Float Fall :: "Someday"

The heartbreaking and brilliant first single from Belgium's Float Fall is the sparse and warm, "Someday". Patterned after the aesthetics of the xx with the figure-eight methodology of boy-girl pop, "Someday" provides the space for a conversation between the two lead vocalists. The result collides in a duet in the chorus, a harbinger of the swelling arrangement that unwraps with organic and terrible efficiency. Guitar plucks descend on melting wax wings before being consumed by a full and surprising middle movement that collapses in a return to the opening conceit, a wilting resolution, "Someday you'll smile."

Mt. Wolf :: "Hypolight"

Mt. Wolf, a South London outfit describing themselves as "dream-folk", carve out tiny spaces for their music to grow. This limited geography is the same trick that Polica did so well last year, the same trick the xx performed a few years back: small spaces followed by big impacts. "Hypolight" is all seed and germ, the smallest of things, propeled forward through three distinct movements. Finger-picked guitars erupt into bracingly mixed acoustic guitar strums, nearly two full minutes before they begin to unfold the drums. Vocalist Kate Sproule is a downright revelation, snapping into her head voice on the song's licensing-dream chorus, "Put another light out." The publishing rights of this moment alone should attract major label interest. "Hypolight", like its predecessor, "Life Size Ghosts" represents the brand of life-affirming pop that signals the small moments before the big one.

Fever Kids :: "Play Hard"

Sparse and warm, Athens' Fever Kids craft a brand of pop that inspires comparisons to a considerably more gendered version of the xx. Replacing the androgyny of the dark-shirted, downcast kids from London with firm femininity, Fever Kids build a sultry and winsome melody on "Play Hard", a quietly angular backdrop and a female vocal built like a wrecking ball. The lyrical references are oblique, like the arrangement, implying a bit of pursuit, including but not limited to some particularly sordid asides and maybe the single grimiest reference to a meeting in the bathroom since the Strokes. "Play Hard", unlike these reckless addendums, sounds painfully restrained, a whisper for when you feel like screaming.

On The List :: Alt-J @ Bowery Ballroom [9.12.12]

Ed. note: This review runs live and first on Bowery Presents' House List blog. Photo courtesy of @jenncorazz because 32ft/second's publication photography department still shuts down this publication's cell phone when this publication tries to take blurry pictures.

There was a certain geometric incoherence in play as hotly buzzed UK band Alt-J took the stage at a very sold-out Bowery Ballroom last night. Everyone was jammed together in this glorified square to see a band that insisted they were a triangle. See, Alt-J contend their name is more than a collection of letters, instead representing the outcome of a keyboard command, the combination of “Alt” and “J,” which on a Mac makes the shape of a triangle, making their very name an unspeakable symbolic iconography. Every face in the audience pointed toward four faces onstage offering seemingly infinite possibilities. This would all seem overwrought, if it weren’t for the uncommon quality of the band’s debut, An Awesome Wave, and their bizarre and brilliant live show. Somehow helpless against their insistence on three-way vanishing points—or how affected and silly this would seem in less capable hands—the audience and the band intersected over and over, creating a cohesive, if pleasantly limited, little world inside these invented boundaries.

The band opened with “(Interlude 1),” with a choir joining them to offer the band’s Baroque-ish two-part harmonies a chilling and elegiac varnish. One part Mumford & Sons and one part the xx, Alt-J slid between slow-drive, sexy arrangements and these warm duets between guitarist Joe Newman and keys player Gus Unger-Hamilton. “Something Good” and “Dissolve Me,” mid-album and middle-set songs expanded this notion of austere vocals and ebullient keyboard-driven arrangements, accented brightly with tactile guitar picking and high-fret work. The band played their best song, “Breezeblocks,” near the end, the track’s punching vocals and guitars ringing through the balconies as the audience shuffled around chanting lines like “Do you know where the wild things go?” The song’s conclusion, a collision of the lyrics “Please don’t go, I love you so” and “I’d eat you whole,” an awesome and approachable angle to a band that values its weirdness as much as its beautiful arrangements.

“This is the last song on the album,” Unger-Hamilton mumbled over the din as Alt-J returned to play “Taro” as the encore. At least one person in the crowd made the reference that is as controversial as it is possibly correct: “Radiohead.” This is a bit of branding too loaded even for a band currently touring with a gigantic neon triangle as their backdrop. However, there was something undeniable happening here. Alt-J finished the haunting last chords of “Taro” and held up a slightly altered version of the “diamonds in the sky,” triangle-ish hand sign that Jay-Z and Kanye West initiated with a straight face in 2005. The crowd returned it in kind having fully embraced this iconography of two lines and three points. The audience and the band made two of these three, one of the year’s best albums brought to the stage made the third at The Bowery Ballroom, a tidy and discrete geometric universe, a triangle inside a square.

Boys and Girls Living Together :: An 8tracks Mix

Boys and Girls Living Together from 32feet on 8tracks.

Last summer 8tracks asked us to curate a summer mix for them, which we did and got us involved in their personalized take on Internet radio. After a long layoff, we returned to 8tracks this afternoon with a mix exclusively concerned with boy-girl pop music. Not surprisingly, most of this music is about break ups. Called "Boys and Girls Living Together" it comprises some of the best pop conversations between male and female vocalists (a trend that we traced to Human League's sex-power treatise, "Don't You Want Me"). The requirements were that each vocalist had to sing at least a verse or a bridge, not just the hook in the chorus. If you enjoyed the Postal Service's brutal "Nothing Better" or the masochism of Stars' "Elevator Love Letter," you already know this aesthetic well. Stream the mix above and take a spin around 8tracks and let us know what we missed.

Top 50 of 2009 :: 40-31 [We lived like Communists, darling]

40. The XX - "Crystalized"

People went nuts for The XX this year. We didn't exactly, calling them, "the most tense bunch of 2009." That was back in March before NPR got wind of the record and turned them into every bourgeoisie fantasy of what indie rock could sound like in 2009. They became Interpol for the cocktail party where no one is really listening to the music. Of course, all of this is negative and "Crystalized" is, empirically, very good. A spare arrangement and a series of increasingly sexual exchanges between two, intensely androgynous voices, make the cut the kind of thing that builds without releasing anything. But that tension moves just enough potential energy to the kinetic side of the equation. It will move you, even if you're standing, stock still.

39. Pomegranates - "Corriander"

Pomegranates were probably loved hardest by our buddy Chuck this year. His taste is usually better or, at the very least, different and richer than our own. We cop to this easily. However, Chuck and I totally overlapped on Pomegranates with their holistic take on shoegaze. "Corriander" proved to be the richest, shimmering track of a number of quality cuts off their latest record, Everybody, Come Outside. The tumbling climax, with crashing guitars and a peel-off pretty enough to make your eyes water, is worth the wait; proof positive that shoegaze can be spacey and directed in the same moment.

38. Throw Me The Statue - "Ancestors"

Creaturesque, the second full-length from Throw Me The Statue, will go down as one of the best records of the year. It never got a ton of attention, perhaps, because it isn't the type of record to ask for it. Quiet, at times propulsive, indie-pop isn't the genre to blow the doors off the hipster Illuminati. But what they missed in the quiet moments was a louder, fuller version of the band. From the opening chords of "Ancestors," we can be sure we are dealing with a maturing, advanced permutation of the kid who showed so much promise bursting on the scene in early '07. "Ancestors" also provided one of our favorite lyrics of the year: "You packed some punch/we were having such flagrant fun." So were we.

37. These United States - "I Want You To Keep Everything"

We saw These United States at the Echoplex in Los Angeles over the summer and were floored by the animation and workman-like approach of lead-singer Jesse Elliot. This comes through no more clearly than on "I Want You To Keep Everything," a song, ostensibly about a divorce or some seismic ending of a relationship where, bluntly, you give it all away. Elliot intones, "Over, baby, we're over/Don't you send me my red shirt." He means it: Keep everything. He's moving on. Ryan Adams, your torch has officially been passed to someone else still willing to traffic in heartbreak.

36. Golden Silvers - "True Romance (True No. 9 Blues)"

Golden Silvers are one of the most hotly tipped bands out of the UK in 2009 and set for a big break in 2010. "True Romance" features stabbing keyboards, a walking bass-line and more funk than you're going to encounter at most intersections on the rock highway. Golden Silvers proved to be as fun as advertised when we caught them at CMJ. Working with triangle, wood-block and, yes, cowbell, the band is ready for a take-over and, "True Romance" is exactly the kind of growth-potential we've got in mind. So, let all this rhythm wash over you. "Rule Britannia ain't coming back?" Sure, it is.

35. Vivian Darkbloom - "Cold War"

Few bands have pictured a break-up in the kind of sharp, geo-political relief of Vivian Darkbloom's "Cold War." The band, discussing what looks like an interpersonal stand-off, reveals, "I loved our Cold War/We never had to speak/We lived like Communists, darling." Not only does this 1989-rhetoric speak clearly, but "Cold War" also features one of the most singable choruses of the year. Like something out of a more stern Bishop Allen, Vivian Darkbloom gave us something Soviet and American at the same time: An ironic hearkening back to a simpler duality. We might not have liked a sustained face-off with another power, but it sure looks better than not knowing who to hate.

34. Logan Lynn - "Feed Me To The Wolves"

We heard a lot of glossy, synth pop/rock this year. Logan Lynn, a label-mate of The Dandy Warhols, managed to separate himself from the pack. "Feed Me To The Wolves" isn't just a shimmering, urgent bit of post-Postal Service electro-pop. It builds into an architectural elevation with bright keyboards clashing with double-tap drums. The stakes are high as Lynn freely admits, "You can feed me to the wolves if I make one mistake." He doesn't specify who these predators are, but we can assume that anyone who spent time in the music industry knows, the wolves are always at the door.

33. Evan Voytas - "Getting Higher"

Building a music career all by yourself isn't easy. Ask Evan Voytas, a kid from the west coast who embraced every ounce of the new digital landscape. His music is glossy, throwback pop and "Getting Higher," with its sweeping synth-strings and upstroke guitars proved to be every bit of what its title describes. As Voytas' falsetto soars above everything in the chorus, chimes explode around him like a series of sonic fireworks. We described him as waking up "confused and disoriented" in a completely digital universe and we meant it as a compliment. "Getting Higher" is directed and if this kid lives in a world of keys and loops, it looks awfully compelling.

32. Harlem Shakes - "Strictly Game"

The Harlem Shakes named their most recent LP, Technicolor Health after a Michael Chabon description in the novel, Mysteries of Pittsburgh. Chabon means to describe what he feels is the seemingly real fitness of a series of increasingly drunken encounters. In the novel, the main character struggles with his father and the impending disaster of his adulthood. He drinks himself into "technicolor health" as an avoidance and a false bullet-proofing. The Shakes might not be overly concerned with their impending adulthood but rather, they view the process as a grind, "Make a little money, take a lot of shit/feel real bad and get over it." In the early pages of the novel, Chabon describes his summer as a period of "dilated time." Add this to The Shakes assessment. We might be in trouble but, at the very least, the world is opening, not closing before our eyes. As with the last bunch, this will also be a better year.

31. Princeton - "Sadie and Andy"

When it comes to sweeping, baroque-pop, no one did it better than Princeton on "Sadie and Andy." The arrangement marches along with horns, harpsichord and some of the most charming female vocals we heard in 2009. If Wes Anderson was paying attention, this would be the centerpiece of his next partnership with Mark Mothersbaugh. The song grabs you on the first listen, only to unfold on repeated listens in expected and pleasant ways. Like the romantic summer months that it seems destined to be tied to, "Sadie and Andy" will always smell like July in Santa Monica with watermelon drink in the cup-holder and "la-di-das" on the the stereo.

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"

The XX :: "Crystalised"

The XX might be the most tense bunch of 2009. You can't listen to this band and not feel a vague sense of anxiety. Weaving taut arrangements dipped in a post-punk after-glow, they are all build-up and no pay-off. It is all intentionally unsatisfying. The music is almost nervous, or more aptly, would be nervous if it weren't so self-consciously confident. Still, watching someone be confidently tense is about as relaxing as watching the middle 50-minutes of Man On Wire. It's kind of pretty, but you feel like disaster is riding shotgun, somewhere around an invisible corner, waiting to ruin everything. The fear ends up in your mouth without really being there.

But perhaps the point is to court a disaster without actually having one. Sort of like eluding to tragedy without actually experiencing it. Sort of like knowing someone who is emotionally destroyed without actually being emotionally destroyed yourself. Sort of like walking a slow-core Interpol high-wire without actually risking anything. Why? The XX are just fine. Whether their self-awareness is crippling or powerful - I wouldn't turn around: Danger is sitting on the back of your neck with a view to a kill.

Listen :: The XX - "Crystalised"
Bonus :: The XX - "Stars" (demo)