Track of the Moment: Gangsta by tUnE-yArDs

           Okay I’m going to level with you, Internet.  I took a lot of pictures at the Roots Picnic John, Elliot and I attended.  We had a really good time, and saw quite a few good acts.  I wrote about St. Vincent last time, and now I’m going to give tUnE-yArDs a spot.  Much like Annie Clark, Merrill Garbus is no stranger to the blog.  Actually, they have both been mentioned the same amount of times for the same reasons.  Elliot wrote about her first album.  Steve wrote about her a while back, as well as making them both honorable mentions for his 2011 album of the year, and she showed up on the now infamous 210 list.  Now I’m evening them out once again.  (Not to I had the same bone to pick with Ms. Garbus as I did with Ms. Clark, but you’ll have to read the last article to hear about that.)  Although they both seem to come up together the only thing they really have in common is they are both beautiful, and talented girls making great music. 

            tUnE-yArDs blows my mind every time I hear her.  She makes all those sounds you hear in the album.  No siren, no pre recorded sounds, just her amazing voice, the instruments, and a loop peddle.  It’s was like hearing a perfectly produced album being recorded right there.  Making noises isn't necessarily impressive, but it's what she's able to do with them.  It's like one of those giant lego statues at lego land.  A pile of legos isn't very impressive or cool, but piece them into this and it's pretty amazing.  The beats are so infatuating, and it didn’t take long for the whole crowd, who didn’t seem like they previously heard this music, to be dancing like mad.  That’s what happens when you have music as down-to-the-core fun as tUnE-yArDs.  It may not be your kind of music, but once it’s on who cares?  It’s funky, kooky, and fun.  What more do you want?

            She played 5 tracks from w h o k i l l at the show, and in one of them she sampled the crowd noise.  That’s right we got to be part of a tUnE-yArDs song, and the three of us didn’t miss the opportunity singing (some might say screaming) along to some VERY FUN MUSIC.  I’m glad I FINNALLY got to see her, and hopefully I never miss a chance to again.  Now fill your ears with this noise!

New Album from Four (cough) Weeks Ago: BiRd-BrAiNs by tUnE-yArDs

Before I start, I wanted to give a quick note. Technically Tune-Yards is stylized tUnE-yArDs, Bird-Brains is stylized BiRd-BrAiNs, and Whokill is stylized W H O K I L L, but if I write them that way every time, my word-processor is going to become sentient and murder me. Also, as usual I am sorry I was a week late, I suck (you just get to enjoy two this week :D ).

This Saturday, several members of the blog (I think everyone except for Eric) are going to the Root’s Picnic at Penn’s Landing in Philly. To say I am excited is an understatement. Not only is James Murphy (of LCD Soundsystem) doing a DJ set, but St. Vincent and Tune-Yards are also performing on top of many other amazing bands. Now, we at the blog have gone to a heck of a lot of concerts this past year. Every time we debate which concert was best, Tune-Yards and St. Vincent are universally agreed to be the top two, with former barely edging out the later (Man Man is disqualified from the debate because I become violent if anyone claims that either concert wasn’t the best concert of all time).

I unfortunately missed the Tune-Yards concert, yet any long time reader (I.E. no one except for Eric) will know that I saw St. Vincent and loved the crap out of that show. Needless to say, I am excited to see Tune-Yards seeing as the rest of the blog claims that they are better. So you can imagine how excited I am for Saturday.

So what made Tune-Yards a better concert than St. Vincent? Both are solo projects by strong female singers, Merrill Garbus and Anne Clark respectively, so they must sound exactly the same. Ah, but how wrong you are you ignorant music fan! Not all female solo acts sound like the homogenous mass I like to call Lady Katie Clarkson.

 According to my co-bloggers, Tune-Yards was simply more fun than St. Vincent. The concert was more like a party than anything else; people just started dancing like mad. Whole sections of the audience jumped up on stage with the band and just started dancing with them. They weren’t thrown off the stage, Tune-Yards just started dancing with them while continuing to play. According to Steve, St. Vincent might have been a better performance, but the Tune-Yards show was one of a kind.

I don’t need to know my friends as well I do to trust their take on Tune-Yards, I can tell from her music. Whokill is one of the best albums of last year. Not only is it amazing artistically, it just makes you want to get up and dance. It has this light-hearted joy to it that makes it fun to listen to. I can only imagine how crazy it must be to listen to live. I doubt that Saturday will be anything like the concert I described above because it is going to be in a festival setting, but I am sure that I am going to have a heck of a lot of fun.

Thinking about Tune-Yards music this week made me wonder why her music is so fun. There are so many different emotions that music makes people feel, but fun is rarely one of them. Upbeat, kick-ass, pumped, happy, ready to party, and relaxed for sure, but fun? I don’t know how but they do it but even her mellow songs have a playful quality to them.

I think Tune-Yards’ music is fun because it feels like kids music made for adults. It has a youthful energy and dynamic to it that is akin to music in kid’s movies and TV shows, yet it has the complexity and depth of more mature music. I might be completely full of crap, but I feel like it bridges the gap between the playful energy of a child’s imagination and seriousness of the adult world. In short, Tune-Yards is music for your inner child.

Connecting childhood to Tune-Yards is not completely unfounded. Both of her albums, Whokill and Birdbrains, feature samples of children. It is important to note that these are not choirs, or focused lines from children like most songs, but straight up kids talking. Garbus also does a lot of work to support youth programs in the arts. Both of her music videos feature a whole bunch of kids from one of said programs. The videos are just a bunch of kids and Garbus up to crazy antics, dancing around and making faces. When kids aren’t on screen, the adults on screen are acting like kids. If those videos aren’t proof that Tune-Yards loves kids I don’t know what is. Check out the video for My Country below.

Somehow Garbus is somehow able to capture the antics of childhood in her music. Is it is the high tempo and strong drumming? Maybe it is the way she sings, an intricate mixture of softly serenading, rapidly chirping, and powerfully bellowing? Or perhaps it is the energetic guitar and ukulele riffs that repeat over and over? I really don’t know; she really doesn’t do any specific techniques that I haven’t heard before. What she does do is put it together in a way that creates a really unique sound that makes me yearn for recess.

I picked up Bird-Brains for the same reason that I picked up St. Vincent’s Marry Me; I wanted to check out the debut album of an artist I love. The thing with picking up a debut album after listening to an artist’s later work is that you will inevitably compare it to their later stuff. While comparing an artist’s varying albums is usually natural, it is unfair in this context. I listened to Bird-brains wanting it to be just like Whokill, just like I did with Marry Me and Strange Mercy. I originally didn’t like it because it wasn’t quite as strong of an album as Whokill, one of the best albums of last year. However, I forced myself to try to appreciate it without considering Whokill and grew to love it.

Bird-Brains is a really interesting album. It might be the most lo-fi album I have ever listened to given that it was recorded on a recycled cassette tape using a dictation machine without a bass guitar. Given its limitations, the album is extremely impressive. Besides the obvious poor sound quality, something that is part of the album’s charm, it is impossible to tell that it is just Garbus and not a full band. It is busting with musical ideas. It so desperately wants to be more than it is but cannot manage it with the equipment that it had to work with. It literally sounds like the cassette is filled to the brim, it cannot physically handle any more musicality and artistry. Switching between the two albums I just can’t help but feel like Whokill is simply Bird-Brains freed from its shackles.

At the same time however, Bird-Brains is not nearly as good as Whokill, even considering the limitations. Yet, that is only natural given that the former is a debut album and the latter is almost a masterpiece. Bird-Brains lacks a bit of the sophistication and artistry of its successor. However, the two albums are actually remarkably similar. The energy and style of Whokill is pervasive throughout Bird-Brains, all that was needed was a bit of time to mature. Unlike St. Vincent on Marry Me, Tune-Yards is not trying to find her sound, rather execute it.

Like Whokill, Bird-Brains consists of one amazing track after another. every song on the album is excellent. It never relents, never sags. I am a huge fan of Lions; the drum beat is so simple yet really drives the song. Also it has the line “While my brother and all his friends whip out their tiny teenage cocks” which is absolutely fantastic (and kind of creepy). John is a huge fan of Hatari which has some awesome bellowing and a really wonderful end section. News, Sunlight, and Jumping Jack, are all bursting with energy and make me want to dance. However, the best song on the album is definitely Fiya, seen below. Fiya has everything I could want in a Tune-Yards song, it starts off soft and peaceful and builds into a massive song that makes my inner child boogie. The drum beat is huge and wonderful and the riffs are to die for; the song is really fantastic.

The one exception I have when I claim that every track is amazing is its lead track, For You. I admit that I am not a huge fan of For You simply because it features a long sample of Garbus and a little boy AFTER the song. I know it is picky but it would have been a great opener it if the two were reversed. These types of decisions really bother me on some tracks; I hate the fact that Neon Bible ends with My Body is a Cage and not Antichrist Television Blues. But that is just me picking at strings.

If you haven’t heard of Tune-Yards before but liked either of the above songs, you should definitely grab Whokill because that album is really fantastic. If you are familiar with Whokill, then I can’t recommend Bird-Brains enough. Once you get over the extreme lo-fi sound, it is a really great album. That being said, if lo-fi is not your jam then Bird-Brains is not for you. Either way listen to tUnE - yArDs and let your inner child out for some fresh air.

Goff's Pick of the Week- w h o k i l l by tUnE-yArDs

As someone who doesn’t curse much, it is hard to exactly put into words just how good I think Merrill Garbus and her project tUnE-yArDs is. There is something so ridiculously crazy about the way she goes about making music that to even try to describe it would be equivalent to explaining rock and roll to Victorian England. It would go something like this, “How do you think a orchestra with just guitar drums and bass would sound if they played two note chords and had someone sing over top of that?. The genius of tUnE-yArDs is equally difficult to quantify and is as equally foreign to modern music as rock to the Victorians would be. How do you think a band with just a bassist and a singer would sound if they performed over two saxophonists and loops of yelps, yells, ukulele, and the sound of common woodblocks bottles and tin cans being hit with sticks? It turns out they sound pretty darn good. Garbus’ songs hover somewhere between surreal and sublime, taking often absurd lyrics and always absurd instrumentation and matching them with a voice that could best be described as being as bipolar as Charlie Sheen. There are two singers on tUnE-yArDs albums, and both of them are Merrill Garbus. In her arsenal she has two different sounds, both unique and with their own style. One style, which can be heard in its most pure form on one of my favorite tracks “Doorstep” from Garbus’ most recent release  w h o k i l l, is angelic and sweet but at the same time very punctuated and rhythmic. This voice comes from another age, its like a fifth lost member of The Shangri-Las got dug up from a time capsule and then thrust into a recording studio. And while this voice is nice, it rides back seat to what I’ve affectionately been calling the “Garbus Growl” a low down voice that is comparable what a talking dog might sing given the chance. What’s more, it’s powerful, that’s the only single word that best describes what a voice that has more attitude than most punk tracks , the most powerful voice I’ve heard in a long time. And did I mention she switches between the two on the fly?

Another aspect of Garbus’ work that is so impressive are the lyrics; not only in quality (and boy are they good) but in the aesthetic that they present, and how it blends and contrasts with her voice and appearance. They mostly focus on violence and how different people are uprooted and caught up in a world that isn’t always sunshine and rainbows. It goes hand in hand with her powerful voice, which are both set in contrast against how she presents herself.  Garbus comes across as someone who is soft spoken, a little shy maybe, but overall charming and adorable. For someone who has heard and not seen Garbus, to hear her be called soft spoken must be laughable, but there is a little truth in it. And how do the lyrics tie in? They only further confuse the listener, I found myself being confused on my first listen of w h o k I l l by violent anthems like Gangsta and Riotriot, which can catch a person off guard. There is definitely a dissonance between how the songs are presented and what they are actually about, which is by no means a bad thing. It makes for a very compelling listen that keeps drawing its audience back in for more, which is especially rewarding when there is something new for the listener to hang their hat on with each spin of the record.