Thrift Store Gems #1

Hum - You'd Prefer an Astronaut

I was digging around a thrift shop and picked up a Hum album called "You'd Prefer an Astronaut" for $1.99. I was only familiar with one song of theirs, a somewhat-typical sounding post-grunge deep-distorted dragging dirge whose main lyric is "she thinks she missed the train to Mars/she's out back counting stars," which I remember being played incessantly on my local modern rock station in the late nineties. The song was also featured in a Cadillac commercial a few years ago, back in the glory days of the clumsy and inefficient American automobile, though I'm not sure any of the song's lyrics were involved. I didn't actually know the name of the song -- but thank the powers that be for Life On Blackberry, for I was able to confirm right there in the store with some quick thumb-punching that it was indeed one of this album's tracks, "Stars." Additionally, the cover of the album was green with a zebra on it, so I was compelled to pull the trigger.

The album opened with a track that was exactly what I was expecting: slow-tempoed heavily-distorted multilayered guitars through which chord changes are hardly distinguishable; a flat, echoless voice that approaches spoken word and boasts mild nasal congestion. Ah, the Nineties. With the resurgence of all these elements of the Seventies and Eighties in popular music, it is refreshing sometimes to hear a good old-fashioned angsty distorted Nineties dirge. I wasn't much a fan of the second track. The third track was "Stars." I realized then what makes this song so great: the intro. A very distortion-less, echo-less, reverb-less, everything-less simple three-chord guitar riff cycles a few times through. The vocalist, Matt Talbott, sings the flagship lyric (above) twice. On the end of the second time through, on the final word "stars," about 45 giant ragged overdubbed guitars come crashing down on a D chord (this song is an unmistakable 'dropped-D' for all of you guitarists out there). Let that note hang as the distortion trails off --- ah yes. That's it. The rest of the song is pretty good too -- at least clearly worthy of extended radioplay and a Cadillac commercial. But it is that forlorn intro that really catches you and gives you that feeling that the song you are about to listen to is about something much more profound than you will ever experience or understand.

That being said, a few tracks later I found Talbott singing lyrics like "it's a waste of a song/you're a waste of my lungs." I realized that the album had a beautiful amateur quality that is harder to come by than it seems like it should be (and not just because the first measure of the fifth track "The Very Old Man" features the Nineties recording trademark of including musician screw-ups in the final cut; see Green Day's "Good Riddance"). Yeah, I know -- there are obviously plenty of bands and songs around that go for that amateur sound. But it almost sounds like Hum are really trying to sound professional, and the amateur sound I'm hearing is by accident. I guess that would be the musical equivalent of just not being good, but it's endearing. You can really hear, see, and feel the instruments being played. You can grasp the songwriting process. You can let yourself get wrapped up in the lunar guitars without losing sight of the humans behind them. While there's nothing truly amazing about this album, and admittedly, the songwriting isn't stellar, I felt instant affection for it. Not bad for a thrift store nab someone probably got bored of in 1999.

FREE MUSIC

SUB POP PRESENTS INSOUND DIGITAL MIXTAPE - SEPTEMBER 2009

Not to let Insound monopolize this site, but they just keep coming up with funky ass shit like every single day. Plus, what I am about to discuss for the remainder of this article is a perfect hybrid between an actual album (as the title of this site would suggest and from which the last two entries have deviated) and the instant gratification of a grab-and-go free mp3 download. So Insound spit out this digital mixtape for the month of September. It's tagged as "Sub Pop Presents:", so take note all you avid record-label followers. Download it HERE.

I don't think there is an intended order to the tracks, but here are some of the highlights:

Iron & Wine -- Belated Promise Ring. I haven't heard too many songs from these guys, but from what I can gather it is almost purely folk music. This one is particularly gorgeous. It is a typical ode to the quirky girl that's been around since childhood, with whom the protagonist has always been confusedly in love in spite of the admonishments of others around him, brimming with fondness, nostalgia, and the bittersweet realization that it will never work.

No Age -- You're A Target. No Age, doing what they do best. Rockabilly tunes and rhythms strangled and obfuscated through nightmarish distortion; slightly off-tune demonic sounds -- the exact instrument responsible uncertain -- welling up through the brackish noise. I think the vocals are what make this band great -- they draw the sound away from the My Bloody Valentine comparisons it might otherwise herald and cement the band's status as one of the more biologically sophisticated evolutions of punk.

Sunny Day Real Estate -- Seven. This track is off of the digitally-remastered version of Diary that was released recently. It sounds amazing. I have the original version of the album, but this track alone has been enough for me to seriously consider picking up the upgrade -- and it's in fact one of my least favorite from the album (in spite of its being the most popular). For as long as I've owned the album I've said that a major part of what makes it so great is the drumwork. Plenty of rock music has outstanding percussion, but you usually have to consciously listen to it to appreciate it. On this track, and on the rest of Diary, the drums stand out as magnificent and energetic whether the listener likes it or not.

The Vaselines -- Son of a Gun. The Vaselines are perhaps most famous for being audibly called out on Nirvana's timeless "Unplugged" album. This track here sounds like it was recorded by holding a microphone to a 200-ft metal pipe pointed towards the band -- with the wind blowing. I almost want to say it has a Clash kind of feel to it.

Fleet Foxes -- Mykonos. This song has been kicking around the internet for awhile. It was released as part of their Sun Giant EP, which preceded their critically-infallible self-titled debut LP by a few months back in 2008. The song sounds a lot like the song "Your Protector" from the debut -- until you reach the middle and it launches into a thundering, voluminous refrain, the harmonized vocals soaring above it all in true Foxes fashion -- complete with plenty of references to the narrator's brother.

Red Red Meat -- Gauze. The song opens with a progression of slow chord strums sporting a cadence we might expect from Radiohead -- you know, where you aren't quite sure at first how a consistent percussive beat is going to fit in exactly. The vocals have more of a Collective Soul thing going on. I am quite fascinated with the sort of lazy, inexact guitar, occasionally half-strumming or half-plucking whenever it feels like it. The effect is actually quite soothing, and I imagine this is the kind of song that would precipitate a gradual lull in conversation amongst a small group of people as each inadvertently finds his or herself drawn into listening.

Flight of the Conchords -- Hurt Feelings. These guys never fail to make me LOL.

....And there's plenty more good stuff on this mix to choose from and form your own conclusions about. Take advantage while the gettin's good: Sub Pop Presents Insound Digital Mixtape - September 2009

Straight West Coastin'

Best Coast

I discovered a new artist through Insound's weekly "free mp3" promotional gag. Looking back at that sentence, I realize how incredibly un-noteworthy such a statement is, considering I rarely have heard of the artist featured in the free song of the week. What I should have said was that I discovered a new artist worth listening to: Best Coast. You're probably thinking that such a name could only be the alias of some fuckoff So-Cal punkster -- true from what I can gather, but in this case it sounds like the brains behind the one-woman operation, Bethany Cosentino, at least spent some time across the prairie in NYC before making such an ultimately superlative declaration (and using it as the title of her musical act no less). So, Respeck.

At any rate, I would describe the music as a combination of the song "Strange" by Built to Spill, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and early-60s feel-good rock 'n' roll. I know that can't be too far off base, since under the "Sounds Like" section of her myspace page youtube videos of The Everly Brothers and The Beach Boys are embedded, but there's definitely a multi-generational feel to this stuff. It's as if the music of those bygone days is being channeled through the jadedness of nineties music and spit out through the contemporary acceptance -- nay, reverence -- of lo-fi noise-pop. Like, the song "Make You Mine," for instance, wouldn't sound too out of place on the soundtrack of American Graffiti. There is a beauty in the repetition of these songs (each contains no more than about six distinct lines of lyrics); in spite of the couldn't-care-less vocal delivery, the lyrics themselves seem heartfelt and paint very accessible impressions of emotional places we've all been. Besides, behind all of that static fuzz and not giving a shit, Bethany actually has a pretty solid voice. I keep hearing sort of a Nancy Sinatra sneer to it. It might not be good in the academic sense, but it is good in any and every other sense because I want to keep hearing it.

Now that I've talked up Best Coast enough for you to run out and pick up the album, I have to tell you that there is no album to pick up -- yet -- unless, that is, you're more authentic than I and own a device capable of playing 7" vinyls (aka 45s). I found this youtube video featuring one of her songs, Sun Was High (So Was I) laid over a portion of some weird French movie. Though it's a song title you might expect from a bunch of high-school juniors who smoked weed for the third time yesterday, it seems to be Bethany's most popular song at this point, judging by the playcount statistics on myspace. It has an attractively warm and dreamy feel to it, and yes, does convey all that which its title suggests. Hope ya can dig on this stuff as much as I am, and definitely check out the myspace page.

A New Zoo

Come one, come all: the Electric Zoo music festival, a celebration of the genre formerly known as "techno," Electronica. The former was probably always an overgeneralized, blase term anyway, but I think it would be safe to say at this point that "techno" has been reduced to an uneducated and possibly condescending appellation for a style that has truly become more than a mere hypersexed niche of fist-pumping guidoism. That's not to say that the crowd assembled at this effective tri-stage outdoor rave on Randall's Island seemed interested in any consideration of the music beyond that which is required for the most primitive of dancelike bodily movements. Circa 6 PM on Saturday afternoon, amidst the muddy cocktail of pulsating bass that hung in the air, one look around the place revealed a raw and ragged picture of guiltless hedonism. Cigarettes hung from the mouths of sweaty, emaciated faces, which adorned every color and style of sunglasses to be popular within the last 25 years, and whoops and hollers and other nonsensical ululations rang out as the music would reach one of the climactic buildups that are so characteristic of electronic music.




It was an experience to say the least. I didn't really know what to expect, going into it, and that's probably why I decided to go. After the perfunctory milling about inside the entrance, our group made its way over towards the second-largest of stages. It was hot and messy and everyone inside was pretty spaced out but enjoying the music. We made our way to the heart of the thing and began bouncing and grooving with the music. The performer was up on the stage amongst a stack of equipment and a tangle of wires, furiously intent on manipulating whatever buttons and switches were splayed out in front of him to exact the most body-pumping sonic sensations on the engrossed crowd. After a series of electronic whirrs and crunches, the sounds quickly evolved into a new rhythm. Some sort of continuous synth-bass infiltrated every nook and cranny of my sensory awareness and I was helpless but to bob my frame up and down in sync with the fascinating noise. Looking around, most of the other concertgoers appeared to be similarly affected -- and of course others were still just sort of spaced out and hanging around -- but either way, it was pretty effing cool stuff.

After a bit of the standard festival lollygagging and much-needed hydration (the water/gatorade lines were longer than the beer lines by about sixfold), we found ourselves at the main stage. This marvel of modern visual sensationalism was equipped with all sorts of nifty lights and LCD screens blasting the illest of abstract lines and shapes, and occasionally, when the situation warranted, the nodding likeness of a grinning dead rodent. I'm serious -- for those of you who are down with this electronic music shiz, you probably know this to be none other than the calling card of Deadmau5 (pronounced "ded mouse"). To uproarious cheers, what I could only assume to be a twenty-something man wearing an opaque, spherical, red mouse-helmet with enormous ears emerged onto the stage. With a few fluid hand motions across the equipment in front of him a cycle of pacman-era tones began. The man-mouse deftly whisked more and more sounds into the cycle, until the whole thing could no longer contain itself, and erupted into a glorious beat with those backwards-sucking kick drums and that electronic venom for which the wild-eyed crowd hungered so.



"This is pure hedonism, and I love it!" exclaimed one of our group members at one point. We were dancing around a pole supporting the tent above the smallest of the three stages in a murky half-light of greenish blue. After having experienced this stuff for upwards of 7 hours, I still couldn't tell any difference between one song and the next, but I realized that wasn't the point. It was complete hedonism, a reckless orgy of youthful disregard, and promised nothing else. Was that anything new? As we walked back into Manhattan across the Triborough Bridge I caught a great view of the shimmering skyline reflecting in the East River. The reflection of the headlights of cars flying up the FDR Drive reminded me that the rest of New York City was going about its business as usual.

That 16th Note High Hat = Crack

Discovery - LP

My street cred came into question at a party recently when I had to admit I hadn't heard of Discovery. Granted, I don't normally fucks with electronica-dance-type stuff, and I really don't know much about the genre, the major players, benchmarks, etc, but I figured there was no time like the present to tackle something new, unfamiliar, and endorsed by designer-drug enthusiasts around the globe. On their myspace page, the duo (composed half-and-half of Vampire Weekend and Ra Ra Riot members) describe themselves as "experimental neo-soul," which I think is exactly accurate. Not that I could ever really disagree with the description a band assigns to itself (hell, Liam Gallagher had me convinced that Oasis really were the "best band in the world"). I was happy as well to see that they listed "that sixteenth-note high hat that you're hearing in da night" as one of their major influences, finally some credit where credit is due. And plus -- Dipset, anyone? Hot damn! So I clicked "play."

The sounds are a lovely pastiche of both all that is cool and all that is good about contemporary dance party music. Those who create, broadcast, and listen to party music walk a precarious line: you need something that is new, fresh, and, in the case of hosting the party, ideally that only about a fifth to a quarter of the partygoers have heard before -- but you need something that still has that feel-good groove and those pleasure-pushing tricks. Discovery seems to fit the bill. Most people have heard of Vampire Weekend, some people have heard of Ra Ra Riot -- I'm willing to bet that a smaller fraction of the intersection of those two populations has heard of these guys. And it's certainly got that synth-pump crack that you hate to crave. Soft, honest vocals take us on a tour of the youths' modern dance-floor world, backed by reprocessed snippets of popular culture (i.e., those beats that are hot on the street) arranged into synchronous, soul-pleasing rhythms. "My bed's too big for just me" plead the multitracked vocals, reminding us how tough it is to be young, single, and hip as hell. I'm lead to believe this is all a satirical experiment, an embellished joke on all the hot shit the kids are listening to these days, exaggerated to the point of being entertaining and satisfying.

By the end of the album, it's clear they seem to have run out of sounds, but the songs still have that fruity lusciousness to them. It's good in the David Bowie sense -- kind of like a fun-house mirror, it's an interpretive and exaggerated expression of what's around it. It's a creative summary of the industry-leading trends. I don't think it will last, but it will be fun while it does. It'll be bumping at my next party. Consider yourself in the knowing fifth.

"A Maze" of Sound

Amazing Baby - Rewild

I was listening to Amazing Baby's album, Rewild, while riding a bus through a torrential thunderstorm in the Catskills. It had been mostly sunny for the beginning of the journey, but at some point I looked out the window and there was this enormous ugly writhing mass of black clouds ahead of us. The rain hit hard and lightning flashed from every direction, though the thunder was nearly drowned out by the roaring of the rain, the bus, and the road. All this while I had been listening to Rewild. I had recently bought it from iTunes and hadn't really listened to all of the songs yet. In the most basic sense, I would describe the band as a more guitar-based fractal of MGMT that has been increased by a few dimensions -- with equal likelihood of spinning off into a beautiful, organic design, or crudely overlapping itself into an unattractive mess (which, not coincidentally, does also describe MGMT's lower-dimensional sound).

Technicalities aside, Amazing Baby's flavor of the fashionable clusterfuck hipster dance party psychedelia does seem to jab at an elusive organ of human nature. The songs are crisp and powerful, and there is enough echo on the vocals to distract you from paying too much attention to the actual words being sung. The lyrics, mind you, were also the last thing I would have been paying attention to, as our driver fearlessly bucked and wrenched the bus through a blinding downpour and what I was convinced was a flash flood. Though undeniably pretentious, Rewild on some levels manages to capture the magnitude of the human experience, in spite of song titles like "The Narwhal," which I am pretty sure features a choir of eunuchs rehearsing Eastern scales. There is some kind of honesty to the songs -- though many of them are a bit too coarse and awkward to try to swallow whole, they certainly don't pretend not to be. There's quite a bit of heart to 'em. Progressive could be the sympathetic way to describe it.

Not long afterwards, I had the chance to catch this band live at the Pier 54 summer concert series. Though I have to say the performance was mediocre, the band certainly gave it 120%, and they were by no means modest about voicing their respects to the main act, Yeasayer. Maybe they are trying to be a little more than just cool.