Tynan's Anger

Arts & Culture Commentary from a Loving Digital Skeptic

Tynan’s Record Report – May 2010

Posted on | May 23, 2010 | No Comments

Record Report

Since Christgau should be enjoying retirement, and since no one else seems to want to take music seriously in the bloggity blog world, the 23-year old founder of the Tynan’s Anger blog has taken it on himself to get real opinions out there that his paycheck doesn’t depend on. Since music should not be taken too seriously, however, comedy is addressed at the end.

Gold Stars:

The White Stripes – Under the Great Northern White Lights
A+

New Pornographers – Together
Their best charting album to date, and their best, this is like Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga x 10. The mass pop album they’ve looked for is as indie as possible on Matador, and it’d play in a Wal-Mart and an elevator as well as it’d play in the Bowery Ballroom (a venue the band’s most likely outgrown by now). She & Him and Beach House would do well to learn a lesson from the New Pornographers; authentically indie, authentically pop, cleanly produced with still a little grime around the edges (“Valkyrie in the Roller Disco is as smart and sensitive as a cool down track you’ll hear on a complete album.) This is the model that all Gen Y artists should look to if they want to be artists first and pop stars close second. “Crash Years” and “(Your Hands) Together” are arguably perfect a 1-2 punch for singles from an alt album since “Hotel Yorba” and “Fell In Love With A Girl.” They won’t need Spoon’s back to basics album either; they never had any.
A

Cathy Santonies – I’m Yr Friend, I’m Your Revolution EP
They may have gotten their first national exposure making my least favorite musician in the history of ever sound badass, but the longtime Chicago buzz band Cathy Santonies have unlocked the secret that those still bemoaning Sleater-Kinney’s demise a half decade later have lacked–unbridled, sincere positivity, the kind that dares you to try to bring them down.

The Santonies use hardcore tropes because that’s what they play, and they cite Full House because it’s what they know. They play their instruments better than most bands of any stripe, finding that the precision of punk can produce the self-discipline most wannabe Lydia Lunches stupidly thought to throw out. They end up making the punk equivalent of Happy-Go-Lucky, finding that the most radical approach to music these days is non-naive optimism, which is the natural flow from living through this and digging you out. The Santonies end up more badass than just about anything these days. Homer alert: they hail from my alma mater. But listen you must, whether or not you’re an intellectual snob.
A

Dr. Dog – Shame Shame
Only a handful of indie bands have reacted appropriately to their new Billboard dominance, and Shame, Shame is the kind of rock album I never counted on Dr. Dog having. I haven’t seen the band live, but their live show supposedly makes up for the overall boringness of the bands previous releases. Now we get the Fun House-style live translation album, and the effects are just as drastic for the better. The length is perfect, the style is refined, and it’s yet another indie rock album cleaned up for prime time. One word I never thought I’d have to worry about with Dr. Dog is “hyperbole.” It’s difficult to describe my reaction to “Stranger” (the lost art of the fade-out!), “Later,” and “Unbearable Why” any other way. Classic track 3 “Shadow People” comes one track too early. Some songs still sound like old Dr. Dog. Otherwise as good as it gets. It’s about time go ahead and declare Philly/Jersey as blowing Brooklyn out of the water of late?
A-

Massive Attack – Heglioland
Something about trip-hop seemed so foreign to me in my college days – not its interesting musical dimension, but the masterpiece status Massive Attack’s first two albums achieved before I got there. After hearing new Portishead firsthand with Third (2008), it was easier to see how, despite seemingly endless incarnations and permutations of rock, dance music, and hip-hop, there’s something so smooth about trip-hop pioneers that makes them still sound so compellingly unique. The effortlessness that accompanied the harshness that applied so well with Third works just as well here, but with the extremes amplified. I’ll listen to Third to close things down, but Heglioland is a hell-raiser in a way I never thought I’d expect a trip-hop album to be. Figures the band that beat The Thom Yorke Show Formerly Known As Radiohead to the chase by five years would catch up so effortlessly.
A-

Gogol Bordello – Trans-Continental Hustle
A-

Broken Social Scene: Forgiveness Rock Record
Rock snob lesson #1: No matter how much you hate the venue, you put up with it for the music. This is why no one has been able to abandon Pitchfork ever since they discovered Broken Social Scene (which they did before they became iconic for doing it with Arcade Fire and notorious for the same reasons with Clap Your Hands Say Yeah). The fact that, 7 years on, the extended collective of increasingly old-timers from Ontario can still nail out some of the more compelling songs-that-work-as-a-whole album is a lesson in staying positive.
A-

LCD Soundsytem – This is Happening
“James Murphy sings!” is to This is Happening what “Zeppelin goes acoustic!” was to Zeppelin III—an intriguing album that’s not by any stretch unprecedented, but rather an album that takes the more deceptively earnest qualities of Murphy’s song stylings and brings them to the forefront (it’s difficult to do when you’re lyrics are written quite so sporadically). Opener “Dance Yrself Clean” is a game-changer disguised as a dud. Greenberg, still the better collection of Murphy originals this year, only confirms the big ol’ McCartney-ite softee side Murphy was always hiding. Of course, when he produces tracks with the delirium of “Drunk Girls” and “All I Want” (the nexus point of “All My Friends” and Sonic Youth) like only LCD Soundsystem can, it’s easy to see why. If this is truly the last LCD album, it’s an understandable recognizing of limits of a career that, while late blooming, was certainly not misspent.
A-

Promising Leads:

Kaki King – Junior
When she plays guitar, she’s a dumbfounding virtuoso with songs and charisma up the wazoo. Take away a little bit of the virtuosity and focus on the charisma, she turns into the female John Darnielle. There are worse fates. I guess if you’re going write a lesbian break up album, you can make songs this graphic still be as edgy as “Spit It Back Into My Mouth.”
B+

American Idiot – The Musical
Review forthcoming
B+

Hole – Nobody’s Daughter
So Live Through This got a P.C. push 16 years ago that it didn’t deserve. It was still the best mainstream incarnation of riot grrl of the 1990s, and hipsters’ willingness to hold a double standard when Courtney Love destroyed herself made her a footnote to younger generations. Truth is Love’s still a force to be reckoned with, and she’s got more of a right than Billy Corgan or just about any grunge holdover. Nobody’s Daughter isn’t an album of great songs you’ll be listening to for the rest of your life; it’s more a showcase of the same kinda of personal force that made great Hole’s work without Cobain’s input even through Celebrity Skin. Those who don’t like the next-to-last Hole album won’t like this either; but like most flawed female performers (be it Yoko, Deerhoof, or GaGa), the uniqueness is what makes is so fascinating.
B

Ponys – Deathbed +4 EP
Turn The Lights Out wasn’t the knockout hit that it could have been, and in vintage Chicago style, it accidentally closed the widest open door the band may ever have for breakthrough success (even if it’s still a pretty great album). The problem was that adding Brian Case, a great drone guitarist, doesn’t mesh when Jered Gummere is still singing his Richard Hell impression. He’s stopped it here; the results are instantly palpable.
B

Rory Erickson & Okkervill River: True Love Cast Out All Evil
The results when an overlooked rock pioneer (overlooked rock legend is a term that should be banned) teams up with a solid Pitchfork band, and the results are not stunning, but quite solid all the same.
B

Better Luck Next Time:

Hold Steady – Heaven is Whenever
Chuck Klosterman recently wrote a fantastic essay on the failure of Garth Brooks’ now mostly forgotten conversion into an alt-rock star. The same rule applies from the sincerity end with Craig Finn’s latest endeavor; for a musician who has let himself be a rock star because he knows no other way, he struggles to become a country boy, even if that’s where he comes from (sorta), and that’s what his Brooklyn transplant friends love him for. Country is a great place to go once you lose your keyboardist, but it also takes away the erstwhile rock star appeal that Finn has occupied so naturally. Meanwhile Tad Kubler suddenly turns from secret weapon to cuckolded guitarist. It’d be a shame to see The Hold Steady become more of a U2-style Craig Finn show than anyone ever thought they would be. Like U2, the songs are still better than most, and the Hold Steady are well beyond the one and done for slip-ups phase of their career. But it’s a compelling and unsettling failure.
B-

MGMT – Congratulations
Few bands epitomize the conflicting, contradicting, and often self-hating attitudes of the under-27 crowd as the Wesleyan grads, an accidental pop stars who are in no way indie unless you crave that they be. Congratulations is a much more musically impressive album the Orangular Spectacular, but the conflict between pop star lust and boundary-challenging, like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Franz Ferdinand are no less maddening. An excellent lead single “Flash Delirium” and a solid, if excessively self-aware, follow up in “Brian Eno” are promising enough, but the rest of the album is a scrambled mess of simultaneous pretension and erstwhile ambitious. They’re just as confused about music as anyone else these days, but the benefit of the mainstream is more leeway to work things out in the future.
B-

Beach House - Teen Dream
Few will doubt the need twee bands to grow up, so it’s a good sign whenever one improves to a blip close to mainstream pop. The problem is the difference between being a grown-up and prolonged adolescence—”higher-fi” that’s still messily produced, with songs slightly more based on songs and less on cuteness, is a baby step for a movement long overdue for a giant leap. It’s still amazing that, nearly 20 years later, intelligent rock bands are still stepping away from Bandwagonesque so tentatively.
C+

Plants and Animals – La La Land
C

Pure POS:

She & Him – Volume 2
Zooey Deschanel is still an indie darling, and deservedly so (just like M. Ward.) But she should stay away from the bubblegum; Her serenity is compromised when she goes for reconstructed big sister Kimya Dawson. Her lack of experience with music explains why this album seems light years less evolved than the New Pornographers’ similar-sounding release.

Gil Scott-Heron – I’m New Here
Not only do I find the songs boring, but I don’t find the pre-jail Scott-Heron that much more appealing upon further review. He was influential and came up with one of the greatest musical one-liners of the 20th century. But that’s not worth giving a shruggable-to-pointless release any more due than it merits. In fact, it’s at the root of where trendhopping coolness has replaced political correct humorlessness.

Harlem – Hippies
This is the second album by a much hyped Matador band that’s failed to raise more than a grand shrug. If nothing else, Matador’s untouchable ability to build buzz is not the kind of buzz that forces you to like worthless things.

Jakob Dylan – Women And Country
I’d like to defend the man, who seems entirely smart and genuine, against baseless accusations of his continued commercial success owing to nepotism. But until he makes an album of any significance that doesn’t compromise Neko Case’s superior talents in the process…he makes it difficult.

Jahcoozi – Barefoot Wanderer
What do you get when you combine sexy synths, a self-aware sexy female singer, and alt-hip hop collabs? Two to three very good tracks, and a hip-hop track where a women confirms that bitches be crazy. XX or Portishead this is miles behind.

Songs of Note:

  • LCD Soundystem – “Drunk Girls” I’ve gone through every ethical quagmire possible with this song: it’s an electro ripoff of “White Light /White Heat” it’s dance-ability will make it frat house material for the wrong reason, and it’s assessment of the double standard of the inebriated is dubious at best. And yet it may be my favorite song of the year so far—it’s too catchy not to be listened to 50 times, its author is too self-aware not to know that his boisterousness shouldn’t be compromised by his commentary, and it’s disturbing video as least compensates for its dubiousness to make me listen 50 more times.
  • A Place to Bury Strangers – “Ego Death” (single) It always seemed weird to me that APTBS would ever be criticized for making songs too “normal” (read: less in yo’ face). “Ego Death,” one of Exploding Head‘s tougher songs is about as not-normal as any single I’ve ever heard, that is until the chorus kicks in, and behind the wall of noise you realize why the band switched to melody. My only beef with the last album was the production-a pretty big beef considering how noisy the band is. The radio edit shows just how awe-inspiring this band can be when the songs are produced right. I want more.
  • Dead Weather – “Die By The Drop” It’d be easier to dismiss the band’s goth leanings if they didn’t also have a clearly visible soul. Die the drop invokes pop-country sense of tragedy Jack White developed with latter-day White Stripes with the dark terrain Mosshart’s always been exploring, and which dominated the first album. The two are developing a chemistry Jack hasn’t had with anyone since Meg, and this is his best duet since with himself “Hotel Yorba.”
  • Mannequin Men – “Hobby Girl” Never stop being so endearingly awesome. This may be their best chance of winning the masses yet (but it sure won’t be their last).
  • White Stripes – “Let’s Shake Hands” A collector’s item that cost hundreds on eBay instantly becomes worthless the moment you hear it in the way everyone will rightfully remember it.
  • M.I.A. – “Born Free”
  • Gorillaz – “Superfast Jellyfish” At first I worried if the seemingly blaséness of the whole enterprise would wear on (even by Albarn, blasé rock’s greatest genius.) Turns out it only produces more and more great songs that all should be singles.

The Hipster Demolition Derby That Is The Album Of The Year:

1. Vampire Weekend – Contra
2. Gorillaz – Plastic Beach
3. Galactic – Ya-Ka-May (note: this may go up when I watch Tréme)
4. Charlotte Gainsborg – IRM
5. OK Go – Of The Blue Colour of the Sky
6. New Pornographers – Together
7. Titus Andronicus – The Monitor
8. Massive Attack – Heglioland
9.  Dr. Dog – Shame, Shame
10. Red Pens – Reasons
11. Spoon – Transference
12. Gogol Bordello – Trans-Continental Hustle
13. Free Energy – Stuck on Nothing
14. We Are Wolves – Invisible Violence
15. Greenberg
16. Surfer Blood – Astro Coast
17. High on Fire – Snakes For The Divine (rising)
18. Eels – End Times
19. Broken Social Scene – Forgiveness Rock Record
20. Kaki King – Junior
21. Constellations – Southern Gothic
22. LCD Sounsystem – This Is Happening
23. Ted Leo & The Pharmacists - The Brutalist Bricks
24. Clem Snide – The Meat Of Life
25: Hole – Nobody’s Daughter
26. Rory Erickson & Okkervill River – True Love Cast Out All Evil

Songs of the Year – Test Run

  • LCD Soundsystem – “Drunk Girls”
  • OK Go – “This Too Shall Pass”
  • We Are Wolves – “Paloma”
  • Cathy Santonies – “I’m Yr Friend! I’m Yr Revolution!”
  • Red Pens – “Blue Lighters”
  • Gorillaz – “Stylo”
  • Screaming Females – “Cortez The Killer”
  • A Place To Bury Strangers – “Ego Death”
  • Gorillaz – “Superfast Jellyfish”
  • New Pornographers – “Crash Years”
  • Mannequin Men  – “Hobby Girl”

Always Leave ‘Em Laughing – Comedy of Note:

Matt McCarthy – Come Clean

Chris Farley was too talented to be the fat man falling down, even if his self-destructiveness left him that legacy. With less stringent standards of both stand-up and the 21st century comedy world, Matt McCarthy has taken the insane loud persona of a big man who would be scary if he wasn’t chest-pains inducing funny. The variety on display here is unbelievable. You get the racial commentary-meets-ginger joke to end all ginger jokes of “The Unsung Minority, the political cartoonery of “Black Ops!”, and the surreal, crosses a line so fast you didn’t realize it was crossed of “Love.” (“Physical Love” overtly crosses the obscenity line that the album’s title implied.) This may not be the most substantial comedy release of the year, but I doubt I’ll find myself laughing so hard at anything else. This is what happens when a mascot at a nerd school goes to stand-up.

Enhanced by Zemanta
Category: Tynan's Record Report, Uncategorized
Tags: > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >

Comments