same as it ever was

A few quick words on Transference, the seventh album by Spoon. I’ve reviewed this album a few days ago “elsewhere” – not sure when it’ll surface though – in which I kinda pegged the album as sort of a “stopgap release” for the band, as compared to their career-best Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (2007). I wonder if that remark of mine was made was too hastily, but I’m sticking by it nevertheless because it is a fair assessment; no one listening to Transference, good as an album it is, would seriously place it in the same bracket as Spoon’s finest work. Since getting out of its major label troubles with Elektra in the nineties, singer Britt Daniel and main collaborator Jim Eno have established an enduring sonic identity on their third album, 2001’s Girls Can Tell (their first on the indie label Merge, which have released all their records since), for Spoon to refine their avant-pop garage sound with each album, at the same time developing into one of the bastions of indie rock. Transference manages to nail that immediate pop feel of a Spoon album, toggling effectively around the band's trademark tight, insistent rhythms, but the new songs just do not hold together as well as it normally would. That said, “Written In Reverse” does sound phenomenal and the tenderly lit ballad “Out Go The Lights” is a deliquescent wonder – and these two songs alone would be enough for Spoon to continue transcending their cult status.

decade's best #27

In the years since it was released in 2001, I have developed this almost irrational affection for the slim collection of songs that is Oh, Inverted World (11 songs, 32 minutes in and out), especially considering that I have come to be rather lukewarm on the subsequent Shins albums. (Think I should also add here that I have not watched that Garden State movie yet.) Oh, Inverted World is definitely worthy of a place on my pantheon of power-pop albums, among the likes of Big Star’s #1 Record, Teenage Fanclub’s Grand Prix, Sloan’s Between the Bridges, Fountains of Wayne's Utopia Parkway, and a few others.

27. The Shins
Oh, Inverted World [Sub Pop, 2001]
All manners of jangly melodies and power-pop embroidery illuminate Oh, Inverted World and serve as a handy introduction to the charms of the Shins. This carefully stenciled debut of an album proved to be just the ideal turf for lead songsmith James Mercer to fashion his willowy pop songs and narratives of sullen romantic fumbles into a fully-framed portrait of suburban loneliness (or tedium). Scurrying from the nimbleness of zeal that punctuate the whip-smart declaration (“When every other part of life seemed locked behind shutters/ I knew what worthless dregs we all are then”) of “Know Your Onions!” to the tender burlesques that lace the closing “The Past and Pending”, it’s a real credit to the band’s pop instincts that the pensive glow of Oh, Inverted World never does overshadow the hummable melodies and chugging geniality of Mercer’s songwriting; perhaps a way (an admittedly clumsy way) to describe the impression Oh, Inverted World leaves on listeners is that it’s similar to reading the midsummer sonnets penned by someone waking up to the deepest folds of winter. And listening to the wistful guitar strums of album centerpiece “New Slang”, with Mercer singing moodily in a state of befuddlement (“I'm looking in on the good life I might be doomed never to find”), the song seems able to locate or evoke the muffled sensation of a rather hapless existence unfolding and falling into place with its own uncanny momentum of disappointment. The albums that follow Oh, Inverted World may come with more expressive musical directions and be fuzzier for better commercial measure, but it is on their unassuming debut that the Shins have created a power-pop masterwork of introspective scope and undeniable quality.

wait until dark

The sound was sultry and portentous, a turbulent indigo rendered in fitful hypnotic tones. The singer swings, she waltzes around slow and restlessly, her unsure steps veiled by a thin wild melancholy sound and the heated intimacy of her powerful, unpolished croon. Her pirate smile, the familiar ache in her voice singing songs of silken elegance that act as both sympathetic magic and bewitching method acting, a portrayal of someone raised on robbery and trying to outrun the wolves of memories from long ago, far away.

This being a Cat Power performance, you know you’re well in for some ragged song interpretation, either of her own tunes or the cover versions that fill up her last two records Jukebox and Dark End of the Street (both 2008) – any expectation otherwise just about went up in smoke as Chan Marshall opened by leading her band through a rambling, mercurial “House of the Rising Sun”. A souped-up “Silver Stallion” and a rather shambolic “Lived In Bars” tipped towards the Southern soul of her well-received 2006 record The Greatest, while the moodier and less immediate material (notably a haunting rendition of Joni Mitchell’s “Blue”) had the spook.

The earthy charisma about Marshall’s not entirely comfortable stage demeanor is kinda endearing to be able to witness in real time. As the band plowed ahead adeptly on the classic country heartbreak “She’s Got You”, there was a split moment when her voice cracks, her mouth sets slightly out of joint for a second, and time briefly slips out of mind. Another moment that you won’t imagine to be easily replicable: Marshall and her band melding the connective tissues between the jazz standard “Lilac Wine” (made famous by the late great Nina Simone) and her own “Where Is My Love” in lackadaisical chorus, and inevitably turning both songs into something unrecognizable and beautifully vulnerable. Quite breathtaking stuff.

seeds of dreams #01

"I was playing at Max’s and going to summer school at City College, so I was pretty tired. But I remember sitting in Central Park just as the sun was going down over the old Atlantic building and getting my thoughts together. And then it was, ‘Oh well, time to record.’ And I walked over.” – The Velvet Underground guitarist Sterling Morrison

I suppose few things in music give me the shakes quite the way the impossibly memorable guitar lick of “Sweet Jane” on Loaded (1970) is able to hurl me into a nostalgic haze every time I hear it. Of the first four albums made by The Velvet Underground, Loaded never did get its proper dues for several reasons, despite this being the only Velvets album that resembles something of a commercial-sounding record. The band were already falling apart by then: drummer Moe Tucker was absent from the recordings because she was pregnant; main creative force Lou Reed would leave the band about the same time Loaded hit the streets. The record company fucked with three of the tracks without Reed’s consent, most significantly cutting out the “heavenly wine and roses” sequence. Or maybe these song-trinkets of unknown pop quality never had a chance to find traction among longtime fans of the avant-garde Velvets who are more accustomed to Reed’s chronicles of downtown dirt, and were simply pissed off at the commercial road Loaded was heading down with the sublimated moods of “New Age” and “I Found A Reason” – not helped that Lou comes across as being a bit bitter about the so-called “album loaded with hits” he left the band with.

Me, I just really enjoy the sprightly guitar interplay between Reed and the late Sterling Morrison and I find that on Loaded (the proto-punk nobility of “Head Held High” is so underrated), Lou achieving a nice compromise between consummate pop craftsmanship and grittier songwriting concerns.

Take the rather downbeat “New Age”: it’s sung slow and smooth in the ever-boyish voice of Doug Yule and features the subtlest of sounds, but Lou’s lyrics obsess over the career of a washed out movie starlet coming to a precipitous end (“Can I have your autograph? He said to the fine blonde actress/ You know I’ve seen every movie you’ve been in, from paths of pain to jewels of glory”). The doo-wop vocal harmonies are perfectly placed on the “I Found A Reason” while the downbeat “Oh! Sweet Nuthin’” drones on beautifully for seven and a half minutes with the kind of scowling finesse Lou Reed patented. Or maybe it would be enough to say that I have come to include one or two Loaded songs every now and then on mixtapes for girls (not all that many opportunities as suck to speak of, to be honest, but hey), especially those who have no fucking clue who is Lou Reed), or that it is my second favorite Velvets record right after The Velvet Underground and Nico (1967).

dreams made good

I did an interview with Philadelphian band A Sunny Day In Glasgow recently for www.agingyouth.com, and the Aging Youth guys are kind enough to let me reprint this here:

Over the course of their two terrific and fairly well-received full-length albums, 2007’s Scribble Mural Comic Journal and the latest Ashes Grammar (2009), A Sunny Day In Glasgow have pretty much established themselves as one of the quintessential dream-pop bands working today. Think of the mesmerizingly fogbound atmospherics of Ashes Grammar as the band’s progression to a newly mined sonic territory without actually ditching the old shoegaze template that has served them so well. The feat is perhaps even more impressive when you consider that main member Ben Daniels recorded these songs at a time when the band lineup was going through a major upheaval: bassist Brice Hickey and Daniels’ siblings Lauren and Robin weren’t able to contribute much to Ashes Grammar – for various reasons that included Brice injuring himself and Robin having to take care of him, and Lauren leaving for grad school – essentially leaving Ben to finish the album with guitarist/drummer Josh Meakim and vocalist Annie Fredrickson, and A Sunny Day In Glasgow currently operates as a six-piece (with newly recruited Ryan Newmyer, Adam Herndon and Jen Goma).

The band members might disagree or decline to comment too much on it, but this backstory somewhat weave itself into the fabric of Ashes Grammar, its chimerical nooks and crannies. Songs unfurl at a lilting psychedelic pace and seem to hollow out ecstatically in the private-space intimacy the band create. (Even though Ashes Grammar was recorded in a dance studio, the songs still largely retain the warmth or that sense of bedroom-pop ambience that we have come to identify with A Sunny Day In Glasgow.) Tunes such as “Passionate Introverts (Dinosaurs)” and “The White Witch” are such indelible pop gems that blend in seamlessly with the loose experimental fragments that circulate Ashes Grammar. “Close Chorus” is perhaps the point of illumination that best serve to unlock the autochrome effects of the album – I get such a rush every time the MBV-like guitar swoon right out of Loveless breaks in at about the 5:41 mark of this song – capturing the sedentary and yet furiously kinetic afterglow of a dream. As such, Ashes Grammar provide for sort of an insular listening experience where previous generations of listeners would have found in, say, the Cocteau Twins, and closer listening will draw you further, almost unconsciously, into the album’s shell of serenity.

We caught up with Ben, via email, to briefly discuss the making of Ashes Grammar and other sundries.

The new record Ashes Grammar sounds more expansive than Scribble Mural Comic Journal, but it also seems like the band lineup was being reshuffled at the time of the recording. Can you share with us a bit about your original set of ideas or plan for how you guys wanted Ashes Grammar to sound like, and how the album has sort of evolved in the six months or so it took for the recording to be completed?

Ben: My original plan for the album was one dominated by vocals. I was planning to work on really intricate vocal arrangements and very minimal musical arrangements. But once it became apparent that both of my sisters wouldn't be around to record it, I abandoned that plan. It's something I'd still like to try some time. But in the end, Ashes Grammar started just like Scribble Mural did – some ideas that I worked on for a while, which turned into songs. This time it was different though, because I didn't finish the demos. I left them really basic, and then Josh and I worked them out in the studio. This was fun to do, but this is also why it took six months to get the album done.

Is there any significance or meaning attached to the album title?

Ben: Absolutely! I'd rather not say what it is though.

People have started to associate the band with a certain brand of "dream-pop", and we do hear and get that sense on Ashes Grammar, where the melodies and atmospheric song elements seem to drift seamlessly from one song to the next. But when you guys are experimenting and putting together the album in the studio, are you conscious of this ambient, dreamlike feel the songs seem to tap into?

Ben: Not so much. I think it becomes more apparent in the mixing process. I knew certain songs were going to go into each other, but the atmospherics don't really become totally apparent to me until I start sitting with the recordings and trying to make everything fit.

I think most of us are aware that you guys are fans of the likes of the Cocteau Twins, Sterolab and My Bloody Valentine, but what are some of the things that have influenced or inspired the band that may not be as obvious?

Ben: It's hard to say and I feel like other people are better at picking out influences for you. I really love Sam Cooke and Buddy Holly and REM and Led Zeppelin was kind of huge for me when I was a kid. Josh is really into Yes and Hawaiian music and the Beach Boys. I think we are all really diverse in our tastes though.

Last question Ben, any chance we'll get to catch your band performing in Asia any time soon, you think? And how does experiencing A Sunny Day In Glasgow live onstage compares to the way you sound on albums?

Ben: We would all love that so much! As soon as lots and lots of people in Asia start buying our records, we are there. I feel like we are maybe a little more loud and rock-oriented live. But we now have six people in the band and we are able to be a bit more nuanced. I think our live show is a good time – lots more dancing than the records might suggest.

snow angels (2007)

The first two David Gordon Green films (2000’s George Washington and 2003’s All the Real Girls) are rather impressive, quietly affecting works that most of his subsequent films are somewhat destined to suffer by way of comparison. It definitely applies to something like Snow Angels – a modest but not particularly well-made film, in which the peculiarities in Green’s often mesmerizing observational filmmaking style barely registers. I wanted to read the Stewart O’Nan novel from which the film is adapted from before writing this – yes, I had wanted to figure whether Green’s first attempt at literary adaptation was somehow botched or was the source novel inherently flawed – but never got around to it. (Instead, I’m wallowing in prime Philip Larkin.) Also, watching Snow Angels, I never really cared about the ill-fated circumstances surrounding the grown-up coupling of the Sam Rockwell and Kate Beckinsale characters; instead, I would have much preferred Green to focus his attention more on refining the first bloom of romantic attraction between two reserved high-school students (capably played by Michael Angarano and Olivia Thirlby), who drifts in and out of the narrative like two characters in search of a country song.

know when i can escape

Even if you listen to Atlas Sound without any prior knowledge of Bradford Cox’s main band Deerhunter or any of their records, Logos would still make for a certain kind of mysterious attraction. Most of the initial attention, including when you’re listening to the CD, would undoubtedly be placed on two collaborative efforts on Logos: the dream-pop incandescence of “Walkabout”, on which Cox apparently credits Animal Collective’s Panda Bear for teaching him how to make use of music samples; Stereolab’s Lætitia Sadier singing on “Quick Canal”, a propulsive 8½-minute song that glides effortlessly on the escapist joy of its unwavering beat and crests on a defiantly blissful ambience in the face of ebbing hope (“I found wisdom is learnt, through a costly process of success and failure”). The rest of Logos, featuring mostly Cox on his own, is as uniformly brilliant. The gauzy acoustic guitar tangos dashing for daylight on “The Light That Failed” (hey, Cox reading Rudyard Kipling or something?), the kiss-me-quick urgency of “Sheila”, and the overlapping melodic cacophonies of “Criminals” all mark the coloring of progress. Remarkable progress, that is.

mixtape (january 2010)

(Wide awake on) wayside overestimations
Wire “Mercy”
Joy Division “The Sound Of Music”
The Fall “Fit And Working Again”
Public Image Ltd “Public Image”
Delta 5 “Mind Your Own Business”
Gang of Four “Damaged Goods”
Devo “Girl U Want”
Scritti Politti “Skank Bloc Bologna”
The Desperate Bicycles “Grief Is Very Private”
The Talking Heads “Memories Can’t Wait”
New Order “Ceremony”
Josef K “Revelation”
Pere Ubu “Final Solution”

Tell her what’s possible/all-day derision, is: Just when I remarked to a friend that I’m not finishing this non-definitive postpunk mix, something comes along to piss me off enough, providing enough bile for completion. Several things that “inspired” this: Simon Reynolds’ impossibly cool Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-84 of course (what a book); re-watching Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette recently (a tad unfairly maligned, maybe); crappy freelance wages and the sweltering, ever-pretentious frustrations of being, ahem, “generally unemployed” (or “positively unemployed”). The icy grandeur of Wire’s “Mercy” is an attempt of letting you in on all you need to know about postpunk in six minutes; or watch me jumpstart and wail along to David Byrne’s “these memories can’t WAAAAAIT”.

decade's best #28

There is a moment within the first 25 pages of the Haruki Murakami novel Dance Dance Dance that never fails to crack me up; that is when this hotel manager dude was sizing up the protagonist (a doppelganger for Murakami himself, as always) and wasn’t left particularly impressed by the Mickey Mouse watch on his wrist. I suppose there are times where I get the same slightly-embarrassed-for me kind of reaction too, for what it’s worth, every time people finds out that I actually listen to rap songs still. Which is why Madvillain mattered so much, perhaps.

Madvillain

Madvillainy [Stones Throw, 2004]
Amid the bustle of advertisement-filler rap artistes and their lamentable sameness choking up traffic in the past decade, Madvillainy clearly stands out for its originality, an album that best personified the surpassing wit and wisdom of underground hip-hop veterans MF Doom and Madlib in complete communion. Everything about Madvillainy was kinda special, starting with the fact that this collaboration between these two unique individuals actually worked out in the first place: Madlib’s reference-heavy production, abstract yet accessible, and as irrepressible as those classic jazz records he reveres; the barking-mad ingenuity of Doom, wilding out on the mike and spewing clever verses in his signature sketch-poetic style that left many commenting on the lack of choruses on the album; and the pulverizing rate at which this stoned duo burn through a range of alter egos in the span of 22 dope tracks – things don’t get crazier than the noticeable swagger with which Doom (in character as Viktor Vaughn) disses himself mercilessly on “Fancy Clown”. In retrospect, Madvillainy holds a special appeal perhaps because the two seem to have developed a strange, mind-meld telepathy along the way; the delirious manner Doom’s rhymes are set canoeing back and forth in answer to Madlib’s uncanny beats and samples is, regrettably, about as outdated these days as the anachronistic armor Doom sports on the album cover. A pretty persuasive case can be made that the slow, soulful and unusually poised flow of Madvillainy presents a definitive statement for making albums that transcend their genres without sacrificing their idiosyncrasies.