Is it December ALREADY?

Hellooooooo, internetland. Is anybody still reading this?

There will be 2007 music posts forthcoming, because it seems to be a tradition for me. I'm thinking a three part series this year; a favorite songs post, a 20-11 post, and a 10-1 post. Those last two may turn into a 20-6 and 5-1, depending on how much I feel like writing about things. As they are right now, all three posts are works in progress that are being slowly worked on whenever I feel like it. I'm doing some last minute cramming with a few albums that I didn't give enough time to before, particularly by Spoon, Robert Wyatt, the Valerie Project, and the Super Furry Animals (and really, how did I snooze on THAT one?).

In the meantime, because I'm in that list-making mood, here is my modest first entry in what I hope will be a recurring series on this here blog: Lists With Unreasonably Specific Criteria.

The idea is that the unreasonably specific criteria will force me to really think, and, more importantly, focus, not to mention write about things that I would otherwise not get a chance to talk about. Today's warm-up involves more coincidence and laziness than anything else:

Best Albums With Artwork Featuring Airplane Imagery That Were Released on September 11, 2001:

1. Beulah - The Coast Is Never Clear
2. Explosions In the Sky - Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die; Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Live Forever

There you go. Ponder THAT shit.

whyyyyyyy

Why do I know the name Hayden Panetierre? I recognize the name, I am aware that she's some kind of fantasy blond jailbait for creepy and pathetic dudes who are the type to count down until a girl's 18th birthday. I guess she's probably an actress on a show I've never seen on a network I never watch. If the network is the Disney Channel, she probably has a career singing uninteresting pop music that will sell a million copies to 12 year olds or whatever age group watches that stuff and has an easily cowed mom. I am ashamed that I am able to speculate that much and feel confident that I'm probably not too far off.

Anyway, the reason for my concern here is that I my brain works in a very strict and regimented fashion, particularly when it comes to memory, and I am allotted only a very small space to remember French-sounding last names of people who are probably not from France, and Hayden Panetiere is lodged in there now, and sooner or later I'm going to try to remember somebody who at one point had some relevance to me and I'm not going to be able to. Who was the guy who played Balki in Perfect Strangers again? FUCK! See? I had to look it up, and apparently it's Bronson Pinchot, but now that I know that, somebody else has been pushed out. If I forget Rheal Cormier or Simon Gagne, there'll be hell to pay. If she wants to push out, say, Lance Cormier, or... the French Canadian guy who plays for the Tampa Bay Lightning who isn't Vincent Lecavalier, she can feel free.... hey! It worked! All right, she can stay for now, I guess. She's probably more attractive than most hockey players anyway.

Versatio

This is one of my more enjoyable AIM conversations that I've had recently. It started talking about St. Bernard dogs, and how hilariously noble they are, and progressed as so:

Tom: finding out that st bernards used to be called "noble steeds" is like if i'd found out that not only was bjork an awesome musician, she also invented cotton candy or something.
Dustin: bjork is actually an elf
Dustin: the last of her breed
Tom: bjork eats happiness and rainbows for breakfast
Tom: with a side of innocence and wonder
Dustin: she breathes in kitten dander and exhales butterflies
Tom: bjork can communicate with dandelions
Dustin: and has nothing but good things to report
Tom: this is like that chuck norris facts thing except way more whimsical. and more fun.
Dustin: dont bring that negativity in here. that chuck norris negativity.
Dustin: bjork is sad that everyone finds roundhouse kicks funny, but thinks rabbits are cute, so lifes okay
Tom: bjork negates all negativity and replaces it with fresh icelandic spring water
Dustin: bjork tried to ride a dog once, but fell and hurt her leg
Dustin: and the dog turned to her and nuzzled her head, and she knew that all sins in this world are forgiven
Tom: bjork can ride a bicycle from reykjavik to london
Dustin: bjork doesnt travel by road, she simply jumps into the air and whatever place needs her the most pulls her to it
Dustin: bjork was at a fancy party and midway through a conversation she coughed and little mini marshmellows fell out onto her hand
Dustin: which she put into a little plastic baggy in her purse which was fuzzy and had googly eyes on it
Tom: bjork can animate a stop motion film in real time
Dustin: bjork doesnt understand why people are against so against war, but thats because the only definition of war that she knows is the card game

more Radiohead, real quick

I think the problem when I had my first listen to In Rainbows last week may have been that I didn't have the speakers up loud enough, because there are some really rockin' songs on that album. They just rock in that weird, intense way that only Radiohead can rock.

In particular, I found the first "HOLY GOD HOW IS THIS BAND SO AMAZING" moment that I was missing before: the second half of "Bodysnatchers" just kills. It's easy to forget that, while in the context of some of their early 00s albums, these songs are fairly conventional, but these are some weirdly structured songs. I compared "Bodysnatchers" to "The National Anthem" before, based on the little instrumental break, but that's turning out to be a more apt comparison than I thought it was at the time, because the two are structured pretty similarly. And, as "The National Anthem" served as one long buildup to that horn-fueled freakout, "Bodysnatchers" also builds to a climax that is admittedly less far-out, but still damned effective. ( If you want to get really particulary, they also both feature false cooldowns near the end.)

Anyway, that song is awesome, and In Rainbows is definitely growing on me.

Jesse are you listening?

I was listening to Scott Walker's The Drift, because it's October, and that's the time of year when you willfully scare yourself shitless, and there's no music in the world that does that better than Scott Walker's later work. In particular, my interest is very much renewed in "Jesse," a song about Elvis Presley's stillborn twin brother, Jesse Garon Presley.

I guess I'm sort of wondering why the thought of Elvis Presley having a stillborn twin brother freaks me out so much, aside from Scott Walker's horrifying music. I think the fact that he had a name (and thus the tiniest bit of an identity) is a good place to start. I guess the Presleys had names picked out for their twins already, not knowing that one of them would come out already dead. How do you pick which one gets which name in that situation? What logic led to Jesse being the brother that never was? Were we a coin flip away from getting future rock music legend Jesse Presley, with poor Elvis Presley being confined to a mere footnote?

That kind of makes me think about an alternate universe where the other twin had been stillborn. What might Jesse Presley have been, had he lived and Elvis died? Why did Elvis live and Jesse die? How many future stars exist only in a parallel universe where they weren't stillborn?

It also makes me consider the thousands and thousands of things in life that have to happen exactly as they happen to lead us to where we are. How many would-be composers are there who have just as much talent as Brian Wilson, except that, say, they didn't grow up in California in the 1950s and 60s? Or maybe they did, but their dad didn't beat them as a child. Or what if Elvis had received a rifle for his 11th birthday instead of his first guitar?

Life weirds me out. This kind of stuff keeps me up at night sometimes. Amateur philosophy hour over.

Tom "liveblogs" In Rainbows 15 hours after everybody else

So Radiohead sort of thrust their new album upon the world with little notice, leaving websites, magazines, and publications of all kinds wondering how the hell they were going to bother reviewing something that the rest of the world was hearing at the same time they were. The answer is apparently to listen to it track by track and write their thoughts, hoping that their inherent journalistic greatness would make their first impressions more interesting than that of the average Radiohead-loving dork. Well, let's put that to the test with my own version of it!

Context: I have not bothered listening to live versions, bootlegs, etc., of any of these songs except one. These are all 100% fresh to me, with one exception, which you'll read about later. And away we go...

In Rainbows:

"15 Step" - The couple track-by-track things I started reading, I stopped after the first song, so I know that the general consensus of this song is that it's apparently the funkiest thing Radiohead has ever done... except I can't ever recall hearing a funky song that was in a 5/4 meter.

"Bodysnatchers" - Opening melody reminiscent of "Palo Alto." Neat little "National Anthem" style instrumental break. Are Radiohead at that point in their career where all their songs can be traced back to one of their earlier albums? Not really, as the latter half of the song shows. Jonny Greenwood has one of the most recognizable guitar tones in the world, by the way. You can tell it's him with a single note. Is this mixed weird or are my speakers funky or something? The guitars completely drown out the vocals at times. Possibly intentional and/or mp3 goofies.

"Nude" - Holy shit! I remember this song! It's so old that it's since passed into being "part of my childhood." Went I went on my very first internet song downloading binge, sometime in 1999, it included something like three live bootlegs of this song. I'm trying to think of bad songs they should have booted off of the three albums they've released since then to include this one (four if you include Ok Computer, and apparently it's been around that long), but all I can come up with is "Pulk/Pull" and "Hunting Bears," and whatever that Eno rip-off was from Kid A. Anyway, it wasn't worth a nine year wait to hear the studio version, but it's still gorgeous. "You'll go to hell for what your dirty mind is thinking" still sounds really ominous coming from Thom Yorke. If anybody reading this is a good enough friend of mine to have the Severn EP that we made, skip to the last song to hear that ending that I totally ripped from "Nude."

"Weird Fishes/Arpeggi" - Back to the uptempo rock, sort of. Opening sounds like The Sea and Cake. I'm wondering if this is going to be a two-part song, as suggested by the title. Me just now: "3:06 must be the begnning of the second part... never mind, he's singing 'weird fiiiiishes.'" I guess it is a two-parter, but they're both really similar. It's more like a coda than anything else. Certainly will seem more obvious with repeated listens.

"All I Need" - I don't really have much to say about this one. I have no idea if those drums are looped or just really robotically played. Oh wait, open hi-hat! Phil Selway, ladies and gentleman! This song turns really beautiful about 3/4 of the way through. Now Phil's crashing those cymbals, as if to say "I AIN'T NO MACHINE, FUCKA!" Thom Yorke's voice is so expressive that it imbues the most inane crap with beauty and intensity. I have no clue what he's singing there and it doesn't matter.

"Faust Arp" - This one gave some website I was reading the chance to namecheck both the fourth-most famous 70s krautrock band AND Pete Townsend's favorite synthesizer with its title. Holy crap, this is also gorgeous. Excellent string arrangement. Maybe a reminder that at their core, Radiohead are good pop songwriters. Anybody with any of their 90s work knows that, but again, there's no real equivalent to this in their backcatalog. If there's a theme I'm getting so far, it's that they're no longer pushing the limits of pop music (which they haven't done since 2001 anyway) but they are pushing their own, which is about as much as you can ask for a band at this point in their career.

"Reckoner" - This is another relatively old one, I think, because I recognize the song title, but it must have come out after the point where I stopped actively seeking bootlegs of new Radiohead material, sometime after Hail to the Thief. This one sounds the most Thief-like so far. Whoa! Another great string arrangement. Jonny may be learning from his film-scoring experiences.

"House of Cards" - Now there's a well-recorded guitar part. It sounds like somebody is playing it in my room. Holy hell that is a shitton of reverb on Thom's voice. When the music is not immediately compelling, I'm going to keep writing about production aspects. Generic Slowdive echo-ey and reverb-y guitar part makes an appearance.

"Jigsaw Falling Into Place" - Opening: "2+2=5" +"Go to Sleep" + "There There." Or something like that. Oh man, this is building into something, that's for sure. Waiting for freakout... turns out to be more of a gradual escalation (I was hoping for something more along the lines of "YOU HAVE NOT BEEN PAYING ATTEEEENTION!"). Jonny still loves his Ondes Martenot. Did Thom just sing "I'm not a faggot"?

"Videotape" - Now here are some fellas who know their way around a repetitive loop-like musical phrase. This is one of those songs where I started out bored and ended up hypnotized. Interesting percussion too.

Well, there you go. Overall, I'd say this is much more sedated than anything they've ever done. I remember pretty distinctly a few "HOLY GOD HOW IS THIS BAND SO AMAZING" moments from every album prior to this one (well, Pablo Honey less so), but those are lacking here. It's all interesting to some degree, but not immediately compelling all the time. It may well be a grower. We'll see.

Coming up next, in five minutes: Tom liveblogs The Fiery Furnaces' Widow City! Not really.

Miles Smiles

Sometimes I read Amazon.com reviews for no good reason (really, there is no good reason to read them), and I wonder if the people reviewing some of the music were listening to the same album that I heard.

For instance, here is a two star (out of five) review of Miles Davis' Live Evil from a reviewer who shall remain anonymous:

"So this album is half a bunch of avant-garde tunes without hint of melody, harmony or rhythm that grind the nerves (especially Little Church and the unneeded quarter-hour Sivad), and half a bunch of lengthy live songs that do the whole fusion thing but mostly fail to generate most excitement over their generally 20 minute-plus running times - the exceptions are What'd I Say, which is exciting the whole way through, and Inamorata and Narration, which is at least good through the first ten minutes. I've got nothing against jamming if it's done the right way, and the group certainly had the instrumental prowess. But nothing can save them from the pits of their dull mock-funk grooves.
Miles has made so much good music, I don't know where to begin. But Live-Evil is one of his weakest albums. Actually, I'm not a huge fan of his fusion work in general."

I don't mention this in order to pick on some guy who even states in his review of a fusion-era Miles album that he doesn't like fusion-era Miles, but I bring it up because it was thought-provoking to me, and I've been thinking about and listening to a ton of Miles Davis recently.

I guess the first thing that struck me was that Miles Davis was many things, but he was never at any point in his career "avant-garde," a term with connotations of arty experimentalism and intellectual abstraction. Miles, particularly in the fusion era, was going for something much more primal and earthy. It may have been atonal, harsh, and weird as hell, but at its core it was meant to kick you in the ass, not stimulate mentally.

It certainly kicks mine. Live Evil to me is (along with all other Miles Davis recordings from 1970-1975) one of the hardest grooving records ever made. If Miles was inspired by what he heard from James Brown, Sly Stone, and Jimi Hendrix, he more or less met and surpassed them at their own game. Uninhibited by the self-imposed constraints those others placed on themselves in order to be "pop musicians," Miles was free to explore funk music however he felt fit, and as a result, he simultaneously invented and perfected the genre that would eventually become known as "fusion."

Anyway, I'll close this with another Amazon review, one that's more in line with my thinking:

"This is the sound your brain might make if you dropped acid then your afro caught on fire. Slices and dices culled from LIVE jams and studio takes of atmospheric funk that were so far ahead of their time, that SETI was sending this across the galaxy. Extraterrestrials heard it and have been afraid to respond ever since.

How far ahead of his time was Miles? I disagree that the LIVE jams outweigh the studio tracks. Sample the ambient trumpet of studio takes SELIM and NEM UM TALVEZ. They're filled with quiet atmospheric BEAUTY. The sound is remarkably similar to the kind of ambience that's being recorded now, 35 years later by ambient artists such as Steve Roach. They didn't call this cat a genius for nothing.

THIS IS THE BEST WAY TO BLOW YOUR TOP WITHOUT SMOKING CRACK. For the best results mix this with a hookah pipe, an Indian meditation pillow, door beads, a blacklight, and a naked afro-chick poster.

Looking for the best LIVE 70's fusion from electric Miles? I also recommend LIVE AT THE FILMORE EAST, MARCH 6 1970: IT'S ABOUT TIME, DARK MAGUS, and AGHARTA. You simply can't go wrong.

ENJOY."

Except for the weird and arbitrary capitalization, this guy is right on. ENJOY.

This is Radio Nowhere!

Every time I hear the new Bruce Springsteen single, all I can think is that I really want to sing "867-5309" along with it.

That aside, Bruce rules, Clarence Clemons rules, Max Weinberg rules, Patti Scialfa, Steven Van Zandt, and whoever the hell else is in the E Street Band now rules, and Bruce looks fantastic for his age.

That song, though... eh.

August 26, 2007.

September 28, 2007.

Some kinda month. Go Phils!

'Ye 2

I had a bunch of things I wanted to say about Kanye West's Graduation, but my mind is running a thousand different directions.

Let's start by saying that Kanye is probably the most interesting mainstream pop artists working today (hence the fact that I will actually buy his records), because his dirty laundry is laid out for everybody to see in a way that isn't really true for any other pop star, now or possibly ever. There's no subtext with Kanye. You don't read his lyrics and wonder if the song is about Jay-Z, because he says right in the song that it's about Jay-Z. Furthermore, his thoughts about these things are interesting and (usually) articulate. His lyrics are about internal conflicts, not ones that involve guns and machismo (to fall back on a rap cliche). He's hugely confident but still hugely insecure, he's proud that he's made a name for himself but feels guilty for those left behind, he loves and admires Jay-Z but can't figure out why Jay is a jerk to him sometimes, etc., etc., and it's all there on the records. The backstage tamper tantrums and general bitchiness only add to the depth. I find him fascinating.

So onto the music: I was going nuts over the (apparent) samples a few days ago, and that's what I'm coming back to. Kanye West is a good artist use to analyze sampling in rap music, because his samples are often of pretty high profile artists, and he makes pretty extensive usage of them in his music. It's interesting to me because it's sort of a foreign concept to me, being a white, rock-oriented dude.

Take "Champion," for instance, which takes the most obscure, two second clip from a small breakdown in Steely Dan's "Kid Charlemagne," and turns it into the backbone of an entire song. I guess when you've trained yourself to listen to music like that, it comes pretty naturally, but it would never have even occurred to me to do something like that for a song.

Ditto for "Good Life," which takes a chunk of Michael Jackson's awesome Trhiller cut "P.Y.T.," slows it down to about half of its original speed, and lets us laugh at that hilarious vocoder part over and over. The one in the original song, not T-Pain's digitally auto-tuned Cher-like love-bot crooning.

"Stronger," meanwhile, takes pretty much just a vocoder part from Daft Punk's "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" and works an entirely new song around it, the second (and second-best) time this song has gotten that treatment from a prominent hip-hop producer (the Neptunes' remix was pretty awesome). Daft Punk's original has yet to be topped, but that'd be pretty damn tough.

The Can sample, meanwhile, is pretty dreary. "Sing Swan Song" isn't so much sampled as loosely covered by Kanye and Mos Def, turning it into a tedious song about the struggle inherent in nailing a drunk and hot girl without her running up your tab, talking too much about her boyfriend, vomiting in your car, falling asleep, and presenting various other obstacles in the way of drunk, semi-date-rape, adulterous sex. How charming. It's actually called "Drunk and Hot Girls," by the way. I'll take whatever nonsense Damo Suzuki was singing about.

Anyway, Graduation is pretty good. His great grooves and lush productions are a given, and there's enough interesting lyrics to keep me coming back. I have no comments about his rapping skills, which are apparently subpar, because I don't know enough about that to comment. It actually is a rap album with no stupid skits (yaaaaaaaay, no Bernie Mac), relatively few guest vocalists (oh, that reminds me, somebody punch Chris Martin in the stomach, dude's getting annoying), and a strong consistency, which is pretty rare, at least for most rap albums I've heard, but again, I'm not the authority.

So yeah, pretty good.

'Ye

Here are a couple of things I noticed about Kanye West's new album, Graduation, by looking at its listing on allmusic.com:

- Track 1 ("Good Morning") is credited to "John, Taupin, West"
- Track 2 ("Champion") is credited to "Fagen, Becker, West"
- Track 8 ("Drunk and Hot Girls") is credited to "Karoli, Liebzeit, Schuering, Schmidt, Suzuki, West"

So apparently Kanye is sampling Elton John, Steely Dan, and Can, respectively. It's not like Kanye hasn't used some milquetoast, vaguely funky white dudes in his music before (hello, Maroon 5 dude!), but it sounds like it may still be some unexplored territory for him. The Can usage in particular will be interesting for me to overanalyze. Maybe this is old news to everybody and I'm just finding out now because I haven't really taken part in the prerelease buzz (or heard any songs off the new album, for that matter), but that should be interesting.

Something else encouraging from the tracklisting: there are no songs that clock in at less than 2:47. Does this mean that it's going to be an album without a thousand irritating "skits" in between every song? Or, more likely, did they just shove them all onto the ends of tracks you actually want to hear so they're harder to program out of the album on iTunes?

Kanye West, as you may recall, is one of the few rappers I bother to even try to keep up with (I usually try to give anything Talib Kweli does a listen, and that's about it, really), and I'll admit it's because in Kanye's case, I'm far more interested in the pop (the hooks, the grooves, etc) than the raps. Don't be fooled by my playing up the lyrics in the item from two years ago, it's all about the tunes. I look forward to hearing it regardless. I couldn't give a crap about 50 Cent's new album. I do I hope that he has a son that one day raps under the name Li'l Nickel, though.

Anyway, I think the dark horse in the Kanye vs. Fiddy sale-a-thon of September 11, 2007 is... *drumroll* Animal Collective! Ok, maybe that's just me...

baseball awesome

If you didn't watch the Phillies game, you missed a doozy of a pickle. You can read the recap here, because I'm too lazy to do it myself.

Anyway, what I wanted to say is that when Jayson Werth got on base in the 9th inning representing the tying run, I immediately had a flashback to September 6, 2005, when the Astros won a game in the 9th inning by using a pinch runner, who stole both 2nd and 3rd off of Billy Wagner (then wearing a Phillies uniform), who ultimately took the loss, and gave up three stolen bases in a single inning. The Phillies lost the wild card spot by one game to the Astros (in other words, if Wagner could have held a baserunner, the Phillies might have made the playoffs).

Anyway, back to August 30, 2007, when Werth got on base, and Wagner (now in a Mets uniform) went into the stretch, and I jumped up and said, "Run, you fool! Wagner can't hold baserunners!" And off he went! Safe! "Go again! Take third!" I exclaimed at the TV set, and Werth bolted on first movement. Safe again!

Werth, of course, scored the tying run, and the Phillies won in probably the most exciting game they've played all year, but basically I just want to say that I communicated with Jayson Werth telepathically, and told him to steal those bases.

You're welcome, Philadelphia.

A stupid pointless post.

Here are my Top 5 Favorite Albums of 2007, as it stands today, for the one person who cares. The one person is me in January 2008 when I want to compare what I thought now to what I will think then.

1. St. Vincent - Marry Me
2. M.I.A. - Kala
3. Menomena - Friend and Foe
4. Deerhoof - Friend Opportunity
5. Gruff Rhys - Candylion

Exciting stuff, huh? Stay tuned for the full top 10, with runners up and favorite songs and maybe least favorite albums, sometime in December or Junuary. I will be posting a series of short stories based on art painted by my dog Riley until then, starting with tomorrow's story, "Blue Pawprint, Spilled Blue Paint."

Max Roach - 1924-2007

A few years ago, I went to the University of Pennsylvania's graduation ceremony, partly to see Bono, who was getting an honorary degree, but also to see Max Roach, who was also getting one. I figured in both cases that it might be the closest I would ever get to seeing them play live (since U2 tickets are $4000 each and since Max Roach was way freaking old). Max ended up not going because he was sick, and his wife accepted it for him. So I never did see him in person, which hits a little harder now that he's dead.

Max was, to say the least, an awesome drummer. A true master of polyrhythm. My first encounter with him was when I bought Duke Ellington's Money Jungle when I was still in high school, a collaboration of giants that I didn't even recognize at the time (Ellington on piano, Roach on drums, and Charles Mingus on bass, for Christ's sake). After getting more into jazz, and hearing Roach's playing for Thelonius Monk, Sonny Rollins, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and Miles Davis, I came to appreciate Max's skill and diversity, but ultimately, I still go back to Money Jungle. His kinetic drumming propels Ellington's songs forward in a way that no swing drummer could ever accomplish, giving them a sense of urgency and an energy that they never had before. Max Roach damn near single-handedly reinvented "Caravan," for instance. But really, the mere fact that he could hang with Ellington and Mingus as they pushed hard bop to its limits without being overwhelmed is all anybody needs to know about him. If he could stand on equal footing with those two geniuses, he could stay with anybody.

Basically, what Max Roach did for jazz was to make drumming into an art form, instead of somebody just keeping time. He realized that since he was using four different limbs to play, he might as well make the most of them. Here is a particularly good example (although you don't get the effect that you get when he's thumping away with a group of musicians).

Anyway, the point is that he wasn't really a household name to most people, but Max Roach is a name that all jazz fans respect, and he'll be missed.

Lyin' in bed, just like Brian Wilson did

Here's something for me to be pretty happy about: new Brian Wilson music!

See, Brian's got a new project called "That Lucky Old Sun (A Narrative)" that is going to be premiered live in London on September 10. This is exciting because it's his first "real" work since he went back and finished Smile in 2004 (2005's Christmas album doesn't really count, even though it did have two very good new songs). I'm curious to see if the nearly unanimous love for Smile (not to mention his working with and finishing up the music) will influence his new music. He hasn't really had a consistently strong solo album yet, other than Smile.

The second reason it's exciting is because my second favorite person ever, Van Dyke Parks, worked with Brian on the narrative, something to do with thoughts about life and "the heartbeat of Los Angeles," with spoken word interludes, brand new songs, and a version of the old song "That Lucky Old Song" which apparently inspired the whole thing. So Van Dyke is on board! And he's got a pretty magic touch, as I've written about before.

And check it out: a new song! It's pretty damned beautiful.

And finally, Brian had a new song on the Arctic Tale soundtrack, but I can't get it anywhere without buying the whole damn CD. Somebody with a Windows computer get it from Soulseek and send it to me or something, I'm dyyyyyying to hear it.

Superbad, or You're Not Allowed to TRY to Make a Cult Film (Unless You're Mike Judge)

Hey, have you guys heard about this movie called Superbad that's coming out? I don't know if you've seen any commercials for it or not. It looks hilarious! This one guy is all like "I cried when I first looked into his eyes, it was like the first time I heard the Beatles." Haha! That's funny, plus I like the Beatles too! And I guess there's this kid named McLovin, and these cops are all like "sounds like a sexy hamburger." Haha! I can't wait to repeat that line 7,000 times with all of my college-age friends. I'll be able to stop same, "Tina, come get your ham" which is still funny though,

Crap. I shouldn't have thought about Napoleon Dynamite. Just thinking about it made me a little bored and irritated and now my sarcasm generator is busted.

Oh well. Anyway, Michael Cera is still funny. Just watch this instead of seeing Superbad. Careful, though, the site is littered with ads... ads for Superbad. *sigh*

fooooooooooo

I had the weirdest urge to listen to the Foo Fighters tonight, because they've come up a couple times in conversation lately. I reached for There is Nothing Left to Lose first, because, even though I listened to it a million times when it first came out (I even made my buddy Chris Vendrick buy it for me the day it came out because I didn't have my driver's license yet), it's the least familiar of the ones I own (I don't own anything they did since that one, because who cares about that crap?).

There is Nothing Left to Lose is surprisingly good. It's not a great album, but it's probably about as good as a band as unambitious and unabashedly poppy as the Foo Fighters were ever going to make. Lots of big hooks, lots of big guitars. A testament to its hooks is the way that I still could sing along to most of the songs despite the fact that I probably haven't heard them in well over half a decade. A testament to the rockingness is the fact that I had to drop what I was doing and play air drums a few times.

Also, give the Foos credit for attempting to jump on the 80s bandwagon a few years ahead of schedule with "Headwires."

Anyway, the weirdest part of this experience is that finding out that I still apparently have the little rub on tattoo that came with the album. Check it:



















I still wonder whose neck is on that cover photo, by the way.

Here's kind of a disturbing quote:

"Bush left no room for doubts or media opinion. He stated clearly that this war is a Crusader war. He said this in front of the whole world so as to emphasize this fact. … When Bush says that, they try to cover up for him, then he said he didn't mean it. He said, 'crusade.' Bush divided the world into two: 'either with us or with terrorism' … The odd thing about this is that he has taken the words right out of our mouths." - Osama Bin Laden, via The Al Qaeda Reader

Loyal readers may remember that I have visited this issue (albeit briefly) not once but twice (second to last paragraph). Also, if you remembered me writing that, I am shocked, because I didn't even remember me writing those without going to the search engine.

Anyway, just sayin'.

commercial radio is irritating

I spent most of today at work in an off road truck that actually has a radio and air conditioning (not a luxury afforded me by other trucks I've worked in so far). Skipping through the radio dial, I landed, and, for some reason, stayed, on 102.9, WMGK. Classic Rock. Ugh.

They played what I guess was a promo for whoever the morning guys are, and it was clip of them talking like this:

Guy 1: "Some politician in Florida wants the government to pardon Jim Morrison for urinating onstage 38 years ago."
Guy 2: "Somehow, I don't think Jim cares."
Guy 1: "They should put a referendum on the ballot in the fall, and let all the old people who live there try to figure out who Jim Morrison is."
Guys 1 and 2: "Hahaha, we are so funny, take that old people, etc. etc."

Hey, who are those old people living in Florida these days? Oh right, the people in the world who are actually old enough to have been there when the Doors were a band.

Nothing like a pair of 50 or 60 year old guys making fun of 70 or 80 year old people. I want to go off on a rant about how baby boomers are incredibly self-absorbed and self-congratulatory, but I decided that I need more and better examples (the stupid hoopla around the Sgt. Pepper's 40th anniversary was one), and I was somewhat restrained by the fact that 40 years from now, pompous jerks like me will be outraged at kids who don't know Radiohead. So for now, let's just be annoyed at those two guys, and I'll stick to NPR tomorrow.

three things

1. I just saw a commercial for Rush Hour 3 that ended with the voiceover guy saying "directed by Brett Ratner." What? Don't most people who are into movies enough to know directors other than Spielberg and Ron Howard know that Brett Ratner is cinematic poison? Didn't they see Red Dragon? Or *shudder* Money Talks? Weird.

2. I was wondering last night whether Charles Nelson Reilly was dead or not. I suspected he was, but didn't really think so. So I remembered to look it up tonight, and apparently he died in May! WHAT THE HELL! How did I not hear about that? Is my sense of how big a celebrity he was warped by all those Match Game reruns I used to watch, and therefore nobody actually covered his death? Man, that kind of sucks. I liked him.

3. Celebrity deaths come in threes, as everybody knows, but do they usually come within a day of each other? Ingmar Bergman, Tom Snyder, and Bill Walsh all died today or yesterday. If this had happened during the 1970s, it would have been a lot bigger news. I'm not sure most people remember who any of those guys are (or knew in the first place). I'm not looking forward to reading a bunch of obituaries that have to explain why we should care about who Ingmar Bergman was, and that he wasn't actually Ingrid Bergman (who was female, and died in 1982). Or hearing about how Bill Walsh invented the "West Coast Offense." Or seeing Philadelphia news stations pay tribute to Tom Snyder, the most famous Philly news man ever (on a short list just ahead of Larry Kane).

Ah, fuck. Life is conspiring to kick me in the balls, hard, for no real reason. Well, now real reason other than that I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Blah blah blah, whatever, you don't give a rat's ass.

is it training camp time already?

I don't know what to make of the fact that this is the second time within recent memory that I've passed along a video of people making "hand fart" music, but I wanted to share it with you because this is basically what goes through my head any time my brain is idle between September and January (but hardly ever February, god damn it).

a chest-unloading rant about the dumbest crap in the world

Uuuuuuuuuuuugh.

Lindsay Lohan, please go away.

Seriously.

I don't want to go on a stupid rant, although I'm probably going to anyway. Just go away. Don't ever let me see you again. I don't want to hear about your addictions, your using rehab and (supposed) redemption as a way to further your career, and then the subsequent relapses. I'm sick of it. I don't want to hear about your apparent near-illiteracy, hilarious though it may be. I damn sure don't want to see you in any movies.

Basically, I'm not entirely convinced that Lindsay Lohan is a real person. I haven't seen her portrayed that way anywhere. If she is a real person, and not a media creation to sell trashy magazines and provoke blogging dorks into incoherent diatribes, I doubt she sees herself as a real person, or if she does, she doesn't see the world as a real place. The whole thing is just so cliched that I can't even laugh anymore. She's the ultimate symbol of the 21st century: a vacuous nobody propped up to make us feel superior to somebody, whom we despise even as we can't look away, as she spirals down toward her inevitable tragedy with ever-increasing speed.

And at the center of it all is a poor, deluded girl who, like so many people in the world, learned to treat her problems with booze and drugs (I'm one to talk, right?), and is rewarded with the attention that she so desperately craves. So her ankle monitor becomes a fashion accessory, and, by extension, a mockery of the entire concept of self-betterment. And she lands in headlines for her stint in rehab, and two weeks later for a cocaine-related arrest.

Ugh. I'm tired of it. Doooooooone with it.

Larkin Grimm went (more) insane or something

Long time readers (if there are any left) of this here corner o' the ol' Internet may remember that I have had kind words in the past for neo-hippie/cosmic freakout virtuoso Larkin Grimm. I kind of forgot about her for awhile, listened to her new album last year a handful of times but didn't really get real into it, and recently was looking through the list of my friends on MySpace (yeah, yeah, shut up) and clicked on her page. Here's what she's saying about her new stuff:

"Most of my recent music deals with acoustic and psychoacoustic properties of sound. In performances, I like to gradually fill a room with sounds that interfere with one another in the air. Each sound on its own is steady and flat, but when several of these sounds collide, they produce rippling rhythmic patterns, resultant psychoacoustic frequencies, and fluctuations in air pressure that can be sensed physically in space. These sounds come out of loudspeakers in the form of electronic feedback, and directly from my body in the form of throat singing and long violin drones. With this activity I attempt to merge my bodily, acoustic presence with amplified electronic sound, to create a third sound that is happening entirely within the air of the performance space."

I don't think "psychoacoustic" is a word that actually exists, but maaaaaan I bet that's really freaking cool. Or irritating. Or cool for me and irritating for most people. Larkin! Come back to Philly! There's no way that stuff sounds half as good recorded as it probably does live.

HEY REMEMBER *random 1980s pop culture dreck*

I think if there's any worse idea in the world than making a live action Transformers movie, it's letting Michael Bay make it. I have no idea why anybody would want to pay money to see that. I mean, usually with the crap that people go see, I have no interest in it myself but can see why other people would want to see it (average Shrek 3 audience member: "I feel frightened of and threatened by anything new and different"), but the Transformers thing confuses me. Hasn't everybody, at some point, watched (or read or listened to) something they really liked as a kid and been confused and disappointed at how bad it actually was? It's going to be that experience again, except the movie is going to be ten times worse than even the cartoon was.

If anybody that I'm friends with goes to see this, though, I might have to reevaluate our friendship. Ok, I'm kidding. But that fact will be in the back of my mind the next time this hypothetical friend recommends a movie.

I'm not sure what to make of the new Wilco album. To be honest, I haven't really listened to it the whole way through enough times (I think I'm at 3 so far). But I have a boring anecdote that I want to tell.

There's a song on the album called "Impossible Germany." It's a pretty ho-hum song, intriguing lyrics maybe, mediocre melody, and then a guitar solo that NEVER ENDS. NEVER. EVER. It's so damned boring. By the third time I heard it, I was getting infuriated at the start of the song knowing that The Jeff Tweedy Noodling Show is right around the corner. I know it's nothing compared to the pair of 10+ minute snoozers that were on A Ghost is Born, but it's still annoying.

And yet, the stupid melody that he plays over and over on the solo is the only actual melody from the album I can remember at the moment.


Oy. I need more time with this one.

thoughtses about thingses

When I worked for UPS at the Philadelphia airport, it resulted in me having a lot of very detailed knowledge about very specific things that would be of no use whatsoever off of the job. I still have pretty much every ZIP code in the state of New Hampshire memorized, for example.

And I thought THAT knowledge was useless.

Now I'm working construction, and if you took me to the high school in Elkton, MD, and asked me what the elevation was at any given spot in the parking lots and landscapes and such outside the building, I could probably tell you, off the top of my head, to within a couple inches.

But, you know, everybody probably has crap like that with their jobs. So whatever. This post was more interesting in my head.

Thoughts:

Some friends and I decided last week that Liars' Drum's Not Dead is the only album we could think of where you can identify any song on the album by beating out rhythmic patterns with your hands.

This year's Panda Bear album is way better than last year's Grizzly Bear album (a band called Polar Bear needs to get a lot of hype next year). Noah Lennox pretty much has Brian Wilson's voice, as well as a similar melodic sensibility, which results in some experimental rock that's actually fun to listen to, after he slaps that voice on top of his mesmerizing instrumental loops and textures. Also, I love the way Person Pitch sounds from a production standpoint. Any album with so much reverb on everything that it sounds like it was recorded from the far end of an enormous cathedral is going to grab my attention.

"Africa" by Toto is pretty much the embodiment of everything that was wrong with a lot of music in the 1980s, but it's still somehow a great song. Sometimes you can't overpower a good enough pop song, no matter how hard you try. Can you imagine how good it could have been if it was recorded in a way that didn't attempt to suck every last bit of life out of the song? I'm sure somebody's done that cover. I think the Polyphonic Spree need to cover that song.

That's it for now I think.

metal sucks (the genre and the material)

A couple days ago, my dad was getting on my case for not wearing my safety glasses at work (I am in the construction biz now). I listened to what he said but didn't really do anything. I figured I haven't been hurt yet, I spent all that time doing construction a couple years ago and nothing ever happened, and on top of that I was already wearing glasses. What was the worst that could happen?

Well, apparently the worst (or at least a bad) thing that could happen is getting a piece of metal in my eye.

I know that you just cringed thinking about it, and basically it's as painful as it sounds, even though the thing was about the size of a grain of salt.

I guess it flew off of either the head of the hammer I was using or the top of the pin that I was hammering. The good news is that now I'm fine. Just remember to wear your safety glasses if you need to, is what I'm saying.

eeeeeep

Arcade Fire.... BJORK BJORK BJORK BJORK BJORK

I saw Arcade Fire live last weekend. Some of you may be shocked at hearing me say that. I'm still mostly indifferent toward them, don't worry.

I was all right, I guess. They have a lot of energy. This one guy was ripping out pages from a book in time with the rhythm of a song, which seemed like a weirdly empty gesture, like a really dorky version of smashing a guitar into a drum set on stage. Or like I put it that night, "he went at it like he was taking a sledge hammer to the Rosetta Stone, and it was just a few pages drifting mildly to the floor."

There were problems. It was neat to watch that many people freaking out at once, but I couldn't hear crap aside from drums and some vocals. They were playing organs and glockenspiels and freakin' hurdy-gurdies, for Chrissakes, but for all I could hear it might as well have been a chorus of kazoos. That's the problem when you get that many people playing that loudly at the same time in a live environment.

All of their songs sound the same to me, even more so in a live setting. That drummer sure does like his "four on the floor" drum beats.

I have more in-depth thoughts about them and their popularity and whatever, but I'll save those for when I'm feeling less lazy.

Basically, watching a really large band with some unusual instrumentation from a foreign English-speaking country that isn't England, with a guy singing some songs and a girl singing the others, I kind of wished I was watching Architecture in Helsinki instead. OK THAT COMPARISON WAS A STRETCH. But I like Architecture in Helsinki. IT'5!

CHANGE OF SUBJECT

I was going to be all coy about the new Bjork album and write my long manifesto about how it's the best album of the 00s later (ok, I haven't even actually listened to it yet) but I'm holding it here in my hands and I just want to say that this is some of the strangest CD packaging I have ever seen. And I've seen some doozies. There's a sticker on the front that's part of the artwork, that seals shut a sort of gate. Then after you either peel off the sticker and agonize about throwing it away (or agonize about ripping it in half in order to leave it on), you open up the gate, and there's a flap that folds up, and behind the flap is the CD. Then there's your liner notes, artwork, lyric sheet, etc., inside the flap that just folded up (now upside down).

As a side note to a side note, the liner notes are on that ultra-glossy paper that I like, like the last Four Tet CD was on. And... that's the only one I can think of right now. I think all those weird post card-like things in the new Deerhoof album are on them too. It's the paper that's almost slippery in your hands.

I'm looking forward to listening to it, even if there is a 7 1/2 minute duet with the dude from Antony and the Johnsons. Hearing about that was displeasing. Kind of like if I'd read "the centerpiece of the new Brian Wilson album will be a collaboration with William Shatner and Scarlett Johansson." I really can't stand that Antony guy's voice. Oh well. Maybe it's good anyway.

Short people got no reason to live

I got made fun of at work today for being short.

I didn't think that 5'9" was short. It's only slightly below average.

I know short people. I ain't one o' them.

Also the word "short" no longer has any meaning to me.

I don't see "movies," I see "films" uuugggggggghhh

So, I was reading a pair of articles in the Inquirer today about this year's summer movie season, and it looks like some of the surefire hits are Shrek the Third, Spiderman 3, another Pirates of the Caribbean movie, Ocean's Thirteen, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and, uh...

JESUS CHRIST CAN'T ANYBODY MAKE A MOVIE ABOUT SOMETHING WE HAVEN'T SEEN A MILLION TIMES ALREADY?

I know this is hardly a new complaint, but CHRIST. Let's keep the list going: Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Evan Almighty, Life Free or Die Hard, Hairspray, The Simpsons Movie, The Bourne Ultamatum, Rush Hour 3, 28 Weeks Later, Hostel 2, Transformers.

See, this is why I never go to movies anymore. When tickets are $10+, you feel like you're taking a risk paying that much to see an unknown quantity. So what we end up with is movie after movie of crap that we've all seen before. Safe, predictable, boring, crap. This is the only kind of stuff that people will promote and spend money on anymore, and subsequently, this is the only kind stuff that people will go see.

I'm sure that a handful of those are probably perfectly pleasant and not terrible, and I'm sure that I'll eventually end up seeing a handful of them (I don't think I have any choice when it comes to The Simpsons). But it's still disappointing how little risk people are willing to take when it comes to making and promoting movies on a large scale.

Basically if you read that list, and realize that the majority of Americans won't see a movie this summer that isn't on that list, that's why I'm a movie snob.

Bjork is on SNL

I haven't really made it a point to watch Saturday Night Live since... well, I don't know if I ever did. I mean, I know there were times when I used to get excited when some of my favorite artists would appear on SNL, but I can't remember of them now. Beck, I guess? Oh, and Elliott Smith. Those were both late 90s probably (I remember Beck playing "Nobody's Fault But My Own" and Elliott playing "Miss Misery").

Anyway, SNL is not appointment television for me because I am an adult, and I like to be doing things on Saturday nights that don't involve watching TV. So what do I do when arguably my favorite artist ever (at the least, top 5, like it matters) is going to be on SNL performing a song I probably haven't heard yet? Also, live Bjork performances don't exactly come a dime a dozen these days.

Luckily, the year is 2007, and there is a very simple solution: YouTube! I wait until Monday, I see her performance when I want, where I want, and I don't have to tolerate Scarlett Johansson mumbling her way through half a dozen mediocre sketches featuring some guys I've never seen before.

Hooray for The Internet.

zen

Just watch this guy's face the whole time. If you ask me, this is a great example of the sort of "brilliant stupidity" that the internet offers in spades.

Of Montreal, of Athens, GA

I've been kind of half-heartedly embracing Of Montreal for several years now. I like a lot of things about them, but I also dislike enough things that I always end up checking out their new albums when they come out but if somebody asks me if I'm a big fan, I say, "eh, not really." Anyway, they were on Conan O'Brien's show last night. It's pretty cool for them I guess. Check out the video:






of Montreal - Heimdalsgate like a Promethean Curse (live) on Vimeo

Like I said, it's cool for them that they get to be on national TV and whatnot. But since I'm a wet blanket and everything, I want to point out some things that I don't really like.

For starters, Kevin Barnes keeps drifting closer and closer to glam rock. His Bowie-ness is increasing, if not in the music than definitely in appearance.

Second, it's kind of reinforcing the image that Of Montreal is actually "The Kevin Barnes Show." I know that's the case anyway, but I'm starting to get uncomfortable with it. As if the costume changes weren't enough to draw all the attention to Barnes, I would swear he actually told the rest of the band to remain perfectly still. I've seen them live (and you may recall I was not entirely satisfied with that either), they actually do move. They looked like a band when I saw them. They look like Kevin Barnes and a backing band here. His vocals are even way up in the mix compared to the studio recording.

And back to those costume changes: does anybody else find them unnecessary and distracting? The song they're playing is actually a pretty good one, but I'd bet that a lot of people hearing them for the first time had no idea, because they were wondering why the dude with the makeup is suddenly wearing a huge lobster claw. It's kinda cool to try to replicate a music video onstage, but anybody who hasn't seen it (which is most people) was probably confused by it. Also, it's risky to be known exclusively for a music video, but that's for a post about Ok Go.

Now, I am aware that lots of people will like the performance for all of the exact reasons I didn't. So you know, don't pounce on me for being too negative. Or go ahead, I don't care.

Kurt Vonnegut 1922-2007

It would appear that Kurt Vonnegut died yesterday.

I have very fond memories of Kurt Vonnegut as probably the first author I got really into. His books were easy to read, easy to digest, often very funny, and always interesting. The autobiographical nature of a lot of his work coupled with the dozens of running in-jokes made you feel like part of a club by the time you got through your third book of his (which would probably be about two weeks after you started the first).

I'd held out hope for awhile that he would live to publish another novel. I guess that's not going to be the case. Maybe I'll revisit some of his stuff.

No further eulogizing here, the article linked does a better job of that.

'Tis a shame, sort of. (I have a hard time feeling too upset when somebody dies at 84.)

damn

Here's me looking at the concert listings on Ticketmaster's website for the Theatre of Living Arts:

"All right. Air is playing at the TLA."

Here's me three seconds later, when I saw the ticket price:

"WHO THE *expletive* DO THESE *expletive* THINK THEY ARE CHARGING 40 *expletive* DOLLARS? WHAT ARE THEY *expletive* BILLY JOEL ALL OF A SUDDEN?"

Seriously. Air tickets are $40. That's a pretty steep price for a band that's probably best known in the United States as the guys Zero 7 have been ripping off all these years (low blow, I know, but I still like Zero 7).

Boy that grinds my gears. And here's why: Air is not a band with a rich fan base. Who do you think the average Air fan is? Roughly college-aged, moneyless dopes like me. Todd Rundgren is playing there, and his tickets are only $35, and he's aiming for the baby-boomer market that will actually pay the big bucks to see Todd Rundgren 30 years past his prime.

I probably didn't need to explain that, but whatever.

huh?

Have you heard about this movie The Reaping? I don't know what it's about. I don't really care. I just know that it's one typo away from some very unfortunate ads.

baseball baseball baseball

Around this time of the year, I usually write up a thing on the start of the baseball season, offering reasons to worry about my beloved Phillies if there's too much optimism or offering hope if there's too much pessimism. This year there's a strange mixture of those two things, so I'll just say this:

Today is Sunday. The next time there will be a Sunday without a Phillies game will be October 7, at the earliest. That's a happy thought, whether they have 90 wins or 90 losses by October.

I've seen these Yahoo! avatar dealies around a couple places. I decided to make one of myself:



Don't you think it looks eerily like me?

Bjork, LCD Soundsystem, folksters

I am going insane not knowing what the new Bjork album sounds like.

Little things like this are not making me any less antsy:



I go through this every two or three years with Bjork, though, so, whatever.

In other news, I like the new LCD Soundsystem album, Sound of Silver, a lot more than the first one. It sounds more like an "album," if you know what I mean. And mp3s and iPods and ADD be damned, I still like albums. I got an mp3 player to listen to entire albums, not to put it on "shuffle." So whatever. I sound old and defensive and stupid. And I digress. I like Sound of Silver because it's way more consistent than the self-titled album, and it has fewer half-assed stabs at different genres (only one this time, "New York, I Love You but You're Bringing Me Down").

A lot of it sounds like Trans-Europe Express-era Kraftwerk and late-70s Bowie to me. And I have no problem with that.

And finally, there was an article in the Inquirer a couple days ago about this guy Joe Boyd, who produced pretty much all of my favorite artists from the 1960s that weren't Beatles, Beach Boys, or Zombies: Incredible String Band, Fairport Convention, Pink Floyd, Nico, Nick Drake, Vashti Bunyan (ok, that one was 1970, but close enough). And I guess later he produced R.E.M., but that's neither here nor there. He has written a book that he is signing in the Philadelphia area for a couple days this week. Or signed. I don't remember when it was. Also, if you get what that title is a reference to and actually like it, you're either as big a dork as me or you're at least 60 years old.

Anyway, the article mentioned that he was behind a lot of the British folk music that "has influenced nouveau freak-folk artists such as Johanna Newsome and Philadelphia's Espers."

Nevermind the use of that annoying term "freak-folk" or that Joanna Newsom and Espers have little in common other than use of mostly acoustic instruments (which, to be fair, could also be said of the Incredible String Band and Nick Drake). "Johanna Newsome?" Hooray for copy-editing.

I find Amy Winehouse kind of annoying.

Or at least, I find the coverage of her to be annoying.

The theory I'm working on is that people apparently find substance abuse by British women to be glamorous and edgy, and not sad and pathetic.

A somewhat related theory is that if the same exact music was released by a black American and not a white Brit, people (press types or whoever) would be far less inclined to pay any attention at all.

TV is dumb

I don't usually get too bothered when a TV show I like gets canceled or otherwise goes off the air prematurely. The most notable and most recent example was Arrested Development, whose bandwagon I was (un)lucky enough to get on toward the beginning of its run, which caused a lot of "will it get canceled?!" agony after every season. But I didn't get too upset when it went off the air, a subject that I covered here. Because after all, it's only TV. And I don't watch a whole lot of TV anyway.

But then last night I was bored enough to be flipping through channels (I sat down to watch the Flyers, and it quickly became clear that they weren't going to give me a whole lot to watch), and I noticed something:

Jim Belushi still has a TV show.

According to Jim has been on the air for 138 episodes and counting, which means it is approaching the point where it will have been on the air for almost three times as many episodes as Arrested Development.

Life just isn't fair, is it?

I like Gruff Rhys

It may be hard to tell sometimes, but I actually do like music. Although Os Mutantes' self-titled album and Robert Wyatt's Rock Bottom are really the only albums ever made that are good. And "Mother" by Danzig is the only other good song. And "Mother" by John Lennon. But not "Mother" by the Police, though. And definitely not "Mother" by Pink Floyd.

Anyway, I like the Super Furry Animals. And I like Gruff Rhys. Gruff's first solo album was released with little (or no) fanfare in something like the second week of January in 2005, and like you would expect from a solo album by a member of a band that relatively few people have heard of, it sank like a stone. It was overshadowed by the Super Furry Animals' magnificent Love Kraft several months later, and in fact, I forgot it existed at all until I started thinking of ways to approach his new solo album, Candylion. Like its predecessor, it was released in early January, and sure enough, there is a Super Furry Animals album slated to come out later this year.

The real point is, Candylion is pretty damn good. Like his first solo album, it's a lot more low key and lo-fi than any SFA stuff. But unlike his first solo album, (which was called Yr Atal Genhedlaeth if you're wondering why I'm not referring to it by name) this one is actually interesting. And, thankfully, not sung completely in Welsh.

If nothing else, Candylion offers an intriguing look at what the Super Furry Animals might be like as a rootsy psychedelic band instead of the genre-hopping madmen that they are. Their last couple albums have turned down the insanity, but not as much as Candylion does. The more stripped-down approach definitely highlights Rhys' strong pop sensibilities. Most of these songs are hummable after only a couple listens.

Of course, "low key" and "lo-fi" are relative terms when dealing with Gruff Rhys. The record does feature a few sweeping string arrangements and the occasional psychedelic meltdown, and by most people's standards the sound itself is gorgeously crystal clear. But it has a spontaneous quality that most of his other work doesn't. (The Super Furry Animals' sound is a more deliberately constructed aural assault.)

Final summary, for those of you who just skipped to the last paragraph: for an album that serves as something sort of thrown-off in between "real" projects, Candylion is surprisingly good. There's always the option of turning off the 13 minute snooze-fest album closer "Skylon!" halfway through, which makes it even better. A coupla highlights for the downloaders, if you're so inclined: "Lonesome Words" and "The Court of King Arthur."

Yes it is, Yes it is, Yes it is...

I had a dream a couple nights ago that I was playing bass for some band, and we were doing a bitchin' cover version of "Roundabout" by Yes.

Do I like Yes? I don't think I do. That song does have a pretty cool bass part, though.

Marissa Nadler

I saw Marissa Nadler last fall, opening up for The Valerie Project. At the time, I didn't much care for her. She stood on the stage alone with her guitar (with backup vocals from an anonymous female on a select few songs) and played repetitive songs that didn't tend to go anywhere or do much of anything, that all sounded exactly the same. Her stage demeanor suggested a really ditzy version of Joan Baez. I had the vague (and vaguely sexist) feeling that she wouldn't have been on the stage if she wasn't so amazingly gorgeous.

I sat twiddling my thumbs for 45 minutes waiting for it to end, and assumed I'd never think about her again after it was over.

So I was somewhat surprised when, in my recent internet browsings, I came across a couple positive reviews of her new album, Songs III: Bird on the Water (I have no idea what happened to Songs I and II). Everything written about it is sure to mention that it was produced by Espers' Greg Weeks, and that most of Espers show up playing something or other. Reading that is when I decided I needed to hear it, of course. (My Espers obsession is well-documented here, if you have the patience to look.)

Well, here's what I think: Marissa Nadler is still kind of boring to me. Most of the songs still sound the same, and most of them still seem to kind of float around waiting for something that never happens. However, I don't dislike her, and I really liked some of the songs. I have a feeling that if I listened to it in the right mood, or by myself in the dark late at night, I might enjoy it. I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt that maybe it's a grower, and I haven't been with it long enough yet.

Greg Weeks, meanwhile, is well on his way to making a nice second career for himself as the producer of choice for the psych-folk set. His work here is more subtle than on last year's Fern Knight album, Music for Witches and Alchemists (not to mention Espers II), and more in the background. It doesn't seem like a "Marissa Nadler and Greg Weeks" album, the way the Fern Knight album kind of sounded like a "Fern Knight and Greg Weeks" album. He still shows up a few times with his fuzzed out Les Paul for some psychedelic guitar work, exploring the notes in between the notes like a rudimentary John Coltrane (and it's still hard to tell sometimes if that's intentional or if he just records all his parts in one take without having played the song before), but the songs never take a backseat to that the way they do sometimes with Espers (and really, that's just a whole different aesthetic and musical philosophy at work). And for the most part, everything is quiet and low key, with barely-there splashes of organ and synth augmenting things. In short, the album sounds great.

My first music post of 2007

Well, Eddie Murphy ruined this year's "the Oscars are predictable" rant by making Norbit and reminding everybody of the kind of crap he's been doing for almost two decades. Plus, putting Eddie Murphy in that sort of spotlight apparently started reminding people that he's kind of a dick. Or at least creepily eccentric. So I was glad to see that upset happen.

And now, after a break of sorts, back to the regularly scheduled music-related posting. I could break this thing up into a half dozen posts, but I'm too lazy to do that much writing. So instead, here are:

Music Reviews That Are So Short That They Are Pointless: 2007 Edition

Yaaay! Excited? Here we go.

Deerhoof - Friend Opportunity - I've never really understood a lot of what people write about Deerhoof. For one thing, having a Japanese woman singing has inspired a lot of weirdly misguided descriptions of their sound. "Yoko Ono meets the B-52s." Whaaa? Also, I don't really buy the conventional wisdom that they're only now, with their last couple albums, becoming "accessible" or whatever. They've always had the "pop" side and the "weird" side, as far as I can tell. Anyway, Friend Opportunity is really good. "The Perfect Me" is one of the best songs I've heard so far this year, and a hell of a way to kick off an album. It's a great explosive album opening song in the vein of... *racks brain* "Sunday Bloody Sunday" by U2? "Baba O'Riley?" "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" from Thriller? I'm having trouble with this one. Anyway, the whole thing is good, but I don't feel like writing much about it. "The Perfect Me" has a cute li'l video which can be viewed here.

Dr. Dog - We All Belong - West Philly dudes getting bigger by the day. Dr. Dog will never be anybody's favorite band, and they'll never release any great albums, but they'll probably have a solid career releasing charming lo-fi throwback pop and encouraging drunken sing-alongs at their shows. This is another one for my "ridiculously derivative music is ok if it sounds like 60s pop" collection (and now that I'm reading that item, I see I actually mentioned Dr. Dog in it). Here's my suggestion to Dr. Dog: for the next album, hire Darian Sahanaja to produce, and he'll clean up that sound and sharpen those harmonies. Then those string and horn flourishes won't sound so out of place, and I'll really like ya.

Deerhunter - Cryptograms - Here is what the birth of this album sounded like: "Hey guys, I just got this delay pedal, you think we can use it for anything?" Apparently all it takes to make music that is considered "experimental" is to surround a bunch of generic "indie rock" songs with a bunch of echo-laden guitar. Oh wait, I guess they crammed those boring "soundscape" things in there too. Those are no more or less interesting than the stuff I do when I'm screwing around with my guitar (and my delay pedal) by myself when I'm bored. The whole affair is mind-numbingly average.

Of Montreal - Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? - This is supposedly Kevin Barnes' breakup album, except he got back together with his wife, so... whatever. It starts shaping up like the best Of Montreal album I've heard, then it runs smack into a brick wall 'round about track 7, a 12 minute exercise in repetition called "The Past is a Grotesque Animal." It is beyond boring. It completely kills the album's momentum, and by the time the damn thing finally wraps up, I have a hard time actually paying attention to the remaining five songs. I could go on about why that track is so stupid, but I don't feel like it. The rest of it is fairly good. If they cut out that one song, they'd have a damn good album on their hands.

Explosions in the Sky - All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone - Most discussions of Explosions in the Sky start with acknowledging that the stupidly named genre of "post rock" lends itself by its nature to a sort of repetition and sameness, which makes it ok that this album sounds exactly the same as the last one. I call bullshit on that. Let's think about what most people consider to be the biggest names in the genre. Have Mogwai ever released two albums that sound the same? Have Do Make Say Think? Tortoise? Even Godspeed You Black Emperor! has managed to vary it up, and when they found themselves unable to do so they went on an indefinite hiatus. So with that said, the new Explosions in the Sky album sounds exactly like their last one. And all the songs sound the same too. I think it's boring and pointless.

The Oscars are a stupid and pointless waste of time: a formless rant by Tom

It may seem self-evident that most awards shows are stupid, overwrought affairs designed to get you to stare at advertisements for four hours. Not to mention the fact that these things are hardly ever actual barometers of what any sort of majority of people consider to be the "best" entertainment in any given category. (Unless throngs of people really thought the Dixie Chicks really deserved that "Album of the Year" Grammy, in which case I may be mistaken. At least the Red Hot Chili Peppers didn't win it.)

And yet every year, we all wait in excited anticipation for the Academy Awards to come around, and tell us all what the best movies and performances of the last year were.

Why? What's the point of watching something when every single one of the major awards is all but a foregone conclusion? Watch me look into my crystal ball and divine the winners of the six major categories this year: Whitaker, Mirren, Murphy, Hudson, The Departed, Martin Scorsese.

Wasn't that amazing? No, because we've been told for over a month that those are going to be the winners, and yet we'll all tune in anyway to pretend that there's some kind of suspense amidst the tedious montages and salutes to those who have left us and an honorary Oscar for Ennio Morricone.

And besides that, there are problems with the awards they give anyway. Anybody who portrays a real person in a movie in a reasonably convincing manner is virtually assured of an Oscar, and sure enough, this year we've got Forest Whitaker as Idi Amin, Helen Mirrin as Queen Elizabeth, and Eddie Murphy as a thinly veiled James Brown. This is why I think that roles based on real people should be a separate category. Other quick roads to Oscar-winning, of course, include playing a mentally challenged person, a drug addict (or alcoholic), or somebody with a terminal disease. If you can combine a couple of those, even better.

As for the best picture, the prevailing trend lately is to give the Oscar to middlebrow, faux-art films that like to congratulate the viewer on their own good taste. How else to explain how Crash won last year? (And let's take a look back at some other winners over the last decade or so: The English Patient, Shakespeare in Love, American Beauty, A Beautiful Mind, Million Dollar Baby.) With this in mind, the smart money would be on Little Miss Sunshine, but supposedly Martin Scorsese's got all the momentum, and this year he'll finally get his Oscar for Goodfellas, and Taxi Driver, and Raging Bull, and Casino, and... ok, The Departed was actually pretty good, despite all the annoying Boston accents. It finally sold me on Leonardo DiCaprio, after his roles in two Scorsese-directed bloated messes failed to do so. And it was fun seeing Jack Nicholson cast in the role of Satan.

Anyway, if there's any reason at all to watch the Academy Awards tonight, it's to see Scorsese's acceptance speech when he finally gets his damned "Best Director" Oscar (unless Clint Eastwood takes it out from under his nose again). Will he point out that Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock, Robert Altman, Ingmar Bergman, Terence Malick, and Sergio Leone never won an Oscar (except for Kubrick's "Best Visual Effects" for 2001: A Space Odyssey)? Or will he be ecstatic to join the elite ranks of Ron Howard, Mel Gibson, and Kevin Costner?

Whatever he says, I'll just look it up on YouTube tomorrow and skip the rest.

Another movie review, 32 years late

"A surprising number of human beings are without purpose, though it is probable that they are performing some function unknown to themselves."

I don't know if I've ever seen a movie that left as many loose ends dangling in the wind as Picnic at Hanging Rock. Of course, all those loose ends are the central part of the movie. If there weren't any loose ends, it would be a standard crime solving mystery film.

So, to backtrack, a little background, since I'm fairly sure that nobody who will read this has actually seen it. A group of girls and a pair of their teachers from a boarding school in Australia take a picnic on Valentine's Day, 1900, to Hanging Rock (a real-life volcanic formation). Three of the girls and one of the teachers go missing without a trace. A week later, one of the girls shows up with no memory at all of what happened.

From there it unfolds like a murder mystery, as pieces of the puzzle slowly come into the picture: a young Englishman and his Australian friend (who is an employee of the English family, who may be royalty or something) witnessed the girls shortly before they disappeared, another girl claims to have seen the teacher running up the hillside in her underwear shortly before she disappeared.

Except (and you can consider this a SPOILER ALERT, except that it's one of the central points of the movie, and thus not really a spoiler) at the end, nothing is explained. The girls are still missing, and nobody knows why. Several subplots come out of the woodwork (for instance, the Australian employee of the English family is clearly the long lost sister of the best friend of one of the missing boarding school girls), and they too are left unresolved.

So here's what I think.

For one thing, I don't think I've ever seen a movie filmed in such bright and crystal clear daylight that creeped me out so much. We are shown everything, yet left able to see nothing. An air of palpable dread and suspense hangs over even the most innocuous of settings, and the uncomfortable and stiff silence that penetrates most of the film makes it all the more unnerving when it is suddenly and unexpectedly interrupted by a hideous outburst. Just thinking about it sends chills down my spine.

Closely related to that is the portrayal of the way that Victorian England rubs uncomfortably against the Australian outback. The boarding school and the English family seem to exist in an awkward approximation of their native English habitat. The picnic is preceded by harsh warnings to the girls against any sort of exploration of the rock, and to look out for the apparent abundance of poisonous snakes and ants. In another scene, on the way to the picnic, the children are allowed to gleefully remove their gloves in a rare display of leniency (keep in mind that February in Australia is summer).

To me, that's the real theme of the movie (although it's a pretty buried subtext, if it was intentional at all): the girls' disappearance may be symbolic of the inability for the "civilized" English to deal with the harsh realities of Australia; it's a warning of the bad things that can happen when we step unprepared into the great unknown, into an environment that we don't control. And never has this theme carried more poignancy than it does today, as we, as a society and as a species, creep ever closer to completely eliminating that which is unknown or uncertain in nature. Indeed, today Hanging Rock is a tourist attraction, complete with a cafe at the base of the mountain.