Girl Talk
Feed the Animals
[Illegal Art; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it an 8.0.
As much as I want to write some breathless diatribe about how Girl Talk is the fourth rider of the apocalypse as far as indie music going all the way up it's own ass until it got puked out of pop music's mouth in the 2000's, A. I can't really get it up to do so on any kind of intuitive level, and B. I kind of just did.
Listening to this now, I'm not sure what it's supposed to make me do. Dance? Yeah, I don't think so. I think it wants me to "not JUST dance." Like it wants me to also go "wooooo" because I can't believe I'm listening to Sinead O'Connor and T.I. at the same time. Well here in 2010, not only can I believe it, I can't fucking stand it. I feel like Girl Talk is like the Weird Al of DJ's. He doesn't even have to make up parody lyrics, he just drops references and you're like "Allman Brothers and David Banner, ha ha ha." Really, it's dance music for the Jerky Boys set. And his records stand the test of time just as well as "Amish Paradise" does, which is to say it's a parody of a thing that probably never should have happened.
Other than that, though, great. Oh man "Hotstepper" and "Woo Ha" just transitioned into "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye" and "Bonita Applebum" and "It Is It" and "Criminal Minded." This is like being ear-raped by a pop music-themed New York Times crossword puzzle. It's making me nauseous in the same way as trying to read on a long car trip. I get that I'm supposed to let go, but the second I do, I find my legs carry me out the door.
Kleerup
Kleerup
[EMI; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 7.7.
Sometimes you read just enough to say to yourself "oh no, I am gonna haaaaaaate this." Well, I don't hate this. It's a minor victory. I don't love it, either, but what are you gonna do? My ears are deaf to Swedish techno pop. I'm wrong about hating it, but right about the deafness. I think (?) this is good Swedish techno pop, but I probably wouldn't know the difference. It sure is... shiny.
Nurse With Wound
Huffin' Rag Blues
[Jnana; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 4.9.
There was a time in the early-ish internet when Brainwashed was my source of choice for music news, reviews, and opinion. I'm kind of glad to see they're still chugging along (means they care), even though I couldn't be less interested in their news, reviews, and opinions. They really hitched their wagons to glitch and didn't ever let go, and the tone has never stopped being hyperserious, like "something important is happening here, and it's important that we know about it." I think there's a healthy dose of musicianship "I understand the history of composition" snobbery in there too. It's a weird subgenre of music fan. The John Cage type. Culture dupes.
Nurse With Wound makes me think of this stuff. They're annoying in a way that makes you think, "Maybe I should like this, it sounds like it's supposed to be for smart people, I'm a smart person, therefore I like this." Well, I'm a smart person and I hate this because I'm a smart person. On an intuitive level where life's too short.
Bobby Womack
The Best of Bobby Womack: The Soul Years
[Capitol; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 6.2.
Pitchfork says Bobby Womack isn't all that great. Suspicion confirmed. Thanks guys.
Pwrfl Power
Pwrfl Power
[Slender Means Society; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 4.9.
How is this working on me in any way? There are so many wrongs here (cuteness, that name, a commercial), how does it make anything resembling a right? I'm not knocked out or anything, I'm just tolerating this against all odds. It's cute, quirky, "I'm damaged" songwriting by a Japanese guy who's a great guitarist but who apparently wants to make silly songs in a Daniel Johnston meets Moldy Peaches mode. And everybody knows that the Moldy Peaches singlehandedly destroyed rock, but of course that wasn't their fault really. They were just kind of charming without particularly being charmers, so it worked. And despite wanting to hate, that Juno song is actually cute, not the fake kind where it's cute by numbers.
This guy, though? How is he getting away with this? Is it because he's Japanese and Japan is a whole country that's built on not being afraid to come off as cute even when you're borrowing something not inherently cute where you're supposed to be tough? (Notice the complete lack of girls, that was the whole point of the American version of rockabilly--getting girls) What's that about? Are the Japanese predisposed to cuteness in some endemic way we'll never be able to catch up to? Should we be worried?
As much as I'm fond of cultural reductionism, I think Pwrfl Power comes out a winner simply because the guy is evidently a great guitarist, and he could probably go and get plenty of recognition for that in "we care about great guitarist" circles, but instead he chooses to do cute goofs. It's even a little disingenuous, because I don't think he's as addled as Daniel Johnston or as big of a goofball as those Moldy Peaches kids, but still it's a lot better of an "I'm emulating this" choice than this would be, especially since nobody would blame him. That's Leo Kottke at the Nugget in Starke, NV! You have any idea how much a gig like that pays? And it's just one guy, he doesn't even need a roadie!
Actually, maybe he didn't have a choice. Maybe the Japanese, beneath all those layers of cute, are really deadly serious all the time 100% of the time.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Friday, July 2, 2010
Pitchfork Reviews 6/26/08
Pyramids
Pyramids
[Hydra Head; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 6.5.
The best rock is a war against whatever most musicianly forces are ruling the day. This is a thought I had last night while getting super baked and watching "Hype" for like the 9th time. I don't know if it holds any water, per se, but you could make a decent case for it. I think you could also make a decent case that this Pyramids album might be, for a certain subset of the musical spectrum, a fairly apt demonstration of the most musicianly forces ruling the day. There is certainly nothing simple going on here.
Ok, I understand the language being spoken here, it's avant garde metal and complex tension-based arrangements ladled onto a kind of shoegaze-y pop songwriting structures with plenty of breaks for pure introspective abstraction, a la side two of David Bowie's Low. Ok. I get it.
But also: I don't get it. What's fun about that?
Air France
No Way Down EP
[Sincerely Yours; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it an 8.6.
I know people who tell me I'm wrong when I say things like "techno is not a valid form of music." And that's why it's fun to say those things. It's like saying "I can't believe you're into that stuff, Jim Henson was a child rapist" to somebody who still makes a big deal out of loving the Muppets even though they're a grownup.
The Watson Twins
Fire Songs
[Vanguard; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 4.6.
It's gross, but the fact about twins is: they always seem like they're hotter than they actually are because there's two of them. The phenomenon doesn't work for music, though. They don't sound better than they are.
They sound like regular, pleasant, pretty adult singer songwriter music of a kind you can probably track down at any given medium-sized "on the downside of the career slope, hence mellowed out hassle-free" oldrock venue at a major metropolitan area near you. Or maybe at some place bigger if they're opening for Tom Petty and you want to get there early.
Plantlife
Time Traveller
[Decon; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 7.9.
I like this in roughly the same way I liked this when it came out. I actually like something about it, but I'm taking it with a mountain of salt because I know it's an appropriation.
Fern Knight
Fern Knight
[VHF; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 7.1.
I also watched a documentary about the Shakers last night. They're fascinating. As I was watching I launched into a reverie I often have where I'm a hip "Lean On Me" style history teacher in a run-down inner city high school. The Shakers documentary would be a part of a lesson I could probably never get away with called "Why White People Are Like That." It'd work fairly well as a teaching tool, because the Shakers are basically a cartoon of W.A.S.P. religious and cultural values.
Inner-city high school kids would totally fucking hate it, though. Not to mention I'd probably get fired for showing it and/or having a lesson about white people. But: Shakers are W.A.S.P.s in a nut shell. W.A.S.P.s think that to be Godly, you have to be serious and focused and work hard at everything you do and make it the best it can be, and also you can't have sex (or at least you're supposed to be in control of your sexual urges). And as hard as they try not to be judgmental, they think other people should be the same way because God don't party.
Part of the Shaker program is music, and their music says a lot about W.A.S.P.s. Here are a people who at their most spiritual make music that is unadorned, simple, God-fearing people singing as plainly and as earnestly as they can. "Tis the gift to be simple." That kind of a thing. It's the voice of a people saying to God, "Ok, you gave us these nasal, pinched voices, and we don't care if we sound like some kind of an embarrassing librarian folk singer, we will take our ability to sing thin, wavering devotionals as a gift and praise you with these annoying voices of ours, and we will not be self-conscious about style or technique or sounding all gross and reedy because that's not what we think you would want, Glory to You." And, weirdly, right on. "Shake" what your mama gave you.
Of course if you're looking for a more complete picture of why white people are like that, there's also the Appalachian tradition of moonshine-soaked Holy Ghost relijun, but those are not WASPs, those are White Celtic Protestants. Totally different breed. Their God has a deep appreciation for recklessness and banjo. And that stuff is also an important part of why white people are like that. Not sure what I'd do to communicate that with these fictional kids. Maybe if somebody made a movie out of this and probably also this, and while we're at it, because Catholicism is centrally important to understanding the middle-class urban tradition of why white people are like that, also this and this and this and... aw hell, this is turning into a college-level ethnic studies class about Caucasians for inner-city high school kids. I might as well cut the middle man and just shiv myself.
Anyhow, Fern Knight is Shaker rock. You can only get super into it if you live in a big house and never get married and wear simple clothing and never make a picture of anything and you worship God for 22 straight hours every Sunday while doing ritualistic dances, and you work so hard to make perfectly functional things that everything you make will last forever. Otherwise, no thanks.
Pyramids
[Hydra Head; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 6.5.
The best rock is a war against whatever most musicianly forces are ruling the day. This is a thought I had last night while getting super baked and watching "Hype" for like the 9th time. I don't know if it holds any water, per se, but you could make a decent case for it. I think you could also make a decent case that this Pyramids album might be, for a certain subset of the musical spectrum, a fairly apt demonstration of the most musicianly forces ruling the day. There is certainly nothing simple going on here.
Ok, I understand the language being spoken here, it's avant garde metal and complex tension-based arrangements ladled onto a kind of shoegaze-y pop songwriting structures with plenty of breaks for pure introspective abstraction, a la side two of David Bowie's Low. Ok. I get it.
But also: I don't get it. What's fun about that?
Air France
No Way Down EP
[Sincerely Yours; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it an 8.6.
I know people who tell me I'm wrong when I say things like "techno is not a valid form of music." And that's why it's fun to say those things. It's like saying "I can't believe you're into that stuff, Jim Henson was a child rapist" to somebody who still makes a big deal out of loving the Muppets even though they're a grownup.
The Watson Twins
Fire Songs
[Vanguard; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 4.6.
It's gross, but the fact about twins is: they always seem like they're hotter than they actually are because there's two of them. The phenomenon doesn't work for music, though. They don't sound better than they are.
They sound like regular, pleasant, pretty adult singer songwriter music of a kind you can probably track down at any given medium-sized "on the downside of the career slope, hence mellowed out hassle-free" oldrock venue at a major metropolitan area near you. Or maybe at some place bigger if they're opening for Tom Petty and you want to get there early.
Plantlife
Time Traveller
[Decon; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 7.9.
I like this in roughly the same way I liked this when it came out. I actually like something about it, but I'm taking it with a mountain of salt because I know it's an appropriation.
Fern Knight
Fern Knight
[VHF; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 7.1.
I also watched a documentary about the Shakers last night. They're fascinating. As I was watching I launched into a reverie I often have where I'm a hip "Lean On Me" style history teacher in a run-down inner city high school. The Shakers documentary would be a part of a lesson I could probably never get away with called "Why White People Are Like That." It'd work fairly well as a teaching tool, because the Shakers are basically a cartoon of W.A.S.P. religious and cultural values.
Inner-city high school kids would totally fucking hate it, though. Not to mention I'd probably get fired for showing it and/or having a lesson about white people. But: Shakers are W.A.S.P.s in a nut shell. W.A.S.P.s think that to be Godly, you have to be serious and focused and work hard at everything you do and make it the best it can be, and also you can't have sex (or at least you're supposed to be in control of your sexual urges). And as hard as they try not to be judgmental, they think other people should be the same way because God don't party.
Part of the Shaker program is music, and their music says a lot about W.A.S.P.s. Here are a people who at their most spiritual make music that is unadorned, simple, God-fearing people singing as plainly and as earnestly as they can. "Tis the gift to be simple." That kind of a thing. It's the voice of a people saying to God, "Ok, you gave us these nasal, pinched voices, and we don't care if we sound like some kind of an embarrassing librarian folk singer, we will take our ability to sing thin, wavering devotionals as a gift and praise you with these annoying voices of ours, and we will not be self-conscious about style or technique or sounding all gross and reedy because that's not what we think you would want, Glory to You." And, weirdly, right on. "Shake" what your mama gave you.
Of course if you're looking for a more complete picture of why white people are like that, there's also the Appalachian tradition of moonshine-soaked Holy Ghost relijun, but those are not WASPs, those are White Celtic Protestants. Totally different breed. Their God has a deep appreciation for recklessness and banjo. And that stuff is also an important part of why white people are like that. Not sure what I'd do to communicate that with these fictional kids. Maybe if somebody made a movie out of this and probably also this, and while we're at it, because Catholicism is centrally important to understanding the middle-class urban tradition of why white people are like that, also this and this and this and... aw hell, this is turning into a college-level ethnic studies class about Caucasians for inner-city high school kids. I might as well cut the middle man and just shiv myself.
Anyhow, Fern Knight is Shaker rock. You can only get super into it if you live in a big house and never get married and wear simple clothing and never make a picture of anything and you worship God for 22 straight hours every Sunday while doing ritualistic dances, and you work so hard to make perfectly functional things that everything you make will last forever. Otherwise, no thanks.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Pitchfork Reviews 6/25/08
Sally Shapiro
Remix Romance Vol. 2
[Paper Bag; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 6.4.
What am I gonna do, track this down and then listen to it before I come up with an opinion? It's another remix album of Swedish discopop. Do I need to tell you if I think it's a "good" remix album of Swedish discopop? Is that a responsibility I have? No. It's summer. It's nice outside. I don't have to do this.
Ponytail
Ice Cream Spiritual
[We Are Free; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it an 8.4.
Allow me to out myself as a total square: I spent a majority of my 20's doing improv comedy. Most of it sucks, but whatever. A few of the people who do it are funny to hang out with, and it's cheaper than being in a band. Eventually I got to the point where I got a little money for doing it, and as a result I did all kinds of weird things that I don't actually like, like living on a cruise ship and hearing "Hot Hot Hot" on maximum rotation blasted out of every crevice of the FLOATING BUILDING THAT I LIVE IN for four months, or asking for a suggestion of a location that would fit on the stage from a hotel ballroom full of bored union electrical workers who could all kick my ass and drink me under the table, and were probably considering both. But fuck it, it beats working. I'm quick enough on my feet for most regular people (drunken idiots mostly) to be impressed that I thought of saying something before they could, and that's really the whole trick of improv. It's like a shitty magic act but for talking. And it's also an artform, but whatever. You could also say "it's an artform" about magic, but that's not going to make you want to give a shit about it.
But as far as the artsy creative-process side of it, well yeah, there are certain principles of craftsmanship and all that. You learn things from it about what it's like to work together to do a thing. Also: I am a total square anyway. No sense in hiding it. I might as well be the best at it I can be. So: improv comedy. I've done it enough that I view collaborative projects through that lens. It's pretty hippy dippy, but it boils down to: you make yourself look good by making the other people you're with look good. Somebody does something that's weird and not immediately funny, then you change what you're doing (or not) to make it make sense (or at least not make sense but on purpose), and then the whole thing will end up being more funny than something that's just kind of medium funny to begin with. It's not rocket science, but people are often bad at it because they're too afraid of not looking good to worry about making other people look good.
Why the fuck am I talking about this? It's boring.
Mark Richardson expends a lot of words on the subject of Ponytail's vocalist Molly Siegel. She doesn't sing words so much as skwawk out noises. Richardson's thesis is that some people might think it's annoying, but it's actually great. I am not one of those people who think it's annoying. I think it's great. So good.
The problem I have with Ponytail, and it comes from my experiences in improv, is that Molly Siegel's complete lack of interest in the verbal isn't being given its proper attention as a choice. In a musical sense. Instead of being put as far out into the mix and given the proper space and attention I think it deserves, her shrieking serves mostly as a counterpoint to wall-to-wall guitar interplay, in a instrumental/math/prog rock tradition. Ok, fine, I get it, there's no rules and etc. etc. But the guitars are ignoring the vocals. And the guitars are not doing anything transcendent. They're doing exact riffs I've heard elsewhere then quickly switching those riffs to other riffs. It's an old trick. The only thing that makes this iteration of guitar interplay different is that Molly Siegel has the task of gamely barking out squeaks and yelps in reaction to it. The way those guitars go on without any apparent reaction to what she's doing, she seems like an afterthought, like her only apparent musical purpose is to gather up blogcolumn inches.
Why not have her out there hollering away on her own if it's the most interesting thing about the band? Let her lead. Even just for a couple of bars before you switch back. Like she's a part of what you have planned and not some gimmicky thing. That would be interesting. We've heard the dual lead guitar thing and the prog thing before, dudes. You've got this insane shrieking woman. Why don't you try making her look good instead of insisting on having it the other way around? Maybe I'm a little biased towards lead singers, but if your vocalist is a blend between Satomi Matsuzaki and Greg Peters and that's the first thing people notice, then it's the first thing people notice. Be who you are, not who you wish you were.
The more I listen to this, the more I am mad at half a band. Why not just kick her out if you're not going to even listen to what she's doing? But part of the problem is her fault, too. She could probably stand to assert herself more, do something that intentionally clashes with the guitar sound, force adjustments, take control, participate more, build something instead of react to something. If the guitar dudes don't notice, make it bigger. Yell "STOP" or stagedive onto your head and bleed and make them worry about you. I don't know. I do know that there's the start of something very interesting going on here, but it's stillborn, and it comes off as being annoying not because of the vocals but because of the evident lack of support for the vocals. Either by the rest of the band or by the vocalist herself. It seems like a goofy little accisperiment instead of a deadly serious thing somebody's doing on purpose.
By the way, if there's a more easily-makefunable phrase in rock than "guitar interplay," I'd like to hear it. It sounds like two dudes swordfighting with their dicks. Like both the phrase "guitar interplay" and the actual sound of guitar interplay sounds like that. Fine, but that's not how you have sex. I don't fault it for being homoerotic, just for being ineffectual.
But of course what difference does my opinion make? I'm a fucking square who does improv comedy. Like in my life I have made up a Shakespearean monologue about toaster ovens. For strangers. On purpose. Without even having been paid for it or even being particularly asked to. So it's not like I've got any moral high ground on what people should and shouldn't do or what's embarrassing or what's good. I just get disappointed by missed opportunities sometimes as far as a band totally ruling is concerned. This is sooo achingly close to being something. Which is a compliment.
South San Gabriel
Dual Hawks
[Misra; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 6.9.
I listened to like three songs. As far as I can tell, these guys don't do anything that Wilco doesn't already do. Maybe there's more echo and/or reverb, but really I'm not hearing anything outside of the realm of Wilco. Are you a big fan of Wilco? I mean to the point where you're constantly thinking "man, I love Wilco so much, I'd even listen to something exactly like it but less good." Are you that big of a fan of Wilco? Wilco. Me neither.
Dosh
Wolves and Wishes
[Unknown; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 7.7.
Oh great, The Arcade Fire claims its first hip hop producer as a part of the collateral damage of their war against soulfulness. This thing sounds like the original score to Zach Braff's life.
Damon & Naomi
Within These Walls
[20-20-20; 2007]
Pitchfork gave it a 6.1.
So this is an album by two of the people from Galaxie 500 who have managed to put out a bunch of signer-songwriter stuff. It sucks. It's boring, it's about feelings, it has no teeth. It is pretty, though. Unfortunately, I'm getting tired of pretty. And calling anything Within These Walls unless you're joking is puke-inducing.
And also I can't quite understand why I'm supposed to be so impressed by Galaxie 500 that I'd give this anything but a middle finger. Or anybody, really. If there was this exact same sounding album but by Anybody I Admire & Somebody I Also Admire, still called Within These Walls, it would get a middle finger too. I wouldn't care how mournful the ruminations were. Or in today's more specific context, if this was just a straight-up indiefolk duo from now like She & Him or Scarlett Johansson & Whoever Is Currently Trying To Fuck Scarlett Johansson, I would give it a more vociferous double middle finger with my balls out of my fly. That's what's going down within these walls.
Remix Romance Vol. 2
[Paper Bag; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 6.4.
What am I gonna do, track this down and then listen to it before I come up with an opinion? It's another remix album of Swedish discopop. Do I need to tell you if I think it's a "good" remix album of Swedish discopop? Is that a responsibility I have? No. It's summer. It's nice outside. I don't have to do this.
Ponytail
Ice Cream Spiritual
[We Are Free; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it an 8.4.
Allow me to out myself as a total square: I spent a majority of my 20's doing improv comedy. Most of it sucks, but whatever. A few of the people who do it are funny to hang out with, and it's cheaper than being in a band. Eventually I got to the point where I got a little money for doing it, and as a result I did all kinds of weird things that I don't actually like, like living on a cruise ship and hearing "Hot Hot Hot" on maximum rotation blasted out of every crevice of the FLOATING BUILDING THAT I LIVE IN for four months, or asking for a suggestion of a location that would fit on the stage from a hotel ballroom full of bored union electrical workers who could all kick my ass and drink me under the table, and were probably considering both. But fuck it, it beats working. I'm quick enough on my feet for most regular people (drunken idiots mostly) to be impressed that I thought of saying something before they could, and that's really the whole trick of improv. It's like a shitty magic act but for talking. And it's also an artform, but whatever. You could also say "it's an artform" about magic, but that's not going to make you want to give a shit about it.
But as far as the artsy creative-process side of it, well yeah, there are certain principles of craftsmanship and all that. You learn things from it about what it's like to work together to do a thing. Also: I am a total square anyway. No sense in hiding it. I might as well be the best at it I can be. So: improv comedy. I've done it enough that I view collaborative projects through that lens. It's pretty hippy dippy, but it boils down to: you make yourself look good by making the other people you're with look good. Somebody does something that's weird and not immediately funny, then you change what you're doing (or not) to make it make sense (or at least not make sense but on purpose), and then the whole thing will end up being more funny than something that's just kind of medium funny to begin with. It's not rocket science, but people are often bad at it because they're too afraid of not looking good to worry about making other people look good.
Why the fuck am I talking about this? It's boring.
Mark Richardson expends a lot of words on the subject of Ponytail's vocalist Molly Siegel. She doesn't sing words so much as skwawk out noises. Richardson's thesis is that some people might think it's annoying, but it's actually great. I am not one of those people who think it's annoying. I think it's great. So good.
The problem I have with Ponytail, and it comes from my experiences in improv, is that Molly Siegel's complete lack of interest in the verbal isn't being given its proper attention as a choice. In a musical sense. Instead of being put as far out into the mix and given the proper space and attention I think it deserves, her shrieking serves mostly as a counterpoint to wall-to-wall guitar interplay, in a instrumental/math/prog rock tradition. Ok, fine, I get it, there's no rules and etc. etc. But the guitars are ignoring the vocals. And the guitars are not doing anything transcendent. They're doing exact riffs I've heard elsewhere then quickly switching those riffs to other riffs. It's an old trick. The only thing that makes this iteration of guitar interplay different is that Molly Siegel has the task of gamely barking out squeaks and yelps in reaction to it. The way those guitars go on without any apparent reaction to what she's doing, she seems like an afterthought, like her only apparent musical purpose is to gather up blogcolumn inches.
Why not have her out there hollering away on her own if it's the most interesting thing about the band? Let her lead. Even just for a couple of bars before you switch back. Like she's a part of what you have planned and not some gimmicky thing. That would be interesting. We've heard the dual lead guitar thing and the prog thing before, dudes. You've got this insane shrieking woman. Why don't you try making her look good instead of insisting on having it the other way around? Maybe I'm a little biased towards lead singers, but if your vocalist is a blend between Satomi Matsuzaki and Greg Peters and that's the first thing people notice, then it's the first thing people notice. Be who you are, not who you wish you were.
The more I listen to this, the more I am mad at half a band. Why not just kick her out if you're not going to even listen to what she's doing? But part of the problem is her fault, too. She could probably stand to assert herself more, do something that intentionally clashes with the guitar sound, force adjustments, take control, participate more, build something instead of react to something. If the guitar dudes don't notice, make it bigger. Yell "STOP" or stagedive onto your head and bleed and make them worry about you. I don't know. I do know that there's the start of something very interesting going on here, but it's stillborn, and it comes off as being annoying not because of the vocals but because of the evident lack of support for the vocals. Either by the rest of the band or by the vocalist herself. It seems like a goofy little accisperiment instead of a deadly serious thing somebody's doing on purpose.
By the way, if there's a more easily-makefunable phrase in rock than "guitar interplay," I'd like to hear it. It sounds like two dudes swordfighting with their dicks. Like both the phrase "guitar interplay" and the actual sound of guitar interplay sounds like that. Fine, but that's not how you have sex. I don't fault it for being homoerotic, just for being ineffectual.
But of course what difference does my opinion make? I'm a fucking square who does improv comedy. Like in my life I have made up a Shakespearean monologue about toaster ovens. For strangers. On purpose. Without even having been paid for it or even being particularly asked to. So it's not like I've got any moral high ground on what people should and shouldn't do or what's embarrassing or what's good. I just get disappointed by missed opportunities sometimes as far as a band totally ruling is concerned. This is sooo achingly close to being something. Which is a compliment.
South San Gabriel
Dual Hawks
[Misra; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 6.9.
I listened to like three songs. As far as I can tell, these guys don't do anything that Wilco doesn't already do. Maybe there's more echo and/or reverb, but really I'm not hearing anything outside of the realm of Wilco. Are you a big fan of Wilco? I mean to the point where you're constantly thinking "man, I love Wilco so much, I'd even listen to something exactly like it but less good." Are you that big of a fan of Wilco? Wilco. Me neither.
Dosh
Wolves and Wishes
[Unknown; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 7.7.
Oh great, The Arcade Fire claims its first hip hop producer as a part of the collateral damage of their war against soulfulness. This thing sounds like the original score to Zach Braff's life.
Damon & Naomi
Within These Walls
[20-20-20; 2007]
Pitchfork gave it a 6.1.
So this is an album by two of the people from Galaxie 500 who have managed to put out a bunch of signer-songwriter stuff. It sucks. It's boring, it's about feelings, it has no teeth. It is pretty, though. Unfortunately, I'm getting tired of pretty. And calling anything Within These Walls unless you're joking is puke-inducing.
And also I can't quite understand why I'm supposed to be so impressed by Galaxie 500 that I'd give this anything but a middle finger. Or anybody, really. If there was this exact same sounding album but by Anybody I Admire & Somebody I Also Admire, still called Within These Walls, it would get a middle finger too. I wouldn't care how mournful the ruminations were. Or in today's more specific context, if this was just a straight-up indiefolk duo from now like She & Him or Scarlett Johansson & Whoever Is Currently Trying To Fuck Scarlett Johansson, I would give it a more vociferous double middle finger with my balls out of my fly. That's what's going down within these walls.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Pitchfork Reviews 6/24/08
Sigur Rós
Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust
[XL; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 7.5.
My parents went to Iceland a few years ago for their 30th anniversary. I asked them if they could bring back some Icelandic rock. They talked to a waiter and asked what's hip in Iceland these days. Apparently everybody over there is already over Sigur Rós. So my parents got me a Mugison CD. It wasn't good, but it did show me something important: Icelanders are suckers for anything that sounds dramatic, and their music scene is overrated. The end.
Studio
Yearbook 2
[Information; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 7.8.
I'm thinking the main takeaway from the above-linked review by Tim Finney is that this album failed to help him make any progress with a girl he was interested in. I might be reading a little too much into it, but that sounds about right. He played her a Kylie Minogue remix that's on this, told her it would blow her mind, and then she said "it sounds like the Gypsy Kings," which God Bless, is about the most withering put down of all time. I don't know why you'd lead off your review with such a crash and burn tale, other than to say "I've got blinders on for this stuff; maybe it's a problem to the point where it's ruining my ability to interact with others." In which case, it's kind of a ballsy move to say "this is me, I have no balls." But I still have a feeling I'd rather read her review of both the album and the incident.
I wonder if she'd say what I suspect: girls like boys who like boy music.
The Goslings
Occasion
[Not Not Fun; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 7.7.
There is an entire rock subculture for masochism. I understand only this about it: if you listen to music that's so loud and harsh and brutal it actually blasts your brain out through the back of your head, then by the time its over you will have a mildly euphoric feeling of having experienced something otherworldly, because human beings until fairly recently had never heard anything louder than thunder. The old voice-of-God trick. There was just nothing in our evolutionary process which prepared us for how loud we can make a guitar these days.
Does that mean we should make guitars as loud as possible as often as possible and never listen to anything else? No. It doesn't mean that. Doing things just because you can is not a lifestyle option unless you're super into masochist rock because you hate your life so much you feel a near-constant urge to be blasted four feet out of the back of it. Or if you're stoned it's good too. Maybe it's ok, like an exploration thing, but then why not go whole hog and get really into mysticism and astral projections and stuff? Oh right, because that stuff is for wusses. Well, carry on then.
Anyway, it's hard to figure out where any of this stuff rates on a quality scale. If The Goslings played a concert and you went to it, it would be a doom point loud on a scale of one to clinically dead.
Grails
Take Refuge in Clean Living
[Important; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 7.8.
So this is a band from Portland that wants to sound like it's from Morocco/Libya/Turkey/India in 1974. But they're not. It's ok, there's still merit in what they're doing, but when was the last time you heard some obscure thing from Morocco/Libya/Turkey/India in 1974 and thought "yes, this is actually a total classic, and not just kind of a kick I'm getting from knowing about something that's obscure--like oh wow, it's from Morocco/Libya/Turkey/India in 1974?" Those "forgotten gems" are only extremely rarely a "listen to it every day for a month" album. I understand that's a very tall order, but when we're talking about approximating something other than what you are because you enjoy it, I think you've got to be pretty careful about both what that thing is and how specifically you are approximating it, especially if you're white and they're not. I'm for big-picture approximations, like how The Stooges approximated the blues as opposed to, say, how Cream did it. Cop the ideas, leave the sound alone.
In this case, these guys are doing stoner rock ragas. Fine, but their Johnny Whiteguy rock approach makes them come off kind of flat, like either the stoner rock is ruining the raga or the raga is ruining the stoner rock, and it's not some kind of miscegenated blending, it's a conflict. The drums demand only peanut butter, the guitars just want chocolate. The end result is they sound like a lesser mid-90's instrumental post-rock band in the Godspeed You Black Emperor!/Mogwai/Golden/Trans Am continuum, except they're the "Eastern" one. And the jury is still out on whether or not that's a compliment, but it's not looking good.
I don't know why I'm feeling so harsh on this, though. I like the idea. Maybe enough so that I'm allowing the execution to disappoint. It could be that we're dealing with a not very good band which nevertheless is at least clever enough to sound slightly different from other not very good bands, and that's all it is.
Martina Topley-Bird
The Blue God
[Martina Topley Bird; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 4.6.
Oh, this is the girl from Massive Attack, and she's now in 2008 doing the British "limited-range female vocalist Billie Holiday-inspired soul but with modern lyrical content, about half a million miles less oomph and musicianship than Billie Holiday and always so because all spread over modern studiopop arrangements rather than developing as a three shows a night collaborator of Lester Young and other real-time geniuses of actual unfolding music" thing like what Lily Allen and Amy Winehouse are also doing in 2008. Presumably she is doing this because she has the Brittriphop bona fides to stake a claim to some of those album sales. Sounds like an ok career move to me. I mean, MASSIVE ATTACK, people. She's earned it.
Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust
[XL; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 7.5.
My parents went to Iceland a few years ago for their 30th anniversary. I asked them if they could bring back some Icelandic rock. They talked to a waiter and asked what's hip in Iceland these days. Apparently everybody over there is already over Sigur Rós. So my parents got me a Mugison CD. It wasn't good, but it did show me something important: Icelanders are suckers for anything that sounds dramatic, and their music scene is overrated. The end.
Studio
Yearbook 2
[Information; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 7.8.
I'm thinking the main takeaway from the above-linked review by Tim Finney is that this album failed to help him make any progress with a girl he was interested in. I might be reading a little too much into it, but that sounds about right. He played her a Kylie Minogue remix that's on this, told her it would blow her mind, and then she said "it sounds like the Gypsy Kings," which God Bless, is about the most withering put down of all time. I don't know why you'd lead off your review with such a crash and burn tale, other than to say "I've got blinders on for this stuff; maybe it's a problem to the point where it's ruining my ability to interact with others." In which case, it's kind of a ballsy move to say "this is me, I have no balls." But I still have a feeling I'd rather read her review of both the album and the incident.
I wonder if she'd say what I suspect: girls like boys who like boy music.
The Goslings
Occasion
[Not Not Fun; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 7.7.
There is an entire rock subculture for masochism. I understand only this about it: if you listen to music that's so loud and harsh and brutal it actually blasts your brain out through the back of your head, then by the time its over you will have a mildly euphoric feeling of having experienced something otherworldly, because human beings until fairly recently had never heard anything louder than thunder. The old voice-of-God trick. There was just nothing in our evolutionary process which prepared us for how loud we can make a guitar these days.
Does that mean we should make guitars as loud as possible as often as possible and never listen to anything else? No. It doesn't mean that. Doing things just because you can is not a lifestyle option unless you're super into masochist rock because you hate your life so much you feel a near-constant urge to be blasted four feet out of the back of it. Or if you're stoned it's good too. Maybe it's ok, like an exploration thing, but then why not go whole hog and get really into mysticism and astral projections and stuff? Oh right, because that stuff is for wusses. Well, carry on then.
Anyway, it's hard to figure out where any of this stuff rates on a quality scale. If The Goslings played a concert and you went to it, it would be a doom point loud on a scale of one to clinically dead.
Grails
Take Refuge in Clean Living
[Important; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 7.8.
So this is a band from Portland that wants to sound like it's from Morocco/Libya/Turkey/India in 1974. But they're not. It's ok, there's still merit in what they're doing, but when was the last time you heard some obscure thing from Morocco/Libya/Turkey/India in 1974 and thought "yes, this is actually a total classic, and not just kind of a kick I'm getting from knowing about something that's obscure--like oh wow, it's from Morocco/Libya/Turkey/India in 1974?" Those "forgotten gems" are only extremely rarely a "listen to it every day for a month" album. I understand that's a very tall order, but when we're talking about approximating something other than what you are because you enjoy it, I think you've got to be pretty careful about both what that thing is and how specifically you are approximating it, especially if you're white and they're not. I'm for big-picture approximations, like how The Stooges approximated the blues as opposed to, say, how Cream did it. Cop the ideas, leave the sound alone.
In this case, these guys are doing stoner rock ragas. Fine, but their Johnny Whiteguy rock approach makes them come off kind of flat, like either the stoner rock is ruining the raga or the raga is ruining the stoner rock, and it's not some kind of miscegenated blending, it's a conflict. The drums demand only peanut butter, the guitars just want chocolate. The end result is they sound like a lesser mid-90's instrumental post-rock band in the Godspeed You Black Emperor!/Mogwai/Golden/Trans Am continuum, except they're the "Eastern" one. And the jury is still out on whether or not that's a compliment, but it's not looking good.
I don't know why I'm feeling so harsh on this, though. I like the idea. Maybe enough so that I'm allowing the execution to disappoint. It could be that we're dealing with a not very good band which nevertheless is at least clever enough to sound slightly different from other not very good bands, and that's all it is.
Martina Topley-Bird
The Blue God
[Martina Topley Bird; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 4.6.
Oh, this is the girl from Massive Attack, and she's now in 2008 doing the British "limited-range female vocalist Billie Holiday-inspired soul but with modern lyrical content, about half a million miles less oomph and musicianship than Billie Holiday and always so because all spread over modern studiopop arrangements rather than developing as a three shows a night collaborator of Lester Young and other real-time geniuses of actual unfolding music" thing like what Lily Allen and Amy Winehouse are also doing in 2008. Presumably she is doing this because she has the Brittriphop bona fides to stake a claim to some of those album sales. Sounds like an ok career move to me. I mean, MASSIVE ATTACK, people. She's earned it.
Friday, June 25, 2010
Pitchfork Reviews 6/23/08
Liz Phair
Exile in Guyville (15th Anniversary)
[Liz Phair; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 9.6.
First of all, the above-linked review is one of the best and most heartfelt pieces I've ever read on Pitchfork, and I recommend reading through it.
Now if you'll permit me a little self-indulgent nostalgia of my own: I never got into this record. In fact, I always kind of hated it. More than anything else it seemed like the soundtrack to my near-complete inability to get laid (I could make out with the best of them, but often got picked off trying to stretch a triple) in high school. I was a 13 year-old 9th grader when Exile in Guyville came out, one of the youngest boys in a grade where the girls are light years beyond the boys in the maturity department.
I was full-on ensconced in the stomach-churning self-conscious teen angst (the fitting popular term) of bands like Nirvana, which was perfect for where my hormone-stuffed pipsqueak of a head was at. The girls I thought of as being on my wavelength and hence most wanted to make it with were onto stuff like The Lemonheads and Juliana Hatfield and Liz Phair. Liz Phair especially seemed unfair to me. Here are all these girls who won't give me the time of day because I don't have hair one on my little scrote, and I'm feeling weak and vulnerable but, you know, available, loving even: tender, and they're listening to this incredible over-it grown up tough girl who's singing about being a blow job queen, and in the same breath these 9th grade girls are complaining to ME about how some fucking douchebag junior won't even give THEM the time of day. UNPHAIR.
Of course I was being self-centered and idiotic like all teenagers, but at the time I really thought "What the fuck are these girls complaining about? What do they need to be tough for? They have it made. They could snap their fingers and I'd run through a plate glass window just for a kiss on the cheek, don't they get it? Fuck 'blow job queen,' I'll settle for just holding hands. I mean, what the fuck is going on?"
But being a girl in the 9th grade is no picnic either. I just didn't get it. And I didn't really want to. It took a couple of turns around the fucking girls over carousel when I was the douchebag junior until I started to get hip. That's the high school circle of life. Cruelty begets cruelty.
Listening to this now, it's giving me flashbacks, and it's showing me why I was crushing the hardest on the girls that were into this. It's a pretty amazing record to have float by when you're going through the 9th grade in 1993-94. Nobody was talking about this stuff. The girls I wasn't as into were pumping out Tori Amos and the Indigo Girls, which is totally flaccid compared to Exile in Guyville as far as reality-based female empowerment goes. But why pick nits, in 9th grade you should take all the empowerment you can lest you be separated to the wrong side of the self-esteem tracks. Liz Phair fans at least seemed open to the idea of fooling around, though. And they were sexy. They smoked cigarettes.
Plus Liz Phair was very non-PC at a time when political correctness was actually a social movement that people were embracing as the next way to be. If you wanted to get laid (and I mean anybody, not just high school) in the early 90's, you had to be prepared to spout an awful lot of rhetoric and be willing to listen to plenty of 4 Non Blondes while suffering through some extremely blue balls, or else you had to be a sufficiently bad enough boy to warrant the surrender of caution. There was a lot of caution in those days. Mountains of it. Liz Phair was somebody who had thrown it to the wind a few times and come out wiser in the bargain. God, I hated her for it. I was determined to follow the rhetoric and 4 Non Blondes strategy. I saw it as my only option, shrimp that I was. And here was Liz Phair, blowing that whole trip to smithereens.
I should have just joined. I essentially did, years later, but God do I ever have a heart full of hate for the 4 Non Blondes and the rest of their milquetoast feminism by rote set. I mean it's still hard to even laugh about how bad they are. I'm skipping the laughter and going straight to being upset just thinking about it. Yes really, over 4 Non Blondes. I don't know how else to put this, but they actually seemed REAL at the time, like they were 100% serious and not just a shitty band raking in money for a load of hot garbage. That's how polite everybody was being, like giving a shit about "What's Going On" was supposed to be a way of life. I should have just relaxed about the getting laid stuff and just actually listened to Liz Phair, even if I didn't like it, if only because A. it's not like I actually liked 4 Non Blondes anyway, and B. she was the real one. It would have done me wonders.
The more I think about this the more it's turning into time machine advice, heading into "if I ever have kids, I'm giving them Exile in Guyville on their 14th birthdays and telling them not to tell their mother so they'll think it's actually worth listening to" territory. It's the most honest, grown-up sex talk a kid could get: it's hard and it fucks you up, but of course it can be pretty hot too, and you're gonna have to learn about it sooner or later. No wonder those girls weren't interested in little wimpy me.
Anyway, I get reminded of all this stuff from listening to this album now. I still don't like it enough to actually want to listen to it, but I like it a lot more on a musical level than I did then, and as a statement both historical and timeless I appreciate the fuck out of it. It's just not for me, and probably never was. But it's one hell of a thing to have done anyway. Chris Dahlen is right. I admire it.
Ricardo Villalobos
Vasco EP Part 1
[Perlon; 2008]
Pitchfork gives it a 7.2.
Techno is not a valid form of music.
The Herbaliser
Same As It Never Was
[Studio !K7; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 6.5.
This sounds like the cutting edge of hip hop, 1996. Like I should be wearing Jnco Jeans, a fuzzy Kangol, and Gazelles right now.
Mike Patton
A Perfect Place OST
[Ipecac; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 5.9.
Oh man, they just decided that Exile in Guyville was enough, and then loaded the rest of this 5 pound day with 10 pounds of shit, didn't they?
Mike Patton is doing old timey and/or spooky music for a movie that I guarantee sucks, because the director was like "let's get Mike Patton, I love his work" when they were looking for somebody to do the original soundtrack. It probably has a ton of plot twists but you don't care about the characters, and it's probably loaded to the gills with style and technique without anything resembling substance, and all kinds of unnecessarily complicated edits and whiplash transitions, to the point where you can't follow the plot anymore, except instead of feeling challenged or interested, you're glad to be relieved of the burden of giving a shit, so you turn to whoever you're with and say "you wanna just go" and they're like "yes, THANK YOU" and then you have a lot of fun with the rest of your night making fun of how awful the movie was. Because that's Mike Patton's career if it was a movie. He's basically the Guy Ritchie of music.
Kidz in the Hall
The In Crowd
[Koch / Duck Down; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 5.5.
Nobody involved in this is Kanye, but they sound like they want to be, down to biting his exact cadence and "experimenting" with the same eurotrash influences in the beats. And I don't even like Kanye.
Exile in Guyville (15th Anniversary)
[Liz Phair; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 9.6.
First of all, the above-linked review is one of the best and most heartfelt pieces I've ever read on Pitchfork, and I recommend reading through it.
Now if you'll permit me a little self-indulgent nostalgia of my own: I never got into this record. In fact, I always kind of hated it. More than anything else it seemed like the soundtrack to my near-complete inability to get laid (I could make out with the best of them, but often got picked off trying to stretch a triple) in high school. I was a 13 year-old 9th grader when Exile in Guyville came out, one of the youngest boys in a grade where the girls are light years beyond the boys in the maturity department.
I was full-on ensconced in the stomach-churning self-conscious teen angst (the fitting popular term) of bands like Nirvana, which was perfect for where my hormone-stuffed pipsqueak of a head was at. The girls I thought of as being on my wavelength and hence most wanted to make it with were onto stuff like The Lemonheads and Juliana Hatfield and Liz Phair. Liz Phair especially seemed unfair to me. Here are all these girls who won't give me the time of day because I don't have hair one on my little scrote, and I'm feeling weak and vulnerable but, you know, available, loving even: tender, and they're listening to this incredible over-it grown up tough girl who's singing about being a blow job queen, and in the same breath these 9th grade girls are complaining to ME about how some fucking douchebag junior won't even give THEM the time of day. UNPHAIR.
Of course I was being self-centered and idiotic like all teenagers, but at the time I really thought "What the fuck are these girls complaining about? What do they need to be tough for? They have it made. They could snap their fingers and I'd run through a plate glass window just for a kiss on the cheek, don't they get it? Fuck 'blow job queen,' I'll settle for just holding hands. I mean, what the fuck is going on?"
But being a girl in the 9th grade is no picnic either. I just didn't get it. And I didn't really want to. It took a couple of turns around the fucking girls over carousel when I was the douchebag junior until I started to get hip. That's the high school circle of life. Cruelty begets cruelty.
Listening to this now, it's giving me flashbacks, and it's showing me why I was crushing the hardest on the girls that were into this. It's a pretty amazing record to have float by when you're going through the 9th grade in 1993-94. Nobody was talking about this stuff. The girls I wasn't as into were pumping out Tori Amos and the Indigo Girls, which is totally flaccid compared to Exile in Guyville as far as reality-based female empowerment goes. But why pick nits, in 9th grade you should take all the empowerment you can lest you be separated to the wrong side of the self-esteem tracks. Liz Phair fans at least seemed open to the idea of fooling around, though. And they were sexy. They smoked cigarettes.
Plus Liz Phair was very non-PC at a time when political correctness was actually a social movement that people were embracing as the next way to be. If you wanted to get laid (and I mean anybody, not just high school) in the early 90's, you had to be prepared to spout an awful lot of rhetoric and be willing to listen to plenty of 4 Non Blondes while suffering through some extremely blue balls, or else you had to be a sufficiently bad enough boy to warrant the surrender of caution. There was a lot of caution in those days. Mountains of it. Liz Phair was somebody who had thrown it to the wind a few times and come out wiser in the bargain. God, I hated her for it. I was determined to follow the rhetoric and 4 Non Blondes strategy. I saw it as my only option, shrimp that I was. And here was Liz Phair, blowing that whole trip to smithereens.
I should have just joined. I essentially did, years later, but God do I ever have a heart full of hate for the 4 Non Blondes and the rest of their milquetoast feminism by rote set. I mean it's still hard to even laugh about how bad they are. I'm skipping the laughter and going straight to being upset just thinking about it. Yes really, over 4 Non Blondes. I don't know how else to put this, but they actually seemed REAL at the time, like they were 100% serious and not just a shitty band raking in money for a load of hot garbage. That's how polite everybody was being, like giving a shit about "What's Going On" was supposed to be a way of life. I should have just relaxed about the getting laid stuff and just actually listened to Liz Phair, even if I didn't like it, if only because A. it's not like I actually liked 4 Non Blondes anyway, and B. she was the real one. It would have done me wonders.
The more I think about this the more it's turning into time machine advice, heading into "if I ever have kids, I'm giving them Exile in Guyville on their 14th birthdays and telling them not to tell their mother so they'll think it's actually worth listening to" territory. It's the most honest, grown-up sex talk a kid could get: it's hard and it fucks you up, but of course it can be pretty hot too, and you're gonna have to learn about it sooner or later. No wonder those girls weren't interested in little wimpy me.
Anyway, I get reminded of all this stuff from listening to this album now. I still don't like it enough to actually want to listen to it, but I like it a lot more on a musical level than I did then, and as a statement both historical and timeless I appreciate the fuck out of it. It's just not for me, and probably never was. But it's one hell of a thing to have done anyway. Chris Dahlen is right. I admire it.
Ricardo Villalobos
Vasco EP Part 1
[Perlon; 2008]
Pitchfork gives it a 7.2.
Techno is not a valid form of music.
The Herbaliser
Same As It Never Was
[Studio !K7; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 6.5.
This sounds like the cutting edge of hip hop, 1996. Like I should be wearing Jnco Jeans, a fuzzy Kangol, and Gazelles right now.
Mike Patton
A Perfect Place OST
[Ipecac; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 5.9.
Oh man, they just decided that Exile in Guyville was enough, and then loaded the rest of this 5 pound day with 10 pounds of shit, didn't they?
Mike Patton is doing old timey and/or spooky music for a movie that I guarantee sucks, because the director was like "let's get Mike Patton, I love his work" when they were looking for somebody to do the original soundtrack. It probably has a ton of plot twists but you don't care about the characters, and it's probably loaded to the gills with style and technique without anything resembling substance, and all kinds of unnecessarily complicated edits and whiplash transitions, to the point where you can't follow the plot anymore, except instead of feeling challenged or interested, you're glad to be relieved of the burden of giving a shit, so you turn to whoever you're with and say "you wanna just go" and they're like "yes, THANK YOU" and then you have a lot of fun with the rest of your night making fun of how awful the movie was. Because that's Mike Patton's career if it was a movie. He's basically the Guy Ritchie of music.
Kidz in the Hall
The In Crowd
[Koch / Duck Down; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 5.5.
Nobody involved in this is Kanye, but they sound like they want to be, down to biting his exact cadence and "experimenting" with the same eurotrash influences in the beats. And I don't even like Kanye.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Pitchfork Reviews 6/20/08
Religious Knives
Resin
It's After Dark
[No Fun / Troubleman Unlimited; 2008]
Pitchfork gave them a 7.6 and a 6.9.
I wonder how often the Pitchfork people cheat. I often dash one of these off in a big hurry without actually listen to whatever it is I'm talking about. Hey, you can't like everything, and I'm pretty sure it's not even worth trying to. Very often I have no particular thoughts on the subject of either the music or Pitchfork's coverage of it. They say "this semi-good rock album gets a 7.2 out of 10" and I say "yes, for me too" and that's all anybody can say about the subject. I at least try to listen. But sometimes I don't. And the stakes are pretty low here anyway. Couldn't get lower, in fact.
Does that mean that the stakes are somehow high over at P-Fork? They aren't actually high, but I'm sure there's a lot of tightly wound people who treat it that way. Throw in the money involved in some of these acts and the fact that P-Fork has legions (?) of devoted, possibly mindless, followers, and I'm sure the contribs over there feel something akin to pressure to get things right. Which is more dayjob than rock, but what are you gonna do? There are several thousand minor music businesspeople whose livelihoods probably hinge on what mood somebody's in when they write a review for Pitchfork. That's probably why the tone of the music writing is usually so somber. They have people's mortgages in their hands. Nice people. Leeches, but still. You can't blame any of 'em. It beats workin'.
So even though their only job is to know things about what's going on in music and have an opinion about what's good that people can agree on or at least hazily see the merit of, I'm sure the job seems a lot more urgent than that. Mostly because there's money to be made in inflating the worth of such an enterprise to the point where it can be toppled and subsumed by savvy insiders with some back-end points hoping to line their pockets by joisting up the next Radiohead. You get the "indie" press in your pocket, you can sell a lot of records to a nation of condo owning end-result-of-urban-gentrification trendjumping wannabes (that I'm WAY cooler than, understand me? I RENT from an OLD LADY: I'm at the most a gentrification middle-man) based solely on "it" factor, even if the band you rep is a fairly straightforward shitty pop enterprise like Franz Ferdinand. So if you're Pitchfork, the odds are stacked sky high against keeping a cool head for too long.
But huge hindsight-is-20/20 whiffs on major acts (it was not entirely unreasonable to make a case for Franz Ferdinand and even Interpol at the time--we thought they might have been stepping stones to some sort of Strokes-based Velvet Underground DNA takeover of all of pop music, rather than just pop music eating all of us alive; it was mildly exciting in the moment and we got carried away) and insider money laundering aside, Pitchfork generally does ok as far as rock crit goes. They just, I think, cheat sometimes.
The boiler-plate template for these Pitchfork reviews is, roughly: share insider-sounding history of the band, gauge expectations for current release based on either previous releases or said history, postulate thesis about the release's ultimate effect in relation to those expectations, prove thesis using concrete examples from the release, hedge bets to show lack of bias, conclude. I don't know if that's cheating, but it sure feels like it sometimes. And I don't blame them, they have to listen to a lot of music. They HAVE to. For proof of urgency, they have about a million A&R reps and PR agents on the phone waiting with baited breath and probably a little implied payola in the form of ad sale bucks. I'd cheat. I'm cheating now, and my phone hasn't rung in hours.
But I wonder if they cheat. I know I do. If I find an angle, I'm off and running, and who cares if it has anything do to with the music (confession time: at this point I have not yet listened to Religious Knives' Resin or It's After Dark). The above-linked review of these two Religious Knives releases seems cheat-y. The cheating is most visible when the formula is at its most transparent, usually when the review is long on history and short on opinion. Or, as in the case of this one, when reviewer Marc Masters drops a little bomb like "Bernstein-- an unabashed fan of Neil Young and the Grateful Dead-- pours his guitar like syrup over pancakes." "Syrup over pancakes": shudder. But also the open sourcing of the Young and the Dead thing indicates that Masters is this guy's friend and knows first-hand how often Bernstein listens to Harvest. Or else Masters read about the Young and the Dead fandom of this obscure noise band's guitarist in some obscure fanzine and passed it off as common knowledge. Either of which indicates either obsessiveness or coolpoint hunting, and both are cheating.
The review is a cheat.
But it's not a swindle.
Now that I'm actually listening to Religious Knives, I'm glad this one got sneaked in there and even received the day's top billing. Even if they cheat (and again: I'm cheating right fucking now) Pitchfork at least slide some of this wonderful, half-assed go-nowhere pretentious druggy noise in with the rest of the up-for-consideration slop as an indication of, "Hey, this is also a part of our collective DNA, you fucking twats, it's not all marketable twee bands and cutesy-wutesy bedroom pop and tongue-in-cheek techno and earnest throaty yelping about loss and regret over indierock jugband accompaniment. Some of this stuff you have to stumble into your local terribleneighborhood artloft for because it's intentionally vague and annoying, and yes, even kind of (totally) sucks. But it's out there too, kids. Go forth and live it if you're curious and bold."
Of course that's quite possibly a part of a larger swindle, the "trust us, we're hip" token review. It's not like these Religious Knives guys are a totally inaccessible wall of ear-destroying noise or anything. They're more in the realm of too loose noodling, searching out the diaphanous border between trance-inducing and just boring, but at least without any overt attention to pop structure. It's not great, sure, and nobody's saying it's great, but it's at least there where it doesn't have to be. If that's who Pitchfork cheats for, even if their reasoning is a part of a larger "hey, we get it" con, then all is not lost.
Good for them. Anyway, this semi-good rock album gets a 7.2 out of 10. Yes, for me too.
My Brightest Diamond
A Thousand Shark's Teeth
[Asthmatic Kitty; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 6.1.
What is it about musicianship and tastelessness that makes the two of them go hand-in-hand so often? Is it just me? Do I begrudge people for having talent in the first place, or just for wantonly displaying it?
Is it a more objective phenomenon, something more like how incredible technical talent is less rare than a singular vision for how such talent as one possesses should be harnessed? If so, what happened to all those technically gifted musicians (you know the type: Dave Matthews Band members, all of prog rock, Eric Clapton, etc.) to make them end up sounding so awful? Was it money? Lack of motivation? Passionlessness? Abusive parents who listened exclusively to Barry Manilow? Svengali boyfriends who were super into Sevendust? Talent only going so far?
What is it? You know? WHAT IS IT?
Anyway, this is a band fronted by a classically-trained opera singer. Their songs suck.
Dan Friel
Ghost Town
[Important; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 7.6.
In retrospect, the guitar sound from the first :30 or so of The Strokes' "Last Nite" in 2001 caused all kinds of trouble. The Strokes were a simple rock band (that guitar sound is incredibly simple elemental rock) when we needed simple rock, and they were huge almost immediately. So then people took the simple things they did, including that specific guitar sound and simple rhythm, as being "the way to make it," tightened the vintage jeans on it, and repeated it until it became the pied piper's call to gullible neuternative rock fans.
But almost nobody took the fact of stripped down rock simplicity itself and ran with it. Including the Strokes themselves. They just repeated the guitar sound, processed through 48 track digital ProTools studio techniques. It was a huge disappointment. "Last Nite" was/is a fundamentally good rock song. The verses had a bounce and, dare I say, a swing to them. Julian Casablancas even looked like Richard Hell, for crying out loud. What a waste it is that returns ended up diminishing rather than building into something awesome after those guys came through.
Not that this thought has anything to do with Dan Friel, really, it just popped in there while I was listening to this one song, "Buzzards," and I think it's accurate. "Buzzards" has that exact guitar sound in it, buried under the "harsh" electric drivel that Dan Friel is dishing out. Listen for yourself, you'll know what I'm talking about. The rest of this album is all the "harsh" (read: annoying) electronic drivel without the Strokes-by-numbers this-is-the-sound-of-guitar-excitement® basis.
But it's strange to me that that sound would rear its ugly head even here, in some guy's "look how little I give a fuck, I'm avant-garde" electro-spazz odyssey from 2008. Enough that it'd give me pause and be the most interesting thing about this. And the electro-spazz itself is too complex. Meaning everything I've heard from this is trying at least two things at once ("cute" and "brutal," "loud" and "pretty," "poppy" and "fucked up"), which is a pretty see-thru compositional attention-getter trick. So I've got to run with it if I've got a thought here.
I'm cheating a lot today.
Stars Like Fleas
The Ken Burns Effect
[Hometapes; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 7.5.
To jump off from what I was saying about The Strokes and Dan Friel, I think just about every creative effort does best when it's simple. Do the one thing that you do. Do only that thing. Learn it, do it well. Find a way to make something that's that. And if you succeed, you will end up making something that only you could possibly have made. Don't shoot for "I want to do something nobody else has done." Shoot for "I want to do something that's so much what I do, that nobody else could do it." And "I do everything" is a copout bet-hedge. It's not going to work. It's not practicable. You're never gonna find a way to do everything. And you don't do everything. Sorry, but there are some things you don't do.
These guys do everything. They do their extreme fucking best at it in a quixotic way that's almost admirable, but it doesn't work.
Twine
Violets
[Ghostly; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 6.7.
Here's another thing I put on and then forgot was on and now I feel better because it's over. Maybe (probably) this is just a shitty example of it, but I do not understand the point of ambient music. You could save a lot of time and effort by just going someplace that's quiet. That goes for both listeners and musicians.
Resin
It's After Dark
[No Fun / Troubleman Unlimited; 2008]
Pitchfork gave them a 7.6 and a 6.9.
I wonder how often the Pitchfork people cheat. I often dash one of these off in a big hurry without actually listen to whatever it is I'm talking about. Hey, you can't like everything, and I'm pretty sure it's not even worth trying to. Very often I have no particular thoughts on the subject of either the music or Pitchfork's coverage of it. They say "this semi-good rock album gets a 7.2 out of 10" and I say "yes, for me too" and that's all anybody can say about the subject. I at least try to listen. But sometimes I don't. And the stakes are pretty low here anyway. Couldn't get lower, in fact.
Does that mean that the stakes are somehow high over at P-Fork? They aren't actually high, but I'm sure there's a lot of tightly wound people who treat it that way. Throw in the money involved in some of these acts and the fact that P-Fork has legions (?) of devoted, possibly mindless, followers, and I'm sure the contribs over there feel something akin to pressure to get things right. Which is more dayjob than rock, but what are you gonna do? There are several thousand minor music businesspeople whose livelihoods probably hinge on what mood somebody's in when they write a review for Pitchfork. That's probably why the tone of the music writing is usually so somber. They have people's mortgages in their hands. Nice people. Leeches, but still. You can't blame any of 'em. It beats workin'.
So even though their only job is to know things about what's going on in music and have an opinion about what's good that people can agree on or at least hazily see the merit of, I'm sure the job seems a lot more urgent than that. Mostly because there's money to be made in inflating the worth of such an enterprise to the point where it can be toppled and subsumed by savvy insiders with some back-end points hoping to line their pockets by joisting up the next Radiohead. You get the "indie" press in your pocket, you can sell a lot of records to a nation of condo owning end-result-of-urban-gentrification trendjumping wannabes (that I'm WAY cooler than, understand me? I RENT from an OLD LADY: I'm at the most a gentrification middle-man) based solely on "it" factor, even if the band you rep is a fairly straightforward shitty pop enterprise like Franz Ferdinand. So if you're Pitchfork, the odds are stacked sky high against keeping a cool head for too long.
But huge hindsight-is-20/20 whiffs on major acts (it was not entirely unreasonable to make a case for Franz Ferdinand and even Interpol at the time--we thought they might have been stepping stones to some sort of Strokes-based Velvet Underground DNA takeover of all of pop music, rather than just pop music eating all of us alive; it was mildly exciting in the moment and we got carried away) and insider money laundering aside, Pitchfork generally does ok as far as rock crit goes. They just, I think, cheat sometimes.
The boiler-plate template for these Pitchfork reviews is, roughly: share insider-sounding history of the band, gauge expectations for current release based on either previous releases or said history, postulate thesis about the release's ultimate effect in relation to those expectations, prove thesis using concrete examples from the release, hedge bets to show lack of bias, conclude. I don't know if that's cheating, but it sure feels like it sometimes. And I don't blame them, they have to listen to a lot of music. They HAVE to. For proof of urgency, they have about a million A&R reps and PR agents on the phone waiting with baited breath and probably a little implied payola in the form of ad sale bucks. I'd cheat. I'm cheating now, and my phone hasn't rung in hours.
But I wonder if they cheat. I know I do. If I find an angle, I'm off and running, and who cares if it has anything do to with the music (confession time: at this point I have not yet listened to Religious Knives' Resin or It's After Dark). The above-linked review of these two Religious Knives releases seems cheat-y. The cheating is most visible when the formula is at its most transparent, usually when the review is long on history and short on opinion. Or, as in the case of this one, when reviewer Marc Masters drops a little bomb like "Bernstein-- an unabashed fan of Neil Young and the Grateful Dead-- pours his guitar like syrup over pancakes." "Syrup over pancakes": shudder. But also the open sourcing of the Young and the Dead thing indicates that Masters is this guy's friend and knows first-hand how often Bernstein listens to Harvest. Or else Masters read about the Young and the Dead fandom of this obscure noise band's guitarist in some obscure fanzine and passed it off as common knowledge. Either of which indicates either obsessiveness or coolpoint hunting, and both are cheating.
The review is a cheat.
But it's not a swindle.
Now that I'm actually listening to Religious Knives, I'm glad this one got sneaked in there and even received the day's top billing. Even if they cheat (and again: I'm cheating right fucking now) Pitchfork at least slide some of this wonderful, half-assed go-nowhere pretentious druggy noise in with the rest of the up-for-consideration slop as an indication of, "Hey, this is also a part of our collective DNA, you fucking twats, it's not all marketable twee bands and cutesy-wutesy bedroom pop and tongue-in-cheek techno and earnest throaty yelping about loss and regret over indierock jugband accompaniment. Some of this stuff you have to stumble into your local terribleneighborhood artloft for because it's intentionally vague and annoying, and yes, even kind of (totally) sucks. But it's out there too, kids. Go forth and live it if you're curious and bold."
Of course that's quite possibly a part of a larger swindle, the "trust us, we're hip" token review. It's not like these Religious Knives guys are a totally inaccessible wall of ear-destroying noise or anything. They're more in the realm of too loose noodling, searching out the diaphanous border between trance-inducing and just boring, but at least without any overt attention to pop structure. It's not great, sure, and nobody's saying it's great, but it's at least there where it doesn't have to be. If that's who Pitchfork cheats for, even if their reasoning is a part of a larger "hey, we get it" con, then all is not lost.
Good for them. Anyway, this semi-good rock album gets a 7.2 out of 10. Yes, for me too.
My Brightest Diamond
A Thousand Shark's Teeth
[Asthmatic Kitty; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 6.1.
What is it about musicianship and tastelessness that makes the two of them go hand-in-hand so often? Is it just me? Do I begrudge people for having talent in the first place, or just for wantonly displaying it?
Is it a more objective phenomenon, something more like how incredible technical talent is less rare than a singular vision for how such talent as one possesses should be harnessed? If so, what happened to all those technically gifted musicians (you know the type: Dave Matthews Band members, all of prog rock, Eric Clapton, etc.) to make them end up sounding so awful? Was it money? Lack of motivation? Passionlessness? Abusive parents who listened exclusively to Barry Manilow? Svengali boyfriends who were super into Sevendust? Talent only going so far?
What is it? You know? WHAT IS IT?
Anyway, this is a band fronted by a classically-trained opera singer. Their songs suck.
Dan Friel
Ghost Town
[Important; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 7.6.
In retrospect, the guitar sound from the first :30 or so of The Strokes' "Last Nite" in 2001 caused all kinds of trouble. The Strokes were a simple rock band (that guitar sound is incredibly simple elemental rock) when we needed simple rock, and they were huge almost immediately. So then people took the simple things they did, including that specific guitar sound and simple rhythm, as being "the way to make it," tightened the vintage jeans on it, and repeated it until it became the pied piper's call to gullible neuternative rock fans.
But almost nobody took the fact of stripped down rock simplicity itself and ran with it. Including the Strokes themselves. They just repeated the guitar sound, processed through 48 track digital ProTools studio techniques. It was a huge disappointment. "Last Nite" was/is a fundamentally good rock song. The verses had a bounce and, dare I say, a swing to them. Julian Casablancas even looked like Richard Hell, for crying out loud. What a waste it is that returns ended up diminishing rather than building into something awesome after those guys came through.
Not that this thought has anything to do with Dan Friel, really, it just popped in there while I was listening to this one song, "Buzzards," and I think it's accurate. "Buzzards" has that exact guitar sound in it, buried under the "harsh" electric drivel that Dan Friel is dishing out. Listen for yourself, you'll know what I'm talking about. The rest of this album is all the "harsh" (read: annoying) electronic drivel without the Strokes-by-numbers this-is-the-sound-of-guitar-excitement® basis.
But it's strange to me that that sound would rear its ugly head even here, in some guy's "look how little I give a fuck, I'm avant-garde" electro-spazz odyssey from 2008. Enough that it'd give me pause and be the most interesting thing about this. And the electro-spazz itself is too complex. Meaning everything I've heard from this is trying at least two things at once ("cute" and "brutal," "loud" and "pretty," "poppy" and "fucked up"), which is a pretty see-thru compositional attention-getter trick. So I've got to run with it if I've got a thought here.
I'm cheating a lot today.
Stars Like Fleas
The Ken Burns Effect
[Hometapes; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 7.5.
To jump off from what I was saying about The Strokes and Dan Friel, I think just about every creative effort does best when it's simple. Do the one thing that you do. Do only that thing. Learn it, do it well. Find a way to make something that's that. And if you succeed, you will end up making something that only you could possibly have made. Don't shoot for "I want to do something nobody else has done." Shoot for "I want to do something that's so much what I do, that nobody else could do it." And "I do everything" is a copout bet-hedge. It's not going to work. It's not practicable. You're never gonna find a way to do everything. And you don't do everything. Sorry, but there are some things you don't do.
These guys do everything. They do their extreme fucking best at it in a quixotic way that's almost admirable, but it doesn't work.
Twine
Violets
[Ghostly; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 6.7.
Here's another thing I put on and then forgot was on and now I feel better because it's over. Maybe (probably) this is just a shitty example of it, but I do not understand the point of ambient music. You could save a lot of time and effort by just going someplace that's quiet. That goes for both listeners and musicians.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Pitchfork Reviews 6/19/08
Scott Kelly
The Wake
Steve Von Till
A Grave Is a Grim Horse
[Neurot; 2008]
Pitchfork gave them a 6.5 and a 7.5.
So these two guys are grouped together because they're both from the metal band Neurosis. This is solo stuff in the late-career I'm an old man now and I'm tired of the world and I sound like Nick Cave vein. It's like this except good. I don't know what to say about it. If you're into medium good lyrics and dark-sounding gravelly voices, and/or you're into metal but you're too old to headbang without fucking up your back for like a week, this stuff is for you.
Tilly and the Wall
O
[Team Love; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 7.6.
Put it this way: there's a reason why these songs are all available on YouTube, and it's probably not because people love them.
I know it's wrong of me, but I immediately started having very dismissive and sexist thoughts about the three women in this band. They're lookers. They look too good to rock, in fact. They sound like they look too good to rock, too. And they're from Omaha. I have a theory about girls from Omaha. It is not a polite theory, except insofar as it involves a prediction of greatness and also the single nicest thing you can do to a man. I feel gross about the fact that strangers on YouTube in a cutesy indie band are making me think about this theory with sufficient enthusiasm as to experience a heart palpitation upon reading that these people are from Omaha. As a matter of fact, I'm thinking of all manner of horribly pornographic ideas right now.
It sucks because now I have to face the fact that I'm capable of being turned on by a "girl band," and not a particularly great one, either. I hate it. The tapdancing gimmick, too. It's like they're just being so cute and fun and friendly and silly and great, and that's tapping into my inner monster and making me all pervy, like a gross old man who's on the outside rather than on the inside where it's just good fun in the name of fun for young people. It's making me feel like a monster. And worse: old. Out of touch. Like I get that I don't get it. Like if these people were my friends and me was around, I'd feel uncomfortable and hope that me would just go away. God, I have never been more angry at my boner. It's like as much as I'm mad at my boner, I'm equally as mad at these people for causing such an unhealthy "urge to destroy" style boner. This must be what child molesters feel like.
Luckily, my brain is screaming out in agony: "The only female musicians it's ok to have a crush on are really good drummers in bands that actually rock! This is not ok! This is like reading Manga porn! If you feel your boat being floated by this, skip it, go watch some regular porn, calm yourself down if you have to, but don't let your boner tell you about your taste in music! Listen to the song without looking at the video. You don't like this. Remember: you don't like this. Sure it's fun and bouncy and girly, but you don't like that as much as you like oogling these young ladies, you sicko. Get a grip. You're still too young to fall for that whole Suicide Girls thing. Those girls are all crazy and gross. Remember that time you hung out with that waitress who wanted to be a Suicide Girl? She was sad and weird. They're all probably like that, and the reason why is their constant exposure to people who think they look like that on purpose as some kind of a come-on for rapers rather than just being slightly confused but good-looking regular people who just happen to have been born with those cheekbones. Don't be like one of those people who makes these women crazy without them knowing why. Relax! In fact, reminder alert: you have a wonderful, beautiful girlfriend already. Call her."
Ok. Thanks, brain.
Now here's the other thing. Is it ok to assume that a band sucks simply because the people in it are too good looking? Yes, I think so. If it was a bunch of pretty boys, I'd think the same thing. I'm not saying that a bunch of lookers can't possibly rock, but I am saying that true rock is ugly. You have to be willing to make yourself ugly for it, or at least not care how you look. Tilly and the Wall do not appear to be willing to do so.
You know what these people are? They're rockteases. No wonder I was letting myself get all worked up. These people are professionals. Or at least they're trying their damndest to get out of Omaha. Which is part of my theory, actually.
Sorry. I am genuinely ashamed of myself. Thanks a lot, Tilly and the Wall. I hope you guys have to stay in Omaha and be a stalwarts of the Omaha rock scene for the rest of your lives. That would serve them right.
The Notwist
The Devil, You + Me
[Domino; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 7.7.
I always kind of thought that The Notwist were like an electroclash band. Maybe that's because the only time I ever heard them was in this one girl's car. She wore striped socks on her wrists, that kind of a thing. I just assumed she was super into electroclash. She probably didn't even know what it was, though, and she just saw striped socks on the wrist in a magazine somewhere and decided to go for it. Maybe that's why electroclash never went anywhere. For a while there it was like "Yeah, maybe THIS is what we're doing" and then it just went away. I don't really know why, it was fun at the time. Maybe it was because September 11th happened and we were all sitting around looking like slackjawed idiots with striped socks on our wrists.
Anyway, The Notwist, to their credit, are not an electroclash band. I think I was thinking of Numbers. Less to The Notwist's credit, though, they're actually worse than an electroclash band. They're moody electronic sad bastard music. I'm glad I sorted that out in my brain, and I can just go back to not giving a shit about these guys.
The Ting Tings
We Started Nothing
[Sony; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 3.8.
I have a feeling I'm going to agree with Pitchfork on this one. I hate it when they trash something and I agree with it, and I hate it even more that I'm more likely to disagree with them when they say something is good than I am when they say that something sucks. But maybe that's fine. I do have two years of hindsight working for me, and very few things are as good as they might seem on first listen.
Oh yeah. For sure. I hate it. It took like 3 seconds to know.
What else? Well, I guess I can take some comfort in the fact that I have a total non-boner for this. That's good. If I'm gonna be a perv throughout my 30's, and the jury's still out on that, at least I'm gonna be a perv for more homemade cutesy stuff instead of biting on whatever approximation-of-sexy fishing lure Sony records is throwing at me. I mean I get that that's still a demeaning way of thinking about a person who's just doing a thing, but this time there's no argument that the thing being done is shitty, and also that lady knew what she was getting into when that dress got picked out from the wardrobe department.
It's the difference between amateur porn and professional porn, I guess. As gross and manipulative and still terrible as amateur porn is, at least you're not falling for some completely false faketitted moanmonster. If I can't suppress my prurient interest, at least do me the favor of approximating some kind of intimacy-based authenticity so that my fantasy world does not place me the role of simpering idiot John with money to burn on a hooker. I'm not into that. I like regular-style fun for free. Nice try, Sony.
Auburn Lull
Begin Civil Twilight
[Darla; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 6.4.
These guys save themselves from instant pretentious ambient music oblivion by bothering to have vocals. I feel like that's a rare enough feat to be mildly impressed by it. I was all set to go "oh no" and just be done with today, and then the vocals kicked in. They're nothing special, they're just there enough to remind you that you're listening to a band and not a museum exhibit. Which in turn is enough to remind you that it's ok to be on drugs, which is pleasant, especially if you're on drugs. Drugs make you paranoid sometimes. And so do museum exhibits.
The Wake
Steve Von Till
A Grave Is a Grim Horse
[Neurot; 2008]
Pitchfork gave them a 6.5 and a 7.5.
So these two guys are grouped together because they're both from the metal band Neurosis. This is solo stuff in the late-career I'm an old man now and I'm tired of the world and I sound like Nick Cave vein. It's like this except good. I don't know what to say about it. If you're into medium good lyrics and dark-sounding gravelly voices, and/or you're into metal but you're too old to headbang without fucking up your back for like a week, this stuff is for you.
Tilly and the Wall
O
[Team Love; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 7.6.
Put it this way: there's a reason why these songs are all available on YouTube, and it's probably not because people love them.
I know it's wrong of me, but I immediately started having very dismissive and sexist thoughts about the three women in this band. They're lookers. They look too good to rock, in fact. They sound like they look too good to rock, too. And they're from Omaha. I have a theory about girls from Omaha. It is not a polite theory, except insofar as it involves a prediction of greatness and also the single nicest thing you can do to a man. I feel gross about the fact that strangers on YouTube in a cutesy indie band are making me think about this theory with sufficient enthusiasm as to experience a heart palpitation upon reading that these people are from Omaha. As a matter of fact, I'm thinking of all manner of horribly pornographic ideas right now.
It sucks because now I have to face the fact that I'm capable of being turned on by a "girl band," and not a particularly great one, either. I hate it. The tapdancing gimmick, too. It's like they're just being so cute and fun and friendly and silly and great, and that's tapping into my inner monster and making me all pervy, like a gross old man who's on the outside rather than on the inside where it's just good fun in the name of fun for young people. It's making me feel like a monster. And worse: old. Out of touch. Like I get that I don't get it. Like if these people were my friends and me was around, I'd feel uncomfortable and hope that me would just go away. God, I have never been more angry at my boner. It's like as much as I'm mad at my boner, I'm equally as mad at these people for causing such an unhealthy "urge to destroy" style boner. This must be what child molesters feel like.
Luckily, my brain is screaming out in agony: "The only female musicians it's ok to have a crush on are really good drummers in bands that actually rock! This is not ok! This is like reading Manga porn! If you feel your boat being floated by this, skip it, go watch some regular porn, calm yourself down if you have to, but don't let your boner tell you about your taste in music! Listen to the song without looking at the video. You don't like this. Remember: you don't like this. Sure it's fun and bouncy and girly, but you don't like that as much as you like oogling these young ladies, you sicko. Get a grip. You're still too young to fall for that whole Suicide Girls thing. Those girls are all crazy and gross. Remember that time you hung out with that waitress who wanted to be a Suicide Girl? She was sad and weird. They're all probably like that, and the reason why is their constant exposure to people who think they look like that on purpose as some kind of a come-on for rapers rather than just being slightly confused but good-looking regular people who just happen to have been born with those cheekbones. Don't be like one of those people who makes these women crazy without them knowing why. Relax! In fact, reminder alert: you have a wonderful, beautiful girlfriend already. Call her."
Ok. Thanks, brain.
Now here's the other thing. Is it ok to assume that a band sucks simply because the people in it are too good looking? Yes, I think so. If it was a bunch of pretty boys, I'd think the same thing. I'm not saying that a bunch of lookers can't possibly rock, but I am saying that true rock is ugly. You have to be willing to make yourself ugly for it, or at least not care how you look. Tilly and the Wall do not appear to be willing to do so.
You know what these people are? They're rockteases. No wonder I was letting myself get all worked up. These people are professionals. Or at least they're trying their damndest to get out of Omaha. Which is part of my theory, actually.
Sorry. I am genuinely ashamed of myself. Thanks a lot, Tilly and the Wall. I hope you guys have to stay in Omaha and be a stalwarts of the Omaha rock scene for the rest of your lives. That would serve them right.
The Notwist
The Devil, You + Me
[Domino; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 7.7.
I always kind of thought that The Notwist were like an electroclash band. Maybe that's because the only time I ever heard them was in this one girl's car. She wore striped socks on her wrists, that kind of a thing. I just assumed she was super into electroclash. She probably didn't even know what it was, though, and she just saw striped socks on the wrist in a magazine somewhere and decided to go for it. Maybe that's why electroclash never went anywhere. For a while there it was like "Yeah, maybe THIS is what we're doing" and then it just went away. I don't really know why, it was fun at the time. Maybe it was because September 11th happened and we were all sitting around looking like slackjawed idiots with striped socks on our wrists.
Anyway, The Notwist, to their credit, are not an electroclash band. I think I was thinking of Numbers. Less to The Notwist's credit, though, they're actually worse than an electroclash band. They're moody electronic sad bastard music. I'm glad I sorted that out in my brain, and I can just go back to not giving a shit about these guys.
The Ting Tings
We Started Nothing
[Sony; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 3.8.
I have a feeling I'm going to agree with Pitchfork on this one. I hate it when they trash something and I agree with it, and I hate it even more that I'm more likely to disagree with them when they say something is good than I am when they say that something sucks. But maybe that's fine. I do have two years of hindsight working for me, and very few things are as good as they might seem on first listen.
Oh yeah. For sure. I hate it. It took like 3 seconds to know.
What else? Well, I guess I can take some comfort in the fact that I have a total non-boner for this. That's good. If I'm gonna be a perv throughout my 30's, and the jury's still out on that, at least I'm gonna be a perv for more homemade cutesy stuff instead of biting on whatever approximation-of-sexy fishing lure Sony records is throwing at me. I mean I get that that's still a demeaning way of thinking about a person who's just doing a thing, but this time there's no argument that the thing being done is shitty, and also that lady knew what she was getting into when that dress got picked out from the wardrobe department.
It's the difference between amateur porn and professional porn, I guess. As gross and manipulative and still terrible as amateur porn is, at least you're not falling for some completely false faketitted moanmonster. If I can't suppress my prurient interest, at least do me the favor of approximating some kind of intimacy-based authenticity so that my fantasy world does not place me the role of simpering idiot John with money to burn on a hooker. I'm not into that. I like regular-style fun for free. Nice try, Sony.
Auburn Lull
Begin Civil Twilight
[Darla; 2008]
Pitchfork gave it a 6.4.
These guys save themselves from instant pretentious ambient music oblivion by bothering to have vocals. I feel like that's a rare enough feat to be mildly impressed by it. I was all set to go "oh no" and just be done with today, and then the vocals kicked in. They're nothing special, they're just there enough to remind you that you're listening to a band and not a museum exhibit. Which in turn is enough to remind you that it's ok to be on drugs, which is pleasant, especially if you're on drugs. Drugs make you paranoid sometimes. And so do museum exhibits.
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