Review: Tennis *Cape Dory*

[Originally written for Pretty Much Amazing.]

Cape Dory arrives amidst the most brilliant bit of self-marketing by a new band since a pair of “siblings” named Jack and Meg White emerged from Detroit wearing red, white, and black. The story behind the band’s genesis, which you probably already know (Tennis is your new favorite band, right?), is so novel that its veracity is beside the point. It goes something like this: Patrick Riley and Alaina Moore, a now-married couple from Denver, scrounged for six years, bought a sailboat (the titular Cape Dory), and escaped their landlocked lives for adventure on the Atlantic. Early into the couple’s trip along the Eastern Seaboard, they discovered they had both played music in the past and had a passion to do it again. One night in a Florida Keys bar, while a Shirelles song played overhead, they decided to give songwriting a shot. After their trip was cut short (and after they were wedded on the deck of the Cape Dory), Riley and Moore returned to their old lives and wrote songs about their seven-month journey. Those songs became the musical travelogue known as Cape Dory. Tennis was born.

The story, which has gained the band instant indie interest, threatens to overshadow the music itself. The Myth of Tennis would be nothing more than cheap fodder for music journalists if Cape Dory weren’t so stunning. This is music that shimmers, sparkles, and swoons. Cape Dory is packed from stern to bow with lovely melodies, often delivered in the form of “oooohs,” “aaaaaaahs,” and “sha-na-nas.” Thin verses, driven by simple guitar hooks, give way to woozy, exuberant choruses. Toward the end of “Long Boat Pass,” arguably the album’s finest track, Moore sings with such joy and longing at once that I catch my breath every time I hear it. No origin story, however charming, can touch a moment like that.

Some early write-ups of the band have compared Tennis to Surfer Blood and Best Coast. Notwithstanding a mutual interest in beach imagery, Cape Dory’s slinky economy more closely recalls an album like Is This It than the reverb-heavy dullness of Crazy for You, or the enthusiastic, multi-tracked wackiness of Astro Coast. Riley and Moore are obviously inspired by the girl group sound, but their music is more of an extension of Blondie’s forays into the genre than, say, a slavish rehash of the Shangri-Las.

Though every song on the album references some part of the couple’s journey, either specifically (“South Carolina,” “Bimini Bay,” “Marathon,” and “Baltimore”) or indirectly (“Seafarer,” Waterbirds,” and “Take Me Somewhere”), these references are merely a means to an end. Cape Dory isn’t a maritime concept record, but an album of love songs as earnest and pure and innocent in sentiment as anything in Celine Dion’s oeuvre, songs that exist in the same universe a saucer-eyed Ronnie Spector sang about in “Be My Baby.” Cape Dory’s ten songs are devoid of any hint of edge or irony. We’re talking devotion, served straight up and often in the second person. Needless to say, many will find all of this a little too precious, saccharine even.

To be sure, Cape Dory is not a perfect record. It’s somewhat slight, not just in length, but in sophistication. A few songs anonymously blend into the next. The production can be muddy at times. But if Cape Dory doesn’t live up to the overblown hype that has built up around Tennis in the last six months, the problem isn’t Tennis, or Cape Dory, but the expectations surrounding both. Taken for what it is – a terrific collection of breezy pop and slow dance doo-wop – Cape Dory is undoubtedly a success.

Review: Robyn *Body Talk*

[Originally written for Pretty Much Amazing.]

No genre of music, not even pop, is more associated with frivolity than dance music. Dance artists are often seen as anonymous and their output disposable. Their purview, the club, is a hedonistic temple of drinking, drugs, and (ultimately) sex. Yet nothing damns the genre more than the fact that its purpose is first and foremost utilitarian – to move the human body.

Robyn Carlsson’s brand of dance music is not an exception that proves the rule, but a one-woman validation of the genre, of how great it can be (and sometimes is) when treated seriously. Her music demands that you dance, but also think, to feel the beat and your emotions, too. Robyn’s integrity, mastery, and playfulness make her devoid of any need for qualification. She doesn't make great dance music: she makes great music.

Her latest album, Body Talk, is the culmination of an almost year-long project. Eager to get her new material out to her starving fans (it has been five years since her last album, Robyn) she released two short albums, Body Talk Pt 1 and Pt 2, soon after they were recorded. Body Talk Pt 3, which will be released concurrently with the full-length Body Talk in many regions (including North America), completes the series with five new tracks. Body Talk, on the other hand, is a 15-track summation of this flurry of material. It features five songs off each of the three short Body Talk albums, resequenced into a new whole. It’s one-stop shopping for those sorry souls who have not yet gotten on board, as well as the official record of the Body Talk project.

There are two questions a review of Body Talk must answer: how good is the new material, and how well do all these songs fit together? The answer to the first question is – they are as consistently terrific as Pt 1’s first half, the high-point thus far. “Indestructible” get’s the full electro treatment, and while I prefer the acoustic version off of Pt 2, the song remains a gem. Its instrumentation cleverly augments the lyric. Robyn’s vocal melody is swallowed by the mix, while tracks and tracks of synths envelop her like a sonic armor. Indestructible, indeed. The sunny pop of “Call Your Girlfriend” hides a darker lyric. Robyn offers a new lover advice for how to ditch his girlfriend: “You tell her that the only way her heart will mend is when she learns to love again. And it won’t make sense right now but you’re still her friend. And then you let her down easy.” Even when she’s a homewrecker, Robyn has a heart of gold. On the delirious Max Martin produced “Time Machine,” she fires up the flux capacitor and speeds back in time at 88 mph to rectify her bad behavior. The best of the five is “Get Myself Together,” with a melody that rivals the album’s first two singles, “Dancing On My Own” and “Hang With Me.”

So how do these songs fit together? Surprisingly well, considering the somewhat disparate sound of each Body Talk album. Most of these tracks are anthemic, sing-a-long dance pop, with some more beat-oriented tunes thrown in for variety. However, none of the ballads from Pt 1 or 2 have made the cut, which means the album never gives you a breather. Body Talk has one major flaw: where the hell is “Cry When You Get Older?” The song is so far superior to most of the others that its exclusion is baffling. I also have some minor gripes about the sequencing of the album. “Don’t Fucking Tell Me What to Do” sounds odd as anything other than an opening track, as it was on Pt 1. On Body Talk, it comes after the early high of “Fembot,” and ends up slowing the otherwise breathless onward rush of its first eight tracks. Also, the album sags about three-quarters of the way in, with its two weakest songs, “None of Dem” and “We Dance to the Beat,” placed back-to-back.

Still, Body Talk is an embarrassment of riches. I prefer listening to the short albums, especially for “Cry When You Get Older” and the ballads. But no matter how you consume it, Body Talk matches Robyn's brilliance, and further shows that no one puts music to a beat as marvelously as Robyn Carlsson.

Review: Rihanna *LOUD*

[Originally written for Pretty Much Amazing.]

What hath Madonna wrought? Over 25 years after her iconic VMA performance of “Like a Virgin,” we’ve finally reached the climax of the oversexed pop starlet. You can’t swing a bottle of Jack without hitting a female recording artist whose primary goal is to get laid. Even Rihanna, the Barbadian pop dynamo, got in on the act. On her last two albums, Good Girl Gone Bad and Rated R, she transformed from girl next door into an expletive-dropping nympho vixen. The often tuneful Rated R, with its guitar-laden mid-tempo jams, tried too hard to add menace and edge to Rihanna’s sound and persona. It was right there on its cover, Rihanna made up like the fifth member of the Misfits from the Jem cartoon, hand over eye and pissed off beyond belief.

What a difference a year makes. Yeah, Rihanna is still exploding f-bombs and purring about wanting to see you just in your skin, but she’s also relaxed a bit. LOUD, her competent fifth LP, is a halfway return to form. Take the album’s opening track “S&M,” an overt rebound back to the forward thrust of singles like “Don’t Stop the Music” and “SOS.” Even with its silly, shopworn lyrics (“I may be bad, but I’m perfectly good at it”), “S&M” is a fizzy joy. (A note to pop hitmakers: sadomasochism may have been titillating when Lou Reed sang about shiny boots of leather back in 1967, but today it’s about as tame as a stolen kiss.) In fact, “S&M” represents LOUD’s central flaw: moments of greatness are marred by egregious errors, and these songs vacillate between the two depending on your mood and generosity.

LOUD is best when Rihanna takes pop to less-travelled realms, particularly when her island influences show. “Man Down,” a reggae-infused mea culpa, is the album’s highlight. Rihanna pulls out a gun and shoots a man down with a wonderful “rum pap pap pum,” killing us softly with an effortless roll of the tongue. It’s a rare instance of enunciation elevated to art. “Cheers (Drink To That),” a celebration of imbibing complete with a (surprisingly killer) Avril Lavigne sample, wins this year’s award for Song Least Likely to Be Heard at an A.A. Mixer. The sequel to Eminem’s megahit “Love the Way You Lie” focuses on Rihanna’s portion and is all the better for it, giving up the goods straight-up and unadulterated.

If only the rest of LOUD were so assured. “What’s My Name” features a terrific hook in its verse, but is hindered by the inclusion of sad-sack rapper Drake (“the square root of 69 is eight something”). The generic Top 40 R&B tracks “Skin” and “Fading” are adequate filler, but filler nonetheless. “California King Bed” manages to best Liz Phair’s “My Favorite Underwear” with a central metaphor so bizarre that you almost forget its overblown melodic schmaltz. Almost.

It’s only been three years since Rihanna released the incredible pop anthem “Umbrella,” but the artistic distance between then and now seems vast. Though nothing on LOUD approaches that particular triumph, Rihanna still delivers some modest highs. To quote one of the album’s better tracks: I’ll drink to that.

Review: Taylor Swift *Speak Now*

[Originally written for Pretty Much Amazing.]

The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. It was only a few days ago when I first discovered mine. I found myself bewildered, ashamed, and more than a bit unsettled. This kind of thing happens to regular people. Philistines, actually. I, however, am sophisticated, erudite, a Man of Good Taste. But, denial is futile. (As is resistance, it turns out.) So, in the spirit of the truth setting me free, I’ll say it: I love the new Taylor Swift album.

I’m being facetious, of course. Not about my high admiration for Speak Now – that’s very real – but about the implied notion that there should be at least a dash of shame added to the enjoyment of twangy pop songs about boys whose names end with the letter “Y.” If you need the modifier “indie” slathered over the word “pop” to make it palatable, stop reading now. If layers of irony, distortion, and/or electronic beats are required to swallow a catchy melody, this review, and this album, is not for you. The rest of us will be perfectly happy to feast on Speak Now’s bounty of pleasures without you.

In 2006, while her 16-year-old peers were spending their free time trying to get laid, high, or, at the very least, a perfect GPA, Taylor Swift was busy crafting a brilliant country-pop tune called “Tim McGraw.” Using the eponymous country star as a totem for nostalgia was a masterstoke, a winking, postmodern novelty that instantly distinguished Swift from the chaff regularly spat out by the mechanized Harvester of Pop also known as Nashville. The rest of Swift’s self-titled debut had a few songs that matched “Tim McGraw” – the banjo-driven, middle-finger flip of “Picture to Burn,” the searing “Should’ve Said No,” and the spirited hillbilly anthem “Our Song” – but as a whole, it was more endearing than it was accomplished. On her excellent 2008 follow-up, Fearless, Swift delivered a record-shattering pop behemoth, albeit one with a country accent. It redefined her as a precocious geek, an outsider hero looking in. “You Belong With Me” exemplified Swift’s new persona, and its accompanying video earned her the award that prompted Kanye West’s ridiculously ballyhooed VMA stunt. (Which is nonsensically “addressed” in the otherwise great Speak Now track “Innocent.”)

Too much has been written about Speak Now’s supposed tell-all confessions, particularly the details of Swift’s failed celebrity relationships. Though her record company, Big Machine, is mostly to blame, the music media haven’t exactly turned away from such an obvious marketing ploy. Sensationalism will sell records, but it distracts from the fact that Speak Now is, song for song, Swift’s strongest album. What difference does it make if “Dear John” is about John Mayer or some fictional John Doe? Or that “Back to December” may or may not be about that Teen Wolf who shares a first name with Swift? I know, Speak Now is just a pop album, which means it will get more attention from US Weekly than it will from Pitchfork, but Swift deserves better.

Speak Now is a career-defining album. It not only lacks a dud, but it also reminds you that a radio hit can be held to a higher standard and still exceed expectations. The album’s first single and opening track, “Mine,” firmly plants Swift in the fertile ground between Shania Twain and Kelly Clarkson, though closer to the latter. Swift’s marriage of pop and rock, with just a bit of country, is effortless and thrilling. Lean verses lead to explosive and exuberant choruses, with one impeccably crafted melody following another. “Sparks Fly” may be your absolute favorite song right now, but “Mean” or “Better Than Revenge” will surely replace it in a couple of days.

The album suffers from a couple of flaws common to most pop albums. It’s exactly two tracks too long: “Enchanted” and “Last Kiss,” fine songs both, slow down the pace of the record. The far-superior acoustic versions of “Back to December” and “Haunted,” found on the deluxe edition of the album, underscore the fact that most of these songs are heavy with too many tracks of instrumentation. Still, griping about a pop album’s overproduction is like complaining that rap music is too misogynistic or that experimental music is too weird. Well, duh.

Speak Now was solely written by Taylor Swift, which seems completely insane. The impressive popcraft of these fourteen songs could have been created by a small army of career songwriters. Well done, Ms. Swift. Speak Now is a well-earned tiara atop of Taylor Swift’s blonde tresses, an album that deserves to sell zillions of records. As it no doubt will.

Review: Avey Tare *Down There*

[Originally written for Pretty Much Amazing.]

In a recent interview with Spin, Dave Portner (aka Avey Tare) was asked how Down There was different from his work with Animal Collective. He responded with coyness worthy of Dylan: “It’s easiest to say there’s something about Down There that makes it more like Down There than anything AC has done.” Thanks for clearing things up, Dave. Statements of the obvious aside, the answer is technically accurate. Down There is a dark tangent broken off from the acoustic experimentation of Animal Collective’s early albums. Portner, being the primary artistic force behind the band, can’t escape certain elements of Animal Collective’s singular sound. Yet taken as a whole, Down There is different kind of beast.

The last we heard from Portner was the terrific Animal Collective EP, Fall Be Kind, which was an autumnal response to the Day-Glo summertime exuberance of Merriweather Post Pavilion. The EP was a shift in tone – complete with a spirited pan-flute jig and a Grateful Dead sample – but it kept with the pop continuity that began with Feels. Down There, Portner’s first solo album, is a retreat from Animal Collective’s catchier forays. Whereas bandmate Noah Lennox (aka Panda Bear) explored his (Brian) Wilsonian side on his third and most-recent solo album, Person Pitch, Portner is using Down There as an outlet for his more outré and abrasive tendencies.

Down There’s opening track, “Laughing Hieroglyphics,” begins as spacey jazz and devolves into a sonic collage of corn-popping-in-a-kettle percussion and swirling electronic noise, played backwards, forwards, and sideways. Uncomfy in Nautica? You bet. “Laughing Hieroglyphics” is followed by the equally disorienting “3 Umbrellas,” which features loud, processed guitar strumming over a pretty melody that’s nearly lost in the cacophony. Any hope that Down There would be Avey Tare’s version of Person Pitch is laid to rest here.

But just when you think Down There is going to be the inscrutable ejaculation of an artist eager to fuck with his fans, everything suddenly comes into focus. (Remember that album Portner recorded with his wife, where every song was played backwards? Me neither.) “Oliver Twist” is a riot, and given the right dance floor, an out-and-out stomper. The twin acoustic instrumentals “Glass Bottom Boat” and “Ghost of Books” are gentle and inviting, both reminiscent of Sung Tongs’ “The Softest Voice.” “Cemeteries” sounds like a séance at Wayne Coyne’s house, with a choir of the living and dead singing backup. If it weren’t for Portner’s distorted vocals, the driving mid-tempo “Heads Hammock” could be a radio staple. Well, a satellite radio staple. On the indie channel.

Down There concludes with its two best songs. “Heather in the Hospital,” a mournful and gorgeous dirge, was inspired by Portner’s sister, who battled a rare form of cancer (she survived). It’s profoundly moving, even if you don’t know the story behind the song. The warm extended tones that fill the song’s first half give way to synthesized harp arpeggios, like the transition music for a dream sequence, suggesting the stupefaction that accompanies repeated hospital visits and the potential loss of a loved one. “Lucky 1” is closest to being an Animal Collective song, which is probably why it was selected as the album’s first single. Portner sings, throat open, over a guttural electronic chug: “There have been days you feel so sad/ Glad you could feel better shape/ Today you like the lucky one!” “Lucky 1” is about how good news makes the bad instantly irrelevant. Though “Heather in the Hospital” is named after his sister, “Lucky 1” is dedicated to her.

If you’re still reading this review, it probably means you’re a diehard Animal Collective fan. Which also means you’re going to buy (or, god forbid, illegally download) Down There anyway. So this summation is for you: Down There is a strange, disjointed mess. You’ll love it.

I Agree, a Thousand Times Over

Greil Marcus, on the greatest album ever:

Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited (1965). No matter how many times you might have heard it, a different song will appear as primary, the star around which everything else revolves—it could be “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry”, one day, “Ballad of a Thin Man” the next, the title song for the next year, “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” a year later, each different song casting all the others into a different relief. Then “Desolation Row” might make you forget that there’s anything else on the album at all. But if the album were simply “Like a Rolling Stone” and 30 or 40 minutes of silence, I still might pick it.

Review: Kings of Leon *Come Around Sundown*

[Originally written for Pretty Much Amazing.]

Fully admitting that there are a number of worthy candidates, and only if pressed, I would have to deem “Back Down South” the worst moment on Kings of Leon’s Come Around Sundown. Not that it’s the album’s worst song; on the contrary, it’s arguably the most sonorous and pleasant track of the bunch. But “Back Down South” so perfectly represents the phoniness that courses through the album’s 48 minutes that it deserves special attention. You can almost hear the Followill boys carefully plotting their new record’s SOUTHERN SONG during rehearsals: “y’all, there needs to be a fiddle, a slide gee-tar, and just in case folks don’t remember we’re from down yonder in Tennessee, let’s remind them in the song’s title.” Lest you think I’m being too harsh, consider the “impromptu” caught-on-tape hootin’, hollerin’, and high-fivin’ at the song’s end. I can’t help but think Kings of Leon are weirdly aping a song like Wilco’s “Casino Queen,” which has an identical hootenanny coda. But where “Casino Queen” is 2:45 of rollicking joy, “Back Down South” is wistful and downbeat: the self-congratulatory ovation at its end is beyond baffling. Were the boys so thrilled they made it through the take that they simply couldn’t contain themselves?

If a band has to fail, it’s always best when they fail spectacularly. There’s something almost pleasurable in witnessing an overreach so great that it’s not merely a train wreck, but a catastrophe that distracts you from a train wreck. The source of the pleasure isn’t schadenfreude, but a nagging question played on repeat: what the fuck were they thinking? At the very least, the listener is still engaged in the music, and in some perverse sense, that amounts to a minor success. Alas, Kings of Leon don’t even throw us that meager bone. Oh Come Around Sundown is plenty bad, but it’s also really boring. Worst of all, it has moments so cloying that I repeatedly had to stop listening to cleanse my aural palate with the sound of street noise.

How did a band once so wiry and scrappy transform into the worst sort of rock-radio pabulum? King of Leon’s debut, Youth and Young Manhood, by no means a great album, at least had the vigor typical of the garage rock revival of the early-2000s. Kings of Leon presented themselves as a capable, promising, and fun bar band. Instead of exploring their rawness, they polished their sound with each successive album, taking their cues from U2’s bombast rather than the Some Girls-era Stones sound that inspired their best early songs. The result was great commercial and critical success, in the form of the multiple-Grammy-winning “Use Somebody.” And they deserved the plaudits. “Use Somebody” sounds like a hit in every way. However hammy Caleb Followill’s vocal, “Use Somebody” is tuneful and cathartic, a worthy imitation of U2’s best. Unfortunately for Kings of Leon, a truism of the natural world applies to Come Around Sundown – lightning doesn’t strike twice.

That Kings of Leon are still being compared to other bands five albums into their career is not a result of critical laziness, but of the fact that behind every note is a zero, a non-entity. They were never worthy of their “Southern Strokes” moniker, but the U2 comparisons, however belabored, still apply. The Edge’s shimmering guitar delays, so iconic, abound on Come Around Sundown. “The End,” one of the album’s better tracks, begins with an inverse replica of the solo drum opening to “Bullet the Blue Sky,” and then goes on to borrow, via guitar, the low-high-low synth hook of the Killers’ “Smile Like You Mean It.” While most of Come Around Sundown’s residual checks are owed to Bono & Co., a few are also due to Aerosmith’s Nine Lives for “Mary,” Pearl Jam’s self-titled eighth album for “No Money,” and Bruce Springsteen’s Working on a Dream for “The Face” and “The Immortals.” Remarkably, even those sub-par albums are better than most of what’s on Come Around Sundown.

If Kings of Leon have an LVP, it’s lead singer Caleb Followill, whose affected vocals and foolish lyrics provide Come Around Sundown’s best howlers. Caleb’s vocals, in the past tossed-off and charmingly lackadaisical, are now wrought with fake squeaks and painful flourishes. Where another vocalist would sing “fight,” he sings “fay-ah-yah-hayt.” Sure, it’s an acceptable embellishment once or twice, but does every vocal delivery require a bucketful of extra syllables? We get it, Caleb. You’re pained. Really, really pained. The lyrics are even worse. The aforementioned “Back Down South” contains the following hand-me-the-rhyming-dictionary singsong:

Underneath the stars,
Where we parked the cars,
Ain’t showing signs of stopping.
Pretty little girls,
Naked to their curls,
Ready to lay in the coffin.

On “Mi Amigo,” Caleb Followill delivers a lyric that sounds like “she wants my asshole to sing a song.” In other words, a fart. It’s an unfortunate mondegreen – and the most apt description of Come Around Sundown that I can think of.

Review: How to Dress Well *Love Remains*

[Originally written for Pretty Much Amazing.]

I went through three stages of emotion while I listened to Love Remains, in preparation for this review. My first few spins were filled with anger toward Tom Krell, the man whose nom de studio is How to Dress Well. I thought the album’s aural hand grenades – the overly muddy mix, the shrill squawks that appear out of nowhere, Krell’s reverb-heavy vocals, the endless buzzing distortion – were unnecessary, pretentious indie window-dressings. Were I not reviewing the album, I would have given up and thrown it aside then and there.

As I dutifully listened on, my anger turned into disappointment. Krell’s indelible melodies began to sink in. If it weren’t for its insufferable production, this could have been a great album, I started to think. Still, I remained intrigued.

It was “Decisions,” one of Love Remains’ later tracks, that led to my mini-epiphany. Halfway through the song Krell sings a cappella to a girl; he reminds her to check her cell phone for his call, and then, suddenly, with layers of tracks bleeding into each other, a glorious wall of wailing falsetto enters. At that moment, I learned to stop worrying and love Love Remains.

Love Remains sounds like a transmission from another dimension, one permanently frozen in 1992, where ghosts not only exist but also record radio hits. These songs are incredibly familiar yet never-before-heard. Tom Krell has so thoroughly synthesized the sound of late-80s/early-90s R&B that the album seems like plagiarism. In this sense, Love Remains reminds me of Ariel Pink’s Before Today, an album that has yacht rock coded in its DNA. But where Pink appears to have his tongue firmly in cheek, Krell plays it straight. And however lo-fi its production, Before Today sounds like Let’s Talk About Love next to Love Remains.

There are moments of pop immediacy (“You Won’t Need Me Where I’m Goin’” and “My Body”) and a few booty shakers (the terrific and pulsing “Walking This Dumb” and “Mr. By & By”) on Love Remains. But Krell is at his best as a Rhythm-and-Blues Midas, somehow turning ethereal chorales into slow jams. “Ready for the World,” ”Lover’s Start,” and “Endless Rain” are alternate-reality R. Kelly singles par excellence.

When I first heard Love Remains, I was certain Tom Krell was hiding his flaws behind the murk of lo-fi studio trickery, as an unskilled pop singer would hide behind the false gloss of Auto-Tune. The truth is, the album’s production is the co-star on Love Remains. As near-perfect as these songs are, the whole overshadows its parts. Brilliant and beautiful, haunting and singularly original, How to Dress Well’s Love Remains ranks among the year’s best albums.

Review: Four Tet *There Is Love in You*

[Originally written for Pretty Much Amazing.]

The closest approximation of pop construction on Four Tet’s There Is Love in You first appears 4 ½ minutes into “Love Cry” and ends about a minute and a half before the song does. Wave goodbye to the nice Approximation of Pop Construction, kids! Good riddance, I say to my own astonishment.

Though nothing on There Is Love in You will be lighting up the pop charts anytime soon, the album is never formless. In fact, form is everything here: the constant repetition of sonic motifs, the contrast of shifting timbres and sounds, the perpetual thumping of a beat. That said, the album is pretty much hookless, at least in traditional sense. Yet Kieran Hebden, the sole member of Four Tet, does something clever; he compensates with musical elements that do a hook’s job: the bouncing 8-bit beeps in “Sing,” the crystalline harp plucks in “Circling,” and the lyrical guitar line in “She Just Likes to Fight” all act like hooks, when they’re too just repeating motifs.

There Is Love in You is, for the most part, instrumental. In the few instances where a human voice is heard, it’s still usually just another element in the mix, like a hand clap or snare tap. Hebden keeps things to the essentials, adding nothing extraneous to these minimalistic tracks. The album has the elegance of a well-constructed sentence: it conveys its ideas clearly, unencumbered with unnecessary embellishment. Few musical voices speak at once, and when a new one enters, it usually means another has just exited. Yet each track reveals new depth with every listen. It took eight spins before I realized that I heard what I think is a sample of the opening line to the Chiffons classic “Nobody Knows What’s Goin’ On (In My Mind But Me)” playing on the horizon four minutes into “Plastic People.” This ambiguity (is that really what I’m hearing?) is even better than the sample itself.

But enough with all this technical analysis, what makes There Is Love in You a remarkable album is its hypnotic beauty. How does music this digital evoke such real emotion without having to delegate the heavy-lifting to a soulful gospel sample? I’ll leave that question to a neuroscientist. Or perhaps the best answer is another question: who cares? However the means, all that matters is There Is Love in You packs enough emotional wallop to make an emo band blush.

Still, this is not music for the casual fan of the electronic genre. As much as I find There Is Love in You compelling, even brilliant, many will find it boring and repetitive. It’s a demanding album – not to be taken with your Ritalin – which never veers into the day-spa-soundtrack territory of so much instrumental electronic music out there. That’s not to say that Four Tet has assigned the listener homework, either. Meet There Is Love in You halfway, and you’ll find that underneath all those blips and beeps thumps a very human heart.

Review: Antony & the Johnsons *Swanlights*

[Originally written for Pretty Much Amazing.]

Swanlights starts with a repeated mantra – sung first with a lilting warble and later with a soaring yowl, accompanied by some gentle piano notes, acoustic guitar plucks, a high-hat metronome click, and finally, after a swollen crescendo, a few grand cymbal rolls – just three words, the song’s title: “Everything Is New.” Well, not exactly. In fact, very little here is new.

Antony Hegarty has perfected a sound. What he lacks in breadth and variety, he makes up for with depth and consistency. Swanlights follows the template laid out by I am a bird Now and The Crying Light; it’s a collection of sparsely instrumented folk nocturnes and chamber lullabies, with a couple of esoteric art songs thrown in for good measure. But where Antony & the Johnsons’ previous releases were impeccably crafted and instantly gripping, Swanlights is looser, at times formless and even abstruse. Which is just a kinder way of saying Swanlights isn’t as good as its predecessors.

At their best, Antony’s songs inhabit a place of such intimacy and yearning that they can be suffocating in their beauty. Fans already know the sublime alchemy that occurs when Antony’s voice meets a devastating melody. Songs like “Hope There’s Someone” from I am a bird Now, “Blind” from Hercules and Love Affair’s debut, and Hegarty’s cover of Dylan’s “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” from the I’m Not There OST show that Antony, while being a great songwriter, is first and foremost an expert vocal stylist.

Nothing on Swanlights rivals his prior greatness, but a few songs come close. “The Great White Ocean” is the simplest of the bunch, just the singer, a stately guitar, and a seemingly timeless melody. It’s vintage Antony, as are its familiar themes of mortality and the bonds of family. Austere and aching, “The Spirit Was Gone” is another song about (surprise!) death, which lifts its hook from Paul McCartney’s “You Never Give Me Your Money” and puts it to great use. Yes, we’ve been here before, but when the familiar is done this well, why complain?

Swanlights shares a flaw with every other Antony & the Johnsons album: its songs have a tendency to blend together, making a collection of strong material seem monotonous and monochromatic. That said, there are a few left turns here, of varying success. “I’m In Love” is the most successful, and the album’s best track. Above a “primitive, offbeat rhythmic drive,” to borrow the words of Philip Glass, Antony sings a repeating eight-tone motif, while a Wurlitzer mimics in kind. The circularity of its structure suggests the perpetuity of finding a new love. It is pessimistic and hopeful at once. Love is lost and found, and lost and found, again and again and again. The album’s lead single, “Thank You For Your Love,” starts out sweet, its bright horn accents a relief to the album’s overall melancholy. Yet for as joyous as it first appears to be, darkness lies underneath. Antony sings thanks to love for saving him from “falling in the seizure of pain,” from being “lost in the dark blackness,” from his mind being “broken into a thousand pieces.” Antony pleads “I thank you!” over and over at the song’s end, and it’s unclear if his pain has been alleviated or exacerbated.

Even Swanlights’ least successful tracks are rescued by a smart twist or an interesting flourish. “Ghost” is closer to “art” than song, but its sixteenth-note ostinati flurries, which suddenly shift to half-time eighth-note pulses, are enough to keep the listener’s attention – a cerebral, if not emotional, payoff.Swanlights’ too-long and soporific title track is aimless for its first half, all drone and reverb, until a drum kit and piano mercifully add some structure to the mess. There’s a gorgeous song somewhere within the meandering “Christina’s Farm,” but you’ll have to wait for it (give It four minutes; it’s worth it). The worst offender is the Björk track ”Flétta,” if only for the great opportunity squandered. Whereas the wonderful Volta track “Dull Flame of Desire” used both vocalists equally, with the bombast they deserved, “Flétta” cedes to Björk’s duller tendencies. The song’s jaunty piano interludes at least inject some life into a largely stillborn track.

If Swanlights had matched the quality of I am a bird Now and The Crying Light, its lack of sonic growth could have been tossed aside as an afterthought, a minor disappointment. Being an inferior album, its similarity only heightens its flaws. Still, it’s almost unjust to nitpick when the overall product is this good. Swanlights is not the departure for Antony & the Johnsons that I’ve been hoping for. Maybe next time. (Might I humbly suggest an album of girl group covers?) For now, I’ll happily settle for a good, rather than great, album.

Song Break: Late to the Game Edition

I'm just now getting around to listening to Hot Chip's One Life Stand. "I Feel Better," the album's standout, recalls the yearning of Hercules and Love Affair's "Iris" and "Athene." As with those tracks, "I Feel Better" is either uplifting or haunting, depending on the listener's mood. Joe Goddard's heavily Auto-Tuned vocal provides a sonic foil to the purity of Alexis Taylor's chorus (clearly inspired by Everything but the Girl's Tracy Thorn). Both trade off over synthesized strings and a simple kick-drum/ high hat/ snare drum beat. An instant contender for song of the year.

A Lady Gaga Takedown

The Sunday Times (UK) published a devastating piece on Lady Gaga by the always wonderful Camille Paglia. Paglia, an iconoclastic cultural critic, is well known for her analyses of Madonna through the years, and for her controversial views on feminism and sexuality. Here's an excerpt from Paglia's criticism of Gaga:

Gaga has borrowed so heavily from Madonna (as in her latest video-Alejandro) that it must be asked, at what point does homage become theft? However, the main point is that the young Madonna was on fire. She was indeed the imperious Marlene Dietrich’s true heir. For Gaga, sex is mainly decor and surface; she’s like a laminated piece of ersatz rococo furniture. Alarmingly, Generation Gaga can’t tell the difference. Is it the death of sex? Perhaps the symbolic status that sex had for a century has gone kaput; that blazing trajectory is over…

Gaga seems comet-like, a stimulating burst of novelty, even though she is a ruthless recycler of other people’s work. She is the diva of déjà vu. Gaga has glibly appropriated from performers like Cher, Jane Fonda as Barbarella, Gwen Stefani and Pink, as well as from fashion muses like Isabella Blow and Daphne Guinness. Drag queens, whom Gaga professes to admire, are usually far sexier in many of her over-the-top outfits than she is.

Peeping dourly through all that tat is Gaga’s limited range of facial expressions. Her videos repeatedly thrust that blank, lugubrious face at the camera and us; it’s creepy and coercive. Marlene and Madonna gave the impression, true or false, of being pansexual. Gaga, for all her writhing and posturing, is asexual. Going off to the gym in broad daylight, as Gaga recently did, dressed in a black bustier, fishnet stockings and stiletto heels isn’t sexy – it’s sexually dysfunctional.

Compare Gaga’s insipid songs, with their nursery-rhyme nonsense syllables, to the title and hypnotic refrain of the first Madonna song and video to bring her attention on MTV, Burning Up, with its elemental fire imagery and its then-shocking offer of fellatio. In place of Madonna’s valiant life force, what we find in Gaga is a disturbing trend towards mutilation and death…

I wholly agree. In fact I wrote this about Gaga last year:

I've been listening to the deluxe edition of her Grammy-nominated The Fame, and I just can't understand why Lady Gaga has broken out of the club scene to become a genuine pop phenom. Yes, her singles are decent, and she knows how to market herself (and endear herself to the gay community). In that latter sense, she invites comparisons to a young Madonna. But the comparison ends there. Go back and listen to Madonna's first few records. Those songs were some of the best pop of the eighties. Other than the incredible, aforementioned "Bad Romance" (which is as close as she gets to Madge's early brilliance), her material is pretty middling.

So what explains it? Perhaps it's because she's an amalgamation of what people like about other pop stars. She embraces style and fashion (like Gwen Stefani), she's a little outre (like Bjork and Kelis), and she flirts with prurience (like a lite version of Peaches). But is she really greater than the sum of her parts?

I don't think so. I'm reminded of Gertrude Stein's description of Oakland, California: When you listen to Lady Gaga, you find there is no there there.

Apparently many find plenty of there there: she won eight VMAs last night, including the top prize for video of the year. So it goes.

Snapshot Review: Big Boi @ 9:30 Club

Tonight Antwan Patton accomplished the impossible: he brought the usually inert DC concertgoer to life. For one sweaty hour at the 9:30 Club, bodies gyrated, hands swung high in the air, and the noses of the shorter among us spoke a silent "thank you" to the recent popularity of Old Spice. The not-quite-sold-out crowd (shame on you, DC) was a mix of frat boys, hipsters, stoners, and even a few hip hop fans. The only words of disappointment I heard at the end of the show were about its short length. Clearly, Big Boi didn't want to disrupt our sleep on a work night -- we were out by 10:40.

During the first third of the set, Big Boi and BlackOwned C-Bone (of Dungeon Family) ran through an extended medley of Outkast's greatest hits: among them "Rosa Parks," "So Fresh, So Clean," "Ms. Jackson," and "B.O.B." It was thrilling to hear some of the most spectacular rap music of the last 15 years performed back to back, yet the show began to sag under the weight of nostalgia. Kudos to Big Boi for shrewdly crafting the setlist. He got all the big hits out of the way before getting to the meat of the show, his solo material.

The evening's most welcome surprise was the crowd's reaction to Patton's new music. The ecstatic response that met the operatic choral hook of "General Patton" signaled we were all here for Big Boi, not Outkast. It spoke to the strength of his new album, or perhaps, more cynically, to André 3000's absence. Still, it's a strange day when "Shutterbugg" is received with more excitement than "Ms. Jackson."

Two highlights of the night. A few ladies from the audience were brought onstage to dance to three songs. At first, they awkwardly swayed in the wings, but as soon as Big Boi unleashed "The Way You Move," his great single from Speakerboxx, the ladies loosened up, and the stage began to resemble the loving misogyny of a good rap video. Later, C-Bone asked the crowd to throw him a bag of weed in honor of the next song, "Fo Yo Sorrows." His request was met halfway through, bringing the song to a hilarious halt.

It was strange to see Big Boi, an exemplar of his genre, and one-half of the one of the most successful rap groups ever, perform to a handful of die-hards. Yes, we showed him the love, and he responded in kind, but it was a scaled-down affair. It's tempting to fault the taste of the masses, those Philistines and fair-weather fans; after all, Lady Gaga sold-out the cavernous Verizon Center the night before. But tonight, a few hundred lucky individuals witnessed a remarkable hour of music in a small venue. So why am I grumbling?

A Simple Inequality

I normally wouldn't blog about this, but I've been buzzing about seeing Big Boi live at the 9:30 club tomorrow. Jon Caramanica's NYT review of his performance at the Brooklyn Bowl, to clunkily paraphrase Bowie, only puts out my fire with gasoline.

Incredibly, the 9:30 club show has yet to sell out. People of DC: listen to Big Boi's stellar new album, witness his incredible Letterman appearance below, and buy your tickets now.

An algebra lesson, if you need it: Big Boi > Outkast - André 3000.

Feel free to check my math tomorrow night.

"Where the Streets Have No Name"

It's not often that I rediscover how much I love a song. Being an obsessive, when I love something, I tend to suck it dry. I return to it so frequently that familiarity doesn't so much breed contempt, but indifference.

Earlier tonight, while I was working out at the gym, U2's "Where the Streets Have No Name" popped up on my iPod's shuffle. It was as if I were hearing the song for the first time. I respect U2, and there was a time, years ago, when I listened to the band regularly. Tonight, the song halted me in my tracks -- literally. It came on while I was running on the treadmill. Two minutes in, I hit the machine's emergency stop button; I listened, out of breath, and sweat-soaked; the song ended, and I played it again and again and again -- three times! -- while awkwardly standing in place. Who cares what the employee behind the counter thought? We were the only ones left in the gym. And I was having a moment, thank you.

Maybe it was it was the increased circulation of blood through my brain, maybe temporal distance, maybe a random instant of aesthetic enlightenment. Whatever the reason, I was able to discern and appreciate the various elements of the song anew, and when I put them back together, I was in awe. So this is why people love U2. Suddenly, it all made sense.

The song begins with the signature cicada hiss of a Daniel Lanois production (a co-production with Brian Eno, in this case). A crescendoing, synthesized church-organ drone emerges, followed by The Edge's iconic delayed sixteenth-note guitar arpeggios, also with a crescendo, in 3/4 time. Both give the the impression that the listener is approaching a song already in progress, implying perpetuity and timelessness. The quarter-note pulse of Adam Clayton's bass and Larry Mullen Jr's kick drum enter the mix, and the meter abruptly shifts to 4/4.

The intro, almost two minutes long, feels like the slow extension of a tight metal coil that wants to fight back. Atop the rhythm section's frenetic stuttering, with a cymbal crash underscoring it, the vocal finally enters: Bono declares: "I want to run! I want to hide!" Release.

The verse brings increasing forward propulsion, and more stuttering. A tighter coil is pulled. Bono's sibilant vocal ("our love turns to russsssst!) soars over a swirling and glorious cacophony. Then, the chorus: the titular lyric ushers in another, greater liberation. Musical voices drop away, yet everything gets louder. The Edge' chiming, descending three-note guitar lick somehow makes the anthem more anthemic. Bono, open throated, sings of burning down love. Beneath him, the music is both lithe and fat. Stutter, stutter, stutter. Repeat verse and chorus.

And it ends as it started, back to 3/4, a drone, and The Edge's arpeggios. Decrescendo. A swift retreat from a song that will seemingly play on forever.

At Long Last, Pitchfork Announces the Best Songs of the Nineties

All week long, Pitchfork has been counting down its top 200 tracks of the 1990s. Putting the untimeliness of the effort aside (and the snarkiness of my post's title), it's a well- thought out and argued feature, and a good springboard for debate (as any "best of" ought to be). Predictably, it follows the willfully iconoclastic slant the tastemaking site is both respected and reviled for. Here are some points of interest:

• "Smells Like Teen Spirit" didn't make the top ten. Nirvana's rank (or non-placement) on any 90s "best of" list is an almost ideological signal of taste. Rank the band too high and you're Rolling Stone or Spin, firmly grounded in the alternative mainstream. Ignore the band altogether, and you come off as irrelevant, or admittedly non-rock (like Jazziz or Urb). Pitchfork splits the difference. "Smells Like Teen Spirit" lands at number thirteen on its list: reverent, but not fawning. The site offsets the ranking and recovers its cred by placing songs by Aphex Twin, Neutral Milk Hotel, and My Bloody Valentine ahead of it. All is well in indie-dom.

• Where's Britney, bitch? While it may seem a given that pop music would get scant attention on a Pitchfork list, in the past the site has heaped loads of praise on pop-that's-so-good-it-transcends-its-lowly-genre. Think, Kelly Clarkson's "Since U Been Gone." In fact, Pitchfork included songs by Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake on its list of the best songs of the 2000s. Yet here there are some glaring omissions, the most notable being Britney Spears' "Baby One More Time," a song so damned good it belongs on a greatest songs of all time list. Where's the Backstreet Boys' "I Want it That Way?" Or even Madonna's "Vogue" (or "Ray of Light")? For as much as Pitchfork (sparingly) embraces pop, these omissions show how very too-cool-for-school and out of touch the site can be.

• "It's the little differences." Throughout Pitchfork's list, an artist's less popular, more buzz-worthy work (to use MTV's parlance of the era) is substituted for the obvious choice. R.E.M. ranks at 72 with "Nightswimming." I love "Nightswimming." It's probably one of my three favorite R.E.M. songs, and I respect Pitchfork for calling it out. But it was chosen over "Losing My Religion." Weezer's "Say It Ain't So" is the site's number ten pick (ahead of "Smells Like Teen Spirit," natch). Weezer clearly belonged on the list, but "Buddy Holly" would have been the predictable choice, for all the right reasons. I think these taste-substitutions make Pitchfork's list interesting, and they reveal a high level of effort and deliberation on the part its writers, but they mar the list's "definitiveness." That said, it's easier to make a definitive list than it is to make an interesting one.

• A high five to you, Pitchfork. For Mazzy Star's "Fade Into You," Belle and Sebastian's "That State I Am In," Smashing Pumpkin's "1979," and Bjork's "Hyperballad." All confirm why I respect you in the first place.

• Stray thoughts on the top ten. Unexpected and eclectic, Aaliyah's inclusion being the case in point. "Loser" is higher than I would've imagined, though not undeserving of its spot. Same goes for "Common People" as the runner-up. While there's a paucity of pop (see above), the hip hop pics are pitch perfect. Before the top 20 was revealed, I assumed "Paranoid Android" would top the list. Instead, the honor went to Pavement. So, it's a wash.

The Death and Life of the Great American Bookstore

I once worked at a flagship book "superstore" here in D.C. (and at a lesser location in South Florida, which is, not coincidentally, scheduled to close in a month-and-a-half). For nine years, I witnessed firsthand the once-nascent problems that are now bankrupting the two major bricks-and-mortar book chains, Borders and Barnes and Noble. Borders has been on the ropes for years, and Barnes and Noble, the nation's largest book chain, is now up for sale. Neither could prevent the rise of the internet, the primary cause of their fall. Still, there are four ancillary causes, listed below, that have accelerated the superstores' demise.

Superstores have become for-profit public libraries.

Borders and Barnes and Noble superstores are inviting places that encourage customers to browse for hours without purchasing anything. Welcoming customer service, plush leather comfy chairs, plenty of tabletop space, premium coffee shops, community events like book groups and open mic nights, and regular national events featuring famous authors and musicians, the very amenities that were meant to make these stores "destinations," turned for-profit businesses into open access public goods.

Here's an excerpt from a recent article in the NYT, on the closing of a Manhattan Barnes and Noble:

Ms. Kelly said she visited the store at least twice a week, usually heading upstairs to read magazines and to pick up a sandwich and cup of Starbucks coffee.

“They’re getting business out of me, I suppose,” she said. “Even though I’m sitting there reading magazines for free.”

When I worked for my former employer, patrons like Ms. Kelly were our regulars. Like my co-workers, I knew most of these regulars by name, and would affably chat with them daily. They were dedicated, yes, but hardly our bread and butter. More perpetual browsers than customers, they would spend hours camped out in the aisles with piles of books and periodicals. In return, they would spend a meager average ticket of around $2.00 a day. It would take at least 5-10 labor hours after closing to clean up after the campers, not to mention the time spent during operating hours dedicated to reshelving their messes -- time spent away from providing excellent customer service and actually selling books.

So, bookstores became libraries. It wasn't uncommon for parents to come to the information desk with school assignments and we, the over-educated booksellers, were responsible for locating their needed materials (this would often involve a good deal of book sleuthing usually reserved for a Master of Library Science). Later, we'd inevitability find the same teetering towers of books in a corner, left unpurchased. Older college students were more self-sufficient, yet the result was the same. They would come in and use our product to complete their homework, with their only purchase being a refillable mug of coffee ($1.75).

During the heyday of hard-copy book and multimedia buying, the customers who came in with the sole purpose of purchasing merchandise were able to subsidize the campers, the needy parents, and the college students. Nowadays, post-Kindle and iTunes, this business model is no longer tenable. The high overhead of a Borders or Barnes and Noble superstore cannot be covered by the sales of tall lattes and blueberry scones.

The superstore's massive footprint is an albatross.

Borders pioneered the superstore model in the mid-1990s. Before then, most bookstores were found in malls, and were the size of the European History section of your local superstore. Stand-alone stores like classic Barnes and Noble locations were larger, and included cafes (which conspicuously did not allow-in unpaid merchandise). However, their focus remained on books and the common "sidelines" found in most bookstores (e.g., calendars, book lights, and inexpensive tchotchkes). Borders changed everything. A typical Borders superstore had a book department that could easily swallow an entire Barnes and Noble. It, too, had a cafe (which conspicuously allowed-in unpaid merchandise), and, unlike the Barnes and Noble of the time, had a gigantic multimedia department. (Barnes and Noble followed suit, but their superstores were conservative by comparison. They basically beefed up their book sections, made their stores vertical, and added marginal multimedia sections.) The sheer size of a superstore, and the diversity and quantity of its merchandise, called for large back room areas for receiving and plenty of office space for administration. This meant that even lower volume stores took up a lot of space, which resulted in hefty rents and high payroll costs.

Again, all well and good during flush times. However, the very nature of the industry changed permanently in the early 2000s, thanks to Amazon and iTunes. The multimedia section in an average Borders store used to be about 2/3 the size of the book section. Today, most Borders stores no longer even carry catalog music; their "music sections" are merely two "browser" fixtures of new releases. The highest volume stores continue to carry a limited number of catalog titles (about the same as a Best Buy's backlist), but it's a far cry from the days when jazz and classical alone took up rows and rows of fixtures. Now that the demand for hard-copy music has dwindled, superstores are left with more floor space than they can use. Those former multimedia sections now look like graveyards, filled with the tombstones of empty retail fixtures. A depressing sight for customers and employees alike.

Deep discounting further undercuts the superstore's profitability.

One of the best perks of working at a superstore was the employee discount, which used to run between 25% and 33%, depending on your full-time/part-time status. Even better, once or twice a year we were treated to "employee appreciation days" that gave us a whopping 40% off of most of the merchandise we sold. Employees readily took advantage of the munificent discount, and would often spend hundreds of dollars on a single purchase (usually on gifts, since this occurred in December).

Today, 40% off is the norm. I get weekly e-mail coupons from Borders, and I'm surprised when the discount is less than 40%. The harsh reality for superstores is that more and more hard-copy book and music consumers are shopping at Costco, Walmart, and Best Buy, chains that often price these items at a loss to drive traffic. With the aforementioned online juggernauts, Amazon and iTunes, added to the mix, superstores have had to slash their margins to a hair's breadth to remain competitive. Theoretically, Borders and Barnes and Noble could have "made it up in quantity," but the weak aggregate demand of the recession economy has only made matters worse for superstores.

The superstore suffers from a confusion of purpose.

I remember the nadir of my bookselling career. I was merchandising a table of "summer items" at the front of the store, the highest-valued real estate of any retail firm. Working from my planogram, I carefully arranged cans of meat rubs, sets of barbecue tongs, jars of four different barbecue sauces, and -- the afterthought of the table -- some books on grilling. One of the stacked glass jars of barbecue sauce fell to the floor and broke; its thick and pungent contents splattered wide on the carpet. I may be making too much of this, but, at the time, the sight of a puddle of barbecue sauce in front of fixtures displaying the bestselling works of McEwan, Chabon, and Atwood was a disheartening wake-up call. What exactly are we selling here?

A common joke among the employees of my store was that we were only weeks away from selling cigarettes and lottery tickets. It wasn't too far from the truth. During my tenure, we sold gardening spades, video games, t-shirts, manicure sets, sushi-making kits, wallets, Dean and Deluca spice racks, board games, hand creams, fake eyelashes, $200 Star Wars lightsabers, and the classics of the Western canon. One of these things is not like the others. Which of them belong in a bookstore?

Our buyers had an admirable goal in mind, to make our stores places for one-stop-shopping. Ultimately, most of the above-listed items ended up being marked down to $1.00, since they were almost always left unsold and were non-returnable to the distributor. In retrospect, this lack of focus, on the corporate level, of the business' identity led the chain down a number of blind alleyways. There are many retail stores that conveniently offer one-stop-shopping experiences, namely big box stores like Target and Walmart. I doubt barbecue sauce and fake eyelashes top the shopping list of the average booklover entering a Borders or Barnes and Noble store. That said, I'm not a professional book buyer. What do I know?

My guess is Borders will go out of business in the next year, and Barnes and Noble will eventually return to its original model of modestly-sized bookstores that cater to a small population of book consumers. Ironically, the clear winner here is the once-beleaguered independent bookstore, the scrappy underdog that never lost sight of what it was selling. After all, with eBooks on the rise, purists (like me) who stubbornly enjoy browsing non-digital bookshelves will need bookstores to patronize, super or otherwise.

UPDATE: From Bloomberg.com:

Borders Group Inc., the second- largest U.S. bookstore chain, will start selling items from Build-A-Bear Workshop Inc., relying less on books for sales as more people use electronic reading devices.

Most of Borders’ more than 500 stores will create sections next month dedicated to Build-a-Bear, the maker of kits kids can use to craft stuffed animals, Chief Executive Officer Michael Edwards said in an interview. The new areas also will feature books and DVDs tied to the brand.

Emphasis mine. The excerpt speaks for itself. (HT Kelsey Pince.)

Review: Robyn *Body Talk Pt. 2*

"It is really very simple, just a single pulse repeated at a regular interval," declares the fembot at the start of "Include Me Out," the second of seven galvanic dance tracks (and one acoustic ballad) on Body Talk Pt. 2. It is, of course, a general definition of beat, the backbone of all music, and the hallmark of the dance genre. As the title Body Talk implies, Robyn's purpose here is sub-genre bending, the study and exploration of dance music itself.

When Robyn Carlsson announced she would release three short albums in 2010, it was unclear how the individual units would relate to one another. Would Body Talk be a singular album, broken into thirds? Or, was Robyn releasing three disparate albums under a titular umbrella, each to be enjoyed on their own? Now that I've heard two of the three records, it appears the answer lies somewhere in between, though closer to the latter than the former. Both recall each other, while sharing and refracting off of a very large genre. Yet they follow a self-contained trajectory of beginning, middle, and end that best lends to individual consumption. If we're to think of the Body Talk series as siblings, Pt. 1 would be the precocious overachiever of the family, Pt. 2 the weirder, more cerebral middle child.

On average, Body Talk Pt. 2 is as good as its predecessor, though I was admittedly underwhelmed by it at first. It's a darker record, at times insular, icy, and (yes) even funny. Whereas Pt. 1, at its best, was infused with the warmth and exuberance of dance pop, defying you not to love it from the first listen, Pt. 2 hews closer to house and hip hop, opening up and paying off with each listen. To wit, the slinky minimalism of "We Dance to the Beat," a companion track to "Don't Fucking Tell Me What to Do." On the latter track, Robyn griped mantra-like about her personal failings ("My drinking is killing me. My smoking is killing me."). On the former she turns her attention outward, and over a Daft Punk bass line dances to the beat of "distorted knowledge passed on," "raw talent wasted," "an eviction next door," "bad kissers clicking teeth." Its lyrical repetition becomes hypnotic.

"We Dance to the Beat" is the first of three oddball tracks that form the heart of Body Talk Pt. 2, and set it apart from anything else Robyn has released. The other two, "Criminal Intent" and "U Should Know Better," are influenced by hip hop, particularly by the music of Missy Elliott. "Criminal Intent" finds Robyn legally accused of "conspiracy to engage in lewd and indecent acts and events." She unapologetically equates the terpsichorean with the sexual, as electronic sirens wail, beats thud heavily, and hands clap along approvingly. "U Should Know Better" is Robyn's most pugnacious track since "Konichiwa Bitches." With the help of Snoop Dogg (who appears to be everywhere nowadays), she trots the globe, letting the people of Earth know better than to fuck with her.

What makes Robyn such a remarkable artist (a pop artist, no less) is the seriousness and depth she brings to this often disposable genre. Yes, these are largely love songs. But more often than not, Robyn's vision of love, and of the world at large, is bleak. On the space disco of "In My Eyes," which opens the album, Robyn sings to her "little star" of deliverance from the artifice of everyday life via the authenticity of personal connection and, of course, through dancing. The song, with its ambient synths and hammering beats, is a sequel to her self-titled album's "Robotboy." But, where "Robotboy" was a call for self-correction, "In My Eyes" casts Robyn herself as the agent of salvation: "When you feel like it's all pretend, then you look into my eyes." Similarly, on the muscular "Include Me Out," Robyn begs her man to enter her heart, as his world falls apart around him.

Like its predecessor, Body Talk Pt. 2 is anchored by an incredible single and an even-better song that follows. On Pt 1, they are "Dancing On My Own" and "Cry When You Get Older," respectively. On Pt. 2, the incredible single "Hang With Me," which first appeared on the last album as an acoustic track, is followed by the even-better "Love Kills." "Hang With Me," seemingly a paean to platonic relationships, reveals itself to be about the inevitability of giving into "heartbreak, blissful and painful and insanity." A lament on Pt. 1, on Pt. 2 it becomes a celebration of falling in love in spite of the pitfalls that are sure to follow. "Love Kills" is her most pessimistic track yet. ("If you're looking for love, get a heart made of steel, cause you know that love kills.") Love hurts when you do it right? On "Love Kills" it is at best a bad case of Stockholm syndrome, at worst deadly, but for the most part, it's miserable. Yet "Love Kills" is propulsive and triumphant; Robyn's music ultimately undercuts her message.

The album's best track is its lone ballad, the devastatingly beautiful "Indestructible (Acoustic Version)." It further proves that Robyn is at her best as a balladeer (see the gorgeous "Eclipse" on Robyn). A string chamber ensemble is her sole musical accompaniment, their lovely arpeggios and galloping ostinato rhythms not too subtly recalling Karl Jenkins' famous De Beers piece "Palladio" (a diamond is forever, but it's also indestructible). Robyn finally gives herself over to romantic love, with full knowledge that she's previously "let the bad ones in and the good ones go." Her solution is to turn a song of experience into a song of innocence: "I'm going backwards through time at the speed of light. I'm going to love you like I've never been hurt before. I'm going to love you like I'm indestructible." With a heart made of steel, she dives in.

If "Hang With Me" is any indication, a dance version of "Indestructible" will be the lead single off of Body Talk Pt. 3, due later this year. This means the youngest sibling in the Body Talk cycle portends to be the wide-eyed optimist of the three. Only, by virtue of being the obvious expectation, it's also unlikely to be true. If Robyn has showed us anything thus far, expectations exist only to be defied.

Song Break

With its regal horns and muted bombast, the new Walkmen track, "Stranded," is pure blue-eyed indie soul. Absolutely gorgeous.

Review: M.I.A. *Maya*

I have good news and bad news for M.I.A. fans. The good news: 2010 has seen the release of a pretty terrific M.I.A. album. The bad news: that album is by Sleigh Bells, and it's called Treats.

Maya Arulpragasam has always been frustrating, by intention. A pop artist who wears political opinions like a penciled-in beauty mark or a weird asymmetrical hairdo, M.I.A. fancies herself a provocateur, when all we really want from her is compelling dance music. With every release, her efforts have resulted in increasingly diminished returns. Arular, her first and best album, was threatened by two interrelated flaws, her penchant for cacophony and an over-reliance on repetition. The material on Arular was so good that it managed to elevate its flaws into the realm of novelty, and ended up being better for them. These flaws were more pronounced in her great (yet wildly overpraised) follow-up, Kala, which contained some clunkers ("Hussel" and "Mango Pickle Down River") alongside some jaw-droppers ("Bamboo Banger," "Paper Planes," and "Boyz"). On Maya, M.I.A. has consolidated and emphasized her worst tendencies, while only intermittently offering the listener the smallest consolation of a good hook.

Lynn Hirschberg's much-discussed New York Times Magazine profile of M.I.A., unquestionably a hatchet job, seemed to confirm the once-sneaking suspicion that Maya Arulpragasam is intellectually vapid and artistically pretentious. Maya accomplishes the same result without Hirschberg's assistance. From the unnecessary typographical presentation of its title (/\/\/\Y/\), to the insipid and instantly dated references to internet culture (the iPhone, Google, and Twitter are all name-checked), Maya betrays the hopeless labor of an artist trying to construct something relevant and profound atop a foundation of sand.

Despite its self-reflexive title, Maya isn't a personal work, nor is it M.I.A.'s Self Portrait, her deliberate attempt to shed fans. Instead, it sounds as if M.I.A., so emboldened by her status as critical darling, assumed any tossed-off dreck would seem better by virtue of being her dreck. Or perhaps she's just run out of ideas. Either way, there's no excuse for the six-and-a-half-minute-too-long "Teqkilla," an aimless mess that hides beneath the belches of electronic tones and a too-familiar beat. "Lovalot," which opens with the insightful lyric, "They told me this was a free country, but now it feels like a chicken factory," only gets worse from there. On "Stepping Up," M.I.A. insists "you know who I am" over the braying of power tools. Yes, Maya, we know who you are. Only this song makes us want to forget.

There are moments where Maya hints at something great, before veering off course. "Born Free" begins with the thrill of an accelerating snare beat that launches into a sample of Suicide's "Ghost Rider." All is well, until M.I.A.'s inert and overly echoed vocal enters the mix, making it the second best song named "Born Free." Its accompanying (nine minute long!) music video is, incredibly, even more obnoxious. "Meds and Feds" features a signature guitar hook by Derek Miller (of the aforementioned Sleigh Bells) as its best element, but lacks the salve of Alexis Krauss' lovely voice. Where Krause tempers Miller's aggressive riffing, M.I.A. turns the song into the aural equivalent of a root canal, without the merciful respite of Novocaine.

Maya contains one unqualified success. "XXXO," a thumping Eurodance gem, is irresistible, with a chorus that demands the confines of a dark and sweaty dance floor. By being blatantly accessible, "XXXO" ends up being the lone left-field track on an album so desperate to incite. If M.I.A really wanted to be provocative, Maya would have contained twelve tracks like "XXXO." In other words, it would have been a Robyn album.

The cover art to Maya encapsulates what's so wrong with the album itself: a shambles of uninteresting and disparate elements that not only fail to jell, but end up obscuring an artist we've come to admire.