Live Music: Car Crash? Plane Down? Nah - It's My Bloody Valentine!

Overheard on the way out of Roseland last night: “That show reminded me of that time I was in a car crash and I almost died…” OK, so, not your typical Jonas Brothers show. In fact it was the long wished-for re-union of My Bloody Valentine, British godfathers of the shoegazer genre who both defined and defied the stereotype of insular guitar-scapes and shuffling beats that would follow in their wake (see Ride, Lush, Slowdive etc.)

After a little heard set of sunny debut EP's MBV mastermind Kevin Shields discovered the joy of effects pedals and massive feedback and used them to push his surprisingly catchy melodies off-center, scuffing up his band’s songs and laying on thick sheets of guitar on albums like 1988’s wonderful Isn’t Anything and their towering 1991 classic Loveless.

Loveless found them with growing acclaim but a crippling inability to deliver on a follow-up, going Axl Rose one better by helping to bankrupt their record label in the elaborate process of endless studio recording and tinkering. The last time the band had played live together before this year was in 1992 and they had long dispersed to other projects by 1997 without any of the abandoned studio work seeing the light of day.

So out of the mists of time comes My Bloody Valentine and nothing much has changed except the ability to now headline a barn like New York’s Roseland two nights in a row as well as the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival upstate, and some extra dosh to spend on a big light show and projected images.

What needs to be said here is this band is freaking loud.

Earplugs were handed out at all the ticket collection points and woe to the badasses who tried to go it nude of ear. The H.R. Giger-like stacks of amps cantilevered over the front of the stage ominously forewarned what was to come. As the guitars cranked up and numerous tiny hipster chicks were lofted upon their boyfriend’s shoulders to see I thought, “Well, this isn’t all THAT loud…” and slid one earplug out only to quickly force it back in against the assault of sound.

The light show, which even Shields (who kicked out a light petulantly mid-show) thought was a bit overbearing for the space, and the sculpted slabs of guitar noise made each song into its own fascinating slow motion plane crash- flashes of light, groaning metal, whooshing air. Juxtaposed on this are the melody and choruses that seem as inevitable as gravity. Even their poppiest song, "Soon", takes a jaunty Manchester beat and turns it into the sound of Happy Mondays being tortured by Al Pacino in Scarface (bathroom, chainsaw, ‘nuff said?)

Then of course came the climax, “You Made Me Realize” which devolves from mere song into what was 20 minutes (concert companion Joe Sofia was counting) of sheer rumbling, testicle jiggling, jowl flattening ever-shifting blare that can only be approximately described as the aural equivalent of tectonic plates making love. After awhile (5 minutes say?) you begin to hear notes that aren't even there in amongst the shifting swirling monumental texture. There was no encore. The only thing they could have possibly followed up with would have been to come out and do “Have You Never Been Mellow” accompanied on a xylophone- merely as a palate cleanser.

This is all to say it was a very good show indeed. Regrets? As Joe Sofia pointed out, the vocals are mixed so low as to be practically non-existent. This isn’t a band anyone goes to for the words but it still felt like an element was getting a little short shrift. The crowd was made up of a high proportion of boorish louts – surprising for a Tuesday. There was one moron who clearly hadn’t been let out of his cage for several years and felt the need to get into a fight and mosh and generally do all sorts of things that were probably slightly more amusing when he was 15 years younger. Then there were the asinine shouts of “Play Louder” from some audience members which received a delicate middle finger from bassist Debbie Googe.

Still, a few boobs weren’t enough to ruin a fantastic show and some of the worst offenders were probably the same folks who inflicted permanent hearing damage on themselves so it all ends well.

Here's a hint of what the twenty-minute section of "You Made Me Realize" sounded like - just a hint mind you:


...and here's "When You Sleep" both from earlier this year:

Music Review: Breeders Spawn Another Keeper With Mountain Battles

Review by Noah Mallin

Kim Deal has had a helluva life away from The Pixies, the band in which she first found fame. The Breeders was originally a side project with Tanya Donnely of Throwing Muses (and later Belly). Their 1990 debut Pod is an indie classic, mixing rubbery rhythms and spiky songforms on songs like "Oh" and "Metal Man" and a phenomenal cover of the Beatles "Happiness is a Warm Gun".

By 1992 the Pixies had died and The Breeders had shed Donnely and added Kim's twin sister Kelley for the wonderful Safari EP, but it was Last Splash and the hit single "Cannonball" the following year that brought Kim-mania to its full public flowering.

Deal responded to her first platinum-selling album by recording and scrapping a follow-up, then re-recording the songs under the band name The Amps. Ironically she and Kelley played locally in Ohio as teenagers as Tammy and The Amps, but Kelley had been sidelined thanks to a growing drug problem (never Fed-Ex your dope kids). The Amps lone album was quite charming, lo-fi in a way that reflected Deal's love for fellow Ohioans Guided By Voices.

Finally The Breeders returned scuffed and scruffy for Title TK in 2002 -- beloved by some fans but hardly the poppy crowd-pleaser that Last Splash was.

Which brings us to Mountain Battles. Deal has toured with her old band and both sisters have cleaned up the drugs and boozing since last we heard from them but it makes not a whit of difference to their sound. They take a long time to make albums that feel gloriously tossed off, like eavesdropping on a basement rehearsal at times.

Battles has those glorious breathy-woozy-sassy Deal sister harmonies in full force and a generally strong set of songs that touch on most of Deal's various sounds without sounding like a retread. The songs sung in Spanish (a trick better left to erstwhile Pixies-mate Black Francis) and German don't go anywhere good but the first five tracks are a welcome beginning.

"Overglazed" is just some rapturous instrument bashing with Kim announcing sunnily "I can feel it..oooo" and yes, so can we. "Bang On" is just as simple, a repetitive beat pounding away with a sweet little guitar filigree and the Deal sisters musing "I want no-one, no-one wants me..." and words to that effect which put me in mind of Ben Gazzara's bitter character in Todd Solondz's pitch-black comedy Happiness. His wife is convinced that he's ending the marriage because he must be in love with someone else. "I love no-one!" he repeatedly shouts.

Then the achingly gorgeous "Night of Joy" floats in, one of several deliciously mellow songs on Mountain Battles that allow the listener to wallow in Deal's tip-toeing chord changes and the sister's indelible harmonies. "We're Gonna Rise" is another such track.

There are a few moments like "Spark" that get bogged down in the willful twistiness that marked Title TK but all is forgiven when "Walk it Off" comes strutting through the speakers with the kind of descending bassline bop that made Last Splash a dorm room must-have.

Overall a welcome return indeed.

Here's a fan vid of "It's The Love" with footage from Cinema Paradiso:

Music Review: R.E.M. Accelerates in The Right Direction but Lose Momentum

R.E.M. -- three guys x four eyes

Music Review by Noah Mallin

The party line on R.E.M.'s new album Accelerate is that it's a return to classic form, something like U2's last few records in recapturing the sound that made them stars. They've even used Jacknife Lee, the producer of U2's How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb.

On first blush this trope holds up. Those stirring arrangements from the I.R.S. Records days featuring Mike Mills' plaintive vocals in the background counterpointing Stipe's singing, guitar-based songs, Mills' bass pushed up front again as a central component all say "Hey, remember?"

Then of course there is the loud short sharp shockiness of the songs, only 36 minutes worth of music with the amps at 11. It's both more and less self-consciously "rock" than their last "rock album" 1994s Monster which had some strange detours and much more delay and reverb.

Why they felt the need for a stripped-down back-to-basics affair is evident to fans and sales wonks alike. Their last album Around The Sun was an artistic and sales flop, a bloated overproduced affair. The album before that one, Reveal had glimmers of greatness particularly in the single "Imitation of Life", but too often felt mannered and lifeless. Up, the album that kicked off their current status as a trio with the loss of drummer Bill Berry, received wildly divergent responses. To my mind it's a fascinating album, and rewarding of multiple listens but not typical of what one would expect from the band.

The problem is that each of their albums, even the great ones that run in a gallop from 1983s debut Murmur through 1988s eclectic big label coming-out party Green found a way to tweak and transform their sound from album to album. Unlike U2, there really isn't a "classic" R.E.M. sound per se. To look at what most consider as their three artistic peaks is instructive -- Murmur is fuzzy experimental art rock with an insistent beat, Document is expansive punchy politicized protest rock, and Automatic For The People is a wounded but hopeful autumnal songcycle that uses shadings of folk-rock and even elements of light prog.

So Accelerate constructs a kind of artificial classic R.E.M. that, as many reviewers have noted, sounds closest to 1986s Life's Rich Pageant. Pageant has more shadings however, with barnburners like "Just a Touch" jostling with the achingly gorgeous "Fall On Me." Accelerate is so intent on "rocking" that it misses what could be some welcome coloration. There are a few changes of pace like the elegiac "Houston" and dour "Until The Day is Done" neither of which really go anywhere. Weirder "Sing For The Submarine" is more interesting and better for it, with an odd backwards-sounding chorus and curious lyrical namechecks of other R.E.M. songs.

There are some winners here, including the first three songs. "Living Well is The Best Revenge" romps around with Stipe's low growl (unlike the early albums he hasn't given up on enunciating), "Man-Sized Wreath" won't erase memories of "Exhuming McCarthy" but delivers pleasure just from hearing Mills and Stipe's voices together and "Supernatural Superserious" gets by on a nice lo-cal guitar riff. "Hollow Man" initially feels like an Automatic throwback before the monster chorus kicks in.

Eight tracks in we finally get to the one killer track, "Mr. Richards", a terrific spiralling hook of a song that chimes and rings in all the right places. It's a great melody delivered with just the right amount of guitar fuzz. "Horse To Water" gets a nice head of steam going and then the closer comes in, the lovably goofy "I'm Gonna DJ", a song that could have just as well opened the album.
If I seem underwhelmed it's because I am. This is a decent batch of songs but the biggest problem is producer Lee. The entire album is so compressed that there is little texture to any of the tracks. The chorus to Hollow Man ought to kick you in the gut -- instead it feels like someone turning on a faucet and then abruptly shutting it off. The weak songs suffer greatly from this and even some of the stronger ones sound samey. I guess this is in keeping with the kids listening to MP3's on crappy computer speakers but is that really R.E.M.'s audience? The overall feeling is stultifying and does the music no favors.

May I suggest that the next time the guys jump in a studio looking for a "raw" sound that they tap someone like Steve Albini (Pixies' Surfer Rosa, The Breeders' Pod, PJ Harvey's Rid of Me, Nirvana's In Utero)-- a choice that would have been oozing with cred and a guy who would have really stripped things down while letting them breathe. Hell, go with Scott Litt who blew Document up to glossy arena size while making sure it rocked hard and had lots of sonic details and texture.

That said this is still an improvement over Around The Sun and does mark a welcome return to fundamentals for what has been one of America's greatest bands. Hopefully this marks just the first step of a comeback trail. Trust me guys, call Albini.

Concert Review: Malkmus, Jicks all About the Chick with the Sticks at Bowery Ballroom

Review by Noah Mallin

Standing at the t-shirt booth and checking out the road wares at the Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks show at the Bowery ballroom in New York last night, a swaying gentleman in a blazer and t-shirt breaks away from an intense negotiation with the fellow behind the table to swivel his head in my direction.

"Hey..." he says to me as his eyes focus behind his glasses, "I'll buy you two shots of tequila at the bar if you buy me a t-shirt. All I have is a credit card." I look at the placid guy working the shirt stand -- he's seen it all before. He shrugs his shoulders," Cash only..." So it's going to be that kind of a show.

Upstairs the band is clearly having monitor issues. Bassist Joanna Bolme keeps gesturing to the mixer to turn up her bass. Every time she waves her arms the guy behind me intones, "Gawd she's hot."

To be fair, the whole band is hot in every sense of the word: Sweaty in the humid funk of the sold out club, attractive sure, and blazing musically. Bolme has always been a sharp bass player, anchoring Malkmus' twisty-turny songs. Malkmus himself is an ace guitarist changing tones from Allman-like lilting runs to heavy distorto sheets within a single tune, his voice squawking and cooing like dyspeptic songbird. Mike Clark hops around from guitar to keyboards seamlessly, his silver lame flashing.

The real deal last night was the newest member of The Jicks, drummer Janet Weiss. Weiss was the powerhouse behind the late Sleater-Kinney's crunch and the whomping swing of the band Quasi which she formed with her ex-husband. Her unerring timing, Bonham-like attack, and turn-on-a-dime tempo shifts have freed Malkmus into even wilder guitar runs -- The Jicks are finally the jam band of his dreams.

There's a cry from the crowd for "Box Elder," a song by Malkmus' original band Pavement. Malkmus murmurs a succinct "No." into the mic. Though Pavement began to take a more expansive view of 60's rock archetypes as they soldiered on before splitting at the end of the 90s, it would have been hard to imagine them as the liquidy groovesters the Jicks were last night. A whole room full of achingly hip indie kidults were doing the deadhead shuffle-sway dance thing as jazzy riffs rang out from the guitar and the rhythm section locked in while Clark did a Ray Manzarek impression behind the keys. Yet, just when you think you have the band pegged as hippie revivalists they switch it up with a cover of hardcore band Fear's "I Don't Care About You."

Most of the set was made up of new songs from Real Emotional Trash with nary a peep from Malkmus' poppy first solo record. Highlights included a sweaty workout on "Baltimore", a plaintive version of "Baby C'Mon" from the last album and a wrung out full-on Woodstock take on "Hopscotch Willie."

Music Review: Malkmus Trash Has Flash, Songs That Last

Malkmus -- Check off "Ironic Mustache" on your Hipster Bingo card...

Pavement were the most indie of indie bands -- they were None More Indie. Initially low-fi, never on a major-label, often obtuse as much as catchy, even their most widely played video looked like something that cost $25. Yet as they went along, in the wake of the critically reviled Wowie Zowie (which has since seen something of a re-evaluation) they began to take on more attributes of what can only be termed as classic rock. Mellotron flutes swirled on "Transport is Arranged" and "Date With Ikea" was nearly Byrdsian with it's ringing guitar figure.

It was around this time that Phish began to cover the occasional Pavement song, striking what for many fans was the final death knell of a band that once trafficked in 2 minute bursts of tangled noise like "Baptist Blacktick." The jazzy expansiveness that jam-band aficionados were responding to has since been given free reign on Stephen Malkmus' post Pavement work with the Jicks.

Malkmus fans are further split over which SM they want to hear, as each of his albums have subtly changed the dynamics between poppy, quirky, jammy, and noisy while still essentially sounding more like each other than anything else in the music world. His first album was poppy, quirky, and for detractors a bit soulless. Album two, Pig Lib was weird and twistingly jammy, my personal favorite but a dud for some fans. His last album Face The Truth promised a return to eclectic noisy experimentism but to me sounded like a disjointed mess. Which brings us to Real Emotional Trash.

At this point Malkmus' style is pretty much set and there is nothing here that deviates from what he's done before. What does set this apart are sharp hooks and memorable melodies. Generally this falls into his jammier work with songs that crest the ten minute mark. It's the majority of shorter punchier songs that connect though, as much fun as it is to hear The Jicks work.

Drummer Janet Weiss, late of strident girl punks Sleater-Kinney and stripped down rockers Quasi adds a great deal of muscle behind the drumkit and the band is clearly having fun. Malkmus is one of the best guitarists out there, spinning out twisty phrases and solos and generally going all guitar god on everybody's asses.

This stands with Pig Lib as the strongest display of what Malkmus does as a solo artist. Songs like "Baltimore" combine his expansive instincts with his hooks ably, tremendous opener "Dragonfly Pie" stops around and suggests a pleasing skronkfest like the last albums "Pencil Rot" before finding its way to a sweetheart of a chorus. At this late stage Malkmus is unlikely to win over any converts but for those of us who enjoy the Gospel this comes on as a treat, even if the long stuff is simply too long.

Music: Beck's Best Re-Boots With Bonus Disc

Beck is all "I see you jacked my look Michael Cera..."

Many reviews of the new two-disc Deluxe Edition of Beck's 1996 opus Odelay have seemed to include an obligatory Kurt Cobain compare-and-contrast alt-stars of the 90s moment. The standard trope is that Kurt was too raw and full of feeling and fellow blonde skinny boy Beck swooped in post-mortem to lighten the mood and take us all away on a wave of irony. Ah, hindsight.

My obligatory Beck/Kurt connection is my memory of the day Cobain died, when Beck's "Loser" was riding up the charts and MTV actually meant Music Televison. Stone-faced MTV News guy (yes there was such a thing as MTV News) Kurt Loder was explaining that an unidentified body had been found in Cobain's house, and it was a blode male in his 20s. My friend turned to me and said hopefully, "Maybe its Beck..."

"Loser" and the accompanying album Mellow Gold did seem like a wispy thin coton candy strand of irony compared to Cobain's gravitas at the time. There was no reason to imagine life beyond a one-hit wonder for the onetime Beck Hansen whereas Nirvana had already been crowned the band of a generation.

The reality is that both artists were expert magpies, building their own sounds and stances out of the accumulated weight of music past. Cobain also in his own way did as much to obscure his true self and his subject matter as Beck did with sometimes obtuse lyrics and misleading explanations.

Ultimately they were both expert curators. Cobain shilled for beloved bands of the past that were barely known outside of rarefied circles: The Vaselines, Meat Puppets, Wipers, and many more. Beck reconfigured underground folk, blues, hip-hop, and indie rock styles, and Odelay is in some ways a tip of the hat to The Beastie Boys 1989 masterpiece Paul's Boutique a massive sales flop that accumulated a rabid cult. They both shared a fondness for Calvin Johnson and K Records.

So on to Odelay, an album that holds up magnificently and benefits from the remastering job (as silly as it might seem to remaster an album that came out in the heyday of CD tech.) Beck hired the Dust Brothers, the producers behind the aforementioned Paul's Boutique. Like the Beastie's album, Odelay is a crazy quilt of samples from sources as diverse as Van Morrison's early band Them, Rachmaninoff, and a host of obscure soul singles. These are fused with a strong set of songs that touch on hip-hop, indian tinged psychedelia , hardcore, noise rock and folk blues.

Beck would never sound as simultaneously expansive and unified again as he does here. Subsequent albums, as excellent as they are, tend to explore certain aspects of each of these touchstones. The follow up for example, Mutations, strips away all of the sampling and hip-hop and rock influences to explore a baroque trippy folk.

Expanding Odelay to two discs blunts its impact somewhat with a grab bag of worthy and second string songs and remixes. "Electric Music and The Summer People" for instance, was a b-side in a different, superior version than the one here. The remixes are almost all negligable, as is a clever mariachi version of "Jack-Ass" entitled "Burro" natch.

This gets 4 out of 5 Kurt Loders, but the original album is a stone 5 Loder classic:


Here's the freaky-deaky video for "New Pollution":


And "Minus" live getting torn up!:

Music: Times New Viking Are Hiding Something

Times New Viking

Times New Viking got a lot of buzz for their ultra low-fi album Paisley Reich last year, some of which emanated from the speakers that played the album. Meet the new typeface of low-fi...ultra low- quality recordings that challenge the ear to pick out the melodies and music trapped within the sonic sludge.

Signing to storied indie label Matador hasn't changed the band's M.O. , the band's relationship to fidelity is Hugh Hefner-esque on their new one Rip It Off -- though songforms and hooks are marginally easier to pick out. It helps that there appears to be a stronger set of songs here but who can tell?

In a way, ultra-low fidelity (no fidelity?) is very now, what with the debate over the prevalence of MP3's and their relatively crappy sound in comparison to the good old compact disc. If we are devolving in our sonic expectations, why not fast-forward into the barely comprehensible.

The reality is that this is more of a sonic pose than anything else -- copped from old Guided By Voices albums (which in themselves played up their sonic imperfections.) R. Stevie Moore made home recordings in 1975 that sound better than what GBV was up to in the very early 90's and wayyy better than what Times New Viking are doing now. In other words, especially in the computer age we are living in now, making music sound polished (if not good) is easy and cheap.

So why hide their light under a bushel? I think partly their is the sheer mystery of having to concentrate to pick out just what the hell's going on under all that distortion and bad mixing. But then there's also the fact that without the lo-fi they are just another band with a strong set of hooky poppy songs. Guided By Voices cleaned it up enough on Alien Lanes and Under the Bushes Under the Stars to reveal some really great songwriting while not losing a distinct sound and presence. Perhaps Times New Viking worry that if the sludge were stripped they'd just sound like Guided By Voices.

Based on the strength of songs like "Faces on Fire", "Come Together" and "The Wait" they should buck it up and go nekkid -- let's hear those hooks boys and girls. Don't be shy.

Rip It Off gets three out of five Tascam portable 4 track recorders:



Here they are live last year:

Music: Chomp on Covers Comps -- Three New Music Compilations

Franz Ferdinand: Batting 1-2

Various artists compilations -- whether they be soundtracks or anniversaries or tribute albums or all of the above -- tend to fall heavily on the various side. With luck maybe one or two tracks offer a new gem or perspective on a well-known artist or introduce an artist previously unheard. Recently three new comps were released to vie for the serious music fans attention.

The BBC Radio One Established 1967 is a paean to the British broadcasters "hip" radio station. The approach is stars of today cover the stars of yesteryear (or on this chronologically ordered comp's second disc not-so-yesteryear). The results are wildly mixed, from the awful straight sung cover of Elton John's "Your Song" by Streets to Fratelli's ho-hum Hendrix-lite "All Along the Watchtower" on the bum end to Amy Winehouse's Johnny Nash by way of Sam Cooke's "Cupid" and Groove Armada's clubbed-out version of Madonna's "Crazy For You." Most of what's here strikes a mushy middle ground, disappointing when such great coverers as Franz Ferdinand and Mark Ronson are on board. The only real surprise is a hard techno take on The Police's "Can't Stand Losing You" from Mika and Armand Von Helden and a sweet sugar-pop take on Wheatus magnificent late 90's hitlet "Teenage Dirtbag" by Girls Aloud.

I'm Not There, the ambitious soundtrack to Todd Haynes equally ambitious new Bob Dylan biopic consists of 34 Dylan covers spread over two discs. The batting average is significantly higher than the Radio One comp, but then so is the talent of the artists involved. Still over two discs what you get is an awful lot of too-reverent takes on an artist who has benefited from loose interpretations of his canon (even by himself). The highlights here are Sonic Youth who do a doleful take on the rare title track, and Mark Lanegan's assured bleakness on "Man in the Long Black Coat". Nothing here stinks, but a lot of it just makes you wish you were hearing the originals.

David Shrigley's Worried Noodles, on it's face, is the least promising of these sets. Also a double-discer, it matches indie artists both renowned and obscure with lyrics written by the multi-disciplinary Scots artist David Shrigley. The surprise is how consistently enjoyable this set is, both for its offbeat lyrics and the wonderful songs contributed by a multitude of sources. Amongst the highlights are Franz Ferdinands rockingly abrasive "One", contrasted with Hot Chip's chilled-out take on the same song, Final Fantasy's perfectly sardonic "Joys", and David Byrne's "For You" -- the Talking Headsy style lyrics making a perfect match. Over two discs there are still a few clunkers but the hit to miss ratio is unusually high. Worried Noodles is a fine investment and the best of this lot.

Music Review: Fiery Furnaces Do What They Know -- But is it Enough?

Fiery Furnaces: Wrong turn at Self Indulgence Ave?

With all the talk engendered by Radiohead's album download scheme and Starbuck's signing boomer acts right and left the general consensus is that the traditional big music business model is an Endangered Species. Furthermore, that may not be such a bad thing. These dinosaurs are the people who rejected Wilco's best album, forced Aretha Franklin to sing standards before fleeing to Ahmet Ertegun and signed Milli Vanilli.

But what if Blondie had never been forced by producer Mike Chapman to go back to a cod-reggae trifle they had been working on and re-tool it with a disco beat as "Heart of Glass?"
What if ambitious manager Andrew Loog Oldham hadn't bothered to lock Mick Jagger and Keith Richards in a room and refused to let them out until they wrote some songs together?

More to the point, what if some cigar smoking prick behind a desk in a glass tower swiveled his chair around and said to Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger something like:

"Listen you two siblings, lovers, whatever you are...I just listened to your new album. Where's the hit?"

Is it indie-rock heresy to ask why two talented people with hooks, sound and attitude galore can get so close to making deliciously memorable songs and still feel compelled to sabotage them time and again?

The best full disc these guys have is EP, ostensibly a collection of stray tracks from b-sides and mini-eps. How perverse is it that great songs like "Evergreen" and "Here Comes the Summer", "Sing For Me" and "Single again" were given a sort of throwaway treatment. These days, artists can be as perverse as they want to be towards their own work and still find a following (hello Bob Pollard) but it really galls me with Fiery Furnaces. I enjoyed the epic sprawling monster that is their Blueberry Boat, an album made up mostly of epic songsuites. Following their comparatively straightforward debut it felt like a band stretching out and finding it's horizons but subsequent albums seem to suggest that what was fresh and arresting has calcified into self indulgence.

Their new album Widow City is typical in that there are a few good songs sandwiched amongst the random riffery, logghorhiac vocals and skronking synth sounds. Matthew, who writes and masterminds the songs, seems to delight in shoving words down his sisters gullet in the way my brother used to hold me down and stuff dirty socks in my mouth. Eleanor has a terrific voice, refined and wistful, but she's made to sing such ridiculousness that it's hard to warm up to her performances and the multi-syllabic overflow lends an air of sameyness to her delivery. My fave song here is "My Egyptian Grammer" in which she's so loaded down with words that she's overdubbed on top of herself singing separate verses.

There are pleasures to be had in the tone of the meaty drums and guitars, the surprising keyboard textures and the flashes of melody and finessed arrangements. But too often it all devolves into murk. Would Clive Davis or Mo Ostin have let such a promising career devolve?

Widow City gets 2 out of 5 Clive Davis':

Music: Live Review -- New Pornographers Get Busy on Webster Hall

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Music Review: Radiohead's In Rainbows Lets The Air In

Radiohead bassist Colin Greenwood "You like my filigrees then?"

"I don't wanna be your friend/ I just wanna be your lover" Thom Yorke croons at the beginning of "House of Cards" on Radiohead's new album In Rainbows. Whoa, what's this? Directness, sexiness, enunciation, on a Radiohead album? Yes and no, and that's the beauty of their latest album, available via download only for the time being at the band's dedicated website . The initial talk had been centered on the novelty and surprise of this release method and the pay your own price strategy, but now that those of us who put in our orders have had a chance to live with the album discussion has turned to the music itself.

The last few albums like Hail to the Thief and the double-whammy of Kid A and Amnesiac grew increasingly claustrophobic and clammy, dense with sound and freighted with paranoia and gloom. In Rainbows isn't exactly The Spice Girls but the production has opened up to let in air and space, allowing the songs to breathe and move. The music itself isn't radically different than what they've done in the past but it's more approachable without being dumbed down. The newly clever arrangements insure that there are a few things happening at once in isolation before expanding and contracting in a big screen version of the sonic playfulness that's become a hallmark of Spoon's sound.

This also allows for a renewed appreciation for Colin Greenwood's fluid bass playing, with fills and filigrees peppering songs like "All I Need", while strings swoop in and out without dominating or overpowering any track. Thom Yorke's voice is wonderfully elastic, as usual, but there is a new clarity in a lot of these songs -- he's no longer afraid to spend at least part of most of these songs in the front of the mix.

Overall the sound is closer to Hail to The Thief's guitar based songwriting than Kid A's more drum and bass electronica, though opener "15 Step" comes close with it's chopped up rhythm track. The band may not be doing anything new here, or making a leap in musical conception (i.e. the leap from The Bends to OK Computer) as bold as it's leap in commercial presentation, but In Rainbows stands with some of their most invigorating and sheer listenable work.

Four out of five downloads:

Music Review: Super Furry Animals Do The Rare Welsh Bit

Super Furry Animals: Insert Slestacks Joke Here

Super Furry Animals have been Wales top musical export since 1996 and the height of britpop. While many of their contemporaries have faded away they keep plugging along. Their latest, Hey Venus!, features more songwriting input than usual from the entire band and a return to the more varied sound of earlier albums like Radiator. 2005's Lovekraft was mostly straight-ahead woozy psychedelia so it's nice to hear them stretch their legs by pulling back the song lengths and keeping some (but not all) of the songs short and sharp. Shortest if not sharpest is opener "Gateway Song" which announces itself as a gateway song to the "harder stuff" on the rest of the album. This is followed by one of their best songs yet, the "Be My Baby" beat-napping "Run-Away" in which Gruff Rhys intones "This song is based on a true story, which would be fine if it wasn't autobiographical". "Show Your Hand" is another of their many recent Beach Boys pastiches, "Neo Consumer" bops along like Heroes - era Bowie, "Into The Night" has a satisfying crunch and "Baby Ate My Eightball" is delightfully weird with it's ping ponging "She Comes in Colors" background vocals. "Suckers" and "Battersea Oddysey" however get bogged down in some of the soundscapes that kept Lovekraft earthbound, and the wonderfully unexpected touches of electronica that used to pepper their albums are nowhere to be found. This is still a fine addition to their canon, if not an out-and-out masterpiece like Radiator.
Hey Venus! gets four out of five Venuses:

Music Review: Stars new album bigger, but is it better?

Stars: Avril Lavigne wants her tie back

The Canadian band Stars had a major artistic breakthrough with 2004's Set Yourself on Fire. For their follow-up, In Our Bedroom after the War they have come down with a major case of Summer sequel-itis. Like something out of the Die Hard franchise they have taken all the things that were hallmarks of Fire, even down to the portentous literary referenced album title being spoken at the outset, and made them bigger, bolder and brighter. There are more strings, slicker production, brighter vocals, bolder arrangements. This isn't a disaster but it makes for an album that feels more distanced and less inviting than it's predecessor.
That's not to say that there is nothing to like here. Sometime Broken Social Scene-ster Amy Millan still has a heart-tugging yearning in her voice, which goes nicely with co-singer Torquil Cambell's detached iciness. Many of the songs are top-notch -- first single "The Night Starts Here" pulses along on an insistent groove, "The Ghost of Genova Heights" comes over as 1985 era Scritti Politti new wave, and "Window Bird" rides an outro of furiously solo-ing David Gilmour-esque guitars. Still, Campbell amps up his Morissey-isms a bit too much at times, and it's hard to recommend this to newcomers to the band even though by all measures it's more "accessible" than it's predecessor. For the already initiated, there are pleasure here that unlock over repeated listenings, but Set Yourself on Fire remains the high-water mark by which all other Stars albums must be judged. Stars gets...er..three out of five stars:

Music Review: M.I.A goes POW! Drops Her Best Album Yet

Maya Arulpragasm (aka M.I.A.) dressed for some night jogging

Sri Lankan rapper/singer M.I.A. (pronounced like "maya") is connoisseur of rhythm, a veritable beat specialist. Like James Brown, she's never met a groove or a polyrhythm she didn't want to ride and on her new album Kala she serves up the results on a gleaming silver platter. Her last record, 2005's Arular, was produced by Diplo with a dense steamy mix that acted as a sensory assault, while still shakin' booties. Kala (XL Records) goes straight to the ass however, stripping away anything that doesn't serve the rhythmic flow and building layers of airy open sound out of people talking, M.I.A. rapping and singing in her distinct lilt and odd juxtapositions of lyrics and influences. "20 Dollar" comes in on gunshots, fuzz guitar, quasi-Indian vocals from M.I.A. and electro-drums before she she starts rapping, her flow insistent and cajoling until suddenly she hits the chorus and it's a cover of "Where is My Mind?" by The Pixies. "Bamboo Banger" similarly takes The Modern Lovers pre-punk classic "Roadrunner" and transforms it into a refrain for third-worlders banging on the doors of passing Hummers that could be full of tourists or soldiers or both. The killer single "Bird Flu" busts out of the speakers with squawking, Burundi-style drumming and wild vocal trills. "Jimmy" is a Bollywood tribute that's as smooth as melting butter and deserves to be a smash. "Mango Pickle" is as addictive as M.I.A. claims the titular snack is and features the rapping of aboriginal Australian pre-pubescents The Wilcannia Mob. They give this song about fishing and eating a strange skew with their high raspy voices and didgeridoo. Then there is "Paper Planes which samples The Clash's "Straight to Hell" in the service of discussing M.I.A.'s wanderings forced and otherwise. As a side-effect of Bush's stringent visa policies she was unable to work with Timbaland on the entire album, as was her plan. As the one Timbaland track shows, this was a good thing as her globetrotting yields up an album of diverse and eclectic pleasure all aligned with the hips and wedded to lyrics about third world democracy and "boyz" who start wars. This one gets 5 out of 5 Visas, a modern dancefloor clasic in the making:

Music Review: The Dynamics First Landing – Lost Soul Redeemed

Jonathan Lethem’s novel Fortress Of Solitude featured a number of imaginary soul musicians nestled among the real-life stars of soul and R and B as part of the fabric of his narrative. Hacktone’s reissue of The Dynamics 1969 album First Landing sounds like what I imagined one of Lethem’s imaginary groups to be: lost could-have-been first string soul stars. First Landing is a surprisingly strong example of the last gasp of traditional soul as it was being challenged first by funk, and later by disco. Sharp, punchy arrangements and production (on two songs by the legendary Chips Moman) are re-mastered to perfection here.
First Landing is impressive in its consistency in a genre known more for singles than for long players. It is stronger song-for-song than, say, Al Green’s debut album. This is all the more notable given the stylistic variety on display, from up-tempo burners like “ I Don’t Want Nobody to Lead Me On” to funky churners like “Dum-De-Dum” to ballads like “What Would I Do.” Isaac “Zeke” Harris has a terrific voice, aided and abetted by co-leads George White (who busts out a killer falsetto) and Fred “Sonny” Baker.
This is a real treat for any fans of late 60’s and early 70’s soul. First Landing gets 4 out of 5 afro picks:

Music Review: Interpol are Repeat Offenders

Interpol have been tagged from the beginning as a sort of Joy Division retread (I hear more Echo and the Bunnymen in their sound). Unlike Joy Division though, lead singer Paul Banks shows no signs of offing himself and Interpol seems unlikely at this late date to turn into New Order. That's not to say this band doesn't have it's own merits. There are terrific songs scattered over their three albums so far, and if their latest Our Love To Admire holds fewer peaks than previous LP Antics, it also contains fewer troughs. What you get is further distillation of the Interpol sound, with some more fancy-pants production courtesy the major-label coffers. Sadly what you don't get is the crystal clear focus on the bands killer all-too secret weapons: the rhythm section of bassist Carlos Dengler and drum phenomenon Sam Fogarino. On Admire the production and arrangements conspire to drown their snap and pop in a blanket of strings, keyboards and guitars.

As I mentioned earlier there are still moments worth savoring, though they will have an air of familiarity to longtime Interpol-ites. "No I in Threesome" is a clever fucked-up relationship song, "The Heinrich Manouver" is an excellent single if a notch down from 2004's "Slow Hands", and "Mammoth" has an epic grandeur befitting it's title. Those are the highlights but the rest is perfectly fine if you can't get enough of Banks' voice and Daniel Kessler's guitar atmospherics. For those who were hoping for some development in the songwriting or playing, disappointment awaits. Interpol has their sound and they are sticking to it. Our Love To Admire merits Three out of Five Ian Curtis neckties (if you know what I mean):

Record Review: Ga Ga for Spoon's Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga

Spoon main-man Britt Daniel writes inscrutable, catchy, hook filled songs that feel emotional even as he builds walls around his true meanings. It's clear from the press info from his band's latest that it is breakup related, and songs like the pensive "Don't Make Me a Target" seem to reference our current political climate. That this album is as personal as Daniel gets is conveyed mostly by tone and feel, his characteristically stripped down arrangements peppered with deliberately left-in studio talk and off-kilter instrument punch-ins.

At first listen, there's nothing here that is radically different from past Spoon albums. Where A Series of Sneaks to Girls Can Tell to Kill the Moonlight felt like a band making great leaps from album to album the transition from 2005's Gimme Fiction to Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga feels more like consolidation. The horns on "You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb" echoing the horns on 2002's "Jonathan Fisk", the spare studio atmospherics of "The Ghost of you Lingers" suggests "Stay Don't Go", also from 2002. The more I listen however, the more depth comes out, and the quality and layering of each song makes the rank among, if not above, their previous high points. Though there is nothing as revelatory as "I Turn My Camera On" from the last album, but Spoons trademark sparseness is used here to hide little hooks and sonic fillips that emerge with repetition. The echo on Daniel's voice in "Rhthm and Soul", the Spanish styled guitar solo on "Japanese Cigarette Case", "the garbled chatter in "Finer Feelings" all suggest that the layers that Spoon spent so many albums peeling back are now being laid back on strategically. The previously mentioned songs are all highlights, as are the wonderful closer "Black Like Me", a Spoon ballad par excellance which is more about soul than skin. Spoon has been nothing if not consistent and they once again have delivered a shoo-in for many critics' end of the year lists. Four out of five spoons: