Playlist: May 26, 2009

"Wilco's Jay Walter Bennett R.I.P. 1963-2009"

Mocky – Birds of a Feather (Saskamodie)

Phoenix – Lisztomania (Wolfgang Amadeus Pheonix)
Flower-Corsano Duo – The Drifter’s Miracle (The Four Aims)
Uochi Toki – Il Ballerino (Libro Audio)
Slakah the Beat Child – Crate Love feat. Divine Brown and Ray Robinson (Soul Movement Vol. 1)

Grizzly Bear – Two Weeks (Veckatimest)
Grizzly Bear – While You Wait for the Others (Veckatimest)

Staff Benda Bilili – Je T’aime (Tres Tres Fort)
Nomo – Waiting (Invisible Cities)
Joshua Redman – Just Like You (Compass)
Elfin - Saddle Running Sheep (Ringing Them From the Begin Again)

Okkervil River – Pop Lie (The Stand-Ins)
Weird Weather – You and Me (Surface of the Moon)
Lucinda Williams – Passionate Kisses (Lucinda Williams)
John Doe & the Sadies – Husbands & Wives (Country Club)

Wilco – Poor Places (Yankee Hotel Foxtrot)
Flowers of Hell – The Strength of String (Come Hell Or High Water)
Woods – To Clean (Songs of Shame)

Album of the Week: Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest

Like a Brooklynite art-rock cousin to the California sunny pop of Pet Sounds, Grizzly Bear’s Veckatimest is a finely crafted record composed with meticulous attention to detail. Every guitar strum, piano chord, and sweet vocal harmony seems as if it has been obsessively considered. A far cry from the lo-fi bedroom pop of 2004’s Horn of Plenty or 2006’s Pitchfork approved Yellow House, this album (named after an island in Massachusetts) is the next step in Grizzly Bear’s sonic evolution, one of the most promising progressions in pop music this side of Radiohead. Sure, the amount of attention Veckatimest has received pre-release may seem a bit like hyperbole (the album has been continuously voted on uber-music geek site rateyourmusic.com in the top five albums of the year since March!), but the attention may also be warranted considering the quality of the record. The songs mix up psychedelic sound experimentation (sure to appeal to fans of Animal Collective), rustic alt-country guitars, and aforementioned Beach Boys harmonies. Perhaps the closest comparison point though may be to Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, as both records tread that fine line between experimentation and roots rock conventions. However, unlike Wilco’s tendency to delve into safe “dad-rock”, the boys of Grizzly Bear produce music a bit too eerie, may I even say edgier, to be cast off to dad’s record collection. The opener “Southern Point” sees the group engaging with psychedelic jazz arrangements while the chamber pop suites of “I Live with You” show how far reaching the band’s ambitions were in recording this album. However, the record truly shines during its moment of pop simplicity, with “While You Wait Here for the Others”, “Cheerleader”, and the bouncy “Two Weeks” standing apart as the album’s highlights. Though the heft of such an ambitious construction may at first come across as a daunting listen, Veckatimest easily becomes one of the most incredible and addictive albums released this year. As the band say themselves, “I can’t get out of what I’m into with you.” I’m sure many more will share these very same sentiments about this album in the weeks to follow.

Listen To: Two Weeks, While You Wait for the Others, Cheerleader

RIYL: Radiohead, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Pet Sounds,

Playlist: May 19, 2009

"Hey look, I'm married now."

The Hold Steady – You Can Make Him Like You (Boys and Girls in America)

Jarvis Cocker – Homewrecker! (Further Complications)
Jarvis Cocker – Hold Still (Further Complications)

Seun Kuti and Fela’s Egypt 80 – African Problems (Many Things)
The Burning Hell – I Love the Things that People Make (wewerk is 6!)
Johnny West – Abandoned House Burning Down (If I Had a Quarter…)
Beck – Nitemare Hippy Girl

Zu – Soulympics (Carboniferous)
Bastard Noise – Tyranny Before Earth Epilogue (Rogue Astronaut)
The Field – The More That I Do (Yesterday and Today)

Bradleyboy – Not Today (The Farm)
Tagaq – Want (Auk/Blood)

Two Fingers – Not Perfect (Two Fingers)

Album of the Week: Jarvis Cocker - Further Complications

Further Complications is a pure pleasure. The combination of Jarvis Cocker’s usual witty, sarcastic, and perverse narratives of modern metropolitan life mixed with Steve Albini’s “in the room” production results in an album that is arresting both sonically and lyrically. Though the former Pulp frontman does not devate too much from his usual themes of unrequited lust ("Angela"), heartbreak ("Homewrecker!"), requited lust ("You’re in My Eyes"), slice of life observation ("Caucasian Blues"), and lust ("Fuckingsong") there is an intensity propelling these songs that was sorely missing from his first solo effort, Jarvis. There are even some surprises too, such as the Spiders from Mars era Bowie evocation of of "Homewrecker!" and the Stooges style hardrock of "Fuckingsong". Proof that there truly is life after Pulp.

Listen To: Fuckingsong, Homewrecker!, Angela

RIYL: Pulp, Ziggy Stardust & the Spiders from Mars, Japandroids

Play List: May 12, 2009

The Kooks – Victoria (War Child Presents: Heroes)

Isis - 20 Minutes/40 Years (Wavering Radiant)
KMFDM – Virus (Naive)
Pawa Up First – The Outcome (The Outcome)

Staff Benda Bilili – Avramandole (Tres Tres Fort)
Staff Benda Bilili - Polio (Tres Tres Fort)
Hotcha! – My Walking Stick (Dust Bowl Roots: Songs for the New Depression)
Great Bloomers – Speak of Trouble (Speak of Trouble)

D-Sisive - Riot I Caused feat. Classified (Let the Children Die)
Random – Splash Woman (Megan Ran 9)

Pulp – Have You Seen Her Lately? (His ‘n’ Hers)
Kate Bush – Wuthering Heights (Wuthering Heights)
Scatman John – Have You Seen Her Lately? (Scatman Sings)

Red Animal War – Violet (Best of...)
After Forever – Who I Am (After Forever)
Kero – Franklinfranklin (Shitkatapult)
Montag – Nord I (Hibernation)

Absu – Night Fire Canonization (Absu)

Album of the Week: Staff Benda Bilili - Tres Tres Fort

The thing about a band like Staff Benda Bilili is that they could be easily written off as a novelty. The group of Congolese street performers consists primarily of paraplegic singer/guitarists who make their way around in specially designed tricycles. The perform in slums and outside the Kinshasa Zoo, and the group’s shining star in a 18 year old musical prodigy who plays his own makeshift single-stringed electric lute that he constructed out of a tin can. Yeah, that’s the type of shit that gets P.R. people salivating. Yet this amazing back story would mean nothing if the music on Tres Tres Fort were not any good. Thankfully, it’s good. Staff Benda Bilili’s unique mixture of rumba, reggae, and traditional rhythm and blues does not quite sound like anything else out there. Some affinities could be made to other bands produced by Tres Tres Fort producer Vincent Kenis (Konono No.1, Kasai Allstars, the the Congotronics compilations) and those who enjoyed Welcome to Mali, last’s years incredible release by Mariam & Amadou, are bound to like this release. Yet these comparison points pale. The album sounds forward thinking while reverting away from the wave of electronics and digital editing that has plagued contemporary Western music this past decade. Tres Tres Fort is one of the sweetest sounding and most inspiration albums of the year by far.

Listen To: Je T’aime, Polio, Avramandole

RIYL: Kasai Allstars, Mariam & Amadou, the Congotronics series

Play List: May 5, 2009

The Cure – Last Dance (Disintegration)
Buck-Tick – Mona Lisa (Mona Lisa Overdrive)
Millimetrik – Unknown (The Banjo Consorsium)

St. Vincent – Actor Out of Work (Actor)
St. Vincent – The Strangers (Actor)

Leonard Nimoy – The Ballad Of Bilbo Baggins
William Shatner – Hamlet (The Transformed Man)
William Shatner – It Was a Very Good Year (The Transformed Man)
Fleet Foxes – He doesn’t know why (Fleet Foxes)

Oh My Darling – Pixou Falls (Oh My Darling)
Freezepop – Vacation (Forever)
Beat Crusaders – I Wanna Go to the Disko (Tonight, Tonight, Tonight)
The Vaselines – Son of a Gun (Enter the Vaselines)

Nomo – Banners on High (Invisible Cities)
16 Volt – Wisdom (Whisper Cure)
The Horrors – Do You Remember (Primary Colours)

The Bird and The Bee – Please Don’t Stop The Music
Barzin – Nobody Told Me (Notes to An Absent Lover)

Patrick Watson & the Wooden Arms– Wooden Arms (Wooden Arms)

Album of the Week: St. Vincent - Actor

Annie Clark has come a long way since her days of being lost in the 10+ member choral indie rock group the Polyphonic Spree. Releasing solo material since 2003 under the moniker of St. Vincent, she has continuously evolved from a faceless background player to an acclaimed solo musician, who with each subsequent release garners even more glowing praise from critics and indie fans alike. And so it has come that Clark has finally assembled an album that fully lives up to her previous potential, Actor. Though 2007’s Marry Me was a fine album, it was marred by a shear lack of distinctiveness. This is not the case with Actor, for not only has Clark finally found her own voice, but the album itself is sonically unique and engaging – a collection of theatrical pop rock that is instantly accessible while experimenting with instrumentation and song dynamics. The songs are often dark, with lyrics examining the fragility of human relationships (Laughing with a Mouth of Blood, The Strangers) and almost Camus-like existentialism (The Party, Save Me from What I Want). Though perhaps akin lyrically to the best of Nick Cave’s 90s material, the sonic inspiration is claimed to be from Prince. This makes since too, not only because of the buzzing synths of the single “Actor Out of Work” or the robotic groove of “Marrow”, but because Actor displays the type of cohesion of experimentation and pop accessibility that marked the high-point of the purple one’s 80’s career. The production from John Congleton (whose credits range from Marilyn Manson to The Roots) also aids the album by giving it a meticulously layered sound, the type that reveals new elements to the songs with each subsequent listen. This is a sound of an artist breaking out and redefining herself.

Listen To: Actor Out of Work, The Strangers, The Party

RIYL: My Brightest Diamond, Julie Dorian, Camera Obscura