Some Toy Band members rocking out forever

The MP3 I have posted is a total pop gem called “Lottery Ticket,” off their 2010 self-titled EP (which you should get your mitts on immediately). From the beginning, the song is almost unbearably gleeful, and although that’s generally not my bag (being pretty goth), I can’t stop listening to it. Colin Summers sings, joined by Karen Adelman on the chorus, which is really the wacky epicenter of the song. To me, the chorus invokes the kind of psychotic optimism that comes with getting drunk in the hours before noon: the entire day is ahead of you and you (and your BFF Jim Beam) are gonna! Take! It! On! Then after that, my favorite thing ever happens: a musical break with a shouty singalong. Yeah, you can tell they’re toys, and yeah, it’s a bit ridiculous, but the integrity of the song’s composition gives it enough grown-upness for maximum listenability. I actually think it’s a bit surreal, like Svankmajer’s Alice, but without all the dead animals.  These are real musicians.  They’re just acting real weird.

Toys & Tiny Instruments — “Lottery Ticket”

Visit the Toys & Tiny Instruments MySpace (and also that of My Friend Other, the band consisting of two core Toys Colin Summers and Alec Betterley, around whose songs the project takes place). And if you’re in NYC, they’re playing on January 8th at noted Bushwick venue Goodbye Blue Monday.  Oh, yeah, and you should probably either trade money for it or just try to sweet-talk some of the members into giving you the five-song EP because it’s really really good.

Mas y Mas, hailing from nearby NoVA, were a perfect soundtrack to this scene. They’re at once fidgety and disaffected, smart enough to know that the best of kind of fun, maybe the only kind, is the stupid kind. On this point check out the (um) pointedly titled “You Can’t Play Without Ice.” It kind of reminds me of the first time I heard the Thermals, all lo-fi and pissed off at posers, but these guys are a lot funnier about it, partly cause I can’t really tell if they’re joking or not. There’s a savant tunefulness too, even though Vinny often tries to hide it behind his Mike-Skinner–as-snotty-American-kid impression.

And the lyrics are golden, as anyone unfortunate enough to follow my Twittrrr barrage will know. On “Sunday School Hymn,” they tackle that freshest of topics—fucking religion, dude—and somehow manage to land it unposed. “Now who here’s had his grandma pass away and wonders why she is still sleeping, and who here’s read a little Walt Whitman and wonders why he is so happy?” Maybe because I’ve wondered both those things, maybe cause there’s some real melancholy in his arch schoolboy recitation, but it’s the most moving thing I’ve heard since Joel got drunk and read some of his poetry at the last gpants staff meeting.

Mas y Mas — “You Can’t Play Without Ice”

Mas y Mas — “Sunday School Hymn”

Mas y Mas are magnanimously giving away their album, Proud Sponsors of Pepsi, here.

 “Turn Me Away (Get Munny)” is the album’s blithe six-minute persistence pastiche: the “can’t turn me away” refrain is the hook, and along with the wah bass, it comes from the 1980 Sylvia Striplin jam. Their voices may be similarly golden, but Badu’s remake is way less wistful, lyrically focusing on the materials of love’s clichés: “Can’t lie to you honey. I / just want your money”, and “I’ll cook like your mother” and “I’ll do what I gotta”. The song’s narrator may be a lover, but she’s not a fool. She is aware that swag is sexy – which is the reason the multiple nods to Notorious B.I.G and the obvious blip from Junior M.A.F.I.A’s Striplin-sampling hit “Get Money” work so well. The result is a layered, smooth, sexy song that feels all new despite its retro roots.

Immediately following that –and separated only by a bit of dialogue about phoning “that other bass player” – is “Gone Baby, Don’t Be Long,” the aforementioned song’s fraternal mood twin. Neither is the evil twin, exactly: the Baby in the song seems to be on his way somewhere, and the protagonist gets that it’s hustle– (and therefore money-) related, but acknowledges she will miss him. The songs are strikingly similar, and, along with the video single “Window Seat,” are the album’s most accessible song-wise, sprawling less laterally than the rest of the album.

Erykah Badu — “Gone Baby, Don’t Be Long”

These two songs mark the central part of the album – which is lyrically and sonically its most emblematic. Beyond this, the song structure changes, the songs lengthen (“Love” at six minutes) and lessen (“You Loving Me (Session)”, at one minute), but never fail to hover around the theme: love is kind of fucked up, but mostly pretty, but it’ll disillusion you, but you probably still can’t stay away because it’s chemically programmed within you.

And as in the controversial video for “Window Seat” (available on her website) in which Badu stoically strips naked in one long shot, this album is personal and bare. But unlike the video’s end, in which the nude protagonist is quickly and anticlimactically assassinated by an invisible threat, New Amerykah Pt. II keeps sending out gorgeous tendrils, never coming to a clear stop. The last track, “Out My Mind, Just In Time,” goes on for ten minutes; as such a long piece, it purposefully morphs in structure many times. This means that the last track is effectively a long hallway of peeks into the rooms of earlier songs in the sequence: idling meditations on the walls we build with our refusals to abandon identity as an “undercover over-lover.” Some reviewers have called this album scattered for the grandiose treatment it gives its most central theme. But this is a love album, and as such, it doesn’t really end. Instead, Badu gives us a somewhat melancholy but still Edenic outro: a pass through the back door, a final piano jingle like a wave of the fingers, unthreatening and subtle.
 

Well, a lot of things have changed since I wrote about Saturday Night Wrist in 2006. First of all, Chino’s not fat anymore. It looks like he’s started taking his physique seriously, abandoned In & Out burgers, and gotten back to burning calories by writing chord-shredding songs. Because second of all, the Deftones are back with a new album and it’s pretty fuckin’ sick.

Diamond Eyes immediately recalls Around the Fur, the band’s breakout record, in its intensity and melodicism. Not that the interim albums lacked these qualities, but for a time the band seemed to be primarily concerned with proving themselves as standing apart from the nu-metal/rap-metal mainstream. They did this convincingly, but in doing so they sort of played against their strengths at times. White Pony was their OK Computer, fiddling with experimental electronics and varied song structures at every turn. The self-titled album made a point of saying “hey, we can do heavy too! we’re fuckin’ metal!!” (cf. “Hexagram” and “Bloody Cape”), and did it ad nauseam. Saturday Night Wrist mixed the approaches of the previous two albums and managed to produce the singularly awful “Pink Cellphone,” inarguably the worst of the band’s career, along with more than a few pretty damn good songs.

So here we are years later with Diamond Eyes. What have we here? Well, only the best album they’ve put out since White Pony. Have a listen to the lead single, “Rocket Skates,” and a look at its stylish if kinda juvenile video (showing Chino’s slacker beard in full effect):

Click here to view the embedded video.

It’s not their best song, nor the best on the album (I mean, that chorus…), but it’ll give you a taste of the rest that’s in store. Diamond Eyes hits stores on May 4th on Warner Bros., but you can pre-order it now if you feel ever so inclined.

Probably every homegrown publication has these embarrassing teething problems, but in Pitchfork’s case this Terrible Epoch coincides neatly with the time when Founder and Editor-in-Chief Ryan Schreiber was a regular contributor. In the course of the site’s slow, stumbling crawl from sub-Geocities design and sub–Karen’s LOST Notebook writing toward the point where Schreiber could be listed as a nominee for Time’s 2009 Person of the Year, the media mogul published a string of cringe-inducing “reviews” of albums—some eminently forgettable (Walt Mink? 10.0? What?) and some classics. And Ryan was at his absolute worst when appreciating legendary artists.

Case in point: Schreiber’s hair-clenchingly godawful writeup of John Coltrane’s Live at the Village Vanguard. This hood classic (thanks, Mike) has recently been given new life by some enterprising YouTubers with a knack for animation and silly voices. Look here:

Click here to view the embedded video.

If watching it wasn’t enough for you (you sick, twisted person), you can read the unabridged original text of the review (since banish-ed from P-fork’s hallowed halls, perhaps in recognition of its shameful nature) here.

In his day job, Morgan is the drummer for much-loved Vancouver indie band Destroyer—something you’d never guess from listening to his work as Loscil, and something I never would have known if it weren’t for a guest-starring turn from Destroyer’s leading man Dan Bejar on the closing spoken-word track of the new album, Endless Falls.

But let’s back up a bit. In truth, my first exposure to Loscil came from the indie puzzle game Osmos. A seamless aesthetic experience, the game melds beautiful visuals with absorbing sounds as the player guides a “mote” around a level filled with other motes, trying to consume smaller ones and avoid being swallowed by larger ones. The conceptual focus on conservation of momentum isn’t at all out of line with Morgan’s own musical goals. Osmos is a brilliant piece of game design, and the music (both by Loscil and other prominent ambient artists) fits perfectly there. Buy it. Play it. It’s cheap!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Morgan’s newest album is a further evolution of the sound he developed on earlier works like First Narrows, Stases, and Plume. The record begins and ends with the sound of rain—perhaps an overused trope in the genre, but perfectly implemented and seemingly fresh here. The warmth of Loscil’s recent albums has cooled a little here, despite a title track that opens things with atmospheric strings over a soft drone. These strings are probably the most animated and most sentimental element on Endless Falls—at times even reminding me of Trevor Jones’ wonderful but not exactly reserved work on The Last of the Mohicans’ soundtrack—giving some early emotional heft to a collection that might otherwise seem distant. “Estuarine” follows, bringing in background piano figures and a shuffling beat surely made by the “looping oscillator” function in Csound that gives the Loscil project its name. The middle section of the album, particularly “Shallow Water Blackout,” “Fern and Robin,” and “Lake Orchard,” are quiet in the extreme, while the last two songs up the intensity level a little.

The penultimate track, “Showers of Ink” features intertwining bells and electronic sounds that recall the beautiful Vangelis score for Blade Runner—long a personal favorite of mine. “The Making of Grief Point” puts an interesting and surprising exclamation point on Endless Falls, featuring Bejar’s stream-of-consciousness monologue—poetic, elliptical, his voice occasionally tripping over itself, but full of cutting lines that make you laugh out of nowhere—over a persistent, clipping beat (almost fit for a microhouse track) and washes of piano and strings. The lyrics concern an imaginary album called Grief Point, and the personal and political turbulence involved in creating it. While the meaning is never precisely clear, the collective feeling of the words fits the ominous and meditative music like a glove.

Loscil — “Showers of Ink”

Endless Falls dropped on March 1st on the venerable Kranky label. You can buy it here or here.

Joe’s Pub is part dinner theatre, part dark nightclub, part music venue, and (unlike most New York venues), they like to keep things on the clock. There was no opening act, and Kate got onstage promptly at 7:30 with her guitarist (and, mixing business and pleasure, her husband) Kier Nuttall. Awash with the gorgeous lighting of the venue and clearly stoked about the receptive crowd, the pair opened with “Politics in Space.” This song is agreeably percussive and funny and a great opener. Listen here:

Kate Miller-Heidke — “Politics in Space”

It is true that Miller-Heidke is quirky and deserves the comparisons to famous alien pop lady weirdos (cheap comparisons I’ll save for other blogs, really). But she also has her own peculiarities: her voice changes pitch and octave in unpredictable and interesting ways, and she’s really used to using it as an instrument (like on her single “Can’t Shake It”). She also gets downright gritty sometimes, banging feverishly on the piano keys and roaring like a demon, or unleashing operatic notes as her tambourine breaks on her hip. These moments are when I like Miller-Heidke best (but everyone who knows me knows that I have always been one for Vegas-lounge-queen-grade melodrama). This is why it surprised me whenever she showcased one of her more traditionally written songs – predictably progressing piano ballads with emotional lyrics, lovely but somewhat too Lilith Fair (songs like “Caught in the Crowd” and the platinum-going “Last Day On Earth”, both tidy and nice but not for me).

But I don’t want to quibble. The set was clever, well played, interesting, and great fun to listen to. Miller-Heidke’s stage banter (something that I usually cringe about *cough* TORIAMOS *cough*) is absolutely endearing and won’t pander to anyone, including the audience or the venue – at one point she stopped and proclaimed that she had never before played anywhere that smelled of “such pungent fish,” referring to the food a patron in front was enjoying. And we got to hear her excellent Britney Spears cover, complete with the aforementioned opera flourishes. Really, if you like music with personality (and clearly you do or you wouldn’t be here at Grizzlypants), and you are lucky enough to be in one of the towns Miller-Heidke and Nuttall will be hitting on their tour, you should go hear out their rather incomparable pop brand.

Finally, for some topical humor (as opposed to the “tropical humor” of the malaria-related practical joke Mike tried to play on the office after one of his Africa jaunts), hear out this little ditty:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Crap, I thought. They’re going to make me write about this.

On the 8th of March, Vivian Girls played Great Scott in Boston. They’ve been subject to a bit of hype, so you might know of them already, but in any event, they’re a guitar-bass-drums girl band from Brooklyn. Their music, the first album in particular, consists of fuzzy guitars and low-key melodic vocals with an almost lazy-sounding beat. Some might compare it to shoegaze. Their second album moves away from this somewhat, with noisier guitar, pounding bass, and a little more emphasis on the vocals.

Seeing them live, it’s clear that, contrary to what one might gather from listening to their recorded work, they enjoy playing with a lot of energy and making a great deal of noise. Guitar work that can often seem indistinct and jangly on the album was instead played fast and aggressively. Vocals that sometimes seem flat and emotionless on the recorded tracks were instead shouted into the mic. You get the idea. This is one of those bands that’s a totally different experience live.

They opened with “I Have No Fun,” the second track from Everything Goes Wrong, their most recent album, which immediately got the crowd moving. They also played several songs from the self-titled first album; for instance, “Tell The World” got people cheering after four notes from the bass. One song was announced to be brand new and was played for the first time that night. It hints at a promising future, though I didn’t catch what it was called. All in all, it was a good night, but let me give you the highlights.

Vivian Girls — “Wild Eyes”
This is the first song the band was known for, and I suspect it’s on the inevitable list of “songs we’re supposed to play” that all bands seem to eventually accumulate. It can be found on their first album, where its subdued harmonies and simple, steady beat perfectly exemplify the band’s style at the time. They played it as their second-to-last song, and got through what’s two minutes on the album in perhaps a minute and a half of noisy guitar, aggressive bass, and an energy that, unfortunately, isn’t quite there in the recording. Hype aside, the difference between what this band was doing in 2008 and what they’re doing now shows that they’re only getting better.

Vivian Girls — “Out for the Sun”
What can I say about this song? It’s from their second album, and it wasn’t my favorite before I saw them play, but it is now. About a minute into the song, the vocals drop away to feature the guitar for a full two minutes. Two guitars are present in the album recording, but with only one guitarist in the band, those of us at the show instead saw a full-on old-fashioned drop-to-your-knees-and-thrash guitar solo that forced the crowd to gradually stop dancing and simply stare in awe. Afterward, the song proper resumes at a faster tempo, pounding bass and drums leading the way to three crashing closing notes. Two people beside me had come for one of the opening acts and had no idea who the Vivian Girls were, but after this song I saw them turn and wordlessly nod to each other. Definitely the highlight of the night.

The band is still on tour and I recommend checking them out if they’re going to be near you. In the meantime, you can find their recordings over at Red Records.