Liechtenstein

This track has become a staple on the ol' show lately, and I was about to mention how well they sound after The Raveonettes. Good thing I did a bit of fact checking, because in fact the only bands that have preceded them are Ratatat, Sonic Youth, and CSS. Being from Sweden, Liechtenstein probably don't want to be compared to those aforementioned Danes, but I didn't make that comparison. Liechtenstein play sugar-free, bubblegum bedroom pop: not too sweet, but instantly endearing. No nonsense. No frills. Just charming vocal harmonies and a steady beat, all sounding like it's coming from the garage of the girl next door.

Dag Nasty

Among my punk friends your credibility diminishes in direct correlation to each subsequent Dag Nasty album you profess to enjoy. Those punk friends then, according to their criteria, are much more punk than I. "Can I Say" (the beginning and end of Dag Nasty for my punk-er friends) and "Wig Out at Denko's" stand out as my favorites by far, but "Field Day" played hand in hand with those first two albums on my desert road trips to and from college over the years (Although to this day, I still haven't ripped it to my computer—that's changing today though. I mean, come on, the opening lines to the title track are, "Here on the beach I've got the sun / I've got the surf, I've got Mexican food. Life don't get better than that!). The shift in sound between "Can I Say" and "Wig Out at Denko's" occurs mostly in the albums' tempos and vocal styles. On the second record, the band slows things down a notch and singer Peter Cortner sings more often than he yells on "Wig Out at Denko's." The transformation continues on "Field Day." Basically, the band continued to add more melodic elements to its hardcore sound, thus they're often cited as one of the bands that influenced later emo bands (I threw up in my mouth a little bit just using that term. Ugh.). . . . I just axed most of this review. Rehashing the band's history was boring me, and hell, anyone could find that info online, or listen to the music and make up their own mind on whether or not Dag Nasty is a band they'll enjoy. It's sad because this post doesn't do justice to the band, nor to their influence on my life. It's close to impossible to talk about bands that mean a lot to me in a space so small (see my Lloyd Cole post as another example). I could organize an entire memoir around these Dag Nasty records. Dag Nasty dominated my stereo when I met Alisa. "Four on the Floor" came out the year of my first radio show. The people and bands I worked with during the first half of this decade were likewise influenced by the band, and I expect the connections I made with Dag Nasty as their soundtrack will last a lifetime.

Echo Chamber: Leonard Cohen

Photo by Kathryn Yu

"I was reading a review of a movie called Watchmen that uses it, and the reviewer said, 'Can we please have a moratorium on 'Hallelujah' in movies and television shows?' And I kind of feel the same way. I think it's a good song, but too many people sing it."

-- Leonard Cohen, apparently not a big "American Idol" fan. (via The Guardian)

Rising: The Antlers

Led by 23-year-old Brooklynite Peter Silberman (pictured above at center), the Antlers make what Pitchfork's Brian Howe called "grandiose yet intimate indie rock" in a favorable review of their track "Bear" from the band's Hospice LP. Thanks to the album's heavy and deathly subject matter and Silberman's quivering croon, the Antlers have garnered many comparisons to Arcade Fire. And it's hard to ignore the way both groups can turn fatalism into something uplifting. (Hospice was partially inspired by Silberman's experiences visiting a loved one in a children's cancer ward.)

Though Silberman has been making bedroom recordings on his own for a while, Hospice is primed to be his breakout. Originally self-released, Hospice will be re-released in a remastered format by Frenchkiss on August 18, and the band are heading out on tour with Frightened Rabbit at the end of the month. (They'll hit the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago on July 18.) We recently gave the singer-songwriter a call to find out more about what inspired Hospice and the secret to making powerful music out of feelings of powerlessness:

Pitchfork: Where do you live?

Peter Silberman: I moved to Brooklyn two years ago. I was living with someone in Manhattan for about a year and a half before that, but we broke up and I didn't want to stay there.

Pitchfork: I read that you shut yourself off from the world while making Hospice-- did that happen around the time of the breakup?

PS: I actually shut myself away for about a year and a half before the breakup, right when I got to Manhattan. When you move to a new place it's a good idea to socialize, but I did the exact opposite. I ruined a lot of friendships. Then I started recording the album.

Pitchfork: A year and a half is a long time to not really interact with people. What was the longest stretch you didn't go out?

PS: That entire time.

Pitchfork: So if one of your friends had, like, a going away party, you wouldn't go?

PS: Right [laughs]. I bailed on a lot of people more or less against my will. And, eventually, no one was talking to me. You convince yourself: "Oh, maybe this is how life is when you get older." Then, when you suddenly realize that that's not the case, you're like, "Wow, I really fucked up."

Pitchfork: So you started recording Hospice once you moved to Brooklyn.

PS: Yeah. It was mostly recorded in my bedroom-- a very basic, semi-functional home studio setup. Like, we couldn't even set up an entire drum set-- we recorded each drum separately and pieced it together. I worked on it all day, every day for about a year and about halfway through the band solidified and started playing on it. We finished the record last August.

Pitchfork: The whole thing was recorded in your bedroom?

PS: Well, I don't like recording vocals around other people because I fuck up a lot and yell at myself. So I brought my recording stuff up to my parent's house in Westchester, where I could scream and curse a lot [laughs].

Pitchfork: Were your parents home at the time?

PS: They were not.

Pitchfork: The themes that tie the album together-- cancer, hospitals, death--  are dire. Were you self-conscious about trying to prevent the record from becoming too much of a downer?

PS: I thought about that a lot. It's tricky to tackle that kind of subject matter and not be completely depressing. Like, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is a pretty dark album, but there's this weird hope in it that you can't really put your finger on. It's easy to make something really depressing, but I like stories where things dip to their lowest and then rise out of it. That sounds so corny, but the trick is to make it more than a Lifetime movie.

Hospice was a product of sorting through a lot of dramatic, life-changing things that had happened in a very short period of time. I spent a lot of time in a hospital with someone-- I tend not to go into the specifics for the sake of anyone involved. But it's a very bizarre environment, especially cancer wards. In particular, I was in the children's ward, which is very intense. But there's still so much positivity there. I think Hospice has a happy ending-- the takeaway point is not necessarily the damage done, but the self-determination.

"Bear" from the Hospice LP, remastered version out August 18 on Frenchkiss

"Two" from the Hospice LP, remastered version out August 18 on Frenchkiss

MP3:> The Antlers: "Two"

Video: Phoenix Live on the Interface

When I say Phoenix can do no wrong nowadays, it's not just because they created my favorite album of the year thus far and got a crowd of jaded Brooklynites positively giddy at a show last month. It's because of smaller things like their performance on Spinner's Interface series, too.

They do acoustic versions of Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix's "Lisztomania" and "1901", and It's Never Been Like That's "One Time Too Many". And while the Wolfgang tracks still kill without all the studio fireworks, "One Time Too Many" is the real highlight, its lilting melancholy lending itself perfectly to an unplugged treatment.

In 2009, there's no such thing as too much Phoenix:

"Lisztomania"

"1901"

"One Time Too Many"

New Release: High Places/Soft Circle: Split

Artist: High Places and Soft Circle
Release: Split 12"
Release Date: July 21
Label: Post Present Medium

Tracklist:

01 High Places: "Late Bloomer"
02 Soft Circle: "Light Bright"
03 Soft Circle: "Don't Just Stand There"

Notes: Split 12" from two impressionistic New York psych-pop projects. Only available on vinyl and limited to 1000 copies.

Media: Stream High Places' "Late Bloomer" here.

News in Brief: Girl Talk, Ghostface Killah, Rye Rye, Bestival

Photo by Eirik Lande

-- If you have a gigantic pile of empty Squirt! soda cans sitting around somewhere, then you can go see Girl Talk for free in Pomona! At the mash-up master's July 24 show at the Fox Theatre, people who bring at least 36 empty cans or bottles of Squirt! will get free admission. If you bring 100 or more, you get VIP access or admission to a meet-and-greet with Greg Gillis himself. That's a lot of Squirt! All those empty cans somehow benefit Habitat for Humanity. Someone please take pictures of all the kids who roll up with backpacks full of empties. Details here.

UPDATE: Only one empty can or bottle of Squirt! is now required for free admission to the show. Guess they actually want people to show up?

-- Urb reports that Ghostface Killah has teamed up with writers Marlon Chapman and Shauna Garr and artist Chris Walker to pen a graphic novel. Cell Block Z follows the story of a star boxer who gets framed for murder and is sent to a high-tech super-prison, where he then becomes a superhero named (wait for it) Ghostface Killah. Someone, I take it, really enjoyed Undisputed II: Last Man Standing but thought it needed more chemical experimentation. Cell Block Z is due from the Hachette Book Group on July 29. (Via the Daily Swarm)

-- M.I.A.'s 17-year-old Baltimore club protege Rye Rye has dropped off of A-Trak's summer tour. The reason? She's pregnant, as she revealed on her blog yesterday. (Via Rolling Stone)

-- September 11-13, Bestival will take over England's Isle of Wight. The bill includes Kraftwerk, MGMT, Fleet Foxes, Dirty Projectors, Massive Attack, Elbow, Doves, Klaxons, Lily Allen, Bat for Lashes, Diplo, Passion Pit, and more.