Earworm: "Wild Horses" by The Sundays

First, I would just like to say that I am now Dr.Queen of Sheba. Thank you.

This one goes in the category of unexpectedly lovely covers--who would've agreed that The Sundays would do beautiful justice to a Rolling Stones song? It's like agreeing that it would be good to make a movie out of a Disney ride, or to put Keanu Reeves in a dystopian cyberpunk epic; it seems a terribly improbable proposal. But I think maybe being The Rolling Stones distracted the actual Rolling Stones from making Wild Horses as it wanted to be. Nothing else in The Sundays' repertoire quite seems to measure up--their other songs are lovely but insubstantial; but achieving aesthetic rightness is nothing to sneeze at, even once.
tags: [Music], [mp3], [Sundays], [Rolling Stones], [Covers]

Earworm: Bob Schneider - Wish

Bob Schneider used to be a favorite of mine, in the years right after college; I haven't listened to him much lately, but Wish off of Songs Sung & Played on the Guitar came up on random the other day, and it was arresting. It's a wispy, insubstantial song, but the understated grotesquerie of the opening image saves it from being saccharine. It's not as cutting as some of Schneider's other lovely, acidly melancholy songs like The King of the World, but striking nonetheless.

tags: [Music], [Bob Schneider], [Wish]

Earworm: Stars - Tonight

It's a funny thing; most sweetly sentimental songs aren't very catchy, and most very catchy songs are more cheerful than sweet. This might be a little more practical if rephrased to say that catchy songs are usually more up-tempo--I wish somebody would do some experiments to pin down the perceptual components that make up or equate to catchy. But I sort of shudder to think of the Pavlovian haiku advertising that would come out of such research, so maybe it's better undone.

Stars seems like a good band to explore the catchy sentimental possibilities, since they do both sides so well; and they might've even figured out the formula, since Tonight from Nightsongs has been stuck in my head for three days now, so it must be catchy; I think--on second thought I'm not sure if that's a fair conclusion; can songs that aren't catchy be persistent earworms? but it's definitely not up-tempo or cheerful.



tags: [Music], [mp3], [Earworms], [Stars]

Earworm: Nick Cave - Babe You Turn Me On

This is a most wonderful song. The frank juxtaposition of arousal and the quiet end of purpose or the world--I don't know what to make of it, but it's powerful.

Nick Cave - Babe You Turn Me On



tags: [Music], [mp3], [Earworms], [Nick Cave]

The Death of Dynamic Range

Disclaimer: I'm not an engineer. Anybody who is, please chime in with clarifications, corrections, or more information.

The excellent Jerry Yeti has pointed out an informative article on The Death of Dynamic Range; this is a consequence of making music on CDs uniformly loud (since digital music has an absolute peak amplitude, unlike analog). If you try to exceed this limit, the sound gets distorted as it's limited to the digital range; basically, by making everything almost as loud as a CD can encode, the dynamic peaks (bits louder, usually for emphasis or a sense of climax) are pulled back down to the peak admissible amplitude--which, because the whole thing is nearly at peak, is the same as everything else.

Interestingly, it's taken Europe and Asia longer to jump on the loudness-wars bandwagon; below are waveforms from Ricky Martin's 1999 ear-bleeding single "La Vida Loca."

The very-zoomed-up version, with the left stereo channel on top and the right one on the bottom:












You can see, at the bottom of both channels, the amplitude is artificially cut off. This is bad.


Compare a 1999 UK release, "Swear It Again" by Westlife:












There's one point at peak while the rest moves around it. This is good; instead of the whole track being pretty uniformly loud, it has a focus.

I wish there were examples from classical music on this article; it seems like the loss of dynamic range would be particularly devastating to classical music, or even most instrumental-only stuff--so is it happening, I wonder, or is this a vocal-pop-only phenomenon?

tags: [Music], [dynamic range], [digital music]

Unexpected Covers: The Laura Veirs Chorus?

So it seems there's a CD called The Young Rapture Choir; this album is a collection of songs written by Laura Veirs and performed by a choir of school children in Cognac, France. The one track that's floating around is their version of Magnetized; aside from the oddness of hearing Laura's lyrics in a French accent, it's even odder to hear one of her songs done rhythmically straight, with all of her odd leaps and syncopations ellipsized. It's no better or worse than one might expect, I think, but still interesting to hear.



tags: [Music], [Covers], [Laura Veirs], [Choral music]

Cat Power & Decemberists

Note: Cat Power - Wonderwall isn't as good as it should be; the chord work is oddly plodding. Too bad--the song suits her voice and manner.

I've heard variously that The Crane Wife is going to be more mature than past Decemberists stuff (although I'm not sure what that means, really), or that it's going to be even more self-pitying. Obviously I'm hoping for the former; having listened to four tracks, I wonder if "more mature" doesn't mean . . . abandoning their accustomed nineteenth-century, flouncing rhythms. The Crane Wife certainly seems to do that less, and it might pass for maturity.

The Perfect Crime is oddly disco-sounding for the Decemberists; and Colin repeats the perfect crime so many times it loses its meaning. When the War Came almost gets into prog rock territory, with its spiraling instrumentation. It's not the Decemberists we all know of old, but I like it.

tags: [Music], [mp3], [Covers], [Cat Power], [Oasis], [Decemberists], [The Crane Wife]

New Find: Wax Poetic

I've been listened to Wax Poetic's 2004 CD Nublu Sessions for a few years now--I think I got my hands on the track Angels pre-release; but I've only just found their older self-titled CD. I am, how you say, very pleased.

It share some tracks with the later CD; by and large, the ones it doesn't share are more groove and less melody, so it's not quite the same thing. There are lots of short, atmospheric, non-sequitur tracks, which makes it one of those CDs that should definitely be listened to by itself and in order, at least until you've got a handle on it. There are fewer vocals, and the ones that do show up are more atmospheric spoken-word stuff than actually sung.

At the moment, my favorite track is On. It's still very groove, but it saves itself from being featureless by the variety its different tracks show in timbre. There's a very diffuse, electronica-sounding sorta-bass line, a very physically textured midline (it sounds like spoons) and the occasional appearance of a sort of whizzbee noise that makes me think of a diminutive comet.



There's another track I'm inclined to like called "Mother Earth," but it loses points with a too-consciously-rhythmic, suave spoken word part. So it seems it wouldn't do to go into this CD expecting the same kind of thing as Nublu Sessions, but it's still an interesting listen.

tags: [Music], [mp3], [Wax Poetic], [Norah Jones]

Bloggers and New Music

Bloggers have a reputation for being uncritical fankids; I suspect this comes from writing about only what you want to--none of us have editors breathing down our necks to get a column out or do a review of the new [insert name here] CD. We don't have to write about anything we don't like, so most of us don't. Reviewing the mediocre is particularly hard--if it's good or bad you can usually get to the meat of why, but if it's mediocre what is there to say--"It just isn't very good"? Not much of a satisfying review; so we all slant to the positive, and write about what we like.

This aggravates me. Uncritical anything is rarely good. So I've decided to review every damn mp3 that ends up in my box, good, bad, or indifferent. I can't possibly love all of it, so it'll involve learning how to figure out why music is not very good or bad.

The first victim of this decision is a couple of bands that Cloud Recordings sent out--Dark Meat and The New Sound of Numbers.

Dark Meat is one of the growing numbers of supergroups; their proper name including all of their members is Dark Meat/Vomit Lasers Family Band/Galaxy, which certainly makes my list of candidates for the Worst Band Name Evar Award. Aside from that, they're from Athens, Georgia, and they have a new CD coming out in late October called Universal Indians.

Honestly, I don't think they're very good; all of their songs sound like they got a little too excited about having so many members. Their voice parts are intermittently discordant but rarely interesting, and their instrumental sound is sprawling and shapeless without any redeeming grandeur. Angel of Meth is the best song I could find; it starts out a cool hybrid between vocal harmony and yelling, and judging by their other songs, holds together pretty well. Later in the song, though, the vocals take an unfortunate turn towards Robert Smith. No.

The second one is much better, or at least much more to my liking--The New Sound of Numbers' Frequency Transmission System, also from Athens; their new CD comes out in October too. It's called Liberty Seeds, and eventually you'll be able to order it from Cloud Recordings. A jerky, jointed beat reminds me of--Bonobo? Xploding Plastix?--and the vocals approach the artificiality of medieval chants or a skipping record at times. They're pretty kooky. I like 'em.

tags: [Music], [mp3], [Athens Georgia], [Cloud Recordings], [Dark Meat], [New Sound of Numbers]

Torquil & Dumont: Memphis

I guess, since Amy Millan has one or maybe two other bands depending on how the term's defined, Torquil's allowed one too. I'm curious about all of their non-Stars projects, since I can never make out if either one is the dominant pleasure in Stars, and a solo project gives me a chance to figure it out; and Memphis (Torquil and Chris Dumont) has a new CD called Little Place in the Wilderness.

Memphis is nice--the whisperiest of Stars songs--but it's a little too consistent, I think. I like the balance of Stars, where they can't be said to be consistently either dreamy or anthemic (although they're usually one or the other); over the course of the Memphis CD, I start to feel like Torquil is whispering too much.

Time Away is one of the songs that make me impatient. Too much like dreamy Stars, too contrastless. I'll Do Whatever You Want I like better--a little more energetic, a little less whispery, although I'm not sure what I think of the wind section's contribution. (It's pretty irrelevant to the music, I suppose, but Daniel Handler aka Lemony Snickett is set to direct the video for this track.)



Hearing Torquil without Amy's decided me, I think; Amy's the greater pleasure in Stars--I like her solo stuff unreservedly. She's got a better balance of tempo (see Headsfull below), and her voice has a clearer, stronger tone. I still like their lyrical interactions as Stars and they're both necessary for that o'course, but judging them as vocalists, I say Amy wins.



tags: [Music], [mp3], [Stars], [Memphis], [Amy Millan]

Emiliana Torrini: A Joanna Newsom for the Rest of Us

I wanted to like Joanna Newsom--I really did. There aren't nearly enough vocalists playing instruments other than guitar, and I suspect that her deliberately obscured rhythms would delight a musician who's interested in thinking about that sort of thing; but it just feels obstructivist to me in the end.

Emiliana Torrini has some of the same babylike vocal qualities that Joanna Newsom shares with Björk and Anais Mitchell; but it doesn't feel like she's trying to keep you out of her music like Newsom, and her mannerisms aren't obtrusive and distracting like Mitchell--and, rather obviously, she doesn't share the electronica experimentalism bit with Björk, and her vocals tend to be somewhat more restrained. (I guess it would be hard not to be more vocally restrained than Björk. I s'pose it should also be noted she's Icelandic, as is Björk.)

It's possible that in a couple of weeks I'll be finding Emiliana twee and precious, too dreamy; and some of her songs I do already find so--I wish she had a little more edge, a song that was notably undreamy. But there are the occasional vivid lyrics (we gather like ravens on a rusty scythe / just to watch such a little dove) that might push that opinion out a little further into the future. For now, I'm enjoying her.

Emiliana Torrini - Nothing Brings Me Down from Fisherman's Woman



tags: [Music], [mp3], [female vocalists], [singer-songwriters], [Emiliana Torrini], [Joanna Newsom], [Björk], [Anais Mitchell]

New: For Those Who Know

Is a band from Austin that describes'emselves as "post-punk rock and pure psychedelic shoegaze pop" on their Myspace, but this pretentious, purple review says they're emo. Is that a contradiction? I'm bloody rotten at genres.

That review there actually makes me think about a problem with music journalism (which goes equally for the old-skool print stuff or the blogosphere)--most of the writers either aren't musicians, or are writing with a non-musician audience in mind, and so the technical specifics are sorta off-limits; in trying to be vivid and communicative, writers just end up being abstract, overwrought, and unverifiable. It's a bit like talking about wine, maybe: some people understand the vocabulary and use it with precision, but most people (like me) just Make Shit Up. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but usually lacks restraint as far as accuracy and relevance go. Thinking about this does make you ask: what exactly do I have to say about this music?

So having said that, I now have to keep my comments simple and pragmatic: I think I like 'em, although it's not something I could see myself wanting specifically--more like a way to fill out a playlist without introducing any real outliers. They're free literally with their early works, quite literally: you can download their whole EP here (flash-based website, so it's not a direct link, but click on Audio to the left), even though they're also selling it, although only through MySpace so far.

Most've their show dates are in Texas--which means I won't get to hear 'em live. Shame--but I still like the EP.

For Those Who Know - Competition off of the self-titled debut




Relevant tags: [Music], [Austin TX]

Squave Wave Punch rE(P)dux

Sean from SWP had the coolness to email me their EP (and give permission for it to go up). This is good--much better than trying to form an impression of a band from just one track. Given the number of hits that entry's been getting, it seems there's some interest, so here it is, along with some notes. (The Underrated Blog is a big fan o'theirs, and some live pictures of them on a Flickr set--is that a tinsel backdrop?)

Given more material, my impression gets better; I think they're still part of that just-rock group I was thinking about, but upon hearing more they seem more substantial, more interesting. Might be just because I listened to them back to back, but SWP sorta reminds me of the jagged, comfy swing of Pinback minus their distinctive guitar sound, a'course, and plus a little more intensity and edge. It is maybe also noteworthy that there's a song called "Neckface"--which makes me wonder if it has anything to do with the elusive (reclusive?) grafitti artist.

Anyway, I like. I want more. I hope they do a Boston show soon.

Square Wave Punch - shhh . . . Keep Quiet EP, which isn't for sale anywhere that I could find--maybe at shows? Streaming below is (or will be, once Castpost comes back) my favorite track of the moment, "Out In the Field."

Relevant tags: [Music], [Square Wave Punch]

Good News: New Pinback

Sorta new, anyway; it's a bunch of early rare material, from 1998-2001 as far as I can tell, being released by their label Ace Fu Records. This is good by me; any Pinback is good Pinback. (Which, by the way, is a reference to the whiny janitor in Dark Star. I did not know that.)

The album cover seems to feature Green Lantern and Darth Vader's lovechild in a landscape by Dali. Sure, why not? Doesn't really seem to fit Pinback, though--they're not dark or melty enough for that.

Pinback - Byzantine off of Nautical Antiques, which's supposed to be released 5 September.




Relevant tags: [Music], [New releases], [Pinback], [Nautical Antiques]

Square Wave Punch

The problem with keeping up with all of the good music blogs out there is that it produces way too much music to be absorbed, or even tried (is this my theme for the week--too much music?). Some things that the blogosphere adores I never try, like Asobi Seksu's new CD "Citrus," which everyone I read loves, or only try a month later, like Ladyhawk. Always makes me wonder what the actual elements are that get me to listen to something. I still don't know what they are, but The Underrated Blog's bit on Square Wave Punch worked, anyway.

Is it just me, or is there a movement of just-rock bands coalescing? Square Wave Punch reminds me a lot of Ladyhawk in that way (maybe White Whale too, a bit): they're not alt-rock or emo-rock or any other hyphen-rock. It'd make sense as a backlash to over-mannered indie acts that're around now (as cool as some of them may be); they have a pleasant kind of palate-cleansing effect, even though they lack the immediate pique-your-interest or substantial feel of more experimental stuff.

Square Wave Punch - Keep Quiet (from YSI)--which doesn't seem to be on CD anywhere, more's the pity.




Relevant tags: [Music], [Mp3], [Rock music], [Asobi Seksu], [Ladyhawk], [White Whale], [Square Wave Punch]

Lost and Found in the Shuffle

I have a ridiculous amount of music--at least, in human terms; in gigabyte terms, I know people with more, but in human terms we're in the same boat: we have too bloody much music to absorb, and most of us acquire new music at such a rate that the situation is hardly going to change.

So there's music in my library that I don't remember having heard. Large amounts of it, even; which seems just as shameful as having large amounts of books you haven't read in your library. (Come to think of it, I don't know why this should be, either; but everybody I know who does have large amounts of unread books is vaguely embarrassed about it--maybe we think it betrays a gluttonous lack of temperance, or something.)

Irrational embarrassment aside, the plus side of this is that shuffling can produce very nice discoveries that still feel new, no matter how long I've actually had 'em. This is one; it's by a tiny band called Dandelion Wine that apparently, incredibly, doesn't have a web presence--and isn't the one from Melbourne that plays pop with medieval instruments, which does.

I like this song: it's got an addictive, sweet bop to it that avoids being saccharine, and there's a nicely steady trajectory from start to finish. I wish to hear more from Dandelion Wine.

Dandelion Wine - Fosterwallace (from YSI)




Relevant tags: [Music], [Obscure Music], [Dandelion Wine], [Mp3], [Found]

Glad to Hear It: Frida Hyvönen

Going to the Jens Lekman/Frida Hyvönen/bunchaotherpeople show at TT the Bear's this weekend; Jens goes on at bloody o'clock in the morning, which has me a bit dampened, but all of a sudden everybody is posting about her, and I like the sample song that everybody's got. So good--maybe I'll get the CD at the show, since I already have all Jens' stuff.

Frida Hyvönen - You Never Got Me Right from YSI




Relevant tags: [Music], [mp3], [Frida Hyvönen], [Jens Lekman],

Psapp Reminds Me of Postal Service

In the sweetness of their glitchy instrumentals (although that goes for Dntel too, of course) and the lyrics that, once you get past the jerky, catchy flow of the song, surprise you with their quiet, vivid detail. Below find "Leaving in Coffins," off of Tiger My Friend.




Get it from YSI

Track: Casey Dienel - Cut Your Hair

Casey Dienel doing Pavement, brilliant! (Thanks to DayTrotter.) I'm so pissed she moved away from Boston right before I started listening to her. Come back to Boston, Casey!

Listen to it:


Get it from YouSendIt

Give Casey Dienel money!

Halou is Cool

They remind me of somebody, though--can't quite put my finger on it. Mogwai for the some of the instrumentation, like on "Everything Is OK", but the voice sounds familiar, too, and I can't place it. This's Honeythief, off of their CD "Wholeness & Separation".




Ohhh. Portishead for the voice, I think.