Smells Like Pop

Here are my ten favorite albums (I found this year more memorable for artists who toured, than albums released – but here it goes):

• Field Music – Plumb: Like The Shins, their past is their closest competition for these XTC-inspired UK popsters. Not a weak track in a prog-rock masterpiece.
• Grizzly Bear – Shields: Though you can hear the influences of Jeff Buckley, Radiohead – the record never sounds derivative. Great songs and musicianship.
• Tame Impala – Lonerism: Though not as good as their debut, this record still fills a void left by other bands that Dave Fridmann produces.
• David Byrne/St. Vincent – Love this Giant: She brought out the young man in him; he matured the sometimes too-precious young lady in her. Add horns – sonic fun!
• Beach House – Bloom: For those of us who could not get enough of Teen Dream.
• Dirty Projectors – Swing Lo, Magellan: Not as novelty-filled as Bitte Orca, but every bit as adventurous.
• Richard Hawley – Standing at the Sky’s Edge: Not terribly different from his last couple of records, but still the master of his genre; ennui-tinged crooning from the depths of despair, the seat of a motorcycle.
• Sharon Van Etten – Tramp: This seems like a classic already, partially because it’s been out so long, partially because of solid songcraft.
• The Shins – Port of Morrow: They’re the losers to the competition in their genre – their past catalog…that being said, more solid pop songcraft, with more nods to the 70’s (Steely Dan, Jackson Browne, Wings).
• Frank Ocean – channel Orange: Hands down the best soul/r & b record of the year, will get me by until the next Raphael Saadiq album. Gotta love anything Andre 3000 guests on, for that matter.

Honorable mentions:

Menomena – Moms, Bat for Lashes – The Haunted Man, Brian Jonestown Massacre – Aufheben, Black Moth Super Rainbow – Cobra Juicy, The Tallest Man on Earth – There’s No Leaving Now, Purity Ring – , Swans – The Seer

“Friends in Brooklyn”

Albums that I think benefit  a bit too much from hipster cred:

• Scott Walker – love the guy, but this record needs more of him punching meat or something, methinks…
• Liars – record good, live show terrible…
• Lower Dens – umm, ok….
• The Walkmen – I thought that, like the product with their name, they went by the wayside…guess there will always be a home for them across the East River, when they’re called the Walkers…
• Ty Segall – I mean, Magnet magazine has three of his records in their top 10…wow!?
• Sleigh Bells – should be spelled “Slay”…
• Japandroids – robots, in their current incarnation, are really quite boring and predictable…

LIVE SHOWS:

• Grizzly Bear (October 4^th, Keller Auditorium)– someone called them the best band of their generation, might agree – great light show, to boot…
• Glen Campbell – (though I saw him at Hollywood Bowl, he did play Arlene Schnitzer – same night I saw Bruce Springsteen) – show me another septuagenarian that can still do what he does – plus, Dawes opened with guests singing songs that Campbell performed on in his heyday as a studio gun-for-hire (Beach Boys lead vocals provided by Courtney Taylor-Taylor)
• All Things Bruce – (November 27^th, Mississippi Studios) – as a precursor to the Boss’ show, local musicians came together to cover him in celebration of local author Peter Ames Carlin’s bio; so many great moments, none better than Corin Tucker’s take on “Because the Night”, or Storm Large’s “Born to Run” with full band (including Steve Berlin – Los Lobos, producer extraordinaire – playing the part of Clarence Clemons). Super fun!
• David Byrne/St. Vincent – (June 15^th, Arlene Schnitzer Hall) – never had the money to see the Talking Heads when they did tour, so this was my substitute…and it was brilliant, as the two talents complemented each other so well.
• M. Ward – (September 20^th, The Aladdin) – arguably the sweetest guitar player alive returned home (to his expectant wife, in audience) to make sonic wizardry look effortless.
• Brian Jonestown Massacre (May 19^th, Wonder Ballroom) – though notorious for legendary naughtiness, Mr. Newcombe and company showed off why so many consider him, and them, to be borderline legends.
• Dirty Projectors (July 25^th, Crystal Ballroom) –Dave Longstreth seemed determined to return the energy he borrowed from Portland when he began the DP’s while crashing with his brother, a Reed College student – an amazing show which included, supposedly, the only 3^rd encore of their tour
• Destroyer (June 4^th, The Aladdin) – Dan Bejar played all the “hits”, seemingly drawing from all over his now burgeoning catalog from just one of his bands.
• First Aid Kit (April 12^th, Wonder Ballroom) – The Swedish sister act created some vocal magic for an incredibly enthusiastic crowd, it’s third visit in a year to a place they seem to consider a home away from home.
• Jeff Mangum (April 8^th,, Crystal Ballroom) – The reclusive frontman for legendary Neutral Milk Hotel turned on the charm, as well as the tunes, as – armed only with his guitar on the expansive Crystal stage – he zoomed through one fan favorite after another, eventually accompanied by members of Elf Power on a handful of songs that showcased his talent for complex arrangements
• Sharon Van Etten/War on Drugs (March 23^rd,, Aladdin Theater) – A great double-bill (something which seems to be rarer and rarer), Van Etten followed up a solid set from Philadelphia’s War on Drugs with a dynamic set of her own, her powerful voice and haunting lyrics framed perfectly by a talented band which included Portland’s Heather Broderick (Horsefeathers).

Whatever your opinion of David Byrne, you have to admit the guy is smart, even just for tacking a book tour onto his successful run of music shows. And his book’s pretty clever, too. How Music Works is part musical autobiography, part sweeping essay on the evolution of music itself, ambitiously edifying but oddly folky at the same time. From it, we learn two major things: 1) the quirky, twitchy persona we associate with Byrne is not entirely a stage act, more an amplification of his everyday traits; and 2) he really loves what he does. The man gets out to at least one live show a week, which at his ripe age of 60 puts me and most of my Gen X compatriots to shame. Byrne’s love of music has led him further and further afield, from the CBGB to Brazil with his own label Luaka Bop, to movies and soundtracks, and on to a number of fruitful collaborations with fellow artists such as Brian Eno. His current work with St. Vincent on Love This Giant is a case study of co-creation, the product of putting two musical prodigies in the same room to record an album, and on the same stage to perform in their own eccentric but choreographed ways.

Sometime David Byrne sounds and acts like an avant-garde Mr. Rogers–and if you’ve seen his movie True Stories, you know his neighborhood’s a little off. Apparently Byrne’s oddities didn’t escape the man himself–he revealingly says that he diagnosed himself early on as having “a very mild (I think) form of Asperger’s Syndrome,” and a friend joked that a predecessor band to the Talking Heads should have been named “The Autistics.” At times, Byrne’s writing itself bears out his self-diagnosis of social eccentricity. On a study that showed up to 69% of creative people have mental health issues: “That’s a lot of nutters!” In the autobiographical sections, Byrne uses more exclamation points per square inch than the usual editor might allow, perhaps to amp up some amount of emotion he’s not quite sure about. He mentions that Jerry Harrison was hesitant to join the Talking Heads after being “burned” by Jonathan Richman, who abruptly quit The Modern Lovers; Byrne’s later description of the discordant end of Talking Heads consists of a single perplexing sentence: “I didn’t perform for a while after that.”

However, it is Byrne’s treatment of the subject of the rest of the book–the status of music itself–which stands at the creative forefront of his book. He opens it with a fascinating thesis, especially for someone often described as a musical genius, de-emphasizing the iconoclastic role of the artist and stressing that creativity is secondary to context. That is, the place and way in which music is performed determines in large part what will emerge and work there. He illustrates (literally) with examples of music that came to fit the acoustic requirements of places ranging from the African savannas to Carnegie Hall, and with observations like the seemingly natural song length of three and a half to four minutes that came to dominate Western popular music only emerged after the advent of 78s and 45s. He asserts that there is no hierarchy or progression in the course of music over time, merely art and artists that flourish or flounder in the spaces given. While this is a strongly democratic view of music, in the end he comes full circle, saying that artists may find a sweet spot within the limitations that they inherit–”Genius…seems to appear when a thing is perfectly suited to its context.”

It is to Byrne’s credit, and to his musical partners like St. Vincent, that seeking out collaboration is a means to continually renewed sources of creativity. Love This Giant is a testament to its success, and my early vote for album of the year. My favorite songs on the album are the duets, like “Who” and “Lazarus,” which sound most obviously like they were born from two creative viewpoints. While Byrne has some solo vocals here which cover some familiar thematic ground, about life during wartime/under some unnamed third-world dictatorship, the overall effect is one of balance between his sometimes grating but intriguing vocals, lively brass instrumentations and St. Vincent’s wide range. In Byrne’s book chapter on collaboration, he states that such ventures are sometimes restrictive and even risky, but the creative rewards come despite and in fact because of the limitations inherent in working directly with someone else of a different vision. Such an approach clearly benefits Mr. Byrne and keeps him relevant by pushing him in new directions, but to some extent even improves St. Vincent’s appearances on the album. As much as I love her earlier work, sometimes it seems to risk moving into the solipsistic world of art-only-for-the-artist’s-sake that might trap other musicians like (to my taste) some of Kate Bush’s later work and a lot of Tori Amos. Love This Giant uplifts, embodying Byrne’s vision for pushing onward with the help of a non-like-minded artist. The whole album, like the book and even the writer himself, is surely more than the sum of its musical parts.

David Byrne, accompanied by St. Vincent,
re-establish music as art

Usually the mention of choreography isn’t what makes something a “must-see” in regards to live music.

However, certain artists and their music lend themselves to larger-than-life spectacle – case in point being David Byrne. On tour with singer/guitarist Annie Clark (ne, St. Vincent), the two mesmerized their sold-out Arlene Schnitzer Hall audience with music from their recent collaboration, Love This Giant, while mixing in a handful of Talking Heads classics, as well as material from Ms. Clark’s 3-album catalog.

The music – and musicianship – was stellar…the marquee artists supported by a 10 piece orchestra (including, at any given time, trumpets, trombones, flugelhorns, flutes, french horns…). This helped take the solid studio-craft of Love This Giant to a superior level – making one feel that the record was simply an excuse to get incredible musicians together to wow audiences live. And it worked, in spades.

Starting with punchy and solid new track “Who”, it was apparent immediately that not only could these folks PLAY their instruments, but that the audience was in for a treat of bodies synchronized in an organized – if not tongue-in-cheek – manner. The musicians were clearly having fun, while bringing a sort-of “Bourbon Street-meets-the-Brooklyn-Bridge” cultural framework to the songs.

But this was no gimmick. The brass and woodwinds not only accentuated the craft of the new material, but fleshed out everything from St. Vincent tunes (like their stunning take on “The Party”, which I suspect never sounded better) to some Byrne solo work (“Strange Overtones”, from a recent collaboration with Brian Eno) to – OF COURSE! – some Talking Heads classics (“This Must Be the Place”, “Road to Nowhere” and – particularly – “Burning Down the House” would sound flat after this line-up’s renditions). But perhaps the strangest, and most subtle, sonic beneficiary was a piece performed for the band’s third encore, “Open the Kingdom” (which, according to Byrne, hadn’t been performed until this evening); it’s a composition by Philip Glass that Byrne – at Glass’ request – contributed vocals/lyrics to. Simply stunning, if not an abrupt, change in direction.

I’d like to think that in an age of homogenization, this was their special nod to Portland. Ms. Clark has been in a couple of skits on Portlandia (modeling police “fashion”, and as a cop), and Mr. Byrne has been in town to promote his literary craft, as is the case this time through.

Unfortunately, I am not part of the other sold-out audience Mr. Byrne will see in Portland this week; he’ll discuss his new book, How Music Works, with Portland’s contribution to music/performance art, Carrie Brownstein (Sleater-Kinney, Portlandia) tonight at the Baghdad Theater.

The Dirty Projectors are the new art-pop standard bearers

Do you remember that David Byrne solo record, the one that made you realize “yeah, this guy WAS the Talking Heads”?  The one that made you forget Jerry Harrison, Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz?

Probably not. Because, over the course of his solo career, Byrne has generated some solid efforts – but nothing approaching what he did with his former band.

If he could have pulled it off, it might sound something like what The Dirty Projectors are doing these days, including what might be the year’s best record, Swing Lo, Magellan. The band showcased the new album, along with a number of songs from 2009’s “breakthrough” Bitte Orca, and a handful of songs from prior albums on July 25^th at Portland’s Crystal Ballroom.

An enthusiastic crowd was provided an amazing show from what is becoming one of the (if not THE) best young bands in terms of taking studio wizardry and replicating (perhaps surpassing it) live. The sound at the Crystal Ballroom (often times a negative) was spot on, and the band seemed to feed off everything (including a hot summer day spent diving into “lackamas creek” [sic]), leading to a surprising (and “pretentious”, Longstreth joked with the crowd) second encore. The special vibe could have also harkened back to Longstreth’s time spent living with his brother Jack in Portland, where he recorded the (defacto) Dirty Projector debut record, The Graceful Fallen Mango.

Longstreth (and company, for the record) is creating music that is Soweto-by-way-of-SOHO. An unapologetic Head’s fan (DP and Byrne collaborated for the stand out “Knotty Pine” on the solid “Dark Was the Night” AIDS benefit compilation), Longstreth continues to channel African sounds and rhythms through eclectic American pop sensibilities. It’s what Paul Simon’s Graceland might have sounded like had it been introduced to NYC’s downtown noise scene from the late 70’s.

So, when Longstreth recently lost Angel Deradoorian (and her angelic voice, no pun intended…), he did what he should have; return to placing himself up front, highlighting his superior songwriting talents, touch upon some of what he’s associated with (female choruses scattered throughout, but not to the the degree of Bitte Orca). Longstreth also hints at Bob Dylan (another acknowledged influence; DP covered Dylan’s “I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine” for the Levi’s Pioneer project) on songs like the title track. Add to the record’s solid musicianship, and some genuinely comic moments, and you have some of Longstreth’s best work – which is saying a lot, considering he’s in the top five young American songwriters.

It’s interesting that David Byrne is now working with St. Vincent (ne Annie Clark); could this have been influenced by the DP’s, who are Brooklyn contemporaries? The Byrne/St. Vincent single “Who” (off their upcoming album, to be released in September) is very good, and is a positive sign. But then listen to the DP’s horn-inflected “Unto Caesar”, an arguably stronger tune.

So, even with the band’s lineup changes, it should be abundantly clear that Longstreth is in charge (though vocalist/guitarist Amber Hoffman would have no problem surpassing the Tom Tom Club), and hopefully those along for the ride can celebrate being a part of some fantastic records.

Kate Bush’s latest, 50 Words for Snow, has this reviewer pleased

Count me (along with Big Boi, St. Vincent, et al) as an ardent Kate Bush fan. So it is with rose-colored glasses that I recommend her newest, 50 Words for Snow, so enthusiastically. I realize my bias as I listen to songs like “Snowflake” and am swept up by the richness of her (now 53 year-old!) voice, and am reminded of what a pioneer she is in creating a sound and approach that so many (wittingly or not) have co-opted, from Bjork, to Joanna Newsom, to Florence and the Machine. Who else can (at least in my eyes) provide Elton John redemption, as they duet on “Snowed in at Wheeler Street”. It’s no surprise to me that this album was released on ANTI Records (Tom Waits, etc.). Its melancholy sound might not be everyone’s cup of tea; however, there is no other voice that I’d rather experience snow, and the winter for that matter, listening to.