I know the music entries are boring for many of y'all. I am sorry, but I gotta get one last batch out before the year in review stuff starts - at least I hope this is the last. I have been warning that it was gonna be busy music-wise, and indeed it is. The good news is that there are still loads of big albums coming out, and the aural pleasure is considerable. Whether or not the reading is, you can only count on the usual caveat emptor.
First Aid Kit - Drunken Trees: I have no idea why this is already out of print and extremely difficult to find. I don't actually have the disc, but I think I have all the mp3s from this album. Maybe I should wait til I have the official CD, but I don't need to see a copy to know how awesome they are. I have a hard time imagining how two teenagers who know English as their second language could make such awesome music, but indeed, there is something going on in Sweden that has just caused them to go into hyper-drive on quality output. They have that magic family-harmony that simply can't be replicated, and for kids, they have material that shows that they either old-souls or channeling past lives. I hope this disc does actually find real distribution. There is not a dud on it, and this is going to be one of my favorite albums of the year. Definitely try to get the mp3 of Our Own Pretty Ways. If nothing else, dial-up the YouTube video of the non-album Fleet Foxes cover. So so good. (B+)
Castanets v. Ero - Dub Refuge: This is a little extra from the new Castanets album. It is literally a dub versioning of City Of Refuge; and while much of what gets called "Dub" now really is disappointing, or just plain shit, I like the original enough, and I like the band enough, I needed to take a chance (it is vinyl only, which I got, but I only have heard it on the MP3 files you get with the album.) I am quite glad I picked it up. The original album is really only growing in my esteem. While it may not have that one knockout on it like Song Is Not A Song Of The World, it is their end-to-end best. It is already kinda creaky and creepy as is, that Ero (a person? a band?) decided to use real classic dub filtering for the material serves to amplify the natural freak-out factor of the original. The big difference, and the real achievement here, is that this effort - while surely not for the first time - shows that the dub style is not solely a reggae language. Dub is infinitely more pliable and can be used to find nuance in anything when done right. A dusty lo-fi borderline-freak-folk album -already perfect for listening in dim light - becomes bigger, warmer, and almost cavernous in scope while retaining that low light narrative perfection. Because pot is not really something that ever meant that much to me, I am sure there are things baked into this dub version that are lost on me, but for whatever reason, I have always enjoyed real dub as a straight, and now I am finding just how much I like it even when taken way outside the realm of reggae itself. That I am missing something that the chemicals might reveal to me makes me ever-so-slightly sad, but I will manage. I think these ideas have always been bigger than the Rasta sacrament anyway. This certainly makes a compelling case for what is possible beyond the usual trappings. I hope this will lead me to more. (B)
Karl Blau - Nature's Got Away: Karl Blau puts out a new album every 5 minutes. I didn't care as much for the last one, AM, as I had for Dance Positive, or my favorite of his, Beneath Waves. When he is good, he is excellent, so I will pretty much take a chance on whatever he puts out, and this one was immediately rewarding, and remains so after weeks of heavy rotation. This album is neither obnoxiously lo-fi (which he can be), nor does it feel like a big budget production. Not having read much of the liner notes, I am not sure if he plays everything (which he is certainly capable of) or if he has help, but it matters little. With Mr. Blau, it is the songs. His voice can come off as a tuneless croak, and even at its best, I wouldn't say he has anything one could call "range". He has style and he has songs. He really seems to lack any pretense, he sings about what he likes (usually people or stories), and he can incorporate just enough of that Elvis Costello late-70s reggae sound into his K Records folk to keep things varied and flavorful. Karl Blau would have to work pretty hard for me to find nothing likeable in one of his albums. That said, it isn't a lock that I am going to find stuff on it that compels me to listen over and over. This disc has that, and holds up end-to-end (for the most part - one or two uncomfortable duds have been removed from my playlist.) I think this disc will be a go-to stop for me on my iPlod for many months to come. (B+)
Stereolab - Chemical Chords: Stereolab albums are quite hit and miss. I have a few that I haven't been through end-to-end twice, and some that I won't go a month without a deep survey of. Their compilations are often the best stuff, and I don't just mean "best of" comps. They have been around so long, and are so prolific, that it would be impossible to keep up with them any other way (unless one was a fanatic for them.) This new one is probably going to end up being my favorite true album (read: non-compilation) from them, which is amazing, because they have been around so long, and because their stuff is so easily identified as being theirs. I can't say they do anything here to distance themselves from their catalog, but neither do they go back over it and put a new tread on it. If I had to put a name to it, I guess I would say this disc spends a little more time exploring their Middle-of-the-Road song structures and more forward arrangements. That doesn't make it easy listening by any means...it is definitely "left of the dial" fodder, but they have to be pushing 40 at this point, and perhaps that is what finds them working with more straight-forward song arrangements. If you like them, you will probably like this. If you only know one or two of their songs, but like what you know, this is probably what you should get after you pick up one of their best-ofs. If you don't know anything about them, I am not sure what to tell you other than this is by far the best French/English Communist keyboard/moog-fetish alt.MOR band going, and they really have the formula down daddy-o. (B-)
ZZ Top - Eliminator: There is now a re-issue of this album with a DVD included that highlights the videos. Getting copies of the videos was my main interest, but I would be lying if I didn't confess that I really loved this album in its time, and time itself has been quite good to it. I am sure the old school ZZTop fan thought this synth-heavy hit machine was a sell-out, but as someone who never cared much for ZZTop either way, this was a giant milestone in my musical education. Yes, Legs, TV Dinners, Sharp Dressed Man, & Gimmie All Your Lovin are all AOR fodder and likely to plague retro programming until people my age die off. If you can't appreciate them for what they are, then I am not sure I can relate. They are near perfect pop songs that - even independent of the videos - ramped-up the amount of nudge-nudge vulgarity and lowbrow culture slumming that could be elevated to the top of the pops. Whether they come out and just say it, bury it in chintzy dirty word-play, or use the videos to show it, they really were the only ones to give Prince a run for his money in creating virtue out of a manchild view of human sexuality, and considering that I was 14 when it came out, it was just what I needed. I may roll my eyes at a little of it now (Got Me Under Pressure? I guess it is better than Pearl Necklace or Woke Up With Wood), but to say that I still don't take the response when it comes time to intone "Black Tie", or to act like I don't get the little-boy-grin when the working dufus is handed the key to the Eliminator for his big moment of initiation into a world of mind blowing sexual hedonism - to deny these moments is akin to denial of self. I would be more worried if these things HAD NOT spoken to me at the time. That I am left appreciating the quality of the songs these days more than the message means I have either grown up a little, or become a total asshole (who has grown up a little.) I can't be worried about it. This document really isn't for me - it is to be handed down like a tattered old Penthouse or Gent to the younger generation. I am not sure they will have a frame of reference for it (the sassy ladies of the Eighties carried bad hair and baby fat to a degree that it interferes with the message - how could they know?) Maybe the grandeur is lost to the future; perhaps this really is just a relic of its time. Surely one can do much more explicit work these days if one is so inclined. This may just seem nicey nice or kitschy to the 14-year old males of the day. That saddens me. I will never have keys to a lady-laden hot rod to hand down to the teenage lads in my orbit, I really only would have had this album to hand down as pass-key to the alternate universe that was ZZTop of this vintage. I fear the meaning may be lost...the transfer of knowledge incomplete...the youth of today, cheated. (B+)
Jolie Holland - The Living And The Dead: Jolie Holland is probably an acquired taste for most, and even I have to be in the mood. I think some of the vocal quirks border on affectation and that at times she is more Texas than Texas. She is also still quite young, and the cement is still a little wet in terms of her finding her stride. Her albums have some very high highs, but they haven't all been consistent, end-to-end awesome. In fact, a lot of my favorite stuff from her shows up OFF of the albums (I Was Drunk At The Pulpit, Don't Get Trouble In Your Mind - 2 awesome covers that were only on compilations, in particular.) The time I saw her show, I became convinced that she is the real deal, and that one day, she is a candidate for creating an across-the-board ass-whomper of an album. This new one might not be that ass-whomper, but it brings her much closer to that. I worry that she may end up veering too hard in the VH1/Starbucks Music direction with each passing release, and indeed, I may lose my interest in her to the adult-alternative horror show. This album comes enough from left field that I think it is still safe to assume she is going to trying being as creative as she is good - and I think this album comes as close to finding that parity as anything she has done. I like the early raw stuff - the verite of a woman, her blues, and a guitar - but this effort is more fully formed, and veers closer to rocking, than anything in her catalog. If ya like the alt.country thing a little more buttoned up, this might be where you should start (the lead single Mexico City is easy to find on MP3 at Stereogum and elsewhere.) This album is coming out late enough in the year that I haven't been able to take this out on many long high-n-lonesome rides through the outback, but I suspect that might be where it hits its stride best. As it stands, I am happy to see her continue to grow and find herself. She is talented as can be, and the output is just now turning the corner so that this should become apparent to a much wider audience. Good for her. (B)
Of Montreal - Skeletal Lamping: Pitchfork dissed this album. I am a follower, so their diss had me worried. Pitchfork is slowly becoming a parody of itself, but they have lead me to so much music I never would have known about and their ear is usually not too far off from my own. I have been waiting a long time for this album, so seeing it get chumped was a super downer. I admit I didn't think the singles (Id, Nonpareil) that came out first were all that good. Compared to the last few albums, these are just not up to that standard. Then all the advance press had me thinking this was gonna be some horrible collage, stuck together just for the sake of being difficult and so that Kevin Barnes can throw off the weight of the expectations on him hitting one out of the park (something he surely could do if he willed it.) I love the last 2 or 3 Of Montreal albums, and have spent so much time with them, the thought of having an entire album cycle give me nothing was something that felt ugly. Indeed, on my first listen through, I wasn't hearing anything that was going to sustain me like the OM catalog has been; I wasn't hearing an album I could literally put on whenever. The collage format is mostly a matter of where they decide to break up the track listing - there are mostly full songs here that run together via transitional songs or song fragments. The format is no turn on, but it is not a big problem. There are plenty of full-fledged songs in there. But I decided that I was gonna listen to this a lot before letting myself decide how I was gonna relate to this, and I am glad I put it in heavy rotation solely for this purpose. With time, I think I got it. Early on I was thinking this was gonna be for OM what Midnight Vultures was for Beck - a borderline dud "party" album that I couldn't say was BAD, but that I had no interest in listening to very often just the same. Certainly, there are shades of that here and there, but it is in the detail, I realized that this disc succeeded at the exact spots Midnight Vultures failed. This album isn't an homage, or parody, or an experiment with the party album form; this is really more like the Prince stuff between Purple Rain and Sign O The Times - transitional & conceptual. By OM standards, the album really is quite close to Prince in how sexually charged it is, and to the degree a white Georgian can bring it, there is also the funk. Where Midnight Vultures approached the sex, the party, and the fantasy with a smirk, I think this is actually a relatively sincere exploration of it by someone who probably really likes sex, probably understands Prince on levels which Prince is usually off-putting, but who simply is a few shades less talented than Prince. That is no indictment of Kevin Barnes. NO ONE is as talented as Prince - especially now that James Brown has passed. OM ain't ever gonna produce sides 3 & 4 of 1999; but no one else is either. The only way anyone else will ever get close is if THEY MEAN IT. On that point, Kevin Barnes does about the best he can with it. That is rises above what Beck could do with the form, but not touch the master, is no indictment, it is high praise. Beck is the only real competition left among the white boys at this point. Kevin Barnes will probably never out-folk or out-rock Beck, but in the Prince homage category, the boy done good. Not great. Just good. (B)
Tegan & Sara - If It Was You: I am ashamed that I missed them when they were putting these albums out. I have almost built out the full back catalog. The songs don't always hit you smack in the face at first, but in time, you see that they are totally in control and work primarily with top shelf stuff. I need more time with other stuff of theirs to know where this fits. Indeed they seem to have been quite young when this was made, but I don't think that proves to be much of a deficiency. What can I say? I wasn't paying attention and I missed out on watching them grow into the top-shelf artistes they are now. Better late than never. (B-)