Jam of the Day: Evian Christ - "Waterfall"

Yeezus collaborator Evian Christ hits out with his own intense instrumental composition on this harsh, industrial-techno track, which actually adds some interesting atmospheric notes towards the end to keep you on edge.

Videos of the Week

Here are the videos that are shooting me closer to spring:



Gorgeous, Lost In Translation-esque video for this haunting track from Damon Albarn's upcoming solo record.



Goofy, fun video from Major Lazer.



Intense clip from The Faint.



Sultry and sensual collaboration between British chanteuse FKA twigs and LA R&B deconstructionists, inc.



Stunning cinematography highlights this video from synthpop enigma iamamiwhoami.

New: Lykke Li - "I Never Learn"

Sweeping acoustic, orchestral track from Lykke Li.

Jam of the Day: iamamiwhoami- "Hunting For Pearls"

Atmospheric synthpop from iamamiwhoami. I love the synth breakdown at the end.

New: The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart - "Simple And Sure"

More crisp alt-pop from The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart from their upcoming third LP Days of Abandon.

Non-Sequiturs

UNF

Daddy!

Grrrr.

So handsome.

Sexy.

Nice chest.

Nice belly.

Drool.

So cute.

Silver fox.

Wow.

Woof.

I think this is the hottest pic of him.  Love the peek of belly.

That is a hot man.

Sleepy bear.

Yes please.

I'll take two.

Beautiful body.

Words fail me.

Tongue out.

Gorgeous.

Damn.

Hey Daddy!

Beef.

Country boy.

Yum.

Furry belly.

Too much cuteness here.

That chest.

Tight body.

SBJ.

Intense.

Bald hottie.

Amazing.

 Nuzzle.

All these Republican state senators and representatives that are sponsoring these ridiculous and unconstitutional "preservation of religious freedom" bills are all fucking lemmings.

It is beyond creepy when someone I don't even know on FB starts sharing my pics on their wall.

The game Threes is so much fun, and yet so horribly frustrating.

It's confounding that in 2014 we are still having to fight for basic rights.

LOL.

I love it when people discount my advice after living here in Atlanta for 20 years. I might not know many things, but I do know Atlanta.

Work limbo sucks.

Sometimes simplicity is the best. The new Real Estate record Atlas is plain gorgeous jangle-pop.

Feast or famine at work; no projects for three weeks, then get hit with two.

After being told I have no boss, and having no one to report to and get work from, my job has become somewhat like sales where I am having to go almost door to door to each attorneys' office to find work.

Could you even imagine?

Do people still watch Glee?

I don't care what your reasoning is, or whether your state has no laws about it, but if you ride a bike or a motorcycle without a helmet, it's kind of stupid.

Is it just me, or is there a mass epidemic of people getting into relationships overnight?

Dat's right.

Sometimes I do think I have lived in Atlanta far too long.

Favorite band name at the moment: Perfect Pussy.

Is there such a thing as a combination introvert-extrovert? An intextrovert?

In this day and age, it should not take anyone over two days to respond to something, especially if it is important.

Granted it was the 80s, but damn, I wanted David Sylvian's hair.

Passive-aggressive is the new black.

I am helpless to resist a man in a Bike jock strap.

Rush Limbaugh needs to rot in hell.

Make it happen.

What I love about SoundCloud is how sometimes it randomly throws some great music at you that you normally wouldn't be exposed to.

When a music magazine/site talks about dance music and songs that are "floor-focused," I am generally taken aback as to what they consider music you can dance to. Generally, the songs they mention are so slight as to be almost gossamer. I certainly wouldn't/couldn't dance to it. I guess by "floor-focused" they mean staring at the floor.

Do you have to like every single song on an album to consider it a classic/masterpiece? I don't think so. Two of my all-time favorite records each have a track that is so completely out of place I nearly skip over it altogether every time I listen to the album. The culprits? "Ignoreland" on R.E.M.'s Automatic for the People and "Electioneering" on Radiohead's OK Computer.

Is there any point to Guided By Voices?

Your cute for the day.

Lyrics Rattling Around My Brain

"Prince Johnny,
You're kind but you're not simple
By now I think I know the difference
You wanna be the son of someone

Remember the time we went and snorted
A piece of the Berlin wall that you'd extorted
And we had such a laugh of it?
Prostrate on my carpet

You traced the Andes with your index
And brag of when and where and who you gonna bed next
All with sons of someones
All with sons of someones

Saw you pray to all
To make you a real boy

Saw you pray to all
To make you a real boy

Prince Johnny,
You're kind but do be careful
By now I know just when to stand clear
When all your friends and acolytes are
Holding court in bathroom stalls

Where you pray to all
To make you a real

Saw you pray to all
To make you a real boy

But honey, don't mistake my affection
For another spit-and-penny style redemption
Cause we're all sons of someones
We're all sons of someones
I wanna mean more than they mean to you
I wanna mean more than I meant to him

So I pray to all
To make me a real girl

So I pray to all
To make me a real girl."

St. Vincent
"Prince Johnny"

"Shotgun poetry
Crack the whip again
Make me see
Sharpen your knives for me
Infiltrate the mind, the body
Body

Contract killer prose
Calmly walks away
As blood flows
Open, the wound grows
Melts away
The water froze
The water froze

'Cause my love, my love, my love don't love me
My love, my love, my love don't love me
My love, my love, my love don't love me
'Cause my love, my love, my love don't love me

Contract killer prose
Calmly walks away
As blood flows
Open, the wound grows
Melts away
Water fro...

'Cause my love, my love, my love don't love me
My love, my love, my love don't love me."

SOHN
"Bloodflows"

"Oh, Carissa when I first saw you
You were a lovely child
And the last time I saw you
You were 15 and pregnant and running wild

I remember wondering could there be a light at the end of your tunnel
But I left Ohio then and had pretty much forgotten all about you
I guess you were there some years ago at a family funeral
But you were one of so many relatives I didn't know which one was you

Yesterday morning I woke up to so many 330 area code calls
I called my mom back and she was in tears and asked had I spoke to my father
Carissa burned to death last night in a freak accident fire
In her yard in Brewster her daughter came home from a party and found her

Same way as my uncle who was her grandfather
An aerosol can blew up in the trash, goddamn what were the odds?
She was just getting ready to go to her midnight shift as an RN in Wadsworth
Then she vanished up in flames like that but there had to be more to her life's worth
Everyone's grieving out of their minds making arrangements and taking drugs
But I'm flying out there tomorrow because I need to give and get some hugs
Cause I got questions that I'd like to get answered
I may never get them, but Carissa I gotta know how did it happen?

Carissa was 35
You don't just raise two kids, and take out your trash and die
She was my second cousin, I didn't know her well at all
But that doesn't mean that I wasn't
Meant to find some poetry to make some sense of this, to find a deeper meaning
In this senseless tragedy, oh Carissa I'll sing your name across every sea."

Sun Kil Moon
"Carissa"

Appealing Things

The new stuff
DJ Paulo at Jungle
Cathedrals
Flavia coffee machines in the break room
Ferry booked for Bear Week

Annoying Things

People who exit elevators slowly
7am return flights
Inequity in the office place
People who don't do what they say they are going to do

New: Tove Lo - "Not On Drugs"

More Swedish pop perfection from Tove Lo, from her upcoming debut EP Truth Serum out next week.

Jam of the Day: Real Estate - "Crime"

Sometimes simplicity is the best.

Album Review: St. Vincent - St. Vincent

St. Vincent
St. Vincent
Rating: Grrrr

On the album cover for her self-titled fourth album, Annie Clark (a.k.a. St. Vincent) assumes the position of queen and/or goddess upon her own throne, ready to listen to her subjects/admirers. It seems fitting as she basically lives in her own musical world, a quirky guitar-slinging vocalist whose intimate, personal ruminations have kept her firmly outside the pop world, but have charmed her cult-like base of fans and music critics. Over her first three records she has retained her same literary lyrical output while moving her music into odder realms, St. Vincent is probably the weirdest pop record you will hear all year, its in your face musical direction and more direct lyrics find Ms. Clark being bolder and more forceful, and while for me it is not her best record (that, for me, is the sublime Strange Mercy), it is her most confident and cohesive record.

Starting off with the buzzy, jerky "Rattlesnake," Clark's brittle guitar snakes around the clanking synths and bassline as the song seems to be both a sigh of relief to be rid of humanity and also a post-apocalyptic nightmare. Her lyrics whipping between lines like "No one around so I take off my clothes/Am I the only one in the only world?" to "Running, running, running, rattle behind me/Running, running, no one will ever find me." On St. Vincent, Clark's tongue fairly drips with acid most of the time, unsympathetic to her characters. On the hypnotic "Prince Johnny," Clark has little time for a lover who seeks the attention of others, sighing "When all your friends and acolytes/Holding court in bathroom stalls/Where you pray to all/To make you a real boy."



During the anti-Internet obsession track "Huey Newton," she decries all the "Fuckless porn sharks/Toothless but got a big bark/Live children blind psychics/Turned online assassins;" which is continued on the horn driven track "Digital Witness," where Clark turns her razor sharp wit to people who spend their lives watching television or in front of the computer screen, never experiencing real life. Clark moans "People turn the TV on it looks just like a window."



Musically, Clark creates a world of paranoia, keeping her rhythms tight but allowing for more schizophrenic use of her screaming guitar lines, and use of harsher synth tones. Where her earlier records kept a very civil, WASPish tone, St. Vincent allows Pandora to open her box and let loose. Whether it be the barely reeled in fury of "Birth In Reverse," the skronky bluster of "Regrets," or the hyper-analog synth funk of "Bring Me Your Loves." But there are moments of transcendent beauty, like the hauntingly gorgeous melody of "Prince Johnny," or the delicate, aching synths of "I Prefer Your Love."

For most of St. Vincent, the record builds logically and exponentially, gathering force and steam, but unfortunately hits a bit of a dead for me at the back end. The final three tracks squander the build up and leave the record at a whimper for me. "Psychopath" limits itself to a wan groove, "Every Tear Disappears" lurches and stutters under a quite lovely vocal track, while closer "Severed Crossed Fingers" meanders with a melody that feels more childish than childlike.

But these slight misgivings don't distract strongly from the rest of the record. St. Vincent is confident and bold, crackling with energy and wit, and further shows what a brilliant songwriter and musician Ms. Clark is, and has become. What's even more amazing is how she has progressed so much over 4 albums, indicating we will be hearing a lot more from her in the future.

Rating Scale:

Chilfos: masterpiece; coolest thing I've heard in ages.

Woof Daddy: excellent; just a hair away from being a masterpiece.

Grrrr: very good; will definitely be considered for my top releases of the year.

Yeah Daddy Make Me Want It: good; definitely invites further listens and piques one's interest for more material.

Meh: not horrible, but certainly not great; could have either been polished, trimmed, or re-thought.

Jeez Lady: what the hell happened? Just plain bad. They should hang their heads in shame and be forced to listen to Lady Gaga ad nauseam as penance.

Tragicistani: so bad, armed villagers with pitchforks and torches should run the artist out of the country for inflicting this abomination on the human race.

New: Cloud Nothings - "Psychic Trauma"

Another peek into Cloud Nothings next record Here And Nowhere Else, the blistering guitar track "Psychic Trauma."