Never Gonna Let You Down

Anyone who caught the NFL matchup on Sunday, Sept. 27, 2009 between the Minnesota Vikings and San Francisco 49ers, or at least the last five seconds of it, saw what was an unquestionably amazing moment in sports. His team down 20-23 with two seconds remaining on the clock, the inexorable Brett Favre launched a 32-yard pass into the back of the end zone with the hopes that some backup receiver they'd stuck in would somehow get his hands on it. Favre lay sprawled out on his stomach watching the action downfield, fully assuming the game was lost. But when the receiver managed to drag a second toe across the edge of the end zone, ball in hand, and the referee threw his hands up signaling a touchdown, Favre was yanked up at once by both his teammates and the sudden euphoria. As Minnesota paraded victoriously around the field, you could see that look in the elderly quarterback's moist eyes: THIS is why he had done it "one more time" for so many seasons now; THIS is why he had flirted with and dodged retirement, pissing off legions of fans and the management of at least two professional football teams in the process; THIS is why he could not leave the game he loved so much. He had done it "one more time" not because he wanted to; not because of fame, fortune, or to prove anything to anyone -- but because he HAD to. He knew in his heart that playing this game was what he was meant to do, it was the fabric of his existence, and doggonit, it's what he would do until he were no longer physically able to drag his surprisingly resilient frame onto the field. And though no doubt there are those times when he questions whether it was the right decision to come back, it is the moments like these that remind him the choice was correct -- that yes, I HAVE to be here, I HAVE to be doing this, I HAVE to be a part of this thing right now.

I recently had the opportunity to observe what I think was the same phenomenon in quite a different backdrop. Fast forward a few days later, it's Friday night, and I find myself in the most, er, eyebrow-raising of venues. It was on the Lower East Side, and by Lower East Side I don't mean your boutique-hipster, yuppie-trying-not-to-look-yuppie standard Friday night fare congregating at the latest hotspot, I mean the fucking Lower East Side. Tucked away at the literal end of Rivington Street, Recoup Lounge was certainly not within the circles of any kind of gentrification, nor of any cognizance of inviting interior design. We had come to see JT Maple, and so had the bartender. Well actually, the bartender probably would have been there anyway. So it was just the two of us.

I don't think I've ever been in a situation where I've completely offered myself up to the mercy of anonymous public attendance, but I can imagine how much of a blow it might be to one's morale. No matter for JT that his only audience was a bored bartender and two yawning twentysomethings, lulled half to sleep by the previous two sets (attracting similarly-sized audiences). Acoustic guitar in hand, he climbed right up on that awkward stool, all lurking in the sallow Pacifico beerlight on the fake ass stage, introduced himself in a low mumble a la Johnny Cash, and proceeded to play his songs as if there had been a room packed with cheering fans. I suppose that being able to perform in spite of the audience is a necessity for any good performer, but I dare muse that it's probably a little more psychologically challenging to play in front of a smaller group: there's no mob mentality, you can turn back if you want to, and there's less anonymity to be gotten away with. But still, there's no arguing -- it sucks when you have a show and two people show up.

As I watched this kid up on the stage, with its wires and shitty garbagebag-wrapped broken flatscreens erupting from the ceiling and God-knows-who denizens of the night occasionally creeping out of one side door and back into another, and listened to the soothing songs and expert guitarsmanship, I realized that JT Maple and Brett Favre weren't all that different after all. Yeah, it sucks when two people show up to your show, but that's what you're up against when you get into the business of pursuing your hopes and dreams. Brett knew he'd be going to be up against the naysaying sports pundits and the tens of thousands of skeptical fans each time he stepped on the field. JT knew that sometimes there'd be let downs and crappy gigs and thin audiences. He was up in front of us not because he necessarily wanted to be, but because he had to be. The path to stardom is paved with frustration, moments of despair, and empty dive sketchbars on the fringe of urban society. This was where he had to be and what he had to be doing, right now, no matter what the past or future held.

We all have something we HAVE to do -- the question is, do we have the courage to do it?


Everyone's favorite song. Skip to 2 minutes in.

http://www.myspace.com/jtmaple <--- JT Maple myspace

Summer Every Day

Summer is here! To celebrate, I've created a Summer Every Day mix. I previously popularized the "Every Day" mix series with such acclaimed mixes as "Party Every Day," "Road Trip Every Day," and "Ornithology Every Day." Look for the next installment coming soon to an internet near you!

Impress your friends on the beach blanket, in the Hamptons, or in the parks this season with this failsafe summertime playlist. With a strong backbone of everything cool to be listening to and a limbic system of strategically placed throwbacks & obscurities, you'll be the champion of the iPod sound dock in no time.

Download below -- oh, and the track sequence is essential, so if you have half an iota of respect for mood and flow, don't go switching it up or hitting shuffle or anything like that.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/3tkqgy

1) Happy Birthday "Subliminal Message"
2) Cocteau Twins "Fotzepolitic"
3) David Bowie "Win"
4) The Pains of Being Pure At Heart "Stay Alive"
5) The Fresh & Onlys "I'm Gonna Be Your Elevator"
6) Vampire Weekend "Taxi Cab"
7) The Avalanches "Two Hearts in 3/4 Time"
8) The Chameleons "Up the Down Escalator"
9) Deerhunter "Vox Celeste"
10) Feeder "High"
11) Best Coast "This Is Real"
12) Oasis "Fade Away"
13) Neil Young "After the Gold Rush"
14) Pavement "Major Leagues"
15) Red Hot Chili Peppers "Walkabout"
16) Washed Out "Belong"
17) Animal Collective "Taste"
18) The Cranberries "Linger"

I Wonder What Your Boyfriend Thinks About Your Braces

Sleigh Bells -- Treats

And the winner is....Sleigh Bells! Winner of what? They're the artist in my Acts To Watch: 2010 list who are first to hit the market with a full-length album. Treats was released May 11 and my speaker system, inner ear, and the retired cop downstairs who knows me only as "the a-hole who plays electric bass at 3 AM" have regretted it ever since. The songs make like some misproduced diabolical incarnation of bitch-girl pop-rap. Remember those first-generation headphone jack speakers you used to connect to your discman to create a ghetto-ass portable stereo? Imagine turning the volume up on those as high as possible -- so they're all crackly and shit -- and pressing them against your ears. "Just turn the volume down, moron," you might say. It doesn't quite work like that. Believe me, I tried -- this music just demands to be played at full volume, and if you try to turn it down, well, you can't.

So here's a question you might ask: is it any good? Yeah, it's pretty good. But there's too much going on here to get caught up in that debate just yet. You might turn your nose up at my association of Sleigh Bells with "bitch-girl pop-rap" -- like, who needs more Ke$ha? It's hard to describe what I'm talking about until you hear it. In hindsight it seems like an obvious maneuver, but the Brooklyn-based duo seem to have one day woken up with the idea of combining trendy off-kilter production and indie ethics with bum-rush, beat-based dance jams. Except that description's an understatement. These songs will elicit bodily movements more carnal and voracious than harmless dance (insert "that's what she said" joke here), and the production completely flips the bird to any conventions of respectful input mixing. The songs are usually formed around some over-gained synth or guitar lick, underscored with syncopating clappy sounds and other bass-heavy percussive thumping, topped off with the rich multitracked vocals of babe-and-a-half leadwoman Alexis Krauss -- and then punched into three dimensions with a crank to 11 of every knob on the soundboard.


it's not just youtube, it actually sounds like that.

Now back to whether it's actually good. I, and most other sources, believe that, yes, Treats is good. However, I (1) think I find the concept of the music more intriguing than the music itself, and (b) find it, by the end of the album, quite honestly a tad annoying. Maybe I'm just not "ready" for it. But, I don’t know, I just can’t picture myself ever being unwaveringly appreciative of hearing Alexis recite in monotone “Got my A-machines on the table, got my B-machines in the drawer” thirty-four times over alternating patterns of screeching static in “A/B Machines”. Elsewhere, brief blurts of noise like “Rachel” and “Straight A’s” seem superfluous besides to reinforce the testy demeanor of the album. In general, the music seems less concerned with being good than with offending; more intent on existing than being listened to.

But isn’t that what rock and roll is all about? I keep thinking of Run-DMC: though acknowledged as pioneers of rap, the music they made was, all at once, rock and roll, just a new approach. Maybe that's what Sleigh Bells are -- a new approach to rock and roll. Nevermind whether it's good. It pushes boundaries, insists on itself, and promises to offend parents everywhere – sounds like rock to me. Like so many before them, the duo find new ways of fashioning chaos and destruction into a coherent concept of music. Whether that concept is something beautiful and something worthwhile to listen to is up to the listener to decide. But it I can tell you this much: it is certainly something, something to behold and something to ponder, and, in the case of me, something to blast incessantly at max volume until the dude downstairs is pounding his ceiling with a broomstick like that time when I was playing my electric bass at 3 AM, my bad. I suspect I'm not alone.

Nate Terepka: Sunriser EP

Hit this shit up pretty soon, or now:

http://music.nateterepka.com/album/sunriser?auto=mp3-320

The Wind That Brings On the Bloody Fookin' Change

A few months ago, after years of well-publicized internal feuds, sibling rivalry, and cocaine abuse, the 90s alt-rock colossus of Oasis finally -- officially -- disbanded. The dissolution of their relevance preceded that of the actual group by about a decade, but I think the latter will help to facilitate some important developments in music trends over the coming twenty-four months or so. You see, don't mean to patronize, but trends move in cycles. With the swathe of "nu-gaze" that's cropped up over the past few years, the winding path of Retro has found its way to the Nineties. Who knows whether early 90s Shoegazer music was actually good; what matters is that it wasn't very cool during its "heyday," for lack of a better term, and thus serves as a perfect emblem of coolness now. So everybody and their mother jumped all over it. But as it did sixteen or seventeen years ago, this new generation of Shoegaze will inevitably give way to what will end up being labeled as the reincarnation of Mid-90s Alt-Rock, and possibly even -- dare I say it -- Britpop.

With Oasis officially out of the picture, they're now fair game -- nay, ideal candidates -- to be repurposed as kitschy retro-novelty. That's right -- bust out the t-shirts. Personally, I'm going to promptly go dig through my old CDs and rip all the Oasis I can find onto my iTunes in preparation for heavy rotation. You might be laughing now; just wait until you're the unassuming butt end of any conversation you'll be having with someone cooler than you circa mid-2011. "Oh, what's that you've got there? A Jesus and Mary Chain tee? Listening to some Slowdive? That's pretty sweet. Me? Oh nothing, just listening to my Parklife cassette...and wearing my Suede '93 tour shirt" Burned.

To celebrate the pending trend shift, I've featured some non-album Oasis songs that many of us stateside may not have been exposed to. These are nothing short of straight fire:

"Cloudburst" from the 1994 "Live Forever" single:


"Whatever" from the eponymous 1994 single; also a prime example of Oasis' frequent, err, "misfortune" of getting into hot water for lifting lyrics and/or other musical elements from existing songs:

Shaken AND Stirred

"Your budget on my neck," brags Cam'Ron on the latest installment of an increasingly diverse and promising line of output from producer Alex Kresovich. The project is Gold N' Fly: 007, which uses the music from Goldeneye 64 -- arguably the best video game ever -- to remix hip-hop acts that are probably more popular than they deserve to be. Cam's line is funny considering the budget for the project was probably not much higher than $0, but as such its presence here is a bold statement, even if unintentional, on the ever growing accessibility of the music industry and the blurring line between amateur and professional (and which is also starting to become a recurring theme of this blog).

And thank G to the D, or else we'd never have gems like Gold N' Fly knocking at our front door. With this collection of innovative tracks, Alex reaffirms his breadth of skill as a sample-based producer and his penchant for tackling challenges of thematic creativity. I guess the ultimate litmus test for any kind of narrow-focus concept art is, does the audience actually enjoy it? In this case, it's hardly a question. Even if you've never heard of Goldeneye 64, Nintendo, or James Bond, you'll be hard pressed not to get a kick of head-bobbing pleasure out of the stuff here. For those of us who've spent countless hours of our youth (and, uh, in times more recently than we'd like to admit) huddled in basements with friends in front of the namesake video game, the music will assume a dimension of nostalgia, and remind us that those were hours well spent.

Some listeners might find it to be too much to digest all at once. A few of the tracks err on the side of drawn-out or repetitive, but die-hards will appreciate the proof that the hip-hop epic is still alive, somewhere. That being said, nobody will disagree that the 22-track, 70-plus-minute album could have stood to have some of the fat trimmed. Luckily, though the whole may not outweigh the sum of the parts, the parts themselves will assuredly shine in countless other contexts; e.g., I see deep and rich fodder for "best-of-my-fave-rapper" playlists for years to come. There are miles of trunk-thumping jams for cruising around town with your brahs next Friday, and plenty of partytime essentials. Though Alex's multi-angle stylistic assault can be overload for newcomers, after a few listens you'll start to appreciate the colorful patchwork; it warrants repeating that, at the very least, there will be something for everyone here.



Once you get down with the producer's modus operandi, you'll have trouble denying or resisting his musical allure. Alex has always had an uncanny grasp on tone and flow, particularly as it relates to aligning that of a given rapper's with that of his beats, and the tracks here evidence definite growth in this vein. Lil Wayne's "Fireman" is handled particularly deftly, the beat accentuating and augmenting the dramatic slowburn of the original track. Obie Trice's "Cry Now" channels raw energy, and Cam'Ron's "Get 'Em Girls" finds a brooding, subterranean beat that rivals the original. I can't pick out a clear standout track -- but I can say that the album's first lyrical track (its second actual track; Alex's albums necessarily have "intros" and "outros," a drama-heightening gimmick that will most likely summon the skip button, but which I suppose is standard in hip-hop), Tech-N9ne's "Everybody Move", might be the most memorable. It blows the door down with its singeing, relentless jabs of snare-y percussion and guitar distortion, while the rapper's tongue-twisting lyrical onslaught sets the stage for the rest of the album.

To dip back into the theoretical, Gold N' Fly really ends up as both an homage to each of the gun-toting, rim-riding, drug-hustling, money-flaunting, woman-disrespecting mainstream rappers who made the cut and a play on them. For all of their countless boasts of cash, cars, and other tokens of wealth, they're humbled by a bedroom producer fucking with some video game samples. Fucking with video game samples to create songs on par with their originals, might I add. Thankfully, we're no longer living in a society that would have punished such abandon for class disparity with gruesome execution, but instead in one where communicative and electronic advances have enabled such indulgences and facilitated their widespread distribution. So download Gold N' Fly: 007, and support the advances the last 7000 or so years of human civilization have brought us!

Download fo' free HERE: www.GoldNFly.com

Nobody Says It Like Wikipedia #1

I get the best laughs out of the way things get phrased sometimes on Wikipedia. Like some things, sorry, you just cannot discuss with a straight face, as Wikipedia attempts in ubiquity. For instance, rap feuds:

When asked about the beef between 50 Cent and Rick Ross, The Game sided with 50 Cent and said that things are not looking good for Rick Ross. However, he offered to help Rick Ross get out of this situation, stating "Rick Ross, holla at your boy, man," and, "50 eating you, boy."

Damn I wish I knew someone had my back like that.

Welcome to 2009

I'm now on Twitter,

@davidcolucci

Follow!


And here is the hottest song you'll hear today, yesterday, or tomorrow:

I Am Legend

Speaking like a quirky science professor to a lab full of students, or like the cool dad showing his teenage son and friends his old Pink Floyd records, Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne obliged the audience assembled at Cornell University's Barton Hall for his band's concert there on April 18th to take the show into their own hands and make it the "second most legendary concert ever" at the venue. The titleholder would of course be the show the Grateful Dead played there in May of 1977 -- an event quite unlikely to be trumped, considering, at the very least, its placement in the timeline of rock and roll, and, at most, that its memory has become so decorated with immortality and magnitude that its being one of the "greatest shows in history" has practically been established as fact. I was at first skeptical of Coyne's repeated coaxing that the crowd deify the show; can something really become legendary by intention? Or does the definition of legendary entail a certain prerequisite of spontaneity? Either way, very few events can be deemed such before, let's say, a decade after their occurrence, so we'll have to let this one marinate for a little while before we can make an accurate judgment. Suffice it to say, there were enough crazy effects, lights, balloons, laser pointers, psychotic video images, confetti, megaphones, bangs, booms, gizmos, gadgets, and, oh yeah, totally awesome music to make the show something memorable for everyone there.

I'm speaking as someone who has come to appreciate the Flaming Lips relatively late in their 20-plus year career, but the thing that occurred to me during the show is how seriously they take themselves as a musical act. That's not to say that the members take themselves seriously as individuals -- in fact, from what I can tell, anyone who takes his or herself too seriously in the music industry won't last very long (I'm looking at you, Scott Stapp). But plenty of artists take their musical output, and performances, quite seriously. For those who've carved out their homes amongst the dense lowland forests of psych-prog and art rock, as the Lips have, I suppose it's a common theme. It's a delicate approach; if handled improperly, you'll fall flat on your face. While it's entirely conceivable that many artists might've stepped up to the mic and said something like, "Hey everyone, tonight we're going to make this show LEGENDARY, wooo!", I don't think many would have meant it as literally as Mr. Coyne did. He meant what he said. Moreover, he truly believed that his band had what it would take to accomplish it. You might jump to classify such an attitude as arrogance; as irreverent hubris. However, I see it as a confidence earned with experience; swagger. He knows that in their performance, there is power: there are elements to move people, to perplex and to astound, and to create palpable memories and emotions that last longer than the show. Wayne Coyne and his bandmates take the Flaming Lips, a living, breathing force unto its own, very seriously.

Not from the show at Barton, but excellent quality:


And for all his showmanship, what with the laser pointers distributed to the audience, who were asked to point them all on Coyne at one point, the inexplicable pair of ten-foot creature costumes that ambled onto the sides of the stage at one point, his trademark plastic-ball crowdsurfing to open the show -- the man is quite human. I don't just mean so in the obvious sense of connecting on some personal level with the audience, which damn near any performer who isn't rigid as a telephone pole or part of some elaborate theatrics usually manages to do. Coyne is impulsive and fickle onstage, one minute fixated on some handheld balloon-blowing firearm, the next bashing on a cymbal. He's having a great time, but is always looking for ways to make it better. It gives the performance an improvisational feel. All of the elaborate props and effects are just a part of some massive grab-bag of birthday-party gimmicks, any of which might come exploding out on a whim. When they do, there's no real plan from there -- it's up to the Flaming Lips, their frenetic frontman, and the audience to decide what to do with them.

The crowd at Barton Hall received the approach quite warmly. If there was any doubt on the show's legendary-ness, it wasn't to be found amongst the throngs of cheering collegiates. All the props and goodies, they really ate that shit up. Not that you can really go wrong giving out hundreds of free laser pointers to an audience before a concert and encouraging their generous use. Still, it was aptly placed and felt natural. For those hard-to-pleasers less dazzled by flashy theatrics, there was no shortage of excellent music. The band played a set balanced with material from their latest Lips-proper album Embryonic, a few of the recognizable staples from Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, and "She Don't Use Jelly." Making an only half-subtle attempt to play to the audience, obscurer material was omitted; in fact the performance included no songs from 1999 breakthrough The Soft Bulletin. But what would you expect -- it's a concert on a college campus in the middle of Goddamned nowhere, you've got to connect to them.

If there was a low point of the show, it was the first encore (and luckily not the last). Understudies Stardeath and White Dwarf, who had opened the show, joined the Lips onstage and performed a cover of Dark Side of the Moon closing suite "Brain Damage" and "Eclipse". A couple months ago the two groups collaborated and put out a complete cover of the iconic album, so it made sense to play some of those songs (I was surprised, at first, that more weren't included; in hindsight, it probably makes sense for the reasons explained in the previous paragraph). I have not listened to any of this project yet. However, I have to say that I was confused, and disappointed, with the handling of these two songs at the concert. Where "Brain Damage" is supposed to be a bubbly, deluded comment on the surreality of life, it was here treated with meaningless, minimal organ chords; "Eclipse" is supposed to floor and overwhelm with a wall of unsubsiding imagery, while here its momentum was destroyed by the instrumental pause after each phrase. If my opinion on these matters is at all credible, I'd go so far as to say that Floyd was misinterpreted. But, as I explained to my friends after the show, who am I to be judging an interpretation of Dark Side of the Moon, much less from a guy who was around when it came out?



Whatever internal debate was raging within me about whether I actually wanted to go so far as to declare the Dark Side covers failures was quickly displaced and likely forgotten as soon as the Flaming Lips returned to the stage for their second encore. In what became a quite sobering and heartfelt moment, Coyne explained that the father of one of the roadies had recently passed away. At the funeral, the song about to be performed had been played -- and for fear of instilling unhappy memories in the youth, he once more implored the crowd to make the moment an uplifting and memorable one. The song was "Do You Realize??" and it turned out to be a thoroughly moving performance. The intent was honest and the emotion was wholly genuine. Coincidentally or otherwise, its juxtaposition with the first encore was interesting, and, simply, perfect: while Dark Side of the Moon ultimately concludes that human nature is inherently whimsical, cantankerous, and cruel, "Do You Realize??" declares the contrary. It represents a sort of at-the-end-of-the-day the-sun'll-come-out-tomorrow outlook on life and the human race, and expresses confidence that there's at least some shred of goodness to be found somewhere in every heart. The enormous screen behind the stage displayed the feed from the miniature camera mounted pointed inwards on the microphone throughout, and there were tears visible in the singer's eyes. And at the end of the riveting performance, amidst thundering cheers, flashing lights, and the snowstorm of confetti being jettisoned from the massive onstage cannons, Coyne smiled and waved and said "I know you do," ostensibly a response to the question posed in the song's title, and then was gone. Who knows what they'll say in ten years -- but that night, he was a legend.

If You've Ever Wondered My Favorite Song...

Hope you're having a great day!

No Time For Pretending

MGMT -- Congratulations

MGMT are in a tough spot. How exactly does one follow Oracular Spectacular? It's not that it's necessarily such an amazing album, in fact I'd call it "good" at best. It's that three songs from the album -- "Time To Pretend," "Kids," and "Electric Feel," in order of importance -- changed shit. A year and a half ago, these songs came crashing into the public conscience, from whence who knew, demolishing whatever fragile wall remained between indie and mainstream. As this new sound permeated even the most insular of cliques, the "from whence who knew" turned into rallying cries of "Brooklyn! Brooklyn! Brooklyn!" Ear and eye were turned towards the gentrifying borough for queues on how to live life. It was "Time To Pretend," in particular, that captured the airwaves and accelerated the hipsterization of pop culture. From features on TV shows like Gossip Girl and 90210, to just about any mix a college student made during 2008, to cocking my eyebrow as the unmistakable "na-na-na-na-na NA NA!" suddenly filled the gold-trimmed ballroom at Boston's Fairmont Hotel where several hundred formally-attired yuppies were gathered for my company's holiday party, it was inescapable. Tough to follow? Perhaps an understatement.

Luckily, MGMT recognized this. There is no Time To Pretend on their sophomore album, Congratulations (it's actually their third album as a duo, but for all intents and purposes let's stick with calling it their second). Any artist with half a lick of musical prudence would have known better than to attempt such a repeat. To do so would surely have betrayed the core message the song itself preaches: indulge ourselves as we may in things like drugs, alcohol, money, parties, moving to Paris, and fucking with the stars, we'll never quite recapture the naive thrill of childhood. Similarly, Time To Pretend happened and won't happen again.

And it wouldn't have been as much fun anyway, would it have? MGMT, having declared that they would create a great album over a really great song, or even a handful, have set about to focus and refine the jittery electro-psychedelia that betters the less radio-friendly moments of Oracular Spectacular, rather than try to recreate its catchy anthems. The new approach is much closer to old-fashioned 60s psychedelia, sporting a splash of soulfulness, possibly dabbling in 5th Dimension territory. Indeed, "Someone's Missing" has got more than a splash; its dramatic finale is straight-up Jackson 5. But they keep things diverse. The progressive touches that appeared on Spectacular are found again -- though more tactfully applied -- most notably on "Siberian Breaks," a lengthy organ-laced number with a couple tempo shifts and so on (and definitely an album highlight). In spite of the ornate arrangements, in many places MGMT almost seem to attempt assertion of mature restraint -- perhaps best expressed by Stereogum, in accidental allegory, when they posted the 4:16-lengthed video for "Flash Delirium": "why not four more seconds, guys?"



The approach raises the question of whether they're a group who benefit from restraint. Their music, image, and everything in between beg excess. Of course, maybe that's only what's been established by audiences -- which, as we've discussed, is kinda what MGMT are trying to buck. They want to show us they can be the shrewd, frugal songwriters too. There are certainly no cheap thrills to be found here. Withdrawn into a grey area of cryptic might-be-irony, the songs land somewhere between detached tragedy and post-high delirium, encumbered only by the obviousness of the effort that went into them. It's assuredly less approachable; what remains to be decided is whether it's in a good way or bad way.

It could also all be a part of MGMT's master plan to return to the underground world they inadvertently shattered for themselves. They make no secret of their admiration for the fringe: as if enlisting the help of Spacemen 3 cofounder Pete Kember to work on the album weren't enough, one track is titled "Song for Dan Treacy" and another is called "Brian Eno". Even if the latter is some kind of tongue-in-cheek self-mockery (and hey, I've always contended they owe rent to David Bowie), name-dropping such champions of the avant garde on two of the album's nine tracks is slightly uncouth and smacks faintly of "trying too hard;" it's probably outright futile, considering the ascension to mainstream culture MGMT have already made. Still, while they may be powerless against the historical and societal forces of categorization, I'm willing to applaud them for sticking to a vision of individualism and identity. It beats letting twenty-year-old chicks sucker you into writing more soundtracks for their wannabe-hipster ambitions. Their longing for fringe notoriety may remain forever a fantasy, but Congratulations is a step in the right direction for the duo. It is consistent, fruitful, and confident -- and I'm betting it won't be their best album.

It comes out on 4/13, but you can stream it on MGMT's website (and upload personal art): www.whoismgmt.com

TSJKYA #2: Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti -- Life In L.A.

This is my favorite song of Right Now. The mild buzz surrounding the new single from Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti, "Round and Round," inspired me to dig into his back catalog, a series of albums released in the mid-2000s indulging in some kind of obscure, experimental precursor to chillwave. It's filled with all sorts of rubbery analog muck and puzzling vocal samples -- are they ironic or for real? -- and is totally sweet.

This edition's This Song Just Kicked Your Ass feature, "Life In L.A.", recollects the kind of psych-pastiche Beck fans used to scream for and turn-of-the-70s AM Gold. It's smooth and groovy and makes me think of driving around town with the windows rolled down on a cool summer saturday evening. "It can be so lonely/Life in LA is so lonely" goes the refrain: indeed, it's a song of solitude, a testimony on the occasional estrangement of city life. It's crowded, full of life, and bustling with energy -- but Lord knows that sometimes the big city can be the loneliest place in the world.

I had to post two versions of this -- why not -- the album version and a surprisingly high-quality video of a live performance of the song (and the most recent documented proof that the kazoo is still in use as an instrument).





Oh, and the live clip above isn't enough to convince you how, um, out there Ariel Pink is, check out some of his drawings: Here

Four Score and Seven Drinks Ago

The Monitor, the second album from Titus Andronicus, reaffirms my belief they're something akin to what would've happened if Conor Oberst had fronted Flogging Molly and they'd been signed to IRS in the early 80s. In an album that doubles as (1) a history lesson on the Civil War and (2) an advertisement for whiskey, our boys from suburban New Jersey come barreling back right from where their debut left off, drenched in glorious ragged vitriol and whatever’s on draft. In a feat rarely attempted since R.E.M.’s Fables of the Reconstruction they turn to mid-1800s America for inspiration, weaving a caustic tale of the Civil War as seen, presumably, through the eyes of a drunken college dropout.

The themes this time around are perhaps a little more ambitious but no less despondent. In a surprisingly well-played parody on the original king of NJ grime rock, the youths belt out, “’Cause tramps like us, baby we were born to die!” All over the album, such self-loathing hyperboles are the mainstays of the gripping anthems. They’re big, dumb, and beautiful; one can’t help but to adore.

All in all, it’s quite a marvelous album. The hang-up on their high school literature classes continues to mix well with the fuck-it-all barstool punk; hijacking Shakespearian drama I suppose is the best way to sell teenage rants about hating the world and such. It’s over the top, but why stop there? Excess is a beautiful thing, if The Monitor has anything to do with it.

Here is the first track from the album performed live last year.

My Favorite Album, You Ask?

Some albums are good in a factual sense: so unanimously praised, so widely cited as an influence in subsequent artists, so statistically successful. Others are good because they are a part of us. They represent distinct memories, times, and places; different feelings and sensations and smiles interwoven with the series of events that defines what we are. OK Computer represents one of the few constants in my life and straddles both of these categories. Released when I was a ripe twelve years old, I was not previously aware of any Radiohead existence -- of course I had heard "Creep," but I didn't know it was Radiohead (Thom Yorke's dream fan?) until some time after. I have a very distinct memory of staying home sick sometime in what was probably sixth grade and listening to "Airbag." I had a thing, back in those days, of recording cassettes of songs played on the local modern rock station, and I had happened to catch the song on one of those recordings before falling ill. I remember lying in bed playing the thing on "repeat" (stop-rewind-play), listening to the tremolo guitar solos and thinking it was the coolest fucking thing I'd ever heard. In fact, everything about the song amazed me. The choppy, droning bass riff that I would be stuck humming for days; those fluttering drums that I would emulate with rapping hands on my desk in math class until the teacher would apprehend me; the seething one-string guitar lick that opens and closes the song. And those fucking vocals: who was this guy, with this high-pitched bleachy voice, singing about something something something to save the universe??

I used to have a rule that I would need to hear at least three songs I liked on an album before buying it. Remember, this was in the pre-Napster days, and I'd seen my friends fall into the Sugar Ray trap; I would try to resist the impulse of falling so obsessively in love with a song that I'd spend a $16.99 (plus tax) portion of my allowance for the ability to possess it and to command the power to play it back for myself whenever I wanted, repeatedly, until getting bored of it in a week or two -- whereupon stamping the song, and album, a bust. That's not to sound righteous, but I think I kind of got it. And hey, I was on a budget. After hearing "Airbag," "Paranoid Android," "Let Down," "Karma Police," and "No Surprises" on the radio, and falling equally obsessively in love with all five, OK Computer was a must-have. While many of my peers would immediately skip to the recognizable songs, I had a practice, after purchasing a new album, of first listening to the whole thing through from start to finish. So there I sat on my floor, right up near the little boombox that was the centrifuge of all of this snobby cd-listening and diligent radio-recording, and marveled in awe and wonderment at the sounds that came out when I put OK Computer on. So novel was the noise, I even remember thinking my stereo was broken when the super-fuzz bass of "Exit Music (For a Film)" came in. And who didn't do a double-take when the SimpleText voice comes in on track 7, "Fitter Happier," prescribing the necessary steps to a healthy, well-balanced, modern yuppie life? At such an age, I wasn't fully cognizant of all the academic analysis that deems an album good, bad, or ugly (and that currently consumes a fair amount of my free time), nor had my musical tastes really developed to a point beyond simple appreciation of whatever was "sonically pleasing" and/or hip to be listening to. But I think that when I listened to OK Computer, a new dimension of musical appreciation flickered within me, though I may not have been able to articulate it at the time. It is one thing, I realized, to create music that is pleasing to the ear. It is another thing to strive to truly create what has not been created -- to create music that has the courage to experiment, that has the courage to defy the existing laws, and that is not merely influenced, but that takes a chance at being influential.



Now that I have been on this earth for twice as long as I had been then, OK Computer remains my favorite album, which is why I called it one of the few constants in my life. Though as I have grown, it too has grown and changed with me. As I grew out of bodily, mental, and musical preadolescence, and began to delve into the academic analysis that is out there, I came to understand what made OK Computer good in the "factual" sense as decreed by the musical pundits. I came to understand how the album was a destructive journey through a faceless Twentieth-Century landscape of blinking and beeping technological paranoia, through the eyes of one who is both an outcast and an integral part of the mess. I read the reviews declaring the album revolutionary, changing and saving and destroying rock. I saw how it influenced modern rock throughout the following years. And as I grew and looked back on it, and was able to contextualize it with where society was coming from and where it was going, I began to see how the album's riveting sounds and images all fell into place amongst the backdrop of the then-modern world. Computers, cars, planes, lights, darkness, people, places, fear and loathing: all of OK Computer's sounds and images swirl into what becomes a marvelous patchwork of 90s modern life. Still, in spite of its historical context, the album is somehow timeless, much in the way that George Orwell's 1984 is -- it represents the perpetual fear that society will come to control us, and that we will cease to control it.

Not to mention the brilliant music. As the themes of the album are timeless, so too is the music -- it is one of those records whose sound will never be dated. This is for the simple reason that Radiohead did not follow any existing conventions or fads when making this album, but instead struck out to form their own sounds and styles: some colorful composites of diverse influences, others completely novel. What's more is it's obvious their producer, the esteemed Nigel Godrich, was in a perfectly concordant state of higher mental synchronization with the band while at the soundboard. Considering musical acts at a height of fame comparable to where Radiohead were after The Bends had been out a couple years, too often do we hear of these artists running amuck with tensions between their own artistic adventurousness and the capitalist loyalties of producers; and likewise, too often do we hear the output of these artists whose production engineers and packages a commodity to appease a key demographic. Maybe it's just me, but sometimes when I listen to music I can "hear the production through the music," and can actually separate what the artist wrote (or didn't) from the elements that were suggested, instated, and commandeered by the producer. On OK Computer, the line between producer and artist is indistinguishable.



And like any great song or album, the music and lyrical themes are seamlessly married. Maybe this is why they both seem so timeless -- the driving organic force behind the two anachronisms is one and the same. The two fuel one another and push the songs through you to that place of vague profoundness. Though Thom's lyrics don't always necessarily make sense, and are often no more than snippets of scenes from his everyday life ("kicking squealing Gucci little piggy" is apparently a reference to some priss Thom saw at a bar who flipped shit when she spilled red wine on her dress), with the aid of the accompanying music you can certainly divine what each song is generally about. Nay -- I don't think it's suiting to say that the songs on OK Computer are "about" anything; it should rather be said that they "are" those things. Twelve concrete, tangible chunks of the world, extracted, condensed, and sequenced into three- to seven-minute entities of sound. In the sense that an album can be thought of as a one-dimensional vector of sound traversing from start to finish, I've found that these entities of sound that make up OK Computer don't seem to follow a linear course, nor any course at all. Instead, they seem to all be a part of some dynamic three-dimensional body in space -- even when the album is played from start to finish like any other album. And as well as the album does work in such an uninterrupted, start-to-finish method of playback, I quickly discovered that the songs are quite easily played in any sort of permutation, or entirely independent from the others. Each song lends itself to different shades of the human condition. I can say with the utmost confidence that, at some point or another, each song has reached me in its own right: whether it be to uplift, to console, or to thrill; to excite for the weekend or to lull to sleep; or simply to bring purpose to staring at the ceiling -- each has had its place.

Thus has the album followed me through the years. As I have come to see it in the mature light of understanding its brilliance, the childlike awe and wonderment I initially felt, and the sentiment surrounding its place as my favorite album, have not been lost nor replaced. Instead, the two forms of appreciation have intertwined and augmented one another. It is an album that never gets old to me, though I could recite every line backwards and forwards in my sleep, and can hear every instrument, sound, and electronic blip as I replay the songs in my head. As I hear it now, I grasp its meaning and significance and influence and rule-breaking-ness, and appreciate its fearless creativity and bold experimentalism. Yet as insightful and esoteric as I can get about it, I know in some way I'll always be that little kid sitting on the floor by his stereo, confused and bedazzled in the fantastic journey of OK Computer. Maybe it isn't fitting to say that the album has followed me through the years -- maybe it is I who have been following OK Computer.

Good Music Is Just So Yesterday

Local Natives -- Gorilla Manor

Let's step back, for a moment, from all this gradeschool bickering about musical fads. Every trend shall have its followers. Every trend will be endorsed until it reaches a certain critical mass; a point after which any late-comers are soon dismissed as unoriginal, slavish, and profit-maximizing. As listeners and critics we feel faced with pinpointing that exact carrying capacity. There are plenty of variables in the model: the trend's relative popularity, how long it's been around, the image of the trendfollowers, corporate profitability, the trend's current iteration (i.e., how many times it has repeated itself), socioeconomic climates, prevailing political ideologies, technological advances, inflation, average atmospheric level of nitrogen. How's one to make an accurate judgment?

Well, inasmuch as it helps those who debate such trivialities in web-forum circles attain a comforting sense of self-importance, truth is that all that shit doesn't really matter to most of the population. Music that sounds good will be listened to, and music that does not sound good will not be listened to. That realization helps eliminate a few variables from the model.

So where does the debut album from Local Natives, Gorilla Manor, fit in to all of this? Seems it's suffered criticism for the aforementioned stylistic bandwagoning at the hands of some of the Interweb's more discerning voices. Not that one necessarily need a discerning ear to pick out the influences and trends these guys are sporting: they ski the tracks broken by the elegant baroque of The Arcade Fire, riding the draft of pretty vocal harmonies afforded by Fleet Foxes...and occasionally scoop up some of Vampire Weekend's beats and string sections along the way. Not too many new trails being explored. But they're still skiing pretty goddamn well.

And thus we see the internal conflict that narrow music-scrutinizing sliver of the population will undoubtedly face in this album, and to which I alluded above. On the one hand, it's incredibly easy to make the argument that Local Natives "play it safe;" on the other hand, maybe these dudes really just wanted to write actual songs, in the traditional sense, that were pleasant and beautiful and easy to listen to.



Put it this way: they're pretty hard to argue against; any such argument can only be founded on the purported trend-following, because honestly, this is just very good music. In spite of the avante-gard It-lister list of influences, they aren't niche or experimental or "campy," they just straight up sound good. Their Frenchkiss labelmates Passion Pit come to mind: you might try to consciously decide the songs aren't that good, but you keep having to tell yourself that. You never feel strongly compelled to throw the record on, but once it's playing it's impossible to resist (though I had been doing really well on sticking to my general principle against listening to any music that uses the lyric "the cistern is not even full").

One thing I do like about Local Natives that can be more concisely articulated is that they aren't overly dramatic; they are effectual and captivating without having to overwhelm. Cadence remains relatively consistent throughout each song. There's always some jangly guitar, a few silky layers of vocals, and and one-two-one-two drum beat. It's Sunday Night music after a long and draining weekend.

But arguably the best word to describe this album is "graceful." No matter how you find their reliance on industry-leading paradigms, they do what they do very well. It won't be an album that is looked back on as influential, but I guarantee the name "Local Natives" will be featured somewhere near the top of whatever iteration of the freak-folk-beard-psych-baroque-pop-rock wikipedia entry we're on in five or ten years. This trend -- whichever appellation you choose -- happens to have produced some excellent sounds and some excellent artists, however densely populated. Gorilla Manor is undeniably one of the shinier examples. And really, fuck all this trend-following for a minute, whatever happened to just plain "being influenced by?"

In A Paris Cafe, I Ate Some Mushrooms

The Art Museums -- Rough Frame

Ok, so what trends haven't these guys knocked off? Cheap drum machine loops? Check. 60s psych-folk revivalism? Of course. Fake British accents? Got em'. Lower-fi production than you? Indeed. Still, don't make the mistake I did at first and think they are trying to be groundbreaking or experimental by marrying the whole Surrealistic Pillow theme with the post-post-punk tape-loop minimalist drum machine stuff -- I really think that they just don't have any other mechanisms at their disposal by which to effect percussion. Except, maybe, that rhythmic low rumble, perhaps a hide drum of sorts...oh wait, no, that's just an underproduced bass.

Point is, they just really had to get this shit out the door and couldn't waste time recruiting a drummer. Given the swelling tide of late of 60s-garage psych-rock indulgence -- reference the Woodsist wikipedia entry for an itemized list of those responsible -- I could understand how artsy high school music-making dorkwads who had always worshiped their Summer-of-Love heroes in categorically chickless cliques would suddenly recognize, and grasp, their time to shine. It's fun, and can be a breath of fresh air amidst the prevailing contemporary indie themes that draw on more recent musical decades -- but at this point, twenty-four-odd months into the movement, you've really got to bring something new to the table to separate yourself from the pack. Does the replacement of a human drummer with a machine, albeit if out of economic necessity, accomplish such? I suppose that's up to the listener to decide.



Lyrics are of course secondary to aesthetic, but it's lines like "Let's all sing of modern things/soft and lovely modern schemes" that give me hope that this could indeed be a shrewd arrangement of artistic self-awareness and stark irony. Still, a few lines later they can't resist the "White Rabbit" throwback, "Take the pill, oh do we dare?" The resounding theme of everything here -- the band, the album, the songs -- is, not surprisingly, art, in the kind of youthful, romanticized sense of sojourns in Paris and exhibitions in Brooklyn. Curiously, their myspace page appears to have been designed by a fifth-grader.

What they do have going for them is a knack for solid melodies and an ability to write half-clever lyrics. The whole psych-folk thing is great and all, but I am interested to see whether they can fully merge their two indulgences -- the former and the tape-loop drums -- into some kind of unholy art-mongering juggernaut of 60s revivalism vis-a-vis 80s revivalism. Glimpsing back at their myspace page, a new video they've posted, "S.H.O.P.P.I.N.G.", seems to incorporate some dreamy synths and a more experimental iteration of their beloved drum machine loops -- so I'm hopeful. Check 'em out:

The Art Museums myspace

Swim To Reach Those Pretty Tunes

Surfer Blood -- Astro Coast

"If you're moving out to the West, then you'd better learn how to surf," advise the members of Surfer Blood in "Floating Vibes," the opening track of their debut album, Astro Coast. It's probably an analogy for some kind of life challenge, but I like interpreting it in a Weezerish sense, like, literally, you should probably learn how to surf if you want to live out here. It's pleasant and refreshing simplicity. The song dances through a lighthearted series of verses and guitar hooks, and when it ends, it catches you a little off guard -- it's content to end and declare itself a complete song without any tricks, curveballs, or lofty aims. Half expecting something along those lines, I was surprised to find myself quite satisfied at its end.

That's the beautiful thing about this album -- each song is succinct and structured, making its point and then shutting up. Even the longer-winded ones towards the end achieve some sort of shrewd economic balance of inputs and components that keeps them within the realm of the clear and concise. The six-minute-plus "Slow Jabroni" never sounds dragging nor drawn-out, and its buildup, climax, and denouement effectively summarize all of what Albert Hammond, Jr. has and hasn't accomplished in his solo career. Abounding in guitars but sparse on solos, these newcomers rely on good old honest songwriting, and the occasional crank of the reverb knob, to hit their groove. It works.



It's almost pointless to discuss influences or who the group sounds like, these are simply too broad and general; but since you asked, a couple prominent groups from the early 2000s with names of the form "The S____s" come to mind. In spite of such no-brainer comparisons, there's assuredly a Nineties twang -- a handful of the songs recollect the likes of early Weezer and Fountains of Wayne (suppress your laughter until listening to their first album), and even, I hoped I'd never be saying this, pre-emo pop-punk (Blink, etc -- no shit, right?!) on closer "Catholic Pagans." But the range of sound gets wider yet, and, wouldn'tcha know, they even take a crack at a few contemporary indie styles, most notably on the baroque-poppy "Take It Easy;" heck, sharpen the production and bring Ezra Koenig in to do the vocals, and you've practically got a Contra b- -- fuck that, a- -- side. Now, there's always a fine line between disciplined experiment with a variety of musical styles and slavish, insulting mimicry. Surfer Blood stay within their comfort zone for the most part on Astro Coast, but when they do take the occasional experimental step outside, it's always done with a "personal touch," delivered through the lens of the group's prevailing musical disposition.

While this has the effect of making Astro Coast an engaging listen, and a pretty friggin' good album, it also makes me very interested in their future. As much as it's necessarily a product of intelligent songwriting, I'm wondering if the concise and straightforward economy of their songs is also, in part, some kind of inherent newcomers' tentativeness: fresh-faced and unproven, they've got 40-odd minutes to make an impact, so they'd better make an impact and shut up. In the cases of Surfer Blood's S-noun forebears (Strokes and Shins if you haven't caught on), impact was made early on with such strict adherence to specific methods of songwriting and delivery; when each group took a jab at more complex and experimental song structures on their respective third albums, the outcomes failed to deliver on the levels the previous albums had. The opportunity for risk was endorsed only halfway, rendering the results awkward and, for the most part, disappointing fans and critics alike. When Surfer Blood reach that crucial third album, and their establishment affords them greater appetite for risk, will they remember the intelligent songwriting that brought us Astro Coast? Only time will tell. For now, we've got this solid debut to enjoy, while these guys revel in the exciting newness of where they are now -- which happens to be a live radio spot on KEXP in Seattle. Enjoy!

TSJKYA #1: Twin Falls + Some (Built to Spill)

This Song Just Kicked Your Ass, TSJKYA for short, is a new installment I'm going to be running periodically. To explain further, I'm going to be posting/discussing songs that have recently kicked my ass and will soon kick yours. Our first guest is this suite of "Twin Falls" into "Some," courtesy of this-guitar-just-kicked-your-ass veteran-facemeltsman Doug Martsch and the rest of our boys down at Built to Spill. Caught them out on Coney Island over the summer --- brilliant show! Enjoy this snippet from a show back in '99.