TUESDAY, JULY 13, 2010 MUSIC QUICK SPINS


School of Seven Bells DISCONNECT FROM DESIRE


On “My Cabal,” the final track of last year’s “Alpinsims,” School of Seven Bells conjured a breezy summer sunrise, an uplifting moment in a sea of grey and gauzy synth-pop. The clouds clear away and the trio strides into the daylight on their new disc — and even if the 10 tracks aren’t as consistently wonderful as the whooshing leadoff single, “Windstorm,” it still feels like a restorative dose in the middle of a blistering summer. Formed by Benjamin Curtis


(ex-Secret Machines) and sisters Alejandra and Claudia Deheza (ex-On! Air! Library!), the outfit claims to take its name from a South American pickpocket academy that one of the sisters saw profiled on television. Further, the Deheza sisters claim their lyrics are often written as imaginary letters between the pickpockets. Makes for nice press-kit copy, but actually concentrating on the lyrics on “Disconnect From Desire” nearly ruins the record. Better to disconnect from words and wade into the sister’s willowy and exotic voices, which slither around Curtis’s crisp, percolating beats, spiraling synths and pealing, precisely placed guitar riffs. The dominating flavors of songs like “Joviann,” “ILU” and “Babelonia” are Ibiza beach beats and the icy detachment of ’80s synth-pop duos. But each time songs such as “Dial” or “Dust Devil” threaten to freeze in some Nordic ice place, the exotic sweep of the Deheza sisters’ vocals — in harmony or peeled apart — rush in like a summer salve. The real treasure, though, is the aforementioned “Windstorm,” a percolating summer concoction with a hooklike gull’s cry. When it’s rushing from the speakers, there’s little concern that the album it comes from might be forgotten as soon as the temperature drops below 80. —Patrick Foster


Recommended tracks: “Windstorm,” “Babelonia,” “Camarilla”


bassist Bob Zilla (Damageplan) —the disc kicks off with furiously burrowing low-end guitars, thudding drums and a raucous howl of “Yeah!” on “Cowboy Way.” Slight variations on that musical formula instruct the “Debt That All Men Pay,” which won’t necessarily keep you from having a “Hell of a Time” on your “Stampede.” Settings soften for “Better Man,” a deftly handled, yet still brawny, ballad that displays a touch that Kid Rock wishes he had. The juggernaut cranks up quickly to warn that “It’s On!” then offers up “Pole Rider.” It’s at this point, however, that the Hellyeah convoy runs into an insurmountable truth: A fusion of hard cowboy rock and metal, while perhaps appealing in theory, just isn’t all that interesting in execution. At least not by Hellyeah,


anyway. —Patrick Foster


Recommended tracks: “Cowboy Way, ” “Better Man,” “It’s On!”


m.i.a. from C1


of her generation. Sure, she’s a middling rapper and an awful dancer, but she still remains larg- er than life thanks to curatorial superpowers that border on War- holian. As the Internet continues to metastasize, her music has made our sprawling popscape feel both endlessly thrilling and com- fortingly finite, grafting Balti- more club to Bollywood to Brazil- ian baile funk with a seamless cool.


Wavves KING OF THE BEACH


Nathan Williams is not a complicated dude. The 24-year-old San Diego indie rocker, who records as Wavves, is mostly obsessed with the beach and just generally chillaxin’. His first two albums were especially uncomplicated — two chords per song, extra fuzzy GarageBand home recordings and, voila, he’s the toast of blogville. Well, at least until the backlash hit. “King of the Beach” is his


Hellyeah STAMPEDE


Like a Ford F-150 barreling down a gravel country road, leaving choking dust clouds and clattering beer cans in its wake, Hellyeah crushes subtlety like a bug. This team of metal all-stars’ second album snorts and stomps and shouts commandingly but comes up short of a unique cowboy-metal fusion.


Saddling an impressive lineup


—drummer Vinnie Paul (Pantera, Damageplan), vocalist Chad Gray and guitarist Greg Tribbett (Mudvayne), guitarist Tom Maxwell (Nothingface) and


Recommended tracks:


“King of the Beach,” “Baseball Cards,” “Mickey Mouse”


Recommended tracks: “It Takes a Muscle,” “Tell Me Why”


A travel tip, and a call for more HINTS FROM HELOISE


Dear Heloise: Several years ago, my wife was teaching at a school where she had several high school students attend a national convention. There would be a lot of inexperienced travelers at the baggage carousel, and a lot of confusion. Some of the students had not experienced travel by air. I suggested that the group stick brightly colored file-folder labels on all sides of each piece of their baggage — all using the same color(s) of labels. The labels are available in several colors at the office supply store, and are inexpensive. Some labels are removable, and one package will label several pieces of baggage. If there is concern about someone else using the same color, use two or more colors in a pattern on each side of the luggage. Count the bags as they are


checked and retrieved, and do not expect anyone else to save your bag for you. One or two members


of the group can take the baggage from the carousel. Just remember to count all pieces with the same color.


Al from New Mexico


Al, fantastic travel hints, even for us seasoned travelers or folks going on vacation only once a year. Those black rolling bags sure can look alike, and there are a lot of them. P.S.: Any other travel hints to


share? Send them in, and we will print as many as possible.


Dear Heloise: A few years ago, when my grandchildren were still young, they insisted on using a huge beach towel to dry their tiny bodies. I came up with the idea of cutting those towels in half and hemming the raw edges so that they didn’t ravel. This cut the amount of laundry in half, and they still got to use their beach towels.


This same grandson seems to


have inherited his grandmother’s frugality, and recently told me he had found a place to buy great clothes at a fabulous price. Turns out that it’s a store that sells gently used clothes at a fraction of the price of new. He thinks it’s a hoot and delights in his finds. He always manages to look well-


groomed in his new/old duds. Dot Lott, via e-mail


Dot, good habits do seem to pass down to younger generations. How smart of your grandson to shop resale stores for clothing, especially in college, where most students are on a tight budget. And if they need clothes for a job interview, this is a perfect way to get seldom-worn clothes for very little cost.


Dear Heloise: I love binder clips. They come in


all different sizes, and I have found them to be useful in many


instances around the home:  I use two of them, one on each side of a wastebasket, to keep trash bags from slipping down.  I use them to hold pants in place when making alterations.  The smaller ones make great bookmarks.  They keep gloves and mittens together.  Use them as clamps when gluing.


Philip, via e-mail


Great uses! Here is one more from Anna in New Jersey: “I use two of the binder clips to fasten the sides or the top of a beach towel to a slatted lounge chair. The towel won’t slip, and you will not have to constantly adjust it.”


Send a hint to Heloise, P.O. Box 795000, San Antonio, Tex. 78279-5000, fax it to 210-HELOISE or e-mail it to Heloise@Heloise.com. Please include your city and state. © 2010, King Features Syndicate


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largely successful attempt to escape the lo-fi foxhole. Brawny guitars replace staticky screeches, juicy hooks don’t have to fight through muddy murk and the result sounds like a time capsule from mid-’90s alternative rock radio instead of a stoned kid killing time in his bedroom. The latter has its charms but Williams’s songs are better served with this new dynamic kick. He’s even working the Gen X angst angle, peppering his tunes with self-loathing lyrics. “My own friends hate my guts / So what, who gives a [expletive]?” he moans on “Green Eyes.” It’s hard to buy Williams as completely miserable; he’s always been a bit of a downer but likely just got bored with singing about being bored. Now he has more in common with the aw-shucks depression of Blink-182, both musically and lyrically. Wavves’ wheelhouse is still centered around pop-punk nuggets such as the title track, but his reach has expanded to include percussion-heavy, blippier fare (“Mickey Mouse,” “Baseball Cards”) without sacrificing any instant gratification. It’s hard to argue Williams is growing up, but he is certainly getting better. —David Malitz


But where M.I.A.’s first two al- bums — 2005’s wonderful “Ar- ular” and 2007’s masterful “Kala” — boasted supreme hooks, “Ma- ya” only bares gruesome teeth. It’s an album about information-age paranoia with beats that bristle accordingly, and bass lines that ooze like so much oil spillage. “The Message,” the album’s opening salvo, follows those aforementioned laptop clicks with a nursery rhyme about Big Brother’s digital omnipotence. “Head bone connected to the headphones,” a male voice chants. “Headphones connected to the iPhone, iPhone connected to the Internet, connected to the Google, connected to the government.” Then out come the power tools for “Steppin Up,” the first of many dismal sonic failures. As drills and power-sanders blast away to an earsplitting death march, the 34- year-old raps in her hallmark deadpan, “M.I.A., you know who I am.” She’s wrong. The brand- name-dropping M.I.A. we know would have taken the opportunity to shout out Black & Decker. She provides her own rejoinder with “XXXO,” a pop-minded club ditty that offers one of the album’s few grabby refrains. “You want me be somebody who I’m really not,” she sings, as if responding to the New York Times Magazine profile that recently framed her as a careerist, a gourmet french fry nosher and a sellout. Even if she’s all three, that’s okay. This is, after all, the era of the confused, con- flicted rap star (see: Kanye West’s bling guilt, Drake’s melancholic materialism, Lil Wayne’s unflag- ging desire to play the guitar). The goal, though, is to trans- pose that inner-conflict into com- pelling pop tunage — and that’s exactly what doesn’t happen here. She’s pushing the envelope fur- ther into the unknown, but there isn’t much to sing along to. Which is why the album’s best songs are the tender, dreamy baubles that feel so dramatically out of place. “It Takes a Muscle” is a sugary


little swatch of video-game-tinged reggae, in which M.I.A. talks tough. “You’re gonna live tomor- row, if you don’t die today,” she sings, her voice Auto-Tuned into cartoonish shapes. “It takes a muscle to fall in love.” The ethereal backing track of


“Tell Me Why” is just as sweet, but lyrically, our hero’s jubilance blurs with anger. “I’m throwing up my hands,” she sings, “like I’m mad at the ceiling.”


But on the album’s most dis- appointing song, she offers a far more distressing gesture: the shrugging of shoulders. Over a frazzled, loping beat, we find one of pop music’s most fearless trail- blazers singing about playing Nintendo Wii. The song’s title says it all: “It Iz What It Iz.” richardsc@washpost.com


KLMNO


S


THE CLASSICAL BEAT Post critic Anne Midgette offers her take on the classical music world at voices. washingtonpost.com/the-classical-beat.


CLICK TRACK For more pop music news, reviews and features, visit ClickTrack, The Post’s pop music blog at blog.washingtonpost.com/ clicktrack.


M.I.A.’s ‘Maya’: Lost in the ruins


C3


GARY HE/ASSOCIATED PRESS BURIED: M.I.A.’s latest album is a blend of industrial clatter and digital slush. SINGLES FILE A weekly playlist for the listener with a one-track mind


Rick Ross featuring Drake and Chrisette Michele: “Aston Martin Music (Official Extended Mix)” The latest from “Teflon Don” is a drowsy, summery stunner complete with a Courtney Love shout-out. Rye Rye featuring Nguzunguzu: “B.A. Mix” “The A-Team” may not have been a cinematic worldbeater, but it birthed a bumper crop of excellent title theme remixes, including this lively one by perpetual star-in-waiting Rye Rye. Theo Martins: “20,000 Leagues (The Feather)”


The Rhode Island rapper waxes nostalgic over a sample of Little Dragon’s “Feather.”


Mr. Oizo and Gaspard Augé: “Tricycle Express” First, French house music titan Quentin Dupieux, a.k.a. Mr. Oizo, made a film, “Rubber,” about a telepathic, serial-killing tire named Robert. (Don’t laugh; it went to Cannes.) Then, Dupieux enlisted Justice’s Augé to assist with the film’s surpassingly good, surprisingly un-sinister score, excerpted here. R.E.M.: “Throw Those Trolls Away” Nostalgic for the days when R.E.M. was one of the world’s best bands, and


“trolls” didn’t refer to mean people on the Internet, mostly because we didn’t know there was an Internet? This demo, part of a bumper crop of rarities pack- aged with the new “Fables of the Reconstruction” reissue, will take you back. —Allison Stewart


MIXING IT UP: Rye Rye teams with Nguzunguzu on “B.A. Mix.”


KATHERINE FREY/THE WASHINGTON POST


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