PreviousSeptember brings new music
09/01/2010
dilly dilly posted the above video last night. According to the youtube page, she won't be doing a whole lot more with it because she feels like it's bitten from something.
HOWEVER, that doesn't change that it's still pretty awesome. It has the exact acoustic moodiness I love.
PLUS, Spose has been having fun with Cee-Lo's awesome "Fuck You." It's worth checking out his version of it.
He's got some dextrous pipes. Raps a mile a minute over that soulful hook. Waxes introspective about how much a year can change things. It's good times!
Spose says on his facebook page that it'll be on the forthcoming mixtape "We Smoked It All Volume 2" due out October 1st.
Brenda - Silver Tower
08/18/2010
Brenda’s Silver Tower is
Sweetly poppy. The songs blend harmony and driving beats. Energetic strumming and dreamlike singing. It calls to mind images of diners, shakes, malts. Driving in cherry cars with no tops. Circuses. Roller skating.
But there’s a certain distortion to it, a certain twistedness. The sugary wholesome pop energy is burnt on the edges, carmelized. It’s rough.
Silver Tower is a top-down summer album. Crank it while cruising along some wooded state route. The album opens on State Lines, the ideal song for shifting into high gear as you hug some twisting road and blast through a curve lit only by your headlights. Stomp down the gas as the song hits that wild instrumental break at the end.
12 hours later you’ll need Intro, though, as your car muscles at top speed over some open, sun-baked landscape. The roads are straighter as the song pounds along with the RPMs. This is music to outrun a police pursuit to. This is the music of adrenaline and white knuckles, ground teeth and relentless bright fun. It’s an unstoppable pop energy.
Blackout is the song you were listening to when you did whatever it is the police want you for. It’s raucous and wild. It’s sweaty and drunk and feels like the sorta thing that you’ll wake up hungover from - but in a joyous way. One of those hangovers that you don’t even mind because you know you earned it. Blackout happily bounces back and forth with dynamic range. The chorus a bouncy fun burn that snaps into an infinitely danceable chorus. It’s driven by Peet Chamberlain’s rubbery bass and DJ Moore’s snappy beats. Carried over that, Josh Loring plays a sparse guitar through some reedy amp.
I’m probably going to dwell on Blackout too long, but I feel it’s a good microcosm of the album. It’s bouncy, fun and distorted. It punches hard and fast and it’s over and you want more. Brenda’s tracks are like crack: they’re short and addictive and the most fun you’ve ever had while you’re listening. And immediately after you want your next hit.
Blackout and Pill Hill do this thing that I really love. The power along and hit this sea shift a little over halfway into the song. It’s like a bridge that just takes you to the end of the song. Or a second movement, I suppose. In the moment it’s all organic but sitting here and jumping 30 seconds back and forth on iTunes it’s remarkable to me that the songs blend so well.
Also: While Blackout is the quintessential drunk song on the album, Pill Hill is druggier. It’s beat is darker and more twisted and the breakdown has this floaty melody over a circular drum beat that’s just mesmerizing.
Let’s talk about Delegator for a moment. It’s perfect for illustrating the powers of a tight three-piece. It starts out sparse and lean, moved primarily by Moore’s drumming and Loring’s singing. And then the bass and guitar kick in full time and suddenly you could make a meal of the song, cut out some substantial bites from it.
Now let’s get to my two favorites.
Ghandi has this wonderful 50s dancehall vibe to it but brings an edge of distortion that’s pretty delightful. It feels like it might be the headlining song for some High School Dance with an Undersea theme. And I love the wordless chorus that hits so hard after the floatier verses.
When I started listening to the album, I didn’t have the context that a lot of listeners did. I am not familiar with Pavement and Guided By Voices, so I couldn’t connect any lines between those bands and Brenda. In fact, it left me pretty stymied. I really enjoyed all the sweet pop fun of Silver Tower but I didn’t really have the vocabulary to contextualize it.
So I wrote to the label.
Graeme K. of Mckeenstreet Music says “The riff in Ghandi, and the verses, take more from Buddy Holly and the Danleers than they do Sonic Youth. Songs like Retina and I’d Be Dead along with Ghandi, sound more at home in the context of a 1959 barn dance, in a way, than they do in the context of 1990s indie rock.”
Which brings me to the other standout for me, Retina. I love a good drone, so I was hooked from that Chamberlain’s cheap Casio tone off the start. But Moore’s drums kick up through the miasmic drone of the organ and Loring’s guitar give you a shore to sit on at the edge of the sea of keyboards.
The chorus is the best on the album, I think, for highlighting Brenda’s finely tuned melodic sensibilities. They stretch words out over a delightful, hooky, rising tune.
It’s just a lovely song for a sunset boatride.
And it has heaviness to it, it’s not just some weakwristed track that’s out of place on an album of balls to the wall energy. There’s an impressive breakdown with wild drums and a throbbing bass line that hooks on just the perfect pregnant note.
It’s delightful.
Silver Tower isn’t perfect. I think the drums, especially, could use a little higher production. They sometimes sound lost or too thin.
But if you’re looking for a wildly poppy, fun and twisted way to spend your summer, put Silver Tower on, turn up the volume and let it carry you through. And when the last wavering chord of I’d Be Dead is cut, hit play and do it again.
Posted by Krister
Naw Capella
07/05/2010
Eminent Portland Hip-Hop Queen Sontiago's talents go well beyond spittin'. Her acapella version of Samuel James' Wooden Tombstone was a show stopper at his epic release party. Now, out of the same field comes this no-longer acapella song Like Love.
It's a collaboration between Sontiago and Darien Brahms. Feature's Sontiago's lyrics, vox and Xylophone; Brahms' instrumentation and Ric Loyd's drumming.
Sontiago says Brahms approached her after hearing it acapella and asked to get involved. And the collaboration really speaks to the inspiration she must've felt when she first heard it. It really builds into something incredibly cool.
The track speaks not only to Sontiago's concrete lyricism and excellent voice, but to the ineffable "it" that some artists have. To be able to hear a song once and develop such a clear vision for it.
Anyway, it's totally worth checking out.
She's Just a Girl
06/21/2010
Samuel James has been workshopping his cover of 'Billie Jean" since Michael Jackson's death. It gets better every time I hear it (you can catch it at Blue pretty regularly, he plays the 1st and 3rd Thursdays of the month).
This version at the One Longfellow solstice celebration takes the cake so far. It's musically interesting, plus it taps into something James shares with Jackson: Showmanship and Panache.
Via HillyTown:
"local blues guitarist Samuel James played a pretty riveting cover of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” and even managed to show off some slick dance moves at the same time."
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