Thursday, May 24, 2007

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.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

you are definitely wrong about panda bear's album being bettter than grizzly bears. panda bear is just long endless repetative loops. boring. grizzly bear is orchestrated lushness.

---an authority figure soon to surface in your life

Tom said...

How strangely ominous.

I respectfully disagree with your preference in bear bands, though. Maybe we can agree that Wolf Parade is a better band than Wolfmother.