Music

[javyn]

I'm re-discovering my Ali Farka Toure Niafunke album....great stuff.

 

[faustian bargain]

BJORK!

Title: "Björk"
Catalog no: FA-006
Label: Fálkinn
Released: December 1977 (Iceland only)


this is the first album bjork ever recorded. she was 11 years old. it barely even sounds like her. probably a recording only interesting to bjork fans.

 

[VMan]

The band 'The Loon' is awesome, I recently discovered them and have been playing them fairly often. Also been listening to some Scissors Sisters remixes, as well as some FatBoySlim remixes.

 

[Alter]

Originally Posted by VersaceMan

The band 'The Loon' is awesome, I recently discovered them and have been playing them fairly often.

What kind of sound? Any comparisons?

 

[tundrafour]

I've been listening to almost nothing but Tom Waits, Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Leadbelly, and Hank Williams Sr. for the past week or so. I want to buy Modern Times but it's $18 at the record store closest to me and $10 on Amazon. As a broke recent college graduate, I can't justify the higher price but keep forgetting to order it online.

 

[VMan]

Originally Posted by Alter

What kind of sound? Any comparisons?

Oops, I meant to put "the album 'The Loon' by the band Tapes 'n Tapes is awesome". They are Indie Rock, and they experiment with a few different styles on their album. I really dig them.

Here's the Pitchfork review, FWIW.

You won't find a tougher sell on neoclassicism than yours truly, so imagine my surprise how this strummy slab from the thrift racks has become one of my early '06 faves. Minneapolis-based Tapes 'n Tapes do it by the book-- that's to say, off the cuff, taking cues from indie legends and newies alike with star-pupil rigor, but never sweating the exam. Here's a charismatic, playfully slipshod band unconcerned with making all the loose ends meet up, audacious enough to leave the dot-connecting to us. But then, never quite knowing which Feelies riff or Malkmus vocal turn or, hell, CYHSY organ sound these guys will strike with next is precisely what makes The Loon such a rich, participatory, and eminently repeatable experience.

Tapes 'n Tapes kneel before Pavement, Wire, Beach Boys, and Pixies, bearing their influences more publically than notebook logo sketches. But facing the task of averting obviousness, they play the uncool card: "The Iliad" dresses its keystones in afro-MIDI percussion, cuica and humorously fake timbale, its garb recalling the shy kid in sculpture class who could be a hipster if not for those Sketchers: Are the kicks a defense mechanism, ironic one-upmanship, or just a really good deal at TJ Maxx? It's all part of their unpretentious approachability and charm. Tandem tracks "In Houston" and "Manitoba" lounge out with surprise vibe melodies, incongruously smooth counterpoints to an otherwise gruff sound. But the move doesn't raise eyebrows, instead fostering a mellow whiskey-belly warmth. Inconsistency, Tapes 'n Tapes understand, adds character and colorizes personality; it also keeps listeners off-balance and wanting more.

If their aesthetic choices sometimes bewilder, the vocals hit nearer mindfuck. Resistant to the emotionally soaring, soft-spot-as-high-point bone their forebears never hesitated to throw, Tapes 'n Tapes seethe smarm and snark. "I've been a better lover with your mother," frontman Josh Grier snarls over restless, incorrigible strums on "Cowbell". But while smack talk's good for a snicker, the band choose introspection over in-joke on "Insistor", whose initially hushed, scat-quick vocals rise to meet the song's surging polka rhythm for a transcendent chorus: "And when you rush I'll call your name like Harvard Square holds all inane." Delivered with just enough desperation to defeat its inscrutability, the line's sweet as Nutella from the jar, and probably healthier.

Unknowable lyrics aren't the only device Tapes 'n Tapes use to summon their primary influence (ahem, Pavement); the band's strict strums-over-riffs philosophy activates last-decade memories, too. "10 Gallon Ascots", alternately the album's softest and loudest cut, rides a furtive, sneaking rhythm that seems channelled straight from "Stop Breathin'", while "In Houston" fuses its "Two States" two-beat stomp to the record's most Malkmusian vocal articulation, an allusion so overt (and dead-on) it verges on memorial. But the band forgoes their heroes' ascetic brevity-- they're just too happy to wail, and too hyperactive to be stopped. "Crazy Eights" balloons from 90-second instrumental placeholder to something more complex after suddenly wormholing from casual swing to overdriven straight-time; "Manitoba" shakes off its blissful pre-dawn slumber to kick an ecstatic, vibraphone-free coda.

While strong faith is always convincing, Tapes 'n Tapes succeed by practice as much as passion, articulating a conventional vocabulary with rare erudition. As such, The Loon brings something for everybody. Not that the band's diplomacy is a kowtow: Loving is just their quaint way of asking for love. Credit yourself if you can get down with a program offering up so many been-there-done-that indicators. Or better, credit the band for avoiding the toothless mush that typically results from this sort of populism, and arriving instead at a fresh vision through eloquent pastiche.



-Sam Ubl, February 28, 2006

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/articl...Tapes_The_Loon

 

[Alter]

Originally Posted by VersaceMan

Oops, I meant to put "the album 'The Loon' by the band Tapes 'n Tapes is awesome". They are Indie Rock, and they experiment with a few different styles on their album. I really dig them.

Here's the Pitchfork review, FWIW.



http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/articl...Tapes_The_Loon

Many thanks. I just happened to accidentally download some of the tracks this morning from a P2P for review purposes only, of course. Listened to them on my train in to work. I like, I like. Thanks for the recommendation.

 

[Connemara]

I just downloaded Herbie Hancock's version of "Thieves in the Temple" (great Prince song, BTW). Highly reccomended to anyone who's even a casual jazz fan.

 

[Manny Calavera]

Originally Posted by VersaceMan

Oops, I meant to put "the album 'The Loon' by the band Tapes 'n Tapes is awesome". They are Indie Rock, and they experiment with a few different styles on their album. I really dig them. Here's the Pitchfork review, FWIW. http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/articl...Tapes_The_Loon
Tapes 'n Tapes are pretty solid. They're playing here at Black Cat on Halloween night and I'm gonna' see if I can wrangle me a date for the event. Just got back from Sunset Rubdown at Black Cat. Really great set despite Spencer Krug and the cute female xylophone player both being quite sick.

 

[gamelan]

Anne Briggs, A Collection. freakin' amazing.

-Jeff

 

[faustian bargain]

NP on Pandora: Kinski, "Daydream Intonation". It rocks!

 

[VMan]

Evol Intent - Us Against the World
Dieselboy - The Human Resource

 

[Britalian]

Anyone heard new Ornette Coleman cd, 'Sound Grammar'? Opinions?
Also, I'm really looking forward to new Tom Waits triple album next month.

 

[Manny Calavera]

Originally Posted by Britalian

Also, I'm really looking forward to new Tom Waits triple album next month.

The single is on eMusic if you're interested. I've had a copy of the album sitting on my desk for about...oh, three weeks now. My recreational music time has been so incredibly pithy as of late. I haven't had a chance to listen to the new Bonnie "Prince" Billy (and I'm pretty much the biggest Oldham fan in the world), The Hold Steady (which I'm really anticipating) or The Decemberists, all of which are also sitting on my desk.

Finally got around to the new Xiu Xiu. It's a really tight record and I was really shocked about the quality, due to the fact I heard Jamie Stewart turned down the weird factor (which made Fabulous Muscles one of the best albums of the decade). Still listening to Grizzly Bear, which is album of the year material (only Cookie Mountain and Pink compare thus far, in my mind).

Oh, and I received something awesome in the mail today...final tuned Altar. If you don't know what Altar is, don't worry. I just want the envy of the fanboys.

 

[lawyerdad]

Originally Posted by Britalian

Anyone heard new Ornette Coleman cd, 'Sound Grammar'? Opinions?
Also, I'm really looking forward to new Tom Waits triple album next month.
The Waits album is to be all new music, or some sort of retrospective?