Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Late to the Party: Bat For Lashes - What's a Girl to Do?


Bat for Lashes is pretty.

This song and video both remind me heavily of Donnie Darko, in the best way.

Monday, April 28, 2008

Space time continuum




The first thing that consumers ought to know about British soul technician Jamie Lidell's second full-length solo record, Jim, is that it was, indeed, created in the 21st century. Although its production, arrangements, vocal approaches, and songwriting all variously and completely resemble that of any given classic American '70s soul record, it was in fact created last year, in locations including Berlin and Paris. Aside from the album itself, there is no hard evidence that Lidell is now, or has ever been, in possession of any kind of device enabling time travel. Consumers may also wish to note that there's no evidence to indicate that Lidell is anything other than a white boy, despite the Redding/Green oomph his voice displays throughout this album. Jim's eyes are blue, and his soul is blue-eyed. A pasty Limey hasn't channeled black America this successfully since, um, Amy Winehouse.

How is Jamie Lidell not like Amy Winehouse? Read on, dear, for the answer.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Don't blink



Canadian yelpers Tokyo Police Club map out the crucial difference between cursory and terse on their debut full length, Elephant Shell. The whole shebang clocks in at several minutes shy of half an hour, and it might seem cheap if its brevity wasn't so full of wit. These songs are as complex as they are short, and they're riddled with well-conceived zigs and zags. The first six, in particular, whiz past as a paradoxically memorable blur of sharp guitar figures and precision-cut rhythms. The album's first half is so tight that it's difficult to parse; even after dozens of spins, every song sounds like a single. Actual singles "In a Cave" and "Tessellate" feature wry keening and densely knotted melodies, just like the songs at their shoulders; "Juno" distinguishes itself with a slower pace and some mordantly tense piano chords, but its effect is no more or less incisive.

Whoo alright yeah uh huh.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

A grounded galaxy



The artwork for M83's excellent fifth album, Saturdays=Youth, features photos of sun-dappled teenagers trying on a half-dozen varieties of rebellious Caucasian beauty. The girl in the picture paired with the lyrics for lead single and album standout "Graveyard Girl" is a dead ringer for Molly Ringwald circa Pretty in Pink. The photo provides support to M83 auteur Anthony Gonzalez's description of the song as a tribute to John Hughes movies—support that comes across as slightly gauche, since the song is perfectly capable of speaking for itself. An ode to the precocious self-involvement of that sweetly storied stereotype, the goth chick, it's awash with post-punky electric guitars and a curiously not irritating children's choir cooing "yeah yeah yeah" at the edge of the mix. It's the kind of work strong enough to be bolstered by a breakdown featuring a female voiceover that concludes, "I'm 15 years old and I feel it's already too late to live. Don't you?" And it's certainly the most typically, successfully pop moment this difficult, often transcendent act has ever produced.

More thoughts here.

Saturday, April 12, 2008

Fun with Household Products



There are only a few different types of songs on Crystal Castles' intermittently exciting self-titled debut. For fun, and in honor of the fact that the band's unique sound is derived from a synthesizer into which they installed an Atari 5200 chip, let's classify these song types with names that relate to some of modern teenagers' favorite timewasters: Wii, Xbox, and Huffing Paint Thinner.

Enjoy the rest of this extended metaphor over here.

Stockholm Syndrome Strikes the Antipodes




It's been four years, one Fabriclive mix, a half-dozen singles, and countless remixes since Cut Copy released their debut, Bright Like Neon Love, and frankly, it actually does seem like it's been that long. Given the Aussie trio's strange and ongoing omnipresence in hipster dance circles, it's almost surprising that they're only on their second full length. In Ghost Colours finds them teamed up to shake some skinny asses with the less famous half of storied production team the DFA, Tim Goldsworthy. Given each party's previous output, it seems like a match made in heaven, or maybe Studio B. Sadly, the end result rates just a few bars above a prototypical sophomore slump: overproduced and underwritten, with tons of sonic experiments that don't pan out satisfactorily, and which contrast glaringly with the few isolated glorious moments of the sort that made people pay attention in the first place.

Yo, Slant Magazine Raps.

Thursday, April 03, 2008

Magpies win



By reveling in pastiche, London electronic duo Groove Armada lives up to expectations on their fifth studio album, Soundboy Rock, and exceeds them by genre-hopping and idea-grabbing so effectively that the overall effect is occasionally transcendent. The group is no longer the poor man's Fatboy Slim or the pensioner's Jaxx. The music they make isn't ambitious enough for such comparisons, and they are not, and never will be, groundbreaking formal experimenters. Instead, they are exceedingly competent craftsmen, and here they demonstrate that they're capable of channeling convincing, if not very inspiring, takes on a baker's dozen of dance music genres and trends in quick and dirty succession. In a way, they're best compared to the session vocalists who sing most of the hooks on this record: reliable and relatively anonymous. No notes are out of place, and few choices glare as mistakes, though the exclamation of "Funk you too!" on the otherwise reasonably funky single "The Girls Say" might qualify. There's also very little to set the soul ablaze, though "Lightsonic," which adheres to the reggae vocals and sweeping electro-house synth-rush formula the group established with their 2001 hit "Superstylin," is a standout. The death-defying verve with which it defies the law of diminishing returns is, in its subtle way, astonishing.

Over here, ladies and germs.