Table of contents

Preface
introduction
PART I: OLD FRIENDS
The Rolling Stones Plundered My Soul
Eminem (featuring Lil Wayne) No Love
Big Boi Shutterbugg
Paul Weller No Tears to Cry
Blur Fool’s Day
Robyn Dancing on My Own
The Shins Goodbye Girl
Train Hey, Soul Sister
Stone Temple Pilots Between the Lines
Hole Samantha
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers I Should Have Known It

PART II: NEW SENSATIONS

Drake Over
Sleigh Bells Tell ‘Em
Janelle Monáe Tightrope
Jenny and Johnny Scissor Runner
Best Coast Boyfriend
Magic Kids Superball
Hunx and His Punx U Don’t Like Rock n Roll
The Drums Forever and Ever Amen
Male Bonding Year’s Not Long
Japandroids Younger Us
Free Energy Hope Child
Happy Birthday Girls FM
 Table of contents

PART III: BETWIXT/BETWEEN

M.I.A. Xxxo
MGMT Flash Delirium
The Hold Steady Rock Problems
Against Me! Rapid Decompression
Gaslight Anthem American Slang
LCD Soundsystem Drunk Girls
Scissor Sisters Invisible Light
Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings I Learned the Hard Way
Band of Horses Factory
The Dead Weather Die By the Drop
The Black Keys Everlasting Light
Arcade Fire Month of May
The National Afraid of Everyone
Interpol Lights
Vampire Weekend Jonathan Low
Katy Perry California Gurls
The Kills Pale Blue Eyes
Blitzen Trapper Destroyer of the Void
Ray LaMontagne Beg Steal or Borrow
Mark Ronson & the Business Intl Lose It (In the End)
Cee-Lo Green Fuck You

About the author

 PREFACE

As proof of my willingness to subscribe to the conventions of preface

writing, allow me at once to dispense with the caveats.

First and foremost, it’s ridiculous to conceive of this book as anything

more than a blurry snapshot of contemporary pop music. Its composition
– 40-plus song reviews, channeled into three semi-arbitrary age brackets,
then organized without regard for chronology – represents a direct
affront to the Western notions of linearity and narrative momentum. This
is not the textual equivalent of a mix tape, wherein the tracks build on
one another for purposes of edification or pleasure. “Singles On Speed”
is exactly what its name implies: several dozen one-off criticisms, turning
over rapidly and groping for some sort of collective purpose, only to find
that modern life is confoundingly random.

Secondly, it’s ridiculous to conceive of this book as anything less than

a blurry snapshot of contemporary pop music. What we listen to, both
as individuals and as aggregates, might be a mere point of data on
the larger indices of economic determinism. But I’ll be damned if our
taste in music doesn’t hold some significant meaning, be it material or
ideal. Our record collections function as surrogate diaries, compressing
loose fragments of sound into postmodern mosaics of identity. These
mosaics can reveal less than they should or more than we’d bargained
for, but their content is almost always instructive. The 21st century man
is virtually inseparable from his music, connected as he is by sleek wires,
strange frequencies, and aesthetic impulses. “Singles On Speed” aspires
to affirm this connection without forsaking its underlying mystery. Faith
in music ought to be like faith in God: iron-clad and fire-tested, but
ultimately ineffable.

Thirdly, despite my evident tendencies toward soap-boxing and popping

off, this book is not about me. Nor am I a particularly important actor on
its subject matter. Music exists and excites irrespective of the critic, and
will continue to do so as long as our species retains the slightest trace of
aural competence. The art is, and must be, the prime mover. Those who

1
 PREFACE

write about it are simply trying to negotiate a foothold in its wake. The
tasks of the critic skirt the border between indulgence and futility – but
the job’s inherent vanity only serves to make it more fun.

Lastly, despite my admitted penchants for disavowal and prevarication,

this book can’t help but be about me. To abdicate responsibility for its
contents would be a shameless act of cowardice, made incalculably
worse by the existential importance I’ve already ascribed to pop music.
So rather than retreat, allow me to move forward with a short series of
personal confessions: I came of age during rock and roll’s Lost Weekend,
with my childhood bookending the Reagan Eighties and the Clinton
Nineties. (This is roughly Born in the U.S.A. through Nevermind, though
I was too busy listening to Michael Jackson and Kool Moe Dee to
appreciate the gravity of such records.) I grew up without the Internet,
cell phones, or cable TV, and have subsequently been a late adopter of
virtually every cutting-edge technology save the Norelco® electric razor.
This is not so much a point of pride as an admission of neglect: I don’t
follow trends or fads because I typically lack the intellectual wherewithal
to understand them. I’m alternately three years behind and five years
ahead of the times. Which makes for an awkward social life and a spastic
summer wardrobe – but also an awfully interesting record collection.

In the end, “Singles On Speed” is a reasonably honest document of

what I’ve been listening to for the past six months. It jumps genres and
corrupts more than a few cultural idioms, but the book’s true merit,
insofar as it has any, is its consistency. I always called them as I heard
them. And I occasionally heard them wrong. Yet I never failed to remain
thematically dedicated and sonically curious. There’s a certain nobility in
this – a nobility that, when coupled with $1.29, can buy me the new Taio
Cruz single.

So, hey, maybe there’s no money in art. But there’s no art in money, either.

2
 PREFACE

Looking back at my half-year struggle to keep up with the daily

tastemaking and hourly downloads, all I know for sure is something I’ve
known all along: Pop music is under no obligation to be popular. This is
usually a blessing, sometimes a curse, and always an interesting topic for
discussion. It’s the truth that redeems the faults of “Singles On Speed.”
Find it on your own terms. If you come away empty, don’t be concerned
– it’s probably my fault.

A.m.V.
September 7, 2010
Paris – Zürich – Trieste – Dublin – Asbury Park

3
 INTRODUCTION

Author’s note: This book started as a blog. Not just a blog, but an anti-blog; that
is, anti-”American Idol,” anti-”Glee,” anti-Ke$ha – even anti-Animal Collective.
Ironically, in the midst of this reactionary stance, I forged a workable coexistence
with Billboard and bedroom pop alike. In “anti,” I somehow found affirmation.

Still, the angers and frustrations that midwifed “Singles On Speed” won’t
be forgotten anytime soon. As such, the blog’s original mission statement is
included below – largely unedited and completely uncensored. Its concerns
remain relevant, even to those of us who have come to love pop music
unconditionally. (Well, quasi-unconditionally.) Give it a speed read.

This blog’s founding operational principle is that the Ramones were an

enormously influential band. Just not influential enough.

Pardon the staggered phrasing and the sudden stop. They’re not used as
devices of rhetoric or agents of misdirection; they merely underscore the
fact that rock music, like political ideology and social class, is becoming
hopelessly bifurcated. In one corner, we have the douched-up bellows
of Chris Daughtry and Chad Kroeger, a school of sound that seems
to aspire to standards first broached by such world-beating bands as
Creed, Staind, and 3 Doors Down. In the other corner, we have Animal
Collective and Hot Chip, a streaming mediocrity of fey atmospherics and
effete in-jokes, each accorded status and sanctuary by a patchwork of
dubiously credentialed music vlogs.

That which exists between these two poles can rightly be called a sonic
no man’s land – first because it’s sparsely populated; second because it’s
utterly devoid of testosterone. In fact, with just a quick booster shot of
perspective, the “no man’s land” label can be extended to incorporate
the dueling poles. Nickelback may traffic in the latest iteration of
cock rock, but they certainly don’t bowl you over with stubble-ridden
menace or the more violent hypertrophies of the XY chromosome
pairing. Their songs are threatening only in their conspicuous absence

4
 INTRODUCTION

of intelligence. As for Animal Collective, their records are tone and

pulse followed by pulse and tone. The music is entirely lacking in
secondary sexual characteristics. It’s androgynous without the attendant
ano-genital intrigue. It’s also bereft of focus and stridency. Despite
being spectacularly overthought, the Collective’s discography remains
inadequately self-aware – that is, too cool for school, but too smart to
question its underlying theses.

This speaks to the central qualitative problem in contemporary pop:

Indie music is far too cerebral, while mainstream music is completely
insentient. I can forgive the mainstream its trespasses. (After all, what is
the Top 40 if not a grope for the lowest common denominator?) Indie,
however, has some serious explaining to do. The genre is fabled to
represent an alternative to the reigning musical regime, a tug not only to
the left of the dial but also to the left of what’s normal. Consider rock and
roll’s shadow history: The Velvet Underground subverting British jingle-
jangle with their narcotic drone and NC-17 themes; Iggy and the Stooges
exposing the lie in Flower Power by taking an industrial buzzsaw to the
Peace and Love crowd’s mellow acoustics; and the Ramones – perhaps
the quintessential expression of rock and roll spirit – bringing speed,
volume, and attitude to a scene that’d been lulled to sleep by ‘ludes,
drum solos, and Rick Wakeman’s keyboard.

This trip down memory lane is not made in the service of nostalgia. The
proto-punk movement needs to be remembered, if only so that we can
also recall the musical caprices that the punk machine raged against
so passionately: progressive rock and disco. The irony of contemporary
indie is that it’s inverted the animal spirit that infused both its infancy and
early adolescence. Today’s “alternative” is a mutant conflation of prog
languor and disco sheen, a music that subordinates human agency to
pixelated sound effects and hypnotic swells of rhythm. It’s not bold, rude,
or dangerous. As such, it’s not rock and roll – at least in the traditional
(and best) definition of the phrase.

“Failure to rock” is not a federal offense. But it is a case of gross artistic

negligence. Contemporary twenty-somethings are being disserved by

5
 INTRODUCTION

Beach House, Ke$ha, and Ariel Pink in much the same way that Seventies
youth were disserved by Yes, Peter Frampton, and the Village People.
Each artist, past and present, is guilty of specializing in distraction at
a time when engagement is absolutely essential. Here we are, in the
midst of the worst financial crisis since the Roosevelt era, with our nation
embroiled in two protracted armed conflicts, with China and India
threatening to usurp our platinum-card consumer status, and the best
we can come up with in terms of Pitchfork-certified redemption songs
are “My Girls,” “Round and Round,” and “Good Intentions Paving
Company”? Where’s the urgency? Where’s the anarchy? Where’s the
blitzkrieg?

Well, if you’ll forgive a little premature chest pounding, I’ll solemnly

declare that here’s the urgency, the anarchy, and the blitzkrieg. In case
you haven’t noticed, this blog is called Singles On Speed (S.O.S.). It’s
designed to showcase songs that undercut the synth-laden sloth that
the indie industry callously slops onto our plates, complete with number
grades and wholly unnecessary remixes. S.O.S. represents less a cry for
help than a call to arms. It’s here to argue that the synthesizer cannot be
used ironically; that digital audio loops are instruments of artifice, not art;
that Radiohead should cut the shit, and get back to writing songs like
“Just.” “Hey ho, let’s go!” isn’t just a Ramones lyric; it’s the first and last
sentence of this site’s mission statement. And our need for speed has
nothing to do with amphetamines.

I’m cynical enough to realize that three chords played in 3/4 time no
longer constitute the raw materials of revolution. Contemporary rock
and roll, even in its primest permutation, isn’t likely to change the world.
But it can change your world. (Or, at the very least, your day.) Whether
this change will be for the better or for the worse, I don’t know. And
this unpredictability, this off chance at a blindside wallop or grievous
testicular injury, is part of the punk ethos’ appeal.

6
 INTRODUCTION

If you’re content to bob and weave to this week’s chillwave psychodrama,

that’s perfectly OK. But that’s not me. I want sins, not symphonies. I want
a track that’ll impel me to do something that I’ll later be ashamed of –
like head banging, fist fighting, or voting Republican. A fifty-carat rock
single comes with clearly discernable side effects. These include, but
are not limited to, loss of car keys, bloody stool, and temporary feelings
of invincibility. Chalk the first two up to harmless teenage kicks, and the
third to that blurry emotional intersection where men win glory and meet
danger at the same time, often with only tenuous command over their
faculties.

That’s what S.O.S. is searching for: Music that’ll make a sober man feel
drunk and a drunk man feel sober; sounds that possess equal parts
clarity and grandeur, with headache and heartbreak commingling in
microments of stark power and sheer release. Jonny Greenwood may be
a musical genius, but I’ll take Johnny Thunders, cracked voice and junkie
business included. Better yet, I’ll take Johnny Ramone. He set the pace
for modern rock. Accordingly, he set the preconditions for Singles On
Speed. His music, like his band’s typically hyperbolic album title, is truly
“Too Tough to Die.” So let’s skip the epitaphs, and double-time it to the
rock and roll. Because when nobody moves, everybody gets hurt.

(March 7, 2010)

7
PART I: OLD FRIENDS

The Rolling Stones
Plundered My Soul
Disclaimer: Song reviews needn’t
always be prefaced by a disclaimer.
But when the song in question is the
Rolling Stones’ “Plundered My Soul,”
a little context can do an awful lot of
good.
So, for the record, this reviewer is
obliged to report that he considers the
Stones to be the greatest band in rock
and roll history. By “greatest” I don’t
mean the most skilled or influential,
just the most emblematic of what
mainstream rock was, is, and aspires to
be – that is, the most rock and roll of
rock and roll bands.
At bottom, the rock genre is an
atomic-powered mixture of backwater
blues, high-country swing, and street-
corner bravado. It was birthed in the
wake of the nuclear bomb, developed
in an age of unprecedented material
comfort, and matured amid a malaise
that called into question the very
dance-first, ask-questions-later
ethic that characterized its wonder
years. The Stones remain singularly
important because they covered this
panoramic musical evolution better
than any of their contemporaries,
moving from dawn to decadence at
a pace commensurate with the times.
9
OLD FRIENDS
Mick Jagger and Keith Richards not
only wrote rock’s signature song, “(I
Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” they also
produced the genre’s most compelling
creation myth: the verse-chorus-verse
of “Brown Sugar.” Those scarred old
slavers and cotton-field laborers, those
African drums that beat cold while
English blood ran hot, corroborate
the fact that rock and roll is a
conspicuously miscegenated medium.
Take the five-note African scale
and superimpose it on the diatonic
European scale, and you’ve got the
makings of all blues-based music. Not
coincidentally, you’ve also got the
Rolling Stones.
I can feel the Too Cool For School set
retreating at the mere intimation of
the Stones’ indispensability. So let’s
agree to drop our sabres and seek
reconciliation on the only reliable
middle ground: the belief that Exile on
Main Street is the band’s best album.
After all, we’re gathered here today to
assess “Plundered My Soul,” a song
that dates from the famously strained
Exile sessions but is only now enjoying
the dignity of an official release. The
track is a revealing sonic artifact of
a titanically popular band caught
digging at its roots and dodging its
taxes, only to harvest spectacularly
strange fruit. Like “Tumbling Dice”
and “Honky Tonk Women” before it,

“Soul” splits the difference between
rollick and reserve. It shuffles out of the
box into a Stones-standard open-D riff,
with Keith Richards’ blues savvy laying
the foundation for Billy Preston’s piano
plunk. Less than 10 seconds after the
opening note, we’re telepathically
ported back to 1972. Punk has yet to
happen; the Beatles’ break-up has
yet to indicate its finality; and Michael
Jackson has yet to turn in his dark
skin and nappy hair. By god, what an
innocent time!
Still, only a fool would argue that
the Stones were squeaky clean. The
Richards family name is more or less
synonymous with junk and booze,
largely on account of the debauched
behavior that Keith exhibited during
the Exile era. “Soul” reaffirms Richards’
doped-up grooves, gaining its slink
and strut from rock’s most economical
lead guitar. Keith sets the mid-tempo
pace, then weaves in and out of the
song’s foreground with his sweet
electric licks. Mick Jagger handles the
rest, peppering his typically over-
emoted vocals with gritty melisma and
pointed accents. “My indiscretion’s
left a bad impression,” Mick admits,
flush with the realization that his lady
friend is gone for good. He’s not
particularly heartbroken over the loss,
just embarrassed that the sudden
departure has caught him off guard.
10
OLD FRIENDS
“I thought you needed my loving/But
it’s my heart that you stole,” Jagger
sings. Then he adds the punch line: “I
thought you wanted my money/But
you plundered my soul.” A woman
he’d pegged as a gold digger has left
his bank account untouched, only to
swipe a healthy portion of his vaunted
mojo.
Such subject matter is par for the
course on Exile. The double album’s
most identifiable lyric is probably
“Baby, I can’t stay” – a four-
word attempt to convince us that
inconstancy is somehow romantic.
Then again, what else would you
expect from a rolling stone? Bluesmen
are not known for their fidelity, nor are
rock and rollers uncommonly prone to
stasis. The Stones are a single band
that’s survived five or six different lives:
the death of Brian Jones; the Mick
Taylor-Ron Wood transition; the disco
stupor of Emotional Rescue; and the
stone-cold folly of Steel Wheels being
mere bumps along the path. “Soul”
takes the boys back to their heyday. It
sounds like “Tumbling Dice” folded
into “Waiting on a Friend,” evincing
a melancholy that’s part Mississippi
Delta, part London Fields. There’s a
caution to this despair, implying that a
straight-ahead rock number, like “Rip
This Joint” or “Down the Line,” is just
around the corner.

We’ll cross that corner next month,
when Exile is reissued as a two-disc
treasure trove of digital remasters and
previously unreleased studio tracks.
Reissues commonly feed off Boomer
sentimentality rather than righteous
tunes, hoping to bank in on the
remembrance of things past. In this
case, however, you get the feeling
that the nostalgia will be good, but the
music will be better. The simple truth
is that Exile hasn’t gathered any moss
or betrayed any loyalties. It sounds the
same as it did in 1972: old, dirty, and
guilty as sin. It offers no apologies for
its excesses and expects no sympathy
for its shortfalls. It just wants to be
heard. Let the disclaimers end there.
(April 20, 2010)
Eminem (featuring Lil Wayne)
No Love
Slim Shady has never been one for
phat beats. Even in his heyday, when
he was moving more units than Jay-Z
and Lil Wayne combined, Em preferred
to rhyme over slinky electronics rather
than hype samples. Compare “The
Real Slim Shady” and “Without Me”
to “99 Problems” and “Encore.” The
key distinction is not white vs. black
11
OLD FRIENDS
or Detroit vs. Brooklyn, but Dre vs.
Ye. Em embraced the lighter side of
Dr. Dre, infusing the über-producer’s
sleek, electro-Chronic piano rags with
a rousing combination of fifth-gear
flow and devil-may-care lyrics. Jay, on
the other hand, partnered with super-
samplers on the order of Kanye West.
He rode their jacked instrumentals like
a pimped Cadillac – loose and easy
when times were good, rough and
ready when the shit went down.
Truth be told, Em was the better
portent to the future of hip-hop beat
making. If the Dirty South takeover
has proved anything, it’s that you
don’t need a stockpile of James
Brown or Ornette Coleman 45s to cut
a blockbuster rap record. Nowadays,
beats are truncated to the point of
chic mongrelization (think Wayne’s “A
Milli”) or soap-operatic swell (think
Drake’s “Over”). MCs who dabble in
the finer side of sampling are typically
fitted for cap and gown, then cited as
late graduates of the Old School. Even
Hov himself, ever the enterprising
businessman, has struck a clean
balance between the suave R&B rip
and the fluttering, M.I.A.-meets-Cash-
Money digital dove. “On To the Next
One” is manned by Sean Carter, but it
just as easily could have been driven
by the man behind Tha Carter III.

So how does Marshall Mathers, the
world’s erstwhile favorite rapper,
fight his way back into hip hop’s top
tier? Apparently, he takes a look at
what’s trending and rushes headlong
in the opposite direction. Em’s
“No Love” is fueled by a fat, gaudy
sample – a sample which proves
beyond a reasonable doubt that
Mathers is afflicted with elephantitis
of the scrotum. The source material
is Haddaway’s perennial club-douche
anthem, “What Is Love” (better known
as the Night at the Roxbury song). As
Pitchfork so eloquently put it, “Word
to Chris Kattan.” Can I get a “What-
What” for Will Ferrell?
Jokes aside, the funniest thing about
“No Love” is that it kinda, sorta works
as an angry-rapper theme song.
Wayne and Shady walk these mean
streets together, trading verses less
like bummed cigarettes than used
hypodermic needles. They’re clearly
getting high off their rhymes. Each
shouted recrimination is triple-layered
with a Me Against the World spirit,
as if the single-finger salute were
the only weapon worth brandishing
in contemporary pop. As line builds
upon line, and the “You kicked me
while I was down” refrain ensconces
itself in your memory bed, “No Love”
becomes the unlikeliest of dis tracks –
12
OLD FRIENDS
one that should have dissed the disser
but instead calls the game out on its
tendency to dispose of its heroes.
Don’t get me wrong: This single is not
especially good. But that’s not for a
lack of effort, passion, or pedigree. In
addition to the Weezy guest spot, Em
gets a beat custom designed by the
good folks at Just Blaze Enterprises.
What results is the most profane
public service announcement since
the infamous “I learned it by watching
you!” spot for a Drug-Free America.
Suffice to say that Wayne’s lead verse is
not even remotely drug free. It’s cued
by a lighter flick, which communicates
a dual urge: first, spark the joint; then,
set the track on fire. Weezy comes
through with killer opening couplets:
“Throw dirt on me/Grow a wildflower/
Fuck the world/Get a child out her.”
This is a man who knows a thing or
two about rebirth. And though he’s
currently encaged, it’s obvious that
the chains of convention can’t hold
him. Weezy has become the thinking
man’s Ol’ Dirty Bastard, mouthing
off on the cosmos even as he trades
in profundities he doesn’t fully
understand. When he tells us, “My
bars are full of broken bottles/And my
night stands are full of open Bibles,”
we don’t waste much time wondering

how he reconciles sin and piety. That
would be like trying to capture the
Holy Ghost.
Em’s mic turn isn’t as immediately
compelling as Weezy’s, but it’s
definitely flush with Shady’s
characteristic bursts of well-articulated
catch phrases. His flow is quicksilver,
and it alights on every hot topic
from bitch MCs to the hellacious
payback that’ll soon befall his
haters. If anything, Em raps too fast
and skillfully to lend his points the
benefit of gravitas. He’s still got that
arresting sinus-infection inflection, bile
dripping from his nose like water out
of a primed spigot. And his intra-line
fluency – the consonance, assonance,
and accenting from word to word –
remains as tight as a vice grip. Only
Em can spit the rather pedestrian
“I’m on the top of my game til the hip
don’t hop anymore” and leave the hair
standing up on the back of your neck.
Yet, in the current pop environment,
some talents are hindrances rather
than credentials. Em puts his head
down and plows through his verse like
Secretariat on steroids. His stage-
crashing fantasies – and a very funny
“Where’s Kanye when you need him?”
lyric – get lost in the shuffle. Wayne,
in contrast, starts slowly, then stutter-
13
OLD FRIENDS
steps into warp speed. He not only
controls his verse; he contains his
anger. Em can only smite his candle
and curse the darkness.
Ultimately, both MCs make the best of
their pairing – not only with each other
but with Just Blaze’s nightclub synths.
A central problem of genre-bending
rap producers, especially those who
purport to work in “rock,” is that they
don’t know rock very well. The emo-
ization of hip hop, seen previously
on Kevin Rudolf’s “Let It Rock” and
Wayne’s Rebirth, is pushed to sordid
depths on “No Love.” One could be
forgiven for thinking that the track
coalesced as follows: Blaze decided
to make a bad Timbaland beat, circa
1998, while Weezy and Em conspired
to channel their inner Dashboard
Confessional. The beat is not phat, it’s
lazy. And while the flow comes fast and
furious, it can’t fully redeem the flaws
of its host.
Let’s give Em some credit: His song
has the weight and urgency of an
Emergency Room visit. Unfortunately,
the patient in question comes across
as sick rather than ill. Somebody page
Dr. Dre. We need a strong dose of
some of that funky stuff.
(June 9, 2010)

Big Boi
Shutterbugg
The indie rock sound is varied and
dynamic, but a good portion of its
enthusiasts run on borrowed nostalgia
for the unremembered Eighties.
(James Murphy’s words, not mine.)
One wonders when hip hop is going
to follow suit. After all, the genre
came of age during the Reagan-era
push for slashed entitlements and
draconian drug policies. Urban decay
was the necessary backdrop for rap’s
growth, as it allowed DJs to siphon
off public electricity, graffiti writers
to vandalize public works, and MCs
to articulate public concerns. Those
public concerns included, but were not
limited to, disco beats, “my Adidas,”
and break dancing.
That’s the thing about the
unremembered Eighties: While Rome
burned, hip hop was advising its
clients to kick back and cut a rug. In
this particular history, Rome happened
to be New York, but any underfunded
American city would have sufficed.
Thirty years later, amid “the greatest
financial crisis since the Great
Depression,” rap’s axial poles may
have shifted south, but its party
ethic still holds primacy. Atlanta is a
14
OLD FRIENDS
(perhaps the) major player on the hip
hop scene, and arguably no other act
has been as instrumental as OutKast
in earning ATL its capitol status. In a
slow, sweaty, decade-long grind, Big
Boi and Dre brought Southern Playa
anthems into the pop mainstream,
using pointed drawls and atmospheric
beats to circumvent the horseshit East
Coast vs. West Coast rap wars. The
Kast were a crew of many colors, but
its central stripes were club-vibed and
chronic-lit. (See “Hey Ya!” and “The
Way You Move” for the dance floor
bang and “So Fresh, So Clean” and
“Ms. Jackson” for the psychedelic
edge.) As such, it should come as no
surprise that Big Boi has painted his
first proper solo record with several
coats of good-time varnish.
“Shutterbugg” is 2010’s answer to
the escapist disco sound that defined
early-Eighties hip hop. It’s an Old
School joint sparked with new-age
feints and flourishes. “Bugg” flies
out of the gate with an electric blast,
chock full of talkbox effects and “Cry
Me a River” Timbatronics. The style is
modern but not exclusively digital; that
is, it’s driven less by cold, high-tech
loops than warm, heavily syncopated
ripples. (Imagine Grandmaster Flash’s
“The Message” folded into the muzak
from Nintendo’s “Pole Position.”)

There’s a buoyancy to the beat, a pulse
that’s first hypnotic, then magnetic, but
always held down by a dynamite MC.
Big Boi has the tightest flow of any
rapper south of the Mason-Dixon Line.
In terms of sheer lingual speed and
agility, our Boi can hand Lil Wayne
his ass and Young Jeezy his walking
papers. Big has something of a jazz
singer aesthetic: He’s equally adept
at quick surges and syrupy reels; he
can spin his way through tricky vocal
cadences or snap along to rat-a-tat-
tat lyrics; and, most impressively,
he can embrace hot bebop slurs or
stone-cold, Sinatra-like enunciations.
On “Bugg,” he imparts an effortless
sprint to his rhymes, racing to the
dance floor like a man on fire. His
sharp intonations are as clear as his
instructions to cut loose: “Party people
in the club/It’s time to cut a rug/And
throw your dukes up in the air/Just for
the shutterbuggs.” Public Enemy this
is not – but it’ll still take a nation of
millions to hold us back.
“Bugg” hosts a battle of alter-egos:
Even as Sir Lucious Leftfoot puts his
best foot forward, Daddy Fat Sax is
consciously taking the track retro. In
his second verse, Big makes pointed
references to the Geto Boys, the
Underground Kings, and the Wu-Tang
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Clan. Then he plunges even deeper,
singing the refrain from Soul II Soul’s
1989 club hit, “Back to Life.” At that
moment, the listener is inclined to look
around for Downtown Julie Brown and
her MTV dancers, flush as the sound is
with proto-rave ingredients.
In the end, however, “Bugg” adheres
to the “I’m the greatest!” tradition that
hopped from Muhammad Ali to the
likes of Kurtis Blow and LL Cool J. Big
Boi flexes nuts regarding his “triple
O.G. status,” fancying himself the
center of attention as he double fists
his way through the V.I.P. lounge. With
synths aflutter and drum machines
pounding on cue, Big takes complete
control of the narrative, sounding
slicker than Slick Rick and kooler than
Kool Moe Dee.
What often goes unremembered
about the Eighties is that its rap beats
were utter garbage – lightweight
sound effects completely unworthy
of the thoroughbred MCs who were
rhyming over them. “Bugg” corrects
this deficiency by drafting a thick,
propulsive Scott Storch production as
its backdrop. Storch gives the track a
metro-Miami feel, which Big snatches
up and escorts directly to A-Town.
The song works because the dove
and the divo are finally matching in
pedigree and acting in concert. Big

checks the rearview mirror but doesn’t
marinate his music in tired nostalgia.
Sometimes it’s best to merely look
back, rather than actually go back,
before advancing forward.
“Bugg” is a long time coming and a
longer time delayed, but its author is
still so fresh, so clean, and so much
better than his Southern competitors.
Big can curtsy to the classic or nod
to the new without deferring to the
myopic trends of the marketplace.
He understands his genre’s potential.
Just as importantly, he understands
its limitations. His new single proves
that commercial hip hop can survive its
shotgun marriage to Auto-Tune. Every
line of his testimony deserves our
time, our attention, and, ultimately, our
applause. Now more than ever, let’s
hear it for the Boi.
(April 10, 2010)
Paul Weller
No Tears to Cry
What’s gotten into Paul Weller? Is
it that most obsequious of artistic
tropes, nostalgia? Or that lifeblood
of progressive songwriting, sonic
curiosity? After listening to Weller’s
latest single, “No Tears to Cry,” I’m
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inclined to drop the deuce, and opine
that the Modfather is moving forward
by looking back.
In this particular case, as is the general
rule, objects in the rearview mirror
may appear closer than they are.
At first listen, “Tears” sounds like a
straight-ahead Neil Diamond rip,
complete with the chesty baritone
and Brill Building warmth. Upon
second spin, the Northern Soul vibe
and Scott Walker symphonics assert
themselves, packing a resonance
worthy of Phil Spector. Subsequent
analyses pick up Tom Jones in the
nose and Ray Davies on the palate,
with a pleasing, spirited aftertaste of
public house psychedelics. Everything
is very swinging and Sixties until you
realize that the vocalist is the lead
singer from the Jam – at which point
you say, “Where are the fucking power
chords?”
These chords are not forthcoming.
Nor are they necessary. Because on
“Tears,” Weller is less concerned with
the exigencies of the modern world
than the reliable rewards of a well-
produced pop song. His voice is bright
and generous, possessing none of the
cockney severity that characterized his
early Jam vocals. Rather than reboot
the take-it-to-you guitars of “In the

City” or the working-class redress of
“That’s Entertainment,” Paul cops
the tender rises and echoes of the
Righteous Brothers. In a song that
barely eclipses the two-minute mark,
we get subtle strings, plangent piano,
and textural shifts that lend equal
deference to builds and drops. Weller
is engaged in a balancing act between
recalcitrance and desperation: He and
his betrothed have lost that loving
feeling, and Mr. Mod is keen to come
off as both sensitive and dispassionate.
He starts the track with “If you don’t
want to see me fall/Turn your face to
the wall,” inviting listeners to imagine
a man on the verge of breakdown. But
by the time he reaches the chorus,
Weller is in full recovery mode,
bellowing “There’s no way I can lie/
There’s no tears to cry/My eyes
have dried.”
Such are the wages of romantic
impasse: It hurts to let go, but not
quite so much as it hurts to stay
together. This is an evergreen pop
topic, and Paul does well to give it
the Nick Lowe by way of Elvis Presley
treatment. The question is whether he
does this in earnest, as per the King’s
protocol, or with irony, in the manner
of the Basher.
I don’t hear any sarcasm in “Tears.”
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The track has the blue-eyed charm
and blokey immodesty of a solid
Nick Lowe single, but it certainly
isn’t “Marie Provost” or “American
Squirm,” wherein ambient, power-pop
tones palliate the jaded narrative. Here
Weller is reaching back beyond his
punkish roots, beyond his Who fetish,
to a simple story about man, woman,
and their tragic incompatibilities.
There are no wasted words or bratty
asides, just the cool reserve of sorrow
and realization.
Weller has certainly earned this
perspective. Earlier this year, he picked
up the “Godlike Genius” statuette at
the NME Music Awards, thus sealing
his legacy with the type of honorary
accolade that says “Sorry your band
never got as big as U2.” For many of
us, however, the Jam are far more vital
and affecting than their worthy Dublin
acolytes. Paul was a godlike genius
well before Bono had dispatched with
his Irish mullet. By the time Margaret
Thatcher rolled into Downing Street,
in 1979, Weller had already written
such enduring proletarian anthems as
“Away From the Numbers,” “Down
in the Tube Station at Midnight,”
“Saturday’s Kids,” and “Eton Rifles.”
“Tears” doesn’t attempt to match
these classics; instead, it aims to
transcend them, to sidestep the

Jam and leapfrog the Style Council.
By staring down his past, Weller is
ensuring that his future is written by no
one’s pen but his own.
“Tears” is so versatile a ballad that
it could have been sung by Roy
Orbison, Engelbert Humperdinck,
Elvis Costello, or several of the ever-
evolving iterations of Bono. Yet, in the
end, what makes the single special
are the Weller bona fides – that
is, the combination of street beat
and love story. More than any other
contemporary British songwriter, Paul
can make timeless beauty sound like
breaking news. And that’s neither
nostalgia nor sonic curiosity – it’s the
rarified product of sheer talent.
(April 13, 2010)
Blur
Fool’s Day
Hanging on in quiet desperation is
the English way. So it should come
as no surprise that Britpop, a genre
long thought to have been felled by
the rough edges of Radiohead’s OK
Computer, still has a vestigial grip on
the pulse of perfidious Albion.
Sure, the Blur-Oasis tabloid beefs have
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faded. But the mid-Nineties records
that fueled their showdown remain far
more popular than the boy-band shite
and introspective art rock that gained
favor in their wake. As such, the recent
disbanding of the Brothers Gallagher
and the purported reunion of the
Albarn/Coxon cohort scored high
enough on the breaking-news index to
merit blog posts and video embeds on
both Pitchfork and Stereogum. After
all, even the most jaded Beach House
fan has fond memories of Parklife
and Definitely Maybe, what with their
enduring counterpoints of symphonic
swells and hi-fi pride.
Earlier this week, the rumors of a
formal Blur reunion were substantiated
by the appearance of a brand-
new studio track. It’s called “Fool’s
Day,” but it’s not meant as a joke
or contrivance. In fact, the single is
positively adult – an odd descriptive
to apply to Britpop, considering that
the genre has always been something
of a promotional arm for the enfant
terrible (see Gallagher, Liam). These
days, Damon Albarn seems less
intent on whipping up a media frenzy
than dialing down the bombast of
his Cool Britannia past. “Fool’s” is
not interested in heady dreams or
aspirations. Instead, it focuses on
commonplace routines and rituals.

Each verse reads like a lean haiku
entered into the daily diary of a low-
maintenance middle-aged man: “TV
on/Of course caffeine/A science of
submission again/Another day/On this
little island.” That’s nearly a quarter of
the song – and it’s not even half
a Tweet!
If Blur started out as an anti-grunge
band, perhaps they’ve now evolved
into an anti-Gaga band. They pack no
bright lights or expensive pyrotechnics,
nor any implication that what they’re
doing is particularly exciting or
noteworthy. “Porridge done/I take my
kid to school/Pass the pound shop,
Woolworth’s” is real-time testimony
from a day in the life, resembling a
45th-anniversary update of “Woke
up/Got out of bed/Dragged a comb
across my head.” As if to rebut Jarvis
Cocker’s most memorable argument,
Albarn seems to be implying that even
wealthy rock stars can live like common
people.
His statement is backed by a
comfortably muted instrumental: a
basic drum beat, an on-again/off-
again synth swirl, and a guitar jingle
that never quite meets up with its
jangle. The chilled-out vocal cadence
is useful, as it’s able to tell a mundane
story with either sober engagement or
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numb detachment, depending on the
listener’s predilection. I see “Fool’s”
as subscribing to a school of thought
that combines the Kinks’ “Waterloo
Sunset” with the Jam’s “That’s
Entertainment,” whereby a slightly
cockney voice can ascribe gravity (or at
least poignancy) to a simple meeting
at the subway station or the passive
act of “watching the tele and thinking
about your holidays.” As the old saying
goes, life is what happens while you’re
busy making other plans.
In this regard, “Fool’s” is a perfect
slice-of-life capture. It eschews the
soaring chorus that typically acts as
the backbone of a Britpop song,
opting for short verse after short verse
of status updates. Yes, there are the
occasional digital pulses and stark
psychedelic tones, but the track will
not be confused with anything from
the new MGMT album. “Fool’s”’
vibe is stripped down and grown up,
facing the charms and indignities of
adulthood with a long-night’s stubble
and a long-day’s weary resolve.
Albarn ends the song where he, as a
working musician, belongs: in a studio,
professing “a love of all sweet music/
We just can’t let go.” His song may
sound like an ennui-ridden lament,
but it’s ultimately a celebration of his
profession.

Which is not to say that it’s a
celebration of Britpop’s legacy. Blur
in general and Albarn in particular
transcended the genre’s limitations
ages ago, with the most conspicuous
evidence being Damon’s platinum
run with the Gorillaz. This idiomatic
mobility aside, 2010 remains an
important year for Britpop, since it
marks the inception of the sound
going legal, at least in statutory terms.
If you date the genre to the Stone
Roses’ 1989 debut LP, then Britpop is
21 – so you’re compelled to buy him a
drink. And if you date the movement
to Suede’s 1992 “Downers” single,
Britpop is 18 – so you’re obliged
to pass him a voter’s ballot or a
conscription card. Either way, you’re
forced to come to terms with the fact
that Britpop has come of age.
Maybe that’s why “Fool’s” sounds so
goddamned mature: Blur simply aren’t
kids anymore. They’ve been on hiatus
for more than seven years. Were they
to return with another burnt offering
to the gods of eternal adolescence,
we might find it hard to take them
seriously. Those who feel that all that’s
sacred comes from youth obviously
haven’t spent much time listening to
pop radio. Occasionally you need a
wizened eye and a furrowed brow. On
“Fool’s,” Blur supply the former while
preventing the latter from casting a
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pall over the entire affair. If there’s any
desperation on the track, it’s of the
quiet variety. What could be more
British than that?
(April 18, 2010)
Robyn
Dancing on My Own
The New Yorker recently described
Robyn’s Body Talk, Pt. 1 as “eight
handsomely formed, near-perfect
pop songs.” I’m content to echo this
assessment, albeit with the addition of
a qualitative sidebar: Of the album’s
eight songs, none is more handsome
or near-perfect than “Dancing on My
Own,” a fluttering wallop of digital
disco that might be my favorite pop
single of the year. “Dancing” has the
thrilling immediacy of a club track but
the sober awareness of an acoustic
ballad. This mixture of wild mercury
and coiled intensity gives the song an
odd chemistry and an odder charisma;
it not only gropes for the zeitgeist, it
also looks forward and backward with
equal deliberation, as if crossing some
sort of sonic byway. Robyn is mindful of
the traffic, but makes no concessions
to intervening forces or external actors.
This is her drama, and she’ll cry if she
wants to.

Perhaps I led this review with the New
Yorker plaudit merely to document the
scope of Robyn’s bourgeois appeal.
If this is the case, my aims were
completely unconscious yet entirely
understandable. Robyn may not be
a household name, but she’s hardly
a fringe act, either. Her last album,
self-titled and released in 2005, is
widely considered to be one of the
best pop LPs of the past decade. Its
clean Swedish production is conjoined
with singing that’s playful, clever, and
utterly human. The conceit seemed
to be that man and machine were
not accursed antagonists in a hastily
evolving dystopia, that the organic
and the inorganic could affirm, rather
than subjugate, each other. This ethic
now informs blockbuster singles from
the likes of Lady Gaga and the Black
Eyed Peas. The avant-dance idiom that
Robyn helped propagate five years
ago has become the new normal, with
the woman-as-robot aesthetic climbing
to new heights on Janelle Monáe’s
ArchAndroid and falling to new
lows on Christina Aguilera’s Bionic.
Consider it computer generation for
the Computer Generation; that is,
music that uses the mechanical device
as theme, instrument, and reason for
being. Digital certainly didn’t start with
Robyn, whose discography dates only
to the late Nineties, but she’s always
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been just far enough ahead of the
curve to seduce hipsters and the NPR
set alike.
Body Talk re-ups Robyn’s “I’m a
cyborg, and that’s OK” conceit, only
with greater bandwidth and more
gigabytes. In fact, the record pairs
the robotic and the emotional so
expertly that “conceit” hardly seems
an appropriate noun to attach to its
approach. At this point, the teched-
up love ballad deserves a subgenre
all its own. And Body Talk’s first
single, “Fembots,” could offer the
movement’s mission statement: “I’ve
got some news for you/Fembots
have feelings to.” The song is smart,
catchy, and sexy. But “Dancing” is the
better composition, largely because
it subordinates savvy jocularity to the
passions that come pre-programmed
in all adolescents.
Radio Pop is a young woman’s game.
And although she’s in her early thirties,
Robyn is uniquely positioned to crash
Billboard’s gates. Her voice is infused
with a perpetual adolescence, one
which not only maintains an alto-legato
range but also is quick to drop “g”s
and “er”s. This slang-style elocution
makes Robyn sound younger than she
is, perfuming “Dancing” with the scent
of underage kicks even as it bangs with
adult insight.

There are, of course, more obvious
reasons why “Dancing” is an elite-
echelon pop song. Let’s start with
the beat: It sounds like a Japanese
motorcycle in full rev, primed to
a healthy purr but too disciplined
to dabble in the red. The rippling
electronic notes amp up to an
impressive RPM level, then propel
forward with a sleek blast of snares.
It has the texture of a Max Martin
track crossbred with the theme music
from Nintendo’s “Pole Position.” The
digital and the dulcet don’t so much
duke it out as bond together in a
covalent alliance. This bizarre aural
alloy reminds me of the lyrical imagery
in Bruce Springsteen’s “It’s Hard to Be
a Saint in the City,” wherein the Boss
claims to have “silver star studs on
[his] duds like a Harley in heat.” Robyn
doesn’t quite pack the horsepower
of a Harley, but her shiny rice rocket
of a track definitely secretes some
serious pheromones. There’s sex, love,
vulnerability, and longing on the vinyl
– a range of feelings that most Top
40 fare is anathema to cover but that
Robyn indulges on the regular.
This is not to say that Robyn writes with
the nuance of Shakespeare or Joyce.
On “Dancing,” the lyrics work precisely
because they don’t require a Cliffs
Notes treatment. “I’m in the corner,
watching you kiss her/I’m right over
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here, why can’t you see me?” makes
for a fairly direct chorus. The narrator is
in a dance club, eyeing a former flame
who’s moved on to another woman.
There’s a tacit intention of winning him
back, but a provisional acceptance of
staying solo and enjoying the caprices
(and catharses) of the dance floor. In
other words, “I can live, with or
without you.”
That said, I’m not willing to let Robyn
off the hook so quickly. The essence
of songwriting is the marriage of the
wordplay with the instrumental, and
something about “Dancing” tells me
that this particular drama holds more
than meets the eye. So let’s use our
ears instead: The beat is sweet and the
chorus is convincingly downhearted,
but there’s a sinister tone that chimes
just below the radar. Is the protagonist
a jilted lover or a deluded stalker?
When Robyn sings, “So far away,
but still so near/(The lights go on,
the music dies)/But you don’t see
me standing here/(I just came to say
goodbye),” we can’t help but feel a
little creeped out. What, exactly, does
this goodbye represent? Is Robyn once
again channeling Springsteen – “For
me this boardwalk life’s through/You
oughta quit this scene too”? Or is
this song’s postscript an aggravated
assault?

I’m clearly taking liberties here.
Dancing on one’s own is substantially
different than pulling a Single White
Female of the Jennifer Jason Leigh
variety. But I consider it a tribute
to Robyn’s musicianship that her
pop dramas provide the flexibility
for interpretation – even if some of
the interpretations are wild and ill-
conceived. Club singles rarely activate
anything but the id, but “Dancing”
is imaginative enough to counter the
body talk with a little brain teasing. It’s
sentient and sensate, yet still highly
syncopated. That’s the future of pop
music: a bizarre amalgam of techno,
rock, and R&B, all rendered personal
by confessional lyrics. Left-of-center
artist have been making this sort of
music for years. Now’s the time for
radio to catch up.
(June 22, 2010)
The Shins
Goodbye Girl
The Shins’ cover of “Goodbye Girl”
defies convention by sounding
demonstrably less modern than
the original. It reconceives a busy,
mechanical affair as a sweet strum
through power pop’s back pages.
Such treatment might clash with
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our sociocultural trend toward ever-
increasing complexity; but, to those
who follow indie music with an attuned
ear, the Shins’ no-fuss approach can
hardly be said to come as a surprise.
Much has happened in the 32
years since Squeeze released their
“Goodbye Girl” single – namely
New Wave, postpunk, New Pop, hip
hop, thrash metal, grunge, digital
disco, and countless hybrids of these
and other idioms. The net result is
that there’s more competition and
cross-pollination in contemporary
pop music. One would expect
this outward-expanding corona of
sound to push serious songwriters
toward postmodern composition.
But in certain alternative sectors, our
multiplicity of forms actually translates
into less cacophony and clutter.
“Goodbye Girl” is a great case study in
reverse engineering. The original, full
of the frenzy of 1978, sounds like it was
recorded in a clock shop or a penny
arcade. There are Devo-esque blips,
beeps, and cuckoos – all of which
were signs of the times, none of which
were necessary to the song’s inherent
integrity. After all, Glenn Tilbrook
and Chris Difford are more Lennon/
McCartney than Mothersbaugh/Casale
or Byrne/Eno. Their tracks imagine that

rock’s radicalization never happened,
that the Beatles’ discography stopped
at Rubber Soul. For Squeeze, the
melody is the medium and the
harmony is the cherry on top. What
they communicate is the very opposite
of U.K. punk’s daft anarchy – that
is, a reification of daily ritual, where
one describes the here-and-now of
the silent majority rather than the
dystopia of the vocal fringe. Tilbrook/
Difford compositions endure because
they treat shared experiences with a
Faulty Towers sensibility: The lads are
more than happy to have a laugh at
their own expense. Listen to “Up the
Junction,” “Another Nail in the Heart,”
or “Is that Love?” Each song plays
like a reaction to a Dear John letter
that the writer never took the trouble
to mail.
“Goodbye Girl” fits this tradition to a
T, turning a private affair into a public
humiliation. You wouldn’t think that the
Shins would be up for this sort of thing,
as James Mercer, the group’s leader,
is often described as painstaking and
self-serious. Yet on the “Goodbye
Girl” redux, the band breaks out
heaping doses of good humor. Mercer
will not soon be mistaken for a barrel
full of monkeys, but his crafty, almost
artisanal approach to songwriting owes
much to the Tilbrook/Difford model.
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Lyrically speaking, Squeeze can adore
without adornment, and Mercer flexes
this muscle by presenting “Goodbye
Girl” as a stripped-down, acoustic
ballad. The background noise is
minimized, lending primacy to
the story.
Our tale begins with the
perambulations of a one-night stand,
segues into a fly-by-night robbery,
and ends with a confession of
longing for the purported thief. More
specifically, a mark falls for a woman he
encounters in a pool hall and, duped
into the illusion of mutual attraction,
is subsequently relieved of the
contents of his billfold. Mercer sings
Squeeze’s lines with clarity but not
embarrassment, using his high register
to report an honest, detail-oriented
account of the goings-on: “She
took me to her hotel/A room on the
second floor/A kettle and two coffees/
The number on the door.” Is this the
tattered poetry of recollection or the
spartan prose of a police report?
One could ask that question about
many Squeeze songs. Tilbrook/Difford
often force their protagonist to play
the fool, making his bed in the first
two verses and lying down on it in the
third. What’s special about “Goodbye
Girl” is that the protagonist plays the

unwitting (or, at least, the unrepentant)
fool. Even after he’s been robbed
and ransacked, shrugging off the
matrimonial bond to his wife along
the way, he still pines to “say hello to
[his] goodbye girl.” He either doesn’t
realize that the little lady is a cold,
calculating pro – the type of woman
who slips a mickey into her john’s
hotel-room coffee – or his adoration is
so great that he’s willing to let bygones
be bygones, and offer himself up for
another pilfering.
The Shins do their best not to obscure
this message. Their breezy melodies
both honor the sheer songcraft of
Tilbrook/Difford and conspire to
mimic the duo’s central leitmotif:
quasi-consensual victimhood. Mercer
disavows his own writing credit even
as he reaffirms Tilbrook/Difford’s,
arguing that caring is not creepy. This
argument fails, of course – which is just
as Squeeze intended. The sentimental
fool is destined to play the perpetual
ass. On the original “Goodbye Girl,”
Tilbrook/Difford identified the donkey.
Three decades later, the Shins provide
the pin-on tail.
(July 30, 2010)
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Train
Hey, Soul Sister
If you want to know why the recording
industry got bamboozled by the
digital revolution, look no further the
major labels’ long-standing allergy to
ingenuity. In light of the blind betting
and Johnny-come-lately strategies
that sustained the commercial music
apparatus in the decade prior to
Napster, one can only wonder how a
structure so decadent and depraved
managed to survive as long as it did.
The feckless drama’s denouement
went something like this: At the
beginning of the Nineties, Sony,
Capitol, and RCA – along with
countless other off-shoots and affiliates
– barnstormed the Pacific Northwest,
jockeying to scoop up any band that
sounded even remotely like Nirvana.
In the mid Nineties, as Dave Mathews
Band, Counting Crows, and Hootie
and the Blowfish started to break the
bank, the Big League brokers were
keen to sign every five-piece with a
grounding in roots rock and ready
access to an electric harmonica.
Then, at the turn of the century, as
Generation X outgrew terrestrial radio
and Baby Boomers surrendered to the
nostalgia of Greatest Hits reissues,
the labels packed up their guitars and

threw heavy timber behind the Boy
Band phenomenon, milking Justin
Timberlake like a many-nippled
cash cow.
This carpetbagger mentality
underscored the industry’s ruinous
myopia. At every juncture, the majors
were guilty of chasing their tails – that
is, waiting for something big to break,
then imitating the reigning sound
until the fad lost its mojo. Amid this
frantic grope for the zeitgeist, the
industry lost control over the means of
production. Musical content was still
critically important, but, by the early
Aughts, the physical CD became an
antiquated, unnecessary encumbrance.
You might be thinking, “This is all
good and well – but what in God’s
name does it have to do with Train?”
Well, Train are a major label outfit, a
band of wily veterans with a history
dating back to the heady, Monica
Lewinsky-era program in Adult
Contemporary hit-making. They were
signed during the aforementioned
dash for roots rockers and radio-
friendly jam bands. But when the mass
market lost its passion for patchouli,
Train proved versatile enough to tackle
girl-targeted guitar pop, in the vein of
Matchbox Twenty and 3 Doors Down.
They bridged a certain gap in chart
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OLD FRIENDS
logic, grabbing the melodic tones
of late-Nineties album-oriented rock
and finding platinum on this side of
the millennial divide, specifically with
2001’s Drops of Jupiter.
Then the bridge collapsed, to much
sound and fury. (Emphasis on the
fury.) Aside from Creed, is there a
pre-9/11 pop band more pervasively
reviled than Train? Sure, Matchbox
and the Goo Goo Dolls come to mind,
but neither of these groups were as
earnest as Train. Pat Monahan pledged
to sing to you until you liked him,
goddammit! He lacked Scott Stapp’s
ferocious messianic complex and
Johnny Rzeznik’s thinly veiled self-
loathing. He intoned to the heavens
– literally “Calling on Angels” – and
expected the firmament below to
accept his entreaties with equal parts
wonder and delight. In short, the guy
was a douche but thought he was
a prince.
As it turns out, a little delusion can
take a middling band an awfully long
way. Against all odds, and back from
a sphere many iterations more distant
than death, Train have pulled into
Grand Central Station with a huge,
glossy, totally disarming #1 record.
“Hey, Soul Sister” is a glittering pop
gem derived from untold decades

of soft-rock rites and lite-FM rituals.
It will haunt your mother’s radio
station for years to come, finding
its niche alongside such reliable
warhorses as Rod Stewart’s “Reason
to Believe” and Elton John’s “I Guess
That’s Why They Call It the Blues.”
Despite being almost 10 months
old, “Soul Sister” has only recently
managed to claim this year’s “I’m
Yours” slot. This slow build – released
to crickets and tumbleweed, then
subsequently resurrected to fanfare
and a media blitz – demonstrates the
confounding incompetence of the
record industry. Train are a Sony outfit,
party to resources that the likes of
Vampire Weekend or Dirty Projectors
could never imagine. Yet the label
couldn’t break this blatantly obvious
summertime anthem? If Sony didn’t
hear the single potential in “Soul
Sister,” they ought to be investigated
by the Better Business Bureau,
and have their commercial licenses
revoked.
But enough about the industry; let’s
focus on the song. It’s not a criticism
when I say that “Soul Sister” is
generic and pandering. Not every
single needs to push the envelope of
post-millennial songwriting. In fact,
most of the time, the mass audience
(or, more appropriately, what remains
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OLD FRIENDS
of the mass audience) is looking for
something friendly and escapist. “Soul
Sister” fits that bill to a T, making up
for what it lacks in originality with a
heaping dose of infectiousness. I find
the gratuitous use of ukulele – yes,
ukulele! – instantly arresting and
gratifying. Though you’re bound
to hear rebuttal testimony, I think it
takes balls for a group of grown men
to resort to dulcimer tones. Most
contemporary pop is synths and drum
machines, and Train have conquered
the charts by busting out the uke?
We haven’t seen a coup like this since
R.E.M. rode Peter Buck’s mandolin
solo to a loss of religion and a win of
several Grammys.
Which begs a peripheral question: Is
Pat Monahan as old as Michael Stipe?
With his band back in the spotlight,
Monahan has had to entertain the
Today Show and View circuits. And
while he’s certainly a fine-looking
man, his A&R department seems
determined to make him look mildly
ridiculous. Pat’s big hair and bratty
countenance position him as a
member of the Replacements circa Let
it Be. But his tight blazers and skinny
trousers place him as an Entertainment
Tonight guest host.
We excuse these trespasses only

because Monahan sings an order
of magnitude better than Justin
Bieber. He may not have quite the
same pipes that channeled “Meet
Virginia,” but “Soul Sister” is so well
structured that anything more than an
unintelligible rendering will suffice to
charm and beguile. Pat’s lyrics have
never been his strong suit. (Cases are
still pending in The Hague for such
cruel and unusual lines as “She checks
out Mozart while she does tae-bo.”)
Yet “Soul Sister” has the melodic
elasticity to accommodate train-wreck
couplets of the first order, including
“Your lipstick stains/On the front lobe
of my left-side brains” and “I’m so
obsessed/My heart is bound to beat
right out my untrimmed chest.” These
words, however dubious, lock into the
track’s ambient groove and adhere to
the simple instrumental like a snake
around a staff. This snake isn’t chasing
its tail; it’s wagging its rattle – and
inviting us to sing along.
Popular music being the unstable,
balkanized compound that it is, “Soul
Sister” is likely to be Train’s last main-
stage hurrah. Facebookers and iPaders
have little use for graying crooners of
questionable pedigree. They’d rather
identify and exploit the next big thing,
like the major labels of yore. Content
is important but replaceable; it’s the
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OLD FRIENDS
platform that counts. But, if you’ll
forgive the pun, Train have a platform
as well. They bust out well-produced,
overwritten power ballads, fueled
more by “Rocket Man” ambition
than “High Enough” posturing. So
if “Soul Sister” happens to be their
last dance, what a way to go out. The
song has scored musical cameos on
CSI: NY, Medium, and Nurse Jackie,
with close to 3 million legal downloads
to boot. And lest it go unobserved,
“Soul Sister” seems destined to
soundtrack a future ad campaign for
either eHarmony or Match.com. The
song is mellow gold, and it shines all
the brighter for sidetracking the typical
machinations of the recording industry
and meeting the listening public
on its own turf. If Train’s next stop is
oblivion, at least they left us something
beautiful to drown out the sounds
of departure.
(April 12, 2010)
Stone Temple Pilots
Between the Lines
Were Stone Temple Pilots the first of
the second-wave grunge rockers or
the last of the Sunset Strip hair bands?
Given the two-decade backlog of
narcotics in Scott Weiland’s circulatory

system, identifying his quartet’s genre
by means of blood test or DNA sample
is more or less out of the question. So
let’s wave off the white lab coats and
cut directly to the chase: STP were
neither a C-league Pearl Jam nor a
tepid retread of Motley Crew; they
were a creaky bridge that connected
L.A. leather with Seattle flannel. This
sonic dexterity made them one of the
Nineties’ most popular rock bands. But
it also makes them acutely difficult to
compartmentalize.
Take another listen to STP’s first
single, “Sex Type Thing.” Is that Layne
Staley on lead vocals, or Axl Rose?
Weiland’s sex-type thing, whatever it
might purport to be, definitely swung
both ways – ie, back to the alcoholic
Eighties and ahead to the heroin-chic
Nineties. (Granted, the latter had
already begun in earnest by the time
of Core’s release, but it had yet to
reach the parodical, aggro extremes of
Staind, Limp Bizkit, and Creed.)
There is, of course, a slight problem
with any discussion that seeks to
carbon-date STP’s sound to the
period straddling George H.W. Bush’s
presidential term – namely, that we’re
currently living in 2010. Today’s pop
music fan couldn’t give a quibble or
a bit about the C.C. DeVille/Jerry
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OLD FRIENDS
Cantrell sonic continuum. The only
question likely to come forth from his
tongue is “What have you done for
me lately?”
Until this week, STP would’ve had
the damnedest time cuing up a
respectable response. But now that
they’ve leaked the first single off their
upcoming reunion album, the band’s
music can finally speak for itself. The
song in question, “Between the Lines,”
is not of the genus that seeks to skimp
on volume. Its message is refreshingly
clear: “For those about to rock, we
salute you!”
Which is not to say that “Between”
is an AC/DC rip-off or a conventional
head banger. Yes, the track is
heavy and anthemic, but it can’t
completely hide its terroir. Like many
other selections from the STP-Talk
Show-Velvet Revolver discography,
“Between” adheres to the classic rock
side of grunge, placing an emphasis
on straight melody and swagger-laden
guitar. Weiland wields the ringmaster’s
cane, pointing to his own sordid past
with such lines as “I like it when we
talk about love/You always were my
favorite drug,” yet his remonstrations
aren’t so egomaniacal as to turn the
affair into a one-man show. Dean
DeLeo runs his hands up and down

the song’s throttle, pushing “Between”
into hyperdrive with a canon fusillade
of power chords and retro riffs. There’s
nothing inherently novel about this
bellow-and-wail formula, but we’re
not filing patents here – we’re simply
rocking out to a solid, all-American
guitar jam.
The STP of 2010 are an order of
magnitude more confident than the
STP of 1992. Rather than hide their
influences behind concussive kick
drums or extended low-notes, the
band is content to show its hand to
everyone at the card table. If daddy
wants a shout-along chorus, daddy
will write a shout-along chorus. And if
mommy wants to bite a full 15-second
mini-section from Nirvana’s “Stay
Away,” mommy will pull the theft
red-handedly, complete with “Get
away!” background vocals. Weiland
finally realizes that he’ll never be Kurt
Cobain, Axl Rose, or David Bowie. He’s
now free to tinker unapologetically
with his back catalog, fashioning
“Between” as the logical fallout of
“Slither”’s metallic echo and “Tumble
in the Rough”’s trippy bluster. Without
according primacy to either grungy
static or hairspray shimmer, Scott and
his STP comrades manage to unleash
an unlikely winner. If you can resist
the temptation to make a “Dead and
30
OLD FRIENDS
Bloated” joke, you’ll discover that the
band is alive and kicking.
(March 23, 2010)
Hole
Samantha
You know those “Miss Me Yet?”
bumper stickers? The ones that are
currently making the rounds at your
local evangelical church and Bass
Pro Shop? Well, if you replace the
sticker’s awkward background photo
of George W. Bush with a Getty image
of Courtney Love, you’d have a pretty
cogent advertising campaign for Hole’s
new album, Nobody’s Daughter.
Music-based nostalgia has finally
beset Generation X, with the source
of their yearning being more guttural
than reasonable. It seems that most
people over 30 hate contemporary
pop with such a passion that they’re
willing to revert to sounds they never
really embraced in the first place.
“Celebrity Skin” (1998) didn’t get any
higher than #85 on the Billboard Hot
100 singles chart, and Live Through
This (1994) peaked at #52 on the LP-
dedicated Billboard 200. Yet we long
for Courtney because she’s a symbol
of Album Oriented Rock’s last stand, a

conflation of Seventies punk, Eighties
underground, and the early-Nineties’
indie-fab moment, all strung together
by a connubial tie to rock and roll’s last
legitimate icon.
So while the reconstitution of Hole
might be something of an anti-reunion
– few original members, no hot-shit
festival exclusives, only luke-warm blog
buzz – it nonetheless takes Generation
X back to a time when guitars ruled
the roost, when Big Government
wasn’t cramming affordable health
care down our throats, and when
apartments in Seattle could be had
for a song (literally). I’m not sure if the
band’s newest single, “Samantha,”
will conjure a full-on revisitation of
yesteryear’s grungy verve and Sub
Pop sonority, but it does its job –
that is, making today’s antic dance
music seem childish – fairly well. It’s
essentially a 4-minute “Adult Swim”
banner, raised by heavy reverb,
snarling vocals, and the nation of
millions that’s not content to bequeath
Top 40 to Taylor Swift.
“Samantha” starts in mid-tempo, then
builds into a heavy romp through
Courtney’s back pages. The titular
Samantha is cast alternately as an
object of pity and ridicule. She’s a
junkie, a prostitute, and a major-league
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OLD FRIENDS
hustler, hell bent on the destruction
of pride and property. You don’t
need to run any chemical assays to
determine that she’s Courtney Love’s
alter ego. (Think Mariah Carey’s Mimi
with a run in her stocking and a spike
in her vein.) Courtney is clearly relying
on the burned-out rocker’s favorite
songwriting trope – public confession
of private sins, cleverly disguised as
a dialectic. But she does this sort of
thing inimitably well, both on disc
and in the tabloids. I think she’s bright
enough to enjoy the irony in her
construction: She disavows the very
past she’s banking upon to sell her
record.
“Samantha” is cut from the alt-rock
cloth that launched dozens of “Seattle
sound” subgenres and moved untold
quantities of flannel. It’s got a mixture
of Smashing Pumpkins fizz and Jack
Endino fuzz, whereby the vocals burn
and the guitars bleed. When Courtney
sings “Stab the gutter right out of
that girl,” she sounds like she’s been
studying at the Marianne Faithful
School of Skanky Rasp. She may be a
fifty-carat flake, and her persona may
be as fraudulent as Goldman Sachs’
annual report, but the trauma in her
voice is real. Insofar as the song has a
chorus, it’s the umpteen repetitions,
either in whole or in part, of the phrase

“People like you/Fuck people like me/
In order to avoid agony.” Looks like
someone’s got a victim complex.
But it also looks like someone’s got
a credible rock single. “Samantha”
manages to marry the pain of the prey
with the bloodlust of the predator,
sounding equal parts put upon and
wizened up. Courtney needs help, but
she’s certainly not helpless. In this way,
she reminds us of her late husband,
who always offset his whimpers
of defeat with growls of defiance.
“Samantha” takes the vulnerability
of “Dumb” and shoots it up with the
bravado of “Frances Farmer Will Have
Her Revenge on Seattle.” The result
could be something insipid – a Bush
song, for instance – but instead we get
a tattered diary page that packs the
sort of sonic punch that the game’s
been missing. However you feel
about Miley Cyrus, you can be certain
that she’s not going to drop a single
containing the line “If you were on fire,
I’d just throw kerosene.” That’s why
Courtney is so necessary: She’s not
afraid to be indelicate.
The moral of “Samantha” seems to be
Love’s not-so-soft lament of “No one
can regain their innocence again.” This
is somewhat suspect, considering that
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OLD FRIENDS
Hole’s founding operational principle is
that innocence is overrated. Courtney
Love doesn’t value innocence so much
as her ability to lose it. And once it’s
gone, she can only hope that it’s paid
off well, like hubby Kurt’s celebrated
teenage angst. Love’s sense of purity
is far too track-marked and emaciated
to prop itself up and ask, “Miss Me
Yet?” Rather than pose subjective
questions, Court would prefer to
reach for the proverbial kerosene, if
only to scorch the outer layers of her
celebrity skin.
Such “Burn, baby, burn!” insouciance
reaffirms Courtney’s appeal. The
charred remains of her career are far
from beautiful, but we just can’t find
the fortitude to look away. The reason
for this is unclear. But I guess we’re
afraid we might miss something.
(April 29, 2010)
Tom Petty and
the Heartbreakers
I Should Have Known It
Tom Petty may not have been the best
singer-songwriter of the late Seventies,
but he certainly had the best mission
statement: “Don’t bore us. Get to the
chorus.”

Rarely is a sentiment this concise also
so expansive. The phrase contains the
snarl of punk, the stomp of garage,
and the smirk of a rock and roll outlaw.
It covers the sonic continuum that
stretched from Elvis to the Ramones,
leaving ample gas in the tank for Tom’s
own variations on its theme. And
Petty, never shy or imprecise about his
origins – see “One foot in the grave/
and one foot on the pedal/I was born
a rebel” – ran down his dream with all
the amped-up horsepower of a race
car driver.
Ultimately, the key distinction between
Tom Petty and Kyle Petty is not one of
attitude but of instrument: The former
traffics in guitars, while the latter
trafficked in motor stock. Both feel the
need for speed. And both know it’s
good to be King.
At present, of course, few phenomena
hold less cachet in the music press
than NASCAR and dinosaur rock. If
the hipster set has any respect for Tom
Petty, it probably comes with a side
order of caveats and condescension.
His Zagat-style entry in Pitchfork’s back
pages might read, “Reliable bar-band
leader” with an “ear for pop hooks”…
but “where’s the innovation?” Yet
by posing such a question, the indie
snob unwittingly reveals his ignorance:
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OLD FRIENDS
He’s forgetting that Petty and his
Heartbreakers weren’t the least bit
interested in reordering the aesthetic
principles of Western music. This is a
band that wanted to go back to the
future – that is, to remember the time
when verse-chorus-verse was a catalyst
to exhilaration rather than an object of
disdain, and then to channel this fist-
first ethic onto the airwaves.
Bear in mind that we’re speaking of
Jimmy Carter-era airwaves, frequencies
beset by prog fog and disco taint.
(Hell, even the president himself spoke
of an invidious cultural “malaise.”)
Much of what had made the American
songbook so spectacular – the low-
brow sensitivity, the miscegenated
rhythms, the 12-bar blues – was
obscured by the smoke and mirrors of
studio production. Pop-star posturing,
with its attendant bared chests and
demi-god grandeur, didn’t help
matters either. Man and medium were
caught in something of a death spiral,
clearly unaware that their fates were
intertwined. As the music became
more artificial, so did the musicians.
I’m not going to be so ingratiating
as to ask whether this milieu rings a
bell. Some things should be obvious
– among them that contemporary
pop is a no-man’s-land of teen

dreams and television tie-ins; and that
contemporary indie, the so-called
“alternative” option, is dominated
by fidget house (ie, disco without
the black people) and chillwave (ie,
prog without a conceptual frame).
Considering these ground conditions,
Petty’s new single, “I Should Have
Known It,” plays like a Heartbreakers
record from the late Seventies. The
track dusts off “Don’t bore us. Get to
the chorus,” only to roll it around in
the mud of the Mississippi Delta and
soak it in the swamps of the Florida
Panhandle. Once again, the M.O. is
not invention but reinvention: taking
the blues of the Deep South and
transposing them onto the jingles and
jangles of reverb-laden rock and roll.
It should come as no surprise that this
formula renders a racket that sounds
an awful lot like Led Zeppelin. “Known
It” is a ramble through Zep’s prime,
blending the buzz and resonance of
“Black Dog” with the slinky majesty
of “Misty Mountain Hop.” There are
traces of the disorienting slurs and
wrinkles that characterized “The
Crunge,” but, by and large, the
band razes the roof at full throttle.
Perhaps it’s only coincidental that the
Heartbreakers have produced a track
so similar to “Heartbreaker.” Or maybe
Petty is just having some fun with us.
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OLD FRIENDS
Despite the song’s boy-done-wrong
subject matter – “Thanks for nothing/
Yeah, thanks a lot/Go ahead, baby/
Take all I got” – it certainly sounds
like Tom is enjoying himself. He
continues to insist that postpunk
never happened, refusing to allow the
Heartbreakers’ lead or rhythm guitars
to be subordinated to the bass. He hits
us with a walloping riff as soon as the
track opens, and gets us to the chorus
in under a minute. (Not bad, Tom. Not
bad at all.)
Yet, truth be told, this is not Tom’s
song. It’s Mike Campbell’s. He’s the
one who’s wielding the killer riffs and
the “Heartbreaker” hammer, not to
mention the compositional gear shift.
At the start of “Known It,” Mike is all
about propulsion – he’s revving the
engine and spitting out sparks. By the
song’s midpoint, he’s moved to slide
guitar, content to vamp and wail like
Duane Allman on amphetamines. The
real rush, however, comes in the final
minute, when Campbell is unleashed
like a mad gator in a Gainesville marsh.
He imparts an Everglades echo to his
stadium-rock chops, making music
that’s at once of the soil and the
sky. Petty chimes in with his ringing
Rickenbacker, but only to lord over a
band that’s white hot. It’s almost as if
the Heartbreakers had developed a

fever, and that the only cure was more
Campbell.
“Known It” is the strongest classic
rock single of the year. That’s not
saying much, given the genre’s slim
slate of new material; but young
folks could learn a great deal about
songcraft by studying the Petty-
Campbell dynamic. What starts as a
strut morphs into an all-out gambol,
with limbs aflair and toes atapping.
The listener doesn’t think, he merely
experiences – which is not a sign of
insentience, but transcendence. When
you’re not given the time to get bored,
you’re not afforded the luxury of
indulgence. Melody and verse engage
you head-on, chugging like a freight
train towards a chorus that serves as
a climax. This swift evolution from
tension to repose is no musical caprice
– especially when all parties involved
know that the intensity is about to
be ratcheted up to higher and
higher levels.
35
OLD FRIENDS
Now more than ever, there’s a place
for a song that grabs you by the lapels
and drags you across the barroom
floor. “Known It” can call that place
its own. The track is a Petty single in
the tradition of “Woman In Love” and
“Running Down A Dream,” wherein
angst and aspiration are let off like so
many pockets of steam. By ascribing
primacy to the guitar, it asks Campbell
to do the dirty work while Petty makes
a clean escape from the burdens of
rock stardom. Tom doesn’t care if he’s
“relevant;” he just wants to be good.
That sentiment may not be as catchy
as “Don’t bore us. Get to the chorus,”
but it’s just as bulletproof. Long may
you run, Tom. No one from the current
generation is going to catch you.
(May 17, 2010)
PART II: NEW SENSATIONS

Drake
Over
Of the many things that Drake and I
don’t have in common, perhaps the
most conspicuous is a collaboration
with Nicki Minaj. Sure, this “Dricki”
partnership is initially notable for its
sheer comedic value, as Nicki Minaj
is the most over-the-top MC name
since Tony Yayo. But, upon further
review, the collab also merits mention
for its tacit hubris. Both Drake and
Ms. Minaj are relative newcomers to
the hip-hop game. Neither have the
platinum album or Disney franchise
to ensure immediate integration into
the Billboard Hot 100. Yet Young
Money Entertainment released their
joint joint, “Up All Night,” as a single.
This tells me that the organization
has a lot of confidence in Drake. He
carries the proverbial load on “Night,”
dropping the first verse, sing-speaking
the chorus, and lending the track its
pervasive cool. Instead of Hova, he’s
Nova: the newbie who’s charged with
bringing enough star power to light up
the pop charts, the social media, and
the hearts of the silly white girls who
underwrite both enterprises.
Drake is getting a 500-decibel PR
blast because he represents hip hop’s
next frontier: the post-street cred
37
New sensations
MC. Rather than subscribe to the
tired exaggerations of biography-by-
bullet-hole, Drake uses his ostensible
disqualifiers – a comfortable suburban
upbringing, a protracted tenure
on Degrassi: The Next Generation,
Canadian citizenship – to his
professional advantage.
In our age of ascendant tween spirit,
Clean Cut is the new Thug Life.
Commercial rap isn’t looking to recycle
Rakim or Tupac; it’s looking for its Fall
Out Boy: an act that places sensitivity
and introspection over the genre’s
historical pillars of violence, misogyny,
and ego. After all, it’s awfully hard to
make industry-leading dough when
you’re locked behind bars – a lesson
that Drake’s sponsor, mentor, and hype
man, Lil Wayne, has learned the
hard way.
Drake is being marketed as a dude
who’s more likely to pack moisturizer
in his pocket than a Tech Nine.
This palatability, distinct from the
outright friendliness of a Justin Bieber
or a Jonas Brother, is the central
emblem of his fast-track approach
to superstardom. Last year, he
graduated from playing a paraplegic
high school student on Degrassi to
trading main-stage rhymes with such
musical stalwarts as Jay-Z, Kanye West,

Weezy, Alicia Keys, and The-Dream –
all before releasing a proper LP. The
hip-hop gods were clearly hoping that
Drake would assimilate into rap’s royal
family without any detours through
drug rehab or the state pen. And
“Over,” the standout track on Drake’s
much-anticipated debut album, just
might mark the beginning of his reign
as pop music’s crowned prince.
“Over” leaps off its vinyl with an
artful flourish, using a symphonic
R&B sample to signal Drake’s arrival.
The brass and the fanfare give the
song an outer armor of importance,
coupling Wagner with blaxploitation
before ceding the floor to Auto-Tuned
vocals. Drake sings (and I use the verb
loosely), “I know way too many people
here right not that I didn’t know last
year/Who the fuck are y’all?,” his
voice sounding more exhausted than
threatening. At first glance, these
lyrics could serve as the introduction
to one of Kanye West’s recent records.
The texture (decadent chill) and the
attitude (V.I.P. ennui) come from the
Ye school of existential hip hop. The
key difference, of course, is that the
MC is a decade younger and comes
with several metric tons less baggage.
Yes, “You too fine to be layin’ down
in bed alone/I can teach you how to
speak my language, Rosetta Stone,”
38
New sensations
would fit nicely in Kanye’s pantheon of
clever come-ons. But, when delivered
by Drake, the words exude worn-down
melancholy rather than amped-up
pride. Throughout “Over,” the boasts
glance while the anxiety wallops. The
single trades in currencies of self-
doubt, not self-aggrandizement.
In mathematical terms, Drake = Ye +
Weezy/Kid Cudi. He’s got a deliberate,
beat-adhering flow that mixes gravel
and grass. Our boy’s neither too hot
nor too cold; which, for all intents and
purposes, makes him the Goldilocks
of the rap circuit. In a scene already
overloaded with “too angry” and
“too arty,” Drake steps up to deliver
the “just right.” And by “just right”
we mean not prone to unlawful
weapons possession, uncalled-for
VMA stunts, or untenable hipster rap.
After all, a pimp has got to keep his
hos on the street if he wants them
to make their numbers. And “Over,”
an expertly pimped out track from
both a production and promotion
standpoint, is copyrighted by Young
Money Entertainment, Cash Money
Records, and Universal Motown. That’s
three deep-pocketed industry players
throwing their collective resources
behind a single unproven MC. Which
is precisely how a star is born in
contemporary pop. Did you really think

that Drake was blowing up on his own?
Drake is a classic right place/right time
entertainer. The major rap labels now
employ fully credentialed marketing
consultants and a bottom-line oriented
A&R staff. Each corporate pusher is
sophisticated enough to know that
fans of Justin Bieber, Joe Jonas, Miley
Cyrus, and Taylor Swift will soon need
something slightly edgier to grow
into. Drake fills that hypothetical
void, acting as a counterpoint to hip
hop’s long parade of reprobates and
roustabouts. That’s why Young Money
has got him dressing up in varsity
jackets and tooling around in Sprite
commercials. When an MC has no
street cred to lose, the blatant acts of
ingratiation can start from inception.
In addition to being a highly leveraged
commodity, Drake is a capable
performer, a deft rapper, and one
sharp cookie. “Over” isn’t the work of
a Manchurian candidate. If anything,
it’s a muffled shout of protest from
inside the machine. “Who the fuck
are y’all?” is rap’s answer to “By the
way, which one’s Pink?” The performer
knows he’s being exploited, but his
rewards are so great that he’d be
stupid to hop off the gravy train.
Drake seems to have his facts straight.
After airing the insecurities that come
standard with his profession, he
39
New sensations
informs the listener that he’s not going
to change a thing: “This is what I’mma
do til it’s over/Til it’s over/But it’s far
from over.”
That last bit of swagger is characteristic
of artists who employ mononymous
stage names. Prince, Madonna, and
Bono find common ground in their
embrace of fame and all its trappings.
Drake is not yet of their stripe or their
station, and he probably never will be.
But his cautious confidence is backed
by moneyed interests and discernible
skill. If this rap thing doesn’t work
out, he can always take the Will Smith
route, and return to acting. Should
the industry pimps raise their hand,
Drake is athletic enough to duck the
blow and double-time it to greener
pastures. So when he says “it’s far from
over,” I’m inclined to believe him. And
I have it on good authority that Nicki
Minaj feels the same way.
(June 18, 2010)
Sleigh Bells
Tell ‘Em
In The Iliad, Homer frequently
describes battle as “the clamor
incessant.” This epithet could just as
easily attach itself to Sleigh Bells’ new
single, “Tell ‘Em,” a ring-the-alarm

cochlea crusher that shoots first and
asks questions later. The track makes
an absolute racket, with arms of iron
and bronze cascading into each other
like so many strong-greaved Greeks
and horse-breaking Trojans. Ultimately,
however, the song is less ancient than
postmodern: It sounds as if it’s caught
up in the Hadron particle collider,
subject to subatomic squawk and
industrial mayhem. Sleigh Bells cram
the primal, the prevailing, and the
futuristic into a tight, tinnitus-inducing
package. The result is something as
concussive as a sharp blow from swift-
footed Achilles. Who knew that “the
clamor incessant” could take the form
of some next-generation shit?
The implications of the Hadron
comparison extend beyond “Tell
‘Em”’s jones for hyperspeed collisions.
Like nuclear physics, Sleigh Bells’
fire-in-the-hole aesthetic can be a bit
too knotty and arcane for the layman
mind. Its sound is so dense and thrust-
boostered that one wonders how it
can make the upgrade from smoking
gun to mushroom cloud.
This is not an irrelevant concern. The
Bells are touted in indie circles as
the Next Big Thang, just as Animal
Collective was tagged with the
“greatness” label some two to three
40
New sensations
years prior to “My Girls.” But let’s take
a look at the video tape: While the
AC have certainly made their mark,
they’ve made it in the margins, winning
critical lauds and a pole position in
the Chillwave 500. There’s been no
real crossover in demographics. If you
ask your mom if she knows who Avey
Tare is, she’s likely to point you in the
direction of James Cameron.
Translation: Our indie-rock battles,
though often loud, are small in scope
and smaller in glory. Sleigh Bells have
already garnered major buzz, yet
they’re largely unknown outside of
Brooklyn’s hipster ghettos. “Tell ‘Em”
could (but probably won’t) change all
that. It layers deftly detonated noise
bombs with a dance beat and sheer
rock and roll spirit. In the aggregate,
it sounds like metal machine music,
only with lasers. The song swirls and
pulses almost as hard as it crashes
and crunches. It opens with a digital
explosion that approaches sonic
boom; the whiplash is so fast and
furious that the listener should be
made to wear a neck brace. Next
comes the weaponization of the
drum machine, whereby snares and
toms morph into short rounds of
rat-a-tat-tat gunfire. Sleigh Bells’
patron and partner in crime, M.I.A.,
helped pioneer this “violence-is-pop”

arrangement. What the Bells do, and
do conspicuously well, is add guitars to
the musical cocktail.
It’s useful to mention that the band’s
eardrum assault comes courtesy of
just two people: Derek Miller and
Alexis Krauss. Miller mans the guitars
and the production board, and Krauss
womans the vocals. Together, they
constitute a flavor combination that
pleasantly fucks with your palate. Call
them the sweet and sour chicken of
skinny-jeaned indie, at once in thrall to
brutally serrated riffs and pop-singer
melodies. In their earlier singles,
Sleigh Bells sounded a bit like Gwen
Stefani fronting the Kinks. With “Tell
‘Em,” the duo move into My Bloody
Valentine territory, alternating shrill
orchestrations with warm buzz. Still,
the track is far from loveless. Krauss’
voice manages to rise above all the
feedback and distortion, as if the band
were aiming for the crunk sublime. I
don’t know whether this is an aesthetic
or a messthetic. Nor do I care.
“Tell ‘Em” works as avant-garde pop
and top-shelf indie – not that there’s
much of a distinction between the two.
You get the sense that Sleigh Bells
are committed to making a high-end
variety of low-end music, wherein
the bass, while physically absent,
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New sensations
determines the directional integrity of
the track. “Tell ‘Em” is uncivil but not
uncivilized. It’ll pulverize your senses
and befog your spatial awareness
even as it commands you, however
dangerously, to dance.
It’s in this small crevice between
poison and palliative that today’s
music makers win glory. The acclaim
may not be incessant – in fact, it may
be cruelly truncated – but the laurels,
once loosed, cannot be taken back.
The Bells deserve credit for pumping
the volume on an increasingly stillborn
idiom. They’re one of the few alt-rock
bands with the balls to pull off an
open-carry. Their guns are out, and
they’re positively blazing. Now it’s up
to the gods to decide whether the
bullets will hit their targets.
(May 3, 2010)
Janelle Monáe
Tightrope
In a recent essay on popular culture,
British novelist Martin Amis wrote,
“One can be famous without being
talented. And one can be rich without
being talented. But one cannot be
talented without being talented.”
Janelle Monáe proves this smirking

tautology right – at least insofar as
it can be proved and not simply
shrugged off with an acerbic “No shit,
Sherlock.”
As a singer, songwriter, dancer, and
conceptual artist, Monáe is defined by
her ability to contrive, choreograph,
and perform. Her talent is omnipresent
and overwhelming; it bubbles up and
sparkles like the effervescence in a
glass of Champagne, as if to signal
the potential to enliven and intoxicate.
She’s yet to become particularly
famous or wealthy, but her uncommon
endowment for the arts has her in
prime position for a breakout into
superstardom.
Now’s a good time to issue the
evergreen critical caveat: Let’s not get
ahead of ourselves! At the moment,
Monáe is decidedly indie. That is,
she’s alternative in the sense that
she’s doing something demonstrably
different and less popular than your
Rihannas, your Beyoncés, and your
Katy Perrys. These indie credentials,
however, shouldn’t be misread as
indicating a proclivity towards the raw
or the low-fidelity. Monáe doesn’t work
in the tradition of Beat Happening
or Guided By Voices, where a
conspicuous amateurism constitutes
a large component of the performer’s
42
New sensations
appeal. Janelle is DIY in attitude but
painstakingly professional in execution.
First, she mapped out a cycle of
concept albums so esoteric that they
could throw Jeff Mangum for a loop.
Then she recorded with the likes of
Big Boi and Diddy. And, somehow, the
process cohered into top-shelf pop.
Monáe’s first major-label single,
“Tightrope,” sounds like the jump-
off to a long and fruitful career in
mainstream music. Its enticements are
immediate and numerous, ranging
from Janelle’s opening soul man howl
to the track’s finger-snapping beat. The
verse singing is quick and clipped, in
the manner of hip hop, but the choral
interludes are articulated with a little
more space and resonance. Monáe
can go from zero to sixty faster than
a Ferrari Testarosa, spitting “When
you get elevated/They love it or they
hate it” with a fluency that reminds
us of Big Boi’s hyper-speed rhymes.
(Note: He graces the track with a brief
but bangin’ guest verse.) She can
also lean back and wail, fortifying the
song’s Dap-Kings-on-dope rhythm
with Erykah Badu-style intonation.
She doesn’t aim for the grown-woman
gravity of Sharon Jones, nor does she
settle for the little-girl melodrama of
the Glee cast. If “Tightrope” can be
classified conventionally, it would be

as “indie soul” or “art-school R&B”
– which, to the ecumenical listener,
translates seamlessly into “pop.” This
track is as easy to like as “Hey Ya!,”
“Womanizer,” or “Crazy.”
How, then, do we make a Monáe?
Well, if Lady Gaga is the bastard
stepchild of David Bowie and
Madonna, Janelle might be best
conceived as equal parts James Brown
and the Black Eyed Peas. Bear in mind
that we’re talking the good part of
the Black Eyed Peas – the accessible
beats, the strong songcraft, the energy
exchange between Will.i.am’s DJing
and Fergie’s singing. There’s also the
explicit futurism, that audacity to deal
in “next-level shit.” The key distinction,
of course, is that Monáe is actually
making that next-level shit, while Will
is giving Eurodisco an electric charge
and calling it the Second Coming.
There’s something Old School about
Monáe’s futurism. It’s not Dada like
Gaga, a perfomer who aims to wow us
with gut-wrench acoustics and punitive
couture. It’s more like James Brown
trapped in a science fiction novel –
far-out but funky.
“Tightrope” comes from an album
entitled The ArchAndroid, wherein
Monáe’s alter-ego, Cindi Mayweather,
becomes a messianic figure to the
43
New sensations
android community of a civilization
called Metropolis. When Janelle sings
“I’m another flavor/Something like a
Terminator,” you not only believe her
but push right past James Cameron
to Fritz Lang and George Lucas. Her
narrative is cosmic rather parochial,
packing an interstellar groove that
marries Devo with OutKast. Yet even if
you know nothing of the Mayweather
saga or the Metropolis back story,
“Tightrope” can still transport you to
a distant universe. It works as a dance
– dexterously “walking the tightrope”
– or a lifestyle – keeping your cool and
maintaining your foothold, even as
androgenic society crumbles.
I can’t think of an entertainer I’d
rather see usher in the rise of the
machines than Janelle Monáe. With
her spectacular pompadour – which
takes the follicular excesses of Cosmo
Kramer and squares them – and her
tuxedo-and-tails approach to stage
wear, she exudes a prescription dose
of “Other.” Her sophisticated sense
of rhythm and flat-sole virtuosity are
less superhuman than extraterrestrial.
Take a look at the “Tightrope” video
and try not to come away believing
that Monáe is one of the best dancers
in popular music. Her performance is
musical Viagra® – not for the proverbial
member, but for the spirit.

In the end, Janelle’s talent makes
her what the game’s been missing: A
New Hope. (Star Wars reference fully
intended.) And if modern history has
proved anything, it’s that A New Hope
doesn’t necessarily imply A Sure Thing.
In President Barack Obama, we’ve
seen how “once-in-a-generation”
political talent can be subordinated to
the indignities of political commodity.
The same thing can happen in the
name of commercial commodity,
whereby rough edges are rounded and
wild ideas are domesticated for the
sake of the mass market. But the real
fun of “Tightrope,” like the real fun of
“Yes We Can,” is the faith it inspires
in its affirmer. We revel in the notion
that this guy or girl is worth betting
the house on, even if – especially
if! – that house is in danger of being
repossessed.
With Monáe, I’m hoping for change
I can believe in, but I’ll settle for a
few solid singles and a rising pop
profile. As Janelle sings at the onset of
“Tightrope,” “Another day/I take your
pain away.” This may seem a meager
reward, but it’s good enough for now.
Dull the ache and maybe – just maybe!
– a more consequential deliverance
will follow.
(May 20, 2010)
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New sensations
Jenny and Johnny
Scissor Runner
Jenny Lewis is one of my favorite
contemporary singer-songwriters.
Notice the absence of the word
“female” in the previous sentence.
Gender, after all, has very little to do
with the calculus of good songwriting:
Either you can pen a solid tune, or
you can’t. And Jenny most certainly
can. (For case-closing evidence, see
“Acid Tongue” or “Rise Up With
Fists!!” – her exclamation marks, not
mine, though I’m happy to second the
enthusiasm.)
With “Scissor Runner,” Lewis adds
a Y chromosome to her catalog’s
DNA. This genetic material comes
courtesy of her boyfriend and
frequent collaborator, Johnathon
Rice. (“Johnny” if you’re nasty.)
An accomplished songwriter in his
own right, Rice has a weary, wistful
voice that mixes John Mellencamp’s
earthiness with John Mayer’s pop
orientation. His solo work has always
been a little too deliberate to hold
my attention, but, coupled with his
paramour, Rice finds just the right pace
and provenance. His vocals are made
for AM Gold of the Laurel Canyon
strain – which, to be clear, indicates
no strain, just day after day of warm
sunshine and low humidity.

The Eagles did this sound well.
Fleetwood Mac did it better. And
Jenny and Johnny, given their semi-
soft acoustics and mixed-double
pairing, mirror the Mac in ways that
transcend a shared geography and
similarly boho-chic wardrobes. The
Mac wrote one of the late-Seventies
few perfect pop songs, Rumours’ “I
Don’t Want to Know,” leaning heavily
on Stevie Nicks’ lyrical concision and
Lindsey Buckingham’s vocal restraint.
“Scissor Runner” takes this track’s
mojo into the 21st century, keeping
the light riff and the male-female
interplay. To call the single breezy is
like calling Chicago windy or Seattle
wet – that is, simultaneously clichéd
and understated.
The Jenny and Johnny website
describes the duo’s early material as
“fast” and “ultra-melodic,” adding
that their voices were often blended
together, “creating a completely new
sound.” Well, two out of three ain’t
bad. “Scissor Runner,” which is among
the group’s earliest collaborations,
is quick enough to support a hasty
gallop. (It might even be considered
“fast” by West Coast standards.) And
no sentient soul will question its ultra-
melodiousness. But on the originality
metric, this song will win no blue
ribbons. Beyond its Return of the Mac
45
New sensations
amiability, “Scissor” bites the soulful,
weekend vibe of Bruce Springsteen’s
“Meet Me at Mary’s Place” and
the shot-out-of-a-cannon opening
chords of Nick Lowe’s “(What’s So
Funny About) Peace, Love, and
Understanding.” The single’s tastiest
attribute is its forward propulsion,
which is insistent even as it leans
toward the mellow-yellow sounds of
the Me Decade. If you’re going to
look back fondly on the Seventies, you
could choose poorer influences than
Stevie, Lindsey, Bruce, and Nick.
Still, forward propulsion implies
a future purpose. And I think this
band has the chops to replicate their
replications – to not just reanimate
the Mac’s old tricks, but to deliver
pure pop for now people. There’s
something astral, perhaps even
heavenly, about a love song that
doesn’t try to hide its underlying
positivity. “Scissor” sounds so happy
that it causes you to hear hand claps
even though none are included in
the mix. Such is the sensibility of an
enchanted afternoon in the Canyon,
wherein delight overpowers the
protests of despair. In the end, Jenny
and Johnny prove to be a charming,
symbiotic duo. Lewis sparks the track,
and Rice dedicates it to the one he
loves: “She ain’t a princess/But she’s

an artist/Painting a portrait/All over
my heart.” You’re a lucky man, Johnny.
Thanks for setting your relationship
to music.
(July 21, 2010)
Best Coast
Boyfriend
Hey, little boy, she wants to be your
girlfriend. “She” is Bethany Cosentino
– singer, songwriter, and, in that dual
capacity, the central creative engine
behind Best Coast, a partly sunny
two-piece band from Los Angeles.
The “little boy” in her equation goes
unnamed but not uncoveted, adhering
to the grand musical traditions of Avril
Lavigne and Ashley Simpson – ladies
who are content to lunch on the
remains of another woman’s man, then
skip out on the bill.
With “Boyfriend,” Cosentino reveals
her willingness to play the house
wrecker, to separate her beau from
his beauty of the moment. As it turns
out, this extradition is less malicious
than fantastic. The song is a California
daydream – fairly easy, fairly breezy,
and awfully aspirational. It owes
far greater debts to the Ramones’
“I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend” and
46
New sensations
Matthew Sweet’s “Girlfriend” than
the catty melodics of the Lavigne-
Simpson sound factory. Don’t get
me wrong: Bethany loves cats (see
her Twitter page and her album
art) and melody (listen to “Sun Was
High” or “When I’m With You”), but
“Boyfriend” largely succeeds on the
strength of its dog-like devotion to
harmony. The track is a study in vocal
loops and lo-fi production, the very
elements that define Best Coast’s
debut LP, Crazy for You. Cosentino
supplements her hazy verses with
ample and extended “ahhh”s, serving
as her own background singer. This
second vocal layer plays deftly with the
song’s unobtrusive surf guitar, which is
presumably supplied by Cosentino’s
collaborator, Bobb Bruno. (He is
marginalized in virtually every press
piece on the band, so I feel no need to
elaborate on him here. Sorry, Bobb.)
“Boyfriend” is something of a
straggler from the recent “blissed-
out buzzsaw” scene, wherein reverb
and girl-group harmonies come
together to impart warm noise and
clunky textures. Almost invariably, the
production sounds estranged and
anti-charismatic, like the theme music
to a postlapsarian Eve. The subgenre
that’s popped up around this sound is
conspicuously female, if not necessarily

feminine. Vivian Girls led the pack,
with Dum Dum Girls following in tow
and delivering better tunes. Best
Coast establish their own identity
by being considerably less abrasive.
Their Wall of Sound is minimalist and
ethereal, packing little of Phil Spector’s
bombast. “Boyfriend” could be the
work of a somnambulist, with its twin
columns of languor and longing softly
pulsating behind a veil of sleep.
What’s interesting about this single
is that it begins with a feint but is
defined by a protracted flutter. Listen
to the opening drum break – it’s nearly
identical to the percussive flourish
that jumpstarts Bruce Springsteen’s
“Badlands.” But where the Boss
pumps his track full of gravity and
pathos, Cosentino dials down both
her emotions and her tempo. She’s
passively lovesick and actively prone to
lonely-girl platitudes, including “One
day I’ll make him mine/And we’ll be
together all the time.” Occasionally,
however, the limp prosaics are busted
up by patches of postmodern poetry,
such as “The other girl is not like me/
She’s prettier and skinner/She has
a college degree/I dropped out at
17.” These couplets bear the mark of
Joey Ramone, who seemed forever
fated to lose his baby to either the
neighborhood tough or the regional
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New sensations
KKK. A rock purist might be inclined
to criticize Cosentino for failing to
decide whether she wants to be
quirky or punk. But if you look at the
discographies of the Ramones, the
Cramps, the Misfits, and the Talking
Heads, you’ll find that quirk was an
essential element of punk. Before
the CBGBs scene got paved over by
aggression, its only entry requirement
was weirdness.
Best Coast win bizarro points for
making the confessional sound distant.
“Boyfriend” is inviting but not sweet,
brandishing retro-chic tones that seem
benign until they become narcotic. It
casts out a line, then quietly reels you
into its echo chamber. This chamber
could be an L.A. recording studio or a
New Age drum circle, but I prefer to
think of it as a beating heart, forever
pounding out its cardiovascular
cadences, be they healthy or diseased.
In all honesty, I wish Best Coast would
raise their BPMs to, say, a steady 65,
just to keep me from nodding off
during successive spins.
Yet I’m sure that if Cosentino tried
to corset her laid-back vibe into
an amped-up uniform, the music
would lose much of its magic. If I
learned anything from my awkward
adolescence, it’s that you don’t get

between a girl and her beau without
shedding a little blood. So let’s allow
“Boyfriend” to keep its distance.
Given adequate space, maybe the
relationship will grow.
(July 29, 2010)
Magic Kids
Superball
Music blogs trade in connectivity
rather than connection. They alert us
to the sorts of musical microtrends
that might inspire a new hairstyle
or a tighter cut of jeans, but they
do it breathlessly, as if preoccupied
by the footsteps of the next nano-
sized paradigm shifter. This loose
footing and itchy trigger finger are
at odds with the deep institutional
memories that characterize such sites
as Pitchfork and Stereogum. One
would think that a scalable collective
of professional music writers would
stand up for staying power, and
issue their superlatives in a manner
conducive to fan building and sound
breaking. Instead, the introduction to
a new artist is short but bombastic,
like a slightly more intellectualized
version of an ad campaign for a Will
Ferrell movie. The impetus is to Like
Us, Friend Us, Retweet Us, Buzz Us
48
New sensations
Up – then to move on to the next
victim before expectation can assent
to afterglow. The period of actual
pleasure is abridged to a condition of
negligibility. Our Band Could Be Your
Life has been replaced by Our Band
Could Be Your Weekend.
This tendency toward the premature
purge is a symptom of connectivity.
The fruits and memes of social
networking are filtered through a prism
of cool, enabling the medium to heat
up with a maniacal blaze of turnover.
The content is almost irrelevant so
long as the reaction is strong.
Connection, on the other hand,
requires complete surrender to a
band’s charms. No glances over
the shoulder, rebooting for fresh
headlines, or jumping to another
mp3 – just a physical record and a Do
Not Disturb sign. By offering our full,
unironic attention, we stand a chance
of stilling the fray and identifying the
keeper, like Keanu Reeves picking out
essential fragments of binary code in
The Matrix.
This job is difficult, but far from
impossible. And we don’t have to be
among the ranks of the chosen to
spot a winner. Sometimes a song can
outsmart the music blogs’ promotional

cycle, and swing back around for a
second helping of hype. Magic Kids’
“Superball” is doing just that. Last
year, the song’s demo-level recording
dominated my indie earbuds for,
well, the better part of a weekend.
It was jaunty, fun, and conspicuously
life-affirming – so much so that it
retained a beloved-orphan status on
my playlists through the early part
of this summer. Then, just as Magic
Kids were fading to the fringes of my
consciousness (seemingly destined to
be confused with Here We Go Magic
and the Magic Numbers), “Superball”
returned in prime fighting condition:
pumped-up by the production board
and ready to serve as the sonic anchor
to a credible debut album.
True to its title, “Superball” is
designed to bounce. Its strings are
warm and coiled, as if prepared to
bound energetically off a cement
surface. Prior to launch, the vocalist
whispers a “1-2-3” count off, then
sings in a manner so sweet and
unaffected that his voice more or
less cedes the floor to the fluttering
instrumental. In the original, a pairing
of violin strokes and organ swells
gave the song two distinct RPMs: the
first was set on “hummingbird,” the
second on “butterfly.” The former was
frantic, the latter ethereal – and both
49
New sensations
worked, albeit through lo-fi haze. The
newer, album-ready version brings
a welcome crispness and an added
electric interlude. The harmonies soar
and the chamber arrangement works
up a sweat. No longer do we mistake
an orchestral flourish for a set of rusty
bed springs. Twee is tweaked to a
knee-high replication of the Wall of
Sound.
Still, “Superball” sounds less like a
Phil Spector number than a Beach
Boys composition cut down to
size by Beat Happening. It doesn’t
endeavor to bowl you over with
excess. Instead, it colors itself lovelorn
and nostalgic, yearning for the days
when the protagonist bounced
his Ball to the rafters, ostensibly in
between feedings of peanut butter
and Popsicles. Lyrical snippets suggest
an unhealthy relationship between
Ball and boy: “When we were young/I
used to play with you for hours in
the sun” segues shortly into “You
were always on my mind/And you
stayed in my pocket all the time.”
But more important than the effect
of this odd anthropomorphism is its
motivation. What, exactly, is going on
here? Is Magic Kids’ totally unguarded
approach genuine or a cheeky pose? Is
“Superball” too precious and, as such,
too good to be true?

To ask these questions is to give
the song more headspace than it
deserves. (Or desires.) “Superball”
disarms you with its sweeping, highly
musical phrasing, not its brain-dead
narrative. The demo recording stayed
in my pocket for more than nine
months, enjoying as many spins as a
busy iPod could reasonably accord a
one-off single. It’s a credit to the album
track that version 2.0 intensified my
connection to the song rather than
diluted it. In fact, I prefer the lightly
tousled remix, with its spit-shine and
peppy oom-pah-pahs. It’s heartening
to see a song this special get a second
running on the blog roll. The rebound
was worth the wait, and its example
is worth learning from: Connectivity
is for 13-year-old girls with calloused
thumbs. Connection is for those of
us who are willing to make genuine
sacrifices for our music. All it takes is a
little patience, a lot of bandwidth, and
a discerning ear. The future belongs to
listeners who don’t mistake the wind
up for the pitch. Wield your bat wisely.
(August 6, 2010)
50
New sensations
Hunx and His Punx
U Don’t Like Rock n Roll
Here’s the thing about punk rock: Just
because anybody can do it doesn’t
mean that anybody should do it.
Far too often, the genre’s insurgent
spirit is channeled into deviant
forms, including such lamentable
subcategories as “Eastern Elite
art-school project” and “German
supermodel’s musical debut.” Three
chords are easy to play; easier to
play badly. Every lumpen misfit with
a movie to promote or a daddy issue
to resolve can simply pick up a guitar,
slash a hole in his jeans, and set about
soiling his reputation. Bad-boy status
is earned – sometimes convincingly!
– with just two or three Dee Dee
Ramone-style count-offs. Then it’s all
aboard the Rocket to Russia, a vessel
of rich musical heritage but dubious
standards of personal hygiene. Part of
the peril of being in a rock band is that
most of the flights towards acclaim
and solvency have to be aborted,
sometimes suddenly, often deservedly,
and occasionally with an immodest
body count.
Hunx and His Punx have all the
makings of a crash landing. They pack
the look of a performance troupe
who’ve begrudgingly chosen music

as their “dominant artistic medium,”
owing to a lack of returned phone
calls from Jon Waters. Hunx (nee
Seth Bogart) is a hairdresser by trade,
and his backing band appears to
be composed of plus-sized women
with sub-Sid Vicious chops. I’m not
flexing my critical license when I say
that Hunx is spectacularly amateur.
Nor am I betraying any secrets when
I say that he’s spectacularly gay. His
first album, released last month, is a
loose collection of bubblegum punk
and swinging disco-rock, perched
somewhere between Danny & the
Juniors and the B-52s. The record
is called Gay Singles, presumably
much to the chagrin of the folks at
eHarmony.
The most compelling of the gay
singles is “U Don’t Like Rock n Roll,”
a bare-bones romp through the sillier
sections of the Ramones’ catalog.
A reverberating bass line and twee
production values are paired with
drums and hand claps lifted directly
from “Rock and Roll High School.”
The resulting mess is less thievery
than homage. Hunx spends the track
berating his boyfriend’s taste in music:
“What the hell is wrong with you?/I
think you sniff too much glue/You don’t
like rock n’ roll/And I don’t like you.” If
such a chorus is not a monosyllabist’s
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New sensations
wet dream, I don’t know what is.
The song ultimately reveals itself to
be a punk-mediated Dear John letter,
a breakup caused by irreconcilable
record collections. The “sniff too
much glue” reference is obviously a
quick wink to Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee,
and Tommy – one which is followed
shortly thereafter by “You don’t
like the Ramones/So you’ve got to
leave home.” Call Hunx a hack if you
must, but don’t accuse him of lyrical
ambiguity. He’s smart enough to keep
it simple, and weird enough to keep it
interesting. Were he to find the nerve
to dress himself in something more
than a slinky, leopard-print leotard, his
list of influences could be worn on his
physical, rather than his proverbial,
sleeve.
The Punx sound is heavy on echo and
jingle-jangle, in the manner of Buddy
Holly, the Ronettes, and Girls. The
latter group is San Francisco’s most
ascendant “It” band, and Hunx has
positioned himself as their strongest
Oakland ally. Highlights from this
subtle act of ingratiation can be seen
in Girls’ Triple-X remix of their “Lust
For Life” video, wherein Hunx scores
a nude cameo. This appearance
might lead you to believe that our
boy aims to make his name as an

agent provocateur. Yet his own music
largely steers clear of shock rock and
protracted PR gambles. Yes, Hunx
is unapologetically fabulous, but he
tempers the built-in hurly-burly by
projecting a small measure of queer
prudence. For every song named
“Cruising” or “I Won’t Get Under
You,” there are three or four with more
innocent, innuendo-free titles, such as
“Teardrops On My Telephone” and
“The Last Time.”
In the aggregate, Hunx churns outs
singles that are equally suited for
afternoons at the malt shop or late
nights at the Blue Oyster. His Rocket to
Russia has landed safely, and without
much in the way of media-driven
fanfare. “U Don’t Like Rock n Roll”
may not be popular, but anybody with
functioning eardrums and a sense of
humor can tell that it’s campy, quirky,
and harmless fun – albeit the type of
harmless fun that seeks to supplant
“The Thong Song” with “The Schlong
Song.” Its perfunctory guitars are
charming; its catty, nasal vocals are
disarming; and its generous organ
swells keep things rolling in the right
direction.
Note to reader: With “organ swells,”
I’m not making a cryptic allusion
to erect appendages. This is 2010,
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New sensations
people. If gay singles are ready to go
steady, I say we let them marry them
into our playlists. Don’t allow the
Mormons over at Clear Channel to
dissuade you from the notion. They
don’t like rock and roll. And though
rock and roll is too classy to comment,
I’m inclined to think that the feeling
is mutual.
(April 1, 2010)
The Drums
Forever and Ever Amen
The Drums’ “Let’s Go Surfing” was the
best beach song of last summer. The
track hung loose but also delivered a
welcome, sobering edge, like a cool
morning’s cup of coffee. “Surfing”
effectively turned last August from
a sweaty, humid mess into a sweaty,
humid mess with whistling and angular
guitar. It traded in something you
don’t hear much of in pop music:
understated good times.
Apparently, these good times became
so protracted that they prevented
the Drums from wrapping their debut
album with any semblance of urgency.
Only now, nearly 10 months after the
“preview” single, is the band’s LP
materializing on release schedules.

To complement this auspicious
portent, the Drums have released
another postpunk banger, “Forever
and Ever Amen.” Just be forewarned
that I use the words “postpunk” and
“banger” cautiously: Yes, the song
retains the band’s signature guitar
tone – somewhere between Tom
Verlaine and Johnny Marr, with every
strum feeling like a stab – but the
overall sound adheres closer to the
college rock of the 1980s than the
militant entertainment of the late
1970s. The Drums appropriate the
spikiness of Gang of Four without the
strident politics, preferring to temper
their music with the warm rush of a
perpetual chill PiL. Singer Jonathan
Pierce is a kind of anti-Johnny Rotten,
eschewing provocation in favor of
romanticism. As a frontman, he’s most
often compared to Morrissey. This
analogy is convenient but ultimately
misguided. Pierce can’t croon with the
same mesmeric contempt as the Moz.
But what he lacks in pitch he more
than makes up for in enthusiasm. Even
when his band is lazily brandishing
its minimalist racket, Pierce imparts
the impression that he’s trying – and
trying really hard! Such volitional,
undisguised effort is tantamount to
trampling on Morrissey’s grave. (And
Morrissey’s not even dead.)
53
New sensations
Despite its Anglophilic ethos, “Amen”
stands as a direct counterpart to the
British Invasion: Instead of featuring
British boys who sound American,
the track features American boys
who sound British. A neo-Albionese
character coats the entire affair. The
verse cadences and the interplay of
electric and analog remind me of
the Moody Blues’ “In Your Wildest
Dreams” (which, ironically, is a song
that’s perhaps best left forgotten). The
lyrics, however, seem to have been
plucked from The Lesser Lines of Echo
& the Bunnymen. “And let me run till
the end of time/Until our hearts are
aligned into the sky” conjures open
fields and high-altitude fantasy, as if
the song’s narrator could pop in and
out of his paramour’s comic book – like
in A-Ha’s “Take On Me” video.
Still, “Amen” and its authors hold far
more indie cred than their European
forebearers. Though the Drums have
“Big in England” written all over them,
they can still set the backstreets of
hipster Brooklyn aflame. The dance-
punk contingent professes a taste
for authenticity in their music. But
concomitant with every hard truth is a
rough day that these kids would rather
put behind them – either through
sonic abandon or epic dreamscapes.
So when Jonathan Pierce sings “We,

we are the young/We live forever,”
you can almost see the skinny-jeans
set pivoting toward the slender-guitar
sound.
The Drums’ genius is to pair the sharp
chords of postpunk with the soaring
choruses of New Pop, excising the
former’s abrasiveness and the latter’s
schmaltz. “Amen” starts with a flurry
of echo-laden pizzicato, but ends with
an extended cascade of “Oh”s. This
is proof positive that the band is not
averse to the niceties of anthemic
songwriting. All those “Oh”s give
the song a “Born to Run” audacity, in
which parting feelings, both anxious
and exhilarating, can be emoted but
not articulated. Such are the sweet
limitations of youth. May they live
forever and ever. The “Amen” is
strictly optional.
(May 24, 2010)
Male Bonding
Year’s Not Long
Male Bonding’s debut album,
Nothing Hurts, has beguiling cover
art. It depicts a fine mess of shattered
brickface, with each chipped
block stacked at random against a
whitewashed stone wall. This image
54
New sensations
of concrete on concrete exudes
both solidity and stolidity, as if the
demolition man had stopped by,
started the job, then lost interest.
That’s a fairly good fictional parallel
for the true story of Male Bonding’s
sound. The band started in the rock-
hard environs of punk and noise, then
abruptly shifted to a more tuneful
iteration of slacker pop – that is,
something lower in volume but higher
in fidelity. This metamorphosis makes
the Nothing Hurts cover art informative
as well as interesting. At first glance,
one expects the unalloyed clamor of a
wrecking crew. At first listen, however,
one gets the skuzzy reserve of urban
bohemia.
Either way, Male Bonding is a band
under construction. And their first
single, “Year’s Not Long,” seems
to imply that their recent sonic
renovation was not only completed
ahead of schedule, but also designed
to highlight the group’s core
competencies. Singer John Arthur
Webb is far from an Iggy Pop-style
wild man; in fact, his voice’s strength
is its fragility. By channeling his soft
tenor into a dreamy croon, Webb
gives “Not Long” an ethereal vibe, as
if the Morning Benders were trading
harmonic structures with Fleet Foxes.

Still, Male Bonding are a rock band,
with a grounding in three-chord riots
and primal percussion. When these
abrasive elements act in concert with
Webb’s more heady impulses, the
group finds a sweet spot between
hardcore and shoe gaze. Perhaps
this explains why “Not Long” sounds
like a conflation of Weezer and Sonic
Youth, mixing “My Name Is Jonas”
bombast with Daydream Nation drone.
It’s friendly enough to attract even the
cautiously curious listener, but strange
enough to scare off the dilettantes.
Noise purists might not take to the
song’s conventional arrangement.
“Not Long” uses its clangs and buzzes
as narrative accompaniment rather
than sheer experimental texture.
Despite a rollicking drum beat and
quicksilver guitar riffs, the track’s
uproar isn’t all that uproarious. Don’t
get me wrong: “Not Long” packs
plenty of energy – but it’s an energy
that feels more rodeo than rock and
roll. With its spasmodic bass line and
cavalry-charge rhythm, the song is
somewhat reminiscent of the Old
‘97’s “Time Bomb,” only with Mike
Watt slapping out the low-end strings.
Taken together, the guitars spiral out
55
New sensations
like microwaves, slowly heating up
the track while the singer keeps his
cool. This juxtaposition of abandon
and detachment affords “Not Long”
its well-deserved Sub Pop credential.
The jagged edges of the instrumental
align with the round resonance of the
vocals, as was the case with most of
Sub Pop’s “Glory Days” bands, from
Mudhoney to Nirvana. Male Bonding
stand out for their concision and their
Englishness. “Hanging on in quiet
desperation” doesn’t presuppose a
proclivity for the 10-minute epic. So
when the band broke ground on “Not
Long,” they made sure that the project
would take just a shade over two and
a half minutes – thus validating the last
two words of the song’s title.
All in all, Male Bonding are just
another brick in the wall: They play
light fuzz spiked with the unwashed
spirit of grunge. But with constructive
building blocks so hard to come by
in contemporary alternative, why not
grab the clay and pass the mortar?
(May 26, 2010)

Japandroids
Younger Us
“Younger Us” is a straight-ahead
song with a split personality. It
wears its heart on its sleeve even as
it presses its blade to your jugular,
balancing vulnerability and menace
like constituent members of a high-
wire act. This odd emotional alchemy,
by which soft nostalgia and hard riffs
are brandished in separate but equal
measures, animates the track with a
sonic youth that’s part punk, part pop,
and part indie. Assemble these parts
together and you’ve got the gestalt of
the song’s authors, a promising two-
piece band from Vancouver called
Japandroids.
The Droids occupy the blunter edge
of the Pacific Northwest tradition,
taking the garage-honed chops of
the Sonics and pasting them onto
the antic musicality of Hot Hot Heat.
Brian King (guitar) and David Prowse
(drums) play accessible noise rock that
doesn’t sacrifice feeling or affect for
the purposes of arty existentialism.
“Younger Us,” their best work to date,
gets to the heart of what it means to
be human without resorting to the
spiked vein or the Kleenex box. Lines
such as “Remember when we had
them all on the run?/And the night we
56
New sensations
saw the midnight sun?” communicate
a camaraderie that will outlast the
dewy caprices of youth. Yes, the look-
back-with-longing vibe is a bit precious
for a pair of 25-year-olds. (Can a singer
really evince nostalgia for something
that he might have experienced last
weekend?) But, taken as a whole, the
song is less a lament than a firestarter.
It flashes forward with a desperate,
windswept determination, as if its very
reason for being is to rage, rage, rage
against the dying of the light.
“Younger Us” breaks out of the box
with the tones and textures of Nineties
alternative. Its opening riff recalls the
post-grunge guitar pop of Green Day,
Blink 182, and No Code-era Pearl Jam,
channeling a jittery hybrid of “All the
Small Things” and “Lukin.” Once the
vocals kick in, however, it becomes
clear that we’re in lo-fi territory. The
narrator may sound like a basket case,
but his story will not fit inconspicuously
on the Dookie track list (or on any
charting album, for that matter). He’s
neither paranoid nor disturbed, just a
little taken aback by the head rush of
a quarter-life crisis. When King shouts
“Give me that you-and-me-to-the-
grave trust/Give me younger us,” the
listener is quickly convinced that he’s
not using punk as parody or protective
layering. The Droids are completely in

earnest. Amid a fuzz fest and stop-
and-go phrasing, King and Prowse
articulate their most naked insecurity:
the fear of advancing years and
retreating vigor, be it real or imagined.
They’re content to save the “Forever
Young” pep talks for Jay-Z.
As we get older, we become more
concerned with our legacy. (The
fact that this statement is a cliché
doesn’t make it any less true.) I think
Japandroids conceived “Younger Us”
as a youthful artifact that will age with
the twin graces of truth and dignity.
And I’m pretty sure that the track will
manage to fulfill these objectives.
Through the fortunes of fate, I recently
sequenced the song alongside the
Skids’ “Of One Skin” on an iTunes
playlist. The Skids number dates to
1978 – that year of flux between U.K.
punk and Anglo-American New Wave.
“Of One Skin” has the same split
personality of “Younger Us”; its tactics
are balls-out but its strategy is rather
conservative. The song, like “Younger
Us,” sprints forward, then comes to a
near stop – only to sprint forward once
again, with all the swiftness of Mercury.
This is “tempo rubato,” wherein
certain notes are lengthened while
others are shortened, in a manner that
can seem disconcertingly arbitrary. Yet,
despite its intrinsic inconstancy, tempo
57
New sensations
rubato is the right speed for youth, a
time when mad dash can beget lazy
melancholy with neither purpose nor
warning.
“Younger Us” climaxes with an
extended shock wave of cochlea-
crushing sound. As the ripples build
on one another, and an echo pattern
begins to emerge, the listener gathers
that Japandroids are thrashing
about with both pride and regret –
fighting off the final throes of young
adulthood, even though resistance is
futile. We have a name for this angry
metamorphosis. It’s called “growing
up.” I hope Japandroids stick around
long enough to reap the benefits of
their maturation.
(June 16, 2010)
Free Energy
Hope Child
Free Energy are something of an
endangered species in today’s
alternately rule-laden and scattershot
music scene. They play timeless,
hypermelodic power pop, yet they’ve
been embraced by the central curators
of Young America’s postmodern
sound. Such thematic incongruity
would be laughable were it not

corroborated by the facts on the
ground.
Here are Free Energy’s hipster
bona fides, in order of descending
importance: 1) James Murphy of LCD
Soundsystem – who’s pretty much the
don of digital disco – recently signed
the Philadelphia five-piece to his
proprietary label, DFA; 2) Pitchfork, a
ratings agency that likes its synths up
front and its guitars tuned by either
Tom Verlaine or Andy Gill, just gave
FE’s debut album, Stuck on Nothing,
an enthusiastic 8.1; and 3) SXSW blog
posts, careening out of Austin at a
fever pitch, report that the band took
skinny-jeaned Texas by storm. If these
guys were on NASDAQ, they’d have
just scored a killer IPO.
From stats we move to queries;
namely, What’s fueled the Free Energy
phenomenon? The answer to that one
is easy: influential word of mouth. But
as to what caused these mouths to go
all slack-jawed in the first place, I can
only posit a theory: I think rock critics
like Free Energy because the band has
evinced a commitment to rewriting
the greatest hits from Lou Reed’s back
catalog. Their first single, titled “Free
Energy” in the smirking, solipsistic
tradition of “Bad Company” and
“Minor Threat,” is essentially a straight
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New sensations
rip of Reed’s “Dirty Boulevard.” And
their current single, “Hope Child,” is
nothing if not an uptempo, off-the-
smack version of “Sweet Jane.” Smart
money says a reprisal of “Satellite of
Love” comes next. Somebody call
David Bowie.
So, yes, FE’s music is hopelessly
derivative. In the aggregate, it sounds
like the Velvet Underground shifting
into Bachman Turner Overdrive. Or
Big Star with larger amps and smarter
groupies. Or Fountains of Wayne with
an ascendant AC/DC fetish.
Each of these descriptions, amusing
as they might think they are, don’t do
the band justice. The thing about FE is
that their pathology reports are already
in – and it’s clear that their tunes are
positively infectious. The Velvets on
Prozac® sounds like a patently bad
idea. Yet when “Free Energy” is
cued up, complete with cowbell and
fuzztone guitar, the formula works like
a charm.
“Hope Child” is equally auspicious.
The truncated “Sweet Jane” riff kicks
things off with Detroit Rock City
abandon, only to be nicely tempered
by hypnotic hand claps and warm,
echoing percussion. When the singer
finally skips in, one wonders whether

Stephen Malkmus took a break from
the Pavement reunion expressly to cut
this track. Frontman Paul Sprangers
obviously supplemented his collection
of Reed, T. Rex, and Thin Lizzy records
with an ample chaser of Slanted &
Enchanted. Accordingly, Free Energy’s
slacker sensitivity manages to stretch
all the way from Andy Warhol’s Factory
to Kurt Cobain’s Pacific Northwest,
with the interdimensional slow-ride
hitched aboard Rick Derringer’s Rock
n’ Roll Hoochie-Koo. On “Hope,” FE
pound out insentient dinosaur-rock
tropes and insipid lead-guitar clichés.
Their hooks and chord surges gnaw
away at your elitisms and defensive
reflexes, until your only option is
surrender. It’s a Cheap Trick, in every
sense of the phrase.
Success is cinched shortly after the
track’s minute mark, when Mott
the Hoople piano clunks crash the
party and immediately set about
working their magic. Buzz gives way
to shimmer, and shimmer to sonic
breakdown. Free Energy undertake
a dynamics adjustment from the
Springsteen school of anthem
building. They reduce the ruckus to
a single drum beat and an acoustic
strum, generating the requisite
tension for a sing-along finale (a la
“Badlands” or “The Rising”). When
59
New sensations
Sprangers asks, “Do you know child/
That a little while/Is all we got?”, he’s
choreographing the triumphant return
of his song’s mantra: “We broadcast
hope!” In the coda, FE repeat “You’re
not alone” over and over again, like
the Boss shouting “Dream of life!”
in between the final lyrical passages
of “The Rising.” Lonesome days, we
presume, are terribly overrated.
“Hope” may spring from the fiery
heights of a Marshall stack, but it
closes in a communal exhalation of
relief. Here we have an indie band
staking its claim to the feel-good
song of the year. When was the last
time that happened? I’m going to go
with “never.” Maybe Free Energy are
innovators after all.
(March 21, 2010)
Happy Birthday
Girls FM
Sub Pop has been putting one over
on the underground for nearly 25
years. They purport to traffic in left-
of-center guitar rock and shaggy
Seattle sonority, but they’re actually a
brilliantly commercial label. Art-school
aesthetics, timely talent acquisition,
and the world’s greatest corporate

tagline – “Sub Pop Records: Going
out of business since 1988!” – belie
a cleverness that extends from
the recording studio to the digital
marketplace. The label’s most resonant
single is almost certainly Mudhoney’s
“Touch Me I’m Sick,” which set
the template for the high-viscosity,
bleeding-guitars sound that would
later become known as “grunge.”
Yet as Sub Pop matriculates into
young adulthood, its cultural legacy
is perhaps better characterized as
“Touch Me I’m Slick.” SP sell us pop,
but call it “indie.” And they do it with a
smile on their face.
Which brings us to Happy Birthday,
new-school Sub Poppers who merit
high marks for their latest single,
“Girls FM.” The track is a tasty mix of
Calvin Johnson, Brian Wilson, and Kurt
Cobain, keeping just enough space
for the alternation of vibrato guitar
stabs, twee choral harmonies, and
loser-tinged lead vocals. As a whole,
“Girls” evinces a smirking naïveté;
Birthday know they’ve got something
special, but they’d never be so gauche
(or industrious) as to beat us over the
head with it. Their song is driven by
stop-start percussion, enabling it to
showcase stutter steps of momentum
and then slacken into a stasis of retro
dreamtones. It’s accelerator, brake,
60
New sensations
accelerator, brake – except when it’s
brake, accelerator.
This tempo tug-of-war is mediated
by guitar phrasing that starts flat
and drone-heavy but builds to quick
crescendos and, eventually, a sliding
synth-treatment. “Girls”’ final minute
features a feedback-and-sound-effect
section that recalls Nirvana’s “On a
Plain,” only in rainbow hoodies and
skinny jeans. The track climaxes with
a fun shambles of speedy falsetto and
digital key shuffles, as if Birthday were
aiming to fast-forward the breakdown
from Weezer’s “El Scorcho” into 2010.
References aside, the “Girls” gestalt
is fairly simple: petty discord into
swinging harmony. It throbs, bops,
sways, and rocks – all in under three
minutes, and never with anything less
than a healthy teen spirit. The single
is spectacularly accessible, but its
affiliation with an indie label will get it
branded “Alternative.” And I think
Sub Pop likes it that way. Because if
they can corner the market on “Girls”‘
brand of snap, crackle, and pop, SP
will be going out of business for many
years to come.
(March 16, 2010)
PART III: BETWIXT/BETWEEN

M.I.A.
Xxxo
As M.I.A. becomes more popular,
she also becomes more convenient.
It’s one thing to have a fringe rapper
big-up the Tamil Tigers; quite another
to have a multi-threat entertainer
make subversive music videos and
ready-to-wear couture. American
poet Dan Chiasson recently wrote
that “anti-institutional assaults of
sufficient vigor inevitably end up being
institutionalized” – a sentiment that
seems just about right for M.I.A. She’s
no longer a madcap emissary of chaos,
but a reliable agent of provocation.
And this reliability makes her an order
of magnitude less dangerous.
Don’t get me wrong: M.I.A.’s fangs are
still out. It’s just that their edges have
been blunted by a surplus of attention.
In the wake of “Paper Planes” and the
Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack, her
fan base has become more expansive
but less discriminating. This transition
seems to have pushed M.I.A. into
Flipper territory: She doesn’t want
audiences with good taste. She wants
audiences that taste good.
When Flipper coined this slogan in the
early Eighties, they were San Francisco
punks with an audience that was
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BETWIXT/BETWEEN
largely limited to the criminally insane.
M.I.A. can’t be afforded the same
“anything goes!” mentality, as she’s
now something of an alt-pop icon, with
a record label to run and production
values to maintain. But, to her credit,
she does seem to be stubbornly set on
“devour,” forever determined to eat
an ever-larger portion of market share.
Her chief colleagues and competitors
are no longer Hot Chip and Lady
Sovereign but Jay-Z and Lady Gaga.
“Xxxo” is probably M.I.A.’s most
accessible single to date. It takes her
electro dancehall tendencies and tilts
them toward digital dance rather than
mutant disco. The sound is postpunk
and neo-tribal, which, given the sordid
history of the compound adjective,
might lead you to believe that “Xxxo”
is feral like the Slits or savage like
Siouxsie and the Banshees. This is
simply not the case. The track is pulse-
heavy but understated, with M.I.A.’s
vocals alternately sung and spoken
rhythmically. Imagine Ke$ha with a gag
reflex, or Gaga with a grounding in
the music of Southeast Asia. The harsh
drums say “jungle,” but the swirling
synths say “hipster nightclub.” The
track will work rooms from Bangalore
to Brooklyn.
Consciously or otherwise, M.I.A.

is following a quiet-loud-quiet
dynamic. She creeps up on the track
slowly, issuing her first few lines
with “Paparazzi”-style echo and
reserve. Only in the chorus does she
relent to “Bad Romance”-caliber
bombast. She sings “You want me
be somebody/Who I’m really not,”
half in frustration, half in acceptance.
One could take issue with the broken
English: “You want me be” is the kind
of construction I typically associate
with my buddy Chico, who, as of this
writing, has not secured a recording
contract in either his native Dominican
Republic or the good old U.S. of A. But
it’s not like we listen to pop music for
its practitioners’ perfect elocution of
the Queen’s English. M.I.A.’s culture,
which is also our culture, is more than
postpunk – it’s also increasingly post-
coherent. When was the last time you
received a text message composed
of complete sentences? Have you
ever Tweeted in idiomatic prose? And
how, in God’s name, do we reconcile
Chatroulette with Western concepts
of linearity?
These questions are not entirely
rhetorical. Nor are they thematically
irrelevant. M.I.A. peppers “Xxxo”
with references to iPhones, Twitter,
and photo uploads, suggesting that
modern connectivity might be both a
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catalyst and an antagonist to modern
love. Constant contact is naturally at
odds with constant craving, as the
former preempts the latter. There’s
simply no substitute for alone time –
and “Xxxo,” by all rights a love song,
is expressly devoted to the type of
boy-meets-girl narrative that needs
no peripheral characters. If he wants
her to be somebody that she’s really
not, well, she can pull him aside and
set him straight. The song’s final lines
are “We can find ways/To expand what
you know/I can be that actress, you be
Tarantino.”
I’m hoping that this is a “so happy
together” point of departure, not a
thinly veiled reference to a sex tape.
M.I.A. is under no obligation to go
blow for blow with Britney Spears.
She’s not a freak diva, Billboard bimbo,
or radio-friendly felatrix. She’s always
classified her music as “Other” –
that is, divorced from the drivel on
the airwaves and acutely allergic to
genre classification. In years past,
M.I.A. reminded us of a World Music
Missy Elliott – a woman who was as
enthused about getting her freak on as
getting her point across. Now Maya’s
got a bigger pop profile than any
contemporary female rapper, in part
because she’s ignored the no-politics
ethos of commercial hip hop. Her

songs may sound cacophonous, but
they’re always driven by a steady beat
and a fertile mind.
“Xxxo” shows that M.I.A.’s songwriting
and production still taste good. As
to whether they evince good taste,
I’m inclined to go with a cautious
affirmative, reserving final judgment
until the full LP drops. Check back
with this adjudicator after the album
is officially released. By then, the
prosecution will have rested, the
defense will have risen, and the gavel
will have been smashed to pieces.
(May 12, 2010)
MGMT
Flash Delirium
Contemporary indie bands are tacitly
forced to choose between angularity
and reverb. They can come icy, shrill,
and sonorous or buzzy, layered, and
headache-inducing. The third way,
generally speaking, might as well be
the highway.
Well, I hope MGMT have EZ-Pass –
because they cover an awful lot of
sonic asphalt on “Flash Delirium,” the
lead single from the band’s upcoming
Congratulations LP. To call “Flash” the
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most musically ambitious pop song of
the year would be an understatement
of epic proportions. The track is an
electropsych carnival of synth balms
and organ swells, with “Kids”-like
propulsive drones abruptly giving
way to Papa John Phillips harmonies
and “Bizarre Love Triangle” vocal
cadences. In the aggregate, the single
sounds like Win Butler fronting Love,
as produced by an acid-addled
Phil Spector.
If I’m dropping a lot of names, it’s
only because I’m picking up a lot of
reference points. And Love’s Forever
Changes, an enduring WTF? moment
from 1967, is a convenient starting
block. Combine Arthur Lee’s hippie
head trips with Oracular Spectacular’s
haunted house music and you’ll get
a pretty good idea of what “Flash”
aspires to. It’s equally indebted to
Summer of Love smiles and Winter of
Discontent surliness, with the Fall of
Man being acknowledged implicitly.
“Forever changes” isn’t just a
“dinosaur rock” album title; it’s also
an apt description of MGMT’s four-
minute sonic chameleon. “Flash” starts
with an electronic whimper – think the
opening notes of LCD Soundsystem’s
“Losing My Edge” or the Broken
Bells’ “High Road” – leading you to

imagine that the song will adhere to
a standard quiet-loud-quiet dynamic.
As it turns out, nothing about the track
is standard. The principles of pace
are given a workout worthy of Jack
LaLanne, with Ben Goldwasser and
Andrew VanWyngarden alternately
stretching, sprinting, and pumping
iron. The duo move seamlessly from
Killers-style space pop to hipster
discord and an echo-heavy, “I Am
the Walrus” crescendo. There’s no
subscription to the conventions of
verse-chorus-verse, but the interplay
of tension and repose flashes a classic
commitment to weirdness.
“Flash” secures its ultimate triumph
by knowing its breaking point, and
then pushing right past it. The song
is a formal eclipse of the expectations
hoisted upon an indie outfit beholden
to a major label contract. Goldwasser
and VanWyngarden are pressured
to make some serious Euros for the
Sony Corporation, yet they refuse to
be corseted into this year’s model.
I’m not sure if this is musical genius or
commercial suicide, but, anyway you
slice it, congratulations are definitely
in order.
(March 10, 2010)
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The Hold Steady
Rock Problems
By decree of the Twin Cities Council
on Subterranean Pop, the Hold Steady
are legally required to sound like a
conflation of the Replacements and
Hüsker Dü. Some might consider this a
rock and roll problem of the first order.
I consider it an impetus to greatness.
Even without Prince & his attendant
Revolution, Minneapolis/St. Paul had
one of the most fertile music scenes of
the early-to-mid 1980s. And although
the Hold Steady’s frontman, Craig Finn,
is now an established Brooklynite, his
roots trace back to urban Minnesota
and its messy, rollicking Twin/Tone
catalog. The Steady’s recent records
have been at odds with contemporary
indie precisely because they’re
informed by the likes of pre-major
label Paul Westerberg, Grant Hart,
and Bob Mould; that is, each HS
album holds classic rock as sacrosanct,
not as an obsolete idiom best left to
history’s dustbin. For all their left-
of-the-dial urgency, the ‘Mats and
the Huskers were among the few
Eighties alternative bands to champion
Creedence Clearwater Revival and
U.K. punk in equal measure. Melody
generally won out over noise. As Bob

Mould put it, “I don’t tend to walk
down the street whistling hardcore.”
The Steady’s latest single, “Rock
Problems,” passes the whistling test
– provided that you have the labial
dexterity of a virtuoso. This is a fast-
paced, hard-hitting song, driven by a
buzzsaw riff and dense, rapid-fire lyrics.
The problematic narrative follows the
out-all-night exploits of boys and girls
in America, two constituencies that
seem to be teetering on the edge
of fracture. “The girls want to go to
the party/But no one’s in the shape
to drive,” Finn reports, sounding
like Bruce Springsteen with an epic
hangover. His backing band, however,
is less E Street than Cheap Trick or
KISS. “Problems” bumps and shreds,
as if custom designed for burnouts and
dirtbags.
Yet the Springsteen analogy remains
apt. The Boss, after all, is something of
an aberration – an East Coast rocker
with a Middle American sensibility. If
you buy one of his tracks on iTunes,
the Genius app is likely to direct you
to John Mellencamp or Bob Seger, not
Lou Reed or the Ramones. The Steady
occupy a similar sphere – the place
where the Badlands meet the Outer
Boroughs, where the barroom floor
meets the arena lights. “Problems”
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is another of the band’s bantam-
weight anthems. The song fights to be
heard, and it’s bound to succeed in its
anticipated niches and pockets. Just
don’t expect HS to sell out Madison
Square Garden anytime soon.
Such sentiments could serve as an
improvised postscript for the twin
discographies of the Replacements
and Hüsker Dü. These Minnesota
bands had pop chops, but their
intentionally sloppy, guitar-fueled
sound clashed inexorably with the
Reagan Era’s hypermodern, synth-
happy New Pop. Today, with digital
effects and trippy atmospherics
winning the indie dollar, straight-
ahead riff rockers are similarly
disenfranchised. As Finn’s female
antagonist complains in his newest
work, “I just can’t sympathize with your
rock and roll problems” – ostensibly
because they’re so dated and cliché.
But there’s a timelessness to the one-
too-many aesthetic that the Steady
have cultivated. The band is heir to the
sonic thread that runs through such
disparate pieces as Springsteen’s “I’m
A Rocker,” the Huskers’ Zen Arcade,
and the ‘Mats’ “Message to the Boys”
– not the Dylanesque “wild mercury”
but a late-Fifties atomic fission of anger
and aspiration. Finn seems to realize

this; which is probably why he ends
“Problems” with a cry of “This is just
what we wanted!” Good rock and roll
is about conflict – between the body
and the mind, the rhythm and the
blues, positive charges and negative
energies. If this mixture weren’t a
recipe for trouble, it wouldn’t yield
such a glorious cocktail. My advice is
to drink ‘em if you got ‘em. Because
without its flair for intoxication, rock
and roll wouldn’t be half as fun.
(March 29, 2010)
Against Me!
Rapid Decompression
Against Me! occupy the sphere where
strident punk meets commercial hard
rock. In theory, these coordinates
would place them in deep-pockets
territory, alongside such reliable gravy
trains Green Day and Pearl Jam. In
practice, however, the band arrived a
little too late to partake of the post-
grunge enthusiasm for guitar-driven
pop. Given today’s abhorrence of
the amp, Against Me! seem fated to
appeal to pockets and cults, playing
out the string of their major label
contract in rock venues that bring
respect instead of revenue.
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“Rapid Decompression,” the first
single off the band’s upcoming White
Crosses album, can be said to revel in
the sonic limbo between Black Flag’s
poverty and Nirvana’s prosperity. Its
fiery interplay of lead and rhythm
guitar coats the track in thick layers
of rock and roll danger, with each
down-stroke alternately churning up
the adrenaline and settling the groove.
The central chord flourish marries
Johnny Thunders with Slash, finally
closing the 3,000-mile gap between
CBGBs and the Whisky A Go Go.
Frontman Tom Gabel barks out his
lyrics like a Digital Age Joe Strummer,
using an anticly quick cadence to
propel the song forward. He builds
momentum with each successive line,
enabling his comrades to stick and
move with percussive volleys and
shouted harmonies. This unit cohesion
gives the track an All-for-One, One-for-
All vibe. “Rapid” is, for lack of a better
descriptive, an anthem.
But what happens when you write an
anthem and no one shows up? When
you assemble a sing-along chorus,
and no one sings along, are you party
to a sound or a chimera? That’s the
dilemma that bands like Against Me!
and the Hold Steady face. Every time
they release a bouncing, arena-ready
number, questions arise as to whether

their ambitions are justified. Even the
biggest barrooms pale in comparison
to Madison Square Garden. And the
contemporary stuff that passes as
mass-activating fare either derives
from American Idol or comes from
the Killers/Muse school of synths and
spaceships. What’s an earnest little
band of punks to do?
Now as ever, the only recourse is
to keep on plugging. Against Me!
started in the manner of the Pogues,
leveraging sloppy acoustics with a
convivial undercurrent. “Rapid” shows
just such a knack for catholic rabble-
rousing. It could stand in for an Irish
drinking song or an Irish fighting song,
provided that there’s more than a pint
of difference between the two. When
Gabel sings “Sometimes it feels like
the whole world’s coming to an end,”
you don’t know if he’s pushing politics
or blarney. Nor do you care.
“Rapid” is a quick jaunt into the
unwashed corridors that accommodate
the likes of the Dropkick Murphys
and Alkaline Trio. The living isn’t easy,
but it isn’t without its charms. This
song will find an audience among
the hopefully disaffected – that is,
the downtrodden who take stock
(and find hope) in upward mobility.
No wonder Bruce Springsteen is an
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Against Me! fan: Both he and Gabel
deal in the same themes and textures.
And if the Boss were launching his
career today, he’d likely find himself in
the same predicament – beloved but
marginalized, on the backstreets until
the end.
(March 30, 2010)
Gaslight Anthem
American Slang
The highway is alive tonight, but it’s
claiming heavy casualties. That seems
to be the score on Gaslight Anthem’s
latest single, “American Slang,”
another earnest, honest, and hard-
charging dirge from the group’s small
but memorable discography. Despite
their relative youth, Gaslight possess
old souls. Their sound is redolent of
Bruce Springsteen, the Clash, and
U2, with the Boss clearly claiming
head-honcho status. These Jersey
boys shimmer and suffer, flashing a
spirit in the night that’s first leavened
by a runaway American dream, then
shadowed by the proverbial darkness
on the edge of town. If Springsteen
were a litigious man, he could
plausibly claim half their royalties.
The disorienting thing about “Slang”

is that it starts with a Cars-y bounce
rather than an E Street shuffle. The
jingle-jangle guitars that compose
the song’s opening passage are more
in the manner of Matchbox 20 than
Steven Van Zandt or the Edge. At
the 30-second mark, you’re inclined
to anticipate the imminent arrival of
Rob Thomas’ husky tenor, presumably
for a mellow romp through Adult
Contemporary. But then Brian Fallon’s
voice emerges out of the ether, worn
and broken, yet reliably undaunted.
Fallon sings a bit like Brandon Flowers,
filtering the Killers’ Las Vegas New
Wave through the machines and fires
inherent in New Jersey’s 732 area
code. It’s in this sonic badlands – part
desert, part blacktop, part alley way
– that “Slang” asserts its identity,
moving from toe-tapper to anthem.
Fallon shouts about “damage,”
“gallows,” and the place “where we
died last year,” but his blood brothers
lift him up with woo-hoo! and oh-
oh! harmonies. The bell-ring guitar
break and “Cut me to ribbons!”
background vocals mix urgency with
resolve. Gaslight are a No Retreat, No
Surrender band, and they’re not about
to apologize for investing so much
energy in their throwback rock and roll.
Fallon brings the track to a close with
a forceful but tender refrain, singing
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“You told me fortunes in American
slang” until the words leave their
mark. He’s cryptic enough to keep the
meaning ambiguous. The line could
be a lament or an accusation, and the
song as a whole could be a product of
failed romance or financial crisis. Yet
any mention of horoscopes, especially
those of the dubious variety, inevitably
points us towards Madam Marie,
whom the cops busted way back in
1973, “for telling fortunes better than
they do.” Springsteen’s blue-collar
smarts and boardwalk mentality are
never far from Gaslight’s radial burn.
Even the single’s title recalls E Street’s
“American Skin,” a ballsy ballad
about the shooting death of Amadou
Diallo. That song’s final couplets – “It
ain’t no secret/No secret, my friend/
You can get killed just for living in/
Your American skin” – cost Bruce the
Rush Limbaugh demographic, not to
mention more than a few New York-
area police escorts. That’s the price
you pay when you have the stomach to
write about what’s real.
Bruce and Gaslight both traffic in the
biggest of big subjects: life and death,
right and wrong, your worst memories
and your favorite song. For them,
the only topic that trumps untimely
demise is unlikely redemption. “Slang”
is partial to just such a rising. You

can search iTunes and Limewire until
your hard drive explodes; you simply
won’t find a more exhilarating song
about the darker angels of human
nature. “Slang” is therefore the perfect
soundtrack for hard times: anthemic
but not escapist, inspirational but
not melodramatic. Even when we’re
saddled with debts that no honest man
can pay, we’re compelled to remember
that fortune favors the bold.
(March 23, 2010)
LCD Soundsystem
Drunk Girls
Guitar-rock partisans are prone
to associate the words “LCD
Soundsystem” with the mark of
the beast. Just as the early-Aughts’
underground garage revival was
gaining national traction, James
Murphy & Co. dropped “Losing My
Edge,” an epic-length negotiation
between spoken-word testimony, low-
end Casio pulses, and delayed-release
block rockin’ beats. It rode hipster
neuroses (“I hear that everybody
that you know is more relevant
than everybody that I know”) and a
truncated Killing Joke sample to the
central square of Lower East Side
indie. “Losing” raised Ludlow Street’s
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water level, setting the pressure
gauge at just the right reading for
LCD’s protégés and label mates, The
Rapture, to break the proverbial flood
gates with “House of Jealous Lovers.”
The resulting deluge managed to
drown those of us who were gauche
enough to spend late 2002 listening to
the Strokes, the Mooney Suzuki, and
Longwave. Our neo-punk movement
sputtered in its infancy, shifting from
scene soundtrack to jeans-commercial
fodder in less than a year. Bands
started trading in guitars for turntables,
and the more alluring cohorts within
the young female demographic began
to filter out of the rock clubs, in favor
of the DJ and his dance floor.
I’ve long held James Murphy
responsible for this unfortunate
exodus, as he was an erstwhile rocker
(fronting such bands as Falling Man
and Pony) who succumbed to the
twin indulges of the DJ booth and the
digitally-enhanced production studio.
To me, his work was directed at a
dubious end – that is, getting people
who shouldn’t be dancing to boogie
like they’re on “Soul Train.” But after
listening to LCD’s latest single, “Drunk
Girls,” I’m willing to let bygones be
bygones, and kill my anti-Murphy
grudge in its eighth year.

“Drunk” is synthetic music with
organic sex appeal. Under normal
circumstance, I’d be inclined to cover
my ignorance of pop’s contemporary
dance genres by alluding to the ever-
trenchant New Order or the always-
reliable Chicago house idiom. But
while “Drunk” is certainly teched up
and high-BPM, it’s clearly not techno
or breakbeat rave. There’s some
rock in its genome, not to mention
a disarming sense of humor and a
distinct sense of purpose. As indie tilts
toward “chillwave” and “blisscore,”
with nary a guitar nor a non-android
voice in the cupboard, Murphy
returns with angst, insecurity, and
an elevated heart rate. His sound is
human, eschewing our latter-day pulse
puritanism for an antic, amped-up
playfulness.
“Drunk” is a Dionysian track, in
thrall to alcohol and all the insipid
rituals associated with its excessive
consumption. Murphy’s target is not
the intoxicated woman but his own
obdurate alter ego, particularly its
tendency to be stupefied by first
principles. “Oh, Oh, Oh! I believe
in waking up together,” he sings,
adding “That means making eyes
across the room.” Murphy’s manic,
Bowie-inflected voice exposes the
inconveniences of ideology:
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Sometimes doing what you believe in
requires you to act out of character.
What “Drunk” argues is that alcohol is
a way around the rules, a catalyst that
skips the set-up and gets straight to
the action.
In musical terms, this means taking
Bowie’s “Hang On to Yourself,” giving
it the glam-meets-Blur treatment,
and then layering in a snippet of Billy
Squier’s “Everybody Wants You” guitar
lick. Here we have LCD’s new micro-
genre: mutant disco, as informed by
electro-punk and Britpop. Like Pulp,
Murphy uses syncopation not to stand
in for substance but to underscore
his social message. His lyrics tend
toward the observational and the
confessional, like Jonathan Richman
stuck in a strobe light: “Drunk girls
like a night of simplicity/They need a
lover who’s smarter than me”; “Just
‘cause I’m shallow doesn’t mean that
I’m heartless/Just ‘cause I’m heartless
doesn’t mean that I’m mean.” Notice
how many times the word “mean”
has appeared in this review, both in
lyric citation and text proper. “Drunk”
is an ode to hedonism, but not one
that advocates insentience. As in
“Losing My Edge,” LCD spike their
footloose and fancy-free instrumental
with several bottles of intellectualized
insecurity.

Reduced to its essence, this single is
pogo music – a fluid, rollicking affair
expertly crafted for jumping and jiving
in a dark nightclub, with the Miller Lite
in your right hand raised up like the
Statue of Liberty’s torch. From a certain
remove, “Drunk” sounds like “Lust For
Life” updated for the 21st century – or
scaled back to suit paleolithic times.
When Murphy puts a wrap on the track
by singing “The day becomes the
night!,” you don’t know whether this is
a cause for celebration or concern. As
Mark Mothersbaugh once said, “The
more technology you have, the more
primitive you can be.” And LCD, with
their supercomputer feel and Art of
Noise futurism, somehow harken back
to man’s state of nature. “Drunk” is a
high-momentum backing track for the
noble savage. I guess that makes it
punk – or at least rock and roll.
You’ve come a long way, Mr. Murphy.
Have a drink on me.
(March 26, 2010)
Scissor Sisters
Invisible Light
Are you better off than you were four
years ago? That seems to be the
question that fans and critics need to
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ask of Scissor Sisters. The electrodisco
ensemble has laid low for the temporal
equivalent of a presidential term,
releasing nary a track since 2006’s
Ta-Dah. The content gap has grown
so wide that Chinese Democracy is
starting to get worried, fearing a loss
of straggler glory.
Thankfully, Axl’s opus can quit biting
its nails, for the Sisters have returned
with a single that aims to make up for
lost time. At 6:12, “Invisible Light” is
the collective’s longest commercial
track. It argues, unwittingly or
otherwise, that a deep hourglass is
needed to accommodate the myriad
caprices of today’s digital dance floor.
Seductive synths are not enough.
Groovy buzzes and snaps are but
a whetter of appetites. In the post-
Gaga, post-James Murphy world,
credible club music had damn well
better be layered, sarcastic, and self-
aware. There are only two targets for
contemporary pulse poppers: “epic”
or “anthem.” A mere “entertainment”
simply will not do.
“Light” holds up the epistemological
end of the bargain. It’s born to be an
epic, both in length and impact. The
track is built around a steady, synthetic
heartbeat, a metronomic device that
throbs and fades but never stops

pumping. Ana Matronic’s keys blend
into the rhythm, providing soft swells
and subtle flashes of atmosphere.
Percussive components, supplied
by both a first-rate sampler and
second-generation drummer Randy
Real, coalesce into a supplementary
pacemaker, ensuring that the track
doesn’t slacken when the primary beat
loop is drowned out by vocal surges or
ambient noise.
Amid the pitter-patter and dreamy
vibes, Jake Shears’ voice stands
out for its ability to gear-shift from
methodical control to Dionysian
abandon. His upper-register wail
remains the Sisters’ sonic signature,
a point of differentiation that enables
them to work in the broad tents of pop
rather than the stuffy ghettos of house
or trance. Shears’ singing gives the
melody shape and direction, a one-two
punch that leads the band straight
into the “Twilight Zone.” I speak not of
the classic television program, but the
Golden Earring banger from the fall of
1982. This rock track’s bouncing, mildly
malicious cadences are borrowed
generously for the first three to four
minutes of “Light.” But just as the
intimations of plagiarism begin to gain
traction, the Scissors throttle back the
beat and cede to the foreground to a
spoken-word interlude.
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This song section is captained by
Sir Ian McKellen (seriously!), thus
demonstrating the considerable
advantages that American bands
enjoy when they happen to be huge
in England. McKellen’s script is largely
balderdash and poppycock – it
consists almost entirely of softcore
doggerel centered on lust and sexual
awakening – but its subject matter
doesn’t preclude the voice-over from
packing its fair share of fun. How can
you not derive a little pleasure from
hearing an Oscar-nominated actor
bark out the following nonsense:
“Painted whores. Sexual gladiators.
Fishtailed party children. All wake
from their slumber to debut at the
Bacchanal.”? Is Sir Ian pissed that
he lost the lead role in Caligula to
Malcolm McDowell? Or are the Scissor
Sisters just irredeemably perverted?
I’m going to have to go with the latter
– but not without a nod of respect
and an offer of congratulations. On
“Light,” the band manages a sleek
musical progression, jettisoning their
Elton John-meets-Bee Gees disco
fever for a Depeche Mode-meets-
Frankie Goes to Hollywood New
Pop swagger. Gone are the icy plunk
of “Laura” and the queer honky-
tonk of “Take Your Mama”; in is the
warm wash of the group’s hypnotic

“Comfortably Numb” cover, albeit with
an added dash of glam.
“Light” is a lithe yet loafing single,
at once motoring along and
skipping deliberately. I take these
tricks of tempo as a sign that the
song is properly self-aware – that is,
conscious of its length, architecture,
and purported importance. I don’t
know enough about dance music to
determine whether “Light” delivers
game-changing goods. Nor am I
properly qualified to opine on the
relative merits of the band’s upcoming
album, Night Work. All I’ve got at my
disposal are fond memories of the
Sisters’ debut and six-plus minutes of
sonic testimony that reaffirm my earlier
convictions. “Light” is adequately
excellent to keep its authors among
the fillet of the mutant disco genre.
I’ll leave it to the market to determine
whether the band is better off than it
was four years ago.
(April 14, 2010)
Sharon Jones and
the Dap-Kings
I Learned the Hard Way
The listening public has become so
accustomed to hearing three-minute
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passages from pop music’s Book of
Love that it’s neglected to ask a very
important question; namely, Is one text
sufficient to cover a subject so vast and
variegated?
Shouldn’t there be an entire School
of Love? Or at least a baccalaureate
program expressly devoted to affairs
of the heart and the harmony? Just
imagine the emeriti, in Soul and
R&B alone: Dean Al Green, Provost
Luther Vandross, and such Honorary
Musical Chairs as Sam Cooke, Aretha
Franklin, and Marvin Gaye. If this
roster had been assembled, perhaps
Sharon Jones wouldn’t be in such a
bind. Had she been offered a more
comprehensive course load in sound
and sentiment, maybe she wouldn’t
have had such a bad-luck rumble
through the blackboard jungle.
Jones’ latest single, “I Learned the
Hard Way,” is a done-me-wrong
ballad derived from one of the
Book of Love’s more sour chapters.
Despite its lush, retro arrangement,
the song is emotionally naked,
pushing accusations, insults, and
self-reproaches across a slinky astral
plane. “Hard Way,” however, isn’t
next of kin to Jazmine Sullivan’s
“Bust Your Windows” or Carrie
Underwood’s “Before He Cheats.” It’s

not the reaction to faithlessness that’s
accorded primacy but the realization.
The act of discovery – that she’s living
a lie, that her man is untrue – is what
drives Jones’ narrative. She smells
the foreign perfumes, hears the
breathless phone calls, and fingers
the tell-tale hotel key, piling all the
accouterments of the philanderer
into a blazing bonfire of vanities.
Once the sordid plot is unraveled,
Sharon doesn’t flinch from meeting
adultery’s petty indignities head-on.
She channels infidelity in high-fidelity,
giving orchestral heft to a humbling
confession: “I learned the hard way,
that your love was cruel/I learned the
hard way, to be your fool.”
The instrumentation on “Hard Way”
fits the track’s subject matter. The
opening horn blast, more sobering
than stirring, sets an ominous tone, as
if operating by the dictates of pathetic
fallacy. It’s immediately clear that
something is rotten in the impending
state of affairs. Jones’ voice, recalling
the likes of Tina Turner and Marva
Whitney, adds a necessary urgency
to the background brass. Her central
refrain – “Now I know about you!” –
throws its weight around only after
Jones has walked the thorny path from
suspicion to certainty. Her soundtrack
never reverts to the whiplash funk that
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helped break the Dap-Kings. This is
not a James Brown-style hip-shaker;
Sharon is committed to composing
a deliberate, classy denunciation of
her beau. In place of lightning, “Hard
Way” brings the thunder, with claps
of admonition segueing into cracks of
righteous anger.
Jones doesn’t traffic in the headlong
melodic runs of Beyoncé Knowles or
the sultry swagger of Erykah Badu.
She makes “Urban” music that’s
completely uninformed by hip hop and
its attendant heavy beats. Her songs
belong to the live-band era, packing
a sound that’s as organic as it is
insidious. “Hard Way” seeps into your
bloodstream and rattles your bones,
like the sock-it-to-me soul that it so
obviously aspires to imitate. Jones has
truly studied under the masters, mixing
Otis Redding’s down-home abandon
with Aretha Franklin’s pitched control.
Yet, on “Hard Way,” she comes across
as a latter-day Tina Turner, forever
shouting “What’s love got to do with
it?”
Fortunately, Jones doesn’t use this
question as a mere point of rhetoric.
She provides an answer, and that
answer is “Everything!” Love parades
through her songbook like a marching
band through the Rose Bowl. Its

lessons may be hard, but we get the
feeling that the subject is worth the
fighting for. And while Jones might
have been slow to intercept the
cheater on her horizon, this middling
misgiving is nothing that can’t be
cured by a couple of hours with a
Bobby Womack album.
Smart money says Sharon already has
Womack cued up on her turntable. She
may not be a founding member of our
theoretical School of Love, but she’s
certainly earned the right to take home
a degree. Let the record show that
she’s graduating with honors.
(April 5, 2010)
Band of Horses
Factory
Is it just me, or has the Pacific
Northwest gone mellow? In the 15-plus
years since grunge lost its commercial
punch, the so-called “Seattle sound”
has toned down its intensity and
amped up its facial hair. Out is the
heroin-chic fealty to Rust Never Sleeps;
in is the beardo fascination with
Everybody Knows This is Nowhere.
The Sub Pop scene has negotiated
a gradual but genuine paradigm
shift, allowing the singer-songwriter
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portion of Neil Young’s discography to
displace its sludgy, viscous, ax-grinding
counterpart.
Insofar as this movement had
a vanguard, and not just an ad
hoc assortment of sweet-singing
strummers, the Shins could probably
be said to constitute the lead flank.
They were the earliest popularizers of
the Back to the Garden ethic, setting
the turn of the century as something
of a dividing line between the Old
Masters and the New Slang. Scores
of pale imitators followed – and by
“pale,” I mean “lily white” – but their
hack work eventually bore righteous
fruit, coalescing into the current
bumper crop of Decemberists, Fleet
Foxes, and Band(s) of Horses. Each
ensemble is whip-smart and buzz-
worthy, but, of the three groups
cited, only the Horses possess true
commercial potential.
With their warm acoustics and high-
pitched harmonies, BoH are a living
testament to the lighter side of Shakey.
They exude a vibe that’s at once feral
and ethereal; the band manages
to keep their knees in the soil while
their heads float amongst the clouds.
Ben Bridwell’s braying lead vocals
are clearly reminiscent of Young’s
drifter croon. Yet, both materially

and metaphorically speaking, the
“commercial potential” to which I
allude has less to do with Harvest
than After the Gold Rush. I’m fairly
certain that the Horses have won the
majority of their gold through product
placement, be it in ads for Ford Edge
or via quick musical cameos on One
Tree Hill and 90210. They’re a zeitgeist
group, if only in the sense that their
music pairs well with the contemporary
lifestyle, wherein a mellow backing
track is preferred to a song that grabs
you by the throat.
“Factory” is another sleek ballad in
the middle-of-the-road tradition. Its
soft pulses and deliberate pacing
conjure a lazy afternoon in the country
rather than a hard day’s work on the
factory floor. But under the dreamy
instrumental lurks an affecting sob
story: Bridwell’s protagonist has just
been dropped by his girlfriend. Now
he’s forced to carry on all alone,
shuffling from hotel to hotel and from
shiny recollection to painful memory.
“It’s temporary, this place I’m in,” Ben
sings, “I permanently won’t do this
again.”
To augment the Man-Beside-Himself
aura, the Horses unbridle a series
of doleful, moaning guitar breaks,
redolent of Weezer’s “Pink Triangle”
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and Pete Droge’s “Beautiful Girls.”
These smooth symphonics give
“Factory” a spectral air, as if it just
emerged out of the gloaming. BoH do
this sort of thing better than any other
indie rock outfit. Even if you’d never
heard of the group, and stumbled
onto “Factory” by happy accident, you
wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the
band’s last underground hit was called
“Is There A Ghost.”
This single will coexist peacefully
with the recent Morning Benders’
cut, “Promises.” Like the Benders,
BoH have a knack for semi-orchestral
builds that give a song texture and
taste. Guitars ring and keyboards
chime, quietly marking rhythm as the
track ventures onward. The band is
walking in place, but they appear to be
climbing the stairs.
Such is the rock sound for the modern
moment: soothing yet active, ever-
present yet unobtrusive. This sonic
formula lets us combine labor and
leisure, to listen in to our digital
jukeboxes even as we’re thumbing out
emails and status reports. Perhaps the
Pacific Northwest has gone mellow
because rock at large has become
less immediate. The genre no longer
kicks in your door and impregnates
your daughter; instead, it wafts into

conference room, kitchen, and retail
outlet alike, as if channeled through
some unknown but ubiquitous censor.
You can’t order a cup of coffee or
watch a sports highlight without
encountering a short piece of mood
music. And if this is the milieu in which
we’re obliged to operate, I’ll gladly
take “Factory” over, say, “Party In the
U.S.A.” or “Need You Now.”
BoH deliver a pleasing, plangent vibe.
They never demand your attention, but
once they infiltrate your defenses, they
command your respect. “Factory,”
“The Funeral,” and, above all, “No
One’s Gonna Love You,” comprise a
post-millennial iteration of AM Gold,
offering easy listening to palliate the
vicissitudes of our hard-knock lives.
It’s not Guns n’ Roses, but it gets you
through the day. And in times like
these, there’s certainly no shame in
copping the aural lithium. Just be sure
to hold on to your Nirvana records.
Because this softer Seattle sound, like
the heavier fare before it, shall pass –
regardless of how many Edges Ford is
able to push off the lot.
(April 21, 2010)
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The Dead Weather
Die By the Drop
Sinister machinations are afoot on the
Dead Weather’s “Die By the Drop.”
Makeshift graves are being dug; death
plots are swinging into motion; and
lead guitars are crying out in pain,
suffering the tortures of a thousand
spiked beasts. The preponderance
of the evidence points toward two
possible interpretations: Either the
Dead Weather are evolving into a
suicide cult, or Jack White is trying to
lay his current commitment to rest,
presumably so he can start another
frighteningly hirsute supergroup.
Then again, perhaps one shouldn’t
expect sunshine and tangerines from a
band named the Dead Weather. Such
a designation has a leaden, lumbering
feel, like Black Sabbath, Deep Purple,
or Nickelback. And “Die,” true to its
title and pedigree, positively drips
sludge, mire, and base intentions.
I don’t mean that in a bad way. The
track is dense but not ponderous,
heavy but not weighed down. Its sonic
heft recalls Led Zeppelin’s “Black Dog”
and “When the Levee Breaks,” twin
celebrations of the blues transported
to a mystic realm beyond psychedelia.
“Die” has a similar intensity, high on

drone and vibration, but still insistent
enough to qualify as a single rather
than an experiment. In the shorthand
reserved for bastard genres, the track
is less Psych-Blues than Abnormal
Psych-Blues.
Supporting testimony comes early
and often. “Die” opens to rattles and
quivers that imagine the mash-up of
MGMT’s “Flash Delirium” and Captain
Beefheart’s “Electricity.” The song
quickly assumes a magnetic pulse – a
gentle tug with a malevolent edge.
Alison Mosshart and Jack White
trade lines like bummed cigarettes,
alternately dragging and spitting out
smoke. “Let’s dig a hole in the sand,
brother,” Mosshart proposes, “A
little grave we can fill.” The subject
is shared destiny, wherein wide-eyed
madness and millennial desperation
coalesce into unholy matrimony.
“I’m going to take you for worse or
better!,” shout the Glummer Twins,
leaving little doubt that this marriage is
bound for the underground. Mosshart
and White consecrate their connection
in the muck and murk of freshly
upturned soil, with no honeymoon
suite in sight. For the Dead Weather,
the key marital vow is not “I do” but
“Til death do us part.”
Fortunately, death becomes this
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serious, dark-toned band. Eerie
atmospheres get along well with the
blues, as the idiom is flush with little
devils and would-be Robert Johnsons.
There’s an element of the supernatural
to the entire Mississippi Delta
mythology, what with its crossroads,
its hell hounds, and its spectral
journeymen. When White sings “Some
people die just a little/Sometimes
you die by the drop,” he could be
eulogizing all the shut-down strangers
and backwoods bards who never
escaped their provincial cultures.
He could be. But he isn’t. Because
“Die” treats the blues progressively,
incorporating rock vibes and the
occasional Digital Age flourish. Its
choral rush forsakes the stripped-
down acoustics of Son House for the
thick grooves of Jimi Hendrix and
the industrial buzz of grunge. I’ll be
damned if the “worse or better” guitar
layering doesn’t sound conspicuously
like the Stone Temple Pilots’ “Down.”
There’s a brutality to these blues, and
the listener is compelled to feel the
noise.
“Die” is Jack White returning to what
he does best: down-tempo bombast.
When he realigns with Meg, maybe
they’ll channel the Elephant side of
their discography – a wide pocket

of catalog that manages to pair an
electric feel with a swampy sensibility.
In the meantime, we’ll settle for the
Dead Weather’s potent strains of
moody blues. Their sound is maturing.
And their textures are sharpening into
a dagger blade of ever-more-blunt
proportions. This might appear to
be cause for concern, but I offer my
sincere assurances: The evolution is all
for the better, none for the worse.
(April 3, 2010)
The Black Keys
Everlasting Light
If you’d told me 10 years ago that indie
rock would soon make a hairpin turn
toward mongrelized disco, I’d have
dropped my Strokes EP and petitioned
for your immediate institutionalization.
The classical theories of popular
music posit that rock and disco are
diametrically opposed idioms – one
representing truth and teen spirit,
the other celebrating the shiny, the
skeevy, and the insensate. Rock
generally requires human agency:
a band, several instruments, and a
convincing live performance. Disco,
quite conversely, suppresses organic
effort with mechanical efficiency. It’s
push-button music instead of music
that pushes the envelope.
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Sure, such analysis reeks of bias and
oversimplification. But when we
treat pop music with a complexity
normally reserved for rocket science,
we sacrifice the thrilling immediacy
that’s made rock and roll something
of a surrogate religion. The faithful
were there for Mick Jagger in 1965,
and they still line up by the millions
to sing along to the final verse of
“Satisfaction.” You can call this sort of
rock and roll fundamentalism irrational,
unbecoming, or, if you must, pathetic
– but you can’t deny that it’s a force to
be reckoned with.
Even as we acknowledge disco’s
hipster-mediated resurgence, we’re
obliged to note our doubts about its
staying power. In the late Seventies,
Donna Summer’s Bad Girls was of
greater cultural import than the
Rolling Stones’ Some Girls. But do
you honestly think that Ms. Summer’s
songs could support a worldwide
stadium tour? She couldn’t sell out The
Olive Garden, never mind Madison
Square Garden. And this fact is oddly
comforting.
The Black Keys enter our discussion
precisely where it began – that is, at
the onset of the 21st century, when
synths were slowly encroaching into
territory formerly accorded to guitars.
Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney

began collaborating as the Nineties
met the Aughts, and have since put
in a decade of shared service. In that
time, they’ve seen the riff-centered
power duo tumble from a position of
primacy (the White Stripes, Local H) to
the outskirts of obscurity (Sleigh Bells,
No Age, Japandroids). Within the indie
circuit, guitars are now frequently cited
as tools of the rear-guard, vestiges of
a “rockist” regime that championed
phallic symbols and primal energies.
Their subtle erasure from both the
music video and the sound stage has
resulted in the wholesale emasculation
of pop music. The airwaves and the
social media are now firmly controlled
by five Amazons (Lady Gaga, Rihanna,
Ke$ha, Taylor Swift, and Miley Cyrus)
and one countertenor (Justin Bieber).
The Top 40, in short, has surrendered
its balls.
This is why we’re obliged to thank
our lucky stars for the Black Keys.
They’re a two-man wrecking crew
that somehow manages to temper
the sound of demolition with dense
flurries of rhythm. The formative BK hit
parade, comprising such songs as “I
Got Mine,” “10 A.M. Automatic,” and
“Strange Times,” is rendered thick by
the intermingling of Delta swamp and
Akron rubber. It’s as if the river and the
factory conjoined beside the assembly
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line, allowing for the mass production
of all-natural goods.
The Key’s latest single, “Everlasting
Light,” signals a slight departure – in
register if not in texture. Auerbach
sings in a suave falsetto, recalling a
hybrid of mid-career Curtis Mayfield
and “Blue Orchid”-era Jack White.
That said, the track is far from ethereal.
Carney grounds the production in a
bedrock of drums, deftly pairing the
percussion with Auerbach’s chugging
guitar. The central riff is short, sweet,
and repetitive – abuzz with reverb but
never in danger of losing its propulsive
energy. Think Led Zeppelin’s “D’yer
Maker” or the Rolling Stones’
“Shattered,” wherein a concise figure
drives the song forward, backward,
and, occasionally, sideways. The
melody locks you in so intensely that
you’re inclined to ignore the narrative.
Perhaps this is for good reason:
“Light” is not a song for fans of
sophisticated lyrics. The lines are
constructed to maximize rhyme
potential, not to illuminate the human
condition. This is the ironic legacy of
Mayfield, who, for all his civil rights
glory, could shoehorn three rhymes
into a transitional chorus without
forsaking his croon. (See “It is now
up to us/And we know we must/Build

up a trust.”) Auerbach works similar
wonders, offering to bring “sun where
there is none,” and then to captain “a
train goin’ away from pain.” The latter
lyric, though puerile, folds beautifully
into its attending riff, which sounds like
a locomotive just setting off from the
station. If the Keys have a message,
it’s “Woman, get ready, there’s a train
coming.” The boxcar door is wide
open – and so is the joint future of the
protagonists.
For once, however, let’s allow the
medium to usurp the message.
Rock is a wildly miscegenated form,
stitching up the Mason-Dixon and
Anglo-American divides with sleek
threads of sonic testimony. The Black
Keys are a product of this sublime
orgy of parochial impulses and
universal aspirations: What happened
in Memphis and New Orleans can
happen in New York, Chicago,
Liverpool, or London. (Hell, it can even
happen in Akron.) Blues-based music
travels on a continuum that provides
no quarter for racial or geographic
discrimination. It’s a sound that’s
utterly hostile to the concept of the
velvet rope. And the Black Keys’ grand
purpose, insofar as they have one, is
to disavow the conceits of Digital Age
disco.
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Although I characterize it as a rebuttal
of contemporary indie, “Everlasting
Light” excludes no one. Its lumbering
wallop packs the pagan blues of Led
Zeppelin alongside the urban soul of
the Impressions, sounding at once of
the soil, the water, and the sky. This
coalition of elements comprises rock
and roll’s living palette wheel. Artists
blend the colors anyway they see fit,
and we quarrel on the merits of the
resulting canvas. In this particular
case, beauty is not in the eye of the
beholder, but in the ear of the listener.
All we can do is keep listening, and
hope for the best.
(August 14, 2010)
Arcade Fire
Month of May
At the 3:42 mark of “Crown of Love,”
the sixth track on Arcade Fire’s debut
album, Funeral, the indie rock universe
abruptly pivoted on its axis. After using
the majority if its run time to build a
dour, dirge-like tension, the song
activates its hidden pressure valve,
releasing a genre’s worth of angst,
ennui, and stalled momentum. Part
purge, part call to arms, this
microment of violin glory revealed
Funeral for what it was: A memorial

service for the garage rock revival, and
an augur of the eclectic, multi-
instrumental sound that would soon
come to characterize the minor-label
circuit.
“Crown of Love” is not one of Arcade
Fire’s more popular tracks, but its sonic
reorientation is a genuine feat of
physics. In terms of compositional
gravity, there’s a discernible Before and
After, a clear Action and Reaction:
Previously, simple, stripped-down rock
and roll had ruled the roost.
(Remember the Vines and the Hives?)
Subsequently, serious, carefully
orchestrated pop assumed the reins.
The difference between Arcade Fire
and, say, the White Stripes is best
understood in the context of this
transition: The latter is a band going
for broke; the former is a band going
for Baroque.
What made the Fire indispensable,
however, was that their Baroque rock
harbored not the slightest vestige of
Renaissance Faire slackery. Yes, there
were harps and luthier-quality
narratives. But these elements didn’t
cohere around a litany of tired pastoral
themes. Funeral’s track list reads less
like a study in functional tonality than
as a stacked line-up card: The
“Neighborhood” songs load the
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bases; the “Crown” pivot point shows
the pitcher’s tell; and “Wake Up”
knocks the ball out of the park.
“Rebellion (Lies)” simply tacks on
insurance runs, as if to say, “This band
means business!”
Unfortunately, such forthright ambition
can’t help but earn a group a
reputation for being uncompromising
or “too serious” – a charge that
Arcade Fire’s second album, Neon
Bible, seemed expressly designed to
corroborate. Another masterpiece – or
another hyper-indulgent chain yank,
depending on your proclivity – Neon
fostered several sleek leitmotifs and an
impressive array of unconventional
instruments. It was the sound of the
king’s court and the scholars den,
condensed into a single LP. Yet despite
its comfort with subjects high and
mighty, the record still burned with the
power-chord passions of the demotic
age. It tried to be all things to all
people, and it damn near succeeded.
The Fire’s newest single, “Month of
May,” betrays these aspirations. It’s
nothing more than a balls-out banger
– which makes it nothing less than a
slap in the face to those who pine for
the band’s more lush and intricate
arrangements. I won’t go so far as to
call “May” a “sonic departure,” as that

would be a cliché. (And a meaningless
cliché at that, considering that Arcade
Fire have shown an ability, if not a
preference, to make pedal-to-the-
metal rock and roll.) Still, the song’s
bull-rush rhythm and double-time beat
are not what you’d expect from the
Fire after a three-year hiatus. Perhaps
that’s why it’s packaged as a B side to
“The Suburbs,” the official lead single
from the band’s forthcoming album. By
unchaining “May” from the A-grade
sweepstakes, Arcade Fire allow the
track to be its own animal. Separated
from its natural habitat – that is, the LP
– the song takes on a feral air: It’s
neither thrash metal nor freak folk but
a sturdier, more efficient
amalgamation. And when metal and
folk come together, what do they
form? I’ll go with “punk rock.”
No need to polish your spectacles: I’m
indeed reporting that Arcade Fire have
released a punk record. In the
language of their own discography,
“May” sounds like a souped-up and
electrified “Television Antichrist
Blues,” only with the Springsteen
inflections usurped by the discordant
heebie-jeebies of the CBGBs set. The
track commences with a Dee Dee
Ramone-style “1, 2, 3, 4” count-off,
then careers into a riff that could easily
be mistaken for something off of
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Rocket to Russia. The more
appropriate reference point, though, is
deeper and darker: The Misfits’ Static
Age. I’ll be damned if “May” isn’t a
kissing cousin to the Misfits’ “Bullet.”
The singles share a manic intensity and
a breakneck pace, with “Bullet”
garnering distinction for being an
order of magnitude more violent. Win
Butler may be a man of many colors,
but he’s yet to drink the blood-red
potions that transport mere mortals to
Glenn Danzig territory. True, when Win
shouts “Some people sing, sounds like
they’re screaming/Used to doubt it,
but now I believe it,” we’re lead to
wonder whether he’s forgotten to take
his meds. But even with the track’s
pounding percussion and death-stare
guitars, we never doubt that Butler will
retain control of his art.
He does this by folding less reactionary
textures into “May”’s DNA. The lead
riff bears vague traces of Black
Sabbath’s “Paranoid,” adding just
enough fuzz to temper Tony Iommi’s
stutter-step propulsion. Eventually, the
track finds room for ambient tones and
noise layers that recall early-90s Sonic
Youth. When Régine Chassagne steps
in to harmonize with Butler, “May”
feels like it’s being visited by Thurston
Moore and Kim Gordon. This doesn’t
mean that the single goes soft; it

merely signifies that, after a sustained
crescendo, the song jumps the 2:30
hurdle by playing around with its
dynamics. The sound washes out in a
snap of the fingers, then returns at full
blast for a minute-long coda that’s
equally moody and ferocious. In the
end, “May” wouldn’t be out of place
on either Static Age or Goo. It’s punk
rock and art rock, tinged with firm
strokes of goth and indie. Let’s call it
“Blitzkrieg Baroque.”
On “May,” the ornate flexes are
reserved more for the lyric sheet than
the instrumental score. Butler
apparently conceived the track to be
part of a song cycle that chronicles a
city-to-suburbs diaspora. Surprisingly,
Win idealizes the urban environment
but renders the outskirts of town brutal
and malignant: “Month of May,
everybody’s in love/In the city we’re
safe from above” segues rapidly into
an ominous depiction of suburban
youth – “Kids are still standing with
their arms folded tight/Some things
are pure and some things are right.”
This inflexibility, be it philosophical or
aesthetic, is a harbinger of a culture
war, one which the Fire are loath to
fight but too proud to boycott. The
band will be heard, in every sense
imaginable. And American music will
be all the better for it.
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“May” earns classification into the
“Songs That Matter” file for two
reasons: First, anything that a group of
Arcade Fire’s caliber puts out after a
sustained absence is going to cause a
Richter-level tremor. Second, the song
effectively rebuts the belle orchestre
sound that Funeral helped escort from
the margins. “Month of May,” like
“Crown of Love,” represents a musical
pivot point. Only this time it’s Arcade
Fire themselves, rather than the indie
rock universe, that’s swinging on its
axis. This change is not as drastic as its
predecessor, but its repercussions will
still leave a fairly wide wake.
Let’s hope that this wake swallows
Funeral’s more unfortunate
godchildren. Because like other
epochal indie records of the past 15
years, such as Kid A, Aeroplane Over
the Sea, and “Losing My Edge,” the
Fire’s first album inspired untold
volumes of second- and third-tier
music. This unfortunate (and perhaps
inevitable) irony prompts my final,
absurdly unreasonable request: On
their next LP, the band that’s renowned
for taking themselves far too seriously
will have to raise their self-regard to
near-messianic levels. In my mind,
Arcade Fire’s meticulously arranged
postpunk is obliged to be perfectly
emblematic of our age. It must

integrate dark urges with light speeds,
satirize a material culture on the verge
of insolvency, and conquer the vast,
purgatorial spaces between
mechanical failure and human triumph.
If possible, it should also sound good.
“Month of May” can’t fully deliver on
this one-in-a-million fantasy, but it’s
certainly a step in the right direction.
And I, for one, am extremely interested
to see where the next step leads.
(May 28, 2010)
The National
Afraid of Everyone
Things weren’t looking too good
for the new National album. Its first
leak, the limp, atmospheric “Blood
Buzz Ohio,” full of clipped croons
and pregnant pauses, sounded like
Julian Casablancas covering Pink
Floyd’s “Learning to Fly.” The live
material that followed was similarly
mellow and moody, with lead singer
Matt Berninger applying an Ian Curtis
baritone to U2-style shimmers and
rings. This mixture of antic intensity
and anthemic composition made for a
shaky vessel. At a certain point, jagged
vulnerability ceases to be a signature
musical texture and starts to become
an alt-rock fetish.
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Thankfully, the National’s latest single,
“Afraid of Everyone,” doesn’t aspire
to a dual identity. It’s the perfect
distillation of an artist beset by modern
anxiety, haunting its indie vinyl like
nothing since the last Arcade Fire
album. In fact, “Afraid” could be
mistaken for a Win Butler solo record,
as it combines my-body-is-a-cage
themes with black-mirror augury.
Berninger is clearly trapped within
himself, and the accommodations are
far from comfortable. “Lay the young
blue bodies/With the old red bodies,”
he sings, imagining a killing field that
spans generations and colors alike.
The narrator is positively bleeding with
insecurity, a condition that appears to
result from the tremors of uncertain
times and the shortfalls of a low-rent
pharmaceutical regimen. The track’s
sober, pain-addled chorus reads,
“With my kid on my shoulders I try/Not
to hurt anybody I love/But I don’t have
the drugs to sort it out.”
I’d be inclined to slip Berninger some
Xanax® were his song not so singularly
arresting. “Afraid” commences with a
drone tone of somber digital swells,
fogging up the canvas in preparation
for the dark-hued vocals. Berninger’s
lyrics and delivery are so honest and
immediate that the listener quickly

understands the depths of his terror.
He’s afraid of radio, television, and the
people he encounters on the street.
Most of all, he’s afraid of himself.
And the fallout from this paralyzing
pantaphobia is a sense of visceral
longing for the unattainable; that
is, an antiseptic, threat-free Fortress
America. If “Afraid” can be said to
be a party jam, the party in question
would have to be a Tea Party, all
placard-carrying worry and shit-your-
pants panic.
The only fear that matters on this
particular track, however, is fear of
music. I mean that in a respectful,
Talking Heads sort of way, whereby
a chilling vibe is established without
multi-instrumental bombast. The
National evince a vintage reserve,
making their message unambiguous
but keeping their acoustics soft and
no-filler. You won’t find a fleet-fingered
guitar solo or a sing-along refrain on
“Afraid.” Its aims are more modest,
but no less affecting, than anything by
Coldplay or Green Day. I plainly admit
to being blindsided by its hazy synths
and stark verses, a sonic seduction
made all the more unlikely by my initial
distaste for this religiously buzzed-up
band. When their new album, High
Violet, is released, I’ll give it a fair and
thorough listen. I advise you to do
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the same. Because if “Afraid” proves
anything, it’s that the National are
nothing to be frightened of.
(April 20, 2010)
Interpol
Lights
Quick, who’s the better Joy Division
cover band: the National or Interpol?
The former are trending higher, but
the latter have posterity on their side –
so, ultimately, the decision is largely a
function of taste.
I’m going to take the path of least
resistance and greatest complexity:
I prefer the National to Interpol for
sheer songcraft, but still think that the
Pols are an order of magnitude better
at the Joy Division business. They
key differentiating factor is Interpol’s
clinical sterility. You could undergo
prostate surgery in their recording
studio and come away infection-free.
Their throbbing bass and rhythmic
guitars pack industrial heft without
the risk of industrial accident, always
reining in the aggression before
it reaches the point of absolute
abandon. Like Joy Division, Interpol
make alien sounds out of human
emotion, all echo and ominous jangle,

while the National can’t quite extend
beyond the terrestrial plane.
The Pols latest single, “Lights,” may be
their first in two years, but it’s certainly
not far removed from their postpunk
wheelhouse. The band continues
to traffic in neurotic buzzsaw, with
pointed twitches and flails popping
off under the reverb. “Lights” sounds
a bit like “She’s Lost Control” – but,
then again, so do three out of every
four tracks in the Interpol discography.
The new single distinguishes itself
by subordinating Manchester’s clink
and clank to New York’s quivering
angularity. This is a song on the verge
of a nervous breakdown, with the band
seeking asylum in pointed confessions
of frailty.
The ill-at-ease vibe is concentrated
in Paul Banks’ shuddering vocals.
His voice is a jagged ripple of ache,
reimagining Ian Curtis’ haunting
baritone without the Jim Morrison
deep-throat. Banks sounds like he
needs a hug, or at least a month away
from blunt objects. When he pleads
“Teach me to grieve and conspire
with my age,” you’re not sure if he’s
suicidal, homicidal, or just bored. This
hint of instability goes from amber to
red only when Banks puts in an earnest
request for supervision: “Please police
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me/I want you to police me/But keep
it clean.” You can just about hear the
orderlies reaching for a straitjacket.
Still, is it any surprise that “Lights” is
characterized by darkness? Interpol
aren’t the Black Eyed Peas, and Banks
runs no risk of being confused with
Will.i.am. When the Pols’ frontman
has, in the pop parlance, “gotta
feeling,” that feeling is generally
depressing. The band’s music is clean
but fidgeting, as if the ensemble were
practicing masochists, forever in thrall
to hair shirts and self-flagellation. Their
heavy snares sound like a whip hitting
the flesh.
“Lights” builds its stress level with
formidable dexterity, then pulls
its pin with a minute-long coda of
instrumental calm and pained vocal
repetition. Banks sings “That’s why I
hold you/That’s why I hold you...dear,”
with the pregnant pause before the
last word expressing more assurance
than doubt. The effect is oddly
reminiscent of Pink Floyd’s “Eclipse,”
which closes with a soothing promise:
“All that is now/All that is gone/All
that’s to come/And everything under
the sun is in tune.” Yet, despite this
implicit harmony, we can’t ignore the
fact that the sun has been eclipsed
by the moon, that the lunatics are

on the grass, in the hall, and in our
heads. Interpol’s job is to stand in
this darkness and try to fend off the
demons.
Let’s hope Banks is more successful
than Ian Curtis was – and that his band
will never be forced to take the New
Order route. Interpol have cohered
into something special: there’s no
joy, but there’s no division either. And
in the bizarro world of rock and roll
mathematics, these two negatives add
up to a resounding positive. Just don’t
expect a smile anytime soon. Because
if Interpol ever attempted to turn its
frown upside down, the universe would
probably implode.
(May 4, 2010)
Vampire Weekend
Jonathan Low
Vampire Weekend provide the
soundtrack to the life I wish I was
living. This life is characterized by
prep-school spirit, wrinkle-free khaki,
and a flair for the high seas. If I had
my druthers, I’d be sailing astride the
Elizabeth Islands at a cool 15 knots,
wearing little more than boat shoes
and a strategically folded Dartmouth
diploma. Once landward, I’d tool
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around town in my father’s recently
decommissioned Mercedes Benz,
stripped of its top but churning with
the character of money nearly as
old as Plymouth Rock. The mayor of
Wellfleet would refer to me unironically
as “Chief,” “Junior,” or “Pal.” And Ivy
League chicks would dig me.
End scene.
But don’t start over. Because flights of
fancy are what make Vampire Weekend
so lovable. Your average middle-class
kid, not knowing Choate from Exeter
or Falmouth from Mashpee, connects
with the band through vibe rather than
narrative. VW songs drip with privilege
but towel off with alternating strokes
of sarcasm and satire. Ezra Koenig is
singing of a demographic to which
he’s never belonged, nor will ever
belong. In a sense, VW provide the
soundtrack to the life that he wishes
he was living. The yacht clubs and the
Vuitton sweaters merely offer cover for
Koenig’s counterintuitive stratagem:
Rather than pretend to be less wealthy
than he actually is, he insinuates that
he’s an order of magnitude wealthier
than the typical J. Crew customer.
This charade is part of the substance:
VW observe from afar, then infuse their
blue-blood personae with all the color,

quirk, and humor of John Cheever or
J.D. Salinger. They’re not just a band.
They’re short story writers.
The Vamps’ latest musico-literary
effort, “Jonathan Low,” is aflutter
with the mysteries of a handsome
drifter. As a one-off contribution to
the forthcoming Twilight: Eclipse
soundtrack, the song is not of a
unified piece with Vampire Weekend
or Contra. It’s forced to wander on its
own and mingle with the hoi polloi,
hoping against hope that it won’t be
throttled by album-mates Muse or the
Dead Weather.
Upon first listen, “Low” doesn’t appear
to be concerned with rendering itself
immune to the taunts of neighborhood
bullies. Koenig starts the track with
a Totally 80s guitar figure – think the
opening strains of Rick Springfield’s
“Jessie’s Girl” – then has his comrades
overpower his light strum with a firm
blast of mandolin (yes, mandolin!).
By the 15-second mark, “Low”
seems to be aiming for a hybrid of
Working Class Dog and “The Battle
of Evermore.” Koenig’s vocals don’t
entirely betray this sensibility, as they
bounce amiably from Indie power
pop to accessible World. It’s full steam
ahead, like a ride on the Block
Island ferry.
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The track takes on an added
dimension when Rostam Batmanglij
unsheathes his electric strings. Though
Rostam is technically a “keyboardist,”
he’s fluent in many instruments and
multiple musical histories. He spikes
“Low” with a piquant dose of Classical,
triggering a chord progression that’s
oddly redolent of Johann Pachelbel’s
Canon in D Major. (Don’t give me
that face. You know this piece from
weddings, graduations, and jewelry
commercials. It’s pretty much joint at
the hip with Vivaldi’s Four Seasons,
signifying “class” to those of us who
have none.)
As one might deduce from its
constituent elements – lean Eighties
guitar, rapid-fire mandolin, and
Baroque composition – “Low” packs
an ethereal instrumental. Yet even as
its players soar above the clouds, the
song’s lyric sheet is rife with references
to the clay beneath our feet. There’s
a macabre aspect to this number,
a pesticide of sorts that’ll keep the
bullies at bay. Early in the track,
Jonathan Low is depicted as “Living
inside a house/Beneath the hanging
tree.” Later, Koenig transitions from
ugly portents to clear causes of
concern: “Violence from without/And
anger from within/Crawling through
the fields/Informing next of kin.”

Mr. Low is either a killer or a murder
victim. As such, his song is as
compatible with the Eclipse concept as
it was incompatible with the Contra LP.
By giving this single a little time in the
cellar, VW has found the right outlet
for its distribution.
Like the Vamps’ three earlier B-sides,
“Ladies of Cambridge,” “Ottoman,”
and “Giant,” “Low” is different from
the band’s proper album tracks – but
only subtly different. The distinction is
a hair-part or a mustache trim rather
than a complete face lift. “Low” is
a little darker and more menacing
than, say, “Campus” or “Cousins,”
but it’s still a VW short story, complete
with scene, protagonist, and sonic
signature. VW continue to do for
“Afropop” music what Hall & Oates
did for “Philadelphia Soul”: They
Anglicize and suburbanize it, not
in petty homage but in an effort to
domesticate a bastard idiom. The
Vamps order Indie and World in
effectively identical measures, then
make each item more palatable for
listeners at large. The result is neither
a disgrace nor an act of cultural
appropriation; it’s a triumph of pop
over pomp.
For all the fiction, fantasy, and
aspiration in the VW storyline, the
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band’s canon is based on a knowing
wink and a playful nudge. The private-
academy pretensions and Cape
Cod allusions are mere fodder for
the haters, of which there are many.
But when the Vamps’ discography is
reviewed as a whole, a simple truth
emerges: What initially sounds like a
gimmick quickly establishes itself as
an ethos. VW aren’t playing games;
they’re playing music. And when
my ship comes in, be it to Martha’s
Vineyard or Bayonne harbor, I want
to hear “Mansard Roof” coruscating
out of the dock-side jukebox. I enjoy
feeling like I’ve made it, even if I’m
an island’s-length removed from
respectability. Vamps like us, baby, we
were born to run. And someday, we
just might get our victory lap.
(June 4, 2010)
Katy Perry
California Gurls
Here we are, just three days into
summer, and the annual flex-off for
Song of the Season is all but over.
Katy Perry’s “California Gurls” is
running the musical equivalent of a
West Coast offense, first befuddling
its competitors with flash and dash,
then jacking up the score with extreme

prejudice. The track has been the #1
song in America for only two weeks,
but it’s held sway as our country’s
most ubiquitous single since it was
released in early May. “Gurls” is
dominating every pop medium, from
radio to video to digital download,
which all but confirms that our
instruments of promotion act in semi-
conspiratorial concert rather than
proud independence. The song is so
pervasive that I sat down to write this
review without having heard Perry’s
opus in its entirety. I’ve since corrected
this glib point of entry, but, truth be
told, I was never being particularly
cocky or bold; I was just being
reasonable. Because when a single
gives you a bum’s rush of the “Hey,
Soul Sister” or “Run this Town” variety,
you don’t have to actively listen to it to
hear its message.
And Ms. Perry’s message, insofar as
she has one, is “Put away the posing
oil and pick up the suntan lotion.”
“Gurls” offers an endless summer to
friends and foes alike, displacing diva
snark and one-upmanship with the
glossy confidence of a pusher who
knows that her product is the best on
the market. Ironically, “Gurls” is not
the best summer song on the market.
(Robyn’s “Dancing on My Own,” Mark
Ronson’s “Bang Bang Bang,” and
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Janelle Monáe’s “Locked Inside” are
all of a higher caliber.) But Perry is not
selling her song, per se. She’s selling
California – which, despite its crippling
debt and heinous White Zinfandel,
isn’t likely to be outdone by Missouri
or Connecticut on the public relations
front. The state’s female contingent
has been internationally renowned
since Brian Wilson was but a gleam
in his overbearing father’s eye. So,
at bottom, Perry’s song functions to
remind us of what we already know:
that California girls are irresistible,
unforgettable, and undeniable.
Each of these adjective is used in the
song’s lyrics, and they are easily the
longest words that Katy deigns to toss
at us fawning submentals. Summer
songs are not composed to pique the
intellect. If anything, they’re stridently
insentient, awash in glad tidings and
feel-good rhythms. “Gurls” delivers
on both accounts, bringing the breezy,
the bouncy, and the melodic in family-
size portions. Perry co-wrote the track
with a pair of Scandinavian Billboard
busters, Dr. Luke and Max Martin. This
translates into music that’s jam-packed
with electronic ripples and computer-
manipulated emoting. The result, in
effect, is a very good Miley Cyrus song.
A synth-laden beat, tactfully smuggled
over the border from parochial guido

to international house, flares up into a
disco-glam guitar figure. It’s as if a Chic
bass line were given a quick Prince
polish, then hyperlinked to the 21st
century. The track should have its own
Twitter feed, if only to prove that it’s
alive, self-aware, and of the moment.
Perry’s vocals are demonstrably
modern. When she sings “You could
travel the world/But nothing comes
close to the Golden coast,” her voice
is Auto-Tuned into a condition of
sterility. Despite its frequent references
to scantily clad women, “Gurls” is
ultimately too camp to be sexy. Its goal
is to charm, not to titillate.
Perhaps that’s why Perry turns to
Snoop Dogg to lend the track an
extra dizzle of narrative fluency. Snoop
welcomes us to Cali with a short
spoken-word intro, then ushers us out
with a playful closing verse. In doing
so he joins Ice Cube and Dr. Dre in the
pantheon of West Coast rappers who
have handed in their strap for a full clip
of crossover appeal. The Dogfather
has more or less been a high-profile
musical prop ever since the “Beautiful”
buzz died down in late 2003. He’ll work
with anyone (see the Andrew Dice Clay
collab), and he usually gets the job
done. On “Gurls,” he spits short, suave
rhymes, capping his guest stint with
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“Katy, my lady/Lookie here, baby/I’m
all up on ya/Cuz you representin’
California.” This is pretty prosaic stuff
from a man who was once the poet
laureate of Long Beach. But, in the
end, we can’t help but think that it ain’t
nothin’ but a G thang – as in, “How
many G’s is Katy paying Snoop for this
cameo?” Wes’side reputations don’t
come cheap.
It’s instructive to note that Perry
considers “Gurls” to be something
of an answer song to Jay-Z’s “Empire
State of Mind.” And while it’s a bit
heady for KP to go tete-a-tete with
Hovi, you can’t blame a California girl
for trying. But you can call her out for
falling short. I grew up directly across
the river from Manhattan, in a satellite
city that bundled a higher crime rate
with a lower tax bracket. As such,
I hold a Jersey-fortified antipathy
toward the big-money grandeur and
cultural arrogance of New York. Yet
I still fell hook, line, and sinker for
“Empire.” The beat is tight, the MC
is a virtuoso, and the chorus girl’s got
pipes that could channel the lower
Hudson into Newark Bay. “Empire”
captured the 24/7 hustle and flow
that’s central to New York’s identity,
both as the Tri-State’s backbone and
the business capital of the world.
The song’s sound, circumstance, and

drama conspired to induce chills.
“Gurls” doesn’t supply the same
anthemic firepower. It simply tickles
your fancy until you scream “Uncle!”
and succumb to a guiltless belly laugh.
This may seem to be a lower form of
art, but maybe that’s Perry’s point:
Look to New York for the histrionics
and the striving. Here in California,
we’re all about entertainment.
I can accept this explanation. I just
hope that the East Coast-West Coast
beef doesn’t regenerate its more
malicious appendages. If Suge Knight
were to smoke Alicia Keys, Ke$ha
would have to be put down as a matter
of consequence – which, on a strictly
hypothetical level, might not be such
a bad thing. Thankfully, however, we
can stand reasonably assured that
New York and Los Angeles will not
only coexist amicably but feed off each
other. Songs like “Gurls” and “Empire”
reach such exalted heights because
both coasts are pumping and priming
the hype machine. When “Empire”
started to fade, “Gurls” stepped in to
pick up the slack. With an eye towards
summer, it arrived with a trunk-load
of silliness. (Have you seen the song’s
video? It looks like a soft-core Fanta
commercial.) Yet as the swimsuits and
tank tops were unpacked, a telling
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truth was revealed: Although the
track’s sound is ersatz, its appeal is
realer than Real Deal Holyfield.
“Gurls” is a phenomenon of the first
order. And as I ogle the myriad pop
numbers that cross my laptop, I find
myself opting for a slight modification
of Brian Wilson’s classic refrain: I don’t
wish they all could be California Gurls,
but I’ll allow Ms. Perry to melt my
Popsicle until something better
comes along.
(June 24, 2010)
The Kills
Pale Blue Eyes
The Levi’s Pioneer Sessions constitute
the musical arm of the company’s “Go
Forth” advertising campaign. If you’ve
missed the TV spots, you’ve missed
consortia of uncommonly athletic men
and women running through fields
and setting off fireworks, apparently
at random and without regard for
trespassing laws. As these kids streak,
rampage, and generally whoop it up, a
Whitman’s sampler of Leaves of Grass
couplets are counted off in the voice-
over. “Pioneers O Pioneers!” makes
for logical source material, and its lines
are quoted freely:

Come my tan-faced children
Follow well in order, get your
weapons ready
Have you your pistols, have you your
sharp-edged axes?
...We must bear the brunt of danger
We the youthful sinewy races, all the
rest on us depend
By the end of the spot, your blood is
stirred and your loins are lubed. But
you’re also left scratching your head.
What, exactly, have you just witnessed?
A Hitler Youth recruitment film? An
especially strident preamble to Season
Two of Jersey Shore? Or a uniquely
American call to arms?
I happen to be a pretty big Walt
Whitman fan. As a writer, he swung
for the fences even as he imagined
a world where fences would be
rendered immaterial. In the context of
the Pioneer Sessions, however, don’t
his words sound just a trifle bigoted?
“Tan faces” and “sinewy races”
recondition the conventional jeans
commercial as a Digital Age exercise
in eugenics. As any student of history
can tell you, manifest destiny loses
some of its romance after that destiny
has been made manifest – particularly
when it’s clotted with lynchings,
border skirmishes, and dead Indians.
We might want to move beyond
an ideology that predates Plessy v.
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Ferguson. Reconstruction was a real
bitch, especially for the dungareed
classes.
But let’s drop the politics for the
moment, and focus on the tunes.
The Pioneer Sessions, quite ironically,
are a Levi’s-mediated program of
covers songs. Contemporary artists
rework classic pop, rock, and hip hop
joints, pioneering nothing but the
degree of corporate outreach into
the independent music scene. From
a thematic standpoint, Levi’s would
have been wiser to shelve “Pioneers
O Pioneers!” in favor of Whitman’s
“Song of Myself.” In this poem, Walt
states “I bequeath myself to the dirt,
to grow from the grass I love/If you
want me again, look for me under your
bootsoles.” Kind of flips the cosmos
on “Don’t tread on me!,” doesn’t
it? “Song” is the most generous of
Whitman poems. The writer reframes
eternal life as an organic resurrection,
in which every foot that descends into
the soil upturns a thousand sleeping
spirits. This is a great metaphor for a
covers collection. After all, what is a
cover song if not an earnest retread?
And I’ll say this for the Sessions: The
covers that Levi’s have unearthed
to date run the gamut from the
earnest to the spectacular. Highlights

include Nas’ sleek update of Slick
Rick’s “Hey Young World,” the Dirty
Projectors’ good-humored treatment
of Bob Dylan’s “I Dreamed I Saw St.
Augustine,” and the Shins’ acoustic
version of Squeeze’s “Goodbye Girl.”
Overall, the terrain has been friendly,
and comes with welcome variations in
topography.
The Session’s latest release, the Kills’
take on the Velvet Underground’s
“Pale Blue Eyes,” is notable for its
retrospective revelation: If the Kills’
Alison Mosshart had been around in
1967, Nico would have been out of a
job and Lou Reed might have found
a muse less destructive than heroin.
Mosshart sings the track masterfully
– which, in a sense, means that she
doesn’t sing it at all. “Pale Blue Eyes”
is never going to cue a running of
the bulls, be they in Pamplona or
on Wall Street. The song is a quiet
resignation, lamenting a love lost and
an idyll defaced. As such, it’s kind of an
anti-Pioneer anthem. Rather than go
forth, “Pale Blue Eyes” hangs backs,
content to arrive fifth, sixth, seventh,
or twenty-eighth – whichever number
manages to help the protagonist
lose all semblance of momentum.
The Velvets excelled at down-tempo
drone and sonic indolence, with the
space between their notes indicating a
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rough mix of laziness and intoxication.
I can’t think of a song I’d rather not
run through a field to than “Pale Blue
Eyes.” Its stark minimalism is the very
antithesis of Whitman’s transcendental
bounty.
Yet the song obviously proved
inspirational to Mosshart and her Kills
collaborator, Jamie Hince – otherwise
they wouldn’t have chosen to cover it.
The duo remain convincingly faithful
to the original, just adding a little
more rollick and sobriety. Where Reed
and company sound dreamy and
untethered, Mosshart and Hince have
their boots on the ground. Beneath
their soles lay tighter chords and more
discernible feelings.
Hince’s strumming is slack but wary,
ever vigilant for the chorus and
the next verse. Mosshart’s vocals
recall a punkier, artier Chrissie
Hynde, discovering that her city, her
innocence, and her man were gone.
Still, she survives, calmly articulating
Reed’s distinctions between
conception and reality: “I thought of
you as my mountain top/I thought
of you as my peak/I thought of you
as everything I could not keep.” The
vibe is less outright surrender – to
sorrow, pity, and self-loathing – than
casual forgiveness. In this way, the
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Kills’ “Pale Blue Eyes” sparkle with here and now – finding kinship with
some of the cautious optimism of LCD Soundsystem’s “All I Want” – as
Concrete Blonde’s “Joey,” which it is of the then and there – borrowing
Johnette Napolitano memorably some of the negative charge from the
closes by intoning “Joey, I’m not angry Velvets’ “Sister Ray.” In the process,
anymore.” it captures the in-between, sounding
like the Modern Lovers singing about
The Kills don’t sound angry, just a modern love. Graded as an item of
bit disappointed. This sentiment is observation, rather than revolution, the
in keeping with the left-of-normal song shines. It won’t foment free dope
scene that the Velvets helped launch. or fucking in the streets – but, for a
If “Pale Blue Eyes” came out today, jeans commercial, it’s not half bad.
Pitchfork would be on it like white
(July 21, 2010)
on rice, championing it as a zeitgeist
track. And they’d be right: The song
sounds current in ways that “Come
Blitzen Trapper
Together,” “Sugar, Sugar,” and “I
Destroyer of the Void
Heard It Through the Grape Vine”
simply can’t. The great pop bands of
In his capacity as lead singer and
the 1960s, including the Beatles and
songwriter for Blitzen Trapper, Eric
the Rolling Stones, weren’t afraid to
Earley has shown striking aptitude
experiment, to bounce off the walls
for verse-chorus-verse constructions.
until their blood began to boil and
Tracks such as “Furr,” “Wild Mountain
their skin became scabbed. But the
Nation,” and “God & Suicide” carry
Velvets always did them one better:
the sobriety of bardy precision even as
They ripped the scab away in one
they flaunt the abandon of electric rock
quick, fearless motion, leaving blood
and roll. Earley often seems dedicated
on the floor. They were the pioneers –
to wielding his wares in the service
the youthful sinewy race on whom the
of a classic rock reclamation project,
future of independent rock depended.
wherein stalwarts like Neil Young and
Bob Dylan join hands with upstarts
Mosshart and Hince do a nice job
like Ten Years After and the James
of documenting the history that the
Gang. But his music also saves room
Underground set in motion. Their
for modern themes and latter-day
“Pale Blue Eyes” is as much of the
influences, including Beck, Pavement,

97

and Wilco. These artists supply the
lo-fi, slacker tones that help prevent
Blitzen’s songs from becoming too
tight or cerebral. After all, Harvest and
Blood on the Tracks have been done
before – and no post-millennial band
stands a chance of topping
the originals.
“Destroyer of the Void” represents a
semi-surprising change of direction for
Blitzen. It’s not that they’ve forsaken
Harvest or Blood; it’s that they’ve
spliced the acoustic pride of mid-
Seventies Young and Dylan onto the
DNA of Dark Side of the Moon. On
“Destroyer,” the prairie winds meet
the lunar fringe, and the point of
intersection sounds strangely like the
Beatles adrift in the cosmos. Earley
does away with linear narration and
the trusty refrain, burying his old spells
like a Pacific Northwest Prospero.
Still, more than a modicum of Blitzen’s
early magic remains, largely because
Earley can separate “concept” from
“structure,” and write a song that
remains thematically intact despite
frequent shifts in style and tempo.
I won’t lie to you: “Destroyer” does
occasionally skirt the outer borders
of listener comprehension. That
said, listener comprehension is not a
prerequisite for listening pleasure. The
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track gives no quarter to art school
elitisms, whereby the challenge of
“getting it” usurps the commitment
to songcraft. Earley never attempts
to deceive or outsmart us; he simply
makes it plain that, on this particular
journey, he prefers the detour to the
paved road. Clocking in at six-plus
minutes, and composed of four
distinct song suites, “Destroyer” is as
dynamic a freak-folk song as anything
we’ve heard during the Chillwave
Era. It’s a kind of sonic second cousin
to MGMT’s “Flash Delirium,” with
melodies and motifs that last for just a
few bars, then are torn asunder by the
imagination of the composer.
Which is not to say that “Destroyer”
is discordant or abrasive. If I was
forced to describe the song in one
word, I’d go with “harmonious.” And
I’d do it for two reasons: 1) Blitzen’s
vocal harmonies are pitch perfect
throughout the track, and 2) Earley’s
sequential song suites operate in
concert to form a unified whole. The
effect is not a collection of short
stories but a series of book chapters,
each subordinating individual glory for
collective integrity.
The suites are best understood as
loose patches of rock history stitched
together by highly competent

musicians. For its first minute,
“Destroyer” is in thrall to CSN
harmonies that allude to Queen at
their most bohemian and rhapsodic.
Harpsichord-like keys soon enter
the pool of voices, providing a crash
course in the studio phrases of the
Beatles: The warm psychedelics recall
Magical Mystery Tour, while the forlorn
strings remind us of “While My Guitar
Gently Weeps.”
This contemplative chapter gives way
to astral synths and copious “ohh”s
and “ahh”s, flipping the Beatles
weathercock in the direction of “Lovely
Rita” and “Something.” Yet as the
track ambles forward, the George
Harrison textures slowly morph into
a Joe Walsh guitar solo. This arena-
rock flourish informs the next episode,
which sounds like Axl Rose covering
Mountain. The pace picks up, fingers
become fleeter, and feet start to
stomp. Earley sings like he’s got a
rattlesnake in his throat, lending shake
and sizzle to every vocal line.
This third suite will please long-time
Blitzen devotees, as it follows the
band’s signature formula: verse-
driven struggle resolved in a choral
catharsis. But before the listener gets
too comfortable or nostalgic, Earley
downshifts into the song’s final section,
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BETWIXT/BETWEEN
a piano ballad that’s equally earthy
and ethereal. “Destroyer” is the title
track from Blitzen’s most recent album,
and it’s in this soft, spacey, searching
place that the LP reveals its essence.
The record is a bildungsroman
without bombast, and the single
is something of a synecdoche: An
abbreviated representation of the
aggregate, complete with wild ideas
and grounded testimony. Earley may
have ignored the amber lights of the
four-minute mark, but he keeps his
lyrics clipped and crisp. “Destroyer”
begins with the line, “Here’s to the
lone and wayward son,” a lean phrase
that somehow conflates T. S. Eliot’s
“Let us begin then, you and I” with the
cornfed rock of Kansas.
Blitzen are high and low, realistic and
romantic, alternating road-weary wit
(“I fell in with men who were wicked
in the end”) with misty visions of
dragons, wizards, and similarly symbolic
characters from the Land of Make
Believe. This marriage of man and myth
defines “Destroyer,” which plays a bit
like Dylan on acid. (The song is tangled
up in tambourine men, if you will.) Its
story is prone to loops and tangents,
but the tale’s hero brings it on home in
the end. When Earley sings “The future
is winging like a bird/Out over the void/
And all my petty crimes and curses,

they are destroyed,” he completes
the arc of sin and redemption. It might
sound like wishful thinking, but is hope
really all that audacious when one’s
dues have been paid, one’s stature
has been earned, and one’s guitar is
decidedly in tune?
Like country rock and plugged-in folk,
cynical pop has been done before, and
done exceedingly well. So perhaps
Earley is telling us that it’s time for
Bright Side of the Moon. The lunatic
remains on the grass, but he’s free to
dash headlong into the forest without
fear of capture or punishment. The
Blitzen songbook has always been
open to the possibilities of, well,
possibilities. And while “Destroyer”
is a break from the past, it honors
the band’s “Don’t fence me in”
ethic. You’re free to choose your own
adventure. Then you’re beholden to
deal the consequences. Rock and roll is
a big-tent affair, but it has no room for
the unimaginative.
(July 1, 2010)
Ray LaMontagne
Beg Steal or Borrow
Even on the doggiest of summer days,
Ray LaMontagne can give you chills.
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His voice is one of the five deadliest
weapons in contemporary pop music,
the other four being Jay-Z’s digital
Rolodex, Max Martin’s production
board, Lady Gaga’s hat rack, and Justin
Bieber’s undescended testes.
Among the contributors to this
fearsome arsenal, only Jay and Ray can
make credible claims to immortality.
Both produce music that’s fit for
annals – in Jay’s case, the annals of
urban cool; in Ray’s case, the annals
of frontier anxiety. Nearly all of
LaMontagne’s songs feature a man
in the midst of crisis, seeking a token
female comfort or the redemptive
buzz of manual labor. On his very first
single, “Jolene,” Ray put it this way:
“A man needs something he can hold
on to/A 9-pound hammer or a woman
like you.” I’ve heard these lines more
than a hundred times, and they still
elicit a standing ovation from the hairs
on the back of my neck. Some of the
blame can be accorded to the beauty
of the lyric. But most of the culpability
belongs to Ray’s husky, beleaguered
baritone.
LaMontagne’s latest single, “Beg
Steal or Borrow,” isn’t quite as raw or
affecting as his Trouble-era material,
but it hosts the quiet desperation that’s
long pervaded his acoustic canon.

The song’s themes are evergreen:
ennui and wanderlust – or, translated
into the vernacular of American folk,
closed minds and open roads. This
tradition, however, is tempered by a
small slice of novelty: LaMontagne
now has an official backing band, the
Pariah Dogs, who patch up the empty
spaces that a solo performer is obliged
to leave unattended. This adds girth
to Ray’s sound even as it robs it of the
immediacy that “one man, one guitar”
seems expressly designed to deliver.
“Beg” is warmer and thicker than
“Jolene,” yet it has little of the latter’s
bleary-eyed starkness or material
urgency. This track conjures emotions,
not tears. And it communicates that
LaMontagne, for better or for worse,
has pushed past the boundaries of
first-person songwriting.
Consider the song’s first line: “So your
hometown’s bringing you down.” On
Trouble, Ray would have scrambled
the perspective, and gone with “My
hometown’s bringing me down” –
or perhaps something less direct
and more poetic, so as to color the
composition confused, wayward, and
romantic. But this is not Trouble. And
this is not Ray LaMontagne circa 2004.
His maturity is marked by his ability
to transcend the self and become a
story teller divorced from personal
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involvement in the story. If before he
was confessing, now he’s testifying.
Let’s not make too much of this
adjustment in narrative handle.
LaMontagne’s most bankable asset is
still his voice, a bellow that packages
grit and grace in a manner that recalls
Van Morrison, Joe Cocker, and Bobby
Womack. Part country, part soul, this
voice gives “Beg” a steady hand
and an honest intensity. Ray paints
a Hopper-like portrait of small-town
angst, his claustrophobic protagonist
itching for a taste of whatever the
highway might bring. The single
slowly blossoms into a harvest of old
influences and contemporary passions.
It packs the sober drive of Neil Young’s
“Old Man” and the country twang
of Crosby, Stills, and Nash’s “Teach
Your Children,” thus reimagining the
aesthetic possibilities of the CSNY
franchise. It also carries the backwoods
stomp that Jack White recently
brought back to Nashville, as well as
the unplugged, “let-it-grow” fervor
that Blitzen Trapper and Fleet Foxes
have planted in the Pacific Northwest.
When you combine this pastoral
conviction with postmodern unease,
you get LaMontagne’s call to action:
“One of these days it’s gonna be right/
Soon you’ll find your legs and go/And
stay gone.”

This take-to-the-road spirit is part and
parcel of Outlaw Country. But it’s also
the essence of second-generation
classic rock, a genre that derives
much of its directional integrity
from “We gotta get out while we’re
young/’Cause tramps like us, baby,
we were born to run!” Take away
the exclamation mark and you’re
left with the dry-palmed gravity that
LaMontagne imparts to “Beg.” By
replacing the Jersey fist pump with a
hinterland beard stroke, Ray converts
the fuel of Born to Run into the fire of
Darkness on the Edge of Town. His
song’s chorus – “Young man, full of big
plans/Thinking about tomorrow/Young
man, you’re gonna make a stand/You
beg, you steal, you borrow” – could be
the rich man’s rebuttal to the attitudes
expressed in “Badlands.” And the final
couplets of the final verse – “Dreamin’
of the day you’re gonna pack your
bags, put the miles away/Just grab
your girl and go where no one knows
you/Oh, what will all the old folks say?”
– sounds an awful lot like the entreaty
that Springsteen used to seal the fate
of “Prove It All Night”:
Baby, tie your hair back in a long
white bow
Meet me in the fields, behind the
dynamo
You hear their voices telling you not
to go
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They’ve made their choices and they’ll
never know
What it means to steal, to cheat, to lie
What it’s like to live and die
To prove it all night
The difference, of course, is the
degree of estrangement; which,
almost as a matter of course, plays
like a difference in the degree of
commitment. Whereas the Boss has
hatched his own escape plan – and
is trying desperately to convince his
girl that his love, his ambition, and
his promises are worth the risk –
LaMontagne is merely reporting on
another man’s predicament. The crisis
is still there, but it’s existential rather
than elemental, with the protagonist
thinking too much and doing too little.
There’s a truth to this approach. In the
planetary aggregate, more small-town
flights are conceived than carried
through. But the drama, as it were, is
with the getaway car. If a young man
is willing to beg, steal, or borrow, then
he should be ready to steal, cheat,
and lie – that is, to lay it all on the
line and never look back. Sure, such
terminology places us squarely in
the theater of the cliché; but clichés
only become clichés because they’re
commonly understood. This familiarity
eventually breeds contempt, as the

phrase is overused to the point of
vulgarity. Good songwriting, however,
should be vulgar, meaning that it’s
obliged to allow a certain measure of
demotic comprehension and popular
buy-in. But it should also be refined,
demanding that its craftsman show
an uncommon flair for the interplay of
sound, word, and image.
Songwriters like Bruce Springsteen and
Ray LaMontagne are national treasures
because they need just three chords
and four minutes to turn the mundane
into the extraordinary. On “Beg,”
LaMontagne doesn’t quite complete
this magical transformation. We get his
voice, which is beautiful, but we don’t
get his personal perspective, which is
essential. There’s gossip in this grain,
but it feels oddly detached, like a
second-hand account made to stand
in for the whispers of the prime mover.
I’d prefer Ray uncensored, unfiltered,
and unfettered. He’s talented enough
to go it alone.
(July 5, 2010)
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Mark Ronson &
the Business Intl
Lose It (In the End)
Mark my words: Record Collection,
the hotly anticipated LP from Mark
Ronson & his Business Intl, will be the
pop album of the year. This is not an
entirely naked prediction. I make it
on the strength of three pre-released
singles – “Bang Bang Bang,” “Lose
It (In the End),” and “The Bike Song”
– which, in their aggregate, feature a
transatlantic guest list that includes
everyone but Mary Queen of Scots.
Each song is infused with the zeitgeist,
playing out that ever-deliberate battle
between the high-tech and the human,
the turntable and the guitar rack, the
dance floor and the concert stage.
Ronson not only has his finger on the
pulse of Young Anglo-America, he’s
also dictating the normative range of
beats per minute. His headphones
serve as something of a stethoscope:
The man is Dr. Pop, alternately
supplying remedies and issuing
prognoses.
“Lose It” is his most compelling brand
of medicine – not because it goes it
down easier than “Bang” or “Bike,”
but because it has a longer period of
efficacy. I’ve been listening to the track
several times a day for the past two
weeks, and it’s still growing on me. The

beat is epic, occupying the heretofore
unpopulated sphere between a
truncated Bach toccata and an amped-
up version of “The Legend of Zelda”
theme. It’s both Baroque and digital,
balancing technical command with
contrapuntal swagger, as if to prove
that the act of “dropping science” can
be performed either in the laboratory
or on the street corner.
Much of this science is dropped by
Ghostface Killah, the V.I.P. MC whom
Ronson recruits to spark the track.
Ghost bounds into the beat, bringing
an earnest grit to the song’s pulsating,
video game undertone. Like all Wu-
Tang veterans, Ghost knows how to
back you up and beguile you at the
same time, issuing vague threats and
pointed humor in rapid sequence. For
my money, the track’s choicest couplet
concerns Ghost’s take on the lubricants
of love: “I stay in clubs drinkin’ the
white gin/’Cuz y’all girls is poison,
peace to Mike Bivins.” That’s the first
Bell Biv DeVoe reference I’ve heard
since the mid-Nineties. And Ghost
pulls it off without a hitch, quickly
moving from old friends to newer
editions. His two verses are short but
memorable: all Killah, no filler.
The toughest job on “Lose It” falls
to Alex Greenwald, lead singer of
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Phantom Planet and returning Ronson
collaborator. He draws the unenviable
task of bookending Ghost’s guest
verses with an airy R&B hook. Those
familiar with Wu lore will recall that
the only man deemed fit to introduce
Ghost is the late, great Ol’ Dirty
Bastard. I doubt that Greenwald would
deign to lace up ODB’s mud-caked
Tims, but, in the interest of Ronson’s
track, he serviceably carries the vocal
component, sounding at once poppy
and forlorn – that is, English.
After all, the Business Intl are not quite
as cosmopolitan as their name might
imply. Their formula, as devised by
Ronson, is to conflate American hip
hop with British dance pop. This is a
slight deviation from Ronson’s previous
obsession, which was to pair U.K. neo-
soul with classic Motown. Inevitably,
both productions derive from the same
place: the post-millennial recording
studio. Ronson is like a three-star chef
in a test kitchen – prone to intrepid
experimentation, but smart enough
to keep the ingredients palatable. His
genre-bending is impressive because
it’s not forced. Ronson largely adheres
to the blues-based traditions of the
American and English pop canons,
mixing R&B with hip hop and rock
with funk.

This is a rather polite way of saying
that he doesn’t punish his audience
with cold, unattenuated, Moroderized
forms. Twenty-minute synthscapes, all
hard and minimalist, are simply not
his style.
“Lose It” clocks in at a swift 2:27.
Contained therein is an expert
instrumental build, Greenwald’s deft
interludes, Ghost’s wicked rhymes,
several hype horn samples, and a
closing bell of pounding percussion.
Ronson’s track covers a lot of ground,
but it’s neither overconceptualized
nor underdisciplined. It’s a generous,
master-class caliber pop gem.
I’m proud to have it in my record
collection. And I look forward to
meeting its brothers and sisters.
(August 14, 2010)
Cee-Lo Green
Fuck You
Although the year in pop music is
getting a little long in the tooth, it’s
been decidedly short on the type of
one-size-fits-all anthems that mislead
us into thinking that America still has
some semblance of cultural unity.
I’m speaking of songs that push the
threshold of universality, striking a
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wide enough stance to accommodate
three distinct generations, like a Patek
Philippe watch or the effects of a faulty
chromosome. Such singles are useful
because their onset of action isn’t
staggered. Mom, sis, and grandpa
could conceivably initiate an a capella
version of the tune at the Thanksgiving
dinner table, in between servings of
turkey and pumpkin pie. Pitch and key
aside, I’d argue that this impromptu
serenade is actually a good thing,
not just for familial bonding but for
national accord.
Let’s frame this debate in the fields of
2010’s pop crop. At some point during
the year, you’ve probably experienced
Train’s “Hey, Soul Sister” or Katy Perry’s
“California Gurls,” either in audio or
video form. Choose one track as your
baseline variable, then ask yourself the
following question, even if it’s entirely
hypothetical: Could this song maintain
the collective interest of me, my
children, and my parents for more than
a two-week period?
I’m going to hazard a guess. And
that guess is an emphatic “No.” Not
because the songs are inherently
flawed or improperly marketed, but
because pop music now adheres
to the promotional strategies of
blockbuster film: The opening
weekend means everything – so the

emphasis is placed on the preview, not
the feature. We expect epic turnover
in content and don’t like to look back
more than a month or so, for fear of
being called a straggler. Songs have
got to put up or shut up, which means
that many worthy singles are buried
prematurely, often to the sound of
silence.
I’m hoping that this will not be the
case for Cee-Lo Green’s “Fuck You.”
The track’s title will obviously fortify
its appeal to the under-18 set, who
require at least one expletive or sexual
reference per pop single. But make no
mistake: “Fuck You” is not a novelty
song. It succeeds in spite of (rather
than because of) its name. Green
dresses his track in casual chic attire,
supplying a head-bobbing rhythm and
a finger-snapping beat, each of which
is indebted to Motown’s Funk Brothers
and ATL’s prime hip-hop export,
OutKast.
Ultimately, the best measure of the
song’s merit is expressed in a single
data point: its level of infectiousness.
On a scale of 1 to 10, “Fuck You”
scores an 11 and change. It’s effective
immediately, like a bracing squirt
of hand sanitizer, a tart letter of
resignation, or “Hey Ya!” Yet it’s not
all wind up and no pitch. The song
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holds its grip for the duration of its run
time, from verse to chorus to bridge.
If anything, it gets progressively
better, channeling its pressure gauge
from firehose to fountain, leaving the
listener drenched in liquid gyrations of
melodic glory.
I can think of only one contemporary
pop single that’s as instantly
arresting as “Fuck You”: Robyn’s
“Dancing on My Own.” But even this
comparison is faulty, largely because
we’re dealing with a fundamental
difference in caliber. In terms of
overall infectiousness, Robyn merely
transmits a stomach flu. Cee-Lo,
on the other hand, delivers an STD
heretofore undocumented in the
clinical literature. To be less clever, and
more callous, the difference between
the communicability of “Dancing on
My Own” and “Fuck You” is analogous
to the difference between the relative
severity of HIV and AIDS.
I use an insensitive analogy because
“Fuck You” is designed to elicit a
strong reaction from the listener. The
lyrics are addressed to a recent ex,
whom Green encounters amidst his
daily routines and rituals. She’s with
her new boyfriend, and the passing
of the proverbial torch lights the fuse
on Cee-Lo’s barrage of f-bombs.

The cursing is neither gratuitous nor
especially angry; “F U!” is simply the
default reaction to witnessing one’s
lady with another man. We’re working
with known knowns here: She’s clearly
a whore and he’s clearly a douche. So
why not exploit the universality of the
situation?
That’s the irony of Cee-Lo’s pop
masterpiece: Here we have the most
radio-friendly single of the year, and
its title precludes it from being played
on the radio. Luckily for Green, no
one actually listens to radio anymore.
His track will blow up on the Internet,
spreading like wildfire along the
California coast. If he hopes to make
any money off “Fuck You,” he’d better
release it on iTunes before I finish
writing this sentence, like Taylor Swift
would’ve done in the event of a leak.
One song, however great, isn’t going
to sustain his momentum all the way
up to his album’s tentative release
date, in December.
But let’s not worry about that now.
Instead, let’s enjoy the track’s
transfixing piano clunk, soaring
harmonies, and jingle-jangle guitar.
The latter element reminds me of
the Spinners’ “It’s A Shame,” another
lamentation on the faithless woman,
but one where the R&B comes
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smooth and steady. “Fuck You” takes
an alternate route, using Cee-Lo’s
inimitable pipes and hyper-honest
lyrics as its central selling points.
Like another soul man with the last
name Green, Cee-Lo doesn’t sing
so much as sang. He can shift from
falsetto to croon in a single vocal line,
allowing the emotive to overpower
the intellectual. If “Crazy” was the
cerebral Cee-Lo, this is him at his most
instinctual. His wounds manifest in
the form of blame and petty derision.
“If I was richer/I’d still be with ya,” he
testifies, later upping the ante with
“I pity the foo-ooo-ool/Who falls in
love with you,” perhaps hoping that
his melisma will soften the slight. The
Best Supporting Vocals statuette goes
to Cee-Lo’s partners in harmony, who
throw in a timely “Ooops she’s a gold
digga/Just thought you should know
ni**a.” The delivery is so charming that
you’ll forget that Kanye West used the
same rhyme scheme five years ago.
Cee-Lo, however, is intrinsically
different from Kanye, Big Boi, and
virtually every other “urban” artist in
pop music. His vulnerabilities are the
essence of his appeal, not something
to be revealed merely to counter
charges of egomania. Green projects
a sort of anti-swagger, in which he’s
always being undermined by some

uncontrollable urge or irresistible
force. On “Crazy,” it was manic
depression. On “Fuck You,” it’s a
lady. Both times, the muse inspired
a cathartic track. By professing his
lunacy, Cee-Lo seemed to negotiate
the task of transcending it. And by
flipping off his ex, he’s taken the first
step toward forgetting her. This song is
that rare track worthy of vintage Prince:
wronged but upbeat, profane but
confessional, simple but funky.
“Fuck You” closes with a bout of
emasculated desperation, moving
from tenuous resolve to cry-baby
appeals. When Cee-Lo sees his little
red Corvette being piloted around
town by another fellow, he comes
spectacularly undone, pleading “Baby
baby baby why ya wanna hurt me so
bad?/I tried to tell my mama but she
told me ‘This is one for your dad’.”
The first line could come from a
Smokey Robinson ballad, the second
from an early Beatles number. Cee-
Lo winks even as he weeps, evincing
a musical economy that’s perfectly
attuned to today’s social media, where
curse-addled multitasking is not just
recommended but compulsory.
That said, Cee-Lo is probably a bit
too uncompromising to conquer the
mp3 generation, never mind their
CD- and vinyl-toting forebearers.
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He refuses to recognize the hard
boundaries between the confessional
and the anthemic, so his work tends
to alternate between seduction and
concussion. “Fuck You” aspires to
master both conditions by juggling a
personal statement with a universal
narrative. In practical terms, this means
that the song can’t decide whether
it wants to be liked by millions or
loved by thousands. To be fair, pop
songs never had to make this decision
when content was valuable and radio
was viable. But “Fuck You” doesn’t
have the luxury of an Alan Freed or a
Casey Kasem. It’s an anthem cruelly
deprived of a flag to salute – so it
assembles a salute all its own, using
little more than a frown of disgust and
an extended middle finger. For some,
this constitutes a freak flag. For others,
it represents a naughty little caprice.
For me, however, the filth and the funk
coalesce into the best pure pop single
of the year.
Whether or not we’re willing to
admit it, America needs this song. It
shouldn’t let a four-letter word stand
in its way, even if it’s used with extreme
prejudice and frightening repetition.
Perhaps today’s pop music has to be
adequately offended before it can
cease to be thoroughly offensive. Sure,
this is an opportunistic conjecture;

and, yes, I duly concede that your
contrary opinion is just as worthy as
mine. But if you’re more outraged by
Cee-Lo’s language than the fact that
“Love the Way You Lie” has been the
#1 song in the country for more than
a month, we’ll be hard pressed to find
even the slightest sliver of common
ground.
This polarization is symptomatic of
America’s current state of intractability.
We have many problems, from the
economic to the existential, but I think
our musical crisis still demands some
token attention. Simply put, a nation
of, by, and for the people deserves a
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far better soundtrack. Cee-Lo is trying
to provide it. And since we’re fortunate
enough to live in a liberal democracy,
we’re blessed with two distinct
choices: Either buy in or get the fuck
out of his way.
Vote red or blue, early or often, for
change or for stasis – but, for God’s
sake, at least have the conviction
to show up at the polls. Our pop
franchise is too valuable to bequeath
to an oligarchy of rhythmless MBAs.
Let’s take America back, one Billboard
slot at a time.
(August 22, 2010)
 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Anthony M. Verdoni is the president of

Green & Byrd, a fledgling advertising
firm based in Asbury Park, New Jersey.
He has written about pop music for
the better part of four years, garnering
several meaningless awards that
needn’t be specified here. He holds
diplomas and/or post-due tuition bills
from such schools as Boston College,
Rutgers University, Princeton University,
and P.S. 33 of Jersey City. Singles On
Speed is his first book. He intends to
write another – but he’s not sure when,
how, or why.

Singles On Speed is dedicated to Kenny Marino (1943 - 2010),

a classical music fan who was cruelly deprived of his coda.

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