Music Tonight: After witnessing my third or fourth “Chillwave” band at last year’s MidPoint Music Festival, it finally hit me what the Indie/Electro/Dance/Pop sub-genre is all about. The sound of Chillwave is the sound of Prince’s first album slowed down slightly and played underwater.
While Washington D.C. quartet Deleted Scenes uses some elements of Chillwave (obscured, gauzy vocals and muffled dance rhythms), the group puts those elements together in exciting, unpredictable new ways, producing a magnetic brand of Art Pop that is simultaneously catchy and experimental. It’s more like Prince’s first album turned completely inside out and run through a bank of random effects, then sprinkled with Deleted Scenes’ unique melodic magic. The compelling atmospherics combine creative beats, engulfing, often sunshiney melodies and an unpredictable mélange of real and electronic instrumentation, all slathered in a distinctively warped and cloudly glaze. In lesser hands, Deleted Scenes’ source material and adventurous approach might come out as impenetrable and obtuse. In Deleted Scenes’ hands, it’s supernatural, fever-dream Pop from another dimension.—-
On the group’s most recent effort, last year’s dynamic and wildly eclectic Young People’s Church of the Air, DS also offers some captivating lyrical gems. The band is able to capture the manic and maniacal tweakiness of “legal speed” use on the Glitch-Funk track “The Days of Adderall” (where the line “I got a magical illusion” sometimes sounds like “I got a magical delusion” and “Can you finish my sentences?” sounds like “Can you finish my senses?”). And on the ghostly, ambient “Bedbedbedbedbed,” Deleted Scenes creates the perfect Mumblecore love anthem, with lines like “We live in difficult times/I fell behind/I did some shit that I can’t deny” and “You are a merciful girl/You helped me back/You cut my hair and you cut me slack.”
If Deleted Scenes are anywhere near as gripping as they are on record when performing live, the band’s freebie show at Northside’s Mayday with local greats The Harlequins should be one of the best concerts of this young year. Yeah, it’s only been 11 days, but still …
Here’s the video for DS’s “Bedbedbedbedbed.”
Momentous Happenings in Music History for January 11 Like in pro-baseball during “The Steroids Era,” it seems like every couple of months, some music sales figures come in that unceremoniously shatter some record once thought unbreakable. Like, “Pop singer Ke$ha just passed The Beatles for most singles sold ever!” or “Lil Wayne has now sold more albums than Frank Sinatra, Madonna and Celine Dion combined!” (NOTE: Sales figures completely fabricated.) Those “historic breaking news” items also usually include an asterisk-worthy aside, like “… helped by the fact that Lil Wayne sold track downloads for a nickel” or “… no doubt fueled by Ke$sha’s offer to let anyone buying an album touch her boobs.”
One record that really seems untouchable is for most copies of a single album sold. That honor belongs to the late King of Pop, Michael Jackson, and his ridiculously successful Thriller album. On this day in 1984, Thriller became the all-time best-seller after cracking the 10 million mark. That figure seems modest now — Thriller went on to sell (as of now) over 110 million copies, double the amount of runner-up The Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd (which is at around 50 million). The rest of the Top 10 best selling albums: AC/DC‘s Back in Black (49 million), The Bodyguard soundtrack (44 million), Meat Loaf‘s Bat Out of Hell (43 million), The Eagles‘ Their Greatest Hits (42 million), the Dirty Dancing soundtrack (42 million), Backstreet Boys’ Millennium (40 million), the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack (40 million), Fleetwood Mac‘s Rumours (40 million) and Shania Twain‘s Come on Over (40 million).
Jacko’s sales record seems bulletproof. Until Lady Gaga decides to give away copies of her next album with every back-hoe purchase on Farmville.
Here’s one of two tracks from Thriller that were not released as a (highly successful) single.
Born This Day: Musical movers and shakers born Jan. 11 include: The elder half of The Judds, Naomi Judd (1946); member of once huge ’50s revivalists Sha-Na-Na, Dennis Greene (1949); singer/songwriter Robert Earl Keen (1956); Bangles singer/guitarist Vicki Peterson (1958); R&B superstar Mary J. Blige (1971); half of The Chemical Brothers, Tim Rowlands (1971); and late E Street Band saxman Clarence Clemons (1942).
In honor of what would have been his 70th birthday, here’s a tribute clip featuring photos of Bruce Springsteen’s Big Man (who passed away last year in June) and his trademark solo on “Jungleland.”
This article appears in Jan 11-17, 2012.
