RSSConsumer Guide by Review Date: 2011-07-05
2011-07-05
The Russian Futurists: The Weight's on the Wheels (Upper Class, 2010) Throwing off his electrofuzz duvet, bedroom-pop solitary Matthew Adam Hart ambles over to a handy recording studio, where he dispenses with comforting layers of echo as if he's finally decided to let the obscure objects of his desire understand his intentions. A few tunes do some stretches, and then a young woman decides it's worth her while to look good too. Soon she and Hart are back in the bedroom, but together, spending "the rest of the night under the covers." Hart suffers his usual second thoughts: "I don't even know what it's like to be honest." But the warmth they shared sticks with him. Maybe he's finally decided that in Toronto you need all the warmth you can get. A-
Teddybears: Devil's Music (Big Beat/Atlantic, 2011) Where the nominally similar Gorillaz are cool and detached, Teddybears want the world and they want it soon. Early in the lead track Eve--you remember Eve--utters, in fact sings, "I am the robot Elvis rocking my bionic pelvis/I'm Technotronic sipping vodka tonics yeah I'm selfish/I am the Killer shaking up some more rock and roll," at which point a vocodored Patrick Arve, Joachim Ahlund, or (most likely) Klas Ahlund murmurs, "Them drum machines ain't got no soul." Joke or gauntlet? The cheap answer is both, but let's make it gauntlet. Not afraid to be funny because they're having so much fun, Arve-Ahlund-Ahlund are one more electrobeat-wielding Swedish cartel bent on proving that rock and roll proceeds from enlightened capitalism like we had in America before our plutocrats started expanding the national income gap up past Colombia's. As soon as Eve is through, here come B.o.B. exulting about how he's gon' "Get Mama a House," Wayne Coyne having a go at "Crystal Meth Christians," Cee-Lo and the B-52's praising a pussycat who happens to be named "Cho Cha." There's also some unusually cheerful Krautrock and the antidrug "Cardiac Arrest," featuring the Teddybears' close personal business associate Robyn, who's why they got to make another U.S. album. Last one was Soft Machine, 2006. Sounded good then. Now it sounds like rock and roll busy being reborn. A