Pitchfork Reviews 5/12/08

Death Cab for Cutie
Narrow Stairs
[Atlantic; 2008]

Pitchfork gave it a 6.0.

Oh man. For real? I'm gonna listen to Death Cab for Cutie? I'm gonna do this?

Do I have to?

Fine! Umm mmm mmm. Oh, that's yummy.

Ok, can I go now?


Elvis Costello
Momofuku
[Lost Highway; 2008]

Pitchfork gave it a 7.5.

It's tough when you like somebody's music but you think they're a twat. Elvis Costello is an arrogant twat. His first three albums are great, and then if you're into the arrogant twat singer-songwriter genre, everything else is pretty decent too.

This is a "return to form" album. He sounds like an old man who's trying to give people what they want for the first time. Whatever still-vital lip sneer he manages sounds glued on. The production sounds like a "we're gonna do it right this time" ruination of My Aim Is True (recorded in a closet with the drums bleeding over into everything so it sounds like you're in the closet there too). But this time, man, we're gonna get 48 track digital production. Hey Charlie, can you compress the guitar feedback on track 17? It's a little too grating. That kind of a thing.

In a way, it's kind of sad. You like him more as a person when he's off doing some horrible fucking zydeco thing that only he thinks is a good idea. Let's not forget that this guy was not some original London punk who happened to be a great songwriter by accident. He was a songwriting careerist with a wife and kid who settled on the new wave sound in much the same way Bob Dylan settled on folk. That he did it really fucking well due to the fact that he was a natural smartalec doesn't mean that it's still necessary for him to approximate that sound lo these years later.

Then again, I wasn't going to buy any more of his stuff anyway. There's enough of it and we get it: you write good songs. I just like these first three. I'll take them and no more lectures about your greatness, please.

But I don't know his business. Maybe he needs to do a little pandering to the new wave crowd to make ends meet. Or else, more likely, he took a look around at the landscape and saw that popular music is basically 1983 again, and thought "well hell, I can do THAT. Better than anybody, as I seem to recall." If so, good for him. It's good to know the old arrogant twat is still stuffed to the gills with scorn.

We don't have to tell him that he's a cloistered, myopic old man musician dinosaur mimicking trends that the rest of us young folks went through years (more than two) ago, and he's just now getting the mall version in his richguy exile and thinking "oh that's what they're up to these days, huh?" No, we won't tell him that, because there's no point and he wouldn't listen anyway and we don't even really want him to.


Kid Creole
Going Places: The August Darnell Years 1976-1983
[Strut; 2008]

Sébastien Tellier
Sexuality
[Record Makers / Lucky Number; 2008]

Pitchfork gave one an 8.6. and the other a 7.3.

Ok, one is latin/funk-infused disco from '76-'83, and one is French electrosynth from right now, so why am I lumping them together? Because they're both reminding me that I'm too old (30) and pudgy (really not very pudgy) to shop in this American Apparel. Also, why is this place covered in porn? Why do I get the feeling that everybody here is waiting until I leave so they can have a vapid teenager sex party? Fuck this. I don't need a fucking 50 dollar sweatshirt that bad anyway. Sorry Malaysia, I'm gonna have to support your sweatshops because the one alternative is to bankroll a creepy pedophile. You win, merchants of cool. I'll return to K-Mart where I belong.


The Explorers Club
Freedom Wind
[Dead Oceans; 2008]

Pitchfork gave it a 6.7.

These guys want to sound exactly like the Beach Boys, and they sound exactly like somebody who wants to sound exactly like the Beach Boys. I'm not making a joke, either. It says it right here in their press release from two years ago. They're a tribute band. I don't understand it. Why would you want to actively remind people of something that everybody agrees is better? It's one thing to have influences, it's another thing to go through the looking glass and try to become your influences.

They should have at least had the guts to call themselves The Beachie Boys and hope this album gets misfiled in the Beach Boys section of nine out of ten record stores nationwide. It's not like anybody's gonna run go buy this anyway. Might as well have it sit there snugly next to three worn down copies of Endless Summer and eight pristine copies of That Lucky Old Sun. It would actually be the better of the three possible purchases. It's not like the Beach Boys didn't dish out their share of depraved cash-grab chaff.