sign in sign up
<<
Home , Bat for Lashes, Crooked Fingers, Daedelus (musician), Dum Dum Girls, Fucked Up, Here We Go Magic

Pitchfork: Track Reviews Page 1 of 7

Search

REVIEWS | TRACK REVIEWS ADVANCED SEARCH

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/11087-morning-light/ 3/9/2009 Pitchfork: Track Reviews Page 2 of 7

forkcast tracks sunday, march 8, 2009

St. Vincent: "The Strangers" Gliss Ghostface Killah, Novel: "Message From Ghost" "Morning Light" , : "Your Control" 6 Sonic Youth: The Eternal mashup Aesop Rock, , Why?: FREEHoudini excerpt : "Play the Game" (Queen cover) MF DOOM: "Cellz" Art Brut: "Catch" ( cover) EMAIL LINK Tinted Windows: "Kind of a Girl" Gliss make no secret of their affinity for the Smashing Pumpkins. They've opened for them, Crystal Antlers: "Andrew" covered "Rhinoceros" on a tribute -- even their name could be mistaken for a long-lost Pitchfork's Best New Music - Tracks B-side. Fortunately for Gliss, they seem a lot more in touch with the Smashing Pumpkins' strengths than does these days. "Morning Light", the opening track from their forthcoming sophomore effort, Devotion Implosion, is firmly rooted in the era, when Corgan's struck a fine balance between shoegazer insularity and American arena rock bombast. Predictably, the feedback is molten-- the guitars fed through an untold assortment of pedals and blown amps. The volume alone is nearly enough to carry it, but "Light" also critically maintains momentum, surging forward instead of sinking beneath its own weight. A sycophantic tribute perhaps, but it sure beats anything the have dreamt up.

MP3:> Gliss: "Morning Light"

— Jonathan Garrett most read most recent

Phoenix "1901" 8

1. "1901" 2. "Desert Fun" EMAIL LINK 3. "Morning Light" It's hard for artists to teeter on the fence of change between -- between refining your 4. "Glass" sound and getting stuck in stasis, between growth and overreach. Unless you're Phoenix, 5. "Young Hearts Spark Fire" in which case you make it look really, really easy, and crank out more effortless pop-rock. 6. "Tunnelvision" While there are more pronounced synths on this preview of their upcoming album, "1901" 7. "Echononecho" sounds like a logical extension of It's Never Been Like That, and is just as smooth and 8. "Now We Can See" spirited and dementedly catchy as any of their best singles. That last record endeared them 9. "Wind Phoenix" to many, and it's worth noting that they don't sound especially daunted by following up their 10. "Lay It Down (The Golden Filter Remix)" last big success. Whatever new touches are added here-- the singeing keyboard chords that 11. "Yeahhh" dominate the first few bars before taking a backseat to that clean guitar, or the percussive 12. "My Girls" marble-down-the-drain echo-- it takes effort to pick them out, as this track is as seamless as 13. "Counterpoint" the top of the peanut butter when you first open the jar. Remember "12:51"? Me neither. 14. "Never Had Like You" 15. "M.A.G.I.C." 16. "Crabapples" 17. "The Breeze/My Baby Cries" (Kath Bloom cover) 18. "Black Lake" 19. "Catholicked" 20. "False Knight on the Road" MP3:> Phoenix: "1901"

— Jason Crock

recently The Mayfair Set "Desert Fun" News 7 Ryan Adams Writes Yet Another Book Reviews Cursive Brother Ali Franco & le Tout Puissant OK Arbouretum

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/11087-morning-light/ 3/9/2009 Pitchfork: Track Reviews Page 3 of 7

Monday, March 9 Features Heaven and Hell Sunday, Reviews March 8 Money Will Ruin Everything: The Second Edition Friday, Aleks and the Drummer March 6 Lithops

Thursday, March 5 Features EMAIL LINK Rokia Traoré This may very well be the biggest threat to one-person bedroom projects that we've seen Wednesday, yet. 's one-girl Dum Dum Girls have reached across the aisle (or perhaps vice March 4 versa) to L.A.'s one-boy Blank Dogs to create a two-person supergroup (a supergroup by News lo-fi standards, mind you) they're calling the Mayfair Set. However, if you do the math, it Tuesday, The 2009 checks out: If you already have one band that's garnering a lot of buzz and you then add March 3 Starting Lineup! another, what are you left with? In this case, maybe something that's greater than the sum Peter Bjorn and John to Open for of its parts. Monday, Kanye to Teach American Idol How to March 2 Sing If you're already familiar with Blank Dogs and Dum Dum Girls, the Mayfair Set shouldn't Devo | Mark Sultan | | Soft surprise you, sounding like equal parts of both separate projects. DDG's Dee Dee and BD's Pack Mr. Blank Dog (they're big on anonymity: Mr. Dog doesn't show his face, and the Mayfair Beasties, Jane's, Depeche for MySpace boasts a few tracks and virtually nothing else) trade off on vocals, with each song ? leaning more towards either the Dogs' rapturous urgency or the Girls' blissful brattiness. Reviews "Desert Fun", which will appear on the band's upcoming debut 7" on Captured Tracks, is The Boy Least Likely To Rio en Medio definitely the poppiest of the known MS tracks, playing like the soundtrack to a pleasantly The Sight Below stoned Sunday drive to the shore, equally luminous and bored. Mr. Blank Dog's Ian Curtis- Selected + Collected: An eMusic in-an-echo-chamber warble warns us that it will be a "very long drive" to finally get to Dee Selects Compilatio Dee's promised "fun in the desert sun", and that's totally fine with me. Woodpigeon

News Dakota Fanning = Cherie Currie in Runaways Pic

Department of Eagles to Debut Video at MP3:> The Mayfair Set: "Desert Fun" MOMA Depeche Mode Finalize Tour Details — Zach Kelly Sonic Youth | Riceboy Sleeps | Lil Wayne | far Suffer the Wrath of Reviews thursday, march 5, 2009 J Spaceman and Matthew Shipp Isaac Hayes "Glass" Surf City Gringo Star 8

Features Tindersticks

News Pitchfork.tv Teams Up With NPR Music | Richard Thompson | EMAIL LINK Dengue Fever Wilco/Feist Collab News Blows P4k Scripture quotes! Split personalities! Gothy art-rock climaxes! From Fur & Gold to "Glass", Circuit Breaker Bat for Lashes haven't gotten much more transparent. But the , England-based Coyne on Arcade Fire: "They're Pricks, band's Scott Walker-ft.ing has an ambitiously ornate opener-- you could almost So Fuck 'Em say it's crystalline, if you're not sick of crystal bands yet. Main woman Natasha Khan's Grizzly Bear Announce Summer Tour Reviews voice is the first thing we hear, slow and haunting as she recites from the biblical Song of Solomon. "I will rise now," she intones, and she does, hitting eerily high notes on the chorus Neko Case Abe Vigoda as she describes a dream of being made out of glass. Shrag Split-panned percussion helps introduce the album's dualistic conceit. Maybe I've been Dent May & His Magnificent Ukulele Longwave listening too much to the new Fever Ray album, but I can hear a resemblance in the frosty rhythms and chilly, wordless harmonies. Organ peals, guitars strum shimmering minor chords, and a methodical fuzz bass line holds it all aloft-- this is moody, atmospheric News concept music. There's also something about an "emerald city", so when the whole thing Reveals Fork in the Road comes out I'm gonna NetFlix The Wizard of Oz; we've been to The Dark Side of the Moon, Details but Two Suns is some Star Wars shit (speaking of hallowed texts). Mars Volta Dude Works With Hella, Juliette Lewis Interpol's Carlos D Makes Film, Blathers About Fam Mastodon to Play New Album in Its Entirety on Tour Oasis vs. China 2: The Reckoning Reviews — Marc Hogan U2 Malajube Here We Go Magic Grandmaster Flash Manda Rin wednesday, march 4, 2009

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/11087-morning-light/ 3/9/2009 Pitchfork: Track Reviews Page 4 of 7

"Young Hearts Spark Fire" Japandroids "Young Hearts Spark Fire" Features 9

News Prince to Sell Three-CD Set Through Target "Do You Realize??" Named Oklahoma State Song T.V. Eye: March 2-8, 2009 Science Sez: Lil Wayne Makes You EMAIL LINK Stupid, Sufjan an

Japandroids are two guys from who make distortion-cranked garage-rock Scion Rock Fest: Photos, Nachtmystium Controversy anthems about fleeting youth: the boys leaving town, drinking, hurting, French kissing some French girls, and then quitting girls altogether. Their debut album, Post-Nothing, was originally going to be self-released last fall, but now it's set to come out this spring, in only, on Unfamiliar. "Young Hearts Spark Fire" is just one of the raggedly emotive standouts on the record, young hearts igniting the duo's stripped-down drums-and-guitar setup into an explosive thing, equal parts insolence and grandeur.

"We used to dream/ Now we worry about dying," members Brian King and David Prowse cry out, in the kind of doomed-romantic instant quotable we used to get from fellow Canadians the Constantines. The whole song hinges on this contrast between innocence and destruction. It's tuneful and universal enough to have been produced as a radio-ready pop- punk single, but it has the kind of volatile churn you'd expect from a band known to cover Mclusky's "To Hell With Good Intentions", which helps to make all its conflicted emotions sound-- for lack of a less controversial word-- real. "I don't wanna worry about dying/ I just wanna worry about those sunshine girls," Japandroids conclude. "Only the Good Die Young" was bullshit-- these guys are too young, and too good, to burn out just yet.

MP3:> Japandroids: "Young Hearts Spark Fire"

— Marc Hogan

tuesday, march 3, 2009

Here We Go Magic "Tunnelvision" 7

EMAIL LINK

Sometimes, it's worth gritting your teeth through a little tedium to get to the good stuff. I'm thinking of Joyce Carol Oates stories in Harper's, stealth sections in video games, and the opening stretch of indie-folk musician Luke Temple's (now fronting a band called Here We Go Magic) "Tunnelvision". It begins as a fairly innocuous folk-rock jam-- clip-clopping percussion and craggy acoustic guitar simmer in a four-track haze, Temple's high voice flying overhead like a banner in the wind. But something happens along the way-- the track picks up buried vocal harmonies like rolling snowball, and little flights of lyricism attach to the underside of the hard-charging riff, which takes on an air of inexorability. Gradually, "Tunnelvision" earns its title, moving so purposefully forward that you can feel your own lateral perspective blanking out, eyes fastened on the prize.

MP3:> Here We Go Magic: "Tunnelvision"

— Brian Howe

The Thermals "Now We Can See"

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/11087-morning-light/ 3/9/2009 Pitchfork: Track Reviews Page 5 of 7

7

EMAIL LINK

The last we heard from the Thermals about Now We Can See, the band's upcoming fourth LP (and Kill Rock Stars debut), vocalist Hutch Harris said it was going to be "Long, for us." However unlikely that might have seemed for the consistently laconic Oregon punkers, we have our first bit of proof with the title track "Now We Can See", coming in at a long-winded 3:30! Nevertheless, I think it's safe to say that even if your average Thermals fan has the attention span of an average Thermals song, "Now We Can See" we'll be embraced as the certifiable rave-up that it is, easily becoming one of their best tunes yet. It's the perfect kind of bursting-at-the-seams power-pop gem, with big "Oh-way-oh-a-whoa" sing-along, tight guitar work, and a gleeful earnestness that's as freeing as it is fist-pump worthy. In other words, if you've ever wondered what the Thermals would sound like if they were the house band at your favorite bar, "Now We Can See" makes it pretty obvious that they'd sound sublime, full of vim, vigor, and starry-eyed resolve.

MP3:> The Thermals: "Now We Can See"

— Zach Kelly

Mi Ami "Echononecho" 6

EMAIL LINK

San Francisco's Mi Ami are carrying the same calling card that a lot of bands are liable to wave in 2009: drum-centric punk with Afro-pop leanings, punched up with noise and lo-fi experimentalism for good measure. And that's not a slight, for this band who caught our attention with an excellent remix of Telepathe's "Devil's Trident". Two years after the dissolution of their D.C. punk outfit Black Eyes in 2004, guitarist and vocalist Daniel Martin- McCormick and drummer Damon Palermo started Mi Ami, adding bassist Jacob Long in 2007 to round out the trio. "Echononecho" comes from the A-side their new 12" of the same name, and dares to make sense of their MySpace's awesome-yet-dubious name-checking (Minutemen and Don Cherry both get shout-outs). The track is no doubt jammy, sounding something like Ponytail tripping out on last year's Nigerian Special compilation complete with dubby bass grooves, banshee yowls (yes, that is apparently Martin-McCormick on high- pitched vocals), and squealing guitars rising from a primordial soup of polyrhythms. As for the debut full-length Watersports, consider our interest piqued.

— Zach Kelly

monday, march 2, 2009

Peter Bjorn and John "Lay It Down (The Golden Filter Remix)" 6

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/11087-morning-light/ 3/9/2009 Pitchfork: Track Reviews Page 6 of 7

EMAIL LINK

"After '' took off so hard, it was embarrassing not having an equally good follow- up." That's Peter Bjorn and John's Björn Yttling, explaining the single the Swedish pop trio released just after the song that launched a thousand covers/remixes. And he's right. As good as "Let's Call It Off" still is, you probably can't whistle its steelpan line from memory; both lyrically and as a would-be hit, it's the glum morning after to its more famous Writer's Block predecessor. PB&J must've learned their lesson, and now they're threatening to teach us one, too.

"Lay It Down" and "Nothing to Worry About", the first two songs we've heard from the band's upcoming Living Thing, manage to match the language-defying accessibility of "Young Folks" while also being surprising, confrontational, and distinctive. A combatively jaunty electro-pop barroom singalong you'll probably never hear in an AT&T commercial? A rhythm-oriented diss track with "D.A.N.C.E."-style kid vox centered around two wobbly chords recalling "Proud Mary"? Fuddy-duddies who would've rather gotten a sensitive, literate, middlebrow indie-pop album are gonna be pissed, but a lot of other people should be warming up their iTunes/eMusic fingers (or grabbing "Lay It Down", the lead single from the album in and , for free here. "Nothing to Worry About" will be the first single in the U.S., the UK, and Scandinavia.)

After , , Kanye West, and a host of others remixed or sampled songs from Writer's Block, PB&J's new stuff is already making the remix rounds. The Golden Filter, a whispery -based nu-disco act with an anonymity shtick and ridiculous interview responses, are up first. Widely posted in the blog-house circuit last year for their gauzy "Solid Gold", the Golden Filter follow up a fine remix of Cut Copy's "Far Away" with this hypnotic, seven-minute take on "Lay It Down", which works a bit better than it probably should. "Hey, shut the fuck up, boy!"-- it's a feeling that transcends genre. And now you can meditate to it.

MP3:> Peter Bjorn and John: "Lay It Down (The Golden Filter Remix)

— Marc Hogan

Lil Wayne "Yeahhh" 6

EMAIL LINK

Yes, three H's. That's the point: excess. It's all over new tape Hottest Ni**a Under the Sun. Mook-rock guitars? Yeah. "Purple Rain" solo w/ falsetto? Yeahh. And-- perhaps most shockingly-- an actually-hilarious verse from Mack Maine? Yeahhh. I mean, bitching about something like "Prom Queen" is like bitching about insects devouring each other on Discovery-- it's disgusting, it's horrible, it's fascinating. Then you flip it off. It's over, onto the next thing. No big deal. Breathe.

Lil Wayne doing rock isn't like Andre doing rock, i.e., dude is still rapping lines around throats, heads, torsos, whatever. Like on "Yeahhh". The song has a rock beat, I guess. But if rock is what's getting Wayne this hyped, give this man his rock. This is throat-jumping-out- of-mouth Wayne, as seen on "Playing With Fire" mixed with go-go-no-hook Wayne, as seen on "A Milli". It's like he's stuck in that space where you realize your entire arm is on fire and people turn into scorching skeletons when you tap them on the shoulder. You know what I mean? No? You are not Wayne.

My favorite line isn't the best line: "Yes, I am a dog/ Now watch me catapult a boy." Right: It's raining pets, hallelujah. But it's the way "catapult a boy" comes out: "cat-a-pult-a-boy," like "cat" is cutting the rope and the "a-pult-a" is the big spoon flying and "boy" is the boulder breaking through a castle wall. Nobody uses catapults in real life anymore, and that's a shame. But there's a lyricism to such ancient weaponry. The angle, the arc, the impact. They flow, in other words. And they hit.

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/11087-morning-light/ 3/9/2009 Pitchfork: Track Reviews Page 7 of 7

— Ryan Dombal

NEXT PAGE >

© 2009 Pitchfork Media Inc. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use | Jobs | Advertising | Staff | Contact Site by Tangible Worldwide

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/11087-morning-light/ 3/9/2009