Black Keys – Brothers
Brothers finds Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney regaining some of the sweaty basement immediacy that characterized their best work. Rather than simply revisit their old records, however, they manage to balance the raw aesthetic of their earlier albums with a quest for new and interesting sounds. Take, for example, the distorted, echoing keyboards and snippets of female backing vocals lurking behind the pounding, skeletal groove of “Next Girl”. The basic track could be taken from The Big Come Up, but the arrangement details catapult it into newer territory. Some of those keyboard tones resurface on the menacing LA narrative “The Go-Getter”, which also explores some aggressive stereo separation Read the Full Review
LCD Soundsystem – This is Happening
how does Murphy follow up his distinguished series of LCD Soundsystem releases? By introducing a new album with a single that wades in tight crunch-funk verses about drunk girls (and boys) before making the personal plea “Just ’cause I’m shallow doesn’t mean that I’m heartless/Just ’cause I’m heartless doesn’t mean that I’m mean.” But even though “Drunk Girls” is not the most obvious attempt at picking up where Silver left off, the single alludes to the general direction that This Is Happening takes: One that’s strikingly familiar despite still reflecting a sense of immediacy. It’s like 2007 all over again. Read the Full Review
Crystal Castles – Crystal Castles
Crystal Castles are far more pop than before, too, which was probably an inevitable move, but hardly a bad one. Like “Celestica”, “Suffocation” and “Empathy” mix fanged distortion and sparkly synths, while tracks like “Vietnam”, “Not in Love”, “Intimate”, and the rave-tinged “Baptism” arm the record with loads of could-be singles. But despite this shift toward beauty and clarity, Crystal Castles still rip into some punishing, epileptic moments, like the distorted bass riff on “Birds” and the shredded brutality of “Doe Deer”. The fluidity of the music is matched by Alice Glass’ frequently manipulated vocals, a showcase for someone too often pigeonholed as a bratty screamer. She sounds at times like everything from a Leslie guitar (“Empathy”) to a Cloverfield-style monster (“I Am Made of Chalk”). The obvious comparison is the Knife’s Silent Shout, but where Karin Dreijer-Andersson often manipulates her voice to play characters, Glass is just as disturbing for her dehumanization. Read the Full Review
Widespread Panic – Dirty Side Down
Some of the best songs in Panic’s catalog are about life on the road, and “Shut Up And Drive” marks another worthy addition, marrying a propulsive, brushed beat to down-home guitars that break for shimmering solos. Then the gears catch and the song lurches back onto the highway. Dirty Side Down is an uneven record at times, but given that the band has been hard-pressed to reproduce the energy of its live performances in the studio, Down’s nimble rhythmic shifts and the playful lead-guitar work of Jimmy Herring provide a zip sorely lacking on the last two releases. Read the Full Review
Some may see it as a creatively bankrupt practice but puns in album titles delight me, particularly puns built out of artists names. If I ever come out with an album, I’ll probably call it, “Herb Today, Gone Tomorrow” or some such nonsense. If you’re looking for a cheap way to entertain yourself and some friends, come up with hypothetical punned-name album titles for everyone in the room. It’s not a contest. Everyone’s a winner.
Let’s take a look at some classic examples and consider their degree of success.
1. Ozzy Osbourne – “Ozzmosis”
This is a good place to start because what we have here is a pun that doesn’t really work. The problem? Ozzy’s making a pun out of a dry, scientific term. It doesn’t really provoke an emotional response or visual association. What if Connor Oberst released an album and called it “Connorvalescence?” Pretty lame, right?
2. Justin Timberlake – “Justified”
JT really rides the line here. I dare say if the man wasn’t so darn cool, this pun would come off as pretty lame. The only bad idea this man’s charisma hasn’t been able to redeem is his performance in The Love Guru. (More like The Loathe Guru. Right?)
3. Greg Kihn – Kihnspiracy
Ladies and gentlemen, meet Greg Kihn, the most prolific punner-of-one’s-own-name in existence. Some highlights from his discography include, “Next of Kihn,” “Rockihnroll,” “Kihntinued,” “Kihntagious,” “Citizen Kihn,” “Unkihntrollable,” “Kihn of Hearts” and “True Kihnfessions.” Mr. Kihn, we at the Pure Pop Blog salute you.
4. Miles Davis – “Milestones”
Like JT’s Justified, this pun doesn’t call attention to itself with unconventional spelling. It’s innocuous, but it works. What a shame Miles Davis didn’t pun his name more often, “Miles” has such puntential.
5. George Strait – “Strait from the Heart”
God bless him. This is not my kind of music, and the cover is nothing short of abysmal, but “Strait from the Heart” is as good as punned-name album titles get. Greg Kihn would be proud. (Or jealous.) This really makes me wish my last name was Strait. Curse my heritage.
Let me start off by saying that every time we’ve played this number in the store, someone immediately wants to purchase it. You just can’t beat that kind of market research. Now for my bit:
This compilation of “Pure Ghetto Disco, Funk and African Boogie” from Brooklyn is the third offering in Kon & Amir’s series of city themed adventures in rare 45′s. Once described by Lord Finesse as “two of the most extraordinary but underrated beat diggers in the game,” the duo split up over two discs to share choice cuts from their expansive collecti0n. Kon takes the first disc, laying out a continuous mix of tracks, layering a bit here and there to stitch together funk and soul. Highlights include the soaring bass groove of slamming opening track “From the Heart” (Kon’s Multi Remix) by Donny McCollough, the temperature raising “Burnin’ Up” (Kon’s Edit) by S.F.B., and self titled track “E.O.D.” by prison band Edge of Darkness. In fact, the Edge of Darkness sums up the unfortunate situation that made most of the artists on this compilation underexposed. Bands with raw and unique talent from the ghetto were underfunded and under-appreciated, while bands with a more marketable sound soared on labels like Motown.
Amir’s disc guides the focus to Fela influenced African boogie and disco. This side represents the global ghetto underground melting pot of the album’s dedicated burrough. As a youngster with a fantastical vision of the sparkling 70′s, these jams make me envision a period of nightclubs blasting off into outer space to party in the funkosphere to the likes of “Galaxy” by Galaxy. “Saturday Night Raps” by Dizzy K is a dance floor stomper that would work just as well as a block party thumper. Picture yourself in the prime of your youth, doing the bump with a hot dog in one hand and a 40oz . in the other, that’s what this sounds like. My only complaint about this release is the severely shortened content of the LP version, but a full vinyl release would probably be out of the average browser’s price range anyway. Make it your summer soundtrack.
The National – High Violet
For years now the National have been singing about the city and wine and girls and maybe growing up a little, and if Boxer saw them embracing the bittersweet sting of maturity and nostalgia, High Violet follows hard on its heels with a set of songs about New York and Ohio, about the terrible, undertow pull of a (gasp) settled, normal life, about being a little in love with melancholy but also being self-aware enough to realize that love is a little ridiculous and self-destructive. Becoming an adult is a slow processes that involves thinking that you’re not a certain kind of person, and then waking up one day and realizing that yeah, you are; recently, National songs have been about coming to terms with that as much as anything else.
When Berninger sings “I was afraid I would eat your brains / ‘Cuz I’m evil” or “I was a comfortable kid / But I don’t think about it much anymore” or “I don’t even think to make corrections” or “All the very best of us string ourselves up for love” or “What makes you think I’m enjoying being led to the flood?”, he and the rest of the band are feeling around the edges of something big and dark and mundane. It’s not that the National’s music (or its members’ lives, one hopes) are devoid of joy or levity, it’s that High Violet summons up perfectly and terribly the sneaking suspicion you start getting in your 20s that possibilities are closing off, that your life might not turn out the way you wanted it to, and that there’s probably no-one else to blame but yourself. Read the Full Review
Dead Weather – Sea of Cowards
“Sea of Cowards,” the band’s sludgier, yowlier follow-up, showcases the interplay between White and Mosshart to a greater advantage than “Horehound” did. The two sound so similar that their vocals are frequently indistinguishable — not so much yin and yang as yin and more yin. Assisted by Queens of the Stone Age’s multi-instrumentalist Dean Fertita and Jack Lawrence of the Raconteurs on bass, the duo whomp and wail their way through a heavy-hitting, sometimes uneven collection of swampy blues-rock tracks. Read the Full Review
Unkle – Where did the Night Fall
The opening Blade Runner whooshes of Nowhere slide into the breakneck Follow Me Down (with Sleepy Sun), which mashes up Eastern influences (India, that is, not Hoxton) and a slice of Björk-giddy Sugarcubes. Natural Selection sees The Black Angels doing Secret Machines’ motorik, with crisp enthusiasm. The Answer (with Big In Japan, the Baltimore ones not the ancient Liverpool ones) is huge and anthemic, like limbs from Elbow and Mercury Rev spliced together. Expect the intro to do duty as the soundtrack to various World Cup moments.
Heavy Drug is just a minute long yet crams in a cappella and Spiritualized trance, while Katrina Ford of Celebration sings like a woman possessed on the blatantly Banshees baroque of Caged Bird. Ablivion is all galloping rhythms and sexy time-shifts. And to climax, because 500 projects in the last year isn’t enough for him, Mark Lanegan croons the farewell track Another Night Out, reasserting how like a Soulsavers album this is when it’s flying. Read the Full Review
We’ve all seen those annoying “Before They Were Famous” bits on tv and in print. Well, here at the Pure Pop Blog we’re not above indulging in cliches. The truth is a lot of you have probably seen this stuff before. However, those that haven’t need to. We must never forget that these beloved artists are fallible.
Phil Collins – Flaming Youth
Claim to Fame - Phil Collins is currently shorthand for soulless mainstream garbage but he used to be pretty cool. He’s a first rate drummer who’s elevated many classic albums with his contributions and he revolutionized the way we feel about things coming in the air at night. His first high-profile gig was drumming for Genesis, a band he would go on to lead into the upper stratosphere of musical success.
Before All That - Collins was the drummer for Flaming Youth, a pastoral rock quartet who to be fair weren’t all that bad. They never really went anywhere, prompting the young and eager musician to pursue other projects. How much does this video remind you of Spinal Tap playing “Gimme Some Money?”
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Yeah we might have swiped this off of Pitchfork, but they swiped it off of Daily Motion so whatever – it’s still hilarious, and the new Fall LP is damn good.
Broken Social Scene – Forgiveness Rock Record
Forgiveness is not a sentiment often associated with rock music. Anger, despair, infatuation, sure. But forgiveness is more complicated, and tougher to fit into a four-minute song. Broken Social Scene know all about heartbreak– they’ve spent most of the last decade crafting songs about it with almost unparalleled zeal. Their story is filled with scurrilous encounters, backstabbings, and break-ups on par with most 70s arena-rockers, and they’ve crashed and rebuilt so many times that it’s nearly impossible to keep track of who was where at any given moment. But they’ve also used that flexibility to their advantage: Their epochal 2002 breakout You Forgot It In People was the joyous sound of friends banding together to boost each other up, while 2005′s Broken Social Scene was the dizzying sound of friends fizzing out into solo endeavors and outside pursuits.
Now they’re back, and they’re forgiving. Who, exactly? Each other, loves, bad decisions, humanity at large, worse decisions, the past, the future, culture, corporations, art, you, me, maybe even George W. Bush. (Well, maybe not him.) And while a 59-minute absolution session sounds excessive for even the most devout fans, Broken Social Scene aren’t just throwing out hail marys here. Because forgiveness is hard, especially for a group this grand and this intertwined for this long. The album lets bygones go while acknowledging the pain and discipline involved, and does so while keeping with the band’s indie-mixtape rep. There’s a song that sounds like Pavement, one that sounds like the Sea and Cake (featuring Sea and Cake singer Sam Prekop), another like a Broadway adaptation of Children of Men, a weightless ballad that may double as an ode to masturbation, and a song that’s basically five minutes of atmospheric pop perfection. Their ambition is intact. Read the full Review
New Pornographers – Together
With just about every member of the band simultaneously maintaining a successful solo career or side project, it’s easy to see how so many ideas—and good ones, at that—end up in the New Pornographers’ songs. Perhaps, then, the real genius of the Pornographers is their ability to be both bewildering and catchy. Even though their albums are crammed with eccentric melodies, unexpected turns in songs, and a cumbersome sharing of duties from one song to the next, somehow their music never collapses under its own ambitious weight. What’s more, though their albums are growers, even the first listen reveals the band’s charms.
This has never been more apparent than on Together, the follow-up to 2007’s Challengers. Whereas that album was an uncharacteristic mellow detour in the Pornographers’ discography, Together is an unabashed return to the big, bold, and brainy power-pop of Twin Cinema, the 2005 LP that won critical acclaim from all corners and cemented the band’s reputation as a rare supergroup that actually deserves the title. As on previous albums, the creative frenzy is anchored by three forces: the Pet Sounds-inspired sunshine of de facto leader A.C. Newman, the detached vocal Bowie-isms of Dan Bejar, and the enchanting vocals of Neko Case. The push and pull of these three forces give the Pornographers their unique sound, at times colliding into one another unexpectedly, at other times effortlessly working in unison, at other times miraculously doing both. Read the full review
Deftones – Diamond Eyes
There are moments on Deftones’ first new disc since 2006—and first without bassist Chi Cheng, who’s been in a minimally conscious state since a 2008 car accident—that sound a bit like a band on auto-pilot. Luckily, though, the title track and “Royal” stomp such limp moments with pleasingly crude riffs that claw and scrape through the verses, then release Chino Moreno’s voice into glimmering, menacing choruses. Moreno and guitarist Stephen Carpenter shove back and forth on “CMND/CTRL” as if trying to slam each other off-beat, charging up the tension and nuance that so many of Deftones’ hard-rock contemporaries lack. Read the full review
Josh Ritter – So Runs The World Away
Existential riddles are again on Ritter’s mind through the course of So Runs the World Away, but he subsumes the natural/spiritual dialectic so common to folk music and zeroes in on the heyday of empiricism instead. A son of two neuroscientists who nearly became a neuroscientist himself, Ritter has drawn songwriting material from scientific subject matter in the past; one of his earliest songs, “Stuck to You”, amusingly deconstructed love-ballad clichés by applying the stark logic of multi-syllabic scientific jargon to them. But this time around, he reconstructs detailed tableaus from the history of late 19th and early 20th century archaeology, astronomy, and exploration, outlining the shadows of meaning cast by the Industrial Age’s last great sweep against the superstitious unknown. Read the full review
Hold Steady – Heaven Is Whenever
At the beginning of the year, The Hold Steady announced it was amicably parting ways with Franz Nicolay, whose whirling, dramatic piano and organ heavily marked the band’s last two albums, Boys And Girls In America and Stay Positive. Some fans assumed that Nicolay’s departure would make for a leaner, less melodramatic band, but The Hold Steady’s fifth album, Heaven Is Whenever, sounds as deliberately mythical as ever. Partly it’s the tempos, which are slower en masse than ever, but it’s also the tone of the songs, which are the most elegiac bunch that Craig Finn has written. Finn has apparently moved permanently away from his talk-rant vocal mode, and as his singing becomes more expressive it also takes on a wistful quality that fits songs that are explicitly about memory and time, as well as music that settles deeper into classic rock with fewer musical wrinkles than before. Read the full review
The following is a hypothetical conversation between Saul Hudson a.k.a. Slash and whatever visionary designed the cover for his first proper solo album, “Slash.” In this fantasy, we’ll call said designer, “Dufus Jones.”
The scene: A smokey bar. It’s name is probably a crass pun. Presumably, there’s a female silhouette accompanying its name on the neon sign that rests above the bar’s entrance. Saul Hudson, out-of-touch guitar icon, sips a diet soda. He sits across from Dufus Jones, a mid-thirties graphic designer who’s greatest success is a poster identifying various kinds of farts. They are discussing the cover for Saul’s upcoming album.
Dufus: (Nervously) Mr. Hudson. This album is going to be huge. Do you know how long your fanbase has been waiting to hear you collaborate with Fergie?
Saul Hudson: (Cool as ice) Call me Saul.
Dufus: Sure thing Saul.
Saul Hudson: (Irritated.) I mean Slash. Call me Slash.
Dufus: Erm… Sure thing Mr. Slash.
Saul Hudson: Just Slash. (For a moment Saul Hudson pulls down his glasses. He does this for effect, just like Axl did, so many years ago…)
Dufus: (Clears throat) Well, as I was saying, Slash, this album is epic. People are going to hear this and be all, “Guns N’ Who? Velvet Revolv-what?”
Saul Hudson: (Laughs gruffly. For a man who often is told what he wants to hear, he has not grown tired of it.)
Dufus: (Continues) Now, what you need to accompany an album like this is a killer cover. I’m talking more epic than the first Slash’s Snakepit album.
Saul Hudson: (Holds up his empty soda glass. A Publicist Dufus hadn’t even noticed is there in moments with a fresh one. Saul takes a pull before offering his considered reply.) More epic than the cover of “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere?” Have you seen that cover? It’s a snake, coiled around a bone in such a way that they together make a dollar sign. It’s wearing my hat, and smoking. That, my friend, is the snowy peak of epic.
