The Oklahoman's George Lang

The New Pornographers ripped through a lengthy set of classics and newer numbers, but I was really wowed by openers The Dodos and Imaad Wasif. The former had about as much musical talent as I've heard in any new band lately and the latter looked a lot like Jimmy Page onstage.

--Carney

Video of the Day: Chromeo, “Don’t Turn the Lights On”

An early candidate for funniest video of 2010 and endlessly watchable, so be careful — this could destroy your work day. Fresh off their Bonnaroo set with that guy in the picture, the Montreal duo will release its first album for Atlantic Records, “Business Casual,” on Sept. 14.
– Lang

Music Review: Arcade Fire, “The Suburbs”

Rating: 90

Artists who grew up in subdivisions often live uncomfortably with warring feelings of love and disdain for the old neighborhood, that place of uniformity that, like it or not, made them who they are. Win Butler grew up in The Woodlands, an affluent suburb on the northern reaches of Houston’s great sprawl, so he lives with the conflict and now projects it in Arcade Fire’s ambitious and beautiful new album, “The Suburbs.”

The opening title track begins with Butler recounting a hazy dream of running through yards and screaming “when all of the walls that they built in the ‘70s finally fall, and all the houses they built in the ‘70s finally fall.” These are songs with connective tissue and common refrains, in which the characters try to escape physically or emotionally, becoming pretentious downtowners in “Rococo” or conforming into a jaded mass “with their arms folded tight” in the glorious art-punk anthem “Month of May.”

While “The Suburbs” will speak to people who grew up in similar surroundings, it is especially resonant to those of us who spent at least part of our childhoods in Houston, a place that experienced some of the sharpest growth of any metropolitan area in the years leading up to 1980, the year Butler was born. The city developed like billowing concentric clouds of carpentry and masonry in the 1970s: “This town’s so strange, they built it to change, and while we are sleeping the streets they re-arrange,” Butler sings on “Suburban War.” My standard joke about the streets in Houston is that the city planners dumped a bowl of spaghetti on a table and traced the mess to create the map. Butler isn’t there anymore, but like any Houston kid, he was deeply informed by a place where one year’s bright, sparkling new neighborhood was the next year’s dumpy tract of worn-out lumber and bricks, with the first residents decamped to Sugarland or Conroe or beyond. We love Houston, we love it not, and Butler’s still pulling the petals off the dandelion he plucked from the vacant lot.

Musically, the seven-piece attacks these songs with balanced power and grace. While Butler is the conceptual king of “The Suburbs,” the tracks sung by Regine Chassagne are among the most instantly engaging, especially the roaring “Empty Room,” featuring Sarah Neufeld’s feverish violin work and the penultimate “Sprawl 2,” where Chassagne sings of alienation in a place where “dead shopping malls rise like mountains beyond mountains.” Butler now lives in Montreal, a city where people walk. But Arcade Fire’s “The Suburbs” proves that he still carries both stark and fond memories of a place where people drive at a crawl through the sprawl, a few feet at a time down the freeway to that house built in the ‘70s that, in his mind’s eye, has yet to fall.
– Lang

Video of the Day: Janelle Monae feat. B.o.B. and Lupe Fiasco, “Tightrope” (remix)

A killer retake on the JB-style first single from “The ArchAndroid,” which is still the one to beat for 2010 album of the year. Janelle tweeted yesterday that the new Of Montreal is a masterpiece, on which she is an esteemed participant. We’ll see, but let’s face it — she knows from masterpieces.
– Lang

Video of the Day: Caribou, “Sun”

Trance-dancing matrons are joined by energetic hotties and three guys dressed like Cameo. That might be the most literal description of the week.
– Lang

Photo Slideshow: Sunday Lane

Tulsa native Sunday Lane released her EP “Bring Me Sunshine.”

Lane has been playing around Tulsa this summer before she heads back to school Florida.

She has a great deal of talent, so make sure to look out for her next summer.

-Poppe

“Mad Men” Recap: 401, “Public Relations”

In the ensuing time between the Season 3 finale and the beginning of Season 4, Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce has not only moved into swank accommodations at the Time-Life Building after a dramatic split with their British overlords, our anti-hero Don Draper has set TV advertising on fire with an ad for Glo Coat floor cleaner that looks a lot like a movie — something we all take for granted today, but when you consider how TV advertising through much of the ’50s and ’60s until the heyday of Stan Freberg was painfully on-the-nose, Draper is shaping up to be quite the revolutionary. But while he can sell a kitchen disinfectant, he seems incapable or constitutionally reluctant to sell himself: in an interview with Advertising Age, he comes off as anti-social and vapid, and the resulting article, intended to call attention to a conquering hero of Madison Avenue, paints Draper as a hollow man. His partners are not happy, and Bert Cooper gets his buddies at the Wall Street Journal on the phone.

The office dynamics are subtly different: Peggy (Elizabeth Moss) is growing into the revolutionary ad woman we suspected she would become, paying actresses to fight over a canned ham in an outer-borough grocery to build brand recognition — unlike Don, she seems well versed in the mechanics of public relations, even though she will see her stunt backfire slightly. But like Don, she seems ready to push the limits of her craft, as evidenced by the “John! Marsha!” Freberg bit that she and her new male assistant keep bandying around the office — proof that she digs the new breed.

In past seasons, Draper was more likely to kowtow to timid companies unwilling to go for the edge, but when executives at a swimwear company come in acting like the kind of milquetoast Victorians that put bloomers on piano legs, he won’t brook it. They keep insisting they are a “family company” and want a wholesome approach to selling two-piece bathing suits. Draper hits them with a print ad featuring implied nudity, and it predictably goes badly, but not only does Draper walk out, he practically runs back to give them the bum’s rush out of the office. Hell, it’s almost 1965 — get with the program, you sniveling weasels. Draper is establishing a new calling card with this: you come to SCDP if you want to win. If you’re not willing to play ball, quit taking up precious air in my office.

Elsewhere in Draperworld, it’s not so nice. Betty and her new husband Henry are having Thanksgiving with Henry’s family, and it’s basically a chamber of horrors, with the kids visibly scared out of their wits of Betty — Henry’s mother says as much later. Don is living in an apartment below his means — he wants to sell the Westchester house, but Betty is dragging her pumps on finding a new place. Even Henry tells her that Don’s in the right to insist they move out. Betty (January Jones) has never been this unsympathetic in the series’ history, and this looks to be how her character will play out. Meanwhile, Don is set up with one of Jane Sterling’s girlfriends, an extremely motivated, assertive date but one who isn’t willing to give it up for Draper unless he accedes to her schedule. She seems to have Don hooked. And speaking of hooked, Don is having a call girl over regularly to slap him around — certainly one way to deal with his guilt.

In the end, Draper goes along with the WSJ interview, and starts out with the anecdote about insisting that Pryce (Jared Harris) fire them all, and we all know this is going to make up for the desultory Ad Age piece. “Public Relations” was really one for the “Mad Men” pantheon, because even if it doesn’t set the tone for the season, it’s clear that the tone is being set for how advertising and the people who make it will evolve from here on out. A hell of a great start.
– Lang

Video of the Day: Foals, “Miami”

Nothing starts the week like a street fight between weightlifters and drag queens. “Total Life Forever” is out now.
– Lang

Videos of the Day: Crowded House and David Byrne, live at Bowery Ballroom

This is all over the place: both Brooklyn Vegan and Stereogum posted these clips of David Byrne and Crowded House performing two Talking Heads classics, “Once in a Lifetime” and “Road to Nowhere.” Based on the results, Byrne and the Crowdies should do a Beck/Lips-style tour, with Neil and Co. taking the first set and then serving as Byrne’s house band for the second.
– Lang

“Once in a Lifetime”

“Road to Nowhere”