From the desk of Charlie Hearon, FrequeNC Records: 

bo/eric,

ok, i think i’ve officially determined that the bass booster button was pressed when i heard it the first time which was giving it a huge bass / low mids sound that was not cool.  so i’m not all the way through but i’m withdrawing 
my worries.  sounds really great with the stereo flat.  it’s a big kick for a “rock” record but i think that’s it’s style. not distracting me at all now.  i gotta say i’m really loving it now. so sorry to wig.  it’s just ‘cause we’re chasing after ultimate dopeness and the stakes are high. much love and respect.  this shit is beautiful.

From the desk of Black Eric Deines:

just got the dezz brezzins. will jam at lunch!! bonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnner.

From the desk of Henry Bolding White:

Gave it a couple of spins last night. It sounds fine to me! Really warm. The kick does have a lot of presence, but not overly so.
I can’t help but think that because there is no bass guitar, my ears may just focus on it more. Fortunately, Michael sure can use a kick drum. There’s very little waffling about, and it’s consistently musical.
 
Side note…It is a little nuts that we did this all in one day.
 
I’d sign off on this in a heartbeat.
-Bo

Our scientific question was, on the surface, quite simple: Is it possible for a band to make a Tusk without having first created a Rumors? But within that question, there is a whole mess of other questions. Can the cocaine-fed vanity and ambition — and a $1M recording budget — be swapped out with Highlife-drenched amateurism and fussiness and still share any musical DNA? Is songcraft and pop prowess interchangeable with afro-kraut-yacht? Can a sampler replace the coos of Stevie Nicks, even if you throw a black, silk cape over it? Is it just as sexy to write songs about the various relationships within your band if your members are all male and look like burn-out, middle-lower class members of Vampire Weekend?

So the finalized version of Live in Miami 1984 is off to be lacquered and pressed with the hopes of having the album completed by Sept. 5 (big love to Charlie at frequeNC), but I’ll be damned if we’re not all still listening to it through every speaker of which we’re within 12 ft. and taking note of Bo’s most excellent job of wrangling our tendencies to muck things up just so. Listen, it might just take a second to get comfortable with our living room spirituals. But once you settle in, I think it’s worth it.

While listening and relistening to our record, I also have realized the debt due to the recordings, self-mythologizing and lyrics of Will Oldham. It’s probably best to let listeners spot these blatant thefts on their own. I bought Palace’s Viva Last Blues after seeing it listed in a regular SPIN magazine column called “Essential Listening,” this particular one titled “Essential Listening: Alt Country.” It was listed right alongside The Jayhawks, whom I thought were quite lovely. But within moments of “More Brother Rides,” I was squirming. Was I supposed to be hearing this? Was this intended for public listening? I was intrigued by the man who longed to fuck mountains, but I also worried for him and feared the parts of me that shared any human DNA with this voice in the speakers. Little did I know I was also falling in love with that feeling, and probably even deeper down I was forever being made into a person whose music would always, in some way, make others squirm just a bit. Let the wheels come off a bit if they may and worry about it later. 

What’s stranger is that Will Oldham’s goofball appearance in Kanye’s video; his role as Baby Jessica’s father in the TV movie (which, let’s face it, we all retroactively judged); his questionable musical output over these later years; his overall King Shit of Turd Mountain behavior — none of it has lessened the impact of Viva Last Blues or Arise Therefore I feel with most every listen, or thereby caused me to rethink Oldham’s identity. 

When Brooklyn-via-Newburyport, Mass.’s Sam Buck Rosen describes his brand of pop recordings as “avant-reggae” or “tropical grunge,” it’s easy to write him off as being cheeky or cavalier. But damned if his Dominant Mind LP isn’t stuffed to the gills with clever incorporations of David Byrne’s world music excursions, the first-thought-best-thought dance-pop experiments of Arthur Russell and the playful grooves of The Upsetters. Each ecstatic track is pushed along by Sam’s cock-sure voice, that of a man twice the 22-year-old’s age and maybe the best adaptation of Elvis’ croon since Chris Isaac (or Roy Orbison?).

While Dominant Mind (released in February by Secretly Canadian boutique, limited vinyl impring St. Ives) is essentially a collection of Sam’s best work over the last two years — recorded in a haunted house in the woods of Vermont and in a practice space at Bard College — many of the songs share the same inspiration: a small self-help book about taking control of one’s mind that Sam found sitting in the garbage. Note song titles such as “Freedom from Domination” and “Don’t Let Your Clothes Wear You,” each with minimalist lyrics that play as part word collage, part puzzle, part personal revelation. From “Freedom From Domination”: “And I take personal issue/With vicious and feeble/Trying to wreck your own pretty is evil/And I lump you in with children and impertinent people.”

Dominant Mind’s centerpiece, “Deseo,” with its soaring tropical horns and throbbing groove, seems to tell the heartbreaking tale of a small South American village and the lonely girl trapped there by way of family loyalty, something fit to be a passage in Marquez’s 100 Years of Solitude. Then, you find out “Deseo” takes its name from Jennifer Lopez’s perfume line.

So yeah, maybe Sam is a bit cheeky and cavalier. But he and his music are also universally likable.

Later this year, three of Sam’s songs will be included on a triple-split LP, The Rap Capital of the World, along with tunes from B C N C and Eli Moore (of K Records band LAKE). More on The Rap Capital of the World coming soon. That said, the first order of business for the B C N C crew is the completion and release of Live in Miami 1984. Got it? Good.