Dan Bejar’s work outside of The New Pornographers has never made many ripples on this side of the pond. More’s the pity, as Destroyer – the loose conglomerate of musicians that take the whimsical Vancouverite as their guiding star – boasts a back catalogue that sits easily amongst the best indie of the last decade. With Kaputt, Bejar has solidified his dark horse reputation with a tribute to the synth pop-pushers of yesteryear that’s part slickly-produced love letter, part withering reappraisal, but which is never less than totally absorbing.
Kaputt is not littered with the sounds of the 70s and 80s – rather, they form its basic building blocks, with Bejar taking the tropes of the era (right down to the synth washes and sax licks half-remembered from some late-night repeat), and reforming them into something new and remarkable. Thus the spirit of the Pet Shop Boys hangs over ‘Savage Night At The Opera’, while the bland inoffensiveness of Kenny G-style sax is harnessed in service of Bejar’s weirdly compelling musings on US race relations in ‘Suicide Demo For Kara Walker’.
Elsewhere, the seen-it-all sleaze of an Altman or Cassavetes film hangs heavily; ‘Chinatown’ and ‘Downtown’ conjure amphetamine-enhanced eyes meeting across dimly-lit dancefloors, over which Bejar seems to wander with aloof detachment, gesturing towards the absurdity of it all with an elegantly raised eyebrow. It’s nostalgic, in a drippingly ironic, Donnie Darko sort of way. ‘Sounds, Smash Hits, Melody Maker, NME / all sound like a dream to me’ he cries on the title track, at once lamenting and passing wry comment on a vanished time, while indulging in some of the music industry-kicking for which he is noted.
Lose yourself in this meticulously crafted melange.
First published in The Brag, Iss. 406, 11th April 2011
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Panda Bear - Tomboy
Back in 2007, Person Pitch – Panda Bear’s third solo record and big sloppy hug to the world – won accolades aplenty, while steering the band from which he was moonlighting (a little thing called Animal Collective) onto the sampler-laden trajectory that produced the exploding star highlight of 2009, Merriweather Post Pavilion. Panda Bear has a new album now. It’s called Tomboy. It’s very, very good.
Gone are the samples and random snippets that punctuated Person Pitch; the haphazard-collage-of-sonic-elements kind of approach is ditched, supplanted by lushly-rendered monolithic blocs of vividly shimmering texture. Similarly, the DJ and techno influences that riddled his previous album (particularly its sprawling centrepiece ‘Bros’) have been submerged within the pop structure that defined the songs of Merriweather Post Pavilion.
But Tomboy is certainly not Merriweather MK II; Panda Bear, AKA Noah Lennox, squeezes an extraordinary range of sounds out of his machinery, forsaking the samplers in favour of a simpler trick; playing his guitar through a synth module. ‘You Can Count On Me’, a message from father to newborn son, provides an intimately heartstring-tugging prelude, before the record is kicked off in earnest with the thundering anthem of ‘Tomboy’. A regal air is struck with the leisurely stroll along the promenade of ‘Last Night At The Jetty’, while a soft climax is reached with the wind chime-laden dirge ‘Scheherazade’, in which Lennox’ tendency towards minimalism reaches its apex with gently lulling style.
Panda Bear has achieved a kind of sonic perfection on this record. The oft-made comparison to Brian Wilson has never seemed more apt, with his opulent sound achieved through an apparent compulsion to create Phil Spector-ish levels of production flawlessness. While it is possible to overdose on overwhelmingly euphoric, vibrant sound, Lennox dares you to try.
The folks over at NPR are being good enough to stream Tomboy in its entirety for your listening pleasure. Have at it!
First published as Album of the Week in The Brag, Iss. 405, April 4th 2011
Gone are the samples and random snippets that punctuated Person Pitch; the haphazard-collage-of-sonic-elements kind of approach is ditched, supplanted by lushly-rendered monolithic blocs of vividly shimmering texture. Similarly, the DJ and techno influences that riddled his previous album (particularly its sprawling centrepiece ‘Bros’) have been submerged within the pop structure that defined the songs of Merriweather Post Pavilion.
But Tomboy is certainly not Merriweather MK II; Panda Bear, AKA Noah Lennox, squeezes an extraordinary range of sounds out of his machinery, forsaking the samplers in favour of a simpler trick; playing his guitar through a synth module. ‘You Can Count On Me’, a message from father to newborn son, provides an intimately heartstring-tugging prelude, before the record is kicked off in earnest with the thundering anthem of ‘Tomboy’. A regal air is struck with the leisurely stroll along the promenade of ‘Last Night At The Jetty’, while a soft climax is reached with the wind chime-laden dirge ‘Scheherazade’, in which Lennox’ tendency towards minimalism reaches its apex with gently lulling style.
Panda Bear has achieved a kind of sonic perfection on this record. The oft-made comparison to Brian Wilson has never seemed more apt, with his opulent sound achieved through an apparent compulsion to create Phil Spector-ish levels of production flawlessness. While it is possible to overdose on overwhelmingly euphoric, vibrant sound, Lennox dares you to try.
The folks over at NPR are being good enough to stream Tomboy in its entirety for your listening pleasure. Have at it!
First published as Album of the Week in The Brag, Iss. 405, April 4th 2011
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Omar Souleyman, James Locksmith, Alps @ The Annandale Hotel, Saturday March 12
It’s hardly necessary to know who Omar Souleyman is to dance yourself into a state of euphoric exhaustion, but it probably helps. Coming off the back of a turbo-charged appearance at WOMADELAIDE the night before, the number one pop star of his native Syria (self-proclaimed – not that you’d want to argue) was snubbed by Sydney audiences tonight, the Annandale’s normally grindingly claustrophobic main bar being criminally under capacity. Whether this was due to Souleyman’s late booking (possible), lack of publicity (probable) or simple lack of interest amongst punters remains open to debate.
The sparse attendance aside, proceedings weren’t helped much tonight by some rickety support. DJ James Locksmith spent much of his first hour spinning various Middle Eastern flavoured dance and ambient tracks to a few early birds. Not exactly a drawcard, but it did provide the soundtrack to a gratifying hour’s lounge. Less so was Alps, whose guitar work may well have been fine ‘n dandy were it not for the fact that the instrument was painfully out of tune – a shame, considering the vigour of his loop-based keyboard tracks.
Whether because of technical difficulties or the vain hope that the venue might fill up at the last minute, it wasn’t until forty minutes after his scheduled start time that Souleyman finally took the stage, Locksmith’s interim efforts at the laptop unable to prevent the natives from getting pretty restless. Fortunately they all had ample opportunity to burn away the twitches within the first five minutes of Omar Souleyman’s frenetic and at times glitteringly discordant music.
Planting himself in the middle of stage, Omar calmly watched the mayhem developing below him as regal as any monarch surveying his realm, with his static presence resplendently attired in a checkered keffiyeh (a Yasser Arafat-style head scarf), dark round eye-glasses, with a slight paunch nudging against his djellaba (ankle to neck length robe). Souleyman was joined on stage only by composer and synth player Rizan Sa’id, an impassive-faced dynamo, whose approach to the traditional dabke involves injecting it with steroids and setting it loose with a machinegun beat, as the sounds of the village are transmogrified into dancefloor crack. It’s impossible to simply stand and listen to Omar; the urge to throw oneself around like a lunatic is far too great. Those lucky enough to attend this curiously bungled evening did so with glee.
First published in The Brag, Iss. 404, 21st March 2011
The sparse attendance aside, proceedings weren’t helped much tonight by some rickety support. DJ James Locksmith spent much of his first hour spinning various Middle Eastern flavoured dance and ambient tracks to a few early birds. Not exactly a drawcard, but it did provide the soundtrack to a gratifying hour’s lounge. Less so was Alps, whose guitar work may well have been fine ‘n dandy were it not for the fact that the instrument was painfully out of tune – a shame, considering the vigour of his loop-based keyboard tracks.
Whether because of technical difficulties or the vain hope that the venue might fill up at the last minute, it wasn’t until forty minutes after his scheduled start time that Souleyman finally took the stage, Locksmith’s interim efforts at the laptop unable to prevent the natives from getting pretty restless. Fortunately they all had ample opportunity to burn away the twitches within the first five minutes of Omar Souleyman’s frenetic and at times glitteringly discordant music.
Planting himself in the middle of stage, Omar calmly watched the mayhem developing below him as regal as any monarch surveying his realm, with his static presence resplendently attired in a checkered keffiyeh (a Yasser Arafat-style head scarf), dark round eye-glasses, with a slight paunch nudging against his djellaba (ankle to neck length robe). Souleyman was joined on stage only by composer and synth player Rizan Sa’id, an impassive-faced dynamo, whose approach to the traditional dabke involves injecting it with steroids and setting it loose with a machinegun beat, as the sounds of the village are transmogrified into dancefloor crack. It’s impossible to simply stand and listen to Omar; the urge to throw oneself around like a lunatic is far too great. Those lucky enough to attend this curiously bungled evening did so with glee.
First published in The Brag, Iss. 404, 21st March 2011
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