Grizzly Bear: My Long Awaited Homage

Alright, I know it's past due, but I needed to release a homage to one of my favorite artists at the moment....(I'll keep it short but sweet).

For a band that released no new music in 2008, Grizzly Bear certainly had a busy year. First there was a performance in which the Los Angeles Philharmonic served as the most unlikely opening act in indie-rock history. Then there were five shows at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, where they were asked by Paul Simon to perform a few of his songs for a career retrospective. Previously unheard songs were debuted on The Late Show with David Letterman and Late Night with Conan O'Brian, and the band was the handpicked opening act for Radiohead. But by the end of the year, the Brooklyn quartet remained just as mysterious and indefinable as they had been at the beginning, as if repeated exposure had only added another layer of content to digest for a band whose music already didn't make for easy one-sentence descriptors. Perhaps it's easiest to understand Grizzly Bear by recognizing what they aren't.

Compare them to other recent NYC buzz bands and the difference becomes clearer. They aren't the head of a stylistic movement like the strokes. They have no outstanding, charismatic member like Karen O of Yeah Yeah Yeahs. They have no unified visual motif like Interpol. But what they do have is one of the most distinctive, transcendent sounds of any band in indie rock, part lush psych-pop harmonies, part avante-garde textural experimentation.

Grizzly Bear - Two Weeks - Live on Later with Jools Holland on the BBC

Grizzly Bear - All We Ask (Black Cab Sessions Chapter 79)

The Dead Weather: Horehound

From the moment primary vocalist Alison Mosshart (The Kills) begins to sing "Hang You from the Heavens" from The Dead Weather's debut single, anyone familiar with the last decade of Jack White's musical output will recognize his influence. Horehound, the first full-length release from this supergroup, which includes guitarist Dean Fertita (Queens of the Stone Age) and bassist Jack Lawrence (The Raconteurs, The Greenhornes), rumbles with the dark power that has characterized much of The White Stripes' recent work. Mosshart often seems to be delivering a Jack White impersonation and, shockingly, it's a pretty damn good one. By stepping out from her relationship with her main collaborator, James Hince, Mosshart is no longer the smoldering indie rock seductress, and instead gives us new character, closer in spirit to RTX-era Jennifer Herrema.

Interestingly, this album is at its weakest when Jack White is taking the obvious lead. One example is the funk-infused "I Cut Like Buffalo," with lines such as "You know I look like a woman/But I cut like the buffalo." The otherwise awesome "Treat Me Like Your Mother" is soiled by the "time to manipulate" breakdown where both singers spell out the word manipulate.

Thankfully, White spends most of his time behind the drum kit, providing a blistering , bleak backbone for much of this record. It's the perfect summer album for anyone who was a huge Zeppelin fan in high school (or back in the day for that matter). Check out the rocking blues of "Bone House" or the sweaty opener "60 Feet Tall," which features a nice little solo from Fertita.

The Dead Weather - Their Oral History and Future Plans


The Dead Weather - Treat Me Like Your Mother

Mew: No More Stories Are Told Today I'm Sorry They Washed Away No More Stories the World Is Grey I'm Tired Let's Wash Away

Don't let the unwieldy album title or the pictographic clown-butterfly composition fool you. Danish trio Mew is certainly impressive, but still a few concept albums shy of bat-shit crazy. In fact, No More Stories is fairly tame in comparison to 2005's sinuous and gloomy song suite, And the Glass Handed Kites. Where Kites stockpiled instrumentation, No More Stories cuts the fat and makes do with the group's new orientation (bassist Johan Wohlert left the band to concentrate on fatherhood).
Jonas Bjerre, Bo Madsen, and Silas Utke Graae Jergensen have forged onward in some remarkable ways. No More Stories starts with the tick of a clock on opener "New Terrain," but quickly reverts to Kites' twisted haze as a din of vocals, cymbal crashes, and guitars come together and strive for our attention. Admission single "Introducing Palace Players," starts largely as an outstanding instrumental breakdown - drums and guitars sway and stutter in unison as murmurs of keyboard fill in the gaps. Singer Bjerre's falsetto is firmly attached to the expectations here. The sensuous space rockers "Beach" and "Hawaii" and the repeated piano on "A Dream," are as simple and straightforward as the trio will likely get. They're all very welcome after Kites' infamous rigidity.

The ambitious "Sometimes Life Isn't Easy" may be the only interruption of ideas here. Compressing an elderly vocalist, a steady handclap bridge, and a choir into a five minute track may be too much for some, but I have to admit, it's a bit catchy. Despite this small shift, No More Stories' closest cousin is Mew's other primary daydream-inducing album, breakthrough Frengers. So when a mesmerizing, fragile song like "Cartoons and Macrame Wounds" references the intricate art of knot decorating, it's also a suitable metaphor for the music Mew creates. No More Stories is the most intricate batch of songs they've produced, but practical enough for daily listening.

Mew - Repeaterbeater

Justice: A Cross the Universe CD/DVD

This is a live album and documentary DVD from everybody's favorite French house duo. The live set was captured in San Francisco's Concourse Design Center last year, with Justice performing alternate versions of tunes from their Cross album, along with some other goodness. The recording illustrates the grandiloquent edge that separates Justice from their Daft Punk forefathers - the last track, "Final," samples Metallica's "Master of Puppets," and one imagines fans head-banging to the climax of their night of dancing.

The DVD is an entertaining tour documentary from the duo's U.S. visit last year, and proves that the arena rock lifestyle of yesteryear remains a valid lifestyle choice. The band stumble through the U.S. with their aggro, gun-obsessed tour manager and eccentric Sam Elliot-voiced bus driver, taking in America's strange landscape, along with a mountainous share of its sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Oh, and incarceration. "Enfants Terribles" is the phrase I believe.

Justice - A Cross The Universe DVD Preview