Review: Sidetracked by Hercules and Love Affair

By and large, 2009 has been a transitional year for dance music. Tired of the solipsism of the electro scene (epitomized by A Cross The Universe, Justice's snooty travelogue of a documentary), critics none well versed in the mythopoeia of the groove have posited that everything from UK funky (the latest -- and well executed -- British regurgitation of early 90s diva house) to the all-too-spare strains of dubstep will mark the next paradigm shift in the genre. But throughout it all, Brooklyn-based producer Andy Butler has remained consistently prolific, recording several singles (and one album) under the Hercules and Love Affair moniker that defy ready categorization. Expropriating the walking bass lines that are all but metonymous with disco sleaze, Arthur Russell's Cageian horn arrangements, and the musique maudite of Antony Hegarty, Butler has arrived at a sound that is irrefragable proof of the idiom's continued evolution. With no less of an authority than Frankie Knuckles (the New York disco/Chicago house pioneer) having produced a remix of the hit "Blind", one can't help but feel that Butler -- who, like many of the genre's initial factotums, is openly gay and not averse to a good lyric -- has revitalized what was a moribund tradition.

Tying together 70s underground disco faves Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band, Gino Soccio, local upstarts In Flagranti, the early avant-dance revivalist Danny Wang, Todd Terry's epochal cover of Phreek's "Weekend", and the new Hercules single ("I Can't Wait", five minutes of truly sybaritic fun) into a cohesive whole, Sidetracked is an exhilarating mix -- so exhilarating that Butler's nuanced segues may keep you from hitting the dance floor altogether. An inveterate and relentless crate-digger, Butler's choices lend the anthology a gravitas far beyond the years of its compiler. While his three-minute deconstruction of "Weekend" (taken from the relatively rare "Retouched by the Hand of Todd" club mix, not the overplayed, hip-hop influenced radio edit) will probably not garner the DJ any new fans, the Buzzard and Ray Martinez cuts will surely bemuse the contemporary generation of banger-reared hipsters. The absence of "Grand Central Shuttle" is conspicuous, but as a subversive exercise and a party album, Sidetracked succeeds on all counts.

Review: Everything Goes Wrong by the Vivian Girls

For anyone who still harbors the steadfast convictions that dance music is only for louche trendoids at pickup joints and the exigency of hip-hop only manifests in an ironic – and slightly dated – context, the Vivian Girls represent nothing less than a paradigm shift in popular music. For anyone who has long succumbed to the Bacchanalian thrall of the dance floor and forsook Guided by Voices for Talib Kweli a long time ago, the Vivian Girls still represent a paradigm shift in popular music. While we can safely assert on the cusp of the 2010s that rock and roll – that peculiar leviathan borne from backwoods cross-fertilization that, like any form of vernacular music in good standing, won’t go away any time soon – has experienced an unforeseen and incredible renascence over the past ten years, feral vitality has been subsumed by the brutal ardor of the conservatory.

As early as 1969, even a Bozo boor like Jim Morrison could definitively proclaim that “rock is dead” and foresee the rapid proliferation of what were then quaintly known as tape machines; within half a decade, “Autobahn” and “Love to Love You Baby” fulfilled the mandate of the lead Door’s prognostication with flying colors. The reactionary torrents of punk and some of its derivatives notwithstanding, contemporary pop is a process in enumerating upon those templates, arguably culminating in the spazzed-out bliss of pre-808s Kanye and the psych-funk furor of Ratatat and Black Moth Super Rainbow. Tellingly, when some of the working-class rapscallions of Britain’s housing estates took to more artistic inclinations in the early 00s, it was speed garage – a frantic variant of drum and bass – that served as the direct antecedent for their grimy experiments. While Dave Longstreth and Ezra Koeing are very talented individuals and seemingly genial guys, their relationship to Jerry Lee and Carl Perkins is tangential at best. Like Cleopatra and Funny Girl, the manifestos of the contemporary rock renaissance are aurally arresting but have no substance – nada, kids. Rock (irrespective of the divisive indie/corporate divide… you say bad, I say worse) has entered its Getz/Brubeck era of conscious obsolescence and avaricious omniscience. This is not to say that what Longstreth and company are doing is unlistenable (Grizzly Bear’s “Two Weeks” will be a standard on par with “Ipanema” or “Take Five” in fifty years, just wait and see) or entirely duplicitous (they’re using rock instrumentation, after all), but it’s deserving of a new sobriquet.

Everything Goes Wrong is the title of one of filmmaker Seijun Suzuki’s better efforts, and if Japan’s answer to Russ Meyer ever deigned to strap on an electric guitar and write 36 minutes worth of three-chord rock and roll, it would probably sound something like this. Having moved from the postindustrial milieu of the Brooklyn DIY circuit to the Plasticine depths of Los Angeles myriad freeways, the Vivian Girls have managed to channel that city’s deleterious energy into something greater than the sum of its – or their – parts. From Ali Koehler’s jazzy (and utterly taut) drumming to Cassie Ramone’s assured (and almost decipherable) vocals, the Vivian Girls have lived up to the nihilistic promise of “Such a Joke” and “Where Do You Run To”. As the titles of “Tension”, “The End”, and the epic “Double Vision” (dig Ramone’s primitive, Neil Young-via-Kevin Shields fretwork), they’ve extended their lyrical purview to more transcendental and universal concerns in a way that would make Durrell and Nin furrow their eyebrows in despair. This is a hulking piece of licentious, incendiary riffage: an off-white nexus where the scene’s prevailing Ivy aridity meets Faulknerian ramshackle bombast in a dual to the death, with the latter camp ballasted by Kickball Katy’s William Calley bass.

Nearly three decades ago, The Minutemen, Husker Du, and – most lamentably of all – The Replacements descended into modest pedantry, unable to reconcile their baser concerns with the scepter of maturity. As the Vivian Girls have ably demonstrated, you can have your cake, eat it too, and somehow beat your more recondite peers to the finish line. As for this album’s relevancy to the future of rock and roll and pop music in general? As the great Paul Nelson once ruminated, it “defines it, expands it, explodes it. Burns it to the ground.”

Review: Silk Flowers (2009)

Multifariousness will likely define the musical legacy of the 2000s; as a friend remarked recently, the postmodern bricolage of Beck's Odelay was so far ahead of its time in 1996 that no one could have possibly anticipated the influence of that aesthetic. Yet this genre-spanning amenability came at the sacrifice of several longstanding forms, and whether you want to chalk it up to Bush-era hubris or the transition of musical breeding grounds from the dishabille of suburban basements to Five Colleges gravitas, the goth is as blithely anachronistic as shoulder pads at the cusp of the 2010s. From what I've seen, Aviram Cohen, Ethan Swan, and Peter Schuette do not take their lyrical cues from Robert Smith or Ian Curtis, but their debut album -- released concurrently with Quentin Tarantino's likely-misbegotten comeback attempt Inglorious Basterds -- is something of a distant cousin of that director's oeuvre on the surface; while Cohen and company may never be partial to black eyeliner and bondage pants, the pastiche element (channeling and reconstituting the usual touchstones of Closer, Flowers of Romance, Mask, a tinge of 20 Jazz Funk Greats, and -- duh -- Pornography) is almost too cloying to fathom at times.

Ever so occasionally, however, the specious kind of pastiche that has been inculcated to us in overt and not-so-overt ways by the trepidatious postmodern hegemony over the past forty years can be successfully subverted -- witness the Astaire-meets-They Live By Night lunacy of Pierrot le fou -- and that is precisely what this Brooklyn-based trio does here. While the Curtis-on-helium vocals that permeate about half the tracks lend the proceedings an air of inveterate studiousness, other tracks (the mostly instrumental "Costume", "Shadows in Daylight") are suffused with decadent Teutonic-via-"Let's Go to Bed" synthesizers and loping drums that suggest a repudiation of the past. The arrythmic, distorted drum machines (one of those counterintuitive textural innovations rarely touched upon since Mtume's mid-70s stint with the Miles Davis) of "Night Shades" will mollify contemporary Brooklyn audiences, but it also hints at their far-reaching potential.

It is only inevitable that the Brooklyn scene will soon produce a Music from Big Pink or There's A Riot Goin' On for the disaffected masses of Generation Y, a musical conflagration of past and future that will lead to yet another paradigm shift in popular music. Silk Flowers is a taste of that looming change, and a subtle reminder that the best is yet to come.

Review: My World by Lee Fields & The Expressions

The peripatetic story of Lee Fields is nothing short of a rock and roll cliche on the surface. Emerging in the waning years of the chitlin circuit (a predominantly black network of theaters that included such touchstones as the Regal in Chicago and Harlem's legendary Apollo) in the late 60s and early 70s, the North Carolina-born Fields immediately elicited attention for his gravely, sonorous voice, often likened by neophytes to "a poor man's James Brown". Not only did the Brown comparisons belie melodic gifts that were commensurate to and probably exceeded the Godfather's talents, they precluded him from making any tangible inroads into the music industry -- a couple of ribald singles (1973's "Let's Talk It Over" and 1975's "Funky Screw") notwithstanding, Fields was not coming to a record store near you. Years of relentless touring culminated in the release of Let's Talk It Over in 1979; aside from a tasteful concession to disco ("Wanna Dance"), the album is an anachronistic hodge-podge of mid-60s R&B and primeval uptempo funk (the JBs-esque "Flim Flam", recently sampled by Madlib).

After the obscure 1984 electro foray "Shake It Lady", Fields migrated to Brooklyn and fell off the radar. 1992's Enough is Enough is a risible comeback effort that finds the crooner extemporizing over MIDI tracks, but copies currently fetch upwards of $70.00 on amazon.com -- a direct result of the return to form that began in earnest with Let's Get A Groove On in 1998. As the lodestar of the Brooklyn soul revival, the album paired the venerable singer with a crack backing group (one that would eventually metamorphose into Sharon Jones's Dap-Kings and the ensemble behind Amy Winehouse on "Rehab") that effortlessly repurposed the dynamics of early funk with the verve of contemporary hip-hop. 2002 brought a further refinement of the retro-tinged sound with Problems, and the recent My World -- recorded in conjunction with his latest band, the Expressions -- finds Fields finally on the precipice of breaking through to the mainstream with his best effort yet.

From the scorching trumpet solo in the opening "Do You Love Me" to the heavily arpeggiated guitars of "These Moments", much of My World showcases the technically sophisticated metier of the Expressions, who clearly operate in the lineage of early Philly soul (think The Delfonics). This could be daunting for a gutbucket-style singer like Fields, but as "Ladies" and "Honey Dove" ably demonstrate, his withered voice can still carry a demanding ballad or two. If those tracks are too ersatz-JB for you, be sure to download "My World Is Empty Without You", a lilting leviathan of sleigh bells, Latin percussion, and choral vocals that (un)intentionally recalls the sui generis of Phil Spector. On a handful of instrumentals, the affected nature of the venture threatens to come to the fore, but the timeless nature of the instrumentation -- heavy on punchy horn arrangements, light on the accouterments of bad 70s production -- will keep the listener returning for more.

All in all, My World -- as belated as it may be -- is a validating gesture for the thousands of soul shouters whose outputs have languished in record bins for the past thirty years. Lee Fields is one of the greats, and after a spin of this nugget, you'll doubtless agree.

Spank Rock triumph (and nearly get arrested), Built to Spill as dulcet as ever at Siren 2009

With temperatures hovering in the low eighties and the beach draped in crimson twilight, one could not have asked for more favorable weather at the conclusion to this year's Siren Music Festival. While the pernicious stomach flu kept me from catching some of the estimable (and yes, not-so-estimable) acts earlier in the day, I mustered just enough strength to catch the festival's headliners -- wizened rockers Built to Spill (at the main stage) and Baltimore club outfit Spank Rock (at the cavernous Stillwell stage, adjacent to Nathan's and the boardwalk).

One of the last vestiges of the nineties alt-rock exposition -- like the Flaming Lips, they were granted unusual creative autonomy by Warner Brothers -- the former group melds hallucinatory, Neil Young-via-Guided By Voices guitars to the broodingly ethereal vocals of world's sexiest vegetarian Doug Martsch. Yet their widespread appeal has always eluded me, and the Siren set -- which captured Martsch looking more haggard than ruggedly masculine -- was almost akin to the paint-by-numbers performance of a heritage act. The opening "Liar" and playfully wry "Dystopian Dream Girl" were immediate standouts, and the nature of the free show absolved any complaints of their merit, but it was still fairly underwhelming. That the reverent crowd skewed relatively young was a surprise that still mystifies over a day later.

By and large the most eclectic act of the indie-centric festival, Spank Rock demonstrated that they've still retained their ribald edge some three years after the release of the incendiary YoYoYoYo. Frontman Naeem Juwan has acquired a Sly Stone-like reputation for missing gigs in some circles, and the collective's (an ever rotating line-up ensures that they are not a band in the traditional sense) dearth of new recordings over the past two years left me expecting the worst. Undoubtedly aware of these perceptions, Juwan and company were exceptionally punctual, taking the stage to the strains of B.T. Express's "Peace Pipe" at their scheduled time of 8 PM. Looking more gaunt and emaciated than usual, Juwan was a spectral force at the show, ceding control after the first four songs to local rap legends Ninjasonik and regular collaborator Amanda Blank (whose solo debut I Love You -- co-produced by Brooklyn wunderkind Dave Sitek -- is dropping on August 4th). Clad in one of her trademark black minidresses, the vampish Blank was the unquestionable highlight of the show, exuding a feral presence that only upped the ante for Juwan -- who was subsequently escorted away from the stage by security.

The final verdict? After two lackluster years, Siren seems poised to reclaim its status as one of the nation's finest free music festivals.

Review: Rated O by Oneida

Part of this post is sheer repentance. Since going pro about a year and a half ago, I've relentlessly harangued Brooklyn-based Oneida for their amelodic diffidence. While I tend to favor music with repetitive structures, their faux-krautrock was never appealing to me -- the best tracks were merely odious, while the worst were flagrant emulations of Ash Ra Tempel and Amon Duul tracks that were close to my heart. But on their newest release, Rated O -- a sprawling triple album issued last week on Jagjaguwar Records -- they have crafted their finest statement, a diaphanous mess in the storied tradition of Exile on Main St. and Zen Arcade that somehow congeals into the best Brooklyn-related album of the year.

As many of their contemporaries (from Grizzly Bear to Animal Collective to the eccentrics in Gang Gang Dance) have embraced the trenchant winds of conformity, Oneida have not lost sight of their contrarian cusp-of-the-decade roots, taking their porous inscrutability to new heights here. With so many ensembles burning out and fading away into the depths of the noosphere after an album or two, they've remained steadfastly indefatigable. Like Exile, it is sequenced in genre-pillaging segments of three or four songs. The madcap electro sequence of "Brownout in Lagos", "What's Up, Jackal?", and "10:30 at the Oasis" may be their most confident and exigent work yet, while "The River" and "I Will Haunt You" are room-clearing classic rock mutations that find the band as sprightly as ever. The concluding "Folk Wisdom" stands as both a recapitulation and an invocation to something new.

As accessible as it is prolix, here's hoping that more artists follow in this album's vanguard lead.

Review: New Denver by Motel Motel

Although they've yet to attain canonical word-of-mouth status, Brooklyn-based Motel Motel may be the best band you've never heard of. While the band prefers to categorize their putatively ramshackle sound as "folk-rock" and often liken themselves to Gram Parsons and Townes Van Zandt, this superficial categorization belies a world of influences that audibly range from The Pixies -- vocalist Eric Engel is Frank Black's misbegotten musical son -- to Tom Waits and the ethereal discord of Talk Talk's final releases.

Boldly schewing the traditionalist streak of most heartland groups, their most recent release -- 2008's New Denver, reissued this week on Rebel Group after a favorably-received tour that culminated in a homecoming performance at the Bowery Ballroom last week -- blends blocks of airy orchestration with rustic plaintiveness and a minimalist lyrical mindset that never strays far from Brooklyn in one of the defining artifacts of the contemporary scene. The epic "Tammy's Bodega" recasts "Where Is My Mind" in the superego's lambent glow, building from a quietly schizophrenic shuffle into an anthemic rocker over the course of seven minutes. "Mexico" is a frontier ballad of the soul that Townes (and possibly Parsons in his Nudie suit/Burrito Brother phase) would have doubtless appreciated, but Engel's pugnacious vocals owe more to the chamber-pop milieu of urban Brooklyn than any singular backwoods force. For iTunes/eMusic enthusiasts, the lightly-orchestrated "Virginia" reins in the group's more eccentric tendencies, delivering veiled optimism in the sanguine hue of the Flaming Lips. Whether you like them or loathe them, it seems that Motel Motel have already escaped the stylistic cul de sac that has ensnarled so many of their peers.

Review: The Phenomenal Hand Clap Band (Self-Titled)

The Phenomenal Hand Clap Band is one of the most buzzed about outfits of the year, and for once, it seems the hyperbole may be justified. On their debut album (a first only in the sense that this particular aggregation of musicians has never recorded together; as an earlier post last week detailed, these are all veteran musicians), the Hand Clap Band exploits the alembic of the sound studio to blend late 70s italo, Sugarhill Gang-era hip-hop, Philly disco, neo-soul redolent of Sharon Jones, Hendrixian funk-rock, and God knows what else in to one of the more ingenuous sounds of the decade. Since indie's ascendancy began in earnest three or four years ago, we've had to contend with the usual stereotypes (TV on the Radio and the Carps notwithstanding) of willowy prep school musicians playing music for, well, other willowy prep schoolers. The Hand Clap Band is by far the funkiest group of whites assembled since the Average White Band -- and that's intended as a compliment. (The Remain in Light-era Talking Heads don't really count, obviously.) Just as Living Colour and a new generation of "Afropunk" bands have demonstrated that rock isn't always the province of whites, the PHCB can get down quite well.

A catchy opener, "The Journey to Sella De Estrada" effortlessly evokes the cheap disco-influenced soundtracks that Justice routinely plunders; after not overstaying its welcome, the final strains segue into "All of the Above", a sort of discofied take on the San Francisco sound of the late 60s. "You'll Disappear", currently immortalized in local nightlife legend as a 12-minute Moroder tribute, is halved and quartered here, but the unexpected opening salvo of that one-two opening punch more than compensates for what sounds like a failed experiment. Side two is a miasma of downtempo explorations; being more familiar with their pulsating disco oeuvre, this is still sinking in. But it sounds quite promising.

All in all, if you feel compelled to buy a new album this week, check this baby out. My divagations don't do it justice.

Weekly Album Review: Mos Def triumphs with The Ecstatic

Changing trends over the past three to five years have precipitated major upheaval in the hip-hop universe. After nearly a decade of broken funk beats, crass samples, occasionally inscrutable lyrics, and weed & gun-infused swagger, the genre reconnected with its spectral dancefloor roots via startling collaborations (N.O.R.E's turn on Canadian electro outfit MSTRKRFT's "Bounce"), Dylanesque "don't pigeonhole me" recalcitrance -- witness Common's recent transformation from Afrocentric funk revivalist to carnal dance maven -- and the rise of a new generation of eclectic African American musicians who felt disenfranchised by the Nineties' criminal ardor (think Jahmal Tonge from dance-punk duo the Carps, who is clearly influenced by hip-hop but plays in an entirely different arena). When reports surfaced last year that the Spectorian Scott Storch, having belied his underground cred as the Roots' original keyboardist into a Faustian bargain that included producing pop tarts at $85,000 a track and pioneering the banal sound that Eminem and 50 Cent would take to the top of the charts on Dre's 2001, was nursing a cocaine addiction and defaulting on child support payments, the fat lady had sung the tune of hubris. Even the mainstream had, to varying degrees of success (Kanye West's 808s and Heartbreak and Lil' Wayne's Tha Carter III being the requisite Rolling Stone historical testaments), integrated the innovations of the groundswell that was roughly coterminous with the "electro-hop revival" and "blipsterdom". Considering that the original hipsters, as per Mailer's Advertisements for Myself, were affluent whites merely emulating the ineffable cool of black bebop players, the latter term does ring of a certain absurdity; thankfully, it seems not to have caught on in common parlance... yet.

Which leaves us with Mos Def, the unclassifiable everyman of alternative hip-hop. Blithely ignoring the trends of the late 90s and early 00s, the Brooklyn-born-and-based MC (real name: Dante Smith) carried the socially-conscious torch of A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul when it was as unfashionable as parachute pants; he was also one of the first to remind the genre of its roots and integrate musicians from a syncretic playing field, most notably Bad Brains' Dr. Know and vanquished psych-funk auteur Shuggie Otis (who plays a memorable blues solo on The New Danger, Def's 2004 foray into a reconstituted hip-hop). Interestingly, this album penetrated the Billboard Top 10 when commercial rap was at its absolute nadir in 2004, demonstrating that there is always a market for good music. Like Tom Waits, he has also pursued a moderately successful acting sideline, appearing in the successful remake of The Italian Job, Be Kind Rewind, and an episode of House.

Indeed, Def's latest -- the much-anticipated The Ecstatic, out on June 9th -- captures the rapper at his most Waitsian, pursuing a singular and idiosyncratic style that takes very few cues from electro... or any other purported flavor of the moment, for that matter. It's sui generis at its finest. The horn and marimba-laden "Twilite Speedball" is practically a homage to Waits's Rain Dogs-era New York sound, with bizarre, nocturnal lyrics that reveal a new side to the performer. Lead single "Life in Marvelous Times" and the appropriately titled "History" (the latter featuring Mos's brother-in-arms, Talib Kweli) revel in a neo-blaxpolitation fantasia of dramatic strings and incessant funk; its the closest he's come to impinging upon Wu-Tang turf, but the flow makes it all worthwhile. "Casa Bey" settles into a lambent Southern soul groove, and the opening "Supermagic" is all Hendrix guitars and rock & roll -- unlike most rappers, Def has always been particularly enamored of the guitar god.

But it is the album's more eccentric moments, such as the Arab pop-influenced "Wahid" -- which, save for its lyrics, would sound great on car stereos on Atlantic Avenue or Fifth in Bay Ridge -- and the Spanish "ballad" "No Hay Nada Mas" that make The Ecstatic truly worthwhile. For Mos Def, hip-hop doesn't seem to be a lifestyle -- it's just a set of tools, a springboard for his formidable talent. Which, if this album is any indication, may well land anywhere over the next decade.

For more information, check out http://www.myspace.com/mosdef.

Weekly Album Review: Why Are We at Veckatimest?

In 1966, Norman Mailer used the threadbare plot of a coming-of-age Alaskan bear hunt as an allegorical subtext for the Vietnam War. The results – nay, the whole concept – was incredibly disingenuous, but it was probably his last great work of fiction, if only for the oblique but engaging title (Why Are We In Vietnam?). With that in mind, seeing as every halfwit of a certain socio-cultural stratum (myself included) has attempted to dissect, deconstruct, criticize, and New Historicize Grizzly Bear’s Veckatimest with faux-plenary authority in the intervening months since Ed Droste’s frantic Tweet about the album leak, I felt that a Maileresque pastiche may be in order when the day of reckoning (viz. writing my review of the much-ballyhooed “album of the year”) came to pass. But then again, there are plenty of other venues for such a yarn – you, dear reader, are probably looking for some honest divagations about this Brooklyn band’s breakthrough album, and why they may or may not deserve premium space in your Nano, and why the gnomically hermetic, NYU sheepskin-holding duo of Messrs. Droste and Taylor deserve to be tithed your hard-earned CUNY Work Study dollars when forms of entertainment that are more valuable (I’m thinking $9.95 copies of The 400 Blows at the Virgin Megastore blowout sale) and less specious are ripe for the taking.

Grizzly Bear are quite anomalous in the underground Brooklyn indie rock scene that has coalesced into a national phenomenon over the past seven years or so. Like most of their peers, they are carpetbaggers from various hinterlands in the American expanse and thus of an entirely different mentality than the average native New Yorker (Ed really, really likes his nabe of contemporary Williamsburg); unlike most of their confederates, they are more beholden to the lambent sounds of the psychedelic Beach Boys than Glenn Branca’s sonic astringencies. If Oneida and Parts & Labor are the Godards and Truffauts of this musical equivalent of a cul de sac transposed upon urban decay – black and white, stylistically reductive, Gitantes and Anna Karina circa Alphaville – Grizzly Bear immediately evoke Bresson’s equivocal Catholic asceticism in their unceasing search for love.

A gay sensibility informs much of their oeuvre (leader Droste is openly gay), and one can’t help but to think of Langston Hughes’s more ambiguous verse when hearing the mantra-like songs of their previous album, Yellow House, which may as well have been subtitled “’I, Too’ for the Digital Generation”. Destroyed but not defeated, Droste inadvertently painted a spellbindingly mimetic portrait of urban gay life on that album that also managed to be touching in its universality. There was a reason why Veckatimest so anticipated – give these guys some time to actually congeal, the rationale was, and these ruffians could be indie’s tardy answer to the Beatles.

Without descending into the ad hominem and vaguely homophobic catcalls of indierocksucks.com (think “eunuch choirboys”), nor the hyperbole of the indie press, it can be safely asserted that Veckatimest is a passable pop album that I will probably play a couple of times every month in the foreseeable future – not the Sgt. Pepper’s of the vanquished Obama revolution, thank you very much. In an interview some months back, Droste assured me that Veckatimest would be even more experimental than its declamatory predecessor, with big, clangorous drums and more poetic lyrics. The drums are hardly stadium-sized, thank heavens, but their increased presence makes for a facile and superfluous change that only detracts from the band’s fragile melodies. A foray into John Martyn/David Crosby-style folk-jazz, the opening “Southern Point”, is the album’s most successful track, in part because it finds them amenable to experimenting in hitherto foreign styles. The rest – from the soon-to-be-hit “Two Weeks” to the Spectorian “Cheerleader”, resplendent with backing vocals from the Brooklyn Youth Choir – is pure regurgitation, Yellow House with a more diverse palette of instruments, the true poesis of a quavering voice submerged in the flotsam of retro-Seventies production.

As avowed fans of Radiohead, Droste and company should have known that they were in a rarefied position after the critical and limited commercial success of Yellow House, much as the former band was after The Bends. Instead of taking their sound into an even more recondite direction and laughing their way to the Greenpoint Savings Bank, Veckatimest is a gluttonous road to avarice, bombast, and Jermaine Clement’s Omnichord collection. While it’s difficult not to find it enrapturing while sipping your morning tea and reading the Times, one wonders if the critics will retract their “all time classic” pronouncements over the ensuing years.