Go see Ben & Drew from Blood Feathers tonight (w/ Juston Stens and Hacienda)

Posted on April 7, 2011 by David G

If you told me Blood Feathers played a bad show, I’d be glad to call you a filthy liar. Ben & Drew are opening up for Philly’s own Juston Stens (previously posted on here) and San Antonia’s Hacienda tonight at the North Star. Hacienda turn the early ’60s dial a tad up from the Black Keys’ level, mostly to great effect, as in the Beach Boys-esque, “I Keep Waiting.” And really: do we need any more reason to go to a show after the words “Blood Feathers”?

PS I’ve heard a four track demo of new Blood Feathers tracks, and boy are they scrumptious.

Hacienda, “I Keep Waiting” [Buy]

Hacienda, Juston Stens and The Get Real Gang, and Blood Feathers
Tuesday, April 7th, 9:00PM, $10
North Star, 2639 Poplar Street
Tickets

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I could not be more excited about the Fleet Foxes

Posted on April 6, 2011 by David G

That’s it. The leaked tracks (despite the blah lyrics of “Helplessness Blues”) are amazing. So, yup: I’m excited. About the album, dropping 5/3 on SubPop. About their show at Philly’s gorgeous Tower Theater on 5/21 [Tickets]. About the many hours I’ll spend this year listening to them, basking in melancholy.

Fleet Foxes, “Montezuma”

Posted in Minutemusic | Tagged | 2 Comments

The Antlers new track, “Parentheses”: The opposite of slight

Posted on April 4, 2011 by David G

I initially fell in love with The Antlers’ Hospice, but its emotional tug fell off for me after repeated lesson. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how my taste in music has been affected by my life situations: music that’s too slight (overwhelmed by the subway) or too harsh (too distracting for work, etc.) tends to get unfairly minimized. And Hospice‘s fall from my good graces was likely the result of that sort of unfair squeeze; no matter how beautiful it was, it was just too slight for what’s going on with my life.

This new track, “Paanetheses” [via Pitchfork], however, won’t fall prey to that. Pulling a major, major page from the last couple of Radiohead albums, it ups the ante with a Greenwood-esque guitar and Selway-esque drums. To be honest, this is as good as, if not better than, most of King of the Limbs.

Keep an eye out for The Antlers’ May 10 release of Burst Apart.

Posted in Random Noise | Tagged | 3 Comments

A New Direction for Noise Narcs: Comparing and Contrasting John Cale and Britney Spears

Posted on April 1, 2011 by David G

Hey all,

Compare and merge: Britney Spears and John Cale, together at last

After 15 grueling months of posting on Noise Narcs, things have gotten pretty staid. We post about music, frequently new, occasionally Philadelphian, occasionally on the varying covers of classic songs. Wash, rinse, repeat.

So, as of today, we’re taking a bit of a gamble. Those of you who know me, know that I’m a big fan of Britney Spears. Sure, as Jody Rosen points out, she’s kind of an empty vessel for her producers, but I’m not falling for the authorial pop fallacy (see: Lady Gaga, whom we should all congratulate for writing her boring pop songs all by herself just like a big girl!). “Toxic,” I totally ♥ you.

What you may not know is that I’ve been burning through John Cale’s catalog in between spinning Britney’s new four on the floor masterpiece, Femme Fatale. Cale is different than Britney, but he’s still pretty great. He also had a part in a song called, “Femme Fatale,” although it does not keep all four on the floor, which Britney is really great at.

So for the next two months, we’ll be posting exclusively on Cale and Spears, using the compare and contrast essay system I was taught in middle school. And to start it out, we have Britney’s new song “How I Roll” and John Cale’s old song “Helen of Troy.”

Britney Spears, “How I Roll” [Buy]
John Cale, “Helen of Troy” [Buy]

Britney Spears, “How I Roll”

Bloop-bloopy-bloop. What a way to start a song! H-o-t! But then this song makes me angry. I can’t believe that Robyn has been stealing from Britney all these years. Copy-cat! Speaking about cats, how great is this lyric, “back downtown where my posse’s at / because I got nine lives like a kitty kat”? She can hang downtown with her posse because even after they stab her and watch her bleed to death, she’s still got eight more lives!

Britney’s songs have multiple meanings. The first three times I was really excited about this song because I thought it was “Philly earthquake,” which scared me because I live in Philadelphia. But turns out that the lyric is “feel the earthquake.” I couldn’t feel it, could you?

John Cale, “Helen of Troy”

Eww! Stop talking about big thighs, John Cale. And those horns are weird. Doo-to-de-doooh! Someone should tell Mr. Cale that we’re not in medieval England with Charles Dickens and whatever, riding horses with armor and being colonialists.

But I do like the part where the man with the lisp talks, totally make think of Sex and the City!!! I also like the part where John Cale talks about Britney: “She’s got fat men, vermin in disguise / In the cold rooms of her eyes.”

Conclusion

Although both John Cale’s “Helen of Troy” and Britney Spears’ “How I Roll” are really neat songs about Britney Spears, I like Britney Spears autobiographical version better because: 1) it’s not set to 19th century England knight horns 2) bloopy-bloop-bloop 3) it does a better job describing how Britney Spears rolls, 4) “Helen of Troy” doesn’t talk about cute kitty cats once and 5) “Helen of Troy” does not once ask “can we get blind, like a captain in the sky?” which is a really important question to ask in today’s modern society.

Posted in Random Noise | Tagged , | 3 Comments

PBR&B: The Weeknd and Frank Ocean

Posted on March 31, 2011 by Matt S

I wish I could say that I came up with “PBR&B” as a term for the indie R&B that has been popping up on Pitchfork, Stereogum, et al. for the past month or two, but I’m not that clever (not by a long shot).  Despite not coming up with the name, I’ve been digging quite a few albums that fall into said sub-genre, namely The Weeknd’s House of Balloons and Frank Ocean’s Nostalgia U.L.T.R.A.

From what I can tell, the main thing that makes PBR&B artists hipster-friendly (versus regular R&B artists like Ne-Yo or Trey Songz) is that at least one song on their album makes extensive use of a familiar, hipster-approved indie rock song. In The Weeknd’s case, this takes the form of two songs that sample Beach House (pre-Teen Dream, no less). “Loft Music,” which is one of the better songs on the album, borrows guitar and Victoria Legrand’s vocals from “Gila,” distorts them, and adds a drum track and vocals. Somehow, it works to great effect.

The Weeknd – Loft Music

Beach House – Gila [Buy]

The other Beach House sample on House of Balloons is “The Party & The After Party,” which samples from “Master of None.” I think it’s a less original sample, an inferior Beach House song (relative to “Gila,” anyway), and the track just sort of meanders along for the last four minutes. Not exactly the best pitch in the world, but it’s worth a listen just to hear the Beach House sample.

The Weeknd – The Party & The After-Party

Beach House – Master of None [Buy]

All in all, the Weeknd album is pretty solid. It is deconstructed, sometimes sparse R&B that is better than anything I’ve heard in the genre in years. My favorite track is the opener “High for This.” While it doesn’t sample any indie rock, the beat during the chorus sounds like the beat from Ginuwine’s “Pony” and the sound from Inception got together and had a baby. Awesome.

The Weeknd – High For This

Frank Ocean’s Nostalgia U.L.T.R.A. is more standard R&B fare, but still an enjoyable album that has its weird moments. For instance, he manages to take an atrocious Coldplay song and make it marginally listenable (“Strawberry Swing”), reworks The Eagles’ “Hotel California” as a song about marrying a teenager (“American Wedding”), and samples Radiohead’s “Optimistic” in an interlude that features two women lamenting the lack of Jodeci in Frank Ocean’s music collection and includes the line “What is a Radiohead anyway?” However, the absolute standout track on the album is “Nature Feels,” in which Frank Ocean takes MGMT’s “Electric Feel” and turns it into a ridiculous outdoor sex romp (first line: “I’ve been meaning to f*** you in the garden”).

Frank Ocean – Nature Feels

MGMT – Electric Feel [Buy]

Posted in Random Noise | 15 Comments

Listen to Timber Timbre’s Upcoming LP for Free!

Posted on March 28, 2011 by Christopher T

Just a heads-up that Creep On Creepin’ On, scheduled for an April 5th release, can be heard for free HERE [updated with the correct link]. I favorably reviewed the Canadian ghost-folk outfit’s 2009 self-titled debut back in Noise Narc’s early days, and Creep On Creepin’ On, as the name might suggest, continues the same theme with references to death, seances, madness and magic spells, but with a few extra instruments thrown in here and there (like the morose sax at the end of the title track or the demonic cello/sax/violin combo in “Do I Have Power?”).  On a first impression, it sounds like some tracks veer more towards a horror movie score sound (Swamp Magic), while others will make you want to slow dance like it’s the zombie prom.  I like it.

Pre-order Creep on Creepin’ On here or here.

Also, it looks like they’re only making three US stops between Ontario and Europe, but one of those is Philadelphia’s World Cafe Live, April 12.

Posted in Upcoming Shows | Tagged , | 1 Comment

RIP Knut (2006-2011)

Posted on March 25, 2011 by Christopher T

When I was on vacation in Germany in 2007, a billboard promoting Frankfurt with a picture of a piggy bank on it read: “Berlin hat Knut.  Frankfurt hat Schweine.” I understood that “swine” in this case referred to the financial industry centered in Frankfurt, but a random German on the streets had to inform me what “Knut” meant.  He was a polar bear born in captivity in the Berlin zoo.   His polar bear mother (a former circus-performer) rejected him, so surrogate father, zookeeper Thomas Dörflein, raised him, and little did I know that I’d arrived in Germany at the dizzy peak of “Knutmania.”  Deutschland loved the cuddly runt.

Here Comes Knut! video.

Knut’s upbringing may have been unorthodox, some would even say “unnatural,” but was it wrong?  Animal rights activist Frank Albrecht thought so.  The life of a polar bear without a polar bear mother’s love and instruction was no polar bear life at all.  Albrecht and a few others advocated euthanasia for Knut, but the children of Berlin stood in his corner, and the result was the zoo’s most profitable year in its then-163-year history.  So that shut Albrecht up.

But the light bulb that burns twice as bright lasts half as long, and like all child stars, Knut didn’t grow up quite right.  At 2 years old, when his surrogate zookeeper father died of a heart attack at the age of only 44, Knut was considerably less adorable.  He was also a little strange, letting the polar bear ladies in his enclosure walk all over him.  Some have argued that the stress of his living situation may have contributed to his premature death (captivity polar bears can live up to 30 years; Knut was 4), which the results of a recent autopsy blame on brain disease.  Witnesses say his rear leg began twitching before he collapsed in a pool of water and drowned as zookeepers rushed to rescue him.

What did the people of Germany see in him?  The story of Knut is one of captivity, exploitation, controversy and a-cute (too soon?) heart break.  In honor of his story, think of him as you gaze at your shoes in sadness, listening to “Polar Bear” off of Ride’s 1990 debut, Nowhere:

Ride, “Polar Bear” [Buy Nowhere]

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New track from Grubby Little Hands

Posted on March 24, 2011 by David G

Those of you at the Noise Narcs show on Saturday may have heard the live premiere of the new track from Grubby Little Hands, “Uneek.” It has the Grubbies moving towards the chillwave side of psychedelic spectrum: watery gurgles flow by a tight R&B-esque drum track and then the Hawaii-esque guitars kicks in. Brian Melton of Fishing Engine, who also did the projection for Saturday’s show, provides the triptastic video.


Grubby Little Hands, “UNEEK”

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The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Tom Waits, and Darlene Love

Posted on March 22, 2011 by Christopher T

It’s not much of a secret that there are some Tom Waits fans here at Noise Narcs.  Most surprising to me about Waits’ recent induction into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is finding out that he plays Rock and Roll.  Usually I just categorize him as “Tom Waits.” But where’s the Hall of Fame for that?  Where’s the Jazz-Blues-Eastern-European-Folk-Avant-Opera and Nightmare-Hobo-Cookie-Monster Hall of Fame for that?

Check out Terry Gross’ great and hilarious recent interview here:

GROSS: Well, what was your first instrument?
Mr. WAITS: I don’t know. I don’t know, probably a box or something.

Tom Waits, “Step Right Up” [Buy Small Change]

Tom Waits, “Misery Is the River of the World” [Buy Blood Money]

Other inductees include Leon Russell (featured on Noise Narcs here) listed as a “sideman” and Darlene Love, whom you may not have heard of–in spite of her prolific career–because of stories like this from her Hall of Fame bio:

Among rock cognoscenti, Love is best known for “He’s a Rebel,” a song credited to the Crystals that was in actuality sung by Love and her vocal group, the Blossoms. The reason for this odd situation has to do with the record’s producer, Phil Spector. He instinctively knew that the song, written by Gene Pitney, would be a hit. But he couldn’t record it with the Crystals, his main recording group at the time. They were back home in Brooklyn while he was out in Los Angeles, impatient to get the song recorded before a competing version (by Vicki Carr) could gain momentum. So he cut “He’s a Rebel” with the Blossoms, crediting it to the Crystals because he wanted a recognizable name on the record and they had two recent hits (“Uptown” and “There’s No Other [Like My Baby]”).

The Crystals, “He’s A Rebel” [Buy The Sound of Love: The Very Best of Darlene Love]

And here you’ll find the full induction list for 2011.

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You passed the test on Saturday / The Trademark Experience

Posted on March 21, 2011 by David G

Thanks go out to all the people who came out to the Cozy Galaxies, Grubby Little Hands, and Bridge Underwater show on Saturday night. You all passed with flying colors. More picture proof can be found at Rockaphilly.com‘s Flickr. And check out Rockaphilly’s indie show listing while you’re at it.

My friend from Wisconsin said, 'Damn. People from Philadelphia are hot.' We know.

Cozy Galaxies

Donnie from Grubby Little Hands

Pat from Bridge Underwater

Speaking of passing tests, this video from Philly’s The Trademark Experience, made to encourage Philly kids to do well on the (funding imperative) PSSA exams, touches all the right places on its way to parodying Fabulous’ “You Be Killin’ Em” [via Philebrity]. Aw.


The Trademark Exeprience, “Fill It In”

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