Duran Duran- Arena

Duran Duran was one of the first non-metal bands I got into as a budding teenager. My slow segue way  from Judas Priest, Icon, and Scorpions cut-off tees into Spandau Ballet leisure suits was abetted by my friend Mike. He indoctrinated me into the cult of Frankie Goes To Hollywood's "Relax" while conning me into believing I'd meet girls at a Wham concert in Philly, a show that saw them opening, AND closing, with "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go". But at Mike's house, the recurring soundtrack to our suburban malaise was always Duran Duran's Arena, a live record culled from their Sing Blue Silver tour after the release of their Seven and the Ragged Tiger album. Full of really weak vocals from Simon LeBon, ham-fisted riffs from Andy Taylor, and a hastily produced single, "Wild Boys", thrown into the middle of a live set?, it's clear that without the visual images of young attractive Brits to accompany flimsy ditties of unquenchable sex drive, the music loses its vitality. A few DD nuggets are included, "Is There Something I Should Know", "Hungry Like the Wolf", "Save A Prayer", but the exclusion of their hits "Rio", "Girls On Film", and "Reflex" is inexplicable ("Rio" and "Girls On Film" were included as part of the 2004 reissue). John Taylor, Duran Duran's other token pretty boy, is the most musically competent in the group, steadying the band with some fortified bass licks, and free-flowing locks. Arena is one for the vaults, meaning it should literally be sealed in a vault and forgotten about.

Buy this record if you're trying to make sense of your youthful transgressions.

www.duranduran.com

Fergus & Geronimo- Funky Was the State of Affairs

Pop regurgitators engage in pure self-indulgence on this new release. They've quickly segued from garage rockers aping Rolling Stones riffs to a bastardized amalgamation of The Mothers of Invention & Devo, tossing a little New York No Wave into the mix as they navigate a world of aliens, Roman Numerals, and wiretapping on this lo-fi concept album.  Endearing in a "we don't give a shit what anyone thinks" kind of way, ineffectual on a fundamental "we're gonna run with this alien concept idea" level.

Buy this record if your braces start vibrating morse code messages.

hardlyart.com/fergusandgeronimo.html

Twin Shadow- Confess

The chorus for the opening track "Golden Light" sounds eerily similar to the Gerard McMann penned "Cry Little Sister", which many of you would recognize as the theme song for the movie The Lost Boys. Twin Shadow's George Lewis looks vaguely vampirish on the Confess cover and I could imagine him performing The Lost Boys theme song himself if he had been making music back in the 80's. His music is one giant homage to the slickly overproduced hits of that decade. Twin Shadow's success is also allowing Lewis to live out his James Dean motorcycle rebel fantasy, and I must say, the looks suits him just fine. One of the interesting aspects to Lewis' music is the contrast between his guitar playing and his reliance on synth-laden hooks. After seeing Twin Shadow play live it's obvious that Lewis is a very competent guitarist, but buries his playing under a pile of new wave keyboard notes. It's this infatuation with dated sounds that is, at once, both charming and limiting. Prince is also a deceptively agile guitar player who, having always placed song structure above personal affectations, wavered through personas and his own genre nostalgia: soul and funk music. If the comparison between the two has not already been made, it should.  Confess provides more of the same, sonically and thematically, as the debut record Forget, but doesn't display much musical progression. Confess feels like the result of a lot of time on the road, writing at rest stops and in flea bag hotels, recording on a couple off days, touring again, a little writing, recording again while on holiday, etc. I hope that Mr. Lewis finds the time to rest and chart out a musical course because he has the potential for a long and fulfilling career.

Buy this record if you're recruiting future soccer stars from Middlesbrough secondary schools.

twinshadow.net

WITCH- We Intend To Cause Havoc

Remember growing up in the early 70's in the Berkshires? Your parents would drag you out to those all-night parties on the farm with their artist friends? They would tell you that this wasn't the kind of candy you could eat even though they were obviously passing sugar cubes around the table. Strangers would beckon you, saying that time doesn't exist here. They would casually assert that transcendental meditation saved their life in Fez. They would dance in a wild arhythmic fashion, falling, bodies writhing on the floor in a mass of discombobulated flesh. You, being tired and confused, would find your way to the spare bedroom, which had become a temporary coat room, and pass out on the pile of jackets splayed haphazardly across the bed. The only thing you wish you would remember from that night was the music playing on the stereo, that African band who had stolen R&B and psychedelia back from the white man. From what you recall, they were the party.

Buy this record so time will fold in on itself.

www.nowagainrecords.com/witch-we-intend-to-cause-havoc

Dope Body- Natural History

Baltimore's Dope Body deliver a crab pot's worth of dude rock to feast on. They rant like Henry Rollins with a slightly higher self-opinion. They shun cloying political slogans as they Rage Against the Machine. They extol the time signatures of NYC band Battles and prance at the primal pace of Primus.  This is testosterone music for experimental jocks or art school flunkies looking to subvert Led Zeppelin's blues by filtering guitar licks through various effect pedals and laptop programs. Dope Body wears its influences on every groove of Natural History, a prehistoric walk through the halls of near-distant musical relatives.

Buy this record if you're looking for a teen version of Sweating To the Oldies.

dopebody.tumblr.com

The Beach Boys- That's Why God Made the Radio

The endless summer keeps rolling along for these timeless music icons. They lost two-thirds of the Wilson brothers (Dennis and Carl, R.I.P), as well as a good amount of respectability ("Kokomo", John Stamos serving as the band's drummer, the realization that Mike Love is a big dick) along the way, but with Brian Wilson back at the helm the Beach Boys seem to have righted their ship. The course has been reset for more vocal harmony and pop awesomeness. Most of the album is culled from previously written songs, sounding like a cross between the Sunflower and  Love You records with a decidedly nostalgic vibe, and all the surviving original members are on board. There's no doubt that this record sounds like what you'd expect to hear from a crew of 60 year old musicians, but for Beach Boys fans like me, songs like "That's Why God Made the Radio", "Spring Vacation", Isn't It Time", and "The Private Life of Bill and Sue" with the awesome, yet typical Brian Wilson-type opening refrain, "The private life of Bill and Sue/ Can you dig what I'm telling you?", really hit the spot. A lot of musicians talk about making mellow, AOR records, as if it's an act of kitsch, but the Beach Boys live it, and continue to perfect it.

Buy this record if you dig what they're telling you.

www.thebeachboys.com

Ariel Pink & R. Stevie Moore - Ku Klux Glam

A pretty frustrating exercise in recording techniques from two of pop's lo-fi record-making experts. Moore has released over 400 tapes of recorded material over the span of his 40 year career. Pink has been recording experimental pop music for ten years and has often utilized mouth sounds as drum tracks (a fact that emphasizes his lo-fi-ness). Moore has become more experimental as the years pass while Pink's music has become more accessible, yet still quirky.
Before it devolves into a whirlpool of banal banter, song idea snippets, and vocal wankerings, Ku Klux Glam has a handful of fully rewarding moments: the Hedwig's Angry Inch glam of "No Zipper", the haunting "Dutch Me", with Pink's trademark ghostly vocal chorus and casio synth notes, and a little slab of Americana, via the breezy pop of "Come My Way". The rest of Ku Klux Glam is mostly fodder for hard-core fans.

Buy this record if you're trying to eat the icing off a cinnamon bun.

www.rsteviemoore.com
www.arielpink.com