Number one guy

Hot Chip
Made in the Dark

The "chip" in the band's name might be a reference as much to computers, which often provide the delectable beats and glitches, as to a piece of chocolate: that candy might best approximate the bite-size, sweet, and occasionally bitter sound of electro-pop, soul and R&B that this hip London outfit has nearly perfected. While the catchiness of the band's earlier dance tunes still lingers, namely on the exceedingly playful and playable Shake a Fist and Ready for the Floor, Alexis Taylor's seductive vocal and the band's slippery synths, slow claps and reverbs do best on slow-jam ballads like the title track and the charming longing tune We're Looking For a Lot of Love. With this, their second stellar album, the band deserves to find it.

The Wu and the Wy

Music Reviews

Wyclef Jean
The Carnival II: Memoirs of an Immigrant
Wyclef was once a wily MC in the Fugees. Today, every time a cell phone rings in Beijing, his voice can be heard chanting Shakira's name over a Latin beat. That's not a bad thing in itself, but his music is. The first post-Fugees album, The Carnival, was as great as it was visionary for the genre-blending that's become a staple of current pop music. Nearly a decade later, Vol. II is a lesson in what's wrong when you turn your albums into the musical equivalent of the UN. Sure, there’s something thrilling about seeing Akon, Norah Jones, T.I., Mary J. Blige, and Paul Simon on one record. But the buzz quickly wears off, and by the time the deluxe bonus tracks kick in – including the grating dancehall head-shaker China Wine, featuring Mandopop star Sun – it’s hard not to pine for that Shakira ringtone. Alex Pasternack

Wu-Tang Clan
8 Diagrams
The passing of Ol' Dirty Bastard in 2004, and signs of fracture amongst the remaining eight Wu-Tang members (RZA has recently fallen under public criticism from Raekwon as well as Ghostface Killah, whose new solo album is directly competing for chart space), sounded like the finishing moves for hip-hop's grimiest family. But this new album, their sixth, sounds like a return to happier times. Of course, nothing is happy about the Wu sound: Over RZA's dark, cinematic beats and kung fu flick samples, the Clan offers street-sweeping, timeless poetry to produce the most solid set of Wu bangers since 1997's Wu-Tang Forever. If the dud The Heart Gently Weeps, billed as the first song to "sample" a Beatles track, is the album's weak spot, Rushing Elephants and Wolves are its fists of fury. Alex Pasternack

Foo for Dumb Thought

Foo Fighters
Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace
There was a time when the Foo Fighters’ name was not the only funny thing about the band. They made smart, playful alt-rock with videos to match (Big Me, Everlong, Learn to Fly); just recently they covered Prince’s Darling Nikki at the VMAs. But as their new album title indicates, fun is not exactly their thing anymore. While the last outing, the two-disc In Your Honor, saw Grohl and company baring their biggest hard rock teeth yet, and to somewhat good effect, now they have dulled into Yet Another Modern Hard Rawk Band. Tracks like Let it Die, Long Road to Ruin, and Summer’s End are as flat as their names suggest. They might take the advice of another song title: Cheer Up, Boys. Alex Pasternack

Ironandwinehouse

Iron and Wine
The Shepherd's Dog

Like his thick beard, Sam Beam’s addictive voice is blanket-soft but not without a certain roughness. Where his previous bedroom-recorded albums buried his most valuable instrument in a hushed haze, almost covering up his rich lyricism in the process, The Shepherd’s Dog brings more detail to Beam’s voice. And he’s got a richer musical palette to match, a range of instrumentation and percussion on top of his old plaintive country guitar. Even as these add texture and help him explore genres, including bhangra (White Tooth Man), West African pop (House by the Sea) and even reggae (Wolves), beneath it all, Beam’s voice and lyrics still thrive. The sense of loss that so beautifully tied earlier albums together has faded, but on this, the best folk album this year, much has been gained. Alex Pasternack

A Not-So-Quiet Desperation

The emotional arc of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs

There seems to be little in Karen O’s explosive stage presence with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs that reveals much about Karen Orzolek, the soft-spoken, contemplative 30-year-old beneath the lead singer. “My persona in the band is unhinged and empowered, a bit mad,” she says of her famously fearsome charisma. But what may not be apparent in O’s performance still speaks volumes. Like, for instance, her little-known Asian heritage.

“I believe that a great deal of my persona in the band is a reaction to the more conservative side of myself,” says Karen O, who is half-Korean. “I have enjoyed playing concerts in Japan and Korea because I feel as though the Asian audience can relate to this reactive persona of mine and the celebratory aspect of our shows. It’s a big celebration of passion in the human spirit, the deeper darker side as well as the soaring transcendent side.”

On paper, talk of ethnicity and a universal human spirit might sound trite for a band that made its name with the loud and messy garage-punk fireworks of its 2003 debut, Fever to Tell. But listen to Brian Chase’s studied but raw percussion, Nick Zinner’s howling guitar, and Karen’s primed voice, swerving between pathos and punk, and you hear how emotionally sincere rock music can be. Live, the music gets acted out through Karen’s paroxysms, her glam costumery, beer spitting and modern dance; if the human spirit ever existed in indie rock, it is in their show, and it’s being celebrated.

“When I was a kid, going to rock shows changed my life, and it became something and somewhere where I found my identity and purpose,” says guitarist Zinner. “I would hope that we are giving an experience like that for some people.”

When they bring that hope to Beijing for the first time at this month’s Modern Sky Festival, it won’t just be another milestone for Beijing’s international music cachet, but probably for the band too. The surprising breakaway success of Fever to Tell was as much a testament to a popular fatigue with slick production as to the pop sensibilities knit within the band’s messy, brutal art-rock. Blogs buzzed, venues sold out, the record went gold; the band is still baffled by it.

“I can’t make any sense of why we have had the success we’ve enjoyed,” says Karen, who first formed a duo with Zinner in 2000 before enlisting her college buddy Chase as drummer. For Zinner, whose bewilderment with rock stardom is registered in an ongoing photography project, the first big shock came last year in Dublin. “We played to 30,000 people, with everyone singing along. Before that, our last show in Ireland [in 2003] was to 40 people in a pub.”

“It was one of those ‘Whoa, how did this happen?’ moments,” says Zimmer. “I still don’t know the answer, but I’m grateful to be asking the question.” To be sure, there have been many other markers of success – some obvious, others more dubious, such as when Karen O was featured in a sneaker ad. “Nowadays, you hear indie bands on commercials all the time, as it’s become a way for people to hear your music, so it’s not such a black and white definition to ‘sell out,’” explains Zinner. Drummer Chase underscores the ambiguity: “It’s definitely possible to do things for superficial gain and keep the integrity of the art. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.” Gold Lion is the opener to the band’s second album, Show Your Bones; that the song should be named after a music award won by the sneaker commercial is as much a statement of the band’s ambition as of its poise.

If it hasn’t soured their ideals, the turbulence of success has touched their music, and for the better. Their more recent material, including the new EP Is Is, reflects their maturation, with greater drama and dynamics than before. And, aside from darker costumes, Karen promises more of an “emotional arc” on stage. “Musically, it was very important when we started for everything to be very minimal and direct,” says Zinner, “but over the last few years, we’ve wanted to incorporate more sounds, more elements, more emotions, for the biggest expression we could make, without limits.”

That open-eyed approach is also evident on the band’s blog, where a headline about their Beijing visit flips around the typical PR jargon: “China To Rock the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.” For all their apparent self-confidence, the band’s blistering live show would be hollow without a strong bond with their audience – a bond they’re looking forward to building in Beijing. “Success is about connecting with as many people as possible,” says Karen, “giving them something to feel passionate about in a genuine way.”

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs play at the Modern Sky Festival. RMB 60. Time TBA. Haidian Park (6282 2006/7/8/9) festival.modernsky.com

from That's Beijing

bib bim bjork

Björk

Volta

After the experimentation of her last record, Medulla, it’s hard not to take Björk’s promise of a collaborative “dance” record with a grain of Icelandic sea salt. Yes, she did call in hip-hop guru Timbaland and her old producer Mark Bell (he of the techno blips of Debut and Homogenic). But the un-pretty results here – Earth Intruders, Declare Independence – shake the booty less than the senses, and end up paling in comparison to the sleepy contributions of Antony Hegarty of Antony & the Johnsons, Malian kora player Toumani Diabate, a 10-piece orchestra, and pipa player Min Xiao-Fen. Forget moving bodies: it’s alongside the pipa on I See Who You Are that Björk’s ever-volatile voice moves most. Alex Pasternack

Harp on it

Andrew Bird

Armchair Apocrypha

In other hands or mouths, Andrew Bird’s crossword-puzzle vocabulary and lyrical obsession with science, psychology and obscure history might come across as pretentious; or, worse, pedestrian. But accompanied by his trademark layered violins, glockenspiels and guitars – and his elegant voice, as capable of deadpan as jazzy soul – the Chicagoan’s profundities are like juicy tidbits of a refreshing and witty late Sunday afternoon conversation (or therapy session). Set around modern fears and revelations, the conversation began with 2003’s Weather Systems, Bird’s first solo album, and continued on 2005’s brilliant The Mysterious Production of Eggs. On Armchair Apocrypha, Bird’s ruminations have grown even deeper, with rich musical flourishes to match. On tracks like Heretics, Dark Matter, and Cataracts, Bird isn’t just feeding us food for thought; these are some of the sweetest pop candies of the year. Alex Pasternack

tha ring master

Dan Deacon

Spiderman of the Rings

Bespectacled surrealist musician plus trash-salvaged electronics plus a love for German synths, video games and children’s shows: to get some idea of what this means, just search Youtube for his name. There, in the space of three minutes (and on some local TV morning show no less), the Baltimore native unspools his magical assault on dance music …

Wait, no – the robotic blips, voice and organ, are far too friendly to be part of any assault, and too far afield to be responding to anything, period. So goes his grandest LP to date. Replete with sublime feedback, grinning choral sections and helium-tinged hip-hop hooks, it’s like a glass of spiked Tang at a circus after-party: not exactly the kind of thing you savor, just the sort that puts a big toothy grin on your face. Alex Pasternack

Double Edge

Tag Team Records and Modern Sky team up for the second CH+INDIE fest

Just for the record, the second annual CH+INDIE rock fest, subtitled “The Wrath of Khan,” is not a reaction to other yaogun festivals in Beijing. (That its name was inspired by a murderous tyrant in the second Star Trek film is little more than nerdy homage.)

“We just wanted to represent as much independent Chinese music as we could in one day, but in a more relaxed kind of way, with beers and ice cream,” says Matt Kagler, head of Tag Team Records. His label and Modern Sky, Beijing’s other big US-China record company, have organized the outdoor festival not to compete with the city’s other fests, or even simply to showcase the labels’ bands: “This is just about music we’re into,” says Kagler.

But that straight-up approach means that it is a far cry from the rambling multi-genre orgies of festivals like the MIDI Modern Music Festival or Beijing Pop. “Basically, sometimes at festivals you get curious bookings, hodgepodge-y type stuff,” explains Kagler. Instead, CH+INDIE (pronounced “Chindie”) features a tight, wholesome line up that’s the rock equivalent of a street-side jianbing, and easier to digest. Day one features six bands, including lo-fi indies Arrows Made of Desire, post-punk outfit Scoff and local legends Brain Failure; lunatic SUBS kick things off a delicious day two, featuring spacey Lonely China Day and local darlings Joyside.

If such healthy servings of sweet Beijing rock are not enough to justify the 45RMB per day entrance fee, the organizers ensure that five kuai of each ticket will go to Altruistic Alcoholics, who are using the cash to build schools in Hubei. In true festival style, the charity will set up a booth on the lawn alongside Red T, Sugar Jar and The Veggie Union.

And just as Kagler promises there’s no beef between CH+INDIE and other local fests, his festival also promises no beef, or other meats for that matter. Though he’s not a vegetarian, Kagler called local food collective Veggie Era, in the name of alternatives. “I’ve never seen anything like that in Beijing. I figured we’d try something different.”

The record labels will of course have booths too—and maybe even right next to each other. In an environment that doesn’t exactly encourage profits (“You’re happy just to break even”), there’s no sense of competition; promoting Beijing’s music with a unified front is a matter of survival. Sure, love for the music is top priority at a showcase like CH+INDIE, “but, hell, we may even make a little bit of money, which would be nice for a change,” says Kagler.

As they have relied on joint shows to spread the word in Beijing, both labels are also striving to position their bands in the widening overseas spotlight. Last April’s edition of the U.S.’s indie music mecca, the South by Southwest Festival, saw visits by Lonely China Day and post-punkers Rebuilding the Rights of Statues (Re-TROS), while Joyside recently played sold-out shows in Europe. Meanwhile, Tag Team and Modern Sky are starting to sign U.S.-based artists.

At home and abroad labels’ collaboration is rooted in cross-promotion, but it helps that Kagler and Modern Sky manager Meng Jinhui are chummy. “Jin and I like to drink beers and listen to Joy Division on vinyl 'til someone gets sick.”

Both labels wear that post-punk love on their record sleeves: Re-TROS, which is represented by Modern Sky in China and distributed in the U.S. by Tag Team, are clear Ian Curtis acolytes. While it’s hard to complain about that influence, Kagler is happy that as China’s rock scene gets more exposure, it’s also growing more original too. “A couple of years ago everything sounded like Green Day and Limp Bizkit,” he says. “Now there’s some really good stuff going on. I wouldn’t have said that three years ago.”

Leading the way are some new venues like upstart D-22, which has been cheered in all corners since it opened last year. But its Wudoakou locale, far from the club-land on the east side of the city, has created what Kagler dubs “the East-West thing.” “These bands that play at D-22 hardly ever play in Chaoyang,” he explains. “There’s no animosity, but somehow it just goes down that way.” He’s hoping CH+INDIE, which features D-22 staples like Scoff and Joyside, will do something to bridge the gap.

For all the free love, rock-and-roll attitude, Kagler has a decidedly un-rock-and-roll piece of advice to fans: arrive early. Rules are rules, especially when it comes to outdoor noise restrictions, and the festival, which opens at 4 pm, needs to wrap up by 11.30. “But it’s cool. There’ll be plenty of stuff to eat, drink, and hear,” he says. “It is after all a festival.”

Chik it out!

Music Review: !!!

Myth Takes

If there’s a modern soundtrack to the kind of wanton behavior witnessed at sweaty, shirtless, college dance parties, Myth Takes deserves a place on it. Previous records from the aptly-named dance-punk outfit (pronounced with three clucks of the tongue) had bursts of brilliance but couldn’t match the live performances, wherein seven men armed with searing guitars, horns and a trance-inducing rhythm section back up the indefatigable, party-starting Nic Offer. But that consistent live energy is sprinkled all over this new record, from the twangy, tribal title track to the album’s spacey, funky centerpiece, the courtship treatise Heart of Hearts. If it occasionally gets to be a bit repetitive, well, then you’re listening too hard … and not dancing hard enough!!! Alex Pasternack

Arcade Fire: Neon Bible

I can brag that I saw Arcade Fire just after the release of their debut album Funeral, because like the record, that crowded, sweaty night was the clarion call for nothing short of an indie-rock rebirth. Of course Win Butler and Co. band made no attempt to hide their debt to proto indie-rockers like David Byrne or David Bowie or even Bono, all of whom would come to give props or even join them on stage for their second tour (that time through, they sold out the sports arena). And rightly so: for a long while afterwards, little else could touch Funeral’s gorgeously bittersweet energy, a rag-tag marching-band spirit that made death sound lovely. But the after-life, as told on this follow-up, ain’t so sweet. The majestic cities and long loves that coursed through the first album have been upended by wars, hurricanes and other current disquietudes, amongst which Butler’s soaring, heartbroken yowl and the band’s orchestral flourishes are searching for at least a momentary escape. Turning from MTV to the hope of “World War III,” our narrator insists on “Windowsill,” “I don’t want to live in my father’s house no more” and “I don’t want to live in America no more,” just before the triumphal percussion rolls in. Whatever may be missing of the first album’s majesty, whatever sonic novelty may be lost here and whatever despair may be gained, Neon Bible is proof that hope remains, at least for innovative rock music.

Russian Doll : Regina Spektor

It's an old story: Wide-eyed nine-year old Jewish girl flees Russia to the shores of New York with her parents, who barely make ends meet while she passes her time exploring their Bronx neighborhood, the old Tin Pan Alley, and the piano keys — a remnant from years of practice in the old country and exposure to the classics (Chopin but also Pushkin). Soon, the setting becomes a downtown Manhattan nightclub, and she's stringing ragtime ballads, jazz standards, folk renditions, energy and vaudevillian pizzazz across the keys. Sheer talent plus a twist of fate would attract the attention of a snazzy producer and a wealthy band of patrons and ta da: Our heroine enters a world of minor celebrity nearly as surprising and strange as her musical narratives.

"We stopped at this truck stop in Colorado, and I'm in the fucking Subway, and there was a girl there getting a sandwich," Regina Spektor recounts a few weeks ago, using the f-word in the most excited, innocent way possible. "I saw her staring and she saw me and I thought about going up to her, but I thought maybe she was just staring, you know, didn't know who I was. Well. I got on MySpace today and someone wrote ‘I love your music and I smiled at you in the Subway.' I mean, wow."

Regina Spektor is running into fans in the strangest places; she's playing sell-out shows in the English countryside; she's getting written about on a hundred message boards and websites; she's on the phone from a hotel room at her latest tour stop, San Francisco. She also has a new album on a major label, Begin to Hope, a follow-up to 2004's Soviet Kitsch. It was a rough version of the latter that first pricked up the ears of the Strokes, who invited her on tour with them, and their producer, who recorded Kitsch. Almost three years later, and 17 years after fleeing Moscow, wow is still very much the theme. When on stage, perched on the edge of her stool, playing with her hands, chatting, the 26-year-old SUNY Purchase graduate still seems amazed, impressed, perplexed by it all, as if she's still learning something big from the crowds fawning over her.

"I can't imagine that kind of devotion, it's really beautiful," she says of the dedication which pushed fans across multiple states to see her play in Colorado in early May. "I played a show in Scotland where kids said they flew from Australia. In Bristol, people had come from Berlin," she says. The curly-haired Russian Jew from the Bronx with real estate on MySpace is trying to figure out where she is, and why people would bother coming that far. "I don't even know how to drive."

When she gets behind the keyboard however, Spektor could hardly sound more in control. From her measured debut, 11:11 through the more fanciful Songs and through the rich Kitsch, Spektor's fingers have learned to dance in jazz and pop and blues rhythms — occasionally parting ways to handle a drumstick on the nearest chair — with a precision matched by a voice that soars and halts aspirated, speaks in tongues and Russian and French and New Yawk accents, raps and, when a chair isn't available, carries the percussion too, beatbox style. On "Twenty Years of Snow," a new song that imitates a Polish mazurka, Spektor's plaintive minor chord progressions twinkle rapidly beneath a voice that ranges from fragile to breathy to speak-y before rolling into a rap that beckons a bop interlude before the recapitulation, where she stutters it all to a close. Such idiosyncratic stylings have earned her the fad label "anti-folk," along with comparisons to Tori, Bjork, Norah, Fiona, Ani and Joni. While perhaps flattering, these names don't do much more justice to Spektor's style than, say, likening her to Ronnie Spector. "Associations are associations," she shrugs, "but I definitely feel like my songs are my songs."

Whereas the adventurous vocal experiments of Soviet Kitsch could sometimes border on preciousness, Spektor's verbal tics on Hope — grunts, breaths, word-bendings and so on — become neater devices for her four-minute fables. The addition of electric guitar courtesy of The Strokes' Nick Valensi and the machinery of producer David Kahne even uncover a new, upbeat poppiness ("Fidelity," "Better," "Hotel Song"), while making room for even more improvisational tricks (see the Billie Holiday tribute "Lady" and the funky admonition "Edit"). Spektor recalls her reaction to first hearing a finished Hope: "I was like, ‘I love you, record." While she only had two weeks to record Soviet Kitsch, Spektor had a leisurely two months for her latest. "It's the first time in my life where I'm so excited that I want people to hear it, where I'm not giving a record to people with a disclaimer that it's not what I wanted it to be. I made it how I wanted to make it."

When asked about what inspired the record, Spektor characteristically points to nothing smaller than the world. "It's so diverse, it's a dream for anybody documenting anything. It's here! The world, write it down!" Her reluctance to talk shop is less a sign of coyness than honesty. "You know — a lot of it is imagination." And this is what most makes the record Spektor's: as usual, each of her songs is a character study in which love is cradled by the tragic knowledge that it can't last. The effects differ, as seen in the heartbroken biblical riff "Samson" and the exhilarating Joni Mitchell-flavored ballad "On the Radio": "This is how it works / you're young until you're not / you love until you don't… you hope it don't get hard / but even if it does, you just do it all again." Her large revelations writ small are sung with the same naïve wonder and confusion and graciousness she shows before her audiences — and which her rapt audiences in turn often show before her.

From a distance, the paradoxical feelings of her song-stories appear as echoes of lost nights, secret loves, and, inevitably, of her own complicated bond with the motherland. Mention returning to Russia, and Spektor sighs. "It's actually really complicated. I haven't figured any of that out. I definitely want to go back but haven't figured out when, or how. It's intense." When her family fled Russia, they were, as Jews, legally considered aliens within their own home. "I definitely love the culture, the people. But it's also very anti-Semitic, lawless, harsh. It's a place where I don't really feel like it's my home at all." Her first lyrics in Russian come in the album's most haunting ballad "Après Moi," where she quotes the poet Boris Pasternak: "February. To take ink and weep, / To write, sob your heart out, sing."

Spektor acknowledges the influence of another Russian literary genius, the tragic comedian Anton Chekhov — but not because of the dramas for which he's famous. "In the plays, he gets too rambly or too philosophical or something, which ends up pushing you out, and reminds you you're a reader or an audience member." It's an impression that hasn't gone lost on her own work. To her, his short stories are more compelling. "They're amazing because they're completely all encompassing. He takes you within them."

Begin to Hope is out on Sire Records on Jun. 13.

This story was published in Paper on June 13, 2006.

Emotional rescues

The hurt beneath the howl of Xiu Xiu BY ALEX PASTERNACK

SWEET DISCORD On tour, Xiu Xiu are Jamie Stewart and his cousin Caralee McElroy. alking to Jamie Stewart, the singer/guitarist who leads the noisy experimental SF Bay Area band Xiu Xiu (pronounced "Shoo Shoo"), can be almost as disconcerting as listening to his music. He’s polite, quiet, and modest, adding small question marks to his sentences and even tossing in a familiar "dude" now and then. It’s all more in keeping with what you’d expect from an emo band frontman than from the mastermind behind some of the more terrifying howls, screeching guitars, and unapologetically dejected lyrics in indie rock. Yet just like a Xiu Xiu song, he’ll touch on a subject that’s uncomfortably personal, like the suicide of his father, Michael Stewart, who produced Billy Joel’s Piano Man. On last year’s Fabulous Muscles (Kill Rock Stars), Stewart sang, "I feel like I’m not nice because sometimes it is hard for me to think something happy about you." But on the new La Forêt (Kill Rock Stars), a sense of resignation has set in; when Stewart entreats himself along with "people I hurt" to "shut up, shut up" ("Ale"), he’s accompanied by a tuneful clarinet melody. Xiu Xiu have a taste for discord — atonal arrangements filled with foghorns, tape hisses, and violent beats and topped off by Stewart’s whispery vocals and the melodrama of his confessional lyrics. The latter have inspired open-mouthed fandom from sensitive scenesters who find solace in his pain, and attacks from critics as being cloying and histrionic. "People have thrown lit cigarettes at me and audiences have yelled all kinds of nasty shit," Stewart says as he prepares for a national tour that brings Xiu Xiu to the Middle East this Saturday for an afternoon all-ages show. "Then there are also people who drive 800 miles to come see us play and ask if they can come sit in our van for three days because they don’t have a bus ride home." On Fabulous Muscles, Stewart worked mostly without his amorphous band, eschewing the buzzing and shrieking of earlier recordings in favor of neo-new-wave synth-pop, decaying house beats, and an entirely acoustic title song. The darker, denser band effort La Forêt splits the difference between convention and daring instrumental explorations, between subtleties and extremes. "It’s not a plus or a minus or a forward or backward," Stewart says of the album, which he recorded with a full, mostly temporary line-up that included Xiu Xiu staple Cory McCullough and Caralee McElroy, Jamie’s cousin and lone back-up musician on tour. "The motivation for writing a less-pop-oriented album wasn’t ‘Oh, Fabulous Muscles is the past — we must shun pop now.’ At the time we were working on La Forêt, we were interested in more experimental music." The Bay Area collective Yellow Swans and a smattering of modern classical composers are detectable influences here, in addition to, Stewart notes, Okinawan vocal performances, gamelan orchestras, and Islamic liturgical chants. Centering lush winds and stirring strings, ringing vibraphones and thick electronic beats, Stewart’s voice floats free as he meditates on decay with a waver that recalls both Conor Oberst and Ian Curtis. "We always write about things that have been going on in the lives of people around us. There have been a lot of difficult things that have happened, and a long history of mental illness in my family." Politics also plays a role. Fabulous Muscles’ evocative monologue "Support Our Troops, Oh" finds its match in La Forêt’s condemnation of the Bush administration during the atonal "Saturn." In the rollicking "Muppet Face," Stewart squeezes in the lines "smells like Fallujah" and "pull down your pants by the Shiites." But he hasn’t lost all hope. "I’m certainly interested in being happy. But working on being happy is definitely working." Xiu Xiu + Frog Eyes + Yellow Swans | Middle East downstairs, 480 Mass Ave, Cambridge | September 3 | 617.864.EAST

Published in the Boston Phoenix, September 2 - 8, 2005