I was anticipating Beach House's latest album Bloom to be another stunning achievement, deeply affecting and moving, etc, having enthusiastically loved their prior output... But no such luck. I didn't loathe it, but just as with the most recent Destroyer album, it went in one ear and out the other. Neither colourless nor terrible, just workmanlike. I couldn't hum a melody from it with a gun at my temple.
Not so with Ms. Domino's 1986 version of Aretha Franklin's dazzling torch song... The hypnotic guitar-interplay mirrors Felt, with a rockabilly twang on the leads, her voice is rich in character and depth. Throaty, even! A sweet soporific lullaby for the droopy eyed positioned between the morose ballads of Christine McVie in Fleetwood Mac and the Baltimore-bred sleepwalking hymns of (yes) Beach House and Cass McCombs.
Sadly the rest of Ms. Domino's work doesn't always add out - hopelessly dated sounding experiments with canned drum loops and an over-reliance on studio "texturing" drag it into the Lilith Fair swamp... Actually, not a swamp - if only she had only recorded something in a backwoods bog! - but rather the estrogen-saturated chamber of some strip mall Yoga studio. The sort of globe-trotting treacle that Tilda Swinton's character in We Need To Talk About Kevin would have on her walkman while hitchihiking through Andalusia. Jane Siberry and frozen yogurt.
Tread forward at your own peril or content yourself with her album East and West and a late period contribution to Stephen Merritt's project, The Sixths.
Nomag is a bilingual online music & culture site (without issues) run by Evelyne Côté (a former music editor at ICI and culture editor at Nightlife) and Félix Dyotte of Chinatown. I contributed a review of Beach House's performance last night in Montreal, which you can read online here.
Okay, so for some reason everyone's posting Norway from Beach House's as of yet to be released Teen Dream album. Either the reason is that that's what Sub Pop is dictating to be the next single or just because 10/10 bloggers prefer that specific more uptempo track to any of the other 9 songs on the album. Of course, all bloggers are either milquetoasts or windbag contrarians (this one included!) and often they're wrong - as they are now. Walk In the Park is a better song... And it's the 21st century, what does a single for an indie band mean except that that's the song the label wants played on KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic so Alex Patsavas can license it for whatever movie/tv show she's working on?
I'm DJing this Sunday at Blue Dog along with the hyper-talented Team Canada, DJ Sombrero n' Jizzy B. There's a free keg on the dancefloor, too. If you're so inclined, stop by. Monday's a holiday so we'll be letting loose. Free for girls. $5 at the door for all y'all else or get guestlist by e-mailing rsvp@lookoutpresents.com Theo Parrish LCD Soundsystem, DFA LCD Soundsystem, James Murphy LCD Soundsystem, LCD Soundsystem Pitchfork
The changing light at San Francisco is none of your East Coast light none of your pearly light of Paris The light of San Francisco is a sea light an island light And the light of fog blanketing the hills drifting in at night through the Golden Gate to lie on the city at dawn And then the halcyon late mornings after the fog burns off and the sun paints white houses with the sea light of Greece with sharp clean shadows making the town look like it had just been painted
But the wind comes up at four o'clock sweeping the hills
And then the veil of light of early evening
And then another scrim when the new night fog floats in And in that vale of light the city drifts anchorless upon the ocean - Lawrence Ferlinghetti
When it comes to Fleetwood Mac, there are a couple of idées fixes that I tend to harp on about when the topic inevitably arrives. First, there's my suspicion that when Lindsey Buckingham wrote 1986's Everywhere, he was either directly or indirectly paying homage to the Talking Heads'This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody), which was released in 1983 (and with the intro, possibly the sound logo of Disney's Buena Vista). Both of these songs are passable as hipster mating calls, which would explain the following videos.
MGMT cover The Talking Heads
Vampire Weekend cover Fleetwood Mac
Secondly, that a couple of years ago, Fleetwood Mac's Tusk album was the album that allowed people of my age and generation the chance to re-evaluate Fleetwood Mac, primarily because the strange excess and weirdness of the album itself and the recording process gave us permission to. That was followed by an embracing of Tango In The Night (I'm thinking now of CFCF's great re-working as evidence), and that we'll shortly be in the age of Mirage, after which there will be a Photian Schism for a couple of years while various sects develop around The Cult of Peter Green, The Gospel of Christine McVie (née Perfect), The Doctrine of Stevie Nicks, & maybe even The Decrees of Mick Fleetwood's Zoo (that's least likely, I think.)
So, what's going to give us all permission to delve into Mirage? Truthfully, the nasally voice of Stevie Nicks has always rubbed me slightly the wrong way, to say little of her neo-gypsy art school teacher outfits (I hate free spirits), so it's going to be a Christine McVie song first, Love In Store, which is awesome in much the same way that the Grateful Dead's Touch of Grey is awesome, and has given me great results as a late-night dancefloor closer.
After Love In Store, my next pick on the album is the 9th track. The opening piano roll of Hold Me is a compelling dance-floor shuffler that eventually picks up steam & becomes a near-perfect expression of desire and the anticipated satisfaction of that desire.
Christine McVie back when her last name was Perfect
Finally, there's the album closer, Christine McVie's ballad Wish You Were Here, reportedly about her deceased lover Dennis Wilson (of The Beach Boys). Incidentally and (by now) obviously, I love Christine McVie's voice, and how much does Victoria Legrand of Beach House's voice sound similar? Just prior to Christine McVie joining Fleetwood Mac, she recorded and released a solo album calledChristine Perfect that I would highly recommend to anyone else enamored with her voice. Here she sings noticeably deeper, and the music is bluesier than her later solo work, especially on a cover of Etta James' I'd Rather Go Blind and my personal favourite, No Road is The Right Road, which is the stylistic forerunner of Holly Golightly's There Is An End.
This could all be moot, though. It's been a long time since I've mp3 blogged, and maybe now we've all got rid of our musical hang-ups, which would go a long way to explain the widespread enthusiasm for the Italo Disco Bike-In this weekend.
Lindsey Buckingham pays tribute to Adam Ant & the Nouveau Pirate Movement
