A recent glowing Pitchfork review of The Blow’s new album, Paper Television described one track, “The Big U,” as “‘Drop It Like It’s Hot’ for the emo set”. This gets it almost, but not quite exactly right.

The Blow specializes in combining hi-fi hip hop’s flamboyance with the idiosyncratic intimacy that’s long been characteristic of bands from Olympia, Washington. Jona and Khaela (the mixed gender pair that make up The Blow, contrary to what the NY Times might believe) both came to Portland from Olympia and have deep roots in that scene. Khaela’s recorded with the legendary Phil Elverum (of Microphones fame) and this new record is out on K, the city’s flagship label.

While “The Big U” definitely has the sonics to warrant the Neptunes comparison, to me the standout track on Paper Television, the most successful example of The Blow’s musical transvestitism, is The Long List of Girls.

The Long List of Girls starts with just a drum corps-style rolling snare figure, which is quickly joined by an almost pitch-less percussive bass line and Khaela’s vocals, in true diva mode. On the “wah-oh” that punctuates that vocal entrance, you can almost see Khaela doing a Beyonce ‘talk-to-the-hand’ wrist flick.

After this intro, the song proceeds through a rollicking structure, featuring spat out syncopated near-rapped verses, laser beam synths, and plunky hyper-artificial pizzicato strings combined into every possible variation of textural density from bare rhythmic unison to crazy everything-happening-at-once party time.

The closest thing to Long List of Girls I’ve ever heard is a track from The Blow’s only earlier release Poor Aim: Love Songs EP, called The Live That I Crave, a tiny little gem of a song whose teasing syncopation will keep you on the edge of your seat for almost the full song before finally giving you the foor-on-the-floor. (The syconpated heavy breathing at the start of each verse alone is worth the price of admission.)

In fact, that whole EP is almost a manifesto of this new style of music The Blow has invented. And, while this new record doesn’t maintain quite the same high level of focus as Poor Aim, songs like The Long List of Girls still make me hope that all of “Drop It Like It’s Hot”-loving America hears it.

Listen:

• The Blow - The Long List of Girls
• The Blow - The Live That I Crave

Buy:

• buy Paper Television from K Records
• buy Paper Television on iTunes
• Buy Poor Aim from K Records
• buy Poor Aim on iTunes

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 31st, 2006 at 5:43 pm and is filed under Featured Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.