Matt Berninger has a flair for stringing things together. This is a man who claims to write down thoughts on the backs of magazines and then piece them into lyrics. Even while writing a song, combining triplets of a piano bass line and eighth notes of the other hand, he constructs the delicately off-kilter opening of “Fake Empire”. Hanging the words “ballet”, “ice” and “bluebirds”, side by side, he generates the lyrics, “do your gay ballet on ice, bluebirds on our shoulders.” In 2009, Berninger even managed to pull together a collection of the most talented indie artists to make Dark was the Night, a compilation album benefiting Red Hot Organization.

His technique does not rely on telling a story, conveying an idea, but instead on his own intuition – he’s a creator of a symbiotic relationship between the spoken words and played sounds.

But it’s almost as if Berninger finally reached a point where this strategy has become too formulaic. In High Violet, the opener “Terrible Love” chants an obnoxiously repetitive melody with similarly annoying and also nonsensical lyrics, “Terrible Love, I’m walking with spiders”.  The novelty of such phrases has worn off, and the repetitive melody throughout the album doesn’t allow for surprise. The mind begins to fill in the blanks and predict too much.

Of course Berninger’s layering, beautiful piano harmonies, baritone voice, mesh together well – as they did in Boxer. But, he’s missing the subtlety that made Boxer so special. Instead he followed his usual formula and made an album that is just a little too obvious to last a very long time.

The succession of songs in the album even seems to follow his method. Scroll through the beginning of each song and from the double beat of the bass drum in “Anyone’s Ghost”, to the single, opening, VCR like tone of  “Little Faith”, and the harmonium strike in “Everyone is Afraid” – and you will see that the National achieved variety – they pieced together an eclectic, but limited style of songs to make their album. Yet, the songs’ lack of surprise and lack of emotional anticipation make them far behind those in Boxer.

Comparable to Coldplay’s X&Y, High Violet is indeed, as Chris Martin once put it, the strip mall behind the cleared path cut with a machete. The only difference is that while Chris Martin was referring to Radiohead “clearing the way”, in The National’s case, it’s they who cleared their own path yet set up a strip mall behind themselves. They reverted a few steps back and regressed a little. An excellent album ought to show a clear progression and evolution of a band. This is where High Violet fails – it’s same old same old.

• Bookmark on Delicious
• Digg this post
• Recommend on Facebook
• share via Reddit
• Share with Stumblers
• Tweet about it
• Subscribe to the comments on this post

With ODDSAC, Fall Be Kind EP, and Merriweather Post Pavilion all appearing within a year of each other, Animal Collective’s presentation of these three releases almost seems swansong-like, especially amidst rumors of the band’s breaking up, which is not out of the question when considering at least the certainty of their indefinite hiatus; Noah Lennox himself confirmed this hiatus in an interview with BBC this spring.

Panda Bear's Tomboy

That is to say, “Tomboy”, Panda Bear’s first single from his forthcoming LP, Tomboy, which is to be released later this year, is not sonically dissimilar to anything you’d have heard on MPP or Fall Be Kind except that it lacks the puerile and untamed energy that we’ve become accustomed to with Animal Collective. Certainly “Tomboy” sounds like Panda Bear and from the very start the song is acousmatic ear candy but the song takes a dirtier, darker approach and by its second half has already become monotonous. However, it is the aforementioned, attractively curious sound-set that Lennox works with in this song that makes up for its sluggish appearance and gives way for several enjoyable close listens.

Tomboy approaches quickly, trailing behind some very excellent AC material. Now compare this to 2006 when Thom Yorke released The Eraser; unlike Animal Collective, he hadn’t just put out a triad of incredible musical releases and we were in fact in the midst of a four year Radiohead drought and at that point any Yorke-related material felt refreshing and perhaps even deserved. Perhaps it isn’t fair to weigh “Tomboy” against previous AC opuses but a direct comparison is almost inevitable this close to the fact.

Click here to listen to the track via the playlist.

• Bookmark on Delicious
• Digg this post
• Recommend on Facebook
• share via Reddit
• Share with Stumblers
• Tweet about it
• Subscribe to the comments on this post

For a man who’s been at least listening to, if not trying to make dance music his whole life, this remix of “Jump Up” is a significant step in the right direction for Thom Yorke. Yorke turns the already uber-exuberant and sardonically kitschy Major Lazer ambling disco track into a bumpin’ yet darker song that still however feels ready for the dance floor. For his remix, he draws from the sonic palette of recent Yorke tracks such as “Feeling Pulled Apart by Horses” and “Hearing Damage” which he wrote for the Twilight series’ New Moon soundtrack, however, Leftside and Supahype’s half rap-half toast vocal presence makes this remix unlike anything Yorke has ever attempted.

Thom Yorke's "Jump Up" rmx appears on the Lazers Never Die EP

The juxtaposition that Yorke’s heavy stutter beat and howling synth backing gives against the rap/toast is one that challenges the song’s Bacchic overtones. He ditches the comically catchy repeating synth line from the original version and gives the song a more slobberingly drunken quality. With his “Jump Up” remix perhaps Yorke hasn’t really perfected the art of making timeless dance music but he managed to remix a perfectly good dance track into something the rest of us can still dance to (because God knows he can dance to anything). Good job, Thom Yorke!

Major Lazer – “Jump Up” (Thom Yorke Remix) by Some Kind of Awesome

• Bookmark on Delicious
• Digg this post
• Recommend on Facebook
• share via Reddit
• Share with Stumblers
• Tweet about it
• Subscribe to the comments on this post

It’s the everlasting gobstopper of ear candy yet it also achieves an incredible level of musical narrative. Flying Lotus’ Cosmogramma will send you on a trip.

What Cosmogramma achieves is not easily or often accomplished. The sounds are immediate and explode outwards from the record. One could say Flying Lotus has perfected the art of recording, but to call what Flying Lotus does “recording” is too passive; he’s more of an architect of sound and form. Also, the idea behind a recording is that something was captured onto tape: it implies a source. The sounds are too novel to be such, but still Flying Lotus doesn’t rely on the novelty to capture your attention, the sounds are merely part of the overall idea of the album. It’s an album with a very concrete overall idea– space– which permeates through every aspect of the album: its soundscape and its structure.

Me with my sparkly copy of Cosmogramma outside Chicago's Reckless Records

Regarding the narrative of Cosmogramma, the track “Intro // A Cosmic Drama” is placed four songs into the album, implying a sort of prologue of the first three tracks, which sound like false starts considering their short and choppy nature. Nevertheless these tracks work to the effect of immersing the listener into the universe of Cosmogramma, because let’s face it, Flying Lotus didn’t just make an album, he created a whole new alternate dimension to put it in. The side-chained compression of “Nose Art”, which gives the song its dance floor pulsating feel, is an example of Flying Lotus’ ability as a producer to create otherworldly effects which only add to the total development of the album. FlyLo’s production is not an end in itself but rather an inseparable component of the album’s general aura. If the first three tracks frame the Cosmogramma universe, then the subsequent track, “Intro // A Cosmic Drama”, begins to fill that vacuum and from there forth, the songs just ooze into frame.

A third of the way into Cosmogramma, “Computer Face // Pure Being” hits you in the face. Its fugue-like sonic incline builds until a final collapse and release. Then comes magic– “…And the World Laughs With You”. How appropriate for a cosmic album and quite the “star-studded” collaboration. Thom Yorke’s vocals ask, “I need to know you’re out there/ I need to know you’re listening.” We’re listening, Thom.

At this point, it would be worth mentioning the slightly less prominent but nevertheless ubiquitous (he appears on nearly half the album’s tracks) collaborator, Thundercat, whose basslines move tracks like “Satelllliiiiiitee” and “Dance of the Pseudo Nymph” from sick to uber-fly. These songs are part of the jazz heavy, climactic second half of the album, a standout of which is “Do the Astral Plane” whose percussive drive makes it one of the danciest, grooviest tracks on the album (not to mention I think I hear Buddha laughing on that track).

In the same fashion that the first three tracks introduced the listener to the world of Cosmogramma, the last three tracks return to the album’s namesake mysticism, working off of the previously constructed stellar environment. Cosmogramma is in no way a traditional concept album but rather, it is simply one of the most unifyingly thematically cohesive albums I’ve ever encountered. Forget prosody and don’t even try to atomize; just soak it all in and make way for Flying Lotus, who will likely become the DJ Shadow figure of the 2010’s, at the very least.

• Bookmark on Delicious
• Digg this post
• Recommend on Facebook
• share via Reddit
• Share with Stumblers
• Tweet about it
• Subscribe to the comments on this post

This article, brought to you by aphera, comes from our wonderful friend and guest writer, Jillian Favorite.

Forgiveness Rock Record

Personally, there is nothing more quintessential to my coming of age story than Broken Social Scene. Very many firsts throughout my youth were accompanied by the experimental ambient rock of Kevin Drew and the Canadian collective – first sip of jug wine, first joy-ride with my sluts and unfortunately my first cigarette in addition to many others. Thus when I heard that BSS was coming out with a new album this spring, I immediately thought of their self titled album (Broken Social Scene/Windsurfing Nation) and You Forgot It in People, two of my all time favorite albums.

But to be quite honest, my joy was quickly followed by doubt.  What else can they really do? They pretty much have labeled themselves as instrumentalists – and nothing else. Can you add more instruments to instruments? Well like always, I was wrong; vocals can be added as instruments as well.

listen here:

The vocals stand out immensely in Forgiveness Rock Record. In the opening track, “World Sick”, Kevin Drew hints at where the band came from with its previous albums with an opening guitar solo followed by his message “my love is for the man”—it almost has a “Cause = Time” (You Forgot It in People) and “7/4 (Shoreline)” (BSS) feel. Tracks like “All to All” and “Sentimental X’s” present female vocalists Emily Haines, Leslie Feist and Amy Millan, whose cooing puts listeners in a world of whimsy. And lastly, the track titled “Sweetest Kill” makes me melt as Drew’s voice drips with seductiveness all the while juxtaposed with a swaying tempo.

In addition to mature vocals, the Canadians have done it with a collection of well produced tracks. This can be attributed to dropping David Newfield as a producer and moving onto John McEntire. But let’s be honest, producers can’t do everything. The group has incredible instrumentals, but the layering has cleaned up beautifully. Instead of noisy chaos, the band has made every instrument count. No longer is the reaction to the music, “this piece could use more of this, or less of that,” but for once “everything fits right into place.”

It is as though when I was listening to Broken Social Scene growing up, they were growing up as a group also. Forgiveness Rock Record shows a lot of maturity that the group hasn’t shown before—the producing, the layering and especially the vocals, and I’m happy to say that they’re still going to be a part of my journey that is life. Give it a listen. As I’m starting anew in my life and becoming a big kid (maybe?) these guys will surely accompany me.

• Bookmark on Delicious
• Digg this post
• Recommend on Facebook
• share via Reddit
• Share with Stumblers
• Tweet about it
• Subscribe to the comments on this post

It’s like MGMT had to appease us with “Kids” in order for us to take Congratulations seriously. After all, Oracular Spectacular had us loving and respecting MGMT to the max. They knew we’d at least give Congratulations a listen… and they were hoping that some of us would see it for the masterpiece that it is. Unfortunately, most of us haven’t developed enough sophistication to fully appreciate Congratulations.

I learned my senior year of high school that some good music requires extreme sophistication. At the time, I was dating this guy who was the lead singer of a classic rock band, an accomplished guitarist, and a world renowned fiddler. He was giving me a ride home from school and put Bob Dylan on for the ride. I cringed and said,  “Uh, I really don’t like him.” He looked at me, shocked, and probably wondering how he could continue hanging out with me and responded, “Well, he’s just too sophisticated for you.”

As a classical pianist, I was extremely offended at the time, but he was absolutely right. And as my sophistication grew so did my appreciation for Dylan.

MGMT’s Congratulations requires that same sophistication because they are giving us Dylan. MGMT is giving us Prokofiev’s Second Concerto. This stuff requires an acquired taste, sophistication and appreciation. There is no room for instant gratification.

Congratulations is dense. It gives your ear too much to grasp the first, second or third time through. It’s the polar opposite of Broken Bells. Danger Mouse gives you what you want to hear without any substance. MGMT gives you substance – oh, they give you too much to chew! Take the first song, “It’s Working”. It begins with a little riff that turns into a verse characterized by quick chord changes, spontaneous drumming, and then a pause… all within the first minute. Then a B section within the second minute, another pause… Something resembling a chorus is introduced in the third minute but then you get a complete tempo change as soon as the chorus ends! MGMT, you’re giving us a lot to digest. And “It’s Working” is a snack compared to “Siberian Breaks.”

But after listening to Congratulations many times, getting a chance to grasp some themes and melodies, dare I say, “it’s incredible.” Dare I say that the multi-part, “Siberian Breaks” is reminiscent of “Paranoid Android”, sometimes compared to “A Day in the Life”. Am I going too far? I don’t think so.

Some would fault MGMT for the density – but I’m not going to. There is a difference between over the top and dense. Over the top is like Rachmaninoff’s First Concerto – you listen and just wonder if all of it’s really necessary. Dense is like Prokofiev’s Second Concerto, you need every part of it, and on every listen you hear more and more of it and it becomes better and better. That’s MGMT’s Congratulations.

I think MGMT was dying to showcase their full potential – I think they suffered through the people friendly Oracular Spectacular so that they could bring us the more obscure Congratulations. They really poured everything they could into this album. They did not hold back – and why should they? They already proved to us that they can write hit singles like “Electric Feel”. Now they’re moving forward – they’re just hoping we can stay on their level. Hey, it took two reviews but I’m there.

• Bookmark on Delicious
• Digg this post
• Recommend on Facebook
• share via Reddit
• Share with Stumblers
• Tweet about it
• Subscribe to the comments on this post

Last time I was home we set up an old WWII-era projector to watch the 16mm reel of a film my mother made during her days in film school. Due to having misplaced the reels for quite a while and a lack of necessary equipment and perhaps chagrin from quitting her profession in film production, she hadn’t watched her films in 21 years. Thus, it was our first time seeing her hidden artistry.

It was also my first experience with the kind of equipment it took to play a film made in the late seventies.  It took nearly an hour for my dad to set up the reel – first it was backwards, then it started going in reverse. We didn’t attempt to pair the audio with the video because it was distributed over four different reels that were meant to be perfectly synced with each other and with the film but we didn’t even have one tape player! Yikes, how did anyone do anything back then?

Anyway, we got the movie playing and black and white images flashed onto the suspended projection screen before us. The movie was about a personal apocalypse and as the character spiraled downward the rate of the cuts increased and scenes whirred in front of our eyes to create an effect of tension. Cuts are edits where the film has been manually cut and taped back together so as the movie climaxed it began to jump off the track because the tape used to hold the cuts together was old and stiff and deteriorating. I guess one of the tricks to help guide the film is for someone to guide the film with his or her finger as it’s passing through the projector. This was George’s job; every time the film jumped and started to get out of sync the image would move around on the screen until George corrected the movement of the film and it returned to normal. It was just as stressful to watch George holding the film steady as it was to watch the main character’s eventual identity apocalypse. Finally, at one point, as George was struggling, the film tore completely (not to worry, this was remedied with fresh editing tape).

The reason I described this is because LCD’s song, “All I want,” has the same effect. It begins with a steady drum beat, then the guitar comes in with a slow melody while underneath there is a quicker keyboard meandering.  Finally, layered on top is the complementary vocal melody followed later by a completely independent synth. As the song progresses these components begin to fall apart like different parts of a machine; or one melody seems to get off track kind of like the film and then it would resume its normal pattern as if someone was holding it back from skipping completely. Just as you think the song is going to ‘rip’ it jumps right back onto its track. At the end, there is no taming every component and as James Murphy sings “take me home” the machine has completely broken and even the steady, simple drum beat is gone.

The incredible thing about this album is that every song on the album was constructed as meticulously as “All I want,” yet somehow it manages to sound like an effortless disarray of sounds. I imagine that each piece is a taming of wild noises. It’s like Murphy is conducting an out of control orchestra and somehow produces a symphony. For those of you who have seen Howl’s Moving Castle, think of Howl’s castle and how every disjoint component seems like it’s going to collapse or roll away, yet each gear, leg and door contributes to how the entire castle can gracefully move.

P.S. the lyrics in the title of this post are from the song, “Drunk Girls”. Great song with spot on lyrics.

• Bookmark on Delicious
• Digg this post
• Recommend on Facebook
• share via Reddit
• Share with Stumblers
• Tweet about it
• Subscribe to the comments on this post

Some metal band playing at Reckless Records. Note the 7-Eleven across the street where I got a Slurpee.

Yesterday was Record Store Day and in honor of it I biked to Reckless Records, a cool record shop in the loop, to check out the scene. I was surprised to see a live metal band playing in the tiny store. It was great fun but I didn’t end up buying anything. Anyway, two new Record Store Day releases that stuck out to me as prominent were a 12″ from Beach House and a new new new new song from Blur! Wow, how many years has it been? Anyway, here’s what I have to say about the releases: the Blur song is excellent and it almost seems like a part of a bigger picture and I would die to get a Blur release this year. Graham Coxon’s guitar throughout, and especially at the end, reminds me of why I care.

The Beach House track, meh… It sounds like a Teen Dream outtake, which it probably is but if you haven’t had enough Beach House then go for it but I wouldn’t have spent money on the footlong (12″ release) if had been able to find it in any of the record stores I went to yesterday. I went to two by the way. The second one was this cute store closer to campus that I walked into on my way to dinner at Ribs n’ Bibs. Dinner at Ribs n’ Bibs was great though. I had a “Bronco Burger” with fries and slaw for three dollars. What a steal!

Beach House – The Arrangementbysubpop

Oh, by the way, download the Blur song here and you can listen to a high quality version on our player.

• Bookmark on Delicious
• Digg this post
• Recommend on Facebook
• share via Reddit
• Share with Stumblers
• Tweet about it
• Subscribe to the comments on this post

I can’t decide whether what they did was genius or borderline suicidal. Genius: I guarantee they will not be nominated for a Grammy after this spectacle – they basically said, FU, whatever, whatever, we do what we want. So the novelty of MGMT is still there. Hell, they’re rebels now. Borderline Suicidal: I bet you clicked through the songs waiting for the next “Kids,” or even something resembling “Weekend Wars.” And by the time you got to “Lady Dada’s Nightmare,” you were like, “wait.. seriously?” And you finished sampling the songs all disappointed, turned away from the album forever.

The problem is not that MGMT set the expectations too high, it’s just we weren’t expecting what we ended up getting. It’s like biting into a lemon, expecting sour, and getting sweet. Your reaction is, “wait, there must be something wrong with that lemon,” when in fact it’s not a lemon at all.

I suggest you take a second listen to the album. It’s actually kind of cool. Tons of layering, dissonances and quick changes. I think if it hadn’t leaked during the snowy doldrums we would have received it more welcomingly. Now, with the warm weather and sun shining, Congratulations sounds like something you’d want to jam out on the porch to in the company of your facial-haired hipster friends.

This review was going to be about how a half-hearted album deserves a half-hearted review. And I was going to ask you to review it in your comments. I no longer think the album was half-hearted – just risky.

Anyway, I’m still interested to know whether anyone still hates it even after a second chance. Or if someone absolutely loved it the first time through.

Give It A Second Chance?

• Bookmark on Delicious
• Digg this post
• Recommend on Facebook
• share via Reddit
• Share with Stumblers
• Tweet about it
• Subscribe to the comments on this post

My sunroof was open,

the 75 degree spring air was circulating through my car, and I was listening to Morning Benders, Big Echo for the first time, thinking about how it would make great summer music and that I would have to post about it later. In fact, by the end of the first song, it was decided – this is exhilarating, amazing! By the sixth song, I was in love and wondering how I had become so infatuated so quickly – I’m usually unfairly critical on first listen! And on that sixth song, ‘Hand Me Downs,’ it hit me; I was so convinced that I was in love because I was listening to my beloved, number one rated, Grizzly Bear!

Not literally, but seriously, the same delayed, distorted, guitar, and that distinct (is it syncopated?) beat. All those elements were there in ‘Hand Me Downs’, and I’d never heard that specific sound and combination anywhere except in Grizzly Bear. As when in love, you write off weaknesses quickly – I wasn’t going to start denying that Big Echo was perfect just because one song was a Grizzly Bear tribute! I thought back to the first song with its climactic opening, 50s bop in the background, and thought, yes, that was unique, nothing like Da Griz, as George calls them.

I played the album a second time through a few hours later on my flight to Seattle. Worn out after reading War and Peace, and studying for Human Sexual Orientation (yes, these are my hilarious last semester senior year classes), I focused all my attention on listening to music for a while. But when I got to only the second song of Big Echo, again, I heard Grizzly Bear! In fact, this time I specifically heard ‘Cheerleader’ – that syncopation, and guitar sound!

What I failed to realize, but found out a few hours later, was that the connection between the Morning Benders and Grizzly Bear was not all in my head. In fact, Grizzly Bear bassist and producer, Chris Taylor, actually produced Morning Bender’s new album. So my point is not to rip on Morning Benders (I am still devoted to their album), but, to comment on producers and their ability to influence music.

Take Broken Bells for example – a collaboration between producer, Danger Mouse, and Shin’s front man, James Mercer. I mean, Danger Mouse produced the album flawlessly. He took risks, strived for perfection, and made something that sounds full and good. But, I’m just lost, what is it that he produced? Sure, James Mercer’s voice is sultry and hott, but there is no other substance. I really find it incredible that there is a material album at all! The songs are literally overproduced chord progressions (if that!) that carousel round and round until the song finishes. The album stands on nothing, but I’m telling you it tricks you into thinking it sounds good!

Then take, Damon Albarn’s Demon Days versus the new Plastic Beach.  I’m a huge fan of Demon Days. I mean it’s Gorillaz so of course there is clever composition and furthermore, Demon Days was produced by the meticulous Danger Mouse. Again, I’m not going to deny that songs such as ‘Feel Good, Inc.’ and ‘DARE’ showcase Danger Mouse’s incredible handy work. But when compared to Plastic Beach, I have to wonder whether Danger Mouse’s influence may have been limiting and stifling what Albarn already had going on. I wonder this because Plastic Beach has all the nuances, creativity, and dynamics that Demon Days doesn’t. Guess who produced Plastic Beach? Damon Albarn himself.

So what’s the ideal combination? I’m going to argue that it’s not pairing Danger Mouse with an already incredible artist. I feel like, it’s instead the Grizzly Bear combination, where the producer is literally part of the band. A similar case occurs in Radiohead, the elusive 6^th member of the band, Nigel Godrich, is as much their producer as he is part of Radiohead. In fact, Thom Yorke officially made Nigel part of his new ‘Thom Yorke’ posse.

I’m also going to take this opportunity to say, MGMT, get a new producer, step it up, you were a disappointment this year.

• Bookmark on Delicious
• Digg this post
• Recommend on Facebook
• share via Reddit
• Share with Stumblers
• Tweet about it
• Subscribe to the comments on this post