The Magnetic Fields Bring The Noise

The Magnetic Fields Bring The Noise

The Magnetic Fields Bring The Noise: Aidin Vaziri | The Magnetic Fields' eighth album, "Distortion," was inspired by the Jesus and March Chain's white-noise drenched 1985 album, "Psychocandy." Accordingly, every song, every instrument - including collaborator and Lemony Snicket author Daniel Handler's accordion - is draped in buzzing feedback. "It's a Carpenters album with chain saws on top of it," Merritt says, citing abrasive bubblegum-pop tunes like "California Girls" and "I'll Dream Alone." "I see the album as a pop-art gesture, where I'm taking someone else's originality and applying it to my own work," Merritt says. "But they didn't teach us how to make feedback out of accordions and electric organs. So, under the guise of imitating them, I seem to have backed myself into an original statement, which betrays my postmodern aesthetic." Continue reading.

Live Review: Sia at the Fillmore, 02/18/08

Live Review: Sia at the Fillmore, 02/18/08

Review: Sia feels the love, and gives it back: Aidin Vaziri | Sia Kate Isobelle Furler's fans come to a concert prepared. They bring whoopee cushions, handmade bars of soap and sparkly suspenders to pass along to the Australian singer who prefers to go by her first name. "I don't know what this is," she said, poking her nose into one of a constant stream of packages handed up from the crowd at a sold-out Monday night set at the Fillmore. "Oh, it's chocolate! I can't wear that." She briefly pretended to be disappointed. "Until later." Listening to the bittersweet music Sia recorded with Zero 7, or even the songs on her fourth solo album, "Some People Have Real Problems," most casual fans might have expected to find a fragile, emotionally racked singer-songwriter shuddering under the spotlight. They certainly couldn't have imagined a giddy 33-year-old woman wearing an oversize checkered scarf, tight pink jeans and blunt bob haircut who cursed like a sailor and relentlessly shared in-jokes and greetings with her MySpace friends. "This one's for you, Jake!" she whooped before launching into her most popular - and most despondent - hit, "Breathe Me." Continue reading.

Pop Quiz: Yoav

Pop Quiz: Yoav

Aidin Vaziri | Think pop music has gotten a bit boring lately? That's because you haven't heard Yoav's mind-boggling premiere album, "Charmed & Strange," in which the singer-songwriter - who was raised in Israel and South Africa before making his way to New York, Montreal and London - violently coaxes weird and wonderful techno and hip-hop tunes out of his acoustic guitar. Yoav spent a good chunk of last year touring with Tori Amos. This week he returns to London to play a pair of arena shows with Underworld. And in April, he'll be back in California for an appearance at the Coachella Festival in Indio.


Yoav
Q: You're opening a pair of shows for Underworld. Are you worried that you're going to get pummeled with glow sticks?
A: I don't know. I think Underworld fans, if they can get over the fact that a dude has just walked onstage barefoot with an acoustic guitar and actually listen, they will be really into it. I'm going to open the set with a techno song I've been working on, and hopefully they will be taken aback because it will all be on guitar. There are worse things to be pummeled with than glow sticks.
Q: Will you be indulging in the festivities?
A: I've begged my management to give me a day off after the second show, but I don't think I can be off my head for my own set because there's a little too much going on. It's like a martial-arts routine up there.
Q: How do you pull it off without hurting yourself?
A: So far it's been fine. You have to stand close to see what my feet are doing. I'm controlling the volume knob with my big toe, operating a sampler with my left foot and a sampler with my right. The tricky thing is it has to become second nature so I can put the songs across because that's the most important thing. The only hurt will maybe happen from bad posture and shoulder stuff. Continue reading.

Pop Quiz: Siouxsie

Pop Quiz: Siouxsie

Aidin Vaziri | Siouxsie is cleaning house. After 30 years with the Banshees and the Creatures, she has dumped both bands, along with her drummer husband, Budgie, and set off on her own with a highly confessional solo album, "Mantaray." On the first single, "Into a Swan," the woman who schooled everyone from PJ Harvey to Karen O wails, "I feel a force I've never felt before." And for the first time ever, at 50, the high priestess of punk sounds like she's in a happy place. We called her up at her new home in the south of France, where she had just returned from a vacation.


Siouxsie
Q: You were just in Sri Lanka. What did you do?
A: I did safari. I went swimming. I did yoga.
Q: I'm sorry, but I'm having a hard time picturing you in scuba gear.
A: It was fabulous. It was nice to go somewhere exotic. I hadn't been on holiday in a long time.
Q: Aren't you constantly traveling the world?
A: Touring isn't a holiday. After 30 years, it must be in my system, but I hate the travel, especially now with all those bloody restrictions. I hate those terrorists making me pack my toiletries in my suitcase.
Q: Do you think that's the worst thing about terrorists?
A: That is the worst thing. I'm getting tendonitis from carrying my suitcase, it's so heavy. I used to be able to balance it out with the carry-on.
Q: Don't you have people to carry your bags for you?
A: I've got no slaves, unfortunately. Continue reading.

Review: Vampire Weekend, Michael Jackson

Review: Vampire Weekend, Michael Jackson

Vampire Weekend 'Vampire Weekend': Aidin Vaziri | The hype surrounding the premiere album by this smarmy quartet of Columbia graduates is blinding. The music itself is not so much, a kind of anemic update of Paul Simon's Afro-pop-influenced "Graceland" with more than a few slips into infernal jam-band territory. Every time you get sucked in by the buoyant, breezy melodies of songs such as "A-Punk" and "Cape Code Kwassa Kwassa," the band hits back with a dumb lyrical couplet like, "Can you stay up to see the dawn/ In the colors of Benetton?" Everything good and bad about Vampire Weekend comes together on "Oxford Comma," a song that finds lead singer and former English student Erza Koenig pontificating on bad punctuation over an oddly captivating mix of soft keyboards and brittle rhythms. It would be a lot better if it didn't sound like the makings of another They Might Be Giants.

Michael Jackson 'Thriller: 25th Anniversary Edition': Aidin Vaziri | The main thing you need to know about this anniversary edition of the biggest-selling album of all time is that it includes "Beat It 2008 With Fergie." If that's not enough to make you dust off your original cassette version of "Thriller," there's a lot more where that comes from: "The Girl Is Mine 2008 With will.i.am," in which the unspeakably obnoxious Black Eyed Peas rapper completely erases Paul McCartney's vocal track from the original duet to make room for himself spouting nonsense such as, "I call her mommy and she call me papa/ I'm sorry Mike, but she loves the way I rock-a"; a piano-laden remake of "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin' With Akon"; and "Billie Jean 2008 With Kanye West," which is basically the same song slowed down to half-speed and slathered with strings for no apparent reason. The funk of 40,000 years has nothing on the smell of dog vomit coming off this. In fact, of all the horrible things Michael Jackson has done since "Thriller" was originally released, this is probably the worst - and that includes teaching Corey Feldman how to moonwalk. Basically, he's taken what was one of the greatest albums of all time and turned it into something slightly less lurid than "My Humps." Oh, well. Everybody knows "Off the Wall" is better anyway.

Pop Quiz: Maceo Parker

Pop Quiz: Maceo Parker

Aidin Vaziri | Maceo Parker has spent five decades blasting his alto saxophone at funk masters James Brown, George Clinton and Prince. Not content with his role as one of music's most famous sidemen, the 65-year-old North Carolina native has also been turning out his own fresh and funky work since 1970. Parker's latest is "Roots and Grooves," a live concert tribute to Ray Charles recorded with the WDR Big Band of Cologne, Germany. It comes with a second disc looking back at his years with Brown.


Maceo Parker
Q: What was it like standing next to James Brown while he was doing his thing?
A: James Brown, who I really learned a lot from, he just worked hard. He really exerted energy. He'd sweat. He always said that if people see you working hard, then they feel OK about the fact that they spent their money and came to see your show. Also, he was able to dance real fast, with all the splits and the turns and all that he did. It was just spectacular. And the music was good.
Q: Do you believe that in 1970, when you quit his band and formed Maceo and All the King's Men, he actually paid DJs not to play your records on the radio?
A: Yes. He told us that. He said he was going to do everything he could to make sure we couldn't make it. We didn't mind. That was just how he felt at the time. He went along with it, and we did, too. We was just having fun anyway.
Q: After playing with Brown, you went to work with George Clinton and Parliament. Was he a slightly different kind of boss?
A: Most definitely. It threw me for a minute. George Clinton had his own concept. He always said it ain't nothing but a party. He came from the street way. You just come as is, play music wherever you are. That's the way the world is - not necessarily uniform, just throw-down right now. It was almost like when you see those musicals where people are playing on garbage cans and the tops of cars. He thought you should just go for it.
Q: What was the Parliament tour bus like?
A: We laughed all the time. It was great. Those years were fun years. We made everything a comedy.
Continue reading.

Simply Paris

Simply Paris

Perfection comes easy. Just ask Paris Hilton.: Aidin Vaziri | Paris Hilton won't take my advice. Her famously perky speaking voice has been reduced to a sorry whimper after a weeklong cross-country trip promoting the new film, "The Hottie and the Nottie," which counts the cockeyed 26-year-old hotel heiress not only as its star but also its executive producer. Paris made the scene at Sundance, conducted roundtable interviews with awestruck college reporters in Philadelphia and slummed it through a screening with a bunch of normal people in Dallas.

Her work didn't end there. To make sure the tabloids had something to talk about after Britney was carted off for her latest hospitalization, Paris also pretended to make out with "House of Wax" co-star Elisha Cuthbert at a New York nightclub, attempted to crash 50 Cent's performance at a Super Bowl party in Scottsdale, Ariz., and even returned to "The Late Show With David Letterman" despite a disastrous appearance last year. For all her efforts, the low-budget comedy that opens in theaters on Friday may be the first candidate of the year for movie critics' 10 Worst Lists.

So after getting her on the phone for a few minutes on Saturday, I couldn't help but suggest that maybe, instead of taking on so many different projects halfheartedly, she should just pick one she truly feels passionate about and put some substantial time into doing it really well. Not only did she not care for the idea, she found the whole theory flawed. "I do everything well," the world's most famous celebutante sniffed. And then I remembered I was talking to someone who had never held a real job, unless you count being on a canceled reality TV series. Continue reading.

Movie Review: 'Hannah Montana' in 3-D

Movie Review: 'Hannah Montana' in 3-D

Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour: Aidin Vaziri I had never heard a song by either Montana or Cyrus until it came crashing down on my head in digital 3-D. Take a little bit of Avril, Ashlee and Gwen with wholesale swipes of melodies from '80s hits like Kim Wilde's "Kids in America" and Corey Hart's "Sunglasses at Night," and you get the general idea. Predictably, most of the lyrics seem to be about leading a double life along the lines of, "I'm just an ordinary girl living in an extraordinary world." The only bit of real drama comes when she nearly slips off the shoulders of her backup dancers as they attempt to lift her up for one number. Spoiler alert - she survives; and if road life is difficult, she never lets on - Cyrus is shown as all-smiles throughout. The film also ignores the trail of angry parents and nightly news reports that seemed to follow the tour. If it wasn't for the stellar 3-D effects, there wouldn't be much to stop this hastily produced film from heading straight to DVD. But the scene at the end where all the confetti comes flying out and the pyrotechnics go off? Even I was willing to let out a little scream for that.. Continue reading.

Pop Quiz: Bob Mould

Pop Quiz: Bob Mould

Aidin Vaziri | Even though Bob Mould has spent the better part of the past decade confusing his fans by becoming a writer for World Championship Wrestling, delving headfirst into dance music and posting pictures of his Christmas roast on his blog, it's all helped him get back to doing what he does best. His latest solo release, "District Line," is a throwback to the jangling, emotionally wound up guitar rock that made him a college-radio superstar in the '80s and '90s as the front man for Hüsker Dü and Sugar. We spoke to Mould, 47, by phone from his home in Washington, D.C.


Bob Mould
Q: Why haven't you gotten in on all the reunion bucks?
A: Nobody's come forward with a big fat check. I'm not interested in that. Hüsker Dü was a great band. The problem with going backward is I don't feel that anger toward the world anymore. It wouldn't look good for me to go onstage and do things from the Reagan era.
Q: VH1 said Hüsker Dü was one of the 100 most important hard-rock bands, coming in just behind the Rolling Stones.
A: God damn them.
Q: What's the most rock 'n' roll thing you ever did?
A: I don't know. I hate tour buses. They're sort of weird. The first rule is you don't s- on the bus. So I prefer to rent a Cadillac and drive myself to shows. It's just a lot more civilized.
Q: And where do you go in the Cadillac?
A: You pull over. Continue reading.

Review: Hot Chip

Review: Hot Chip

Hot Chip 'Made In The Dark': Aidin Vaziri | Having managed to find an audience that actually wants to hear a bunch of guys who look a lot like junior bankers playing music that goes bliddly-bleep-bloop-bloop-bloop, British synth-pop import Hot Chip is on a hot streak. The group's previous album delivered the much-blogged hit "Over and Over," which featured the rather good lyric "Over and over, like a monkey with a miniature cymbal." Its third and latest continues to mix the gags and grooves, with a sudden upsurge in dramatic '80s power ballads. Singer Alexis Taylor has a surprisingly soulful voice for a guy who probably still plays with Transformers, and he uses it to varying effect to belt out hypnotic dance-floor stompers such as "Shake a Fist" and future prom staples such as "We're Looking for a Lot of Love." While the band has a tendency to stick its tongue too deep into its cheek (see "Wrestlers"), on the whole this is about as sublime as dance music gets these days.