There's something certifiably wrong with The Dears' recording output.
Their music sounds so much better when played live its as if the two formats contain completely separate bands. Songs which absolutely floor one with magnificience in life sound on compact disc or empeethree as pleasant as an open mouth kiss from an extraordinarily attractive member of the opposite sex, only they've got horrible dragon mouth rot. You know you should be enjoying it, on some level, and yet your senses are telling you to just fucking stop because that is gross.
On record, their guitars sound limp, their drums irritate, and Murray Lighburn's unspeakably golden vocal chords leave, to pound this metaphor into the ground, a bad taste in my mouth.
But Jesus tap dancing Moses, you wouldn't think so from their live work.
I can't understand where the disconnect is. The Dears' sound isn't too far afield of any number of bands who succeed on record. Okkervil River, TV on the Radio, My Morning Jacket, Murder By Death (of whom I was distinctly reminded of at the show), Cursive, Broken Social Scene, all of them pack similar ambitions to Lightburn and Co.'s into a solid format and sound great. No Cities Left and Gang of Losers are good albums; unlike these others, they're not great. Why does this happen?
I can't make heads or tales of it and I'm not going to try. Needless to say the show last night floored me, and was much more than good enough to make me forget the death's doorstep feeling of being awake for thirty four hours with a bad case of the flu. Every note was glorious, the band was class right down to their fingernails, and Murray was one of the most genuinely gracious and obviously serious-about-his-art frontmen ever. The set was a perfect mash of No Cities Left and Gang Of Losers material. I was infinitely more familiar with the former, but I enjoyed both despite being in that peculiar show-state of really liking a band and yet not being able to affect the fluidity of motion/appreciation that other patrons do.
I'm like, I love this band! But no, I don't know this song! Please don't judge me harshly!
I'm so enamoured of Opera that if I don't have at least four tabs open
I feel like a poser.
Thursday, November 16, 2006
Monday, November 13, 2006
I'd rather be watching Firefly
I'm always curious about which way music's going to progress to next.
Shh, I'm trying hard to avoid pretension here.
Back in the tenth grade, when punk was beginning its super saturation of everything everywhere and we'd yet to see the machinations of dance-punk sweep over, again, everything, I was telling my friends that synthesizers were going to dominate music, popular or no, before long. Sure, affixing "core" to the end of everything was awesome, and it was great how every flippant chearleader and pot-smoking jock in my high school insisted that they loved punk and emo (Dashboard Confessional/My Chem/FOB and Bright Eyes singles respectively) to death, but it wasn't going to last. A few years down the road, I asserted, punk's going to be a joke and all the bands we listened to wouldn't have made the least bit of impact on music's real history.
Of course, I still wore my Sparta shirt and listened to Taking Back Sunday every single day. The point is I at least knew better. I put my TheSTART on and committed to memory the synthesized noodlings of The Cinema Eye and Thunderbirds Are Now! and the Stiletto Formal and I believed.
And now what've we got? Samples and synthesizers are standard issue building blocks of music, attached to every genre under the sun. Artists featuring neither aren't taken seriously unless they're doing the country or folk thing, and in that case a band's expected to at least feature myriad traditional and orcehstral instruments to even in out. I'm seeing the term "guitar band" used more and more as a pejorative. "Dance punk" seems to function like ipecac on anyone with ears, punk's going to be recovering from an overexposure hangover for the next several decades, and even mentioning emo is liable to get you shot dead.
I was right, motherfuckers.
I like it, really. The somewhat unpalatable glitch-folk of Grandaddy and A Sun Came/Enjoy Your Rabbit era Sufjan have given way to the absolutely gorgeous likes of Akron/Family, Chad Vangaalen, Grizzly Bear, and Califone. Synth and chamber-pop laden rock, born, I think, principally out of Canadian acts like the Unicorns and Broken Social Scene have flourished through too many artists to name. Electronica, more than any other, has absolutely exploded in popularity and sheer creativity. This has been a renassaince deliciously devoid of posturing and icon-dependence, and possesses a fantastically down to earth sensibility and warmth that I hope has got years left in it.
But my curiosity's piqued again. Where's music headed to now? Everyone I've talked to seems to have been astonished and pleased by the country and folk revivals of the past few years, but I don't think these fixations have much further to go. I don't see a reversion to guitar rock or punk as feasibly possible for at least another generation, so what else is there?
Metal's started to enjoy some more widespread and creative exposure, with bands like Sunn 0))), Agalloch, and Boris incorporating radically new approaches to a stereotypically burnt out genre, along with being increasingly well received amongst different audiences. But metal is extraordinarly tough to predict, and any branch of extreme music is going to have to overcome an absolutely staggering stigma amonst non-believers to go critical in the way punk and electronica have in the new millenium.
Is it going to be world music? I genuinely can't think of where else things could head. It plays directly into the current prediliction for folk and country, doesn't it?
I've got hints of this direction through Man Man and Gogol Bordello, but mostly I've been thinking this because I love Beirut's debut album, Gulag Orkestar, way too damn much.
Beirut has a population of one, officially. Zach Condon plays, and I quote: "Horns, violins, celli, ukuleles, mandolins, glockenspiels, drums, tambourines, congas, organs, pianos, clarinets and accordions (no guitars)." Holy shit, celli? I don't think that's a word. What pushes the arrangement into indie-kid wet dream territory is the contribution of two bonafide Neutral Milk Hoteliers in the mix. Jeremy Barnes and Heather Tros, presently of A Hawk And A Hacksaw, lend percussion and violin with the same poignancy and understated grace they brought to Mister Mangum's seminal masterpieces, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.
It sounds like a mess on paper, and the unorthodox instrumentation can indeed sound a bit sloppy, but this is by and large a terrificly focussed, richly colourful swath of music. Sparklingly exotic balkan melodies are hijacked into beautiful pop songs of the Western persuasion. The tone is overwhelmingly depressed, but sad music has never, ever felt so organic and toe-tappingly alive. It's far, far removed from dance music, but I find it impossible to sit still through the album's indescribably lovely movements.
I tend to sway.
Zach's robust yet ineffably pubescent warble sets down an entirely new path of melancholia, and his miniature orchestra of vibrantly mournful brass and woodwind - and whatever category the accordian falls under - blends unbelievably well. There are lyrics here, but the most brilliantly poetic verses on the album feature Zach giving himself over entirely to worldless wailing, as in the excellent closer After the Curtain and album's heart Mount Wroclai (Idle Days).
Jeremy Barnes's simplistic but rich drumming, favouring a steady bass thump covered in various exulting cymbals, does a superb job of grounding the precocious Condon and his symphony. It's easy to recall NMH throughout, especially flavours of Holland, 1945, The Fool, and Ghost. Barnes is a truly excellent percussionist, and his work here showcases the drums as a viably beautiful sound, not simply a timepiece.
The album is remarkably consistent, and I'm sure the greatest criticism which will be levelled against is its tendency toward sameness. I can forgive it for that, personally. In fact, the greatest departure from Gulag Orkestar's magnificient sound, the near-electronica blips of Scenic World, turn out to be the album's weakest moment. The fantastically realized old-country sound that pervades most all the rest of the album is too good to let go of.
I'm tired and Douglas Coupland isn't helping one bit.
Shh, I'm trying hard to avoid pretension here.
Back in the tenth grade, when punk was beginning its super saturation of everything everywhere and we'd yet to see the machinations of dance-punk sweep over, again, everything, I was telling my friends that synthesizers were going to dominate music, popular or no, before long. Sure, affixing "core" to the end of everything was awesome, and it was great how every flippant chearleader and pot-smoking jock in my high school insisted that they loved punk and emo (Dashboard Confessional/My Chem/FOB and Bright Eyes singles respectively) to death, but it wasn't going to last. A few years down the road, I asserted, punk's going to be a joke and all the bands we listened to wouldn't have made the least bit of impact on music's real history.
Of course, I still wore my Sparta shirt and listened to Taking Back Sunday every single day. The point is I at least knew better. I put my TheSTART on and committed to memory the synthesized noodlings of The Cinema Eye and Thunderbirds Are Now! and the Stiletto Formal and I believed.
And now what've we got? Samples and synthesizers are standard issue building blocks of music, attached to every genre under the sun. Artists featuring neither aren't taken seriously unless they're doing the country or folk thing, and in that case a band's expected to at least feature myriad traditional and orcehstral instruments to even in out. I'm seeing the term "guitar band" used more and more as a pejorative. "Dance punk" seems to function like ipecac on anyone with ears, punk's going to be recovering from an overexposure hangover for the next several decades, and even mentioning emo is liable to get you shot dead.
I was right, motherfuckers.
I like it, really. The somewhat unpalatable glitch-folk of Grandaddy and A Sun Came/Enjoy Your Rabbit era Sufjan have given way to the absolutely gorgeous likes of Akron/Family, Chad Vangaalen, Grizzly Bear, and Califone. Synth and chamber-pop laden rock, born, I think, principally out of Canadian acts like the Unicorns and Broken Social Scene have flourished through too many artists to name. Electronica, more than any other, has absolutely exploded in popularity and sheer creativity. This has been a renassaince deliciously devoid of posturing and icon-dependence, and possesses a fantastically down to earth sensibility and warmth that I hope has got years left in it.
But my curiosity's piqued again. Where's music headed to now? Everyone I've talked to seems to have been astonished and pleased by the country and folk revivals of the past few years, but I don't think these fixations have much further to go. I don't see a reversion to guitar rock or punk as feasibly possible for at least another generation, so what else is there?
Metal's started to enjoy some more widespread and creative exposure, with bands like Sunn 0))), Agalloch, and Boris incorporating radically new approaches to a stereotypically burnt out genre, along with being increasingly well received amongst different audiences. But metal is extraordinarly tough to predict, and any branch of extreme music is going to have to overcome an absolutely staggering stigma amonst non-believers to go critical in the way punk and electronica have in the new millenium.
Is it going to be world music? I genuinely can't think of where else things could head. It plays directly into the current prediliction for folk and country, doesn't it?
I've got hints of this direction through Man Man and Gogol Bordello, but mostly I've been thinking this because I love Beirut's debut album, Gulag Orkestar, way too damn much.
Beirut has a population of one, officially. Zach Condon plays, and I quote: "Horns, violins, celli, ukuleles, mandolins, glockenspiels, drums, tambourines, congas, organs, pianos, clarinets and accordions (no guitars)." Holy shit, celli? I don't think that's a word. What pushes the arrangement into indie-kid wet dream territory is the contribution of two bonafide Neutral Milk Hoteliers in the mix. Jeremy Barnes and Heather Tros, presently of A Hawk And A Hacksaw, lend percussion and violin with the same poignancy and understated grace they brought to Mister Mangum's seminal masterpieces, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.
It sounds like a mess on paper, and the unorthodox instrumentation can indeed sound a bit sloppy, but this is by and large a terrificly focussed, richly colourful swath of music. Sparklingly exotic balkan melodies are hijacked into beautiful pop songs of the Western persuasion. The tone is overwhelmingly depressed, but sad music has never, ever felt so organic and toe-tappingly alive. It's far, far removed from dance music, but I find it impossible to sit still through the album's indescribably lovely movements.
I tend to sway.
Zach's robust yet ineffably pubescent warble sets down an entirely new path of melancholia, and his miniature orchestra of vibrantly mournful brass and woodwind - and whatever category the accordian falls under - blends unbelievably well. There are lyrics here, but the most brilliantly poetic verses on the album feature Zach giving himself over entirely to worldless wailing, as in the excellent closer After the Curtain and album's heart Mount Wroclai (Idle Days).
Jeremy Barnes's simplistic but rich drumming, favouring a steady bass thump covered in various exulting cymbals, does a superb job of grounding the precocious Condon and his symphony. It's easy to recall NMH throughout, especially flavours of Holland, 1945, The Fool, and Ghost. Barnes is a truly excellent percussionist, and his work here showcases the drums as a viably beautiful sound, not simply a timepiece.
The album is remarkably consistent, and I'm sure the greatest criticism which will be levelled against is its tendency toward sameness. I can forgive it for that, personally. In fact, the greatest departure from Gulag Orkestar's magnificient sound, the near-electronica blips of Scenic World, turn out to be the album's weakest moment. The fantastically realized old-country sound that pervades most all the rest of the album is too good to let go of.
I'm tired and Douglas Coupland isn't helping one bit.
Thursday, November 09, 2006
Gubbish
I will not preface any article herein with any variation of the phrase, "So, it's been a while."
I think anyone who's ever tried to keep a steady journal or diary or blog has had moments where they realize they've neglected their self-imposed charge and, stricken with guilt and returning to the pen or keyboard, they declare that this time will be different. They insist, I will not lose this one!
Nooo.
I think everyone's experienced the odd moment in their life where some subsurface ideas or notions, present but not fully realized or discussed, are suddenly brought into sharp relief by some revelation or another, and then you feel stupid.
Know what I thought? I thought that the wondrously smart and complex hip-hop found in 13 & God, Subtle, and cLOUDDEAD was so good. I just couldn't get over how the emcees from each had picked up the exact same nasal delivery style. I went so far as to encapsulate my unending praise for Subtle (which, to be fair, adequately answers the question of what jamming every genre ever together sounds like: awesome) by explaining to Jams that they were like a much deeper, more listenable 13 & God.
These outfits have the same freaking emcee. Bam.
It's too late an hour to write more. I feel silly.
I think anyone who's ever tried to keep a steady journal or diary or blog has had moments where they realize they've neglected their self-imposed charge and, stricken with guilt and returning to the pen or keyboard, they declare that this time will be different. They insist, I will not lose this one!
Nooo.
I think everyone's experienced the odd moment in their life where some subsurface ideas or notions, present but not fully realized or discussed, are suddenly brought into sharp relief by some revelation or another, and then you feel stupid.
Know what I thought? I thought that the wondrously smart and complex hip-hop found in 13 & God, Subtle, and cLOUDDEAD was so good. I just couldn't get over how the emcees from each had picked up the exact same nasal delivery style. I went so far as to encapsulate my unending praise for Subtle (which, to be fair, adequately answers the question of what jamming every genre ever together sounds like: awesome) by explaining to Jams that they were like a much deeper, more listenable 13 & God.
These outfits have the same freaking emcee. Bam.
It's too late an hour to write more. I feel silly.
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