Central Village

Cut

I've been hearing the nicest things about The Knife recently. I know a couple friends are calling it their album of the year. I've been meaning to track it down for months now, and finally did this weekend. Thoughts? Pretty good, but inconsistent at best. Some of the songs really don't work for me...sound too simplistic and hollow. Others completely nail it.

Forrest Families is the best track on the album, despite the completely nonsensical lyrics. It's laughable. They throw in a lot of edgy words that grab your attention like "Communist," but I can't follow them for the life of me. It still hits musically at all the right points tho. Would make for a great night-driving song.

The Knife - Forest Families (mp3)

Unrelated, but just got an email that Boris is playing a Vice party at the Annex at Midnight. It's free and there's no list as far as I can tell. I don't know much about them, but they sound pretty nuts. Pitchfork gave their latest album Pink an 8.7 and a Best New Music distinction. There may or may not be free Sparks too...can't tell from the flyer exactly what the deal is. Worth checking out either way.

Femme Degeneration

These guys totally ruled on Friday night. Femme Generation. Remember that name. It turned out it wasn't their first time ever playing in NYC, but the first in a very long time. I expect them to be back soon. The set felt way too short and the crowd was way too sparse, they played their little hearts out, coming down into the crowd before wrestling with each other and destroying the drum kit on stage by the end. Worth note is the bass player's amp, which I guess I didn't really get a good picture of, but was humongous. Taller than he was. His lines came through really strong as a result, adding a much welcomed umph behind these songs live.

Can download a few tracks from my last post. Some more pictures of the FG show after the jump...

Femmebots

I was poking around Pollox Niner this morning and saw she mentioned this band Femme Generation that is playing with Bishop Allen at Pianos tonight. They sound pretty rad. From Toronto and playing what I believe is their first US show ever tonight. Some of their stuff sounds like...off the top of my head....Ghostland Observatory meets Tokyo Police Club? But it really goes all over the place. No two songs sound all that much alike. Very Canadian. They look like they'd be unbelievable live too. I'm really looking forward to this.

Femme Generation - The Nation's Birthday (mp3)
Femme Generation - Heart in Stitches (mp3)
Femme Generation - Honestly, Trudy (mp3)

There's also Myspace, natch. You can stream the whole new album and download more tracks at their site as well.

The song that brought it all down

I had heard the name Micah P. Hinson thrown around a bit. I had the CD laying around somewhere in my room. Just another name, never thought much. I forget why or when I decided to listen to it, but I did and there was nothing that instantly grabbed me. Put it aside for a couple days. Went back to it yesterday randomly and something clicked. It's all I listened to last night while I was playing with my new computer, aside from and hour of Soul Patrol and McPheever. Uncomfortably soothing stuff. He's got a great voice and a beautiful knack for storytelling. The back story of being broke and homeless at age 19 before scraping himself together to make music again is almost as devastating as his music. It's gotta take a lot for a 22 year old kid to sound like this.

Listen closely to the Gruff echo of the lyrics throughout this song. Like there's a ghost in the studio. Or an old, toothless man shouting along from the back of a bar somewhere. Even more impressive is I'm pretty sure that's Micah in the background screaming along to his own melancholy. I could be wrong, but he plays everything else on the album, so why not the schizophrenic backing vocals as well?

Micah P. Hinson - The Leading Man (mp3)

That track just nails this one for me. The rest of the album is really strong as well. It's coming out the Tuesday after next, I believe (6.6.06). Keep an eye open for it.

Eating my Borscht-Flavored Words

Not to trip over my own feet too quickly, but I never really said I had a problem with Beirut. I was more offended by the fact that some guy came out of nowhere while I had stepped away for a second and became an indie sensation. I think the album is interesting and has at least one excellent track, but has yet to really blow me away yet. The songs were much more impressive live, however. The solitary trumpet stands out so much more, and watching this kid swap between that and his ukulele mid song was great to watch. Probably most important was that the music finally had my full attention. Whether it's a fault of the band or my awful attention span I've yet to figure out, but listening to it in the background while I set up my new computer or edit a database at work did not leave me with much of an impression at all. With all my attention on stage, watching the songs develop and play out as they do seemed much more on point.

Following them were Sunset Rubdown, who sounded even better than they did in LA a few weeks earlier. Opening with a solo 'I Believe in Anything' most likely was an effort to cut off the know-it-all requestors at the pass. When someone asked for it in LA, Krug deadpanned "We haven't played that song since we recorded it." After 3 weeks of hearing the same request, he most likely just wanted to get it out of the way to avoid the focus being taken off the rest of the band and their work, which is of course nothing short of stunning.

Krug seemed to enjoy himself the most as the keyboardist in Frog Eyes. He, for the first time I've ever been present, seemed completely relaxed and to be enjoying himself. Couldn't get my head around Frog Eyes, however. Not awful, just a little too busy for my taste. The lead singer does look a bit like a frog, amusingly. That was my favorite part.

When you say it's gonna happen now

How good is tATu? Seriously. Completely overlooked as a flash in the pan, these girls have had remarkable staying power. Next time you hear 'All the Things She Said' at a club, watch the reaction of the crowd. Complete pandemonium. Take away all the superfluous plotting and positioning with the whole faux-gay thing and you're left with at least a couple (Not Gonna Get Us was always my fav) killer songs. There are no two ways about it.

Anyway, inspired by a comment on Stereogum, I tracked down the "spectacular" tATu cover of The Smith's "How Soon is Now?". With the exception of Paul Simon, there are few artists tougher to cover than Morrissey. tATu does well, however. Have a listen.

tATu - How Soon Is Now (mp3)

Denmark is the New Sweden, Canada still Canada

Not too long ago, I came across this band from Denmark called UTAH. Pretty epic stuff. I imagine some people may hear some of these songs and shout Radiohead ripoff, but I think there's a lot more them than just that. The soaring vocals and dramatic quiet loud quiet thing is there, but the songs seem to have a bit more cohesiveness than your average OK Computer clone. I like them a lot, have been listening to the tracks I got of Garage Band a whole bunch over the last couple weeks.

Here are a couple tracks below. Doesn't look like there are any plans to come back here yet, but hopefully soon. I was surprised to see that they played Sin-e in New York, as well as a few other cities in the states not too long ago.

UTAH - DDA (mp3)
UTAH - Alien Battle (mp3)

My other obsession of the time being is Toronto's Tokyo Police Club, who, despite me only hearing three songs of theirs and being out of town when they recently came to New York, seem poised to become the band to watch. I can't tell you why, except the right people seem to be talking about them already and catchy, quirky bands that sound like a lot of things without coming off as derivative seems to be the perfect formula these days. They've been my default answer for whenever somebody hears that I write a music blog and asks me what the next big thing is gonna be for a few weeks now. (pic via BV)

Hopefully they come back to NYC soon too. Here are some songs. Nature of the Experiment is my Myspace profile song.

Tokyo Police Club - The Nature of the Experiment (mp3)
Tokyo Police Club - Cheer in On (mp3)

I just don't know what to do with myself...

Sorry for the lack of content of late. If you know me personally, you may be aware I've been rather distracted by matters I most certainly cannot discuss here. Nonetheless...

Pitchfork Fest Preparty looks perfect. Aziz, Eugene, Barry, Joggers, Voxtrot and Sunset Rubdown. Party starts at 9 and my flight doesn't land till 10. Rats. Hopefully I'll get there in time to hang out for a little.

I went to see Naughty By Nature on Wednesday night. It was a lot of fun. As I said in the forthcoming Gothamist review, I was a massive fan of these guys when I was younger. If you were too, I'd recommend going to check them out next time they play nearby. It's quite fun. I posted some pictures from the show up on Flickr.

Also saw Guns and Roses earlier this week too, speaking of bands I loved when I was younger. Fun, had it's moments, but was hardly blown away. The new band was more of a distraction than I thought they'd be. Axl sounded great, but he moved old. Some songs were amazing (November Rain, in particular), some were just ok. Nothing was really bad, tho. Glad I didn't miss it, but I wouldn't have paid to go a second night. No pictures, I'm afraid. Wasn't allowed in with my camera.

How I met your Mother Finale? Holy amazing. Great ending, serious emotional punch. Even more so than The Office finale, which was pretty stellar too. Bloc Party's "Modern Love" finale was the PERFECT cherry on top. Got me listening to that album again. That show just can't do wrong. I hope it continues for seasons and seasons. Here, for old time's sake. Listen to it again if it's been a while...

Bloc Party - This Modern Love (mp3)

Jeez, what else...Tonight, I hope everyone comes down to Mercury Lounge at 9:00 for Slowlands. Stick around for Land of Talk, who sounded really great on KEXP this morning. Here are a couple mp3s for both:

Slowlands - Listener's Dilemma (mp3)
Slowlands - Eisenstein (mp3)
Land of Talk - Sea Foam (mp3)
Land of Talk - Speak to me Bones (mp3)

Angels & Airwaves will save your life

Or so Tom Delonge would like you to believe.

The show wasn't bad at all. The music wasn't, at least. Delonge means well I'm sure, but I think he may have just lost his mind. Went off on these genuine, yet completely sappy rants about what it feels like to be in love, the pettiness of war and stuff like that. He sounded like he really meant it, which is nice, but it came off sounding completely nuts. Or sarcastic. Except he was straight faced and dead serious. And the kids hung on every word he said. It was kind of creepy, actually.

Anyway, good, catchy Pop-Prog stuff. Heavy 80's influence, but not embarrassing or offensive or anything. I enjoyed myself for the most part, at least when the music was playing. Not nearly as much as some people did tho. A couple things I heard afterwords outside of Bowery:

"That, like, changed my life!"
-Young kid, 13 years old or so, to his father.

"That was the most amazing show I've ever seen"
-Some meathead looking guy, aged 16-22.

"I touched his foot once, his knee twice and his hand once...When he said "If this guitar wasn't here, you'd totally be touching my dick," that was me!"
-Some 16-22 yr old, perfectly normal looking guy.

Well then.

Lots more pics after the jump...

Tripwire blog chart

I'm not 100% sure what this is, but I submitted a list, as did a pretty healthy number of the blogs I read. I know in the future there's gonna be a Sirius radio show based around this and it makes everyone feel somewhat important. The list shouldn't surprise you if you stay up to date with all this stuff, but it'll be a good barometer of what everybody's really listening to/talking about. I think it's a great idea, and I'm more than happy to participate. I'm glad SOMEBODY will be making money off all our hard work.

You can see the whole list here. Here was my top 10, submitted on May 3rd:

The Walkmen
Slowlands
Sunset Rubdown
The Riverboat Gamblers
Cloud Cult
Minus the Bear
Brand New
Russian Circles
The Sounds
Land of Talk

Needless to say, it was a pretty off the top of my head list. Still, I stand by it. Even the questionable picks. Only one of my picks cracked final list, mind you. I'm ok with that.

I've been really busy this week, but I've got a growing backlog of bands and shows I wanna talk about. GnR, Ghostland, Hockey Night, Joggers, Giant Drag, Tokyo Police Club, Utah, and more. I'm also coming down with some sort of smoke machine-induced cold/sore throat from last night, so bear with me.

This week I'm seeing Angels and Airwaves tonight (really), then maybe Another round of Ghostland at Delancey if I'm not dying by them, tomorrow I'm seeing Naughty by Nature and Black Sheep (really), Thursday is Sam Champion at Southpaw (click on the flyer to enlarge) Friday is Land of Talk and Slowlands, Saturday I'm going to Connecticut, and Sunday I'm going to the National.

By the way, Ghostland Observatory is on KEXP at 4:00. Listen if you can.