Month: March 2011

Yuck Prepares Me For My SXSW ‘Get Away’

We are less than a week away from South By Southwest and I am getting pumped. I’ll be there for the first time with NPR Music producing concerts, including some of my favorites of 2011: James Blake, Smith Westerns, Yuck, Raphael Saadiq, Colin Stetson, tUnE-yArDs, The Joy Formidable, The Antlers, WILD FLAG, Khaira Arby, Bright Eyes, Kurt Vile and a few more. I’ll also be filming a crapload of videos that we will shoot down there in the style of our Tiny Desk Concerts series.

And then in my not-so-copious free time I shall be trying to see as many bands as I can jampack in. Among the bands I’m most excited to see is my hands down favorite new-ish act of 2011, Yuck. My love has been well-documented both here and at NPR Music. So pardon me as I continue with my plugging. They just put out a cool video for their opening track “Get Away” and it’s, um, pretty cool. Also somewhat NSFW, so there’s that.

Memoryhouse: A Blissed-Out And Beautifully Murky ‘Heirloom’

Memoryhouse – “Heirloom” from Jamie Harley on Vimeo.

Just came across Memoryhouse today when I read that they have signed with Sub Pop. I can’t say I’ve heard too much about this Toronto pop duo just yet, but they seem to be wading in the same waters as labelmates Beach House and Papercuts. That is, they play gorgeous, blissed-out dream pop filled with reverb, washed out vocals and crisp guitars that cut through the murky beauty.

While their Sub Pop debut isn’t due for awhile, check out this fantastic video for the song “Heirloom” — directed by Jamie Harley that uses old footage from Morocco and London shot back in 1968 for some film called Home Movie. I love the blasted out colors and grainy footage from what looks to be 16mm stock. It works very nicely with the mood of the song.

I look forward to hearing more from this band this year.

Admiring The Art Design Of Broken Bells

Last year’s album from Broken Bells — a collaboration between Danger Mouse (aka Brian Burton) and The Shins’ James Mercer — was among my favorite records of the year. It was such a great mix of psychedelic pop instrumentation, Spaghetti Western soundtracks and electronic experimentation, but done in a way that was still very approachable. The record was definitely a grower though, as it took time to listen and dig in to all the layers going on under Mercer’s voice.

One of the other things I have loved about Broken Bells is the visual aesthetic of their record cover art. The cover art for the band’s full-length debut — as well as for the singles “The High Road” and “The Ghost Inside” — was designed by Atlanta-based artist Jacob Escobedo, who has also done work for Gnarls Barkley and the Dark Night of the Soul album.

All the images have a cohesive design and color palette, clean typography and a worn-in feel that makes each cover look like an old waterlogged record discovered in a forgotten bin down in the basement. As I said in my round up of the best album art of 2010, “the imagery is both cosmically alien and antiquated, as if it’s what we imagined the future to look like in 1973.”

The band just announced a new EP, Meyrin Fields, that continues this trend and works just beautifully. You can hear a track from the EP over on the All Songs Considered blog at NPR Music.

Julianna Barwick’s Stunning ‘Reckoner’ Remix

Whoa, how did I manage to miss this one for at least a few years? Awhile back you might recall that Radiohead released “stems” for their song “Reckoner” from In Rainbows. These stems basically are individual tracks from the song, not quite the raw multi-track recordings, but rather they were grouped into different pieces like strings and rhythm guitar or background vocals or lead vocal or lead guitar or drums and percussion. With these stems they allowed you to remix the song and upload it to a cool site where you could vote on your favorites. The results were decidedly mixed as to be expected from such a project. But there were some gems.

Among them was Julianna Barwick’s version:

Now I vaguely remember hearing this one once or twice perhaps. I’ve known of Barwick now for a year or two and always admired her stuff. It simply never clicked with me who created this remix. But with Barwick’s new amazing masterpiece album The Magic Place, I am more than aware of who she is. That record completely sold on her ambient choral music: it’s transcendent, effervescent and absolutely stunning work.

Somehow, I guess I just missed this complete reinvention of one of my favorite Radiohead songs. It totally works and hints at how amazing a collaboration with Yorke could potentially be.

98 Seconds From Peter Bjorn And John

One of the things that everyone seemed to forget when discussing Peter Bjorn And John’s breakout album Writer’s Block was it’s conciseness. When you boiled down the glockenspiels and whistling that made “Young Folks” such a monstrous, ubiquitous hit, the songs on that record were lean, simple and melodically memorable. The song structures were just innately well crafted and clean, something their follow up, Living Thing was absolutely not. That record was drowned out by needless electronic layers and bloated synths — they went big when they probably should’ve gone smaller.

Well with their newest record Gimme Some, the band seems to have returned somewhat to form. The songs aren’t nearly as tight and catchy as on Writer’s Block, but they’ve definitely pared down the flabbiness and sheen. The best example of this is the impossibly short, perfectly constructed “Breaker Breaker.” The song is a minute and 38 seconds, yet it feels fully thought out and a powerful burst of British Invasion rock and punk rock energy.

The video for this song also brilliantly captures the fury, the speed and explosive nature of the song — in a way that makes you sit and try to figure out how they made it (film in slow motion and speed it up so it’s in sync?) Bands don’t seem to do songs this short anymore because let’s face it, it’s freaking hard to do. So bully for Peter Bjorn & John. They’ve pulled it off and outdone themselves in the process.

Michel Gondry Goes Split Screen (Again)

What is it about split screen in film that, when expertly employed, makes it so engaging and interesting? Some of my favorite films from the 1960’s use it really well — the original Thomas Crown Affair with Steve McQueen and Woodstock come to mind right off the bat, but I’m sure I could find 20 others if I had a few minutes.

In Michel Gondry’s latest music video for The Living Sister’s song “How Are You Doing?,” the visionary iconoclast director uses a 3-way split screen to depict an increasingly crazier and crazier series of events for Inara George, Eleni Mandell and Becky Stark. There’s accidents, fires, shootouts, sinkholes and childbirth, all shot in Gondry’s trademark homemade style.

And in pure Gondry fashion, the events all align at the end. While I’m not exactly a huge fan of the song — it’s well-crafted but perhaps a little cutesy for my tastes — there’s no denying this is an awesome video.

This is not the first time that Gondry has used split screen either. Fans will remember a phenomenal video for Cibo Matto’s “Sugar Water,” which uses the same technique that shows the action going in both forward and reverse, serving as a mirror image that eventually meets in the middle. Truly great.