Hospitality

Well, MXP has done it again.  He recommended Hospitality’s self-titled debut album and I liked it.  He’s 2 for 2.

I think the word that comes to mind when I think of this album is “lovely”.  Per Wikipedia, “Hospitality is an American Indie pop trio from Brooklyn, New York, formed in 2007 and consisting of Amber Papini (vocals, guitar), Brian Betancourt (bass) and Nathan Michel (percussion). The band is currently signed to Merge Records and released their first full-length album on January 31, 2012.”   Papini has a lovely voice that sounded reminiscent of Petula Clark or some other 60s British singer.  That these guys are from Brooklyn seems pretty run of the mill but I would have sworn they were British.  The British accent that Papini sings with should seem annoyingly pretentious a la Madonna, but I just find it charming.  Part of it is probably my current “Downton Abbey” obsession.  Part of it is also the sweet songs.  There’s “Liberal Arts”, a song than any liberal arts major can identify with, “So you found the lock/ But not the key that college brings/ And all the trouble of your B.A. in English literature/ Instead of law, or something more practical”.  Then there’s the dreamy “Sleepover”: “Lock the door, I’ll take your coat/ Let’s pretend that it’s summer,” she sings.  There are a lot of doors and keys and locks on this album.  Lots of comings and goings.  In “Betty Wang” she shouts, “If you leave New York/ I don’t care, I don’t care!” teased by electric guitars, trotting drums, twinkling keyboards.  And then there’s their single, “Friends of Friends” that has a Strokes-esque opening and then swings into story of friendship. After she sighs, “When I call / You don’t pick up any more,” she tries to pick herself up and dust herself off “friends that are new friends and friends that are old friends”.  The album sounds young and exploring and fun and groovy.  Yes, groovy—that’s another word for this album!  This album isn’t breaking new ground or changing the world.  But like I said, it’s sweet and lovely and groovy.  And a totally pleasure to listen to.

Next week, I’m going to give Sharon Van Etten’s Tramp a shot.

21

When I said last week that I had no idea what I’d be listening to next, it was a bold-faced lie. Maybe I wasn’t sure what I’d be listening to “for the blog,” but my plan for my headphones was crystal clear: Adele, Adele, Adele. Last week, right before the Grammys, I finally broke down and bought Adele’s 21. I kept looking for it over and over again on Spotify, but after continuous thwarting, I was forced to revert to the 90s and pay for music (I know what I sound like, and I’m thinking a lot about the implications of Spotify and other sharing apps, but I’ll have to come back to this…).

I’ve been meaning to listen to this album since the first time I heard “Rolling in the Deep” on the radio. During these painful months where I’ve been effectively cock-blocked by Spotify, I’ve been trolling our local Top 40 radio stations, hoping to catch a few notes of one of her singles. Luckily, it never takes long.

Before two weeks ago, those singles were all I knew of Adele, but in the past two weeks I’ve embarked on a full-scale immersion program. It began in earnest when I stumbled upon her Live from the Artists Den special, during a bout of late-night channel surfing. Watch some of the highlights on Hulu:

The show itself was super stripped down—just her, a pianist, and a guitar player in a small auditorium. She’s sitting on a bar stool, feet dangling, effortlessly belting out these soul-crushing ballads, her voice absolutely powerful and perfect. Yet despite her instantly iconic singing and songwriting, she looks like your friend from high school who’s thrown on ridiculous false eyelashes and is practicing for her upcoming chorus concert at your kitchen table. She’s not really cool, but she’s not at all self-conscious, and she’s pouring everything she’s got into those songs.

This is what I love about Adele. She’s not a celebrity, but she is a huge talent, and her star power comes completely from her voice. Later that week as I watched the Grammys, with Lady Gaga carrying a ridiculous scepter and hiding behind a black onion bag mask and Nicki Minaj exorcising herself, I felt so excited that the big winner of the night, the one we were all waiting for, has the sense and the class to rely solely on her talent. In a world where celebrity has become more and more about the glittering, tweeted, Perez Hiltoned façade, it’s beyond refreshing to watch someone make it because she’s just too fucking amazing to not be famous.

Grammys Adele was a microcosm of what makes her even greater—she looked like that same high school friend going to the prom: wearing a modest party dress, with her hair kind of a mess, completely graceful and charming, but snotting on herself when she got overwhelmed by the emotional weight of the occasion. Her speeches were short, sweet, and virtually unintelligible. Her post-surgery return to triumph was flawless. If there’s something not to like about this woman, please no one ever tell me.

In the meantime, if you haven’t listened to 21, you just should. It’s a delight from start to finish.

For next week, I’ll listen to Johnny Cash’s 1994 American Recordings. During my Adele binge, I learned that 21 was produced by Rick Rubin and that she credits him as a major force in making it as good as it is. I also love the Rubin-produced Taking the Long Way by the Dixie Chicks, who also sing the praises of his magical touch. So, although I love Johnny Cash for his badass self, I’m choosing this album solely for the producer. I might go on a full-scale Rick Rubin kick for the next few weeks, because the man knows what he’s doing.

Lady MIN-jah

I called myself out in my last post about the calcification of my musical tastes.  I mean, I don’t have any shame about loving the old style(s), but, obvs, my failure to listen to stuff folks are making now is embarrassing and an indictment of my own cultural myopias.  Which is precisely why writing for this blog is such an amazing thing; it prevents my musical brain from GOPing* itself into a puddle of cantankerousness.

This whole point was brought home crazily dramatically last week when La Girlfriend was talking to me about the Grammys and referred to the success of one Aah-de-LAY and the crazy performance of one Lady MIN-jah (rhymes with ninja).  After receiving a blank stare from me, I asked her if she was referring to Adele and Nicki Minaj.  Which she was.  While I love and bless her, that living example of “whatever you young’uns are listening to these days” scared me.  A lot.  In that moment, I realized that I’ve seriously been meaning to listen to Nicki Minaj’s Pink Friday.

Nicki Minaj's Pink Friday

So much written about Nicki Minaj seems to be more about her fashion than her music.  That being said, this quote from the recent NY Mag article about her really screamed to me:  “And it’s no coincidence she’s also the first woman to make a legitimate case for herself as hip-hop’s top dog.  Or that doing it, as a woman, has meant turning herself into a doll-eyed candy-colored chameleon, converting talk shows and red carpets into manga strips with impossibly dyed, sometimes dichromatic wigs and a mind-bending array of improbably flattering gear…[s]hape-shifting is a survival mechanism for a lady in rap:  If you stay in one place, the latent male aggression will gut you like a fish.”

Minaj is performative in a way that seems totally unique.  Unlike Lil’ Kim—who you just can’t help thinking does it all because she is desperate for the always lost gaze of Biggie and is still trying to top Faith Evans—or Missy Elliott—who butches it (mebbe because she is, mebbe because one way of handling the misogyny is to submerge overt “girlieness”)—or Lady Gaga—who seems to really just be deeply insecure about her FACE and so throws all kinds of pyrotechnics to guarantee that no one looks behind the curtain to actually see her—Minaj makes femininity the most insane caricature of all time.  And that isn’t to say that Kim, Missy and Gaga aren’t performing certain femininities; they clearly are, but Minaj makes the expectations of the feminine RIDICULOUS and she somehow doesn’t get lost in her own hyper color-saturated salvation show.  Gaga without the egg would be Dorothy in Kansas.   Nicki without the neon would still be a forceful badass.  As Kanye puts it in one of the tracks, Blazin’:  I think, without makeup, you still bad as hell.

That idea of being stripped is real.  In Dear Old Nicki she rhymes: You never switched it up/You played the same part/But I needed to grow/And I needed to know/That there were something inside of me that I need to show/So I just deaded you/Left you in all black/But dear old Nicki/Please call back.

That line reminds me of one of my favorite poems, To Myself, by W.S. Merwin:

Even when I forget you

I go on looking for you

I believe I would know you

I keep remembering you

sometimes long ago but then

other times I am sure you

were here for a moment before

and the air is still alive

around where you were and I

think then I can recognize

you who are always the same

who pretend to be time but

you are not time and who speak

in the words but you are not

what they say you who are not

lost when I do not find you

I could go into a whole thing here about black women, media, and the inherent tension between and pain inherent in denials of black femininity alongside the hyper-portrayals of black female sexuality.  Basically, Minaj explodes these social burdens by both incorporating whiteness through her alter-egos Roman and his upper-crusty British mother AND making her femininity and sexuality cartoonish, plastic and impossible.   That fakeness is more real than a lot of crap going on in music right now.

Ok, taking the grad school hat off now.

Girlfriend can work the fuck out of a sample.  She is giving me Annie Lennox (Your Love), the freaking Buggles (Check it Out) and Simple Minds (Blazin’).  The shout out to the hard-wired music preference days of my early teens, endears her to me.  As an MC, she seems solid.  Solid-ish?  I mean, she is surrounding herself in crazy good company:  Kanye, Will.I.Am, Eminem.  Her rhymes aren’t laughable, but I wasn’t going damn all the time either.  I’m also not exactly an expert in the world of hip-hop.  I know what I like, I listen to what I listen to, but that knowledge is not large.  She leans pop, so this music is squarely within my own pleasure principle.  Her actually singing voice sounds to me like a slightly less auto-tuned Rhianna.

I still have no idea what this was:

But I am feeling this album something crazy.  I mean, you’d basically have to be dead to not have heard Super Bass (or, well, a fan of Lady Minja), but this was the best stretch I have done in awhile.  Late to the game is better than never arriving.

*GOP [gee-oh-pee] verb (1) To actively ignore societal and cultural progress so as to hew closer to personal and irrationally held beliefs that are increasingly narrow, unsupportable, irrelevant, moribund or otherwise outmoded or outdated.

Even at her worst, Nippy was the best

I know I said I was going to review Mick Hucknall’s Tribute to Bobby, but that’s going to have to wait until next time. Given the events of the last week, today I’m listening to Whitney Houston’s final album, I Look to You.

Full disclosure: I have already listened to the album. I’ve owned it for years.  But I gave it another listen to review it here anyway, because I know most people haven’t heard it.

I bought the album in 2010, when Whitney was in the midst of a much-hyped comeback attempt. She was doing the Oprah show and other press junkets. She was candidly addressing her substance abuse struggles and crappy marriage to the one I will not name here. She looked gorgeous. I was rooting so hard for her.

Like much of the world, I was captivated by Whitney back in 1985, when she opened her mouth and revealed one of the wonders of the world. My amateur singing career began when I took the stage in a middle school talent show, closed by eyes and sang You Give Good Love, all the while imagining that I was that lady. From that day on the principal called me “Whitney.” That was awesome.

For decades to come, Whitney’s voice wasn’t just something I loved, it was something that helped me get through life. That adoration endured through high school (I’m Your Baby Tonight – yes!), college (The Bodyguard soundtrack –yessssss!!), law school (The Waiting to Exhale soundtrack, released right when my engagement broke up, lawdhammercy yes, y’all!) and beyond (another divorce-like breakup a few years back necessitated the loud and repeated play of It’s Not Right, But It’s Okay. YES!!)

But by 2010, the world had for years seen a different Whitney. We had seen – literally, on a reality show – our angelically talented power-mezzo-soprano spiral out of control into a skinny, sweaty, jittery mess. But I hoped and prayed that she could right herself.  I knew the Greatest Voice of All was long gone. But I was praying  she still had something to give musically, and I wanted to be in her corner, so of course I bought her album. And I liked it.

Let me be clear, the damage caused by years of lively dangerously was clearly audible in her voice. It had a raspy, delicate quality that was absent in her early years. But that quality didn’t completely camouflage the beauty in her voice. Listening to was is like welcoming home a good friend who had fallen on hard times. You coundn’t help but open your heart and say “welcome.”

Honestly, the worst part of the album is the songwriting, not the singing. I wish Clive Davis had given her better material than some of the schmaltzy crap on there. Because on the good songs, like my favorite track Worth It shows, she could still soar – if she worked hard enough at it.

I also like the pop tracks, like the Alicia Keys-penned Million Dollar Bill. You can tell that she was having fun, and that she still wanted to dance with somebody.

The fact that Whitney – even with a voice ravaged by time, abuse, and neglect – could still make an album that’s better than a lot of stuff that is being released out there in the pop and R&B world makes her loss even more tragic. You will be painfully missed, Nippy.

 

Loving Loveless

I picked this week’s listening assignment by going through Pitchfork’s list of the Top 100 Albums of the 1980s from the top. I still have some embarrassing holes in my knowledge of non-mainstream music from the 80s, which I blame on living in Delaware during the dark pre-Internet days. It’s not that it was impossible to hear new music back then — the University of Delaware did have a radio station, after all — but it was an uphill climb for a sheltered oldest child with limited funds to spend on records.

Most of the white guys in my high school were either preppies who listened to classic rock and the Dead, or “Ozzies” (as my friends and I called them) who listened to hard rock and metal. Prince and Michael Jackson were for girls—though “Beat It” had an Eddie Van Halen solo, so it was OK. I spent my high school years studying the Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock and Roll, trying to make sure I knew every band Eric Clapton was in. Thankfully this didn’t last forever. Bands like Talking Heads and English Beat, introduced to me by my older friends, opened the door to less mainstream music. By senior year, I had several Art of Noise records, was a huge fan of XTC, and shocked myself by enjoying the first Pet Shop Boys album. (“It’s disco!” cried my stepfather, who probably went to a disco record-burning party in the 70s, or at least wanted to.)

Thanks to 120 Minutes on MTV, I wasn’t completely clueless by the time I got to college. I arrived in 1987 having just months ago learned of The Cure, The Smiths and The Pogues. I knew who the Sex Pistols were, but had never actually listened to them. Meanwhile, the art kids on the fourth floor were listening to Bauhaus and Joy Division. I would go to the campus record store and look at the names of groups I knew nothing about and wasn’t sure if I would be able to stomach: Sonic Youth, Butthole Surfers, Hüsker Dü, Dead Kennedys, Screaming Trees. How many bands were there, anyway? And did they all sound as scary as their names?

I feel like I’m just now catching up. Going through Pitchfork’s list from #1 down, the top ten are almost entirely albums I capital-L love (with the exception of Joy Division, whom I still don’t know that well apart from that song), where #11-20 already gets into territory I’m unfamiliar with. (I don’t know The Fall or PIL as well as I should, and what the Sam Hill is This Heat?) My Bloody Valentine jumped out at #22 as a band whose name I had seen thousands of times without having any idea what they sounded like. For some reason, I imagined they would sound like The Jesus & Mary Chain.

Turns out I wasn’t that far off. Loveless, their acclaimed second album from 1991, has the effects-heavy guitar drone of Psychocandy — which I know is referred to as shoegazing! Still catching up over here — but its oddly pretty, thanks to the sweet voices of guitarists Bilinda Butcher and Kevin Shields. It’s like a harder, less loopy Cocteau Twins, or Yo La Tengo if they had less ridiculous voices and a drummer shipped in from Manchester. You can hear echoes of Loveless throughout the rest of the 90s — apparently Radiohead, Trent Reznor and Robert Pollard were all huge fans.

I wouldn’t say the songs are catchy. I’ve listened to the album three times this week and can’t name a song or remember a lyric. (The vocals are as muffled and buried in the mix as your average BBC drama.) It really doesn’t matter, though. The wall of guitar sound is intoxicating, in a drinking red wine on a gray afternoon sort of way. When I say this is the kind of music I would love to take a nap to, I absolutely mean it as a compliment.

Now about The Fall. I’m REALLY, really supposed to appreciate them, right? Le sigh. I’ll try again.

You cannot divide a trinity

I stand before you a woman humbled by her passions and appetites. Boris owns me, completely and totally. Long a band I have both admired and adored, and wished I had been cool enough to fall in love with before I did, I was thrilled when I read that they would drop three (3!) albums last year, a feat not seen since Robyn way back in the distant past of 2010 as far as I am currently aware of. After the two weeks I just endured trying to write something about just one of these releases, I implore you not to make me aware of any other act out there that I may remotely like doing the same, because it will make me fail again. When a band makes three disparate records with crossover of several tracks, I am left with the contemptible task of trying to write about all of them. Damn you, Boris.

In my mind Boris is an experimental noise act with heavy metal tendencies formed in 1992.  A three piece since 1996 made up of Atsuo on drums, Wata on guitar and Takeshi on bass, all share time on lead vocals. Their name was taken from a Melvins track. They notably collaborated with Merzbow and Sunn O))), serious noise and drone/doom cred respectively. One of the heaviest tracks an old band of mine ever wrote and played was known initially as “the Boris song” because the slow, sludgy thickness of it had been inspired by (maybe slightly stolen from) some sickly heavy Boris stuff that was slow and brutally hard. They have made some stuff that forced me to whip my hair back and forth as only an aging metal head can.

I knew from my uncanny reading comprehension that I should not expect brutal or heainess from their most recent work. Hell, I got a grand chuckle reading the outrage from listener’s reviews on iTunes. “This is not metal!” They are correct, it is not metal, and iTunes keeps Boris in a metal closet. “If you knew anything about Boris you would know they do not classify themselves as metal!” They are also correct; Boris does not self identify as a metal act, but will not have a fit if you do so.  The album causing this consternation was New Album. This is a full on J-pop rumspringa. This album makes me want to run up and down cliffs like Sonic the Hedgehog in ‘91, Dance Dance Revolution like it is ‘05, and relive the days where my amazonian self was trying to pretend to be a Harajuku girl in 6” platform shoes in the 98. It is new for Boris, and fun and well produced. But it is not new in the world as a sound, and, when expressing my frustration at my inability to write a cohesive piece about it, a wise man asked if I would like this album if it was not by Boris. Ah, the answer is yes, I would like it, but I likely would not have spent $9.99 on it. I would have janked a couple of tracks, “Hope” is a Katamari Damarcy worthy bit of dream pop. “Pardon?” is a bong gurgling bit of shoegaze, and “Jackson Head” is a driving fun fest with a Jason Statham action sequence worthy pulse.

Here is where it gets convoluted. I already knew “Jackson Head” from Heavy Rocks 2011, the first of the three records that I picked up because I like heavy things. I bought it in the way a French chef would buy butter, because I needed to. I do like this record. I do. But the bit I like best is a brief instrumental that is the final track, “Czechoslovakia”. It shreds and pounds and makes me happy and is one of the heaviest things on the whole record. It makes me hungry for more of the old, and these cats are smart and cruel enough to tease someone like me with a nugget that leaves me panting for more. The opener, “Riot Sugar” taps that early on, sexy, quiet/loud dynamics, but an easy grunge heavy rocker that would make anyone old Soundgarden fan happy. “Window Shopping” is hard, but Wata, who is doing much more than usual of the lead vocals on these records, adds such a sweet poppy “doo-doo-doo”it lightens up what would be straight wailing fun rock like a Mad Max styled dune buggy with a Hello Kitty surf kite propelling it. This record is great good time rock. It is not noise. It is not metal. It has moments of metal, but is not metal in spirit at all, at all.

So, what is the missing piece of the puzzle? Attention Please, the last bit I procured. And I love it. It takes what exists in the other two, but has shoegaze and ambient noise tied up in such a smart sexy package I may marry it. “You” belongs on a sexing up playlist; “Hope” has more drive in this record’s version, stronger, even more assured. The opener “Attention Please” is hot hotness that you should use as your internal soundtrack while negotiating your next dark, smoky room. “Les Paul Custom ‘86” has me convinced that I can sing along in fluent Japanese. Noise ripples and belies the molten vocals. Yes, this is the record to buy if you are only buying one. Just do it. You will like it no matter what you claim you are into. It is just great, a surprise and great.

The worst part of this entire affair? I think you need to listen to all 3, again and again. Just to figure out which you like the most and then second, third and tenth guess yourself. Maybe so I won’t feel so alone or maybe because 20 years in these guys are nowhere near done making things that make them and us happy and that is a rare gift indeed.

Looking Beyond the Charm of the Highway Strip

I distinctly remember the first time I visited my then-boyfriend’s childhood home.  I was completely enthralled by the pictures of him as a child, as a teenager.  It wasn’t that I wished I had known him back when he was younger, but I was fascinated by the idea that this awkward adolescent somehow became this man I cared so much about.

Listening to The Charm of the Highway Strip reminded me of that trip.

The Magnetic Fields, founded and led by the cranky Stephin Merritt, are best known for their possibly silly, possibly dead serious concept album, 69 Love Songs, but that album, which came out in 1999, was the band’s seventh studio releas. The album seems so effortless that it’s easy to forget that it only came after years of labor in the vineyards of pop music.

Charm of the Highway Strip is the band’s fifth album, released way back in 1994. Given my love of 69 Love Songs (and several other Magnetic Fields albums), when I came across a copy of COTHS, I grabbed it.

On its own, the album wouldn’t be my favorite.  The synthesizers are a little too harsh, and the songs don’t have the same heart (or maybe lack thereof) that makes Stephin Merritt’s later albums so weirdly addictive, but you can hear everything that makes 69 Love Songs so great floating around COTHS in embryonic form. The over-processed sounds, the nimble wordplay, and the all-in commitment to concept (songs about highways, vampires) are all getting worked out.

That’s not to say that it really works though.

For the most part, the songs don’t have the melodies that Merritt figured out how to mass produce later on, although the biggest exception, Two Characters in Search of a Country Song, is a doozy. It’s the kind of song I could listen to ten or twelve times in a row, and I’ve learned the lyrics well enough to sing it in the shower every morning for the last few days.

The other songs a fun, but they don’t have much staying power.  The best thing about it, for me, isn’t anything on the album at all, but the hints about what the Magnetic Fields will produce in the years to come.

Next week, I’m going to take a shot at a band I don’t know at all, Hospital Ships. I was so impressed by their appearance at the NPR Tiny Music Desk that I thought I’d pick up their album Lonely Twin and give it a listen.

(Don’t) Marry Me, Emily Moore!

A few weeks ago, I was hanging out with some friends talking about lesentment, the unavoidable resentment that lesbians (and presumably all other queer folks) feel as we join in celebrating all the rituals of heteronormativity. We were particularly focused on the lesentment that grows for us as we continue to attend straight wedding after straight wedding, spending small fortunes on ridiculous outfits, trolling outrageous registries for nearly-affordable shower and wedding gifts, and experiencing the delightful awkwardness and tokenism that often accompany our attendance at these monumental celebrations of heterosexuality. The straights are made at turns uncomfortable, outraged, titillated, smug, effusive and amused, or have their amazing liberal open minds confirmed by our presence. It gets tiring. And for me, it’s no solution for the gays to just hop on the marriage bandwagon, without questioning all the inherent problems in the institution to begin with.

Anyway, we were so engrossed in this conversation that I decided to skip the Menage a Twang show I had tickets for that night at Union Hall. Menage a Twang is a Brooklyn-based trio of ladies who describe themselves as “comic country” with a love of folk, and whose music is mostly about the joys and perils of living in New York City. Sounds dicey, I know, but as I mentioned in my previous post, I have an incredible nerd crush on one of the band’s members, Emily Moore. Having missed the show and entertaining elaborate plans to make Emily Moore love me, I was in quite a pickle. So I decided to review them for the blog and was pleased and relieved to find their self-titled debut album on Spotify.

As I listened to the album the next day, the opening notes had me scared. It’s not the most polished or talented musicianship and it smacks of folky soprano and musical theater, two things I do not love. But the lyrics are actually hilarious, and they capture all of the wonderful horrible things about living in New York. The song titles give you a good idea of what you’re in for: “Let’s Share a Studio and Temp,” “Listen, Sister, Don’t Date a Hipster,” “I’ll Only Support Your Art for So Long,” and “Weekend Service Changes” all capture the bittersweet love affair that we have with this fine city—the tiny exorbitantly priced apartments, the precious struggling “artists,” the neverending subway construction, Williamsburg people.

But the song that really solidified my love, that helped me look past the Kristin Chenowethian song-stylings and brought me into a state of pure cathartic lesenting bliss, is “Secret Conservative Side.” Led by my pretend girlfriend Emily Moore, “Secret Conservative Side” is all about being invited to the straight wedding of her friend, a former “lesbian feminist vegan who wanted to free Tibet.” It so perfectly captures the indignities of lesentment—butch guests wearing dresses, services held in super conservative churches, feminist brides taking their husband’s name—particularly when the wedding is for a bride and groom who fancy themselves progressive and/or queer allies. The lyrics are hilarious and good-natured (no one likes an angry lesbian!), but absolutely call people out on their hyposcrisy, and had me laughing out loud on the train. They also had me wishing that I’d made it to the show at Union Hall. Next time, Emily Moore, next time.

There are other gems on the album, like “Good Face/Bad Art,” which details the balance you have to strike in dating between hotness and delusion (“Your face is hot, but your art is just so stupid”). Every song on the album is funny and well-written, and New Yorkers can’t help but appreciate the scenarios these ladies lay out for us. It’s not the kind of album that you’d want to listen to over and over again (unless you’re the type who listens to zany Broadway cast recordings at home), but it’s smart and funny and you’ll definitely be entertained the first time through. They also do an amazing rendition of Destiny’s Child’s “Survivor,” which you can listen to here, along with all their other songs. Enjoy!

My final analysis: Menage a Twang is kind of like an incredible feminist modern day revival of Hee Haw, moved from the fields of Kornfield Kounty to the gentrified streets of Brooklyn. In fact, I’d love to see these ladies do a complete Hee Haw-style stage production of their album, a la this gem:

I’m not sure yet what I’ll be listening to next week. Stay tuned….

Hey Justice: Jethro Tull called and they want their music back

The French electro-rockers Justice (Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay) created a buzz in 2000 with their hit D.A.N.C.E. Their remix of MGMT’s Electric Feel was a dance-floor banger and an instant classic. (They won a Grammy for it in 2009). They beckoned me with their big, gutsy grooves and catchy power-chords. So their recent release Audio Video Disco was high on my “I’ve been meaning to” list. My first impression was that it was good. I liked this. Yes. But it sounded so familiar that I was perplexed. I had anticipated something avant-garde; something fresh and modern. What I found was my fathers record collection, digitized.

The songs are bold and vigorous, but all attempt a calculated pursuit of Prog rock hits from the 70‘s. Genesis, Emerson Lake and Palmer and The Who are obvious inspirations, however, the album is littered with moments of straight imitation. I found this distracting and offensive. For example, in the keys part on the title track Audio, Video Disco I’m hearing Joe Jackson’s “Steppin Out” . The chorus sounds like T-Rex’s “Get it On”, part deux. If AIR remixed “Get it on” it would be this song. The overall production is full bodied and complex, but at times it’s so complex and so dense that it becomes a bombardment of sound.

There is no denying the talent of these two guys. Their epic use of snares, synths, and distortion techniques are the envy of electronic producers worldwide. However, I cant help but feel that their talent has been wasted on recreating something that has already been done 35 years ago.

The more I listened to AVD, the more mediocre it became. I didnt find it memorable: not lyrically or musically. “On and On” being the only exception. This I played over and over. Although, the flute solo here is yet another irritating imitation of Jethro Tull.

These guys look the part of the era they’re trying to recreate, with their faded rock Tee’s, jean jackets, leather vests and mustaches.

It made me realize what their album was lacking: authenticity.

I can’t help but ask myself if these Parisian bad-asses just did something as American as Le Big Mac? Did they knowlingly jump into the uncool Hollywood formula of pointless remakes? Or did they make this album with actual integrity, as some kind of artistic experiment of modern media? The most likely explanation is they just wanted to rock: to dork-out to their idols. But there are obvious problems in attempting to re-create a genre that is was so unique to its time it was named “Progressive”. A remake of something classic can never be authentic. The best it can ever be is ok. Perhaps Justice can find a niche as pioneers of a Post-Prog movement with their explosive arena-rock for ravers, but their handlebar mustaches can never acheive the same level of coolness as my dads, and neither will their records.

Sara smiles, but the rest… well…

During a recent insomnia-driven, middle-of-the-night YouTube search of Hall & Oats songs (what?) I came across this video:

My immediate thought: Who the hell is Jimmy Wayne, and why is he not my husband?

I posed these questions to Mr. Google, who could only answer the first: Jimmy Wayne is a North Carolina-born country singer with three albums under his belt, the most recent being 2010’s Sara Smile.

So I gave this album – which was deeply discounted on iTunes (that should have been a sign, y’all) – a listen. My conclusion:  Jimmy Wayne is a better soul singer than country singer.

Mind you, I like country music. Good country music. Patsy Cline, Willy Nelson, Randy Travis, the Oak Ridge Boys, Kenny Rogers and Sugarland all occupy space on my iPod. The best part of country, aside from the wonderful dramatic lyrics, is that deep, guttural vocal qualify that the best country singers possess.

Jimmy Wayne does not possess that quality – at least not as demonstrated on this album. On every song on this album, aside from the title track, I would describe Wayne’s voice as pleasant. Good country singers do not have “pleasant” voices.

Add to the fact that the songs are forgettable. Wayne himself shows he’s no great songwriter. “Just because two people are in love / Doesn’t mean they won’t disagree,” he sings in the self-penned track I’ll Never Leave You (which, incidentally is one of the better songs on the album). That is about as profound as it gets. There is no gusto, no you-rode-off-on-my-horse-with-my-best-friend-and-all-my-money-then-badmouthed-me-on-Twitter kind of story, no heart plucking expression of love. (Except for the Hall & Oates-penned title track. See what a huge difference good songwriting makes?)

I’ll be kind and give this album a “meh.” I mean, it doesn’t send you running for the “off” button on your MP3 player. But it doesn’t make you want to listen to it more than once, either. The title track is the only song I didn’t immediately delete from my iPod (and even that version is nowhere near as electric as the live rendition with Hall).

Here’s my suggestion to you, Mr. Wayne: Make a soul album. The world loves a blue-eyed velvety crooner. Oh, and also: call me.

Next week I am excited to give a listen to something I stumbled upon recently: Mick Hucknall’s Tribute to Bobby (as in “Blue” Bland). Can’t wait!