Fresh Cherries from Yakima

bang.

DOWNLOAD: fresh cherries from yakima’s on repeat mix 2010.

“i don’t mind sifting through trash,” sings intelligence frontman lars finberg, “everything is just trash.” opening up the third verse of the wonderfully-titled “thank you god for fixing the tape machine”, it’s apparent that finberg quite the caustic sense of humor, which is something that just happens when you live in seattle. with song titles like “debt & E.S.P.” and the playfully-combative “fuck eat skull”, it’s apparent that humor courses throughout the whole of fake surfers, the band’s fifth record (and first-of-two in 2009). relative veterans of the west coast’s lo-fi/noise-pop/psych/garage-punk movement (in addition to former eat skull drummer beren ekine-huett, they’ve also picked up chris woodhouse, producer of thee oh sees’ the master’s bedroom is worth spending a night in as a second-guitarist), “thank you god” is indicative that, like their peers and friends in eat skull and thee oh sees, the best bands in the movement are the most slept-on. launched with a two-chord-riff, a bouncy bassline and stomping drums that would probably have most people screaming nuggets before the fourth measure, the song is a simple-but-fully-fleshed-out rock song (again, something that separates these guys, eat skull, and thee oh sees from the rest of the lo-fi pack). by the time everything goes apeshit at the end and the sparks fly from the song’s final blast, you’ll be thanking god (s)he fixed the tape machine, too.

a common point of discussion in the music world is sometimes about what we all like to call “the crossover”. it’s happened far too many times for anyone reading this blog to not know what it is. however, in the past few years, we’ve been seeing a crossover being applied that is more artistic than monetary. “musical cosmopolitanism”, if you will. a lot of hullabaloo has been made over the marriage between indie-rock and hip-hop these days, admittedly with the bad far outweighing the good. and i’ve willfully ignored lil’ wayne’s “artistic diversion” the rebirth and have no immediate or long-term plans to ever sit down and give it a listen, opting instead to use this review as all i need to know.

however, things seem to be looking up for 2010. word just broke that thom yorke is going to be guesting on beatmaker flying lotus’ next LP, the knux’ rah al milio is recording a psych-garage project under the name joey lestrat, and tv on the radio guitar/rock-producer-for-hire dave sitek is starting to make a name for himself on the beats. in addition to dropping a remix of MF DOOM’s brilliant “gazzillion ear”, sitek punched the boards on two tracks for wale’s official debut longplayer, attention deficit. a short but impressive resume.

the first thing you hear on attention deficit are the booming drums and horns that quells all speculation as to how wale titled this song, with tiny electronic flourishes and bongos in the background, fleshing out the proceedings. and no matter how far into the record you go, you never really escape the fact that sitek outclassed some pretty seasoned veterans on this record (including but not limited to the neptunes), and has made the relative newcomer to hip-hop on the shortlist of “beatmakers to watch”. now, let’s not forget about wale, frontrunner for most “rappers to watch” lists for the past few years straight. with a typically elastic flow, wale does what wale always does over the beat, and what wale does is more often than not endlessly replayable. all the subjects are broached in the cauldron pot that is wale’s mind: sports. video games. canceled television shows (that arli$$ reference was brilliant). even the terrible british accent can be forgiven when it’s surrounded by such an assured performance. fix up, look sharp, joe.

i’m not sure if any of you have noticed, but in his relatively short time as a solo artist, philadelphian singer/songwriter kurt vile has become somewhat of a beloved figure around these parts. a big part of that comes from his voice; i wish i could come up with a proper alternative for the term “world-weary”, one that’s not as cliche, but i’m having a hard time describing vile’s beaten timbre as anything but. of course, the voice would mean nothing if he didn’t have the songwriting chops to back it up, which he obviously does, being as though kurt vile is the first artist in the history of this blog to have two records on the same year-end list. constant hitmaker, which probably didn’t make this list because it was released in 2008, was the most uneven of the bunch, bolstering his strummier folk songs with chintzy drum machines and peppering in ambient interludes more aimless than the ones found on the excellent god is saying this to you. on the other side of the coin, however, hitmaker contains “freeway”, vile’s first downright-anthemic rock song, and his most popular song to date.

i think i may have written before that i prefer vile’s quieter, fingerpicked folk songs to the fist-pumping rock tunes, and constant hitmaker highlight “slow talkers” could very well be the best song vile has recorded. the tune finds vile at his most unadorned; just his voice and his guitar. no droney flourishes in the background, no drum machine backing. as a showcase of his ability with the six-string, the track shines as vile plucks a melodic guitar line, with the slight reverb carrying each note a few feet into the distance. “everyone i know,” starts vile at his most introverted, “talks to me way too slow/i lose track of what they say/before they walk away.” vile laments his inability to pay attention while also being conflicted over someone floating through his life: “you’re on my mind most times/when fear does not overflow/and i pray that your cup runneth over/with things i despise, over and over.” you know what they say; hate is a distant cousin of love. the track itself, moreso than any other on constant hitmaker, is covered in dust, rendering the song as a relic from a long-gone era, as some dude with soot on his shoes recording this song by the train tracks in the 40’s. given the type of people that vile sings about in his lyrics, he could be in worse company.

digitally-manipulated folk music is obviously something i know a thing-or-two about. i spent a year-and-a-half recording acoustic guitars and digitally manipulating guitars to make them sound virtually unmusical, turning what started as a nervous breakdown into my largely unofficial debut record as fresh cherries from yakima, buttons for north caroline. this concept is nothing new, but with bands like nurses using the template to make a house-of-mirrors folk-pop record in apple’s acre and city center’s ridiculously-slept-on self-titled record both dropping last year, it seems to have become a minor wellspring of creativity these days.

city center finds fred thomas, the frontman for the unabashedly-poppy saturday looks good to me, stretching out his range a little bit, bolstering modest folk tunes with bits of ambiance and washes of noise. having shared a split-seven-inch with fresh cherries-beloved act grouper, thomas seems to have taken a few cues, applying just the right amount of distance to his art-damaged brand of ambient-folk, but ending up with something more direct, more lively the down-the-hallway-distance of grouper’s more recent work. “unfinished hex”, the closing track on city center, sounds almost like grouper in a bedroom instead of an empty ballroom. “unfinished hex” is the modestest of city center’s output, playing all of its near-three minutes with a simple strum and a distant cloud of noise. there are no grand explosions or moments of complete disintegration like on other parts of the record, just a simple tune that floats away into nothing. sometimes, the unfinished shows a beauty unseen by the completed.

i think everyone has the same problem with the genre-at-large of female singer/songwriters: there’s too much manicured preciousness and not enough genuine emotion. and when the heartbreak does seem genuine, there is an underlying frivolousness to it, like the artist felt as genuinely heartbroken over her first car getting totaled. but over the landscape of expensive guitars and piano lessons, a few artists are peppered throughout who genuinely tug heartstrings and provide a whole lot more than a pretty face and a pretty voice. immensely talented brooklynite sharon van etten is one of those artists.

modestly released by unfuckwithable label drag city in spring 2009, because i was in love may seem like your run-in-the-mill coffeehouse folk record on the surface, but its hidden charms are why the record snuck up on a ton of 2009 year-end lists. exclusively carrying traits that most people take for granted in singer/songwriters (such as incisive lyrics, affecting chord progressions, you know, shit that music critics pretend that every singer/songwriter has), most of the songs on van etten’s debut full-length up the ante by including superlatively creative vocal arrangements. “have you seen” is the greatest example of this strength, taking a downcast, solo-guitar-driven waltz that sounds like something elliott smith would have strummed on his self-titled record, van etten searches for her heart, that tangled mess of aortas and ventricles and such, carried by her soft soprano. buoyed by the rich melody, the pitch-perfect vocals circle around each other so wonderfully during the wordless chorus, the melancholy arrangement of the notes end up hitting a spot in your heart that you probably didn’t even know you had. and then, you touch your chest, realizing that you haven’t lost it, yet.

screw that “lo-fi” tag; real estate is nothing less than a pop band. they may not color within the lines as neatly as the shins, nor are they as overly precious as vampire weekend (chill out, their first record is still a classic), but they’re all the better for it. a tough task is at hand for any reviewer, myself included, to effectively describe real estate without using the word “beach”; nearly all of their songs are written in a major key and frontman martin courtney delivers his forlorn lyrics with an introverted, tuneful sigh, exhibiting an undercurrent of loneliness, the audio equivalent of walking past a water park that’s closed for the season. most of their songs either come with lengthy instrumental codas (self-titled record standout “suburban beverage”), or are entirely instrumental, allowing your mind to drift into its own summer destination spot. a beach. a pop group.

“dumb luck”, the closing track on real estate’s limited-edition reality EP, is very much a synthesis of what makes real estate one of the most promising bands around right now. the vocals don’t kick in until about halfway through the song, allowing the band to lock into a limp-wristed, loosey-goosey rhythm, conjuring images of pavement as a cruise ship house band, drinks with little umbrellas down at their feet. harmonic melodies and virtually indecipherable lyrics (i think i may have heard something about reality television being sung) carry the vocal part of the song with a dejection that’s a far cry from the slacker-like shrug that the music suggests. like many bands that have come up over the past two years, the vocals are so far down in the mix that it sounds like they are just another instrument instead of leading the charge (again, unlike some of their guitar-pop peers). at the five minute mark, matthew mondanile’s beautifully meandering guitar line carries the song to its finish, finding its home in someplace sunny. a beach. a pop group.

the ecstatic. “exhibit c”. mos def and jay electronica had banner years in 2009; the former released what is arguably the best record of his career and the latter recorded what was unarguably the best song of the year. of course, we all knew they ran in the same circles, and some of us might have even heard that the two of them and formerly-lil’-wayne-affiliated artist curren$y were recording a collaborative record under dame dash’s dollar. so, in a way, we all expected something like “holiday” to happen; for two of the brightest minds in hip-hop today to meet and come up with something crazy. i’m sure some of us even expected “holiday”– for all intents and purposes, an unfinished song– to turn out as replayable as it did. with modest drum programming and a warp-speed string quartet making up the beat, “holiday” finds producer just blaze at his madlibbiest (observation courtesy of my man small pro), a terrain that both MC’s are very familiar with. mos def begins the proceedings with one of his more poetic latter-day verses, proclaiming, “the little light grow large and don’t out at all.” “don’t get it confused,” begins jay electronica’s verse, “this message is for solo artists, but i get at crews,” before levying the downright-scary threat with a slight smirk, “we could make the news.” the verse that follows this opening couplet is the kind of gravitas-heavy, location-citing (”i’ll be on the low, sipping daiquiris in baton rouge”), self-mythologizing (”jay doppler went from panhandling socks in a box to popular”), intellectual (”the kid intend to split more wigs than british parliament”) classicism (”who shot ‘ya?”) we’ve come to expect from the new-orleans bred rapper over the course of his short career. there’s been talk of jay electronica having a vast amount of weight on his shoulders, a weight that he may not be able to carry. but, if you’re like me, the early material that has been floating all over the internet for the past couple of years is far too incredible to not proclaim the MC as the greatest hope for the future hip-hop has had in a long time. if this man is the second-coming of nas, you just have to cross your fingers and believe that jay electronica has more than one illmatic in him.

sometimes, i feel that teen dream, beach house’s debut for sub pop records and third album overall, is a bit samey in places. in spite of having some of the best songs they’ve committed to tape (or protools, or whatever), a few of the songs sound like victoria legrand and alex scally have written a lot of them already, and better. sometimes, usually under very specific circumstances, teen dream is the only record i want to listen to. and it’s always the penultimate track that grabs me by the neck, gasping for air. the one that always affects me both emotionally and physically. the best tune on the record, and on the shortlist of best beach house tunes in the span of their three-record career.

starting with a clattering of metal instruments, the first thing noticed about “real love” is how… real everything sounds. before this record and this moment in particular, there was a beauty to be found in the cheapness of the instruments. but there are no chintzy keyboard presets or yard-sale drum machines on “real love”; the drums are real, and those are real piano keys being stabbed as the reverb carries the notes to a distant part of the room. legrand takes advantage of the organic instrumentation by giving her most assertive vocal performance to date, sounding like she would perform this song in a converted church standing ten feet away from the mic while scally loops vaguely dissonant ambient guitar during the second verse. with that performance and rich melody come lyrics that fully underscore the emotion that comes when you tighten your diaphragm.. “real love,” legrand sings, “it finds you somewhere with your back to it,” belting out the line as if she’s trying to get the attention of the person who has their back turned. there is no crescendo that leads the song to a cathartic finish, just legrand quieting down and hanging her head low as the song closes and the curtains close. everybody goes home, and real love doesn’t find anybody. how accurate.

every hip-hopper with half-a-brain seems to be nostalgic about the glory days of rap, where most MC’s were able to… you know, actually rhyme; where you didn’t have to have a gimmick or a rap sheet (which, in itself, is a gimmick) to gain notoriety in the hip-hop game. i don’t want to come across as an old fogey, but if this were 1995, detroit’s own elzhi (one of the remaining living members of the legendary slum village) would be a legend. hell, if this were even 2000, el would at least have a wide-spanning fan base of reverent backpackers the world over. but, no use in crying over ripped college-ruled paper; it’s 2010 and elzhi still remains somewhat of an unsung firebrand of “purist” hip-hop. there is no gangsta posturing, no syrupy drawl, no ostentatious diamond-encrusted bart simpson pendants; just a dude that can rap his ass off.

late last year, elzhi quietly dropped the leftovers unmixedtape, a collection of odds-and-ends, remixes from his 2008 record the preface, and a redone version of “dedicated” from his much-beloved (at least around the hip-hop blogs i frequent) europass. much like lupe fiasco’s enemy of the state (number fourteen on my best-of-2009 list), it dropped with a decidedly modest amount of fanfare, despite it being better than a good many of hip-hop’s physically-released records surrounding it. but among the all the boom-bap from black milk and various others, and the winning contributions from seattle’s own jake one, “the crowd” is the gut-punch that knocks you on your ass, the joint that sounds like it could have been a fist-pumping anthem for the rawkus set. or, at the very least, a single for one of the soundbombing compilations.

over a wailing rock sample and drums that bang hard enough to give even steve albini a boner, el– like fucking usual– walks up to the beat and throw punches like a seasoned prize-fighter, his muscular rhyme cadences sounding even beefier when connecting with the pummeling backdrop. as for the lyrics, if you’ve spent as much time with royce da 5′9″’s bar exam 2 mixtape as i have, then you’ll recognize quite a few of these lyrics, from his verse over “royal flush”, where he keeps up with royce’s revenge turn for what happened on “motown 25″, and absolutely decimates canibus’ opening bars (”out with heaters and spray y’all/then put you in a hole, like robbing peter to pay paul” = !!!!??!). with his complaint of “you mainstream and you hot, when did you gain steam?/it makes my brain scream, your career should have remained dream”, it sounds exactly like what the underground rap heroes of yesteryear used to say. make way for elzhi, current somewhat slept-on dynamo and underground rap hero of tomorrow.