c.2010 New York Times News Service
'THIS IS HAPPENING' (DFA)
LCD Soundsystem
James Murphy, the semicomic force behind the one-man dance-rock band LCD Soundsystem, has loaded himself up with broad, juicy aesthetic problems. He makes the nature of those problems pretty clear, and so his records radiate with anxiety.
One problem is how to transfer the magic of one form to another. He admires the slow, additive, build-up-the-vibes process of an extended dance mix or a DJ set, and he wants to replicate it with live instruments in a single song. (In the studio, he plays all the instruments; for his live show, which will come to Terminal 5 in Manhattan for four nights starting Thursday, he uses a band.) He lays down simplistic but steady disco drumming, beautifully squelchy old synthesizer tones and a junkier version of the guitar-scratching perfected by James Brown's old guitarist, Jimmy Nolen.
Another is how, or whether, to be cool at an advanced age. (He's 40.) He has said that this will be his last LCD Soundsystem record, but whereas he used to take an entire song to transmit a hipster's age-consciousness - "Losing My Edge," his breakthrough from eight years ago - now he can transmit it in a single phrase. ("Everybody's getting younger," he sings in "Dance Yrself Clean," and we know exactly what he means.) This routine has made him a little bigger than his music, and it's become something he could potentially mine for a long time.
A lot of the words in and of themselves on "This Is Happening" - yowled, crooned or muttered as if he's making them up on the fly - aren't very good, except to engage you with the music. You wonder how he could share lyrics so half-baked. And paying that bit of attention brings you into the momentum and the particulars, a dry snare drum curiously low in the mix, overmodulated vocals and extra elements brought up loudly: synth percussion, high-hat cymbals, conga drums.
But you can't ignore those words, and the more they come to feel like branding, the more irritating they can be. Murphy specializes in circuitous or fake deep-thoughts - "complicated people never do what you tell them to" - or a kind of dopey metalanguage: "from this position, I can see both of them/from this position, I totally get how the decision was reached." Sometimes he writes reveries that start strong but peter out, as if he wanted to rewrite David Bowie's "Heroes" but suddenly found something better to do:
I miss the way the night comes
With friends who always make it feel good
This basement has a cold glow
Though it's better than a bunch of others
This music sounds fantastic, as usual - clean, tight and separated in the mix - but songwriting inspiration is in short supply. The aah-aah vocal chorus in the first track, "Dance Yrself Clean," is not amazing enough to bring back again for the last one, "Home." And the songs in general come from a hugely judicious mid-1970s to mid-'80s record collection: Brian Eno for the disembodied vocals; Bowie, Ultravox and the British new-romantic bands for the intellectual romance; Kraftwerk, disco and ESG for the beats; post-punk for the atmosphere.
And "Drunk Girls," the most rock 'n' roll track on the record, grates in exactly the same way as "North American Scum" did on the last album: It's empty provocation with a wink. It isn't a song about drunk girls, really; it appears to be a song about a guy who's had the great idea to write a song called "Drunk Girls" but can't convince himself that they're any better or worse than sober girls. There's a laugh in there, but it's a very short one.
- BEN RATLIFF
'TREATS' (Mom + Pop Music/NEET)
Sleigh Bells
Harsh and sweet, immense and airy, flippant and serious, blatant and subtle - Sleigh Bells works all those polarities, and more, on its all-out blast of a debut album, "Treats." Even after wide Internet exposure of demos, and brief yet clamorous live shows, the album versions of the songs maintain or increase the impact. The tracks don't just rock - they detonate.
This Brooklyn duo uses a straightforward formula. Derek Miller wallops the riffs he's assembled with guitars, electronics and drum machines, usually cranked up and maxed out. Alexis Krauss tops them with vocals that can be blithely melodic or vehemently chanted. She's likely to start or culminate a song without words, whether it's rhythmic heavy breathing or cooing "ah-ahs."
A similar approach has worked for MIA (whose label, NEET, released the album) and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (particularly in Sleigh Bells' "Infinity Guitars"). But Sleigh Bells sounds louder - as much through distortion as through volume - and it thinks younger, regularly glancing at adolescent aspirations and romances.
"Tell 'Em" opens the album with a riff that slams like a crunk drumbeat, blares a guitar hook, throws in dance-club handclaps and a sirenlike synthesizer, then piles on twin guitars for happy overkill, while Krauss tells "boys" and "girls" that "you can do your best today." In "Rill Rill," which adds some girl-group chimes to guitar chords sampled from Funkadelic's "Can You Get to That," Krauss sings, "Wonder what your boyfriend thinks about your braces."
There's nuance in the noise. One way Sleigh Bells makes its songs hit so hard is to make the beat start and stop, leaving gaps. In them, Krauss' voice might hover by itself, or Miller will reveal one of the small parts within the crashes. His tracks borrow from all over the place: trance-music synthesizer arpeggios in "Run the Heart," rockabilly reverb in "A/B Machines," metal power chords in "Treats," hardcore guitar frenzy in "Straight A's."
Miller has a gift for sonic irritation, like the naggingly repeating, bent guitar note that defines "Crown on the Ground." But merely staying abrasive would be too single-minded for Sleigh Bells. The beat calls for dancing, and there's delight in Krauss' voice as she sings hooks that could double as pep-rally chants or incitements to a schoolyard insurrection.
- JON PARELES
'INFINITE ARMS' (Columbia)
Band of Horses
Green Day took about two decades to make it to Broadway. Band of Horses is on a far quicker path.
On its first two albums, what Band of Horses lacked in songwriting depth it made up for in texture. For (sometimes) better and (more often) worse, this group has been ambitious with its rural indie rock, playing loose with density and lightness, loud and soft.
But on "Infinite Arms," its third album, Band of Horses' swipes at majesty have turned lazy. The opening song "Factory," bolstered with sweeping, mourning strings and brass, comes closest to the group's best work. From there, though, the mood lightens considerably, and disruptively. "Compliments" has a faint whisper of country-disco, and much of the rest of the album ("Dilly" and "Older") is redolent of the 1970s soft-rock folkies America. There's none of the dynamic intensity or yelping angst of the best, if overhyped, moments of songs like "The Funeral" and "Our Swords" from the 2006 Band of Horses' debut album, "Everything All the Time" (Sub Pop).
Instead, the band leans on plain, incredibly legible songs that have little to hide behind; successful in a gestural way, but little more. And the songwriting of the frontman Ben Bridwell, always a little obtuse, has begun to decompose, like sketches drawn from faded memories. At times, as on "Blue Beard," he lands on a stretch of trite imagery: "The Midwestern sky was gray and cold/the sun never shined but that's all right/I couldn't find letters that you wrote me."
In several places, he pieces together fragmented scenes, as if with stage directions already in mind. "The elevator in the hotel lobby has a lazy door," he sings at the start of "Factory." And on "NW Apt.," he coos conspiratorially, "Somebody trapped in an underground basement/just a few blocks down the road." Time for a quick set change.
- JON CARAMANICA
'ROYAL TOAST' (Cuneiform)
The Claudia QuintetThe Claudia Quintet, established a little more than a dozen years ago by the drummer and composer John Hollenbeck, turns out music of clockwork intricacy and crisp premeditation. But it's not a fussy enterprise, or given to pondering its own accomplishment. "Royal Toast" exudes the same coolly assertive air as each of the band's previous four albums, striking a similar accord between the factions of progressive jazz, classical minimalism and low-glare experimental rock.
By now that balance of styles reflects an established protocol, one slightly less unusual than when the group first started. Jazz and new music and post-rock, or whatever you want to call it, have been steadily encroaching on one another's turf for a while, sharing many of the same resources, even some of the same musicians. (Hollenbeck, for one, has longstanding ties to the interdisciplinary artist Meredith Monk.) The overlap has a lot to do with textural dynamics, which is what the Claudia Quintet has always been about.
Well, that and groove, on a cellular level. Along with Hollenbeck, an inventive and economical drummer, the band involves Chris Speed on tenor saxophone and clarinet, Ted Reichman on accordion, Drew Gress on bass and Matt Moran on vibraphone. "Royal Toast" also puts Gary Versace to work on piano and a second accordion: another pair of rhythm instruments in the lineup, and more grist for the harmonic mill.
Hollenbeck composes with an ear for passing tensions, some breezier than others. His band mates, all thoughtful improvisers, fill in the gaps, sometimes literally. "Royal Toast" includes brief interstitial tracks by each regular Claudia Quintet member, overdubbed with a version of himself from a separate take: So "Ted vs. Ted" has Reichman doubling an accordion prelude. It leads naturally into "Armitage Shanks," on which he solos over a row of telegraphlike rhythmic stoppages.
In several tunes, that one included, a solo gradually melts into a background figure, without any clear threshold. Structure and liberty are both so integrated into the band playbook that they don't assume any kind of opposition. That's more commonplace than it used to be too, though this group still makes it feel special.
- NATE CHINEN