3 DOORS DOWN RETURN WITH THEIR 5TH STUDIO ALBUM, TIME OF MY LIFE. RECORDED WITH GRAMMY-NOMINATED PRODUCER HOWARD BENSON (HOOBASTANK, THEORY OF A DEADMAN) THIS ALBUM SHOWS A CLEAR EVOLUTION FOR THE GROUP WHILE MAINTAINING THEIR UNMISTAKABLE HIT-MAKING SOUND. ALBUM INCLUDES THE SINGLES "WHEN YOU'RE YOUNG" AND "EVERY TIME YOU GO."
AVAILABLE NOW!
/music
The Independent Record Store—
Sunrise Records
M
any Goliaths have been brought down in
by
Andrea the blood sport that is the current retail Trace music industry. There are a few indomitable Davids left standing. How do independent chains of old school record stores survive the blows that have destroyed major players like Sam The Record Man and Tower Records? In Canada, the last independent record store chain still selling new music is Ontario’s Sunrise Records.
“Sunrise survived because of the hands on approach of myself and loyal supportive associates with a passion for music and music retailing,” states Malcolm Perlman, co-owner of Sunrise Records in Ontario, Canada. “I have always micro-managed every aspect of the business and continue to do so to this day. I strongly believe that there is still life for CDs for quite a while to come. Independent retailers have to leave the digital world to major players such as ITunes. I-Tunes however, can never replace the personal experience encountered in a record store.” The landscape of music retail has changed enormously in the last 10 years. Digital downloads (legal and illegal) are, of course, a huge factor, but not the whole story. “The major labels put all their support in chains such as Best Buy, Future Shop, Target, Walmart, Circuit City etc,” notes Perlman. “These retailers were only interested in using CDs as loss leaders. As a result, consumers have had difficulty in finding catalogue product. So they gave up going to stores when looking for CDs. Interestingly enough, independents are very successful in the U.S. Why? Because they listen to their customers who, at the end of 8
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the day, are why we are in business.” The advent of digital options has also shifted the paradigm of how some people choose to consume music. A portion of the population prefers to select specific songs, and the ability to purchase individual digital tracks has diverted casual music fans away from physical product. In some ways, it’s a return to the 50’s when the industry was ruled by the 45 rpm single. Another challenge is the relative dearth of major releases. “There has been an overall decline in the number of major artists and bona fide hit albums,” opines Timmy Ray Baker, head music buyer at Sunrise. “Twenty years ago most big artists would put out a new album every year or at least every two years; now it’s more like one every 4 or 5 years.” There’s one blast from the past that is a herald of good news: the much-lauded resurgence of vinyl. A lot of factors are at work here, sound quality, preference for tangible media and sheer collectibilty being the most important. Audiophiles are returning to the LP to satisfy their lust for a warmer, more organic sound. It is a backlash against the comparatively cool digital CD and the ever-more impersonal
digital track. In a bizarre turnabout, music fans who once bought CDs to replace their vinyl, are now buying vinyl to replace their CDs. And that’s one of the places where indie retailers like Sunrise fit in. “The customers who are still shopping for physical media are the real music fans,” observes Stephanie Azzopardi, Sunrise’s director of store operations. “They’ve waited for the album; they want the whole CD, want to look at the art and pictures on the inserts, and would like to read the lyrics and acknowledgements.” They want the entire vision and experience that the artists have crafted, seemingly with these hardcore fans in mind. Along with concert venues, independent record stores are the last places left to experience the thrill of music. They are also the hang-out of choice of the devoted. The employees serving customers at indie retail are a breed apart. “The majority of the people at Sunrise Records are longterm employees, some with 17, 20 and 25 years at Sunrise” says Azzopardi. (If you work retail, you know how unusual that is.) “Let’s be honest, no one will ever become rich working in a record store. The difference with us is that our staff love their jobs. How great is it to wake up in the morning knowing you work in a record store?” Sunrise isn’t alone in championing indie music retail. Recently, the chain joined the Music Monitor Network, a coalition
of indie retailers in the US, fighting (and winning) the battle to stay relevant and strong. As Sunrise was the first non-US retailer invited to join, the MMN made Tim Baker the chairman of Record Store Day in Canada. Baker is not that much different from the customers he buys for. “I’ve been in music wholesale/retail for 35 years with 5 years of that spent playing and touring in a band. I used to spend all my money on albums and I took a job at Sherman’s Mister Sound at Yonge & Bloor when I found out they offered staff discounts on imports.” Baker says, “We joined the Music Monitor Network 4 years ago. At that time, they were essentially a buying group, but are now the major voice when it comes to independent music retail. The MMN created Record Store Day and it has become a world-wide phenomenon. I hope to involve more labels and retailers in next year’s event.” “Tim pushed hard for us to become involved with MMN,” adds Perlman. “This has been a great move for us. Michael Kurtz, the leader of MMN, is a great inspiration and has done wonders in uplifting the image of indies around the world. He conceived the idea of Record Store Day and we happily joined in.” Record Store Day, an annual love-in for independent music retail has been enthusiastically supported by musicians and fans alike. Celebrated every April, it’s a day music fans pack into record stores (only indies can participate) and snap up exclusive product put out just for Record Store Day. Scads of vinyl, exclusive discs, re-released rarities: bands and labels come forward with a host of offerings and there are more every year. The outpouring of specialized releases says a lot about how musicians feel about record stores. There is an ocean of cool quotes on RecordStoreDay.com. “Independent record stores are a vital source of the ever-changing cool,” says guitar virtuoso Joe Satriani. “They respond to the street faster than the chains can. Musical trends are confirmed at the local independent record store, by you and me. Hanging out, listening to something you’ve never heard before, being enlightened by the staff, getting into something new, finding that old recording you’ve been searching for, having your local band’s newest offering stocked right next to major label stuff, it all happens at the local indie shop.”
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Musical trends are confirmed at the local independent record store, by you and me. Hanging out, listening to something you’ve never heard before, being enlightened by the staff, getting into something new, finding that old recording you’ve been searching for, having your local band’s newest offering stocked right next to major label stuff, it all happens at the local indie shop.” -Joe Satriani
By all accounts, product knowledge and a love of music seem to be the essential differences that set an indie record store apart. “I know what our core customer wants and it’s my job to make sure our stores have what he or she needs,” states Baker. “At the same time, we have to ensure we are a welcoming environment for people with different tastes and needs. I never buy using personal taste but I do try to influence the tastes of others on occasion. We have store managers like Debbie at Sunrise in Lynden Park (Brantford) and Steven at 784 Yonge Street who have been with us for over two decades and have ridiculous product knowledge. They keep me on my toes and bring something special to the business.” Expanding the inventory has been one key to the success of Sunrise Records. “I have always been prepared to make product mix changes whenever the need arose despite, on occasion, resistance from the stores,” Perlman explains. “Music always has been our primary focus and always
will be.” But in order to stay in business, it’s adapt or die. Baker concurs. “The addition of our pop culture merch, which we started bringing in almost a decade ago, was a large step in keeping us relevant in the new millennium. A large percentage of our trend items are music or movie related. The rest fits the lifestyle of our customer. Our stores are not boring.” But do customers approve of the merch in a music store? “I think most of our music-only customers ‘get it,’” observes Baker. “They understand why we chose this path and approve. But make no mistake, music is our number one priority.” Music has been the priority for 34 years. Sunrise started in 1977, originally launched by The Handleman Co., with a newly built, modern store at 237 Yonge Street, across from the Eaton Centre in the heart of the famed record store strip in downtown Toronto. Brothers Malcolm and Roy Perlman purchased the store in 1978. “It was the best looking store downtown,” says Malcolm, who, before purchasing Sunrise, was VP Finance of Capitol Records for eight years (now EMI Music Canada) and was closely involved in the expansion of the Mister Sound retail record stores owned by Capitol Records in Canada at that time. All told, Perlman has been involved in the music business for almost 42 years. Sunrise has two stores on Yonge Street and has survived while other chains, most notably Sam The Record Man, A&A Records and Music World have disappeared. Sunrise Records has stores on other downtown strips (in Kingston and in London), and in malls across Southern Ontario. They remain independently owned and operated. Even the mall stores have a “street store” feel, with many staff members themselves musicians, playing in bands. “Every store has or had band members,” says Azzopardi. “Staff members frequent concerts, performances and shows, often every week. Their passion for music is their life.” How will Sunrise Records and independents like them persevere in the digital age? “It has been a very rough haul,” admits Perlman. “We are continually evolving by searching out products which fit into our overall sales mix. It is critical to maintain a store which is interesting and relevant to the consumers, with music always as the core.” needle
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Wolfgang Mentality
(clockwise from top left) Tyler, the Creator, Domo Genesis, Mike G, Hodgy Beats, Left Brain, Frank Ocean and Syd that Kyd
Future Intense
Speculating what Odd Future will become is as difficult—and fun—as defining what they are / by Justin Hampton
T
he fuse is lit. You don’t know when the next explosion is going off, but you
know it’s coming. Besides, being taken by surprise is half the fun. Maybe they’ll start a fight with Chris Brown over Twitter. Or maybe one of them will injure his foot stage-diving into a crowd at SXSW or at a show, while a horde of fans chant “Golf! Wang! Golf! Wang!” or slogans to that effect, unconsciously hoping he’ll get up and injure himself even more seriously. Hell, maybe even the put-upon, insanely-gifted-yet-bitter leader may eventually crack under the pressure and self-destruct, with the last detonation leading to the group itself. That’s always fun. Of course, it’s supposed to be a new day. Goodbye, evil major labels. Hello, bloggers, social media and an ultra-empowered music audience. This is the bowl the Los Angeles-based hip-hop collective Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All have dropped into, skateboards and all, and it’s amazing who’s watching. Pharrell, The New Yorker, Dr. Dre—practically everyone who’s wondering about the fate of the music industry wonders whether these kids will pull off the ultimate trick move that gets everyone making money again. Just ask Billboard, who called these guys the future of the music industry. It’s definitely not the time for a faceplant. I’m talking to them early on, however, when it’s all fun and games, before it becomes a job. And just like everyone else, I’ve got an agenda when I’m talking to them. It’s not the one that they think, however.
So, I drive into downtown L.A. I run into
Hodgy Beats outside the parking lot, practicing a flip on his skateboard. “The rest are coming, but I always end up early.” “Cool. Well, let me show you where this place is.” The loft space is a 1,500-square-foot area with brick walls, hardwood floors, an oak-paneled bar and DJ booth that doubles as a photo studio and a party space. The three-person swing in the middle of the space adds a festive touch. You pass through a fully functioning party supply business to get there. We photo by Julian Berman
break up the buds on the bar and I roll up joints and makeshift blunts (no Swishers; I wasn’t that down at this point in time), you know, for a little variety. I pull out a die I got from a pocket trade with a pot trimmer last summer at the Rainbow Gathering. It’s six-sided, with the numbers given in sign language. I tell him that there are any number of communities in existence everywhere in the world where outcasts are developing their own ideas for self-reliance—tactics that will be necessary as the decades pass and the privations that climate change, overpopulation and pollution wreak upon our civilization become undeniable. I suggest he check out the Ohio-based skater estate Skatopia, which I heard about on the road, and the closest cultural analog to an intentional community I can think of for someone in Hodgy’s position. He seems interested. I smile inside. I like this kid. As we talk, Hodgy’s phone rings. Everyone else has arrived. I go downstairs to find the OF entourage. I’m only expecting Domo Genesis, the group’s resident stoner, and Left Brain, the laid-back, easygoing yin to OFWGKTA figurehead Tyler, the Creator’s conflicted Yang. But here comes Tyler, walking up the stairs... and into another loft space where construction is taking place. I see him making this mistake and I’m yelling, “Tyler! It’s upstairs! Let me show you,” peeking through the doorway he walked through, but he keeps walking. He then, suddenly, pushes himself against the wall, like he’s hiding. He’s being playful. So, I’m gonna hide, too. needle
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I push myself against the wall and a sharp stab of pain shoots up my body from my back. I have backed into a bolt sticking out of the wall, because bolts sticking out of walls are so industrial and stylish, you know. I will be feeling this shit for well over a month afterwards. Ever since then, I have associated Tyler with this crazy injury. It’s not in any way coming from some innate maliciousness on his part; unlike others I’ve met in my life. It’s just what surrounds him. The group seems taken by the space, and after a few tokes, the documented analgesic effects (thank you, Prop 215) settle in enough for me to wonder aloud about the band’s career without much physical distraction. Tyler’s only going to jump in here every so often, as he’s not technically even part of the interview. He just showed up to make sure everything went well, and occasionally play some music on the piano. Definitely a hands-on sort of guy, this fella.
So, Hodgy, when did you guys get serious about the
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rap game? “I always took it seriously. Like, when everybody took shit seriously as a group, it was about ’08. We just needed to find a spot where we could record shit.” Most fans know that spot as their engineer/DJ Syd’s recording space. Since finding this space, the crew has amassed a back catalogue of astonishing diversity. Tyler’s moody, depression-laced melodies and snide, fuzz-laden grooves have stood out most strongly with listeners, but Left Brain has shown extraordinary growth with recent output from Mellowhype, his collaboration with Hodgy Beats. The duo’s recently rereleased BlackenedWhite [see review, p. 40] contains some of these tracks, including the menacing “64,” one integer up from Tyler, the Creator’s “Untitled 63” for no discernible reason at all, but not “Chordaroy” because it’s one of the fabled Earl Sweatshirt tracks. Yes, THAT Earl Sweatshirt, the rap prodigy who recorded one LP, starred in one unforgettably eerie video, and dropped some clever verses before his mother whisked him away into some unseen limbo at some point last year. The one everybody considers to be OF’s finest MC. It’s at this point where the OFWGKTA story becomes horridly ghoulish for me. No, I didn’t ask about him, and no, I have no interest in bringing you that “exclusive” interview, because unlike The New Yorker, I put sock puppets on my hands, not in my articles.
People wanna label something so quickly, so it’s not as new and not as confusing to them. But they can’t do that to us ’cause they don’t know what label to give us.” —Hodgy Beats
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People jumped up and down over Yung Berg when he started, and nowadays stealing his chain is a hiphop rite of passage. So, maybe Earl’s better off in the Samoan boarding school. OF’s manager, a 40-year-old former Interscope repper named Christian Clancy, recommends on his website a book called Empire of Illusion by Chris Hedges. In it, Hedges interprets American pop culture as a hallucinatory reflection of America’s rapacious, selfdestructive tendencies and warped moral values. The only way out for OF is to control the narrative, make sure it isn’t labeled horrorcore, somehow diluted and therefore neutralized. “People wanna label something so quickly, so it’s not as new and not as confusing to them,” says Hodgy. “But they can’t do that to us ’cause they don’t know what label to give us, ’cause we’re always different. We keep coming [up] with different things every time. Being misunderstood is good at times.” “It would be a problem if we all drew the same crowd,” offers Domo. “We don’t draw the same crowd. Like, I can draw in smokers and, like, the urban crowd. They pull in the horrorcore and the hipsters. It’s just a diverse crowd. It’s on purpose.” They play around a lot, these guys. At points, I’ll ask questions, and Tyler will whisper a response into Domo’s ear, who will parrot it back to me. (Q: “What is Golf Wang?” A: (whisper) “Is a gang” (more whispers) “They attack old people” (whisper again) “They’re wild desk hunters.”) They talk of a TV show that will put the rest of their 60-person crew to work. I remark on Tyler’s fascinating VCR video on YouTube when Tyler barks out, “That’s not my video!”, just to see how far along he can string me (embarrassingly far). They stage a show-ending “booty contest” between their female fans at the end of the Pomona show I caught that reminded me of Gathering of the Juggalos in its most uncomfortably sexist moments. And boy, that swing in the middle of the room. Tyler sure loved that swing. I often wonder what OFWGKTA’s gonna do when they grow up. Personally, I hope they can encourage their fan base to become a full-on tribe with its own customs, traditions and social vision. Tyler touches on this in “Radicals”: “We came together ’cause we ain’t had nobody else. Do you? You just might be one of us. Are you?” Hopefully, they do harness this energy, before the audience either destroys them (hello, Michael Jackson) or forgets them. They’re in no place to hear this yet. It’s still playtime for them. And my back is still aching. Even the beef is still playful. I ask them just before they leave about their contempt for rap bloggers 2DopeBoyz and LA radio jock Steve Harvey, who often makes tearful entreaties about the fate of young black men. Domo parses Tyler’s whispers: “They are desks, and we are the ultimate desk hunters.” More at oddfuture.com.
Red Hot + Revitalized
After a period of relative silence, the HIV/AIDS activists of the Red Hot Organization are hotter than ever / by A.D. Amorosi
Y
ou could say it had finally gotten under John Carlin’s skin.
It was right before Halloween 1990 when the New York City entertainment lawyer—angered by the travesty of HIV/AIDS, and the lack of adequate care and information being provided its victims—released the first project from his Red Hot Organization.
It was the AIDS charity album Red Hot + Blue, and it featured the likes of U2, Annie Lennox and Tom Waits performing haunting renditions of songs by Cole Porter, the legendary Broadway and Hollywood songwriter. The eerily poignant tunes (“I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” “After You, Who?” and “You Do Something to Me,” for instance), many unheralded since the 1940s and ’50s, were dedicated to AIDS-stricken intellectuals and artists that Carlin had known. The album changed everything. That first Red Hot collection’s high standards for artistry—to say nothing of the attention and money it raised—redefined the game for the multi-artist tribute compilation. That first edition sold over a million copies worldwide, raised millions for AIDS charities, such as AmFAR and ActUp, and won an ABC network primetime slot on World AIDS Day. “The goal of the Red Hot Organization— my goal—has always been to produce credible things that people want,” says Carlin while gearing up for the release of his organization’s latest offering, Red Hot + Rio 2, a Tropicalia follow-up to 1996’s samba-flavored, Antonio Carlos Jobim-exalting Red Hot + Rio. On Rio 2—the 21st release under the Red Hot banner, but just the second since 2002—Tropicalista’s old school (Os Mutantes, Caetano Veloso, Tom Zé) and new school (Los Van Van, Brazilian Girls, Forró in the Dark) join pop stars (John Legend, 14
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Beck), assorted gringos (Beirut, Of Montreal, Devendra Banhart), and the ubiquitous David Byrne (Red Hot’s godfather of sorts, with seven appearances throughout the series) to take on this psychedelic Brazilian sound. “The Brazilian artists in particular were hungry to do this,” says the now 50-year-old Carlin. “They wanted to reinvent themselves, as well as their music, while considering the cause we were recording this for.” But it wasn’t just the artists who welcomed reinvention. Just two years ago, without a little reinvention on the organization’s part, a 21st Red Hot record would have been unlikely, if not improbable.
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hen asked why he’d revisit the idea of Rio, Carlin notes the difference in the records’ vibes—Rio 1’s got soft, bossa nova blips and hips, while Rio 2’s a collection of wild, rhythmic sandblasts. But if we’re being frank, the main reason Red Hot can return to Rio with full two-disc, all-star gusto is the complete resuscitation of the benefit behemoth via 2009’s Dark Was the Night. Unlike 2002’s Red Hot + Riot: The Music and Spirit of Fela Kuti (critically lauded but something of a flop, sales-wise), Dark Was the Night ran wild, generating proceeds of over $1 million a new crop of indie weirdos recording under the production of the National’s Aaron and Bryce Dessner. Bon Iver, Yeasayer and more helped make Dark shine.
“That really revived the series,” says Carlin. “And it was a pleasure to immerse myself and Red Hot in the indie rock scene after so long.” (Red Hot’s last foray, No Alternative, featured Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins and Sonic Youth, and came out at the height of grunge’s minute in 1993.) While working on Dark, Carlin found that many of its artists, from Arcade Fire to Antony Hegarty to Devendra Banhart, had a love of Brazilian music and listed Red Hot + Rio as a touchstone in their appreciation. It was as if Red Hot had discovered its offspring. Carlin also learned that his affinity for the harder Tropicalia was shared by many. So he floated the Rio 2 idea past Chuck Mitchell, who’d run Verve when that label released Rio 1. “We remained friends, and he helped make the deal with E1 where he is now.” E1 was enthusiastic enough to cover the recordings’ costs and distribution. “Fifteen months later,” says Carlin, “we had Red Hot + Rio 2.” It seems so simple. Then, why the mid2000s slump? “The music industry was [in trouble],” figures Carlin. Red Hot’s basic economic model forgoes donations, instead producing commodities that audiences crave, buy and share with friends. That generates revenue, and HIV/AIDS charities benefit. That model became fraught with headaches within the last decade of the music industry. Carlin says it became difficult to do charitable compilation albums because so many others had gotten into the game. Carlin also seemed a bit demoralized by the cool reception to the Fela project. “That was the best record we had done musically. I love that record. It did okay, and we still gave away some serious money to African youth organizations, but it didn’t set the world on fire or find its audience.”
And perhaps, intellectually, Carlin found himself more focused on a children’s development company called Funny Garbage that, for the last 15 years, has been at the forefront of digital media. “That felt more like punk rock did at its start than music [had].”
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hough Carlin paints a picture of himself as a fairly quiet and calm person, Red Hot was motivated by powerful anger. “At that time, a huge percentage of people that I knew, loved and worked alongside were sick or dying,” remembers Carlin. “My spiritual mentors were the Beatles, and I was profoundly influenced by the way in which John Lennon and George Harrison used their music for political activism.” Carlin didn’t want to just march, or make a quilt. He wanted to brand his version of giving. A tribute to Cole Porter just popped into his head. “Porter’s music hadn’t been addressed since the days of Frank and Ella.” His lyrics seemed to fit the historical moment really well. And the tribute album was still new at the time. We were only second to those truly amazing projects that Hal Wilner
had started.” “Some artists didn’t want to Still, getting started was a headdo it because they didn’t want ache, due to America’s fear of the people to think they were gay. still misunderstood HIV/AIDS Which is funny,” laughs Carlin, “because about half of the virus and the stigma attached to ones who said it were gay.” all things gay—to say nothing of Having U2 on board helped. releasing a charitable album at a time of great, greedy profitability “Having Bono and U2 step up in the entertainment industry at the height of their fame and Red Hot + Rio 2 is “We were originally doing the put their macho, hetero shoulavailable now from E1 Music first album through Warner Bros. ders to the wheel was considuntil Mo Ostin stopped the projerable.” ect,” remembers Carlin. “It wasn’t Guys like that made it feafear of AIDS on his part. Literally, they sible for hit-making pop stars—from George Michael through Red Hot + Rio 2’s John Legweren’t doing charity records. They’re not politically amoral; they are capitalists. They end—to expand the brand with their particisaid, ‘If you do a charity ball, we will buy a pation. It’s those artists who, in Carlin’s estable.’ It was profit versus no profit. Asking timation, are the bold-face names who draw artists to do something gratis compromises mainstream audiences, as well as pay into a their position as businessmen. At least that’s cause they might not otherwise. what they said.” “If the first three names are at the top in Carlin scrambled to find another label for terms of success and prestige,” he says, “we that first record (Chrysalis), but lost several get checked out. People stay for the depth.” nervous artists along the way. Which is why For more on the Red Hot Organization and Red Hot still goes for three to four times the series, hit redhot.org. number of artists that it eventually lands.
Rio Grand
Red Hot + Rio 2 artists on the Red Hot series
Bebel Gilberto Covering Moraes
Fernanda Takai Covering Antonio Car-
Moreira’s “Acabou Chorare” The first time I heard about the Red Hot project was when the first one came out, Red Hot + Blue. “Acabou Chorare” was [Red Hot producer] Béco Dranoff’s choice. It was left aside during the recording of my last album, and we felt this version needed to come out one day. I’m very proud to once more be part of this amazing project. [Gilberto did “Preciso Dizer Que Te Amo” with Cazuza on the original Red Hot + Rio.] As for AIDS and combatBebel ing the dreaded Gilberto disease? A lot has changed over the past 10 years, but there’s still a lot to learn about it. It’s a constant battle that we are not yet over.
los Jobim’s “Águas de Março” with Atom, Toshiyuki Yasuda and Moreno Veloso “I was invited by Japanese producer Toshiyuki Yasuda to sing a new version of “Águas de Março.” He was working on a different approach of the song with German artist Atom [a.k.a. Señor Coconut]. Moreno Veloso was the other vocal guest involved in this project. As I am a big fan of all of them, and also of Tom Jobim’s work, I said “yes” immediately.
Javelin Performing Tom Zé’s “Ogodô, Ano 2000” with Tom Zé I was in middle school when Red Hot’s No Alternative compilation came out. I cannot stress enough how crucial that tape was for me. And the album’s mission was not lost on me or my friends. I think it’s amazing that Red Hot actually got kids like us, at such a young age, obsessed with that Nirvana bonus track, to think about HIV awareness. Go on, Red Hot. I’d also like to thank them for giving us Pavement’s “Unseen Power of the Picket Fence.”
Angelique Kidjo Covering Gilberto Gil’s “Aquele Abraço” with Forró in the Dark and Brazilian Girls The first album of Red Hot + Rio was so important that I was thrilled to be involved in Rio 2, as it looks as if the message on HIV/AIDS awareness has to be told over and over again. Zach Condon of Beirut Covering Caetano Veloso’s “O Leãozinho” Brazilian guitar music is some of the most important and impressive in the world. That song really stuck out in [Veloso’s] catalog, at least melodically. I though it really accentuated his voice in a way that was really impressive. And it was so simple that I thought, “Hell, maybe we can do it.” One thing I find really interesting is its sense of melody. These big boisterous songs that turn into these really intimate songs and then back again at the drop of a hat. I find that really fascinating. I think it’s a really refined way of working with music.
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Life of Leisure CSS sweat out 11 feel-good hits of the summer
Lovefoxxx is pissed. At me.
It’s all Skype’s fault. I’ve repeated myself half a dozen times, but because of a crappy Internet phone connection between my place in Brooklyn and the CSS singer’s new home in Brazil, she can’t hear what I’m saying. “Are you saying ‘fuck you’?” she demands to know. “NO!” I blurt. “POP. MUSIC.” Come to think of it, “Fuck You! Pop Music!” is the message at the heart of CSS, a group of friends in Brazil who got together to write some tunes and wound up an international touring band. “We didn’t have any goals, really,” says Lovefoxxx, who points to the name of the band as proof. CSS is short for Cansei De Ser Sexy, which roughly translates as “tired of being sexy”—a claim they heard Beyoncé make in an interview—not exactly indicative of a serious-minded group of individuals. “Even though we’re funny and fun people, I think that we would have thought more [about the name] if we knew the band would become anything,” she laughs. “I really like the name now. I think most bands should happen like this. Not just bands, but everything. Ultimately, we were lucky, at the right place at the right time, but I really like how we came out of nowhere.” CSS were indeed the chosen ones. They formed in September 2003, played their first gig a month or two later, and promptly took off. Though they had no intention of becoming anything, this five-piece—with their raucous punk rock ethos, electro-pop jams and celebratory live shows—was so infectious that the public had other ideas. 16
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/ by Jeanne Fury
“After our first show, we never had to book a show,” says Lovefoxxx. “Everybody would call us and get in touch with us. It was never something we were trying hard to make work. People were really coming after us.” They were signed first in Brazil and then in America on Sub Pop. Their debut, Cansei De Ser Sexy, featured songs like “Meeting Paris Hilton” and “Let’s Make Love and Listen to Death From Above” that heavily touted the band’s loose, kooky spirit. Its follow-up, Donkey, took the wild-eyed energy, streamlined it and added some shadows. Growing pains? Maybe. But CSS grew right through them.
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Ana Rezende dos Anjos, Carolina Parra and Luiza Sá. “The liberating thing has to do with all this happiness that we were feeling,” she explains. “When we were making Donkey, we were in a really rough place, so it was a very nice contrast to the previous years.” Lovefoxxx had told NME that touring to support Donkey “sucked my soul,” and left her completely spent. “We were in the touring life for so many years, it took me a while to relax, but I made it!” she laughs. “And I can’t wait to have my soul sucked again because I really want to tour a lot now.” She has good reason to want to get back
People say, ‘It’s funny how the record starts with “I Love You” and ends with “Fuck Everything”’ and take it as a negative thing. But it’s really happy, that song. I think everybody is going to scream together, ‘Fuck everything!’” —Lovefoxxx
Their third album, La Liberación, is back spouting laser beams, cowbells, rainbowshooting synths, horn sections—all that jazz. If a mantra was in order, “Free your ass, and your mind will follow” would be it. Any opposition to the sunny party vibe is summarily, briskly brushed off with tunes born and nurtured on the dance floor. It’s a direct reflection of the band’s own positive outlook. “Last year, when we were doing the album, it was a really great year for everybody,” says Lovefoxxx of her bandmates Adriano Cintra,
in the spotlight. La Liberación is CSS’s most engaged offering. “[The songs] are more gigfriendly,” says Lovefoxxx. “People can come together and scream together.” This connection is still a sort of new phenomenon. For all its rebellious charms, CSS’s first album wasn’t really something to consider beyond its feral light-heartedness. An audience didn’t yet exist in the band’s consciousness, and they had no trajectory to speak of. Here, songs grab you by the face and smoosh their lips to your mouth, as if to say, “life is beautiphoto by luiza sÁ
have gifted Lovefoxxx with a broader perful, go get some.” The album’s first track, “I Love You,” is a spective on life and a hunger to grow as an futuristic rave-up power-washed with doartist. “At the beginning of the band, it was pamine. “I thought I was a traffic light, you really hard to record vocals for me. I would always see me there but never realize,” sings be so, so shy, and I would have to drink loads Lovefoxxx, “and like a car crash, you changed and turn off the lights and ask for nobody to my scene, you bumped into me and now my look at me,” she laughs. “Now, I’m glad I don’t light is always green.” The surfeel insecure like that anymore. prise elation is recurring. The For some songs I really wanted to do some badass vocals.” reggae-disco “Hits Me Like a Rock” is about a great song you “Rhythm to the Rebels” starts haven’t heard in a long time that with finger snapping and a lean can still knock you out. Years beat, then disperses into cranky, back, CSS made a similar statespiraling riffs. “Wanna break some ment with “Music Is My Hot Hot rules?” Lovefoxxx leers on the mic. Sex” (which landed in an iPod “Well, I do.” CSS build up to it. The commercial), but both the song culmination of La Liberación is La Liberación and the sentiment were thin by the final track, “Fuck Everything,” will be available comparison. that borrows its high-octane drive August 23 from V2/Cooperative. Experience and necessity from the Riot Grrrl era. “I’m gon-
Viva la Liberación
CSS are (from left) Luiza Sá, Adriano Cintra, Lovefoxxx, Ana Rezende and Carolina Parra
na dance all night, even if the music sucks!” Lovefoxxx shouts defiantly. “People say, ‘It’s funny how the record starts with “I Love You” and ends with “Fuck Everything,”’ and take it as a negative thing,” she says. “But it’s really happy, that song. I think everybody is going to scream together, ‘Fuck everything!’” The idea thrills Lovefoxxx. She feels more confident and energetic now than when the band started, and performing onstage is no longer a booze-soaked mystery. Experience lead to the liberation. “Before, we couldn’t figure it out; it was like a monkey trying to open a coconut with its hands,” she says. “Now we have a knife and a chopping board.” CSS will be on the European festival circuit through September. More at csshurtssuxxx. blogspot.com and their Facebook.
Bless This Mess The Black Lips: pissing off dickheads since 1999 by Patrick Rapa
photo by davide bernardi
“
W
hich one should I get?” Jared Swilley’s at
Ronson should’ve realized who he was partying with. The guys in this band are not built like most people. “We have a cockroach mentality. We’ve been exposed to all the germs in the world and we don’t take medicine. I think we’re immune to a lot of things,” says Swilley. “A lot of times when we find out people are sick or have the flu, we all try to drink from their cup, so you build up the antibodies. At to see us, so those things would happen just ’cause we were drunk teenagers and didn’t least, that’s our theory.” know how to play. That got written about and That should illustrate just how incompatiit just kind of became this thing.” ble Black Lips sometimes feel with the rest of the human race. They often find themselves So, what, GG Allin had some good ideas? pissing people off without trying. “I respect him a lot as an artist, but I don’t agree with a lot of the things he did. A lot of it “It’s a politically correct world,” laments was pretty gross and a lot of his music wasn’t Swilley. “Especially in this world when you’re that great,” Swilley says, before paraphrasmaking music for generally upper middle ing the old line about Allin’s exclass, college-educated white crement being a holy sacrifice at kids. They usually have PhDs in his bodily temple of rock ‘n’ roll. getting offended. That’s like the “As a weird performance artist, I number one sport for white peothink GG Allin’s amazing. We’re ple is getting offended. National like GG Allin kindergarten. pastime.” It’s a learning process. After “And that’s what rock ‘n’ roll’s supposed to do. It’s supposed to getting into a fight with perennial be dangerous. It’s supposed to rivals Wavves and their hangersmake dickheads mad.” on, he gave a drunken interview Arabia Mountain “Mad Dog,” off their stellar where he called singer Nathan is available now from Vice. new Arabia Mountain, pays tribWilliams a “faggot.” A bunch of ute to the power bold music can times. Since then Swilley’s apolhold over stupid people, making tongue-inogized, saying he didn’t intend it as a slur, cheek references to backwards-messages and and swore off the “f-bomb” as a favor to his heavy metal inspiring murder. The song even father, a recently out-of-the-closet preacher features some backmasked Ke$ha lyrics. of a large liberal Southern church. “I think it’s beautiful that Americans in the “I’m the only male in my family who’s not ’60s burned Beatles records en masse. I think a pastor,” says Swilley. All his life he’s been a it’s amazing that Tipper Gore brought all non-believer, but he still felt a calling, of sorts. these people into the Supreme Court to talk “I always knew I’d be onstage somewhere.” “This is my purpose in life. This is all of about saying things backward on records.” This whole air of danger—it’s the real our purposes. We’ve been doing it since we deal. Just ask Mark Ronson, who produced were 13 years old. Everyone dies one day, and hit albums and songs for Amy Winehouse, you want to leave your mark.” Timbaland and Lily Allen before working on Recessional hymn? Arabia Mountain (the first outsider Black “Tell everybody that’s reading this to Lips have ever let produce their stuff ). One please buy the album, because my kids are night, after nailing the track “Raw Meat,” fucking starving.” the band took him to Manhattan for some You don’t have kids. raw liver sashimi. The next day, everybody “No I don’t.” was sick, but Ronson was really sick, as in Black Lips are on tour. More at black-lips.com call-his-mom, drive-him-to-Cedars-Sinai, and vicerecords.com. 105-temperature sick.
a liquor store, looking at beer. It’s 2:30 in the afternoon, Los Angeles time, his first day off in two and a half months. “I’m gonna get an Asahi because I’m going to Japan on Thursday.”
The sound of clinking bottles. A loud, lungclearing cough. “And can I have a pack of Parliament Lights?” The rest of Swilley’s band, Black Lips, are back home in Atlanta, but he’s out west scouting a place to live. His girlfriend, Katy Goodman of Vivian Girls, just moved out here from Brooklyn. Their bands have toured together a bunch in 2011, including that upcoming Japanese swing. “All the other guys in the band own houses in Atlanta. I wasn’t really ready to settle down,” he says. Swilley still loves his hometown, and misses soul food, but calls L.A. the best music scene in the country. “I like it out here. I can still have a front porch and a yard for roughly the same rent, so I can have a semblance of still being in the South.” Swilley’s come a long way, and not just geographically. “I was homeless for about four and a half years,” he says, recalling the early, dirty punk days of Black Lips. “And that’s a first-world problem. If I didn’t wanna be homeless, I could’ve just quit the band and gotten a job somewhere. I’m not complaining about it; it’s just the situation we put ourselves in.” They’re the kind of band critics like to call “scuzzy.” Their melodies are pure garage-pop enthusiasm, but everything’s got a vintage, lo-fi sheen to it. The choruses often call for messy, three-man sing-shouting. And their vibe could probably be summed up by their unofficial anthem, 2007’s “Bad Kids”: Toilet paper on the yard Six F’s on my report card Smoke cigs in the bathroom stall Spray paint a penis on the wall It’s true, Black Lips are probably what your parents meant by “the wrong crowd.” Bassist Swilley and guitarist Cole Alexander were both kicked out of high school (which is where the band started, by the way). Everywhere they go, they’re preceded by their raucous rep, and usually leave behind a wake of dubious anecdotes. All that shit about vomiting, nudity and urination at Black Lips shows—that’s just apocryphal folklore, right? “Yes and no,” Swilley says. “There was only about six or seven people a night coming out
“
We have a cockroach mentality. We’ve been exposed to all the germs in the world and we don’t take medicine. I think we’re immune to a lot of things.”
—Jared Swilley 19
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“I
don’t want to get to any spot where I’m on autopilot,”
says Richard Buckner, who over the course of 17 years and nine albums has made his way from a loose affiliation with the alt-country movement to the eerie, almost alien landscape and oblique narratives of his new album, In Blood. But even Buckner, a lifelong itinerant who habitually rearranges his studio space and swaps instruments in and out of storage to make repeating himself impossible, could do with a bit less upheaval than he’s seen of late.
“
Which story to start with: The fact that, due to a dying tape machine and a stolen laptop, he had to record Our Blood four times over? The captive film score, stuck in legal limbo, that forced him to abandon the idea of a story told through prose, instrumentals and songs—a story that still links the tracks on Our Blood, but only in his head? Why not Monday, Buckner says, “the guys at work start with the murder? If it bleeds, it leads. After relocating from Brooklyn to upstate were all like, ‘Did you hear about that burnNew York, the latest in dozens of moves going car with the headless body in it?’ I’m like, ing back to Buckner’s childhood, when his ‘Headless? Nobody told me that!’” parents would regularly separate, move to Fast-forward a few months, when the podifferent cities, and then reunite in a third, lice pull Buckner in for questioning. “I’m like, Buckner and his girlfriend thought they’d ‘What is it? The neighbors again?’” he recalls. found a quiet place to live. If not the nicest “I thought it was maybe for a domestic dispart of town—Buckner describes it as “kind pute or something. They go, ‘No, it’s someof cracker-y”—it seemed like somewhere thing that happened a while ago.’ I go, ‘Oh, two artists could be left to their work. That you mean that car with the headless body in was until the police knocked on his door and it?’ And they go, ‘Headless body, huh? What asked if he knew anything about the body do you know about that?’” found in a burned-out car on a nearby road. Eventually, Buckner managed to con“One of the cops said, ‘Yeah, that’s actually vince the police that though the decapitaa popular road for dumping bodies,’” Buckner tion hadn’t been made public, there are no recalls. “I move from the most dangerous part secrets in a small town, and he hadn’t acciof Bed-Stuy to this little town in dentally confessed to the crime, upstate New York, and I’m near Agatha Christie-style. Or at least, some weird Mafia hit road?” he hopes he did. “My friends say At the time, Buckner was these investigations can take years,” he says. “I’m still waiting working one of a series of day for that call someday.” jobs that included driving a Before that, Buckner wrote and forklift and holding signs for a played the score for a gay romance road crew in subzero temperatures, a stint necessitated by an called Dream Boy, which screened unplanned hiatus in his touring at a handful of festivals and then Our Blood will be schedule. (We’ll get to that in a vanished. Part of the deal, he says, available August 2 from Merge. was that he’d be able to release moment.) When he came in on
The trials Richard Buckner endured on the road to his new album would have exhausted Job by Sam Adams
The guys at work were all like, ‘Did you hear about that burning car with the headless body in it?’ I’m like, ‘Headless? Nobody told me that!’” —richard buckner
22
the songs on his own; he’d planned a tour that would have centered on instrumentals, and “wouldn’t have been like anything I’d done before.” But when it came time to get the masters back, he says, “investors got involved, and I didn’t want to get involved in a fight. The whole thing is sitting in a drawer in my desk right now, and I’m trying to figure out if I’ll ever get to release it.” That brings us, by a route substantially less meandering than Buckner’s own, to Our Blood, his first album in five years—though not for lack of trying. By the time he finally recorded the versions that appear on the album, he’d played them so many times that it was like being his own tribute band. “It was like buying a piece of overpainted furniture and you can’t tell what it originally was,” he says. “You want to strip it down. I had to take it to someone else to mix, because at that point, I just couldn’t hear it anymore.” Even if Buckner had wanted to recreate the sound of his ill-fated first attempts, he wouldn’t have been able to, since he no longer lived in the same place he’d recorded them. Instead, he went in the opposite direction, taking his tenor guitars out of storage and using nonstandard tunings to force himself into new territory. photo by jill draper
“I’d end up taking a few strings off a sixstring and making it into a four-string or a three-string,” he says, “or turning a 12-string into a 10-string or less, just so that by the time I layered the different guitars, it would sound like a different kind of chord.” He cites the legendary jazz arranger Gil Evans, per-
haps best known for his work on Miles Davis’ Sketches of Spain, as a primary influence. Our Blood’s “Thief” has randomness built right into the song. The pulsating sound underlying the entire track is produced by a guitar pedal called the Slicer, whose unpredictability stymied Buckner until he conceived
of using it for just that effect. “It takes notes and puts them in arpeggiated form that you can’t really control that well,” he explains. “It was like, ‘This is cool, but what the fuck am I going to do with this?’” Eventually, he realized that rather than attempting to fit the pedal into the song, the only way to use it was to build the song around the pedal. “There was a lot more human error involved, which made the outcome of the whole recording different,” he says, very much pleased with the result. Stagnating, as it turns out, is a Buckner bugaboo. The artists he admires are those who continually reinvent themselves, like Bill Callahan, who performed for more than a decade as Smog before dropping the moniker in favor of his own name. “It’s not like I’d be a big Bruce Springsteen fan in any case,” Buckner says wryly, “but I might go after him more if he’d have Roy Bittan throw away the one keyboard that’s been on every record for the last 20 years .” With any luck, the unexpected happenings surrounding Buckner’s album will be confined to the recording process; he’s certainly had more than his share of turmoil this time around. Even so, he says, “That whole period was really good for me. It was turning into a very small world for me, and I was turning in on myself. So, when the time came I had to get these jobs, I was, like, not speaking. I feel sorry for the first couple jobs, because I was just this freak show. I was doing my job, but I was wasn’t really communicating with people, and they were like, ‘Who the fuck is this guy? Where did he come from? How does he live?’” Richard Buckner will be touring in August with David Kilgour. More at richardbuckner.com. 23
Option Paralysis Spencer Krug frees himself to make new artistic choices with his ever-changing project, Moonface / by Bryan C. Reed
I
f Spencer Krug is known for anything, it’s his activity. Since 2005, not a year has passed without at least one new album from at least one of his many bands. ¶ Krug entered the collective consciousness first as a sideman in Carey Mercer’s Frog Eyes (Krug left after that band’s debut, 2002’s The Bloody Hand), then as a founding member of Wolf Parade.
When Wolf Parade’s Isaac Brock-produced debut, Apologies to the Queen Mary, arrived in 2005 via Sub Pop, it was one in a pack of emerging Canadian indie bands with a knack for bending bombastic rock into new shapes. But Queen Mary offered a glimpse at the sort of busy arrangements and impressionistic lyrics Krug would continue to explore in other projects. It also introduced Krug’s dramatically enunciated singing style; 2005 also saw the debuts of instrumental trio Fifths of Seven and then-solo project Sunset Rubdown. Fifths of Seven, formed with cellist Beckie Foon and mandolinist Rachel Levine, released its sole album, Spry From Bitter Anise Folds, while Sunset Rubdown expanded into a steady lineup and built an acclaimed
The Road to
Moonface
career of its own. In 2006, Krug joined Frog Eyes’ Carey Mercer and Destroyer’s Dan Bejar to form Swan Lake, a studio-only project with two releases under its belt. But those days are gone. Now, Krug writes via email, there is only Moonface. “Any of the proper bands that I was working with over the last seven or eight years have stopped for now.” Wolf Parade, Swan Lake, Sunset Rubdown: They’ve run their course. “Maybe that’s a bad sign,” he says. “Maybe I wreck things. Actually, for sure I wreck things, but only maybe do I wreck bands.” With the benefit of some hindsight, though, it’s not particularly surprising that Krug, for whom one band was never enough, would find the limitations of a well-defined
Sunset Rubdown
Fifths of Seven
Spry From Bitter Anise Folds
Snake’s Got a Leg
Venturing solo for the first time, Snake’s Got a Leg is hardly Sunset Rubdown’s crowning achievement. It does, however, hint at things to come. “Hope You Don’t Stoop to Dirty Words” opens with two minutes of pensive drones before Krug welcomes a characteristic almost-pop vocal melody. “Stadiums and Shrines” builds itself on stacked phrases, much in the vein of Organ Music’s looped and layered melodies. [Global Symphonic, 2005]
24
entity confining. Moonface is deliberately fluid. It can take on any sound, or include any collaborators Krug sees fit. “What I don’t want is for any specific sound or style to be expected of Moonface, and to be able to explore whatever instruments or styles I happen to be into, and, hopefully, allowing others to hear it with a more open mind, and not the burden of comparing it to whatever came before,” he says. “I don’t think this is entirely possible, but like I said, that’s what I’m hoping for.” Moonface debuted, officially, in January of 2010 with Dreamland EP: Marimba and Shit-Drums. A limited Sunset Rubdown 7-inch, 2009’s Introducing Moonface, proved to be the project’s origins, though. The 7-inch contained only two simple recordings, but for Krug, it was a reminder of the benefits of working alone. For Dreamland, which was reportedly inspired by a dream journal, Krug set the template for what Moonface would become—at least for the foreseeable future. With a given set of parameters, Krug—a pianist for two
Even in Krug’s catalog, this is a left-field gem. The album’s delicate compositions—filled with ominous pacing and a loose, confident interplay between pianist/accordionist Krug, cellist Beckie Foon and mandolinist Rachel Levine—show off Krug’s non-rock chops, without shedding his predilection for melodic counterpoints. [DSA, 2005]
decades—forces himself to work outside of his typical comfort zone, while satisfying a curiosity for how specific timbres change the way music is received. On Dreamland’s single 20-minute track, Krug harnesses the warm resonance of the marimba, layering melodies and crafting a softly shifting psychedelic landscape that makes its sprawl feel much shorter. He’d planned to follow that album with a similar one. “At first, this record was going to be another percussion album,” he wrote in a sort-of artist’s statement distributed by his record label, Jagjaguwar. “But it wasn’t happening.” Instead of the vibraphone he’d hoped for, Krug turned his attention to organ, specifically “an old double-manual organ— the kind from the ’80s that you find in your grandmother’s basement.” The product of Krug’s sudden urge, the obviously titled Organ Music, Not Vibraphone Like I’d Hoped, could hardly be more different from its predecessor. Instead of one 20-minute piece, Organ Music offers five, ranging from six-and-a-half minutes to just past eight. Krug finds his voice here in densely layered melodies, not allowing notes to resonate in open space the way they do on Dreamland. Here he balances the cool, mechanical plod of early new wave with the melodic flourishes of progressive rock, without sacrificing the idiosyncratic songwriting style that Organ Music, Not introduced Krug to Vibraphone Like the indie rock world I’d Hoped will be available Aug. 2 in the first place.
“
But he’s assertive that, [The words ‘striking though upcoming live perout on my own’] are formances will focus on material from Organ Music, it too confident and powerful to isn’t meant as a precedent. describe where I’m at musically. Moonface isn’t just another solo project. “I am not ‘strikIt’s more like I’ve started down ing out on my own,’” he says. a big curvy water slide that I’ve “Those words are too connever been on before, and I just fident and powerful to describe where I’m at musically realized there’s a huge rip in the right now. It’s more like I’ve ass of my shorts.” —Spence Krug started down a big curvy water slide that I’ve never been on before, and I just realized there’s a huge rip in the ass of my shorts that I hope no one sees when I get to the bottom.” Moonface, he says, should be as much about collaboration as it is about solo work. His next recording will be with the Finnish space-rock band Siinai. They’ll be writing the music, while Krug will provide his voice and lyrics. Again, Krug is seeking a new approach by creating new parameters for himself. By limiting his options on a per-album basis, he’s creating new ones overall. “To say a project or a band is limited in what it can do, just because the material is made within set parameters or a predetermined process, is to confuse the art with the artist,” Krug says. “The artist is still free go cut off his or her own ear whenever the urge strikes.” Moonface will be on tour through early August. Hit jagjaguwar.com for dates.
from Jagjaguwar.
Swan Lake
Beast Moans
With Krug rejoining his former band- and roommate Carey Mercer, as well as Destroyer’s Dan Bejar, Swan Lake was immediately heralded as some sort of supergroup, a meeting of the minds for idiosyncratic Canadian songwriters with unique singing voices. It is also among the more challenging entries in the catalog, paying close attention to texture, filling every available air-pocket with warm distortion and finding compelling conflict in the chemistry among the band’s three principals. [Jagjaguwar, 2006]
Sunset Rubdown
Dragonslayer
For Sunset Rubdown’s latest, Krug and Jordan Robson-Cramer, Michael Doerksen and Camilla Wynne Ingr—his multi-instrumentalist bandmates since 2006’s Shut Up I’m Dreaming—added bassist and percussionist Marc Nicol to their ranks. They also approached the studio less as a laboratory for experiments, opting to find a more spacious, more immediate recording. They succeeded; Dragonslayer is Sunset Rubdown’s biggest, boldest statement, even verging on arena pop on songs like the explosive highlight “Idiot Heart.” [Jagjaguwar, 2009]
Wolf Parade
Expo 86
Wolf Parade’s swan song is probably the band’s most accessible and most confident effort. It’s also a sadly overlooked entry that boasts surging momentum and draws bold keyboard riffs to the foreground from its first track (“Cloud Shadow on the Mountain”), and leads with thick, slick keys on songs like “Ghost Pressure,” “Oh You, Old Thing” and (how’s this for a prescient title?) “In the Direction of the Moon.” [Sub Pop, 2010]
—BCR
25
Dour & Dusty
Magnetic Fields songsmith Stephin Merritt rifles through his mind’s attic in compiling Obscurities / by K. Ross Hoffman
S
tephin Merritt is nothing if not precise—in his speech, his painstaking approach
to conceptually specific projects (including, most famously, the Magnetic Fields’ self-explanatory 1999 opus 69 Love Songs), and, especially, in his meticulously wellformed songcraft. Uncharacteristically, then, Obscurities, a new compilation issued via Merritt’s 1990s home base Merge Records, offers a peek under the rug of his tidily appointed catalog, with a delightful assortment of lost gems and loose ends: b-sides and compilation tracks from multiple Merritt outlets (the Magnetic Fields, the 6ths and the little-known Buffalo Rome), and a handful of previously unreleased numbers, including several from an in-limbo musical project whose premise, as he described to me, sounds like a logical occasion for 6.9 billion love songs. He spoke with me by phone from Los Angeles—where he’s been living for five years, although, he said, he still spends “a quarter to a third” of his time in New York, where he keeps a tiny apartment “the size of his living room in L.A.”
I’ll start by asking about your upcoming compilation, which I’ve been having a lot of fun listening to. Was it fun to put together?
Um, no. No. It was agony to put together. I had to listen to everything obscure that I’ve ever done, and most of the obscure things that I’ve ever done are rightfully obscure, so it was really depressing. But I managed to cull from the morass of... oh, that’s a mixed metaphor. I like listening to the final product. But it took a lot of suffering to get there. About how much material was there that you weeded out?
At least another album’s worth. I toyed with the idea of making two records—one called Good Obscurities and one called Bad Obscurities. Deserving Obscurities.
Yes. The bad obscurities would include a lot of the covers that I’ve done, which for some reason never seem to turn out well. Why did you decide to put this compilation out, and why now?
Hm. My manager, Claudia, has been needling me to do it for years. Merge really wanted to put out the 7-inches and stuff that they’ve released in some saleable form. Because apparently you can get some of this stuff online, illegally. Illegally, but not legally. So, now you can get it legally. And I had the time to it. I suddenly had the time to do it because some other [plans] fell through, so I was able to spend a month putting together the record. That’s why now. 26
What’s the story with Buffalo Rome?
That was me and Shirley [Simms] in the mid’80s. I made an early version of what would become [the Magnetic Fields’ debut] Distant Plastic Trees, and Shirley sang it. We did, I think, an edition of 50 cassettes, and they were sold through the K Records catalog. I take it that’s a play on “Home on the Range.”
Probably. Yes. But it’s also the name of an actual railroad; there was a Buffalo-Rome railroad, so I believe “Home on the Range” was a play on Buffalo Rome, R-O-M-E. [ed: Google fails to substantiate this, but fair enough.]
What’s the story behind The Song From Venus? There are three songs here from that project, right?
Yeah. That’s all we recorded. They were recorded as a demo for potential producers of our screenplay to get a sense of what the music would sound like. What’s the gist of the screenplay?
It’s a sung-through musical about some love affairs that end unhappily because they’ve been prompted by this record that comes from Venus. It’s a form of invasion of the Earth: The Venusians have released a record which makes Earthlings fall madly in love with whoever they are with when they hear the record. So, chaos ensues. And soon the Venusians are taking over the Earth, and Daniel [Handler, aka Lemony Snicket] and I don’t agree on the ending. I say that it should be an unhappy ending, where there’s an odd number of people in the world, and the odd number is our hero, but Daniel thinks that we’ll have an easier time selling this to producers in America if it’s a happy ending, and the Venusians take over the world and everyone is in love, and everyone’s happy, the end. Universal love is accomplished, the end.
These are two very different endings that we have yet to agree on. Was that disagreement part of what doomed the project?
Oh, it’s not particularly doomed; it just hasn’t been finished. It’s still in the works?
It’s sitting there; we haven’t worked on it in quite a while, but we could potentially work on it again.
the snacks that I’m wolfing down. There’s another song on the record that has a similar worldview, but I can’t remember what it is right now. “Scream Until You Make the Scene”? “Rats in the Garbage of the Western World”?
They all have pretty bleak outlooks, I guess. And then there’s “Rot in the Sun.”
Right. The moral of which is “don’t move to L.A.”
Well, I guess it’s obscure.
It’s certainly obscure at the moment. But if Baz Luhrmann were to suddenly decide to pick it up, it would probably not be obscure for long. Or if Beyoncé became attached. If Beyoncé became attached and Baz Luhrmann optioned the property, I think that would be ideal.
How do you feel about that now?
I like it. I actually think that the song is pretty accurate.
The odd number.
I’m interested in talking about the shifts between your work in the ’90s and your work since then, especially in terms of your songwriting. What are the main things that stand out to you in comparing those two periods— or do you tend to think of them as not distinct?
Yeah, you have some experience with that.
Do you see major changes in your approach to songwriting between, say, pre- and post-69 Love Songs?
Is there a role you have in mind for Beyoncé?
The lead.
Yes. We’d have to switch the genders around. It’s easy to switch genders around.
Yes. You just change the o’s at the ends of the words to a’s. Right. Ah. It’s easier in Spanish.
Yes. But it’s the same principle in English. You just change “Hank” to “Hanka.” Change “Butch” to “Butcha.” Do you align yourself with the worldview expressed in “When I’m Not Looking You’re Not There”?
I consider those lyrics to be a dilation of a particular mood. It’s a sort of heavy metal lyric, I think. An expression of paranoia. When I smoke pot, which is extremely rarely, because I don’t like it, I feel like that. It’s hard to get me to smoke pot because the paranoia I feel is much more unpleasant than any of
Hm?
Well, when I put out 69 Love Songs, I soon afterward interviewed Tom Lehrer when his box set came out. And he said that he doesn’t approve of false rhyming, and he thinks that he and [Stephen] Sondheim, with whom he went to summer camp, are the last bastions of strict rhyme. So, I took that as a challenge, and ever since then I’ve used only strict rhyme. Whenever there’s a false rhyme in any of my songs in the 21st century, you can tell that that song, or at least that part of the song, is from earlier. So, lyrically, I have constrained myself to the showtune style of strict rhyme. Other than that, I don’t think I’ve changed my songwriting particularly, except that I try to expand it ever outward. But I still have particular chord progressions that I like, which cause some repetition.
What do you mean by expanding it outward?
Genre-wise. I try to include some new genres and new perversions of genres every time I make a record. It seems to me that one difference is that you impose a lot of constraints on yourself, perhaps more—certainly the 69 Love Songs project was one constraint, and most of your projects since then have had some specific limiting factors, and you mention this rhyming constraint. Do you feel like that has had any other sort of indirect effects on the kinds of songs you write?
Well, I also used constraints creatively in the ’90s—I had the House of Tomorrow EP which is all loop songs, and Charm of the Highway Strip is all songs about travel, and that sort of thing. So, in that way I don’t see any particular difference. I guess to me… I don’t know if you’re thinking about things this way, but often individual songs will feel constrained just on the level of the song. One way I would think about it is that the songs, maybe starting with 69LS and since—and there are definitely exceptions in both directions—tend to feel tidier, like there’s one guiding idea and everything else in the song is clearly in service to that central premise, whereas before there might have been more lines that were more impressionistic or didn’t relate quite as directly, but still had an evocative effect. I’m thinking of songs like “The Desperate Things You Made Me Do” and a lot of the songs on Holiday.
You may be right. But we have to end now.
For more on Stephin Merritt, the Magnetic Fields, the 6ths, Future Bible Heroes and the Gothic Archies, visit houseoftomorrow.com
“
I interviewed Tom Lehrer when his box set came out. And he said that he doesn’t approve of false rhyming, and he thinks that he and Sondheim, with whom he went to summer camp, are the last bastions of strict rhyme. So, I took that as a challenge.” —Stephin Merritt 27
Rule Portlandia Is Stephen Malkmus, indie rock’s long-reigning king, abdicating his throne?
story by
Jonathan Valania
photo by hayley young
If
imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, satire is a close second. After all, everyone
knows you’re nowhere until your locale is brilliantly lampooned in Twitter-iffic, Hulu-able form. Case in point is Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein’s hipster burlesque Portlandia, a loving mockery of the bluest city on the angry red planet that is the USA circa now: All lattes and tattoos, skunk weed and microbrews, unlimited wireless for all, a free-range chicken in every pot, and everyone gets around on solar-powered tofu bicycles. This is the place that Stephen Malkmus—the aging slacker princeling, the man Courtney Love called the Grace Kelly of Indie Rock— has called home for the last decade. He lives here with his wife, the noted artist Jessica Jackson Hutchins, and two daughters (6-yearold Lottie and 3-year-old Sunday) in a fairly palatial two-story spread that lists for in excess of a half a million dollars. Clearly excited to have a visitor, Lottie runs up to me and drops one of those priceless out-of-the-mouths-of-babes bon mots: “Have you ever been to California? I got a hot dog there!” Portland has served as home base for his post-Pavement solo career where, abetted by an ever-shifting line-up of Jicks, he has cranked out five albums of critically acclaimed but modest-selling albums. So, it comes as no small surprise when his wife lets it slip that the Malkmuses (Malkmae?) are moving to Berlin. “We’re gonna try it for a year,” Malkmus says with a shrug. “After that, who knows? We could leave this all behind. I’ve been here a long time. We had our kids here and this is a good place for that. But Jessica never wanted to live here. She kind of got shanghaied; she moved into my house. She’s made a great effort to join this town, but at the end of the day it’s really just a big small town and it can be a little stifling intellectually compared to a big city like New York where she used to live.” But what about the Jicks? They all live in Portland. “Yeah, they weren’t too happy about it when I told them,” he admits. “But I was like, now we’ll have a home base when we tour Europe.” The next day the band rehearses in the basement of longtime Jicks bassist Joan Bolme’s charming bungalow, where they’re breaking in new drummer Jake Morris, who has replaced the recently departed Janet Weiss, formerly of Sleater-Kinney and currently of Wild Flag. The practice space is rec room fresh, low-ceilinged and bedecked with Christmas lights, gig fliers and anvil cases marked PAVEMENT guarded by two big shaggy dogs named Earl and Gracie. Malkmus is wearing earplugs and seated next to his amp and trusty Moog, as he puts the new guy through his paces. From a distance, he looks the same as he ever did peering out from the cover of any number of long-gone glossy alt-rock mags back in the ’90s—boyishly handsome, untucked and smirking like the veritable cat who swallowed the canary—with only the faint hint of crow’s feet around his eyes betraying his 45 years. He is trading jokey anecdotes
with his fellow Jicks, which, in addition to Bolme and Morris, are rounded out by guitarist/keyboardist Mike Clark, who Malkmus likes to introduce as the only guy he knows who still buys R.E.M. albums. For the amusement of his bandmates, Malkmus relays the details of a recent family outing with the sleep-deprived listlessness that is indicative of newly minted parenthood. “We went to one of those places where people with kids go and put ’em on a trampoline and sit around complaining to each other about how tired they are,” says Malkmus. To amuse his young daughters during the car ride home, he says, he made up his first, and probably last, rap song: “Cream Cheese Rules.” To which Lottie, his 6-year-old, told him, in so many words, that he was talking out of his ass. “I told her I meant it from the bottom of my heart,” he says, something he has been insisting upon since the beginning of his career. From here, the conversation transitions into a brief assessment of celebrity golf prowess. “Justin Timberlake is good at golf—I read that today,” Malkmus offers, apropos of nothing. “Justin Timberlake is good at everything,” counters Bolme. This is followed by a brief discussion of the ravages of melanoma when Clark mentions a suspicious mole he’s discovered. Malkmus tells him that his cousin is a dermatologist and would likely give it a gratis look-see, and worst-case scenario there’s this new melanoma drug that’s so effective they’ve halted clinical trials and started giving it to the placebo group. After rehearsal, Malkmus begs off a scheduled one-onone interview for now, as domestic duty calls: dinner with the wife and then taking in the new Werner Herzog documentary. I sit down with Bolme on the stoop of her house. She tells me how she first met Malkmus through mutual friends when he moved here, and the two soon became Scrabble buddies. Bolme is the only member of the Jicks who has been around since the beginning of the end of Pavement. She is pretty, thin and blonde, with indie cred to burn. Though she is currently married to a member of the British band the Cribs, she will be forever known in certain circles as the late great Elliott Smith’s one true love, back in the grand productive days, before hard drugs sapped his talent and his will to live. She tells me that she makes her living off Jicks touring rev-
I just figured out that what I could give the Earth is melodies that move in different directions than most.
Stephen Malkmus
30
Traffickers: (from left) are Mike Clark, Jake Morris, Joan Bolme and Stephen Malkmus
enues and that the year-long hiatus while Malkmus toured out the Pavement reunion almost drained her bank account. “That Pavement tour almost killed me,” she says, ruefully. This inevitably invites the question of how she feels about the fact that, fair or unfair, the Jicks will be forever relegated to the shadow of Pavement, despite the fact that the Jicks have been around just as long and released just as many albums, and embarked on just as many tours—and for that matter have garnered just as many glowing reviews. “I’ve been in a band with Stephen longer than anyone has been in a band with Stephen, including [charter Pavement member] Spiral Stairs,” she says, with mild indignation. “So, that’s annoying. I mean, nothing against those guys—they are my friends and I love them— but there are things he can do with this band that he could never do with Pavement.” I ask her how Malkmus has changed since she first met him more than a decade ago. “He’s less hyper, which is good,” she says. “He thinks harder about melody and he’s not as much of a screamer as he was. Still, while he might seem mellow on the surface, underneath he is still a spazz.” Bolme points out that Malkmus basically writes two kinds of songs for the Jicks: long, complicated guitar-heavy “jams” and simpler, catchier “pop songs.” The first Jicks album emphasized the latter, while the three that came after—Pig Lib, Face the Truth and Real Emotional Trash—tilted towards the former. As such, the Jicks seem to draw two different and somewhat mutually exclusive audiences.
photo by leah nash
“The people who like the jams also like the poppy stuff,” she says. “But the pop song fans don’t like the jams.” Count me among the pop-loving camp. I think I speak for the silent majority when I say: Don’t bore us, get to the chorus. Though this is likely said every time Malkmus releases an album, his new one, the Beck-produced Mirror Traffic, is arguably his strongest set of songs since Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain or at the very least his self-titled 2001 solo debut. And even if there is no “Cut Your Hair” or “Jenny & the Ess Dawg,” it hardly matters anymore. In the time of Ke$ha and Katy Perry, in the post-empire era of the music-industrial complex, when radio has become the horse-drawn carriage of the Information Age, songs no longer “mean a lot when songs are bought.”
-
It’s a few hours later and I am sipping beers with Mike Clark at the
Record Room, a Portland record store specializing in vinyl with a license to sell choice craft beers. Clark is thinner than your average heterosexual 41-year-old (he and his wife are vegan), with closecropped hair and an unerring soft-spoken politeness. We talk about how we both paid good money for the new R.E.M. album and have already stopped listening to it. Which we both agree is sad, but inevitable. I ask him about how he came to be a Jick. “After the first album was recorded, they were looking for a second guitarist/keyboard player for touring the record,” he says. “So, I learned all the songs and practiced so hard, but at the audition we just wound up playing Creedence and Dylan songs.” The results of the audition were inconclusive. “I kept telling people that I think I’m in the Jicks,” he says. “But I didn’t know for sure until I read the press release on Pitchfork.” Talk soon turns to Mirror Traffic. He says that Janet Weiss, drawing on her extensive experience with Sleater-Kinney, insisted that every band’s fifth album should be an occasion for “wacky reinvention.” Because all the previous Jicks albums were self-produced, it was agreed that they should bring in a name producer for the new one. There was brief talk of hiring James Murphy of LCD
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He thinks harder about melody and he’s not as much of a screamer as he was. Still, while he might seem mellow on the surface, underneath he is still a spazz.
Soundsystem, but he was tied up with LCD’s swan song album and tour. Also considered was longtime Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich, who helmed Pavement’s final album, Terror Twilight, but he was busy working on Radiohead’s The King of Limbs. At some point, Malkmus mentioned to his bandmates that Beck had expressed an interest in producing him, and it was quickly agreed all around that this was the way to go. Knowing that the Pavement reunion tour would eat up the bulk of 2010, Malkmus wanted to get the new Jicks album in the can before hitting the road with his former band. Like Bolme, Clark privately had some reservations about the Pavement reunion—after all, it was a bit like sending your wife on a road trip with her old boyfriend. “My one fear was that fewer people would come out to see the Jicks afterwards,” he says. “All those people who discovered Pavement after the fact and figured the only chance they were going to get to see Malkmus perform was a Jicks show, and now [after the reunion tour] they would feel like they’ve checked off that box.” Clark took in four or five Pavement shows, and even crashed one of their rehearsals. “Stephen told me that his one regret was not writing more complicated guitar parts for Pavement songs, because I think he was a little bored,” says Clark. “I was impressed with how gracefully he handled the reunion. I never got the feeling he was trying to be 22 again or what he was doing was somehow negating the Jicks. And it wasn’t even his idea. It was more his booking agent and the fact that [Bob] Nastanovich was broke and had loan sharks after him.” In January of 2010, Malkmus and the Jicks started work on Mirror Traffic at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles with Beck behind the board. (Clark says he had met Beck back in the early ’90s when his old band, a surf instrumental outfit called, amusingly enough, Underpants Machine shared a bill in Olympia, WA, shortly before “Loser” broke big.) “Occasionally you would see him dancing in the control room, and then we knew we were onto something,” says Clark.
-
A day later, I am sitting with Malkmus at a favorite beer-and-burger
joint near his home, which he’d prefer I not name. Malkmus is sporting slept-in hair, beat-to-fuck tennis shoes and a threadbare V-neck sweater. He arrived in a lived-in Jetta with ancient plates. Talk soon turns to Beck. “He called me a couple years ago and said, ‘I’m a producer now’— this was around the time he was working on that album with Serge Gainsbourg’s daughter—‘I’ll do your next record,’” says Malkmus. “I knew him from the alt-rock era—we did Lollapalooza together—and he and I always got along fine. He’s a real down-to-earth guy.” Malkmus mentions as an aside that the reason Beck is focusing his attention on producing other artists is because he is no longer able to tour due to a repetitive stress back injury. “Some people have the constitution for it and others don’t,” he says. “Guys like Dave Grohl can tour all the time, but a guy like Kurt Cobain could not.”
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Joan Bolme Asked about the poppier vibe of the new album, Malkmus acknowledges that the last three Jicks albums were “more rocking, angular and weird,” and that by contrast the new album is much more song-oriented. “I wasn’t going to play a lot of gratuitous solos; I did that for a few records and I was tired of that,” he says. “I guess I just sort of figured out that what I could give the Earth is melodies that move in different directions than most. But writing songs is a lot harder than just plugging in, hitting record and playing guitar. Having said that, I can’t write songs like Taylor Swift; someone like me can’t write songs like that convincingly. I can’t just write four-chord songs anymore; I just know too much.” Asked about the title of the new album, Malkmus says he wanted something that evoked a decadent L.A. party scene—the mirror in question would be used for cutting out lines of coke and the traffic would, presumably, be a line of Hollywood debutantes with one foot in the grave. “I’m picturing a chick staring at her infinite mirror cocaine paranoia,” he says. “Originally I wanted to call it Madonna in Love—which is ironic because she strikes me as a person who is incapable of falling in love; I don’t think a narcissist can ever fall in love with someone other than themselves—but nobody else liked that one. Then I wanted to call it L.A. Guns because we recorded in L.A. and utilized some hired guns [Farmer Dave, formerly of the Beachwood Sparks, contributes some lovely pedal steel to the album; and a French horn player was brought in for “No One Is As I Be”]. But Matador was like, ‘People don’t name their albums after other bands,’ and I was asking for a lawsuit. Apparently there was a band called Pump that sued Aerosmith for calling their album Pump.” Talk segues to Vampire Weekend getting sued by the blonde wearing the tapioca Lacoste shirt in the vintage ’80s Polaroid that comprises the cover of Contra. “Before I even heard the music, I knew they were going to be successful,” says Malkmus. “They looked sort of like an uptown Strokes, like privileged guys who don’t need to be doing this—which is what people used to say about Pavement.”
mirror moves Malkmus
on Malkmus
Given his demonstrable fondness for wordplay, I asked Malkmus if he was willing to play freeassociation with the songs on the new album—I say the title and he tells me the first thing that comes to mind: what it means, what inspired it, an interesting or amusing anecdote about recording it, etc. —JV
Read
“Tigers” It’s supposed to be like a ’77 Stiff Records pop song. Tigers are rugged individualists, hence the line about needing separate rooms. But they still need to hook up occasionally, so there’s the line that goes “let me in.” A tiger would even eat his children if the mother let him. Personally, I’m more like a penguin, but “we are penguins” is not very rock. “No One Is (As I Be).” I love your vocal on this, by the way. I think it’s the most honest piece of singing I’ve ever heard from you. That’s the guide vocal. My voice is quite hoarse because it was quite late at night. Usually you just sing along to give the band cues when they are recording the music, and then you go back and do the vocals for real. I tried a few more vocal takes, but everyone liked the guide vocal.
Raymond Cummings’ 5-bell review of Mirror Traffic on p. 44.
“Senator,” which features the immortal line, “I know what everyone wants—what everyone wants is a blowjob.” It would be a much better world if, when people saw that you were down, they gave you a blowjob. What about women? Cunnilingus is a blowjob. “Brain Gallop” It sort of has a loping pick-up beat in the middle and then it goes into a gallop, and I was thinking that’s where your mind would skip a beat like, you are jumping over a hurdle. Beck and his henchmen did a good job at making it sound good. Plus, it’s got a good solo at the end. “Jumble Gloss” On the last day of recording, we just jammed for about four hours and then Beck boiled it down to that little atmospheric interlude. It was supposed to be the leadoff track, but then we pussied out.
photo by hayley young
“Stick Figures in Love” It’s a catchy little ditty. The chorus is just the verse done differently. I used to do that a lot with Pavement. Most of Slanted and Enchanted is like that. “Spazz” The title describes how it sounds—up and down musically and lyrically ADD. Beck thought it was my version of rapping. “Share the Red” Family bent, share the red, share the bloodline. “Tune Grief” The idea was to write a punk song for someone who’s never heard a punk song. Like if you went to Papua New Guinea and played them the Sex Pistols—what would it sound like to them? I’m really just trying to justify not bothering to write lyrics. “Forever 28” The reason it’s called that is there’s a store called Forever 18 [ed: It’s actually Forever 21]. The narrator is a real buzzkill. He’s always trying to say really negative things, which is typical of a 28-year-old. You think you’re cool. You don’t need to fall in love or have kids. I might have thought I was pretty hot shit at that age. But you never are, of course. “All Over Gently” A passive-aggressive break-up song. Instead of a hard landing, there’s soft grass. We’re breaking up, but we’ll still be friends. Of course, that never happens. [At this point he excuses himself to step outside for a smoke. “Don’t include this in the article in case my daughter reads it,” he says.] “Gorgeous George” Gorgeous George is a real person; he was a wrestler in the ’20s and wore all these outrageous outfits and had a posse and he became very famous. He knew how to use the media to create an image, he always had a lady on each arm, he was like the first pop culture figure. That song was never supposed to be on the record—it wasn’t even done. I just went into the control room with Beck and improvised the lyrics, which led me to hold some notes longer than I would have because I am thinking about what comes next. We tried another vocal take, but it wasn’t as good. It’s similar to Mutations-era Beck. He really liked [the song], I wasn’t so sure. Sometimes the key to being a producer is sending out positive energy.
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-
Stephen Malkmus still does the New York
Times crossword puzzle in ink (“but that’s just because I hate pencils”), but these days he’s more excited about the Scrabble app on his iPhone. I ask him if he uses the same muscles for songwriting as he does for Scrabble and crossword puzzles. “Songwriting is harder and more spiritual, and crossword puzzles are more intellectual,” he says. “As for what songs mean, they’re just words. Nobody knows what they mean.” There are two prevailing schools of thought about Malkmus’ prowess as a songwriter. The first holds that Malkmus has a well-earned rep as indie-rock’s great wit, a wry observer of the exigencies of white upper middle class privilege, a Gen X icon for people who still read books and blow their disposable income on obscure vinyl pressings of second- and third-tier Krautrock bands. The second holds he’s just making it up as he goes along, that his song lyrics are nothing more than stream-of-consciousness babble, inside jokes and stoner logic, and that his true thoughts and emotions remain forever walled off behind a smirking ironic remove. I ask him if he thinks his songs really “mean a lot,” or are they mostly just words with the right vowel sounds to carry the melody? “To me, rock lyrics are projection, a revenge fantasy, a fantastical pose, an imagined victory,” he says. “For me, it’s what can I get over on the world, and sometimes it’s just joking around. Humor is important, really important. It’s the only inroad to the mainstream that someone like me could make.” I ask him to confirm or deny the rumor that the reason Pavement reunited was because Bob Nastanovich was bankrupt and addicted to crack. False, he says. He does have some horse-betting debts, but he’s happily married and just bought a house in Iowa. As for the crack thing? Not so much. “He hates cocaine; he’s never even tried it,” he says, adding cryptically, “There are two people in Pavement who have never even tried it. I’m not going to say who, but he could be in the room.” As for the Pavement tour being a big cash cow, Malkmus claims to not even know how much his cut was, and either way he hasn’t spent a dime of it to date. Likewise, royalties from Pavement album sales are modest and split five ways. “I’ve never seen any money from record sales in 13 years beyond the recording advance,” he says. “These days, bands make money touring, not selling records, unless your song gets used in a TV ad. And in the Jicks, on a good year, each guy makes about as much as a guy working in a coffee shop.” Life on the road during the Pavement reunion, he says, was a lot cushier than the typical Jicks tour. “It came at a good time for me, personally,” he says. “And it was a lot easier than touring the solo thing, which is a lot more Darwinian. You have to take an ego punch, but it was having people do things for you. I had a guitar tech. I didn’t have to do interviews.”
Forever 21: Malkmus jams with Pavement at the “Matador at 21” party in Las Vegas, October 2010
Stephen told me that his one regret was not writing more complicated guitar parts for Pavement songs, because I think he was a little bored.
Mike Clark
34
I wonder out loud why Pavement didn’t record any new music for the reunion tour. “I just couldn’t put my heart into it, personally,” he says, wearily. From there I ask him if he thought agreeing to the reunion tour was somehow an admission of the failure of his solo career, or would be perceived that way. “I never thought about it that way,” he says. “But in the end, that’s Matador’s problem, not mine.” I ask him why, some 10 years after, Pavement can sell out several-thousand capacity amphitheaters despite a hefty ticket price, while the Jicks play rooms a fraction of the size, for a fraction of the price. His response boils down to: What else did you expect? This is the standard downwardly mobile trajectory of a golden indie-rock career in its second decade. Eventually, your audience grows up, and out of you—or at least out of buying albums and going to shows. Now they go to restaurants. They have kids and mortgages and middle-aged crises to worry about. Plus, there’s more competition these days—music scene’s crazy, bands start up each and every day. “Young people these days are finding their own bands to identify with,” he says. “I don’t think they are necessarily looking for some-
one our age.” The somewhat shocking news that Malkmus and family are breaking up with Portland and moving to Germany has been weighing on my mind for the duration of my stay. What does that even mean, I keep asking myself. Why would anyone leave all this behind? The chill climes year-round, the good coffee on every corner, the record stores that sell microbrews, the lesbian bookstores, the indierock softball league, the abundance of skunky medical marijuana, the moody S.A.D.-ness of those moody, watercolor skies. He’s dug in here, with a wife and two kids and a fat crib on the right side of the tracks. He’s landed gentry. His frickin’ band lives here! I can’t think of a better place for a guy like Malkmus to grow old and run out the clock. This is the place, after all, where young people go to retire. On my last night at the Jupiter, a kitschy old-school motor lodge turned rocker-friendly boutique hotel, I bolt upright at 3 a.m., shaken from sleep by this troubling thought: He’s cutting bait, dissolving the Jicks, and retiring from the music business. Mirror Traffic will be his swan song, he just hasn’t formally announced it yet. The next day at breakfast, I ask him as much. “No, no, we’re still going to work on new stuff,” he says. “I have such a backlog of new stuff that I’m excited about. I’m just not sure where we will go after Berlin.” Well, we’ll always have Portlandia. Achtung, baby.
photo by JAKE GILES NETTER
new music reviewed and graded for your aural pleasure
Fall From Grace
Almost everything goes wrong on the Rapture’s muchanticipated comeback
C
The Rapture
In the Grace of Your Love
DFA /Modular
photo by Ruvan Wijesooriya
ultural precedents matter, and for that reason, the Rapture can take heart. For it’s been, what, five YEARS since their last LP, and they can rest assured that people will still remember their role in brokering the historic peace accord between indie rock and dance music with “House of Jealous Lovers.” Still, nowadays, everybody with a MIDI controller and a loft space in Williamsburg is making some form of guitar-oriented funtime fluff. Besides, the initial buzz-band euphoria that once surrounded the Rapture has long passed, as their departure from Universal Motown and the exit of bassist/founding member Matt Safer certainly indicates. So, as the group comes full circle with their return to the NYC dancepunk mothership DFA, latest release In the Grace of Your Love moves out of the party and into a troubling phase of post-hipster dotage. While one has to give the group points for veering their music into new territory, nearly every track is a dud, however well-intentioned.
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THE
reviews
Aligning themselves this time around with producer Philippe Zdar, another dance music vet with indie credentials (Chromeo and Phoenix, for starters), the Rapture’s initial instincts seem appropriate at first. But they make questionable stylistic choices from the get with “Sail Away,” which shifts from a drowsy feelgood synth drone into aimless jazz skronk for no apparent reason (they also attempt a similarly pointless genre switcheroo between accordion-flavored Latin house and minimal techno on “Come Back to Me”). The rock material is uniformly bland, and while the flakiness of the group’s lyrical style has always exuded a lamebrained charm, it’s woefully unable to handle weighty subjects like a mother’s death in “Children,” which sounds like early MGMT in one of the later stages of grief. Even party tracks like “How Deep Is Your Love?” and the
Blondie-ish “Never Die Again” are halfhearted affairs in desperate need of a remix. Perhaps most upsetting is the album closer “It Takes Time to Be a Man,” a misbegotten stab at gospel-soul. When vocalist Luke Jenner scraps his Robert Smith interpretation to do his born-again brother impersonation (“There’s room at the moun’top / For everyone in God’s plan”), it comes off as cribbed and even insulting to the spirit of the source material. Considering all the time spent off and an even more saturated music market, it doesn’t bode well to see the Rapture squander their goodwill like this. Clearly, they’re no longer the band they used to be, but they don’t really seem to know who they are now. No doubt, the Rapture are much older, but they don’t come off as much wiser this time around. —Justin Hampton
The Rugged Individual Robert Pollard’s hair-raising creativity launches Boston Spaceships into the stratosphere
Boston Spaceships
Let It Beard GBV, Inc
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H
opefully Robert Pollard has made provisions
for medical science to study his brain after his death so that a gifted research Poindexter can definitively point to a particular frequency or cell cluster that caused an endless stream of brilliantly cavalier music to emanate from his magical wizard head cave. Boston Spaceships (Pollard, bassist Chris Slusarenko and drummer John Moen) is merely one case in point; Pollard’s first post-Guided by Voices band has released five full-lengths, two 7-inches, an EP and
Ada
Meine Zarten Pfoten Pampa
No hearts of glass here Like Isolée’s Pampa Records bow in January, Meine Zarten Pfoten (which translates, brilliantly, to “My Tender Paws”) marks the fervently awaited follow-up to one of middecade “minimal” electronica’s most appealing and personable documents, in this case 2004’s phenomenal Blondie. Pfoten, true to its title, veers far from that album’s Teutonic bleep-and-thump backbone in search of gentler, plusher, sensual pastures: bossa-tinged, witchily cooed opener “Faith” (a Luscious Jackson cover, of all things); the Cornelius-like chime and sway of “On the Mend”;
a live album since 2008, many singled out for end-of-the-year honors. For Let It Beard, Pollard offers a double album’s worth of typical alt-pop weirdness, while maintaining his creative grip on the more experimental aspects of his Quadrophenia/Lifehouse fixation, like banjos and feedback on “Let More Light in the House,” the Game Theory-tributesPete Townshend thunder roll of “Tourist U.F.O.,” the angular jazz swing of “Minefield Searcher,” and the ’60s punk update of “Toppings Take the Cake” and “Tabby and Lucy.” With twice the space to fill, Pollard gives his demo id free rein (well, when doesn’t he?), as evidenced by delightfully disjointed counterpoints like “A Hair in Every Square Inch of the House” and “A Dozen Blue Raincoats.” As usual, Pollard’s fanciful oddball moments are fascinating interludes that perfectly frame his more traditionally structured oddball moments (“Christmas Girl,” “Red Bodies,” the title track, the spectacular bombastic pop twist of “German Field of Shadows”). Pollard has cited Let It Beard as an inadvertent concept album, but everything he’s written since the first GBV cassette in the late ’80s fits in that bigger picture paradigm; to paraphrase Arthur C. Clarke, it’s the 9 billion songs of Robert Pollard, and they all peg perfect holes in their specific times. —Brian Baker
“Happy Birthday”’s cheery throb and playfully warped vocals. It’s only after the delectably burbling synthesizer “Intro” (which arrives, quirkily enough, at the album’s midpoint) that we get something properly house-derived and dancefloor-plausible with “At the Gate”’s moody dark-disco whirr, and then it’s perhaps the least distinguished thing here. But “going soft” doesn’t mean Michaela Dippel’s lost her edge. Don’t equate organic delicacy and vocal abundance with a lapse into feeble easy-listening: there’s as much spunk, production clarity and inventiveness here as ever. And, as demonstrated by a sparkling, unlisted transformation of Little Joy’s “Keep Me in Mind,” she hasn’t lost her knack for surprising indie-rock covers either. —K. Ross Hoffman
Alkaline Trio
Damnesia
Anti-/Epitaph
AT’s revisionist history, in the best sense Last year, venerable Chicago pop-punkers Alkaline Trio ditched their major label contract and crafted the brilliant This Addiction, which perfectly balanced their early bristling intensity and latter effervescent pop verve. That process continues in a different vein on Damnesia, as the Trio reimagine tracks from their lauded catalog in a semiunplugged setting. Some, like “We’ve Had Enough,” feel like the acoustic guitar demos that teed up the original electric tracks, while others, like the melancholy piano balladry of “The American Scream” and the anthemic acoustic reading of “Radio,” are powerfully rearranged spins on songs that already benefitted from a surplus of passion and intensity. Damnesia also features three new tracks, a Dropkick Murphys-flavored cover of the Violent Femmes’ “I Held Her in My Arms,” the tossed off malt liquor paean “Olde English 800” and the wistful love-gone-wrongery of “I Remember a Rooftop.” The reexaminations are an interesting alternate past, but you can bet they’ll be plugged in and face forward soon enough. —Brian Baker
of big, electro-laden pop songs with a bedroom popster’s earnestness. It’s an eclectic collection abounding with Beck-isms, but it’s those same bedroom pop sensibilities that produce a few too many Bieber-isms. There’s a song called “Heart You 4 Ever” and it goes “You might think I’m crazy, but I think I’m gonna love you forever.” By the time we get to “Complex,” I’m well past my threshold of aw-shucks songs. —Matt Sullivan
Beyoncé
4
Columbia
The simple pleasures A new Beyoncé record is, by definition, an event, but after her last album’s sprawling, unwieldy embarrassment of riches (and vaguely contrived stylistic segregation), 4 feels almost casual: a plain dozen unfussy tunes with (mostly) refreshingly minimal, understated productions, custom-devised for Ms. Knowles to sing the bejeezus out of them, which she graciously, gracefully does. That’s a tremendous treat in itself, as always, though she’s rarely been quite this artlessly affecting; authoritative yet unforced (breezily pyrotechnic, even). And, shrugging off negligible missteps like “Party”’s pointless Kanye West intrusion, there are comparable musical pleasures all across the tracklist, from “I Miss You”’s warmly brooding slo-mo electro and “Love On Top”’s grin-inducing throwback R&B gush to the euphorically scattershot, Boyz II Men-sampling “Countdown.” Even the album’s unorthodox bluesiness-infront, party-in-back sequencing (flip the track order—nipping the overblown “I Was Here”— and you’ve got a much more conventional, arguably more effective LP, not unlike B’Day with an inverted ballads:bangers ratio) helps it feel like an appealingly low-key, off-the-cuff lark. As though B could just sneak up on us like that. —K. Ross Hoffman Black Lips
Arabia Mountain Vice
Kyle Andrews
Robot Learn Love Elephant Lady
Does not compute Nashville-based singer-songwriter Kyle Andrews has been cranking out a sizable catalog of quirky pop for the past five or six years. More people started taking notice last year when the video for “You Always Make Me Smile” went viral. In it, our troubadour performs in the crosshairs of a Guinness World Record attempt for the largest water balloon fight. The song mostly sounds how the title reads, so it was prime TV commercial fodder. Andrews is no less sappy on Robot Learn Love. In what’s pitched as a loose concept album on modern technology’s effects on love, heartbreak and the like, he puts effects, filters and all manner of digital doohickeys to use in a hi-fi/lo-fi mix
Mouths and money aligned While a lot of ink has been spilled on the Atlanta boys’ onstage antics, has anyone talked about how good the music is? On their seventh release, Black Lips save their anarchic spirit for the songs while producer Mark Ronson cleans off the scuzz, leaving room for a document that’s equal parts Pebbles and postpunk. And the thing is, you can dance to almost all of it, particularly rave-ups like “Bone Marrow” and “New Direction.” “The Dumpster Dive” and “Don’t Mess Up My Baby” are Exile-era Stones inspirations, while the surfy “Bicentennial Man” and the taut “Go Out and Get It” recall fellow Georgians R.E.M., and the Feelies for the former and Squeeze for the latter. There’s also a Byrds-y jangle about a superhero incest survivor (“Spidey’s Curse”) and a happy Ramones-like ode to the wonders of marginal tour food (“Raw Food”). —Sara Sherr
David Bromberg
Use Me
Appleseed
An old folkie’s return American roots master David Bromberg has finally returned in full with his new album, Use Me. Following a 17-year hiatus from recording, 2007’s Try Me One More Time was a stripped-back solo affair focusing on his love of blues and early country. Though these traditions have always been the foundation of his music, it’s nice to hear him again with a full band and a host of famous friends. The blasting horns that open the new album recall his heyday back in the ’70s, when the Grateful Dead and George Harrison used to play on his albums. On Use Me, he brings a modern A-list of celebrity friends to the table, giving the production, song choice and recording over to artists like John Hiatt, Keb Mo, Dr. John, Linda Ronstadt, Los Lobos and more for a full album of inspired duets. This is Americana done right, and done by an artist who wears his influences on his sleeves. Respect your elders, kids! This is one old folkie with lots of new things to say. —Devon Leger CSS
La Liberación V2
A maré está alta In hindsight, 2008’s Donkey seems much like Blondie’s 1980 LP Autoamerican: a collection of more musically expansive genre exercises, hampered by stiff arrangements and slick production that failed to capitalize on the promise of its earlier work. The Brazilian quintet’s latest full-length, La Liberación, is billed as a “return to form,” and from its earliest moments (the slinky electro ballad “I Love You”), the signal-to-noise ratio is much, much better. Speaking of Blondie, tiny spoonfuls of reggae continue to seep into the CSS stew on “Hits Me Like a Rock,” while cute-as-a-button vocalist Lovefoxxx effortlessly channels Debbie Harry’s rapturous cadence on “Red Alert.” Collaborations with Ratatat and pianist Mike Garson (“Partners in Crime”) are radical, too, but the best moments on La Liberación are intensely personal, as when Lovefoxxx sings about her big city wardrobe on “City Grrrl.” You had us at “short shorts, short skirts,” girl. —Nick Green Curren$y
Weekend at Burnie’s Warner Bros.
Higher times Stoner rap, dude, it’s so, uh... wait, where are we going with this? You’ll have to excuse us—we’ve been conducting a, uh, rigorous critical analysis of Curren$y’s latest album Weekend at Burnie’s all morning, and we’re having a little trouble getting up to speed. The New Orleans native—who ran with both the No Limit and Cash Money crews back in the day—has dropped the tightest, most focused al-
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bum the genre has heard in years. Again, we’ve been, uh, analyzing this particular strain of hip-hop for years, and we know nickel-bag schwag when we hear it: Curren$y only brings the stickiest of the sticky-icky. He’s been ripping monster hits on the mixtape circuit, and his step up to the majors find him exhaling a big purple cloud of dexterous wordplay, hazy synths and minimalist funk. Be it lead single “She Don’t Wanna Man,” piano driven Jeep-beat “This Is the Life” or deep space journey “Money Machine,” Burnie’s exhibits an artist that has mastered his medium. —Sean L. Maloney
Dex Romweber Duo
Is That You in the Blue? Bloodshot
Who else could it be? Without prior knowledge, Dexter Romweber’s covers are indistinguishable from his originals. That speaks volumes of the man, his music and his chemistry with sister/ drummer Sara. In this two-piece guise, now on its second LP for Bloodshot, Dexter sheds most of the wild-eyed rockabilly that made his Flat Duo Jets cult favorites, favoring a more far-reaching approach to early American rock ‘n’ roll. From acoustic blues rollick (“Homicide”) to hypnotic exotica ballads (“The Death of Me”); from American Gothic twang (“Redemption”) to, well, wild-eyed rockabilly (“Jungle Drums”), the Romwebers execute with the casual confidence of players who’ve long since mastered their craft. Sara’s understated swing, the warm crackle of Dexter’s Silvertone, and his voice—worn into a supple, effective croon—go together like Jack and Coke. There’s little here that DRD didn’t already do on 2009’s Ruins of Berlin (screwball guitars on “Wish You Would” notwithstanding), but if consistency is a virtue, this Duo looks pretty saintly. —Bryan C. Reed Dom
Family of Love EP Astralwerks
Pop wunderkinds shine brighter, sacrifice their edge Massachusetts debt-fugitive Dom and the fellow travelers who play beneath his sans-surname marquee know their way around armada-launching chord changes; Dom tunes aren’t so much tapeworms as they are deep-burrowing ticks. That sure-footed, flash-pop alchemy only accounts for half the band’s appeal—the rest lies in the almost S&M, push-pull quality of music and sentiment. Last year’s Sun-Bronzed Greek Gods EP balanced these scales nicely, but Family of Love errs. “Telephone” opens Love too promisingly. There’s
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Bad Girls What a wicked thing Ettes do, to make you dream of them
W
hile this writer is currently enjoy-
ing the current ’80s-on-’60s girl group craze of the Dum Dum Girls and the Vivian Girls channeling the Shop Assistants through the Brill Building, a Krian Music little contrast would be nice. The Ettes answer the question Group/Fond “When’s the Pandoras revival?” (Well, at least the garage era. Object/Fontana I don’t have an answer for the metal years just yet. Perhaps that’s the Donnas). Either way, they are definitely kindred spirits with someone like Holly Golightly, last decade’s model of retro cool. The Ettes are a nomadic trio, now based in Nashville, consisting of guitarist/ badass frontwoman Coco Hames, bassist Jem Cohen and drummer Poni (a.k.a. Maria Silver). Since 2005, they’ve put out four full-length releases, plus Parting Gifts, a 2010 side project that featured Hames, Cohen, the Reigning Sounds’ Greg Cartwright and the Greenhornes’ Patrick Keeler. The overall mood of Wicked Will is heavy, foreboding and cinematic. It could be a soundtrack to the next Kill Bill sequel or the next ’60s girl gang flick that Tarantino unearths. Hames sings like she’s got a heart wrapped in leather and a switchblade hidden in her beehive, declaring on opening track “Teeth,” “Every time you smile, I can tell you’re just showing your teeth,” and concluding on “The Worst There Is,” “When you’re the worst there is, there’s nothing to fear.” Silver and Cohen provide excellent backup for Hames’ fuzzed-out leads. They keep things moving like a getaway car. What keeps Wicked Will different from your average garage rock album is its subject matter, which Hames says to be about herself and her relationships with women. Girl-on-girl crime, between friends or lovers, is richly layered, heartbreaking stuff that most scientists are still figuring out. Try to find songs about what makes mean girls come undone, and usually you’ll have to suffer through something that rocks a lot less than the Ettes. —Sara Sherr The Ettes
Wicked Will
a crack-rock hook rendered in antique landline beeps and fluorescent keyboard chords, cresting Brit Invasion drum-rushes, and the ultimate in paradoxical high-maintenance straitjacketing: “I come alive when you come on the line / But I die every time that we say goodbye.” Meanwhile, the title track’s cosmonautical effects-pedal swirl is nothing short of divine, but there’s no palpable sense of conflict at its core. And for all the Sunset Strip hair-metal thrills “Happy Birthday Party” teems with, there’s none of the subversive, bait-dangling daring of, say, “Jesus” or “Rude as Jude”; this thing could cold-rock a quinceañera in the magical land of Care-A-Lot without anyone batting an eyelash. —Raymond Cummings
Fennesz
Seven Stars Touch
Always worth the wait Fans of the experimental side of electronic music tend to stand at attention when news of a new Fennesz record breaks. Austrian guitarist/laptop-ist Christian Fennesz isn’t necessarily lacking in prolificacy, but a great many of the recordings bearing his moniker share credit
with a number of collaborators. Since the release of his 2001 breakthrough opus Endless Summer, Fennesz has released only two solo albums. The four-song 10-inch Seven Stars is the composer’s first solo release since 2008’s gorgeous Black Sea. The big news in the lead-up to this was that the title track has drums. While this isn’t the first time a Fennesz track has featured percussion (back when his techno days where less distant, Hotel Paral.lel had drum machines), the introduction of a live drummer could have been a big shakeup for a guy known for meticulously micro-editing synthesized washes of ambience and noise—but it isn’t. While light and pleasant, Seven Stars doesn’t signal any big sea changes—if anything, the title track is the most pop-structured piece he’s done. But it does affirm that Fennesz is still the best at what he does. —Matt Sullivan
Gavin Friday
Catholic MB3
Friday rages against the dying of the light Friday’s first album in 16 years is a quiet, chilling meditation on the loss and limitation we face as
the aging process begins to approach its grand finale. His voice alternately whispers and growls, croons and groans as he takes on the questions of loss, death and betrayal backed by lush, cinematic soundscapes full of dark ambient colors. The tracks are by turn infinitely expansive and quietly claustrophobic, mirroring the difficult emotions he expresses with his bleak poetry. “Abel,” the opening track, sets the tone with a desperate vocal that tries to climb out of a hole of pain and hurt feelings. When Friday sings, “I want to be able to find my own,” you sense that his prayer isn’t going to be answered. The songs slowly build in emotional intensity until “Lord I’m Comin’” signals his final descent into a quiet resignation of the inevitable. —j. poet
Hail Mary Mallon
Are You Gonna Eat That? Rhymesayers
Hip-hop hooray What has hip-hop been doing that Hail Mary Mallon’s debut feels so fresh? This is what hip-hop is supposed to sound like these days. Thick, dense forests of crashing sound, rolling bass lines and snare hits like a slap in the face.
What Was in a Name Mark Bianchi retires Her Space Holiday in style
Her Space Holiday
Her Space Holiday No More
Good Ideas
D
on’t be afraid of what we might be,” sings Mark Bi-
anchi, the focal point of Her Space Holiday, on “Anything for Progress,” the first song on his last album. This is, according to Bianchi, the final HSH full-length after five albums of being such. On this first Technicolor epic reminiscent of the sway and pluck of Pet Sounds, Bianchi bobs and weaves through brightly seesawing brass and flute sounds with lyrics like “As my body grows up I don’t want to go cold / This is all I know” and “Follow my voice / you will soon be free” that seem to point toward an endgame of sorts as much as they do
some strained relationship. But that could just be the over-reading of a critic against the easy intent of a lyricist just trying to tell a story or two. For instance, if I was being a real goof, I’d say the line “We should all be so furious,” whispered by Bianchi through the loud/ soft blip/crunch dynamics of “Black Cat Balloons,” is my response to his quitting the Holiday. Where I might add the line “say you’re going to stay” (his lyrics, not mine) to the start of the clickity-clackety “Shonoanoka,” he would then parlay with “I got to burn the selfish sound / down to the ground,” and it would turn into a tennis match rather than a gently hummable tune. Point, counterpoint. Point is Her Space Holiday has given the planet Xoxo Panda & the New Kid Revival and Manic Expressive during its tenure. If it had done nothing else after the brilliantly Rundgren-like and softly neurotic Home Is Where You Hang Yourself (and its 2.0 version), the world would’ve been a better place. Just saying. Find a way back sometimes. —A.D. Amorosi
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Hip-hop is supposed to peel you back, grab you, shake you, slap you. Hip-hop is why rock is dead. Who cares about another skinny-jean indie rock band when you can be marinating your earholes with deep beats and swift flows? The bright boys in Hail Mary Mallon know this. Hell, they hail from the glory days of ’90s rap. Aesop Rock’s Labor Days was an anthem for every college undergrad who needed music to shake the brain. Joined in Hail Mary Mallon by longtime friend Rob Sonic, both rappers scale back the tongue-twister labyrinths of Aesop’s later joints, preferring instead to deftly match cadences with the beats of DJ Big Wiz. This album will explode what you think about hip-hop in 2011. —Devon Leger
Hercules and Love Affair
Blue Songs
Moshi Moshi
Flex ‘n’ effects It’s second-album time for Andy Butler’s shapeshifting, fervently classicist dance-music troupe, and the big stories seem to be that a) there have been some change-ups in the vocal department (farewell Antony; welcome newcomers Shaun Wright and Aerea Negrot), and b) the retro-revivalist reference points have been updated from ’70s golden-era disco to jacking turn-of-the-’90s house (which is really only half-true; peep the stately, string-laden strut of “Painted Eyes” for proof). Oh, and that there’s no single to match the epoch-making rapture that was “Blind.” So be it: Butler’s production prowess remains as magnificent (despite his manifest reverence for past masters from Patrick Cowley to Marshall Jefferson to Arthur Russell) and distinctive as ever, and the slightly wider net he casts here (lest we forget, the debut was plenty varied, too) simply makes for more facets to his mirrorball—including, perhaps dubiously positioned at the album’s center, a pair of flat-out gorgeous ballads. True blue is more like it. —K. Ross Hoffman Joe Jackson Trio
Live Music: Europe 2010 Razor & Tie
Multiple personalities in order Live albums are usually contract killers or cash cows, and the fact that Joe Jackson has only released one album of new material since 2004’s Afterlife doesn’t bode well for his seventh such disc. But if it doesn’t join the thin ranks of essential concert documents, Live Music’s sparse arrangements and eccentric song selection at least skirt redundancy. Co-credited to drummer Dave Houghton and bassist Graham Maby, whose history with Jackson goes back to the 1970s, the album presents
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reworked versions of old chestnuts “Sunday Papers” and “Got the Time”; the latter, pared down to its rhythm track, recalls Elvis Costello’s “Lipstick Vogue” in its hurtling velocity. A quarter of Live Music’s 12 tracks are devoted to covers, including a languorous take on the Beatles’ “Girl” and Bowie’s “Scary Monsters.” Ian Dury’s “Inbetweenies” is the pick of the lot, with Jackson perfectly matched to Dury’s barstool wit. Jackson’s studio albums have sometimes been cloistered affairs, but Live Music welcomes all comers. —Sam Adams
MellowHype
BlackenedWhite Fat Possum
Suicide boyz, reissued When asked about where to start with the strikingly prolific (and popular, and young) L.A. rap collective OFWGKTA, head honcho Tyler, the Creator often names MellowHype’s BlackenedWhite as the posse’s best. “Everyone was on it,” he explained once to a fan on his Formspring account—but no longer. It’s rare that a label will reissue an album with fewer tracks than the original, but such is the case with Fat Possum’s new CD and wax pressing of the 2010 downloadable. In the case of “Chordaroy,” permission to use the vocals of Earl Sweatshirt went M.I.A. with the wunderkind himself, exiled last year to Samoan boarding school (mom wasn’t as wowed by his lyrics as The New Yorker). In the case of the other five felled tracks, it seems to be an editorial decision— a shame, since “Hell” and “Loco” were two of the original’s better cuts. What’s left, however, is quality stuff, Hodgy Beats spitting rapier wit over Left Brain’s alternately banging and boozed production. The slow death of “Primo” is still a highlight, as are the kushy “Loaded” and ghastly “64” (the latter being one of two new exclusives). Welcome back to the terrordome, folks. —Jakob Dorof Stephin Merritt
Obscurities Merge
Ample pickings All but Stephin Merritt’s diehard fans have given up trying to keep track of his prolific output. Even within its designated time frame, the 14-track collection Obscurities only begins to sweep up all of Merritt’s leavings from the pre-69 Love Songs era: Magnetic Fields b-sides, a spare 6ths track, a handful of previously unreleased compositions from a sci-fi musical authored with Daniel Handler (a.k.a. Lemony Snicket). As you’d expect, it’s patchy going, and there are some perplexing omissions, but then along comes “Rot in the Sun,” a blissful beach number that doubles as a withering indictment of grungeera sellouts (“You can make an atrocious Top 40 record / No one will know in two weeks’ time”), or
“Forever and a Day,” a fleeting love song as plaintive and bare as anything he’s written. As a rule, odds-and-sods roundups are for existing fans only, but Obscurities might gain Merritt some new ones. —Sam Adams
Peter Murphy
Ninth Nettwerk
Brilliant dark matter from Bauhaus’ original particle decelerator Goth’s soundscape would be ash gray rather than jet black without Peter Murphy’s essential contributions, as his Bauhaus/Dalis Car/solo influence has blown through generations with the constancy of the jet stream. On Ninth, his eighth studio album (apparently, he’s numbering his 2001 live album) and first in seven years, Murphy returns to the visceral and immediate alt-rock swell of 1990’s Deep for a set that rumbles with veteran authority and bristles with modern energy. From the towering swagger of “Velocity Bird” to the majestic and moody melodicism of “Seesaw Sway” to the soaring goth blueprint of “I Spit Roses” and the hypnotic Thin Black Duke balladry of “Never Fall Out,” Murphy and perfectly-matched producer David Baron construct Ninth as a solid yet elegant sonic fortress that reinforces Murphy’s legendary status as goth’s architect, and proves his relevance to the coming crop of darkwave wannabes with the crucial lesson that greatness is more than eyeliner and attitude. —Brian Baker Night Birds
The Other Side of Darkness Grave Mistake
The smell of napalm Night Birds are far from the first punks to find inspiration in the fluid momentum and quick, emphatic guitar runs of surf rock. But they’ve still managed to make it seem like they might be. The Jersey/Brooklyn foursome draws from well-chosen influences—suggesting black metal blizzards with the barrage of drums and shrill guitar that opens “Demon Haunted World,” nailing spot-on Adolescents backing vocals on “Paranoid Times” and cutting a crisp instrumental with “Day After Trinity”—and elegantly balance classic surf’s crisp reverb with the brittle, brash distortion of West Coast hardcore. Where previous EPs—compiled earlier this year on the Fresh Kills, Vol. 1 CD—often drifted in one direction or the other, Other Side marks a new level of consistency, propelling songs like “Failed Species” with sharp, jutting guitars, snotty vocals and a twisted, humorous vision of B-movie Apocalypses. Here, it’s never too risky for some R&R. —Bryan C. Reed
OK Go
180/365 Paracadute
Sing it one more time, Buggles! Does the world need a live album from a band better known for visuals than music? No, especially when this treadmill-hopping, Mouse Trap-building, paint-splattering, IKEA- and acrobatic-dog loving L.A. band’s videos are exponentially more innovative and stimulating than the corresponding music. (Can you hum the tunes that go along with those videos?) Call me a traditionalist blowhard, but bands should be more concerned with making a good song than a nifty visual; otherwise, call yourself an art troupe or some shit. Though OK Go have a reputation for being fun, lively performers, 180/365, recorded from a bunch of shows on the band’s past tour, doesn’t sound all that ecstatic. It’s little more than a flaccid, tawdry Duran Duran rip, with wannabe-chic white-boy geekiness standing in for New Wave’s gender-blurring sexiness. If these guys dragged a fleet of treadmills onstage and played their songs while doing a choreographed routine for a DVD version of 180/365, maybe this review would be warranted. OK? Go home. —Jeanne Fury Sam Phillips
Solid State
Bound for the Floor Suffocating production keeps the Horrors’ latest from taking off
I
n a brooding British accent, Horrors’ front-
man Faris Badwan delivers his lines as if standing on a balcony at midnight, stoned out of his bean, wearSkying ing velvet slippers and blowing soap bubbles from a plastic pipe. A bit much, but he’s good at it. And it works for Skying, xl a softer offering than the band’s gleaming breakthrough, Primary Colours, which topped NME’s best of 2009 list. On the third album, jagged riffs and slickly sliced edges have been shelved for languid movements and gauzy textures. The Horrors maintain a gothic shroud, but behind it, there’s a boyish, yearning romanticism, not a remorseful depression—the objects of desire (presumably women) feel attainable. “It’s a joy to see you waiting there, writing letters, burning in the air,” Badwan sighs on “Oceans Burning.” Songs are awash in a dreamy, Eno-worshipping accessibility, with gangly, flowing New Wave synths grazed by radiant post-punk guitars. “Wild Eyed” feels like slipping into a coma in the middle of a nightclub; after a similarly ethereal stupor, “Endless Blue” snaps forward with Bowie-metal; and though “Monica Gems” is the most cantankerous, dissonant offering, it maintains perfect Robert Smith hair. Indicative of its title, Skying is an album that doesn’t want to drag its heels, and unfortunately, the heavy-handed production job does a disservice. There is a lot going on in these songs, and all those rhythmic layers too often get compressed into an impenetrable slab; the fussiness of the music is on purpose—we get it— but it needs breathing room, and after a while begins to interfere as opposed to accentuate. —Jeanne Fury The Horrors
photo by neil krug
Notable Music
Recollections from beyond Saturday night Subtitled “Songs From the Long Play,” Solid State gathers a baker’s dozen from a year’s worth of fan-funded tunes, previously available only to subscribers. Although they’re culled from five EPs and a full-length album, each with its own unifying theme, the songs make for a surprisingly cohesive whole that stands tall alongside Phillips’ more conventionally produced recordings. Phillips has always been adept at mixing styles, alchemically fusing past and present; see her Rubber Soul-tinged high-water mark, Martinis & Bikinis, for proof. On Solid State, she slides seamlessly from the honky-tonk guitar and snare-drum slap of “Lever Pulled Down” to the pizzicato strings of “What It All Means.” “I’ve been trying to simplify, but it seems as if that’s what you do when you die,” she sings on the latter, but the complications of Solid State are what make it worth listening to. —Sam Adams The Postelles
The Postelles +1
Take it, then leave it The Postelles are yet another lighter-shade-of-Strokes quartet from New York, having recently inked and smoked a major label deal in record time. Here, their self-titled debut— which leaked with a Capitol Records logo affixed last year, but never got pressed up for your local landfill—is tweaked a bit in the tracklist, but still sounds like ’50s pop formula by way of a northerly,
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Vampire Weekend breeze. Listening to the skinny bop of opener “White Night,” the tired boot stomp of the closing “She She,” or most of the middling stuff that happens in between, it’s pretty easy to hear why some desperate A&R might have indulged in a brief tryst with the Postelles—but that’s about the most you can say for them. Songs like “Can’t Stand Still” and “Hold On” might make decent summer playlist fodder, but even then, this record is the epitome of not here nor there. Isn’t this kind of music supposed to sound nice and shiny, at least? —Jakob Dorof
Scream
Complete Control Sessions SideOneDummy
Unessential, but undeterred Best known for being the band Dave Grohl was drumming in before he joined Nirvana, Scream are back with their original (Grohl-less) lineup after 18 years on hiatus. When the venerable Virginiabased punks released their last album, Fumble, Bill Clinton was in the first year of his first term, Arrested Development was Grammy’s best new artist, and the Toronto Blue Jays won the World Series. Mercifully, Scream haven’t become a similar relic. Complete Control Sessions, an EP recorded this past February, is an upstanding slice of dissident energy. “Can’t beat the stop watch, get outta my way,” sings Pete Stahl on the sizzling opening track, a mix of the cool poetic musings of the Smiths and the jagged zing of Bad Brains. Elsewhere, the wiry groove of “The Year Bald Headed Singers Were In” fits neatly beside the three-chord hardcore blitz of “Jamming at 606,” and if you close your eyes and hold your breath, you can still feel the pit’s heat. —Jeanne Fury The Sea and Cake
The Moonlight Butterfly Thrill Jockey
If a butterfly flaps its wings in Chicago, a dude in Hamburg grows a beard As the sands tinkle through the hourglass, the very blatant jazz/fusion influence the Sea and Cake have become known for over the course of eight albums has taken what may be its biggest leap. The Moonlight Butterfly’s strongest attachment to the highfalutin world of high musicianship are the oft-extended jams the Chicago-based quartet embarks upon during each of the six songs here. The lengthy instrumental sequences are otherwise bookended by shimmery, ethereal and summery indie rock, with wispy vocals and flighty picked-out chord voicings that generally give way to synth swells. Those synths then pull and direct the proceedings down a complaisant Krautrock
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International Man of Mystery Portugal. The Man conducts quirky genre synthesis on a grand scale
A
fter the gutter runoff of last year’s
American Ghetto, it’s not particularly surprising to see Portugal. The Man spring for a major laIn the Mountain. bel. That album, with its overproduced mess of trip-hop, rap In the Cloud. and radio pop influences, made for a confused menagerie of styles from the quartet of Alaskan genre alchemists. It was Atlantic a blend that might have seemed a cinch for a band that had previously made prog rock and emo sing together, but the end product felt more like a failed attempt at cashing in than anything else. It must have gotten the attention of Atlantic, however, who bankrolled this new one, and even hired Mr. “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” Andy Wallace, to mix. But In the Mountain, In the Cloud doesn’t sound like a Vines album—it sounds like a huge imagination being realized by a budget to match. The hooks are bigger, and the orchestration more lush and elaborate, than on any of Portugal’s six previous records. The guitars call to mind Oasis, Funkadelic and Modest Mouse—at their best when intertwined. Songs like “Got It All” and “So American” channel ’70s rockers like Bowie and T. Rex, and the album’s overall aesthetic is comparable to symphonic ’60s pop tributes like Self’s Breakfast With Girls, Silverchair’s Diorama and Cornelius’ Fantasma. Unfortunately, John Gourley’s disco falsettos occasionally resemble Passion Pit or MGMT’s first album (read: 2007), and oftentimes—most regrettably the closing “Sleep Forever”—Portugal seem to cut these songs short of the climactic coda or grand finale they deserve. But on the whole, In the Cloud is a surprisingly agile rebound that smartly befits the summer season. —Jakob Dorof Portugal. The Man
lane—think the opposite of Trans Am’s kinetic energy—like the title track, which may not be their most assertive musical statement ever, but
will likely have the band pocketing some publishing money after its appearance in a high-end car commercial. —Kevin Stewart-Panko
The Polarizer
Cowbell scribes Justin Hampton and Jakob Dorof see dubstep dynamo Skrillex finishing, respectively, first and last
The Case For
Opening Argument
The Case Against Opening Argument
Only petty scenester haterade can really account for the nastiIf anyone on the Cowbell staff ought to like Skrillex, it’s me. I Skrillex ness aimed at the success that former From First to Last screaswear by good electro bangers some three years after they’ve mo vocalist Sonny Moore has enjoyed as Skrillex. The guy’s become passé, and Sonny Moore cites the mighty SebastiAn as More Monsters a skilled producer with an instantly recognizable sound that a primary influence. But he takes the worst of the best (Sebasand Sprites tiAn’s jockier moments, Justice’s long-staled soundfonts) and excites his audience, end of story. Big Beat/ Only two new Skrillex tracks on the EP, so the real meat is in slams them against more questionable reference points (Rusko’s Atlantic the remixes. The Kaskade mix underlines the connection Skrillex vomitous wobble, deadmau5-ian neo-trance). has forged between progressive house and dubstep, while Juggernaut and Here, his narcissistic tendencies are further exposed; four tracks are Dirtyphonics’ aggressive reworkings go straight for the throat, and even remixes of last year’s “Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites” (totaling seven into double time. officially released versions in eight months), each proving the “gorestep” Skrill, in the meantime, plays around with pop reggae (“First of the Year original unsalvageable. From there, both variants of “Ruffneck” use goofy SFX [Equinox]”) and even an Elton John-ish string section on the cheekily titled and gratuitously ethnic vocals to desecrate a perfectly nice strings sample, “Ruffneck Bass.” The bastards haven’t ground him down yet. —JH and the opening “First of the Year (Equinox)” squirms like another rehash of the cockroach-persistent “Scary Monsters.” Moore’s body count rises T h e R e b u t ta l ever higher. —JD Funny that my man Justin feels compelled to defend T h e R e b u t ta l Skrillex on the basis of being “instantly recognizable” and for “exciting his audience”—can we not say I’m grateful that Jakob isn’t reiterating the aggravating condescenthe same for Limp Bizkit, Nickelback or Creed? sion (and Corey Feldman jokes) Dubstep Forum members ladle onto Moore. Regardless, my sense is that Moore never got the memo on Moore’s output has been no less derivative or obnoxious. In the same way the nü-metal Approved Musical References from self-appointed EDM tastemakfad of the early aughts sullied the names of ers (cough, ResidentAdvisor, cough). And I hope he never does. Nirvana and Red Hot Chili Peppers, Skrill’s That’s not how EDM evolves. PB&shit sandwich of influences has all Take Brazilian Baile Funk. People went Lady-frickin’-Gaga over but drilled the last nail in the coffins of it when Diplo threw it on the international dancefloor in ’06. Yet once-respectable genres like (pre-Rusko) people in Brazil see it as LCD garbage. Yet it exposed people dubstep and French house. This “Ruffneck” outside Brazil to a new way of hearing dance music. There’s business even sees him flingin’ shots at Dipvalue in that. lo-descended dancehall, now. —JD Moreover, just because frat boys like a certain form of dubstep/electro house doesn’t invalidate In Closing it for anyone—except music snobs, apparently. Last year, I attended the Gathering of There’s a place on the dancefloor for everybody. the Juggalos for another magazine. Moore gets that; the snobs need to remember Back in the ’90s, I saw Insane Clown this. —JH Posse as an affront to my notion of In Closing “good” music. But I learned from Juggalos that my notion of quality As someone who loves Girl Talk when he’s rewas shaped by the narrow conmembering how not to suck (rarer and rarer, straints of my music-critic tribe. these days), snob purism is not among my We don’t understand the needs of priorities. Adventurous genre recipes are what makes innovative music. a Nickelback or Creed fan; to write their passions off is to languish in The diff between this and disco, Diplo’s baile, ignorance, and consider it enlightet al, is that there’s just nothing for mind, soul or sweet tooth in Skrill’s cookbook: So far, his enment. concoctions as a DJ sound as tasteless as the Sonny Moore shines a bright worst of All Day’s mash-up refry. At best, this light upon the children who em“new way of seeing dance music” makes people brace him. After the deaths at Dallas’ Electric Daisy Carnival, he tire of real (quality) innovation quicker, and at worst, it sets rancid precedents. Unlike Skrillex, refused to condemn his audience’s choices, but warned them of the danRage Against the Machine offered something mugers they face. He has a big heart, and sically—but were they worth the Papa Roach/Fred I can hear it in his music. He can stay Durst chart domination just ’round the bend? More here for as long as he wants. —JH monsters, more sprites, more slippage for an already oil-slick slope. —JD
photo by ethan saks
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THE
reviews
Sole & the Skyrider Band
Hello Cruel World Fake Four Inc.
What George Carlin would sound like if he wasn’t funny Sole’s mad as hell—again. Can we take it anymore? Ever since jetting from the Anticon collective, Tim Holland has struggled volubly and repeatedly with the twin specters of a civilization on the brink of collapse and a hip-hop industry that refuses to even acknowledge it. One has to respect his determination to force the issue in these sad times,
but it does make for a difficult and gloomy listening experience. Continuing down the same crooked road a few years later from his first self-titled debut, yet without that LP’s eclectic forays into rock and reggae, Sole fights what he knows (or presumes) to be a losing battle, “another war criminal / for being on the wrong side of history.” Fellow Oakland MC/Internet obsession lilbthebasedgod lightens up affairs with some vintage free-association verse on “Bad Captain Swag.” But one can only hope the larger world finds a solution to its stalemates ASAP, if only so that Sole can, too. —Justin Hampton
Requiem for Freeform Tea Leaf Green recall the halcyon days of independent radio
T
his album totally bums us. Not that it’s a par-
ticularly bummerific record—hell, Radio Tragedy! is a really fun romp—but it does remind us of , well, the Radio Tragedy! rather tragic state of radio. See, our favorite college radio station just got sold, gutted and handed over to some epically unhip clasThirty Tigers sical music cats. Gone are the days when we could just turn on our radio and know that we’d be knee-deep in way-out sounds. Gone are the days when we could find independent music on our dial that’s more than a 30-second clip on All Things Considered. Nope, no more free-form, fly-bythe-seat-of-your pants listening for us—just carefully curated corporate playlists. Bummerino metropolis. Tea Leaf Green
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Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks
Mirror Traffic Matador
Jicks Nation finally gets the Wowee Zowee it deserves “What everyone wants,” as Stephen Malkmus explains on “Senator,” “is a blowjob.” No kidding; savor this one, the closest the ex-Pavement singersongwriter has come to indulging populist/popular whims since going solo. Against ripcord riffs and concussive drums, a wave of condemnation: poison for immigrants, ancient bong hits, a dry-eyed
Maybe it’s just a case of fast-acting nostalgia, but Radio Tragedy!—with its easy flow from jangly pop to folky reggae and jammy rock numbers—is exactly the kind of album that college radio was made for, that made college radio matter in the first place. Sure, songs like the rockin’ “You’re My Star” and the space-shimmy of “Germinating Seed” are great when they pop up on your iPod, but damned if they wouldn’t sound a hell of a lot better with a few awkward pauses and nervous laughter to follow them up. Call us old-fashioned, but Radio Tragedy! makes us yearn for the days when the airwaves weren’t so damn tragic. —Sean L. Maloney
probe of what Britt Daniel calls “the mystery zone.” Malkmus reserves his erudite ire for Washington D.C., lambasting a self-serving, out-of-touch Congress with a passion many believed was out of his range; ironic, then, that the Beck Hansen-produced Mirror Traffic rolls like a master class in indie rock retail politics. There’s something for everyone: bramble-y breakup folk cut with time-signature hi jinks (“All Over Gently”), ADHD pogo-punk (“Tune Grief” playing it Sex Pistols straight, “Spazz” commingling jazz and ’core), voluptuous Humboldt County blues, sticky with resin (“Brain Gallop,” “Stick Figures in Love”). Have some pedal steelsoaked C&W about holing up with a brain-cracker doorstop (“Long Hard Book”); take in an unbearably tender Neil Young-esque homily (“Share the Red”). Deal a back porch vibe into the deck—our host humming, yowling and laughing along with his own stoned guitar leads and choogling solos— and you’ve got an classic where asides like “sit-ups are so bourgeoisie” scan like koans. Or, well, coded blowjobs. —Raymond Cummings
Maria Taylor
Overlook
Saddle Creek
Eat your heart out, Jenny Lewis Guesting on eight Bright Eyes albums, collaborating with Crooked Fingers, Michael Stipe and Moby, pursuing a recording career that stretches back to Little Red Rocket’s 1997 debut—given the scope and extent of her experience, Maria Taylor could have easily become a little too pro long ago—a little too smooth and set in her ways. Instead, the singer, songwriter, guitarist, keyboardist and drummer constantly hones her strengths and embraces new strategies. More intimate and less glossy than her 2009 Nettwerk one-off, the Azure Ray veteran’s selfproduced fourth solo album brings new light and heat to Saddle Creek, thanks in part to the fellow Alabamans she enlists for assistance, in part to her acumen at locating the biggest, corniest gesture a song might be able to accommodate— then making the perfect one next door. As always, Taylor’s limpid voice and knack for tweaking country tropes rank first among a shitload of assets. —Rod Smith Various Artists
Wall of Sound: The Very Best of Phil Spector, 1961-1966 Legacy
Ghost with the most Thanks in no small part to the BBC documentary The Agony and Ecstasy of Phil Spector—not to mention the fact that he’s in prison for murder—it’s easier than ever to hear the inherent psychodrama of Phil Spector’s great early-’60s work. That’s even if you eliminate the Crystals’ 1962 “He Hit Me (It Felt Like a Kiss)”—just one of this compilation’s good works. At 19 songs, it’s the definitive document of
David Byrne
Ride, Rise, Roar Eagle Rock Entertainment
Doored and floored What nerve! Only 27 years after his cinematic debut, cycling enthusiast David Byrne returns with yet another rockumentary. Granted, the film’s emphasis differs significantly from Stop Making Sense’s. Jonathan Demme’s concert classic captured Talking Heads at the height of their glory, while Ride, Rise, Roar stalks the only member of said band with more staying
Spector’s obsessive genius for hit singles with the density of medicine balls, instantly making the overstuffed, over-expensive Back to Mono box set irrelevant; get this and A Christmas Gift for You and you’re all set. And just in case you need reminding: “Be My Baby,” “Da Doo Ron Ron,” “Then He Kissed Me,” “River Deep, Mountain High.” That should be plenty—and is. —Michaelangelo Matos
Tom Vek
Leisure Seizure Island
U.K. electropopper’s sophomore outing arrives too late When London studio rat Thomas Timothy VernonKell first ventured on to the scene, he was early. The excellent eclectic patchwork of 2005’s We Have Sound presaged the brassy PoMo electro-rock that would soon be unleashed across the post-LCD Soundsystem aughts. Vek made a splash with the suave single “C-C,” rode the crest and retreated to his studio for the remainder of the decade. The resulting follow-up, Leisure Seizure, would have sounded incredible in 2007. Today, its snapping beats and urgent arrangements feel misplaced. “We Do Nothing” playfully cranks and sputters like the wind-up toy Hot Chip abandoned on Made in the Dark; the noxious guitar clang of “World of Doubt” has little in common with the chillwave du jour. Then again, maybe Tom Vek is aiming higher than underground dance culturemongers. The insanely catchy “A.P.O.L.O.G.Y.” is a pop earworm on
power than a sparkler as he tours in support of Everything That Happens Will Happen Today— his first collaboration with registered genius and stay-at-home party pooper Brian Eno in more than two decades. Director Hillman Curtis takes us behind the scenes, again and again, interrupting perfectly good songs with rehearsal footage and interviews with pretty much everyone involved— including the dancers and choreographers so many people bitch about. While performance segments favor old favorites, the action peaks with a rendition of Everything’s “I Feel My Stuff” marvelous enough to justify at least the price of rental. —Rod Smith
par with current U.K. sensation Example, and the pulsing, sensitive “Close Mic’d” transcends scene boundaries. Make no mistake, the music on Leisure Seizure is quality stuff. But its overall feel is aggressive, and electronic music got its aggression out during the dubstep heyday. —John Vettese
The War on Drugs
Slave Ambient
Secretly Canadian
Can’t stop the addiction Since forming in 2003, Philly’s War on Drugs have been singled out by more than few for their ability to mold the desolate twangyness of Americana into urban indie rock so that it doesn’t sound so desolate and twangy. Slave Ambient does this by combining worlds. For example, “Your Love Is Calling My Name” has up-tempo dyadic guitar chord shots battling through orchestral walls to create an Eno-meetsAphex Twin mood. “Come to the City” features loose instrumentation and Adam Granduciel’s nasally vocals buffered up against militaristic, almost-industrial electronic rhythms, with full-on ambient soundscapes pushing some sections. Granduciel’s voice is all Tom Petty/Bob Dylan—especially on “Brothers”—and continues the dichotomy theme with his spacious and folksyindie style making use of a verbose lyrical attack. It’s the sort of haunting stuff you’d listen to while staring out the window during a pensive crosscountry Greyhound ride home, after being kicked out of school or dumped by your significant other. —Kevin Stewart-Panko
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movies
Precious Moments Despite its feline narrator, Miranda July’s The Future takes a turn for the darker / by Sam Adams
T
he rap on Miranda July, at least as far as her movies goes, is that they’re glib, airless, hyper-ironized and insufferably precious simulacra of real life for emotionally stunted audiences who can’t stand to face it. Even those who warmed to her 2005 debut, Me and You and Everyone We Know, could be forgiven for throwing up their hands at the new movie, which features narration by a talking cat named Paw Paw. July is well aware of what she refers to as “the cute thing,” if somewhat mystified by it. “For me, I’m talking about really dark stuff, so I’m like, ‘How can I make this more cute?’ Because it’s actually not, in my mind.” July assumed that her second time at bat would be easier than the first, but found making The Future exponentially more draining. In part, that’s for practical reasons: a shorter shooting schedule, and the fact that foreign financing required her to work with a largely German, substantially non-Anglophone crew. But the process also required her to face down demons that even now, after months
of screening and talking about the film, she’s unable—or unwilling—to articulate. “Making this movie changed me,” she says, her voice a mixture of relief and regret. July was, personally speaking, in a much better place when she filmed The Future than when she first conceived it. As she was editing Me and You, July was also going through a painful breakup; she recalls thinking, “I’m making this very hopeful movie, but I’d really like to make a movie that captures this feeling that I’m feeling now.” The Future began as a performance piece, with July, as in life, playing the role of the dumpee. As it evolved into a narrative, the genders had switched: In the movie, it’s July who does the dumping, and boyfriend Hamish Linklater who gets the axe. But more critically, July had gotten over the breakup, in the most definitive way possible: During the period July was working on the script, she met and married filmmaker Mike Mills. Getting hitched didn’t cure July’s anxieties, but it transformed them: The villain
Future Imperfect:
Miranda July and Hamish Linklater in The Future.
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in The Future isn’t loneliness, but entropy, the slow decay of time and purpose. Sophie (July) and Jason (Linklater) are a cohabiting couple who’ve stalled out in their mid-30s and are struggling with the commitment of adopting a stray cat. In the opening scene, they sit at opposite ends of the couch in their nondescript Los Angeles apartment, laptops open, facing but not seeing each other. With 30 days before they can pick up Paw Paw, Sophie and Jason set a deadline for remaking their lives. They quit their deadend jobs and lay out new projects. He takes up canvassing for an environmental group, and she pledges to create a new dance every day, measuring herself against the YouTube clips of spandex-clad teens gyrating to hiphop tracks. But starting over is not as not as easy as it seems, and before long they’re both diverging from their prescribed paths. He starts spending days with an elderly widower who reflects on his half-century of marriage, and she starts an affair with a divorced suburban father, implanting herself in a warped reflection of domestic life. “Meeting Mike and realizing I wanted to spend the rest of my life with this person made me very aware of mortality somehow,” July reflects, “almost overly focused on that I was going to be old soon. The longer it took to write the screenplay, the older I got, and the more everyone around me was having kids… it all became very much about time.” In the movie’s most fantastic sequence, Jason, sensing an impending breakup, literally stops time, freezing Sophie in perpetual night. Jason’s world stands still, but he soon realizes that the rest of the world is still moving on: He can stop time, but only his time, and when he comes back, nothing will be as he left it. It’s an ingenious metaphor for the cost of arrested development, one that separates The Future from the plague of movies about overgrown manchildren belatedly coping with the responsibilities of adulthood. At the film’s Sundance premiere, July described The Future as “a monster movie” in which the monster is “me, if I lost my way.” In a sense, it’s a cautionary tale, from July to herself. It’s hard to imagine that a woman who’s exhibited work at the Whitney Biennial and won the Palme d’or at Cannes has
movies
issues with underachievement, but perhaps it’s that fear that keeps her moving forward. Like Sophie, July does battle with the Internet, which, she said at Sundance, “fills in all the spaces in the day when you might have doubt or not know what to do.” Especially for an artist, those uncertainties are crucial. It’s in the interstices, the gaps where you might whip out your smartphone or check your Twitter feed, that new ideas are born. When she’s writing, July uses a program called Freedom to sever her laptop from the Internet. “A lot of the time, my job is to focus,” July says. “Once you stop it, you begin to realize or remember the different quality of your attention without the Web. I actually feel sort of elated. I feel really free, and, bizarrely, as if no one is watching me, as if the Internet goes both ways. Instead of me not looking at stuff, my first feeling is, ‘Now I’m alone. I can do anything I want.’” Over the course of two interviews, a glass of grenache rosé and some barely picked-at tapas, July hints that The Future’s roots go deeper than she’s willing to say. Some of the movie’s more eccentric details, like the fact that Sophie has a T-shirt she totes around with her as a kind of security blanket, are directly ported over from July’s own life. (She even brings it to screenings.) For all her free-spiritedness, there’s a side of July that’s tightly controlled, almost scripted. After a day of interviews, she reflects, “I don’t know if I’ve said one true thing today. I have these stories, like how I came up with the idea for Paw Paw, and I think they’re true, but I honestly don’t know any more.” We may never know how much of July is in The Future, and it’s possible even she doesn’t. But it’s clear that, talking cat or no, the movie touches something profound, something beyond the boundaries of easy explanation, something worth stopping time to try and figure out.
The Future will be in theaters in August.
For more on The Future, and to sign up for biweekly divinations, visit thefuturethefuture.com
Now Screen This Sam Adams with the best of what’s in movie theaters this month
Amigo Once a spiritual godfather of the American independent film movement, John Sayles has fallen on hard creative times. Amigo, set during the Philippine-American war at the turn of the 20th century, casts its eye on a promising and little-known subject, but the movie’s wide-flung plot never congeals into a larger whole. The characters are thinly sketched and unevenly acted. You’d be far better off reading Sayles’ massive novel A Moment in the Sun, which covers some of the same territory with much more grace.
Higher Ground Working from Carolyn Briggs’ memoir This Dark World, Vera Farmiga gives herself a plum role in her directorial debut. As a devout Christian immersed in the long-haired “Jesus freak” movement of the 1970s, she speaks to God casually, as one might a car that won’t start. “Come on,” starts a typical prayer. Eschewing Briggs’ retroactive skepticism, Farmiga stays in step with her character, producing the rare American film that treats faith seriously, but not soberly. Blair Witch Project’s Josh Leonard is revelatory as Farmiga’s caring but authoritarian husband.
Bellflower Skidding along the line between gearhead pipe dreams and subversion thereof, Evan Glodell’s first feature is a hand-tooled marvel, its saturated colors and impressionistic images captured by camera equipment he built himself. Glodell also plays the lead, a grease monkey with two loves: a nice-looking chick and an “apocalypse mobile” he and a buddy have tricked out with a homemade flamethrower. The story grows more intense, and less believable, as it goes on, plunging Glodell into a Mad Max scenario of his own making, but the film’s ending retroactively lends depth to a movie that’s previously been all surface.
Tabloid After staring down Holocaust deniers and revisionist historians, Errol Morris now seems to see indeterminacy everywhere he looks. There’s a fascinating story at the heart of Tabloid, about a former Wisconsin beauty queen charged with kidnapping and raping a young Mormon missionary, but the attempt to spin yellow-press hyperbole as existential dread doesn’t wash.
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movies
Impales in Comparison
Fall On Your Sword get serious with the score to Another Earth / by Shaun Brady
J
udged solely by their YouTube page, Fall On Your
Sword might be easy to write off as little more than a mildly clever pair of musicians with access to editing software. Amusing enough to pass a little downtime in the office, their videos tend to target fairly lowhanging fruit—pop culture punching bags like David Hasselhoff (“Powerless Man,” a mash-up of backstorynarrating openings to ’70s/’80s TV series) and William Shatner (“Shatner on the Mount,” remixing an infamous interview detailing the sexier side of his mountain-climbing escapades in Star Trek V). Hell, the name of their YouTube channel is “fallonyoursword69,” indicating a sniggering, junior high sense of humor.
The soundtrack to Another Earth is available now from Milan. Another Earth will be in theaters this month.
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A wholly different side of the Brooklyn-based duo is revealed on their debut CD, however, the soundtrack to director Mike Cahill’s Sundance award-winning debut feature, Another Earth. Cahill’s film involves the life-changing collision of two people on the night that a parallel Earth is spotted in the night sky. While that cosmic intrusion into the everyday hangs over the entire film (quite literally), Cahill focuses more on the idea of second chances, how an alternate existence offers a chance for redemption. FOYS’ score is a blend of classically influenced piano and strings commingled with electronic drones and pulsing techno, which perfectly captures—even divorced from the images it was composed to accompany—the film’s blend of human drama, philosophical meditations and sci-fi otherworldliness. “Mike wanted us to focus on the emotional aspects of the story, always with a vague science fiction element to it,” explains Will Bates, one-half of the FOYS team. “We were just tipping our hat to the sci-fi without making it into a synth-laden tech score.” Cahill heard those elements in another piece the duo had recorded for an art installation. “It was beautiful,” the director recalls. “The sound was this organic, raw, electronic/classical pulasting, and somehow it encapsulated both the cold crispness of the science and the textured warmth of the human story. It was the perfect sonic feeling for the film.” While he gave them a generous amount of freedom,
photo courtesy Fox Searchlight Pictures TM and © 2011 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved.
movies Cahill says that he could trust the composers based on the level of communication they all shared. “We had this crazy synchronicity. We were speaking the same language even though one was the language of music and one was the language of story. Their choices were intuitive and thoughtful and not obvious, which I loved. I think they’re geniuses.” Bates, whose résumé includes stints as a film composer and a saxophonist for the likes of Roy Ayers, Paul McCartney and Marc Almond, formed Fall On Your Sword in 2008 with Philip Mossman, who scored Steven Soderbergh’s Out of Sight and Ocean’s Eleven alongside David Holmes, and spent five years as a member of LCD Soundsystem (recently rejoining the band for its final performances). The pair of British expats focused on the marriage of music and visuals, creating their viral videos and performing live against a backdrop of collaged footage. They quickly segued into the advertising realm, winning major awards for a commercial for Australian shoe company Nomis and scoring spots for VH1 and the stop-motion Danny Trejo Machete ad for Lipton Brisk Iced Tea (“and then I wash my hands”). Since cutting the ribbon on their Williamsburg studio a year and a half ago, they’ve taken the leap into feature films, beginning with Kitao Sakurai’s Aardvark, about a jiujitsu-fighting blind man. There are already three more films in the can to follow Another Earth. Their soundtrack album expands on the cues from the film, which Mossman describes as “possibly the most fun I’ve ever had in the studio. It was great once all the work was done to just revisit it and stretch it out. We just let it go wild, stepped outside of the movie, and watched it grow beyond what that was and become a record in its own right.” Of deciding on a sound palette for each particular project, Bates confesses that he and Mossman share an “unhealthy addiction to collecting old analog bits and pieces. There’s a store in the East Village that we go to, this crazy old man who sells weird instruments. We sometimes just go in there and pick an in-
“
strument that will be the basis of the score. We just did one that was more or less entirely done with a Suzuki Omnichord. But every project is different.” Despite the demands of shaping the music to the demands of film directors or corporate clients, Bates and Mossman insist that FOYS maintain an identity born of their conjoined sensibilities. Perhaps that’s best expressed in the puckish sense of humor, evident from videos where Michael Caine’s icy stare causes Meg Ryan’s When Harry Met Sally diner orgasm to the over-the-top operatic melodrama of a teaser for RuPaul’s Drag Race, and even to the dubstep inflections in their otherwise straight-faced Another Earth score. “I feel like Fall On Your Sword has evolved over the last year or so into a very unique individual sound that is the sum of both of our skills,” says Bates. “We’re both doing work that we wouldn’t be doing individually. I, for one, find myself being a little bit braver than I would be if I was on my own. We really push each other to explore and experiment.” More at fallonyoursword.com and anotherearth.com
There’s a store in the East Village that we go to, this crazy old man who sells weird instruments. We sometimes just go in there and pick an instrument that will be the basis of the score. We just did one that was more or less entirely done with a Suzuki Omnichord.” — Will Bates
NEEDLE
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movies
celluloid corral
This month’s best, worst, weirdest and wildest in home video entertainment by andrew bonazelli
Eastbound & Down: The Complete Second Season Not as many people dug the second season as the first, probably because the only member of the original supporting cast retained at length was its most obnoxious: Stevie. And we’ll grant them that—Stevie can be fucking soulcrushingly annoying. But that’s his raison d’être. Sometimes his bare ass cheeks will flap around at length, and you’ve just got to live with it. Anyway, as an exercise in anticomedy—namely occasionally making Kenny Powers as unlikeable as Ralph Fiennes in Schindler’s List—these seven episodes should age very, very well.
Your Highness Of course, not everything Danny McBride does is met with universal hell yeahs. Your Highness had a solid high concept, a great title, a surprisingly decorated cast (for a medieval stoner comedy) and a preview spotlighting Natalie Portman in a thong, yet it completely and utterly tanked. We’d like to tell you why, but it was out of theaters before we even had the chance to throw a tenner toward the losing cause. Maybe McBride’s just best consumed in bite-sized doses.
Two and a Half Men: The Complete Eighth Season Astonishingly, I’ve found myself doing something else all 177 times CBS has put a new episode of this show on the air. Some nights, I opted for relaxing drinks with friends. Other nights, an early slumber after a long day of work. Still other nights, trimming my toenails and attempting to floss with them. I have to say, I wouldn’t trade in a single day out of those 177. (Even though Charlie Sheen thoroughly redeemed everything stupid he’s ever done privately or professionally with his recent cnnsi.com Major League interview.)
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Super We’re in a particularly desolate stretch of our national superhero obsession. And while there’s nothing particularly original about Super’s conceit—a put-upon dork (Rainn Wilson) loses his girl to a criminal and suits up to do something about it—we can absolutely get behind the bluntness of said dork’s methodology: cracking perpetrators both insignificant and substantial in the face with a pipe wrench. This isn’t as subversive as its director thinks it is, but it at least succeeds as an uniquely unsettling portrayal of dementia and desperation.
if… Most cinephiles know this as the 1968 film that brought Malcolm McDowell to Kubrick’s attention for A Clockwork Orange, but it earns its Criterion tongue bath on its own merits. For a while, if… plays like a slightly darker precursor to Dead Poets Society, School Ties and the like, following a bunch of lads’ misadventures in an authoritarian ’60s U.K. prep school. Then it all unravels into—or naturally arrives at, depending on how skewed your perspective is— one of the most delightfully surreal and deranged finales of a decade rife with them.
photo by fred norris
/movies
to hurry along Armageddon so that a righteous kingdom can emerge from the ashes, the Brotherhood, naturally, in control. And one way to put some giddyup to the End of Days is to drop the vampire/zombie thingies from helicopters! (Except you only hear the helicopters and hear the thud of essay by Stan the falling thingies.) Michna How these hybrid thingies came into existence, or how the Brotherhood plans to youngster’s (Connor Paolo) family is eradicate them, who knows? Who cares? annihilated by bloodthirsty maraudAnd the reason you don’t know or care is ers. Said youngster is rescued by why Stake Land is such a welcome little wily, grizzled veteran of the war for surcatharsis from the real-life loony religious vival (called “Mister,” starring co-writer cults and vampire/zombie thingies who Nick Damici.) Aforementioned wily vet- dominate most of our institutions today. eran teaches youngster every trick of the (And don’t think Stake Land doesn’t killing-to-stay-alive trade. Their ultimate know it: virtually every scene is a pointed goal is to journey to a land of safety and metaphor for our increasingly dysfunctional world.) tranquility, here called New There’s much to admire in this Eden. Along the way? Dansmartly modulated (there are no ger, adventure, love, a couple of dull moments) gory little indie. laughs—best joke: New Eden is . . . Quebec!—and heaps of mutiFrom Paolo to horror diva Danielle lated bodies. Harris and Kelly McGillis (!)—who, So, yes: like Lord Of The unlike in Top Gun, doesn’t conRings and Little Miss Suntort her body to make herself look shine, director (and co-writer) shorter than Tom Cruise—the cast Jim Mickle’s Stake Land is a Stake Land will is uniformly commendable. road picture. Then again, not be released Best, though, is Nick Damici, Aug 2 by just any road picture. whose commanding presence is the Entertainment For one, the bloodthirsty One film’s great stabilizer (and fount of marauders are vampire/zombie thingies arcane scholarship on the myriad ways of who (which?) we soon learn in discarded slaughtering thingies). newspapers and AM car radios—surely Something else—and wondrous— too: half the film’s budget was found behind Damici looks eerily like (and seems to sofa cushions—have taken over not just pay homage to) the late, greatly underNew York, Washington and Possum, Mis- rated Warren Oates. And not just any old souri, but OMG! most of the world! Worse, Warren Oates, but Sam Peckinpah’s Warthis plague of monsters has been inflicted ren Oates from Bring Me The Head Of on the world by a loony neo-Nazi/Ku Klux Alfredo Garcia and especially The Wild Klan-y (their “robes” are made of brown Bunch (to both of which Stake Land burlap potato sacks) religious cult called bears a passing resemblance). Damici the Brotherhood. Their goal, I gather, is even wears an M1911 U.S. army service hat with the Montana crease, front brim flipped up, like Oates in The Wild Bunch. The giveaway—never mind drinking, smoking and dancing with (albeit WASP) señoritas—arrives when Damici exits a whorehouse and Paolo wonders aloud what the girl’s name was. Replies Damici: “I never asked.” Unvarnished Oates and little cloudbursts of Peckinpah. How can you not like Stake Land?
Stake Tartare A
Questions or comments? Email stan@sunriserecords.com 52
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The Furies NEGLECTED
CRITERION
1950 / Director
Anthony Mann
Why It’s Neglected: Not only because it’s a western—who went to see westerns in 1950?—but because it was noir meister Anthony Mann’s first western. Later that year, when Mann teamed up with James Stewart in Winchester 73, their first of five groundbreaking “adult” cowpoke collaborations, the filmgoing universe shifted. Then everyone went to see westerns. The Theme: Mann and novelist Niven Busch concurred that The Furies was a variation of Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot, in which decency is more honoured in the breach than in the observance. The biblical “Pride goeth before the fall” is also an acceptable generalization of the theme. But noir themes lingered in Mann’s bloodstream, and in The Furies there are enough dark sub-themes to have given Freud an erection. The Story: T.C. Jeffords (Walter Huston, in his last film) is master of all he surveys, a wealthy, domineering, widowed rancher who casts a pall of fear and loathing over all about him, including his milquetoast son and resentful Mexican cowhands and servants. Over all, that is, except his scheming, wilful daughter, Vance (Barbara Stanwyck), who aims to take over his empire. By the time T.C. is gunned downed, she’s reduced him to a humiliated shell, and is mistress of all she surveys. Truly her daddy’s daughter. What You Get: A gorgeous print; four outstanding performances; Franz Waxman’s dynamic score; and the first intimations of Mann’s signature trope of comparison between nature and psychology. Throw in a commentary track, three featurette interviews with Huston, Mann and his daughter and a booklet with a funny Mann interview. Plus: a trade paperback of Busch’s novel!
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AUGUST 2
4-Film Favorites: Steven Seagal (Under Siege, The Glimmer Man, Above the Law, Fire Down Below) Accused at 17 Animated Classics Collection Beast in Heat Triple Feature Bellydance Superstars: Bombay Bellywood – Live From Los Angeles Ben 10: Ultimate Alien – The Return of Heatblast Best of Storybook Classics Bittersweet Boston Strangler: Untold Story Breaking Point Carbon Nation Charlton Heston Collection: 4 Film Favorites (Troy, Alexander Director’s Cut, Clash of the Titans, Anthony and Cleopatra) Chuggington: It’s Training Time Classic Holiday Collection Vol. 1: 4 Film Favorites (Boys Town, A Christmas Carol, Christmas in Connecticut, The Singing Nun) Classic Holiday Classic Vol. 2: 4 Film Favorites (All Mine to Give, Holiday Affair, It Happened on 5th Avenue, Blossoms in the Dust Cold Weather Colony: Season 2 Con Artist Cougar Hunting Crazy for Cars Collection 2 Curious George: A Day at the Library Dancehall Gladiator Daughter of Death Deadmau5: Live @ Earl’s Court Lear Lemon Lima Denzel Washington Collection: 4 Film Favorites (Training Day, John Q, Fallen, The Pelican Brief) Doctor at Large Doctor at Sea Doctor in Clover Doctor in Distress Doctor in Love Doctor in the House Doctor in Trouble Eastbound & Down: The Complete Second Season Ed Sullivan: Rock ‘N’ Roll Revolution – English Invade America/America Fights Back Elvis: The Great Performances Boxed Set Epic Adventures Collection: 4 Film Favorites (Troy, Alexander Director’s Cut, Clash of the Titans, Antony & Cleopatra) Everwood: The Complete Fourth Season Evidence of a Haunting Exit 33 Exporting Raymond Ferris Beuller’s Day Off Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood Part 5 Gannin Arnold Project: 5 World Class Drummers Garrow’s Law: Series 2
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Ghastly Grabs 10 Ghastly Grabs 11 Going Postal Green Lantern: Emerald Knights Happy the Littlest Bunny/Maxwell Saves the Day Hell’s Kitchen: Season 5 Herculoids: The Complete Series Impact 911 Iris the Happy Professor Jackie Chan’s The Prisoner Jesse Stone: Innocents Lost Jetsons Meet the Flintstones Jewel: The Essential Live Songbook Joe Maddison’s War John JR Robinson: The Time Machine John Pinette: Still Hungry Last Night Least of These Little Cars Vol. 7: Revved and Ready to Go Little Mermaid/Pocahontas Loopdiver: The Journey of a Dance Maid Sama!: Collection 2 Manchester Fiesta 5th Anniversary Part 1 Manchester Fiesta 5th Anniversary Part 2 Masters of Terror Max Fleischer Cartoon Collector’s Series Maya Midnight Horror Collection Vol. 1 Midnight Horror Collection Vol. 2 Midnight Horror Collection Vol. 3 Midnight Horror Collection: Vampires MLB: Minnesota Magic – Remembering the Minnesota Twins 1991 World Series Championship Music Never Stopped Mystery Science Theater 3000: XXI – MST3K vs. Gamera Nicholas Sparks Collection: 4 Film Favorites (Nights in Rodanthe, The Notebook, Message in a Bottle, A Walk to Remember) Nicki Minaj: Romans Revenge Outside the Law Perfect Game Pie in the Sky: Series 5 Pinocchio/Heidi Pit and the Pendulum (1991) Pure Country 2: The Gift Quarantine 2: Terminal Raw Feed Horror: 4 Film Favorites (Dead Ahead/Rest Stop Don’t Look Back/Sublime/Believers) Revolutionary Girl Utena: The Black Rose Saga Set 2 Rio Robin Hood/The Three Musketeers Samantha Brown’s Passport to Great Weekends: Collection 3 Sands of the Kalahari Sci-Fi Collection: 4 Film Favorites (Contact/Lost in Space/Sphere/ Red Planet) Sci-Fi Collector’s Set Vol. 17 Screaming Man Sesame Street: Learning Letters With Elmo Soul Surfer Soundstage: Heart – Live Soundstage Presents: Sheryl Crow – Live Stake Land Steel Pulse: Introspective Storm Chasers: Season 3 – Let Chaos Ensue Streetwalkin’ Strigoi Super Hero Squad Show: The Infinity Gauntlet – Season 2, Vol. 1 To Walk With Lions Tortilla Flat Tracy Morgan: Black and Blue Tsubasa: Season Two
Aug 2 Tracy Morgan:
Black and Blue
Yay, new Tracy Morgan stand-up! Would you call the riff about how he’d “pull out a knife and stab” his son if he were gay his “A material” or just “Tracy being Tracy”? [HBO}
UFC 130: Rampage vs. Hamill United States of Tara: The Third Season Vampires Collection: 4 Film Favorites (The Lost Boys/Lost Boys: The Tribe/Lost Boys: The Thirst/Queen of the Damned) Vs. the Dead Wess Morgan: Under an Open Heaven Who Killed Chea Vichea? World War II: 1939-1945 WWII Mega Pack Yellowbrickroad Zen: Vendetta/Cabal/Ratking AUGUST 9
Ah! My Goddess: The Complete Second Season Algerian War 1954-1962: Algeria – Roots of War 1830-1955 Algerian War 1954-1962: Algeria – The Final Showdown 1960-1962 Algerian War 1954-1962: Crisis in France – The Return of De Gaulle 1956-1960 Anatomy of Loe Bass Hawgin’ & Snapper CHummin’ Bikini Girls on Ice Brinde Con Sangre Brujos Contra Chamanes Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff Camp Hell Choose Clash Clinic Dave Liebman Big Band: As Always Doctor Who: Paradise Towers Doctor Who: The Sunmakers Dov Davidoff: Filthy Operation Dream Home Duck & Deer Huntin’ Evil Things Executioners From Shaolin Family Adventure Vol. 2 Family Drama Triple Feature Five Shaolin Masters Forensic Files: Convictions Overturned Forensic Files: Crimes of Passion
Forensic Files: Death by Poison Forensic Files: Historic Cases Forensic Files: Kidnapping Cases Forensic Files: Medical Mysteries Forensic Files: Serial Killers Forensic Files: Sex Crimes Fox and the Hound/Fox and the Hound II Franklin: The Best of Franklin Frat House Massacre Fritz Von Runte: Bowie 2001 – A Space Oddity Gordon Giltrap & Raymond Burley: Double Vision in Vision Guerra Callejera Collection Gunless Hallelujah Gospel Head Rush Here Piggy Piggy Hey Arnold: Season One Holiday Magic House of the Dead I (Almost) Got Away With it Jack Hunter: The Quest for Akhenaten’s Tomb James Ellroy’s L.A.: City of Demons Jefferson Starship: Soiled Dove Jug Fishin’ Made Simple Jumping the Broom Kobato: Collection 1 Last Godfather Lifted Llena De Amor M.A.S.K. Vol. 1 M.A.S.K.: The Complete Series Mad Monkey Kung Fu Mars Needs Moms Marvin Hamlisch Presents: The ‘70s – The Way We Were Mission Demolition Nighttime Bowfishin’ Noir: The Complete Collection Otoboku: Maidens Are Falling for Me – Complete Collection Pardoner’s Tale Pasion Morena Paul Polo Polo: Vip, VOl. 2 Quails, Hogs, Dogs & Frogs Raging Boll Rednecks Do Mexico Saving Grace Season to Remember Secret Diary of a Call Girl: The Final Season Shake Shaolin Temple 3: Martial Arts of Shaolin Soul Eater Parts 3 & 4 Southern Doves & Squirrel Doggin’ Spirit of Christmas Super Susie Tallman and Friends: Come On, Let’s Go Tactical Force Tales of the Abyss Part 1 Tenant Top Gear: The Complete Season 16 TV’s Cops & Private Eyes Ultimate Wildlife: Animal Adaptation Ultimate Wildlife: Animal Diversity Ultimate Wildlife: Animal Intelligence Ultimate Wildlife: Carnivores Ultimate Wildlife: Nature’s Rhythms Ultimate Wildlife: Ultimate Planet Unanswered Prayers Violencia En La Frontera Warriors of the Apocalypse Webster: Season Three What On Earth? Inside the Crop Circle Mystery SWide Open Wiggles: Ukelele Baby Yo Gabba Gabba: Music Makes Me Move Your Highness
AUGUST 16
After Agent 8 Arctic Blast Bang Bang Club Batman: The Brave and the Bold – Season Two Part One Best and the Brightest Bob the Builder: Super Scrambler Breaking Glass Breath Campbell’s Kingdom Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That! Tricks and Treats Chato’s Kitchen… And More Stories to Celebrate Spanish Heritage Colossus of New York Conspirator Cul-De-Sac Curious George Rides a Bike… And Five More Stories Cut-Throats Nine/Joshua Damn! Dave Grohl: The Man With the Midas Touch David Holzman’s Diary Dead Can Dance: Toward the Within Death Stop Holocaust Dexter: Season The Fifth Season Double Life of Veronique Dumbek With Jonathan Kessler Elvira’s Movie Macabre: Eegah Elvira’s Movie Macabre: The Brain That Wouldn’t Die/The Manster Everyone Loves Mel Fanboy & Chum Chum: Brain Freeze Gone Grace Card Gruffalo Hanna’s Gold Hero: 108 – Season 1, Vol. 2 Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil Horatio Hornblower: The Further Adventures Idiots and Angels Ill Met by Moonlight Jane Eyre (2011) John Carpenter’s The Ward Just Us Killing Lavell Crawford: Can a Brother Get Some Love? Life After Django Reinhardt Little Senegal Lizard Boy Lulu Magic Flute Man Who Walked Between the Towers… And More Inspiring Tales Mark Kozelek On Tour Maryland Deathfest:T eh Movie II Medium Raw Meet Monica Velour Monster Bug Wars Must Love Cats Nexus: The Drug Conspiracy Night of Bloody Horror Night Raid 1931: Complete Collection Outcasts Priest Proper Violence Queen to Play Radiohead: Life on Demand Reality Star Seaman’s Fantasy September 11: Memorail Edition Shark Gordon: The Ultimate Shark Collection Smile Smoke Screen Somebody Help Me 2 Something Borrowed Spin City: The Complete Fifth Season Spot Goes to School Stoney/The Killer Likes Candy Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam
Aug 23 ESPN Films 30 for 30: The Fab Five
This polarizing documentary about Michigan’s ’90s hoops heroes touches some sensitive, volatile ground in exploring the rivalry between UM and Duke’s AfricanAmerican players. [Team Marketing]
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Season 9 Thomas Hardy Collection Vanity Fair Voltron: The Saga Begins AUGUST 23
4 Family Movies: Family Heartwarmers Absent Father Alfred Hitchcock: A Legacy of Suspense All Pro Sports Football Series Vol. 1 All Pro Sports Football Series Vol. 2 Angry Beavers: Seasons 1 & 2 Apocalypse 2012: The World After Time Ends Assassins Creed: Lineage Bambi II Battle New York: Day 2 Bea: Definitive Newsreel History 1946-1974 Beaver Best of Global Lens: Brazil Best of Jack Benny Betty White Collection: America’s Funny Lady Beverly Hillbillies: Meet the Clampetts Beyblade: Metal Fusion Vol. 4 Big Gay Love Collector’s Set Big Lesbian Love Collector’s Set Blade/Ring of Death Bleeding House Blitz Blues and the Alligator: The First Twenty Years of Alligator Records Boac: Definitive Newsreel History 1939-74 Bonanza: Adventures With the Cartwrights Britain’s Railways: Golden Era of the Big Four Brothers and Sisters: The Complete Fifth Season By the Devil’s Hand: The 666 Killer Calamari Wrestler Chamelon Chet Baker: Candy Christian Traveler Citizen Jane
Classic U.S. Combat Aircraft of WWII: P-51 Mustang Closed for the Season Cold Fish Dalai Lama: A Practical Way of Directing Love and Compassion Dalai Lama: Contentment, Joy and Living Well Dear Uncle Adolf: The Germans and their Fuhrer Deray Davis: Power Play Dinosaur Train: Dinosaur Big City Dirty South Movement: Little Jon & Three 6 Mafia Dual Survival Ermerson, Lake & Palmer: 40th Anniversary Reunion Concert ESPN Films 30 for 30: The Fab Five Event: The Complete Series Eves Family TV Classics Florida Road Followed Home Garfield Show: Spooky Tails Godfather Squad/Bruce’s Last Battle Gossip Girl: The Complete Fourth Season Greatest Movie Ever Sold Haunting in Salem Henry’s Crime Heroes of the Old West High Cost of Living Hostage House of Fallen How It’s Made: Sports How the Toys Saved Christmas I Will Follow In Search of Santa Jesus Lizard: Club John Wayne: The Tribute Collection Johnny Carson: Late Night Legend Hump Offs Jumpin Jim’s Ukelele Workshop Kanye West & Pharrell: Super Producers in Hip-Hop Kenny Chesney: Boys of Fall Legend of Rin Tin Tin: America’s Favorite Canine Hero Little Big Soldier Little Matchmaker Live From Tokyo Lucy: A Legacy of Laughter Marriage Retreat Meteor Storm Miami Ink: The Complete Collection NCIS: Los Angeles – The Second Season NCIS: The Eighth Season Neds New Adventures of Captain Amazing-Lad Newsreel History of the Third Reich 16-20 Off the Map: The Complete Series PBS Explorer Collection: Stargazing PBS Explorer Collection: The Red Planet Peeping Blog Peter Erskine: Everything I Know – A Work in Progress Peter, Paul and Mary: 25th Anniversary Concert Phineas and Ferb: The Movie – Across the 2nd Dimension Poetry Prime Suspect 1 Prime Suspect 2 Psych: The Complete Third Season Psych: The Complete Fourth Season Remembering 9/11 Road to Nowhere Robert Plant’s Blue Note Roger Corman Cult Classics: Sword and Sorcery Collection Roger Corman’s Cult Classics: The Women in Cages Collection Rounders Rowan Atkinson Presents: Canned Laughter Sam Henry Kass Show Episode 1
Samurai Girls: Complete Collection Secret Societies and Sacred Stones: From Mecca to Megaliths Secret Sunshine Sgt. Frog: Season Three Part 2 Shaman & Ayahuasca Shark Men: Season Two Shirley Temple: Everyone’s Little Princess Shockorama: The William Beaudine Collection Sistas of R&B: Hip-Hop Soul – Keshia Cole & Mary J. Blige Snoop Dogg & Ice Cube: Gangsta Rap Icons Sonic Rock Solstice 2010 Sons of Guns Spymate Steamy Art House Hits Stick It Stone: No Soul Unturned Super Hybrid Sympathy for Delicious Tassili Textuality TNA Wrestling: Sacrifice 2011/ Slammiversary 2011 To Die Like a Man Tom and Jerry & The Wizard of Oz Tracker Troll Hunter UFC 131: DOS Santos vs. Carwin Upstairs Downstairs: Series Four Wainwright Walks: Lake District Warped World of Koreyoshi Kurahara Where the Boys Are ‘84 Women of Courage: Stories of Faith and Love Wrong Side of the Bus WWE: The 50 Most Shocking, Surprising, Amazing Moments in WWE History Wyatt Cenac: Comedy Person Zoot Sims: In a Sentimental Mood AUGUST 30
2 Fast 2 Furious 5th Quarter 90210: The Third Season Adrenaline Rush American Family Andre Rieu: An Unforgettable Evening With Andre Rieu Angelina Ballerina: Shining Star Trophy Asylum Seekers Atomic City Back to the Future: 25th Anniversary Trilogy Beneath the Mississippi B:ereavment Big Box of Zombies BKO: Bangkok Knockout Blackmail Boys Breaking News, Breaking Down Cagney and Lacey: Together Again Carmen Cell 211 Cherry Children of the Corn Cigarette Girl of Mosselprom Claudio Arrau: The Two Romantics Coffin Complete Jean Vigo Cougar Town: Complete 2nd Season Daguerrotypes Death of a Cheerleader Defenders: The First Season Desperate Housewives: The Complete Seventh Season Detroit 1-8-7: The Complete Series Devil’s Teardrop Doc Martin: The Movies Dora the Explorer: Dora’s Ballet Adventures Dora the Explorer: Dora’s Halloween Adventures Esa=Pekka Salonen: In Rehearsal – Los Angeles Philharmonic
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AUGUST 2
Soul of New Orleans Proud to Be here White Crosses The Suburbs CD/DVD Icky Mettle Devoured Trees & Crystal Skies Battlecross Pursuit of Honor Bitch Be My Slave Rick Braun Sings With Strings Richard Buckner Our Blood Buffalo Killers 3 Louise Burns Mellow Drama Bury Your Dead Mosh N’ Roll Butterfly Messiah Eternal The Calm Blue Sea The Calm Blue Sea Greyson Chance Hold On’ Til the Night Dave Cloud & Gospel … Practice in the Milky Way Coll… Colonies of Bees Giving Johnny Cooper Live at the Pub II Denial Fiend Horror Holocaust Dawn Desiree Dancing, Dreaming, Longing Dir En Grey Dum Spiro Spero Diva The Glitter End DJ Raff Latino & Proud Drive-By Truckers Greatest Hits 1998-2009 The Ettes Wicked Will Every Avenue Bad Habits Excruciator Devouring Extraord. Popular … Apocryphal Fire in the Warehouse Flourishing The Sum of All Fossils Fountains of Wayne Sky Full of Holes Fruit Bats Tripper Kenio Fuke Relaxing Melodies of Nature John Gold A Flower in Your Head John Hiatt Dirty Jeans and Mudslide Hymns Justin Hines Days to Recall John Holt Stick by Me Hope I Die Virgin Is Forever No Way Immersed In the Ire of Creation It Prevails Stroma Mat Kearny Young Love Keb Mo The Reflection Daniel Knox Evryman For Himself Last Winter Heart & Broken Compass Malefice Awaken the Tides Manraze Punkfunkrootsrock Mariachi El Bronx Mariachi El Bronx Woody McBride Adven. in Deep Techno Vol. 1 S McClain & K Reier… One Drop Is Plenty Joe McPhee Survival Synchronicity Memories of Machines Warm Winter Mephisto Walz Insidious Moonface Organ Music Not Vibraphone Like I’d Hoped Musikanto Sky of Dresses Naturally 7 Christmas: A Love Story Nekromantix What Happens in Hell, Stays in Hell Tig Notaro Good One O.A.R. King Pestilence Doctrine John Pinette Still Hungry Powerwolf Blood of the Saints Racebannon Six Sik Sisters D Rodigan’s Dubwize … Dave Rodigan’s Dubwize Shower Sanchez Love You More Ximena Sarinana Ximena Sarinana Kenny W Shepherd How I Go Soil Bleeds Black Alchemie Soil Bleeds Black Quintessence Somi Live at Jazz Standard Soundtrack Super 8 Johnny Adams Trace Adkins Against Me! Arcade Fire Archers of Loaf Aristillus
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Southbound Fearing The Prophecy Positively 4th Avenue Monsters II Jesse Sykes & Sweet … Marble Son Paul Thorn Mission Temple Fireworks… Unkind Harhakuvat Uriah Heep Official Bootleg 3: Live in Kawasaki Japan Various Artists Americana Rock Your Blue Eyed Soul Various Artists Slow Grind Victorious Cast Feat… Victorious: Music From the Hit TV Show Violet Tears Cold Memories & Remains Viva Brother Famous First Words Wake the Light Leave It All Behind Jim Ward Quiet in the Valley, on the Shores the End Begins The Wood Brothers Smoke Ring Halo Southbound Fearing Sovereign Strength Sun Wizard Swollen Members
AUGUST 9
Reverberation 2 Strong If You Feel Like Dancin’ Der Verborgene Blood Sweat The Story: The Interviews Fingers Everything A Real Elegant Gypsy Wake Up Jam We Live in Paradise Time of Your Life Ben Me Shape Me Hello Suzie High in the Sky Almost Grown Night Time Is the Right … Raw Animals Dust to Dust Snacktime Very Famous Dub Album Ain’t That Lovin’ You Hook, Line and Sinker Africa Tailgates & Tanlines A Wilder Alias I’m Gonna Make You Mine Kingdom of the Blind Shout for Freedom The Complete Reunion Concert 1994 Contro Trio Connection Steve Cropper Dedicated Culture Club Miss Me Blind: Greatest Hits Live Desmond Dekker Gimme Gimme Der Moderne Man Unmodern Plus Diamond Plate Generation Why? Dillinger Some Like It Hot Mickey Dolenz Plastic Surgery Dom Family of Love Dr. John New Orleans Man Dream On Dreamer Heartbound Drive A The World in Shambles Alton Ellis All My Tears ELO Part II Can’t Get You Out of … ELO Part II Last Train to London ELO Part II Rockar Eyes Set to Kill White Lotus Chris Farlowe Ride On Baby Gary Farr & T-Bones Rarities Joe Farrell Outback Ferrer, Rossi, Mag… Tango Fire + Ice Midwinter Fires Fleshgod Apocalypse Agony Michael Franzini Out of a Logical Choice Franzini, Ajmar, Ran… Franzini, Ajmar, Rantzer, Pint Orlandi Gamba Remembering Nino Rota Gangsterstory The Double Life Mickey Gilley Stand by Me Glee Cast Glee the 3D Concert Movie Golden Palominos Celluloid Collection Gong Opium for the People Great Kat Beethoven Shreds 13th Floor Elevators 2 Strong 94 East Art Abscons Ace Hood Adele Airto Francesca Ajmar Jan Akkerman Dennis Alcapone Alev Daevid Allen Amen Corner Amen Corner Amen Corner Animals Animals Animals Ginger Baker Barenaked Ladies Michael Ian Black Black Uhuru Ken Boothe Neville Brothers Dennis Brown Luke Bryan Jackie Cain & R Kral Lou Christie Cipher Jimmy Cliff Colosseum
Bury Your Dead Aug 2
Mosh N’ Roll It’s been five years since the kids cared about this Masshole metalcore wrecking crew, but that hasn’t stopped former barker Mat Bruso from rejoining the jud-jud fray. [Mediaskare]
Greeley Estates Death of Greeley Estates Luther Grosvenor If You Dare Grown Up Avenger … Disagreements With Gravity Gruppo Z Live in China Gucci Mane & Waka… 1017 Bricksquad Presents… Ferrari Boyz Woodie Guthrie Great Dust Storm Woodie Guthrie Old Time Religion Woodie Guthrie Vigilante Man Haunted Heads Songs Playing Hawkwind Urban Guerilla Buddy Holly Raining in My Heart Buddy Holly True Love Ways John Holt Just the Two of Us The Horrors Skying Humble Pie Home and Away I Roy From the Top John Illsley Glass John Illsley Never Told a Soul John Illsley Streets of Heaven Indestructible Noise… Heaven Sent… Hellbound Into It. Over It Twelve Towns Gregory Isaacs Let Me Be the One Gregory Isaacs My Day Will Come Gregory Isaacs Steal a Little Love Johnny & Hurricanes Beat Johnny & Hurricanes Hot Johnny & Hurricanes Rock Jeff Johnson Shine Karmakanic In a Perfect World Ke/Hil Hellstation Carole King Best Is Yet to Come Carole King Crying in the Rain Kites With Lights Cosmonauts Krystal System Nucelar Little Richard Baby Face Little Richard Rip It Up Little Richard She’s Got It M.E.F. Verosimlmente Magma Uber Kommandoh Marillion Marbles Marillion Somewhere Else Bob Marley African Herbsman Bob Marley Concrete Rebel Bob Marley Dub Collection Bob Marley Keep On Skanking Bob Marley Natural Mystic Bob Marley Rainbow Country Bob Marley Small Axe Bob Marley Thank You Lord Bob Marley Touch Me Bob Marley Trench Town Rock Bob Marley Volume 1 Marc Maron This Has to Be Funny Elam McKnight Zombie Nation The Meters A Message … Meters Guy Mitchell Music Music Music Guy Mitchell One by One Guy Mitchell Singing the Blues Ricardo Moraes Live at Bird’s Jazz Club Van Morrison Here Comes
! S I H T R E V O DISCew Albums You Need… Four N
THOMAS DYBDAHL SONGS
Multi-award winning Norwegian singer-songwriter Thomas Dybdahl releases his North American debut album Songs, an intimate album of lush, intricately orchestrated pop where “each song has the delicate suspense of a drawn breath” (NY Times). The album is released via, Strange Cargo, a new label created by multiple Grammy-winner and famed producer, Larry Klein (Joni Mitchell, Tracy Chapman, Herbie Hancock). Named by Q Magazine as “one of the most talented singer-songwriters from the Norwegian scene,” Dybdahl’s songs linger with a controlled intensity that have drawn comparisons to Jeff Buckley, Ray LaMontagne and David Gray. Album highlights include the lead single, “Cecilia,” which ourishes in echoing slide guitars along with Dybdahl’s weightless, breathy vocals; “From Grace,” a gorgeous pop song underscored by plucky acoustic bass and “All Is Not Lost,” which ickers with Dybdahl’s earthy tenor and chugging guitars, dissolving into a hazy instrumental. A must listen for any true music fan. Available Now.
NATALIA KILLS PERFECTIONIST
Perfectionist is the debut album by Natalia Kills. Signed and discovered by will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas, Perfectionist is a genre-bending pop record. The album features the singles “Free” feat will.i.am, and “Wonderland & Mirrors.” With her unique, dark electro-pop sound and image, Natalia Kills is force to be reckoned with in the music scene. Available August 16.
VIVA BROTHER FAMOUS FIRST WORDS
Celebrated producer Stephen Street, who helmed inuential recordings by both the Smiths and Blur, approached VIVA BROTHER after hearing a batch of the quartet’s songs. Famous First Words adds to that venerable list of Street-produced British classics. It’s a ten-track opus of glittering brevity, a pop rock uppercut for a generation of texting teens, their faces up out of their phone screens, mouths wide open and chanting in unied sing-a-longs. The debut album includes the rst single “Darling Buds of May.” Available August 2.
DANIEL WESLEY EASY LIVIN’
Daniel Wesley, the rock-reggae singer/songwriter and guitarist from Vancouver, has released his fth studio album Easy Livin’. Recorded in both Toronto and Vancouver, Wesley co-produced seven tracks on the album with Dave “Rave” Ogilvie (Skinny Puppy, Marilyn Manson, Jakalope) and three with Greig Nori (Sum 41, Hedley, Marianas Trench). Easy Livin’ features collaborations from Bedouin Soundclash’s Eon Sinclair and Sekou Lumumba, and Dave Vertesi of Hey Ocean! The album includes Wesley’s rst single, “Head Outta Water,” complete with gales of electric guitar, ten-storey drums, and a classic sts-in-the-air stadium breakdown. Available Now.
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Preacher Stroll on With the Yardbirds Live on Air
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Conan the Barbarian Aug 16
Original Motion Picture Score Just as this remake has a lot of work to do to match the Schwarzenegger original, the soundtrack must try to equal a truly iconic predecessor. The lack of Linkin Park is a start. [Warner Bros]
A Song From Me Anyway Fearless The Best Of You Better Run Songs for Other People Leave No Trace Transformation BBC Sessions Defender Fresh Evidence Wheels Within Wheels Adimiron Black The Ornament Of the DEays Hardboiled Wonderland As Small as a World as Large as Alone Hercules & Love Affair Blue Songs Hexantanz Nekrocrafte Hibria Blind Ride Hipower Ent Presents Hoodtimes Music Hipower Ent Presents Summertime Party Music Hipower Ent Presents Hipower Soldiers Triple Up Hotel Lights Girl Graffiti Impiety Skullfucking Armageddon Kamuela & South Sea… Blue Hawaii P Kanter & Wooden … Live at Sweewater 1991 Karthago Rock & Roll Testament The Konsortium The Konsortium L.A. Guns Ultimate Guns and Vision Last Call Stay on the Outside Layzie Bone It’s Not a Game Dan Levy Congrats on Your Success The Mahones Tribute: Whiskey Devils John Martyn Tribute: Johnny Boy Would Love This The Masonics In Your Night of Dreams PaulMcCartney Chaos and Creation Mister Heavenly Out of Love Muzzaik Nervous Nitelife Natalia Kills Perfectionist Nectar Sunday Night at London Roundhouse New Villager New Villager The Nylons Fabric of Life The Nylons Play On The Nylons Skin Tight The Nylons Wish for You Daniel O’Donnell Live From Nashville Offending Human Concept Ollabelle Neon Blue Bird Graham Parker ‘80s Reverb Rules OK Graham Parker Box of Bootlegs Vol. 2 Parson Red Heads Yearling Psychostick Space Vampires Vs. Zombie Dinosaurs in 3D Revocation Chaos of Forms Cliff Richard Move I The Routes Alligator Slaine A World With No Skies 2.0 Somerdale Brighter Than Before Soundtrack Conan the Barbarian Soundtrack Drive Soundtrack Fright Night Soundtrack The Devil’s Double Sovereign Strength Reflections Stand Your Ground Despondenseas Sly Stone I’m Back! Family & Friends Tame Impala Innerspeaker Maria Taylor Overlook Ten out of Tenn Volume #4 Thorns Thorns Today Is the Day Pain Is a Warning Tommy Tutone A Long Time Ago UGK The Bigtyme Way V8 Wankers Iron Crossroads Victorian Halls Charlatan Virgin Steele Noble Savage Voices of Extreme Break the Silence Wagons Rumble, Shake and Tumble Jerry Jeff Walker Jerry Jeff Walker Plus The War on Drugs Slave Ambient White Arms of Athena Astrodrama Astrid Williamson Pulse Warren Wolf Warren Wolf Yellow Ostrich The Mistress Eli Young Band Life at Best Z-Ro Straight Profit Family Family Family Merrell Fankhauser Billy C. Farlow Filthybird Fool’s Gold Eric Gales Rory Gallagher Rory Gallagher Rory Gallagher Rory Gallagher Gehenna Gold Leaves Grey Reverend
Heralded as a modern day mix of the Small Faces, The Who, Led Zeppelin and The Kinks.
PRESSURE & TIME OUT NOW!
ALSO AVAILABLE RANDOM AXE Random Axe
JASTA Jasta
PETE ROCK / SMIF N’ WESSUN
REVOCATION Chaos Of Forms
Legendary Weapons
SLAINE
SWOLLEN MEMBERS
THE DANGEROUS SUMMER
Monumental
A World With No Skies 2.0
Monsters II
Marketed & Distributed in Canada by Entertainment One Canada
WU-TANG
War Paint
For his brand new release 2120 South Michigan Avenue, Thorogood offers a full-length homage to the label that bred his style with interpretations of 10 Chess classics. The album also includes original tributes to the Windy City and Chess’ crucial songwriter-producer-bassist Willie Dixon, penned by Thorogood, producer Tom Hambridge, and Richard Fleming, plus a cranked-up version of the Stones’ titular instrumental. Produced by Tom Hambridge, the album also includes featured guests Buddy Guy and Charlie Musselwhite! … this is the album George Thorogood was born to make!
R.E.M. ’s ‘LIFES RICH PAGEANT’
Remastered And Expanded For 25Th Anniversary Edition
The new edition features the digitally remastered original album, plus 19 previously unreleased demo recordings cut prior to the album’s studio sessions ! This 2CD package is presented in a lift-top box with a poster and four postcards. “The Athens Demos,” as R.E.M. has dubbed them, comprise the new edition’s second disc of 19 previously unreleased recordings, including drafts of Pageant’s 12 songs, plus additional demos of songs including early versions of “Bad Day,” “Rotary Ten,” “Two Steps Onward,” “Mystery To Me,” “All The Right Friends,” and “March Song (King Of Birds),” an early instrumental version of “King Of Birds” from Document, and one track, “Wait,” that has never before been officially released by R.E.M. in any form, but it has shown up on bootlegs over the years.
ED SULLIVAN PRESENTS
Rock ’N Roll Revolution (DVD)
THE BRITISH INVADE AMERICA AMERICA FIGHTS BACK In February, 1964, The Beatles landed on Ed Sullivan’s stage and our world changed forever. The so-called “British Invasion” took America by storm with bands such as The Rolling Stones, The Hollies, and Herman’s Hermits! How did America respond? They met the British head on with groups like The Beach Boys, The Mamas and Papas, The Byrds and groundbreaking artists like Bob Dylan and James Brown. Timeless live performances coupled with insightful interviews from the musicians themselves tell the story behind the music that changed our lives.
ELVIS PRESLEY
THE GREAT PERFORMANCES This 2 DVD set captures Elvis’ undeniable physical appeal and unrivalled artistic brilliance. From his first performance that shocked a nation to just weeks before his death, Elvis’ captivating stage presence and irresistible charisma are evident in every frame of film.