140 Character Record Review: tUnE-yArDs - w h o k i l l

tUnE-yArDs - w h o k i l l: 

 Assured songbird beats wings over Africa/Bklyn/Caribbean;

lands to jump on soundboard, record migratory pattern

140 Character Record Review: Panda Bear - Tomboy

Panda Bear – Tomboy:

Swaddling by a tanning bed; 

Like showering in a suspended glittery mist of refrain

140 Character Record Review: Allison Krauss & Union Station - Paper Airplanes

A. Krauss & U.S. – Paper Airplanes:

Perfection in roster & execution like the '92 Dream Team produces 

tearful beauty like a lifetime of fading sunsets

On the Record

Record Store Day, an event to promote independent record stores, will be held on Saturday April 16th.  Launched in 2008, Record Store Day features exclusive music and merchandise by a range of artists coupled with in store performances, meet & greets, and general good times.

Here's a list of some stuff I'm excited to hear.  Check out the website to find participating stores and a list of releases.  Take this opportunity to stop in to a record store near you and help support musicians, music lovers and a business model in contrast to iTunes, torrents and the like.

 
Blitzen Trapper - "Maybe Baby" and "Soul Singer" 
Format: 7" Vinyl
Label: Sub Pop

Freddie King - "Wash Out" and "Butterscotch" 
Format: 7" Vinyl
Label: Sundazed





 



Greatful Dead - Greatful Dead (LP)
Format: Vinyl
Label: Rhino

    


    Ryan Adams and the Cardinals - Class Mythology (EP)

    Format: 7" Vinyl

    Label: Pax-Am Records

Jenny and Johnny / Gram Parsons and the Fallen Angels featuring Emmylou Harris - Love Hurts
Format: 7" Vinyl
Label: WBR






 

Rapping in the Band

Short of Aerosmith & Run DMC, rap rock hasn't really worked out so well as a genre.

In fact, besides the 16 bars of rhymes obligatorily added to every pop song looking for edge since 1999, hip hop hasn't really played well with it neighbors.  Despite the fact that hip hop as an art form began with MC's rapping over soul, funk, and R&B records, a cohesive blending, beyond sampling, of hip hop with some of these genres has been a more difficult task to master.

Here's a couple, however, that really make the partnership work.  

Galactic is a hard driving stew of jazz, funk, and brass from New Orleans that sets the musical table about as well as anyone.  This track is from the album From the Corner to the Block, released in 2007, which is entirely dedicated to collaborations with hip-hop artists.  Other standout tracks include "Think Back" with Chali 2na from Jurassic 5 and "The Corner" with Gift of Gab from Blackalicious.  

The Black Keys dubbed their 2009 collaboration with a host of hip-hop wordsmiths BlakRoc.  Check out his track, "Ain't Nothing Like You (Hoochie Coo) featuring Mos Def and Jim Jones.  I love the split screen in the video contrasting Jones laying down his verse (in between a marijuana cigarette or two) and the effects pedals, knobs, dials, and switches.

Also give a listen to "Telling Me Things" featuring RZA of the Wu-Tang Clan.

Song Meanings: Wye Oak - "Civilian"

I am nothing without pretend
I know my thoughts
can't live with them

I am nothing without a man

I know my faults

but I can hide them

I still keep my baby teeth
in the bedside table with my jewelry

you still sleep in the bed with me

my jewelry, and my baby teeth

I don't need another friend

when most of them

I can barely keep up with them

perfectly able to hold my own hand

but I still can't kiss my own neck

I wanted to give you everything

but I still stand in awe of superficial things

I wanted to love you like my mother's mother's mothers did

civilian
civilian

Wye Oak is a duo comprised of Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack from Baltimore, MD.  The song also lends its name to Wye Oak's third full length, released earlier last month.

For me, the meaning behind the song centers on the public and private selves we create and how they intersect, overlap, and converge; how, over time, the person we have evolved into has to grapple with an ever changing version of itself.

Without even trying, each of us create multiple personas that dictate and influence the ways we interact with certain people, places and situations.  Think in-laws, work, family functions - our rituals for behavior in these situations are each different from the other.  

Therefore, versions of ourselves exist with each person we know - everyone knows a different part of our story, but none knows the entire narrative.  The private self (i.e. you) is the only one that does.  So is the private self a recognition of pretending; acting at "being yourself"?  I'm not a student of philosophy, but I seem to remember existentialists calling this the "inauthentic being" - because we have consciousness of the self we can never fully participate in being.  We take cues from our cultural notions of what it means to be a father, or employee, or a coach, and we take those shared stereotypes and integrate them into the way we act.  Therefore, we're always in a state of "acting" as ourselves as a perception of what we see around us.

This idea of pretending opens the song - Wasner singing "I am nothing without pretend".  She divulges that she "knows her faults" but that she can hide them - her private self.

In the second verse the idea of baby teeth, representing a past version of herself and equated to something valuable, jewelry, is co-mingled with the bed where she sleeps with a new lover - the simultaneous convergence of herself past and present collides, suggesting this is the state that the protagonist "can't live with".

The relationship teeters on failure in the third verse with Wasner confessing that she doesn't "need another friend". She wanted to "give you everything", but can't.  Her inability to reconcile those things that are "superficial" stands in her way.  I take that to mean that she is unable to reveal her private self in any meaningful way.  She feels she is unable to live up to the standard of love set in her mind, like her "mother's mothers mother".

In the end, she is left a civilian - no longer part of the battle to keep things together.