Animal Collective just released their latest EP, Fall Be Kind. The cohesive 5-song collection speaks to the continuing progression of the group’s sound. Sound effects shimmer throughout the EP and the echoing of Animal Collective’s characteristic otherworldly and layered vocals transport the listener into fantastical realms. This is just what I’ve come to expect from this band. I desire to live in their dream world.
“Graze” begins as a hash-induced lullaby, “Let me begin, feels good ’cause it’s early… some ideas are brewing”, floating into a jubliant swirling of pan flutes. The chorus lures an emphatic sing-a-long. And the end is just mesmerizing as it fades.
I am most infatuated with the stream of consciousness, ethereal vibe of “What Would I Want? Sky”. One is immediately lost in a cloud of thought. Avey Tare’s vocals float above a Grateful Dead sample from “Unbroken Chain” (off Grateful Dead From The Mars Hotel, 1974), widely known as the first ever to be licensed. A clip of Phil Lesh’s vocals “…sky. Whoa I oft-” is looped and somehow reshaped into the title phrase. What results is a gorgeous feat. Near the end of the track, Avey sings “I should be floating but I’m weighted by thinking”, encompassing what Animal Collective has always been about. Ironically, the band coaxes you out of thought and into visceral feeling. Their music is a way for the intelligent mind to let go of anxiety and wrap itself in the complexity of sound instead.
“Bleedings” is not my favorite, but its darkness is beautiful nonetheless.
“On A Highway” follows Avey on another daydream as he travels down the road while the band tours. Singing “I let some hash relax me, get lost in human pleasure,” you can just imagine the feelings he is experiencing in that vehicle. Meditative lyrics and colorful imagery drive the song through a continuous flow of thought. Avey is yet again beset with an racing mind as he sings “…can’t help my brain from thinking. I can’t breathe.”
On the closer, “I Think I Can”, Panda Bear lets loose with jarring rhythms, claps, and array of synthesized samples. It starts out rather eerie but ends up soaring into one of my favorites songs on the EP.
With the Fall Be Kind EP, Panda Bear’s, Avey Tare’s, and Geologist’s brilliance is exposed once again. On the tail of their January 2009 release of the widely acclaimed Merriweather Post Pavilion, this new EP is noticeably less hooky, but no matter as it wraps me up further in Animal Collective and makes me wonder what we’ll hear next. This band perfectly pleases the mind by making a cacophony of sounds sound concordant.
Animal Collective, formed in Baltimore, MD, recently transplanted to NYC….
“What would I want? Sky!”
Is everything alright?
You feeling moany?
You feeling lonely?
You’re not the only
Is everything alright?
You feeling stormy?
You feeling phoney?
You’re not the only
Do you get up up up?
Clouds stop and move above me
Too bad they can’t help me
What is the right way?
Do I float up up up?
When I stop and look around me
Grey is where that color should be
What is the right way?
Old glasses clinking and a
New order’s blinking
and I -
I should be floating but I’m weighted by thinking
That I got on the river
Really can’t make you change
And the sky gets filled up too fast
and the taxi man’s saying, “You betta
give me some money; stop daydreaming, dude!”
When the point of horizon is hiding from you
What would you want sky?
Are you taking it lightly?
Lost in the flurries
You start to worry
You will be buried
Taking it lightly
and so I hurry
I start to worry
Here come them flurries
Is everything alright?
You feeling lonely?
You feeling moldy?
You’re not the only
Is everything alright?
You feeling stormy?
You feeling foamy?
You’re not the only
Do you get up up up?
Clouds stop and move above me
Too bad they can’t help me
What is the right way?
Do I float up up up?
When I stop and look around me
Grey is where that color should be
What is the right way?
Old glasses clinking and a
New order’s blinking and I -
I should be floating but I’m weighted by thinking
I’m a fly on the river
That’ll make me some change
When the sky gets filled up too fast
and the taxi cab’s waiting, “You betta
give him some money;
stop daydreaming, dude!”
When the point of horizon is hiding its blues
What would you want sky?
Grizzly Bear just released an extraordinary claymation video to go along with the song “Ready, Able”, off of their summer release Veckatimest (2009). The video, directed by Allison Schulnik, depicts creatures as their colors and forms melt and morph in a fantastical natural world. The music provides a gorgeous backdrop. As the song floats along, so does the story.
The band’s eccentric sound incorporates lush choral arrangements, atmospheric folk melodies, and exploratory song structures. The harmony-laden, lush grandiosity of their swelling tunes, feature dreamy vocals from all four members. The resulting resonances and melodic swirls offer a seductive, boozy elegance. Their music plays like the Beach Boys mixed with Nick Drake, fused with the theatrical feel of Devotchka and a touch of David Byrne.
Grizzly Bear formed in 2000 in Brooklyn with members Daniel Rossen (vocals, guitar, keyboards), Ed Droste (vocals, guitar, keyboards), Chris Taylor (bass, backing vocals, various instruments, producer) and Christopher Bear (drums, backing vocals). Droste wrote the first album as a form of catharsis after a bad breakup. He gave the CD to his friends and a copy found its way to Bear and Taylor, who liked what they heard. The two met Droste by way of a friend and offered postproduction and remixing help on the songs. The result was Horn of Plenty (2004). Rossen joined to perform guitar on the live shows. In 2006, the band had the good fortune to support TV on the Radio, in 2007, Feist, and in 2008, the band opened for Radiohead on the second leg of their North American tour. On the last date, guitarist Jonny Greenwood named Grizzly Bear his favorite band. Other admiring fans of the group include Fleet Foxes, Jeff Tweedy, CSS and Beirut.
After I heard “Concrete Seconds” off of Pinback’s Blue Screen Life (2001) in early 2006, I began to fall for the band. It’s ethereal rainy day music, inspiring you to float along, deep in thought, intertwined in their lilting rendition of indie rock. The consistency of their sound is comforting and travels through each of their albums. Each song moves with minimalistic keyboard parts, doleful dual vocals, soaring guitar lines, and meditative drum beats. Within them is a certain warmth.
It all started in 1998, when Pinback’s founding members found some time on their hands. Armistead Burwell Smith IV and Rob Crow, both singers, songwriters and multi-instrumentalists, began putting together songs that evolved into their ’98 self-titled debut, a 10-song thrust into dreamily controlled strangeness. They named the band after a spaceship crew member from the 1974 sci-fi comedy Dark Star: The Spaced Out Odyssey. Sergeant Pinback is actually fuel engineer, Bill Fruge, who puts on Pinback’s space suit when trying to rescue Pinback from suicide from wading into a fuel tank before the start of the ship’s mission to destroy unstable planets. Fruge inadvertently takes the place of Pinback and adopts the ship’s mascot, a mischievous alien “beach ball with claws”, that refuses to stay put in the food locker and forces Pinback to chase it all over the ship. Does it get any stranger?
Pinback’s most recent album, Autumn of the Seraphs, was released in September 2007. The band is currently on tour with dates across the U.S. They play the Ogden in Denver on November 6th.
Nov 5 – Granada Theatre, Lawrence, Kansas
Nov 6 – Ogden Theatre, Denver, Colorado
Nov 7 – The Depot, Salt Lake City, Utah
Nov 9 – Commodore Ballroom, Vancouver, British Columbia
Nov 10 – Neumo’s Crystal Ballroom, Seattle, Washington
Nov 11 – Doug Fir Lounge, Portland, Oregon
Nov 12 – Humboldt State University The Kate Buchanan Room, Arcata, California
Nov 13 – Bimbo’s 365 Club, San Francisco, California
Nov 14 – El Rey Theatre, Los Angeles, California
Nov 15 – Belly Up Tavern, Solana Beach, California
Nov 16 – The Casbah, San Diego, California
Saw Wye Oak last week at the Fox and got more than I expected. I anticipated the indie-folk rock duo from Baltimore sounding good after listening to their recorded material and seeing their name often. But Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack’s contribution onstage was more than I had hoped for.
Wasner is a true emotive force on guitar. Fierce and technical, she adds deep intuition into her playing which causes every song to soar. She’s dirty with distortion and along with her graceful vocals, it enforces a beautiful dichotomy. I find Wasner to be what is so alluring about the band, but without Stack’s additions, there would be no compliment to her power and grit. Stack intertwines his vocals with Wasner’s, while simultaneously playing drums with his right hand and both legs, and bass lines and effects with his left on keys. Together the two create huge walls of sound that envelope. Their lyrics have an emotional directness, adding romantic hues to this hazy shoegaze fuzzpop.
Wasner and Stack formed Wye Oak in 2006. Their first album, If Children, was released in 2007 and again in 2008, once the group signed with Merge Records. The Knot, their second, was released this year.
This song just crushed me. Heard it for the first time now. It’s an unusually dark kind of day in Colorado and the emotion within this song adds color and texture to the bleakness of it all. Taps directly into how I’m feeling. The song is breathtaking and Thom Yorke’s touch turns it into gold.
Waking up and the bed was made
No one looked me in the eye
More I try, More I cry
And it’s all for the best
Watched my brother cutting grass outside
Sitting on the porch he told me
It’s a long way to go before we can rest
But it’s all for the best
You’re so beautiful it sings
On a lonely lazy morning
And when I see you rocking back and forth
Whispering that it’s all for the best
One day the stone will roll away
Soon you’ll see
You’re far away from home but never far away from me
And that’s all for the best
(…and say you love me)
Promise me, son, not to do the things I’ve done
Walk away from trouble
(at the end of the day)
Say you love me
Say you love me
“All For The Best” appears on Ciao My Shining Star: The Songs of Mark Mulcahy, the tribute album released to provide support for Mulcahy, whose wife’s sudden death last year left the musician to raise their three-year old twin daughters alone. The original track appears on Miracle Legion’s Surprise, Surprise, Surprise LP (2000).
All 41 songs on the album, staggering in their intimacy and form, burst with love, hurt, loss, sarcasm and melody. Ciao My Shining Star is a strikingly beautiful and entirely appropriate tribute to an under-valued songwriter, who may now receive an appropriate level of attention. The collection (21 on CD, an additional 20 available online only) features covers of Mulcahy and Miracle Legion songs performed by artists including The National, Dinosaur Jr., Frank Black, Michael Stipe, Mercury Rev, Ben Kweller, and Elvis Perkins.
Thom Yorke’s music video for “All The Best”:
It seems that Mark Mulcahy hasn’t quite yet enjoyed the recognition he deserves. Through the Connecticut-based band Miracle Legion and his solo work, he has written an impressive body of largely ignored material.
Mulcahy is an unmistakably low-key individual, but even he was taken aback by the gathering of friends and peers who contributed songs. “This, in a strange way, has given me a look at what I’ve done or what impact I’ve had on something, which I just don’t think you normally get,” he says. “It’s one thing when you meet a band that opens for you, and they say, ‘Oh, man, I’ve always loved you guys,’ and that feels normal. But when it’s Thom Yorke or someone on a much different level, it’s kind of surprising.” – Hartford Currant
All I can say is that we are lucky that Thom Yorke keeps releasing tracks for us.
Built to Spill’s new album, There is No Enemy, brilliantly captures the melodic beauty of these indie rock forefathers. It’s good old, traditional Built to Spill sounding as great as ever. The album is their 7th and the 1st since they released 2006′s You In Reverse, the band’s highest charting album yet. On There is No Enemy, Built to Spill investigates an aesthetic they’ve created and honed over the years, revolving around Doug Martsch’s soft, yet penetrating vocals swimming in a bath of refracting guitar tones. The band again finds a new and interesting way to approach this sound.
Martsch’s lyrics are poignant and inviting. When he sings “Goddammit, things fall apart” on the appropriately titled “Things Fall Apart,” it’s hard not to feel like you understand. And on “Life’s A Dream”, he wisely reflects, “Waste your life/ but you don’t know what it’s worth/ Comb your mind/ For all the treasures of this earth / Too close to find/ anything outside yourself.”
Below are the 3 tracks that lead into There Is No Enemy. The band is currently streaming the entire album on MySpace.
Nowhere Lullaby
Trying not to solve this
Doesn’t mean it’s not that bad
And everyone gets through the night
And everyone wakes up all right
And the fear you feel will pass
Then a calmness that will last
We will learn to drift off fast
Another nowhere lullaby
You can rest or you can try
And this waste it shines in every way
Yeah this waste it shines in every way
Make me laugh every single day
And you hardly make me cry
Made fifteen years fly by
Still here and I don’t know why
Has it been that long
Is the time and the table gone
Hope it’s longer than that now
Don’t forget we don’t know how
And everyone gets feeling down
Everybody understands
We’re all doing what we can
Another nowhere lullaby
You can rest or you can try
And this waste it shines in every way
Yeah this waste it shines in every way
Ever since SXSW, I can’t stop thinking about Passion Pit. One of the best acts I saw that week by far. The band’s live performance is nothing less than electrifying. Their sound is a fine example of where indie rock has been going. Combining digital effects (2 keyboards, synth, and samples) with 80′s pop and falsetto vocals into decidedly current electro pop. I’m susceptible for falling for these types of bands as they get me on all sides of what I’m into. Love this comparison from Audio Muffin – “… (Imagine) if MGMT got together with Postal Service for a few drinks and decided to create music that balanced out batshit crazy with bespectacled yearning, the result might sound something like Passion Pit.” The band is also becoming known for remixing groups like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Ra Ra Riot, but I think their memorable originals is where it’s at.
Currently based in Cambridge, MA, Passion Pit formed in late 2007. The blogosphere lit up over their infectious single ‘Sleepyhead’ off their-debt, dorm room-recorded EP, “Chunk of Change” (2008). Michael Angelakos (lead vocalist) created Passion Pit in order to write a few songs as a Valentine’s Day gift for his girlfriend. Four of those songs plus ‘Sleepyhead’ and ‘Better Things’ make up the disc, which quickly made it around the Emerson campus where Angelakos was studying. The band released their first full-length album “Manners” this past May. Appearances include almost all the major fests including Sasquatch, Bonnaroo, and Lollapalooza this summer and Austin City Limits, Monolith, and Treasure Island this fall. Catch them.
Sleepyhead
And everything is going to the beat
And everything is going to the beat
And everything is going
And you say it was like fire around the brim
Burning solid burning thin the burning rim
Like stars burning holes right through the dark
Flicking fire like saltwater into my eyes
You were one inch from the edge of this bed
I dragged you back a sleepyhead
They couldn’t think of something to say the day you burst
With all their lions and all their might and all their thirst
They crowd your bedroom like some thoughts wearing thin
Against the walls against your rules against your skin
My beard grew down to the floor and out through the doors
Of your eyes, begonia skies like a sleepyhead
Your head
The Reeling
We dug these holes we crawled into now they’re my home
Now here I cannot feel the wind, cant feel the rain oh no
And I believe in gentle harmony
Well how I loathe all this obscenity
Is this the way my life has got to be?
Have I a single opportunity?
Look at me oh look at me is this the way i’ll always be
Oh no, oh no
Now I pray that somebody will quickly come and kidnap me
Oh no, oh no
Everyday I lie awake and pray to god today’s the day
Oh no, oh no
Here I am oh here I am oh when will someone understand?
Oh no, oh no
And all at once I feel this, oh how it clings to me
It reels and calls me towards it, confounding destiny
And I can feel the madness inch by inch
The more I run the more I am convinced
A color all these like the branches glimpse
Just like the saddle in the foggy mist
Look at me oh look at me is this the way i’ll always be
Oh no, oh no
Now I pray that somebody will quickly come and kidnap me
Oh no, oh no
And everyday I lie awake and pray to god today’s the day
Oh no, oh no
Here I am oh here I am oh when will someone understand?
Oh no, oh no
Look at me oh look at me is this the way i’ll always be
Oh no, oh no
Now I pray that somebody will quickly come and kidnap me
Oh no, oh no
And everyday I lie awake and pray to god today’s the day
Oh no, oh no
Here I am oh here I am oh when will someone understand?
Oh no, oh no
I first started listening to Phoenix back in 2004 when I found the band’s 2nd album, Alphabetical, on a listening station in Bart’s CD Cellar in Boulder. Immediately upon placing the headphones over my ears, I was wrapped up in tight pop grooves, smooth vocals, and sparkling sonic effects.
The band is curiously original despite the fact that their earlier albums inspire comparisons to Maroon 5. I momentarily forgot about the band, but noticed they were on tour this year with a new album, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. Went to the sold out show at the Bluebird (Denver, CO) blind, and was pleasantly shocked with where they’d taken the music – expanded direction into danceable, catching indie rock, filled with heavy keys and sound effects all laying on the foundation already built. Hooked again.
Based in Paris, Phoenix took off in Europe in 1999 when Air asked the group to be their backing band on several U.K. performances. The band broke in the U.S. on Saturday Night Live this past April, just before releasing their 4th studio album, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix (2009). After signing Phoenix in March, Daniel Glass of Glassnote Records released one of the new tracks to build up interest in the record and to increase the demand for live performances. According to Glass, that’s what inspired rampant talk about the band on blogs and the call from Saturday Night Live. Since then, Phoenix has played sold out clubs across the U.S., with appearances at Bonnaroo and on Letterman. This fall’s schedule includes the Greek Theatre (L.A.), The Warfield (S.F.), Monolith Festival (CO), and Austin City Limits.
I’ll leave you with two tracks and a video. “If I Ever Feel Better” is one of the first singles released back in 2000. Next is “Lisztomania” from Wolfgang Amadeus. The must watch is the video of “1901″ from SNL in April.
Lisztomania
So sentimental
Not sentimental no!
Romantic not disgusting yet
Darling i’m down and lonely
When with the fortunate only
I’ve been looking for something else
Do let do let do let jugulate do let do let do
Let’s go slowly, discouraged,
Distant from other interests
On your favorite weekend ending
This love’s for gentlemen only
That’s with the fortunate only
No i gotta be someone else
These days it comes it comes it comes it comes it comes and goes
Lisztomania
Think less but see it grow
Like a riot, like a riot, oh!
I’m not easily offended
It’s not hard to let it go
From a mess to the masses
Lisztomania
Think less but see it grow
Like a riot, like a riot, oh!
I’m not easily offended
It’s not hard to let it go
From a mess to the masses
Follow, misguide, stand still
Disgust, discourage
On this precious weekend ending
This love’s for gentlemen only
Wealthiest gentlemen only
And now that you’re lonely
Do let do let do let jugulate do let do let do
Let’s go slowly, discouraged,
We’ll burn the pictures instead
When it’s all over we can barely discuss
For one minute only
Not with the fortunate only
Thought it could have been something else
These days it comes it comes it comes it comes it comes and goes
Lisztomania
Think less but see it grow
Like a riot, like a riot, oh!
I’m not easily offended
It’s not hard to let it go
From a mess to the masses
Lisztomania
Think less but see it grow
Like a riot, like a riot, oh!
I’m not easily offended
It’s not hard to let it go
From a mess to the masses
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