New: Immaculate Machine - "Only Love You For Your Car"

Named after the lyrics from the Paul Simon song "One Trick Pony," Victoria, British Columbia's Immacculate Machine clearly have a playful sense of humor. One that's perfectly displayed in the song "I Only Love You For Your Car" from the band's fourth LP, High on Jackson Hill—released yesterday. The catchy chorus, loose rhythm, and cheerful organ riff produce an instantly accessible sound that serves as a proper introduction for a band comprised of three childhood friends: Brooke Gallupe (guitar/vocals), Luke Kozlowski (drums/vocals) and occasional member of the New Pornographers, Kathryn Calder (keyboard/vocals).

Immaculate Machine - "I Only Love You For Your Car"

Here's a live performance of the track in Ontario with the organ replaced by a couple of ascending "oohs" and some Will Ferrell-esque cowbell.

Low Fidelity Fuzz In A Tall Fizzy Glass

Glasgow's Camera Obscura and Raleigh, North Carolina's Love Language play songs like beaten and well-worn memories--faded at the edges and out of focus with colors forgotten, mixed, and matched; tones bursting with blissful and emotive pop melodies, unsteady and unbalanced with nostalgia.

You may not share any stories with singers Tracyanne Campbell of Camera Obscura or Stuart McLamb of the Love Language, but there's plenty to sing along to in their Phil Spector-laced and unabashedly sweet low fidelity pop fuzz.

Have a tall glass:

Camera Obscura - French Navy

The Love Language - Lalita

Tallest Man On Earth - "The Gardener"

I've written about Scandanavian folk singer Kristian Matsson before. His music breathes fresh air into the tired Dylan-esque catalog. Here, Matsson performs amongst a collection of antique instruments inside of the Music Inn in Greenwich Village. Thank the folks at La Blogotheque for the video. 

Tallest Man On Earth - "The Gardener"

Buy: Amazon

Random Updates

Here's a happy, ska-inflected number about drinking, late nights, and all that good stuff: Olivia Mancini & The Mates - "My Old Ways"

Read my interview with Mancini at the Washingtonian. 

I also started writing news updates today for Melophobe. Check out the site's great concert reviews and photos (and news). 

And lastly, if you haven't heard DC's The Moderate, they're worth checking out: go here for a concert review and here to listen. 

Three Songs You Need To Hear

The New York Times ran an article on the Detroit punk rock trio Death last month. It's a great story and the music's even better. Fellow Detroit-raised musician Jack White of White Stripes-fame gave his first impression: "The first time the stereo played ‘Politicians in My Eyes,’ I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. When I was told the history of the band and what year they recorded this music, it just didn’t make sense. Ahead of punk, and ahead of their time."

Death - "Politicians In My Eyes"

Mike Vogel's remix of the Bruce Springsteen track "Tougher Than The Rest" is as relaxing, soothing, and spacious as a song gets. A repeated percussion loop and layers of soaring synths give the Boss an unusually textured platform for his single off the 1987 Tunnel of Love album. 

Bruce Springsteen - "Tougher Than The Rest" (Mike Vogel remix)

A friend recommended I take a listen to Rhode Island's Low Anthem. It was good advice. According to Spin, the three band members combined to play 27 different instruments on their 2008 release Oh My God, Charlie Darwin, including pump organ, Tibetan singing bowl, and the zither—a stringed instrument that dates back to 433 BC. The bluesy and preachy "The Horizon Is A Beltway" is a scorching foot-stomper with influences ranging from Tom Waits to Josh Ritter and every rickety, harmonica-fueled folk rocker in between. 

The Low Anthem - "The Horizon Is A Beltway"

The Sweet Disco of Johnny Jewel

Portland, Oregon's Chromatics and Glass Candy are two effervescent and discoed-out projects started by Johnny Jewel, master of all things synth. Jewel, unlike the mass majority of contemporary recording artists, doesn't use a computer to make his sound. Instead, he operates with a couple of vintage synthesizers that create a strangely organic wall of intricately danceable and thoughtful funk.

Jewel, who works with his ex Ida No in Glass Candy and current sweetheart Ruth Radelet with the Chromatics, has now found a muse for his newest project. After two years of working on the production for Desire, Jewel came upon singer Megan Louise in Montreal—it was the voice he'd been looking for. The next day, he rented an apartment in the city.

The duo's sound is in line with Jewel's past work: an often adrift, spacy and bouncy balance of fuzzy and soft tones. The song "Dans Mes Reves" comes with a genre classification: "dreamwave." Genres tend to be narrow and oversimplified, but here, Jewel couldn't be any more unusually qualified.

Desire - "Dans Mes Reves"

Glass Candy - "Rolling Down The Hills"

Chromatics - "Running Up That Hill"

Buy: After Dark compilation

Getting to know the Antlers

I listened to the Antlers for the first time last night. I don't know why it took me so long. The Brooklyn, New York band's sound is captivating and deeply affective, almost to the point of having a physiological power over the listener.

The music often comes slowly and in waves. First shallow and harmless, then again with a magnetic pull that makes it nearly impossible to turn away your attention.

The Antlers is led by 22-year-old vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Peter Silberman. The project started with Silberman recording songs alone in his Manhattan kitchen and has grown into a three-person Brooklyn-based group with the addition of banjo and trumpet player Darby Cicci and drummer Michael Lerner.

Hospice, released last month, is a concept album of sorts: a self-described elegy for Silberman's year-and-a-half dissapearance in 2006. Accordring to the Antlers' Web site, Silberman stayed "cocooned in his apartment, hiding away from friends, family, and most of the city." When he emerged, he began to record Hospice—a process which took another year-and-a-half. Silberman opted to not rent a formal studio space for the album and instead recorded the songs in the freedom of his own home. He describes the process with Interview Magazine's Lucy Madison:

I was kind of writing and recording at the same time—and writing through the recording: kind of putting down ideas and building upon them. Sometimes the songs would take on a life of their own based on different experiments. So I wasn't sure exactly how it was going to sound until it was done, but that's usually how I end up writing songs

Silberman's music is not for everyone. Tones are often mercurial, changing from soft one moment to dark and heavy the next. But the experience, even for a loosely connected listener, is a cathartic one. Notes and melodies instantly dig under your skin and stay there for hours at a time. Whether it's today or sometime in the future, the Antlers deserve a listen.

The Antlers - The Universe Is Going To Catch You (from In The Attic of the Universe) 
The Antlers - Two (from Hospice)

Buy: Amazon, eMusic, Insound, iTunes

Soundtrack: Adventureland

Adventureland had me at hello. Or rather, at the introductory riff to the classic Replacements track "Bastards of Young."

Set in the summer of 1987, the film's landscape is colored by the trickle down effect of Reaganomics and plenty of cheesy rock (see Foreigner, Falco). But the focus is never on the era's silly chart-topping bands or ridiculous clothing; they are simply elements that help place the film's characters—poor, nerdy, and rebellious—in the margins.

Musically, Adventureland does what Dazed and Confused did for 70s rock acts like the Runaways and Alice Cooper. Adventureland gives the unruly greats of the 80s, specifically Hüsker Dü and the Replacements, a contemporary platform to be celebrated and heard. The two Minneapolis bands are not only featured on the soundtrack, they are also written into the screenplay: Kristen Stewart's character Em wears a Hüsker Dü t-shirt and love interest James, played by Jesse Eisenberg, finds a Replacements LP in her record collection. The song "Bastards of Young" almost serves as a sketch for James, who finds himself abandoned and lost after college:

God, what a mess, on the ladder of success,
/ Where you take one step and miss the whole first rung. /
Dreams unfulfilled, graduate unskilled, /
It beats pickin' cotton and waitin' to be forgotten.



We are the sons of no one, bastards of young.
/ We are the sons of no one, bastards of young. /
The daughters and the sons.



Clean your baby womb, trash that baby boom. /
Elvis in the ground, we're waiting on beer tonight. /
Income tax deduction, what a hell of a function. /
It beats pickin' cotton and waitin' to be forgotten.



(chorus)



Unwillingness to claim us, you got no word to name us.



The ones who love us best are the ones we'll lay to rest,
/ And visit their graves on holidays at best.
/ The ones who love us least are the ones we'll die to please.
/ If it's any consolation, I don't begin to understand them.



(chorus)

The soundtrack also features a dose of Lou Reed favorites, including "Satellite of Love" and the simultaneously haunting and soothing Velvet Underground treasure, "Pale Blue Eyes," which appears twice to emphasize James's devotion to Em.

It's not often a director so heavily invests, both thematically and contextually, in his soundtrack. And it's even more unusual for a director's taste to be this great. 

The Replacements - "Bastards of Young" (highly recommended)

Hüsker Dü - "Don't Want to Know if You Are Lonely"

The Velvet Underground - "Pale Blue Eyes" (closet mix) (highly recommended)

Live: Langhorne Slim at Iota

"I'm gonna play some new songs and some old songs," said singer/songwriter Langhorne Slim as he plopped down on a wooden stool. "If you hear something you know feel free to freak out or take your pants off."

Thursday night's solo acoustic show, the only one of the tour, was a subtle display of all things endearing about Slim: a casual confidence and humor, a soulful set of pipes, and rugged and bluegrass-tinged guitar play.

His set included bare-bones versions of "Rebel Side of Heaven," "Diamonds and Gold," "Colette," and the great "Restless." An hour into the concert, it became clear that the themes of Slim's songs are fairly heavy on the redundancy—love lost, love gained, and plenty of "honeys" and "babes"—but at this point in the young songsmith's career, it's not a problem. He carries himself with a complete genuineness—at times self-deprecating and others with a bulletproof swagger. 

By the end of the night, I was convinced every woman in attendance wanted to sleep with him and every guy wanted to be him. Just another night's work. 

Langhorne Slim - "Restless" (mp3)

Buy: Amazon, eMusic

Digging For Covers: Stars - This Charming Man

The Smiths are not my favorite band. Yes, my taste in contemporary music gravitates towards independent rock bands, but counter to popular belief, liking the Smiths is not a prerequesite. However, I always enjoy the sounds of Smiths' lead guitarist Johnny Marr. Even his collaboration with Modest Mouse on the recent We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank came out brilliant. His shimmering and high-energy leads feel like shots of pure joy—all with an instantly nostalgic flavoring.

Marr's most classic riff is on "This Charming Man." Paired with Morrissey's polished vocals and old-fashioned lyrics, the 1983 single is a simultaneously vulnerable and blissful track that captures the Smiths in the peak of their craft.

Montreal's Stars released a cover of the track on its 2001 debut album Nightsongs. It's a slower take that transfer's Morrissey's emasculated vocals to an almost whispered spoken word interpretation by the Stars' Torquil Campbell. This largely electronic version is sparse with just a bass, drum loop, and keyboards through the first verse and chorus, but when Marr's riff eventually emerges it does so with added weight and in a completely wide open space—perfect for a scenic drive through the country.

The Stars - "This Charming Man" (mp3)

Buy the Stars: Amazon

Buy the Smiths: Amazon