Tag: Dream Pop

Categories
Tunes

Best tunes of 2010: #18 Phantogram “Mouthful of diamonds”

<< #19    |    #17 >>

Let me know if this has ever happened to you.

You discover a band or solo artist and download or purchase a physical copy of their album. You really enjoy it. You listen to it a few times. And then… you forget about it. A few years later, you’re trawling through the upcoming releases list and notice an album by a name that sounds familiar to you. You check out the advanced single (or two) and like what you hear but damned if they don’t sound like you’ve heard them before. So you go to your massive iTunes playlist and sure enough, there they are. And you go about rediscovering them all over again. And you know that you didn’t lose track of them because they’re a forgettable artist or anything like that. It’s more symptomatic of having too much music available to our collective fingertips, a good problem to be sure, but also one that is a new one in this internet world in which we live.

Phantogram is one such band for me. I got into the Greenwich, New York-based duo with the release of their debut album, “Eyelid movies”, and was completely absorbed with the cinematic and atmospheric worlds they created with their music. I was then reacquainted with them in 2013 with the release of a handful of singles in anticipation of “Voices”, the sophomore full-length that came out the following year. In Phantogram’s case, it definitely wasn’t them – it was me. They were pretty active in the four years between albums, having released a couple of EPs and having collaborated with a bunch of notable artists, like Big Boi and Flaming Lips. Apparently, my listening ears were elsewhere.

“Mouthful of diamonds” is one of the incredible tracks off Phantogram’s debut that completely drew me back into the fold while waiting for “Voices” to be released. It’s the album’s lead off track and explodes with its intense beat and low end layer, while synth screeches flit about with Josh Carter’s jangly guitars and Sarah Barthel’s soft and breathy vocals. It is dark and haunting. It is a dream from which you don’t want to awaken. It is a futuristic dance club in some sci-fi flick yet to be made. It’s all this and everything else your mind can imagine while you close your eyes and sink back into your couch with the song’s beats thumping through your earphones.

And I’ll tell you something else. Two albums and two live sets later, and I definitely haven’t lost track of them again.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2010 list, click here.

Categories
Tunes

Best tunes of 2000: #6 Mojave 3 “Return to sender”

<< #7    |    #5 >>

It was Saturday afternoon, September 30, 2000, and I was at work, nearing the end of my shift. I called Tim because I had a hankering to go out and was curious to see what my friends were doing. “I know what you’re going to do tonight,” Tim proclaimed, much like Hunter S. Thompson’s lawyer might have done in ‘Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas’. “You’re coming with me to see Mojave 3 at the Horseshoe tonight!” It was fortuitous for him and for me that he had an extra ticket for the show and was looking for someone to claim it. I had never really listened to Mojave 3 before but I was game.

I don’t really remember many details of the show, given the amounts of cheap draft consumed that night, but I’ve got two that I can relay. The first is that I must’ve really enjoyed it because I went out the very next day to purchase their latest disc, 2000’s “Excuses for travellers”. The second is a short conversation that transpired on the way out of the Legendary Horseshoe after the show that will live on in infamy. Tim was saying something about how Neil Halstead and Rachel Goswell had gone all Cowboy Junkies with Mojave 3. And I drunkenly proclaimed, “Tim, you have no concept of genre.” He just looked at me, incredulous, and said, “I don’t even know how to respond to that.”

I don’t want to put more words in his mouth than necessary but Tim was probably referring Halstead’s and Goswell’s pointed shift in musical direction after they disbanded their original band, Slowdive, and formed Mojave 3 with another Slowdive member, Ian McCutcheon. By 2000, they had added Alan Forrester and Chapterhouse’s Simon Rowe to their roster but they never did change the three in their name to a five. They were also on album number three by this time and had firmly defined their sound, as atmospheric as anything their first band would’ve been proud of but with a country and folk tinge, which is likely where Tim dug up his Cowboy Junkies reference.

“Return to sender” is a boppy number that dances along to Halstead’s gentle acoustic strumming and his soft and plaintive vocals. The jaunty drumming, the banjo twang, twinkling keys, and harmonica flourishes only to serve to add to the wistful joy. And all that’s great but for me, this song is elevated above others of its type by the lyrics.

I went looking for a priest
I said say something please
I don’t want to live my life all alone
He said god will take care
Of those that help themselves
But you look pretty screwed
Send a letter

So all this to say, after years of listening to this song and catching up on the rest of Mojave 3’s back catalogue, I may be willing to concede that Tim may have had something with the Cowboy Junkies comparison. (But I still stand by my statement about his lack of genre sensibilities.)

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2000 list, click here.

Categories
Tunes

100 best covers: #97 The Raveonettes “My boyfriend’s back”

<< #98    |    #96 >>

In October 2005, a video game called Stubbs the Zombie was unleashed upon the world. Being the world’s sorriest excuse for a gamer, it’s no surprise that I have neither seen nor played this game. (I should like to ask fellow blogger Sarca if she’s played and has thoughts on said game.) I assume it takes for its protagonist a zombie called Stubbs, given its title, but of its plot, I know nothing. I would posit, however, that it takes place in or about the 1950s or 1960s, having listened to its soundtrack. Yes, you heard that right. A soundtrack was made for this game (maybe this is a regular occurrence Sarca?) and it’s the music therein with which I am much more familiar.

Released on the same day as the game, the soundtrack boasts twelve covers of classics from the golden age of rock and roll and an original theme, all by indie artists that were popular in the mid-2000s. We have Cake performing “Strangers in the night”, Death Cab For Cutie doing “Earth angel”, and this lovely take on “My boyfriend’s back” by The Raveonettes.

The original number by The Angels is a bubble gum pop number from 1963 complete with handclaps and cheeky backup singers. It is kind of dark looking at it through today’s PC lenses, the singer threatening a guy with assault at the hands of her rather large boyfriend. It would seem that back in the day this guy would be seen as getting his just desserts since he had first harassed the girl for a date but once rebuffed (several times as it sounds), had spread rumours about her. But it’s all okay, you say, it’s a cheerful and fun song. They’re clapping their hands, fer chrissakes!

But then we listen to The Raveonettes’ cover, which also appears on their album from the same year, “Pretty in black”, and the mood is slightly different. Sure, it’s still boppy but the handclaps are replaced by electronic beats, the guitars are roughed up and raw, and Sharin Foo’s vocals are sassy, channelling Debbie Harry and almost insinuating that she doesn’t really need her boyfriend to defend her. It probably goes without saying that I enjoy this version better with all its noise and angst, while still hinting at the era of soda parlours and poodle dresses, but I can certainly understand any nostalgic bliss directed at the original.

The cover:

The original:

For the rest of the 100 best covers list, click here.