Song Reviews

thoughts on individual songs

Styrofoam: Front to Back

From the album Nothing’s Lost (2004)

Belgian composer Styrfoam is a consummate bedroom auteur, accomplished in the so-called “indietronic” genre, effectively wielding his laptop to weave a kind of downtempo electronic pop music. His early work is more ambient in nature, peppered with influences of 8-bit game-style accents. As his music has progress, however, he’s become ever more audacious in his compositions, fleshing out his sound with a more “organic” feeling, despite his glitch-centered production methods.

This song, Front to Back, meanders peaceably, like a digital lullaby for a good two and a half minutes before launching into a sing-song overdrive. It’s layered, complex harmonies will get stuck in your head.

[audio:070528FrontToBack.mp3]

What I Love: Marvelous chord changes; those dense vocal harmonies.

The Mountain Goats: Dance Music

From the album The Sunset Tree (2005)

This song is about escapism. With poignancy and daft lyrical narration, John Darnielle (aka The Mountain Goats) weaves a tale of domestic violence and a troubled life on the skids. The only outlet for the song’s protagonist is the volume knob on his stereo and the “dance music” it amplifies, which he uses to elude the strife in his life.

The beautiful part of this song however, is its clear-as-day construction. With unadorned instrumentation and a simple verse-chorus-verse structure, Dance Music is classic Mountain Goats. What else would you expect from “America’s best non-hip-hop lyricist“?

[audio:070525DanceMusic.mp3]

What I Love: It’s peppy and sad at the same time.

PS- John Darnielle maintains a blog at Last Plane to Jakarta.

Mouse on Mars: I Go Ego Why Go We Go

From the album Varcharz (2006)

After creating some most infectious and “warm” electronic grooves that were both danceable and singable, Mouse on Mars returned with an album of “spatial free-jazz and cocaine-fried booty funk” on the largely structureless Varcharz. But don’t take structureless to mean groundless. Beats are what MoM do best, and while the album has its share of dissonance, it’s a noise symphony built on a solid foundation.

Take, for example, the assonantly named I Go Ego Why Go We Go. With its calculated repetition and precise layering, the song sounds like it could have been composed by some sort of JamDroid, its disruptive rhythms compelling all the other robots to abandon the assembly line and get on down.

What I Love: It’s Mouse on Mars; the beats are cold and unfriendly, but that won’t stop me from bobbing my head.

Free Download.

Presidents of the USA rarity: Ça Plane Pour Moi

ça plane pour moi cover

A long time ago, while expanding my cultural horizons and getting to know a distant branch of my family, I spent a good portion of the summer in the nation of France. It had the works: sight-seeing, landmarks, historical places, family gatherings, camping, Eurorail, and of course shopping and souvenirs. An excellent summer well spent. And it was made more excellent by a handful of hard-to-find musical acquisitions I made while perusing various stores and malls.

One such find, I believe I picked up at the Virgin megastore on the Champs-Élysée or maybe FNAC, was a CD single by The Presidents of the United States of America, that quirky alt-rock-punk-pop band who emerged from the collapse of Seattle’s grunge scene. PUSA was near the peak of its success that summer and the band was a favorite of mine for a time.

Thus I was quite intrigued when I discovered this cardboard sleeve CD single while browsing the stacks. In French, the title read Ça Plane Pour Moi and the artist, to my surprise, was The Presidents. The song was certainly not a single release from the band’s debut album, with which I was already familiar. It was a baffling mystery, but as a third year student of the French language, I was quite attracted to this French language song.

Plus, I’ve always had a fascination with CD singles. There’s something about the combination of low price and rare songs that I, as a collector, can’t resist.

So, putting it all together:

Francophilia
Rare music
CD single
A then-favorite band
Being able to forever say “I bought this in France”

You bet it was a no brainer. I snapped it up faster than you can say Tout de Suite.

Ça Plane Pour Moi roughly means “This life for me.” There’s no direct translation of the phrase but it is an expression of detached contentment with one’s existence, possibly with ironic undertones. The particular recording is a cover of the 1977 hit by Plastic Bertrand, though The Presidents perform it in more of a happy-go-lucky surf punk style. The lyrics are chock-full of French slang that don’t make any literal sense, but if you have to delve into it, try this analysis.

[audio:070514CaPlanePourMoi.mp3]

For a long time, this song was a rarity, so rare that the disc doesn’t appear on either AllMusic’s PUSA discography or Discogs.com’s listing. Amazon has it for $20+, but fortunately for you guys, iTunes offers it for just 99¢.

Weird Al – Trapped in the Drive Thru: Perfect Parody

What can I say? This is brilliant. It’s a bit long (11 minutes), so block out some time to watch the whole thing.

It also helps to be familiar with Trapped in the Closet, R. Kelly’s hip-hop opera in multiple parts which tells a complex story (with several interwoven plots) of increasingly bizarre cases of infidelity and sexual hang-ups. Here’s a Google Video if you need to brush up. Sometimes referred to as the “Plan 9” of music videos, the series has obtained a bit of a cult following and it has been a ripe target for parody since its 2005 release.

So it should be no surprise that Weird Al decided to tackle it. But the caliber of the results, now that is a bit surprising. Mr. Yankovic has done some amazingly clever and funny work in the past (his Star Wars Episode I song comes to mind), but the source material for this is just so ridiculously over-the-top that its quite the feat that he was able to top it. And of course, it’s all the more astonishing that he does it by transposing the excessive and strained drama of the original to a topic most mundane: the search for dinner.

Trapped in the Drive-Thru – "Weird Al" Yankovic (Doogtoons)

Japanophilia: Four Japanese albums you should have in your collection

This article is also a guest post for Webomatica, who asked me to fill in for a day while he’s in Japan. Appropriately, I think, I dove through my library and pulled out some of my favorite Japanese albums. Enjoy…

sumum yokota - symbol

Susumu Yokota – Symbol (2005)

Yokota is a musician of the sonic contortionist variety, meticulously sculpting sounds and bending them to his will. Symbol features some delicately constructed mashups of classical music, with passages that are both instantly recognizable and relatively obscure. Lightweight and easy on the ears, this album is sonic bliss that samples predominantly from the western musical heritage. It’s an engagingly mellow aural experience. Read my full review.

Listen to Traveller In The Wonderland:
[audio:070123TravellerInTheWonderland.mp3]

cornelius - point

Cornelius – Point (2002)

Similarly, I would also describe Cornelius, who takes his pseudonym from Roddy McDowell’s character in Planet of the Apes, as a meticulous creator of sounds. But high art isn’t his game; his level is clearly that of catchy pop numbers and urban culture. In the early 90s, he came to fame in Japan as part of a mostly straight-ahead pop outfit called Flippers Guitar. Since then, he’s embraced a kind of whiz-bash indie electronic eclecticism, which comes to a head on his magnum opus. This record is the reason I’ve called him Japan’s greatest natural resource.

Listen to Another View Point:
[audio:070327AnotherViewPoint.mp3]

yoshinori sunahara - sound of the 70s

Yoshinori Sunahara – PAN AM: Sound of the 70s (1999)

This album may have been released in 1999, but as the title suggests, it might as well have been set much earlier. As for the particular sound of the 70s, this isn’t disco, or funk, or classic rock. It’s smooth and jazzy with a retro lounge feel. Sunahara, who is positively obsessed with TWA-era airline travel, pulls out a soulful downtempo groove that will make you feel like you’re waiting to jet off to London from the terminal at JFK.

Listen to Theme from Take-off (Magic Sunset):
[audio:070323ThemeFromTake-Off.mp3]

pizzicato 5 - Happy End of the World

Pizzicato 5 – Happy End of the World (1997)

Released at the peak of Tokyo’s so-called Shibuya-kei scene (the emergence of which had parallels with that of American grunge–but that’s another story), P5’s Happy End of the World is filled to the brim with the ultra cute, ultra stylish and ultra smooth vibe with a little tongue-in-cheek mixed in that makes the world created by this music so inviting for American hipsters and hipster wannabes. It also doesn’t hurt that the album is expertly crafted, with wide-ranging musical influences layered on top of some very infectious beats. However, for all the sophistication this album exudes, there’s a certain childlike giddiness to the whole affair. This album ranks among my all-time favorites.

Listen to Love’s Theme:
[audio:070323LoveTheme.mp3]

Extra credit. Japan for the past 15 years or so has been cranking out some excellent music. Check out the stylings of: Yoko Kanno/Cowboy Bebop, Nobukazu Takemura, Cibo Matto, Fantastic Plastic Machine. Explore them at your leisure.

Chemical Brothers – Star Guitar video: Cleverly Hypnotic

In addition to their world-sized beats, The Chemical Brothers are generally known for their world class videos. I stumbled across this video to Star Guitar from the duo’s 2002 release Come With Us while perusing the ol’ Google Video/YouTube library this afternoon and was quickly fascinated.

It was directed by noted film dude Michel Gondry, who’s done some impressive work, including intriguing videos for Bjork, Beck, Radiohead and many other musicians, as well as numerous innovative television commercials. But he’s also responsible for pioneering “bullet time” cinematography, so negative points there.

Of course, the concept of synchronizing visuals with the rhythm of music isn’t exactly new, but the execution here is clever. Though by the end of minute three, you’ve pretty much gotten the point and are ready to move on.

Star Guitar is an awesome song and the video is pretty cool, so enjoy it: