May 19, 2013 — The British beat-makers shed their electronics in pursuit of a sound designed to translate live. For their second album, Mount Kimbie's Dominic Maker and Kai Campos even trot out languid vocal performances and a real live drum kit, while still sounding like themselves in the process.
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First Listen: Mount Kimbie, 'Cold Spring Fault Less Youth'
by Otis Hart
May 19, 2013 — The British beat-makers shed their electronics in pursuit of a sound designed to translate live. For their second album, Mount Kimbie's Dominic Maker and Kai Campos even trot out languid vocal performances and a real live drum kit, while still sounding like themselves in the process.
Daft Punk caused a stir earlier this year when its members announced that they'd recorded their new album, Random Access Memories, without drum machines or computer programs. Thomas Bangalter recently told All Things Considered's Audie Cornish that he'd wanted to glorify the "magic of human performances and possibly do a little bit of dance music at the same time."
The British beat-making duo Mount Kimbie takes a similar, if less publicized, approach on its second album, Cold Spring Fault Less Youth (out May 28). Dominic Maker and Kai Campos fell in love with performing live during the past two years and wanted to record an album that would transfer to the stage more easily than their critically acclaimed Crooks & Lovers. (Though those songs did work pretty well at the Tiny Desk.)
The first thing that stands about Cold Spring Fault Less Youth is the traditional drum kit. Sticks, snares and cymbals pop up in several of these tracks, usually in a low-key fashion that recalls Four Tet's early post-rock act Fridge. The addition of languid vocals, including two appearances by young British crooner King Krule, is even more jarring yet works nicely, particularly in the album's first single, "Made to Stray." Of course, given Mount Kimbie's objective — a sound that translates live — the full effect of all these traditional instruments won't be felt in these parts until the band embarks on its upcoming North American tour.
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First Listen: Tricky, 'False Idols'
by Otis Hart
May 19, 2013 — The producer's best album since the mid-'90s, False Idols is one of 2013's biggest surprises so far. His signature mix of menace and seduction still sounds contemporary after Tricky's more than 20 years in (and out of) the spotlight.
Listening to a new Tricky album for the first time can be a, well, tricky experience. Anyone who lived through the '90s trip-hop bubble is going to spend that initial spin comparing it to Maxinquaye, the Bristol producer's canonized collaboration with Martina Topley-Bird. Obviously, that's setting the table for disappointment — nothing released today is going to hit as hard as that album's nascent perfection.
So, once you've made your first pass through False Idols (out May 28), go back to the beginning and listen to the album again on its own terms. You'll be surprised how contemporary Tricky's signature mix of menace and seduction sounds after his more than 20 years in (and out of) the spotlight.
With help from young British vocalists Francesca Belmonte and Fifi Rong, Tricky deftly balances sexy sighs and dub-influenced basslines. Each time through the album, different highlights surface. First, it might be "Nothing's Changed," the quasi-cover of his own "Makes Me Wanna Die" from Pre-Millennium Tension. Then the timpani and pungi vibe of "Tribal Drums" stands out. The third time through, the refrain from "Does It" is a grabber: "I wouldn't be caught dead in love."
Tricky's best album since the halcyon days of the mid-'90s, when he could do no wrong, False Idols is one of 2013's most pleasant musical surprises so far.
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First Listen: Laura Marling, 'Once I Was An Eagle'
May 19, 2013 — Marling's songs dig well beyond the everyday, with each sung in a wise, dusky, brooding voice that always seems in control of its surroundings. The U.K. folksinger's fourth album, Once I Was an Eagle, takes a remarkable journey over the course of 16 hypnotic, subtly inventive songs.
Laura Marling has accomplished an awful lot at 23 — four strong albums, armloads of awards — but what's more remarkable is the way the U.K. folksinger has gotten to this point. Marling's songs dig well beyond the everyday, with each sung in a wise, dusky, brooding voice that always seems in control of its surroundings. She can perform ornate ballads about dashed romance, but Marling sounds equally comfortable posturing confidently in "Devil's Resting Place," whose words could just as easily fuel a stomping Jack White jam. (Seriously, he should cover it just to prove the point.)
The devil pops up several times in Once I Was an Eagle (out May 28), but Marling views him a peer as often as he's a tormentor. He represents only one of the recurring threads woven into the fabric of a hypnotically pretty record that's not easily unpacked: Its first four songs flow together so seamlessly, in word and sound, that they appear at first to belong to a single shimmering 16-minute relationship postmortem.
All of Marling's vocal and guitar parts on Once I Was an Eagle were recorded in a single day — especially remarkable, given how frequently they remain in the spotlight throughout the album's 63-minute running time. But the singer takes a longer and more important journey along the way: As these 16 subtly inventive songs unfold, her fearless, blood-and-guts earthiness makes room for warmth and openness that's even more complex and rewarding.
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Sean Nelson's new album, Make Good Choices, comes out June 4. (Courtesy of the artist)
First Listen: Sean Nelson, 'Make Good Choices'
May 19, 2013 — Eight years after his last album with Harvey Danger, Nelson returns with a wonderfully catchy and quotable solo record. True to virtually every piece of music the singer-songwriter has ever written, Make Good Choices is fueled by a cocktail of quotability and charm.In the playfully faux-autobiographical "Kicking Me Out of the Band," Harvey Danger's Sean Nelson closes his solo debut by painting a comical portrait of a deluded former frontman whose hedonistic exploits get him booted from the band he'd founded. It's a stinging, clever bit of satire — the sort of song Nelson ought to trot out at a key moment in the stage musical he was born to write one day — but it also draws a sharp contrast to the singer's own story.
Unlike the subject of "Kicking Me Out of the Band," Harvey Danger followed its own tremendous success — in the form of a smash single called "Flagpole Sitta" back in 1998 — with a pair of lovely records, neither of which did much of anything commercially. But Nelson never seemed to chase another chart-topper: His band's second album, 2000's King James Version, was a lush, thoughtful, sonically ambitious flop, and Harvey Danger self-released a near-perfect power-pop record (Little by Little...) five years later, before slowly winding down operations by the end of the decade. The group disbanded amid no apparent animosity, and Nelson has kept busy as a writer, actor and occasional musician ever since.
Now, eight years after Little by Little..., Nelson returns with Make Good Choices, a wonderfully catchy and quotable solo album to which he'd devoted years of intermittent tinkering. Recorded with an assortment of sure-handed all-stars, including R.E.M.'s Peter Buck and Death Cab for Cutie's Chris Walla, Make Good Choices fits perfectly on the irregular-but-unimpeachable Harvey Danger continuum. The title track even serves as a sequel of sorts to the group's last song, "The Show Must Not Go On," as Nelson looks back on a failed relationship through the lenses of temptation and bitterness, only to wisely conclude that the past is best left where it belongs.
True to virtually every piece of music Nelson has ever written, Make Good Choices (out June 4) is fueled by a cocktail of quotability and charm — not to mention a gift for gorgeous ballads like "Advance and Retreat" — but also clearly informed by the unlikely career that led him to this point. In all, it's a fine new beginning for Nelson, a singer who's all the wiser for the endings he's faced.
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Piñata Protest's new album, El Valiente, comes out May 21. (Courtesy of the artist)
First Listen: Piñata Protest, 'El Valiente'
May 12, 2013 — The band embraces the century-old traditions of Mexican music its members encountered while growing up in south Texas. But it also freshens classic sounds with an ear toward punk energy and reckless, intense power.Audio for this feature is no longer available.
I was in high school, playing drums in a band with some pals in the mid-'70s, when I got a call from my uncle: Would I like to play a couple of dates with his norteño band over the summer?
While my drumming skills were decidedly high-school-level in terms of the rock and pop music of that era, I thought to myself that I was good enough for the two-step waltzes and cumbias that are a staple of accordion-fueled dance parties all over the Southwest and northern Mexico.
During that summer of 1976, in some nameless cantina somewhere in northern California, I discovered that rock 'n' roll and norteño actually had a lot in common: Both project raw, reckless, intense power that celebrates life, and both are meant to move butts onto the dance floor.
Which, in turn, explains why the new album from the young San Antonio band Piñata Protest sounds so natural. Its members project that same energy throughout throughout El Valiente, but with more of a punk aesthetic; the whole thing begins and ends in the span of less than 20 minutes. But, while punk was built on the idea of ignoring (if not destroying) all that came before it, Piñata Protest embraces the century-old traditions of Mexican music its members encountered while growing up in south Texas.
El Valiente (out May 21) includes a great morning-after song that celebrates living life today while anticipating regret tomorrow, as well as a track that examines the realities of living along the U.S./Mexico border. But one of the biggest joys of the album and this band is how they transform everyone's favorite ranchera song — "Volver, Volver" — into an over-the-top punk rave-up that makes me want to stage-dive into a pit of cowboy hats and big belt buckles.
Of course, ranchera fans know their way around cowboy hats and big belt buckles, and the guys in Piñata Protest rock their tattoos and cowboy hats as seamlessly as their music spans cultures and genres. That's the ultimate lesson of El Valiente: that the combination of accordions and punk represents an organic expression of the bicultural life lived by millions across this country.
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