by Lauren Tischler

It is safe to say that hip-hop prodigy Scott Mescudi, better known as Kid Cudi, has a lot going for him. His debut album Man on the Moon: The End of Day sold 104,419 copies in the span of a week, he stars in HBO’s “How to Make it in America,” and has collaborated with hip hop greats such as Common and Kanye West. The rapper, singer, and actor is on the top of his game after a few short years, and the much awaited release of his newest album Man on the Moon II: The Legend of Mr. Rager tells us he’s not stopping anytime soon.

Considering the amount of success that Kid Cudi’s breakthrough album had in 2009, it was instantly obvious that the follow-up had to meet some high expectations. Whether the album meets these standards is debatable. The album opens with the rapper crooning promising lyrics. “You are now in the world I am ruling,” he expresses, followed by a soulful chorus sung by Gnarls Barkley’s Cee-Lo Green. The song is seemingly a prelude to an album that we believe will be somewhat like Cudi’s first work: refreshing and youthful. What follows, “REVOFEV”, meets our anticipations with a mysterious, psychedelic drum beat and instrumental track.

While the first two tracks of Man on the Moon II are convincing, the rest of Kid Cudi’s album proves to be wary. The tracks are unmemorable and seem to blend together as the album progresses. “Don’t Play this Song” is a dull composition with monotonous lyrics, and while Mary J. Blige is featured on the track, even she fails to impress. “MANIAC” featuring St. Vincent and Cage, and “Erase Me” with Kanye West again prove that even an impressive line up of guest vocalists does not attribute considerably to success of any kind on Cudi’s album.

Although Man on the Moon II is not Kid Cudi’s most outstanding work, it shows us a side of the artist we have not seen in his earlier music. Since Kid Cudi’s first album, he has become a father to a little girl named Vada and has been arrested for criminal charges and drug possession. The artist has also, in the past year, opened up about a heavy cocaine addiction. Though we should not hand Cudi a free pass because of these trials, it is unquestionably a factor to be taken in when considering his newest album. Man on the Moon II is blatantly dark and exemplifies these problems in Cudi’s life. This effect can be seen, for example, in “Wild’n Cuz i’m Young”. Kid Cudi speaks of how his father’s smoking and drinking habits influenced him over an eerie synth line. “These Worries” is another cryptic narrative. The album closes with “Trapped in my Mind”, and while the track is not catchy or noteworthy, Cudi’s lifeless delivery provides a surprisingly fitting conclusion to the album.

So despite the fact that Kid Cudi’s new album won’t be perpetually blasting from my stereo in contrast to his early release, it serves another purpose. Man on the Moon II: The Legend of Mr. Rager introduces us to an intimate artist named Scott Mescudi, rather than the pop culture icon Kid Cudi we know and see everyday.

Kid Cudi – Scott Mescudi vs. The World (ft. Cee-Lo Green)

Kid Cudi – REVOFEV

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by Matt Keefer

Frontman Wayne Coyne approaches the tour at his own pace.

Few could predict that an indie punk group from Oklahoma City would have such an innovative presence in the music world. At 49, Wayne Coyne and his quartet of space-a-delic freaks, including bassist Michael Ivins and drummers Steven Drozd and Kliph Scurlock, have earned a Grammy, covered Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side of the Moon” in its entirety, and toured relentlessly across the world. Currently on tour for their first double-album Embryonic (excluding Zaireeka, their 1997 four-album experiment), the self-deprecating Coyne delivers about the not-so-glamorous side of touring, as well as about future projects.

Matt Keefer: Thanks for your time. Do you mind if I record the interview?

Wayne Coyne: Sure. I don’t expect you to write it all down and remember it. I’m not doubting your ability to remember, but, see, I just talk. It might be a lot easier for you to say, ‘Nah, that fucker goes on too long.’

M: At 27, being 49 seems like a long way to travel.

WC: I remember when I was 27, I would think about someone who’s almost 50 years old: ‘Dude, are you alright?’ I don’t ever get the feeling that I’m any different. It’s only when I look in the mirror sometimes that I think, “oh wow, I look like a weird old guy.” I don’t feel different to myself. It’s a strange phenomenon.

M: How’s your tour for Embryonic going so far?

WC: We’re never really on tour for very long. We’ll go out for maybe about ten days, play some shows, then we’ll go home for ten days… we’re always doing everything at the same time. Since we’re playing some shows in the summertime, you always run into other groups, and we ran into a group, Trombone Shorty, just last night. They’re almost into their third consecutive month of playing. That can beat you down. I already did that several times – when I was your age – and it can be such a mind-fuck, you’re so torn away from your life that you’re trying to build, the people that you knew. Like I said, I’m 49 years old, and the other guys, they’re not as old as me, but they’re not in their early 20s. I think they don’t want to be taken away from their families and their lives for that long. And you can almost go endlessly the way we’re going. You can almost never stop, because we’re going full-time. Doing the Flaming Lips tour is kind of like working at Target: it just kinda is. It’s not too hard, you just get up and go to work.

M: I know some musicians that have kids, and touring must be rough on them.

WC: Especially for musicians. The reason I say musicians is that they have a sensitivity about them, or they probably wouldn’t like music. And all these things that play into human dramas and emotions are just a little bit more, either enjoyable, or a little bit more painful. Sometimes I think groups try to say ‘we’re going to play for six months straight,’ and then take three years off. You know, that’s easy to say, but a lot of things happen to people in six months that you cannot reverse. Especially if you have young children. Six months, they’ll be completely different little creatures by then. We don’t want that. We want to make our music, do our performances, do all these things because we love what we do, not put one thing that we love on hold so we can have another. We want to have it all at the same time.

M: On the positive aspect of that, do you have any good tour stories?

WC: (Laughs) I don’t know, a lot of times there’s not that much crazy shit going on. When we played at Bonnaroo about a month ago, you play into the night pretty long, and there’s a lot of young people there that are doing drugs and stuff. So those [gigs] always play more into the good old rock and roll stories. After we got done, it was about ten minutes after three in the morning, I went over to the LCD Soundsystem stage, where they had just started their set – and I sort of Tweeted about it the day afterward – but this big, naked guy sort of attacked the stage.  Me and, what’s this comedian’s name, Aziz Ansari? – this giant, freaked-out naked guy, had to be doing some acid or something, simply attacked the stage, and we sort of had to hold him down until the security guards could take him away. It was a very strange, charged moment, where that doesn’t happen to you every day. You know, where you’re suddenly assailed by a 300-pound, naked guy, and he’s all sweaty and he’s drenched. That’s probably the last phenomenal rock-and-roll moment that happened to us.

M: I guess at that moment you’re glad that you pump iron five times a week.

WC: I don’t do that much, but I do yoga almost every day. So, yeah, you’re glad that you have energy and you can react and you don’t feel intimidated. I know you’re saying that jokingly, but I mean it. To be in a group, and to do all these things; you wouldn’t want to do it if you don’t have a lot of enthusiasm. So yeah, I jumped right to task. We didn’t really want to. The guy was very strong but he was pretty slippery, because he was so sweaty. The slipperiness made it impossible to grab him. It’s a good trick. If you’re ever going to run from the cops, strip yourself naked and be slippery.

M: Sure. I should probably carry some cans of grease, too.

WC: (Pauses) Then their only solution is to tase you.

M: You’ve also toured Europe and around the world. Any places you’ve enjoyed outside of the US?

WC: It’s all pretty great when you’re a group like the Flaming Lips. Most everywhere that we would go nowadays, we’re invited to play by a group of enthusiastic ‘freaks.’ We just recently went to Croatia, and we played the Glastonbury Festival (in UK) and got to see Snoop Dogg, meet Mick Jones from the Clash. Hang out with Damien Hirst. There’s a lot of great things that can happen to you simply because you’re just traveling the world all the time. But the other side of it is that you spend a lot of time in airports and on airplanes. Sometimes you get done playing at two-o-clock in the morning, and you have to get to the airport at four-o-clock in the morning. Running from one show to the next, everything is ‘hurry hurry hurry’ all the time. Sometimes I think it’s too many experiences. It’d be like having to eat twenty meals in one day. There’s just no way you can enjoy all the things that are happening.

M: Do you have anything new on the horizon?

WC: We’re always – I don’t know if ‘contemplating’ is the right word – but you’re always considering new musical ideas, new things that you want to play into. We’re always doing little movies and little videos. I just shot an ending of a video for a song on Embryonic called “See the Leaves”. We were shooting this guy on the north side of Oklahoma City who has a big acreage where he’s burning a bunch of his brush that he had chopped down. So we saw this giant fucking bonfire. We shot for an ongoing piece in our storyboard there. So it’s always a kind of combination of everything: new music, and new movies, new videos, new things for our website, new toys, new t-shirts. Everything is a Flaming Lips creation. The great range of things that you can do readjusts your focus on music.

M: Last question: Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs made a brief appearance as a frog on Embryonic.  Would you consider a fuller collaboration with her?

WC: These are definitely collaborations of a sort. I don’t know. For me, I’m more comfortable doing these types of collaborations, where I have the song written, and I have the arrangement, and I just simply call Karen and say ‘All you have to do is be you, and I’ll do all the work.’ A lot of artists don’t really want to collaborate in the sense that people think they do. The art is a lot of times just made very intensely. You simply say, ‘I like this and I don’t care what you think.’ That is in a lot of ways how art is made. And when you’re collaborating with someone that you love and admire, the way that I was working with Karen O, it’s not so much a collaboration, as it’s me giving her a format for her to be her pure self. And that’s different than us writing a song or writing lyrics or writing an arrangement together. So, I don’t know. If whoever called me up and said, ‘Hey, do you want to do this,’ I would always be open for it. I’m open to new experiences and new failures or successes. But I could understand how a lot of people wouldn’t be. It’s nerve-wracking; it’s not always very pleasant. I try to make ours as easy, as quick, and as pleasant as possible. They simply can do this little thing, and be part of this bigger thing. That’s why most artists would want to do it in that way, more than a ‘Hey Henry (Rollins), why don’t you write a song today?’ A lot of people will do that to us. I’ll say ‘not really, but I will, if that’s what we’re doing.’

M: You’re definitely right: you talk a lot. But it works with interviews.

WC: (Laughs) I know I paint it like it’s going to be torture, but I’m trying to give you as much a lay of thinking about me as you can. Make me sound cool.

The Flaming Lips will be playing on 10/10 in Austin, TX. You can buy tickets here.

The Flaming Lips – Race for the Prize

The Flaming Lips – Fight Test

The Flaming Lips – It’s Summertime

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Describing an Of Montreal show is like setting the scene for a circus. Literally. The amount of cartoonish yet elaborate characters, the band-built set of props, the whirlwind of energy… it is difficult to pinpoint which component of the performance merits the most mention. When it comes down to it though, like the mark of any great band, it is the music that keeps people going. For a band like Of Montreal, their set is not an illusion designed to compensate for sub-par music. Neither is frontman Kevin Barnes’ energy, which is the quite opposite of a facade and a vocal part of his music whether on stage or not. So when I saw them for the first time on Saturday night, I was not surprised by the festival-like atmosphere. I knew that would be there. What stunned me was a remarkably tight performance that somehow managed to take the best parts of the band’s music and their renowned stage presence, both of which are anything but subtle. Such immaculate management prevented an overflowing of ideas, which is always possible considering the band’s lofty scope. Fans were treated to quality with no pretentious showmanship.

The success of their performance on Saturday night, the second of a two-night stint at Terminal 5, is no surprise to fans. When you have an opener like Janelle Monáe, who is successfully attaining fame in both independent and mainstream circles, it is hard to have doubts. The little that I caught of her set was excellent, and her re-emergence during the phenomenal “Enemy Gene” later in the night brought emphatic cheering from an audience that were thankful to be given an opener that sounded like a headliner. This occurred about mid-way through Of Montreal’s setlist, which to my delight was culled heavily from their new album, False Priest (review here), and my favorite, Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? (review here). Barnes and co. were able to seamlessly navigate their way around a setlist that, despite their striking stylistic similarities (like Barnes’ falsetto or a funk-heavy rhythm section), contained appropriate variations in tempo and mood.

A rendition of “Casualty of You” was a surprising entry in the midst of jolted dance-friendly efforts like “Godly Intersex” and “Girl Named Hello”, which was accompanied with dancers in pig masks who proceeded to grind it up with Barnes. Yet, they all maintained synchronization even as breathing room got thinner. As the sole ballad-like track on False Priest, “Casualty of You” fit naturally with songs from the same album despite its emotional distance. Barnes’ piano-driven delivery reached believable authenticity despite the more vivacious preceding efforts, which was played with expected mastery by longtime members Bryan Poole, Dottie Alexander, and others. Barnes stole the show’s visual factor, but the music was a collaborative tour-de-force that contained the tightness and infectiousness demanded from funk-heavy efforts.

Performances of “Bunny Ain’t No Kind of Rider” and “She’s a Rejector” reminded me how wonderful Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? was. Even though Barnes is three years past the divorce that plagued him to write many of the exceptional but forlorn efforts on Hissing Fauna, the same intensity was there as if it happened yesterday. It is questionable whether an audience should enjoy an artist’s suffering, so perhaps these tracks sounded bouncier and more fluid than usual because the issue is not as sensitive. Or maybe it is simply that the band was on their game. The intro to “Bunny Ain’t No Kind of Rider” focused on some very interesting glitch-pop, while “She’s a Rejector” retained the same successful anthem-against-heartbreak feel as it did three years ago. These songs were fantastic additions to the False Priest-heavy set, showing more alt-rock and electro-rock than funk but achieving a similar degree of irresistible uniqueness.

These earlier efforts had little dependence on the set or scenery, which Barnes described to Spinner as being a very collaborative effort: “It’s like we’re an art collective, in a way,” he said. “Everyone in the band is contributing, everyone is the crew is contributing and this is very collaborative experience for all of us. Our bass player is responsible for building 85 percent of the props we’re going to use on tour. My brother designed all of them. All of us are involved in filming all the video content.” Seeing as how tightly involved the band’s music was, it is not surprising to see that this was a mutual effort. Barnes may steal the show on more occasions than one, but it is clear that the Georgia-based collective are blessed with additional talent beyond their enigmatic frontman.

For a tour that has seemingly been developed like an elaborate film, with costumes and sets taking the entire summer to create, it certainly lived up to expectations. I am not sure how Barnes had enough time to write a great album like False Priest AND help organize an intricate tour like this, but that is beside the fact. The band put on an exceptional show that was lively but also somewhat grounded, featuring a very accessible setlist (for Of Montreal’s standards) and not straying too far from it, apart from a few admirable Michael Jackson covers to close the night. I recommend that you listen to False Priest, fall in love with it, and check to see if the band is coming somewhere near you. If not, it is one of those tours you will regret missing a year from now.

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Of Montreal – Bunny Ain’t No Kind of Rider

Of Montreal – Coquet Coquette

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by Josh Taylor

Julian Shah-Tayler was born to make music. Putting out an EP every few months and pumping out 50-70 songs a year is no easy feat, unless you show prevalently the aspects of a well-rounded musician. His robust musicianship is responsible for his versatility as an artist. What I noticed after listening to his latest EP, Un Ange Passe, is that Julian is a songwriter who creates for his heart’s content. He strays from songwriting conventions and isn’t afraid to experiment if it amuses his untypical sensibilities.

Julian’s songs distinctly belong to their maker. Un Ange Passe is very personal and all the songs on the EP (with the exception of “Wetter”) were written for a dearly departed friend of Julian’s who tragically passed away. The literal translation of the title “Un Ange Passe” is “an angel is passing”, but is usually used when an awkward silence falls over the room. The EP tells a brief and interesting story about what happened to Christine. Julian tells it well, as the story is endearing and stripped down to the most honest details.

Instead of diving into the story headfirst, the EP begins with “Wetter.”  The songs on the EP are sandwiched by “Wetter” and the remix of “Wetter” by Karl Leiker. This song is definitely the black sheep… uptempo, naughty lyrics and electro influence. The feel of the song is great and could be a radio hit. The second song on Un Ange Passe is “Everything Is You”, serving as a good transition into the rest of the EP, which is more relaxed musically. The song begins with finger-snapping, chimes and some elusive and wandering exotic-sounding instruments. Then iit develops a direction and chooses to take on a New Order/Depeche Mode feel. The nameless exotics remain, lending a curious tone to the song. It’s almost as if they don’t belong, but are still welcomed.

“Communication” resembles the sparse feel of a desert. It’s expansive (at 5 and a half minutes) and filled with many instrumental breaks. The track lulls and winds but I don’t know that it goes anywhere. All I know is that when I listen to it, I start to space out.  If Julian wanted “Communication” to have a daydream-inducing effect, then bravo — well done, because that is exactly what happens.

“Christine” is where the EP starts to come together and the song clearly lays out what exactly happened to his late friend of the same name. Make what you want of the other songs and interpret them as you wish, but here is what happened, Julian seems to say. Musically, “Christine” brings to mind The Smiths “How Soon Is Now?” and has the same pensive inquiry.  One of the most striking and revealing lyrics is “as the kiss of the needle delivers you to the real world” followed by this lyric in the bridge “even if this life could give you all the love you need, I guess you had enough.” The verdict: overdose.

Un Ange Passe occupies a certain estranged darkness, but it is only when the listener gets to “Christine” that I feel they can go back and find its lingering presence in the background of the entire EP. Perhaps that misplaced discomfort is the awkwardness that the album title also refers to. Still, the way the song is handled is half ode, half something else that I can’t quite pin down. For a song written for a close friend the song isn’t particularly sentimental, which is odd to me. However,  I think those feelings find their way into the next song “Lullabies.”

From what I heard, “Lullabies” was written for Julian’s future daughter. But the listener is also led to believe that perhaps the song’s tender message is intended for Christine as well. The lullaby soothes the listener as well as the singer, perhaps reminding him that everything will be fine and there really is nothing to be afraid of during the night, and maybe in death…

Whatever the ultimate purpose of Un Ange Passe is, it can be listened to in many different ways. Julian is adventurous with his artistic choices and presents his subject matter though a twisted lens. This is not to say that his method is perverse, but rather aiming for artistic perfection on his own terms. Some say that’s a nifty idea. I would say it’s better than nifty, or original, or clever. I would say the whole EP is a noble effort. Too many musicians make music to turn a quick buck but lack the vision to make something worthwhile. Others write for their heart’s content, yet lack the talent to make sophisticated music. Julian, however, is the best of both. He is talented and passionate, which shows remarkably.

One last thing I noticed: None of these songs showcase Julian’s piano talents, but word on the street is that his full-length debut does. Entitled Coito Ergo Sum, it is due in the fall. So keep an eye out, or an ear rather.

RIYL: Depeche Mode, Dave Gahan, New Order, Erasure, Pet Shop Boys, Duran Duran, The Cure, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Alphaville, David Wrench, The Human League, Gary Numan, Tears for Fears, Soft Cell, INXS, Talk Talk, A Flock of Seagulls, Naked Eyes, Blancmange

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Julian Shah-Tayler – Everything Is You

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Julian Shah-Tayler – Wetter

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Julian Shah-Tayler – In Your Room (Depeche Mode cover)

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