Music Pool: Monade, Basement Jaxx

A Few Steps More

On A Few Steps More, the line between Monade and Stereolab is blurrier. With the addition of permanent members, Monade are now a proper band recording in a professional studio, and the result sounds a hell of a lot like Stereolab. Sadier has one of the most distinctive voices in indie rock, so in one sense the similarity isn't surprising. Catch her in a duet with your granny on bongos and you'll still hear plenty of our beloved Groop. But here so many of the trademark influences and timbres (AM radio horns, Brazilian rhythms, lots of Moog) are presented in essentially the same proportions we've come to expect from late-period Stereolab, and it's a little strange that two different bands can be pointed in almost the exact same direction. It also makes me wonder what Tim Gane-- the person I once imagined to be Stereolab's genius auteur (there's subconscious sexism for you)-- is contributing at this point. Still, once you get past the initial disorientation, A Few Steps More is a solid record. Sadier's vibrato-less purr (she's singing mostly in French here) is as enticing as ever on "Das Kind", and halfway through she dusts off the high-pitched, far-off wail that shows which layer of Beach Boys harmony caught her attention. "Wash and Dance" has a nice build, transforming from a floaty ballad into a swirl of ringing guitar and driving drums. A few songs are too long, and it gets a bit samey by the end, but the album projects a coherent and well-realized mood: Mid-tempo, mellow, and dreamy, these songs make me glad spring is just around the corner.



Kish Kash

Ah! So with Kish Kash, Basement Jaxx deliver yet another disc pumped to the gills of every sound in the world they can get their hands on. Curiously, much like their pop music opposite in Timbaland—he who values open space as opposed to Ratcliffe and Buxton’s zest for overlapping layers that theoretically shouldn’t work, but do, oh so well—Kish Kash finds the band settling into a comfortable groove, almost refusing to push any sort of an envelope, but instead—the crucial instead!—almost playing a sort of catch-up, lapping up production—Indian strings, most prominently—that we have heard in far more vital context on Rooty, or ... top forty radio! ...Kish Kash, the album, rides triumphantly along the Basement Jaxx formula we know and love, the formula of throwing weird shit in everywhere!...These are real songs here, with choruses and verses and vocals wrapped around each other. "Good Luck" opens this album, a clear, absolute presentation of the best of Basement Jaxx.

p.s. A great article about the underestimated brilliance of the '67-'71 Beach Boys:

http://www.stylusmagazine.com/feature.php?ID=648

Included on the Smiley Smile/Wild Honey two-for-one is the bonus track “Can’t Wait Too Long”, which was another lost masterpiece of Brian’s recorded in separate sections between SMiLE and Friends. My bet is that bands like Stereolab and Radiohead have heard this groundbreaking production, for many of their soundscapes echo the sublime sonics and instrumentation of “Can’t Wait Too Long”. This song is easily one of Brian Wilson’s greatest achievements as a songwriter and producer; in five minutes and thirty-five seconds it does for his musical legacy what the entire White Album does for the Beatles. “Can’t Wait Too Long”, with its trancelike repetition and ultra-modern ambiance, is another piece that sounds right at home in the 21st Century.