Laura Gibson & Ethan Rose – Bridge Carols

Listening to this new album, “Bridge Carols,” brings to mind images of the return of spring. And also, maybe, a quiet place in the country to get some clear thinking done.

Laura Gibson’s vocals, and other instruments, filtered through Ethan Rose’s electronics, like breeze through the tall grass.

A brilliant collaboration, through which one plus one definitely equals more than two.

Download one of the best tracks, “Younger,” and stream the entire lp from the “Bridge Carols” website.

Gigi – Maintenant

Some might accuse me of being nostalgic for the 1960s by writing about this new lp by Gigi this week and the Keb Darge/Paul Weller disk last. Perhaps so, but it is also true that both are excellent new records that rank among the very best I’ve heard lately.

The story behind Gigi, apparently, goes like this. Colin Stewart, who as it turns out has produced some of my very favorite albums in recent years, including those by Pink Mountaintops, Black Mountain, Young and Sexy, and especially Destroyer, joins forces with Nick Krgovich from No Kids to compose some songs that have a retro-60s vibe, to take advantage of some newly-acquired vintage studio equipment. Then, an all-star cast, including but not limited to Zac Pennington of Parenthetical Girls, Rose Melberg, Owen Pallett, Karl Blau, and the always-wonderful Mirah, signs on to provide the vocal performances.

Most impressively, the lp manages to avoid the kind-of-half-finished sound that plagues a lot of side projects and wide collaborations. Though the revolving cast of vocalists means that each track has its own special personality, the whole record sounds remarkably, consistently great. And though Stewart and Krgovich draw their inspiration from 60s-era pop music, many of their guests bring in key elements of the sound of the Pacific Northwest/K Records scene as well, adding dimensions that make the songs truly original and not mere tributes, though worthy tributes in part they are.

All of which brings me to the title: though influenced by the past, this lp is very much of the here and now. Tres tres bien!

Four Tet – There is Love in You

Four Tet - There is Love in You - Domino Records (2010)

What I find most interesting about this new lp by Four Tet is how it plays around with opposites. These are dance tracks that you can meditate to. Built around electronics that, somehow, give the music an incredibly organic feel. And conjure up images of unexplored landscapes, uninhabited at first glance and so to whom do those disembodied voices belong: real people or ghosts?

All that’s what makes it my favorite Four Tet album so far.

Keb Darge & Paul Weller – Lost and Found: Real R’n'B and Soul

Loving this new collection of ’50s and ’60s soul compiled by Keb Darge and Paul Weller.

I’m not quite sure about the “lost” part — I doubt that it’s true to say that any of the tracks here were really ever totally lost, at least not to true fans (which would include of course Darge and Weller themselves).  But certainly they’re all at least somewhat obscure, and the two curators have done a great job of bringing them back to light and sequencing them nicely on the cd.

My personal favorites: Emmitt Long’s “Call Me,” Margie Joseph’s “One More Chance,” The Flirtations’ “Stronger Than Her Love,” and, especially, Tammi Terrell’s “All I Do Is Think About You.” That last one, composed by Stevie Wonder and originally recorded in 1966, features an incredibly beautiful, absolutely perfect vocal performance by Ms. Terrell and most definitely stands as an underappreciated Motown classic.

Four Tet – Angel Echoes

BBC Sessions version of track 1 from the new Four Tet lp, “There is Love in You,” just out this week on Domino Records.

Kompakt Pop Ambient 2010 Compilation

“Pop Ambient 2010,” the tenth in its series, brings together many of the usual names: Thomas Fehlmann, Mikkel Metal, Triola, the Orb, and label founders Juergen Paape and Wolfgang Voigt themselves.

Still, what makes the very good compilation great are the surprises, chief among them DJ Koze’s excellent “Bodenweich.”

And, best of all, “Pop Ambient 2010″ features two outstanding tracks by Bvdub, “Lest You Forget” (see below) and the astonishingly awesome, 17-minute “Will You Know Where to Find Me.” Both of those compositions were first presented on Bvdub’s lp “We Were the Sun,” released last year on Quietus Recordings, but regrettably in such limited quantities that it’s become very difficult to find. But, here they are, in what will hopefully presage a rerelease of the original full-length.

Beach House – Teen Dream

Beach House - Teen Dream - Sub Pop (2010)

“Teen Dream” is Beach House’s third lp, their first on Sub Pop, and by far their best yet.

And you can take that as no small compliment, since I thought the first two albums were really quite good. But I agree that “Teen Dream” is far better, with each of its ten tracks living up to or surpassing the very high standards set by my previous favorites, like “Master of None” from the self-titled lp and “Gila” from “Devotion.”

In terms of overall style, not much has changed: if you know the duo from their eariler work, you’ll easily recognize them here as as well. But according to the Sub Pop page, Alex Scally and Victoria Legrand worked intensively on these songs for months. And that hard work really shows, with compositions that are both consistently superb and superbly consistent and with vocal performances by Legrand that are soulful and moving beyond anything she’s done before.

Now, I must confess that I’m not sure what to make of the album’s title. Is the Shaun Cassidy reference intentional? That awaits further research. But based on the music and lyrics alone, I would have called the collection something like “to love in the past and present perfect” instead.

Still, the “Dream” part I do get. “The melody haunts my reverie” sings the girl in that Lichtenstein painting. After listening to this new lp by Beach House, I’m inclined to say the same.

She & Him – Change is Hard

Elvis Costello – Show Biz Kids

Greil Marcus/Werner Sollors – A New Literary History of America

Just finished reading the Marcus/Sollors anthology, “A New Literary History of America,” cover to cover.

That sounds a bit crazy, I know, but I learned a lot and was very often entertained.

Here’s a list of my favorite entries, in chronological order:

1. Francois Furstenberg, Washington’s Farewell Address (1796)
2. Robert Clark, The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841)
3. James Dawes, The Limits to Violence (1885)
4. Richard Powers, The Robert Gould Shaw and 54th Regiment Monument (Memorial Day 1897)
5. Walter Mosley, Hardboiled (1926)
6. Paul Muldoon, Carl Sandburg and the American Songbag (1927)
7. Marybeth Hamilton, Jelly Roll Morton Speaks (May 1938)
8. Robert O’Meally, Billie Holiday, Strange Fruit (1939)
9. George Hutchinson, Letter from Birmingham Jail (April 1963)
10. Anne M. Wagner, Maya Lin’s Wall (1982)

Everyone has their hobbyhorses, though, me included, so I will also say that there should have been more about the last three decades. No entry on David Foster Wallace, despite the fact that he wrote the greatest book of the last quarter century. Nothing about Madonna, either: like it or not, she’s had an enormous influence on American culture over that same period. Her first album was pretty good, too.

Still, it was great in particular to see some American academics and intellectuals writing about stuff that really matters.