I'm a big believer that, as I've written before, a lot of music fits best in a certain season. The National, for example, have for years been a fall band to me. Something about falling leaves and heartbreaking piano ballads just go together marvelously. Similarly, Sigur Ros has always been a band for snowy winter days.
But, folks, now it's summer. And, hot damn, I found a perfect summer jam.
It's Mos Def's new track with the Japanese DJ Deckstream.
Yup, I'm as surprised as you.
It's been a little while since we've heard Mos Def sound as smooth, laid back and stress free as he does on this wonderfully floating and bobbing track, appropriately titled "Life is Good." HIs last full, official record, The New Danger, was full of half-baked ideas, most of them angry — so a breezy summer track like "Life is Good" is a pretty staunch change in direction.
But it couldn't have come at a better time — I mean, shit, it's summer!
Deckstream's jazz-piano over splash-crash percussion sounds like walking down a Manhattan street in the middle of August without a care in the world — the chaos is all there, but you're blissfully floating above it.
While I'm sure there'll be many more perfect summer songs to come, this one's got me in the mood. Thanks Mos Def. I needed this.
When Manchester Orchestra’s I’m Like a Virgin Losing a Child came out in 2006, both fans and critics weren’t exactly sure what to make of it.
The record was certainly ambitious — hell, just look at the title — but the songs weren’t quite so epic to back up front man (then teenage boy) Andy Hull’s philosophical meanderings. Let alone that I once played the record for a friend who subsequently asked if it was the new Saves the Day.
But fast forward three years, thousands of tour miles and a generous helping of musical development, and Manchester Orchestra have returned with Mean Everything to Nothing, a record that feels fully cooked on all fronts. And it tastes, or rather, sounds, stunning.
The band’s centerpiece has always been Hull’s emotive (read: vast understatement) vocals, varying from a near-whisper to some serious throat-shredding, all tied together by the notion that the dude really, truly means it.
And that doesn’t change on Mean Everything to Nothing — if anything, Hull is even further out front to the benefit of the band. The 22-year-old bearded Southerner is a hell of a front man from both the performance and lyrical standpoint.
His voice has a distinct Isaac Brock-ian quality in both its variance and its almost mysterious beauty. But where Brock seems to know his own over-the-top-ness, Hull’s bleeding-heart and often bleeding-palm (religious imagery abound) sincerity makes the music that much more affecting.
The songs on Nothing rock like more complex and layered Pinkerton-era Weezer tunes with significantly more emphasis on faith and love than sex and paranoia. But that comparison alone would rob the record of much of its aural depth — throw in some early My Morning Jacket and fellow Southern gloom-rockers Dead Confederate and the record starts to take shape.
After the twee-pop with meaty guitar opener “The Only One,” “Shake It Out” seems like the real beginning to the album — opening with frantic guitar stabs and Hull singing so frenetically I can picture him looking nervously around the room and pulling his own hair out as lines like “I am the living ghost of what you need / I am everything eternally / God, just speak!” shoot out like stray bullets.
Then the levy bursts and Hull screams the song’s title like a man possessed while his band somehow manages to furiously keep up the pace with huge percussion and muscular walls of guitars. “In My Teeth” is Manchester’s take on In Utero-style Nirvana, and, believe it or not, it works. Marvelously. The song’s intro even sounds like the type of riff Cobain would’ve loved to write, not to mention the dun-dun (pause) dun-dun guitar drops during the verses were lifted from “Lithium.” Still, the similarity isn’t grating — if anything it’s refreshing, a return to form for angry-at-God guitar rock.
Nothing isn’t all Hull’s flailing around like a rag doll, though. “I Can Feel a Hot One” is a gorgeous, slowly-plodding ballad in which Hull builds and deconstructs his melody in each verse, never gaining too much intensity but steadily pushing his thoughts forward. When he sings “To pray for what I thought were angels / Ended up being ambulances / And the Lord showed me dreams of my daughter / She was crying inside your stomach,” whether you believe him or not, think it’s trite or beautiful, it’s near impossible to feel nothing.
And when Hull sings, “I’m gonna leave you the first chance I get” on the sprawling, 11-minute “The River,” you’d be a fool not to believe him. The scary part is figuring out if he’s singing to God, to his audience or to his own oft-tortured, scared and brilliant mind.
So the Dr. Dog show last night was predictably fantastic. Be it in a tiny club or a 600-hundred seater, the Philly boys of Dr. Dog could stir up a room of the tightest Republican senators to break into a groove and get down. I'd refrain from saying the show was perfect — but that's mainly because they didn't play "My Old Ways."
Aside from that, all was wonderful — overwhelmingly positive vibes bouncing from wall to wall in the club, kept afloat by the band's sublimely flowing rock and roll. A Dr. Dog show has the same effect on me that I imagine Oprah does over most of the middle aged women in America — that feeling that everything is alright, everything is lovely.
But the surprise of the night was openers Drink Up Buttercup. Just like Dr. Dog often hit like Beach Boys at that band's most happy and magical, Drink Up Buttercup take the same band's creepier, psychedelic side and twist it into a wild swirl of pounding trashcan percussion, maddening harmonies and dinosaur stomp bass.
This music is following Alice down the rabbit hole. It's being inside an Edgar Allan Poe story. The band's live experience is that crazy.
The studio recorded stuff (check MySpace) successfully sounds like it was recorded in the lowest level of a submarine mid-deep sea dive, but live the band explodes off the stage with enough energy to take down said submarine.
These videos don't nearly do the band justice, but I hope it's a decent primer. You owe it to yourself to check out Drink Up Buttercup. Just don't go too crazy.
If you've read much of this blog, you know that I love the music that really makes me feel something — whether it's happy or sad, dirty or sexy, in love or totally full of intense dislike.
Dr. Dog do that to me. The band's music is so full of motion, of emotion and of the richest imagery in rock right now.
Forget about the haters that say Dr. Dog sounds like the Beach Boys or the Beatles. Because, well, they do — but that's not a bad thing. The band takes the restless, swaying positivity of classic sunshine bands like the Boys or Beatles and puts a distinctly modern twist on it.
It's impossible, at least for bleeding hearts like me, not to be moved by tunes like "We All Belong." Call me a sap or not, but singing a phrase like that, with such a lilting and catchy melody, makes me nod and say, "Yeah, man. We sure do."
The Dog's singer and bassist Toby Leaman took some time while cruising around Seattle's fish market on his day off to talk. Here's what the doc had to say:
Gravity Rides Everything: What was the first record to blow you away?
Toby Leaman: I was a kid. It woulda had to be Out of Time by REM. I liked music before that but it was the kind of music you like before you decide that you like music. I was really into DJ Jazzy Jeff and Fresh Prince — the one with “Parents Just Don’t Understand” – but as far as that having any musical affect on me…maybe not.
GRE: What about (Dr. Dog hometown) Philly inspires you?
TL: The people. The more people you meet and all the interesting things people are into — because its not extremely expensive or at the cutting edge, it affords people to just do what they want to do without sacrificing too much. If they want to do something really weird that’ll never make them any money — you can do that in Philly. There are outlets for it — little house punk shows, art shows.
GRE: The band has said that FATE is the record that the you guys were destined to make. How do you interpret that?
TL: You could say that about any album we’ve made. They’ve all been a product of what we had available to us at that time. And certainly for FATE we had more available to us. Still, we don’t really feel limited whether we were recording on 4-track or reel-to-reel 8-track or even when we moved to 24-track.
GRE: Is Dr. Dog's best record still to come?
TL: Absolutely. The next one will be the best one to date. Without a doubt. We’ve been talking about it a lot. We wanted to release something this summer — it’ll be like a mini album. I'm trying to avoid calling it an EP. We’re going back to 8-track on that one just for the hell of it. But the next full album, we’re talking about not doing it ourselves — maybe in partnership with somebody else. We agree that for us to get to the next level artistically, as lofty as that sounds, we need to get out of our own studio. Mainly it’s an engineering issue. But also it might be fun to let another head in.
GRE: How would you describe your approach to songwriting. Does it come naturally or do you set aside time?
TL: Both. Sometimes you’re not trying to write anything and something just comes up and its easy as pie. I try to play at least a couple hours in my head when I’m at home. It’s my favorite thing to do, so it’s not a hassle. I would write all day every day if I could. Like 90 percent of what I write never becomes a song. It’s hard to say when you’re actually writing and when are you just dicking around, though.
GRE: My favorite Dr. Dog line is "What blows us hear today will blow us all away" from "The Breeze." How does that mentality factor into being a traveling band?
TL: I never thought about it in that light. Obviously the term "blow us all away" has multiple meanings. Essentially, I would imagine that what Scott (McMicken, guitar and vocals) was trying to say that the things that have brought you to a place are the same things that’ll get you beyond it. All your history and experience, up to whatever the present is, those are the things that’ll push you further. He might’ve meant it the other way — when you reflect upon your life, it’ll blow your mind. But you can take it anyway you want. Once the lyrics are out of our hands and recorded, they’re no longer ours.
GRE: I recently spent some time working with the poor in Guatemala. The only band I listened to was Dr. Dog because of the music's infectious positivity and hopefulness. What music makes you feel like I did in Guatemala?
TL: In one sense, I feel glad to be doing what we love to be doing. I’m happily married, I have a dog and a house and shit. But as far as actual things that’ve made me feel lucky. Well, I play cards and it’s always beautiful when you get lucky. I haven’t found money recently, but whenever that happens… Honestly, we’re lucky to have a day off today.
Check out Dr. Dog's latest record, last year's FATE, on Park the Van and let the happiness in.
Something about the so-in-your-face-sexuality made it, to me, totally unsexy. And aside from the ridiculously catchy "Fuck the Pain Away," which was itself so over the top it was hard to hate, Peaches just wasn't a train I was riding.
But hot damn, her newest record I Feel Cream, out just next week, has made me a believer. Gone are her over simplified, sparse beats — they've been replaced by some fine, thumping and pulsing electroclash (dare I say) soundscapes that toy with her better-than-ever plaintive moans.
This is 'late 80s, blowing lines in a sweaty club where there are girls dancing in cages'-type electronic fuzz, and finally - finally - Peaches' is heavier on the innuendo than the straight up sex. And, by the logic of music, that makes her latest sexier than ever. By far.
Don't get me wrong — I Feel Cream still has its flaws. Peaches' attempt at actual rapping on "Billionaire" is just goofy and forced.
Check out some of the better jams of the record below:
Granted, Peaches is half-naked in this clip, but the point still stands. Quivering beat that flares up at all the right times, catchy-sexy melody and allusions to fucking without waving the fucking in your face. Hot shit.
Rubber-band-bouncy beat and some grit in her voice, this is a hell of a jam.
So there it is. Peaches, a stranger no longer.
Check out I Feel Cream out May 5 on XL. Then get laid. Peaches wouldn't want it any other way.
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