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So Teenage Dream finally leaked and I can finally listen to what I’m sure will be one of the best albums of the year…but first I had to put this on repeat because it’s an epic mix. Makes me wish I had seen Kaskade back at Electric Daisy Carnival.
Katy Perry – “Teenage Dream (Kaskade Club Mix)”
Daily Klap
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club, dance, Kaskade, Katy Perry, pop, remix, Teenage Dream
I love it when bands surprise me. For someone who thought Ra Ra Riot were like a lesser Vampire Weekend with a string section after 2008’s so-so The Rhumb Line, I was ready to push through The Orchard and let it down gently. Then I listened to it, and lo and behold, a band I had written off ends up backhanding me across the face with one of the better albums I’ve heard all year. Previous fans of the band will no doubt be delighted to hear that singer Wes Miles still sounds like Ezra Koenig, if a little more prone to falsetto, and that the band’s bouncy brand of pop-rock is still very much in evidence (just check out that ADD bass line on uber-catchy single “Boy”). But whereas The Rhumb Line was all meaty melodies and festival-ready sing-a-longs, The Orchard feels like a proper album of baroque pop – the songwriting is noticeably stronger, the band takes their time around the tunes rather than jumping headfirst into hooks, and the lovely strings of violinist Rebecca Zeller and cellist Alexandra Lawn seem far more integrated into the affairs here rather than the gimmick they at times appeared to be on their debut.
It’s a record that knows that the best way to start an album is not a rookie move like throwing out your best song or first single, but to kick things off with a track that announces a new, determined direction instead. “The Orchard” is just that song, floating along ominous string chords and a pensive bass line without a hint of drums or guitar. The focus is purely on Miles, who sounds like a markedly more assured vocalist throughout the record and never as clearly as he does on “The Orchard.” The strings at the forefront is something repeated throughout the album, from the way they add a melancholy note to the otherwise upbeat “Boy” to the way they arch and dip across melodies, putting their indelible stamp on songs like “Do You Remember” and “Kansai.” The fact that Zeller and Lawn are the centerpiece of songs rather than a touch of color here or a flourish there makes The Orchard everything The Rhumb Line hinted at but never accomplished: the sound of a complete and full band, utilizing an array of sound and talents in a more organic way than many of their peers.
Not to say that the rest of the band suffers in comparison. Drummer Gabriel Duquette is the unsung hero here, laying down a number of intricate beats that always propel things forward but never overwhelm. Like the National’s Bryan Devendorf or Bloc Party’s Matt Tong, Duquette has some impressive chops (check out his subtle work on “Massachusetts”), but uses them more to build a rigid rhythmic framework than show off. Everyone contributes, whether it’s consistently fantastic rhythm work, airtight melodies and subtler hooks, or Miles letting Lawn on the mic for the excellently Fleetwood Mac-ish “You And I Know.” There are a few missteps; seriously cheesy synths midway through “Foolish” mar some perfectly good dream-pop, and the sluggish “Keep It Quiet” ends the album with a whimper rather than a bang. But perhaps that’s to be expected – The Orchard is nothing if not a sharp left turn from the cheery, thumping pop of their debut, and ending it on its most plaintive note is sort of fitting. It’s also everything I wanted from a sophomore effort: sophisticated, confident, surprisingly layered, and endlessly entertaining. It’s always exciting when a band seems to get it and come into their own as a group – with The Orchard, Ra Ra Riot have finally created a distinctive identity all their own.
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Sort of a mixture between fun., Free Energy, and a whole heap of summer-lovin’ pop-rock that wants to be HUGE, not just hooky. Catchy melodies that seem like they’re fit for an arena even though they work just as well on headphones. Steel Train, the band’s third album, came out at the end of June – better late than never.
Steel Train – “You Are Dangerous”
I didn’t even know Ra Ra Riot were releasing a new album until last week, but The Orchard, which drops next Tuesday, has pretty much all I’ve been listening to the past week. It’s a more cerebral affair than their Vampire Weekend-esque debut, pushing those fine ladies rocking the strings to the front of the mix and generally making some pretty well-crafted, thought-out tunes. “Boy” was released online a couple of weeks ago and is a pretty fantastic, upbeat single, but “Kansai” is a more apt indicator of what the band was going for. Of course, both are awesome.
Can't find a legitimate picture of him unless he's Borgore's identical twin
Filthier than doing a line of your own dandruff (thanks Youtube!), Tomba’s new single is pretty much exactly what I expected after hearing the 35-minute sewage treatment plant that was “Disturbed.”
Tomba – “Come Out and Play ft. OTG & Sharon”
There’s barely a second that goes by on Galaxie 500’s On Fire without Dean Wareham begging love lost just one more chance, but it’s “Where Will You Come Home” that really sticks out for me. “When will you come home? / watching TV all alone, watching Kojak on my own,” he wails with his eyes potentially closed, but through all the radiating passion I’m left wondering: is this just time passing by a commercial break? Whoever Wareham’s ex is, his high-pitched mopes try and try to convey the blues she’s given him, but he sends her (and all of us) one better – yep, On Fire is an album that couldn’t be without melodrama. Melodrama sets it all alight.
Even if this isn’t true, On Fire succeeds on a similar feeling, a contradiction of terms that makes Wareham sound like he needs the agony more than he needs it cured. It’s a record about romantic things gone the wrong way: a shitty date, a weird acid trip, a sad night alone or even the frolics at the end of the world. Each song exists on its hunger for this darn-shame sadness, and the band accepts this feeling. At times Wareham seems aware of how trivial he is being, side-stepping his problems with silly anecdotes- “I stood in line and ate my twinkies / I stood in line I had to wait” when he’s drugged up; “you said / can I bring my guitar?” when he leaves the planet. Wareham doesn’t patronise us and give us life-lessons on love and pain – hell, even on his band’s tearful cover of “Isn’t It a Pity” he stops short of this – he just shares it with us, he makes a day of it. In fact, his George Harrison rendition sums it up with a grin. Sucks, doesn’t it?
The synchronisation couldn’t be better. The music and emotional weight of On Fireshare a mutual understanding, with the flattened out guitar play reserved when Wareham sets his dull, plodding scene and the blistering solos temperamental when he enters it. That in itself summarises all ten of the album, each explosion of instruments set to its weepy conductor; when he has his serious face on, the music makes us frown as much as he does (“Isn’t It A Pity,” or “Snowstorm”) and when he’s light-headed his band mates respond, just as they do on the glum hoedown that goes on in “Leave The Planet,” the band reverting to an out of tune harmonica to fend off the apocalypse. It’s silly, but serious and touching in the same blow, and in a sense Wareham and co. smooth over their melodrama with something more realistic. The music is realistic, in a way- there are times when Wareham is each feeling he has, and these simple guitar chords deafen us and mellow out when the time is right.
This is my favourite dream pop record out there because, quite simply, nobody is shoving it down your throat. On Fire plays out with only half a heart, spacing out Wareham’s passion as if it were for no one other than him. He repeats himself like he’s the only guy that matters and to hell with bigger problems, but still I can share in every moment of this, even without being told to. It’s immersing at every turn, playing out with the best kind of music- that which reflects mood. Most importantly though, Wareham shows us what we’re all too fond of. He knows melodrama makes us tick, that we’ll use this beautiful On Fire record and make it all about our foolish selves when really it’s just another rock record. I’ve never watched Kojak, though, so take one off five hundred.
Galaxie 500 – “Isn’t It A Pity?”
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Few better ways to kick off a weekend than with a new track from dance-punk mainstays !!!, whose 4th album, Strange Weather, Isnt It?, comes out Aug. 24. After the thorough listens I gave the new album (read: once-through so far), “The Hammer” immediately leapt out as the dirtiest. More cowbell?
What made Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin’s debut album Broom such a delight was its simple charm and beautifully unassuming melodies. Sure, it was home-recorded in a pointedly lo-fi manner and slightly derivative of bands like the Shins and early Apples in Stereo, but there was something inspiring about these three Missouri kids pulling off some truly gorgeous indie pop with a miniscule budget. It meant the songs had to be good, not fluffed up with studio tricks, and they were. The songs on Pershing were just as solid, no doubt, but a more confident SSLYBY began to lose some of that production innocence and amateur sensibility that colored their debut, seeming instead to be searching desperately for that hit single to put them over the top. Now we finally have The Indie Band Making Good – Death Cab’s Chris Walla behind the boards, a honest-to-God studio to play with, and a summer release date, the perfect time to listen to a band as breezy and lighthearted as SSLYBY generally sound. Unfortunately, what they end up with sounds more like contemporary Weezer than something you might find at the back of your local discount record store, something that was perhaps not groundbreaking but definitely yours.
Too often here SSLYBY sound like someone else’s band, or maybe Chris Walla’s wind-up power-pop toy. Of course, everything sounds good – each song here could be a potential hit single for the band or any other songwriter, and with Walla’s beefed-up production sharpening every cymbal hit and making the guitar chords more pleasant and audible than ever before, it’s a fundamentally flawless indie pop record. It’s just so unexpectedly generic; from the faux-anthem “Banned (By The Man)” to the cringe-inducing lyrics of “In Pairs” to the by the numbers designated single “Sink/Let It Sway,” nothing here leaves much of an imprint. Agreeably shiny guitars? Check. Soothing vocal harmonies? Check. Handclaps? Check. It’s inoffensive, sometimes fuzzy, other times crisp guitar pop, tunes that are a dime a dozen on any college radio station. Those who haven’t heard the band before will find everything agreeable enough, if a little indistinctive – what was the fuss all about, anyways? Then again, only the lovely, acoustic ballad “Stuart Gets Lost Dans Le Métro” takes a page from the Broom handbook, right down to the opaque name, hushed vocals and delicate melody.
If it wasn’t for that sole offering, Let It Sway might seem the work of an entirely different band, one content to offer up bland sing-a-longs like “All Hail Dracula!” and the truly bad one-two combo of “Animalkind” and “Phantomwise,” songs that lack even a modicum of the above average catchiness that keeps the rest of the record afloat. Occasionally SSLYBY will recapture the magic solely on the strength of their not inconsiderable songwriting chops – “Everlyn” is one of the group’s best love pleas ever (the completely surprising guitar solo is a plus), and bookends “Back in the Saddle” and “Made To Last” are two of the strongest tracks on the record, particularly the latter’s wistful tone, so appropriate as the brightest days of summer begin to fade. It’s a shame, because as SSLYBY have continued to expand their sound the genre that they were a few years late to has already grown past them. James Mercer is off doing things with Danger Mouse; Ben Kweller was indulging in alt-country last go-around; most of the Elephant 6 bands are either off getting freaky with themselves (Of Montreal) or spacing out (Apples in Stereo). If the band doesn’t start catching up to their peers, they’re going to end up a lot more like their misbegotten namesake than they would probably prefer.
Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin – “Everlyn”
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If there’s a better summer record for 2010 than Free Energy’s Stuck on Nothing, I haven’t found it. Just a damn shame it was released all the way back in March…but that’s what blogs are for. Song and album best played with top down and road trip commenced.
Japanese wunderkind Shugo Tokumaru’s latest album, Port Entropy, has already made it into the Top 40 upon its release in Japan, but hasn’t quite made it to these shores yet. Don’t think it’ll quite be hitting the Top 40 stateside, but when it comes to Beach Boys-esque pop sung entirely in Japanese with as many instruments as possible crammed into each song, I think Shugo has the market cornered. Think Jonsi with a little less rainbows.
Shugo Tokumaru – “Tracking Elevator”
I’m certain Renegades is supposed to appeal to someone but I can’t think who. I think it’s supposed to be me; I was one of those fussy diehards just longing for Feeder to roll back the years and create another Polythene or Echo Park, records that plugged in and rocked out but didn’t forget their pop priorities.
The real problem is that those punk-y diehards, yours truly included, have been saying this since Comfort In Sound and their reward has come three records down the line. Now it’s hard for them to know if they want that group of kids in their life because seeing them grow up has been half the fun of being their fan. For all the complaining, records from Comfort In Sound onwards were the band’s truest accomplishments because they showed a maturing band, a group responding to tragedy and producing songs that weren’t just about getting laid or installing cup-holders into the glove department of their car. The sentimentality of each record was startling and the balladry that accompanied it proved that the band needed their emotion on the surface of things. And tracks such as “Miss You” and “Just The Way I’m Feeling” were the result.
On Renegades the band hold true to their word and create that record of high-voltage, no-frills punk rock, whatever you want to call it; it just isn’t sappy and sad, and that’s by their design. But fans will rue the day they made that pledge, because this isn’t Feeder anymore. It was Feeder nine years ago, granted, but now each track sounds like a shell of what it should be. By definition, Renegades is supposed to be a raw interpretation of Grant Nicholas’ and co, with each song left in its skin and dressed up none. But raw musicianship isn’t raw Feeder, and less certainly isn’t more: tracks such as “This Town” and “Barking Dogs” fall flat on their face because they emulate the glory days more than they speak for themselves, and a lot has happened since the glory days. With one member now missing from the original line-up, the grungy fuzz and the attitude that goes with it is simply unbearable when it comes from the band we’ve had develop feeling and understanding, and the fact that they can’t channel these things into their old sound is probably the most devastating conclusion to make from Renegades. It acts simply to show us what cannot be done.
Even with its eleven tracks, only one needs to be looked at to draw the line in Feeder’s career at 2010. “Call Out” takes the crown on Renegades at least statistically (it’s the best-bet single, you could say) but it sounds like a crushed version of “Miss You,” the same for its musical structure but having the feeling made naked. Now thought and feeling isn’t important to Feeder, which is what every fan wanted; another rendition of “Buck Rodgers” to pump up and down to. But we could still do this with “Miss You,” and if we hadn’t been bitching and moaning we sure would’ve. On “Call Out,” Nicholas describes the very song he is singing as invincible: “You can’t take that away.” So much for the song – give me the words any day.
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New album Let It Sway from Missouri indie popsters comes out next week. Summer please don’t go.
Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin – “Made to Last”
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