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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.