« Video: Blank Dogs - "Setting Fire to Your House" | Main | News: The Kills end Boulder show early, Alison Mosshart taken to the Hospital »
April 22, 2009
Quartet
I'm hard-pressed to pin down a specific time Bradford Cox is is porting to in his latest digital single. There's something of a loose, beatnik vibe to the whole thing though, right down to its disdain for the bourgeois 'burbs. "Suburban streets, you've been cruel to me. I hate your light. I hate your time." Alienation is not new to the Cox oeuvre. Notably though, I think this is about as clear and un-fuzzed as I've ever heard his singing voice, which is typically sad and lovely. Remember, just a few years ago, they were getting hit with the "he can only hide under distortion" knock. You don't hear that one much anymore.
Brakes' frontman Eamon Hamilton is a friend of mine (like an actual friend, not a twitter pal) and when I see him he's mainly pretty jovial. So, understand my surprise upon spinning his band's latest record Touchdown (out now on Fat Cat) to find this nasty, snarling little In Utero unit shifter buried amid a set of tightly crafted melodic rock. I'm not sure the source of the of the puddle that needs soaking up but I think we can safely assume that the rag in question is blood-saturated. Early candidates: fingers, eardrums.
Is the fog lifting ever-so-slightly on these mysterious hometown name usurpers? A bit, I guess, but not enough to put me off. This whole track is a mixed signal, still. Even as they're brightening their palette a little bit, with decipherable lyrics, cozier synth tones, and warmly distorted guitar, they are exalting the futility of warmth in general. "The sun can't warm you up" after a night of debauchery, sirens coo, sounding delightfully drugged out, even mid-moralization.
Automelodi - "Ciao! Ciao. Ciao?"
I suspect most of you trend hoppers have stopped looking north to Montreal for your cues on cool, but I've got evidence here that the chilly province isn't entirely tapped out of unknown pleasures. Xavier Paradis had been recording under various synth-centric monickers for over a decade, before rebranding himself Automelodi. Thus, it's no real shock that this music should sound so rich and fully formed. Xavier sounds a single Y chromosome over the androgynous line (or slightly like Lissy Trullie smoking another pack a day). It's tempting to call this a modern continuation of the ultra-obscure Franco synth wave that brought us such forgotten early 80s luminaries as Ruth and Charles de Goal, but those bands were barely this warm and inviting. It swings from romantic desolation to giddy pop swells effortlessly, guided by insistent blips. Also, the morphing punctuation makes the song's title unreasonably fun to say aloud. You can order their Fait ses Courses EP here.
Posted by Jeff Klingman at April 22, 2009 07:46 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.merryswankster.com/movabletype/mt-tb.cgi/2054
Comments
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)
