By Phil

Published: November 29th, 2006

Anyone who knows anything about a decent emcee will tell you that it's all about breath control. To the dilettante picking up a microphone is about a rapper's swagger and number of bullet wounds, but anyone who calls themselves a fan of the form will affirm that it's the way they spit out what they're saying that marks the difference between a star and an amateur. After all, anyone can get shot or rhyme a few landmarks- the good ones have the rhythm to make it all flow. But breath control in phrasing doesn't have to be exclusive to hip-hop; it just happens to be because most traditional singers are focused on other things. Whether it's injecting the right amount of ...

By Phil

Published: November 13th, 2006

If you trace your finger from high art to low, or from the dirtiest pop to the type of glistening thing that the horn rimmed glasses crowd adores, you recognize that it's a mobius strip running along similar principles. Take, for example, Fergie's current contribution to our understanding of the human condition, the insightful ode entitled London Bridge. Sure, it's a crass ooze of hormones that probably sets back that whole "feminism" thing a couple of decades, but its use of metaphor and idiom is as aggressive as a pelvic thrust. Think about it- staid London Bridge as sexual image? Speech actually slurring in the middle of the song? The meaning may be coarse, but the execution is as as ...

By Phil

Published: October 20th, 2006

So you're about to read an article about a band called "The Comas." With a name like that, there's bound to be a certain set of ideas that you have lined up in a neat little mental Excel column of what this band is going to be. Here's the rundown on the band with the reader's expected reaction provided - The Comas (they've got to be mope rock) are an indie (angsty) band that hails from Chapel Hill, North Carolina (they must sound like country) and moved to Brooklyn (they wear western shirts and have never seen a shovel). Their last CD came with a sci-fi glossy DVD (they are art rockers) that starred Dawson Creek's Michelle Williams, who lead ...

By Phil

Published: October 16th, 2006

It’s a modern version of the chicken and the egg question- do images have soundtracks, or is it sounds that have imagetracks? Anyone can provide a pop culture mini-thesis on the ways that music affects images, from waxing philosophic on The Graduate to stuttering praise for Garden State (it’s a generational thing). In those films, music adds context to images, working as a kind of cover to contain all those colors and shapes inside a single mood.But when, if ever, do we think about images giving context to sound? Even music videos, the chief evidence of this phenomenon, end up using music to supplement their iconic images. Whether it’s an elaborate pop-opera like Thriller or just a video of ...

By Phil

Published: October 14th, 2006

There are two very different kinds of photographs. The easy kind is the kind we know best - the kind where we pluck the apple from the tree and coat it with fast flowing caramel. Celebrity photographs shine in a calculated attempt not to associate, but dissociate, with the people on the page. The shadows in those hollowed cheekbones, the glistening unlined foreheads, the floating strands of hair that never fall - we’ve convinced ourselves that celebrity photographs are about “getting to know” the soul behind an actor, but really they perform the opposite function. They make the celebrity unknowable by making them unreal. Of course, that doesn’t mean that the taste of all that inconsequential beauty doesn't feel good. It ...

By Phil

Published: September 18th, 2006

It’s possible- if you try- to imagine David Bowie coming of age in some alternate reality. Granted, Bowie’s made enough alternate realities of his own, but it’s possible (barely) to speculate that in some galaxy Bowie was trained on the California coffee shop circuit, maybe during the dot-com boom. Instead of gender bending bombast and intergalactic swagger, he’d have stuck with his birth name David R. Jones and lyrically tread the relationship path with a dash of technical daring. He’d be able to use all the mixing tricks of the modern age, adding self-backed choruses and claps of sound that have no discernable real world origin, while never forgetting the visceral draw of rock. And, eventually, all the vapor from ...

By Phil

Published: September 13th, 2006

It's important to have a little context when it comes to the legend born as Horace Swaby. Imagine that after first grade ended, instead of ditching your recorder for a fierce collection of Pogs or half-hearted attempt at Tamagotchi, you were intrepid enough to stick with the thing until it worked. And imagine that it really worked, that because of you everyone was suddenly using the recorder to ornament their music just because you had made it sound that cool. Justin Timberlake would coat his songs in those sick thick notes, and Death Cab for Cutie would insert mid-whine recorder solos because things weren't already sad enough. Suddenly, Wal-Mart and Goodwill would become retailers of the country's new most-popular instrument. If that ...

By Phil

Published: September 11th, 2006

Sol Seppy is, even once you’ve become familiar with her work, something of a mystery. Once you hear this singer-songwriter with the tongue twister name (try saying "Sol Seppy Sings Songs" seven times fast), you’re run into a complex maze that’s hard to escape. Not that you’d necessarily want to. But take Slo Fuzz, the opening track on her MySpace profile- it starts out sounding like a cover of Lennon’s "Jealous Guy" before it shakes into a head nod trance, focuses to full on rock, and then circles back to the beginning with enough of a dizzying twist that it’s like listening to a whole new song. That’s just the music. Sol, a brunette, occasionally wears the type of platinum ...

By Phil

Published: August 25th, 2006

Sometimes the lyrics that work best are the ones that perch between the universal and specific. When you’ve been lulled in by the mundane details, a big statement can hit like an emotional sucker punch when you least expect it. It’s that see-saw between the concrete and abstract that makes The Boats worth noting- they catch you when you least expect by sliding in something bigger than themselves.Listen to "I Am Your Ghost" and at first there’s only a guitar sidling next to a piano, with words about disappearing appropriately fading into the rest of the music. All the politics of relationships are detailed with court report precision until Micah McGraw, The Boats’ lead singer, yells that "You moved to ...

By Phil

Published: July 25th, 2006

Any jaded Washingtonian will be happy to orate about the DC area’s big electoral irony- the political capital of the nation suffers under taxation without representation. Despite the fact DC residents are forced to pay tax, they don’t have a Senator or Representative to speak the truth to power (or take money from neighborhood lobbyists). It’s a city full of politicians huddled in search of a constituency. Have you ever been to a singles bar with only couples in the room? That imbalance has been as true for culture as it is for taxes. In the past, DC just hasn’t been able to “represent.” While Washington boasts stone columns and stern foreheads as proof of its intentions, cultural concerns skip out ...

By Phil

Published: July 17th, 2006

The most exciting and, well, bewildering thing about Scout Niblett is that in addition to being a singer, songwriter, and fire-spouting multi-instrumental force, she actually believes in astrology. Serious astrology- not next to the classifieds horoscopes, but real deal planetary alignment type stuff which is, honestly, a preference that might complicate relationships with a friend. "You were twenty minutes late because of Pluto?" But for a musician, astrology turns out to be a poetic goldmine. It’s important to note Scout’s belief in the potency of the stars because it directly raises the potency of her music. Her latest album's title, Killed By Neptune, is an allusion to the cleansing powers of that far out planet. And her MySpace page presents, before ...

By Phil

Published: June 22nd, 2006

Undoubtedly, one of the stranger phenomena in modern life is when your friend calls you from his cell phone when he's five feet away. Really, it's an emotional transformation that takes place- you start off wondering where said friend is calling from, become slightly perturbed when you see him giggling to your left, quickly begin to doubt your friendship with the spastically laughing man-child, and then it happens: you hear him on the phone. Except you hear the real voice to the left about 2.5 seconds before you hear it nestle into your right ear, which sparks a series of explosive questions. How is this happening? How can we be talking at different times now, but always talk to each ...