[review 2006: the best of the year]

A friend of mine went to see the Blow this summer, just before the release of Paper Television. Khaela Maricich apparently introduced a song with an admission: the next album was going to be their pop album, something they could actually make some money on for once. At the time, everyone probably thought she was kidding, but now we know otherwise: Paper Television is the closest thing the Blow has to a pop album.

Of course, no one in the K Records stable really has much to spend on things like big-name producers or lavish, fully-equipped studios in Hawaii, so when the Blow decide to make a pop album, we’re not talking Timbaland and Christina Aguilera. We’re barely in the territory of I Am The World Trade Center, the last indiepop duo (or maybe the only indiepop duo) to garner the half-joking dubious title of “the indie Britney Spears.” They at least had an array of laptop-powered synths and samples at their disposal; whether intentionally or otherwise, Maricich and partner-in-crime Jona Bechtolt work with a smaller palette of sonics to spin their minimalist electropop magic.

If you’ve ever heard a Blow album before this one, however, you’ll think the sound much fuller than before. Bechtolt’s instrumental talents have worked wonders for Maricich, who previously ran the Blow as a one-woman show. While Maricich’s coyly innocent vocals have always been a Blow trademark, Bechtolt’s contributions provide a vital counterpart that has, until now, been missing: sexy lo-fi beats and bleeps that sound just as juicy as Maricich’s best lines.

Accompanying the reinforcement in the production department is a newfound focus in the songwriting; nearly all of the experimental scribbles from older albums have been dropped in favour of—gasp!—fairly straightforward verse-chorus-verse pop structures. And again, the Blow score a bullseye. The slinky, seductive qualities of earlier Blow albums tended toward the subliminal, expressed most effectively in breathy sighs and burbling electronic riffs. On Paper Television those qualities get more play, especially on songs like the siren’s call of “Pardon Me,” aka “The Blow’s Late Night Dance Party Extravaganza.” Everything about this song is sex, from the lyrics (”there was a lot of sweat” indeed) to the relentless beats to the awesome flute-loop breakdown.

The biggest problem with earlier Blow albums was the faint whiff of awkwardness about the proceedings; Maricich could never quite sell material like “What Tom Said About Girls,” a rap track that couldn’t escape the occasional hints of hesitation and the bedroom-pop sound. But Paper Television hits the ground running and almost never lets up; “Pile of Gold” and “The Long List of Girls” more than make up for the lost potential in “What Tom Said About Girls.” On the more traditional indiepop side of the ledger, the Blow offer up “Parentheses” and “Babay,” the closest they’ve come to the ideal Maricich has been chasing with earlier songs like “Jet Ski Accidents” and “A Night Full of Open Eyes.”

“You don’t know this,” Maricich once said during a show, “but most songs by pop stars are written by indie girls.” The crowd probably thought that was a joke too, but listen to Paper Television and you’ll come away a believer.

Overshadowed by the Crystal Method in their heyday and largely relegated to soundtracks and commercials like so many other electronic artists, Death In Vegas’s story is not particularly unique on the surface. Flirting with the boundary between rock and electronica, Death In Vegas has never received much attention for their proficiency with either, so it’s easy to overlook the quirks that pop up throughout their career. They’ve hosted a night at the Barbican in London about surf movies, for example. Their third album, Scorpio Rising, takes its name from a little-seen short film by Kenneth Anger that mixed together fascinations with fascist imagery and leather fetishism—a slightly leftfield choice for an album name. And then there’s the small matter of the video for “Dirge,” one of the band’s more recognizable songs. Featuring the hypnotic vocals of Dot Allison, “Dirge” is six minutes of relentless build-up, and though its structure is extremely simple—essentially two chords and a single refrain repeated over and over—it is intensely menacing and affecting.

“Dirge” is not exactly what you’d call radio material; it’s far too long and sounds like the soundtrack to someone being stalked and murdered. And yet it was released as a single, with not one but two videos eventually accompanying it. The second video features a clipped version of the track playing over elegantly shot but slightly creepy scenes of ballroom dancing. But the first is more interesting; shot with a budget of £200 for a film festival, the original six-minute video features a slightly different cut of the album version. The visuals are simply a series of stark portraits of Americans killed by guns during the course of a single day.

Once upon a time, Khaela Maricich was the woman who sounded a lot like Mirah and was partly responsible for the best Microphones song ever recorded, “Oh Anna.” Since then she had a short stint as the ludicrously named Get The Hell Out of the Way of the Volcano, a one-woman sound machine that later transformed into the Blow, to the relief of hundreds of indie music factcheckers everywhere. The Concussive Caress (or, Casey Caught Her Mom Singing Along With the Vacuum) was the last album I picked up from her, a skittish collection of half-formed beat excursions, lofi analog indie rap and vaguely experimental pop in the K Records vein. Despite covering a lot of bases musically, it all sounded very much like a K albuum; take away the more experimental touches and you basically have a charming young woman making music in her bedroom. Well, actually it was recorded at the Dub Narcotic studios, but even though that studio is the size of a gymnasium, it’s amazingly good at producing records that sound like they could’ve been recorded in a bedroom.

Anyways, since The Concussive Caress Maricich has been busy. Perhaps her smartest move in the last couple of years was to add a second member, Jona Bechtolt. If you’re like me and you haven’t heard this latest incarnation of the Blow, then “Pardon Me” will be a revelation: this is how you imagined the Blow sounding in your head when you first heard about them, how you thought they should’ve sounded all along. Slinky, sexy and quickfooted, it’s the Blow on steroids—or maybe the Blow with dance lessons? Infinitely catchier than anything off The Concussive Caress, “Pardon Me” represents a breakthrough for the Blow. And now that Mirah has taken a year off after some lukewarm releases, we need someone to carry the K banner proudly. With the Blow currently opening for Jenny Lewis on tour, I think we have a new flagbearer.

P.S. Khaela has a blog. And it’s not like that stupid blog Moby had, either. Man, that was stupid.

I never got around to buying the last Basement Jaxx album.

The Dizzee Rascal song, “Lucky Star,” was insane—a bigger, bolder and brasher version of “Romeo.” Siouxie Sioux’s contribution, “Cish Cash,” was just as huge, even though it was completely different. “Good Luck,” “Hot and Cold”—it seemed like the Jaxx could do no wrong. And then I heard “Supersonic” and it all fell apart.

I didn’t really like “Where’s Your Head At,” though that’s the one Basement Jaxx song everyone recognized. But “Supersonic” was a whole new world of suck. It sounded like a bad Moulin Rouge leftover, and I don’t like Moulin Rouge. Suffice it to say it’s the worst Basement Jaxx song I’ve ever heard by a long shot. And even though I still think of picking up Kish Kash occasionally, those thoughts always die when I think about having to skip over “Supersonic” every time I put on the album.

The good news is the Jaxx are back, and they’ve brought with them “Hush Boy.” It’s no “Lucky Star,” but you only manage to score one or two of those in a career. The bad news is the rest of the album has enough annoying touches that I’m pretty sure I won’t be buying it either. It took a few listens to figure it out, but the biggest problem is all those annoying touches remind me of “Supersonic.” From the vaguely annoying chorus of “Take Me Back To Your House” to the incredibly annoying choruses of “Run 4 Cover” and “Hey You,” it’s almost as if the majority of Crazy Itch Radio was written originally as carnival music, and then repurposed for dance floors. In case you’re wondering, that’s not an endorsement. But then there were lots of people who liked Moulin Rouge, so the Jaxx might be on to something here.

At least you get “Hush Boy.” Enjoy.

The fun things you find browsing through Wikipedia:

Annie rerecorded her songs Chewing Gum and Heartbeat in the Simlish nonsense-language for The Sims 2: Nightlife’s Danish and Norwegian localizations.

You can’t just read something like that and not want to immediately track down the songs in question. So I did. And yes, it’s really her.

In the midst of all the Saint Etienne re-examination I did a while back, I forgot to mention a few things. First off, the Saint Etienne MySpace page contains a preview of the Mervyn Day soundtrack, “Sugarhouse Lane.” It’s a short instrumental piece of ear candy; can’t wait to see what the full soundtrack brings. Second, YouTube is a goldmine for videos and live performances, including this fantastic festival performance of “Goodnight Jack,” a Live with Jools Holland performance of “La Poupee Qui Fait Non,” a chat and performance of “Filthy” at V2000, and finally the oddity of Saint Etienne closing out a British breakfast show at Halloween with “He’s On The Phone.”

Finally, there’s “Angel,” a track that falls in the lengthy transition period between 1994’s Tiger Bay and 1998’s Good Humor. Released as a radio single in 1996 and presumably intended to promote the double remix album Casino Classics, “Angel” had been in the works for a while but seemed to be a track that wouldn’t quite come together properly. On the fan club odds-and-ends release Nice Price, you can hear the original mix from 1995 that the band appear to still be quite fond of. According to the liner notes of Nice Price, no one else seemed to appreciate it as much as they did. In hindsight, what their original mix really needed was a good edit; at seven minutes long, “Angel” just took too long to get to the beats, distracted as it was by the electronic noodling at the beginning. Trim all those bits off and pump some vitamins into the remainder and you get this mix by Bristol house duo Way Out West, a lesser-known but still essential Saint Etienne track.

Forgive me; I was in the mood for something personal. Skip over this if you like; there’s a rare video at the end and the song truly is ace.

All it took was one errant YouTube search, but that was enough. For the past two days, I’ve been obsessing over Saint Etienne as if I’d found them for the first time. I’ve been playing live appearances over and over again. I found their Myspace page so I could listen to a track off their upcoming soundtrack for What Have You Done Today, Mervyn Day? I signed up for the Avenue mailing list so I could get access to their archives and download rare tracks. I even held my nose and sorted through the Savoy Jazz site to listen to the remixes they commissioned for “Stars Above Us.” I think I fell in love with Saint Etienne again this past Tuesday.

In one of the interstitial monologues that pepper Finisterre, Michael Jayston utters the evocative phrase, “I feel a nostalgia for an age yet to come.” The unrequited romantic can find a great deal of comfort in those ten words; it describes perfectly the act of wishing for something so strongly that you have already lived it in your imagination, your dreams more vivid than memory itself. But Saint Etienne are a group that caters just as much, if not more so, to the overtly nostalgic. “He’s On The Phone” and “Nothing Can Stop Us” conjure up fond memories for anyone who used to love Saint Etienne at the peak of their popularity, the most prominent aspect of the backdrop of their youth. All pop groups endure the burden of a million half-forgotten endless nights. But because Saint Etienne keep returning to the scene of the crime, continually renewing their associations with London and Britain, their link to the collective consciousness of a very specific time and place remains strong even today.

I didn’t grow up in that place at that time. This makes things somewhat difficult. When Saint Etienne announced their brief U.S. tour earlier this year, I would’ve killed for a plane ticket and a spot at the show. But the more I thought about it, the less I liked the idea. My fears were confirmed upon hearing the general makeup of the crowds at each show—generally people in their thirties and forties, people who have a reasonable claim to being part of that era. I obviously don’t have a claim to that era, can’t even say I’m reliving my own past, but rather someone else’s past, imagined through my own eyes. There are so many levels of nostalgia that it borders on the ludicrous.

The most devious thing about pop music is convincing people who were too young for the era that everything was simpler back then, more direct, more carefree, more fun. Saint Etienne is perhaps guiltier than most. But at the same time, it takes two to dance. Nostalgia is the last resort of those who cannot bear to live for today, they say, and of the perverse kind of nostalgia for an age that never really was, perhaps I’m guiltier of that than most as well.

Broadcast always seem to bring their A-game to every album they produce. Whether you’re a fan of their psychedelic electronic pop or not, it’s hard to deny that everything from The Noise Made By People onwards is carefully conceived, edited and produced. More so than most bands these days, each Broadcast album is a unified entity, and while you can pick out individual songs as favourites, the whole is always more than the sum of its parts.

Singer Trish Keenan mentioned in an interview that the recording process for each album is stressful enough that some of their best songs come after the recording sessions are in the bag and the band is left to their own devices, not having to worry about deadlines or album motifs or sequencing. The Future Crayon collects a bunch of these one-offs from various EPs and singles from the years up to and including Haha Sound. “Where Youth And Laughter Go” is a staple of their earlier live shows, back when they were touring The Noise Made By People. I daresay it’s better live; to understand why, watch their performance of “Winter Now.”

Considering the shift in sound of Tender Buttons and the prospect of a different direction for album number 4, it’s probably best to consider The Future Crayon as a time capsule and a holdover until the next Broadcast album, set for sometime next year.

So here’s a cover song that didn’t make the Covers in May list because I didn’t find it until halfway through May. Solex is a personal favourite of mine; Solex vs. the Hitmeister wasn’t the greatest album in the world, but its cut’n'paste aesthetic and childlike wonder are addictive. It’s unlikely you’ll ever hear anyone else do a song like “Solex All Licketysplit”; it’s territory Solex seems to have mostly to herself. Which was why her latest album, The Laughing Stock of Indie Rock, was such a downer: too many downtempo moments and wankish keyboard effects, not enough of that classic Solex exuberance and joy.

No such problem with this one-off for the tribute album of Pavement covers, Everything Is Ending Here. Solex’s version of Shady Lane, likely commissioned because of her prior association with Matador, is a good bet for most divisive song on the CD. This is Solex at her most spectacular heights of glitchy arrhythmic girlishness, and you’ll either think it’s amazing or horrific. Released around the time of Solex’s last Matador album, Low Kick and Hard Bop, it’s also a great example from Solex’s most successful period; Low Kick and Hard Bop was a fantastic mixture of old-school vintage vinyl samples and the off-kilter live instrumentation that started creeping in with 1999’s Pick Up. If you like “Shady Lane” and haven’t heard anything else from Solex, Low Kick is a good place to start.

And finally, we come back to where we started—sort of. “Poupée De Cire, Poupée De Son” was recorded only a year after “Laisser Tomber Les Filles,” but it’s widely regarded as one of, if not the peak of Gall’s popularity as a singer. As Luxembourg’s entry in that year’s Eurovision song contest, “Poupée De Cire, Poupée De Son” was notable for a couple of reasons. It was backed by some serious star power; Serge Gainsbourg wrote and arranged the piece, putting the song right up there with ABBA’s “Waterloo” in terms of signficance outside the contest. It was also one of the first songs to break tradition with the usual Eurovision oeuvre of mellow, pedestrian folk songs. Even today “Poupée De Cire, Poupée De Son” is recognized as a top-flight Eurovision winner, though honestly that’s not necessarily saying much.

Case in point: Eurovision has been derided so much over the years that it’s spawned a compilation CD of kitschy covers. A Song For Eurotrash was released in 1998, a spinoff of a British television show called “Eurotrash.” An hour-long special, also titled “A Song For Eurotrash,” was filmed and aired on Channel 4, featuring various performers staging a mock Eurovision. So not only do we have the likes of Kenickie and Bananarama recording covers of old Eurovision chestnuts, but you can even track down vaguely embarassing video of the same bands performing the covers on the show. Sacha Distel, a French singer and guitarist of some renown during the 60s, was asked by the producers of “Eurotrash” to help them lampoon the contest, and for kicks they brought in UK electropop Dubstar to join him. The result is a strange but delicious amalgam of the original’s orchestral melody and slick electronic beats. The off-kilter oddness is mirrored in the vocal arrangement, with the venerable Distel giving the verses an old school crooner vibe while Dubstar singer Sarah Blackwood plays the seductive dance chanteuse, treating the French lyrics a little roughly in the process.

Despite the ironic origins, Dubstar and Distel’s cover is actually quite outstanding. It’s right up there with the best Dubstar work, that’s for sure, and it’s a great update of the original in that all the elements that made the 1965 version wonderful—aside, perhaps, from the Lolita factor—are still present.