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
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.
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.
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?"
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:
"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!
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.
"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new."
-Anton Ego, from Disney's Ratatouille (2007)
