The D.A. :: "Pastels"

Four years ago in the dead of winter, on the snowiest night of the year, three of us ventured into the borderlands between Bushwick, Brooklyn and Ridgewood, Queens. It was an art-space party, the type you are invited to by a bartender and performance artist you know, someone who had recently rebranded herself under a new name to divorce the patriarchy of her old one. It was more circus than party. A heavy-set man, resembling Damian Abraham of Fucked Up, offered to let you staple American currency to his arms, chest and forehead, handing out his staple gun with a smile. Gymnasts twirled overhead and people walked on stilts. I would swear someone was swallowing a sword and breathing fire. Our trio got fantastically liquid, a 3am attempt to sign the band who played the party and a memorable slip and semi-concussion on a low cement wall. The night wound down and we propped ourselves up on one another, trying vainly to find a car who would take us in. Taking pity, perhaps, our eventual gypsy cab driver piloted us through empty apocalyptic streets, melting snow clinging to our sweaty faces. When El Paso band, The D.A. sing, "All my friends are feral cats, hipsters and scaredy rats, hobos and acrobats", it makes me think of that night, a slice of youth and New York that could never be recovered, of things and scenes we were certainly not but wondered at anyways. It was cultural ethnography to be sure, but it was a dark, cold evening in the middle of nowhere and the ladies spinning on the ceiling were unforgettable.

The D.A. - Pastels by Low Life Inc

Youth Lagoon :: "Afternoon"

The wistful electronic pop climbs out of your speakers like a Sunday morning, instantly private and familiar. Youth Lagoon, another excellent member of the Lefse family, opens his recently BNM'd record, A Year Of Hibernation with the glimmering, slow burning sounds of "Afternoon", caught between these introverted impulses and a need to share them. This is only the beginning of a slow, clapping build that reaches the paragon of all bedroom pop, seeming important without being grandiose, feeling handcrafted without risking a lack of ambition. These are dreamy anthems for a generation capable of building brilliance in home studios and laptops, both terrified of the outside world and necessarily affecting of it. The band's debut record is out now and they play Glasslands tomorrow night.

Listen :: Youth Lagoon - "Afternoon"

Jonquil :: "Mexico"

The keyboard bumps are warm enough to melt the ice in your glass. The condensation on the outside a reminder of both the cold within and the heat without. In one of those bursts of optimism that accompany the new year, we picked Jonquil as a band to watch in 2011. Their debut EP, 100 Suns was by far the best of a 2010 crop of sunny bands, a focused, unacademic version of the afro-pop that Vampire Weekend provided the Spark Notes for four plus years ago. On, "Mexico", a one-off 7-inch single, the band washes their typical cascading guitars with backing vocals that tumble in time. But, it is those keyboards, and the drums once they kick in, that provide the vaguely syncopation, the poly-rhythm so unconscious of post-colonial politics that it somehow doesn't feel ripped off. These modern trajectories are curious; white kids from Oxford, England playing a style of music revived by kids from Columbia University who were accused of stealing it from Paul Simon who was accused of stealing it from the entire nation of South Africa. It brought us here, a small dose of the Southern Hemisphere called, "Mexico", melting by any means at all.

Listen :: Jonquil - "Mexico"

PAPA :: "Ain't It So"

Los Angeles-based PAPA seem to inspire comparisons to the Strokes, though this is a little like saying your extroverted, upwardly mobile, politically-minded friend reminds you of a young Bill Clinton. It isn't particularly fair and remains one of those general specifics. In reality, PAPA seem to channel some of the more muted influences in T.Rex. "Ain't It So" is a slice of glammed out rock with an absolutely gratuitous (and this isn't always bad) key change thrown in during the finishing kick. The guitar hooks, the real hallmark of this band, will stick to your temporal lobe like the name of your first girlfriend, somewhere between absolutely arbitrary and a chunk of important, sepia-toned memory.
PAPA: Ain't It So by Hit City USA

On The List :: The Shins @ The Bowery Ballroom [9.25.11]

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

Venture a look into the vaguely wounded visage of James Mercer—the soft, tight-knit eyes, a curious combination of a furry Moby and a less self-important Kevin Spacey. From the moment of his band’s inclusion on the 2003 Garden State soundtrack, Mercer carried the weight of the indie-rock universe: praise, stereotype, epithet, all of it. Seeing him now, it had to wear on him, and even the most glib reading of the Shins’ last album title, Wincing the Night Away, would offer as much. Mercer openly admitted to insomnia during the round of interviews that accompanied the disc. It risked being a bad joke. He was, after all, an institution, and one that needed to equally hold our affection and our sarcastic disdain. So, for his first run of live shows in nearly four years, the songwriter strode to the stage at a very sold-out Bowery Ballroom trying to figure out if any of this was to be recaptured or if being a big enough deal to be picked upon alone was, in and of itself, enough.

Mercer winked at any burden of being in a band that launched a thousand others, opening with “Caring Is Creepy,” the song that Zach Braff ensured nearly every high school and college student of the early 2000s would have an opinion about. The group moved methodically through “Australia,” “Mine’s Not a High Horse” and “Phantom Limb,” a mix of the jangly, glossy sounds that define where this band began and from where it has traveled. Sounding rehearsed and tight, this vastly different version of the Shins (Mercer fired the drummer and had creative differences with the rest) than the one that recorded the previous record, featured the very excellent Jessica Dobson on rhythm guitar, an improvement by any measure.

In the spirit of return, the Shins folded a few new songs from a record due early next year into the middle of the set. But each time, Mercer returned to familiar material, in one three-song sequence playing the beautiful “Saint Simon,” with its line about blue-eyed girls, “Girl on the Wing” and “Know Your Onion.” The set closed with “New Slang,” a pathological pop song that bookended any movie-soundtrack jokes (this writer’s included), and “Girl Inform Me,” replete with a prog-rock inspired jam. Mercer cracked a smile that registered just between a wry laugh and knowing that there is power in being someone’s punch line.

Phantom Limb by theshins

Real Estate :: "Green Aisles"

This is the part where you say something about the fading summer. This is the part where you say something about the last warm rays of orange sunshine slipping out the side door and through the buildings of your version of the American city. And this is where you build the metaphor, something rooted in the changing of seasons and the passing of time, a lazy tautological conjecture about, well, moving on. To be sure it is something wistful, and we will look at each other in earnest fashion and in the eyes. We mean it, you know, even if the message rings a shade predictable. Near the end of a season of dilating days (thanks, Chabon) we aren't left with heaps of wisdom, just some long, great afternoons, now getting short and shorter in time.

Real Estate - Green Aisles by DominoRecordCo

Color Radio :: "Quiet House"

The risk in making big, atmospheric rock songs is falling just short of orbit. Fill your ambition with jet fuel - or maybe it's the other way around - and try to get your bird in the air. Chicago's Color Radio, a pair of brothers from Mexico City now turned into a driving four-piece, aren't necessarily daunted by the challenge of having "Quiet House" get the nose up over the skyline and turning the arrangement toward something perpendicular. The chorus, one of those thrashing savageries with its edict, "They're breakin' in", said twice for emphasis, rises under its own power, a punching rhythm section and big shoegazing guitars. The backing vocals slide up a third and the feeling is the first half of a parabola but without the irritating comedown. The final seconds are a chiming reward and an unmistakeable feeling of weightlessness, we assume, right before the fall.

Listen :: Color Radio - "Quiet House"