I get the idea that if this was in English, the lyrics would be the sort that utterly distract me from the pure joy of the music. She’d be all, “my man-a wanna me-a eat-a his banana” and “one two three four egg drop soup” (all rights reserved for my next album). Not that there’s anything wrong with that, except for possibly a small amount of damage to the psyche, about as much as a can of Coke Zero does to the body.
But it’s in French, so it just sounds groovy. I guess “Je Veux Te Voir” was her “I Kissed A Boy” - or whatever, the song that brought her to attention before her album was finished. It has a less bassy, more pop sound than the rest. I guess it was/is a “you are not by nature well endowed for procreation” type of song, but again, it’s in French, so my awareness is mediated.
So Tortoise is coming out with a new album on 23 June. I have kind of mixed feelings about Tortoise ever since I saw them on their tour with Daniel Lanois - they opened and played as his band. It was almost as if Lanois had never heard Tortoise before, but they did a good audition, and it was politically feasible, so went with it; then, hearing them every night, he was forced to understand that their kind of music was very dry and cerebral, where his is emotional and immediate (live at least).
Almost as if. At any rate, watching him interact with them on stage reinforced the sense I had developed, watching them, that their music was about as meaningful to me as a pile of calculators programmed to beep the tune to “Secret Agent Man”. I loved It’s All Around You - at least I did one time on the road from Angel Fire to Taos, NM, when I determined it was my favorite instrumental album since Kind of Blue (!) - and TNT is a classic, so I was rather at sixes and sevens over the ordeal.
Perhaps they’re just best enjoyed in moments of solitary attention. I remember that the Tortoise crowd’s stance was of awkward, arms-folded, second order reverie, such as would be expected of people who have primarily experienced something alone and unhindered by drink.
This new Tortoise track strikes me as rather an attempt to claw towards immediacy, so we’ll see what comes of the new album.
It’s interesting, because it sounds very generic and synthetic and derivative, like music that a committee of robots would make trying to replicate Bjork’s pre-Vespertine music - yet it is very listenable, for example while washing the dishes and reading Wittgenstein.
The lyrics are kind of good. “My Electric Husband” has some clever lines about a blender and a juicer.
De Staat is somewhat more dissonant than the other Andriessen pieces I know (De Stijl, M is for Man…, the stuff on Bang On A Can - Industry, all fantastic). There are a few really impressive explosions of mind-numbing sound.
The Real Ambassadors (hear “Remember Who You Are”)
This is a mostly out-of-print collaboration between Dave Brubeck and Louis Armstrong, along with a few other people. The liner notes claim that this is a musical written by Dave and Iola Brubeck, but many of the high points consist of Armstrong singing very Satchmoey tunes - I suspect he contributed compositionally.
He was clearly the kind of guy who turned any group of people into “Louis Armstrong and a bunch of other people”. It’s amazing to witness myself growing agitated listening to the chorus/Brubecky parts, only to be pulled right back into it by Louis. I love Brubeck, I used to listen to Time Out, Time Further Out, Quiet as the Moon (Brubeck playing the Peanuts music), a live album or two. It’s not that Brubeck fails (although the chorus does offer some screechy cacophonies), but that Armstrong is just such a bright light he casts shadows off everyone around him.
“Remember Who You Are” (side 1, track 4) is a killer. I love the drums. There’s so much reverb on the vocal, sounds like a plate reverb to me. Trombonist Trummy Young sings the second verse.
Grizzly Bear has taken a real step here towards mainstreaming an esthetic fairly well laid out by Robert Wyatt. This is an album that will probably turn up on the sound system at Starbucks at some point, but plenty of it is coming out of a tradition of pretty droney, spooked, playfully odd music. It’s bittersweet to behold, like a child growing up.
The place where this surpasses Animal Collective’s recent effort is in its sonics, its rhythmic stability, its production values in general. The A.C. has songs, though, which this album does not.
The entrance of a voice can instantly locate any piece of music, whatever its inherent character, in a space wholly determined by the character of the voice. The music practically becomes an afterthought.
Compare Talk Talk to Gastr Del Sol. It would take a little convincing, but if Laughing Stock featured David Grubbs on vocals it could pass as a post Camofleur GDS album. “New Grass” sounds like Tortoise mixed with Oval; the way “Myrrhman” sits loosely in its music, Grubbs could start sing-talking at any moment.
The second Mark Hollis opens his mouth, Talk Talk becomes a band of the 80’s, a new wave, glam-rock, pop-music creature which just happens to have wandered into a hostile environment.
The music becomes very much like what I occasionally try to imagine Cher makes when she’s out of the spotlight, kicking back with her free jazz quartet. Of course you can see why a band like U2 avoids taking this direction in public. Talk Talk made this wildly mutated, beautiful chimera, but of course they sacrificed their reputation among casual listeners.
