Heartache With Hard Work

I first heard “Elevator Love Letter” in January, 2004, and it was an absolute revelation.  Ever since then I’ve been convinced that Stars have a truly world-class album in them.  2005’s Set Yourself On Fire hinted at this, but never quite arrived.  Then came In Our Bedroom After The War which was fine, but given my lofty expectations couldn’t help but be a major letdown.  What happened to the glitter, the magic, the feeling that something pure beyond belief was spilling out of your speakers?  I mean, I understand the desire to expand your sonic territory, but when you can make songs as achingly beautiful as “Elevator Love Letter” or “Ageless Beauty” why wouldn’t you do so?

Since then, we got the Sad Robots EP a couple years ago, with five mediocre tracks and one piece (“14 Forever”) that reminded me of just how amazing they can be.

Well, their new full-length is due out next month, and the big question is which iteration they’re going to be working with.  Based on the one track I’ve heard so far, things are looking promising.

Fixed – Stars

“Fixed” has the same full-fledged energy as the best songs from Set Yourself on Fire, and put Amy Millan’s voice right at the front – where it ought to be.  Most importantly, it’s driven by an impulse to go big and bright.  The keyboards twinkle and dance, the vocals are full of the sort of lilting swings and dances that make my heart feel all fluttery.  The only complaint I’ve got is that it never quite hits the top gear.  You get the sense that a big chorus–or going in the precise opposite direction, a bridge to cool things off–would turn this from a good song into something capable of stopping the world.

While we’re on the subject, you can hear the second song streaming at Pitchfork.  “We Don’t Want Your Body” has a much more prominent 80s vibe and strays a bit too far into  disco-synth territory but it’s hard to argue with the energy on display there.

Blood – The Middle East

In a continuing effort to balance blogging demands with actual life, I’m just going to piggy-back on a great song I ‘discovered’ today thanks to Music for Kids Who Can’t Read Good.  The band is called The Middle East, though they sound a lot more like a windswept Scandinavian night to me.

Things start slow on this track, but you’ll definitely want to stick around.  After a couple minutes the chiming bells and gentle plucking of strings grows into a wordless chorus with horns and singing bells and horns that explode like fireworks.  It’s big and bright and glorious and beautiful and sad all at the same time.

This is  a song for those who like The Arcade Fire but wish they had a bit more restraint, or who like Sufjan but wish he wasn’t quite so precise and exacting.

The Sight of Love – The Camerawalls (featuring Sarah Gaugler)

Continuing the theme of songs that sound like they come out of the Sarah Records catalog, here’s one from The Camerawalls.  They’re from the Philippines of all places but listening to this track you can’t help but imagine them sitting around a record studio with The Field Mice in Bristol circa 1993.

It’s got that light and jangly guitar, tempered by the slightly downtrodden vocal progression.  The whole thing feels effortless, an expression of simple joy at waking up each day with something to live for.

I feel like I never have time for anything anymore, which is really frustrating.  But in the interest of denying rumors that the blog has officially died, here’s a song to tide you over while I grade approximately 5o million papers and read 10 books and write endless papers.

Kirsty – Maple Leaves

This is Scottish folk-pop of the finest variety.  All the obvious references seem appropriate: Stuart Murdoch, Camera Obscura, etc.  But really they sound more like an old Sarah Records band than anything else – with that little guitar lick that rolls over you like a light breeze over the hilltops.

You can download their 2-song EP for free here. Hat tip to Another Form of Relief for introducing me to the band.

For Things that Haven’t Come Yet – Nana grizol

I won’t even pretend to have a grasp on the intricacies of the British electoral system.  I get the broad contours of it but when people start talking about how to wrangle a ‘Queen’s speech through parliament’ I tend to get a little lost.  None of which prevents me from being fascinated watching the results come in today.

As far as I can tell, the only real question left is how much the Conservatives win by.  There’s a small chance they’ll get sufficient seats to simply form a government on their own.  But the likelier result is that they come up 10-20 seats short and then the real fireworks begin as Labour scrambles to try to build a coalition of sufficient size to get themselves a working government. It seems unlikely, though.  Even if the votes might theoretically be there I have a feeling it’s going to be hard to actually hold them together in the face of what (let’s face it) is a pretty catastrophic loss.

In many ways, it’s similar to what’s likely to happen in November on this side of the ocean – where it’s virtually certain that Democrats will suffer a major loss of seats in Congress, but are at least somewhat likely to hold on to both houses.  And the question then will be how they actually govern (or if they CAN govern at all).

I’ve been mostly following things on the Guardian’s election blog.  Anyone have advice for a better place to go?

The idea that over half of people polled approve of the new Arizona immigration law is…disturbing?  Sad?  Terrifying?  I don’t know. Maybe all of the above.

I don’t really have much to say other than that.  What a country…

I guess the only solace is that I would imagine that the people who like it are somewhat split between the racist loonies who really like it and a bunch of other people who might like it but probably aren’t going to make it the central component of their political thinking.  Meanwhile the people that hate it include a LOT of people who really really really hate it. And some of them used to be swing voters.

Am I grasping at straws here?

So I’m a lot less invested in this financial reform business than I was with health care reform.  Part of it is simply that I don’t really understand what is going on.  My grasp on economics is rough at best, and this stuff is insanely complicated.  The episodes from This American Life about the crisis are good and everything, but they don’t really prepare you to make judgments about the details of regulatory reform.

As far as I can make out, the bill that’s going to pass will be good-not-great.  That’s in part because (unlike health care where the best case scenario was quite obvious, if politically infeasible) I don’t think there is any clear sense of what is definitely the right way to go.

I’m inherently skeptical of full-throated populism, for two reasons.  First, it can so easily get turned toward anti-intellectual ‘throw all the bums out’ sort of stupidity that does no one any good.  But also because it scares me how easily it bleeds into the kind of destructive nationalism.  Anger is good, but unfocused rage is a dangerous and scary.

That said, I find it hard to figure out if in this particular instance the people who are calling for mobs and pitchforks are really wrong.  My interest in justice is usually pretty cerebral but it’s hard to keep things balanced when you start to understand just how badly these people messed things up, and just how reasonable it was for them to do so, given the constraints (or lack thereof) they were working with.  So while I don’t want to assign excessive blame the particular people in these Wall Street firms and hedge funds and such, I do want to align myself with the idea that there is something seriously wrong in the state of Denmark.

But, as I said, that’s a feeling more than something I can state definitively.  I’m not interested in revenge for its own sake.  If it turns out that the best thing going forward involves a light hand I’m not going to demand more just to ease my feelings of anger.

All of that is a (long) preface to my thoughts on the political elements of this fight–something I do feel confident speaking about.

Yesterday, the Democrats attempted to get the bill to the floor.  Not to vote on the bill, just to bring it to the floor so it can be debated, amended, etc.  And the Republicans filibustered.  Which is just insane, and–even more than all health care shenanigans–clarifies just how absurd our Congressional system has become.

The Republicans, remember, were up in arms just a month ago about backroom deals. So now, they demand…that the Democrats work out some backroom deals before they’ll let the bill even come to the floor for public debate.  Don’t get me wrong–I think the fetishization with publicity in law-making is silly.  That’s not the issue.  The real matter is simply that we have an institutional structure which is premised on the idea that the elements within it will operate in good faith.  And we have a political culture which is virulently opposed to operating in good faith.  It’s a deadly mixture.

People are a flutter with the news that Congress is suffering the lowest ratings in history.  How is this surprising?

As Joe Klein says:

You’d think it would be in everyone’s best interests to get this Wall Street Reform passed quickly, elegantly, overwhelmingly and without games, since it’s something that the American people favor by huge margins. But this Congress is one sick culture.

It’s a great time to be an American, I guess.

Impression – Young Adults

A beautifully prepared slice of post-punk noise, guitars that dance on the end of hooks like they’re being battered, snarly vocals, and all of this drenched in a sort of washed-out almost shoegazy blend of reverb and carefully plucked notes.

Young Adults manage to accomplish the difficult feat of sounding like about a million other bands but still being just a little bit ineffable.  So, if you like the Pixies or Nirvana or Dinosaur Jr. or basically any garage rock band ever you’re probably going to like these guys – but they don’t really sound precisely like any of their influences.  They’re loud, enthusiastic, tightly-wound, and completely irresistible.

To put it another way: the craze for No Age a couple years ago would be far more deservedly be directed at Young Adults.  They’ve only got a demo out right now, but hopefully a full-length is on its way soon.

Someday Maybe – City Light

It’s a pretty easy path to my heart if you’ve got band members from both Seattle (my home-ish town) and the Bay Area (where I’m living these days).  It also helps if you can write a great hook.  And even more if you can breathe a little bit of life into what often promises to be a stale and worn out genre.

City Light manages to check all those boxes.  The basic riff that drives “Someday Maybe” is clean and bright, but they douse it in enough distortion to give it some heft.  Sure, you can’t help but think about that Conor Oberst album from a few years ago when you hear the world-weary, dusty folk-singer meets newfangled electronics vibe.  But that’s fine.  I was all set to offer a really illuminating piece of insight and suggest that it actually sounds a lot like a Her Space Holiday record…and then I discovered that Marc Bianchi is actually part of City Light these days.  So, yeah, it’s not too surprising that’s its got that sort of feel.

The album is called Burned Out Bright.

Armour – Uber Glitterati

You miss the 80s?  So do Uber Glitterati.  But unlike you, where nostalgia only generates an impulse to watch re-runs of Alf, they’re actually doing something productive.

“Armour” would sound perfectly at home on an OMD record, with all the gentle pop sensibility that implies.  They’ve really captured the sensation of gently undulating synths which hold aloft vocals that hint at silky smoothness but offer just enough ethereal movement to keep you guessing.

Check out a bunch more tracks from Soundcloud.