Four Your Amusement
The Wombats, "My First Wedding" - The fact that I'm still discovering songs off the Wombats' Girls Boys and Marsupials a month after getting it is, I guess, not really all that remarkable; good albums do tend to have a pretty long tail. Maybe I'm still a little surprised to discover Girls Boys and Marsupials is an actual no-fooling good album - lord knows it could have just been the two singles and a bunch of filler and I'd be perfectly content with it, but either the Wombats have one hell of a knack for filler or they just kinda keep shrugging off brilliant little songs like this one. But I'm also consistently finding myself startled by the economy of their songwriting; whereas this time last year I would have been all MAN I JUST CAN'T WAIT FOR THOSE WOMBATS TO GET ONE PAUL EPWORTH, these I'd honestly be a little disappointed if they went that route simply because their better songs don't need a lick of augmentation either to catch the ear or to get their point across. "My First Wedding", for instance, is pretty much the "showiest" song on Girls Boys and Marsupials, decked out in synths and big beltalong climaxes and whatnot, but every section of the song reflects its topic, namely finding yourself in a situation you hadn't expected to be incapable of dealing with in a rational manner; as a battle-scarred veteran of more of those moments than I can count, you have my word that reducing yourself to a point where all you can do is repeat "SHE'S! NOT! THAT! BEAUTIFUL!" is an eerily nuanced representation of just what happens when they go down. Anyway, Girls Boys and Marsupials is packed to the gills with songs that work like that, and you all owe it to yourselves not just to nut up and pay Vinyl Junkies for a copy before they re-record it with someone like, I dunno, James Ford, but also to actually crack open the shrinkwrap and listen to the goddamn thing. I guarantee you a better return on your investment than you'd get by squirreling it away for a rainy-day eBay auction. (Girls Boys And Marsupials is available through Vinyl Junkies - their site's in Japanese, so you can either attempt to muddle through the pages or email them at order@vinyl-junkie.com to set up a PayPal transaction.)
Magneta Lane, "Wild Gardens" - Oh man, am I ever in trouble; the last time a song gave me as many problems related to finishing the rest of the album was "Dead Disco" on Metric's Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?, only in that case, I didn't have a review of the album due in a matter of days. Unfortunately, Magneta Lane seem to have arrested my brain in the space of three minutes and change - and I really do mean Magneta Lane and not the rather acceptable dudes responsible for Dancing With Daggers' production, no mean feat. But this is pretty easily the best song they've ever written - it's got better dynamics than "The Constant Lover", it's tighter than "Mare of the Night", it's got a better chorus than "Bridge to Terabithia", and so on down the line. If it hadn't been for their unfortunate and misguided canonization as hipster icons by the media, I'd like to think that "Wild Gardens" is the kind of song the Yeah Yeah Yeahs would be putting out - well, if they got their shit together, that is. (Click here to buy Dancing With Daggers from Amazon.com)
Lily Allen, "Oh My God" - A late dose of Amy Winehouse's "Rehab" - seriously, what the hell was that song doing hiding from me all last year? Don't play coy, songs; it rarely becomes you as much as you'd think - has sent me careening off on a Mark Ronson kick from which there may be no return; I'm already more amped for the release of Version than damn near anything else on the horizon, and if the whole album's one-eighth as good as the singles to have surfaced so far, it'll be an unalloyed blast seeing if anything can possibly kick it out of my CD player in the few months following its arrival on my doorstep. But a pleasant side-effect of my crash-course in his ourvre is a rather surprisingly welcome reintroduction to Lily Allen; in addition to his witheringly charming remix of "Smile" (available here along with many other fine songs for the stealing), they've also collaborated on this cover of the Kaiser Chiefs' "Oh My God", a song which, despite being my entry ticket to the carnival of retroactive self-loathing known as the Kaiser Chiefs, really is quite the little pop song. And considering the idiotically stone-groove overhaul Ronson performs on the Chiefs' track, it's almost disconcerting to find myself admitting that this is Allen's track to own more than anything else; she takes what had been a histrionic midtempo third-rate ripoff of Roxy Music's "Out Of The Blue" (which, again, doesn't keep it from being quite nice in its own right) and effortlessly turns it into a melange of cooing and sneering, a welcome change from the original's refusal to embellish mortifying lyrics like "Come back stronger than a powered-up Pac-man" with a hint of anything performative beyond HEY LET'S ALL SHOUT NOW. She really does need to work with Ronson on a full album in the worst way (almost as bad as the Scissor Sisters needing to collaborate with Richard X); he makes music that sounds found, and she finds music in her which all but obliterates stuff most musicians try and try and try to make. April 16th cannot get here fast enough. (Click here to pre-order Version from Play.com; I haven't been able to figure out whether it's getting a US release or not, but since I'm sure I'll be posting more about this album as the date draws closer I'll keep you posted.)
Tap Tap, "Way To Go, Boy" - So it seems that, while I was napping, Tap Tap became anointed as the next big Band To Be Made By The Blogs, a fact which seems surreally improbable given the fact that most of their album isn't all that good. It's nowhere near bad, of course, but it's also an almost palpably "first" album, the kind of thing a band tends to put out before it catches its stride and figures out not just what they're capable of doing but why they should do it (in light of Tones of Town's near-strident excellence, it's enormously tempting to call this the Field Music Corrollary). Fortunately, around two-thirds of the way through Lanzafame, "Way To Go, Boy" shows up out of nowhere and leaves me feeling at least moderately in on the joke; it just stormed out of my headphones at gale force, all but erasing the half-hour-plus' worth of one plodding drumbeat (not that Tap Tap don't take it to at least a few interesting places, but GOOD GOD, SON) in the time it took me to lose straight sets at Wii Sports Tennis. Out of all the pastiches Lanzafame presents to your ears, "Way To Go, Boy" is far and away the most successful, and I'm not just saying that because it's such a neon-colored bold pastiche of two-tone, the Lord's Own wave of ska - it's simply the only song that displays any sort of purpose (whether or not it's worth praising an album for this when the purpose is apparently no more noble than giving nostalgic dorks like me a chance to exhort all present to pickituppickituppickitup) beyond using other people's musical ideas to make debatably pretty pop music. Given how the major trend in pop-music consumption among the voices in my head that actually decide this shit seems to be leaning towards songs with a purpose ostensibly beyond sending me back to the record store, I have to believe that Tap Tap's got a pretty bright future ahead of them; they may not realize it on Lanzafame, but as long as they're capable of writing a song as good as "Way To Go, Boy" and burying it towards the end of the record where they announce themselves, they've got nothing but time. (Click here to buy Lanzafame directly from Stolen Recordings, the label)
Magneta Lane, "Wild Gardens" - Oh man, am I ever in trouble; the last time a song gave me as many problems related to finishing the rest of the album was "Dead Disco" on Metric's Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?, only in that case, I didn't have a review of the album due in a matter of days. Unfortunately, Magneta Lane seem to have arrested my brain in the space of three minutes and change - and I really do mean Magneta Lane and not the rather acceptable dudes responsible for Dancing With Daggers' production, no mean feat. But this is pretty easily the best song they've ever written - it's got better dynamics than "The Constant Lover", it's tighter than "Mare of the Night", it's got a better chorus than "Bridge to Terabithia", and so on down the line. If it hadn't been for their unfortunate and misguided canonization as hipster icons by the media, I'd like to think that "Wild Gardens" is the kind of song the Yeah Yeah Yeahs would be putting out - well, if they got their shit together, that is. (Click here to buy Dancing With Daggers from Amazon.com)
Lily Allen, "Oh My God" - A late dose of Amy Winehouse's "Rehab" - seriously, what the hell was that song doing hiding from me all last year? Don't play coy, songs; it rarely becomes you as much as you'd think - has sent me careening off on a Mark Ronson kick from which there may be no return; I'm already more amped for the release of Version than damn near anything else on the horizon, and if the whole album's one-eighth as good as the singles to have surfaced so far, it'll be an unalloyed blast seeing if anything can possibly kick it out of my CD player in the few months following its arrival on my doorstep. But a pleasant side-effect of my crash-course in his ourvre is a rather surprisingly welcome reintroduction to Lily Allen; in addition to his witheringly charming remix of "Smile" (available here along with many other fine songs for the stealing), they've also collaborated on this cover of the Kaiser Chiefs' "Oh My God", a song which, despite being my entry ticket to the carnival of retroactive self-loathing known as the Kaiser Chiefs, really is quite the little pop song. And considering the idiotically stone-groove overhaul Ronson performs on the Chiefs' track, it's almost disconcerting to find myself admitting that this is Allen's track to own more than anything else; she takes what had been a histrionic midtempo third-rate ripoff of Roxy Music's "Out Of The Blue" (which, again, doesn't keep it from being quite nice in its own right) and effortlessly turns it into a melange of cooing and sneering, a welcome change from the original's refusal to embellish mortifying lyrics like "Come back stronger than a powered-up Pac-man" with a hint of anything performative beyond HEY LET'S ALL SHOUT NOW. She really does need to work with Ronson on a full album in the worst way (almost as bad as the Scissor Sisters needing to collaborate with Richard X); he makes music that sounds found, and she finds music in her which all but obliterates stuff most musicians try and try and try to make. April 16th cannot get here fast enough. (Click here to pre-order Version from Play.com; I haven't been able to figure out whether it's getting a US release or not, but since I'm sure I'll be posting more about this album as the date draws closer I'll keep you posted.)
Tap Tap, "Way To Go, Boy" - So it seems that, while I was napping, Tap Tap became anointed as the next big Band To Be Made By The Blogs, a fact which seems surreally improbable given the fact that most of their album isn't all that good. It's nowhere near bad, of course, but it's also an almost palpably "first" album, the kind of thing a band tends to put out before it catches its stride and figures out not just what they're capable of doing but why they should do it (in light of Tones of Town's near-strident excellence, it's enormously tempting to call this the Field Music Corrollary). Fortunately, around two-thirds of the way through Lanzafame, "Way To Go, Boy" shows up out of nowhere and leaves me feeling at least moderately in on the joke; it just stormed out of my headphones at gale force, all but erasing the half-hour-plus' worth of one plodding drumbeat (not that Tap Tap don't take it to at least a few interesting places, but GOOD GOD, SON) in the time it took me to lose straight sets at Wii Sports Tennis. Out of all the pastiches Lanzafame presents to your ears, "Way To Go, Boy" is far and away the most successful, and I'm not just saying that because it's such a neon-colored bold pastiche of two-tone, the Lord's Own wave of ska - it's simply the only song that displays any sort of purpose (whether or not it's worth praising an album for this when the purpose is apparently no more noble than giving nostalgic dorks like me a chance to exhort all present to pickituppickituppickitup) beyond using other people's musical ideas to make debatably pretty pop music. Given how the major trend in pop-music consumption among the voices in my head that actually decide this shit seems to be leaning towards songs with a purpose ostensibly beyond sending me back to the record store, I have to believe that Tap Tap's got a pretty bright future ahead of them; they may not realize it on Lanzafame, but as long as they're capable of writing a song as good as "Way To Go, Boy" and burying it towards the end of the record where they announce themselves, they've got nothing but time. (Click here to buy Lanzafame directly from Stolen Recordings, the label)
posted by James at 4:31 PM
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