Music Criticism

Anything more asinine? It occurred to me, as I recently took from my schedule to indulge in some ezine diatribe, that the Interpol album never had a Casio's chance in symphony of not getting coal raked. It's just one example, but music criticism seems to have devolved with the rest of popular media: mix 10 parts entertainment with 2 parts information. It's a very sweeping statement, but I struggle to find exceptions. And I can understand why knee-jerk shit throwing is a sound approach that maintains reader interest, provided the readers aren't as interested in the music as they are with the culture. The fact is, it takes a damn good writer to convey mediocrity, whereas raving and scathing reviews tend to compose themselves. For a band like Interpol that has always been a signature sound, a blueprint that couldn't change for the comfort of their fanbase, it seems absurd to expect them to evolve or start writing insightful lyrics.

Having said all that, I've veritably boxed myself into a position of defending middle ground retro-wannabes, and I would like it stated for the record that I feel no inclination to purchase Our Love To Admire. I must also confess that there was a time (2002-03..ish) when I was a Pitchfork fiend and read their daily reviews before I checked my email. It's easy for me to rest on the crutch we all seem to use when defending former habits ("Oh, back in the day it was better, more puristic and about the music."), but I somehow doubt it's changed on a fundamental level. Here's what I suspect has happened.

When you're new, you're eager to experiment. It's been years since I made a blind, er, deaf purchase, i.e. bought something purely on a stranger's recommendation, but there was a time when I was so hungry to try new things that it almost justified the expenditure. Let album X be my foray into genre Y, and thus do I expose myself to something that I couldn't possibly make an educated judgment about. As time passed, I sampled more and more, and now I can somewhat discern what something will sound like when a writer uses seemingly arbitrary comparisons. The same probably applies to the music critics. They get spoon-fed album after album and they have to make a conclusive assessment of 10 records in less time than they used to spend on one as a teen. Hence, they arm themselves with hyperbole and diction.

Anyway, it all seems rather pointless. Music is the experience of listening to it. Not that I want to post labels on people, but if you get more pleasure from discussing how something is good or bad than you can extract from actually listening to it, you simply aren't a fan. You're just a critic. It also gets a little old to wake up one day and realize you've haphazardly surrounded yourself with people who simply don't share your taste, or enough of it. Since this blog is only read by people from Murmurs, I have no shame in dropping transparency and citing that this is one of the main reasons I left. Well, that and the corrupt management. (Censor the Woodman, will ya? Fuck you. :))

Anyway, it's not that I take issue with blogging, but I just don't see myself updating this thing more than once every 3-4 months. It's not a priority for me. However, you can rest assured that two fundamental principles ring true: 1) I will always go out of my way to find music, even if I don't feel a burning desire to spread the gospel. 2) I loathe your favorite [(Canadian) sic] album.

Cloud Cult: The Meaning of 8

So I realized that when I talk about music, understanding what I'm saying is entirely contingent upon having heard the album and also some sort of infantile brain damage. I really feel that the solution to this is for everyone to immediately buy any album i talk about, rather than slightly modify my methods. This will give the added benefit of having Cloud Cult's mission statement, a sort of eco-friendly approach to album production that ends up in quite aesthetic packaging, become inextricably tied to their music. It has happened already, in that any review mentions Minowa's ideologies as much as his musical vacillations but asking him to engage in a high demand capitalism would tax his natural inclinations to release CDs made of used condoms and diapers.

Of course, The Meaning of 8 is the result of a singular opinion, the sort of album that tries and fails on the merits of one man alone, and eventually succeeds because of this. I don't think anything Minowa says, persay, is intrinsically interesting, but the fact that he so believes his lyrics lends them a sort of importance within the music. So what I'm saying is the analogy looks like this - reviews of Cloud Cult : environmental politics :: Cloud Cult : Minowa. This seems reductionist to say the least, and something Buccigross has been doing for years on Sportscenter (as Belle is to & Sebastian so too is Andruw Jones to the Braves) but what separates an effective cult and one that gets disbanded after no one can decide on what kind of robes to wear is the unified message. It doesn't matter if it's Herff Applewhite, the dude from Polyphonic Spree or even Dr. Jaques A. Bailly, you need to know exactly what you're saying, and sometimes the language of origin.

End of Year Rank for Meaning of 8: 7

Fake Empires vs. Scythian Empires

vs.


For some reason, I see similarities between Andrew Bird's Armchair Apocrypha and The National's Boxer. The problem is that this comparison isn't favorable for either. The National have an immediacy and an urgency that makes their album seem better, while Bird is much more aloof, affecting a disinterest the way ill-advised guys think the surest way to impress a girl is not to show any inclination toward them. "Fake Empires" is Boxer's masterpiece, and a song that stands as one of the year's best (that brings the count to two, more to come). However, because "Fake Empires" is so transcendent, the common songs which serve as its profane context lose much of their luster. If this album were sequenced any other way, perhaps the more than serviceable "Slow Show" would rise to the top, but as it is, "Fake Empires" is the one. "Scythian Empires", on the other hand, is buried at the end of an album that is a very logical and seamless (I'd say "seemless" as a play on words, but that seems like the worst affront to Saussure I can envision) extension of Mysterious production of Eggs. Despite the musicianship, it is essentially one hour long yawn...infectious sure, but just to the point of more of the same kind. To take the metaphor to its overplayed length, Bird feels that the only way to circumvent (the old reacharound) the yawn is to acknowledge it through songs such as "Plasticities", a smirking nod to the alternate pronunciations to mean "things make of plastic" or "fake cities".

So what I'm left with is two albums that play like Interstate 86. Roughshod, in need of a lot of work, but beautiful regardless. One sings about "Fake Empires" in a much more "real way", and the other sings about real empires, all the while knowing that they may just be shadows on a cave wall (I mean, just look at the song titles associated with disbelief: "Dark Matter", "Heretics", "Imitosis"). Since we've been interviewing recently at work, and I've readopted my unfounded, biased, illogical ranking system, I will make the following projections:

End of Year Rank for Boxer: 12
End of Year Rank for Armchair Apocrypha: 10

R.I.P. Penguins 2006/2007 Season

Ever since the Penguins were summarily dispatched by the Dave Matthew Band of hockey, the Ottawa Senators (heartless bastards with no love for a great story) I've been somewhat depressed about the world of sports. Sure, I've got College Hoops 2k7 and memories of World Cup soccer announcers saying "Seaman to Butt", but there's just something missing. Luckily I saw this story today:

"Sidney Crosby is among the candidates for Time Magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the world, known as the Time 100.

Voting is taking place right now here on Time.com. Crosby recently became the youngest player ever to win a scoring title in a major professional sport and is considered the fresh new face of the NHL."

You'll note that Daniel Alfredsson didn't make the list. I guess all the schoolchildren who he psychologically scarred don't count as having "real influence". Combine the Time list with the new Penguins arena, and there's hope for me yet.

Panda Bear - Person Pitch

PANDA BEAR
Person Pitch

So there I sat, parked at the cliff's edge. As I hypnotized the engine, my eyes rested on the cape unfolding before me. The harbour abruptly ended in front of me, the vertex of which nudged the street to the hospital. The hospital was a hazy brown, and the cars like pigments on a postcard. The seagulls gathered on one of the drying dunes as the tide inched out to sea, "Comfy in Nautica" seeped into my brain like the salt our wind carries.

Panda Bear's latest is a new age soundtrack set against indie stoner Beach Boys harmonies, and it's very surreal when you get lost in its blissful malaise. When you prod any member of Animal Collective about what drugs he indulges in, you tend to take a fork in the eye, but there is a definite frosting of hot boxery over tracks like "Take Pills", which starts out in a sleazy ambient groove but morphs into a sing-a-long ditty about clumsy self-righteousness.

The only criticism one could venture is how indulgent the album can be, but in the right mindset it doesn't so much overstay its welcome as occasionally lose its consciousness in moments of sunshine and cocktails. I fecking love this shiz. But I'm not sober, so don't scrutinize my spelling or coherence, suckas.

Something That Really Sufs My Jan

So I've come to realize that I absolutely detest people who smash guitars on stage. I caught a repeat of the Arcade Fire's performance on SNL and after an exceedingly lackluster performance of Intervention I think, Win broke his guitar like he was Hendrix. It's become such a caricature of rock posturing, and to see this token from a band that is used to only breaking hipsters' hearts was indicative of just what I don't like about Neon Bible. I have nothing wrong with being ambitious, but even George W. Bush wouldn't support the execution.

So here are a couple albums you should listen to instead of Neon Bible (and both from Scandinavians):

Sondre Lerche: Phantom Punch - I was somewhat disheartened with Lerche's last album, the obsessively smooth Duper Sessions, and it seemed to signal a distilling of the worst aspects of Two Way Monologue. He had never been Mr. Testosterone, but he was clever and poppy and I liked that. Phantom Punch isn't exactly a return, but it has guitars and a sense of purpose. When it was posted on his website that this would be a "rock album", I figured it would either be an atrocious mangled loud affair or a repeat of REM's Around the Sun (wasn't that supposed to be a "rock album"?). But this is everything those two options aren't.

Hello Saferide: Introducing... - This was released a while ago elsewhere, but I expect great things from the sweetly voiced Annika Norlin and she seems to enjoy nothing more than putting her slightly off kilter thoughts into a rhyme scheme. She sings love songs hoping people get sick so she can nurse them back to health and intones "Damn, I wish you were a lesbian" to her best friend.

Uncle Tupelo: March 16-20, 1992

Froggy's Favorite Albums




It's easy to debate about Uncle Tupelo's place in the evolution of "alt country" or whatever moniker the genre garners, but since I wasn't much older than 9 at the time this album was released, I'm not in a position to pontificate about that. In fact, since my musical adolesence was somewhat delayed, I didn't come to this album until my college years. However, I'm entirely glad I waited. There's a nascent love of Americana music that courses though my ears, from a childhood spend in the heart of Appalachian Pennsylvania and countless hours traipsing through abandoned industry and overgrown riverbanks, and this album, more than any other, tackles that.

A discussion on Murmurs a few weeks ago got me thinking about why I really like this album as much as I do. Certainly it's not all that "I was born to like country music" garbage, or I'd a) like a lot more country music, b) have gotten in to it sooner (rather than spending sophomore year telling then roommate that country music was for hicks. Now I find out I'm just a self loathing WASP.) and c) what realistically determines what kind of music you like? I think this third question is one that can be dealt with in a few different ways, by dissecting the math that goes into notation and chord structures or the simple fact of my dad listened to Dylan and Van Morrison, so I listen to people who similarly listened to those bands.

When it comes right down to it, music snobbery is comprised of two pieces. The first is knowing bands which no one else has heard of, maintaining vehemently that you heard of them first, and ardently collecting all their material so that you can use the phrase "I like the remix on the Japanese tour release EP better". The second is wanting to blow people's minds with music. Sometimes these go hand in hand, and Uncle Tupelo is one of these bands. Nearly everyone has heard of Wilco, if just because Tweedy is a sniveling sycophantic hack, but not as many people (besides those who appreciate the genre which is, in fact, named for their first album) know the story behind Tupes. And since this album, more than any other, encompasses the straight ahead country (regardless of the "alt") and features many of the classic covers (and seamlessly incorporated originals), it is the most representative of the entire Tupelo quatrain. The genius of the title is that this is a timeless album that is intrinsically tied to the four days over which it was recorded so that it is more than a style or a collaboration, it is a moment, and that is what music is really comprised of.

Of course, I also love Swedish pop music, which is about as twee and superficial as you can get. So WTF?

Sellout Perception

Precisely what constitutes the shark leap to sellout status? Big budget record deal? Ad slot endorsement? Neon Bible? If you visit certain websites, it's a lot more ironic than that.

Okay, so I can't be arsed to visit a Postal Service web forum, but I find it rather amusing that a lot of smaller artists have recently fallen prey to full scale spam attacks. When you consider the victimized fanbases, comparatively small in the grand scheme, it can only mean one of two things: 1) online marketing is a crap chute run by inept teenagers; 2) independent music listeners have enough expendable income to justify overwhelming their custom chat areas.

Why is it that Isobel's site has more registered spammers than genuine fans? And the Fiery Furnaces boards had a good month of peace before the jackals swooped in like the place pissed oil. To this I say in a cheap Colbert(ish) voice: the measure of fame is not about the sale of song rights to a cola company or automotive manufacturer; it's not about whether you make six digits or more every time you cut an LP; it's all about which audience is so imbecilic that they believe those photos of Natalie Portman stroking her lady business are genuine. I mean, I compare some of these indie bands with well established acts, and there's virtually no spam shadowing the popular ones. Oh sure, you might suggest they can afford better webmasters and content filters, but that's sloughing off the trend. And trend is king.

Nobody knows that it's M.I.A. singing behind that roof-jumping sedan, but take the fight online and the gloves hit the floor. The web has become so integrated with popular culture that it's become pointless to watch the news; they only show about 10% of the amateur footage and edit the good parts. Why did Pitchfork even know about the Animal Collective/Crayola commercial? As if we needed more fodder to build a case against the 'fork, here they are oldschoolin' it and watching television, telegraph and gramophone's younger cousin. Fuckin' 'ell, man, how do you interrupt a 30-second read only slot with a timeshare plug?

Here's a bit of advice concerning all present and future opportunists (what else can they be called): all online offerings are fake. Every one of them. You give your personal information to them, and they either bill you immediately for a non-existent service or they forward your contact details to 100 firms that will do it tomorrow. There's no way to consolidate your credit through email. There's no shortage of quality amateur porn, i.e. you needn't peruse whatever URL the cheaply composed email is pimping. But if bands who write literary tunes eventually attract fans who would buy into any of the abovementioned bullshit, they've probably sold out and alienated anyone who knows the meaning of the term "undergrad". Except my favorites, of course. They're just plain awesome.

EPs

So in looking through my music, I realize just how many EPs I actually own. I've also, for the time being, slotted Beirut's Lon Gisland EP into the top 5 of albums released so far this year. But how can 15 and a half minutes of music possibly stand up to the scope and diaspora of styles and themes found in a full album? (Well, one that's not released by the Shins, who seem to rerelease the same half hour album every couple years)

For some artists, the EP is a way to try new things, to tinker with a fuller band sound (Beirut) or percussion (Iron and Wine), for some it's a chance to clear out the archives (Sondre Lerche), or even just experiment with a cheesy synth riff (Architecture in Helsinki). The Flaming Lips released two of the worst EPs known to man by repackaging some remixes and one-off covers to capitalize on the expanded visibility they had with Yoshimi, whereas Colin Meloy used the EP to release (for the most part only at tour stops) his covers of Morrissey and Shirley Collins tracks (I'll be honest, the "Sings" series is the only way I'd listen to Morrissey), which ostensibly influenced him, though he followed those quite listenable EPs up with a full length Decemberists album that contained none of that folk introversion.

Anyway, I'm sure these thoughts are quite underformed, but maybe there's a poetic justic in not being able to properly talk about otherwise deserving albums, like Hello Saferide's Would You Let Me Play This EP 10 Times A Day or They Might Be Giants' Why Does The Sun Shine EP, because they themselves don't properly sit with the artists' full length releases.

American Idol Stunts Your Gray Matter

Why even mention such mental poison when the optimistic hipster ought to celebrate good music, you might be thinking. I previously said that a lot of so-called music fans lack the conviction to understand their taste, and that's because a lot of people have no actual semblance of opinion; they're told what to like and blindly accept it.

Friends, a confession: I engaged in some mind-numbing "entertainment" a few weeks ago when one of my best friends visited from abroad. As best I can tell, he's a pretty religious Idol viewer-- in spite of being a talented musician. What I observed that night appalled me for several reasons. First, there was no emphasis on person, just performance. If music is to be reduced to a scientific measure of pitch and timbre, songcraft would be about writing increasingly complex rhythms and not expressing an idea. Contestants were not people with emotions as vehicles to interpret music, they were jukeboxes to be judged as amp and speaker configurations. Sadly for them, and previous winners, when the hype machine dons a new chassis, they lack the individuality to touch a non-Vegas audience. My only consolation that night was having a high school chap with whom to mock every person who thought this a serious foray into the music industry.

I'd like to elaborate on the premise that music, like all art forms, is about expressing oneself. It doesn't take a connoisseur to deduce the likes of Dylan and Cash had shit terrible voices, but the passion that drives their music is irrefutable. How else could you explain their myths, which seem to transcend the generations? At my rural gym, I see metalheads and punk thugs alike who appreciate their output, and that speaks volumes to my skinny ears. I just drowned in Sonic Youth's "Diamond Sea", an epic song if ever one existed, and I've no doubt that most audiences would erupt in an applause of exploding heads if they would attempt a listen. Why? Because they haven't trained their ears or hearts to respond to chemistry or anything reminiscent of a musical journey. It's not an easy sell because people don't tend to extract enlightenment from trivial distractions we dub "culture". Our culture has become a reel of ephemeral camera shots and lightning quick ads. But consider this: architects express themselves technically and aesthetically. Sure, they get to sculpt the faces of cities and towns the world over, but they also have to ensure that beams won't collapse and buildings won't buckle like Paris's jeans in front of a penis. That's what real music is: enough rhythmic and instrumental cues to keep the mind from wandering, but only if built on a foundation that justifies opening your damn mouth in the first place.

On Nick Drake

The time has come to respond to a few of the comments, made, I can only assume, under the influence of having listened to Creed.

First and foremost: I have nothing against Nick Drake. Many are the times I have reflected on the ennui that some like to call "life", and silently, passively air guitared along with Things Behind The Sun. Many are the times I've heard Fly in a movie, and had to endure my friends (who think Guster are underground) loudly exclaim that they "can't wait until this guy just releases an album already". But all that being said, Nick Drake is great.

Secondly and secondmost: People who throw proven albums like In the Aeroplane Over the Sea into the discussion of bad favorite albums are clearly antagonizers. It's the closest-to-perfect album ever recorded, so is free from the conversation. Shine on Jeff Mangum, you crazy weirdo.

David Vandervelde: The Moonstation House Band

The first great debut of 2007?



I've long thought that Jay Bennett was the little plastic prong doowhackeys that hold a CD into a jewl case of alt. country. Not entirely essential, pretty worthless on their own, but damn is it inconvenient if they're not around. When he left Wilco, they devolved into a wankery only seen in dimly lit European porn houses, tentatively titled Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Now, he lends his formidable studio prowess to the two greatest tracks off a relatively brief solo outing by Michiganer David Vandervelde (Michiganese?). Sure, there are other songs besides "Jacket" and "Murder in Michigan" (Sufjan Stevens lodged a formal complaint arguing that this song, in fact, must have been accidentally written by him) worth hearing on this album, but the slightly psychedelic warbling of Vandervelde is a bit of a hodgepodge so it's best to stick to the tried and true.

So here's the situation. You need to buy this album. You need to listen to it in your car, cruising down Pennsylvania's rural roads, singing "Well didn't someone tell you it's raining/because you forgot your jacket on the second floor/you might have got a mind like a fortune teller/but you never know what lovin's for". It doesn't mean anything, but it sounds like it should. And if that's good enough for Ferdinand de Saussure, that's good enough for me.

The Crappy Album Challenge

Froggy and Woodman aren't your ordinary snobs. Occasionally, we endeavor to enlighten you the reader as to why you lack the taste or conviction to appreciate good music. We look forward to your favorite album submissions, which we will painstakingly dissect. We reserve the right to never exert ourselves.

Coldplay Sucks

Sweet god, just end it already.