Heartache With Hard Work

Oh Jenny and Blake, why have you forsaken me?

We’ve had some good times, haven’t we? I can still remember the first time I heard a Rilo Kiley record, how beautiful I thought “So Long” was, how my heart stuck in my throat when I heard you sing “It’s so fucking beautiful,” and how I felt like you had peered directly into my soul with “A Better Son/Daughter.”

Of course I knew that it couldn’t last forever. After all, time goes on, we grow up and drift apart. I just never thought it would be like this.

I was anticipating an amicable fadeout – an old friend who you see every once in a while and reminisce about old times. Instead, it’s like an ex-girlfriend who got really into goth or meth or Scientology or something after you broke up. In fact, you have a hard time even remembering how you could have loved this person in the first place. Was this always buried in there somewhere and I just didn’t notice? And then, for just a few seconds, the old person shines through and it all comes crashing back, but then she starts talking about the ARC triangle and “livingness” and you make your excuses and back away quietly.

I’ll admit, my high hopes were a little tempered by Jenny Lewis’ pleasant but bland Rabbit Fur Coat. The reaction was so positive from critics and fans that it seemed inevitable they would continue in that direction. Why keep making effervescent and clever music when you can bring in the fans by dulling the edges and making a mainstream pop record?

And the result of such calculations: Under the Blacklight, a record with a few nice melodies buried underneath several tons of photoshoots and soulless production. The record’s “theme” of seedy lives being exposed was very cutting edge in 1983, I’m sure, but which is so cliched by this point that it has about as much emotional resonance as an episode of Miami Vice.

It can be divided into the following categories
– Songs that are soul-crushingly boring (Close Call, Dreamworld, Smoke Detector, Give a Little Love)
– Songs that are obnoxiously self-satisfied (Dejalo)
– Songs that think they’re dark and sexy but actually are just embarrassing (The Moneymaker, Dejalo again)
– Songs that think they’re an interesting juxtaposition of genres, but turn out to be stale retreads of a million mediocre 80s bands (Breakin’ Up, Dejalo AGAIN)
– Songs that seem to operate on the premise that if you add horns to an irrelevant track it turns into gold (15)
– Songs that try to rise out of the muck around them but are just a little too precious and insignificant to make it (Silver Lining, Under the Blacklight)
– The one moment where they show us something new and wonderful – what the whole record would have sounded like if I had my way (The Angels Hung Around)

Some will say this is just progress, that they’re trying to be more serious, to rise above their past and make a record that means something. And they’ll point to a bunch of love songs in their earlier works and some sophomoric lyrics on tracks like “It’s a Hit.” But those people would be wrong. Simple subject matter does not make a record insignificant. And the untutored lyrics were part of the charm. You didn’t demand perfection because you cared far more about how it felt than how it looked in a glossy magazine.

Because the long and short is that those old records were fun. They felt like real life, with some bumps and rough edges but natural and carefree for all that. In contrast, Under the Blacklight feels like a beer commercial – and not even a particularly good one. It’s a gritty TV show pummeled into meaninglessness by a hundred executive meetings.

I disagree with a lot of Pitchfork reviews, but their take on this one was pretty spot-on: “It’s the prerogative and privilege of any pop act to change direction. It’s one of the things that makes pop music so exciting. But change always carries a degree of risk, and in the case of Rilo Kiley’s fourth album Under the Blacklight, it manifests a wonderful sense of irony: Under the Blacklight is Rilo Kiley’s riskiest album because it’s their album that takes the least risks.”

That’s exactly right, and it’s a shame because they are clearly one of the most talented and inventive bands around. But they took the easy way out on this one, and they need to be called out for it.

MP3s:
The Angels Come Around (which is really quite lovely)
A Better Son/Daughter (from 2002’s fantastic The Execution of All Things)

Am I the only one who doesn’t get Radiohead? I mean, I keep listening to their new records because I love “Fake Plastic Trees” more than oxygen, but I never really got the big deal about OK Computer, and understand less and less with every new disc.

So they released the newest one without any fanfare, on the internet, for free (or whatever people wanted to give them). And all that is pretty cool. Except that the $0.00 I paid for it is a pretty close approximation to how much enjoyment I’m going to get out of it.

Well, I guess I like “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi�” enough that I’ll probably listen to it 5-10 times in the next few months. So maybe I should chip in a quarter. Meh.

Don’t get me wrong – I totally get that they are technically proficient and put together some very interesting stuff. It just surprises me how this somehow became the band that everyone could agree on.

Anyways, how awesome is this version from the Clueless soundtrack (one of the all-time great soundtracks by the way)?

Fake Plastic Trees (acoustic) – Radiohead

Yesterday I mentioned Labrador – without a doubt one of my favorite record labels in the world. Today, I want to hype up another Labrador band, probably my favorite in fact: Club 8. I raved about “Whatever You Want,” the opening single from their new record back in May.

That album The Boy Who Couldn’t Stop Dreaming (eMusic) is out now, and I’m happy to report that it’s every bit as good as I was hoping. “Whatever You Want” remains the most immediately catchy track, but plenty of these songs are stunning in their own right.

In particular, the opening track “Jesus, Walk With Me” has to be one of the most tender, personal, and heartfelt songs of this millennium. Karolina Komstedt has always had a beautiful voice, but this time she officially transcends the mortal plane, resting alone with a broken heart and the sparse accompaniment of a finger-picked guitar. It’s also one of the most honest and compassionate musical takes on the meaning of faith I’ve ever heard.

The third track “Football Kids” strikes a balance between the first two, with a quiet verse that bleeds into a rousing chorus and the light touch of an organ.

The rest can’t quite live up to the magic of those first three tracks, with a few too many low-tempo atmospheric tracks, but there is more than enough to keep you interested. The upbeat tandem of “Heaven” and “When I Come Around” anchor the middle of the record, while “Leave the North” may be the darkest sounding track they’ve ever produced. The record closes out with a few tracks that hearken back to their earlier work – gentle acoustic ballads that make you remember what it was like to fall in love for the first time. And it’s all capped off by the title track, a pure demonstration of the joy of song.

I’ve always felt that Club 8 had an amazing talent for conveying seasonal relationships. The same song could feel like a perfect summer song in July and then exemplify the beauty of a long winter night a few months later. This facet of their sound is fully explored on The Boy Who Couldn’t Stop Dreaming. On song after song I can hear, all at once, the gentle rays of the spring sun, an idyllic summer afternoon, the leaves of autumn drifting slowly to the ground, and a blanket of winter snow. And most of all you sense the beauty of now – this one moment in time – and how it relates to every other imaginable instant.

MP3s:
Jesus, Walk With Me
Whatever You Want

I rant and rave about how much I love all the fantastic indie-pop music coming out of Sweden, but set all that aside. Yes Sambassadeur are from Sweden, yes they’re on Labrador, and yes they make pop songs so sweet you could get a mouth full of cavities just listening to them (remember Kate? God I love that song).

However, all that means absolutely nothing when put into the context of the first song available from their new record Migration. It’s called “Subtle Changes” and it takes everything that made their past work great (a lilting beat, a deft touch of strings, and vocals that wrap around you like your favorite blanket on a winter morning as you watch the snow fall), and adds enough force to knock you over.

Subtle Changes – Sambassadeur

From the first moment, with those soaring strings and galloping beat you know you are in for something special. And it only gets better once the vocals join the fray, as smooth as can be. Then, there’s that horn solo, as brilliantly off-kilter as any I’ve ever heard.

This is a song to be treasured, to be listened to on repeat as you begin the long task of healing a broken heart. It’s the kind of song that reassures you – any world with music so beautiful can’t be all bad.

According to their page at Labrador (where you can stream the whole thing), the new album is due out on October 24. I have a feeling that’s the release date for Europe, but hopefully it’ll make its way over to these parts sometime soon. I’m not normally one for listening to streaming music, but I went over there just to get a taste and listened to the whole record. It’s really good.

So Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize. Good for him. My favorite quote on the subject, from Talking Points Memo:

“You know, with Al Gore winning the Nobel Prize for his environmental activism, it really makes the Nader voters look prescient, doesn’t it?”

For serious.

Tessie – The Dropkick Murphys
Dirty Water – The Standells
The Bartender’s Song – The Mighty Mighty Bosstones

In (slightly) less important news, the Red Sox begin the ALCS with the Indians tonight, so here’s a few Sox-themed tunes for the weekend. My thoughts about the series can be summarized by borrowing a Simpsons joke from the folks at Baseball Primer:

I don’t use the word ‘hero’ lightly, but David Ortiz is the greatest hero in American history. Except maybe Al Gore.

Jarhand – Immaculate Machine
Dear Confessor – Immaculate Machine

I wrote yesterday about the new record from the New Pornographers, commenting that “if it was some band I had never heard of, I would probably praise it as a fine new entry in the genre of ‘New Pornographers-esque’ indie rock.”

Along those lines, today I want to talk about a fine new entry in the genre of New Pornographers-esque indie rock. The band is called Immaculate Machine, the record is called Fables, and while they aren’t doing anything too unique, they’ve got enough of a knack for hook-laden indie pop with nice harmonies that it doesn’t seem to matter.

As if the connections weren’t obvious enough, they actually opened for the Pornographers a while back and their keyboardist (Kathryn Calder) is one of the many folks who revolve through that band.

It’s a little more hit-or-miss than you might hope for but the highlights are absolute power-pop masterpieces that call to mind not just the Pornographers, but also the heyday of folks like Teenage Fanclub, Sloan, and The Posies. “Jarhand” in particular is a true classic with a galloping guitar line and a driving coda (“it’s all in your head, jarhand…”).

The weaker moments mean that it probably won’t quite make my year-end list, but there’s enough quality material here to make it well worth your time.

Music is all about types, isn’t it? The more I write about it, the harder it is to avoid dropping a “sounds like…” – something which is especially hard to do given the number of bands I really enjoy these days who all play variations on the same power-pop-meets-New Wave theme.

And of all the references, the easiest to fall back on has to be The New Pornographers. I wouldn’t really have guessed it back in the days of Mass Romantic, which gave me the impression of being a pure one-off, a side project that had somehow caught lightning in a jar. But then they came out with Electric Version which was really pretty good (and is often a little underrated in my opinion) and Twin Cinema, which was even better than Mass Romantic.

And so, without me really noticing, they had become almost an indie-rock institution, the referent point for hundreds of other bands. They were experimenting, moving away from the blistering feel of that first record, but without losing any of their charm. And you started to imagine them popping out a great new record every couple years.

So what happened? The short answer is that great records only sound effortless – it takes a tremendous amount of work, talent, and yes, luck for it all to turn out right. The ingredients are all great, you mix them together well, but you can never be quite sure how the cake will turn out until you pull it out of the oven. Sometimes you get a Twin Cinema and sometimes you end up with Challengers.

The latter isn’t bad by any stretch – even if you don’t mix it quite right, the premise and ingredients are good enough to produce something enjoyable – but you can’t help but feeling disappointed. No one’s going to say no to a piece of cake, but if they’re expecting Finale and they get Shaw’s, they might be a little annoyed.

So the verdict:
My biggest complaint has to be that it is often more than a little flat. “My Right Versus Yours,” for example, is pretty clearly a yeastless version of “The Laws Have Changed.” There’s an especially noticeable dip in the middle (“Myriad Harbor” through “Failsafe”), which they try to cover up with some extra frosting without much success.

As for flavor, they certainly experiment a bit, but for the most part it’s too tentative. You’re left wondering if it might have been better to really let loose rather than adding just a chile or too and calling it “Latin inspired.” It isn’t different enough to be truly affecting. Instead, the differences sometimes only serve to call attention to the clashing tastes (see “Entering White Cecilia”).

All that said, these weaknesses are more than a little compensated by surprising layers once you start to dig in, including the delightful “Unguided” and “Go Places” – both of which would be among the best songs on any of their records.

If it was from virtually anyone other than the New Pornographers, the strengths would be enough to convince me to overlook the weaknesses. If it was some band I had never heard of, I would probably praise it as a fine new entry in the genre of “New Pornographers-esque” indie rock.

They certainly don’t do anything wrong here – they just fail to do things as well as I may have hoped. But we all need to remember that taste is a very subtle and subjective thing. Not everyone can be The Beatles, releasing a all-time classic every 9 months. From mortal bands, we have to take a lot of B- records in exchange for the occasional A+. It may even be the sign of a great band that you still enjoy listening to them even when they’re a little off their game.

MP3s:
Unguided
Go Places

It’s been awhile, hasn’t it? I’ve been in Lexington, Kentucky for the last week getting nowhere close to enough sleep and working a little too hard, but I’m finally back home with a little bit of free time. I used about 12 hours of that to sleep, waking up at the nice early hour of 2:30 PM.

I’ve got an ever-increasingly backlog of things I want to write about here, so hopefully I should be able to post pretty regularly for the rest of the month.

Black Winged Bird – The Cake Sale (featuring Nina Persson)

I’d like to start off with a quick post about an absolutely lovely new track from Nina Persson (of the Cardigans). It’s part of a project by The Cake Sale, a loose collective of folks who came together to make a record (also called The Cake Sale), scheduled for release a week from today. It’s put out by Oxfam, and “all the profits will go to support Oxfams Make Trade Fair campaign and their overseas programme work.”

Of that I heartily approve. Oxfam is a wonderful organization, not just on the right side of basically every important issue, but often a driving force in the effort to change the terms of the debate. They actually featured prominently in my undergraduate thesis for their work in conjunction with the Jubilee Debt Campaign. And beyond that, they have some killer thrift stores throughout the UK. So I’ve always had a soft spot there, and this record will only contribute to that.

The band laid down the backing track before knowing who would be singing, but I can hardly imagine this track any other way. Persson has to have one of the finest voices in modern music and she makes this song completely her own. I could listen to her sing beautiful ballads from now until the end of time and probably not get sick of it.

I’m not even going to make an effort to avoid the cliches today. I’m sure someone with more time and energy could come up with a good way to recommend MGMT (pronounced “management”) without mentioning synths, electronics, pop beats, and psychedelic inspiration, but I am not that guy.

If you like that sort of stuff, you’ll like this song. And frankly, even if you normally aren’t a fan, you’ll still probably like this song. It’s pretty good stuff.

Time to Pretend – MGMT

I was going to post a picture, but pretty much every one I could find was just them standing around with their shirts off, which is not really what I was looking for.

I don’t normally have much interest in regurgitating press material, but sometimes it’s a band I love and a turn of phrase that so perfectly captures every reason why I love them, and I just can’t help myself. So here’s how the new Tullycraft record was described in a recent e-mail:

“Their new album, recorded entirely on analog tape, is not simply a collection of wonderfully snarky pop songs with one or two anthems thrown in, but rather an entire record of ultra-catchy, smart indiepop anthems, taking aim at vampires, the English class system, goth waitresses and so much more.”

So first of all, new Tullycraft! And not only that, but new Tullycraft which promises songs about vampires and class politics. What more could anyone want?

The Punks Are Writing Love Songs

Sometimes Tullycraft are so meta that they transcend meta and return to a kind of elemental pureness. The perfect example is, of course, the classic Twee, but this track is another strong entry in the genre. It also once again proves that the difference between punk and twee is really just a matter of perspective.

Every Scene Needs a Center is due out on Magic Marker Records October 23.