On some 90's list!
I keep coming across "that 90's sound", and I think that means at least three different things. I'm not going to unpack it all here, but this is less Pavement angularism, less Dinosaur Jr sludge crunch, and more straight up Supergrass crunchy, all engines go, sea skipping rock. It's sunny, simple, repetitive, and bouncy, nary a difficult thing about it.
That said, it's not that they're not trying. As this kind of stuff goes, they endeavor to keep you on your toes and to keep your head bobbing - dig some of the surges on the verses of Half the Lies You Tell Ain't True as it propels ever upward.
This isn't my scene, but its a darn solid album for what it is. If I'd found it when it came out I probably would have loved it 3.5/5
You might like this if: you like your rock crunchy, uncomplicated, soaring; precise and deftly executed
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
#477 Of Montreal - False Priest
Why not? Of Montreal's always good for a roll in the hay.
10th! Can you believe this is the 10th Of Montreal album? Honestly, they've started to blur together for me, with a lot of the same disco/synth/omgwtf sounds, the same swervey structures, the same batshit harmonies. On one hand, that's unfair. All of Kevin Barnes's albums are wildly different and unpredictable, all sound quite different on a per-song basis, so how can I say they all sound the same? On the other hand, that's the price of being wildly different, eventually it all becomes noise. Look at enough Pollocks and it's all just more squiggles - the effect is numbing.
The other numbing aspect of the Of Montreal oeuvre is the lyrical content. I understand that this is supposed to be the R&B album, and there are moments of Mayfield/Gaye heartache and pathos, but that well has already been drunk pretty dry by Barnes. Frankly, sometime halfway through The Past is a Grotesque Animal, Hissing Fauna's 12 minute temper tantrum centerpiece, I stopped having a lot of sympathy for the boy's wounded heart. By now, his grasping and hurting and highs and lows are just getting wearying, like that friend who's always having another tearful breakup.
It's a shame, because there are brilliant flashes. The rising flourishes and vocal interplays of Enemy Gene, the glinty outro of Our Riotous Defects, and the bent, jaunty bliss of Sex Karma. I really like a lot of what's going on here, but I'm worn out. I love you Kevin, but I can't keep doing this 3/5
You might like this if: you like angular, adventurous, insane, catchy pop, and haven't already burned out on the Of Montreal sound
10th! Can you believe this is the 10th Of Montreal album? Honestly, they've started to blur together for me, with a lot of the same disco/synth/omgwtf sounds, the same swervey structures, the same batshit harmonies. On one hand, that's unfair. All of Kevin Barnes's albums are wildly different and unpredictable, all sound quite different on a per-song basis, so how can I say they all sound the same? On the other hand, that's the price of being wildly different, eventually it all becomes noise. Look at enough Pollocks and it's all just more squiggles - the effect is numbing.
The other numbing aspect of the Of Montreal oeuvre is the lyrical content. I understand that this is supposed to be the R&B album, and there are moments of Mayfield/Gaye heartache and pathos, but that well has already been drunk pretty dry by Barnes. Frankly, sometime halfway through The Past is a Grotesque Animal, Hissing Fauna's 12 minute temper tantrum centerpiece, I stopped having a lot of sympathy for the boy's wounded heart. By now, his grasping and hurting and highs and lows are just getting wearying, like that friend who's always having another tearful breakup.
It's a shame, because there are brilliant flashes. The rising flourishes and vocal interplays of Enemy Gene, the glinty outro of Our Riotous Defects, and the bent, jaunty bliss of Sex Karma. I really like a lot of what's going on here, but I'm worn out. I love you Kevin, but I can't keep doing this 3/5
You might like this if: you like angular, adventurous, insane, catchy pop, and haven't already burned out on the Of Montreal sound
#476 Nero - Welcome Reality
I don't even know how I got sucked into listening to this.
So this is why people hate dubstep. I mean, not because of this album directly, but I'm getting exposed to all this ravey, maximalist techno that uses buzzy bass, warped synths and big drops to create the electronic equivalent of Limp Bizkit. Skrillex, Qemists (whose album was so bad I couldn't make it past 3 songs and therefore is in that set of shadow bad reviews that never actually exist as posts on here) and now this album. Dubstep tricks don't ruin albums, DJs ruin albums - it's the alto sax, vocal harmonies and blues chords - all a matter of how you use em.
This isn't a good way to use em. The songs are rockist, but not in a good way, full of female vocals repeatedly crooning things like "are you ready? do you know? I feel it too" like an Evanescence B-side. Or A-side, they seem like a band that's gone dubstep by now.
Build build drop WOBBLE repeat. There are some exceptions, like the simmering Scorpions, but they most draw attention to how transparently the wobble is being used on this album. Ok, that's a nice trick, but it's not a 4/4, you can't build songs on it. This stuff might be dancable, but I'd be embarassed to dance to it. Is this dubstep for girls? That might explain a lot - not because girls listen to bad music, but because music for most any group is probably a mistake.
Listen to Crush on You and tell me that's not one of the worst songs you've heard all year. Lets outdo ourselves for inane lyrics, tune the vocals to a snow scraper edge, use our wobbles as randomly and clumsily as possible and then randomly break into a double time shitshow Cindy Lauper remix. I could do this all day. No wonder people revere that Luomo album, look where things ended up 12 years later 1/5
You might like this if: you think dubstep techno should be less imaginative and more annoying. Oh, and more slathered in chewed up samples of girls yelling "I got a crush on you!"
So this is why people hate dubstep. I mean, not because of this album directly, but I'm getting exposed to all this ravey, maximalist techno that uses buzzy bass, warped synths and big drops to create the electronic equivalent of Limp Bizkit. Skrillex, Qemists (whose album was so bad I couldn't make it past 3 songs and therefore is in that set of shadow bad reviews that never actually exist as posts on here) and now this album. Dubstep tricks don't ruin albums, DJs ruin albums - it's the alto sax, vocal harmonies and blues chords - all a matter of how you use em.
This isn't a good way to use em. The songs are rockist, but not in a good way, full of female vocals repeatedly crooning things like "are you ready? do you know? I feel it too" like an Evanescence B-side. Or A-side, they seem like a band that's gone dubstep by now.
Build build drop WOBBLE repeat. There are some exceptions, like the simmering Scorpions, but they most draw attention to how transparently the wobble is being used on this album. Ok, that's a nice trick, but it's not a 4/4, you can't build songs on it. This stuff might be dancable, but I'd be embarassed to dance to it. Is this dubstep for girls? That might explain a lot - not because girls listen to bad music, but because music for most any group is probably a mistake.
Listen to Crush on You and tell me that's not one of the worst songs you've heard all year. Lets outdo ourselves for inane lyrics, tune the vocals to a snow scraper edge, use our wobbles as randomly and clumsily as possible and then randomly break into a double time shitshow Cindy Lauper remix. I could do this all day. No wonder people revere that Luomo album, look where things ended up 12 years later 1/5
You might like this if: you think dubstep techno should be less imaginative and more annoying. Oh, and more slathered in chewed up samples of girls yelling "I got a crush on you!"
Friday, February 24, 2012
#475 Minor Threat - Out of Step
I'm thinking about getting rid of this "how I got here" entry. Its all lists lists lists these days, getting desperate for the newnewnewnew.
I've listened to a fair amount of punk lately, and found most of it more melodic than you might expect. After all, as I've argued, at the end of the day, the music is supposed to be enjoyable on one level or another.
This is pretty pure hardcore though, with relentless shouting, short songs, sheetmetal Gang of Four guitars and speed-metal-fast double-bass drumming. In fact, stripped down, skinny, speed metal is a pretty good reference point for what you're getting here, all blistering menace. Everything here is percussive, everything hits for points, nothing is trying to be much fun.
Except that last track. Man I love the last track turnaround. Often its a place to bury an unlistenable, experimental track where it can readily be ignored by the masses, but can buy authenticity with the snobs. The opposite happens here, as Cashing In delivers an oft-since-done sarcastic sellout song that is actually pretty tuneful, and ends with actual strings! Only slightly cacauphonous strings! Its a great little moment that turns the whole album. First of all: they're certainly earned the right to make that song after the 8 blunt instruments that preceded it. Second, it says: sure, we could be pop if we wanted. We're obviously capable of making a catchy, New York Dollsesque jam, but we decided to beat you up 8 times instead. There's some connection to the aforementioned Kid606 album that I'm just not quite willing to make right this moment.
Not exactly my scene when it comes to punk, but I can't help but admire it. Sharp dudes playing fast 3.5/5
You might like this if: you like fast, shouty punk that doesn't pull its punches. Well, except that last one.
I've listened to a fair amount of punk lately, and found most of it more melodic than you might expect. After all, as I've argued, at the end of the day, the music is supposed to be enjoyable on one level or another.
This is pretty pure hardcore though, with relentless shouting, short songs, sheetmetal Gang of Four guitars and speed-metal-fast double-bass drumming. In fact, stripped down, skinny, speed metal is a pretty good reference point for what you're getting here, all blistering menace. Everything here is percussive, everything hits for points, nothing is trying to be much fun.
Except that last track. Man I love the last track turnaround. Often its a place to bury an unlistenable, experimental track where it can readily be ignored by the masses, but can buy authenticity with the snobs. The opposite happens here, as Cashing In delivers an oft-since-done sarcastic sellout song that is actually pretty tuneful, and ends with actual strings! Only slightly cacauphonous strings! Its a great little moment that turns the whole album. First of all: they're certainly earned the right to make that song after the 8 blunt instruments that preceded it. Second, it says: sure, we could be pop if we wanted. We're obviously capable of making a catchy, New York Dollsesque jam, but we decided to beat you up 8 times instead. There's some connection to the aforementioned Kid606 album that I'm just not quite willing to make right this moment.
Not exactly my scene when it comes to punk, but I can't help but admire it. Sharp dudes playing fast 3.5/5
You might like this if: you like fast, shouty punk that doesn't pull its punches. Well, except that last one.
#474 Kid 606 - The Action Packed Metallist Brings You the Fucking Jams
Someone recommended this to me, probably when I was looking for something that scratches my Feed Me itch, forever chasing that dragon.
What this sounds like is a lost Girl Talk album, bridging his mashup sensibilities with his Secret Diary-and-earlier-era noise nonsense. Kid606 has two sides that are in constant combat: a desire to move you and make you dance and smile with beats and references and combinations, and a punk side that violently rejects any notion of decency, that keeps pop at arm holding a disembodied arm's reach. The album is like an emotionally abusive boyfriend, seeming so nice, seducing your pants right off and then going on a shitbanging bender and telling you that he needs to go to vegas to blow off some steam and that he thinks things are getting too serious. And then he takes a shit on your rug.
There are loops you like, but they're not wielded for maximum dancability, they're wielded, bent, sometimes listenably, sometimes unlistenably, at the kid's whim. A groove gets laid down, but it gets chopped monumentally long. Not so long as to make you dance or get into a really good groove, but so long as to make you go "that's really longer than good taste would dictate". And how do you explain the physically painful whine running over the top of the second half of Kiddy Needs a New Pair of Laptops. Its mashup taken to geek show levels: how much subversion of pop can you handle? Enough to become bored? Enough to make your ears actually hurt in its name? Its no Metal Machine Music, but Kid606 seems to share a bit of the pop nihilism that spawned that project.
In case there was any doubt, consider the first three minutes of unlistenable noise that serve as gatekeeper to 606land. If you can't handle this, get the fuck out now, because we were not meant to be, says this gatekeeper. And then, having thoroughly banished any notion that he's pandering to anyone, Kid is free to indulge in some reasonably deft mashupery. So is Kid606 about being listenable, or is he performance art, smashing up pop? He tries to dodge either o these answers with closer This is Not My Statement that crushes Creep into dust and then grinds that dust under its heel over the course of 13 most-excruciating minutes.
At the end of the day, the album's more concerned with being art than it is being music, than with being listenable. And that's fine. As noise, I mostly admire it. If nothing else, it never ceases to surprise. As actual, listenable music? Barf. I hope you're happy Kid 3/5
You might like this if: you believe in music as art, and are willing to suffer for art. Pop is ground into your brain as a violent act, like some sonic Clockwork Orange variation. Sound fun?
What this sounds like is a lost Girl Talk album, bridging his mashup sensibilities with his Secret Diary-and-earlier-era noise nonsense. Kid606 has two sides that are in constant combat: a desire to move you and make you dance and smile with beats and references and combinations, and a punk side that violently rejects any notion of decency, that keeps pop at arm holding a disembodied arm's reach. The album is like an emotionally abusive boyfriend, seeming so nice, seducing your pants right off and then going on a shitbanging bender and telling you that he needs to go to vegas to blow off some steam and that he thinks things are getting too serious. And then he takes a shit on your rug.
There are loops you like, but they're not wielded for maximum dancability, they're wielded, bent, sometimes listenably, sometimes unlistenably, at the kid's whim. A groove gets laid down, but it gets chopped monumentally long. Not so long as to make you dance or get into a really good groove, but so long as to make you go "that's really longer than good taste would dictate". And how do you explain the physically painful whine running over the top of the second half of Kiddy Needs a New Pair of Laptops. Its mashup taken to geek show levels: how much subversion of pop can you handle? Enough to become bored? Enough to make your ears actually hurt in its name? Its no Metal Machine Music, but Kid606 seems to share a bit of the pop nihilism that spawned that project.
In case there was any doubt, consider the first three minutes of unlistenable noise that serve as gatekeeper to 606land. If you can't handle this, get the fuck out now, because we were not meant to be, says this gatekeeper. And then, having thoroughly banished any notion that he's pandering to anyone, Kid is free to indulge in some reasonably deft mashupery. So is Kid606 about being listenable, or is he performance art, smashing up pop? He tries to dodge either o these answers with closer This is Not My Statement that crushes Creep into dust and then grinds that dust under its heel over the course of 13 most-excruciating minutes.
At the end of the day, the album's more concerned with being art than it is being music, than with being listenable. And that's fine. As noise, I mostly admire it. If nothing else, it never ceases to surprise. As actual, listenable music? Barf. I hope you're happy Kid 3/5
You might like this if: you believe in music as art, and are willing to suffer for art. Pop is ground into your brain as a violent act, like some sonic Clockwork Orange variation. Sound fun?
#473 Teenage Cool Kids - Denton After Sunset
2011! Almost through all the albums I got off of my general 2011 list trawling. Guess I'll have to buckle down and put my own together pretty soon here.
Is the sounds-like list the laziest form of music criticism there is? Well, I'm 473 wholly unpaid reviews in, after under 2 years, so I gotta cut a corner here and there. Plus, in my own normally-more-humble opinion, its actually something I'm pretty good at.
In this case we've actually got a pretty nice blend of 90's band sounds, all wracked with rough edges and tension. Contrast this with the Mr. Dream album, which trucked in sludgy, generally much more easily mimicked 90's underground sounds. Here its all Pavement, Built to Spill, with little catchy Beulah highs and Grandaddy lows. I mean, knock me for the sounds-like game if you must, but listen to Landlocked State and tell me that doesn't sound exactly like Pavement meets Beulah*. You can't.
Unlike the just-reviewed Clap though, TCK make something from their sounds, pulling deeper and richer than Pavement did, and wracking itself with more angularism, noise and general agony than any of the other bands it resembles. Plus, whatever Volvo to a Kiss is, I like it - blissful chuggy fun. Full of lo-fi charm, hooks and surprises, it overcomes some sluggish pacing and morose tones to bring a smile to this old man's face 4/5
You might like this if: you like slightly noisy, heartfelt, ragged Pavement-style 90's rock. What is that the 4th time I made the comparison? Not a bad pedigree.
* And hey Landlocked State sounding like bands who famously discussed Handsome Western / Two states? Coincidence? Reaching?
Is the sounds-like list the laziest form of music criticism there is? Well, I'm 473 wholly unpaid reviews in, after under 2 years, so I gotta cut a corner here and there. Plus, in my own normally-more-humble opinion, its actually something I'm pretty good at.
In this case we've actually got a pretty nice blend of 90's band sounds, all wracked with rough edges and tension. Contrast this with the Mr. Dream album, which trucked in sludgy, generally much more easily mimicked 90's underground sounds. Here its all Pavement, Built to Spill, with little catchy Beulah highs and Grandaddy lows. I mean, knock me for the sounds-like game if you must, but listen to Landlocked State and tell me that doesn't sound exactly like Pavement meets Beulah*. You can't.
Unlike the just-reviewed Clap though, TCK make something from their sounds, pulling deeper and richer than Pavement did, and wracking itself with more angularism, noise and general agony than any of the other bands it resembles. Plus, whatever Volvo to a Kiss is, I like it - blissful chuggy fun. Full of lo-fi charm, hooks and surprises, it overcomes some sluggish pacing and morose tones to bring a smile to this old man's face 4/5
You might like this if: you like slightly noisy, heartfelt, ragged Pavement-style 90's rock. What is that the 4th time I made the comparison? Not a bad pedigree.
* And hey Landlocked State sounding like bands who famously discussed Handsome Western / Two states? Coincidence? Reaching?
Thursday, February 23, 2012
#472 Clap - Have You Reached Yet?
This is something of a cult classic, found on some 70's lists.
Time for another of my sounds-like-track-by-track smackdowns. Ready?
Only Just an Act: The Kinks' Nothing to Say
Get it While You Can: A watered down Stooges' Raw Power
Have You Reached Yet?: The Stones' Soul Survivor*
Ok, now that that's out of the way, maybe I can proceed. Look, I get that this is something of a 60's revival, but these guys really ape countless riffs and structures and chords and it ends up sounding like pastiche, never achieving much of a voice of its own. I admire its garagey charms, the ragged vocals, the glammy touches, the jangling guitars and rombling bass, but at the end it just ends up sounding like a garage band. Not like a band making garage-style rock, but rather an actual band playing covers and near-cover originals in their garage.
What interview was it? Or was it a movie? A band talks about some advice they got, about how they should learn to play their favorite songs and then give them their own twist. That's more or less what's happening here, and with admirable aplomb, but it needs less favorite song and more actual twist - too few of the songs here actually differentiate themselves for my taste 2.5/5
You might like this if: you really have heard all there is to hear from 60's rock and just have to have to have more, and don't mind that nothing on here will really break that mold
*This album actually came out the same year as Exile, to be fair, but this is emblematic of a generally severe case of Stones-copping
Time for another of my sounds-like-track-by-track smackdowns. Ready?
Only Just an Act: The Kinks' Nothing to Say
Get it While You Can: A watered down Stooges' Raw Power
Have You Reached Yet?: The Stones' Soul Survivor*
Ok, now that that's out of the way, maybe I can proceed. Look, I get that this is something of a 60's revival, but these guys really ape countless riffs and structures and chords and it ends up sounding like pastiche, never achieving much of a voice of its own. I admire its garagey charms, the ragged vocals, the glammy touches, the jangling guitars and rombling bass, but at the end it just ends up sounding like a garage band. Not like a band making garage-style rock, but rather an actual band playing covers and near-cover originals in their garage.
What interview was it? Or was it a movie? A band talks about some advice they got, about how they should learn to play their favorite songs and then give them their own twist. That's more or less what's happening here, and with admirable aplomb, but it needs less favorite song and more actual twist - too few of the songs here actually differentiate themselves for my taste 2.5/5
You might like this if: you really have heard all there is to hear from 60's rock and just have to have to have more, and don't mind that nothing on here will really break that mold
*This album actually came out the same year as Exile, to be fair, but this is emblematic of a generally severe case of Stones-copping
#471 Luomo - Vocal City
Off some list of the aughts.
Initially, I was pretty unimpressed with this album. Why did I look this up again? Turns out it’s a real hit among certain crowds, and on a quest to figure out why I dug deeper and deeper in to the writing to be found online about it. Try it for yourself, you won’t have to look far to find aficionados typing breathlessly about the effect it had on various movements, the ways that it drove a nascent micro-house movement, the kind of scene it created at raves and parties, the way that it blended this sub-sub-genre with that. If you say so, guess you had to be there.
I’m trying to avoid making this a commentary about the commentary, but I can’t escape from it. So, on one hand, I admit an ignorance to the context of this album an ignorance that is about to (spoiler alert) make me give a middling score to an album revered by its adherents. On the other hand, I can help but notice blind spots in said adherents, where people note the use of clipped samples and textured tones, as if these weren’t things that had been pretty thoroughly explored by instrumental hip hop, ambient and experimental subgenres of all kinds. And apparently vocals were a big innovation. I’d be more impressed if I’d never heard Endtroducing, Moon Safari, Neu, or any ambient music ever . I know these aren’t the same thing, but if putting a 4/4 underneath well-worn tricks is all it takes to be groundbreaking then house was even more stale than I thought circa the turn of the century. More than one commentator tries to convince you not to be scared off by the long track lengths, which run roughly 10-15 minutes. Raver please. That constitutes a noteworthy song length? I’m being a snarky shithead and I know it, so might as well double down: if this album strikes you as groundbreaking you are listening to way, way too narrow a slice of music.
Now ok, I’ll back it down. I guess if the main thing you’re looking for is something that can get played at a rave, apparently this was new stuff, and more power to that. I rarely look for dancability in music, and I concede that combining well-worn tricks never previously made danceable into something that is, in fact, danceable, is a nice innovation for that set. And its entirely possible that I'm prejudiced against it because so many of its tricks have become so mainstream in the last 12 years.
The actual album, right, right. It’s fine. It evolves slowly, has some silky, subtle changes, and generally rides the hell out of a groove, for better or worse. Don’t expect a lot of surprises here, there’s nothing that would snap you out of your reverie, and plenty to build it up, lots of little details down between the beats when your head wants to reach for them. And I'll certainly concede some great moments: halfway through Class a dirty synth line rolls in and bounces off the bass and clattering beats, its actually pretty sick. Hell, if I wanted to sit around getting high bobbing rhythmically, this probably wouldn’t be a bad choice, actually 3.5/5
You might like this if: you want to dance and space out and have a soundscape to do it in, this is a perfectly good, dense-but-spare prickly piece of beats to do it in
Initially, I was pretty unimpressed with this album. Why did I look this up again? Turns out it’s a real hit among certain crowds, and on a quest to figure out why I dug deeper and deeper in to the writing to be found online about it. Try it for yourself, you won’t have to look far to find aficionados typing breathlessly about the effect it had on various movements, the ways that it drove a nascent micro-house movement, the kind of scene it created at raves and parties, the way that it blended this sub-sub-genre with that. If you say so, guess you had to be there.
I’m trying to avoid making this a commentary about the commentary, but I can’t escape from it. So, on one hand, I admit an ignorance to the context of this album an ignorance that is about to (spoiler alert) make me give a middling score to an album revered by its adherents. On the other hand, I can help but notice blind spots in said adherents, where people note the use of clipped samples and textured tones, as if these weren’t things that had been pretty thoroughly explored by instrumental hip hop, ambient and experimental subgenres of all kinds. And apparently vocals were a big innovation. I’d be more impressed if I’d never heard Endtroducing, Moon Safari, Neu, or any ambient music ever . I know these aren’t the same thing, but if putting a 4/4 underneath well-worn tricks is all it takes to be groundbreaking then house was even more stale than I thought circa the turn of the century. More than one commentator tries to convince you not to be scared off by the long track lengths, which run roughly 10-15 minutes. Raver please. That constitutes a noteworthy song length? I’m being a snarky shithead and I know it, so might as well double down: if this album strikes you as groundbreaking you are listening to way, way too narrow a slice of music.
Now ok, I’ll back it down. I guess if the main thing you’re looking for is something that can get played at a rave, apparently this was new stuff, and more power to that. I rarely look for dancability in music, and I concede that combining well-worn tricks never previously made danceable into something that is, in fact, danceable, is a nice innovation for that set. And its entirely possible that I'm prejudiced against it because so many of its tricks have become so mainstream in the last 12 years.
The actual album, right, right. It’s fine. It evolves slowly, has some silky, subtle changes, and generally rides the hell out of a groove, for better or worse. Don’t expect a lot of surprises here, there’s nothing that would snap you out of your reverie, and plenty to build it up, lots of little details down between the beats when your head wants to reach for them. And I'll certainly concede some great moments: halfway through Class a dirty synth line rolls in and bounces off the bass and clattering beats, its actually pretty sick. Hell, if I wanted to sit around getting high bobbing rhythmically, this probably wouldn’t be a bad choice, actually 3.5/5
You might like this if: you want to dance and space out and have a soundscape to do it in, this is a perfectly good, dense-but-spare prickly piece of beats to do it in
#470 Bad Religion - Against the Grain
Lists lists lists, they give me albums to listen to - following up on Suffer.
Very little music really wants you to dislike it. Sure, punk, noise, experimental nonsense of all kinds, it wants them to hate it, but it wants you, the listener and fan, to like it, even if its only because it is so thoroughly offensive to them. And that them-offensiveness is the appeal of a lot of punk, the aggression and non-conformism and its general defiance of good taste is what makes punk punk (and is the core of what post-punk carried over the border). But what if you, the fan, also likes melody and hooks and, well, good songs? Punk wouldn't want to be so enjoyable as to be broadly appealing - that way lies selling out, so a series of compromises and slides up and down the scale take place, especially during the 90's punk revival, when rock had learned plenty of tricks to tempt bands down the pleasant scale to sellout land.
Bad Religion does a pretty darn good job of this actually. They're repetitive and angry, full of shouting and noise, but all that energy is directed skyward instead of into the mud. The bass sputters Bad Brains fast like a lakeborne retriever, the guitars chug and turn, and the vocals just soar. That's really the signature Bad Religion trick, those downright excellent harmonies that act as release of each song's frustrations, that are that moment your plane leaves the ground elsewhere bound. It's all pretty pop, though not as quite as 21st Century Digital Boy* would lead you to believe. I found myself listening to it quite a lot actually, smoothed out without being boring, enjoyable for me with just the barest touch of 90's level anti-themism to give it a bit of texture, and blistering by with some downright old school 1-2 minute song lengths. And those harmonies 4.5/5
You might like this if: you want some darn good pop punk, hovering right around Dookie in terms of accessibility, but well short of Blink 182.
* I never noticed the line at the end of that song that changes the hook to "21st century Schizoid Boy", confirming the title's King Crimson reference. Neat.
Very little music really wants you to dislike it. Sure, punk, noise, experimental nonsense of all kinds, it wants them to hate it, but it wants you, the listener and fan, to like it, even if its only because it is so thoroughly offensive to them. And that them-offensiveness is the appeal of a lot of punk, the aggression and non-conformism and its general defiance of good taste is what makes punk punk (and is the core of what post-punk carried over the border). But what if you, the fan, also likes melody and hooks and, well, good songs? Punk wouldn't want to be so enjoyable as to be broadly appealing - that way lies selling out, so a series of compromises and slides up and down the scale take place, especially during the 90's punk revival, when rock had learned plenty of tricks to tempt bands down the pleasant scale to sellout land.
Bad Religion does a pretty darn good job of this actually. They're repetitive and angry, full of shouting and noise, but all that energy is directed skyward instead of into the mud. The bass sputters Bad Brains fast like a lakeborne retriever, the guitars chug and turn, and the vocals just soar. That's really the signature Bad Religion trick, those downright excellent harmonies that act as release of each song's frustrations, that are that moment your plane leaves the ground elsewhere bound. It's all pretty pop, though not as quite as 21st Century Digital Boy* would lead you to believe. I found myself listening to it quite a lot actually, smoothed out without being boring, enjoyable for me with just the barest touch of 90's level anti-themism to give it a bit of texture, and blistering by with some downright old school 1-2 minute song lengths. And those harmonies 4.5/5
You might like this if: you want some darn good pop punk, hovering right around Dookie in terms of accessibility, but well short of Blink 182.
* I never noticed the line at the end of that song that changes the hook to "21st century Schizoid Boy", confirming the title's King Crimson reference. Neat.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
#469 Flash Bang Grenada - 10 Haters
I was digging around the internet for info info on Busdriver and it turns out I totally missed this colaboration he did with Nocando.
For most of hip hop's lifespan the production's been built on samples, but there's been a movement in the last handful of years towards fully electronic, originally composed beats and accoutrements. This is on full display here, where 8 bit bleeps, squared-off squiggle and synthy arpeggiation and wash underlay everything, sounding like a harder-edged version of Busdriver's recent experimental-but-pretty approach.
Speaking of harder-edged, this is Busdriver's hardcore album. He's not talking about shooting cops or smacking bitches (except as part of the double entendr'd "(make that) beat my bitch" hook), but he swears, talks shit, spits harder than usual. Bringing battle-rap hardened Nocando along is another nudge in that direction, and as on his track Least Favorite Rapper, Busdriver is often upstaged by his sharper-tongued counterpart.
Don't get me wrong, the combination is actually kind of perfect, the rapper play off eachother's strengths effectively, clearly coming to the same places from different directions. But coming into this as a Busdriver fan is was startling to find him the sidekick. Don't knock it if it works if nothing else this helps explains Busdrivers more confident (excellent) new record.
The combination of two such obviously different rappers is refreshing, if jarring, something that is offset by the album's use of repetition and structure, across tracks like on In a Perfect World and 10 Haters, in bursts like on I Can Teleport's intro and outro. It's decidedly listenable, well-paced, with a pleasant sheen and complex lines to unpack on repeated listens. What more do you want on a rap album? 4/5
You might like this if: you like complex, electronically inflected rap, but still want it to come out swinging
For most of hip hop's lifespan the production's been built on samples, but there's been a movement in the last handful of years towards fully electronic, originally composed beats and accoutrements. This is on full display here, where 8 bit bleeps, squared-off squiggle and synthy arpeggiation and wash underlay everything, sounding like a harder-edged version of Busdriver's recent experimental-but-pretty approach.
Speaking of harder-edged, this is Busdriver's hardcore album. He's not talking about shooting cops or smacking bitches (except as part of the double entendr'd "(make that) beat my bitch" hook), but he swears, talks shit, spits harder than usual. Bringing battle-rap hardened Nocando along is another nudge in that direction, and as on his track Least Favorite Rapper, Busdriver is often upstaged by his sharper-tongued counterpart.
Don't get me wrong, the combination is actually kind of perfect, the rapper play off eachother's strengths effectively, clearly coming to the same places from different directions. But coming into this as a Busdriver fan is was startling to find him the sidekick. Don't knock it if it works if nothing else this helps explains Busdrivers more confident (excellent) new record.
The combination of two such obviously different rappers is refreshing, if jarring, something that is offset by the album's use of repetition and structure, across tracks like on In a Perfect World and 10 Haters, in bursts like on I Can Teleport's intro and outro. It's decidedly listenable, well-paced, with a pleasant sheen and complex lines to unpack on repeated listens. What more do you want on a rap album? 4/5
You might like this if: you like complex, electronically inflected rap, but still want it to come out swinging
Monday, February 20, 2012
#468 The Grateful Dead - American Beauty
Another Alex rec.
I have heard startlingly little of The Grateful Dead, generally writing them off as being 'guitar music by stoners for stoners', best experienced live and high, approximating the best faded day on the a porch with your buddy who plays guitar pretty good experience ever, but ill suited for being heard recorded and sober. Their reputation for jamminess precedes them.
This album does a fair bit to belie that impression: the songs are briskly paced, generally bereft of solos or indulgence of any kind. In fact, it's all pretty acoustic, more Americana than I ever realized, most twang and pluck than noodle. Which isn't to say that the playing isn't deft, its just not bombastic about it, laying down twitchy, nuanced runs.
This is music that wears a rut in your soul, but that rut has not as of yet been worn in mine. The listening is, at least at first, actually a bit unmellow. The vocals are somewhere between Young and Dylan on the strained scale, and to call the harmonizing loose is an understatement. On one hand it all lends a scraggly charm, but the offness grated on the back of my mind. If I could sing along and pile my own voice on those ramshackle harmonies I'd probably be a happy man, but until that day 3/5
You might like this if: you like dusty, honky tonk folk, and don't mind if the wheels're a bit warped and the axle a little square.
I have heard startlingly little of The Grateful Dead, generally writing them off as being 'guitar music by stoners for stoners', best experienced live and high, approximating the best faded day on the a porch with your buddy who plays guitar pretty good experience ever, but ill suited for being heard recorded and sober. Their reputation for jamminess precedes them.
This album does a fair bit to belie that impression: the songs are briskly paced, generally bereft of solos or indulgence of any kind. In fact, it's all pretty acoustic, more Americana than I ever realized, most twang and pluck than noodle. Which isn't to say that the playing isn't deft, its just not bombastic about it, laying down twitchy, nuanced runs.
This is music that wears a rut in your soul, but that rut has not as of yet been worn in mine. The listening is, at least at first, actually a bit unmellow. The vocals are somewhere between Young and Dylan on the strained scale, and to call the harmonizing loose is an understatement. On one hand it all lends a scraggly charm, but the offness grated on the back of my mind. If I could sing along and pile my own voice on those ramshackle harmonies I'd probably be a happy man, but until that day 3/5
You might like this if: you like dusty, honky tonk folk, and don't mind if the wheels're a bit warped and the axle a little square.
Sunday, February 19, 2012
#467 Gastr del Sol - Camoufleur
Alex recommended me up a couple of his favorites.
If there's any word for this album it is unhurried. Songs unfold over time in classic Talk Talk / Stars Like Fleas / KC Accidental post-rock fashion, evoking cold, bright open spaces, repeating, evolving, meandering. Rounds ring long and clean, bereft of the kind of reverb that's in these days but rather sustained from choices involving extensive vibration. Noise creeps in, horns, pianos too, queer and unhurried like a sunny day Twin Peaks dream.
The construction is relaxing or demanding, depending on how you look at it, and undeniably arty. But the sentiment is all bare hearts, Microphones small and raw and uncertain but striving. Certainly the most crucial moment of the album is the end of the opening track. As a little scene begins, a young man's voice betrays his excitement at being in this moment and recording it: he struggles to communicate with the kids, to explain that he's recording them setting of their fireworks, but that he doesn't speak French, but that they should keep going, but no he doesn't know what time it is, and no, this is a microphone. He moves from being excited to dismayed that the moment is being ruined to convinced that it is better than ever, to frustrated at his out of placeness to frustrated at his awareness of his out of placeness and back and forth between breaths. It sums up everything about a person in love with the world and reveling just on the cusp of uncertainty, thrilled and frightened and squirming in the interactions with strangers and strangeness. That sense of discomfort, of wonder, of uncertainty follows every trembling note of the epics that follow.
I have a respect for the album, I like what it does, but for my taste its a bit too atonal, a bit too formless to make it into regular rotation. Could be a grower though 3.5/5
You might like this if: you like slow, frail music, full of uncertain pathos and flashes of beauty.
If there's any word for this album it is unhurried. Songs unfold over time in classic Talk Talk / Stars Like Fleas / KC Accidental post-rock fashion, evoking cold, bright open spaces, repeating, evolving, meandering. Rounds ring long and clean, bereft of the kind of reverb that's in these days but rather sustained from choices involving extensive vibration. Noise creeps in, horns, pianos too, queer and unhurried like a sunny day Twin Peaks dream.
The construction is relaxing or demanding, depending on how you look at it, and undeniably arty. But the sentiment is all bare hearts, Microphones small and raw and uncertain but striving. Certainly the most crucial moment of the album is the end of the opening track. As a little scene begins, a young man's voice betrays his excitement at being in this moment and recording it: he struggles to communicate with the kids, to explain that he's recording them setting of their fireworks, but that he doesn't speak French, but that they should keep going, but no he doesn't know what time it is, and no, this is a microphone. He moves from being excited to dismayed that the moment is being ruined to convinced that it is better than ever, to frustrated at his out of placeness to frustrated at his awareness of his out of placeness and back and forth between breaths. It sums up everything about a person in love with the world and reveling just on the cusp of uncertainty, thrilled and frightened and squirming in the interactions with strangers and strangeness. That sense of discomfort, of wonder, of uncertainty follows every trembling note of the epics that follow.
I have a respect for the album, I like what it does, but for my taste its a bit too atonal, a bit too formless to make it into regular rotation. Could be a grower though 3.5/5
You might like this if: you like slow, frail music, full of uncertain pathos and flashes of beauty.
Friday, February 17, 2012
#466 Busdriver - Beaus$Eros
In the driver we trust!
We're in for a long one here folks, but I'm going somewhere with this.
I didn't have a typical Busdriver experience. I came across his music at a crucial, formative moment, which is to say I discovered Busdriver when I didn't know shit. At the ripe age of 22 I was still out of it enough to think that contemporary hip hop was only toughguy end-of-line-rhyme type shit. I'd missed Masters of the Universe, Organized Konfusion, Stankonia, Cold Vein, Operation Doomsday, shit that would have even started to prepare me, so think how double hard my mind was blown when I heard the mind-blowing Temporary Forever. That was the first rap album I ever loved and became my go-to rec for people who said they didn't like rap (who were abundant as fuck in aughts Orange County). Dude rhyming over fast horn riffs, rhyming unicorn with shoehorn, indulging in artsy, noisy, madcap turns: it spurred me to challenge a lot of my assumptions about music.
Unfortunately I also was still dumb in my relationships with rap, bands, and the world. One night I was stunned, STUNNED, to see Busdriver show up at a Unicorns show. In fact, full stop. Aside: So its 2003ish and I go to see basically my favorite band, The Unicorns, at my favorite venue, The Echo. Next thing you know fucking Busdriver gets on stage, and he freestyles over Unicorns squonktastic shitstorms. Let's lay this out: I go to my favorite venue to see my favorite band with no heretofore known hip hop leanings and my favorite rapper shows up and freestyles with them. Bull. Shit. I find the man himself afterwards and managed to stutter my way through saying what's up while The Truth of Spontaneous Human Combustion rang in my ears and I generally assumed that Busdriver hated me for reasons stemming from a general crushing ignorance of how to be a white rap fan and an assumption that it had to be complicated. This exchange did lead to being a third of the entire audience at the worst promoted show possible, where I bumblingly tried to procure a copy of Cosmic Cleavage before trundling off and watching awkwardly as Busdriver made the best of a shitty situation, gamely rapping to basically no one. I think the last time I saw the dude was as the most enthusiastic experiencer one of the first Corn Gangg shows (though I tried unsuccessfully to get in to see him open for Deerhoof) and then I moved thousands of miles away from LA. Edit: No! I saw him play with Kneebody, whose drummer I went to high school with. That was fucking insane.
My regret about this respawns from the realization, over the years, that Busdriver probably could have a pat on the back around then. As far as I can piece together, the dude was immensely talented, knew he was immensely talented, and was frustrated at fuck about where it was getting him. More generally, Busdriver seems like a self-conscious guy. Not unduly; he's probably pretty normal on that front for an actual person. But by rock star / rap star / public figure standards, where you're supposed to not give a shit, Busdriver obviously gives a shit what people think of him and his music, and about how his music is getting out there or not. And who wouldn't? Its not weakness, its an uncommon honestly, a lack of the kind of filters that most artist wrap themselves in, with facets of that honesty glinting off of the presumed half-truths of Least Favorite Rapper, Cool Band Buzz, Avantcore, Rap Sucks, even coming out of the crannies of The Weather's Glorified Hype Man, and on and on, to say nothing of the struggles referenced on the eventually-obtained Cosmic Cleavage. It's the kind of post-hardcode intimacy and vulnerability that Kanye and Drake are twisting to epic proportions lately, and Busdriver's been doing it for a decade. He's a real dude, too bad I didn't realize that before I moved.
I mention all this as context for the arc Busdriver's albums took: after his Pinkerton-personal Computer Cooties he put out a series of albums that just didn't feel wholehearted. The Fear of a Black Tangent / Roadkillovercoat / Jheli Beam sequence was dotted with adventurous production that didn't quite fit the rapping, with songs that smelled like they were fishing for airplay, sounding generally like an artist struggling to redefine himself, while struggling to define his relationship with his audience and his potential future audiences, trying on different stylistic outfits, but finding them baggy in the shoulders, tight as the waist, and in colors that didn't match the eyes. A guy who once engaged in constant surprise suddenly reveled in choruses with sing-song hooks; consider Kill Your Employer, unsuccessful as irony and bereft of sincerity, leaving only a chorus skin on a bloopablip skeleton, emblematic of the era's weakest moments (though Least Favorite Rapper and Manchuria were highlights).
And then Computer Cooties came out, and maybe the freedom of the small, free project snapped him out of his trying to please phase. That project was all over the place, and clearly just a matter of rapping, no gloss, just sick fucking rhymes, priming Busdriver, just maybe, to make the album he'd been trying to make all those years, to finally do himself right.
So, right, I don't know shit, this is all wild conjecture, but its how I read the decline and possible redemption of one of my once-favorite musicians, and it just so happens to fit into the narrative capped by Beaus$Eros. Which is to say that this album sounds like modern-era Busdriver, with none of the jazzy turns that marked Temporary Forever, but for the first time the man owns the sound.
---Actual Review Start---
I'm running just the barest bit long, so let me try to give the diligent reader a shortcut to work with: Bon Bon Fire is all you need to hear to understand what makes this whole album work:
- Musically, its bouncy, downright catchy, but weird as hell. With subbass buzz, trippled doo doos, chiming girl vocals, squirks and squalls, fitting together perfectly, echoes, drop outs, fuzz ins, tiny dubstep squibbles applied with admirable restraint.
- Structurally, its as adventurous as you could want, going high and low, and back and forth, narry a chorus to speak of, and that dropoff at 3:00 into the double drop-off at 3:20 into soaring croons at 3:40 is one of the finest sequences I've heard all year so far. It's a madcap chain of hooks that refuses to resolve into a single chunkable nugget for easy storage, demanding repeat listens, sounding like underground Hey Ya. Anyone who knows me knows that's a curiously high compliment.
- The lyrics are classic Busdriver, dropping Clam Chowders and Lay Pipes straight of Cosmic Cleavage, dropping Matt Lauer's and Oligarchy's straight off Temporary Forever.
- The delivery is legit. For once Busdriver owns his swears and N bombs, he owns this whole song, finally escaping that guest-on-his-own track tone that plagued his last few albums.
It's a goddamn great track.
Even Kiss me Back to Life, which bears some of the hallmarks of previous chorus-drenched, indieventurous-flecked tracks actually pulls the trick off this time, the chorus soaring, breaking down into herky-jerky bridges with confidence.
I still don't know what's going on on NoBlacksNoJewsNoAsians, but its brilliant, utterly original in structure, dropping off before it wears out its welcome by subverting the very countdown cadence it spent the first two minutes establishing.
In short, there's the sound of Busdriver taking chances here, of not giving a shit, of getting back to saying what's on his mind. Dude put out a song full of electro disco throb that repeats "ass to mouth" a few dozen times as a hook; this is a guy who is fucking going for it, fitting right in with the recent Das Racist and Spank Rock albums that have left trashy slashes across the last year in music. When he shouts "I'm the antichrist!" and Midnight Vulture breakdowns take over and the chorus comes back trippled up over doublehard bass and you're bobbing your head like hell you know something's going right.
My main complaint is that there's not enough actual rapping on here, plenty of tracks are at least as sung as they are spit, but you know, these days I'm not even that bothered by that. Frm time to time I've had to describe Busdriver as a madcap, Zappaesque art-rock songwriter that just happens to rap, and that fits perfectly well here: as a well-paced, inventive, experimental indie rock album this is the best I've heard in a while. Besides, Drake and Kanye's aforementioned output has opened a mainstream door for proggy, intimate, singsongey R&B-tinged hip hop that blurs lines, and this album fits that trajectory: adventurous structure, inventive production, delivering the occasional unflinching sexual diversion. This is nowhere near as bracing in its emotional content, but its a way better album than Drake's and comes surprisingly close to Kanye's (which I confess to liking a goddamn lot).
I need more listens (I apparently just wrote 1500 words about an album I've heard twice) to take it all in, but its been running around in my mind for days. There's a lesson for you here, kids, though I'm not sure what it is. Be true to your heart? Hang in there baby? I'm just excited to see this return to form from a criminally underappreciated rapper, may he finally find success 4.5/5
You might like this if: you like crazy structures, hooky hooks, incredible rhymes, well-integrated production and hyperinflected, hard-edged delivery. And hey, let's get really old-school Busdriver: even if you don't think you like rap, give it a try.
We're in for a long one here folks, but I'm going somewhere with this.
I didn't have a typical Busdriver experience. I came across his music at a crucial, formative moment, which is to say I discovered Busdriver when I didn't know shit. At the ripe age of 22 I was still out of it enough to think that contemporary hip hop was only toughguy end-of-line-rhyme type shit. I'd missed Masters of the Universe, Organized Konfusion, Stankonia, Cold Vein, Operation Doomsday, shit that would have even started to prepare me, so think how double hard my mind was blown when I heard the mind-blowing Temporary Forever. That was the first rap album I ever loved and became my go-to rec for people who said they didn't like rap (who were abundant as fuck in aughts Orange County). Dude rhyming over fast horn riffs, rhyming unicorn with shoehorn, indulging in artsy, noisy, madcap turns: it spurred me to challenge a lot of my assumptions about music.
Unfortunately I also was still dumb in my relationships with rap, bands, and the world. One night I was stunned, STUNNED, to see Busdriver show up at a Unicorns show. In fact, full stop. Aside: So its 2003ish and I go to see basically my favorite band, The Unicorns, at my favorite venue, The Echo. Next thing you know fucking Busdriver gets on stage, and he freestyles over Unicorns squonktastic shitstorms. Let's lay this out: I go to my favorite venue to see my favorite band with no heretofore known hip hop leanings and my favorite rapper shows up and freestyles with them. Bull. Shit. I find the man himself afterwards and managed to stutter my way through saying what's up while The Truth of Spontaneous Human Combustion rang in my ears and I generally assumed that Busdriver hated me for reasons stemming from a general crushing ignorance of how to be a white rap fan and an assumption that it had to be complicated. This exchange did lead to being a third of the entire audience at the worst promoted show possible, where I bumblingly tried to procure a copy of Cosmic Cleavage before trundling off and watching awkwardly as Busdriver made the best of a shitty situation, gamely rapping to basically no one. I think the last time I saw the dude was as the most enthusiastic experiencer one of the first Corn Gangg shows (though I tried unsuccessfully to get in to see him open for Deerhoof) and then I moved thousands of miles away from LA. Edit: No! I saw him play with Kneebody, whose drummer I went to high school with. That was fucking insane.
My regret about this respawns from the realization, over the years, that Busdriver probably could have a pat on the back around then. As far as I can piece together, the dude was immensely talented, knew he was immensely talented, and was frustrated at fuck about where it was getting him. More generally, Busdriver seems like a self-conscious guy. Not unduly; he's probably pretty normal on that front for an actual person. But by rock star / rap star / public figure standards, where you're supposed to not give a shit, Busdriver obviously gives a shit what people think of him and his music, and about how his music is getting out there or not. And who wouldn't? Its not weakness, its an uncommon honestly, a lack of the kind of filters that most artist wrap themselves in, with facets of that honesty glinting off of the presumed half-truths of Least Favorite Rapper, Cool Band Buzz, Avantcore, Rap Sucks, even coming out of the crannies of The Weather's Glorified Hype Man, and on and on, to say nothing of the struggles referenced on the eventually-obtained Cosmic Cleavage. It's the kind of post-hardcode intimacy and vulnerability that Kanye and Drake are twisting to epic proportions lately, and Busdriver's been doing it for a decade. He's a real dude, too bad I didn't realize that before I moved.
I mention all this as context for the arc Busdriver's albums took: after his Pinkerton-personal Computer Cooties he put out a series of albums that just didn't feel wholehearted. The Fear of a Black Tangent / Roadkillovercoat / Jheli Beam sequence was dotted with adventurous production that didn't quite fit the rapping, with songs that smelled like they were fishing for airplay, sounding generally like an artist struggling to redefine himself, while struggling to define his relationship with his audience and his potential future audiences, trying on different stylistic outfits, but finding them baggy in the shoulders, tight as the waist, and in colors that didn't match the eyes. A guy who once engaged in constant surprise suddenly reveled in choruses with sing-song hooks; consider Kill Your Employer, unsuccessful as irony and bereft of sincerity, leaving only a chorus skin on a bloopablip skeleton, emblematic of the era's weakest moments (though Least Favorite Rapper and Manchuria were highlights).
And then Computer Cooties came out, and maybe the freedom of the small, free project snapped him out of his trying to please phase. That project was all over the place, and clearly just a matter of rapping, no gloss, just sick fucking rhymes, priming Busdriver, just maybe, to make the album he'd been trying to make all those years, to finally do himself right.
So, right, I don't know shit, this is all wild conjecture, but its how I read the decline and possible redemption of one of my once-favorite musicians, and it just so happens to fit into the narrative capped by Beaus$Eros. Which is to say that this album sounds like modern-era Busdriver, with none of the jazzy turns that marked Temporary Forever, but for the first time the man owns the sound.
---Actual Review Start---
I'm running just the barest bit long, so let me try to give the diligent reader a shortcut to work with: Bon Bon Fire is all you need to hear to understand what makes this whole album work:
- Musically, its bouncy, downright catchy, but weird as hell. With subbass buzz, trippled doo doos, chiming girl vocals, squirks and squalls, fitting together perfectly, echoes, drop outs, fuzz ins, tiny dubstep squibbles applied with admirable restraint.
- Structurally, its as adventurous as you could want, going high and low, and back and forth, narry a chorus to speak of, and that dropoff at 3:00 into the double drop-off at 3:20 into soaring croons at 3:40 is one of the finest sequences I've heard all year so far. It's a madcap chain of hooks that refuses to resolve into a single chunkable nugget for easy storage, demanding repeat listens, sounding like underground Hey Ya. Anyone who knows me knows that's a curiously high compliment.
- The lyrics are classic Busdriver, dropping Clam Chowders and Lay Pipes straight of Cosmic Cleavage, dropping Matt Lauer's and Oligarchy's straight off Temporary Forever.
- The delivery is legit. For once Busdriver owns his swears and N bombs, he owns this whole song, finally escaping that guest-on-his-own track tone that plagued his last few albums.
It's a goddamn great track.
Even Kiss me Back to Life, which bears some of the hallmarks of previous chorus-drenched, indieventurous-flecked tracks actually pulls the trick off this time, the chorus soaring, breaking down into herky-jerky bridges with confidence.
I still don't know what's going on on NoBlacksNoJewsNoAsians, but its brilliant, utterly original in structure, dropping off before it wears out its welcome by subverting the very countdown cadence it spent the first two minutes establishing.
In short, there's the sound of Busdriver taking chances here, of not giving a shit, of getting back to saying what's on his mind. Dude put out a song full of electro disco throb that repeats "ass to mouth" a few dozen times as a hook; this is a guy who is fucking going for it, fitting right in with the recent Das Racist and Spank Rock albums that have left trashy slashes across the last year in music. When he shouts "I'm the antichrist!" and Midnight Vulture breakdowns take over and the chorus comes back trippled up over doublehard bass and you're bobbing your head like hell you know something's going right.
My main complaint is that there's not enough actual rapping on here, plenty of tracks are at least as sung as they are spit, but you know, these days I'm not even that bothered by that. Frm time to time I've had to describe Busdriver as a madcap, Zappaesque art-rock songwriter that just happens to rap, and that fits perfectly well here: as a well-paced, inventive, experimental indie rock album this is the best I've heard in a while. Besides, Drake and Kanye's aforementioned output has opened a mainstream door for proggy, intimate, singsongey R&B-tinged hip hop that blurs lines, and this album fits that trajectory: adventurous structure, inventive production, delivering the occasional unflinching sexual diversion. This is nowhere near as bracing in its emotional content, but its a way better album than Drake's and comes surprisingly close to Kanye's (which I confess to liking a goddamn lot).
I need more listens (I apparently just wrote 1500 words about an album I've heard twice) to take it all in, but its been running around in my mind for days. There's a lesson for you here, kids, though I'm not sure what it is. Be true to your heart? Hang in there baby? I'm just excited to see this return to form from a criminally underappreciated rapper, may he finally find success 4.5/5
You might like this if: you like crazy structures, hooky hooks, incredible rhymes, well-integrated production and hyperinflected, hard-edged delivery. And hey, let's get really old-school Busdriver: even if you don't think you like rap, give it a try.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
#465 VA - DFA Compilation Vol. 1
I gave DFA Comp #2 to my brother and he dug it, asking for more. Strangely enough, I never did check out the (comparatively small-scope) first volume.
This is actually a pretty excellent document of the basic facets of the stunningly-short-lived, largely-DFA-fueled dancepunk scene, structured No New York-style as a couple of songs by each of 4 bands. Specifically:
- The Juan Maclean: the Daft-Punk, ravey side of the scene
- The Rapture: The shrieking, neon-disco side of the scene
- LCD Soundsystem: The music nerd, clearly most promising and successful side, perfectly merging culture, beats, electronics, shouting and sly glances. The only band to really transcend and outlast the genre (unless you count Liars, who outlasted it by foresaking it)
- Black Dice: noise/art band that really has nothing to do with dancepunk at all, but that seems strangely at home here: breaking up the pacing and providing a nice thematic link back to No New York via their near-unlistenable noisefucked approach.
It's actually an excellent listen, with two 4-song halves, each featuring one song by each band, each starting with a Juan Maclean raveup, wielding a top 10 ever dancepunk track in the 3-slot (House of Jealous Lovers, Losing my Edge), ending with a Black Dice expectation-challenger / soul-tester. And if you're not familiar with the scene, say if you haven't ever heard either of those two aforementioned tracks, I can't think of a better place to start 4/5
You might like this if: you're looking to find out what "dancepunk" was. You like throbbing beats, manic energy, and just a touch of arty obnoxiousness slashed over top
This is actually a pretty excellent document of the basic facets of the stunningly-short-lived, largely-DFA-fueled dancepunk scene, structured No New York-style as a couple of songs by each of 4 bands. Specifically:
- The Juan Maclean: the Daft-Punk, ravey side of the scene
- The Rapture: The shrieking, neon-disco side of the scene
- LCD Soundsystem: The music nerd, clearly most promising and successful side, perfectly merging culture, beats, electronics, shouting and sly glances. The only band to really transcend and outlast the genre (unless you count Liars, who outlasted it by foresaking it)
- Black Dice: noise/art band that really has nothing to do with dancepunk at all, but that seems strangely at home here: breaking up the pacing and providing a nice thematic link back to No New York via their near-unlistenable noisefucked approach.
It's actually an excellent listen, with two 4-song halves, each featuring one song by each band, each starting with a Juan Maclean raveup, wielding a top 10 ever dancepunk track in the 3-slot (House of Jealous Lovers, Losing my Edge), ending with a Black Dice expectation-challenger / soul-tester. And if you're not familiar with the scene, say if you haven't ever heard either of those two aforementioned tracks, I can't think of a better place to start 4/5
You might like this if: you're looking to find out what "dancepunk" was. You like throbbing beats, manic energy, and just a touch of arty obnoxiousness slashed over top
Monday, February 13, 2012
#464 Wild Flag - Wild Flag
Couldn't miss this one on the 2011 lists if you tried.
Well, this is no real supergroup, its pretty much a Sleatter-Kinney album, in song structure and overall sound. So, plenty of hooky guitars, insistent drums, rah rah defiant vocals, the occasional structural squiggle and Spoon-levels of casual muso cache.
And like most SK albums its perfectly solid, full of undeniable melodies and headbobbery, but never quite rising to any truly transcendent heights. The real highlight here is in the supergroup-ready production, which is aggressive in shifting the mix and the focus mid-track, allowing guitar solos to soar, bass to double rumble, organ flourishes to crest, jarring your attention out of thrum-thrum reverie once every track and a half or so.
On a personal level, I'm hard as hell to please when it comes to female vocals, and Carrie Brownstein generally doesn't do it for me: her reedy, breathy, inflection-heavy settles into a frequency already crowded by guitars, always competing for space. That alone keeps this from being a real hit for me. Sorry indie hardliners 3.5/5
You might like this if: If you like Sleater-Kinney? Ever since I spontaneously started this little section shortcut circa #353 I've endeavored to avoid making it snarky, to give the casual reader something to skim, but what else can you say here? Its a good solid rock and roll album that doesn't take any really big chances.
Well, this is no real supergroup, its pretty much a Sleatter-Kinney album, in song structure and overall sound. So, plenty of hooky guitars, insistent drums, rah rah defiant vocals, the occasional structural squiggle and Spoon-levels of casual muso cache.
And like most SK albums its perfectly solid, full of undeniable melodies and headbobbery, but never quite rising to any truly transcendent heights. The real highlight here is in the supergroup-ready production, which is aggressive in shifting the mix and the focus mid-track, allowing guitar solos to soar, bass to double rumble, organ flourishes to crest, jarring your attention out of thrum-thrum reverie once every track and a half or so.
On a personal level, I'm hard as hell to please when it comes to female vocals, and Carrie Brownstein generally doesn't do it for me: her reedy, breathy, inflection-heavy settles into a frequency already crowded by guitars, always competing for space. That alone keeps this from being a real hit for me. Sorry indie hardliners 3.5/5
You might like this if: If you like Sleater-Kinney? Ever since I spontaneously started this little section shortcut circa #353 I've endeavored to avoid making it snarky, to give the casual reader something to skim, but what else can you say here? Its a good solid rock and roll album that doesn't take any really big chances.
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
#463 Bad Religion - Suffer
Via punk lists.
Melodic hardcore, with fast bass, scraggly sing-shouting, and drums that bum-buh-bumbahbuh forever and ever and ever. Which is great. No frills, few surprises, some downright catchy moments, evolving without smacking of effort, exuding Dead Kennedys lite disgust and defiance, full of the kind of sunny CA punk that Green Day popularized, but with fewer inventive highs and obnoxious lows. Perfectly solid 3.5/5
You might like this if: you like your punk somewhere halfway between Ramones disinterest and Sex Pistols disgust, somewhere between Bad Brains fast and Buzzcocks hooky.
Melodic hardcore, with fast bass, scraggly sing-shouting, and drums that bum-buh-bumbahbuh forever and ever and ever. Which is great. No frills, few surprises, some downright catchy moments, evolving without smacking of effort, exuding Dead Kennedys lite disgust and defiance, full of the kind of sunny CA punk that Green Day popularized, but with fewer inventive highs and obnoxious lows. Perfectly solid 3.5/5
You might like this if: you like your punk somewhere halfway between Ramones disinterest and Sex Pistols disgust, somewhere between Bad Brains fast and Buzzcocks hooky.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
#462 Buddy Holly and The Crickets - The "Chirping" Crickets
Desperately grasping for classics!
On one hand I'm ashamed I've never heard a Buddy Holly album in its entirely. On the other hand, how many folks my age actually have? Dude's not especially cool, known-but-not-revered by everyone.
Mostly this is what you'd expect: wholesome, full of harmonies and backing doos and wops, galloping along wit jaunty backbeats and surfy guitars, all at about 2 minutes a pop. Some of these drag, where crooning and shuffle don't add up to much. But there's also some feisty rock and roll swagger, especially during the opening tracks, where sharp production and Elvisian delivery spark hearts. The sum is an enjoyable piece of history, made mostly of filler, with a couple of genuine corkers 3.5/5
You might like this if: you like really-old school rock and roll, or at least want to know where pretty-old school rock and roll came from
On one hand I'm ashamed I've never heard a Buddy Holly album in its entirely. On the other hand, how many folks my age actually have? Dude's not especially cool, known-but-not-revered by everyone.
Mostly this is what you'd expect: wholesome, full of harmonies and backing doos and wops, galloping along wit jaunty backbeats and surfy guitars, all at about 2 minutes a pop. Some of these drag, where crooning and shuffle don't add up to much. But there's also some feisty rock and roll swagger, especially during the opening tracks, where sharp production and Elvisian delivery spark hearts. The sum is an enjoyable piece of history, made mostly of filler, with a couple of genuine corkers 3.5/5
You might like this if: you like really-old school rock and roll, or at least want to know where pretty-old school rock and roll came from
#461 This Heat - Deceit
On some list of 80's albums, and mentioned in the Losing my Edge rant. Double points!
I have heard some atonal, noisy, terrified, terrifying, confrontational shit in my day, but this is something else, sounding truly outside of music, an unmakeable record. This sounds like a record from a post-apocalyptic future; not one made about said future, but truly from it, which is quite a trick.
There barely seems to be a band here at all; the vocals seem to tell fractured sides of various stories of a world gone wrong, alternately cowering Radioheadlike and delivering state anthems in the streets, alternately oppressed and oppressing to oblivion. Rackets clatter, proggy time signatures shudder, sheetmetal guitars and Eastern twang and tinny drums do battle, but the whole thing is also strangely hooky at times, coalescing into moments of stunning beauty, flowerbuds in bootprints, Gang of Four songs played by tincan skeletons. A New Kind of Water sums it up nicely: try to keep from bobbing your head to that bassline, even as guitars chatter and vocals drone.
In the noise, the post-punk seeth, the teasing wielding of melody, you can hear a starting point for bands like Liars and Death from Above 1979. It's as unpleasant as it sounds, but stratlingly singular, plainly must hear 4.5/5
You might like this if: you like abrasive, daring, powerfully strange rock, rendered beyond post-apocalyptic
I have heard some atonal, noisy, terrified, terrifying, confrontational shit in my day, but this is something else, sounding truly outside of music, an unmakeable record. This sounds like a record from a post-apocalyptic future; not one made about said future, but truly from it, which is quite a trick.
There barely seems to be a band here at all; the vocals seem to tell fractured sides of various stories of a world gone wrong, alternately cowering Radioheadlike and delivering state anthems in the streets, alternately oppressed and oppressing to oblivion. Rackets clatter, proggy time signatures shudder, sheetmetal guitars and Eastern twang and tinny drums do battle, but the whole thing is also strangely hooky at times, coalescing into moments of stunning beauty, flowerbuds in bootprints, Gang of Four songs played by tincan skeletons. A New Kind of Water sums it up nicely: try to keep from bobbing your head to that bassline, even as guitars chatter and vocals drone.
In the noise, the post-punk seeth, the teasing wielding of melody, you can hear a starting point for bands like Liars and Death from Above 1979. It's as unpleasant as it sounds, but stratlingly singular, plainly must hear 4.5/5
You might like this if: you like abrasive, daring, powerfully strange rock, rendered beyond post-apocalyptic
Monday, February 6, 2012
#460 Ramones - Ramones
I keep thinking I've heard all the seminal rock albums ever and still keep finding weird oversights like this. Fixed!
You know what's strange about this album? It's arguably the first punk album, but its basically post-punk. Bad Brains would engage in shredding acrobatics, The Sex Pistols would engage in overt craven impulses, countless bands would engage in raging aggression, countless others still would engage in punk as revolution. But here The Ramones don't bother with any of that, they offend by refusing to engage, by refusing to entertain, by causally subverting what they're supposed to do during a rock song, creating confrontation by aggressive dismissal. Years later bans decided all the rage and noise wasn't necessary, that you could leverage punk by going thrumthrumthrumthrumthrumthrum. Turns out that's where it all started.
The songs smack of not giving a shit what you think one way or another. They're short, repetitive, utterly bereft of any attempt to change or get your attention, like they've been beamed from space a million years ago from a civilization whose planet was long since consumed by its gianting sun. The only things that even remotely be called pop gestures are the mini-solo in Now I Want to Sniff Some Glue and the vocal melody in the break in 53rd and 3rd. Everything else just chuggs along, shouting shouting, and gone.
Sure, there's some interesting cultural maneuvers here, copping early rock and roll moves with equal parts reverence and irreverence, but for the most part it just arrives and sits there, playing more or less the same song again and again and again. A good find, I had no idea how single-minded this shit really was, curiously brilliant in its small way 4/5
You might like this if: you want some repetitive, disinterested guitar rock that won't snap you from your reverie once. Good history lesson.
You know what's strange about this album? It's arguably the first punk album, but its basically post-punk. Bad Brains would engage in shredding acrobatics, The Sex Pistols would engage in overt craven impulses, countless bands would engage in raging aggression, countless others still would engage in punk as revolution. But here The Ramones don't bother with any of that, they offend by refusing to engage, by refusing to entertain, by causally subverting what they're supposed to do during a rock song, creating confrontation by aggressive dismissal. Years later bans decided all the rage and noise wasn't necessary, that you could leverage punk by going thrumthrumthrumthrumthrumthrum. Turns out that's where it all started.
The songs smack of not giving a shit what you think one way or another. They're short, repetitive, utterly bereft of any attempt to change or get your attention, like they've been beamed from space a million years ago from a civilization whose planet was long since consumed by its gianting sun. The only things that even remotely be called pop gestures are the mini-solo in Now I Want to Sniff Some Glue and the vocal melody in the break in 53rd and 3rd. Everything else just chuggs along, shouting shouting, and gone.
Sure, there's some interesting cultural maneuvers here, copping early rock and roll moves with equal parts reverence and irreverence, but for the most part it just arrives and sits there, playing more or less the same song again and again and again. A good find, I had no idea how single-minded this shit really was, curiously brilliant in its small way 4/5
You might like this if: you want some repetitive, disinterested guitar rock that won't snap you from your reverie once. Good history lesson.
#459 PJ Harvey - Let England Shake
I never was so int PJ Harvey, but the 2011 lists wouldn't let up on this one.
This is a profoundly uncomfortable record. Harvey's tremulous treble quavers over top of minor key, ramshackle churn, everything fragile and nervous. It's an album about the state of the world, and it accurately reflects existence circa 2011, full of doubt and fear, channeling Great War imagery to evoke gaping despair. Everything is off. Glory of state anthems are sung sardonically by Sound of Music marionettes, The National bass surges pulse boreal over hillsides, trees bristle with the creak of the Tom Waits songs played by the tiny couple in Mullholland Drive.
Harvey finds herself wandering like a ghost through the England she loved, but displaced and disconnected like a ghost awakened 100 years after her death and horrified at the state of things The cold and space and grey and green of England seep everywhere as Harvey sings its name as if mourning a long dead lover. Again and again trumpets and vocal snippets overlay, as if played by another band next door or on an errant state radio, keeping you out of step and out of synch and uneasy.
It is a masterstroke of ill ease, capturing the feeling of shame and disdain any thinking person feels if they really think about the world these days, doubling down on the Radiohead modern stomach-pit jitters aesthetic. It wholly succeeds in doing what it set out to do, perhaps too well; I may never have the energy to listen to it again 3.5/5
You might like this if: you want catharsis for modern ennui. If you're reading this circa 2030, and the world somehow still exists at all, this is how we felt these days, listen and learn.
This is a profoundly uncomfortable record. Harvey's tremulous treble quavers over top of minor key, ramshackle churn, everything fragile and nervous. It's an album about the state of the world, and it accurately reflects existence circa 2011, full of doubt and fear, channeling Great War imagery to evoke gaping despair. Everything is off. Glory of state anthems are sung sardonically by Sound of Music marionettes, The National bass surges pulse boreal over hillsides, trees bristle with the creak of the Tom Waits songs played by the tiny couple in Mullholland Drive.
Harvey finds herself wandering like a ghost through the England she loved, but displaced and disconnected like a ghost awakened 100 years after her death and horrified at the state of things The cold and space and grey and green of England seep everywhere as Harvey sings its name as if mourning a long dead lover. Again and again trumpets and vocal snippets overlay, as if played by another band next door or on an errant state radio, keeping you out of step and out of synch and uneasy.
It is a masterstroke of ill ease, capturing the feeling of shame and disdain any thinking person feels if they really think about the world these days, doubling down on the Radiohead modern stomach-pit jitters aesthetic. It wholly succeeds in doing what it set out to do, perhaps too well; I may never have the energy to listen to it again 3.5/5
You might like this if: you want catharsis for modern ennui. If you're reading this circa 2030, and the world somehow still exists at all, this is how we felt these days, listen and learn.
Thursday, February 2, 2012
#458 King Creosote & Jon Hopkins - Diamond Mine
On the 2011 lists.
Isn't it funny how setting matters? How albums become soundtracks? How that one time we heard that album in the most important moment makes it our favorite album ever, a title applied again and again and again.
Had I heard this at my desk my review would have consisted of pointing out how spare it is. How it evokes the smallness of The Microphones, the brittle everyday glimpses of The Books, the haggard texture of Neutral Milk Hotel. I would have observed the similarity to my own songs, with the clumsy singing, the texture, the spare structure, the obsession with mini epic build and buzz and bass. It is a gorgeous, minor, album, coming in at a perfectly slight 32 minutes. I would have observed all of this and all of it is true.
As it is, I heard it on a lonely, desperate night, walking and walking down Elm. A child in a second story window taps on the glass signaling to no one; the ebb and flow of breath fogs the world; a feather falls spinning from nowhere; a girl with golden hair so thick I think its a head wrap steps out of the T station and stuns me; everyone sees me walking and we all look each other in the eye; bare trees spiderweb city-lit cloudscape; a stranger's TV pulses on the window; a man puts his hand on a woman's back as they shuffle from their car to their apartment and everything is tiny and huge and goes on forever and is gone 4.5/5
You might like this if: you want to feel small and sad and open and through
Isn't it funny how setting matters? How albums become soundtracks? How that one time we heard that album in the most important moment makes it our favorite album ever, a title applied again and again and again.
Had I heard this at my desk my review would have consisted of pointing out how spare it is. How it evokes the smallness of The Microphones, the brittle everyday glimpses of The Books, the haggard texture of Neutral Milk Hotel. I would have observed the similarity to my own songs, with the clumsy singing, the texture, the spare structure, the obsession with mini epic build and buzz and bass. It is a gorgeous, minor, album, coming in at a perfectly slight 32 minutes. I would have observed all of this and all of it is true.
As it is, I heard it on a lonely, desperate night, walking and walking down Elm. A child in a second story window taps on the glass signaling to no one; the ebb and flow of breath fogs the world; a feather falls spinning from nowhere; a girl with golden hair so thick I think its a head wrap steps out of the T station and stuns me; everyone sees me walking and we all look each other in the eye; bare trees spiderweb city-lit cloudscape; a stranger's TV pulses on the window; a man puts his hand on a woman's back as they shuffle from their car to their apartment and everything is tiny and huge and goes on forever and is gone 4.5/5
You might like this if: you want to feel small and sad and open and through
#457 Bassnectar - Divergent Spectrum
Still seeking that Big Adventure high.
Here's more typical Bassnectar, see my previous review for the basics. On this album things have taken an even more ravetastic party turn, with smoother synth melodies, bigger beats, and way more Skrillex-tastic shoutalong frat afterparty hooks. That last bit I'm not so fond of. In fact, all of this has taken a turn for the obnoxious that I don't quite approve of. It seems like there's only so many ways you can take this dubstep-flecked techno raveup sound, and they're not for me, the kinda transcendent hook of Above and Beyond notwithstanding 2.5/5
You might like this if: you like your music right up in your face, louder than should be mathematically possible, with lots of bassy drubble drops and men and synths alike shrieking around every corner, but don't want anything quite as far down that path as Skrillex
Here's more typical Bassnectar, see my previous review for the basics. On this album things have taken an even more ravetastic party turn, with smoother synth melodies, bigger beats, and way more Skrillex-tastic shoutalong frat afterparty hooks. That last bit I'm not so fond of. In fact, all of this has taken a turn for the obnoxious that I don't quite approve of. It seems like there's only so many ways you can take this dubstep-flecked techno raveup sound, and they're not for me, the kinda transcendent hook of Above and Beyond notwithstanding 2.5/5
You might like this if: you like your music right up in your face, louder than should be mathematically possible, with lots of bassy drubble drops and men and synths alike shrieking around every corner, but don't want anything quite as far down that path as Skrillex
#456 Hank Mobley - Soul Station
Another hot shit jazz album. So desperate.
What do I know about jazz? You've got your joggling bass, your sprightly piano, your shuffly brusshed drums and a shitload of nuanced, smooth sax solos. There's nothing entirely adventurous structurally here, you've got your main riff, a bunch of soloing, some time changes, but nothing too batshit. Just a solid jazz album. Cool. 3.5/5
You might like this if: you like jazz?
What do I know about jazz? You've got your joggling bass, your sprightly piano, your shuffly brusshed drums and a shitload of nuanced, smooth sax solos. There's nothing entirely adventurous structurally here, you've got your main riff, a bunch of soloing, some time changes, but nothing too batshit. Just a solid jazz album. Cool. 3.5/5
You might like this if: you like jazz?
#455 Sonic Youth - Sister
Lists!
If I told you I wasn't that big on Daydream Nation* would you lose all faith in me? Sonic Youth has always played with texture and noise, has always endulged in chords without names, configurations of strings that ought not to be played together. If you don't play guitar, try this some time: hold down four strings in some random configuration and strum them; fully half the time you'll think "that sounds like something out of a Sonic Youth song". Daydream Nation was their biggest one, the moment when they seemed to go from art punk to Art punk, aspiring to Velvet Undergound heights, when the song lengths stretched, when every screech seemed Loveless-perfectly placed. There were screeches and squalls and screams, but they seemed designed to impress-via-offending rather than truly offend.
I never did hear this, nor EVOL, their pre-daydream output. The energy is different here, more sincerely bent, the noise intended to actually be confrontational, while Daydream Nation seems comparatively Kid-A-icy. There's the sound of an actual band here, sometimes clumsy and immediate. The highlight is certainly Pacific Coast Highway, with its noise-drenched, Kim-scrawled squalls bookending a floating piece of harmonics.
I can't quite get into Sonic Youth. They are one of the ultimate muso bands, seemingly existing so that guitar players can admire how unusual their approach is, without providing all that much in terms of actual visceral enjoyment. My insane review of Gas notwithstanding, I don't necessarily go in for that kind of just-conceptual nonsense. This is a good crunchy, noisy album, admirable to be sure, but I'm left with little reason to actually listen to it 3.5/5
You might like this if: you like dissonant confrontational underground rock. You want a lesson on how noise found its way into modern rock
*Edit: later today I revisited Daydream Nation and I totally appreciate it more than I ever have. What the fuck do I know anyway?
If I told you I wasn't that big on Daydream Nation* would you lose all faith in me? Sonic Youth has always played with texture and noise, has always endulged in chords without names, configurations of strings that ought not to be played together. If you don't play guitar, try this some time: hold down four strings in some random configuration and strum them; fully half the time you'll think "that sounds like something out of a Sonic Youth song". Daydream Nation was their biggest one, the moment when they seemed to go from art punk to Art punk, aspiring to Velvet Undergound heights, when the song lengths stretched, when every screech seemed Loveless-perfectly placed. There were screeches and squalls and screams, but they seemed designed to impress-via-offending rather than truly offend.
I never did hear this, nor EVOL, their pre-daydream output. The energy is different here, more sincerely bent, the noise intended to actually be confrontational, while Daydream Nation seems comparatively Kid-A-icy. There's the sound of an actual band here, sometimes clumsy and immediate. The highlight is certainly Pacific Coast Highway, with its noise-drenched, Kim-scrawled squalls bookending a floating piece of harmonics.
I can't quite get into Sonic Youth. They are one of the ultimate muso bands, seemingly existing so that guitar players can admire how unusual their approach is, without providing all that much in terms of actual visceral enjoyment. My insane review of Gas notwithstanding, I don't necessarily go in for that kind of just-conceptual nonsense. This is a good crunchy, noisy album, admirable to be sure, but I'm left with little reason to actually listen to it 3.5/5
You might like this if: you like dissonant confrontational underground rock. You want a lesson on how noise found its way into modern rock
*Edit: later today I revisited Daydream Nation and I totally appreciate it more than I ever have. What the fuck do I know anyway?
#454 Spor - Pacifico EP
Still on the hunt for more Feed Me's Big Adventure level stuff, thought I'd try some of his earlier stuff under the Spor monicker.
This is just 5 mixes of the same song, which is more Bassnectar than Feed Me, full of the same kind of groaning bass and dropping synth lines, but with a pretty sheen, soaked in autotuned voice and a ringing synth vibes bridge. A trancy-dancy 4/4 wanders in and out, and then gets bent into slow dubby stutterpulses. It doesn't really quite build, and if you don't listen closely you might be convinced that it doesn't change, but in that sense its a victim of its own smoothness, as the surging lines are bent into sweeping transitions, beats sneak in, and are mutated back into warpy beastly armies, touching travelling salesmanlike across most of the styles that influence the later Feed Me work.
That said, its a little too smooth, lacking that riffy energy of the Big Adventure. Also, its perhaps a bad sign that the instrumental version is my favorite of the lot; that vocal delivery just doesn't move me, its vague bittersweet existentialism reading like a dubstep Good Riddance. That leaves, in order of decreasing goodness
#2 Chasing Shadows Remix: which applies ghostly areodynamism and extra layers of buzzsaw repetition that provide a bit more menace
#3 Original Mix: (see above)
#4 Accousti Version: which even more overtly calls out the sappy indie-pop-moper angle, but is kind of a fun trick
#5 Kito and Reija Remix: which adds vocal lines that are even more distractingly cloying than the original's
Still doesn't scratch the itch, not my favorite track of Gooch's 2.5/5
You might like this if: you like the softer Bassnectar tracks, wish LCD soundsystem sounded more watery and dubsteppy, or just want a super smooth piece of (slighty) genre bending techno. In the latter case, stick with the instrumental version.
This is just 5 mixes of the same song, which is more Bassnectar than Feed Me, full of the same kind of groaning bass and dropping synth lines, but with a pretty sheen, soaked in autotuned voice and a ringing synth vibes bridge. A trancy-dancy 4/4 wanders in and out, and then gets bent into slow dubby stutterpulses. It doesn't really quite build, and if you don't listen closely you might be convinced that it doesn't change, but in that sense its a victim of its own smoothness, as the surging lines are bent into sweeping transitions, beats sneak in, and are mutated back into warpy beastly armies, touching travelling salesmanlike across most of the styles that influence the later Feed Me work.
That said, its a little too smooth, lacking that riffy energy of the Big Adventure. Also, its perhaps a bad sign that the instrumental version is my favorite of the lot; that vocal delivery just doesn't move me, its vague bittersweet existentialism reading like a dubstep Good Riddance. That leaves, in order of decreasing goodness
#2 Chasing Shadows Remix: which applies ghostly areodynamism and extra layers of buzzsaw repetition that provide a bit more menace
#3 Original Mix: (see above)
#4 Accousti Version: which even more overtly calls out the sappy indie-pop-moper angle, but is kind of a fun trick
#5 Kito and Reija Remix: which adds vocal lines that are even more distractingly cloying than the original's
Still doesn't scratch the itch, not my favorite track of Gooch's 2.5/5
You might like this if: you like the softer Bassnectar tracks, wish LCD soundsystem sounded more watery and dubsteppy, or just want a super smooth piece of (slighty) genre bending techno. In the latter case, stick with the instrumental version.
#453 Dave Brubeck - Time Out
I'm getting desperate, even hitting the jazz, which I have no ability to review.
The rap on this one is its experimentations in time signature, especially the classic Take Five. The thing that got me was how sprightly it is, there's nothing ponderous or difficult about it, no bracing silences, to spastic bursts, to noise or aggressive assertion of its avantness. It's downright listenable, perfectly cool, agile without being smooth. Effortless. Let's leave it at that 4/5
You might like this if: shit I don't know. You like jazz? You want something inventive without all the effort that inventive jazz implies.
The rap on this one is its experimentations in time signature, especially the classic Take Five. The thing that got me was how sprightly it is, there's nothing ponderous or difficult about it, no bracing silences, to spastic bursts, to noise or aggressive assertion of its avantness. It's downright listenable, perfectly cool, agile without being smooth. Effortless. Let's leave it at that 4/5
You might like this if: shit I don't know. You like jazz? You want something inventive without all the effort that inventive jazz implies.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
#452 Mudhoney - Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge
Again, this was on some list. I'm legitimately getting desperate for places to find new stuff. I mean, there's a million albums I haven't heard, but which ones? The obvious choices are running thin.
If you only galnced the most mainstream end of the grunge story you'd be forgiven for thinking that Nirvana was the hardest thing to come out of the whole movement, the only real rockers. Pearl Jam muddled in core classic rock, Stone Temple Pilots were a touch nasty for an album and then weirded up while mellowing out, and various followers stuck to the same blueprint. Only Nirvana, among the really heavy popular hitters, seemed to have legitimate rage, legitimate unhinged energy.
Of course, in the earlier and/or undergroundier days there were all manner of scuzzbuckets, from Dinosaur Jr. to The Jesus Lizard. And these guys, apparently, who I never really heard.
I've already set it up, some scummy rock, all sneering vocals, dischordant post-velvets chords, and even some sickly organss, sounding a bit like Black Sabbath and Iron Butterfly had a baby and this was his snotty shit of a cousin. I mean that in the best possible way.
It works best when it kicks off the mud and engages in some actual angular, proto-Dismemberment Plan repetitive punk, as on Something so Clear, or just outright garagey thrash, as on Fuzzgun '91. But then there's the 6 minute Broken Hands that starts off by quoting a Neil Young song's opening riffs and then proceeds to ape his 6 minute song structures, without any of the pathos or riffage. Everything else falls roughly in between.
What ever happened to Mudhoney? The signed to Sub Pop, started touring with Sonic Youth, put this album out, by all accounts were on trajectory to indie rock greatness. And then 2 months later, Nevermind came out and shaped the face of grunge's path to the mainstream. There's some similarities between the albums, a similar dissonance and seething disinterest, but this is comparatively thin, too unwilling to please, too restrained in its disgust to grab the world by the face. Guess they'll have to settle for indie cred.
An interesting piece of history, some clever riffage, but, to my ear, see above:simultaneously not tuneful enough and not arty enough, outshined by bands that came after and learned from their blueprint 3/5
You might like this if: if you haven't heard this by now you might have missed your window to love it, but you still might like it: it's dissonant and hooky, impassioned and dispassionate, a classic slice of sludgy, punky grunge
If you only galnced the most mainstream end of the grunge story you'd be forgiven for thinking that Nirvana was the hardest thing to come out of the whole movement, the only real rockers. Pearl Jam muddled in core classic rock, Stone Temple Pilots were a touch nasty for an album and then weirded up while mellowing out, and various followers stuck to the same blueprint. Only Nirvana, among the really heavy popular hitters, seemed to have legitimate rage, legitimate unhinged energy.
Of course, in the earlier and/or undergroundier days there were all manner of scuzzbuckets, from Dinosaur Jr. to The Jesus Lizard. And these guys, apparently, who I never really heard.
I've already set it up, some scummy rock, all sneering vocals, dischordant post-velvets chords, and even some sickly organss, sounding a bit like Black Sabbath and Iron Butterfly had a baby and this was his snotty shit of a cousin. I mean that in the best possible way.
It works best when it kicks off the mud and engages in some actual angular, proto-Dismemberment Plan repetitive punk, as on Something so Clear, or just outright garagey thrash, as on Fuzzgun '91. But then there's the 6 minute Broken Hands that starts off by quoting a Neil Young song's opening riffs and then proceeds to ape his 6 minute song structures, without any of the pathos or riffage. Everything else falls roughly in between.
What ever happened to Mudhoney? The signed to Sub Pop, started touring with Sonic Youth, put this album out, by all accounts were on trajectory to indie rock greatness. And then 2 months later, Nevermind came out and shaped the face of grunge's path to the mainstream. There's some similarities between the albums, a similar dissonance and seething disinterest, but this is comparatively thin, too unwilling to please, too restrained in its disgust to grab the world by the face. Guess they'll have to settle for indie cred.
An interesting piece of history, some clever riffage, but, to my ear, see above:simultaneously not tuneful enough and not arty enough, outshined by bands that came after and learned from their blueprint 3/5
You might like this if: if you haven't heard this by now you might have missed your window to love it, but you still might like it: it's dissonant and hooky, impassioned and dispassionate, a classic slice of sludgy, punky grunge
#451 Gas - Pop
This might have been on some top albums of the aughts list?
Wolfgang Voight makes some experimental music, and this is no exception. 7 tracks, averaging nearly 10 minutes each, highly repetitive. Not just repetitive unto themselves, but across the whole album. Think Eno at his most ambient, or The Disintegration Loops, with less disintegration.
I don't think I could have reviewed this album, or even appreciated it, without a conversation I had a few months ago with John, a friend who's been studying music for years and years. I don't remember the details, but he introduced me to a musical composition concept whereby one starts with a melodic line and then enacts a series of transformations on it, reversing it, nudging it this way or that, according to some pretty specific rules. My first reaction was to interrogate whether this produced particularly compelling music to listen to: John seemed to dodge the issue a bit, redirecting to its conceptual value. I pressed. Was it more likely to lead you to more compelling music than more traditional methods? John seemed unwilling to commit to that level of endorsement. What's the point then, if it doesn't make better music?
Eventually, though, I did an end-around past that entire angle and came to see the approach's value, even if that value wasn't in its ability to create enjoyable music. What I eventually decided was this: when you hear music, it isn't necessarily about the experience of the hearing, not necessarily. You can express ideas through music, and what you mean to create may not the experience of hearing the notes themselves, but the experience of understanding the ideas behind the notes as they emerge and settle in your mind. Restrictions in structure bolster music's ability to bear super-sonic conceptual payloads, much as some poetry is aided by the imposition of structure. A long boring film may be a way of saying something about boredom, even as it fails to be a film.
This is all very possibly pseudointellectual hokum, or maybe the expression of larger ideas in the guise of a music review.. meta-hokum! And its about to get worse. How can you describe an object that does not exist? You can describe it, you can draw it, you can make a 3d animation of it, you can simulate its qualities in dance, and, yep, you can make music of it. Not about it, but of it, music that represents a thing.
This album, which I found underwhelming musically, was nonetheless compelling in its ability to create, fully formed in my mind, a notion of a slowly rotating crystal octahedron, as wide as t is deep, taller than it is wide, turning in a cave, spilling forth with light and tendrils of light. This stems, perhaps, from my notion of Acid Casual's signature synth surge as the turning of a lighthouse over the coast, repetitive sound as circular motion, sine waves as sine waves.
The crystal is realized through music, and is rendered in a way more real than if we could see it, as it plays out in dreamlike overload. It changes cyclically like the nights and days, and slowly over the course of the album like the seasons, the repetition again and again cementing its contours, much like frames make up comic motion, much like repeating events become habit, much like jokes become catchphrases, much like seeing a loved on every day makes up your notion of who they are and what they are capable of and what they are not. The color of the light changes, the tone of the place changes, tension creeps in, a sense of dying or exploding or being reborn emerges, like the end of Akira or Princess Mononoke or Metropolis or any anime when the world is rent and we learn that all of man is wrong. This album is a thing. It is not the experience of listening to beat or melody, though those are fleetingly present, it is the experience of knowing that thing 4/5
You might like this if: you finished reading that whole review. It demonstrates the requisite ability to tolerate bullshit.
Wolfgang Voight makes some experimental music, and this is no exception. 7 tracks, averaging nearly 10 minutes each, highly repetitive. Not just repetitive unto themselves, but across the whole album. Think Eno at his most ambient, or The Disintegration Loops, with less disintegration.
I don't think I could have reviewed this album, or even appreciated it, without a conversation I had a few months ago with John, a friend who's been studying music for years and years. I don't remember the details, but he introduced me to a musical composition concept whereby one starts with a melodic line and then enacts a series of transformations on it, reversing it, nudging it this way or that, according to some pretty specific rules. My first reaction was to interrogate whether this produced particularly compelling music to listen to: John seemed to dodge the issue a bit, redirecting to its conceptual value. I pressed. Was it more likely to lead you to more compelling music than more traditional methods? John seemed unwilling to commit to that level of endorsement. What's the point then, if it doesn't make better music?
Eventually, though, I did an end-around past that entire angle and came to see the approach's value, even if that value wasn't in its ability to create enjoyable music. What I eventually decided was this: when you hear music, it isn't necessarily about the experience of the hearing, not necessarily. You can express ideas through music, and what you mean to create may not the experience of hearing the notes themselves, but the experience of understanding the ideas behind the notes as they emerge and settle in your mind. Restrictions in structure bolster music's ability to bear super-sonic conceptual payloads, much as some poetry is aided by the imposition of structure. A long boring film may be a way of saying something about boredom, even as it fails to be a film.
This is all very possibly pseudointellectual hokum, or maybe the expression of larger ideas in the guise of a music review.. meta-hokum! And its about to get worse. How can you describe an object that does not exist? You can describe it, you can draw it, you can make a 3d animation of it, you can simulate its qualities in dance, and, yep, you can make music of it. Not about it, but of it, music that represents a thing.
This album, which I found underwhelming musically, was nonetheless compelling in its ability to create, fully formed in my mind, a notion of a slowly rotating crystal octahedron, as wide as t is deep, taller than it is wide, turning in a cave, spilling forth with light and tendrils of light. This stems, perhaps, from my notion of Acid Casual's signature synth surge as the turning of a lighthouse over the coast, repetitive sound as circular motion, sine waves as sine waves.
The crystal is realized through music, and is rendered in a way more real than if we could see it, as it plays out in dreamlike overload. It changes cyclically like the nights and days, and slowly over the course of the album like the seasons, the repetition again and again cementing its contours, much like frames make up comic motion, much like repeating events become habit, much like jokes become catchphrases, much like seeing a loved on every day makes up your notion of who they are and what they are capable of and what they are not. The color of the light changes, the tone of the place changes, tension creeps in, a sense of dying or exploding or being reborn emerges, like the end of Akira or Princess Mononoke or Metropolis or any anime when the world is rent and we learn that all of man is wrong. This album is a thing. It is not the experience of listening to beat or melody, though those are fleetingly present, it is the experience of knowing that thing 4/5
You might like this if: you finished reading that whole review. It demonstrates the requisite ability to tolerate bullshit.
#450 Tom Ze - Tom Ze (1968)
More early tropicalia self-titled albums! (edit, though this is apparently also known as Grande Liquidaçao)
The simplest way to explain this album is that it's somewhere halfway between Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso; a watered down version of the former's eclecticism washed with a slightly rougher version of the latter's crooning. Everything here is in watercolor, with broad, lush strokes of horns and organs in place of complex runs, with choruses of vocals in places of Gil's pointed yelping, but with that rock and roll edge. The result isn't loungey, nor particularly garagey, eschewing two of the main tropicalia touchstones; its more readily in line with the slightly slower-tempoed British bands of the 60's, say The Small Faces, The Zombies, and Nirvana.
As an American listener in 2012, it makes it a bit less exciting, less exotic, but this isn't to undermine the album's considerable inventiveness. First of all, those bands are among the best of the decade, not a bad place to start. Secondly, this is only loosely comparable to those bands, and only closely akin to them by comparison to other tropicalia acts of the era. Taken on its own, this is still a skittering, sprawling mess of intruments, rhythms and vocals, soaring like a proto-polyphonic spree on tracks like Gloria and Sem Entrada E Sem Mais Nada.
I think because of this scatteredness, the album is harder to classify and harder to appreciate, dense colored noise read as brown. But listen to the interlocks of drums, vocals, organs, jangled guitars, and trumpets on Quero Sambar Meu Bem closely and watch the patterns swirl. A victim of my short-turnaround structure, worth your listen, though I think that its a bit mushy for me. Gil is still the winner of the three so far 3.5/5
You might like this if: you liked slightly sleepy, slightly psychadelic 60's rock and want a funky, inventive, Portuguese-language twist
The simplest way to explain this album is that it's somewhere halfway between Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso; a watered down version of the former's eclecticism washed with a slightly rougher version of the latter's crooning. Everything here is in watercolor, with broad, lush strokes of horns and organs in place of complex runs, with choruses of vocals in places of Gil's pointed yelping, but with that rock and roll edge. The result isn't loungey, nor particularly garagey, eschewing two of the main tropicalia touchstones; its more readily in line with the slightly slower-tempoed British bands of the 60's, say The Small Faces, The Zombies, and Nirvana.
As an American listener in 2012, it makes it a bit less exciting, less exotic, but this isn't to undermine the album's considerable inventiveness. First of all, those bands are among the best of the decade, not a bad place to start. Secondly, this is only loosely comparable to those bands, and only closely akin to them by comparison to other tropicalia acts of the era. Taken on its own, this is still a skittering, sprawling mess of intruments, rhythms and vocals, soaring like a proto-polyphonic spree on tracks like Gloria and Sem Entrada E Sem Mais Nada.
I think because of this scatteredness, the album is harder to classify and harder to appreciate, dense colored noise read as brown. But listen to the interlocks of drums, vocals, organs, jangled guitars, and trumpets on Quero Sambar Meu Bem closely and watch the patterns swirl. A victim of my short-turnaround structure, worth your listen, though I think that its a bit mushy for me. Gil is still the winner of the three so far 3.5/5
You might like this if: you liked slightly sleepy, slightly psychadelic 60's rock and want a funky, inventive, Portuguese-language twist
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