Consequence of Sound is proud to present a performance-based video series called Off the Avenue. Each week, we'll be posting new videos of bands performing live at North Avenue Studios in Orange City, FL. In today's episode, Portland electro-pop outfit YACHT performs 'Utopia' from last year's Shangri-La.
You can watch past episodes of Off the Avenue here.
July 22nd 2012 is a day that will live in infamy in the hearts of Bostonians. On that day, 101.7 WFNX will end 29 years of broadcasting independent alternative rock radio after being sold to media conglomerate Clear Channel. The sale's announcement back in May was a crushing blow not to just local aficionados, but music listeners the country over. Over nearly three decades on air, WFNX has had a hand in breaking everyone from Nirvana to The Killers to Gotye, all while keeping local heros like Mean Creek and Viva Viva in heavy rotation. Their legendary 1994 free Green Day concert at Boston's Hatch Shell is just one of numerous events the station is famed for throwing all over town. Thursday night was the Seaport Six concert at Bank of America Pavilion, and though it wasn't initially planned as such, the event will go down as the last hurrah for one of Boston's most beloved institutions.
And what a sendoff it was. Things started with Stephie Coplan & the Pedestrians, who just the night before had won the Boston Phoenix (WFNX's newspaper cousin) Boston Music Poll's national 'What's Fucking Next' award. While traffic kept me from catching her set, I managed to get in with only missing the opening song from Reptar. These Atlanta boys have built a reputation for being 'a live act', and they certainly thrashed a good party, though they may be more suited for a club or festival crowd than BoA Pavilion's all-seated setup. Delta Spirit was next, and it's sad to say they had the weakest set of the day. Though they actually sounded great, their energy got lost in the slowly filling Pavilion, and the crowd waiting for GROUPLOVE or Two Door Cinema Club wasn't familiar enough with Matt Vasquez and crew (as one 13 year old girl yipped, 'play something I know!') to appreciate what they brought.
Life shot through the venue as GROUPLOVE took the stage, and my previous opinions of the worldly collective were unexpectedly shattered. 'Tongue Tied' sent the place into a frenzy, and the appearance by tourmates Reptar for the cover of 'I Wanna Dance With Somebody' was an amusing ruckus. The most veteran act on the bill, Cake, was another surprise, managing to captivate an audience I wasn't counting on buying in ' even saw some brace-toothed middle schoolers sporting Cake shirts too big for their prepubescent frames. After some overly long entrance music, 'Sad Songs and Waltzes' seemed an odd choice for opener, but the crowd was eating it up by the time 'Frank Sinatra' and 'Short Skirt/Long Jacket' hit. Ireland's Two Door Cinema Club headlined, and their infectious indie dance pop sent gyrating waves through the packed Pavilion. No one was seated, lifted to their feet by Tin Tin-lookalike frontman Alex Trimble's pitch-perfect vocals and his band's hook-laden numbers.
Both Two Door and Cake expressed their personal love for WNFX (Cake lamented they were also changing formats to Spanish language ' a possibility for FNX ' sarcastically remarking 'Hey, it's business. Business is so much more important than culture. That's why we're in the BANK OF AMERICA [Pavilion]!'). When the station's DJs came out to say their goodbyes, the crowd proclaimed their own appreciation with non-stop applause and hollers. Local celebrity Adam 12 elicited the loudest response as he rallied the troops to work together to keep FNX living, possibly online (a petition to keep the station's format is also being passed around). Whatever happens to 101.7 come July, Boston will always remember WFNX as the pinnacle of independent rock radio, a place local and national acts could find love and support, and an irreplaceable beacon of culture. Check out these photos from their last major event, and remember: We Are WFNX.
Photography courtesy of Heather Kaplan
After the longest break between new tracks in some time (an agonizing two-plus weeks), Childish Gambino returns with a fresh solo number entitled 'Shoulda Known'. Backed by a beat of jittery keys akin to a hovering alien spaceship, Gambino drops rhymes about Twitter, IMAX movies, and Christina Milian between choruses of falsetto harmonizing. Stream it below (via Complex.com).
Gambino's other releases include collabos with Beck, Nipsey Hussle, Heems, and ScHoolboy Q, along with the solo number 'We Ain't Them'.
What is compelling about Usher's new album, Looking 4 Myself, is how he tries to develop an amalgam of the musical ingredients he has toyed with in the past to produce a new genre he coins 'revolutionary pop.' In other words, he's never needed a career rejuvenation, but in his new album, he's reinventing himself anyway. And that willingness to progress at the risk of failure is why Usher still matters in 2012 while artists like Next are an afterthought.
The 14 tracks on Looking 4 Myself leave the listener enticed, mainly because there is no pattern to what the next song has to offer. There is no coherent approach in a thematic sense. In fact, Usher more or less concedes this record forays into a new musical sphere, and much of the record is storytelling from a fictional standpoint, rather then a personal diary. 'People often assume that each and every thing that you say, you go through,' Usher explained later in the interview. 'But that's not true. There has to be some sort of element of entertainment and artistry where you kind of dream things up. I've always wanted to be a person who wanted to introduce myself to different people. That conversation hasn't ever changed, but now, I have music that speaks to that, so it's easier for people to understand who I am as an artist.' The lyrical freedom allowed by the musical experimentation is refreshing, especially after previous releases like Confessions and Raymond v. Raymond gave listeners a front row seat on Usher's personal trauma. And without that baggage, we're left analyzing the music, which again, is fittingly arbitrary.
There are four working genres in play here: Usher's classic mold of hip-hop and R&B as well as the derivatives of each style. For example, 'Can't Stop Won't Stop' and 'Scream' are aggressively seductive club songs in the same vein of previous hits such as 'Yeah!' and his collaboration with David Guetta on 'Without You'. But the 'revolutionary pop'counter to those tracks are 'Show Me', 'Twisted' and, most notably, 'Numb'. On the surface, these three songs are archetypal electronic dance anthems, but they are bolstered by more complex vocal construction.
Meanwhile, Usher boasts his superior R&B vocal range in 'Climax' and 'Dive'. Each track has its moment but teeter toward mediocrity when no payoff occurs (Side note: ironic that 'Climax' has no, uh, climax. If this was intentional, it went over my head, and I'll tip my hat to Usher. Well played.). However, 'What Happened To U' and 'Sins Of My Father' display the same vocal prowess but are matched with beats of higher sophistication which avers his earnest attempt to deviate from a traditional blend of R&B and hip-hop.
Although Usher circumvents writing from personal narrative, in 'Numb' he appears to inadvertently describe the logic behind the musical ambition permeating Looking 4 Myself when he sings, 'Keep on doing the same old thing/Are you expecting change/Is that really insanity/Or just a loser's game.' The context of these lines are within the prism of a tumultuous relationship, but isolated, the words parallel Usher's goals with this record. One can't help but wonder, if even an artist with the level of success Usher has enjoyed, did he ask himself whether it is insane to waver from a proven formula? The cliché, 'If it's not broken, don't fix it' is profoundly accurate in many facets of life, but can also lead to complacency. Usher doesn't subscribe to that platitude, he relies on his own mantra, 'Evolve or evaporate.'
Essential Tracks: 'Numb', 'Can't Stop Won't Stop', and 'Sins Of My Father'
Photo by Brad Bretz
Crystal Castles debuted a new song during their performance at the Parklife Festival in Manchester, England last weekend, as Pitchfork points out. Watch the fan footage below.
Crystal Castles have been at work on their third LP, which is tentatively due out this summer via Fiction/Universal. The outfit also has a number of summer tour dates scheduled on either side of the Atlantic, which you can find listed out on their website.
Matsson functions differently. He's more autonomous ' secluded somewhere in his home country of Sweden with each album consisting of little more than his nasal drawl, dextrous finger picking on an acoustic guitar, and sparse accompaniment. Compared to Dylan's eight LP's, Matsson now has three, bolstered by two strong EPs of hyper-consistent songwriting. On There's No Leaving Now, Matsson lolls on down the same path he's been a-walkin', careless of the destination or the speed of life around him. The sound is more dampened than his previous recordings, even though it sometimes features more studio arrangements than any of his previous works, almost (but not quite) making good use of an eight-track recorder. The deliberate pacing he choses ' both musically and career-wise ' does little favor for his disconnected nature metaphors that make up the brick and mortar of his songs. All the romantic imagery, the roses, the rivers, the wind, the walls soon run together and become desaturated.
Though individually, those little images are such pretty things that pass you by as the album tours about. They elicit something out of time, neither past, present or future, in a small corner of the world where Matsson longs for some peace and quiet. At the end of 'Wind and Walls', he subtly lets us know that 'I'll be best when the silence comes.' He's still a peerless doter, and 'Leading Me Now' offers some of the most direct and ultimately best narratives on the album, borrowing similar love epithets from his still-pinnacle 'The Dreamer', off his Sometimes The Blues Is Just A Passing Bird EP. It's something as simple as, 'And you'll give me the look of thorns we give liars every night/ but I get you somehow'' that ends up leaving the lasting impressions long after the album's over.
With the pace slowed and the production values erratic and eroding, Matsson's pep gives way to plaintiveness ' and while he can contemplate an unknown force that shook the Earth in '1904', the imagery often takes hair-pin turns from one slice of pleasant rural nature to another. It's dizzying trying to follow along, and without the wit or buoyancy found on The Wild Hunt, songs like 'To Just Grow Away' and 'Criminals' politely breeze by, leaving us with insufferable riddles instead of evocative stories.
On The Wild Hut, Matsson used to be the dreamer who was 'the fire on the mountain' promising her, 'If I don't get you in the morning, by the evening I sure will.' Now he's the dreamer whose world has shrunk to a paler reality. Instead of angling to usurp the King Of Spain, it seems like he only wants to go for walks on his property. And now he asks her, 'Will there be time to harvest rivers that for so long refused to grow?' on the title track ' a beautiful, solo-piano ballad. His raspy voice still aches and arches over the songs and caries his wandering soul and eager heart, but near every other facet of There's No Leaving Now is compressed, leaving a much smaller impression than his previous albums. I'd weigh this fact less in the balance, but it took two years for The Tallest Man On Earth to make this record. It's only here that I wish Matsson would be more like Dylan and chose adventure over meditation ' and be quick about it.
Essential Tracks: 'Revelation Blues', 'There's No Leaving Now', and 'Leading Me Now'
Feature artwork by Drew Litowitz.
The ever-present sinister undercurrent to Metric has always been at odds with the light of their pop sensibilities. While optimism eventually took the lead on 2009's Fantasies, Synthetica represents a descent, and that dark side is now more ominous than cynical. When Haines sings lines such as 'I've got something no pill could ever kill' on the title track, it's with a feeling of triumph over a world of artificiality that sacrifices individuality, as the fast-paced power pop musical backdrop evokes a hurry-before-it's-too-late sense of urgency. Drum beats that march towards doom, cascading synths, and apocalyptic lyrics paint a crumbling dystopia on 'Speed the Collapse' but build to a toe-tapping, head-nodding liberation, complete with 'aah aah aah' singalong vocals.
Gritty lead single 'Youth Without Youth' is a refresher on everything that has made the music of Metric so endearing for the past decade. The latest in a grand tradition of short, punchy synthpop smashes filled with hooks, 'Youth Without Youth' brings something different to the formula this time around in the form of a glam-gone-industrial vibe that juxtaposes Gary Glitter with Marilyn Manson circa Beautiful People. Here, Metric's perpetually socially aware lyrics go down with the spoonful of sugar that is the equal parts sweet and scathing voice of Haines.
Exuding both mystery and wonder and dropping from soaring to breathy, Emily Haines' vocal stylings are always the centerpiece of a Metric album and its equally dichotomous musical themes. Synthetica is no exception, but here they are processed with purpose, such as with the unworldly distorted backgrounds of 'Youth Without Youth'. On opener 'Artificial Nocturne', the Haines' delivery of opening lines 'I'm just as fucked up as they say/ I can't fake the daytime/ I found an entrance to escape into the dark' strips the humanity from the song and enables the squalid throbbing synth line to set the tone for the album. One of Synthetica's most charming moments comes when Haines adapts a high-pitched, child-like soprano for 'Lost Kitten'. Not only does 'Lost Kitten' bring to mind Grow Up and Blow Away, but it's also a testament to the element of whimsy that's so rarely found in pop music today.
The manufacturing plant that is Synthetica is not without its flawed models, where something went amiss during the process of manufacturing. 'Breathing Underwater' feels more like an example of overproduced pop, rather than any subversion of it, while dramatic tension escapes the layered vocals and fuzzed-out synths of 'Dreams So Real'. Synthetica's penultimate track 'The Wanderlust' features a cameo vocal appearance by Lou Reed, and like everything else Reed has touched in recent years, 'Wanderlust' is noteworthy purely for the curious novelty factor and little more. While Reed's vocals do noticeably respond melodically to Haines', rather than standing as a total anachronism, the disparity never becomes a fully working one, and the track would be best served as a B-side.
So what is Synthetica? According to an open letter from Haines, it's about 'being able to identify the original in a long line of reproductions' and 'what is real vs what is artificial,' while musically standing as 'the sonic culmination of everything [they've] done.' On Synthetica, Metric explores the dark side of an artificial world, while simultaneously appropriating it and offering new twists on the band's familiar aesthetic by turning away from their new wave roots. Synthetica is also the latest in a series of Metric albums whose greatness comes in moments, rather than being fully actualized.
Essential Tracks: 'Youth Without Youth', 'Speed the Collapse', and 'Lost Kitten'
