Satellite Skin’s got this country feel – but not really. It sounds like a desert plain and a wide sky, and it sounds like Modest Mouse too – but unlike most Modest Mouse songs, it doesn’t sound pissed off. It lacks the sheer punch of jams like “Dashboard” or “Ocean Breathes Salty,” maybe just because it is less angry. The twangy guitar and delicate piano make me think sunset out west, but Isaac Brock’s snarl and Johnny Marr’s solos make me think late-night back east. Give “Satillite Skin” a listen. Continue reading →
Author Archives
20
May 09
Modest Mouse – Satillite Skin
15
May 09
Chiddy Bang – Southpaw, Brooklyn, May 13 2009
Southpaw, in Park Slope, is dark and uncrowded. The sparse crowd is an awkward, eclectic mix. In one corner a DJ spins nineties rap, watched by awestruck preppy hipsters in peach button-downs. Most of the crowd clusters happily by the long bar. Chiddy Bang’s first New York City headlining show is performed for no more than forty people, happy drunk girls and guys in their thirties absently sipping a beer and, in one corner, a white-haired couple I assume are somebody’s grandparents.I have never seen live rap before, with the exception of one Talib Kweli song. But Chiddy Bang aren’t really a rap group like you’d expect them to be. Continue reading →
30
Apr 09
Vampire Weekend plus Ra Ra Riot equals Discovery
I have three confessions: I love Vampire Weekend, and I love Ra Ra Riot, and I love Discovery.
What Discovery is, besides the spaceship and a TV channel, is Ra Ra Riot’s Wes Miles and Vampire Weekend’s Rostam Batmanglij, and instead of churning out lovely orchestral pop as they do with their respective bands, they churn out… jams. Z100-style club-banger jams, with autotune and fuzzy synth and lyrics like “google yourself when you get home.” Jams I, a white girl, feel comfortable awkwardly gesticulating to whilst driving in my car or whilst alone in a room (sometimes, I must admit, in a room with other people). Jams of the caliber of “Single Ladies” or “Yeah!” era Usher.
Discovery have two songs as of now, so maybe I’m taking things a step too far when I laud them so passionately.
But listen to this: Continue reading →
9
Apr 09
Ra Ra Riot – Webster Hall, NYC, April 4 2009
Wes Miles pulls at his clothes like he wants to say “Free me from this earthly prison!” He stares into nothing. He turns this way and that with lifts and presses of one boat-shoed foot. Wes Miles does not stand still, and the rest of his band does not stand still, and no one in this cavernous room stands still, and everything jitters electrically.
This is Ra Ra Riot’s biggest headlining show to date, and Wes nervously admits this between “Run My Mouth Off” and “Winter ’05,” halfway into the show as if he doesn’t want to jinx things. I have always believed that Ra Ra Riot deserve more attention and more love, and when year-end lists came out last December I looked nervously for The Rhumb Line (their only album) everywhere, for their name in the top-ten of best live band, for “Ghost Under Rocks” under best song, but I was disappointed to discover that not all people extend the kind of adoration to Ra Ra Riot that I do. This sold-out show appears to be a step in the right direction. Continue reading →
