WEEK 4
Directions To See A Ghost
The Black Angels
The name Black Angels taken as it was from the Velvet Underground conjures a certain kind of negation of spirituality. They are not a band you dance to or clean up after your cat to or make love to your significant other to. We’re given directions to see a ghost and they lead us down a cavernous labyrinth of blind alleys across whose twists and turns we’re reminded of how fuzzy guitars and authoritative beats spell doom for other sounds. You listen to the Black Angels with the same attentive dread as you do a tin cup preacher, the difference is one’s noise warns of the apocalypse while the other refreshes us with the promise of change. GRADE: A-
B.R.M.C.
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
A rémoulade of blues funk power pop cooked down to a sludgy ooze. BRMC proves to be as essential as the primordial slime from which all music and life springs and no less organic. Listen to it at maximum volume to scare kids and old people alike. GRADE: B+
This is Happening
LCD Soundsystem
Sometimes music will come along and so perfectly speak to us that it is difficult to express properly exactly how it makes us feel. Is it enough to say that one finds in the music a kind of metronome for the soul? Maybe. Maybe not. The highest compliment I can think to give that which those who are unimaginative enough to be paid to label things call 'dance music' makes us want to move for the most obvious and sublime of reasons. Though our feet move long in advance of us understanding why. This is Happening is full of reasons to dance and the simple edict as if echoing in the beat belies a fantastic complexity that makes one want to listen to it again and again. Just ask my downstairs neighbors. I have heavy feet. GRADE:A
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Thursday, May 27, 2010
WEEK 3
Nobody Said It Was Easy
The Four Horsemen
Just listened to this one for the first time in more than a decade. I remembered thinking only the first two songs were good. Now I see I was wrong. GRADE:D
The Bachelor
Patrick Wolf
Garage chamber music from outer space? Pacha's last cowboy DJ on mescaline? I'm not sure how to describe Patrick Wolfe, except to say his music takes you on a tour of a world that would be better never to exist but only because flesh is weak and we are all the heroes if only in his dreams. Easily one of '09's best records (I know it was a pretty dire year). GRADE: A
Preliminaires
Iggy Pop
Actually, I found this strange piece of work, combining as it does two of my favorite humans (the Ig and Houellebecq) an irresistible curiosity at first. On subsequent listens, I've been enchanted by its subtle beats as well as Iggy's well rehearsed French phrasing. The songs melt together into a jazzy river of unfilled dreams. The album somehow manages to capture the ennui of the expat American arriving in the left bank only to realize he is decades too late and that Paris is gone.
It doesn't compare with the stooges but stands alone. Fish Tank, if that is his real name, owes me a pint in Boston. GRADE:B
Swim
Caribou
Moving from 60's psychedelic pop to 70's psychedelic funk, Caribou has made yet another album that I will listen to again and again. I suspect it will not fail to improve my mood each time I do so. There is something in this approach to music that calls to my soul. Sure, much of it is electronic but it manages to sound more organic
by way of the ENIAC as designed by Leonardo's dreams. Dance the dance of the cosmos to this one, it is the soundtrack we'd all like our lives to live up to. GRADE:A
Nobody Said It Was Easy
The Four Horsemen
Just listened to this one for the first time in more than a decade. I remembered thinking only the first two songs were good. Now I see I was wrong. GRADE:D
The Bachelor
Patrick Wolf
Garage chamber music from outer space? Pacha's last cowboy DJ on mescaline? I'm not sure how to describe Patrick Wolfe, except to say his music takes you on a tour of a world that would be better never to exist but only because flesh is weak and we are all the heroes if only in his dreams. Easily one of '09's best records (I know it was a pretty dire year). GRADE: A
Preliminaires
Iggy Pop
Actually, I found this strange piece of work, combining as it does two of my favorite humans (the Ig and Houellebecq) an irresistible curiosity at first. On subsequent listens, I've been enchanted by its subtle beats as well as Iggy's well rehearsed French phrasing. The songs melt together into a jazzy river of unfilled dreams. The album somehow manages to capture the ennui of the expat American arriving in the left bank only to realize he is decades too late and that Paris is gone.
It doesn't compare with the stooges but stands alone. Fish Tank, if that is his real name, owes me a pint in Boston. GRADE:B
Swim
Caribou
Moving from 60's psychedelic pop to 70's psychedelic funk, Caribou has made yet another album that I will listen to again and again. I suspect it will not fail to improve my mood each time I do so. There is something in this approach to music that calls to my soul. Sure, much of it is electronic but it manages to sound more organic
by way of the ENIAC as designed by Leonardo's dreams. Dance the dance of the cosmos to this one, it is the soundtrack we'd all like our lives to live up to. GRADE:A
Monday, May 10, 2010
WEEK 2
Straight To Video
Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments
Lighter than punk, heavier than garage the unfortunately (or perhaps inspirationally) named Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments offer the kind of full frontal straight ahead rock that sounds more melodic and controlled than it has any right to be. The guitars often sound as though they are being played by a cheese grater rather than a pick. There is as much steel as skin in the percussion and the bass spends most of its time trying to keep up. The lyrics (as embodied by "Outside My Scene") both celebrate and lament the life of the drunken bar band. Straight to Video represents a kind of joyous bacchanal held during the dark night of a lost soul where anything is possible but we’re not disappointed when only rock happens. GRADE: B+
This Nation's Saving Grace
The Fall
I always loved stretching out in my parent's basement and so apparently does Mark E. Though the basement where he recorded This Nation's Saving Grace sounds as though it is located beneath Vivian Westwood's OBGYN practice and above a 18th century smithy's hut. Punk doesn't disappear on this album so much as grow from the angry growl of the band's 70's work to a more impressionistic growl that portends the electronics and sonic layering they would increasingly adopt to redoubtable ends in the coming years. . GRADE: A-
Through The Windowpane
Guillemots
Plays great on a ride through the heart of Manhattan. As I learned when my now wife, then girlfriend took our first trip together. I was amazed at her boldness, demanding that we drive all the way to our midtown hotel. So this review will be colored in the best way, as all music we share with lovers is, unless of course they leave us.
Avant-pop seems like a fair label if only because back in the day in a church somewhere near, say Cologne someone said the same thing about Bach. That's right I'm comparing this to Bach.
"Redwings" is the highlight here, balancing as it does harmony and emotion; those exquisite layers of gossamer. GRADE: A-
They Live On The Sun
Cloud Cult
These clouds float by looking all too familiar. Fuzz, beeps, blips and whole lotta meh. Listeners are better advised to listen to the Clouds Taste Metallic by The Flaming Lips. GRADE: D+
Straight To Video
Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments
Lighter than punk, heavier than garage the unfortunately (or perhaps inspirationally) named Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments offer the kind of full frontal straight ahead rock that sounds more melodic and controlled than it has any right to be. The guitars often sound as though they are being played by a cheese grater rather than a pick. There is as much steel as skin in the percussion and the bass spends most of its time trying to keep up. The lyrics (as embodied by "Outside My Scene") both celebrate and lament the life of the drunken bar band. Straight to Video represents a kind of joyous bacchanal held during the dark night of a lost soul where anything is possible but we’re not disappointed when only rock happens. GRADE: B+
This Nation's Saving Grace
The Fall
I always loved stretching out in my parent's basement and so apparently does Mark E. Though the basement where he recorded This Nation's Saving Grace sounds as though it is located beneath Vivian Westwood's OBGYN practice and above a 18th century smithy's hut. Punk doesn't disappear on this album so much as grow from the angry growl of the band's 70's work to a more impressionistic growl that portends the electronics and sonic layering they would increasingly adopt to redoubtable ends in the coming years. . GRADE: A-
Through The Windowpane
Guillemots
Plays great on a ride through the heart of Manhattan. As I learned when my now wife, then girlfriend took our first trip together. I was amazed at her boldness, demanding that we drive all the way to our midtown hotel. So this review will be colored in the best way, as all music we share with lovers is, unless of course they leave us.
Avant-pop seems like a fair label if only because back in the day in a church somewhere near, say Cologne someone said the same thing about Bach. That's right I'm comparing this to Bach.
"Redwings" is the highlight here, balancing as it does harmony and emotion; those exquisite layers of gossamer. GRADE: A-
They Live On The Sun
Cloud Cult
These clouds float by looking all too familiar. Fuzz, beeps, blips and whole lotta meh. Listeners are better advised to listen to the Clouds Taste Metallic by The Flaming Lips. GRADE: D+
Friday, April 30, 2010
Weekly 4 Pack
Week One 5/1/10
Congratulations
MGMT
Is the fact that this album makes me wonder what a psychedelic Carol King record would sound like a good thing? Maybe. I read an interview with these boys in RS a while back in which they claimed to be getting wrecked on drugs because they were living like rock stars ironically. Have we reached the point in society where irony can be traded as cheaply as its made? Maybe. Does the fact that one can hear the bones of Muzak in almost every track mean there is something cloyingly artificial going on here? Maybe. Will I change my rating after my wife gets a copy of this and I listen to it a few hundred times driving around the north shore this summer? Maybe. Will my rating go up or down? Maybe. GRADE: C-
Here Lies Love
Fatboy Slim, David Byrne
Like its heroine's shoe closet, the album contains too much variety to please every set of ears (or feet for that matter, though long stretches are agreeable danceable in a NYC 70's disco kind of way, meaning it is easy to imagine white people gormlessly shuffling their feet). Unfortunately, the one constant is a kind of schmaltzy, musical theater execution. A team of extraordinary voices has been gathered to sing about a subject that not one sounds overly passionate about. Still, there is enough charm here, enough Byrneian love of rhythm and harmony to warrant a listen. GRADE:C
Volume Two
She & Him
Hangover music occupies a quite necessary niche in the life of a drinker. I should know I am one. With Vol. 2, She and Him have concocted a collection of songs to soothe one's aching mind as he contemplates whether or not he's going to be able to keep his eggs down, after a night of living like Ike Turner or at least Jamie Turner. "Me and You" is the real stand out track. It mixes dust bowl gospel chanting with dreamy, western Burt Bacharach like orchestration. This album steels one for the long day of recovery ahead. And yes junior, I'll have that coffee now. GRADE: B
Born Again Revisited
Times New Viking
Low-fi like it was recorded under several blankets that smell of patchouli, Times New Viking is certainly the best band ever to be named after a made up font. Organs buzz and crawl over jagged guitar lines, the vocals are more like echoes heard from the near distance, and yet it all manages to sound urgent and finished. A sheen of rough-hewn beauty creeps through on nearly every song. GRADE: B+
Week One 5/1/10
Congratulations
MGMT
Is the fact that this album makes me wonder what a psychedelic Carol King record would sound like a good thing? Maybe. I read an interview with these boys in RS a while back in which they claimed to be getting wrecked on drugs because they were living like rock stars ironically. Have we reached the point in society where irony can be traded as cheaply as its made? Maybe. Does the fact that one can hear the bones of Muzak in almost every track mean there is something cloyingly artificial going on here? Maybe. Will I change my rating after my wife gets a copy of this and I listen to it a few hundred times driving around the north shore this summer? Maybe. Will my rating go up or down? Maybe. GRADE: C-
Here Lies Love
Fatboy Slim, David Byrne
Like its heroine's shoe closet, the album contains too much variety to please every set of ears (or feet for that matter, though long stretches are agreeable danceable in a NYC 70's disco kind of way, meaning it is easy to imagine white people gormlessly shuffling their feet). Unfortunately, the one constant is a kind of schmaltzy, musical theater execution. A team of extraordinary voices has been gathered to sing about a subject that not one sounds overly passionate about. Still, there is enough charm here, enough Byrneian love of rhythm and harmony to warrant a listen. GRADE:C
Volume Two
She & Him
Hangover music occupies a quite necessary niche in the life of a drinker. I should know I am one. With Vol. 2, She and Him have concocted a collection of songs to soothe one's aching mind as he contemplates whether or not he's going to be able to keep his eggs down, after a night of living like Ike Turner or at least Jamie Turner. "Me and You" is the real stand out track. It mixes dust bowl gospel chanting with dreamy, western Burt Bacharach like orchestration. This album steels one for the long day of recovery ahead. And yes junior, I'll have that coffee now. GRADE: B
Born Again Revisited
Times New Viking
Low-fi like it was recorded under several blankets that smell of patchouli, Times New Viking is certainly the best band ever to be named after a made up font. Organs buzz and crawl over jagged guitar lines, the vocals are more like echoes heard from the near distance, and yet it all manages to sound urgent and finished. A sheen of rough-hewn beauty creeps through on nearly every song. GRADE: B+
Saturday, January 31, 2009
How The Album "The Soft Parade" by the Doors Explains The Entire History of Mankind
Part Two: Historical Turning Points, Barack Obama and "Shaman's Blues"
Friends, with inauguration day not long past, I want to address the serious subject of the Obama Presidency through my preferred prism, the lyrics of the late Jim Morrison. Could he see the future? Was there some cracked wisdom to his chemically aided pronouncements? It is safe to view him as a modern day Socrates imbibing Michelob hemlock? The answer to all of these questions is an urgent yes. As proof, I humbly offer "Shaman's Blues."
The music is urgent from the outset, befitting for a song filled with such portent. The beat is as steady and constant as the persistent march of time. Manzerek's organ alternately wails and hums while Krieger's guitar always threatens to shoot off in some new direction before riffing back to the beat in a satisfying series of ripples. Then Morrison, ever the drunken master, peps up to deliver an almost breathless stream of words which may have told more than even the master had foreseen.
There will never be another one like you.
There will never be another one
Who can do the things you do, oh!
Obama is and will forever be the first African American President in the history of the US. It is important to keep in mind that the political machine he built was a mixture of the old and the new.
Will you give another chance?
Will you try, little try?
Please stop and you'll remember
We were together, anyway… All right!
The Internet which had been to that point a crude tool in the marshaling of a campaign became central to his campaign. What was interesting was the way the Obama team used the Internet to bring together Democrats of every kind and stripe to function as foot soldiers in their local communities. They indeed gave old politics another chance by combining the kind of door to door glad handing with the massive electronic reach of the information super highway.
And if you have a certain evening
You could lend to me,
I'd give it all right back to you.
Know how it has to be with you.
I know your moves and your mind,
And your mind, and your mind,
And your mind, and your mind,
And your mind, and you're mine!
In his 1995 book Dreams of My Father President Obama seems to answer Jim. "With our eyes closed, we uttered the same words, but in our hearts we each prayed to our own masters; we each remained locked in our own memories; we all clung to our own foolish magic." It is as if the "certain evening" is the closing of ones eyes and simply speaking one's mind is all we have to do.
Will you stop to think and wonder
Just what you'll see
Out on the trainyard nursing penitentiary?
It's gone, I cry out long.
Play it, brother.
President Obama again in Dreams of my father: "maybe once you stripped away the rationalizations, it always came down to a simple matter of escape."
So yeah Wikipedia is not always the way.
Did you stop it to consider how it will feel,
Cold grindin' grizzly bear jaws hot on your heels?
Do you often stop and whisper in Saturday's shore
"The whole world's a Savior?"
Who could ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever ask for more?
I think this quote from his inaugural address needs no further explanation as to how it helps to answer even explain what Jim was trying to tell us. "Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many.
They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America — they will be met." Kind of chills up a spine, doesn't it?
Do you remember?
Will you stop, will you stop the pain?
Again we turn to our President's Inaugural Address. He answers Jim it not directly then in at least in a hopeful yet oblique manner. "Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end."
And there will never be another one like you.
There will never be another one
Who can do the things you do, oh!
Will you give another chance?
Will you try a little try?
Please stop and you'll remember
We were together, anyway… All right!
"Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency."
How you must of think and wondered,
How I must feel
Out on the meadows
While you're on the field?
I'm alone for you, and I cry.
Again from Dreams of My Father:"Was the collaboration of some slaves any different than the silence of some Iranians who stood by and did nothing as Savak thugs murdered and tortured opponents of the Shah? How could we judge other men until we had stood in their shoes?"
He's sweatin', look at him…
Actually President Obama keeps it pretty cool. It's really his touchstone. The man doesn't let much get to him and believe me that is hard because ignorance and violence go together in this country like the Anglos and the Saxons.
Optical promise…
You think it's easy coming up with this shit? Okay Jim, optical promise. Now can we get back to future President Obama?
(Heh, heh, heh.)
Maybe he meant to say optimal pilsner? That would be more like Jim. That's a Jim, I understand.
You'll be dead and in hell before I'm born…
Yeah I'm going with optimal pilsner.
Sure thing…
Exactly Jim.
Bridesmaid…
Okay, Bridegroom.
The only solution —
Isn't it amazing?
It is Jim for you to have predicted and engaged in one of your imitable Q & A's with our future president is amazing.
Part Two: Historical Turning Points, Barack Obama and "Shaman's Blues"
Friends, with inauguration day not long past, I want to address the serious subject of the Obama Presidency through my preferred prism, the lyrics of the late Jim Morrison. Could he see the future? Was there some cracked wisdom to his chemically aided pronouncements? It is safe to view him as a modern day Socrates imbibing Michelob hemlock? The answer to all of these questions is an urgent yes. As proof, I humbly offer "Shaman's Blues."
The music is urgent from the outset, befitting for a song filled with such portent. The beat is as steady and constant as the persistent march of time. Manzerek's organ alternately wails and hums while Krieger's guitar always threatens to shoot off in some new direction before riffing back to the beat in a satisfying series of ripples. Then Morrison, ever the drunken master, peps up to deliver an almost breathless stream of words which may have told more than even the master had foreseen.
There will never be another one like you.
There will never be another one
Who can do the things you do, oh!
Obama is and will forever be the first African American President in the history of the US. It is important to keep in mind that the political machine he built was a mixture of the old and the new.
Will you give another chance?
Will you try, little try?
Please stop and you'll remember
We were together, anyway… All right!
The Internet which had been to that point a crude tool in the marshaling of a campaign became central to his campaign. What was interesting was the way the Obama team used the Internet to bring together Democrats of every kind and stripe to function as foot soldiers in their local communities. They indeed gave old politics another chance by combining the kind of door to door glad handing with the massive electronic reach of the information super highway.
And if you have a certain evening
You could lend to me,
I'd give it all right back to you.
Know how it has to be with you.
I know your moves and your mind,
And your mind, and your mind,
And your mind, and your mind,
And your mind, and you're mine!
In his 1995 book Dreams of My Father President Obama seems to answer Jim. "With our eyes closed, we uttered the same words, but in our hearts we each prayed to our own masters; we each remained locked in our own memories; we all clung to our own foolish magic." It is as if the "certain evening" is the closing of ones eyes and simply speaking one's mind is all we have to do.
Will you stop to think and wonder
Just what you'll see
Out on the trainyard nursing penitentiary?
It's gone, I cry out long.
Play it, brother.
President Obama again in Dreams of my father: "maybe once you stripped away the rationalizations, it always came down to a simple matter of escape."
So yeah Wikipedia is not always the way.
Did you stop it to consider how it will feel,
Cold grindin' grizzly bear jaws hot on your heels?
Do you often stop and whisper in Saturday's shore
"The whole world's a Savior?"
Who could ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever ask for more?
I think this quote from his inaugural address needs no further explanation as to how it helps to answer even explain what Jim was trying to tell us. "Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many.
They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America — they will be met." Kind of chills up a spine, doesn't it?
Do you remember?
Will you stop, will you stop the pain?
Again we turn to our President's Inaugural Address. He answers Jim it not directly then in at least in a hopeful yet oblique manner. "Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end."
And there will never be another one like you.
There will never be another one
Who can do the things you do, oh!
Will you give another chance?
Will you try a little try?
Please stop and you'll remember
We were together, anyway… All right!
"Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency."
How you must of think and wondered,
How I must feel
Out on the meadows
While you're on the field?
I'm alone for you, and I cry.
Again from Dreams of My Father:"Was the collaboration of some slaves any different than the silence of some Iranians who stood by and did nothing as Savak thugs murdered and tortured opponents of the Shah? How could we judge other men until we had stood in their shoes?"
He's sweatin', look at him…
Actually President Obama keeps it pretty cool. It's really his touchstone. The man doesn't let much get to him and believe me that is hard because ignorance and violence go together in this country like the Anglos and the Saxons.
Optical promise…
You think it's easy coming up with this shit? Okay Jim, optical promise. Now can we get back to future President Obama?
(Heh, heh, heh.)
Maybe he meant to say optimal pilsner? That would be more like Jim. That's a Jim, I understand.
You'll be dead and in hell before I'm born…
Yeah I'm going with optimal pilsner.
Sure thing…
Exactly Jim.
Bridesmaid…
Okay, Bridegroom.
The only solution —
Isn't it amazing?
It is Jim for you to have predicted and engaged in one of your imitable Q & A's with our future president is amazing.
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