TV on the Radio - Dear Science

Two years since they took the indie crowd by storm with Return to Cookie Mountain, New York City's TV on the Radio are back with Dear Science. Released on Sept. 23rd, the album shot to #12 on the Billboard charts, 29 spots higher than Cookie Mountain's summit.

TV on the Radio have been making experimental Afro-Jazz-Electro-Post-Punk-Rock since 2001, with four EPs and now four full lengths under their belts. The sound is urban, and that's the best way to describe it. Though the eight sets of recordings sound noticeably different, each could easily be the soundtrack to a cement stroll.

The album kicks off with "Halfway Home," the one track on the entire album that sounds like it could have been included on Cookie Mountain. It's as back to the roots as TV on the Radio can get, comprised of industrial beats under electronically distorted guitar riffs that eventually culminate into a danceable guitar solo with a hint of synth.

But if you want danceable, "Golden Age" is where it's at. The picked out rhythm over the cymbal heavy background shakes the body and soul together. As the first single from Dear Science, it embodies the change in sound from the melodrama and darkness that enveloped Cookie Mountain (check out the video at the end of the post).

That isn't to say Dear Science doesn't have its dark moments. The subtleties of "Stork and Owl" make it haunting. "DLZ" creeps into the head for completley different reasons. It's a tragic song, oozing in imagery of horrific accidents and the rejection of the perception that death is the end of things.

The album's second single is "Dancing Choose," a head banging, almost hip-hop track. It's reminiscent of jumping around in crowded clubs, loud but cheery music controlling every inch of your body. Like a religious revival for your musical soul, it absorbs into your mind in a way no TV on the Radio track has ever done before. And when the horns come in, be ready to lose your mind.

Long time fans of TV on the Radio may be initially shaken by the pressence of such upbeat tunes, but the musicianship and the effort we are used to from the band are still there. After a listen through the entire disc, Dear Science is the best and most accesible record by NYC's favorite genre benders.

"Golden Age"

Doomtree Blowout IV

www.doomtree.net

Tartufi at St. Olaf College

I mentioned in my previous post that I might not be able to check out the band Tartufi who were to play at tonight. I did, in fact, manage to see them and it was, in fact, more interesting than Romantica.

I showed up just as doors opened at the venue and was impressed right off the bat by the wide array of guitar pedals and drum equipment. Now, a lot of equipment can sometimes signal a really awful band who happen to have wealthy relatives who support their "artistic endeavors." Tartufi are not that band. Hailing from San Francisco, California, the band play a blend of electronic, rock and atmospheric music. The band consist of Lynne Angel on guitar, bass, vocals and pedals, and Brian Gorman on drums, bass, keyboards, pedals and about 800 other things.

Again, many toys can mean an unbearable noise so I was initially skeptical. That skepticism last all of two minutes. At the end of that two minutes I realized that Tartufi were there to play music, with a little noise thrown in for good measure. Angel and Gorman make the most complex music I've ever seen created live by only two human beings. They looped everything possible and continued to play over it, creating lush soundscapes that would instantly switch to heavy-as-hell, overdriven bass, tribal drum madness.

What most impressed me was the ability of both performers not only to loop the music, but to continue to play over it with one another. Looping is a difficult thing as it is, but two people looping different parts has the potential to be chaos. Angel and Gorman were consistantly on the same page, however, cueing one another with both looks and hand signals. That trust in your fellow performer, as well as that connection, was wonderful to watch.

The only thing that seemed to be lacking, in my mind, is more visual elements. Angel and Gorman were, as I said, wonderful to watch, but Tartufi's music screams to have multimedia elements added. Video elements or even dancers would be incredible. Tartufi's show, as it is, is so carnal and involved that adding more to it visually to create a complete sensory experience could give these two the push they need to be huge, especially with the Sigur Ros, Explosions in the Sky and Radiohead crowd.

For fans of Sigur Ros, First Communion Afterparty and Animal Collective.

Romantica at St. Olaf College

I'm very lucky to attend a college that is close enough to a major city (two, truth be told) which allows us to get a wide variety of musical acts to perform on campus relatively regularly. This weekend we were fortunate enough to book two shows on two consecutive nights, beginning this evening with a group from Minneapolis called Romantica. Owing to the twangy indie/alt-country that the band plays you wouldn't know that the lead singer, Ben Kyle, originally hails from Belfast except for his accent. The rest of the group are from the U.S.

Bridging the gap bands like The Wallflowers or Counting Crows and Ryan Adams (all of whom are much better than Romantica), Romantica are to the Minneapolis-St. Paul country scene what Quietdrive is to the Minneapolis-St. Paul pop-punk scene. Well loved and receiving more and more attention nationwide due to their very safe, straight-ahead songwriting sensibilities.

I arrived at the show a little late and, frankly, I don't think I missed too much. Romantica are good musicians and good songwriters, they're just redundant. Every song began to blend into the previous one with only the occasional tuning or "thank you" to break up a set of songs. Kyle has a good voice but he never quite explored his full range the way I was hoping. Every so often he would hit a higher note in a more "intense" moment of a song, but for the most part he stuck to a safe range. This wouldn't necessarily have been a bad thing if he had opened his eyes once in awhile during the songs. After the third song I grew tired of watching him emote over twangy guitars and a rather boring rhythm section.

The rest of the band didn't do much to interest me either. While Kyle is the attractive lead singer with an acoustic guitar, the lethar jacket-clad Luke Jacobs was the gritty bringer-of-twang, switching back and forth between electric guitar and pedal steel guitar. Rounding out the lineup was bassist James Orvis (a chubby bassist - imagine that), and Tony Zaccardi on drums. For the most part they stayed on their respective parts of the stage, going through the motions. Again, it wasn't that it was bad, it was that there seemed to be no live-show spontinaity.

The best moments came when Kyle explored the upper regions of his vocal range or when Jacobs was allowed to do something interesting on the guitar. However, the low point of the show came when Kyle announced, "This is is a Leonard Cohen song," just before launching into a cover of "Hallelujah." Considering that everyone and their little sister has covered the song, I hope that Romantica don't think that theirs is original (click the link - the song has "been recorded more than 170 times for release...").The song itself is beautiful and can be incredibly haunting. Unfortunately, Romantica did not pull it off.

Romantica had been talked up to me by a number of my friends but I found myself feeling rather let down. Perhaps it was simply this particular performance, though I have a hard time believeing that they could be animated at all. I can only hope that tomorrow's performance by California band Tartufi is more interesting.

Internet Radjio

Hi. This is Timmy Troubadour. If you are reading this right now you have the capability to also listen to the radio show that I host once a week on Sunday nights from 11 to midnight. You can stream it online here and then click on "webcast" up at the top. It's called North Star Music and features only artists who live and work in the great state of Minnesota.

Here's a list of what I played this evening:

• "Hail! Minnesota" by the Mahtomedi High School Chamber Orchestra
• "Tell Me How A Man Gets Close to You" by Mark Mallman
• "Churches and Hospitals" by Small Towns Burn A Little Slower
• "Say Hey There" by Atmosphere
• "Coffee Ring pt. 2" by Andy Johnson (Check out this post to download this track!)
• "Frog and Toad" by the Bad Plus
• "Just Drums" by Tapes 'n Tapes
• "Veteran" by Dessa
• "Breakfast With My Shadow" by Cloud Cult
• "Fiddle Foot Jones" by A Night in the Box
• "7th Street Queen" feat. Craig Finn by Friends Like These
• "Hatchet" by Low
• "Jessica" by Mouthful of Bees
• "P.O.S is Ruining My Life" by P.O.S
• "> sexy" by Unicorn Basement
• "Hardland/Heartland" by the Plastic Constellations
• "Stars" by Kid Dakota

I probably won't put a set list up every week, but maybe I will. If you're really good. I would love it if you listened, however. That would be good for us both. Here's the link again: KSTO St. Olaf College Radio.

Review: Against Me!, Ted Leo & the Pharmacists and Future of the Left

I had a chance to see Against Me! (AM!) play with Ted Leo & the Pharmacists (TL/Rx) and Future of the Left (a group featuring former members of mclusky and Jarcrew) at First Avenue in Minneapolis this past Thursday night.

Being an all ages show Future of the Left took the stage at about six-fifteen as people were still trickling in. I have to say, I was impressed by the show they put on, especially considering the early start time. Drummer Jack Egglestone attacked his drums with a look on his face that implied the drums had done him a deep, personal wrong. Bassist/vocalist Kelson Mathias and vocalist/guitarist/keyboardist Andy Falkous sweated enough to douse a fire. Their set ended with Mathias jumping from the four-foot high First Avenue stage onto the dance floor where he proceeded to do pushups over his bass.

What stood out to me the most was the heavy use of bass in their songs. Nearly every song used bass overdrive and Mathias played as if he were playing a guitar. Playing in this way gave a very melodic quality to the rhythm section and forces Falkous to use his typically melodic instruments to play basic rhythms.

Considering Ted Leo is nearly forty, he’s still rocking harder than a lot of people half his age. Still pissed off in his middle age, his songs speak of and with anger at the way things are while being surprisingly danceable. His set began with a short speech by two of the people preemptively arrested before the RNC (those arrestees have since been dubbed the RNC 8). TL/Rx recently released a fund-raiser EP called Rapid Response to raise money for the non-profit organization Democracy Now! that is helping with the legal fees of the RNC 8, and the Minneapolis chapter of Food Not Bombs.

If you don’t know TL/Rx I urge you to check them out. They draw from a variety of styles including folk and reggae but can most accurately be described as a gritty indie band. Their most recent record, Living with the Living (2007), is the strongest of their releases, though Shake the Sheets (2004) is also great.

Against Me! has been one of my favorite groups for awhile now and this was my second time seeing them live. It has been my experience, and the experience of those I’ve talked to, that AM! rarely disappoint. They took the stage with little fanfare, which is appropriate, and launched immediately into the set.

This is the final tour AM! Are doing in support of their 2007 album, New Wave but we were treated to a set of songs covering most of their career. In fact, we didn’t even hear half of the tracks off of New Wave. Crowd pleasers like “Walking is Still Honest” and “Pints of Guinness Make You Strong” (both of which were sung a capella by the more boisterous of those in the audience before AM! even took the stage) were in abundance and Tom Gabel and the rest of the AM! crew seemed to be enjoying the evening as much as the audience.

The most entertaining moment of the night came when Gabel – who rarely, if ever, says anything more than “thank you” and “good night” to audiences – mercilessly called out someone in the audience for flicking off the band during the entirety of “Borne on the FM Waves of the Heart.”

“I think my favorite part about playing that last song,” Gabel said, “was the guy in the pink scarf who flicked me off during the entire song.” Gabel went on to say, “God forbid the lead singer have the audacity to write a song about how he fell in love with his wife.”

I’ve heard that after more touring abroad the band will head back into the studio to work on a follow up to New Wave. However, if you ever have a chance, be sure to catch these guys live – you won’t regret it. Same goes for TL/Rx and Future of the Left.

Self Promotion Alert

I wrote (most of) this. But it's free. So you should download it anyway.

Enjoy The Gringo Demos.

Hyro Da Hero

With the Myspace generation taking control of the music scene, everyone with a page on the social networking site gets hundreds of adds from bands they've never heard of each year. For most of us, that problem is quickly solved with a simple delete (or an add for those who use the site as a gauge of their importance). Every once in a great while someone adds me with a name interesting enough for me to give them a listen. This was the case for Hyro Da Hero.

A full fledged member of the mixtape genereation, Hyro, from LA by way of Houston, manages to do it better than even Lil Wayne (who gets called out in one of Hyro's most popular tracks, "Punk Rocker"). He wraps over everything from Soulja Boy ("Punk Rocker") to Incubus ("Wish You Were Here") and Marilyn Manson ("Tainted Love"). Though he's a proficient rhymer, he obviously wants to distance himself from what he refers to as "Ringtone Rappers," aka the mainstreamers.

I'll be honest, I heard "Punk Rocker" and thought it was hilarious. But I dismissed it as that, some guy with a gimic trying to get some attention. Then I downloaded more of his stuff. After a couple listens he started to grow on me. In between the self glofication there are tracks with a message. "Glimpse into New America," which contains one of those samples I KNOW I know but can't place, is introspective and confronts America's tentativity towards electing a black president. (P.S. if you can name that song, I'll do what I can to send you a cookie.)

And the best part is, everything he's released so far is free. That's right, two whole mixtapes for a grand total of FREE. Download both the Gangsta Rock Mixtape as well as the Rock & Roll Gangsta Mixtape off of his iLike page here. Just do it. Seriously.

Mockingbird

Let's kick this off old school. James Taylor and Carly Simon.