Wilco’s new album The Whole Love is already assured to be among my favorite albums of the year, but it’s also the band’s best since A Ghost Is Born, if not Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. It’s also the first record on their new label dBpm. The band released a 7″ single this summer to celebrate, with “I Might” and a great cover of Nick Lowe’s “I Love My Label.” Check out this nice video of them recording that song in their famed “Wilco Loft.”
This fall Wilco will be touring with Nick Lowe as well, so that’ll surely be an excuse for them to collaborate on stage. Should be fun.
This year the arty noise rockers Deerhoof have been releasing a series of collaborative singles — on which different vocalists sing on instrumentals from their 2011 album Deerhoof Vs. Evil. The latest 7″, “Behold a Raccoon in the Darkness”, features Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy singing over the instrumental for Deerhoof’s track “Behold a Marvel in the Darkness”.
The B-side, “Own It”, is a new recording from Tweedy’s side project the Raccoonists, a band that includes his two sons, Spencer and Sam. Check out the super fun lo-fi video for that song:
Recently Washed Out performed for Sirius XMU Sessions, during which they performed a short but well-realized cover of Chris Isaak’s lovely 1989 slow jam ballad “Wicked Game,” from his record Heart Shaped World. It’s a great reminder to how amazing the original is.
Check out Isaak’s performance on Late Night with David Letterman (back when he was on NBC) from March 1991. Excellent version.
Sufjan Stevens dropped by WNYC to sing “Pleasure Principle” the last acoustic portion of his 25-min long epic “Impossible Soul,” from his even more epic album Age Of Adz. He’s joined here by The National’s Bryce Dessner and two members of his band, including Kat Martino. Sufjan is ending his so-called touring behind this record next week with two big shows at Prospect Park, which is shame because this material deserved more of a showcase on a fuller national tour.
If you heard this new Wilco single “I Might” a few weeks back and thought it showed great promise for the upcoming record, you’re not alone. It’s a great tune. Now I have now heard the new Wilco album The Whole Love, and I can say it’s absolutely great. Totally the album I had hoped they still had in them after the last two decent, but ultimately sorta boring records. The experimental fire is back and it might be the best record of theirs since A Ghost Is Born. That’s probably all I’m allowed to say for now, but more later I’m sure. In the meantime, listen to this song again. It’s great.
When it first came out last fall, Sufjan Steven’s The Age Of Adz was obviously ambitious. The record was somewhat of a departure from the Stevens’ typical acoustic identity — he traded his banjo and acoustic guitar for synthesizers, computer blips and boops, drum machines, electronic glitched out percussion, 8-bit video game sounds and complicated horn and string arrangements. Everything in the record seems so perfectly placed, every flourish adding something new to hear. It was no more dense than say Illinois; it was simply a different palette he was working with.
Still, there was a ton to unpack in this album and in this age of listening to an album once and deciding what you think instantly, it’s possible people weren’t sure what they were hearing. It was going to take some time to really digest the music, the lyrics and the overall scope of what he was fully going for. Now, nearly ten months later, it’s clear to me that The Age Of Adz is Sufjan Stevens’ best and most vital work.
When Sufjan Stevens released Illinois in 2005, it was easy to believe that the prolific singer-songwriter might actually get around to writing a record for every state. It was a lofty if unlikely project, but it was fun to imagine what places Stevens might tackle next. Instead, for the most part, he fell silent. But Stevens returned in a big way in 2010, releasing an album-length EP (All Delighted People) and following it with The Age Of Adz, on which he eschews many of his musical signatures — the crisp banjo melodies, the sweeping instrumental arrangements, the wispy vocals — for glitchy beats, bit-crunched synths and filtered vocals. Still, as much as the palette has been deconstructed and changed, it’s a sound that’s as dense and ornately orchestrated as ever. As always, at the center of Stevens’ sonic experimentation is his way with melodies and themes that reveal themselves slowly. With so much to process, The Age of Adz works as a bold statement from an artist unafraid to push himself beyond his musical comfort zone.
The more I think about it, Radiohead probably released The King Of Limbs about three months too early. At the time it came out, I was incredibly happy to hear the music and loved the songs on it — the new direction towards groovier, more electronic-based dubstep songs felt organic and a natural evolution. No one is making music quite like Radiohead.
But, if I had one complaint about the the album — and this is a minor one I should say — it’s that to me did seem about two songs too short. At 35 minutes, it was spare and just as the album really started connecting and climaxing, it was over. Like I said, great songs, just maybe not enough.
Since the album’s release in February, the band released a special 12″ double single “Supercollider/The Butcher” for Record Store Day and eventually gave those songs away for free for those who bought the record. Those songs would have been perfect if sequenced within the full length. Now comes “Staircase,” a new song premiering as part of a Nigel Godrich’s video performance series From The Basement. (BBC will air a 55-minute broadcast of The King Of Limbs: Live From The Basement in which the band will be performing the entire album plus apparently a few other songs, including this one.)
The song is predictably great, but it also sounds like it would’ve sat nicely next to the songs on The King Of Limbs.
With a mix of electronic and acoustic drumming (two drummers!, in this case Clive Deamer joins for the song), some intricate guitar work, a peculiar chord progressions and a sturdy throbbing bass groove propelling the vamp, there’s a lot going on under this very danceable song. “Staircase” easily could have been a highlight on The King Of Limbs.
I’m loving this song, but I wonder if the valid arguments against Radiohead’s album length might’ve been cut down if they had included this and the other two songs way back in February. A band like Radiohead has earned every right to put out whatever they think is their best piece of work. But as consumers, music buyers — of which there are fewer and fewer of them these days — want to feel like they received something special and got a good value for their money. Otherwise, they’ll continue on downloading mp3’s for free. In that regard, it’s understandable that some thought this album didn’t deliver.
But all of this is just a side note to the fact that this song is really awesome and I wish it was on the album proper. Just a thought.
UPDATE (7/9): Radiohead has debuted another new song — this time it’s another video performance that’s leaked from the From The Basement session: “The Daily Mail.” Radiohead also played this live at their surprise appearance at Glastonbury a few weeks back.
This song is great too… man if they had just included these four on the damn album. I hope this and “Staircase” are released as another single/B-side soon. Check it out here:
Seemed like for awhile every indie band would use a seemingly low fi cover made from a Polaroid or retro-looking candid photograph as their album cover art. Pitchfork even looked at this trend not too long ago.
Now, I’m starting to see a new trend develop. Photos of beds, sheets, pillows and people ON said beds.
Here are three recent ones I’ve found, but I’m sure there are way more if I dug a little deeper.
Houses, All Night
Washed Out, Within And Without
Holy Other, With U
So what other albums are employing this? I’m told that according to the New York Times, three makes a trend. So what is the origin? Excluding general laziness or lack of creativity when it comes to album art, because that would be too easy to blame, why is this now a “thing?” Is it group think? Copy cats? Coincidence? YOU DECIDE!
UPDATE 6/18/2012: Recently I found yet another album cover that can be added to this trend of album art to employ bed sheets and pillows and scantily clad bodies. Here’s Violens’ True.
UPDATE 8/30/2012: Holy Other has another bed sheets-inspired cover for their album Held.
UPDATE 4/29/2014: Found yet another bedsheets album cover, this time for the new EP from Tourist, Patterns. Behold:
UPDATE 8/1/2014: The upcoming album from shoegaze metal band Whirr, Sway, has sheets too.
Before he was the the brooding baritone singer of The National, Matt Berninger used to be a graphic designer (albeit one who reportedly distracted himself by scribbling lyrics in the margins during meetings). So it sorta makes sense that he and the band would have a great, clean sense of design when it comes to their record covers. Starting with last year’s very fine High Violet, and continuing through their subsequent singles and EPs, The National’s album art has been particularly gorgeous, with a cohesive, evocative look and feel.
These covers are the work of New York-based artist Mark Fox, whose sculptures have been the basis for, and in some cases, re-purposed into album art. These incredibly intricate sketches and sculptures look to be crafted out of all sorts of textures and tactile materials: wood, string, metal, tape, paper colored with paint and colored pencils, and so on. There is so much detail to these pieces that you want to reach out and touch them, but at the same time there is a simplicity to Fox’s work which allows them to be a natural fit for an album cover.
When viewed together into a series, and coupled with a sleek typography layout, there’s a clear sense of style and direction that seems perfect for the dark, melodic vibe that The National’s music exudes.
Fox’s piece “The Binding Force” was used as the basis for the cover for The National’s full-length album High Violet:
I often pick up CDs from the pile to listen to based on the label. Today I’ve been listening to The Golden Record, new album from the band Little Scream on one of my favorite labels, Secretly Canadian. The record is full of big sounds: swooping strings, distorted guitars and thunderous drums, all under Laurel Sprengelmeyer’s gorgeous voice. In addition, Sprengelmeyer plays guitar, violin and keyboards.
The record also contains a fine pedigree of support players: Richard Reed Parry (Arcade Fire, Bell Orchestre), produced and performs on The Golden Record along with a ton of Montreal-based musicians fill out the rest: Mike Fuerstack (Snailhouse), Becky Foon (Silver Mt. Zion), Patty McGee (Stars), and Sarah Neufeld (Arcade Fire, Bell Orchestre). In addition, The National’s Aaron Dessner plays guitar on the lead single, “The Heron and The Fox.”
Check out this extremely intimate video of Little Scream performing “The Heron and The Fox” in the close confines of a small car, buried in snow. It is one of the quieter, more introspective songs on the record, the sound here in this video is definitely more paired down compared to the record. And the setting might make you feel a little claustrophobic at first, but the way their whispered, stunningly harmonized vocals fill up the car will more than win you over.
