Capital Cities :: "Safe And Sound"

Remember the first time you heard "Kids" or "Sleepyhead"or "1901"? Each of these summer anthems were so transcendent that in retrospect you don't need to attach band names, only the years 2007, 2008, and 2009 respectively; the songs spoke for themselves and the bands blew up. In 2011, it will be Capital Cities, a Los Angeles electro pop act with a buzzy summer jam, "Safe And Sound", replete with a hefty downbeat and an airbrushed trumpet hook. Easy rhymes like "even in a hurricane of frowns/we'll be safe and sound" or "in a tidal wave of mystery/I know you'll be standing next to me" and lyrics that run in exact time with the 4/4 time signature make "Safe And Sound" instantly digestable, the kind of lather, rinse, repeat pop that is so intensely satisfying. In the first lyric, "I could lift you up," served over stomping synths, arrives as the thesis statement. Even three years later everything is still going to the beat.

Listen :: Capital Cities - "Safe And Sound"

Warm Weather :: "The Dance"

Warm Weather are a Los Angeles group of recent college grads with an excellent debut EP, Dances. In the spirit of other esoteric, somewhat baroque pop acts like Vampire Weekend and fellow Angelinos, Princeton, Warm Weather drape swelling arrangements in layers of vocal harmonies and enough poly-rhythmic influences to make everyone have to use the proper noun, "Paul Simon". Lead track, "The Dance" very nearly explodes half a minute in with a cascade of backing harmonies, in essence a movement in three parts, this demarks the end of the of first and the beginning of the second. By the third, a roaring breakdown of so many individual vocal parts, the band is at the height of its power before an entirely satisfying resolution of a final chord. Fairly simple, these are the last collection of notes on the first song of one of the best debut EPs of the year.

Twin Sister :: "Bad Street"

The break for Twin Sister - and here I don't mean publicity-driven Top 40 radio, but rather something stylistic - was 2010's "All Around And Away We Go". It was the position from which they launched themselves out of a lo-fi haze (and obviously, the forecast was a still a little hazy) and into a more spacious, almost disco-infused landscape. On recent single, "Bad Street", the band continues this trajectory away from home-recorded, cold-medicine jams and into substantially funkier (if "funkier" can be used as a critical and analytical term) territory. "Bad Street" climbs to an apex around the lyric, "I want it bad, I want it bad", though leaving it abundantly unclear whether this is qualitative statement or an expression of supreme desire. Either way, Twin Sister have moved expertly from making pleasantly drowned lo-fi, to upbeat summery disco pop. And they've done it all, as they would tell you with pride, without a publicist.

Listen :: Twin Sister - "Bad Street"

Mumford and Sons :: "England" [The National Cover]

East Enders, Mumford and Sons recently recorded a cover of the National's "England" from 2010's High Violet. Perhaps, it is appropriate that an actual English band play the song written by the Brooklyners by way of Ohio, in a swarm of bees, you know the rest. The cover was a part of VH1's "Unplugged" series, more than a little ironic given that Mumford has never played anything approaching "electric" or "plugged". However, "England" wears well in the hands of the folk set, building to a stomping conclusion around the lyric, "'fraid of the house, spend the night with the sinners", one of those lines written by a divided atheist and appropriated to be worn smooth in the hands of a believer. But all religion and regions aside, this reminds us of the depth and talent of the National and Mumford's ongoing revelation that a banjo band can and will sound great all the time.

Tags: Mumford and Sons Unplugged, Mumford and Sons, Music Videos, Live Performances

On The List :: The Decemberists @ Prospect Park Bandshell [6.14.11]

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

Colin Meloy, lead singer of the Decemberists, took to the stage last night in Brooklyn, a borough he unwittingly helped build. See, since the first Decemberists demos and EP back in 2000-2001, Brooklyn fully embraced the Meloy shtick, a delocated Portland East, full of beards, thick-framed glasses, microbrewed beers and sustainably raised chicken. In essence, Meloy turned his wanton nerdiness into a major label deal with Capitol Records, and a bunch of nerdy kids declared him their archetype and followed his excellence by deftly selecting their shifts at the Park Slope Food Coop. The memory of these 10 years is as powerful as whatever actually happened. You didn’t necessarily need to look like Meloy to get into the bandshell last night, although it didn’t hurt, but this was in so many ways the return of the king.

Dressed in a smart three-piece gray suit, Meloy strode to the microphone more or less on time, with a glass of red wine that he carefully placed atop an amp, to be largely forgotten. The band opened with “July, July,” potentially their most singable song, before moving into material off their latest and best record, The King Is Dead, playing “Down by the Water” and “Calamity Song,” which Meloy offered free of charge to Michelle Bachman’s campaign. The beards and cheese plates on the lawn roared their approval but it was only Meloy who pulled off the sarcastic lyrical reference to supply-side economics before singing, “Will we gather to conjure the rain down?” laughing as his followers stood in hoods and umbrellas under a spitting drizzle. He couldn’t have seemed more powerful.

Perhaps it was some of Meloy’s first lyrics of the evening that rang the most true. In “July, July,” he reflected: “And we’ll remember this when we are old and ancient, though the specifics might be vague. And I’ll say your camisole was a sprightly light magenta when in fact it was a nappy bluish gray.” Memories colored with the sheen of nostalgia. So those in the crowd would forget these silly beards and goofy haircuts and the sleeping baby at a rock concert and the organic cheeses and the sustainably fermented pinot noir, but they will remember how this felt, to be in the same ZIP code as the brilliant Meloy. As he sang in “All Arise,” a country-western joint played to Prospect Park West, “just be mine tonight,” and they were.

The Decemberists -This Is Why We Fight by MMMusic

FIRST RATE PEOPLE :: "Someone Else Can Make A Work Of Art"

First Rate People return with their most long form effort to date, "Someone Else Can Make A Work Of Art". For a band with such fine songs and many of them clocking under three minutes, the 4:38 run time on "Work Of Art" feels downright longitudinal. Carrying three or four distinct movements on the single, the band continues to be agile, Swiss Army popsmiths, shifting between melodies with a sense that you're never fully out of the chorus. The arrangement is spacious, with a production sheen that indicates that FRP's days of making little bedroom pop songs might be graduating into something larger, the proverbial roof deck above the cozy studio apartment. Most importantly, like everything else the band has done to date, "Work Of Art" can instantly become your favorite song, the special power of the Canadian kids with pockets overflowing with hooks.



Listen :: First Rate People - "Someone Else Can Make A Work Of Art"

The Heartrates :: "Midnight Crisis"

The clock strikes twelve and this is nothing new; it happens twice a day. Similarly, the hollow keyboards at the center of The Heartrates' first proper single, "Midnight Crisis" don't quite due justice to the angular guitars and the ripping vocals that crop up later. In fact, initially, it sounds a little like "horror pop", some soundtrack for a late night sock hop at a haunted house that is neither particularly scary nor winningly ironic. However, "Midnight Crisis" turns into a stomping bit of dance rock in the first chorus before giving way like a false floor to another hook, "Goin' downtown/gonna chase you pretty women around." Now, this reads a bit monstrous, you know, in analogy form: Frankenstein's monster is to the woods outside Geneva as this guy is to the Lower East Side. However, "Midnight Crisis" seems to revel in this danger, chasing a dueling vocal harmony from front to back, through steaming chorus and the most vile down beat, or, the perfect soundtrack for that time around midnight when the edge of the night gets a little serrated.