Shake Appeal is a column that highlights new garage and garage-adjacent releases. This week, Evan Minsker discusses the debut from Sydney's Angie, a live album from White Fence, a demo from New York hardcore outfit Ivy, the sophomore LP from Detroit's Terrible Twos, and a new cassette from Boulder, Colorado's Thee Goochi Boiz.

Angie: Turning [Rice is Nice/Easter Bilby]

Angela Garrick is a Sydney native who's probably best known for her tenure in Straight Arrows, Circle Pit, and a couple other bands. (According to Discogs, she was the photographer behind that Royal Headache single on Matador, too.) Her debut solo album is a total star turn for Angie, bringing her fully into the spotlight on a record with a tightly honed, dark hued aesthetic. There's a trudge to these songs; there are guitar solos, but they never outright rip or soar. Everything here feels somewhat dour, but when you've got melodies like the one on "Parallels", that's not a bad thing.

White Fence: Live in San Francisco [Castle Face]

While Third Man has done a nice job of releasing killer live LPs from newer garage bands, it looks like John Dwyer's looking to give Jack White a run for his money. Castle Face is launching a new series of live records, wherein Dwyer uses a Tascam 388 machine to record his friends and labelmates. The first installment is a complete blessing: A live album from White Fence. Tim Presley's reputation to date is one of "prolific bedroom artist," but he also puts on ripping live shows. The LP features songs from White Fence, Is Growing Faith, Family Perfume, and Cyclops Reap. Looks like the label's putting out a live Fuzz album, too.

White Fence: "Swagger Vets and Double Moon" (Live) on SoundCloud.

White Fence: "Chairs in the Dark" (Live) on SoundCloud.

Ivy: Demo cassette [self-released]

There's not a lot of info out there about the New York punk band Ivy, but this much is clear: Their ranks include members of Brown Sugar, Deformity, and Weird TV; and they just played their first show in July. This cassette demo was released at some point, is currently sold out, and is available to download in its entirety. But here's the important bit: These seven songs (in 10 minutes) are front-to-back awesome—belligerent, screaming, buzzsaw hardcore. Sure, it's too blown out to fully understand the vocals, but the energy and hooks completely kill. 

Terrible Twos: Horror Vacui [Urinal Cake]

A recent episode of the Comedy Central show "Drunk History" took place in Detroit. At one point, there's a dude with a mustache drunkenly bragging about how easy it is to get out of a straitjacket. That dude is Craig Brown, who was in King Tuff's touring band, plays in Liquor Store, and fronts the Detroit band Terrible Twos. Their sophomore LP Horror Vacui is manic and wired, consistently moving with screaming energy and jagged guitars. It's marked partially by its Lost Sounds-ian darkwave leanings, but the main draw here is the quickness and immediacy of tracks like "You Can't Have My Chips" and "Michael Stipe". 

Terrible Twos: "A Word and a World" on SoundCloud.

Thee Goochi Boiz: Fast Food for the Teenage Soul [Burger]

This week, the folks at Burger Records have given us the sophomore effort from Boulder, Colorado's Thee Goochi Boiz. Don't let their ridiculous moniker stand as an obstacle: Their record is full of well-done garage pop. It's a bit sloppy, sometimes evoking the Memories' paced, stoned smirkings. There's also a twee element in play, like when the band implement xylophones and whistles on "Everything I Do Is Wrong". There are even songs that verge on balladry, like "Why You Gotta Be Mean to Me". But then they also deliver some of these songs ("Neon Brain Splatter", "Stewin in My Juices") with a punk rock bash. 

Also Worth Hearing: Burger's second-ever and ultra-stacked Wiener Dog Comp (featuring, yes, another White Fence track); a new LP from Charlotte punks Joint D≠ (via Sorry State); a 7" from Jackson, Mississippi's Wild Emotions (via Blahll!).

White Fence: "Today's Lesson" (Filth cover) on SoundCloud.

Wild Emotions: "Hey Everybody" on SoundCloud.

Down Is Up discusses music that falls slightly under the radar of our usual coverage: demos and self-releases, as well as output from small or overlooked labels and communities. This week, Jenn Pelly looks at two recent reissues of music from the late 1970s and early 1980s, including first-wave Portland punk band Neo Boys and British anarcho-punk experimentalists Androids of Mu.

Neo Boys: "Give Me the Message" on SoundCloud.

01 Neo Boys - Sooner or Later - Neo Boys were contemporaries of first-wave Portland punk bands like Wipers and the Rats, but their sound was also rooted in the skinny elemental riffs and the outsider spirit of New York punk. In 1978, four years after Tom Verlaine, Richard Hell, and Billy Ficca had disbanded their Downtown proto-punk band, Neon Boys, and formed Television, teenage sisters K.T. (vox) and Kim Kincaid (bass) began Neo Boys on the other side of the country. (They eventually opened for Television, an impressive first gig.) Kim's smart, poetic singing was gruff and expressive in a way that sometimes recalled a more direct Patti Smith. Also comprising drummer Pat Baum and guitarist Jennifer Labianco, who later left and was replaced by the more proficient Meg Hentges, Neo Boys were a pioneering all-female punk group in the region and challenged the conventional notion that girls could only be singers.

For 20 years, K Records founder Calvin Johnson has been digging up the band's material for Sooner or Later, a (somewhat overwhelming) 45-track survey of their recorded output, demos, and live sessions. It includes their 1980 EP, recorded by Wipers' Greg Sage and released via his own Trap Records, as well as 1982's Crumbling Myths. Over their five-year run (they disbanded in 1983) the band was primarily an opening act, playing makeshift venues like houses, colleges, galleries, and their practice space. "It was definitely DIY before that was even considered a huge concept,"  K.T. told The Oregonian. "We just didn't know any other way."

Kim's lyrics had political overtones—Neo Boys weren't interested in love songs—and her words were especially sophisticated for a teenage writer. They were true rebels with a cause, in fact many of them, from gender politics to economic inequity. The twangy bounce of "Poor Man's Jungle", for example, unloads frustration regarding systemic oppression of the poor. Meanwhile the wonderfully apathetic "Abnormal Chick"  is as biting as its title suggests: "I don't really care who I go to bed with," Kim sings, audibly bored, between indecipherable lines and rough, rudimentary cymbal crashes. "Makes no difference to me/ Get away/ Don't you touch me." And whether or not Patti Smith was actually an influence, similarities abound on songs like "I Don't Belong" or their version of "I'm Free", on which these could-be icons of early D.I.Y. punk embodied their own definition of freedom.

02 Androids of Mu - Blood Robots (1980) - Meanwhile, overseas, Androids of Mu were taking shape in the West London squatter scene. Androids (Suze the Blooz, Corrina, Cozmis and Bess) fused the combustible art-punk aesthetic of the Raincoats—once called "scratchy-collapsy" by Scritti Politti's Green Gartside—with the anarcho-punk spirit and energy of Crass. (Androids apparently turned down an offer to do a split single with Crass, who insisted they use a different drummer.) Under the new conservative rule of Thatcher, Androids of Mu released only one LP, the blissfully noisy and at times nonsensical Blood Robots, through Fuck Off Records in 1980. Water Wing Records in Portland, Oregon (distributed through Mississippi Records) has finally reissued it earlier this year.

Androids of Mu sang of atomic explosions and radiation and bored housewives and drag queens; they hollered and shrieked and sang sweet. They laced their psychedelic guitars with scrappy synth parts, and occassionally wove in a ska undertone or mesmeric dreamscape. Their sound was unmistakably post-punk, but the artists had roots in more of a 1970s hippie scene surrounding the Stonehenge Free Festival. Suze, the singer and primary songwriter, was previously a member of Hendrix and Zappa-inspired bands Here & Now and Planet Gong, which explored psychedelic music and spacerock. (She started out as a dancer before switching to singing.) I was interested to discover that Suze—also a clothing designer, visual artist, and astrologer—was 30 and had two children by the time Blood Robots was released in 1980. That year, Androids of Mu embarked on a "free tour" with peace-punk bands the Mob and Zounds, in which all shows were free and everyone lost money. They were attemping to change attitudes about the worth of music; if a showgoer paid anyway, this person might realize something about how he or she supported the entire of idea of the event.

Androids of Mu considered most of their songs to be protest songs, and they primarily played benefit gigs, with no intentions of earning a profit for themselves. Their feminism also came through: Corrina, the guitarist and singer, was an engineer at the lo-fi underground Street Level studio, where she recorded obscure female bands from London and eventually released an all-female compilation called Making Waves. But, like Neo Boys, their radical intentions seemed to lean towards something broader, more inclusive, and human. "The most important thing about the Androids is that we wanna break down barriers, particularly between nationalities and this sort of tribalism that really separates young people," Corrina said, speaking with the fanzine No Class. "We wanna accent the things we all share and the grounds upon which people can relate, rather than reinforce the differences, and the separatism. I feel it’s one of the most political things that this band is putting out. That is our main point."

"Historians are the helots of academe," my grad-school advisor used to say. Take advantage of all that labor, he urged—you won’t believe what they’ve managed to find till you take a look. 

Or a listen. Historian Emily Thompson's book The Soundscape of Modernity (MIT Press, 2002)is a work of mind-blowing ideas about sound, based on research in mind-numbing detail about architectural acoustics. There is more in that book about ceiling tile than anyone should need to know, and yet… I treasure the knowledge, because what Thompson does with it changed my listening forever. And I am far from lonely in my admiration for the book—it helped launch the now-booming academic field of sound studies, and earned its author a MacArthur fellowship. 

Recently, Thompson put her efforts into building The Roaring Twenties, a website that documents the sounds of New York City in the early 20th century. Less a work of analysis than a mass of painstakingly organized detail—the helot’s hard drive—it is now available for our collective exploration. Newsreels, newspaper clippings, and city documents relating to noise are not only cross-referenced, but physically overlaid on one another via a map, a chronology, and a chart of all the city’s noises by type. In a statement for Vectors Journal, publishers of the site, Thompson explains:

"The aim here is not just to present sonic content, but to evoke the original contexts of those sounds, to help us better understand that context as well as the sounds themselves. The goal is to recover the meaning of sound, to undertake a historicized mode of listening that tunes our modern ears to the pitch of the past. Simply clicking a 'play' button will not do."

To those of us who click play buttons all day long, this is quite a throwdown. The internet has brought us into easy contact with so many sounds, but typically at the price of divorcing them from context. LPs gave us liner notes (or at least credits and an image to stare at) and CDs provided booklets that framed the music in some way. But mp3s and streaming files are lonely things, usually identified only by artist and title. Leaks and other sub-legal downloads might not even come with those (at least not spelled correctly). 

Is this loss of context contributing to a loss of meaning for music, as Thompson implies for the noises she documents? Noise and music are not always the same, but to the historian they certainly can be: "Musical Instruments" is one of the categories of sounds on The Roaring Twenties, as is "Radio and Music Shops" (don’t miss the fantastic newsreel footage of Radio Row on Cortland Street, where all the shops broadcast different music into the street simultaneously). Context, or Thompson’s "historicized mode of listening," would seem to be precisely what we are losing by listening online.  

Still, if you are not a helot of academe, a critic making use of their labor, or an obsessive record collector, dehistoricized listening may suit you fine. But Thompson's project reminds us of the thrill and the importance of context—a concept that might not just be confined to the academy. After all, the LP and the cassette are both experiencing revivals, and maybe it's partly because they reintroduce history to the sounds they convey.

Welcome to Mixdown, an ongoing series where Pitchfork staffers and contributors talk about mixtapes and mixes that may not be covered in our reviews section but are worth discussing. Today, we're looing at Austrailian producer Flume's guest-heavy mixtape, TM88 and South Side of 808 Mafia's new collection of hard-hitters, and Mac Miller's mixtape as his pitched-up vocal alter-ego Delusional Thomas.

Flume: Deluxe Edition Mixtape 

Jordan Sargent: My only thought about Flume before this has been, "Wait, why is this guy named after a Bon Iver song?"

Corban Goble: Flume is one of Lorde’s favorite producers. I try to phrase anything in terms of Lorde these days. Degrees of Lorde.

Carrie Battan: You and everyone else. My first thought about this is that it sounds exactly the way I imagine French people imagine rap music. I do like it, though.

Flume: "Space Cadet" [ft. Autre Ne Veut and Ghostface Killah] on SoundCloud.

JS: Maybe this is confirmation bias considering his contribution here, but if you had told me "Autre Ne Veut has put out a rap album under an alias," I would’ve believed you.

CG: So, Flume is one of Australia’s biggest young artists. His solo stuff is pretty EDM-y, so I expected this to be a little more… fun? It kind of scans to me as a taken-a-touch-too-seriously crossover bid. Throwing Autre Ne Veut and Ghostface on a spacey slab… not sure it stacks up to the sum of its parts. And, like, I don’t know if I need to hear Freddie Gibbs rap on this lush, warm-sounding thing.

Flume: "Holdin On" Ft. Freddie Gibbs on SoundCloud.

I like the How to Dress Well thing, though, less chilly than his usual stuff. Thoughts?

CB: You know, the Freddie Gibbs track on here is one of my favorites, and I find Freddie Gibbs painfully boring in general. I think this kind of lush, rainbow-bright beat suits him well.

JS: I think the R&B stuff (the How to Dress Well song, ANV’s hook) are the best things here. Tonally, those moments remind me a bit of, like, Jamie Lidell’s electro-soul. I don’t think the rappers really sound all that good over these beats. M.O.P. in particular just sound really out of place, like a bad Soundcloud remix.

CB: I guess I need to come face-to-face with the fact that I’m someone who likes bad Soundcloud remixes right now.

TM88 & South Side: Crazy 8 X It's A Southside Track 3

CB: A reader of this column recently suggested to me that we make it a little bit more servicey by giving specific track reccomendations—the argument being that the mixtapes are generally really big and unwieldy and bad, but that there are usually a few standouts that are worth revisiting. This tape, from two producers of the Brick Squad-affiliated 808 Mafia production crew, is above-average across the board, but there are definitely some things that could go on a highlight reel. Like Rich Kidz' exuberantly warped "Gangsta Party". (Other column suggestions from the same reader: "Get Rembert in the mix! Throw Tom in there!")

CG: Yeah, "Gangsta Party" is great—definitely one of the more exciting tracks Rich Kidz have done in a while. Also, I am someone who enjoys Future on something uptempo, so I like "Chosen One". And Young Thug’s "Danny Glover". And of course Domani Harris, T.I.’s son. Would it be fair to say Domani’s track outshines his dad’s track?

JS: Domani’s track is good. I like that there’s a baton-passing element to his inclusion... not because T.I. is also on a song here, but because Rich Kidz started out as squeaky-voiced rappers themselves. Now they’ve grown up and make richly melodic tracks about parties—at some point, we’ll hear Domani Harris belt through Autotune and that will be a good day.

CB: T.I. with his son on this mixtape—which is a good representation of the center of Atlanta rap right now—is an apt contrast to his song on the Lady Gaga album, which is called "Jewels ‘N Drugs". T.I. will do anything this point and he’ll sound exactly the same on all of it.

JS: Three more things about the 808 Mafia tape before we move on: 1. The best beat is on the Ca$h Out song. Do with that what you will. 2. On DatPiff at least, the Ace Hood song is titled as "Prey For Me", which is a typo that would make a decent concept for a song if Ace Hood was creative. 3. There is a rapper on here called "Nephew Texas Boy", who fits perfectly into my favorite game: Put "Got Bandz" at the End of Every Rapper’s Name.

CG:Davinko Got Bandz.

CB: Just want to make sure I’ve got this straight: Delusional Thomas Got Bandz?

JS: Delusional Thomas has all of the bandz.

Mac Miller: Delusional Thomas

CB: Wait, I just want to find this comment from the DatPiff page for the Delusional Thomas tape:

"All the people who said this was wack definitely doesnt get the breakdown of the mixtape. It sounds the way it does because Mac's alter ego, who is Delusional Thomas is rapping. Thats why on the last track it says 'feat. Mac Miller' and he raps in his own voice. Try understanding the tape before you judge it idiots"

Agree or disagree, you guys?

JS: This entire mixtape is Mac Miller rapping in a chipmunk voice. You guys may or may not be aware of this, but Mac Miller does a lot of drugs.

CG: Also, this mixtape definitely has the most instances of the rapper threatening to shit in my mouth. At least that I’m aware of.

JS: Someone send this mixtape to Richie Incognito then. The rapping on this is pretty good; from a lyrical standpoint it’s an indication that Watching Movies With the Sound Off isn’t a fluke. But, there’s the whole thing about the chipmunk voice, so the replay value is extremely low.

CB: The takeaway from this mixtape is just an updated version of Jordan's game. The rules are now: add "Delusional" before anyone’s name in addition to adding "Got Bandz" to the end. Until next week, Delusional Jordan Got Bandz, Delusional Corban Got Bandz...

Photo by Guy Aroch

First-week sales of 140,000 were enough to give Arcade Fire a No. 1 album, as Reflektor takes the penthouse on the Billboard 200 album chart.

If you’re a regular chart-watcher, that sales number might look vaguely familiar. That’s because a number in the low six figures with a "1" in front of it is basically the benchmark first-week sales figure for any big-name indie band with a limited radio profile.

Let’s call it the Vampire Weekend number. I bring up Ezra Koenig’s merry band, because Vampire Weekend have scored two straight No. 1 albums—their second and third discs, 2010’s Contra and 2013’s Modern Vampires of the City—with very similar first-week sales figures: 124,000 and 134,000, respectively.

Win Butler, Régine Chassagne & co. appear to be on the same recording-and-release schedule as VW. Arcade Fire have now also scored two consecutive No. 1 albums in the same two years: 2010’s The Suburbs and 2013’s Reflektor. And again, the first-week sales numbers of the two chart-topping discs fell within about 10K–20K copies of each other: 156,000 and 140,000.

That 100K-plus number persists across other indie-ish artists that have landed No. 1 albums in Billboard over roughly the last half-decade: Modest Mouse’s We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank (March 2007, 129,000), Radiohead’s In Rainbows (January 2008, 122,000), Death Cab for Cutie’s Narrow Stairs (May 2008, 144,000) and Jack White’s Blunderbuss (April 2012, 138,000—the first No. 1 album of his career, believe it or not; the White Stripes never reached the summit). The Decemberists scored a slight outlier in February 2010 with The King Is Dead, which managed to top the chart during a slow sales week with 94,000 copies—but that number’s near enough to 100K to resemble the VW number.

But what do all seven of these acts—Arcade Fire, Vampire Weekend, Modest Mouse, Radiohead, Death Cab, White and the Decemberists—have in common? With a couple of exceptions, they have near-nonexistent Hot 100 presence.

VW and Decemberists have made no Hot 100 appearances at all (four of VW’s songs have "bubbled under" the chart). Arcade Fire, Death Cab and Modest Mouse have had no song peak higher than No. 60. Radiohead and White, relative elder statesmen among these acts, have scored a Top 40 hit apiece, but each was short-lived and long ago ("Creep", No. 34 in 1993, and "Icky Thump" with the White Stripes, No. 27 in 2007; a second Radiohead Top 40 hit, "Nude" in 2008, was a fluke, spending a single week in the Top 40 due to an iTunes promotion). To be sure, several of these acts have performed well on the Modern Rock/Alternative chart—No. 1s for Modest Mouse and Death Cab, plus White with his former bands—but alt-rock radio success alone doesn’t generate No. 1 albums. And anyway Arcade Fire, Vampire Weekend and the Decemberists have all performed modestly on the Alternative chart, with nary a Top 10 hit among them.

Hit singles matter, because the minute a "hip" band scores a serious radio hit, their album sales generally multiply. Look at Daft Punk (scientists would call them our control group). Earlier this year, Random Access Memoriessold an exceptional 339,000 copies in a week—one of the best sales weeks by any act this year. Sure, the duo was coming back as conquering, EDM-pioneering heroes after a long hiatus. But they’d never sold more than 71,000 copies in a week for 2010’s Tron soundtrack; their prior studio album, 2005’s Human After All, had sold 125,000 total.

Clearly, Daft Punk’s X-factor on RAM was the chart-conquering performance of "Get Lucky"—their first (and, to date, only) Top 40 hit. It’s safe to assume the radio-blanketing performance of the Pharrell-produced "Lucky", which reached No. 2 on the Hot 100 in June, accounts for at least half of Random’s first-week sales number. In fact, given the stark contrast to all their indie-friendly brethren and their 100K–150K starter weeks, it’s pretty safe to assume that the hit single nearly tripled the sales DP could otherwise have expected.

I mentioned a minute ago that Arcade Fire have never reached the top half of the Hot 100. Actually, their pop-chart record is even worse than that: Prior to this fall, they’d scored no Hot 100 hits at all. In late September, the week of their most recent "Saturday Night Live" appearance, "Reflektor" spent a single week on the big chart at No. 99.

We can either regard that meager performance as typical of a band with AF’s profile, or we can consider it their pop coming-out party. The most interesting tidbit in Billboard’s article announcing AF’s No. 1 album this week wasn’t their sales figure, it was this:

"Reflektor is distributed by Universal Music Group, the band's first album with major distribution…Another change in the world of Arcade Fire is that it has a new partner in Capitol Records, which is promoting the album to radio. (The band is still with its longtime label Merge Records…)"

Major distribution? Radio promotion?! These are uncharted waters for Arcade Fire, and virtually any band on Merge. The band is having its cred and eating it too: Remaining on its indie home while simultaneously straddling mega-conglomerate Universal and decades-old label Capitol.

Despite its James Murphy–generated dance beats, Reflektor remains a quirky album, with few obvious radio candidates. But if Capitol can get Arcade Fire even a medium-size pop hit, it’ll be interesting to see whether, by Album #5, the band will break out of that Vampire Weekend box.

Shake Appeal is a column that highlights new garage and garage-adjacent releases. This week, Evan Minsker discusses the latest from California punks Scraper, Detroit's Growwing Pains, Sudbury's Strange Attractor, Denver's Pizza Time, and something called Star Spangled Banana.

Scraper: Scraper [Cut-Rate]

Earlier this year, Scraper put out a killer 7" on Drag City's offshoot God? Records. Their full-length debut is out now on the new California label Cut-Rate, and it's a record full of muscular, vicious punk. Their songs are about getting stoned, driving around in shitty cars, and skateboarding. While the lo-fi hiss surrounding their sound is sign enough that this is a trashy rock'n'roll album, they seal the deal with some laughably over-the-top violence on "Kill From the Heart": "I'm gonna kick your ass"... "You fuckin' pig, give me a drink"... "You need to be shot". It all reminds me of this guy who sat uncomfortably close to me on the bus one time and tried to intimidate me into helping him steal 90 beers. Vaguely threatening, ready to party.

Growwing Pains: 17 Songs About the Same Girl [Urinal Cake]

This album's title is not a joke: Hamtramck, Michigan's Growwing Pains have written a debut album's worth of songs all about one special lady. (Though according to Urinal Cake head Eric Love, they initially wrote 22 songs about her.) Whoever she is, she's quite the muse—this album is completely great. Growwing Pains' sunny melodies, use of keys, and powerful delivery recalls the manic joy of the Barbaras. There's something frantic and desperate about the tone of songs like "Tonight". Then, after a full album high energy rock songs, things comes to a comparatively gentle finish with the jangling hum of "Ellen's False Teeth". Since there's a firm concept in place, the song titles offer a glimpse into the stories within: "Toothpaste", "Call Me Up", "Turn Off the Lights", "Misogynist", "Break Up". All 17 songs offer catchy, diverse melodies. (Stream the full album here.)

Growwing Pains: "All the Time" on SoundCloud.

Strange Attractor: Back to the Cruel World [Mammoth Cave/FDH/Resurrection]

There's plenty of punk rock immediacy on Strange Attractor's Back to the Cruel World, but a little patience goes a long way to let this album's strange, sometimes chaotic universe unfurl. Not that this is Quadrophenia or anything—there are three songs on the B-side called the "Total Shit" Trilogy and most of these tracks offer under two minutes of punk fury. But the Sudbury, Ontario band offer something more than meets the eye: "Gimme Something Else" has a narrative about addiction, while "In Your Eyes" features an impressively restrained bridge. There's an array of percussion on "I'm Trying to Wake You Up" that adds nuance to their otherwise fast, booming, kit-centric approach. While the singer's voice has a quality that could accurately be described as "rat-like", this ain't just mindless speed punk.

Pizza Time: Quiero Mas [Burger]

Look, I know you can see the art on the left over there, so you've probably already started to write this one off as a novelty record. This next sentence is not going to help change your mind: Pizza Time are from Denver and their LP Quiero Mas is sung entirely in Spanish. So this is the part of the blurb where I try to convince you to look beyond the salivating slice on the left and give this album a chance: It's actually good. These are well-crafted, minimal garage pop songs that feature some solid guitar work. Their opening track "La Verdad" could pass for one of Nobunny's better songs. Their handclap-filled song "Tan Bajo" is catchy and spare, though it's a ballsy move to give your garage pop song the same name as a Davila 666 album. They're an entertaining seven tracks; the album's available to download for free.

Star Spangled Banana: Pebbles 2000 [Agitated]

There's not a lot of information out there about Star Spangled Banana, though their very literal Warholian album art seems to suggest that they're a pretty tongue-in-cheek outfit. Their attack is similar to the beefy leanings of Purling Hiss (especially stuff like "Midnight Man"), though there's a lot more clarity in Banana's sound. "Sex bomb baby, oh yeaahhhh," they sing on their cover of Flipper's "Sex Bomb", all but confirming that this is well-executed, acid-washed goof rock for the stoner set.

Star Spangled Banana: "Let Me" on SoundCloud.

Star Spangled Banana: "Sex Bomb" on SoundCloud.

Also Worth Hearing: The snotty new single from Tucson's Sneaky Pinks—a new 12 track collection from the band is due in 2014 (via Almost Ready).

photo by Will Deitz

The most surprising thing that happened at this year’s CMJ Music Marathon in New York City had nothing to do with music. On the second day of the October festival, news broke that a lawsuit had been filed against the organization to the tune of $1 million, after a failed merger between CMJ and management/promotion/production company Metropolitan Entertainment. New York Times writer Ben Sisario suggested that the lawsuit could prove a "substantial blow" to the company’s financial stability. But this would only be the latest setback for the 33-year-old festival, whose influence has diminished in recent years. The question isn’t how to save CMJ, but whether any New York festival existent or imminent could take its place.

CMJ was originally founded for industry professionals to discover new bands, and the internet’s since provided a quicker (and more inexpensive) alternative to performing A&R duties. Regardless, two multi-venue fests have attempted to issue correctives, and like much NYC-based cultural phenomena that gets publicity these days, both come from Brooklyn: June's indie-skewing Northside Festival, and Brooklyn Electronic Music Festival, which takes place just a few weeks after the last CMJ banner is taken down.

The six-year-old BEMF offers up what its name suggests: electronic music (predominantly dance-leaning) and considering mainstream American dance culture's recent boom, this has lent the festival added relevance in the last couple of years. With an extensive lineup tailored to appeal to interests both big-room and small-scale, spread across seven Brooklyn-based venues within walking distance of each other, BEMF is a dance festival without the muddy and furry-booted mayhem that often go hand-in-hand with dance festivals. It's Electric Zoo for people who don't like to leave their borough on the weekend.

It was clear that BEMF organizers MeanRed were attempting to promote responsible behavior in the wake of this year's drug-related deaths at Electric Zoo, with flyers reminding festivalgoers about the dangers of substance abuse (not that it stopped the inevitable from happening, of course). For the most part, though, that was the extent of BEMF's branding at the associated venues—even the glowing cube in the shape of the fest's square logo that was on stage during many of last year's sets was conspicuously absent. In a few instances, it was replaced by a glowing cube of a different sort: that of the Red Bull Music Academy, who were one of this year's sponsors. RBMA's presence was a déjà vu of sorts for NYC-residing fest attendees, since the company recently hosted their month-long residency in the city this past summer. With a seemingly endless groundswell of financial resources, RBMA's sprawl was ambitious, impressive, and at times thrilling, with a truly insane lineup and a few outside-the-box ideas that were successful despite the considerable ickiness of an energy drink stamping its brand on artistic culture.

This year's BEMF had the unfortunate position of standing in RBMA's shadow, but its lineup was plenty diverse in its own right, featuring emerging artists alongside considerable legends like John Digweed, MK, and longtime BBC Radio 1 DJ and Essential Mix host Pete Tong. As genres, dance and electronic music have no particular "sound", so the lineup was comprised of showcases that provided something for everyone who preferred to stay in one place during the chilly weekend. Some of these sonic threads carried greater current cultural relevance than others, though.

"Everyone's going to end up there at the end of the night," I heard someone say at Friday evening's makeshift Boiler Room session at the uncomfortably vacant space Villain. He was talking about Montreal producer and TNGHT member Lunice's headlining set at LuckyMe's Music Hall of Williamsburg showcase. Not so, as it turned out. Although Lunice and bill-sharers Evian Christ and S-Type are a few artists carrying the torch for dance music's recent flirtations with hip-hop, the room was never more than ¾-full, standing in stark contrast to TNGHT's packed-house performance in the same venue at the end of 2012.

Blasting recent tracks from Drake, Kanye West (whose Yeezus played a role in nearly every one of the night's sets), and Jay Z among others, Lunice tried his best to whip the room into a frenzy with his notoriously energetic performance, gesticulating and mouthing along to lyrics in a manner that makes you dread the moment someone will coin the term "kabuki-trap". Still, the audience size was in constant flux, and some overheard audience banter suggested why: "I'd like to stick around, but I'm going to head to Output instead."

Many people did just that (the immobile line for Digweed's five-hour set wrapped around the block) and it's easy to understand why. The under-a-year-old club Output brings Manhattan nightlife sensibilities—overpriced drinks, a strict "no photos or videos" policy, a cavernous multi-level floor plan with plenty of curiosities (and couches)—to the decidedly DIY-focused Brooklyn social scene, and most people you talk to will have differing opinions on the place. But people who enjoy it usually cite the same reason: the sound system. "[B]est sound system in the East Coast, bro," minimal techno wünderkind Nicolas Jaar recently told me in an interview, and while I can't vouch for the specificity of his opinion, just listening to music in Output and the adjoining Panther Room, as well as cutting loose on the dance floor, is a supremely enjoyable experience.

The considerable rowdiness of NYC nightlife points to the greatest hurdle that BEMF faces as a viable festival for the committed and the dilettantes alike. Most festivals are less about hearing music and more about the experience, a reflection of one's lifestyle choices; if you're going to go hard on BEMF, you have to like going out late. A lot. Every night begins at 10 p.m., and if you planned to see any of the bigger names that dotted the mostly-underground lineup, a commitment to staying out until 3 a.m. or later is a requirement. For weekend warriors, not an unreasonable request—but what about Sunday, the day before most 9-5'ers with money to blow on a weekend of live music have to go back to work? BEMF's final event, headlined by impromptu headliner and RSS-baiting remix fiend Star Slinger (who served as a replacement for Todd Terje's abrupt cancellation), was scheduled to end around 4 a.m. Monday morning, a not-exactly-ideal timeframe for the hungover-at-work-averse.

So BEMF, like much of dance culture, is not built for the uncommitted. Imaginably, its audience could grow with a few tweaks—more "early" sets, less set-time conflicts (being forced to choose between Actress and Oneohtrix Point Never on Saturday night seemed particularly egregious, especially considering the shared audience the two artists arguably possess), less venues to cut down on the time spent walking between shows at the time of year when temperatures drop sharply. (Output's two-room structure and all-night atmosphere seems especially tailor-made for hosting a slightly pared-down but no less impressive version of this festival.) Dance culture prides itself on exclusivity, though, so it's possible that the interest in audience expansion is minimal; as changes loom over the future of NYC-based festivals, though, it's possible that such presumed attitudes will shift accordingly.

Pictured: Jeff Koons' sculpture of Lady Gaga

In the increasingly out-of-control arms race of 2013 album pre-release campaigns, Lady Gaga's artRave was the A-bomb. Held at the Brooklyn Navy Yard on Sunday night, the event was ostensibly a release concert for Gaga’s new album ARTPOP, out this week. But it was also oh so much more. Part science fair, part costume ball, part sculpture exhibit, and part Warholian Happening, the artRave capped a year in which the music industry has gone to any and all lengths to attract attention to its artists, by any means necessary.

Sure, elaborate album rollouts are nothing new. (Read Stephen Deusner's recent Pitch piece for a brief history of online campaigns in the past decade.) And labels and bands have been staging stunts since time immemorial. But 2013 has seen such a high concentration of gimmicks, treasure hunts, and "mysteries" that it's hard to imagine how this can all be sustainable—especially considering the fact that revenue streams for musicians are drying up exponentially with each passing day. 

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter about Arcade Fire’s labyrinthine Reflektor campaign, the band's manager Scott Rodger said, "We're in an information overload, but just to be recognized you have to be more creative and do things in a way that people will talk about socially—online but also in the physical world. How do you become one of those things that people talk about?"

Well, one way to get people talking is to hold a bunch of journalists hostage on an airplane for seven days. The beginning of the current deluge can arguably be traced back to last fall's Rihanna 777 fiasco; perhaps, when the history books are written, we will look back on the 12 months between #RihannaPlane and #ArtRave as a kind of golden age of music advertising, and a TV show will be made about, oh I don't know, the millennial Don Draper who thought up Katy Perry's Prism truck.

Once Rihanna opened the floodgates, she was followed, to varying degrees, by Perry, Daft Punk, Kanye West, Boards of Canada, Jay-Z, Thirty Seconds to Mars, and countless others competing for ears, eyes, pageviews, likes, followers, and, of course, those rapidly dwindling dollars. 

But more than any other current pop star, Lady Gaga understands the value of a good stunt. She's built her career on watercooler moments, from the meat dress to the "Telephone" video to that bonkers Thanksgiving special (soon to be repeated!) and beyond. Her ARTPOP promotion cycle has so far included tattooing the album name on her arm, getting fans to paint a mural of the tracklist, getting superstar artist Jeff Koons to make the album cover, getting naked in a video for the Marina Abramović Institute, creating an app to accompany the album, redesigning the USA Today logo, and, um, this.

All of which lead up to Sunday night: Lady Gaga dressed in a space suit, standing in a freezing cold warehouse on the East River waterfront, about to demonstrate a flying machine she and her team had invented.

Gaga strapped into Volantis

Before the artRave even began, Gaga held a press conference to unveil Volantis, billed as "the world's first flying dress." We were handed ARTPOP t-shirts and detailed information sheets describing the contraption sitting in front of us as "a purpose designed transport prototype designed to carry one person in a controlled hover and directional movement." Gaga gave a lofty speech about how Volantis has the potential to change the world, how it exemplifies the power of young minds, and how we were all about to witness something very, very important.

Then, surrounded by Tyvek-suited assistants, she was strapped into the device, which looked like a department store mannequin attached to a bunch of streetlights. It roared to life and lurched forward a few feet, hovering. Then it did the same thing, backwards. Then it stopped. That was it. Never before have I felt more like I was living a scene from Spinal Tap.

Hilarious, and yet absolutely charming. Here was one of the biggest stars in the world, with seemingly unlimited resources at her disposal, and she's chosen to invest herself in this almost quaint idea of making a machine that can fly. She's willing to make a complete fool of herself in front of scores of journalists, because she genuinely thinks she's making the world a better place.

And you know what? She kind of is. There was nothing inauthentic about the joy on the faces of the hundreds of super fans (aka Little Monsters) that filled the venue for the artRave. Nobody there spent hours hand-crafting their own personal replica of a Gaga outfit (whether it was the Kermit dress or the seashell bikini or the bubble dress) to be ironic. Gaga makes millions of people happy. She helps kids who feel like outsiders in daily life feel like superstars in her world. So she can fly around in her jetpack-on-steroids as much as she damn well pleases.

The Volantis demonstration was only the appetizer for the party itself. At one end of the event space stood a stage that looked like a big, white wedding cake. At the other end, towering above everything, stood Jeff Koons' gargantuan sculpture of Gaga, depicted naked, legs spread, with one of Koons' trademark gazing balls in her crotch. In between stood four other enormous Koons sculptures, as well as two bars, on which a variety of contortionists performed throughout the evening. Large screens played videos of Gaga made by Marina Abramović, photographers/directors Inez & Vinoodh, and director/playwright Robert Wilson (yes, the guy who made Einstein on the Beach with Philip Glass).

Off of the main space, there was an installation by artist Benjamin Rollins Caldwell, "Binary Room", that consisted of a whole room, including furniture, made up of old computer parts. There was a room dedicated to the ARTPOP companion app, along with displays of Gaga fashions designed by her creative team, Haus of Gaga. There were also food trucks, including one giving out ARTPOP lollipops.

Gaga performs in front of the Koons sculpture (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for 42 West)

Gaga's performance was amazing as usual—a master class in over-the-top theatrics, campy gender-bending, and cheeky fun. (It can be watched in full on Vevo.) But it was almost beside the point. The whole Gaga machine, the whole Gaga world we were immersed in—that was the point. It was overwhelming, all consuming. Something even the best album promo cycles only dream of being. 

But how can anyone top this? Have we reached the logical endpoint of this hyper-speed marketing madness we've endured over the past year? I can't imagine it continuing much longer without people getting bored with and/or annoyed by these tactics. Pretty soon, even a flying machine demonstration at your album release party is going to seem old hat. 

So, where do we go from here? Album launch parties in outer space? Actually…

Down Is Up discusses music that falls slightly under the radar of our usual coverage: demos and self-releases, as well as output from small or overlooked labels and communities. This week, Jenn Pelly overviews a few old but worthy projects by members of Swearin' and an active offshoot.

Photo by Jesse Riggins

Sometimes tracing a band's roots can be just as exciting as hearing their demo for the first time—getting lost in the world they've created and seeing how all the pieces fit together. Swearin', the New York/Philly-based fuzz-pop band, have a sizable back catalogue to explore. In light of the band's great new LP, Surfing Strange, out last week through Salinas/Wichita, here's a brief survey of some pre-Swearin' endeavors from the band's primary songwriters Allison Crutchfield and Kyle Gilbride, plus a listen at songwriter/bassist Keith Spencer's current side-project. Some of these songs could explain why Swearin' are often erroneously stamped with a "pop-punk" label. Many of them are a lot scrappier than anything you'll find on Strange, but this group's underground output is inspiring in its own right. The writing can be endearing, witty, and ruthlessly catchy, harkening back to a fully independent, band-as-life ethos that feels all too uncommon nowadays.

01 Big Soda

In 2011, Kyle Gilbride and his short-lived band Big Soda released a three-song demo as well as the six-song Paper Route; the band also included Brian Schleyer, who now plays in the Babies alongside Woods' Kevin Morby and Vivian Girls' Cassie Ramone. Big Soda is a worthy introduction here, having produced Swearin's titular track (above), a compressed rock song busting with ripchord abandon and smart, slacker angst. This band's songs are packed with little pains of confusion and self-doubt, wasted days and boring nights, those gruelingly unclear moments of waiting and thinking that come with implausible crushes.

"You Are the Worst" carries the sense of transience that marked Swearin's debut—wishing someone was back in town, crashing on floors in unfamiliar states. The guitar crunch drops out at all the right moments as Gilbride snarls through this incredible song of love and "hate": "You left to catch a ride/ Cause you're the worst/ I wanted to leave my life/ and be wherever you were." It's not hard to see how some of Swearin's best ideas were brewing in these songs.

Swearin'. Photo by Cynthia Schemmer

02 Bad Banana

As heard on Waxahatchee's Cerulean Salt track "Blue Pt. II", there's something mesmerizing about hearing singer-songwriter Katie Crutchfield's voice mix with that of her twin sister Allison. Before Waxahatchee and Swearin' were full-time projects, there was Bad Banana, a 2010-2011 pop-punk project where both Crutchfields played guitar and wrote songs. (In their other shared band, Katie wrote songs and Allison played drums.) Kyle Gilbride also played guitar in Bad Banana. In interviews, both songwriters have framed this as a not-so-serious band, but actually these songs are surprisingly resonant, wildly catchy, and at times very funny. Their entire (incredibly titled) 2010 demo Crushfield is worth checking out (it's free to download here) and their 2011 Cry About It 7" for Puzzle Pieces is at Bandcamp (and below). 

"Stand Next to Me", sung by Allison, is an amazing punk-love account of a drunken meeting with a crush who also happens to be in your favorite band. "You seem to be in high demand/ But you're talking to me about your favorite bands/ Descendents and Dinosaur Jr," Allison sings. They'd be perfect together, she is sure, because they would never be together—always on tour, or crashing on someone's couch. "STAY@HOMESIREN" is another highlight, wherein Allison and Katie collectively expel some negative energy towards someone whose lifestyle is a little different from their own. "Your friends are talking too much," they deadpan. "Your boyfriend is a such a drag." As with many Bad Banana lines, the heartening songwriting chemistry sounds effortless, and there's an unfiltered attitude to it all that oftentimes only comes through when you're around the people who know you best.

03 Great Thunder

Keith Spencer, who also drums for Waxahatchee, has more of a mysterious presence in Swearin'. In my recent interview with the band, he was credited for the new record's heavier aesthetic, and Kyle noted his taste for obscure songwriters. Keith sings softly on his songs, but the instrumentation is generally heavier; before Swearin', he sang and played in the abrasive, Killdozer-worship band called Bad Blood Revival that cited influences like Jesus Lizard, Melvins, and Butthole Surfers. Their album Tongue Twisting Tunes for Tiny Tots is here.

Keith says his triology of songs written for Surfing Strange (two made it onto the record) were inspired by the Beach Boys and meant to flow into each other like a suite. There was an elegy for Dennis Wilson ("Surfing Strange") and a song about Brian Wilson ("Melanoma"), with a somber link in the middle ("Glare of the Sun") written entirely in a shower in Madrid. His approach—louder, more abstract, but ultimately personal and intimate in nature—marks much of the material from his other project with Katie Crutchfield, Great Thunder. Check out two songs from their recent tape (below), released through Swearin' drummer Jeff Bolt's cassette label Stupid Bag. Great Thunder's double album, Groovy Kinda Love, is out next month from Salinas.

04 P.S. Eliot

In the more melodic corners of contemporary U.S. punk, the two records from P.S. Eliot are absolutely essential—2009's emotional, folk-tinged Introverted Romance In Our Troubled Minds, and 2011's more straightforward, Deal-indebted Sadie. (Both records, released on Salinas, are on Spotify and very much worth seeking out.) Though the band was guided by Katie Crutchfield's existential, ambitious, no-future songwriting, with Allison on drums and backing vocals, it can be interesting and certainly revealing to enter 70 minutes of the creative environment that spawned an artist.

Welcome to Mixdown, an ongoing series where Pitchfork staffers and contributors talk about mixtapes and mixes that may not be covered in our reviews section but are worth discussing. This week we're jumping into new releases from Hudson Mohawke and Baauer, a new regional All Star tape from Three 6 Mafia's DJ Paul, and Chris Read's memorable Midnight Marauders tribute mix.

Midnight Marauders: 20

Corban Goble:A Tribe Called Quest was one of the first groups I was fluent in; I memorized every inch of what they'd recorded when I was in high school. Midnight Marauders is my favorite album of theirs and something I feel like holds up pretty well. This mix, which is kind of like one of those "What they sampled" tapes fused with MM itself, kicks ass. Do you guys have Tribe #memories?

Carrie Battan: Absolutely. Midnight Marauders is one of those albums that I can go a year or two without hearing and then listen to it and feel taken aback by how deeply it’s embedded into my psyche. We’re all too young to have gotten into it when it came out, but it still felt very important and formative when I was a teenager (and especially during my freshman year of college). I sincerely hope that this is an album that will continue being important to high schoolers and college kids forever. Listening to this mix makes you realize that no one has ever been able to recreate the sheer easefulness of the album.

Jordan Sargent: This really ups the ante for all further mixes that just string together samples from an album or an artist. This feels very organic in a way that I think honors the way these songs—and most sample based rap beats, really—were probably formed. Aside from being a lot of fun to hear, the mix just seems rightly in the spirit of an art form that has more or less fallen by the wayside. Also, the way the samples flow into the songs here makes me think of other tracks that pull from the same sample sources—there’s a real "tapestry of music" thing going on. Should I hit a bong now?

CB: Yes, hit the bong and then make like me and start looking at pictures that demonstrate how well Q-Tip has aged.

Da Mafia 6ix: 6ix Commandments

CB: What do you think Da Mafia 6ix thinks of the "Worst Behaviour" video?

JS: They probably stopped watching during the skit like everyone else. Also, DJ Paul has a successful BBQ sauce business. So he’s probably feeling alright all around. The rest of Da Mafia 6ix I can’t speak for.

CG: If you’re a Three 6 person who loves that sound but is curious to find some new spins on it that don’t totally overhaul the tried-and-true format, this mixtape is made from your very imagination. The best of all is probably the posse cut "Body Parts", which takes just about takes everyone that had a cup of coffee with the group in the early days and throws them on an absolute slammer. It’s nine minutes long, but you’ll probably experience it for longer as you’re spinning back the parts from Juicy J, Gangsta Boo, and the whole family.

CB: I might rather just go listen to SpaceGhostPurrp’s album from last year, to be honest. Or Juicy J’s album. Those newer iterations of the Three 6 trademarks are just more appealing to me at this point than a super dense, heavy new B-Team posse mixtape.

JS: Yeah, Juicy’s album surprisingly stayed pretty close to the vintage Three 6 sound, but there’s definitely a more contemporary bent to it. He also raps almost exclusively about doing drugs, so if you want to listen to a competent tape of Memphis head-cracking raps this mixtape is more your speed. The chorus of "Yean High" goes "Smoke coming up out my mouth/ Smoke coming up out my gun," which is pretty brilliant and makes me wonder how no one in the Three 6 universe ever stumbled on that construction prior to 2013.

Hudson Mohawke: Hud Mo 100

CB: And if you want to go super lightweight with the Three 6 vibe, you can listen to Hudson Mohawke’s new EP of edits, which includes a rework of Three 6's "Who Run It". I really like these Hudson Mohawke edits—especially for reminding me how good Chris Brown’s "Kiss Kiss" is—but they toe the line of humdrum SoundCloud remixes.

CG: Yeah, "Kiss Kiss" stood out to me initially as well because of how he repackages it, kind of rebuilding the spine of it. I was thinking about whether I thought Hudson Mohawke had "made the leap," the arbitrary notion of him graduating from the SoundCloud ranks to more prestigious work on albums. He’s at least on most people's shortlist of producers and I’d argue he’s earned that.

JS: I really like TNGHT’s recordings, but I’m not sold on the idea of HudMo being much beyond whatever he produces there. That said, these edits are pretty fun—I dig the cement-mix churn he’s going for with the "Kiss Kiss" rework and "Midas Touch" shows some real pop instincts that I wish would show through more in the rest of his production. The beats he’s done for Drake, Pusha T and G.O.O.D. Music felt too much to me like HudMo making a random YouTube user-style “[x rapper]-type beat” whereas the edits here feel a lot more distinctive. And I want to hear him do R&B! "Midas Touch" is great. But maybe I’m being selfish.

CB: Delusional Selfish Jordan Sargent Got Bandz

Baauer's USB Stick

CB: Wait, so is Baauer someone who has graduated beyond the SoundCloud ranks? This little collection of songs that he released by throwing a USB stick in the audience… no one embodies the cheaply infectious trap-slap the way he does. I find myself sort of swaying back and forth in my chair when I listen to this stuff, completely against my own volition. Also when I was listening to these songs—particularly the first one, “1Snap” I just kept waiting for Big Sean to start rapping.

CG: Ha, I’ll never be able to unhear Phantom Big Sean on these now. Whoa. I think Baauer sat back after that first blast of exposure, and maybe that was smart? There’s something missing or some space to be filled on these songs, whether by a vocalist or some other element. Baauer’s carving out one of the weirdest careers. When I started from the top with "1Snap" I knew within three seconds how I felt about it.

JS: "RASPBERRY", which cuts up the vocals from Crime Mob’s "Rock Yo Hips" over this little bubble-pop beat with unending pulverizing bass, is legitimately awesome. I’ve listened to it like five times in a row now. The rest of this is awful. Which, I mean, he put these songs on USB drives and gave them away for free, so whatever. But I’m going to listen to "Guap" now. Swerve.

CB: I really hope that this new Lil B song means that the 05 Fuck Em mixtape is coming any day and we can do a pre-Thanksgiving edition with it. Also, it’s been a very long time since Lil B showed a big sack of weed (and a can of Olde English?) in a video.

JS: Maybe this is a question for a few weeks from now, but I wonder which teenager was the first in American history to completely befuddle a Thanksgiving dinner by saying "I am thankful for the Based God." This had to have happened, in what, 2010? 2011?

CB: You'd think there would be a popular Lil B Thanksgiving meme now. Let’s look for evidence and report back next week.

You probably know Rudimental, the London-based dance collective whose album Home (released this past April) spawned two No. 1 hits in the U.K. Along with tracks by Disclosure, Duke Dumont and Chase & Status, Rudimental have nudged the top of the British charts away from EDM and back towards sounds like house and drum & bass. But you may not know Black Butter, the small dance imprint that pressed Rudimental’s earliest records. In 2013, the label has released a string of singles by underground artists that have, with a boost from outlets like BBC’s Radio 1, helped define a sound that revives the spirit—if not always the particulars—of the type of vocal house music that crossed over into the pop world in the 90s.

Black Butter was founded in 2010 by veteran industry figure Olly Wood. In an interview with eMusic last year, Wood said that he intended for "the label to not be restricted to any one genre and to make a real point of being all over the place, sonically." Rudimental—who lean on the clattering percussion of drum & bass but who dip artfully into house and sometimes garage— are a visible example of this ethos, but Black Butter’s 2013 output (or at least the best of it) uses the tempo and tones of house music to build songs that are distinctly pop.

Listen to five of Black Butter's stand-out 2013 tracks after the jump.

Kidnap Kid - "Thin Lines" [ft. Lotti]

With its husky vocals and major-key piano chords, "Thin Lines" sounds eerily similar to how Feist might if she decided to make dance music. Even when the beat kicks in, the track rolls along on an easy, hummable bassline that settles on a rather mild tempo. There is a strong vocal hook from the little-known singer Lotti, but this is the dance music of bouncing and swaying, of feeling breath on your neck. Kidnap Kid has opened for Disclosure and Rudimental in America and first scored a notable track with 2012’s "Vehl", but this is his best, most accomplished single yet.

Gorgon City - "Real" [ft. Yasmin]

"Real", from duo Gorgon City, showcases the distinct vocal stylings of Yasmin, who provides an elegy for a broken relationship: "We used to be real." Of all the tracks on the shortlist, this one is the most shamelessly 90s, with piped in samples from a male vocalist and even laser sounds(!). Black Butter isn't exactly a label of hands-in-the-air bangers, but "Real" is the exception; this is an anthem.

Syron - "Here"

Okay, "Here" really isn’t dance music at all. It's straight-up pop with the flavor of dancehall, though sonically it reminds me most of Ne-Yo’s "Miss Independent" (which inspired a hit Vybz Kartel remix, so it’s all coming full circle). But that "Here"—from the 19-year-old singer Daisy Tullulah Syron-Russell—doesn’t sound out of place on Black Butter speaks to how much the label has gravitated towards pop, and vice versa.

Drums of Death - "True" [ft. Yasmin]

Colin Bailey has been producing as Drums of Death since 2008, but didn’t put out a record on Black Butter until last year’s Blue Waves, a slapdash but often invigorating EP of club-driven house and techno. With "True" he streamlines his sound towards the poppy side of house, but doesn’t go full crossover: Instead of a soaring chorus, Bailey dices up Yasmin’s vocals to sound like a sample.

Sinead Harnett - "Got Me"

"Got Me" is a funny song. The vocals track along a simple, almost dinky, little keyboard melody that straddles the line between instantly catchy and incessantly annoying. But the vocals from Sinead Harnett—who sings alongside the prodigal MNEK on Rudimental’s soulful single "Baby"—really can’t be denied. "Got Me" is a nice tune, but ultimately serves as a warning that Harnett is a vocal talent who will release something very, very good in the not-too-distant future.

Near the end of Kim Gordon's performance last night at Issue Project Room, she wailed into a harmonica, her briefly abandoned guitar hanging from her shoulder—a signature moment of searing noise and elegant destruction. Gordon's collaborator at the dimlit industrial-cathedral space in downtown Brooklyn was painter Jutta Koether—"the duo share an unabashed pleasure in disregard for technique," the program read. Koether paced through the crowd, distributing Xeroxed copies of a 1993 writing on the failures of advertising by Gordon's late, longtime friend, Mike Kelley, the renowned visual artist, "anti-rock" musician and Sonic Youth collaborator. Gordon's deadpan singing always has a physicality about it, but she felt especially present last night. Her performance was imaginative, tangible, and free; earlier, people had cheered. "What do you think this is," Gordon asked, "a rock show?"

This year, Gordon seems to have worked in nearly every medium but a conventional rock setting. Most visibly, she has performed abrasive, bluesy noise with Bill Nace as Body/Head, releasing a double album on Matador. She also began writing a memoir, filmed an episode of Lena Dunham's HBO show "Girls", and exhibited her first visual art retrospective at Manhattan's White Columns Gallery—a thrilling survey, Design Office, that ranged from early writings, avant-garde video work, and her X-Girl clothing line to rather illuminating "modern landscapes" of spray-painted tweets by the likes of Dunham and Stephen Malkmus. 

Above: Kim Gordon, "Design Office"

Last night's performance with Koether was part of a two-night tribute to Gordon at Issue, benefitting the 10-year-old experimental art space. Maybe the greatest surprise of the night was just how much spirited laughter—on and off stage—their set allowed. Among blasts of aggressive guitar and hellishly overdriven electronics, the duo reenacted a 1991 conversation, printed in Interview magazine, between Gordon and Mike Kelley (his own work is currently being honored with an inspiring multi-floor retrospective at MoMA Ps1). "I met Kim Gordon in the late 70s and she was still a California girl, still an artist, and still a 'librarian type,'" that interview went. "Now Kim's the hot and steamy female member of Sonic Youth!" The questions sarcastically dealt with Gordon's "transformation into a sex symbol"; "Did you leave art to chase rock gods?" Kelley asked. The performance was full of subtext, recalling the parts of Gordon's White Columns show that illustrated unfortunate interview questions she'd been asked in the past, like "What's it like to be a girl in a band?" (a line also found on Sonic Youth's 2009 single "Sacred Trickster".) In more direct moments of Gordon and Koether's gripping spoken word, Gordon mused about prioritizing music over art. "It's hard to get hot over a painting, there's no equivalent for teenage obsessiveness," she said. "Art obsession is ideology. Ideology can be made sexy, but it's easier in music."

Earlier Gordon performed for the first time with I.U.D., a noise power-trio including multi-instrumentalist Lizzi Bougatsos of Gang Gang Dance and drummer Sadie Laska of Growing. "Did anyone else go to the Lou Reed memorial today?" Bougatsos asked of New York's late punk godfather. Mike Kelley was not the only lost friend in the air. "It was really nice," she added, "I have to say." Indebted to him in audible ways, their slow, expressive dual drumming swelled, like a ritual, to more bodily percussion. At a point Bougatsos, who sat on the ground and provided vocal texture, stretched her arms as if flying, only to end the set with a megaphone and police siren, to accent the vibe of lawlessness. Gordon, meanwhile, explored the possibilities of her bright drone guitar, the deconstructed soul of the music. It conjured a potent urgency. Even with all the night's allusions to the past, Gordon, as ever, makes you want to rip it up and do something new.

Above: Sonic Youth Bandname Sculpture (Kim Gordon, 2013)

Shake Appeal is a column that highlights new garage and garage-adjacent releases. This week, Evan Minsker discusses the new album from the Limiñanas, a split from So Cow and Image Makers, a reissue of Baltimore psych hero George Brigman, and debuts from ANO and Life Stinks.

The Limiñanas: Costa Blanca [Trouble in Mind]

The Limiñanas hail from Southern France, and on Costa Blanca, they exude a whispering cool. At the beginning of "Rosas", Lio Limiñana speaks in a deep, husky voice—he sounds like Serge Gainsbourg, detached and untouchable—over a rolling bass groove and rattling tambourine, before a warm, wah-wah guitar comes in. It's an album that seems to take its cues only from the coolest vintage sounds: Gainsbourg, French new wave, and the Velvet Underground. A lot of bands aim to put their spin on vintage material, but very few can make it sound this good. Also: Listen carefully for the unexpected John Landis and John Belushi namedrops on "Votre coté yéyé m'emmerde".

The Limiñanas: "My Black Sabbath" on SoundCloud.

So Cow / Image Makers: Split [Boston Pizza]

So Cow is a solo project by Ireland's Brian Kelly. Image Makers are a Spanish outfit. This limited run split, which came about after the two bands played a show together in Madrid, features a choice cut from each artist. "Visa Waiver", with its crusty low end and stabs of feedback, is one of the more ragged tracks in So Cow's pop-heavy discography. Meanwhile, Image Makers' "Mediocridad" is a jangling, swooning pop tune cut with reverberating synths. The mood is drastically different on each side, but both songs are total earworms.

George Brigman: Jungle Rot [Obscure Oxide]

In 1975, Baltimore shredder George Brigman self-released his debut album Jungle Rot. Now, it's got a vinyl reissue on Obscure Oxide. The title track features some beefy, acid-fried, psychedelic guitar heroics. There's similarly throaty, macho, strange stuff out there today—like Birds of Maya, Purling Hiss, and Spacin'. But then Jungle Rot has more gentle and minimal fare ("Schoolgirl"), blues rock ("Don't Bother Me"), and completely fried fuzz ("I Feel Alright"). It's a ripper that's unpredictable and consistently great.

ANO: Shit Just Got Real! [self-released]

This cassette demo is several months old, but it's good enough to deserve a belated mention. Since there's no information on ANO out there, I emailed them to get their story: They're four people from all over the globe, but fate brought them together in London. Guitarist Leah currently lives in San Francisco, drummer Raquel and vocalist Andrea are from Spain, and bassist Rob is from Guildford, England. They played about four gigs and made this demo before going on hiatus. Hopefully they'll come back someday, because this demo is great. "You bore me!" they growl. "I don't care about anything!" they shriek. Eight loud, bashing punk songs that don't fuck around. 

Life Stinks: Life Stinks [S.S.]

While the Bay Area seems to be teeming with prolific songwriters who make nuanced, well-crafted garage pop, there are also plenty of sloppy, macho punks. (See: Scraper.) Life Stinks belong in the latter category, which is made evident on their self-titled LP. They employ a menacing low end, their guitar solos sometimes feel flat or misplaced (like on the end of "Sharp When You're Bummed"), and their lyrics go out of their way to provoke: On "Cemetaries", frontman Chad sings about how he wants someone to throw his ashes in the eyes of his enemies. There's also a lot of stuff about how pointless cemeteries are. Awesomely, the LP is co-produced by two studio wizards: Kelley Stoltz and Eddy Current Suppression Ring's Mikey Young.

Life Stinks: "Sharp When You're Bummed" on SoundCloud.

Life Stinks: "Cemetaries" on SoundCloud.

Also Worth Hearing: A fresh pressing of Gino and the Goons' self-titled 12" (via Total Punk); Cold Beat, a band featuring Grass Widow's Hannah Lew and Shannon and the Clams' Cody Blanchard (via Crime on the Moon); Nonage, the new album from Autistic Youth (via Dirtnap); jangling pop from Vancouver's Tough Age (via Mint).

Gino and the Goons: "Gotta Getaway" on SoundCloud.

Cold Beat: "Worms" on SoundCloud.

Tough Age: "The Heart of Juliet Jones" on SoundCloud.

"The aim was to make music with punk’s energy but more finesse and beauty," says Cocteau Twins guitarist Robin Guthrie in Facing the Other Way: The 4AD Story, Martin Aston’s sprawling and excellent new book about the legendary British record label. Of the effects pedals he began building in the early ’80s, Guthrie adds, "I was trying to make my guitar sound like I could play it."

If punk was about doing it yourself—getting the most mileage (and volume) out of your basic abilities—Cocteau Twins were a quintessential punk band, and by extension, 4AD was a quintessential punk label. Neither is viewed as such, and that’s understandable. Guthrie’s music with his former wife and Cocteau Twins partner, singer Elizabeth Fraser, is the epitome of ethereality, and the punkest 4AD ever got was with its early signees, Bauhaus and the Birthday Party. But as Aston—a veteran British music journalist who’s penned books about Björk and Pulp—makes clear, the fundamental virtue is the same: following a vision wherever it may lead.

Formed in 1979 by two English record-store employees, Ivo Watts-Russell and Peter Kent, 4AD spun the success of its early, dark post-punk roster into a much broader palette in the ’80s—one that encompassed the pan-ethnic swoon of Dead Can Dance; the Yankee quirk of Throwing Muses and the Pixies; and even the reverence of This Mortal Coil, Watts-Russell’s collaborative studio project. It was the last group that gave the label its first British hit, a cover of Tim Buckley’s spectral "Song of the Siren", performed under the TMC banner by Guthrie and Fraser. Modern English’s "I Melt With You" followed, as did M/A/R/R/S’s "Pump Up the Volume"—multimillion-selling singles that defined the poles of 4AD’s appeal, from sumptuous post-punk pop to groundbreaking house. With the Pixies’ elevation to alt-rock sainthood in the early 90s, 4AD remained committed to championing smaller, stranger bands, although—Pixies aside—a certain earnestness remained the label’s through line, up to and including current 4AD acts like the National and Iron & Wine.

Facing the Other Way tells the 4AD story with depth and scope, but the book is just as much a biography of Watts-Russell. Reticent and intuitive, he led 4AD into the realm of labels such as Factory—4AD’s closest contemporary in sound and vision, at least in the early ’80s—that turned a record company into something akin to a subculture. It wasn’t all Watts-Russell; graphic designer Vaughan Oliver was just as responsible for the label’s mystique via his visionary, hypnotically Dada-esque cover art. It was branding, sure, but in a way that was neither cynically postmodern or glibly pop-art. Like most of 4AD’s music, it didn’t shout. It lay there, half-hidden, beckoning.

Ultimately 4AD succumbed to the same compromises and corporate consolidation that befell many of its peers. But as Facing the Other Way illustrates, its legacy continues to inspire. It’s hard to imagine a challenging, oblique band like Deerhunter having a more apt home than 4AD, and it’s equally hard to imagine young, well-curated indie labels like Sacred Bones existing as such without 4AD’s influence. Aston paints a panoramic context in this regard, dwelling on the label’s many tangents (post-punk, goth, world music, shoegaze, alternative rock, indie pop, folk) while keeping an eye on how that teeming patchwork—much like the harmonics of a heavily-modulated Cocteau Twins chord—coalesce into a shimmering whole.

Facing the Other Way is not without flaws: Occasionally it gets bogged down in contracts-and-licensing minutia, and the segues from past-tense narrative to present-tense interviewing are sometimes arbitrary and jarring. Overwhelmingly, though, the book is an exquisite reflection of 4AD itself—extravagant, atmospheric, and rich in texture and timbre. In one of many chapters on Cocteau Twins, Guthrie humbly sums up his towering, vastly influential aesthetic as "beautiful noise"—the same phrase used by director Eric Green as the title of his upcoming shoegaze documentary, which features Cocteau Twins prominently. But beautiful noise is more than just a sound. While it’s true that 4AD has been responsible for some of the most charismatic cacophony in recorded history, it’s the tension between celestial aspirations and fleshly fragility that’s the true dynamic behind the band, the label, and a sizeable chunk of the best music made—noisy or not—over the past 30 years. As Aston elegantly conveys in Facing the Other Way, beautiful noise can be an ideal for living as much as listening.

photos by Puja Patel

It’s rare that you hop into a taxi and the driver already knows where you’re headed. Such was the case on October 26, when I said I was going to the Treme neighborhood of New Orleans; the cabbie glanced into his rearview mirror and knowingly replied, "You’re heading for the Clairborne Bridge, honey!" He was right. As we got closer to the destination, it was clear that the festivities had already begun: Boys no older than 10 scurried around with trumpets in one hand and snowballs in the other, a wave of families carried fold-up chairs and coolers, and police officers idly blocked us off of the street and into an underpass. Together we walked towards the distant hyper-thud of a bounce beat.

It was the day of the annual Red Bull Street Kings competition—an event that, though sponsored by an energy drink, still gave off the vibe that it had been thrown by the city itself. (A few days in New Orleans and you’ll discover that, to visiting corporate entities in search of local flavor, brass bands are a hot commodity.) Four brass bands had been selected to battle during the free, five-hour event that closed down city streets for a quarter of a mile. Solange lingered by the main stage, but most of the audience had their eyes on the judges’ raised platform, where local legends Mannie Fresh, Trombone Shorty, and Kermit Ruffins looked on. Each band—the New Breed Brass Band, New Creations, TBC, and New Orleans’ first and only all-female group the Original Pinettes—hosted a 15-minute second-line (the name for the party of people who follow a brass band, celebrating and dancing as if at a jazz funeral procession) up to their place on stage. Host and local radio DJ Slab 1 called from the stage, "Where are these Original Pinettes? They call themselves the Street Queens but all they’ve proven so far is that women are always late."

They might be late today, but they started early. Formed in 1991, the Original Pinettes began as a group of students from the local all-girls St. Mary’s Catholic School. Like the city they call home, the band was torn apart by Hurricane Katrina, sending members to seek refuge with family and friends scattered in neighboring states. In 2006 Christie Jourdain, snare drummer and current bandleader of the Pinettes, sought to reconstruct; she rounded up the members who were still willing to play and together they went hunting for women to replace those who had dropped out in the wake of Katrina. "We went to local high-schools and watched second-lines," says Jourdain. "Now our band spans the ages of 17 to 38." But they’re still playing in a boys’ club. "We’re family down here, but we’re also women. We want to show that you can be strong and still ladylike; we are mentors, mothers, college-students, people with careers," she explains. "We’re all family down here. There’s a lot of love between bands but you have to earn respect." Even then, having local jazz celebrities give tutorials and advice is practically routine. "Trombone Shorty said he would teach me a skill," Jourdain mentions casually. "But he also told me it was up to me after that."

At Street Kings, costumes are on despite the unseasonal heat. One band is led by a man covered in feathers and glitter in his Mardi Gras carnival flair, another band plays Daft Punk's "Get Lucky" as uniformed kids play hype men, the Pinettes have confetti poppers and the unmistakable shrieks of their sisters. A woman who looked to be in her fifties, fully decked in a Bo-Peep costume, booty-bounces to the stage as a tall, top-hatted man toting a puppy exaggeratedly clears a path for her with his cane. Later that night on "Saturday Night Live", Miley Cyrus would twerk for lolz in retribution for her controversial VMA performance a month earlier.

"You want to talk twerking?" Mannie Fresh asks me a few days after the competition, chuckling. "Let’s talk twerking." We go over the basics—the introduction of bounce to the city’s ingrained interconnected music culture. There’s Miami’s influence via 2 Live Crew, Fresh’s own brassy, bass-heavy 1987 track "Buck Jump Time", and MC T Tucker and DJ Irv’s 1991 "Where Dey At", (widely considered the first bounce song ever) which popularized the Triggaman beat sampled from The Showboys "Drag Rap (Triggerman)". Then there’s DJ Jubilee’s 1993 "Do the Jubilee", which finally gave a name to the booty-dancing that had become so popular. "Stop! Shake it, twerk it!" commands the emcee.

"Really, bounce became a reflection of this city musically," Fresh says. "Twerking is part of that culture. You grow up into it." And, sure enough, there’s plenty of the dance when Fresh assumes the role of Street Kings DJ. We watch three generations of women tease a toddler who tries to emulate the casual bounce of her older sister. "You’ve got too much jiggle, girl!" the grandmother says to the tot. She hoists herself out of a lawn chair with a resigned sigh and begins to demonstrate. "See? You gotta get that wobble!"

For committed fans of regional, urban dance music, it’s been a bit bizarre to watch the pop world suddenly go bonkers over booty-bouncing. The dance comes rife with racial implications; it’s oversexualized, controversial, and currently in the hands of a predominantly white industry that thrives on both. Lily Allen’s video for "Hard Out Here" has spawned the newest bout of discussion about twerking, as she damns the Man responsible for objectifying her sisters while zooming in on the slow-motion wave of a hired back-up dancer’s ass twerking behind her. But while the media crows in disgust and anger, dissecting the racial and feminist undertones of the video and associated phenomenon, the innovators in New Orleans seem to have a different take.

"Seeing a four-year-old twerking is not an uncommon thing in New Orleans," says producer and DJ Rusty Lazer the next day as we walk around the French Quarter with coffee and beignets from Cafe Du Monde in hand. He’s served as bounce queen Big Freedia’s long-time DJ and currently manages and produces for Nicky Da B, the rapper responsible for the most current wave of crossover-bounce appeal via his Diplo-helmed single "Express Yourself". "It’s remarkable how outsiders have treated [twerk]," Lazer says. "These kids grow up in a community where it’s common and there’s no innuendo; it’s acrobatics, it’s expression, it’s part of music culture. The outsiders sexualize the dance more than it was ever intended to be. People see a female ass move and think it’s only good for one thing; provoking or providing sex. I think the controversy speaks to the level of sexual maturity in pop; that they don’t see the world, or movement, as a complex tapestry. It’s an oversimplification that comes from what it takes to be in that realm and it’s easy to simplify these historically complex cultures into digestible nuggets. For bounce, for twerking, that nugget is sex."

It’s no surprise that the person partially responsible for turning upside-down ass-shaking into a viral internet presence is supportive of pop’s current obsession with the aesthetics of his local sound, but he’s taking the attention with a grain of salt. "Everyone has their take on it but dancing is a form of expression and empowerment," says Nicky Da B. "This applies to men, to gay people, to women. Everyone shakes their booty here, it’s just a matter of what to." Adds Mannie Fresh: "The word 'gender' doesn’t even exist here. We are an open, free place."

The Original Pinettes

Five hours and rounds of battle after the Street Kings competition’s initial start, the name of the thing is quickly altered as the Original Pinettes are declared the first ever Street Queens of New Orleans. They accept their award to wild approval from the crowd; much of their corner are women who went to St. Mary’s and have brought their own families to the community celebration.

"Things have been crazy," says Jourdain two weeks after the competition. She tells me about the phone calls for gigs that immediately followed. (Unsurprisingly, many are from corporate entities, like the H&M that will open in the French Quarter this month.) Twitter founder Jack Dorsey and fading aerobics-king Richard Simmons recently attended one of their shows, hanging out on stage and eventually making requests. "It’s cool when famous people are in town and want to be a part of your shows because they love the energy," she says. She adds laughing: "But try and tell us what to play and we will have no problem telling you to fall back and let us do what we do!"

Still, there’s no hiding that this is a significant moment for her and her self-described "sisters from love, not by blood." They’re in tune with the world outside of their city, but revel in the acknowledgement given within. "People come here and want to be a part of something," she says. "We see so many music worlds interwoven in New Orleans; it’s in our blood, in our history. I honestly think it’s great that pop stars are emulating us with twerking and all that, but they won’t actually understand us unless they come here and try to understand. And we invite them to."

Last night, Kanye West’s supposedly embattled Yeezus tour came to town for the first of four NYC dates. Spoiler: It went off without a hitch, unless you’re getting really nitpicky (and/or you were there on a date with Kevin James). Other stuff:

ABOUT THAT SCREEN
The ginormous, circular LED screen that hovers over Kanye’s craggy set was damaged in a recent highway accident, causing West to cancel or postpone a number of Yeezus dates. Recently, Vulture ran down the vital days spent fixing the screen, and something that jumped out at me from their report was this quote, from the tour's production designer John McGuire: "Without the screen, we lose a third of the show."

Was the screen that important? While undeniably beautiful thanks to its crystalline depictions of natural phenomena that approaches (BUT DOES NOT SURPASS) the "Bound 2" video’s Lisa Franked-out dreamscapes, I’m going to say it was more like 20% of the show. For the most part, there’s enough going on that you’re really not looking at that big halo screen so much, if you can even see it (it was not visible from some parts of the upper deck at the Barclays Center). It’s cool, but cooler stuff happens.

MASK CHANGE 1
9:34 PM

SURPRISINGLY ENDEARING MOMENT
Though I happen to feel that some of Kanye’s onstage ranting is prepackaged and at times a touch forced—he clearly knows that people expect him to do it and he obliges—last night’s lecture seemed particularly charged. He pinballed back and forth between a couple of topics, memorably namechecking Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Holy Mountain and shaming anyone in the audience who hadn’t seen it. But he began with a story about talking to a CEO who had called (?) just to give Kanye advice/compare him to Muhammad Ali. This all funnelled into a point about being yourself—he had recently performed "Can’t Tell Me Nothing"—but I had to wonder… what is this service? Did people pay Kanye to get on the phone, only so that these callers who were worth "multi billions" could give unsolicited advice to him? Is it a hotline? Where do I get this number?

Anyway, it was surprisingly touching, if a little hard to follow. In the end, there is something strangely charming about someone dressed like Paris Fashion Week Boba Fett prattling on about The Holy Mountain. For someone who made an album called The College Dropout, he's pretty much got the collegiate experience down with that whole thing.

MASK CHANGE 2
10:28 PM

OUT OF CONTEXT KENDRICK LAMAR QUOTE OR MUTUAL BENEFIT LYRIC?
"I hope I live a legacy… in your heart"

MOVIE EVERYONE ON KANYETOTHE IS WATCHING RIGHT NOW
The Holy Mountain

MASK OFF, FIRST TIME
10:45 pm

KANYE STUFF THAT HAPPENED WHILE I WAS AT THE BARCLAYS SHOW STILL BETTER THAN THE VIDEO
While Kanye was performing "Black Skinhead", he and his production team arranged the neat trick of having his LED screen avatar mimic the movements he was making on stage. Neat, in theory, but since Kanye ducked a lot during that song, his CGI double was always just kind of out of the frame. When it wasn’t, its arms were contorted and weird-looking.

JUST SAYING
Drake’s StubHub prices for comparable seats on a similarly situated weekday night at the same venue were triple Kanye’s

CONCLUSION
While it didn't resonate like the heartbreakingly sincere Glow in the Dark tour—I’ll never forget the instantly iconic moment of Kanye sitting on his set’s lunar surface, lost in thought and thinking of his mom while "Don’t Stop Believing" was screeching from the speakers—Yeezus once again certifies Kanye as one of the most imaginative and exciting artists working. From the demonic Aggro Crag set to the costuming (I’m going to call the vibe "satanic Taymor") to the merch stand stocked with confederate flag-checkered apparel that Kanye is daring you to buy as a test of your devotion, it’s hard to envision another artist delivering a show that succeeds on both their own terms and the audience’s.

If you’re a pop music fan and you’ve been on the internet this week, you’ve probably read some of the chatter surrounding the lackluster debut of Lady Gaga’s third full-length, ARTPOP. Mother Monster debuts at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 this week with 258,000 in sales.

As Billboard points out in this week’s chart numbers, Gaga’s first-week total is right in line with, if a bit off from, the recent chart-topping debuts of Miley Cyrus (Bangerz, 270,000 in late October) and Katy Perry (Prism, 286,000 in late October). A number between 250K and 300K is the typical first-week benchmark for albums by Top 40-dominating pop stars—Britney Spears will likely debut in that neighborhood when her next album drops in two weeks; her last disc did 276,000 in its 2011 debut.

The problem for Gaga, perception-wise, is she isn’t supposed to be measured by the same yardstick as these other starlets. This is the culture-dominating, Madonna-rivaling road warrior queen who famously sold 1.1 million copies of her 2011 album Born This Way in its first week.

Infamously, that seven-figure sales total was inflated by a two-day Amazon MP3 sale of Born This Way for just 99 cents, a gimmick by Amazon to promote its then-new Cloud Drive service. I have long argued that Gaga doesn’t entirely deserve the big red asterisk that chart historians place next to Born This Way because of this fire sale. Yes, a reported 440,000 of the 1.1 million buyers that week in May 2011 took advantage of the ridiculous price, but we’ll never know how many tens of thousands of those folks were planning to buy Born anyway. 

Moreover, the album was purchased at regular price by nearly 700,000 people, a positively Eminem-ian number. Whatever high-six-figure sum Born actually earned that week in 2011, it indicated Lady Gaga’s cultural capital was at an all-time high—in the wake of her Monster Ball tour and the 2008–10 onslaught of smash singles that, arguably, reinvented Top 40 radio in Gaga’s image.

But there’s no getting around it: ARTPOP’s first-week number is a serious comedown—less than one-fourth of Born’s first week. Even if you throw away Born’s 99-cent Amazon purchases, it still outsold ARTPOP by nearly three-to-one.

Think the blogosphere noticed? Oh, my, has it: Spreading like wildfire this week, before the album chart numbers were even released, was a titillating, anonymous-source-based Examiner.com article purporting that Gaga’s label Interscope had spent $25 million promoting ARTPOP—the most since Michael Jackson’s 2001 underperformer Invincible and its $30 million pricetag. Follow-up stories have speculated, dubiously, that ARTPOP’s poor debut would lead to company layoffs.

I have a hard time believing Interscope was that shocked by Gaga’s first-week number. Sure, record companies know how to overspend—Gaga’s “artRave” album-launch party at the Brooklyn Navy Yard (featuring a flying dress) couldn’t have come cheap. But it beggars belief that Interscope would set such a stratospheric budget for ARTPOP, expecting it to do anything close to Gaga’s 2011 numbers. Even an optimistic record label knows Gaga’s Imperial Phase, where she sets the pop-cultural agenda, is over. They’d have plenty of data upon which to base their lowered expectations.

For starters, there’s what I call the AC/DC Rule—my theorem which states that initial sales of an album are a referendum on the public's feelings about the act's prior album, not the current one. (I named it after AC/DC, a band whose first Billboard No. 1 album is both less acclaimed and poorer-selling, by a factor of five, than its classic predecessor.)

My rule has worked both ways for Gaga. Her debut full-length The Fame, with its slow sales build and string of hit songs, primed hundreds of thousands of people to line up for Born This Way in week one, resulting in that eye-popping 2011 debut. But that’s when the AC/DC Rule flipped on her: Born’s shelf life was unquestionably shorter and less impressive—fewer hits, medium-size sales, general weirdness that outstripped her prior, more lovable weirdness—and so a falloff in sales, for whatever album came next, was inevitable.

Additionally, looking just at ARTPOP itself, any pop-watcher had to expect it to do modest business where the rubber meets the road: hit songs.

Lead single “Applause” (a grower, in this critic’s opinion) peaked at No. 4 on the Hot 100 in September. That’s a perfectly respectable showing, but it was trounced by the fall’s other two big pop-diva releases, Katy Perry’s “Roar” and Miley Cyrus’s “Wrecking Ball,” which both hit No. 1. Comparing Gagas to Gagas, “Applause” also saw a lower peak than any of her album-leading singles: The Fame’s “Just Dance” made No. 1, The Fame Monster’s “Bad Romance” reached No. 2, and Born This Way’s title track debuted at No. 1. ARTPOP has spawned a second Top 10 hit, “Dope”; but it made the winner’s circle last week only because of Billboard’s quirky decision to count streams of her crazy-emo YouTube Awards performance of the song for the Hot 100. This week, in the absence of heavy YouTube numbers, “Dope” plummets 63 spots to No. 71.

So that’s it, right? A weak debut by a pretentious, high-art-fetishizing album, combined with underperforming singles: surely Lady Gaga is over?

Maybe not. When I think of ARTPOP, I don’t think of career-burying Waterloos like Jackson’s final studio album Invincible. To me—as long as the whole world is going to compare Lady Gaga to Madonna anyway—ARTPOP is her Erotica.

Remember that overlong 1992 Madonna album? Released to coincide with Sex, Madge’s art book/photography happening, Erotica the album was a 75-minute smorgasbord of musings on carnal desire, acclaimed by some at the time but now generally regarded as three-star Madonna at best. It does contain—and is redeemed by—two of her best ’90s singles, “Deeper and Deeper” and “Rain,” both Top 20 hits (the album’s biggest single, the No. 3–peaking title track, is forgettable). Most important, Erotica was only a modest commercial performer, peaking at No. 2 for a single week and thus snapping a streak of No. 1 studio albums (Like a Virgin, True Blue, Like a Prayer). It ended up double-platinum—a fine showing, but the lowest-selling studio album of Madge’s first decade.

The parallels between Madonna’s fifth studio album and Gaga’s fourth are manifold. Pretentions toward high art? Check: Erotica landed at Madge’s Camille Paglia moment, when—between Sex and the recent hit/video “Justify My Love”—her output felt more like a semiotics thesis than a career. Underperforming singles? Check: There were no No. 1s on Erotica; it would take until her next album, 1994’s Bedtime Stories, for her to top the Hot 100 again (with “Take a Bow”). Catcalls from the peanut gallery? Check: In The Rolling Stone Album Guide, Barry Walters aptly recalls the release of Erotica as the moment when “a media backlash intensified.”

Given what lay ahead for Madonna after Erotica—career triumphs like Ray of Light and Music, a raft of Top10hits—Gaga would be well within her rights keeping perspective right now.

She’s also got cause for optimism on the singles front, even before ARTPOP runs its course. “Applause”, despite it modest peak, has been in the Top 10 its entire chart life (now 13 weeks), indicating a base of ongoing support from singles-buyers and radio. Speaking of radio, this week, the mad-catchy R. Kelly duet “Do What U Want”—so beloved by radio programmers that Interscope actually changed its plans and accelerated promoting it—rises into the Hot 100’s Top 20, leaping 30 spots to No. 18 fueled by Top 40 airplay.

Come Christmas, “Do What U Want” will likely be a Top 10 or even Top Five hit, and ARTPOP, though still a muddle of an album, may remain propped up within the Top 40. It’s a comedown for Lady Gaga, to be sure—but that’s the thing about pop demigods who have Imperial Phases. After the phase ends, you’re left navigating a career as a run-of-the-mill pop star, proving yourself song by song. Let’s see if Gaga can handle it.

Welcome to Mixdown, an ongoing series where Pitchfork staffers and contributors talk about mixtapes and mixes that may not be covered in our reviews section but are worth discussing. Today we're talking about Kanye's tour, Rich Kidz' new mixtape, and Dev Hynes of Blood Orange's new mix for the Fader.

Yeezy Season

Carrie Battan: You both went to Kanye last night? I went the first night.

Jordan Sargent: Yep, it was a Mixdown field trip to the Yeezus tour. I bought a cheeseburger that had chicken fingers and french fries on it. I asked a lot of questions about it before I purchased it and was not real enough to eat it as assembled.

Corban Goble: I hit the merch stand hard. My mom is going to have the greatest Christmas ever!

CB: The best part of the show for me was being seated next to these incredibly rowdy college bros (or maybe they were European kids?) who were drunkenly cry-singing every single lyric, including (while facing one another) "Your titties, let ‘em out, free at last."

CG: Jordan had a good description of the general audience vibe when he chatted me "fratty bros dressed like hypebeasts." There was like, an Exxon tanker of spilled beer in my section. Had you guys seen Kanye previously? 

JS: I saw Kanye earlier this year at the Adult Swim Upfront (those words should not make sense to you), but this was my first time seeing him in an arena. The show was awesome, obviously. I thought it started really strongly—Yeezus material plus stuff like "Mercy" and "Cold" just kills in that setting.

The show dragged a bit in the middle and picked up again towards the end, though there is some cognitive dissonance in watching him rap material like "Stronger" or anything pre-808s. Honestly, my favorite part was that the main stage away from the mountain shook violently when Kanye was really hype. It felt very "California Love" video Terrordome. 

CB: I was also pleased to see that Kanye is a good-bad dancer in the same way that he’s a good-bad singer. I thought the show was awesome—FILLED WITH AWESOMENESS—too. I heard some complaints that parts were a bit sloppy and loose, but that wasn’t the impression I got. Or, if there was some sloppiness, it was an organic part of Kanye’s overblown and theatrical approach to arena shows. Corban, how would you compare it to Drake’s show in the same stadium a few weeks ago?

CG: Drake’s show was higher energy. The set is engineered to be a little more fun and loose than Kanye's. Also—I’m borrowing a friend’s observation here—people are just kind of cold on Yeezus, at least in a live capacity. Nothing Was the Same has all this lush, vibrant sound that might play better in an arena setting than the sharp-edged Yeezus sound. I had a great time at both, honestly; Drake’s show was the best I’ve seen him and Yeezus was only a couple hairs off from Glow in the Dark, which was the best show I’d ever seen before that. In conclusion, I’d just hedge my bets and go to both tours if given the opportunity.

Also, I want to say that seeing Tribe, even in a somewhat depleted state, was delightful.

CB: Mixdown is a real bundle of love for A Tribe Called Quest.

JS: If I’m being completely honest, my true favorite moment of the night was when Busta Rhymes came out for "Scenario". He was jumping so forcefully that it looked like he was actively trying to break the stage. It didn’t even matter that they didn’t turn his mic on for the first three minutes. Busta’s music has gotten so humorless in the last several years; it was awesome to see him utterly losing his mind.

Busta also got the biggest applause of the night, even louder than when Kim walked into the V.I.P. Speaking of rich kids…

Rich Kidz: West Side Story 

CB: Smooth transition! I’ve only been listening to it for a day but the new Rich Kidz is already one of my favorite tapes of the year, in particular the song "More". We’re at the height of young rappers making music that is, above all, beautiful, and this is especially beautiful.

Rich Kidz are the best at encapsulating feeling both young and old at the same time—they try swag out like grown men and refer to their youth in the past tense ("when I was young") but there's a youthful wink to it, especially with lines like, "My shoes cost more than your outfit." Bragging that your shoes cost more than someone's outfit is like saying, "I’m older and cooler and richer than you, but not by much!"

CG: I’ve liked a handful of RK tracks in the past, but I didn’t anticipate them sticking the landing when moving into more melodic material. They’ve had catchy hooks in the past but I think something like "More" is on another level. I’m not so into the spitball rapping over songs like "Ambitionz of a Ridah" but this is a mixtape and I should probably chill out.

JS: I love Rich Kidz. I loved when "My Life" made Pitchfork’s Top 100 Tracks last year. I love this mixtape. These dudes might be the most melodic rappers in the game aside from Future, who, by the way, should try and make Rich Kidz famous. Like, the outro of "Run It Up" basically sounds like an Usher feature. The production on this tape is consistently bizarre but they float steadily over any beat they choose. These are anthems. "More" is so good. Can we issue a rogue Best New Music?

CB: What is it about Rich Kidz that prevents them from getting either a.) radio play or b.) lots of critical attention? Also, this is the sparsest Wikipedia page I’ve ever seen: "RK4L RICHKIDZ FOR LIFE AINT NO TRADING KOO-KOO. RichKidz consist of two lyricists named Skooly and Yung PU."

CG: I did a track writeup a while back for a RK song and it was impossible to figure out what was going on. I think all these songs stand up on their own but maybe don’t kick you in the face in the way that a song by somebody you’ve never heard of might need to in order to take over your life.

JS: The one thing they need is a song with an obvious catchphrase. They need a phrase as instantly memorable as “Versace Versace Versace Versace” basically. The new crossover is coining a ubiquitous Twitter hashtag.

CB: Let’s hope it’s somewhere on the next Rich Kidz mixtape.

Blood Orange: Fader Mix

CB: Given the nature of the new album, Cupid Deluxe—which feels like a warm mixtape-like collage—the mixtape companion doesn’t add all that much to the picture. I'd probably rather just put the album on. But the one thing I really like about it is hearing Dev Hynes narrate his selections in a radio voice. He can sometimes be a distant figure in his own music, so it's fun hearing his voice straight-on.

CG: He definitely has the right BBC Radio voice, too. I would listen to a sports call-in show he hosted, which is basically what happens at the 50-minute mark.

The big thing I get here about Hynes and Cupid Deluxe is a better idea of what the texture of his music is founded in. He’s always had interesting percussion ideas—I think of that early phase of Blood Orange where he was pulling up a drumbeat he made in GarageBand, hitting play and then building his guitar lines over it. So, it makes a lot of sense to hear stuff like UB40 and Afrikaa Bambataa, "space beats from the 80s!" or something. I also had to seek out that Skepta freestyle he put in there.

The caller is being way too hard on Carmelo, by the way.

JS: Dev should have his own radio station, straight up. One of these days, maybe even 20 years from now. If radio still exists. I think it’s cool that he slips some unreleased stuff in here, it’s kind of humble and endearing in a way—he just wants to be next to his heroes. This mix is a really good time.

CB: He'll have his own podcast—all of us will, actually. P.S.—did you catch the part in the Skepta freestyle where he mentions MySpace views? British people…

Dev Hynes is a sportsman of all kinds. I will leave you with this footage of him playing tennis for VFILES:

Shake Appeal is a column that highlights new garage and garage-adjacent releases. This week, Evan Minsker discusses an archival live record from the Gories, the latest from Cheap Time, a new full-length from Buck Biloxi and the Fucks, a West Coast garage comp curated by Sonny Smith, and the debut LP from Huntsville, Alabama's Nightmare Boyzzz.

The Gories: The Shaw Tapes: Live in Detroit 5/27/88 [Third Man]

Third Man puts out a lot of live records, but this one's special. It's Detroit garage rockers the Gories in their prime playing a local converted storefront the year before they put out their excellent debut album Houserockin'. Here, they rip through John Lee Hooker and Stooges covers. Right as they start "Again and Again", the music suddenly stops. You can faintly hear Mick Collins say to his band, "That was the fuse." Then, somebody else leans into the mic and announces to the room, "That was the fuse." Unlike most live albums, you can sense how small the space is; it's easy to pick out individual shouts and pieces of loud conversations. An essential addition to an iconic rock band's discography. 

The Gories: "To Find Out" (Live) on SoundCloud.

Cheap Time: Exit Smiles [In the Red]

It's a big month for Cheap Time. While frontman Jeffrey Novak just put out his new solo album Lemon Kid (via Trouble in Mind), the band have returned with Exit Smiles, the best album they've released since their excellent 2008 debut. Exit Smiles is adventurous: "Same Surprise" follows a soaring melody that's reminiscent of the song structures on Television's Marquee Moon. They detonate a jagged, rapid-fire guitar sound on "Kill the Light". The vocals of "Slow Variety" are spat with a growl, then processed through a bunch of reverb and draped over a funky bass line. Throughout the LP, they ride these sprawling long-haul grooves; it's a good look for this band.

Buck Biloxi and the Fucks: Buck Biloxi and the Fucks [Red Lounge/Secret Identity]

This is this New Orleans band's second showing in this column. The muscle-punk basher "Holodeck Survivor" is one of the best garage releases of the year, so this full-length album, wherein the Fucks pay homage to the Ramones' Leave Home album art, comes as a very nice surprise. Here, they've got 16 songs in 23 minutes, every moment teeming with punk fury. The guitars rip and roar, usually leaning more toward Johnny Ramone than James Williamson. "I'm a terminator/ I'm a, I'm a terminator," they sing on "Lazerdeath". There's a song called "The Walls Have AIDS" where the chorus is just that phrase repeated several times. It's thrilling, well-crafted snot punk.

Buck Biloxi and the Fucks: "Who Gives a Fuck" on SoundCloud.

Various Artists: I Need You Bad [Polyvinyl]

Sonny Smith has curated a compilation of West Coast artists affiliated with the garage scene. He's carefully selected 15 tracks, most of them on the gentler end of the spectrum. Naturally, there's a Sunsets track in there, plus stuff by Magic Trick (Tim Cohen of the Fresh & Onlys), the Sandwitches, and the Memories. It's a well-curated compilation that establishes a cohesively relaxing vibe—with some gorgeous work by Jessica Pratt and Chris Cohen, this isn't exactly a wild-eyed punk record. I'd highly recommend "Hot Summer" by Cool Ghouls, a jangling surf tune that you'll want in your back pocket come beach season. 

Nightmare Boyzzz: Bad Patterns [Slovenly]

When it comes to music, Huntsville, Alabama is perhaps best known for being the home of the recently reunited rap duo G-Side. But don't sleep on the rock'n'roll coming out of that city; this Nightmare Boyzzz album is really good. It's fast-churning power pop à la the Exploding Hearts, steeped in an extra coating of fuzz. "Bender" is a particular highlight, with its earworm hook cut with stabs of spastic, feedback-addled noise. Their vocals are nasal, their percussion thuds, and their melodies choogle. As King Louie Bankston says, everything points at the rafters.

Also Worth Hearing: Speaking of Bankston, there's a new EP from Missing Monuments (also on Slovenly); screaming, heavy psych from the Freeks (featuring FuManchu's Ruben Romano, LP out soon via Burger); new single from Cheap Trick-ian Boston punks Casanovas in Heat (via Katorga Works); organ-led psych from Mr. Elevator and the Brain Hotel (via Burger).

The Freeks: "Big Black Chunk" on SoundCloud.

Casanovas in Heat: "Belvidere" on SoundCloud.

I watched the entirety of Pharrell's new 24-hour music video "Happy"—on mute, in 2-hour chunks, over the course of several days; that is how I am still alive. Watching 400 Southern Californians dance for an entire day might sound like some kind of Pavlovian torture scheme, or the opening montage of an "Ellen" taping gone horribly awry. But, unexpectedly, watching all of "Happy" actually allowed me to appreciate (though it could have been some kind of Stockholm Syndrome thing) it for what it is—a visual census of a place, an homage to the neighborhoods of Los Angeles and the people who live there. Each of its 400 dancers were filmed in one take, and the video gets its charm from the fact that everyone had just one shot to make it work. There are blemishes, sure, but they're what gives "Happy" its character.

And yet, I am in no way advocating what I have done. So rather than suggesting that you too should watch the whole thing, I thought I'd share my 5 favorite moments after the jump.

Gas Station B-Boy [12:29 AM]

Here a dancer (whose pop n’ lock game is on point) schools the ticking clock in the nuances of his dopeness. Between the Michael Jackson crotch-grab shuffle and dude’s crazy stop-motion robotics, it’s an impressive showcase set against the unassuming backdrop of a Culver City intersection.

Magic Johnson Dancing In His Private Trophy Room [5:36 AM]

Six hours into the video, the camera shifts from some dancing Despicable Me mascots onto a pair of giant white sneakers. An upward pan reveals that the shoes belong to Magic Johnson, who then takes us on a jaunt through his front yard and into his Beverly Hills estate. We pass an archive wall displaying every magazine cover he’s ever been featured on as well as a handful of china cabinets filled with commemorative basketballs and other impressive trappings of accomplishment. We end up in Magic’s private trophy room, where he shimmies joyously in front of five Lakers championship plaques and five golden NBA trophies. He’s wearing an "L.A." t-shirt the entire time.

Jamie Foxx Using His Adorable Daughter as a Prop [5:28 PM]

Shortly after Steve Carell’s 5:08 PM appearance, Jamie Foxx and his two daughters parade down a train track, and all the youngest one can do is throw her hands up victoriously whenever Foxx throws her over his shoulder. It's a simple but poignantly adorable scene, beautifully framed in the waning desert sunlight.

Odd Future’s Dance Routine [1:48 PM]

In their goofy cameo Tyler, The Creator, Earl Sweatshirt, and Jasper do a broadway-dandy dance routine that finds them twirl-jumping into jazz-handed layouts every time they hear the word “Happy”. They share a three-way high-five around 1:49, and leap through intersections before getting low on a sidewalk while swinging their arms and snapping like extras in a Dick Van Dyke musical. They are no match for the actual tuxedo-wearing dandies at 2:20 PM—professionally-trained showmen whose tap-dancing prowess is, I should point out, next-level—but here the perennial oddballs still look more happy-go-lucky than we’ve ever seen.

Pharrell’s Final Cameo [11:00 PM]

A "Happy" fact I admittedly did not realize until four hours in: The camera returns to Pharrell at the top of every hour. It gives the video structure; even as the scenery meanders through Hollywood, Silver Lake, Beverly Hills and Runyon Canyon, Pharrell conveniently finds a way to pace the plot after his initial midnight kick-off. He reappears at 1 AM wearing a white Argentina hat and again 2 AM in a cropped black duster. By 5 AM he’s walking with a blue-haired lady friend; at 8 PM he’s doing the Peewee Herman dance in a supermarket. But his last appearance is the best of all 24 cameos: in a bowling alley (beginning with a slick stroll down a perilously-waxed lane) Pharrell has a dance-off with a little girl that ends in the most charismatic high five you’ve ever seen. By this point in the video we’ve encountered everyone from ribbon dancers to river dancers, skateboarders, park rangers and adorable swing-dancing coeds. No two muses are alike except in the singular joy that defines their moment on screen. But the real pleasure comes from watching Pharrell, who even after 24 appearances still looks happiest of them all.