Best Coast - "Boyfriend"

I don't like to boss around my readers, so let me take this opportunity to ask politely that you listen to the track, "Boyfriend", by Best Coast. The song will be featured on her (Bethany Casentino's) first full length album, Crazy For You out July 27th. Continuing this year's trend of the lo-fi girls gone garage (Dum Dum Girls; Coasting), the song has a sweet summer sun burn to it mixed with a resigned sigh over unrequited love. It's a tact that's hardly new, but can still present itself in highly enjoyable ways - press play and see.

She & Him show

Last night I saw She & Him at Terminal 5 in NYC. I arrived a little bit late, missing the majority of comedian Eugene Mirman's standup act. Zooey Deschanel and M.Ward graced the stage at 9 pm sharp with their backing band already in place. Aside from Ward's prominent lead guitar, they were also backed by a second guiatrist (who stayed mostly acoustic), a bassist, drummer, and two young ladies adding keyboard, percussion and harmonizing vocals. Deschanel herself banged a tambourine on many of the songs, but also played a rather disobedient organ throughout the show. The keyboard had a few sounds on it, one of which was a Wurlitzer that apparently had gone completely out of tune in transit. Because of this, she had to use the organ function, which had a deep jazz sound, which led to a few false starts to songs that featured her on keys, as she struggled to find the right octave to play. She fared quite well though, playing gracefully along with the band on poppy girl group bouncers like "Don't Look Back", "Over It And Over It Again", and the excellent single "In The Sun", all from their latest record Volume Two. Volume One was well represented as well. The majority of that record was played over the course of the night (they opened with four songs from their first album - "Change Is Hard", "I Thought I Saw Your Face Today", "I Was Made For You", and "Black Hole" before going into thei latest single, the dreamy "Thieves").

While the stripped down middle section that featured just Ward on acoustic guitar accompanying Deschanel's vocal was a highlight, the most exciting parts of the show were when Ward took the mic himself - first on the band's powerful remake of the NRBQ classic, "Riding In My Car" where he shares a verse both on the record and in live performance, then again later on two songs from Ward's solo catologue. M.Ward's latest record, Hold Time, features a blissful cover of Buddy Holly's "Rave On", reorganizing it into a midtempo sway, to which the She & Him band nailed. Both that song and the Ward original, "One Magic Trick", were further enhanced by Zooey's June Carter belting, backing up Ward's rough growl.

Probably the biggest delight of the night was delivered in their closing number, a chilled out cover of the Screaming Jay Hawkins standby, "I Put A Spell On You". The lights dimmed as Ward played an icy guitar thump over Deschanel's mile long wails. While she was showboating a little, you couldn't help but crack a smile as she stomped the ground like a pouting child, drawing out each note in a long, pronounced yell. At the song's conclusion, Ward then looped a twangy guitar loop that sounded straight out of Kill Bill, which was then repeated infinitely as the audience exited.

On a blistering hot day as July 6, 2010 was, it was nice to hear a set of fun, laid back, good old fashioned pop tunes. Never delving too far into their country tendencies, She & Him, along with their backing band, kept it light and fun, with a great sound and tight inner dynamics. One criticism could be said about some of their tempos, which while in many cases were faster than the record, on a couple of occasions they started running a little too fast which sounded borderline frantic. Still, the band's energy kept the crowd's way up and gave us all a swell show.

James - Laid

Laid is an odd album. Not in that it exercises any breakthrough methods of production. The album was the first of several collaborations James made with producer Brian Eno, and the end result isn't much different from the work he had previously done with U2. Each track has his usual glowing style - a light use of reverb on just about every instrument, atmospheric backgrounds, nontraditional song structures, etc . He was definitely the ideal producer for the group, as their sound seemed to pick up where U2 ran away from in the early 90's. What makes the album odd though is how misleading its title track is. Everyone knows "Laid". A short and sweet anthem about gettin's some, the track tore up the pop charts in the latter part of 1993 (it peaked at #61 on the US Billboard 100, but reached #24 in the UK, as well as #3 on the Modern Rock charts). Given the blissful state of the track, one would think it would be the leading track (or at least rack two or three) on an album full of uplifting pop ditties. Not exactly.

Laid starts with the surprisingly somber "Out To Get You". A soul searching song about loneliness, it gets the album off somewhat awkwardly. "Sometimes (Lester Piggott)" is more of what one would expect given the title track. An uptempo propulsive track, "Sometimes" rides rather consistently on the refrain, "sometimes when I look in your eyes, I can see your soul". "Say Something" has a similar sentiment and feel to both "Sometimes", but the rest of the album is very restrained and has a somewhat wounded feel. "Laid" finally plops down at a bewildering track 11 on the album. By this point, the jolliness of the song can barely be appreciated considering the amount of seriousness the listener has had to deal with listening to songs like "P.S.", "Knuckle Too Far", and "Five-O". It's helped somewhat by its predecessor, "Low", which is jaunty enough to get the listener ready for some fourth quarter poppers, but the album then immediately returns back to its reflective state with the elegant ballad, "Lullabye" before ending with the rather ambiguously sneaky "Skindiving".

One thing that should be made clear here though is that Laid is a good album. It may not live up to what many college radio fans would expect it to be, but it is still quite worthy of being in Eno's production resume. The problem with the album, and the reason why most people have forgotten it, is that it doesn't quite go far enough. The album is clearly trying to be a statement of great emotion, but the end result isn't really anything that U2 hadn't already done with The Joshua Tree. Had the album been made in 1986, it would have been a revelation. Despite the fact that nearly all the songs are very good ("One Of The Three" doesn't quite cut it; apparently Eno didn't like himself and wasn't present during its recording), it just doesn't break down enough barriers to be memorable beyond it's catchy as hell single.

This Is Lame

Jeff Tweedy has made some of my all time favorite songs/albums of all time. However, since the monolithic and quite excellent A Ghost Is Born, Tweedy and whoever he decides to call Wilco have become increasingly disappointing with their output. One of the main problems I have with their material and demeanor is that they really began to show their age. Tweedy is someone who has always had a good sense of humor, but he desperately tries to make like he's cool despite the fact he's kind of a jerk. Also, with every year that passes, he just seems like a dorky uncle, living up to the dad-rock stigma his band has been getting for quite some time. In this clip, Tweedy is asked by an audience member to either play, "Ashes Of American Flags", or Beyoncé's "Single Ladies". It at first seems like he's going to be perform a nice folked out version of the pop banger. He quickly abandons this though, and then reads the lyrics to the audience blankly. He procedes to mock the song in his delivery, going through each line in a straightforward manner, as if to showcase the stupidity of the song (although I agree that the "to infinite and beyond lyric was a bad choice), when in actuality, Tweedy is the one who looks stupid...oh and old. This runthrough of the song only shows how he doesn't understand pop music at all, and is just like your average middle aged loser, unwilling to accept music that's youthful and fun. The fact that "Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)" is better than any song Tweedy has written since 2004 is not even the point, but it's a valid sidenote.
 

Grinderman 2

Grinderman is Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds members' twisted garage side project (as if the group wasn't twisted enough in their own right). I am more than a little freaked out by the trailer for their upcoming sophomore release. Simply titled Grinderman 2, the album will feature the same cast of characters from the Bad Seeds (Nick Cave, Warren Ellis, Martyn Casey, and Jim Sclavunos). Here is the creepy as hell trailer, as well as a refresher of how awesome they are, from their self titled debut.