WHITE STRIPES - "ICKY THUMP"

The first single from the forthcoming White Stripes album “Icky Thump” lives up to its moniker’s corporeal nastiness, driven by thumping kick and bass topped with ecstatic keyboard squelches and squeals. Structurally “Icky Thump” is a well-layered mess of herky-jerky stopping and starting, alternating between Jack’s half-spout feverish storytelling and stripped-down stomp box breakdowns. The best part about it is that though tighter and more aware of how they approach their songs, the band hasn’t lost any of the sloppiness of their early material. “Icky Thump” is all about attitude and Jack’s alienated American advice giving, a mix of Spanish slang, English colloquialisms, and Old West iconography, is his sassiest yet. Not to mention that “Icky Thump” features one of Jack’s best guitar solos to date that is all tension and hiccupping silences that is hard not to compare to a Miles Davis ‘Black Beauty’ (Chick Corea) level freakout. I love this track and haven’t been this excited about a White Stripes album in…take that back, I’m always excited about new White Stripes albums.

HANDSOME FURS - "PLAGUE PARK"

Great to Highly Recommended

“I will return/ to a dead and rural town/ I’ve got some friends there/ wheels just spinning in the ground” Dan Boeckner wails in Springsteenian stutter over the minimal repetition of clipped organ, electric guitar, and a mix of electronic and kit drums on “Dead + Rural”, a song that anchors the second half of the excellent Victorian surrealist fever dream that is the Handsome Furs first full length album “Plague Park”. Dan and fiancée/writing partner Alexei Perry explore similar dissatisfactions and attractions to both the rural and the urban, to the natural and the manufactured, and their mutual displacement and homelessness throughout the 9 tracks on “Plague Park”. There is a dual repulsion away from the place or point of view they sing from, be it bucolic or metropolitan, and longing for the opposite place, creating a restless tension throughout the album that is manifest in both the lyrics and arrangements: electronic collides with acoustic, skyscrapers with religious symbols, hard earned sentiment with world weary pleas on what I discovered to be an initially dark, but ultimately satisfyingly complete album.

I say initially dark because as the title of the album, which comes from a park in Helsinki (a place that fittingly experiences a month with little or no daylight) that was built atop a mass grave for 17th century plague victims, comes across as sinister, further exploration reveals more poignant observations hidden below the murky exterior (the park is the site of Helsinki’s largest annual celebrations). There is a video out for their song “Dumb Animals” that you can look up on YouTube, and which is representatively dark, feverish, and Lynchian, yet listening to “Plague Park” I can’t help thinking that this band would be perfect to score a clay-mation Jan Svankmeyer film; with their harmonious investigations of the distinction between the organic and the mechanic and their equally grim and dreamlike approaches to it (and because their album cover reminds me so much of his short films).

Handsome Furs may not have the urgency and immediacy of Wolf Parade, nor the epic whirlwind heat of Frog Eyes, nor the timelessness or raw emotion of Sunset Rubdown, but it is impossible to deny them either gravity or pathos and they stand tall in their indie rock family tree, leaning heavily on minimalist repetition, dense electronics, and Boeckner’s distinctive voice which sounds like a cross between Beck and Kurt Cobain. It probably isn’t fair to compare Handsome Furs to these other bands except for the fact that Boeckner is indirectly related to them all. Nor is it fair to compare this album to Thom Yorke’s “Eraser” album which came out this time last year, but I think that “Plague Park” is ultimately a much more complete, human, successful, side project foray into dark, electronic based meditations than the Radiohead leader’s and that is certainly no small feat.

My favorite tracks on Plague Park are the simplest: “Sing! Captian”, “Snakes On The Ladder” (with its Ennio Morricone aping snare and baritone build), and “Handsome Furs Hate This City”. “Dead + Rural” is another standout track apparently based on the Liars’ song “The Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack” which they covered as they were just starting to do shows. The single “What We Had” is a great slice of macabre built on a pulsing factory-line drum beat and the same jangly guitar riffs that made Wolf Parade so popular.

I have to believe that the sense of longing that thematically ties all of the songs on “Plague Park” together must stem from restlessness and maybe a fear of stopping or, God forbid, going backwards that Dan and Alexei must feel as they move between rural and urban environments with their various bands, but I believe it is the same fear that makes Boeckner so productive. “Plague Park” is an excellent debut and I recommend it to fans of Wolf Parade, to anyone who has more than one home, and those who aren’t afraid of the carnal ruminations that Handsome Furs might bring to the table.

***PRINCE to announce Residency in Los Angeles

...at the Roosevelt hotel!!!! Here are the details from the Los Angeles Times:

"What the plans call for: On seven Friday nights starting June 15, the Roosevelt will close off its lobby at 9 p.m. Then, at 11:30 in the Blossom Room in front of 250 seated guests and an undetermined number of standing-room-only patrons, Prince (joined each week by special guests) will give a two-hour performance. At 2 a.m., Prince's private chef will take over the kitchen of the Roosevelt's Dakota restaurant, which will morph into an after-hours dinner club. As part of a jazz ensemble, Prince will entertain diners until 4 a.m."

This is quite possibly the most amazing thing to hit LA in some time. And remember that this is happening just before his proposed extended hiatus to study the Bible. Now you know what to get me for my birthday!

Show Update (5/21)

Thursday: The Clientele and Beach House at the Knitting Factory

Saturday: Crystal Castles at The Echo

Sunday: YACHT at The Echo

5/31: The Hold Steady at El Rey

6/01: Deerhoof at The Natural History Museum
Black Angels + Vietnam at Troubadour

6/07: The Tennessee Three (Johnny Cash's Band) at Safari Sam's
The Mae Shi at The Smell

6/10 + 6/11: LCD Soundsystem + Planningtorock at El Rey

FEIST - "THE REMINDER"

Good to Great

I consider myself really lucky to have grown up in a family with very disparate, often conflicting musical tastes. Even though there was controversy at the record player when it came time to pick out music for a party with my mom typically going for the George Strait, Gene Autry, or James Taylor and my dad anything from Little Anthony and the Imperials to The Temptations to Sade, I was at least exposed to a wide palette of expressive music. Though my musical preferences have since expanded beyond my parents’ taste, there has always been a middle musical ground that everyone gets behind and Feist’s “The Reminder” fits into that zone of comfort from which I can easily recommend to anyone.

It is no surprise to me that you can find this album at your local Starbucks because of what I call its ‘safeness’. I was initially turned off by the idea that Starbucks would be selling Feist’s latest even after considering the adult contemporary tendencies of several tracks on “Let It Die”, but after the initial grumbling, it makes perfect sense to me. Starbucks is a comfort zone after all; a familiar oasis, consistent in every facet from the glowing green signs to the gauzy green tea: you always know what you’re going to get when you go into a Starbucks. The music on “The Reminder” fits right into the coffee shop ambiance, all hisses and gurgles, finger snaps and upright bass. It might be disconcerting for Indie music fans to see an artist as fiercely independent as Leslie Feist from behind a Frappucino at one of the world’s largest retail sites, but look at the other albums on the shelf next to "The Reminder", which Hear Music, who handles Starbucks’ music offerings (and was once a great little record store which I frequented whenever I had an excuse to) has put there: the Beatles, Joni Mitchell, Miles Davis, James Brown, Al Green, Wilco, Johnny Cash -- all albums which I am happy to have in my collection.

“The Reminder” is the result of Feist’s forays into three distinct ‘safe’ genres: Smooth Jazz on songs like “So Sorry”, “My Moon My Man”, and “The Limit to Your Love”, Singer-Songwriter Confessional on “The Park”, “The Water”, and “Intuition”, and her strongest, Pop on “I Feel It All”, “Past In Present”, “1234”, and “Brandy Alexander”. Feist manages to mix all of these into a nice comforting Christmas-y Blend. Her voice, calling to mind Sade, Norah Jones, or Mariah Carey as much as more like-minded influences like Joni Mitchell, is undeniably the strongest thing on this record. It is at once breathy and near whisper, soulful and in control. It has a tendency to disintegrate at the moment you expect her to sustain and hints at teenage cigarette rasp or the precipice of laryngitis.

The arranging and production on “The Reminder” is hit or miss for me: at its best it plays off of Leslie Feist’s voice, and it slides back into adult contemporary jamming at its worst. With all of the success that Feist has had lately, it pains me to think that she couldn’t have recorded on an upright or baby grand piano rather than the m.o.r. electric keyboard that is peppered throughout. In spite of the mixed bag production by better-than-that Swede Gonzalez, Feist manages to endow each song with its own transcendent moment: The way she strains the “we” on “So Sorry” along with Jamie Lidell’s Marty Robbins copping backing vocals, the way she explodes the second chorus on “I Feel It All” , the guitar breakdown 3/4 through “Sealion”, the way she half yells the opening lines to “Past In Present”, the transition into the bridge of “The Limit To Your Love” , the way she coos “some more” in “1234”, the stop start snapping in “Brandy Alexander”, the unexpected horn and organ part on “Intuition” followed by a choral call and response, the harp on “Honey Honey”, and the duet on “How My Heart Behaves”.

I rarely find myself going back to a track as much as I have with “I Feel It All” and “1234” makes me want to smack my gum like I was in the 5th grade. But, underneath the slickly nostalgic exterior of these songs are lyrics about heartache and the capricious nature of love. Feist sings obtusely about having and not having, but longing for some stasis with her love. Yet, in contrast to the uncertainty of her lyrics, Feist’s voice projects a calming hopefulness that is as comfortable as finding a Starbucks late at night in some alien city.

FROG EYES - "TEARS OF THE VALEDICTORIAN"

Great

In the RKO film The Last Days of Pompeii, Marcus, a Roman blacksmith, becomes a gladiator in response to his wife’s death and as a result becomes callous and violent and selfish until he is called to protect his own peace-loving son amidst the eruption of Mount Vesuvius on Pompeii. Frog Eyes’ latest album “Tears of the Valedictorian” calls to mind the failures of men such as Marcus in equally Romantic settings with a sound that rivals a force of nature in its bombastic chaos and its ability to physically shake listeners. These songs are about primal fears, universal dreads, and they are bleak to the bone. Mercer’s lyrics question the efficacy of masculinity through tragic-Shakespearean characters who try and fail to be chivalric, strong, supportive, and protecting in the face of these obsessive terrors. He embodies each of these characters with his roaring washing machine caterwaul, which calls to mind a carnival barker or a brimstone preacher. As I mentioned in my previous review of the Frog Eyes live show, his voice can be very polarizing and yet on the album, he reigns in a lot of the time to a near whispered falsetto, calling attention to the gender expectations that he addresses, and at other times his voice is completely drowned in reverb and noise.

The sound of the album is equally romantic, dense, and caustic bringing together high modernism and baroque sensibilities into a messy lava flow of sound. Guitars tremor and buzz like swarms of bees or fire alarms while the boom crash percussion alternates ship bell banging with precise snare accents. Spencer Krug’s keyboard accoutrements fill in the silences or in grander moments wash over and pile on top of the amounting babel.

“Tears of the Valedictorian” can be overwhelming at times, especially on first listen, and it takes several attempts to dig through the layers to discover the core songs beneath the exquisite excess. In fact, I feel like Frog Eyes is at their best when they negotiate 60s pop chord changes and 70’s soul flourishes into the spackling of noise and make it their own as they did on Carey Mercer’s stunning contribution to the Swan Lake album “The Partisan But He’s Got to Know”. In songs from “Tears” like “Caravan Breakers, they prey on the weak and the old” ,“Reform the Countryside” , and “Evil Energy, the ill twin of” these music staples cut through in a guitar run or a doubled keyboard line or are called attention to with a hammering snare staccato and it feels like a real reward to hear them. After the first two tracks, the songs on “Tears” ebb and flow from quiet and confessional to roaring and expository every other track providing an experience not unlike that of taking a hot and cold shower.

I recommend this album to anyone willing to give it several listens and who is not completely alienated by Mercer’s singing style. Frog Eyes have come back like Vesuvius with “Tears of the Valedictorian” their best record since “The Folded Palm” and I am certain that it will only get better with subsequent listens.

PATRICK WOLF - "THE MAGIC POSITION"

Good to Great

I imagine Patrick Wolf performing the songs on “The Magic Position” on the largest high school theatre stage in the world, alternatively the most popular kid and the biggest outsider. This is quite a change from the kid that I imagined taking long ostracized trips into gothic forests or moping in the corner of his spartan orphanage room on his previous two albums “Lycanthropy” and “Wind in the Wires”. Even though Wolf has made his most intimate feelings more accessible with gummy melodies and colorful flourishes, his weary croon still imparts the sadness of his darker endeavors. Patrick’s voice has always been capable and intriguing, but it is the drama and excess and indulgence, indicative of his youth, that makes “The Magic Position” arguably his best album to date.

Patrick has been in music news a lot lately what with his New York City performance falling into disarray, the firing of his drummer, and the subsequent declaration that he was quitting music in November, followed by a quick detraction and a lashing out about public attention of him. He chalks all of this up to the exhaustion from touring over the last several years and more importantly the year-long production of “The Magic Position”. It would be easy to dismiss such emotional irrationality as being selfish, childish, and unnecessarily whiny, but I think it is indicative of the greatest strength of album: its raw, emotional youth.

“The Magic Position” is about a relationship and listening to it makes you feel like you are breaking up with someone. Wolf begs for Liberacci comparisons as he huffs and puffs until he is out of breath. When I was a kid and I was faced with a soda-fountain, I would often (with a little peer pressure) make a ‘suicide’, mixing a little bit of every soft-drink offered by the machine including the standard lemonade or punch offering. I feel like Patrick Wolf takes a similar approach on this album, mixing all the popular influences (pop, house, dance, hip-hop, tribal beats, etc.) with his standard orchestral flourishes and theatrical showmanship and an eye towards media reaction.

The titular track “The Magic Position” is Patrick’s best song to date and it is one of my favorites of the year. It is dripping with drama and camp (two of the things that Patrick does best) and is outrageously catchy, fun, and provocative. I find myself singing it all the time. Unfortunately, he never matches this level of playfulness anywhere else on the album. The second half of the album is really strong with lovely ballads like “Augustine” and “Enchanted”, but these feel more like high-school musical standards than the edgy, upbeat songs like “Overture”, “Magic Position”, and “Bluebells”. So there is the more experimental first half for the electronic set and fans of Antony and the Johnsons and the smoother, classical second half for the teary-eyed nostalgists.

“The Magic Position” is for anyone who wants a little more drama, emotional vulnerability, and pomp and circumstance in their lives. Either way, you’ve got to put the title track on your next party mix.

CHARLES BURNETT'S "KILLER OF SHEEP"

This is a retrospective post and it is appropriately so because the film that I am looking back on was retrospective in its release, and at the time of its first release, retrospective in its style and in its themes. I was compelled to write about it in spite of its retrospective qualities because having seen it nearly a month ago, it remains the most emotionally progressive film I have seen this year. Charles Burnett’s 1977 film has been described as a displaced neo-realist caption of Watts in the 70’s and a stylistic contemporary of Ray and Cassavettes. My friend Alex pointed out that the raw black and white photography of the film, which has a tendency to linger upon ghastly images of ignored children, draws heavily upon the Depression Era photography of Helen Levitt’s Harlem children series and I would add that the pensive portraiture of Stan and his wife most likely owes an unconscious debt to the black and white Blue Note images of Frank Wolff.

While the images alone are worth the price of admission, it is the music of the film that makes it transcendent. “Killer of Sheep” is a musical film. It has all of the introspective rhythms, rests, crescendos, and lulls of a great ballad. It has all of the spiritual gravity of a hymn and the poetic grace of a psalm. Though it is a complete, cohesive film from start to finish, “Killer of Sheep” is magnificently fragmented into self-contained vignettes like songs on a great pop album. At times it contains the cut-up quality of beat poetry or bebop jazz and at others the essence and cohesiveness of symphonic movement.

The music in the film itself runs the gamut of musical genres from pop, jazz, classical, gospel, to soul and is ironic at times, commenting upon the imagery it juxtaposes, and poignant at others, integrating itself into the world of the characters. It comes as no surprise to me that the most often sited scene from the film is that of Stan and his wife dancing in their living room to Dinah Washington’s “This Bitter Earth” as the lyrical metaphor and musical potency endow a simple shot with the soulful siren’s purr. Elsewhere there is Cecil Gant’s “I Wonder” and James Elmore’s “I Believe” reflecting the two emotional poles that Stan wavers between. Songs like Walter Jacob’s “Mean Old World” would appear to be an on-the-nose choice for a film that illustrates a man struggling to live in a place that holds him back, but it comes off as playful and funny, which is what the film turns out to be. Two extremely effecting scenes in the abattoir are rendered distinct by Rachmaninov’s “Piano Concerto Number 4” in an early establishing scene and the moving version of “The House I Live In” sung by Paul Robeson in the matter-of-fact second scene. The brutality of the final scene of the film in which sheep are led to be slaughtered is underscored by Paul Robeson’s bittersweet version of “I’m Going Home.” My favorite scene in the film though is that of Stan’s daughter sitting on the floor of a cluttered closet playing with a doll next to a record player that belts out Earth, Wind, and Fire’s “Reasons”. Intercut with Stan’s daughter singing along to the track while combing her doll’s hair is a scene in which Stan’s wife is in the bathroom preparing for what looks like a date, but turns out to be another day of sitting around the kitchen table. But, this isn’t a hopeless act. There is so much joy in these simple moments that the film becomes a celebration of these things rather than a plea for pity.

Unfortunately, I think that “Killer of Sheep” left theaters in LA last week, but I believe Milestone films is planning to release it on DVD in the near future. So if you haven’t seen it, you should put it in your NetFlix Queue so that when it is released you’ll be ready to experience a film that like the best music will get stuck in your head.

THE NATIONAL - "BOXER"

Highly Recommended

Last weekend’s much-touted bout between Oscar De La Hoya and Floyd Mayweather Jr. was another in a waning string of attempts to resuscitate the sport of professional boxing. With the amount of money and media that went into promoting this thing you’d think that it would be the show of the year, but unfortunately it was nothing more than high gloss tongue whetting for gambling enthusiasts, high end sports bars, b-list celebrities, and reality television dramatists – completely predictable and empty of consequence. The National’s upcoming release fittingly titled "Boxer” evokes both the nostalgia for and the hopelessness of the once prideful, now dying sport. With characters both barbaric and defeated, the songs on “Boxer” create reflexive melancholic portraits of aborted humanity in shimmering warm washes.

With his boozy, bruiser, bawl, singer Matt Berninger brings these characters to life, imparting his own staggering baritone to each subject with unwavering efficacy. This album has the heft and weight that was missing from last years inconsistent “Alligator” yet feels in keeping with the evolution of a band that is restless and ready to move on to something bigger and better.

The piano is right up front in the mix counter-pointing Berninger’s grave vocals and taking a cue from Springsteen balladry which has become so common a touchstone for bands these days like the Hold Steady and Arcade Fire. In fact, upon first listening to “Boxer”, I commented to my friend D-Ton that I thought that The National were approaching the same sonic drama levels that the Arcade Fire have harnessed so effectively in their two full length albums and honed in their live show. Though each song maintains the self-serious approach as songs on “Alligator”, the songs on “Boxer” come in tight packages with the drama of a three act story, building slowly, harmonically, instrumentally, and rhythmically, reaching a crescendo and fading out quickly, leaving you dazed on the mat, waiting for the next round. Of course I have to mention that The Arcade Fire have announced that The National will be opening for them on many of their tour dates and I have since congratulated myself on having made the most appropriate mental band pairing since Beck and Hank III.

The first seven tracks of the album are equally stunning and the sequencing couldn’t have been better. Such consistency from track to track with the repetition of musical and lyrical elements reminds me of the crisis level urgency of The Walkmen’s 2004 release “Bows + Arrows”. Stand out tracks include opener “Fake Empire”, summer singalong “Green Gloves”, vampy Replacements romp “Apartment Story”, and rueful closer “Gospel”. Other than the inclusion of “Gospel” I think the album could have ended at track seven as the repetition that works so well for the first seven songs only numbs with the watered down album end.

The image on the cover of "Boxer” is telling. The National continue to grow as a band as they observe and absorb the world around them, consequently reflecting a specific time and place endowed with the importance that only such dramatic music can. What distinguishes them from other bands attempting the same thing is that they belong in the worlds they describe and count themselves wholly amongst the rejected characters whose stories they tell.

Upcoming Shows (5/9)

May 10th: St. Vincent and John Vanderslice @ Largo - I am really looking forward to the St. Vincent release (she's from Dallas, 23yrs. old, used to sing with Polyphonic Spree). Her single "Now. Now." is one of my favorite tracks of the year. (http://www.myspace.com/stvincent)

May 12th: Wilco on "A Prairie Home Companion"

May 16th: Patrick Wolf @ Troubadour

May 30th: Mary Timony @ Echo

May 30th and 31st: Arcade Fire @ Greek Theater

Upcoming Album Releases (5/9)

This Week:
Bjork - Volta
The Clientele - God Save the Clientele
Mary Timony - The Shapes We Make
YACHT (of The Blow) - I Believe in You, Your Magic is Real

Next Week: Wilco - Sky Blue Sky
Battles - Mirrored
Dan Deacon - Spiderman of the Rings
Dungen - Tio Bitar

May 22nd:
Handsome Furs - Plague Park
The National - Boxer
Ben + Vesper - All This Could Kill You

FROG EYES and ALEX DELIVERY at Spaceland (LA) May 5th

Frog Eyes is the kind of band that you need to see on a boat. The atmosphere at the show was that of a tent-post revival and the performers sweated prostrate as if souls were actually on the line. Carey Mercer’s goose call warble falls somewhere between the mezzo soprano of Renee Fleming, a burlesque yodeler, and Burgess Merideth in a bath tub, and as a result, has an extremely polarizing effect even upon the faithful who paid $8 to stand up front. I haven’t seen a bandleader so commanding in a very long time and never have I seen a band so tightly in tune with and devoted to their songwriter in contrast to all of the apparent chaos that he projects live. Watching Carey center stage, the band relegated to a corner at the back, reminded me of a story I heard about James Brown who used to have ten hour rehearsal sessions before any performance whether it was a church barbeque or at the Apollo. I was told that if he heard a band member make a mistake, he would turn to them and, as if part of the song, would utter some guttural “gotcha” or “uh-huh” and later fine them an inappropriate sum. This would keep any band tight. Frog Eyes were tight like I imagine James Brown’s band being, not out of fear, but out of a true passion for the music and respect for their audience.

As musical friends of mine know, I’ve touted repeatedly that Spencer Krug is one of the best songwriters/ musicians/ creative people out there (with his bands Sunset Rubdown, Wolf Parade, and Swan Lake) – and though he plays keyboards for Frog Eyes and his contribution to their most recent record is paramount, his absence from the show (as he is on tour with Sunset Rubdown) hardly deterred from the urgency and power of the music. Guitars filled in the harmonic gaps and the stunning drummer made up for the missing percussive key strokes with skittering martial drum fills. A great show all around.

A pleasant surprise was opener Alex Delivery. I had heard a couple of songs off the Jagjaguwar website recently and was excited to see what they had to offer live. After a messy start, they found their groove midway through the 8 minute opener and I was moved by the dramatic shifts that the mostly instrumental set hinged upon. Though they only played three long songs and the vocals were hardly distinguishable, the motorik, rhythm, reverberant clangy guitar work, and My Bloody Valentine keyboard brought to mind other art-rock acts like The Double with a dalliance of Kraftwerk and a hint of the ambitious sonic ephemera of Explosions in the Sky, which made for a very compelling set. I look forward to hearing more from them in the future.

GENESIS

Here it is. After several months of deliberating, beating around the bush, etc., I have finally taken the steps necessary to post something on the internet. I have to admit, I feel pretty productive. Often I have been asked by friends and family for suggestions about music and shows and though I have never been a diarist or self-effacing critic, I felt that this would be an appropriate forum for telling you about what I am interested in. I don’t intend to preface what I post, but that it is my own opinion. I plan to post about upcoming shows and music releases, and review the shows that I go to and the albums that I listen to. I might even write about a movie, sports team, or headache. Who knows. I guess that you’ll have to come back often to find out. As is the nature of the blog internet. Thanks for reading.