Pretty Heart :: "Fraud"

The bombastic creep-pop that spills out of Pretty Heart's (nee Morgan Hollinger) "Fraud" is one part Kate Bush (it is, after all, still the Year of Kate Bush, 1979-present) and one part School of Seven Bells. Full of hooks and intentionally unsettling moments, Pretty Heart taps the same pathos that allows Ellie Goulding to say things like, "Do you want my heart between your teeth?", a sort of destructive but very serious approach to love and loss that feels important in an age of emotional unavailability. Love sounds like a dark, weird murder on Pretty Heart's debut EP, Half Asleep, a collection of songs that reflect both a tactile bedroom sensibility, an intimacy in the shadows. "Fraud," the most approachable of the seven track on Half Asleep is rooted in a dressed up keyboard progression and then accented with Hollinger's controlled and confessional vocals, layered into a dizzying and glittering array. It is either the biggest bedroom record of 2012 or a record that will only be in the bedroom until absolutely everyone hears it.

TRAILS AND WAYS :: "Tereza"

A modern day Rousseau would probably reflect on our current age with, "Music is born free and yet everywhere it is in chains." Bassist and vocalist Emma Oppen sheepishly coos her response, "It was just just my nature," in the chorus of TRAILS AND WAYS' fine first single, "Tereza," seemingly liberating herself and everyone else. An awesome "shrug" of a lyric, a sort of implicit helplessness or explicit freedom, Oppen and her bandmates from Oakland seem beholden only to themselves as dreamy soundscapes ebb and flow in time with oblique lyrics like, "I made myself a shoreline without water." The genre references footnote Radio Dept. and School Of Seven Bells (with either the treble or the opiates turned way up) though the over-arching sentiment is a sort of Je ne sais quoi, an arrangement with a friction coefficient of zero, gliding from shore to shore under a force, contract and authority all its own. Oppen suggests this freedom is hard-wired, and its hard to argue as the song, quite literally, washes away in the final seconds.

On The List :: School of Seven Bells @ Mercury Lounge [6.10.10]

School of Seven Bells are wearing it on their skin. Each member of the band features the cover art of their new record, Disconnect From Desire, tattooed prominently on their body; guitarist Ben Curtis is wearing his over his heart. The intoxicating vocalists, Alejandra and Claudia Deheza elect to circumscribe the image on their arms, reflecting a different, nonetheless committed, series of personal choices. A physical commitment, a mixture of pain and soaring beauty, lies indelibly etched in black ink in definition and defense of a new tribalism. School of Seven Bells are exactly this; urban and profane, distant and enormous, ancient and horribly futuristic, a burn of contradictions and desire.

The two Deheza sisters reflect a different, two-roads-diverged-in-a-yellow-wood question. Alejandra, quick, propulsive and bubbly, offered the only "thank you's" and annotations, saying early in the evening, "these are all songs off our new album ... but we have some old ones later." Claudia, delicately behind a keyboard, remained still, providing the intense minor key harmonies for which the band is so deservedly famous. She takes her eyes off the keyboard only to send soul-splitting gazes to the back of the room. The Mercury Lounge, sold-out to capacity, began to move on the fourth song of the evening, the stunning "Babelonia" from the band's forthcoming LP. Alejandra danced on the downbeats, arching her eyebrows to indicate the seriousness of her purpose. Claudia was, well, predictably hard to read.

Though the crowd knew few of the songs, the soaring wall-of-sound approach proved non-negotiable. There were moments so loud, so condensed, so incredibly intricate that you wonder if this band is like Icarus, daring their wax-wings not to melt on the surface of the sun. But perhaps this is darker. On main-set closer, "My Cabal", the band drifted away to some foreign and familiar, a pleasant and unsettling challenge to their audience to join them by the end of the night, burned together in our ears and on our bodies.

Listen :: School of Seven Bells - "Babelonia"

On The List :: The XX + School of Seven Bells @ South Street Seaport [8.14.09]

On one of those Friday evenings that make you not only like, but love New York City, we headed down to the Seaport for one of those outdoor concerts that make people wistful, either because they are good or because they are free. South Street Seaport is usually full of the worst concoction of tourists, bankers and people who simply crave a manufactured historical experience. We know one good kid who likes it down there, but we're friends with him so it doesn't count.

For The XX and School of Seven Bells the surrounding dynamic stayed the same; into which was inserted a pocket of those serious-faced hipsters who are either too young to knowingly be ironic or too old to do anything besides be knowingly ironic. It was an awkward mix and if you were sitting on the patio on the second floor of Pizzeria Uno, you could be forgiven for looking down, listening and wondering, "what the hell was that?"

The XX are dressed almost identically; black pants, loose black shirts of one variety or another, and black shoes. This is the kind of band that should never play in daylight. This band should maybe never play outside. There is a natural claustrophobia to their music that is best suited to low-ceiling clubs sometime after curfew. Granted, they sound incredible live and loud, something that is hard to get a feel for on their album. It is mood music, to be sure, but the mood is a dark one. They are gracious, if tautly unenergetic. It could be the pants.

School of Seven Bells slide to the stage with the knowing comment, "We're just going to wait for it to get dark." They sound great, with packaged instruments and drums blared out over keys and two thrashing guitars. I immediately regret not going to see them when their publicist sent me emails with subject lines like, "You should really catch this band." We are, perhaps, a little over-stimulated but sonically, the band is just right, with a spacious and driving sound. Five blocks away, you can still hear them on a roof top. And in the summer, this is exactly what we're looking for.

Listen :: School of Seven Bells - "Half Asleep"
Bonus :: The XX - "Crystalised"

[Elevator] School of Seven Bells :: "Connjur"

This band is a comer. No question. School of Seven Bells rose out of the ashes of Secret Machines' mercurial flame-out, as guitarist Ben Curtis got tired making of psych-rock and started making Norwegian-flavored, electro arena pop. The first thing that came to mind was, "this is the record The Knife meant to make three years ago." It's big and dark and, at times, really unsettling. But it's incredibly credible. In fact, subtract The Knife's "Heartbeats" (and I understand this is incredibly impossible), School of Seven Bells have a record that is vastly better than Silent Shout.

"Connjur" is the first single off Alpinisms and a perfect example of the dark electronic soundscapes that this band traffics. It's probably not the best song off the record ("Chain" is instantly more satisfying and "Wired For Light" is mas. sive.) but "Connjur" is enough to get you started. There's something almost tribal going on here; like a late-night, northern lights freak-out, where Bjork's catalogue is tirelessly remixed into reverb-heavy 125bpm dance-hits. Or like a downtown, drugged-out rain dance. It's all connected. So pray the Sun God doesn't come out tomorrow and it stays dark forever.

Listen :: School of Seven Bells - "Connjur"