Listen To This
Download “A Picture of Our Torn Up Praise”
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Release: October 23, 2007 from Dead Oceans
As much as it’s filled with repetitious melodies and lyrics that aren’t the full force of poetry yet, Matthew Houck’s Pride, released under the name Phosphorescent, is a beautiful album. Indeed, the repetitions evoke a sense of containment, which effects a devotion that requires little or no straying. And so the voice stays on course one wistful song after the other, borrowing their solemness from hymns, though tucked away in the background of some are movements more energetic and spontaneous. There is also a successful employment of a choir throughout, which is apt for a project that sounds like it was produced for the singer’s own salvation, and which smooths the sound surrounding his flaking voice.
More after the jump.
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Download “First Fantasy” (from the upcoming Little Kingdom)
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As awful as weather comparisons to music are, Citay’s “First Fantasy”, off the upcoming Little Kingdom, is proving to be a soundtrack for today’s drizzle. The song is rich with voices and instruments that knot through and through in harmony, but it’s really the pace that’s remarkable. There’s a certain kind of slowness, as exemplified in a confident stride, that lacks neither drive nor movement, and as such asserts independence. Unlike the excitement of being in the middle things, of having given to the uncertainty of whichever way a process might head, including nowhere, which has its own charms of course, this pace feels like it benefits from hindsight, of having come through something that has certainly passed. Of the identifiable lyrics, there are the lines: “Last week was like a year ago/ Five years, just like yesterday”.
Dead Oceans will release Little Kingdom on November 6th.
Download “Dancing Behind My Eyelids” from Mum’s website (requires email address)
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So far as it can inferred from the sound of “Dancing Behind My Eyelids”, which you can trade for your email address on the band’s website, and “They Made Frogs Smoke Til They Exploded”, which now has an animated video, the new Mum is sounding cheerful. This, considering the album they gave us last, Summer Make Good, was not quite a summer album (if one were to make a quick, misguided guess from the title). Instead, it stretched with mournful longings, drawing pictures of dark clouds, icy water and a harsh, winter landscape. And as if the album’s dreary weather wasn’t obvious, song titles such as “Small Deaths are the Saddest” and “Weeping Rock, Rock” served as reassurances. But for now, from the upcoming Go Go Smear the Poison Ivy that comes out on September 24, something far brighter.
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Mum is playing two Wordless Music Series dates in New York, on Nov 9 and 10th.
Download Petra Haden’s cover of “Don’t Stop Believin’” by Journey (from Guilt by Association)
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Engine Room Recordings hosted a contest to mark the upcoming release of a compilation featuring “15 acclaimed underground artists covering their favorite guilty pleasure pop tunes”. They are now showing winning videos and other entries at YouTube, film student Andy Cahill emerging victorious with his stop-motion piece for Devendra Banhart’s rendition of “Don’t Look Back In Anger” by Oasis. This and other two other songs revealed by way of the videos – Petra Haden’s cover of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin” and Will Oldham‘s cover of Mariah Carey‘s “Can‘t Take That Away” – surely hint at Guilt by Association being an interesting take on guilty pleasure pop tunes. Launch parties will be hosted in various cities, including two in New York: August 21 at Pianos and September 7th, “the big launch” following September 4 release, at Joe’s Pub.
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Release: June 5, 2007 / Absolutely Kosher
Arms Down is Get Him Eat Him’s follow-up to 2005’s Geography Cones. I’ve been letting this new one sit for a while, hoping I would either grow to love it, or figure out why I don’t. It’s not a bad record, but you know you like an album when, if it were a basket of strawberries at the market, you’d want to take at least some of it home (yes). Arms Down inspired no such greed, so I turned to the albums I do love. These tend to have an unintentional greater idea behind them, the kind that comes together as a result of other intentions and inspirations, the outcome of things falling into place. In Arms Down, that sort of idea is either missing, or, if present, not very alive.
There’s more after the jump.
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Release: May 22, 2007 / Arts & Crafts
I prefer Final Fantasy’s intricate string arrangement and casual production of “Peach Plum Pear” to the original by Joanna Newsom. However, Owen Pallett (aka Final Fantasy) has been outdone by fellow re-mixers on Do You Trust Your Friends, the remix album of 2004’s Set Yourself On Fire by Stars. For “Your Ex-Lover Is Dead,” Owen’s remix is blatantly sad, which, to be fair, is problematic only when compared to the assortment of moods the original pulls off. The string arrangement here is more traditional than what we’ve heard before, and Owen’s put work into a fornlorn composition for the piano instead. For the most part, however, I’m of the opinion that trustworthy friends have outdone Stars themselves.
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Paris Is Burning EP
Released: 2006
This week was filled with quality new songs, but the one I played the most is an older one, though newly acquired. As previously mentioned, St. Vincent merch table was selling her EP Paris Is Burning for $5, and though the second track “What Me Worry” is a fine tune with jazzy singing, and the third, a cover of Nico’s “These Days”, is just as excellent, the title track is alone worth 5 bucks. Written by Annie, it is by itself evidence of her exciting talent. It gives me goosebumps.
“Paris Is Burning” begins with foreboding French horns that would go nicely with a murder scene in a black and white movie. And the kind of tension that would go along with such a scene is sustained throughout the song. Picking words from the lyrics itself, especially in the light of the waltz rhythm introduced in the second half, “Paris Is Burning” is somewhat of a “black waltz.” The lyrics are simple enough, but poignant and well-arranged, and Annie’s got a way of adding eeriness when she sings them. The first few words, sung slowly over acoustic guitar:
I write to give word the war is over
Send my cinders home to mother
They gave me a medal for my valor
Leaden [?] trumpet spit
The soot [?] of power
(Review continues after the jump)
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Download “The Crystal Cat” (from Spiderman of the Rings)
or listen:
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Release Date: May 8, 2007
On the surface Spiderman of the Rings may sound like the kind of record where anything goes. High-pitched voices sing without intending to be pretty, and sporadic noises from the world of pixels are found in plenty. The playfulness of it all has been so skillfully whipped that glaring choices seem to have been made out of pure silliness. There’s enough evidence, however, to indicate otherwise; that this is a record where a particular aesthetic has been sought, be it a seemingly bizarre one, and classically-trained Dan Deacon has expertly brought it under his control so he may let it loose.
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Download Beirut’s KEXP SXSW session (from NPR)
Photo: Claire Vogel
Zach Condon of Beirut has told Billboard that the new album’s is not a heaviliy Balkan aesthetic; the upcoming material is instead more “varied in approach” where every instrument isn’t necessarily used on every song. For string arrangements Beirut has been working with Owen Pallet of Final Fantasy, who they’re playing with at the May 6-8 Bowery Ballroom dates, and Griffin Rodriguez is on board as the producer. Spain may get a preview of some of this material at its Primavera Festival.
