A Bunch Of Quick(ish) Takes

You people don't know how tempted I really, really am to turn this blog into All La Monte, All La Time for the sake of pure orneriness. However, since it's been kind of a slow week with the music-posting, I figured I'd just hoist up a whole bunch of Indie-Rock Nuggets Of Interest and let y'all have at it.

Shimura Curves, "Noyfriend" - It's been pretty difficult to ignore the motorik beat's glorious return to indie-pop prominence, but it's certainly been possible; I honestly do like all those bands like the Early Years and Emperor Machine, but it's pretty much impossible to see any frivolity in their approach to music-making whatsoever, and in light of the way frivolity kinda sorta defines every action that I've ever taken I just don't find myself fiending for them. I'm only bringing this void up, of course, because the Shimura Curves seem to have swooped in to fill it quite nicely - Tom over at the wholly essential Indie MP3 characterized them as "the Pipettes fronting Kraftwerk", a description of such elegant accuracy that it practically puts me in literal pain to hang those quote marks around it. What's revelatory about the Curves (or at least "revelatory" in that gloriously ephemeral winding-down-summer sense), after all, is the way they're able to pick up threads of the motorik sound which, in the hands of a band more interested in righteousness than awesomeness, would probably end up sounding like study hall rather than recess; the organ on "Noyfriend", for instance, may basically only be distinct for the way it sustains itself, but it stands in such striking, warm opposition to the relentless urgency of the beat or the achingly bloodless intonation of the vocals that it pretty much had me cheering like a jackass to nobody in particular as much as any song I've heard since "Pull Shapes". I mean, there's your answer as to why this band sure feels remarkable - they're hardly the only people turning their hip40something cousins' record collections into something for the chi'ren, but damned if anyone else is doing it with these records, let alone doing it so ridiculously well. (Click here to buy The Kids At The Club, an outstanding recent collection of indie-pop released by How Does It Feel Records featuring "Noyfriend", directly from the label)

Fury of the Headteachers, "Farewell Comrade" - As bad as it makes me look to admit it, I gotta admit that mp3 blogging offers no more invigorating pleasures than checking to see if there's any chatter on the Hype Machine about a band like Fury of the Headteachers and finding a big ol' blank slate. Part of this, I'm sure, lies with the fact that I spent most of my seventh and eighth grade years tagging bands for success with about the same accuracy that FEMA deployed rescue workers to New Orleans (unless, of course, there's another person on this godforsaken rock who still actually remembers the Greenberry Woods or Jonny Polonsky), and it's always a charge to find yourself with the opportunity to revise past failures. And BOY are Fury of the Headteachers ever going to be more of a success than the Woods or Jonny or any other shoulda-been buried towards the end of a CMJ CD; aside from their painfully cumbersome name, there's absolutely nothing on "Farewell Comrade" that makes me think they shouldn't be promoted through the ranks up to Bloc Party status sooner rather than later, right down to the way that the song sounds like nothing more than a grab-bag of decent ideas for a song until the chorus comes in and immediately has me in full-on OOH OOH OOH MISTAH INTAIR-NET mode. Of course, having said that, I'm well aware that this is hardly a coincidence - if nothing else, the "Farewell Comrade" single should mark the moment when Silent Alarm took over from Turn On the Bright Lights as the template according to which success-minded indie-rock bands construct their identities, right down to the HEY CHECK OUT THIS HIP YOUNG GUNSLINGER WE'VE GOT MANNING THE BOARDS routine for rising star Paul Harris - and that by plugging them on the Hype Machine (of all places), all I'm doing is feeding a machine which can only end in the next generation of My Chemical Romances; all I can say is that when Chris Presland barks out the "X! IS! FOR EXECUTION!" refrain, I don't give a fuck about what I'm doing anymore. Maybe that's why the barren machine is such a turn-on - it's about as close to good drugs as mp3 blogging ever gets. (Click here to buy the "Farewell Comrade" single directly from Grace Records' MySpace)

The Neon Plastix, "On Fire" - Since it looks like the Killers have decided to become a Serious Rock Band (an ambition which should be held in the same regard as any proclamations I might make about wanting to be my generation's John Updike), now would be the moment for a hungry young band to dive for the torch of Infuriatingly Effective Synth-Pop Masquerading As Stadium Rock Music. It is, to be sure, a rather crowded field, but with the release of "On Fire", it's hard to say that Neon Plastix don't deserve to be counted among the frontrunners. I mean, lord knows they've got the hooks and the delivery and the beat that'd earn an instant beating from some huge dude named Tiny wearing a ratty old Slayer shirt to spare, but what's most encouraging about them is the way they don't reek of cocksure preordained success, an incredibly welcome change from all the bands that seem to think that just because their drummer can ride a hi-hat and their lead singer's voice can expand to fill whatever space it's put into, they have the right - nay, duty - to write impenetrably dull third-rate U2 ripoff tracks. That's not to say that "On Fire" doesn't sound like it couldn't cause a crush of bodies because good lord, but simply that they don't appear to be glossing over that part of their career that bands tend to be so reluctant to tell their grandkids about. "On Fire" is embarassing and juvenile in the most glorious senses of the words; it sounds like a band getting something not particularly noble or meritorious thoroughly out of them, but doing so in a style that just happens to be spectacularly easy to devour. Maybe "On Fire" is the kind of song that makes the most sense as simply being an indie-pop equivalent to a movie like Kill Bill; if this is in fact the case, then let's just thank God that they came along right when the Killers started making Jackie Brown over and over and over and over and over again. (Click here to buy Digital Penetration, a rather kickass compilation of the indie-rave scene put out by alt del records, directly from the label)

The Strand Arcade, "Get Knives" - The more observant among you might have noticed a certain fondness for nervous indie-disco in this post, and if you haven't, well, the Strand Arcade's "Get Knives" probably would have been enough to clue you in. Part of me wonders if my fondness for this track - which starts (although it certainly doesn't end) with those hi-hats hot enough to cook dinosaur eggs on 'em - isn't the result of some technical decision made in the heat of the moment (and, most likely, with an eye towards keeping the bottom line down); with the exception of the vocals, pretty much every other aspect of "Get Knives" sounds so far back in the mix as to almost pass for avant-garde. Okay, that's exaggeration, but it's still a striking effect, and more precisely a striking effect put to fantastic results on "Get Knives" - at the very least, putting such an incessant, insistent beat right up front nearly to the exclusion of all else is a formidably economical way to keep a song's energy level from dipping, and of course when all the other stuff does show back up in the chorus, the song suddenly leaps to nigh-unto-Strokes (or at the very, -Good Shoes) levels of sneering rock'n'roll abandon. It's a very quietly neat trick, no matter how it came into being; let's hope their future is marked by such effective deployment of resources. (Click here to visit the Strand Arcade's website for more song)

Air Traffic, "Just Abuse Me" - One of these days, I plan on sitting down and banging out the post about why Ben Folds Five's The Unauthorized Biography Of Reinhold Messner absolutely deserves unironic consideration as one of the best albums of last decade, but apparently before I get around to that, I have to point out that the Five have arguably done as much to popularize the writing of bad music as anyone not actually cashing royalty checks for Staind songs. I mean, Air Traffic's "Just Abuse Me" is a fantastic piece of jaunty piano-driven indie-pop up until the moment it damn near turns into a Millencolin song apparently simply out of spite for me; all that smirking key-pecking and those arch, self-deprecating "I'll let you use me/oh just abuse me" lyrics lose their luster in a hurry the instant I get visions of poorly-executed star vehicles for Julia Stiles. It's clear that they know how to be a Piano Rock Band at least as well as anyone since Folds; it's just a shame that they seem to lose their confidence in themselves and feel the need to compensate with bog-standard CRUNCHING GUITAR AVALANCHE stuff, since of fucking course that fucking stuff never ever ever ever ever gets fucking old as all fuck. I mean, go back and listen to "Army" off of Reinhold Messner; it's certainly not shy of Bits Where All The Rocking Kicks In, but it never comes close to abandoning its innnate showiness in a misguided bid to break into the wallets of a bunch of kids who'd otherwise be sitting around going LOL PIANOS BE 4 FAGGITZ. My advice for the band would be to leave those kids to their Avenged Sevenfold records; all the parts of "Just Abuse Me" that reject those jerks have me foaming at the mouth for whatever Air Traffic have coming up next. (Air Traffic's debut single is long since sold out, but check out their MySpace in the meantime - if "Just Abuse Me" doesn't get you jazzed for these guys, give "Never Even Told Me Her Name" a shot. And if that one doesn't work, LEAVE THIS PLACE.)

Strictly Built 4 Smoking-Jacket Linx

La Monte Young, "Voice And Sinewaves" (THIRTY-TWO MB OF UNBELIEVABLY PRETENTIOUS [yet great] DRONING WARNING) - Although I couldn't possibly count myself among the chorus of people loudly bemoaning the state of pop music in 2006, it does strike me as significant that the album with which I've spent more time this year is, without question, La Monte Young's The Well-Tuned Piano. I realize, of course, that using a work as insufferably experimental as The Well-Tuned Piano as a cipher for the failings of contemporary pop music is a little bit spurious, but I don't care how you want to phrase it - anytime you catch yourself clocking double-digit playcounts on a tuneless, droning, acyclical five-hour session literally consisting of one piano being tuned, there's a pretty powerful point about the vitality of all the music actively soliciting your attention and participation being made whether you choose to recognize it or not. I mean, we've all got friends who just can't make time for any movies that don't smack of either the Criterion Collection or their own perverse interests - do you pay any attention whenever these people start opining about the latest Peter Jackson monstrosity? Same principle.

My point today, however, isn't to tear down 2006 (INSERT BOILERPLATE LOVE FOR Silent Shout AND Through The Windowpane AND The Trials of Van Occupanther AND So This Is Goodbye AND Sateenkaarisuudelma ETC), but rather to praise Young, the figure rapidly emerging as equally central to my appreciation of contemporary classical music in general and minimalism in particular as Richard X was to my
understanding of synthpop. To say that I've been on a bit of a Young kick lately would be a rather hilarious understatement; for the love of God, I've met Tool fans exponentially more receptive to pleasures outside of their chosen idiom than I've been ever since Classical Connection started posting Young albums by the fistful a few weeks ago (TOOL FANS, people). There's just something uniquely engrossing about Young's minimal drones if you can ever find the patience and willingness to submit to the saw-toothed knife of their unforgivable pretense; you might think that it's impossible to listen actively to something like "Voice and Sinewaves", a piece whose only dynamic comes from the way it pitches up and down, and which doesn't even do that by any compelling logic other than (maybe?) an interest in cataloguing every combination of tones afforded by the setup, but fuck, it's entirely possible to listen to "Voice and Sine Wave" in the same fashion that you'd listen to the sounds of the ocean as long as you refrain from from dwelling too long on questions of authorship - Young's music works almost as well as Music That Exists So I Should Probably Either Listen To It Or Ignore It as it works horribly as Music That Some Guy Wrote To Confront His Reality*.

Except, of course, for the fact that the loathesomeness of Young's music is precisely the component that transforms it from background music for raw-food vegan dinner parties into something worth actively listening to. That's not to say that the concepts behind Young's work hold the keys to any earth-shattering revelations into the human condition or questions of eternity; Young wisely leaves exploration of topics like these to the professionals in favor of stripping everything down to its most formal level. I mean, what is A Well-Tuned Piano other than a composer rolling the dice and going "Y'know, I bet there's five hours worth of engaging stuff just in the process of tuning a piano"? How about "Voices and Sinewaves" - even with the addition of an actual human voice, is there anything for the audience to receive besides any pleasures naturally derived from the collision of the two sounds that make the piece up? I'm not saying that that's all the content in Young's minimalist work, of course - given both the debts Young's drones owe to what he learned from Ravi Shankar and contemporary classical music's mortifying proclivity for heavily coded mysticism - but I speak from experience when I say that it's certainly all that Young makes available to someone encountering his music outside of the continuum in which he placed it. Not coincidentally, the question Young's music forces tends to have almost nothing to do with any concerns about whether or not I "like" it or "appreciate" it ("Voices and Sinewaves" being a particularly beautiful, if glacially restrained, exception) as with whether or not I respond to it in the first place, a much trickier, much more interesting proposition.

And, I think, ultimately one which goes right to the heart why I've been walking straight past most of the year's best pop records in favor of The Well-Tuned Piano: there may not be a shortage of pop records to enjoy and take to heart, but few if any of them require (let alone bear out) that kind of challenge. I mean, I have all the fondness in the world for Pieces of the People We Love, but the biggest challenge it poses is getting one's finger ready in time to skip over the tracks produced by DangerMouse - an extraordinarily valuable lesson to learn, true, but not a particularly profound one if you're interested in questions of why you like stuff more than ones of whether you like stuff. And if Young's music has any value, it lies in the clarity he affords his audience - after all, the odds are pretty good that you can already tell with devastating accuracy whether or not Young's music is the kind of thing from which you might ever derive the tiniest shred of satisfaction, and unless you're on a OC3 line or you read ludicrously slowly, you haven't even heard two seconds of his music yet (or you're a La Monte completist who's somehow failed to add "Voices and Sinewaves" to your collection, although the smart money's on the first guess). And while this is, I freely admit, a really shitty reason to throw your support behind pieces of music, it's still a mighty tempting one in an age requiring committed soul-searching just to tell whether or not you like that Final Fantasy album or just like the idea of that Final Fantasy album. Maybe it's just another symptom of the fucked-up age we live in that I have to go to impenetrable thinkpieces to dose up on escapism before retreating back to the heady, theoretical world of stupid-ass indie-pop; in the real world, I'd be pretty hard-pressed to argue with someone asserting that right now, "Voices and Sinewaves" is playing in the background while a bunch of terrorists sit around hating America. I just dont' care anymore. La Monte does what Beirut don't, and that's all that matters to me. (Most of La Monte Young's work is emphatically out of print, but as mentioned above, Classical Connection's got a whole bunch of it right now - I've done few more productive things with the internet lately than massacre every single link he's posted, and I heartily suggest that you do the same.)

*I suppose it also helps if you attempt to smoke your bodyweight in pot on a nightly basis, but you can pretty much stipulate that sentiment over this whole blog.

Pull Tiger Tail, "Animator" - I cannot for the life of me imagine how Vincent Vincent and the Villains managed to release two singles on the unstoppably awesome Young And Lost Club label while Pull Tiger Tail only has one to their credit; admittedly, this probably owes at least partially to the fact that Pull Tiger Tail are split seconds removed from emerging from their chrysalis and that "Animator" is their first single, y'know, ever, but THAT'S NOT THE POINT GODDAMMIT. In a very real way, I can't see how the Club haven't been pushing Pull Tiger Tail for new material day and night; "Animator" is about as close as you're likely to get to a bridge between the post-Libertines playful balladry that marked the singles on which YALC built their reputation (hellooooooo Larrikin Love) and the more fashionable haircut indie that actually, y'know, sells these days (relatively speaking, of course). And the end result is utterly awesome - "Animator" was one of those songs that had me grinning in anticipation of that moment where everything all fell into place on the chorus as early as three chord changes into the song, yet unlike most songs of that family actually managed to deliver when the chorus just breaks stride and bolts for the promised land. It helps considerably, I might add, that these guys know how to write a song; it's easy to notice the only-slightly-grating cleverness when the song suddenly mirrors its narrator's, er, suddenly vanishing tumescence, but what's much more subtle and much more satisfying are all the little lyrical touches - you gotta admit that these kids have an undeniable gift for finding words that sound awfully good when set to their music. I mean, I never would have considered the word "animator" to have a whole lot of power either as a signifier or just as a word with syllables that can be sung in a kickass way, but goddamned if the chorus to this song isn't basically just vocalist Marcus Firefly (PROBABLY NOT HIS REAL NAME) swinging the word over his head until the center just won't hold anymore. It's also worth pointing out that "Animator" is probably the best-produced single on Young and Lost Club yet, a fact owing to the presence of Sunny Day Sets Fire boardsman Manolo Remiddi, and while it may be tempting to fantasize about what Pull Tiger Tail might do with a more ideologically-minded producer, you can't really argue with the results of Remiddi's unobtrusive and impeccably manicured mix - I mean, I'm sure "Animator" could have been turned into something that rapturously tortured the woofers and tweeters fairly easily, but Remiddi was wise enough to let the song's merits stand on their own. It's just a remarkable song, instantly among both the best and the most encouraging indie-rock songs I've heard this year - I'm not sure if Pull Tiger Tail'll ever top "Animator", but it's clear that at least they know how. Let's hope they've got a follow-up planned really soon - or better yet, that they get ahold of the same pictures of the heads of Young and Lost Club engaging in unseemly congress with a donkey that Vincent Vincent and the Villains must have. (Click here to buy the "Animator" single from Rough Trade - it's limited as hell, so get while the gettin's good.)