ny resolutions

The Day There Was No News

2008-05-16T10:45:00.001-04:00

The Day There Was No News
Originally uploaded by Pixelsurgeon

by Pixelsurgeon

Procrastination Patrol: Lykke Li

2008-01-30T07:51:00.000-05:00

So I've moved into a new apartment for a few months. It's nice, having the space entirely for myself, and being back online 24/7. Though I'm meant to finish a project I'm working on, being online means I'm quite often watching Youtube.
This week, I've been watching Lykke Li's video for her sneaky pop hit (in Sweden at least), Little Bit. Sound-wise, Li splits the difference between Robyn's detached euro-pop (now with added Snoop Dogg!) with the eerie spareness of the Knife's faux-marimba ballads (like Marble House). This mp3 is recommended for fans of Cassie's robotic slinkfests as well as Björk's more Homogenic compositions.

40 best songs of 2007

2008-01-13T11:16:00.001-05:00

Ok, so this is like, so last year, but I did promise. These were my 40 favorite songs of 2007, soundtracking lots of packing and unpacking, runs through New York, Holland and Berlin, and my every home-cooked meal. No. 1 should come as no surprise.

(image stolen from the almighty popjustice.com)

1. Umbrella (Rihanna cover) / Scott Simons (myspace)
A bare ICU beat backs the glitch and piano reconstruction of this gothy megahit. Of all the covers of this omnipresent track, this is the saddest version, even milking the 'Ella ella, ey ey' section for rainy day pathos.

2. D.A.N.C.E / Justice (video)
Daft Punk meets the Jackson 5, the t-shirt-tastic video was every fashionista hipster's wet dream.

3. 1234 (Van She Technologic Remix) / Feist (original video/fanmade remix vid)
Counting has never been this fun. Though Leslie's original is pretty awesome, this Australian remix strips much of the slightly too Adult Contemporary production and adds some scuzzy speakerbusting beats.

4. Books From Boxes / Maxïmo Park (video)
Honest to goodness straightforward New Wave rock, imagine me helplessly tapping the Footloose intro while doing my dishes.

5. Here (In Your Arms) / Hellogoodbye (video)
Awesome Cher-stealing shoestore rock that sounds like the trashiest Eurodisco.

6. Overpowered / Roisin Murphy (video)
Our generation's Donna Summer brings the higher consciousness. Also, how many disco tracks use the term 'cognitive state' and make it sound sexy?

7. Falling Slowly / Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova (video)
That song from the 'Once' soundtrack.

8. Valley Morning / Loudon Wainwright III (live video)
This gorgeously laidback tune from the 'Knocked Up' soundtrack shows where Rufus got his sense of melody. It depicts any morning in LA, touching on immigration policy and the Schwarzenegger.

9. John Brown / Papercuts (myspace)
Like Ennio Morricone produced Americana, the mid-song change of rhythm is where Sergio Leone would have the tantalizing avenging begin.

10. Plus Ones / Okkervil River (acoustic video)
From a rich album inexplicably left off my best-of list, this song is the smartest, referencing numerical hits from among others Nena, R.E.M., Lionel Richie, Paul Simon, The Zombies, and ? and the Mysterians, all the while making a subtle point about a relationship's ending. Okkervil River's 'Like a Rolling Stone.'

11. Knife (Girl Talk Remix) / Grizzly Bear (video)
Last year's best track remixed by this year's best DJ.

12. I Still Remember (SebastiAn Remix) / Bloc Party (download via zshare)
This huge Ed Banger remix builds a potent lovesong from pieces of the weakest and whiniest single from the entirely too earnest (but still charming) second Bloc Party album.

13. Bleeding Love / Leona Lewis (video)
Last year's X-Factor winner rightly spent months atop the UK charts with this majestic and gory extended metaphor: "My heart's crippled from the vein that I keep on closing/ You cut me open and I keep bleeding love."

14. signatune edit v2 (more kick thomas bangalter remix) / DJ Mehdi (video)
Daft Punk's Bangalter pulls out all his tricks to extend the 1-minute original to 6-and-a-half of ecstatic dancefloor bliss.

15. Paper Planes / M.I.A. (video)
Most infectious and politically incorrect chorus of the year. "All I wanna do is *gunshot* *gunshot* *gunshot* *gunshot*, *reload*, and take your money."

16. Ludlow Street / Suzanne Vega (live video from amsterdam)
This sad elegy to the streets of the Lower East Side is just one highlight of la Vega's lovely album.

17. Ray of Zdarlight (Digitalism vs. Wham!) / The Avalanches (mp3 from pitchfork)
A forgotten George Michael hit resurrected as robotic French disco by Australian mashup masters. Soulwax' version crosses it with Tears of Fears' 'Shout!'

18. Beautiful Life / Gui Boratto (sweetest video)
A gorgeous techno ballad, like a high-speed trainride through a waking dream.

19. Goodbye (Tahiti 80 remix) / The Postmarks (video for original track, remix is here)
Stereolab meets The Cardigans, chilled vocals, a big chorus.

20. To Build A Home feat. Patrick Watson / The Cinematic Orchestra (video)
The Canadian Polaris Prize-winner brought the ordinarily quite funky Cinematic Orchestra their most likely track to ever soundtrack a tragic season finale of Brothers & Sisters (Ed. Youtube says "featured on ABC's Grey's Anatomy"), wait for the stunning, but helpless orchestration in the final minute.

21. Losin' U / Amerie ft. Willy Denzey (youtube radio)
The most underrated American R'n'B pop-diva shines among this addictive blend of French hiphop, Arabian pop, and crunky synths.

22. Girls And Boys In Love (David E Sugar's Shameless Mix) / The Rumble Strips (original's video/remix mp3 here)
Humongous and helplessly joyous piano and 8-bit remix of these Austin rockers by British bleepster. Also check the Strips' remix of Amy Winehouse's 'Back To Black'.

23. I Miss You Someone / Cloetta Paris (mp3 @ myspace)
Icy, icy Scandinavian minimalist pop anthem, also check her breathy cover of 'St. Elmo's Fire.'

24. Future Pt. 1 / Voxtrot (daytrotter link)
More perfect pop from Austin, though the album did not deliver the easy pop-thrills of their singles, this track showed they could still be the new R.E.M.

25. Out of Control (Song 4 Mutya) / Groove Armada feat. Mutya Buena (video)
Wonderfully self-referential eighties-style pop-song featuring the deliciously mean ex-Sugababe Buena.

26. Anti-Anti (Treasure Fingers Remix) / Snowden (original's video/remix @ hype machine)
No idea, but everytime this popped up on shuffle, I thought, "What was this again? This is awesome and vocoderlicious!"

27. Si tu disais (Françoiz Breut cover) / Benjamin Biolay (original live video/cover @ hype machine)
Comme Beirut en francais. Ces violins, delicieux!

28. The Whole World And You / Tally Hall (live video plus sir mix-a-lot cover)
This simple and circusy serenade is the shortest track here, and by all counts the sweetest: "No one's better than you."

29. Gettin' Enough? / Lil' Chris (video)
More British pop from the ultra-minor leagues, peewee, in fact. Like Green Day and Kim Wilde's illicit ADD lovechild.

30. Bathroom Gurgle / Late of the Pier (video)
Scuzzy rock that sounds like a glam-rock demo, wonderfully pissed off and dancy.

31. About You Now / Sugababes (video)
Major-League British pop from the oddly consistent and always up-to-the-minute-sounding Sugababes. What Kelly Clarkson could conquer the world with.

32. Sweaty Wet/Dirty Damp / Gameboy/Gamegirl (suitably dirty live video)
Australian dirty dirty laptop-hop, file under 'songs that go boom'.

33. Young Folks (beyond the wizard's sleeve re-animation) / Peter Bjorn & John (original video/remix @ hype machine)
Justly inescapable whistleblowers pop.

34. The Magic Position / Patrick Wolf (video)
Life-affirming and rainbow-colored chamber-pop.

35. Beggin' (pilooski edit) / Frankie Valli (video)
Pilooski's re-edit brought out the urgency in Valli's boppy lament.

36. Untrust Us (Demo) / Crystal Castles (youtube radio)
In which princess Zelda disappears into a hyper secret secret level, with Wario watching through a one-way mirror, hypnotized.

37. So Electric / Lifelike (youtube radio)
Time-stopping stadium-sized house music.

38. The Boys (Calvin Harris cover) / Dragonette (original's video/fanmade vid for cover)
The awesome Dragonettes outfreak Harris' silly "The Girls" through more tht just gender-reversal.

39. Never Hear Surf Music Again / Free Blood (mp3 @ hype machine)
A poppier !!!, a wonderful new chorus each of its six minutes.

40. The Good Soldier / Nine Inch Nails (youtube radio)
Reznor brings the sexy back.

Kandors by Mike Kelley

2008-01-02T05:17:00.001-05:00

There are many different Supermen. Over the years this fictional superhero has developed and grown, but also fled into alternate universes to start again, each writer and illustrator building on past continuity and deviating from it just enough to keep fans guessing and the story alive. In his new show at the Jablonka Galerie in Berlin, Mike Kelley (1954) returns to his themes of personal memory and popular culture, this time exploring them through the myth of Superman’s lost city of Kandor. [...]
The whole set-up at the Jablonka Galerie suggests a complex expansion of a two-dimensional comic strip concept into three dimensions. The bottled sculptures are situated among futuristic home-design elements – space dividers, consoles, counters - that seem out of context, too spare. This counterintuitive homeliness is accentuated by the occasional ‘anachronistic’ prop – a woven basket, a discarded yellow shirt, or a kitschy porcelain bouquet. Anachronisms like this only add to the tension between the frozen state of the still, bottled Kandors and their sped-up projection counterparts, suggesting a distortion of the fabric of time, as if Superman just stepped out and the planet has forgotten which way to turn.
By titling the show 'Kandors,' Kelley acknowledges the multiple nature of Superman’s cultural heritage, by extension challenging the notion of an objective representation of the past and portraying our (pop-) cultural memory as shifting and amorphous, multi-interpretable. Seen in this light, Kandors is a successful play on the flexibility of this kind of cultural knowledge and its inherent lack of objective truths, as well as a powerful meditation on the impossibility of reliving the past.
Read the rest of my review at Whitehot Magazine.

The Swept Aways sing a sad sad Xmas

2007-12-23T09:49:00.000-05:00

Though most would paint christmas in tones of green and red, Low and Elvis know its most common shade is blue. A maudlin wall of cheer, the Swedish wistful way with a hook and a giant Spectorian chorus. Like Wham's Last Christmas before them, The Swept Aways choose a melancholy approach to the merry season. With its sad tale of "eggnog on your collar", these wonderful Swedes sing about a "cry cry christmas, christmas means goodbye" (mp3).

My Favorite Films of 2007

2007-12-19T10:10:00.000-05:00

The next part in my 'best of 2007' cycle is my list of best cinema experiences. Twelve films that I thought were awesome and would heartily recommend for Christmas netflix- or multiplexing. What did I miss here? What did you guys love?

1. Zodiac
My most visceral cinematic experience this year took place in that awful theatre in Chelsea, not the one next to the legendary hotel, the one just off to the west on a deserted stretch of 23rd street. I was quite literally on the edge of my seat the entire film. Not frightened of the film's serial killer, or even David Fincher's trademark deep scares, but because of the completely believable obsession that slowly absorbs Jake Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey's characters as they become involved in the hunt for the Zodiac killer. Because we know the killer was never actually caught, the narrative tension builds around what might have been, every near-miss or close call especially poignant in the face of the unresolved ending. All in all this is a surprisingly subtle and psychological work, one that beautifully depicts the era and the excruciating clumsiness of pre-CSI policing.

2. Lust, Caution
A friend once told me that truly great (and, I imagine, truly awful) films can be understood in any language as they are primarily told by the images and the expressions of the actors. I saw Ang Lee's latest seething masterpiece in a sold-out alfresco screening in Venice on the night it won the Golden Lion there. The complex tale of espionage and sabotage came across flawlessly, even though its sprawling Chinese dialogue was only subtitled in Italian. A second viewing, here in Berlin, only brought further layers of lyrical complexity. As in "Brokeback", much of the love story is unspoken, told through the faces of Tony Leung's harsh collaborator and Tang Wei's instinctive spy. Again, the sex scenes are unflinching and violent, though much more graphic, and the ending is heartbreaking, another lover left alone in the other lover's empty bedroom.

3. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Though Johnny Depp was long attached to play the lead in this true story of imagination's triumph over nigh complete paralysis. "Kings and Queen"'s Matthieu Amalric's performance however transcends any the always slightly campy Depp could have pulled off. Director Julian Schnabel avoids much inevitable sentimentality (or the slightly academic tone of the similar "The Sea Inside") through Amalric's dry inner monologues and truly inspired visualizations, shot from the paralyzed man's severely impaired and immobile point of view. The one detractor, if it can be called that, from this intimate tale is the endless stream of gorgeously French women that fawn over the protagonist, but hey, can we really complain about that?

4. Atonement
My love for this film is all the stronger for my low expectations, after all Keira Knightley in another period drama? Joe Wright's "Pride and Prejudice" was fresh, certainly, but it in no way predicted the sheer cinematic daring this film brings to the film. Some scenes are positively operatic in their staging, a feeling heightened by the sumptuous soundtrack, which is enriched with the clacking rhythm of a typewriter. The editing too is wonderful and entirely untypical of the typical period drama, ranging from quick flashbacks and forwards, to one hallucinatory long take on a battle-strewn beach. McAvoy and Knightley are great (as are Vanessa Redgrave and Romolai Garai), but Saoirse Ronan, the prescient star of Peter Jackson's forthcoming "Lovely Bones", steals the film.

5. Knocked Up/Superbad
As any fan of his TV-show "Freaks and Geeks" will attest, Judd Apatow can do no wrong when producing films about awkward and ill-advised fumblings of any kind.

6. Grindhouse
As someone who grew up with Tarantino and Rodriguez films instead of the exploitation films they so shamelessly pay tribute to in this superfun and dirty double bill, how could I not enjoy this? Fergie's empty skull is exposed! Quentin's penis actually falls off! Uma Thurman's "Kill Bill" stand-in is a kiwi! and she kicks motherf$%$ing Kurt Russell's ass!

7. Michael Clayton
What could have been a simple legal thriller is enhanced by Tom Wilkinson's lucid ramblings, George Clooney's ineffable charm, and Tilda Swinton's slightly nervous portrayal of a woman in over her head. Just watching her dressing, folding her clothes, and washing her armpits, clearly shows Swinton's acting can make any project eclipse its genre.

8. Death at a Funeral
Another entirely unexpected pleasure - I mean Frank Oz also directed the painfully unfunny "The Stepford Wives" and "In & Out" - this small British ensemble comedy mines the fertile ground of the graveyard for a truly hilarious tale of blackmail and mourning. I was really howling with laughter, especially at the inimitable (and naked) Alan Tudyk, who you'll remember as the timid pilot of the "Firefly" or the demented pirate in "Dodgeball".

9. Hot Fuzz
A glorious parody of American buddy movies, its sheer Britishness causing much of the viewing pleasure (although seeing a vicious old lady being kicked in the face is a perverted joy all in itself). The second viewing is even better, like Hotter Fuzz.

10. Once
This bittersweet work of musical verité is surely destined to become some generation's "Before Sunrise."

11. The Year of the Dog
Mike White directs Molly Shannon, Laura Dern, and Peter Sarsgaard in this wonderfully acted, painful tragicomedy of one woman and her love for dogs.

12. Fido
A fifties-set zombie film for satirical kids, enough said.

Four honorables must be mentioned here, all almost worthy were it not for very minor issues of story or Richard Gere. "Tekkon Kinkreet" is the prettiest film I saw all year, a gorgeous animated film that looks different than anything familiar from Miyazaki or Pixar. Sarah Polley's "Away From Her" is a heartrending tale of sacrifice and marriage, carried by the luminous Julie Christie. "The Hoax" is much more fun than its poster suggests, like "The Aviator" crossed with "Catch Me If You Can" minus the Leo, and "I'm Not There", apart from the aforementioned Gere, is actually a rewarding Dylanography, if you can tear your eyes away from another of Cate Blanchett's transformative biographical performances.

There are still at least three notable absences here, movies that I've enjoyed immensely when I read them, in screenplay or graphic novel form, but have not had a chance to see (damn you German distributors and Chinese internet pirates!). "Juno" is a very smart comedy about teen pregnancy starring the amazing Ellen Page and Superbad's Michael Cera (as well as his "Arrested Development" dad, Jason Bateman). Ryan Gosling stars in the sweet "Lars and the Real Girl", a most unlikely lovestory between a town and one man's Real Doll (tm). Lastly, "Persepolis", the stark and surprising tale of a young girl's coming of age in the axis of evil, and her subsequent adventures in Vienna and Switzerland.

best album of 2007: the arcade fire

2007-12-08T10:46:00.000-05:00

1. The Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
One solid characteristic of your favorite album of the year is that you can’t really listen to it anymore; you’ve completely played it out. Still, I cannot underestimate the marvel it has brought me over the course of 2007: from it’s slowly leaked first tracks in January, the stunning Blogotheque vidcast, and the gorgeous Norah Jones and Calexico covers of smoldering stand-out track “Ocean of Noise”. Though, as the David Byrne said, in his best-of-2007 list, the lyrics are ‘all wrong,’ the first listen to “My Body is a Cage” was the most singularly visceral rock experience I’ve had all year (here’s the fan-video that the Boss himself dug).

If the Fire’s great first album, “Funeral,” was a celebration of life in the face of death, this Springsteentastic album – unafraid of grand gestures, doomy chants, and church organs – is a wild elegy for life in the face of the rapture. Mercifully, its apocalyptic atmosphere is lifted by just enough wisps of hope and an overall feeling of strength in numbers, a warm collectivity we also find at my #2.

best albums of 2007: 2. beirut

2007-12-08T10:44:00.000-05:00

2. Beirut - The Flying Club Cup
To really understand my love for this band is to go back in time, to their second or third ever show, a shambolic performance at the Knitting Factory in which ukuleles broke and singer Zach Condon was still quite stagestruck. Over the past two years though, he’s assembled a band that rivals the Fire’s in joyous rock communion, and expanded his dynamic range from Balkanic singalongs to French chansons. The gorgeous and complete set of videos shot by La Blogotheque for the album’s release take the songs to the streets – and ice cream truck garages – of Brooklyn, and show that the Beirut live experience is uniquely intimate (here’s a one such live version of “The Penalty”). With songs that evoke tundra yurts and urban cabarets, Beirut displays an urbane melancholy that we also find in the Swedish lamentations of my #3.

best albums of 2007: 3. loney, dear

2007-12-08T10:42:00.000-05:00

3. Loney, Dear - Loney, Noir
What sets this band apart from #1 and 2 above is its bare, blatant sense of hope. Perhaps because of this, it was the only concert to make me cry this year. With their slightly precious vocals and hyper-melodic songs, loving this band is almost too easy, too sweet on the ears, but their tendency towards communalist din at least prevents it from being too saccharine. The opening number, “Sinister in the State of Hope”, is evidence of Loney’s great sence of pace and orchestration, creating an solemn paean to elusive hope. Beautifully and subtly laced with buzzy or hissy electronics, Loney, Dear’s best songs waltz up to a frantic, even squeaky climax that, through sheer joy and faith in change, reached into my heart this year and rewired it in the best of ways.

best albums of 2007: 4. the national

2007-12-08T10:40:00.000-05:00

4. The National - Boxer
Less concerned with hope and more with the passions is this incredibly solid album by Brooklyn’s The National. More controlled and measured than any of the outburst-prone bands above, this band, and especially their incredible drummer, delivers a grounded, driving and not just sexy, but actually sex-y set of songs that are as stadium-ready as those of the Fire’s. As with the Screaming Trees’ Mark Lanegan, the steady, low voice of their lead-singer works its mojo best on Boxer’s slower tracks, like “Slow Show” and “Start A War” (also check out their Daytrotter session, it includes a cover of the Psychedelic Furs’ “Pretty in Pink”).

best albums of 2007: 5. rufus wainwright

2007-12-08T10:37:00.000-05:00

5. Rufus Wainwright - Release The Stars
Though this album is often dramatically overproduced and weighed by down by unnecessary flute solos, any true Rufus lover would tell you that there is no such thing as a dramatically overproduced flute solo when Wainwright’s grand emotions are at stake. As the album’s completely unhinged, operatic opener, “Do I Disappoint You?” (ha!), rhetorically asks: “Why does it always have to be chaos?” Well, dear reader, it has to be chaos to allow for contrasting songs as elegant and refined as “Nobody’s off the hook” and “Going to a Town” (a gorgeous Goodbye-New York-Hello-Berlin track, the lame video for which is here), as it also has to be chaotic to make authoritative astronomical commands like in the jubilant album closer “Release the Stars”, the song that launched a million trillion slowly sparkling disco balls.
(Ed. Note: Also, it has to be said that a choreographed dance in Garland-drag to Judy’s “Get Happy” (Youtube helps) might get you more devotion from this writer than is officially allowable by the rock journalist union.)

best albums of 2007: 6. radiohead

2007-12-08T10:35:00.001-05:00

6. Radiohead - In Rainbows
A scaled-back, more personal set of ten tracks by what is arguably my generation’s favorite band ever. It was actually a very strong year for my high school musical crushes, with great albums by PJ Harvey, Björk, and Air all making appearances in my top 20. This might be because I’m getting very close to thirty and becoming more reluctant to embrace new sounds, but I really hope it’s because these artists are coming into their own now, making work that has no benchmarks but their own. With the syrupy-sexy (as far as echoey floaty Thom Yorke songs can really be called sticky) “House of Cards”, Radiohead at least broke new ground in lyrical content, “I don’t wanna be your friend, I just wanna be your lover,” is positively Prince.

best albums of 2007: 7. grizzly bear

2007-12-08T10:33:00.001-05:00

7. Grizzly Bear - Friend
Shamefully left of my best-of-2006 list with their superlative “Yellow House” album, the Grizzlies unyielding “Knife” finally slashed its way to the heart of my iTunes this year. This EP shows the strides the Brooklyn band has made musically since their bearded, fragile campfire days when I first saw them, opening for Sufjan Stevens at a Katrina benefit. Now sonically at cruising altitude, the songs reinvented here, or covered, as in the case of Phil Spector’s horrific girl-group ballad “He Hit Me (But It Felt Like a Kiss),” masterfully change gears emotionally and musically. The band’s tonal range is especially strong in the vocal harmonies that make Grizzly Bear the tightest band in the country. Though it’s only represented on this collection by three covers, “Knife” with its “Stand By Me” backing, sinister lyrics and soaring vocals (here in an even boppier live version from February 2007) is unquestionably the best song of 2006 (damn!).

best albums of 2007: 8. vampire weekend

2007-12-08T10:31:00.000-05:00

8. Vampire Weekend - Blue CD-R
Proof of the slow dissolution of the record industry, and the power of blog-hype, is the presence of this sort-of unreleased debut EP by these local Paul Simon-fans. Stylish and over-educated, they take Simon’s (and David Byrne’s) African rhythmic influence to create happy (a deeply uncool concept in indie-rock), punky two-minute-pop songs that still can’t help but make me walk with a smile in my step (try and stay stoic during “Cape Cod Kwassa”. They also rhyme ‘Louis Vuitton’ with ‘Reggeaton’: skills!).

best albums of 2007: 9. spoon

2007-12-08T10:28:00.000-05:00

9. Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
Though I haughtily dismissed this album after a careless first listen, I was scared into giving this record another chance after last year’s Grizzly debacle (see #7 above). Listening to somehow bare songs like “Black Like Me” or “The Ghost of You Lingers”, I found Spoon’s strutty rocksongs to have choruses after all, and not just that, but their addictive tracks possess musical structures that are all the more rewarding for leaving little gaps of silence, of aural space. This might make it seem as if Ga x 5 is a difficult album, but mariachi-fun tracks like “The Underdog” (the cute one-take video is here) or “You Got Yr Cherry Bomb” should easily blow this notion away with their mighty, funky horn sections.

best albums of 2007: 10. doveman

2007-12-08T10:25:00.000-05:00

10. Doveman - With My Left Hand I Raise the Dead
A very different approach to the idea of musical deconstruction, of the sound of silence, can be found in this challenging album by these jazzy (?) self-confessed lampshade rockers. By challenging I mainly mean ‘hard to listen to on shuffle’; of the 16 slow and stately tracks here, just over half is an actual song, the other seven take up almost as much time, connecting the songs not through interludes, but through almost improvisational textures, bits of melody dis- and re-appearing and sometimes alternating with hiss and muttering (if you can spare 11.5 minutes, listen to “track 9” and “Castles” in order, and swoon). These nameless tracks function as out- and intro, leading in and out of song, perfectly mirroring the intimate Doveman live experience (check out another lovely Blogotheque video), in which Thomas Bartlett’s frail voice and piano subtly contrast with bits and pieces of mandolin and trumpet, like “Chet Baker Sings” Radiohead, broken and lovely.

best albums of 2007: 11. lcd soundsystem

2007-12-08T10:22:00.000-05:00

11. LCD Soundsystem - Sound Of Silver
The closest thing 2007 had to New Order (the title track in particular), that other band that so effortlessly crossed soul-stirring new wave rock with pounding pounding disco music.

best albums of 2007: 12. pj harvey

2007-12-08T10:20:00.000-05:00

12. PJ Harvey - White Chalk
Her best work since “Is This Desire?”, Chalk is mostly piano-based, Polly Jean’s vocals much more ethereal than on her previous, growling “Uh Huh Her” album. This strummed live version of Chalk standout “Grow Grow Grow” reflects the isolation and introspection of these heartbreakingly poised 30 minutes of fine-tuned grief and surrender.

best albums of 2007: 13. blonde redhead

2007-12-08T10:16:00.000-05:00

13. Blonde Redhead - 23
I only fell in love with these moody, shoegazy tracks after Mike Mills’ Miranda July-starring video, entirely composed of one-second shots. The rest of the album sustains this delicate mood of velvety discomfort, “The Dress” with its “I love you less, now that I know you” refrain is exemplary of 23’s dirgy pop.

best albums of 2007: 14. new young pony club

2007-12-08T10:14:00.000-05:00

14. New Young Pony Club - Fantastic Playroom
An angular and hella funky new-wave pop album that completely delivered on “Ice Cream”’s promise of dispassionate vocals and even cooler asymmetric hairstyles (check that video on Youtubez). Reminscent of early Madonna and Duran Duran, try the sub-zero dance-pop of “Tight Fit”.

best albums of 2007: 15. jens lekman

2007-12-08T10:10:00.000-05:00

15. Jens Lekman - Night Falls Over Kortedala
With its ironic juxtaposition of maudlin (and often witty) lyrics, “If I Could Cry (It Would Feel Like This),” and sunny, almost Motown or Love Boat theme-sampling instrumentation, Lekman has created sardonic, yet heartfelt songs that can warn the coldest Swedish winter. The tragic tale of guacamole gone wrong, like, emergency room wrong, “Your Arms Around Me”, is undoubtedly the sweetest, saddest love song of the year.

best albums of 2007: 16. miracle fortress

2007-12-08T10:08:00.000-05:00

16. Miracle Fortress - Five Roses
Montreal’s best kept secret, a warm and poppy bath of sound that releases its rich and rosy fragrance only after a few sleepy listens. I heard the quietly ebullient “Little Trees” first, and suggest you do too, if only to be surreptitiously transported to a sleepy, romantic Quebecois street corner where the smell of fresh bagels is gently wafting your way from the 24-hour bakery further on up the street.

best albums of 2007: 17. the go find

2007-12-08T10:04:00.001-05:00

17. The Go Find - Stars on the wall
What adorably Belgian postmen would sound like if they were raised on the Postal Service album and the Sofia Coppola soundtracks (see my old post here).

best albums of 2007: 18. band of horses

2007-12-08T10:01:00.000-05:00

18. Band of Horses - Cease To Begin
Unabashedly grand in the ‘storming the gates of heaven’ way – listen to “Is there a Ghost?” to hear the ethereal extent of Band’s north-western rock aspirations – this sophomore album is actually as good as everybody said last year’s My Morning Jacket was.

best albums of 2007: 19. !!!

2007-12-08T09:58:00.000-05:00

19. !!! - Myth Takes
The triple exclamation marks definitively heart your dancing shoes (“Yadnus” was a live favorite of mine), but please do wear sturdy ones, because this cocky deconstruction-disco-rock will disco you until the disco deconstructs itself into a steaming pile of cowbell.

best albums of 2007: 20. rosie thomas

2007-12-08T09:57:00.001-05:00

20. Rosie Thomas - These Friends of Mine
My only concession to my Sufjanmania – though he also plays piano on #4 – this short set of slightly too cute Brooklyn coffeeshop ballads (it comes with a Fleetwood Mac cover! And it’s “Songbird”!) still boasts more than just a few Suf-appearances (on a straight cover of R.E.M.’s “The One I Love” for ef’s sake, see what I mean by cute?), Thomas’ originals, like “All the Way to New York City” and “Say Hello,” manage to earnestly portray bittersweet regret.

best albums of 2007: 21. sexton blake

2007-12-08T08:50:00.000-05:00

21. Sexton Blake - Plays The Hits
Covering, among others, Elton John, Kim Carnes, Milli Vanilli, Rod Stewart, Erasure, as well as fucking Paula Abdul (remember the Keanu-goes-Jimmy-Dean video for “Rush Rush”? Yeah, me too) and LL Cool J, while still preserving one’s dignity, and not only that, but actually extracting emotional truths from singles flogged to death on AM radio, earns Blake not just cool-kudos, but major karaoke karma points.

best albums of 2007: 22. air

2007-12-08T08:43:00.000-05:00

22. Air - Pocket Symphony
A bit boring, yes. Repetitive, also, Elevator music, definitively. But this French band never aspired to change the face of rock, just to create imaginary, futuristic soundtracks to imaginary, futuristic French films in which everybody is somehow both smoking and radiant. This sounds like a sequel to last year’s equally sonically rich Charlotte Gainsbourg album (then #18), but mostly without Jarvis Cocker’s redeemingly sharp lyrics (“The Duelist”, a Jarvis and Charlotte duet was a bonus track).

best albums of 2007: 23. chromeo

2007-12-08T08:42:00.000-05:00

23. Chromeo - Fancy Footwork
Elevating retro to the next level, this catchy album of metallic vocoder-enhanced lost New Edition hits (like titular single “Fancy Footwork” (check their vid on Youtube) or 80s-flashback “Opening Up”) is like a new soundtrack to a funny “House Party” starring Morris Day and Prince as Kid ‘N Play (or Hall & Oates), respectively.

best albums of 2007: 24. over the rhine

2007-12-08T08:40:00.000-05:00

24. Over The Rhine - The Trumpet Child
Like #20, this is sometimes frightfully MOR, Adult Contemporary, or even – the horror! – Starbucksy. Still, if merely being jazzy – yes, Jazzy-jazzy –, having a really good female singer, and being accomplished musically would prevent me from embracing luscious and hip-wiggling tracks like “Trouble” or glowing almost-hymns like the album’s classy title track, then I’ll gladly embrace the Michael Bublés of this world and buy another latte.

best albums of 2007: 25. björk

2007-12-08T08:16:00.000-05:00

25. Bjork - Volta
Though the Icelandic siren is as always musically inventive and delivers beautiful “Hyperballad” song-songs like the oceanic (and slightly Homogenic) “Wanderlust” or the mysterious Antony duet “Dull Flame of Desire”, Volta is especially notable for Björk’s most strident (and f*&%king loudest) song yet, “Declare Independence”, the great Spike Jonze video for which cannot even come close to the sheer life-force and M.I.A.-besting political energy that bursts forth from its speaker-wrecking pagan bassline. Raise your flag, bitches.

belgian beauty

2007-11-26T15:54:00.003-05:00

DSCF4231, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

louvain/leuven

2007-11-26T15:54:00.001-05:00

DSCF4230, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

desk in berlin

2007-11-26T15:53:00.001-05:00

DSCF4222, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

sony center

2007-11-26T15:51:00.001-05:00

DSCF4202, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

studying at the filmmuseum

2007-11-26T15:49:00.001-05:00

DSCF4215, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

mauerpark

2007-11-05T10:47:00.001-05:00

DSCF4178.JPG, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

sky im hof

2007-11-05T10:36:00.001-05:00

DSCF4194.JPG, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

sorry, no internets yet in my new room in berlin. more when i get back online, i promise.

maybachufer

2007-11-05T10:22:00.001-05:00

DSCF4192.JPG, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

my balcony

2007-11-05T10:21:00.001-05:00

DSCF4181.JPG, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

berlin sky

2007-11-05T10:17:00.001-05:00

DSCF4189.JPG, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

fall in kassel

2007-10-04T07:22:00.001-04:00

0031, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

c in kassel

2007-10-04T07:21:00.001-04:00

0034, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

tourist heaven

2007-10-04T07:19:00.001-04:00

0005, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

romanian pavillion

2007-10-04T07:18:00.001-04:00

0001, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

yes, those are fur coats stuffed between the letters.

polish pavillion

2007-10-04T07:17:00.001-04:00

0002, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

the actual frame of an old polish supermarket squushed in the polish pavillion. awesome.

canal st

2007-10-04T07:15:00.003-04:00

43510029, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

san giovanni e horse

2007-10-04T07:15:00.001-04:00

43510024, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

zollverein 1

2007-10-04T07:11:00.001-04:00

43510018, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

zollverein 2

2007-10-04T07:10:00.001-04:00

43510016, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

zollverein 3

2007-10-04T07:09:00.001-04:00

43510009, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

best song ever

2007-10-04T07:04:00.001-04:00

10720005, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

snake river

2007-08-06T15:19:00.003-04:00

hell's canyon lomo 2, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

k and his camera

2007-08-06T15:19:00.001-04:00

k and his camera, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

my first fish

2007-08-06T15:18:00.001-04:00

my first fish, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

t shows me her frogs

2007-08-06T15:17:00.001-04:00

t shows me her frogs 2, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

wet

2007-08-06T15:16:00.003-04:00

wet, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

hell's canyon

2007-08-06T15:16:00.001-04:00

pole, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

margarita in colorado

2007-08-06T15:15:00.001-04:00

margarita, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

big b

2007-08-06T15:13:00.003-04:00

DSCF3631.JPG, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

eyes

2007-08-06T15:13:00.001-04:00

DSCF3619.JPG, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

vehicle

2007-08-06T15:12:00.001-04:00

DSCF3613.JPG, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

church window

2007-08-06T15:11:00.003-04:00

DSCF3643.JPG, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

punk-ass bug

2007-08-06T15:11:00.001-04:00

DSCF3609.JPG, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

legs

2007-08-06T15:09:00.001-04:00

DSCF3618.JPG, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

santa at habana

2007-08-06T15:06:00.001-04:00

DSCF3606.JPG, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

Rufus Wainwright at The Gramercy Theatre, June 5th 2007

2007-06-06T01:13:00.001-04:00

elvis, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

Watching Rufus Wainwright's first in a row of New York shows at the Gramercy Theatre, a very intimate new venue whose old cinema appeal remains, I was only briefly distracted by the presence of the glowing and flip-flopped Maggie Gyllenhaal just across the aisle. The show featured no songs from Wainwrights first two albums, focusing on the strongest material from his Want cycle and an almost complete reading of Release The Stars, his most recent paean to beauty.

Apart from a wonderful and completely botched reading of Tulsa, his song about a one night stand with a certain Mr Flowers of The Killers, the new songs were beautifully performed, simplified from their sometimes too ornate production. The newly boyfriended Rufus especially impressed with his ode to love (and Berlin) in Tiergarten (mp3) .

With several costume changes (first a striped suit, then lederhosen, a robe, and finally just lipstick, tights, a jacket and hat), an intermission, an a capella unamplified folk song (the romantic Irish standard Macushla), and a dance routine to Wainwright's cover of Judy Garland's Get Happy, the evening certainly made me look forward to Rufus' inevitable Vegas residency.

piano

2007-06-06T01:12:00.003-04:00

piano, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

macushla

2007-06-06T01:12:00.001-04:00

macushla, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

judy 2

2007-06-06T01:11:00.001-04:00

judy 2, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

Unlikely Summer Jams 2007: Patrick Cleandenim/The Free Design

2007-06-05T17:11:00.001-04:00

fly away, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

When I first read about Patrick Cleandenim on marathonpacks, my interest was piqued by the references to Rufus Wainwright. Though the song posted there did not immediately grab me, I did some research (it's what all the kids call scouring Youtube, honestly) and was intrigued by the Daytrotter-profile, but more so the video for So You Think You're Gonna Live Forever, all black and white and Coney island-retro.

Distributed in the US by Ba Da Bing!, suitably the same label that brought us Beirut (the band now out-Google-ranking the country it took its name from, crazy), the 21-year-old multiple media artist's album Baby Comes Home was recorded with a twelve-piece orchestra. Though some of his tunes sometimes lean towards Belle & Sebastian, Cleandenim's ambition, according to his myspace page, seems to be the more restrained Bacharachian space-age pop of David Axelrod or Joe Meek, rather than Rufus' cabaret and Garland-influenced stylings. My favorite song by Cleandenim (Patrick Clendenin Roberts from the musical city of Lawrence, Kansas), Days Without Rain (mp3), seems to have different roots than Rufus, but all the album's songs could have easily been performed by Dusty Springfield or Dionne Warwick in their heydays. With its intoxicating stop-start structure, the waltz' chorus-style vocals recall those of easy-listening records by baroque pop innovators like The Free Design.

The Free Designers (active from 1967 to 1972, and also in 2001) are admittedly a little bit more hyperactive, their Enoch Light-produced work lovingly reinvents pop-hits like California Dreamin', Happy Together and Light My Fire as orchestral pop-singalongs for modern living. Their own originals, as head on the wonderfully issued best of on Varese Sarabande, are playful and jazzy (not in the noodly, but in the unexpected and inventive sense of the word). Bubbles (mp3) is infantile in the best kind of way, preserving a sense of wonder and simple melodic joy. Though the verse reveals a child's set of worries, "ma ‘n’ pa are arguin’ again; today I lost my best friend; the kitty has a little cold; ‘n ‘ grammama is getting older, my tummy has a little pain; ‘n’ when does Jesus come again?", the overall bubble-happy sound definitely warrants its inclusion on the Powerpuff Girls soundtrack (albeit in a Dressy Bessy cover).

Rihanna's Soul Makossa

2007-06-05T11:47:00.001-04:00

dollartheque, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

Listening to Good Girl Gone Bad, the new album by Rihanna, a singer who I'd previously only registered as just another Soft Cell-sampling RnB starlet, I realize that the gothification of pop music runs very deep. This is not about the guitars, these songs owe more to Usher's shivery synth track Yeah, it's more about the general sense of slow-burning real anger and Depeche Modey disaffected dread that seeps from between the pop songs' shiny elements. Just like Omarion's eyelinery Ice Box track, Rihanna's very gloomy summer banger Umbrella, stompingly mad new single Shut Up And Drive, or album track Breakin' Dishes (chorus: "I'm breakin dishes off your head all night, and I'm not gonna stop until I see police and lights.") reintroduce new wavy rock idioms in a similar but more danceable way than Kelly Clarkson's impossible-to-karaoke-without-shrieking Since You've Been Gone.

Posted first on the bilingual beats-blog Fluokids, and produced by Norwegian hitmeisters StarGate, who also did Beyonce' recent spate of incomprehensible hits Irreplaceable and Beautiful Liar, my favorite on Rihanna's album, Don't Stop The Music (mp3), is also the most techno. Like all great dance songs - Kylie's Can't Get You Out Of My Head, Madonna's Music and LCD Soundsystem's Losing My Edge - is deeply self-reflexive; it is a dance song about dancing and its structure thoroughly supports that. As the track's tension builds and builds, a Daft Punkian bubbling melody underneath the stomping rhythm and Rihanna's repetitive slowly reveals itself to be the "Ma-ma-ko ma-ma-sa ma-ma-ko-ssa" refrain familiar from Michael Jackson's dancefloor stormer Wanna Be Startin' Somethin. Like that forebear, this is relentless, a late night houseburner that surely deserves summer jam status.

For those who need a little late afternoon summer jamming, I suggest the afro rock classic that 'inspired' Jacko's classic. Originally written and performed by Cameroonian saxophonist Manu Dibango in 1972, Soul Makossa introduced the still-infectious chant that now powers Rihanna's track. Out of all the different versions of the influential song (reggae, rumba, house, electro), I picked this coarser-voiced version (mp3) by the Lafayette Afro Rock Band (1974), a funk outfit that fled Long Island for Paris. More angular than the song's original, this Talking Headsy version will have your BBQ parties bumping until it's time to break out the glowsticks and the Rihanna hits.

PS. Also check out Popjustice's hilarious list of one hundred things less brilliant than the new Rihanna album. My top three favorites:

49. 'Imagine' by John Lennon
People think John Lennon's some sort of lyrical genius but did he ever – EVER – come up with this line – from 'Breakin' Dishes – "I'm roasting marshmallows on the fire and what I'm burning is your attire"? No he did not.

52. Making pancakes
Having no eggs in the house will not prevent you enjoying the new Rihanna album.

68. Battlestar Galactica
Battlestar Galactica is amazing but at least the new Rihanna album won't hit you over the head with stuff about 'politics' and 'the real world' when all you want to do is watch a load of robots being blown up by fit people. Which is not to say that 'Good Girl Gone Bad' doesn't have a social conscience, because it probably does, somewhere or other.

Unlikely Summer Jams 2007: Fleetwood Mac/The Field

2007-06-02T16:23:00.001-04:00

fairyland, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

One summer I took over the record store I worked at for a few months while my boss went off to India. Piccolo Records was housed in the tiniest old building. It had seen Napoleon take the city of Maastricht but would not keep standing for much longer. My tasks included covering the records in the store with plastic before I left each day. A single rainstorm would soak the store and render the beautiful records worthless. That summer, I lived every music geek's High Fidelity dream. Though many people would say that the most power lies in merely lounging imperiously behind the counter and occasionally deigning to answer questions by the humble clientele, my experience taught me that the greatest pleasure a record store employee can have is to put on a record and have it bought right off the store's shiny Technics 1200.

Those days I just grabbed random records from the racks, discovering Meat Loaf and the Bee Gees surprisingly palatable early work, but never quite getting into Beefheart or Zappa. To my surprise though, the record that was sold straight off my turntable the most was the multi-million selling album Rumours by Fleetwood Mac. Though it has in the past been written off as a commercial easy listening album, it is luminously produced, never over-stuffed, but also not cliched in its casual instrumentation. The ideal record to put on as I opened the store, propped the door open, and started to remove the plastic sheeting off the racks (just because it is July, sunny even, does not mean that it never rains during fickle Dutch summers).

The more than 30 million-selling Rumours (1977) is stuffed with anthemic pop singles, Clinton-campaigner Don't Stop, devastating Karaoke beast Go Your Own Way, and the sultry groove of Dreams. The appeal of the album version of fan-favorite Gold Dust Woman lies in the way Stevie Nicks' other times too-unbridled symbolism and floatiness has been contained, paced-out, harnessing its vicious power without exactly revealing the song's subject (jealousy? drugs? break-ups?). The sparse demo I'm posting is much tighter but less menacing. My main interest is in its surprisingly sweet coda, which sounds almost exactly like the poignant, wordless warbling than underscores the dramatic scenes on the Gilmore Girls.

More summer stompers can be found of the Mac's weirdest album, the wonderful Tusk (1979). Apart from the insane title track (background noise, African drumming, spooky vocals, and of course a brass band finale), and Stevie's sprawling swamp of a song, Sara, it also features the very Don't Stop-ish Think About Me , which I've posted in the single version off the expanded re-issue. As with Fleetwood Mac's most powerful stuff (and, now that I think about it, Abba's work as well), this song works best in its juxtaposition of upbeat sound and loose rhythm, with more pointed, dark lyrics, probably bred from the band's fucked-up inner romantic dis-entanglements. As Arion Berger suggests in his Rolling Stone review of the Rumours reissue:

"It's not a classic breakup record; it wasn't built as a soundtrack to whatever heartbreak you're trying to sing along to. But it's their breakup record, and in its idiosyncratic way it mirrors all the lost loves of the world. The two couples confess, blame, sigh and ride a deep, chugging groove toward some kind of resolution."

For fans of later Mac, as well as those of minimalist Teutonic techno, I'll end this with a post of The Field's epic stretching of the 1987 song Everywhere, here renamed Everday. As I've attempted to describe before, the tracks produced by Stockholm's Axel Willner are a different kind of trance. The music sounds like a warmer version of a skipping song on a CD. You know, those times where you're too busy doing something to realize you've been listening to the same few seconds of your favorite song for the last hour, just because someone used that disc as a coaster. The tracks on The Field's From Here We Go Sublime album just keep on building and building, revealing tantalizing snippets of their source material, but somehow ultimately imploding that material, mining radio staples by The Four Tops, The Flamingoes, hell, even Lionel Richie's Hello, for previously unsuspected tensions and dancefloor energy.

Unlikely Summer Jams 2007: Daft Punk

2007-05-31T15:41:00.001-04:00

la vermine, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

In a year without any new Daft releases, it seems odd that Daft Punk finds its way through my summery speakers daily in an almost non-nostalgic way. Apart from the plethora of supersharp recent remixes of their classic singles (try the allknowing Hype Machine for some of the latest ones), it seems odd how the band's french touch has trickled down anew on dancefloors worldwide. It seems odd that their music feels as timely as the other artists sampled by Kanye West on his new mixtape, Thom Yorke, and the omnipresent Peter, Bjorn and John. It definitely seems odd that it has taken me 6 years to rediscover, ahem, Daft Punk's epic pop masterpiece, Discovery.

Back in March, I was at a much-blogged party at the Hiro Ballroom. The line-up was made up out of the current gods of European dance music - Justice, SebastiAn, DJ Mehdi, Busy P - and all the club kids (and just as many bloggy photographers were out in full fun force. Once me and my friend had elbowed our way to the front of the stage where the Ed Bangers were taking turns playing their records, we noticed that somehow the unthinkable was happening; New Yorkers were dancing. They were smooshed up against each other, storming the stage, sweatily wriggling around, but dancing nonetheless. Out of all the heavenly tunes the dj's taunted us with (you know the tricks: fade out the bass, bring in the vocals, cut out completely, then slam it all back in for the chorus, rinse, repeat), my favorite that night was Daft Punk's deliriously disco album cut Face To Face.

Unlike One More Time, or Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger, this track was not released as a video or single, though it apparently topped the US club charts. More than the monstrously 'eadbanging remixes of Nirvana and Rage Against the Machine classics, this innocuous party track brought it all back. The summer of 2001 I spent driving around Italy and Austria with my family listening to the personalized mix-cd's I, the musical control freak, had provided them with. This was the era of blissfully perfect pop: Destiny's Child's Bootylicious, 'N-Sync's Pop, Madonna's Music, and Rufus Wainwright's Poses. Best though, in retrospect, might have been Daft Punk, who in Discovery created an album that they could release each consecutive track from, and still reign supreme over radios in beachfront bars, sandal & shoe-stores, and cars without ac's.

Since the other tracks are so hyper-familiar, I'll leave you with Something About Us, the sweet love-theme from Discovery's accompanying anime-epic by Leiji Matsumoto, Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem. A summer slow jam, this has shades of Miami Vice, a late eighties kind of Alexander O'Neal vibe, but reinterpreted by lovesick robots about to leave earth for their less complicated home planet. For other otherworldly visual cinematic pleasures, check out this, the Pink Floydian final scene of Daft Punk's forthcoming film Electroma.

Unlikely Summer Jams 2007: Bang Gang

2007-05-30T20:50:00.001-04:00

lostmarbles, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

"Inside, we got to know girls who had never considered taking their own lives. We fed them drinks, danced with them until they became unsteady, and led them out to the screened-in veranda. They lost their high heels on the way, kissed us in the humid darkness, and then slipped away to throw up demurely in the outside bushes. Some of us held their heads as they vomited, then let them rinse their mouths with beer, after which we got back to kissing again. The girls were monstrous in their formal dresses, each built around a wire cage. Pounds of hair were secured atop their heads. Drunk, and kissing us, or passing out in chairs, they were bound for college, husbands, child-rearing, unhappiness only dimly perceived--bound in other words, for life." (1993, p. 235)

Like Sofia Coppola's dreamier adaptation, Jeffrey Eugenides' novel The Virgin Suicides very vividly evokes the dull, slow-burning boredom of a teenage summer. Air's soundtrack to the film magically matched the flowy seventies shots of Kirrsten Dunst and her onscreen sisters, adding a lush layer of sensuality to the tragic tale of teen ennui. For their second album, Icelandic ex-triphoppers Bang Gang seem to have followed Air's lead, creating tracks that are more soundtrack than song. Sure they have vocals and even choruses, but they lack the comfort a song's climax and resolution offers, instead presenting us with swaths of atmosphere.

Released in the US in April 2007, their 2003 album, Something Wrong, is anything but. Having completely dropped the forced trip hop beats of the previous LP, You, main Bang Ganger Bardi Johannsson now focuses on simple expanse and emotion. Wrapped in moody guitar, the demo for Follow most closely resembles Air's Playground Love (check out the surreal singing chewing gum video). A spaced-out invitation to launch into the stars, moody and melancholy, the track offers momentary glimpses of discordant terror, only to phase out complacently at the abrupt ending.

It's Allright, here in a live version, takes an equally swathy tack that is especially effective around its 2.40 mark, when the drums really roll in, different vocal tracks start to overlap, and the rhodes organ makes all other cares float off into the distance. Eardrums Shall Fail has details of an interesting remix competition (now sadly over) of this song, as well as the great Shout Out Out Out Out remix of the almost Interpol-esque gloomfest Find What You Get. If you still feel inclined to attempt a remix, here are the separate anatomical parts.

One more link, for cover-fanatics like me. Youtube has the summer allergy inducing video for Bang Gang's jangly cover of the Supremes' sixties classic Stop! In the Name of Love.

Unlikely Summer Jams 2007: Kids Rap

2007-05-29T18:36:00.001-04:00

fence me in, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

For this second set of summer jams, I picked Rappers Delight Club and Wilcannia Mob, two acts that are not just singalongably sunny, but also hilariously honest. Both come from the peculiar and wonderful genre of kids' rap, but manage to stay far from the glossy Lil' clones so familiar from MTV (excepting the aforeblogged lipgloss-genius Lil' Mama, and with one honorably surreal mention of seven-year-old reggeaton sensation Miguelito, whose video for Boom Boom disturbingly alternates between cute kids at the zoo and gyrating mamas at a racetrack).

One very cool Maryland school teacher created the Glenallen Rappers Delight Club, a regular jam session at one of his daycare programs. Though they also boast tracks based on Sesame Street, Sufjan, and even Wes Anderson beats, their most summery track coasts on a joyous Motowny sample by notoriously melancholy Swede Jens Lekman (!?!). When We Were Kids immediately giggles out of the speakers, kids rhyming off their best lines as they celebrate being young and irresponsible, "Got no bills to pay, I can play all day." These bubbly kids are natural rappers, rhyming soap with antelope, and their lines are eccentrically paced and singularly funny, "I have a dad. I'm so glad he buys me popsicles. If he didn't, I wouldn't have popsicles!"

The Australian Wilcannia Mob takes an approach that is less block party, favoring rural outback subjects such as fishing and playing the didj' more natural to their hometown, 620 miles southwest of Sydney in New South Wales. Over Downriver's simple but hypnotic beatbox and didgeridoo rhythm (produced by Morganics, his website also features tracks made with Indonesian and Tanzanian kids), the five Aboriginal boys rap us through their ideal summer day: catching some fish, jumping off the bridge, and playing the their didgeridoos. Here, the poetry is also quite miraculous in its joyous simplicity, ranging from the deadpan "When I catch a fish. I put it in the fridge," to the more esoteric "This is my rhyme, and that's what I said." Born from workshops by South Sydney-based organisation Shopfront Theatre for Young People, the track has won several awards since its release to Ausssie radio station Triple J, and has even been re-edited by M.I.A. producer Diplo.

Unlikely Summer Jams 2007: The Go Find

2007-05-29T16:53:00.001-04:00

go find, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

Now that summer has hit New York in all its sweaty humid glory, I have immediately started to look for this year's summer jams. Not only the hits popping loud from every corner deli or Humm-ousine, but songs that can define a season and become inextricably enwrapped with its memories: In short, a soundtrack for summer '07. In my next few posts, I'll suggest a few tracks that either through their sheer rhythmic heat, or their poptastic choruses should make their way onto your picnic boomboxes or roadtripping iPods.

The likeliest options are obviously Rihanna's twirly emo-r'n'b hit Umbrella, or Lil' Mama's feisty minimalist handclapfest Lip Gloss (and they surely deserve their own posts), but my first suggestion is a little more farfetched. In fact, it is fetched all the way from my exotic, and sometimes sunny motherland, Belgium.

Dieter Sermeus' The Go Find has on their latest album Stars On The Wall blossomed from a one-bedroom electronic act into an sprawling six-person band. Their sound still sparkles with electronic flourishes, but is now underscored with more organic drum and bass sounds inspired by Fleetwood Mac's uber-summer jam album Rumors.

The Go Find's 25 Years is one of those songs that sound best when heading off into sunrise or sunset. With warmer synthy bridges and a lovely, nostalgic chorus, the song deals with the homes and people you left behind, the longing to return, and the memories that live on regardless.

There are a few videos and another great song up at The Tripwire, but I'll leave you with just one more album-track. Sounding like a sadder cross between Dusseldorf's proudest The Notwist and Sub Pop indie-hitmailers The Postal Service, Beautiful Night takes you on a short summer's night walk. Though it feels like only a fragment of a song, it captures the shy beauty of the rest of Stars On The Wall, thoughtfully contrasting Beach Boysy melancholia with squelchy, small computer sounds.

bird on a montreal branch

2007-05-24T14:39:00.003-04:00

bird, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

squirreling

2007-05-24T14:39:00.001-04:00

squirrel, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

montreal at night

2007-05-24T14:37:00.001-04:00

night, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

Loney, Dear's punctuated Scandinavian pop

2007-03-20T18:20:00.001-04:00

After The Pipettes' fabulous encore, I hopped into my waiting car service (or probably someone else's) and rushed through downtown Brooklyn to sneak into Union Hall's sightline-challenged basement. Loney, Dear had just started their set. What you need to know about this Swede is that he is quite relentless. Already four albums into his short one-man-band career, his latest, "Loney, Noir" is pop almost to a fault.

Laden with hooks and cheery brassy Sufjan-strumentation, the album is precise and hopeful even in the face of mild tragedy, a state of mind that can be a bit much for those who like their sentiments sloppy and slushy. On closer inspection, the songs always undercut their own pop-bravado. "I Am John," the free mp3 offered by Sub Pop is undeniably the album's tour-de-force in peppy relentlessness (sparkly xylophone included), but Emil Svanängen's lyrics hint at a tragic romantic realism when he follows the chorus' "Never gonna let you down" with, "but i will always let you down."

My favorite track was saved until the Union Hall encore. Emil apologetically introduced it as one fan's favorite song that was botched the previous time the band aired it on stage. On record, the first bleepy notes of "I Will Call You Lover Again" sound like a demo, bare keyboard tones over Emil's wavering, thin vocals. "I'm not a boy, but I'm not accustomed to this." A waltzy, washy rhythm takes us deeper into the track as a fanfare of brass and percussion starts to break out in the background. The vocals win in confidence and we realize this is a mantra. "I'll whisper your name, and again," one man singing to convince himself he will win his lover back this time.

The Pipettes' Brooklyn charm offensive

2007-03-20T18:18:00.000-04:00

After the ridiculous cool-concert drought of February 2007, I was more than enthusiastically snapping up tickets to the many SXSW-related shows happening all over NYC in March. Belatedly realizing, after clicking the 'Confirm Payment' button, that I had bought tickets for two shows happening on the same night. Moreover, the first was happening in Williamsburg, the other in Park Slope, a true Brooklyn logistics horror.

My double-booked evening did not start well, I stood in the lush Luna Lounge anxiously hoping The Pipettes would start in time for me to make it to the nerdy Union Hall in time for the uniquely Swedish indie-pop of Loney, Dear (but more on the Swedes in my next post). The Pipettes were late, and nervous; their tech-guys checking up on the same keyboard five times. The suspense was killing me, I hardly even noticed my teen-idol, the ever-present ex-Pumpkin James Iha, lounging around behind me. Still, when girl-group-goddesses Gwenno, Becki, and Rose stepped on the stage, dressed in three different, but equally polka-dotted dresses, all was forgiven. The group performed choreographed literal dancemoves, alternated on vocals, awkwardly said 'cheers' between songs, and played all my favorite tracks off "We are The Pipettes".

With my favorite Pipette B-side already featured by NPR, I'll post a different under-three-minute classic by this contemporary British version of The Crystals, The Ronettes, or The Shangri-la's. Starting off with a faint crackling, "Because It's Not Love (But It's Still A Feeling)" combines handclaps, a Spector backbeat, and surfy guitarlicks to soundtrack the girls' glorious pop. The ideal end-of-prom song for any fashion-forward sixties film, this song dares you not to sing along, not to invent your own silly synchronized hand gestures with your friends, not to feel as though school is over forever (and there's a polka-dotted boy or girl waiting for you right by the gate).

2006's top 28, albums, belated

2007-02-04T16:48:00.000-05:00

1. final fantasy - he poos clouds
2. beirut - gulag orkestar/lon gisland
3. hot chip - the warning
4. the knife - silent shout
5. sufjan stevens - the avalanche
6. the pipettes - we are the pipettes
7. cat power - the greatest
8. thom yorke - the eraser
9. margot & the nuclear so&so's - the dust of retreat
10. the be good tanyas - hello love

11. junior boys - in the morning
12. the hidden cameras - awoo
13. camera obscura - let's get out of this country
14. tiga - sexor
15. sonic youth - rather ripped
16. el perro del mar - look! it's el perro del mar
17. lo-fi-fnk - boylife
18. charlotte gainsbourg - 5.55
19. the whitest boy alive - dreams
20. yeah yeah yeahs - show your bones

21. tunng - comments of the inner chorus
22. barbara morgenstern - the grass is always greener
23. bonnie 'prince' billy - the letting go
24. beck - the information
25. the blow - paper television
26. lily allen - alright still
27. johnny cash - american v
28. fujiya & miyagi - transparent things

top 28s, songs, belated

2007-02-04T16:46:00.000-05:00

1. teddybears - yours to keep
2. the mystery jets - you can't fool me dennis
3. morgan geist - most of all
4. justin timberlake - sexyback
5. gnarls barkley - smiley faces
6. doveman - happy
7. cassie - me & u
8. the mountain goats - woke up new
9. laura barrett - robot ponies
10. kleerup feat. robyn - with every heartbeat

11. the klaxons - gravity's rainbow
12. van she - kelly
13. jenny wilson - let my shoes lead me forward
14. john vanderslice - exodus damage
15. midlake - roscoe
16. snow patrol - chasing cars
17. nelly furtado - say it right
18. loveninjas - keep your love
19. oppenheimer - breakfast in nyc
20. pet shop boys - flamboyant (michael mayer kompakt mix)

21. voxtrot - raised by wolves
22. the presets - girl & the sea
23. sally shapiro - i'll be by your side
24. the feeling - sewn
25. chris thile - stay away
26. ra ra riot - can you tell?
27. the ballet - in my head
28. the american analog set - cool kids keep (8 min version)

no. 29

2006-12-03T22:40:00.000-05:00

2006' best albums: 29. various production - the world is gone

not a compilation album, various production combines beautiful pencil-sharp sleeve and website design with a sound that perhaps can best be descriped as apocalyptic grime-folk. after releasing a handful of radically different ep's - including robo-funk versions of missy and brandy hits, but also cough-syrup-crunked retro soul tracks and gloomy folk tunes - various released their debut album: a style-compilation unified by a creeping sense of dread worthy of a british lynch. sir, though it has up-to-date, slightly too commercial-shiny beats, at least gives a good sense of this album's mysterious attractions.

2006' best songs: 29. pink nasty & will oldham - don't ever change

this austin songwriter sounds nothing like her name suggests. after dropping several great covers into the blogosphere - moody versions of elo and usher - pink nasty's raucous duet with will oldham shocked fans of bonnie 'prince' billy around the world; the man can really belt! the down-to-earthy lyrics (which feature deodorant stains, a subject rarely referenced in love-songs), combined with the singers' 'say you love me six times' battle just before the drawn out coda makes this the sweetest lovesong i've heard all year.
http://uploadhut.com/view.php/233543.mp3

no. 30

2006-12-03T22:22:00.000-05:00

so, i made this list of the best music of the year. actually, it's two lists: one for best albums, another for best songs not found on those albums, both are top 30s. i know that might seem like a lot but it barely fits. the songs discussed today are the last on the lists. they are perhaps replaceable, or overseeable, perhaps not all that relevant to music history or my own. still, they end the lists, serving as gatekeepers, good gatekeepers, worthy even, but not as good as the 29 ahead of them.

2006' best albums: 30. ms. john soda - notes and the like

somewhat of a dusseldorfer supergroup, this duo, made up of members of couch and the notwist, make like a sunnier ladytron. their 'no p or d' was my favorite album of 2002, and this has the same warm glitchy qualities, combining glittering electronic crunches with droney, but never downer strings. with beautiful german-accented vocals and rewound, stuttering instrumentation, hands is a lovely introduction to my apparently least favorite favorite album of 2006.

2006' best songs: 30. the field - thought vs. action

released on 12" as the b-side to 'love vs distance,' this quite astonishing 10-minute piece may start out as almost generic microhouse, chopped akufen-ic vocals slowly moving to a brisk, techno step, but four minutes in very familiar flute tones start to sound. you realize it's an intro, but the song never breaks. instead, gurgly kompakt beats drive the short snippet of the four tops' 'reach out i'll be there' to subdued, but powerful filtered heights.

facade

2006-09-17T17:44:00.000-04:00

facade
Originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

couperus

2006-09-17T17:43:00.001-04:00

couperus
Originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

vaporetto stop

2006-09-17T17:43:00.000-04:00

vaporetto stop
Originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

no phone

2006-09-17T17:42:00.001-04:00

no phone
Originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

simple life

2006-09-17T17:42:00.000-04:00

simple life
Originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

hongkong reflection

2006-09-17T17:41:00.001-04:00

hongkong reflection
Originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

hungarian close-up

2006-09-17T17:41:00.000-04:00

hungarian close-up
Originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

hungarian pavilion

2006-09-17T17:40:00.002-04:00

hungarian pavilion
Originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

prada

2006-09-17T17:40:00.001-04:00

prada
Originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

church

2006-09-17T17:40:00.000-04:00

church
Originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

american picture

2006-08-11T20:02:00.001-04:00

american picture
Originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

kailin caravan

2006-08-11T20:02:00.000-04:00

kailin caravan
Originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

home depot run

2006-08-11T20:01:00.000-04:00

home depot run
Originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

heatwave

2006-08-03T22:23:00.000-04:00

heatwave
Originally uploaded by nyresolutions.