NYC Music

New York may have turned into Yuppie Paradise but musically it has closed the decade in style, on top of the pop heap. Excuse me then if I indulge in some dancing about architecture.

It has been a fantastic Indie decade for the city, contributing more unforgettable albums to these fragmented ten years than any other time since the CBGB’s heydays in the late 70’s. Be it The Strokes’ Is This It? or TV on the Radio’s Return to Cookie Mountain and Dear Science or Vampire Weekend’s eponymous debut, its been a thrilling ride. In my opinion though, 2009 has put all the other years in the shade.

Just take a look at this year’s releases. Among the countless hipster faves, you’ll find such gems as Antony and The Johnsons’ The Crying Light, Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion, Julian Casablancas’ Phrazes for the Young and arguably the best album of the year- Dirty Projectors’ Bitte Orca.

Pic: Antony Hegarty, beautifully brittle

The Crying Light was the first of the lot that I managed to get. Its impossible to go through the strangely luminous, teasingly seductive songs that makes up the album without being profoundly moved. Everyone knows about Antony Hegarty’s much talked about sexuality, but it really amazes how few have actually heard the music. A great amalgam of jazz figures, understated autumnal strings and Hegarty’s beautiful voice, The Crying Light is absolutely brilliant. Although the album deals with issues like death and decay it’s a classic statement of the creative will turning fear into a defiant celebration of life. Epilepsy is Dancing, based in part on the famous Japanese Butoh dancer Kazuo Ohno, who at 106, is still performing, is a case in point. And then there are deeply sexy, playful songs like Kiss My Name, one of the most accomplished come-ons set to music that I can think of. On top of all that, Hegarty’s album makes one of the most personal environmentalist statements in music. In the haunting Another World, he sings, “I’m gonna miss the sea, gonna miss the snows; I’m gonna miss the trees, miss the things that grow.” A beautiful album.

Pic: Animal Collective, Good Vibrations

Very happy with life seem Brooklyn favourites Animal Collective. They delivered another early stunner when Merriweather Post Pavilion was released in January this year. MPP is like most other AC albums in one way- it takes time getting used to. At least so I thought, before I heard the album a second time. Its no understatement to say that this is veritable candy-shop of an album- immensely accessible, and with new sound-treats in store every time you visit.

Lyrically the songs move away from the tribal hootenannies of yore, peopled by strange animals and colours, as Panda Bear and Avey Tare write about the joys of domesticity on Summertime Clothes. Of course, if you’re as Day-Glo as these gents, even your domesticity’s slightly weird. They write love paens to wives and children in the band’s surreal metaphors on My Girls and Also Frightened. On Brothersport As opposed to being slightly cheesy, its actually exciting and very touching, especially when coupled to the fairground music that goes with it. Ah the music! All AC albums have followed the relatively simple but hard-to-execute sonic architecture of overlapping circular arrangements culled from samplers and damaged-guitar tones, that come together for soaring choruses and then break down again, creating a compelling ebb and flow. In MPP, they get it very right because all the sounds chase the very conventional song structures in a dizzying sound that’s designed for the inside of your head. Grounding this kaleidoscope wash of sounds are deep bass pulses, tambourines and the occasional tribal thud. By the time the album orgasms in the joyous Brother Sport, you’re left breathless and grinning. AND they made Billboard Top 20! Last month’s Fall Be Kind EP’s no slouch either.

Pic: Julian Casablancas, Synth Popper!

Strangely enough, you hear distinctly AC-ish sounds at 1:53 of 4 Chords of the Apocalypse, a great blue-eyed soul number delivered with uncharacteristic ferocity by Strokes-man Julian Casablancas. Yes, you read right- Casablancas and ferocity in one line. Nearly all the members of the Strokes had released multiple solo albums- barring guitarist Nick Valensi- but what people were really eager to hear was new music from the band’s singer and songwriter Julian Casablancas. Finally released, his debut solo album Phrazes for the Young is a triumph.

It starts out on familiar Strokes territory with the chugging, chiming guitars of Out of The Blue bursting from the speakers. But by the time the glorious chorus comes on, it isn’t guitars that come to the fore, but synthesizers! And this from a man who we all thought was a late-Seventies, guitar chewing, Velvet Underground-loving pop purist!But the song’s so good, you can hardly imagine it existing in any other sonic context. The other tune on this short album that most resembles The Strokes is the raging River of Brakelights. But the other six songs take one musical left turn after another, all the while retaining their quality pop hooks. So while Glass can only be described as a combination of Western Classical motifs and shiny, glacial electropop, 11^th Dimension wanders through a looking glass world of cheesy 80s synth pop, treated percussions and a decidedly 50s guitar figure. These wildly disparate elements should never mix, but here they do so, miraculously. In a similar vein, the deep soul of 4 Chords of the Apocalypse suddenly morphs into sampler-led sonic terrorism in the chorus, which then leads to a delightful sweeping guitar solo. It’s a mesmerizing mix, one that feels perfectly logical.

Casablancas has often been accused of singing in a sullen whine. On Phrazes he buries his vocals deep in the mix ala Mick Jagger on The Stones’ Exile on Main Street, and just as Jagger did on that album, Casablancas proceeds to unveil his rich range- considerably better than on the Strokes’ albums- from the fantastic soul croon on Apocalypse to a warped, wry sing song on the country ditty Ludlow Street. His voice is expansive and expressive. It grows on you, and soon you’re humming the tune. Ludlow Street, another strange mix of styles, is the masterpiece on this album. It starts with an ominous drone like something out of the There Will be Blood soundtrack before morphing into a country lament for the soul of New York City. While Casablancas rips into the gradual marketing and yuppification of the world’s greatest- and once the most bohemian- metropolis, banjos duel with pianos, drum machines and loud brass. I’ve never been this pleasantly surprised.

And finally, Dirty Projectors.

Pic: Dirty Projectors, obstinate eccentrics

When I saw Bitte Orca, it looked strange enough for me to get it. And when the heavily reverbed prog guitar intro of Cannibal Resource started, with the very Led Zeppelin heavy drums, I was lulled for a second into thinking that this would be a straightforward pop album. Of course, I knew nothing about band mastermind David Logstreth. Pretty soon the soaring, ethereal voices of singers Angel Deradoorian and Amber Coffman started floating all over the place, in precisely written parts over stop-start rhythms, Tinariwen-like handclaps- all tied into a very Captain Beefheart-like approach to songwriting. Its difficult music, but one that let’s you in if you give it enough time. And once you’re in, the pleasures- melodic and rhythmic- just keep on coming.

Take Temencula Sunrise for one. Soaked in the same warm communal vibes as Merriweather- is this the dawn of an East Coast love-in?- this songs winds its way into your skull through a beautiful chordal acoustic guitar figure that is as eccentric as Longstreth’s high, keening voice; which suddenly leads up to a gloriously electric chorus and then breaks for the second verse which is arranged like a song from Tinariwen’s Aman Iman from two years ago. Longstreth evidently takes African music seriously, and you can hear his influence on the band that two of his erstwhile protégés formed- Vampire Weekend. Anyway, the song then goes into a compelling, driving yet utterly inscrutable guitar solo- more inventive than anything Jack White has recorded in the past few years.

Further on you have the brilliant Timbaland soul r’n’b pastiche Stillness is the Move. Amber Coffman outdoes herself in a masterful vocal turn of glorious radiance. Then you have the unsettling folk ballad Two Doves and other highlights like Useful Chamber which winds all over the place over eerie keyboard figures and voices, a dancefloor beat before convening for the strangely uplifting chorus of “Bitte Orca Orca Bitte” and another blistering solo that Jimmy Page would have been proud of, as would be Thurston Moore. Its mesmerizing music, messy by design and rich in melody and rhythm. Its my favourite album of the year by miles.

Kid A, a personal history

After almost a decade of the album being released, I downloaded Kid A today.

It’s a big deal for me.

Back in 2000, I was 19 years old, a sophomore and a diehard Beatles nut. I was also nuts for all of Britpop, at least the most mainstream artists in it, like Oasis, Blur, Ocean Colour Scene, Kula Shaker, The Verve. You name it, I loved it.

I loved all those melodies, the classicist songwriting, the guitar solos, the “wow these are my rockstars” kind of stars-in-your-eyes devotion that these bands inspired. I loved the way they dressed, their haircuts, their guitars, all that cool gear man!

Yet, there was one band that I just felt no attraction for. Radiohead. Of course, I had heard and loved Creep and Karma Police and Just, even No Surprises. But Subterranean Homesick Alien? Thanks but no thanks. This was just too weird for me, and I couldn’t abide by electronics. And what was with all that moaning anyway? Why couldn’t I make out what Thom Yorke was trying to say?

So no Radiohead for me then. In fact, when my copy of Ok Computer got whacked, I couldn’t give a damn. After all, Travis was much nicer. The Invisible Band? I thought it was a classic.

In 2000, I heard all that brouhaha about this crazy new album that Radiohead have come out with, something called Kid A. I read about it in music magazines- “Thom Yorke has an emotional meltdown!”; “Radiohead says, ‘No More Melody!’”; “Colin Greenwood confides, ‘We could almost kill each other’”. This weird band had apparently gotten weirder. Apparantly this album had no guitars, no songs, just ambient moaning, and lots of electronic didgeridoo.

Kid A was a work of painful genius, they said; it captured the disjointed new Millennia; it was the sound of the new century! Thank you, I’d rather weep to Parachutes. Chris Martin had a better voice I thought. The very name, Radiohead, reminded me of all those strange noisy bands on Rock Street Journal with ‘head’ in their names- Portishead, Buckethead, Motorhead, Jarhead, god-knows-what-head. It was so, you know, musty and Nineties!

When I left University with my MA in 2004, all of 23 and nowhere to go but away, my musical tastes were the same- Bob Dylan, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Oasis, Kula Shaker; and bands that sounded like them. The only anomaly to this was probably my un-analysed love for The velvet Underground

And so I carried on through those lost years (in a way), as my career atrophied and went nowhere and my yearning for the mountains grew into an unrequited hurt. But musically, 2005 and 2006 were rich years. I was finally earning, though peanuts. I had a little cd player. I could finally go to a cd shop- in this case Music Land in New Delhi- and pick up old albums by The Band, Traffic, The Byrds, Motown. I could finally hear all these great bands and their albums from the 60s and the 70’s; build up a record collection that I could be proud of.

But it was a record collection that mirrored those of my peers. There was nothing I didn’t have that they didn’t. I was hanging out with a peer group at least 5 years older than me, and it did me a world of good too, as I started listening to more Jazz, Bluegrass, Folk. But there was nothing I could call my own, apart from The Beatles, and we all know just how many other billions regard The Beatles as their own! It was as if this decade, my decade, was passing me by and I knew nothing of its music, hadn’t even bothered to hear anything new. It would all be inferior to the 60’s anyway, I told myself. Why bother?

And then, 2007.

I was finally in a job that I was comfortable in; that gave me some breathing space; that didn’t ask for too much of my time. Better still, I had a regular income. And I was in a band again.

Being in a band that rehearses every other day and that wants to play its own songs does things to you that would never otherwise happen. You start thinking of music as something organic, something that grows. It ceases to be a commodity, no matter how highly prized. The band's guitar player Sujoy (The Prof) introduced me to Bop and Swing; to Django Reinhardt, Lenny Breau, Esbjorn Svensson, Brad Meldhau and so much more. Meanwhile my editor at the magazine, Sanjoy, exhorted me to write on music.

Easier said than done. I had discovered Indie, and so my first reaction was to write on Devendra Banhart or LCD Soundsystem or The Strokes, often in a haphazard way. Would staid suits (the predominant audience of my magazine) be even remotely interested? But it was a start, and I was grateful.

I got albums by the dozen. Including Radiohead’s In Rainbows. Swayed by the beautiful, haunting songs on that album, I went back to their earlier albums, especially Ok Computer. The songs started making sense. They ceased to be miserable moanings in the dark and became immensely complex bits of enjoyment. Then I discovered all those covers of the band's music by other bands, jazzmen. These forced me to listen to Radiohead-music with fresh ears.

Over the last couple of years I’ve discovered more bands and music than I can possibly keep up with. Much of it has been great. Since I was now writing on them, I had to pay better attention. Under Sanjiv, my erstwhile editor, I was forced to think about how to write, how to present my ideas, how to tie it up in a cohesive way. All the stuff, basically, that you never learn unless you’re doing it. Again, I’m extremely grateful.

My own songs started to reflect this broad palette. That, in turn got me thinking about song structures, melodic lines, key shifts, what have you. And as I grew in music, I started looking at my old loves in a new light. For the first time, I could enjoy The Beatles in an objective way, looking out for details, making notes about the songwriting and the arrangements. The internet was there, along with a plethora of books on music, for any questions I may have. Then there was the Prof, arguing with me on every turn. That helped.

I was even going to the mountains.

And so, after years of being in denial, I downloaded Kid A. From the horns-led mayhem of The National Anthem, to the panic disco of Idioteque, and the fragile beauty of Morning Bell- I'm dissolving in an ocean of sound.

Everything in its right place.