Great EPs of 2007

As part of our continuing year-end coverage, we're going to feature some of the great shorter releases this year that were categorically excluded from our top 25.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Is Is
Karen, Brian, and Nick have really perfected their formula. The two sides of the YYYs coin are the frenetic stomper and icy ballad, best exemplified by "Rockers to Swallow" and "Down Boy". The three seem to pull together as a unit more tightly than on Show Your Bones, regaining more of the garage rock aesthetic from Fever to Tell.

Black Kids - Wizard of Ahhhs
The other important self-release this year after In Rainbows. If Tokyo Police Club (and Voxtrot and Arctic Monkeys before them) hadn't done the "darling of the blogger based on less than 20 minutes of recorded material" thing last year, I'd say Black Kids were doing something extraordinary. Still, the catchiest four songs of the year. Seriously.

Grizzly Bear - Friend
The brooding melancholy of 2006's Yellow House returns here but with more verve, more urgency, and energy than that still excellent LP delivered. The psych-folk virtuosi still speak softly, but carry a slightly bigger stick this time around. Their cover of The Crystals' "He Hit Me" is a standout. The covers by CSS, Band of Horses, and Atlas Sound are nothing to write home about, but they don't detract substantially from the quality of the EP as a whole.

Tokyo Police Club - Smith
A super short set from an already short-winded band, Smith showcases the slower, less overdriven side of TPC, even more so than side 2 of A Lesson in Crime.

Murmurings of a New MBV Record...

Though this story has been heavily reported on Pitchfork, we would be remiss if we failed to make some mention of it here. There have been rumours of a new album from shoegaze masters My Bloody Valentine. Such rumblings are substantiated by the band having scheduled several dates for the summer of 2008 (which sold out quicker than you can type "My Bloody Valentine"). A disappointing but unsurprising corollary to the scheduling of these dates came when the band all but silenced speculation that they would be appearing at 2008's Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. The follow up to the groundbreaking "Loveless" is as of yet untitled, but still promises to be among the highlights of next year. The stage is set.


-PTC

Genealogy!: The Velvet Underground

In our newest regular feature, I'll explore an artist or otherwise important institution that has contributed to the development of independent music as we know it. In this post, I investigate The Velvet Underground.

The two most instructive terms I've come across in describing The Velvet Underground are "avant-garde" and "proto-punk". The two mesh nicely. Any group presaging a musical development on the magnitude of the emergence of punk by more than a decade must have certainly been cutting edge. Until The New York Dolls and The Sex Pistols, it is doubtful that any group produced music so completely askew from established norms as to truly warrant being called avant-garde. VU were doing more than throwing genres, influences and studio gimmicks together. They forged an altogether new kind of music.

Hazy and dark, VU and contributor Nico probably went unmatched in innovation until two gents named Lee and Thurston started playing with screwdrivers. The Sonic Youth comparison is especially apt given the heavy presence of female tenors Nico and Kim Gordon in both groups, chiming guitars, and obtuse tunings. It's surprising how few music writers bring up these parallels.

Often lumped unfairly in with the 60s psychedelic movement, VU had artistic drive that the meandering Grateful Dead or Jefferson Airplane could not match. Though considered the fathers of punk, they shunned much of that genre's testosterone. If Thurston Moore and J Mascis are the fathers of indie rock, then the still relevant Lou Reed (see our The Killers - Sawdust review) must be some kind of great-grandfather.

Spotlight On: White Rabbits

Tokyo Police Club meets Voxtrot (listen to opening track "Kid On My Shoulders" and tell me that's wrong).

Maybe you have not heard "Fort Nightly" by White Rabbits. It's an exceptional record released just around the same time as (and admittedly, in the shadow of) The National's masterwork "Boxer". As such, it was overlooked by many within the indie community (this blogger included). But now that the smoke has cleared from such landmark releases as "Boxer", "The Stage Names", and of course, the monumental "In Rainbows", it seems fitting to take a look back and appreciate this charming album by an unheralded but quite talented group of musicians. This record brims with verve and guts from the very beginning, and unapologetically rocks and rolls for a captivating 41 minutes. Sure, there are albums that you should listen to before this one, but you really ought to listen to this one.


-PTC

Record Review: Broken Social Scene Presents Kevin Drew - "Spirit If..."

Rating: 5.6 / 10.0

This record is the first in a series of solo albums (the “Broken Social Scene Presents…” series; how apt) from the legendary Canadian indie-rock super group. Anyone who has listened to Broken Social Scene would rightly expect a thing or two from it, then. Kevin Drew is a critical member of the band, and in the end, that proves to be both the best and the worst thing about this record. He fails to meaningfully deviate from the sound of his main project, but lacks the support of its other, vital members. As such, this record, while a showcase of Drew’s exemplary songcraft, is somewhat thin, and sounds like a band trying to ape Broken Social Scene rather than the work of the brains behind that magnificent machine.

What should a Broken Social Scene side project sound like, then? Well, I can’t rightly answer that question. But I can tell you what it certainly should not sound like, and that is Broken Social Scene. What is remarkable about the band is the diversity of influences that come together to make the whole: whether it is the crafty, shimmering indie-pop Feist presented on “The Reminder,” or the Latin-infused groove of lead guitarist Andrew Whiteman’s exceptional “National Anthem of Nowhere,” released under the moniker Apostle of Hustle. Those side projects made me appreciate Broken Social Scene more, because they made me hear different aspects of the music, different facets of the sound. Drew’s record does no such thing. I hear Broken Social Scene minus Feist, Whiteman, Canning, et. al., which pales in comparison to the complete group’s work. The ambition is here, but the skill and diversity of ability to pull it off is absent, which proves to be this album’s tragic flaw (ALL of the drums sound like 7/4 Shoreline. Every damn track, I kid you not). The high points of the album are the places where Drew embraces the “solo” aspect of this project: “Broke Me Up” is a lovely, introspective tune that is clearly the work of a man who sounds glad to be working alone.

All in all, there are no really bad songs on this album. There are even quite a few good ones. It just fails to satisfy. Here’s the biggest problem with the record: after spinning it, I felt like I needed to go listen to Broken Social Scene so that I could hear “Spirit If…” sound the way it should. So I listened to “You Forgot It In People,” and found myself saying, “Oh, that’s what he was trying to do. I get it.” That compulsion did not come to me after listening to “The Reminder” and it certainly did not come after I listened to “National Anthem of Nowhere”. Those albums were real side projects - solo work that had a purpose. “Spirit If…” is the work of one member trying to recreate the sound of his band. When you’re a member of a group like Broken Social Scene, such efforts never really have much of a prayer of being successful.


-PTC