Bogan Via :: "Kanye"

A high school acquaintance of mine relays the following story about meeting Kanye West. I suspect many people have a similar version with personal specifics. On the night his second LP, Late Registration dropped, West shuffled past my former high school classmate at the release party. After exchanging pleasantries, West said, "Have you heard my new record?" Before allowing time for a response, he answered his own question, "It's fucking incredible." This moment, and thousands of others like it, lodged Kanye firmly in the consciousness of the modern music fan, a brand of excellence and arrogance of the type that yields single-name soccer players and single-name musicians. Kanye. Or consider Bono, who once leaked his own music by listening to it at volume with the windows of his French villa conspicuously open. It resounds with arrogance bordering on the sublime. After all the anxiety, relativism and pragmatic thinking, it is a relief to hear confidence in art. Brooklyn-by-way-of-Phoenix band Bogan Via have released a single, "Kanye" that reflects this cultural evolution. But instead of brashness, they hollow out the center, replacing it with minor key synthesizer progression and lyrical urgings like, "Give your heart to everything, you gotta move when the move seems right." The vocal duet and somber mood evokes something caught between Mates of State and Beach House's records before you knew about Beach House. This is a diet of sadness, the knowledge that so many have put hope in your arrogance, alone in a tower of your own making, sentenced to a lifetime of the same conversation and your same trope answers. Here, this is beautiful, but they already know that.

Listen :: Bogan Via - "Kanye"

Oberhofer :: "Runaway" [Kanye West cover]

Bradley Oberhofer has a thing about leaving. On first break-though 2010 demo, "I Could Go", Oberhofer, yelped about the need for some kind of escape velocity, the kind of thing you imagine a 19-year old thinks about before they become a minor establishment on the New York indie rock circuit. With a full length debut out on Glassnote, Oberhofer now turns his attention to the haunting piano hooks of Kanye West's "Runaway". It is a predictably self-loathing affair, opening with high-fret guitars before finally settling into a falsetto chorus that could almost merge with a half-the-BPMs version of, "I Could Go". As the piano chimes against the grubby little guitars you can almost hear the brittle and fractious Oberhofer yelping out, "I could go ... away" against the real lyrics about "douche bags" and "assholes". At once faithful and playful, Oberhofer's version is gorgeous in spurts and ironic without cracking a smile. Either way, honest or not, he and Kanye are both certain about needing to get away from everyone, maybe even themselves.

Kanye West @ Bowery Ballroom [10.23.10]

Yesterday as news leaked out that Kanye West would be playing Bowery Ballroom, I was on a train from DC to Providence. Immediately emailing my editor with Bowery Presents, I swore I would get off in New York if he could set up a guest list for the show. We had 70 minutes to make it happen and, well, it didn't happen in time. No hard feelings and an amazing effort, but what about the people who snuck through Ticketmaster's labyrinth and paid their 106 dollars to see Mr. West? They saw the entirety of West's new record, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and an encore that would close with a nearly ten minute rant. By all reports it was explosive, heavily documented and down right weird. Would you expect anything less?