Beirut/Realpeople – “My Wife, Lost in the Wild”
There’s a lot to be said for continuing to dig in the same hole. Each of Zach Condon’s projects with Beirut tend to yield a consistently good-to-really-good album or EP, and a monster single (“Postcards From Italy,” “Elephant Gun,” “Nantes”). His inevitable best-of is going to be required listening, but in the meantime his albums tend to get sidelined in favor of other, flashier things. The obvious solution to this is, of course, to make an electronica album. Though he may have hedged his bets by releasing a double EP, March of the Zapotec & Realpeople: Holland, which splits itself between a traditional Beirut side and a side with beats, Condon surprisingly knocks the electronica side out of the park. Bright Eyes should probably start taking notes. The knob twiddling on “My Wife, Lost in the Wild” ain’t much to speak of on its own—just some resolutely PBS sci-fi synths—but Condon’s anachronistic voice sounds as if it were secretly always meant for guesting on a Chemical Brothers album.
The Black Lips – “Short Fuse”
Crystal Antlers – “Andrew”
As a general rule, the better your garage band is, the less likely your neighbors are to call the cops. While The Black Lips seem intent on finding the precise amount of preciousness they can stuff into a sloppy rock song before they drive even the grooviest suburbian to dial the police, Crystal Antlers seem more interested in deliberately wading through a century’s worth of guitar licks and growls in order to strike a delicate balance between something that sounds raw up close and pleasant from a distance. “Andrew” could be a soul burner if it weren’t dressed up in sludgy guitar noodling and plaintive screaming. (We anticipate an incredible cover by Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings.)
Teengirl Fantasy – “Portofino”
If it didn’t introduce a significant sample of “Throw Some D’s” at the 3:09 mark, Teengirl Fantasy’s “Portofino” would merely be a Four Tet-influenced piece of instrumental hip-hop, building a music-box melody into a perfect, patiently droning build. As it is, the song hinges on the tension between its resolutely anti-pop framework and the pop sentiments of the “Just bought a Cadillac” part of the appropriated chorus. In a post-Girl Talk world, what wins? The Rich Boy sample isn’t what makes the song work—it would be just as catchy without it. But the Rich Boy sample defines “Portofino”—without it, it would definitely get lost in the annals of new-millennium electronica. And yet, Teengirl Fantasy want to resist mere gimmickry, washing the sample in reverb and using it only at the peak of the song. It’s almost as if “(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan)” had erupted into a rap chorus instead of Ben Gibbard’s emotive dream imagery.
The Hold Steady – “Atlantic City”
Bruce Springsteen spent the early part of his career proving the inherent power of the rock gesture. In the 70’s, every Springsteen song seemed to climax with the same moment—when the wall of sound drops out, and Springsteen shouts the hook over hand-claps (with his arms, of course, extended over his head) and the thudding bass drum—before trailing out, led by the caterwaul of a wayward saxophone. Every song was an anthem, even the ballads, and every vocal contained Thunder Road’s pledge to ride out tonight and case the promise-land. When the stark Nebraska appeared in 1982, it stood in direct opposition to the sound Springsteen had spent a decade crafting, but managed to pack in the same emotional wallop without the advantage of a band and a projected stadium full of people. “Atlantic City,” the album’s spirit animal, traded the hand claps and bass drum thuds for a moment of absolute silence. Then, a harmonica solo.
That pivotal moment in Springsteen’s career didn’t quite turn out the way anyone expected it. Two years later, he had the biggest hit of his career in Born in the U.S.A.—a meticulously polished album that shared more in common aurally with Huey Lewis than with Bob Dylan. Things just got glossier and more commercial from there—Tunnel of Love followed in 1987, and the disappointing Human Touch and Lucky Town in 1992. When those albums faltered on the charts, and Springsteen felt he needed to revamp his career, he returned to the spare acoustic songwriting of Nebraska with The Ghost of Tom Joad. But it didn’t quite work. Nebraska’s songs had been written in the model of Springsteen’s 70’s output, and, stripped down to their essence, retained the punch of those rock gestures. The Ghost of Tom Joad was written in the model of Nebraska, and it was boring as balls.
When Bruce asked The Hold Steady to cover one of his songs for the War Child: Heroes benefit compilation, the band chose to re-imagine “Atlantic City” as if Springsteen had never taken the aesthetic leap of Nebraska. As such, it’s stacked with all of the classic rock gestures that The Hold Steady does so well (and maybe they sound even better because they were largely absent from last year’s Stay Positive)—the hushed, meaningful opening verse sung over a few loose piano notes; the triumphant explosion of the saxophone riff that follows; the multiple uses of that moment when the band drops out and a minimal but confident rhythm section drives the vocal—on the second verse, after the first chorus, and culminating in Craig Finn and Franz Nicolay harmonically repeating the line that wouldn’t sound out of place in one of their songs, “Everything dies/That’s a fact/Maybe everything that dies/Someday comes back."
-Martin Brown, 2009
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