Urban Quotidans

The Besnard Lakes - Albatross (buy)

Playing Bowery Ballroom tonight.

The textural guitars are mostly static and the winsome vocal is delivered at a single patient pace throughout its five minutes. Its calmness makes it build slowly so it feels like a time lapse video of spliced together nature films and urban quotidians (not unlike the actual video). At it's cymbal-crashing climax you can easily imagine a budding flower or a baby walking; it's big because her voice isn't.

Ezra Furman and The Harpoons - Take Off Your Sunglasses (buy)

Thursday Remixes: Hold On

Rusko - Hold On Subfocus Remix (featuring Amber Coffman) (free download)

The best Dirty Projectors songs tend to be the ones not sung by Dave Longstreth. The group's boss is one of the smartest music-makers out there but he must sometimes envy his other singers' voices. Best known as one of the DP's lead vocalists, Amber Coffman lends her soft croon to this electronic smash that takes her out of intellectual experimental rock and places her in DJ music. A successful juxtaposition in a brand of music that exists exclusively in headphones and concert filler. Which is a shame because we just can't imagine hearing this on a night out in meatpacking.

Rox - I Don't Believe (Don Diablo Remix)

Sleepwalkers, This Desert EP

Hundred in the Hands - Sleepwalkers (buy)

"Sleepwalkers" is a gauzy, dreamscape of 80's synth echoes and ethereal guitar riffs. It isn't the dance song that "Dresden" is, but it reveals a new side of Hundred In The Hands. Clearly the duo is capable of writing an emotional song that plays well even without the drum machine. See the stripped down take after the jump, and stream the EP courtesy of Bleep.

The EP, This Desert is out this week on Warp (buy it on Bleep).

No Love Lost

LCD Soundsystem - No Love Lost (Joy Division Cover) (buy)

I remember the Tuesday in May that Weezer released the Green Album. Five years after Pinkerton, and exactly nine years before today I asked my mom on that high school morning if she could pick it up. I'd heard "Hash Pipe" on the radio enough times to know that in my young music life there was nothing that compared to my anticipation for Weeer's third full-length. Knowing nothing about it, I got home that afternoon excited in a way I can't even relate to today and unpackaged the CD. Frowning at the recycled album art I put the disc in the stereo and sat down on the living room floor. And for all of its 28 minutes I just sat there.

After a three year hiatus, LCD Soundsytem today released their third (and supposedly final) LP. And although it features questionable artwork that would allow you to easily mistake James Murphy for Michael Buble, it's probably going to be really fucking good.

I've intentionally limited my exposure to the album, hearing each of its singles only once or twice because I want the album to feel like an album again. Now that the internet hype machines have learned to ravage an album for its singles and spit out the rest, it happens less frequently that a band makes a group of songs that may be better together than they are apart. Premature as it can be for me to say, This Is Happening has a chance to be one of those. And so does any other LP in which the average song length is a whopping 7 minutes. Is there a better way to defeat the single than by making long, radio un-friendly cuts?

Buy This Is Happening on compact disc or vinyl or mp3. Just don't read Pitchfork until you've heard the whole thing.

Master of None

Beach House - Master of None (buy)

It's embarrassing how much bad music I listened to when the first Beach House album came out in 2006. Before last Wednesday's show at Webster Hall I'd never even heard "Master of None." Playing to a sold-out crowd doesn't mean much these days, but for Beach House there was a lot of love. Fans seemed to know the band's albums, not just the excellent singles.

Victoria Legrand spoke very little throughout, and when she did, it seemed as if it took her concentration from playing. One time she realized this, and she stopped, put her hand on her forehead and said "I'll talk to you guys later." She and Alex Scally were as focused as anyone I've seen on stage in memory. In the encore Legrand lost her balance during a jam-out on "10 Mile Stereo" and fell backwards to the floor. She sprung up with a self-assured and unembarrassed smile and went on in the way she would have acted if someone in the crowd had yelled "I love you Victoria!"

What Did My Lover Say

Wolf Parade - What Did My Lover Say (It Always Had to Go This Way)

Wolf Parade will always sound more like a full band to me than Boeckner's side-project Handsome Furs. The drum parts are more varied and the harmonies are more developed. This combination of guitar-driven, synth-embellished indie rock with a taut rhythm probably won't ever get old. And how long has it been since you've heard a guitar solo in an indie rock song?

In Ruins

Fol Chen - In Ruins (free download)

The original cut is propelled by a one-two thumping kick drum that contrasts airy vocals, similar in a fashion to the staccato guitars of "Stillness Is the Move." Over the door-knocking onomatopoeic thumps (if drums could speak), Fol Chen describes unspecific nighttime urban destruction. Where the original is remarkable for its negative space not filled by drums, the Baths remix is oppositely pulsing throughout. Replacing the uncomfortable rhythm of the original with a bass drum downbeat, it floats more naturally; but doing so masks the emotiveness of the vocal. The Baths might have Freddie-Prinze-Juniored "In Ruins" by sanding down its edges, but don't credit them for making Rachel Leigh Cook pretty.

Hear the remix after the jump.

Lights - New Interpol

Interpol - Lights (free download)

Interpol is back! With its extended vocal melody and turned-down guitars, "Lights" is more like "Our Love to Admire" and less like their first two LP's. But that doesn't mean it's bad. It's the big sounding record of a band and not the introverted songwriting of Julian Plenti, although with the prominent piano of the latter. Its four-note hook is so plain yet so climactic. Add to that, lyrics that aren't about a "Girl On The Sporting News", and that's pretty much a success.

"Lights" downloads for free at interpolnyc.com with sign up.