Pants Yell!

I wasn't as crazy about Pants Yell! as some of the writers seem to be.

My Dusted review:

Lately, lots of bands have their sights on the C-86 sound – jangly, effete, fluid romantic pop – but Pants Yell! seems to be drifting away from it. There’s an off-kilter angst in the guitar riffs that surround Andrew Churchman’s slippery croons, an almost mathy syncopation and energy. An edgy, caffeinated energy pervades Received Pronunciation, making it more interesting that it would otherwise be, but not quite saving it.

If you compare Received Pronunciation to 200x’s Alison Statton a slight but palpable uptick in abrasion emerges. Smooth, sustained bits – like the languid guitar slides in “Evan’s Wood” or the Cure-like washes of synths in “Two French Sisters” – have been tamped down. Guitar lines stutter stop-start strum-lines, slashing ahead then pulling back (“Got to Stop”), or jittering off-balance in asymmetrical bursts (“Rue de La Paix”). Churchman still sings like a lo-fi, slightly flat Morrissey, blowing fleeting impressions out into lush romantic gestures, but he is hedged and braced by tougher arrangements this time.

More

“Cold Hands”


Going to see Dan Deacon tonight, more later.

MV + EE (and J Mascis)

Matt Valentine and Erika Elder live nearby, and I know a guy who plays with them sometimes (but not on this one), and I see Erika at the co-op once in a while though we don’t know each other. I just know what she looks like. Anyway, we’re not friends or anything, but it seems kind of like a victory for the home team when they put out an album as good as Barn Nova which continues to move away from the really pastoral, Incredible String Band-ish folk raga end of things, into a more rock-centric, Neil Young-ish kind of territory. Oh, yeah, and another local hero, J Mascis plays guitar and drums on the album, so that’s fun, too.

Here’s a bit from my Blurt review:

Even backwoods mystics like to rock out once in a while. With Barn Nova, Matt Valentine and Erika Elder move further away from the Basho/Fahey axis of finger-picked primitivism, closer to Neil Young's amplified guitar anarchy. They get a boost, on "Summer Magic," from J. Mascis, his guitar wheeling and spiraling against slow, shuffling blues and incense-scented chants. Dropping Frampton-esque bends and pull-offs, cranking Crazy Horse-ish turmoil, Mascis puts the "wild" back in this duo's imagined wilderness. But even without Mascis, as on epic "Bedroom Eyes," Valentine approximates the heat and ferocity of Young's fiery dirges, carving arcs of distortion not unlike those on "Down By the River" or "Southern Man."

The rest


There’s a track on my mix from yesterday. Here’s “Summer Magic” which is the one with J.

I made a new mix

Track listing

Elliott Brood “Write It All Down for You”
The Ettes, “Walk Through that Door
Brilliant Colors, “Absolutely Anything”
Fresh & Onlys, “D.Y.”
Scotland Yard Gospel Choir, “Would You Still Love Me If I Was in a Knife Fight”
Sin Fang Bous, “Melt Down the Knives’
Mum, “Hullabbalabbaluu”
Atlas Sound, “Quick Canal (with Laetitia Sadier)”
Volcano Choir, “And Gather”
Cold Cave, “Life Magazine”
THao and the Get Down Stay Down “Easy”
MV & EE, “Get Right Church”
Califone, “Krill”

Download here

Enjoy!

Prince Rama of Ayodhya

Here’s a really interesting mix of rock, improv, drone, raga and jazz from a NYC-based band called Prince Rama of Ayodhya. I caught onto them while writing a show preview for Philly weekly, not of the band itself, which played Philadelphia on October 18, but of a benefit to help them raise money to replace instruments which had been stolen at this earlier gig. The benefit is on November 16 at National Mechanics (22 S. Third Street), and Hermit Thrushes, Strand of Oak and Tinmouthy are on the bill, so if you’re in Philadelphia check it out.

Couple of live mp3s (thanks to WFMU, best radio station ever)

“Om Mane Padme Hum”

“Panoptic Yes”

Lots more here

it's my birthday tomorrow, so if you've got any cool music that will take my mind off how old I'm getting, send it over.

Thao Nguyen

Quickie feature on Thao and the Get Down Stay Down up at Blurt today…

Thao Nguyen says that she may not really have been ready to process a romantic break-up at when she first started writing the brutally frank songs that make up Know Better Learn Faster, her second record as Thao With The Get Down Stay Down. She had just come off an extended tour, for one thing, and for another was still feeling wounded and vulnerable. But studio time for her band's second full-length had already been booked, and Nguyen was feeling pressure.

"There's definitely an undercurrent of helplessness," Nguyen explains. "It was not the ideal time. It was something very important that I was not quite ready to write about it."

Maybe that's why she exhorts herself to "Know Better Learn Faster," in the album's title track, while recognizing that you can only learn as fast as you learn. "I have come to find you can't know better or learn faster until it's too late," says Nguyen. "The title is kind of a joke."

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“Know Better Learn Faster”

Mum’s the word…

My review of the really wonderful Mum/Sin Fang Bous show I attended last Sunday is up now at Blurt.

"I have been thinking about this beautiful note, a note that we begin every show with," says Múm's co-founder Őrvar Póreyjarson Smárason as his seven-person band finishes setting up drums, keyboards, pedal boards, cellos, violins, guitars, two melodicas and one ukulele. "It's such a beautiful note. I can't stop thinking about it."

And then Iceland's long-running electro-pop band drifts into the ethereal opening to "Illuminated," into a note grows and wafts upward in breathless, scale-climbing "ooh ooh oohs." It's the kind of note you could, indeed, get lost in, and both the band and the audience is simultaneously transfixed by its startling purity, its soft dreamlike intensity.

Indeed, tonight's show is all about the jaw-dropping, sudden beauty of experimental pop. Múm, along with opener Sin Fang Bous, both traffic in gentle, delicately arranged pop songs, billowing with soft harmonies and given spine by hard, dance-floor-thudding rhythms. Both are from Iceland. Both have new records out on German electro-label Morr Music, and both surpass these records decisively in live performance.

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Mum’s MySpace


Sin Fang Bous’ MySpace

Reading Mojo, raking leaves…but not at the same time

Very quiet weekend. Sean was sick, though if it was swine flu, it was an extremely mild case. It’s no joke though. Twelve kids are out from his high school with confirmed swine flu, lots of others just staying home sick, and they’ve been cancelling extracurricular stuff. Also, we have lots of big trees, so there are vast quantities of leaves and pine needles to rake, which would be even more tedious than it is without the iPod. We did get into Brattleboro to buy groceries, and I stopped at the record store and bought the new Mountain Goats, which is excellent, but no way am I ready to talk about it yet, and the latest Mojo. The comp CD is all electronic music, timed to complement a big interview with Kraftwerk. This is truly not an area of expertise for me, but I am kind of enjoying it, and without anything better to say, will leave you with this video of Kraftwerk’s “The Robots.”