Like Red Roses

Catch Up/Collection

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 21:51:17 -0400

Although I haven’t posted here recently, my (still relatively) new job affords me the occasional writing opportunity. Here’s a collection of blurbs I’ve written about some stuff I like.

Pterodactyl – Spills Out
Hearing about this album was one of those times where you read a review about an album and you don’t really care how it gets rated, because the description itself sounds amazing. Really glad I found out about these guys.

Eleanor Friedberger - Last Summer
The best music writing captures a feeling– I think I did that here.

Actress – R.I.P.
I came at this one as a primer for someone not immersed in the world of electronic music (myself included).

Spoon – A Series of Sneaks
This and Kill the Moonlight trade off as my favorite Spoon album, with Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga close behind.

Bat for Lashes – Two Suns
Really proud of this one, though I wish I’d come up with a better first and last line.

Here We Go Magic – A Different Ship
I wondered if this one could be taken as a slight, though I didn’t mean it that way.

The Men – Immaculada
I hadn’t spent a ton of time with this one, so I lean a bit more on the telling rather than the showing.

Audio Technica AT-LP120USB
There’s one bit of this that was meant to be funny, but maybe just to me.

The Books – A Dot in Time.
I like this one, it’s tough to try to sum up your feelings for a band’s entire career but I think I did pretty well here.

Chromatics – Night Drive
Just skimming the surface.

My coworkers write some pretty good stuff too! Here’s a sample:

Big K.R.I.T. – Return of 4eva
John is hilarious, you should read everything he writes.

Food Pyramid – Mango Sunrise
Rich runs pretty dense but there’s gold in there.

Breton – Other People’s Problems
Anna describes the experience of a band changing your perspective when you see them live. Also, this one made me laugh.

Julia Holter – Ekstasis
Celeste captures this one well.

Chairlift – Something
Ryan works a good mix of funny, random, and interesting.

Porcelain Raft – Strange Weekend
Lots of folks in the office were loving this one, I still haven’t dug into it.

Smashing Pumpkins – Siamese Dream Josh has moved on, leaving the flag he carried for emotional 90s music at least partially unflown.

THEESatisfaction – awE naturalE
Joe saw these guys at a Shabazz Palaces show and was raving soon after– I think it’s justified.

Wu-Tang Clan – Enter the Wu-Tang: 36 Chambers
A little bit of me can relate to this one, except I was listening to Cake.

Future Islands / Ed Schrader’s Music Beat – Split
Mike makes the case for this split and the series it’s a part of.

I hope to write (and write here) soon.

oneweekoneband: Elliott - Speed of Film Final track from “False...

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 10:33:00 -0500

oneweekoneband:

Elliott - Speed of Film

Final track from “False Cathedrals” (2000)

I’ve always felt that False Cathedrals had a bit of a pacing problem: any of the last three tracks could be the final. Even amidst an album of frequent cathartic moments, “Carving Oswego”, “Lie Close” and “Speed of Film” all pack a wallop worthy of ending the LP. What sets apart “Speed of Film” as the piece that Elliott would choose as a closer?

False Cathedrals strikes an adversarial tone early on, the first intelligible lyrics challenging the ideals and values that we’re sold — well, more specifically, that Americans as are sold — though I’m sure we’re not the only ones. The album is rife with struggle, whether against these confining socializations, past failures, personal brokenness, or greater tragedies.

“Speed of Film” continues that tone, while reflecting on the disparities between reality and our attempts to capture it in art. It challenges our attempts to gloss over so many uncomfortable details in our attempts to convey the human experience, not only in media, but even in our day to day lives; it targets the ways various ways we transmit those aforementioned values and ideals, spit-shined until the imperfections are no longer seen.

Strangely, at the same time, it indicts itself.

False Cathedrals is, at its best, highly cinematic, making epic in scope the ordinary if painful struggles of “this normal life”. “Speed of Film” is the first time in the album where that facade starts to slip, and the first time where the narrator admits that their own story faces the same the same potential pitfalls it calls out.

It is near impossible for any one work of art to fully capture the human experience, and even if the things we want seem straightforward, actually living that out is never simple. “Speed of Film” admits that however earnest the intentions, False Cathedrals is just one take on the story — to a certain extent, you’re going to have to write your own.

— Jeffrey Woldan

(Jeffrey has been extremely kind and helpful with tweaking this blog’s code and html theme time and again… thanks, Jeff!)

I was excited to contribute to One Week // One Band last week. If you’re not following, you should be!

I generally post longer-form writing (by internet standards, anyway) here, but if you’re looking for something more traditionally tumblr-esque from me, you can find it here.

Playing Favorites

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 16:33:24 -0500

Being underemployed has its perks; I’m rarely able to assemble a top albums list during the year in question, much less write about my choices. This year, I’ve done just that! These are the albums I enjoyed the most this year, and there’s actually eleven of them, because I forgot about one and then didn’t feel like dropping any of the others. These things are never an exact science, no matter how much we make it out like they are, but generally I liked it more the further down the list you go. Regardless, they’re all worth checking out.

House of Balloons, by The Weeknd

There were other albums this year that composed the epicenter of this debate, but House of Balloons poses the same questions: How far is too far? When does expression of heinous thoughts and actions cease to be valuable as art and start to harm either and/or both the listener and creator? House of Balloons isn’t the first to stir up such questions, but it does so more knowingly than Goblin, and differently than its other contempories. Kanye attempts to make his remorse and internal conflict both epic and self-righteous; Drake just seems like a jerk. Abel Tesfaye manages to capture a somnambulant, broken hedonism that strikes a nerve in the way others haven’t; the scenes he’s describing rarely sound appealing, but he’s not exactly trying to escape, either. So back to my original question: are these cautionary tales, or subtle advertisements for the lifestyle Tesfave chronicles and possibly lives? I’ll vouch for the former, but I can’t deny the danger is part of the appeal.

It’s All True, by Junior Boys

I tried imagining Junior Boys as ‘80s pop stars, touring alongside the likes of Duran Duran and New Order. It almost worked; and who knows, maybe in the right moment, and with that goal in mind, they could have made it. Ultimately, though, they seem a bit too cagey to me. Junior Boys don’t write feel good dance anthems like Cut Copy or Friendly Fires; rather, the lyrics on It’s All True reflect on angst, longing, defiance, and disappointment, with just the faintest opportunity for blissful escape. Lyrically, Jeremy Greenspan seems much more embroiled within the conflict than longing or looking towards the other side. It’s that tension that largely defines “It’s All True”, but you’d be forgiven for not noticing amongst the back to back jams. Ultimately though, that tension is their greatest asset, and they manage it relentlessly until “Banana Ripple”, where all their effort pays off. Junior Boys aren’t necessarily the electronic act you’d expect to close out their album with an extended rave-up (which, if you listen closely, still sounds like a kiss-off), but they do it, and pull it off magnificently. The production and songs are top notch; though traditional Japanese instrumentation is incorporated, it’s subtle, and the album sounds mostly like a slightly refined Last Exit. They aren’t treading far from their wheelhouse here, but a more pleasing electro-pop album is hard to find.

4, by Beyonce

Although I’d like to claim earlier, could 2011 be the year I really stopped worrying and learned to love pop music? I’m still a little uneasy about this album as a whole; I find some of the songs thematically boring and clichéd; the thought that I’m only a step or two from Whitney Houston territory makes me nervous. Vocally, though, Beyoncé manages to sell them all, with a truly stunning set of performances. The martial strut of “Run the World (Girls)” is an outlier; the rest of the album is either more vulnerable, more inviting, more fun- or some combination of the three. The gems are truly gems, glittering and exciting- The rise and fall of “1 + 1” fully overcomes any weaknesses in the arrangement, “Countdown” is “My Girls” x100, and “Love On Top” leaves you, mouth agape, wondering how she just pulled of another key change. Maybe I’m not there yet, but 4 comes as close to melting my cold rockist heart as any anything.

Gloss Drop, by Battles

I guess, to some extent, people missed Tyondai Braxton. Gloss Drop didn’t make quite the splash of it’s predecessor, but I’ve found it much more intriguing. Somehow Battles have become both more colorful and weightier on their second full length, a contradiction that fits nicely with the other big one in their music: how can music be so detailed and technical, and still sound like the guys making it are having so much fun? Take pounds of pristine production, mix it with so much excitement, and pour it all over a craggy soundscape worthy of getting lost in- the results are an album I returned to again and again.

New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges, by Colin Stetson

No one is doing what Colin Stetson does. I doubt anyone else ever will- his particular concoction of talents, voice, and vision are unlike anything I’ve heard before. It’s a continual source of amazement that the song on New History Warfare Vol. 2 are largely single takes, with no electronics beyond the myriad microphones used to capture the sounds Stetson produces. Even without this knowledge, the music is strange and consuming- you’d almost believe it was the work of some avante-electronic composer methodically bending the sounds through a wide array of knobs and switches, not a red-faced saxophonist pouring every ounce of his stamina into these alternately fiery and brooding pieces. That it manages to be deeply thematic and moving as well?

Despite the Gate No Mansion, by Resplendent

It’s been several years since the type of music that Michael Lenzi makes has fit well in the zeitgeist, indie or otherwise. Though the music he was making after the dissolution of The Fire Show was a departure from the metal-infused experimental post-punk of that band, in retrospect the course he was cutting would only diverge more sharply from the prevailing musical currents as time passed. Although he would mine hip hop and folk for inspiration (popular veins for sure), it was deeply filtered through his abrasive, experimental, do-it-yourself aesthetic. Despite the Gate No Mansion continues a similar exploration. It opens with an extended burst of static, and every following bloop, bleep, chord, and drum hit sounds frazzled and frayed. Every line of verse and chorus is hard won, a man making music for no other reason than that he loves to. It is deeply cathartic and personal, alternately caffeinated and meditative, a truly rare piece of art that stands on its own among the sounds of the year. It’s a refreshing reminder of what I’ve loved in music of years past, yet feels fully vital today.

(This album was self-release in the most minimal of ways, but is available online.)

The King of Limbs, by Radiohead

Perhaps destined to be Radiohead’s most underrated album, The King of Limbs stands among Radiohead’s best work. It is no Kid A, and no Ok Computer. It’s different from In Rainbows (Radiohead goes pop, to occasionally dull results), Amnesiac (striking in it’s discontinuity and experimentation), or Hail to the Thief (Radiohead goes pop, to brilliant results), but The King of Limbs presents at least two distinct sides of Radiohead while continuing to innovate sonically, if not as dramatically as in the past. All but one of their members (according to a quick web search) are in their forties- they’re not young guys anymore. That’s not meant as a mulligan- this is exactly what I would hope they’d be doing at that age, after six strong to amazing albums; I can get if this isn’t your cup of tea, but they’re still doing what they do best- let’s call this number seven.

Kaputt, by Destroyer

Come to think of it, in certainly moments, Kaputt isn’t all that different from House of Balloons: both find the narrator walking through an array of broken and possibly destructive scenes, though Dan Bejar takes a few steps back. He’s always at least somewhat on the outside looking in, and his observations are served with a healthy helping of snark. The degree to which Bejar is putting us on is unclear; although his fantasies are a little brighter, there’s something slightly unreal about the whole endeavor (the video for “Kaputt” captures that sense well). Somehow, there remains an emotional core beyond the facade; there is something true in all these songs, if just the feelings evoked. Kaputt occasionally suffers from being less wordy than it’s predecessors, but overall, Dan Bejar’s transformation to a crooner works remarkably well, and I’m not sure there’s many other who could sell me on this soft, smooth-jazz-esque palette. Bejar remains in a class all his own, and he’s by far the better for it.

Bon Iver, by Bon Iver

My most vivid memories of listening to this album involve drifting off to sleep either during or shortly after- there’s been a number of potential indie lullabies this year, and Justin Vernon’s entry may be the best. People have called this album depressing; I find it warm, inviting, and calm. Vernon is not my favorite lyricist or vocalist, but on Bon Iver he leapfrogs his previous works, revealing his tremendous (if previously hinted at) skills as a composer and producer. Bon Iver doesn’t hit you over the head with it’s charms, but if you’re ready to receive them, they are many.

Let England Shake, by PJ Harvey

“The West’s asleep”, begins Polly Jean’s latest; though we might interpret that in many different ways, it certainly strikes a chord. This is one of the most striking things about Let England Shake; that although it is incredibly intense and dramatically detailed in it’s description of the horrors of war and conflict, it never feels like Harvey is trying to force her beliefs on the listener. Although it is explicit and deeply uncomfortable (at least if you’re really listening to what she’s saying), it walks that tightrope like few albums can- even the universally loved What’s Going On can get a little overbearing. PJ Harvey takes an unflinching look at the realities of war, and while the listener can overlay their own opinions and judgment on the contents therein, Harvey rarely does. Though she is certainly not without an opinion on the subject matter — who would right a whole album about a subject they don’t care about? — she shows tremendous respect to both her subject matter and the listener throughout.

And what might otherwise become an overbearing listen is buoyed by the tone of the music and her voice, which are distinct amid her discography. The sound (and in brief moments, the lyrics) bring a levity and a vaguely sarcastic innocence to the whole proceedings. But perhaps that is really where Polly Jean says the most, and ultimately where I identify the most with this album. Even the interpolation of “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” and “Summertime Blues” speak volumes, perhaps cynically, but, somehow, not without a sense of hope.

Metals, by Feist

To the best of my knowledge, This is the first Feist album I’ve listened to all the way through. I’ve heard a couple of catchy songs, sure, but never got the impression they were anything more than good-natured, semi-organic pop. I hadn’t found her particularly compelling apart from her Broken Social Scene appearances, and was perfectly happy leaving her firmly in the background of the burgeoning adult-indie revolution. In fact, my introduction to this album might as well be right out of Spotify’s press packet (and I suppose, but extension, file sharing’s), as I would likely never have heard and purchased it otherwise.

After the first couple listens, I was ready to write it off as pleasant but ordinary folk-pop, but it had started to impress itself onto my mind, despite the half attention I’d afford it. I continued to listen, and as I did, it’s idiosyncrasies began to appear: the noisy, pounding drums of “The Bad in Each Other” and “Undiscovered First”, the shouted refrain of “A Commotion”, and Feist’s spindly, winding, and intensely human vocals. I can’t think of another album I’ve heard this year that breathes like this one does, or sounds so distinctly Canadian - I had to check to confirm that although Bryan Webb does sing backing vocals on one song, Constantines were not Leslie’s backing band.

In a year full of subdued, pleasant, and soothing music, this one stood out- not only because, like Bon Iver, it managed to feel distinctly alive, but also because it packed a hidden punch for those who dug a little deeper. I didn’t know she had it in her.

Mysterium Tremendum

Sun, 11 Sep 2011 20:00:27 -0400

A few weeks ago, I went with some friends to an evening service at Redeemer Presbyterian Church, on the Upper East Side of New York City, and I really enjoyed it. The sermon was on living for God’s presence, hinging on verses from Exodus, including the following:

The Moses said to him, “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?”¹

One of the things I found really interesting about the service was the worship. It’s quite a large church, and so I understand they have a number of different worship teams performing in different musical styles. That evening’s worship was accompanied by a five piece jazz band, plus a vocalist/worship leader. I’ve rarely, if ever, experienced worship in that style, and it was neat- it was evident they were accomplished musicians and performed together well. Still, the music felt somewhat listless, and didn’t always compliment the lyrics and meaning of the songs we were singing.

This got me thinking about the music of the church, and specifically the music we use to worship.² I think I’ve seen a broad range of styles in my different church experiences, and it’s great that we have place for everything from traditional hymns and pipe organs to classical, jazz and contemporary pop/rock. I can’t help but think, though, that we could do better.

John Lin, who gave that evening’s sermon, referenced a quote by Rudolph Otto from The Idea of the Holy, on the idea of “mysterium tremendum”:

The feeling of it may at times come sweeping like a gentle tide, pervading the mind with a tranquil mood of deepest worship. It has its wild and demonic forms and can sink to an almost gristly horror and shuddering. It may become the hushed, trembling, and speechless humility of the creature in the presence of—whom or what?…The ‘mystery’ is for him not merely something to be wondered at but something that entrances him; and beside that in it which bewilders and confounds, he feels a something that captivates and transports him with a strange ravishment, rising often enough to the pitch of dizzy intoxication.

I know from my own experiences that music is capable of at least approximating all these things- but why does it seem so rare that we are seeking to foster this in worship? Instead, we seem to prefer the ordinary, the well-worn, and the comfortable. This is not entirely unexpected- we are most definitely creatures of habit, and it’s natural that something repeated over and over again would lose its ability to catch us off guard, if not its impact and depth.

When I think of “mysterium tremendum”, the music that comes to mind is ostensively secular. Artists like Godspeed You Black Emperor, Liturgy, and Colin Stetson can evoke a sense of awe in the face of something bigger that ourselves. The Appleseed Cast and Doves often evoke beauty and hope. These are far from an extensive list, and you may disagree with my assessments, but my point is this: there’s a lot of ground we (the church) haven’t covered, and it’s not hard to find.

I’m not saying we all go out and imitate our favorite indie (or whatever) bands in our churches- it’s just that I look at the vast array of music expression outside of the church walls and wonder why we couldn’t do better. Nor am I saying we should throw out all our existing worship and start anew. Instead, let’s look take a closer look at the God in whose presence we are desiring to dwell, and allow him to transform what we exemplify in our worship. Perhaps music from outside of the church can inform our search, but it’s by truly knowing God better that we will begin to understand what worship can be. By all accounts, encountering God’s manifest presence is transforming- can our worship approach the same?

Exodus 33:15-16, NIV ↩
Worship in the most obvious and explicit sense, anyway. ↩

Bon Iver

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 22:31:00 -0400

At the risk of falling guilty to the very claim I’m about to make, Bon Iver’s lyrics often hit me like a shoe. That is: clumsy, unwieldy, and unpleasant. Take an example from For Emma, Forever Ago: “Gluey feathers on the flume”. What could that even mean? Or: “I crouch like a crow”- do crows even have knees? I mean, if I really try, I guess I can imagine a crow sort of leaning down from above, which would be a bit like a crouch, maybe. This second example, however, highlights another quirk in Justin Vernon’s songwriting that rubs me the wrong way: his penchant for constant alliteration. That and the way he forms his lines in rigid, repetitive meter strikes me as cutesy, valuing formal craft and clever aesthetic over any actual meaning or dramatic effect the lyrics might otherwise have.

For Emma, Forever Ago is a good album whose composition and mood fit its backstory well: it sounds like it’s about loneliness, pain, and heartbreak, which goes a long way towards supplementing the questionable (though not always) lyrics. It’s a beautifully crafted album in every other regard, and shows a surprising mastery and depth of sound, considering the apparently humble equipment used to capture it.

All of the above is the result of maybe months of deep introspection, trying to figure out what it was that was holding me back from really loving For Emma, Forever Ago, and why I wasn’t that excited to hear Bon Iver was preparing a follow up. On the first few listens to lead promotional single “Calgary”, it seemed my bias was confirmed: the song appeared nothing more than a vague wash of synths and soaring vocals, pleasant but ultimately vacuous. Even on my first couple listens to Bon Iver, it seemed pretty but overwrought, and I’d found a new aspect of Justin Vernon’s music to dislike: his voice. On Bon Iver, it’s multi-tracked to hell, which, given it’s already sizable sonic presence, seems largely unnecessary and somewhat annoying.

Still, I gave it another couple listens, all prepared to write my mostly critical review- but a funny thing happened on my way to that piece: I started to like the album. A lot. In fact, I liked it to the point that I’m now prepared to say that this is head and shoulders beyond For Emma, Forever Ago, a greater realization of every promise displayed on that album than could have every been expected, and almost certainly one of the best albums of the year.

Most of my qualms above still stand: I’m not always fond of Justin Vernon’s lyrics, and at times, I do find his voice grating. On the other hand, on Bon Iver he’s often surrounded in broad swaths of reverb and layered sound, making a number of lyrics harder to parse (and thus, quite possibly better), and just like For Emma, there are moments when the lyrics (or at least my perception of them) click. In addition, Vernon shows impressive range and control of his voice throughout, climbing from his more recently unveiled deep baritone to the high falsetto featured throughout most of For Emma. The extreme vocal layering still seems unnecessary, but the surroundings are beautiful, powerful, and inviting, and in its best moments, Vernon’s sounds otherworldly and haunting. And though he’s certainly enlisted help, it’s hard to think of Bon Iver as solo album, or solo musician, anymore- this LP is sprawling and huge, seeming far too vast to have sprung from the mind of single individual- you’ll be surprised to find it’s only forty minutes in actual length. Still, there’s plenty of opportunity for the listener to disappear among the peaks and valleys of the journey, and, contrary to its predecessor’s association with winter, the perfect soundtrack to a hazy, gentle summer day (or night).

And in those valleys- those nooks and crannies- there is a wealth of sounds and subtlety to discover. Take “Calgary”- which seemed at first simple and sparse, but upon closer inspection reveals motion and details amongst the sway. You’ll notice the gentle but building drums, electronic squiggles, and churning, metallic guitars, before they all disappear into the acoustic coda. It’s enough to make you forget the little niggles you might otherwise have- and despite all those niggles, there is no doubt in my mind that, as Vernon’s indicated, this is a truly honest album- and while that doesn’t make it critically unassailable, it does make it brave, and a tremendous statement from a much more promising artist than I would have thought even days ago.

Burst Apart

Sun, 12 Jun 2011 17:02:55 -0400

A friend invited me to see the Antlers at CMJ 2009. I hadn’t heard of them, and I remember checking out a few songs from their then current release, Hospice, on their myspace page, prior to the show. They seemed mostly pleasant and folky, but one song stood out from the rest: “Sylvia” opened with a unstable, tonal buzz, with delicate guitars and voice leading into a massive crescendo: layers of soaring, emotive vocals, fuzz, and pounding drums forming a wall of sound reminiscent of lo-fi shoegaze.

The cathartic blast of “Sylvia” was exciting, but seemed somewhat out of character with the other songs I’d sampled. Seeing them live provided my assumptions largely wrong. That night, the Antlers were a fiery burst of explosive guitar and keyboards, pounding drums, and the stunning vocals of Peter Silberman. What sounded staid and quiet on record proved a loud, cathartic, living and breathing organism on stage. Everything about them that night made them seem a band hungry to prove themselves, with the musical chops to back it up.

As I spent more time with Hospice, it began to unfold. The metaphorical theme of abusive relationship between hospice worker and terminally-ill patient grew into a life of its own, and the Antlers’ exceptional way with melody and song structure emerged through the fog of its relatively lo-fi production. Rather than being burdened by its conceptual weight, it seemed to lift it away, creating an invigorating and empowering listening experience.

Burst Apart, the Antlers’ follow-up full length, trails an album that evoked strong emotional connections with many of its fans; Hospice was a uniquely powerful experience, such that any effort to repeat it would almost certainly have led to failure. Fortunately, the Antlers have attempted no such thing; though the moods and sounds of Burst Apart share common elements with Hospice, they’ve managed to create a unique and separate collection of songs, a confident effort in finding a way forward from their previous breakthrough work.

The problem is, it’s just not that good. The Antlers, who self-produced Burst Apart, made it immaculate and moody- set in this frame, the influence of Radiohead circa Ok Computer or even In Rainbows becomes clear. Rolling basslines, chiming guitars, clean, metronomic drums, and ascendant vocals abound. The album sounds really good, but the songs themselves frequently fail to follow suit. Beyond cathartic subject matter, the Antlers proved on Hospice that they could write great songs. Unfortunately, on Burst Apart they seem frequently content to ride a singular groove for the duration. Sometimes, as on “Rolled Together” or “French Exit”, it works, but other times, as on “Parentheses”, and “I Don’t Want Love”, things fall short.

Seeing the Antlers perform live again, just under a month ago, mirrored my feelings for the new album almost exactly: beautiful and technically proficient, but missing something of the core that drew me to the band in the first place. I can’t completely place it, but it feels like the band is in stasis. The Antlers’ close Burst Apart with the most Hospice-like song on the album, “Putting the Dog to Sleep”- and I think it’s one of the best. It’s one of the few songs on Burst Apart that structurally and lyrically create something more than just a few fleeting images. It reminds me that the Antlers are capable of a lot more.

Blood Pressures

Wed, 18 May 2011 00:01:00 -0400

The Kills’ latest, Blood Pressures, is a good album, but it’s one I’m a little mixed on. I tend to write about things I really like here, for two reasons. When I set up this site, I wanted it to be something of a series of letters to the things I love, and, by extension, to the people who read what I write. It’s really easy to be negative and to try to make yourself look better by tearing things down. There’s too much of that online, I think, and although I know there is a place for careful, measured criticism that wants to make things better, I’ve tried to focus more on positive reinforcement. The other reason is more incidental: in attempting to encourage my muse (or whatever you want to call it), I’ve found it much easier to write about things I’m excited about. I want to write about Blood Pressures, because there are some things I really like about it, though in comparison to their other efforts, it pales.

I can’t help but feel like something that got me excited about the Kills in the first place is missing from this release. That’s not necessarily a bad thing- bands have every right to evolve over time. I don’t want to hear the same band make the same album, over and over again¹, and the Kills haven’t done that.

Domino’s promotional copy for the album talks about “a new thoughtfulness and depth”, which seems to translate at least partly to slower average tempos. One other thing the promotional copy mentions is “a fuller sound”, which is, at first blush, a bit disappointing. A spare, dry sound has always served them well. Take “No Wow”, the first, eponymous track off their 2004 release. It opens with a pitter-patter, galloping and glitching as muted guitar begins to intrude, alongside Allison Mossheart’s contained croon. Throughout the song, both voice and guitar slowly gain force and volume, finally joined by Jamie Hince’s vocals in the climax. The lyrics repeat, but the intensity continues to grow, though VV and Hotel are always holding something back, lest the full force of their emotions destroy us all.

Even as the song builds, the sounds are sparse and elemental: guitar, drum machine, vocals. This stark sound continues throughout, accompanied by a tension always boiling just below the surface. A lot of this tension comes from romantic disillusionment and the feelings associated therewith- a theme the Kills hit repeatedly and unapologetically, not only on this album, but throughout their discography.

In addition to relationship drama, the Kills traffic heavily in a specific kind of cool- Matthew Perpetua described it as the “‘sexy fucked-up rock star’ look”. You can see that in their press photos, and you can hear it in their music, for sure. Why do I buy their pose while rejecting one like Bon Jovi’s? The raw elements aren’t entirely different, but the presentation could hardly be farther removed. Where Bon Jovi is exultant, overblown, and emoting, the Kills are restrained, detached, and wounded.

On No Wow, everything seems stripped to it’s barest elements- the instruments, the voices, the heart- nothing is hidden, but everything is skeletal- bits and pieces of blues and rock, assembled into the kind of machine that’s much too old to come with the much-needed booklet of safety warnings. In this sense, their appeal for me is not entirely different from Califone’s, in that they take well worn American music traditions and recontextualize them as something more mechanical, making their sound something of a time warp between the old and the new.

All this is not entirely lost on Blood Pressures, but most of the elements I’ve described above are reduced. The mix is fuller, the drums a bit more conventional, the vocals not quite so desperate. Allison and Jamie are actually singing, now, which is ok, but a little less exhilarating than their previous work. The album between No Wow and Blood Pressures, Midnight Boom, isn’t as spare as the former, either, but it felt more disjointed, a little weirder, and occasionally, more ecstatic.

What it seems that both No Wow and Midnight Boom have that Blood Pressures lacks is the aforementioned tension (which is strange, given the latter’s title). It’s cheap and easy to make unsubstantiated claims that Allison Mossheart’s other band and Jamie Hince’s love life have distracted them from their work with the Kills, or at least scratched some itch previously left irritated, but even easier (though still unsubstantiated, at least on my part) when the music sounds much more relaxed. The Kills used to sounds like they were fighting for something, and maybe now, on Blood Pressures, they’ve actually found whatever that was.

There’s a bit of menacing swagger on songs like “Satellite” and “DNA”, and the Kills wear the laid-back, almost upbeat vibe on “Baby Says” pretty well. It’s ultimately weird to hear Jamie and Allison take their turns at balladry, with “Wild Charms” and “The Last Goodbye”, respectively; I wouldn’t call these failures, but they don’t kill, either. “Heart is a Beating Drum” does the best job of capturing their previous high-wire desperation, both in lyrics and composition. The tempo is a bit higher and the percussion inventive, with what sounds like ping-pong balls clattering to the beat (not entirely unlike Autechre, though much more accessible). “Pots and Pans” uses a metallic, buzzing acoustic guitar and a lo-fi thump to summon the ghosts of blues(wo)men past- to great effect, as the Kills most satisfying album closer yet. If the Kills are finally getting theirs, I’m glad, and on this song at least, it pays off.

Not really the same as what I was talking about in my last post- there’s a difference between riffing on a common theme and replicating the past. The Kills certainly have their niche. ↩

Comfortable Blues

Fri, 06 May 2011 16:01:57 -0400

I like and admire Fleet Foxes, but I don’t share the immense love that many others seem to have for the band. They’re certainly talented, and all of their releases to date have been impeccably written, recorded, and produced. For what it’s worth, I haven’t given Helplessness Blues as many listens as I generally would before writing about it,¹ but this recent piece by Tom Ewing does a good job of addressing my feelings about the band, in general.

Fleet Foxes are pretty easy to lump into a “comfort music” category- “pleasant” is one of the first adjectives I’d use to describe them, and is at least part of the reason there’s hesitancy in my endorsement of their music. Ultimately, they seem to me a pretty straight reading of a certain strain of folk, bolstered perhaps by a bit of ‘70s singer-songwriterism. In and of themselves, I don’t find those traditions particularly exciting. Fleet Foxes do manage to transcend their genre limitations from time to time with some really exquisite songs- “White Winter Hymnal” renders a mysterious mix of beauty and horror, and the title track from their new album is another great mélange of, well, helplessness, and hope. Overall, though, it’s a toss up between these guys and John Denver, who has some pretty great songs² too.

What about the other bands that Tom talks about, like The Fall or Stereolab? These are harder to nail into one particular sonic tradition, but have maintained relatively consistent and identifiable sounds throughout their career. Tom talks about the comfort of a new release by the former, and Matthew Perpetua describes the latter in a similar way here. Bradford Cox has shared similar sentiments. Me? I’d pick Califone. I’ve previously written about a track from their latest album, All My Friends Are Funeral Singers, which is, by conservative accounts, their fifth full length. I could talk about their experimental excursions into music for films, their blending of rock, folk, loops, radio decay, and found sound, and the differing character of their various releases, but you know a Califone album when you hear it. They’ve carved out a very distinctive niche, but stayed pretty well in that niche throughout their career.

Overall, I’m happy with the variations they’ve pulled from that vein. I imagine many people feel the same way about Fleet Foxes, even at this early point in their career. It is interesting to imagine how any of the bands I’ve mentioned might go about reinventing themselves, but I don’t know that they should. It’s something of a high wire act; not every band pulls it off, though it’s thrilling when they do- and not every band needs to. While I’m often draw to music that sounds unlike anything I’ve heard before, there’s something to be said for consistency, too.

Not that there’s an exact number- perhaps ten is a good estimate. ↩
Apologies for the goofy video. ↩

An Open Letter to Amy Andronicus

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 17:17:00 -0400

Can I call you Amy? I haven’t actually been to any of your shows. I can’t remember exactly how I can across your tumblr, other than it being linked from someone else’s. I am a fan of Titus Andronicus, though perhaps a casual one. You’re definitely on the list of bands I’d really like to see but just haven’t gotten around to (one I’m trying to shorten considerably).

I’m writing for a couple reasons. One, because I think you’re an excellent writer. Although I do occasionally indulge in the rapid-fire link/meme (re)posting that is so much of the internet today, what really moves me, and what I’m always on the lookout for, is people who are taking the time to put together something more substantial- people who are really writing, and saying interesting, intelligent, and impactful things. Thanks for being one of those people.

I guess “impactful” is sort of made-up corporate speak, but I like it. It feels more forceful than “emotional” or “moving”, and I think it’s appropriate in this context. I really admire your desire and your ability to do a specific type of violence in your writing and art. I’m speaking specifically about your piece on gender performance and power in rock music. I hope it’s fair to characterize it that way: as violence against complacency and conformity and the damaging forces of stereotypes, to name a few.

The other reason I’m writing is because I identify so strongly with what you have to say. I know the feeling of life as a performance, of trying to be what other people want or expect you to be. I know that fear of exposing yourself for who you really are battling against the deep desire to do the very same thing. As an individual aspiring and attempting to write, record, and perform my own music, I know that feeling of wanting to be so much stronger, better, and more determined than I am or at least seem to be. I continue to fight my own hang ups and inhibitions and attempt to make sense of the mess of my myriad influences, both those I aspire to emulate and those I want to throw off. I connect with what you’re saying, even as a white, heterosexual male. I’m not saying our circumstances are the same, but some of the underlying themes must be.

This is a process that takes time and repeated attempts to capture the same old bulwarks, over and over again. Slowly, I’m starting to see. I’m realizing that differences that made me stand out and feel so uncomfortable growing up can actually be weapons for good, if only I can learn how to wield them. I’m looking upward, and I’m moving forward. This piece of writing you’ve shared has been a small but not insignificant signpost continuing to point me in the right direction.

Thank you for that.

Jeff

P.S. I’ve been listening to the new tUnE-yArDs while writing. It’s been somewhat distracting, but appropriate. It really does feel like she’s laying it all out, all her quirks and flaws and inconsistencies. I find it all a little uncomfortable, but some of the best music is.

P.P.S. It wasn’t until just now I fully realized you’ve just done something similar for Conor Oberst. All of the above still stands.

The King Of Limbs

Wed, 13 Apr 2011 16:28:27 -0400

It’s a little daunting to try to review or even comment on the latest Radiohead album, The King of Limbs. I wasn’t the first kid on the Radiohead train. I didn’t think too much of the the earlier singles- Creep, or even Karma Police. Thom Yorke’s voice was just too much for me at the time. But when we talk about album releases as an event, the leak/release¹ of Kid A onto file sharing networks is pretty much the album event in my life. As a college student just discovering Napster and looking for new music to explore, I had noticed all the hype surrounding the album’s leak and decided to check it out. I don’t remember if my actual hearing of the album came before or after the review, but it was right around this time I started reading Pitchfork (née Pitchfork Media), and came across this review. Re-reading it now, it’s bombastic and perhaps a little ridiculous, but this was the reaction that the album provoked in so many. For me- and I’ve been thinking for the last few days how to put this into words- it is perhaps the only album I’ve heard that was both completely foreign and completely perfect, right from the start.

So many of the albums I’ve grown to love were disorienting first listens, so it’s hard to explain how Kid A fell into place so effortlessly. It doesn’t make much sense. I wasn’t listening to anything like it at the time- late nineties emo and maybe a bit of drum and bass are the closest touchstones I could muster. So when Brent DiCrescenzo said (in that aformentioned review) that Kid A was “an album which completely obliterates how albums, and Radiohead themselves, will be considered”, and that “comparing this to other albums is like comparing an aquarium to blue construction paper”, it really felt like it was true. All the processing of Thom Yorke’s voice- all the chopping and reversing and echoes- had the strange affect of sanding down that edge that had turned me from the band earlier, and I was able to really appreciate the beautiful gift he’d been given. I played it, night after night. I left it on repeat in my dorm when I left the room. it seemed like the perfect soundtrack to my life at the time, this organic, soul-filled form of electronic music I’d never known could exist.

I downloaded b-sides. I got copies of Ok Computer and The Bends, and came to understand them as the masterpieces they are. I came to love the disjointed contrast of Amnesiac to the perfect flow of its predecessor. I saw Radiohead perform in the Summer of 2001 at Suffolk Downs. When Thom did his crazy dance to “Idioteque”, I knew exactly the rhythms he was moving to. When a jetliner passed over in the middle of “Paranoid Android”, I was in awe.

Neither Hail to the Thief nor In Rainbows could equal earlier albums, but I loved them nonetheless, both loaded with great songs that other bands would kill for. The deluxe edition of In Rainbows has the unique distinction of being the first vinyl album I purchased- the LPs would sit for a while before I actually had a player to play them on, but it remains the most nicely-packaged piece of music I have ever bought. All this to say, there is a whole heck of a lot wrapped up in my experience and fandom of Radiohead. I can’t think of another band that I have been a fan of for so long, and that has continued to put out compelling music throughout.

This is supposed to be about The King of Limbs. But this is the environment any new Radiohead album is born into: a mass of past history, experiences, and high expectations from a whole lot of fans. It’s certainly not easy to manage those outside pressures, though I wouldn’t go so far as to say we should feel sorry for them. Long time Radiohead fans, myself included, also tend to be pretty forgiving, willing to follow the band wherever it might go.

If anything, it seems like Radiohead has been working hard to lower expectations for a while now. Few would argue that Hail to the Thief is among their best works, and although some people really love In Rainbows, it’s certainly not as ambitious as earlier albums. It seems like a lot of people feel the same about The King of Limbs, and in some respects I agree. By Radiohead standards, this seems a slighter album. Eight songs, thirty-seven and a half minutes divided into two distinct “sides”. But it’s not just the length- the songs seem simpler and more subdued.

But in a way, it’s a beautiful thing. In fact, this is the most “beautiful” Radiohead album, as a whole, since Kid A. There’s something more relaxed and natural about The King of Limbs than even In Rainbows, which is ostensibly Radiohead’s accessible, pop album- though it never felt like a natural fit to me.² If Radiohead has indeed spent several albums trying to escape the overhanging legacy of their “classics”, The King of Limbs is the first time they’ve really succeeded. It feels to me like Radiohead just being Radiohead, finally free from the pressures of living up to their previous works.

It’s useful to talk about The King of Limbs in relation to some of the criticism it’s received. Does it sound like a Thom Yorke solo album? Maybe at first listen. But give it a bit of time, and the rest of the band begins to appear- Ed and Jonny’s guitars, Phil’s drums, Colin’s (stunning) bass work- not to mention Jonny’s orchestrations, especially on the spacious and beautiful “Codex”. Everything’s a bit more subdued, but remains extremely dense in the first half, and relentlessly technical throughout. If it sounds at first like a mostly electronic album, it’s because every piece and performance has been assembled so perfectly.

Is this a really difficult album? By Radiohead standards, no. Especially not the second half, which seems as accessible as anything they’ve done, if a little less rockish. Is it overly indebted to dubstep, Flying Lotus, and the like? While it’s easy to draw that line, it seems to me that Radiohead is doing something unique with these influences- a synthesis of their own history and that of their contemporaries. Some have drawn connection between The King of Limbs and earlier works, particularly Amnesiac. I’d call this is their best work since that post-Kid A peak. This is the band firing on all cylinders but, also, growing up. We should all look so good, after 26 years.

Until I looked into it, I was under the impression the band was upset about the album appearing on file sharing networks before it’s release. Maybe not. ↩
Yeah, I think In Rainbows is generally overrated. I’ll try to let it slide. ↩

Post Everything

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 22:51:01 -0400

I’ve even surprised myself with the fondness I have for the video for “Friday”, the song from Rebecca Black and Ark Music Factory that’s recently created quite a stir online. There’s a lot to like about the song (really!) but I think ultimately what sells me on it is how close it comes to being a perfectly generic teen pop song, but is pushed just off kilter with its strange and slightly confusing lyrics. It traffics in an entirely predicable mode musically and visually, but it somehow tweaks the formula just enough to make it almost endlessly interesting, and even (if we are charitable enough) a critique on the cookie-cutter nature of large segments of the music industry. We joke about the existential dilemma of which seat Ms. Black can take, but these quirks are what moves the song out of the realm of every other song about the weekend ever written into something which transcends the archetype.

I have similar feelings for Destroyer’s latest, Kaputt. Musically, there is little new ground tread. In fact, at first blush it sounds like a lot of music I would have purported to hate not long ago: ‘80s smooth jazz, yacht rock, Kenny G. But, again, something is askew. I suppose the degree to which you “get” Destroyer, or certainly their latest, is predicated on the degree to which you believe there is that something slightly off in all of this. When Dan Bejar sings about “chasing some girls- alright, chasing cocaine” on the title track, it doesn’t feel quite right. There is something dangerous and lascivious about the whole idea, but there is also an undercurrent of sad, almost pathetic fantasy, especially when accompanied by the video for the song. This, I think, is a big piece of what makes some folks really passionate about Destroyer: it’s the sense that he’s achieved such a mastery of the tropes of rock and pop that he is able to bend and twist them into something familiar yet different, something oblique and layered in unexpected ways. This is not that different from Rebecca Black’s Friday, though it is possible the results are much more inadvertent coming from Ark’s songwriting team.

And, as much as I’m pleased and amused to find common ground between a song that’s been called “truly, undeniably awful” and an album at least one critic has referred to as a “STONE CLASSIC”, that’s not really the point. What I really found fascinating, in both of these cases, is the way both have somehow evaded my traditional genre barriers to become music that I’ve enjoyed and listened to a quite a lot more than I initially expected I would.

There’s been a lot of talk about how quickly trends and eras are recycled in the internet age, to the point where we’re devouring and spitting out styles faster than ever before. We could debate the pluses and minuses, but if we’ve reached the point where everything and nothing is new, where does that leave us? Perhaps, in a really good place, where we can throw away all our stigmas and preconceived notions of good and bad culture and take each piece of art we encounter on its own, individual merit. Post everything doesn’t sound too bad to me.

Have One on Me

Sat, 05 Feb 2011 16:15:00 -0500

I’m still trying to figure out my feelings Joanna Newsom’s latest (triple!) album, Have One on Me. I certainly took to her first two more quickly. The Milk-Eyed Mender is more immediate, more joyous and filled with genuine (if mostly harp-based) pop songs. Ys is more orchestrated, more fantastic, more mystical, and despite the superior length of Have One on Me, more epic. Her latest seems the most grounded, the earthiest, and the least oblique of the three.

Two thousand ten was a weird year for music, for me, but only the latest in a series. Two thousand and eight found me struggling with its role in my life and taking a break from a lot of what I’d enjoyed over the previous few years. Two thousand and nine saw me trying to catch up on everything I’d missed in 2008, and 2010 felt like the year the dam broke: when the glut of music I wanted to take in fully overwhelmed my ability to do so. Enter the aforementioned album, which though it arrived early in the year, still made a presumptuously large claim on my already limited listening time.

I picked up the vinyl right around its release; six sides seemed like the ideal way to process such a quantity of song. But what I’ve learned through my foray into vinyl is that although it can provide a pretty great listening experience, it’s not ideal for the casual listening which, sadly, composes the bulk of my listening time these days. I gave it a couple listens, but it spent a lot of time sitting, along with my other LPs. I finally picked it it up on CD just recently.¹

After the first, the early details of Joanna Newsom’s albums have seemed like awful cliches, potential disasters of Stonehenge-sized² proportions. A heavily orchestrated album of five epic harp-folk compositions, with an average length over ten minutes? A triple album with most of the songs over six?³ In lesser hands, similar forms have proven unwieldy. However, Like Ys, Have One on Me shows Ms. Newsom fully capable of sustaining such weight. I’d be hard pressed to claim than any of her latest seems unformed, hastily arranged, or subpar. Still, I’m not quite sure how to process it.

Have One on Me seems Joanna Newsom’s most ordinary work, and in a way, I’m both drawn in and repelled by that aspect. The sincerity of emotion in her previous works has never been in doubt, but there was a sense of fancy that that seems missing, or at least subdued, in her latest. Earlier, I called this album earthy, but maybe “earthbound” is more appropriate. Of the three, it seems the most concerned with the domestic, the details of the day to day, with love, and with location. In a sense, I mourn the loss of the more colorful elements of her previous work, though there is a comfortable familiarity here.

And, as much as 2010 was unusual for me musically, it was even more jarring as a whole. I’ve grappled with the effects of disconnect, and felt a great deal of unsettledness as I’ve sought to pursue the things that truly move me. It hasn’t been easy, and the moments of peace have been few. I’ve longed for and even enjoyed brief moments of domestic simplicity, but they have been rare. Have One on Me feels like a respite. I was reading this post on dating bibliophiles earlier today when the following line grabbed me: “The world isn’t enough for us, so we need something more.”

Yeah.

I’m not going to fully explore this here, but the point is that I feel that way a lot, and one of the ways I address that is through music. I can momentarily satisfy a lot of these felt needs through the right words and/or melody. So the question becomes: how much of this is healthy? When does it become too much? When does does it pacify those desires, when does it stir them up, and which is better? The fact is, no matter how many “life-changing” songs I hear, the same desires remain.

I can’t pretend I’m completely cognizant of all the cause and effect, but I know there have been many times that a song has given me hope that the things that I’m feeling are real, that I’m not alone, and that it’s worthwhile to keep up the fight. The best parts of Have One on Me can do that. And that’s why, though I’m still digesting it, and there are parts I’m not sure that like, and I’ve spent more time with a number of other albums, I’m wondering if it might be my favorite from last year.

It’s not just the music and lyrics, either; it’s the sheer audacity to release a project of this magnitude, and succeed. There are others who did something similar in 2010; those are great albums, too. But I think it’s the universal normalcy of Have on One Me that I want, at the moment.

I wondered recently if CD sales have dropped so low that when I buy an album, the artist actually notices, and wonders who that person is. ↩
I understand the challenge of making size comparisons here. Not actual physical size, ok? ↩
Though to be fair, as Mark Richardson pointed out in his Pitchfork review, it’s about the same length as Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. ↩

New Years

Tue, 04 Jan 2011 00:44:00 -0500

Growing up, I wasn’t the most coordinated kid. You always hear about the gawky, awkward teenager, but I’m pretty sure my gawky, awkward phase extended a good bit farther, in both directions. It’s debatable whether I’ve really gotten past it now. I was reminded of this fact this morning after a slightly uncomfortable encounter with some black ice on a walk in the park. Of course, my first thought was “Did anybody see me? And how ridiculous did I just look?” But I managed to remember: I hadn’t fallen. I was still upright. There was a moment of uncertainly, but I had recovered, and was continuing down the path. And it made me think.

This wasn’t the first time I’ve said to myself, “all the falling you did as kid made you better at falling, and better at recovering from near-falls”. But it got me thinking about the circumstance of my life, and especially those things I’d once regarded as faults or failings- ways that I felt I didn’t measure up to those around me, others expectations or the examples that they set. “Why can’t I be more confident like [so-and-so]?” “Why don’t I have a plan like [this guy]? “Why aren’t I coordinated like [she] is?”

I started to contemplate what I’ve learned from all the things I’ve struggled with, all my insecurities and shortcomings and weaknesses. These are things that have caused me a lot of grief over the years, like nails digging in under the skin. The damage done is undeniable. But what has come in the aftermath, the recovery, and even in the downfall and destruction, is something amazing, just as beautiful, if not more, than my “best” moments. Just as clumsiness taught me better how to handle myself in physically awkward and even dangerous situations, these other faults and failings have taught me to be flexible, to be humble, to be slower to speak and quicker to listen. What was intended to harm was also intended for good.

It’s with a small measure of clarity that I begin to realize this now. My struggles are ongoing; I have not arrived. It is only in my best moments that I can see this vista clearly. But slowly, those moments become more frequent, and the things I am seeking after seem nearer and nearer. I have not arrived; there are far more struggles to come. But I begin to realize: my whole life has prepared me for this. I don’t know what is to come; there will likely be failure and disappointment that comes as much, if not more, than success.

I love stories of redemption; the opportunity to leave the past behind and start anew is something that resonates deep within my soul. There millions of stories like this, in one form or another; maybe more. But life is rarely so clean and concise as the stories we tell. My own road to redemption has been messy, long, and even excruciating at times, but I am still moving forward. I haven’t given up on the call placed upon my life, nor the one who has placed it there. I don’t know exactly what that will look like, or where I’ll end up when all the dust settles- if it even settles at all. I do, I truly believe, that in the end “all will be made well”, but I don’t know how exactly how we’ll get there. And I’m more and more ok with that.

This life is a journey; it’s not an easy one, or always a fun one, or necessarily what we want it to be. But it is beautiful, and full, and vibrant; even in the darkness, even when we can’t see where we are going at all. As this new year begins, I want to take the best of these good things I have been given, no matter how I’ve received them, and make the most of this life. Now. Here. Today. What I can do may be small, but even the smallest spark can incite the largest flame.

Happy new years. It’s never too late to start.

Alternative Nation

Wed, 08 Dec 2010 23:27:50 -0500

I’ve been reading the “Whatever Happened To Alternative Nation?” articles at the Onion A.V. Club. In the most recent article, mostly about Kurt Cobain, Steve Hyden mentions himself as 11 years younger than Kurt Cobain; that would make me 4 years younger than Steve. I was 12, in April 1994, when Kurt Cobain shot himself. It didn’t mean that much to me, really- except to recognize it was a big deal to a lot of people around my age. I remember Nirvana getting pretty popular in the year or so before hand, and various friends starting to get into them. I was (in teenage years) significantly younger than Steve Hyden during the years of “Alternative Nation”, and although I can read the articles now with a certain knowing nostalgia, my experiences at the time were certainly different.

The underground versus mainstream debate addressed in Mr Hyden’s fourth article would have been almost entirely foreign to me, those days. All I knew was MTV (they still played videos then! quite a lot actually) and rock radio: Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Smashing Pumpkins: these were as edgy/underground/alternative as it got. I think the Boston radio market was pretty decent at one point, though I feel like I came in on the tail end of that. Though, at the time, I felt more on the outside looking in, here are some thoughts from the era.

Nirvana kind of freaked me out. Ok, most of these bands probably did on some level, but Nirvana seemed the scariest of the bunch. Plus they had that naked baby on the cover of their one album, and the naked- well, naked and skinless- angel on the cover of that other one. Messed up, right? I liked “Lithium”, even though it talked about having a friend in your head and finding God and I wasn’t sure if it was all a joke or serious or what. It was intense, and sad, and somehow, even just entering my teens, I related.

Bush seemed pretty intense, too, if not so raw. They didn’t really arrive on the scene until after Nirvana was gone, but they seemed at least as serious, if a bit more shiny. Songs about the chemicals and flies and albums called “Razorblade Suitcase”- I mean come on; that seems pretty serious. I guess Gavin Rossdale was attractive or something? Uggh, he looked like Jared Leto circa “My So Called Life”.

I actually felt like I could discover new music and new sounds on the radio in the nineties. Rock radio, even. I mean, admittedly, my musical education, at least of anything post-1960s, was pretty insignificant at the time, but to my novice ears, it seemed like there was always something new arriving: a new band, a new sound, a new album. Ska. Punk. Electronica. Grunge. Hard Rock. Maybe it’s just the jaded old man talking, but things seemed pretty good- not necessarily great, mind you- but pretty good, then.

Looking back now, Smashing Pumpkins feel like a gateway drug into lately nineties emo in college. The combination of prettiness and loudness, psychedelic rock and shimmering clean guitars, and the moaning- it was a potent and enticing concoction to my young and mopey mind.

I’m not sure how to explain my feelings on Pearl Jam. They seemed pretty cool on one level, but I didn’t get into them until later, and then only a little. They were mopey, too, but a certain kind of mopey I couldn’t really support. (See also: Candlebox and a million other pseudo-grunge sound-alikes, continuing all the way to Nickleback.)

In my teenage perception now filtered through years of nostalgia, Soundgarden seemed like the epitome of rock gods. Those humongous guitars? The songwriting chops? Steve Hyden points to an article extolling the virtues of the Stone Temple Pilots, but for my money, Soundgarden had them beat. The “Black Hole Sun” video was incredibly creepy , no doubt, and for me, one of the most memorable videos of the era, and, again, oh so serious. That seemed to be a quality I was looking for in my music, and I suppose that continues today. I just watched it now, and it’s still really creepy, although I suppose it makes more sense now. A weird, melty American apocalypse- genius! “Keep it off My Wave”? “Spoonman”? These are classics, in my book. I’ve a particular fondness for “Keep it off My Wave”, even though it sounds a bit pieced together now.

I just listened to almost all the Stone Temple Pilots videos on the MTV site. Perhaps swayed by the aforementioned article, there was a ounce of unresolved sympathy stirred, as if I’d been meaning to reconsider their place in the canon. Maybe it was the unrequited intention to buy more than one of their albums at different times that brought me to it, but it turns out there were only a few songs I really still enjoy. “Interstate Love Song” sounds like a classic still today, transcending it’s time- nothing too innovative, but taking its place in the blues-rock canon. “Lady Picture Show” is remarkably Beatles-esque, in a good way. “Vasoline” is pretty good, not to be confused with “Glycerine” (see Bush, above). I still have no idea what Scott Weiland is saying in the chorus of “Trippin’ on a Hole in a Paper Heart”, but it’s probably better that way. Watching the videos now, Scott Weiland must have seemed incredibly cool in my teenage years: like the kind of guy I wished I could be but definitely couldn’t. Their videos are strikingly weird but fun: “Days of the Week” is particularly compelling, even if the song isn’t.

What about Rage against the Machine? Listening to their songs now, they definitely had something to say, and it’s unfair to dismiss them as just another in a long line of folks selling anti-capitalism. But when I first heard them, they just seemed foreign- strange, like my brain didn’t quite know how to process what I was hearing. I didn’t listen to anything resembling rap at the time, except maybe the Beastie Boys, and I certainly didn’t like them much. I guess they sounded pretty intense. And really, Tom Morello was a pretty innovative guitarist, and Zack de la Rocha had a good thing going, too. But most of that realization was after the fact. Today, I’d recognize, for example, “Bulls On Parade” as a pretty excellent song, although it still feels pretty similar to “People of the Sun”. Though you gotta respect the way he says “tobacc-oh!” in the latter. Regardless, we should all appreciate the cover of Evil Empire. I definitely didn’t know what they were actually talking about, I just had some vague idea they were “revolutionary”. Perhaps that’s my loss.

The one Beastie Boys exception was “Sabotage”. Epic video. I had no idea who Spike Jones was at the time, but he certainly knew what he was doing. Probably one of the first rap-rock songs I got into, more so that Rage against the Machine.

So I said I liked my music serious, but Green Day, at least back in the day, seemed sort of the opposite. Not quite the pop-punk jokers that Blink-182 would be, but the band playing in a Sanitarium in the “Basket Case” video seemed lighthearted, right? Certainly compared to their more recent rock operas.

And then there was No Doubt. I feel like as a young male in the nineties, you had to have a love hate relationship with No Doubt. I mean, Gwen Stefani was hot, but they had some pretty sappy songs, too. I suppose the love hate relationship, with both No Doubt and Gwen Stefani, continues today. Ok, I really love them and Ms. Stefani unequivocally and that’s why I was making cracks at Gavin Rossdale’s hair. Either way, “Spiderwebs” was good.

This doesn’t even began to cover the lesser bands- take for example, Orange 9mm. I barely knew anything about them- The only song of theirs I remember is “Failure”, which is apparently online at a couple sites, but I can’t get it to play. I’m not sure if I’ve ever heard any of their other songs, but the rosy fondness remains.

So, what to make of all this? There’s really no overarching message here, just a vague tribute to some of the bands that shaped my teenage years. I like to think my tastes have evolved; that they’ve improved and broadened a lot since that time. But the feelings of confusion and disorientation I had when I was first trying to make sense of some of this music- yes, even this music- is another thing I’m strangely nostalgic for- it’s harder and harder to find. The more music you’re exposed to, the less often you’ll find something truly surprising, and I kind of miss that. It doesn’t happen so often, anymore.

Sanity Addendum

Sun, 14 Nov 2010 18:58:09 -0500

I just watched the uncut interview that Rachel Maddow did with Jon Stewart this past week; to both of their credits, I think it does the best job that I’ve seen of explicating the point that Jon Stewart was trying to make with his and Steven Colbert’s rally, and of the departures points between his perspective and that of Rachel Maddow and, presumably, of MSNBC. (You should really watch the whole thing. I’ll wait.)

The most crucial difference in my mind is clearest in the last minutes of the interview, where Jon Stewart asserts that there is a difference between true journalism and what he does; that there is a “high-mindedness” that should accompany journalism which does not apply to his works of comedy and satire. That Rachel Maddow does not see this difference seems to me a distillation of everything that is wrong with at least, the “liberal” news outlets today. Jon Stewart and the Daily Show do take some cheap shots; is that ideal? Maybe not, but do I find it excusable in a comedic context. There is an outlet, an escape valve which I believe is inherent in comedy that allows things to not be taken too seriously.

Applying the same type of cheap shots (an example in the interview is referring to and riffing on Tea Party activists as “teabaggers”) within the context of a news organization is very different. There is no equivalent escape valve in this context; what could be dismissed with a wink and a smirk from a good natured comedian is delivered, and much more likely to be accepted, as fact from one casting themselves as a journalist. Are there people out there who watch and receive the Daily Show on the same level as cable news? I’m sure there are. But I would stake that the onus lies on the individual, in this case; that it is the viewer who is distorting the medium into something it is not. When Rachel Maddow equates her role as a journalist with that of a comedian, she, in my opinion, is the one doing the distorting.

In my mind, the separation of these roles seems quite natural, though they have certainly been shaped and refined by society over many, many years. Jon Stewart makes reference to this when he talks about “the footsteps of [his] ancestors” in comedy, and states that the realm in which he operates has a long and established history. He says “the box that I’m in has always existed. The box that you’re talking about, I think, is new.” He doesn’t directly criticize this new box, in fact, he says he isn’t worried if what he does and what MSNBC does are perceived in the same way, but it seems to me thate only logical conclusion from the points he makes is that there is something, on some level, wrong with the new box.

As I’ve already stated, I believe one of those flaws is the fact that Rachel Maddow doesn’t seem to realize her box is any different from the Jon Stewart/Daily Show box. But maybe they are the same. If not, what’s the difference? Again, the fact that MSNBC portrays itself as a real news organization is a part of it. I know that some would argue that objectivity is impossible, that it’s a false goal we shouldn’t even attempt to achieve. I would agree that true and complete objectivity is probably impossible, and that it’s something we as humans will only occasionally stumble over. Still, I think that at our best, we can get pretty close, and I think that it’s worth fighting for. That many groups calling themselves news organizations have largely given up this goal is quite discouraging to me.

True confessions here: I don’t watch any cable news, for the occasional clip online, but I think I have a feeling of the tone and content of the various networks, so in this discussion, I’m mostly going off that. I’m certainly open to thoughtful rebuttals in the comments. I will digress, however, to say that although I question whether it should be called a news organization at all, MSNBC at least acknowledges its bias, if only obliquely. That Fox News calls itself “fair and balanced” is laughable, and I think the Daily Show makes that clear. I’d even go so far as to call Fox News dangerous, as the network presents a good deal of opinion as fact and is prone to making slant accusations that a significant segment of the country accepts as gospel. Really, though, MSNBC does the same thing, if more subtly. Where Fox News says “this is not my opinion, this is fact”, MSNBC implicitly says “this is my opinion, but it’s the right opinion.” The ratio of fact to opinion may be higher than Fox News, but, in it’s essence, it’s the same thing.

When I really stop to think about Fox News, it is more discouraging to me than MSNBC, not only because what they are doing is worse, but because I really believe that the “conservative” perspective has a lot to bring to the table. It saddens me that so many of it’s proponents in media and politics serve only to reinforce the worst straw man arguments against it’s ideas. At the same time, in some sense, at the present, I see it as a lost cause. That’s not to say it’s hopeless and impossible to change what Fox News and the “conservative” moment is doing, but for me, personally, I don’t even know how to begin. In a sense, I’ve written them off for now, at least until I’ve got some better ideas. It’s more interesting and it feels more productive right now to engage Jon Stewart’s critique of the “liberal” media because people actually listen to what he has to say, and also because until people realize that the problem is more systemic than just on the right, or for that matter, the left, nothing is going to change.

Though I do take issue with the way they portray themselves, I’m not disputing MSNBC’s or even Fox News’ right to exist, or to say the things they say, in one form or another. I do believe, however, that in both cases, what they are doing is largely detrimental to the country, in the sense that they amplify and polarize the democrat/”liberal” v. republical/”conservative” divide, which, as Jon Stewart says, “…is, in many ways, a funhouse mirror of what actually really matters.” It’s really rare to hear someone in the media saying something like this, so if you decided to skip the interview before, I’d really encourage you to go back and watch it once you’re done here. There’s so much good stuff.

A really striking exchange occurs at about seventeen minutes in, when Jon Stewart questions the coverage of Tea Party activists at town hall meetings versus the coverage of Code Pink activists in their various protests. Specifically, Jon Stewart questions how the Tea Party movement was portrayed:

Maddow: Well my coverage of that was about it being organized. Yeah.

Stuart: But again, your coverage of it was to delegitimize it. That it was actually not real, it was astroturf.

Maddow: No, actually no. My approach to that was to say this is being used as a widespread political tactic by people with a lot of money and a lot of stake in the policy issues and they’re sort of deploying direct action activists in a way that we haven’t seen before.

Isn’t that the same thing? Isn’t she implying that the Tea Party activists were puppets in the hands of the powerful and weathly, somehow “deploy[ed]” like mercenary soldiers to the battlefield? I haven’t see the original coverage, but that sounds like Fox News level aspersions to me. What’s scarier, though, is that she seems completely unaware that she’s doing it. And, maybe that’s what’s really rare about Jon Stewart, that, although he’s opinionated, he doesn’t pretend like he’s got all the answers, or that he’s got everything figured out. What sets him apart from other comedians and even more so from commentators like Rachel Maddow is the humility and grace he shows, even when he’s addressing people and ideas he disagrees with. Take for example his discussion in this interview of President Bush’s decision to use waterboarding to interrogate suspected terrorists- it’s not so much a “defense”, as Rachel Maddow characterizes it in her lead in to the interview, but an attempt to understand the motivations of a person he clearly disagrees with. We talk about those kind of things, you know, “walking a mile in someone else’s shoes”, but we rarely do it. It’s nice to see someone in the media actually put it into practice, and not solely to advance their own interests.

Too often, we use all these tools, including the jokes and dispersions and self-righteous arguments, as cudgels to beat our opponents into submission, as if we just punch them a little harder, or mock them a little more cruelly, they’ll give in and change their minds. At least that’s the better option; I hope we haven’t just completely given up and decided that these “others” are worthless and beyond hope, irreconcilable enemies who must ultimately be destroyed. I think the political climate today is evidence that it doesn’t work; that yelling louder and mocking harder is ineffective, not to mention that it lacks respect for these people who we disagree with, but are fellow humans and, ultimately, a lot like me and you. But I’ve written on that before.

Like I said before, its a really great interview, and that is to the credit of both the interviewer and interviewee. I wish Rachel Maddow understood more of what Jon Steward was trying to say, but she’s allowed him to have a voice, and a reasonable forum in which to express it, and that’s a pretty good start. It’s not an easy stand to take, but I really admire what Jon Stewart is doing, which I feel is principled, though not necessarily popular. I’m sure he’ll lose a few fans for what he’s said. Ultimately, although Jon Stewart and Rachel Maddow probably share a lot of similar opinions, and this interview proves to me that she does do some good work, it’s Mr. Stewart who leaves me with hope for our nation, our world, and its future. And I think that says a lot.

(Housekeeping note: I’ve been hard at work on a “novel” for NaNoWriMo, which is why I haven’t written much here. Things should spin up, at least a bit, in December.)

On Sanity

Tue, 02 Nov 2010 12:25:00 -0400

According to Jon Stewart, there are two ways to report on a rally: “tremendous success or horrendous failure”. There is no middle ground. But the Rally to Restore Sanity (and/or Fear, though there seems to have been much less media attention on Steven Colbert’s more satirical contributions) was ostensibly all about middle grounds, based on the premise that the extremists on either side of the political spectrum do not represent the majority of Americans, and that the sane, reasonable moderates needed an opportunity to express their opinions and represent themselves in the midst of the circus that is our media today.

The more I become familiar with Jon Stewart, the more I like him; I believe he genuinely wants what’s best for this country. He is respectful to the guests on his show even when he disagrees, and although he and his associates do take a cheap shot in the name of comedy from time to time, I find him largely more honest and humble than than the “real” newsmen and newswomen. In the times I’ve watched his show, he’s shown no favor to conservative and republican pundits and politicians, but does not shy from criticizing liberals and democrats either. I don’t agree with him on every issue, but he’s a smart man who is saying a lot of things that need to be said about the media, politics, and American culture at large.

I didn’t attend the rally this past weekend; I’ve only read a few brief accounts of what happened. So, in the spirit of reasonableness, take my comments with a grain of salt. It seems like Jon Stewart, continuing his trend, made a lot of sense: the critique of modern journalism is well-deserved. But, as Jon Stewart hinted in his closing remarks, the media is not the sole source of our problems, only a magnifier. I am a bit worried, though, that people will miss this point. I’d like to think the rally approached the ideals that spurred the love-ins of the ’60s- at least the closest our modern day, irony-laden society will come. I’d like to think it is a step in bridging the real divides that exist among even “reasonable” people in our culture today. And maybe it is. But when I look at a selection of the signs at the rally, I have to hope it is not a representative sampling, because of the number of signs offering condemnations of others’ points of view. I really don’t think this was Jon Stewart’s intention, but if anyone came away from this thinking it was an anti-Tea Party, anti-Sarah Palin, or even anti-Glenn Beck rally, something was lost.

Perhaps the rally is most interesting as a cipher. I’m sure for some people, it was an opportunity to mock the Tea Party movement. For others, it was a rally giving identity to the ‘Obama generation’, or the ‘pragmatists’, the ‘disenchanted’ or maybe the ‘educated’. Although I might, on some level, fall into any of these four groups (or maybe even all five), I’d like to see it differently. I’d like it to be a testament to the hope that we can work together, that we as a nation can reach out and create real dialogue, balance opposing viewpoints, and find solutions to the problems at hand- and that a sense of unity as Americans, and as people, is attainable, even if we disagree. But maybe that’s just me.

Ultimately I see the general mockery and vilification of any group or individual as fundamentally wrong. That is not to say that it’s wrong to utilize humor in calling out or challenging others’ ideas- in fact I think it’s an incredibly powerful and valuable tool in that regard. It’s when that humor is combined with belittlement or distain that we lose our way. The Daily Show is not perfect in this regard, but it does a pretty good job. Our culture at large, including the media and the politicians and, yes, the public and you and me, not so much. Jon Stewart has made overtures in this direction, so hopefully we’re getting the message, but I’m not sure; NPR, at least, doesn’t appear to think so.

So, from one outsider’s perspective, it sounds like the rally was a success, but not an unmitigated one. Perhaps Jon Stewart would be proud.

It Gets Better

Fri, 29 Oct 2010 14:29:00 -0400

This life is hard. Seriously. If I had a dollar for every disappointing, painful, awkward, miserable, confused and straight up difficult moment in my life, it would be ridiculous. I.e., that’d be a lot of dollars.

And really, my life has been pretty good.

Some people have it harder. Some are born into extreme poverty, and death is on their door, every day. Some spend their whole lives struggling with an esoteric disease, a mental illness, or a deforming physical malady. Others suffer verbal, social, and physical abuse because of who they are or because of the choices they’ve made.

Some people have a network of family and friends to support them in the hard times, people who understand what they are going through and know how to respond, who they can rely on to lend a helping hand, but others don’t. Differing levels of support abound- today, with the internet and its associated technologies, there are even more ways to build that type of support¹, and likewise, even more to tear it down. The circumstances surrounding the suicide of Tyler Clementi are just one example among many, even in recent weeks.

I am deeply saddened by these events, but I cannot say I am shocked. We like to think we are so enlightened, that years of progress and societal reform have brought us to a place where we should know better. We should, but we don’t. We distance ourselves from these events by saying “Well, certainly, me and my friends, the people around me, we know better. I would never do such a thing.” But the propensity for evil, even unintentional evil, lies deep in each of us. Tweets from the student allegedly responsible for the for the video recording sound like a man oblivious to the emotional damage he is about to wreak. Even with best intentions (and his were certainly not), we can cause incredible damage to those around us. I am reminded of the song “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.”, by Sufjan Stevens. A strangely sympathetic reflection on the serial killer, Stevens ends the song by acknowledging that “…in my best behavior, I am really just like him- look beneath the floorboards, for the secrets I have hid”. We have different checks and balances within our communities, and within our hearts, but the potential for evil is there, and will, at different points in each of our lives, make itself known.

I hope that we will take these recently publicized events seriously. I hope we will be vigilant against violence, in all of its forms, against all people- no matter their appearance, beliefs, or choices, and regardless of whether we approve or disapprove of their behavior. I pray that, presented with the opportunity, we will find a way to intervene and stop this kind of bullying and abuse. I pray that we will find ways to teach others that this is wrong. The sad fact, though, is that the people who can make a difference will not always be around- there is truth in the prototypical bully appearing or acting out just after the parents disappear. We cannot, in our own strength, completely wipe out evil, no matter how hard we try. So the message that it gets better is an important one. We need hope to see past our current circumstances to the future that could be, if we hold on.

At the same time, it doesn’t always get better, especially right away. The It Gets Better Project is most specifically directed at kids in school who are dealing with abuse in relation to the perception of their sexual identities, and I suspect that for most of them, it will get better after they graduate. Sometimes however, it gets worse, even much, much worse. Bullying is only one of innumerable challenges most of us will face throughout the course of our lives. Sometimes, simple hope is not enough; sometimes, only the strongest will survive. This is not natural selection- this is about the choices we make. And the best choice I ever made, the choice which has given me the most strength in the hard times in my own life, was asking Christ into my life. I remember crying out in my bedroom in my high school years, literally singing Psalm 13: “How long will my enemy triumph over me?” More recently, I’ve identified with the stories of Job and Joseph, individuals who lost everything they knew only to be restored and even exalted by God later in life. But these tales only make sense if you believe that the God who is found in them is real. He has proven it to me many times over, and although at times I struggle with it, I do. I am given a deep conviction that although I do not understand it, the hard times I have suffered and continue to suffer are making me stronger and more prepared for what is to come. How can I doubt it? This is the God who gave Horatio Spafford the grace to pen, even after losing his son, his fortune, and his four daughters, “It is Well with My Soul”. I can’t imagine making it so far without him. And although it is a constant battle, I know he is quelling the evil that lies within me, step by step, little by little, giving way to his grace and his life. This is the evil that would lash out at those different than us, that would take advantage of others for our own selfish gains, and even lead us to our own destruction. We cannot win alone.

This hope is available to any who will receive it. One thing I want to make clear, and that I think those of us who identify with Christ have largely failed to express, is that this invitation is extended to everyone- to the losers, the dropouts, the failures, the rejects, those questioning their own identities, and those who have found a home nowhere else. Jesus says “Come. Come as you are, and I will receive you, though the rest of the world turns away.” It will not make your life easy. It is not guaranteed to turn you perfect², beautiful³, or smart⁴⁵. But it is real, and you will have a companion, every step of the way.

It’s really amazing to see the extent to which a community like reddit can band together for (virtually anonymous) members in trouble. Like any community, it’s not without it’s faults, but certainly in this aspect, it is worthy of our respect. ↩
At least not right away. ↩
Although it may change your perception of what beautiful is. ↩
But it will make you wise. ↩
All in due time. ↩

The Age of Adz

Mon, 25 Oct 2010 20:35:00 -0400

I guess because he professes a Christian faith, because I like “indie”¹ music, and because I have an interest in the ways Christians engage outside of existing “Christian” subcultures, I’ve always felt a certain affinity with Sufjan Stevens. I also like his music, but I don’t know if my appreciation has gone much deeper than these factors. It’s only recently I’ve come to grips with just how talented he really is, how far and above most mortals in terms of skill and vision he is and has become. It’s also only recently that I’ve done any notable digging into the meaning of his more esoteric (to me at least) lyrics and themes.

So yeah, I don’t really know what he’s talking about in a song like “Jackson”, and my obviously deficient education hasn’t given me much exposure to Saul Alinsky besides the page on Wikipedia. Still, I definitely relate to his songs, the sadness in “Flint (For The Unemployed and Underpaid)”, the wistfulness in “Sister”, the questions raised in “Come On! Feel The Illinoise!”, and the hope and confusion and doubt in “Casimir Pulaski Day”. The kinship I feel with his most recent material, however, is different.

I took the comments he made last year in stride; Sufjan seemed to be questioning a lot of what he had been doing, but I didn’t see him giving up. I worried that there might not be another Sufjan Stevens album per se, but I couldn’t see him giving up music, and I felt like I could relate. Don’t most of us come to point where we wonder, “What’s the point of it all?” Isn’t this a healthy question to ask?

When I heard early versions of new songs on his tour that same fall, I was generally excited. He seemed to be moving beyond the dense concepts of earlier albums, and incorporating new elements into his sound. It was a good thing, and I looked forward to hearing what might come next. Finally, this past August, he released the All Delighted People EP, with it’s epic title song. Here was Sufjan Stevens, taking everything he was feeling and discussing in those earlier comments, and wrestling with it in the midst of a darker, if not entirely divergent, sound. An almost twelve minute ode to existential angst? Yes.

So “All Delighted People” was a step forward, and in some ways, a bridge to his latest full length, The Age of Adz.

Well, in lyrical tone, at least.

The early release of “I Walked” pointed to a much more electronic sound. So too the early release of “Too Much”, my favorite of the new songs I had heard on his previous tour. Gone were the free jazz freakouts, replaced with a lengthy, composed outro, all heavy laden with electronic detritus. I took it in stride, unsure of my early feelings but still confident the final, complete product would silence my doubts. At this point, it’s been close to a month and many listens since I first heard the album. Some albums take time to reveal themselves; I kind of hated Merriweather Post Pavilion on my first couple listens. And I’d say my perception has shifted, but maybe not as much as I hoped.

The strange paradox of The Age of Adz is that it is both a complete reinvention of Sufjan Steven’s sound, and almost entirely predicated on his earlier works. The electronic blips, bleeps, and squelches² are certainly reminiscent of 2001’s Enjoy Your Rabbit, and there were other hints to his late return to electronics in The BQE and his cover of Castanet’s “You are the Blood” for the Dark Was the Night compilation. Still, for even the most jaded Stevens fan, this must come a bit unexpected.

The Age of Adz kicks off with one of only a few folk-ish moments on the album, “Futile Devices”. Seemingly from another’s perspective, it describes times spent in Sufjan’s apartment and words of love left unsaid, a glance that quickly turns nostalgic in the light of the album’s midsection. The Age of Adz appears to focus largely on the dissolution of a relationship and the emotional aftermath of those events. The work and life of Royal Robertson has been sited as an influence, but acts largely as a backdrop and palette which Sufjan uses to express his own experiences.

As the second song begins, the aforementioned electronics make their grand entrance, all sloppy explosions and accelerating windup motors. One of my early questions as I approached the album was whether these seemingly random and initially incoherent sounds would, with time, congeal into something more solid, a structure which supports the larger movement and flow of the song. The answer seems to be yes, and no. The orchestral strings and horns of Illinois are still there, though emerging less frequently and buried deeper in the mix, no longer the focal point as on previous albums. Alongside synthesizers and the occasional guitar, they form the melodic bedrock of these songs. At times, the other electronic sounds feel draped over, floating unattached to the the rest of the song. With time, they fade into the overall soundscape of a casual listen, but something is lost. By ignoring these percussive, discordant sounds, the more melodic elements become comparatively dull. When I listen, there is an uneasy balance- there is a certain dissonance which remains at odds with the still heavily composed arrangements, a sense of unease which I cannot relate to any other album.

On those arrangements- I don’t discount his primal, primitive approach, but this is still a Sufjan Stevens album, through and through. Along with the orchestra, the largely female glee club choir persists, and they both make appearances of “Vesuvius”, lyrically perhaps the darkest and most internal song, but also most reminiscent of his previous work. The electronics play a smaller role here, but the song still devolves into a stretched distorting of Sufjan’s voice before returning with a more traditional choral outro, complete with the festive jingle of sleigh bells.

As far as Sufjan’s vocals, the most metaphorical ink has been devoted to two moments. The first occurs in “I Want to Be Well”, which ranks among the best of the album. Radiohead comparisons are apt, with breakbeats reminiscent of “Optimistic” or “Sit Down. Stand Up.” The song finds Sufjan addressing questions of relationships, life, and mental heath, culminating not with the title refrain (though a poignant moment in itself), but with the line that follows, repeatedly: “I’m not fucking around”. You believe him. He even channels a little Thom Yorke with his unhinged, wavering vocal delivery. The second attention grabbing moment is found deep in the heart of the 25 1/2 minute closing track. Over that time, “Impossible Soul” segues through at least five distinct parts, one of which finds Sufjan lamenting in autotune, sounding a little like a clarinet at first, before becoming highly reminscent of your favorite modern R&B. It’s certainly surprising, but not the only change from previous albums’ vocals. Most of the album finds Sufjan singing through various effects, most subtler than the autotune but generally creating distance and uncertainty between himself and the listener. Like the orchestra, Sufjan’s still there, but he’s a smaller figure in this brave new landscape.

“Impossible Soul” deserves a closer look- the ideas and sounds in this composition alone could be the basis for an entire EP, if not full length, of a less ambitious artist. It begins as a plodding keyboard ballad, filled out with harp, assorted acoustic percussion, echoey vocal effects, and an electric guitar solo. Next, a solemn discourse on courage by Annie Clark (or is it Shara Worden- the internet verdict seems to still be out on that one, but it sounds more like Annie to me), all swaddled in burbles, strings, and analog scrapes and scuffs, which then evolves into a call and response with Sufjan and Co. A retro-futuristic horn section leads to a final refrain of “don’t be distracted”, repeated whisper-like as trumpet piece reminiscent of “Riffs And Variations On A Single Note…” joins the blips and beeps. Next, the autotune, where Sufjan mourns the “stupid man in the window; I couldn’t be at rest”, as a hushed choir keeps time. A disco beat emerges; this is dance music, Sufjan-style. The slightly awkward choir accompanies Sufjan as the myriad reflections from the mirror ball shine over the wreckage: “it’s a long life/better pinch yourself/put your face together/better get it right/…boy, we can do much more together/it’s not so impossible!” The chorus breaks down into mumbles- “do you wanna dance?”- and a call response between a female chorus and a Daft Punk robot. More electronic beats. Strings and horns appear, and the song fades with a single held tone, as the acoustic guitar reappears. Sufjan closes with a confession- “I never meant cause you pain/my burden is the weight of a feather”. Sufjan contrasts his lover’s refrain with a different assessment: “boy, we made such a mess together.”

It’s not hard to be drawn into the vast landscape of the epic closer, but some of the shortest songs are the most immediate, and the most unequivocally successful. “Now That I’m Older” is a vaguely Gregorian piece, beautiful and rising, a lucid look back on the relationship that was and is no more. The bed of voices undulate as Sufjan describes: “there’s so much travel, yeah/now that I’m older/someone else, can see it for myself”. “Bad Communication” gives melody to the squelches and vibrations, as Sufjan alternately chides and calls out for his lover: “don’t look, don’t walk away when I am speaking…I love you”. The effects on the vocals that undergird “All For Myself” make them sound like a pump organ, supplemented by electronic trills and swells, as the lyrics reach for the sublime: “I want it all for myself”. These pieces seem the transmogrified remnants of the romantic idealism so present on Illinois, and are among my favorites. This album leaves me to wonder what would happen if Sufjan continued the experimental, but dropped the epic, for a bit? Is he even capable of such a thing? These tracks may be the closest we’ll get.

So what of all this? As I survey the big picture, I remain in conflict. There are moments that feel like the best thing Sufjan has ever accomplished, and others where it feels like his Prophet ‘08 and assorted clatter are slipping just beyond his control. The frequent tension in the layout of all these noises creates a certain unease that hasn’t fully faded in repeated listens, but which is perhaps indicative of my relationship to the lyrical content, which sometimes hits too close to home. There are moments that are not easy to listen to, so wrapped up in hope and doubt and confusion- there remain spots of obtuseness, here and there, but without a doubt, this is real, and much more explicit than anything he’s done before.

Ultimately The Age of Adz gives fills out our picture of Sufjan in ways we haven’t seen before. It’s interesting to see what elements remain from the work of his past, given his intentions to deviate so strongly. It’s also fascinating to see what’s changed. It’s beautiful to see someone grappling with the challenges of their life and coming out, stronger than ever. Given the choice of “Illinois 2: New Joysey!” and this, I’d gladly choose the latter.

It’s become harder in recent years to define indie, since it’s come to represent not only a methodology but also a sound and a subculture, but feel free to use any of those definitions here. ↩
The squelch may be the one sound, that for me, has required the most adjustment to appreciate. Not too many people are bold enough to rock the squelch, but maybe there’s a coming trend. ↩

Apple

Fri, 22 Oct 2010 14:21:00 -0400

Although my family didn’t own a computer until I was midway through high school, most of my friends’ families were more technologically inclined, and I took an interest in PCs early on. I remember booting games from MS-DOS, playing around in Windows 3.1, spending time on AOL. I took a couple programming classes in high school, and as a computer science major in college, I bought my first computer, which I built for myself. I took pride in picking out the components I wanted and in upgrading and adding others to fit my needs. The main problem with this was that components could be compatible and still not work quite right. Some parts were worse than others- once I reinstalled Windows, the CD burner I had added started working, but the TV tuner I added took down my computer multiple times, sometimes corrupting the OS to the point that it failed to boot.

These were the heady days of Windows 98 and 2000; it was all so new. I learned from each disaster, but at some point I wanted something better. I was sick of all the nonsense, and when I saw a friend’s Power Mac G5 and his massive Cinema Display, I was awestruck. I had used Macs before, but they had always seemed so dull, confusing, and constrained. This was something different- OS X. I suspect my first exposure to was to Panther, but when I bought my PowerBook, it was loaded with Tiger. I was pretty enamored.

I’m on my third Mac laptop now (the previous two having left my possession, for different reasons, long before the end of their usefulness- perhaps stories for another time), and I’ve been through a few iPods as well. I wanted an iPad, but I held out- for about a month. So yeah, I really like Apple products. Mac OS X does a better job of staying out of your way and letting you get things done, and in general, their products are a joy to use because of the premium placed on design and user experience as a whole. I’ve given up a certain degree of control for what is, to me, a better experience overall. They’re not perfect, and I know Windows is a lot more stable now than 8 years ago, but I’ve found the occasional cost premium to be worth it.

It was not long after I got my iPad that the recent stories about suicides at Foxconn emerged. It bugged me- the world is a really complicated place, and it’s hard to keep track of the effect your every action has on others, especially where so much of what we purchase and consume takes such a long and winding road to get here- but if we come to an awareness that what we are purchasing is hurting others, shouldn’t we do something about it? This seemed like a pretty clear case, at first- inhumane working conditions at a factory where computing electronics from various manufacturers, including Apple, are made, leading to the suicides of several workers there.

But like I said before, it’s complicated. I thought about returning the iPad- a thought that disappointed me, but that I think I could have done, if I had really felt so convicted about it. I eventually mentioned it to friend whose advice I respect quite a bit, and they said I should use the iPad for good- which I’ve tried to do. And with that, I let it go, for a while.

I have thought about it again, but with even less clarity. A conviction I gained from my time in Jakarta, traveling the streets and visiting both the lavish homes of the wealthy and the flooded-out, bare slums of the poor, is that the human being is able to survive and even thrive in a very wide range of living conditions- we have enormous capacity to bear hardship, especially if we have hope. I’ve returned to the original question again, asking myself if 12-hour working days are truly inhumane, if the living conditions in the worker dorms unacceptable, and whether these workers are truly being exploited. I don’t know, and I think it’s really hard to know without being there, or at least talking to and meeting the people involved. Even a profile of a night’s work left me unconvinced. It’s certainly not an easy life, but is it unjust? I don’t know.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that it’s easy to set expectations on what is right and just based on what we know and what we’ve become accustomed to in our own life experiences. Although my life over the last year or so has been far from what I would have planned, and hard in many ways, it’s still quite distant from the experiences of these workers at Foxconn. Is it better? Worse? I don’t know. Life isn’t just your material comfort, or the hours you spend at work, or your free time, or even your rights- there are mental and spiritual aspects which may be tied to these things, but are even harder to quantify. I will say that in this time I’ve tried to be content but not complacent with what I have and where I am at, but it’s been hard to find that balance. Even in the last few days I’ve have problems with some of my Apple hardware, including a monitor which seems to have failed just one month out of warranty. I’m definitely frustrated by this, but is what’s happened truly unjust? Have my “rights” as a consumer been violated? There are moments where it feels like just another in a long line of insults and injuries. Still, I have life. I have people who love me, however imperfectly. I have the grace to go on living and be forgiven, even despite my many betrayals of the one who made me. I’m not saying there isn’t injustice in this world, or that there aren’t wrongs worth fighting to make right. At the same time I know in my own life that my expectations don’t always line up with the truth of what I need, and that I can be quick to cling to things I’ve become comfortable with or things that I really want, and think I know best when I really have no idea.

I struggle to balance my understanding of humility and meekness with calls to justice, boldness, and strength- to balance contentment with the current state of things with the ability, need, and willingness to recognize and improve the things that can be changed- in many ways, I’m still praying the Serenity Prayer, over and over again. I don’t always make the right choices. Perhaps there’s a key to this I don’t really understand. I’ve sought to engage and learn from those who see or express these things differently, but it is easier said than done. I know meekness comes naturally to me, but I can be bold in I’m standing up for something I really believe. Still, those moments are few and far between. Sometimes I feel I should be doing more- I just don’t know what.

I’d love to see.

The Walkmen

Sat, 09 Oct 2010 12:04:28 -0400

The Walkmen are one of my favorite bands, although I don’t know if I’d realized it before today. The “workmanlike” descriptor was practically invented for bands like this- for ten years now, the Walkmen have churned out consistently good indie rock, developing a sound all their own while introducing subtle and occasionally surprising twists throughout. When I moved up to Connecticut to live with my aunt, I had a friend follow my rented U-Haul in my car, and one of the CDs in the stereo just happened to be the Walkmen’s You & Me. He described it as a good album for a trip to Connecticut. I wondered if he meant that he found a sort of bucolic collegiate affluence in their subject matter. I could see that; much like Vampire Weekend’s songs about Cape Cod and Oxford Commas, some of Hamilton Leithauser’s lyrics point in that direction. Perhaps he was simply referring to their sound- slow (especially on You & Me), heavy on the reverb, and crooning- which alludes to an older, possibly classier, time. A review on Cokemachineglow said You & Me “…doesn’t end up sounding like classic rock as much as it just sounds old.” So there’s that.

You & Me is perhaps my least favorite Walkmen record, as an album; not for the songs (which are generally great) but because it is (intentionally) long and the pacing feels off. It sounds like it could end with “New Country”, but continues on for two more (admittedly good) songs. Is this exalting with faint criticism? Even A Hundred Miles Off, generally regarded as their worst album (at least if you disregard their song for song cover of Harry Nilsson’s Pussy Cats, which is also good, if a bit rote), holds a special place in my heart, showing off a consistently angrier and brasher band.

This angry and brash side was first exposed on 2004’s Bows + Arrows, which houses what is widely regarded as their best song, “The Rat”. In “The Rat”, we find Leithauser, or character he’s portraying, at wits end, shouting angrily at an unknown enemy, lashing out in vengeance of perceived wrongs. What surprises me now about the song is the way in assimilates an almost disco beat and synth/organ line (perhaps an influence from the then-burgeoning dance-punk revival) into it’s overwhelming wall of sound- so subtle that I’ve never heard it mentioned before now. The Walkmen have their influences, but they’ve never seemed like they were following anyone’s trends.

There are some who lament the sound of the Walkmen as of late, suggesting they’ve abandoned the best of their accomplishments for a dimmer, dazed sound. That’s not entirely true- Lisbon is perhaps their most upbeat sounding album, and “Angela Surf City” certainly carries some of the intensity of “The Rat”, if not the madness. Still, these intense cathartic moments are an exception to the slower burn of most of their material, but is this really to their detriment? I don’t think so.

My fondness for the Walkmen is well expressed in the line I quoted from that Cokemachineglow review- the Walkmen sound old, as if from another, different time- sometimes they hark back to the music of my childhood, riding in that ‘77 Cougar or ‘67 Chevy van. Other times they seem to reference the rock and roll history that sits just outside the periphery of my musical knowledge. Whatever the case, they take their influences and filter them through their own modern sensibilities and experiences and end up with something new. Nobody really sounds like the Walkmen, and while they’ll never be know as the most innovative band in terms of sound, no two albums sound the same.

This wouldn’t be possible if they didn’t embrace the eccentricities of each of their members. Paul Maroon’s guitar sounds beautifully lazy and off kilter on “On The Water” and “Juveniles”, raw and echoing on “Revenge Wears No Wristwatch”. Leithauser’s vocals have developed across the course of five albums, but retain a certain inebriated warble that has never quite matched his clean cut appearance. The drums and percussion are aptly described as subtly inventive, and often retain a playful shuffle, whether the songs drift by lazily or pound to the point of breaking. The piano and organ add an ethereal layer so central to their earlier material (like “The Blizzard of ‘96”) that they could have been described as their defining element, but have found an equally valuable, if less overt, supporting role in later material. The only element that could possibly be described as perfunctory is the bass, which serves as a fine foundation for the theatrics above, but has its moments to shine on songs like “Donde Esta La Playa” and “On The Water”.

There’s bands like Radiohead, or Animal Collective, where each new album brings a reconstruction of the band and their sound. The Walkmen aren’t one of those bands, and maybe that’s why they’ve crept up among my favorites without my full realization. But pay attention, lest you miss the development that has occurred- they certainly aren’t standing still. The Walkmen have managed to innovate and change with each new album, incorporate numerous well-known influences, and nonetheless create a sound all their own. That’s worth celebrating, I’d say.

Hear a few songs from the Walkmen’s latest on myspace.