Heartache With Hard Work

Folder – Plastic Operator

Plastic Operator appear to be some sort of European electro-pop group. I had never heard of them, but an enterprising reader was kind enough to send me this great track. Then I checked the Hype Machine and apparently they’re relatively well-known, at least as far as the blogs go. Who knew?

Anyways, this song is totally cheesy, all awkward romantic fumblings and synths that bubble merrily along, and I mean that in absolutely the best way possible. There’s a part of me that wants it all to be so simple. And while this kind of stuff occasionally sounds like it comes straight from a button on an old Casio keyboard, that kind of simplicity is hard to actually produce. And check out the moment about 90 seconds in with the strings – beautiful.

I’ve posted about The Sinister Turns a few times before, but it never hurts to mention one of my favorite under-appreciated bands a little bit more. I managed to catch them last month at a little show in Somerville that was a lot of fun – they have some new songs that maintain the feel of their other stuff but take things in some slightly odd, extremely interesting directions.

I’ll be excited to hear final versions of those songs, but for now, I just wanted to link to a neat little interview at Stranded In Stereo with Susan from the band (who wisely identifies Grendel’s Den as the best bar in Harvard Square).

Zolpidem – The Sinister Turns
The Last Time – The Sinister Turns

And seriously, who here among us can turn down a great ukulele- driven pop song? Not I.

I just discovered Down the Oubliette – an archive of hundreds of Okkervil River shows – which is both a good and a bad thing.

Good because ZOMG basically infinite Okkervil River!!!!!!1111oneone

But bad because I really don’t have the time to sit down and comb through hundreds of shows for my single favorite version of every song. For now, here’s an achingly beautiful version of one of their more underrated tracks.

Okkervil River Song – recorded for VPRO Radio in the Netherlands, September 23, 2003

It’s like the anti-Springsteen – no grand gestures, no motion, just clasped hands as you stare at the dirt and the grime, huddled and happy, and a dull ache when it’s all gone.

With your hand inside my pocket, you whispered in my ear
“We have come from ugliness to find some refuge here
With this bracken for a blanket, where these limbs stick out like bones
We have found a place where we can be alone.”
Far away our parents slept in while we watched our fire burn
They dreamed of nothing and got nothing in return

And the water slipped on slowly past our bodies in the weeds
Pulling plastic wrap and razors on its current through the reeds
Then I woke up one cold morning, felt an absence at my back
And I searched and stared but only the river stared back

Update: Okay, one more song. I’ve been looking for a version of “Westfall” that could match the forcefulness of when I saw them last year. This one doesn’t quite do it, but it’s pretty devastating nonetheless.

Westfall – Jakes’ Bar and Grille in Providence, July 15, 2007

1976 – Nick Schillace

A quiet evening, good friends, the smell of a fresh summer evening, toes tapping in beat, smiles, a cool cup of sweet tea.

A crystal clear memory of when you were young and the whole world seemed new.

A summer dress – grass-stained and beautiful, running through shaded paths in the woods behind the house, hair flowing freely behind you.

A first kiss – awkward and perfect, a crooked smile, eyes that shine and sparkle.

Nick Schillace is an acoustic guitar player from Detroit. This song is from his new record Landscape and People, coming out March 18th on NC’s Burly Time Records.

I’ve never been a huge fan of The Notwist, but I’ve certainly enjoyed some of their stuff. So the prospect of something new from them certainly piqued my interest.

Good Lies – The Notwist

And I have to say, it doesn’t disappoint. At the risk of coming off like a complete Philistine, let me just say that this track is a decent representation of what I’m always hoping for every time I put on a new Radiohead record. It’s got the same sleek, electronic, guitar-driven feel – like an endlessly flickering electrical circuit on the fritz – and the same mixture of despondency and starry-eyed wonder in the vocals. Except that the difference is…well…I actually enjoy listening to this song.

I enjoy melodies, what can I tell you?

The Devil, You + Me is out in June, from Domino.

The Mending of the Gown – Sunset Rubdown

How in the world did I miss this one until now?

I guess that since I wasn’t particularly impressed with the last Sunset Rubdown record, I just didn’t pay much attention to the new one. Which means I’m only now getting around to actually listening. But man, this is almost as good (if not better) than anything from Wolf Parade.

It leaps effortlessly across genres, with a little prog-guitar, some nice little piano bits, and lyrics that constantly threaten to trip over themselves as Krug pushes hard to get every encrypted thought out. Lord help me if I have any clue what it’s about, but it’s so chock full of delightful lyrical turns that I want to listen over and over to try and decipher them all.

I guess this all means it’s time for me to go buy Random Spirit Lover and find out if the rest is as good.

White China – Fever Marlene

More quick hits. This time it’s a very quick little track, less than two minutes, beautiful and sparse. It’s got a wispy, sentimental feel – like a quiet summer evening spent on a porch, reminiscing about past loves.

Fever Marlene are also great because, as far as I can tell, they have all their music available for free online. [edit: no, actually it isn’t. I guess it was just a press version that was free. Or something. Go here to actually order the record]

Once again, it’s the time of year when I’ve got way too much else going on to justify spending much time writing about music. So instead of doing some of the full reviews I keep promising to get around to, I’m going to put those in a holding pattern of indefinite length and try something else. For the next couple weeks, it’ll be a new song every day (or at least every day I get around to posting).

But not just “new” in the sense of being current – it will literally be a song that I had never heard until that day. Usually I give myself at least a couple weeks with something to let my opinions settle a bit. But the result is that I spend a *lot* of time trying to come up with a perfect way of describing my reaction.

For the next two weeks I want to go in the opposite direction: fleeting reactions, first impressions, and mad impulses. However long it takes to listen to the song is how long I get to write about it. And we’ll just have to see if that produces anything interesting.

Run Away From The Suits – Aster

First on the list is Aster, a band which I have a very hard time classifying. You want to call them shoegaze, but this song is so much warmer than that. I guess there’s a little bit of space rock, but there’s a strong pop sensibility here that doesn’t really gel with that. And while they do rock a bit, the sound is far more characterized by gentle swells punctuated by a few slightly more heavy interludes. Still, trippy beats and lush synths notwithstanding, this is not simply pop music.

I guess I’ll settle on calling it keyboard-driven dream pop, but even that leaves something unsaid. Whatever it is, it sure puts me in a good mood.

Get Some Things Seldom Heard Of here.

Digital Love – Miracle Fortress

Sometimes you hear something that just totally blindsides you. I mean, who would have guessed? Sure, it kind of makes sense if you think about it, but never in a million years could I have imagined myself saying “you know what my life is really missing: a Miracle Fortress cover of a Daft Punk song.” And yet, I listen to this and discover that it is precisely what I needed.

It’s the perfect kind of cover. One which makes you run through several thoughts in rapid succession.
1. Man, I really like that song – I haven’t even thought of it for what, a few years?
2. Wait a second, this cover is like…totally different and yet exactly the same
3. Hmmm, I really need to listen to the original now
4. But actually, I mostly just need to listen to this cover some more. A lot more.

The Fall of Math – 65daysofstatic

Several years old in the real world but totally new to me is The Fall of Math, the debut album from the post-rock instrumental group 65daysofstatic. I reviewed their most recent record last year, but somehow never managed to pick up their first one, perhaps because it’s never had an official US release.

Well, that’s about to change. A copy came in the mail for me recently to celebrate the upcoming North Americana release and to set the stage for a huge upcoming tour.

I wanted to write about this record for two reasons. First, because it’s great and I’ve been listening to it a lot. Second, it creates an opportunity to make a meta-comment on the way we approach music.

I love writing a blog for a lot of reasons. One of the big ones is that it encourages me to constantly be seeking out new music – something which is clearly good but hard to force yourself to keep up with without some external motivation. However, there are times when I wonder if the whole culture of music blogs creates an unfortunate obsession with recency.

Everyone wants to be cutting edge and only talk about the newest records, to be ahead of the parade of hype, to think about everything in the context of whether it has any chance of making your end-of-the-year list. And all of that is more than a little silly. There is so much good music out there that there is literally no chance that I’ve heard all the good music from any past year, and I think it’s useful now and then to stop, take a breath, and let the music take you over instead of the other way around.

There’s also an interesting phenomenon of constantly being introduced to bands with a back catalog of many years. It’s kind of disarming in terms of trying to write a review. The usual fallback is to compare the new record with the artist’s past work. What have they changed, what remains the same, what does this tell us about the progression of their sound and approach to music? But now, none of that makes sense anymore. You’re left in the curious position of knowing the ending while reading the opening chapter.

All of that is a long way round for me to say that it’s difficult for me to conceptualize The Fall of Math. It’s clearly the same band I was introduced to last year on The Destruction Of Small Ideas, but in some sense this record stands outside of time. It’s the sound of half-thought ideas that flit away before you even know what they are, of a dark shape flickering in and out of your peripheral vision.

But it’s also forceful, aggressive. It crackles like parched pine needles in a campfire – a quick burst of heat and light, gone before you know it.

And then, without warning, it’s gone. The moment when a flock of birds disintegrates…the formation breaks and out of one, many – each moving alone now. There’s something magical about the chaos of it all. There is a logic, a mathematical precision that underlies it all, but it so transcends our simple capacity for prediction that we are left with nothing to do but wonder.

65daysofstatic are on tour with The Cure. Check out their page for all the dates.