Art Brut - Art Brut vs. Satan

Album Reviews
Pitchfork
April 21, 2009
Link
7.7

 

Spoiler alert: Art Brut lose. Of course they do. Tramps like former Art Brut tourmates Hold Steady were born to run around wearing baseball jerseys in front of Counting Crows fans (and good for them!). Art Brut were born to lose: How could they ever improve on the clumsy meta-punk rush of their first single, "Formed a Band"? They arrived almost fully formed. They never got to play "Top of the Pops". When they miraculously came up with another 11 songs just about as good-- or, in the case of "Emily Kane", arguably better-- on their brilliant 2005 debut album, Bang Bang Rock & Roll, it only added sting to their inevitable defeat. They were even losers at being losers. I loved them for it.

That's partly why it's so strange now to read reviews that lump Art Brut in with more commercially successful UK bands such as Bloc Party and Franz Ferdinand. At live shows, lead not-quite-singer Eddie Argos used to change "I can't stand the sound of the Velvet Underground" to "I can't stand the sound of Gang of Four," and I always assumed his targets were obvious (hint: neither the Velvet Underground nor Gang of Four). Full of fist-pumping but self-mocking bar-punk about obsessive fandom and romantic awkwardness, Bang Bang Rock & Roll was the closest our decade has come to The Modern Lovers. Art Brut's true peers are lyrical music geeks like John Darnielle, Jeffrey Lewis, Jens Lekman, Los Campesinos!, the Tough Alliance, and, most recently, Nodzzz. It's not irony; it's self-aware sincerity.

Good news for people who love losers: Art Brut's third album is on what Kanye might call "some Benjamin Buttons shit." Gone is the slight maturation of their good-- but, sadly, not great-- sophomore album, 2007's It's a Bit Complicated, which tried to win by the attractive-people rules of polished production; the songs were still warm, witty, and alive, but they just didn't have the original's "I've seen her naked-- TWICE!" brashness. Recorded on the fly with fellow Jonathan Richman acolyte Frank Black, Art Brut vs. Satan is a scrappy, romantic, and painfully hilarious return to loserdom. Coldplay will always be more popular. So what? I hate those guys!

Art Brut probably do, too. If they can't topple vague, pasty, barely breathing background rock from the charts, at least they can sing gloriously doomed songs about it. "Cool your warm jets, Brian Eno," Argos jibes on "Slap Dash for No Cash", teasing shiny U2 clones the way he previously skewered vapid post-punk revivalists. Argos champions instead the records where you can hear not only the crack of the singer's voice, or the squeak of the guitarist's fingers, but also (as on a Gorky's Zygotic Mynci B-side, apparently) their parents complaining about the volume-- not because those records are more artistically valid, or more authentic or whatever, but for a more important reason: "Those are the records I like."

Black gets the Art Brut spirit down on record better than anyone has before, with the blazing pop-metal vainglory of Weezer, the scruffy cheekiness of early Rough Trade bands, and lots of enthusiastic backing vocals. Fun for them, fun for us. "Demons Out!" shifts the Smiths' "Panic!" from hanging DJs to denying record buyers suffrage, but don't mistake it for a Death Cab for Cutie-like manifesto against U.S. Auto-Tune pop; more accurately, it's an ideal rebuke against the endless Travis Kooks Kaiser Chiefs Razorlight blandness of UK "science museum" rock. So too "The Replacements", which melds the Mats' "Alex Chilton" and the Brut's "My Little Brother" into a clamorous endorsement of used CDs and deluxe reissues. Extending the prior album's trend toward sacrilegious song titles, "Twist and Shout" may not have you accidentally repeating its off-key la-la-las in public, like the song's narrator, but you'll probably know exactly how he feels. Not that Satan gives a damn about songs that communicate aspects of everyday life with clarity and human charm.

Art Brut remain ever the underdog when they're singing about arrested development and girls, too. "DC Comics and Chocolate Milkshake" is a cereal-eaters' song as universal as Jerry Seinfeld, with a nicely echoing bridge, while perfectly sloppy public-transportation anthem "The Passenger" rewrites Iggy Pop from the perspective of a guy who can't drive. "Summer Job", with its Vampire Weekend-whooping intro vocal, is the album's only concession to conventional melody, and its summertime-blues-curing slackerdom could hardly be more enjoyably juvenile. Like a bizarro "Rusted Guns of Milan", "What a Rush" fumbles for morning-after Beatles vs. Stones meaning-- and socks. Add to vocab: "Sober...ish?". Slowing down but not going ballad, "Am I Normal?" is a preview of the kind of shy neurotic who might go on to write "Emily Kane".

Art Brut Vs. Satan begins and ends with a hungover Argos trying to remember what he did the night before. Frantically buzzing opener "Alcoholics Unanimous" finds Argos sending apologetic mass texts; he's been concerned about what he's been up to, and with good reason. On epic finale "Mysterious Bruises", which I didn't even notice was seven minutes until I looked it up later, Argos proclaims: "I fought the floor and the floor won." Satan always wins. The beautiful people and their sycophants will always outnumber lovable losers. But this is a record I like.

Super Furry Animals - Dark Days/Light Years

Album Reviews
Pitchfork
April 20, 2009
Link
8.3

 

Once you've communicated what you want to say so many ways, there's always the groove. Not that Super Furry Animals were the ones who needed to get theirs back, exactly. I mean, sure, 2007's Hey Venus! wasn't so much "speaker blowing"-- lead singer Gruff Rhys' advertisement-- as "hey, SFA still don't suck yet." But before that, 2005's Love Kraft was a multi-layered psych-funk-folk-samba epic about love, war, and "no more romantic comedies." Since then, the Welsh quintet's offbeat side projects-- such as Rhys's Delorean-themed Neon Neon partnership with Boom Bip, or keyboardist Cian Ciárán's electronic-leaning Acid Casuals-- have kept the Super Furry faithful well-supplied.

Dark days? Uhh, have you picked up a newspaper lately? Me neither, which I assume is part of the problem. "People that go out and murder people don't read The Wall Street Journal," New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg told CNN's Wolf Blitzer the other day, on whether the shitty economy added to gun violence. And yet all of a sudden a lot of liberal-arts-damaged hipsters seem to know a hell of a lot about the financial sector. Call it a capital infusion: SFA's ninth album in almost two decades as a band, Dark Days/Light Years, is also their most playful since 2001's Rings Around the World. Full of paradoxes and loving parodies, honeyed psych-pop harmonies and shaggy vamps, it's just the sci-fi groove-rock mindfuck to shake us out of our no-fun times.

First, the grooves: SFA assembled Dark Days/Light Years-- nine years in the making, 40 days in the recording-- largely out of riffs and ideas that for one reason or another had gone unused. The results are as free-wheeling and inspired as the group has sounded in years-- Super-er and Furrier. Heavy blooz schoolgirl-ballers from Grand Funk Railroad to Eric Burdon can keep their puds and their guts squeezed tight into their bellbottoms after opener "Crazy Naked Girls", a three-part song that reclaims wah wah and a whole lotta lovin'. Groove turns to stomp on Ciárán-fronted "Mt.", which places Donovan folk mysticism over glam-rock schaffel.

Then, when the machines groove, it's motorik. The Super Furries meet the ensuing depression with... more wryness. "Let us make the best of a difficult situation," Rhys intones on first single "Inaugural Trams", the album's top stand-alone track. In a utopian universe where it would've been politically feasible for President Obama to announce, upon his inauguration, a plan to reduce emissions ("by 75!") and restore the economy through a public-transportation moon race, "Inaugural Trams"-- with Franz Ferdinand's Nick McCarthy rapping some of the only German words I know that aren't "Kraftwerk" or "hefeweizen"-- would be the summer jam. If "Inaugural Trams" is "the definitive krautrock song about railcars," as New York magazine's Vulture blog wondered recently, it's only in the way Rings Around the World's "Juxtaposed With U" was the definitive Philly soul sexx jam. In other words, it's something else.

And it's not alone. Lester Bangs once recommended a young punk band call their album The Monkees' Greatest Hits; the biggest disappointment here is that the Super Furries didn't make "The Very Best of Neil Diamond" the title track. The song's ancient licks and sweaty percussion might suggest early 00s R&B, or some kind of Eastern thing, but far from it: The chorus of "trust but verify" swipes a favorite Cold War catchphrase of Ronald Reagan. Somewhere before the guitar-gnashing bridge, I guess there's also this narrative about a Neil Diamond tape playing in the aftermath of an apocalypse. (And I'm told you can hear quotes from Vivaldi and Beethoven in Metal Machine Music, too...) Right after "The Very Best of Neil Diamond" takes us to "Sweet Caroline" and back, "Helium Hearts" drops us off in Eden. With perfect hippie-dippie non sequiturs about wedding rings, togetherness, and vegemite, it's probably the closest SFA's latest comes to the swooning, ELO-lite psych-pop of past highlights like 1996's "Something 4 the Weekend".

Just because a band sticks to the old-fashioned idea of an album as a cohesive piece of work doesn't mean it has to get all stuffy about it: Dark Days/Light Years begins with casual chatter and ends, after the "Beat It" meets "Livin' on a Prayer" bass lines and burbling vocal nonsense of Ciárán-penned quasi-instrumental "Pric", with three minutes of droning electronic tones. (SFA have played this kind of prank before, burying career highlights on hidden tracks or non-album singles.) Guitarist Huw Bunford's "White Socks/Flip Flops" makes up in wet synths, blistering guitars, and taut rhythms what it lacks in fashion sense; fuzzed bass-guitar duel "Inconvenience"-- not an Au Pairs cover-- goes from "what the fuck?" to jihad and pirate ships (timely!). Even the least exceptional tracks here, twinned songs "Where Do You Wanna Go?" and "Lliwiau Llachar", still offer raucous drumming and catchy Welsh-language vocals.

Remember when columnists predicted the death of irony after 9/11? Didn't happen, but between the whole everybody-losing-their-jobs thing and having an actual well-meaning grown-up in the White House, deadly seriousness is more of a threat now than ever. At least there's Glenn Beck. In the meantime, Dark Days/Light Years brings some good vibes for everyone "from middle-aged sophisticates to stone-aged reprobates," to borrow a line from the rhythmically restrained, Spoon-like "Moped Eyes". It used to be called "Hot Nuts".

Thieves Like Us - Play Music

Album Reviews
Pitchfork
April 10, 2009
Link
5.6

Sensitive clubbers of the world, unite. Thieves Like Us singer Andy Grier, an American, met keyboardist Björn Berglund and drummer Pontus Berghe, both Swedes, when they all lived in Berlin. The Tron-loving filter-house electro-poppers now call Paris home, and French label Kitsuné picked up their big single, the euphoric but also melancholic downtown-metro ride "Drugs in My Body". Debut album Play Music was variously conceived and created in Berlin, Vienna, New York, London, Rio de Janeiro, and Stockholm.

Finally getting a belated U.S. release, the disc justifies some but not all of its carbon footprint. New Order's 1984 hit "Thieves Like Us" exemplified how those UK synth-pop icons could take something "so uncool"-- like love of tech gadgetry-- and give it a certain expensively wasted glamor. "Drugs in My Body" adapts this strategy for our post-Daft Punk ears. It's hyper-urban strobe-pop, with aching vocals and a tightly coiled Durutti Column sample that could appeal not only to don't-call-it-blog-house LastNightsPartyers, but also to Factory-worshiping indie bedwetters like me. The full album should be an okay soundtrack for a hoverbus tour of some retrofuturistic metropolis, but it's somewhere just outside of track 3 when the Dramamine starts to kick in.

Play Music slows down more often than your Justice Mobile Digitalisms, and when it does it tends to lose some focus. Unfortunately, the horn-haunted nighttime cityscape of "An Easy Tonight" sounds less like the City of Lights than the City That Makes Me Kinda Sleepy; the solid but unremarkable kosmische of "Lady" needs something a little more distinctive alongside its tasteful woundedness. Most of the singing was recorded at home, which helps it sound sincere, but also helps it sound like a specific, time-fixed notion of sincerity (won't anyone just let Ian Curtis rest in peace?). Shoulda-been instrumental "Program of the Second Part" suggests, "Sing along to Suicide."

Of course, smuggling open-hearted vocal frailness into ecstatic electronic dance-pop can still have thrilling results, as New Order showed, and the likes of the Tough Alliance continue to demonstrate. Thieves Like Us are usually best when they're giving us a spoonful of sugar to help the miserabilia go down-- feeling low at a higher tempo on "Your Heart Feels", for example, or daydreaming about David and Angela Bowie on the similarly faster-paced "Miss You". "Drugs in My Body" B-side "Fass" also does all right despite meh meta lyrics about crossing "scene lines." But the second-best thing here actually has to be finale "Sugar and Song", a sure-enough slow breakup ballad that's as depressive as so much good Spiritualized. Although Play Music drags more than I would've hoped, it's still a reasonably lustrous place to be sad now and then-- without drugs in my body, but not without "Drugs in My Body".

The Coathangers - Scramble

Album Reviews
Pitchfork
April 6, 2009
Link
7.2

 

If the only good reason to overturn apple carts is for the fun of it, how 'bout them apples? Like Athens' Pylon before them, all-grrl Atlanta quartet the Coathangers are making sure the revolution will not be such a drag. On a rough 'n' rowdy self-titled 2007 debut via local label Rob's House Records, they swapped "Suck My Left One" for "Nestle in My Boobies", "Oh Bondage, Up Yours!" for "Shut the Fuck Up", hating Margaret Thatcher for sympathizing with "Tonya Harding". Word is their ramshackle live shows-- alongside the likes of Deerhunter, Black Lips, Jay Reatard, and, next month, Calvin Johnson-- have included loogies and My Little Pony.  Cue the premature backlash.

The Coathangers keep the back-alley post-punk party going strong on a scratchy, shrieky, foul-mouthed sophomore album, Scramble, their first for Seattle-based Suicide Squeeze. The call-and-response vocals-- split between guitarist Julia Kugel, drummer Stephanie Luke, keyboard player Candice Jones, and Meredith Franco on bass-- are shrill. The politics aren't, even though technically everything-- from their beyond Fucked Up name to their overall fuck-you we're-not-the-Donnas stance-- is kind of political. Nope, the Coathangers aren't ones to let good intentions stand in for a good time.

As with fellow Georgians the B-52s, their best songs play like should-be novelty hits. The Coathanger with the chirpy Snow White voice sings lead on a couple of the catchiest, including upstairs-neighbor rant "Stop Stomp Stompin'" and unrequited-love-at-first-sight song "143", both of which have enough quotidian sloganeering and goofy-but-true detail for UK shouters Art Brut. Pretty sure it's the same band member who threatens to break our "fucking face" on caterwauling garage-rocker "Gettin' Mad and Pumpin' Iron", too. But the Coathangers can also drop the tempo-- slow dancing with a dude who "ain't no sissy" on "Dreamboat", or missing a boy from outer space on keyboard-driven "Sonic You". There's even one for the olds: "Arthritis Sux". There's even one for tUne-YarDs: sloppy sound-effect collage "Bobby Knows Best".

Put together enough novelty hits, and you have a pretty solid album. If off-kilter percussion can't quite overcome the whispery false ending on "Pussywillow", or "Time Passing" gets a little lost up its own indecipherable sci-fi squall, there's always the scuzzy pink frost of "Toomerhead" (he ain't an asshole, he's just sick), or the get-off-my-back hoarseness of "Bury Me". Particularly given the neanderthal sexual politics of much of the current indie music scene-- looking at you, Brooklyn Vegan comments section-- it's good politics when a girl group can declare, as a deeper-voiced Coathanger does on "Cheap Cheap", "You can just go fuck yourself." It's good entertainment when they can make us pretend they're not talking to us-- and that's probably smarter politics, too. As the Long Blondes once sang, you could have both.

The Decemberists - The Hazards of Love

Video / Album Review
ABC News
Link
March 30, 2009

Jeremy Jay - Slow Dance

Album Reviews
Pitchfork
March 25, 2009
Link
7.7

 

Whenever some idiot convinced you that stuff like crushes and holding hands was dumb, that what you should really care about is getting action, that's when you became an adult and started dying. I think I'm paraphrasing fellow music critic Chuck Eddy here. Remember your first slow dances, seventh or eight grade? For me there was a lot of nervous excitement, plus whatever you call the emotion when you're a clumsy preteen dancing to "The End of the Road" with the girl you like, or "I Swear" with the girl who likes you. I seem to recall high school dances being similarly fraught. Now try to think of the last time you felt something that intensely.

Jeremy Jay, then, must live in Neverland. But is he Peter Pan-- or Michael Jackson? The question gets more interesting on the hiccupy-voiced Paris/L.A. bandleader's second K Records LP. It's the most weirdly mesmerizing in a series of promising single, EP, and full-length releases that includes last year's shadowy, cinematic heart-tugger A Place Where We Could Go. Jay's the type of guy who tours with Deerhunter but covers Madonna just as naturally as Brian Eno. Billed as winter-themed, Slow Dance uses crisp garage-rock and frigid post-punk as a backdrop for romanticized pop fantasy.

"Slow dance" has has basically emerged as its own, resurgent genre these past several years: the cosmic disco of Lindstrøm, Prins Thomas, and Todd Terje; the flamenco-inflamed beach trips of Studio, Boat Club, Hatchback, and Windsurf; the after-hours glide of Glass Candy and Chromatics; the sample-based vacations of Quiet Village and Air France. That connection is probably a coincidence. But then again, maybe it isn't. On the first few listens, I noticed the record's minimal yet evocative lyrical repetitions less than its snow-globe-meticulous sound. Jay recorded the album in winter at Olympia's Dub Narcotic Studio, with bassist Derek James, drummer Nick Pahl, and additional guitarist Ilya Malinsky; the early nights and electric lighting of the season are all over the frosty synth-and-guitar surface of opener "We Were There" (a new version of a 2007 single), the slow strums and cold breaths of gorgeously spare "Winter Wonder", and the choked sobs and fingersnaps of piano waltz "Slow Dance 2". "You've got the rhythm," Jay insists on "In This Lonely Town".

That song also captures a vivid scene, maybe the opening of a film: the narrator walking with his peacoat on, seeing fish by the pier, smelling coffee and sweets by the "pizza club." Part of the pleasure of repeat listens is trying to figure out whether Jay is just too innocent to be true-- like, what's he hiding, right? "Giddyup, horsey, giddyup," goes "Gallop"; "Canter, canter, canter," adds the next song, "Canter Canter". And there Jay is, amid the "disco lights" (!) and Drifters-style percussion of "Will You Dance With Me?", resting his head on your shoulders, "melting in your arms tonight." Jay envisions an angelic guitar-strummer illuminated by a disco ball (!!) on "Where Could We Go Tonight?", again raising more questions than answers. In the final seconds of the most urgent-sounding track, "Breaking the Ice", he murmurs almost as an aside: "Should've told you that I love you." You could choose to dismiss it all as kids' stuff. But that's the idiot talking.

The Decemberists - The Hazards of Love

Album Reviews
Pitchfork
March 23, 2009
Link
5.7

 

Nobody got into the Decemberists for the riffs. In other ways, though, the theatrical Portland folk-rockers' noble sojourn into heavy narrative prog-folk was probably always in the stars. Ornately antiquarian diction was their Ziggy Stardust. Ginormous song suites based on world folklore were their deaf, dumb, and blind kid. Yes, they were meant for The Wall.

In an interview with Paste, singing guitarist/songwriter Colin Meloy mentioned that The Hazards of Love was "initially conceived as a musical... but I decided about halfway through my time in France that it wasn't going to work as a stage piece. But it would still work as a rock record, so that's where it ended up." Alas, for all the derring-do of the Decemberists' resolutely un-sold-out (I guess?) fifth album, its failures as a stage piece may explain some of the problems that hamper it as a rock record.

It makes sense that the Decemberists would end up here. A willingness to make their fans put in some work, whether with fancy language or sprawling song suites, has been part of their steez ever since the baroque reveries of 2002 debut Castaways and Cutouts and stagey bookishness of 2003 breakthrough Her Majesty-- both of which still kick pantaloon. After 2004's The Tain EP flashed the first signs of metalhead envy, Picaresque a year later ended the Decemberists' indie years with their most relatable and poppiest album (still my favorite of theirs). Capitol debut The Crane Wife showed no symptoms of what Meloy had termed "major-label sellout-itis".

The Hazards of Love, inspired by UK folkie Anne Briggs' 1966 EP of the same name, has thick stoner-metal sludge and peat-bogged prog-folk arpeggios. Tucker Martine, who mixed The Crane Wife, produces exactly right for the material, focusing on the songs. Multi-instrumentalist Jenny Conlee and bassist Nate Query add several string arrangements. Robyn Hitchcock adds subtle electric guitar textures on an instrumental interlude, and My Morning Jacket's Jim James and the Spinanes' Rebecca Gates are in there somewhere, too. Still, although the album's grandiose narrative about star-crossed lovers William and Margaret-- and the dastardly villains who beset them-- has some nice twists, it's not exactly Andrew Lloyd Webber. Usually here's where I'm supposed to say, "That's OK, you don't have to follow the plot, because the songs stand on their own"-- except, with a few exceptions, they don't, not quite.

It doesn't simplify things that Meloy sings the parts of multiple characters, also including "First Voice" and "The Rake". The blessedly thorough lyric sheet makes advance mp3s like dark infanticide memoir "The Rake's Song" a lot funnier, full of witty wordplay ("I was wedded and it whetted my thirst") and sly foreshadowing ("You think that I would be haunted"-- he will be), but reading isn't the same as listening. Too much work, not enough payoff. (Hmm, imagine that.)

Not that the Decemberists' latest has anywhere near the smugness that haters might wrongly expect-- they sang "California One/Youth and Beauty Brigade", calling "all bed wetters", after all. "The Wanting Comes in Waves/Repaid", in which Meloy's William argues against the Queen to set him free to be with his beloved, has blazing classic-rock riffs and a commanding vocal by My Brightest Diamond's Shara Worden. (The reprise is less essential, unless you're still following the plot.) Worden returns on the "The Queen's Rebuke/The Crossing", which has blistering dynamic shifts, an organ solo, and plenty of lurching Black Mountain heaviness. Surprisingly, it all sounds like the Decemberists, at least if you've been paying attention over the years.

For the love songs, then, The Hazards of Love puts on some Nashville twang. Pedal steel cries alongside swaying accordion on "Isn't it a Lovely Night?", with a precious post-orgasm (post-Pete & the Pirates?) pun. As the pregnant Margaret, Lavender Diamond's Becky Stark is a welcome pairing for Meloy, smiling with Princess Bride-like serenity through her worries on "Won't Want for Love (Margaret in the Taiga)"; Meloy's voice is at its vulnerable best on the trembling meadow-makeout ballad "The Hazards of Love 2 (Wager All)". I can take the undead children chanting on "The Hazards of Love 3 (Revenge!)", but not the watery wedding vows on the drunken finale-- what can I say, I really, really didn't like Titanic.

Enough happens musically on The Hazards of Love that I can still see it being fun for fans in a live setting, especially if you know the lyrics. On disc, though, it's largely missing the catchy choruses and verisimilar emotions that previously served as ballast for the Decemberists' gaudy eccentricities. As a turn toward metal, The Tain EP's smaller portion was more satisfying-- although, as mid-career change-ups go, this is still a fair piece more enjoyable than something like MMJ's Evil Urges.

"Doing The Hazards of Love took a lot out of me," Meloy confides in the press bio. "And I'm definitely curious what will come out now that I've got this out of my system." The Decemberists already released three non-album singles last year, compiled as the Always the Bridesmaid EP; "Sleepless", a lovely orchestral lullaby from the recent Dark Was the Night charity compilation, suggests the Decemberists still have plenty more nautical epics to perform. "I've got nothing to hold onto," Meloy sings. A friend of Bobby McGee's once called that feeling freedom, and it only took a four-and-a-half-minute song.

Live: Morrissey at Bowery Ballroom

Live Review
Village Voice
March 23, 2009
Link

Our unsleepable friend gets the message on an ill-wind (Angela Hogan)

Morrissey
Bowery Ballroom
Saturday, March 21

"I can smell your draft," Morrissey announced upon taking the stage at the Bowery Ballroom, the smallest New York venue the former Smiths emo-crooner has played in easily Googleable internet memory. The 550-capacity Bowery Ballroom is a step down for the Pope of Mope-- last time he was in town, Moz was originally supposed to play Madison Square Garden (but ended up at Hammerstein, post-cancellations); later this week he'll be at Carnegie Hall (and Webster, but y'know). At first, I figured he was making some obsolete quip about our dank Lower East Side hygiene. Four songs in, as a plume of green smoke from the front rows climbed to the rafters, the man's point was unmistakable: "I'm not really used to this smell, and I'm warning you, it could have an interesting effect on me. If I were you, I'd stand back."

Morrissey's superfans mostly took their hero's advice, even though they're notorious huggers. And as for interesting effects, Moz was in his hoped-for charming form, chatting and gesticulating throughout a disappointingly brief 80-minute set. Current album Years of Refusal is the best since 1994's Vauxhall and I, and the evening's songs were just about evenly split between YoR, 2004's You Are the Quarry, older Morrissey solo output, and the Smiths. (2006's Ringleader of the Tormentors wuz robbed.) His longtime backing band, including bolo-tie-rocking guitarist Boz Boorer, gave tunes both new and old a muscular glam-rockabilly crunch. If intimacy was the draw, charisma and showmanship were the rewards. Also: middle-aged male semi-nudity.


Forget the increasingly dignified resonance of that singing voice, how about the sounds Morrissey makes? "Everybody's la-ha-ha-ha-ughing," he hiccuped on Vauxhall's "Billy Budd." "Urrrrghhh!!!!" he bellowed during fiery YAtQ single-as-polemic "Irish Blood, English Heart". On the same album's Nancy Sinatra-covered slow jam (such as it is) "Let Me Kiss You", Moz practically barked like a dog, tossing the first of three shirts into the crowd on the words "you see someone that you physically despise." He growled insults on YoR's midtempo chugger "Sorry Doesn't Help", attacking "fake humility" only a few seconds after brilliantly brushing off creepy but heartfelt fan-worship with: "Is he making fun of me? He will, one day." Backed by upright bass and accordion on "Why Don't You Find Out for Yourself" Morrissey punched the air with a lusty "oooph!"

Then again, Morrissey's voice has arguably never sounded richer than on the new record, and Saturday night's show demonstrated that's no fluke. The 49-year-old performer romped through the endless "don't give me anymore"s on YoR opener "Something Is Squeezing My Skull" with nary a gasp; his pretty a capella intro to lone encore "First of the Gang to Die"--the YAtQ track that is probably his biggest 2000s-era "hit"--showed he can do soft nuance, too. The band's punched-up power chords could start to run together at times, but they helped freshen up Smiths classics like "This Charming Man" (first song of the night) and "Ask". "It's macho military might that will bring us together," Morrissey sang at the end of the latter, changing the lyrics. The star of a stunning "How Soon Is Now?", other than Moz's initial request for a "dead cat" ("I'd like to see if I can swing it"), was a gong, crashing again and again over the effects-washed final chords. Biggest complaint: He didn't play more songs, especially from the new album (especially "It's Not Your Birthday Anymore").

The "possible greatness of any pop artist is in the greatness of their influences," Morrissey declared before early-1990s b-side "The Loop", which suggested a few of the singer's own influences with its bright guitar twang and shuffling rhythm. Videos featuring Moz heroes--including early UK rock'n'roller Vince Taylor and the New York Dolls--were projected onto the curtain after a solid if uninventive opening set of post-Arctic Monkeys Britrock by Manchester's the Courteneers. And Morrissey dedicated "Seasick, Yet Still Docked"-- a slow, self-lacerating number from 1992's Your Arsenal-- to classic gangster-movie actors Billy Hallop, George Raft, and "all the great performers of the Bowery-- all of which you have obviously forgotten." Hey man, a $75 ticket price-- before Ticketmaster and/or scalper surcharges-- doesn't guarantee connoisseurship.

No one makes melodramatic self-mockery more appealing. "I'm the type who just can't be loved," Morrissey murmured at one point. Later, after introducing the band, he contemplated aloud: "Who am I? Well, that is a question that many have died trying to answer. I can only be identified on a slab, by the scars of pain." The shtick's not all self-mockery, either: "In a few days we'll be in a slightly posher part of town, so obviously none of you will be there. Nice meeting you."--Marc Hogan

Morrissey plays Webster Hall, Wednesday, March 25, and Carnegie Hall, Thursday, March 26.

Lotus Plaza - The Floodlight Collective

Album Reviews
Pitchfork
March 20, 2009
Link
6.8

 












It'll be a shame if Lockett Pundt's solo debut gets lost in all the light and heat coming from his main band. But it won't be surprising. In a rare interview, the shy Deerhunter-er told blog BBQCHICKENROBOT that he started recording his album at the beginning of 2007. Since then, Deerhunter has released Cryptograms, the Fluorescent Grey EP, and last year's Microcastle/Weird Era Cont.; lead singer Bradford Cox's Atlas Sound has released Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel, plus a staggering number of mp3s, mixes, and non-album tracks. At shows, Pundt can be seen strumming wordlessly, staring toward his effects pedals.

And yet the sole figure behind Lotus Plaza has had a huge-- and all too often unacknowledged-- role in establishing Deerhunter's hallucinatory sound. The Atlanta band's chaotic 2005 debut, Deerhunter aka Turn It Up Faggot, gets kind of a bad rap, no doubt in part because Cox disavowed the thing. But it shows that Deerhunter didn't turn into the shoegaze-drenched dreamweavers we know and love until after Pundt joined. Pundt wrote the music for some of Deerhunter's most indelible songs-- "Strange Lights", "Like New"-- and made his singing debut on Microcastle. The Atlas Sound album, which features Pundt's guitar on "Cold as Ice", is dedicated to him.

So that the first Lotus Plaza album, The Floodlight Collective, is a hazy bedroom reverie shouldn't surprise listeners accustomed to other Deerhunter-related projects, the hypnotic solo work of Panda Bear, the lonesome longing of Jeremy Jay, or to a lesser extent the introverted homemade racket of Wavves and Dum Dum Girls. Produced by Brian Foote of Nudge, the album submerges plaintive vocals in layer after reverb-washed cloud layer of ethereal guitar atmospherics, achieving a woozy and sometimes barely intelligible prettiness. That can best be heard on tracks like the tambourine-jangling "Whiteout"-- its gentle melody gaining force on repeat listens-- or the squealing, Quickspace-esque rocker "What Grows?" (it does, an abstract Yo La Tengo). Pundt plays all instruments, except for Cox's turn on Factory-ready drums for the sweet dream pop of "Different Mirrors"; a bouncy Supremes beat gives way to outer-space Roy Orbison on "Quicksand". The krautrock pulse and piano-dripping radiance of seven-minute centerpiece "Antoine" sound like a Stereolab disciple starting to come into his own.

As with bashful Blur guitarist Graham Coxon on his own solo debut more than a decade ago, Pundt at times lets his diffidence get the best of him. For all the subtle detail in a track like the mournful, pitch-shifted "Sunday Night"-- which vaguely recalls Atlas Sound's "Bite Marks" in its nostalgic main riff-- with Pundt's melodic and conceptual strengths so submerged, the album can begin to run together. That's probably the point: From the washed-out cover art to the few discernible lyrics, The Floodlight Collective is obsessed with the indistinctness of memory, the dazzlement of bright lights. Opener "Red Oak Way", maybe Pundt's "Hazel St.", longs for "sunny Saturdays watching cartoons in the living room," warm rays shining through the windowpane. So The Floodlight Collective is a mostly elegant listen, and one whose failings are part of its theme: Like a vague recollection, it's still a little hard to hold onto after it's over-- pretty albeit somewhat ephemeral. Memory knows before knowing remembers, sure, but too much light makes the baby go blind.

White Lies - To Lose My Life...

Album Reviews
Pitchfork
March 16, 2009
Link
4.0














Two months after Ian Curtis died, Bono stopped by the desk of Factory Records founder Tony Wilson and said something like, "Now he's gone, I promise you I'll do it for him." At least that's what Wilson later told critic Simon Reynolds. U2 soldiered on without Joy Divison's gothy glamor, and of course Bono wasn't the only one carrying an unforgettable fire for Curtis. Then and since, a long list of bands have tried fusing U2's stadium-size grandiosity with Joy Division's bleak foreboding. Sometimes they're Radiohead, sometimes they're Interpol, and sometimes they're White Lies.

The most relevant current comparison is probably Glasvegas, another UK band groomed early on for success, only to release a disappointingly ponderous debut album. Except where Glasvegas' roots in girl-group, JAMC, and early Creation bands amounted to an Exciting New Direction in the beleaguered British indie scene, White Lies have been striking the usual post-punk moves ever since a pair of Stephen Street-produced singles in 2006, back when they were called Fear of Flying. White Lies' debut To Lose My Life... recently entered the UK charts at #1 and combines prose-purple darkness with rafters-shooting arena rock. It's better than Elefant, worse than the Stills, nearly on par with Editors-- which in the English rock press these days assures descriptors like "classic" and "masterpiece."

Produced by Ed Buller (Pulp, Suede) and Max Dingel (the Killers, Glasvegas), and boasting melodramatic accompaniment by a 20-piece orchestra, To Lose My Life... can't be faulted in terms of tightness or radio-ready polish. If you liked the new Oasis and U2 records, never bought Turn on the Bright Lights, and tend to ignore clumsy lyrics, you might enjoy raising your beer to this album just fine. Hell, the hummable Cars-esque new wave at the bridge of dour opening track "Death" is just what you needed if you're willing to forget "Just What I Needed". But White Lies know beer is really more for staring at glumly: "Everything has got to be love or death," singer/guitarist Harry McVeigh declares.

Why not both? "Let's grow old together and die at the same time," the title track urges, certainly not the last time someone will rewrite the Smiths' "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out" by way of the Modern Lovers' "Dignified and Old", crank up the bombast, and leave out all pathos, personality, and charm. White Lies' flirtations with mortality certainly don't help their drab tunes. "If you tell me to jump then I'll die," goes the galloping "E.S.T."; "As you said goodbye, I almost died," the weepy "Nothing to Give" adds. But their rote cheerlessness suggests no such emotional intensity. As McVeigh sings on POW-invoking sub-Joshua Tree ballad "Fifty on Our Foreheads", "All we heard was lies about the truth." Right, as opposed to the other kind of lies.

White Lies could even get away with a little heavy-handed somberness if anything of their own (other than unintentional humor) shone through their reconstituted gloom-rock. A little less death, a little more love-- of creativity, of life in all its urgent particulars rather than just the hand-me-down cliches that stand in for them-- would go a long way. Take "Unfinished Business", where gothic organs, Interpol-like phrasing, and a jarring James Bond allusion convey little other than that White Lies own a few critically acclaimed records and probably know who Roger Moore is. "Love and death are always on my mind," the Stills sang back in 2003. In other words, White Lies are boring and stuff.

Say Hi - Oohs and Aahs

Video / Album Review
ABC News
Link
March 9, 2009

The Boy Least Likely To - The Law of the Playground

Album Reviews
Pitchfork
March 5, 2009
Link
7.5














Childhood isn't kids' stuff. Like Tom Cruise, or life in Hobbes' state of nature, it can be nasty, brutish, and short. Language that would make Rahm Emanuel or a "South Park" writer blush. Intolerance enough to have Rush Limbaugh sound like Gandhi. A mini shock'n'awe campaign of child-on-insect violence. And, every now and then, brief glimpses of nudity. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

UK twee-poppers the Boy Least Likely To didn't disappear after 2005 debut The Best Party Ever reclaimed the schoolyard. But their vividly imagined mix of whimsy and melancholy has attracted a magic-threatening share of the spotlight. A steady drip of TV, film, and retail licensing for single "Be Gentle With Me", originally released in 2003, culminated (so far) with a Coca-Cola commercial during this year's Academy Awards broadcast. At the same time, in a world where Noah and the Whale exist, hipper-than-thou tastes have shifted back toward harsher, rougher sounds, or else impossibly perfect Auto-Tune chart-pop.

Boy will be Boy. Delayed by record-label collapse, sophomore album The Law of the Playground evokes a nostalgia that has as much to do with those innocently optimistic days before financial meltdown, fake celebrity Twitter posts, and Hipster Runoff as with lazy summers. This still isn't kids music. But TBLLT's child's-eye perspective on English anorak pop, sunny West Coast harmonies, Belle and Sebastian-y folk, country, and soul, is now certifiably... theirs, just theirs. Dexys Midnight Runners-like strings join banjo, recorder, handclaps, synths, and glockenspiel. If the enchantment has weakened a smidge, the craft-- and the extreme cuteness-- sure haven't. TBLLT have covered both George Michael and the Field Mice; their own best songs combine the former's chart-conquering populism with the latter's practically mind-expanding wimpiness. "I've got puppy powers," TBLLT lyrical and vocal half Jof Owen murmurs on current single "Every Goliath Has Its David", as multi-instrumentalist/composer Pete Hobbs wields birthday-party orchestration like a giant-killing slingshot.

Yet whether on gung-ho opener "Saddle Up", or self-pep-talk "When Life Gives Me Lemons I Make Lemonade", fear and neurosis almost always undermine the cheery arrangements. It's an old move, not just for these guys, but on advance download-only single "I Box Up All the Butterflies", with its twang and "When I'm Sixty-Four" oompah, TBLLT give gnawing insecurity a welcome charm. After "the birds and the bees" beset Owen when he's being entomologically cruel, dude reaches a koan-like understanding on acoustic ballad "The Worm Forgives the Plough", itself halfway between Sarah Records indie and Weezer's Pinkerton "Butterfly". Harmonica- and glockenspiel-led "Stringing Up Conkers" juxtaposes grown-up body image problems with... shoving pencils up your nose.

Self-referentiality adds to The Law of the Playground 's sense of déjà vu even as it lets the band try new angles on familiar themes. "The Boy Least Likely To Is a Machine" is a sad scientist's-workshop concept-song... sort of their "Dr. Carter"; brassy swooner "The Boy with Two Hearts" could be the duo's autobiography (with its accompanying anxieties) or a love song (with its accompanying anxieties); "The Nature of the Boy Least Likely To" slows down and stretches out, fighting the same demons as The Best Party Ever 's "The Battle of the Boy Least Likely To".

An old Calvin & Hobbes Sunday strip has been making the rounds again lately. Calvin tries to sell Susie Derkins lemonade, overcharges her because of "demand" for an exorbitant salary, uses sludge water to cut costs, goes to mom for a bailout when Susie won't buy. As strong and unusual as The Law of the Playground is, especially out of step in 2009, it never quite feels as inspired, as fraught with conflicted beauty, as past songs "Paper Cuts" or "Be Gentle With Me" or "Monsters". But that doesn't mean melody, harmony, and earnest self-expression of the funny pathos of being human are any less relevant this year than they were in 2005. "I'm still as stupid as I was before," Owen sings on poignant finale "A Fairytale Ending".

Shrag - Shrag

Album Reviews
Pitchfork
March 3, 2009
Link
7.4















During the first wave of UK indie, Gang of Four wrote anti-love songs while bands like the Slits, the Raincoats, and X-Ray Spex rejected not only romance but also traditional femininity. In the Britpop 1990s, Blur snarkily claimed to see no difference between "Girls and Boys", and Elastica made sexual demystification a lot more fun ("You could call me a car lover/ 'Cause I love it in a motor"). Brighton's Shrag are a sharp up-and-coming poppy post-punk band smearing their own dark lip gloss on sex and gender. But you can always tell deep down they're looking for real, vital connection.

They find it in more ways than one on their self-titled debut album, which mostly pulls together songs released on mp3 and 7" going back to 2006, when "Don't Speak"-ably stinging breakup ballad "Hopelessly Wasted" made a few waves. More often the three-girl, two-boy guitar-synth rioters are more bellicose-- hitting the giddy stratospheres of early Long Blondes singles (minus the glamour) while tremblingly shouting down a cheating lover on spiky-riffed "Lost Dog", or holding a "long term grudge" on fast, still-furious "Long Term Monster". Shoplifting is hard on the unrepentantly unruly "Intelligent Theft", but bratty MySpace-quote pop sounds easy. The most divisive track is likely to be Kate Nash-conversational "Talk to the Left", a bare electro-punk update on awkward sex jams ("Did he really say, 'Baby, now I'm heading south?'") from the Au Pairs' "Come Again" to Art Brut's "Rusted Guns of Milan". "Cupboard Love" should get basement crowds belting out requests for W-2 information. You just haven't earned it yet, baby.

Like many of us in our increasingly autistic age, Shrag seek not just physical connections, but to participate in shared culture-- the essence of the English DIY movement. Even when they're talking about their bodies, Shrag use the language of fans. Love Is All-ish sax spree "Pregnancy Scene" is the best petulant protest against all our friends growing up and having babies since the Boy Least Likely To's "Monsters"; the only previously unreleased non-instrumental, "New Favourites", obsesses over a clique-changing best mate like she's a once-favorite band; "Mark E. Smith" is the indie kid's "Would you do that if Barack Obama was watching?". My absolute favorite song here, "Forty Five 45s", is a beautifully crafted, basically one-chord wonder sung by a narrator who'd notice every nuance in the mixtapes you give her and then be really fucking pissed when you take off with all her mp3s except Jeff Buckley. You could've at least left the Los Campesinos! zine.

Only connect? Not hardly: "Different Glue" grapples with groping strangers who will make you glad you stayed at home tonight. "Women get hassled at gigs if they're not with a bloke," Gang of Four's Jon King told critic Greil Marcus in 1980. The name Shrag, sort of a nice onomatopoeia for the younger group's tough-talking shambling, is also an actual English word that's obsolete. King's statement isn't-- neither is a good fanmade antidote to pop music that's some dying conglomerate's idea of how much self-expression you can handle. Things aren't perfect, but we've come a long way.

Malajube - Labyrinthes

Album Reviews
Pitchfork
March 2, 2009
Link
6.4














"Malajube's music is labyrinthine," Pitchfork's Brian Howe wrote by way of praising the French Montreal band's breakout sophomore album, Trompe-l'Oeil, in 2006. With their city then under the indie rock microscope, Malajube (still say it MAL-a-zhoob) scanned as yet more ramshackle hyper-pop, language less a barrier than a Dungen-esque point of difference-- when it counted, say on the hook to commercial-bait standout "Montréal -40°C", these inaugural Polaris Music Prize nominees sounded no more francophone than, I dunno, Electric Light Orchestra. Media hype now gone home, Malajube up the labyrinthine stakes on Labyrinthes, daring re-entry. It's not for the faint of heart-- or the fain to double back.

How do you say "gone all prog" en français? The change is as much context as content-- multipart Trompe mini-epics "La Monogamie" and "Le Crabe" already were reminiscent of contemporaries such as Mew-- but jarring structural changes are the norm on Labyrinthes, suggesting Malajube's former "progressive emo jam band" MySpace descriptor may have been more apt than absurd. Six-minute opener "Ursuline" boldly announces the new approach-- and, if you understand the submerged lyrics (or read the interviews), the Catholicism/mortality-minded lyrical themes-- as blistering guitar solos, chopsy drumming, and portentous chants descend upon a placid piano intro, leaving only church bells in their wake. Juxtapositions juice a couple of the best songs: "Casablanca", which veers from hazy Tropicália-tinged pop to a fleet-fingered guitar coda, and "333", all gallops and screeches and echoes except when its inner "Dust in the Wind" breaks out.

Where Malajube fall flat, it's not due to complexity, but grim reality: Comedy rarely translates well. Jerry Lewis, anyone? "It's good to have humor in music too," drummer Francis Mineau, lead singer Julien Mineau's brother, told the National Post. The most immediately accessible tracks here-- spiky video selection "Porté Disparu", with its Ed Wood-worthy synth line, or the harmony- and piano-driven "Luna"-- translate as light-hearted whether you know that "Les Collemboles" refers to eating bugs someday or just like to hum along with its call-and-response chorus. The more sinister "Le Tout-Puissant" and "Cristobald" convey instrumental prowess and grandiosity, sure, but I could use a pie in the face (OK, the closing growls almost count). So although Labyrinthes further establishes Malajube as French Canadians worth following, this time you may not make it far enough to save your brother from the Goblin King.

Jean on Jean - Jean on Jean

Album Reviews
Pitchfork
February 24, 2009
Link
6.7














Hours turn to days, you know. Molly Schnick won't be getting back the 10 years she spent as cellist with Bay-Area-turned-Brooklyn electro-punks Out Hud, but she's been spending the time since their 2005 breakup with herself again. On the debut of solo project Jean on Jean, Schnick wonders aloud whether she's losing her taste for the nightlife. The answer, based on this strummy bedroom chamber-pop U-turn, is a qualified yes.

Jean on Jean boots almost everything about Schnick's old band, down to the dub-chamber vocal effects and Fall Out Boy-like song titles. The songs themselves convey intimate, everyday experiences with homespun charm. Over the uncharacteristic electronic beats of "Cold Horse", the narrator gets to her train station, then to one of life's forks in the road; "You and I" makes "a sink of party dishes" a metaphor for what's left after lost love. A couple of the most emotionally resonant tracks for me raise the sorts of questions people nearing 30 might jot in their FaceSpace/Twimblr. "Will I ever again own the night?" Schnick asks between castanets and tambourine on "Grown". To which methodical working-stiff lament "Change" appends, "Where is the harm in comfort/ And not going out at night?"

A gentle soul throughout, Schnick layers her endearingly plainspoken vocals over cellos, ramshackle guitars, keyboards, various reverb-coated percussion instruments, and, on wavy beach meditation "Hawaii", even bird noises. The album is almost always more intricate than its modest tone suggests, with the best tracks recalling wallflower tunesmiths from the Zombies' Colin Blunstone to the Softies. (Schnick cites Blunstone and late California folkie Judee Sill as influences; Blunstone's catchier, Sill's twangier, and Jean on Jean can't match either great just yet.) Opener "Tonight", the first video selection, may not quite make you pull over to the side of the road the way its narrator does, but it's right up there with the Headlights' similar 2008 track "Cherry Tulips". Schnick's string arrangements, meanwhile, should grab some fans of Joanna Newsom, Andrew Bird, or Beirut-- see the classically elegant bridge on finale "Finally".

If you can root against Schnick as she goes it alone in such a super vulnerable way, you're an asshole. But that doesn't mean her album is flawless-- pretty sure that's part of the appeal. The one-two punch of "Circle", a folkier number with Schnick's breath as percussion, and "Summer", with 1960s psych-pop keyboards and harmonies, walks the line between minimal and monotonous. For such a pop-tinged album, choruses in general tend to be a bit unremarkable; for such a personal-sounding album, a couple of lyrics ring jarringly un-conversational notes here or there. That Jean on Jean isn't perfect piles heartache on heartache. But it shouldn't stop a small, hopefully devoted cult from cherishing this album. And it shouldn't stop Schnick from trying on her Canadian tuxedo again some other rainy day. For wild nights out, there's still her guest work with ex-!!! guy John Pugh's Free Blood.

Van Morrison - Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl

Album Reviews
Pitchfork
February 20, 2009
Link
4.5




















I loved the idea of Astral Weeks before I loved Astral Weeks. I'm sure I'm not alone. Irishman who sang proto-punk "Gloria" and drunken dorm-formal singalong "Brown Eyed Girl" and went on to do Moondance goes into a midtown Manhattan studio with top-notch jazz sessionmen. Pours out stream-of-consciousness stuff about love, rebirth, and a pain that passes all understanding, in an impressionistic folk-jazz-blues idiom that transcends existing rock conventions. Nobody buys it. A decade later, Lester Bangs calls Astral Weeks "a mystical document." In 1995, MOJO ranks it the #2 album of all time; eight years later, Rolling Stone ranks it #19; in between, damn thing finally goes gold. To a hopeless romantic, what's not to love?

Only Astral Weeks the album could live up to Astral Weeks the legend. A 23-year-old Van Morrison howls, he hollers, he cajoles, he grabs hold of the ineffable and caresses its edges, bending and reiterating it like an instrumental virtuoso. Guitarist Jay Berliner (Charles Mingus' The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady), bassist Richard Davis (Eric Dolphy's Out to Lunch), and drummer Connie Kay (of the Modern Jazz Quartet) create an improvisatory space for Morrison's haunted freeform meditations; Larry Fallon's overdubs add strings, woodwinds, and harpsichord. You breathe in you breathe out, baby baby baby, way upon way upon, dry your eye your eye your eye, too late to stop now, the love that loves the love that loves the love that loves the love that loves to love the love that loves to love the love that loves, I know you're dying. The legend is with the album, and the legend is the album.

Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl was a pair of concerts held last year at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, honoring the legendary album (scheduled to be reprised February 27 and 28 at New York's Theater at Madison Square Garden). Now Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl is also an album honoring the shows that honored that legendary album. Sadly, one thing that this record isn't: legendary.

Astral Weeks was released 40 years, almost to the day, before Van Morrison performed the whole thing live two straight nights last November. "We did the songs and took them somewhere else. Transcended the originals, if you know what I mean." That's Morrison talking to the Associated Press recently. The shows featured guitarist Berliner from the 1968 sessions, along with other previous Morrison collaborators and a full string section; they were generally well-reviewed. As recorded on Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl, the performances retain the improvisatory approach from the record, right down to changing the song order-- the all-loving, possibly transvestite-themed, vaguely pro-civil-rights hymn "Madame George" now closes, rather than atmospheric mortality rumination "Slim Slow Slider". There's much rejoicing.

I guess you had to be there. On disc, Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl is a bland, bluesy celebration you can afford to miss. Oh, it still consists mostly of great songs-- the two "bonus" tracks slightly less so-- performed with skill, and recorded at fine quality, but it's hard to imagine why anyone other than souvenir-seekers or live-music absolutists would need to listen to this more than once as long as the original LP remains in print. An album brave enough to embrace life in all its ugliness and anguish, right on through to its inevitable end, becomes just another document of the rock'n'roll generation's stubborn confidence it will outlive itself. Sort of like those Dick Clark teeth on the cover.

"I believe I've transcended," Morrison sings on an extended outro to the opening, title track. "Slim Slow Slider" is now jammy, incongruously upbeat, fixed in time and place by the live audience-- some guy loudly cheers the song's placement after a newly percussion-crowded "Beside You". An ignoble thunk disrupts the harpsichord in the left speaker near the start of "Cyprus Avenue", which now inexplicably follows swinger "The Way Young Lovers Do"-- and lacks the dramatic, showstopping interlude described by Bangs, documented on 1974's It's Too Late to Stop Now live LP. Morrison's voice here is heavier, still distinguished, but as he slurs his way through the ordinarily sublime verses of "Sweet Thing" before breaking off for a superfluous harmonica solo, this much is clear: A work of art can withstand the ages. People never do.

A high point is "Ballerina", the possibly prostitute-themed song where Morrison's voice sounds richer and fuller; his growled "get on up!" evokes both James Brown and Morrison's own Brown-esque "good God!" barks back in his youth. "Madame George" ends with Morrison's communal invocation to "get on the train"-- well, actually, it ends with some hokey guy shouting Van Morrison's name over and over into a microphone. Still, better than the drippy bonus track version of "Listen to the Lion", originally from St. Dominic's Preview, where the same dude bellows, "Vaaaan Morrison! The one! The only!" as a saxophone hits barge-like brown notes. If it sounds like I'm overstating my complaints, it's only because listening side by side with Astral Weeks can't help but magnify them. You don't need Pet Sounds Live, either.

There's a case to be made that Astral Weeks, the album, never quite captured Astral Weeks, the idea. Morrison has complained about producer Lewis Merenstein's chosen running order. Then again, he has also denigrated his accompanists and described Astral Weeks as a "rock opera". The repetitions in Morrison's songs carry over to his discography: Prior to Astral Weeks, he recorded other studio versions of "Madame George" and "Beside You". A 10-minute "Slim Slow Slider" was supposedly edited down to 3:18; nothing's set in stone. OK, so maybe what Astral Weeks represents to so many of us can't be perfectly recorded, whether on vinyl or in 1s and 0s-- definitely not in words. But I can feel it in my bones when I listen to the original album (turn it up, so you know it's got soul). When I listen to Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl, I just feel lonely, and old.

M. Ward - Hold Time

Album Reviews
Pitchfork
February 17, 2009
Link
6.8














Matt Ward is no longer at the point in his career where you devote an entire album to the memory of an obscure folk guitar hero. The Portland-based singer, songwriter, and accomplished guitar player is enjoying his highest level of mainstream recognition yet, thanks in no small part to a fine, comfortingly nostalgic collaboration with actress Zooey Deschanel last year as She & Him. He has shared stages with Norah Jones, Jenny Lewis, Bright Eyes, and My Morning Jacket. During the presidential primary season, he played a benefit show for Barack Obama.

On Hold Time, Ward loses himself to find himself. With increasingly expansive production and broader lyrical themes, Ward's sixth studio album polishes away a little bit more of the individual character that makes his best recordings so human and rewarding. Paradoxically, that mostly just reinforces Ward's defining trait: a conviction that simple songs can transcend time, and that categorizing music by era can be just as artificial as categorizing music by genre. Ward argues his case pretty convincingly for much of the album, if not quite as eloquently as he has in the past.

Hold Time is not an album-length diatribe about your cable company's understaffed customer-service call centers. "If only I could hold time," Ward's winningly cracked voice sighs wistfully on the title track, a strings-and-piano ballad that sounds like "The Long and Winding Road" and name-checks the Beach Boys compilation Endless Summer. Where 2003's Transfiguration of Vincent was inspired by a memorial service for folk legend John Fahey, 2005's Transistor Radio had the golden age of radio, and 2006's Post-War had wars, Hold Time is conceptually similar to Ward's underrated sophomore album, 2001's End of Amnesia. Back then Ward was helping us remember. Now he's making time stand still, with old sounds, a few old songs, and age-old subjects: love, god, old songs. He also has some indie-famous guest stars.

Bigger arrangements; same folk, rock'n'roll, and Americana roots. With mixing and assistance from Saddle Creek mainstay Mike Mogis, plus strings by Peter Broderick (Horse Feathers, Efterklang), Ward keeps his voice sounding lo-fi even when the production is Phil Spector-sized. "Never Had Nobody Like You" alludes to The Dark Side of the Moon while basically rewriting The Music Man's "Till There Was You" as a stomping glam-rock duet with Deschanel. Ward could've stopped writing "Stars of Leo" early and called it "I Get So High", but to his credit he keeps going; the cascading guitars, vivid verses, and multi-layered percussion make it one of the album's best tracks (though it's not actually "above" the name-checked "Sea of Love"). However, orchestration and vocal overdubs aren't enough to save acoustic strummer "Jailbird" from dying in its cage, despite some twangy, lyrical lead guitar work.

God is the perfect subject for a songwriter of Ward's aspirations toward timelessness. Shuffling guitar hoedown "Fisher of Men" extends one of Jesus' favorite metaphors, while the organ-kissed surfer-folk wisdom of stripped-down "Blake's View" is touching and beautifully phrased, its potentially grating reference to Blake perhaps a way for Ward to distance himself from the song's reassuring sentiments even while offering us comfort in them (pretty close to Transfiguration's "Dead Man", though). "If you're trying to sing an old song/ You're getting all the words wrong," he sings, crediting Paul, whether the Apostle or the Beatle, on strings plus banjo acid-rocker "Epistemology". Grandaddy's Jason Lytle fits well enough into the Wall of Sound on bouncy, clever "To Save Me". Suggested alternate title: "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands (So Would It Kill the Motherfucker to Answer a Guy's Prayers?)".

Covers are another way Ward sets Hold Time out of time. One of them sure goes on forever, anyway: a ponderous rendition of country classic "Oh Lonesome Me" with awkward call and response vocals featuring an out-of-place Lucinda Williams. Buddy Holly's "Rave On" matches up nicely with Ward's simple-is-good philosophy, and this laid-back remake is sonically detailed enough (another Deschanel guest spot) to justify itself-- it has nothing on Transfiguration's irony-free cover of David Bowie's "Let's Dance", though. Meanwhile, Ward's instrumental take on Billie Holiday-sung jazz standard "I'm a Fool to Want You" is a smoldering guitar showcase recalling Neil Young's Dead Man soundtrack work or the solos of Giant Sand's Howe Gelb, who released Ward's debut a decade ago.

Memory is the world's greatest liar. So it's possible that Ward's past albums seem a cut or two above Hold Time only through the rose-tinted lens of hindsight-- sort of like how we've come to romanticize the Old West, say, or previous eras of rock'n'roll. But the new one, although steeped in American music tradition, could use some more of the pioneering spirit that got us here. Hold Time is an enjoyable, well-constructed album, and as good a place as any for newcomers to start-- it just doesn't hold many surprises. If it all seems too familiar to you, too impersonal, try the back catalog. As memory turns to myth, some myths are worth remembering. Not only John Henry, but Prometheus, too.

M. Ward - Hold Time

Video / Album Review
ABC News
Link
February 16, 2009

Free Blood - The Singles

Album Reviews
Pitchfork
February 11, 2009
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5.9
















I know vampires have been killing it lately, but there is such a thing as too much Free Blood. Though not until after sweat, skronk, drugs, sex, cowbells, toms, cello, saxophone, shrieks, falsetto, and an Obama shout-out. At the start of 12"s compilation The Singles, the Brooklyn duo of erstwhile !!! singer/drummer John Pugh and fashion designer Madeline Davy makes more like Free Beer. Downtown no wave takes the L train to Brooklyn dance punk, buys pills instead of that Polish beer, and basement-punk hedonism warps into a studio-funhouse manifesto. Comedown's a doozy, though: remix after interminable remix working buzz into buzzkill and ending up too drunk to screw. Like Jimmy Buffett fans.

The Singles' six originals would make for a disconnected night out, and no doubt an energetic live show, but they're a wild ride in headphones. The unpredictable twists and turns-- the Jack Johnson acoustic-guitar shambling at the end of bass-centered ode to excess "Never Hear Surf Music Again", or the ear-splitting TV on the Radio soulful-rock futurism of "Weekend Condition"-- don't leave much to hold onto, but they're varied and relatively fun. Most of the time, though, Free Blood are closer to the dub-chamber of Gang Gang Dance or the rangey punk-funk of Pugh's prior band, getting kinky with the piano-plinking rhythmic clatter of "Royal Family" or lost in the layered percussion of "Parangatang". Weird contrasts abound: On "Surf Music", Pugh and Davy chant "I'm high" until it sounds like the name of the Buckeye State. On the suggestively undulating "Grumpy", Pugh exclaims, "Obama!" Maybe Ludacris knows what it all means.

The five remixes drag out Free Blood's free-loving freakout without boosting the booty-shaking factor; it's as if The Singles is taking the new President's "set aside childish things" and getting stultifyingly adult with it. "I'm not playing silly games," Pugh sings on "Quick and Painful", still a nice bacchanalian pastiche, but the Hot Chip remix is painfully absent here. Barfly's "Surf Music" remix separates out the instruments and emphasizes a bit of a rock feel with a bass hook that's part the Troggs' "Wild Thing" and part the Breeders' "Cannonball". Scotty Coats and Wes the Mes recognize the expressiveness of Pugh's "Weekend Condition" vocal, then make a screechy version of Jose Feliciano's "Light My Fire" with it. Brothers' "Royal Family" revamp fares best, frosting militaristic house beats with radioactive synths; "Grumpy (Greg Wilson Version)" is serviceable but sleepy space-disco, and "Parangatang (Tim 'Love' Lee Mix)" sounds like your alarm clock or the guy jackhammering outside. Party too long and it gets tedious (I'm told!). Wake up and it gets worse.

You Can Vote However You Like

Feature
Pitchfork
October 29, 2008
Link

"Young Barack Obama, I'm all for it," Juelz Santana raps on "Black Republicans", which eventually appeared on Lil Wayne's phenomenal Da Drought 3 mixtape last year. It wasn't the first pop-music recording to mention the junior Senator from Illinois-- Neil Young name-checks Obama on "Lookin' for a Leader", from 2006's scattershot Living With War, for one-- but it was the first that I had on repeat. "Black Republicans" surfaced on the internet in January 2007, a full year before Obama's game-changing Iowa caucus victory over Hillary Clinton. I mainly liked the track for Wayne and Santana's lyrical Lambeau leaps and shameless flouting of more established rappers, but there was also a weird thrill in hearing my personal political-news-junkiedom echoed in pop culture. When the original "Black Republican" (singular-- don't ask me) showed up on Nas's Hip Hop Is Dead in December 2006, it was momentous not because of any (dubious) political content, but because the track was the first-ever collaboration between Nas and longtime rival Jay-Z.

Fast-forward to 2008. Rapping over one of Wayne's most-rapped-over beats, Bangladesh-produced Tha Carter III single "A Milli", Jay-Z joyfully describes himself as "the hood's Barack." Nas samples Obama's idealistic Iowa victory speech and a pessimistic line from 2Pac's "Changes" for his untitled ninth album's "Black President". Of course, there's Will.i.am's celeb-packed "Yes We Can" video, which turns lyrical political rhetoric into music that sounds like political rhetoric. Russell Simmons and mixtape DJ Green Lantern eventually dropped an Obama mixtape, and rappers Kidz in the Hall and Common have paid tribute, as well. Half-Kenyan band Extra Golden recorded "Obama", and an instrumental version of the National's "Fake Empire" appeared in an Obama ad. There have also been hundreds of amateur efforts, from "the Obama girl" and Amigos de Obama's Spanish-language, reggaeton "Obama" on down. It would take more than 55 hours to listen to the 1,000-plus songs about the Democratic nominee uploaded to the YouTube playlist Obama Songs.

By the pop-music metric, John McCain was behind even before his October descent in state and national polls. Despite an endorsement from Daddy Yankee, the biggest music-related headlines from the Arizona senator's campaign were often negative: One by one, artists complained about the use of their songs at campaign events, from Heart to John Mellencamp to the Foo Fighters. Jackson Browne even sued. Toby Keith, who had delighted conservatives with ass-kicking 9/11 anthem "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (the Angry American)", called Obama the "best Democratic candidate we've had since Bill Clinton." As if twisting the knife, he added, "And that's coming from a Democrat." Kid Rock, who performed at a Republican National Convention-related event in 2004, has been conspicuously noncommital this time around. But the current Republican presidential nominee has his musical tributes, too. John Rich of country music duo Big & Rich wrote and sang a Chuck Berry-style rock'n'roll rave-up called "Raisin' McCain", and Hank Williams, Jr. attacked Obama and all his rowdy "terrorist friends" in the honky-tonk number "McCain-Palin Tradition" (an update of his own 1970s hit "Family Tradition").

In a presidential election year where both candidates claim a mantle of "change," the use of original campaign songs is, to be sure, nothing new. People who took high school U.S. history may remember "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too", the slogan from a popular 1840 campaign song praising Whig candidates William Henry Harrison and John Tyler at the expense of Democratic incumbent Martin Van Buren. But what about "Get on the Raft With Taft" for William Taft in 1912? "Happy Days Are Here Again" was Franklin D. Roosevelt's theme song in 1932, Dwight Eisenhower ran to Irving Berlin's "I Like Ike" in 1952, and Frank Sinatra customized James Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn's "High Hopes" for John F. Kennedy in 1960.

Although campaigns continued coming up with new songs well into the latter half of the 20th century, what ultimately spelled the campaign song's d-o-o-m was the rise of TV and radio to replace rallies, parades, and boisterous bands, Frederick N. Rasmussen writes in the Baltimore Sun, citing Irwin Silber's 1971 book Songs America Votes By. If a changing media climate is (at least part of) what has consigned 1960 Richard Nixon campaign theme "Click With Dick" to the dustbin of history, though, it's also a big reason why candidates are becoming associated with custom-written songs again today. Nowhere else but on YouTube would Will.i.am's "Yes We Can" video have almost 11 million views; even Mike Huckabee has "Stuck on Huck", and Ron Paul can boast several online tribute songs. In that sense, the "netroots" associated with Howard Dean's failed 2004 campaign have become real even beyond their ability to fill campaign coffers with many small donations, as internet use has gradually gained ground on TV viewing as a media source.

With the presidency of George W. Bush sinking toward its current 25% approval rate, critics and pundits often asked what happened to the political music of previous eras. Where was our equivalent of Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'", Hüsker Dü's "Divide and Conquer", or Heaven 17's "(We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang"? Robert Christgau has repped for James McMurtry's seven-minute "We Can't Make It Here", but its Texas Americana-rock doesn't sound much like the present multicultural moment; the fake folksiness of millionaire TV pundits notwithstanding, any extra votes Obama may get from traditionally Democratic demographics like women and African-Americans count just as much as the votes of traditionally Republican-leaning white males like "Joe the Plumber." I initially took John Mayer's "Waiting on the World to Change" as a derivative wuss-out (when Bob Marley interpolated a Curtis Mayfield song, he at least gave the man a share of royalties), but Christgau argued pretty persuasively at this year's EMP Pop Conference that the 2007 radio hit opens a dialogue with an audience big enough to count on Election Day. Sadly, you can't say that about politically minded records like TV on the Radio's Return to Cookie Mountain, Super Furry Animals' Love Kraft, or Josh Ritter's The Animal Years.

2008 has been a year of not just political songs, however, but campaign songs, at a moment when a black man finally has a genuine chance of becoming president. The historic nature of such an accomplishment has informed many of the pro-Obama songs this year in a way that running to be the oldest president ever elected could never have boosted McCain, even if you set aside the youth-leaning bias of pop music. And race perhaps explains why some of the most interesting and most widely disseminated campaign songs this year, from "A Billi" to "Yes We Can", have come from hip-hop, while one-time Obama openers the Decemberists (used by conservatives to explain the huge crowds at one Obama event-- and to imply Obama is communist) are still singing about "Valerie Plame". At the end of two decades during which mainstream rock critics and fans of rap's "golden age" have decried the violence, misogyny, and materialism in hip-hop, it's telling that one of this pop-music genre's most critically and commercially successful artists, Jay-Z, is seeking to link himself with a politician, rather than the other way around. CurrentVibe cover star Obama is, by all appearances, the most popular figure in hip-hop. (Just don't tell that to DMX, who asked XXL magazine, "What the fuck is a Barack?")

The candidates themselves have stuck mostly to the campaign-song model of the TV era, using previously written music at their events. I've already mentioned the complaints McCain has received from some musicians, reminiscent of the debate over Ronald Reagan's use of Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A." in 1984. However, McCain has often also used Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode", along with Kenny Loggins' Top Gun song "Danger Zone" (amusingly, CNN's Bob Greene recently appeared to miss the "Maverick" connection there; in fairness, most dance-music fans probably missed the connection to disco legend Giorgio Moroder, who co-wrote the tune). McCain and Obama both have used Brooks & Dunn's "Only in America", a song previously claimed by Bush. Obama has also frequently been known to play Stevie Wonder's "Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours" after speeches. But none of these songs have been for the candidates what Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop" was for Bill Clinton in 1992.

If history is any guide, campaign songs are usually as ephemeral as the worst novelty schlock. Regardless of who wins on election day, Will.i.am's "Yes We Can" and Rich's "Raisin' McCain" may soon be as hard to stomach as "Macarena" or "Mambo No. 5"-- assuming they aren't already. Or do you still rock "Go With Goldwater" every morning on your iPod? This year's best campaign songs, aesthetically if not politically, are the ones that incorporate their candidates' messages in new, subtle ways, rather than simply reciting the flimsy media narratives that can turn both sides, liberals and conservatives, Olbermann viewers and Limbaugh listeners, TalkingPointsMemo readers and LittleGreenFootballs posters, into unthinking dittoheads. Hell, one song that isn't political at all, T.I.'s No. 1 hit "Whatever You Like", has already become part of the political discussion in three hilariously great ways: as a Joe Biden endorsement; as a Weird Al song about recession; and, as Idolator pointed out, as a group of totally adorable school kids singing "You Can Vote However You Like".

Here's an unscientific sampling of 10 songs mentioning the candidates (plus one relevant outlier) that I think are worth discussing in greater depth. Barring another 2000-style quagmire, we may find out the night of Nov. 4 whether there's any truth to Obama's recent boast on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show": "I'm convinced I'm a better dancer than John McCain." Come to think of it, let's skip the election and decide the presidency with a special evening of "Dancing With the Stars". Makes about as much sense as the Electoral College.

NAS: "BLACK PRESIDENT"
Nas' untitled album this year was a typical post-heyday Nas album: uneven, with a few moments of lyrical brilliance, and questionable beatmaking decisions. This song has its flaws, too-- when Nas is "like, what the fuck?", so am I-- but whether on the official LP or on Nas' The Nigger Tape with Green Lantern, this song's drummer-boy beat and debate between Nas's positivity and 2Pac's weary skepticism has kept me coming back more than any other campaign-related tune. My wife taught it in her 7th grade English class last school year in Brooklyn; her students liked it, too. Key line: "It ain't the '60s again."

JAY-Z: "A BILLI"
Hova may not be a billionaire yet, but in a year when even Danish waterfall artistswere rhyming over "A Milli", Jay's enthusiastic bling-politics rhymes here are rivaled only by Fabolous and Lil Mama among the (too many) "A Milli" versions I've heard.

YOUNG JEEZY [FT. NAS]: "MY PRESIDENT"
Speaking of "bling-politics", one-time undecided voter Young Jeezy sounds masterful on arguably the least explicitly political Obama song of all. His president is black, his Lambo is blue-- so what? Same difference. "I'm important, too," Jeezy exhorts, comparing his motivational ability to Obama's. Nas sounds like he got lost and ended up on the wrong track.

BIG BOI [FT. MARY J. BLIGE]: "SOMETHING'S GOTTA GIVE"
The wah-wahing soul funk of recession-scarred "Something's Gotta Give" is perfect for Big Boi's flexible flow and Mary J. Blige's gorgeously smoky vocals. Blige is the one who big-ups B.O., but Boi has a political statement to make to self-styled music connoisseurs, too: "The great debaters debate about who's the greatest MC/ Subject matter don't matter because their verses empty/ No room for thought, nothing for the brain to digest/ So I guess it be about who can jive talk the best."

JOHN RICH: "RAISIN' MCCAIN"
I liked this one better when it didn't have fiddles or sound like "Monday Night Football" and was called "Johnny B. Goode". Also, what does "Raisin' McCain" mean, exactly? I thought I was supposed to be the media elitist who doesn't know my Bible. "Play that American guitar, son." As for the video, well, I see white people.

HANK WILLIAMS, JR.: "MCCAIN-PALIN TRADITION"
Hank Williams, Jr., like most Americans, doesn't believe that ol' "left-wing liberal media" anyway, so I won't explain to him that the financial crisis has nothing to do with bankers not wanting to make loans and Bill Clinton saying, "You got to." When being a Republican means you can't know what a credit default swap is, the recent poll numbers make a lot more sense.

JUDD KESSLER: "LEAD THE WAY"
Bethesda, Md.-based lawyer and amateur musician Judd Kessler's earnest, piano-based message of unity is my favorite McCain anthem. "Imagine someone with a real voice singing it," he says. Aw, dude, you're welcome in indie rock anytime.

JOHN BROWN: "SARAH PALIN (I WANNA LAY PIPE)"
When former "Ego Trip's (White) Rapper Show" contestant John Brown first released his tribute to Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin, I was hesitant to discuss it-- after all, was there any point in reinforcing the idiotic sexual fantasies circulating about her, from Rush Limbaugh calling her a "babe" to the National Review editor Rich Lowry seeing "starbursts"? Sometimes funny is just funny, though.

MALIK YUSEF [FT. KANYE WEST AND ADAM LEVINE]: "PROMISED LAND"
Obama has spoken highly of Kanye West, and the Chicago rapper has returned the favor in interviews, but West has stayed more circumspect about the election on record, focusing his most recent output on his own Heartbreak. On this track from the official Yes We Can: Voices of a Grassroots Movement soundtrack album, he joins with Maroon 5 singer Adam Levine and previous collaborator Malik Yusef to fuel the GOP's Obama-as-Messiah meme.

LUDACRIS: "POLITICS AS USUAL"
Obama has also spoken highly of Ludacris, so this horn-bumping track from Luda's otherwise-forgettable DJ Drama-- aka "Barack O'Drama"-- Presents: The Previewforced the general-election candidate to distance himself from some of the rapper's uglier remarks. As Pitchfork contributor Ian Cohen put it, "Essentially, this is Obama's Sistah Souljah moment, giving him the opportunity to make bold disapprovals of Luda's views of Hillary ('she hated on you so that bitch is irrelevant'), Dubya ('mentally handicapped'), and in the money quote, McCain ('don't belong in ANY chair unless he's paralyzed')." I'm still not sure what that last lyric means.

THE MOUNTAIN GOATS: "DOWN TO THE ARK"
Many indie- or rock-oriented artists have shown their support for Obama, from Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Arcade Fire, Superchunk, the Breeders, Jeff Tweedy, Conor Oberst, Shudder to Think, the Decemberists, My Morning Jacket's Jim James, Joanna Newsom, the National, and M. Ward to Andrew Bird, Les Savy Fav, Fiery Furnaces, No Age, Vampire Weekend, and Lightning Bolt-Foot Village project Noise for Obama-- among others. But few (if any) major indie-rock bands have actually written a song about their candidate. The possible reasons could fill up a whole other feature, whether they're simple cynicism, an aversion to putting art in the service of a specific politician (politicians are, after all, politicians), recognition that such songs rarely stand the test of time, or what. The Mountain Goats' John Darnielle evokes this tension nicely in "Down to the Ark", a piano-driven song he wrote for the Super Tuesday primaries at the behest of public radio's "Weekend America". Darnielle denounces the tax cuts and war matter-of-factly enough, but he portrays the candidates themselves in a darker, more fantastical light. After all, all politicians have pledged their loyalty in blood to a "cloven-hoofed prince," right? Given the enormous challenges facing this country, whoever wins... let's hope not.