Animal Collective and Playing the Hits
A few years ago I went with a few friends to see the experimental band Animal Collective at the Black Cat in Washington, DC. At the time I had only been listening to them for a few months but was really infatuated with the yelpy chaos of their new record, “Feels,” and was eagerly anticipating the energy of seeing the songs performed live. As a newcomer to the scene I knew that that Animal Collective had a passionate cult following but I hadn’t really heard much about their live shows. Later I would learn that they play almost exclusively new or unfinished music live and historically don’t seem to have much concern for creating in-roads with their audiences through traditional set lists. In keeping with this pattern their set that night was mostly a wandering haze of vocal and electronic loops briefly punctuated by spirited renditions of a few older songs accompanied by enthusiastic audience support. Perhaps unsurprisingly, as a newbie I struggled to connect to the set for much of the night. It was a real challenge to maintain concentration between the wall of seemingly incoherent sounds and the looks of obvious displeasure shooting my way from most of the friends I had dragged along. When Animal Collective did get around to playing “We Tigers” (maybe the closest thing they had to a hit at the time) I happily danced and sang along as much out of excitement for a familiar song as for a break from the monotony of the previous ninety minutes. To this day that is probably the only show I’ve been to where I can honestly say that I was both genuinely thrilled and legitimately bored in the same set.
Despite that experience Animal Collective have grown into one of my absolute favorite bands in the last few years. I run out and get their records on release day, buy any and all side project releases, encyclopedically read interviews, and even orchestrated one of their songs to be played at my wedding reception last year (the picture at the top of from that very moment). I’ve also actively chosen to see them perform two times since and would go again tomorrow if you asked.
Part of my reasons for this have been how much I am drawn to their seemingly endless drive for experimentation and even reinvention from album to album. Some of it has been their incremental willingness to craft songs that are just terrific to dance to. Another major aspect is the expansive, encouraging lyrical inspiration they draw from simple events like fireworks displays or morning at home with your family. More than anything I think I appreciate them because few other artists seem to approach music quite the way they do, I want to be a passenger for their ride.
A few weeks ago I saw Animal Collective play a raucous, energetic headlining set on the first night of the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago. In the years since my time at the Black Cat their audiences and influence have grown by leaps and bounds; the members now live all around the US and Europe and their most recent album cracked the billboard top 40 on vinyl sales alone. They are full-on headliners now but at Pitchfork they stayed true to form and played a set largely made up of new sounds and songs. They didn’t abandon the past entirely, I think I counted 5 old songs in the set, but I’m sure there were many members of the audience (myself included!) who would have loved to hear more big hits from their most recent album. In an interview later in the weekend, singer Dave Portner (otherwise known as Avey Tare) addressed this situation:
“We’re definitely aware that there’s an expectation for us to play certain songs, especially from (most recent album) Merriweather but because our time is usually so limited when were together writing and working, we have to focus on the new stuff.”
From what I can tell the band has no ill will towards fans for clamoring after hits, they merely don’t want that focus to shift them away from the work at hand, the work that is still in progress, the work what’s next.
It’s interesting how certain genres like indie rock, pop, and hip hop, have acquired such strong traditions when it comes to live performance: 1) play a few songs from the new record 2) but don’t wait too long to start playing some of favorites 3) and always finish the set with your biggest hit.
I doubt that even at their height audiences went to see Beethoven or Miles Davis and left disappointed if they didn’t play “Kind of Blue” or the 5th Symphony. I don’t think its wrong or even bad to go to a show hoping to hear your favorite songs; I do it all the time. I just wonder if we might benefit by more artists having a willingness to experiment and push against even our most entrenched performance traditions.
Cynicism vs Sincerity in the Music of Bon Iver
“So this guy broke up his band, got mono, and then had his heart broken. He went by himself out into the woods of northern Wisconsin in the middle of winter to recuperate and ended up recording this album in a cabin… It’s awesome.”
This is a version of the story that introduced “For Emma Forever Ago”, the first album by Wisconsin base indie folk musician Bon Iver, to wide audiences back in 2007-08. Over time the back story of “wounded guy retreats from society only to emerge with brilliant insights” became a kind of legend that brought a lot of acclaim to Bon Iver and its frontman, Justin Vernon. It didn’t hurt that the album itself was a raw and stunningly beautiful piece of work, but the accompanying back story seemed to give listeners an element that we all crave. Whether every detail of a “creation story” is true it lends depth and authenticity to otherwise challenging pieces of art and helps invite closer inspection. We crave narratives like this not only for context but because they help us differentiate in an internet age where even a few minutes of surfing can easily stir up dozens of promising unheard new bands.
The cabin story and the album gave Justin Vernon a kind of credential with fans that can be far more elusive than record sales, people eagerly wondered what would he do next? In the few years since that record was released Vernon has put Bon Iver on hiatus and jumped into working with widely divergent musical side projects like the 25 member soft rock, soul ensemble Gayngs and an experimental post rock collaboration called Volcano Choir. More famously, he recently got the call to fly to Hawaii and work in the studio with Hip-Hop giant Kanye West; a partnership that resulted in Vernon singing extensively on two of West’s recent hit singles and joining him for a headlining performance at the influential Coachella music festival in southern California.
Amid excitement about those projects and a growing buzz for this week’s self titled Bon Iver follow up album, Vernon made a strange choice while making an appearance on late night with Jimmy Fallon recently. He opted to play an obscure cover instead of his just released new single. This might have been more understandable if he had chosen to cover a well respected indie forebear like Neutral Milk Hotel or Pavement, or an ironic cover to pile up the views on Youtube (Snoop Dogg’s “Gin and Juice” maybe?) Instead he chose Bonnie Raitt and Bruce Hornsby’s 1991 hit “I Can’t Make You Love Me” and nailed it. By all accounts Bonnie Raitt and Bruce Hornsby do not write “cool” songs for a young indie artist to cover but when asked Vernon defended his choice saying he loves artists like Hornsby and Raitt and that “I don’t know why you’d spend any of your time trying to remake something that you don’t actually like.” (Taken from this great interview)
Whether you take him at surface value or not there’s a telling moment at the end of the new album; after 40 minutes of beautiful string and brass arrangements, understated guitars, and multi-layered vocals, where Bon Iver sound like vintage Bruce Hornsby. Accompanied by two saxophones, a pedal steel, and Hornsby’s trademark Korg M1 synthesizer, Vernon sings some of the albums most direct lyrics:
“Said your love is known, I’m standing up on it- Aren’t we married?!
I aint living in the dark no more, it’s not a promise, I’m just gonna call it
heavy mitted love”
It might say more about the indie music scene than Bon Iver himself but so far much of the attention on this new album has been on this choice of the final song. Why copy that sound? Is he trying to be cheesy? Does he really mean it? The answers may just come down to a matter of opinion.
All art movements (including indie music) go through phases of detachment and irony, sincerity and directness. Elvis’ hip shaking on “Heartbreak Hotel” lead to The Beatles absurdism on “I Am The Walrus”, just like Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was a reaction against the gaudy directness of Guns and Roses “Paradise City”. Bon Iver might not be breaking new ground by embracing uncool music from the past but his attempts at sincerity and collaboration are a welcome addition to the legend of one man and his cabin.
music for getting sh*t done.
Pop quiz!
“Why am I presently not…”
a) in or
b) around a body of water with
c) a foofy drink in my hand and
d) loud music in the air and
e) the fake coconut stench about my nostrils?
the answer to this is f) finals week. BOOOO!!! HIIISSSSSSS.
Instead, I’m locked to my couch, endlessly typing typing typing and taking occasional breaks to eat terrible food and play Words with Friends. Thanks to dudes like 7th century Chinese Emperor Xuanzong and 1900′s New Yorker Willis Haviland Carrier ( science!) this is a relatively comfortable option. But it still sucks.
So here’s some music for gettng sh*t done.
They’re called Explosions in the Sky. Classified as “post-rock,” it’s epically instrumental for maximum noisy-neighbor-loudness-canceling properties, and vocal free for minimum distraction. Because really, when you know the words, can you really refrain from singing along? No words means I can keep a constant stream of academic drivel flowing from my fingers.
This is also great music for long drives alone, your mind really starts to wander and makes you think deep stuff like “my, those stars are clear tonight” and “I hope that dead raccoon had a good life before his untimely death by semi.”
Also, EITS just came out with a new record that’s a real good. Check it out here, and let us know in the comments: what your best soundtrack for getting sh*t done?
No sleep till the 9th,
Christin
Soundtracking Travel: Radio Dept and the Great White North
Recently I had the pleasure of spending a long weekend with my wife in Toronto. It was our first time in the city and we started with coffee shops, bookstores, restaurants, and neighborhood walks to teach us about this new place. Given the nature of the trip I opted for conversation over earbuds and didn’t directly listen to very much music during our stay. Even so, I found myself keying in on in-store stereos, humming incessantly, and even half singing my own little songs as we walked from door to door. I didn’t think much about this at the time but in retrospect I think that sort of thing happens because we need music to help make sense of new places. It’s the reason film scores are so subtly impacting and car stereos are key to an enjoyable road trip. When music sets a scene it engages our imagination in a different way and helps us interact with our surroundings more deeply.
In the case of Toronto, a city famous for birthing bands like Broken Social Scene, Feist, Stars, Do Make Say Think, Austra, and Owen Pallet, interacting with the music scene also seems essential to understanding what makes the place tick. Nationwide the Canadian government is known for supporting “homegrown artists”, and radio stations in Canada are required to play a “percentage of content that was at least partly written, produced, presented, or otherwise contributed to by persons from Canada.” Directly correlated or not it’s impressive to note just how many influential and important bands have come from a nation with a smaller population than the state of California. Though music alone can never fully define a place as big and diverse as Canada, it seems like a good place to start.
During our short trip we weren’t able to see performances by any world-renowned local musicians but we did catch an informative set from the Swedish band Radio Dept. For those who aren’t familiar, Radio Dept. are an Indie-Pop band on renowned Swedish label Labrador Records who have been together on and off since the mid 90′s. They don’t tend to give interviews or tour very frequently and have only ever released three full length albums but nonetheless have developed a passionate following in places like Toronto. At their show itself I was impressed to see a room packed with fans engaged, dancing, and enthusiastically calling out song requests even as the band played a reserved and workmanlike 90 minute set. Toronto seems to support artists asking good questions (as Radio Dept. certainly do in songs like: “You Stopped Making Sense”, a beautiful and challenging piece about religious conversion from the perspective of a confused friend,) and any city doing that is worth visiting time and time again.
Now only a few days after returning from this trip I have strong images of Toronto that come to mind when I listen to Radio Dept. In another way I had a similar experience when we visited a little bookshop on Queens Street that was quietly playing an old Cat Power record in the background. The mournful music seemed to color everything in the store and helped push me into buying a difficult historical novel by William T. Vollman that I’d been scanning and passing over in other stores for months. I’m not sure if Radio Dept. will always remind me strictly of the Horseshoe Tavern or if I’ll think about Cat Power every time I pick up that copy of “Europe Central,” but I appreciate those connections. I love the way that music can pull you back to strong memories of the past the same way that a whiff of your dad’s pancakes or the scent of a certain shampoo can transport you back to youth.
What are the songs or bands that you most strongly associate with a certain memory, trip, or place?
My Personal Musical History: Nirvana, Sonic Youth, and 90′s revivalism
In the last few weeks it seems I’ve been thinking a good bit about musical history. Nothing too high-brow (though great music writers like the New Yorker’s Alex Ross have recently made me want to!) Instead I’ve been thinking more about my “personal musical history;” about the music that I first got excited about as a kid, what I may have missed at the time, and what the best of it has to say now.
This started back at Christmas when my wife broke from our usual music buying patterns and gave me a few records of older music: A collection of country blues recordings from 1927-1952, an amazing collection of recordings from Alan Lomax’s “Southern Journey” recording traditional folk music in 1959-1960, and most excitingly a recently repressed copy of Sonic Youth’s seminal 1987 release “Sister.” While I can be forgiven for having missed out on the initial run of those first two recordings (I wasn’t born yet after all,) Sonic Youth is one of those bands that I have known about and respected from a distance for years but never quite dove into before.
Turns out I was hooked from the initial guitar breakdowns of album opener “Schizophrenia” and immediately pulled back to memories of my first times hearing music for myself; the early 90s grunge that felt like it could be mine instead of just something I heard through my parents or a friends older sibling. Listening to great music from that era like Sonic Youth got me running not only out to the store to pick up copies of other their classics like “Daydream Nation” and “Dirty,” but also back into my own old CD bins to find copies of Nirvana’s “Nevermind” and “In Utero” that still had liner notes marked with my handwriting alongside the lyrics. I took the nostalgia to another level a few weeks later on Record Store Day and bought a rare repressed Nirvana EP from a tour they did back in 1992 and I’ve been loving listening to that version of “Aneurysm” over and over and reminiscing about the joys of my first musical love. After all the “voice of a generation” prose that was heaped on Kurt Cobain after his death, the actual songs still strike me as visceral and important after almost 20 years. Sonic Youth as well, while not ever reaching quite the same massive audiences, have charted a challenging yet consistent course for almost 30 years, and while I’m personally late to the party I’m looking forward to spending more quality time with their back catalog in the next few months and seeing front-man Thurston Moore in concert later this summer as a genuine fan.
I mention all this because I’m actually not usually someone who spends a lot of time reminiscing about older music or listening with nostalgia to “the classics.” I tend to be more excited about new records and artists commenting on contemporary issues, instead of focusing on the past. In fact I often feel a little disappointed when I scan through a friends shelf (or iTunes) and can immediately identify when they had their first child or what year they graduated from college based on when the collection stops. At the same time my recent trip down memory lane has reminded me about the importance of having a good musical memory, towards my own collection and especially towards the “foundational music” that helped shape how I got here.
In that vein, this week’s “All Songs Considered” (a terrific NPR program across the board!) had an entire episode devoted to “breaking up with your favorite bands”. The shows three main contributors tracked their musical relationship history with various artists over the years answering questions like:
“Who are the bands you had a passionate relationship with only to see things drift apart over time?”
Who broke up with you outright after a strange new release that you couldn’t stand?”
“Who have you lost touch with but still think back on the good times fondly with?”
For music lovers these are great questions; questions we could spend hours trying to answer. After pouring over my own history these past few weeks it seems like the most important thing is to just keep getting into serious relationships with music in the first place; whether our favorite artists consistently thrill us, flame out, or end up releasing embarrassing smooth jazz records.
song of the day: tUnE-yArDs | Bizness
Ever wanted to sit down and try to create a song with a loop? Start with one, and build it up, over and over again, developing something out of little ten second snippets?
It’s not easy. The hardest part of is trying to make it sound like more than the sum of its pieces: more than just lots of tracks on repeat.
A good example how to do it right is from Merrill Garbus, whose band is known more as tUnE-yArDs… here’s a clip from a New York Times article about one of the concerts when her first album was released:
Tune-Yards is a one-woman outfit — Ms. Garbus was joined here by Nate Brenner on bass — and her debut album, “Bird Brains,” is a self-made, no-fi, oddball gem, a collision of African, soul and cabaret vocal strategies over an admixture of reggae, hip-hop and folk. (It will be rereleased on 4AD, with bonus tracks, next month.)
Her concert was similarly DIY, as if building from scratch were for Ms. Garbus an ethic more than a necessity. She had a floor tom at her right, a snare at her left, and for each song she would create her own rhythmic backing by using effects pedals to loop a drum beat (or vocal pattern) that she’d pound (or scat) out herself. Talking about bad dreams late in the show, she said, “That’s the nightmares that I have — that I don’t have rhythm anymore.”
Just releasing a follow-up album this in April, Garbus takes that similar feel of bits and pieces and creates pop tunes that help welcome in May flowers. The song here “Bizness” is the first single from the new album, which came out in February.
Enjoy, and have a great start of the month. Additionally, I’d like to welcome Andrew Heffner as our new writer. We hope to be bringing you more!
Music as Tap Water? U2, Pitchfork, and ambient composer Tim Hecker
A few years ago three of the members of U2 sat down for an interview with the indie webzine Pitchforkmedia. The fifteen minute interview was a strange collision between an earnest band with a long resume and penchant for sincere lyrics and politics; and a website famous for popularizing a detached, snarky approach to taste making and criticism. The bulk of the interview went according to script, questions about the band’s latest album and tour plans, anecdotes from recording, etc. but at the very end of the piece U2’s gregarious frontman, Bono, asked to make a statement to the readers of Pitchfork. He commented that even for those readers who hate U2, and “can’t stand the sounds we make; I’d like to think that we have something in common and that is a deep respect for music as a kind of sacrament, as something sacred. Because we live in a moment when music is becoming less and less a precious thing in our culture, it’s like tap water. It’s all background music. I just want to pay respect to your audience, to people who really want to know what’s right and wrong, what’s great, and what’s happening. We respect that.”
In the time since this interview occurred there have been oceans of commentary on the dying record industry, on sales figures that seem to fall precipitously each quarter, on more and more music stores closing their doors, and on how young people today just don’t seem to care about music with the same passion, commitment, (or cash!) as their predecessors. Montreal based ambient composer Tim Hecker perhaps inadvertently has jumped into to this conversation with his recent full-length album. Stemming from his reaction to anti pirating raids in Kazakhstan that produced images of “millions of DVDs and CDRs being pushed by bulldozers. ” Hecker recounts becoming “obsessed with digital garbage” and the desire to explore “the connection between the computerized engineering that led to the codification of MP3s and music’s denigration as an object and thus a viable means of economic survival.” Heady stuff to be sure but the result is an innovative and fascinating new album called “Ravedeath, 1972” on Kranky Records.
Unlike Hecker’s previous “structured ambient” studio creations, this piece came together initially as a collaboration with the experimental Australian musician/producer Ben Frost, and found the pair recording on a church organ in Iceland. However beautiful and direct as these initial recordings may have been, Hecker soon brought them back to his home studio to be combined with a host of other sounds, instruments, feedback, and distortion to conclude the production. The end result is a beautifully conflicted album of warring parts. While each song blends seamlessly into the next over the course of fifty minutes, there is rarely a moment where only one dominant sound motif holds.
The album’s cover itself is a startling contribution to this conversation, a faded photograph depicting the ritual of MIT students dropping a piano off the top of the building that might otherwise appear harmless or even exciting but carries an air of foreboding in this context. Aptly titled opening track “The Piano Drop” begins with a wall of quiet distortion only to break into a strikingly melodic keyboard progression and then back to distortion in its three short minutes. Similarly, the two-part album centerpiece “Hatred of Music Part I & II” rolls back and forth between atmospheric and hazy effects all while the aforementioned organ intermittently attempts to break through like a time capsule of music from an earlier era. Twelve minute, three part closing piece “In the Air I-III” is built primarily on a haunting piano line repeatedly overrun by a smoky haze of humming electronics. The piano has the last notes; a tired, mournful conclusion calling into question which sounds have truly won the day. The final notes return to that image of a piano perched precariously on the edge of a tall building, surrounded by thin air.
“Ravedeath, 1972” is an excellent contribution to the canon of ambient music started by Brian Eno and perfected today by artists like Stars of the Lid, William Basinski, and Fennesz; but its loose structure, lack of vocals, and understated qualities will make it easy for many people to ignore. Perhaps a self-aware artist like Hecker had this in mind all along? Having long been interested in exploring the creative boundaries of sound, (Hecker’s last release “An Imaginary Country” was a full scale attempt to create a musical rendition of its title.) On “Ravedeath, 1972” he seems to be intentionally crafting a record that cannot decide between being expressive and beautiful or hazy and distracting. For many the conflict itself is perfectly suited to the contemporary “musical scene” that Hecker wants to comment on. In this era where music is increasingly accessible but also increasingly undervalued, Hecker’s work seems to be asking whether we will aspire to complex and demanding art forms or drink only “tap water?”
Links for deeper inspection:
song of the day: tv on the radio | new cannonball blues
Spring is continuing, and with it has been a flurry of great new albums that have caused this guy to spend a bit more lucro on music than he usually does. No complaints though. One of the albums I personally was excited for was TV on the Radio’s new work, “Nine Types Of Light”.
TV’s new album takes a much more melodic (in comparison to their more noise-overlaid trips of songs), which gives a great counterpoint to some of their previous efforts.
A personal favorite of mine is “New Cannonball Blues”, but keep in mind that I think the best way to enjoy TVOTR is to listen to the whole album.
Enjoy, and Happy Easter!
song of the day: odd future | sandwiches
Questlove called Odd Future “Not User-Friendly“, and I rarely disagree with Questo. So when I started taking listening to some OFWGKTA (Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All), I was starting to stretch my own ears out a little bit. A Los Angeles hip-hop/skateboard posse, they’re getting a lot of talk because they’re doing music their way. And it’s starting to get guys whose opinions I respect (Mos Def, Questo, Kanye, etc) excited. So I want to give you all a little taste, as you all should be made aware. Even I’m a little behind on this, as these guys were getting interest last summer. But this is Ohio, not LA, and these things take a little bit of time.
(and SonicArchitecture just started. I’m working on it)
Anyway, if you guys saw them on Jimmy Fallon, you’ve already seen this, but this is the closest thing I thought was PG-13 for the kids. Their rhymes are heavy (Tyler the Creator’s, the ringleader of the crew, newest called “Yonkers” is a good example), but you should know these guys.
song of the day: childish gambino | not going back
Donald Glover is better than ‘Lil Wayne.
Rephrase that: Donald Glover is what ‘Lil Wayne should be.
You may already know him from Community (if you want TV) or 30 Rock (if for some reason you like to pay attention to writers of comedy shows). But now you’ll know him as Childish Gambino, rapper. While he’s been making albums since 2008, his last LP Culdesac garnered a bit of attention. He just released a new EP, and this is the last track. Heavy hitting, and really take some time to listen to his rhymes. He’s wittier than 70% of guys out there, but has no reason to be non-sequitor.
Best part? His stuff is free. Get the whole EP. Share it. Let others know.
Adam
Christin D.
andrewbheffner
