Tag Archive for 'pop'Page 2 of 2

When Vampire Strikes

published
on February 8, 2008
by
ACtual
in artist/album reviews, genres, music, technology, and website
. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Vampire WeekendConsidering the next band pretty much got its start in the blogosphere, I’m a little late to the party on this one. But I don’t think tardiness has ever stopped me from enjoying myself. And besides…good music can always use publicity. “Blog Bands” as they’re known, groups that achieve status and reputation through the postings and writings of people who have heard them, are steadily on the rise. Even for the groups that get out to tour, have word of mouth and sign a deal, cyberspace writings, tags and search engine results are becoming more and more important to up and coming ensembles. Our friend Scott Reitherman and his group Throw Me the Statue provides a good example of how a few well placed authors and blog articles can help influence the rise of a smaller local group. I’ll also mention that the rise of this next group, in addition to their styles of music, breadth of their album, resemblance to some excellent groups of the past and ability to mix these things together make them perfect fodder for this blog. In 2007, Vampire Weekend started making some noise with a single or two. Coming out of New York (having all met at Columbia), this foursome (Ezra Koenig – guitar/vocals, Rostam Batmanglij – keyboard, Chris Tomson – drums, and Chris Baio – bass guitar) eventually signed a record contract and on January 29th put out their debut eponymous album. And I’m going to tell y’all something…it’s hot.

Most readers here will know my long standing opinion of pop and radio music. So when I say that this group’s 11 track, 34 minute pop inflected album is an achievement, some might think I’m joking. But this group becomes the next in a long line of musicians who have been able to take completely different musical styles and weave them into a cohesive tapestry that can absorb a listener. They also have a knack for emulating the 80s wave of Paul Simon‘s Graceland album, some of the Talking Heads‘ tracks and Peter Gabriel in bringing seemingly incongruous world music into the mix and making it downright fun to listen to, regardless of musical preferences. The album is so diverse in its sound, yet tied to the simpler and shorter blueprints of pop music that I can imagine any listener finding moments of happiness in all the songs, even if the style of one is more enjoyable to them than others. Furthermore, the simple yet poetic lyrics are easy to listen to, sing along with and understand. The group dubs themselves as artists of numerous genres that they’ve mixed and matched, including “Upper West Side Soweto.”

The album kicks off with “Mansard Roof,” an up tempo song leaning towards the indie rock spectrum of things. On first listen, one finds a graceful, short and moving song. On repeated listening, the less noticeable instrumentation becomes more prominent and provides a hint of just what’s in store on the rest of the album: a group of intelligent and accomplished musicians bringing numerous genre sensibilities to all of their songs. On “Oxford Comma,” a simple and out front drum beat backs an almost 50s sounding simple organ-like melody with a simple lead vocal track that ascends to moments of joyous falsetto. The guitar solo is simple and happy, never becoming too enamored with itself or too complex to enjoy. On “A-Punk,” the group takes on punk sounds reminiscent of the Ramones and Sex Pistols, yet again infuses it with a more manageable and less abrasive pop flavor. The end result is a mash-up that I’ve decided to call island punk.

“Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” brings out numerous styles. At the beginning, you can hear the South African/Congol rhythms that conjure memories of Graceland. The lightly spaced and simple lyrics keep the sound light before exploding into a chorus where lead singer Ezra Koenig elevates his voice into a simultaneously exuberant and pleading rasp. “M79” moves into a peppy keyboard and string style that would fit perfectly on a Wes Anderson soundtrack. This style is backed with lyrics that oscillate between Simon and Garfunkel in the verses to Talking Heads in the chorus. Throughout, the strings and keyboards play melody and scale style, accentuating and reinforcing the infectious tune. Finally, the bridge brings to mind New Order‘s “Bizarre Love Triangle” further deepening the pool of influences this band pulls from. Now, I know what you have to be thinking at this point…there’s no way this group sounds like all of these things, and this author is just looking for an excuse to name drop. I assure you this is not the case. Somehow Vampire Weekend has managed to take all of these various influences and fuse them together in a style uniquely their own.

“Campus” continues to vary the feel of the album while returning to the indie core that connects the majority of their tracks. The staccato lead up to the frenetic chorus is an instantly attainable indie pop that also brings to mind a Killers tune on Xanax. “Bryn” comes out with a moving and again South African influenced guitar before settling into a verse structure with simple poetry influences backed by an easy bass line and drum rim shots. The poetry falls into place as Koenig sings, ” Lights by the ocean/A westerly motion that moves California to sea/Eyes like a seagull/No Kansas-born beetle could ever come close to that free.”

“One” is the one track on the album that falls a bit flat for me. While it’s sure to have its admirers, the song illustrates the lone time on the album that the heights Koenig attempts to reach just don’t quite work. The simple bass and video game like beeps and blips bring the song back from that, but the repetition of the chorus keeps this song a bit stagnant. “I Stand Corrected” shows a more somber side to the group. While the tempo kicks in with drums after about 30 seconds, the tone of the song and Koenig’s lyrics seem sadly apologetic. The strings in the background help keep this more subdued aura intact despite the driving beat. “Walcott” starts out with a frenzied wall of sound approach before settling into a verse segment that beautifully integrates more strings, this time in a style and structure hinting at the Beatles‘ “Eleanor Rigby.” Its force and motivation to “get out of Cape Cod tonight” bring to mind a fleeting and almost pleading joy at the release captured in the unstoppable train of the last 40 seconds. This ends abruptly leading into the album’s finale, “The Kids Don’t Stand a Chance,” which again captures strings and a well orchestrated band underneath lyrics accentuated with an ABCB rhyme scheme. The trilling instrumental segment at the end of the song provides a lush and fitting fadeout to this incredibly diverse album.

This record and group, while only in their infancy stage in terms of release and recognition, do an amazing job at showing that pop music doesn’t need to be denigrated and reduced to the meaningless lyrics and heartlessly packaged cookie cutter sounds that pervade the radio air waves. It demonstrates that when done correctly, the mixing of pop sense, short and simple songs, poetry as lyrics and diverse genre study can produce an album that will capture listeners regardless of their primary genre affiliation, and remain incredibly listenable throughout…perfect pop. Catchy without being syrupy, intelligent without being pedantic, Vampire Weekend has managed to take what they know and like about music and filter it into a refreshing sound that, while carrying influences from artists and styles past, remains indelibly their own.

Don't Idolize

published
on January 15, 2008
by
ACtual
in genres and music
. 9 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Millions of Americans tune in weekly to American Idol. Millions will tonight for its premier. I’m still trying to figure out why.

I know, I know. The TV line-up is thin right now. Unless you’re watching the stellar 5th season of The Wire, indulging your senses in the L Word or devouring the new and improved American Gladiators, life on TV during the writers’ strike is hard. And while Fox may want you to believe it, buy into it, and worship them for it, American Idol is not the solution to your problems. They thought we’d forget that we aren’t getting 24. For years now, Fox has taken the show from over the pond and fed it to you with a sense of smug satisfaction. I mean, think about it…millions of Americans audition, meaning that the job of casting is never difficult (unless you consider that three people actually have to sit there and listen to millions of Americans who think they can sing), it doesn’t take any writers, so that cost and hassle is eliminated, and millions of Americans not only tune in, but actually call and text in to vote. People…they’re laughing all the way to the bank! And now, with the writer’s strike, they’re anticipating running up the viewer count because there is nothing else on. I give you fair warning here, gentle readers…if you really like Idol, or you’re not interested in a prolonged rant against it, this isn’t the post for you. For all the rest of you…read on!

There are numerous reasons not to waste your time on this show. Of course, enjoying wasting your time isn’t one of these reasons. But the reasons, when it comes down to it, need to be split up and addressed differently to both music lovers and people who don’t really care about music. First we’ll tackle the people who don’t really care about music…

You don’t like music or really care about it. You view Idol as pure entertainment, something to throw on the tv while you eat your dinner. In the beginning stages of the show, you like watching horrendously bad people who think they can sing. There’s a certain sort of sick fascination here, like watching a train wreck or taking pictures of a car accident as you drive by. I can almost understand this part…it can be humorous, entertaining to watch people as incredibly bad as the beginning contestants. But as humorous as it can be, what does it say about your taste that this is a good way to spend your time and viewing hours? Is laughing at other people’s misfortune that fun?

Then, you get into the regular show and listen to Simon, Paula and Randy talk about these people as if they’re actual artists. However, the entertainment value here is again derived from watching the contestants get beat up on. What the judges actually say doesn’t have any bearing, because the viewing population is the one who votes on the winners, so why even have judges to begin with? I will point out here that you can basically watch this sort of thing in any local karaoke bar. I recommend here American Gladiators, any National Geographic program, and movie watching as great alternatives to the “entertainment” value of American Idol. You can also spend 45 minutes reading a book and use the 15 minutes of commercial time in a TV hour to go for a walk. Of course, in the end, if Idol is that entertaining to you, you’ll still watch it, but my point here is to get you to sit there for a minute, think about it carefully, and really determine if you’re gaining anything, even real entertainment that couldn’t better be found elsewhere, out of this pursuit.

Then you have the people that enjoy or claim to enjoy music. This is a much easier group to attack. The entertainment goers have some excuses, as in the end what counts as entertainment is a matter of taste, and if you like it, you’re entitled to it. But in my mind, any self-respecting fan of music should have serious problems with this show as American Idol, for all its posturing as a musical show, is virtually devoid of any sort of actual musical quality or content, aside from the few guest appearances throughout the year by actual musicians. The program is supposed to crown the next pop music star, giving label execs a bankable star to sell albums because they have already won over the viewers who vote, so who wouldn’t buy the album?

Well, when you look at the fact that American Idol basically tests to see if you’re able to give a strong karaoke performance on national television, why should you expect any sort of actual musical talent from these people, let alone a decent album? People come on the show that have never made it as musicians, never made it in a band, and haven’t had any luck making it as a singer. These people aren’t just the most absolutely talented singers who happen to have really bad luck getting signed. There’s a reason they haven’t made it! They make the show based on their ability to carry a tune solo, and then progress based on their performances of other artists’ songs. Sure, as a singer you make each song your own, but not in any way that isn’t identical to what happens in millions of karaoke bars the world over. They don’t write their own songs, they don’t make their own music, and they need only the capability to captivate an audience of millions of “average Americans” (and we all know how smart they are from their election choice in 2004) for five minutes at a time. Finally, when the Idol is crowned, someone else usually writes the songs for the album, and the album sales usually flop due to either a) the fact that the Idol watchers have short attention spans and have moved on to other Pop Top 40 hits between the finale and the record release or b) the album exposes them for what they truly are: a glorified winner of a nationally televised karaoke/popularity contest. There are of course exceptions to the rule here, but the last Idol winner, Taylor Hicks, failed to break 1,000,000 album sales and lost his contract. Where were the millions of fans that voted for him when it came time to buy his album on the record contract they helped him get? Even a former Idol contestant (and loser to Hicks), Chris Daughtry, thinks the process is silly. “It’s funny at first, but come on,” he said. “They spend three weeks on people that can’t sing, and that’s what they’re banking it on. (They should) find some people that you can really invest in.”

In addition, you have merely to surf Billboard’s Top 100 or scan the radio airwaves for 5-10 minutes to realize that what the “average American”/radio listener/American Idol watcher knows about music is pretty much nothing. Saccharine singers like John Mayer and Jack Johnson, talentless “rappers” like Soulja Boy (all the people that came to this post from the Soulja Boy tag are now ready to throw me under a bus) and musically bereft bands like Nickelback saturate the entire popular music scene. Sure, there are different musical tastes, and I don’t deny anyone the right to their opinion, but when did the aggregate musical taste of the masses get so bad that a song telling you to “superman dat ho” could spend 26 weeks on the Top 100? Is anyone out there listening anymore? Meanwhile, amazing groups and artists like k-os, Throw Me the Statue, Immortal Technique and Jean Grae make music for years without getting noticed by the masses.

If you’re a “music fan” that’s spending time watching Idol, I suggest to you a visit to a listening station to find an unknown artist, a trip out to see a live performance somewhere, or simply an exploration into the collections of Hall of Famers that you aren’t familiar with. There is so much great music out there that you haven’t heard, I promise.

My Mom loves Idol…she’s of the entertainment crowd that enjoys watching Simon plaster contestants. Whenever I get caught up on my anti-American Idol rant, her constant argument revolves around the millions of people that tune in and call or text in a vote. “30 million people tune in,” she tells me, “they all like it.” I leave you here with the words of a wise person…”what’s right isn’t always popular and what’s popular isn’t always right.” But in the world of pop music and a show like American Idol, it should really be, “what’s popular isn’t always good.”

Putting Emerald City on the Map

published
on October 24, 2007
by
ACtual
in artist/album reviews, genres, and music
. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

Blue ScholarsThere’s garbage floating around out there. It’s in the bottled water, and people keep drinking it. Every once in a while, I understand a sip, but the massive thirst for this garbage water is becoming unbearable. Of course, it’s easy to become addicted to a certain type of water when you really don’t know any better, or perhaps don’t want any better. And when all the brands of water taste the same, what does it matter what bottle you drink from? And why wouldn’t you buy it?

Well, the bottled water companies here are the record labels and radio stations, obsessed with putting out a consistent product that keeps the masses drinking. In the process, musicians and artists are funneled into a series of water bottles, the shapes and sizes of which can vary, but the general taste of which remains the same. So, left with not much other choice, you keep flipping on the radio and drinking Pop. I don’t blame you…like I said, I take a sip sometimes too, it’s what we’ve been raised on, like fluoridated water, but it’s easy to forget that you can bypass the bottled water and get to the source sometimes.

Let’s be honest people, when a show like American Idol draws 30 million viewers a week in order to crown the next great radio star from a host of characters that couldn’t even launch the idea of a musical career without a free-for-all reality program catering to the masses, we have a problem as a music listening population. I’ve got an idea…let’s let everyone in the world, regardless of talent or skill, compete by singing copies of Pop radio songs, and the person who is the least offensive and most popular to the people that watch this show and listen to Pop 100 on the radio can launch a recording career, make more bad pop songs and sell records.

When I put it that way, doesn’t it insult your musical intelligence? Doesn’t it offend you that 90% of the music you hear out there all sounds the same and is mass market pumped to you through the iTunes collective? If it doesn’t, you can stop reading here and go back to sleep…MixMatch is about changing the way music is made and the way it sounds, not sitting idly by and buying the new “Single of the Day.” I’ve heard people say that they watch the show, but wouldn’t buy the album. This is like saying you don’t support the steps taken by our government to secure cheap oil while complaining about how much it costs to fill up your 2 miles to the gallon SUV. You might not be directly responsible for the problem, but you’re contributing to the means that lead to the end. We’re still overseas and you’ll still be hearing that artist on the radio for the next two months. So who shows more intelligence? The viewers that promote this kind of annual activity by spending their time and money on it, or the media moguls who have realized that no matter how many times you repackage the same thing, the majority of Americans raised on the radio are going to buy and buy and buy. And yet every season, new contestants arrive, millions tune in, and record companies make massive amounts of money funneling us a “new ” version of radio music we’ve heard 50,000 times in the past 10 years. But I digress…the point was Emerald City.

Because some of the most authentic and creative sources are so forgettable, we have to keep spreading the word and reminding ourselves that there are other drinking options out there. One of the premier out of bottle drinking experiences now and for the last 15 years has been the consistently overlooked, under-appreciated and sparsely marketed underground hip-hop scene. Sure, CDs and mp3s still float around, and there’s some consistent word of mouth when an underground artist rises to the surface, but all too often, incredible DJs and MCs stay underground, sometimes leaving us with less than we deserve.  For instance, one of the artists right now that exemplifies the fight against the mainstream record label, the need to speak honestly about the state of politics, the media and the record industry is Immortal Technique.  And yet, because labels are trying to tone down his message, he stays off them, and remains underground.

And you deserve the underground of Seattle. Yes. I said Seattle. The City of Rain isn’t just for Starbucks (scary stuff people) addicts, Seahawk fans, or long-haired flannel wearing musicians with the urge to turn their brains into a Jackson Pollack painting anymore. The indie (not grunge, indie) scene is pulsing with new musicians interested in turning the surroundings into a musical tapestry of depression AND hope. I thought a band like Throw Me the Statue showcased Seattle music at its best. Hip-Hop? You can find that in the Bay Area, LA, various havens on the East Coast. But not Seattle, not since Sir Mix-A-Lot or outside of the Lifesavas anyway. Or so I thought. Always exposed to new things through the IndieFeed Hip-Hop collective, I was recently turned onto Blue Scholars, an underground twosome from the Northwest with two albums for you to sink your ears into.

As with most prolific and worthwhile underground artists, the personal stories of the artists play an enormous role in the music they make, and the Blue Scholars, a play on blue collar, let their history and surroundings saturate every beat and line of their two cds, the 2004 release Blue Scholars and this year’s Bayani. They’re the answer to that question you have long contemplated but maybe never thought to ask…What do you get when you mix a Filipino rapper and an “Iranian American jazz-trained pianist” turned DJ? The result is a large spectrum of beats ranging from melancholy drifters to jazzy car cruisers, and lyrics examining the social, economic, and political systems in existence here in the United States. But when not tackling the socioeconomic divide, they still have the time and the skill to put together laid back summer day tracks that you can imagine coming out of stereos in the streets or from passing car windows.

What’s interesting in discovering these two albums at the same time, produced three years apart, is noting some of the similarities while also being able to see how far the group has come in their personal and musical mission. On Blue Scholars, the group sounds like your fundamental backpack crew. The delivery of the lyrics is laid back and easy to follow without sacrificing complexity of subject matter or rhyme scheme. Even on the songs with less of a message to send carry a sense of urgency to be heard. The beats are of a lower production value, giving it the basement studio sound, but still contain musical hooks and phrases that you can’t stop listening to. In short, it’s your typical stellar yet underfunded debut album from an underground hip-hop group. The subject matter tackles their origins as a group, their personal connections to the working class and life for a Seattle transplant.

Bayani, on the other hand, shows what three years can do to the growth and development of a musical sound. They come out sounding more secure, more focused and more intent on being heard. If Blue Scholars is a whisper from the basement, Bayani is a shout from the rooftops. Some of the more typical hip-hop beats of the first album are abandoned here for more complicated beats incorporating jazz and world sounds. The beats by Sabzi here are of a much higher quality, creating a more perfect tapestry for Geographic’s tightened and more lyrically calculated flow. You see glimpses of what he’s capable of as a lyricist on the first album, but the second album shows off just how talented he is in mixing potent wordplay, social observations and governmental condemnations into complicated phrases that roll off his tongue.

Bayani also refuses to let its political message be ignored. While Blue Scholars carries some references to the war and bits and pieces speaking against our current government (which really hasn’t changed much since the album’s release), Bayani is infused with an anti-war, anti-establishment message that makes some sort of appearance in every song, most notably “Back Home” which tackles the need to bring American troops back from Iraq and “50 Thousand Strong” which looks at the riots and subsequent police action at the WTO meetings in 1999. At the same time, they don’t forget the need for tracks that you can sit back to, which they fill with “Ordinary Guys” and the homage song to their hometown, “North By Northwest.”

So if you’re looking for some solid underground hip-hop from an unusual geographic location, look no further. It’s only fitting that an MC named Geographic could help make the traditional locations of genres irrelevant. Remember, when we change the way music is produced and recorded, we can change how it is distributed, where it comes from, how it becomes profitable, and who takes home that profit. So put the water bottles down good friends, go find that fresh water and take a sip…if it’s slightly strange at first, don’t be alarmed, give it time…we’ve been drinking garbage for so long.