Unpiano | Music Blog

//watch the throne

Do I even have to talk about this one? Biggest pop album of the year and for good reason. I think it’s pretty much official that these guys are creating the Use Your Illusions of our time. Since rock abandoned the concept album, hip hop has stepped in and picked it up to become the new arena rock. Have to say that Kanye sort of killed Jay on this one.. but it all comes out in the wash (check out Kanye’s verse on the ‘No Church’ – it’s on fucking fire). Enjoy these for as long as I can have them up or until they use up my bandwidth.

EDIT: This review of the album is the most hilarious thing I have read in a long time and is better than anything I have ever written.

Jay-Z & Kayne West – No Church in the Wild (feat. Frank Ocean)
Jay-Z & Kayne West – Why I Love You (feat. Mr. Hudson)
Jay-Z & Kayne West – Murder to Excellence
Jay-Z & Kayne West – Gotta Have It

Night Manager is a lo-fi, surfy, garage-rock band with a pop sensibility usually reserved for bands without a sense of humor.  The melodies are instantly catchy, but the (really) lo-fi sound lends the songs a harder edge than contemporaries like Best Coast or Ariel Pink.  This is garage for real, as in “sounds like it was recorded in a garage on a tape deck,” which is pretty badass and definitely suitable for their sound.  The vocal lines are throwback 60′s style, but the heavy distortion makes them sound almost inhuman, like an alien synthesizer.  I’m not normally a “lo-fi” kind of guy, so it’s great to hear a band just going for it, all-in.

“Pizza Pasta” is the title track off the new 7-inch, out now on Fire Talk.  You can grab it here. You can also get the last EP from their Bandcamp, it’s a “name your price no minimum” download, so you can’t beat that.

Night Manager -  Pizza Pasta
Night Manager – Blackout Sex
Night Manager – Do I

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//photo by big simba

Maybe it’s something about the fact that he’s also an actor, comedian and writer. Or maybe it’s the fact that his rhyme-style is almost 100% stolen from Dreezy (by way of Weezy) so that it comes off sounding like Drake-lite. Or maybe it’s that his voice holds no weight whatsoever and none of the subject matter means a thing when listened to more than twice. Or maybe it’s the creepy way he leans on his Asian fetish every two sentences. It doesn’t come off smooth, but more like a nerdy drama kid who is mad at girls for not paying him any attention. It’s for all these reasons and more that I decided that Donald Glover should quit Rap music. It’s a shame, because I wanted to like it really bad. It’s so close – like on the edge of being amazing, but he’s just not the right personality to pull it off. I can relate to a lot of stuff he’s talking about and the beats are actually pretty sick (except for Freaks And Geeks – which is basically ‘Love Is A Battlefield’). However at the end of the day, this is featherweight Urban Outfitters rap that holds very little value and comes off way insincere. How sincere can you be as a rapper anyways.. when it’s your 5th career. We’ll see if anything changes in September when the album drops, but until then I’ll only check him on NBC .

Childish Gambino – The Longest Text Message
Childish Gambino – Break (All Of The Lights)
Childish Gambino – Freaks and Geeks
Childish Gambino – Not Going Back

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NYC-based Producer and Singer Quinn Luke may be better known as a member of the Phenomenal Handclap Band, but this is the side project where he gets to shine. Getting in on the Blue-Eyed-Soul resurgence led by gentlemen like Mayer Hawthorne, Luke gets soulful over some four on the floor with a massive list of credited players on the record.  Bing Ji Ling retains Handclap’s funky riff foundations, but the scope of the songs leave behind the indie tag in favor of an epic, produced, disco sound.  Equal parts Bill Withers, Arthur Lee, Barry White, Ike and Tina, and Curtis Mayfield.

Also the dude’s beard is super killer! A beard that serious is automatic authenticity!

Bing Ji Ling – Move On
Bing Ji Ling – Hypnotized
Bing Ji Ling – Bye Bye

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Dang.. I know that this song is hella cheesy and on a total party tip, but can you deny that you nod right along when these girls let loose with “Fuck what you heard”? So hype.. I would put this on at 1AM when everyone is wasted and guarantee that people would bug out. Granted, I’m not actually sure what they are talking about.. Why would they be on some bullshit? Shouldn’t the guy they are talking about be ‘on some bullshit’? So confusing.. anyone?

Nina Sky – On Some Bullshit

The Vivian Girls sounded great on paper, but the recorded output never seemed to live up to the greatness of some pretty obvious influences. Another case of too much attention too soon, not giving them enough time to flush out their sound before the media hype hit. I caught them live a couple of years ago at SXSW, and I think they might have been alright (I was fucking wasted after playing my own show an hour earlier, so the whole “memory” thing isn’t firing on all cylinders), but the main thing I took away was that the second they started playing, the entire show flooded out of the club to get a good space for Thee Ohsees playing outside on the street. The positive to this bummer story is how much good music is being churned out by ex-members; Frankie Rose and the Outs, The Babies and this little gem by La Sera (aka: founding VG member Katy Goodman). This debut 7″ shows a lot of promise, looking forward to the LP on Hardly Art next year.

La Sera – Never Come Around

Detroit based producer Matthew Smith has been kicking around in his outfit Outrageous Cherry since the early 90′s. They’ve recorded a stack of LPs over the years, but 1999′s Out There In The Dark is the one I go back to when the leaves turn and autumn sets in. A heaping platter of psych-pop, with the cold, reverby production reminiscent of The Seeds or any number of mid-sixties contemporaries from across the pond (The Eyes, The Sorrows, The Troggs, etc.).

Outrageous Cherry – Togetherness
Outrageous Cherry – Corruptable
Outrageous Cherry – Eclipsed

Summer’s over and good riddance. Not that I’ve got a beef with sunshine, cold beer and cutoffs, quite the opposite actually, but it was a long hot one and its now time for some sweater weather. If anything is keeping me anchored in the waning, hazy days of Summer 2010 though, its this blazing balls-stuck-to-your-inner-thigh heat and this blazing new Best Coast LP. I’ve raved about this little L.A. band before, and they seem to outdo themselves with each release. Crazy For You sounds like romp through the city in the heat of the day, with Bethany Cosentino’s lazy, lovelorn vocal delivery ducking into every air conditioned bar in town, hand in hand with a crew of treble heavy guitars. Sure, after a few spins Bethany’s pining away for one oblivious dude or another makes me think “Lady, get a fuckin’ hobby or a heroin habit or something else to keep you busy”. But really, if all I have to bitch about is lyrics, most of which (like band names) are completely idiotic, then this record is a win.

Best Coast – Crazy For Your
Best Coast – Goodbye

JESSE’S NOTES: The album’s lead-off track ‘Boyfriend’ kills it for me. For some reason it reminds me of Sonic Youth, and it’s just melancholy enough for me to relate to. Thanks for making me sad again!

Best Coast – Boyfriend
Best Coast – Boyfriend (Ghostwaves Edit)

//photo by virginia weatherby

San Francisco based Art Museums has pretty much dialed the sound of the early Television Personalities records (as well as some classics from the late 80s Flying Nun Records catalog and a smidge of the best of Guided By Voices) with their debut Rough Frame. This LP is a quirky, simplistic art-pop romp set to primitive drum machine beats, toy-ish keys and guitars, all captured on a Tascam 4-track to high-bias cassette. A favorite classic from yester-year or this month’s favorite new release? The roomy, reverby vocal treatment adds a layer of timelessness that could make it either.

Art Museums – We Can’t Handle It
Art Museums – Sculpture Gardens

I drug a few early Rocketship singles out of the archive this last week, I had forgotten how much I loved this incarnation of Dustin Reske’s long running but reclusive pop project. The boy-girl vocals, humming Farfisa organs and vintage Association inspired bass tones bowled me over the first time I heard this first 7″ from the tiny Bus Stop label in the early 90′s. Later output, including the fantastic A Certain Smile, A Certain Sadness LP on Slumberland, dipped into more shoegaze and Stereolab-inspired territory, but these early tracks have a vintage pop sound that many bands from this wave of indiepop tried to copy but could never do justice like Dustin could.

Rocketship – Hey Hey Girl
Rocketship – Naomi And Me
Rocketship – Your New Boyfriend