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.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Sunday, October 14, 2007
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.
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.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
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.
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.
Monday, October 08, 2007
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.
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.
Monday, October 01, 2007
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.
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.
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