James Blake - "Limit To Your Love" (Feist Cover)

I "strongly dislike" post-dubstep (yes, there's already a post-dubstep), but U.K. dubstep producer James Blake's cover of Feist's "Limit To Your Love," from his self-titled debut album, is pretty fucking gorgeous. I remember hearing this song for the first time while waiting for the Wildbirds & Peacedrums show at the Waldorf Hotel to start. I never thought to ask that night's easily accessible DJs what the song was - for whatever reason - but fate brought me and James Blake's cover together once again.

Feist - Metals (Cherrytree/Interscope Records, 2011)

It's been four-and-a-half years since Leslie Feist released her third album The Reminder which catapulted the post-Aughts queen of indie rock into bona fide superstardom. Few have likely forgotten her since her subsequent hiatus, and even fewer will likely forget her after an album as fresh and powerful as Metals.

If there was one thing that struck me right away about Metals, it was its dense, intricate and bold arrangements. Opener "The Bad in Everyone," a track as musically and lyrically turbulent as one would expect from its title, pretty much sets the pace and bleak tone for the rest of the album with its heavy opening drums and sombre strings and horns.

The next track "Graveyards" includes the first of Metals' several sweeping harmonies. The dark orchestral quality that pervades the majority of Metals, which is often heightened by these very harmonies, continues on "Caught A Long Wind," a delicate track lightly accented by tenuous strings. As "Long Wind" shows, even when the pace slows down on Metals, and the songs are sparser, Feist still sounds very loud. (It should be noted that in this and similar cases, "sparse" on Metals still at least means seamlessly composed strings, pianos and guitars.)

Upon first listen of Metals' lead single "How Come You Never Go There," listeners might have wondered how the song, so unconventional from the rest of Feist's work, would fit into the album. But such wonder is completely dispelled when the song seamlessly transitions from "Caught A Long Wind": "How Come You Never Go There"'s unusual song structure, less-is-more horns and particularly the song’s plodding rhythm seem all too logical of progressions when compared to the rest of the despairing album.

The dramatic "A Commotion" gave me chills, the first time I heard it. And although the harmonic chants of the song's title, agitated, jittery riff and overall sense of urgency all give me goosebumps, the highlight of "A Commotion," and perhaps the most unexpected musical moment on the album, is an exotic instrumental line by something that sounds like a wind instrument I can't identify. "A Commotion" was indisputably the most attention-grabbing song on Metals for me, up to this point.

Metals mellows out by its second half, starting with the next track "The Circle Married the Line," the most tender moment on Metals yet, if only for its few twinkling triangles, note-picked acoustic guitar and soft harmonies.

Following "The Circle Married the Line" in sequence as well as tempo and sparseness is "Bittersweet Melodies." What sets this latter triangle-sprinkled song apart from the rest of Metals (besides "Anti-Pioneer," which I will address momentarily) is that it harkens Feist's first album Monarch (Lay Your Jewelled Head Down), though "Bittersweet Melodies" is more intricately composed, louder and clearer in production than anything on her debut. Likewise, "Anti-Pioneer," which may tie with "Cicadas and Gulls" as the barest song on Metals, also harkens classic Feist, as it is a re-working of her popular live number "When the Month Changes Numbers" from as far back as 2004. And speaking of "Cicadas and Gulls," it is the only instance I can think of during which I thought of another artist while listening to Feist. Indeed, Feist’s hollow vocals, thin harmonies and folky acoustic guitar on the lullaby-like "Cicadas and Gulls" could unwittingly pass as a Cat Power song and also closely recall the Reminder cut "The Park" by Feist herself.

My favourite song on Metals may very well be "Undiscovered First," the most guitar-oriented track on the album, although it too is interspersed with horns and erupts in a HUGE climax with an insane, torrential, high-register harmony, thudding drums and various other rattling percussion before ending with the echo of ghostly background vocals.

Overall, Metals features an emphasis on strings not heard of much from Feist since Monarch. And it is often the rich confluence of these strings with other elements such as heavy drumbeats, pianos and horns that prevents even Metals' lightest songs from sounding airy and upbeat to the overtly poppy extents of "1234," "Mushaboom," "I Feel It All" and "Past and Present." Even Metals' most relaxed moments almost always take stormier turns with huge climaxes wherein all of the aforementioned elements collide at once, making for a very stark contrasts within songs.

Even during Metals' most reserved moments, there is at least an underlying force behind the album. Surprisingly, that force, as well as the latter half of Metals' frequent quiet/loud, soft/heavy contrasts within individual songs, never becomes overbearing or exhaustive. Indeed, Metals is striking in its size and ambition and furthermore striking when compared to the sparseness of Feist's previous albums which focus on her near-whispers, gentle coos and playful arrangements. Whereas Monarch, Let It Die and The Reminder are albums you could put on during a dinner party, Metals affords no (or few) opportunities to unwind.

The most satisfying aspect of Metals, besides giving fans fifty minutes of awesome new music after a four-and-a-half-year-long wait, is that Feist has been able to grow so much so (relatively) late in her game. It's always easy for artists to become complacent after finding as much success as Feist did with The Reminder, and as great as The Reminder was, it wasn't too much of a departure from her previous work. But if Feist continues to grow as she has on Metals, she'll have no problem keeping fans interested for years to come, even if they may not always fully recognize her at first. After all, to make listeners work in such a way - and for such rewards - is one of the best thing fans could ask for from their favourite artists.

Everything Is Boring and Everyone Is A Fucking Liar Double-Post

Maryland hip-hop duo Spank Rock are back with forty-one minutes of coool sounds on their slickest, most danceable album yet Everything Is Boring and Everyone Is A Fucking Liar (Bad Blood Records, 2011).





If you like what you've heard, stream the entire new album at Rolling Stone's website.

Lou Reed and Metallica - "The View"

Lou Reed and Metallica are releasing a fully collaborative album called Lulu on October 31. The first full track they’ve released is called “The View.” I’ve never cared for Metallica, and I haven’t really cared for Lou Reed since Transformer (RCA Records, 1972), but despite my doubts about Lulu, I think “The View” is pretty fucking awesome. I'll definitely be checking out Lulu now.

More and More, I Think Talking Heads Are the Greatest Band Ever.

And David Byrne is the greatest frontman ever. This video is just fucking awesome in every way possible:



How does someone come up with those jerky, robotic and marionette-like body movements or have the innate sense to move like that? Or like this:





David Byrne's energy and stamina in those two videos alone (both from Talking Heads' 1984 concert film Stop Making Sense) just astounds me, especially assuming he was always that expressive live. I NEED to watch Stop Making Sense NOW.

Marnie Stern on Music Criticism

"I think the feeling right now with criticism and reviews is that it's rare that someone is actually critical. It seems more about discovering it, and you judge for yourself whether you like it or not. Before, you used to have to spend seventeen bucks on a CD so you wanted someone to tell you if it was good or not. Now, you don't need a review, you just download it and throw it away."

I never thought about that before. She may be correct about the weight most readers (myself included) give reviews nowadays, but I disagree about reviews rarely being critical anymore. Pitchfork is notorious for its pretentiously critical reviews (see their staggeringly low score of 1.2/10 for the Dandy Warhols' Odditorium Or Warlords of Mars), often to the point that readers may wonder, "Why do they even review X album or Y artist in general?" And for a more recent example, check out Tiny Mix-Tapes' review of Blondie's latest album.

I could pick and choose negative reviews from various publications all day, but I know Marnie isn't saying critical reviews don't exist at all anymore. My point is just that maybe it's just the reviews I happen to read, or maybe I just have "bad" or unpopular taste in music (although much of my taste consists of some of the highest-selling artists of all time, so the latter isn't the case), but reviewers definitely aren't afraid to voice their criticisms, however unnecessary those reviewers' voices may have become in the digital age.

Click below to watch the video for Marnie Stern's "Transformer":

Where Has This Song Been All My Life?