Lis­ten: Spin­ning and Scratching

Love is All were near­ly lost to the whirl­wind this week, as they opened for Tilly & The Wall at a near­ly emp­ty Starlight Ball­room. Mind you, after sev­er­al con­sec­u­tive packed hous­es for the likes of Bore­doms, Son­ic Youth and TV on the Radio, the sorts of shows where the whole room sweats and the floor is slick with human con­den­sa­tion, it was a wel­come, if some­what dis­heart­en­ing change. As CMJ approach­es, Philadel­phia has been inun­dat­ed all week with great shows by bands on their way to their show­cas­es; next week, it’ll be the same as bands leave New York and dis­perse to the far flung cor­ners of USA in search of an audience.

Swedish punk/pop quar­tet Love is All, like many inter­na­tion­al acts that have gar­nered crit­i­cal acclaim before their albums reach the US, suf­fer some­what from the gol­drush phe­nom­e­non that typ­i­fies so much music blog­ging. Nowa­days it seems that an artist gets noticed twice [first time in the “break­through” review, sec­ond on that promis­ing first tour] before suc­cumb­ing to some com­bi­na­tion of faulty cul­tur­al mem­o­ry, bad tim­ing and the end­less flux of new mate­r­i­al in our hyper­me­di­at­ed soci­ety. So while there are more and more inter­na­tion­al bands enter­ing the Amer­i­can pop­scape, in a man­ner of speak­ing, they’re lost in the hel­ter skel­ter of Amer­i­can re-releas­es and end­less pro­mo­tion­al tour­ing sched­ules, the very thing that keeps them from record­ing the new mate­r­i­al that would keep them fresh in the cul­tur­al imagination!

Sim­ply stat­ed, Love is All deserve bet­ter. Imbued with the bub­bly pop spir­it that char­ac­ter­izes Swedish stars ABBA, but sound­ing more like X‑Ray Spex, lead singer Josephine Olaus­son danced and shrieked gid­di­ly through two and three minute songs last Tues­day, whip­ping the audi­ence into a sug­ar high fren­zy. Accom­pa­nied by her chirp­ing, pos­si­bly mal­func­tion­ing key­board, slash­ing gui­tar, throb­bing bass and squawk­ing sax­o­phone, all of which were pro­pelled by mop­top pop drums, Love is all mar­ried the very seri­ous down­town post­punk to its mor­tal ene­my: chart­pop music. On Tues­day night, it proved a thrilling, if tumul­tuous, marriage.

While they suf­fered the same mediocre con­di­tions that Griz­zly Bear has now famous­ly doc­u­ment­ed, their punk sen­si­bil­i­ties used the bad sound to max­i­mal advan­tage, result­ing in a fre­net­ic, noisy per­for­mance that accen­tu­at­ed all the best ele­ments of twee punk. The show itself was rem­i­nis­cent of the ear­ly days of third wave punk, where out in the ‘burbs, kids were putting on shows for their friends with their friends, danc­ing and hav­ing a good time, with­out much regard for such reifi­ca­tions as “the scene.” Over­all, it was a refresh­ing anti­dote to the at times sti­fling pos­ture that artists and audi­ence assume as de rigeur, too often meet­ing as adver­saries instead of accom­plices in some great, imag­i­nary punk conspiracy.

• Reviews of Love is All, The Sci­ence of Sleep and the new UT reis­sues forthcoming
• Tonight: Beach House

Lis­ten: Movie Theme

It could’ve been a com­plete wash. With the Killers play­ing across town, and the week’s sched­ule filled with plen­ty of hot indie acts, it was alto­geth­er pos­si­ble that Beck, a sort of father fig­ure to count­less pop absur­dists, would’ve seen him play­ing to a hol­low venue peo­pled with aging hip­sters and VH1 mani­acs. Add to that two lack­lus­ter albums that main­ly rehash his pre­vi­ous work on Ode­lay and Mid­nite Vul­tures and it seems that in the wake of the lachry­mose epic Sea Change, Beck had sim­ply lost either the knack for a quirky sin­gle, or had lost touch alto­geth­er. That last bit still may be true, but it was­n’t the case at last Mon­day’s show.

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My mind is still some­what blown from this. I’m wish­ing now more than ever that some­one had shot video of the Philly pup­pet out­ro, but this footage from New York will have to do. Com­men­tary on Beck-as-pup­pet lat­er today.

Sat­ur­day night’s TV on the Radio showed a band moti­vat­ed by their per­son­al ambi­tion and the polit­i­cal cli­mate in which they’re work­ing. Like the ear­ly days of U2, R.E.M. and more recent Radio­head albums, TV on the Radio com­bine pol­i­tics and love and con­fu­sion with­out over­pow­er­ing the audi­ences with melo­dra­ma or mes­si­ah com­plex­es. Tunde Ade­bimpe fronts the band like a man pos­sessed, bor­row­ing lib­er­al­ly from Michael Stipe’s histri­on­ic stage pres­ence, often flail­ing as he sings. Lead gui­tarist Kyp Mal­one snarls men­ac­ing­ly at his side, pro­vid­ing the beau­ti­ful, dan­ger­ous har­monies that make TV on the Radio’s trade­mark sound so sin­gu­lar­ly gor­geous and urgent.

The ener­gy and excite­ment they gen­er­ate does­n’t come with­out sac­ri­fices. The deft sep­a­ra­tion that defines the sound of Return to Cook­ie Moun­tain lit­er­al­ly gets lost in the mix, result­ing in a more uni­form fuz­ztone under­cur­rent that enveloped Des­per­ate Youth, Blood­thirsty Babes. But maybe that’s part­ly the point. For all the stu­dio artistry in evi­dence on their new album, their rabid live per­for­mances are what win over fans in the end. In sum, TV on the Radio embody many of the qual­i­ties that were once under­stood, per­haps too sim­ply in a now extinct for­mat, as mod­ern rock.

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