Laurie Anderson- Homeland (2010)

http://www.mediafire.com/?o81psbwqdxsozvd

As an artist and a violinist, I am unabashedly infatuated with Laurie Anderson. And if you are reading this, I don't need to talk about how awesome she is.

"Homeland" is interesting in that it is a document of a performance that she performed on tour for awhile. I love that idea--the "tour" first with the album later. And Homeland is also interesting because it's just weirdly dark, but also really accessible. It's clearly about the entire 9/11 paranoia.

Musically, it has songs that could allllmost end up on the radio, though most of it is pretty atmospheric. At times it feels like an "Americana" soundtrack, with lots of lonesome fiddles playing together and against each other. And the awesome voicebox is back, which makes at least one song in particular feel wonderfully creepy.

"In America, we like solutions. We like solutions to problems. Companies with experts ready to solve these problems. Only an expert can solve these problems."


Can you comprehend that she's married to Lou Reed? That still seems so strange to me. Also kind of funny that Art21 just featured her. Hey Laurie, thanks for being an amazing artist for 30 years. It's cool if we throw you a bone now, right?

Slowdive- Pygmalion (1995) and Pygmalon Demos (1994)

http://www.mediafire.com/?gzyknf2nmjy

While i listened to a lot of embarrassingly bad music in high school (inevitable, but especially so growing up in an isolated small town), i managed to make friends with a gal in--ironically--east Ohio who turned me on to brit pop, shoegazer, and noise rock.

One of my favorite high school bands, believe it or not, was Slowdive. I heard their UK-only final release Pygmaleon early on in college. I paid $18 for it on a whim  and it was one of the best musical finds of the year. Their signature album "Souvlaki" is pretty cool and it has that seminal shoegazer sound--dreamy, reverby, epic, melancholic. But Pygmaleon was different--sparse, uncomfortable, disjointed, and eerily pretty.

This is the kind of album that happens as a band breaks up. Some members want to go in a new direction, the others don't like it, so you get an incomplete band making a record in pieces without the same commercial enthusiasm or backing of the label. Sometimes great things happen in that space (see Big Star: 3rd).

Fifteen years later, and it still stands out as an interesting listen. Might i also add that i would take this CD over any Mojave 3 record. 

If you find yourself especially smitten, or a bigger-than-average Slowdive fan, listen to the Pygmalion Demos:
http://www.mediafire.com/?um1ms1lcuri

Kawai Kenji- Ghost in the Shell OST (1995)

http://www.mediafire.com/?tc5sbmauak88o1t

Soundtracks are tricky because they often don't stand on their own, without the images and dialog that they are supposed to support. I'm a bit dubious of soundtracks that play like entire albums-- they should be more evocative, leaving you wanting for a little bit more.

I recently re-watched this film and was struck by the music. It feels like the soundtrack to Blade Runner--both minimal and completely essential to the film's noir feeling, tinged with philosophy, sadness, indifference, anxiety, and wonder. 

The soundtrack is always somehow "empty" even in the fullest numbers (the title credits, which repeats periodically). The idea is to convey the ghost, or the spirit, that is somehow present in the materials that it shouldn't be--namely technology.

It's made me want to view the rest of this series. Plus, it's a killer soundtrack to a bike ride home. Wow.

An incredible live performance of the opening credit song ("Reincarnation"): 

Kawai Kenji in the studio, in a knit sweater and mullet.
I don't know if this makes him more awesome or just cringe-y.

Luke Temple- Snowbeast

http://www.mediafire.com/?k0ls0vv8izwrhkc

You know you have a good friend when they email you to write, "Hey, this cd makes me think of you. I think you'd like it."

Luckily for me, when someone does that, they're often right. Luke Temple was recommended to me by a good friend and I ended up really being drawn by it. I really got hooked on it when i was riding my bike downtown on the way to see Camera Obscura play live. This is an amazing "Hot-summer-night-on-a-bike" cd-- lots of swirls, loops, ambiance, textures, and great vocals. The songs are simple and catchy, and they fade and wash into each other, so that the whole of the album is greater than the parts of it.

Snowbeast (nickname for yeti) made me think about songwriting and recording differently. Luke Temple sings in this great haunting register, and layers his vocals at parts. There is a strange absence of low end stuff-- hardly any bass, etc. But it's really the high, lonesome vocals that do it for me. Plus the gurgling synth textures and "less is more" approach. The tracks are eerie, pretty, and haunting, which is like icing on the cake.

Give it a chance, listen to it a couple of times, and I bet it'll grow on you.

By the way, this image was taken from the Daytrotter Sessions site (which you should look into, if you haven't). Luke Temple with an armful of Yeti.  Wacky.

Shields Down- Powdered Sugar Avalanche

http://www.mediafire.com/?5uc3gdwbpym5hwh

Powdered Sugar Avalanche combines the Everything But the Kitchen Sink Brian Eno brand of pop music with the whirled sonics of My Bloody Valentine and the instrumentation of Magnetic Fields. It's ultimately a group of pop songs, but sounds a bit like Alan Lomax engineered a group of pop musicians that Brian Eno arranged and Kevin Shields produced. It's all over the place, in a nice way, i think.

The 'band' consists of brothers Ben and Leif Fairfield, who both make their own cds, and Lisa Chuang. Ben Fairfield tends to make poppy songs in the vein of Jack Johnson or Elliot Smith while Leif prefers the overall sound and feeling of songs, more akin to Brian Eno or Andrew Bird.

The songs here are shrouded in imagery and feel a bit like reading a book on a remote ocean shoreline. It has a song in Thai, a Chinese boys choir, and lyrics about Japanese history. It's familiar-enough as a pop cd, but even at its most intimate, it still feels pretty far off and abstract.

"Any Kind of Day" feels a bit like Sarah McLachlan-meets-Cush and "SwanDive" nearly sounds like Jeremy Enigk with a looser backing band. I have always appreciated bands that rotate lead singers, and i especially like the three part harmonies.



* If you ever get a chance to pick up a physical copy, it's printed letterpress! Woo ha!

Braids- Native Speaker

http://www.mediafire.com/?ztf5zuxaem3skhg

BRAIDS are:
a) one part early 90s classic 4AD sound (already recipe for greatness),
b) one part Gang Gang Dance,
c) one part Siouxie and the Banshees, and
d) one part Lars Ulrich.

Imagine really tasteful synth textures (i know--oxymoron, right?), female vocals with lots of personality and strength, super huge pop sensibility, soul, and the feeling of being seventeen years old on a spring break camping trip. Braids is really my thing this week.

Wearing a truly terrible band name on their sleeves, Braids are a four piece from Montreal, Canada. They could fit anywhere in a bill with Cocteau Twins, an aggressive version of Slowdive, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Animal Collective. Really, really great stuff that can fill your heart on the cloudiest day or brightest summer day.

Singer Raphaelle Standell-Preston is part of another poorly named group (Blue Hawaii), who sound basically like Braids, but less polished. Standell-Preston is interesting: she gets comparisons to Jenny Lewis and Bjork (which--C'MON!--has to be the laziest comparison someone could ever draw); however, she sounds to me like Joanna Newsome singing electronic music.

Love 'em.

Rachel's- Systems/Layers

http://www.mediafire.com/?hzjyj3zvlkm

Rachel's has to be one of my favorite bands ever, and Systems/Layers is probably their finest record. Most of their albums could be classified as concept albums, but this one works the best. Start to finish, it has an uncanny cohesion, and it bounces between classical, ambient, trip-hop, spoken word, indie rock, found recordings, and low budget movie soundtrack.

It works well as active and passive listening, and as a result, Rachel's proudly boasted of being as popular with grandparents as they were to young hipsters. If that sounds at all weird, please listen to this and see what I mean.

This cd has a tenuous beauty and sadness to it-- both frail and rough. Probably one of my top 10 records of all time. I played the hell out of this the year it came out.

Also great by Rachel's: Selenography, Music for Egon Schiele, and The Sea and the Bells.

Broadcast and the Focus Group- Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age

http://www.mediafire.com/?gzgejyzbx4z

This starts off sounding like Os Mutantes in the 1960s, but by the time you reach the end of this cd, you'll feel like you're listening to Cut Chemist's paranoid doppleganger on acid. 

This entire cd was probably made without touching a musical instrument, and as always, sounds best through a pair of headphones. The first track will make your mom happy, and the last track will make your mom want to send you to a therapist.

Bang on a Can All Stars- Music for Airports

http://www.mediafire.com/?d2vuu97kb8h2m9f

Unless you have lived (quite successfully) under a log for the past several decades, you've gone through a period of really liking Brian Eno's Music for Airports. The story is that while he was hospitalized, he became fascinated with sounds that blended into the environment. That is apparently an amazing idea, though Eric Satie had a very similar idea a good hundred years before...

I digress. So there is a "New Chamber Group" or however they describe themselves, named Bang On a Can All Stars (i won't judge you for judging the name. Yuck.) who likes to cover music by people who will never appreciate their efforts (e.g. Brian Eno and Richard D. James). They turned this extremely discreet music into something sort of dynamic, to be played live by 8 or 9 musicians.

I sound pessimistic, but the actual recording is pretty nice. If you are at all familiar with Eno's original, this is an interesting listen.

(Please, BOACAS: new name, or at least new album art. Yuck.)

Women- Public Strain

http://www.mediafire.com/?8yfmqd2wcls4ycf

A friend turned me on to Women's "Group Transport Hall," which i covered for a performance about jeggings. The song is really great-- weird, wobbly, beautiful, and catchy.

Public Strain could be described that same way. It has that uncanny element to it, where you recognize and don't recognize the music. It goes from sounding strident to blissful, and makes me feel like i'm underground looking at cathedrals when i listen to it. I read that it felt more like an "album" than most cds, and sounds best (*surprise surprise) when listened to on headphones. If you play it through speakers at work, like i did, people will just glare at you.

Recommended for fans of Deerhoof and Slowdive or Aaron Martin. *A disclaimer: it took at least 3 listens for me to really like this, which I think is a sign of a great album. One of my favorite discoveries of this new year.