Because new music can be intoxicating.
And people sometimes call me Drunk.
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
New Music Roundup 4/30/13
The Computers - Love Triangles, Hate Squares
I find this album insanely fun. The Computers are a British band of Black Flag fans who have managed to infuse their punk music with rockabilly, 60's doo-wop, and other oldies sounds, all led by a lead singer who sounds more than a little bit like Fall Out Boy's Patrick Stump attempting an Elvis Costello impression. That's a lot to digest there, so I'll say that the band's final product ultimately reminds me of the Hives: they rock bombastically, but it's always in service to a bouncy beat and a catchy chorus. This album is highly recommended.
Among a certain demographic, Daft Punk's forthcoming album Random Access Memories is likely the most anticipated album of the year (Justin Timberlake's 20/20 Experience is probably its only competition), so when the band finally officially releases (after numerous fake fan edits appearing on the Internet) the lead single from that album, they're going to have my attention.
It's probably not a good sign that the album is still several weeks away and I'm already tired of the increasingly deafening hype surrounding the album, but I'm going to attempt to divorce myself from that and judge the single on its own merits.
And those merits are numerous. Personally, the whole artificial robot sound that is so integral to Daft Punk's aesthetic, while occasionally interesting, tends to leave me a little cold, which makes this song's mid to late 70's R&B and funk influences so inviting. Nile Rodgers plays guitar on the track, and as usual he's awesome, bringing that warmth of sound that is sometimes lacking with Daft Punk. This is unquestionably a good look for Daft Punk, and the song makes you want to dance and gets in your head nigh instantaneously. Here's hoping the rest of the tracks on the album will continue to examine similar musical veins.
My only complaint (barring the omnipresent hype) is with Pharrell's vocals. I think he performs serviceably when in the higher register required on the chorus, but he sounds a little flat on the verses. In some ways it makes him sound slightly detached, which can be a noticeable problem when singing over such vibrant musical backgrounds. He doesn't ruin the song, but it's hard not to imagine what a truly accomplished R&B vocalist, like Justin Timberlake, Miguel, or Mayer Hawthorne, would have been able to do with the song.
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
New Music Roundup, 4/16/13
Ghostface Killah - Twelve Reasons to Die
There was a 0% chance I wasn't going to like this. Combining one of the most inventive rappers working today with the bombast of Adrian Younge, the producer behind the Black Dynamite soundtrack and the previously covered Delfonics album, is a strategy that just works. This album is actually the first concept album Ghostface has ever done, and the hyperviolent story of a mobster who returns from the grave to exact revenge upon his murderers is given a grimy, grindhouse-influenced aural backdrop by Younge. Here's hoping these two continue working together.
The 1975 - Facedown EP, Sex EP, and Music for Cars EP
Currently there exists within rock music a tremendous lack of ambition. This lack of ambition is not of an artistic nature - as should be glaringly obvious from this blog, plenty of good bands are doing plenty of good work under the auspices of rock music - but rather of a commercial one. It has been widely reported that each year rock music moves further away from the zeitgeist with diminished album sales and popularity, and though there are a myriad of reasons for rock's decline, one reason that probably isn't brought up enough is this lack of commercial ambition by today's rock bands.
Simply put, very very few rock bands openly pine to be the most biggest band in the world anymore. Contrast this with hip hop, which is seemingly driven solely by want: the want of material possessions, the want of a multitude of sexual partners, the want of alpha dog credibility and status. And though there have been other points in rock's history where movements have sprung up that were not interested in mainstream popularity (punk being the easiest and most obvious example), today's current indie/rock environment is unique in that its "big" bands are totally and completely divorced from the mainstream, neither striving for nor reacting against it (as punk and its brethren did). Rock and the mainstream are not even operating in the same universe.
This current vacuum is what makes Manchester band The 1975 so tantalizing. Though no formal album has yet been released, the band has already released three EPs worth of material in a little under a year, and those releases show a supremely confident band with an arena-ready sound. The best way I could describe the band's sound is like a British version of latter-day Kings of Leon (which may mean Kings of Leon mixed with the Kooks): they're not afraid to write sprawling to-the-rafters type anthems that feel modern yet obviously indebted to U2, and on the song "Chocolate" they even show a bouncy catchy upbeat side. It feels too early to guarantee success for this band, but the work they've done thus far is very very strong, their full-length debut will be essential listening whenever it's released, and it doesn't take much imagination to see this band as an incredibly successful rock band, whatever that may mean in 2013. And hey, if they want to reintroduce rock music to the mainstream (which is a preposterous expectation for a band that hasn't yet released an LP), that'd be cool too.
Guards - In Guards We Trust
This is the debut from a very interesting new Brooklyn band. Led by Richie Follin, the brother of the lead singer of the underrated indie band Cults, Guards is attempting to combine the crowd-pleasing power pop hookiness of 70's bands like the Raspberries and Big Star with what is considered traditional indie music of the 2010's. The end result are a batch of guitar-driven hook-y songs with vocals that sound like they were recorded at the end of a long hall which manage to achieve a very nice balance of being more or less instantly accessible while still sounding fresh; it's traditional yet modern. I'm reasonably certain this is my favorite album of 2013 thus far and would encourage everyone to give it a listen.
