Good Weather For Airstrikes

The merits of the a-side have already been thoroughly discussed here, so this single review will serve more as a pedestal from which I can sing the praises of the b-side, “Fulwood Babylon”, which is one of my favorite songs of the year and perhaps the best-produced non-electronica songs to come out in recent history. The incredible production can be attributed solely to the presence of half-man half-magician Erol Alkan behind the boards on this, the first track he’s ever produced for a band. The song’s worth taking note of for that reason alone, and while the Blondes are right at home with Steve Mackey on the bulk of their ouevre, this collaboration with Alkan has proven to be an impossibly-perfect pairing and has yielded my favorite Long Blondes work to date.

As previously noted, the band score with the whole clever narratives/dark undertones/spiky guitars/thumping basslines thing, and “Fulwood Babylon” sees them perfecting this formula. Alkan makes his money on the depth and expansiveness of his productions (case in point: the reverb-drenched chorus vocals on his supreme “She’s Hearing Voices” remix), and those two bread-winning elements, coupled with the Long Blondes formula for success, result in an absolutely huge track in terms of both breadth and, er, awesomeness. Everything about the song works, from the way the alliterative hard consonants of the opening acapella verse gradually give way to the bassline that will prove to be the backbone of the song, to the way the backing vocals echo out into the ether, and finally to that incredible spoken word bridge, the latter of which is my single favorite moment in any song in 2006. As usual, Green Pea-ness (seriously, get on that shit) was the first to post the track and sums it up better, and “Fulwood Babylon” comprises one half of the greatest blog post ever (that Snowfight track somehow manages to be every bit as rare and incredible as “Fulwood”), so you’d be wise to your self a favor and head over there.

The single release comes in three formats, two releases on 7″ vinyl and one on CD, each with its own exclusive Alkan-produced b-side and unique Kate Jackson-created artwork. The other b-sides, “Platitudes” and “Last Night On Northgate Street” are okay and all, and while “Northgate Street” is pretty good, neither hold a candle to “Fulwood Babylon”. The band will be releasing their next single, “Once And Never Again”, on October 3rd, with their Steve Mackey-produced debut, titled Someone To Drive You Home, following on November 6th. Be sure to check out my mega-profile of the band here or the Hype Machine for more LB goodness.

MP3s:
“Weekend Without Makeup” - The Long Blondes ((highly recommended))
“Fulwood Babylon” - The Long Blondes ((HIGHLY recommended))

I’ve been having a love affair with The Long Blondes since Springtime. They’ll have multiple tracks on my year-end best of list, with at least one breaking the top ten. They’re easily my favorite new band of 2006 after Guillemots. The thought of their debut album, of which there are still no official details, more or less makes me squirm in my seat with anticipation. Yet, this is the first you’ve heard of them in this space (though they’ve been covered extensively everywhere else you look). I guess I’ve just been waiting for the right angle and entry point with which to start my coverage of The Long Blondes, but unfortunately none ever really presented itself, and I’ve just about reached the breaking point, so here begins our far-too-extensive coverage of the group.
I first heard of The Long Blondes on Rough Trade Shops’ Counter Culture ‘05 compilation early this year, when “Lust In The Movies” burst through my speakers with that unbelievably addictive “Edie Sedgwick! Anna Karina!” chorus, and those spiky guitars and thumping basslines sealed the deal, rocketing the Blondes to the top of my HolyShitFindMoreFromThisBandNow list. Further investigation put singles “Appropriation (By Any Other Name)” and “Separated By Motorways” in heavy rotation on my iPod, and shortly thereafter the “Weekend Without Makeup” single dropped, and well, the rest is history. On the topic of that last single, I’ll be saving discussion of the b-side, “Fulwood Babylon”, for my single review of the track, as it would just be downright unfair to the rest of the band’s ouvre to spend this introductory to the band gushing over one (albeit, immaculate) track when the rest of their library is so incredibly strong as well.

While the previous singles served to further pique my interest in the band, it wasn’t until “Weekend Without Makeup” that they reached the same plateau established on “Lust In The Movies”, which outside of its inclusion on that Rough Trade can also be found as the b-side (upstagery!) to their initial “Appropriation” single. “Weekend” finds the Long Blondes at their best; clever narratives obscuring dark undertones, that galloping rhythm section and a chorus with more punch than your high school prom. The track also finds the Sheffield five piece (of which no member is either blonde, nor terribly long) evoking memories of the blue collar grit and glamour of Pulp, fitting considering long-time Pulp bassist Steve Mackey handles production duties on the track. Additionally, Mackey has been announced as the producer for the group’s debut, of which their have been no details announced aside from the fact that Mackey will be producing and they’ll be heading into the studio in the near, if not immediate future. Go ahead and download the two tracks we’ve discussed so far while you catch you’re breath, I’m still not done.

MP3s:
“Lust In The Movies” - The Long Blondes ((highly recommended))
“Weekend Without Makeup” - The Long Blondes ((highly recommended))

I should stop writing now and just hit you with the goods before you all lose interest and just “Page Down” until you hit the rest of the mp3s, but I haven’t even gotten started yet (I mean, I told you before, this has been building up for a long time). Lead singer Kate Jackson, or indie crush of the year as I should probably call her, proves to be the perfect frontwoman for the group, as it’s her dynamic and deliverance that truly takes these tracks to the next level. The Blondes’ songs find Jackson juggling different female archetypes from track to track, and its her ability to write from these ever-changing perspectives that makes her narratives so enjoyable and refreshing to listen to. Whether she’s the helpless admirer (”Lust In The Movies”, “Autonomy Boy”), jealous or cast-aside lover (”Weekend”, “Giddy Stratospheres”, “You Could Have Both”), unattainable vixen (”Madame Ray”, “Fulwood Babylon”), or general guardian and bestower of cautionary advice (”Once & Never Again”, ), Jackson manages to consistently keep her lyrics fresh and we never find her repeatedly coming back to a narrative crutch, a truly admirable quality in today’s overly-recyclable music scene. The Long Blondes have also opened my eyes to how much I fucking love spoken word bridges and in the few songs where they pop up they serve to perfectly compliment Jackson’s , been-around-the-block delivery, succeeding despite the inherent nature of such a lyrical device to scream “pretense!”.

MP3s:
“You Could Have Both” (Demo) - The Long Blondes
“Giddy Stratospheres” - The Long Blondes

By this point my fingers are bleeding and I’m starting to cramp up, but I absolutely can’t depart before first pointing you in the direction of Dreams of Horses who have made the interminable wait for the group’s debut a little bit more manageable by making six of the album’s demos available for download here. I jacked “You Could Have Both” (re-uploaded on my own hosting for bandwith-courtesy purposes, put the guns down) for the purpose of illustrating my spoken word bridges point, but outside of that “Madame Ray” and “A Knife For The Girls” are top notch as well. Again, grab those here and be sure to thank them while you’re there. Additionally, a search for the Long Blondes in the US iTunes store will yield no actual music (because, naturally, US iTunes sucks), but will turn up a 20-minute podcast that sees the band discussing their histoy, influences, and introducing their favorite tracks that’s definitely worth a download and a listen. Finally, I leave you with the demo version of “Once & Never Again”, which has just been announced as the band’s next single and is due out October 3rd on Rough Trade, with whom the band just inked a deal this summer.

MP3: “Once & Never Again” (Demo) - The Long Blondes

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Here’s a little treat to make up for that apparent Postal Service hoax. This was originally part of the initial PS-writeup, but as the issue began to heat up I removed it so as to narrow the focus on the issue at hand. Regardless though, in the short time it was up it sparked interest and praise, so here it is again. Funkagenda, an up-and-coming house DJ and producer in the UK, has taken the Radiohead classic, transplanted a four-to-the-floor house beat onto it and danced it up with some synthesizer surges, all the while keeping the original vocals and that immediately recognizable descending guitar progression. I think he’s done a good job with the track, though the changes aren’t drastic, and according to his website he’s got remixes of Hard-Fi’s “Cash Machine” and Jose Gonzalez’s “Crosses” floating around out there somewhere, both of which I’d love to hear, so if anyone can point me in the right direction that’d be much appreciated as always.

MP3: “Street Spirit” (Funkagenda’s Spandex + Ketamine Mix) - Radiohead

Here’s a track that actually is by Ben Gibbard and Jimmy Tamborello. Yeah, it was released four years ago and isn’t exactly “new”, but it’s an undeniable classic and after the a-side, b-side “Your Hill” just might be the best thing Dntel’s ever produced and has gone criminally underappreciated. The highlight of Life Is Full Of Possibilities, an incredible debut in its own right, “The Dream” is one of the great songs of the new millenium, and is responsible for the spawning of the Postal Service, who are in turn responsible for one of the great albums of the 21st century. In fact, it’s no stretch to say that no song has done more for the synth-pop genre, and possibly the entire electro-pop genre as a whole.

The song itself? Immaculate. A dream indeed, a hazy one at that - waking up to a misty sunrise as the chugging beat of an impending hangover builds in your brain. An alcohol-induced static clouds your mind as details of the night before (that girl, the DJ) swirl and blur in your memory as you try to distinguish reality from mere nighttime fantasy. Soft gray morning light fills the room as you drift back off to sleep and somewhere a telephone rigns out tinto the ether, indistinguishable in its placement in reality or unconscious dreaming.

“Your Hill” evokes the same gray light of morning, as a gentle accordion and that signature Tamborello textured percussion builds toward the inevitable sunrise. Nearly entirely instrumental, Tamborello’s timid vocals are introduced halfway through imploring the listener to “remember… how fun it was when you were young”. Perhaps this is the same character, now years older and world-weary, willing himself to remember “the fun it was”, the better times like those remembered in “The Dream” in order to get through the day.

Rarely, if ever, have the A and B-side of a record worked so well together in such evocative harmony so as to actually enhance each other, and this is a primary reason, aside from the obvious quality of the songs, that this is one of the finest singles of the last five years.

MP3s:
“(This Is) The Dream Of Evan And Chan” - Dntel ((highly recommended))
“Your Hill” - Dntel ((highly recommended))

Being the immaculate song that it is, it’s spawned it’s fair share of covers and remixes, a few of which are available below. The Postal Service and Superpitcher remixes are pretty straightforward reworking ofs the track, with the PS one being the more simple of the two, while the Lali Puna remix ignores the vocals and focuses only on the wonderful, dreamy instrumentation. Finally, the two covers are both solo acoustic numbers, the first taken from a Ben Gibbard acoustic performance on KEXP, the second from a young, anonymous guy named James, whose voice is like that of a younger, even more precious Gibbard.

Bonus MP3s:
“The Dream Of Evan And Chan” (Postal Service Remix) - Dntel
“The Dream Of Evan And Chan” (Lali Puna Remix) - Dntel
“The Dream Of Evan And Chan” (Superpitcher Kompakt Remix) - Dntel
“The Dream Of Evan And Chan” - Ben Gibbard
“Sick Dream (Of Evan And Chan)” - James

ELSEWHERE: The new TV On The Radio video for “Wolf Like Me”, my favorite track on their incredible new album, has finally hit the internet, after what feels like an eternity of waiting. And… it’s really really (really) awesome. The color, the cinematography, the whole 80’s b-movie horror film feel of it; director Jon Watts did a pretty amazing job. It’s an AOL exclusive for now (watch it here), but you better believe you’ll find it here as soon as I get my hands on it.

This is a great song that is definitely not by the Postal Service. Enjoy!

MP3:“The Importance of Being” – Not The Postal Service

After that look to the past, let’s jump back to 2006 for one of the year’s best, the first Thom Yorke video off of his incredible solo, er, not solo debut, The Eraser. Directed by Chel White, the video employs groundbreaking Smallgantics technology to create breathtaking contiuously-tracking aerial shots, which are set up from the point of view of a bald eagle flying over the land below. Greedy hands grab at and try to compromise the eagle’s flight (thereby compromising it’s freedom), as it flies over a desperate man lying on top of a skyscraper and a protest below. Before too long White cuts to eerily dark and blurred stock footage of violent riot footage, further enhancing the dark and unsettling overtones of the clip. In the final minute, all of a sudden the stock footage abruptly transitions in time with the music to footage of Thom drowning as he meets the camera with a stoic gaze. Here’s to drowning in the icy throes of capitalism!

Video: “Harrowdown Hill” - Thom Yorke
Director: Chel White
Watch: [YouTube]
Download: [Quicktime] [iPod]

Joseph Kahn’s epic video for Muse’s “Knights Of Cydonia” was pretty well-received when I posted it to kick of the first Music Video Monday last week, so here’s another one of Kahn’s classic videos, for the Chemical Bros’ “Get Yourself High” (featuring K-Os on the verses), which relies on the same general realistically-recreate-kitschy-nostalgia-film-style-with-futuristic-updates principle as his clip for “Cydonia” did. This time around, we’ve got everyone’s favorite genre (after futuristic westerns of course), 70’s ninja films! Kahn does an incredible job here, recreating (or is it original footage that’s doctored, I honestly have no idea) the exact style of those classic kung-fu films, incorporating relevant elements like headphones, records, and boomboxes into the mix, all the while timing everything perfectly in sync with the music. For more on Kahn, here’s a great Q&A with him courtesy of Director-File.com.

Video: “Get Yourself High” - Chemical Brothers (ft. K-Os)
Director: Joseph Kahn
Watch: [YouTube]
Download: [Quicktime] [iPod]

Props to ClipTip for the heads up on this video, which is a fabulousness overload courtesy of the Scissor Sisters. The always-poptastic Sisters return here with the video for “I Don’t Feel Like Dancing”, the lead single from their upcoming album, Ta-Dah, which has already has UK dancefloors abuzz for a few weeks now. The video is a true sensory overload from the start, with at least three planes of action going on in every frame and no color in the entire visual spectrum going unused. There’s not much more to say, other than that I’m pretty sure this looks like what ecstasy feels like, but either way it’s an impressive clip.

Video: “I Don’t Feel Like Dancing” - Scissor Sisters
Director: Andy Soup
Watch: [YouTube]
Download: [Quicktime] [iPod]

The single release of the song also features the return of the inimitable Erol Alkan, who chips in his “Carnival Of Light Re-work” to the song’s already impressive list of remixes. As usual, Alkan takes the track and completely reinvents it into a sprawling, expansive space filled by miles of reverb and the Sisters’ retro-futuristic synths and electronic booms and bips, spreading out the vocals so they’re few and far between so as to put the instrumentation in the spotlight.

Bonus MP3: “I Don’t Feel Like Dancing” (Carnival Of Light Re-work) - Scissor Sisters

NOTE: UVa certainly isn’t giving us the national holiday off and classes are in session as always, so don’t fret that I’m gonna skimp on the second installment of Music Video Mondays, which starts now.

It’s videos like Thomas Hilland’s “Eple” clip that make me wonder how much some directors must hate themselves in order to subject themselves to such a painstaking process as this video must have required. Hilland cut up what must have been hundreds of vintage postcards and pieced them together seamlessly, and the product is a video that keeps the viewer moving in continuous non-linear motion, through windows, doors, picture frames and more, all the while keeping them fully immersed in retro 80’s-era Norwegian nostalgia. “Eple” is one of my favorite songs of all time, so I’m happy to know it was given a video treatment as imaginative as the song itself. Impossible to describe or do justice with screen shots, so just download the video below to see for yourself.

Video: “Eple” - Royksopp
Director: Thomas Hilland
Watch: [YouTube]
Download: [Quicktime] [iPod]

Hilland went on to direct a second video for Royksopp, this time for “Sparks”, also off of the electronica duo’s stellar debut album, Melody A.M. It remains quite creative and continues with the continuous non-linear movement theme, this time forgoing the 2-D world of postcards for real-life apartment living, as the camera takes the viewer in, out, above and below rooms in a run-down apartment complex.

Video: “Sparks” - Royksopp
Director: Thomas Hilland
Watch: [YouTube]
Download: [Quicktime] [iPod]

NOTE: Much of this text already appeared in my post on The Science of Sleep, but since I built the record up only to shaft you on the mp3s last time I figured I owed you some downloadable love this time around.

Listen to this and tell me this isn’t the most exciting collaboration of 2006: lyrics by Jarvis Cocker + music by Air + vocals by Charlotte Gainsbourg = Charlotte Gainsbourg’s international debut, 5:55. Seriously. Hell, it doesn’t even stop there. They’ve got David Campbell (Beck’s dad) arranging strings, Nigel fucking Godrich – fresh off of The Eraser – behind the boards on production, and afrobeat-legend Tony Allen and The Divine Comedy’s Neil Hannon fit somewhere into the equation as well. Yeah, I know – ridiculous.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Gainsbourg surname, Charlotte Gainsbourg is the daughter of Serge Gainsbourg, a French pop star in the 1970’s who went onto a brilliant career scoring films in the 80’s. The elder Gainsbourg is generally regarded (especially in France) as one of the most brilliant musical minds of his era, and 5:55 will be Charlotte’s debut in the international music scene, though she released Charlotte Forever, which featured 13 year-old Charlotte singing songs written by father, in France in 1986. Presumably out of respect for her father, former Pulp frontman Cocker, whose lyrics were regarded by many as the quintessence of late-90’s working-class Brit Pop, has contributed the words for this record (with some help from Neil Hannon), which Gainsbourg sings in hushed delicate tones, with piano-based, otherworldly production courtesy of the French soft-electronica kings Air. Few other musicians, especially in the electronic realm, have such a complete mastery of their medium as Air does, and they are at the top of their game once again on 5:55. The production is centered around twinkling piano chords and subtle acoustic guitars and wonderfully complements Gainsbourg’s tender voice. Charlotte’s vocals aren’t initially overwhelming; she possesses a voice that is neither powerful nor awe-inspiring, but her vocals have a very unique purity and delicacy to them that steadily endears her to the listener (think a much more hushed [and less vocoded] Imogen Heap on “Hide and Seek” for a reference point).

Despite my initial neutrality towards the album, it’s now firmly entrenched in heavy rotation on my iPod and will likely end up in my year-end top five, with lead single “The Songs That We Sing” and likely eventual single “Everything I Cannot See” grabbing the spotlight as two of the best songs I’ve heard in 2006. “The Songs That We Sing” forces it’s way into your head and your heart with those relentlessly swirling strings and stays there, while “Everything I Cannot See” is a delicate acoustic number that gradually builds until it erupts into a pounding chorus featuring brilliant Cocker lyrics and an unbelievably catchy vocal structure. Furthermore, the rest of the album is brilliant as well; Cocker and Hannon craft a lyrical masterpiece around a brilliant airline-anxiety concept on “AF607105”, “The Operation” rides a catchy bassline and even catchier piano riff and features more of Cocker’s brilliant concept-driven lyrics, and “5:55” shows off quintessential Air at their best. This album was already predestined to be a huge hit in France when it was released last week, but the album is a darkhorse to be not only a critical hit but a US commercial success as well, as the Fall US release will coincide with the release The Science of Sleep, Michel Gondry’s newest motion picture featuring Charlotte alongside Gael Garcia Bernal in her first starring role. The indie kids will love it because of the Cocker/Air connection, Air fans especially won’t be able to get enough because this can basically be viewed as an Air album featuring brilliant guest vocals and lyrics, Starbucks twenty-somethings will like it because Starbucks will (or at least they should) sell it, your Mom will love it because it’s just the kind of stuff she likes, and pretty much everyone else will love it because it’s just that good. Last time around this is the part where I skimped on the mp3s and shafted you all, but this time around you get an ample taste of the albums brilliance with the album’s aforementioned highlights “The Songs That We Sing” and “Everything I Cannot See”. If it weren’t for those crafty Guillemots, Charlotte would have herself the debut of the year, do yourself a favor and check it out below.

MP3s:
“The Songs That We Sing” - Charlotte Gainsbourg
“Everything I Cannot See” - Charlotte Gainsbourg