Streaming/Fondling: The Big Name Drop

The world may be falling apart around us, but that hasn't stopped some beautiful new tunes from arriving at our digital doorsteps. This week's edition of Streaming/Fondling is heavy on big names like the Fleet Foxes, TV On The Radio and blog-sensation turned Columbia Records signees Cults. In the coming weeks and months, I expect we'll also have new tracks from Everybody Taste favorites Vetiver and Bon Iver, who both recently finished up new albums. Here it goes:

Review: Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson - Summer of Fear

The music created by Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson isn’t easy to define. Or pigeonhole. He is without a doubt unlike any other contemporary artist, due largely to his voice. Like a vintage guitar amplifier, it’s an unpredictable instrument capable of channeling great emotion, with words emerging from the songsmith’s mouth quivering, shaking, in whispers and primal screams. An electrifying tool, that paired with nontraditional song structures, often seems to reveal the bare bones of the artist's soul.

TV On The Radio guitarist and singer Kyp Malone says of Robinson: “Like a lot of good music his songs feel like they are filling a predetermined space, like the ether was just waiting for him to connect the dots and give voice to them."

Malone produced the young musician’s sophomore record, Summer of Fear. The album is similar in style to its predecessor, but delivers a more refined sound and confidence, as if Malone brought a freshly sharpened batch of tools to work with. Previously tinny drums are more full-bodied; guitars take new and larger shapes; and most importantly, Robinson’s voice gets company. The stark contrast of sunny female vocals along Robinson's side brings an added emphasis to his own ragged words and results in some of the album’s brightest moments, including the choruses in “Death by Dust” and “Summer of Fear Pt. 1."

Much of the songs on Summer of Fear begin with the strum of a muted guitar, like quiet brushes of rhythm before the cataclysm of sound. “Trap Door” builds slowly in this fashion, growing louder from verse to chorus and bridge. Only after the climax of the second chorus, Robinson bridges to a new chorus with an even greater intensity: a coda in which the narrator reveals one can sink even lower than the “proverbial” bottom by way of a trap door. It’s a perfect pairing: absurdly dark lyrics over a polyphony of uplifting melodies.

Robinson’s imagery is nearly always dark (“It’s a hard enough time just trying to hang myself,” “love is a feeling you might not find with murder on your mind”) but paired with his playful use of words, rhyming, and sentence structure, the music somehow evolves into passionate and hopeful collages of sound.

The most immediately accessible track off the album is the up tempo “Death by Dust,” a song seemingly about young people’s difficulty in confronting and expressing emotions (“With our tongues tided tight to teeth / Hanging twenty years of flesh on a shoulder of sand”) and the cathartic capability of music: “When you’re young and the dust gets in your lungs / We steal songs that you had sung.” String arrangements explode over the final chorus amidst pounding drums and Robinson’s scratchy howls. Lyrically, nothing ever seems to be quite right in the world of Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson or his characters, but sonically, there are few records that have made this quality of a racket.

Rating: Eternal happiness, throat lozenges, and the top spot in a few end-of-year lists.

Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson - "Death by Dust" (from Summer of Fear)

David Bowie's "Heroes": The Covers

TV On The Radio - "Heroes"

Magnetic Fields - "Heroes"

Ewan McGregor & Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge - "Elephant Love Medley" ("Heroes" appears at 2:02)

Videos (Youtube links):

Nico - "Heroes (live)"

Blondie - "Heroes (live)"

Oasis - "Heroes (acoustic)"

Arcade Fire - "Heroes (live)"

Wallflowers - "Heroes"

Review: TV On The Radio at 930 Club

Two songs into Monday night's show at the 930 Club, TV On The Radio had heads bopping, feet twisting and jumping, and jaws perked into contented smiling positions with a deadly fast version of "The Wrong Way." For the notoriously led-footed DC audience, it wasn't half bad.

Through to the encore-closing "A Method"—performed as an ensemble percussion piece with members of the Dirty Projectors and Baltimore's Celebration—the band had the full-capacity crowd hooked onto its waves of distorted guitars, effected drums, and seemingly possessed vocals, often delivered in beautiful harmony.

There wasn't room for much filler during the evening. From the David Bowie-esque masterpiece "Golden Age" to "Halfway Home" and "Dancing Choose," nearly every song was a monster of sound, movement, and sweat. While the crowd became especially crazed during "Wolf Like Me"—the band's most successful and accessible song to date—the highlight of the evening was instead the band's first hit: "Staring At The Sun." Performed with Katrina Ford of Celebration—who recorded vocals for the the original back in 2004—the song found the always sincerely manic Tunde Adebimpe bouncing up and down with his lanky arms flailing on-beat and Ford doing her best to keep up as the layers of guitars climbed surreal heights. Even the beer-bellied Kyp Malone—sporting his usual afro and a fully grown beard—found himself jumping around.

This was my third TV On The Radio show. And every time the venue gets bigger. For a band that's always been and probably will always be adorned by the critics, it's rewarding to see the other half of success come with droves of wanting fans. It's hard to make songs you play every night appear new and fresh, but TV On The Radio—like a middle-aged and well-read punk rock band from hell (Brookyln)—always make their songs roar with a furious enthusiasm. They are easily one of the best live bands in the world. (Photo by BetweenLoveAndLike)

TV On The Radio -"The Wrong Way" (from Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes)

Iran: "Buddy, what's wrong?"

I first heard TV on the Radio through actress Juliette Lewis's iTunes celebrity playlist in 2005. One of the five songs was "Staring At The Sun." "Epic chorus," she said. "Makes me think of water and glaciers." I hit the preview button and the deals been sealed ever since.

My love for the band's walls of guitars, unpredictable and experimental vocals, and aggressively original style of pop music first led me through the normal fan route of live shows and record collecting. Eventually, I youtubed MTV's Celebrity Deathmatch claymation show which singer Tunde Adebimpe animated; I watched the film Rachel Getting Married which Tunde costars in and sings an a cappella version of Neil Young's "Unknown Legend"; I listened to the bare-bones rock of Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson which singer/guitarist Kyp Malone produced. But most recently, I found myself listening to the low fidelity Iran, the band Malone played in before joining TV on the Radio.

In February, the group released its third LP, Dissolver. While Malone contributes on guitar and background vocals, the band is primarily the work of Aaron Aites (above right). Aites started Iran in 1998 in his San Francisco bedroom with a four-track. Now with Dissolver, the group's first release since 2003's The Moon Boys, Aites is leaving behind some of his well-worn grit and fuzz for a cleaner and more accessible sound. The album's standout track "Buddy" is the best place to start: a melancholy and doo-wop-tinged layering of sonic goods, complete with the light pattering of a piano, crashing symbols, splattered guitar chords and the frenzied pluck of its strings, and the deep-throated tone and quivering cadence of Aites.

Iran - "Buddy" (from Dissolver)