Panda Bear {& the more the merrier}

As you would assume, I've been hard-pressed to properly post as of late. As a genetic default, this puts me into a spiral of guilt that perpetuates delayed postings which equals no postings which equals more guilt which means I'm blaming my mother.

Isn't that what I'm supposed to do in my late-20s when I'm questioning inherent personal behaviors?

Since taking over for Mckay two years ago, I have a lot of heart for ES and being able to share music with the five or six of you that check back from time to time. To be sure we keep the ES closet full, I've decided to bring on guests writers - particular people particularly passionate about music. They're only requirements are to stoke the blog fires, exercise witty banter and be scorchingly good-looking. We've set a high-bar around here.

So without further ado - ladies and gentlemen: the reputable Dustin Artz!
{f*ck...i gotta step up my game}

xx, chirgo
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I like lists.

Every year on my phone I make a list of all the new albums about to come out. Next to each sits a number denoting how many times I'll eventually listen to it.

Anyway.

For most of 2010 Panda Bear's name sat on that list with a big 0. His album "Tomboy" kept getting delayed and delayed, and that stubborn little zero brought me a pang of disappointment every time I glanced at it.

So I'd listen to "Person Pitch" one more time. Every track on it flawless, just as relevant today as it was four years ago; hazy, warm and dream-like, so simple yet so overwhelmingly grand and lush. Something sacred about it. Add to that the accessibility of "Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavillion," and my anticipation for "Tomboy" couldn't have been any greater.

So I might be a bad guest host critic for this one.

"Tomboy" is solid, don't get me wrong. The songs are shorter, but still contain the simple, repetitive melodies that put you in a trance. They just end sooner. Long, repeated choruses like "Know you can count on me," still make you feel somehow more pure just for listening to them. Percussion like that on "Slow Motion" still gets your head nodding, recalling the stutter stop of throwback Audio Two's "Top Billin." Interwined with all the reverb and repetition to come, Panda Bear still creates magic.

And yet while the formula is still mostly there, the biggest shift on this album seems to be an emotional one. While Panda Bear is always reflective, at his most impactful he dwells in the land of optimism and triumph. E.g. Noah yelling at his brother at the top of his lungs to open up his throat…"MATTTTT!!!!!!!" This album on the other hand is enveloped in a bit of darkness, the songs increasingly tinged with loneliness as "Tomboy" progresses. There is something uneasy lurking in the corner. And instead of leading us out, like the guitar that strains to be heard and eventually prevails on "Bros," Panda Bear lets doubt sit with us as the album stops spinning.

Which, of course, is not always a bad thing. If I threw away all the self-absorbed melancholy in my CD collection I wouldn't have much left. But when you look up to a musician like some sort of Holyman the way I do Noah Lennox, well, to be frank, it just kind of bums me out.

That said, I'm probably going to listen to it a hundred times and have it end up on my best of 2011 list.

Panda Bear // Slow Motion

Solarium Guns in Paris Gold

10.26.10 UPDATE: I was metricfied last night - big time. Still don't have full strength of hearing in my right earbones thanks to the EXPLOSIVE guitars. Ms. Haines was a whirl of peroxidized gold lamé, and had the audience practically eating out of her thin, smack-ready hands. A certain person who is unendingly difficult to dazzle and has a hard time with the word "fabulous" beamed it was "best show {he's} seen in a long time. Maybe ever." His tee was also drool-soaked from watching Emily for a hour and a half, but I do take him at his word, and agree with it. Pole vault, don't walk, to catch them back on opening for Muse.


METRIC TONIGHT, taking a little break from their tour with Muse.
The National / RVA / 8p doors

Metric // Gold Guns Girls
Metric // Gold Guns Girls {Acoustic}

Lykke Li is back on tour for a short stint while finishing up her LP, sole Stateside stop is Le Poisson Rouge / NY / December 1. She laments the stage is easier to handle than real life - along with playing with mirrors out in the desert in her skivvies and bed linens.



Lykke Li // Paris Blues

Active Child

Well...erm...
Can't really top that behemoth post of a mixed tape. Ever ever. But I do hope all the feudal Lords and Ladies of the Empty Skeleton Kingdom revels in the soundwaves of my birthday tribute as much as I do.

Only feasible followup is to wax poetic over some favorites - cuz I know you want all the smutty slutty deets. I mean, along with the music! Right?
What are you really reading this blog for, anyway?

All right, Active Child = Pat Grossi, former member of the Philadelphia Boys Choir until his father packed up the family and took them cross-country before Grossi cleared the frightening forest of puberty. It was a necessary move - Daddy Grossi worked for Priority Records, a major rap label that required him in the West office. So Grossi grew up with full reign to listen to dirty gangster rap and shake hands with Snoop, Dre and other greats.

For some reason this trips me out when you check out the tracks, which sound like an evangelical rave.
But, as I think about it, raves have more in common with evangelical gatherings than most any other comparative event.

It took some time, some experimentation, but Grossi finally elicited a heady potion to combine electro synth with monastic hallows and his otherworldly tenor. Layers and loops later, you got yourself an EP my friend.

If you didn't catch it earlier.

Active Child // Wilderness

Charlotte Gainsbourg

The just-a-slip-of-a-thing Charlotte is no stranger to the scene.
Singing scandalous melodies with her dear daddy, Serge, barely out of grade school.
Playing dressup in movies like L'effrontée and La science des rêves (The Science of Sleep, you wanted to ride that patchwork pony, too).
Dropping two albums, one of which climbed to the top of the French music charts. All seemingly a magnolia dream until she suffered a cerebral hemorrhage in 2007.

Two years later, Charlotte collaborates with Beck on her most recent release, IRM. Influenced by her chaotic experience (MRI, ah - now we're up to speed), the two connected on weird levels. We're talking Beck-written lyrics like "drill my head full of holes / to let the memories out" before he even knew what had happened. Makes you want to touch fingertips with your cubicle-mate and zip energies to each other.

IRM is Charlotte retro soul '60s baroque with strokes of Beck's electronic ambience. Sometimes darkly droning and steely, at others layered like tulle. Enjoy a track more on the tutu side.

Charlotte Gainsbourg // Me and Jane Doe

Cold Cave

If you're of the emotive, angsty, poetry reading sort you may already be familiar with Wesley Eisold. A poet and a musician, I'm not sure if he's quite a bard - more of an alumnus of the scene. Or maybe you're a Fall Out Boy groupie and know he's had some songwriting plagiarism beef with Pete Wentz? H-anyways, after years of hardcore punk noise bands like Give Up the Ghost he's taking a cerebral holiday as frontman of Cold Cave with current fellow bandmates Caralee McElroy and Dominick Fenrow.

More Depeche Mode than Fugazi - most of the early November release, "Emotional Rescue," keeps you at arms length. It's like prodding human emotion with a chilled iced tea spoon; stirring things up but everything stays colloidal. This track's an exception - a pulsing thrum of a daydream with the mantra "I"m never going back." The refrain keeps in line with Cold Cave's outlook that one can feel like there's nothing more and everything more. I'll have both with a slice of lemon, please.

Cold Cave // Life Magazine

Washed Out

A Thursday of Indian Summer. Makes me want to shuck my skinnies and expose faded tanlines to the level three UV Index.

Or I'll listen to Washed Out. Oozy boudoir synth, all pink pillows of sea foam and low country longing from Ernest Greene. I'll throw on neon wayfarers, slide my cut-neckline sweatshirt off one shoulder and smack some watermelon bubblicious before a solid sesh of seven minutes in heaven.

Washed Out // Feel It All Around

Mochipet

FROM TAIPEI. via the Bay Area.

does a bitchin resume of labels a label whore maketh? he's recorded on the following:

-Bpitchcontrol (Berlin) [Ellen Allien's label]
-Tigerbeat6 and ViolentTurd (Oakland) [Kid 606's labels]
-Component (CT)
-ExNihilo (Belgium)
-Detroit Underground [awesome]
-Voxxx (Chemnitz)
-Deathsucker (UK)
-Intellectos (Boston)
-Schematic (Miami) [Otto von Schirach's label]
-Reconfiguration (China)
and his own Daly City Records (Daly City)

Many people consider this hip hop, and Mochipet himself claims that his favorite music is "anything not electronic." Well, then.


Mochipet at Bangface, London

Mochipet // Master P on Atari

Two Fingers

If you've ever listened to Amon Tobin you know he can go deep and tribal. He was spreading Brazilian sound around before Crookers and the Twelves took over blog house.

His new project with Joe "Doubleclick" Chapman, Two Fingers, takes that deep down to the next level of the inferno, mixing that DEEP (did I mention it's deep? and tribal) sound with a lavish recordful of British and American MC's. They. Bring. It.


Two Fingers and the MC, Sway, recording in Montreal

Two Fingers // High Life featuring Sway

Wavves

Three-chords plus distortion divided by lo-fi static equals California beach punk in this disaster of an equation. The dingy noise plaguing this entire album will make your ears bleed if you forget to take a break every few songs. But do that and you might find yourself hearing a nice, and sometimes melodic, extension of 80's punk sock. I mean rock. Punk sock? I’m sick, forgive me. Physically sick, not mentally demented. The latter is yet to be proved.

But seriously, you could end up stabbing your grandmother’s eyes out with the dull end of a plastic spoon if you take too much in at once. So please BE CAREFUL!

I’d like to make a quick note about the labeling of music. Or rather propose a question about it. What the fuck is College Rock? Who decides what gets labeled what and on what criteria? Are those in college the only ones who can appreciate such music? And what if you’re an athlete that goes straight to the NBA after high school because of a gifted set of calves? Do you bypass this music altogether like some type of music time machine? That seems really unfair. I mean just because I can jump really high doesn’t mean I don’t want to enjoy some quality sock rock. I’m just sayin’ maybe the powers that be should be more thoughtful when it comes to these sorts of things. You never know who’s gonna get hurt.

Never mind, I don’t care anymore.

See also No Age and Jay Reatard.

So Bored

Handsome Furs Like To Travel

Husband and wife duo, Alexei Perry and Wolf Parade’s Dan Boeckner, have an inspiring story. They travel and then write music based on what they’ve absorbed. And what they’ve absorbed is a tightly nit ball of electronic beats and quiet rage. According to them, they’d both love to be foreign correspondents. Just a bit of advice, stick to the music. And to the fucking. It’s good for all of us. They’re currently touring in France, Italy, and Canada before hitting up Iowa and Kansas.

Handsome Furs' sophomore album, Face Control, out today, promises to be dance-worthy and soulful at the same time. Soul dancing is not advisable. Here’s a taste.

I’m Confused

Did I mention Alexei is hot? Or did you not see the photo?