Factor

13 Stories (A Prelude) (01.2010, Oooh! That's Heavy)

For: production work by: Blockhead, Madlib, El-P

Byline: 2010's first great hip-hop album. Welcome back to my life.

Sadly, hip-hop in 2009 was pretty much neglected on the TOME, in 2010 I have resolved not to let it slip through the tracks. I don't have any real excuse, some great albums came out in '09 DOOM, the "Blueprint 3 "(I liked it, ok), Raekwon "Only Built For Cuban Links II". Kicking the year off right is 13 Stories by Canadian producer Factor. The Canadian producer responsible for work behind artists as varied as Aesop Rock and Xzibit (remember him!!), gives a pretty coherent thesis of 13 stories by 13 MCs. Like most concept albums with various contributers some stay close to the script, others apparently didn't read the e-mail header. Regardless of the vocal contributions, Factor's production work takes a scattershot concept and shuffles through genres enough to give it some breathing room. The album hits early with the always incredible Anticon founder Sole giving one of his most memorable lines of his career with "Elliott Smith put a knife through his heart/now, that's gangster/ask Michael Jackson/there ain't no such thing as painkillers" on "Don't Jock the Dead". If the lyrical allusions haven't tipped you off, this is Factor treading some pretty deep and murky water, his understated beat, bowed strings, and tortured blues sample keep the track plodding forward with its head down. It speaks to a great producer that this contemplative posit on mortality can be bookended by two old-school hip-hop rave ups. This is par for the course for the entire album, "Black Fantasia" with Living Legends' Sunspot Jonz, has a positively addictive hook (the reappropriated theme to Miami Vice, Glenn Frey's "You Belong to the City") while Jonz counters this with a depressing tale of loss and vice. In terms of production work, Factor never does anything to draw attention away from the collaborative nature of this album, allowing the MC to hold court over his classical samples, vocals rooted firmly in the blues and soul, and gritty, lo-fi atmospherics. The fact that his production never imposes itself lends creedence that 13 Stories is in fact a concept album proper, and not a producers vapid excuse to get some lime light by producing the album under his own moniker. Regardless of the range of talent flown in, 13 Stories is still very much the unique vision of Factor, and his name deserves top billing.

P.S Why is this called the prelude? Because Factor is dropping pt. 2 in March. Stay tuned!

Ryan H.

Oooh That's Heavy myspace

Introducing... Erin Chapman! + Owen Pallett

Introducing... Erin Chapman! Joining Team Tome, Erin comes to us straight outta Seattle, WA (although she will always think of herself as displaced Texan), Erin adds a feminine mystique, theater background, and some pretty cool projects in her wake. If you think this review is dope (we do), check out www.seriousandgifted.com and greater than or equal to blog. Welcome Erin!

Heartland (01.2010, Domino Records)

For: Andrew Bird, Xiu Xiu, Boy In Static

Byline: By dropping the Final Fantasy moniker Mr. Pallett produces his most accomplished and stirring album to date.

Simply put: Owen Pallett’s newest installment, “Heartland,” enraptured my soul and my imagination. Sounds cheesy and too good to be true, right? But seriously, throw on some headphones and listen to this album with your eyes closed, and before you know it, you will be creating a love-torn opera, with the all the smoke and lights to go with it.

This may have been a result from being on a kick of watching too many musicals as of late, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that Pallett’s training in classical music and music theory are abundantly apparent. Every instrument, note, verse seem to serve a particular purpose in telling a story.

With two operas under his belt, it comes as no surprise that there seems to be an underlying storyline both lyrically and musically to “Heartland,” with each song leading directly into the next. The listener is immediately gripped to the intoxicating build of excitement of instruments in “Midnight Directives.” I am sucker for songs that provide a slow build of momentum, so it is no surprise that a favorite of mine is “Red Sun No. 5.” Not mention, I love the faintly heard flute on the track. If you are to press pause for an “intermission,” it would be after “The Great Elsewhere.” A beautifully composed track, where Pallett’s string arrangement causes a momentous build to the song, which after it climaxes he brings the song to a close, and in my imagination I can see lights slowly dimming on the stage.

The curtain arises again, with slowly creeping, but welcoming “Oh Heartland, Up Yours!” The climax being “Flare Gun,” with what seems to be a battle cry, allows the rest of the album to resolve itself. It begins to slow down and taper off, ending with “What Do You Think Will Happen Now?” Pallett’s voice sounds nothing short of a trained musical artist, soothing the dizziness caused by the looped and cryptic piano. The piano causes your heart to match the speed of the beat, which can feel the urgency of the song, but ends with resoluteness and all is resolved.

With meticulous attention to detail, Pallett produced an album that will tickle not only the ears but the imagination. He awakes the listener at times with awkward mixtures of strings and percussion, such as in “Tryst With Mephistopheles.” At times it seems as though the two parts are playing different songs, but Pallett provides a solid, strong ending to his album, and leaves the listener contemplative and yearning to listen to the entire album again and again.

Erin Leigh Chapman

And So I Watch You From Afar

Letters (02.2010, Smalltown America)

For: Don Caballero, Polvo, Explosions in the Sky

Byline: blistering math-tinged, metal-inspired post-rock that is as cathartic as it is beguiling. Originally published on www.inyourspeakers.com. Used by permission from In Your Speakers, LLC.

Back in 1975 Cat Stevens penned a practically nonsensical “Pythagorean Theory Tale,” which told the tale of a fictional planet called Polygor and its inhabitants the “Polygons” (you can see where this is going). I couldn’t tell you what this story is about aside from its characters having geometry-related names that related to some aspect of truth. What I do know is that it inspired some of the worst/best song-titles ever created: “Majik of Majiks,” “Banapple Gas,” “Land of Freelove & Goodbye.” Stevens called this fiasco, Numbers.

Apparently not heeding the cautionary tale in naming your album after a loaded singular noun, Ireland’s And So I Watch You From Afar unleash “Letters.” They do so, apparently, without some Kabala-esque journey into symbolism-loaded numerology. S, D, B, K…It isn’t an anagram. It isn’t the first or last letters of each band member’s name. Perhaps it stands for Satan’s Dead Boys Klub?

As we banish all thoughts of a sci-fi epic based on the Pythagorean Theorem, we can embrace an absolutely beautiful sixteen minutes of some of the most brutal riffs and epic breakdowns in recent memory. “S Is for Salamander” offers some serious Bay Area-inspired riffage over hyper-kinetic time changes and moments of Marnie Stern-like (never Van Halen) finger-tapping guitar solos and precision-timed hand-claps. Taking cues from bands ranging from Mastodon and Explosions in the Sky, to math-rock legends Polvo, ASIWYFA create a sound that skirts the periphery of so many sub-genres it is difficult to classify what exactly it is they are playing. But it works.

“D Is For Django (the Bastard)” is the most obviously post-rock-leaning track on the album. It’s swinging jazz-based time signature is taken straight out of an early Do Make Say Think handbook. Moments like these make “Letters” even harder to classify. While never exactly brooding or subdued, “Letters” seems to have more in common with their heavier post-rock brothers in arms than metal bands of this ilk. I write this as another massive metal riff rips through my speakers on the messy, “B Is for B-Side.” The cognitive dissonance that results from trying to categorize ASIWYFA is impressive, but nothing compares to the beating my frontal lobe is experiencing from attempting to incorporate such a massive amount of sound.

The final track, “K Is For Killing Spree (An Ode To)” is the only song that even stretches over the four minute mark. The breakdown on this track is absolutely bottomless, stretching bass and guitar distortion into the only gasp of air this album takes before launching back into another assault on the senses. With all of this stand out heaviness, melody never gets away from ASIWYFA. While only four songs long, “Letters” is 100 % listenable, a testament to a marriage between brutality and accessibility.

And So I Watch You From Afar keep nothing close to their chest or up their sleeve, everything that could be poured out is poured out in a tirade of post-rock, post-metal annihilation in an unbelievably brief sixteen minutes. No self-serving prophecies or numerology on this album. Sigh.

Ryan H.

ASIWYFA myspace

Four Tet

There Is Love In You (Domino, 01.2010)

For: Fridge, Manuel Gottshing, Gas

Byline: Like the greatest of virtuosos, Kieren Hebden has proven himself a true genius of the medium, manipulating and representing these trajectories in a beautifully precise way that translates as both a prodigious mastery of craft, and real honest-to-god emotional depth. Originally posted on www.inyourspeakers.com. Used by permission by In Your Speakers, LLC.

If Kieren Hebden’s Four Tet project were a color model, it would have to be RGB. The reasons are simple - RGB is the additive color model. Red, Green and Blue light are superimposed on top of one another, and when mixed in varying degrees combine to form a vast array of colors, culminating in pure white. This is opposed to a model like CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and blacK) which is subtractive, starting with white and subtracting wavelengths to reveal color, culminating in pure black. RGB is commonly used in electronic media (hint, hint) like television and computer screens, while CMYK is more often found in print media using inks and pigments. For Hebden, the musical medium itself seems to be more like a screen than a sheet of paper - the black void of silence is the canvas upon which the combination of an assortment basic colors (synths, drums, bass, etc.) formulate a sweeping diversity of color (sound).

It may be a stretch of an analogy, but given the fact that the cover of Four Tet’s fantastic new record, There is Love in You, features small circles with Photoshop screenshots, grayscales, and RGB color wheels, filtering through them images of flowers and fabrics, I think it is fitting. Each track on the album begins with a blank canvas, a black void of silence, and slowly filters colorful textures one by one to create vast spectral expanses of sounds and moods. Instead of using complex or bloated chord changes, Hebden opts for methods practiced by composers like Manuel Göttshing, Wolfgang Voigt or Steve Reich with unchanging harmonic centers, using texture and volume to reveal the limitless potential the sonic spectrum contains within. Each element functions as an additive color - a guitar loop, melodic wind chimes, a toy piano, harp, synth wash or vocal sample - all carefully timed and systematically layered over a hypnotically grounded groove to wield beautifully fluctuating painted works of art. Tracks ebb and flow like the tide, building layers into swirling, controlled crescendos that are allowed to ride along with the current. Whether you’re on the dance floor or curled up in some blankets for a snooze, you’ll be gently swept away.

By a long shot, There is Love in You is Four Tet’s strongest, most consistently rewarding release to date, and there are a couple of key differences in Hebden’s approach that set it apart. First has already been touched upon - the groove. The beats are much less rooted in hip hop and are geared more towards the dance floor. Everyone’s familiar with the age old axiom of “less is more.” Four Tet seems to have really taken this to heart on the new record. Previous ‘Tet records have had the drums front and center, whether they were the hip down-tempo beats of Rounds or the vibrant, aggressive blasts of Everything Ecstatic, syncopation was always the key, and it certainly unlocked the door to some very funky moments. But switching to a largely four-on-the-floor base was a marvelous decision on Hebden’s part, as these foundations provide a much broader, more open forum upon which Hebden has been able to really stretch his legs.

These wider landscapes have also allowed for Hebden to display his mastery of subtlety, keeping the beats simple and tenderizing them gently with micro-fills in the snare or layered hi-hat patterns to keep things interesting. Standout track “Plastic People” starts with a Gas-like steady bass drum pulse and adds understated, jazzy comps - hand claps, rim knocks, and up-beat pulsing shakers. These elements are methodically added to, and subtracted from the beat, maintaining a forward motion in a way that’s hardly noticeable but endlessly preservative of the track’s substructure.

The other key difference is in Hebden’s use of vocals, a technique I’d not yet heard from any previous Four Tet outing, and which works wonders for the project’s overall aesthetic. Hebden uses vocals here like any other instrument or sample on the record. The medium of electronic music is inherently audible throughout these samples - melodies are fractured, cut up, re-arranged, looped - in a word, constructed. Vocals are thus simply another weapon in Four Tet’s vast arsenal of sonic elements, treating them as percussive and melodic instruments rather than mere vehicles for lyrics. The voices provide another function here as well by giving these tunes a certain amount of soul. Look no further than lead single, “Love Cry,” for an example. The samples here, however devised or artificially conceived, are delivered with some seriously convincing passion, sexualizing and intensifying the track’s rhythm, faintly recalling the sweaty stomp of Chicago house.

Whether it’s the lulling repetition of gorgeous harmonics, the lush, densely constructed textures, the entrancing vocals or the bewitching beats, There is Love in You is positively addicting. Stripping down has simultaneously beefed up Four Tet’s mastery of beauty, and it is the more focused attention to sheer sonic detail that does the trick. No matter how electronic Four Tet’s music is, there has always been an innate sense of naturalism within his work, and There is Love in You highlights this sensibility more than any other Four Tet record before it. The sound wave itself, not unlike a guitar string, drum head, piano key or vocal cord, is a tangible, natural element of the physical world. It is Four Tet’s instrument, and just like the greatest of virtuosos, Kieren Hebden has proven himself a true genius of the medium, manipulating and representing these trajectories in a beautifully precise way that translates as both a prodigious mastery of craft, and real honest-to-god emotional depth.

Craw'z 1/28/2010

Four Tet Myspace

Hot Congress Compilation 1

Hot Congress Compilation 1 (Hot Congress, 2009)

For: See Below

Byline: NOTE. This is not an endorsement for Scott Brown and his chiseled features.

I feel a little guilty about sitting on this for so long. I feel guilty because this is a totally amazing compilation and the good folks at Hot Congress are practically giving it away. Scratch that, they are giving it away! Hot Congress, while cool as an idea works even better in its execution. A group of friends living in Denver, playing in bands, working day jobs, trying to make ends meet say: screw it! we are doing it ourselves! Crawford, Tome's boy-wonder, is an integral factor in this collective, both as a founding member and as a player in the Vitamins, a band featured on the comp. Hot Congress is a collective in the truest sense of the word. A non-profit enterprise in which everyone works together to book shows, throw cd release parties, rep each other at any chance and contribute from recording to performing. Hot Congress can also be seen as a musical statement, like No New York in the late seventies, of what is happening in Denver in 2009. Although a certain aesthetic does not prevail, each band could not have reached the level of success that they have found in Denver without a little help from their friends. Or, they probably could. Every track on this comp. is solid. I will write a few sentences about each band featured. But before you go any further, download it here!

Achille Lauro "Cardboard Divas": It doesn't hurt that this bands lead singer sounds like a mix between DM Stith and Yoni Wolf. The one-two punch of the buried organ and staccato guitars are absolutely leveling.

Kissing Party "I Just Want to Get Out of This Body": Rivaling SLC's Sleepover for cutest band name ever, Kissing Party marry the adorable twee sensibilities of the aforementioned twee revivalists and a strong Shoegaze sheen over the guitar and vocals.

Lil Slugger "There's No Id in This City": Whoa, I went to high school with these guys. I was in drummer Justin Couch's first band, and we were called Ill Dorado, and we were as awesome as the band name. Apparently there is a life after high school english project bands. Unhinged squalls of noise brim over mind-tangling time signature changes and start-stop song dynamics. Lil Slugger take cues from some of art rock's most important and enduring weirdos to churn out some impressive noise-pop gems.

Vitamins "Sequined Dress": Definitely the best cut from their 2009 EP "Songs For Stems Cells". Lizzy Allen's ethereal voice floats deftly over a massive back beat (that bass line will destroy you) and swooning guitar neck bending.

Action Packed Thrill Ride "In This River": The opening guitar line sounds like it could be the lead in to a Phil Spector doo-wop mini-orchestra. Instead APTR's own skewed pop sensibilities take this line and turn it into a quasi-ballad, quasi down-tempo indie rock slowburner. Delight.

The Jim Jims "Horny": The name says it all right? Dear Vile Blue Shades, you have some new tourmates and best friends. That synth line straight kills me every time.

The Pseudo Dates: "Songbirds": A woozy slice of blissed out dream pop that gathers steam until its ultimately triumphant release towards the end of the track.

Breakfastes "Ageless": Far and away my favorite track on the compilation. The twin guitar attack and soaring male-female vocals inadvertently throw my fist into the dash of my car as I pound out the massive noise breakdowns to the rolling eyes of my wife.

Ken Arkind "Maggie": An interesting move here. A spoken word track. Interestingly, a spoken word track that doesn't suck. "Maggie" is a hilarious/sad/accusatory/ultimately redeeming poem of a young man's torrid love affair with the City of Angels. I'm talking L.A. Concrete jungle where dreams are made of.

Action Friend: "Aren't You Scrumptious?" Is that a question? Threat? Either way the uncontained noise freakouts that punctuate an otherwise swinging post-jazz, Thrill Jockey-esque instrumental track, are bite-sized morsels of saccharine sweet noise candy. Man, I can really run a food analogy into the ground.

Fissure Mystic: "Young Psychedelic Flowers" A darkly psychedelic tribute to sixties flower child aesthetic filtered through the noise attacks of Sonic Youth. "Peel all your psychedelic skin off" that line will stick with me for years.

Ryan H.

Beach House

Teen Dream (01.2010, Sub Pop)

For: Mazzy Star, Fleetwood Mac, Grizzly Bear

Byline: Witness the rise of indie rock’s newest leading lady. Victoria Legrand, meet indie rock stardom. Indie rock stardom, Victoria Legrand. Lush dream-pop and a surprising turn towards volume on the Baltimore duo's third album. Originally published on www.inyourspeakers.com. Used by permission by In Your Speakers, LLC.

What marks Teen Dream as a truly great record is the sea change from 2008’s masterpiece sophomore album Devotion. While the core framework of Alex Scalley’s meandering guitar lines, Victoria Legrand’s slinking organ lines and breathy, late-night croon remain; a full transfusion of life-blood has been performed. All ten tracks are immediately gripping and attention demanding, Teen Dream doesn’t live in your CD player like Devotion did. What was immediately reassuring, comforting and familiar about that album soon became ubiquitous in my life. I had that sucker on wherever and whenever, to the point that I forgot I was listening to it. Teen Dream has no interest in letting that happen. From the album's first breath, Beach House has moved past the easy dream-pop qualifiers and into deeper, more mysterious territory.

Victoria Legrand’s voice has matured from being a key component to Beach House’s lush, sonic palette to its driving agent. Moving beyond the seemingly obvious Hope Sandoval comparisons, Legrands’s voice has taken on a sultry, soulful quality. Her velvet-draped coo is still present, but when it is time to bring the emotional point home, she bellows as if possessed by the spirit of Dinah Washington. This sister’s got soul. Following the suit of his musical partner’s renewed vigor, Alex Scalley’s guitar work has become more fuzzed out, more omnipresent and far more muscular. Formerly content with following Legrand’s dime-store organ, Scalley’s guitar work of major chord riffing and shoegaze tendencies now wrap the compositions neatly together in a down blanket of aural warmness that carries each song determinedly towards a newfound compositional clarity. Teen Dream doesn’t misstep once, each arrangements is airtight and completely lucid.

“Zebra” opens the album with a driving plucked guitar line before Scalley and Legrand float in with a delicious vocal harmony. It is breathtaking the way Victoria broods over that first syllable of “You Know You’re Gold,” holding it just long enough to deliver a wink and a nod to songstresses of old. She repeats this through the line “Oasis child/born so wild.” Joni Mitchell, Grace Slick, and Caithlin De Marrais have walked this path before, pouring themselves into a single note or bearing their souls in such a way to put extra emphasis on a vowel. More than a tribute to rocks sisters in arms, Teen Dream exudes the compositional confidence of a band well in its stride. “Silver Soul” features Scalley’s discovery of the reverb pedal on his chugging rhythm guitar line and diving, mournful lead guitar. Scalley’s guitar work comes close to stealing the show on a few tracks.

Compared to the subdued Devotion there are some downright rockin' moments conjured up between them. The cymbal crashes and rushes of distortion on “Walk in the Park” and “10 Mile Stereo” (the album's best track) accompany Legrand’s powerful voice. Her enunciation when she bellows “They carry us on/forever” creates a powerful, declarative punctuation on an even more powerful record. “10 Mile Stereo” boasts some of the album's most transcendental tremolo picked guitar lines that lead bands like Mono and Mogwai to cathartic heights. This virtuosity is displayed again on “Walk In the Park” where Scalley and Legrand push each other into rushes of emotional release.

I am bringing a lot of attention to the noisier aspects of the new Beach House album because they stand out from their previous work. With that said, even at their loudest moments, Beach House arrangements are more lush and full then earsplitting or cacophonous. In fact they are largely just more emotionally expressive. Beach House can still play intricately-orchestrated dream pop like it's 2007. The two singles “Used to Be” and “Norway” are clear examples. Both songs have breathtaking flourishes that require incredible attention to detail. Legrand’s breathy Erin Ferin-like vocals are matched with pitch shifted organ lines that dip in time with Scalley’s winding guitar lines that droop to meet her husky lilt. The chorus is built on that same interplay between the atmospheric guitar work and the percussion-like vocal lines. “Used to Be” is the most organ/piano-centered arrangement, boasting both a galloping drum pattern and sing-song melody that both follows and sometimes leads the upright piano.

Teen Dream may be one of the most hotly anticipated albums of 2010; with the duo’s move to Sub-Pop Records, their ties to the incredibly prolific Baltimore music scene, and the notice given to them from the likes of Grizzly Bear and Julian Casablancas. 2009 was a year of hyped-to-the-hilt albums, delivering on all fronts, and with Beach House’s new work, it looks like 2010 is off to a great start.

Ryan H.

The American Dollar

Atlas (Yesh, 01.2010)

For: This Will Destroy You, Lymbyc Systym, Arms & Sleepers

Byline: Glowing electonic ballads lead post-rock and shoegaze into its most logical and terrifying qualifier driven sub-sub genre. Post-post-rock.

I would start off this review by cracking a joke about the strength of the American Dollar, but that would require referring to Atlas as weak and failing on the global market. (Insert rimshot sound here). Atlas is the American Dollar under the Clinton administration. The American Dollar have produced a stunningly gorgeous record. Skirting the lines somewhere between the crescendo-driven excesses of post-rock, the aural sheen of shoegaze, and the skittering electronics and ascending/descending piano lines of bands like The Album Leaf and tourmates Arms and Sleepers. The American Dollar force the moments of brooding soundscapes, stirring washes of synths, and the straight-for-the-throat, Top Gun Anthem soaring guitar heroics into three-half minute chunks of pure headphone noise candy. Before passing The American Dollar off as one of those electronic bands that use electric guitars for that emotional punch-in-the-face crescendo that post-rock sells all for, tracks like "red letter" make me wonder why I even applied that post-rock tag to begin with. The song is constructed around downright "wobbly" dubstep tempo before layering some serious Vangelis like synth bombs on top and masticated guitars that are chewed up and spit out the other end of a sequencer. What do we call this, "dub-gaze"? Regardless, The American Dollar has ventured into waters only swimmable by a few bands who can marry electronics and shoegaze guitars without sounding contrived. M83, you have laid a wonderful, treacherous pathway.

Ryan H.

Bramble

H.A.G.S. EP (Self-Released, 02.2010)

For: Beirut, Dark, Dark, Dark, A Hawk and a Hacksaw

Byline: Bramble Had A Great Summer. 6 fully realized songs birthed on a bike tour and remembered and sung on chilly winter nights.

Please Note: This is obviously not the record cover. But a Lisa Frank binder drawing, as art for their upcoming EP becomes available, I will replace this picture. Sadly.

There is something inherently comforting knowing that no matter how bleak our prospects look there are kids somewhere riding their bikes down the coast from Seattle to L.A singing songs about summer, surf, and sand. That as bad as things get there will be somebody willing to flip off despair and sing love songs at the top of their lungs as they cruise naked down a California highway. Nomadically minded SLC stalwarts James Miska and Chaz Prymek have collaborated to create an album that spills over with youthful exuberance and unchecked enthusiasm. What started as diversionary side project on their 2009 bike tour from Seattle to California has turned into a collaborative-four piece with instruments including, but not limited to, guitar, banjo, charanga, accordion, and various pieces of percussion. The collaborative nature of this album has produced some exciting results, in fact, H.A.G.S. sounds nothing like a Chaz Prymek or James Miska album, although the first 30 seconds of Chaz's signature acoustic guitar on "Fruit of the Moon" may fool you. Bramble incorporates the barely-held-together looseness of an Eastern European busking family band, the subversive positivism of an anarcho-folk-punk band, and the swelling a cappella choruses of a campfire sing-along. The first swell of voices on "Colors" sends a chill up my spine on every listen. Probably the most ambitious busking band in the world, H.A.G.S. is meticulously recorded with the fidelity never getting in the way of capturing every nuance of James Miska's heavenly voice or the group counterpoint shouts, whoops, and hollers. Like Zach Condon's latest indigenous exploration of native music in Oxaca, Mexico, Bramble weave in the ramshackle harmonies of the Eastern Bloc with a driving (salsa, meringue, raggeton?) beat that pulses with the collective energy of four musicians saying F U to a rapidly deflating sense of optimism in this country. I am probably a better person for listening to this album.

Ryan H.

Bramble Myspace

Grimes

Geidi Primes (Arbutus Records, 2009)

For: Broadcast, Cocteau Twins, tUnE-yArDs

Byline: Genre-mixing, continent-hopping, underworld-spelunking tunes that gel an impressive range of instrumentation and styles into something that embraces, yet stands reactionary to the wonderful world of pop.

Claire Boucher’s press release to the TOME self-describes her music thusly: “I make weird pop music under the name Grimes.”

So... there’s just not a lot to go on here at first glance. But from the opening moments of her daring new record (released by Montreal’s Arbutus Records via cassette tape), if anything this assertion is a grossly modest understatement. Geidi Primes is about the weirdest of weird I might be willing to lump in with something anyone might even remotely consider to be “pop music.” Ukelele patterns, spooky multi-tracked vocals, gently rolling keyboard delays, funky drum beats and nervous percussion flood the headphones in a dizzying way that manages a calming composure throughout. The real draw here is especially the vocals, which display a fantastic versatility ranging from a vibrato-less, apathetic quality that reminds me of Broadcast, to soaring falsetto accompaniments recalling the Cocteau Twins’ Elizabeth Frazer, always employing a mastery of melodies that at times border on heartbreaking and at others find themselves in the realm of Asian, melodic minor modes.

I guess if I’d have to place this in a “now” context, Grimes follows suit with what tUnE-yArDs accomplished last year in that one-woman-band-makes-booties-shake sort of way. But Boucher’s style is decidedly different and unique in that these songs are a.) much more reserved, and b.) have a twisted, darkly gothic attitude in them. A lot of this stuff feels very 80s-Cure style, with simple pop grooves and flattened synth foundations mixed with 808-clapped backbeats and hip hop bass. “I don’t want to break your heart in the dark,” Boucher sings on “Feyd Raucha Dark Heart,” embracing the haunted ghost that love can so often be. Fav track: “Grisgirs.” It’s got a beat that just won’t quit, hypnotically pounding like the tell-tale heart beneath a wooden floor of a piano hook and soft, contemplative singing. Overall, this shouldn't work - there's a blend of contrasting styles, instrumentation (from electric guitars to accordions and back again), and emotions that just seem counterintuitive to one another. The amazing thing is that it does work. Marvelously. Give this gal a few years to hone her skills, tighten up the song structures and stretch her legs, and you're looking at a potentially massive career in creativity.

A side note - “Rosa,” which sounds like an obvious pick for first single off this collection, only plays through half the track! Read: Dear Grimes, plz resend.

Love,

--Craw’z 1/20/2010

Free Download of Geidi Primes

Grimes Official MySpace

Arbutus Records

**Note - Arbutus Records has since re-uploaded the free digital copy of Geidi Primes! The link above is associated with this new download. Hooray!! Thank you to Grimes and Arbutus Records!!!

Lindstrøm & Christabelle

Real Life is No Cool (Smalltown Supersound, 2010)

For: Michael Jackson, Michael Jackson, Michael Jackson, Gorgio Morodor, Michael Jackson

Byline: Lidstrøm’s latest collaboration is a delightful fusion of his space-disco grooves with tight pop-song structures. Both a thoughtful reminder of Michael Jackson’s finer moments and an exciting glimpse into the future of the pop song as we know it. Originally published on www.inyourspeakers.com. Used by permission from In Your Speakers, LLC.

2009 trivia time! What famous pop star died in 2009? If you it took you more than .0002 seconds to answer, you probably shouldn’t be reading this article. Actually, you’re probably not even alive. Healthcare, Afganastan, the crumbling economy and subsequent recession... sorry, but 2009 will not be remembered for these things. So, excuse me if I mention the king of pop about a dozen times throughout the course of this review, but sliding in at tail end of the year, Lindstrøm & Christabelle have produced the most fitting tribute to Michael Jackson’s best work I can think of. For a man who sadly made himself most famous many years, slip-ups, scandals, and embarrassments after his fabled hey-day, L & C seemed focused on the true gifts Jackson gave to his fans and the music world at large: that of ass-shakin’, toe-tappin, fun-lovin’, and truly brilliant songsmanship.

One thing I think a lot of people have seem to forget about the best work Jackson produced: he didn’t produce it. Quincy Jones did. Now, there’s no questioning that the songwriting and delivery of Thriller is still without parallel (and shall remain so for quite some time). But it’s absolutely crucial to remember that without Jones’ skillful arranging of the various parts and pieces that make up the epic symphonies of pop Jackson sang over, the album simply could never have held it’s own weight. Jones found a way to balance Jackson’s charismatic bravado by firing back on all cylinders with blasting horns, tight rhythm sections, and exuberant, brilliant layers of sonorous texture.

It’s in this spirit of the fully-formed, lush dance tune that Lindstrøm takes his cue, filtering this sensibility through a truly 2009 vibe (if not forward-thinking, or even futuristically ahead of its time), and in doing so, by pairing with a highly skilled vocalist in Christabelle, he has succeeded in the crafting of 2009’s finest pop album (this record was released in Europe December of last year, stateside this month)... even though it’s not exactly pop. And the most impressive thing about Lindstrøm’s effort here is that, unlike Jones, he doesn’t have the benefit of a studio’s worth of equipment, and an industry’s worth of musicians at his disposal. Real Life is No Cool ends a year shrouded in the loss of pop music’s most-tragic of stars by paying tribute to not the man, but the music behind the man, and the real reason Michael Jackson was so great.

But Real Life is No Cool is an interesting, if not somehow puzzling career move for Lindstrøm, who made perhaps his biggest splash to date with last year’s brilliant Where You Go I Go Too - a magnum-opus of space disco meanderings, three sprawling tracks totaling almost an hours worth of unstoppable dance beats and hypnotically breathing (even psychedelic) textures. It’s arguable that Lindstrøm thrives best in these more open modes (the pop song is admittedly a quite “closed” form in and of itself), and what’s important here is that he doesn’t lose complete sight of his signature sound with Christabelle by his side. “Looking for What,” opens the album with Christabelle’s voice seismically splashing like waves against a coast of nothingness, all backwards and doubled, and looped. It’s a full minute before she finally makes some intelligible sense as the beat slowly solidifies into that classic Morodor pulse. “What should we do? Should we start?” She repeats as if the two are treading on somewhat unfamiliar ground. The song lasts a full six minutes, which is a healthy-dose for anything with the “pop” tag on it, yet it’s uniquely relatable in the pop forum.

The song ends with a ramschackle of sampled ideas, as if the duo truly is searching for that quintessential “what,” before finding it, sliding quickly into the stomping-raver “Lovesick.” It’s an immensely satisfying track with a throbbing forward motion, yet relaxed and sloooooowly lurching beat. A word of caution: watch your head on this one. By no fault of your own, you may find it slamming uncontrollably into the nearest solid object directly in front of you (try not to listen to it in front of, say, a brick wall). Christabelle is at her flirtiest, most luscious, absolute sexiest on this cut, snuggling her whisper right up against your ear - a tantalizing siren’s call to the dance floor.

If the ghost of Thriller haunts any one particular track, it’s “Baby Can’t Stop.” It’s got a stretchy bass line and some supremely tight horn hits that hammer down a hook so sharp it’s guaranteed to make Peter Pan pee his pants. Lindstrøm’s never had a track quite like it, dead solid proof that he, however near-perfect in the space-disco format, can throw down in the radio, club-ready ring with some serious authority.

Overall, Christabelle - while solid - is not the album’s true draw, as Lindstrøm kind of over-shines the vocals throughout the album. He sounds great with a vocalist, but this still feels more like a Lindstrøm album than it does a collaboration, especially when he recycles an old single, 2003’s “Music In My Mind,” which originally appeared on the It’s a Feedelity Affair singles collection, and reappears here as a new mix with the Christabelle’s vocals included, which seems almost like an afterthought.

Though 2009 may go down in history with the stain of tragedy painted across the old man’s sash (out with the old...), the cold and final chapter of December has brought the warmth of a fun, sweaty night’s out to the club with Real Life is No Cool. It’s a record to to listen to and remember why we love to dance, and stands tall and strong among the Gwen Stafani’s of our generation, who seem to toss dance music’s more important innovators in the waste basket. Lindstrøm’s take on the style is simultaneously old and new, as though looking back in time has opened a wonderful and exciting new door. With each subsequent release, Lindstrøm has miraculously improved and is ever-closer to making leaving his mark permanently stamped in the history books.

--Craw'z 1/19/2010

Lindstrøm Official Website (via Feedelity)

Shark Attack!! Surfer Blood

Astro Coast (Kanine, 2010)

Was I misquoted? I guess I did say Astro Coast was one of the best releases of 2010 so far. What date is it today? Oh - Jan. 15th you say? So far, iTunes is telling me that I’ve collected 14 albums with release dates that fall within this 12-month block we find ourselves in currently, and two of those are re-issues. And yes, this is one of the brightest of this tiny bunch (to put it in perspective, I collected well over 200 for 2009, and I fully expect that number to be superseded this year) - so maybe that isn’t saying a lot.

Here’s what I hear in the youthful, excited and triumphant debut from these Palm Beach alterna-rockers. I hear the power-punch of Blue Album era Weezer, and I hear the melodic tunefulness of the Shins, and I hear the shimmery, reverb/echoed textures of Real Estate. It’s all mished and mashed together into bite-sized (shark-bite sized? Sometimes - dig the 6 min. plus “Slow Jabroni”) chunks of meaty, muscly pop songs. But these muscly pop songs at times have the added edge of a tropical flavoring - soca patterns (from Trinidad) in the drums, light syncopation in the guitar lines - that add a sense of delight to the woes of teenage lovelorn seclusion, of which this style is predictably reminiscent. Ryan’s right to call “Swim” the album’s best track, but he’s wrong when he forgets numbers like “Harmonix” and “Fast/Slow Jabroni,” tracks that display a band that exhibits refreshing confidence. This is indeed a young band, but it’s a young band fully buying into its style, aware of precisely what it’s ripping off and when, and exploiting these borrowed moments to their full extensions to create a sound that I, for one, can totally get behind.

Here’s where things go South: tracks like closer “Catholic Pagans” almost borrow a bit much. The chord progression seems stale on the first listen, as if we’ve all heard it a thousand times before (and we have). Thus, for a debut, though Surfer Blood crafts a strong, confident album with Astro Coast, there’s a sense that the group could go one of two directions - into simple, easy power-pop stardom, or develop and diversify their skills into something critics may hope to call challenging.

Craw'z (01/15/2010)

Battle Royale: Surfer Blood

Surfer Blood dropped their debut album Astro Coast on tuesday to a salivating public who was introduced to this young band via their incredible single "Swim (to reach the end)". The release saw something very interesting happen here on the TOME, Ryan and Crawford ended up disagreeing (!) on the worth of this album. This rarely happens so we thought we would mark the occasion by a good old fashioned grudge match. Crawford says its one of the best releases so far this year, Ryan says, "meh". Ryan's slovenly argument is presented below. Stick around for Crawford's rejoinder tomorrow. Like this scary shark cover Surfer Blood is severing limbs and once unanimous musical enthusiasm for releases.

Surfer Blood comes to us dressed in a similar package that Girls did last year. A band with an absolutely killer single and cool back story (although waaay less crazy than Girls) in the year previous drops their long awaited debut albums with tunes with nostalgia turned to 11. By now you know the story, freshmen dorm-mates at University of Florida record album in their room, the appropriate hype machines take notice, release single, we salivate over debut. Now debut drops and I apologize, I really do, I just can’t get behind this young band. Although Crawford disagrees sincerely, I can’t help but notice the distinct Vampire Weekend influence. And I am not saying that Vampire Weekend is the worst band in the world, but the whole precious poly-rhythm afro-pop thing, when is that going to run its course? I can’t even really get into the whole Nineties alternative rock tag without getting caught up on the staccato guitar playing and start-stop time changes that comes close to near Talking Heads worship. I mean they use a pan-flute for goodness sakes! The albums saving grace is “Swim (to reach the end)”, where is that raw aggression and super-awesome reverby vocals on that anthemic chorus on the rest of the album? Instead we are left with vapid tales of lust and David Lynch on the cowbell heavy “Twin Peaks”, the uninspired “Anchorage”, and the carbon copy VW stylings on “Take It Easy”. All I can say is that I am glad this wasn’t recorded two years ago or it would be covered beneath a grating sheen of distortion instead of the relatively clean recording we get here. They say youth is wasted on the young, so it will be very interesting to see where these rag-tag group of non-surfers take their music in the coming years. I will be all ears.

Ryan H.

Surfer Blood Myspace