The idea that a person could abuse their own relationship with cooking shows is ridiculous, but here I am writing in the wake of an uncomfortable realization that I've been yelling "Get to the goddamn action!" when television's chefs get too chatty.
You know, some of them try to have a plot. It's a total waste of time, am I right?
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Sunday, May 27, 2007
A moth gives freely of itself unto the bulb
Today marks the first time in three years that my last.fm (audioscrobbler, if you're nasty) has beeped, whirred, clicked, and spat out a Weekly Top Artists list completely dominated by hip hop acts. It wasn't so much as a year ago that I'd casually whip out that most frequent of colloquial wankisms that so dominate the self-styled Indie culture, "I like everything; except hip hop, rap and country. You know, good music." Depending on the flair with which you popped out that "good", your audience would know just how hip you are.
Lame.
To be fair, it's really not hard to understand this cadre of skittish youngsters' cynicism toward all things hip hoppy: take a peek at what's busting platinum in the genre and ask yourself if you'd give it even half of one chance to please your ear. The seemingly endless army of store-bought gang-stahs parading around the virtues of mysogyny, crass materialism and dropping things like they are various uncomfortable temperatures aren't exactly stopping their indulgences in favour of anything artistic or progressive. It isn't a stretch to call these false paragons of hip hop things like "rephrensible" and "multiple felons", and brand the rest of the genre likewise and believe me, I was right in there doing so.
Too bad for me. I'm not eager to jump on the bandwagons I'm seeing crop up here and there proclaiming "hip hop is the new indie", because I feel like a tool making any proclamation of the sort and could tell you a few stories you'd like me less for. But with full view of the huge influx of cookie-cutter acts since Modest Mouse smashed their way into the public eye 'round ought-four, I must admit a steady standardization of indie rock and pop.
And you all know what the OC has done to us. Yeah, it keeps me up at night too.
Hip hop, on the other hand, has laboured fantastically under the heavy burden and resulting oversight its overpaid pop culture liasons have reaped. Startlingly unique acts have blessed my ears with seemingly endless poise and experimentation for months. Every conceivable genre has been hijacked into poignant, musically powerful hybrids by any number of artists for years, from metal in Dalek to electronica in Prefuse 73 to glitchy singer-songwritery indie pop in Why?.
You can trust me on this, you'd like the stuff if you gave it that one half chance. Let me point you in the right direction:
Top five hip hop albums to convert indie kids with
5. Why? - Elephant Eyelash
Just talking about this week, this is just this-week-Josh talking here, Why? statistically blew away all comers in the ever-heated battle for my listening time. The solo project of Yoni Wolf, an Anticonian beatmaster making up one third of personal favourite cLOUDDEAD, Elephant Eyelash conjures all manners of psychadelic and pop influences and channels it throught the unbelievably tight confines of Yoni's synthesized beats. Finding his closest mirror in indie-pop favourite Emperor X, absolutely every note on this ecclectic masterstroke finds itself synthesized and tossed together with any number of unlikely mates: acoustic guitars weave in and out of turntable quips, gorgeously selected samples gallop wide-eyed past exulting strings, and Yoni's own half-sung rhymes tell beautiful pop tales that'd make the The Piper at the Gates of Dawn look sober.
4. J Dilla - Donuts
Instrumental, sample-driven, defiantly theatric and sadly posthumous, Jay Dee's late and great celebration of glistening organic production packs the emotive and intellectual impact of any art-film you'd care to name. Drawing his samples from generations of soul and blues and working them over with the skill of a true craftsman, Donuts is a boundless canvas of glittering tableaus, the sleek deliverance of literally dozens of succinct, beautiful feelings so ineffably personal, so obviously real that they shrug off any need for identification. A producer's producer album, Donuts is as sweaty and visceral as hip hop gets, and twice as classy. I can turn this on any day and get lost in it.
3. Dalek - Absence
I've spoken on these two men more than any other artist thus far, and I'll do it again. Signed to Ipecac Recordings, who carry such monster acts as Isis, Hella, and the goddamn Melvins, Dalek are the metalhead's hip hop act. Their latest LP notwithstanding, Dalek bring the noise: whole canyons of it, stretching and gouging sampled instruments, vividly industrial synthesizers, and some of the best scratching in the field, care of turntablist DJ Still. These men literally produce the heaviest drum mix I've ever encountered, bar none, and throw down intelligence and social conciousness with sincerity and vigor. What's best, while the wall of sound that Absence hits you with certainly overwhelms, surrendering to the storm of it yields breathtakingly detailed music, unstoppable layers of sound harnessed into powerful songs as affecting and potent as any of their rock brethren.
2. Prefuse 73 & The Books - Prefuse 73 Reads The Books
This is completely shameless indie baiting, what with the Books' status as indie/electronica darlings, but herein lies the heart and soul of this ridiculous list. Instrumental and sample driven like Donuts, Prefuse 73 Reads The Books opts out of the organic and slaloms gracefully into the electronic, the spiritual and the futuristic. Seamlessly merging the Books glitchy acoustic guitar noodling with Prefuse 73's flawless production and beats, the album soars close to Post Rock, Boards of Canada level ambition but settles comfortably for a celebration of beautiful sounds.
1. Subtle - For Hero: For Fool
Most of the men and women, including my own family, have found me quite honestly frothing at the mouth in praise of Subtle's utter perfection of form and content, and yet I've hardly put any space aside for the angelic For Hero: For Fool herein. I could and probably soon will devote pages upon pages to each and every track, something which so consumed my idols at CMG that they could barely contain their review of even one track in the confines of the mere internet.
Trying to describe the genre-bending Subtle accomplish through this, their second proper album is pointless: the sextet leave such petty considerations far, far behind. The amalgamation of electric cello, Jeffrey Logan's impeccably sharp beats, all manners of woodwind and synthetic flourishes, and Doseone's jaw-dropping impressionist liturgy come together with such grace and gut-level power that I've repeatedly failed to do the men justice - hence the frothing. No single album has ever proffered such crossover appeal, so gorgeously combined mind razing dance aesthetics with such heavenly orchestral dynamics, with such progressive lyricism as could startle any modern poetic scene and render all lesser emcees obsolete. I've made the journey through FH:FF's weightless body numberless times by now, and every trip never fails to leave me overwhelmed.
Lame.
To be fair, it's really not hard to understand this cadre of skittish youngsters' cynicism toward all things hip hoppy: take a peek at what's busting platinum in the genre and ask yourself if you'd give it even half of one chance to please your ear. The seemingly endless army of store-bought gang-stahs parading around the virtues of mysogyny, crass materialism and dropping things like they are various uncomfortable temperatures aren't exactly stopping their indulgences in favour of anything artistic or progressive. It isn't a stretch to call these false paragons of hip hop things like "rephrensible" and "multiple felons", and brand the rest of the genre likewise and believe me, I was right in there doing so.
Too bad for me. I'm not eager to jump on the bandwagons I'm seeing crop up here and there proclaiming "hip hop is the new indie", because I feel like a tool making any proclamation of the sort and could tell you a few stories you'd like me less for. But with full view of the huge influx of cookie-cutter acts since Modest Mouse smashed their way into the public eye 'round ought-four, I must admit a steady standardization of indie rock and pop.
And you all know what the OC has done to us. Yeah, it keeps me up at night too.
Hip hop, on the other hand, has laboured fantastically under the heavy burden and resulting oversight its overpaid pop culture liasons have reaped. Startlingly unique acts have blessed my ears with seemingly endless poise and experimentation for months. Every conceivable genre has been hijacked into poignant, musically powerful hybrids by any number of artists for years, from metal in Dalek to electronica in Prefuse 73 to glitchy singer-songwritery indie pop in Why?.
You can trust me on this, you'd like the stuff if you gave it that one half chance. Let me point you in the right direction:
Top five hip hop albums to convert indie kids with
5. Why? - Elephant Eyelash
Just talking about this week, this is just this-week-Josh talking here, Why? statistically blew away all comers in the ever-heated battle for my listening time. The solo project of Yoni Wolf, an Anticonian beatmaster making up one third of personal favourite cLOUDDEAD, Elephant Eyelash conjures all manners of psychadelic and pop influences and channels it throught the unbelievably tight confines of Yoni's synthesized beats. Finding his closest mirror in indie-pop favourite Emperor X, absolutely every note on this ecclectic masterstroke finds itself synthesized and tossed together with any number of unlikely mates: acoustic guitars weave in and out of turntable quips, gorgeously selected samples gallop wide-eyed past exulting strings, and Yoni's own half-sung rhymes tell beautiful pop tales that'd make the The Piper at the Gates of Dawn look sober.
4. J Dilla - Donuts
Instrumental, sample-driven, defiantly theatric and sadly posthumous, Jay Dee's late and great celebration of glistening organic production packs the emotive and intellectual impact of any art-film you'd care to name. Drawing his samples from generations of soul and blues and working them over with the skill of a true craftsman, Donuts is a boundless canvas of glittering tableaus, the sleek deliverance of literally dozens of succinct, beautiful feelings so ineffably personal, so obviously real that they shrug off any need for identification. A producer's producer album, Donuts is as sweaty and visceral as hip hop gets, and twice as classy. I can turn this on any day and get lost in it.
3. Dalek - Absence
I've spoken on these two men more than any other artist thus far, and I'll do it again. Signed to Ipecac Recordings, who carry such monster acts as Isis, Hella, and the goddamn Melvins, Dalek are the metalhead's hip hop act. Their latest LP notwithstanding, Dalek bring the noise: whole canyons of it, stretching and gouging sampled instruments, vividly industrial synthesizers, and some of the best scratching in the field, care of turntablist DJ Still. These men literally produce the heaviest drum mix I've ever encountered, bar none, and throw down intelligence and social conciousness with sincerity and vigor. What's best, while the wall of sound that Absence hits you with certainly overwhelms, surrendering to the storm of it yields breathtakingly detailed music, unstoppable layers of sound harnessed into powerful songs as affecting and potent as any of their rock brethren.
2. Prefuse 73 & The Books - Prefuse 73 Reads The Books
This is completely shameless indie baiting, what with the Books' status as indie/electronica darlings, but herein lies the heart and soul of this ridiculous list. Instrumental and sample driven like Donuts, Prefuse 73 Reads The Books opts out of the organic and slaloms gracefully into the electronic, the spiritual and the futuristic. Seamlessly merging the Books glitchy acoustic guitar noodling with Prefuse 73's flawless production and beats, the album soars close to Post Rock, Boards of Canada level ambition but settles comfortably for a celebration of beautiful sounds.
1. Subtle - For Hero: For Fool
Most of the men and women, including my own family, have found me quite honestly frothing at the mouth in praise of Subtle's utter perfection of form and content, and yet I've hardly put any space aside for the angelic For Hero: For Fool herein. I could and probably soon will devote pages upon pages to each and every track, something which so consumed my idols at CMG that they could barely contain their review of even one track in the confines of the mere internet.
Trying to describe the genre-bending Subtle accomplish through this, their second proper album is pointless: the sextet leave such petty considerations far, far behind. The amalgamation of electric cello, Jeffrey Logan's impeccably sharp beats, all manners of woodwind and synthetic flourishes, and Doseone's jaw-dropping impressionist liturgy come together with such grace and gut-level power that I've repeatedly failed to do the men justice - hence the frothing. No single album has ever proffered such crossover appeal, so gorgeously combined mind razing dance aesthetics with such heavenly orchestral dynamics, with such progressive lyricism as could startle any modern poetic scene and render all lesser emcees obsolete. I've made the journey through FH:FF's weightless body numberless times by now, and every trip never fails to leave me overwhelmed.
Monday, May 21, 2007
An-a-log
I find it almost impossible to type the word "casino" with any measure of speed. The reason? I always, always type the word "casio" instead. Ugh. If ever there was a music geek in need of a life, well, um, I'm probably a real star candidate.
I mean, I noticed this phenomenon at the tail end of a day where my chief activity was giving my computer a tune up whilst memorizing all the interconnections to be found in the anticon collective. I also may or may not have restarted my sojourn through the fifth HP novel: do shut up.
I'm going to buy some even thicker-framed glasses and spend my evenings with a Moog, excuse me.
I mean, I noticed this phenomenon at the tail end of a day where my chief activity was giving my computer a tune up whilst memorizing all the interconnections to be found in the anticon collective. I also may or may not have restarted my sojourn through the fifth HP novel: do shut up.
I'm going to buy some even thicker-framed glasses and spend my evenings with a Moog, excuse me.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Dumb? Ugly? Rhythm section
Tomorrow I am going in for a job interview. When I say "going in" I mean much like Luke went in to the Dagobah system: confused, stupid, and piloting stolen rebel equipment he would later submerge into a swamp. This interview will determine whether or not I am fit to join something called "Pro Security", a possibility I find both financially appealing and personally nauseating. Although I am certain I could kill a man if I were needed to.
I wonder if that'll come up in the interview. Hm.
About three years ago I picked up the four-stringed variety of guitar known as "bass" and foreswore all other loves. Three years later, I've learned how to use it, and it only took the whole of the in-between time to get me there. It's not so much that I'm good now, but I have dedicated a large enough chunk of my listening life to picking out the low end from songs and judging it as harshly as my frail white body could manage: an exercise which has led me to muster pretension enough to present the following list. In addition to spiking a concentrated globe of my own hate out of the interwub and - hopefully - into your neural network, I'll suggest two tracks as listening material, one supporting my claim (i.e. this bassline sucks!) and the other refuting it (this bassline pwns in spite of Josh's efforts!). I know most of you can't be bothered to track down such things and think, "Hey! Josh has a point!" But then I don't believe any of you exist anyway.
Top five reasons your band's bassist sucks
5. They're using a pick
It's a widely held joke in the music world that all the good bassists are ugly, much in the same way that all decent drummers are dumb as a post. Rifle through your favourite bands with talented four-stringers: would you bang any of those folks? Chances are overwhelmingly against an affirmative, and even freakier are the odds that should you find the odd exception to this rule, and Carlos Denglar and Paul Simonon do jump immediately to mind, you almost always have discovered an accomplished bassist who plays with the condom of the rhythm world: a pick. I have investigated this phenomenon with exceptional acuity and discovered my hypothesis to be accurate in one thousand percent of cases.
Look at a bass, then a guitar. The strings on the former are considerably thicker, more spread out, and fewer than on the latter. The use of a pick on a bass screams, in nearly any corner of the world, that the artist in question wanted to play guitar but thought bass would be easier, or some other pejorative those solo-getting fellows like to lather onto an instrument which has been preposterously lumped in with the guitar because of its overt similarity. Worse, reliance on a pick almost always leads to over-sharp and soulless basslines that lose the rhythmic detail the bass needs to shine. Guys, the whole spectrum of tone, cadence, and technical complexity possible with a bass can be wrought with two or three fingers. Stop picking at it.
The case for: Red Hot Chili Peppers - Parallel Universe
The case against: Interpol - The New
4. They're playing all of three different notes
This is an almost universal problem in popular music, ever since a generation of young people misinterpreted Nirvana's intense minimalist approach to punk rock, eschewed the less easy stylings of classic rock, and became idiots. But even bands with great technical merit succumb to this rejection of the bass's qualities, leaving it to hold down one or two points of a low end as a glorified drum kit. Sure, songs (plenty out of Refused's canon for example) can be provocative by relying on heavy rhythms instead of melodic nuances, but it's a shortchange. The kids that look at the bass as lesser than a guitar like to point out how admittedly gorgeous a handful of chords can sound with six strings, while the bass's capacity for even the simplest chord is limited and Smoke On The Water, when you get right down to it, is about as interesting as it is complicated.
A bassist is ruined by idleness. The instrument has a startling capacity for beauty, vibrance, and acrobatics that begs for full scales, alternation between multiple octaves, and use of the highest and lowest frets for dramatic changes in flavour. And yes, the low-end crunch loosed by a bass can and will crush those tiny guitar's fickle bodies any day of the week, but they can do so much more than just that.
The case for: Deep Purple - Smoke On The Water
The case against: Refused - New Noise
3. They're playing a heap with the tone of warmed over elastic bands
Growing out of the abusive mentality pickers and guitarists pour onto the bass is the belief that the hardware doesn't make much of a difference, that a bassline is a bassline and technical matters which are critical to guitarists, drummers, and any synth op out there are unimportant for the b-tar. The very real difference can be immediately found in even a cursory comparison of the gorgeous punk strains found in any (old) Dan Adriano line to the shambling piles of parts the Beatles inexplicably stuck Paul with for most of his career.
Oh snap. Josh is debating the technical merits of the Beatles' rhythm section. Let's hurry away from this.
The case for: The Beatles - A Hard Day's Night
The case against: The Clash - Rock The Casbah
2. They're playing whole notes
Don't get me wrong, every single piece of rhythmic possibility open to a bassist finds a critical place in the instrument's oeuvre. It's the songs that resign only enough faith in the bass's appeal as to restrict it to clunky full-bar plunks that utterly fail it. Any number of pop-rock numbers try to pull this shit off, or instead resort to its mathematical equivalent, the nothing-but-quarter-notes-boogie, and it is uniformly awful. Yes, the bass is a rhythm instrument. It is not, however, a metronome. Giving in to this sorry strategy not only sounds terrible and requires positively zero-skill with a difficult instrument, it rips out fully one-half of most such band's whole rhythm section.
The case for: The Arcade Fire - Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)
The case against: Red Hot Chili Peppers - Porcelain
1. They're playing like it's just another guitar
This is the damned philosophy that runs through every other ridiculous idiocy inflicted upon my fair instrument. I'm not so well-schooled in music theory to argue the merits of counter-point and polyrhythms and whatever, but in listening to any number of radio jams over the years it continually sickens me, and it doesn't take an aficionado to perceive this, that when a bassist is playing precisely the same freaking rhythms and melodies as their more popular brothers the instrument actually disappears. You might be able to hear it, maybe, but its presence in a song is completely invalidated and pointless. Not one song has ever been made richer by the inclusion of a redundant bassline allowed only to ape what's already there, so much so that I can't find a single example to pose as a case against me.
Seriously, fucking pop-radio. Amirite?
Y: The Last Man is the best thing I have ever read and I spent a good portion of the past few years doing nothing but reading. If you ask me nicely I will give it to you for free, but unspeakable rituals of the flesh may or may not be involved.
I wonder if that'll come up in the interview. Hm.
About three years ago I picked up the four-stringed variety of guitar known as "bass" and foreswore all other loves. Three years later, I've learned how to use it, and it only took the whole of the in-between time to get me there. It's not so much that I'm good now, but I have dedicated a large enough chunk of my listening life to picking out the low end from songs and judging it as harshly as my frail white body could manage: an exercise which has led me to muster pretension enough to present the following list. In addition to spiking a concentrated globe of my own hate out of the interwub and - hopefully - into your neural network, I'll suggest two tracks as listening material, one supporting my claim (i.e. this bassline sucks!) and the other refuting it (this bassline pwns in spite of Josh's efforts!). I know most of you can't be bothered to track down such things and think, "Hey! Josh has a point!" But then I don't believe any of you exist anyway.
Top five reasons your band's bassist sucks
5. They're using a pick
It's a widely held joke in the music world that all the good bassists are ugly, much in the same way that all decent drummers are dumb as a post. Rifle through your favourite bands with talented four-stringers: would you bang any of those folks? Chances are overwhelmingly against an affirmative, and even freakier are the odds that should you find the odd exception to this rule, and Carlos Denglar and Paul Simonon do jump immediately to mind, you almost always have discovered an accomplished bassist who plays with the condom of the rhythm world: a pick. I have investigated this phenomenon with exceptional acuity and discovered my hypothesis to be accurate in one thousand percent of cases.
Look at a bass, then a guitar. The strings on the former are considerably thicker, more spread out, and fewer than on the latter. The use of a pick on a bass screams, in nearly any corner of the world, that the artist in question wanted to play guitar but thought bass would be easier, or some other pejorative those solo-getting fellows like to lather onto an instrument which has been preposterously lumped in with the guitar because of its overt similarity. Worse, reliance on a pick almost always leads to over-sharp and soulless basslines that lose the rhythmic detail the bass needs to shine. Guys, the whole spectrum of tone, cadence, and technical complexity possible with a bass can be wrought with two or three fingers. Stop picking at it.
The case for: Red Hot Chili Peppers - Parallel Universe
The case against: Interpol - The New
4. They're playing all of three different notes
This is an almost universal problem in popular music, ever since a generation of young people misinterpreted Nirvana's intense minimalist approach to punk rock, eschewed the less easy stylings of classic rock, and became idiots. But even bands with great technical merit succumb to this rejection of the bass's qualities, leaving it to hold down one or two points of a low end as a glorified drum kit. Sure, songs (plenty out of Refused's canon for example) can be provocative by relying on heavy rhythms instead of melodic nuances, but it's a shortchange. The kids that look at the bass as lesser than a guitar like to point out how admittedly gorgeous a handful of chords can sound with six strings, while the bass's capacity for even the simplest chord is limited and Smoke On The Water, when you get right down to it, is about as interesting as it is complicated.
A bassist is ruined by idleness. The instrument has a startling capacity for beauty, vibrance, and acrobatics that begs for full scales, alternation between multiple octaves, and use of the highest and lowest frets for dramatic changes in flavour. And yes, the low-end crunch loosed by a bass can and will crush those tiny guitar's fickle bodies any day of the week, but they can do so much more than just that.
The case for: Deep Purple - Smoke On The Water
The case against: Refused - New Noise
3. They're playing a heap with the tone of warmed over elastic bands
Growing out of the abusive mentality pickers and guitarists pour onto the bass is the belief that the hardware doesn't make much of a difference, that a bassline is a bassline and technical matters which are critical to guitarists, drummers, and any synth op out there are unimportant for the b-tar. The very real difference can be immediately found in even a cursory comparison of the gorgeous punk strains found in any (old) Dan Adriano line to the shambling piles of parts the Beatles inexplicably stuck Paul with for most of his career.
Oh snap. Josh is debating the technical merits of the Beatles' rhythm section. Let's hurry away from this.
The case for: The Beatles - A Hard Day's Night
The case against: The Clash - Rock The Casbah
2. They're playing whole notes
Don't get me wrong, every single piece of rhythmic possibility open to a bassist finds a critical place in the instrument's oeuvre. It's the songs that resign only enough faith in the bass's appeal as to restrict it to clunky full-bar plunks that utterly fail it. Any number of pop-rock numbers try to pull this shit off, or instead resort to its mathematical equivalent, the nothing-but-quarter-notes-boogie, and it is uniformly awful. Yes, the bass is a rhythm instrument. It is not, however, a metronome. Giving in to this sorry strategy not only sounds terrible and requires positively zero-skill with a difficult instrument, it rips out fully one-half of most such band's whole rhythm section.
The case for: The Arcade Fire - Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)
The case against: Red Hot Chili Peppers - Porcelain
1. They're playing like it's just another guitar
This is the damned philosophy that runs through every other ridiculous idiocy inflicted upon my fair instrument. I'm not so well-schooled in music theory to argue the merits of counter-point and polyrhythms and whatever, but in listening to any number of radio jams over the years it continually sickens me, and it doesn't take an aficionado to perceive this, that when a bassist is playing precisely the same freaking rhythms and melodies as their more popular brothers the instrument actually disappears. You might be able to hear it, maybe, but its presence in a song is completely invalidated and pointless. Not one song has ever been made richer by the inclusion of a redundant bassline allowed only to ape what's already there, so much so that I can't find a single example to pose as a case against me.
Seriously, fucking pop-radio. Amirite?
Y: The Last Man is the best thing I have ever read and I spent a good portion of the past few years doing nothing but reading. If you ask me nicely I will give it to you for free, but unspeakable rituals of the flesh may or may not be involved.
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Until the monsters chase you home
Menomena is pop. Menomena is quirky and eclectic and far-reaching in melody and instrumentation. Menomena is pronounced "mah-nah-meh-na" and is supposed to be tied to Muppets, of all things.
Menomena's oh-seven album Friend and Foe takes the more-subtle experimentation of 2003's (wonderfully titled) I Am The Fun Blame Monster! (It's an anagram, bitches.) and incorporates even more piano and a whole whack of different vocals, and somehow an even higher level of energy.
I must say, when writing this I felt repeatedly as though I'd chosen a ridiculously complex project for my entrance into the terrifying world of musical criticism, mainly because as I listen to these songs, new layers and facets are constantly being revealed. No song is consistent in sound and instrumentation in their roughly three to five minute time span. This is what makes this band, on the one hand, a challenge to dissect but on the other, an absolutely exhilarating listen. What's more, the myriad sounds and melodies and the shifts between them are completely seamless. Oh yeah, and don't get me started on the lyrics. Artistry is rife here.
Exhibit A: Foe sees the trio departing somewhat from the ridiculously resonating echoes so present in Monster's songs such as "The Late Great Libido", which is a build-up of
reverberating vocals which'll shake your soul but, um, in a playful way. There's a distinct sing-songy quality to his voice (whose I'm not sure, it seems the members share the mic), which manages to stay playful despite the entrance of what can only be described as thrillingly melancholy piano. Then the drums and Justin Harris's (much revered) baritone sax charge in and the three instruments settle into a pleasant, pretty harmony of sorts.
There's a raucous, dirty sound to Danny Seim's percussion, a tone accentuated deliciously by the squelching sax. Here the often smooth singing, as in "Twenty Cell Revolt", finds its contrast and a certain liveliness. These elements make "Boyscout'n", in fact, the perfect soundtrack for a boisterous, comical romp through an untamed wilderness. Wow, if only the word "romp" weren't so damn appropriate…
Menomena's lyrics drift through various phases of philosophical self-reflection and displacement. Foe's "My My" is a song comprised solely of what-if's, "What if I sold everything I know / And ran away from everyone I know / could I make another place my home?". Menomena's lyrics are generally simply put, and thus do not overcrowd the music in the least. They are instead charged with emotion that may be difficult to pick up at first listen with 
all the other elements grabbing for your attention.
The point I may be not-so-subtly trying to get across is that this band merits a veritable multiplicity of listens, for your sake as a listener and for Menomena's sake as really effing crafty musicians.
Sunday, May 06, 2007
Parentheses are lazy writing (bitch)
If you want a laugh, try clicking the "next blog" button up over yonder. The blog constituting "next" seems to change with every individual click, but the last time I checked it was a particularly frank log of dissertations concerning dog sex. How this winds up being my neighbour, I'm sincerely not sure - if I were to have a real neighbour whose entire being consisted of nothing but discussing dog sex, I'm not sure I'd stick around.
I just checked and as of right now we're adjacent to a blog providing nothing but screencaps of arabic porn.
You will note the proximity of the "flag blog" button to the one providing the "next blog" function: I believe I have discovered why.
One time, a long time ago, I said I'd review a certain album for you. What I meant to say was, I'd love to review a particularly pretty album for you sometime in late Spring.
If you know me then you've probably heard me going gang busters about the band Califone the odd time, especially in recent weeks when something clicked inside of me and the ultra-hip americana band pulled a dragonforce directly into third place on my audioscrobbler, up from their previous position of, like, seventieth. I did put 2006's Roots & Crowns somewhere up in the top ten best albums I heard all year, back when I was into that sort of thing, but the thing you have to understand is that sometimes I even know more than my self. That is, I knew this was a fantastic album even though I had yet to really figure out why.
This is a band so mired in sheer talent, so immediately creative in their exploration of a well-worn canvas that the only band I can reasonably liken them to with any hope of getting my meaning across is feckin' Radiohead. I am thinking this is high enough praise to gain your attention, yes?
So, if the phrase "ultra-hip americana" has soiled your mood, please endeavour to make it to the end of my article.
Roots & Crowns is about the prettiest gust of music you're likely to hear in a good long while, it is an album which finds itself hunkering down at the mathematical convergence between beauty and its less popular uncle, substance, and setting up a rustic, dilapidated cabin therein. While the extent of my own knowledge vis a vis the genre of Americana prior to diving into Califone's ridiculously prolific output consisted of all the Johnny Cash I've ever heard, which is embarassingly little, I can safely relate to you that this music is the aural manifestation of a sunset. Frontman Tim Rutili and his merry, allegedly huge cast of conspirators are not so much informed by man's nature and nature's man - if you take my meaning - as they are the gleaming avatars of these most provocative ideals. It sounds grandiose, and it is. Roots & Crowns glides over and embraces topics as smart and provocative as martyrdom, familial loss, loving imperfection, and some vicariously unnameable things with both strength and real sweetness and it could be, in short, country music. But it's far from being so simple, which is what has got me so hot and bothered, if you've noticed. What's set Califone apart, at least for the indie set, is spectacular and gorgeously realized execution and a delicate skirting of cliche. The expression of such common, albeit importantly common themes is so effortlessly performed and beautifully produced on this, their ninth studio release, that the music is pure joy of sound before the surfeit of genuine intellect that is each song's content becomes apparent.
This not just some guys with acoustic instruments in a barn somewhere, this is an extraordinarily modern piece of music. I mean, they have their acoustic guitars most of the time, sure. But they've also brought a suite of electronic and studio-borne tricks at the ready and they use them as artists should.
Now I do in fact have one caveat about the record, and it is its insufferably slow beginning. The four ditties that eat up Roots & Crowns' first fifteen minutes, while pretty in their own right, are easily the most lackluster on the album. They drag, and offer the least by way of the creativity and emotive impact the band is capable of. Opener Pink & Sour is dark and inexplicably electronic, a drawn-out moody affair that's intriguing as a first track, but scarier than most of the rest of the songs without much impact. Spider's House and Sunday Noises are very nearly by-the-numbers country pieces which slink by with a fair bit of simple charm but little presence. If there were little more to the album than what this first act suggest, it wouldn't be worth half the praise that's been heaped upon it.
But things pick up with the inscrutably muscular folk of A Chinese Actor and don't fail to extract the breath from your chest for the next seven tracks.
Our Kitten Sees Ghosts maps out the real tense of the record, a breezey mess of acoustic guitar and rustic soul that absolutely worships the clarity and beauty of sound possible with such classic tools. Feedback and a perfectly produced atmosphere of resonance glimmer across most every bar, a sound that's simultaneously all Califone's own and yet immediately and endlessly attractive. The vibrant marriage of simple, clunky percussion, powerful acoustic radiance, and veritable chasms of productive nuance and electronic noise shimmer and glide across the whole of this record's remainder, not a single note out of place nor a mood imperfectly delivered. Tim Rutili's voice has the consistency of warm syrup and is applied as such. His isn't exactly an American drawl, but the man sings good and slow with a purpose. Better than this, and to do no insult to the man's thick and golden voice, the production of tracks like The Orchids and Burned By The Christians and half a dozen other benefit enormously from the utterly perfect layering of his diligent vocal tracks. There couldn't be more than two or three adorning each song, but the effect is uniformly spectacular, compounding and detailing a simple voice's stark emotion and weary intelligence with sincere elegance.
This is pretty music. But sugary it ain't.
Latterday tracks Black Metal Valentine and Rose Petal Ear - especially Rose Petal Ear - revel in the sort of deep country gothicism which'll raise the hair on the back of your neck in any stretch of unkempt woods. The seamlessly brilliant pairing of tinny, high strung acoustic guitar with sudden swaths of distorted, down-tuned electric bass positively creep me out, in the loveliest sense of the phrase, and realize the potency of the field of music this band's mining without succumbing even the least bit to repetition. Black Metal Valentine leans even more heavily on bare electronics, and seems to grow out of a place between the haunted house of Climbing Up The Walls and the woods around it. It slinks along under foggy vocals and eerily tapping percussion to create some of the most stunning moments on the album, the whole spectrum of dissonant effects coming together in absurdly moving collisions of sound. When Mister Rutili deigns to put falsetto into his songs, as with these ones, he does so with the precision of a surgeon and with the style of the mad variety.
Penultimate track 3 Legged Animal packs all the melancholy, impossible hope, and talent this band possesses into four minutes of flawless pop-folk, the kind of sleepy, sun-on-your-face gem that should woo literally every human being on the planet. Every band has that song which any fan will instantly recommend to anyone halfway interested: this is that song. Easily the most upbeat song to be found on Roots & Crowns, this beauty barely affects a canter its whole length and when Tim Rutili croons, he's completely sincere and masterfully powerful without so much as raising his voice - it doesn't need more. While album closer If You Would breaks out a strident, ethereal piano for the ultimate in swarthy bring-downs, very much the country brethren of Pyramid Song, it's not so much noteworthy for its own pretty, somewhat plain effects, as for the finality of its hazy fade away. The all instrumental outro which constitutes the last handful of minutes of it and the album movingly affect a summary, a microcosm of everything that's just been heard. Strings pick up strains of hope, perversity, and ineffable sparks of fear. It's a breath from the unknown, built on the simply beautiful altar of the earth.
It's very much like a rickety Yellow House you might know, left wide open, abandoned, and wrought with unspeakable meaning. It's the soundtrack to the imagery built out of the countryside we all know, rarely visit, and immediately identify with both as an endless ghost of spindly trees and monstrous shanties, and as the cradel of each of our lives.
Like I said, it sounds grandiose, and it is.
I just checked and as of right now we're adjacent to a blog providing nothing but screencaps of arabic porn.
You will note the proximity of the "flag blog" button to the one providing the "next blog" function: I believe I have discovered why.
One time, a long time ago, I said I'd review a certain album for you. What I meant to say was, I'd love to review a particularly pretty album for you sometime in late Spring.
If you know me then you've probably heard me going gang busters about the band Califone the odd time, especially in recent weeks when something clicked inside of me and the ultra-hip americana band pulled a dragonforce directly into third place on my audioscrobbler, up from their previous position of, like, seventieth. I did put 2006's Roots & Crowns somewhere up in the top ten best albums I heard all year, back when I was into that sort of thing, but the thing you have to understand is that sometimes I even know more than my self. That is, I knew this was a fantastic album even though I had yet to really figure out why.
This is a band so mired in sheer talent, so immediately creative in their exploration of a well-worn canvas that the only band I can reasonably liken them to with any hope of getting my meaning across is feckin' Radiohead. I am thinking this is high enough praise to gain your attention, yes?
So, if the phrase "ultra-hip americana" has soiled your mood, please endeavour to make it to the end of my article.
Roots & Crowns is about the prettiest gust of music you're likely to hear in a good long while, it is an album which finds itself hunkering down at the mathematical convergence between beauty and its less popular uncle, substance, and setting up a rustic, dilapidated cabin therein. While the extent of my own knowledge vis a vis the genre of Americana prior to diving into Califone's ridiculously prolific output consisted of all the Johnny Cash I've ever heard, which is embarassingly little, I can safely relate to you that this music is the aural manifestation of a sunset. Frontman Tim Rutili and his merry, allegedly huge cast of conspirators are not so much informed by man's nature and nature's man - if you take my meaning - as they are the gleaming avatars of these most provocative ideals. It sounds grandiose, and it is. Roots & Crowns glides over and embraces topics as smart and provocative as martyrdom, familial loss, loving imperfection, and some vicariously unnameable things with both strength and real sweetness and it could be, in short, country music. But it's far from being so simple, which is what has got me so hot and bothered, if you've noticed. What's set Califone apart, at least for the indie set, is spectacular and gorgeously realized execution and a delicate skirting of cliche. The expression of such common, albeit importantly common themes is so effortlessly performed and beautifully produced on this, their ninth studio release, that the music is pure joy of sound before the surfeit of genuine intellect that is each song's content becomes apparent.
This not just some guys with acoustic instruments in a barn somewhere, this is an extraordinarily modern piece of music. I mean, they have their acoustic guitars most of the time, sure. But they've also brought a suite of electronic and studio-borne tricks at the ready and they use them as artists should.
Now I do in fact have one caveat about the record, and it is its insufferably slow beginning. The four ditties that eat up Roots & Crowns' first fifteen minutes, while pretty in their own right, are easily the most lackluster on the album. They drag, and offer the least by way of the creativity and emotive impact the band is capable of. Opener Pink & Sour is dark and inexplicably electronic, a drawn-out moody affair that's intriguing as a first track, but scarier than most of the rest of the songs without much impact. Spider's House and Sunday Noises are very nearly by-the-numbers country pieces which slink by with a fair bit of simple charm but little presence. If there were little more to the album than what this first act suggest, it wouldn't be worth half the praise that's been heaped upon it.
But things pick up with the inscrutably muscular folk of A Chinese Actor and don't fail to extract the breath from your chest for the next seven tracks.
Our Kitten Sees Ghosts maps out the real tense of the record, a breezey mess of acoustic guitar and rustic soul that absolutely worships the clarity and beauty of sound possible with such classic tools. Feedback and a perfectly produced atmosphere of resonance glimmer across most every bar, a sound that's simultaneously all Califone's own and yet immediately and endlessly attractive. The vibrant marriage of simple, clunky percussion, powerful acoustic radiance, and veritable chasms of productive nuance and electronic noise shimmer and glide across the whole of this record's remainder, not a single note out of place nor a mood imperfectly delivered. Tim Rutili's voice has the consistency of warm syrup and is applied as such. His isn't exactly an American drawl, but the man sings good and slow with a purpose. Better than this, and to do no insult to the man's thick and golden voice, the production of tracks like The Orchids and Burned By The Christians and half a dozen other benefit enormously from the utterly perfect layering of his diligent vocal tracks. There couldn't be more than two or three adorning each song, but the effect is uniformly spectacular, compounding and detailing a simple voice's stark emotion and weary intelligence with sincere elegance.
This is pretty music. But sugary it ain't.
Latterday tracks Black Metal Valentine and Rose Petal Ear - especially Rose Petal Ear - revel in the sort of deep country gothicism which'll raise the hair on the back of your neck in any stretch of unkempt woods. The seamlessly brilliant pairing of tinny, high strung acoustic guitar with sudden swaths of distorted, down-tuned electric bass positively creep me out, in the loveliest sense of the phrase, and realize the potency of the field of music this band's mining without succumbing even the least bit to repetition. Black Metal Valentine leans even more heavily on bare electronics, and seems to grow out of a place between the haunted house of Climbing Up The Walls and the woods around it. It slinks along under foggy vocals and eerily tapping percussion to create some of the most stunning moments on the album, the whole spectrum of dissonant effects coming together in absurdly moving collisions of sound. When Mister Rutili deigns to put falsetto into his songs, as with these ones, he does so with the precision of a surgeon and with the style of the mad variety.
Penultimate track 3 Legged Animal packs all the melancholy, impossible hope, and talent this band possesses into four minutes of flawless pop-folk, the kind of sleepy, sun-on-your-face gem that should woo literally every human being on the planet. Every band has that song which any fan will instantly recommend to anyone halfway interested: this is that song. Easily the most upbeat song to be found on Roots & Crowns, this beauty barely affects a canter its whole length and when Tim Rutili croons, he's completely sincere and masterfully powerful without so much as raising his voice - it doesn't need more. While album closer If You Would breaks out a strident, ethereal piano for the ultimate in swarthy bring-downs, very much the country brethren of Pyramid Song, it's not so much noteworthy for its own pretty, somewhat plain effects, as for the finality of its hazy fade away. The all instrumental outro which constitutes the last handful of minutes of it and the album movingly affect a summary, a microcosm of everything that's just been heard. Strings pick up strains of hope, perversity, and ineffable sparks of fear. It's a breath from the unknown, built on the simply beautiful altar of the earth.
It's very much like a rickety Yellow House you might know, left wide open, abandoned, and wrought with unspeakable meaning. It's the soundtrack to the imagery built out of the countryside we all know, rarely visit, and immediately identify with both as an endless ghost of spindly trees and monstrous shanties, and as the cradel of each of our lives.
Like I said, it sounds grandiose, and it is.
Friday, May 04, 2007
And then there was something like two
Joshwa, it seems, has grown weary of blogging solo and has thus made this space into a collective of sorts. Whether this is a good idea, or a bad idea... well, I'll try my hardest not to kill it - with uninspired music reviews or y'know, accidental annihilation.
Additionally, I'll attempt to quell desires for excessive self deprecation now, and in posts Of The Future. 'Cause you can only take that for so long until you really wonder if it IS that "inadequate of a review/blurb/whathaveyou" and I do sort of want some respect.
Hooray! A real, goddamn reason to write. Words will flow all comfy-like soon enough, I would hope.
I recently reset my darling last.fm page in light of the nagging demonic voices that told me my top charts were dated and frankly, dull as can be. That'd generally be the direction I'd point someone in if they were to want, for whatever reason, a glimpse of my musical pallette. Oh, man I could've made a witty Owen Pallett joke there... Not that the request-for-an-extensive-overview-of -listening-habits-complete-with-graphs ever happens, but damn, that would make us (yes, I speak for Josh now) really fucking giddy. Music geekery, hooray. But, I digress (hardly a rare occurence for me... editing will be an asset in the Future) and what I wanted to say was that it's currently in shambles but will grow into a beautiful flower representing all that I love and cherish.
Next time: content.
Additionally, I'll attempt to quell desires for excessive self deprecation now, and in posts Of The Future. 'Cause you can only take that for so long until you really wonder if it IS that "inadequate of a review/blurb/whathaveyou" and I do sort of want some respect.
Hooray! A real, goddamn reason to write. Words will flow all comfy-like soon enough, I would hope.
I recently reset my darling last.fm page in light of the nagging demonic voices that told me my top charts were dated and frankly, dull as can be. That'd generally be the direction I'd point someone in if they were to want, for whatever reason, a glimpse of my musical pallette. Oh, man I could've made a witty Owen Pallett joke there... Not that the request-for-an-extensive-overview-of -listening-habits-complete-with-graphs ever happens, but damn, that would make us (yes, I speak for Josh now) really fucking giddy. Music geekery, hooray. But, I digress (hardly a rare occurence for me... editing will be an asset in the Future) and what I wanted to say was that it's currently in shambles but will grow into a beautiful flower representing all that I love and cherish.
Next time: content.
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Internet search: hime lick manover
I've been trying to figure out why Google Reader is necessary for the past two hours.
Essentially you use it to plug websites in as subscriptions, and then it compiles any new posts for you to read in customizable and streamlined format. So basically it is an extremely limited web browser. As in, that thing which you use to use it. You know the channel guide you get to peruse satellite television? It's exactly like that, and yet I feel like I am wasting precious kilowatts without it.
I subscribed to Krista's blog and it feels as though I have parked a Google agent outside of her house in a black Cadillac, clad in a trenchcoat and watching.
Essentially you use it to plug websites in as subscriptions, and then it compiles any new posts for you to read in customizable and streamlined format. So basically it is an extremely limited web browser. As in, that thing which you use to use it. You know the channel guide you get to peruse satellite television? It's exactly like that, and yet I feel like I am wasting precious kilowatts without it.
I subscribed to Krista's blog and it feels as though I have parked a Google agent outside of her house in a black Cadillac, clad in a trenchcoat and watching.
Josh actually thinks these topics are related to each other
I like Google, perhaps you've heard of it.
I'm mostly sure I'd wielded the mighty search engine for a good half-decade before I finally made the jump into that tantalizingly vague little piece of text hinting at "More >>". Since then the company has achieved something like Illuminati-scale dominance of virtually every piece of information reaching my and, if my guess is correct, every single other human being's mind.
I can, right now, use Google Earth to find an aerial photograph of my own home then open up Google Picasa to post this picture onto my Google Blog which will be recorded in my Google Reader and thereby into my Google Email account. There are programs from Google on my computer which I have actually forgotten about but I am certain are still there, adorning the deepest dungeons of my digital kingdom smiling happily and sporting stylish interfaces. Every time I so much as look at these sleek paragons of computerized efficiency I feel the whole vista of human possibilty lurch before me, vast fields of potency held open by the nigh endless power of Google.
This would all be very exceptional if I really had anything to do. I am sure very important people are using it right now to actually take over the world.
Now: I like how, even amidst the notoriously violent sprawl of total anguish which is final exams, Spring's managed to drag its cheap ass out of retirement for a swing at legendarily stubborn Kingstonian Winter. This has had two immediately recognizable effects. First, the lot of us students get to ruin ourselves on textbooks and ink fumes with full view and knowledge of the saccharinely beautiful weather outside our crypt-like windows, a land of beauty which seems to relish its opportunity to prod and taunt us whilst remaining just beyond our reach, and flitting into actual goddamn blizzards the moment we step outside. Second, holy jesus spring hormones are ready to get some business done.
In honour of this, as something of a burnt wicker effigy style offering aimed at the placation of our lusty and effervescent god, I'd like to put forth the following list of names, corresponding to what I am sure you will discover to be the eight prettiest folks in indie music.
My list will be complete with pictures. I am sure I do not need to explain the importance of such decadence within the context of my sinful list-making. The pictures, I don't need to tell you, are brought to you by Google. Heee.
Sufjan Stevens
Get it out of your system right now: Gay, Josh, super gay. Okay. Sufjan is a pretty boy, he plays bluegrass instruments with flair and penetrating blue eyes and has somehow made the former sexy. Guys are now going to parties and picking up girls using the humble banjo instead of the classic acoustic guitar, and I blame this man. He has ruined forty years worth of accepted sexual politicking and made me feel inadequate. You also could slice diamonds on those cheekbones.
Owen Pallet
I've recently had to good fortune to see young Owen live, and I can tell you all from experience that he is a good looking boy. The kind that make me curse my mortal body and deliberate over the pros and cons of expensive and dangerous surgery, but I digress. His appeal is astoundingly compounded by his simultaneous invocation of old-school geek culture with ridiculously advanced playing of the violin, and the fact that he both describes his feather-soft singing as complete shit and also on par with the Thin White Duke.
Emily Haines
I admit, sometimes she looks like she's subsisted on wine and cheap gin for a good couple of months: all hungover and partially skeletal. I haven't seen her in person: I'm seventy five percent sure this phenomenon has photography to blame. Emily is, at least under certain light, spectacularily sexy. Her consistently hot-and-bothered lyricism has the uncanny ability to hook directly into my libido and stick there, and when she sings in french I feel like that horny guy from the Adams Family. I can't help it. I don't need to mention that she's an All Canadian superstar, which at this point in time I conjecture does qualify as Supremely Hot, and that she moshes in miniskirts. And did you see that video with the bondage themes? Jeeeeezus.
Karen O
So she's half Korean, and half Polish? Something like that. I relate to Karen as New Yawk's version of Miss Haines: the same, only louder and crazier. Her sense of style very frequently scares the living hell out of me, but when the act's off she's absolutely magnetic. Lithe and allegedly batshit crazy, I can't pinpoint how much of her sex appeal is the direct result of her erotic punk rock persona, but neither do I spend much time deconstructing such things. Her lips are almost as beautiful as Regina's, I like her bangs, and I'm always a sucker for the deep dark hair.
Sarah Balliet
She plays a cello in a rock n' roll band which is inlayed with Iron Maiden album covers. No, not that one, but if you want to come over I'll show you since I plan on making Sarah my girlfriend. I honestly just don't know that much about this beautiful Murder By Deather, except what I have just told you, but her tough-as-nails attitude and conjoined gorgeous cello playing and pretty face is enough justification for the crush I like to assume she reciprocates. One time Jess saw MBD live and she couldn't see Sarah: goddamnit.
Sarah Slean
Being a twin has some funny side-effects which non-twins don't really get. Case in point, I couldn't allow myself to like Sarah Slean all through high school because my twin sister loved her to the point of idolatry and I just didn't like music that Alyssa likes. That's a bad Josh: first year out of high school I got to see Sarah perform in the same church I'd later see Final Fantasy at, and upon seeing my twin sister again the first words out of my mouth were something along the lines of "I saw an angel and she sang to me." I've since scoured the hoary pores of the internet searching for any picture which might accurately convey the overwhelmingly beautiful presence that the songwriter carries like a bracelet, to no avail. The first person to buy my sister a drink at a bar ever was Sarah Slean, and I am really totally jealous.
Valérie Jodoin-Keaton
All of you readers just went, "Who?" Let me tell you: the first time I saw the Dears perform I spent the entire time trying to physically adjust myself to the torrent of absolutely flawless Canadian rock which had flowed into and over me for a good half hour. The second time, I spent almost all of the concert fixated like a crazy man on the equally flawless visage of Valérie. She plays flute and second synthesizer, and is in general a heart-stoppingly beautiful woman. I recently discovered that frontman Murray Lightburn is in fact not married to her, but the other girl in the band, and I actually exulted because I thought I had a chance. Jess immediately laughed at me.
Regina Spektor
I know you're not surprised. Also, you're wondering if my blog has had enough frivolous pictures of Regina tossed in for candy. The answer is NO. I don't believe I need to again expunge my deep-seated adoration of Miss Spektor, nor do I think I could reasonably stop talking if I were to begin. She's the prettiest woman in music, you know? Her lips and eyes could start a war, her figure can and does regularily induce aneurisms in yours truly, and her shy and earthly personality and ceaselessly quixotic songwriting taps into the warmest feelings and memories I humbly tote around with me. I have a crush on her, and if this list isn't in any sort of numbered order she still takes first place on principle. I often wonder if I could meet and speak to the lady without melting like a cheap candle: in most scenarios it doesn't turn out well.
Miss Leslie Feist gets an honourable mention for consistently writing and recording the sexiest Canadian pop-folk I have the singular pleasure of listening to. The Reminder recently dropped and it delivers on the breath-taking potential which the Albertan-cum-Maritimes songstress has been working on expressing for years and two moderately fantastic albums. I think she's pretty too, but something deep inside of me registers her as some sort of second grade teacher archetype. I can't really deal with it, you understand.
I wonder if Google's noticed me today. I'm sure there's some way that I can check that, excuse me.
I'm mostly sure I'd wielded the mighty search engine for a good half-decade before I finally made the jump into that tantalizingly vague little piece of text hinting at "More >>". Since then the company has achieved something like Illuminati-scale dominance of virtually every piece of information reaching my and, if my guess is correct, every single other human being's mind.
I can, right now, use Google Earth to find an aerial photograph of my own home then open up Google Picasa to post this picture onto my Google Blog which will be recorded in my Google Reader and thereby into my Google Email account. There are programs from Google on my computer which I have actually forgotten about but I am certain are still there, adorning the deepest dungeons of my digital kingdom smiling happily and sporting stylish interfaces. Every time I so much as look at these sleek paragons of computerized efficiency I feel the whole vista of human possibilty lurch before me, vast fields of potency held open by the nigh endless power of Google.
This would all be very exceptional if I really had anything to do. I am sure very important people are using it right now to actually take over the world.
Now: I like how, even amidst the notoriously violent sprawl of total anguish which is final exams, Spring's managed to drag its cheap ass out of retirement for a swing at legendarily stubborn Kingstonian Winter. This has had two immediately recognizable effects. First, the lot of us students get to ruin ourselves on textbooks and ink fumes with full view and knowledge of the saccharinely beautiful weather outside our crypt-like windows, a land of beauty which seems to relish its opportunity to prod and taunt us whilst remaining just beyond our reach, and flitting into actual goddamn blizzards the moment we step outside. Second, holy jesus spring hormones are ready to get some business done.
In honour of this, as something of a burnt wicker effigy style offering aimed at the placation of our lusty and effervescent god, I'd like to put forth the following list of names, corresponding to what I am sure you will discover to be the eight prettiest folks in indie music.
My list will be complete with pictures. I am sure I do not need to explain the importance of such decadence within the context of my sinful list-making. The pictures, I don't need to tell you, are brought to you by Google. Heee.
Sufjan Stevens
Get it out of your system right now: Gay, Josh, super gay. Okay. Sufjan is a pretty boy, he plays bluegrass instruments with flair and penetrating blue eyes and has somehow made the former sexy. Guys are now going to parties and picking up girls using the humble banjo instead of the classic acoustic guitar, and I blame this man. He has ruined forty years worth of accepted sexual politicking and made me feel inadequate. You also could slice diamonds on those cheekbones.
Owen Pallet
I've recently had to good fortune to see young Owen live, and I can tell you all from experience that he is a good looking boy. The kind that make me curse my mortal body and deliberate over the pros and cons of expensive and dangerous surgery, but I digress. His appeal is astoundingly compounded by his simultaneous invocation of old-school geek culture with ridiculously advanced playing of the violin, and the fact that he both describes his feather-soft singing as complete shit and also on par with the Thin White Duke.
Emily Haines
I admit, sometimes she looks like she's subsisted on wine and cheap gin for a good couple of months: all hungover and partially skeletal. I haven't seen her in person: I'm seventy five percent sure this phenomenon has photography to blame. Emily is, at least under certain light, spectacularily sexy. Her consistently hot-and-bothered lyricism has the uncanny ability to hook directly into my libido and stick there, and when she sings in french I feel like that horny guy from the Adams Family. I can't help it. I don't need to mention that she's an All Canadian superstar, which at this point in time I conjecture does qualify as Supremely Hot, and that she moshes in miniskirts. And did you see that video with the bondage themes? Jeeeeezus.
Karen O
So she's half Korean, and half Polish? Something like that. I relate to Karen as New Yawk's version of Miss Haines: the same, only louder and crazier. Her sense of style very frequently scares the living hell out of me, but when the act's off she's absolutely magnetic. Lithe and allegedly batshit crazy, I can't pinpoint how much of her sex appeal is the direct result of her erotic punk rock persona, but neither do I spend much time deconstructing such things. Her lips are almost as beautiful as Regina's, I like her bangs, and I'm always a sucker for the deep dark hair.
Sarah Balliet
She plays a cello in a rock n' roll band which is inlayed with Iron Maiden album covers. No, not that one, but if you want to come over I'll show you since I plan on making Sarah my girlfriend. I honestly just don't know that much about this beautiful Murder By Deather, except what I have just told you, but her tough-as-nails attitude and conjoined gorgeous cello playing and pretty face is enough justification for the crush I like to assume she reciprocates. One time Jess saw MBD live and she couldn't see Sarah: goddamnit.
Sarah Slean
Being a twin has some funny side-effects which non-twins don't really get. Case in point, I couldn't allow myself to like Sarah Slean all through high school because my twin sister loved her to the point of idolatry and I just didn't like music that Alyssa likes. That's a bad Josh: first year out of high school I got to see Sarah perform in the same church I'd later see Final Fantasy at, and upon seeing my twin sister again the first words out of my mouth were something along the lines of "I saw an angel and she sang to me." I've since scoured the hoary pores of the internet searching for any picture which might accurately convey the overwhelmingly beautiful presence that the songwriter carries like a bracelet, to no avail. The first person to buy my sister a drink at a bar ever was Sarah Slean, and I am really totally jealous.
Valérie Jodoin-Keaton
All of you readers just went, "Who?" Let me tell you: the first time I saw the Dears perform I spent the entire time trying to physically adjust myself to the torrent of absolutely flawless Canadian rock which had flowed into and over me for a good half hour. The second time, I spent almost all of the concert fixated like a crazy man on the equally flawless visage of Valérie. She plays flute and second synthesizer, and is in general a heart-stoppingly beautiful woman. I recently discovered that frontman Murray Lightburn is in fact not married to her, but the other girl in the band, and I actually exulted because I thought I had a chance. Jess immediately laughed at me.
Regina Spektor
I know you're not surprised. Also, you're wondering if my blog has had enough frivolous pictures of Regina tossed in for candy. The answer is NO. I don't believe I need to again expunge my deep-seated adoration of Miss Spektor, nor do I think I could reasonably stop talking if I were to begin. She's the prettiest woman in music, you know? Her lips and eyes could start a war, her figure can and does regularily induce aneurisms in yours truly, and her shy and earthly personality and ceaselessly quixotic songwriting taps into the warmest feelings and memories I humbly tote around with me. I have a crush on her, and if this list isn't in any sort of numbered order she still takes first place on principle. I often wonder if I could meet and speak to the lady without melting like a cheap candle: in most scenarios it doesn't turn out well.
Miss Leslie Feist gets an honourable mention for consistently writing and recording the sexiest Canadian pop-folk I have the singular pleasure of listening to. The Reminder recently dropped and it delivers on the breath-taking potential which the Albertan-cum-Maritimes songstress has been working on expressing for years and two moderately fantastic albums. I think she's pretty too, but something deep inside of me registers her as some sort of second grade teacher archetype. I can't really deal with it, you understand.
I wonder if Google's noticed me today. I'm sure there's some way that I can check that, excuse me.
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