Earlier this year, I covered the South by Southwest Music Festival for the Los Angeles Times’ Brand X; since Brand X has since been wiped from the Internet (and since I’m starting to think about next March already), the photos are now here. You can find shots from my unofficial Waynestock party with TwentyFourBit (and Sondre Lerche, Pepper Rabbit, ARMS, etc.) in the recap post.
The New Division – True Lies OFFICIAL VIDEO from The New Division on Vimeo.
The New Division bear no relation to Joy Division, but it’s probably safe to assume they’re fans. The SoCal band’s “True Lies” offers distant vocals and well-honed emotional angst as well as twinkling synths and of-the-moment hammer-heavy drum sequencing that makes the relationship drama feel increasingly claustrophobic. (And increasingly dubstep-y, which isn’t a bad thing.) The band’s debut album, Shadows, is due 9/27, with a Skrillex remix presumably in 3… 2…
Marling in 2008 / Photo by Bex Wade via Flickr
My dad still remembers seeing Joni Mitchell. (It helps that he still listens mostly to the albums that soundtracked his college years, which I suppose dooms me to trying to explain Sufjan Stevens to my kids while they listen to post-post-chillstep on their Apple iEars.) I’ve never listened to Miles of Aisles so I have to imagine what it must’ve been like, to see the best folk songwriter of her day at the height of her powers. It was probably not unlike last night’s Laura Marling show, which was both as triumphant and intimate as any concert’s likely to get this year.
Openers Alessi’s Ark, fellow U.K. folkies and members of the same revivalist scene that’s also spawned inferior (and coincidentally, male) acts such as Noah and the Whale and Mumford and Zzzz, played to a previously unfamiliar audience and won them over completely. (The girl who mouthed every lyric to “Wire” should consider herself the coolest person in the room.) Alessi Laurent-Marke’s voice is deeply breathy and almost free of vibrato, rendering her notes fine and pure enough to be white sand from some undiscovered beach. (Or, uh, drugs, if you want to go there.) Her songs, mostly from the very good new album Time Travel, were charming enough, though they tended to slip into repetitious one-chord-per-bar strumming — a limitation she recognized when she stopped one song to note, “It just goes on and on like that for a while.” Good as she was, her banter was even better, cracking jokes about her father’s fondness for California fish tacos and the state of the Troubadour (“It’s very wooden”). Alessi Laurent-Marke was born in 1990, which made her self-assurance — and talent — very nearly jealousy-inspiring. Read the rest of this entry »
That’s all the news! Looking forward to getting shut out of the Ticketmaster presale already. Glad an Atoms for Peace album is finally coming — I’m surprised it wasn’t done months ago after Thom’s extensive time in L.A. [Green Plastic]
Related: The King of Limbs is still pretty great.
Since nobody else has asked: did something… happen to Annie Clark? When 2009′s Actor gave up the tongue-in-cheek wit and jazz-pop excursions of Marry Me, it was in the respectable pursuit of exploring the dark territory that has threaded through her work beginning with her first release, the Paris is Burning EP. But on Strange Mercy, the void consumes her. It’s the first St. Vincent album without her face on the cover, a sign, perhaps, that she’s tired of the dichotomy between porcelain-doll looks and fret-savaging musicianship; tired, as my colleagues have guessed, of holding back.
Judging by the lyrics, she’s tired of a lot of things: “I don’t want to be a cheerleader no more,” she wails on “Cheerleader,” but she surely knows that’s a different thing than actually leaving the squad. There’s no song more powerless-feeling than the title track, which would offer “Good news that I don’t believe / If it would help you sleep” to an anonymous accomplice and the authoritarian image of a “dirty policeman” with no saviors or solutions in sight. Only the “hysterical strength” of the track of the same name allows her to “stand up” against grief and burials. At every turn, Clark appears trapped, a claustrophobia that can’t help but extend to the audience. Read the rest of this entry »
Lambchop – National Talk Like a Pirate Day by MergeRecords
I try to avoid non-donut-including fake holidays, but if Merge Records is giving away one of the best-ever Lambchop songs from the best-ever Lambchop album (yes), that’s worth celebrating.
Previously: Live: Lambchop at the Echoplex
With Ashes & Fire well on its way to winning the hearts and minds of a previously chilly blogosphere (Stereogum, I see you!), Ryan Adams keeps putting out killer in-studio videos, in case you were wondering if you should pack some tissues for his fall tour. (via Stereogum)
Hear the first half of my intro to the Ryan discog, 45 Minutes, here.
Via Twitter, from the U.K. twee act: “Back at work after another great weekend of recording. We have finally broken the back of this record!” After promising live takes on “Europe” and “Neil Armstrong” and this year’s “Darren” single, it should be another winner — and hopefully in time for Chanukah.
