TV on the Radio is back!

ANDY: Man, TV on the Radio. Their first album, 2004's Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes, had a couple of absolutely captivating tracks, like the vocal feats of strength on "Staring at the Sun". Their sophomore effort and best album to date, 2006's Return to Cookie Mountain, was a more complete record, with the unavoidable single "Wolf Like Me" driving the LP along. 2008's Dear Science was a largely forgettable affair if you ask me, although Raj had some loopy theory about "Golden Age" being a funk song.

So it is with some trepidation that I listened to Nine Types of Light. Will it be a return to form, or a continuation of the last record's blandness? I just hadn't heard anything from these guys in the last five years that even remotely resembled the sonic depth of "I Was A Lover" or "Hours". This album has somewhat conventional beginnings, with Babatunde Adebimpe's incredible pipes wasted on the nearly spoken word track "Second Song". "No Future Shock" has more of the rhythms that Cookie Mountain did so well, but again with oddly uninspiring lyrics and vocal delivery. It's oddly a track that seems like it would be have been a great b-side from The Yeah Yeah Yeahs It's Blitz, with Karen O doing her thing all over. "Killer Crane" is a nice slow jam, totally fine, but not that remarkable. "Will Do" is actually pretty sweet, if again, not as lyrically or vocally crazy.

Just when you think I'm really going to dump on this album, "New Cannonball Run" saves the day! This is the TV on the Radio I'm trying to listen to. Big fuzzy synths, fat drums, tight verses, that trademark falsetto, and...horns! The type of ambition and complexity that seemed absent on Dear Science is back once more. "Repetition" is also fun, with little guitar licks where the synths were, and "Forgotten" also has this great interplay between the light cymbals and bells, and the lower synth tones, before it explodes with all the horns and guitars and greatness.

So yeah, 10 tracks, 43 some-odd minutes, and I tend to like the second half of this record more than the first. It's not Return to Cookie Mountain, but thankfully it's also not Dear Science. Glad to hear some of the more complex jams, and I'm looking forward to seeing these guys again this summer. Hopefully it won't be like the last time, with the guys in the Birkenstocks head-banging and ruining "Staring at the Sun" for me. Fuck those guys.

RAJ: Dear Science has less sonically complex production than TV on the Radio's earlier work (although saying that Science's production is bland is typical Andy exaggeration/baiting) - but when it comes to boring trivialities like melodies and hooks, Dear Science blows away the band's other albums by simply trying to actually, like, have them. It's kind of striking how tossed-off the actual songwriting is on the band's two biggest tracks- "Staring at the Sun" is basically a cool bassline and a single verse searching for an actual whole song, and "Wolf Like Me" has an amazingly bland three-note chorus if you actually pay attention to it (which you usually don't, of course - these tracks succeed because of Dave Sitek's production sleight-of-hand). Dear Science, on the other hand, was an album with real songs that you could sing along to and sometimes even dance to (maybe "Golden Age" isn't fucking George Clinton, but you'd be hard-pressed not to call it funky - and "Red Dress" is a goddamned Afrobeat tribute). It was an album that was fun - entertainment with hints of dystopia instead of dystopia with hints of entertainment - which is why it was great (and also why it was spectacularly overrated, but that's another can of worms).

The main point, I guess, is that I don't really have any idea where Andy is coming from, just as I'm totally baffled by his assertion that Nine Types of Light is more in the ambitious and complex vein of Cookie Mountain thanDear Science, when it seems to me like the album sounds way more like the latter instead of the former. This is again stripped-down production in service of straight-ahead songwriting instead of the kind of baroque production showcase that we've seen from these guys in the past. In fact, it's kind of surprising just how conventional a lot of this songwriting is (as I've mentioned before) - this is even closer than Dear Science is to a pop album, with a whole assortment of gooey love ballads along with pretty straight-ahead rawk numbers like "Caffeinated Consciousness". When Tunde sings "Every night we're on a mission/to shift your known position/into the light" on "Second Song", that's a pure dancefloor chorus - in "Dear Science", even the bouncier tracks would start off with things like "Hey jackboot, fuck your war!"

The straightforwardness isn't a bad thing but it certainly keeps this album from being the kind of Statement About Our Times that we're used to from the band - the vibe is much more about great musicians just having fun together. Personally, I don't much care for most of these ballads - great singer that he is, Tunde has always seemed more Thom-Yorke-cerebral than convincing loverboy, and none of these earnest love songs really manage to convince me otherwise. But when the band gets into the high-energy genre-smashing freakouts that they specialize in, the results are predictably great - I agree with Andy that taut, synth-fueled groove "New Cannonball Run" is the best thing on the album (props by the way to any song that name-checks both Cannonball Run and The 400 Blows) and generally the faster the tempo the better the songs are here. So overall, a very solid record, but far from the kind of earthshaking "important" records that have been this band's bread and butter.

TV On The Radio - "Will Do" by Interscope Records

Night goes down and I'm at it again

My favorite jam of the year so far.

March Mudmix

Hopefully the New Jersey spring will consistently show its head sometime soon. Until then, enjoy some tunes mostly from well before my time, new Thurston Moore, and a special peak into my four-track recorder in 2006, among others. Put it in for a 30 minute drive to nowhere.

1. The Jive Bombers - Bad Boy (Bad Boy - 1957)
2. Tubby Hayes - Embers (Tubby's Groove - 1960)
3. David Bowie - What In The World (Low - 1977)
4. The Rising Storm - To L.N. - Who Doesn't Know (Calm Before - 1967)
5. Six Organs of Admittance - Thicker Than A Smokey (School of the Flower - 2004)
6. The Beach Boys - I'm Waiting For The Day (Pet Sounds - 1966)
7. The Byrds - I Am A Pilgrim (Sweetheart of the Rodeo - 1968)
8. HG&TN - Catamaran (4-Track Doodlinz - 2006)
9. Deerhunter - Strange Lights (Cryptograms - 2007)
10. Thurston Moore - Benediction (Demolished Thoughts - 2011)

edit 3/31/11:

Humble readers, if you want this mix, go buy the songs on iTunes or download them yourself, because I just got the following e-mail:

"Blogger has been notified, according to the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), that certain content in your blog is alleged to infringe upon the copyrights of others. As a result, we have reset the post(s) to "draft" status. (If we did not do so, we would be subject to a claim of copyright infringement, regardless of its merits. The URL(s) of the allegedly infringing post(s) may be found at the end of this message.) This means your post - and any images, links or other content - is not gone. You may edit the post to remove the offending content and republish, at which point the post in question will be visible to your readers again.

A bit of background: the DMCA is a United States copyright law that provides guidelines for online service provider liability in case of copyright infringement. If you believe you have the rights to post the content at issue here, you can file a counter-claim. For more information on our DMCA policy, including how to file a counter-claim, please see http://www.google.com/dmca.html.

The notice that we received, with any personally identifying information removed, will be posted online by a service called Chilling Effects at http://www.chillingeffects.org . We do this in accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). You can search for the DMCA notice associated with the removal of your content by going to the Chilling Effects search page at http://www.chillingeffects.org/search.cgi , and entering in the URL of the blog post that was removed. If it is brought to our attention that you have republished the post without removing the content/link in question, then we will delete your post and count it as a violation on your account. Repeated violations to our Terms of Service may result in further remedial action taken against your Blogger account including deleting your blog and/or terminating your account. If you have legal questions about this notification, you should retain your own legal counsel.

Sincerely,

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Affected URLs:

http://seriousbusinesstunes.blogspot.com/2011/03/march-mudmix.html"

You know what this means, everyone? Someone is looking at our blog! Or The Beach Boys have hired someone to program something to make sure that their music isn't put up for free on mixes for college students! And that I'm a terrible person!

Hello, spring! : Buke and Gass

I don't know about all y'all, but around this time of the year, I'm about ready to shake off the end of winter woes and head into the sunshine and showers of a month called April. She's a beautiful woman, tall and leggy, restless, and ready to fling off her clothes as a prelude to your summer debauchery.

Part of this means issuing a cease-and-desist on the more ambient tunes that have been bouncing (or lulling) around the four walls of the inside of your head, and putting on something way less tired, electronic, etc. Going out to see performers is key, especially now that it's warming up enough for you to actually wait patiently in a ticket line. And be sure to catch acts who don't stare at their laptops instead of you, wiggling their dangling bits for hours at a time, while the drool in your mouth ends up on the floor instead of on the tongue of the biddy next to you. Pull your shit together man! And then rock out hard to some new badass toounes with heavy, pounding bass and complex(!) rhythms, played by dirty mans and womans with hands.

+ Step one: Shake off your self-induced-Clockwork-Orange-incessant-viewings-of-Lotus-Flower glaze, and tear yourself away from Radiohead for a minute(, Andy).

+ Step two: Douche yourself with a healthy dose of Buke and Gass.

Buke and Gass - Page Break


Distortion and fuzz come in all shapes and sizes and can create dazzling effects in post-production, but personally I'm still most impressed by a live band that is rhythmically tight and improvisationally gifted. Call it what you will, (a misplaced invitation to write with this blog?) but I am in love with bands that pull off full stops mid-song, only to start up again with the same intensity that was held breathless in the air for a tense moment.

Buke and Gass have my full support this way: Their music is bold and original several times over, from the rhythms to the vocals, from the d.i.y. construction of their instruments to their home-cooked amplification; all of which results in sound that returns you to the bluegrassy knoll of musical youth, where all the kids just wanna mosh. This duo of hyper-talented Arone Dyer and Aron Sanchez play self-modified baritone ukulele (buke) and bass guitar (gass?), respectively, melodically, and refreshingly unencumbered by expectation or influence. Bang with them, as I will, all spring long.


Buke and Gass - Medulla Oblongata

Shameless Thom Yorke Love

By now, readers of this blog will know I have a tough time saying anything bad about Thom Yorke. Thom would fare well in an all-out battle with Tom Brady for my favorite Thomas of all time (no love for Jefferson). In any case, this Thom has been really busy lately, DJing a surprise set in LA with the brohemian (and SRS BZNZ favorite) Flying Lotus, and working on a collaboration with MF Doom that might result in an LP (!?). Aside from these hip-hoperations, our man Thom released a 12" collabo with fellow Britons Four Tet and Burial, who had previously cut a single together back in 2009.

Needless to say the thought of these three blokes together on the same track got my mouth a-waterin'. Any listen through The King of Limbs shows that Yorke's been looking to explore this more atmospheric/electronic/dubsteppy world for a while. Hell since Kid A Radiohead's flirted with electronica. Burial's been quiet since the release of 2007's Untrue, and Four Tet's There Is Love In You was one of the finer records of 2010. The two tracks are expectedly similar, with Yorke's voice floating over Burial's drum loops and Four Tet's synths. Not too much to digest or analyze here, but a collaboration with potential from Englishmen. Worth a listen.

Burial, Four Tet & Thom Yorke - Ego by ListenBeforeYouBuy

Burial, Four Tet & Thom Yorke - Mirror by ListenBeforeYouBuy

Nate Dogg 1969-2011

Nate Dogg. The inimitable bass voice of G-Funk, and founding member of 213 (along with Snoop Dogg and Warren G) has passed away at the age of 41. No one could sing it like he could.

I'm sure his next stop is the East Side Motel.

_____S☆O☆U☆L☆ON☆I☆C☆E_____

_____S☆O☆U☆L☆ON☆I☆C☆E_____

*tracklisting on request

Radio, Rye Rye, Video

TV on the Radio - "Caffeinated Consciousness"



Judging from this track and "Will Do", the new TV on the Radio album seems like it's shaping up to the band's most conventional release yet. That's not meant as a knock, but both tracks have a decidedly non-experimental meat-and-potatoes straightforwardness to them - Sitek's atmospherics aside, "Will Do" is a modest little ballad that's sweet-leaning-towards-gooey . I like "Caffeinated Consciousness" quite a bit as well, probably because it basically is a Pixies song (specifically, "U-Mass" - there's also a hint of the Tame Impala song "Solitude is Bliss", which has a fantastic music video). It does seem like there's kind of a conscious effort to rein back on some of their more outre musical tendencies - we'll see how that pans out on a full album scale.

Rye Rye - "Hardcore Girls" (dir. by Liza Minou Morberg)



Rye Rye is basically a blank as a vocalist. Her voice is so slight and her flow so fast that she doesn't really leave any major impression in terms or personality or lyrical content. She is, however, smart enough to hop on productions that are busy enough to not demand more than a minor rhythmic element from the lead singer, and The Count and Sinden provide a banger here for her to work with. It's also kind of adorable how Rye Rye seems to be putting on a M.I.A-cockney accent for the hook here - this being her first single where M.I.A. (who signed Rye Rye to her label) hasn't actually shown up herself. The song itself is apparently a few years old, but the video has just surfaced now - Rye Rye's from Baltimore, but this pretty entertaining survey of street fashion and weightlifting chicks has something about it that strikes me as quintessentially LA.

Foo Fighters - "White Limo" (dir. by Dave Grohl)



I haven't actually listened to a Foo Fighters album since the 90s, but I have always had a soft spot for the full on goofiness found in the music videos of Dave Grohl and company. "White Limo" basically sounds like a hair metal track, and Grohl has put together a video that's best described as a Twisted Sister homage by way of Public Access TV, which is just overtly incompetent enough to be kind of endearing. And yes, that is Lemmy from Motorhead driving the limo.

W-H-I-T-E - "Fountain"

W-H-I-T-E: "Fountain"

<3

Michio Kurihara - Sunset Notes (2005)

Once upon a time I listened to a ton of music from Japan. Something refreshing about it. I guess it started with Boredoms, but then took a turn to Keiji Haino, Merzbow, Ruins, etc. etc. Something was just so refreshing about this weird noise coming from East Asia. At the time, Boris's Pink was getting rave reviews out here, so I snagged it, liked a lot of it, but I wasn't a huge fan of the metal-garage burners that Boris was putting out. I did search their back catalog, and enjoyed a lot of what I heard, less concise and more expansive than Pink. But I mean, drone and half hour noise sometimes leaving you want a crisp A-B-A song form. Then Rainbow comes out, and I love it. I had that on so much. And quickly enough I realized that the reason I loved it so much had little to do with Boris, but rather Michio Kurihara's fuzz-pedal laden guitar solos. Just mind-blowing phrases; I'm not sure what gear he's using but dang. So I've listened to some of his other work with other groups, but not enough to really know what I'm talking about. But somehow recently I stumbled upon Kurihara's only solo album, 2005's Sunset Notes. This is exactly what I needed. It's Kurihara's guitar without the gloom of Boris (not to say I don't appreciate Boris's sound, it's just nice to have Kurihara's own arrangements - a bit more light-hearted, pensive, and more psychedelic). Overall, it's just a solid album. A couple tracks feature some Japanese lady, but the tension and release of Kurihara's axe-work is the obvious focus of each album - even the surf-rock track "Twilight Mystery of a Russian Cowboy." But that track is pretty uncharacteristic of the other 8 songs. The Boomkat review basically sums up my experience:

"...Yep this man is a demon when confronted with six strings and a pick, and across nine tracks Kurihara shows us his severe and virtuoso skill, drenches it in reverb and implores us to punch the sky with the kind of glee only ever gleaned from extended guitar solos. Melodic, jubilant and effortlessly experimental 'Sunset Notes' is just the album I've always wanted from Kurihara, and now sidestepping from his supporting roles in Ghost and Damon & Naomi his talents are framed quite wonderfully. It might not sound too tantalising to be sold an album which is balanced around guitar solos, but this is where 'Sunset Notes' differs from all preconceptions, and rather than sink into self-indulgence it seems that the record is made with the listener in mind. I read somewhere that Kurihara still has a full time job at a factory in Japan, and this kind of connection with 'real life' is evident as his fretwork lets us soar into oblivion, it's rock 'n roll without the meaningless excess, and in that there is real beauty."

I'm a college student with no income. Chances are if you're reading this, you are too, or you work for Lexmark and spend all of your money on cheap whiskey. None of his songs are on youtube or anything, so if you want this album, the link is below. Enjoy.

Michio Kurihara - Sunset Notes

Raekwon - Shaolin vs. Wu-Tang

The problem with Jay-Z nowadays is not that he stopped rapping about the streets, but that he started rapping about himself - his real self, that is, not the highly theatrical version of himself that used to be his main topic. There is not a lot of drama in the situations that populate Jay-Z songs now, like Jay-Z meeting Obama or whining about AutoTune, and the real drama that I'm sure is present in his life would probably be bad for RocaWear as a business if he actually talked about it. Sociopaths and idiots (especially those that care about "realness") aside, drama is the real reason that people like gangsta rap - it's a world with huge stakes and larger-than-life anti-heroes and villains.

Raekwon (who I'm sure lives in the Tri-state suburbs and sends his kids to private school in reality) gets this, which is why his own take on high-powered (albeit still criminal rap) businessman rap in Shaolin vs. Wu-Tang is so much more interesting than something like The Blueprint 3. Raekwon doesn't sacrifice the grit and vivid detail of his street reminiscences when he transitions to loftier realms - if he was talking about using milk as a secret ingredient while cooking crack before, now he's showing off the golden rocket launcher his aunt brought him from Rwanda and traveling to Scotland to hunt down a former business associate.

The micro detail in Raekwon's stuff always feels vibrant and fresh, even if his macro goal is emphatically the same exact thing it's been since 1994 - nothing but plain ol' hard-boiled criminal storytelling. Raekwon scoffs at that traditional rockist idea of innovation or progression (understandably enough given how that rule has worked out for other Wu members - Ghost's "R&B album" is among the worst things any Clan member has done, and RZA is probably hanging out in an opium den making psychedelia right now). I suspect he'd even take issue with that Big Boi chestnut about "writ[ing] knockout songs" while other rappers "spit punchlines for money" - who the fuck has time for songs? Song, at least in the rap world, implies that you have to have a hook (which I'll define here as a chorus that isn't just Raekwon himself repeating a line), something which only 4 of the 17 tracks on the album have (and one of those "hooks" is delivered by, um, Winston Churchill).

No, even if his beat selection is reliably solid, Raekwon is all about the words in a way that nearly no contemporary rapper still is, with a style dense enough to pack multitudes into lines and even fragments of lines. To wit, in "Molasses" (fueled by a great homage to an old Liquid Swords beat):

Word to the Gold Panameras, and to the wood grain in my Lambo
I go the extra mile, my flow scalpels
Crew cuts, the older niggas, the same rumors from the same goons
When niggas catch visions of killing capos

In four lines: a particularly exotic brand of Porsche, transitioned by a pair of metaphors into a two-line study of criminal bosses retaining power by carefully and dispassionately tracking and dealing with ambitious young up-and-comers. And this isn't a standout excerpt, it's a typical one! Even a casual listener catching the odd fragment of meaning will get the key vibe of these tracks - a gaudy noveau-rich lifestyle papering over the frantic anxiety of criminal life - but these stand up to repeated listening .

Most rap nowadays either has veered towards pop (Kanye, obviously, but even someone like Big Boi fits here too) or relies on something beyond the lyricism (the Odd Future-Insane Clown Posse comparison really isn't that far off on paper - it's the beats and Tyler the Creator's creepy-mesmerizing swagger that make the Wolf Gang interesting). With occassional exceptions (Freddie Gibbs and Roc Marciano come to mind), Raekwon is one of the few torch-bearers for a specific kind of vital, important rap style, and as long as his abilities are as razor-sharp as they continue to be, I don't mind his staying in his wheelhouse one bit.

Also:

- It's worth mentioning that Raekwon always has his guests firing on all cylinders - Ghostface continues his recent trend of only being worth a damn on a Raekwon album, and Rick Ross of all people drops what seems like a career best verse on "Molasses". Someone's going to have to explain the line "Ankle monitors under garments, so fuck showers" to me though - does Officer Ricky not bathe?

- While we're on Odd Future - I'll grant you the genius of Tyler, but do people really think the rest of the crew gets anywhere close to that kind of quality? To make a completely inappropriate analogy, the other Odd Future members are like the not-famous Black Eyed Peas to Tyler's Will.I.Am (Earl can be Fergie in this formulation).

Raekwon - "Molasses"


Raekwon - "Butter Knives"

I Still Love Post Rock: Mogwai is back

Once when I was about 15 and expected different things from my music I went through a serious post-rock phase, a couple years after weaning myself from my Linkin Park phase (boo, hiss). Whatever, like you were never 13. You've gotta start somewhere.

Anyways, I went to see Sigur Ros one night in high school, and it was awesome, except Mogwai was playing across town at a 21+ venue, and I wished I could've seen em both. But with Godspeed You! Black Emperor on a reunion tour (I have a ticket, am extremely excited) and Mogwai out in support of their impressively-titled new LP Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will, maybe I'll get my chance.

This album is no Young Team, nor is it Come On, Die Young or even Mr. Beast. There are some rather catchy songs! Almost...pop! Of course you have your requisite monumental walls of guitar sound, but "San Pedro" reads more Sonic Youth than Slint.  Like rock, without the post-. You won't find a ten to twelve minute epic like "Christmas Steps" on this album, but I'm ok with that. I guess I outgrew the need for slow building gloominess, and so did Mogwai. They've managed somehow to preserve their guitar stylings, while dabbling in almost alarming electronics on "Mexican Grand Prix" or  DJ Shadow-style melancholy on "Letters to the Metro". Hell, "George Square Thatcher Death Party" sounds like an LCD Soundsystem instrumental, until the autotune (!) comes in!

"To Raging To Cheers" and "Rano Pano" are more of what we would expect Mogwai to sound like, but this newfound levity has found its way into these tracks as well. So I'm hoping if I catch these guys in April, I'll have a great time, and still get my face and ears properly abused by guitars. The album concludes with a modest by Mogwai standards 8.5 minute mini-epic entitled "You're Lionel Richie", which works as a nice post-rock coda, on an album that may be post-post-rock? Brings a smile to my face, anyways.

Mogwai - Rano Pano by subpop

Mogwai - San Pedro by subpop

Mogwai - George Square Thatcher Death Party by Henry Coachella

Gang Gang Dance - "Glass Jar"

Gang Gang Dance isn't my favorite band, though I love their sound. But when it comes to transitions within their music, they don't really have any rivals. The transition between "God's Money I (Percussion)" to "Glory In Itself" caught me totally off guard back in '05. "Bebey" to "First Communion"? Perfect. And their more long formed songs just seamlessly vary from tribal to noise to punk to hip hop to whatever you want, flowing without crack. There's no time counter on this link they put up, but it's pretty apparent when they switch it up and you just sit back and snag the GGD vibe. Promising.