Dusted's Destined series kicks off with Bachelorette

You’ve undoubtedly heard me whining about how nobody will let me cover breaking bands anymore (if you haven’t and want to, drop me an email, it’s one of my favorite things to complain about)…

In any case, Dusted does a feature early every year called “Destined” where we focus on 10 emerging artists. Last year we had Hercules and Love Affair and Fuck Buttons and I forget who else, but it’s worth watching. Anyway, this the first time I’ve ever been asked to participate. I got Bachelorette, a New Zealand-based singer who sits somewhere between Animal Collective and Joanna Newsom. She’ll have a new album out on Drag City this year.

Here’s a bit of my piece:

You get the sense that Annabel Alpers, the New Zealand electro-pop artist known as Bachelorette, doesn’t much care for talking about her delicate, multilayered songs. She’d rather not theorize about the nexus between synthetic tools and raw human feeling. She has no clear idea of where she’s heading musically, after My Electric Family, the album she’s mixing right now in New Zealand for release on Drag City this spring. She’s perfectly happy to let that question resolve itself later, when she gets back to her computer to write new songs.

“I don’t have a particular direction that I want to go in at all,” she says, by phone, early on New Year’s Eve 2008. “Every time I work on a song or an album, I’m always surprised with how it comes out, because it’s not how I started out with it.”

Yet you can’t mistake this flexibility, this open-ness to the vagaries of inspiration, this refusal to articulate an artistic philosophy, for lack of purpose. “Sometimes I think the reason why I play music is that it’s the way that I’m able to communicate to people,” she says. “It’s better than the way that I’m capable of communicating just through talking or the conventional kinds of communication that other people are satisfied with. That doesn’t satisfy me. So, it’s a way of trying to be satisfied with communicating with other people.”

More


Doo-Wop


I Want to Be Your Girlfriend

The best music scribes not writing about music

Jason Gross has his annual round-up of “great” music writing up at PopMatters today.

Caveat: If you want the gold, better write for a daily or be a famous musician. Another caveat: Write about the business, not the music, that’s all anyone cares about (despite the fact that the music is in much better shape than the business).



My review of Wall-E is also up at PM today.

Wall-E, with Ratatouille, The Incredibles and Toy Story, is that rare thing – a children’s film that transcends its category. Its opening third, mostly without dialogue, is a stunning achievement, a lyrical, magical evocation of an imaginary space that feels absolutely true to itself. In fact, the only time that Wall-E falters is when it tries too hard to be a children’s film, with cuddly humanoid characters, fast-moving plot and too-pat resolution. The final two-thirds of Wall-E are not bad at all…just a step down into popcorn fodder from an opening that felt like art.


Also a shortie on Push-Pull a goofball punk rock band from my home state of Indiana. Their first album has recently been reissued on Sick Room Records.


“Tans Taafl”

Groove Rider…with pictures

My favorite afro-funk-robot-dance band, Mahjongg, has got a new video out called “Groove Rider”.


The song’s on a 7” from K Records. As the video makes fairly obvious, they are based in Chicago (though originally from Missouri, or at least some of them).

Why doesn’t everyone love this band the way I do?

REM reduxe

Not to go all old fart on you, but I have been really enjoying the two-disc reissue of REM’s Murmur, which Bill got me for Christmas this year. It’s been remixed to give more equal weighting to all the instruments (you can hear the bass), and there’s a second live disc from right around the time of release. I still probably like Reckoning a little better, but this is good stuff.

The original IRS promo for the album


“Radio Free Europe”, live in March 1983

The Enchantress of Florence

It's been so long since I had anything up and published that I've sort of forgotten how to do this. Anyway, my lone effort at book reviewing for 2008...a paragraph on Salman Rushdie's the Enchantress of Florence. It looks like there's lots of other interesting stuff on the list which i will have to check out later (hopefully literally, from the local library).

Here's a link

I don't normally review books because it seems like there ought to be at least one part of my life that's strictly for entertainment.

First day of the year...album of the year

You all know how much I hate agreeing with Pitchforkmedia (leave off the media and you'll find yourself at a feedstore)...but yesterday I was lying motionless, listening in awe and excitement to Meriweather Post Pavilion, the new Animal Collective, and today they have awarded the CD a 9.6.

What are we going to do for the rest of the year?

Oh, yeah, we'll think of something.

A new mix for the new year

I don't know about you guys, but I am sick to death of year-end blather. Here's a mix of stuff that I've been working on over the last couple months. None of it made my year-end mix (though Fennesz showed up on a bunch of other people's lists)...some is late-year 2008, some early 2009 and some early to mid 1980s (though reissued recently). Anyway, I like it...maybe you will, too.

Download here for seven days only.


Track listing:
"Jak" Volcano Suns. My favorite cut (the first one, off the first album, all downhill from there) off Merge's two-disc reissue of this post-Burma, post-punk, Boston band.
"The World's Can't Have Her" Cobra Verde. Nice 70s guitar riff, eh?
"Where's Captain Kirk?" Spizzenergi. Vintage early 1980s new wave...Peel's favorite "Star Trek-themed" song ever...no idea what kind of competition there was.
"Prefix Free" Parts & Labor. My "damn, that should have been top 20" late discovery for this year.
"Credit River" The COnstantines. Another mostly overlooked gem from 2008 -- thanks Ian, I kind of lost track of these guys after they left Sub Pop.
"Down with the Blue Lobsters" The Nightingales. I'm thinking that this new one, recorded with people from Faust, is better, silkier, more evil and more reptilianly menacing than anything from the heyday.
"Flash Bulbz" The Red Eyed Legends. Think they've spent much time with Shellac?
"Time Stands Still" Like a Fox. Yes, the power pop weakness wins out again. All you hard core types should skip this one.
"everything with you" The Pains of Being Pure at Heart. Terrible band name, iffy label but kind of genius blend of lo-fi buzz and pop sweetness...I'd give them the "trying to be J&MC and not sucking" award for 2009 hands down.
"Happy New Year" Michael Zapruder. Terrific low-key, literate but unpretentious songwriter from the Bay Area...his dad shot that Kennedy footage, I think. Happy new year to you, too.
"Sanguinary" Chris Brokaw. I see Chris Brokaw as the slender thread that holds the whole indie/noise/rock/no wave/alterna country world together...if he's not in at least three bands a year, the entire mess comes unstrung. Here he is, just the man and his guitar, sounding pretty damned great.
"Do Not Love a WOman" Christina Carter. Spookily glorious.
"Saffron REvolution" Fennesz. I'm struck mute by stuff like this, but isn't it beautiful?
"I'm a Machine" Slaraffenland. Saw these guys at SXSW and it was one of the nicest, sunniest, most welcoming and inclusive show of my life...everybody banging on percussion, beer smells wafting...very nice. New EP has covers of Radiohead ("Paranoid Android") and A-Ha ("Take on Me") but I'm going with this original.
"Stepper a.k.a. Work" Skeletons. Matt Mehlan has changed his band name AGAIN, but it's still the same freakily warm, disco-into-afrobeat-into-free-jazz celebration that he's always behind.
"The Tulip Staircase" Dreamend. I've gotten to be kind of a fan of the Graveface label (Black Moth Super Rainbow, Experimental Aircraft, Hospital Ships), and this is the label owner's band...very nice pop into psychedelia kind of effort that reminds me a little bit of David Kilgour, especially in the guitars, and also Circulatory System.