808s & Heartbreak- Kanye West

Kanye West is a drama queen. He has thrown tantrums at award shows, compared himself to Jesus, vandalized airports and declared that George Bush doesn't care about black people, to name a few exhibitions of this fact. That said, 2008 was quite a year for West. His mother passed away (eliciting an extremely moving rendition of "Hey Mama" at last year's Grammys) and his engagement to longtime girlfriend Alexis Phifer dissolved. It seems as though for the first time, any claims of dissatisfaction or despair from West can be taken seriously.

On 808s & Heartbreak, West channels his depression into a finely crafted canon of detached yet highly emotional tracks. Using the ubiquitous AutoTune, West develops a downcast narrator who waxes despondent on the "good life," upon which he waxed rhapsodic with last year's Graduation. The songs found on Heartbreak are full of disillusion and gloom, a mood accented by the use of the Roland TR-808. The drum machine's low, tribal booms create a rumbling undercurrent to the album, appropriately suggesting an incoming storm. The robotic AutoTune, the thunderous 808 and the fact that West opts not to rap, mold Heartbreak into an intriguing and oddly lovely album.

Heartbreak's eleven songs (not counting the unnecessary live bonus track, "Pinocchio") are perhaps the most cohesive of any of West's albums, if only in the respect that they are intended to be thematically and musically related. Songs such as the 80's throwback "Paranoid" (feat. Mr. Hudson) and "RoboCop" (which samples the score from the film "Great Expections) segway neatly into each other, forming a hip-hopera of sorts. In this opera, though, the protagonist is an antihero: irreversibly depressed and dejected, with hardly motivation to improve his conditions. West chooses to bask in his tears, luckily to the benefit of the listener. The gorgeous "Streetlights" is a showcase of why West was an innovative producer in the hip-hop world before he even began to record himself. The singles "Love Lockdown" and "Heartless" are interesting and creative cuts, the former for its sparse atmosphere, the latter for its juxtaposition of a jaunty beat with glum lyrics.

808s & Heartbreak is no doubt a departure for West. While innovative and stunning in its own rite, its shroud of ice prevents it from holding a candle to Yeezy's past efforts. Reviews of the album have been divisive, and while it impresses me greatly, I hope West will pull himself from heartbreak and (excuse the pun) be stronger on his future albums.

Download these: "Street Lights," "Paranoid," "See You In My Nightmares."

Lo siento

My posting has been very sporadic, and unfortunately I have not had a chance to post since Thanksgiving! Not to worry though, dear reader (singular), there will be posts galore in the coming weeks!

Interview with Tom from Los Campesinos!

Last spring I sat down with Tom from Los Campesinos! for a chat about their tour, their debut album Hold On Now, Youngster, and punctuation. Tom was incredibly sweet and friendly. This interview and more appear in the latest issue of my zine, Championship. If you're interested in a copy, shoot me an email at nmsles@gmail.com!

So how’s your tour going?
It’s going really good! The first gig in Hoboken was the sort of size venue we’re used to playing. It was kind of like a bar, but a really good atmosphere. Georgia from Yo La Tengo came. I’m a massive fan of Yo La Tengo so that was pretty overwhelming. We’re just glad we got through the set without completely messing up. It was a really good show, and we had a really good one last night as well. We’re going to do a crap show tonight because that’s how things go [laughs]. Brooklyn was bigger, it was a really good venue and we had a really nice response there. It’s just a lot of fun. We’ve been shopping, buying musical gear, so I’m happy!

So tell me about your latest album, Hold on Now, Youngster…
Well it doesn’t feel very new to us anymore, we’ve had it for a while. I haven’t listened to it in ages. It came out in April here, so I guess it’s still relatively new. We were really pleased with it. I guess it was quite a self-indulgent album in a lot of ways. We tried to write it and record it in a way that we’d be happy with rather than trying to worry too much what people think of it, and just do our own thing. That was always the most important thing, and I think we achieved that. We were all pretty happy with it. It’s strange now- cause there’s been enough time since it, and because we’ve been writing new songs and we’re doing some recording in the next few weeks- it almost feels like and old album now. We’re looking forward to recording new songs and recording on them.

Between your band name and the rhyming of “parentheses” with “ellipses,” the band seems to have a bit of a fascination of punctuation.
Well, Gareth is the lyricist so that’s really his obsession. I think there’s a certain element of OCD. We’re quite into the details of everything, really. Punctuation kind of represents that quite well. We get pretty pissed off when apostrophes aren’t used correctly which is really lame and embarrassing, but those are the things that matter to us and I think they matter a lot to Gareth as well, which is why they enter his lyrics. He’s quite autobiographical in his lyrics. So if a lack or misuse of apostrophes in the world bothers him they’ll turn up in songs. Look forward to “Ode to the Semi-colon” or something on the next album [laughs]. That’s why I don’t write the lyrics!

What’s your favorite song of yours?
It changes all the time. I think when we finished the album, “…And We Exhale and Roll Our Eyes in Unison.” I think we were all really pleased with that. It came together really well. It’s got two distinct halves and the second half is really fun to play. But I guess “We Are All Accelerated Readers” was the one that we were most happy with as well, because it’s been around for a while but it was in a completely different form when we first played it live, and we were aware that it wasn’t working quite right, but it sort of felt like it had potential to be a better song. We worked really hard and we changed the drum parts, we changed a lot of the positions of the vocals and the melodies. Through working on all of those details it suddenly came together really well and when we recorded it was far better than we ever expected. That’s one we still enjoy playing live as well. Harriet worked really hard on cool violin sounds and violin lines. It felt really fresh compared to some of the other songs, so that’s still one of my favorites. Of course then there are songs like “You! Me! Dancing!” which get really good responses live and so that’s always really fun to play because you feed off the crowd. That’s a complete cliché, but it really happens. If that song gets played well then it doesn’t really matter if we play other songs badly [laughs].

Why did the band decided to have a violin player?
The whole formation of the band was accidental in a lot of ways. We didn’t really know what we were doing. From my perspective, I met Neil, who had been jamming with Ellen and Ollie for two weeks and we started playing songs together. Gareth overheard what we were doing and he came along to do vocals. For some of the songs we were playing we decided they would sound kind of nice if they had strings. It was that casual, we never had any big picture of the sound we wanted to create. We just thought strings would sound good, and we invited Harriet along. It was really that simple. It was the same with Aleks. We thought a female vocalist would be good, so she came along. That was really the formation of the band. We never really expected to get to be in this position, so nothing was thought out particularly well. We get asked questions about the name, and those are questions without a significant answer, because it was a bit of a passing thing.

Are there bands that you try to emulate in your music?
Yeah, I mean I sort of presume this is the way any band works. When we started off we just tried to rip off the bands we liked, and I think to an extent we still do that. And then as you get better at it you get closer to a lawsuit [laughs]. But me and Gareth bonded especially over our love of Pavement, which is probably my favorite band ever. I think we’re sort of lucky because we didn’t rip off the bands that well, so we stumbled across something unique. Our instrumentation is different, and Gareth’s vocal style is different, his lyrics are really different, so I think we have come across something that isn’t like all the bands we rip off. We’ve almost got our own sound now. There are certain ways you try to emulate bands as well. It’s not so much you hear the song and you like the melody so you play the melody as well. It’s more the fact that there are so many good melodies in Pavement. Pavement write amazing pop songs, but they’re presented in a less-than-technically-accurate way. It’s more about the song rather than the way it’s played, and that’s something we’ve tried to take on board as well. The songs are the most important thing, and the energy. The songs are more important than hitting the right notes all the time so that was always an element of fun we tried to maintain. We do still want to improve as musicians and songwriters, and improve in a technical way, but the energy is always the most important thing.

Would you consider Los Campesinos! a pop band?
Yeah. Genres are so…murky. Especially in the U.K., the word “indie” doesn’t really mean what it used to mean. That forced us a bit into using the term “pop.” I’ll describe Pavement as a pop band because of they have fairly structured songs and they’re melodic. I think we like the term “pop” because it’s such a fluid term, and it’s probably the most vague of all the genres. Any sort of music can come under that term, so it feels liberating and empowering in that sense. I don’t think we want to limit ourselves to a specific genre because we don’t really know what we’re doing. The word “pop” doesn’t really mean “popular” or “populist” anymore. It’s more like the energy and the sound…I’m trying not to sound pretentious.

You guys are a pretty young band.
I think we’re younger at heart than we are in physical. We’re still young, but when there are bands like the Arctic Monkeys and Smoosh, you feel pretty old. When you’re younger, the thing you always want to do is either be a footballer or a pop star, but then you reach an age where you start seeing other people that are successful footballers and they’re younger than you and pop stars that are younger than you, and you just think, “Yeah well, I’m past it now” [laughs].

Looking ahead ten years into the future, where will Los Campesinos! be?
I haven’t got a clue! We’re aware that it isn’t going to last forever, and we’re not trying to make it last forever so we’re just trying to make it be as fun as it can be while it is lasting. With pop music, especially at the moment, everything is over so quickly. We are just trying to have as much fun as possible and not worry too much about the future. I guess in ten years when I’m 33, there will probably be smack habits, and illegitimate children [laughs].


Photo courtesy Barry Yanowitz.

Joe's Record Paradise

When my parents used to travel a lot, they would buy a record from each country/city they visited. Over their years of travel they amassed a fair amount of Indian and South American vinyl. It got to take up too much space though, so today my mom had me go through and pick out what I wanted to keep so that she could sell the rest. After I scoured for cool cover art and interesting music, we took the box of records to a store I'd never been to called Joe's Record Paradise.

When I used to play indoor soccer, I would pass this shop, but because of its small and poster-covered exterior and strip-mall location, I never thought anything of it. Turns out I was missing out. Inside the sticker-littered doors is a vinyl mecca. Rows of LPs, ranging from soul to blues to reggae to punk to rock line the floors and walls. There's also a fine CD collection. The vinyl is all pretty inexpensive. While my mom chatted with the man who was flipping though her albums for what he wanted to buy, I thumbed through the store's supply.

I ended up with a Johnny Cash album for $1.50, Talking Heads's Remain In Light for $8.00, and Joni Mitchell's Clouds for $4.50.

The man who had been helping us, Johnson, recommended we take the records he didn't buy a few doors down to a thirft store called the Wagging Tail (it supports the Humane Society), which we did. At this store, there was a nice vinyl selection with each record $1 a piece. I didn't pick anything out, but in the CD section I found Son Volt's Trace and The Replacements's Don't Tell a Soul.

I also got two hours of highway driving in! Overall a very productive day. Unfortunately, I now have to finish writing a research paper...

From Australia With Love & Sugar- Lenka

I remember briefly brushing past a blurb on Australian native Lenka in a magazine a few weeks back and not paying it much thought. I believe the write-up mentioned her in relation to Bjork, who, sorry, I'm afraid I have never had much of a taste for.

While I was watching Grey's Anatomy last week, I heard the sweetest little ditty in the closing scene. A few keystrokes later, I learned the song was "Trouble Is A Friend," and the singer was none other than that singer I passed over as a Bjork-Feist knock-off.

However, after purchasing her delightfully poppy self-titled album, I discovered that, aside from gender, Lenka is in fact not at all like either of these femme fatales. Where Bjork revels in obscurities and off-beat rhythms, Lenka's sound is rooted in accessible and hook-filled pop songs. Where Feist like to add a jazzy or understated element to her music, Lenka's tunes are straight-forward and often embellished with charming bells and whistles.

On album opener "The Show," Lenka sings about her life as if it is a carnival- a theme highlighted by the twee, carousel-esque glockenspiels and the pleasingly childish rhythm. On "Don't Let Me Fall," plucky strings complement Lenka's soft voice and smooth chorus. Occasionally, Lenka does venture into cloying and too-sweet territory, such as on the schmaltzy "Live Like Your Dying."

Overall, Lenka is a perfectly lovely album, and just that. Because sometimes a perfectly lovely album is just what the doctor ordered.

Album Highlights: "Trouble is a Friend," "We Will Not Grow Old," "Don't Let Me Fall," "Knock Knock"
Also: Check out Lenka's stellar cover of Modest Mouse's "Gravity Rides Everything," available on her MySpace.

Pandora's Box, Actually Not Full of Sin

I know Pandora's been around for ages, but I never really got into it. However, the other day when I couldn't quite place the song I wanted to hear, I decided to give Pandora a chance. I plugged in "Elliott Smith," and the station that came up was truly great. I already knew most of the songs, but I got a few good Iron & Wine tunes I hadn't heard, and all in all Pandora put together a lovely little mix. I don't know how frequently I'll use it in the future, but using it this weekend I at least found some faith in its scientifically calculated playlist.

Interview with Brandon Summers of The Helio Sequence

Here's an interview I did earlier this year with Brandon Summers of the Helio Sequence for the first issue of my zine. Keep Your Eyes Ahead (Sub Pop), is one of my favorite albums of 2008, and I highly advise all of you to check it out. He was a really interesting guy, and I'm pulling this out of the archives so it can find a new life with a broader audience on the Internet. Enjoy!

On Wikipedia it identifies the Helio Sequence as an indie-electronica band but I definitely noticed a lot of other genres in your music. How would you describe it?
Brandon Summers: Well I wouldn’t describe it as indie-electronica; I think that’s a really funny tag. I don’t even know, I think of what we do more as songwriting, really, and that’s why there are so many elements and different sounds that make it into the songs that we write. When we’re writing songs we’re always just searching for the right sounds and arrangements and mood to communicate what needs to be communicated.

There seems to be a big Bob Dylan influence on this album. Was that conscious or did it just happen?
BS: I mean I’ve always listened to Bob Dylan just in passing, you know like I’ve always listened to the Beatles or Velvet Underground since I was a teenager, but there was a really distinct point where I just went out one day and I saw the record “The Times They Are A’Changin’” on vinyl and I just decided I would buy it, and I hadn’t really listened much to his early stuff. It was a poignant time in my life and some of the songs hit me really, really deeply and I think kind of made sense to me. Even just listening to the songs that he wrote gave me a different idea. I went in to write songs and I was really inspired to pick up my acoustic guitar and write songs on it, which I hadn’t done much in the past. Before, everything had been pieced together from jams and bands and keyboards and that sort of stuff. So this was just a different way of writing songs. And I also started to learn a bunch of his songs and see if I was singing them and putting them under my fingers and putting my voice in those settings if I would get a better understanding of how he gets his songs to be so amazing.

Your vocal chords were shredded prior to making this album. How did that change the course of the production and songwriting?
BS: Well it’s interesting, that kind of goes hand-in-hand with the whole Bob Dylan thing because when I was building my voice back up again I would start taking not only Bob Dylan songs, but songs in general, if I heard something I really liked I would try to teach myself and learn that; a lot of old folk tunes, old singer-songwriters from the seventies; new stuff, even. I would just learn it, play it under my fingers, figure out what was going on vocally. I used a lot of that just to build my voice back up again. Also it shows in a lot of the arrangements we used and the world of the songs we were choosing for this record, because there’s a lot more acoustic guitar. The singing going on in that setting, rather than rock, sitting down and jamming and then putting vocals over the tops, everything became more integrated in the songwriting process.

Would you say it was worth it to lose your voice just to gain the different perspective on your songwriting?
BS: Yeah, absolutely. During the time that I lost my voice there was a huge time of self-doubt, and what if I was never going to sing again? I took a good look at things I had taken for granted. I took time to sit down and think about what matters to me and refocus everything. Looking back, difficult as it was to build things back up again, and as scared as I was, and as much self-doubt as I had, I think it was really important.

For a band with two-members, you have a very full sound. Has that always been a goal of yours?
BS: Definitely. Both Benjamin and I have always been fascinated by big sound and things that are really sonic, and textures and depth and recording in general. It’s interesting that there are only two of us, but we knew that we could do it. And the further we go on we have a deeper understanding of things like sonics and textures and start to look more at the skeleton, you know, which is the song itself, and more and more I think that is a fascination for us.

Do you have a favorite song off the new album?
BS: I like all of them for different reasons. I really love the song “Shed Your Love” because it was one of the songs where I didn’t consciously write it, where I sat down and the song sort of came out at one time, and there’s something that’s really close to my heart about a song that happens in that way. And there are other songs that came about like that too, like “Hallelujah,” where it all just came together really quickly. I’m really happy about how that one turned out.

Interview with Alexandra Lawn of Ra Ra Riot

Here's an interview with Alexandra Lawn, the cellist of one of my current favorite bands, Ra Ra Riot. This interview, along with interviews with Los Campesinos!, Girl Talk and a bunch of album reviews, artist profiles and kick-ass artwork (by my pal Carson) will be in the upcoming issue of my zine, Championship. If you are interested in a FREE copy, email me your address and I'll ship it to ya when we're done (probably within the next two weeks).


What is a “rhumb line,” and why did you choose that for the album title?
It’s a navigational term for one point that passes through all the meridians on a globe. It’s a very good metaphor for a journey and we thought it would be a very appropriate title for the album. It’s also the lyrics in “St. Peter’s Day Festival,” which is the last song we worked on with John and we thought it fit very well.

Would you say that the theme of a journey, tying in with the rhumb line, guided the album?
I guess if there is a theme that would fit, but I don’t think we went into the album necessarily with a theme in mind.

What’s your favorite song on the album?
“Oh La.”

How’s your tour going?
We’ve been on tour for four or five weeks now, and it’s been going really well. We’ve been having a really fun tour and every city has really proven to be a great crowd. It’s really cool to be supporting this album that we’re very proud of.

What was it like being a band in college? Did you play most of your gigs on campus?
Yeah, we played a lot of house parties, which was really fun and exciting. We tried to practice every day and we were fairly diligent. It was a great way to spend the last semester.

I read a review that called Ra Ra Riot a more light-hearted Arcade Fire. What do you think of that comparison?
I mean, maybe the orchestral arrangements Arcade Fire has remind people of our cello and violin but I don’t think any of us find our sounds similar whatsoever. But we are by no means ashamed to be compared to them [laughs].

What have you been listening to lately?
Fleetwood Mac, The Virgins, Billy Bragg, Paul Simon, Midlake

Taylor Swift- Teen Icon

As a teenage girl, I understand what it's like to be a teenage girl. I understand stress of high school, feeling insecure at high school, and wanting to impress, kiss, and/or punch boys...at high school.

While my music taste falls into the indie rock category, there are many deviations. These deviations range from my immense appreciation of 80's and 90's hip-hop to my inability to resist catchy Top 40 tunes. One deviation, country music, used to be a much larger portion of my palate. While I still have a soft spot for the Dixie Chicks, I no longer scout country tracks and find most of it, sorry, nauseating.

There is, however, one country singer that my teenaged estrogen and I can't resist: Taylor Swift. Yeah, her songs are pretty generic and not in the least as innovative as the music bands like Grizzly Bear or Vampire Weekend are cranking out. But here's the thing: everything she croons about shoots directly to the lovestruck ventricles of girls my age. In interviews she chats casually and candidly like that girl from biology class who was always so friendly to everyone and you felt like you could be best friends with.

As I said, her songs are simple. They follow the same verse-chorus-bridge-verse-BIG CHORUS! structure and 90% are about boys. The way I see it, there's nothing wrong with that. She's nailed what appeals to her demographic and hey, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Fearless, released yesterday, is only Swift's second album, but the teen beauty is already primed to be an icon. For the past few weeks, I couldn't leave a class without hearing a girl hum a chorus from "Love Story" or "You're Not Sorry," two of her new singles. Today there was a abundance of shared iPod earbuds as doe-eyed damsels in adolescent distress bonded with Swift's ballads. I can't think of a comparable teen heroine from decades past, but for this millennium, Swift fits the position of female paragon just fine.

Home sick, posting out of boredom!

Hey all! I'm home sick with a sinus infection, so this post is just going to be lists and videos and blurbs...

Room
I'm redecorating/organizing my room! I'm adding bulletin boards above my desk so I can post up pictures and magazine cut-outs and other inspiring garbage, and I got a Wilco poster (see above) to go above my bed. I also got frames that fit LP covers, so I'm going to pick out a few records with cool covers to put up. Suggestions?

Thanks!
I got an extremely friendly and flattering email from Marissa over at The Anti DC, as well as a shout-out in her Dan Deacon post. It's feels great to get some feedback on my writing as I'm trying to practice for a future career! Also, I don't know if many people read this at all so it's nice to know that these posts aren't lost in cyberspace.

I Leave You With This: