All posts by Sarah Horne

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Futureheads – The Futureheads

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The Futureheads – The Futureheads (Sire)

This band exists on pure charm. Their self-titled debut sounds like what would happen if members of the Vienna (or in this case, Sunderland) Boys Choir grew up, learned guitar and started a band. The Futureheads combine impossibly thick Northern accents, punked-up gorgeous harmonies and precise guitars into a package that is winning, listenable, and—yes—touching. Their bio cites Kate Bush, Devo, Queen and Fugazi as influences, and you can hear all of these and more without the songs straying into derivative territory.

The subject matter of the songs ranges effortlessly, cheekily even, from robots to the first day on your new job to drowning—not your typical post-punk Wire-happy material. Add a well-executed, perfectly placed Kate Bush cover (“Hounds Of Love”) and you have possibly one of the most original albums of the past five years. It is not hyperbole to admit that the first time I listened to this album I felt drugged (happy drugs-drugged, not somebody-put-roofies-in-my-drink-and-I-just-woke-up-in-a-basement drugged). I couldn’t stop smiling.

After the initial giddiness wears off, you realize that there’s much more than goofy aural Prozac operating here. About that song about drowning—it took me a few listens to realize that it isn’t literally about drowning; it’s a rueful examination of the disintegration of a relationship where one person doesn’t want to work at it anymore. The metaphor would feel heavy-handed if they didn’t structure it so beautifully. In hushed, nearly a cappella verses, the singer (all of the band members sing at various points, and with little in the CD sleeve to guide me it’s difficult to tell who sings what and when) describes the drowning: “It cut through the water as we watched it getting closer / And you said that it would soon fall down the drain / You said it didn’t matter but then that is you all over / And the danger of the water meant it wasn’t worth the bother.” It is gorgeous, and it stands out starkly from the rest of the songs.

This album stands out. Go buy it.

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Rilo Kiley – More Adventurous

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Rilo Kiley – More Adventurous (Brute/Beaute)

If Rilo Kiley were a person, it would be a prom queen at two a.m.—gorgeous, world-weary, lipstick-smeared, desperately trying to convince you that she’s a little bit bad. Their latest release, More Adventurous, also fits this fictitious persona. It’s got attitude for miles and a grace and confidence that help make up for the tiny flaws that humanize it.

The album starts out with “It’s A Hit,” which contains some fairly facile comparisons of the current White House to a chimp that throws its own “shit at the enemy,” but the anger and tone of the song, along with the tight instrumentations and melodies, help the listener forgive its flaws. “Portions For Foxes” deserves to be on every radio station everywhere. It’s an absolutely flawless, gleeful New Wave shout of a song that at the same time admits, “I know I’m alone whether I’m with or without you.”

The two highlights of the album come back-to-back: “I Never” and “The Absence Of God.” It’s been widely reported that singer Jenny Lewis stripped naked in the recording booth in order to create a feeling of being more exposed. The result is absolutely stunning—a modern doo-wop girl group song that finds the narrator admitting “I’m afraid habits rule my waking life / I’m scared and I’m running in my sleep for you.” “The Absence Of God” is reminiscent of Kate Bush’s “Moments Of Pleasure,” another sad, gorgeous wisp of a song that muses over God, love, and death while (presumably) namechecking people in the songwriter’s life (“And Mike, I’ll teach you how to swim / if you turn the bad in me into good again”).

Jenny Lewis’s voice, by turns warm, bouncy, growling and resigned, carries the album through its wild experimental fits and is so gorgeous that by every song’s end you believe that Rilo Kiley could pull off speed metal. There are people who feel that the inclusion of guitarist Blake Sennett’s songs, something that Rilo Kiley has done on each album, is a misstep. The example found here (“Ripchord”) is a bit jarring in its placement, but it’s a lovely, shy song that deserves to be heard as much as anything else on the album.

This album is enough to keep both first-time listeners and seasoned fans happy—a feat that is so difficult to do these days, Rilo Kiley really must be able to do anything.

Rilo Kiley mp3s available across the web from their previous labels: Saddle-Creek and Barsuk.

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Mclusky – The Difference Between Me And You Is That I’m Not On Fire

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Mclusky – The Difference Between Me And You Is That I’m Not On Fire (Too Pure)

Let this never be said about Mclusky: They’re boring.

This, either: They lack substance under all the guitars, yelping bombast, and snarkiness. While they clearly revel in their role as the kids at the back of the indie-rock class who won’t sit down, shut up and listen, or stop putting gum in your hair, there are clear moments throughout The Difference… that reveal a dark, scary heart beating amidst the goofiness.

All of their signature elements are here. The titles and one-liners that induce that embarrassing type of snorting giggle are present as ever, yet there’s a new element present that was difficult to detect on their previous efforts: they are, at times (gasp) earnest. “Without MSG I Am Nothing,” remarks “you are the only one who has no trousers on / good audition!” yet manages to sound pointed and resigned when it concludes “everywhere I look is a darkness.” “That Man Will Not Hang,” meanwhile, sports the narrative “that man realized he wanted to have children with this girl / he pulled her to his side and quietly / gave away his heart like it was his to give away.” This is clearly not the same Mclusky that famously hollered “My love is bigger than your love, we take more drugs than a touring funk band!”

The most curious example of this newer, softer, fuzzier Mclusky comes with the closer, “Support Systems.” It comes in slowly, with muttered, fuzzy vocals ruminating on bipeds, life, and being made of skin. Just before it leaps to its final howled refrain of “Salt and its stains!” it slips in the Roald Dahl-esque sentiment “Think of death as a medium-sized yellow robot / that should help.” How that’s supposed to help isn’t clear, but it feels like the end of a fairy tale and sounds by turns drunk, hapless, and angry. Mclusky Does Death, inimitably.

Other high points: The mid-tempo “She Will Only Bring You Happiness,” which cheerfully announces “Our old singer is a sex criminal,” while “Your Children Are Waiting For You To Die” begins with a hilariously off-key acoustic duet, then morphs into sneering, sarcastic revelations like “Your children are just waiting for a chance.” The titular subject of “You Should Be Ashamed, Seamus,” is skewered by being told “You should be abridged, Seamus.” How many other bands can get away with talking about abridgment? “Slay!” takes the soft/loud dynamic to the absolute extreme, with whispered vocals and a screamed chorus with meaty, thumpy riffs that would make lesser bands cry.

Mclusky is a very smart band. They are a band that, if they ever decided to take a political bent to their lyricism, might possibly take over the world. But they’re clearly having too much fun with language and sound to ever do that. And this listener wouldn’t have it any other way.

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Pilot To Gunner – Get Saved

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Pilot To Gunner – Get Saved (Arena Rock)

What we have here is a record that made me feel not the normal highs and lows of experiencing an album for the first time, but almost as though I’ve been robbed. All of the elements of a good record are there—hooky melodies, a solid, music-can-save-you-and-your-future-children opening/title track, a cheeky sense of irony. The problem is that so does everything else these days. When all the aforementioned elements are put together in a way-too-slick production and sound like they’re performed by Appealing Rock Singer Prototype One™, we got a problem here. I found myself wanting to scream at them, “TRY HARDER!”

Yes, I’m very sorry that you’ve spent a great deal of your musical careers opening for bigger bands and being underappreciated, but did you have to write a song about it (“Hey Carrier”)? Yes, I, too, feel that the music scene is full of posers and it must be much more intolerable in New York (“Metropolitan,” “Dry Ice & Strobe Lights”). This is not a revelation, and there would have to be actual feeling behind the lyrics or an innovative way of telling this fact to make me accept that there are two songs on the subject. There’s basically nothing about this record that makes me care. It’s rock by numbers, and I could see them fitting in between Blink 182 and Hoobastank on your local alterna-lite station. Smart listeners, I think, need much, much more than that.

You can download Barrio Superstarrio via Arena Rock.

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Atmosphere – Seven’s Travels

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Atmosphere – Seven’s Travels (Epitaph)

I fear for Slug. I really do. As frontman of the Minnesota rap collective known as Atmosphere, his emotionally fraught lyrics and sensitive-boy song topics first inspired people to tag him the “emo rapper.” Atmosphere’s 2001 release, God Loves Ugly, happened to include a song called “Saves The Day,” which prompted Slug (real name: Sean Daley) to joke in the press that he was going to call his next record “Built To Spill.” Instead, Atmosphere was signed to Epitaph and called their new record Seven’s Travels. Atmosphere has become the Next Big Thing. The spotlight prompted the press to begin comparisons to—you guessed it—Eminem, the other, ahem, white meat.

These comparisons are lazy but understandable, for several reasons. Seven’s Travels continues to explore Slug’s obsessions: his problems with women, his self-loathing, his need to prove himself as an emcee, etc. But the comparisons end (or should end) there; where Eminem’s philosophies hit the listener with the delicacy of a jackhammer, Slug’s lyrics and beats accomplish what the best rap albums do: shake ya ass and make ya think.

This is not to imply that the album is flawless. It relies a little too heavily on old tricks at times: the first half of “Suicidegirls” consists of angry (staged?) answering machine messages left by various women over a complicated beat, a gimmick which should have died with God Loves Ugly. At its best, though, it contains sly lyrics like “The Barbie doll’s caught, body parts come off / And I think she’s a he…STOP, look at how it walks / They got the weirdoes, the talent, the beautiful / An arm and a leg for a one-story cubicle” (“Los Angeles”). At its most naked, dirt-under-nails-and-all beauty, look to “Lifter Puller,” which starts with a mournful female hook and explands to tell the story of a doomed, possibly autobiographical, relationship: “Tonight the part of man and woman will be played by boy and girl.”

Slug and company have, unfortunately, a long road ahead of them if they wish to break out of the Shadow of Em. I doubt that pop culture has progressed to the point where it can accept more than one white rapper thriving at a time. This record proves, though, that Atmosphere deserves (and demands) your respect and attention.

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Death Cab For Cutie – Transatlanticism

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Death Cab For Cutie – Transatlanticism (Barsuk)

According to dictionary.com, “transatlanticism” is not a word. When searching the definition, after informing you of this fact, the site prompts you “Did you mean trans atlanticism?” and then tells you that’s not a word either. The fourth edition of the American Heritage Dictionary defines “transatlantic” as “on the other side of the Atlantic” or “spanning or crossing the Atlantic.” It seems that the very act of trying to find a definition for this word sums up the feeling of the album itself—trying to put a name to a feeling that cannot be described. With their latest full-length release, Death Cab For Cutie has validated “transatlanticism” as a word. The songs on this album are restless, gorgeous, expansive, and, well, transatlantic.

Love and loss have always been themes explored in Death Cab’s music. Part of the reason it works so well is because of the contrast between their lyrical content and the way the music itself sounds. The most successful example of this is with “The Sound of Settling,” with its “ba-ba, ba-ba” choruses, handclaps, and ringing guitars. It takes you several listens to fully let the sadness of the lyrics sink in and realize with some irony that kids at shows are going to most likely be gleefully singing along to lyrics like “Are you this fleeting? / Old age is just around the bend.” In the breathless, angry, driven “We Looked Like Giants,” singer Ben Gibbard puts it in almost Puritanical terms: “Goddamn the black night / with all its foul temptations.”

Elsewhere, topics that have become indie rock staples are revisited—failed relationships, absent parents (“Death of an Interior Decorator”), tender love songs (“Passenger Seat”), themes that Death Cab has expanded upon previously which would sink into cliche in less capable hands. The beauty of this album is that it feels both intensely personal and universal at the same time. The stunning, eight-minute title track builds to a chorus of “I need you so much closer,” which will most assuredly become an anthem to long-distance relationships everywhere. Yet the listener feels almost like he is reading a diary, like he is witnessing something that he shouldn’t.

Death Cab for Cutie has fashioned a career out of wearing its bleeding, broken heart on its sleeve without trying or ever feeling overwrought, and that is what makes them so compelling. With Transatlanticism they have taken this concept, to borrow a phrase from Gibbard’s side project, to “such great heights” that it’s impossible not to be moved.

MP3s of “The New Year” and “Title and Registration” available via Barsuk Records.

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Rufus Wainwright – Want One

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Rufus Wainwright – Want One (Dreamworks)

If Rufus Wainwright’s last album was all about addictions, poses and obsessions with sex and boys and beauty, then his new release takes those themes, adds more strings, and adds one more obsession for good measure: love. Both in concert and on his records Wainwright is the past and present king of the Grand Sweeping Gesture. Want One is no exception; about halfway through “Oh What A World” we suddenly realize that we are listening to a plaintive reinterpretation of Ravel’s “Bolero.” (This is something that only Wainwright could get away with—despite the way it sounds on paper it doesn’t feel like a gimmick. It is, in fact, quite stunning in its excecution.)

The thing about gestures, though, is unless there’s some real emotion behind them, they are, well, empty. While Wainwright has flirted with this reality in the past (“The Consort,” from Poses was a song…about…a movie?) this collection of songs has the emotional angst to temper the score. He is still singing wistfully about “pretty things” and “rebel angels,” but this album also contains one of the loveliest songs ever written about cell phones: “Vibrate.” The song is also an example of another theme on the album: age. He is getting older. He cannot “dance like Britney Spears,” he is “getting on in years.” References to, of all things, electroclash and karaoke, give way to a spirit which is not at all tongue-in-cheek: “God knows what all these new drugs do / I guessed to have no more fears / but still I always end up in tears.” By the time he sings “Call me,” it feels more like an honest plea than a wink.

The title track exemplifies the mood of the album. After musing about his parents and referencing John Lithgow and Jane Curtin (huh?) he closes the song by placing himself in an airport, having packed his passport and feeling quite lost. He asks “Tell me, will you make me sad or happy / and will you settle for love?”

Want One is the sound of a man who is lost and bewildered by love and age and modern life. Rumor has it that there will be a Want Two. It’s impossible to imagine what more he could want or how he will follow this up, but if it sounds as good as this, let’s hope he keeps the map of the emotional terrain he’s opened intact.

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Crime and Judy – Vendetta Chants

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Crime and Judy – Vendetta Chants EP (Latest Flame Records)

It has been 20 years since Milwaukee has had anything to shout about as far as offerings anything to the national music landscape. The Promise Ring? Broke up. The Violent Femmes’ reunion tour is but a distant memory now. And the Gufs? Please. As a resident of this town I can say with some authority that good music exists, but nothing that really has the potential to take over the world. Out of these semi-desperate shadows comes Crime and Judy with a big sexy yell and plenty of violins. Their five-song Vendetta Chants EP captures the excitement of their live shows (something that has been thrilling Milwaukee audiences for a couple of years now) and beyond. Imagine Cursive with three girl singers and a violinist rather than a cellist. Imagine the Yeah Yeah Yeahs minus too much beer.

The fact that it was recorded live at the Miramar Theatre both lends to the band’s strengths and detracts from the sonic quality. The vocals could have benefited from a bit of tweaking, and you can occasionally hear distorted murmurings and applause in the background, but overall the fidelity is nearly studio-quality.

The two standout tracks are “Kill Me Goodnight” and “Lose Your Allusion.” The former, a down-tempo meditation on the perils of the morning after, showcases crunchy guitars and the call-and-response vocals that the two singers are (locally) famous for. The latter is more insistent in both tempo and tone, with its repeated insisting both to “go, go, go, run” and “listen, relax, just be polite now.” It also contains the moment—scratch that—the Moment. You know, the one that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up when you come across it and you yell out loud “That’s IT!” Here, it comes at the end of the song—the vocals are building and playing off one another and then out of the background comes one lovely, tense extended guitar note—and then it all ends abruptly. The listener is left wanting more, which, for a band with so much potential and such poise, is a very, very good thing indeed.

MP3s available on Crime and Judy’s site.

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Mission of Burma – Signals, Calls and Marches

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Mission of Burma – Signals, Calls and Marches (Rykodisc)

I was a year old when this EP was originally released. I was five when Mission of Burma broke up. The first time I was made aware of them was when I heard Moby’s cover of “That’s When I Reach for My Revolver” on Animal Rights. But I have spent the better part of this week wandering around downtown hollering “This Is Not A Photograph!” in my head, with my own mental approximation of Roger Miller’s Boston-via-England vocal delivery.

I get the same feeling when listening to this collection of eight bits of angular, melodic noise that I did when I first heard the Clash and the Ramones: I wondered how I had existed this long without having them in my life. I wondered why I didn’t pay attention when I sat around listening to my snotty rock friends talk about Fugazi’s influences. These songs walk the line between noise and beauty. For every dissonant chord, punk sneering (“Outlaw”), and railing against “Fame and fortune,” we turn a corner and find harmonized, lovely voices within the same song. This is to say nothing about the sensitivity to be found in the lyrics, as illustrated beautifully on “Red”: “There’s a window in my head / there’s a window in my heart / I look out of it as I’m sleeping / and then I am torn apart.” We then turn another corner to be confronted with the beautiful guitar and ooh-ooh crooning of “All World Cowboy Romance.” You can hear everything within Mission of Burma.

For those of you who wish to be purists but don’t have the budget to accumulate this band’s entire discography, this reissue of their 1981 EP is a fine place to start as it adds “Academy Fight Song” and “Max Ernst,” the a- and b-side of their first single. Perhaps you even already own the reissue and it’s moldering at the back of your closet someplace. For the love of God, un-molder it. Give it to your little brother who thinks that Avril and Sum 41 are the pinnacle of punk. Wave it in front of your neighbor who has never forgiven you for engaging her in that debate about George Michael’s greatest hits. (You know you love them too; it’s okay, we’re all friends here.) But the bottom line is extremely simple: listen to it.

It will reaffirm what you loved about music in the first place. It will make it okay to breathe again. It may even change your life.