Humanizing The Vacuum

Beach House begin their fourth and best album Bloom with “Myth,” their best song. A song for which “limpid” appears in the Oxford English Dictionary, anchored by one of those guitar arpeggios that the duo stole from any number of late eighties 4AD acts, it offers a conditional statement (“If you build yourself a myth/”You’d know just what to give”) on which previous albums would have been content to rest. Then a middle eight, guitars turning to strums unexpected and gorgeous in their simplicity, offers truth: “Found yourself in a new direction/Aeons far from the sun/Can you come?” Singer-keyboardist Victoria Legrand reminds me of any number of terrific late Catherine Denueve performances, the ones she’s given in Potiche, Kings and Queen, and The Girl on the Train: the hauteur never thaws; the composure she maintains as she shares her restlessness and longing makes her more richly human.

Bloom is going to be praised to surfeit. Its songs ripple like the sea surface full of clouds memorialized by Wallace Stevens. Triumphal unfurling like Bloom‘s demands the honing of craft, a cunning for surprising listeners with tricks deployed on its predecessors and making them sound welcome, such as the way Alex Scally fiddles with volume and pitch bending on “New Year” as if we hadn’t already heard this novelty on Teen Dream‘s “Norway.” Legrand’s yelling “someone like you,” chasing a melody and a memory, evokes Galatea warming to flesh.

But heard in sequence the songs’ dappled effects get wearying if not fusty. At the concert I attended in October 2010 when they opened for Vampire Weekend, I watched the sellout crowd mesmerized as those choreographed arpeggios and swell-and-ebb synth pads settled on them like dew. One turned to her girlfriend: “They’re fucking awesome. Wanna get a cigarette?” Although Beach House would get me more excited if they believed in rhythm programs as fervently as limning the melancholy of sitting on a Nantucket sand dune in January, Bloom earns its title. Remember the advice of horticulturists: spray water on roses; don’t drench them.

Kindness is singer-songwriter Adam Bainbridge, an Englishman with hair like a CSNY roadie. Living room disco is his specialty: the echo-laden fragility of Arthur Russell, the slink of Nile Rodgers’ guitar lines add propulsion to a rickety project. An unwieldy collision between the Ambitious Lovers and Trevor Horn gets a tip of the hat on the rather loud “That’s Alright.” His tastes are even more expansive: he reconceives the Replacements’ “Swingin’ Party” as a lament by the sensitive boy never invited out and Anita Dobson’s “Anyone Can Fall in Love” as an androgyne doing a Dionne Warwick impersonation at a supper club. Of course sad and glad can coexist; Bainbridge avoids antitheses when possible. The high point is “Cyan,” a dance track whose transparent surface conceals eddies. For his next trick Bainbridge should join Hercules and Love Affair.

Years of good intentions later, Rufus Wainwright releases his first good album since 2001: twelve good to excellent songs reliant on the guitar-bass-drums structures he’s occasionally eschewed. Covering Judy Garland, collaborating with Neil Tennant, and setting Shakespeare’s sonnets to music must have either satisfied his ambitions or taught him how to apply his attraction to elongated, swooping vocal melodies to an album that Asylum Records could have released in 1976 with the expectation of a top ten debut, gold certification, and a Rolling Stone cover story of our boy, and long hair rakishly combed to one side. If the singer-songwriter moniker isn’t apt, check out the scenario delineated in “Montauk”: “One day you will come to Montauk and see your dad wearing a/kimono and see your other dad pruning roses/Hope you won’t turn around and go.” Other than the my-two-gay-dads figure, this is the kind of letter to the world whose demotic power Jackson Browne or James Taylor might have employed; but only Wainwright would sustain tension by chasing a synth string motif with a vocal at the upper end of his register.

It’s hard to remember how weird Wainwright’s debut sounded in 1998. A year before the Great Record Label Merger, Dreamworks releases a luxuriant song cycle to doomed male youth scored by Van Dyke Parks. Much of it — then and now — sounds cluttered and not particularly fleet but I can understand how it can be a favorite album for many listeners. But for lucky artists through pain and knowledge comes forgiveness. Wainwright had to sing about foolish loves, matinee idols, and Danny boys before arriving at the concision of “Montauk” and “Out of the Game,” his take on “Watching the Wheels” — a celebration of kicking it with a boyfriend and child and not subscribing to Billboard. One of the ironies of Wainwright’s is that his bilious personal life shows itself in his songs as peeks, eyeballs through windows. He’ll name cigarettes and chocolate milk as two of his favorite things but relies on Cole Porter-esque discretion when hinting at “those other things” he won’t mention. The triumph of Out of the Game is the way in which the quotidian becomes as radical a “lifestyle choice” as crystal meth. This is a fellow who sang a song whose refrain “My phone’s on vibrate for you” he turned into something strange and thrilling. Here’s hoping for more strangeness and thrills

One classic on Master of My Make-Believe: “Disparate Youth,” a seething track whose chinoise opening lick, thick guitar strums punctuating each verse, block keyboards, and Santigold’s detached vocal make for the best example of triumphalism for its own sake I’ve heard since early nineties Rush declared that we were young and wandering the face of the earth wondering if our dreams were immortal for a limited time. Back to Santigold though. What an artful trick she manages. Singing like the words are being pulled through her front teeth, she nevertheless convinces me she’s committed to a “life worth fighting for.” The runner-up: “The Keepers,” an Arular-era M.I.A. ringer (yes — inevitable) in which her command is even more impressive. She’ll bend octaves and go kiddy-chorus because the times call for desperate measures: “We’re the keepers, while we sleep in America/our house is burning down, our house is burning down down,” she sings with a shattering mix of elation and rue.

R&B singer-songwriter Miguel is hungry, a flâneur who peaks through store windows, buys on impulse, regrets it, and keeps walking. His breathless tally includes 2010′s full length All I Want is You and a series of EPs archly titled Art Dealer Chic. The latest, leaked during last Friday afternoon news dump, is the weakest of the three: confused in its intentions and confusing as music. But as a workbook in which Miguel Jontel Pimentel has limned the possibilities of influences like El Debarge, Sly Stone, and Here, My Dear-era Marvin Gaye it hints at an addled Economist-addicted power-chord-mad smooch-fusion that should allay Maxwell fans mourning his comparatively indolent work habits. In other words the middling at best chart performance of “Sure Thing” on Top 40 stations versus its mind-boggling commercial triumph on R&B radio might be the last time Miguel scores a hit, any hit, reliant on the post-Stargate ethos.

Volume 3 begins with the kind of minor chord synth-drenched partyup anthem familiar to fans of Prince’s Dirty Mind and Controversy (it’s called “Party Life”). “Ooh Ahh!” boasts falsetto, handclaps, and single chord guitar vamping. By far the most interesting track is “Candles in the Sun, Blowin’ in the Wind,” a tentative step into introspection defined by Miguel’s stuttering “other-other-other” like it’s 2007 and “Umbrella” looks like the future in pop. But this element isn’t half as perplexing as the decision to interpolate a John Lennon interview in which he denounces conservatives liberals, socialists, fascists, and every other twentieth century political phenomenon. Intended as exclamation point, it also adduces Miguel’s naivete. Denounce “extremes” in the hopes of sitting one’s rump down in a self-created centrist sphere looks like bravery to Thomas Friedman types, and while I don’t expect political sophistication from a musician I do want him to offend somebody.

No “Adorn” or “Gravity.” It’s possible he’s thinking those masterpieces of sexual healing. Let’s hope his growing cult sustains him long enough for him to posit rock star moves like the video for “Arch & Point” as genuine crossover possibilities (it’s the sexiest thing I’ve seen all year). Here’s to him — us — accepting the wisdom of the truest lines he’s ever written: “Nobody’s perfect/We are alive.”

Another year, another Cloud Nothings album as cold as mackerel. But it’s a while since I listened to a band whose cymbal sound annoyed me.

From a review in dialogic form between Rich Juzwiak and Emma Carmichael:

RICH: She just seems to have little grasp on much of what she puts out besides the braggadocio. Her “gay” character Roman is embarrassing and honed from ignorance—mentally unstable and cowardly (Roman never called out Eminem for saying “faggot” on the track they shared last time around, nor did he apparently protest the presence here of noted homophobe Beenie Man). Her female empowerment is also tenuous. “If you wasn’t so ugly, I’d put my dick in your face,” could be argued as a provocative reclaiming of the penis whose lack puts her at an automatic disadvantage in such a male-dominated forum; “I am the female Weezy” (as proclaimed at the end of “Stupid Hoe”) is just irresponsible, especially because female rappers have fought (and often succumbed to) being assigned counterpoints. How passé to have a male define your womanhood. The most revolutionary thing about Nicki Minaj is that she’s the female Nicki Minaj.

“What still makes Nicki’s narrative so singular, though, is not just that she is kind of weird and erratic, but that she raps about being a woman,” Carmichael counters. To which I’d respond: Minaj’s raps about being a person as conversant in brand names as any male hip-hop artist, about her pride in being a commodity; she’ll rub an endorsements in your face like it’s a dick. She does funny voices but so did Busta and Lil Wayne. Where Busta outdoes her in speed and pre-2008 Wayne in chronic stoner lunacy, Minaj gives the impression that her lines appear as they occur to her; they’re the essence of old school improv.

But back to the gender question — a complicated one. Dan reminds us of the fates of Lil Kim, Lauryn Hill, and Missy. One of the most astute commenters I’ve read in weeks patiently explains how and why Minaj’s music, despite its frustrations, is fraught with sexual ambivalence. I wonder if it’s the fate of female performers to project femininity by wearing harlequin wigs, stupid clothes, and “outrageous” costumes. While I’m not suggesting that Lady Gaga should eschew the makeup and trill “Speechless” at the piano like the Elton John of Barbara Walters’ dreams, there’s an aesthetic limit to allowing gimmickry signify untethered to, say, fucking. Or appearing on award shows. Or getting one’s wig stuck in a subway door. For all the amazing qualities of “Come on a Cone,” “HOV Lane,” and “Roman Holiday,” they’ve exhausted me, and I’ve only lived with them a week. Minaj strains for novelty. The pop quadrant of Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded (e.g. “Starships,” “Marilyn Monroe”) strains for anything and everything; they’re disgraces, one and all. The frustrating irony, however, rests on the fact that the album’s failures adduce her aesthetics (or market plan) more shrewdly than the successes. As exhausted a subject as Marilyn Monroe is — even when Elton eulogized her — it’s a minor revelation that she’s referent, case study, and symbol of excess. The track remains stupid; she could have called it “Elizabeth Taylor” and produced the same effect. But note how she repeats “how Marilyn Monroe felt felt felt.” She aims for the survivor self-pity that is the staple of Hollywood pop songwriting. And that’s how she wants us to regard her. She’s not a woman, she’s not a man — she’s a star.

My favorite single of 2011 was Azealia Banks’ “212.” I’ve written enough about it. I read tittering here and there; the only reason lots of us fell for it, these straight male critics argued, is because she said “cunt.” Well yeah. She acknowledged it was there to get eaten, or if available, she’d do the eating. She sounded not just like a woman but several human beings at once, avid and curious like lots of hungry up and comers who aspire to be beautiful sinners and Marilyn Monroes. An avidity and audacity Minaj hasn’t once matched. Neither has Banks. It’s not hard at all to be a pimp. It’s hard enough to be a woman.

From the sound of Madonna’s voice the album should have been called Helium. Smart enough to unearth hooks in synth bass skronk, obsessed with marketing how she doesn’t give a __ but buying William Orbit’s services for the album’s three catchiest track just the same, she’s still shameless about confounding truths about artistic strengths and weaknesses. The truth, although not the whole truth: like a blender whose warranty expired, Madonna’s post-opera-training voice has constricted into a squeak, a pinched signifier of pleasure unmoored from the words she’s writing and the pleasures she’s describing. But this is a veteran. The surprise isn’t how unsurprising the dance tracks are; the surprise is the fragility of the ballads. Whether “Falling Star” or “Masterpiece” join her canon I won’t speculate, but Madonna The Serious Artist takes them seriously, weighing each word. I won’t forgive her for “Girls Gone Wild” — I can’t. Or for “You’re Abe Lincoln /Cuz you fight for what’s right.”

Unlike the valedictory notes struck in a couple reviews, I don’t hold working with Martin Solveig, the Benassis, and M.I.A against her. Of course she doesn’t listen to fresh sounds with the avidity of yore. Besides, thinking that this is what Madonna exclusively accomplished at her peak misses the point: she brought fresh sounds to her and alchemized them into stranger and thrilling yet accessible creations. Voice distortion and impatient experiments with dubstep may adduce her desperation; the wonder is how much she still sounds like Madonna, unafraid to sound like the sort of person to make a daft Lincoln analogy.

Artists resort to tape sounds, filters, and feedback when they’ve replaced everyone in the band or it’s time to release the third album. Here’s a point in The Shins’ favor: since Port of Morrow is their/his fourth album you can scratch the last argument. Writing songs in which he/they tries and fails to fit his voice around the guitars and drums, James Mercer/they has/have never courted obscurantism so deliberately. The music, as Greil Marcus said about Elvis Costello’s Goodbye Cruel World, settles on the tables and chairs like dust. I’ll embrace “Fall of ’82″ the fullest because it boasts the dumbest chord sequence: remove the production syrup and gewgaws and I swear it sounds like Third Eye Blind.

Assuming that the Shins’ reluctance to change my life was my fault, I relistened to the first three records this weekend, and, yes, Chutes Too Narrow is the best although not by much. When he’s on Mercer can do winsome and oblique as well as any songwriter this side of Colin Newman; the pretty hooks and punked-up tempos beguiled everyone involved. Wincing The Night Away isn’t much worse, in the same way that the contemporaneous Modest Mouse’s We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank embarrasses its 2004 breakthrough not a bit (how fitting that Johnny Marr plays on both). Port of Morrow is a bad album, a dead end about which its few supporters will clear their throats and change the subject in a couple of years, but it codifies Mercer’s problem with sense. This dude needs an editor.

The formal virtuosity of The Men’s Open Your Heart is impressive; they’ve got their shit down. So do No Age — their closest confreres — and Yuck. I haven’t reviewed any of these young fellows much; I have little say about the way the speedfreak guitars match the blurry, confused feelings. I prefer No Age, but The Men’s devotion to subtly variegated textures on seven-minute tracks like “Oscillation” (perfect for your afternoon workout, by the way) recalls Mission to Burma. My favorite song is the most dismissed in the reviews I’ve read: a wee acoustic thing called “Candy” that’s like Chris Bell singing stupid lyrics over chord changes that would make Sonic Youth vomit in their mouths. Verse of the month: “I’ve been to the darkest places/I’ve been a total mess/I’ve picked up all I could and laughed off all the rest.”

Oh, Madonna. Two consecutive dud singles in a row is so not you. For time immemorial her second singles have been at least as good as their predecessors. The sugar-free gum of Hard Candy broke the streak. With “Girls Gone Wild” she’s still in the slough. I can’t put it better than Katherine St Asaph:

Even if you discount the fact that the Girls Gone Wild franchise that coined the meme is possibly the worst thing ever, even if you discount the fact that it’s cheap titillation, this is still a conceit that Madonna addressed and demolished decades ago. Madonna has been in the game since 1983. She practically invented the game, as it currently exists for pop artists. There are literally academic programs based on her career and its messages. Madonna has no business singing things like “good girls don’t misbehave, but I’m a bad girl anyway,” not because women shouldn’t sing about sex and definitely not because older women shouldn’t (I can already picture the YouTube comments and snarking squawking heads, and they make me want to yank my brains out through my forehead), but because she’s been past this since she devised her persona. It’s like a groundbreaking female artist deciding to finger-paint Tijuana bibles of herself for no reason except that’s what the market wants, and y’know, it’s not so bad, it’s easy work. The other part of the chorus is hitched to “girls just wanna have some fun,” a sentiment that required Cyndi Lauper’s doctoring to charge its girl power in the first place. Madonna shouldn’t have to borrow from Cyndi Lauper. And she definitely shouldn’t have to borrow from the very cliche construction of sexuality that she’s both teased and stomped to death.

Or, self-cannibalization will nourish you if you don’t munch on your endocrine glands, heart, and brain.

Greil Marcus and others writing at the dawn of punk recorded how watching Johnny Rotten was so unsettling that an atmosphere of danger and impending doom would hang over the venue. Sinead O’Connor at the peak of her evanescent stardom in the early nineties had that impact on me. I hadn’t seen her alive — what live performance could match the tremors set off by “Troy,” “Jackie,” and “Just Like U Said It Would B”?

Eric Harvey notes how O’Connor tearing a photo of John Paul II asunder on “Saturday Night Live” provoked the biggest earthquake of all. Watching it at my uncle’s house, the act happened so quickly and spontaneously that we all sat blinking as if a fly had flicked across our lines of vision. It wasn’t all though:

A couple other reactions bear mention: Tim Robbins, that evening’s host, didnt’t even acknowledge her in the good-nights. Didn’t even look at her or mention her name, and she’s standing right next to him. Tim Robbins! Then it got worse the next week, with Joe Pesci. His “hey I taped the photo back together” stunt was fine, but then he said, “if it was my show, I’d have gave her such a smack!”, at which point the audience applauded. Seriously. A round of applause for a man threatening physical violence against a woman who had made a gesture trying to draw attention to child abuse in the Catholic church. Crazy.

Again: Team Sinead forever. When she walks away from the mic after the above performance, she seemed absolutely fine—no doubt still on a high—until Kris Kristofferson grabs her in his unnecessarily paternalistic way (I think he said “don’t let the bastards get to you” or something?), at which point she seems to break down. Which makes sense.

I’m not being fair to How About I Be Me (And You Be You); it’s the first O’Connor I’ve bought since 2000′s Faith and Courage, an album burdened by superstar productions by the likes of Wyclef, David Stewart, and Brian Eno (she could afford them in 2000?). Although it’s her strongest album-length statement since the first Clinton administration, HAIBM depends on the audience’s knowledge that sundry forces ruined her career and fucked her life. One of those sundry forces is O’Connor herself. Like the folkies whose tradition she cheerfully blasted her way past, she confuses topic sentence plainness with eloquence; the magpie who purloined Prince typography and drum machines, who covered Nirvana and mid-eighties B-52′s, is gone. On “Queen of Denmark” she sports a guitar, two chords, and the truth, which these days runs to lines like “I wanted to change the world but I couldn’t even change my underwear” and “I hope you know that all I want from you is sex/To be with someone who looks smashing in athletic wear.” This isn’t territory too far from 1990′s “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” in which she managed to enjamb “You know how it is and how a pregnancy can change you” without tripping over her bare feet.

All credit to a singing voice that has lost some of its bottom end but retains its power to startle. A committed vocal performance means recording a bar or set of verses in one mode and then switching to another seconds later; this tonal imbalance — a commitment to an iteration of “honesty” that requires parody and self-mocking wit — renders the googly-eyed naturalism of her songs even stranger (the 1992 covers album Am I Not Your Girl? failed because, forced to perform in one mode per song, she sounded monochromatic and cowed). The best example here is “Old Lady,” in which the acoustic melody refracts her intensity into the gentlest of irony. She has no problem presenting herself as a dotty old bird carrying parcels and valentines while laughing like an idiot at the fantasy she’s created around loving a man. Savor How About I Be Me, folks — we may not get another.