New Neutral Milk Hotel Tour Dates

New tour dates announced on what looks to be Neutral Milk Hotel’s Neverending Comeback Tour. Guess Jeff Mangum got over his decade of reclusiveness? I saw him live in 2011 in Woodstock, NY, and the prospect of seeing the entire band back together has me salivating. Still no TO dates, but a man can dream, yes?

Anyway, the additional dates:

10-11 Baltimore, MD – 2640 Space at St. John’s Church
10-12 Richmond, VA – The National
10-14 Covington, KY – Madison Theater
10-15 Urbana, IL – The Canopy Club
10-18 Memphis, TN – Minglewood Hall
10-19 Chattanooga, TN – Track 29
10-20 Birmingham, AL – Iron City
10-22 Athens, GA – 40 Watt Club
10-23 Athens, GA – 40 Watt Club
10-24 Athens, GA – 40 Watt Club
10-25 Asheville, NC – Thomas Wolfe Auditorium (Mountain Oasis Festival)
10-26 Atlanta, GA – The Tabernacle
11-10 Melbourne, Australia – Harvest
11-16 Sydney, Australia – Harvest
11-17 Brisbane, Australia – Harvest
11-28 Taipei, Taiwan – Hostess Club Taipei
12-01 Tokyo, Japan – Hostess Club Weekender

Vampire Weekend – “Ya Hey”

Are we excited for this album?

NO WE ARE NOT

I have this terrible feeling that the new album, Modern Vampires Of The City, is going to be a gigantic clusterfuck. This track is alright (minus the annoying high-to-low chirping being used as an instrument) and “Steps” comes off like a typical VW track, but “Diane Young” is such a horrific abortion of a song that I would not be surprised in the slightest if the album becomes the band’s Centipede Hz. Time will tell, I suppose – ten days to be exact.

Palma Violets – “Best of Friends”

This song. This song right here. Every time I hear it I feel the urge to write down the name, because I know I’ll forget it if I don’t, and yet I never do. Now it’s here, so that everyone can share in the fist-in-the-air, summer’s-here exultation that this track’s chorus and reverberating leads promise. Open-air garage rock for the nights that never end.

Tame Impala covering Outkast on Like A Version

Australian psychedelic juggernauts Tame Impala stopped by Triple J’s Like A Version and busted out a fantastic cover of Outkast’s “Prototype”. They’re all so young, to have that much soul.

Also from that session, a performance of the ubiquitous “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards”:

Cayucas – “Bigfoot”

Poor Cayucas. They just want to play the soundtrack to an endless summer, paying homage to Vampire Weekend and Beck along the way. These days, however, are a catalytic era for popular music; under the surface, an intense period of creativity and exploration is occurring. Bands like Cayucas that come along and just want to take stock of what’s already been accomplished are typically derided for being “derivative” and lacking in artistic merit. Albums like Bigfoot, though, aren’t about creating some new artistic paradigm, however; they’re just here for the barbeque and the brews. It’s an album written to be played in the summer, outdoors, and in this goal it succeeds admirably. The first two tracks, “Cayucos” and “High School Lover”, hit like a one-two punch to radio while we were all still languishing under snow, and they brought with them the promise of brighter, warmer days. Now that those days have arrived, Bigfoot provides a perfect accompaniment to them; it works for outdoor parties, BBQs by the lake, cottage get-togethers, or whatever other cliched Summer Activities you’re into. It doesn’t aim much further beyond that, and it doesn’t have to. You can’t discuss Hemingway and Proust with it, but who cares? You can chug a beer to it, it’s at least vaguely intelligent, and sometimes that’s all that really matters. Now go outside, or something.

Final Mark: B+

And, if you’re going to go outside, don’t forget to bring a book. If you need a book, you can find links to such sundries on http://www.trevorjameszaple.com . There’s even an excerpt you can download to try it before you buy it. Shareware stylez. Word.

Unknown Mortal Orchestra – “II”

In the wake of Tame Impala’s success with Lonerism, expect there to be many more bands that trade in nostalgia for acid-tinged rock edging their way into the light. Foremost of these is Unknown Mortal Orchestra; their love of funky drumming and tough, reverb-soaked guitar licks practically guarantees their ascendency to the ranks of indie buzz bands. The problem, however, is that this is largely all they do. Every track on the album follows the same sort of formula – drums like an old school hip hop sample cut through with guitar-noodle riffery – and deviates from this path only slightly. Some are louder than others – as on “The Opposite of Afternoon” – but they all cover the same sonic terrain. The high points of this style are, frankly, rather incredible: check out the single, “Swim and Sleep (Like A Shark)” for a good clue as to what a brilliant pop single sounds like in 2013. If the album stuck more to crafting moments like that, instead of losing itself in meandering, self-important guitar passages, it would be acclaimed. There is definite potential there, as long as guitarist/leader Ruban Nielson can get over himself long enough to realize it.

Final Mark: C+

And don’t forget to check out my book at http://www.trevorjameszaple.com, excerpt available for free and without much effort! Shareware 4 Lyfe.

Foxygen – “We Are The 21st Century Ambassadors Of Peace And Magic”

Foxygen is the result of a love for Sixties psychedelic troubadour rock filtered through a fine David Bowie mesh. Their third album is at once highly derivative and yet wholly original. Taken from the aspect of being an album solidly rooted in the 1960s, it is highly inventive, and stands alongside the bands it references as an equal, not a clone. None of the band members were alive when this sort of music was made, nor were they living during the waves of bands that referenced those bands. Nevertheless, they hit every mark with style and aplomb, whether it’s evoking Dylan on “No Destruction”, referencing Sgt. Peppers on their own intro, or shapeshifting Lennon with Seventies glam on the three-part “Shuggie”. The album is perfect to play around aging hippies; they get all misty-eyed and start talking about their favourite parts of the Sixties. Meanwhile, it’ll also get your local hipsters into a serious groove, getting the jump started in whatever espresso cafe or bookstore/bar you happen to be happening in. If they aren’t into it by the time that thrilling run in the first part of “On Blue Mountain” comes around, they weren’t worth the plaid anyway. Dress like a fop, smoke some pot, and guzzle cheap wine like it were going out of style: the band doesn’t just suggest that you do so, it demands it.

Final Mark: A

Pissed Jeans – “Honeys”

Factory towns are, by and large, not a terribly fun place to live. I’ve lived in more than a few, and believe me when I tell you that the curious intersections of sociology that occur in them have a tendency to wear you down after a while. Life there is as monotonous as the machines make it out to be; you get into a rut of the same old places populated by the same old faces. You go to the same bars, have the same drama, sleep with the same people. Pissed Jeans knows this life all too well. They come from Allentown, PA. You know, “Well we’re living here in Allentown/and they’re closing all the factories down/Out in Bethlehem they’re killing time/Filling out forms, standing in line”. It’s the existential ennui of such a place that lends the band the primal urge necessary to craft their brand of heads-down, cock-out torpedo rock. They exist in a similar sonic realm as Polaris winners Fucked Up, but where that band reaches for the esoteric, with concepts and operas, Pissed Jeans instead mostly just wants to follow the Stooges in terms of feedback, fucking, and getting fucked up. They succeed at this wildly; they can deftly balance rave-up bouncing garage punk (“Vain In Costume”, “Bathroom Laughter”) with Melvins-esque sludge (“Chain Worker”, “Male Gaze”). “You’re Different (In Person)” shows a deep love for the Jesus Lizard. It’s an album that seems to exist primarily to placate the fears of the nouveau aged who think the Nineties cornered the market on the Sabbath dream. It transcends these influences, though, with a deadpan sense of humour that sets it to an equal alongside the classics and a balls-out attack that makes it all seem curiously modern.

Final Mark: A-

Veronica Falls – “Waiting For Something To Happen”

On their second album, the English pop band continues to be rather difficult to pin down. They have wistful, twee melodies like genre legends Camera Obscura, but their sound is much more robust than anything that outfit ever released. They have elements of shoegaze and Eighties alt-rock, but they’re hardly the engine-rush, Hughesian soundtracking band that The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart perfected. The truth lies somewhere in the middle, like it always does: they aren’t prep-school-wistful, they aren’t a twee version of the Smashing Pumpkins, but they do okay. The C-86/Jesus And Mary Chain vibe some of the tracks hold helps to propel it along, but it gets mired down about a third of the way through and everything sort of sounds similar once you get to the end. Their 2011 self-titled debut held a lot of promise but Waiting For Something To Happen doesn’t really deliver, unless “promise” is supposed to lead to “more of the same”. The album’s title accurately describes the act of listening to it; you keep waiting for something to move you to the next level but nothing ever does. Decent enough, but rapidly approaching the vanishing point of “why bother?”

Final Mark: B-

My Bloody Valentine – “m b v”

When I first read that My Bloody Valentine was finally releasing a follow-up to 1991’s Loveless, a legendary album that stands as the icon of the shoegazer movement, my first question was, naturally, “why?”. I mean, seriously. If it’s been 22 years, what’s the point? Obviously the pressure of following up an album as iconic as Loveless is negated by the fact that more than two decades have passed. Surely the band members have better things to do with their lives than to gather together and try to relive past glories. Other iconic Nineties groups have tried to do so in the last few years; most have failed miserably. Did anyone really care about Soundgarden’s latest efforts? Does anyone besides the terrestrial radio heshers even listen to new Alice In Chains music? You don’t see Pavement releasing new material, and it’s not as though Slint has decided to try to out-do Spiderland. So, it was with trepidation that I listened to MBV. I even took quite a while to listen to it after I acquired it. It sat on my hard drive, gathering dread like spider webs. Even after glowing review after glowing review rolled in, I put off listening to it.

I shouldn’t have been afraid. It’s not Loveless, but it’s very, very, very good. It recreates the sonic stew the band bankrupted their label chasing all those years ago, and even manages to clean up the proceedings a little. The album is still mired in the lower frequencies, with subtle changes rumbling under the ghostly vocals and vacuum cleaner melodies, but there are nods to real, complicated percussion in places. It was rumoured in the late 1990s that Kevin Shields had recorded an MBV album that added jungle and drum n bass music to the mix, and the ghost of that long-shelved project still haunts tracks like “In Another Way. The pairing seems as though it should always have been; somewhere, someone has mixed a set of dnb paired with Isn’t Anything. It falls short of similar praise with its predecessor by slightly overstaying its welcome on a consistent basis. Several of the tracks run longer than they really need to, although a bit of longevity can be excused after such a long absence. Taken as a whole, m b v is a more than worthy followup to Loveless, and a prime contender for 2013 as well.

Final Mark: A