Robert Christgau's Music Criticism Blog - Expert Witness - MSN Music

Odds and Ends 021

Pazz & Jop comments 2012

By Xgau Jan 18, 2013 7:13AM


Animal Collective: Centipede Hz (Domino)

All too theoretically fun-loving communards nice up the hilarity, whereupon their base tells them to stop being such goofs already ("Moonjock," "Applesauce") ***

 

El-P: Cancer4Cure (Fat Possum)

Loathing this fearsome gets kitschy fast unless it cops to caricature or abjures surreal overstatment‑-which latter his least austere album does sometimes ("The Jig Is Up," "Drones Over Bklyn") ***

 

Hot Chip: In Our Heads (Domino)

Possibly the world's most thoughtful and loving dance band‑-virtues that, tragically as usual, often aren't as exciting as one might hope ("How Do You Do," "Don't Deny Your Heart") **

 

Cat Power: Sun (Matador)

Chanteuse realizes she can say no to peace without giving love the fish-eye, lowering her tristesse quotient beaucoup ("Peace and Love," "3,6,9") **


 

Future: Pluto (Epic)

The truth is, his Auto-Tuned flow has more future in it than his intermittently interplanetary rhymes ("Turn on the Lights," "Permanent Scar") **

 

Tame Impala: Lonerism (Modular)

You have to respect a nuevo-psychedelic sage whose message to the world is "Nothing ever changes/No matter how long you do your hair/It looks the same to everyone else"‑-well, at least I do ("Apocalypse Dreams," "Feels Like We Only Go Backwards") **

 

Purity Ring: Shrines (4AD)

Displaced soprano asks musical question: is this home or exile? ("Ungirthed," "Lofticries") *

 

Andy Stott: Luxury Problems (Modern Love)

Electronics more human than sopranos! ("Sleepless," "Luxury Problems") *


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124Comments
fell in a well
Jan 23, 2013 3:53AM
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Tame Impala almost has a great sound, but loner-boy Kevin Parker is dying for some frog DNA to flesh out his music.
El-B
Jan 22, 2013 4:32AM
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Surprising discovery: "bitch I'm wavy" is scientifically accurate.

Paul Albone (Melbourne Paul)
Jan 21, 2013 4:17PM
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"agnostic bums and stoner tables"

 

Well that has got me ready for work this morning.  Sounds very Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band.

Semi Mike (ShadyShack)
Jan 21, 2013 3:53PM
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Testing , testing ....Nick’s new fὖcking system.


Anyway, just wanted to post some thoughts on more records I’m just getting around to for the first time. yes i'm lame. I don't know where this leaves my #11 Dylan Hicks, hope he doesn’t get pissed off.


todd- agnostic bums and stoner tables ( i like the production on this a lot. if you don't like the production here then you probably didn't like it on The Woods, and the words don't suck either)


patterson hood - heat lightning rumbles in the distance (heat lightning can't rumble only thunder can rumble, especially in the distance...i still love this album, its subdued but I worry his neverending well of stories will dry up one hot arid summer day soon.  i’m a pessimist I guess.)


jason isbell & the 400 unit- live from alabama (Hot cha cha! great live versions of his best songs and DBT classics...i'm late again) 


lee ranaldo- between the time and tides (just gorgeous guitar rock. makes me miss SY even more than i previously realized. Xtina As I Knew Her = best quine-like guitar work i've heard in a long time)


Not sure where all of these will fit into the scheme of my list just thought I’d ruminate out loud for a minute.
richbogich
Jan 21, 2013 2:40PM
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Cam, thanks for all the Sparrow music. I only have the A+ Volume 1, and have not heard it in quite a while, but now I'm craving  some Sparro(w)mania. What better way to honor MLK than to play the rousing "Martin Luther King", probably written soon after he was killed. He's called the "calypso king of the world" but you really wouldn't think so from the sly, witty, somewhat subdued soca songs on Volume 1. Not so with "King of the World", where he lets loose with long jams of that typical soca beat. A little too generic, but  still a well-executed groove. His lyrical delivery of  political and culture criticism  to the jubilant  beat of calypso is actually quite effective, serving like black comedy or satire.
 BTW, our host is quoted in the Wiki entry on him.
Not. Milo. Miles.
Jan 21, 2013 10:14AM
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Followup comment ---

Will Rigby, *Paradoxaholic*

Very strong, consistent album of rockin' poppin' tunes in which the pervasive element is humor -- some fun-ny, some sick, sick, sick.

Kurt
Jan 21, 2013 9:30AM
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To shoot off a quick thing about The Seer, I've never listened to the whole thing, but it sounded very hit-or-miss to me. I have some friends who got very into it, but I couldn't really feel it, at least not for the most part. I don't mind the 30+ minute noisefest part (which is as far as I made it into the album), it fits right in with the aforementioned "music for sadists" description, but when it's interspersed with stuff like the cult-chant opener, I don't really understand why even fans of the sound wouldn't just go back to "Filth" for a quicker, more precise fix (or better yet, Flipper's "Generic Album", which I found to give off a similar vibe, if a little more enjoyable).
JeffC77
Jan 21, 2013 8:33AM
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Hope I'm wrong, but from the title to the lyrics to the stately arrangements, Fade sounds like a valediction...
David54ev
Jan 21, 2013 3:33AM
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Greg Teta posted "what's wrong with amazon btw?"

 

Here in the UK at least it's their massive tax avoidance.

 

Not unique, of course, Starbucks are much the same and I do my best to avoid both if I can.

 

This isn't helped by the loss of HMV as now there's very few places where you can actually buy music face to face.

Cam Patterson
Jan 20, 2013 10:09PM
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I want to come back briefly to the Mighty Sparrow conversation we were having two weeks ago. I believe it was instigated by the inclusion of "Sparromania" in Odds & Ends 019. The first Sparrow review by Xgau (and the first time I'd heard of Mr. Sparrow) was in 1984, the review for "King of the World". All of our host's Sparrow reviews since then have been firmly in the CD era.

But "King of the World" itself has never been reissued on CD, nor is it likely to be considering how fecund, fractured, and overlapping Sparrow's recording career has been. And two other albums are mentioned in that capsule with enthusiasm.

One of those is "Hot and Sweet", which Milo lauded during our discussion. He's right, these are mid-70s re-recordings, but so were the first two Wailers albums on Island, and nothing is wrong with any of them. Fortunately, "Hot and Sweet" has been reissued on CD and is easy to find. A great first stop to make if you've never heard Sparrow and aren't already deep into calypso.

The other LP mentioned in the "King of the World" review is "More Sparrow More!!", which is from 1969 I believe. It leads with the not-self-negating "Sparrow Dead" and includes both "Cock Fight" and the timely "Martin Luther King". (I think if Sparrow deserves one gold medal, it would be for coming up with the greatest song titles of all time.) Interestingly, the liner notes mention the term "Sparromania", so the dropped "W" appears to have been going on for a while, regardless of how it started. Like "King of the World", "More Sparrow More!!" has never been reissued on CD.

So I'd start with "Hot and Sweet" and then maybe the Ice reissues (I'm as fond of Volume 2 as Xgau is of Volume 1, but all four are solid). If you've caught a buzz for the ebullience and wit and jam of the Mighty Mighty Sparrow, then you'll soon glom onto these too, which I don't think have ever been ripped before:

King of the World: http://goo.gl/Rn5Lg

More Sparrow More!!: http://goo.gl/2Mxgv


Not. Milo. Miles.
Jan 20, 2013 8:29PM
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Oh, well, there goes the football season. I'm fine with watching a Super Bowl and not giving a poop one way or the other. Without question, this is the beginning of the end of the Brady Era. He's not gonna win it all again.
JeffC77
Jan 20, 2013 5:38PM
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Resisted Jamey Johnson's Hank Cochran tribute until now because:
a) I've never cared for Johnson's own songwriting.
b) I felt the material was too shopworn.
I was wrong. At least half the songs are new to me, and the standards are reimagined and/or reinvigorated.
Moral: Trust The Dean.
Bradley Sroka
Jan 20, 2013 5:02PM
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Hey Bob, stop working! Go back on vacation! :)
Joey Daniewicz
Jan 20, 2013 3:00PM
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If you have Facebook, you can view my collection of writings about Swans' The Seer.  I'm currently trying to get to the bottom of why the album was so acclaimed in a way no other Swans album ever has been.  goo.gl/ErgrO

Incidentally, their 2010 album, My Father Will Guide Me up a Rope to the Sky fared about equally well as Grizzly Bear's Shields did this time around.  Those claiming it was "ignored" didn't see The A.V. Club's flat A or the fact that it beat out excellent collections from Gorillaz, M.I.A., Das Racist, and No Age.
Not. Milo. Miles.
Jan 20, 2013 11:29AM
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I still have my original vinyl copy of *Filth*. Probably won't sell it. Can't imagine playing it ever again, though.

From spin one, it was very clear to me that Swans was music by and for sadists.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

You guys can punch each other in the ears all you want.

Just do it over there.

Way, way, way over there.

PS: And I agree, nobody looks a whit more ridiculous in whips and chains and leather when they're a bloated sagging bag of dewlaps.

JeffC77
Jan 20, 2013 11:03AM
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"There will supposedly be a commercial Dabke CD eventually..."

Excellent.
Robert Christgau (Xgau)
Jan 20, 2013 10:38AM
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There will supposedly be a commercial Dabke CD eventually, but my sense is that these things happen slowly in the Sublime Frequencies world--could be a couple of months, or Christmas.



Jason Gubbels
Jan 20, 2013 10:30AM
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"Especially since their previous album, My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky, was completely neglected a few years ago."

I actually quite liked "My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky," although I'll agree it didn't receive quite the attention "The Seer" did.


"Old Testament meets Andrei Tarkovsky by way of Bela Tarr"

These references are a bit clunky, but at least they aren't as ludicrous as the high art signifiers I spotted weighing down any number of reviews for Scott Walker's "Bish Bosch".

But as far as the Old Testament goes, are we talking the Pentateuch or the Tanakh? I'll have to thumb through my copies of both to see if I can come up with a poetic flourish as unwieldy as "the sun f*cks the dawn".


Greg Teta
Jan 20, 2013 9:38AM
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Decherre-amyrigby.co​m- contact them and offer to pay for overseas shipping-what's wrong

with amazon btw?

JY49NY
Jan 20, 2013 9:27AM
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Funny thing is that after going away for a romantic weekend in gorgeous peacefulVermont - where the birds fly high and the fir trees sway in the wind, where the snow covers the land with a feeling of calm and quiet - we'll probably be graced on Tuesday with reviews of death grips and public enemy.  Ah, the life of a rock critic.

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about the blogger

Robert Christgau

Starting in 1967, Robert Christgau has covered popular music for The Village Voice, Esquire, Blender, Playboy, Rolling Stone, and many other publications. He teaches in New York University's Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music, maintains a comprehensive website at robertchristgau.com, and has published five books based on his journalism. He has written for MSN Music since 2006.

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