FRESH BAKED
in NYC
Kurt Vile
Childish Prodigy
2009 | Matador Records
B-

Kurt Vile is a confident guy – with a name like that, he has to be. On his newest album, Childish Prodigy, the Philadelphia singer/songwriter (and Williamsburg/
Woodsist/Market Hotel staple) swaggers between fuzz and folk without much effort. At times the transitions seem appropriate: opening track “Hunchback” is as sexy and playful as centerpiece “Blackberry Song” is sweet and soothing. But even with the added polish, some of the softer songs feel unfinished.

Almost all of the lyrics sound improvised, which for the most part is fine. When his vocals mesh with layers of distortion Vile sounds off the cuff, but when his singing is front and center, he sounds like he doesn’t have anything to say. A line like, “I ain’t never been so insulted in my whole life/ Shit!” is easy to ignore when it’s buried under the Kraut-rock kaleidoscope of “Freak Train,” but when something as clichéd as “You better get your head re-screwed on,” is clearly repeated over and over (and over) on “Heart Attack,” it’s harder to ignore.

Childish Prodigy is cleaner than last year’s lower-fi Constant Hitmaker and 2009’s God Is Saying This To You, but that isn’t necessarily an improvement. Vile is at his most effective when he’s strutting his stuff and stumbling through a wall of sound; on the quieter tracks he sounds like he’s pacing.

None of these songs ever really progress or move forward. The same notes swirl around and around, paired with either belligerent yelping or overwhelming neuroses. On “Inside Lookin Out” Vile’s “Got the blues so BAAAAAD,” and on “Monkey” he admits, “I was so sad/ I swear I held my own hand/ Pretending it was yours.”

The whole record is like a drunken ride on a carousel: the exciting moments are dizzying and colorful, but when things slow down regret sinks in.

by Kyle McGovern

THE NINETIES-IST
One Saturday night about six months ago, I was standing outside Academy Records in Williamsburg. It was one of those rare Saturday nights in New York, one where everyone you know decides to go out of town and, just as you get all set to go party, you find yourself in the middle of the perfect stay-at-home-and-catch-up-on-Grisham night. Not one to sit at home on a Saturday night, I found myself hanging around N. 6th Street, trying vainly to stir up a ruckus.

While smoking a cigarette on the street, I happened to overhear a snippet of conversation that set my teeth on edge. Two girls in their early twenties, obviously from money and most likely on vacation from some exclusive private college, walked past Academy. One girl said to the other, “So…do they still make records? And do people still buy…music?” The surprise and disdain in her voice were such that she might as well have been saying, “Remember when people thought the Earth was flat?”

My heart sank at the tone in her voice, because she’d illuminated the problem without even knowing there was one. The mainstream music industry, comically flawed since its inception, has been a creative wasteland for years. While I would posit that the old model for promoting and distributing mainstream music has been showing stress fractures since the fake “vinyl shortage” of the early 70s – in which albums by fringe bands like the Modern Lovers were shelved, the excuse being there wasn’t enough vinyl to meet production demands – it is my astute opinion that the old standard of modern pop music breathed its death rattle in 2003. Sometime after the White Stripes’ Elephant and before Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief (and, in fairness, the industry’s corpse may have kept flopping until Good News For People Who Love Bad News came out in April ’04) the rock-music-as-big-moneymaker model jumped the shark. The last wave of new, compelling rock music (aka the garage rock movement of ’01 – ’03) had failed to ignite: The Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and their ilk had all somehow managed to follow up stunning debuts with tepid sophomore efforts. The lifers – bands with no real hits but respectable catalog sales and devoted followers – began jumping ship from their respective labels (either by necessity or design), many realizing the benefits of working with a small organization, many more marginalized by the continued consolidation of the big label infrastructure.
More on #1: A Prologue

HIDDEN GEM
Belle and Sebastian
If You’re Feeling Sinister
1996 | Matador

Can a record like If You’re Feeling Sinister, Scottish-college-project-turned-twee-wunderkinds Belle and Sebastian’s 1997 breakthrough album, ever exist again? Spring 1998, this album (reportedly made by a band that consisted of eight people but sounding like it was made by about three) fell into my lap at my college’s radio station. Interest peaked at first by the band’s name, sparking memories of the British cartoon series that was broadcast occasionally on Canadian television in my childhood home, I was immediately hooked on the band’s sound – and I was not alone.

If You’re Feeling Sinister was an enigma: bandleader Stuart Murdoch and the rest of his crew refused all interviews and rarely played concerts, sticking to their native Glasgow when they deigned to play live at all. Yet the band’s first fully-conceptualized album (their debut, 1995’s Tigermilk, is a rushed, occasionally brilliant mess that Murdoch has described as a “product of botched capitalism”) made its way onto the Matador label and, slowly but surely, into the hands of college radio jocks and other discerning audiophiles like me, based on word of mouth alone. Kind of nice, when you think about it, but also kind of depressing: less than fifteen years after Sinister’s release, the current promotional norm of internet blasts and the slow and steady decline of college radio suggest that, were Belle and Sebastian to pop onto the scene in 2009, they would quite possibly be swept under the rug before anyone got around to digging on the record.
More on Belle and Sebastian | If You’re Feeling Sinister

Roger Daltrey of The Who to Go On Solo Tour, Talk About His Generation to the Youngsters [BrooklynVegan]

As You May Know, We Love Talking Heads. So Please Don’t Call On Oct. 13, When Stop Making Sense Comes Out On Blu-Ray Format [Pitchfork]

Bad Blood Between Matador Records and Victory Records Getting Worse In Wake of House Fire [Pitchfork]

No More Albums Don’t Mean No More Music! Listen to New Radiohead Track, “These Are My Twisted Words” [Consequence Of Sound]

Are You On The Bus? Dan Deacon’s Bus That Is. Watch This Mini Documentary About Deacon’s “Vantastic” School Bus [Pitchfork]

Dr. Dre to Rescue Your Ears From All Those Sad Tinny mp3s You’ve Been Listening To, Thus Saving the World of Digital Music! [Pitchfork]

What Dislocated Shoulder? Randy Randall and No Age Back On Tour, Hitting New York In October [Tiny Mix Tapes]

RIP Rashied Ali, Jazz Drummer, Coltrane Collaborator [NME]

compiled by Erin Sheehy

No More Radiohead Albums? AAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGHHHH! [The Tripwire]

Watch The Drums New Video for “Let’s Go Surfing,” Look Out For Their Upcoming Shows [Brooklyn Vegan]

C-Murder Convicted of Second-Degree Murder [NME]

Co-Owner of Matador Records Loses House In Fire [Brooklyn Vegan]

Don’t Look A Gift-Horse In The Mouth and For God’s Sake Don’t Punch It!!! Man Arrested For Punching Police Horse After Lollapalooza [Pitchfork]

Watch The Trailer For Tom Waits’ Upcoming Film, “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” [Prefix]

And In More Tom Waits News…Anton Corbijn Is Publishing Book Of Tom Waits Portraits [The Tripwire]

If Morrissey Ain’t Making Money Off It, Why Bother? Morrissey Tells Fans Not To Buy Reissues [Rolling Stone]

I Always Secretly Hoped Elton John Would Work With Alice In Chains, Now My Dreams Are Fulfilled [Prefix]

821 Entertainment To Make Hank Williams Biopic [Prefix]

compiled by Erin Sheehy

HIDDEN GEM
Tobin Sprout
Carnival Boy
1996 | Matador Records

Tobin Sprout is perhaps best known for his role as guitarist in Guided By Voices, for a major part of the mighty band’s career. A visual artist by day from Dayton, OH, Sprout, tired of the road and wanting to concentrate on raising a family and making solo records, left GBV in 1997, on the eve of their classic, Mag Earwig! Before leaving the band though, Sprout dropped his solo debut, 1996’s Carnival Boy.

From what little research I can glean (when a group has as many records as GBV and Bob Pollard on his own, things get a little shuffled under the rug), Sprout and Pollard’s relationship remained collaboratively fruitful after Sprout’s “retirement.” Carnival Boy and Not In My Airforce, Pollard’s solo debut, were released on the same day, and both men appear on the other’s record. Even after the split, Sprout occasionally appeared on subsequent GBV tracks, and he and Pollard started Airport 5, a collaborative band, in 2001.
More on Tobin Sprout | Carnival Boy