were more critical. A couple of days earlier, Pitchfork reported that Black Kids were working with Arcade Fire/Björk managers Quest Management. A photo from their CMJ debut appeared in a piece in The New York Times by critic Jon Pareles, under the headline, "Play Well, and May the Blog Buzz Be With You." In the coming months, the band toured and played summer festivals in the United States and Europe, including shows opening for Australian synth-poppers Cut Copy. Debut album Partie Traumatic, produced by Suede's Bernard Butler and containing new songs in addition to polished-up EP cuts, came out on Columbia in the summer of 2008, topping Billboard's U.S. Heatseekers chart.

A big reason for all the attention was "I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance With You", a scraggly, hook-filled indie-pop ditty with instantly understandable subject matter and playfully gender-ambiguous verses. UK singer/songwriter Kate Nash covered the song on a French radio station. The demo eventually placed at #68 on Pitchfork's Top 100 Tracks of 2007. The band went on to play the song on several late-night TV shows, both in the States and abroad, and the Butler-produced version of the track hit #11 on the UK charts. The single featured a brightly colored electro-funk remix by the Twelves, which the cast of "Glee" covered in that show's second season. The Twelves' remix also appeared in the FIFA 09 videogame.

Sadly, it was all too much, too soon. Shortly after Black Kids played CMJ, current Pichfork contributor Jess Harvell wrote an Idolator "special report" called "The Black Kids Hype Must Be Stopped," arguing that the songs were "very much undigested." Harvell wasn't alone in his skepticism: Partie Traumatic lacked the homemade charm of the EP, but more importantly, it failed to provide another single as endearing as "I'm Not Gonna Teach". In 2009, Black Kids released the Cemetery Lips EP, comprising three remixes and three new tracks. A year ago, the band played a Florida "mini-tour", with a setlist that appeared to include new songs potentially intended for a second album.

Death Cab’s Chris Walla On UGGs, Nine Inch Nails, and Bacon as the New Vegan

Feature

eMusic
May 31, 2011
Link

Chris Walla is best known as the guitarist for Death Cab for Cutie, but the Pacific Northwest musician is also a solo artist and veteran producer in his own right. But while Walla produced Codes & Keys, Death Cab’s first album since 2009′s chart-topping Narrow Stairs, he delegated the mixing duties to someone else: Alan Moulder, whose name has appeared in the liner notes to many of the greatest alternative-rock albums from the past 25 years (Depeche Mode,Smashing Pumpkins and My Bloody Valentine, to name a few).

Shortly before the release of Codes & Keys, eMusic’s Marc Hogan got on the phone with Walla during a brief tour stop in Edmonton, Canada, ahead of the band’s headlining slot at the Sasquatch Music Festival.

Who Are...Cults

Feature
eMusic
June 6, 2011
Link

File under: Girl-group pop, refracted through an eerie, contemporary lens

From: New York, San Diego

Personae: Madeline Follin (vocals), Brian Oblivion (beats, guitar, vocals)

If people join cults to escape adulthood, what Madeline Follin and Brian Oblivion started looks like an exception. A little more than a year ago, the Cults leaders — who met when both lived in San Diego and then, later, moved to New York — were just a couple of 21-year-old film students haphazardly posting a few demos online. Now they’re major-label artists promoting a hotly-anticipated album, with all the grown-up demands that entails: constant travel (SXSW! Coachella! Buffalo, NY!), innumerable phone calls (um, guilty) and precious little free time.

But Follin, whose stepfather co-founded White Zombie, knows it’s nice work if you can get it. “I feel so much more free than when I was going to school and I would go to a party and people would be like, ‘Oh, so what are you doing after college?’ and I would be like, “I have no idea — still trying to figure that out!’” she explains. “But you know, don’t really have to deal with that anymore. We’re really lucky.”

That spirit of freedom extends to Cults’ self-titled debut. Like the initial demos, Cults is a rare mixture: There’s sunny indie pop with the heart-grabbing hooks of ’60s girl groups, sure, but it’s all built meticulously, from the beats up, with a note of darkness at the edge of every silver lining.

eMusic’s Marc Hogan reached Follin — who, boyfriend Oblivion has joked, “is quickly becoming the Nicki Minaj of indie rock” because of her numerous guest appearances (DOM, Fucked Up, Guards) — at a rest stop in Ontario, at the height of Cults’ first-ever headlining tour.

Overlooked Records 2011

Feature
Pitchfork
July 22, 2011
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Clams Casino
Instrumental Mixtape
[self-released]

Mild-mannered physical therapy student by day, producer of lumbering, luminescent backing tracks for rising rappers by night, Clams Casino didn't even ask money for his creations until a couple of highly limited, vinyl-only releases earlier this year. The first and more comprehensive of these was the suburban New Jersey beatsmith's Instrumental Mixtape, originally available in March as MP3s. With slowed-down, blurred-out samples of sighing songstresses from Imogen Heap to Björk, the record shows Clams' intricately glazed PC productions are even more fascinating without rhymes over them.

















Marissa Nadler
Marissa Nadler
[Box of Cedar]

If you measured artists' popularity by the devotion of their cults, Marissa Nadler wouldn't exactly be overlooked. After four finely wrought neo-folk albums, the Massachusetts-based songwriter got by with a little help from her fans in making this self-titled, self-released album. That successful Kickstarter funding campaign bears deeply rewarding fruit on Marissa Nadler, an uncommonly detailed album that's full of otherworldly romantic melancholy, whether in country-glinting "The Sun Always Reminds Me of You" or synth-touched "Baby, I Will Leave You in the Morning". Nadler's patient, often-elliptical songwriting shines through clearly enough to welcome a whole new crowd of rabid supporters.
















Peaking Lights
936
[Not Not Fun]

It's a long way from Madison, Wisconsin, to Kingston, Jamaica. Though Peaking Lights' hometown may be better known for its Big Ten university, abundance of beer and cheese, and recent political protests, their new album's warm, dub-wise psych-pop should convince plenty of coastal music fans to stop ignoring the rich, inventive sounds coming out of the heartland these days. Where last year's vinyl- and cassette-only Space Primitive was an exercise in fuzzy abstraction, on 936 the band's busy percussion, ambling bass, drifting keyboards, reverb-drenched guitar harmonics, and chant-like female vocals strike a deft balance between languid tropical atmosphere and no-nonsense Midwestern hooks.

Words and Music: Our 60 Favorite Music Books

Feature
Pitchfork
July 11, 2011
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Hip: The History

by John Leland

"Hipster" may be one of the most overused epithets of the 21st century. As this 2004 book argues persuasively, the concept of hip also happens to be one of the uniquely defining characteristics of American culture: a complex and contradictory social nexus that shapes how we view the world to this day. If anyone is suited to take on the fool's errand of answering Tower of Power's immortal question, "What Is Hip?", it's John Leland, former editor-in-chief of Details and an original columnist at SPIN. Rather than provide a how-to manual for trendies, Hip: The History exhaustively explores how this strange force works, how it has come to dominate over the past several centuries, and what all that might mean, with incredibly provocative results.

The history of hip, Leland discovers, is about the unequal exchange between outsiders and insiders, with African-Americans foremost among them. Drawing a direct line from the coded language of slaves to minstrel shows to the exaggerated "post-hip" whiteness of Ashton Kutcher in a trucker hat, Leland defines hipness in terms of not only Charlie Parker and the Velvet Underground, but also Mark Twain, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Walt Whitman. Hip, he sees, can be a progressive force, as in the civil rights movement, but it can also allow privileged whites to substitute enjoying the most stereotyped elements of African-American culture for actually ending racism. And, nodding to Thomas Frank, he acknowledges that the pursuit of hipness is inextricable from 21st-century corporate capitalism, too. Unfortunately, the fact that there's just a single chapter set aside for women further reflects hip's ongoing problem with gender equality.

At the time, some critics complained that Leland hadn't written in some would-be hip argot-- his prose is painstakingly intellectual, overflowing with knowledge and ideas-- but that only underscores how far ahead of them he really was.






















Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time

by Rob Sheffield

Music is made to be shared. In a time of torrents and Google-friendly file-transfer sites, the mixtape has maintained an improbably prominent place in popular culture, from Nick Hornby's High Fidelity and its movie adaptation to Thurston Moore's Mix Tape: The Art of Cassette Culture, Jason Bitner's Cassette From My Ex, and the many online-only "mixtapes" spanning Dirty South rap and Berlin techno.

In concept, Rob Sheffield's Love Is a Mix Tape could have been unbearably affected: The longtime Rolling Stone writer organizes his book around 15 mixtapes made by him and wife Renée Crist, herself a fellow music critic. In execution, though, Sheffield's memoir is wonderfully poignant-- funny but also deeply moving, and less about mixtapes than about the joy and pain of being human. "Renée died on May 11, 1997, very suddenly and unexpectedly, at home with me, of a pulmonary embolism," we learn in the opening pages. "She was 31."

Sheffield is self-deprecating and unsentimental in setting out the facts of his story, but the man's love for his late wife radiates from the page, and by the time the book is over, many readers will feel it, too. Love Is a Mix Tape reveals how music-- especially the music of the 90s, and especially the music of indie-rock icons Pavement-- brought together a "shy, skinny, Irish Catholic geek from Boston" and a "hell-raising Appalachian punk-rock girl," deepened their bond, and finally accompanied Sheffield through his lonely, miserable months as a widower. The first night Sheffield met Crist, he offered to make her a tape. "Except this time, with this girl," he writes, "it worked."






















Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste

by Carl Wilson

There may be no accounting for taste, but there's always a story behind it. For all the different approaches and musical genres on display in Continuum's 33 1/3 series of books about albums, almost all of their subjects have one thing in common: critics adore them. Former Pitchfork contributor Carl Wilson's entry on Céline Dion's Let's Talk About Love is different. When this book came out in 2007, Dion had just become the best-selling female recording artist of all time, but she was-- and remains-- anything but a critics' darling. "From the start," Wilson acknowledges, "her music struck me as bland monotony raised to a pitch of obnoxious bombast-- R&B with the sex and slyness surgically removed, French chanson severed from its wit and soul... a neverending crescendo of personal affirmation deaf to social conflict and context."

A music writer for the Toronto newspaper the Globe and Mail, Wilson is too conscientious to feel comfortable rejecting someone so globally beloved. So this erudite and eye-opening book attempts to explore not only Dion's polarizing appeal but also the very concept of "taste." Along the way, Wilson traces his loathing for Dion back to her Oscars performance alongside Elliott Smith, examines the meaning of "schmaltz" and Dion's French-Canadian roots, meets her adoring fans, sees her Vegas show, reviews the album (it's the one with that Titanic song), and analyzes theories on taste from David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and Pierre Bourdieu (turns out social distinction plays a big part). By the end, Wilson has set the blueprint for a kind of music criticism that "might put less stock in defending its choices and more in depicting its enjoyment, with all its messiness and private soul tremors-- to show what it is like for me to like it, and invite you to compare." In other words, let's talk about love.

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

Feature
Flavorwire
May 20, 2011
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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.)

Label Profile: Fat Possum Records

Feature
eMusic
March 2011
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Beyond the Deal: Michael Eisenson Goes the Distance

Feature
Agenda
April 4, 2011
Link (available to non-subscribers as a PDF here)

You Were There: The Complete LCD Soundsystem

Feature
Pitchfork
March 28, 2011
Link

Bonnie Hill: The Shareholder Whisperer

Feature
Agenda
March 28, 2011
Link (available to non-subscribers as a PDF here)

The Envy Corps

Feature
YellowBrick
February/March 2011
Link

The Envy Corps are free. Lead guitarist Brandon Darner remembers the exact moment of their emancipation. On Oct. 16, 2008, the Des Moines-based quartet was about to play Schubas, in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood, when an e-mail came through on Darner’s smart phone: Universal subsidiary Vertigo Records was releasing the band from its major-label record deal. The guys high-fived each other.

Who Are...Fergus & Geronimo

Feature
eMusic
January 2011
Link

File under: '60s garage-pop laced with slacker irony
For fans of: The Fresh & Onlys, the Beets, Harlem, Box Elders, Strange Boys, Eat Skull, the Dead Milkmen, the Troggs
Personae: Jason Kelly and Andrew Savage (vocals, guitars, bass, drums, organ), with guests Elyse Schrock (vocal), Casey Carpenter (flute), Monet Robbins (saxophone)
From: Denton, Texas; now living in Brooklyn

"The rock 'n' roll business is pretty absurd, but the world of serious music is much worse," Frank Zappa once told a bemused interviewer. Fergus & Geronimo started with the premise of "Motown by way of Mothers of Invention," and the Texas-bred, Brooklyn-based duo clearly shares Zappa's mischievously sardonic outlook. Unlearn, the band's full-length debut for the Sub Pop imprint Hardly Art, is at once more musically polished and more lyrically caustic than the group's promising run of singles on well-regarded indies Woodsist, Transparent and Tic Tac Totally!. Right before Kelly and Savage left their apartment to pick up a new four-track machine Savage had just bought off Craigslist, they spoke with eMusic's Marc Hogan about Top 40 production values, a Super Bowl bet gone wrong and why networking is really, really important.

Live Transmission

Feature
Pitchfork
February 7, 2011
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"But the people as a whole retain their interest in free speech by radio ... It is the right of the viewers and listeners, not the right of the broadcasters, which is paramount."
--U.S. Supreme Court Justice Byron White, in 1969, writing for the majority in Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. Federal Communications Commission

"Freedom to publish is guaranteed by the Constitution, but freedom to combine to keep others from publishing is not."
--U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, in 1945, writing for the majority in Associated Press v. United States

On October 5, 1998, dozens of unlicensed radio broadcasters marched on Washington, D.C. Their target: the Federal Communications Commission headquarters. But these protesters didn't just carry signs. They hauled puppets. Leading the way was a huge Pinocchio marionette, "Kennardio," named after then-FCC chairman Bill Kennard. And pulling his strings? A TV-headed monster-- the National Association of Broadcasters. "I just chuckled about that, because if anything, I was the NAB's nemesis," says Kennard, now the U.S. Ambassador to the European Union, speaking on the phone from Brussels. "I was creating a new radio service that was seen as a threat to the commercial broadcast industry." That radio service was low-power FM, or LPFM, and it's been a long time coming.

In early January, President Barack Obama signed the Local Community Radio Act of 2010, which is expected to create hundreds, possibly thousands, of noncommercial FM stations. The new law brings into effect much of what Kennard's FCC set in motion more than a decade ago. Like the roughly 800 LPFM stations already in existence, these new entries on the dial will be run by nonprofits: churches, schools, unions, local governments, emergency responders, and other community groups. Their signals must be no stronger than 100 watts, the same as an incandescent light bulb, so a typical broadcast range is only about seven miles in diameter. Unlike all but one current LPFM station, the newcomers will be able to apply for licenses in the top 50 U.S. radio markets-- home to 160 million potential listeners. A dollar may not get you very far in New York City or Los Angeles, but even a weak radio signal carries.

Many questions about how the law actually works will not be answered until the FCC issues final rules, expected later this year. And some of the details can get rather technical: For example, the "contour method," which is a way of measuring potential signal interference. Still, at its most basic, what the Local Community Radio Act does is remove restrictions on LPFM stations that have been in place since the turn of the millennium. And it frees the FCC's hand to issue more licenses for LPFM stations in places where it couldn't before. For some lucky communities-- and the increasingly interconnected independent music world is only one-- the Local Community Radio Act could quietly change the way we think about radio: as an art form, as a medium, and as a public forum.