Indie rock duo John Heart Jackie sent over this song in, um, October. I apologize, both for keeping them waiting and for not sharing this one sooner. The song’s a lightly orchestrated, sweetly sung take on the Prince deep cut, with Jennie Wayne’s vocals warbling with wonderfully Lilith Fair-era feeling. If they cover Lisa Loeb, I promise to post it before 2013.
John Heart Jackie – “When You Were Mine” (Prince cover):mp3
This video is silly and fun but mostly I’d like you to hear how effortlessly Twerps pick up the banner of the Of Skins and Heart-era Church and just wave the shit out of it. Don’t ever leave me, ’80s guitar tones. The Melbourne band will be at SXSW, though their tour’s skipping L.A. for the moment. Twerps, their debut, dropped in October on Underwater Peoples and Chapter Music.
At the Echo on Friday night, sitting next to a handful of future lung cancer patients, staring at my phone, I was thinking about Azealia Banks. The Harlem rapper/singer is nothing if not a compelling personality; “212,” her star-making single after a few embryonic misfires, is her Don Draper carousel pitch. The video offers little more than her ear-to-ear smile, self-consciously silly dance moves and a Mickey Mouse sweater. It is, in a word, fun. Banks, whose Twitter display name is “Yung Rapunxel” and responded to the Huffington Post’s police siren article about her bisexuality with the line, “Who came out ? Was it not always clear that I enjoy time with other Mermaids?,” seems savvy and amused with the absurdities of her sudden fame. Under the difficult mantle of “Female MC,” she has yet to retreat to Nicki Minaj’s plastic fortress or shudder under the weight of the expectations that seem to have crushed poor Kreayshawn.
“212″ is split like a three-act play, divided by Banks switching moderately successfully from rhyming to singing and back. (It’s harder to be funny when you’re singing.) She’s an equal opportunity offender, though the song’s NSFW closing line is the pointed “I’ma ruin you, cunt.” Still, “212″ offers its share of female empowerment: when she repeats, “I guess that cunt gettin’ eaten” over the round Latin rhythm, it’s a moment for women to throw their hands up in triumph as boyfriends look around bashfully and scratch the backs of their necks. It probably sounds really great at the club.
Promise and the Monster is a Stockholm folk-rock act with a surprisingly frigid style. Compared to Swedish sun-seekers such as Jens Lekman or Peter Bjorn and John, the band might as well hail from Antarctica. Its music, driven by the barbed, breathy vocals of Billie Lindahl, shifts between gothic chamber assaults (“Swim,” spooky-girlfriend anthem “Dorothy”) and gentler balladry, like the reverb-aided “Sibylle” and “Cory.” It’s evocative of Marissa Nadler’s shadowy catalog as well as the darker sounds of Warpaint or Chelsea Wolfe, though Lindahl’s multi-tracked harmonies manage to walk an intriguing line between edge and comfort. (The band also shares a label and an intensity of style with Jose Gonzalez.) There’s a similar balance in the album’s production: there’s just enough warming reverb to keep the songs from dying from exposure. Stream it in full on Spotify; buy it via Imperial Recordings’ store.
“I know a place where rent is free,” Charles Latham sings in “I’m Moving Back to My Parents’ House,” but his post-college malaise isn’t the satirical Portlandia variety. Instead, the ramshackle folk effort takes a sincere approach strengthened by its ’50s pop shoo-bops: “How, how long until things get weird?/Till we’re arguing about my curfew, till I’m stealing beer?” Not very long, pal. It’s an anthem for our times, as well as a tune that’d charm on any subject. Here more Latham on Bandcamp.
Be safe, pals. See you in 2k12. Also: (500) Days of Summer forever. Watch Nellie McKay’s (even better?!) version after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
Let’s just dive right in, shall we? I wrote blurbs for everything. If you jump straight for No. 1 (SPOILER IT’S KAPUTT), I’ll understand, but you might enjoy some reading. Read the rest of this entry »
The brightest spot of 2011′s music for me was that I could’ve happily watched handsomely crafted live videos and downloaded radio sessions and bootleg recordings all year and never reached for an actual record. It’s both a tribute to modern technology and a sign that we have a welcome surplus of quality videographers and engineers. Hopefully they keep it up. Here are six essentials. Read the rest of this entry »
