tUnE-yArDs

Rob Harvilla talks to Merrill Garbus (tUnE-yArDs) over at the Village Voice about, among other things, Vampire Weekend and African music.

Fwiw, I still haven't listened to her record -- I think I may have heard clips, but I did see her live opening for Dirty Projects last fall, and having known nothing of her beforehand, I left really impressed. The whole crowd seemed impressed.

Apparently this is a typical reaction. From the VV interview:

I first saw you at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, opening for the Dirty Projectors. The crowd was sort of aloof and indifferent when you started, and then totally rapt and in love with you by the time you were done. Do you have a sense onstage of winning over a crowd like that? Can you feel that bond intensifying in real-time?

Yeah, definitely. I went to school for theater at Smith College—I definitely honed the ability to demand attention. I guess I've become less comfortable with waiting for it. When I first started doing music, I was doing open mics, which were a similar kind of thing, like, "Get people's attention or die": Get people's attention in the first five minutes—or 30 seconds—or be ignored and not get any tips. And also street performance, which I did in the subways in Montreal. It's a survival technique for sure, and now I feel like I've come to make that part of the thing. It doesn't always happen, but it happens 90 percent of the time these days, and I have a feeling that's because I do demand that of audiences. I say, "If you're here, then be here. If you're here, then be part of this thing, or walk out of this room, which is also fine."

*Dirty Projectors, obv

i had the opposite reaction when i saw TuNeYaRdZ: i was totally impressed from the very first song but got pretty bored about halfway through

i think there's a lot of potential but at the moment the songs seem too formulaic and samey

i took a shot at it
she's amazing live.

Holy shit that first video.

http://stereogum.com/638092/tune-yards-bizzness/mp3s/

Well?

sounds great, digging the step up in production

love this track, have not heard produced version hitting play now thank you for this owen!

okay i prefer the rawer screamy version
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcmJnNYAkFI
though this is nice and dense and the horns really help and it gains on second listen. they're different animals?
very psyched for new album

sounds great, digging the step up in production

courtesy of the great eli crews and new, improved in oakland!

this makes me feel uncomfortable don't know if i want to listen to it again. like crazy person music

I have a feeling that I'll miss the dictaphone styles of the first record
But then I realized I could just re-record the album onto a dictaphone
If I ended up missing it that much

or getting shitty headphones

Bizness is fantastic, keep coming back to it.

I like this one

http://youtu.be/e31dpx-XGfI

Streaming here - http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2011/apr/11/tune-yards-whokill-album-stream

Really loving it.'gangsta', 'powa', 'bidness' and 'my country' all A+. Seems front loaded to my ears or perhaps the second half will take longer to get into.

sinking my teeth into this right now

HOLY FUCK the finished version of Gangsta is AWESOME

ooo

album is heavily zappa-d out, much more than birdbrains

This just got an A from Robert Christgau and is streaming on NPR. It's cool. Bizness is an obvious song of the year contender.

Pareles reviewed in the NYT and he gave it a qualified rave; only major complaint was the lyrics and I don't blame him there.

They're all over the place and often clever but sometimes just __shrug__

basically this and the quik are pretty much my fave albums this year so far.

freelancer Patrick Foster for the Washington Post loves it:

“Whokill” is one of this year’s boldest, freshest creations: A pulsating quick-step that feels utterly contemporary, careening down a city street while the detritus of consumed influence trails from the car windows.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/click-track/post/quick-spins-tune-yards-ralph-stanley-dj-quik/2011/04/19/AFjYmE6D_blog.html

That kinda makes want to hate it, but I will give it a shot.

It's definitely real good. Not what I expected at all.

the detritus of consumed influence

oh rlly

anyway I hated the first one and this one's more difficult but I like it a lot more!

I heard this (and Tune-Yards) for the first time today, it's definitely a good album but I'll need more time to process it. One similarity/influence I hear is dEUS circa The Ideal Crash, but maybe that's just the Zappa feel percolating down again.

This is a major record, people. Don't let the unconventional punctuation put you off. I'm telling you, this little lady is dy-no-mite!!!!!

ugh

i've come to really love this with repeated listens, it's leaps and bounds better than the first one (her ideas are too interesting to be mired in low fidelity). i've had the chance to play it out loud for some people over the past few weeks and have enjoyed the (mostly positive) reactions

I can't believe how little attention it's getting around here. It's such an ILM friendly record.

not for everyone i guess.

mental note: add this band to that thread about 'bands you'll never listen to because of their stupid name'

i.e. basically all of them?

She said the weird spelling was to increase her MySpace visibility.

i heard the single today ("bizness"?) and her voice kinda scared me off. maybe i will give the full album a shot later.

coming late to tune-yards - heard a few tracks off the new album last week and was v impressed, then went back to the debut. sometimes hard to believe it's a woman singing, due to the timbre of merrill's voice, but only occasionally. striking. a strong & distinctive vocals, memorable songs, forward-thinking arrangements & production, and a dazzling procession of reference points (which is to say i get where that washington post guy is coming from with his "detritus of consumed influence"). exactly the sort of record i'd like to be listening to this summer.

since i can't make sense of the dirty projectors comparisons i keep reading (a product of my own ignorance), i'll say that the music reminds me v slightly of animal collective, back when i thought i liked animal collective, circa sung tongs - you know, popping their panda tare heads up among the african, doo-wop, blues, hip-hop and gospel influences. probably a lazy reference point, but i'm hardly up to date on yr contemporary indie styles. cocorosie?

neneh cherry imo

should listen to neneh cherry i guess

Songs from the first album didn't make much of an impression on me -- I don't even remember whether I heard the whole thing or not. This one took a little while to sink in, but I'm pretty into it now. And I definitely hear the Dirty Projectors comparisons -- see, e.g., the guitar solo on "You Yes You" (about a minute in).

yeah, 'killa' esp. has a neneh vibe

it's a fair comparison. She's got a LOT of influences going on though; references the babenzele pygmies as a touchstone.

should listen to neneh cherry i guess

― normal_fantasy-unicorns (contenderizer), Monday, 2 May 2011 19:40 (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yes!

big lol to those on another thread dissing her supposedly tokenistic/trendy/not-'authorized' appropriation of african music (weirdly patronizing suggestions to "do her homework") when she in fact spent time in africa playing with african musicians there

also surprised to find that she is 32. from her videos i thought she was like 24

anyways like a lot of AC or dirty projectors i *get* why it is praised but don't find myself reaching for it that often

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmleSfx9hn8&NR=1&feature=fvwp

Here, she makes a mockery of other so-called "live loopers". I can't even deal with this it's too good.

http://vimeo.com/22883825

A really obvious point to make, given all the post-Haiti-trip drumming on the record, but a lot of this sounds like a lost Slits or Rip Rig & Panic album.

Second the comment above about "Look Around". "Real Thing" and that is a great 1-2 punch.

Could happily listen to Merrill singing all day.

Also really miss the saxophones.

Just watched their recent performance of Water Fountainon Fallon and it's way better than the recorded version -- seems like i recall feeling the same way when i watched the Tiny Desk Concert they did promoting the last album.

ultimately this album feels like a swing and a miss to me; too much exploration of "okay i have a style and i'm famous so now what"
I'll ride for Water Fountain (def fave track for this year so far), Wait for a Minute and Rocking Chair but not a whole lot else. It's easily her weakest LP in my eyes.
Strangely, one of my old interns is touring and doing back up for Garbus; she's in that Fallon performance.

Maybe Nikki Nack isn't as much of a breakthrough as Whokill was, but I think in some ways I like it better. It's more consistent. There are a couple of tracks that I skip on Whokill but none on Nikki Nack - although "Rocking Chair" doesn't feel very essential, it's short enough, unlike for instance "Wooly Wooly Gong" on Whokill which seems to go on forever.

That's an inversion of how I'm listening to it! Different strokes I guess.

finally had a chance to listen to the new one a few times, and I love it. It's like an instant party in a can.
Whokill had higher highs, and parts where you go, "what is this whichcraft?" Nikki Nack just has me blissfully head bopping in the fabulous far-out mix.

i think the "party" aspect is a little deceptive -- the lyrics get pretty dark, all the stuff about rape/domestic violence, identity politics, depression, gentrification.

(not to mention the cannibalism interlude, which i wish she'd left off the record b/c it just feels so out of place.)

i love the record though; it reminds me of growing up in nyc and being exposed to the hulking and ever-mutating mass of pop/synth-R&B/freestyle/electro/new jack/reggae-inflected stuff that was on the radio and coming out of every car window, as well as all the attitudinal fringe-folk weirdos at the little clubs and festivals that my folks dragged me to. i've said before that tune-yards is really evocative of "summer prospect park 1988" for me and that's even more true with nikki nack.

I like the cannibalism skit. Reminds me of the skits on De La Soul Is Dead.

(not to mention the cannibalism interlude, which i wish she'd left off the record b/c it just feels so out of place.)

this, exactly! i don't necessarily hate the interlude, it just sucks a lot of the energy and momentum out of the record at that point!

Maybe 'party' was too strong, but her singing sounds so self-assured and dynamic as apposed to the more experimental stuff. I almost expect to hear her throw in a 'come on now' every now and then.

She does throw in some "Woo Hah!"s.

I've had mixed feelings about this band before but they kicked ass at Pitchfork Fest. I was really impressed. I guess they make sense as a "festival band."

I was going to say the opposite -- love "Hatari" and all of Whokill that I've heard, just saw them play a festival set and they were good but I wished I were seeing them in a smaller room with fewer people.

I really enjoy this record - maybe even moreso than w h o k i l l - and I'm a bit surprised it doesn't seem to have the same kind of impact as its predecessor. Sure, it's a bit messy in places, and it requires a few listens to properly sink in, but that's always been the case with her, hasn't it? So many hooks, so many beautiful melodies to discover!

What's interesting to me is that she has said in interviews that she had studied 'pop composition' prior to writing the album. I vaguely remember her even mentioning a book on how to write a pop hit. It's curious, because most of the songs here tend to stray away from the typical pop structure. It's a bit more glossy, more synths and programmed beats; hooks and tunes - check, but your usual pop song structure? Not so much.

huh I thought this album was explicitly more conventional in songwriting and performance than whokill

also, it rules

Yeah, compared to w h o k i l l, sure, but in early press she made it sound like HERE COMES MY TOP 40 RECORD. Or maybe I just saw it mentioned one time too many and expected something more straightforward. But I'm glad she didn't dumb it down; and yeah, it rules.

love it

It definitely hasn't gotten a tenth of the buzz of whokill. I have a theory--the lyric "a blood soaked dollar" from the single is to blame. It comes across as a Grade Z Occupy Wall Street trope, just so obvious and clumsy. It kinda mars what is a kickass song.

i just never warmed to this album.

I admired the previous album, but rarely wanted to play it. This one I actually enjoy listening to.

Saw her live last night. What an awesome gig. It made me appreciate her songs even more, especially the Nikki Nack ones.

they sound better live, yes.

New song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAadziqcQZw

The album, I can feel you creep into my private life, is out in January.

I am really surprised by how hard I've turned around on her. I guess once I acclimated to the shouting, I could start enjoying what she was doing.

lol reading upthread shows I have both a great mind for inference and a terrible memory

Very cool!!

Love it. Welcome back.

Love this.

"Heart Attack". Like the way the track starts very basically, then gradually blossoms to an opulent 70s disco sound. Album's going to rule. Don't like this video much though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-7je-jsuC4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Xd097nWH2s

I like the video better than the song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hcG6UgTHiU

this is the best thing i've heard from them in a long time

This 1000% reignited my fandom... I love when she plays to her strengths (biggest voice out there, puppets)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fy3xdHw4YTs

I mean it this performance is crazy and great, vocal performance alone even

yeah that's a fantastic performance

i feel pretty optimistic about the new album now

i kinda like the cover of Cannonball

Me too

i really like this album, her best since whokill! haven't paid enough attention to notice if there's any of the real embarrassing clunkers there were on the last one though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyXwmyjNco8

idioteque cover is cool too

oh meant to say "lyrical clunkers"

dang at that idioteque cover, nice blend of styles

now that i've paid attention to them i can say it holds up lyrically too! delightful

This album is REALLY REALY good

I agree

yes

That's quite the triple recommendation.

This is great and I can't really figure out what I want to say about it besides that