one-listen thursday

so this week one-listen wednesday comes to you from the comfy environs of my own house. and also on thursday. and i missed last week. i know, i know. shit's real. so better late than never. in case you're new here, i listen to a cd i haven't heard before and then hold forth on how it is while i'm listening to it. it's been called "the death knell of criticism." that's just super.

we are wolves
non-stop je te plie en deux
fat possum

i read a little bit about these guys in skyscraper, and it seems they're a bunch of montreal art school students and the guy who plays drums plays guitar here and the guy who plays keyboards plays drums or some such thing. and there's a drum machine.

from what i heard about this band, fat possum seemed like an odd label fit, but i can kind of see it. it's got a guttural thing going about it. a little bit like the black keys recording ethos. the name of which i can't remember. hang on ...

hey wow: in looking for the above info i just discovered that the black keys have signed to nonesuch records. their nonesuch debut will be out on sept. 12. okay, i'm going back to look for that term again ...

no luck. it's something about lo-fi meeting awesome. i'll try and get back to you. dude: the ice cream truck is right outside my house. the jingling bells are an interesting addition to we are wolves squallingly dirty sound. it makes me think of death from above 1979 except not nearly as propulsive; it's much slipperier and greasy. i'm on track 3, "la nature." it's held down by a killer great dirty synth line that's just begging to be remixed. i mean, you could hang a whole electronic dance beat around it, but mostly it's draped in lots and lots o' noise.

the title of the album means "non-stop i fold you in two." sounds super-uncomfortable. the drummer plays standing up with no bass drum, which is where the drum machine comes in. it's a very collage-y sounding record so far, with lots of little weird whoops and hollers going on in the background (and sometimes the foreground). there's something very art school about making music with a powerfully pounding groove and then singing like you're being eviscerated. this is like dance music for a david lynch movie.

is it in wings of desire where nick cave is singing in a club in germany? it's kind of got that vibe, where just even being able to dance to this just screams i'm wearing black and don't really care. i'd just as soon be writing pomo poetry.

i don't mean any of this as a knock, though, because this type of thing can be done either very badly or kind of sickeningly well, and we are wolves seems to be falling into the latter camp. the drum machine keeps everything organized, but the synth lines and guitar stuff sounds like it's in constant danger of falling out of time. it's a good tension. there's a great broken bassline in "snare me" that i bet would just kill live when pumped up loud and through a killer p.a. system.

have i mentioned that they're playing here soon? they are. i just went to check my e-mail, but then i realized that i already downloaded that message to my e-mail at work, so i can't get you the details, but i'll get back to you on it. plus: just scored an aimee mann interview! sweet!

track 5, "namai-taila-cambodge (go-tabla-go)," is probably my fave so far. it's tabla driven and more mellow and open than the other stuff so far. plus, it's instrumental. the screaming might be getting to me a bit. but if that's your thing, they're good at it. it's nice to hear a band switch gears.

wow, "nonstop" has a toy ray gun sound as a major melodic element. props.

so again with the black keys: they've invented this sort of idealized blues sound which strips all the crap away from contemporary blues and amplifies the groove, the grit and the soul to make a sort of simulacrum of blues and soul music. we are wolves sound much the same, except it seems like they've traveled to the future and done the same thing with stuff like nine inch nails and other industrial/electronic musics of the late '90s and early '00s.

jay clark needs to remix something from this album. did you hear his bloc party remix? stunningly awesome faux-nintendo work. at its heart, this is really a very simple album; it's just that each element that's there is ramped up to a quasi-ridiculous degree. these guys should be cast as the houseband in some kind of near-future, dark apocalyptic noir movie. the song "t.r.o.u.b.l.e." has only these lyrics: "t to the r to the o u b l eeeee ... looking for some trouble!" suffice it to say, they mostly keep their political statements to their volume and not their lyrics.

we're on the penultimate track now: "we are all winners." this album has a charming mix of world-weary posing and wide-eyed naivete, in the way that very abstract and arty music by its very nature displays a kind of contempt for the everyday, but at its best also makes us re-envision what the everyday is. there was a great little piece in harper's last month about exploring the quotidian, about going deep inside the everyday and non-descript to find a sublimality that's very different from our typical expectations of the sublime. we as americans expect to be entertained 24 hours a day and made to feel special, but this seems like a pretty recent development. there's a lot of beauty to be found in gentle observation of pretty much anything.

on the surface, we are wolves seem to not fit into the everyday with their glitchy and aggresive synth sounds and howling vocals, but there's something brave about not setting music apart from life. they're all playing off-instruments for the members and it sounds like they're having a hella fun time doing it. good for them. i'll bet they kick ass live.

and scene.