Pitchfork Reviews 5/2/08

Fairport Convention
What We Did on Our Holidays
Unhalfbricking
[Hannibal; 1969/2008]

Pitchfork gave it an 8.8/9.3.

I'm sure there are more than a few boring PhD theses out there about the technology-driven evolution of folk music into popular music and the resultant downfall in the insularity of local cultural traditions. Fairport Convention always makes me think about such things. Mostly because it's a lot of interminable Brit-folk warbling that occasionally (25% of the time) crystallizes into perfect pop/rock. It's kind of like watching cocaine and baking soda get cooked into crack rock, except it's guitars and British white people instead of cocaine and baking soda.

I never got into them. Crack because it kills, Fairport Convention because my launching point was Liege & Lief, which the internet tells me was their big "fuck it, we're folk" album. To which my response was "fuck it, I'm not." It's kind of a dead giveaway when only British people love something.

Does that sound xenophobic of me? I can't say I care. A. They're Britain, it's not like I'm putting a "kick me" sign on some poor kid, and B. if they don't like it, they shouldna kicked my Scottish relatives off of their piddlyshit island for not pledging allegiance to the right dudes. Not that I want to go back or anything, just, you know: nyah nyah, Britain. We invented rock and you didn't. You can't even say "but we perfected it," because we have the Velvets, who even kicked John Cale out on his limey ass. As for my distaste for the French, well, that's only natural.

Anyhow: the 10% of Fairport Convention's catalog that's most tolerable to my American ears also sounds like it's ripe and ready to be picked up and ruined by Wes Anderson's next film. In a good way. The rest sounds awfully warbly to me, with a side of stoney noodle dancing-style hypnotic trance that's not always so bad. In general I'd say the Fairport Convention is to rock what "Battle of Evermore" is to the rest of Led Zeppelin. And for the record I acknowledge I could be completely wrong on this one if you're infuriated. But if you're infuriated AND British: nyah nyah.


Boris
Smile
[Diwphalanx; 2008]

Pitchfork gave it a "6.4 (U.S.)."

Maybe I was accidentally listening to the Japanese version, but most of this sounds great to me. Opener "メッセージ" is a masterpiece of timing, plus the guitar totally shreds. I can understand Zach Baron's complaints about "君は傘をさしていた" and especially "放て!" (a relentless high-register feedback assault that leaves me nauseous and drained) but Boris more than makes up for it on "隣のサターン."

Ha ha haw: the old "Japanese word" gag.

It's fairly accurate to say that Boris just do their thing and don't give a shit, and a "their thing" sub-thing of their larger thing (being psychedelic) is rocking about as hard and as brutally as possible. It's always good not to give a shit, and the brutality end of the rock spectrum is worth exploring. Sure, they sometimes (often) overstep the bounds of what's tolerable, but they do it on purpose, and their more extreme material pushes the boundaries enough for their less in-your-face material (still pretty far up in your grill) to sound welcome. In terms of psychedelia, they tend to snatch victory from the jaws of bad-vibes "why are my teeth grinding--oh yeah, the music" defeat. It's an old trick, but they're good at it.

And they keep recording long 19-minute freakouts. I have a feeling one of these days they're going to put together a 15+ minute rager to rival "Sister Ray" and "Halleluwah" for supremacy in that category. But A. they haven't yet, and B. that category can be a logistical bummer (i.e. "I will listen to this four or five times a year, get all the way through it without being too annoyed to finish maybe two or three times, and really enjoy the whole experience maybe once, though that once will be an intense enough experience to justify the patience" a.k.a. appointment listening, not the kind of thing you ever want your iPod to play while on random). I think it's a weird thing to constantly shoot for, but it's not my job to tell people what to do. I just take what I like and move on, and I like most of this enough to take the whole thing.


Atmosphere
When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold
[Rhymesayers; 2008]

Pitchfork gave it a 7.0.

I don't know why hip hop that realistically portrays my (white, urban, backsliding downward from upper-middle class to the new lethargic college-educated middle class) general worldview is such a turn-off for me. I can listen to Ghostface rap about destroying somebody's face with a point-blank gunshot for hours on end, but the second somebody starts rhyming at me about student loans, I tune out. It's not surprising, actually. I also tune out if somebody in real life starts telling me about student loans, even if it's my good friend Sallie Mae. There's just more immediacy in the might-shoot-somebody-in-the-face margins of life. Even if it is, technically, bullshit. Bullshit compellingly told is called "a story." As far as Atmosphere is concerned, the truth menially told is called "bitching and moaning."


Robert Hood
Fabric 39
[Fabric; 2008]

Pitchfork gave it a 7.3.

Look at my cheekbones. I am buying two hundred dollar face cream.


Various Artists
Yeti #5
[Unknown; 2008]

Pitchfork gave it a 7.8.

It's a compilation CD from a zine that came out two years ago. I can't track it down without paying money for it, and I don't want to. If I had to guess, I'd say it sounds like a compilation CD from a zine that came out two years ago. Meaning: if you like saying things like "I think they put out a track on one of the Yeti comps" in order to convince people that you know everything about everything, then this is a great reason for you to pay too much money for some shitty zine.

Except this comp features tracks by such known-commodity indie luminaries as Iron and Wine, Deerhoof, Atlas Sound, and Akron/Family. So it's a limited window for obscurity bragging points. You'd have to find some 18 year olds to impress by dropping a Yeti-comp reference. Everybody else would either fall on the side of "what the fuck are you even talking about" or else "yeah yeah, Iron and Wine, ho hum." But you should absolutely shell out the dough for this if you like Iron and Wine, Deerhoof, Atlas Sound, or Akron/Family so much you feel an urge to own some crappy live recording or outtake of theirs that they gave to a zine because A. they know the person who's doing it and B. whatever the song is wasn't good enough to put out by themselves unless it's five years later as a "we're officially no longer vital and/or we have drug habits now" singles comp. You will be rewarded for your trouble by a grab bag of tracks by lesser artists who are excited by the exposure potential, self-indulgent goofs by the publisher's "experimental" noise friends (think 4+ minute recording of buzzing AM radio signals by a "group" labeled as Cookie Monster's Scrotal Infection), one thing you almost think you kind of like by a band you've never heard of and won't again, and posthumous recordings like the always entertaining "Untitled" by Unknown Artist.

Maybe you can also read an article in the zine about how smart and special you/the author/the publisher are for being interested in/knowing about/publishing the subject matter. Except you'll be the one that paid for it, which means you're a bigger dupe than the people who pay money to take an online IQ test. I mean: there's book smarts and then there's street smarts, people.