Why I love Okkervil River

Lyrics, lyrics, lyrics. There is absolutely no one on the indie scene writing lyrics as intelligent and intricately rhymed as Will Shef. Some criticize being excessively literate, but it's a bit like accusing McJagger of preening too much on stage. Isn't that the point?

From "Plus Ones":

And no one wants a tune about the 100th luftballoon
that was seen shooting from the window of your room,
to be a spot against the sky's colossal gloom
and land, deflated, in some neighbor state that's strewn with 99 others
as gentle or as clean as all the others
...
The 51st way to leave your lover:
Admittedly, it doesn't seem to be
as gentle or as clean as all the others.

Or how about "Singer Songwriter"

You come from wealth,
yah, you got wealth
what a bitch that they didn't give you much else. 

I heard cuts by The Kinks on your speakers,
I saw Poe and Artaud on your shelves.
While The Last Laugh's first scene
on your flat panel screen
lit Chanel that you've wrapped around yourself.

So, yeah, I'm just a little excited about Okkervill River's new release and the fact that they are playing Boston at the Royale on June 8th.

James Blake

If Thom Yorke and Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) had a love child, it would probably sound something like James Blake.  His self-titled debut sounds like a dubstep remake of For Emma, Forever Ago, which is just the weirdest thing I've ever written, but that doesn't make it any less true.  Both albums are pervaded by the same isolating atmospherics - it's hard to imagine Blake writing this album while locked away in a Wisconsin cabin for the winter, as Vernon did for his stellar 2008 release, but it still feels just as forlorn and snowbound.  Listen to Lindisfarne I & II:  It opens with Blake's solo vocals run through a vocoder, and then slowly layers on additional tracks of Blake harmonizing with himself.  It's haunting - a more mature version of Imogen Heap's 'Hide and Seek.'  In the second part, the guitar and simple rhythm part feel eerily reminiscent of For Emma.  As for the Thom Yorke comparisons, well, mostly I have to say that I wish that Yorke's solo work was this good.  Frankly, I wish King of Limbs had been this good.


The stand out tracks here are completely unexpected:  At first listen, 'I Never Learnt To Share' is just strange.  Blake sings one line, 'My brother and my sister don't speak to me / but I don't blame them'.  He repeats it over and over again throughout the song.  On repeated listens, you hear the layered vocal harmonies subtly shift, while the organ builds and changes underneath the melody.  It's intelligent, sophisticated, moving and the rare song that changes my conception of what good music should sound like. Similarly, on 'Give Me My Month', Blake steps out of the processed sound of all the other tracks - it's just Blake and a piano, in a strangely classic piece of pop music.  Blake seems to be demonstrating that he deeply understands the musical forms that he subverts elsewhere.

Indeed, it's the solid musical underpinnings that hold these songs together even as Blake bends them, letting harmony lines fall just barely out of sync, twisting meters and processing instruments almost beyond recognition. In particular, there's a strong current of classic R&B running throughout the album, particularly in the final track 'Measurements', which sounds practically like a church spiritual.  Blake sings these parts beautifully, showing just how much the breaking, cracking sound he uses to great effect elsewhere (particularly on 'Unluck') is an intentional choice.

The more radio-friendly songs (relatively speaking), are good hooks into the album, but fall a little flat on repeated listens.  'The Willhelm Scream' is, despite the title, a very easy song to like - without the jagged rhythms of other tracks, and with Blake repeating a lovely melody and accessible lyrics, it sounds more like  like an Aaron Neville hit than the rest of the album.  There is not thing wrong with the song -  I just can't listen to it too many times.  Ditto 'Limit to Your Love'.

Still, this album has been at the top of my rotation for two straight weeks now - forcing out The Mountain Goats excellent new album before I had a chance to write a review.  

James Blake on Amazon
James Blake on iTunes

Palpatine on Skins

Spent yesterday wandering from the Embarcadero up to Fisherman's Wharf via Chinatown and back down to  Union Square plus some rambling through the Mission.  Logged about 6.5 miles by my best guess, most of it with either the Mountain Goats (review to come) or Gillian Welch on repeat.   The best thing about wandering aimlessly around a city is stumbling across stuff like this:

I don't know what's better, his drumming or the fact that his hoodie kinda makes it look like you're watching Emperor Palpatine rock the trap set.  

(PS - I have no idea what's up with aspect ratio, and so far I haven't figured out how to fix it.)

Kurt Vile

I once read that genius is not that which is not an imitation, but that which cannot be imitated.  By that definition, I don't doubt that Kurt Vile (yes, that is his real name) is a genius.  Countless reviewers have pointed out the similarities to Tom Petty, Bob Seger and Bruce Springsteen in his latest album, Smoke Ring for My Halo, but it never quite seems to explain what you are listening too.  Ordinarily, when we say that an artist has a certain 'influence', it's because we find a specific element of their music to sound like the prior artist.  Tom Petty's voice sounds like Bob Dylan's which sounds like Woody Guthrie's.  Kurt Vile sounds like Tom Petty played wrong.  The simple chord structures are there, the half-sung, half-intoned vocals are there, but it's been picked apart at the seams - the memorably pointless guitar licks have been replaced with wandering fuzz that shifts and falls over the beat; the glibly simple melodies are reduced to repetitive, almost a-melodic drawls that slur out like an afterthought;  the faux-hardscrabble lyrics (think of the empty nostalgia of Mary Jane) scorched away by a Cobain bleakness that doesn't even try for redemption.

It's easy to hate this album on first listen.  It's so painfully uncool - the FM rock influences are so... sincere.  Even the lyrics seem to come from the wrong decade:

I bet by now
You probably think I'm a puppet
To the man
Well, I'll tell you right now
You best believe that I am

Who talks about 'the man' in this day and age?  The guy has hair past his shoulders, for crying out loud. I mean just look at him - he should be playing for the Meat Puppets in 1986, or a mid-90's Vaselines cover band, or for Pearl Jam, well, ever.  He just has no right to be relevant in 2011, and yet somehow he is.

There's nothing ironic about any of it: no pop-inspired hooks and no 'I'm cool for being so bored' lyrics.  Instead he's singing "I get sick of just about everyone / And I hide in my baby's arms / Shrink myself just like a tom thumb / And I hide in my baby's hands" and then on the next track he's straight into a beautiful, catchy guitar melody for 'Jesus Fever' (my favorite on the album so far) that sounds like the love child of Fleetwood Mac and REM.  It's a beautiful finger-picked line that seems to stretch out just two bars too long.  But that's what you start to fall in love with on this album - nothing has been sanded flush.  The joints are all visible, the flaws left exposed - one guitar part too many here, a syllable drawn out too long there, it's the polar opposite of my last obsession.  Just listen to the rattled bass note at the beginning of every four bar phrase on On Tour. It sticks out.  It shouldn't be there - it's too heavy, too overdone. But it's very intentional, and it it rings out the monotony of the touring life - it's Seger's 'Turn the Page' minus the romanticism.  It's just ugly and menacing:

Watch out for this one
He'll pump you full of lead for turning your head wrong
I would know
I see through everyone, even my own self now

Not every song on the album works.  "Society is My Friend" is just too high-school poetry, as is the title track, but if you've recently overdosed on Radiohead, The National, or the Smith Westerns, this just might be your antidote.

Smoke Ring for My Halo on Amazon
Smoke Ring for My Halo on iTunes

Permutations

When I visit Manhattan, I often have the impression that I am seeing the same 7 or 8 people over and over again:  The skinny-jeaned hipster, the girl with the teddy bear hat, the confused asian tourist...   It's as though these archetypes wander across my field of vision and then race off stage to change their shoes and put on a different necklace, maybe a wig, before they are shuttled up to the the next block to reappear in their new permutation.  It's a feeling I don't get anywhere else - I suppose when you have 8 million people packed into such a small area, the need to establish one's identity at a glance becomes a matter of tribal membership.  How else could you maintain your sense of self when you live with in a mile of more people than a human being would typically meet in a lifetime throughout most of history?

It's a digression, I know, but I have this same feeling of reappearing permutations when I listen to "No Color," The Dodos third album, especially comparing it back to their first.  The core remains the same, while the particulars are rearranged - folk rhythms (particularly celtic drumming, to my ear), highly percussive guitar work, short melodic phrasing and repetitions that treat the vocal track almost as a drum in itself - these are always consistent, while the particulars are reconfigured from track to track, and even within a song. Intentionally or not, it seems to borrow from Ornette Coleman's idea of harmolodic music, where every instrument carries melody and percussion with equal weight.  This same idea was a direct influence of Soul Coughing, and I hear much the same effect in Rodrigo y Gabriela's virtuosic guitar work on 11:11, though all of these bands have (thankfully) dropped Coleman's atonalism.

Done well, this aesthetic is energetic and engaging, and The Dodos certainly do it well.  Meric Long's guitar work is forceful and precise, working equally well for finger-picked acoustic lines and the occasional driving electric shred.  Logan Kroeber melds his syncopated drum work seamlessly with the guitar, complementing Long's own rhythmic play.  But the style can also be limiting.  The emphasis on percussion is sometimes to the detriment of melody - each of Meric Long's vocal and guitar lead lines are beautiful, but he often constrains them to repeat a very exact motif over a couple bars, which leaves little room for harmonic or melodic development.  Instead, The Dodos create forward motion by switching across distinct sections of short, repeated rhythmic, harmonic and melodic motifs - changing clothes when our heads are turned, but returning as much the same person we saw a moment before.  This is actually a distinct improvement on Visiter,  where Long and Kroeber sometimes let each section persist for all or most of the song - no matter how good those two bars are, they just can't sustain an entire song.

The album is at it's best when Logan and Kroeber give their creations just a little space to breathe, particularly on "Companions" and "Don't Try and Hide It," where the duo allow the patterns to mutate and shift less precisely. Neko Case's appearance on the latter track is extremely welcome - I often prefer Case's work on other artist's albums, where the unusual but beautiful character of her voice adds potency, where on its own it can be a bit intense.   Kroeber's lead lines on the electric guitar are also particularly good in that song.  There's also real melodic development in "When Will You Go?", and (in another clothes-changing moment) there's a certain 60's folk-pop influence to the vocals, much like my favorite track on Visiter, "Ashley," which for some reason that I will never fully understand, always makes me think of Mrs Robinson in the The Graduate.

While I do think it would benefit if The Dodos relaxed their precision just a bit more, the highlights of this album are incredibly rewarding, though I found it took a couple listens before they started to reveal themselves.

Yellowman

I had the privilege this afternoon of seeing my friend, Rachel Christopher, in Trinity Rep's production of Yellowman.  She plays opposite Joe Wilson in an overwhelming hour and a half of theater about the nexus of color, gender and class within a 1960's Southern Black community.  The play is shattering most of all in the absence of overt white racism: this is about how the legacy of prejudice, slavery and poverty infects a community until it devours itself.  How a cast of two can sustain an audience through such a painful and taxing drama is beyond me, but I certainly know that this was true virtuosity.

For me, the musicality of the dialogue (really, closer to monologue) is irresistible.  Throughout, the actors repeat permutations of their lines that highlight the cadences of southern oratory, gospel and blues traditions.  As Eugene and Alma (Joe and Rachel, respectively) slip from their own characters voices into the Gullah accents of their parents and grandparents, each character-within-character becomes a rhythm of it's own, and the director highlights this at times by playing the actor's voices on tape behind their continuing dialogue.  Later in the play, after Alma escapes South Carolina and moves to New York, she carries us through the city in the clicking of her newly-beloved high heels, making her walk (and her words) into a dance, a beating drum. Music becomes a backdrop, an simple necessity for the play - as Eugene asks, "Is there anything beyond church music and blues?"

Painting Isolation

Other than writing my review for Kaputt, I spent most of yesterday's ride back from New York listening to Brooklyn Rider's Dominant Curve. The afternoon before, I'd been to the Whitney to see an exhibition of Edward Hopper's works. I wasn't terribly familiar with Hopper - of course everyone knows Nighthawks. Those paintings kept coming back to me during the ride: the deep sense of isolation embedded in mundane, often bright and vivid scenes.  A Woman in the Sun and New York Interior in particular stuck with me and it seemed appropriate subject matter for as rain-slashed bus ride back to Boston. You sit right next to someone, within a few feet of a 50 more for 4 straight hours, and no one says a word - very Hopper.

Dominant Curve is one of the few things to get me interested in modern classical music in a long time. I don't feel in the least qualified to review it (not that I've let that stop me so far) but the jangled notes, the quartet ceaselessly pulling together and breaking apart across the second movement of Achilles Heel... Well, it fit the bus ride and the paintings.

Dancing with Himself

"I write poetry for myself / I write poetry for myself / I write poetry for myself"

Self-referential, pop-referential, post-modern to the nth degree. Destroyer's latest album, Kaput, is a Depeche Mode album remixed by Blondie, a photocopy of a photocopy of a CBGB poster. It's self-indulgent to a degree that's almost nauseating on first listen, but on reflection, is appropriate for the subject matter. Somehow it works, if you can stomach it.

Dan Bejar seems to be trying to build the ultimate 80's album: disaffected lyrics heavy with apparent poignancy and yet ultimately ephemeral; The words fade as quickly as the manufactured fog at a discotheque. He layers these with synth washes, mindless soft-rock saxophone wails and drum tracks that would sound right at home on the Yamaha keyboard my father brought home in 1986, and the result is an homage which is strangely longing and yet completely honest about the pointlessness of that decade. The effect works best on "Savage Night at the Opera" - the guitar riff could have been lifted right off London Calling - where Bejar seems to be singing directly to the ennui of New York City club scene.

"A savage night at the opera. / Another savage night at the club. / Let's face it, old souls like us are being born to die"

This album is maddening: I hated it from the first time I heard it, but I keep coming back and listening to it anyway. The composition is so carefully and intentionally over the top, and each hook feels like it's a song you already know - you just can't remember where you heard it before. Was that sax solo from a Billy Joel album? The guitar solo on smile: it's Bejar imitating a new wave band that stole it from 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps' and vocals on the outro are an homage to a ripoff of 'Hey Jude.'

But the album borders on an altar to atheism: glorification of nothingness, of pointlessness. At a certain point I start to think that solipsism may be an indefensible artistic viewpoint. If there is nothing to be known or communicated, why write a song? And why listen to it?

But I still keep listening to it. And maybe that's Bejar's point: no matter how vague and pointless, the music that he pays homage to drew people to the clubs night after night and made them feel something.

The 5 Stages of "King of Limbs"

1. Anticipation

Oh my god.  New Radiohead.  New.  Radiohead.  Why isn't it here yet?  I can't wait.  I hope it's as good as [OK Computer/Kid A/In Rainbows/Amnesiac].  Of course it will be - it will be better. Thom Yorke is incapable of anything other than complete genius and he would never do anything that wasn't frickin' A-mazing.  OK, I mean [Pablo Honey/Hail to the Thief/Amnesiac] wasn't my favorite, but it's probably my fault;  I just didn't listen to it hard enough. Yes, definitely my fault.  ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod...

2. Confusion

What's up with the first track?  I mean it doesn't really sound like In Rainbows, which was awesome.  It's good though, right?  I just thought there was going to be more [traditional song structure/accessible lyrics/layered sounds/stilted rythms] and less [traditional song structure/accessible lyrics/layered sounds/stilted rythms].

3. Denial

Yeah, it's totally genius.  Going with that [annoying looping rhythm/screeching vocals/disembodied computer voice/sampled piano] was an artistic reinvention.  It's a whole new ballgame and Thom was right to throw off the shackles of the last album.  It's just sooo good that it's ahead of everybody else and we have to catch up.  Genius.  Definitely genius. Couldn't be anything but genius because everyone knows Radiohead is genius and if this isn't genius that would mean everything that came before wasn't genius either and that would just be unbearable.

4. Anger  

IT WAS ALL A LIE.  This makes no sense.  This isn't another  [OK Computer/Kid A/In Rainbows/Amnesiac]!  It's worse than [Pablo Honey/Hail to the Thief/Amnesiac] - it's just noise.  No wait, it's still just my fault.  I didn't listen hard enough - if I listen to it a second time OH WHO AM I KIDDING IT'S JUST WEIRD FOR THE SAKE OF WEIRD. 

5. Acceptance

OK, I guess I really do like Give up the Ghost and Little by Little.  It's kind of a pared down In Rainbows, almost going back to Kid A, but still with some of the accessibility of [OK Computer/The Bends/In Rainbows]. Bloom is starting to grow on me, too.  And Codex... Well, Thom Yorke sure can do still do that 'sweet sadness' better than anybody else - it might even be up there with Exit Music or Motion Picture Soundtrack.  Wonder why they didn't put it at the end of the album.  I think I could live without Feral or Lotus Flower - and what's up with the album length? Only 8 songs?  Kinda weird.  OK, so maybe it's not another [OK Computer/Kid A/In Rainbows] but it's still better than 90% of the albums I'm going to buy this year, and definitely more inventive and unique than 99% of them.  

Radiohead Pre-order

I'm a little disappointed that Radiohead decided not to stick with the 'pay-what-you-want' model they tested  for "In Rainbows," but I'm way too excited for a new Radiohead album to let it get me down.

Be the first kid on your block to pre-order "King of Limbs"

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

"The ArchAndroid" is curiously schizophrenic and obsessively polished at the same time - it's a big, meaty, unpredictable mess of an album that calls to mind Outkast's "Stankonia" in its arc from track to track, bouncing across styles at a blistering pace (Classical to 40's jazz to 60's pop to R&B and back again), and yet, unlike Outkast's album, each individual track is fiercely controlled, and musically far more refined.  Monae's split Android/Human persona is ultimately a good metaphor for the split personality of the music.

Monae is at her best when she embraces that control and puts the (considerable) energy at her disposal behind it.  In "Dance or Die" and "Faster" the frenetic pace of the music works well against her exceptionally tight vocal work - in the first track it's a monotone rap laid out as only an android could over techno-cuban rhythms and a Miami Sound Machine-worthy chorus.  I love the bass work throughout the album, and particularly on "Dance or Die" - it's intelligent and yet visceral, drawing on latin music to keep the energy alive without dumbing down.  The transition from that track into "Faster" is just spectacular;  The songs couldn't be more different, with one techno/latin and the next a sped-up 60's pop piece along the lines of "These Boots are Meant for Walkin'", and she does both feels justice.

Monae's vocal talents are undeniable and, to my ear, refreshing.  Her voice is exceptionally pure, drawing on those 60's pop influences for a clean sound totally at odds with the excessive-vibrato R&B belting that seems to have become the gold-standard for American female vocalists.  It's exceptionally gratifying to hear a truly wonderful singer eschew the cliche'd baroque embellishments and rely on the simple strength of her own voice.  You won't hear Mariah/Beyonce/Christina vocals-for-their-own-sake, and it's a relief. 

If "The ArchAndroid" has a flaw, it's that it's too much robot, not enough woman.  Monae's performance can come off as theatrical - on "Come Alive (War of the Roses)" she sings "That's when I come alive / Like a schizo running wild" in what should be wild abandon, but she still sounds more like an actress playing crazy than a woman losing control.  I can't help but wonder if this isn't Big Boi's influence - his work is so tightly wound that it sometimes needs Andre 3000's explosive nature to keep it in balance.

Still, the album is breathtaking in its scope of influences alone and it handles each of them exceptionally well - I would love to hear her tackle slightly more personal subject matter, but oddly enough, after listening through several rounds, I started to feel that the album in its entirety is a sort of self-portrait, expressing exuberant passions and conflicting tensions of control and release that really do say something about Janelle Monae, even if the individual tracks sometimes feel like screens that she hides behind.

Hardwired

There's a funny thing that happens occasionally on my way home from work.  As I reach Porter Square, it's not uncommon for the infamous Porter Square escalator  to be out of service, which makes for 6-story vertical climb.  Not fun.  But the interesting thing is what happens when I try to step on to the stalled escalator:  A brief but intense moment of vertigo as my brain reacts to the split second delay before my foot makes contact with the stair.  I know the escalator is not moving. I know not to expect the tread to rise to meet my descending foot.  But somehow, and this is the part that fascinates me, some part of my brain has been optimized purely for getting on and off escalators, and yet it isn't quite able to figure out that a non-working escalator is just a stair.

That's the odd thing about brains - we experience reality as objective and fixed, but behind the scenes our minds are doing all kinds of weird processing to make the world more comprehensible.  Optical illusions are the classic example used in Cog Sci 101 classes.  My personal favorites are the gray contrast illusions, since their application to the real world is so clear:

(Licensed under Creative Commons. Author information here.)

The gray bar in the center is the exact same shade throughout, and yet we see it as lighter on one side and darker on the other.  Our visual cortex is 'enchancing' the contrast in order to improve edge-detection.  This has huge advantages in the natural world, especially where you might need to distingush a camouflaged predator (or prey) from its surroundings.

So by now some of my readers (maybe even both of you) might be wondering what this has to do with music.  The fascinating thing about music (at least for me) is that it exists at all, let alone why it is so prevalent throughout human society.  Every culture has it's own form, and even music in another language can attract passionate fans.  It appears to have no obvious evolutionary value, and yet this appreciation for music has real neuro-psychological underpinning. Arstechnica has a great writeup on research showing how listening to a beloved piece of music causes dopamine releases in the brain. This activation of the mesolimbic system appears to be associated with both mental reward and memory.

But why does it exist?  Babies can distinguish the "mood" of music as early as 5 months of age: does this mean that music is hardwired into us from birth?  Or does the substantial amount of brain dedicated to auditory processing simply respond well to such complex stimuli?  I don't know of any definitive answers to these questions, but as I read more I'll post what I find out here.

The Middle Class Are Evil

Ah, the suburbs.  Punching bag of artists, aesthetes, malcontents and the generally disaffected everywhere. Clearly, most of America lives in a wasteland of deferred dreams, nattering, painful, pointless conversations and a secret loathing for themselves that can only end in death or the complete abandonment of all the stifling mores that once held them in thrall.  Think 'American Beauty'.

Enter Arcade Fire's "The Suburbs".  This album topped so many 'best of' lists for 2010 that I just had to dig it out and give it another listen.

Arcade Fire is part of odd little trend in music:  outsized Canadian bands.  Stars, New Pornographers, and Broken Social Scene all come to mind.  They all feature heavy instrumentation (partly due to the sheer number of members in each band), melodramatic subject matter (maybe because they're Canadian?), and indie artistry laid over surprisingly catchy pop-hooks.  For me, it's pretty hit or miss.  Stars "Set Yourself on Fire" was a thrilling, if heavy-handed mishmash of pop-punk anarchism and candy-sweet love songs, while their follow-on "In Our Bedroom After the War" was unlistenably melodramatic.

If you listened to  prior Arcade albums, "Funeral" and "Neon Bible", or any of the bands mentioned above, you have some idea what to expect from "The Suburbs" and Arcade does not disappoint.  These are structurally very simple songs laid over with an eclectic mix of instruments in careful (and often intriguing) arrangements, played with anthem-level intensity.  It's style that works brilliantly on "Neon Bible" - after all, what theme could better suit such an baroque, dramatic style than our culture's near-religious obsession with media and fame?

But it just doesn't suit "The Suburbs".  Every lyric drips with disaffection:

But I would rather be alone
Than pretend I feel alright
If the businessmen drink my blood
Like the kids in art school said they would
Then I guess I'll just begin again

If you're going to pull off words like those, you need some rea Cobain-style bored anger, howled out over a barely-tuned guitar.   But these songs are so intricately played and planned, that the disaffection comes off as a pose. It's like writing a love song in heroic couplets;  Who's going to believe that your heart is pouring out words that just can't be contained anymore when you're rhyming every line?

It's not their most interesting album musically, either.  The driving 'four-on-floor' beats and Springsteen-esque hammering on the guitar doesn't leave much room for dynamic range on this album.  Even weaker tracks on "Neon Bible" (including the title track) vary the feel enough to make the next song that much more interesting contrast.  The segue from "Neon Bible's" spare, thumping drum and aetherial backing vocals to the swelling church organ of "Intervention" keeps the album moving where "The Suburbs" barely even changes tempo.

Slamming the 'burbs is a time-honored trope in hipster circles, but there just isn't much here to give it a new take.  I guess you can't make the kind of sweeping grandiosity that makes Arcade Fire the band they are out of such a nihilist subject.

The Freewheelin' Kristian Matsson

Is it a blessing or a curse to sound just like an early Bob Dylan?  Kristian Matsson might be the only man alive who knows for sure, but I suspect even he must have doubts.  At times, his most recent album, 'The Wild Hunt' is so reminiscent of classic albums like 'The Freewheeling Bob Dylan' and "Bringing it All Back Home" that a casual listener might for a moment think they were listening to a long forgotten b-side.  The differences are most definitely there, though, and it doesn't take long to appreciate where The Tallest Man on Earth (Kristian's stage moniker) uses his uncanny vocal resemblance to Mr. Dylan as a jumping off point for something that still feels fresh and relevant.

One thing Matsson learned well is that folk doesn't have to be soft, wilting or ambient (though there are some bands, like Horse Feathers, who do that sound rather well);  It can be raucous, angry and jubilant - sometimes all at the same time.  When Matsson sings "Driver don't go that fucking way," on 'You're Going Back', he stretches the epithet to the point of breaking and effect is downright unsettling.  This is not your mother's folk song. The Wild Hunt also borrows heavily from Dylan's lyric style, using convoluted lines the snake their way through a verse until you can barely recall where they began.  Take the opening line of the title track:

There is a crow moon comin' in well you keep looking out

It is the hollow month of march now sweeping in

Lets watch phenomenon's that rise out the darkness now

Within the light she is my storming heroin.

Matsson uses the juxtaposition of contrasting ideas (in/out,dark/light) frequently,  such as "I could roll you to hell / I could swim from your heavens."  The lyrics have a phenomenal sound to them, but they are dense to point of impenetrable at times, and border on beautiful nonsense. I've been thinking about a post on lyrics in general, and The Wild Hunt has plenty that are worth exploring.

There are definite departures from folk classics in Matsson's guitar work; He relies on quite an array of open-tunings that give each chord so many repeated notes that it feels like multiple guitars playing together.  It's a sort of folky 'wall of sound' with just one instrument, and it's quite in contrast with the spare finger-picking and alternating-bass strumming patterns that resonate on many of Dylan's best early tunes.

But the biggest stylistic differences between The Tallest Man and Dylan are in the subject matter.  Matsson is deeply personal at all times, though not without levity, such as in the joyful King of Spain, whereas Dylan's early songs were heavily infuenced by the political everyman philosophy of his country forebears.  You certainly won't hear Oxford Town in any of these tracks, and perhaps that's a loss, but if so, it's a loss that reaches far beyond The Tallest Man.  Politics have been more or less banned from popular music for some time, and if Matsson tried to bring it back, most people would just call him dated.  And, despite wearing his influences on his sleeve, The Tallest Man doesn't feel dated in the least.

The Tallest Man on Earth

Some people just know how to emote, like in this clip of The Tallest Man on Earth playing The Wild Hunt.

The Death of eMusic

This week I reached the decision to end my eMusic subscription after years of happy listening. I was a huge fan for a long time, and while I'm happy to see the company grow and succeed, the service also no longer supplies what made me love it's earlier incarnations.

For those who aren't familiar, eMusic has a rather long and complicated corporate history, but when I found the site in 2006, they were focused on offering DRM-free, indie-label music on a monthly subscription basis. Your $20 bought you 40-50 monthly downloads, so it was less than half the price of iTunes, and it was much more geared toward music discovery. TV on the Radio, Okkervil River, The National, The Black Keys, Arcade Fire, Andrew Bird, The Avett Brothers - I found them first on eMusic. There are so many more, too, that I could make a post just listing them all.

The editorial comment, the best of lists, the thoughtful user reviews - all these made the site valuable, but if I'm honest, I think it was the subscription model that made it so addictive. The money was already paid, so it encouraged me to explore, and try things without hesitation. I spent hours wandering through the site, clicking 'save for later' on all the albums that interested me. I knew exactly when my downloads reset every month and I would use them all in a day, getting the music that I had been looking at for weeks. Then I would spend the rest of the month listening, digesting, and occasionally falling in love.

There were losers in what I downloaded - 'Oneida' inspired strong emotions from some members, but I found it unlistenable. And there were others that I respected but never ignited my passion or that I enjoyed for a few weeks but didn't make a lasting impression. But then, hidden among all these bands, I would find the obsessions - the albums that would catch me on the first listen, and then grow like a weed into my brain with each pass until it was all I could listen to for days, even weeks on end. And it was those albums which inspired me to start writing about music.

When eMusic first took on a major label, I was not concerned - there was good music there that I looked forward to exploring. I like indie music because I often find it more inventive than what's on the big labels, but I'm not a label-snob. Still, increasingly eMusic has been taken over by the chart-toppers. And the price has gone up time and time again. Now, a $14 subscription buys $16 with of music, and the per-track price is barely lower than iTunes. eMusic claims their prices are half of iTunes, but that only seems to be true of the most obscure items. And now Amazon's prices are frequently as good or better.

I can't blame eMusic for what they are doing - they are a company like any other, and who can hold it against them for wanting to grow and succeed? But for me, I guess I'll be hunting down my next obsession elsewhere.

Django

I've been trying to learn Django Rheinhardt's spectactular solo from Minor Swing for a while now - for those of you who don't him, Django lost most of the use of his ring and pinkie on his right hand in a fire, but retaught himself to play guitar without them.  My guitar teacher pointed me to this film of Django, which is pretty incredible.  Sadly, the violinist (who is much less interesting to watch or listen to) gets most of the airtime, but Django's solo starts at 2:10, and there a few runs in there that will make your head spin.  Worth a watch.

Brothers - The Black Keys

Previous Black Keys albums always felt a little like someone took Spoon, sucked out most of the irony (a mixed blessing) and gave them a good lesson in blues-rock. The minimalist rock thing worked pretty well for both bands - solid hooks, raw energy and music that didn't feel produced to death. But there's always that point in a Spoon album where the repetition wears thin, and I can't help wondering if it wouldn't have been OK to maybe just add one-teensy little extra layer. Is it too much to ask for just one unexpected horn trill? Maybe a real bridge? I had the same problem with albums like Rubber Factory and ThickFreakness. When the hook was good enough, it could carry a song all by itself ('When the Lights Go Out' still rocks my world) - but it's damn hard to write an entire album of songs that can carry themselves on a single hook.

Enter Brothers. The Black Keys stopped being slaves to their own sound, and the results are phenomenal - when I heard Dan Auerbach doing an R&B falsetto 22 seconds into the first track (and doing it well), I knew I was in for something different, and I was digging it. When I heard the first shoo-wop from the backing vocals 40 seconds later (hey, whaddya know - a song CAN build!), I was hooked. 'Next Girl' takes it back into more familiar Black Keys territory, with Auerbach's vocals channeling a little Jack Bruce, but even here the game has been upped - there's new depth in the riffs, and real variation across chorus verse that breaks up the hook.

The subject matter is more personal too; When Auerbach sings "I'll be the go getter', he's just setting you up for this:

Palm trees, the flat broke disease

And L.A. has got me on my knees

I am the bluest of blues

Every day a different, different way to lose

The go getter

The disjointed bass and guitar parts seem to fall on top of the beat, stumbling through the song like a drunk making his way home after the sun has come up. Patrick Carney's drum work is sublime - a shifting pattern that always seems to skip the downbeat and missing 2 & 4 just enough that when he does hit them, it almost feels like just another syncopation. I'm always impressed by drummers who can give a song a new texture with what they do - many of the greatest virtuoso's of trap set don't have this quality. Carney has it in spades, and his work here is so finely tuned to needs of each song that it's easy to overlook just how 'right' it is. But that's true of so much of this album - every song is so carefully crafted, with nothing unnecessary, nothing that doesn't feel effortless, that it's a pleasure to just sink in and forget the artifice that makes this art.

The little house on Ellis Drive

Is where I felt most alive

The oak tree covered that old Ford

I miss it Lord, I miss it Lord