PeeP on PoP- Ford and Lopatin

Ford and Lopatin- Channel Pressure (Software Records- 2011)

~by Gabe McBride

93_______________________

I look at that score, and wonder if I can possibly be serious, but then I listen to the record again, and I know I’m right. It’s hard to hold back my gushing and giddiness over Channel Pressure, the debut full-length from the band formerly known as ‘Games’, comprised of Daniel Lopatin, who also performs as ambient synth/ drone act, Oneohtrix Point Never, and Joel Ford, of new wave disco-pop aficionados Tigercity. So Ford and Lopatin do draw something of a midpoint between the two bandmembers regular gigs, driving an experimental, digitized spike through the heart of early 80’s europop and r&b inflected dance tunes, creating a forward-thinking retro amalgam of keytarism, Apple IIe blips, skanky hairband guitar riffs, and groggy but sharp-cornered atmospherics.

Now, as I’ve said before, I am an electro novice, and I am not going to try and debate whether the album is ironic or whatever, but where Channel Pressure wins me over so easily, is in its seams-bursting pop insistence, that straddles the line between being overwrought and concise. Not that Ford and Lopatin are holding much back here. The tunes have an “everything and the kitchen sink” feel throughout Channel Pressure, without losing focus or feeling sloppy. The record is first and foremost, a rethinking of 80’s pop, taken apart and reconstructed like a Rubik’s Cube that couldn’t be solved, but is then turned into a work of art, no longer corny or anachronistic. It’s music I kinda hated back when it was popular, revamped into something not only digestible, but desirable, and HIGHLY danceable, especially if your hair is properly crimped.

For Fans of: Com Truise, Bobby Brown

PoP Live! Ween...

Went to lovely Bend, Oregon and saw Ween at the beginning of July. The sun was hot, the day was beautiful, and, apparently, Gene Ween is dying. I say this as more a casual fan of the band than many of the hippies, indie kids, frat boys, and Prius driving baby-boomers in attendance: Gene, please see a doctor. The guy looks like he weighs 100 lbs. Gene (Aaron Freeman) Ween's substance abuse issues are not exactly a secret, but just wanna say, Pop on Purpose is praying for you, bro.

What was a PLEASANT surprise was, though, was that the band kicked it OUT for the fans, as the set (no opening act, BTW) was three hours long, and I happily remembered and was easily able to sing along to several of the tunes, and not just the HIV song. Which they did play. A realy, really good time.

PeeP on PoP- Kids on a Crime Spree

Kids on a Crime Spree- We Love You So Bad (Slumberland- 2011)

~by Gabe McBride

89_______________________

Somewhere between a longish EP and a mini LP, my initial impression of Kids on a Crime Spree’s  eight song debut was that this is a young band who are mature beyond their years, playing reverb heavy, punked-out updates on late 50’s/early 60’s rock ‘n roll (think Buddy Holly with an effects pedal). As it turned out, I was exactly wrong about the bands’ chronological youth, as KoaCS is the work of a 40’sish guy, Mario Hernandez, maintaining a youthful outlook on We Love You So Bad, and whose work with his previous band, guitar and keyboard pop mavens, From Bubblegum to Sky, I was (quite happily) familiar with. 

With the album’s boyish vocals and unblinking indebtedness to so-big-today-it’s-hard-to-believe-they-were-around-almot-thirty-years-ago, flavor of right now, Jesus and Mary Chain, Hernandez has carved out a feedback swathed, surf-rock mini-masterpiece that begs to be put on looping repeat on your listening device of choice. Word is, Hernandez has almost 100 tracks recorded under the Kids on a Crime Spree moniker. Here’s to a full-length (or two) in 2011!

For Fans of: The Raveonettes, The Queers



PeeP on PoP- Starfucker

Starfucker- Reptilians (Polyvinyl- 2011

~by Gabe McBride

83_______________________

Reptilians, the newest by Portland’s Starfucker, starts off out of the gate with its most disposable moment, a generic guitar chord accompanied by an almost comical turntable scratch, as the intro to album opener ‘Born’; serving as a curveball for what’s an otherwise fairly serious, if still very danceable electropop endeavor. What makes Reptilians such a success is the band’s ability to retain a rich, luxurious sadness at the album’s core, which tends, in my opinion to make for the best pop music.

The songs are interrupted every few tracks by a very British man talking about his thoughts on death, which he seems to view as not only inevitable, but in some ways, desirable or something to look forward to. I can’t say that head ‘fucker Joshua Hodges feels the same way, and damned if I can find any references on the web to who is the owner of these spoken interludes, but I have to assume that the band went into the studio with doom on their minds, not that this is the band’s goth album by any stretch. Known for their energetic, upbeat live shows, the band hasn’t stripped anything down from their two previous albums, heck, if anything, the tunes on Reptilians are even more dense, catchy, complex, and bursting at the seams with ideas than those on Starfucker (2008) and Jupiter (2009, both on Badman Recording Co.).

It took me a couple months to get my brain around Reptilians (hence the relatively late date of this review, considering the album was released in March) but it turns out Reptilians is apparently best listened to at full blast, in an empty office, working late on a Friday night. The sunset was beaming in through the window behind me while I wrote up some court paperwork that would need addressing first thing Monday morning. I was a little sad about not being home with my family, the drawn out, retro-futuristic synth chords of ‘The White of Noon’ played through my head and it fit perfectly. It was a bittersweet note that the album hits over and over.

For Fans of: Passion Pit, Hot Chip, New Order

PeeP on PoP- Moon Duo

Moon Duo- Mazes (Sacred Bones Records- 2011)

~by Gabe McBride

87_______________________

All the signifiers are there for this to be the drug album of the year, but it isn’t. Moon Duo’s Krautrock inspired rhythmic miasma of chugging guitars, and bleating organ drone is psychedelic music played by people who seem like they are NOT under the influence of hallucinogenics. Wooden Shjips’ Erik Johnson and cohort Sanae Yamada play dialed in, tightly chiseled, face melting space-rock tunes that offer more than the typical gauzy, loosey-goosey psychotropic mind-tripping music for the pharmacology crowd.

What sets the tracks on Mazes apart from the rest of the stoner set is its binary throb and oscillation, which is a more apt description than might be initially apparent, as Moon Duo is just that- a duo- even when they play live, with a  (all computery and whatnot) drum machine. Normally, I could easily consider this a deficit on a band’s behalf, but it comes through on Mazes as a stroke of propulsive genius. Instead of washes of aimless guitar freak out, the songs have a bouncy, joyous lift, injecting a rare energy into an all too often listless genre.

For Fans of: Surf City, Sportsguitar

PeeP on PoP- Fleet Foxes

Fleet Foxes- Helplessness Blues (Sub Pop- 2011)

~by Gabe McBride

80_______________________

Fleet Foxes' 2008 self-titled debut and Sun Giant EP were bona fide instant classics. The first music by front man Robin Pecknold and crew was a left-field take on wintery hippy folk, injected with icy Brian Wilson styled harmonies and sophisticated instrumentation. Pecknold, who was just a few rotations around the sun removed from his teen years at the time, was a thoughtful songwriter, and the band appeared to value intricacy and exploration, something belied by the youth of those involved. Fleet Foxes proved to be a commercial and especially critical success, landing on the top of several year-end lists, and, admittedly, remains in my current iPod rotation to this day.

So, three years later, we have Helplessness Blues, the much anticipated follow up by this band of less than merry nouveau hippies, and as is often the case, it fails to live up to high standards set by its predecessors. This, I guess, makes things sound more dire than I mean for them to. Singles from Helplessness Blues, released during the lead up to the album-release proper, ‘Grown Ocean’ in particular, showed the band expanding their already ambitious sonic pallet and opening up the doors on their hermetic song structures. And the title of the album is something of a misnomer, as Pecknold engages in a little bit of mid 20’s navel gazing, something I usually have little patience for. Fortunately, the tone of the album is overwhelmingly positive, as Pecknold, once again mature beyond his years, seems to understand that his successes enable him to aspire to more than rock stardom, more than drugs, partying, and women. Which is inspiring in and of itself, even if, as implied in the album’s title, he is not sure what he should do with his ability to influence and offer himself to a bigger purpose. Happily, he steers clear of the tired political and phony baloney spirituality proffered by many of his artistic brethren, even as it is apparent that he is not sure what he should be aspiring to.

Where Helplessness Blues falls somewhat short of the 2008 releases is in its submission to convention. Reportedly, Pecknold recorded and then ditched a whole other album’s worth of material, as he was left unsatisfied with the results. But, again, I wind up qualifying my criticism. The album sags a bit in the middle, with a stretch of primarily acoustic folk tracks, although this isn’t so much a lack of quality songs, (they remain consistently beautiful) as much as it is a sequencing problem. Also, the band has more or less abandoned the guitar and piano interludes that characterized so much of Fleet Foxes. There is a free/jazz saxophone explosion at the end of ‘The Shrine/An Argument’, which hints at the previous works’ adventurousness, but lacks the organic boundary-hopping feel that made Fleet Foxes so endearing. So where does that leave my final assessment? I really am not sure. There are times listening to the album that I am genuinely disappointed and others in which I feel like I really have nothing to complain about. Helplessness Blues is a lush, open work, which hints at future greatness, rather than embodying it.

For Fans of: The Band, Wilco, Lower Dens

Talk on Purpose: The Horror The Horror

So, I've made no bones about my love for Swedish pop impresarios, The Horror The Horror, and, on a lark  I emailed the band on their MySpace requesting an interview. Within a few days, lead singer Joel Lindstrom and  I were chatting it up like tight bros from back in the day. Suffice it to say, Joel is a nice guy, who has no problem offering up a little fan service! Enjoy, kids.

So how did The Horror The Horror get started? Did you guys know each other before becoming a band?

THTH got started out of the boredom and frustration that came of that my old band and at the same time Mattias' old bands kind of vanished, or lost the momentum, or whatever and we still wanted to do stuff and play music and write songs, but mostly just to hang out and we had no real output at that point. So basically me and Mattias started hanging out more and more and then we started to stuff musically together and then we got in touch with some old friends, people that we liked to hang out with and also people that we had played with earlier and also liked musically. Johan and Jacob and I know each other from school and Patrik and I and Mattias and I also got to know each other from some years before we started the band.

So what music did you listen to growing up? Have the bands and music you liked when you were younger changed a lot, or do you still listen to the things you did as a teen? Who would you consider to be your influences?

As a kid I listened to everything my older sister put in front of me, initially mostly Italo disco and all the standard 80s hits. The first bands that I got really into was the Cure, The Smiths and Depeche Mode and then I got really hooked with the Manchester scene, Stone Roses Charlatans and Happy Mondays and all of that. But at the same time I was exploring all the 60s and 70s stuff that I found in my father’s LP collection. Basically I was all over the place through my teens. I even loved the acid jazz stuff for a while, Galliano, Corduroy that shit. All of this music I still have love for but it's hard to say what's the biggest influence. No doubt, the 90s scene both more electronic stuff and the indie scene had a major impact as it was at that point I started to play in bands. But when we started this band I was basically only listening to the NYC scene, Velvet, Lou Reed's Transformer, Television, Talking Heads, Richard Hell and Jonathan Richman and some punk stuff Sex Pistols and The Saints etc. And at that point came all the new bands from New York: Strokes, Interpol, LCD Soundsystem, Radio 4, !!! that I loved and that surely influenced us too. Lately I've been going back to all the good stuff from the 80s like Talk Talk, Prefab Sprout, Terence Trent D'arby and what not. But also Giorgio Mordoder, Lisa Stansfield and S'Express.

What is it that's so special about Sweden? There seem to be so many great bands there, especially pop bands (The Legends, The Concretes, The Shout Out Louds, and The Horror The Horror, of course!).

We’ve gotten this question a lot over the years and I have two favourite suggested explanations:

1. School system. Back in the 80s and 90s there used to be really good and free government funded music classes that almost everyone took.

2. Boredom: Sweden is cold and dark and in most parts of the country nothing much happens at any point. Ways out of the boredom that this creates are to watch TV a lot, commit suicide or to lock yourself in a room with some friends and rehearse and hope that something fun will come out of it.

The two explanations also might be joined together.

Do you think there is any more to it than those two reasons? Something genetic maybe? Which lesser known Swedish bands should people know about?

Yeah, there are a bunch of popular explanations but I really don't think there is any one real reason. Swedes are pretty tall and I've read somewhere that tall people have bigger success career-wise than short people. Also people say Swedes are good looking and that is, as everyone knows, the most important key to success in the music industry. Another explanation is the strong melodic tradition in Sweden, from the traditional music, through ABBA and so on, but I don't know... I think people should listen to Paper, an awesome kraut/punk-band from Stockholm. They have released two albums so far and those are both brilliant. Another cool band is I Are Droid. They released one album like two or three years ago and they are working on their second one right now. Also I have to promote our own different side projects: My new band is called The Italian String Machine. Johan has his own project called SirVice. Jakob plays the drums in a band called the Majors and Patrik has two bands, The Battle of Santiago and The Worthy. All brilliant stuff of course! Best new track: Wallenberg - legendary feat. Leila K (of which I just did a remix as Italian String Machine)

So maybe Sweden is perhaps genetically engineering a master race, who will dominate the world through good-lookingness and pop tunes? Sounds kind of awesome, scary and awesome. On a completely other note; is song writing for the band collaborative, or is there a primary songwriter?

That analysis came from your mind not mine ;-)

The THTH song writing is always a collaboration. Usually me or Mattias comes up with a rough draft of a song, a guitar phrase or two and then we try out different stuff, arrangement wise, and the rhythm stuff etcetera and everyone tries their own stuff until we are all (kind of) satisfied and I try to come up with the melody and the words almost always last.

Do you play guitar on the records or live, or do you stick to singing?

I mostly stick to singing, but on the latest album I actually play most of the keyboards.

So the big question: when are you guys going to tour the States?

As soon as we get the invitation, we'll be over there for sure!

Well, consider THTH formally invited! I can't actually pay for you guys to get here, but if you play in Oregon, I can offer my basement for everyone to sleep in as well as a nice continental breakfast! Thanks for your time. Any words for your fans?

Alright, we love the continental breakfast! So we just might pick up on that, you never know. Thank you! Yes. To our fans: If you exist, thank you! And be patient, we will try our best to come to you and meanwhile dig into the records/mp3s or whatever. And, this summer we are recording a brand new single, (not from the album) that will be released as download/Vinyl 7" in September or so, if everything goes according to plan that is. It is going to be fantastic, unique and surprisingly fresh sounding. Or, more so than anything we have done before!

All the best!!!

Joel/THTH