Saturday, May 30, 2009

Jarvis Cocker--Further Complications: Jarvis Moves From Your Wardrobe to the Garage, Deviance Still In Tact

Throughout his reign as the sexnerd front man of Pulp, then his role as thinly-veiled outer ego Darren Spooner in the electro outfit Relaxed Muscle, not to mention his first efforts as a witheringly witty solo artist, Jarvis Cocker has mastered the art of come-hither wryness. Therefore, it’s easy to understand why he would want to stretch out and express his latest mid-life crisis in a different way.

On Further Complications, his sophomore effort as a solo artist, Cocker called upon Steve Albini, that angry man who prefers to record artists rather than produce them, to cast a loose and loud feel over the proceedings. The results, while commendably risky, are mixed.

The opener and title track “Further Complications” may take a few Jarv devotees aback, as Cocker unveils his new affinity for shouting. Cocker has never really pushed his voice too far past yelping, so this new vocal method is cause for alarm, not to mention indicative of why he’s stuck to addressing his words in a fey sneer for so long. This album has no shortage of zingers, but shouting doesn’t heighten their impact.

Arch utterance…then…zing always works, however, and Cocker does seem to still be aware of this, as he returns to that delivery more than once on the disc. The biggest standouts here are the tracks which sound like well-preserved Pulp jewels. “Slush” is musically reminiscent of We Love Life single “The Trees,” and is a quality holiday song to boot. “Hold Still” pairs a nice groove with a glammy chorus, and offers its share of blue label witty lyrics, "kittens are cute but a full-grown cat can be cuter" being a personal favorite. And “You’re In My Eyes (Discosong)” is a lush, eight minute disco monologue that takes the listener away from whatever mundane activity they may be partaking in and places them directly on the dance floor of the song.

As far as the shoutier tracks go, “Angela,” a song Cocker gave away as a free Mp3 on his website, is the most successful in replicating that ‘60’s psych-garage sound. “Homewrecker” features some cool, vaguely post-punk horns which aid in making the song a stompy blast.

“Pilchard,” a weird instrumental freak out, doesn’t quite work, however, and “Fuckingsong” and “Caucasian Blues” are--with the exception of possessing great titles and boasting a witty lyric here and there--are mostly forgettable. The placement of these two songs before “Slush” and “You’re In My Eyes” ultimately proves beneficial, as the latter tracks are rendered all the more remarkable. After an album of clamorousness, it’s somewhat startling for things to end so sentimentally. Underneath that titillating strut and those saucy come-ons, maybe Cocker--to paraphrase a line in “Leftovers”--really is a teddy bear, after all.

Level of Disappointment: 6; but this is only because I expect a little more from Jarvis . I’ll be seeing him in July, and, seeing as he’s one of the best front men ever, there is little chance that will disappoint.

Watch: Jarvis playing with some blocks (courtesy of Youtube user lindadox, ripped from jarviscocker.net).

Read: A fun interview with Jarv (yes, they are all fun reads, but this one has some particularly good quotes).

Thursday, May 21, 2009

The Horrors--Primary Colors: Powerpuff Ghouls Prove Post Punk a Perpetual Resource

A lot of cool people love The Horrors. Cool people can have lapses of taste too, but for the record, Henry Rollins thinks they’re great; Bad Seeds/Grinderman drummer and Vanity Set weirdo Jim Sclavunos produced “Count In Fives”, a mod-goth glove slap of a single; Yeah Yeah Yeahs guitarist Nick Zinner produced their debut album, Strange House. Zinner seems to have acted as a bit of a goth Svengali to the susceptible British youths, because that album casts the impression of a really fey Cramps and Birthday Party meeting in an opium parlor where the karaoke machine has nothing to offer but Screaming Lord Sutch’s greatest hits. This time around, The Horrors are being co-produced by Geoff Barrow out of Portishead. The goth aesthetic has been returned to the tomb and now the band have decided to trick out those Joy Division/Chameleons vibes that every other indie band has been noodling around with since the start of the '00's. On their attempt, The Horrors have inserted synths and dabbed some shoegaze tones over the whole formula, and they meander into Spacemen 3 territory on occasion.

So far this is all sounding really awful and derivative, right? For some reason--maybe it’s because, on songs such as “Who Can Say,” those prominent synths have a tendency of evoking the A Clockwork Orange soundtrack---Primary Colors is not awful. Instrumentally, many of the songs are genuinely beautiful. Were the whole album devoid of vocals, it would be a creamy post punk shoegaze delight, but alas, singer Faris Badwan has got to ruin such songs as “New Ice Age” (really? Like it’s not obvious enough that you guys are Joy Division fans) by maintaining the same gutter rat vocals he employed on The Horrors’ debut. Although, Badwan’s voice being such a fright and all, I suppose The Horrors still live up to their name in spite of no longer being a goth band.

Another snag preventing me from taking full enjoyment in Primary Colors, and another argument for Badwan’s voice being disposable, is that the lyrics are fairly unspectacular. “I Can’t Control Myself,” a track in which the band gets their Spiritualized on, appears to be a sex song. As far as the allure of bands and artists go, there are two types: the charismatic sex beasts you want to take to bed after one chord progression, and the otherworldly creatures who you simply want to enjoy superficially. The Horrors epitomize the latter.

Yet the lackluster lyrics again make us grateful that The Horrors at least know how to blend the best bits of their great record collection into moving songs. “Scarlet Fields” may be the best track on the album, but it’s such a mish mash of influences--those A Clockwork Orange synths, some Pixiesesque rhythms, My Bloody Valentine noises succeeding the nervy post punk chorus--it’s a marvel that the song actually works. Now, if only Badwan could have affected the fuzzy shoe gaze murmur he displays here for the entirety of the album.

I am a little sick of bands continuously flirting with post-punk styles, no matter how endlessly pliable the genre is. The last time I listened to Primary Colors’ final track, “Sea Within A Sea,” I skipped the two minute fade out and put on Magazine; at least with them, the vocals are bad-interesting, not bad-ingratiating. Yet, if bands like The Horrors continue tampering with and reshaping the basic formula, I’ll keep my complaints to a minimum. That The Horrors have fooled me by proving they do have a bit of substance behind their style, however, is something in which I’ll remain quite vocal in my agitations.

Level of Disappointment: 5; I think the real reason Henry Rollins likes them so much is because he’s capable of bench pressing all of them at once, though.

Watch: “Who Can Say” official video (Like the video for Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ “In the Ghetto” without a fraction of the drugs or sex appeal).

Monday, May 11, 2009

Videos Inspired by Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain: Bright Colors and Hipster Ponces

Anyone who has seen the 1970 film El Topo, directed by Chilean filmmaker, mime, and Tarot enthusiast Alejandro Jodorowsky, will probably agree that it is a visually glorious piece. If you have never seen it, or even heard of it, John Lennon being an out and out fan boy for the flick might serve as decent enough encouragement to seek it out. Lennon and Yoko Ono aided in the statewide release and distribution of El Topo, which is about a gunfighter who, after defeating the top master in a series of duels, goes sort of insane and reemerges as a Buddhist, adept at miming and worshipped by a village’s shunned and deformed population.

Lennon and Ono financed Jodorowsky’s next film, 1973’s The Holy Mountain. Brimming with religious symbolism, tarot allusions, and images artfully shot in captivating technicolor, the movie---which was not treated to a wide release until 2007--has seen various tributes in the realm of music videos.

Because I failed at putting much thought into this post, only the obvious videos will be hyperlinked and reviewed in this post. I would hyperlink the corresponding Holy Mountain clips as well, but most are not available on Youtube. These serve as a good taster, though.

Marilyn Manson--“The Dope Show”

As far as kind of recent musicians go, it is no secret that Jodorowsky is way into Marilyn Manson, even admitting in the book The Spiritual Journey of Alejandro Jodorowsky that he “sensed genius” upon catching Manson being gothically laissez faire in a television interview. The fandom is mutual; shortly thereafter, Manson sent Jodorowsky a letter, pointing out that a scene in his video, “The Dope Show,” was a homage to a Holy Mountain scene in which a thief awakes in a room and with great consternation discovers that he has unwittingly been used as a model for replicas of Christ. In the “Dope Show” video, Manson awakes to find replicas of himself, which he proceeds to destroy. Given the song’s subject of idolizing the famous, Manson’s unfavorable reaction to the models is understandable. The video packs a nice industrial glam punch, and the gay cops may or may not be a nod to the gay sheriffs who make an appearance during El Topo’s second half.

MGMT --“Time to Pretend”
Amid all the hipster hypnotizing kaleidoscopic sfx and shots of MGMT, who are so obnoxiously attractive that I’ve fancied wringing their necks more than a few times, are two Holy Mountain-inspired scenes, one featuring MGMT and pals sitting at a table and pushing cash into a fire at the table’s center, and another showing the same cast atop a temple. This video is way too intentionally makeshift and busy, but it does contain one cool image that is lacking from The Holy Mountain, and that is a giant, rideable kitten.

Late of the Pier--“Heartbeat”
This is like a Klaxons video, minus the seizure lights and Klaxons in the nude, an image which makes the viewer yearn to take a melon scoop to their eyeballs. This video mostly nicks The Holy Mountain’s set design, but I can’t really tell why, other than the fact that this band seems like a bunch of art kids trying to be cool. The Holy Mountain didn’t need no stinking skinny indie kids collapsing into its sets. This is not an improvement upon the source material nor a fitting homage, sorry!

Santigold --“L.E.S. Artistes”

So, this is homage done right. The video is a direct replication of what is possibly The Holy Mountain’s best-known scene--one that reveals the artifice of special effects. The visuals appear relevant to the subject matter of the song, yet the video somehow remains mysterious enough that a viewer may want to find out what else is behind its look. I’m not quite sure what the opening scene of Santigold on horseback in a woods is all about, but otherwise, very good job, and Santigold can rightly be called both cool and fierce.


Questionable Homage:

Beck--“Sexx Laws”
A couple of Beck’s songs reference the film, plus it seems like the sort of movie weird and arty pre-Scientologist Beck would love, so incorporating its style into his music videos seems like a given. This one contains a scene that involves a lot of paint being splattered in a similar way to the Santigold video/Holy Mountain special effects scene, and a character who looks slightly similar to the alchemist played by Jodorowsky himself in the film, but these may just be coincidences. Even if the Jodorowskyesque vibe was unintentional, this video is still pretty excellent, in spite or maybe because of the cameo by Jack Black, not to mention the humping cans of Spam.


El Topo Honorable Mention:

Manic Street Preachers--“Found That Soul”
I hate to be one of those people who pauses a video and then records the exact time something appears on screen, but at 1:14, a paperback copy of the El Topo screenplay shows up. This video is basically cool books and nocturnal animals filmed in night vision, but seeing as El Topo’s screenplay is one of the cool books in question, there is little to complain about here. I have a long, emotionally painful history of being a Manics fan, but hey, I’m not complaining about that either. They are still “That Band” for me, but I can also admit they are goddamn pretty ridiculous. The only goddamn ridiculous thing about this song, however, is that it is grossly underrated. As soon as I pressed the play button, the opening riff proceeded to rock off my face, starting from the hairline down. Also, their new album, Journal for Plague Lovers, is brilliant and I will probably be raving about it in this space eventually.


In conclusion, paying respects to Alejandro Jodorowsky leads to mixed results, but as long as people like Santigold do it correctly enough that a few curious fans are compelled to view the source material, I can cope with cheesy effects and indie-rocker prats.

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Live Review: The Kills, with support from Magic Wands and The Horrors--Webster Hall, May 2, 2009

Webster Hall is not the largest venue in New York City by any means, but it can feel that way if you aren’t in the first five or six rows at any given show. With a prime spot comes the threat of being crammed up against some very annoying people, and, with a floor that seems to rubberize as the crowd becomes more excited, and the passing glimpses of sad looking dance parties that go down in other parts of the venue as you exit or enter the building, Webster Hall can be considered a pretty deplorable venue.

However, if the band you’ve braved all these various badnesses to see is outstanding enough, a good show can help you forget your current location. In this regard, The Kills, and, to some degree, The Horrors, rose to the occasion on May 2. Magic Wands, although not terrible, didn’t quite succeed; but, being the first band in a line-up of three, we won’t waste time on them.

I had seen The Horrors a few times before, in their past incarnation as a really incredible looking goth novelty band with no discernable songs. Despite the song deficit, they still knew how to put on a show, and like a curious girl going to see a really non-threatening version of The Birthday Party, I once got kind of roughed up at one of their gigs. The Webster Hall setting wasn’t intimate enough for The Horrors to do any harm, and, although they are now a legitimate band with actual songs, their live show is patchy. There seemed to be a lot of artifice going on to cover for the fact that--although goths are not known for having golden throats--lead singer Faris Badwan has really got a terrible voice. None of the songs sounded very coherent until the set was nearly over. That said, the two final songs, “Who Can Say” and “Sea Within A Sea”, sounded close to glorious and the band made up for incoherence with energy and flash. Badwan, who is 6’6 and last night kind of looked like a beak-nosed teenage Joey Ramone whose been transplanted to the ‘90’s (cool Nirvana Bleach t-shirt) was somewhat threatening, what with his penchant for hoisting up his mic stand and hovering it over the cluster of people in front of him. The new album is capital S Shoegazey--as guitarist Joshua Third’s haircut can attest--but the live show is anything but. The Horrors have also done away with what used to be their sole redeeming quality--fabulous goth style--and have branched out; now only one of them looks like a Nosferatu who’s still teething!

The satisfactions gained from The Horrors set instantly dissipated when The Kills took the stage. Allison Mosshart could easily do in all five feeble Horrors with a flick of her pinkie, so much was certain when she made her first speaker leap of the evening. Much like Nick Cave, she oozes charisma and sexual energy so much that all orientations are thrown out and the audience becomes submissive to the performer’s whims and hovers. Jamie Hince doesn’t have Mosshart’s sexual charisma, but he kept things audience participation-friendly throughout the evening. Although their live shows are notorious for the force field of sexual tension between the duo, this Webster Hall outing seemed a little tame. The tension was most evident on “Last Day of Magic,” but for the most part the two rocked out in their own special ways, Mosshart with her aforementioned speaker-hopping and offering her hand to lucky audience members, Hince with his robotic hand motions during the drum machine intros to “Sour Cherry” and “Getting Down,” some fancy footwork thrown in for good measure.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about the Kills live experience is taking in the amount of noise they produce with--at times--just one guitar and some samples. Yet another one of Webster Hall’s drawbacks is its less than stellar sound system, but Mosshart and Hince made the most of this setback by not scrimping on the rock. And, if all else had failed, there is little denying that an hour and a half of the two bandmates having a fierce staring match would have been worth the ticket price. Although something like that might lead to a mass water shortage, as we’d all have to take cold showers immediately afterward.

Level of Disappointment: 5;there wasn’t nearly as much sexual tension as expected, and I’ve got no clue why they didn’t play “What New York Used to Be” while in New York, but really, those are the only complaints I’ve got.

Watch: The Horrors--"Sea Within A Sea" (official video).


Watch: The Kills--"Last Day of Magic" (live on Jonathan Ross).