Fizz, Flash, French (NLST66)
20 June, 2014
Is it wrong that I'm putting off a blog for the local paper to bring you a long-overdue Soundscape roundup? Probably. But this stuff excites me way more than the carefully cultured art-damaged "tolerant" scenesters that ruled the popularity contest/music award ceremony last night. If I could please, please, please never have to sit through the painfully pretend-coy, I-give-up, dainty teacup ukelele sound of Four Eyes for the rest of my stay in Athens, I wouldn't ask for anything else. (Except to please, please also never have to sit through a intolerably bluesy-whiny T. Hardy Morris performance. Of course, the whole dirty details will be pressed into words before this day is over, so stay glued to yr TV set (TV).
UPDATE - Seems the newspaper doesn't need my write-up, since the editor already wrote one. Go figure. Guess my real blogging finesse will be tested tomorrow after tonight's outing. Ah well. I'll post it up here anyway. Eventually.
UPDATE - Seems the newspaper doesn't need my write-up, since the editor already wrote one. Go figure. Guess my real blogging finesse will be tested tomorrow after tonight's outing. Ah well. I'll post it up here anyway. Eventually.
Nice Legs – Vocalists can be a dime a dozen in these smaller outfits. Maybe it’s the proximity. Why don’t we hop a flight to South Korea? Here, from Seoul, shines the bass-heavy pop of Nice Legs. And what a lovely voice. I wish I weren’t so lazy / to change the things around me, she says on “Three” – but, m’dear, your bright and wistful graces could ripple these crowded waters yet. Not as petite and pixie-ish as, say, the chick from Deerhoof, but still young and green.
Lullaby Land is only the tiniest glimpse into this lush world - a bloom of bristling melody cut loose to float in the air (“One” and “Three”), a forlorn yet bouncy call-and-response (“Two”), and the sweetest little carousel (“End”), spinning at a snail’s pace as our cheeky protagonist (who, in this scenario, could be 24 or 16 or 10) sings across the horsies to her summer crush, I’ll be your god if you’ll be mine…
Quick. Grab yr bottle and catch this EP before it flies astray.
Lullaby Land is only the tiniest glimpse into this lush world - a bloom of bristling melody cut loose to float in the air (“One” and “Three”), a forlorn yet bouncy call-and-response (“Two”), and the sweetest little carousel (“End”), spinning at a snail’s pace as our cheeky protagonist (who, in this scenario, could be 24 or 16 or 10) sings across the horsies to her summer crush, I’ll be your god if you’ll be mine…
Quick. Grab yr bottle and catch this EP before it flies astray.
MISTER SUIT – Next contender for new fave single of 2014, if only because this Chicago native channels several disparate sources that tickle my gothic funny bone. No reference at all to the punkiest of Wire’s Pink Flag suite – “Hold On” is the jabbing, uber dancey missing link between Christian Death and the Horrors’ “Strange House” era (i.e the only Horrors album I come back to irregularly). Christ, this guy – his voice slips and slides all over the oil-slick churning groove. If it weren’t so sticky humid in here, I’d be all over this room.
The flip, “Get It Right”, can only be “new wave” (as the Bandcamp page claims) if new wave were always as laser-cut as the Fixx, whilst unraveling and fraying in your ears at the same time. Not as infectious as the A-side, but give the strident sucker a few spins and the impression will char another spot in yr cerebral lobes. Need more, dude.
The flip, “Get It Right”, can only be “new wave” (as the Bandcamp page claims) if new wave were always as laser-cut as the Fixx, whilst unraveling and fraying in your ears at the same time. Not as infectious as the A-side, but give the strident sucker a few spins and the impression will char another spot in yr cerebral lobes. Need more, dude.
TV Girl – Oh, I’m in love again. It’s true. Like one Bandcamp user commented, this is absolutely “a perfect pop album”. So effervescent in its texture, fuzzy yet not quite warm. Bright, but not sunny – more like glo-in-the-dark brites, bouncing blues and yellows and magentas. Crisp beats, synths fluttering like butterflies, breathing ragged neon mist...and of course that sublime sadness. “Pantyhose” is the first song in a long time with a story that made me gasp. Poor fellow.
Where are we, anyway? Give me a name here. Give me a hand. I’m trapped in a dream. Even more of an instant hit than Future Islands, and four times more lucid. Plus, whistling.
As a bonus, the band offers a jpg lyric sheet with the digitals, with “stylized visuals of beautiful women…added for visual pleasure”. That’s right, gentlemen – download this album and you’ll get free porn. Ladies will at least be content to see that the women in question are slender, not anorexic, with fairly average-sized boobs, and overall of the more free lovin’, late-sixties kind of mold. And if you think this is totally irrelevant in regards to the album, then you’re wrong – because TV Girl’s work is very girl-centric, sounding out her psyche and measuring her power in the perpetual romance cycle of pop. What she can say. The trump cards she can pull.
Where are we, anyway? Give me a name here. Give me a hand. I’m trapped in a dream. Even more of an instant hit than Future Islands, and four times more lucid. Plus, whistling.
As a bonus, the band offers a jpg lyric sheet with the digitals, with “stylized visuals of beautiful women…added for visual pleasure”. That’s right, gentlemen – download this album and you’ll get free porn. Ladies will at least be content to see that the women in question are slender, not anorexic, with fairly average-sized boobs, and overall of the more free lovin’, late-sixties kind of mold. And if you think this is totally irrelevant in regards to the album, then you’re wrong – because TV Girl’s work is very girl-centric, sounding out her psyche and measuring her power in the perpetual romance cycle of pop. What she can say. The trump cards she can pull.
Take “The Blonde”, for instance. To begin with, the verses echo The Cars’ “Drive”, which automatically resonates with shattering empathy. But the lyrics probe deeper, pressing deeper into the old stereotype about blondes and asking how she feels to be so wrongly misjudged as a sexual creature. The best part – the blackest, too – is after the narrator suggests that introverted blondes dye their hair:
it won’t do you any good
cause pretty soon your roots will be showing
and anytime you leave the room
They’ll ask you just where the hell
do you think you’re going
That’s the juiciest thing about French Exit – behind the Technicolor, glo-brite dream of it all is this bitter core, a resolute acceptance that the sexual fantasies often enacted by similar pop songs occur in real life with severe consequences. Both sides can be victims, and often are.
My one qualm is that the songwriter assumes quite often that females have this innate intuition about what to do in these sticky relations, and how to turn things to her advantage, which is a gross overstatement. I’m 24 and know nothing (nor do I care to know anything) from the universal spell book of man-charming. But that won’t stop me from swooning to this and seriously contemplating a French Exit T-shirt.
it won’t do you any good
cause pretty soon your roots will be showing
and anytime you leave the room
They’ll ask you just where the hell
do you think you’re going
That’s the juiciest thing about French Exit – behind the Technicolor, glo-brite dream of it all is this bitter core, a resolute acceptance that the sexual fantasies often enacted by similar pop songs occur in real life with severe consequences. Both sides can be victims, and often are.
My one qualm is that the songwriter assumes quite often that females have this innate intuition about what to do in these sticky relations, and how to turn things to her advantage, which is a gross overstatement. I’m 24 and know nothing (nor do I care to know anything) from the universal spell book of man-charming. But that won’t stop me from swooning to this and seriously contemplating a French Exit T-shirt.