Playing Catch-Up: Several Short Reviews

Okay, there are a lot of albums from 2009 that I haven’t reviewed yet and it’s already 2010. This doesn’t really bother me, but when I look at the stack of albums I have to review, there are some that I just don’t have that much to say about. Because I update with a frequency that can best be described as erratic, I like the posts to be of a length that might justify the time between them. And some albums, try as I might, don’t inspire much verbosity from me. This is not always because I dislike the album.

Anyway, I decided to put together a collection of shorter reviews of albums I’ve listened to, some of which I think you should listen to and some of which I think no one should listen to. In alphabetical order, even:

Alec Ounsworth, Mo Beauty. You might know Mr. Ounsworth as the uber-nasally vocalist for Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and it’s a reasonable bet that, if his voice chased you away from that band, it will chase you away from his solo debut as well. You know, ’cause it’s still him singing. Anyway, Mo Beauty is actually kinda beautiful. I haven’t had as much time to listen to it as I would like, but every time I do, I enjoy it. Ounsworth is a little more folky on this album and by “folky” I mean “folk by way of David Byrne and Tom Waits”, which is hardly a bad thing. Ounsworth’s best work is still the first Clap Your Hands Say Yeah record, but Mo Beauty is good in its own right.

The Cribs, Ignore the Ignorant. I’ve already mentioned that “We Were Aborted” is a thunderously badass way to open an album. Ignore the Ignorant doesn’t get any better than its opener, but it drops down to a fairly consistent level of quality. Gary Jarman has a pretty pleasing voice, one minute crooning like Dave Gahan, the next yowling like Johnny Rotten. I didn’t like this album much when I first heard it (after “We Were Aborted”, which I loved instantly), but it’s actually done a lot of growing on me and I find more to like with each listen. Not a bad choice for people who miss the Libertines.

Devendra Banhart, What Will We Be. I’m probably gonna catch hell for this, but somewhere in the time between Cripple Crow and What Will We Be, I stopped being able to tell the difference between Devendra Banhart and Jack Johnson. I know Banhart looks like Charles Manson, and his music a bit more sophisticated than Johnson’s but I can’t help feeling like Banhart fills the same niche for indie kids that Johnson fills for frat kids. I’ve listened to What Will We Be about eight times now and I find myself drifting off about half way through every time. I’ve made an honest effort and, well, I just don’t give a fuck about this album. Moving on…

Franz Ferdinand, Blood. This is the “dub” version of Tonight. I don’t really care for dub music, but Blood is actually not entirely intolerable. If you think Tonight is not ravey enough, this might help you out. Incidentally, I listened to this album on headphones on a long subway ride and enjoyed the hell of it. That’s a pretty specific context in which to enjoy an album, but I stand by it.

Fruit Bats, The Ruminant Band. A dude from the Shins. I think his name is Eric Johnson. This record is like an indie version of the Supertramp songs I liked from the Magnolia soundtrack and the only Led Zeppelin album I like, Led Zeppelin III. I’m gonna pretend that tells you everything you need to know about The Ruminant Band.

Girls, Album. Pitchfork went all gooey over this album, but I don’t get it. It sounds like Wheatus. Fuck this album.

The Gossip, Music for Men. This album, on the other hand, is pretty rad. Beth Ditto is a big, fat, Katy Perry-hating dyke and I would adore her on those grounds alone, but the fact that she can straight up belt shit out is icing on a giant lesbian cake. This was my surprise pop album of 2009, like the first Santogold record (she’s Santigold now, I guess. I don’t care as long as she stays awesome) – something that sounded abhorrent to me on paper but was absolute candy for my ears. Ditto’s voice may be too strident for some, but it’s a real voice in an age of auto-tune and you gotta raise your glass to that.

Iggy Pop, Preliminaires. I just never knew what to say about an album that features Iggy Pop singin’ cabaret style, often in French. I dig this record for existing, but I hardly ever listen to it. Make of that what you will.

Karen O and the Kids, Where the Wild Things Are Soundtrack. Karen O and some kids having a lot of fun in a studio. I like the cut of this album’s jib and feel deep shame for having not seen the movie yet. The film is written by Dave Eggers, who is awesome. He co-wrote the screenplay for Away We Go and if you haven’t see that yet, stop what you’re doing and watch it right now.

Kings of Convenience, Declaration of Dependence. This is easy: the degree to which you are put off by the forced cuteness of this album title is the degree to which you’ll probably not have patience for the album itself. I’ll cop to liking the Kings of Convenience, though. They come up at the perfect times when my Songbird is on random, but listening to a whole album of theirs could induce a coma. They make Riceboy Sleeps sound like Black Fucking Flag.

Marilyn Manson, The High End of Low. I know I’m passing up easy jokes about how Manson worships David Bowie here, but the fact is Marilyn Manson made one great album called Holy Wood that was equal parts tuneful and wrathful and he’s never had that kind of fire since. While The High End of Low isn’t as cringe-inducingly emo as 2007′s utterly ill-advised Eat Me, Drink Me, it is still pretty awful. To illustrate my point: on Holy Wood, Manson pretty blatantly jacked the riff from Blur’s “Song 2″ for “The Fight Song,” but I forgave him for it because “The Fight Song” is still one of the best things to crank up when you’re pissed off. On The High End of Low, Manson gives us “We’re From America”, which astute (by which I mean “non-comatose”) readers will recognize as a shameless and wholly inferior ripoff of LCD Soundsystem’s “North American Scum.” Maybe getting the swine flu will give Manson a much-needed boost of inspiration, but I’m not holding my breath.

Taken by Trees, East of Eden. So this Swedish indie singer goes to Pakistan and… well, it’s not a joke. Victoria Bergsman, once of the Concretes (an occasionally good band), took a trip to Pakistan and recorded East of Eden, her second album as Taken by Trees. How good does this album have to be to surmount the pretension of a spiritual journey to Pakistan and an Animal Collective cover? Exactly as good as it is. This album is truly lovely, and not a little surprising for that fact.

Deck = cleared. I should have some thoughts for you on some late-2009 finds (including stuff from Soulsavers, Lucero, and the late Vic Chesnutt) and the new Vampire Weekend record very soon. And by “very soon” I mean “????????”….

Danger Mouse vs. Danger Mouse. The Winner? You

We all know by now that DJ Danger Mouse rocketed to notoriety by remixing Jay-Z’s The Black Album with The Beatles’ White Album. The result was a pretty decent record called The Grey Album and it infuriated Mr. Z that someone would toss fresh beats onto the a cappella version of his album. You might be inclined to ask why Jay-Z would bother releasing an a cappella version of a hip-hop album if he didn’t want you to fuck with it. The bottom line, at any rate, is that The Grey Album will never see the light of day. It has been passed around by industrious bootleggers, but don’t expect it to come to your local FYE.

Danger Mouse has produced works for Gorillaz, collaborated with the likes of MF Doom, The Good, the Bad, and the Queen, and, of course, with Cee-Lo as the duo Gnarls Barkley.

Gnarls Barkley released “Crazy,” the catchiest single… um… ever in advance of St. Elsewhere, their debut. St. Elsewhere never lived up to the promise of “Crazy.” It wasn’t a dreadful album but it felt a little like a joke. It was just compelling enough to make my ears perk up when I heard that Gnarls was releasing a second album. So maybe they mean it after all?

The Odd Couple is a pop pleasure; it’s infinitely more melodic (if occasionally more melodramatic – “Open Book” is a little bit over the top) than its predecessor and it hangs together like a real album. It opens with the vague social concern song “Charity Case”, which is about as serious as the album gets. We can’t all be Billy Bragg, but you can throw Gnarls Barkley on at a party without killing everyone’s buzz. As much love as I have for Mr. Bragg, I cannot make the same claim about him.

Pound for pound, The Odd Couple has funkier beats, more interesting melodies, and more hooks than St. Elsewhere. I made it through St. Elsewhere about twice before I gave up on everything but “Crazy” (which the radio had already made me sick of) and the Violent Femmes cover “Gone Daddy Gone.” But I’ve been able to enjoy The Odd Couple several times now, and actually enjoy it more every time I hear it. It’s a testament to Danger Mouse’s talent that he can so adequately tailor his style to compliment his collaborators. He finds beats here that are the perfect backdrop for Cee-Lo’s high-pitched howling and the result is a light, fun listen unlike 90% of the pop music you can listen to today.

As if to prove that he can (and should) collaborate with anyone, Danger Mouse produced the new Black Keys album Attack & Release. It was originally to be a collaboration between the Keys and Ike Turner, produced by Danger Mouse. Turner, however, died before the sessions could be completed (cocaine is a helluva drug). The Black Keys were left with a handful of songs and a fantastic producer, and so they went to work putting together Attack & Release, arguably their best album to date.

I’ve been a Black Keys fan since Thickfreakness, which I listened to solely because it struck me as a righteously bold move for two white dudes from Ohio to name their album Thickfreakness. But it was a heavy motherfucker of an album, packed with some of the least watered-down blues I’ve heard this side of Hendrix. (The Black Keys have, on occasion, denied being a blues band – and they aren’t really – but the fact is, a lot of their songs are the blues and we really should be grateful. A lot of white guys have really  co-opted and fucked up the blues, but the Black Keys seem to have a genuine grasp of the looseness, loudness, and unbridled woe required to make good blues.) The Black Keys kept trucking along right up through Rubber Factory, where they really tried to expand their sound (let’s face it – there’s only so much you can do with two people in your band). And then came Magic Potion, an album with eleven tracks, just like Attack & Release, only Magic Potion feels like it’s several hours longer. You could hear Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney wading through the sludge of their sound, trying to find more to do with drums and guitar, guitar and drums.

So along comes Danger Mouse with his bag of tricks and provides The Black Keys with a much-needed shot in the arm. Attack & Release owes as much to The Band as it does to The Black Keys’ usual blues influences and it is full of the sort of rich textures you can have when there are more than two people in your band – there are flutes, organs, contra bass clarinets (!), and a lot more harmony vocals on Attack & Release than on any previous Black Keys record, and while all that extra instrumentation can run the risk of giving you a bloated turd of an album, in the capable hands of Danger Mouse, it’s all sliced and diced together into a lean, mean, heavy, and excellent rock record. “All You Ever Wanted,” leads off the set, a pretty blatant signal that this is not the same ol’ Black Keys on Attack & Relase. Of course, the album would suck if it was all tender ballads and organ solos, so the Black Keys toss in some very expected jams like “I Got Mine.” But in the context of the album as a whole, even the songs that sound just like other Black Keys songs have a fresh energy to them. The Black Keys never needed to abandon their bread-and-butter stuff (loud guitars and crashing drums), but they definitely needed to put more meat on the bones. And Danger Mouse provided them with a great opportunity to do it.

Ordinarily, I’d frown a mighty frown on a band putting two versions of the same song on an album – I usually don’t care that you couldn’t settle on which mix was better. Not that interesting. “Remember When (Side A)” and “Remember When (Side B)” are a great exception, however. Forming the centerpiece of Attack & Release, these two versions of “Remember When” are about as different as they can be. Obviously, the lyrics are the same, but Side A is a plaintive, lilting ballad and Side B is a full-on rocker, stuffed with all the stuff I loved about The Black Keys in the first place. Hopefully the Black Keys will continue to collaborate and experiment in the future, or at least hire a few more musicians full-time.

For my money, The Black Keys is the better of this year’s two Danger Mouse albums (so far – he could and hopefully will give us another DangerDoom album before years’ end). It’s a fantastic rock record produced by a man with a gift for hearing the exact sound a band or singer needs and artfully producing it. But you could do worse than picking up both albums and deciding for yourself. Because when DJ Danger Mouse produces, the winner is always you.

Tapes ‘n Tapes vs. Destroyer. The Prize? I Will Call the Winner’s Album Kind of Good

Say what you will about Tapes ‘n Tapes, but they play to their strengths which are as follows: they’re good musicians. Great drumming, awesome guitar work, pretty decent bass player. Lyrically? Well, actually…

I don’t know. I’ve listened to Walk It Off, their latest effort, several times now and I have no fucking clue what Josh Grier is saying. The album is not terrible. I like the melodies, the instruments sound great (thanks to that oft-producer of Flaming Lips albums, David Fridmann), but the only line I understand is, oddly enough, when Grier shouts on “George Michael,” “and you can’t understand what we say!”

The songs are good enough, I guess. They sometimes make me wish I was listening to Transmissions from the Satellite Heart by The Flaming Lips or any of the Delgados albums (Fridmann produced some good shit for those defunct Delgados), which is not necessarily a compliment – I mean, your album probably shouldn’t make people want to listen to other albums. You know, that aren’t yours. The fact is, though, The Loon, the Tapes ‘n Tapes debut, was a quirky little bastard of an album and you could forgive it for sounding too much like this or that because it was a pretty playful outing. Walk It Off, on the other hand, is a pretty serious-sounding affair. Not bad, mind you, but it’s like getting dry toast when you want southern barbecue. It’ll help your hunger, but you’re not gonna invite your friends over for dry toast and tap water.

So Destroyer wins the prize here with Trouble in Dreams. Not that Dan Bejar’s new record is a rack of ribs and a cold IPA to Tapes ‘n Tapes’ dry toast, but it’s an enjoyable listen. Bejar sets the mood effectively on the first line of the album: “Okay, fine, even the sky looks like wine.” This is a clue – pour a glass of something strong (this is a red wine album if ever there was one) and prepare to sit through Bejar’s sometimes too-clever, often crazed accounts of whatever the fuck he’s talking about.

I tried to listen to this album in my car, which is the entirely wrong context for 2 reasons. First, obviously, you can’t drink red wine while driving to work. And second, car listening is great for albums that you can stop in the middle (when you get out of your car) and jump right back into (when you get back in your car, maybe eight hours later). Trouble in Dreams is an awful car album not because the music is bad (it’s good) but because Bejar really creates a mood from start to finish. Meditative, playful, confused, sarcastic, Bejar is doing some serious emotional traveling and it doesn’t flow well if you’re hopping out to work a day in between doses of Destroyer.

But when I can sit down and listen to this album all the way through, I’m struck by it. I should fucking hate Destroyer. He sounds like a cross between Kenny Loggins and James Taylor with just enough of a young Bowie thing going on to force you to spare his life. Of course, Bejar’s voice is what it is; and he actually does a lot with it.

What I dig about Trouble in Dreams is that, on balance, it’s like Dan Bejar invited a bunch of friends and a few foes over to his house for some serious discussion but he got too drunk and his attention span shrank. And now we’re sitting back and watching him go on these tirades about Leopards of Honor and something about “the fucking horizon.” It’s some weird romantic mess (and the bonus is no singer operating today, not a single one of them, can enunciate an f-bomb the way Dan Bejar can. Let’s see Kenny Loggins do that!) and I’m telling you right now that it’s kind of good but I can tell it’s gonna grow on me. There’s a balance to be struck with Trouble in Dreams and a bottle of red wine – somewhere as the album plays on and the level in the bottle decreases, something sublime will transpire. If this weren’t a fucking Wednesday, I’d put this theory to the test forthwith.