Some Recent Acquisitions
The Decemberists
Picaresque
My Short Take
Jeff Mangum reincarnates... as Colin Meloy, and makes the next great Neutral Milk Hotel album (oops, wait a minute, I guess Jeff Mangum isn't dead yet). Meloy shares Mangum's ability to fashion fun-house mirror pop songs, and The Arcade Fire's fascination with 1st intervals. Great, great stuff.
Others Write
"Re-sleeve that album cover! Disregard those silly liner-note photographs! Never you mind the Decemberists' attempts at theatricality-- Picaresque is the band's least stagy, most serious, and most accomplished effort yet."
Pitchfork
"The tunes take the listener on a time-shifting, stream-of-consciousness expedition into the imagination, peopled by infant monarchs, suicidal lovers, vengeful sailors, military wives and boy ghosts. As with classic picaresque tales, the art and purpose lie not with the narrative's resolution but in the trip itself."
Pop Matters
"Like Nellie McKay says, all dude-rock is a pose, and unless selling drugs or driving steel is your art, you’re always going be at least once removed from reality, which means you have just as much freedom to embellish or flat-out make shit up as Meloy.
Picaresque
My Short Take
Jeff Mangum reincarnates... as Colin Meloy, and makes the next great Neutral Milk Hotel album (oops, wait a minute, I guess Jeff Mangum isn't dead yet). Meloy shares Mangum's ability to fashion fun-house mirror pop songs, and The Arcade Fire's fascination with 1st intervals. Great, great stuff.
Others Write
"Re-sleeve that album cover! Disregard those silly liner-note photographs! Never you mind the Decemberists' attempts at theatricality-- Picaresque is the band's least stagy, most serious, and most accomplished effort yet."
Pitchfork
"The tunes take the listener on a time-shifting, stream-of-consciousness expedition into the imagination, peopled by infant monarchs, suicidal lovers, vengeful sailors, military wives and boy ghosts. As with classic picaresque tales, the art and purpose lie not with the narrative's resolution but in the trip itself."
Pop Matters
"Like Nellie McKay says, all dude-rock is a pose, and unless selling drugs or driving steel is your art, you’re always going be at least once removed from reality, which means you have just as much freedom to embellish or flat-out make shit up as Meloy.
The only difference is that rather than sell you snake oil, Meloy’s selling you a self-contained universe, and while there may be a certain self-consciousness in wilin’ out to Meloy’s carefully arranged costume dramas, it’s not really any more of an escape because all of the normal human conflicts are still there."
Stylus
Stylus
"'The Infanta,' the thunderous opening track on the Decemberists' fluid and predictably studious Picaresque, rolls in like a ghost ship at 40 knots in a hail of cannon fire with a mad English professor at the wheel. Colin Meloy and his esteemed West Coast colleagues have no qualms about beginning their third full-length record with a processional about a child monarch, and it's a testimony to their talents as orators and interpreters of both the absurd and the mundane that they continue to assimilate more fans than they alienate."
All Music Guide
Bloc Party
Silent Alarm
My Short Take
Antony & The Johnsons
I Am A Bird Now
My Short Take
Tiny Mix Tapes
LCD Soundsystem
LCD Soundsystem
My Short Take
All Music Guide
"I have a big crush on James Murphy, but all music critics do. He's like the much cooler version of us. He is the big white music nerd who actually went on to do something about it by co-founding DFA Records and producing the coolest music in the world: post-punk post-funk punk-funk, new wave that also sounds like no wave, tunes that make dancers confused as to whether they should pogo or do the pelvic thrust, music that incorporates all other musics."
Pop Matters
Silent Alarm
My Short Take
Okay, so what would it sound like if a young Damon Albarn was Gang of Four's lead singer? Might sound something like Bloc Party. Lean, angular, slashing guitars under a wailing British tenor. Brilliant, mate.
Others Write
"Screw context, screw biography—Bloc Party have been around too short a time for either to matter. What is important is that they have a sense of adventure, romance, belief and intelligence, of art, a desire to explode preconceptions and exceed expectations that marks them out way above and beyond any of their perceived peers. Silent Alarm is a debut about desperation, about being desperately angry at injustice, about being desperately confused with the world, about being desperately in love."
"People will love this record. And so, inevitably, the people who don't love it will start complaining. And when they complain, they'll point out that this is just a regular-old rock album, full of all the current stylish rock-album tricks. And they'll be absolutely right; at worst, Bloc Party are like one of those people who are so well-groomed that it's hard to remember exactly what they look like. But really, a complaint like that misses something: Being a good ol' unchallenging rock band is this outfit's whole point-- and their biggest strength."Others Write
"Screw context, screw biography—Bloc Party have been around too short a time for either to matter. What is important is that they have a sense of adventure, romance, belief and intelligence, of art, a desire to explode preconceptions and exceed expectations that marks them out way above and beyond any of their perceived peers. Silent Alarm is a debut about desperation, about being desperately angry at injustice, about being desperately confused with the world, about being desperately in love."
Pitchfork
"Batten down the hatches and light the torches. Bloc Party is Paul Revere music. It is a rallying cry on swift horseback, a revolving lighthouse floodlight penetrating wind, ice, rain, and snow. The London-based quartet lives in a succession of tensions: little tic-addled songs that breathe deadlines, generated by dual-turreted guitars that spiral up the rhythm section like a neon double helix."
Pop Matters
"Batten down the hatches and light the torches. Bloc Party is Paul Revere music. It is a rallying cry on swift horseback, a revolving lighthouse floodlight penetrating wind, ice, rain, and snow. The London-based quartet lives in a succession of tensions: little tic-addled songs that breathe deadlines, generated by dual-turreted guitars that spiral up the rhythm section like a neon double helix."
Pop Matters
Antony & The Johnsons
I Am A Bird Now
My Short Take
It's all but certain that if you haven't heard this record, you haven't heard anything like Antony. A high, keening tenor, often soaring to falsetto, with a Bryan Ferryesque warble on the top. Over the top, really. Listen here to "Hope There's Someone" and prepare to disbelieve.
Others Write
"The greatness of this downcast crooner is the melding of that otherworldly trill with a dark, powerful aesthetic. Looking past his sad eye make-up and kewpie-doll features are these mesmerizing songs about loving dead boys, plaintive letters from hermaphroditic children, the fear of dark lonesome purgatories, breast amputation, the fluidity of gender."
"I'm completely overwhelmed by this record. I Am a Bird Now is beyond any semi-confectionary aesthetic distance that you might bring to discussing your average album. This music grabs a hold of you and doesn't let go. It feels timeless and gorgeous and bigger than life. It may not be "soul" in the strict, music appreciation 101 sense, but it could make even the most jaded atheist approach a metaphysical regard. It is assured, seering and majestic SOUL to the utmost. I'd put on my critic's cap and dive into scrutiny, but I am too enraptured by this artist's music."Others Write
"The greatness of this downcast crooner is the melding of that otherworldly trill with a dark, powerful aesthetic. Looking past his sad eye make-up and kewpie-doll features are these mesmerizing songs about loving dead boys, plaintive letters from hermaphroditic children, the fear of dark lonesome purgatories, breast amputation, the fluidity of gender."
Tiny Mix Tapes
LCD Soundsystem
LCD Soundsystem
My Short Take
Not much doubt that "Daft Punk Is Playing In My House" is the most ass-shakinest, killer riffinest, groovealiciousest song that I have heard in a long, long time. Worth the price of admission just for this track alone, but the rest of the album rocks in a super-disco bass-thumpin' way as well.
Others Write
"And, simply put, it’s a hit. It’s not exactly a home-run, mind you—LCD Soundsystem is not an album that results in blown minds and logic-defying epiphanies. But after disappointing would-be breakthrough releases from so many of the discopunk frontlines, this is an album that’s more easily classifiable as “great” for what it isn’t, rather than what it is. It’s not inconsistent. It’s not a total deviation from what we know of the group. It’s never dull. And, most importantly—it is in no way a let down."
"I'm completely overwhelmed by this record. If a music-nerd version of Animal House set in 2005 is ever made, "Daft Punk Is Playing at My House" -- the boisterous opener of LCD Soundsystem -- would make an ideal theme song for the fraternity on which it is based. The self-conscious, awkward music obsessives pledging into this fraternity would have to pass a complex trivia test, own a compulsory list of records, and, as a hazing ritual, ask to dance with someone in public. If LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy were the least bit open to the concept, he could be the fraternity's advisor. Judging from a handful of singles and this album, he'd be more than qualified."Others Write
"And, simply put, it’s a hit. It’s not exactly a home-run, mind you—LCD Soundsystem is not an album that results in blown minds and logic-defying epiphanies. But after disappointing would-be breakthrough releases from so many of the discopunk frontlines, this is an album that’s more easily classifiable as “great” for what it isn’t, rather than what it is. It’s not inconsistent. It’s not a total deviation from what we know of the group. It’s never dull. And, most importantly—it is in no way a let down."
All Music Guide
"I have a big crush on James Murphy, but all music critics do. He's like the much cooler version of us. He is the big white music nerd who actually went on to do something about it by co-founding DFA Records and producing the coolest music in the world: post-punk post-funk punk-funk, new wave that also sounds like no wave, tunes that make dancers confused as to whether they should pogo or do the pelvic thrust, music that incorporates all other musics."
Pop Matters
posted by dgags @ 5:09 PM
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