Quick post on a song I discovered from one of my most recent blog obsessions Hits In The Car:
Broke My Eyes – DonkeyBoy
Why does such a beautiful mixture of electronica and New Wave bliss have to come from a band with the name DonkeyBoy? That moment at 1:23 just slays me. And, like most bands I’ve been enjoying lately, they’re from Scandinavia.
In my part of the world, we’re in the middle of what’s probably the last big snowstorm of the year. It’s beautiful.
(from xkcd, a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language)
Today is the first day of SXSW, so I thought I’d wrap up by giving a quick list of all the shows I would strongly recommend. This is nowhere close to exhaustive – it’s the bands that I would make a serious effort for. I added asterisks (*) for the extra-special ones, and made it two (**) for the ones that I would really kill to see. You’ll notice there’s some serious scheduling problems, including the insanity of Okkervil River, Voxtrot, and Asobi Seksu all playing at the same time tomorrow night. I would have to go with Okkervil River, but it would kill me to miss those other two.
Where applicable, I’ve included an MP3 and link to a past review of the band.
And, while I haven’t gotten around to talking about The Cloud Cult yet, let me make a serious pitch that you go see them. Their new record is almost certainly the best I’ve heard this year.
Wednesday, 14 March 2007
09:00PM Oh No! Oh My! (Flamingo Cantina) (review)
I Have No Sister
10:00PM Beirut (Emo’s Main Room) (review)
Postcards from Italy
11:00PM The Rosebuds (Antone’s) (review)
Back to Boston
* 11:00PM Lily Allen (Stubb’s) (review)
LDN
* 12:00AM Birdmonster (Habana Calle 6 Annex) (review)
Balcony
12:00AM The Broken West (Antone’s) (review)
So It Goes
12:45AM Blonde Redhead (Emo’s Main Room) (review)
23
Thursday, 15 March 2007
* 12:00PM Marit Larsen (SESAC Day Stage Cafe Austin Convention Center) (review)
Only a Fool
10:00PM Stars Of Track And Field (Momo’s) (review)
Movies of Antarctica
** 10:00PM Cloud Cult (Emo’s Jr)
10:00PM Snowden (Lambert’s) (review)
Anti-Anti
11:00PM Architecture in Helsinki (La Zona Rosa) (review)
Do The Whirlwind
12:00AM Bloc Party (Stubb’s)
** 12:45AM Okkervil River (Mohawk Patio) (review)
The War Criminal Rises and Speaks
** 01:00AM Asobi Seksu (The Parish II) (review)
New Years
** 01:00AM Voxtrot (Emo’s Main Room) (review)
Soft and Warm
Friday, 16 March 2007
* 07:45PM Nellie McKay (Exodus) (review)
Columbia is Bleeding
09:00PM The Eames Era (BD Riley’s) (review)
When You Were a Millionaire
* 09:00PM Marit Larsen (Uncle Flirty’s Loft) (review)
Only a Fool
** 09:00PM Brandi Carlile (Austin Music Hall Ballroom Austin Convention Center) (review)
Fall Apart Again
10:00PM Six Parts Seven (Maggie Mae’s) (review)
Stolen Moments
11:00PM Amy Millan (Habana Calle 6 Annex) (review)
He Brings Out The Whiskey In Me
12:00AM WinterKids (Whisky Bar)
12:00AM Sloan (Dirty Dog Bar)
12:00AM Headlights (Red 7) (review)
TV
12:00AM Chin Up Chin Up (Maggie Mae’s) (review)
Virginia Don’t Drown
01:00AM Tullycraft (The Parish II) (review)
Twee
* 01:15AM Busdriver (Zero Degrees) (review)
Casting Agents and Cowgirls
Saturday, 17 March 2007
10:00PM Tilly and The Wall (Beauty Bar Patio) (review)
The Freest Man
11:00PM The Pipettes (Beauty Bar Patio) (review)
Pull Shapes
11:00PM The Goodnight Loving (Beerland) (review)
Dead Fish on the Banks
* 01:00AM The Kissaway Trail (Buffalo Billiards) (review)
Smother + Evil = Hurt
Updates will be sparse over the next few weeks – it’s the busiest time of year for me – but I’m back today for another quick SXSW recommendation.
If you’re at all into twee, you probably already know about Tullycraft. If not, you absolutely must listen to these two songs:
Twee
Pop Songs Your New Boyfriend’s Too Stupid To Know About
Not much to say here that you can’t hear for yourself, except to note that “Twee” is the song that first turned me onto Sarah Records and for that (as well as for one of the all-time best lines: “and she said hey hey hey, won’t you listen to me? well you can keep the punk rock ska rap beats and house, fuck me i’m twee”).
Check out Tullycraft’s SXSW page, and see them Friday, March 16 at 1:00 AM at The Parish II (214 E 6th St).
I’ve talked about The Pipettes briefly a couple times in the past year. Usually it involves me pointing out that, as much as I like them, I can’t understand why people get all googly-eyed over them in particular when tons of other great bands are doing the same thing to a lot less acclaim.
However, that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t love to see them live. They’ve got the Northern Soul, girl-group, 21st century take on Phil Spector with an apparently limitless supply of sass thing going on in spades.
Pull Shapes
It Hurts to See You Dance So Well (demo version)
I defy anyone to listen to “Pull Shapes” and not enjoy yourself. I’m not sure it can be done. Even so, despite the very just praise for that song, my favorite from them continues to be the very first song I heard: the demo version of “It Hurts to See You Dance So Well,” which is without a doubt the best 66-second song ever written. No frills, no time wasted – it’s one solid minute of glorious harmonies and head-bopping music.
Check out The Pipettes’ SXSW page, see them Saturday, March 17 at 11:00 PM at Beauty Bar Patio (617 E 7th St).
I never fell hard for Beirut the way a lot of bloggers did – the endless Neutral Milk Hotel references felt like they were grasping at straws, and it seemed like a lot of fuss about one very good song accompanied by a bunch of interesting but not spectacular ones.
Postcards from Italy – Beirut
That said, this song is really, really good. And it demonstrates that Zach Condon has loads of talent, a gift for poetic imagery, and big dreams. The rest of his work doesn’t manage to live up, but he’s still very young, and I think we can expect more great things to come. I haven’t seen Beirut live, but I’ve heard good things.
One more track, the SXSW free download:
Elephant Gun – Beirut
This is a fairly representative example of his non “Postcards From Italy” work. When he’s on (around 1:20, for example) he creates sonic landscapes as well as anyone.
I haven’t seen Beirut live, but from what I’ve heard, it’s pretty fantastic. Check out for yourself Wednesday, March 14 at 10:00 p.m. at Emo’s Main Room (603 Red River St).
Is it as good as Funeral? I can’t answer that question. Ask again in two years and maybe I’ll be able. It certainly doesn’t grab you with as much force, nor does it possess the same unaffected, almost naïve brilliance. The scope is wider, the themes broader, and the tone darker. There is no song that simply demands to be heard the way I found myself addicted to “Rebellion (Lies)” and I was underwhelmed on the whole after a couple listens.
All that said, I keep coming back, and the more I listen the better it gets. What at first felt unremittingly bleak now admits the occasional ray of hope, what seemed atonal now sounds nuanced, what felt chaotic remains that way but gains increasing beauty and purpose.
One thing cannot be denied: the uniqueness of the band is immediately apparent. People struggle to define exactly what Arcade Fire is – we know they’re post-something, but what precisely? Post-punk, post-rock, post-post? It’s a testament to their unique vision and talents that they defy such easy definition. Indeed, trying to duplicate their sound has become a bit of a cottage industry (virtually every third band on Myspace lists them in their “sounds like” section), and I’m as guilty as anyone of dropping the “sounds like Arcade Fire” line, but let’s be honest, all those imitations pale in comparison another jolt of the real deal.
The one thing I can say for sure is that they play “chamber music” but the size of the chamber can change from second to second. At one moment, it’s small and intimate, gut-wrenchingly tender. And then without warning, you suddenly find yourself in an arena of unimaginable size. The true genius of Arcade Fire is their capacity to create virtually seamless transitions between artistic chamber-pop to arena-post-rock that sounds like the heavens collapsing upon you.
However, if the general sound is the same, there are a number of important differences. This is not simply Funeral redux. It is darker, more sinister, and where Funeral grabbed and shook you to pieces, Neon Bible is filled with slow burners that may not stun you immediately but which also will not let go. “Ocean of Noise” spends three minutes teasing at the possibility of a buildup before finally providing some element of release. And even with the minor climax, the title is apt: this song is as deep and dark as the Pacific Ocean. “The Well and the Lighthouse” is pleasant but not overpowering for two and a half minutes before breaking up into a delightfully fractured waltz.
One of the strongest tracks “(Antichrist Television Blues)” gives Win Butler a chance to show some other bands how to evoke Springsteen without sounding hokey. A lament for 9/11 transforms itself into an ode for a starlet daughter, and the whole time there is an element of black humor in the delicate balancing among the hope for escape from a blue-collar life, the hypocrisy of religion, and the strength of faith. It also features some of the most enticing percussion I’ve heard in years – it is subtle but really controls the entire song.
These are just examples: every song on the record is delicately constructed and more than a few layers deep. That said, Neon Bible does suffer, in my mind, from two interlinked weaknesses that (at least for now) prevent me from declaring this the album of the year on the spot.
First, as I mentioned above, it feels calculated. The most amazing thing about Funeral was that every second felt like it simply could not be another way. The internal purpose of the song, the sound, the lyrics: all were a single, organic whole that emerged together. A scream here, a burst of strings there, it all had an artlessness that is unmatched in contemporary music. Neon Bible retains much of that strength, but hits a few bumps as well. The most notable example is the album-closer “My Body is a Cage” which feels forced in every respect. Another weak spot is the instrumentation on a number of the early tracks, which sounds patched-together and artificial. A particularly troubling example is “Intervention,” which (in spite of this) is probably the best track. Perhaps it is simply that I’ve grown accustomed to the pared-down acoustic version which has been floating around for a couple years, but I can’t help but feel that this is a intensely personal song forced to become “Rebellion (Lies), Part II.”
The second weakness is thematic. Where Funeral was intensely personal and (because of this) achieved a sense of universality, Neon Bible attempts to widen the scope to doom and gloom in the broadest sense. We are treated to imagination of the end of the world, uncrossable rivers, empty streets, a world encased in darkness. Where Funeral was about dealing with loss of loved ones, Neon Bible is about an entire world gone mad. The problem is that apocalypse is global, but redemption can only be personal. By focusing too much on the former, the few flashes of hope are quashed before they ever get a chance to develop. Another manifestation is melodic. The second half of “Black Wave/Bad Vibrations,” for example, is stunning in its ability to generate a mood – when I listen to it, I keep looking outside to confirm that we’re not in the middle of a nuclear war. Yet, the effort to create this atmosphere seems to come before the desire to enrich the song with a melody or to give this tension and avenue of release. Similarly, “Black Mirror” is extremely well-constructed but I can’t help but feel that it’s little bit long on the spooky and a little short on the melody. Over several albums they have made clear the importance of atmospherics, but you have to wonder if there’s a limit to how far it can take you.
To put it another way: the album is short on climaxes (or, to be fair, is short on climaxes compared to what we might hope for – they still blow 99.99% of bands to smithereens in this department), because those emerge in the battle between competing elements. The crushing weight is rarely lifted enough to admit room for anything else. This is especially true on the album’s first half, with the darker-than-dark “Black Mirror” followed by the quick paced but not particularly imaginative “Keep the Car Running” and the album’s major downer: “Neon Bible” which appears to be a half-song, a kernel of an idea that never turns into anything else. They tease without giving release.
These two factors combine to create a record that wants so desperately to be meaningful that it, on occasion, overreaches. In an ideal world, meaning emerges spontaneously – it is not manufactured. The line between these two is a very fine one, and it is up to each listener to decide whether they cross it. For me, though, I think Neon Bible risks forcing into existence a world that is bleak beyond repair.
To be clear, I do not mean to suggest that the album simply needs a couple happy songs to balance the mood. Instead, I think they would have been well-served by a one or two more songs like “Intervention,” which bites as deeply as anything else on the record, but does so by giving a particular, personal incarnation to the pressing darkness (“Been working for the church while your life falls apart / Been singing ‘Hallelujah’ with the fear in your heart”). Here, the apocalypse is not some relentless, undefined force that exists outside ourselves – it is born of our own hypocrisy, mistakes, and terror. The condemnation in “Intervention” is so stinging because it is a catastrophe of our own making.
Contrast this with the unremittingly bleak “Black Mirror” which appeals to a sense of inescapable doom that transcends our own existence (“Black mirror knows no reflection, knows not pride or vanity / Cares not about your dreams, cares not for your pyramid schemes / Their names are never spoken / The curse is never broken, the curse is never broken”). The song is not bad, by any stretch, but it could be improved with a small dose of ambiguity. If there appears to be no hope, there is also no urgency. And without that, the music no matter how well-constructed, can’t help but feel slightly flat.
I am not looking for false optimism that a single individual could somehow fix such deep crises embedded in the structure of our lives. Rather, just some admittance that, in whatever small way, there is hope for something else.
They only take on this project once, in what ought to have been the album closer: “No Cars Go.” It’s strange that a song written long before the rest (released before Funeral on the Arcade Fire LP) could be such a perfect capstone. Whereas most of the album is full of lyrical flourishes, this song is a lesson in simplicity, with lyrics that do not really progress beyond “We know a place where no planes go / We know a place where no ships go / Hey! / No cars go”. Against the nightmare of a distant and detached society, they offer a utopian dream of transcending the confines of a post-industrial society so fixated on movement that it has lost the ability to imbue itself with meaning. It is the light at the end of the tunnel, which perhaps is powerful precisely because it is placed in contrast to the hopelessness of the earlier songs. Perhaps, we are left to wonder, that terminal blackness was prophetic instead of descriptive, a warning.
We are then left to ponder the album’s title: Neon Bible. Holiness is corrupted, transcendence is made material, and all that which we ought to value is burned on the altar of our own sanctity. In that context, this song is the true rebirth, the resurrection of our own beliefs and desires – a ‘Hallelujah’ uttered in the spirit of simplicity. It is telling that one small variation on the chorus produces the line “Us kids know.”
It is the climax long-awaited, not just thematically, but also musically – with a bubbling pace and a looseness that cannot be found earlier.
And yet, we are still left to wonder: is this the ray of hope it seems to be, or is it instead a sly take on a post-apocalyptic world. Is it a prayer for peace or a grim warning of all that we might destroy? Perhaps it is both – a recognition that our greatest discoveries become our worst mistakes, but also that we are not completely adrift in a sea without meaning.
It is ultimately up to the individual listener to decide. Does this song, in all its beauty and complexity, crack the façade of hopelessness cultivated elsewhere on the record? Does the unfortunate decision to include the melodramatic “My Body is a Cage” drag the record down just as it was reaching escape velocity? I remain undecided. As I listen more, the fissures may wider, the pathos may deepen, and its emotional resonance may grow. Or not. But the fact that after so many listens I am still struggling to define my relationship with the record by itself proves that they have created something with far more depth than the usual musical fare.
This invites a final point: Neon Bible deserves to be listened to the whole way through. In an era of MP3s, it’s very easy to siphon off a couple of the best tracks and ignore the rest of the record. On most records, you won’t lose anything from doing so. This is not such a record. “Intervention” is a great song, but it is far more powerful in the context of the album’s progression. And while “Black Mirror” fails to appeal to me all that much on its own, when counterpoised with “No Cars Go” the reverberation of meaning and tone creates a gestalt whole that transcends each individual component.
The final verdict: this is a very good record. It might be a great one. Either way, there is no denying that the run of seven tracks from “Intervention” to “No Cars Go” is as good as anything you’ll hear this year.
MP3:
Black Mirror
Continuing the project of exploring some of the fantastic bands you could see if you’re lucky enough to be attending SXSW this month, today’s focus is the Danish band The Kissaway Trail. I’ve only heard one song from them, but that song is so good, I feel no compunctions about making a recommendation.
Smother + Evil = Hurt – The Kissaway Trail
The big news this week is Arcade Fire, with the much-anticipated release of Neon Bible tomorrow (my review is soon to come), and while I wouldn’t go so far as to declare this band “the next Arcade Fire,” it’s hard to listen to them and not make a comparison. This song is epic, heartbreaking, tender, and the vocals tear at your heart. They’ve got the soft/loud dynamic, the orchestral swells that never feel clichéd, and a coda that ratchets up the emotion to a whole new plane. It all adds up to something seriously impressive.
I would not be remotely surprised if they blew up in a serious way on the strength of a killer show at SXSW. My advice: jump on the bandwagon now so you can say you were a fan before they were big. If they’re unlikely to quite reach the heights of an Arcade Fire, I don’t think it’s remotely a stretch to say they could be the next Mercury Rev. Which is still pretty impressive.
I’ve been trying for most of the afternoon to get a hold of their self-titled record which this song is from, but to no avail. It’s currently out in Denmark, but won’t be released in the rest of the world until next month (and who knows how long it will take to get to the US). I managed to get into the Denmark iTunes store and listen to the clips form the songs which was enough to convince me that this could easily end up as one of my favorite records of 2007…assuming I ever manage to hear the whole thing.
Check out The Kissaway Trail’s SXSW page, see them Saturday, March 17 at 1:00 AM at Buffalo Billiards (201 E 6th St).
Another day, another post about SXSW bands. Very quick one today since I’ve got work to do and Settlers of Catan to plan. Also, I’m about half a year behind the curve on even posting this band in the first place. So if you want to hear and discover more, you can always check out the Hype Machine.
Anti-Anti – Snowden
The band is Snowden, and while they never appealed to me quite as much as some similar “blog bands” (Birdmonster and the Sound Team for example), this song rocks pretty darn well. And they strike me as the sort of band who would put on a killer live show.
Check out Snowden’s SXSW page, see them Thursday, March 15 at 10:00 PM at Lambert’s (401 W 2nd St).
I wasn’t going to post on The Broken West, since virtually every other blog in the world already has, but since I’ve decided to highlight some of the good shows at SXSW, I couldn’t let them slip past again.
So It Goes – The Broken West
If you like power-pop in the vein of Sloan, Teenage Fanclub, the Posies, and a whole slew of other great bands from the early 90s, you’ll probably like The Broken West, too. And if you also like Big Star, the Byrds, and early Wilco then the dappled bits of Americana which adorn these tracks will only make you swoon all the more.
Check out The Broken West’s SXSW page, see them Wednesday, March 14 at 12:00 AM at Antone’s (213 W 5th St), and buy their album I Can’t Go On I’ll Go On.
A little bit of minor business first. I’ve switched the feed for the blog. It can now be accessed here. The old one will still work so there’s no real need to change, but the new one is through Feedburner, which gives me a slightly better sense of who is subscribed and how they’re reading. And I’ve heard that a few people have been having minor problems with the Blogger-based feed. Doesn’t matter too much, but go ahead and make the switch if it’s no trouble.
Onto the music…It’s come to my attention that there is some kind of music festival going on down in Texas this month. Now I’ve never been to South by Southwest myself, and won’t be attending this year either, but I’ve got some friends who will be there that have been asking for band recommendations. So I thought I could devote the next week or so to bands who’ll be playing SXSW that are well-deserving of your attention. Of course, these bands are all great and get my stamp of approval independent of the theme, so even if you’re not going to be in Austin, you’ll want to check them out.
First on the docket is The Goodnight Loving, who sound more like the Exploding Hearts than anyone I’ve heard in years.
Dead Fish on the Banks – The Goodnight Loving
Don’t let the title throw you: this track is a delightful mixture of pop, punk, macabre lyrics, and reckless energy. It’s the kind of song that just demands to be played at full volume while you’re driving down the highway on a sunny afternoon.
Check out The Goodnight Loving’s SXSW page, and see them Saturday, March 17 at 11:00 PM at Beerland (711 1/2 Red River St).
