Digest - The Morning News

Listening • One of the Beautiful

“Regarding our absence, sometimes one needs to disappear in order to regroup; situations change and human beings are swept here and there by the marvelous ebb and flow of culture.” Such is the explanation—noticeably void of definitives, of real cause and effect—posted on the Voxtrot website. This is clearly a different age and time, when a brief two year interlude between the release of their self-titled debut album and a performance at their hometown’s SXSW festival demands an explanation, an excuse note. Such a hiatus, perfectly understandable in decades past, now seems to imply a tragedy, or, if nothing else, an imposition on hungry listeners.

Listen, Voxtrot: It’s ok. Shit happens, right? Not everyone can walk in your shoes. We’re just happy to find this new single, produced by that dude from Spoon, manifesting itself on our blog-trolling radar. It’s a nervous song, pregnant with suspicion and expectation. The mix of live piano and raggedly enveloped keyboard (Casiotone? If I’m not mistaken?) is a fitting juxtaposition, reflecting what was both lost and gained by your absence. The lyrics seem to weave around the same themes, but in a linear fashion, a sine wave progressing, swirling along the x-axis, drilling a hole in our heads. —Erik Bryan, Mar. 18, 2009

» Listen to "Trepanation Party" at My Old Kentucky Blog

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Listening • Dance Til You’re Dead

Under most circumstances, a tonal shift in a band’s entire sound is a signal of desperation. Perhaps they are past their prime, perhaps they aren’t selling out the same venues they used to. But sometimes it’s the sign of a truly restless creativity, one that informs a scorched earth policy toward their past success. It’s certainly the more dangerous approach, but it can lead to brilliant rewards for faithful listeners (cf. Radiohead, circa 2000). Such is the case for the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs album, It’s Blitz!

Gone are Nick Zinner’s mercilessly screeching guitar, gone are Brian Chase’s frenetic drum fills, but, strangely, it still feels like the same Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The attitude that propelled their first album, Fever to Tell, to nearly instant ubiquity is intact, and, if anything, Karen O.’s voice is more refined and suited to this bold new venture. Some will decry the almost total wash of synthesizers over the duration of the album, but this can easily be seen as a plus as it gives the band a fuller range of sounds and tools to experiment with in their quest to put feet on the floor. However, saying that the album is “experimental” is not really accurate. Granted, it’s a departure of sorts for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but firing straight for the heart of New Wave dance pop is hardly a gamble in these deeply nostalgic, dance-friendly times. You will hit your mark.

The entire album was made available digitally yesterday on the band’s site. While there, check out the super-fun video for album opener, “Zero.” Linked below is the mildly darker second track, “Heads Will Roll,” in which Karen O. assumes a Queen of Hearts brutality toward the dancefloor. —Erik Bryan, Mar. 11, 2009

» Listen to "Heads Will Roll" at Stererogum

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Listening • Xylopholks

Last week, amid a crush of evening commuters, I stood slackjawed on the L train platform and witnessed what I could only assume were two grown men, one in a blue Cookie Monster-ish costume, the other a pink gorilla [turns out it was Jon Singer and Bridget Kearney—ed.], playing rollicking ragtime on a xylophone and a stand-up bass, respectively. Quite apart from the spectacle, what was most impressive was how accomplished this duo is, both clearly masters of their instruments despite the movement-encumbering shaggy costumes they performed beneath. Heavy is the head that wears a Muppet.

They call themselves Xylopholks, and though the linked YouTube clip can give an idea of seeing and hearing them, nothing could have prepared me for the uncontrollable smile that forced itself onto my face that night. They are an artistic assault on the sensory order of nitrous oxide. I don’t care that they’ll never win a Grammy or show up on MTV or probably even record a full album. As a random burst of amiable strangeness, so particular to New York City, they are perfection. They also play parties. —Erik Bryan, Mar. 9, 2009

» Listen to "The Moon My Gun My Baby" at the band's MySpace

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Listening • We Are All Made of Stars

You don’t realize how far you’ve come, how insignificant you are, until you look up and remember—oh yeah! There are things called stars! Two hundred stars are born every second, filling me with the sort of hope too big to be printed across a nation. Stars don’t rise and set—it’s us who blanks them out. And it’s us who links them with lines of light trillions of miles across, making constellations worshipping gods of old.

The Constellations are two bands, both of whom I discovered on the same day. Are they the same band? Oh Zeus! I wish. One featured on Said The Gramophone, and they have a song called “Oh Captive Princess.” It’s funky, with hundreds of bulbs flashing on intermittently, helping the plants grow as the gardeners drum their fingers on the watering can, wait to feed on the fruit, and begin the whole process again. Enjoying the band so much, I searched more and found another song by The Constellations called “Love Is A Murder” featured on Stereogum. (The song is in the comments.) The song features a cameo from Cee-Lo, one half of Gnarls Barkley. (I think he’s the Gnarls, and Dangermouse represents the Barkley.) It’s one of those songs I listen to 50 times in 24 hours. Instead of flourishing fruit think feasting on burgers grilled on hot-rod hoods before the big race.

Are they the same band? Could be. How will you tell them apart? How do you tell the stars apart? I don’t. I just listen, watch, and the read the sky, allowing other people’s lines to link everything up into a sometimes good, sometimes bad whole. What is art, except drawing a line somewhere? —Mike Smith, Mar. 6, 2009

» Listen to "Oh Captive Princess" at Said the Gramophone

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Listening • Ram On

Settling Scores

According to McCartney, only two lines on Ram were aimed at John Lennon: "Too many people preaching practices" and "You took your lucky break and broke it in two." [via]

As anyone who’s been to the movies recently, or listened to a radio, or watched another stale episode of supposedly edgy satire (SNL? Family Guy? Fill in the blank?) has surely noticed, our cultural arts could now persist for eons untold in a state of half-wakefulness, cannibalizing the more salient aspects of previous human endeavors to continually replicate something new out of something cherished. A self-selecting mash-up, an autochthonous reinterpretation, a covers album. The pertinent question being, yeah, so what? Where’s the problem?

Out of Los Angeles comes a particularly strong argument for putting our creative efforts on auto-pilot: a loose collection of Angeleno musicians covering Paul McCartney’s second (and best) solo album, Ram, has been curated by the folks over at Aquarium Drunkard, with requests for donations to No More Landmines. The original work (recorded, it bears snarky mentioning, in NYC) proved definitively that McCartney could not only succeed but shine following the break-up of the Beatles (a break-up that some of us late-twenty-somethings are still just coming to terms with). The new interpretation, Ram On L.A., cobbled from many disparate voices, speaks to the pop brilliance of the original, but of course casts each track in its own distinctly distorted light.

Though Earlimart’s contribution on “Too Many People” is stellar, I’m finding myself more strongly drawn to Secretly Canadian-signed Bodies of Water’s take on “Dear Boy.” This track, as well as their previous work, is well worth a listen. —Erik Bryan, Mar. 4, 2009

» Listen to "Dear Boy" at Aquarium Drunkard

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Listening • Empire for Ashes

A thousand American Idol winners singing through a thousand autotune modulators will never make a Voice, a singer to be reckoned with, instinctually appreciated, and surrendered to. Very few of our musicians could just as easily go by the title of singer alone, which is what makes Neko Case and her dulcet serenades so transfixing.

Her new album, Middle Cyclone (which boasts some of the most kickass cover art seen in a hot minute), is due this coming Tuesday, March 3. As she bends slowly away from the roots-of-country sounds that gave her a broad appeal and audience, she finds gradual interest and gratification in gently teasing the boundaries of the low-key, wistful realms of alt-whatever-it-is, where she reigns as queen. So broad (and, some would say, bourgeois) is her appeal that NPR is currently streaming the album in its entirety from their site. But let it not be said that she’s “sold out” or gone middlebrow or, worse yet, lost her edge. This is the same woman, capable of both the most affecting earnesty and the most sublime tongue-in-cheek self-deprecation, mind you, who appeared as siren Chrysanthemum, quite fittingly, on an episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force. If that ain’t cred … —Erik Bryan, Feb. 27, 2009