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MGMT, MGMT

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MGMT is MGMT‘s third record.

One of my professors used to say, “Some books you read. Some books read you.” I think this is a record that is going to read a lot of people. It certainly read me.

Honestly, the reason I picked it up was I saw so many reviews that were basically “what is this weird quarter-life crisis nonsense??!!” which as it turned out were right, in a way. The songs are more introspective – there is actually a song called Introspection, which I love – and do grapple with more adult topics, specifically, the alarming sensation of being an adult, and all of it is filtered through a musical fun house mirror.

Or: MGMT’s answer to “What do you do after you become super-famous, then make a record your fans kind of don’t like because it wasn’t the same as the first one?” is “Become aggressively weird.”

Here are three songs from the record, all of which are very good. I decided to share them in video form because the videos are also aggressively weird.

Alien Days: colonial-era alien abduction as a metaphor for how your most precious things are sometimes caviar for unfeeling creatures. (Ooooh subtle, MGMT!) Also, aliens doing ballet.

MGMT - "Alien Days" (Official Video)

 
Your Life is a Lie: A bit of a modern echo of Once In A Lifetime; the moments after you have realized you have let the water hold you down and you don’t know where you are and you have to tell this nice lady next to you that she is not your beautiful wife.
MGMT - Your Life Is a Lie

 
Cool Song No. 2, in which Michael K. Williams engages in some skullduggery and then a dude slowly turns into a tree.
 
MGMT - Cool Song No. 2

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A Good Read A Good Listen and a Good Drink, John Moen, Perhapst

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It’s a simple yet sublime pleasure, and just thinking about it can make you feel a little calmer, a little more content. Imagine: You bring out one of the good rocks glasses (or your favorite mug or a special occasion tea cup) and pour a couple fingers of amber liquid (or something dark and strong or just some whole milk). You drop the needle on the jazz platter (or pull up a blues album on your mp3 player or dig out that mixtape from college). Ensconcing yourself in the coziest seat in the house, you crack the spine on a classic (or find your place in that sci-fi paperback or pull up a biography on your e-book reader). And then, you go away for a while. Ah, bliss.

In this series, some of NTSIB’s friends share beloved albums, books and drinks to recommend or inspire.

Revise Your Maps is the second solo record from Perhapst, aka John Moen (The Decemberists, Maroons). It is a delightful folk-pop record, smooth and refined in some places, rough and jangly in others.

Here is Wilamette Valley Ballad, which got stuck in my head for a couple of days recently:
 

 

Other especially strong tunes are Revise Your Maps, Sorrow & Shame, and Still (Mt. Zero).

The more I listened to the record, the more I wanted to know more about the man who made it. So here is John Moen to tell us about his favorite book, record and drink:

A Good Read:

My favorite book is The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt. Because I felt the need to loan it out, and read it at the same time, I now have two hardcover copies on my over-burdened bed stand. The author is (at least some of the time) a Portland guy which makes it all the sweeter, but this isn’t just a case of local pride gone to a reader’s head; this is actually one of the best books you’ll ever read.

It is a Western, of sorts, and a strangely violent look at sibling relationships. A great story told by a very smart and extremely funny writer – I found it hard to make time for others once I had started reading. Luckily, for those impatient folks who seemed to need my participation in their lives, I finished the book much sooner than I desired.

It is so good that you may even buy it twice. I highly recommend The Sisters Brothers.

A Good Listen:

It’s hard to say how good a record really is, when you get hooked as a teenager… I first heard Emergency Third Rail Power Trip by The Rain Parade when I was a hormonal 16 year old, and it made me feel great! By “great!” I mean totally depressed and introspective to the point of inspiration.

I am still inspired by the same record these days and continue to rob it’s “vibe” when writing music of my own. The album is true downer pop written by guys from the eighties taking on the sounds of the sixties. To my ear, the record is incredibly melodic, a tapestry of textures, and also imperfect in all the right ways. I will be buried with a copy… on Saturday.
 

Rain Parade - Talking in my sleep

 
A Good Drink:
Jack and Coke. My favorite. Yummy.

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Gary Numan, Splinter (Songs From A Broken Mind)

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gnsplinter

There are times when I wish I could transmit the experience of listening to body of music for the first time whole and complete and unfiltered, so that y’all could experience it just as I did.

Because if I could, all of you would be able to stand with me on the subway platform on a crisp cold sunny morning, half-asleep and surrounded by other commuters, while the initial notes of I Am Dust, the first song from Splinter (Songs from a Broken Mind) by Gary Numan rolled over us like a grimy tide coming in. They’re darkly seductive and a little bit intoxicating, like heavy sweet aural smoke.

And perhaps, as I did, you all would smile into your scarves and let the dark tide pull you under.
 

 

Here’s what I think about Splinter, now that I’ve listened to it a few times: it is a dark, dense, contemplative record, rigorously constructed and at times a little chilly. A candle-lit cathedral with broken windows. It is gloomy, but pleasingly so.

And while the slower songs – and there are several – are lovely, the places where the lights that shine most brightly through the gloom are the club bangers, like Love Hurt Bleed:
 

Gary Numan - Love Hurt Bleed

 

Note: there is a remix competition going on for Love Hurt Bleed through November 25, 2013. Get on that, producers in the audience!

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Video: Villebillies, Love is Kind of Crazy

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And continuing the cannibalism theme, or maybe just going off on a little “monsters in love” tangent, here is the video for Love is Kind of Crazy by the Villebillies, of Louisville, Kentucky, which makes excellent use of both a Dusty Springfield sample and a firedancer.

 

Villebillies - Love is Kind of Crazy

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Video: Natti Vogel, Cannibal

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Here is the video for Cannibal by Natti Vogel, directed by Rebecca Rojer, and starring Vogel and porn star Colby Keller.

The song is a cabaret-pop gem about wanting to be consumed by a lover.

The video plays with and explores the definitions and conventions of “food”, “porn”, and “food porn” by simultaneously mashing them together and flipping them inside out. “Boy in a cage” is mixed with “boy about to be dinner” in one scene, while “one partner washes the other” is presented in the context of “human washes his next meal” in another. “Sensual eating” and “food photographed to look luscious” are twined together and exaggerated to the point of grossness as part of a “fattening the kill” montage.

There was also one particular sequence that made me squawk with glee, which comes at 2:40 and I’m not telling you what it is, because that will ruin the surprise.

Meanwhile, while I may never look at pomegranates or savory danishes the same way again, as soon as I recovered from the initial shock of watching this, I had a list of people I wanted to share it with right away.

 

Natti Vogel - Cannibal (Official Video)

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Name That Face: Happy Flowers vs Happy Mondays

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Name That Face: the series inspired by Jennifer’s adventures in musician misidentification over the years. For anyone who has ever misremembered a band name at a crucial record purchasing moment and tragically bought Patty Smyth rather than Patti Smith; melded “Arctic Monkeys” with “Wolf Parade” and Googled in vain for “Arctic Parade” or “Wolf Monkeys”; or been unsure whether they want something by Swiiim or SWIMM. To tell your own tale of woe, drop Jennifer an email.

Happy Flowers VS Happy Mondays

The Time: November 1988

The Place: A hospital in suburban Virginia

What happened?

I was 13, and recovering from major surgery. My parents, being dear, sweet, people, offered to bring me some new music to listen to while I was trapped in bed. I requested: The Happy Flowers. They checked the name several times. Yes, I said, I’m sure. I was very, very keen to get hold of their music. I had been waiting for months for it to be released. The new Happy Flowers tape was absolutely the one thing I wanted.

A day or two later, a brand new copy of I Crush Bozo was delivered to my eager little hands.

I felt a pang of disquiet just looking at the cover. But I pressed onwards – I mean, bands but all sorts of random things on album covers, right?

This is the first track on I Crush Bozo:
 
http://youtu.be/ysMSuUgVdDQ
 

I listened to it in a state of baffled shock. Maybe just the first song is bad, I thought, and kept going.

No.

They were all terrible.

(I was not an experimental noise fan at the time. I am, now, and I still don’t like it.)

I hit the “stop” button and sat there, glaring at the tape in horrified confusion, wondering what had gone wrong.

Eventually I put it away; it sat in my music collection for years, a stone on my mental shoe. I wondered, frequently, what I had really been looking for.

Twenty years later, I was making my way through a Stuart Maconie book – I think it was Pies and Prejudice – when, thanks to one of his musical digressions, I realized what I had done.

My clue was Maconie mentioning that the Flowers had gotten some US press in the late ’80s, which was approximately the same time I was ducking into the magazine section at Tower Records to read Circus and anything else involving guitars and/or tattoos in rushed 10 minute bursts, while my parents picked out movies to watch.

Somehow, between relying on jumbled memories of hastily read material and trying to think around the last of the anesthetic fog, I had confused the Happy Flowers with the Happy Mondays.

This Wrote for Luck, a song from Bummed, by the Happy Mondays, released in, indeed, November of 1988:
 

Happy Mondays - Wrote For Luck

 

And that is much more what I would have been into at the time.

Mystery: solved.

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Video: Fé, Time

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Good morning, NTSIBbers. Here is the video for Time, the first single from Fé, aka Ben Moorhouse and Leo Duncan, of London.

They first started writing together in a meat container under the Westway (elevated highway) that Duncan was living in at the time; he moved there after the houseboat he was living in on the Thames started taking on water.

You’d never know all of that from this song, though. It’s a mellow tune, and the video is sweet casual-stroll-through-a-lush-sunny-cider-farm moment of zen – with a little surprise at the end.
 

Fé - Time (Official Video)

 

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A Good Read A Good Listen and a Good Drink, ALX, Love Crushed Velvet

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It’s a simple yet sublime pleasure, and just thinking about it can make you feel a little calmer, a little more content. Imagine: You bring out one of the good rocks glasses (or your favorite mug or a special occasion tea cup) and pour a couple fingers of amber liquid (or something dark and strong or just some whole milk). You drop the needle on the jazz platter (or pull up a blues album on your mp3 player or dig out that mixtape from college). Ensconcing yourself in the coziest seat in the house, you crack the spine on a classic (or find your place in that sci-fi paperback or pull up a biography on your e-book reader). And then, you go away for a while. Ah, bliss.

In this series, some of NTSIB’s friends share beloved albums, books and drinks to recommend or inspire.

I first encountered Love Crushed Velvet a couple of year ago when they were part of a Beatles on the Ukelele production in Brooklyn. One of the songs they covered was Back in the U.S.S.R.; afterwards lead singer ALX and I bonded over being among the few people in the room old enough to remember the U.S.S.R., and then I found out their original work was pretty great, too.

On a related change-of-world-order note, here is the video for Revolution Time, inspired by the Arab Spring of 2011, from their recently released EP Delusions.

"REVOLUTION TIME" - Love Crushed Velvet [Official Music Video]

 

When I asked ALX to be part of this series, I decided to, if not start a revolution, at least shake up the status quo a little bit, and gave him this picture of pumpkins on 34th Street as a prompt:
 

IMG_4222

Here is what he sent back:

Autumn. The shortening days, the crispness in the air whispering that summer has passed. T-shirts surrender to light sweaters, leather jackets replace denim. Sneakers are put away and boots—and the attitude that they convey—give us an added bit of swagger as they shape our strut from block to New York City block. While autumn changes how we dress and feel, it also reshapes our sensibilities…in music, in drink, in literature.

Music. The day I am writing this is the day that Lou Reed passed away. The quintessential embodiment of New York rock n roll attitude, his music never felt like a part of summertime—it was the sounds of October and November that came out of the stereo when his records were being played. And today, it’s impossible not to play Transformer, arguably his finest solo album. Walk on the Wild Side is most famous song, but Satellite of Love and Perfect Day are perhaps his finest—it’s hard not to choke up when you listen to them, especially today . . .
 

Lou Reed - Perfect Day - Later... with Jools Holland (2003) - BBC Two

 

October also makes us want to start enjoying heavier drinks again. Thicker beers, and . . . whiskey. When listening to Transformer, I couldn’t resist the urge to whip up my own version of a Sazerac, a great potion based on rye whiskey. Just seemed like the right thing to drink today.

It’s also the “perfect day” to re-read Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, a brilliant book that explores the challenges of managing relationships between complex, unfulfilled characters. I’d originally read it while writing some of the songs on our new EP, Delusions, and it felt appropriate to bring it around again on this late October evening. The emotional temperature of the book is pure autumn—and it’s infused with some rock ‘n roll characters that remind me of some of the individuals that I’ve encountered in my own life. Great read.

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Introducing: Willie Dick

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Every once in a while, I get emails from artists, review their work, and then sit at my desk blinking rapidly and thinking What the actual hell did I just watch?

Sometimes I dig deeper and it doesn’t go well; other times I’m seduced by raw charisma and want to share my joyful bafflement with everyone I know.

Willie Dick, of Glasgow, Scotland, falls firmly into the latter category. His work will turn your brain sidewise and you will like it.

This is Deeper Darker, a truly unsettling tale from his Halloween special album Halloween Horror (download it for free at bandcamp!):

WILLIE DICK - Deeper Darker

 
And then there is My House My Rules, created while he was squatting in an abandoned nursing college and morgue (!), which includes Deeper Darker, but also infectious bangers like I Will Be Your Juliet:
 

WILLIE DICK – I Will Be Your Juliet from Billy Campbell on Vimeo.

 
Merry Gothic Christmas, y’all. Have fun, be safe, we’ll see you back here tomorrow.