frog eyes

bells in the crooked port

i'm a bit mystified that people aren't raving more about this band. sure it isn't easy listening but you would be surprised how soon you get used the vocal and actually start liking them. for the meaningless lame comparisions think crossing nick cave with jeff buckley with a healthy dose of xiu xiu. the song is from the folded palm released this year on absolutely kosher (another song here) but they also released ego scriptor, an acoustic album, this year. it is just as good. carey mercer, the singer, also has a solo album under then name blackout beach.

the flesh

love your fate

the faint's wet from birth almost ruined my year. the flesh goes a long way towards giving me my dose of the faint for the year. though in all fairness they are more similar in spirit than in sound. not nearly as driven by rhytm as the faint was and the vocals remind me more of the blood brothers. love your fate hijacks bits of destiny's child and it sounds utterly brilliant. the rest of the album may be more brilliant. so brilliant indeed that it received a great review by cnn. whether or not that is a recommendation....

micro reviews

low - the great destroyer: the best since their first? low rocks out - relatively, that is. surprisingly good. mercery rev - the secret migration: not bad unless you compare it with their old stuff. then it sort of blows. but as expected sort of flaming lipsesque poppy that I guess is every bit as much mercury rev's sound. i just miss the damn guitars. m83 - before the dawn heals us: more varied than their last & the sound isn't as distinguished. but basically the tracks that rock, rock and the slow stuff is a little boring. plus some horrible eighties vocals. terribly uneven. and you will know us by the trail of dead - worlds apart: let's just say that it is hard to see them destroy any stages to this music. not necessarily bad... just sort of retro bowie type sound. actually, it is kinda bad but maybe i need to give it another listen. bright eyes - digital ash in a digital urn & i'm wide awake it is morning: it sort of makes sense for bright eyes to release two albums. both their last album and the shows have suffered from being too all over the place. don't get me wrong, i think bright eyes is responsible for some of the best songs in the last few years, but i think at some point either i just lost interest or oberst ran out of ideas. the "acoustic" album in its better moments reminds me a little of a lesser elliott smith. the more folksy stuff just bores me now. the "digital" album also fails to convince though i think it contains a few of the better songs in this batch. another disappointment. hood - outside closer: the first single was fantastic (video). the album is a bit more low key. in terms of pop it doesn't quite reach the heights of their previous stuff but it sounds just as good - just more ambient than before.

khonnor

megan's present

it is a little depressing when these teenagers make such good records. khonnor is supposedly seventeen years old and he has put together a pretty nice laptop-rock album. for lack of time i'll just say m83, slowdive with a touch of the flaming lips. something along those lines i guess - or not. just check the song out. his website is pretty nice too: www.khonnor.com/

alias

unseen sights

well, enough bitching and whining about things that don't matter. i stumbled upon this album muted by alias released last year on the anticon label. the temptation is to label it instrumental hip hop because of the lable he is on but it is neither hip hop nor entirely instrumental. it is closer in spirit to boards of canada and occasionally maybe four tet. alias has worked with a bunch of hip hop artists of the good kind, e.g., slug and sage francis, but here is a song where markus acher from the notwist (another excellent band) provides the vocals. this song simply amazes me - the music and the vocal just fit perfectly together. i don't know whether i'm more impressed by the stunning prettiness of the song or just how it is pieced together.

on the methodology of the record review

record reviews don't usually bother me - it just someone's opinion & in most cases they probably reflect more on the writer than the artist being reviewed. but on the other hand most of us read reviews in the hope of finding out about the latest and the greatest so in a sense a writer, or a publication, can become a useful guide to what is hot and what is not. everett true (of the nme? or was it melody maker?) used to be my northern star for a while guiding me towards some great music. today, the internet has taken over and a number of websites offer a narrower focus than the aforementioned publications and i put a lot of stock into, e.g., pitchforkmedia. but once in a while i have my doubts. three things bother me - they don't apply only to pitchforkmedia but, hell, for the point of illustration. one. old farts that are no good. does michael jackson's compilation really deserve 8.0? i don't think anyone who wasn't a teenager while mj was at his "peak" would seriously consider thriller any good. take away all the memories you may associate with mj's music including the moonwalking in highschool and what is left? pretend mj was unknown and released any of his albums today. do you really think you would prefer listening to him rather than say modest mouse or out hud or max richter? my point is that i read record reviews to find stuff i like not stuff that may have some significance in pop culture history or in someones adolesence. i simply would never but mj's music on. because really, it is utter crap. two. old farts that are good. this really is the same complaint but i would feel terrible putting the clash into the same category as michael jackson. the clash made some stellar music no question. but did London Calling deserve a 10.0? great album but for the same reason as above i think someone's judgement may just be a little clouded by history and, as such, it doesn't signal accurately to me, or rather someone that hasn't heard the clash, how good the album is. how often do you think "i think i'll put the velvet underground on because they were so influential"? I don't know, but i tend to listen to them because i like the music. however important the music may have been in whatever social context you want to put it, it doesn't really make it better. write an article about these things - they are interesting in themselves - but don't call it a record review. three. "legends". now i'm thinking brian wilson and smile. forget the myth, review the album. C-. four. we're so damn hip we like crap. it is a tough world other people are also reviewing cool music. and you have to stay a step ahead. and it is good. pitchforkmedia, e.g., has exposed me to lots of stuff i wouldn't have stumbled upon if it hadn't been for their insistence to dig up new "more out there" stuff. but there comes a point in every hipster's life that they can't stretch any further. and the only way to stay cool is to start liking the lame. i refuse to believe that pitchforkmedia likes annie's anniemal that much (8.8) - i think it is misguided coolness. it is not a bad album but it isn't that good either. i check pitchforkmedia, and others (see links), out not because i'm curious to know what people there like but because they have shown themselves to be fairly reliable in recommending music. coolness, by its nature, is no reliable.

so i guess i'm arguing for a "veil of ignorance" method of record reviewing. Ideally, one should know nothing about the artists and simply let the music speak for itself. With famous old farts this, of course, is pretty much impossible but the reviewer should try to distance themselves from all those factors that don't really relate to whether the cd/album is worth listening to. well, enough bitching - got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning. and an hour too early as well.

the duke spirit

red weather

over the years i have sometimes wondered about the influence of "geography" on music. it certainly seems that cities rise and fade in terms of their output of "good quality" music. think seattle way back when and montreal today. what i find more interesting, however, is the continental divide. why is there so much music coming out of the states and so little out of the uk? it might just be the size but in my estimation it doesn't account for the differences. there are simply very few british bands that i like these days. trying to think of a few i can come up with arab strap, mogwai, 22-20s, and british sea power. and, well, chris clark and aphex twins. when i first got serious about listening to music the situation was almost reverse. of course, flipping through my collection i have to say happy mondays were shit and the stone roses weren't really much of anything - though they certainly were a notch. still, my bloody valentine, jamc, and ride have stood the test of time. so maybe it is just a matter of taste. but of the bands above two are scottish and the rest (excl. the electronic) sound pretty american. anyhow, the duke spirits also sound american. except that the singer sounds like pj harvey but pj harvey always sounded a bit american to me. her early stuff certainly appeared more related to babes in toyland or hole than any british artists i can recall from the time. at any rate, the point is that i like the duke spirit. resorting to lame comparisons i think they bluesy version of sonic youth (read: w/o the experimental edge) mixed with tricky's reading of public enemy's black steel in the hour of chaos. and of course it comes nowhere close to describing the sound. but at least i tried. just check red weather from their first ep out.

daedelus

cadavre exquis

the title song (well, translated into french) from daedelus' upcoming release. if you haven't heard daedelus before he is pleasant sort of chap from san fran that likes to play with electronics. what sets him a part is probably the source of his sounds, which as far as I can tell are from the 20's and 30's. my first encounter with daedelus was invention which got me all excited. such neat sounds! and somehow it worked. later on came the weather, a collaboration with busdriver and awol one, which was essentially a rap album with daedules providing the tracks. well, it was a lot of fun but i often wished that they had mixed the album differently, bringing the music a bit more upfront. daedelus must have thought the same becomes rethinking the weather, an "instrumental" version, appeared shortly after the weather. on his forthcoming album deadelus keeps moving further away from IDM to hip hop, this time collaborating with a variety of rappers including mf doom, which i always imagined would be a near perfect match. i wasn't entirely right but the thing is that mf doom's stuff can't really be improved on so it nowhere near a miss. prefuse 73 also appears on a track that could belong on any prefuse 73 album. in the end it is all good fun but like before i'm not convinced daedelus should bother with the rappers. his fairytail mini-musicals are quite enough for me. at least this time around the music manages to shine through. the sample song features the french ttc who sounds a like a french missy elliot. which is not a bad thing at all. two thumbs up.

wordsworth vs. bush

i couldn't help but find this debate between bush and wordsworth a little entertaining.

hercules

can't go out

well, there is nothing really herculian about this band. pretty chamber pop recorded on a single microphone and mixed by maestro j mascis (though i wonder how much mixing you can do with something recorded this way... or maybe i'm just exposing my ignorance here?) at any rate, great stuff if you are in the mood for something, well, moody and melodic. more over at hercules' website + links to buy.

hood

the release date for hood's new album is slowly approaching. check out the lost you over at zuri's blog. i was completely floored by this song when hood played the airwaves festival here last month. completely brilliant in every way. the ep version doesn't quite match the thunderousness of the live version but it still remains one of this year's best songs. also, i've been hooked on mark lanegan's bubblegum lately. i won't offer a sample from the album because it works far better as whole than in parts. solid job from the old fart. also spinning on my, erm, computer: the danish efterklang and teenager khonnor's handwriting. samples will arrive shortly.

vincent & mr. green

like you

this sounds like a smoky bar (soon to be outlawed everywhere apparently) in the same way elysian fields does but less jazzy. also reminds me little of portishead. at any rate a notch above the other trip hop acts in my estimation. actually there is a whole lot more going on here than that would suggest. hints of country in some places, pj harvey in other. but altogether it makes for a nice listening.