Popcorn Noises

"But so what if their Afro-tribal-electro-twee-pop is indeed all sugar and no roughage; is it a crime..."

Thu, 24 May 2012 13:49:00 -0400

“But so what if their Afro-tribal-electro-twee-pop is indeed all sugar and no roughage; is it a crime to make Annuals look like they were actually ahead of their time? No, but all of the above means essentially little since every time Graham Ulicny opens up his throat, you just wanna yell “this is all your fault!” at the nearest .jpeg of Panda Bear and Avey Tare. I mean, it really is: I’ve always considered Merriweather Post Pavilion to be The Soft Bulletin of its decade and 10 years ago, the Reptars of the indiesphere sported a mewling, no-attack whine decked out by saturated synth strings and drums redlining with distortion. But Animal Collective understood the relationship between form and function, and the visceral shrieking of their earlier work was meant as a conveyance for the primal, occasionally unspeakable urges contained therein. But despite attempts at lyrical heft detailing a too-vague sexual awakening (“Sebastian”) and an encomium for a friend (“Ghost Bike”), Ulicny undermines himself on a second-by-second basis by finding no lyric that can’t be subjected to at least six different forms of contortion regardless of its content. Is there any reason for a line such as “Daniel left you for another boy/ Indeed he did you like a windup toy/ Oh why-o, why-o” to be sung like you’re trying to one-up Dave Longstreth in a vocal game of H.O.R.S.E.? I mean, if you’re going to stuff a song called “Orifice Origami” with four octaves of goosed-up pitch exaggeration and reserve your most strangulated affectations to deliver the title of “Please Don’t Kill Me”, does that mean you have all the self-awareness in the world or absolutely none at all?”

- Reptar: Body Faucet | Album Reviews | Pitchfork

Ian Cohen smacking down on cruddy bands is one of music writing’s great pleasures, but I’m posting this here for the Animal Collective thing. I went through college listening to Feels too, but man am I sick of hearing new bands try to sound like them! (This maybe goes along with the other thing I said about weirdness.) I sense in a lot of indie bands these twin desires for a) credibility derived from being perceived as ‘experimental’ or ‘avant garde’ and b) amassing a large-but-‘savvy’ audience with pop songs. Animal Collective have done pretty well navigating those impulses, so it’s only natural that young artists would seek to replicate their formula. Sonically, though, nobody with half an ear is fooled. To me it suggests that a lot of these people are thinking about how to be in a successful band instead of how to make distinct, interesting music and that’s really sad.

jamiesoncox: A Shot of Jamieson, Episode 3 - Sean...

Thu, 17 May 2012 23:06:49 -0400

jamiesoncox:

A Shot of Jamieson, Episode 3 - Sean Nyffeler

Episode 3! Let’s do this!

My guest for tonight’s show is Sean Nyffeler, a.k.a popcornnoises. We discussed his move from Wordpress to Tumblr and entry into the music writing community (with help from a previous guest), the role of contrarians and our respect for them, and bridging the gap between virtual friendships and real-life friendships with Tumblr pals. There are a few stretches of garbled speech, but nothing is rendered incomprehensible. I’m considering moving to South Korea or Hong Kong just for high-quality Skype connections for these podcasts.

As always, please holler at me if you have questions, comments, concerns, or are interested in appearing on A Shot of Jamieson. Thanks for listening!

For anyone interested in listening to me be genuinely uncool.

Really, though, this was fun! Hopefully I come off sounding likable and not too-(anything). I recommend having a chat with Jamieson whenever you get a chance.

Standing in Webster Hall right now, with a very expensive...

Wed, 16 May 2012 21:09:09 -0400

Standing in Webster Hall right now, with a very expensive Budweiser in my hand, it’s clear to me that The Men enjoy making music more than just about anyone at the moment.

pitchfork: As a companion to his Underscore piece on the...

Wed, 16 May 2012 14:48:54 -0400

pitchfork:

As a companion to his Underscore piece on the history of Quiet Storm, writer Eric Harvey compiled this 104-song playlist of essential slow jams, from the Delfonics, to the Isley Brothers, to Smokey Robinson, to Anita Baker, to Maxwell, and much more.

This piece is fascinating and I’ve been revisiting the playlist ever since Harvey posted an early version of it on Tumblr at the end of 2011. Anecdotally: growing up in Florida means getting used to summer afternoon rainstorms. In July and August you can practically set your watch by them. The quote from Smokey Robinson’s autobiography resonated with me: “I heard distant thunder, smelled the air just before the rain, saw lightning streak across the sky, felt the winds blow.” Just the other day I was saying how I always love that before-and-after rain smell and how it conjures strong childhood memories in me. Now I’m working on mentally stringing those sensations together with these songs.

So anyway, can we go ahead and have this be the Summer of Quite Storm?

Hidden Tracks?

Wed, 16 May 2012 10:57:19 -0400

I did not download/listen to the leak/NPR-preview of Bloom, I waited until it came out yesterday and I bought it with money, so I haven’t had the months that many folks have to let it sink into the back of my brain. So far I like it more with each play.

Something about “Irene” bothers me, though. Not the song itself, but the fact that the track is 17 minutes long and, lo and behold!, it contains another secret song at the end after a few minutes of silence. I’ve suddenly realized how ridiculous the idea of trying to put a “hidden track” at the end of an album is these days. You take one look at the song lengths in your iTunes library and you either say to yourself (somewhat stupidly) ‘wow, Beach House made an epic 15 minute song!’ or you know immediately that there are in fact eleven songs on this album, not ten, and the band feels that they are pulling a fast one on you. A hidden track can no longer be hidden; it’s an insurmountable limitation of the digital format. Between this and the curmudgeonly interviews they’ve been giving as of late, I think we’re starting to see Beach House’s stubborn side emerge, and even as their output remains consistently enjoyable and engaging, I wonder how close they are to getting existentially stuck at the bottom of their own well.

Animal Collective - "Honeycomb" b/w "Gotham"

Wed, 09 May 2012 10:20:00 -0400

Somewhere along the line I lost track of the idea of ‘weirdness’ in music. The further you step back from it, the harder it gets to pin down what ‘conventional’ music is supposed to be and how anything can be called ‘weird’ in opposition/as an alternative. I used to be able to use Animal Collective as my own mile marker for weirdness, partly because their music used to be a lot more abrasive and partly because I was at a point in my life where I found a lot of personal value in feeling like I was roaming the edges of popular music, discovering hidden gems that people in the middle didn’t want or know about. Now I ask myself if the appeal of Strawberry Jam or Here Comes the Indian or Sung Tongs (I will probably always love Sung Tongs) wasn’t actually founded in cultural caché—if I started liking the music only after being drawn to what it might be like to be a person who liked this music instead of just engaging the music itself—and I can’t come up with a satisfying answer. If you don’t have your arms folded too tightly, Animal Collective can be great at freaking you out: the screaming, bashing, and ululating electronics and all that can sound just wild enough to be inhuman. But as the disorientation wears off and you begin to recognize the patterns in what they do, you end up wondering if it was really all that strange in the first place. What, if anything, are you left with after that?

I think in its own way Merriweather Post Pavilion was a shot at answering that question. The AnCo dudes filled out the bass, shined up the keys, wrote big, open melodies, and ta-dah!: they found a much wider audience and took a turn as big indie pop stars. There’s a well-worn road for bands (invented by critics and rock scribes, I’m sure) that starts out on those ‘weird’ edges and makes its way toward the ‘conventional’ center. Experiments are the beginning, pop songs are the end, and Animal Collective got about as far down that road as they’ll probably ever get. Maybe that’s why these new songs sound like an irresolute shuffling of feet: no real hooks to speak of, but not much to throw off the ears or astound the senses either. You step back far enough and the line between ‘weird’ and ‘conventional’ disappears, so anyone who’s spent a lot of time studying, following, and playing with that line is going to find themselves at a sudden loss of direction.

I am trying to go to this tonight and if you’re in New...

Tue, 08 May 2012 10:14:51 -0400

I am trying to go to this tonight and if you’re in New York I invite you to think about going too.

Hundred Waters are from Gainesville, FL (the town where I went to college) and it’s sort of an acquaintances/friends-of-friends scenario for me, so although I’m glad their album has been getting some good reviews and they’re starting to establish a fanbase beyond their local scene, I have a rule that I avoid writing about music made by people I know. It makes it too hard to be fair, critical, and/or not overly snobbish. I do enjoy North Highlands’ album quite a bit, though.

Anyway, I’ve been out of town for a few weeks and it’s been even longer since I’ve dragged my lazy haunches out to a show, so I think it’ll be fun.

Daughn Gibson - All Hell

Wed, 02 May 2012 11:10:51 -0400

“I saw him, underneath the neon lights of a corner bar, crying like a child. So I asked him, ‘What’s the matter?’ and he said, ‘I’m just an old man in a young girl’s world…’”

Daughn Gibson delivers that little bit of theatrical scene-setting in his commanding baritone half way through All Hell, drawling the words in imitation of the old country musicians whose songs he samples to build his own. It’s a helpful encapsulation of what’s happening on this record, especially since without a hint of two we might be tempted to see Gibson’s music as homage or graverobbery. At his darkest—and this is a deceptively dark album—he sounds a lot like late-70s/early-80s Scott Walker, crossing from MOR and pop into the shadowy world of art rock. “The Day You Were Born” sounds like Leonard Cohen teaming up with Bill Callahan to cover Nick Drake, while “Rain on a Highway” finds Gibson incorporating a touch of Roy Orbison warble. When he flexes the hard edges of his voice, as he does in that above narration, it booms like Johnny Cash. All of this to say: Daughn Gibson bears a clear resemblance to several other traditionally deep, manful singers.

What Gibson doesn’t do, though, is linger behind his influences as some set of playlistable Spotify recommendations. Or, rather, he simply treats them as means instead of ends. Construction matters a lot on All Hell, since the perceived chasm between the dusty, raggedy country songs Gibson samples and the modern way he puts them together—slicing, looping, pitching up and down—is so wide. His methods allow him to investigate some established storytelling tropes about down-and-out anti-heroes littering the rank corners of a thousand stale dives (“Ray,” “Bad Guys”) while pitting them against the unstoppably sleek, plastic futures we all seem destined for. Notice how “Lookin’ Back on ‘99” nudges bits of gritty noir rock toward something resembling European techno, or how “Tiffany Lou”s lament pivots on a warped, glitchy chorus and sputtering drums.

The way I hear it, what’s at stake on All Hell is a handful of notions about traditional masculinity. Gibson puts it bluntly on “A Young Girl’s World,” but it’s all over every sound on this album. It’s not as simple as undercutting patriarchy or sympathizing with the truck-driving types who have less and less to offer the world, either. He’s looking for emotional intersections, commonalities that might let the symbolically old and new coexist without demolishing or corrupting each other. The cover image shows Gibson—his facial stubble somewhere between runway and highway—buttoning up a frayed plaid shirt in a multi-angled mirror as if he were expecting a fashion choice (or anti-fashion, if you wish) to transform him into the kind of man neither he nor the characters in his songs can really afford to be anymore. Remember, he’s not the old man in the young girl’s world, he’s the young man trying to make sense of both, and in the process he’s made one of the year’s most engaging, dramatic, and replayable albums.

"Fevers and Mirrors isn’t degraded from being removed from the bullshit of your youth, and in..."

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 10:20:30 -0400

“Fevers and Mirrors isn’t degraded from being removed from the bullshit of your youth, and in any context it’s a tremendous record that is “critic-proof” in the same way Violent Femmes, Pinkerton, and, yes, the Smiths are. Scoff if you must, but let me ask you this: How many people do you know got into Morrissey as teens? Okay, now how many got started in their 30s?”

- Bright Eyes: Fevers and Mirrors / There is No Beginning to the Story EP | Album Reviews | Pitchfork

This sorta skirts an idea I’ve had for a while that I’ll occasionally bust out for an ill-timed dinner party rant, which is that certain musics are (unintentionally?) designed to have a limited-but-intense shelf life that only really exists in your teenage years. It’s not quite an across-the-board genre thing, but being who I am and coming from where I do, I tend to see ‘emo’ as the big signpost for it. Do you ever find yourself talking about the music you loved in high school with some strange mix of humor—the kind of humor that covers up shame because those things are passé or seem utterly ridiculous in hindsight—and/or balance-correcting pride that tries to reclaim and destigmatize those sounds? It’s different than just saying ‘oh, I liked this stuff when I was younger but now I like other stuff, lol’ or even conjuring a spot of nostalgia for when things that don’t matter as much now mattered a lot more. It’s not about what’s culturally relevant so much as what emotional states you’ve grown into and out of. Music with this extra teenage ingredient, whatever you want to call it, takes different forms over the years but appeals perennially to young people who need their small, awkward problems to feel huge. Ian Cohen mentions Violent Femmes, Weezer, and The Smiths next to Bright Eyes, but I personally only had any kind of teenage-ish connection with Bright Eyes (and even then I was late to the party). The others were slightly before my time, so I listen to them as hip older bands with a certain teenage petulance. The music changes with each new generation of teens—that’s maybe something Cohen’s missing here—but every hormonal high schooler gets the Conor Oberst or Morrissey they want/need/deserve. It’s as if there’s a mode of listening, a way of relating to music, that’s only possible in that short span of years. Some people laugh at it, some cover it up, and some refuse to move past it, replaying their 10th grade faves in hopes (I think?) of getting back to that state. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, but it’s also not the end-all of listenership. I tend to think people are better off when they can relate to songs without wrapping their identities up in them, when they can enjoy them as just songs and nothing more. For a time, though, many kids do seem to need them to be more, and that’s what ‘emo’ is for.

B Michael Tumblr: Four Pictures Of Instagram

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 11:29:00 -0400

B Michael Tumblr: Four Pictures Of Instagram:

bmichael:

Last night and this morning I saw three music writers write on Instagram. I was going to reblog Perpetua, but I couldn’t upload photographs to the reblog, so this new post should suffice.

Amanda Petrusich says,

These days, instead of eschewing technology, we’re using it to deny itself — it’s…

Go read this whole thing. It’s great. Two cents of mine: Instagram is gradually becoming the social network that I check / update most often (Tumblr aside, natch’), partly because it resides exclusively on my phone and my phone is always with me, and partly because all my closest friends (especially the ones who don’t live in the same city as me) use it and we exchange likes and comments and it becomes a nice way to see what everyone’s up to. It would be inane for anyone else who wasn’t us because they wouldn’t care about us and our inane lives, but since we do care about us it’s meaningful. As with many other Internet Things, real-world sociability precedes and gives (any possible) value to these flimsy digital exchanges.

I don’t really care or think too much about the filters. Sometimes I use them, but often I do not. The ability to #nofilter, in my mind, keeps a lid on the volatile discussion of What This Thing Is Doing To Photography And Our Brains. I use the filters, as B Michael says, to cover up and / or correct the crappiness of my own picture-taking—lighting, framing, etc.—but I have no illusions about my Instagram photos resembling a) ‘authentic’ analog photos or b) anything nostalgically warped and decayed. Any photo I put on there that I actually like as a photo doesn’t get a filter. If you use Instagram enough, you can start to pick out which filters people are using on sight, which means you sorta end up looking through them and hey presto! they disappear. If you want to get the most out of it and cut down on cognitive dissonance, I suggest only following people you actually care about in real life (not every damn Facebook friend who pops up on your feed) and keeping the faux-artiness of your pics to a minimum. Stop trying to look cool, in other words.

I can't find love. Like, anywhere. Now what?

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 08:27:14 -0400

Ah, yes, something I’m totally not qualified to talk about at all. What a refreshing change of pace! I can see it now: this blog slowly morphs into a weird duo-tone stew of musical musings and less-than-helpful relationship advice, a two-pronged attack of uselessness for the ages!

…So I guess it depends on what you mean by “love.” Your use of the word “anywhere” and the fact that my Gmail inbox says I received this question at 1:35 in the morning (assuming you’re on US East Coast time, which, okay, you very well might not be), suggests to me that you’re feeling especially lonely and maybe even a little worthless. This I actually do know something about, so let me assure you that no one—not even you, Anonymous!—is as unloved as they think they are at 1:35 in the morning on a Wednesday. Go to bed, for pete’s sake, and if you still feel this bad in the morning, make yourself some eggs, put those eggs on an English muffin with some cheese and maybe a little ham or bacon, and then call either your best friend or your mom. They will tell you that they love you and you should believe them when they say it.

As for romantical love, well, there just aren’t many non-cliché answers. Let’s consult the great American songbook, shall we? The Supremes: “You can’t hurry love / you just have to wait.” Whitney Houston: “You said be patient, just wait a little longer / but that’s just an old fantasy.” Rihanna: “We found love in a hopeless place.” See? You’ve got to toughen up. Have thick skin and just keep putting yourself out there. And if you can’t handle that then you’re treating love like a watched pot, Anonymous, so quit waiting for it to boil and go do something else for a while. It’ll happen when it happens and there’s no reason for you to sit around being unhappy in the meantime.

Coachella?

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 08:36:44 -0400

What about it, exactly?

Y’know, given the aloofness of your question, I can only assume this is a covert offer from a wealthy fan to finance a trip for me to the festival next year, which I wholeheartedly accept! Included in this will be round-trip air fare between New York City and southern California, lodgings, entry fees, primo camping equipment (we may be acting like wild animals in the desert, but let us at least sleep like human beings!), food and beverage costs, and access to VIP/press areas so I can “cover” (read: “drink free beer”) the event properly.

I will say, though, that in a conversation last night, agreeing with one friend that the infamous “hologram” of Tupac during Dr. Dre’s set this year was cheesy, gross, and dumb (“tech hubris” is my new favorite phrase when it comes to this stuff) got me into a discussion with another friend which ended with me arguing that video chatting is pointless and unnecessary, so clearly Coachella is a gleaming goldmine for stubborn cultural thought.

If you could make a living doing whatever you want, what would it be? What is your passion?

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 01:51:00 -0400

Nomadic Mongolian herdsman.

Artisanal bakery janitor.

Retired Brewmaster.

Importer/Exporter.

Semi-professional music writer.

Why don't you share your DJ set playlists?

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 14:03:41 -0400

Because I’m DJ Oscar The Grouch, dang it, and I was voted Least Likely to Succeed in kindergarten because I am horrible at sharing!

Does KFC share their blend of eleven herbs and spices? Does Coca-Cola share their secret formula? Some things are better left a mystery.

Besides, if this is about what I played at your birthday party, I can’t even remember anymore, so it’s a lost cause either way.

Is living in NYC really THAT awesome? I mean, how much better than everywhere else can it be, right? I've wanted to live there for almost as long as I can remember, but I'm half a world away. If I wanted to move there after I graduated, it'd be a crazy huge undertaking, and risky with it. Would it seriously be worth all that?

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 09:04:46 -0400

I’ll tell you the same thing my friends and family told me when I was unsure about moving here: the worst thing that can happen is you just come back home. You only live once, Anonymous, and the weight of regrets and what-ifs will haunt you far beyond any risks or sacrifices you make to get here.

Have you ever visited New York, though? The first time I did was about 9 months before I packed up my life and made the big move, so obviously I fell in love with the city right away and haven’t really looked back since. Is it that much better than living anywhere else? I think so! But remember, I had several things going for me right off the bat that made it 1000% easier to move and start a life here. I had a job (watching my friends search for jobs in NYC can be heartbreaking), I had friends (a lot of people I went to school with moved here too), and I had a place to live with unbelievably low rent (low enough that I won’t mention the number here because it’s uncharacteristic of New York in general and I don’t want to skew the facts: this is a very expensive city). Finding those three things can be hard in any new city you move to, but I’ve noticed a kind of kinship among New Yorkers when it’s brought up here, like it’s this special, weird, hellish experience that they’ve all been through that bonds them together.

Also keep in mind that, even though New York is bursting with culture and history and myth, living here is not all Alicia Keys choruses and autumnal strolls through Central Park. Eventually you will settle into a routine and you’ll deal with the same day-to-day boredom you’d have anywhere else. People live mundane lives here, too. For me the trick is to try to have one of those reflective, poetic moments every now and then where I see the city with fresh eyes and can’t believe I get to live here. In those moments, it feels like the greatest city in the world.

So yes, come give it a shot!

How do I choose the right IPA for me?

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 17:43:00 -0400

Keep in mind that there’s no accounting for taste. Your results may vary. BUT:

The biggest thing that turns people off of IPAs is of course the bitterness from the hops. I happen to like my beer as hoppy/dry/resin-y as possible, with a nice golden/orange color to it, so I don’t get involved with IPAs that advertise themselves as “balanced with malty sweetness” or anything like that. These tend to be light on flavor but heavy on texture. They’re the ones that give you that too-full feeling. Besides, hops offer a different, more citrus-y sweetness if you add enough of them. A good, crisp IPA should be light and drinkable while still delivering a total flavor beatdown. India Pale Ales are a lopsided, specialist type of beer; they’re not supposed to deliver everything to everyone. My endpoint for this, the beer I currently hold as my gold standard of IPA perfection, is Brooklyn Brewery’s Blast Double IPA, which I realize is not exactly available at every corner store. In fact, if you take a look at the list of locations on that page you’ll see you kinda have to live in NYC/New England to even have a shot at trying it, which makes me feel all kinds of smug and hipster-y things but I don’t care because this beer is just that good. I’ve never seen it sold for less than $8 a pint and if I go to a place that sells it I can’t pass up having one (or four). Most “double” IPAs cross the line from bitter to sweet (again, in that citrus/floral way that you get from excessive hops) to the point that they can become cloying, but Blast is strong and refreshing. If/when you can’t drink that, I find it’s best to reach for beers that approach a similar experience. Lagunitas, Goose Island, Smuttynose, Firestone (Union Jack), Green Flash, Cigar City, and Sweetwater all make great IPAs that won’t bog you down.

Huh. This sort of turned into ‘picking the right IPA for me, not you‘—sorry—but I suppose that’s to be expected. Whatever you do, stay at least 500 feet away from Redhook’s Long Hammer IPA at all times and try not to be in the same room as any Samuel Adams pale ale/IPA. Those can get awkward, to say the least.

***ED: These are all American IPAs, which are stylistically different than British IPAs, which tend to be those darker, heavier ones that I’m not really into.

***ED#2: If you’re feeling adventurous and a little self-destructive, try a Dogfish Head 120-Minute IPA. They make one batch a year and it’s practically a hop liqueur. Dangerous stuff.

If you had someone trapped on a desert island, what disc would you play to slowly drive them mad?

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 16:57:00 -0400

The easiest answer is something very outsider-y and “difficult” like Metal Machine Music or Philosophy of the World, but even those can develop their own kind of internal logic that stops bothering the ears after a while (sort of…). Has William Shatner put out an album lately?

This reminds me of a story. I think my old roommate told it to me (don’t know where he heard it*). So these two guys lived near this diner—one of those old school retro joints with a jukebox that still works—and one day as a joke/”social experiment” they went in, put $20 worth of quarters in the jukebox, and preceded to play Tom Jones’ “What’s New Pussycat?” over and over and over again, sitting in the corner booth and watching the reactions of everyone else in the restaurant. I mean, that’s a hard song to stomach one time through, much less 10-12 times in a row. Plus it’s very repetitive and doesn’t have very clear start and end points, so at first people didn’t seem to realize just how long the song had gone on. But gradually, of course, they started to see signs of visible annoyance and exasperation. It got worse with each play, to the point that every time “What’s New Pussycat?” started over again an audible groan resonated through the diner. They’d pushed the tension about as far as it could go, so they played Jones’ other signature song, “It’s Not Unusual,” next and the whole place practically erupted with sighs of relief. Finally, no more pussycat! Even another cheesy Tom Jones song is better than hearing “What’s New Pussycat?” again! After “It’s Not Unusual” ended, though, they started playing “What’s New Pussycat?” again. That, I think we can safely assume, is when more than a few people lost their minds.

*It’s this. (h/t Crumbler)

Ask Me Questions?

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:47:38 -0400

Ask Me Questions?:

Please? I’m in need of a jolt of inspiration. Or something to riff on that doesn’t end up a 1,000-word slough no one ever reads. I am stuck in my ways—help shake me out of them!

(I am, however, prepared to speak at length on non-musical topics such as fried chicken in north Brooklyn, the ins and outs of choosing the right IPA for you, and working from home as a sustainable lifestyle.)

Listening Journal: Alabama Shakes - Boys & Girls

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 11:46:44 -0400

It’s hard to make soul music sound fresh. Perhaps there are one too many gold-cased 20-disc Time Life compilations in the world. Or maybe there’s just something in the stylistic DNA that tends to make it feel comforting and a little nostalgic. Bloody and visceral, too, but forgiving in ways rock ‘n roll rarely is. With that said, everyone getting excited over Alabama Shakes should really consider giving Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings another shot. Brittany Howard’s voice doesn’t play super nice with the muffly analog sound of these recordings. She sings with such heavy, spastic inflections that some of the detail actually gets lost, turning emotive songs into something resembling a tantrum. Like late-career Jack White (with whom they share a stage) and late-career Black Keys (with whom they undoubtedly share a fan base), Alabama Shakes’ sound doesn’t scan as ‘modern hybrid’ so much as ‘grab-bag of “classic” stuff.’ They’re clearly not art school weirdos and shouldn’t be held to those expectations, but I can’t help asking if the world really needs another record like this. Or, rather, if a record like this deserves the massive audience it’ll surely have. Hey, like what you like and who am I to begrudge people their taste and enthusiasm—I just don’t see what all the fuss is about.

"Why the Old-School Music Snob Is the Least Cool Kid on Twitter"

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 17:34:00 -0400

"Why the Old-School Music Snob Is the Least Cool Kid on Twitter":

Oh boy. OK, here’s the thing. I tend to think of taste and notions about taste as a sort of developmental issue, the idea being that people develop/inherit tastes and some attendant modes of thinking long before they develop the capacity to consider them self-critically. Your ideas about what is good and bad taste—about where music’s value comes from, in other words—aren’t inherent, but they do tend to precede you or anyone else being able to articulate what they are. This mindset where obscurity is valuable unto itself is something a lot of us picked up when we were teenagers and, if you’ll allow me a moment of blind psychoanalysis, it probably has more to do with burying the insecurities of a person than it does engaging with art. I think maybe that’s what Alexandra Molotkow is getting at when she says, “I liked the idea that my favorite movies, books and music are for me and a select few others, because they’re special and they’re part of my life. To think that everyone in the world might love them just as much makes me feel like a salt molecule in a tub of brine.”

Why should anyone feel unspecial because of the music they like? I say this because it takes one to know one, but what a horrible, flimsy thing to tie your identity to! Culture is always in flux, so even if you feel secure in relentlessly favoring the obscure no matter what it happens to sound like, you can’t rely on obscurity itself retaining any value over time. That’s part of Molotkow’s point, I think, but I would go a step further and say that the value of obscurity is/was a house of cards that everyone who subscribes to it builds for themselves. When did modern culture ever collectively agree that knowing about underground stuff was the paragon of cool? Or has that always been the province of a certain kind of person (myself so very much included) who made the mistake of piling their eggs in the music + coolness = self-worth basket?

My point in all this is that Molotkow doesn’t (or shouldn’t claim to) speak for everyone who listens to music in 2012, just herself and maybe some of us who’ve had to carefully confront our own backwards thinking. Recognizing and refining (with fire if necessary!) your own ideas about taste is a developmental stage that hopefully every music fan goes through at one point or another. Some people just get to do it in public via the New York Times, is all.