Hey, I was at this show!; image courtesy of pitchfork.com
I was surprised to discover that I haven’t mentioned Julianna Barwick much beyond a brief SXSW recommendation, because I’ve been into her for a while now. If you ever see me in the Asthmatic Kitty t-shirt I inherited from a clothing swap a few years back, she’s the artist I’m representing (no hard feelings, Sufjan). Credit of my awareness goes to my partner, who forwarded this Dusted piece because of my known fondness for female voices and loops. NPR is streaming her forthcoming album The Magic Placeuntil its release on the 22nd, and I recommend you check out this beautiful record.
When talking about Barwick as a musician, I should really be talking about vocals. Her music is predominantly vocal-based, and gestures toward the formative years she spent in church choir. However, I find it especially interesting how she conceptualizes and manipulates her voice as an electronic instrument, potentially making her a good addition to Tara Rodgers’ great book Pink Noises: Women on Electronic Music and Sound. For one, she eschews traditional lyrics and tends toward mouth-singing and abstract syllables. For another, she threads her voice through an effects pedal and a looper. This distorts the sonic and tonal quality of her voice and allows her to build her voice into a choir, as well as embellish upon several passages that coalesce into fully-realized pieces of music. Given the spare set-up, it’s remarkable how lush and expansive her songs are. I caught Barwick during last year’s SXSW and was surprised that these songs, which don’t lend themselves to rock venue performances, could still teleport me to some place outside myself. As someone who believes in some semblance of a spiritual realm and the transformative power of community but has little regard for organized religion, I appreciate how her music gestures toward the sacred without tying itself to a particular deity or dogma.
Some people may dismiss Barwick for creating yoga music for hipsters. Frankly, I’d prefer it to the new age soundtrack on my yoga DVD, though it is uniform with its out-of-time production aesthetic. I certainly understand if some people only hear layered gibberish with little variance between songs. But what I get from Barwick’s work isn’t a set of songs so much as a healing musical experience that gives my head the space to wander, collect, and recharge. That the opportunity for such restoration is generated through electronic equipment and her being makes it all the more exceptional.
Kara Walker at work; image courtesy of walkerart.org
Destroyer’s Kaputt came out last Tuesday. As a longtime fan of Dan Bejar’s main project, I’ve been pretty taken with it since tracks started filtering out late last year. My line about Destroyer is that it’s what English majors should be listening to instead of the Decemberists. That’s as much a glib comparison as it is a cheap shot against a band I actively dislike, especially since they have very little in common besides being led by a nasal-voiced front man with a love for big words. I will allow, however, that I’ve never understood the point of Colin Meloy’s lyrics. To my ears, it exists for its own sake and since I maintain that Meloy rivals Jay Leno as the public figure in possession of the most punchable jaw, I’ll interpret that sake as personal edification. Bejar could be accused of similar things, though his elliptical lyrics and prismatic compositions transfix me. Notice how vast “Rubies” is in its first half, only to drop into disarming intimacy. A symphony folds into a four-track recording. Staggering.
I’m interested in Bejar’s artistic evolution, particularly after Your Blues. Derided in some circles as “the MIDI album”–a reference to the antiquated musical interface used to provide much of the album’s background music–many found this stylistic departure from his guitar-based compositions disconcerting. The rockist panic informing such aversion is pretty funny to me. Your Blues ranks among my favorite Destroyer records and warrants rediscovery. It’s clear with subsequent releases that while he may not have been using successive albums to respond to previous ones, he was building on certain ideas. Your Blues hardly sounds like a departure in context. The most reductive connection between Your Blues and Kaputt is that he’s channeling another outdated era of pop music production–one Mark Richardson places between 1977 and 1984, at the height of soft rock, smooth jazz, and new romantic pop. But Bejar’s always been interested in toying with outre musical ideas. Destroyer’s shimmering guitar lines recall 70s AOR staples like Bread and America, so his attempts at something we might call ambient yacht rock shouldn’t come as any surprise. Also, as an Electronic fan, I’m tickled that the New Order/Pet Shop Boys/Smiths’ side project is one of the album’s main musical reference points.
But what does come as something of a (pleasant) surprise to me is artist Kara Walker‘s presence on Kaputt. I had the privilege of seeing her My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love exhibit in 2008 at the Modern in Fort Worth. It remains my most disquieting spectatorial experience. Walker is best known for recasting Antebellum-era silhouette cutouts in cinematic tableaux to reinterpret America’s ongoing racist history (she also gets a shout-out in Le Tigre’s “Hot Topic”). Nightmarish visions of sexual violence and abjection twine with surrealist and sensual imagery that sneak up on you once you look past cultural associations with silhouette portraiture’s feminized gentility. That I saw this after looking at an Impressionist exhibit–and walking through the gift shop–at the nearby Kimbell Museum only put the vitality of the exhibit in sharper relief. There’s no way one of her murals could make it onto an umbrella.
Kara Walker's "Endless Conundrum, An African Anonymous Adventuress" (2001); image courtesy of walkerart.org
Perhaps related to serving as a curator for Merge Records’ retrospective, Walker contributed lyrics to “Suicide Demo for Kara Walker,” so named as a reference to the proto-punk duo. She wrote several charged phrases onto cue cards and Bejar sang them, rearranging and embellishing some passages. It’s easily my favorite song on the record, though I’m disquieted as to why. Ann Powers recently offered some insights into their collaborative effort, noting their shared interest in appropriation. Bejar has been compared to Leonard Cohen, particularly his detached narration of hedonistic tales. Soft rock’s seductive qualities–the backlit production, the reliance on 7th chords–disquiet in their efforts to soothe and drip sophistication, especially when Bejar whispers lines like “New York City just wants to see you naked and they will,” “wise, old, black, and dead in the snow,” “All that slender-wristed, white, translucent business passes for love these days,” and “Don’t talk about the South, she said.” Kaputt also prominently features vocalist Sibel Thrasher. In the context of this song, her presence calls into question the role many black female vocalists held as background singers for artists like Simply Red.
Cohen also comes to mind when we talk about reinterpretation. Many folks who’ve heard “Hallelujah” might attribute Jeff Buckley, but the song originated with Cohen (actually, Buckley’s version is a cover of a cover, as he cribbed John Cale’s reading of it). So what happens when lyrics are drafted by an African American woman whose words are then reinterpreted by a white Canadian man frolicking in the studio? Who does it belong to? Frankly, I’m not sure. I’m inclined to rule that it belongs to both of them and to the listener. What I know for certain is that this song is stuck on repeat.
Janelle Monáe did a lot to define 2010's year in music; image courtesy of newblackman.blogspot.com
Jennifer Kelly is my favorite writer at Dusted, my go-to music e-zine. Recently she conceded that this year in music had a lot of contenders, but no clear leader of the pack. She then went on to list ten albums she really liked regardless of music critics’ echo chamber. It’s a good list, and I recommend you check it out. I also think you should give some time to Wetdog, a British punk band I learned about from her list.
In many ways, 2010 was an embarrassment of riches. So many big-name artists released career-peak records and lots of up-and-comers made me excited to listen to music each week (day? half-day? quarter-day? how rapid is the cycle now?). On paper, it’s a banner year. Yet I can’t pick one album that defines it. But that’s probably a good thing.
If I were to draft a list, three albums would place at #2. Critical darling Janelle Monáe comes the closest to topping my list. She defied commercial expectations with a pop album called The ArchAndroid about a futuristic metropolis that fused Prince with Octavia Butler. Joanna Newsom channeled Randy Newman, Joni Mitchell, and Blood on the Tracks-era Dylan to create the dusky reveries on the enveloping Have One on Me. LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy lifted synths straight out of Depeche Mode’s Black Celebration and the Eurythmics’ “Love Is a Stranger” while borrowing from Berlin-era Bowie for This Is Happening, which was book-ended by two of the man’s best songs.
Joanna Newsom on David Letterman; image courtesy of stereogum.com
The last two artists also managed to follow up and improve upon the albums that made them big tent attractions. Like most great pop music, they transcend their influences and ambitions. Yet each album is weighed down by at least one song. I always skip Happening‘s “You Wanted A Hit?,” which is too long and repetitive, even if it is aware of these things. I won’t fault Monáe and Newsom’s scope, but pruning a few tracks off for an EP or as b-sides might have been helpful. I think “Say You’ll Go” and “Kingfisher” don’t have the impact they could have elsewhere. If Newsom were referencing PJ Harvey’s Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea, “Kingfisher” would be her “Horses in My Dreams,” but it’s buried here.
BTW, no one’s jostling for #3. It’s Flying Lotus’ elegantly trippy Cosmagramma all the way.
As with every year, there are albums that are overrated and underpraised. Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is a perfect #11. It’s got fascinating angst and pathos that recalls another celebrity guilt rock record, Nirvana’s In Utero while squarely situating it as a black man’s experiences with fame. West’s bionic, prog-inflected production is the most potent it’s ever been. “All of the Lights” and “Monster” are among the year’s best songs, though credit goes solely to Nicki Minaj for the latter. But Jesus am I tired of reading ovations that cite the rapper’s Twitter feed. Yes, it provides insights into his process. And yes, it is noteworthy how West made so many tracks available to fans before the album was released (and maybe I’d bump it to #10 if “Chain Heavy” made the final cut). But it’s hardly album of the year or even a career best (in my opinion, he still hasn’t improved upon Late Registration).
Conversely, Spoon’s Transference is an ideal #9. People seem to hold one of America’s best rock bands in lower esteem this year for making an incomplete-sounding album. To my ears, this is an ingenious thing for a band so preoccupied with space and compositional austerity to do with a break-up record. I keep returning to tracks like “Is Love Forever” and “Nobody Gets Me,” yearning for a resolution I know I won’t find. I’d also mention that Marnie Stern‘s latest record (which would probably round out the top five) and Dessa‘s A Badly Broken Code (a peerless #4) were slept on. If they didn’t place higher, it’s only because they didn’t feel the need to announce their greatness and came on as slow burners. The same could be said of Seefeel‘s earthy dub on Faults (possibly #7) and Georgia Anne Muldrow, who had an incredibly prolific year that peaked with Kings Ballad (between #8-10). Psalm One’s Woman @ Work series on Bandcamp has me anticipating her next album. Oh, and since this was a year largely defined by albums about break-ups and shaky make-ups, Erykah Badu’s Second World War (#8) needs your attention.
There’s also lots of new stuff I liked this year that I hope ages with me. I’ve made peace with my misgivings about the limited shelf life of Sleigh Bells’ bubblegum through blown speakers, in part because Treats (#12-15 with some staying power) sounds amazing in the car, which is where all great pop records become immortal in the states. I’d like Best Coast more if leader Bethany Cosentino just went ahead and wrote a concept album about the munchies or her cat instead of devoting so many songs to boys. Sufjan Stevens’ indulgence bored me silly, as did Surfer Blood’s inability to rise past their influences and sound like themselves. Big Boi and Bun B’s ambitious releases deserve their accolades, but they should excite me more than they do. I have yet to fall in love with Robyn the way everyone else has, but Rihanna continues to be my girl.
I’m really into the new Anika record, which is tailor-made for insomniacs. However, I’m certain that a woman with a Teutonic monotone snarling her way through catatonia as producer Geoff Barrow quotes post-punk’s buzzsaw guitar noise holds limited appeal. I always welcome a new Gorillaz album, and Plastic Beach certainly delivered. Among others, I liked new efforts from Baths, El Guincho, Noveller, M.I.A., Grass Widow, Sharon Van Etten, Soft Healer, Beach House, Mountain Man, The Black Keys, Cee-Lo Green, Tobacco, Sky Larkin, Tame Impala, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, Nite Jewel, Deerhunter, Vampire Weekend, Warpaint, Antony and the Johnsons, The Budos Band, and Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, even if the last two artists essentially release the same great album each time out. And even though I get a free cocktail if Merge wins the Album of the Year Grammy, Matador had a good year for me with Glasser, Esben and the Witch, and Perfume Genius, whose harrowing confessionals will hopefully find a larger audience (Sufjan fans, listen up).
(Note: don’t get me started on the Arcade Fire. I’m going to be mean and unfair, as I’ve been since I gave up on liking Funeral. Suffice it to say, I’m not fond of them and think I can tell you more about living in a Houston suburb than they can. But it won’t be a productive conversation because I’ll tear up my throat launching cheap shots about dressing for the Dust Bowl and wearing denim jackets to prove that you’re one with the working man. It’s not helpful, so I’ll be kind and say they’re fine at what they do but I want no part of it.)
Part of why I can’t settle on a #1 is because I don’t think it matters. I don’t think I need an album to define the year for me. It’s always seemed that selecting one was a fool’s errand. Steve Albini may very well be an insufferable jerk, but he’s absolutely right when he said “Clip your year-end column and put it away for 10 years. See if you don’t feel like an idiot when you reread it.” Last year, I chose Neko Case’s Middle Cyclone. While it helped situate my feelings for the year, it can’t hold a candle to her modern classicFox Confessor Brings the Flood. But now I’m not even sure what the point is. This exercise doesn’t take into account all of the older music I finally prioritized this year. For me, 2010 is just as much defined by digging through Cocteau Twins and Throwing Muses records (4AD had a good year in all kinds of ways), as well as getting excited about Mary Timony, Jenny Toomey, and Carla Bozulich.
Carla Bozulich and I will be spending some quality time together next year; image courtesy of wfmu.org
Furthermore, I’ve sometimes lost sight of why I write in this medium. Apart from being vulnerable to having my content scraped by sketchy sites and feeling like I should be doing something more politically important with my time, it can be a challenge to keep the routine of blogging from dulling the impact of your work. This may have more to do with a need to explore scarier forms of writing, like the kind that requires the involvement of a guitar or a storyboard. As a departure, I started a film blog series for Bitch last month. It’s been the right kind of challenging, though I’m not always certain I’m effectively communicating what I hope to accomplish. Music allows for abstraction where films require exposition, which sometimes makes me feel like I’m writing several variations on “I walked to the chair and sat down.” But I’m learning and it’s been a lot of fun.
I don’t mean to be self-effacing toward my efforts, as I’m proud of them. It’s been a good year and it’s healthy to be critical when you’re taking stock. Perhaps I’m responding to a lack of stability. This was a year of change. Some changes were seismic, like when several friends had babies. Others were gradual, like my partner launching a successful music e-zine and me delving into the world of freelance writing in earnest while taking a deep breath and learning to play the guitar. While some friends returned to Austin, others moved away this year and more are soon to follow in 2011. There’s even an infinitesimal chance I’ll be in that number, but the likelihood of uprooting and leaving the food carts and backyard parties of my adopted home is so small and too profound to consider, so I push it away.
But as I’ve thought on these feelings during the year, the lyrics from LCD Soundsystem’s “Home” resonate. Though detractors may note Murphy’s manipulating my generation with lines like “love and rock are fickle things” and “you’re afraid of what you need . . . if you weren’t, I don’t know what we’d talk about,” I’ve taken comfort in crooning them in my car. That’s the best of what pop music can accomplish–taking abstractions and making them applicable to life’s mundane realities, at times clarifying their importance. In whatever medium, I can’t wait for another year of writing about it.
James Murphy, you and I had another good year; image courtesy of nymag.com
I was about ten feet away from Ramona Gonzalez's microphone when this picture was taken -- Nite Jewel sign with Stones Throw; image courtesy of thetripwire.com
Peanut Butter Wolf announced earlier today that Nite Jewel (aka Ramona Gonzalez, with friends) are now signed to his label Stones Throw, which will release the forthcoming Nite-Funk. This is very exciting news to me for a few reasons.
1. I really liked last year’s Good Morning, Nite Jewel’s self-released debut. I didn’t hear a lot of buzz on her beyond the Dusted review my partner forwarded to me because he knows how I feel about funky ladies with synthesizers. But I really enjoyed the set I saw at Ms. Bea’s during SXSW last year.
2. It’s been pretty hard to get a hold of Good Morning without buying it online. That means I’ll get to buy the new album in the record store. It also might mean that previous releases might be more readily available, though I’m not sure if Stones Throw will be doing any kind of distribution deal with Italians Do It Better, which released some of Nite Jewel’s singles.
3. Nite Jewel is an interesting addition to Stones Throw, which is one of my favorite record labels. The label is most closely associated with underground hip hop (see also: Wolf, J Dilla, Oh No, the ever-prolific Madlib in his various incarnations). But has expanded to include a diverse range of artists ranging from retro soul outfits like Mayer Hawthorne and the County and synth-funk artists like former Austinite James Pants and Dâm-Funk, who introduced Gonzalez to her L.A. neighbor Wolf.
This is very exciting news. I like what I’m hearing and can’t wait for the sounds we’re all about to hear.
Neko Case, striking chords and melting hearts; image courtesy of merryswankster.com
I love lists. At the end of every year, I dutifully check in with my AV Clubs and my Pitchforks and my NPRs and my Dusteds and whatever other publications appeal to politically liberal youngish people trying to keep up.
There’s a special place in my heart for music lists. Back in my college radio days, we used to devote hours (some of them on air) to dissecting the year-end best-of lists. Having served posts at office jobs that require a considerable amount of editing and fact-checking, and thus allow for some quality headphones time, these sorts of lists now serve as a discursive mix tape that I can alternately love, hate, or dismiss.
Yet, I tend not to make lists. It isn’t a matter of feeling like my opinions aren’t valuable. It’s a resistance to canon formation. I question whether the list itself is a useful tool with which to measure history. There’s something so arbitrary about ranking, so temporal about certain offerings, and so glass-cased final about the results. It seems to render the chosen cultural moments accidental, temperamental, and airless. And often the items deemed worthy on these lists have nothing to do with me or anyone else who isn’t a straight white adult male.
To me, the only use a list has is to argue about it with a group of friends over beer, make another list to counter someone else’s (whether it be drafted by a friend or a respectable publication), or scrawl all over the margins of the pre-existing document. Otherwise, the proceedings seem deceptive and unsatisfying to me. And even though I like to wrestle with lists, I don’t really need proof that good things came out each year. Good movies, TV shows, books, and especially music get made every year.
That said, I do believe in favorites. While favorites can shift with time and gathered experience, I’m a big believer in selecting a defining text that encompasses the year. I don’t remember if I originally thought Pedro Almodóvar’s Volver was my favorite movie of 2006, though I know I loved it. When I think about it now though, I remember calling my mother immediately after the screening I attended because the thought of living in the same house as a grown woman with your mother who might be a ghost was too profound an idea not to relate to her.
I remember how TV on the Radio’s Dear Science captured the hope of change promised by the potential election of Barack Obama, especially in the wake of a demoralizing Bush administration that the band gestured toward in previous, more emotionally turbulent albums.
So what of this year? Well, my choice for album of the year picked me.
Cover for Middle Cyclone (Anti- , 2009); image courtesy of pastemagazine.com
Before getting into why I picked the album I did, which I established as my #1 way back in March despite keeping fantastic company with offerings from Bill Callahan, Animal Collective, Dirty Projectors, P.O.S., Fashawn, Micachu & The Shapes, Thao and the Get Down Stay Down, St. Vincent, Bat for Lashes, Speech Debelle, Grizzly Bear, Themselves, Memory Tapes, Janelle Monáe, Phoenix, Taken By Trees, Nite Jewel, Destroyer, Julianna Barwick, Fever Ray, The Noisettes, Atlas Sound, Vivian Girls, Gossip, Best Coast, Dan Deacon, Brother Ali, and so many others, I’d like to be candid for a moment. When I think about this year, I think about how I tried to make it a good one. I believe I was successful and I know I have many people to thank for that. But it was definitely a growing year, and usually not in the certain, considerable, triumphant ways that “growth” often suggests itself as a word.
I started this blog at the end of April. While I made a New Year’s resolution to do it, I created it out of a need to control my feelings about a professional setback that rendered itself more heart-breaking than I thought it would when the decisions were finally handed down. Throughout this year, I’ve often (re: daily) reflected upon my future and who I want to be, worried not so much that I lack the ability to progress toward a career I really want and think I’d be great at, but that I’ll never get the chance to develop and move forward. That’s some heavy shit. It doesn’t translate well into party-time chit-chat either, especially when some of your friends are already on the path you’d like to be on someday.
As a result, I tried to broaden my focus and interests. I tried to get some related things accomplished and made some progress. But I also got comfy and more involved with my current job, read more books, saw more movies, heard more music, hung out with my friends, had quiet nights at home with my partner and our cat, got involved with Girls Rock Camp Austin, co-taught some rad music history workshops, paid off my loan, and threw myself into this blog with abandon. Admittedly, it’d be nice to get paid to put this site together, as I could easily be happy making a career out of it. But it’s been so fun and rewarding to write up these posts and have smart, sensitive people follow along and participate. I’ll gladly pay the money to keep the domain name.
But none of this fucking matters when a tornado is ripping up your house or a killer whale is eating your lungs. And with that, let’s get into Neko Case’s Middle Cyclone.
So, the second time I heard this album, I knew it was the one to beat. And before people cry “safe choice!” or “bias!” I’ll point out that Animal Collective secured many publications’ top spot with a crossover hit back in January. And then I’ll add that Middle Cyclone, much like Merriweather Post Pavilion (and Dear Science before it and Kala before it) distilled the musician’s artistic growth. In this particular case (no pun intended), she honed her considerable writing ability, developed her Gothic noir musical tendencies, piled on catchy melodies and haunting harmonies, and showcased a maturing, perfect alto. The issue of vocal range is one of great importance to me, as it means I can sing along with her. We had some good sessions in my car.
It was also the long-awaited follow-up to Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, which continued but further shaded the cinematic work the singer had done with Blacklisted. Fox Confessor was a cycle of post-apocolyptic fairy tales about car accident victims, army widows, and fingerless cannery workers.
As is evident in much of her earlier and subsequent work, animals show up. Sparrows, lions, and foxes make often allegorical appearances, though her gendered connection to nature would take a more literal, weirder turn when she decided to record crickets chirping for Middle Cyclone‘s final 30 minutes. Sometimes cover songs get re-interpreted, as on the spiritual “John Saw That Number” and Sparks’ “Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth” and Harry Nilsson’s “Don’t Forget Me” on her follow-up.
Sometimes Case would show up too, most noticeably on “Hold On, Hold On.”
But Case is all over Middle Cyclone. Whether she’s singing about a love-lorn tornado or a biker’s wife or a convict or an owl, she’s singing from their perspective rather than narrating their lives. She’s also often singing as herself, revealing who that might be with lines about being the dangling ceiling of a caved-in roof or threatening to punch a lover in the face if the word “forever” is uttered in “The Next Time You Say Forever.” I also love her assertion that “heaven will smell like the airport” but that we shouldn’t worry about whether we get proof of it is fair in “I’m An Animal.” However, her candor on the title track moves me the most.
Through the liner notes, we even got more of a sense of who she is. Her deprecating sense of humor is evident, as is her confident sense of artistic ownership and her craftiness with collage art and découpage glue. As this was the year Austin City Limits released their cookbook, I can’t wait to try out her recipe for houndstooth chocolate chip cookies. And let’s not forget how many pianos she needed to make this album. She may be a goddess, but she’s also a kooky lady.
This goddess and kooky lady are evident as one on the album’s bad-ass cover. While it’s Neko on the hood of a car, the image is far from Vargas girl cheesecake. This one is barefoot and holding a sword, but she’s also 38 (now 39) and pretending to be an eight-year-old boy.
In sum, Middle Cyclone was a defining and distinctly female work that came about from age, experience, a clear sense of self, some hard knocks, and even more defiance to overcome them. It was exactly the album I needed to hear this year, often and at full volume.
So, I recently revisited Björk’s Vespertine because, as followers of the blog can probably guess, it made me a feminist and I will be posting about the hows and whys of it at length in the not-too-distant future.
But one thing I forgot about the album that really impacted what I listen for in other people’s music is non-traditional instrumentation. Of course Björk would extend these musical explorations further with her follow-up, Medúlla, which was largely an a cappella record that explicitly configured the voice as an instrument, and often a percussive one at that (hopefully the feminist possibilities of using the voice –both explicitly female and degendered through digital manipulation – as such an integral part of song construction are obvious). But with Vespertine, she and production team Matmos often constructed beats out of surprising, often small, seemingly non-musical objects often associated with leisure pursuits or the domestic, like a deck of cards or cutlery.
Listening to the album again reinvigorated my interest in hearing weird objects be used as instruments. Today, I offer up toys as possible instruments and present bands Y Pants and CocoRosie as evidence. Representing New York at two very different times (early 80s and present-day, respectively), these two bands have members who employ rudimentary electronic toy pianos, noisemakers, and other gadgets that seem swiped from a long-abandoned bargin bin.
Y Pants; image courtesy of waylonhatchet.com
CocoRosie; image courtesy of nymag.com
For Y Pants’ Gail Vachon and Virginia Piersol, the toy piano and drums became an interesting way to reconfigure the sound of dub and reggae, two key interrelated musical movements for both punk and post-punk that had probably become too predictable as white-appropriated touchstones by 1979. As Y Pants were associated with no wave, with ukelele player Barbara Ess once a member of Theoretical Girls, another seminal band of the period formed by guitar visionary/cranky drunk grandpa Glenn Branca, there’s an excellent chance the band was rebelling against post-punk’s intellectualist posturing and angular guitar lines. What better way to piss off the scene than making messy music about the joys of eating with factory-produced shiny plastic toys?
(Note: Apologies, but I cannot find a live performance for Y Pants. As with much no wave, which was reviled by pretty much anyone with ears at the time and only recently became cool, despite the Brian Eno-produced No New York compilation, there’s not a lot of recorded evidence of the band in concert. The only thing I’ve seen that really documents the scene is Downtown ’81, but Y Pants were just about to break up by then. Which is too bad, because apparently they were all about unconventional performance spaces. So if you have any leads on where to track down a clip, let me know. In the meantime, check outY Pants, a repressing that combines their self-titled EP with their only album, Beat It Down.)
With CocoRosie, the instrumentation conveys something a little more transparently disturbing. Sierra Casady’s sweet, at once jazzy and operatic vocals contrast with wheezy, out-of-time bleeps and bloops from sister Bianca’s various toy instruments, which foreground songs that tend to focus on death, drugs, doomed love, incest, AIDS, abuse, and co-dependency. The toys, which may one day expire or be discarded, then become a symbol of betrayed innocence, the cold assurance that childhood — girlhood — is going to end in loss. At least you have your sister, who may also be your lover.
As an aside, I can’t bring up CocoRosie without pointing out that they’re really problematic in terms of race. They’ve dabbled with cholo fashion, perhaps in acknowledgement to the multifaceted dimensions of their Native American heritage, which they have also hailed in their attire and music.
Racially dicey sister-lovers; image courtesy of beastnation.com
In addition, they’ve made me a bit queasy in their appropriations of blackness. They consciously try on the voices of African American jazz singers like Billie Holiday. In addition, on ”Jesus Loves Me,” a track off their first album, La maison de mon rêve, the girls uses a certain racial slur when singing that God’s only son loves them, but not their wives, or their black friends. And Bianca has long been a fixture at Kill Whitey parties in Brooklyn.
That said, to borrow a phrase from Seth Watter’s Dusted review of Y Pants, both bands’ use of toys help build minor manifestos that sound like “a small explosion in the bedroom.” In his essay “The ‘Feminization’ of Rock,” Tony Grajeda argues that the bedroom is a domestic, queerable, intimate space where most lo-fi music is written, rehearsed, and recorded. While he was thinking about primarily-male indie rock acts like Pavement, the bedroom is clearly where Y Pants and CocoRosie belong as well. Just don’t pretend there isn’t anything subversive about what these ladies do in there.
Once again I swipe something my friend Kristen got to first. Luckily, she has pretty great taste.
Yesterday, as I was winding down another day at the office, I gave a listen to Taken by Trees, Victoria Bergsman’s solo project. You may know her from The Concretes, a band she used to front. Thus, you may have been charmed by the music video for “The Chosen One” or the song “Say Something New,” which was used in a Target ad.
If not, assuredly you heard “Young Folks,” the juggernaut of a song she sang with Peter, Bjorn, and John.
Well, apparently she’s been working on her own for a little while, under a name that brings to mind the theatrical, literary, gender-ambiguous monikers of St. Vincent and Bat for Lashes (if not also the artists’ sweeping, meticulously crafted sonic landscapes). East of Eden,Bergsman’s second album as Taken by Trees comes out later this month, but NPR has it available to listen now.
She recorded this album in Pakistan with producer Andreas Soderstrom (where, at the risk of gawking like an ugly American, they had to pretend to be married). I wonder what relationship Sweden and Pakistan have with one another (if any), what the album title may mean sociopolitically, or what interest Bergsman had in recording there apart from her love of Sufi music. For a more vigorous critique of these issues in the album, I’ll point you toward Michael Cramer’s Dusted review.
That said, I do feel they did a good job incorporating Middle Eastern instrumentation without appropriating or essentializing it. The result is a dreamy song cycle that’s great for the change of seasons.
Note also her cover of Animal Collective’s “My Girls,” which she changes to “My Boys.” (Side note: Listen for AC’s Noah Lennox, aka Panda Bear, who provides backing vocals on “Anna”). Bergsman also subs out lyrics about living “with a little girl and by my spouse” to “with a little cat and by my spouse.” Purr. If I had known about it earlier, I would’ve brought it up in my post on cover songs, along with her cover of “Sweet Child O’ Mine.”
