THE TOFU HUT

Maw! We got visitors!

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My server gifted me with hosting for the holidays, so I have some long overdue Giftmas presents to give out. Enjoy!
spiffy special: Vanilla Ninja
A very special guest returns today at th' Hut: Elisabeth Vincentelli is a former music editor and current senior editor at Time Out NY. Today, she joins us to drop some tracks and tell us a bit more about Estonian girl group Vanilla Ninja. Elisabeth and I share a taste for trashy Euro-pop; my hope is to hang out with her and her girlfriend shortly and share that love by gettin' down to some cheesy PS2 Dance Dance Revolution Megamix tracks. I miss the thrill!
Yes, I am a mega-dork.
Make her feel welcome and leave some commentary, n'est-ce pas?

While Sweden and Norway regularly produce extraordinarily inventive music in a wide range of genres, it looks as if the Baltic countries are turning into dangerous competitors. Typically, two of my current favorites hail from Estonia: the black-metal combo Loits (signed to the excellent Lithuanian label Ledo Takas) and the pop-rock girl band Vanilla Ninja. Let’s save Loits for another, darker time, and focus on Vanilla Ninja, which represented Switzerland at the 2005 Eurovision Song Contest in Kiev despite having zero connection to that country—well, their producer David Brandes works in Germany but was born in Basel, so maybe that’s all it takes to carry the Swiss flag.

Cynics may call Piret Järvis, Lenna Kuurmaa, Katrin Siska and Triinu Kivilaan guns for hire, but I still rooted for them at the contest. First of all, they wore all-white outfits and still didn’t look like dorks. Second, singer-guitarist Lenna professes to like nu metal and has appeared in an Estonian version of The Sound of Music—an unholy combination that actually sheds light on Vanilla Ninja’s mix of operatic overproduction and melodic chops. (I should specify “current mix” since the band used to be a lot more poppier, as examplified on “Inner Radio,” off Vanilla Ninja’s self-titled debut. The group’s turn toward rock grandiosity may have a little something to do with the departure of original member Maarja Kivi, who was replaced by Triinu.)

Vanilla Ninja - "Inner Radio"

The Ninjas’ Eurovision song, “Cool Vibes,” is among the strongest tracks on their third and most recent album, Blue Tattoo. Its coauthors, Brandes and John O’Flynn (a.k.a. Bernd Meinunger, a successful German music hack), also cowrote Germany’s Eurovision entry, Gracia’s awful “Run and Hide,” a detail that somehow adds to the inexplicable mystique surrounding “Cool Vibes.”

Vanilla Ninja - "Cool Vibes"

Everything about that song is dead perfect: the way it waxes and wanes, the way Lenna’s voice slightly breaks at crucial moments, the way the choir goes in and out, the way it all sounds like a particularly over the top Jeff Lynne concoction. I especially love that after literally dozens of listens I still have no idea what it’s all about. The first couple of times I heard it, for instance, I thought Lenna was singing “I can see the danger eyes in your eyes,” which felt poetically dumb in an English-as-a-second-language Eurovision way. But then I realized she actually says “I can the danger rise in your eyes,” which fits the song’s mood of vague despair. I read somewhere that it’s supposedly about a wolf, but I don’t think even Estonians would call a wolf “Cool Vibes.” Unless it’s a metaphorical wolf and the song’s about death by pop music. Damn, I knew I should have stuck with Arcade Fire.

Because Vanilla Ninja does particularly well in Germany, land of the power ballad, it seems like half of its latest songs fall in that category. The best example is “The Coldest Night,” in which lyrics such as “Rain of ice was fallin’/From the black clouds in her eyes” indicate that all is not sunny out there in Tallinn. Or maybe it’s about a wolf. Awesome!

Vanilla Ninja - "The Coldest Night"

Buy 'Blue Tattoo' from Amazon at ridiculously jacked up import prices.
Or, you know, look elsewhere.

Visit the official Vanilla Ninja website.

Explore the Eurovision website.

Read this brief interview with VN.

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spiffy special: Too $hort
A very special guest returns today at th' Hut: Anthony Miccio. Internet wag and pen-for-hire, Miccio also runs Anthony is Right, where he dispenses choice bon mots and variegated wisdom on matters musical and otherwise. Anthony has long been th' Hut's connection for all things big and glistening that might otherwise escape our more rockist readers earholes; today he tries something a bit less radio-friendly.
Make him feel welcome and leave some commentary, ya heard?

Too Short - "She Loves Her"

One could be forgiven for believing that Too $hort, author of "Invasion Of The Flat Booty Bitches," "She's A Bitch," "The Bitch Sucks Dick," "Punk Bitch," "Can I Get A Bitch," "Take My Bitch," and "Bitch Bitch Bitch Make Me Rich," is an insufferable misogynist, extreme even for a hardcore rapper. So it's surprising that his 14th album, 2002's 'What's My Favorite Word?', finds him writing about a lesbian encounter in the second person ("You look in the mirror, and see your own reflection/ Face in her thighs, with no long erection"). While the track's success as erotic art is questionable, its refreshing to hear him describe sapphic self-discovery with such sympathy ("juices flowin like a stream/ with no man in between/ feels like a dream"). His fascination with lesbianism has precedent (i.e. 2000's "2 Bitches" - "After seein this shit, I ain't wanna fuck/ I wanna see how long they can keep goin/ I don't know, I fell asleep on 'em/ When I woke up I was getting my dick sucked"), but "She Loves Her" reduces his presence to mere narrator, an unexpectedly ego-free progression.

Don't get the wrong idea, though - his latest album has a track called "Hobo Hoeing."

Buy 'What's My Favorite Word?' from Amazon.

Visit Too $hort World, the man's official site.

Read this long $hort interview from the MurderDog archives.

"Life too short, girl?"

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spiffy

In the mood to rough it?

Have I already written about how glad I am that I'm on monkeywire? Without it, I would never have learned about Stalin's Monkey-Man Soldier program and my life would've been that much less rich.

Six months later and I still enjoy the occasional game of peekaboom. This visual $25,000 Pyramid may be my favorite game on the web this year.

Fun with fraternity hats.

This immense Maude Flanders in heaven fanfic site makes me kind of glad that I can't read German. Or else deeply sad that I can't. Not sure.

File under mysterious: Tofu vs. Fork didn’t really do it for me.

For about two months I kept up this pic of Celine Dion eating a baby on my work computer, from this amazing Celine Wallpaper site until my co-workers forcibly made me change it. Some days I miss it more than others.

Labels: Anthony Miccio, clicky, Elizabeth Vincentelli, music

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spiffy special: Mylène Farmer
A very special guest joins us today at th' Hut:
Elisabeth Vincentelli is a former music editor and current senior editor at Time Out NY. Elisabeth has written for the Stone, EW, the Voice and has penned liners for more than a few discs. This is, I hope, the first of several pieces that she will be doing for us on French pop music.
Make her feel welcome and leave some commentary, n'est-ce pas?

Mylène Farmer - 'L'amour N'est Rien'

Mylène Farmer - 'Porno Graphique'

There¹s only one person who matters in French pop, and it¹s not Benjamin Biolay or Keren Ann or Phoenix or Daft Punk; it¹s Mylène Farmer.

In her adopted home (for she was born in Canada), Mylène¹s often dubbed "the French Madonna," a comparison she¹s earned by dint of her longevity as a best-selling star (close to 20 years), her ambitious, super-slick pop sound, and the obsessive devotion she inspires in her fans (of which I¹ve been one since hearing her first big hit, 'Libertine,' in 1986. Unlike Madonna, though, Mylène isn¹t really embraced by her own country¹s intelligentsia, which is sadly incapable of seeing that she¹s the most idiosyncratic, eccentric, completely sui generis singer we French have. She sells millions of records and is treated with derision by tastemakers, the fools!

Like her frozen-in-amber appearance, Mylène¹s songs, which she writes with longtime producer Laurent Boutonnat, have changed very little over the years: a disco-Goth stomper here, a dramatic ballad there; frequent lyrical references to mysterious shadows, obsessive love, death and the joys of anal sex; echo-drenched vocals alternating between sexy whispers and asthmatic high notes. (The one time she tried to deviate from her formula, on the guitar-heavy, Los Angeles­recorded Anamorphosée [1995], the reception was frosty.) To accompany this delirium, the red-headed singer's made a string of demented videos boasting huge budgets, full credit rolls and nutty storylines.

Here are two excerpts from Mylène¹s brand-new CD, "Avant Que L'Ombre;" the first single is titled 'Fuck Them All' (in English) but the album is so good that it isn¹t even among the best songs.

'L'amour N'est Rien' is a straightforward, vaguely uptempo pop tune. The lyrics cover all the Mylène bases, referencing metaphysical something or other, the darkness, and love being boring when it¹s sexually correct.

In 'Porno Graphique,' a crow-like cackles introduce a typically catchy Mylène tune that, also typically, combines gloomy bells, a nursery-rhyme melody, a piano counter-melody, disco-inspired strings and treated vox provided by the multitracked singer. Lyrically, the song joins 1988¹s 'Pourvu Qu'elles Soient Douces' (available on Farmer's two disc best-of "Les Mots") in the pantheon of great Mylène songs praising sodomy. Oddly, the track concludes on the singer asking for a mojito before erupting into disquieting laughter. It doesn¹t make sense but then Mylène hardly ever does and still, it works; that¹s what makes her a pop star.

Import "Avant Que L'Ombre" (roughly, "Before the Darkness"), Farmer's new and long-awaited album, from Amazon.
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Explore this extensive Farmer site.
It's in French but the monolingual among us can always rely on pidgin babelfish.
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Download a score of Farmer tracks (and some wallpapers!) from this slick fansite.
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Read this Farmer bio (in English!) from Radio France International.

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spiffy

BUFFO IS THE WORLD'S STRONGEST CLOWN.
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Want to live MOMA chic, but can't afford the toll?
Why blow your money on a 45 buck Carlo Contin Satellite Bowl when you can get the same effect from six pairs of chopsticks and a rubber band?
More economical DIY design available here.
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Custom Pez dispensers.
I'm diggin' the Mister Natural, the Alien and the Badtz Maru.
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Having just zipped through the first two seasons of The Wire in about a week-and-a-half flat, I can't recommend it enough.

Nobody's harder than Omar, so check out this great Tavis Smiley interview (transcription here) with the man himself, Michael K. Williams.

Dude is street fa real and fa sho.
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"Dave Chappelle has checked himself into a mental health facility in South Africa"
I'm a-hopin' and a-prayin' that this is some sort of Kaufman-esque stunt; otherwise, it's a damn shame.
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Lord knows I monkeyed it up enough yesterday, but here's one more: An Ebay auction for a screaming monkey button.

Labels: clicky, Elizabeth Vincentelli, music