Music

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• Music 06/29/06

  Vetiver—To Find Me Gone
  Unfairly lumped into the Freak-folk category after receiving a stamp of approval from the King Freak himself Devendra Banhart, there's absolutely nothing freaky about Vetiver and their beautiful, lilting songs. The vocals are smooth and pitch perfect, interlaced between distant drums and gentle acoustic guitars. This is music that feels familiar yet at the same time has something distinctly, yet elusively unique about it. Mysteriously wonderful.
  
  Laura Veirs—Year of Meteors
  Like a modern-day Liz Phair without the smut, Laura Veirs has got a raspy voice, a knack for storytelling, and an ability to have you whistling her tunes in no time flat. Her music is enchantingly simple and direct, and universally enjoyable. We'll admit, it took us close to a year to even bother giving her disc a listen, but once we did we soon regretted ever making any snap judgments on this quality singer-songwriter. (Note: Veir's only offense is the horrendous "rap" remix of her lead single "Galaxies" featuring some dude named Kotos the Rock Thrower. Please purge this from your hard drive as soon as possible.)
  
  Camera Obscura—Let's Get Out of This Country
  We usually hate Twee. A lot. So much so we resisted listening to this band for quite some time, and are thus very surprised to find ourselves enjoying it. The general sound reminds us of a vintage pop landscape, filled with late '70s public service announcement jingles and bountiful semi-generic-sounding strings. Throw in some organs, lovely female vocals, and bits and pieces of Belle and Sebastian-like candy-coated hooks, and you have yourself a pleasant, carefree summer album.

• Music 06/15/06

  Hot Chip—The Warning
  We've been sitting on this CD since we got an advance copy of it last fall. And it's probably for the best, because we loved it then, but surely never expected to still love it and play it to death close to ten months later. Hot Chip falls under the electronic label, but are often mired by critics who call their music too "ironic" or "goofy," and while elements of this exist, at the heart of it all are massive pop songs laced with bizarre tinges of melancholia. Harmonies abound through the sleek and often minimal production. As far as major label pop music goes, this might just take the cake. Easily an early contender for album of the year.
  
  Final Fantasy—He Poos Clouds
  Brilliance comes in many forms, but when was the last time you heard an album inspired by role-playing video games and actually thought it was a masterpiece? Usually such fare is left to the frumpy wiccans playing Magic, but leave it to homo-extrordinaire Owen Pallet to release this semi-challenging but entirely unique vision of betrayal, lost love, and epic Japanamae dorkery, to universal praise. While the majority of the album is Owen and his violin looping over each other, there are drums and other bits and pieces of texture that weave their way into the saga and leave the listener both bewildered and enchanted.
  
  Beirut —Gulag Orkestrar
  Every once in a while the bloggers get it right, and they've struck gold with hype of the month, Beirut. One part gypsy vagabond music, one part Magnetic Fields (and throw in a splash of Rufus Wainwright vocals), and you get a strikingly accomplished debut from 19-year-old Zach Condon. It took us a few weeks to actually give it a chance, but sometimes hype happens for a reason. Venture deep into this album of waltzes and accordions and, tell us, can you really resist it?

• Music 06/06/06

  Espers—II
  Who would have thought that the next British Folk Revival would happen in Philadelphia? If you've ever had a traumatic experience at a Renaissance festival, stay away from this disc. But if your taste runs toward fireside acoustic jams and angelic voices, you'll probably like Espers' latest effort. Breezy and natural, the true strength of this band is the way they work together to make a beautiful wall of sound that is at once melancholy and inspirational.
  
  FM3—Buddha Machine
  OK, so this really isn't an album at all—it's a tiny nondescript box, available in six different colors, with two batteries and a speaker. But when you turn it on it emits your choice of eight different repetitive ambient loops that make you stop thinking of the Buddha Machine as a toy and start thinking of it as the best thing ever! The Buddha Machine's dreamy, meditative drones are incredibly calming and complex considering their humble source, thanks to the work of creators Christiaan Virant and Zhang Jian, also known as FM3. And at 25 bucks a piece, this is also a great gift for the music nerd who has everything.
  
  Various Artists—Panama
  If you're in New York for the summer and you don't have some Latin music in rotation, you might as well just move back to Kansas, because you just don't get it. Just buy this and repent for your sins. Excellent British reissue label Soundway Records has outdone themselves again with this sampler of treats from late '60s/early '70s Panama. The music is a wonderful mix of heavy funk grooves, hypnotic Latin rhythms, and a bit of island flavor via Jamaica and the Caribbean, all channelled through long lost Panamanian bands. Almost everything on this compilation was previously impossible to find in the States, but cruising around the city this summer with the windows rolled down, you can be sure it'll be a big hit.

• Music 05/26/06

  Phoenix—It's Never Been Like That
  People often throw around words like "guilty pleasure" while freely admitting to their love for this French band. That's part of their appeal: People love talking about how they shouldn't like this band but they do. In the past their pitch-perfect take on Hall & Oates-inspired, blue-eyed soul has set them apart from other rock bands who equate sloppiness with being real. On their latest release they come closer to that rock sound, but really they are just channelling the Strokes and the result is pitch-perfect, soulful rock. This is probably their best full-length release yet.
  
  Boris—Pink
  God Bless Japan! Just when we were thinking everything sounds the same, another beautiful album washes up on our shores from the Land of the Rising Sun and all of a sudden our faith in music is restored once more. Boris have been at it for a while, but their latest has all of the ethereal beauty and melody of prime My Bloody Valentine mixed with enough sweaty, energetic, balls-out rock 'n' roll to get your heart pumping. Buy the album and then go see them live next time they are in town (and don't forget your earplugs).
  
  Milton Nascimento—Clube Da Esquina
  There really is no replacement for Brazilian music when it comes to choosing your summer soundtrack. Sometimes you just want an album that will shoot rays of sunshine from the speakers. This is that album (trust us). With so much focus on '60s bossa nova and tropicalia in recent years, people tend to forget how fertile the music scene in Brazil was in the 1970s. This 1972 album is a peerless classic that combines beautiful singing, virtuosic songwriting, and the best orchestral arrangements we've ever heard. That's right, we're talking about arrangements with this one. It's that good.

• 05/17/06

  Nagisa Ni Te—Dream Sounds
  Just look at the cover: a cartoon pink bunny surfing...what could be sunnier? Dream Sounds is the kind of album that makes you want a front porch and a pitcher of lemonade. The music on this disc shows the full range of this long-running Japanese band from pastoral strummed guitar soundscapes to shiny guitar power pop to loping Neil Young-inspired country rock ballads. Just get a boombox, turn this on, and soak up the sunshine.
  
  Charalambides—Our Bed is Green
  Kranky Records has thankfully reissued this album from 1992, which had been nearly impossible to find since its original release (it was only available as an extremely limited-edition cassette). Charalambides is the Houston-based husband-wife, guitar-vocals duo of Tom and Christina Carter whose sparse music is a psychedelic mix of gospel, blues, and folk, channeled through the outsider music of fellow Houstonian Jandek. This album (their first) was recorded at home on a 4-track tape recorder, but it seems more akin to an old scratchy 78 rpm record than the lo-fi guitar rock of the early '90s. Christina's voice is beautiful and eerie all at once, and the backing music will remind you of everything great and weird about American roots music.
  
  Choubi Choubi! Folk and Pop Sounds from Iraq
  This disc should be the start of your obsession with Alan Bishop's Sublime Frequencies label. As a side project from his band Sun City Girls, Bishop travels the globe as an amateur ethnomusicologist (usually to locales considered unsafe by "sensible" travelers), gathering music in any form possible from records and cassettes to snippets of radio broadcasts. This particular set shows the wide range of music available from Iraq, mostly from the years of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. Unlike most World Music labels, Sublime Frequencies does not get bogged down in questions of "authenticity," so the variety of music ranges from the traditional choubi music of the region to unlikely pop confections, giving the set the unpredictable feeling of turning the radio dial in a foreign country.

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