Pitchfork Reviews 6/5/08

Radiohead
The Best Of / The Best Of [Special Edition]
[Capitol; 2008]

Pitchfork gave them a 4.0/2.0.

Yes, I am familiar with the band Radiohead. What? Oh, no thank you. No thanks. Look buddy, I said NO. Hey, you want me to call the cops? I don't want to but I will. Ok. Yeah, have a good night, good luck. Hang in there.


Gas
Nah Und Fern
[Kompakt; 2008]

Pitchfork gave it a 9.2.

One of the things in life that I can't tell about is "experimental electronic music." Like I can't tell if it needs to exist. I think it might not. Like these guys are doing all their experimental stuff so that some day their musical "discoveries" will be understood and accepted by the world at large in the form of, probably, some kind of techno that does some esoteric nerdy musical thing that other techno has previously not done. So it's a little like being at the very most abstract forefront of parking lot design or wisdom tooth removal procedures or something else that sucks.

Also: the "experimental" nature usually means "guess what method I used to arrive at roughly the same boring pretentious wailing mess of sound that's existed in 'experimental' electronic music ever since there was such a thing? THIS TIME IT'S A SOFTWARE I DESIGNED WITH ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TO LEARN HOW TO PLAY A SYNTHESIZED TRUMPET" rather than "I'm producing a sound that has never been heard before and my results are new and strange and crazy."

But I probably just don't get it. And I think I'm in the middle of a breakup with drugs.


Vetiver
Thing of the Past
[Gnomonsong; 2008]

Pitchfork gave it a 6.5.

This is a covers album of mellow old folk/rock/country tunes that I'm not familiar with in the first place, done in the style of a mellow folk/rock/country tunesman from now. It's nice if you like that kind of thing, and I can't imagine why you wouldn't like that kind of thing on at least a level of "ok, this is on, and it's reminding me to calm down." You don't have to love it or be passionate about it. It's good times music, like, I dunno, JJ Cale or something. The kind of thing that comes on and nobody says "turn that fucking noise off," but maybe somebody does just change it after a few songs if it's not right, because sometimes when you're upset the last thing you want is somebody telling you to relax because it's like "the whole reason why I'm upset in the first place is people telling me what to do all the time."

I know about this first hand. Had a rough night's sleep because I got all the way up my own ass upset last night. I was alone and there were sirens in my neighborhood and then a thunderstorm. I live in a city and I feel perfectly safe most of the time, but it's a pretty thin line. If some police-fleeing weirdo came stumbling through my alleyway looking for shelter from a thunderstorm and decided arbitrarily "that's the house I'm going to kill everybody in," then not a whole lot would stop him. I'm protected by locked doors and windows. That's it. They're thin. I'm vulnerable.

And on the inside is me, and I'm not going to kick anybody's ass. I might slow them down a little, struggle, make it hard to get away with murdering me, but as far as successful defense goes, I'm not confident at all. People are delicate. We have just a layer of skin and then a bunch of stuff underneath and it's all pretty easy to ruin, and then once you die, that's it. You're done living. We're all so vulnerable.

I got pretty freaked out thinking about all of this. I have a 3 wood. I put it under the bed after holding it high on the walk from my pantry, where it lives, to my bedroom. I think I was subconsciously making sure to show it off to any potential murderous burglars who may have been stalking me at the moment. It was a neurotic and paranoid episode, but what are you going to do? Live in the suburbs? Stop smoking pot and watching post-apocalypse movies alone late at night? Maybe some day for the suburbs and I could also probably stand to cut down on that second thing if it's gonna turn me to a quivering mental patient every time. Or at least feel the tension and switch to something more uplifting, like say "Twins" or "H.O.T.S."

It was "Waterworld," by the way. Human race spoiler alert: we're all doomed.

I get the feeling that if I had put this on instead of "Waterworld" last night I would have had a better time of things. But then I might also have gotten mad at it if I had put it on after having watched "Waterworld" for being such a thin expression of the sheer joy of being allowed to experience what it's like to be alive. I might have got annoyed and yelled "don't pull that 'calm down' shit on me, I've got problems!" Willie Nelson would have been better. That's a guy who can handle his weed. He's not telling anybody to relax, either. He just leads by example.

Still, if you're relaxed already, this is good theme music for that. The end.


Young Knives
Superabundance
[Rykodisc; 2008]

Pitchfork gave it a 6.6.

I'm an American boy. I tune out when a musically straighforward pop/rock band spends a lot of time skewering British society. But these guys are so GOOD AT IT. Take that, BRITISH SOCIETY. This will teach you to... you know... suck... at... YEAH. "GUNS OF BRIXTON!"


Marc Ribot
Party Intellectuals
[Pi; 2008]

Pitchfork gave it a 6.1.

This starts off with a pretty intense feedback psyche cover of The Doors' "Break on Through." It's the kind of thing you'd put on a mix for yourself to listen to in the car, feel pretty clever about it, and then wind up skipping it after the third listen. Eventually you'll realize that this is not one of your better mixes, like the fact that you put "Break On Through" on there and thought it was a kickass idea kind of opened the floodgate for a lot of other recent "let's see if I like this" level stuff, or else the other mixtape phenomenon of "man, that's two songs where one would have sufficed" where two things are essentially the same but one is better.

That's because there are a lot of cops on this even though it's all over the place. One track is "look: I'm doing Berlin-era Bowie," then "look: I'm doing Spectrum/Spacemen 3," or "I'm Robert Fripp," or "look: I'm approximating a Cuban version of Serge Gainsbourg." It'd be a letdown if I had expectations, but I don't, and anyway it's called "Mark Ribot's Ceramic Dog" so clearly it's a tossoff goof because that's not what you call something you're totally serious about. So it's not really worth analyzing, but I'm not sure why this needs to exist.

The above-linked review by Joe Tangari gives a clue of why. This guy is apparently an "avant garde" musician who's more notable for his collaborations than for his all-over-the-place solo stuff. So basically he's a session guy with street cred. And what I'm listening to now is his business card. Oh, ok. Well in that case, Mark Ribot, I'm just going to put all that stuff you're copping from on my mixtapes, and I wish you a long and lucrative career of making other people's music more "interesting." Your secret's safe with me, buddy. Wink.