EAT ME PITCHFORK

CONCERT REVIEW: ATLAS SOUND

2010-01-19T06:09:00.000-08:00

Bradford Cox’s performance as Atlas Sound at Lincoln Hall January 15 is the one to exceed this year. Sit up and take notice, 2010. The bar is set damned high.

Cox’s set was over an hour long, a mellifluous dream tender and melancholy and hypnotic. He seemed to play exclusively for himself, reducing the audience to mere voyeurs guiltily witness to an intensely private scene of quiet personal exorcism, a cast spell punctured only by eccentric (and sometimes very funny) asides delivered in a nervous and feathery tenor. This was only exacerbated by a remarkable physical presence; Cox is a painful exercise in angles. His tissue-thin, emaciated figure seemed to bend under the stage lights; his pale, long face and hands lit by effeminate twitches. One particularly insensitive prick answered Cox’s introduction of “How are you tonight? I’m not so great. I’m just not feeling very well,” with a beer-drenched, sneering, “Who’s your cardiologist?” which seemed to make the entire venue clench in a collective wince; the guilty reflex following a casual mention of death in the presence of someone terminally ill. It is widely known that Cox’s anorectic silhouette is a product of the rare genetic disorder Marfan Syndrome, which complicates, among other things, the heart’s function – sadly, many Marfan sufferers die young of a heart-related difficulty. And while he is quick to dismiss the disease as his defining trait, Cox seems equally aware of its looming truths: “And this song...this song is about my own death,” he proclaimed before falling into the first measures of the gorgeously funerary “Attic Lights.”

Cox performed songs which consistently began as attentive, sensitive interpretations and dissolved into extended thematic improvisations. He seemed to be embarking on a serious and profound exploration of his own music/psyche, isolating motifs and melodies into obsessive, patiently searching drones, as if pacing his mind’s labyrinth. It was an exploration that taxed the attention span of the less disciplined observer, and towards the close of the set the previously to-capacity Hall was a little emptier. Cox didn’t seem to notice or care.

Surprising was the density Cox was able to achieve with only harmonica and acoustic guitar surrounded by a hemisphere of pedals which he navigated with intuitive ease. While his recordings posit a saturated, distorted otherworldliness, a song such as “Walkabout,” which recorded features Noah Lennox (and is, by nature, very “Noah Lennox-y”), was a completely different animal performed by Cox alone. The “Walkabout” on the latest Atlas Sound album, Logos, is summery, sunny, insouciant. “Walkabout” live was delivered with the elegiac sobriety of a dirge; mournful and resigned, but no less rich.

My strongest cathartic experiences of live music have been housed exclusively within either noise or classical performance, probably due to the “absolute” properties typically conducive to free interpretation in those genres. No contemporary songwriter has left me feeling so haunted and moved as Bradford Cox, and I departed Lincoln Hall early that morning completely overwhelmed and vaguely terrified that I had just witnessed some lovely, strange memento mori.

EAT ME PITCHFORK'S TOP ALBUMS OF THE DECADE

2009-12-28T16:24:00.000-08:00

TAKE UMBRAGE.

Radiohead is not on this list. The Strokes are not on this list. Wilco is not on this list. The White Stripes are not on this list. Animal Collective is not on this list. WHATCHOO GON DO BOUT IT?

BOOKS

The Lemon of Pink (2003)

Of all The Books’ albums, Lemon displays the greatest depth by maintaining tonal and thematic consistency throughout. It is cohesive, meticulous, rich, and reveals something new upon each listen. The seamless intertwining of original material and bits culled from a vast library of found sounds makes Lemon, in my humble opinion, probably the greatest existing specimen of integrated sampling by any artist. One of the most striking elements of The Books’ idiosyncratic breed of electronic music is that it feels very organic; organic in the sense that its fluent structure comprised of tiny constructive units forms something which seems to mimic the process of ‘thinking.’ The Books’ aptitude for simultaneity and conceptual organization makes for music that is both listenable and literate.

BONNIE 'PRINCE' BILLY

The Letting Go (2006)

This was tough because Will is so prolific, but The Letting Go is just fucking majestic. I will wager that “Cursed Sleep” and “Love Comes To Me” are two of the best songs he’s ever written, with “Cursed Sleep” being the only folk song I could describe as “epic.” The semi-cinematic string arrangements escalate the emotional impact of the album without compromising Will’s quiet, acoustic fortitude.

BATTLES

ep-c (2004)

Battles’ prodigiously complex, guitar driven math rock conjures images of robots engaged in a heated chess match. ep-c was the first work of theirs I heard and it remains my favorite release, despite the studio polish and critical acclaim of their most recent record Mirrored. I have seen Battles perform three times, and I proclaim them among the greatest live acts operating today. Jon’s inhumanly muscular drumming on a tiny tiny kit is unfailingly impressive.

CARIBOU

Andorra (2007)

This album is en pointe. Dan Snaith is a truly deft songwriter, and Andorra is a glassy bouquet of sophisticated, shimmering pop tracks colored by dark, delicately shaded math and krautrock undertones.

BURNING STAR CORE

Challenger (2008)

Spencer Yeh might be better known for other products/projects, but I feel that Challenger
displays his most substantial sonic breadth to date. As it is not abrasive enough for harsh noise and not tedious enough for drone, Challenger is surprisingly accessible. It’s a rich and fibrous soundscape, and Yeh is smart enough to tease out the beauty in a tone by showcasing it rather than drowning it beneath an oppressive, angry legion of exploding bass cabs. Not that there’s anything wrong with Hair Police...

BLACK DICE

Creature Comforts (2004)

Broken Ear Record and Beaches and Canyons and even Repo are all pretty stellar, but Creature Comforts made me fall in love. The album is just so fucking quirky that if it weren’t so fierce I would be tempted to call it cute. Guitar and electronics prance around squealing, chirping, growling, howling in a curious anthropomorphic noise orgy. The album seems equally funny and dangerous. Whatever the fuck is going on, the great thing about Black Dice is that they obviously don’t give a damn what you think, what scene they fit into, and don’t seem compelled to adhere to any formula whatsoever. They’re just a great band with a fervently individual, passionately experimental sound. I suppose the placement of Creature Comforts here is really more about the group in general -- they might be the noisy exemplar of artistic integrity. And Noah Lennox agrees with me.

*this song is not from Creature Comforts, but it rocks.

PANDA BEAR

Person Pitch (2007)

And speaking of Noah Lennox, I readily confess that I had no idea who the hell Animal Collective was when I bought this album, and though it was released around the same time as Strawberry Jam I would argue that Noah’s solo effort is better, and in a lot of ways stylistically anticipates the AnCo of Merriweather Post Pavilion. The sopping wet vocal reverb, the cyclical structure, the parallel organum in perfect intervals of thirds, fourths and fifths which recall traditional chant; Person Pitch drifts along with dreamy, church-like languor. To say that it is transcendental music might be stretching it, but there’s definitely a comprehensive spiritual bent which lends Person Pitch a sweet and searching sincerity.

WHY?

Alopecia (2008)

Why? cultivates a sound which is compellingly ambiguous and seems to straddle a few different fences, but whether you choose to pigeonhole them into indie rock, freak folk, alternative hip-hop, etc., they sound absolutely sure of themselves, and the clarity of their distinctive vision makes pigeonholing irrelevant. Why?’s athletic backbone is Yoni Wolf, who’s oddly appealing nasally monotone slithers around between rap/spoken word and a tuneless singing of sorts. Wolf adroitly navigates dark lyrical territory with heartbreaking eloquence and self-deprecating transparency; I can’t think of any other ‘rapper’ who would dare explore desperate masturbation habits, lots of weeping, and ruminations on personal failure (all typically conducted in a toilet stall) and further, Wolf does so with an emotional disconnect and anecdotal bemusement which totally nullifies any indulgent self pity such topics would seem to propagate.

FENNESZ

Endless Summer (extra tracks version - 2007)

There’s really nothing I can say about this album to do it any justice, aside from this: if there’s anyone with the talent, insight, aptitude, and subtlety to construct an exquisite, unfurling, ambient response to The Beach Boys own Endless Summer– it’s Christian Fennesz

CONVERGE

Jane Doe (2001)

I’d been a fan of Jake Bannon & Co. for a few years before they released Jane Doe, and when it came out I listened to it incessantly. While hardcore is a genre that no longer particularly interests me, I maintain that Jane Doe is its most savvy constituent. Converge’s formula of rapid-fire, fever-burning tracks interspersed with down-tempo, melodic ones is at its best here, and culminates in the heroic title track, which alternates between soaring and sludge. The album is solid from start to finish, due in part to the technical virtuosity of the band. Drummer Ben Koller tackles the abrupt tempo shifts and polyrhythmic eccentricities like a fucking machine, and long-revered guitarist Kurt Ballou cuts up some ferocious riffs while coercing his instrument to emit a spectacular range of tones. And Jake Bannon’s bloody, feral, deaths-head howl is at its sharp and lacerating finest. What makes Jane Doe so raw and startling and mature is that Converge finally found a way to utilize their prodigious skill to aggravate and inflame emotional turmoil; where before Bannon shrieked indistinct suicidal mantras against a backdrop of bass, drum, guitar, on Jane Doe the separate components fall away and you don’t need to read the lyrics to know, because everything coalesces into a monstrous organism that angrily, despairingly expels from a back gaping maw the sound of suicide itself.

AKRON/FAMILY

Love is Simple (2007)

Akron/Family make very special music which is both beguilingly insouciant and earnestly adventurous. Most indie outfits approach the americana genre with a palpable ironic sensibility, but Akron/Family are disarming in their sincerity and obvious appreciation of the roots of american music that manifests as a rather baroque tapestry of pitch-tent gospel chanting, dixie riffage, ragtime, sweet acoustic folk, appalachian mountain melodies, and free jazz improv. Love is Simple presents a sophisticated alternation between blissful abandon and whip-smart self-containment, but always threatens to burst with tenderness. Listeners weary of the self-reflexive irony and stylistic appropriation which is so prevalent in today’s alternative movements should find Akron/Family to be a wonderful palate cleanser; their authenticity is infectious and, quite frankly, pretty adorable.

JUSTICE

Cross (2007)

I’m going to get a lot of shit for this choice. After a long period of ambivalence, I am ready to confess that I think Cross is pretty brilliant. Obviously there’s a brazen, distinctively French douchebaggery afoot, but sonically Cross ploughs through the rigid tenets and delicate sensibilities of preceding French electronica with cheeky, unapologetic fervor. It’s loaded with catchy, ironic hooks, and it flows like one monster current of electricity - but it’s also really fucking noisy. Listening to songs like “Stress” on a good set of headphones reveals a mid-level so loud it actually hurts – one of the really curious aspects of this album is the very narrow sonic envelope, which sits centrally and doesn’t bother much with either the hi or lo shelf – quite unusual for electronica. Something like five hundred samples ranging from 50 Cent to Hall & Oates have been condensed, stretched, and fucked with to the point that they’re completely disguised as nearly pure waveforms or bitcrusher distortion walls. Blatant rips of italo-disco are not disguised, but are, once again, totally unapologetic. The enormous ratio of appropriated material on Cross tugs at the concept of originality, but Justice’s subversive angle on appropriation is indeed original and unmistakably theirs, as is the big fat middle finger directed at venerated electronic acts such as Daft Punk. I love this album. Bite me.

HARK! A PLAYLIST #01

2009-11-14T09:40:00.000-08:00

This one's called CLUMPITUDE. Some newish things I've been trying out.

LOVE LIKE A SUNSET (ANIMAL COLLECTIVE REMIX – DEAKIN’S JAM)/Phoenix

BLACK RICE/Women

FUTURE PRIMITIVE/Papercuts

I SAY FEVER/Ramona Falls

THE VOWELS, PT. 2/Why?

DIRT (FEAT. AESOP ROCK)/Tobacco

DIE SLOW (TOBACCO REMIX)/HEALTH

OVUM/Alvin Band

TIGER TAMER/Arms

FEEL IT ALL AROUND/Washed Out

SEASUN/Delorean

BUBBLE REPUTATION/The Most Serene Republic

BEST ALBUMS OF 2009 #02

2009-10-27T05:50:00.000-07:00

DM STITH – Heavy Ghost. The few critics who have taken the time to review this really compelling debut LP from David Stith have found it difficult to peg. When you unravel Heavy Ghost, you may sense that you are listening to the work of a classically-trained musician who has read a lot about John Cage and who inexplicably wants to write pop music without ever having heard any. And he’s never heard any because he’s chained to a pipe organ in a stony bell tower like a character from a Victor Hugo novel or something. Actually, Stith is classically-trained (and the son of a church choir director) but he’s also the kind of guy who blogs about what he’s cooking for dinner and philosophical epiphanies that come to him while he’s talking on his cell phone in the cemetery. He’s definitely a modern oddball, which makes the painstaking delicacy and gentle restraint of his music all the more compelling.

Stith’s Heavy Ghosts conjures images of a dream machine conducting uneven rotations that reveal strangely menacing shapes glancing across the surfaces of a dark room. The album’s name is apt – there is a very diaphanous, eldritch quality to Stith’s music which is daintily hung with details so sensitive they’re barely detectable. Very slight electronic and percussive bits made with scrapings and scratchings (i.e. Stith drags a coin across the steel casing of a table fan) flutter in and out of an essentially acoustic chamber soundscape. Piano, violin, cello, guitar, and voice are most prominent, but this familiar ensemble is subverted by Stith’s careful structuring and nontraditional technique. Piano is included mostly for its rhythmic qualities, strings slide around in peculiar trills and glissandos, guitar strings are plucked in waltzy arpeggiated chords, and Stith’s airy, baby’s breath tenor trails off into unexpected cadences and nonlinear melodies. In this way Heavy Ghost reminds me of the Impressionism of Debussy or Faure; music best understood and most revelatory in its Gestalt. The interweaving of all Stith's disparate strands into some silky tapestry is what makes the album accessible, though accessible is perhaps an inappropriate term – this ostensibly placeless music is lent a striking Otherness which is both intoxicating and unsettling. Stith never allows you to feel comfortable; he holds you at arm’s length to admire his lovely but quixotic machine from afar.

I kind of stumbled upon this album by accident, and was genuinely shocked by its unusual beauty and almost flagrant disregard for trend. Heavy Ghost is rife with paradox; it is both baroque and sparse, sweet and sinister, sprawling and concise, engaging and distant. And its entirety is imbued with a very quiet urgency achieved not through crescendos and similarly recognizable devices but through the inclusion of very subtle shifts in tempo, harmonics, and mood. It’s an erudite construction of patient and unfolding elegance.

Standout tracks include the shimmering, celebratory “Fire of Birds,” the inimitably creepy “Thanksgiving Moon,” and the exquisite “Braid of Voices,” which comes to an odd and chilling close as Stith whispers his own name - David, David... - against an undulating backdrop of dark piano chords.

and here: a video for Isaac's Song, the opening track off of Heavy Ghost.

DM Stith- Isaac's Song from Asthmatic Kitty on Vimeo.

BEST ALBUMS OF 2009 #01

2009-10-25T16:41:00.000-07:00

DAN DEACON - Bromst. It should come as a surprise to no one that Deacon has a degree in electroacoustic composition – the introduction to Bromst comes in the form of an absolutely unapologetic, big, fat fucking square wave giving you the heads up that you might have a heart attack within the next hour. Deacon’s most accessible release thus far is still like having a bipolar preschooler in the peak of mania attack you with freshly-sharpened crayons, and after rendering you unconscious this kid eats the crayons, drinks your blood for strength, and jacks your wallet. Bromst is frantic, frenetic, and totally wants you to drop dead on the treadmill. And Dan Deacon live is transcendental – he manipulates his audience into a servile blob of sweat and worship. I know he had me laying on my back on a grimy warehouse floor singing a random tone to the command "think about the face of somebody who doesn’t love you anymore" with several dozen loaded scene kids in 100 degree heat at 2 AM.

RESOUNDINGLY DISAPPOINTING/OBNOXIOUS ALBUMS OF 2009 #03

2009-10-25T16:04:00.000-07:00

PASSION PIT - The Reeling. I’ve been on the fence about these guys for a while, and I readily confess my love for the infectious, omnipresent mid-tempo dance hit “Sleepyhead” from their debut album; it's perfect because it does exactly what’s expected of it. But for their sophomore release Passion Pit takes redundancy to a whole new dimension by adhering with a death's grip to a formula in which, most prominently, the vocalist consistently besmirches every single chorus with his horrific falsetto wraith-wail. About 3/4ths through each track he ceases for an instrumental breakdown during which the major motif is pounded into your skull with a hateful mallet, and then Wretched Vocalist returns just when you’ve come out of hiding because you thought it was over with a ridiculously anthemic "HAVE YOU SEE ME CRRYYYYYYY..."

No I have not. I’m like a fucking floppy Frodo Baggins under a rock in the fetal position with my ears and eyes covered until you snake away into the ether on your midnight devil-steed, asshole.

Tracks are uncomfortably long and accomplish little. Instrumentation and structure are unimaginative and juvenile. Spiritless synth lines. Major "meh."

To their credit, I saw these guys live for free at the Apple Store on Michigan Ave. and they brought down the house for a bunch of 16 yr olds in polo shirts.

RESOUNDINGLY DISAPPOINTING/OBNOXIOUS ALBUMS OF 2009 #02

2009-10-25T15:13:00.001-07:00

THE DECEMBERISTS - The Hazards of Love. I’m going to shove quarters into all of Colin Meloy's facial orifices while he sleeps. Like a porcine llama mysteriously endowed with the facility to vocalize and who abuses this anomaly to commit evil acts, Meloy bleats his way through yet another operatic, contextually irrelevant album brimming with verbose descriptions of damsels, bodies of water, various forms of underbrush, and fantastical creatures. I guess resurrecting the 1970’s propensity for album “stories” and rock operas is kind of interesting. Kind of. But just because there’s a general desert of concept albums doesn’t mean we have to crap ourselves over the only one available. The narrative here is so preposterous and lost in it’s own jargon it ends up looking like Wagner’s retarded psych-folk offspring after generations of inbreeding, drunk at a BBQ and trying to discuss Novalis.

Painfully overwrought and kitschily self-indulgent, The Hazards of Love is quite frankly embarrassing to listen to; when you have this album on you kind of slink around hoping nobody can smell it. Among the few high notes is the inclusion of My Brightest Diamond’s Shara Worden, who lends her smoky, syrupy alto to the Forest Queen character. Yeah, the Forest Queen. It appears the peculiar and occasionally compelling auteurship of the Decemberist's vision is undermined by desperation in the very striving for auteurship.

Though they’re absolutely brilliant live. Seriously; really tight, smart arrangements of songs that present challenges in their recorded complexity, and Meloy exerts masterful control over his audience, who melt to pasty saccharine butterballs ‘neath the power of lyrics like And here we died our little deaths/and we were left to catch our breaths/so swiftly lifting from our chests (among the numerous poetic tricks in those lines alone is also the reference to “little death” – a Shakespearean term for orgasm. Nice. Every English major in the place just creamed themselves.) The Decembrists also get the award for Best Onstage Banter -- aside from when I saw Spinal Tap on my 13^th birthday.

RESOUNDINGLY DISAPPOINTING/OBNOXIOUS ALBUMS OF 2009 #01

2009-10-25T13:57:00.000-07:00

PHOENIX - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. I enjoyed the pithy fin-de-siecle references for about five minutes, and let us face it: "1901" is really fucking catchy. But it’s also emulative drivel, and there’s nothing exciting about a band you could easily synopsize as sounding “like Vampire Weekend, but French.” This is especially disconcerting seeing as Phoenix have been around for a bit - this is their fourth full-length LP, and drawing comparisons to a flash-in-the-pan Cape Cod clusterfuck with one measly album to their name is kind of a testament to how unremarkable their music is. I don't understand the rationale behind so much hype for a band that is clearly inferior; so inferior that other artists take the Phoenix dross and turn it into gold. Case in point: they recently released a remix album, and Deakin of AnCo goes to town on the vapid, forgettable track “Fences” - transforming it into a dense, textural Merriweather Post Pavilion-esque gem.

I haven't seen Phoenix live, so I can't attest to whether any dynamic missing on record is unleashed during performance. I have, however, seen video footage of them on Letterman or something equally tame and stupid, and as I recall, it was quite "meh."