noise winter 2013 #2

EDITORS-IN-CHIEFGinger Holmes

&Hayley Ricardo

LAYOUT EDITORKevin Oliveira

ASSISTANT EDITORNicole Wallace

Want to write for us?Email [email protected] [email protected].

PlaylistCalifornia Dreamin’

1. Best Coast - The Only Place2. Wavves - Nodding Off3. Beach House - Myth4. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Under the

Bridge5. Warpaint - Krimson

6. The Monkees - Daydream Believer7. Dr. Dre - Nuthin’ but a ‘G’ Thang8. Lana Del Rey - Ride9. Tupac - California Love10. No Doubt - Just a Girl

Gianna Collier-Pitts

Artist profilesShe Keeps on Fallin

I remember when I was a child and I heard Alicia Keys’ Songs in A Minor for the first time. It was amazing. The album was heaven in my red Sony Walkman. I didn’t know what love was at the time, but I knew it was a huge deal when I listened to “Fallin’”. It was my first introduction to soul music; through Alicia’s passion, I knew the genre was something to be respected. No song could be more empowering than “A Woman’s Worth.” No song could be more romantic than “Butterflyz”. In 2001, it was the paradigm for what a good soul album should sound like. Years later, and Alicia created Diary of Alicia Keys. It was she at her most forceful, poignant, and embracing: it was Alicia at her peak. Fast-forward twelve years later, and that boy with the red Sony Walkman is disappointed. Alicia Keys has rolled violently from her summit. With her immense desire to stay in the industry, her songs have become recycled and trite.

Songs in A Minor was Keys at her most bluesy and emotional. At that point she was a young singer, full of problems and hankering for solutions. Songs in A Minor was significant because Alicia was vulnerable. That an ordinary girl was willing to share her pain with us was refreshing. I loved her for it. Her second album, Diary of Alicia Keys, showed Keys on the rise. However, songs like “Diary” and “Karma” displayed Keys in a huge struggle: telling her story or the industry’s. With her second album, she won that battle, but as of recently she’s been fighting a losing game. With tried ballads like “No One” and “Superwoman,” As I Am was a failed attempt by Keys to reproduce what made her successful, instead of being vulnerable again and sharing herself. With her marriage to Swizz Beatz and a child named Egypt, she’s been absorbed by the music business. The Element of Freedom illustrated Keys at her most restricted. She tries desperately to resurrect old themes that clearly hold no importance in her life at the moment. Don’t even get me started on Girl on Fire.

I’m not trying to bash Alicia. She’s my girl. However, I’m giving her some tough love as a dedicated listener of her early work. I want “Fallin’” again. Alicia was a girl on fire when she sung “If I Ain’t Got You.” Keys may be comfortable, but that should not be an excuse to lack quality and substance. I wish the best for Alicia, and I wish she would stop Fallin’.

Shane Potts

Lana Del Rey The Internet seems to have forced one to either really hate or really love Lana Del Rey. If you don’t know whom I’m talking about, to put to simply she’s a pop singer from New York (she actually went to Kent), who is actually named Elizabeth Grant. She describes herself as a “self-styled gangster Nancy Sinatra,” and was virtually unknown until 2011.

Every Lana Del Rey hater will probably

tell you that she’s fake, which isn’t necessarily true. The majority of artists have weird or flamboyant stage personas, when in real life they are quite normal people; it’s just part of garnering attention. But what’s interesting is her persona. It’s an entire collection of I-have-daddy-issues, weak-rich-girl-who-always-ends- up-with–the-bad-guy, and I’m-hot-and-I-know-it clichés.

The whole issue of her clichés popped up after Del Rey was featured on one of British GQ’s

covers. There were five different covers for this issue, four featuring men in nearly identical black suits and the last being Lana Del Rey, the only woman, curled up naked against a wall with make-up and jewelry. The remaining images of the shoot were a mixture of half-naked poses with a curtain and other such poses. Of course this is an example of pop-culture sexism at its best (or you could also say worst), and it caused a whole heap of general Internet ruckus. Now whether this was directly her own fault or GQ’s is really up to you, but it certainly added fuel to the fire. To further add to her persona, half the songs on her album Born to Die pertain her relationship with men: either asking for him to come save her, or for them to run away together. Take her song Off to the Races, which contains the verse, “Because I'm crazy, baby/I need you to

come here and save me/ I'm your little scarlet, starlet/ Singing in the garden, / Kiss me on my

open mouth/ Ready for you”. I think you get my point. She often expresses what she finds as “the dark side of the American dream,” and yes, her lyrics are dark, but they’re not about working two jobs, living on food stamps kind of American dream dark side. It’s more of the Facebook queens gone off the rails kind of dark side.

However, as messed up as her characters and persona are, people love them. No matter how weak and dependent they manage to be, they are also seductive, sexy, glamorous, and cool. But in this whole process she has been able to create music that is original and oddly poetic. She does all this while also referencing true love, but describes it as something that is in no way pure or good, but maybe it doesn’t have to be; maybe it’s just real. She’s in no way a good influence for young girls (but then again I could write pages of the artists who aren’t) and as a

feminist her lyrics agitate me to no end, but maybe she’s writing from what she knows, from what’s true to her, from the dark side of glamorous rich kids who’ve come off the rails, and from the dark side of her own American dream.

Nicole Wallace

Album reviewsLocal Natives - Hummingbird Sound-wise, Hummingbird isn’t all that different from the Local Natives’ first album, Gorilla Manor. Drifting, dreamlike melodies and intricate instrumentation remain the core of their music. What makes it worth a listen are the lyrics. Raw emotion has replaced the common angst of their first album. However, if you’re looking for uplifting, cheerful lyrics, you won’t find them here. Hummingbird’s songs are a haunting look at a world becoming stranger and more distant every day. Beautiful, yes. But happy? Not in the least.

The album starts off with a headfirst dive into the emotional tumult of “You & I”. “When did your love/ When did your love grow so cold?/ The closer I get, the further I have to go,” croons lead singer Kelcey Ayer. The tempo of the album picks up toward the middle with songs such as “Breakers”, “Black Balloons”, and “Woolly Mammoth”. The emotional tone of the lyrics, however, does not.

Black Balloons”, the most upbeat song on the album, capitalizes on the juxtaposition of more jovial instrumentals against the somber lyrics: “Circling vultures always overhead/ Force your hand/ Every day is life or death.” The tempo slows down again toward the end of the album with songs such as “Bowery”. The highlight of the album is “Columbia”, which deals with death of Ayer’s mother. The pensive melody partners perfectly with the direct and poignant lyrics. “Every night I ask myself/ Am I loving enough?/ Am I loving enough?Overall, Hummingbird showcases a growing maturity in the band. This sophomore effort proves that the Local Natives are receptive and responsive to both negative and positive feedback from previous albums, while still managing to maintain their unique voice. This ability ensures more than anything else that the Local Natives will remain an influence for some time to come.

Grace Alford-Hamburg

Foxygen - We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic

The indie/alternative world owes a lot to classic rock artists, but very few groups pay homage to their roots as much as Foxygen does. These L.A. kids know their roots and own them. Foxygen’s newest album, We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace and Magic, contains echoes of The Kinks, Beatles, and Stones throughout – with their own twist. The harmonies, bluesy guitar, and Mick Jagger-like voice of Sam France certainly make the album seem as if it were released in the early ‘70s. The album opens with “In the Darkness”, an upbeat introduction that harkens back to The Beatles’ Revolver. “No Destruction”, one of the album’s singles, has some definite influences of The Rolling Stones, but with a Californian twist: alongside twangy guitar, Beach Boys-like backup vocals, and some harmonica, Sam France declares, “San Francisco/Oh you make it so/Oh you make it so long on me.” My personal favorite song, “San Francisco”, sounds uncannily like Ray Davies circa 1972, and leaves the listener feeling nostalgic from the catchy but mellow chorus. The album’s other single, “Shuggie”, is more funky and mysterious – the transitions from different sections of this song leave the listener shocked. Other than the main singles, the album is littered with smaller gems like the slower ballad “Oh No”, and the more bluesy “Bowling Trophies”. From their first album, Take the Kids Off Broadway, the band has certainly evolved; their debut album is much more psychedelic and monolithic. Foxygen’s We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace and Magic is certainly worth a listen for indie/alt rock fans and classic rock fans alike. If you like these guys check out: Tame Impala’s Lonerism, Campfire’s Tomorrow Tomorrow, and Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s II.

Ginger Holmes

My Bloody Valentine - m b v

  Falling in love with My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless took a little experimentation. I started with drinking really cold beverages really fast, moved on to gazing at my shoes, and ended up locking myself in a dark room for forty-eight minutes (that worked). It was a challenging but rewarding album whose distorted sound and often unintelligible vocals revealed beautiful, layered melodies with a little digging. Falling in love with MBV’s first studio album in over twenty years was not a task. From its opening moments, m b v feels like Loveless 2.0, picking up where its predecessor left off to effortlessly introduce shoegazing to the twenty-first century. Things get strange around the halfway point. In “Is This and Yes”, the guitar is tossed aside and an exploration into space rock ensues. If this is Kevin Shields’s answer to Pink Floyd’s “Any Colour You Like”, then I ask him to please pick the guitar back up: this sounds like bad 16-bit video games music fused with low quality synthesizer horns, something I could achieve with the Casio keyboard in my basement. “New You” should have stuck with what it had going for it: Shields’ liberal use of tremolo.

Instead, it layers on a tacky bass-line that that might sound exciting in an elevator and vocals I wish I couldn’t hear. “In Another Way”, a sort of tribal dance for MBV devotees, doesn’t feel out of place, but “Nothing Is” is truly nothing but an exercise in how long fans can put up with the same guitar riff and driving drum beat with little to no dynamic or temporal variation (three and a half minutes, apparently). I would have declared the album a complete success had MBV simply given up their blind exploration into strange and sometimes tawdry experimentation, but the charade continues until the bitter end. Loveless found me breaking through walls of heavily-distorted guitar to expose a surprisingly melodious core; apparently, after wading through a rhythm section composed of a helicopter, “Wonder 2”, m b v rewards me with…Kevin Shields discovering how to make his guitar sound like the horns in “All You Need is Love”. Bravo. Dripping walls of guitar on heavy drugs. Barely audible vocals that leave the melody alone. The rare but sweet chord progression variation. It’s certainly minimalist, but it’s what made Loveless such a success. “She Found Now” is just another track off Loveless, but track two, “Only Tomorrow,” begins to improve on the formula: varied dynamics, an explosive bridge, and vocals that are audible without getting in the way. “Who Sees You”, with its whining chords just begging to be bent back to pitch, proves a worthy sequel to Loveless’s “What You Want”, and even features a simple guitar solo. m b v’s triumph is “If I Am”, a track that cleverly uses distortion as a second instrument and employs enough clean strumming to frame beautiful chord changes. Also, it may sound crazy, but at the end of the song it sounds like Shields is urging me to “eat [his] liver.” Loveless was an album that rewarded listeners. With the exception of its opening few tracks and “If I Am”, m b v seems to punish them. As a fan of Loveless looking for more of the same, I may be slightly biased, but the second half of m b v was not designed to be palatable for fans or accessible for newcomers: it is an outright abandonment of the shoegazing verities Loveless worked so hard to discover. Its opening moments attest that sticking with a proven formula works; as its last act seems to sigh, m b v was a failed experiment.

Kevin Oliveira

Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

Fifteen years ago, Neutral Milk Hotel rocked the indie music scene with their final album, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. Combining the elements of Dylan-esque folk and the ‘60s psychedelic movement, with occasional instances of sexually driven lyricism, this album has been christened as the greatest of all time by many and an overrated pile of garbage by many others. Indeed, the original reviews of the LP were mixed; M. Christian McDermott of Pitchfork Media acclaimed the album for “blending Sgt. Pepper with ‘90s lo-fi” while Ben Ratliff of Rolling Stone called it “thin-blooded, woolgathering stuff”. Other critics refused to state their opinions altogether, instead commenting on the album’s polarizing effect; Jason Ankeny of Allmusic remarked that the album “is either the work of a genius or an utter crackpot, with the truth probably falling somewhere in between.” Yet, no matter what you think of it, Aeroplane has influenced a new generation of indie musicians and left its mark on the industry as a whole.

Before the release of the album, Jeff Mangum, the lyricist and songwriter of the band, had been living under constant unemployment. After the release of On Avery Island, the band’s first LP, he read and was inspired by Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl. The recording of Aeroplane occurred within three months during the summer of 1997. Since then, Mangum has been rarely sighted; the band is on indefinite hiatus. However, on November 12, 2012, he announced a 2013 tour of the United States as a solo artist.

The effect of Aeroplane and Neutral Milk Hotel, regardless of Mangum’s reclusive persona, is still seen today. Arcade Fire, Bon Iver, and the Decemberists have all listed the band as a major influence, while artists such as The Mountain Goats and The Dresden Dolls have covered their songs. Mangum’s band has even garnered praise in literary form, being featured in Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan. Plus, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea remains in high demand on vinyl, even being the sixth-highest record of 2008. Though Mangum no longer writes his songs in a haunted closet and Neutral Milk Hotel is nothing more than a memory, its legacy lives on.Brad McPherson

concert reviewJeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel at Union Station, Hartford - 2/19/13

I walked into Union Station unsure of what to expect. The choice of venue threw me off, and more importantly, I had never seen a musical idol of mine live, with the exception of a brief live performance by Thom Yorke at the beginning of a DJ set in September. Half of Brooklyn-based folk duo Tall Firs opened the show - he other half had returned home for a family matter. I honestly don’t remember much of his set, except that it probably would have sounded pretty nice if virtually the entire audience behind the first few rows hadn’t have talked through it; this was unfortunately only the beginning of the night with this show’s very rude crowd. Tall Firs was followed by former Neutral Milk Hotel member Julian Koster’s current band, The Music Tapes, who delivered an energetic and charming set featuring a seven-foot-tall metronome and a singing television. The audience was bearable during their set, if only because there was no way to talk over the loud guitars and percussion. Thirty minutes passed, and Mangum took the stage quietly and shied away from copious applause, accepting it with a shy smile. From his modest wool sweater and khakis to his setup consisting of a plastic chair next to a rack holding four acoustic guitars, an outsider might have guessed he was playing an open mic night. Unfortunately, the audience would have given him away in the worst way – among the usual I love you’s, there were many Play (obscure B-side)’s, and a couple You look homeless-es, apropos his unruly beard. At one point, he turned backstage to ask, “Is this song in A?” and someone yelled, “I think it’s in A flat.” One local blogger described it as “a bunch of six-year-olds trying to impress their dad”. It was awful. Mangum played beautifully, however. His voice sounds exactly as it did fifteen years ago, and his signature strained range and long tones - swear he held every one of the really long, pressured notes in “Oh Comely” - helped him completely dominate the hall by himself. After the first three songs, he encouraged us to sing along, which led to a fun rendition of “Song Against Sex” in which we filled in for the brass section, followed a few minutes later by the simultaneously exhilarating and hilarious experience of the full hall half-screaming “I love you, Jesus Christ!” during “King of Carrot Flowers, Pts. 2 & 3”. He closed with fan favorite “Ghost” before returning to the stage with Koster for a rendition of “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea” featuring Koster on the saw, playing the part that gave the song its edge when it was first released. Overall, Mangum’s set was spectacular. However, the audience’s behavior frustrated me and put a damper on the evening. For people who seemed so desperate to prove themselves as superfans, they seemed to be forgetting that Mangum left Neutral Milk Hotel and has stayed out of the public eye for fifteen years because he was overwhelmed by the amount of attention they were getting, so being abrasive in any way, even jokingly, was completely inappropriate. The man wrote a collection of unconventional songs about Anne Frank that is one of the most beloved albums of all time. Show some respect.

Hayley Ricardo