At Mount Zoomer
[Sub Pop; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 7.7.
Last night I was walking home from the grocery store, and there was a young woman sitting on the balcony of an apartment building in my neighborhood screamtalking to a friend. I hate screamtalking. It gives me the willies. It's a combination of being embarrassed for the (often) young person who's partaking, and anger at having my ears commandeered by a 20 year old's loud ruminations on the nature of guy and girl relationships, spoken with the urgency and authority of a national address.
But I get it. It's practice. That's how these people think you're supposed to sound when you're saying something important. Of course they're not saying anything important, and any given 20 year old is going to be hard pressed to come up with something to say that will be important to anybody but themselves. But: that doesn't mean they shouldn't try to. They don't know yet that the most important things you will ever say in your life will probably not sound like an English translation of one of Hitler's more obscure 9-hour speeches, one that occurred late in the regime and was for some reason on the subject of the quality of service at Bed, Bath and Beyond.
It's aggravating to hear it, but the subtext comes ringing out: "I am an adult, I have serious opinions, what I say is important, I want to be taken seriously." Let's not get too upset over the conversational equivalent of a teenaged lion's squawky half-roar. We all have to go through this. If I don't like it, clearly I should go make enough money to afford a neighborhood that's not annually overrun by summer-sublet college kids.
Anyhow, I walked past this balcony, thinking to myself "surely this is the worst conversation anybody's ever had. I feel sorry for whoever is not the one talking right now, hopefully they're not just waiting for their turn to scream." And just then the conversation died down enough to where I could hear the music they were also listening to. Maybe that's the reason why the talking was so loud. They were listening to loud music, but they were also talking about their philosophies, and clearly such a conversation should not warrant the turning down of music while you're on the balcony of an apartment building in a working class neighborhood at 10:30pm on a Sunday. Clearly this is something that the whole rest of the world could learn a lot from.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure it was Wolf Parade.
I think that's fitting. This is the musical equivalent of screamtalking.
King Khan and the Shrines
The Supreme Genius of King Khan and the Shrines
[Vice; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 7.5.
If you like fun, you should be as excited about King Khan and the Shrines as you are embarrassed about Wolf Parade. This is music for screamscreaming, which I think is a more natural state for kids than screamtalking. Like I'd kind of prefer it if that girl on that balcony had thrown shaving cream balloons at me instead of just talking loudly. Sure it's more messy, but it's also more ridiculous and fun and stupid, and as pissed as I'd be, it wouldn't matter. The joke would be on me. I would only be able to respond with war. And not the kind where you call the cops. The kind where you wait for an egg to rot and then you throw it up there.
Various Artists
African Scream Contest: Raw & Psychedelic Sounds From Benin & Togo 70s
[Analog Africa; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it an 8.9.
So it's an Afrobeat compilation. But is it a good one? "Scream contest" sounds promising. And... yes. It's a good one.
Use this to soundtrack "making the potato salad before having a cookout, and FYI I am stoned out of my mind, so I am probably going to spill a shitload of milk into this potato salad, which I won't mind because I'm stoned out of my mind, and neither will all of my young, fashionable stoned of their minds friends, except we of course won't eat the whole amount of the potato salad, and it will sit in the fridge for WAY too long before we eventually throw away the whole thing, container and all, which is a good idea because I definitely don't want to open that because A. it's rotten, and B. I was still stoned out of my mind when it started to rain at the cookout that we had anyway because it was nice when we woke up that day and that's all we had to go on and that should be enough, and I was stoned out of my mind so I wasn't really thinking about proper food storage, so the potato salad also got about as much rain water in it as it does spilled milk." It's the perfect soundtrack for that.
Or if you have a different Afrobeat compilation, you can use that too.
Port O'Brien
All We Could Do Was Sing
[Self-Released; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 7.5.
Here's what Ian Cohen has to say in the first paragraph:
Are the manifold manifestations of twee the most fearsome boogieman facing rock music? Did you frame that Sasha Frere-Jones article where he complained about indie not being black enough? Ever consider buying a Decemberists concert ticket just for chance to get a clean shot at Colin Meloy? You should probably just stop reading right now. Odds are, this very site is reviewing four other records that you'll almost certainly like more than this one.
Thanks for the heads up, dude. I had not read that article. It's great. I won't say I agree with all of it, but I agree enough that rock needs to pull its head out of its ass and try to be fun instead of serious. I wouldn't go so far as to delineate that dichotomy along racial lines, but if that helps somebody else, I'm all for it.
Since Port O'Brien is our jumping off point, here's a different question: when does fun end and annoying begin? And can we, should we delineate THAT along racial lines? If we did, is the general consensus that "annoying" is either too specific to one side or another, and "fun" is great for everybody? Is the hairy-for-liberals difference essentially that if something is "too black" for most white people we think it's cool because we have to otherwise we're being racist, but if something is "too white" for most black people we think it's not cool because that's what defines "cool?" Maybe. I don't know. Sounds like a stretch to me.
Still, I have a hard time believing that a majority of black people would be into this kind of a thing. To be fair a majority of white people are not into it either, just the indie kids who are into it, probably like 50,000 tops. And among those of us who have heard this and want to know about it just in case, I can't be the only white person who thinks this is more annoying that fun. And I also don't think it's reclaiming any kind of "too white" shared white person heritage just because it's totally soul-free. It's soulless, but also cloying and cute. I might not have the best perspective on this, but I don't think "cloying and cute" are overarching qualities attached to the entire cultural tradition of American white people.
"Square" maybe. Maybe you could nail Port O'Brien on its squareness as a vector for being "too white" and hence "more annoying than fun." But then you'd be saying that white people are square, which is maybe truthful, but it stings, guys. Because for all the advancements made by white people over the centuries, including destroying all cultures which ever strove to strike an equilibrium between themselves and the planet they inhabit, that's the one thing we wish we weren't: square. But not all of us are square. Elvis wasn't square. The Fonz wasn't. Chet Baker: not square. Jerry Lee Lewis. Lou Reed. As round as it gets. In fact, the best white person musicians are the few who transcend squaredom. Which means that the stuff that falls short is not good. Which is I think what Sasha Frere-Jones was talking about in so many thousands of words. We're not talking about race here, we're talking about not being a bunch of designer baby stroller-buying SQUARES.
And regardless of what race you are, if you're into Port O'Brien, then you might as well also be into dressing your baby up like a peapod, or buying a little red riding hood cape for your dog, or anything else a person can spend money on for no other reason than because it's cute. Which is as square as it gets. Sorry bro.
Wait a minute. Maybe what we're really dealing with is a gender thing. Yes yes, I can see it now. An inherently sexist ten thousand word essay about the ascendancy of the woman in American culture, with halfassed Gladwellian sourcing on how it's due to the fact that the population has been more female than male for a long while now. Man, that sounds incredibly reductionist and totally wrong, but, possibly if I throw in enough razzle dazzle and critic-proofing "I'm just sayin'" language, it could be considered officially "interesting." I could be a glimmering beacon in the firmament of literary-sounding shittalking. I will file this away in my brain's back pocket in case I get a call up to the major leagues.
Anyhow, yeah, thanks Ian Cohen, for letting me off the hook for your honest analysis of Port O'Brien. This band sucks.
Nalle
The Siren's Wave
[Locust; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 6.6.
This is Scottish people who are trying to blend Scottish folk nosewarbling with pretentious flatliner Avant Garde drone. Does that sound like something you'd be into? Why not? Is it the complete lack of percussion or the fact that those are two things that tighten your spine? Both? Ok. Me too.
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