Baby Pink :: "Cellar Door"

Critics can't decide whether to bet on the return of emo or the return of 1990s alternative rock. Baby Pink cast their creative lot with the latter on best-song-to-date, the reverb-pedal-heavy, "Cellar Door" throwing itself back to the British invasion of Oasis and Blur. Even their press photographs scream 1995. But will Baby Pink be TRIBES or the Vaccines, will they be Oasis or Spacehog? The final movement of "Cellar Door", the two most pleasing words paired in English, bodes well, the band rolling over the lyrics, "Just shake little baby, just shake for me" until it becomes marching orders, maybe even the sound of an old thing that could well be the next one.

Top 50 Songs of 2012 :: [10-2]

Welcome to our annual countdown of the 50 best songs of the calendar year. Songs must be from an EP, LP or demo released during 2012 and no band may appear twice. Today, we count down 10 to 2. 

10. A.C. Newman feat. Neko Case - "Not Talking"



What separated Newman's 2012 release, Shut Down The Streets, from being a New Pornographers record remained unclear, especially with a Neko Case appearance on the debut single, "Not Talking". What remained certain was this: when Case and Newman collaborate, the results are magic. A whirling melody and Newman's typical austerity dissolved into Case's transformative duet. It was about a lonely, reverse-engineered Eden. "Rescue teams will look for days/I like the way things are/They should abandon the search," they sang, providing the outlines for exile of these two massive talents. It was allegedly about redemption, a bridge about distance, Case and Newman soaring out over the arrangement with sturdy wings, but it was clear these two were happier out there alone.


9. Father John Misty - "Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings"



The most memorable drum and guitar line of 2012, Father John Misty built a house of death on America' far western boundary with "Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings." "What are people gonna think?" Misty posed to the woman in question, though he suffered from no reservations of formality when dishing up one of the most satisfying sexual lyrics of the year, "I laid up for hours in a daze retracing the expanse of your American back." It was all love and funerals, digging in the dirt, girls along for the ride, making out and up in cemeteries in Los Angeles.


8. Sun Kil Moon - "Sunshine in Chicago"



Mark Kozelek has never lost sleep over forthrightness. In 2012 "Sunshine in Chicago" was no exception, a bracingly honest take on getting old. He admits to getting an STD in Chicago in the 90s, though this somehow comes across as dulcet as the admissions of his own father's exile to Chicago in the summers to relieve a crowded house. Nominally, it is a walk through a sunny Chicago, but it is Kozelek's talent for blighted imagery that takes us to his father, a more-famous career with the Red House Painters, and that line about "guys in tennis shoes." Few other artists do place, minutiae, and lyrical imagery as well as Kozelek, admitting to being both crushingly sad and entirely fine with getting older, all in the span of a walk down Lincoln Avenue on a sunny afternoon.


7. The Zolas - Knot In My Heart"



The most unexpected and infectious chorus of the year, The Zolas' "Knot In My Heart" proved to have staying power behind their one monstrous hook. It was the Spoon song for the year we didn't get a Spoon record, a bit of angular and restless piano-pop that held incredible darkness beneath an ebullient surface. The "knot" wasn't real, though it probably felt that way. The band unleashed lyrics like, "it's hard and weird not to know how your day begins, though I'm lying next to someone new" a simple and crushing aside. The final twist saw the arrangement at full bore, sparse piano chords insistent over the top of the repeated and eponymous lyric. It both ripped and could rip you apart.


6. The Vaccines - "Aftershave Ocean"



The magical realism emerged as a thick stew on the Vaccines' non-single, "Aftershave Ocean." It was their best song from a frankly forgettable sophomore record that will undeniably result in people getting fired at Columbia Records. "Aftershave Ocean" was undeniably excellent, a weird mixture of elements of 2001 Strokes and 1968 Beatles. The guitar line chased the melody, Justin Young singing throwback pop lyrics like, "You're coming up for air/happier down there/in your aftershave ocean." It wasn't clear what it all meant, some weird lines about self-denial, "pulling the wool over," life being difficult to face and indulgence, but the impression was something more like, "Yellow Submarine," the escape that promised better times below the surface of some magical place.


5. Nite Jewel - "One Second of Love"



A whirring synthesizer back-beat announced the arrival of the singular Nite Jewel's "One Second of Love." It featured the chorus of the year, the absolutely best hook, good enough that she only teased the listener with elements of the first refrain, waiting until the 1.21 mark to unleash the complete version. It was haunting and cold, singer Romona Gonzalez asking, "Who has one second of love?", an implication that this might be more fleeting than we were lead to believe. The middle section darkened further, before a final movement, spacey synths soaring to meet the chorus of their maker, Gonzalez, alone in a layered duet with herself, asking her most pressing question.


4. Beach House - "Myth"



It was a lighthouse warning, an iron triangle, a pot and pan beginning. It was something you couldn't quite place, that ringing sound that began Beach House's stunning achievement, "Myth." That banging, inexplicably folded into the arrangement, like an auditory announcement in the fog that lay ahead. It was beautiful, intentionally and creatively gauzy. Victoria Legrand, in her usually haunting voice, suggested, "what comes after this/momentary bliss/ consequence of what you do to me" as if to say to the world they pushed back in their chairs, something this pretty has to come at a cost. Dreams this big, lies this wide, fog this rich, it must fall apart somewhere. It was maybe a bit much, but like only a few other songs this decade, you'll likely remember where you were when you heard "Myth" for the first time. There was no denying this truth, a banging reminder of where you were on their drifting sea of melody and self-deception.


3. Stars - "Hold On When You Get Love And Let Go When You Give It"



Leave it to Stars to hit us with a lyric like, "take the weakest thing in you/and beat the bastards with it," a neo-Breakfast Club call for weird dignity in an increasingly individualized and lonely world. For Torquil Campbell, his weakness was that he was frightened and high, twin admissions at the center of "Hold On When You Get Love ...". Amy Milan was reduced to a Kate Busy-like feature in the chorus, her tweaked and soaring vocal offering a counterpoint to Campbell's confessional Moz. The marching orders were everywhere, the title, the chorus, the ratatat drums calling us to attention, the way they slammed in and out of the chorus, the Cure guitars. It was big and bold and beautiful, a bit silly and a bit saccharine, but love can be like that. Stars remained appropriately at the center of the melodrama, maybe the song of their career, one that Campbell admitted had a "pretty melody," but wouldn't help you leave the party at the right time. This was presumably a cautionary tale of the infidelities that happen after midnight. It was an admission; they could tell you what love sounded like, but they couldn't make you do it.


2. Alt-J - "Breezeblocks"



No one knew what to do with Alt-J in 2012. People compared them to Radiohead. Critics swooned. Pitchfork left them out of their top 50 albums. It was a cacophony as loud as the disparate influences on their record. This writer nearly had a meltdown listening to their debut LP, An Awesome Wave, and its best song, "Breezeblocks" the first time through. There was so much to it, two distinct movements, each a bit bizarre, describing first a murder and then a cannibal's desire to eat the object of your love. The final lyrics, almost done in a round fashion, "Please don't go/I'd eat you whole/I love you so," layered and layered, the drums gaining in intensity and the arrangement swelling behind the band until it was almost maniacal. Perhaps this was suitable for a song about holding the object of your desire down with concrete blocks, a winking and intense idea for what would become the band's "radio single" at college radio in the US. The weirdness worked, and Alt-J held us all under the water, or maybe it was us that killed them. Either way, we were kept together in a weird, pseudo-fetishy way, held down with weights and bound to the bottom.

China Rats :: "To Be Like I"

If everything breaks right for China Rats in the next few months, they will be 2013's answer to the Vaccines 2011-campaign. The Leeds band channels more Ramones pop-brut than the Vaccines ever did, but the insistent drums and shout-along refrains are the common thread. "To Be Like I" is a revolving door rock song, spinning and spinning in place, joyfully centered on the title lyric. The band will play SXSW in a few months time, and have a coming single to back "To Be Like I" and the band's other recent raucous single, "N.O.M.O.N.E.Y." With a big following in the UK, in the ever-evolving American "now," China Rats are in the pregnant moment before things either happen or don't, like "To Be Like I," full of potential, brash and uncertainty.

Top 50 Songs of 2011 :: 10-6 [We all got old at breakneck speed]

Welcome to our annual countdown of the 50 best songs of the calendar year. Songs must be from an EP, LP or demo released during 2011, no band may appear twice. Each post title contains a lyric from one of the ten songs to follow, a hint and a hook that stuck out clearly in this group. Today, we count down 10-6.

10. Florence and the Machine - "Shake It Out"

 

Florence Welch went for broke in 2011, and by this I mean she was as willing to use cliche, simile and bad metaphor as I was in the first clause of this sentence. On "Shake It Out", her bombastic and soaring single, she featured turns of phrase like, "regrets collect like old friends", "pound of flesh", "it's always darkest before the dawn", "dragging that horse around", "damned if I do and damned if I don't", "shot in the dark" and, again, "it's always darkest before the dawn". The song was a veritable Mad Libs of familiar figures of speech; it almost read like an athlete's press conference. But, it was specifically Welch's ability to traffic in such common tropes, updating them with her stunning vocals and top-of-the-room melodies, that made her so instantly relational on her second album. Some 27 months ago she was a bizarre woodland sprite playing the Bowery Ballroom, but in 2011, Florence blew away the concept of a sophomore slump with a common touch. If it was her mild weirdness, a Kate Bushness, a nearly garish individualism, that initially attracted label executives, it was her ability to speak to everyone in applicable generalities that made "Shake It Out" and Ceremonials so brilliant. Always fiercely internal, Florence previously kept the world away with a once-in-a-generation voice and by being almost religiously different. In 2011 she spoke to all of us at once, keeping us out by letting everyone in.


9. The Strokes - "Under Cover Of Darkness"

 

Angles was the album The Strokes had to make, and it sounded like it. Far from being a traditional "comeback" record, whole portions of the album felt workman-like, as if the very weight of the five album deal from RCA hung over every note. This wasn't exactly the Phoenix rising from the ashes. Casablancas checked out of the studio, or maybe the band turned on him; it didn't necessarily matter. Like a punch-drunk prize fighter, The Strokes got it together, not for an album, but for a song. "Under Cover Of Darkness" possessed an uncommon urgency in its opening angular riffs and its half pleading, half promising pre-chorus lyric, "I'll wait for you", a hook that most bands would take as the refrain to their first radio single. The Strokes, finding some of their old magic, pushed the "Good Enough" to be "Great", and the chorus itself was an explosion of ratatat drums and Casablancas' only passionate moment on the record as he bid goodbye to his "adversary and friend". The psychology was rich. Was this the band's goodbye to itself? Was it an admission of how hard Angles was to make? This doesn't even address the lyric about "everybody singing the same song for 10 years." Just how burdened the band was with an acute self-awareness, we'll never know. It was a tired album after a five year layoff, a strange contradiction, but for "Under Cover Of Darkness" it didn't matter. It was the song they had to have and did.

8. The Smith Westerns - "All Die Young"

 

Seeing The Smith Westerns at Pitchfork two summers ago would never have lead anyone to believe the band was capable of the awesome, funeral pop of "All Die Young". They were young and entirely unimpressive then. By 2011 their status as distinctly "youthful" remained unchanged though the qualitative distinctions about their sound had shifted. "All Die Young" was a throwback single on a throwback record, the opening organ chords and wistful guitars calling some blurry nostalgia of the type that is so easily projected by the listener. It was a slow-dance, at least at first, a languid Box Step through the end of a lazy summer. But the arrangement altered for the final third, an upbeat syrupy sing-a-long rooted in the title lyric. It wasn't a recommendation that we, or they for that matter, die, but it was that kind of blissful fatalism that can only happen in your late teens and early twenties. In days of increasing weight and seriousness, it was a carefree melody and a sense that we would all be alive or dead together. Youthful sentiment mixing easily with an uncommon musical sophistication, the latter free from any trappings of age.


7. The Vaccines - "Wetsuit"



London's The Vaccines were one of those rare rock acts that created backlash before their debut LP ever arrived in stores. Perhaps a product of an increasingly reactionary and fast-moving music journalism climate, the Vaccines emerged from nowhere with "If You Wanna", a sketchy mediafire download sent in the fall of 2010, and were roundly criticized by that very winter. Still, the band's debut LP, What Did You Expect From The Vaccines? was one of the best rock debuts in recent memory and certainly one of the best rock records of 2011. The final single from the record, "Wetsuit" was the destillation of all that made The Vaccines so relevant this year. Singer Justin Young warbled platitudes about youth, introduced for the first time as suggestions and later appropriated as louder, anthemic orders. The song finishes with fist-raising aplomb and lyrics about salvation and purity, the kind of patriarchal generalities that so many rock songs begin and end with. Of course, even reading this, if you are determined to hate The Vaccines there is little anyone can do about it. In all probability, you hate their path to the seven spot on this list, to their record deal, to their festival gigs, as much as you hate their music. You also hate their music. Your vengeance is swift, we get it. But, The Vaccines charmed us in 2011 because they seemed in on the joke. Yes, their rise was mercurial. Yes, their record possessed obvious influences. But, if you hated them, the backlash was their creation. They made you do it, like them or not.

6. The War On Drugs - "Come To The City"

It takes a special band and a special song to have you yelping along on the first listen. It was an aesthetic reaction, done without thought or consideration, a visceral slice of sensibilities you did not know or did not remember you had. Perhaps the War On Drugs had you at the menacing, rolling drums that begin "Come To The City", seeming to move and spread like a cloud bank rising in the distance. Maybe they had you when you thought, "Shit, this reminds me of a U2 song that I used to love." Or maybe it was just a hymn of urbanization that hooked you, like so many, to follow their directions and end up in the city. The arrangement built a wall of sound that allowed the lyrics and melody bounce off it, sing from the top of it, hide behind it. The thrashing guitars and relentless drums were the story as singer Adam Granduciel wailed and yelped lyrics about "rambling" and "moving", one of those American stories about trying to find home between where you're from, where you've been and where you might belong. It ended in series of unintelligible moans from behind the guitars, the final edict being the first one: You will find yourself in the city, young man. You knew it the first time you heard it because it was a sense you always had; move forward, move on. Go forth and go now.

On The List :: The Vaccines @ Bowery Ballroom [1.20.11]

This review runs live and in color on Bowery's House List.

There were two shows happening last night at the sold-out Bowery Ballroom, and the Vaccines were playing them both. As the most hotly buzzed UK band since the Arctic Monkeys, the London four-piece took the stage in front of a crowd that hardly knew them. A cursory exploration of the Internet would reveal that any nonindustry kids in attendance had heard a maximum of four songs before buying tickets to the first Vaccines show in the US. The crowd wasn’t exactly there to see the band, but rather, they showed up to see what they imagined the group would be. So the question and the disjoint hung heavy over an unwitting and ecstatic audience: Who are the Vaccines?

Even with all the hype, the Vaccines, displaying a combination of polish and caustic irreverence, appeared unfazed. They opened with “Wreckin’ Bar (Ra Ra Ra),” a sub-two-minute ripper sitting so firmly on the downbeat that you’d almost expect the floor to collapse. Two songs later, sounding like a more approachable Interpol, the Vaccines played their latest single, “Post Break-Up Sex,” the kind of love song that isn’t about love at all—kind of like people who fought to see a band they hoped might be great. The Vaccines hung the middle of their show on the fulcrum of their first demo, “If You Wanna,” a storming sing-along that might be their best song.

The quartet closed their main set with “Blow It Up,” describing destruction and mercuriality in the same chorus. And the two images of the band began to comfortably focus toward each another like uncrossing eyes. They were both themselves and the band everyone had imagined they could be. In the terms of their hype, they’re “the real fucking deal.” And nothing better shaped the evening than the second song, a tune no one knew (how could they?), where the final act was the screaming lyric: “We are happening.” And they were.

The Vaccines - Blow It Up by radarmaker

The Vaccines - Wreckin' Bar (Ra Ra Ra) by radarmaker

[Elevator 2011] :: Bands On The Rise

As is the custom in the indie rock universe in this coming second decade of the 21st century, it is not simply enough to know about something, you must know about it first. Furthermore, you must make outlandish predictions regarding the future success of said thing. In this case, it is music. In this case, it is 2011 and our predictions for the bands and artists who will be taking off wildly in the coming year. After the jump in no order, with regard for your future listening and the wisdom of the crowd, your Elevator 2011 bands.

Top 50 Songs of 2010 :: 40-31 [It's alright if you wanna come back]

40. Tallest Man On Earth - "Burden of Tomorrow"

In 2010 Kristian Matsson as Tallest Man On Earth, an unlikely Swede, so successfully tapped the American folk tree, the most common critical comparison was Bob Dylan. Perhaps a better precedent - and entirely more reasonable - would be Bon Iver, as shared makers of small, acoustic records that chart the depths of human sorrow with mournful vocals and little else. On "Burden of Tomorrow," Matsson's yelp and drawl sketch a universe full of metaphors rooted in nature. Perhaps with an eye toward Dylan and Vernon, he intones, "Rumor has it that I wasn't born/I just walked in one frosty morn." Surprise.

39. Wildlife - "Stand In The Water"

On one of the best debuts of 2010, Wildlife charged out of the gates with "Stand In The Water," replete with pounding drums and a unforgettable hook, "just as long as you're looking for me." This is all before the arrangement explodes into a sea of backing vocals and another assurance, "We're all going somewhere." It sounds a little like a more fully realised Wolf Parade demo, something absolutely going somewhere

38. Dead Confederate - "Run From The Gun"

A shabby chord progression and vocals that sound like they've been up all night before being recorded into a wax paper microphone are the backing of Dead Confederate's slow drive "Run From The Gun." The title lyric is sandwiched around the divine promise, "don't be afraid," while it remains unclear if this violence is real or imagined. The guitars project longing, the vocals agony, but the hook will stick in your cheek because it was built to do so.

37. Hooray For Earth - "Surrounded By Your Friends"

In 2007 it was fashionable to scream, "Where are your friends tonight?" Hooray For Earth offered an entirely optimistic response in 2010, with a chorus built on the title lyric and a church of chiming synths and swelling backing vocals. A cloying subject matter that never becomes cloying in practice as the band navigates this hopeful territory with aplomb and a knack for arty synth rock, like an indie rock Erasure. That is, hopefully, taken as a profound compliment.

36. Math and Physics Club - "Jimmy Had A Polaroid"

No band, and certainly no song, better captured the essence of a spinning, sunny summer than Math and Physics Club did with "Jimmy Had A Polaroid." The lyrics are built around a silly bit of nostalgia before the protagonist moved away. All that remained was this picture and these lost salad days spent getting dizzy in the park.

35. Glasser - "Home"

The stage name for Cameron Mesirow, Glasser delivered some combination of the industrial pop that has become currency in loft apartments and the cold, urban tribalism of label mates Tanlines. Mesirow's vocals emerge as the only source of warmth in the the freezing arrangement of xylophone and looping hand claps. Slowly, the sonics expand, becoming fully realized as "Home" swells behind her like the menacing storm front she alludes to in the song's first lyrics. She is gorgeous and haunting, as you might expect.

34. Northern Portrait - "New Favourite Moment"

Designed perfectly for a movie montage, Northern Portrait craft a slice of twee with tumbling guitars and a self-actualizing chorus. Left in the wake of a now defunct Lucksmiths, the band takes up the banner of shoe-shuffling, feel-good pop currently only rivaled by the Acid House Kings and Math and Physics Club in spirit and execution. Is it the Cure playing a Belle and Sebastian record or something less self-serious? They make no mistake, the answer sitting squarely in the title.

33. LESANDS - "Pretenders"

We saw LESANDS on two coasts and in two small rooms in 2010. One, a tiny art space in East LA and the other, a well-accented space in Park Slope, Brooklyn and each time their vibrating synthesizer anthems elevated the scene. "Pretenders" is their center piece, a pounding and buzzing dose of pop so relentless and infecting in its approach that you will have "roses, roses, roses ..." stuck in your head for weeks.

32. Magic Bullets - "Lying Around"

Magic Bullets delivered one of the most immediately accessible songs of the year on the yelping, Smiths-inspired "Lying Around." The lyrics trace the animative qualities of relationships, and the concurrent malaise in their absence. The guitars are playful and the bass line, frenetic. The final conclusion is a little slice of pop nihilism, "It doesn't mean a single thing."

31. The Vaccines - "If You Wanna"

The Vaccines are absolutely going to kill you in 2011, approaching US shores with as much unknown hype as any rock band we've seen since the early Arctic Monkeys singles in 2005. On first demo, "If You Wanna," the band etches their exit strategy for a failed relationship; just let her come back. It's alright if you wanna come back, they suggest, with something of a rye grin and no mention of what drove the separation in the first place. It's refreshing, a chorus this full of hooks, and unpolished and unconcerned with being either.

The Vaccines :: "If You Wanna"

Brand new UK band The Vaccines have barely a footprint in proof of their actual existence, only an infectious, patient-zero single and a publicist behind their emails who admittedly doesn't even represent them. You can't make this stuff up. So, the math on this is a little iffy, but we do know first demo, "If You Wanna," is a throw-back burner with good attitude and an instantly memorable chorus. For a band with a name and almost nothing else, a cocksure demo takes the place of depth, and you can be absolutely sure you'll be hear a great deal more from these shadows in the digital darkness.

Listen :: The Vaccines - "If You Wanna" [Link dead, killed by copyright 1.18.11]