Bonobo – El Toro

With his 5th album under the Bonobo moniker, Simon Green has created a minor electronica masterpiece. Multiple styles, themes and tempos converge, often featuring Andreya Triana’s lovely vocals (when will this woman put out a record of her own??? {updated 7/19/2010…the answer is apparently August 23rd in the UK and Sept. 3rd in the US!}), from the epic sounds of the opening “Prelude” and closing title track, to bubbling soul of “The Keeper” and “Eyesdown” to my personal fave “El Toro” a simply gorgeous vamp with strings where Green makes use of virtually every part of an exceptionally long drum break from a Port Authority Band track, and chops it up to the point where if you didn’t recognize the break, you’d think there was a live drummer. Nothing short of bloody brilliant.

Dum Dum Girls – Jail La La
Dum Dum Girls – Blank Girl

It might be easy to dismiss Dum Dum Girls as late-comers to the recent “Girls In The Garage” revival including Brooklynites, the Vivian Girls and Golden Triangle and Cali based groups like Best Coast. A quick buzz-through of the 11 tracks that make up their full-length debut “I Will Be” might not inspire much in the “I-tunes” preview trained ears of many listeners, they play fast, they play slow…there’s lots of fuzzy guitars. But if you ignore this record and this band, you are missing one of the absolute best albums of the year.

As far as I can tell, from articles and interviews, Dum Dum Girls appears to have started as more of a conceptual, bedroom project for lead singer/guitarist Dee Dee. In time she found the rest of her girls, including Frankie Rose, former drummer for Vivian Girls and began to perform live in addition to recording cassettes and 7″‘s. I first heard Dum Dum Girls on Michael Stock’s excellent “Part-Time Punks” weekly radio show on KXLU. Stock is often excited, but he was extra-excited to play music from a 7″ from the group, and with good reason.

For me, what separates this band from other similar sounding acts are the melodies and harmonies at work in the exceptional instrument that is Dee Dee’s voice. In the midst of those post-punky/surf rock drums and the mountains of guitar fuzz there is a unbelievable strength and sweetness. Dee Dee’s vocals sometimes insistently cut through the noise, sometimes they float over it, other times they’re front and center and just plain lovely, as on the slower tracks “Rest Of Our Lives” and “Baby Don’t Go.” Dee Dee is the vocalist that back in the 1990s I’d always hoped Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill would be, committed to an aesthetic and a sound, but she never makes the mistake of sounding too girly or cutesy just for effect. She sings like a woman of extreme confidence, powerful and strong at times, but aware of the beauty that comes from a subtle change in phrasing and tone.

As good a singer as she is, she’s also a great songwriter with a real knack for hooks and harmony. “I Will Be,” and the single “Jail La La” are definite standouts, but virtually ever song has a moment of borderline pop genius from the “Someone Tell My Baby, Or Else He Won’t Go Out And Save Me” of “Jail La La” or the “My Baby’s Better Than You (Yes He Is!)” line that takes over 1/2 way through “Everybody’s Out,” to the way “It Only Takes One Night” shifts from the singing of the title to Dee Dee’s pleading “Don’t Forget Me” and especially the little mini song cycle of everlasting loving, “Rest Of Our Lives,” “Yours Alone” and “Blank Girl” with the last one actually featuring Dee Dee’s husband Brandon Welchez from the Crocodiles in a duet.

“I Will Be” is a really exceptional debut full-length. A rare underground rock record that begs to be listened to completely and repeatedly so that the full subtleties of the songs can present themselves to the listener. Everytime I hear it there’s some new element I hadn’t noticed before and that’s rare for an album that doesn’t feature a single song longer than 4 minutes and is less than 30 minutes in total length. It is also only one of the many qualities that have made this record one of my favorites of 2010.

As an extra treat, here’s a couple of videos of the group performing live at South By Southwest (via Pitchfork TV). As good as the album was, I’m really excited to see what this band will record in the next year or so…

Dum Dum Girls – Catholicked

Dum Dum Girls – Play With Fire (Rolling Stones Cover)

Cumbia En Moog – Cumbia De Sal

Was listening to this one on my way to work and almost spilled my morning tea everywheres.  From this post on Super Sonido, Afrosound followed the Chi-Cha movement in Colombia and provided some exceptional heavy weight vibes.  Vampi Soul has now put together a two disc/lp comp of the freshest sounds…so very necessary.

Valerie Lagrange – Si Ma Chanson Pouvait

Finders Keepers has released yet another stellar collection of obscured music, this time from the French BYG / Actuel record label. Though some American avant-garders make appearances (especially of note is a funky track from the Art Ensemble of Chicago), most of 22 tracks on this comp. are French psych with a slightly proggy, hippie rock sound, but all very very cool. I thought about posting the funky psych tracks from Coeur Magique or Ame Son, but instead decided to bring you a smoother side of breaktastic dopeness from Valerie Lagrange. Don’t Sleep!

No one sings quite like Yukimi Nagano of Little Dragon. The voice is one thing, which has some similarities to soul singers past, but what sets her apart is her phrasing and completely singular sense of timing. Of the many gems in her sparkling, though very fresh career, is “After The Rain” from Little Dragon’s debut self-titled release of 2007.

Like this reading of the song, I did the stereotypically American thing and thought perhaps the song was related to Hurricane Katrina and the shock of the man-made aspects of that catastrophe. Taking a deeper look, I feel like Nagano’s theme is probably not so specific, but might still be related to man-made disasters, real and metaphorical.

After the rain the temperature drops
And covered in ice was my window top

I’d like to take these two lines more or less on their face as being related to seasonal weather changes and what should be a recognition that coming with those changes come the regular spate of bad weather, perhaps given its location, Gothenburg gets either a bit of flooding or some heavy snow.  Just from what I can tell online it seems to have a very Bay Area kind of climate, but even in the Bay, you know that it will rain pretty much all Spring and then never again til the next spring.  How people forget that cyclical nature to weather is always surprising to me.  It’s not a mystery.  It happens every year, but somehow we’re always surprised.  In SoCal, there seems to be some genuine surprise when wildfires break out in the summer, even though it happens every single year in more or less the exact same places! 

But this line could just be an opening location, for something a bit less directly weather related.  Perhaps the “rain” refers to relationships, whenever something major and catastrophic happens, that causes the rain, or tears to fall, the temperature definitely drops between those in the relationship.

After the rain we forget
We make sure we gain then we leave it
‘Cause we’re a nation of forgetters
Oh after the rain we pretend
It’s easier to begin without looking back

Now this verse, which repeats a couple of times could be literal or metaphorical, especially that “nation of forgetters” line, which does really speak to a mindset in many parts of the world, where people think “it won’t happen here” or “it won’t happen to me” and eventually they get caught up in the same cyclical disasters.  I think this constantly about the people who refuse to live in a “safer” environment and instead choose to reside in wildfire/mudslide zones in Southern California. 

But these lines can also refer to something broader in our culture (or perhaps cross-culturally) when it comes to love and all the drama connected to it, we often choose to forget about what just happened, in one relationship or in the next, in many cases repeating the very mistakes that caused the “disaster” to occur, again and again.

People where have you been
Have you been hiding
In your big houses
People after the rain
Will your life
Will it ever be the same
(Ooh!) people what will you do
When your luck
When it turns on you
(Woo!) people after the rain
Will your life
Will it ever be the same

To me, this series of lines towards the end of the song seems to be the strongest case for a social commentary in “After The Rain.”  Nagano appears to be calling out people who have the ability to change things for the better, but who remain disconnected and aloof, hiding in their big houses.  But this could be metaphorical as well, after all we do erect pretty big houses for ourselves and when someone comes along and blows that house down, we are rarely the same.

Incidentally, there is a music video for this song and it’s no real help at all in terms of elucidating anything about the song’s meaning, unless Nagano and crew are suggesting people should move their houses (perhaps not on snails) instead of staying around in the same place where these disasters continually occur.  At least that’s my take, let me know what you think!

(After the rain)
After the rain the temperature drops
And covered in ice was my window top
I say goodbye I wave my hand
As a thousand doves fly
Across the blackened night

(Wooo!) After the rain we forget
We make sure we gain then we leave it
‘Cause we’re a nation of forgetters
Oh after the rain we pretend
It’s easier to begin without looking back

‘Cause all at once air so thin
And there’s nothing left to breath in

After the rain we forget (2x)

Behind the dream so rosy and red a pile of things to forget
A voice of the past tiptoes in a cracking ghost whispering

(Wooo!) After the rain we forget
We make sure we gain then we leave it
‘Cause we’re a nation of forgetters

After the rain we forget (2x)

People where have you been
Have you been hiding
In you big houses
People after the rain
Will your life
Will it ever be the same
(Ooh!) people what will you do
When your luck
When it turns on you
(Woo!) people after the rain
Will your life
Will it ever be the same

After the rain we forget (4x)

Love Is All – Dust

Third record from this post-twee/post-post-punk outfit from Sweden. In total, the record is pretty mellow but the upbeat tracks are rather stellar, including the track that leads off the record, “Bigger, Bolder” and this one which is closer to the end. Must be something about those snare rolls that I find irresistible…and by the way, whatever they have in the water up there in Gothenburg, Sweden (where Love Is All hail from as well as The Knife, El Perro Del Mar, Little Dragon and Jose Gonzalez) they seriously need to bottle that isht and send it out to music deprived corners of the world.