TV on the Radio “You”

Dan Savage is fond of saying that every relationship you have fails until one doesn’t. In a way, that’s the thematic core of this song: Tunde Adebimpe is singing about a failed love, giving it something of a post-mortem while lamenting “you’re the only one I ever loved.” The chorus is more bittersweet, as each line looking back on what they had together is proceeded by the phrase “constantly wrong.” That’s often how it seems in retrospect, like you have the answer now and can’t imagine why it wasn’t obvious back then. But in the moment, even the most idiotic love feels like the only truth.

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Kanye West and Jay-Z “Gotta Have It”

One of the most interesting things for me about Watch the Throne is listening to Jay-Z, the most imperious rapper in hip-hop, essentially bend to the artistic whims of Kanye West, the genre’s most ambitious auteur of the past half decade. The record is clearly the product of West’s distinct vision, with Jay-Z doing his professional, precise Jay-Z thing. But part of his professionalism extends to adapting to his surroundings, which means that on some tracks, he makes some effort to be revealing and emotionally direct, because that’s Kanye’s thing. And it’s weird and not tremendously convincing.

Kanye can’t help but project his intense insecurities – he’s emotionally transparent at all times, and it’s part of what makes him such a fascinating and magnetic pop star. Jay-Z, however, is the radical opposite – his every word and movement is focused on controlling your impression of him. His songs are essentially a never-ending PR campaign in verse. Even when he’s trying to seem “open,” like on “Welcome to the Jungle,” you can tell how deliberately he is controlling your access and guiding your perceptions. He just can’t spill the contents of his head out on to the tape like West. This guarded quality is interesting in its own right, and I certainly relate more to this attitude than Kanye’s chronic oversharing, but I find that I don’t really care to know much about Jay-Z’s inner life. He’s more compelling as an icon. (In this way, Kanye is analogous to the Marvel Comics model of whiny, introspective, persecuted superheroes [Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Hulk] and Jay-Z is more like DC Comics’ Superman and Batman, who thrive when creators trade on their stoic, iconic qualities.)

In some ways Watch the Throne is disappointing in that it doesn’t do enough to stress the contrast in Jay and Kanye’s personalities. Even when both rappers stick to a basic thematic conceit within a song, they seem like they’re not quite relating to one another. I’m particularly fond of “Gotta Have It” because it’s a major exception to this rule, as both men are actively engaged with each other through the entire piece as they trade off lines. This song finds West stepping more into Jay’s comfort zone — whereas the more Ye-centric tracks have a neurotic buzz about them, “Gotta Have It” has the triumphant, dominating spirit of Hov classics like “U Don’t Know” and “Public Service Announcement.” They don’t really say much of substance to each other, but it’s still exciting to listen to these guys in a dialogue.

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Cymbals Eat Guitars “The Current”

“The Current” is rather epic for a song that barely cracks the two minute mark. For the first minute and a half, the song is all forward momentum and delicate gesture, with subtle rhythms and instrumental harmonies that recall Sonic Youth in Daydream Nation mode and Radiohead’s fixation with atmospheric arpeggios on In Rainbows. Once the song cycles through all its twist and turns, Joseph D’Agostino sings a brief passage that comes out sounding like a sci-fi prayer. He relaxes his mind by imagining a multiverse full of infinite alternate versions of himself, and thinking that among those countless iterations of his life, there’s at least one duplicate of himself without any problems. It’s a humbling, calming thought. And then there’s silence.

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Neon Indian “Fallout”

Neon Indian’s first album trafficked mainly in blunted nostalgia, with fairly slight but sometimes mesmerizing tunes filtered through self-conscious faux-cassette aesthetics. “Fallout,” the first song released from his second album Era Extraña is far more mature and resonant in a way that doesn’t seem as though it could be a happy accident. There’s still a haziness to the sound, but the atmosphere is secondary to the music, which touches on the epic, melodramatic romance of a particular strain of 80s radio hit. “Fallout” has some distant echoes of tunes like Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away,” but the its most compelling for the way it updates the deep-voiced masculine romanticism of bands like OMD and Love and Rockets. Even compared to that stuff, Neon Indian is stoic and restrained, but there’s a genuine yearning at the core of this song. “If I could fall out love with you,” he sings, only just barely holding back the passionate love anthem buried under woozy psychedelia and emotional defense mechanisms.

Rewards featuring Solange Knowles “Equal Dreams”

I like that Solange is carving out this interesting little niche for herself as this boho R&B singer who turns up on all sorts of arty little records. This is one of her more interesting one-off collaborations – she’s a little bit outside of her usual comfort zone, but makes the most of being the warmest element in a cool DFA 12″ disco track. There’s actually very little in her vocal performance that comes off as particularly R&B – there’s a trace, but it’s filtered through an icy Euro vibe. It’s funny, really, that she’s dialing down her natural inclinations to arrive at a similar place as singers who have to deep dig to put as much soul in their work. At any rate, it’s a very nuanced vocal that contrasts very nicely with the more hushed male lead part and a track that shifts very intuitively between very stark and richly detailed sections.

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Shabazz Palaces “A Treatease Dedicated to the Avian Airess from North East Nubis (1000 Questions, 1 Answer)”

If you want to cut straight to the emotional center of this song, advance to 0:38 for the “oooooo weee” at the start of a new verse. You only hear that digitally processed swoon once in the piece, but it sets the tone for the lovestruck banter through the rest of the track. The song perfectly captures the feeling of trying to balance a desire to come off cool and suave with this geeky, enthusiastic urge to just ask a million questions because you’re so fascinated and enchanted by someone that you just want to know everything, and every little detail is exciting and interesting. Their mystique is alluring, but you still want to get beyond it. I love the way the music floats around in a relaxed haze, but gets grounded by the bass when his language becomes more assertive and decisive. Then there’s the questions, spilling out and fading into infinity: “What’chu reading?” “Did you see City of God?” “Do you fuck with Kobe or LeBron?,” et cetera…

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See Also: I interviewed Shabazz Palaces for Rolling Stone.

The Kills “Future Starts Slow”

Every other day lately I have a conversation with someone who is anxious to skip ahead to some point in the future. I’ve spent most of my life feeling that way too, so I have a lot of empathy for that sort of angst. Sometimes it’s about wanting far more than the world could reasonably give you, which makes me think of a brilliant lyric from a Maxi Geil song called “A Message to My Audience”: “I want the world, and I want it now / can’t that be arranged for me somehow?” But in less petulant moments, it’s closer to the feeling of “Future Starts Slow,” which bleeds out equal measures of passion and fear. Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince sing about feeling terrified that their passion – for someone, each other, their art, anything – could disappear. And then what? The Kills write from the perspective of people who thrive on intensity and emotional investment, so when Alison sings “if there’s a time when the feeling’s gone / I want to feel it,” it’s clear that she’s talking about her worst nightmare. The pain of waiting around isn’t so much about needing something to happen right away as much as it’s about fearing that it will never come, or that you’ll somehow go numb while you wait your life away.

Buy it for $5.99 from Amazon.

St. Vincent “Surgeon”

“Surgeon” is maybe a strange way of introducing listeners to St. Vincent’s third album Strange Mercy. Though it provides a few eye-opening “wow moments,” particularly during the instrumental climax, it’s something of an outlier on the record. Most of the songs on Strange Mercy have a very active tone, with Clark singing from the perspective of characters who are almost oppressively extroverted – people who make eye contact with such forced assurance that their gaze could blow a hole through your face like Cyclops. “Surgeon” is more passive and sickly, with a fragile protagonist who begs for the “best, finest surgeon” to “come cut me open.” It’s an eerie, ambiguous piece that alternates between moments when the sounds seem to float in a perfect, serene balance and others when it falls into uncomfortable disarray. Clark’s climax isn’t quite cathartic, but she definitely makes it so you feel relieved when it’s over.

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Slow Club “Two Cousins”

Slow Club have shifted up their style on their second album Paradise, mainly by dialing down the overwhelming tweeness that marked their often exceptional male-female indie folk duets. They still harmonize throughout the record, but for the most part, Rebecca Taylor sings lead while Charles Watson focuses his energy on filling up negative space with ambiance, texture and instrumental harmonies. This was a very good idea. The best moments on their debut Yeah So came when Taylor would break out of tight harmonies with Watson to provide soulful, expressive emotional peaks to standout tracks “Giving Up On Love” and “Trophy Room.”

“Two Cousins,” the first single from Paradise, signals the break from the band’s earlier aesthetic. The arrangement is densely rhythmic and heavy on treble, with a sharp keyboard riff that seems to across the song in a diagonal motion. The treble crowds out Taylor’s voice at some points, but it’s thrilling when she cuts through it, as if she is emoting her way through a wall of bright notes. As always, she’s very good at conveying a wounded sadness – in this case, it’s something about the way she sings the words “I look into your eyes / you don’t know who I am.”

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Lil Wayne “Rollin’ (Freestyle)”

This freestyle isn’t exactly special in the sprawling Lil Wayne discography, but it’s a fine example of the way he builds momentum as rhymes spill out of his head. He’s done a lot of variations on this type of flow, but it never fails to sound exciting, particularly when there’s always this moment where he knows he has dropped a particularly clever line and seems eager to top it. The performance comes across as very athletic, but it’s ultimately more of a cerebral thing, like a highly entertaining and musical equivalent of some guy burning through a difficult crossword puzzle.

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U2 @ New Meadowlands Stadium 7/20/2011

Even Better Than the Real Thing / The Fly / Mysterious Ways / Until the End of the World / I Will Follow / Get On Your Boots / Magnificent / I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For / Stay (Faraway, So Close!) / Beautiful Day / Elevation / Pride (In the Name of Love) / Miss Sarajevo / Zooropa / City of Blinding Lights / Vertigo / I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight – Discotheque / Sunday Bloody Sunday / Scarlet / Walk On // One – Hallelujah / Where the Streets Have No Name /// Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me / With or Without You / Moment of Surrender / Out of Control

I wrote a full review of this show for Rolling Stone. Let’s talk about “Zooropa.”

U2 “Zooropa”

“Zooropa” is as close as U2 has ever come to expressing their artistic philosophy in song. They are true believers in music as a communicative medium that can work on a massive, global scale. When Bono sings “skip the subway, let’s go to the overground / get your head out of the mud, baby,” he means it as an indictment of every talented artist who shrinks from the possibility of engaging with a large audience. While I can certainly understand the point of view of such artists, I’m very inclined to agree with Bono on this in a broader sense. I genuinely believe that challenging, imaginative artists should push their ideas as far into the mainstream as possible rather than retreating to the margins. When Bono sings this part, he sounds heroic. The music swells to an anthem like many U2 songs before, but it’s still has an odd, slightly detached feeling. I think that climax is very well-earned in this piece, in part because I think this pledge to “dream out loud” is genuinely courageous, even if it sounds a bit corny.

It’s perhaps a bit ironic that this was the only song in this concert where U2 themselves were barely visible to the audience. The band performed within a cone of cascading lights and words, a visual set piece that countered the indifference of some audience members who didn’t recognize a relatively obscure album track. At several other points in the show, Bono did his “mugging directly into a camera at close range” trick. I couldn’t help but think that maybe that move should’ve been reserved for “Zooropa,” a song that could have benefited from a bit of eye contact.

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Royal Trux “The Banana Question”

Even without Jennifer Herrema growling “Is that a fucking question???,” “The Banana Question” would still seem like a rude song, a piece of music that seems to lunge out at the listener to invade their personal space. It’s gleefully manic, bouncing and spinning around without any sort of focus. It’s a perfect blend of whimsical and belligerent, like punk rock designed to emulate the mood of an overstimulated and cranky little kid.

Royal Trux “Blind Navigator”

I love the way this song balances this fairly loose groove with Neil Hagerty and Jennifer Herrema’s desperate yowls and howls. They’re not quite hysterical — it’s more like they’re just super-charged with passion. Nevermind the blues riffing and the bizarre psychedelic flute-like synthesizers, this is Royal Trux’s version of gospel, with the two clinging to some agnostic, strung-out version of faith. Their vocals tangle up, veering in different directions at some points and colliding in others. They’re both lost, but it’s like they’re trying to find their way back to each other in a game of musical Marco Polo.

Eleanor Friedberger “Heaven”

Eleanor Friedberger’s debut solo album Last Summer is packed with enough highly specific references to locations within New York City that it practically begs fans to go visit them all, or at least make an annotated Google map. “Heaven” is the exception. It’s a somewhat atypical song in the Friedberger & Friedberger canon; at least in the sense that it draws some of its power from lyrical ambiguity rather than narrative and context. Eleanor sings to someone named Lee — even at their most vague, the Friedbergers can’t help but include these sort of concrete details — but seems to lament that while this person feels lost and restless, a sort of peace exists within them. That’s a great idea, but it’s complicated by this bridge: “I mention your name / only in hell / it’s the same.” It darkens the sentiment in an interesting way; it leaves me a little unsure of the relationship at the core of a song that otherwise seems gentle and loving. Truly, this is one of the most light and relaxed recordings in the overall Friedberger discography — Matthew may have been inclined to overwork the tune and crowd it out with too many sounds, but Eleanor’s elegant arrangement frames her voice at its sweetest with subtly majestic horns and a gorgeous piano solo.

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Paul McCartney @ Yankee Stadium 7/16/2011

Magical Mystery Tour / Jet / All My Loving / Junior’s Farm / Drive My Car / Sing the Changes / The Night Before / Let Me Roll It / (brief Foxy Lady instrumental jam) / Paperback Writer / The Long and Winding Road / Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five / Let ‘Em In / Maybe I’m Amazed / I’m Looking Through You / I Will / Blackbird / Here Today / Dance Tonight / Mrs. Vanderbilt / Eleanor Rigby / Something / Band On the Run / Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da / Back in the USSR / I’ve Got A Feeling / A Day in the Life – Give Peace A Chance / Let It Be / Live and Let Die / Hey Jude // Lady Madonna / I Saw Her Standing There (with Billy Joel) / Get Back /// Yesterday / Helter Skelter / Golden Slumbers – Carry That Weight – The End

Paul McCartney “Let Me Roll It” (Live in 2009)

This show was such a thrill; one of the best large-scale shows I’ve ever seen. Aside from the pyrotechnics and fireworks that accompanied “Live and Let Die,” this show was pretty light on spectacle. And really, how much spectacle do you really need when you’re watching a Beatle perform mainly Beatles songs for three hours straight? And yeah, that’s right — three hours, with only two brief encore breaks. McCartney is 69 years old, but performs with the energy of someone a third of his age. He was in great voice; his band was virtually flawless. I don’t think I really need to sell you on the greatness of this man or his body of work, but it’s hard to come out of a show like this without feeling awestruck. It’s rather like when I finally got to see Prince a few months ago — these are living legends who can get by in concert simply by showing up, but they both perform with such skill and passion that you come away realizing that a lot of why they have this incredible stature comes from fully committing, pushing themselves as far as they can go and clearly taking great pleasure in showing an audience a good time.

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tUnE-yArDs @ Pier 54 Hudson River Park 7/14/2011

Do You Wanna Live? / Gangsta / Es-So / Powa / Fiya / Bizness / Real Live Flesh / Hatari / You Yes You / My Country // Killa (with fireworks display!)

tUnE-yArDs “My Country”

In comparison to other tUnE-yArDs shows that I’ve seen, this show was a bit weak — the audience wasn’t as rowdy, the band was slightly out of practice, Merrill Garbus had a bit of trouble with her higher register — but it was still a thrill. Garbus is so on point lately that an off night is still astonishing. She mentioned being a bit nervous about playing to such a large audience, but by the halfway point in this gig, you’d never know it. She’s a natural for this sort of thing: wildly charismatic, huge voice, very theatrical. (This show ended with a fireworks display, which made perfect sense.) I’ve seen her perform enough times to recognize her tricks, and they work every time. I’ve had more fun seeing tUnE-yArDs in small venues, but it’s becoming apparent that she’s going to have to move up the bracket to the big rooms soon. I just hope the next time she plays NYC she books a better space than Terminal 5.

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Wild Beasts @ Le Poisson Rouge 7/13/2011

Plaything / Loop the Loop / Deeper / The Devil’s Crayon / We Still Got the Taste Dancing On Our Tongues / Albatross / This Is Our Lot / Bed of Nails / Reach A Bit Further / Hooting and Howling // Lion’s Share / All the King’s Men / End Come Too Soon

Wild Beasts “End Come Too Soon”

Wild Beasts’ third album Smother is a rather luxurious work of art: Elegant in its design and rich in detail; the sort of record that you need to spend time with in order to fully appreciate its nuances. Time is valuable, of course, so I can understand why a lot of people seem to be passing it over in favor of other recent albums that sketch out a more clearly defined mood without suggesting any complicated ideas. The group remain an exceptional live act, or at least the sort of band that impresses with top-class ensemble playing. Hayden Thorpe and Tom Fleming are both incredible, charismatic singers, but the main draw here is probably a hard sell for most folks: Wow, check out that subtlety! Such a fine balance of raw style and musical sophistication! What a fascinating take on male sexuality in pop music! Even still, even if they’re presently erring on the side of understatement, they still know how to go epic. “End Come Too Soon,” the grand finale, was extended slightly to amp up the drama of its climax, which seems to lament the brevity of the male orgasm.

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Animal Collective @ Prospect Park Bandshell 7/12/2011

“Change” / “Stop Thinking” / Did You See the Words? / “Long Time Ago” / “Take This Weight” / “Knock You Down” / Brother Sport / “Mercury” / “Your Choice” / “Frights” / We Tigers / Summertime Clothes // “I’d Rather” / “Little Kid” / Taste

Animal Collective “Taste”

I knew that Animal Collective had been playing new material in their recent shows but had avoided actually listening to any of it because I knew a lot would get lost in shitty fan-shot YouTube clips, so I held out to either watch the music performed in person or hear the finished studio recordings. I’m glad I did. I quite enjoyed being surprised by these new compositions over the course of the show — certainly much more so than I expected.

A few notes on the new material:

1) The band set up is basically: Deakin on guitar and sometimes percussion, plus he sings lead on “Change.” Geologist doing his regular Geologist things with electronic instruments that are not visible from the audience. Panda Bear on drums with a bit of keyboards and vocals. Avey Tare on keyboards, guitars and lead vocals. (Panda only sang lead on three of fifteen songs in this set: “Take This Weight,” “Brother Sport” and “I’d Rather.”) Though there was a lot of guitar being played, it very seldom sounded anything like a guitar.

2) Given that Avey has gone back to being the dominant vocal presence in the band and there are no harmony parts on the new tunes, it would be tempting to say that this batch of songs very Avey-centric. But it’s not exactly true. Panda’s percussion is crucial. Whereas Merriweather Post Pavilion was all about melody and harmony, this new record seems to be more about rhythm and groove. It sounds as though they are filtering elements of funk and R&B through their very distinct aesthetic. I am dying to hear how this stuff comes out in the studio — specifically “Long Time Ago” and “I’d Rather,” which struck me as rather incredible pop songs straight away.

3) Deakin’s song was pretty good! Who knew?

4) Panda’s “Take This Weight” was, at least tonight and for me, the dud of the bunch. Too droning, too Tomboy-ish. Doesn’t really fit in with what they’re doing on the other songs.

Nearly two years ago I saw Animal Collective play at the same venue, and it was one of the most memorable concert experiences of my life for a handful of reasons. Mainly, the audience was wonderful. Joyful, energetic, totally passionate. This crowd was very much the opposite. No matter where I went in this audience, I was surrounded by chattering jerks who seemed to have almost zero interest in the performance. Well, aside from “Brother Sport” and “Summertime Clothes,” that is — the hits got people going. I totally understand wanting to hear your favorite songs at shows, but I don’t get just talking through the entire set and generally showing no respect to the band or the people who really wanted to pay attention to the songs. As much as the audience from two years ago reaffirmed my faith in young music fans, this crowd just made me feel bitter and irritable.

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R.E.M. “Just A Touch”

Somewhere on this planet (most likely in Missouri), there is a video cassette titled It Takes a Nation of Midgets to Hold Us Back. I filmed the majority of its contents on a camcorder in 1996, and it was intended to be a gift for an acquaintance of my friend Todd, who filmed everything else, and appears in most of the scenes. The idea was to show her around the Hudson Valley and (hopefully) to make her laugh. It’s a weird tape, full of goofy tangents and jokes that were probably only really funny to the two of us at that moment in time. She never actually received the tape. I held on to it for the longest time, and now Todd has it. He and I are not currently in touch, and I’ll probably never watch it again.

I mention all of this because “Just A Touch” is very prominently featured at the beginning of the tape. We kick off the movie in the same way that we began all our little adventures — riding in Todd’s Suzuki Swift down Main Street in my home town. Normally, this part of Cold Spring is very quaint and bustling with tourists from the city shopping for antiques and whatnot, but on this particular winter day, the town looks miserable, grey, empty, and nearly inhabitable. “Just A Touch” plays over the car stereo — my selection, my tape — and the contrast between its wild, cheerful tone and the bleak imagery is (unintentionally) hilarious.

“Just A Touch” is one of the rowdiest, most joyful numbers in the entire R.E.M. discography, and though it appears on 1986′s Lifes Rich Pageant, it actually dates back to their pre-Chronic Town period as a party band in Athens, Georgia. If I recall correctly, it’s got something to do with Michael Stipe’s confused recollection of the day Elvis Presley died, but the lyrics are besides the point — it’s all about the spirit of the performance, and the reckless enthusiasm expressed in every moment of the recording. Stipe sounds especially unhinged, particularly toward the end when he’s totally flipping out before seeming to fall over with his final shout: “I’m so goddamn young!!!” Few songs sound as fully alive as “Just A Touch,” and if the Presley thing is true, the King couldn’t have asked for a more fitting tribute.

Buy it from Amazon. This review was originally posted April 2nd 2007 on Pop Songs 07-08, where I wrote about most every song in the R.E.M. discography through 2004.

Lady Gaga “Yoü and I”

“Yoü and I” isn’t merely a love song. It’s a grandiose display of affection; a monument to the man Gaga loves. It’s a power ballad about Gaga and her on-and-off boyfriend Lüc Carl, a guy who, by all accounts, is the love of her life. He’s a rocker dude, so it’s a big rock song. There’s a bit of Shania Twain country rock in the mix, but it’s mostly a pastiche of Def Leppard, Guns N’ Roses and Queen. Since Gaga has the economic leverage to achieve stylistic verisimilitude through hiring her influences, Def Leppard/Shania mastermind Mutt Lange produced the track, which samples Queen’s “We Will Rock You” and features a guitar solo from Brian May. (Maybe an alternate version exists in which Axl Rose sings back-up vocals.)

The song plays power chords and glam metal solos on my heart strings. I get totally overwhelmed by the starry-eyed passion expressed in this music. I feel her joy, but I also feel a pang of envy. “Yoü and I” makes me want to love someone this much. It makes me wonder what it must be like for someone to love you so much that they need to pay tribute to you with a stadium anthem.

There’s an aspirational quality to this song. It’s a fantasy of something pure and wonderful, but also flawed. They break up, they screw up. She’s chasing him down for years and hoping that this time it might work out. This is the flip side of “Bad Romance;” the version where the drama and angst results in the happiest possible ending. In either case, Gaga presents her relationship as a narrative, an epic romance between two archetypes — the New York Woman and her Cool Nebraska Guy. As a result, her love life becomes a work of art as thoroughly aestheticized as any of her songs, outfits, videos or performances.

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Gardens & Villa “Carrizo Plain”

I’m not usually into this sort of slow, sad, cinematic cowboy music but I find myself entranced by the way this unfolds over five minutes. The guitar, percussion and keyboard parts hang loosely in place, but suggest a heavy gravitational pull. The vocal melody winds around gently until it seems to knot like a noose on the repetition of the line “you and I are intertwined.” A lot of bands try and fail to capture this sort of desperate, desolate vibe, but this is exactly right. It sounds sorta like the Shins dying slowly in the middle of an endless desert.

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