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November 06, 2008
Four Tracks
Josephine Olausson always seems overexcited and slightly stuffed up. It’s hard to get an emotional read on her, as she seems perpetually halfway between spearheading a party and shutting herself in for weeks. In “Sea Sick” she’s railing against the horrors of her ocean cruise, bored to tears as the only would-be-relaxer with “an original hip.” Her mumbly Scandinavian warble is singular enough that it can make the defiant “I’m board to death on board this ship” sound almost exactly like the even further past wits end proclamation, “I’m bored to death of all this shit!” Her p’s are pointed. The Jock Jams stomp that joins it (that's stomp--stomp--STOMP--stomp--stomp--STOMP, for the record) can’t help but blur it towards the stronger emphasis. The backing track throughout emulates a creative mind reeling with lack of stimulation, reeling from sharpened guitar lines to chaotic horn spillage at ramming speed. Yes, she’s seen the buffet. No, she is NOT amused.
Times New Viking - "No Sympathy"
The Times New Viking songs I’ve loved this year have been warm and trebly to the point of near abstraction. “No Sympathy,” the sleepiest track on their recent Stay Awake EP, falls nicely into the romantic smudge category. If there's a reason it starts by faking an Indian radio signal, though, I’ve yet to discern it. That lively ghost of a signal gives way to the more familiar strains of tenatively sobbing keyboards and Beth Murphy's vocal mush. But I like it for its indistinctness. It’s broad colors are smeared lipstick red and watery mascara black, both bruised just slightly blue.
As Alden Penner and crew failed to play New York on election night, this mp3 is still our best lead about the reclusive Unicorn's new work. Their big city debut would have likely been forgotten in the glee riots that ensued anyway. "Perfect Fit" begins with Penner inching a mysterious little keyboard figure forward, sounding like a more frenetic version of a Harry Potter Hogwart's theme. Penner sounds more sincere here than his in his perpetually kidding Unicorn tracks. Which is not to say he follows a straight songwriting course, frequently breaking into wordy Malkmusian digressions, containing lushly emotive declarations themselves. "I wear the past like a second skin" goes one cryptic keeper. It sounds like its stifled a bit of our boy's pluck, really. But there's nothing on the horizon I'm more excited to hear than what exactly he's been up to in the Canadian wilderness for the last five years.
The only older track here was dragged from complete obscurity to semi-obscurity by Systems of Romance recently. I am informed there that Fad Gadget's frank Tovey was the first act signed to Mute Records after that label launched with the Normal's immortal "T.V.O.D."/"Warm Leatherette" single. "Scapegoat" from 1982's Under the Flag LP is more tongue in cheek than the label's industrial beginnings might suggest. Frank Tovey employs a disco throb, and a goofy Greek chorus to detail the blame laid on his narrator's feet. Where it really gets swell though, is in its final minute. Frank duets with a aloof French lass (is there any other kind?). He sounds big, but detached. She's small and close. The synths come rushing back, unmoved.
Posted by Jeff Klingman at November 6, 2008 07:20 PM
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