Rating My CD's: God Save Strawberry Jam

33. The Kinks -- The Kinks are the Village Green Society


The Kinks are a bunch of dorks. This album proves it.

That's not just me talking. The aforementioned Rock Snob's Dictionary sums this album -- supposedly a "lost masterpiece" among Rock Snobs (whoever the hell they are) -- as "pastoral Victorian whimsy" released a year too late to cash in on it.

Yet it remains beloved of critics and nerds, who love nothing so much as trying to convince people that excessively wrought glockenspiel solos are the greatest thing since Elvis wandered into the Memphis Recording Service.

Now, I haven't a thing against glockenspiel solos, or expressions of pastoral Victorian whimsy. So I don't mind The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society. In fact, I'll admit that some of these songs have a wonderful knack for infecting your brain. "Picture Book" probably wrote the bible on what it means for a song to be "jangly", but it's got a nice shuffle to it. "Last of the Steam-Powered Trains,"
a rather kitschy blues, is better for the solo, which bursts out of the melody into something resembling a rock song. "Wicked Annabella" also satisfies the craving for rock, but it seems odd and out of place, a desperate reminder of what the Kinks were doing a few years previously. And I'm almost prepared to forgive "Johnny Thunder" for the opening line "lives on water, feeds on lightning."

But there's plenty on here that's simply irritating. "Monica" sounds like the Ventures rewritten as Muzak." "People take Pictures" is a tedious diptych of "Picture Book" that undermines the first song. And the requisite Floydish hippy silliness appears, apropos of nothing, on "Phenomenal Cat."

As a microcosm of what's wrong with this record, I choose "Big Sky," a rather dopey expression of 60's Romanticism, without any of the threat or sense of taboo violation that makes Romanticisim interesting. Dave Davies' guitar, which livened up "Steam Powered Trains" so nicely, gets buried underneath orchestral arrangements. In fairness, the stuffing also does much to obscure the rather banal lyrics about "big city lies." But not enough.

It takes some careful pop melodicism to make this kind of Little-England bigotry sound transgressive, and Ray Davies certainly brings that. But I'm afraid, like Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, this album gets by more on it's minted status as a flower-power curio than repeated listenings.

Then again, it does have oompahs.


Grade: OK     

Post-Punk Lo-Fi Alt-Country Power-Trio

These and other terms I have absorbed over the course of weekend with The Rock Snob's Dictionary, a book I'm almost positive was intended as a joke platform to snark at bands and musicians that the artist's don't like. It's useful, in that I learned a few things, such as the existence of people who plume their elitism by referring to Bob Dylan as "Zimmy." And the combination of this book and Keith Richards' autobiography has actually made me want to give Gram Parsons' music a listen. I probably won't, though, because I already spent my music budge for the month on a Black Angels CD.

Somehow, I'll manage

If you haven't noticed...

The radio show I write for, Rock'n'Roll Archaeology, is linked at the top of the next column. We "explore the musical mysteries of the Rock'n'Roll era," which means we drop knowledge on the heads of fools who don't know anything about anything before the 1970's. We can be heard at midnight on Saturdays on 88.1 WYPR in the Baltimore/Washington area.

For those of you not so fortunate as to live near these Meccas of culture, here's the link to the podcast of our first episode. What is the first Rock'n'Roll song? There will be a test.

Heavy Rock

Over at Fast N' Bulbous, Fester makes a strong argument for putting proto- and 1st generation-punk, early heavy metal, early 70's funk, and a few other hard rock noise merchants into a super genre called Heavy Rock. Not only did Lester Bangs and such use the term back in the day, but it moves away from having to slice finer and finer microgenres for each subculture. It would be unifying.

Plus, the first album on the list is Fun House. What's not to love?

Talking Back to Punk Rock #13

"So you're saying you DON'T want to be an intellectually disabled citizen of your home country? What a bold, transgressive statement. You have shocked us all again, Billie Joe, and we're totally going to forgive you for Warning!

By the way, why don't you age? Do you mainline collagen or something?"

-Green Day "American Idiot" 

Hugh Laurie a Bluesman?

Yes. Yes he is. And by Hear, Hear!'s standards, a fine one:

Give the album a chance and you’ll be converted. By the time Let Them Talk has played out in its full glory, you’ll have forgotten this is a blues album by an actor. It’ll be more “where’s this guy been all these years?”

I always wondered why House always had guitars on the al of his apartment. I thought it was just good TV writing.

Bleh

Long weekend, summer cold, and I can't concieve of an activity less appealing to me than listening to Jamie XX's (Because he had his identity stolen by the White Man, twice?) new single.

So I'm going to review that Red Sammy CD I mentioned, and I'm going to review Village Green Preservation Society. I just can't decide when.

Lemme be Honest...

I like Andrew Earles a lot. He's funny, and he's forgotten more about popular music than I'll ever know. But I can't pretend that I have the slightest idea what he's talking about in this piece, because he's forgotten more about popular music than I'll ever know. And I'm pretty sure I'm older than he is. Hell, I still think it's kinda funny that the Feelies covered "Everyone Has Something To Hide 'Cept for Me and My Monkey." My record collection is abysmal compared to the "perfect" one he's been building. Here it is, in it's entirety:

Actually, I think the whole song is pretty funny...

So I can't claim claim the kind of authority that's necessary to denounce other people's tastes as objectively ridiculous. And I'm not sure I even want to. Sure, damning the folly of others hasn't stopped being fun, and there's certainly a fair bit of pretentious hipsterism that I will hold as a sacred task to slap around like the proverbial red-head stepchild. But I can't possibly say that the stuff I review here is truly, objectively, good. Or bad. Or indifferent. This is all about me, and what I like. I will never be an expert. Just a fan.

Graveyard Country Music

Last night I was watching Wifey's Glass Mind Theater show, and I got to meet two of the guys in Red Sammy, a country-blues-folk band with some pretty serious soul. As it turns out, Adam Trice had heard Rock n' Roll Archaeology, my radio show, the previous Saturday, and gave me a free advance copy of their about-to-be-released CD, A Cheaper Kind of Love Song. Watch this space for a review later this week.

Oh, and the title of this post? That's their catchphrase. I like it a lot.

The New Raveonettes Sounds Awful...

...and I haven't heard a note.

the revealingly titled Raven in the Grave is rife with the somber, gossamer 4AD mannerisms of yore. The dreamy longings of “Forget That You’re Young” decisively call up the specter of Cocteau Twins, while “Apparitions,” with menacing gallop and funereal atmospherics, has Clan of Xymox’s mournful markings all over it.

The Raveonettes need their Surf Riffs. It's what makes them interesting. Poor fools, they peaked with their first EP.

Talking Back to Punk Rock #13

"So who's stopping you? You know where the garage is."

-The Ramones, "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue"

Rating My CD's: Fancy

32. The Kinks -- Face to Face


I hate listening to the radio. At best, Tesla's Marconi's century-old invention exudes tedious middlebrow talkiness; at worst, the complete absence of thought. And that's only the actual content: radio commercials are a whole other way to get under my skin. If I ever meet the bastards behind the Cars for Kids ad, I will not be held responsible for my actions.

But back in 2000 I didn't have much of a choice. I was driving a 1988 Lincoln Mark VII whose reliability taught me to curse auto mechanics in the saltiest of terms. I had lost my first job and was alternating between temping and collecting unemployment. Disposable income was not part of my life experience, so new car stereos and new CD fodder for mix tapes weren't either.

So after wearying of almost all the commercial stations in the Delaware Valley, my housemate hipped me to the local University of Pennsylvania station. Although the pledge/membership ads were fully as dull as any other desperate attempt to part me from my cash, at least they played songs not pile-drived into my head ad infinitum. And one afternoon in the late spring to early summer, I heard the first Kinks song that made me give a damn about them:

The Major Lazer Video

To be blunt, I lacked the courage to respond with Andrew Earle's tart invective. The experience pole-axed me, and I still can't express my reaction in anything like critical terms.

No, I'm not going to link it. You know how to use the Internet.

New Beastie Boys Album

To Buy or Not to Buy? Honestly, To the Five Boroughs kind of soured me on everything since Ill Communications.

Here's Pitchfork:

Looking at their arc from a purely musical perspective, you could divide their career in half at the midpoint of that decade-- at some point between 1994's Ill Communication and 1998's Hello Nasty. Their first four full-lengths came in less than eight years, and during this stretch, they were hungry and on the move, restlessly searching for new avenues of music expression. They're just now getting to their third proper album (fourth, if you want to count 2007's instrumental LP The Mix Up) in the 17 years since.

I think that's just about right. Hello Nasty is good, but not great, and they've only gotten older since. Every critic's desperate attempt to plump them up as "Beastie Men" or "engaged post-wiseasses," has failed to cover up the fact that they've lost their spark and are basically decaying into a Beastie Boys cover band.

But hey, I could be wrong.

Rating My CD's: Aging Balding Star

31. Kings of Leon -- Aha Shake Heartbreak


Two years ago, the wife and I spent our anniversary in Philadelphia for a Kings of Leon concert. We kicked around my old stomping grounds, bought  tees, savored the aroma of cannabis wafting from the levels beneath us, and had a grand time. I would call it about the peak of my KoL fandom. Since then, I've progressively lost interest.

It's the sort of thing that happens with bands: you discover them, pour over them, wait with growing expectation for successive releases, and then lose the thrill. They wouldn't be the only band I did this with this decade (Hi, Black Rebel Motorcyle Club), but they may have been my favorite.

And I haven't really wanted to dwell on the why, because the why digs at one of the most annoying cavils that people toss at bands: "They sold out." I hate listening to people whine about their favorite bands selling out as soon as more than 50 people have heard of them. Your favorite groups don't suck because you have to share them with people ostensibly less cool than you are. They suck because any group that a status-obsessed nerd such as you likes is bound to be awful.

Band Professionalism

Other McCain, whom I normally link at The Essayist, has a smart post about what Brian Epstein brought to the Beatles -- Professionalism:

For all the bohemian mythos about performers as artists pouring out the innermost secrets of their souls, it’s really just show business. And professionalism is about respect for one’s audience, providing them with the maximum enjoyment by maintaining the illusion that the performer is somehow set apart from the common run of mankind, so that what is seen on stage is really something special.

There is an exchange -- sometimes more than one -- between artist and audience, and exchanges need to operate according to some of the rules of trade, and also some kind of basic respect. It doesn't really matter the genre; one of the most professional bands of the last thirty-five years was the Ramones. They survived for twenty years without strong album sales because they ruthlessly toured and professionally performed. Johnny Ramone gets a lot of the credit for that: he gave a damn about what the band looked like, how they walked across the stage, how long the set was taking to perform.

Joe Strummer echoes these thoughts (3:59 at the link, unless you want to listen to Dee Dee's comments first)

Record Store Day: Rain Edition.

I stumbled into the Record and Tape Traders in Towson on the second Record Store Day back in 2008, unaware of the event. The clerks filled me in on the details and I excitedley purchased a Dead Weather single. I've been wanting to hit up Soundgarden in Fells Point -- a participating store, which R&TT technically isn't -- ever since. But for the last two years, circumstances have kept me away. I don't remember the details; it's the kind of nonsense that married people have to deal with. My wife would know.

Yesterday, I was determined. I'd primed wifey with the idea that This Was Going To Happen. I'd budgeted the cash. I'd printed my Amazon Wish List. All was ready for me to breath record store air.

Google Could Own the Music Industry

Apparently, quite easily.

I got news for you: they already do. Eventually, they'll get around to putting in the paperwork.

Alternative and Metal Blog

German, but also posts in English.

The Background is black, as it should be.

New Strokes: Another Point of View

ChartAttack likes it just fine, if 4/5 is a "just fine" rating.

The half-buried vocals sound more compressed than usual in places, and Casablancas' vapid, self-loathing lyrics tread familiar ground. But the songs themselves are as catchy as ever, sinking their hooks into you with guilty-pleasure guitar and vocal melodies underscored by the band's signature tight, fat rhythms.

So more or less what Pitchfork said, except they make it sound like a good thing.

As for myself, I listened to it streaming on the Strokes website when it was available, and I was underwhelmed. First the White Stripes break up, and now the Strokes embrace the meh. This decade is not starting well.

Record Store Day Releases: The Spin List

Spin is lame at best, but any info about Record Store Day releases are welcome, especially as I don't find RSD's web site terribly user-friendly. In fact, from a content-design point of view, main-page navigation kind of sucks.

What I might want:

1. 13th Floor Elevators 
2. White Stripes
3. Nirvana
4. The Dangermouse/Jack White/Norah Jones thing
5. Freddy King might be good
6. Mastodon's ZZ Top cover might be tempting
7. Pink Floyd
8. Velvet Underground

Lester Bangs Quote of the Day

At its best New Wave/punk represents a fundamental and age-old Utopian dream: that if you give people the license to be as outrageous as they want in absolutely any fashion they can dream up, they'll be creative about it, and do something good besides.

-New Musical Express, 1977

The key phrase in the above would seem to be "At its best." By this definition, punk was only at its best at the beginning, before creativity had given way to creed. 

God, Music Sucked in the 80's...

They even found a way to make Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins sound lame:

Rating My CD's: And the White Knight is Talking Backwards...

30. Jefferson Airplane -- Surrealistic Pillow


I was the oldest, and I've never thought that to be any fun. Every child finds something to lament about their  rank in the birth line; for me it was never having anyone ahead of me to guide me and show me cool stuff. Music and comic books and other trappings of youth culture have depended on older brothers and cousins since time immemorial. In this area, I was on my own.

Two friends were instrumental in helping me to develop my tastes in music and other things. The first was a fellow military brat I spent a lot of time with while living on base in California when I was 14. He hipped me to the Pixies and the Dead Kennedys and fostered an enduring appreciation of Batman comics. But most of what he tried to show me I used to pretend that I knew things I didn't know and was above things I had almost no real contact with.

New Metal (Not Nu-Metal)

I've had my eye on this disc for a while. I got it yesterday at Best Buy when they charged me $10 to recycle an old TV and then gave me a $10 gift card in return.

I've been listening to it on repeat. I know almost nothing about metal, but I like this. I like it a lot.

If Everything That I Hate in Music Was Distilled into a Single Record...

...it would be this:

It's so miserable being a bad art student's shitty crayon drawing

First of all, the band name is just preciousness summa cum laude, an almost deliberately obnoxious display of off-putting, self-congratulatory wordiness, all to express an idea that's been moldering in the ground since William Wordsworth moped around Tintern Abbey. The name is so painfully earnest that it makes me wish to see them star on someone's FailBlog.

The cover art magnifies the effect. I detect a pale (naturally) echo of the pink-and-blue trend in indie album art. I'm at a loss to guess what else I'm supposed to see, save another whispy, ill-defined soul in chains. Why not just paint a sad-eyed unicorn or vampire? It would appeal to the target audience just as well.

And the music? They sound like the Cure. Sometimes they almost want to sound like the Jesus and Mary Chain, but they haven't the courage to go for it. So they sound like the Cure. The End.

In conclusion: there's such a thing as leavening your sensitivity with humor or guts. Try it sometime, dweebs.

Wire Has a New Album.

I've been waking up to Pink Flag in my CD-clock radio for a couple of weeks. It works nicely.

I have Chairs Missing on vinyl. It is sublime.

But for the new album, which Wire supported by adding a layer to Jimmy Fallon's crust of hipsterdom, I'm thinking...Amazon MP3. Why?

1. Wire is almost by-definition digital music.
2. The album cover is kind of ugly.
3. It's cheaper that way.

Ephemera

Chaos happens, and when it does, blogging shuts down. Sorry.

Here's what occurs to me:

1. My stance on Andrew Earle's book has moved from "I'll pretend I might buy this," to "I might actually like to read this."
2. Pandora has made me decide that I like the Cold War Kids. However, I have refused the thumbs-up to the Ting Tings, because I cannot like a band with such a name.
3. Are the Hollywood Undead a sign of the premature emergence of retro rap-metal, or just the Hinder of 2011?

Onanistic Recursion: Dana Vachon Uncovers the Dark Side of Rebecca Black

Vachon's tongue is so far in his cheek he's licking air. It's actually too good to block quote. Just read it.

The Strokes Battles Ad Hominem

Pitchfork gives the new Strokes record, Angles, a tepid 5.9 and a whole lot of "meh" in the review:

Throughout, the album is hobbled by disconnections-- between verse and chorus, lyrics and music, intent and execution. Casablancas' ambivalence about his own actions crops up often.

Whatevs. They like Battles, which sounds like crap spun through a cotton-candy machine.

Does Four Dates Make a Tour?

Modest Mouse thinks so:

• May 26 - Boise, ID - Knitting Factory
• May 27 - Missoula, MT - Big Sky Brewery
• May 28 - Spokane, WA - Knitting Factory
• May 29 - George, WA - Sasquatch Music Festival (SOLD OUT)

My guess is, they either need to warm up to be ready for the Sasquatch Festival, or they've got some new songs they want to play with. In either case, I feel like this tour would be worth seeing.

Talking Back to Punk Rock #12

"NOW you hear it? Didn't catch any of it while you were mumbling through 'Sex Boy'? Maybe you need to run into strange men more often."

- The Germs "Now I Hear the Laughter"

Gallows Humor

Andrew Earles seems to lament a band called Gallows receiving the most recent style "PRESENT AND FUTURE OF PUNK".

I don't blame him. The cover art of their debut album looks like someone put strychnine in Roger Dean's acid.

RIP Nate Dogg

No info as to cause, but he did have two strokes in 2007. Forty-One is too young to die of natural causes.

This song was ubiquitous in '94:

New Kills Song

I like the Kills, even if I don't listen to Midnight Boom as much as I used to (the mood, it comes and goes).

But "DNA" is a nice little song. Blues-punk chunkiness that hits straight and true.

The new album drops April 4th. "DNA" is available as a free download with a mailing list sign-up.

My Space vs. MySpace

A while ago, say 2005, I was the bassist of a band that did not exist. Which is to day, we practiced every Sunday for the better part of five months, and we plunked down for a rehearsal space, and I bought a 50-watt bass amp, but we never played a show and never had a name. Creative indifferences and all of that. Nobody's fault, and no ill will. A thousand garage bands meet the same fate every month, I'm sure.

Well the bandleader has a new crew, Tell You Monday, and they have a Facebook profile, and they're playing their first gig down in Southern Maryland this weekend. I won't be able to make it, but I wish them well. What's interesting to me is that this is the first encounter I recall of a band hawking on Facebook instead of the inevitable MySpace. That's the one function MySpace has managed to hold onto, isn't it? Does every band still have a MySpace as a matter of course?

I mean, check out Yuck, the hip young gunslingers fresh out of Cosmopolistan, which Under the Radar hails as having "managed to craft a surprisingly accomplished album for a band that's only a little more than a year old." They've got a MySpace. And a year-old "tour" going (when does "playing gigs" become "touring"?). And a self-produced record out on Fat Possum.

What does this mean? I don't know. Other than I think Tell Me Monday needs a MySpace. And, you know, luck.

Wye Not?

The actual Wye Oak was the state tree of Maryland. It was 96 feet tall, spread 119 feet into the air, and its trunk measured 31 feet 10 inches in diameter. At the time of its destruction in a thunderstorm in 2002, it was 460 years old.

So there's a little hometown pride in me when discussing Wye Oak, the band. Not only are they from Maryland, they're from Batlimore. And they're a duo, a reverse White Stripes. Sure, they're folk-rock-dream pop, which normally induces boredom headaches, but after I got the free Starbucks download of R.E.M.'s new single (which isn't bad at all), I'm in a more charitable mood. Also, one of their songs is free on iTunes right now.

I think the song is "Holy, Holy," which ChartAttack singles out for praise in an otherwise disappointed review of their new album (which has a pretty bad name: Civilian). If I like, maybe I'll check out last year's EP (I love EP's) and make up my own mind.

UPDATE: I was right. The song was "Holy, Holy" and it is good. And Free.

Magnet Sucks

It is official.

Nothing if not a model of consistency, Buffalo Tom has been making the same decent-to-great music since 1992’s Let Me Come Over. Actually the Massachusetts trio’s third album, Let Me Come Over feels more like a debut, as it zeroed in brilliantly on the group’s strengths, namely the earnest, imagery-laden, acoustic-gone-electric songwriting of guitarist Bill Janovitz and bassist Chris Colbourn and the propulsive punk undercurrents supplied by drummer Tom Maginnis. Judging by the band’s latest, Skins (Scrawny), it’s a formula that still has legs. Skins is the group’s eighth album and second since reuniting after a 10-year (sort-of) break, and its world-weary lilt and been-there/done-that themes make it the perfect grown-up companion piece to Let Me Come Over’s reluctant coming-of-age angst. It may be the best thing the band has done since that LP. Buffalo Tom will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week.

So how'd you like to read that five times on a web site's main page? Which is what happens every time they let people guest-edit the mag: the same by-line advertisment appears over and over again (because Heaven Forbid we have to click on an anchor link to discover who in Hades Buffalo Tom is, if we happen to give a moldy crap).

This is what they've devolved to. No Over/Under since September. No Put Up Your Dukes for a year. No Where's the Street Team? since January 2009. I may have slagged these regulars before, but I like them much better than giving indie-bands and has-beens (anybody out there really hungry for the B-52's political outlook?) a platform upon which to wallow in their self-assurance.

Do these clowns actually have anything to say about music? Because right now they could achieve the same results by liking things on Facebook.

More Zeros = More Irony

Apparently Big Dog 4000000 should remind me of Ministry, among other things.

Unfortunately, all they bring to mind is an Irish Wolfhound and the word "bajillion".

Rating My CD's: I Got Struck By Lightning, and Now I Glow

29. The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion -- Plastic Fang

It sometimes happens that I buy a record and can't stop listening to it, bowled over by its energy, punch, and hooks, and when I pull my head up out of it, no one else has paid any attention. It's kind of annoying, and it always makes me want to slap the collective cognoscenti up the side of their expensively coiffed heads and scream "Are You Retarded? How Did You Miss This Album?"

Now, in some sense, I've already done that with regard to Plastic Fang, the penultimate JSBX disc. So I probably don't need to go again into the fact that the trendhumping bastards who rin the indie music mags decided that Spencer & Co. were so five minutes ago when the White Stripes showed up, only to dust off their late-90's admiration and put it back on the shelf as soon as it was safe to do so.

Reminiscing You

On the one hand, it never bothers me to see the nose thumbed at the hipster doofii, and prejudices in music condemned. Almost all music is better than its detractors would have it, or else it would not have fans. So Frank Valish's "Musical Explorations, or My Ever-Shrinking Indie Cred" blog is generally a good thing.

On the other hand, there's certain things I don't like to see revisited:

*Shudder*

I remember the days when almost every band looked like this, and I remember it sucking. There's just such a uniform blandness, intensified and not diminished by the obligatory androgyny. So when Valish writes:

Thankfully, however, if one digs beneath the surface of Waite's pop career, there are more than a couple laudable compositions, and the second part of his set on this night featured some of this more gratifying material. In his lost late '90s/early '00s years, Waite released some truly affecting pieces of singer/songwriter pop, examinations of New York City life, introspections, possibly autobiographical, on a self-medicating former rock star, and narratives about young musicians dreaming of stardom. And it is songs like these that are the most moving and revelatory in terms of the artist John Waite has become. "Downtown," the tale of the downtrodden former star whose hit song is now more recognizably sung by another, is a window seldom seen into the consciousness of an artist whose more famous days are past him. And, even more impressively, when Waite launches into early career peaks, such as 1982's rocking "Mr. Wonderful" and such '70s Babys material as the "Midnight Rendezvous," or the show closer "Head First," it's like the years have melted away. Here, the man is untethered by his former fame or the weight of past hits, such like that which led the protagonist of "Downtown" to the street corner for his high 15 years ago. It's a man reborn. And for me, it is some small reassurance that maybe you can in fact go home again.

... I believe him. And I don't wish any ill on John Waite, whose music I wouldn't recognize if I heard it. Health and prosperity to him, says I. But dear sweet Lord, if there's anything I would like to remain in blissful ignorance of, it's 80's ballad stables like "Missing You" and "How Did I Get By Without You." I heard enough of those between the ages of 3 and 13 to last a lifetime.

Bad Album Names: RHCP Provides Teachable Moment

The Red Hot Chili Peppers (which is a middling-to-bad band name itself) apparently want to name their new album "Dr. Johnny Skinz's Disproportionately Rambunctious Polar Express Machine-head".

Behold, for ChartAttack does the Lord's Work:

Back down here on planet Earth, we'd like to caution RCHP against going with this title because, well, it's retarded.

Here are another 10 cautionary points (which means don't do it) the band should keep in mind when eventually officially naming their upcoming album:

10) P.M. Dawn — The Bliss Album…? (Vibrations Of Love And Anger And The Ponderance Of Life And Existence)

9) Alanis Morissette Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie

8) No album title should ever be a symbol.

7) Extreme — Extreme III Sides To Every Story

6) George Clinton — Hey Man, Smell My Finger

5) No album should ever be self-titled.

4) Fiona Apple — When The Pawn Hits The Conflicts He Thinks Like A King
 What He Knows Throws The Blows When He Goes To The Fight 
And He'll Win The Whole Thing 'Fore He Enters The Ring
There's No Body To Batter When Your Mind Is Your Might 
So When You Go Solo, You Hold Your Own Hand
 And Remember That Depth Is The Greatest Of Heights
 And If You Know Where You Stand, Then You Know Where To Land 
And If You Fall It Won't Matter, Cause You'll Know That You're Right

3) No album shoULD EvEr ABUSe capitALIZation like THIS.

2) Limp Bizkit — Chocolate Starfish & The Hotdog Flavored Water

1) Butthole Surfers — Hairway To Steven

Album names should never be cute. Like any other name attached to a band, they're the first and most essential peice of marketing. Those guys in Archers of Loaf will never have an interview that doesn't involve talking about their opaque band name.

The idea is to get people thinking about the album, not about the name.

The Vinyl Moneypit

Interesting commisseration amid vinyl afficionados at Amazon. Obsession has its costs.

Also, Record Store Day has this list of releases. Shop well, my friends.

The Double-Helix at Work

Enough of all this blather about the 80's Revival and the coming 90's revival. The real shift in fasion is Aviators vs. Wayfarers.

Old and Busted (for now).

New Hotness (for now)

New Strokes Album

Again with the pink and blue. Did I miss a meeting?

Deep in the Night I'm Lost in Love

It became clear to me on my last birthday, when a friend suggested that I crank some Stooges on vinyl, that I don't have any vinyl Stooges. This unpleasant realization yielded another: I don't have any live Stooges either. So I've set my heart on picking up a vinyl copy of Metallic KO, because it seems so necessary.

But vinyl Metallic KO is like to be expensive. So I thought this might do. But Amazon only sells it in the pricey limited edition form. So I thought Thousand Lights might be interesting. But how many different versions of "1970" do I want to listen to?

The mass of unreleased/unofficial stuff intimidates me. Insight? Because at this point I'm prepared to just go home and listen to Raw Power for the 800th time.

Under the Radar Denounces Blog Hype, Slags Pitchfork

I love it when they fight.

It’s a story that has repeated itself far too often, and for every Arcade Fire or Bon Iver that translated blog momentum into near unanimous acclaim, there was a Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Midlake, Voxtrot, Sound Team, Cold War Kids, or Tapes ‘n Tapes that received a strong push from the blogosphere and found that by the time their second album was released, a lot of people had jumped off the merry-go-round. Without the opportunity to develop a fanbase that would invest time and money in them, those bands found that the same listeners and writers who had championed them had either moved on or weren’t interested in watching a band go through growing pains.

The internet expands, but human memory does not. There's only so much room for so many bands in our hearts or our wallets. I haven't listened to any of those bands, because my music tastes are a lagging indicator. It's very rare for me to get into a band on their first disc; I usually wait until they've been around and have learned to grow. That way, I don't have to sit around waiting for the next record to drop.

The only time I stepped outside of this rule was in 2002-2004, when I made a point of jumping on the Rock Revival bandwagon. This led me to purchases as diverse as the White Stripes and the Vines.

If blogs were the gatekeepers for the indie rock kingdom, Pitchfork were and are the undeniable kingmakers, having essentially launched the careers of Broken Social Scene, Sufjan Stevens, Arcade Fire, and others with one glowing review. The blogs might discover a band, but if that band is going to move beyond the blogs into the larger bloodstream, Pitchfork needs to officially confirm it with a “Best New Music” review.

They do? They are? Why Pitchfork particularly? Why not Spin or Magnet or CHARTattack or that plucky little Under the Radar? Is Pitchfork the hit-king?

Fear the Power of the Dove!

Look, I'm not saying that Powerdove is the worst band name I've ever heard. ...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead would beat them out, as would Of Montreal. But Powerdove definitely has that "Really?" effect. It's not clever if its ironic, and it's painful if it isn't.

Cletus ain't amused by yer shenanigans.

I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself

I am actually sad that a band has broken up:

The White Stripes Call it Quits

I suppose this fits. They've made their mark, and Jack has a thousand other things to do. But still. Dammit.

And after all that righteous snark I've thrown at Spin for kicking them so much, Jack & Meg have to go and prove those trend-sucking bottom-feeders right. I am depressed.

We Don't Hear a Single...

Under the Radar reports that "Swedish twee-stars Acid House Kings" (just nod and smile) are going to prevew a handful of tracks from their upcoming album and let their fans vote on the single. This is either:

1. An awesomely awesome marketing move, which will soon be copied by everyone who's anyone!, OR
2. A sign that they have no idea if any of their songs are good enough to be a single.

Only time will tell. They look nice and non-threatening in the picture, though:

Dude? The Upturned Phallic Guitar? Could you BE more Rockist?

Rating My CD's: Let's Have a Partay!

28. The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion -- Acme

If you had met me in the spring of 1996, and then the following fall, you would have done a double-take. In fact, a few people did. In between my sophomore and junior year of college, I had ditched my frightening tortoise-shell androgynous Birth Control Glasses and gotten contact lenses. I'd also bought some new clothes and cut my hair. Gone were the eye-disturbing blood-red-on-blood-red ensembles, the greasy mushroom fro, the general sense of "I don't know who the fuck I am, but you're going to see me, dammit."

I'd also started a strange kind of internet flirtation with a girl who lived in Kentucky, who shall remain nameless so as not to injure her reputation for ever getting herself involved with the likes of me.  Both of these have a connection with The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion in general and Acme in particular.

Rating My CD's: My Father Was Sister Ray

27. The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion -- Orange

Back in December of 1999, when I still though The City Paper was worth reading, I came across one of the inescapable Best of the Nineties records, which is to say, three of them (because our authoritative critical voice must have a multiplicty of opinion!). And one of them had Orange somewhere right in the middle.

I already had Acme, and liked it, and had heard from the former internet semi-girlfriend who got me into them (more on that later), that their earlier stuff was better. I was still too young to roll my eyes at said cliche, so I schlepped into Center City Philadelphia on the train, and picked up this silver-leafed disc at the HMV on 15th and Walnut.

Motorhead. Conan. Giant Marshal Stacks.

Ariel Pink's Empty Graffiti

Via Fluxblog, this messy catchall, which Perpetua praises for it's "cheap glam Cobain look":



Bit of Suicide, bit of Bowie, and...something else...can't quite put my finger on it:

Ah...



Hurry that 15 minutes up, boys...

I Don't Know Who the Sam-Scratch Ray LaMontagne is...

...but I've wanted to buy this album since I saw it in Starbucks (Yeah, I go to Starbucks, and I look at music there. Because it's there).

Why? Because the album name is good. Also, the cover is nicely minimalist.

Packaging, people. It matters.

The X Most Blah of Whatever

I've made it this far without taking note of anybody's Top Ten of 2010 Lists. It's not that I find such exercises completely useless; it behooves to take stock of what has passed and what can be considered favorable and unfavorable. I just find them over-used: a cheap device to garner attention and controversey (which is to say, more attention).

Filter's Top 10, however, spares us no exhaustion. Not only do we get the Official Magazine Top 10, but the Top Reviewed Albums, the Publishers', Editor-in-Chief's, Associate Editor's, Layout Designer's, writing staff's and Guy Who Sleeps on Our Couch's individual Top Tens. By the time you're done, LCD Soundsystem would have implanted itself as a self-regenerating meme in your mindhead.



This totally changes my mind about irony.

Anyway, I thought I disliked Top Ten's because they were thoughtless and non-authorial, but it turns out I liked them even less when they're detailed and transparent. Maybe I only like the funny kinds. Let me know if you see any.

I'd Like to Feel Bad for Creed...

...I mean, it's 2011, and the hip still won't miss the opportunity to bash them, even for things they had nothing to do with.

According to Germany's Der Spiegel newspaper, little Walter Eikrem was walking home from school in his hometown of Rakkestad when all of a sudden he found himself on the same path as a pack of wolves.
Instead of crying wolf and running away, Walter did what seemed to be the only logical thing to him: he pulled out his cell phone, took the ear buds out of it and turned Creed's "Overcome" up full blast while screaming and waving his arms.

And the wolf ran away. GET IT LOL C WUT I DID THR?

Then I remember how skull-scrapingly bad Creed's music is, and I'm more or less fine with it.

Self-Abuse

With all the crap I sling at the hipster doofii, it behooves me to tossa few wads at myself when I merit it.

I just got a Pandora account this week. For real. I've been listening for days, and I'm completely enamoured. How was I not aware of this?


So much for Irony being dead...



Irony is Boring.

I liked the first two editions of Pitchfork's Why We Fight, but I've missed every one since. I've read #3 and #4 just now, and while I thought #4 was an okay walk through the perils of MIA's playing with politics, I got three quarters of the way down #3 and was suddenly, un-utterably bored with the entire enterprise:

This idea of knowingness, though-- our relationship with it can get complicated. Right now, one of the internet's most successful bastions of knowingness is a blog called Hipster Runoff, a performance that's almost nothing but knowing: It shrugs, it takes an arch, pseudo-scientific tone, it puts every other word in scare quotes. Here you go, it seems to say: Here is your weird market of hipness and cool. The end. You can take it as withering satire, if you want to, because its skewers are dead on target. Of course, if its pseudonymous author really thought the market of cool were that pointless and vacuous, why spend so much time thinking about it-- why know it well enough to be savvy? It's not so much a satire as a whole performance of knowingness. And even if I don't often have the stomach for it, I can't pretend the performance isn't an immaculate one: it's knowingness raised to the level of poetry, free of the burden of "intent" or sincerity or any point beyond what the reader reflects out of it. It goes beyond "the author is dead" and turns the author into some kind of zombie.

When I was in college, REM had a rather large hit song with the line "You said that irony was the shackle of youth." At the time, I disagreed, saying that irony was the weapon of youth. We were both right, I suppose, but I don't care to examine the matter much further than that, because Irony, capital "I", is not that interesting. It's not really a thing, it's an act, a choice. That's why an analysis or discussion of Irony will always feel overblown. And it's why Family Guy will always be less than its competitors.

I say that because the article namedrops The Simpsons. But The Simpsons, however arch it seemed, always leavened its snark with a sincere heart. The show actually cared about its characters; even, or especially Homer. Homer Simpson serves the show as the butt of most of the jokes, but if something really really bad happened to him, fans would be heartbroken. Because Homer is not really a bad guy, just flawed and limited, like all of us are.



Family Guy, on the other hand, doesn't really care all that much. About anything. The show's evolved from an even arch-er version of The Simpsons to an endless On the Road movie with a drunken hipster dog and a gay baby standing in for Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. It's breezy and stupid and fully aware of its breeziness and stupidity, and works them like Stevedores for every laugh. At the root of every Family Guy gag is the thought, "This is so completely retarded that I have no choice but to laugh."



And while such cheap absurdity is a well that may never run dry, it's a good distance away from the archness and intellect of The Simpsons, and light-years away from its great rival South Park. Trey Parker and Matt Stone's show is a lot of things, but almost never ironic. Rather, it's bone-cuttingly satiric, to the point of being mad-dog mean:



The humor here comes from saying the unsayable, and while that sounds knowing, it's not irony, because it's meant with deadly earnestness.

My point is that irony is not worth the effort of hashing out, because it's by no means as central to our cultural narratives as people who wallow in it, or fuss about it, think it is. There's a time when we all love it, and think ourselves superior for being aware of it. It passes.

Robert Pollard is a Dork.

I don't care about Robert Pollard, or Guided By Voices, or any of that. I just don't. It's Stuff I've Heard of But Never Listened To. And I'm sure that his new disc, Space City Kicks, unleashes just as much awesomeness as Under the Radar says. I like that title so much, in fact, that I'm willing to listen to some samples on iTunes. But the cover...



Dude...


Why is he standing there like that? Is this some kind of kung fu position? And why isn't there anything spacey or city-y, or even kick-y (unless Robert refers to his badass two-tone shoes as "kicks" as the kids do these days)?

I mean, it's possible that some dippy photographer came up with this, and the record label went with it sans Pollard's approval, but this is out on Pollard's own label, so that answer's stupid. No, he thinks this picture is cool, from the understated tiny red heart on the king's-blue shirt to the guitar just hanging out next to the whatever-white building in the vacant lot down the street from the Bob Evans. Robert Pollard this the whole thing, including the "punch me in the jimmy! Do it HARD!" stance, is just too ineffable to be effed.

Ergo, he's a dork.

New Foo Will Kick in the Kicking Place, ChartAttack Assures Us

And we are meant to be excited by such. By the Foo Fighters. The fighters of Foo. No, really.

Look, Dave Grohl has enough grandfathered indie cred that he could play on a Justin Bieber record and still be cool. And as long as he whips out those drumsticks whenever Josh Homme demands it of him, he can do whatever the hell else he wants to pay the bills. And hell, the're one or two Foo songs I like. "Monkey Wrench" comes to mind.

But I'm never going to be excited by a Foo Fighters record. The Foo Fighters were the methadone we all needed to get over Nirvana's downfall. That's all. Sorry.

Then again, that little tease they link does sound pretty good.

2010: The Year "Douchebag" Jumped the Shark

At least, going by this meandering piece in the Village Voice, which claims that Kanye West and James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem won "one for the douchebags," whatever that might mean.

Their fantastic lives begot fantastic albums. MBDTF was a delirium of influence, a recombination of musical DNA as varied as gothic East Coast rap classicism, '70s prog rock, and winsome '90s electronic music. In doing so, West paid maximalist homage to his own best work: the sped-up soul sampling of his early productions, the glossy thump of Graduation, the ornate orchestration of Late Registration, the sad robot pulse of 808s and Heartbreak. And he rapped better, too—a necessity on an album that featured historically grand competition, from a bloodthirsty Nicki Minaj to Raekwon to Jay-Z himself (twice!), a hip-hop fantasy camp basically unparalleled, in part because any other artist would've been afraid to try. Murphy, for his part, boiled down a decade of sarcasm and ironic dance-floor excess into a plainspoken kiss-off to the career that had cost him everything external to the band he found himself trapped in.

So I guess that means...we like them? We don't like them? They're douchebags? What the hell does that even mean anymore? Did we ever know? The word "douche" suggests feminine hygiene, or other matter gynecological, and George Carlin testified to its use to insult women only, at least among NY Italians of the 1950's to 1970's. But by some kind of post-modern inversion, it's come to be applied as an all-purpose insult against hyper-masculine bro-types. Joel McHale can't get through a bit about Tool Academy without using it.

Their fingers smell delightful. Delightful.

Here's Andrew Earles, my muse, two years ahead of the curve: as usual:

“Douchebag” is perhaps the most overused slang in the parlance of the under-50 set. It’s so damn effective, and I love nothing more than to latch onto slang that’s either showing its expiration date or recently expired altogether.

That was in 2008. So now that it's ubiquity is secure, and it has passed from meaning whatever it meant to "something not desirable," I'm going to quietly retire "douchebag," and it's little bro, "d-bag" from my parlance. You may consider this official:

Question:

Do I find the idea of listening to the Decemberists boring because band names that refer to long-dead Russian political movements are just too precious to be taken serously, or because I'm afraid I'll start confusing them with the Arcade Fire?

Rating My CD's: You've Made a Fool of Everyone

26. Jet -- Get Born

I first reviewed this CD on the old version of this blog, The Notion, back in 2003, when everyone had discovered that rock n' roll was not, in fact dead. I had some notion in my head of a New Rock Quadrifecta of the Strokes, White Stripes, Hives, and Vines. I made a generalized statement about Australian bands not bothering too much about their appearance:

Unlike the The Strokes' rich-boy bum ensembles, the Hives' neo-mod uniforms and the White Stripes' peppermint chic, The Vines were the only band of the origonal "new rock" quadrifecta that didn't have a ready-made look (which may be why they've slipped off the radar screens). Australian boys play rock n' roll, unapologetically, and they know it ain't their job to look pretty. That's for the wankers from Pommey-land and pretentious Yanks.

Blissfully ignorant of my misspelling of "original," I go on to say that Jet rocks satisfactorily, but also brings the moody piano balladry, and that this was a good thing.

Eight years on, I'm tempted to search up a Where Are They Now file, but I'm almost positive I know the answer without Googling. They enjoyed copious amounts of cocaine. Their sophomore record stiffed. They bled members back to Australia, where those who haven't sunk into drug-induced uselessness are dreaming of a comeback [Corrections to this prognostication will be welcomed].

But what of Get Born, their two-hit wonder (the second hit being "Cold Hard Bitch")? Has repeated listenings changed my original estimate? Have I discovered deep tracks which make "Are You Gonna Be My Girl" and "Look What You've Done" seem overrated? Is it time to revisit Jet?

No.

They had a song so genius-simple and bluntly-horny that it became a hit. They had another that wasn't half as good but fed into fear of the female, and it was less of a hit. They had a pretty good ballad that still sounds good today. That's it. They weren't as fantastic as their fans hoped, nor as bad as their bashers quipped.

So Hail and Farewell, Jet. For that little moment, we were all your girl.

Grade: L

Xan McCurdy Preaches the Gospel of Bass

At Magnet, the Cake multi-instrumentalist talks up the importance of the low-end:

I’m not talking about these chest-pain-causing bass-frequency fanatics, but the subtle melody-enhancing, rhythm-keeping, ass-caressing bass-guitar sounds. Put on any Marvin Gaye and turn up the low frequencies on your home or car stereos or your mp9 player (or whatever) just a tad, and I promise it’s a little bit better. And kiss your local bass player. He works a lot harder than you think.

This is all true. As I've said, I used to play the bass, and it may be an easy instrument to fake along with, but it's truly difficult to play well. And if you do, people are unlikely to notice.

Even punk bands need good bass players. My favorite punk bassis? Paul Simonon of the Clash:

Animated History of the Beatles

Kind of awesome, albeit cliched:

BEATLES Rock Band from alberto mielgo on Vimeo.

When you think about it, the Beatles kind of were a cartoon.  Everything about them seemed to follow a script, and the image and sensation of them grew to be larger than the four men in the band could actually fulfill. Since they broke up, they have apotheosized into cultural symbols that cannot be killed.

The more cartoony of them seem to be dying last, anyway.

Kung Fu!

I Agree With Fluxblog

If I tease Fluxblog occasionally, it's done out of love, or at least, respect. Perpetua's career is testament to the value of passion and determination, and I don't begrudge him a bit of the success he's earned.

And sometimes, we manage to oddly mirror each other. For example, his post about the Replacements expresses my thoughts entirely. I've been sort of wanting to get into them, but I haven't yet, and I'm not sure why. I think it's because they seemed redundant to me. "Ah, sure, punk rock," I'd think, "I know punk rock. What's that you say? Then they 'matured'?"



But now I'm more okay with letting bits of 80's rock past my nose, so I think I'll give them a fair hearing. Suggestions as to Replacements songs/albums to start with will be welcome.

Mark Your Calendars, Fools

Record Store Day is April 16th this year. One Day after Tax Day, which works for me for some reason.

Who is this Kate Moss Person?

In the process of getting the news out that the Kills will have a new album hitting the shelves in April, Pitchfork lets out this piece of fatuousness:

In the time since the Kills released their 2008 album Midnight Boom, the oozing blues duo have been busy with other things. Alison Mosshart has been kicking it with Jack White in the Dead Weather, and Jamie Hince has been racking up low-grade tabloid fame as Kate Moss' boyfriend.

Ignoring, for the moment, the gee-golly-goshers aspect of being told that musicians do other things when not in the studio or on tour, why in the name of all things holy am I supposed to give a snowball in hell about who James Hince has been fornicating with? Are they really trying to coat this trivia with some kind of lovers-reunited meme?

Blue and Pink Sets Indie Hearts A-Flutter, Wallets A-Open

Scrolling through Pitchfork, I find the following two album covers, right on top of each other:

Title shortened from "Gimme Some Plastic Surgery,
For the Love of God."

Irony and fatuousness mix in one complete package.

What happens when the collective unconscious becomes self-aware?

iAlbum

While I've steadily lost interest in Gorillaz over the years (if there's anything less self aware than a rock/hip-hop supergroup, the most carrion-like of music acts, whining about trash, I haven't percieved it), and probably won't buy The Fall whenever it comes out, I am intrigued by the fact that Albarn recorded it on his iPad while touring. If an iPad can do that, then who needs a studio?

We aren't all digitized yet.

2.8 million vinyl records were sold last year, the highest since 1991. The Beatles sold the most, but Arcade Fire and Black Keys did respectable sales.

Personally, I can't get enough of the stuff.

Rating My CD's: Are You Trying to Tell Me "Purple Haze" Says Something?

25. Jimi Hendrix -- Smash Hits

I've bought this CD twice. The first time it was a stocking-stuffer/sub-gift for my brother. He listened to it once or twice and then gave it back to me. I sold it to Record and Tape Traders with a pile of other stuff I didn't listen to, and bought something hipper instead. Because, Hendrix was such a cliche, man! The inevitable #1 on lists of rock guitarists made by people who can't think for themselves! The Sheeple!

The second time it was homework for the first and only gig I've ever played, an event sponsored by the College of Southern Maryland Guitar Club at a coffee shop. I never went to CSM; I ran into the director at a production of Beauty and the Beast that wifey was involved in. He saw me in my Miles Davis T-shirt and chatted me up, found out I played bass, and asked me to come jam. So for an evening I was Noel Redding to a trio of honkeys who all wanted to be Hendrix and were way better musicians than I've ever been (the only black member of our impromptu group was the drummer, in a neat inversion of the racial makeup of the Jimi Hendrix Experience).

Rating My CD's: EEEENNNNNNHHHHHH

24. Ilad -- The Spoon

I do 90% of my CD-listening in the car. Radio is lame, and I buy music for a reason. So I'm that guy: constantly switching out the CD's in my car so I can listen to new stuff. If a CD stays in my car longer than a couple of weeks, I'm very busy.

And that's a strike against Ilad, because this CD doesn't play in my car very well. It's one of a handful that I call "skippers". If I drive over a pothole, it skips. If I drive over a manhole cover, it skips. If I drive over a rise in the earth higher than four inches, it skips. So the most consistent sound I get from The Spoon is stereo whirr.

Sure, I could listen to it on my stereo at home. But that's where I listen to vinyl. Besides, my stereo has taken to turning itself on in the morning and blaring Ilad from the basement, so I feel as though I've gotten a good exposure to it.

What it sounds like is a pleasant, tepid soup of jazzy non-jazz. I don't know if jazz musicians enjoy themselves far more than anyone listening to them, because I like jazz, but I do kinda get that feeling from this record. Like there's some kind of deeper sophistication that the band itself is totally digging, but which is utterly lost to me. I hear guitars, and drums, and bass, and rythmic switches that more or less fail to arouse anything in me. I'm not getting it, and I don't care.

Grade: C

Rating My CD's: Northern-ness

23. The Good, The Bad & the Queeen -- The Good, The Bad & the Queen


English music is known for two things: mirroring back American Rock n' Roll louder and harder, and expressing a profound romantic bleakness. Sometimes, instead of sucking deep of Yankee rhythm, the Pommies take the same instruments and play a raw yet gentle music full of the kind of un-nameable yearning that C.S. Lewis called Northern-ness, or Joy: a grey savoring of all the cold truths of the world. The Kinks, after the initial ramalama of their early songs, did this kind of music best, and you can also hear it in later songs of Kinks-revivalists the Jam (check out "English Rose" for an example).