Before I get to the reviews, it's worth noting that the song I have listened to obsessively over the past few weeks is not new, not reissued: it's "Bridge Over Troubled Water." Five minutes of musical perfection, and not just because Paul Simon wrote a great song and Art Garfunkel sang it divinely. The third irreplaceable ingredient is session pianist Larry Knechtel, who is just as prominent as Garfunkel; Knechtel shared the 1970 Grammy Award for "Best Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s)" for his work on this song. Best known as a member of '70s soft-rock icons Bread, he played on hundreds of storied sessions, but none surpassed "Bridge Over Troubled Water" for impact or beauty.
Knechtel died in August, which is inevitably a sad note, but I was happy to see that his passing was marked (hardly a given for a session man) and his countless contributions to the music of my youth were duly noted.
Nisennenmondai: Destination Tokyo (Smalltown Supersound) Nisennenmondai is a Japanese group, as if you couldn't tell from their name (which means Y2K Bug) and album title. I greatly enjoyed their previous offering, a 2008 compilation of EPs, so this one went into the player as soon as the promo arrived. They are definitely evolving into something more danceable -- with the tracks stretched out to club length, but with real drums -- yet also more daring. I guess this female trio plays "post-rock," but to me it sounds like Neu! playing Philip Glass. Drummer Sayaka Himeno is amazing, motorik at the starts of the long pieces and bashing through the increasingly dense crescendos with imagination and bravado without ever abandoning the prime imperative of the beat. Guitarist Masako Takada and bassist Yuri Zaikawa lock into complementary patterns, then pile on additional layers and swooshes with celestial clarity, achieving ecstasy through repetition and slight variation.
Babatunde Olatunji: Drums of Passion Deluxe Edition (Columbia Legacy) Back in the white-bread 1950s, world music was considered too raw to place before the record buying public in unadulterated form. Add some strings, some white people, call it exotica, and then maybe the bastardized bugger would be considered fit for consumer consumption. Drums of Passion was the album that changed that. When it appeared in 1959 -- yup, 50 years ago -- it was the first LP of traditional African music recorded in the U.S. Nigerian master percussionist Babatunde Olatunji's collection of authentic West African drumming and chants caught on, though, to the extent that it even spawned a 1966 sequel, More Drums of Passion, included in this two-CD set. Influencing jazz musicians, rock musicians (eventually), and other open-minded listeners with its complex polyrhythms and earthy vocals, it became an important artifact in many people's global musical education. Fifty years down the road, its joyous energy still resounds undimmed.
Ramos was making a name for herself on the New York club circuit as a singer-songwriter at the beginning of this decade, then decamped to Los Angeles. Word now is that she may return to NYC -- our gain, their loss. At least her Western sojourn yielded, if not the fame she deserves, this sterling set of songs, including the sad dismissal of Hollywood, "Stars Are Just Cement." With her soaring, wounded-angel vocals as attractive as ever, she would be an enjoyable listen even if all the songs were mundane mediocrities, but in fact this disc is filled with a dozen little wistful masterpieces that flash gentle humor and pointed apercus amid the sweetly jangling acoustic guitars and mournful cellos. A couple of tracks sport pedal steel guitar, their country simplicity offering changes of pace that make me wonder whether she'll end up in Nashville at some point.
With Blixa Bargeld producing its debut, this Chinese duo is bound to get compared to Einsturzende Neubauten. At times that makes sense, though it's more recent Neubauten that usually comes to mind. But this group has such an individual sound, with so much variety, that comparisons can't do it justice. Shenggy (Korg MS-20 synthesizer, samplers, tape manipulation, drums, percussion, vocals) and Shou Wang (guitar, organ, Theremin, pedals, vocals) are certainly industrial in tone, but quietly; noisy at times, but within firm structures -- some sort of hybrid of scraggling post-punk guitar and the more far-out edge of current electronica (such as Autechre) squeezed into an avant-garde music box, with Chinese and English vocals. It's one of the most exciting and intriguing debuts of the year.
YLT has always showed a great deal of variety, but they've outdone themselves on this album, which has so many styles that over its first half (the first nine of its twelve songs) it almost sounds like a multi-artist compilation. The first track, "Here to Fall," makes it immediately clear that YLT refuses to be pigeonholed; they've never before sounded quite like this track's Brit-poppish heavy electronic-plus-strings vibe. "If It's True" opens like it's about to burst into "Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch" or "Soul Deep," and soul sounds/references pop up elsewhere as well. Jangley dream-pop, snazzy '70s pop, a darkly keyboard-heavy lullabye, pounding rock, a loungey groove, and an acoustic ditty that always seems on the verge of becoming "Sloop John B" make appearances. Then, for the three long concluding tracks that are roughly equal in their combined length to the nine preceding songs, we are in familiar territory: the long, guitar-oriented drones and whispered vocals that are practically a YLT trademark, closing with a raucous freakout.
Dancer/musician Steven Reker, recently seen and heard as part of David Byrne's touring stage extravaganza, makes his debut with this six-song EP recorded by Brendon Anderegg (Mountains). In collaboration with Anderegg and and Richard Levengood, Reker is responsible for all sounds but the percussion and strings on one track. The songs are movingly intimate in tone and lyrics, but also build majestically by layering electric guitars and keyboards. Reker's tremulous vocals (sometimes peaking to forceful insistence, and now and then overdubbed in harmony) add to the sense of highly personal communication, as does the nearly claustrophobia-inducing closeness and tightness of the soundstage. Percussion is light, the beat carried along in its occasional absences by guitar and bass patterns. I can't exactly pin down the meanings of any of the songs, but they are memorably poetic.
Drive-By Truckers: Live from Austin (New West)
Recorded for the long-running PBS program Austin City Limits during the band's tour supporting last year's Brighter Than Creation's Dark, Live predictably contains more songs from Brighter than any of their other albums (five of the first six tracks, but none thereafter). I'm a big DBT fan, and I enjoy this album, but it is not even remotely essential. It sounds like PBS music: too many tracks are slow and low-key, stressing the band's literate qualities. "That Man I Shot" and a few other similarly intense and raucous songs would've greatly improved the situation. The rarities compilation is actually superior from the moment the cheeky opening track, "George Jones Talkin' Cell Phone Blues," kicks in with its heavy dose of pedal steel. There are four killer covers: fellow Southerner Tom Petty's "Rebels," Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone," a dark and heavy run through Warren Zevon's "Play It All Night Long" (which shares DBT's Skynyrd obsession), and Tom T. Hall's Vietnam-era war-casualty classic "Mama Bake a Pie (Daddy Kill a Chicken)," which, sadly, remains timely, and with its dry black humor sounds exactly like a DBT song. There are a couple of alternate takes that hit and miss, but the previously unreleased originals are all solid, and they even come up with a sleazy and sinister Christmas novelty, "Mrs. Claus' Kimono." This band's leftovers are better than most bands' regular albums. Hell, better than some bands' greatest-hits albums.
Kinda mathy, kinda noisey, kinda dancey, Health offers the best of several worlds -- not by alternating these styles, but by combining them (though, yes, a few tracks are nothing but noise). And they aimed for maximum power and grit by recording direct to analog tape; you can practically hear the meters hitting the red (or you should: the band includes instructions that "this record should be played at a minimum of 90dB"). This is much more focused and structured than their earlier releases, and IMO much better.
This London quartet's cool, quiet ditties exude DIY charm. Sometimes, with their quiet male/female vocal tandem, they seem to be reworking the dreamy end of the post-punk spectrum, as if Young Marble Giants had reunited and taken advantage of current electronic beats and equipment to augment their low-key guitar pop. At other times, they fit neatly but imaginatively into the current dance/indie-rock miscegenation with their clicking, stripped-down beats and brightly pulsating guitar patterns. A pure delight.
This will come as a surprise to those few folks familiar with Wild Beasts' first full-length, which was weirder and more scattered; its avant-cabaret feel is replaced by a more focused and accessible sound. The first track, "The Fun Powder Plot," reminds me a bit of Hercules and Love Affair: Hayden Thorpe's falsetto is as whoopingly high and wildly emotive as Antony's (albeit with the occasional Morrissey inflection), and there's a definite disco feel. That said, this British group's skewed pop sensibility is more on the herky-jerky post-punk disco end of the spectrum rather than the smoothly pulsating Eurodisco of H&LA, with catchier songs and occasional jangling, soaring guitar lines reminiscent of early Echo & the Bunnymen. -
Steve Holtje 
Mr. Holtje is a Brooklyn-based poet and composer who splits his time between editing Culturecatch.com, working at the Williamsburg record store Sound Fix, and editing cognitive neuroscience books for Oxford University Press. No prizes for guessing which pays best.
White: White (OpenNote)
Yo La Tengo: Popular Songs (Matador)
Health: Get Color (LovePump United)
The XX: XX (XL)
Wild Beasts: Two Dancers (Domino)
Well, this is my first visit
Well, this is my first visit to your blog! But I admire time and effort you put into it, especially into interesting articles you share here!
James
Oh, this music is awesoming!
Oh, this music is awesoming! I consider myself to be the most ardent admirer of Nisennenmondai. Their last album around I thought their cloudier, dirty tracks played better than their cleaner ones. I was still more impressed with the physicality of their songs, their musicianship, rather than the songs themselves (the Marnie Stern syndrome, I think). While they're still nimble musicians, Destination Toyko paints the trio as equally exciting songwriters.
Great review, all this music
Great review, all this music is really great, I am going to listen to some of these songs right now.
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