Playlist: Scary Music

"The mythic horror movie, like the sick joke, has a dirty job to do. It deliberately appeals to all that is worst in us. It is morbidity unchained, our most base instincts let free, our nastiest fantasies realized...lifting a trap door in the civilized forebrain and throwing a basket of raw meat to the hungry alligators swimming around in that subterranean river beneath" - Stephen King

Regardless of what you think about Stephen King as an author, the man at least understands the psychology behind what he does. The "alligators" that King speaks of are the darker parts of our psyche. And while I disagree with the idea that we must indulge them to keep sane, I do believe that they need to be indulged all the same. Everyone has a way of sating their secret dark side. Unsurprisingly, I listen to music. Scary music.

I don't say that to be edgy. Nor, for that matter, did most of these artists make these songs to be edgy. When you get down to brass tax, music is just another form of art. And art has always been used to convey horror. Goya painted it, Romero put it on film, Lovecraft wrote it and groups like Throbbing Gristle recorded it. Despite their macabre, bizarre intonations, each of these songs is an excellent piece of art. And like all good art invoking fear, they entertain, discomfort and intrigue all at the same time.

The following songs are scary. They were designed to make listeners nervous and uncomfortable. Each goes about it in a different way, but all of them are very effective in one form or another. Some of them go for pronounced "jump" scares, while others use disturbing themes to get into listeners' minds. The best of them use their arrangements to create a disquieting atmosphere, and the lyrics whip the imagination into a frenzy. Either way, counting down, here are some of the scariest songs I've privileged to hear.

7. Subway Song by the Cure

Prior to 1982's Pornography, most of the Cure's catalog was pretty sanitary stuff. The one run they made at doing anything truly frightening was the closing track on side one of their debut album, and it's fairly cheap scares at that. I'll let you listen to the song to figure out why. The song details a woman walking home at night from a subway. She notices that footsteps are following her, but she's too scared to confront them. The minimalist melody feature arrhythmic guitar chords and a steady baseline to replicate the footsteps. "Subway Song" is tense, building the illusion that something awful is going to happen by the end of the track. It does. Despite being something of a cheap thrill, "Subway Song" is damned effective at freaking the absolute piss out of anyone who's never heard it before.

6. Pirate Jenny by Nina Simone

"Pirate Jenny" is a song from the 1928 music Tenpenny Opera, and was meant to be little more than the private fantasies of a maid. Nine Simone's 1964 cover, however...that's something else. Recorded at a time when African Americans could literally be killed for registering to vote, Simone channeled her rage at current affairs into a cover not implicitly, but unmistakably aimed at white America. Accompanied by a spooky, saloon style piano, Simone's emotions oscillate between broiling rage, bloodlusty satisfaction and gleeful madness as she leads pirates to the town's sack and slaughter. If her proclamation, "That'll learn ya!" and the carnage that precede it don't send chills up your spine, I don't know what's wrong with you.

(Note: While this isn't the scariest song on this list, per say, it is definitely the best. Ballads sung this well and emoting so masterfully are hard to come by)

5. Misery's the River of the World by Tom Waits

When it comes to frightening music, the question is not whether T-Waits songs are scary enough for consideration, but which one of the plethora of options is scariest. There are so many good choices that it's hard to nail one down. This song, though, is the one that plays when you enter Hell. It's a long rant about how fucked up the world is set to a psychotic carnival melody that never manages to be melodic enough to not to terrify. Waits is in full snarl mode on this track, growling out his condemnations of mankind with gleeful abandon. While kids check their closets for the Boogie Man, the Boogie Man checks his for Tom Waits.

4. We Drive East by Death in June

This song is as brilliant as it is unsettling. It details the hapless civilians caught between the totalitarian Soviets and the brutal Nazis during the battle of Stalingrad. A trumpet acting as a war horn and marching drum play in the background while two singers trade licks; one singing about the mindless Nazi drive to eradicate human life and the other the perpetual meat grinder that the communists threw themselves into. The lyrical themes fit the chaotic, discordant music perfectly to create a disturbing anthem for the human toll that war takes on the people who deserve it least.

3. Facing the Wind by Nico

This is not the Nico from "Sunday Morning". It's the Nico from "Venus in Furs". On this track, the lyrics are not the creep stars, even in the slightest. The "it" she's singing about having a hold on her could be mean anything, so it's not so bad. The music, however, is terrifying. I would love to tell you what that medley of instruments is, but the truth is that there's so much insanity going on there, that I have no earthly idea. An accordion, maybe? Something that makes a howling sound, anyway. Listening to this song gives me the creeps because there's something about it that just feels wrong. That something being everything about it. This is un-music, and scary in the same way that monsters in Lovecraft stories defy geometry.

2. Hamburger Lady by Throbbing Gristle

(Note: I was going to talk about the song "Slug Bait" here by the same band, but every time I sat down to write about it, I found myself too uncomfortable to get through the entry. If you want to hear the song that's too disturbing for me to even listen to all the way through, much less write about, you can find it here. Just don't say I didn't warn you.)

If someone tells you that electronic music can't be scary, they're full of shit. At the very least, they've never heard Throbbing Gristle. TG has long made horror a part of its shtick, and damn few artists do it better than them. At least "Hamburger Lady" is one of their less disturbing songs lyrically, and it's about a burn victim. Not that you can really tell. The heavy, siren-like bass and distorted whatever-the-hell-you-call-that-ringing-nightmare  make the rather subdued vocals nigh impossible to understand. This is some serious horror film music.

1. Hello Skinny by the Residents

Horror is a funny thing. If the Beatles had done this song, it just would have been a cute little ditty about a re-salesman. Instead, it was done by a band that looks like this. And this. And a few times, this. They describe themselves as an "art collective", which is apparently how they started saying "Nightmare Factory" back in the 70s. The Residents do scary music the same way Germans make cars; very well, and with frightening efficiency. From their screeching avant-garde cover of "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" to the aptly name "Die in Terror", the group is no stranger to making skins crawl.

"Oh, hai!"

But if you ask me, the band was best at terror when they kept it simple. "Hello Skinny" is simple. And boy howdy is it terrifying. Unlike most of their work, "Skinny" is driven by a clarinet  and a bass guitar. The resulting nightmarish sound is matched by the singer's menacing vocal performance (and I say "the singer" because even after 40 odd years recording, nobody has ever seen the band's faces, or knows who they are behind the eyeball masks. Just let the thought that the person sitting next to you could be a Resident sink in for a second). And all of that is done for a song about what, exactly? A grizzly murder? A psychopath in an asylum?

Nope. Just a skinny dude who sells Louis Armstrong records to truckers. Perhaps what makes this song scarier than anything is the anticipation. Both the music and the vocals lead you to believe that something awful is going to happen the whole time, but it never does. Unless, of course, you count the maniac chant at the end, which could just be a warped vinyl, or could be someone getting the holy shit murdered out of them.

It's really up to the listener.


Anyway, that's my rundown of songs that you can scare the shit out of yourself with this Halloween. Sweet dreams everyone!

David Byrne, Spotify and the Art in the Digital Age

David, I apologize for this rant in advance

I had a blog entry planned this week. I was going to write an extremely snarky, sarcastic review of the Metallica, Lou Reed collaborative album Lulu; a record so bad that it was "terrifying". And while I may do that at some point in the future, I'm going to take a break from my Halloween stuff in order to write about something a little more timely and relevant.

David Byrne, former frontman of the Talking Heads and indisputable genius in his own right, wrote an op-ed in the UK paper "The Guardian" a couple of weeks ago. In it, he decried the internet streaming service Spotify. Byrne makes a number of claims in his piece. He argues that Spoitfy and services like it will eventually own the entire market, and that digital streaming will supplant record sales. He goes on to speculate that while established acts like his own will survive, up and coming acts will be squeezed out of the market. His opinion reflects that of many others, including Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke.

Destroyer of worlds. Or at least the arts, apparently.

Now, I love David Byrne. He's probably my favorite artist recording music today. So it is with the utmost respect that I insist that, while some of Byrne's points are valid ones, most of what he's saying here is simply not accurate.

First, I should acknowledge that Byrne isn't entirely in the wrong here. Spotify royalties to the artists are a pittance. He correctly points out at one point that an artist would need to have his music streamed over 230,000,000 times just to make an even $15,000, minimum wage salary. There's some validity to that criticism. I, for one, would gladly accept an increase in Spotify's monthly fee if meant that artists received more money for their work.

And I'm not alone in that, which is precisely the problem with his logic. Byrne, and others like him who have railed against the digital music revolution, fundamentally misunderstand their own fanbase. The assumption fans would rather take music for free than pay artists for it is one that flies in the face of a number of success stories that the internet has produced. The Scottish electronic band Chvrches released their debut hit "Lies" for free on the Neon Gold blog, and saw explosive popularity thereafter. When they released their debut album, they streamed it for free on NPR, a number of music sites and Spotify, and the record still sold a chart topping 16,000 copies it's first week. People bought it because they liked their music and wanted to support the artist. Despite the fact that the music was widely available for free, people bought it anyway simply because they wanted to own it for themselves.

The picture of "internet success"

Take this argument to its logical extreme, and you find Kickstarter. Dozens of artists have used the site as a launch point for albums. And while it's mostly going to local, "small time" acts, there are also groups like Toad the Wet Sprocket, who just raised $260,000 on a $50,000 goal to cover the production costs of a new record. In other words, the group's fans wanted new music from them so badly that they laid down five times the money that was asked of them for a record  that didn't even exist yet. And the real kicker is that those who donated are still going to buy the finished product, despite the fact that they funded its very existence. In any other business venture, such an investment ahead of the product would warrant the sharing of profits among the investors. But fans of music, games, film and other Kickstarter ventures invest that money simply because they want a chance to purchase the product.

I'm generally loathe to throw out anecdotal evidence to make a case. But these individual stories represent a broader trend. Primarily on the backs of digital media outlets like Amazon and Itunes, the music industry last year saw its first increase in record sales since 1999. And on top of that, there was a decrease in piracy. Granted, $16 billion is a far cry from the industry's $28 billion high, but the increase is a reflection in modern trends that defies the argument of digital deniers: despite an explosion in free or cheap online streaming resources and an abundance of illegal options, more people are buying music than they did last year. Spotify itself, which has 6 million paying customers as of May, is a testament to the fact that. Despite having free services like Youtube at their disposal, fans are more than happy to fork over money for the music they love.

Perhaps even more baffling than artists like Byrne blaming fans for not supporting the music, is that they're making Spotify out to be the culprit at all. Spotify is not the reason artists barely receive any pay for the songs they play. The company has already doled out over 70% of its revenue for royalties alone. No, they're not the bad guy here; it's with the labels that they're paying the royalties out to. Just as they did with radio royalties before, labels take the lion's share of the money fronted by Spotify (which, for the record, is to the tune of a half billion dollars), and then give a pittance of that back to the artists themselves. The problem that exists in the current music market is the problem that's always existed: labels are an outdated form of distribution. It's not the fans who robbed David Byrne, and it's not even Spotify. It's the same middleman that has artificially inflated the price of music for decades. That these artists can't see that is strange, considering how long it's gone on.

Y'know...guys like this

Consumers have always wanted more flexible musical options. It's why they recorded singles from the radio on cassette, instead of buying albums loaded with filler. It's why they turned to illegal downloading. The hunger that's existed in fans for affordable means of building a music collection stems from the record labels that put a stranglehold on music distribution. Spotify didn't create that need. They're a response to it. And thanks to their success and that of other digital distribution, music piracy has been on the decline for years. In fact, there's even a great deal of evidence to suggest that Spotify is acting as a boon to Itunes purchases. Services like Spotify aren't supplanting music purchases; they're informing them.

It has been high time for a long time that the old model of music distribution was abandoned. Record labels for years have been in the business of exploiting both consumers and artists. Byrne, of all people, should know that. Ironically, by pulling out of Spotify and other services like it, artists are cutting off what may well be the best hope for a change in the industry. And it's the emerging artists that Byrne fears for that have the most to gain from that transition. The great contribution of the internet to the arts has been the way that digitization has broken down the barriers between content creators and their consumers. And with all due respect to Mr. Byrne, that anyone would try to destroy that newborn intimacy shocks me. Change is coming, whether those used to the old business model like it or not. And I for one welcome it.

Playlist: Halloween Themes

The celebration begins!

I've decided to kick off my four post Halloween-a-thon with something nice, light and general. As I stated in my last blog, Halloween music exists more in spirit than tradition. It's a feeling. Whether it's a song like "This is Halloween" that catches the aesthetics, or one that simply sounds spooky, Halloween music is all about capitalizing on a mood. There's a reason that "Tubular Bells" becomes super popular this time of year; it sound scary as shit and it reminds us that The Exorcist was a thing.

So for this addition to my playlists, I'm trying to hone in on those perfect, Halloween party songs. This will hardly be a comprehensive list. It's more of a rundown of some of my personal favorites. I also won't be including a few classics like "Thriller" because honestly, what's the point? I enjoy sharing music that other people might not have heard before rather than beating to death songs of which there's nothing more to be said.

So, starting chronologically...

1. Nightmare by Artie Shaw (1938)

Being an old jazz number doesn't stop Shaw's seminal work from being spooky as all hell. The rhythmic drumbeat and clarinet line that form the song's backbone, coupled with an aggressive brass section help this song create atmosphere that says "something awful is about to happen". For an era in which music was so sanitized, Shaw's tune really stands out as unique simply for the audacity of what it was trying to do and the creativity with which it went about doing it. That's probably why he adopted it as his signature song.

2. Downbound Train by Chuck Berry (1955)

It's hard to believe it, but the Godfather of Rock and Roll (who may have also put cameras in women's toilets at one point or another) was once a fiery Southern Baptist.  For the B-side of his fourth single, he brought that obsession with damnation into the recording booth and banged out "Downbound Train"; the tale of a drunk dreaming about his trip on train to Hell. It's hardly shocking or powerful, but Berry brings enough sincerity to it to make it seem spooky.

3. I Put a Spell on You by Screamin' Jay Hawkins (1956)

Screamin' Jay's 1956 classic has long been a Halloween favorite. Rock and roll legend states that Hawkins originally tried to record this song as a more typical blues piece, and it never worked. Then he and the rest of the band showed up at the studio shitfaced drunk to rerecord it, and he viscerally growled out the tune in the guttural fashion that would become one of his trademarks. There have been dozens of covers since, mostly playing the song as a straight ballad. But if you're building a soundtrack to Halloween, accept no substitute.

4. Devil's Grip on Me by the The Crazy World of Arthur Brown (1967)

Like Hawkins, Arthur Brown's performances were always bombastic and colorful. The two artists also shared a love of macabre lyrics and spooky sounds. Hammy though it might be, it's hard to go wrong with Brown for a Halloween choice. This one invokes images of Satan, so I think it's a winner.

5. Bela Lugosi's Dead by Bauhaus (1979)

Bela Lugosi was a larger than life figure in early horror cinema, and had actually been dead for 23 years at the time of this song's recording. None the less, it's a masterful tribute to him. The song features driving percussion accented by bass guitar and dozens of odd, bizarre sound effects and guitar distortions that help create the atmosphere of a horror film. "Bella Lugosi's dead...undead," The song proclaims, "and the bats have left the belltower." It was Bauhaus's first single, and it really established them as the pioneers of goth rock as it emerged in the late 70s.

6. Human Fly by the Cramps (1980)

Bauhaus weren't the only band that studied old horror film. Right there with them were the Cramps, one of my favorite punk bands. Between songs like "Zombie Dance", "I Was a Teenage Werewolf" and "Human Fly", it was obvious from the beginning that campy B-horror was a major part the group's visual and audio aesthetics. The latter of those was written as a loving tribute to b-horror film The Fly (the 1958 original, mind you, not the 1986 Jeff Goldblum one). The song is played in a surf rock style, if surf rock overdosed on acid. At only 2:02, it's far too short for a song this good, but I'm not sure the Cramps were ever very capable of recordings songs over 150 seconds or so.

7. Ghost Town by the Specials (1981)

Ska today has becoming Babbie's First Rock Genre for teenagers everywhere. Now that the stereotype has formed, it's difficult to remember that the genre could once be pretty edgy. Such was the case for the 1981 single "Ghost Town". Though the song is less about supernatural entities and more about modern urban decay, its depiction of crime, violence and the miserable state of poverty stricken cities, sounds decidedly uneasy. This is mostly due to the swinging saxophone that creates the desolate atmosphere on the song.

8. Country Death Song by the Violent Femmes (1985)

The Violent Femmes first album may have made them famous, but for my money it was their second that made them great. The son of a devout Baptist minister (there's a pattern forming here, for the observant among you), frontman Gordon Gano decided that for the second record, the band would play stripped down, gothic country as opposed to acoustic party-punk. The result was a deep, emotive and occasionally creepy album with fervent religious overtones. The album's opening track, Country Death Song, is the confession of a crazed man seeking penance in suicide for the daughter he'd murdered. A simple, bouncing bass backs the song, while veteran banjo picker Tony Trischka creates a desolate, dark country vibe. Gano's own psychotic vocal performance drives home the madness meant in the song.

9. Dead Man's Party by Oingo Boingo (1986)

If there's a song more "80s" than this one, I'm not sure what it is. Cheesy drums and sax? Check. Aggressive synthesizer? Done. Faux gothic affectations? They're all over it. Oingo Boingo and front man Danny Effman (Jack Skellington himself) not only created a distillation of everything that new wave was teased for, but also the perfect Halloween party song short of MJ's "Thriller". Despite all of it's cheesyness, I adore this song. It's too fun not to fall completely in love with.

10. The Curse of Millhaven by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (1994)

I've already written extensively about Nick Cave & the Bad Seed's magnus opus Murder Ballads. But it would feel wrong of me to make a list of Halloween music and not include a song from it. The natural choice, both because it's fun and grisly as hell, is "The Curse of Millhaven". The song chronicles the narration of a pretty blonde haired girl named Loretta (though she prefers Lottie) and the small town she lives in. Oh, and 23 people that she viciously murders for her own amusement. Nick Cave inflects that sort of gleeful insanity perfectly in his vocal performance, and the erratic, swinging bass and guitar chords sell it well. Though it might disturb the more faint of heart, this a great song for a Halloween party.

11. The Ghost of Stephen Foster by Squirrel Nut Zipper (1998)

Speaking of fun, nobody does it better than SNZ. "Hell", their biggest hit, was a very tempting choice for this. But ultimately I went for this one instead. This song details a meeting between our anonymous narrator and the spectral version of America's original hitmaker in a spooky old hotel. It's a bizarre, neo-swing tune that would feel right at home being played by a ghost band in a haunted house coming to life. I always got that mental image from it, so I was pleased to find that the video was exactly that. It's right above, and it's one of the most enjoyable music videos ever made. So check it out.

12. God's Away on Business by Tom Waits (2002)

Tom Waits is the indisputable king of Halloween. Between his gravelly, snarling voice, his freaky avante guard hooks and the macabre songwriting he's wont to delve into, there are literally dozens of songs I could choose for a list like this. Not all of his music is like that, of course, but the 2002 album Blood Money certainly qualifies in its entirety. I ultimately went with "God's Away on Business", because it's the record's best and because there's a badass mashup in which Cookie Monster sings it.

13. The Shankhill Butchers by the Decemberists (2006)

There have been so many gory revenge ballads, tales of killers and deeds most foul expressed on Decemberist albums that I actually think that frontman Colin Meloy might be insane. Whether I'm right or not, he's damn good at creating them. Meloy, in this song, plays a mother telling her children a threatening lullaby about the very real historical gang of Irish loyalists. In fiction, they came for disobedient children, with "cleavers and their knives". The whole thing is done in a very minimalist, spooky, understated way that fits the song perfectly.

14. Cannibal Family by the Wolfgangs (2011)

I'm not even going to pretend that I know what this song is about. The lyrics, as far as I can tell, don't exist online and what's-her-name up there's vocals are incomprehensible. But this rockabilly jam sounds dark, and the video implies that it's about people who eat people. That's pretty fuckin' Halloween right there.

15. He of Cloven Hoof by Those Poor Bastards (2012)

If Tom Waits is the King of Halloween, Those Poor Bastards are his princes. TPB plays a tortured, gothic, mutant version of country, or so the theory goes. This song is less country and more "wailing pipe organs from Hell". I first heard it at a truck stop where I fueled up at 3 AM on a drive home, and was shocked at how different it sounded from anything recorded ever. TPB steep their music in pitch black Biblical imagery, southern gothic themes and insanely creepy musical vibes. Some of it borders on hammy, but most of it is genuinely creepy in a way that can make your skin crawl.

So that does it for Halloween list one. To continue the leadup to the holiday, later this week I'll be posting a review of the album of my nightmares; an album so, horrifyingly bad that it chills my very bones. What record could frighten me so? You'll just have to tune into the Weekly Record to find out.

Halloween Extravaganza

There are four American holidays that come with their own soundtracks.

Christmas it the most obvious. It's the juggernaut of seasonal song that nobody seems to like, but inexplicably plays for a quarter of the year anyway. Perhaps its that long window in which the music's in vogue that makes it completely impossible to find once Wal-Mart's holiday sales officially end (which to me, at least, is no small mercy). Consisting of anything vaguely Celtic, and various renditions of "Danny Boy", St. Patrick's Day music is easily my favorite. Although people only get really excited about it during the 12 hours they spend shitfaced on the holiday itself, it can be found all year round hibernating in faux Irish pubs the nation over. And although it's hardly official in any sense, I think there's a strong case that the two dozen traditional patriotic songs, the "1812 Overture" (Because setting off fireworks to that shit is awesome) and a handful of shitty country-western songs make up a soundtrack for the 4th of July that plays non-stop for about three days on either side of Independence Day. Outside that time frame, you can usually hear it at sports arenas, AM radio stations and Republican campaign rallies.

And then there's Halloween.

Halloween has no official soundtrack, and unlike the others, very few standards. Sure, there are a few cheesy songs like "Monster Mash" or "This is Halloween", but for the most part, Halloween songs exist in spirit more than tradition. It's loosely defined, but anything featuring monsters, black magic, demons, or really just songs that are creepy as fuck are usually considered fair game. This makes Halloween music the most interesting seasonal fair. There's no clear definition for it, and a lot of the stuff that fits the theme best is little known. That makes it fun to write about; I get to talk about music I love, do something timely and hopefully help you all out with the upcoming music. 

So as this is October, and October is the month of Halloween, I'm going to use this blog to celebrate the season. Each week, from now until Halloween, I'm going to make a themed posts here. I'll be making two posts with ten great Halloween jams each, a post about songs with disturbing lyrics, and a final post on the holiday itself about songs that are just plain terrifying to listen to. Hope you enjoy!

Album Review: The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight. The Harder I Fight, the More I Love You

I've always enjoyed Neko Case. Her beautiful vocals, her colorful lyrics and her effortless grip on any genre she attempts to play in all make her a talented musician. In 2007, she had one grand slam of an album with Fox Confessor Brings the Flood. Ever since, I feel like we've been waiting for her second masterpiece.

It's here now.

The Worse Things Get comes at a difficult time in Case's life. Her familial relationships have, if her music is any indication, been strained for some time, particularly with her parents. In the time since her last record, 2009's Middle Cyclone, her parents both died, along with her grandmother. It was the depression that followed, which Case herself has described with "physically debilitating", from which this album was born. Not since Neutral Milk Hotel's Aeronplane Over the Sea have I seen an artist's emotions so nakedly on display. Like the aforementioned classic, the result is not depressing, but rather beautiful, hopeful and strong in the face of tragedy.

Case's already impressive songwriting prowess is better than ever on this record. At one moment, Case can be emotionally vulnerable, such as the hauntingly beautiful "Local Girl", or "Calling Cards". Then, she'll display defiance. "Man" is a fiery, catchy feminist song in which she asserts her independence by way of defying her gender roles.

"And if I'm dipshit drunk on the pink perfume
I am the man in the fucking moon'
Cause you didn't know what a man was
Until I showed you"

It's a powerful statement, and easily the best song on the album. On tracks "I'm from Nowhere" and "City Swan", she makes similar cries of independence. The themes add up to the core narrative that Case is mourning her losses deeply, but is not broken.

Perhaps the most impressive part of Case's songwriting is her ability to talk about her own personal and societal struggles through the stories of others. Each of the album's 12 tracks is its own look into the life of an individual. In "Calling Cards", Case's character is collecting calling cards for a loved one, identified only as a singer, but can only reach empty dial tones instead of the one she searches for. In "Nearly Midnight, Honolulu" she's a drifter watching a mother abuse her child. "Bracing for Sunday" casts her as a rebellious teenager, stuck in a small town and dreaming of the day when she won't be chastised on Sunday for being who she is. After falling in love with a woman, she murders her brother/rapist. These are intensely emotional stories, each reflecting a microcosm of Case's own internal demons. Her lyrics are laced with colorful phrasing as well, that lends a profound poetry to every tale she tells.

"I dropped my gloves into the stove
Hymns echoed out the grate
I fell in love with those electric lights
That drug me into town so late

To nimble, cunning, clever nights
I railed behind them, deputized
To scrape the lens of Christian eyes
A Friday night girl, Bracing for Sunday to come"  - Bracing For Sunday

"Goodnight, sunshine
The ghetto-bird shines 4 am,
Welcome to the West
A mosquito to kiss your hands and feet
Welcome to this dirty business" - I'm From Nowhere

I could go on and on about the power of the songwriting on this record, but to do so would be a huge disservice to the music. Case has never been one for settling down into a defined genre, and she's as opposed to the idea as ever here. Her vocal style may be decidedly country-western (If only in the Kelly Hogan, Patsy Kline sense), but she applies it to aggressive rock and roll, haunting folk and ethereal experimental tracks. Case also demonstrates her skill as a guitarist on tracks like "Local Girl" and "Calling Cards". One song that immediately jumped out to me was "Nearly Midnight, Honolulu", which features Case signing a Capella with her own recorded voice providing her backup. The effect is a haunting, gospel tune that is simply breathtaking. Each song's music is tailor fit for its lyrical theme, and each has its entirely own mold.

This is a fabulous album from start to finish. I don't say this often, but there isn't a single misstep the whole record over. For its emotional complexity, poetic approach to storytelling and the diverse musical presentation throughout, I can say with confidence that this is not only one of best records of the year so far, but Case's finest effort to date. I cannot recommend this album highly enough.

Album Review: Wise Up Ghosts by Elvis Costello and the Roots

I love screwball collaborations. Not collabs that don't work, like Metallica and Lou Reed's effort that could generously be called a failed experiment and accurate the vicious murder of all things that audiophiles hold dear. What I'm talking about is work produced by artists that you never would have thought to combine in a million years. The 2010 effort Broken Bells fronted by the bizarre-yet-winning combination of hip-hop producer Danger Mouse and Shins rocker James Mercer. Or the unlikely duo of St. Vincent and David Byrne that produced one of last year's best records, Love This Giant.

It was that vein I was hoping for when I first heard that Elvis Costello was teaming up with the Roots. Costello is a living legend, and one of my all time favorite artists besides. And the Roots, while best being known as Jimmy Fallon's house band, are a proven jazz-rap group responsible for over a half dozen terrific records in their own right. I couldn't imagine the two pairing up well, but the talent was there and the first single, "Walk Us Uptown" was good enough to seriously heighten my expectations.

So how did it live up?

At first, phenomenally. Costello's wry humor and distinctive vocal delivery were a perfect match for the odd, funking grooves that the Roots are famous for. The two seem a match made for one another. Costello is as prickly as ever, writing songs about government surveillance, environmental degradation and the world just generally going to hell. This urgency is balanced by the cynical levity with which he treats many of his issues, creating a record that on one track will beg you to care about an issue of relevance, only for Costello to throw up his arms and say , "Fuck it" on the next. It's a wonderful balance.

All of that is typical Costello. Where this record surprises is the way his shrill, uneven crooning matches perfectly the eccentric jives of the band. In being the singer, it may seem that Costello is the star on the record. But the reality is that the Roots rules the stage here as much as he does. This album is packed to the brim with the slickest funk-jazz beats since the 70s heyday of the genre. There's an effortless ebb and flow on the record. Tracks like "Walk Us Uptown", "Sugar Won't Work" and "Wake Me Up" provide a funky, streetwise swagger, while others such as "Refused to be Saved" and "Come the Meantime" teem with an apocalyptic urgency. All of it works beautifully, and the artists maintain a wonderful creative sync while still maintaining a sharp. stylistic contrast.

All of that makes the second half of the record that much more disappointing. The first sign that all of this might go wrong is, perhaps fittingly, "Tripwire". It middles around as an early Costello "Allison"-esque ballad that lacks neither the grooves of the Roots nor the charm of the Attractions. In fact, it just kind of middles about, not going anywhere in particular. The model is unfortunately followed by the tracks "Viceroy's Row", "If I Could Believe" and the album's title track. And while the Latin infused "Cinco Minutos Vos" could have been a good slowdown track in between the catchier, funkier numbers, its existence alongside the others just contributes to the sense that the group ran out of ideas and started winding things down halfway through.

It's extremely disappointing, because if Wise Up Ghosts had maintained its initial momentum, I have every confidence that it would be my record of the year. As it stands, though, all the bad that comes with the good renders it a mediocre album. If you can pick it up, I still recommend it, because there is serious greatness here. I'd love to see another collaboration between these artists where they, y'know...finish the job. But I'm not holding my breath on that one.

Album Review: The Bones of What You Believe by Chvrches

Chvrches is one of those groups that's been floating around the internet for a while now. Scottish in origin, they had crafted a couple of web hits in the form of 2012's singles "Lies" and "The Mother We Share". Arguably, it was record label Neon Gold's blog posts about them that started them breaking big. Last week they released their first full length album, The Bones of What You Believe

It can't be understated that what Chvrches is doing, an electro-synth pop steeped in retro 80s nostalgia, is in with the indie music scene today. On one hand, that represents a great opportunity for an up and coming group like them. On the other, it means they're entering a saturated market. On some level, I have to admit that there's nothing Chvches is doing that feels exceptionally innovative, just because this sort of retro-pop revivalism has been everywhere in recent years (I again cite the 2011 film Drive's soundtrack as the tipping point for this becoming a full blown phenomenon). That is not to say, however, that they haven't come as close to perfecting the art as a group can get without being the Pet Shop Boys or Kavinsky.

The 80s influence on the record is palpable. All over the place, there are shades of PSB, Depeche Mode and Tears for Fears. Whether they intended it to or not, I also feel that many of the higher BPM tracks smack of old video game music as well (We Sink and Recover, seem particularly pointed examples, though the observation really applies to all of their faster track). Lead vocalist Lauren Mayberry's voice has an ethereal quality that jives very well with the group's electronic sound.

There are a number of tracks that stand out here. The two aforementioned songs that put them on the indie radar are great, thumping pop tracks, and the record's first single "We Sink" is an equally catchy endeavor. The album's fourth track, "Tether" introduces itself as a more introspective, subdued song, before a powerful synth line transforms it into an epic masterpiece at the midway point. And despite the fact that Mayberry is mostly absent on it, "Under the Tide" is a probably my favorite on the album. I couldn't tell you which of her band mates takes the mic, but the song reminds me a great deal of the 2012 Tanline's single "All of Me"; one of my favorites that year.

Bones is and excellent record, but it's not without its faults. Specifically, I found the tracks "Recovery", "Night Sky", "Lungs", and "Gun" to be significant disappointments compared to the rest of the album. Bones is a cutting edge work, brimming with passion and creative arrangements. But these four tracks feel like standard dance pop fair. Apart from a few duds, however, Chvrches debut album is one to be extremely proud of, and thus far, an easy contender for pop record of the year.