2010 is another banner year for indies, with some wunderkinds from the pre-Tens issuing sophomore and junior albums (Vampire Weekend, July's new album by M.I.A., Band of Horses) and some new (or at least semi-new) acts getting their fair share (or more) of buzz.
Folks seem to be raving about She & Him, for example, M-Ward's "Swell Season" with Zooey Deschanel. Sure, it's charming, but it's also kind of bloodless. On the other hand, I go gaga about pretty much anything Danger Mouse does, so Broken Bells (his duo with Shins' frontman James Mercer) has me itching to run down to Amoeba.
Since "Top Ten" lists seem to be out like the seventies (call it a sign of our ever-shrinking attention spans) we're cutting our list down to a much shorter, tighter, and more manageable five songs from the first half of 2010, released between January and June.
Below the cut, listen to a playlist of tunes we've had on constant rotation, complete with (sometimes snarky) commentary. Mix, enjoy, repeat.
Bloodbuzz Ohio (The National)
So good it could be a whole list in itself. That's all. Or as an old friend of mine put it, you just want to lock yourself in a dark room and listen to this track again and again. And again. And again.
Me and Jane Doe (Charlotte Gainsbourg and Beck)
There's a lot of first-class brooding and pensiveness on IRM, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Beck's collaboration that straddles 2009 and 2010. I'm a little surprised at how solid the whole thing is, since CG has kind of a flat, detached singing and songwriting style (she's a "chanteuse," after all). But this track not only has a catchy, tongue-in-cheek, spinning across the meadows upbeat-ness to it, it also has an irresistibly free-wheeling and elegant guitar hook (plus what sounds like Javanese gamelan samples)—vintage Beck.
The Ghost Inside (Broken Bells)
Like I said, Brian Burton (aka Danger Mouse) could record an album of vuvuzela duets and I'd be all over it. But while I found the first couple of advance tracks from Broken Bells (Mongrel Heart, The High Road) intriguing but not indispensable, "The Ghost Inside" has just the right mix of fat, measured beats I'd expect from Danger Mouse (hand claps for the win!) and an unexpected, Bee Gees-worthy falsetto from James Mercer. Why yes, I'll have another (insert your favorite alcoholic beverage here).
Beach House
Norway (Beach House)
Beach House's music makes me want to take a long walk on a wintry shore on some other planet. There's just a touch of Cocteau Twins in the dreamy reverb and breathy backup vocals, but then you have that warbling, organ-grinder wallpaper of a pedal tone and the throb of that Hamm's "Land of Sky Blue Water" tom-tom. Beach House's songs are so loose and natural that you feel like you have all the time in the world—lor some other world—leven though the track lasts just over four minutes. More, please.
White Sky (Vampire Weekend)
Ezra Koenig and Co. quickly became 2008's The Strokes, the band that everyone either loved to love or loved to hate. I never stopped liking their peppy, kwassa kwassa-inflected indie pop, but then again, I'm a fortysomething in a 34-year old's body, an "All Songs Considered" poster child. (The other day at the polls, a gray-haired fortysomething voter grinned at my T-shirt, which referenced the classic Nintendo's video game "Contra," and said "Great album!") I wasn't surprised, then, that Vampire Weekend's sophomore album was another collection of candy and earworms. What I was surprised about was a post by Momus, one of my favorite and perennially hipper-than-thou, crustily forward-looking artists/musicians/bloggers, wherein he declared that he dug Vampire Weekend's new album. The band had lobbied for his support for their first album, but to no avail. What won the crotchety Momus over this time? He gave it up to Koenig's "charm offensive." Come to think of it, that might be a better name for the band.
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment