Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Life Music
This blog is not an autobiography. I keep my life out of these posts, even if my personality is always implicitly present.
But most of you know me. So what the hell. I'll tell you what's been going on lately.
I just moved into a new apartment. Across the street is the University of San Francisco soccer field. At night the field gets lit up like a stage for practices and games. The scoreboard blocks most of the ocean view. My girlfriend and I haven't unpacked all of our boxes yet, and we eat our meals on a small table covered with a curtain.
Details like this are important to me right now. My life has been shaken up, and the stuff of the world is vibrating. I wish I could convey how sublime this is, but I'm afraid of coming off like a stoner or a bad Romantic poet. But you know what I'm talking about. Think of the last time you moved to a new city, or your first night in a college dorm. Change makes everything vivid.
Especially music.
The summer before I went to college, I listened to the Wilco album Summerteeth almost every day in my Volkswagen Golf. Now whenever I hear "She's a Jar" or "How to Fight Loneliness," I think of downtown Santa Barbara, Spanish Colonial buildings, the courthouse where I interned, the 101.
A year ago, when I moved to San Francisco, I had LCD Soundsystem's "North American Scum," "Someone Great," and "All My Friends" on iPod repeat. I made a special "On-the-Go" mix: Track 1 was "North American Scum," track 2 was "Someone Great," track 3 was "All My Friends." My memory associates those songs with the Market Street subway. Last January, when I ranked them in a three-way tie for song of the year, I knew I wasn't being rational.
At the moment I can't stop listening to In Ghost Colours by Cut Copy. When I try to listen to other stuff, I end up thinking, "I wish this was more like Cut Copy." Clearly, I shouldn't attempt a full review of In Ghost Colours right now. Impossible to be objective. So let's leave it at this: It's a feathery electropop record, part Daft Punk, part Off the Wall, part Cure. The choruses of "Lights & Music," "So Haunted," and "Far Away" make me want to dance like a Muppet.
Eventually my Cut Copy obsession will end. I'll get used to my new apartment, and the random details of my surroundings will become mundane again. But the way I see the soccer field, the partial ocean view, and the unpacked boxes right now will be preserved: faintly in memory, amateurishly in this post, vividly in music.
But most of you know me. So what the hell. I'll tell you what's been going on lately.
I just moved into a new apartment. Across the street is the University of San Francisco soccer field. At night the field gets lit up like a stage for practices and games. The scoreboard blocks most of the ocean view. My girlfriend and I haven't unpacked all of our boxes yet, and we eat our meals on a small table covered with a curtain.
Details like this are important to me right now. My life has been shaken up, and the stuff of the world is vibrating. I wish I could convey how sublime this is, but I'm afraid of coming off like a stoner or a bad Romantic poet. But you know what I'm talking about. Think of the last time you moved to a new city, or your first night in a college dorm. Change makes everything vivid.
Especially music.
The summer before I went to college, I listened to the Wilco album Summerteeth almost every day in my Volkswagen Golf. Now whenever I hear "She's a Jar" or "How to Fight Loneliness," I think of downtown Santa Barbara, Spanish Colonial buildings, the courthouse where I interned, the 101.
A year ago, when I moved to San Francisco, I had LCD Soundsystem's "North American Scum," "Someone Great," and "All My Friends" on iPod repeat. I made a special "On-the-Go" mix: Track 1 was "North American Scum," track 2 was "Someone Great," track 3 was "All My Friends." My memory associates those songs with the Market Street subway. Last January, when I ranked them in a three-way tie for song of the year, I knew I wasn't being rational.
At the moment I can't stop listening to In Ghost Colours by Cut Copy. When I try to listen to other stuff, I end up thinking, "I wish this was more like Cut Copy." Clearly, I shouldn't attempt a full review of In Ghost Colours right now. Impossible to be objective. So let's leave it at this: It's a feathery electropop record, part Daft Punk, part Off the Wall, part Cure. The choruses of "Lights & Music," "So Haunted," and "Far Away" make me want to dance like a Muppet.
Eventually my Cut Copy obsession will end. I'll get used to my new apartment, and the random details of my surroundings will become mundane again. But the way I see the soccer field, the partial ocean view, and the unpacked boxes right now will be preserved: faintly in memory, amateurishly in this post, vividly in music.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Instance of Beauty #3
From Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov:
[Note: The narrator is speaking (in third person) about his spurned wife.]
He dreamed of her more often, and with incomparably more poignancy, than his surface-life feelings for her warranted; these dreams occurred when he least thought of her, and worries in no way connected with her assumed her image in the subliminal world as a battle or a reform becomes a bird of wonder in a tale for children. These heart-rending dreams transformed the drab prose of his feelings for her into a strong and strange poetry, subsiding undulations of which would flash and disturb him throughout the day, bringing back the pang and the richness - and then only the pang, and then only its glancing reflection - but not affecting at all his attitude towards the real Disa.
[...]
At the turn of the path he glanced back and saw in the distance her white figure with the listless grace of ineffable grief bending over the garden table, and suddenly a fragile bridge was suspended between waking indifference and dream-love. But she moved, and he saw it was not she at all but only poor Fleur de Fyler collecting the documents left among the tea things.
[Note: The narrator is speaking (in third person) about his spurned wife.]
He dreamed of her more often, and with incomparably more poignancy, than his surface-life feelings for her warranted; these dreams occurred when he least thought of her, and worries in no way connected with her assumed her image in the subliminal world as a battle or a reform becomes a bird of wonder in a tale for children. These heart-rending dreams transformed the drab prose of his feelings for her into a strong and strange poetry, subsiding undulations of which would flash and disturb him throughout the day, bringing back the pang and the richness - and then only the pang, and then only its glancing reflection - but not affecting at all his attitude towards the real Disa.
[...]
At the turn of the path he glanced back and saw in the distance her white figure with the listless grace of ineffable grief bending over the garden table, and suddenly a fragile bridge was suspended between waking indifference and dream-love. But she moved, and he saw it was not she at all but only poor Fleur de Fyler collecting the documents left among the tea things.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Somewhere Between the Body and the Tip of the Long Tail
The OaKs have been ignored. Amazon doesn't carry either of their fine LPs. Pitchfork hasn't mentioned them once; not even front man Ryan Costello's fire sale and humanitarian trip to Afghanistan moved the Fork to ring him up. The highest profile review of the OaKs's new album, Songs for Waiting, was run by the Atlanta branch of Creative Loafing.
So it goes. The OaKs aren't trying to resuscitate disco or interrogate the linkages between Afrobeat, dub, Tropicalia, and early rock 'n' roll (all while ripping off Panda Bear), so a nod from Pitchfork is out of the question. Same for radio play: Even the catchiest tracks on Songs for Waiting would sound awkward on a Clear Channel station. Too elliptical, too acoustic, too untrendy.
Also, reviewers keep missing that capital "K."
But the OaKs deserve your attention. Songs for Waiting is a distinctive, re-listenable album. A six-piece, the OaKs sound remarkably nimble; acoustic guitar, electronic textures, glockenspiel, all-over-the-place percussion, and boy-girl harmonies mesh crisply, never drowning out the songs. Weird time signatures abound. Verses and choruses are never played the same way twice. And while you won't find many sing-along hooks, certain riffs and one-off bass lines will burrow into your brain tissue. Exhibit A: "Masood." Just don't dance to it. You might pull something.
Check their MySpace. Leave a comment. Tell them to back away from that ledge. Pitchfork will call someday.
So it goes. The OaKs aren't trying to resuscitate disco or interrogate the linkages between Afrobeat, dub, Tropicalia, and early rock 'n' roll (all while ripping off Panda Bear), so a nod from Pitchfork is out of the question. Same for radio play: Even the catchiest tracks on Songs for Waiting would sound awkward on a Clear Channel station. Too elliptical, too acoustic, too untrendy.
Also, reviewers keep missing that capital "K."
But the OaKs deserve your attention. Songs for Waiting is a distinctive, re-listenable album. A six-piece, the OaKs sound remarkably nimble; acoustic guitar, electronic textures, glockenspiel, all-over-the-place percussion, and boy-girl harmonies mesh crisply, never drowning out the songs. Weird time signatures abound. Verses and choruses are never played the same way twice. And while you won't find many sing-along hooks, certain riffs and one-off bass lines will burrow into your brain tissue. Exhibit A: "Masood." Just don't dance to it. You might pull something.
Check their MySpace. Leave a comment. Tell them to back away from that ledge. Pitchfork will call someday.
Friday, April 4, 2008
Friday Top Five: R.E.M. Songs
In honor of R.E.M.'s supposed "return to form," here are five truly in-form songs from the band's first fifteen years:
5 "Texarkana" (from Out of Time, 1991)
Mike Mills, bassist and harmonizer, takes the lead vocal on this one. He also wrote the melody and the indecipherable lyrics. It's always fun to hear Mills out front; for me, he's the key member of R.E.M.: Without his lissom bass lines and his contrapuntal back-up vocals, Stipe, Buck, and Berry would be a conventional-sounding Byrds tribute band.
4 "Electrolite" (from New Adventures in Hi-Fi, 1996)
Click the link, dig the video. Spike Jonze directed it! Spike Jonze!
3 "Talk About the Passion" (from Murmur, 1983)
This would make the cut on the strength of its opening riff alone. Eat your hearts out, Lennon and McCartney.
2 "Fall on Me" (from Life's Rich Pageant, 1986)
Stipe puts on a verse-bridge-chorus clinic.
1 "Nightswimming" and "Find the River" (from Automatic for the People, 1992)
Yes, it's cheating to have two #1's, but these two tracks - the closing pair on Automatic - belong together. "Find the River" fills out the instrumentation, mirrors the chord changes, permutates the melody, rounds out the emotional arc of "Nightswimming." Separately, they're elegant, moving songs. Together, they are the best back-to-backers in rock history.
Discuss.
5 "Texarkana" (from Out of Time, 1991)
Mike Mills, bassist and harmonizer, takes the lead vocal on this one. He also wrote the melody and the indecipherable lyrics. It's always fun to hear Mills out front; for me, he's the key member of R.E.M.: Without his lissom bass lines and his contrapuntal back-up vocals, Stipe, Buck, and Berry would be a conventional-sounding Byrds tribute band.
4 "Electrolite" (from New Adventures in Hi-Fi, 1996)
Click the link, dig the video. Spike Jonze directed it! Spike Jonze!
3 "Talk About the Passion" (from Murmur, 1983)
This would make the cut on the strength of its opening riff alone. Eat your hearts out, Lennon and McCartney.
2 "Fall on Me" (from Life's Rich Pageant, 1986)
Stipe puts on a verse-bridge-chorus clinic.
1 "Nightswimming" and "Find the River" (from Automatic for the People, 1992)
Yes, it's cheating to have two #1's, but these two tracks - the closing pair on Automatic - belong together. "Find the River" fills out the instrumentation, mirrors the chord changes, permutates the melody, rounds out the emotional arc of "Nightswimming." Separately, they're elegant, moving songs. Together, they are the best back-to-backers in rock history.
Discuss.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Yes, This Band Actually Calls Itself Someone Still Loves You, Boris Yeltsin
Ah, silly band names. "Hey, let's go see the Someone Still Loves You, Boris Yeltsin" - pause, recuperative breath - "show."
Yeltsin - let's just call 'em that - plays crisp, shape-shifting pop. Think of a math rock band doing a Hanson tribute. Indie-lite, for sure, but songs like "Glue Girls" tear-ass around like vintage New Pornographers, doing as many melodies-per-minute as the most ADD tracks on Mass Romantic. Repeated listens are inevitable.
Yeltsin's new record, Pershing, which apparently won't include the snappy B-side "Half-Awake (Deb)," drops on April 8. In the meantime, try some hors d'oeuvres.
Yeltsin - let's just call 'em that - plays crisp, shape-shifting pop. Think of a math rock band doing a Hanson tribute. Indie-lite, for sure, but songs like "Glue Girls" tear-ass around like vintage New Pornographers, doing as many melodies-per-minute as the most ADD tracks on Mass Romantic. Repeated listens are inevitable.
Yeltsin's new record, Pershing, which apparently won't include the snappy B-side "Half-Awake (Deb)," drops on April 8. In the meantime, try some hors d'oeuvres.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Instance of Beauty #2
From "The Initiation" by James Tate:
The long wake continues,
quiet and moronic expressions.
The jowl of the dead
is agape with infinite abandon
as if he were about to sing:
if we concentrate
he may remember the words.
The long wake continues,
quiet and moronic expressions.
The jowl of the dead
is agape with infinite abandon
as if he were about to sing:
if we concentrate
he may remember the words.
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