Concert Pick of the Week: Pearl and Beard

Pearl and Beard
Friday, June 11th, 9pm
The Red and the Black, $8

Finally, an indie-folk band that is just accepting that half of their image comes from the beard and nothing else. Pearl and Beard, the Brooklyn based trio, aren't quite as soft as their pidgeon-holed genre might suggest, though. Their sound is uncharacteristically soulful and powerful; they don't shy away from a shout here and there (see: picture). Head down to H street Friday night and maybe he'll let you rub his beard for good luck! Check them out in this subway!

Review: New Pornographers, Together

The New Pornographers

Together

B

Together has been lauded as the triumphant return of the New Pornographers after the lull of 2007’s Challengers, but after a few listens, I couldn’t help but feel a little bit underwhelmed. Maybe it’s easy to expect too much of The New Pornographers, a band that has churned out several critically acclaimed albums in the past ten years and stars four very talented and individually successful musicians like A.C. Newman, Dan Bejard of Destroyer, Neko Case and Kathryn Calder. We expect chugging guitar riffs and infectious pop hooks sung in perfect male/female harmonies, so sugary that we can easily swallow down those abstruse lyrics. Most of all, we expect them to sound as fresh and energetic as they did when we first blasted Mass Romantic over our speakers ten years ago. Not that I should be projecting all my expectations on to you—maybe it’s just me holding on to the sounds of “Letter From An Occupant,” “Electric Vision” and “Sing Me Spanish Techno” a little too tightly. But it’s difficult to say exactly what’s missing on the new album. It’s more mid-tempo than earlier albums, but no more so than 2005’s Twin Cinemas. There are the high-energy numbers of old like “Crash Years,” “Up In The Dark” and “Your Hands (Together).” There are breezy hook-filled tracks like “Silver Jenny Dollar” and “Sweet Talk, Sweet Talk.” So what’s the problem?

Review: Janelle Monae, The ArchAndroid

Janelle Monae
The ArchAndroid (Suites II and III)

A+

I generally like to call myself a music enthusiast of sorts; someone up-to-date on a wide variety of artists, genres and random happenings in the world of music. Well, my mind has been blown away; I’ve been put into check by a single album and I’ve been forced to realize that I actually know very little. Yes, I originally learned of Janelle Monae about a year ago but I didn’t take any time to listen to her work before now. Big Mistake. Her sophomore album, The ArchAndroid, was released last week under Wondaland Arts Society and Bad Boy Records. It’s been quite a while now since I’ve listened to an album and loved every bit of it. Yeah, there have been random songs or artists that have caught my attention over the years but Janelle Monae’s originality definitely sets her apart from the average artist. I’m trying to think of the last time I’ve been completely at a lost for words describing what I think of an album in its entirety. The only phrase that might even come close to portraying what I think of The ArchAndroid is that it’s “freaking amazing” but even that doesn’t fully describe how much I love this album. The ArchAndroid serves as a continuation to her mixtape, Metropolis: Suite I (The Chase) and tells the story of Monae’s alter ego, Cindi Mayweather. In The ArchAndroid Cindi Mayweather dominates android society and her experience and lessons learned as this leading lady are described throughout each track on the album. This celestial story is very evident in the trippy instrumentals Janelle Monae sings over. While listening to the album I imagine myself in a flying saucer weaving through paper stars in a low-budget animated clip (somewhat like this). I’m trying to decide which song I think is best but I can’t, so I’m just going to tell you my favorite set of songs. These songs (tracks 2-4) made me immediately want to fall in love with a woman I’ve never even met. These three tracks (“Dance or Die (featuring Saul Williams),” “Faster,” and “Locked Inside” respectively) are all so different and so great individually but work together in a way that happens so rarely with most albums. The ArchAndroid can’t simply be described as a pop album, a funk album, a soul album or anything else so limiting because it’s all of those and so much more. From the funky beats, awesome production quality, Janelle Monae’s beautiful voice and catchy lyrics (see I’m shaking like a schizo taken from the song “Faster”), The ArchAndroid is quickly topping my list of favorite albums from 2010 and we’re barely six months into the year yet. As everyone slowly begins to forget their “Best of the decade” lists so carefully put together this past winter, I think Janelle Monae is exactly what we need to start off this new decade and revive the creativity and originality of the music industry.

-- Dominique Barron

Review: Delta Spirit, History from Below

Delta Spirit

History From Below

A

 Note: Delta Spirit will be performing at the 9:30 Club on July 3^rd. You should totally go. 

I know what you’re thinking, “Another A album? WGTB has more grade inflation than a high school English class.” Maybe, but Delta Spirit’s sophomore album History From Below is a wonderfully crafted portrait of Americana that is deserving of such praise. The five-piece San Diego band delivers a mature and intelligent album that aims to say something meaningful about life with genuine emotion and conviction.

Musically, the album is a palatable blend of soul, blues, and folk rock, with undertones of Bob Dylan, which alternates between beautifully understated acoustic songs, marked by plucked guitars and sweeping strings, and more heavily instrumented tracks, with amplified guitars, pianos, and kick drums. The true driving force behind the album is lead singer Matt Vasquez, who joined the band when he was discovered serendipitously by drummer Brandon Young singing on a bench at 2 in the morning. His brooding, yet gentle voice delivers the poignant lyrics with a sense of urgency that make even the down tempo songs compelling. Most tracks have a chorus that is easy to sing-along with, often augmented by Vazquez’s backup harmonies, adding to the album’s folksy tone. The best example of this, and probably the album’s top track, is “Golden State,” which grooves around a simple guitar and piano riff, eventually culminating in an outro of “ohhh oh ohhhs.” Other standout tracks include the opener, “911,” a sneering critique of American militarism, and “Ransom Man,” where Vazquez’s tender voice really shines over a plucked guitar and heavily reverbed strings.

However, History From Below is more than just a collection of pleasant sounding folk rock songs, and the lyrics are what make it stand out. With lines like Everyone wants what nobody needs/Silver and gold (“St. Francis”), I want to get an answer/To why I was even born, and the earth is so tender and cruel/Well if you're not there it's still so beautiful (“Salt in the Wound”), Delta Spirit explore the cliché themes of life, death, love, and destiny in a cerebral and authentic way. Delta Spirit is a band with a conscience, and they have a lot of ideas worth listening to, especially when Vazquez is singing them. 

-- Jared Iversen

The District Dialect: Ben's Chili Bowl

Welcome to 'The District Dialect,' a column about the distinctive sounds of Washington, DC. Our writers are going out into the District and capturing the sounds that make our city unique, and showing us where music exists in ways subtler than we often notice. All audio pieces are recorded, edited, and produced by the authors'. This week Catherine Degennaro went to Ben's Chili Bowl:

District Dialect: Ben's Chili Bowl by igorgerman

If you live in DC, you may know the famous Ben’s Chili Bowl as a great place to grab a late bite after a night out at the Black Cat or the 9:30 Club. If you don’t, you may know it as that place where Bill Cosby and the Obamas eat free. But beyond being a hotspot for hungry college students and DC royalty alike, the restaurant is steeped in U Street and Washington history. Catherine DeGennaro and Christina Crisostomo, resident connoisseur of all things chili, stopped by to explore Ben’s storied history, food and atmosphere over a blasting jukebox and the sound of halfsmokes sizzling on the grill.

--Catherine Degennaro

Review: LCD Soundsystem, This is Happening

LCD Soundsystem

This Is Happening

B+

Have you ever seen a Liquid Crystal Display Soundsystem in a store?

Of course not. That’s because such a device doesn’t exist in the real world. In reality the name LCD Soundsystem is the unreal product of two very different concepts fused together into one being, a sort of chimera between sight and sound. Like all mythical beings and things that are sort of grounded in things we know, the image we have of an LCD Soundsystem lives somewhere on the fringe of our imagination, operating in the seemingly gray area between reality and fiction.

That’s exactly where the work of this band resides: on the edge of producer and band leader James Murphy’s mind. When Murphy first felt inspired to start LCD Soundsystem in 2002, he envisioned playing whatever music popped up in his head, whether it made any sense to anyone else or not. A self-portrait of the band and its style of music, according to Murphy:

“disco. bored people. a poorly executed fist-fight. sandwiches without too much meat and stuff on them. records that you used to hate but are kind of cool now that you heard them again years later at your friend's house. hipster nonsense. midrange, and not so much bass-and-treble. an engine that needs the timing looked at and is running at capacity. a band.”

This kind of eclectic, hodge-podge, exploring deep space past Pluto-the-no-longer-planet music is exactly what you can expect to find in LCD Soundsystem’s newest album This Is Happening. Released on May 17, it is a full demonstration of Murphy’s willingness to do anything he wants with his music.

This Is Happening rises from Murphy’s mind like a city without its L’Enfant to organize the intersection of every street and the height of every building. Whereas in some communities all the houses look exactly the same, listeners will find that urban sprawl that comprises the 9 tracks on this album exhibit an incredible range of styles, emotions, and messages, all rushing towards us on I-95 en route directly from Murphy’s soul. In “All I Want”, we feel his soft-edged but heartfelt passion; in “Drunk Girls”, we find a playful and light attitude towards frivolity; in “Somebody’s Calling Me”, we face a more reserved, subdued, and despairing tone. “Dance Yrself Clean,” is in itself akin to two songs -- for exactly 3 minutes and 5 seconds it is surprisingly held back and quiet, until which point a unstoppable power surge of electronic bass kicks in almost entirely unexpectedly. If it weren’t for the continuity of Murphy’s lyrics unifying both halves, listeners might be caught checking to see if it was even the same track, making it a veritable two-faced creature.

Of course, the pure power of Murphy’s wild range of sounds and styles doesn’t imply that his thoughts never strikes out. LCD Soundsystem diehards may find themselves disappointed with some of Murhpy’s forays into different musical techniques. The heavy and robotic feel of “Somebody’s Calling Me” and “One Touch” seem a world away from the band who in the past brought us the optimistic and vivacious “Daft Punk is Playing at My House”. Purists might label “Home” as an attempted but lesser follow-up to “All My Friends.” In addition, Murphy’s freewhelin’ spirit at times gets a little ahead of itself – “Pow Pow” comes off as not just disorganized, but in a bad way, as it is more difficult to identify with what he is trying to accomplish here than in songs like “All My Friends,” which one musician has called the “Baba O’Reilly of our generation.”

But to criticize Murphy too much for straying from what people might think sounds like LCD Soundsystem would be to miss the point entirely. This band’s success and talent has been defined by its ability to move beyond its own comfort zone to see what’s out there, and the overall result has been great new music. After all, you may not find a hit on this album, but they don’t really do hits.

-- Brian Sergi

Review: Peter Wolf Crier, Inter-Be

Peter Wolf Crier

Inter-Be

a solid B

Whenever I listen to this album, I imagine Peter Wolf Crier playing in a giant, abandoned old barn, in the middle of nowhere, around sunset, when the light filters in through the cracks of the walls just right so you can see the dust and specks of hay kind of swirling around. That’s exactly what this album sounds like. Cool, right? Not really, according to this graphic:

Peter Wolf Crier haven’t had it easy. They weren’t surrounded by 1000 dive bars featuring 1000 new breakout indie bands every evening to delve inspiration from, they didn’t have a 100% chance of trendy—they were surrounded by, well, Minnesota: open expanses of land, tiny little farm towns, probably a lot of cows and sometimes some trees, too. (Yes, that means no dive bars.) That puts them at about 5% chance of trendy. I know their pain! These are my people—we have to learn to think differently with these kinds of odds. And Peter Wolf Crier did—to their great success; their debut album Inter-Be has been gathering buzz for most of the last several months.

It’s hard to get anyone’s attention when you’re a guitar-and-drum indie-folk duo. There are only a bazillion other versions of you out there, grappling to the death for just one single speck of recognition. Peter Wolf Crier gets around this with a sound that’s just different enough from everyone else to be perfect—listeners are intrigued, but not so put off PWC is forever condemned to obscurity. The vocals on Inter-Be are effectively what really set the band apart—I would say lyrics, I’m a sucker for lyrics, but I can’t for the life of me understand most of them (the only word that comes through on “Crutch & Cane,” the track that immediately made it on my list of favorite songs for late March/early April, is “Zanzibar.” Well, I’ve always wanted to go to Zanzibar?). The tracks effectively sound like they were recorded in a tinny echo chamber—which doesn’t even sound that attractive, but it’s perfect. The drums and persistently strummed guitar follow in the same echoing fashion throughout. This may be a stretch, but the tracks sound like they somehow have a LOT of space in them—these are, at the end of the day, just two guys trying to throw something, anything out into the vast openness of a Minnesota plain.

Stand Out Tracks: “Crutch & Cane,” “Hard As Nails,” “Down Down Down” (I for some reason immediately think of Elliott Smith’s “Don’t Go Down”)

-- Fiona Hanly