The Daytrotter Index
A Week With Thom Yorke's "The Eraser": Day 5
30 July 06
Words by Hannah Clemens//Illustration by Shannon Palmer
I feel compelled to confess at the last that yes, I had a leaked copy of “The Eraser.” Like any good bootlegger, I bought the album on its release date, but that does not excuse the fact that I had the album in advance and therefore had an unfair advantage when writing this review. But truth be told, it took me at least five listens to really like “The Eraser.” All the problems I described over the last four days annoyed me to no end at first, but when I finally let this album work its way under my skin I began to hear what was behind all that. It crept out, little by little, in the way the layered “ooh”s add an orchestral quality to the chorus of the title track, or the way several songs have delayed endings that stutter along, as if getting a second wind before they succumb to entropy.
The Donkeys
The Donkeys: Scruffiness Comes In All Forms, Even As Men Play Songs And Lakes Dress Up Like Mirrors
30 July 06
Words by Sean Moeller//Illustration by Johnnie Cluney
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There’s a line in ‘C’mon Virginia,” a song off of the debut album by San Diego’s The Donkeys where singer/drummer Sam Sprague sings, “You’ve got those eyes/Seems you could throw a penny in ‘em,” that somehow makes it all sink in. It’s a simple piece of lyric that’s only supposed to be about a dame batting some pretty blue, cavernous eyes, but the calming and delightful way that the bushy Sprague lays it out makes you want to imagine the young band as a neverland of sorts, a place to lose yourself completely without a bread crumb or popcorn trail to lead you back. Everything they do is reminiscent to a quiet pier, a tranquil lake that looks like it’s make of mirrors or a shady yard with a spacious oak tree and a tire swing dangling down from a creaky branch. They are easy living and virtuous. They’re in favor of bringing back the good old days and the soda fountains. They support cookouts and beer from the bottle. They are gentle beings who believe in country, folk, roots and rock as much as they do peace, love and dope.
Listening to their lone album, you bear witness to the idea of what it must be like to be completely assured, to be connected to that one part of your makeup that’s beyond reproach, that is your true constitution any way you cut it. They are sympathetic to their inner motors and drive shafts, which leads to the delivery of songs of innumerable pleasures and sleepy acquiescence. It’s given to the listener with resounding love marks and invisible kisses, put down on record as triumphs that aren’t belabored or trite. These are songs that have ancestors aplenty, but their shared features and distinctive markings are few.
A Week With Thom Yorke's "The Eraser": Day 4
28 July 06
Words by Hannah Clemens//Illustration by Shannon Palmer
Nigel Godrich could well be the most influential producer of his
generation, thanks in large part to the time he has spent with
Radiohead. Producing Beck and Sir Paul on the side hasn’t hurt, but when I say influential I’m really talking about the clout he has inside the studio. Artists including Yorke respect Godrich enough to treat him like an additional member of the band (he performed with Yorke and Jonny Greenwood on a TV appearance last Saturday, in fact), and he seems to possess an awful lot of creative control on “The Eraser.” According to various interviews, Yorke came to Godrich at the beginning of the session with a whole lot of fragments and samples, and the producer was integral in turning those snippets into songs.
Aziz Ansari
Aziz Ansari: Really, Is That How You Eat A Pizza?
28 July 06
Words by Sean Moeller//Illustration by Erica Parrott
Love it or leave it, Pitchfork – the online music magazine that’s referred to as the gold standard in criticism – is our hub. It’s the place we usually take our morning coffee or bagel for a walk in front of. It’s loud and bossy, arrogant and influential and utterly necessary for any band worth its salt to begin to scratch the surface and weasel its way, albeit tremulously, into the brighter lights. A positive rating and a flattering review can turn Little Miss Nobody into an instant starlet. They can make sure that Sunset Rubdown and Voxtrot are no longer groundlings, but hot commodities driving the industry suits bananas. They stir craze better than anyone not working for New Musical Express.
And while our good buddies Sunset Rubdown and our future compadres Voxtrot are in Chicago this weekend kicking off the first (official – in 2005 it went by the title of the Intonation Festival before a rancorous splintering helped to make the Windy City festival central this summer) Pitchfork Music Festival, there’s more to appreciate than just great indie rock bands. Ever heard of a bad ass dude named Eugene Mirman? Yeah, he’s great. Ever heard of a funny ass dude named Aziz Ansari? Yeah, he’s just as great.
A Week With Thom Yorke's "The Eraser"
A Week With Thom Yorke's "The Eraser": Day 3
27 July 06
Words by Hannah Clemens//Illustration by Shannon Palmer
A few astute journalists have pointed out that the name on this album is misleading: it ought to say “Thom Yorke and Friends” on the cover. It’s true that Jonny Greenwood is responsible for the sampled piano chords of the title track, and many other samples on “The Eraser” came from bits of Radiohead soundchecks that Yorke stored on his computer for years. And when he first announced the album’s impending release, Yorke decreed that it was not to be called a solo album. All of that raises an important question. What’s the difference between these songs and Radiohead songs? Those who believe Yorke’s voice makes Radiohead what it is are liable to say there is no difference, that the frontman’s distinctive style and paranoid lyrics could have make these songs candidates for Radiohead’s next LP.
Shapes and Sizes review
Shapes and Sizes: Children Going Mad
27 July 06
Words by Gabe Durham//Illustration by Jorge Tapia
Indie roll call! We’ve got some Jenny Lewis-like female vocals from Calia Thompson, and just like in Lewis’ Rilo Kiley, Shapes & Sizes sound best with Thompson at the forefront. There’s some Danielson Familesque production in which vocals move in and out of the forefront, the lead is traded between the three singers, and wacky touches like a tuneless whistling solo (“Wilderness”) are always around the corner. The better of the male singer sounds like the lead singer of Bedroom Walls. There’s some early Modest Mouse-like atonality in there. Plus they’re Canadian like the Arcade Fire. That’s all the ways to pigeonhole Shapes and Sizes that I can think of for now. But the comparisons don’t do justice to Shapes and Sizes’ self-titled debut. This band has come up with a mixed bag that is entirely their own. The album starts strong with “Island’s Gone Bad,” a quiet melancholy tune that jumps into a frolicky rocker.
Chappelle's Show Season 3-ish review
Chappelle's Show: Season 3-ish Is The Nirvana Boxed Set All Over Again, Except For That Scene With The Tyrannosaurus Rex Hatching
26 July 06
Words by Sean Moeller//Illustration by Ryan Flynn
My mom wouldn’t know Dave Chappelle if he came up to her and slapped her across the face. Even if she did know who he was – the $50-plus million dollar man and America’s great runaway story of 2005-06 – she wouldn’t like him. She wouldn’t think anything he said was funny. She would call it stupid. It’s an assessment reserved for no one. Will Ferrell’s stupid. Peyton Manning’s stupid. Aquateen Hunger Force is stupid. Everything Evil Knievel’s ever done is stupid. She’s universal in her labels. But my mother would love these last three lost episodes of Chappelle’s Show, along with the blooper reel, VH1-styled “Making of Season 3-ish” documentary of those left at the show finding whatever unused footage they can from a computer’s hard drive and deleted skits that Comedy Central released on DVD two days after the third episode aired. She’d eat this up because – for better or for worse – she’s a completist and those are the only people who really needed this season-ish to happen and for it to become purchasable.
A Week With Thom Yorke's "The Eraser": Day 2
26 July 06
Words by Hannah Clemens//Illustration by Shannon Palmer
The angriest song Thom Yorke has ever written is on this album, though you might be hard-pressed to find it. No, it’s not the menacing stalker diatribe of “Skip Divided” or the fed-up declarations of “Black Swan.” It’s the eerie, slightly drowsy slope of “Harrowdown Hill,” written about David Kelly, the U.N. weapons inspector whose death on the titular hill was ruled a suicide after an allegedly insufficient investigation. “Where’s the blood?” Yorke demands, before the song spirals out of control and he repeats, “I felt me slipping in and out of consciousness.” His outrage is clear, but unlike much of the politically-charged music released in the past year, he focused his anger to the finest possible point and “Harrowdown Hill” is effective because of that attention to detail.
A Week With Thom Yorke's "The Eraser": Day 1
25 July 06
Words by Hannah Clemens//Illustration by Shannon Palmer
It’s hard not to suspect that Thom Yorke might be having a good laugh at our expense. After all, throughout the short period of recording “The Eraser” last year, he offered no hint of the project’s existence, not a peep to tease us until the middle of May. Then and only then did W.A.S.T.E. members, who thought they were waiting for a new Radiohead album, receive a cryptic e-mail with a link to an even more cryptic website. Then the whole thing leaked in June – was it an ingeniously subversive marketing ploy of his own devising, or an honest bugger-up on the label’s behalf? The world may never know. Now that “The Eraser” is officially available, anyone with fortitude enough to wait until the release date is liable to be astonished anew.
Regina Spektor "Begin To Hope" review
Regina Spektor: "Begin To Hope"
24 July 06
Words by Sean Moeller//Illustration by Shannon Palmer
Regina Spektor needn’t have that piano in front of her. I repeat, she doesn’t need any help. It’s a superfluous prop that serves as an apostrophe-shaped, wooden box on stage and as room decoration everywhere else. It emits what her fingers want it to, but it’s a gratuity. What we’re here for is the beautiful New Yorker’s effervescent voice, which comes across as stained glass windows do in a bright sun storm and as a diamond refracted. It’s spell-binding and orgasmic. How she makes it sound like that and still get it to carry on like the purity of the trade winds is beyond intelligence.
“Begin To Hope,” Spektor’s second album and major label debut, is another momentous piece of pulsating confection that flutters, drips like candlestick wax, shocks, goes on adventurous lyrical benders and knocks you flat on your ass. She’s America’s best-kept secret, hands-down. She creates a world all her own with nearly every song on the disc, which is the true pursuit of anyone who sets out as a writer or artist. Her music is akin to a bearskin rug—abnormal, warm, soft to the touch and unable to ignore. Forget the elephant, it’s the bearskin rug in the room that’s the Regina-approved idiom.
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