Kiotti & other: June 2008

Thursday 26 June 2008

Pharrell Williams calls The Strokes 'genius' at London signing

N.E.R.D's Pharrell Williams has described The Strokes as "a genius band", after Albert Hammond, Jr. responded positively to his suggestions that he produce the New York group.

The producer and singer spoke at London's clothing boutique The Hideout, where the group were signing copies of their new album 'Seeing Sounds'.

The store, which attracted hundreds of fans to the signing, also stocks Williams' clothing ranges Ice Cream and Billionaire Boys Club.

Speaking to NME.COM, Williams said: "Julian [Casablancas] and I have already worked together, of course I would be up for [producing the band].

"I would work with Julian in a heartbeat, in a heartbeat. They are a genius band, a genius band."

Check out NME.COM's Office blog later for the inside story on the signing, including snaps of Williams and his expensive clothes ranges.

Wednesday 18 June 2008

Sparks, Exotic Creatures Of The Deep

One almost despairs at the thought of reviewing another great Sparks album. 21 albums into one of the most idiosyncratic careers in pop/rock and the Mael brothers remain firmly on the periphery; such is the place to reside when you consistently and annoyingly demonstrate original thinking. The impossibility of pigeonholing the pair makes most people run for the hills. But the brave amongst us know for a fact that next to no one is making such criminally underrated and startlingly original music, in any genre, these days.

The last two albums, Lil' Beethoven and Hello Young Lovers, were filled with cod-operatic, Reichian repetitive odes to fickle humanity, love and vanity. Exotic Creatures is filled with yet more biting commentary. The title is presumably a reference to the characters dredged up in the songs therein. There's the guy whose girlfriend rejects him because he's not as deep as Morrissey (Lighten Up Morrissey); the amnesiac party animal who can't remember the identity of the girl next to him (Good Morning); the complete non-party animal (I Never Got High); or even the porn star at the center of The Director Never Yelled 'Cut'. And then there's the evisceration of modern manners. How about Photoshop - a tale of the ease with which we airbrush our past lives, or let The Monkey drive, which may or may not be about srvitude and decadence? There's even a song about the Rennaisance, called simply This Is The Renaissance. Dumb pop, this is not.

Stylistically it's slightly more varied than the previous two albums. The same staccato piano and electronica template with multi-tracked choirs of Russell holds sway, but there are also heavy guitars (courtesy of Dean Manta) and even a return to the barbershop and swing pastiches of the 70s glory years. Best of all there's the glitter stomp of the brilliantly-titled I Can't Believe You Would Fall For All The Crap In This Song. But in the end words fail to do justice to the odball greatness of this band. Undoubtedly the live performances of this album will be the usual multimedia extravaganza: Everyone is urged to attend. Such special, intelligent pop cannot bear indifference forever.

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Monday 9 June 2008

My Morning Jacket's Evil Urges 'Was The Hardest Record We've Ever Made,' Says Jim James

"We almost broke up the band," My Morning Jacket drummer Patrick Hallahan joked on the topic of the laborious sequencing process for the new record, Evil Urges. But joking aside, the band makes it clear that the recording process was far from easy this go-round.

"It was the hardest record we've ever made. We did have a lot of fun in the conceiving of it — but in the making, it was more like work," lead singer Jim James explained. "It was just like kind of slamming at it — working with sounds and trying to get it to work out."

While James typically demos new material on his own, the recording process for the Louisville rockers' new album had a few more stages than usual. About 25 demos were presented to the band for realization in a lax Colorado atmosphere.

"I thought there'd be songs on the record that [in the end] didn't even make the record," said James. "A lot of the songs don't work out — but some of them work out great that you didn't think would work out." And after a month or two of fiddling around in Colorado, it was on to New York for the actual recording.

This time, the pressures of recording in a New York studio, as opposed to their usual Louisville spots, added some creative restrictions. "I think we're more used to working on our [own] terms ... just the pressure of having an end point added a different edge to our workday because before, we could just record whenever the feeling hit," Hallahan said of the problems they faced.

"From, like, noon to midnight, we could only be in the studio for 12 hours," James added. "We didn't want it to be an electronic-sounding record. I wanted it to be organic — [just] a band playing. And to do that on some of the songs, it took a lot of takes and a lot of time, miking, getting everything worked out so it would be ... almost to halfway trick you into thinking it was a drum machine. But it's not. It's a person playing. But trying to do that in the real world took a lot of time."

Due in stores June 10, Evil Urges is a hodgepodge of different sounds and genres that coalesce nicely into a new My Morning Jacket package. It won't be the opus to launch them into superstardom, but it continues what has been their slow upward trajectory to the top echelon of American rock.

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