Author: symeo

Review: Band of Horses – Acoustic at the Ryman

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If you really want to laugh some time at how seriously music critics take themselves, I recommend you take a look at the evolution of Pitchfork’s opinion of Band of Horses.  What was first breathless praise slowly but surely evolved into near utter contempt.  Even though it was the work of multiple reviewers, each had similarly high hopes derived from the band’s early work.  At a certain point, you have to ask, “Why was this case?”

Though it may seem like I’m attempting to bury Band of Horses, this actually is not the case.  I am just offering an argument for not having rapturous expectations in the first place.  I remember hearing “The Funeral” when it first came out, and my first instinct was to say “Hey, this is a pretty good Shins song.”  You would think that considering that they were label mates on Sub Pop that this would be among the first comparisons to be made, but instead I saw a lot written about My Morning Jacket (not really, but I can see some similarities at least from a vocal perspective between Ben Bridwell and Jim James) and Neil Young (no, not at all).  In fact, I had first tried to pay attention to Band of Horses because of the MMJ comparisons, and when I didn’t hear the similarities, I decided to ignore them, despite the heavy praise of the album.  It wasn’t until I saw BoH open up for Dinosaur Jr. that I decided to reconsider my stance, based both on the music and Bridwell’s beard, which was at the time at a level of Martsch-ian proportions.

I actually first became excited for the band when I heard the lead single for Cease to Begin, the seemingly upbeat “Is There A Ghost”.  And then when I saw that they had a song called “Detlef Schrempf”, they had all the hooks they needed for me.  If you reference one of my favorite third-banana NBA players from the 90’s (and a beloved Blazer in his short time here), you definitely have my attention.  It was at this point that I decided that I would start following this band and at least keep track when they released a new album.

Now I will agree with the critical consensus about the decline in relative quality over the course of BoH’s career.  Infinite Arms had a couple of catchy songs, but I never played it as much as Cease to Begin or Everything All The Time.  And Mirage Rock left such a minimal impression on me that I recently checked to make sure that I actually own the album.  The difference is, I don’t see the decline in the grandiose tragic terms as some of those other critics.  “Where’s the artistic growth?” they would ask; I respond, “Why did you expect any to begin with?”  There wasn’t anything necessarily uniquely great about the group from the beginning.  They merely developed an interesting sound, wrote a few good songs, and continue to do pretty much the same thing for each album.

This leads me to their latest release, Acoustic at the Ryman.  The review for this album in particular is even more hilarious considering the level of bile and invective.  It’s at this point you have to step back and ask, “What is a live acoustic album for?”  It pretty much just serves the purpose of providing a mix tape of previous albums, a pseudo-Greatest Hits collection for neophytes, with a slightly different take on these songs, something that serves the fans.  There’s no need to go into long digressions about the significance of the venue and analyzing the existential dilemma of a moderately successful indie rock group.  Accept it for what it is, and move on.

So, considering those parameters, is the album a success?  If you’ve never heard Band of Horses, pick the album up and you will get a good idea of their sound.  For fans of the band, sure, why not–the arrangements are different enough that they’re enjoyable to compare to what you know.  It’s not sacrilege to hear “The Funeral” with a piano.  Save the theatrics for someone else.

Covered: “No One’s Gonna Love You”

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Covered is a feature where we examine the merits of various cover songs, debating whether or not they capture the spirit and intent of the original, if the cover adds anything new, and whether or not it perhaps surpasses the original.  If we fail on those counts, at the very least we may expose you to different versions of great songs you hadn’t heard before. 

This week we’re going to bridge between an artist we examined last week and a group whose new album we’ll review tomorrow.  First, we’ll examine the original from the new artist:

It’s easy to see why “No One’s Gonna Love You” was one of the singles from Cease to Begin.  It’s a gorgeous and delicate ballad, with beautiful crystalline guitars, and a soaring melody which is a perfect showcase for Ben Bridwell’s voice.  It’s pretty much right in Band of Horses’s wheelhouse, the kind of song that people would suggest when selling the potential of the band.  Sorry for the quick description, but the qualities of the song are pretty self-evident upon first listen, and there’s no real need for further analysis on my part.

When examining the tracklist to Cee Lo’s album The Lady-Killer, I wondered if this could possibly be a cover of the Band of Horses tune, and much to my surprise it was.  Upon first impression, one wouldn’t expect there to be much common ground between the two artists, but of course Cee Lo has never been one to constrain himself with musical limits (see the previous “Covered” with Gnarls Barkley’s version of “Reckoner”).  Cee Lo says “Fuck that” to your narrow-minded expectations (of course, not to be confused with another popular statement he made that year.)

The thing that I love best about this cover is that instead of downplaying the potentially saccharine sentiment of the song, it goes in completely the other direction and amplifies them to the hilt.  “No one’s gonna love you more than I do”?  Let’s make sure you get the message by adding huge swelling strings!  And the basic hip-hop beat programming works surprisingly well with the music too.  And the final confirmation of what makes this a really good cover: I’m sure there were plenty of people that bought Cee Lo’s album without realizing that this song was actually done by a semi-obscure indie rock band.

And to top things off, Band of Horses decided to return the favor by doing their own cover of Cee Lo’s “Georgia”.  It’s quite the mutual appreciation society that they’ve developed.

Over the Weekend (Feb. 17 Edition)

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It’s a holiday weekend, so it’s a fine time to catch up on some #longreads before heading back to work tomorrow.

Pitchfork had an interview with Sub Pop co-founder Bruce Pavitt about his new book of photographs documenting Nirvana’s 1989 European tour.  It’s a great first-hand account of “the calm before the storm”, before everybody had an idea what grunge was or where Seattle was even located.

A different era of Nirvana

A different era of Nirvana

The Guardian has an excellent interview with Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth.  It’s a wide-spanning interview, covering her early career with the band to her new work with Body/Head and other venues for her art.  The end of her marriage to Thurston Moore and the breakup of Sonic Youth are still clearly sore subjects, so don’t read this expecting juicy gossip.

Stereogum has a ranking of the Elliott Smith albums from worst to best.  I know it’s merely opinion, but let me say this: it’s just wrong (beyond the fact that there is no “worst” Elliott Smith album).  Feel free to read it anyway, because it’s always good to talk about Elliott Smith’s work.  The subject is definitely worthy of a TL;DR post later on, but here is the correct ranking, in order of increasing awesomeness:

  • 7. New Moon
  • 6. Elliott Smith
  • 5. Roman Candle
  • 4. Either/Or
  • 3. From A Basement On The Hill
  • 2. Figure 8
  • 1. XO

And finally, Beck has a new album coming out next week.  We’ll have a long review of his career so far later this week, but for those of you who don’t mind jumping the gun, NPR has a stream of Morning Phase available on their site.  Also, it’s a good reminder to note that we have a Tumblr, because apparently that’s what kids do these days, where we posted the link earlier.

Feats of Strength: The National

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The National released one of the best albums of 2013 with Trouble Will Find Me.  This is no surprise, considering the excellent run that the band has been on–this is now four straight classic albums for the band.  Alligator, Boxer, High Violet, and now Trouble mark one of the greatest winning streaks in music history, and depending on the day you ask me, I’d rank any one of those as the band’s best work.  And just like their albums, it’s hard to elevate any member’s contributions over the other.  Everyone works together to make a cohesive sound, from the rich textures of the Dessners to the complex rhythms of the Devendorfs to the deep, expressive voice of Matt Berninger.

One of the great things about The National is the subtleties that reveal themselves over multiple listens.  On the initial lesson, you get a general feeling that sure, this is pleasant, with only slight variations in tempo signifying the difference between the bittersweet quick numbers from the melancholic slower numbers.  But with each successive listen, you get a better idea of the layers within each song, from different textures between instruments you didn’t pick up on the first time to certain dynamic swells that escaped notice the first time around.  Most impressively, The National prove that intensity doesn’t have to mean “loud” and “abrasive”.

And then when you get an appreciate all the different layers of their songs, you begin picking up on the lyrics, and find a ton of memorable lines.  The song “Pink Rabbits” is no exception, and there are several lines that stand out, ranging from the clever (“Now I only think about Los Angeles when the sound kicks out”) to the beautifully depressing (“You didn’t see me I was falling apart; I was a television version of a person with a broken heart”).  It’s not just the individual lines of the song that are noteworthy, but the way that they are structured as well.

Again, this is a detail that becomes apparent after multiple listens, but there are several songs that The National have written that don’t employ traditional verse-chorus-bridge-chorus structures.  There is the illusion of different choruses, but this is based more on melody and dynamics than a traditional structure.  For the most part, “Pink Rabbits” relies on the same four chords, but different sections have the effect of a chorus because of either a build-up (two-chord sections, marked by the lyrics “And everybody was gone, you were staring down the street cause you were trying not to crack up) or by a quick simple repetition.

The effect of this is we get linear progress as we proceed through this particular story of heartbreak, with momentary glances back at the past.  This is effectively complemented by the music which has a dragging rhythm as if the band is trying, but can only manage to trudge along.  This reinforces the narrative of a person confronting all the emotions that come with seeing an old love once again, though circumstances have changed.  The narrator is uncomfortable dragging up old feelings (“I’m so surprised you want to dance with me now, I was just getting used to living life without you around”) and feels bitter about encountering them once again (“You said it would be painless–it wasn’t that at all”).

There is a particular section where the particular melody line that Berninger matches up perfectly with the narrative.  When he sings the section that begins “I was solid gold, I was in the fight”, the melody lifts up and is ascending.  However, when the narrator meets the old love, the melody line begins to descend as he sings “I’m so surprised you want to dance with me now.”  From this moment on, the mood has permanently shifted, and the emotions come bubbling up to the surface.

Catching Up On The Week (Feb. 14 Edition)

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A few quick links you may have missed this week and worthy of your time this weekend

Chino Moreno is best known for his work as the vocalist for the Deftones, but he is definitely unafraid to branch out and work with other artists (Palms, Team Sleep).  Now Chino has a new project called ††† (Crosses), and they released their debut album out this week.  Chino gave interviews to SPIN and Rolling Stone, discussing his musical influences and other interesting stories including battles with labels over his career.  For me though, the one piece of information that most intrigued me was finding out that Chino now lives in Oregon.  If I ever see him around, I’ll be sure to welcome him.

Happy Birthday Oregon!

Happy Birthday Oregon!

Mark Kozelek has a new album out this week under his Sun Kil Moon moniker called Benji which is already drawing raves for both the evolution of his style and the stark, deeply personal lyrics.  He did an interview with Pitchfork a couple of weeks ago, and you can read it here.

And the LA Times recently had an in-depth look at the recording process behind Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories.  I would note that it was the Grammy winner for Album of the Year, but you and I know that designation really doesn’t mean anything at all.

The Danger Mouse File

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With the recent release of the new Broken Bells album After the Disco, this is as good a time as any for people to become even more familiar with the different projects of Danger Mouse.  If you’ve listened to music in the last ten years, you’ve come across several songs produced by Brian Burton, aka Danger Mouse, and more likely than not own at least an album filled with his contributions.

If there is one thing that I can pinpoint as a signature of the Danger Mouse Sound, it’s the idea of the old made new again, or perhaps the retro in a modern context.  This is not done in a showy or bombastic way–at no point in a Danger Mouse song is he calling to the listener’s attention THIS IS AN OLD STYLE/CONCEPT.  There is nothing post-modern about his use of old styles, and certainly no ironic commentary.  He’s not just throwing old records into a blender and spitting out reprocessed old music; you won’t find a dubstep version of a Hollies song, for example.  Though he first got most people’s attention with his Jay-Z/Beatles mash-up The Grey Album, he’s moved well beyond throwing modern beats behind old soul samples. It’s much more subtle, which is why it’s worked so well over multiple iterations. 

There are certain reoccurring elements that can be found in the Danger Mouse sound.  The one that I usually pick up on is a certain bass sound–quick, staccato single notes, and often muted to dampen the sound a bit.  There are also certain idiosyncrasies to his drumming/percussion, namely in his snare sound and his use of the ride cymbal, often matched with a late 50’s/early 60’s rock beat.  And you are also likely to hear certain organ flourishes that give an additional color; it’s usually not a dominant sound, but present enough in the background that it is a significant part of the atmosphere of the song.

Danger Mouse hasn’t just been consistently excellent in the past decade, he’s been quite prolific.  That means there are probably a few albums of his that you haven’t gotten around to listening to, or may not even have known existed.  I mean, I was looking at this list and saw a few albums that I owned that I had no idea he had helped produce.  It could just be confirmation bias speaking, but as I’ve listened to them in writing this article, I keep going, yeah, that definitely has that Danger Mouse sound.

One of those albums is The Good, The Bad & The Queen, which has unfortunately been forgotten about a bit over the years.  It’s the rare super-group album that’s worth listening to (and it definitely is a super-group: Damon Albarn of Blur, Simon Tong of The Verve, legendary drummer Tony Allen, and holy shit Paul Simonon of The Clash).  While each of the component parts are brilliant, they unite to create a singular album that is different than anything else they’ve ever done.

Another overlooked album is the debut of Electric Guest, Mondo.  I’ve heard the single “This Head I Hold” a bit on the local alternative radio station, but it never made much headway nationally.  It very much has the kind of groove found in Danger Mouse’s work with Gnarls Barkley, namely from the bass and from the classic pop-rock drums, just with a different singer.

Speaking of Gnarls Barkley, even though everyone knows their breakout hit “Crazy” and a lot of people picked up their debut album, their follow-up The Odd Couple never caught on like it should.  There was no single track that stood out from the pack like “Crazy” did, but the album was stacked from top-to-bottom with fantastic songs.  “Run”, “Going On”, and “Surprise”  were all incredibly fun tracks filled with energy that should pack the dancefloor.  “Blind Mary”  was a bouncy track that managed the difficult task of being positive yet melancholic.  And then there’s the devastatingly heart-breaking ballad, “Who’s Gonna Save My Soul?”, with it’s absolutely perfect video.

2008 was an absolutely banner year for Danger Mouse, creatively speaking.  He had three of my top ten albums of that year, an honor that means absolutely nothing to most everyone.  In addition to The Odd Couple, there was his work on Beck’s Modern Guilt and The Black Keys’s Attack & Release, albums which I will argue are among the high points of each artist’s careers.  Beck is of course famous for shifting genres with each album, and he slides in smoothly into the Danger Mouse style.  Beck always had a great touch in finding bits and pieces of old styles and repurposing them in modern contexts, so it should have been no surprise that he and Danger Mouse were simpatico.

The Black Keys were a different story.  They had an easily identifiable trademark sound of ragged two-man blues/rock, and it was unclear how another element could fit in without disrupting that aesthetic.  So often the production touches were at the margins or added for just little bits of color–a perfectly timed organ hit here, a little jazz flute there, etc.  It was enough to push the group into new creative directions and eventually into greater commercial success.  While some may grow tired of how The Black Keys have come to dominate rock radio today, I will always appreciate it when great songs like “Little Black Submarines” come on, even if they ruin some of its beauty by knocking out a whole verse and not allowing the song to properly develop (a rant that I will save for a later day).

It’s a lot better than being constantly subjected to Nickelback.

But perhaps the most interesting entry in the Danger Mouse discography is the project he did with composer Daniele Luppi, entitled Rome.  It’s basically a soundtrack to a fake spaghetti western, and it’s really quite a blast.  The album does a great job of mixing in instrumentals with more traditional “songs”, featuring Jack White and Norah Jones on vocals.  In the end it fulfills the goal of any project like this: it makes you want to see the movie that would have this soundtrack.

If this has done anything, I hope it makes you at least somewhat excited when news of another Danger Mouse release comes out.  And checking the calendar, you should be feeling that in approximately…three months.  Enjoy.

Review: Broken Bells – After the Disco

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It’s been amusing to read reviews of the new Broken Bells album, namely the amount of focus that multiple critics place on the name of the record.  It brings to mind memories of middle schoolers putting together slap-dash book reports and riffing as much as they can on the title and back page in their oral presentations.  It makes me wish that I had some social media pull to start a trending hashtag of #CrappyBookReports.  I can understand how certain bands spend a lot of time and effort thinking that the album title really encapsulates what they were going for on the record, but you know, sometimes it’s just a convenient label (and just something taken from a particular song).

So, in other words, I’m not placing much stock in any grand statement in After the Disco.*  Instead, I’m content to enjoy it as a pleasant 45 minute record of mid-tempo rock.  The highs aren’t particularly high, and I wouldn’t say there’s a killer single hidden in the tracklisting somewhere, though “Holding On For Life” was enough of a hook to get me excited to actually buy the album.

One thing that the album does a great job is throwing enough curveballs that seemingly straight-ahead tracks usually in a place that you don’t expect.  It makes for a great listening experience, but hell to figure out which song exactly it was that you were digging.   Opener “Perfect World” starts with a great, motoring groove (almost a disco beat!), and then ends with a great half-time coda that brings the mood back down to Earth (maybe I should give critics more credit–they saw the album title AND listened to the first song).  That said, songs where the tempo picks up like “The Changing Lights” and “Medicine” stand out a bit, but they never fully lift off.  It’s most clear in the song “No Matter What You’re Told”–if there was just a little bit more urgency and just a couple more beats per minute (and a snare sound that was a bit more lively), this would be a great crowd-pleaser.  But the restraint is clearly by design, so it’s difficult to pin all the blame on stylistic choices like that one.

The biggest problem is with the concept of “Broken Bells” itself.  Both James Mercer and Danger Mouse have done excellent work on their own, but the combination of the two is puzzling at first glance, and there’s not really enough in their music to take away any potential doubts.  Mercer already has an authoritative voice in The Shins and is a suitable vehicle for most of his musical ambitions; Danger Mouse has produced great tracks, but he could probably need a stronger vocal presence than Mercer.  The music never really rises above its side-project nature; the whole is not greater than the sum of its parts.

But there is something to be said for just good music; bands don’t always need to justify themselves.  In that respect, I’m perfectly content on buying Broken Bells albums and will probably continue to do so in the future.

*For the record, I always thought that After the Disco would have been a perfect title for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ It’s Blitz!

Covered: “Reckoner”

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Covered is a feature where we examine the merits of various cover songs, debating whether or not they capture the spirit and intent of the original, if the cover adds anything new, and whether or not it perhaps surpasses the original.  If we fail on those counts, at the very least we may expose you to different versions of great songs you hadn’t heard before.

One of the highlights of Radiohead’s classic album In Rainbows was the song “Reckoner”.  It may seem like a contradiction when I put it this way, but if I had to describe it, I’d say it was a beautiful, haunted, jazzy piece.  The first instrument the listener hears is the super-clean guitars with their rich, bassy tone, a style used throughout In Rainbows but used to maximum effect here (I’ve quipped to friends before that it seemed that Radiohead forgot that there were other pickups on their guitars besides the neck pickup, but it works perfectly in this context).  The stuttering rhythm of the beginning arpeggios are complemented by a shuffling drumbeat, which gives the song a right mix of propulsion as well as unease.  The use of the ride cymbal also adds to the haunting quality, giving an instrumental haze through which Thom Yorke’s ethereal vocals filter in and out as he pleads in a gorgeous falsetto.

So it would seem like it would be difficult to match the greatness of this song, right?

I would say that while the original is a great song, I believe that the Gnarls Barkley cover surpasses it.  The instrumentation is faithful to the original, right down to the tambourine part as played by Danger Mouse.  One small difference is that instead of strings, the band opts for some distortion on the guitar, a substitution which works great in the live setting.  But what sets this version apart from the original is the amazingly emotional vocal performance by Cee Lo.  He gives this song all the passion that it didn’t even know it needed, turning Thom Yorke’s pleadings into a forceful demand.  It’s a stunning, powerful performance, and is the key to what makes it one of the best covers I’ve ever heard.

***Side Note: I was actually at the concert in 2001 at The Gorge where Radiohead debuted an early version of “Reckoner”.  It sounded pretty much nothing at all like the song we all know now.

Over The Weekend (Feb. 10 Edition)

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It’s Monday, and what better time to watch some videos because doing actual work sounds pretty awful right now.

There goes my plan to invest in Medieval Madness points

Not For Investment Purposes

Justin Vernon from Bon Iver and Volcano Choir sat in with The Roots on Jimmy Fallon’s show last week, and Pitchfork has videos of the combo playing Bon Iver songs.

Punk icon Dennis Lyxzén (Refused, The (International) Noise Conspiracy) has a new group called INVSN, and their sound is a bit different than what you would expect.  Then again, if you expected synths and programmed drums, I would like to learn about the hallucinogenic substances you’ve been ingesting.  But I like the sound, and Stereogum has the video for their song “61”.

I’ve been sticking around after The Daily Show and The Colbert Report to watch the show @Midnight.  I’ve been switching between that and Community reruns, but lately I’ve been sticking around the reruns less often (though this may be the result of the syndication schedule not doing a great job of shuffling the episodes).  I only bring it up here because Neko Case was a contestant on the most recent show; you can watch her Win The Internet here.

And finally, here’s Andrew W.K. doing a guest song for a show on Animal Planet, featuring a ridiculous-looking cat.  It is everything you’d hope and expect it to be.  And that’s the best way to start the week.

How To Spend The Weekend When Snowed In

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We usually don’t get much snow in the Pacific Northwest, and as a result we’re generally unprepared to deal with such unpleasantness.  This means outside of a couple of hours of shoveling the driveway and taking a quick trip to the grocery store (and then getting the car stuck in the snow before making it up the last hill to my house), it’s been a stay-indoors-the-whole-weekend kind of time here.

Someone didn't pay the fee to the Snow Miser

This will not get plowed for days.

At least I’m taking advantage of the opportunity to watch one of my many music DVDs, and what better time to watch the documentary of Sigur Rós’s tour of their homeland of Iceland.  The visuals of their countryside are stunning, and as one would expect with the majestic music of the band, so are the songs.  The band comes up with many novel arrangements of their songs, ranging from their stunning light shows in Reykjavik to acoustic performances in the middle of nowhere.  In addition, I also love seeing just how some of the most unreal sounds that the band makes on record are reproduced live.

 

I highly recommend buying it, but here’s at least the first disc.