Don't Take My Life Away

Tune Yards - Bizness (free download)


Listen as Merrill Garbus adds the layers: a vocal dripping like melting ice, a harmonizing vocal, drums, drumsticks. Tune Yards played this at Summerstage last year, and her voice looked the way it sounds; pushed to its limit her head turns at an angle and toes the line between yelling and singing. The chorus adds economical guitar upstrokes, and other embellishments of this kind expose the structure of the song, so that when she gets into the later choruses there's an entire horn section behind her. In that way the song builds and builds, like a controlled crescendo of euphoria. She toys with your emotion as it rises, pauses, and drops back in.

w h o k i l l is out April 19th on 4AD. Tune Yards plays Minneapolis 5/8 and Brooklyn 5/21. Check out her first album, Bird-Brains.

Contact High

Architecture in Helsinki - Contact High (free download)


"Contact High" is Architecture in Helsinki's new single. It is infectious and irresistibly bubbly. A bright melody over a staccato bass line gets expert production that balances the cheesy synth layers with the clean vocals of the chorus. And a key change--or is that a transposition?

Architecture in Helsinki have wrapped a new album, due out in May in the US, and are also heading out on a worldwide tour. See details at their website.

Recovery?

In the wake of the post-Arcade Fire Grammys, and that hilariously popular Tumblr I wanted to take on Recovery by giving it a fair listen. It is unjustified for Eminem's fans to disparage something they seem proud to admit to not knowing, just as it would be for me to do so.

Recovery as heard by a fan of this music

Rap has normally been a selfish song, but Eminem takes the sport to a new level. The egomaniac here steps down on that Chrysler 200 pedal and pushes it to top speed for all 17 songs. Thematically it’s cohesive: Eminem has gone clean, risen from the ashes, soars over others like a phoenix, is now good at sex, and will make your woman want him. Sonically it’s not at all cohesive, which makes sense considering that 18 producers were used and no producer has more than 3 tracks. The only sound that comes through across the whole album is his full-force yell. I can’t deny his technical skill, but where’s the variation? How can everything in your life be THIS INTENSE!!!?

His insecurities are so blatantly apparent that they go mostly ignored. His constant desire to prove himself and berate critics has come to define him as an artist. At this point in his career (or since his fourth album) he is so carried away with this that he doesn’t even sound like a musician. Every verse is a battle and in that way, technically he may be winning. But maybe he's become such a good rhymer that he can't make decent songs.

Marshall Mathers has a great story, no one denies that, but his whole craft has become to simply retell it. What made the Marshall Mathers LP interesting were the characters and stories he wrote; as a storyteller Eminem can be great. He isn't here. The foul language is relatively cleaned up, and the pop culture references have moved from flash-in-a-pan pop stars to NFL players. We should probably start referring to Shady as Brett Favre for all his retirement talk. Surely a longer-lasting choice for subject matter.

The self-deprecating moments of Recovery are its best. There aren’t many of them, but with Mathers it feels more natural to hear about “white trash parties” than how good he is at fucking. Admitting to nearly dissing Lil Wayne or Kanye is a rare moment of humility from him, and going as far to admit that his last two albums were weak (though Rolling Stone gave his last three albums 4 stars apiece) is certainly refreshing. But perhaps that’s the problem with his music; he spends so much time fighting his critics that he doesn’t even know who they are anymore.

Song-by-song notes follow below.

Trouble

Elliott Smith - Trouble (Cat Stevens Cover) (play in streampad below)

Compared to Cat Stevens' original recording, Smith's is vulnerable and defeated. Smith's frailty has always been one of his most defining characteristics, perhaps because it never felt like he had to try to sound that way. The studio production of the original however has great details that are worth noting; the vocal harmonies and two-note piano flourishes are striking.

Waiting in the Cold for Tickets to a Funeral

Memory Tapes - Today Is Our Life (play by clicking at bottom of screen)

It starts lazily, like only our favorite mornings could, and then like stepping outside to a rush of cold air on your cheeks, it goes carpe diem in double time. Lyrics that sounds foolishly simple are surrounded by drum machines and synth lines. With hooks to spare, Memory Tapes dives into multiple sections just like any good feeling without wearing it out.

It comes from as a part of the free compilation from London label Something In Construction.

The Last Time We Saw A LCD Soundsystem Show

Shit Robot - Take Em Up (Original Edit, Featuring Nancy Whang) (buy)


All My Friends want to see the LCD Soundsystem funeral.

LCD Soundsystem keyboardist, Nancy Whang contributes vocals to this track from DFA project Shit Robot. Except for the coda, this is written as a pop song rather than a seven-minute dance track. The verse-chorus structure features 90s synth textures and an uncharacteristic hook for the group. Here's hoping for a Nancy Whang solo project.

Until Then

[photo by fadzly]

Broadcast - Until Then

Benoit Pioulard and Rafael Anton Irisarri - Until Then (Broadcast Cover)


The build at the end is immense like watching a giant wave grow and grow until it crashes silently and you turn and all you see is the twinkling melody of a piano.

Broadcast's Trish Keenan sung with a nearly famous calmness. "Until Then," like much of the group's discography is anchronistic. In 2000 Thom Yorke called The Noise Made By People his third favorite recording of the year, and yet in 2011 it feels new to those of us learning of Broadcast as we learn about Keenan's death. The juxtaposition of dark, detached lyrics with the gentle vocals and rhythm-less samples is frankly confusing. And as it should be, sincerity is so much more believable when it's not sung selfishly.

via

Prince: Live at Madison Square Garden

I never wanted to be your weekend lover

To anyone who cares about music, this shouldn't be optional. For all the music I've seen, the spectacle of a Prince show can sadly only be compared to Superbowl halftimes and awards show performances. Yet this is what live music can be; this is the mold into which record labels pour pop star clay. Looking down at the stage and up at retired Knicks jerseys in the rafters I realized that I had never thought I would see a performer like this. How many are there really? MJ, James Brown and who else?

The praise bestowed on him before even reaching the stage felt unnatural and completely opposite to a rock aesthetic, but it wasn't about a band, this was really about one artist formerly and currently known as Prince. He took the stage in a gold bedazzled suit and matching high-heeled shoes, and his energy was immediately large enough to fill the arena. But it was his presence that was unique. Absent were the stereotypes of masculinity and sex, and black or white, just a transcendent performer in front of ten thousand really different people, the way that the best have always existed.

It took two songs for it to be clear that this was one of the most complete performers ever. He danced and played guitar like it was a part of him, closing his eyes, completely connected to his instrument whether it dripped like oil or burned like a brushfire. He fell to the ground singing "Nothing Compares 2 U" and sang the most aggressive falsetto I've ever heard.

I remember a lecture in college on rock history, where the professor described a milestone song that changed popular music. Being students raised on Nirvana and Pavement I couldn't imagine this song being anything other than "Smells Like Teen Spirit." To our guesses he only smirked. When the professor pressed play and "Purple Rain" played I didn't even recognize it.

On Monday, the guitar was unmistakable. I knew immediately that Prince was performing "Purple Rain" and it felt like seeing something for the first time that you knew intimately through every way but life. When "Purple Rain" ended I stood awash in gentle awe.

Craft Spells

Craft Spells - Party Talk (buy)

This is dreamy bliss through reverb and wordless harmonies. Similar in production to recently highlighted Therapies Son, and equally uplifting. This is softening the blow still felt from LCD's Saturday announcement.

LCD Soundsystem's Finale

Good things shouldn't end early. Barry Sanders shouldn't have retired at 30 and FOX shouldn't have cockblocked a fourth season of Arrested Development.

For those of us trying to understand what could possibly inspire James Murphy and company to break up their band, the scraps of interviews with Pitchfork shed some light:

Murphy spoke with us about LCD's pending breakup last July before their epic closing set at the Pitchfork Music Festival, saying, "It's all just gotten bigger than I planned or wanted. Not that I'm against it but I don't want to get bigger. What's the goal now-- get fucking huge? I don't want to be a famous person. It's fucking great where we are. I get on an airplane and nobody has any idea who I am. I just want to do other stuff. And since we know we're not gonna do another record I feel freer to do the biggest shit I possibly can. Like, 'Fuck it, we should play Madison Square Garden.'"

He continued: "If I thought there was another record, I'd be very uncomfortable and anxious about it and what it was going to do to my life. Putting an end to it frees me up to have fun; it's like knowing your mortality. As a kid that always wanted to make music, I couldn't have dreamed of a better place to be than where I'm at right now. I didn't even know this place existed-- to play with your friends and be really satisfied and happy. It's not so bad."

Murphy has also mentioned how dedicating himself to the band full-time has prevented him from taking advantage of other opportunities. In December, he told Spin, "There are other things I haven't been able to do because of it. Twice, I couldn't make an Arcade Fire record. I couldn't make a Spoon record. I couldn't work with John Cale or Devo. The plan was for this band to be part of my life, then it started to be the whole of my life." 

It's fucking sad news, but whether or not we sympathize with Murphy's reasons, they are exactly what endears us to him.

Read the full blast at Pitchfork.

May You Never

Land of Talk - May You Never (buy)

It opens like most tracks by The Knife, with an electronic flourish probably borrowed from an upgrade sequence of a video game. The piano lines are reserved and Lizzie Powell's vocal sounds like it is sung from the bottom of a well. But once "May You Never" opens up it's really just an indie rock song. The guitar theme is carried by propelling drums and the song paces like a movie; it ebbs and flows with the narrative and slows in order to build climaxes. For that it sounds like an adventure crossing snow-covered grass and roads.

"May You Never" comes from the 2009 EP, Fun and Laughter on Saddle Creek. Cloak and Cipher is Land of Talk's 2010 LP, it's under-appreciated, and it's five bucks.