I've been wrestling with my review of the Jesus Lizard's Liar for a while now. My difficulties with it have really helped me see the challenge in writing an album review so as to have a sort of narrative quality to it, flowing prose with a beginning, middle and end. I've been trying all sorts of little angles to get the juices flowing, and came up with this terse little piece I thought I'd share:
Recipe For a Jesus Lizard Song
1. Have rhythm section play absolutely punishing backing beat.
2. Have guitar player alternate between:
(a) chunky blues-based riffs, (b) post-punk chime/shimmer (c) all-out squalls of white noise.
3. Have vocalist:
(a) drink body weight in alcohol, (b) rant and rave on top of the whole glorious mess.
Intensely tongue-piercing-cheek irony or outrageously overreaching numb-to-taste delirium? I mean this cover so completely screams EXCESS!!! that it looks more and more earnest and sincere the more I look at it, in a "Hey! Let's capture all of the awesomeness of a thousand epic movie posters on a single album cover! AWESOME!" sort of way. See this video, where you can see those costumes from the cover in full motion (quick summary: two coked-out looking dudes mugging for the camera in Shanghai, China[?!?]), and this interview for further evidence on that question.
So I was surprised to find that the title track (Pitchfork's #96) of this album, which I was expecting to be some symphony-bursting, over-produced mess (the aural equivalent of the poster's blockbuster movie-fest I guess) is such a tight, tight, lovely, sighing little piece of 80's-derived pop music. In fact, it's the incredible leanness of the song that is one of the biggest factors contributing to its success. The thing simply sounds effortless.
Note the opening descending cloud-like synthesizer melody, the brief bursts of one-note vocals that open the verse melody, the insistent, yet understated chiming guitar that underpins the entire song and subtly shifts its pattern at appropriate moments.
"Walking on a Dream" sounds like the product of innumerable, ruthless editing sessions, like what emerges after attempting to take out as many extraneous sections as possible until what is left is as direct and succinct a pop song as possible. As they say, it takes a lot of work to make something look that effortless.
There's also something so winning to me about vocalist Luke Steele's performance, the way he petulantly open mouths some words ("how can i explain"), the little quirks of pronunciation he brings throughout the song.
One of my favorite moments is the mini-bridge, when the percussion drops out and a disembodied voice, sounding distant and scratchy, almost like a sample, sings "catch me I'm falling down", partially accompanied by another voice further up in the mix. It's a lovely little moment of semi-repose and wistfulness that provides a touch of emotional resonance in the midst of the song's coasting joy, and it exemplifies the subtle detail and craft all over this song, cheese-bomb cover and coked-out video be damned.
The end of the year means list-making time in the music world, and, out-of-touch with the Indie zeitgeist though I may be, I still doubt any site's list carries more weight than Pitchfork's (admittedly there's the Village Voice's Pazz and Jop and Idolator.com's Jackin' Pop, but both of those are aggregate lists, combining votes from hundreds of disparate music critics for a more mainstream picture). So it's interesting to check in with them at the end of the year and see exactly how things turned out in their view, what narratives they use to frame the year, and also which early heavily hyped juggernauts have run out of steam, which underdogs might sneak their way to the top (I remember Sufjan Stevens' Michigan coming out of nowhere to grab the #3 slot in 2003; he was a relative unknown at the time and it really helped kick-start his ascent to his current place in the mainstream Indie pantheon).
Their lists (especially the singles list) provide a broad and decently diverse (read: Indie-centric but dipping in dance, rap, pop, and metal) pool of music, and a great opportunity to discover some of the year's highlights that may have slipped under your own personal radar. I'll make a few posts with my own favorite discoveries from the lists. Here's one to start:
Women - "Black Rice"
This song caught my eye partly because its high rank (#17 overall) combined with its obscurity, and partly because it sat atop Pitchfork-founder Ryan Schreiber's own individual top tracks list. Superficially, the track stakes out the same sort of echo-ey garage-psych-postpunk territory Deerhunter so successfully inhabited on Cryptograms, but "Black Rice" finds hypnotic splendor not in rapturous overload (see, i.e., "Spring Hall Convert") but in shambolic, plodding warmth, bone-dry production, Panda Bear-like vocals (read: Beach Boys-derived), and an absurdly catchy, serpentine melody that I somehow feel justified in describing as "sideways". A truly dusty gem.
Quality Details: the deceptively intricate xylophone part that enters the song accomplanied by zombie handclaps on (what sounds like) the words "lemon and daylight"; the lovely cascading bassline that funnels the song back into its second verse; the sudden falsetto leap in the chorus that best exemplifies the melody's pleasantly queasy quality.
Surprise! Hello there. This semesters' exams are almost over and I can't believe my last post was back after my last set of exams. I'll start something up again on this after finals. I'll put up something, anything for consideration/dialog. See you there~
I need to work on some long-overdue reviews for Audrey (sorry Audrey!), but here's some quick thoughts on some things I've been listening to lately (please make use of the imeem player above to sample the songs I mention, and let me know if it's working for you!):
Ellen Allien & Apparat - Orchestra of Bubbles
It's been exam-studying time, and that means a greater than usual dose of instrumental music. Last semester it was Tortoise; this time I went with the Disintegration Loops, Stereolab (vocals, yes, but it's only distracting when you can understand what they're saying; unintelligible French cooing presents no distraction) Aphex Twin and recently, this album. I find it hard to put my finger on what separates engaging, interesting and listenable dance and electronic music from its less fortunate brethren. The album is melodically and rhythmically strong, sure, but there is also a pure pleasantness and organic warmth in the sounds themselves. On album standout "Jet" for example, the warm pulsing synth that mirrors the bass pulse and the delightful little scuttling noises that strafe across it like tiny crabs on a sandy beach, exemplify how the best tracks on the album build tension piece by piece, with simple melodic elements that display an exceptional sonic tautness. Not every track is as successful, but some are, "Turbo Dreams", among them.
The Constantines - Kensington Heights
Still delving into this record, but it sounds promising so far, an interesting development in the wake of the surprisingly sparse and trad-rock influenced Tournament of Hearts, both expanding on that sound, and re-integrating more of the spikier post-punk of earlier albums. Opening track "Hard Feelings" is the perfect example of this melding of worlds: The song has classic rock swagger and even a decent straight-up guitar solo(!), but also an unmistakable angularity and metallic bite that evokes Fugazi, not Fogerty (in fact, the band's sound has often been pegged as "Springsteen fronting Fugazi"; an application of the "Band X meets Band Y" device that music critics often overuse at the expense of actual insight or description. This particular descriptor is stubbornly persistent as a lazy shorthand for the band; it's like the statement just gets copy and pasted from review to review). The song channels its ample energy into stuttering, interlocking keyboard and guitar riffs, which contrast nicely with Bryan Webb's always-satisfying rasp of a vocal delivery. Also deserves mention: the awesomely pounding repeating post-chorus riff that evokes both an air siren and some giant machine press crashing down and resetting itself over and over. The rest of the album I don't know as well, but some other preliminary thoughts: "Million Star Hotel" is a formidable second track; where "Feeling" took a horizontal approach (barreling forward momentum) Feeling is more vertical: the tempo more deliberate as riffs soar, tower and crash. "Trans Canada" rides a chunky bass riff to an impassioned climax, although the build is so brief, I'm not sure the payoff is fully earned. "Shower of Stones", the first misstep, is sung by Steve Lambke instead of Webb, and confirms just how effective Webb is as a vocalist, and how much the band loses in his absence. And I'll agree with Pitchfork's Jason Crock, that I could do entirely without the odd, cheesy keyboard effects on "Credit River". I still haven't quite parsed the lyrics on the album; although I'm not a big lyrics guy, lyrics are usually a plus point for the band, who employ a hyper-romantic sort of street poetry tempered by rootsier, blue-collar sensibilities. Sometimes I feel like they can overdo the affected poetic mannerisms, but Webb's impassioned vocal delivery is so effective, he tends to make almost anything work. A sample of some nice lines at the front end of the "Trans Canada" climax:
"I had that vision, brother/the one about you, brother/we did ride, ride on the shining path together"
I will say that I don't particularly like the album cover, though. For what sounds like, so far, such a lively record, that cover is surprisingly drab and dull, and the airplane propeller silhouette, unless I'm really missing something, just seems like a total non sequitur. Really, it looks like something slapped together in Photoshop in about 45 seconds. But minor gripes aside (and I'll admit, I'm actively searching for them because I am a bit biased towards the Constantines; "On to You" is a personal favorite of mine), initial impressions suggest thatKensington Heights just may eventually prove a worthy development and extension of the Constantines' already accomplished oeuvre.
Alright! For now it's back to work on that Jesus Lizard piece, and maybe even the Stereolab one I was hoping to do. I'll post them here after I'm done. I've got a lot of ideas for this blog that I'm excited about implementing, and now that it's summer, I might actually have the time to implement, but we'll see!
Exquisitely tactful vocalist, unerringly consistent songsmith, and all-around awesome frontman Britt Daniel, you deserve every accolade you receive and so much more.
Ok, I'll admit, Spoon is my favorite band. My music taste has somewhat of a formalist slant. I appreciate expansive creativity and avant-garde boundary pushing, sure, but I really have a soft spot for musicians and artists who can artfully manipulate the formal constraints of classic pop and rock songwriting structures and assemble them into new, exciting and timeless shapes.* Spoon is a perhaps peerless example of such a band.
I heard recently that Matthew Perpetua of Fluxblog fame has a project to review one R.E.M. song every day for a year or something (and that Floodwatchmusic , another great blog, is doing the same for Rush(!)). Maybe I'll anatomize Spoon's catalog as well. I'd love to set out in clear and rational terms, with all the evidence I can muster, why I believe them to be truly (one of) the greatest band(s) of our generation.
*As an aside, I think the same sort of logic explains why I love "Ocean's Eleven"; the movie takes a familiar theme and and executes it with such wit, class and restraint that the end result has a transcendent sort of breezy magic, channeling the charisma and glamor of Old Hollywood.
When I was young, probably in elementary school, I read a joke in Reader's Digest, in one of those "Laughter, The Best Medicine" sections. The joke went like this:
Some musician dies, and awakens to find himself in a club where a jam session is about to take place. The people there tell him he's in hell, and he asks who's jamming, only to find that all these legends are jamming there together, Hendrix on guitar, John Lennon singing, etc. So he's all incredulous and says there's no way this is hell; I must be in heaven! And the punchline is, that at exactly that moment, Karen Carpenter walks out and gets behind the drum kit.
I didn't really find it that funny, not really knowing who most of the people really were; the only lesson forever imprinted on my impressionable young mind was that Karen Carpenter was a horrible drummer, bad enough to make Heaven into Hell. As an enormous, almost obsessive fan of good, smart, tasteful, musical drumming (I can call Mastodon one of my favorite bands largely on the strength of Brian Dailor alone), I guess that little piece of information stuck in my head, a damning account of an inexcusably tacky musician. So I was more than a little surprised to find a clip like this on Youtube:
If you don't have time to mess around, go straight to the 8:50 mark for the real goods. Plus, half the time she's simultaneously singing in that flawless soft-rock voice. All apologies, Karen Carpenter. You have been forever vindicated in my mind and heart, as a truly kick-ass drummer.
(NOTE: I made the above playlist at imeem.com, an awesome site for streaming music files. I recommend signing up for a free account there in order to listen to basically every song on the site in full-length version. In the meantime, here is a link to a full version of "Acid Fight", and here's the Myspace page for Ecstatic Sunshine)
My appreciation of Sunset Rubdown has been a long while in the birthing. Spencer Krug purveys a highly theatrical brand of densely-layered symphonic and yet clattering indie rock with his increasingly serious (haven't they put out two full-length albums since Wolf Parade put out their debut?) and noteworthy in its own right stand-alone side-project. His songwriting, especially on last year's Random Spirit Lover tends towards the labyrinthine, piling melodic line on top of melodic line, shifting from chord to chord in a restless way that doesn't seem to appeal immediately with conventional listening sensibilities... or at least with mine, anyway. I think in describing their music to friends, I've used something like "Baroque, proggy, garage rockin' oompah-clatter." (I should have added to the end of that phrase, "that tends towards moments of shimmering transcendence.") Anyway, I remember that upon my first listen to Shut Up I Am Dreaming, the band's 2006 debut LP, I felt shut out by the dense murkiness of the production and the songs themselves. I definitely would not describe that record as "sharp". Spencer's keyboard tones shimmer and bleed, leaking all over the rest of the composition, and the drummer hammers on the crash early and often. Plus, when I heard second track "They Took a Vote and Said No" I got turned off pretty quickly, thinking "wow, goofy, faux-precious toy marching-band stuff. Not for me."
I was however always impressed with Krug's lyrics and the way he throws this mess of highly-evocative dreamlike language together and delivers it all in a highly-affected impassioned voice. Perhaps that lyrical talent was what encouraged me to keep coming back to those difficult, vaseline-smeared songs for additional listens, until finally the unorthodox melodies began to make sense and I could submerge myself in the wall of instrumentation instead of running smack into it and bouncing off.
So at this point I definitely consider myself a Sunset Rubdown fan, if not a fanatic, per se, and it was with some eagerness that last night, my good friend Chen and I went out to see them perform as the headliners at a wonderfully budget-priced show (thank you Boost Mobile and New York Magazine for targeting this demographic!) in the heart of Fort Greene, Brooklyn.
The venue was, as expected, a Masonic Temple, and managed to convey a pleasantly appealing low-key community-center-converted-for-a-punk-rock-show vibe in spite of the banners of corporate products adorning the main hall, and despite the imposing and elaborate architectural touches (which actually provided an apropos framing for Sunset Rubdown's ornate compositions) that come with being, well, a Masonic Temple. Not long after arrival, first act of the night, Ecstatic Sunshine took the stage. The venue was still pleasingly sparsely-filled and Chen and I took up chairs at the rear of the venue to conserve our standing strength and lower-back muscle endurance for the later acts. As lead-off men, let's just say that Ecstatic Sunshine did not quite do a Rickey Henderson-like job of setting the table for the rest of the line-up. I had actually done some prep work before hand to acquaint myself a bit better with the opening bands, and had found a 2006 record of theirs composed of dual indie-rock guitar instrumentals, like the guitar tracks from a Bloc Party record played in isolation, except more busy and complex to make up for their starkness. I thought it would make for a good opening act; gimmicky and interesting and diverting enough, a musical appetizer before the main course.
Alas, they instead opted instead to assault the audience with chime-y guitar loops and fuzzed-out analog keyboard tones, and Chen and I, after zoning out for a bit and wasting some of our eardrum's membrane integrity, instead opted to sit on a nice bench in the hallway. Although I only heard about ten minutes of music or so, they nevertheless shook me of the opinion that they were not playing compositions but merely "jamming" in an unfortunately unentertaining way that involved a lot of knob-twiddling and little to no dynamics, melody or complexity. Sorry, guys, I couldn't dig it.
We went in some time after we heard the abrasive noise inside the main hall end, to take up decent positions for the band batting second, Blood on the Wall. I had heard good things about BotW for a while, that they effectively and energetically recreated the sloppy, pleasantly slack sounds of early/mid 90's Indie Rock, (back when that term evoked Archers of Loaf, Pavement, Sebadoh and their ilk, and not the gratifyingly confusing mish-mash of styles it does today).
They took stage, just guitar, bass and drums, a refreshingly sparse setup and a good contrast to the relative plethora of instruments and musicians I expected the headliners to roll out. Bass player Courtney Shanks spoke-sang in what Chen pointed out was a pleasingly low register, a female vocal approach pointedly contrasted by her brother, guitarist Brad Shanks, who had the kind of appealing high-pitched whine that evoked Black Francis more than anyone, but also gave me glimpses of Jack White. Drummer Zach Campbell maintained a competent, hard-hitting thump.
They jammed out their straightforward Indie Rockin' tunes, but for most of their set were more notable to me for their earnest energy and good-natured approach than any compositional achievement. With their last two songs, however, I caught a glimpse of something special, the sort of slapdash, spiky, catchiness that was as appealing last night as it must have been for Pixies fans back in the day. Second-to-last song "Mary Susan" was an exhilarating shout-along and a bona fide anthem, and set-closer "Acid Fight" was a build and release jam that ended with Brad writhing on the floor of the stage repeatedly shouting the ridiculously great chorus "THERE'S SOMETHING WRONG WITH YOUR FACE!!!!". In these two songs, Brad's vocals were at their finest, reaching heights of catchy shout/screaming that suggested he'd cross-bred his Black Francis shriek with a healthy dose of the yelping of the Jesus Lizard's David Yow (Acid Fight reminded me of Jesus Lizard staple "Seasick" with its churning, repetition of a single riff buoyed by super-charismatic howl-vocals).
So, with at least their immediate predecessors having done a bang-up job opening for them, Sunset Rubdown finally took stage. Spencer was even more boyish looking than I anticipated, which, along with his omnipresent slight lisp, cast his musical work in a different light, as the product of a preternaturally talented mastermind (I discovered later that he turns 31 in less than two months; no Zach Condon is he). They opened with an decent version of Random Spirit Lover standout "Winged/Wicked Things", that didn't quite nail the full martial drama and energy of the album version, probably just from being the first song of the night played, with no prior momentum to aid it. Immediately afterwards, though, and as if acknowledging the likeness, they played another waltz-time song of similarly stately and epic form, Shut Up precursor to "Winged/Wicked Things", "Stadiums and Shrines II". Their performance of this song was spot-on and one of the highlights of the night, and in an inspired choice, tacked on the outro from "They Took a Vote and Said No" for good measure, a thrashy section that fit better at the end of "Stadiums" than it did in its original place.
The front-loading of the set continued with "Trumpet, Trumpet, Toot! Toot!", a swift, howling minor-key rocker from Spirit Lover. On the whole, though, they balanced their set well, interspersing a few new songs amongst fan favorites, and never letting the energy drag too much. I was happy to see them display a good grasp of the strengths and weaknesses of their own catalog (especially as they work in the live setting), shunting many of their more marginal album tracks in favor of the more upbeat/epic numbers. It was enough that they included the dirge-like six and a half minute plus behemoth "Stallion" at the center of their set; had they also included fellow slowpokes "The Men are Called Horsemen There" or "I'm Sorry I Sang on Your Hands...", the energy of the set would have been totally quashed.
I was also disappointed by the truncated version of standout track "Shut Up I Am Dreaming of Places Where Lovers Have Wings", they played, cutting out the lovely, drama-building acoustic intro AND the awesome, psuedo-calypso new-wave-y outro that was one of the finest (and surprisingly in contrast with the rest of the album, very crisply-executed) moments on that album; it was a passage I had been looking forward to seeing live, but alas was not to be.
Krug and co. closed out the main part of their set with a surprisingly moderately-paced version of "Mending of the Gown" whose distinctive opening guitar flickers elicited a big cheer from the crowd, confirming which fan favorite was fairest of them all. I was not digging the relaxed tempo so much, but they did add some dramatic start-stop pauses and loud-soft dynamics that made up for the loss of faster album version's sheer giddy rush.
The obligatory encore brought out big, surprisingly conventionally structured (relatively speaking that is, for Krug) ballad "Us Ones In Between", the most effective slow song of the night. It was followed by unreleased song "Three Colours", a song that opened with a pleasantly breezy yet melancholy descending guitar figure, and in general proceeded along less melodically wild lines than the typical Sunset Rubdown tune (CORRECTION: "Three Colours" is actually an old tune that appears on a 2005 EP; I thought it was a bit misanthropic/anti-climatic of Krug to close with a new/unreleased song. Thanks to Maria for the tip). It was a solid song, and Chen even commented that it was the most appealing tune of the night for him.
So with that the concert ended. Overall, it was a fine show. Sunset Rubdown acquitted themselves well, for the most part totally nailing Krug's byzantine arrangements (except for, notably, one point in "Up On Your Leopard...", the little guitar lick that comes in at 0:53 in album version, when the guitarist either played a reeeeallly discordant improvisation, or more likely, just completely botched it), and Spencer's voice was surprisingly forceful, limber and accurate; he replicated, in note-perfect fashion much of the hooting and barking I had taken to be spontaneous when I heard it on record. But if I could select one general gripe with their performance, Chen and I did think the show suffered from the band's general disconnect with the audience. They performed competently and often passionately, Spencer forcefully banging out chords with aplomb and percussionist at the rear of the stage battering away with wild abandon, but there was little in the way of between song dialog, and as far as I could tell Spencer sang almost every word with his eyes closed. For a band so invested in highly theatrical music, they could have benefited from a little more playing to the crowd, a bit more hamming it up or just some on-stage movement or action, in the vein of the raucous Funeral-era Arcade Fire live show. Then their live show might actually become a moving theatrical spectacle in its own right, instead of just appearing to soundtrack one.
Sunset Rubdown Setlist:
Wicked/Winged Things Stadiums and Shrines II Trumpet, Trumpet, Toot! Toot! Silver Moons Up On Your Leopard, Upon the End of Your Feral Days Idiot Heart Stallion Shut Up I Am Dreaming of Places Where Lovers Have Wings Taming of the Hands that Came Back to Life (New Song) Mending of the Gown
I've been reading a ton of Jorge Luis Borges recently. The man has become my favorite author. As much as I love his short stories, I may love his essays even more. There is something that is just so appealing to me about Borges' non-fiction writing; each essay is like an opportunity to sit down and chat with this incredibly well-read and intelligent person, to hear him ruminate with resounding clarity and an enduring sense of wonder about endless topics in philosophy, religion, politics and history, and above all, literature. I love it!
If you've never read Borges before, he is sort of a super-brainy forefather to the Latin American Magical Realists. His short stories often involve the exploration of an idea or logical puzzle. There are a few central themes that he is particularly fond of and returns to again and again, among them, the unity of all humans and human experience and the unfathomability of the concept of infinity. I highly recommend Labyrinths as a starting point. If you find you have the pallet for him, go on to his Collected Fictions and Selected Non-Fictions;
All this literary material may seem at first blush a bit far off topic, but Borges is actually a big inspiration for this site. I've often struggled with the nagging fear that music writing and criticism is parasitic, that no matter what, it will always be inferior to the production of music itself. But reading Borges' lucid and insightful literary criticism, I see that criticism can act as an invaluable bridge between the reader/listener/consumer and the book/music/art itself, as well as between fellow art appreciators. Besides, I totally subscribe to the notion that the viewer/listener collaborates with the artist to create the meaning and value of his art. With that in mind, criticism can be just as creative as art itself, a secondary vehicle that nevertheless animates and articulates what the experience of art is for the recipient. Criticism can breathe life into thoughts and emotions that usually go unexpressed and unexplored, can bring them more clearly into focus, can put their aesthetic mechanisms "under the magnifying glass" (if you will permit the pun).
Now, with regards to actual music-related content, the purported focus of this site, I'm going to start doing some album reviews and posting them up here. I think it'll provide some good practice and put a give a little structure to what I'm trying to do here. My first review will be of the Jesus Lizard's 1992 album Liar, motivated and inspired by Audrey Gertz's very cool 1992 music review project (thanks, Audrey!). Look for it here soon~
of the Jesus Lizard's Liar for a while now. My difficulties with it have really helped me see the challenge in writing an album review so as to have a sort of narrative quality to it, flowing prose with a beginning, middle and end. I've been trying all sorts of little angles to get the juices flowing, and came up with this terse little piece I thought I'd share:
