In Revue- 'Depression Cherry' (Beach House)

The last time, or maybe the time before (it's hard to say with certainty), that I was driving the two-hour stretch of I-70 from Columbia, Mo to Kansas City I had a cheaper than cheap pair of knockoff Raybans on. "POLYVINYL," a record label home to bands I love such as American Football was imprinted in white lettering on the black sides. I had just turned off the podcast Hollywood Prospectus featuring some witty repartee about the failings of True Detective Season 2 when I switched over to Beach House’s fifth LP Depression Cherry. Given that I was gazing intently through the small "slit" in the glasses, just above the bridge of these faux-Bans, the timing could not have been better.

Such an innocuous thing was so cosmically perfect because that sort of staring, peering through minutiae with the intensity to cause blindness, is the kind of focus it would take for someone to notice the movement in Beach House's sound over those aforementioned five albums. Beach House, the band’s 2006 debut, might sound like its guitar is on loan and its rickety drum machines from a flooded Guitar Center, but I’m still reminded of the halo effect around light poles on an empty street of a mid-sized city (pop. 100,000) at 2 a.m. on a Sunday night; Bloom from 2012 also does this. It’s like this dulled warmth, perhaps being hugged by someone with snow gloves on, that’s been in Beach House’s blood since the beginning. The gloves have gotten bigger and a little more expensive perhaps, but you can still feel this warmth. A writer for Stereogum, whose name I am genuinely forgetting, compared its subtle expansion of sound to shifting plate tectonics and I think that’s as good a metaphor as will ever be developed to describe its “change” in sound.

The new "accouterments" to Victoria LeGrand and Alex Scally's summer home are first single "Sparks"'s shoegaze, the Perrey-esque synth fade ups on "Space Song," an insistent ticking in "Wildflower" that takes me back to Drive, a propulsive quality in the first five seconds of "Bluebird" that brings to mind Dan Deacon. All of it is fairly new, but none of it feels that way. At no point do the extra wrinkles in the pages make the text unreadable. Shoegaze has so often been concerned with sonic textures that the peeling guitars and vocal shards of "Sparks" make sense. It’s evident that Jean-Jacques Perry's defining ambient piece "Prelude au Sommeil" has its soft hand pushing up the synth fader in "Space Song" because both efforts leave you breathless. Not in the sense that you're choking. No no. That you literally have exhaled your entire body in response to how tranquil the sound is. You have to push the air out just to make room for comprehending the moment. I think of Drive when I hear the ticking of "Wildflower" because it has similar noirish uneasiness. What you once knew to be true and could hold in your hands is slowly slipping out. Which is an awful, terrifying feeling.

If all of this makes Depression Cherry sound obtuse or fey, it isn't. For as airy and ethereal as LeGrand's voice is, she's incredibly grounded. Before she even gets to "Beyond Love"'s chorus she sings "I'm gonna tear off all the petals from the rose that's in your mouth," a detail so lived in and specific you take it for truth. A married couple in "PPP" (Piss Poor Planning) is looking into each other’s eyes and struggling to see anything worth loving anymore, "It won't last forever, or maybe it will" is the figure-8 elliptic she deflatedly croons. The avian of "Bluebird" can't seem to take flight before the penultimate song's trickling keys evaporate into the night air. 

Only on closer "Days of Candy" does the album shuffle off its lyrical mortal coil. And then, it does so by including a 24-part harmony from the Pearl River Community College singers and stating "the universe is riding off with you." Its part hymn, part nursery song, part dirge and one of the most hypnotically ornate things the band has done. Drum machines crackle on a sort of delay and LeGrand's voice echoes like she's the last person on Earth trapped at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. When Beach House goes big, it goes big in a way that would be frightening if for not how lovely it sounds.

And yes love is a common topic, but the love of these characters is just as likely to wither inward as it is to expand outward. What is a warm love song one minute can become a cold elegy the next. Alex Scally's gently flitting guitar can grow loud enough to drown out the hum of an entire city. With Beach House you can see all of these mammoth changes coming from a mile away; you just have to look closely.

"Skin Song"- Bat For Lashes

Listeners who thought Space Project, which utilized recordings from the Voyager spacecraft, wasn’t strange enough will now have a new compilation to pique their interest. Entitled Body of Songs, the collection will explore the deepest parts of the human body instead of the coldest reaches of outer space; in the name of science of course. In his initial appeal to artists 8 months, Professor Hugh Montgomery said he had no doubt "exposure (to the human body) will change you. It's changed me. It's changed everyone I know that deals with patients and it will change you." Changed by the exposure, artists like Ghostpoet and Goldie have already contributed to the cause with the unnerving ambiance of "A Plateful of Liver" and "Electric Abyss"'s frantically building drum and bass.

Now Natasha Khan, under her Bat For Lashes stage name, has contributed to the medical endeavor. And while this project hasn't changed her musical approach, it's given us a remarkably evocative piece of dream pop. Though it's titled "Skin Song" to fit in with the anatomical theme, a better name would be "exhumation." Khan's digging up the corpses of past relationships, "I've blushed and I have bruised, felt the passing of you, I've bled, and I have healed." Hearing her dispirited moan plied to muted drumbeats and reverberated guitar is crushing. It's a reminder that there are some things time can't bury in the sand. That sometimes we're stuck wishing for the best, "I hope he's an old, good friend of mine." What Khan's forgetting though is our bodies are constantly replacing withered cells with new ones. Red blood cells turn over about every four months. White blood cells begin again every year on average. And the skin cells Khan's whispering about are shuffled off in two to three weeks. While we don't become a new person, we're given a fresh start.

(You can hear "Skin Song" now through Pitchfork and watch a teaser trailer for the project below.)

In Revue- 'Ultraviolence' (Lana Del Rey)

"He used to call me DN, that stood for Deadly Nightshade, cause I was filled with poison, but blessed with beauty and rage. Jim told me that. He hit me and it felt like a kiss. Jim brought me back, reminded me of when we were kids"

Those depressive lines exhaled by Lana Del Rey in the opening of "Ultraviolence" contain details rarely heard from the late night siren. On her still divisive first album, Born to Die, listeners were privy to similar stories of hopeless female characters and the seedy men they sought, but names typically weren't afforded. What you were left with were sordid tales that while compelling, were bizarrely unrelatable because they skimped on specifics. 

Ultraviolence scrawls those forgotten notes in blood red lipstick across every page. The aforementioned verse purportedly deals with Del Rey's time in a cult-like offshoot of Alcoholics Anonymous called Atlantic Group. Whoever "Jim" was, he held enough sway to make blind fury seem beautiful. On the mournful piano ballad "Old Money" she mentions her father, Robert Grant, whose love and support inspired her to push through trying times. She also alights on her "mother's glamor" a figure rarely heard from in Del Rey's work. Black Keys guitarist Dan Auerbach's narcotized surf-rock effort "West Coast" has Del Rey keenly observing a Parliament cigarette’s dull flicker, as she sings Stevie Nicks' "Edge of Seventeen" on a beachfront balcony. With the picture Del Rey paints, you can see the waves crashing in her rear-view mirror as she pulls out of a sand covered parking lot. These yarns are no less gloomy than those on Born to Die, but the rich details she weaves in make it feel that way.

Which is part of what makes the push in the music blogosphere to heap praise on Ultraviolence extremely frustrating. Pitchfork readily declared the new record "gorgeous and rich" whereas Born to Die had tracks like "Carmen" and "Diet Mountain Dew" that were "trifles." In Stereogum's "Premature Evaluation", Tom Breihan (a writer I enjoy tremendously) argues the difference between Born to Die and Ultraviolence is "vast" while noting "it’s just as euphorically fake as Born to Die was. It’s just that LDR fakes it realer now." If he means Lizzy Grant's carefully curated personae as Lana Del Rey is "realer" because her narrative bent has grown, then he's right. Nowhere in the piece though does he praise Del Rey's eagle eye for detail. So what we're left to assume is Del Rey is more laudable now because she's stuck to the glum, romantic wanderlust Born to Die was reviled for.

Logically this revaluation makes as much sense as the imbecilic criticism the Miami Heat's LeBron James has faced over the past four years. In that span, he won two championships and nabbed two MVPs, though those achievements were dwarfed in conversation by his "shortcomings. " Supposedly, he didn't take game-winning shots or come up big in the clutch. Listening to anyone of a certain age tell it, Michael Jordan was God incarnate deity and James was some schlub from Akron. When Del Rey's Born to Die was minted in January 2012, writers lambasted it for sounding samey and being devoid of "human emotion." Never mind anchoring tracks "Video Games" and "National Anthem" captured an emotional desperation uncommon in Top 40 flavored pop. No, "Video Games" had grown stale since its 2011 premiere and "National Anthem" was no different than a "faked orgasm." Her image was "manufactured" in the mind of NME, who conveniently forgot about artists from Bob Dylan to David Bowie and Beyoncé who have profited greatly from an image far removed from reality. 

In recent times, the artist most comparable to Del Rey is rapper Rick Ross. While he now receives plaudits for his kingpin character, he didn't with 2006's Port of Miami or Trilla in 2008. Then he was a "generic gangster" who had zero personality. But in July 2008 word broke he'd been a correction's officer and instead of cashing in his chips on the drug-lord alias, he doubled down. Not accounting for an increased lushness in production, his virtually unassailable 2012 tape Rich Forever isn't a far cry from Trilla, just as: Born to Die, Paradise, and Ultraviolence are of a similar cut.

And like Ross, the actual difference between Del Rey's newly praised work and her old loathed material is production. In place of Born to Die's tinny orchestras and canned strings are bluesy guitars, gut punching drums, clearly ringing piano and limpid violins. "Pretty When You Cry" has producer Dan Auerbach playing a sooty, reverberating guitar that makes "all the special times" Del Rey spent with an ex distant memories. It'd be a better fit for David Lynch's noirish nightmare Blue Velvet than Del Rey's own cover of the Bobby Vinton tune. Bearing ready-made comparisons to a James Bond theme, the alluring "Shades of Cool" languishes at a slow waltzing pace. Granted most waltzes don't incorporate wah-wahing guitar and to my knowledge Bond songs are bereft of references to men who could love drugs more than any woman. 

When Ultraviolence moves out of a 60s psych-blues feel, it's no less successful. "Money Power Glory"'s stagnated drum machine claps and a deceptively calm synthesizer only magnify Del Rey's devilish seduction routine. "I'm gonna take them for all that they've got," she ensures. Tasteful gulps of tenor saxophone and bending pedal steel in Nina Simone cover "The Other Woman" end the album on a dour note. Del Rey's pained warble conveys the lonely image of a woman waiting for her secret lover to come to her. Despite her "French perfume" and manicured nails, she can't keep him around. That's not how "love" works.  Hoping and wishing don't transfer into adoration. It has to be mutual to last and if it’s not, it gradually becomes indistinguishable from obsession.

Though Ultraviolence's through-line is intense longing blurring into obsession, there's room for other material on the LP. "F***ed My Way to the Top"'s title is betrayed by Del Rey's insistence "Life is awesome, I confess. What I do, I do best. You got nothing, I got tested. And I passed, yes." In an interview with Grazia Del Rey admitted: 

"It’s about a singer who first sneered about my allegedly not authentic style but later she stole and copied it. And now she’s acting like I am the art project and she the true super artist. My God and people actually believe her, she’s successful! I shouldn’t continue ranting, it doesn’t get anywhere."

So what scans as an account of sexual conquests rapidly mutates into a Rakim sized boast of artistic prowess. "Brooklyn Baby", arguably Ultraviolence's centerpiece, is a satirical embrace of every posh sensibility Del Rey's been accused of having. "Well my boyfriend's in the band, he plays guitar while I sing Lou Reed. I've got feathers in my hair. I get down to Beat poetry. And my jazz collection's rare, I can play most anything," she jokes over a sumptuous blend of Mellotron and acoustic guitar. Even with her tongue firmly in cheek, there's bite in Del Rey's words. This is what brought her notoriety and she's not changing. She's defying audiences to like her and in the case of Ultraviolence, overwhelmingly succeeding.

"all white everything"- jj

In 2009 when they were both coming to prominence, I frequently confused the bands jj and The xx. I know I can't be alone in that confusion because they were almost fated to be blurred together. Both trade in stark, dream-haunting pop. Frequently the only sign of a pulse either have to show is a well-programmed drum sequence. Both groups are "fronted" by vocalists who simultaneously manage to sound self-assured and slowly withering. In reality one of the most tenable differences between the two is that jj exists as a Swedish duo and The xx are an English trio.

But it’s coming up on two years since we’ve heard anything new from The xx, whereas jj are readying their third LP, V. Today the duo offered the first taste of the album with "all white everything". The song begins with Elin Kastlander silently praying as crisp piano trickles in. In such a desolate environment, Kastlander sounds defeated. Her hopes for mending her "restless soul" are dashed when everything a possible companion tells her is deemed "all Greek to me." "I've been up all winter for someone like you and I know that you've been up all winter for someone like me," she exhales in the following chorus. It's a common sort of desperation, hoping someone else feels the same as you so you can justify what seems absurd. Kastlander's desperation only grows as Joakim Benon’s high-strung drum machine dots the barren landscape. At the apex of despair, around the 3:26 mark, she struggles to complete the question "have I said enough?" When you're alone long enough, it becomes much easier to question every decision you've made. 




V drops August 19 through Sincerely Yours/Secretly Canadian.

"Descent"- Fear of Men

Dream-pop trio Fear of Men make relationships sound absolutely torturous. When they're gliding along on the sunny fizzles and fuzzes of "Luna", Janet Weiss hits the E-brake to whisper "I've tried my best to destroy you." Whatever goals the couple once had have deteriorated into a competition fueled by stubborn pride and a profound unwillingness to see the writing on the wall. In writhing slow-number "Outrun Me", unwillingness is transcribed into a refusal to leave behind something wholly familiar. Experiencing love for the first time is a magnificent thing, but having to move on can be agonizing. It's devastating, and only in that wreckage do you realize the cliché "you never forget your first" exists for a reason.

The devastation on display in the Brighton-group's latest effort "Descent", is far more subtle but no less monumental. When Weiss softly exhales "cause I have you" in the sparkling chorus, you think you're hearing of an unshakable friendship that James Taylor and Carole King would approve of. The type of friendship that puts you closest to your actual-self, where there's very little you have to hide. A friend who will pull you out of "nothingness" as Weiss puts it in the jangly intro. It sounds so blissful, something anyone would sign up for in an instant. But few would sign on the dotted line after hearing Weiss recount "spending half my life next to you." All of the time spent is taxing, to the point Weiss can't even finish her thought; she can only offer a disconsolate "oooh." Then you realize a life-long relationship isn't always liberating, it can also be a prison sentence you never come back from. You'll watch the days go by, marking them off in chalk, and pray for anything to take you away.






Fear of Men's debut LP Loom is out April 21 in the UK and April 22 in the U.S. through Kanine Records.

"Outrun Me"- Fear of Men

Reviewing Fear of Men's "Luna" a week and a half ago, I was quick to point out the clear divisions the buzzing track had from traditional jangle-pop fair. Murky bass swirled in the background. Reverb obscured every corner of the once bright number. Lead-singer Jess Weiss sighed and delivered mid-song "oohs" more fit for the graveyard than the Billboard charts. Still, heard at the right angle or from a far-enough distance, you could easily mistake "Luna" for a sped-up slice of dream-pop.

Hearing "Outrun Me"'s opening swathe of feedback and stammering drums you know right away this isn't the stuff of dreams. It's night-time fare, but the sort you play while you writhe in your bed and worry about days past and future. Where you'll repeatedly insist "I've changed," as Weiss does in her angelic coo, even though evidence may say otherwise. Plenty of theories are posited as to why this writhing won't stop. "Genetic longing" is one possibility Weiss suggests underneath the foggy rhythm section. A loss of "common decency and sense of history" is another hypothesis that's formulated. "Love" is always a go-to explanation for why someone has hit a rough-patch. And while the four-letter word figures into Weiss' downcast state, the real reason is even simple. "You were my first one, the one that stopped my mind from leaving," Weiss explains. Losing your familiarity can be as nightmarish and devastating as anything.

As Gorilla vs. Bear is reporting, “Outrun Me” is the B-side from Fear of Men‘s Luna 5″ flexi-disc / 20-page zine, out April 7 on Art is Hard. The Brighton group's LP Loom is out April 8th through Kanine Records.

What's New(s)?

Reggie Watts tackles "Brownsville Girl"

When the Bob Dylan in the 80s compilation was first announced, one of the most intriguing covers listed was Comedy Bang Bang bandleader Reggie Watts diving headfirst into the unwieldy "Brownsville Girl". At 11 minutes, it's one of the longest track in Dylan's six-decade oeuvre and also one of the most poetic, with lyrics co-penned by renowned playwright Sam Shepard. In covering such an esteemed track, Watts eschews much of the spoken-word verse for tender soul singing laid over a warping dance groove. "I love this track, hadn't heard of it before I was asked to be a part of the project," Watts told Spin.com. While that unfamiliarity may spook certain Dylanphiles, there's no cause for concern. It may be nowhere near the original song length, but thanks to Watts' earnest performance it still possesses all of the heart.

Pre-orders of Bob Dylan in the 80s: Volume One are available through the project's website and the record is officially out on March 25th. You can hear the track here and view the tracklist below:

Bob Dylan In The 80s: Volume One:
1. Langhorne Slim & The Law – “Got My Mind Made Up”
2. Built to Spill – “Jokerman”
3. Reggie Watts – “Brownsville Girl (Reprise)”
4. Craig Finn – “Sweetheart Like You”
5. Ivan & Alyosha – “You Changed My Life”
6. Deer Tick – “Night After Night”
7. Dawn Landes & Bonnie “Prince” Billy – “Dark Eyes”
8. Tea Leaf Green – “Waiting To Get Beat”
9. Aaron Freeman & Slash – “Wiggle Wiggle”
10. Elvis Perkins – “Congratulations”
11. Hannah Cohen – “Covenant Woman”
12. Marco Benevento – “Every Grain Of Sand”
13. Yellowbirds – “Series Of Dreams”
14. Blitzen Trapper – “Unbelievable”
15. Lucius – “When The Night Comes Falling From The Sky”
16. Glen Hansard – “Pressing On”
17. Carl Broemel – “Death Is Not The End



Beach House go to space

 

A month and a half ago, I wrote about Youth Lagoon's swirling track "Worms" culled from the upcoming Space Project. Compiled by Lefse Records, the Space Project utilizes recordings from the Voyager spacecrafts of "fluctuations in electromagnetic radiation and particle and converts those occurrences into sound." In the case of "Worms" the otherwise indetectable exhalations of Uranus' rings could be heard.

Now dream-pop duo Beach House has unveiled their contribution to the lofty project. Entitled "Saturn Song", the track is perfectly in keeping with the vacant atmosphere that a title like Space Project would portend. Moog synths moodily burble on in the background, while timid keys step to the front. What sounds like a cold wind can be heard rustling in the intro. Victoria Legrand's voice is aching and fragile, as though it's been on one too many missions. "I don't wanna" she sighs over and over again. Rarely has non-committal sounded so engaging.

Space Project will drop April 18th through Lefse Records.

Sleigh Bells bound to wrack up noise complaints on new tour

There will be blood, as Brooklyn noise-pop duo Sleigh Bells hit the road in support of their vicious 2013 release Bitter Rivals. Though the junior LP reshuffled the band's sound, it didn't mess around with the volume, everything was still cranked all the way up to 11 when the noise came. And now that noise will be everywhere the next few months with the band's campaign. They kick off a little more than a week from now at SXSW in Austin, before pillaging through Coachella, the Governor's Ball, and countless other cities along the way. Check out the dates below along with the video for "Bitter Rivals".

Tour dates:

3/14 Austin, TX - Red Bull Sound Select Party at The Belmont
3/21 New Orleans, LA - BUKU Festival
4/5 Norman, OK - University of Oklahoma -East Lawn
4/6 Houston, TX - Warehouse Live
4/7 San Antonio, TX - White Rabbit
4/9 Phoenix, AZ - Crescent Ballroom
4/12 Indio, CA - Coachella
4/15 Mexico City, Mexico - El Plaza Condesa
4/19 Indio, CA - Coachella
4/21 Boulder, CO - Fox Theater
4/22 Omaha, NE - Slowdown
4/23 Des Moines, IA - Wooly's
4/25 Gambier, OH - Kenyon College - South Quad
4/26 Carrboro, NC - Cat's Cradle
4/27 Atlanta, GA - Counterpoint Music Festival
4/29 Charlotte, NC - Fillmore
4/30 Charleston, SC - The Music Farm
5/2 Tampa, FL - Big Guava Music Festival
6/6-9 New York, NY - Governors Ball Music Festival
6/13-22 Toronto, Ontario - NXNE Festival
6/19-22 Dover, DE - Firefly Music Festival

Check back in tomorrow for more of the newest in new(s) and follow AllFreshSounds on Twitter for updates throughout the day.

"Luna"- Fear of Men

"I've tried my best to destroy you," isn't the sort of sentiment you'd expect to anchor a slice of sun-drenched dream-pop, but then again putting a calcified dog on your cover isn't a move for the masses either. That's the sphere U.K. trio Fear of Men occupies on "Luna", the latest track off of their forthcoming debut Loom. Electric guitar fizzles and fuzzes in an updated Byrds fashion, but the dark bass traipsing in the background is indebted more to Joy Division than jangle-pop. In one light, Jess Weiss' tone is joyous. Hit a dimmer though and those cries of joy become inexorable sighs. Even the mid-song break into "oohs" casts a ghostly pallor. Addled by feedback they call to mind Grouper's crushing "Cover the Long Way", an artist you should avoid summoning if your goal is "sunny." "Reality cannot abandon me, it's painful" Weiss coos in a critical turn. "Luna"s discord comes from being forced to stay awake when all you want to do is dream.

Loom is out April 8th through Kanine Records.

In Revue- "Wondrous Bughouse"

On a WTF Podcast with Marc Maron, drummer Dave Grohl quipped, "living for the moment is a great way to live, but a horrible way to survive." Having just gone through a week-long Spring Break trip with two friends of mine, I couldn't agree more. There are few things we want more than to feel alive, to the hear the thudding of our own heart in our chest as we push forward into the unknown. But it's a pace that's impossible to keep up; we need day off from our work or a day to detox from a few too many drinks. More than anything else, "Wondrous Bughouse," the second LP from Trevor Powers' Youth Lagoon project, is about negotiating the terrain between living and surviving.

The sci-fi indebted opener sounds quite literally like a search, a moon rover scanning for signs of intelligent life or a beating heart. The instrumental meditation bleeds into the heartfelt "Mute" where roses are growing and fables are told at a feverish pace. The shrill deviations on the track serve not only as an unofficial chorus, but a portal into a land of make believe as brilliant as the cover. A "3D world," where death exists, but can't quite clutch us.

Death is ever-present on first single "Dropla" as well, were the steady tinning of sleigh bells on the track tap into the pure ecstasy of an early Christmas morning. The song is a portal back to a time when the only worry we had was unwrapping presents and the mantra of "you'll never die," seemed more fact than fiction. As is the case with "Dropla" and several other songs on the record, the stereo panning that recalls Tame Impala, pops up throughout the album and suits these churning melodies well. 

"Sleep Paralysis" is musically the closest Powers comes to turning the wondrous into the wicked. The track replete with lyrics of "strangers" and "grave mistakes" is buoyed by a lurching 1, 2 backbeat marching down a pitch black forest road. "Attic Doctor" has its own menace, a steady dancehall spill over into a slow moving Flaming Lips acid trip. "I won't die easily," Powers sings deeply buried in the mix. It's one of many to stubbornly thumb its nose at death, to cast away tomorrow and cling to today.

The sonic sheen of this album serves as a clear indication that "Year of Hibernation," was born not out of choice but circumstance. And much like the music on "Wondrous Bughouse" plays out as an evolution of that album's "lo-fi" bedroom pop aesthetic, so too do the lyrics. Powers has grown up tremendously in the time since his first LP, and is much more world-weary. Those walls he once covered over with "Posters" are moving closer and closer in. The penultimate track "Raspberry Cane" which flies over a swirling psychedelic sea timidly builds into a song of acceptance. Ringing piano fades in and out, as Powers waves goodbye to the misspent mantras of youth and raises a glass high to the inevitability of aging. 

When listening to this album, the question of who would want to live forever rings out from every peak of these 10 tracks. As we age, our past becomes a fog as we struggle to recall and reconfigure our cloudy childhood memories. Living forever then would in practice become, living for the past, struggling to recapture something that can never be caught. Powers learns that lesson on "Wondrous Bughouse" and toasts to death.  In the end, accepting death makes living all the easier. 

"Dropla"