The Friday Fivehead: eMusic Bonanza! Tonight, Final Fantasy, Hector Zazou/Katie Jane Garside, Sunny Day Sets Fire, Terminus
May 23rd, 2008
Buying mp3s online can be an extremely frustrating experience. Even today, after DRM has been soundly shouted down from every tech pulpit in the United States, many online mp3 sellers still continue to sell mp3s encumbered with DRM. Steve Jobs likes to spout a lot of blather about how much he dislikes DRM, but that doesn’t change the fact that the iTunes Music Store is still the greatest source of DRM-chained mp3s on the ‘Net. Quite frankly, if you buy DRMed music from the ITMS or any other DRM-supporting retailer, you’re a goddamned idiot.
There are plenty of DRM-free online mp3 stores, though. Amazon.com’s own mp3 store is 100% DRM-free. So is Amie Street (though I find their popularity-based pricing schematic to be a little weird). And there are many, many, many more. However, when it comes to purchasing mp3s from the Web, there’s one place I always go: eMusic.com. eMusic has been around for years, has always been DRM-free, has the best prices, and has a truly gigantic selection of (primarily indie) music to browse through. So much music, in fact, it’s easy to get lost in the aisles, as it were, unless you either know exactly what you’re looking for or you’ve got some serious browsing skillz.
Or, you could just read this week’s Friday Fivehead and go after the five artists/albums I’ve chosen to profile this week!
This month, I decided to browse only brandnew music, stuff that has only been added to the site in the last week or two. Naturally, I headed right for the Alternative/Punk section and went straight for the New Wave, Goth, and Indie Pop subsections. Considering my tastes (and the fact that those three “labels” are so expansive that they can contain music ranging from pure electronic to acoustic folk-rock), those are always good places to start, and this week I ended up purchasing music from five artists I had never heard of prior to sampling them on eMusic.
First, I stumbled upon a 4-track EP, Modern Romance, by a lovely little synthpop duo called Tonight. I was sold the second I listened to the first few measures of the first track, “When Galaxies Form,” which is a gorgeous oldskool synth gem which features swirling synths, beautiful vocals, and spaced-out sci-fi lyrics that will immediately have you thinking of Peter Schilling and S.P.O.C.K. Tonight’s vocalist (”the chick”—I couldn’t find names or any further info on either bandmember) has a lovely, soft voice that has a Blondie-like tonality, but isn’t slathered in so much reverb that her vocals become just another instrument in the mix—something that I’ve seen happening a lot in synth music lately. Much like Bobby (from last week, remember?), Tonight’s music is both danceable and catchy: the beat will definitely get you moving on the dancefloor, but this is not anonymous dance music like most techno (ugh)—the melodies are very memorable, and you most certainly will find yourself singing along while the tracks are playing, and afterword as well. I can’t recommend this EP highly enough. It’s got something for everyone, because it’s a masterpiece of popular music, but will particularly appeal to New Wave and space disco enthusiasts, as well as sci-fi geeks and analog-synth afficionados.
And then there’s Final Fantasy, who come from the complete opposite end of the music spectrum. Where Tonight is an obviously beat-driven, melodic group, Final Fantasy is a mostly-percussion-free, oftimes abstract orchestral outfit. He Poos Clouds is a collection of miniature symphonies, comprised primarily of live strings (violins, violas, cellos), piano, and harpsichord with vocals flying over them all like the titular poo’ed-out clouds. There are very few catchy hooks here, and many of the songs are so abstract that they will primarily appeal to people who like their music complicated and avant-garde. However, several of the songs, particularly “The Arctic Circle” and “This Lamb Sells Condos” are lovely pieces of music that immediately call to mind the orchestral pop of Annie Lennox…only weirder. Final Fantasy is most definitely a weird band. Their lyrics are strange and their arrangements often needlessly complex (too much damn Schoenberg, I think) but I’m still telling y’all to download this entire album NOW. Why? Because it’s one of the most unusual and idiosyncratic albums I’ve heard all year. You may find it a little hard to get into, but just sit back and enjoy the strangeness. It will grow on you quickly once you realize that it sounds like the soundtrack to a mutant, dada-esque stage musical from the 1920s.
If, on the other hand, you want music that’s got the same quirkiness as Final Fantasy but is more accessible, then let me point out Hector Zazou and Katie Jane Garside’s dark nu-jazz/trip-hop masterpiece Corps Electriques. This album is what Portishead’s miserable Third album should have been: a bass-heavy, glitchy barrage of gritty beats and slutty-little-chanteuse vocals. Remember Recoil, Alan Wilder’s post-Depeche-Mode project best known for its dark but sexy lyrics and its heavy industrial soundscapes? Corps Electriques sounds like Recoil crossed with lounge jazz. The beats are harsh and clicky, the bass murky, and the music a complicated bolus of live and synthesized instruments over which Ms. Garside’s shrill little voice streaks like a trail of sputtering light. The vocals really make this album, as Garside can leap from orgasmic trills that would outdo most pornstars to silky-smooth croons in seconds, her voice shuttling up and down octaves in a dizzying—but seriously hot—hurricane of words. Much like Final Fantasy, this group, too, has a very evident dada aspect to it: the combination of beauty (the melodies) and ugliness (the shattered, rusty beats). But lest you think this a difficult album to listen to, let me assure you, it’s not. Garside’s gorgeous voice and Zazou’s jazzy instrumentation combine perfectly to create a lively, if dark and bipolar, album that will appeal to traditional vocal jazz lovers as well as it does industrial freaks.
Sunny Day Sets Fire is a very straightforward, no-nonsense indie pop band, and Summer Palace, their latest album, is a very straightforward, no-nonsense indie pop album. But don’t think that this is an “easy-listening” album—Sunny Day Sets Fire’s lyrics are peculiarly dark, which gives their bouncy, melodic songs an ironic edge. But not the all-too-common, self-aware “irony” of your typical Pitchfork Media Darling: SDSF is a band who clearly enjoys writing music high in hummable content and low in self-righteousness. “Stranger” is, first and foremost, a good jam whose rather somber lyrics don’t detract from the jam but actually bolster it by making both the music and the lyrics sound rather tongue-in-cheek. Classic pop melodies and good songwriting always works, no matter what the subject matter of your lyrics may be, and SDSF is very aware of this: they’re not trying to sneak some kind of “message” into your head via their perfectly-crafted songs, they’re just out to write some good songs that, okay, do deal with rather tough topics at times. “Teenagers Talking” is a rather vicious song, lyrically, but, man, if you don’t find yourself bouncing along to the melody then, unlike Sunny Day Sets Fire, you’re clearly taking yourself and your music too seriously. After the weirdness of Final Fantasy and the harsh realities of Hector Zazou * Katie Jane Garside, Sunny Day Sets Fire is a good palate cleanser that doesn’t leave you with the stilted, self-important aftertaste of, say, a Radiohead album.
And finally, back to synthpop for a moment. Terminus‘ first album, uncreatively named Debut Album, is actually a very creative little collection of New Wave songs that combine synths and “real” instruments to create excellent jams that are both inspiring and melancholy, at the same time. Much like Tonight, Terminus is big on science and science-fictional themes: “Song for Laika” is a pretty—if necessarily sad—song dedicated to the first dog in space, and the album opener, “Colossus”, is an eerie ambient soundscape built around a sample from the awesome old AI movie Colossus: The Forbin Project. The album is evenly divided between instrumental numbers that recall early-80s Kraftwerk without sounding particularly dated, and club-friendly synthpop songs that vary widely in their BPMs. This is a good thing: it keeps the album from becoming repetitious. In fact, Debut Album sounds more like the soundtrack to a late-1970s sci-fi movie than it does a typical synthpop album. The airy, heavily-reverbed female vocals give the songs a very retro feel, especially on “One more Love Story” and “Girl in Electronica”, but the despite all retro connotations this album still sounds futuristic—mainly because Terminus uses the classic analog synth sounds that have entered into the collective unconscious as the iconic Sounds of The Future. Make sure you’re wearing your tinfoil spacesuit with the fishbowl helmet before you listen to this record, just in case you experience any loss of cabin pressure or find yourself beyond the orbit of the Moon!
Aaaaaaand, that’s it. Go forth and get ye an eMusic membership—hell, $20 a month for 75 downloads is a damn good deal—and grab these albums. You won’t be sorry…unless, like, you really wanted that new Britney single and somehow ended up with Final Fantasy instead. Then you might be sorry, for a little while…until you realize you downloaded something a thousand times more interesting. I’m gonna go and listen to that Terminus album a few more times now, so I’ll catch y’all next week. Same Bat Time, same Bat Channel!
Technorati Tags: music,review,tonight,modern romance,final fantasy,he poos clouds,hector zazou,katie jane garside,corps electriques,sunny day sets fire,summer palace,terminus,debut album,friday fivehead,derek c. f. pegritz,pegritz
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