Jingle Fever

Rip It Up and Start Again

2008-01-13T10:00:00.000-08:00

I hesitate to call Hold On Now, Youngster... my favorite album of 2008 not only because it's only 13 days into the year, but because I'm still in the phase (that I'm assuming most close observers of popular music and its criticism go through) where I'm wondering why we quantify music based on the year it is released. Not that I'm that torn up about the idea— I voted in Idolator's year-end poll and see me doing so until it ceases existence— but it's higher phrase for me to say that I can't remember the last time I so willfully engrossed myself in an album this quickly.

It's funny to me too because I thought I had moved past the phase of my life where I still fell head over heels for twee-leaning stuff like this. That's underselling both Los Campesinos!— mainly because the guitar tones on this album are murderous and because they don't fuck around with shit like trumpets or toddler keyboards from 1987— and albums by twee bands that I probably still like (Boy Least Likely To, Architecture in Helsinki). For the past few years or so I've viewed twee in my rearview mirror, appreciating those albums more as a gateway away from the indie rock I really lived for in high school and into the further reaches of indie as a proper noun (meaning stuff that Pitchfork will bother to review but doesn't sound like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, i.e. Parts & Labor, Studio, etc.). I guess that's to say I was remembering a band like BLLT more as enablers than artists. I'm not sure if there's really a problem with that (I'm sure there's an assload of "indie" fans who remember the Garden State soundtrack the same way), but either way I was pretty sure I would think new twee would sound nice but ultimately boring.

It would be wrong to say that LC! make twee that isn't boring, because ultimately they're a long way from I'm From Barcelona. But I think what's drawn me so hard to HONY... is how shrewd and aware of a band they are. They recognize how slippery of a slope it is from playing xylophones and singing "I'll be ctrl-alt-deleting your face with no reservation" to being a clown-ass genre-parody like Envelopes, a band that plays more rock-inclined twee like LC! but do it with an a smug sense of slacker self-satisfaction that it's almost sad to listen to (I used to ride for this band a few years ago btw [too lazy to dig up thing I wrote for Stylus about them], but listening to their shit now makes me cringe).

Also, and I guess in the end, they appeal to the too self-aware cynic in me. They hit this on "We Are All Accelerated Readers": "The opposite of true love is as follows:/Reality!" It's not a groundbreaking sentiment but one that hits me hard nonetheless, because it's cynical, but also because it operates in a realm of reality that a lot of utopian twee— and, shit, a lot of lovesick indie— seems to choose to ignore. They close the song with, "Since we all became accelerated readers/ we never leave the house," which not only nails college-break life right to the wall (which I guess might date it for some people, but really kills me right now), but also shows that LC! are the type of cynics that feel detached from, and in a way above, their peers (maybe this is emo, but I read it as mature insulation).

I could go on and note a shit ton of cynical and self-aware lyrics ("And woe is me/And woe is you/And woe is us, together" [from, hello, "...And We Exhale and Roll Our Eyes in Unison"] or "When the smaller picture is the same as the bigger picture/ You know you're fucked") but it shows so viscerally in the way they play and sing: with abandon, like punks. And that's a sly and purposeful self-removal from every scene— twee, American indie, British indie, indie-pop— except indie as a hemisphere-wide umbrella. (They say it themselves: "And it's sad that you think that we're all just scenesters/ And even if we were, it's not the scene you're thinking of.")

To be honest I think this reading (or the band themselves) could be seen as snobby or snotty or elitist, but I see a lot of myself in Los Campesinos!, and if that makes me those things too, I'm okay with that. But I think people are gravitating towards them for those very reasons. It's a quizzical and skeptical eye they cast on the world and their peers, but they also care the most, too.

Addendum to "Jingle-related things to do"

2007-12-15T19:00:00.000-08:00

Mash up David Bowie's "The Secret Life of Arabia" with Stevie Wonder/Gilberto Gil's "The Secret Life of Plants."

I was going to keep this a secret; but, you know.

In Due Time

2007-09-03T10:00:00.000-07:00

I feel foolish when incidental events in my life turn me on to an album I had previously decided I wasn't really feeling (this happened with Battles, as well), but we've been listening to lots of 14th/15th century choral music in this class I'm taking this semester and it's opened up a portal in Person Pitch that I had either not explored or decided was bullshit.

As we've been listening to these pieces (or clips of them), I've become kind of enamored with the idea of these women singing these drawn out notes and vowels that then hang around the ceiling of the cathedral and bounce-off the walls and kind of coalesce into this haze or cloud that hangs over everyone until it slowly dissipates with time, and the idea of these words having almost literal weight seems really powerful to me.

And so, I've been able to connect that idea to some songs on Person Pitch. The way that "Bros" grows organically from within itself is not completely unlike what it sounds like when a chorus draws out a two syllable word over thirty seconds so that every change feels inextricably tied to the action before it. I feel the same way about "Bros," which is kinda crazy since it's 12 minutes long, but it feels totally contained within itself now, whereas I always heard it as a pseudo-hippie beach jam that was background noise no different than the last stoned weekend. The key is in the dissipation, I think. Now, the decresendo during the song's outro seems like the final release of pent-up emotion, where I had always previously heard it as being taken with the wind to neither the delight nor displeasure of anyone.

"I'm Not" owes the biggest debt to choral music, even though it's vocals are highly processed clipped samples. It's masterfully arranged though, so it comes closest to the contained cloud of sound waves, which in turn makes it seem like the most powerful song on the album. The way in which one would have to labor to sing like traditional choral singers did is not unlike the way I imagine Noah Lennox labored to get everything on the song to work and fit together.

Since I'm basically hearing Person Pitch as an adapted work of choral music now means that I find the two most traditional songs here (read: the one's with the most vocals), "Comfy in Nautica" and "Take Pills," to be completely inessential and even distracting if the album is to be evaluated as one long, near continous piece (which it basically is).

The parts that I like still aren't sticking all the time, but I find myself becoming increasingly immersed in the album "Bros" onward, whereas I had always felt I was grasping for meaning, feeling, anything. I don't love it just yet, but I'm certainly getting lost in it. And I'm not asking for much else right now.

Let's Push Things Forward

2007-08-17T18:00:00.003-07:00

Download: Vampire Weekend: Boston

It's nice to see a young indie band that gets it, you know? I'm hardly— hardly— the first person, on the internet or in print, raving about Vampire Weekend. But most of their press focuses on what obviously seperates them from all the other indie antelopes. Stuff like this: "...pulling on the world music bend of Paul Simon's Graceland and late Talking Heads, wrapped in literary barbs and ample alliteration."

And all that's true, and inevitably and invariably part of their charm. But there's much more to this band than what most blogs can fit into a blurb before the mp3 ejac or what most mags can fit before the next picture of Britt Daniel. It's the reason why the picture accompanying this post is not the usual obnoxious photo of a horse or some shit. That's Vampire Weekend drummer Christopher Tomson, wailing on his drums much harder than anyone did on Paul Simon's Graceland.

Vampire Weekend— for anyone uninformed, put-off or disillusioned— is a real-ass band. And I don't mean to use italics to show that I'm breaking a sweat over these guys or anything, I'm just stuck somewhere between distressed and annoyed by the fact that exactly, oh, everyone is failing to mention that we've finally got a (nother) fairly MOR indie-rock/pop band with a spine. All that's to say that, yeah, songs about Cape Cod, reggaeton and quads are "smart." But more so is a pop band that knows to build itself a backbone.

They're long on hooks, yes— but so is "The Wheels on the Bus." The reason Vampire Weekend is much more than a good band with a nice blog song is because they've got a rhythm section that is willing to grit their teeth and politely muck shit up beneath all the bongos and minor key synth plinking (much more Walkmen than Paul Simon, anyway— and that's a good thing). Two dudes willing to play the two most thankless instruments in rock for a band already pigeon-holed as Clean Cut Ivy League White Dudes Who Play Afrobeat or Some Shit. Thing is, the joke isn't on them.

From the Vault: Strokes Fan Club E-Mail, May 16, 2007

2007-08-13T23:00:00.000-07:00

(No, the joke isn't that I'm on the Strokes Fan Club e-mail list.)

*** WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON, YOU SAY?
well i'm glad you asked...
TheStrokes are still enjoying some much needed "off time". i wouldn't expect anything to come out this year, but hey, then again, ya never know... in the meantime, they are staying busy pursuing some other personal interests and are busy working/writing/rehearsing and all those things bands do in between albums... but there are no immediate plans to release an album or tour for the time being.

Read: "The Strokes are still enjoying some much needed "off time" while Albert pursues his interest in becoming a middling modern rock artist on the road to having an album sold exclusively at Starbucks in 10 years (or digitally inserted into your ear, whatever) and while Nick plays rhythm guitar on Queens of the Stone Age and Mooney Suzuki cover band albums and while Julian gets fat and while the bassist slowly dissipates into the sky."

J-Tull.com Tour Dates

2007-08-11T12:00:00.000-07:00

Jethro Tull are going on the March of the Living. Expect a new album by 2008 full of emotional introspection and references to Jewish lore- "Out from Under Wraps."

Luscious

2007-08-10T23:00:00.000-07:00

From Castles to Highways

2007-07-21T08:00:00.000-07:00

NEVER FORGET

Remy Martyr

2007-07-17T10:00:00.000-07:00

(Let's just take a second and admire the above photo.)

Let's make it clear that there is much more at stake here than the baby fat of Remy Ma's bff/bag holder. If the former Ms. Terror Squad goes upstate for more than one year, declare rap as an art form produced by females officially dead, or at least on permanent hiatus. Which isn't to say that Remy is the 3000 of this female rap shit, but that she is the only female rapper left who's actively trying push things forward, or if we're getting gully, the last female rapper left who's actively trying to get that guap; the last female rapper who's actively respecting her hustle.

Lost in the whole hoopla over her Shesus Khryst mixtape was that REMY MA(RTIN) WAS ACTUALLY PUTTING OUT A MIXTAPE. In case you missed it, Foxy is more concerned with manicures, Trina with Wayne, Shawnna with getting some head and Kim with God knows who what. Whether or not Remy can outrap those aforementioned is irrelevant (she can, obvs), but right now she outcares them to the BK and back. And with all due respect to Makeda Barnes-Joesph, that's the worst part of this shit.

Jump into My Mouth and Breathe

2007-07-17T08:00:00.000-07:00

No rap since this has made me literally buzz half as much.

Young Dro->Clipse->Ja grand finale= game's still over.

Follow the Lead-or

2007-07-14T21:00:00.000-07:00

Albums of the half-year of my life where growing up finally got really fucking scary.

1. LCD Soundsystem Sound of Silver
It would be easiest for me to say that SoS is my favorite album of the year because it has the most hooks and the funniest/best/heart-wrenchingest lyrics (which is all true), but I guess I finally realized that I love this so much because it runs through roughly the same gamut of scattershot emotions that this last semester and summer have been for me. There's basically a line or two in every song that I could have gotten tattooed on me at some point this year in the right situation— "When once you had believed it/ Now you see its sucking you in" from "Get Innocuous!" the "time to get away" refrain in "Time to Get Away" and obviously the list goes on. It makes sense I guess that James Murphy sequenced a perfect album, where the second half is the meta-obvious comedown from the first half's ultra-Zeitgeist, and though it's been maligned as fuck, "New York I Love You" sounds to me like that point of composure/realization/epiphany after you get really worked up about something. Also didn't hurt that "All My Friends" came out at a time when all I wanted to do was see my friends.

2. Battles Mirrored
This made no sense to me until I saw Battles live and stared at them and watched them give each other non-verbal cues before they turned a song on its head and watched their guitarist/keyboardist (not the one with the afro) buckle his knees in relief when everything went down as planned even though they had probably done the same break like 150 times before that and watched them all go out into their own worlds for like four minutes only to return to the same headspace at the same exact time right on a dime. Pre-show it sounded like Mirrored had all of its humanity purposefully removed and post-show nothing feels more cohesive and delicate to me, which is about as much a reversal as I could imagine happening.

3. Justice †
This is easily the surprise of the year for me both because I like it so much more than I thought I would and because I don't get why Justice are so love/hate. I'm pretty ignorant about the canon of dance/house or whatever, but this sounds pretty forward-thinking and accessible and lovable and technically sound to me. Their constant splicing and dicing of their music sounds to me along the same lines of what Girl Talk does, which is why I think these songs sound so fresh, but I guess is also why people dislike them so.

4. Simian Mobile Disco Attack Decay Sustain Release
I finally realized that this is basically all I ever wanted in "dance" music after unsuccessful forays with more acclaimed stuff along the lines of the Knife and Dan Deacon, etc. SMD's stuff is obviously much more poppy and "accessible" which is obviously why I like it, but this also grabbed me because its the best most digestible album I've heard in a year where I've been trying to push my music interests outward.

5. Animal Collective Strawberry Jam
I'm for one happy these guys finally turned into the best pop band in the world. SJ is what I've always wanted avant-pop to sound like: pushed but not over the ledge, chaotic but controlled, wanky but realized, Brian Wilson but not blanketed nor flaunty.

6. Lil Wayne Da Drought 3
Yeah this is a mess (and the perfect time for the bandwagon to empty), but I love hearing the unfocused weed-fried side of Wayne's brain. Tha Carter II is really fucking focused and realized, and I don't really mind having to filter through massive slogs like this because it's the reason I feel closer to Wayne than any other musician in the world right now. DD3 is kinda like how we know all of our friends, how we know all the stuff they love to talk about even though it may annoy us and how we know all of their faults but don't care because it only magnifies everything that's great about them. Plus, he's a really great rapper.

7. Of Montreal Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?
This is what Super Mario would sound like if it was fully-formed music and not 8-bit synth stuff. It sounds like bouncing off clouds and going down tunnels and bopping things to kill them and eating mushrooms (to grow) and running around while being invincible, which isn't to demean the lyrics and actually shitty backstory behind this, but this album above all sounds really fucking hopeful and optimistic to me, which makes me think of being a kid, which makes me think of Super Mario, so yeah.

8. Lucky Soul The Great Unwanted
I had convinced myself that I was sick of music like this, but this is so much better than the Pipettes. Really beefy as this type of pop goes, but also slinky and flirty and grounded. I'm not sure who the girl singer of this group is, but she's up there with Karen O. and Jemina from BYOP in terms of sounding like the best girls to me: at times riot grrl but also at times needy but always never scared.

9. Bloc Party A Weekend in the City
I dont mind that Kele is making sweeping world observations and sounding really clunky doing so, because I feel clunky when I try and make sweeping statements about the world or politics or whatever. This album is Bloc Party finally coming into their own, moving away from the twitchiness and paranoia of Silent Alarm and into the grandiosity and maturity they hinted at on "Pioneers" or "Like Eating Glass." The songs are pretty fantastic, but I'm happy that these guys realized how, for better or worse, they could become a Band.

10. The Field From Here We Go Sublime
The warmest blanket.

11. Rihanna: Good Girl Gone Bad, 12. Arctic Monkeys: Favourite Worst Nightmare, 13. Fall Out Boy: Infinity on High, 14. Dizzee Rascal: Maths and English, 15. T-Pain: Epiphany

Actual music criticism coming soon, but for now...

2007-07-05T01:56:00.000-07:00

Dance tonight, and the next night, and the next night, and the next night, and the next night, and the next night, and the next night, and the next ni

2007-07-02T12:00:00.000-07:00

British tabloid reporter Missy Frock guests on this week's Jingle!Everywhere I've seen Paul McCartney, be it a television interview, commercial, or print advertisement, he has pulled a mandolin from his ex-wife's spare leg and played "Dance Tonight." Move over Gnarls Barkley, this song isn't just ubiquitous but also performable.
Honestly though it's possible Paul forgot all of his other songs. "Memory Almost Full," indeed.

It's Been a Minute For the Both of Us

2007-06-03T00:00:00.000-07:00

My flow is past murder, it's autopsy
What are you, senseless? This is forensics,
I don't spit, I throw up my intestines

Stop Snitchin'

2007-05-17T09:00:00.000-07:00

Download: T.I.: "Big Shit Poppin'"
Calling this no "What You Know" is fucking retarded. Lemme guess, it's also no Illmatic right? Anyone who purports to have liked King cannot dislike this song. Don't love it? Fine. But it's one of the ten best hip-hop songs released this year easy. T.I. is the contemporary King of Swagger. This song is swagger. It sounds effortless because it wants to sound effortless. People are missing this. "What You Know" wanted to sound like you were about to get your ass beat. "Big Shit Poppin'" sounds like you already did. Because you already have. Kings sit on thrones and smile and bask and enjoy being kings. This is Tip enjoying being a king. Enjoy it also.

An Epimetheus Moment

2007-05-16T10:00:00.000-07:00

The Be Your Own Pet album is fantastic. I don't find Jemina Pearl to be as important to this record as the majority population I think, but pontificating about her is obviously nearly impossible considering how overtly in your face and thrust to the forefront she is. I think for both detractors and boosters her lyrics were a big deal in terms how the album was recieved, like people who really liked this were celebrating the whole "I'm here to steal your virginity!!!!!!!!!!!" thing while people who didn't just brushed the lyrics off as immature and nonsensical, etc. Thing is, I would hardly say that the lyrics are necessary to even remotely grasp what BYOP, or even Pearl, wants you to grasp, things like brattiness, punkiness, snotiness, spontaneity, etc., which are all things that I think are better conveyed with the screaming and frothing and thrashing.

And I don't want to downgrade what Pearl means to this band, she's clearly the heart, soul, vital organs and circulatory system here— or at least embodies what BYOP would want those to be— but I can't shake the fact that I still find the buzzsaw guitar work here more important to both the BYOP aesthetic and the quality of the album. Which again isn't to say that Pearl doesn't seperate BYOP from probably nine-hundred other young punk bands, but the constant barrage of guitar hooks on this album is truly staggering. And, while Pearl is the number one reason to see these guys llive, it's her bandmates that truly make the album.

You Ain't Even En Me Classa

2007-05-14T00:00:00.000-07:00

If more evidence beyond "Kick, Push" and "Daydream" through "Hurt Me Soul" on F&L was needed to prove that Lupe Fiasco can make five-star rap songs when he isn't fucking around with electric guitars, samples of screaming eagles and no-name r&b singers than this (courtesy Nah Right) is the prosecution resting.

I Think They Used to Be Called Ratatat

2007-05-10T21:43:00.000-07:00

"Hey, were you at battle of the bands tonight?"
"Yeah."
"Who was the best band there?"
"Brunette."
"Oh, I've never heard of them."
"Yeah, they were pretty good. They need a vocalist though."
"What do you mean they need a vocalist?"
"They don't have a vocalist."
"Like there just isn't one?"
"No, there's no vocalist."
"Wow... I'm really having trouble wrapping my head around this."
"Yeah..."
"No vocalist, huh...?"
"..."

Next Post is a Guest Blog From Cam'ron re: Getting Kicked Out of Dipset

2007-05-05T22:00:00.000-07:00

But for now, watch me get my Fluxblog on!

Bonde Do Role: "Geremia"
Things about this song: There are fun martial drums. There is a funner kazoo. There is a fun rapping verse that may or may not be from Luigi from the video games. But, the most fun thing about this song is the girl who raps the first and third verse. Her voice is of someone who spent a whole day screaming her lungs out at a soccer game. It's weary, worn and broken. But it's also fantastic, and is absolutely perfect for a song that sounds like a six-hour party condensed into less than three minutes. This would be the first Pipettes single after they emerged from three years in the Amazon.

Feist: "Limit To Your Love"
Truth about The Reminder: It's inconsistent candlelight dinner music. "The hipster answer to Norah Jones" means that it still sounds like Norah Jones, and the album, at its worst, still sounds like Norah Jones. WIth that being said, it's third fourth is as knockout at this music gets. "Limit To Your Love" is when one of Feist's piano ballads finally recedes from outside the shadow of her brilliant pop ("1 2 3 4", "Past In Present") because she steps out of her quirkiness and sings like someone who is demanding your attention. So when she launches into the line "It should be written on your face/ I'm piecing it together/ There's something out of place" she draws out the "place" like she's screaming from the top of a mountain, and not only should it whip this guy to attention like a smack across the face, but it'll uncompromisingly jar you out of the trance you might've unwittingly fallen under during the seven songs prior.

The Besnard Lakes: "And You Lied To Me"
I'm going to make no bones about what is truly great about this song. After nearly five-minutes of find yourself in the stars prog meandering, the guitarists in this band rip into a searing two-minute long back-and-forth solo that sounds like getting slowly sliced in half by a white-hot saw.

Hunting for Witches

2007-05-02T19:00:00.000-07:00

Not sure if this is tounge-in-cheek, but "Doe Boys and Girls in America" and "My Moon, My Shawty"???????????????? This is creativity on another level. This blog is now a mash-up blog. Here are the first mash-ups.

ENJOY!!!!! JAMS FOR DAYS!!!!

Brightblack Morning Light vs. Mika "Everybody Gaylight"
Fall Out Boy vs. Feist "Thnks Fr The Reminder" (FULL ALBUM MASH-UP HOLY SHIT)
The Knife vs. Avril Lavigne "We Share Our Mother's Girlfriend"
Lil Wayne vs. The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus "I Can't Feel My Face Down"
DJ UNK vs. Feist "1 2 Step 3 4"
Robin Thicke vs. Panda Bear "Comfy In U"
Fall Out Boy vs. Feist "This Ain't a Scene, It's a Sea Lion Woman"

It Must Be Summer Love

2007-04-29T22:00:00.000-07:00

LOOK WHAT I FOUND!

THE OFFICIAL SNACK OF HIP-HOP!

"DARK SIDE OF THE MOON" OF STARBUCKS ROCK

2007-04-24T12:00:00.000-07:00

Leslie Feist bridges the geographical gap between France and French Canada and your face as seamlessly as she consumes the interval between talented chanteuse and stone cold fox (eat that, Mama Cass!). Her voice is terrific, and while it's easy to be tempted to sign off her niche as one tackled ad nauseam, I refuse to capitulate. Instead, her siren song is one of another world, a refreshing and heartening waft that eludes even Starbucks, unless they're playing her I guess. Feist brings delightful vitality even to those songs she didn't scribe. There's a great adventurousness and escapism to her style, from her uplifting voice to the dazzling keys and heavy, ubiquitous bass that color her cheery sepia lyrics. Her music videos mirror that fantasy and cheekiness beautifully- lots of hedonist smiley-clappy group dancing a la Blues Brothers and vapid situations-turned-dance spectaculars.

So I'm on a Feist kick. I got Let it Die a month ago and I've been all over it since. I'm trying to compensate for the three years I didn't spend with LID before I jump into The Reminder, but I wouldn't have it any other way. The fact that I've only recently happened upon Feist makes every song all the more sweet- like finding out you're not actually allergic to something delicious after two decades of silly apprehension. Feist registers more with personal distinction than soft jazz ingenuity- she's talented, pretty, and charming behind a microphone and her large, obscuring electric guitar.

Feist- Mushaboom
Feist- Secret Heart
Feist- 1234
Feist- My Moon My Man

Please, Take a Ride With Me

2007-04-15T22:00:00.000-07:00

My favorite blog on the internet is called Free Darko. It's dudes who blog about the NBA. They have an abstract, never-defined, much bantered about "defintion" of what Free Darko stands for and the players that represent it. Here's a list from a while back. Many people argued about it.

Basically, I've compiled a list of artists who most define what I stand for in this here pop music world. I'm not waxing romantic or philosophic as much as trying to let it be known who in music I ride for. These aren't my favorite artists. Many of my favorite bands in the world (Bloc Party, the Strokes, Wolf Parade) do not appear on this list. I don't necessarily like much or any of the music of some people who appear on this list. I think 98% of Juelz Santana's recorded music is complete shit, but the man walks around in public with a tissue sticking out of his nose to stop sinus problems and keeps stacks of money in the bandana around his head. I ride for this man.

What my criteria here is unexplainable really. The abstract term gully might be the closest actual word that would encompass where I'm coming from. But with that being said, I would classify Paula Dean as gully, so take my definition of gulliness with a grain of salt. So here, then, is my list of the artists/bands (currently alive) that for some reason(s) have a permanent and nearly-forever home in my heart.

(In order of JFness.)

(Meandering explanations on the inclusion of artists' on this ever-expanding list possibly available upon request.)

1. Lil Wayne
2. Akon
3. Da Band (R.I.P.)
4. Meg White
5. Murphy Lee
6. Juelz Santana
7. The Rapture
8. Cam'ron
9. Beyonce
10. Kanye West
11. Remy Ma
12. Yung Joc
13. Andrew Bird
14. Jim Jones
15. The Clipse
16. Crime Mob

...If You Apply Some Pressure

2007-04-13T09:00:00.000-07:00

Download: LCD Soundsystem: "North American Scum" (LP Version)
LCD Soundsystem: "North American Scum" (Live on Letterman)

Please hold back your vomit, but Sound of Silver is also my favorite album of this short year. I find "North American Scum", though, to be quite drab and punishingly anticlimactic. It's maybe the 7th or 8th best song on the album, buoyed only by what is some pretty great writing and that awesome "TAKE MEEEEE BACK TO THE STAAAAAAATES MAAAAAAAN!" part.

This live version here is worlds better. James Murphy and his band are forced to condense the song into about three-and-a-half minutes (basically half the runtime of the original), and the forced speed by default forces the song to muster the punch it never really had . And I know this laid-back impassiveness and detachment is part of Murphy's steez, but this sped-up version sounds like a complete call-to-arms, and it works better on about seven different levels.

Then there's the instrumentation: percussion by a few dudes that sounds like about 700 guys playing exclusively coconut and sea shells, blaring blaring blaring horns from the Letterman house band and itchy, scratchy guitars. And then there's the vocals: a pretty cute Asian girl provides the more assertive female backing vocals, but it's Murphy— with about 9 improved parts to overshadow him— who's the clincher. A completely virtuosic performance; a pitch-perfect exercise in taut restraint leading to a transcendent final minute.

This Is Why I'm (Insert Pun Here)

2007-04-06T19:00:00.000-07:00

Mims' new album is called Music is My Savior (Sidebar: I thought Pitbull would have copyrighted turning proper nouns into bad acronymic rap album titles by now). I haven't heard it and I don't plan on hearing it. What's got me all twisted up is just the name itself. Not the who, what, where or when (although those also); I'm more concerned with the why.

"This Is Why I'm Hot" is pretty standard fare in terms of what we've been getting from debut rap singles recently. I'm basically referring to "It's Goin' Down" and "Shoulder Lean" here, and both are enduringly great songs that will be inextricably tied to each other, in my mind at least. More than anything about those songs, I was always curious about the empty threats and empty boasting (I guess "braggadocio" if you will), not because I was offended personally about their possible (and probable) inauthenticity, but because I was intrigued as to why Joc/Dro thought they could get away with this audacious type of braggadocio without someone calling bullshit.

Both Joc/Dro gave off this air that they had already beaten the game at it's own game, that they were just using rap or at the very least passing through it for the quick(er) bucks. This doesn't really surprise me— Clipse and Jeezy make no qualms about this rich before rap type of thing— and it's obviously the culture rap lives in now, so I assumed Mims in the same light as those guys in terms of what I thought he was trying to portray himself as.

Thing with calling his album Music is My Savior is that it makes him infintely more human than those guys, in the sense that if I also happened to stumble upon the number one single in country, music would indeed also be my savior. I don't care about my rappers being relatable, human, real or any of that crap, but I was totally thrown for a loop by Mims flipping the script and painting himself as a slave to the music when "This Is Why I'm Hot" would seem to try and do otherwise.

I never thought I'd say that I completely have no handle on who Mims is as a person, or who he's trying to portray himself as in this rap game, but I don't. This whole "savior" deal has made him in my eyes one of the most compelling personalities of this short year, joining the likes of Gilbert Arenas (R.I.P.) and (pause) Donald Trump. (In the name of all that is holy).

Flava In Ya Ear 01: Only Because My Brain is Fried

2007-04-05T13:00:00.000-07:00

More on these later... you've been warned...

(A playlist of sorts... in no particular order, for no particular audience.)

Rich Boy ft. Polow da Don: "Throw Some D's" (Effortless.)
T-Pain ft. Yung Joc: "Buy You a Drink" (Can T-Pain get some love, internet?)
The Field: "Everyday" (Gave me that feeling in my stomach like going down a roller coaster.)
Young Jeezy ft. R. Kelly: "Go Getta" (Gorilla stomps.)
Young Dro: "Shoulder Lean" (That dude.)
Sean Paul & Rihanna: "Break It Off" (Fuck a Beoncye/Shakira collaboration.)
Gui Boratto: "Beautiful Life" (Life affirming. Also: this intro sounds like the intro to "Rebellion (Lies)")
R. Kelly ft. T.I. and T-Pain: "I'm a Flirt" (Didn't call it a comeback.)
Bloc Party: "The Marshalls Are Dead" (Pre-Silent Alarm fireball.)

The Laws Have Changed

2007-04-01T21:00:00.000-07:00

You know you're in too deep when you belly laugh after pilot Matt introduces flight attendant Kim.

999 Times That Same Note

2007-03-22T19:00:00.000-07:00

Download: LCD Soundsystem: All My Friends

I think the greatest testament to this song is that nothing I've read about it has been able to approximate what it feels like to listen to this song or what you feel like after you listen to this song. Like, every Panda Bear review I've read has been able to rather accurately describe what it's like to listen to the record in the way that internet rock crits do, i.e. "like filtering sun through your eyelids" or "like being suspended in water" or "groggy on a beach," etc. and all of those sound like reasonable approximations of what that album sounds like in terms of a nice Metacritic blurb.

What's more, a lot of people aren't even attempting to tackle this song in Sound of Silver reviews, I'm guessing because the idea of writing about this song is so absurd (the best piece on the track I've read is this), not in the "it's so good that words won't do it justice" kind of way (but almost), but because it's impossible to try and describe this song without making it sound like the worst thing ever.

At it's core it's just that piano loop and a simple drum beat maybe some guitars, synths or whatever, but "this song is eight minutes of two piano notes" isn't really an appetizing description. The lyrics are great but they aren't as important to the song as the delivery of them, and the best word to describe that is maybe "yearning" or "aching" or something better than those but nothing really quite accurate.

Moral: Leave it to James Murphy to turn his absolute worst idea into his absolute best song.

Where My Macaroni?

2007-03-19T13:00:00.000-07:00

Weezy F. was starting to scare me; his best rapper alive boasts were becoming increasingly harder to defend when it was all but pudding this summer. It seems like he's been getting bored with himself, so like he decided to get on forgotten 106 & Park stars' singles (hello Mya) or that he wanted to start rapping like Elephant Man. Not to mention, he was striking out like P. Diddy (get familiar) on said major singles ("Give good brain like you graduated from a good school"= low point of my '06) insomuch that it I was for a second scared that he was not just Fat Joe's bff, but that he was actually turning into him.

And then this arrived rather inconspicuously on the once dominant XXL Bangers section, with Weeze rapping over T.I.'s rather meh "Top Back." And naturally, dude is in top form, the form that made rather prominent bloggers bonkers over an internet only mixtape on which said dude had like 8 songs. Here he is again sounding like he hasn't eaten in nine days, like he is the hungriest of the hungry, like he would bite your face if you stepped to close, pushing and pulling and stretching his voice and vowels like someone who aimlessly fiddles with gum. He patently slams the breaks on his flow mid-verse not as a gimmick, but because he literally can't control his own self, because he has yet to calculate his actions, because he is the most reckless of all rappers. And he's even sounding increasingly more insane by the leak, so here he is moving through his various personalities (Jovial Wayne, Agressive Wayne, Snarling Wayne, Manical Wayne) with a shout out to the long lost Fresh Fresh F-ere Fresh, ramblings about T.I. (...?) and a hyena laugh in a matter of like two and a half minutes.

All of that is fine and dandy (it is), but his punchlines are my heroin and I've been shaking and sweating for a few months. So when he dropped the equivalent of an ounce of smack, "A pint of DJ Screw and that Hawaiian/ I am... leaning like a three-legged lion," I couldn't help but grin the toothiest of grins to no one in particular, in my mind saying to the walls of my dorm room, "Don't fear, peasants, for the king has returned."

JF Does SXSW

2007-03-17T13:00:00.001-07:00

(from a dorm room in Missouri)

What I learned about the internet's favorite bands:

Somebody needs to hook this guy up with some of that famed barbecue.

(Deerhunter, via Pitchfork)

I'm apparently in this band.

(Menomena, via Pitchfork)

Yes, these girls are very cute, but they still need to work on that choreography.

(the Pipettes, via The Fader)

This man is terrifying.

(Tim Harrington, Les Savy Fav, via Pitchfork)

This woman cut her show off, and it looked boring as all fuck.

(Marissa Nadler (?), via, you guessed it, Pitchfork)

This woman was right, she doesn't need rehab, but may I suggest plastic surgery?

(Amy Winehouse, via Stereogum)

Take That and Rewind It Back

2007-03-17T13:00:00.000-07:00

Not sure if it's due to a consistently disappointing 2007 (with the exception of this and uh, this...), but I've been completely mesmerized and entranced recently by albums I previously had absolutely no feelings for. They are:

Spoon: Gimme Fiction
Up until about a week ago, if this band unexpectedly broke up, I would've slept and probably rolled my eyes through all the eulogies, even the drippingly morose Status Ain't Hood best band in music/ I loved this band in high school obit. I mean, who really needs power pop in their life? The answer, apparently, is me. The thing about this that really grabbed me— besides the utter hookiness— is how well produced and nuanced it is. It toes that incredibly fine line of being dense without overly stuffy, and for a power pop record it's really unpredictable, like everytime there should be some cheesy guitar solo they just drop in some distorted squall ("The Beast and Dragon, Adored") or pseduo-ambient samples ("Sister Jack"). If I had ever given this the time of day two years ago, I think I'd care immensely about this band, even though they strike me as stunningly cold.

Dizzee Rascal: Boy In Da Corner
Whenever I can't sleep I usually end up re-reading end of year wrap ups and I think "I Luv U" was in the Top 10 in Stylus' list of Top 50 Singles of 2000-2004 and I was trying to think back to like the 2 times I listened to this album to remember what "I Luv U" sounded like, and I had absolutely no recollection. So I listened to the song and I didn't fall completely in love with it, but it was alluring enough that I was compelled to let the album play through. Where it sounded jagged and blunted to me the first few times, the mix of Dizzee's no-flow and the constant pulsating stabs of whatever Playstation/grime this shit is called kind of has me in awe. It always sounded unapologetically dirty and "grimey," but I never realized how many interesting sounds there were on this album, the least of which is Dizzee's voice. I'm sure this made for a lot of sickening M.I.A.-esque romanticizing of a foreign kid where people used Dizzee's real name in write-ups and whatever so I'm happy I wasn't aware of the internet in 2003 when this came out, and so I'm happy that I stumbled upon it instead of being beaten over the head with it.

The Dismemberment Plan: The Dismemberment Plan is Terrified
Instead of just not caring about this, I was really unaware of its existence up until a few months ago when I started reading more about the D-Plan. I like Emergency & I a lot, but I was never compelled to get a hold of Terrified, but I became friends with this kid a bit older than me that's really into D-Plan, so I got it from him and it's raw and awesome and hilarious and magical and all that teary-eyed adjective shit. I wish I was like 6 years older so I could've been an unrelenting obsessive disciple of this band.

NSFW: LET IT BE... NAKED!

2007-02-26T13:00:00.000-08:00

There's been a lot of weird hype over the past few weeks. Fair enough that weird, erratic publicity is the most exciting publicity, but after listening to what amounts to straight ELO for the past month it would seem that other bands are trying to get my attention. Who knows if this is something that perpetuates itself when everyone is already paying attention anyway, but this this and this could easily be people playing a desperate media eager to stroke pop culture's ego, as this weekend's SNL aptly pointed out but excessively joked on CNN's Anna Nicole Smith infatuation. I think I'm okay with bands being bands. My math teacher got angry at my class for "giving that skank [Britney Spears] all of her millions" but he's probably just angry that she had perfectly good hair and didn't appreciate it. Kevin Barnes may be the impetus for world peace, Arcade Fire can be about great rock music and Britney Spears has every right to stop making millions of dollars and being pretty so that she can drug, flash, rehab and look like fantastic max. I'm only going to listen to Xanadu a few more times.

Then Let the Motherfucker Burn

2007-02-24T17:00:00.000-08:00

Just a prediction: If and when Arcade Fire plays "Intervention" tonight on SNL, it'll be one of those moments. I have this sequence already playing out in my head: time stops on the heels of Win's "Lift me up and take me out of HERE," the band finishes the song in some whirling blaze of glory, they walk off the stage like "what you know about that?" then a commercial and then a Kenan Thompson skit where people start laughing immediately but not for the reasons Kenan Thompson thinks.

Mr. Me Too

2007-02-22T13:00:00.000-08:00

Menomena on a Blog

Menomena's new album is not at all good— though nearly anyone with a heartbeat and a keyboard would have you believe otherwise— but it's not as bad as it is painfully mediocre. Though they've been around for a few years or so, they're pretty much a completely synthetic indie band: ironic promo shots, ironic song titles, music with weird time changes, the whole nine. I'm not sure why people haven't brought up that Friend and Foe was done fifteen times better about a year ago when Man Man released Six Demon Bag or when the Fiery Furnaces released every album they've ever made. If those two bands ever got together they'd have made Friend and Foe in their sleep on a bad day. I mean everytime I listen to this stuff it sounds more and more to me like a joke played on the internet, like, let's take elements from every popular indie band, put them together, and crash Stereogum's server— and it worked. It's almost like playing pick the sample with Night Ripper: tortured Honus Honus wails here, Love is All sax pumps there, airy Grizzly Bear melodies everywhere. Shame is, they can write reasonably well ("The Pelican"), but they're so tied up in art for art's sake that it becomes tiresome to pick out the good parts and lines and metaphors, etc. When these guys play the Bowery, will New York City explode?

There's a new Chromeo track at Discobelle, and it's predictably very good. They're all on Junior Senior's steez again— though I guess I'm not sure who came first— but there's this great moment everytime post-chorus where these drums that sound taken directly from "In the Air Tonight" scatter around the back of your head and it sounds like there's literally people in the back of your head beating drums around. For how overtly disco this is, it's pretty great headphones music.
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