So, I'm at the Tribeca showing of "Beats, Rhymes & Life" – the forthcoming movie about a Tribe Called Quest's life, death and possible rejuvenation. Prior to seeing this movie, I know not very much about Tribe. I mean, I like them. I have their "People's Instinctive Travels" album. "Left My Wallet in El Segundo" gets stuck in my head when I'm looking for my wallet. I can make sly Facebook status update references to "Can I Kick It" (incidentally, Phife Dawg's least favorite of their songs). But, you know, knowledge? Uh-uh. So when this movie [...]
Keren Ann song "My Name is Trouble" came into existence, I think, after Sufjan Steven's "I Walked." But it feels spiritually like a predecessor. "My name is trouble/my first name's a mess," she sings, so sweetly. "If you let me love you/I will love you to death," she chirps. And later, a bit apologetically, "If you were to come back to me/in pieces or in melody/there couldn't be a better way through." Listen to "I Walked" after this, and you can't help but feel that Sufjan's narrator is merely doing [...]
"Is that all, then?" is the response of some Radiohead fans far more intense than I to the King of Limbs. Only eight tracks? Why you do us like you do, Radiohead? It's leading to all sorts of conspiracy theories. Is there a second half of this album coming? Why are there going to be two vinyls when the physical album gets released? Why is the last song on the album titled "Separator," and why does it contain the lyrics, "If you think this is over/Then you're wrong"? Then there's the below mysterious video clip of [...]
One woman's trash is another woman's treasure. Who knows if these songs are the best of 2010? I mean, I couldn't get into Arcade Fire, so assuredly there's something wrong with me. These are my favorite songs, though, my friends this past year, my soundtrack. Sleigh Bells: Tell 'Em. This song makes me wish I had a car. And not just any car. One of those cars with those stereo systems that are so loud when they drive by you, frames rattling off their wheels, you think it must be an alien driving, because the [...]
Exhibit A: Home Video. Moody piano? Check. Stuttering drums? Check. Ethereal, mysterious, oft-lingering-on-one-word vocals? Check. Yeah, it's missing, like, a 17/8 time signature or two, but whatever. Exhibit B: Duologue. It's like Radiohead themselves, through a just slightly distorted mirror. All the elements above, plus some extreme falsetto and a bass line that seems more than a tad influenced by "I Might Be Wrong." Duologue - Cut & Run by Freedom Or Death Listening to [...]
I seem to have stumbled across a bunch of actually good sort-of Halloweeny music entirely by accident in the past few months. It would be ghoulish of me not to share. The Dead Weather: Die by the Drop "A little grave we can fill together." Cat Power: Werewolf She did this song a few years ago. I came across it in the context of Almodovar's latest, "Broken Embraces." Liminanas: I'm Dead [...]
The National at Prospect Park, July 27 I can't figure out where the voice of The National's lead singer Matt Berninger comes from. He isn't a big guy. Certainly, his body isn't big enough to contain that delicious, warm, large voice. As he sang lyrics like "I was afraid/I'd eat your/brains" and "I'm sorry I missed you/I had a secret meeting in the basement of my brain" (which latter would make an excellent corporate voicemail greeting) at the Prospect Park Bandshell, I came to this conclusion: There are, in fact, more than three dimensions, and in [...]
I am uncertain about how to pronounce Menomena, and I sort of like it that way. I hope it's pronounced such that it almost rhymes with "phenomenon," which is how I like to let it roll off my tongue. If it's not, and it's actually something that sounds like a child's chant about a bully, don't tell me. I don't want to know. While we're on the topic of my own insecurities, I am also uncertain that I'm actually smart enough to be listening to this group. They're sort of the musical equivalent of what Winston Churchill [...]
Okay, so I am obsessed with vuvuzelas, and their B-flat-ish-ness. First of all, why B flat, and not A sharp? Why vuvuzela, and not lepatata ? Nonetheless, B flats make alligators bellow. See? B flats also continue after you are gone . Black holes sing in B flat. Apparently, in basso profondo B flat. Johnny B. Goode is a famous song in B flat. And, as NPR (which seems to be even more obsessed with B flat than I am) tells [...]
BLK JKS' "Zol" should be - probably will be - a sure-fire World Cup hit. It's obviously geared for that: they're from Jo-burg, the lyrics are futbol-y, there's a call-response thing going on, the album drops two days before the World Cup starts, they're playing at the opening ceremonies...and for the first 15 seconds or so, it's, yeah, instant theme song. But all the BLK JKS I've listened too (full disclosure: not much, just a handful of songs) has sounded a little minor key, a little discordant, and I'm hearing that here, too, once the lyrics kick in. [...]
This song expresses my own mixed emotions towards my adopted home so well it's almost creepy. You got that nice slow phrasing from Gil Scott-Heron, evocative of the southern transplant making their way (and I'm not from Jackson TN, but it is eerily close to the family homestead). You got the New York patter from Nas, so fast you can't totally follow it, as fast as the city itself, loving the city, but hating it a little too - a more realistic representation than the Beastie Boys' paean . Yeah, I too can [...]
Most summers, there's an album that makes me wish I had a car, so that I could drive around, windows down, stereo blasting, and share my musical tastes with all those around me. Because I suffer from that same delusion of so many other Brooklynites, namely that everyone wants to know what my musical taste is, particularly as I drive past them, and will be forced to agree that, yes, (insert name of band I hadn't known of previously here) is amazing. Last summer, there wasn't a summer album like that. Of course, there wasn't really a summer, [...]
Manhole covers exploding! Three-alarm fires! The threat of carbon monoxide poisoning! If it were any other band, I would have had doubts that the actual Atoms for Peace show could top the random events that came before it. I emerged blinking and mildly disoriented, as one does, from the 7th Ave. B subway stop a little after 6 p.m. Tuesday, hoping to pick up my will call tix for Atoms for Peace from Roseland quickly and grab a bite to eat before the show. The only warning of [...]
I'm still dubious that Wall Street II: Money Never Sleeps is going to be able to meet the high bar set by its predecessor, but this rather clever preview does give me hope. It seems like it's not going to take itself too seriously, from the shot of the mobile phone (I REMEMBER that phone!) to Gordon Gekko getting outclassed by a random drug lord. I also like the ominous driving music in the background. The wonders of Google quickly told me it's a song called Ricochet, by Shiny Toy Guns, whom I know nothing about since I [...]
When did this win me totally over? When the (dreamy) lead singer sings, "We'll still be best friends when all turns to dust," and hits that unexpected note at "all," that's when. Yours Truly Presents: The Morning Benders "Excuses" from Yours Truly on Vimeo .
It is good to see there's still a place for something like this in an A.D.D. world. Then there's the top song here , which is possibly even better, in a sort of opposite way. PolarBear on myspace
Warning: You will not find Animal Collective, Dirty Projectors, or Grizzly Bear on this list. (Loses 99/100 of potential audience...) Now then. Here are 25 songs that I adored in 2009, in no particular order. Mexican Chili Taco Fiesta - Tamales Oaxaquenos (via KEXP). If you had told me that I would include a mostly instrumental song about Oaxacan tamales, where the only lyrics I can understand are the title words of the song, on my year-end mix, well, I might not have laughed at you, but I [...]
I'm working on a pop record in my bedroom, says this Aussie named Whitley on his blog quite some time ago. Oh heaven's no, anything but that, says a rather grumpy respondent. Thank heavens he persevered, because Go Forth Find Mammoth , from what I can glean, sings.
I like this. I like the tinkling way it starts, the dissonance of the lonely lyrics and the warm music, the unexpectedness of the guitar strumming when it kicks in, the way she turns the tables, the acceleration into a torrent of fierceness, the emphatic full stop. Heaven Help The Day by Petracovich
Maybe it's just because I've stopped listening to the normal airwaves radio because NYC radio SUX, but has there been no real summer jam this year? There's a few indie things, sure, like maybe Das Rascist's Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell (via Pitchfork) or The Temper Trap's Sweet Disposition (video), but what about the mainstream stuff? Where's the Lil Wayne Lollipop of this summer? Kid Cudi? Really? And that Flo-Rida song...first, it's nowhere NEAR as good as Low, and second, Eiffel 65??? Maybe Boom Boom Pow...maybe She Wolf (video) - it's got a [...]
The Gloaming
The Kills on Letterman (Video)
Download: James Blake Live Album (Unofficial)
My Funny Valentines
Lana Del Rey - Without You (Kill Paris Remix) [Dubstep]
