Princeton :: "Sadie and Andy"

Baroque chamber-pop slips into your music collection like an over-dressed dinner date. Maybe you agreed to meet for a bite to eat, but you had no idea that we were dressing up. Should I be wearing a tie? And it's not that baroque chamber doesn't look good in a cocktail dress, it's just that you're not quite on her level and you didn't have time to adjust. You're partially impressed (she looks great) and partially overwhelmed (apologetically shabby). There are no regrets about being here. Princeton's latest mp3 drop, "Sadie and Andy" breaks out with flowing strings, harpsichord and sweeter-than-sweet vocals. It is sophisticated and a little dressed-up. Not surprisingly, you can barely keep up.

Listen :: Princeton - "Sadie and Andy"

Friska Viljor :: "Wohlwill"

Friska Viljor are a two-man Swedish outfit with a lead-single about a neighborhood in Hamburg, Germany. This sort of pan-Europeanism suits the stumbling, stomping, vaguely-Eastern single "Wohlwill." Horns punch the air like an inspired, middle-aged dancer and carefree chord-progression rolls into a chorus that is every bit the reason why minor revelations are written in major keys. The production is delicate but not crushing; like Beirut grew up and wrote music for a movie with a happy ending. The singular lyric sums up the freedom of youth, "because we'd been down there for a couple of days/getting nothing but drunk and we were lost in a haze/so all this time we were wondering if/we'd gone to the right town." It is a song about a place, a neighborhood the band came to love, but it is more about being pleased with where you are; where ever that is.

Listen :: Friska Viljor - "Wohlwill"

Holopaw :: "The Art Teacher and the Little Stallion"

Featured prominantly in Holopaw's press materials is a quote from Isaac Brock. It is typically reductionist, emotional and exactly the kind of thing you'd expect from a guy who once sat down and wrote lyrics about trying to drink away the part of the day that he could not sleep away. Brock's assement of Holopaw's unexpected orchestral indie-pop out of Gainsville, "You're heartbroken, you're in love, the world's not complicated."

As much as this sort of self-serving emotionalism is repugnant, you have to take a spin through "The Art Teacher and the Little Stallion" before you write-off Brock's assessment. With the kind of string arrangement that would make you cry if you did that, and lyrics like, "I whistled through your crooked teeth/I never noticed your crooked teeth," the song is built for hurt. The voice remains just at the edge of complete failure, quivering in practiced but unperfected strength. And you wonder if this is real, these moments and these histories, or if it is all an elaborate fiction. But yes, heartbreak and love, they can coexist, imposters both.

Listen :: Holopaw - "The Art Teacher and the Little Stallion"

The Sweet Serenades :: "On My Way"

This tune struts out of the woods like an animal on a mission to evolve. Starting with something rough and primal, the song ends polished and explosive enough to light up the darkest parts of bars with no names and rock clubs with no memories. Two explosive guitar blasts announce the start, hot on the heels come rolling toms and a cowbell. Sweet Serenades' "On My Way" charges out of the wilderness on all fours. A gait becomes a lope becomes a dead run and suddenly, at the critical moment (we'll call it, "the chorus") the beast leaps upright and hits an arms-flailing, human sprint. An urgent four-on-the-floor rhythm section leaves no doubt: We might have grown up in the wilderness, but we make our home in the city. We're on our way.

Listen :: The Sweet Serenades - "On My Way"

Hatcham Social :: "Crocodile"

I would like to plan and execute a major bank robbery. Something styled out of Michael Mann's brain. Something that would involve the theft of millions of dollars, a fascinating multi-part plan, maybe a helicopter and a getaway driver, fake names, and passports from Argentina. We would need diversions and architectural plans and a man on the inside. We would need almost every stereotype from every Hollywood bank job movie. We would need very expensive grey suits.

But then there is the unpleasant reality that I and my associates would certainly be caught. If we imagine this involving my three to five best friends, the plan would almost certainly be too complicated or completely improvised. Someone would be late. We would charge ahead, undaunted, finding initial success, only to be detained at the airport with 75 million dollars stuffed into our suitcases. We would face massive prison sentences.

Hatcham Social, a British post-punk outfit suggest a solution with their debut album title, You Dig The Tunnel, I'll Hide The Soil. First cut, "Crocodile" is full of hooks and edgy guitars. The band is opening for Echo and the Bunnymen on their US tour, which is exactly where the need to be. What better title for a break-out: you dig the tunnel, I'll hide the soil. We're out on the lam.

Listen :: Hatcham Social - "Crocodile"

On The List :: Fanfarlo @ Bowery Ballroom [9.21.09]

This review runs on Bowery's House List blog.

Monday was already moving. Months ago, the show scheduled for Mercury Lounge shifted to Bowery Ballroom. Fanfarlo, a group of prog-folk, Arcade Fire-lite Brits, inspired a ticket-buying run that forced a venue change, only to sell-out on the next level. Perhaps more simply, this band put five times as many people as were originally expected in Bowery last night. This would be like making reservations for six, and having thirty people show up. Frankly, you had no idea you had this many friends. Multiplication is almost never a bad thing.

The band opened with "Drowning Men," a normally thudding meditation on statis. Tonight, it was just three band members, a stripped down and haunting version of the original. But three became four and five and six as the full band spilled to the stage for second song, "I'm A Pilot." It was a relief, but specifically it was a surprising clown car of multi-instrumental musicians. The band then played "Finish Line," unironically near the beginning, and the elevating "Harold T. Wilkins ..." The set built backwards to the finish.

All this funneled down to the last song of the main set (the band would play two encores). As their nominal closer" "Luna" stomped and bucked to its finish. The band's leadsinger began by slamming an auxillery drum at the front of the stage and ended the night with a solo on clarinet. It was a moment that pictured range and the crowd was happy to move along with the band. You could look and see what was happening, it was on stage and all around, times four or even five.

Listen :: Fanfarlo - "Luna"
Listen :: Fanfarlo - "Finish Line"
Listen :: Fanfarlo - "I'm A Pilot"

Small Black :: "Despicable Dogs" [Washed Out Remix]

The glo-fi genre holds as much promise as it does confusion. Warm synth-lines, echoing and fuzzy vocals - it doesn't seem definite enough to be promising. But Small Black made their way into our summer as the soundtrack to a departure from Los Angeles. As the 2.30am red-eye sailed out over the city, the song's signature lyric "do it without me/do it when I'm gone" took on added relevance, after all, I was getting out of there. The neon lights seemed to pulse and move with the electronics in my ears, like this was all a high-budget commercial done by a director with a tragic sense of humor and an eye for human drama.

But this experience in late July holds nothing to one I had this morning. Washed Out's take on "Despicable Dogs" is quite simply the most beautiful song I've heard this year. With a wall-of-sound loop and a "We can dance if we want to" allusion, Washed Out have pumped up the Small Black original into something that is as head-nodding as it is completely perfect. The emotional haymaker is still in the chorus where the signature lyric, the one that made Los Angeles harder to leave, comes through a mess of coordinated synth-peels like the quiet return of a past relationship or the departure from a current one. It needs no introduction. You can already feel exactly what this means.

Listen :: Small Black - "Despicable Dogs" [Washed Out Remix]