Let’s knit toys
New music! Verbs is the just-released album by the Portland group AU, and it’s pretty delightful.
The album is a nice mix of big, high-energy orchestrations and quieter songs, with equal weight given to vocals and instruments. I’d say the sound of Verbs lands somewhere between Sufjan Stevens and Animal Collective, which is just fine by me.
You can hear a happy song from the album, “rr. Vs. D” on the Aagoo Records website.
I usually seem to catch up with new music about 1-2 years after it’s released, so I’m happy to have found a great album a mere two months after its debut.
Listening to Cut Copy’s new album In Ghost Colours feels kind of like cheating, it’s so listenable. It makes me think of a tree somewhere that grows songs, and Cut Copy just went and picked their favorites before anyone else got to them.
If you, like so many of us, are a sucker for the retro 80s vibe, you should pick this one up. That is, if you haven’t already in the past two months.
My sister and I got my mom an iPod shuffle for her birthday last year. She was mildly appalled when I showed her the iTunes store, where you have to buy music? I thought you kids all got it for free on Napster, which is illegal and wrong, by the way!
I asked her what song I should find on iTunes for her, and her immediate request was “Legendary Chicken Fairy,” the most psychedelic song title I’d ever heard. It turned out to be an actual song, by country duo Jack Blanchard and Misty Morgan, who wrote songs mostly about birds in the ’70s. My mom started signing along to the iTunes clip:
Chicken fairy in the sky
Mother Goose’s butterfly
Do whatsever’s necessary
Legendary chicken fairy
Sing a song that’s sanitary
Take my wish o big canary
Legendary chicken fairy…
Then my dad joined in from the kitchen. It was weird and kind of cute. But once the moment passed, my mom refused to pay money for the music by these people who apparently had some part in my parents’ courtship. (”Where’s all that free music I’ve heard about?”) We found some NPR podcasts instead. So for Christmas last year I gave my parents Life and Death (And Almost Everything Else), which includes “The Legendary Chicken Fairy” among its 29 tracks. It got a laugh, if not a long listen.
But it’s actually an impressive collection of songs. (I had bought the album for myself before getting another one for my parents.) Most of them are clever and melodic, and some are rather beautiful. A lot of them are about birds. I would recommend it to anyone with a sense of humor, and maybe kids.
Recently I was searching for the soundtrack to Disney’s Alice in Wonderland animation, when the iTunes Music Store introduced me to The Sound of Style, a greatest hits album of the music of Bob Thompson.
I didn’t know that “space age bachelor pad music” was an actual genre, and not just the name of a Stereolab album. Most of the tunes in The Sound of Style are working under the retro-futuristic concept of the human voice—a chorus of them, actually—as a jazz instrument, trilling nonsense syllables and mingling with saxophones. It’s kind of reminiscent of the theme to the original Star Trek series or old commercial jingles (Thomspson did the music for tons of them mid-century, and there are a few included on this album as well), but listen a bit and you’ll find that the arrangements are sophisticated enough to have a not-so-novelty place in your music library. It’s what I imagine 1950s hipsters were listening to, while they sipped burbon and played canasta in their carpeted dining rooms.
The Sound of Style appears to be only available through iTunes, but there are other albums by Bob Thompson at Amazon, including The Sound of Speed, a collection of transportation-themed orchestral music (minus the fantastic vocals).
Metacritic is a bit too meta, and the Pitchfork reviewers are a bit too caught up in their own cleverness. So for music recommendations, I am lately all about All Songs Considered, the unfortunately titled weekly music show on NPR.
ASC is just indie-nerdy enough and just mainstream enough to avoid being annoying most of the time. Host Bob Boilen is obviously aware that most of his listeners are a little older, a little whiter, a little less hip than the general population, but he’s not afraid to push his demographic with some music that is new and exciting.
Thus, I must give ASC much credit for my most recent music binge. The following are my first and generally superficial impressions of what came for me in the mail today:
Sound of Silver - LCD Soundsystem
This is my first album by LCD Soundsystem. No objections here—it’s New Wave-funky and chill at once. If I owned a boutique of some kind, I would play this album over the speakers on Thursdays.
Kala - M.I.A.
The international vibe of the album is pretty inspiring, but the huge ad for ringtones and cell phone wallpapers that fell out when I opened the jewel case wasn’t particularly inspiring. Maybe it’s just way postmodern like that.
Famous Blue Raincoat - Jennifer Warnes / Leonard Cohen
The 20th Anniversary edition of this album was recently released, so I figured it was time for me to purchase the original recording, which is slightly more expensive from Amazon, for some reason.
Being Leonard Cohen songs, they are great, of course, but you have to be entirely not squeamish about the mid-’80s sound (i.e. echoey drums and synth) to really enjoy it.
Strawberry Jam - Animal Collective
Lovely. It’s so happy and listenable, I don’t know if it can really qualify as experimental. The first track, “Peacebone,” is my new favorite song.
And the album packaging is a not-to-be-missed experience of ultra-glossiness.
D-D-Don’t Don’t Stop the Beat - Junior Senior
Again I find myself late to the early ’90s retro party. But getting this infectious CD is good enough reason to hold your own party.
ASC bonus: There was a really weird and un-edited out moment in the August 9th show, in which Bob had some guests discussing the best music from the first half of 2007. Bob interrupted Tom Moon to tell him that he was popping his Ps, and the following 90 seconds consisted of an awkward discussion about where Tom should start speaking from again and an extended pause of complete silence, during which everyone was waiting for him to start speaking again. The way that this embarrassingly “off-air” moment was left as is in the podcast makes me think that Bob secretly has it in for Tom.
Since I seem to be covering my favorites in various media lately, why not music?
Return to the Sea - Islands
Amazon.com insisted that I wanted this album. Their music-pushing is a little annoying, but Amazon knows me all too well. I wasn’t too familiar with the Unicorns, from whom Islands apparently sprung, but they’re from Montreal, and maybe that’s about all we need to know. Even expecting to like this album, I was pleasantly surprised at just how listenable it is. There’s something good-naturedly bratty about its sound, which is fun.
Live Through This - Hole
Maybe you remember that Courtney love used to be known for her band in addition to her late husband and drug problem. This was actually one of the first CDs I ever bought (maybe the second), when I was about 14. Having lost it long ago, I just bought it again recently, after hearing that Ms. Love is working on a new album. Listening to it again, I’m not convinced that its subject matter is appropriate for a 14-year-old, but it’s certainly just as good as I remembered. A very tight, cohesive album, at once very pretty and disturbing.
Very curious to hear what’s coming next from her.
Neon Bible - Arcade Fire
This was another case in which it seemed like every media outlet was insisting that we all want this album, the follow-up to the hit Funeral. So I put off getting it until everyone shut up about it, and now I admit I feel a little late to the party. It’s dark, epic, and completely deadpan, which is refreshing. Maybe like a soundtrack to a hip and modernized Les Miserables. It seems that you just can’t go wrong with Montreal music these days. Is something in the water?
Wild Like Children - Tilly and the Wall
This one is a couple of years old, but I just recently got it. It’s upbeat indie-pop, with the unique accompaniment of tap-dancing throughout. I have to say, the tapping schtick gets to be a little much for me to listen to the album straight through, but it’s charming nonetheless - the songs themselves are clever, and certainly deserving of points for originality.
Also looking forward to the new Cornelius. (Anyone heard it?)
I always appreciate a good music recommendation. Here are some for you, selected from my recent acquisitions (but most are not recent releases).
Cê - Caetano Veloso
I think I’m not alone when I cringe a little at the term “world music.” It’s meant to cover many diverse styles, yet it invariably brings to mind that Peruvian pan flute music that my mom used to play endlessly on family vacations.
Forget the genre name for the time being, and take a listen to this album by Brazilian pop/ rock legend Caetano Veloso. I’m just getting to know him myself, but this album is so fresh and exciting, I can’t wait to share it - it’s unmistakably and beautifully Brazilian, but the more frenetic parts of it are also reminiscent of old Talking Heads, or some of the more ’70s-ish indie rock that’s come out lately. And this guy is in his 60s.
Cathedral - Castanets
Nice goth-y country stuff.
We Haven’t Just Been Told, We Have Been Loved - Half-Handed Cloud
Lo-fi hipster Christian music. I think.
Platinum and Gold Collection - Eartha Kitt
Cute and jazzy and really engaging.
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