The Natural History - Beat Beat. Heartbeat.

Damn, I love rock & roll. And I love New York. Let me tell you about my weekend. On Friday, I got on stage with a couple of friends and played and sang some Spoon covers. Have you heard Spoon? They’re fantastic! Totally rock, but in a really original, kind of sparse and literate way. Well, the concert was a blast. I wore my rockstar shoes. We threw in a little "Kashmir" quote on "Fitted Shirt." Then, on Sunday, I went to New York City. I was there for several hours, to see the new Tony Kushner. The play was phenomenal, but what really made it worth the trip was just the few minutes walking around in the village, grabbing a falafel at Mamoun’s, even getting lost trying to find the Holland Tunnel (serves us right for trying to drive in Manhattan.) Anyway, great weekend.

I’ve been listening to Room on Fire like, nonstop. It didn’t grab me at first quite as much as the debut, and I’m still not sure it’s as good, certainly it retreads a lot of the same ground, but for now at least I can’t get enough. The way those cheeky little guitar parts intersect with the cheeky bass parts and vocal parts; the preposterous recording quality on the drums and vox. How do they manage to sound so alive and so apathetic at the same time? It’s so ridiculously New York. You know, from living in the city this summer, I didn’t get the sense that the hoohahed ‘rock’ scene is really a thing, which is too bad in a way, but in any case we’ve gotten some great records out of it here in the hinterlands. There’s this band Dopo Yume – maybe you saw them in Olde Club last year? – who have been kind of inexplicably overlooked so far; they sound a lot like the Strokes, but decidedly dancier, and with rather more <3, and their songs are just as catchy and maybe more consistently interesting. They’ll probably blow up sometime soon.

In the meantime, maybe you’d like to hear something about the Natural History? I’ve listened to this record maybe a dozen times this week, and I can tell you it’s pretty solid stuff. Guitar, bass, drums; frills not so much. Sounds like lots of bands, both new (like the ones I mentioned before) and old (like the ones the ones I mentioned before are supposed to sound like.) A lot of it sounds like itself, to be honest – sometimes a song will start and I’ll think it’s the one I just heard – but not in a bad way. It’s like New York, I guess; geez, can you stand those people that think New York is so great? That’s all they want to talk about, the subways and the streets, they think it’s so cool but who really cares?

Where was I? Oh – Beat Beat Heartbeat sounds real catchy while I’m listening to it, but I have to admit not much sticks with me when the record ends. So, buttons? Here’s what: just go to Olde Club on Friday, and check out the Natural History making their triumphant return to campus. You’ll dance and pump your fist and have a great time (remember, standing still isn’t cool anymore.) Who knows, maybe you’ll dig it so much you’ll buy the album, and if so you’ll probably have a blast reliving the show in your room for years to come. And as you leave the show, you’ll most likely be thinking "damn! I love New York, and I love rock and roll!"


Yo La Tengo - Today is the Day EP

I won’t take the time here to argue that YLT are our greatest working band, but man is it arguable. Suffice it to say that no lover of music should be without their two lengthily-titled masterpieces, and their other ten or so albums are fine, fine as well. Their latest full-length, this year’s "Summer Sun," was a suitably shimmering, sweetly downcast soundtrack to much of my Spring, a quiet gem even if several critics interpreted its simpler, mellower approach as evidence of career fatigue and impending mediocrity. As if to dispel any concern that they might be getting soft in their old age (please, they aren’t even twenty years old yet!), here comes the anti-"Sun", bursting out the gate with three noise-drenched slices of bashin’ pop – possibly the toothiest three-song stretch on a YLT release since "Painful." "Styles of the Times" bops as it burns while "Outsmartener" brings a bit of that trendy Eastern flavor. Having proved they’re still rocking with the best (and no doubt, these guys know how to drown the beautifullest melody you’ve heard with enough noise to make you keep on squinting,) the stalwart Hobokenites offer up a cover ("The Needle of Death" – Bert Jansch, anyone? well, it’s an interesting little tune, and Georgia sings) and an instrumental (charming and "Sun"ny) – both obligatory for any Yo La record. But for all this mean meat, what really makes this ep worth hearing are the tracks that lean most suspiciously towards filler: the bookending alternate versions of album cuts. The titular opener, which was among the more hummable moments of "Summer Sun," is recast here in the "Sugarcube" mold; trenchantly rockist, with thick passionate guitars and driving drums that can’t quite disturb Ira’s understated vocal, making for a beguiling mix of agitation and calm. Conversely, the disc closes with a reworking of "Cherry Chapstick" – best known as the solitary slab of straight-up rock that served as the beautiful dot of yang to point up the yin of the otherwise hushed (and brilliant) "And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out." Here it’s slowed to a crawl and stripped down to an acoustic ballad, and it’s as gorgeous as ever. Taken together, these tunes demonstrate something of the consummate craftsmanship behind Yo La Tengo songs – even so dramatically recontextualized, their pure power as songs is undiminished. And if you needed convincing, let this EP demonstrate that Tengo’s talent hain’t gone anywhere either.