Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Haterz Gonna Hate

News Flash!
For the same reason that high school girls hate other high school girls: They're unformed people whose towering egos cover for their abysmal insecurities.

U mad, bro?

Rating My CD's: Angular Boredom

43. Modest Mouse -- We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank


Sometimes, when I review a CD, I'm stuck for something to say about it. I'm not really in the mood to listen to it, and repeated listenings to get myself in the mood inspire nothing in me. When that happens, blogging lulls occur. I start buying mp3's on iTunes, vinyl at record stores, anything to pump up my energy for a task whereof the taste has left me.

Today, I say the hell with it. This CD is not very good. I can tell because I'm bored with the very process of discussing it.

And I'm surprised this time. Sure, even I knew I was in for a labor writing about Ilad and The Good, The Bad, and the Queen. But back when I first bought this CD, I actually kind of liked it. I've had albums that I disliked at first, only to have them grow on me. I can't recall another occasion where I liked something well enough to say that it was "pretty damn good" only to be sick of it eighteen months later.

This music is too ponderous for me, too cleverly heavy, too "angular." In short, it commits all the sins of Good News for People Who Like Bad News while retaining none of that album's graces. The result is that this album feels like work, and if I wanted to work at music writing, I wouldn't be keeping a volume of unedited snark about all my possible employers out here on teh Intertubes where everyone can see it.

So begone, Modest Mouse. Your name describes your output too accurately to warrant further consideration.

Grade: C

Friday, August 19, 2011

Summertime Blues

Summer's almost over, but Rocking out is still possible. At least, if you know where to get vinyl:


PLAY IT LOUD.

Rating My CD's: We Worked Harder Than This

42. Modest Mouse -- Good News For People Who Love Bad News


Modest Mouse has a certain aesthetic, and I'm not sure if it's an aesthetic I share. These guys clearly take what they do seriously, try to write new and different hooks, intelligent and decipherable lyrics, and labor (as you must labor) to keep it loose. But something about this record just screams "2004" to me, as though that were a time long ago that I've walled off.

I was certainly living differently then: unmarried, different part of the state, different car that I was driving to New York on a monthly basis to see my girlfriend. I ate up a lot of miles in that year, and GNFPWLBN still feels like the soundtrack to those road trips. So maybe that's it.

But then again, maybe not.

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

My Ding-a-Ling

I put this on the Novelty Records show for Rock'n'Roll Archaeology, and now I can't get it out of my head. So suffer along with me.

This was Chuck Berry's only #1 hit, which I suspect is due to the way he giggles it up here.

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Things I Learned from Reading Fluxblog II

Because:

  • Kanye West is a Marvel; Jay-Z is a DC.
  • Matthew Sweet has nothing to do with the Illuminati
  • The emotional center of a Shabazz Palaces song is "oooh wee"
  • Being anxious to skip ahead to some point in the future is sometimes about wanting more than the world can possibly give you
  • Making eye contact with forced assurance could blow holes in people's faces. Like a Cyclops.
  • Things which are obvious in retrospect seem patently false at the time.
  • The last few Sonic Youth records have been middle-of-the-road.
  • Sound in original context produce less attachment than sound in artistic quotation marks.

Monday, August 15, 2011

It's Like Christmas 2: Filter Gives Us Another Fucking List of Records They Like

Double-thanks for not even doing it at the year's proper midpoint, you whores.

Let's see what they picked:
  1. Fleet Foxes -- Helplessness Blues. "I gave my love a cherry that had no stone...."
  2. Paul Simon -- So Beautiful or So What. The latter.
  3. Battles -- Gloss Drop. Coming Soon to an Ice Capades near you.
  4. Explosions in the Sky -- Take Care, Take Care, Take Care. You Suck, You Suck, You Suck.
  5. James Blake -- James Blake. James Blake.
  6. Panda Bear -- Tomboy. As a rule, I hate any record that anyone uses the word "lush" to review. It invariably promises lame techno tricks disguised as deep feeling. I wonder if you're legally required to present your removed testicles to Filter before they bestow the moniker.
  7. Other Lives -- Tamer Animals. The White Stripes died for this?
  8. Gang Gang Dance -- Eye Contact. Oh, dear. Someone seems to have murdered Florence + the Machine and then resurrected them with some kind of voodoo ceremony into the bodies of Sailor Moon characters. My wife will be so unhappy.
  9. Iron & Wine -- Kiss Each Other Clean. 'Natch.
  10. Danger Mouse & Daniele Luppi -- Rome. I loves ya, DM, honest I do. But why you brought Jack White in for his singing voice on an orchestral record like this defies my imagination. Also, where the hell is Penfold?
  11. R.E.M. -- Collapse Into Now. Grampa done woke up, and he wants him some loud git-tar before  his afternoon constitutional. But don't keep it up too long, or he'll start a-mumblin' agin.
  12. Shabazz Palaces -- Black Up. Because what Hip-Hop needs is a lounge act that gives its songs Fiona-Apple-Style names.
  13. Beastie Boys -- Hot Sauce Commitee Part Two. OMG Remember Back to the Future?
  14. Floating Action -- Desert Etiquete. I got bored listening to the samples and went and listened to Vincebus Eruptum by Blue Cheer for the first time instead. Now I have to decide if I want it on iTunes or CD.
  15. Black Lips -- Arabia Mountain. Do you think that if these guys step into the same room as the Black Angels, the fabric of Space-Time will rip? Or will they just cancel each other out?
  16. J Mascis -- Several Shades of Why. Yet none explain why everyone decided midway through the last decade that everybody has to pretend to be a folkie.
  17. The Dodos -- No Color. Especially when there are perfectly good real folkies, like these guys.
  18. Bill Callahan -- Apocalypse. Or this guy.
  19. Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. -- It's a Corporate World. The band name isn't funny. The album name isn't funny. What's funny is this guy singing "We Almost Lost Detroit" with sincerity. Like, "Whew! The Motor City Sure Dodged a Bullet That Time!"
  20. The Sea and Cake -- The Moonlight Butterfly. This isn't a bad band. They play the same indie-folkie-pop as everyone else on this list, but they play it well. But this album represents the nadir of post-modern musical packaging. To wit: the band is called "The Sea and Cake." Two things that, in most circumstances, have nothing whatever to do with one another. What does this mean? What does it evoke? NOTHING.  The album is called "The Moonlight Butterfly." Not "The Moonlit Butterfly," which would create a specific, and lovely, image. No, it's "The Moonlight Butterfly," which means NOTHING. And what's the cover art? A pencil drawing of an elephant on yellow.

Free Music: La Resistance

In Space, No One Can Hear You Suck.

The name's a leetle precious, and their write-up doesn't do anything to downplay that reaction ("the Factory Records"?)

But they're offering their whole debut record, Philosophy (which is a good album name), for free at their web site.

And they don't sound bad at all. They add just a touch of power-pop cheer to the general post-punk moodiness, and it works. A real Joy Division, you might say.


The Deepest Mystery of Black Flag...

...isn't how they survived with Henry Rollins as long as they did.

No, it's how anyone in their right mind would prefer My War to Slip it In.

But I suppose that's an argument for another day.

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Rating My CD's: Beg, Steal, or Borrow

41. Ray LaMontagne and the Pariah Dogs -- God Willin' and the Creek Don't Rise


I wrote a while ago that I wanted to buy this, on packaging alone: Good band name, good album name, good cover art. A real K.I.S.S. operation.

I finally did buy it at Target a few weeks ago, and initially I was disappointed. Somehow, I'd built it up too much, and the actual album didn't quite sound like the album in my head. Or perhaps, I'd been listening to it exclusively in my car, and this maybe isn't a car record.

I'd like to the critic-y thing and put it in it's proper place and context in the Genre of Country, or Country-Rock, or Alt.country, or whatever, but actually I don't want to, because Genres Suck. The only reason I'd want to do that would be to demonstrate to other nerds that I actually know what I'm talking about, but has anyone who reads this blog (I know you're out there; I can see your pageviews) ever been convinced of that? To ask the question is to answer it.

At any rate, on my home stereo, this record sounds good. I still don't know who Ray LaMontagne is, but he has a decent voice (miles better than Jeff Tweedy), and by the standard of this album, a pretty good producer. This album is sweetness and light, mirthy misery, a soft summer shower. It's on right now, as I usually have a record on when I write about it, but right now I want to listen to it more than I want to write about it.

Music is supposed to be evocative, and right now this is evoking something pretty powerful in me. Something sad but determined, bruised but unbroken, stirred but not shaken. Or some such cliche, which is usually the thing you fall to when trying to put the language of the soul into the language of the mouth. Maybe if I reach for my Rock Snob's Dictionary, I can find a word that approximates my reaction to this record. Perhaps "plangent" will do:
Plangent. Stand-by rock-critic used to lend a magical aura to any nonaggressive guitar-based music (even though the word's primary meaning is "loud and resonating"). Stipes' muffled vocals and Buck's charming, plangent guitar made R.E.M.'s Murmur one of the most auspicious debuts of the 80's.
Aren't you glad I don't write like that? I sure am.


Grade: LL 



"You're Gonna Pay" is Available on iTunes Now!

As is Wilson Getchel's other song, "Before You Reach Waco.

They're both good. Buy them.

Sunday, August 07, 2011

Remember Blender?

Yeah, I know it folded two years ago, retreating to an online presence that hasn't been updated since March.

But I found this Mad-esque mockery of a real Blender front page I did almost exactly six years ago, and I felt like posting it.


I'm pretty sure "The Nuttiest Hair in Rock" was real. The rest I thought moderately pithy back in 2005. Your mileage may vary.

Saturday, August 06, 2011

You're Gonna Pay

I displayed this already at Revolutionary Nonsense, but it bears repeating:



I've been chatting on Twitter with M. Getchel, and he tells me the song will be on iTunes next week. I will buy it. You should, too.

Friday, August 05, 2011

Rating My CD's: The Lewis Boogie

40. Jerry Lee Lewis -- 18 Original Sun Greatest Hits


Back in 1993, when the Rolling stones were recording Voodoo Lounge in County Kildare, Ireland, they discovered that Jerry Lee Lewis was hiding out from the IRS down the road apiece. Serendipity, right? So they bring the ol' sumbitch into the studio, and jam away. But when Jerry Lee hears the playback, he starts picking the Stones apart, a little "Hey, that drum's a bit slow there; that guitar isn't on point there..." And Keith Richards loses his temper, tells him to back the expletive off, and storms out. Upon which, Jerry Lee turns around and says "Well, it usually works."

I've had this disc forever. I think I either picked it up on Amazon, in the earliest days of same, or it was part of a package I got for joining BMG way the hell back in the summer of 1998. In any case, I got it for the same reason that anyone of my generation ever picked up a Jerry Lee Lewis: that one scene in Top Gun when a wasted Goose howled his way through "Great Balls of Fire" at the piano, and it sequed to Mav on his motorbike with what's-her-name, with the Jerry Lee original in the background. Whatever I thought of that movie as a kid, I loved that song. It was and is perfect, pure boogie, sex and noise and punch.