Update

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Vintage and Vogue Squalls*

More than anything, I think, When U Gonna Luv Somebody, the debut album from Charlie the Horse, is the sound of a young band having fun. The way the band harmonizes, the raucous background noises, and the, well, smiles you hear through the music, tend to dominate the feeling of the record.

Displaying a talent beyond their years, the sound on When U Gonna Luv Somebody is often ramshackle yet always intentional and intricate. The banjo and horn on Up and Down Ladies add layers to an already clever love song. Despite the seemingly precocious vocals, lead singer Andrew Zucchino is not without humility in his tribute to the lady in question—explaining to her that “I follow shiny things/ because I’m young.” A better and more simple way to explain dalliances I have not heard (if that’s in fact what this is).



The texture of Hey Girl is different from the rest of the album—the vocals are secondary, playing background music to the piano that leads the way. For young bands, crafting this elaborate sound without cluttering everything else seems to be one of the most difficult propositions in making a record. Yet, here, Charlie the Horse is able to layer all of their sounds and still keep them distinct. It’s an example other fledgling bands would do well to follow.

It also helps, of course, that the distinct sounds are ones you would actually want to hear. The guitar work on Thunderstorm is reminiscent of some of the Black Keys’ best work (not to mention some Built to Spill-esque tremors on Go! Run! Hide! Run!), and Hey Boy starts off with a bass line and organ pulled from the Allman’s Whipping Post.

The real standout though, is Fever. Everything is present here—great vocal harmonies, Zucchino’s emotions on his sleeve, perfect light and airy guitar—and again the overwhelming sense that the band works well together, has fun, and is producing great music. Damn. It’s understated yet overpowering all at once—a sign that the underlying elements are so strong they don’t have to be shouted or turned to 11.



There’s a moment at the end of the first song and title track where you hear someone fiddling with a radio dial, and finally settling on something. Intentional or not, it’s a nice metaphor for the album. There’s a lot going on here, especially considering there are only eight tracks on When U Gonna Luv Somebody. It’s the rare debut album that both promises much for the future and delivers plenty for the present.

*In the interest of full disclosure, I’ve known lead singer Andrew Zucchino since he was a child. (I think) his older brother and I got him drunk for the first time by leaving jello shots in his fridge which he unknowingly ate. That said, I think this caused me to be even more careful with my words than usual. In short, I wholeheartedly believe everything I wrote above. Luckily, Andrew made this easy on me by making a kick-ass record. We’ll do an interview later this week and hear more. Congrats dude.

Give Your Lover a 69 for Valentine’s Day

Get your mind out of the gutter. I’m talking about the Magnetic Fields’ 1999 masterpiece 69 Love Songs. It is, as the title suggests, 69 “love” songs. There’s no way to accurately describe all of the songs in a general manner, they run the gamut from your run of the mill indie-pop to country to electronica. They’re not all brilliant, but there’s enough in there to find something from everyone, even your (perhaps) musically challenged significant other.

Why does it work? Most likely because of lead songwriter Stephin Merritt’s talent and unique approach. In a recent interview with Onion A.V. Club, Merritt pointed out that

You know, most love songs are not cheesy and corny. Most love songs are complaints, I think. Or about unrequited love, coming at it from some oblique angle. Only the ones that say “I love you” over and over are the cheesy, corny ones that people complain about. At least half the songs people hear in the world are love songs. I feel like my love songs, probably none of which just say “I love you” over and over again, are in the mainstream of that tradition of being a little off.

The brilliance in Merritt’s songs lies mostly with their sarcastic remarks (How Fucking Romantic), brilliant insights (They’ll Be Time Enough for Rocking When We’re Old), or casual self-deprecation (I Think I Need a New Heart).

Some of the funniest love songs come from his attacks on clichés. My favorite is from The Book of Love: “The book of love is long and boring / no one can lift the damn thing / it's full of charts and facts and figures / and instructions for dancing.” Merritt describes this process:

I don’t think there are any clichés I try to avoid. As soon as I spot a cliché, I go for it. I feel like clichés are the most useful thing in songwriting. They’re the tool on which you build all the rest of the song. Clichés that other people should try to avoid, I suppose, are rhyming “dance” with “romance,” or putting the word “love” at the end of a line and having to rhyme it. That’s about it. If you want to write a love song, you need to not try to write it for a particular person in a particular situation. It needs to be vague, otherwise you’re going to fall into trap after trap of trying to rhyme with somebody’s name. Keep it vague. That’s the T-shirt from this article.

All in all, there is a lot going on here. It’s going to take some time. But what better way to spend Valentine’s Day with your better half than listening to great music that can make you life, cry, and cringe from song to song? Here’s the 18 I would start with:

Absolutely Cuckoo
All Your Little Words
A Chicken with its Head Cut Off
Reno Dakota
I Don’t Want to Get Over You
Let’s Pretend We’re Bunny Rabbits
Come Back from San Francisco
The Cactus Where Your Heart Should Be
The Book of Love
I Think I need a New Heart
How Fucking Romantic
Nothing Matters When We’re Dancing
Roses
Time Enough for Rocking When We’re Old
Very Funny
(Crazy For You But) Not That Crazy
Papa Was a Rodeo
Love is Like a Bottle of Gin



*Disclaimer: I’ve never tried this before. The closest I came to “sharing” this album with someone was with my friend Deacon, and while our romance is unflappable, it may not be the type most of you share.

New Beach House Record 75% Less Boring

Beach House creates music that you’re only going to be listening to at the beach when it’s pouring rain outside. Still, there’s a need for this type of thing and their new record, Teen Dream does a stellar job of it. It’s a marked improvement from 2008’s Devotion, an unbelievably dull record, especially considering the rave reviews it received (one exception—a beautiful cover of Daniel Johnston’s nearly perfect song Some Things Last a Long Time). This time out, however, Beach House (Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally) create a record that may be the perfect soundtrack to a rainy day at the beach, or anywhere else. I find myself playing it on repeat during Snowpocalypse 2010 here in D.C.

So what makes Teen Dream work where Devotion so boringly failed? In a very general sense, the songs here seem to have more of a purpose. Only a few tracks seem to meander (Norway, Real Love), but most have very direct hooks that catch within the first minute. Alex Scally’s guitar is excellent all over this record. The opener, Zebra, starts with a simple plucked electric guitar, with Victoria Legrand rhetorically asking “don’t I know you / better than the rest?” The guitar is out front again on Silver Soul, but this time Legrand lets her voice fly a bit—“it’s a vision / complete illusion / it is happening again / it is happening again.” Used to Be is as close to a straight pop song they may ever do, while 10 Mile Stereo is as driving of a song as the name implies.

Most impressive on this record, I think, is that Beach House did not change their sound, they just made it sound better (wait…isn’t that a tag line for a commercial?). It’s the sound of a band growing into their own and learning to use each other. Teen Dream will never be everyone’s favorite record and I won’t be putting it on to entertain guests, but it may be the best sleepy, rainy day pop record we hear in 2010.

Fuck Your Coloring Book!

One of my favorite people in the world, who I have defended before, is back! New, semi-crazy but pretty fucking cool blog post! Sure, it’s got a rant about fashion I don’t understand, but the better point is here (I’m putting proper capitalization on his words):

“Remember, there was a time when everybody dissed Michael Jackson every chance they could. Imagine the pressure of being a true icon. Very few human beings are strong enough to take constant hate! If we don’t do what you feel is the shit, you beat us up verbally and mentally, like a Catholic school teacher beating a creative student into submission. I can hear you screaming ‘color inside the lines!’ Well fuck your coloring book.”

There are three things here worth discussing. First is the obvious point—he’s right—as an “icon,” he constantly gets analyzed and beat to shit like everyone else. Sure, he chooses to be an icon, but goddamn don’t we want that? We need icons, he is one. It sucks that we do this to people we like and admire.



Second, you’re made because he called himself an icon in the first place. What, is he supposed to act all doe-eyed and fascinated when he sees his fans and realizes his popularity? Fuck that. It would be even worse if he pretended he wasn’t a celebrity. Are we mad because he’s popular now? Did we think he was better before all of this, before we had to share him with everyone else? If we liked him then didn’t we want this for him? When did I become a question-talker?

The third thing is that sure, we don’t want him always rapping about his celebrity. We don’t want yes men around them so they don’t know what’s worth a shit and what’s not. We want them, at least in essence and spirit, to remain the same, to be able to draw us in for the same reasons they attracted us in the first place. But for them to be able to do that, we have to give them support, which may mean ignoring them when they do something we hate and loving them when they do something awesome. But mostly, it means not being dicks to people we’ve never met.

Following up a Great Record

Two of the best pop-indie-rock albums released in 2007 and 2008 were Spoon’s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga and Vampire Weekend’s self-titled debut. For Spoon, it represented the culmination of a number of very good albums, with the result being a beautiful, polished album that was brilliant in moments and strong the whole way through. For Vampire Weekend it was an auspicious debut, one that caused strife and jealousy long before it was even released. This year, however, both groups have released records that are markedly more difficult and less poppy than their predecessors. Spoon’s Transference is a driving, almost hypnotic record which manages to sound like everything they’ve done before yet also nothing like they’ve done before. Contra, the offering from Vampire Weekend, matches for the most part the upbeat nature of their debut, but eschews the beautiful guitars that marked their first record for more keyboard and perhaps just space in general.

Vampire Weekend’s task was insane in a way. Facing more hype than any band since The Strokes, they met expectations with their debut. Yet, just like their predecessors in expectations, following with a second album was always going to be even more difficult. So how did Vampire Weekend acquit themselves? Very well, I think. I’m reading a book called When Giants Walked the Earth, which goes into a detailed history of early Led Zeppelin. In it, Page talks about trying to follow their debut (which was similarly hyped/panned/controversial): “Too many groups sit back after the first album, and the second one is a down trip. I want every album to reach out further—that’s the whole point.” Yet balancing this with not, as he said, overstepping the mark and making it too different from the first was a difficult task. Vampire Weekend may not have done as well as Led Zeppelin, but that’s a bit of an unrealistic ask.



Contra often finds VW eschewing their electrically electric(?) guitars that stamped their first album for keyboards, or as on White Sky, just Ezra Koenig’s voice. It’s an interesting touch. Without the guitars leading the way, everything else comes to the forefront, with mixed results. Sometimes, everything ends well, as on Diplomat’s Son, and sometimes, on tracks like California English and Taxi Cab, the results are not so pretty. Still, there are more standout tracks than not. The aforementioned Diplomat’s Son does well with violin, cello, and piano really leading the way, and some exceptional vocals from Koenig. There is improvement here—I think the track is superior to Campus, one of my favorite’s from the original record.

The opener, Horchata, is similarly interesting and exciting. It manages the upbeat tone of the first record without resorting to guitar to do so. Those wishing for that original sounds will be pleased by the inclusion of Cousins and Holiday, the former being the strongest and second-quickest track on the album, clocking in at 2:25. Koenig sprints through the vocals like there’s not time to waste, and the track works nicely within the album, being sandwiched between two of the slower tracks. Overall the album really does work—there are growing pains—but the bad is undoubtedly outweighed by the good, and the advancement is encouraging.



Spoon’s task is perhaps a bit easier, but no walk in the park either. Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga was a triumph on all fronts (except for the naming of the record maybe), and following that with an even more perfect record would have been impossible. So this time Spoon decided to forgo using a producer, and do the whole album themselves. The result is a more raw, dirtier, methodical record. Fans expecting more of the same will undoubtedly be disappointed. Frontman Britt Daniel explained during an interview on All Songs Considered that while they loved their previous record, they were ready to do something different. That this one would probably have less chord changes, less obvious hooks, and be a little tougher to break through. And it is.

Despite the at least semi-intentional obfuscation by Spoon, Transference is still a strong record. The typically strong melodic tracks are still there, but perhaps a little less plentiful. I count Written in Reverse and Trouble as strong yet typical Spoon tracks. Others like Mystery Zone, Who Makes Your Money, and I Saw the Light drive harder, reduce chord changes, and are more reminiscent of something from A Series of Sneaks than anything since. The record still works though, Bob Boilen opined during his interview with Spoon that this would be a great driving record, and I think that’s accurate. Poppy and fun, it’s not (at least all the way through), but there’s a place for records like this.



Maybe the question behind both of these records is one that has been driving tension between fans and bands for as long as the two have existed—that is, what do bands really owe their fans? Spoon knows it can create great pop fare, as does Vampire Weekend, yet they’ve both forgone that approach on these past two records to some extent. This approach will almost certainly alienate more fans than it makes happy (though it will certainly please some). But does that matter? Do they owe their fans anything/everything? Well, probably not. There are a lot of ways to look at this, but my take is that I want to hear the music that they want to make. If that means I’m not as satisfied with some albums, I’m ok with that—I can listen to something else. But it also means that maybe Spoon, next time around, go back and make another beautiful pop record because they had the chance to do something darker and denser in between. With Vampire Weekend, it means an expansion of their pallet, giving them more options and abilities on their next record. I have the feeling that neither of these records will crack my top 3, or maybe 5 for 2010, but they’re still strong in their own right.

My Favorite 20 Songs of the Year

20. Phoenix-Countdown (Sick for the Big Sun): I don’t think the drummer ever stops with the cymbal splashes here, and it works. Huge, Enormous, Bombastic track.

19. Bill Callahan-Jim Cain: On an album full of Callahan’s sad poetry, this is the best stuff. A few excerpts: “I started out in search of / ordinary things / like how much of a tree/ bends in the wind / I started telling the story / without knowing the end.” “I used to be darker / then I got lighter / then I got dark again.” “But the darkest of nights / in truth still dazzled.” “I ended up in search of / ordinary things / like how can a wave / possibly be.”

18. Andrew Bird-Oh No!: I have no idea what the lyrics mean (“ oh arm in arm we are the harmless sociopaths”), but goddam this tune gets stuck in your head. The whistling is hypnotic and the single fuzz guitar note during the chorus is the best note I heard in all of 2009. Simple in its beauty.

17. Karen O and the Kids-Hideaway: The best thing to come out of Where the Wild Things Are. My favorite Karen O song since Maps. Probably the slowest Karen O song ever. Tragic and delicately beautiful, reminds me of Fall starting to break in D.C. “By the way / you know you’ve always been the one / you’ll ask your reasons why / what once was yours is mine / my baby’s gone.” There’s nothing but her voice and a guitar for like 2 minutes, and even then the song never really breaks, which is perfect.

16. Deer Tick-Easy: Be patient here—you have to get through the meandering intro to get into one of, if not the best chorus of the year. As the lead track on Born on Flag Day, it’s a huge departure from their last effort War Elephant. Three chords never sounded so sweet.

15. Micachu-Sweetheart: 53 seconds of pure genius. Must be heard to be believed. “I love the sound of bass and fear!” What does that mean!!

14. Animal Collective-My Girls: Hard to quibble with the sentiment here—“I don’t mean / to seem like I / care about material things / like a social status / I just want / four walls and adobe slats / for my girls.”

13. Neko Case-Vengeance is Sleeping: Saddest song of the year, only the fact that it makes me so fucking emotional keeps it out of my top 10. http://www.nekocase.com/lyrics/mc06.htm.

12. Bon Iver-Blood Bank: Not satisfied with dominating music in 2009, Justin Vernon released his Blood Bank EP this year, giving us a hint of where he may go when he follows up his brilliant debut album. While the tone is a little less melancholy than previous efforts, Vernon sticks to his strengths, which are, um, everything? It’s a nice step forward, a little different than For Emma, Forever Ago, but not a wholesale diversion from it.

11. Dirty Projectors-Temecula Sunrise: Dave Longstreth really lets his falsetto go here, and it sounds really fucking good. The lyrics are strange (“definitely you can come and stay with us / I know there’s a space for you in the basement yeah / all you gotta do is help out with the chores and dishes / and I know you will”). Great guitarwork as well, which is everpresent on the album anyway. This one and Cannibal Resource have clipped back and forth as my favorite song a number of times.

10. Dirty Projectors-Cannibal Resource: The shaky yet distinct opening chords provide the perfect introduction to Bitte Orca, hinting at what is to come. Despite the variety of sounds here, each one is distinct, holding itself clear as opposed to blending in like the Animal Collective record seems to do.

9. David Byrne & The Dirty Projectors-Knotty Pine: David Byrne brings a quicker beat and chorus to the Dirty Projectors than is present on Bitte Orca. Great leadoff track to a must-own compilation in Dark Was the Night.

8. The Avett Brothers-Laundry Room: Really, really good Avetts song. Maybe my favorite of all time. Vivid description literally and metaphorically of life as a teenager in love: “Close the laundry door / tiptoe across the floor / keep you clothes on / I’ve got all that I can take / teach me how to use / the love that people say you make.” Not content to dwell on teenage years, the Avetts then delve into more present heartache: “last night I dreamt the whole night long / I woke with a head full of songs / I spent the whole day / I wrote em down but it’s a shame / tonight I burn the lyrics / cause’ every chorus was your name.” On top of that, we get their only real old-fashioned instrumental freakout at the end of the song. A fucking triumph, I think especially for those around my age who have experienced both the teenage version and semi-adult version of that heartache. Hard to believe I think there are seven songs better than this.

7. Wilco-Wilco (The Song): The only saving grace on Wilco (The Album). Comforting in a weird way, with Tweedy telling us no matter what else is going on, “Wilco will love you baby.” And despite the possible cheesiness involved with using your own band as a comfort, it works here. Best guitar work on the album as well.

6. Megafun-The Fade: This is close to a perfect alt-country song, and Megafun did it on their fucking debut album. Good lord. The perfect amount of slide guitar, sentimentality, and understated vocals. Some bands go their whole existence trying to record something this beautiful, sad, and brilliant, but Megafun does it on their first try. The rest of their album has them trying a bunch of different sounds, but this is the one that worked best.

5. The National-So Far Around the Bend: Getting me through a year without a new album, thank you. And somehow, they had this gem lying around after Boxer? Wow. Everyone knows a girl like the one they describe: “take a bath and get high through an apple / wanted to cry but you can’t when you’re laughing/ nobody knows where you are living/ nobody knows where you are / you’re so far around the bend.”

4. Phoenix-1901: Really great feedback-laden guitar line, maybe the second best line of the year behind the piano on my number 1 pick. Second best song on a great summer album, good lyrics for it as well—“20 seconds till the last call / going hey hey hey hey! / lie now you know it’s easy / like we didn’t all summer long / and I’ll be anything you ask and more.”

3. Phoenix-Lisztomania: Giving it the edge over 1901 because of the Franz Liszt reference and because I fell in love with it first. Doesn’t have that same guitar hook, but great description of trying to write a love song—“so sentimental / not sentimental no / romantic not disgusting / yet darling I’m down and lonely,” and then the pains of trying to write pop music in general—“these days it comes and goes / lisztomania / think less but see it grow / from a mess to the masses.”

2. Neko Case-This Tornado Loves You: Best Neko Case song of all time. She tears through it over a surprisingly full arrangement, screaming “this tornado loves you / this tornado loves you / what will make you believe me?” Awesome acknowledgement of her own status that she laments all through the album, and a tempting plea at the end. Of course none of it would work if it didn’t all sound so great.

1. Grizzly Bear-Two Weeks: I heard this on All Songs Considered, immediately got it and put it on a CD, took it to work, and told everyone at work that it was going to be the best song of the year. And it’s not just for posterity’s sake that it ends up here. Takes no time to fall in love with, as soon as you hear the first piano chords you are hooked. It’s so fucking good that it makes the rest of the album seem slow and awful by comparison (which it certainly is not). My only problem with it is that if Grizzly Bear can make this sound so effortlessly, why don’t they write a whole album’s worth of material like this? Unreal.