TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2010 MUSIC QUICK SPINS


Portico Quartet ISLA


This instrumental ensemble, whose 2007 debut was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize given to the best album released in the U.K. that year, is back with a quietly impassioned set of originals that fuse elements of pop, jazz, classical and electronic music. Built around saxophones, piano, double bass and hammered steel drums, the music is suffused with tension. The arrangements beg for resolution, but the performances are ultimately so sublime that it hardly matters whether they achieve it or not. (Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t.) Its lack of vocals aside, the contemplative intensity of “Paper Scissors Stone” would have sounded right at home on Van Morrison’s 1968 landmark, “Astral Weeks.” The propulsive “Dawn Patrol” makes use of Middle Eastern modalities, while “Life Mask,” with its exquisitely glacial calm — especially on the identically titled interlude that appears two tracks before it — calls to mind the breathtaking meditations of the great jazz pianist Bill Evans. “Clipper,” meanwhile, sounds like a cross


between “Haitian Fight Song”-era Charles Mingus and Moby at his most gospel-inspired. And “Line,” with its hints of Balinese gamelan music, evokes a storm gathering over the desert, complete with birdlike cries of soprano sax and plashes of cymbal that conjure images of earthbound creatures scurrying for cover. Other antecedents, from Cecil Taylor to Brian Eno, can be heard among the at once ruminative and ecstatic performances here. The aggregate, however, is wholly original, 21st-century experimentalism that stirs both body and soul. —Bill Friskics-Warren


Recommended tracks “Line,” “Clipper,” “Paper Scissors Stone”


Sara Bareilles KALEIDOSCOPE HEART


Thanks to the success of her ’07 track


“Love Song,” singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles became known as the queen of the tell-off piano ballad, a field she still has largely to herself. “Love Song” was tart and solid, and Bareilles sang it as if she knew she had a No. 1 hit on her hands (she did). “Kaleidoscope Heart” is the follow-up to “Little Voice,” the major-label debut disc that housed “Love Song,” and it contains one track, “King of Anything,” that can rightfully be considered its heir, which is the exact number it needs. Grouchy and perky at the same time, “King of Anything” is presumably aimed at record label insiders (“So you dare tell me who to be / Who died / And made you king of anything?”), who haven’t been the target of this much piano-ballad-based wrath since the last Fiona Apple album. Elsewhere, Bareilles channels Carole King as much as she does Apple, though at her best she suggests Ben Folds if he had been an earnest semiotics major. She’s a knockout singer with a strong sense of melody and a distaste for the melismas and assorted other fripperies which have hobbled her contemporaries. “Heart” is as diverse as she can make it, with a smattering of strings (“Uncharted”) and rollicking, harmony-heavy pop songs (“Gonna Get Over You”). There’s nothing else as punchy as “King of Anything,” especially on the disc’s draggier second half, which finds Bareilles settling down to the making of conventional sad-girl-type ballads familiar to anyone who has ever attended Lilith Fair.


— Allison Stewart Recommended tracks


“King of Anything,” “Uncharted,” “Gonna Get Over You”


Recommended tracks “So Let Us Create,” “Half Crazy,” “Mistletoe”


Jukebox the Ghost EVERYTHING UNDER THE SUN


“Songcraft” conjures visions of wizened warblers like Leonard Cohen polishing and re-polishing a turn of phrase, a chord change, until a song hums with perfect alchemy. There’s songcraft in the world of shiny, disposable pop music, too, though. Case in point: “Everything Under the Sun,” the second album from Jukebox the Ghost, which is so dominated by the Philly-via-D.C. (George Washington University, specifically) trio’s craftsmanship that only a few actual songs manage to escape. The 41-minute album is snappy and lively and melodic (and occasionally contemplative), drawing shrewdly on a well of contemporary pop influences from Tokyo Police Club to Rufus Wainwright to Barenaked Ladies. Yet that very shrewdness — the piano riffs of “Mistletoe” are so well played and bright! “Half Crazy” struts on tightly constructed guitar riffs and tasteful synthesizer accents! The drummer keeps everything on track so smartly! — keeps nearly everything here from connecting on a deeper emotional level. As with Jukebox the Ghost’s debut, the record is dominated by the piano of Ben Thornewill, who penned seven of the 12 tunes. Guitarist Tommy Siegel contributed the remainder, but other than the latter’s slightly tougher vocal style, songs like “Carrying,” “The Sun” and “Empire” are of a piece — bright, jumpy, finely crafted and too lightweight to make a lasting impression. That’s not the case with “So Let Us Create,” the album’s most striking tune. Its ascending/descending melody exposes a tactile edge that feels like an actual glimpse into the heart of its creators. And it’s a tactile heart that Jukebox the Ghost seems to have left behind in its pursuit of pop songcraft. — Patrick Foster, USA Today


KLMNO


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


SINGLES FILE


A weekly playlist for the listener with a one-track mind


Trey Songz featuring Drake: “The Usual” The “Successful” duo re-team for a predictably steamy old-school jam from Songz’s upcoming “Passion, Pain & Pleasure.”


Jukebox the Ghost: “Empire (Freelance Whales remix)” The formerly District-based trio’s new single gets a ghostly revamp cour- tesy of the Whales.


Doug Paisley featuring Feist: “What I Saw” The formerly ubiquitous Feist contributes a barely there vocal to this low- key, ’70s-ish folk track by Canadian Gordon Lightfoot/Band/Jim James hybrid Paisley.


The Capstan Shafts: “Heart Your Eat Out” West Virginia singer-songwriter Dean Wells, who usually home-records un- der the name the Capstan Shafts, got a band and a coating of studio pol- ish for his new, maybe-breakthrough “Revelation Skirts,” from which this short, perfect pop-punk song hails.


The Drums: “We Used to Wait” (Arcade Fire cover) The Brooklyn band enlivens one of “The Suburbs’ ” slower moments in this BBC Live Lounge session excerpt.


— Allison Stewart


C3


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


BACK TO


OLD SCHOOL: Trey Songz, teaming up with Drake for “The Usual.”


The Walkmen travel easily on ‘Lisbon’; Interpol falls flat by David Malitz New York and its music are


perpetually cool, even if the par- ticular brand of coolness is con- stantly shifting. In the early 2000s the Strokes ushered in what could be the final era of magazine-ready, fully styled rock- and-roll superstars; now the hip- pest groups to emerge from Brooklyn look like a hodgepodge collection of Ivy League grads who favor music that dabbles in basically every genre except rock- and-roll.


So where does that leave the


Walkmen and Interpol, a pair of bands that crawled out of the city’s shadows a decade ago play- ing the kind of moody, brooding songs that have at least temporar- ily taken a back seat when it comes to being the sound of the city? The Walkmen — a band whose roots are in the halls of D.C.’s St. Albans School — seem at perfect ease on “Lisbon,” the quintet’s fifth album of original material in a startlingly consistent career. It’s a sturdy collection of dirges that occasionally dazzles and decided- ly builds on the band’s well-sea- soned recipe of using Hamilton Leithauser’s elongated vocals and Matt Barrick’s powerhouse drum- ming at the center of attention. The Walkmen’s greatest


strength has always been a head- down determinedness. While that’s still present on “Lisbon,” the group takes the time to come up for some well-deserved air. For most of the album the band is content to shuffle along in open spaces, far from the claustropho- bia of the city. “The country air is good for me,” Leithauser croons on opener “Juveniles” as reverb- flecked guitar mingles with Bar- rick’s rumbling rhythms. “Strand- ed” is a horn-fueled, border waltz, the soundtrack to riding into the sunset, and “All My Great De- signs” is even more laid back, each member careful not to step on each other’s toes. As always, the highlights come when the band revs it up. “Angela Surf City” finds Leithauser enter- ing red-in-the-face wailing terri- tory while Barrick’s casual gallop becomes a full sprint. No current band does hard-charging mini- anthems this well. It’s an increas- ingly rare moment of urgency in the band’s catalogue, but slow and steady has proved to be a winning strategy.


GREG MORRIS


TIGHT KNIT:The Walkmen, whose roots are in D.C., build on their winning ways with their latest album, “Lisbon.”


Whereas the Walkmen have


never sounded more comfort- able, the same cannot be said for Interpol. Instead of a gradual march to success, Interpol has gone through the hype cycle and come out barely intact. There was the breakthrough debut (2002’s “Turn on the Bright Lights”), the major-label commercial disap-


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pointment, the frontman’s solo side project, the departure of a key founding member (bassist/ fashion plate Carlos Dengler) and, finally, the return to original indie label completely with the well-worn “self-titled album as restatement of identity” gim- mick. The problem is that there’s lit-


JELLE WAGENAAR


LITTLE PAYOFF: Interpol’s self-titled album has atmosphere but little substance.


tle to identify with on “Interpol.” Interpol always seemed like a marriage of convenience, made up of people who wanted to be in a band and just happened to end up in Interpol. The Walkmen grew up together and are a tight-


knit unit — even the band’s ques- tionable vanity project, a song- for-song cover of a Harry Nilsson album, was a full-on, all-in group effort. Interpol’s disconnect is heard throughout the new al- bum, which is directionless, bland and just generally boring. Thanks to the stilted baritone


of singer Paul Banks, Interpol has always endured comparisons to Joy Division, even though the foursome doesn’t play the taut, tension-filled songs that made Ian Curtis and Co. such cult he- roes. The sweeping dramatic ges- tures of fellow ’80s U.K. bands Echo & the Bunnymen and the Chameleons were always more accurate points of comparison for the band’s dark dynamics. All of the individual elements are present on “Interpol” — ev- erything sounds fantastic, as crisp as the band’s previous work. “Success” chugs along with chim-


ing guitars, a slinky bass line that drives the melody and Banks of- fering his vague quotables (“I’ve got two secrets / But I only told you one / I’m not supposed to show you”). It’s a formula that re- peats itself throughout but rarely finds a worthwhile payoff. In- terpol’s songs have always had a tendency to drift but snapped you back to attention with quick bursts of blade-sharp catharsis. The new album is all atmosphere with none of the meat. The band would have been better off re- uniting in two years for the 10th- anniversary “Turn on the Bright Lights” tour.


david.malitz@wpost.com Recommended tracks


The Walkmen: “Angela Surf City,” “Juveniles,” “Stranded” Interpol: “Lights,” “Summer Well”


BENNETT RAGLIN/GETTY IMAGES


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