Saw a production of Sweeney Todd at Signature Theatre last night. J. got some last-minute tickets at a discount. There was a part of me that expected to hate it for the simple reason that it is a musical, but only a part, because I had seen it on Broadway many years ago, must have been 1989 or thereabouts, and I recall having liked it, although I remember no details aside from the general premise of the famously macabre story. Well, last night I did not completely hate it. To be sure, the "musicalness" of it grated on my nerves - the hokey love songs and the overwrought, hyper-theatrical singing style that instantly screams "Broadway" and makes me want to plug my ears. But there were a few redeeming qualities as well - seriously creepy set and costumes, generally solid vocals (with the exception of Anthony and, on some songs, Johanna, whose love story side-plot was kind of pointless anyway) and Sondheim's score that was surprisingly modern and dark, especially on the theme song (reprised throughout the show).
Above all, however, the reason Sweeney Todd works is because it has a hefty dose of tragedy. Todd is a tragic character, and the ending is only somewhat happy, in that the bad guy gets it, but so does everyone else. Only the young lovers - largely irrelevant as I pointed out - live. The thing basically ends in a blood bath. Great art, and even decent art, must reflect either the emotional state of an individual, or some essential aspect of the human condition, on a deep level, and to do that, it must contain a great deal of tragedy, for it is tragedy, more than anything else, that defines our essence and our interactions with one another. That is why most musicals miss the mark by a mile, and why Sweeney Todd gets closer than most despite staying largely true to form.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Edmunds Wilson, To the Finland Station
Edmund Wilson's To The Finland Station is a minor classic, and having finally read it after it had spent years on my list, I can see why. The writing is extremely engaging and frequently quite beautiful. There were times when I found the book hard to put down. Because of this, I read without taking notes, so what follows is shorter and more shallow than it might have been otherwise.
...Station is an unusual book - it is the literary and ideological history of socialist revolutionary movements in Europe. Wilson starts with the earliest thinkers who left a significant body of work to which we can trace the Radical Left - Michelet, Renan and their immediate followers. The bulk of the book is dedicated to Marx and Engels and their written output. In the final section, which is somewhat less focused on written work, Wilson discusses the rise of Lenin and the Bolshevik revolution in Russia.
One of the really remarkable things about ...Station, though, and the main reason why it is so engaging, is a very strong emphasis on biography. In particular, Wilson renders Marx, and his relationship with Engels, with such vividness and attention to detail that we get a very vibrant and complete portrait of both men. In fact, the middle section of the book would suffice as a biography of Marx for most readers. The portrait of Marx that emerges is that of an extremely unpleasant character. He was a mad genius, utterly incapable of functioning in society, unable to manage the simplest details of daily life without help, all the while driven inexorably to write. He was opinionated to the extreme, unable to suffer the slightest disagreement, disdainful of all interlocutors, even those who were largely supportive of his aims, and obsessed with always having full control of any movement that claimed him as its ideological foundation. He was doted on throughout his life by his long-suffering wife and financed by Engels, without whose handouts he would have probably perished, unable as he was to hold a job of any sort.
As to the substance of his subjects' work, Wilson is frustrating. He is an extremely keen critic of Marx & Co.'s work, and where their arguments, or methods, or both, don't hold water, which they don't in many places, Wilson deconstructs them with impressive subtlety and finesse until there is nothing left. He is unequivocal on the fact that for all the ink they have spilled on their theories of dialectical materialism, "the truth is that Marx and Engels never worked out their own point of view in any very elaborate way." (p. 213).
I am particularly grateful to Wilson for not ignoring the aspect most others do: their utter disdain for some of Europe's, and the world's, peoples that they felt were incapable of executing a revolution and should therefore be eliminated so they don't stand in the way. Engels in 1851: "The Poles have never done anything in history except commit courageous quarrelsome stupidities" (p. 270). And a little later: "Engels also approved when 'energetic Yankees' took California away from the 'lazy Mexicans' because... the former were better fitted to work the country..." (ibid.).
For all that, however, Wilson, who is well known to have been sympathetic to the political Left, turns right around and expresses an almost unbridled admiration for his subjects' achievements. It is true that technically he is admiring the writing - the persuasiveness of their arguments, the effective responses to their critics, etc. - but the terms he uses are tantamount to admiring the substance of the ideas the writing contains:
...Station is an unusual book - it is the literary and ideological history of socialist revolutionary movements in Europe. Wilson starts with the earliest thinkers who left a significant body of work to which we can trace the Radical Left - Michelet, Renan and their immediate followers. The bulk of the book is dedicated to Marx and Engels and their written output. In the final section, which is somewhat less focused on written work, Wilson discusses the rise of Lenin and the Bolshevik revolution in Russia.
One of the really remarkable things about ...Station, though, and the main reason why it is so engaging, is a very strong emphasis on biography. In particular, Wilson renders Marx, and his relationship with Engels, with such vividness and attention to detail that we get a very vibrant and complete portrait of both men. In fact, the middle section of the book would suffice as a biography of Marx for most readers. The portrait of Marx that emerges is that of an extremely unpleasant character. He was a mad genius, utterly incapable of functioning in society, unable to manage the simplest details of daily life without help, all the while driven inexorably to write. He was opinionated to the extreme, unable to suffer the slightest disagreement, disdainful of all interlocutors, even those who were largely supportive of his aims, and obsessed with always having full control of any movement that claimed him as its ideological foundation. He was doted on throughout his life by his long-suffering wife and financed by Engels, without whose handouts he would have probably perished, unable as he was to hold a job of any sort.
As to the substance of his subjects' work, Wilson is frustrating. He is an extremely keen critic of Marx & Co.'s work, and where their arguments, or methods, or both, don't hold water, which they don't in many places, Wilson deconstructs them with impressive subtlety and finesse until there is nothing left. He is unequivocal on the fact that for all the ink they have spilled on their theories of dialectical materialism, "the truth is that Marx and Engels never worked out their own point of view in any very elaborate way." (p. 213).
I am particularly grateful to Wilson for not ignoring the aspect most others do: their utter disdain for some of Europe's, and the world's, peoples that they felt were incapable of executing a revolution and should therefore be eliminated so they don't stand in the way. Engels in 1851: "The Poles have never done anything in history except commit courageous quarrelsome stupidities" (p. 270). And a little later: "Engels also approved when 'energetic Yankees' took California away from the 'lazy Mexicans' because... the former were better fitted to work the country..." (ibid.).
For all that, however, Wilson, who is well known to have been sympathetic to the political Left, turns right around and expresses an almost unbridled admiration for his subjects' achievements. It is true that technically he is admiring the writing - the persuasiveness of their arguments, the effective responses to their critics, etc. - but the terms he uses are tantamount to admiring the substance of the ideas the writing contains:
These writings of Marx are electrical. Nowhere perhaps in the history of thought is the reader so made to feel the excitement of a new intellectual discovery. Marx is here at his most vivid and his most vigorous - in the closeness and the exactitude of political observation... etc. (p. 237)To The Finland Station was first published in 1940, when the West, and thus Wilson, could still be forgiven for not yet having understood the full implications of Stalin's most egregious crimes of a few years earlier. By the time he reissued the book with a new introduction in 1968, the full extent of the horror was well known, and in fairness, I must acknowledge that he does make an effort to repent: "I had no premonition that the Soviet Union was to become one of the most hideous tyrannies that the world had ever known..." (p. v). He also makes one of the most scathing character sketches of Lenin I have read. But he makes no effort to trace the beginnings of that tyranny to the work of Marx and his cohorts and followers that he so admired, so we are left with the deflating sense that the obviously brilliant Wilson is little more than another exponent of the fallacy that makes the continued appeal of the radical Left so frustratingly persistent: that Marxism was ruined by its implementation and at its core remains a good idea.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Keith Jarrett: Testament: Paris/London
In television, it's called jumping the shark. The gimmick gets stale and the audience stops caring. It pains me to say this, but judging by his latest recording Testament: Paris/London (ECM, 2009), I'm afraid the same may have happened to Keith Jarrett.
But maybe I am being insufficiently charitable. I firmly believe that any music must be able to stand on its own, requiring no written or spoken commentary, introduction or analysis, but maybe, just maybe, with Testament you could make a case for starting with the liner notes. Like some of his music, Jarrett's notes have always been a little pompous and self-absorbed for my taste, and Testament is no different, but unlike his previous recordings, here we get way more about the man's emotional state than we bargained for. He tells us about his wife leaving him, about almost having a nervous breakdown before one of the concerts documented here, and about how people around him, both friends and strangers, lifted his spirits and, together with the categorical imperative of playing freely improvised music, helped him get through the ordeal. So those who might be inclined to indulge Testament as something Jarrett had to do out of desperation, and thus forgive whatever artistic deficiencies it might have, have my permission to do so. Ultimately, though, these confessions are neither here nor there. They do not absolve the music from the requirement of having to stand on its own, and that it comes close to not doing.
Jarrett has been playing and recording improvised solo concerts for decades. He would start with a strain or two of melody, or a simple chord progression, and extrapolate from it on the spot for as long as necessary, until the material had nothing left to give up. It did always amuse me that he ran out of steam, however gracefully, just before he would have exceeded the length of an LP side, though in his defense, I will mention that he took the advent of CDs in stride and would improvise non-stop for an hour or more in his late-80s and early 90s concerts. But I digress. Many of these recordings contain moments of sublime beauty and overpowering poignancy. As self-indulgent as they are, we do not need to make extra-musical excuses for their validity. The music itself has always offered more than enough. The guy sure knew how to get at your inner core with stuff that he claimed to have pulled mostly out of his head and mostly on the spot.
About ten years ago, however, after recovering from a long illness, Jarrett's style changed. As first documented on Radiance (2002), each individual improvisation became shorter and more harmonically and melodically dense. He was now communicating in discrete units instead of a long narrative arc. Far more significant than the length, however, was the fact that Jarrett tried to abandon all preconceived notions. He wanted to improvise from a completely blank slate. Much of the resulting music acquired, in the best cases, a certain brooding darkness, initially appealing but ultimately directionless, and in the worst, the seemingly random abrasive dissonance of hyper-modern atonal compositions. Much, but not all. One does not throw away thirty years of experience overnight, or even in the course of a single illness, however serious, and at least half of the material on Radiance betrays much of Jarrett's old style, only on a smaller scale. The heart-rending minor-key melodies are there, as are his trademark foot-stomping vamps that launch his right-hand lines into the sonic stratosphere. Also present is a strong whiff of the American Songbook which he clearly absorbed while working on his album of unaccompanied standards The Melody at Night, With You (1998). On Radiance, Jarrett is not playing the actual standards, of course, but their chords and the general direction in which some of that music moves are definitely in his fingers. There is plenty of incomprehensible, intellectually overwhelming and emotionally closed noodling on Radiance, to be sure, but with the judicious use of your CD player's programming feature, the two discs can be distilled down to about an hour of very enjoyable music.
Which brings us to Testament. Three discs, two complete concerts, no editing. Whatever the personal upheavals in Jarrett's life, it is obvious that he has been moving consistently in the direction started on Radiance, and has traveled quite a distance over the past decade. He still has a lot to say, and in the relatively short time limit of the individual tracks he has imposed on himself (most are in the 6-9 minute range), he has to cram in a lot of notes into each one. The melodic and harmonic foundation of his old style is not completely gone, but he has clearly shed much of what was still in his toolbox a decade ago. The result is that the communication between the performer and his listeners, or this listener at least, has broken down almost completely. Jarrett's thought patterns are so densely packed and idiosyncratic, and are so lacking in audible structure and organization, that when the music is over, I think nothing and feel nothing, but not in a meditative, mind-clearing sort of way. Instead, I seek meaning intensely while he is playing and find myself woefully unsatisfied when he is done.
A small handful of tracks - it seems silly listing names when they are all just Part 1, Part 2, etc. -- are still effective. Predictably, they are the ones that have retained the vestiges of his original style. Where recognizable chord progressions and motifs based on familiar intervals percolate to the surface, Testament momentarily satisfies. These moments are much too few and far between, however. The bulk of the music remains Sphinx-like in its impenetrability. For Jarrett himself, I suspect the recording is a triumph. He has come closer than ever before to being completely spontaneous. His audience, however, has lost a once eloquent improviser who has withdrawn completely into his own world.
But maybe I am being insufficiently charitable. I firmly believe that any music must be able to stand on its own, requiring no written or spoken commentary, introduction or analysis, but maybe, just maybe, with Testament you could make a case for starting with the liner notes. Like some of his music, Jarrett's notes have always been a little pompous and self-absorbed for my taste, and Testament is no different, but unlike his previous recordings, here we get way more about the man's emotional state than we bargained for. He tells us about his wife leaving him, about almost having a nervous breakdown before one of the concerts documented here, and about how people around him, both friends and strangers, lifted his spirits and, together with the categorical imperative of playing freely improvised music, helped him get through the ordeal. So those who might be inclined to indulge Testament as something Jarrett had to do out of desperation, and thus forgive whatever artistic deficiencies it might have, have my permission to do so. Ultimately, though, these confessions are neither here nor there. They do not absolve the music from the requirement of having to stand on its own, and that it comes close to not doing.
Jarrett has been playing and recording improvised solo concerts for decades. He would start with a strain or two of melody, or a simple chord progression, and extrapolate from it on the spot for as long as necessary, until the material had nothing left to give up. It did always amuse me that he ran out of steam, however gracefully, just before he would have exceeded the length of an LP side, though in his defense, I will mention that he took the advent of CDs in stride and would improvise non-stop for an hour or more in his late-80s and early 90s concerts. But I digress. Many of these recordings contain moments of sublime beauty and overpowering poignancy. As self-indulgent as they are, we do not need to make extra-musical excuses for their validity. The music itself has always offered more than enough. The guy sure knew how to get at your inner core with stuff that he claimed to have pulled mostly out of his head and mostly on the spot.
About ten years ago, however, after recovering from a long illness, Jarrett's style changed. As first documented on Radiance (2002), each individual improvisation became shorter and more harmonically and melodically dense. He was now communicating in discrete units instead of a long narrative arc. Far more significant than the length, however, was the fact that Jarrett tried to abandon all preconceived notions. He wanted to improvise from a completely blank slate. Much of the resulting music acquired, in the best cases, a certain brooding darkness, initially appealing but ultimately directionless, and in the worst, the seemingly random abrasive dissonance of hyper-modern atonal compositions. Much, but not all. One does not throw away thirty years of experience overnight, or even in the course of a single illness, however serious, and at least half of the material on Radiance betrays much of Jarrett's old style, only on a smaller scale. The heart-rending minor-key melodies are there, as are his trademark foot-stomping vamps that launch his right-hand lines into the sonic stratosphere. Also present is a strong whiff of the American Songbook which he clearly absorbed while working on his album of unaccompanied standards The Melody at Night, With You (1998). On Radiance, Jarrett is not playing the actual standards, of course, but their chords and the general direction in which some of that music moves are definitely in his fingers. There is plenty of incomprehensible, intellectually overwhelming and emotionally closed noodling on Radiance, to be sure, but with the judicious use of your CD player's programming feature, the two discs can be distilled down to about an hour of very enjoyable music.
Which brings us to Testament. Three discs, two complete concerts, no editing. Whatever the personal upheavals in Jarrett's life, it is obvious that he has been moving consistently in the direction started on Radiance, and has traveled quite a distance over the past decade. He still has a lot to say, and in the relatively short time limit of the individual tracks he has imposed on himself (most are in the 6-9 minute range), he has to cram in a lot of notes into each one. The melodic and harmonic foundation of his old style is not completely gone, but he has clearly shed much of what was still in his toolbox a decade ago. The result is that the communication between the performer and his listeners, or this listener at least, has broken down almost completely. Jarrett's thought patterns are so densely packed and idiosyncratic, and are so lacking in audible structure and organization, that when the music is over, I think nothing and feel nothing, but not in a meditative, mind-clearing sort of way. Instead, I seek meaning intensely while he is playing and find myself woefully unsatisfied when he is done.
A small handful of tracks - it seems silly listing names when they are all just Part 1, Part 2, etc. -- are still effective. Predictably, they are the ones that have retained the vestiges of his original style. Where recognizable chord progressions and motifs based on familiar intervals percolate to the surface, Testament momentarily satisfies. These moments are much too few and far between, however. The bulk of the music remains Sphinx-like in its impenetrability. For Jarrett himself, I suspect the recording is a triumph. He has come closer than ever before to being completely spontaneous. His audience, however, has lost a once eloquent improviser who has withdrawn completely into his own world.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Snow
Greater Washington, DC, has been under two feet of snow since Saturday, and another foot is predicted for tonight. The temperatures have been hovering in the upper 20s and low 30s. The city, needless to say, is not handling it well. All government offices and schools closed even before the snow started on Friday, and remain closed. The subway was completely shut down all weekend, and above-ground stations didn’t open until this morning, with trains, which normally come every 3-5 minutes during rush hour, running as much as a half hour apart. The streets are a mess – practically nothing has been plowed, at least not in a way that is actually helpful, and for some incomprehensible reason, there is no evidence of anyone doing the most obvious thing: spraying salt.
I grew up in a cold place. The snow typically started falling in late October, would stick by mid-November and the ground would remain covered until at least late March, with a fresh dusting of an inch or two falling every few days. Temperatures in the single digits Fahrenheit were commonplace. More significantly, though, it was a place where both modern technology and a Western work ethic and sense of responsibility were in short supply in the best of times. So how did we do it? The subway – the city’s only piece of public infrastructure that worked almost flawlessly – ran on schedule regardless of the weather. The rest of the transit system didn’t, but then, it never did. The buses and street cars were antiquated, unsafe, overcrowded and filthy, but they stumbled along every bit as well (or poorly) in driving snow and frigid cold as they did on a beautiful summer day (itself a rare occurrence). Not once do I remember a complete cancellation of service due to weather.
Four-wheel drive was unheard of outside the military – the few people who did own private automobiles, my father among them, typically drove locally built replicas of 1960s Fiats: rear-wheel drive, 60 hp engines, skinny bias-ply tires and no safety features to speak of (power-assisted brakes were an extra-cost option; ours didn’t have them). Yet not once did my father refuse to drive because of the weather. He would take the battery out of the car and carry it indoors at night (giving himself permanent back problems in the process) lest it would be dead the next morning because of the cold, but not driving did not occur to him. Sometimes, he had to dig the car out with an ice pick, and it took a while, but off it went eventually down the slushy street, fishtailing and spinning its tires.
I do not remember seeing the streets being plowed. I am sure they were, but I cannot imagine it being done efficiently. Nothing else in that society and that system ever was, and the idea of the government, at any level, providing a decent service to its citizens without being bribed, cajoled, or threatened from above, was anathema to the very way the system worked. So while I am sure snow plows disrupted traffic in the center of the city regularly, I would bet money the streets weren’t any cleaner for it.
So how did we do it? How did we not only function, but took the miserable cold, snow and filth in stride every winter? Why is it that masses of people were absent from work regularly, but never because of the weather? Is it simply a question of being used to it?
I grew up in a cold place. The snow typically started falling in late October, would stick by mid-November and the ground would remain covered until at least late March, with a fresh dusting of an inch or two falling every few days. Temperatures in the single digits Fahrenheit were commonplace. More significantly, though, it was a place where both modern technology and a Western work ethic and sense of responsibility were in short supply in the best of times. So how did we do it? The subway – the city’s only piece of public infrastructure that worked almost flawlessly – ran on schedule regardless of the weather. The rest of the transit system didn’t, but then, it never did. The buses and street cars were antiquated, unsafe, overcrowded and filthy, but they stumbled along every bit as well (or poorly) in driving snow and frigid cold as they did on a beautiful summer day (itself a rare occurrence). Not once do I remember a complete cancellation of service due to weather.
Four-wheel drive was unheard of outside the military – the few people who did own private automobiles, my father among them, typically drove locally built replicas of 1960s Fiats: rear-wheel drive, 60 hp engines, skinny bias-ply tires and no safety features to speak of (power-assisted brakes were an extra-cost option; ours didn’t have them). Yet not once did my father refuse to drive because of the weather. He would take the battery out of the car and carry it indoors at night (giving himself permanent back problems in the process) lest it would be dead the next morning because of the cold, but not driving did not occur to him. Sometimes, he had to dig the car out with an ice pick, and it took a while, but off it went eventually down the slushy street, fishtailing and spinning its tires.
I do not remember seeing the streets being plowed. I am sure they were, but I cannot imagine it being done efficiently. Nothing else in that society and that system ever was, and the idea of the government, at any level, providing a decent service to its citizens without being bribed, cajoled, or threatened from above, was anathema to the very way the system worked. So while I am sure snow plows disrupted traffic in the center of the city regularly, I would bet money the streets weren’t any cleaner for it.
So how did we do it? How did we not only function, but took the miserable cold, snow and filth in stride every winter? Why is it that masses of people were absent from work regularly, but never because of the weather? Is it simply a question of being used to it?
Friday, February 5, 2010
Wgot 2008
I've been promising my friend S.G. a review of the latest mix he had put together (or, rather, his computer running wget had put together for him) for a while, so here it is.
Keren Ann: Hallelujah
This is one of the rare songs where a specific version - the late Jeff Buckley's in this case - has rendered any version that would come after it irrelevant. I suppose one could argue that a genuinely well-crafted song such as this one lends itself to a variety of interpretations, and I suppose it does, but that does not guarantee those interpretations' success. Keren Ann deserves a few points for trying, but that's about it.
Max Richter: The Twins
I have a vague recollection of this track circulating around the internet a year or two ago, and if memory serves, there was a video associated with it that was in some way remarkable. Having never seen the video, I can't comment. The tune is a pleasant enough vignette that wouldn't be out of place on a soundtrack to an indie film.
Sven Libaek: Inner Space: Dark World
Speaking of film music, this guy is supposed to be a real film composer. Objectively, this is dismissable, but something about the mood it creates does it for me. The combination of vibes and electric piano - frequently difficult to pull off because the timbres of the two instruments are so similar - helps. A highlight in an otherwise dim set, no question about it.
Ratatat: Mirando
This style probably has a name, but I'm not hip enough to know what it is. A kind of jungle-meets-lo-fi. Some cool-sounding analog synths and Steve Hackett-like guitar bits, but the tunes doesn't go anywhere and quickly starts to grate on your nerves, or mine at least. Gains a bit on repeated listening, but not much.
Armin Van Buuren: Precious
What techno was meant to be - infectious beyond belief but manages to create a mood with some seriously dark minor chords despite a relentlessly pounding beat. Good stuff.
Voyager One: The Future is Obsolete
It starts out with enough promise, thanks to seriously floppy and echoey drums and exaggeratedly English vocals, but ends up sounding like a bad version of Ride (if anyone remembers those guys).
Breakbot: Happy Rabbit
The name of the band says it all. The headache arrives quickly, though the discoey bass line might have worked in a different context.
The Retail Sectors: The First Step to the End of Life
Ever heard an introduction that does not introduce anything? This is it.
The Postal Service: Brand New Colony
The sound is recognizable, but I've liked these guys' other stuff better. The interlude in the middle of the song is a nice touch.
Chakachas: Via Cuba
This has to be a joke. A polished but generic rhumba backing track that sounds like it was originally intended for a different, and better, recording, with seriously goofy vocals, in English but rendered in the most offensively stereotypical Latino accent. A musical equivalent of blackface?
The Coast: Nueva York
Piano-driven indie power pop with more than a touch of Crowded House and maybe even a little Springsteen. Could be a lot worse.
Man Man: Black Mission Goggles
Circus music on steroids. The fact that the first four bars of each verse are dead ringers for The Beatles' Come Together does nothing to redeem the track. There is an allusion to Tom Waits about forty seconds before the end, but I suspect most people would quit listening long before then.
Mystery Jets: Young Love (Shoes Mix)
Can't decide if it wants to be art-pop, techno, or 80s-retro. Next.
Cloud Cult: When Water Comes to Life
Another cinematic track, decently arranged with some strings... until the vocal kicks in.
Emily Jane White: Bessie Smith
The standout track on the whole disc. Who cares that she is a dead ringer for Cat Power? The song just works, propelled along by some gorgeous arco double bass. I think I'll get the album.
???:???
No tags on this one. Waltz time keeps your attention for a while, but the whiny vocals and generic arrangement lost me about a minute and a half into the track.
Can Joann: Endure en Vogue
Nice high-register bass. Now how about a song to go with it?
Voice of the Seven Woods: Satai Nova
Another track that sounds more like a vignette than a full-blown song, but the acoustic guitar is actually pretty slick.
Jim Noir: Don't You Worry
This guy really wants to be performing in the sixties, but since he can't, he feels compelled to add some gratuitously reverbed synths. The listener gains nothing.
The Walkmen: Lady Midnight
So this is alt.country? Or just a Johnny Cash rip-off? And why is it so boring?
Gnarls Barkley: Run
Words fail me. Take a James Brown LP and play it at 45 rpm, then mix it with the backing track played at the intended 33 1/3.
Keren Ann: Hallelujah
This is one of the rare songs where a specific version - the late Jeff Buckley's in this case - has rendered any version that would come after it irrelevant. I suppose one could argue that a genuinely well-crafted song such as this one lends itself to a variety of interpretations, and I suppose it does, but that does not guarantee those interpretations' success. Keren Ann deserves a few points for trying, but that's about it.
Max Richter: The Twins
I have a vague recollection of this track circulating around the internet a year or two ago, and if memory serves, there was a video associated with it that was in some way remarkable. Having never seen the video, I can't comment. The tune is a pleasant enough vignette that wouldn't be out of place on a soundtrack to an indie film.
Sven Libaek: Inner Space: Dark World
Speaking of film music, this guy is supposed to be a real film composer. Objectively, this is dismissable, but something about the mood it creates does it for me. The combination of vibes and electric piano - frequently difficult to pull off because the timbres of the two instruments are so similar - helps. A highlight in an otherwise dim set, no question about it.
Ratatat: Mirando
This style probably has a name, but I'm not hip enough to know what it is. A kind of jungle-meets-lo-fi. Some cool-sounding analog synths and Steve Hackett-like guitar bits, but the tunes doesn't go anywhere and quickly starts to grate on your nerves, or mine at least. Gains a bit on repeated listening, but not much.
Armin Van Buuren: Precious
What techno was meant to be - infectious beyond belief but manages to create a mood with some seriously dark minor chords despite a relentlessly pounding beat. Good stuff.
Voyager One: The Future is Obsolete
It starts out with enough promise, thanks to seriously floppy and echoey drums and exaggeratedly English vocals, but ends up sounding like a bad version of Ride (if anyone remembers those guys).
Breakbot: Happy Rabbit
The name of the band says it all. The headache arrives quickly, though the discoey bass line might have worked in a different context.
The Retail Sectors: The First Step to the End of Life
Ever heard an introduction that does not introduce anything? This is it.
The Postal Service: Brand New Colony
The sound is recognizable, but I've liked these guys' other stuff better. The interlude in the middle of the song is a nice touch.
Chakachas: Via Cuba
This has to be a joke. A polished but generic rhumba backing track that sounds like it was originally intended for a different, and better, recording, with seriously goofy vocals, in English but rendered in the most offensively stereotypical Latino accent. A musical equivalent of blackface?
The Coast: Nueva York
Piano-driven indie power pop with more than a touch of Crowded House and maybe even a little Springsteen. Could be a lot worse.
Man Man: Black Mission Goggles
Circus music on steroids. The fact that the first four bars of each verse are dead ringers for The Beatles' Come Together does nothing to redeem the track. There is an allusion to Tom Waits about forty seconds before the end, but I suspect most people would quit listening long before then.
Mystery Jets: Young Love (Shoes Mix)
Can't decide if it wants to be art-pop, techno, or 80s-retro. Next.
Cloud Cult: When Water Comes to Life
Another cinematic track, decently arranged with some strings... until the vocal kicks in.
Emily Jane White: Bessie Smith
The standout track on the whole disc. Who cares that she is a dead ringer for Cat Power? The song just works, propelled along by some gorgeous arco double bass. I think I'll get the album.
???:???
No tags on this one. Waltz time keeps your attention for a while, but the whiny vocals and generic arrangement lost me about a minute and a half into the track.
Can Joann: Endure en Vogue
Nice high-register bass. Now how about a song to go with it?
Voice of the Seven Woods: Satai Nova
Another track that sounds more like a vignette than a full-blown song, but the acoustic guitar is actually pretty slick.
Jim Noir: Don't You Worry
This guy really wants to be performing in the sixties, but since he can't, he feels compelled to add some gratuitously reverbed synths. The listener gains nothing.
The Walkmen: Lady Midnight
So this is alt.country? Or just a Johnny Cash rip-off? And why is it so boring?
Gnarls Barkley: Run
Words fail me. Take a James Brown LP and play it at 45 rpm, then mix it with the backing track played at the intended 33 1/3.
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