Popcorn Noises

You Either Love Love or You Don't

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 12:30:00 -0500

In the wake of her death, Valentine’s Day seems as appropriate a time as any to write something about Whitney Houston. I think it’s fair to say that she—at least our idea of her, the her portrayed in the songs she sang—loved love. She did not love it like Celine Dion, who makes it a shrine, draping it in crimson silk on a silver pedestal surrounded by sleeping multiracial cherubs, but as a quality of a person like hair or fingernails. She was not in thrall to love itself, in other words. She did stuff with it. Love was a thing to pledge, save, take back, and even turn on yourself, actions you might just as easily ascribe to her gargantuan voice. I suppose some credit goes to Dolly Parton for writing the song this way, but notice how the big chorus of “I Will Always Love You” puts a much greater emphasis on “I” and “you.” Those notes are stretched out as tonal bookends of the phrase while “love” is sung on a quick jump between chords. Houston emphasized those differences heavily, embellishing the long notes with vibrato and melisma so you knew they mattered to her. Her legacy to love was thus relational, not abstract, a more important hair to split than we might think.

On a personal note, I would not count myself a ‘fan’ of Whitney Houston or other singers who could be clustered next to her. I’m a straight white dude who likes indie rock (not that any of those things should be considered occlusive, mind you), but because of my age and middle-class upbringing it’s almost impossible for me not to have a cursory knowledge of her hits. Her voice bled and belted from every radio, airport terminal, dentist’s office, and TV awards show around when I was a kid, and not because anyone in my family was into her either. She had achieved such a ubiquity as to be inescapable, a laudable pop culture feat in itself but also a phenomenon with odd side effects, like engendering a sense memory whereby even someone like me can remember the lyrics to “It’s Not Right But It’s Okay” after not hearing it for thirteen years. For me, Whitney Houston is a prime example of how music worms its way into our brains long before we develop the agency to reject it. It may not have any conscious bearing on your tastes as an adult, but it’s there, echoing in the folds of your grey matter. Regardless of what other sounds you pile on top of it, all it takes is a few bars of melody to instantly call it to the surface. You can think of that same huge Bodyguard chorus as a promise—a threat, even—to everyone in her global audience: I will always be in your head, in the form of this song, waiting to be released again from your memory. I don’t know if I’d call it love, but it sure is potent, eh?

Fake Outrage

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 12:03:59 -0500

I don’t think there’s much difference between the (ostensible) recording industry giving itself awards and, say, a widely-read magazine/blog putting out a year-end list of favorite albums. People should not treat them differently. Maybe the Grammys just produce a lot more talk because a lot more people pay attention to them, but I worry that since there’s a ceremony on TV where famous people get dressed up and make speeches people grant it more authority than they ought to. Sure, a handful of internet commentators might kvetch about the particular order of records on Pitchfork or The Guardian’s Best Albums lists, but for the most part there’s an understanding that these publications have certain taste bases and a certain readership that they cater to. They are not expected (by reasonable people) to fairly and accurately cover all contemporary music everywhere. The Grammys should be the same way. As I said last year when Arcade Fire won Album of the Year and all of Twitter pooped its pants, take a quick scan through the list of past winners and you’ll get a clear sense of the Academy’s taste. To me, it seems most of the time they cede the decision to vague popularity for genre awards, but they’ll enforce an ‘adult’ rock/soul/jazz sensibility for across-the-board ones. If you pay attention to the kinds of artists/songs/albums that tend to win those Grammys, the results of any one particular year shouldn’t come as a big surprise.

Also, the trend of vocal bemusement at any “indie” artist winning a Grammy—be it Arcade Fire last year or Bon Iver this year—is losing its humor fast. “Who ever heard of them?” go the rhetorical questions, as if visibility and record sales were somehow prerequisites of quality. There are these two lines of thinking—‘it can’t be good if it’s popular’ and ‘it can’t be good unless it’s popular’—that shape much of the gut reactions to these things and they’re both so incredibly wrong that it gets deep under my skin and makes my jaw tense up. We should not read a correlation, inverse or otherwise, into measurable popularity and perceived quality. The Academy is a body—like a person or a publication—with a set of tastes and if they’re shifting or expanding that taste, as any person or publication is apt and perfectly entitled to do, we can not hold it against them. The awarding of Grammys is an expression of taste and the public is owed nothing by it.

Listening Journal

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 12:31:00 -0500

I have a habit of not pushing myself to hear new releases all the time, waiting around for good records to somehow find their way to my ears, which is not a good way to do things if you want to be an even half-decent critic. So I spent the last couple days playing catch-up on a handful of talked-about albums I’ve been meaning to listen to—some newer than others—taking notes as I went and trying not to get overwhelmed by the glut of new sounds. Here are some short thoughts on them.

Chairlift - Something - I didn’t expect to like this as much as I do. Popular and critical praise aside, there’s been an overabundance of ‘atmospheric,’ 80s indebted electro-pop albums the last few years and I find it increasingly difficult to locate vitality or personality in those sounds. Chairlift can certainly be too ethereal for their own good—and they rely far too heavily on rote, marchy (boring!) 80s drum beats—but when they allow themselves to branch out, like on “Ghost Tonight,” they reveal themselves to be keen, inventive sound sculptors. The melodic strength and cosmopolitan poise of “Frigid Spring,” “Grown Up Blues,” and even the silly “Amanaemonesia” don’t hurt either. Basically, the further Chairlift roam from Drive-soundtrack retro moodiness, the better off they are.

First Aid Kit - The Lion’s Roar - This record should be listed in a Dictionary of Modern Music under O for ‘Omaha.’ These Swedish sisters have Mike Mogis’ country-folk-pop production, a guest verse from Conor Oberst, and those close-knit harmonies that start off pleasant but sour quickly from overuse. Ten songs of dusty strumming filtered through orange afternoon sunlight and wrapped in quavering personal angst makes for an adequately moving record, but it’s far from a revelation. If it had better lyrics it’d be a lost Jenny Lewis album, or add a dash of impetuous pep and it’d scan like Slow Club (in a good way) or She & Him (in a not so good way). Serviceable catnip for Saddle Creek devotees, but I doubt I’ll come back to it much.

Sharon Van Etten - Tramp - A diary full of hard knocks isn’t a prerequisite for making sincere, affecting music (let us never forget it!), but in the case of Sharon Van Etten it sheds a lot of light on what makes her compelling. Tramp’s backstory of her struggle to escape the clutches of a controlling boyfriend has gravitas and fuels some great writing (“Give Out,” “All I Can,” “Ask,” etc.), but you can hear it just as clearly in her voice. She sings like a strong person beaten down into deep weariness—never timorous or fragile, but nervy and exposed. Aaron Dessner’s production wisely mirrors her attitude, with guitars and drums that never get too comfortable in their own spaces, sometimes murmuring in the background behind a thick curtain and other times crowding in so close around her that they simultaneously smother and lift her up.

John Talabot - ƒIN - This may boil down to a personal preference thing. I like the idea of headphone dance music in theory, but in practice I don’t seem to find myself making a lot of time for it. I tend to think of it as something to zone out to, and maybe I’m just too much of a sucker for songs to get deep into it. Some of Talabot’s tracks hew closer to my comfort zones—“Last Land,” “Journeys,” “So Will Be Now…”—but others can feel angular and blocky in a way that distracts my ears. I hear the contemporary steamy ‘tropical’ influences at work, though thankfully they don’t overwhelm the record. There are also smooth, dark, even woozy sides to ƒIN and so far those are the better ones.

Beach Fossils - What a Pleasure EP - A more downcast, melancholy addition to the world of indie surf bands. Beach Fossils have never been exactly brimming with energy or emotion, but here they manage to widen their pale sound while letting the appealingly bleached, morbid qualities of their debut slip through their fingers. The guitars sound fine, but the rhythm section is still too thin and papery, dropping the bottom out from these supposedly-deeper songs and making them plod where their influencers pushed. I realize it’s an EP and probably a stop-gap on the way to the next album, but What a Pleasure demonstrates what it sounds like for a band to not go far enough, in any direction.

Caveman - CoCo Beware - Yeah, I didn’t think Local Natives could get any more snooze-worthy either, but here we are.

Remember a few months ago when I did an illustration for my...

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 11:24:00 -0500

Remember a few months ago when I did an illustration for my friend Josh’s blog? Well I finished another one this weekend and the post it accompanies is up now. Read it here (I haven’t gotten time to yet). I’m told it’s about going to the movies and spending money and peoples’ expectations of how those things should relate.

Like my last one, this illustration was done with ballpoint pen on plain old copy paper, but I scanned and edited it in black and white (twice!) instead of greyscale so it would look more authentic and distinctive. I’m pleased with how it turned out.

*(Want custom illustrations for your blog where everything resembles the two I’ve done so far? Drop me a line—I’ll probably get to it eventually!)

Useful things I did on my day off today: - Finished that Edie Sedgwick piece I’ve been sitting...

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:44:00 -0500

Useful things I did on my day off today:
- Finished that Edie Sedgwick piece I’ve been sitting on for a couple weeks
- Finished another cartoon / illustration for a friend’s blog that will be up soon
- Started planning my two-week trip to Florida at the end of April

Useless things I did on my day off today:
- Took a nap
- Ate a pint of chocolate ice cream
- Watched “Best Food Ever” and “Misfits”

Vacation days—especially paid ones—are a precious benefit of Day Jobbing and it’s important to use them well.

"What Cue?..."

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 11:18:15 -0500

“…’Faye Dunaway’ take two,” mumbles Justin Moyer in a terse moment of verité that kicks off First Reflections, the otherwise spotty and confounding 2001 debut of his Edie Sedgwick project. It’s been a different ‘band’ every album, but in the beginning it was a bass-and-drums duo of Moyer and Ryan Hicks, both stalwarts of the DC Dischord scene. The blurb-able headline here, though, is the post-ironic (or maybe pre-ironic?) concept of half-intellectualized celebrity worship that serves as Moyer’s prime directive. Hence christening every song after a famous actor—Sean Connery, Gwyneth Paltrow, Tom Cruise, and Meryl Streep to name a few—and flying it all under the banner of Andy Warhol’s most renowned starlet. It’s not quite the famous-for-being-famous vibe of your Hiltons and your Kardashians, but it’s in a similar vein: stardom as both a flimsy construction and a cultural end in itself. The band may’ve argued that it was all a sincere form of avant-garde adulation, but the album’s not so convincing.

Why talk about it at all, then? I only bothered to hear a few tracks from the subsequent Edie Sedgwick albums (including the electroclash drag show of Her Love is Real…But She is Not!, arguably the project’s artistic peak) and the pretense is questionable at best. Yet First Reflections—and “Faye Dunaway” in particular—have stuck with me ever since I first heard it almost nine years ago. People don’t often talk about how an experimental piece of music fits into their lives because they’re too focused on what it means in a super-social context. Pop songs can speak to you, for you, and about you, but a noodly, abstract, honking 2-minute jazz-punk screed about Winona Ryder speaks over you. It’s condescending. You’re not supposed to relate to it. But this record is great in the way that its rubbery, immaculate minimalism—clean, undistorted bass guitar and perfectly-recorded drums—creates a sense of openness. That’s why Moyer’s album-starting aside is so important: it reminds us that, in the end, this is just the sound of two guys jamming in a room. He shouts his beat-poet lyrics above the din as if they weren’t the whole point of the band to begin with. For someone like 17-year-old me, such comfortable sonic looseness paired with the wiggling, hyperactive groove of “Dunaway” could be all you needed to forge a new experimental definition of rock music in your head.

At least that’s how it felt back then. This was toward the end of the Epitonic era—remember?—before free mp3s came packaged with six press photos, a Vimeo link, and aspirations of ‘grassroots’ viral buzz. For me it ended up working out as a kind of free-associative exercise in music discovery, where Edie Sedgwick got lumped in under the general banner of indie with, like, TV on the Radio’s early stuff. I heard Daniel Johnston for the first time on an internet radio station labeled “Alternative,” sandwiched between the Elephant 6 free-jazz group Bablicon and, I think, The Crystal Method. It was a strange time in my life. I was hungry for all things unknown and unusual, trying to skew my musical vocabulary toward the underground largely without the aid of critics, record store clerks, cool older friends, or any of the traditional pre-net gatekeepers. I would get into all of that soon after I graduated high school, but for a brief moment I was out there on my own, listening to whatever bits came along and biding my time until I could get the hell out of Orlando and grow up already. I wish I could remember more of it.

“Faye Dunaway” feels representative of that time, though, and (perhaps not-coincidentally) also of the sorta-unrealized goals of the band. Moyer zeroes in on Dunaway’s famous legs, but he adopts the prima donna attitude traced most directly to the 1987 drama Barfly (Mickey Rourke plays Charles Bukowski—yeah, I know…) in which a camera tilt over her legs that wasn’t in the script was added at her insistence. “These legs are guns—you get the good side!” Moyer snarls, casting his muse as a ominous weapon both on screen and off. Dunaway threatens with her legs and Moyer threatens with her. That’s why it’s hard to buy the deflection of post-irony: Moyer sounds too vertiginous, too snotty, and too eager to prove a point here (too “punk,” in other words). It would take another album and a reinvention of identity for him to get it right. Here he seems much more interested in drawing out the depths of dead-eyed stardom, even using the obvious metaphor of makeup for his opening call to arms, “Come rouge! Come blush!” All across the album’s lean 27 minutes he can never bring himself to put it bluntly. I get why—“celebrities are shallow” would make for a pretty boring lyric sheet—but just as Moyer makes like it’s easy to see through the stars he’s memorializing, we as listeners will probably find it easy to se through him.

I keep coming back to this record, though, and I’m finding it hard to be satisfied with “I heard it when I was a teenager” as a suitable explanation. I mean, there’s a case to be made that biography is responsible for all tastes, however indirectly, but I hear something in First Reflections that I don’t hear anywhere else, not even in my all-time favorite albums: the willingness to not matter followed up by actually not mattering. I believe this is one of the most important functions of indie rock as a musical subculture—to produce works that go deservedly nowhere, which indulge in irredeemable pretension or numbing facileness, and which are still out there floating around in the back bins of record stores or the deep corners of the internet for some kid to stumble upon and make his/her own. No one in their right mind would burn this album onto CDs, print up little jewel case inserts, and slap a $15 price tag on it thinking that it would sell, right? And even the most blasé or die-hard punk critics would hesitate to give it five stars, right? It’s not ugly or unlistenable like so much other failed avant rock, but it has no lasting pop acumen. It interacts with culture—painfully so, sometimes—but it doesn’t position itself within the history of music. There’s no creep of nostalgia or tribute to beloved records here. There’s no reverb. In many ways it’s the opposite of what the indie rock landscape (which I still love) looks like today—a farm system for internet-tier pop stars—so it feels like just what the doctor ordered. Please continue to ignore it so I can keep it for myself.

Good Morning to You

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 10:24:00 -0500

Good Morning to You:

People seem to like these and it’s been a few weeks since the last one, so here’s another mix tape. I might just be wired differently, but I’ve always preferred Emily Haines’ dour solo work to Metric’s glossy bombast. When given some room to breathe she has a knack for elucidating the tired and helpless sides of adulthood, even to the point of letting the mood become oppressive, which is a risk I sense fewer songwriters taking without the aid of over-produced atmospherics these days. Even though it’s fairly soft in the middle—Haines, Sade, ambient Eno, etc.—this one does lean further toward ‘classic’ (not Classic) rock.

http://spoti.fi/xKDcHU

I Listened to the Lana Del Rey Album

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:15:00 -0500

I am taking the side that says this is a fatally flawed album, fascinating though it can be. Here are some more thoughts:

- While I hold to my previous impression of it, “Video Games” is indeed the best song on the album. It’s focused and evocative where much of Born to Die is a slapdash grab-bag of signifiers—one of the few that can be said to be about more than just, well, being Lana Del Rey. It’s also one of her most straightforward vocal turns, which is telling.

- On several tracks, she seems to be confusing jumbled wordiness for the kind of half-rap sass Beyoncé and Rihanna do so well. Is this supposed to be the ‘gangster’ part of her persona? Her vocal style is too slurred and manic to handle such rapid rhythms.

- ‘Trip-hop’ or ‘future cosmetics commercial?’

- She has a flair for stringing together some truly awkward lines. “Off to the Races” and “Lolita” are nearly unlistenable in this respect. Also, rhyming is more important than she thinks it is.

- Even more grating than her words are the way she modulates the timbre of her voice from verse to verse, line to line, and sometimes word to word. Everything from nasal-Stevie-Nicks drone to hiccuping-smurf giggle. She pouts behind the beat until she’s audibly out of breath half way through a phrase, which is not pleasant to hear.

- Not that it matters much, but these songs don’t hang together as an album very well. The sequencing is senseless and haphazard. It’s also about 20 minutes too long.

- The dubious ‘authenticity’ of her persona doesn’t bother me, and in fact I suspect it’s not what’s actually bothering a lot of people who grouse about it. Born to Die’s few clear-headed moments hint at a grand-scale tragedy of American dreaming, of messy, ignoble people wanting more than anything to be magically lifted out and given the kind of sparkly, beautiful new lives they’ve seen on TV, but knowing deep down they’ll never get it. On paper it could be the foundation for a Great American Novel. Here, though, I see it as a problem of execution. The bullet point images of smalltown bad girls, James Dean-ish hearthrob dudes, mid-century Americana, aspirational Hollywood glamor, etc. come so fast and smooshed together that it scans as subterfuge. Maybe we as consumers of music are just so used to incredibly well-executed pop personae that an alarm goes off the minute we encounter a not-so-well-done one. In other words: it’s not that she’s fake, it’s that she’s just not very good.

B Michael Tumblr: It's Not For You

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 13:31:00 -0500

B Michael Tumblr: It's Not For You:

bmichael:

I’ve had some really good conversations on Twitter today, which really foregrounded a problem with criticism. The idea of a critic landing a cross-genre shot, contre-pied’ing our expectations (think: David Wallace on Terminator 2) is delightful. But it has to be done extremely well, drawn from a decent amount of knowledge and even more empathy.

Most times, when a critic of one type deals with an unfamiliar topic, he enters parlous territory. Think: Chuck Klosterman on Tune-Yards.

The bigger point, then, is that sometimes something’s not for you. It’s a challenging presumption. Eve Barlow treated it in a piece on criticism and Rihanna:
I’ve seen it time and again – people reviewing artists outwith their comfort zone. The reviews may as well write themselves. Alexis Petridis wrote the Rihanna live review recently for The Guardian. Why?! What is the point of Alexis, a highly esteemed writer but someone who blatantly doesn’t want to embrace Rihanna’s Grace Jones-indebted pop shtick, writing that review? I don’t want to assume too much about you. If it is the case that you are a relentless pop junkie like me and await the next of Sean Rowley’s Guilty Pleasures nights with enormous glee then please let me know. I’d love to go out clubbing and bend your ear about all the tricks of the trade. It’s just that reading your review of Rihanna’s album, I can’t help but get the sense that you’re not enjoying yourself and you’ve missed the point.
A big pop release? Please, I’d love to read Jonathan Bogart on it. Death metal (or whatever I’m to call it)? Brandon Stousy, definitely. The latest King Louie tape? Get me David Drake. People have wheelhouses, sets of knowledge, and most importantly, appreciation for different things. Those are the people who should be working on those things. That doesn’t mean those things would only get positively reviewed. In fact, the opposite. The more into something, and the more you know about it, the easier it is to find its faults and identify where it’s gone astray…

Please do click through and read the rest of this because it covers some important things to think about. I realize, especially in terms of the subject matter being covered here, that the world probably doesn’t need another white-male perspective like mine on it, but this first bit about critics having ‘wheelhouses’ hits home pretty hard. Is it better to keep writing about what you know in order to perpetuate well-read/well-listened discussion of art (and cut down on the ignorance factor explained above) or is it better to branch out—slowly, first with your ears then much later with your words—to try to gain a new, possibly wider point of view? For instance: the few times I’ve written about pop, R&B, and hip-hop (especially of the commercially successful variety) I’ve struggled to articulate what I hope/wish were my well-reasoned thoughts on it. This stuff usually ends up reading very shallow and inexperienced—hey big surprise!—and I decide to crawl sheepishly back to my comfort zone. In the last month, the best things I’ve written have been about The Mountain Goats, Sleigh Bells, and The Shins; a decent encapsulation of an indie-pop/rock centric taste, wouldn’t you agree? I’d be lying if I said my interest in other genres, though spurred mostly by earnest musical fascination, wasn’t also fueled in part by an ugly anxiety, a sudden sense of smallness and ignorance that comes from reading other people who know backwards and forwards things I’m clueless about. I’m glad that awesome criticism pushes me to want to be better and more knowledgeable, but it’s tough to know where to channel that energy.

"I have to ask you something," the young girl sent over gchat. Reflexively he opened a new tab and clicked the bookmarked link to quickmeme, thoughts racing as to which template would be most appropriate to respond with, but then he got another message. "Serious question." His fingers went limp. His expression sobered. His inner Good Guy Greg took over.

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 17:39:00 -0500

Jake C., everyone! (Who hopefully doesn’t mind me posting this publicly.)

My esteemed colleague Loni The Linguist also responded to my complaint thusly:

since you can’t read body language or hear the tone of someone’s voice in digital culture, these are the cues we have to work with

Right, and that friction of intent (combined with the potential for anonymity) is the seed of all trolling, snarking, and asshat-ery online. People can be jerks in real life too, of course, but what troubles me is the way that internet conversations seem to be spiraling toward sarcasm (or irony or meme-ness or whatever you call it) as the default attitude. Our troubled hero Greg is the perfect example: only when forewarned of a serious question does he pocket his cleverness and pay attention. Don’t get me wrong—I love clever gifs/air-quoting/all that and I think people like me just need to lighten up sometimes—but in many cases I sense the kind of one-upsmanship at work where people aren’t ‘listening’ to each other so much as waiting for their chance to make a really ripping comment. Digital culture often seems predicated on speaking (or perhaps shouting), not being spoken to, and I think that’s a dangerous attitude for people to get used to.

Anyway, enough Sean Telling People How To Be for one day. Who needs a drink?

There is something fatally wrong with digital culture when a person who is asking another person a...

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 11:22:24 -0500

There is something fatally wrong with digital culture when a person who is asking another person a genuine question has to preface his/her genuineness—“Serious question,” “Not loaded…really interested,” etc.—before it can feel like a real conversation is happening.

The Shins - "Simple Song"

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 19:33:33 -0500

When a no-longer-topical band comes out with a good new song, it forces us to throw our cards on the table and cop to our core values. Some people call it the Tyranny of the New, others call it Relevance, and many more (me?) don’t call it anything but still behave according to its principles. A few years ago when I started DJing at friends’ parties and such, I had a rule that anything between 1 and, oh, 7-10 years old was off-limits. You either play brand new (“relevant”) songs or you play songs old enough to carry an acknowledgement of age (“nostalgia”). Anything from that self-imposed dead zone felt stale and chewed-up, old enough for everyone to be bored with it but not old enough to trigger strong memories. As a DJ (or, for the sake of the argument, any public consumer of music) it would make you seem dorky and out-of-touch, not cool enough to be familiar with culture’s cutting edge the way you’re supposed to be. I’m not as strict about adhering to my dumb rule anymore, but I think I still do it on a subconscious level because, quite frankly, it works. I also suspect I’m not alone.

The funny thing is, even when you’re not choosing or performing your taste publicly, this same idea can govern the way you think about new music. In 2004, a once-moderately-hyped indie pop quartet called The Shins had a Moment. It was such a Moment, in fact, that most writers (including me, it seems) can’t review their subsequent work without mentioning it. You know how Christian Bale’s Patrick Bateman does more actual music criticism in American Pyscho talking about Phil Collins and Huey Lewis than John Cusack’s record store-owning Rob Gordon does in all of High Fidelity, but no one notices because of, y’know, the serial killer stuff? To me, the Natalie Portman Effect sorta works the same way. Her Garden State character’s dictim that The Shins will “change your life” is so absurdly nullifying, so hilariously sweeping that it cemented The Shins’ legacy before most people even heard them. It’s an anti-critical endorsement that continues to trump any critical endorsement one could give. (Thank goodness for Chutes Too Narrow, right?) Because the Moment was so big for an indie act—a Hollywood starlet in a successful motion picture endorsing the most prominently-featured band on its wildly popular soundtrack—the explosion of attention around The Shins had the adverse effect of freezing them in time in the public consciousness. No matter how much (or how little) music they’ve put out since, they are 2003-4 all the way down.

But James Mercer hasn’t done himself many favors in this realm, either. It’s been almost five years since the last Shins album—a fact that could probably banish them to has-been status by itself—and with news that he’d summarily fired the rest of the band and started over with a fresh crop of backing players, the idea of a new record has started to seem messy and a little desperate. (Not to mention…irrelevant?) “Despite the drastic changes to the musical landscape over the last half-decade, there’s still room for tracks like ‘Simple Song’,” concluded Larry Fitzmaurice in his BNMing track review. And though they were characteristically divided on its quality, the gang of critics at The Singles Jukebox also found themselves frequently hearkening back to the band’s past. This isn’t just a case of evaluating a song within the context of a band’s career, it’s an acknowledgment that The Shins’ shelf life has extended beyond their 15 minutes. The subtitle on the TSJ entry is “Remember 2003?,” as if that were the only year anyone ever listened to this band. You can hardly blame them, of course, but it does make this track seem ill-fated right out of the gate, no?

I like to think that some of “Simple Song“s anthemic qualities—the “Baba O’Riley” windmilling, the spine-chilling background melody that ascends the scale with tenuous urgency—are there as markers of hope, trying to convince your ears that The Shins, such as they are, still have enough spark and vitality to be a presence in the lives (if not the culture) of people in 2012. Whether or not you buy it depends on your relationship with their past, I suppose, but it’s worth noting that Mercer has remained fairly true to his musical self. His sense of melody, always scraping at the upper edges of his range, remains as simultaneously meticulous and delicate as ever, confirming that at least in the abstract sense he couldn’t write a not-catchy tune if he tried. “Simple Song” is recorded as a lithe pop ditty, too, the guitars never overwhelming the rhythm section’s sense of balance, even as they lead to and stomp all over those downbeats. It’s true that Mercer has neither the charisma nor the cojones to be a convincing rock frontman—he’s too boyish and wistful—but that’s why we’re fortunate his new attempt at power-pop still emphasizes pop over power. We don’t have to strain to accept a contrived performance.

Either The Shins are aware of this dubious sense of modesty or (far more likely) it’s intentionally built in. Mercer’s always tended toward knotty lyrics that hinge on, um, unusual images, but here he tones down some of the fancier flights and offers what may be his first straightforward love song. “Well this is just a simple song to say what you done,” he begins, in thrall to a woman who has apparently made him a much happier person, “I told you ‘bout all those fears, and away they did run—you sure must be strong!” I suppose there’s some eye-rolling linkage to be found here between Mercer’s saved-by-a-girl revels and the plot of the film that boosted his tax bracket, but let’s not kid ourselves into thinking this isn’t a near-universal trope in popular music. And anyway, the more compelling lines come when he turns from her to face us directly. “I know that things can really get rough when you go it alone,” goes the chorus, offering encouragement through its sympathy. “Don’t go thinking you gotta be tough.” This isn’t exactly groundbreaking advice to get from a vulnerable-sounding singer, but it’s sage wisdom nonetheless. By the end of “Simple Song,” it seems Mercer’s learned his lesson, too: “Love’s such a delicate thing that we do, with nothing to prove.” And as he shouts out his new-found sense of assurance—maybe in love or maybe just in his band’s place in the world—what can we do but cheer him on?

"I have no idea what these songs are supposed to be about. The lyrics are superficially..."

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 11:45:14 -0500

“I have no idea what these songs are supposed to be about. The lyrics are superficially indecipherable. There’s one track (‘Powa’) where Garbus briefly and convincingly sings like Robert Plant. There’s another track (‘You Yes You’) where she repeatedly screeches the phrase “What’s that about?” and it might be the single most grating musical moment of 2011.”

- Or, you could like, listen closer and think. It’s not that hard. I like Klosterman, but no music writer is ever anywhere near good when s/he tries to parse why others like an artist without doing the actual messy ethnographic work, or (much worse) to be a sportswriter/political wonk and predict an artist’s legacy. (via marathonpacks)

I have no idea how I am supposed to take a piece seriously when it contains the sentence, “I’m not really in a position to argue for (or against) the merits of tUnE-yArDs, simply because I’ve barely listened to w h o k i l l.” (via thirtydollarproject)

He’s doing it to establish a ‘non-partisan’ air so his ‘friendly advice’ seems more sincere I guess.

(I think TBH an experienced music critic should be able to get quite a lot out of something on first listen and maybe articulate it usefully. I don’t think that’s what Klosterman’s doing.)

—-

What’s so lame about this piece is that it’s Klosterman’s way of doing for music crit what cable TV pundit-hacks do for political commentary: substituting poll-number commentary for actual critique of ideas, substituting inane speculation for informed opinion. It’s clearly one of those quota-filling posts that he coughed out in a couple hours. (via marathonpacks)

Yaassss!!! Join me! Disliking Klosterman gets lonely. We even have similar tastes, but the way he writies about things makes me question what I like. (Edited to add my special Chuck Klosterman tag) (via lastbutnotleast)

There are people who like Klosterman? (Never forget.)

I do not particularly like Klosterman. And this is something of a shit sandwich of a piece. But, it’s sort of girded by whitebread slices of truth… (er, that metaphor got away from me).

He’s clearly adopting a faux-naive critical stance as a rhetorical gesture

I’m guessing this doesn’t mean much to more than (maybe) 10,000 people in the entire country. In fact, if you effortlessly understood 100 percent of this article’s opening sentence, you can probably skip the rest of the piece.

And then his conclusion actually seems like the truth to me, at least.

It’s possible that she’s an authentic genius, and that w h o k i l l will mark the “breakthrough” beginning of a major career punctuated by intermittent moments of meaningful innovation. She could end up like James Murphy or Cat Power. But it’s just as possible — in fact, more possible — that this will not happen. She will probably just make a bunch more albums of varying quality, none of which will get the collective adoration of w h o k i l l. And then Garbus will end up with this bizarre 40-year-old life, where her singular claim to fame will be future people saying things like, “Hey, remember that one winter when we all thought tUnE-yArDs was supposed to be brilliant?”

Granted, it’s not hard to predict things when your prediction is Either this thing will happen or the rough opposite of it will happen, but his thoughts about the fickleness and transience of indie taste-making seem very true to me. The frou-frou about The Strokes’ ten year anniversary, for example. If The Strokes have to scrape and claw for respect in ten years’ time, you really think Tune-Yards is going to be a slam dunk?

But, still, yes, ultimately, Chuck Klosterman is a prevaricating loser. (via bmichael)

The way Tumblr formats these things is tough to parse out (this one paragraph is me, Sean/Popcorn Noises) but suffice it to say I agree with all of this and the Klosterman piece is a terrible excuse for ‘criticism.’ His argument is a muddled cocktail of ignorance and arrogance—I didn’t really listen to it, but I don’t get it, so obviously no one will even take it seriously a year from now—and has little to do with the perils of “critical adoration.” (Also, isn’t the point of a critics’ poll to reflect the taste of critics? Why get all snide about something “10,000 people in the entire country” care about as if Pazz & Jop were the Peoples’ Choice Awards?) I dislike Klosterman a little more every time I read something he’s written about music and I’m reblogging it here for posterity so I never forget.

when the top 2011 albums post will arrive? :P

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 08:28:29 -0500

Oh, about three weeks ago.

Me On Lana Del Rey

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:56:00 -0500

Me On Lana Del Rey:

tomewing:

I wrote this for the Village Voice Pazz & Jop issue - very cool to be asked to do an essay, and doubly fun because after a couple of years writing more and more trend pieces it was great to do something digging into a particular song and what’s happening in it.

I don’t necessarily want to keep talking / thinking too much about Lana Del Rey because it’s exhausting and her album’s about to come out anyway so I have to steel my brains for Round 6,742 of LDR Debating, but the very end of this essay caught my eye. “It’s uncanny valley pop about an uncanny valley love affair—almost convincing, but just wrong enough to chill and fascinate.” Cool! Is this maybe something we’ll see happening a lot more as digital culture continues to further shape and contextualize art? Is Lana Del Rey the @horse_ebooks of pop music? These are the things I will be trying not to think about as I wade slowly through the tide of Pazz & Jop content today.

They’re shooting for loud, noisy (read: Sleigh Bells-y) R&B, which is not a bad impulse in...

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 09:39:00 -0500

They’re shooting for loud, noisy (read: Sleigh Bells-y) R&B, which is not a bad impulse in and of itself, especially since experimenting with modern R&B is the hip thing for indie bands to do right now (Katherine St. Asaph compared “Comeback Kid” to Mya on Popdust yesterday, which is apt). In order to get there, though, they’ve sacrificed much of the exclamatory and experimental power of their early stuff. Good R&B takes nuance and a certain sense of intimacy (which is why vocals are often close-mic’d and melismatic), traits you definitely wouldn’t associate with this band. So yes, credit Sleigh Bells for at least trying to work their way to a sound that’s more ‘mature’ and more widely accessible…

…But none of that changes my original sense that it’s just not working. I find it disheartening that both songs they’ve put up from the album are built exactly the same way. That’s part of what I mean when I say their idea of a song is getting narrower. Ever hear the old demo version of “Kids,” called “Beach Girls?” There was barely any guitar on it, but it was still warped and overdriven. It rode that same line that “A/B Machines” and “Crown on the Ground” did between extreme, catchy bounce and ear-splitting audio assault. The ‘riffs’ on those songs sounded as much like fire alarms as they did music, which to me was the most fascinating thing about them. It was as if Sleigh Bells were simultaneously celebrating and pointing out the painful lunacy of big, bright, shiny sounds. Listening to the two new songs, pleasurable though they may be, it becomes apparent that they’re no longer interested in exploring those boundaries. Bubblegum verse-chorus-verse songs need more room to breathe than they’re being given and hardcore thrashing becomes boring when it’s lashed to such linear structure. I wonder if there’s some other aspect of pop—some untenable sense of attitude—that was embodied in their best work instead of the form of pop we get here. I’m sure lots of people (myself included, maybe) will enjoy Reign of Terror for what it is, but it’s disappointing to see them aim so squarely for a middle ground they’re not even well-suited to.

Rote of Terror

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 15:12:00 -0500

What bothers me about “Comeback Kid,” as well as its predecessor “Born to Lose,” are the ways in which Sleigh Bells’ conception of how a song can work seems to be narrowing. Thinking back to their first cruddy CD-R demos, part of what excited me was the (temporary) sense that they wanted to take a crack at re-imagining not only volume and dynamics, but the ways that general realms of pop and rock could interact. The original mix of “A/B Machines” is the best example. There, Krauss’ vocal was set on a loop, not quite droning but not totally teenage and sassy, either. The lyric came off tech-sexy and aloof, like a sample of some other tune recontextualized by Miller’s production. His emergency siren squall only resembled a guitar in the song’s ‘quieter’ moments, and looping it the same way as the vocals helped to abstract it from the fingers-and-strings physicality of a rock guitar. “A/B Machines” was a dance track built with the tools—electric guitar, noise, aggression—of a hardcore punk song, a fundamentally different approach to music-making than the somewhat skin-deep affectations of these first two songs from Reign of Terror. Here, despite maximal distortion white-washing the guitar tone almost to death, it’s played conventionally as a riff of flat, alternating chords. The drums, too, are exactly what a hardcore punk drummer would play except for the minor fact of their being programmed with synthetic sounds. Both “Comeback Kid” and “Born to Lose” follow the lead of Treats’ weakest, most one-dimensional songs (all of which still trump these), perhaps relying too heavily on the now-stale novelty of the band’s hardcore-meets-teenpop genesis. As pop songs they’re hummy and under-written in an attempt to excuse the stock sound, and as noisy rock songs they’re flatlined by the half-hearted stab at a deeper, ‘balanced’ mix. Neither one is particularly danceable. I realize Sleigh Bells isn’t a band that merits critical fire for not being arty enough, but these songs sound like a retreat from something that could have been much greater than the sum of its parts.

All's Forgotten Now

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 12:18:00 -0500

Perhaps in the shuffle of holidays and EOY lists in December you missed One Week One Band’s theme week dedicated to album-closing tracks? It was cool: we got to read a bunch of different writers all following (at least loosely) the same format one right after another. OWOB is itself a bigger version of this, but condensing it helped illuminate the variances in style, taste, and listener experience, which is always a great thing to observe. Brad Nelson’s stellar write-up of Boz Scaggs’ adult-contempo ballad “We’re All Alone” stuck with me the most, reintroducing me to a song I’d probably heard somewhere in the background of retail stores my whole life and making me an honest-to-goodness fan. I especially like the way he situates “Alone” in its own time and place—L.A. in the mid-70s—and reads it as an existential treatise on the kinds of lives being lived there.

[…] A ‘70s situated inexorably in Los Angeles, land of hot sidewalks and terrors and a supernatural belief in architecture as an indicator of spiritual wealth. Houses were set wide and apart, their own compounds, theologically sealed, the final sum of anarchic urban planning. Lawns served as borders and tributes to a totally conquered desert, at least psychically. There is always the threat of the old dead landscape lurking at the edge.

Between the song and the above description, which highlights the sense of domestic melodrama that colors it (“Close the window, calm the light”), as well as the dark, desolate picture of Los Angeles we all saw in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive, I’ve been toying with a mental map of the city, a somewhat romanticized sense of ennui that a place like, say, New York doesn’t have. Credit some of this to the shared cultural mythology of L.A. itself. I mean, Drive is positioned within the continuum of film noir that’s always revolved around California and, aside from New York, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more mythologized American city. This is where a line gets drawn, though, because New York has largely been spoiled for me. I tend to think once you’ve lived in a place you can’t be as seduced by its twisted folklore anymore. It turns out that—surprise!—people live mundane, comfortable lives in even the biggest, brightest, most dramatic cities and chances are you will too. Myths (especially dark ones) are most gripping when they’re all you have to go on.

Scaggs understands the inevitable pull of regularity, which is why he chooses to paint L.A. in that suburban light, but since this is pop music it still winds up warped and skewed into an outsized legend. He draws a direct line from the relentless rain storm seen through a window (as if the city were trying to drown its inhabitants) to being swept out to sea forevermore. Dangling on the edge of the Pacific, his weepy, curtained version of L.A. is still the last outpost of the West, the end of civilization before the (other, aquatic) desert. It’s a place where stories get told and then wither almost immediately, imparting a magnetic lure to the notion of being swept away and forgetting everything. Even mundanity is overpowering there.

- - -

When it comes to using music to conjure up real places, tweet-master John Darnielle is one of our longest-standing laureates. Though I admit I’m a bigger fan of his newer, more spruced-up work (which bars me from “real” Mountain Goats fandom, I know)—Sunset Tree, Get Lonely, and the underrated All Eternals Deck—and much of his geographically-based stuff predates it, his sheer globetrotting thoroughness means he’s probably hit on at least one place that’s important to you. Take, for example, the opening scene of “Dance Music,” where 5-year-old Darnielle hides from an abusive stepfather in his room on Johnson Ave. in San Luis Obispo, two hundred miles up the coast from L.A. and, as it happens, only a mile or so from the duplex on Couper Dr. where I spent my first 5 years. And let’s not forget the affirming mantra from “Jam Eater Blues,” which last year served as my personal reminder of why leaving Florida would be worth the risks: “Life is too short to spend the rest of it down here in Tampa.”

Lately, though, it’s been Deck’s “Outer Scorpion Squardon” catching my ear. The song’s gracious piano chords have an elegance to them that can be absent from Darnielle’s blockier jams—the work of a songwriter, not just a writer. It’s also a song about time instead of place. “If you really want to conjure up a ghost / cultivate a space for the things that hurt you most,” he sings, recognizing how the traumas of the past stick with us the longest (like, say, the childhood hardship of the aforementioned “Dance Music”). In just a handful of lines he wrestles with the desire to kill those painful memories—“Ghosts of my childhood stay with me, if you will / find a place where there’s water, hold you under til you’re still”—while still resigning himself not only to accepting them, but to embracing them as part of himself, delivering in the process one of the most heartening lines of his career: “Don’t let anybody call them ugly.”

Like the apocalyptic desires lurking behind “We’re All Alone,” the conflicted self of “Outer Scorpion Squadron” moves beyond the common artistic tropes of conflating pain and beauty. Neither song is built to revel romantically in its own despair. Darnielle isn’t holding up his ghosts for all to see and Scaggs never forgets the cost of forgetting. If the things that hurt you most make you who you are, then the challenge becomes finding a way to not hate yourself for being damaged. Notice how both songwriters allow no place for shame, Darnielle in his defense of ‘ugliness’ and Scaggs in his creation of a safe place. “All’s forgotten now, my love / we’re all alone,” isn’t just an escape route from a grim Los Angeles of the mind, it’s an invitation to be openly, finally honest.

Happy Birthday, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 11:52:19 -0500

Happy Birthday, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year:

This is another mix tape I made for you. If you caught the last one, you can maybe see the habits I’ve developed over the years with these things. I like to keep them around a dozen songs each—long enough to try out some different things but not so long that it loses a sense of cohesion (I like when mix tapes feel like albums and I try to sequence them as such)—as much for the sake of attention spans as anything else. I like to emphasize bookends, too. First and last songs are important because they tell you what kind of journey you’re going / have been on. Like a joke with a well-timed punchline or a catchy melody, there should be a lyrical sense to the way songs feel in a certain order. That’s my goal, anyway—you listen / think of it however you want.

http://spoti.fi/yStCZF

One More Thing About This Year

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 12:24:45 -0500

Here, for posterity and in many ways to remind myself that I did actually accomplish things this year, is a small collection of stuff I wrote in 2011 that I’m not embarrassed to have people read again:

- The White Stripes - “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground” - Feb. 3 - An ode to my first-and-favorite song by that band that broke up this year

- Cold Pizza Friday LIII: Imaginary Bonaroo - Feb. 18 - Clowning the crowd, line-up, and mindset of the biggest festival I’ve never been to

- From Odessa to Houston - May 6 - Perhaps the most successful thing I wrote all year, a slice-of-life intersection of food, music, and film

- Hey, Mr. DJ - May 13 - Weddings, friendship, Daft Punk, and “My Girls”

- If There Was a Me For You - Jun. 14 - They Might Be Giants’ “Ana Ng” and the narcissism of loneliness

- It’s Scott Walker’s Fault, pt. 1 - Aug. 14 - My introduction to an artist who I spent as much time with in 2011 as any contemporary band (pt. 2, an attempt to review his greatest work)

- tUnE-yArDs live review - Sept. 21 - Singing, participating, and making music about music

- M83 - Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming - Nov. 4 - The perils of epic-ness and one of the year’s most overrated albums

- That 70s Glow: Living in Twilight - Nov. 10 - ELO’s “Telephone Line” and the aura of an era you didn’t live through

More is available in the archive—including the “Net Beef” pieces that have attracted eyeballs and opinions but only because they’re opportunistically topical—but most of it’s probably not as good. Here’s hoping 2012 will be the Year of Sean Writing Better!