Deportees :: "Islands and Shores"

Lyrics like, "something gets to die when something lives" are functionally meaningless, yet when thrown into the right type of sky-riding rock song, they can be later justified as a kind of pitch-perfect emotional fodder. Deportees, a band we posted about a few weeks back, do just this on older single, "Islands and Shores". Recalling a less bombastic Temper Trap, the down-cast guitars are set against a swirling mixture of synths, backing vocals and strings. The climactic lyric, the chorus, risks being just as un-utilitarian as the the one about living and dying. This time the band intones, "looking out for this love, looking out for us," as a choir of voices rise in the background and the arrangement reaches its high-water mark. Accomplishing meaning in reverse, Deportees build an architecture that gives weight to the lyrics inside it, even if those lyrics struggle to find to find the same weight at their center. When done right, and this qualifies, these moments and couplets can be recast as desperately important. A line like, "if it was up to me I'd give you all the oceans" pulled off the yearbook page and thrust, improbably and incredibly, into your short term memory.

Deportees - Islands And Shores (New Single) by UniversalMusicSweden

Tiny Victories :: "Gravitron"

It is the seasick nostalgia of our childhoods that make these memories both faded and brilliant. Echoing in us like a burned Polaroid, these vignettes still call us to higher purpose, a memory of a self that both does and doesn't still exist. Brooklyn's Tiny Victories bridge easily this type of gap between the muddied reverb of their arrangements and the top-of-the-room choruses that build the architecture of their refrains. On "Gravitron", a suitably spinning melody whips around and around as the hook with double-tap drums playing the dual role of enforcer and sycophant. The final explosion roots in the lyric, "We could think about it", spun round a few times and tossed out dizzy and entirely satisfied.

Mike O'Neill :: "Henry"

Playful drums and friscalating backing vocals lay the groundwork for Mike O'Neill's latest single, "Henry". The chorus is empty and full at once, layers upon layers of woozy "doos" acting as the hook in place of the hook that isn't totally there. Replay, given "Henry" is only two-and-half minutes long, proves a satisfying ride, lolling down the back of a simple piano progression and the sweetest little melodies you'll hear today. For the Wes Anderson movie appropriated to personal aesthetic experience, the tweed jacket worn with a straight face, "Henry" pulses up and down with a motion all its own and a sepia filter that doesn't feel a bit dishonest.



via Indie Music Filter

Burning Hearts :: "Burn Burn Burn"

Perhaps being forced by your housemate to listen to Enya unironically for the past three months makes a person susceptible to the voice and melodies of Burning Hearts singer, Jessika Rapo. A Finnish duo turned four-piece, Rapo merges her dulcet voice with the arrhythmiatic key signature changes from drummer, Henry Ojala. "Burn Burn Burn" opens with haunting scarcity, a sparse arrangement and the tripartite repetition of lyrics. The chorus gives way to something else, a building urgency, metaphors about roaming the deserts and forests. Layers upon layers of vocals offer a raging potential energy to the song's final movement, a desire to scream along with Rapo, to turn this up and let it spin wildly out of control. Of course, this is compartmentalized and denied, a dignified brand of austerity that is, frankly, hard to look away from.

Superhumanoids :: "Geri"

LA's electricity and groundwater must have trace elements of neon in it. For anyone who enjoyed M83's most recent (or, hell, any) effort, Superhumanoids' "Geri" has some of the same DNA. The synths hum and the male-female vocal interplay sounds like a slow motion dribble hand-off between two sleek, languid guards. The forecast calls for something permanently dark, rife with glowing electronics and a hook sharp enough to stick in your chest.

On The List :: John Roderick @ Mercury Lounge [1.28.11]

This review runs live, first and in color at the Bowery Presents' House List blog.

The first time I saw John Roderick was with his full band, the Long Winters, at a now-defunct East L.A. venue back in 2008. He was in rock-star mode with long hair and a loud maroon jacket, and he never took off his sunglasses. But on Saturday night, a mellower version, perhaps a more authentic Roderick, took the stage at Mercury Lounge with an acoustic guitar, plaid shirt and horn-rimmed glasses. It ended up being more of a group-therapy session than a rock concert. He seemed to accept and embrace this, one of the most self-aware and whip-smart musicians of his generation, positioned at the edge of being an indie-rock icon and a guy, like everyone else, getting older.

Roderick came onstage, tuned his guitar and asked for requests, later admitting he had half a mind to make the entire hour-plus set all requests, but this emerged as mildly problematic in the night’s second song. After playing “Hindsight,” Roderick took another suggestion, “The Sound of Coming Down,” a song from the Long Winters’ nearly decade old When I Pretend to Fall. After the first verse and chorus, a perfect and sublime Roderick hook (“Hey, you know nobody’s chasing us”), it was clear the singer struggled with the lyrics to the second verse. When an audience member shouted the first couplet, Roderick laughed and picked up the thread. He would apologize for the misstep, but it was a perfect reflection of the evening: audience members throwing requests, help, sarcastic barbs and Roderick responding in kind—a sort of hyper-literate ringleader for this circus collection of liberal arts degrees, facial hair and memorized indie-rock lyrics.

The audience wanted more than the 11 acoustic versions of Long Winters songs that Roderick played. “The Commander Thinks Aloud,” which Roderick informed us was “about a spaceship crash,” produced the type of silent reverence that brought all these quippy, culturally relevant fans to the same place. It was Roderick, alone, describing the last moments of the Space Shuttle Columbia. The final chilling lyric, “The crew compartment is breaking up,” describes the fatal perils of reentry. And the moment transcended any snappy comebacks as Roderick earnestly, and somewhat awkwardly, struggled to thank everyone for coming.

Listen :: The Long Winters - "Pushover"
Listen :: The Long Winters - "Ultimatum"
Listen :: The Long Winters - "Blue Diamonds"
Listen :: The Long Winters - "Stupid"
Listen :: The Long Winters - "Carparts"
Listen :: The Long Winters - "Unsalted Butter"
Listen :: The Long Winters - "The Commander Thinks Aloud" [Live at Union Hall 4.2.2007]

Deportees :: "A Heart Like Yours (In A Time Like This)"

We need vanishing points. Those dots on the horizon, the end of a long and tragic orthogonal, represent some better bit of accomplishment, some better vision of the future. Of course, all things being relative, we never arrive there exactly. We move forward, a halting and bizarre procession, but we never capture those lost black dots at the edge of what we can see. There emerge new ones. We steel ourselves, rekindle optimism and proceed. We find a platitude that works in this moment. Deportees' enormous and mournful single, "A Heart Like Yours (In A Time Like This)" feels cut from this type of cloth. Big, pulsing, background vocals take a choral turn on a song that runs over six minutes and never raises above head height. No grand final movement saves the listener. There is no transfiguration, just a routinized march forward on lyrics like, "Save it for another world"; we assume he means "your heart" if we take the title at face value. Each choral loop offers a few glossy steps forward, but the outcome is no more or less defined at the end. The final lyric, "I miss you when you're gone" is the lone vanishing point on the horizon, any progress towards it receding and receding in kind.