TRACKING: Telekinesis - "Ghosts & Creatures"

SOUNDS LIKE: Neighbors, Gardens & Villa, Spoon
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE: The spooky, synthy turn for Michael Benjamin Lerner is damn good!

Michael Benjamin Lerner, better known as his recording moniker Telekinesis, sure knows how to write a pop song.  Since 2009, he's put out two well crafted LPs full of addictive melodies that act as soundtracks for days spent strolling through parks as you bask in the sun.  After working at home in Seattle with Death Cab For Cutie's Chris Walla as producer on those two albums, Lerner headed to Austin, Texas and hooked up with Spoon's Jim Eno at his Public Hi-Fi studio to produce his third album, Dormarion.

While nearly every Telekinesis song before now came from a blue sky with nary a cloud, "Ghosts & Creatures" sounds like Lerner heading right into a storm front.  A calm piano fuses with a spooky synth overtop the pulse of a heartbeat, providing the thunder for Lerner's lightning vocal.  Sheets of rain begin to to descend on us throughout the chorus, but right when you think it's dissipating it's not as the rainy afternoon we've encountered comes at us full throttle by the end.

Dormarion is out April 2nd via Merge.  Telekinesis will hit the road in April in support of the new album, and invade The Black Cat right here in Washington, DC on May 6th.

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TRACKING BEST OF 2012 EDITION: #5 White Rabbits - "Heavy Metal"

SOUNDS LIKE: These Spoon wannabes still have that silver utensil in their mouth
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE: Because it's not a bad thing, it's a good thing! It's #5 on the list!

When Brooklyn's White Rabbits hopped onto the scene in 2005, they were just lumped in to the neverending sect of bands from Williamsburg.  What made them stick out was their pension for a nervous tension in their songs that didn't fall to far from the musical drawer that Austin's Spoon resided in.  They began honing in that sound when they got the chance to work with Spoon's very own Britt Daniel, who twiddled the knobs and produced their breakthrough It's Frightening in 2009.  The sextet, armed with two drummers to double up on the 4/4 Jim Eno beat got even more Spoon-ish with this year's Milk Famous.  Helmed this time by longtime Spoon producer Mike McCarthy, they created an even more frightening, Spooiner album than before.

But enough about Spoon, let's talk about why we're really here.  Famous opener "Heavy Metal" is anything but what its title leads one to believe.  While a reversed piano loop starts in the front, it's quickly moved to the backburner as more elements are added to the compound song.  While Greg Roberts reaches for a falsetto nearly out of his comfort zone, the ultra sexy bass line keeps things going smoothly.  They make the song all their own and shed that comparison documented in the paragraph above by a lead guitar bit that, if it were doused in a pedal of distortion, would be pretty heavy.  And you know what, who cares that their love for one of the best indie bands out there strains through all of their songs, its takes a song like "Heavy Metal" to show us how bands are influenced by their peers and how they can make their own songs even better than they already are.

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LIVE: Divine Fits @ The 9:30 Club - 10/18/12

Some people go to a lot of trouble to let you know that Divine Fits, the collaboration between Dan Boeckner, Britt Daniel and Sam Brown, is not a “super group.” Take the quotes off of that though and you’re still left with a super group, and if anything their performance at the 9:30 Club last week couldn’t have put a finer point on that distinction if it tried.

Oh sure, the issues that exist on the album are all still there, including the big one of Brit Daniel’s songs sounding, for the most part like Spoon outtakes. But should that really be a point of contention? At this point you could no more take the Spoon out of Daniel then Daniel out of the Spoon. And considering that this is their first effort, it’s to be expected that there is some overlap.

So while songs like “Flaggin’ A Ride,” “The Salton Sea” and “Like Ice Cream” came off as the tight, off kilter pop gems that they are, it was the Boeckner fronted songs – “Baby Get Worse,” “Civilian Stripes” and a performance of “My Love Is Real” shot straight from 1987 – that showed off the true potential of this nascent band, and pointed to, sound-wise, a more distinctive future.

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