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Tegan and Sara: If I Was You
Tegan and Sara
If It Was You
(Vapor Records, 2002)
When Tegan and Sara released their 2007 album The Con, it was greeted by fans and critics alike as a bold departure from their previous work. This album was vivid, it was emotional, and its roots were blatantly planted in pop. In the context of public perception, it was an unforeseen move. Until The Con, Tegan and Sara couldn’t seem to separate themselves from basic descriptions: “Twin sisters,” “lesbians,” “witty,” “quirky,” and any number of adjectives that pointed to what Pitchfork’s review of The Con eventually called out as “tampon rock.” After The Con, it was tampon rock no more for the (lesbian) (quirky) Quin sisters.
Augie March Is a Little Wonder
Augie March
Strange Bird
(BMG Australia, 2002; spinART Records, 2004)
We owe Australia credit for some of the most compelling and well-constructed pop songs of the past decade; we also owe ourselves an explanation for the fact that some of its very best bands, ones well-loved and awarded in their home country, somehow never quite translate properly for this side of the world. What we ultimately get are pale imitations of what we ought to know. Instead of You Am I, who have made over a decade’s worth of classic power pop records, we get Jet, who humbly present us with a few catchy radio tracks and then let us kindly forget about them. Instead of passing on the wonders of Midnight Oil to the next generation, we’re forced to explain the strange fact of Silverchair’s continued existence. And while we’ve busied ourselves with pleasant surprise over the arrival of Architecture in Helsinki, we’re still woefully unaware of a band who in 2002 (2004 in the United States) released an album that unfolds like the best of literary efforts.
Outro: The Mendoza Line End the Conversation
In the summer of 2000, I was still new to New York, and I stood one night at a club called Brownies trying to hide my Midwestern roots in an Armani Exchange purse and the pockets of my new black pants. On the stage was a band whose presence made me uncomfortable before they’d even started playing; somehow, they seemed mismatched. There may have been five people on the stage, there may have been seven, but there were definitely too many. They were gawky, they tripped over one another, and they didn’t ever seem quite in sync. Their songs were a curious manifestation of this discomfort, simple and melodic jangle-pop numbers with titles like “Baby, I Know What You’re Thinking.” Their songs may have verged on being cutesy, had they not been so earnest in their delivery.
It was an experience that might have been forgettable had it not been for two striking details. The first was their bold choice of cover songs. Self-assured in voice but awkward in stance, the band’s main frontwoman stepped up to the mic and sang the first line of Arab Strap’s “Packs of Three.” “It was the biggest cock I’d ever seen, and I had no idea where that cock had been,” she sang to a few uneasy crowd chuckles. It was a song so brazen that I had a hard time believing this hot mess of a band was willing to try it.
Here’s to Hallelujah the Hills!
There is a certain sense of security in owning a vehicle that only holds two people: when you’re always the one driving, it follows that you always know who has been in your car. There’s also a very uncertain dose of strangeness involved in everyday life, and at times even the most logical equations don’t hold true. Ryan Walsh is well acquainted with this sense of the strange: One day, he reached into the passenger-side pocket of his two-seater truck and found a CD by a band he’d never heard of.
“I had no idea how it got there, and I asked all of the people who’d been in my car, and everyone was saying no,” Walsh says. “I listened to it, and I loved it.”
Lil’ Chief Records: New Zealand Indie Sets Out to Expand Our Horizons
by: Sarah Flynn
By now, there’s a good chance that some fraction of Lil’ Chief has entered your life as well. Maybe your introduction came through seeing the Brunettes open for the Shins on their Wincing the Night Away tour. Perhaps you’re a fan of Sub Pop Records and picked up the Brunettes’ latest, Structure & Cosmetics, you read a stunning “Best New Music” review of the new Ruby Suns album on Pitchfork and made a mental note to check it out, or you heard the Reduction Agents in last year’s film, Eagle vs. Shark. If none of these cases apply, your time will come. Slowly but surely, this tiny New Zealand indie pop label is seeping into the American subconscious, and Shute is continuing this quest with lunch in the East Village.
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by: Sarah Flynn
published: September 3, 2008
in column: Feature Story
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