these are the ones I listen to religiously… which makes up for the paucity of religious sociology/theology podcasts out there.
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Archive for the ‘music’ Category
bradford cox + noah lennox = total summer jammage
In music on July 18, 2009 at 12:59 pm“walkabout,” from the upcoming atlas sound cd.
on repeat: passion pit
In music on July 13, 2009 at 11:02 pmokay, so when i first heard the name of this nyc band, the image that immediately popped into my head was that of a shirt with really atrocious underarm sweat stains (aka banana clips). click on the graph below for a bigger version.
awesome and not-so-awesome album covers of ‘09
In music on July 1, 2009 at 4:17 pmAWESOME:
Wilco / Wilco (The Album): I want a camel at my otherwise orange-themed birthday party.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs / “It’s Blitz”: I’ve always wanted to do this (bonus: the disc is a pizza)
Major Lazer / “Guns don’t kill people… Lazers kill people”: Mummies… check. Skeletons… check. army personnel with lazer arms… check.
not-so-awesome after the break. Read the rest of this entry »
the grizz
In music on June 17, 2009 at 3:34 pm
my assessment of the brooklyn quartet’s latest (click for bigger version).
neko case
In music on June 12, 2009 at 9:05 am
…is a force of nature, i.e. not to be messed with. her act, which i caught tuesday night at the warfield, was a study (despite THAT voice) in tempo: drawing mostly from this year’s excellent middle cyclone, neko played with the pacing of her songs–every note was true (in tone) to the recording, but was stretched or condensed at will. her vocal range is 3D, shifting not only along the hi/lo and loud/soft axes, but along the molasses/bubble-gum-pop-fast continuum. her band was a bunch of pros, but neko could have been up there with an ipod–only once or twice in the set were they able to show off their chops… a little. disarmingly funny in between songs, neko’s face became vacant while performing highlights like “red bells,” “margaret vs. pauline,” and “this tornado loves you”–like it was just a vessel for that voice. you sort of wish she would at least look like she was having fun.
while i was listening to “merriweather post pavilion” for the 20th time…
In music on June 11, 2009 at 12:23 pm… these albums were released, and are quite wonderful in their own ways:
actor / st. vincent: annie clark supposedly wrote the music for this album with garageband’s little composing tool, and then had her friends perform the parts live. the result is something uniquely and completely imagined, whole–perfect, until you notice how odd some of the compositions are. “laughing with a mouthful of blood” and “marrow,” coming back-to-back on the LP’s second side are perhaps the best (and strangest) of the bunch–clark’s guitars (clean on “laughing” and distorted on “marrow”) weave in and out with lush orchestration on these songs, yet her voice pierces through everything, never raising in volume while getting the point across, like a professor who knows she’s right. a taste: “actor out of work”
face control / handsome furs: dan boeckner, one half of wolf parade’s writing team, is often self-referential–if not outright self-plagiarizing: a lot of these tunes have similar riffs to WP’s at mount zoomer; still, they have more breathing room on face control. boeckner tends to carry a single chord progression throughout his songs, letting layers of keyboard and muffled guitar add complexity, and on this album, he builds tension by withholding or burying certain melodic lines. their eventual reemergence providing the thrill of face control’s somewhat understated songs. the 3 short interludes on the album are completely self-indulgent on boeckner’s part, but are tiny gems–bringing sparkle to the precise, utilitarian goodness that is the rest of the album. the best of the set: “radio kaliningrad”
little hells / marissa nadler: though hopelessly front-loaded, nadler’s latest actually deserves the often heavy-handed adjective attached to her music–’haunting’: not quite a song-cycle, little hells is populated with repeated themes and lyrics that, like the ghosts in nadler’s songs, are both familiar and eerily distant. this phenomenon is not limited to the album as a whole, though–within songs like “the hole is wide,” you struggle sometimes to differentiate between perceived and actual distortions of repeated piano or guitar lines. chalk it up as great production, maybe, but echos have a strange vitality in nadler’s songs. exhibit a: the title song
bitte orca
In music on June 2, 2009 at 5:01 pm…is streaming over at npr. just a fantastic, fantastic record.
if saturdays = youth, phoenix = summer
In music on May 29, 2009 at 9:38 am
click on the graph for a bigger, readable version
while you wait for the others
In music on May 26, 2009 at 8:17 pmhere’s my current fav from the excellent new album by the Grizz, released today. i’ll come up with a chart-y thingy one of these days for Veckatimest
“while you wait for the others” / Grizzly Bear
best overlooked album of ‘09
In music on May 24, 2009 at 11:36 am
click on it for bigger, readable version
tvotr + dirty projectors @ the fox
In music on May 23, 2009 at 4:18 pm
dirty projectors
Dave Longstreth is a lucky man. Not only is he on a ridiculous artistic high right now, he gets to hang out with Angel Deradoorian (purple shirt) who, after last night’s ridiculous dirty projectors set, replaces Annie Clark on my indie rock goddess pedestal. Sure, she just stood behind her synth and plucked a chord or two on a guitar while Longstreth laid down tasty lick after tasty lick of reggae-dub-spazz-rock wonderfulness–irrelevant. As Garth might say, She’s a babe-raham lincoln, Wayne. The projectors played all new stuff, and it was stunning: like animal collective, they build on a single riff (or note!) that spirals inward and outward (in both dynamics and complexity) like a kaleidoscope–it would be maddening if it wasn’t so catchy and danceable.
TVOTR were high energy, if not particularly focused. They drew mostly from dear science and return to cookie mtn., and frontloaded a lot of the hits–”wolf like me” and “halfway home” roared out during the first thirty minutes. Dave Sitek stood in the back trying to look like he wasn’t playing sixteenth notes for 90 minutes; Kip’s vocals were sadly off; the sax player was a little too into it. The best moments on the band’s record come in transitions–where kinetic and potential energy are exchanged, where the tempo shifts into a different gear–and this remained true for their live act. Which, I guess, made their missteps in between that much more of a bummer.
