By Alexis Tarrazi

Throw together a harmonica, mandolin, electric guitar and an accordion and you get FoRo SoCo. No it’s not the name of a new drink. It’s how celebrity actor Kevin Bacon and his brother Michael describe their band’s, Bacon Brothers, style of music – Folk Rock Southern Country.

Known for dancing across the screen in “Footloose” and more recently as a former FBI agent in the Fox television series “The Following,” Kevin teamed up with his older brother, Michael, 17 years ago to form the Bacon Brothers and have not looked back since.

The Bacon Brothers will be performing at Town Hall on May 2 at 8 p.m.

Tell me how the Bacon Brothers was formed.
Kevin: Michael was nine years older than me, still is as it turns out. (Laughs) And we would get together play music, write songs. He was off on a music career from my earliest kind of memories. Eventually he asked me to do percussion, backing him up. You know we kind of played together there. And then I went off and decided to become an actor. We had a demo of some songs we were trying to get cut by other people and a friend of ours heard it and said, ‘Why don’t you go out and play the songs yourselves?’ And that was really the first show. That was 17 years ago.

How does it feel to be doing it this long?
Michael: Well hopefully we are getting better and I think we are. I think Kevin and I have something similar, that once we decide to do something we sort of feel compelled to make it better work on it and fine tune it and I think as long as we still have that motivation, we are just going to keep going. I mean we certainly never, when we played out first gig, we really didn’t intend it to be… pretty much do for the rest of our lives. So far it’s worked pretty well and we both enjoy it.

Have you learned anything over the years?
Kevin: Oh gosh it’s always a learning experience. My God. That never ends. For me it was a big new kind of mystery place. I played a little bit of music live and I had been writing songs since I was a little kid. But to actually stand in front of people and actually sing and play an instrument and play a song that was based on something personal in my life. It was a large and terrifying landscape. Like any other kind of creative expression. You learn by doing. There is a lot of stuff that can’t be taught in a classroom. So you have to go out there and do it and you have to fail and pick up the pieces.

Kevin, would you say it’s tougher to be on stage versus having the chance to redo a take on camera?
Kevin: Well I had done a lot of stage acting. That’s where I started out when I was really young at 18, 19 years old in New York, Off Broadway and on Broadway. So I think that’s a similar kind of experience with this group of people that there is no take and there is no ability to do it over and there is butterflies and also the exhilaration of having gotten through it and it either being good or being bad. It kind of goes both ways. You can walk away and go man that was just awful or just walk away and feel fantastic about it. I don’t know if I would say more difficult or less difficult, the process of doing films or doing television is also hard. For one thing you work a lot longer, it’s a lot harder. I sometimes laugh at the fact that you hear rock bands say how exhausted they are for playing for an hour and 15 minutes and I kind of think, really?! (Laughs). Our days are like 14 hours, that’s a slow day. But I get it because I have experienced it now. There is a lot of preparation that goes into that. There is a lot of getting there, sound checks, thinking about it and getting yourself ready for the show and the concentration it takes. I don’t think I would categorize it as easier or harder.

Any preshow traditions? Anything to warm up before hitting the stage?
Michael: Well we do, do these vile vocal exercises that if there any people in the room, they immediately leave. It involves us grabbing our jaws and sticking our tongues out and making this horrible sound. Other than that we like to sing Beatle songs and Dave Clark 5 songs and just old stuff for fun and warm up our voices. But no specific rituals.

Why do you do those vocal exercises by pulling out your tongue?
Kevin: Yeah why do we do that Mike? (Laughing)
Michael: Well the idea is it doesn’t do a damn thing. (Laughs). The idea in singing is you are trying to disassociate all of what you think it takes to sing from the actual act of singing. A lot of people tighten up their jaw and tighten up their tongue and their face and their eyes. What you want to do is let all of this stuff go, so if you do your exercises while you are grabbing your jaw that takes it out of the mix and if you are sticking your tongue out that becomes out of the mix. It’s just a way of tricking your body to let go of stuff that it thinks you need to sing.

Excited to be back in the local area?
Kevin: We love it. It’s great. We played the Town Hall, it’s been a few years but we are looking forward to that. We never had a bad gig in New Jersey, we love playing in New Jersey.

What can fans expect to see from the show?
Michael: Well the band is Kevin and I of course. Kevin doing some of the vocal, me doing some of the vocals. Kevin plays acoustic guitar, harmonica and percussion. And I play acoustic guitar, electric guitar and cello. And then we have four guys backing us up – piano, bass drums, electric guitar, but switch off on accordion and mandolin. So there are a lot of harmonies. With the exception of two songs, they are all original songs we have written over the years and released on CDs or we plan to release in the future.

Your latest album was in 2011. Are you working on anything right now?
Michael: Yeah we got about, we have five things in the can that are 90 percent finished. We are waiting to check out a gig we did live to see if we can get a couple tracks from that… And you know we need about 10 songs and I think we are about three quarters of the way there. And our plan is to release something in the summer.

Kevin & Michael Bacon
When: May 2 at 8 p.m.
Where: Town Hall, 123 West 43rd Street
Cost: $47 – $57
For More Information: 212-840-2824 or baconbros.com.

How do you come up with new music?
Kevin: That’s a mystery. You never know where they come from. You hope that they are some place out there in the ether. Sometimes they come easy, sometimes they come hard. It’s just, you pick up your guitar and you hope that there is something living inside there.
Michael: That’s a terrifying thought. (Laughs)
Kevin: It is a terrifying thought. (Laughs)

Do you have anything on your rider, which you need to have before a show?
Michael: We are pretty easy. We have a rider but it’s pretty tame compared to some of other riders I’ve seen.
Kevin: We have wild berries, alcoholic beverages, almonds; I like a lot of almonds, I think they are the perfect kind of food, they travel well.
Michael: It’s funny. We had a rider for five years and all this stuff would show up that we really didn’t like. We realized that somebody had taken a rider for a band that opened for us and just pasted it on ours. And it took us five years to realize that it wasn’t actually stuff that we wanted.
Kevin: Yeah they had a specific particular type of wine. And we hated the wine and we kept going, ‘Why does this wine keep showing up?!’ And then you think to yourself, that somebody in a small town is scratching their head trying to find this specific type of wine that we don’t even like.

By Sophia Rosenbaum

Coheed and Cambria’s song “Welcome Home” takes on new meaning this Saturday when the band performs for the first time at Radio City Music Hall.

Coheed and Cambria. Photo by Lindsey Byrnes

“New York has always been the hometown show,” said lead Singer Claudio Sanchez. Sanchez and guitarist Travis Stever grew up just up the river in Nyack, N.Y.  The two other band members — drummer Josh Eppard and bassist Zach Cooper – are originally from further upstate.

Coheed and Cambria’s spent more than a decade creating an intricate science fiction storyline told through seven studio albums – one of which got them to #5 on the Billboard 200 charts.

Saturday’s performance is at the tail end of their North American tour to promote their double album “The Afterman.”

The band continues to create musically complex songs that push the boundaries of progressive rock ranging from the contemporary feel of “Evagria the Faithful” to the snappy pop rhythms of “Number City.”

Sanchez and Cooper had a moment in between performances to talk with reporter Sophia Rosenbaum about life on tour, Saturday’s show and their first double album.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

SR: All of you are from the New York area. What’s special about playing in New York City?

ZC: New York will be a special show because all of our families will be there. I’ll go out to dinner with my wife, hang out with friends who will be in town. Those kinds of shows are a lot different than the every day touring shows.

SR: Radio City’s got a lot of history. How does it feel to get to perform there?

CS: I’ve definitely gone to the Christmas Spectacular. To get to perform on that stage is a real thrill and a big win for Coheed.

ZC: For headlining, this is the biggest crowd I’ve ever played. It’s such a cool venue. It’s really exciting for me to be playing there.

SR: Radio City is a seated venue and Coheed is very much a band that feeds off of the crowd’s energy. How do you think this will impact your performance?

ZC: We’ve played a couple of fully seated venues and you couldn’t even tell because the crowd had so much energy. But sometimes, in the seated venues, people feel constrained or it’s a little more tame. Hopefully, the crowd is just as excited as we are. It should be a high-energy, really fun time.

SR: Is there something you do every time you come to NYC?

CS: I’ll visit Midtown Comics or I’ll go down to the East Side and visit Tokyo Seven.

ZC: When I’m in New York, I like to walk.  That’s the one thing I like to look forward to.  No agenda, just walk. For a while, my wife and I were living in the Village and I’d find myself walking all the way uptown to Central Park and just going. It’s very inspiring – all the people and all the things you can see.

SR: As a progressive rock band, you’re always experimenting with your sound. Have you noticed if it’s had an influence on your fan base?

CS: For some reason, people find these two albums a bit more accessible. There’s something in it for everyone. It covers a lot of ground musically.

SR: What is your favorite track off the second part of the double album, “The Afterman: Descension”?

CS: It would have to be a tie between Number City and Gravity’s Union.

ZC: It’s a toss up between two songs. I’m really having a strange attachment to “2’s My Favorite 1” mainly because it’s the first song I recorded with them and it’s the song I auditioned on. “Number City” because it’s quirky and funky and weird. It’s a melting pot of all these musical styles. I love the horns section.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

Coheed and Cambria takes the “Great Stage” Saturday at 7 p.m. with Between the Buried Me and Russian Circles. Four days later, they head to Toronto to kick off their international tour.

Recently, when I’m not performing diligent research, sifting through a hard drive’s worth of mp3s, resting my chin in my hands contemplatively and having deep deep thoughts about pop songs for you lovely people, I’ve been playing a video game called  Bastion. It’s a really fun game, but more importantly, it’s a genuinely moving experience. If it was just the Isometric Action RPG it is in its core mechanics, that would be fine, but it’s Bastion’s presentation that makes it so unique and fantastic. That’s not to say that it’s style over substance; rather, it’s substance communicated perfectly by style. The most basic element of this is that Bastion is remarkably pretty, a techni-watercolor post-apocalypse that is simultaneously cartoony and grim. Added to this is the unreliable narration of Rucks (voiced beautifully by Logan Cunningham) who wryly comments on our actions as we hack and slash and shoot and explode our way through this ruined world, foreshadowing betrayals of trust and revealing dark secrets.

And all that would be enough to set Bastion apart from the pack: Wild-West tinged apocalyptic fantasy game, a Cormac McCarthy fairytale, wonderfully written and presented, full of depth and charm. But what elevates Bastion from a great game to an excellent one is its music, and the way it’s interwoven with the narrative.

Bastion‘s soundtrack was composed by Darren Korb, a New York-based musician with a background in scoring movies and television. Korb’s seamless blend of steel-bodied cowboy country, big beat electronica, western classical, and American and Middle-Eastern folk musics breathes uncanny life into the gameworld. The violent struggle for survival, the uneasy peace between rival countries Caelondia and Ura, the despair brought about by living off the scraps of your own dead civilization, and the hope of a brighter future (or a return to the comforting arms of the past); these things are present not only in the game’s visuals and narration but in the martial chaos of the industrial drum, oud and mouth harp-led “Terminal March” and the frontiers-y, old west-meets-breakbeats jam “In Case of Trouble.”

But while Korb’s compositions certainly flesh out Bastion, it’s the folk songs he wrote for the game that most inform the narrative. “Build That Wall” and “Mother, I’m Here” are sung by two of the game’s secondary characters (one of whom’s singing voice is Korb himself). They songs are relics of the world destroyed by the Calamity, the remnants of an all but extinct culture. They are eulogies and warnings, an attempt to hold on to the ephemeral and an acknowledgement of the inevitable. One of the most remarkable things about these songs isn’t fully evident until the end of the game, where they are combined into the soaring, sadly beautiful and beautifully sad “Setting Sail, Coming Home.” The songs are reflections of each other, parts of a larger whole. And, moreover, depending on the choices you make in the endgame, one’s interpretation of the lyrics is shifted. I don’t want to spoil too much, so I’ll just say that “Setting Sail, Coming Home” is as split between wanting to return to a bygone world and trying to build something out of its ashes as the rest of game is. I may or may not have teared up at the end of my first playthrough.

Bastion can be played on pretty much anything from an iPad to an XBox 360, and I strongly advise you to do so. Even if you are video game averse (and seeing as the medium is currently dominated by dumb, jingoistic bullshit like the Call of Duty games, I really can’t blame you) you should at least watch a few gameplay trailers, and listen to Darren Korb’s fantastic soundtrack. Hopefully it’ll change yer mind.

That’s this week in NTTOD. Follow Simon Lazarus Vasta on Twitter @hunter_s_narc.

If “raucous” and “intimate” can coexist adroitly, that describes the atmosphere at the release party for Marc Spitz’s new memoir Poseur, an affair tucked cozily away up a staircase at the Lower East Side’s Slipper Room.

Everyone here knows each other, laughs heartily like old friends, embraces one another eagerly. An outsider would hardly recognize Spitz, who fades purposefully into the crowd, ceding the limelight, preferring a spot at a tiny table pressed up close to his old pals. Writer fame is different than other kinds, he’ll later explain, and release parties are stressful.

The Slipper Room is one of Spitz’s old haunts. He used to DJ here back in the day when DJing was nothing like how we think of it now. You’d have to seek out your records at a joint like the House of Oldies in the West Village, wait for your coveted 45s to zip up on a dumbwaiter.

Spitz would DJ many such bars, which rented out their booths to free agents like him.

“I’d stumble in drunk,” he says. “It was like a status thing.”

He adds: “Modern DJ culture happened over night.”

The burlesque dancers who take the stage at the Slipper Room are a handful of originals from Spitz’s days of haunting the venue, moving salaciously to such 90s acts as Nine Inch Nails while suggestively gripping copies of Poseur.

Brought back to perform just for Spitz, they show no hint of being out of touch.

The man behind the sunglasses

Forty-three-year-old Spitz, born in Far Rockaway, has written plays, novels, and nonfiction, and has a prolific career as a music journalist for “Spin.”

Perhaps this is why, when I ask to meet somewhere “of significance,” he chooses the White Horse Tavern in the West Village, a famed joint known for drawing such patrons as Dylan Thomas, Bob Dylan, and Hunter S. Thompson over the years.

Spitz, who shows up with a Sylvia Plath button on his authentic Burberry trench coat and two Basset Hounds—named for Joni Mitchell and Jerry Orbach—in tow, is just a slightly aged version of the grungy, gangly, and perhaps slightly awkward kid in sunglasses and Edie Sedgwick t-shirt who graces the cover of Poseur. He still wears a black leather bracelet and sunglasses, and seems perpetually caught off-guard.

“I’ve been there, but I don’t really like it,” says Spitz of the White Horse. “It’s why I came to the City,” he adds, referring to the larger, rich history of writer culture rather than the establishment itself.

In Poseur, Spitz recounts studying at Bennington College in Vermont but knowing if he wanted to make it as a writer, he must get to New York City, and fast. Specifically, he must live at the Chelsea Hotel in a sort of “bohemian squalor” in order to launch himself into the kind of pictures of success with which the ambitious collegian figuratively surrounds himself.

Eventually Spitz’s young ambitions will amount to more than just pipe dreams. His story is truly one of wanting something badly enough and succeeding, though at some point, he realizes merely getting his body to the city where great artists flourish (and often founder miserably) isn’t enough.

“There’s definitely a ‘what now?’ moment,” he says.

In Poseur, Spitz writes of spending his first night in the renowned Chelsea Hotel, scared to death, barely expecting to survive, unsure who or what might break down the door in the middle of the night. It’s not exactly the romantic experience he envisioned when he thought of Patti Smith walking into the lobby and feeling as though she’d “come home.”

“The Chelsea was the home I wanted, but it was also a place where people suffered and sometimes died,” he writes in his memoir.

As a music writer, Spitz interviewed many of rock’s big names, but even then had trouble getting past the sense he was nothing more than a fraud. He would have to invent a persona to overcome his shyness.

“Bowie was shy,” he explains. “It’s genetic, people are predisposed, but I overcame it by inventing someone who wasn’t shy.”
“I couldn’t even talk to a rock star. Interviews felt like blind dates. I’d have to drink, put on sunglasses, I couldn’t be honest. I’d have to take a pill.”

Still, Spitz “felt like part of rock and roll even though [he] wasn’t in a band because [he] was part of a larger phenomenon—part of the ecosystem of the rock world.”

Perhaps not too much has changed, as he relays his own anxiety over being interviewed to this day. “I can write about it, but in person it’s like maybe I should leave it in the shrink’s office,” he says.

Shy kids write diaries, explains Spitz. He kept a diary his whole life, allowing him to recall with ease, as he does, what songs were playing on the radio at any given moment.

(Spitz’s choice to include in his memoir so many references to artists he says is a nod to technology—the ability for the reader to quickly Google anything unfamiliar—as well as a stylistic choice.)

Poseur

Spitz says Poseur is the first book of his last four that didn’t feel “like a job” to write because he called all the shots, giving it—for him—an unprecedented level of honesty and integrity.

“There’s no way to bullshit it. Maybe I just wanted to be an authority on something,” he says.

Still, writing a memoir was a new experience with its own challenges. “It’s hard to have things come to light after the fact. I still have dreams that I’m working on it,” he adds. “It’s sad.”

Spitz wrote Poseur before selling it. He says it occupies a place in his heart which hasn’t been fulfilled since he wrote at length about The Smiths.

“My other books are sold in airports,” he says. That’s not to say he’s not waiting for Poseur to become a sensation.

Poseur is the story of how Spitz searches for the authenticity that makes great writers and artists, but it’s also a candid examination—peeling back the skin of downtown New York City in the 90s.

In penning the memoir, ruminating on downtown now versus then, Spitz describes a mix of emotions.

From ‘93 to ‘94, he briefly moved to Hollywood. Even then, he says, New York City was changing.

“I moved back for good in ‘95; you could tell it was a different city.”

“It changed so much,” he says. “If I left the Lower East Side in ‘95 and came back, I would not recognize anything…I would wonder ‘is it still dangerous?’”

“It took 15 years to become that way,” he adds. “It took 30 years to get beyond the 70s myth. I thought it was time to write this book because of how quickly things were changing.”

“It offers a record of bygone time that is literally bygone.”

Spitz describes writing Poseur as an instinctual and freeing process. As a writer who no longer tries to write like others, he notes Poseur offers a good lens to view the changes in himself as well as the City.

Despite this, Spitz says a lot of what went into the book arose from input and discussions with others. He was also not afraid to pull back the curtains on his process and personal evolution.

“Does older, wiser me comment in the book?” Spitz asks. “Yes, but I think that makes for a more pleasant, sadder, sweeter read.”

He also worried at times about missing out on the humanity that can arise in fiction if he was too busy trying to get the period right.

Taking in the city with Spitz

As we walk through the Village, Spitz pauses briefly, perhaps nostalgically, below the “Peace to the World” sign at the Saint Anthony of Padua Church. He recalls the church as a sort of East to West gateway from his younger, wilder years.

We wind up at The Library bar on the Lower East Side, where Spitz worries he won’t know who’s working anymore. To his delight, Kendra is behind the bar, as she has been for the past 10 years. She tells Spitz her psychedelic solo act is taking off and slides us a couple business cards.

“I used to drink here all the time,” says Spitz from behind his sunglasses, sipping a tall Bloody Mary. The coolly distant boy from the cover of Poseur momentarily reemerges. “I can’t count how many hours I’ve spent here.”

At some point, Spitz realized he was ready for a slower pace of life. “New York is for young people,” he says. “I want to age gracefully. You feel like a ghost, haunting the neighborhood.”

“I loved anyone who wanted to die young…I could only die too young.” It’s too late for that now, he adds.

Before taking off into the brisk Lower East Side afternoon, Spitz sheds a little more light on the artistic process with an observation that would resonate with anyone who’s just completed their magnum opus: “The world didn’t end when the book came out.”

“Just make me sound cool,” he says, finally, making sure I know he’s quoting Almost Famous.

It’s the inevitable consequence of living in the Greatest City in the World™: as the skies turn an adjectiveless gray, the trees stripped to their slender bones, and night falls faster than Gerald Ford down the steps of Air Force One,* most of us get a little visit from our old college buddy seasonal affective disorder. SAD invites himself over for a bottle of Chateau Diana and ends up camping out on your couch for three months because, you know, it’s rough out there, and he needs some time to get his shit together. SAD gets potato chip grease all over your sofa, spills beer on your cat, and never stops talking about his ex. SAD watches every episode of Law & Order, SVU on Netflix Instant and starts a Tumblr devoted to Mariska Hargitay. SAD is miserable, and his goal is to make you as miserable as he is. The asshole.

Some attempt to fight him with sun lamps and regular exercise and vitamin D supplements, but most, if not all, fail. The only way to truly defeat the bastard is to just wait him out. Or you could move to LA, but we all know who the real loser is in that scenario.

Me, I don’t make much of an attempt to fell the great winter beast. I end up couchlifing it with some ordered-in hot wings and a six-pack of something pissy, weak and delicious while watching Olivia Benson chase down sex offenders. But there’s still one thing that helps me with SAD’s doldrums, reminds me that there’s shit to do besides mope, how beautiful New York can be, and how much I adore the people in my life. It’s the thing that gets me out the door every day. Well, most days.

This is the point in the music article where I talk about music.

The thing about pop songs is that they are, by and large, bite sized. Yes, you can stack them together to create a larger narrative or context, which, when done right, produces heartbreaking albums of staggering genius, but they should have the ability to stand alone, tell a complete story, create a comprehensive ambience, in approximately three minutes. This is ultimately why music is so important in establishing mood, and why it’s so handy in rescuing oneself from the brink of despair.

Now, what music is best for dealing with seasonal malaise, you ask? Do you try to scour and sandblast the bummers out of your system with Katrina and the Waves and Harry Belafonte? Or do you take the opposite approach and try do befriend SAD by getting heavy into Joy Division and the Smiths, his favorite bands of all time?**

These may work for some, but I’m more of a melancholy guy ’round this time of year. A lot of minor chords strummed by girls very far away, plaintive textures on the brink of collapse, and promises too burdensome to keep. It’s music that acknowledges how shitty it all can get, but retains that one element that distinguishes melancholy from despair: hope. It’s the taste of last kisses, the smell of old books rotting away. It’s missing the last train out of a strange new town, and it’s the January day that you realize you haven’t seen more than thirty minutes of sunlight all week. Melancholy is the cure for what ails ya; allowing you to wallow, but also rise above. Each of these songs is a mini catharsis, a baptism, a chance to find the beauty and the promise even in the coldest, darkest parts of the year.

Feel better.

Listen to the Playlist on Grooveshark Here

1. Take Us Back – Alela Diane

2. I See a Darkness – Bonnie “Prince” Billy

3. Katy Song – Red House Painters

4. Guiding Light – Television

5. Lizzy – Ben Kweller

6. Six String Serenade – Mazzy Star

7. Paradise Circus – Massive Attack feat. Hope Sandoval

8. Girl Singing in the Wreckage – Black Box Recorder

9. Goodbye England (Covered in Snow) – Laura Marling

10. Lunar Sea – Camera Obscura

11. Hong Kong – Gorillaz

12. Blues Run the Game – Nick Drake

13. By This River – Brian Eno

14. In the Drugs – Low

15. Don’t Do It – Sharon Van Etten

16. Cotton – The Mountain Goats

17. Two Step – Throwing Muses

18. True Love Waits – Radiohead

*This timely reference was brought to you by the SNL writer’s room circa 1976.

** Seriously though, get him drunk enough and SAD will show you his old Ian Curtis webshrine he built in Angelfire. It’s still up!

That’s it for now. Go listen to this playlist and take a long walk. We know it’s cold out, just do it. Follow Simon Lazarus Vasta on Twitter @Hunter_S_Narc

The Best in Order of Preference

1. “Late,” Florrie
2. “Super Ultra,” Charli XCX
3. “Cold Summer,” CJ Hilton
4. “Warrior,” Queen of Hearts
5. “Skitszo Pt. 1,” Colette Carr
6. “Iconic,” Icona Pop
7. “True,” Solange
8. “Cityswitch,” SRH
9. “Ghost,” Sky Ferreira
10. “Against the Wall,” Kat Graham

The release of an EP has become a rite of passage in pop music. It’s meant to mark an artist’s readiness for greater things, while defining how that artist wants to be seen by his or her public.

In the pre-download days, the music industry didn’t have much use for EPs. They were neither here nor there. It must not have seemed worth it—all the paper, plastic and aluminum it took to convert five castoff tracks into a marketable product.

But EPs have now been embraced by the demoralized, declining music industry, precisely because the format is flyover country. There’s no recognized history of past success, no tradition associated with EPs. Failures go unnoticed amid that flat terrain.

Many of the artists who made notable EPs in 2012 probably won’t become pop superstars. But they were successful in this particular year, in this particular format, because unlike major-label moneymakers and TV talent show contestants, the recordings were made to justify their claim on an audience’s attention and did so, even if just for the length of a few tracks.

Stuck neither here nor there, they devised a destination for themselves and went there. And it turned out to be somewhere worth going. To me, that’s pop.

Florrie.

‘LATE,’ FLORRIE
“Late” is Florrie’s third and final EP before her major-label debut, expected to drop sometime this year. All three were produced by Xenomania, the British pop production outfit where Florrie was once house drummer.

She has also been a model, and there is something of a runway attitude about these four tracks. Even more than in “Introduction” and “Experiments,” the first two Florrie EPs, the songs here march out fiercely to meet you.

“Late” goes way beyond ambition, aesthetic and commercial. These songs are so focused and tightly wound they suggest that, for Florrie and her collaborators, the pursuit of pop perfection has become an idée fixe.

Indulging Xenomania’s famous penchant for toying with song structure, Florrie builds ecstatic melodies out of chants that initially seem lightweight (e.g., “I shot him down-down-down-down-down-down,” “You gotta earn every inch of my body, babe”).

But if the songs on “Late” have a common “theme,” it’s that Xenomania’s pop vision—which Florrie incarnates—is not to be trifled with. The polish and sharpness of this sophisticated EP render totally irrelevant the question of how seriously we’re meant to take it.

That’s because Florrie and Xenomania prize sincerity over seriousness. The final track, “To the End,” clarifies the sense of moral purpose behind their embrace of what’s commonly labeled disreputable. Florrie calms the culture’s Fear of Music as she intones, “Who knows what the future holds? Better do what you’re told … I will only bring you happiness.”

Byblos offers old-world Middle Eastern cuisine accompanied by live music most nights and a great lunch special each day from noon-3 p.m. It is open seven days a week for both lunch and dinner, a rare find in this mixed commercial and emerging residential neighborhood.

The service at Byblos is excellent; the wait staff and ownership are attentive and concerned that all diners have a first-class dining experience. They recently moved to the 80 Madison Ave. location (between 28th and 29th streets, next to the upscale Carlton Hotel). The owner and his wife (Saba and Sonia Kachouh) are at the restaurant most days, ensuring top-notch service and overseeing the live entertainment.

And then, of course, there’s the food—a wide variety of Middle Eastern dishes ranging from Lebanese staples like tabbouleh and hummus to more exotic fare like kafta khoush kash, a seasoned ground meat with parsley and onions and an added spicy sauce. There is a large range of salads and hot appetizers: Some of our favorites include the fattoush salad (Byblos special), a chopped Middle Eastern salad with toasted pita on top; the jawaneh, chicken wings sauteed with cilantro, garlic and lemon (a tangy and tasty mix); and falafel (small, round deep-fried patties made of chickpeas and coriander served with a tasty tahini sauce).

On the cold-appetizer menu are many delicious varieties of hummus (pine nuts, tahini and meat are a few of the optional ingredients), other favorites like batinjan makdous (pickled baby eggplant with walnuts and garlic), and one of their specialties: garlic labne with walnuts (thick creamy cheese with an added flare of garlic).

The meat staples at Byblos are grilled and made delicious by the Lebanese seasonings and the added rice and vegetables. Our favorites include the delicious grilled lamb chops and the mixed grill (one skewer each of shish kebab, shish taouk and kafta kebab). There are also great seafood dishes liked grilled striped bass and grilled tilapia (fresh fish filet dressed with lemon and garlic); my dining partner said the latter was very good, but I can’t personally attest to it due to my fish allergy.

The Byblos bakery is chock-full of great pastries and pies such as Byblos kallage (pita bread stuffed with goat’s milk cheese and grilled) and meat pies (dough filled with seasoned meat and pine nuts).
Byblos has a very affordable $16.50 lunch special each day, which includes a soup or salad, one entree and coffee or tea. The Byblos Deluxe Dinner is a smorgasbord of delectable appetizers, choice of an entree and coffee and dessert, all for $42.95 per person.

Byblos is a great find for all midtown diners searching for authentic Lebanese food and ambiance.
Byblos Restaurant, 80 Madison Ave. (between 28th and 29th streets), open daily for lunch and dinner, with brunch on Sundays. They also do corporate catering and private events. Call 212-687-0808 or visit www.byblosny.com.

My Bloody Valentine, TBA (TBA)

The music masses have been waiting for a follow-up to My Bloody Valentine’s last album, the modern-classic-that-has-been-around-so-long-now-it’s-just-a-classic Loveless, for twenty-one years now. Many, myself included, had given up the faith, stopped chasing that particular white whale, and resigned themselves to crate-digging for early MBV obscurities. But when Kevin Shields reassembled the band in 2007, he did so with accompanying promises of a new record, allegedly 75% finished. Virgins conceived. The sky turned magenta. Popgeeks worldwide wept tears of joy into their Primal Scream bedsheets. But as the weeks turned into months and the months into years, it seemed Shields was making empty promises. The band continued to play sold out shows, but any talk of a new album was seen as just that: talk. That is, until last November, when Shields told the NME to expect a new album by the end of the year. Then, on Christmas Eve, the band confirmed that it had finished mastering three days previous. So, yeah, we don’t have a name, we don’t have a release date, sure, it was supposed to come out last month, but heck, it’s done. It’s coming.

I just hope it isn’t the shoegaze Chinese Democracy.

The Joy Formidable, Wolf’s Law (January 22)

The Joy Formidable are responsible for some of the most ferocious and affecting Indie Rock I’ve heard in ages. One of my favorite things about this Welsh three-piece is how they manage to sound so big, so restless, so undefeatable, and lead single “This Ladder is Ours” is no exception. More maximalist, blow-the-bloody-doors-off pop in 2013!

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Push the Sky (February 18)

After wading around in the sludgy blues-rock purgatory of Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! and the Grinderman records, Nick Cave seems to finally be returning to the surface. If “We No Who U R” is anything to go by, Push the Sky seems to be a return to the plaintive, sorrowful, nature obsessed poet last heard on 2004’s double album Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus. And while I dug my namesake album and Grinderman quite a lot, I’ve missed this guy.

ScHoolboy Q, Oxymoron (TBA)

While last year’s Habits & Contradictions was nothing short of fantastic, Oxymoron looks like it’s shaping up to be a whole different animal. It’s to be Q’s major label debut on Interscope, and in the wake of Black Hippy compatriot Kendrick Lamar’s phenomenal good kid, m.A.A.d city, he’s set the bar pretty high for himself, according to this interview. Here’s hoping he clears it.

David Bowie, The Next Day (March 12)

There is a new Bowie album coming out.

There is a new Bowie album coming out.

There is a new Bowie album coming out.

THERE IS A NEW BOWIE ALBUM COMING OUT AND IT’S THE FIRST ONE IN TEN YEARS AND I’M HYPERVENTILATING OVER HERE YOU GUYS

OH GOD HE’S BACK HE CAME BACK FOR US I’M SO HAPPY

THERE’S A VIDEO WITH PROJECTION PUPPETS AND A SONG OF NORWAY T-SHIRT AND ALSO A LITTLE PUP WALKING AROUND

VISCONTI’S PRODUCING AND THE SONG’S ABOUT BERLIN AND THE END OF THE VIDEO IS ODDLY REMINISCENT OF DAVID MALLET’S BOWIE VIDEOS FROM THE LATE SEVENTIES AND EARLY EIGHTIES

I’M SO EXCITED YOU GUYS

(cough, pant, cough, et cetera)

Achem. Sorry.

I just hope it isn’t the Bowie Chinese Democracy.

We’ll be back next week with more jokes at Axl Rose’s expense, but that’s all for now here at Now Take Them Out Devils HQ. Follow Simon Lazarus Vasta on Twitter @Hunter_S_Narc, and gander at his Tumblr here, where he’ll be obsessively posting screencaps from Revenge for some reason.

Missed the rest of the Now Take Them Out Devils end-of-the-year coverage?
Check out Part 1 Here
Check out Part 2 Here
Check out Part 3 Here

The Black Hippy crew definitely had a good 2012. ScHoolboy Q started the year off well with Habits & Contradictions, an album that somehow managed to meld Southern party rap with gloomy trip hop and the eeriness of mid-nineties East Coast hardcore. Control System, Ab-Soul’s darkly psychedelic tour of his own mind, followed. But the Hippies were saving the best for last: come October, Kendrick Lamar released good kid, m.A.A.d city. And it’s the best record I heard all year. Heck, it’s the best record I’ve heard in years.

Good kid is subtitled “A Short Film by Kendrick Lamar,” but it’s not an accurate description; if anything, it’s closer to a one man show. Actually, scratch that. Talking about good kid in terms of other forms of media (while helpful in establishing that yes, there is an ongoing narrative at play here, yes, this is a concept album, no, that isn’t considered a bad thing anymore) is ultimately pointless, because like many other works of genius, it would be impossible to translate into another medium. What makes Lamar’s masterpiece so amazing is how it uses the structure of an album to tell a story, or rather stories. Over the course of seventy minutes, Kendrick shuffles through personas and perspectives; sometimes he’s a sixteen-year-old version of himself, sex-and-status crazed and freestyling in the back of his friends car for the first time; sometimes he’s the sister of a prostitute he eulogized in his first album, Section.80; sometimes he’s his father, weary and drunk; sometimes he’s many all at once, an ethereal amalgamation of human hopes and failures. Lamar weaves tales of teen lust, peer pressure, bloated egos, self-doubt, and revenge elegantly around one central incident in which the girl of young Kendrick’s dreams lures him across town to get jumped. The whole thing is a brilliant machine, with well-paced cliffhangers, musical themes connecting disparate threads, and, and I can’t believe I’m saying this either, possibly some of the only good uses of skits in the entire history of hip-hop. Voicemails from Lamar’s parents and conversations with his friends help flesh out his character, sketching a portrait of a likeable, sensitive kid trying to seem cool in front of his more gangster friends. Overall, it’s the story of teenagerdom: testing out unknown and dangerous waters until it gets too deep and too far away from the shore. good kid is the story of a boy who’s deciding whether to fight against that riptide all the way to the beach, or just drown.

The whole thing sounds great, too. That east-meets-south production of Habits & Contradictions is done even better here, especially due to the addition of Compton G-funk flair. Everything that happens in good kid takes place in Los Angeles, sure, but this is a coastless album, in certain ways.
It’s an album to dance to, and one to cry to.
It’s an album for anybody who’s ever been a teen.
It’s the best album of 2012.

And that’s it for 2012. Hope you’ve had a good one, and be sure to tune in next week for more Now Take Them Out, Devils. Follow Simon Lazarus Vasta on Twitter @Hunter_S_Narc

Read parts one and two

The Almost-Best Albums of 2012 (In No Particular Order)

Killer Mike, R.A.P. Music

R.A.P. Music is one of the most streamlined hip-hop albums of all time. Mike jumps into a track, makes his point, and moves on with intense momentum without ever feeling rushed. El-P’s production is complex without ever becoming baroque. The whole thing is short enough to fit on one LP, yet it overflows with content. It’s a record that feels old school and brand new at the same time, where the political is the personal, where each track is just as good as the last, and you’re damned sure not gonna play favorites. From the unforgivingly blunt and brutal opening salvo “Big Beast” to the music-worshipping spiritual release of the title track, you are immersed in Mike’s mission statement, his manifesto. Heck, it’s called R.A.P. Music. No filler, no skits, just straight heat.

DIIV, Oshin

Even the staunchest defenders of Shoegaze and Dreampop have to admit that those genres have a tendency to get a little repetitive; indeed, some would even argue that it’s part of the charm: it’s ethereal music, music to get lost in. However, more often than not, the songs end up getting lost themselves, and you’re left with an album full of samey blah.

Oshin isn’t one of those albums. It’s vast and dreamy, certainly, but it’s also diverse and surprisingly structured. Instead of an intangible lump, it has a point a and a point b, visiting the likes of the slow chug and virtuous guitar playing of “Air Conditioning” and the propulsive Post Punk of “Doused” along the way. It’s one of the most fully realized records to come out of the current Brooklyn scene in a good long while.

Fiona Apple, The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Server You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do

What’s most immediately apparent about The Idler Wheel… are its contradictions. It’s fragile and strong as steel, melodic and dissonant, hysterical and sober, wrathful and loving, cynical and naïve, guttural and transcendent, sexy and grotesque. There’s the mental prison of “Every Single Night,” but there’s also the unbridled freedom of “Anything We Want.” There’s the unrequited love and loneliness of “Valentine,” but hold out ‘til the goofy double entendre of “Hot Knife.” I’m not certain if The Idler Wheel… is the best Fiona Apple album, but I do think it’s her best expression of herself overall: a bundle of incongruous ideas, fierce and vulnerable. Also, genius.

Frank Ocean, channel ORANGE

Do you need me to tell you that channel ORANGE is great? It topped the best albums of the year lists at Spin, EW, The A.V. Club, The WaPo, The NYT, Billboard, and many, many others. Rolling Stone put it at number two, but that’s only because Bruce Springsteen released a record this year. At the time of this writing, Pitchfork hasn’t announced their top 25 yet, but rest assured channel ORANGE will top it (and if it doesn’t… well, we’ll talk about that in part four). And you know what? Everybody ever is right. In a lot of ways, channel ORANGE is just as much a part of 2012 as “Gangnam Style” and “Call Me Maybe”. I heard it at house parties, dive bars, specialty coffee shops, blasting out of car stereos, backstage at CMJ showcases. It’s genuine and soulful and accessible and everybody should listen to it because it’s got a little something for everyone and a lot for almost anyone. If you haven’t given it a chance by now, then god, Jed, I don’t even want to know you.

But. It’s not my album of the year. It’s mad close. These four records all came close. But I’m going to discus my favorite record of the year, shit, possibly my favorite record in years, in the next entry of: Now Take Them Out, Devils!

To Be Concluded… Follow Simon Lazarus Vasta on Twitter @Hunter_S_Narc