Eleanor Friedberger :: "My Mistakes"

We are a sucker for a good confession. The kind that sneaks up on you in the middle of a crowded party - and the din of other peoples' chatter offers part of the drama and the backdrop - where someone stares at your face and tells you something exciting or terrible. Their eyes are clear, like we imagine Eleanor Friedberger's are when she writes lyrics like, "I thought I'd learn from my mistakes." It is simple and the refrain around which the author stuffs other asides like, "She's got kind of a native vibe before that was so cool/she's got kind of a native vibe before I even knew who was who/And he's ignoring me like it's 2001." We are clearly at the mercy of her universe, not entirely rational, as the singer of the Fiery Furnaces builds the kind of soundscapes that slide between territory already well surveyed by Feist and more meditative Arcade Fire cuts (this is purely based on a few measures of shabby guitars and is particularly unuseful; I mean, there are horns at the end). Her tone is revealing, in this case not meaning worthy of a second layer of meaning, rather simply the pulling of drop cloth off a piece of furniture, like leafing through an old notebook. Her debut will be out later this year on Merge.

Listen :: Eleanor Friedberger - "My Mistakes"

On The List :: The Pipettes @ Mercury Lounge [4.20.11]

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

The Pipettes appeared like an intensely fashion-coordinated vision, all in various permutations of checkered print, a throwback to a time when such collusion was charming, romantic and unironic. With two endearing female leads and an all-male backing band, they embrace the sounds of the ’50s without toting its misogynist social mores. The vocalists effusively thanked the crowd, and mentions of delayed passports and it having been such a long time since they’d played New York City would come later. For the moment, they were just two bubbly girls, their band and a series of killer dance moves to challenge a city steeped in cynicism, sarcasm and caustic irony. Without ruining the ending, one of these two entities—band or bitter urban milieu—would lose.

With one of its frontwomen an inspiring images of ’90s Cardigans singer Nina Persson and the other referencing the thick-rimmed glasses of an American Apparel librarian, the Pipettes are truly a different lineup from their original three-part-harmonies version. They opened with “Your Kisses Are Wasted on Me,” a song about, well, exactly what the title indicates. And this type of directness, unobfuscated by bullshit and snark, would be the theme of the night. The band quickly ran through, “My Heart’s a Bomb,” “Dirty Mind” and “Thank You,” all about exactly what you might think, before thanking the audience again.

The set closed in a moment of supreme good feelings with the band playing recent single “Stop the Music” before finishing with their most widely appreciated track, “Pull Shapes.” The final lyrics, “Dance with me pretty boy tonight,” which we have to assume was directed at those in the crowd, who obliged, perhaps admitting some kind of defeat to the two effervescent women onstage, their colors coordinated and their eyes sparkling.

The Pipettes - Pull Shapes (RAC Mix) by RAC

Tom Vek :: "A Chore"

It isn't worth putting Tom Vek's debut album We Have Sound in a cultural context. You were either paying attention in 2005 or you weren't. And, frankly, if you weren't and someone didn't make specific mention of the multi-instrumentalist between then and now, you would have missed it entirely. After all, the indie rock world moved on. But if you waited around for Tom Vek these last six years through two Strokes and Radiohead records and Arcade Fire winning a Grammy, he returns this June with a new album and a first single entitled, "A Chore". The video centers on an a easy but good gender-bending joke. If you were wondering where to find the modern record that TV On The Radio suddenly lost the ambition to make this year, it is here. It is still undeniably a solo show. Suitably, by the end, oscillating between televised black-and-white and real life color, Tom Vernon-Kell is left standing alone on stage like he'd been waiting there the whole time or it was us who left him, not the other way around.

Therapies Son :: "Touching Down"

The music for the last scene of a movie that hasn't been written yet, Therapies Son offers "Touching Down" as a soundtrack powerful enough to forge a narrative around. Is it one of those road movies, something American enough to paint counter-culture with romantic tones in a mainstream media? We will need a motorcycle and some fresh-faced kids. We will need long shots of big smiles (or Stern Faces, depending on where we are in the plot) and yellow highway lines gliding under the edge of the camera with the kind of poetic apathy required of metaphorical inanimate objects (read: roads, see: coming of age story) in movies like these. And, we suppose the fun here isn't the characters or the shoddy writing or the production assistant who put all the wrong things in someone important's coffee on the third day of shooting. See, none of it has been written. Therapies Son, a 19-year old kid from California just happens to have the sound, friction coefficients set to less than zero, to float us in the right direction. You write it and I'll get the bike; we'll meet on the coast.

Listen :: Therapies Son - "Touching Down"

Little Scream :: "The Heron and the Fox"

In 1977, NASA launched the second Voyager mission into deep space. One of the loneliest moments in the history of science, the craft did not intend on returning, only to broadcast for as long as it could and then silently carry certain contents to anyone who might find them. On board was a golden record, not coincidentally the title of Little Scream's debut album. The golden record of the Voyager mission contained the sounds of earth: animals, running water, language, laughter, what Carl Sagan would call, "a message in a bottle on a great ocean." Little Scream, sounding an awful lot like Jenny Lewis on downers, with help from Aaron Dessner of the National, sets out to frame this moment of the Voyager's unrequited quest. It was an unmanned mission, a little ball of tin foil and circuits hurtling through the planets, carrying the documented proof of life on earth in the hope that someone might find it and begin to understand us. At some point a few years ago, it passed Pluto and kept moving. The darkness certainly dilated around the craft; its cargo so arbitrary and yet so important, its mission so dutifully performed and so solitary in nature.

Listen :: Little Scream - "The Heron and the Fox"

Delta Maid :: "Under Cover Of Darkness" [Strokes Cover]

I can't say much for Delta Maid other than to regurgitate some press blurbs about how she is small in stature, from Liverpool and generally writes country music. Her cover of most recent Strokes' single, "Under Cover Of Darkness" proves a crushing reimagination of the original. Reducing the arrangement down to acoustic guitar and a few, well-placed harmonies, the melody of the original emerges as a long goodbye, the notations more playful and the lyrics more fully heartbroken. Casablancas' 1000-yard stare sings through the lips of this girl from England, her voice shifting gears easily as they sing "So long my friend and adversary, I'll wait for you." It sucks the air out of the room. Maybe this proves the power of melody, or the malleability of the form and function of rock music, like this emotional Swiss Army knife equally useful for cutting bark or filing your nails. Or maybe it proves that a girl in Liverpool can deliver and relieve so much pain through words of a sad, lanky guy on the Lower East Side.

We Are Augustines :: "Chapel Song" and "Book Of James"

The question isn't how the world will burn, but rather what we will build in the aftermath. We Are Augustines forged their band on the broken rubble of the excellent Brooklyn outfit Pela. Sonic cousins to mid-career National records, Pela's instrumentation drew a broad swath through the American indie rock tradition, their melodies finding dilated heartbreaks in second movements. But, the band didn't make it out of recording their second album and their late night shows in the backs of bars they used to do for friends on Smith St. We Are Augustines are a resilient second attempt to make this work. Sounding very much like their precursor, "Chapel Song" and "Book of James" traffic in the same vague religiosity of the Saint from which Augustines' picked their name. Men of confession, of former sin, of documentable salvation, they move forward. And this is the hard part, now, the trick even, to make again and anew out of thin air the almost of that previous thing. They are certain to do it.