The Animal Show » She & Him

Congratulations, Volume Two Leaked

dfjacobs — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 15:00:29 +0000

How many hipsters does it take to fix a leak?

Since I have been voted commander in chief of your musical enlightenment (by myself), a responsibility I very nearly take seriously, I spent the better part of my Sunday night (about 3 minutes) isolated for profound reflection and diligent research. In that seemingly interminable time, I had storyboarded an entire weeks worth of articles, only to be awoken by a cyber blitzkrieg of music news. I was so consumed by my prolific plans that I did not check the news wires until Monday morning (very late afternoon). For those of you who are not on spring break and do not have immeasurable time on your hands, She & Him’s Volume Two and MGMT’s Congratulations both leaked over the weekend. Now one of these album’s leakage is far more noteworthy than the other. Many of you are probably asking, “did he write that sentence because he had always dreamed of using the word leakage in a public forum?” Absolutely I did, but I also think that it really is the proper conjugation in this context. I digress. Volume Two was intended to be released today anyhow, so its slightly premature arrival does little for anyone outside of those select individuals who believe Zooey Deschanel and Sonic the Hedgehog to be on neighboring levels of awesomeness. Congratulations on the other hand, was not supposed to be released for another 21 days (but who’s counting). The two albums not only represent polar opposites in terms of content, but also in what they mean for the careers of their respective creators. Now because I know most of you care more about MGMT, I’ll begin with She & Him.

Volume Two is exactly what one would expect as the sophomore release from Queen of the Hipsters Zooey Deschanel and her ever-so-talented compatriot M. Ward. Her Royal Highness Deschanel diverges little from her successful Volume One except perhaps in exhibiting more shrewdness about her range. She continues to perform her classic lighthearted lyrics sung in her raspy, smile inducing voice. And while the album sounds nothing like an archetypal M. Ward release, his producing and arranging fingerprints are strewn about the record. The majority of the record is given a 60’s and 70’s oldies arrangement to accompany Zooey’s vintage voice, which is often layered atop itself for smile inducing harmonies. There’s absolutely something Beach Boys-ian in many of the melodies, in addition to heavy influences of early R&B. This volume, much like its predecessor, goes down exceedingly smoothly, like my pick up lines on the hard of hearing, until of course, they are told what I said.

On it’s first listen, Congratulations goes down about as smoothly as ten year-old dfjacobs trying to get into the 20/20 club or the highly explicit diatribe I gave to my 5th grade English teacher. It’s distant, completely unexpected and at some points abrasive. MGMT depart from their idyllic dance-pop on Oracular Spectacular and morph into futuristic psychedelics. The Brooklyn duo of Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden responded to the leak by streaming it on their own website with the message, “Hey everybody, the album leaked, and we wanted you to be able to hear it from us. We wanted to offer it as a free download but that didn’t make sense to anyone but us.” whoismgmt.com seems to be a genius web address, mirroring the thought process of most of the band’s listeners. The album requires many listens before its endearing qualities are fully appreciated, and for those of you waiting for the “Kids-ian” or “Time to Pretend-esque” song, you will be heartily disappointed. The duo said that they didn’t truly understand why Oracular Spectacular became so popular on mainstream airwaves, and that they did not believe themselves to be a pop group, but rather a rock band. Whether you love the new direction or hate it, you have to respect their gravitas. They could have easily created the mainstream dance-pop follow-up and sold a million more records, but they tried something different. While I’m still on the fence about how fantastic their creation is (it’s growing on me massive amounts with every listen), I respect the hell out of them for trying it.

I apologize for writing such an epic, and I promise to return to my Zooey Deschanel-esque light-hearted elegance tomorrow. In the meantime, enjoy some of my favorite tracks from each record.

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In the Sun – She & Him (YSI)

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Me and You – She & Him (YSI)

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Someone’s Missing – MGMT (YSI)

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Brian Eno – MGMT (YSI)

Uncle Fumerus Has Technical Difficulties

Edward — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 21:49:58 +0000

Goddamned blog ape.

As some of you may know, the Show recently got added to the Hype Machine bloglist, which has accounted for traffic more than quadrupling our normal daily readership. As such, our filehosts have gotten super-pissed at us. Feces has been flung all over the place. And, as you probably have noticed, that’s resulted in dead links. So we’re going back, not to square one, but maybe to square 3/2s, where we stream audio but provide mediafire/zshare links for download. Streaming audio is better than no audio, right? I’m currently going back through posts with dead links and fixing them, but please let me know if you find any that are still dead. Also, if you have any suggestions for good filehosts, leave ‘em in the comments. Until then, enjoy the relatively appropriate “This is Not a Test” from the phenomenal Volume I, which I’m using to test the new system.

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This is Not a Test – She & Him (mediafire) [Buy it.]

New M. Ward: "Never Had Nobody Like You" featuring Zooey Deschanel

Edward — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 17:35:22 +0000

He can totally make gold albums without Zooey. Just don't forget that they collaborated on that album you really liked!

Fresh out the box comes this track off of M. Ward’s upcoming album, Hold Time, which is due to drop February 17th. Featuring vintage overdriven guitars pounding chunky chords, this retro goodie is sure to delight. Also, it has Zooey Deschanel. Remember her? Attention: she’s still awesome. Singing a little backup on the chorus here, she teases us with the promise of She & Him: Volume II. Release it already, please.

Never Had Nobody Like You (feat. Zooey Deschanel) – M. Ward

Hold Time comes out February 17th. Buy it. And if you haven’t already, get Volume I. You won’t regret it, trust me.

My Top 10 Albums of 2008

Edward — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 19:02:59 +0000

Only 8 days left to wear these!

I know, I know, dear readers. You’ve been so very patient these past 24 hours waiting for this, and I appreciate it. Well, now you can stop sending me hate emails, and feast your eyes and ears on this cornucopia of musical goodness. Just in time for Christmas Eve.

Did you know making year-end lists is hard? I really hadn’t counted on there being so much writing involved in blogging. I thought it was all about writing funny things over people’s faces in MS Paint. Dagg, yo. Anyway, I wrote many many words, and I hope you read at least one out of every 5. That’s really what I’m going for.

Catch the list after the break.

10) MGMT – Oracular Spectacular: Technically a 2007 release, I’m including this because the physical release was 2008. And because I don’t care to split hairs. I liked this album a lot, but not as much as some people (deep, right?). Mainly, I was turned off by the album art. What the hell, guys? Do you think you’re cooler than me? I can paint my face, too. Anyway, there are some sweet tracks on here, which have inspired some even sweeter remixes. Check em both out.

MGMT – Electric Feel

9) Esau Mwamwaya – The Very Best Mixtape: I do a lot of reading the internets for music. Presumably, you do too, unless you’re my dad, in which case, Hi, Father. Anyway, in September, the entirety of the information superhighway was blowing up with news of this dude, Esau Mwamwaya (pronounce his name just by reading it so fast that noone can tell the difference). He was totally bringing afro-pop into the world-wide-web generation, man. He sang Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa! Totes out-Africa’d Vampy Weekend! And then he released this super-sweet mixtape for free, and I was all like, dang, bro, this is sum hawt shitt. You’ll prolly be like that, too.

Esau Mwamwaya – Funa Funa

8 ) Cut Copy – In Ghost Colours: The word “Colours” snagged me, although this album has the dubious distinction of being the only one on this list I purchased at Pitchfork’s recommendation. To be fair, I bought it because I was going to Pitchforkfest (which I cannot recommend highly enough), and they were one of the bands on the lineup I hadn’t heard of. I was not disappointed. My major criticism of Pitchfork is their love for music more cacophonic than melodic. Cut Copy is none of that. If anything, they err on the side of Eurotrash pop beats, which is fine by me. All in all, this is an album which delivers the jams without compromising intelligence.

Cut Copy – Feel the Love

7) She & Him – Volume One: Zooey Deschanel is a mystery to me. Mainly because I have no idea how to pronounce her name. I’ve been told it’s supposed to be like Zoe, but I will continue to call her “Zoo-ee” until she personally corrects me. I find that exoticism makes her all the more attractive. She has one of those instantly recognizable voices, and the songs on Volume One could have been written forty years ago. And I mean that in the best way possible. She’s a cutey patootie. I’m waiting for Volume Two.

She & Him – This is Not a Test

6) Okkervil River – The Stand Ins: I had a poster of the cover art from The Stage Names up on my wall last year, and I told my roommate at the time that I thought it would be hard to find creepier album art. Then Okkervil River stepped it up, to make something even more disturbing. Then put them together. Yummy. This was completely a sequel to The Stage Names, which was, at one point, going to be a double album. Stage Names was probably my favorite album of 2007, so I was understandably very excited about Stand Ins, and it really didn’t disappoint. It didn’t have as many amazing individual songs as Stage Names, but it flows perfectly and makes me all the more excited about the prospect of new Okkervil material. Of course, now if they don’t release another album in 12 months I’ll probably be disappointed.

Okkervil River – Bruce Wayne Campbell on the Roof of the Chelsea Hotel, 1979

5) E-603 – Something for Everyone: If Girl Talk and Diplo had a lovechild, I would be very confused. But I’d be a lot more interested if, instead of Girl Talk, E-603 and Diplo had a lovechild. Because I think E-603 is legitimately better than Girl Talk. And not just because he looks like this or dresses like this, or writes things like this. Having seen both perform this year, I can say that E-603 puts on a better show. Period. Whereas Girl Talk plays through his hits, prolonging some samples and occasionally venturing into new material for a few seconds, E-603’s show is completely different every time. I kept looking for my favorite samples from the album, and being impressed and surprised when the ones I heard were even better. His debut album is all the mash-up I need. And it’s available for free on his website. Download it now.

E-603 – Crystal Friend

4) Santogold – S/T: If I said this was due to my embarrassing affection for Gossip Girl, I wouldn’t be giving Santi enough credit. But I can’t say it didn’t help. If you’ve never heard the blood-curdling “Ah-ah-ah-ahhh”s of “Creator,” you’re missing out. I’m not afraid to say I like Santogold more than M.I.A., and her collaborations have been sick. Though I have too much of a conscience to post her album (you should buy it. Now.), she did release a mixtape with Diplo, one of my favorite DJs of the year, which is nasty (and an honorable mention on this list). Catch it.

Santogold – Creator

3) TV on the Radio – Dear Science: 2006’s Return to Cookie Mountain has been one of my favorite albums of the past couple years. It showed TV on the Radio’s stepping in stride, perfecting their formula for hard-hitting electro-rock. I would have been all right with a straight sequel to that (a la The Stand Ins), but Tunde and the boys rocked my world with a deep and troubled album that still rocks. I feel it’s hard to write about it in a way that gives it enough credit. Just listen.

TV on the Radio – Halfway Home

2) Fleet Foxes – Sun Giant EP/ S/T LP: Pitchfork packaged this as their number one, the LP I bought came with the EP in it, and both were released in ’08. I’ll follow Subpop’s lead and do the same. Enough has probably been written about Fleet Foxes, but I’ll say this: the album continued to surprise me. It stood the test of time, of overplay, of overblogging, and still came out a surprisingly strong effort. I’m a big fan of indie-folk, and this seems to be the perfection of it. The most amazing thing about Fleet Foxes to me is how note-for-note they could replicate their harmonies live. Listening to them, you’d assume that overdub after overdub had gone into the recording, but those chords in White Winter Hymnal really just are a few guys singing together. Beautiful.

Fleet Foxes – Drops in the River (From the Sun Giant EP)

1) Vampire Weekend – S/T: It’s a little disappointing to me how quickly the tide of public approval can turn against an artist. Overexposure really is deadly (and I suppose I’m not doing much to remedy that..), and Vampire Weekend suffered more than any other band in 2008. They deserved all of the hype, though. They brought simple youthful joy to music for upper-middle-class hipster kids. They exposed the too-cool-for-school to pure, unadulterated fun. And that’s no easy task – I saw them in concert in July, and, during “A-Punk,” they attempted to get audience participation in the form of a few well-placed “ohs.” Ezra Koenig, before teaching us, looked out at the audience (which had been standing still for the entirety of the 4 songs leading up to the moment) and asked, “do you guys do this? Are you into this?” Not really, but Vampire Weekend helped them try.

Vampire Weekend – M79