10.20.07

Four in the Must-Have Category

Posted in Music at 9:46 pm by Moody

The following four albums — however different from each other they may be — should be considered indispensable for your music library. Each proves itself on its own terms, building on the merits of those that preceded it. While any one of them might not be your cup of tea, there is not any doubt that all of them are top shelf in terms of quality. All are worth at least sampling, regardless of your usual tastes; who knows when a new favorite might emerge? Goûtez la différence. Apprenez la différence. Vive la différence!

(Just click the album covers to go to the band/album page.)

Radiohead, In Rainbows

Longtime fans of Radiohead have, over the years since Pablo Honey, come to expect surprises, innovation, and the surpassing of all previous efforts with each new release. Although Hail to the Thief felt, to some extent, like a subtle return to elements found in OK Computer and The Bends, it was still different, still another animal. But while In Rainbows builds on the sound of previous albums, it seems to finally realize a true and full synthesis (not distillation) of and balance between all that preceded it. It seems the title suggests as much; all the colors of the band’s music are represented in one overarching work.

If synthesizing and finding the balance point of the band’s distinctive sound on a new album was what they sought to do, the members of Radiohead succeeded admirably. In committing songs to an album that were previously reserved for live audiences (the best test subjects for new material, I’d think), and then reworking them for the sake of the whole, Radiohead have produced an album at least as solid as The Bends and perhaps more accessible than any previous album. It is a work spangled with the sort of highlights and great moments that fans of Radiohead long ago came to expect, but it never brings about the kind of nostalgia one gets — the kind that sends you back to old favorites — when a band is passing their prime. Radiohead have the kind of staying power one hopes for, like a promise delivered in rainbows.

For a longer, more in-depth review, see Pitchfork.

Listening to: Radiohead - Nude via FoxyTunes

Meshell Ndegeocello, The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams

On her seventh full-length recording, Meshell has brought the inebriating subtleties of Comfort Woman and the algebraic jazz complexities of The Spirit Music Jamia: Dance of the Infidel together with the fierce incisiveness of Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape to produce a truly innovative, hard-hitting, world challenging work of art that speaks with a blunt, poetic elegance to the life we have been given, the life we have made, the life we wish we had, the life we continue to fool ourselves about. If you are not confronted by the fearless questions Meshell is asking, then you simply have not heard her.

The world has made me the man of my dreams is consistently brilliant. It is a hard brilliance, like that of a diamond, polished by Meshell’s wide range of vocal emotions and amazing lyrical prowess, not to mention her astonishing (one could arguably call it “unsurpassed”) bass guitar work. Musically (by which I mean to include what is sung and how it is sung), the album reaches for and attains a level of pristine artistry; its complex constructions come off as mathematical simplicity, its simplicity unfolds into a rich tapestry of poetry as worthy as Rumi’s and Audre Lorde’s. Her themes are as diverse as ever, yet this album has seen their potency and temperament strengthened still further, as if she has somehow managed to squeeze into them the understanding of even more life lessons.

Listening to: Me’Shell Ndegéocello - Michelle Johnson via FoxyTunes

Iron & Wine, Shepherd’s Dog

“Southern gothic indie folk” would be one label you could stamp Sam Beam’s (Iron & Wine’s) work with, … with a side of Tex-Mex. However, it would be easier instead to say that Shepherd’s Dog is a singularly haunting album buoyed up by a smiling spirit and love of life (despite or because of the odds). To be sure, there is something so easy-going about Beam’s stoner vocals that you may, in fact, overlook what he singing:

Here’s a prayer for the body buried by the interstate / Murder of a soldier, a tree in a forest up in flames / Black valley, peace beneath the city / Where the women hear the washboard rhythm in their bosom when they say, / “Give me good legs and a Japanese car and show me a road” \ (from “Peace Beneath the City”)

With guests musicians from the band Calexico (with whom Beam did an EP called In the Reins in 2005), Shepherd’s Dog varies between southern and south-western regions of Americana in terms of style, but this only lends to the strength of the album because they mix so well in Beam’s hands. The fact is, the music is beautiful as farewell kisses, the lyrics are poetry as pretty as autumn’s favorite dresses, and together they create songs that it would be awfully hard to tire of in one long, worthwhile lifetime. Shepherd’s Dog plays to the part of me that yet hopes for a good ending without having to look the other way from what’s sad or hurtful in life.

Listening to: Iron & Wine - Peace Beneath The City via FoxyTunes

Angels of Light, We Are Him

This release by Angels of Light (with Akron/Family and the assistance of several great musicians) should be considered a music library necessity in the same way Modest Mouse’s The Moon & Antarctica and Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot are, with the understanding that We Are Him hails from ultimate Thule in comparison. Featuring guests like Christoph Hahn (electric guitar; open-tuned lap steel), Bill Rieflin (”Hammond B3 organ, Moog synthesizer, electric guitar, bass guitar, drums/percussion, piano, casio, and backing vocals and probably 3 or 4 things I can’t remember at the moment…”, according to Gira), Eszter Balint (fiddle and violin), and several other really talented musicians, We Are Him sounds full, rich, and otherwise instrumentally resplendent; it sounds, in short, like nothing you’ve heard before.

By turns hypnotic, dark, intricate, touching, creepy; We Are Him does not let up, even in its quieter moments, for its 55.7 minute duration. In his fifties now, Michael Gira — creator/frontman of the seminal avant-rock band, Swans — has spent his career honing a particularly sharp style of music nearly unparalleled in the (generally) non-commercial music industry. On this new album, Los Angeles native Gira sometimes recalls Johnny Cash and sometimes Nick Cave, but throughout the album’s length he maintains his signature style, a style tempered in the same fires — set by New York’s “no wave” scene — that gave us Sonic Youth and Glenn Branca. But, lest this be misinterpreted, let it be said that Angels of Light are the heirs of a certain attitude born in the late ’70s - early ’80s, but the music is contemporary; previous decades are not here revised or revisited. We Are Him is truly a work of this era. While others try to revive or recreate their heydays, Gira proves beyond doubt that his education has not stopped and that his development has been true.

Listening to: Angels of Light - The Visitor via FoxyTunes

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02.09.07

Of Noise and Data, Pt. 2: “Data”

Posted in Bands, Music at 8:34 pm by Moody

Ryoji Ikeda: Dataplex

While Merzbow’s noise is accessible as a topic of discussion owing at least in part to its controversial, confrontational nature, Ryoji Ikeda’s dataplex [iTunes link] — an ultra-precise, intricately layered, minimalist audio experience — turns back any easy, let alone ready-made, discourse. In its own way it parallels Masami Akita’s efforts generally: the bits and bytes of (sound) data Ikeda uses do not lend themselves to interpretation; only in relation do they “make sense” as a work or, better, as a movement, and even then that sense takes time to form. As is pointed out:

the first eight tracks of dataplex consist mostly of high-frequency raw data. their structures are located clearly outside the cosmos of music. instead, these linear tracks seem to be source code transformed into an audible medium; a constant stream of data, they represent the basic material of the album.

However, any comparison to Merzbow is bound to be short-lived. Even in those first eight tracks (lasting some ten minutes) there is a marked difference, as if we are dealing with an entirely different aural medium, an entirely different psychoacoustic realm. What is in Metamorphism [iTunes link] a violent, destructive assault on the mind, is in those first eight tracks of dataplex an impersonal flow of bits and bytes of data with only the sense of a machine’s organization. And where Akita strikes down whatever structure would arise and stabilize in the maelstrom, Ikeda builds mathematical structures, both linear and fractal, from the otherwise meaningless atoms and molecules of sound. In other words, Ikeda progressively brings the “raw data” into the “cosmos of music” through an artistic arrangement of its content.

And yet, Ikeda does not remove the listener from the realm of data itself. He does not elevate or suppress the data in the way that, say, pointillists or abstract expressionists do. Perhaps a useful comparison at this point is to Alva Noto’s excellent release, For [iTunes link], where basic elements are treated, manipulated, and beautifully turned — or elevated — into aural paintings that recall everything from Blade Runner’s quieter moments and scenes from La Planète Sauvage, to advanced alien races (beloved of hard SF) blossoming into space on gossamer sails of sculpted light, to the magisters playing the glass bead game, to a meditative night alone with Eno and Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies cards. It is not surprising that Carsten Nicolai studied landscape design. It is also not surprising that, like Ikeda, Nicolai makes art installations. It is certainly not surprising that the two artists have worked together.

But Ikeda’s work represents, it seems to me, a further step into minimalism. It is a masterfully minimalist work that is designed to strip away all but the focus of the project at hand.

The visual aesthetic vanishes, to be replaced by pure data, yet at the same time the very essence of the image transformed into an abstract but utterly precise mathematical code. [Source]

The ninth track, “data.microhelix”, takes flight from the quasi-structures of the previous seven tracks — from “data.simplex” to “data.googolplex” — all of which end with the suffix “-plex” (the first track is, naturally enough, “data.index”). This is the point at which the abstract mathematical code becomes a more aesthetically recognizable geometrical form. It is also where the genius of Ikeda’s minimalism begins to fully reveal itself. As the beats, breaks, hums and clicks roll, it might seem tempting to describe the track as techno-based, but that would be a mistake. Although there are unmistakable similarities, these are superficial, and donning a good pair of head- or earphones is enough to dispel the illusion. One moves immediately from basic math (the m-d-a-s of that old mnemonic) to complex polynomials expressed in sound, whose equations play out like beautiful aural theorems with song titles. Nine tracks farther along (”data.vortex”), Ikeda blows it all away in an astonishingly open space that I can only describe as being the perfect ambient soundtrack for the infinite light of cyberspace, into which he gradually introduces a fluttering beat and certain other sounds that virtually overwhelm the senses. But at the point where the eighteenth becomes the nineteenth track, “data.matrix”, we re-enter a more active space again, leaving the infinite array and returning to the activity of the base Arabic numerals. Into this ten-minute track the infinite is reintroduced as a background for the finite activity in the foreground. And so we have the full spectrum in flow, the full picture is revealed, and none of it is any more or less than the sum of its parts. In the final track, “data.adaplex”, Ikeda returns us to the realm of raw, almost undifferentiated, data. Final impression? Ikeda’s is the work of a virtuoso.

So, is dataplex [iTunes link] machinelike, or does the compositional effort of the artist give it a human face, as it were? As I said, Ryoji Ikeda neither elevates nor suppresses the data that he uses in his composition. In a sense, I feel that he frees the data from its implicit or ulterior use so that it may be expressed qua data-in-itself. Certainly, he chooses the keys and tones, the BPMs and arrangements. But in the execution of the work the data is revealed, as if by an electron microscope, leaving us to ponder that it can be seen as particles or waves but never both simultaneously. The sine wave only exists in motion, though any point along its length may be perfectly graphed. Deeply considered, the tracks are inevitably machinelike — owing to their computational origin and digital existence — up to the point where the listener perceives and (thereby) interprets their motion. It is the listener who will then elevate or suppress the data, or else will yield meditatively to the experience of the data-in-itself.

………

Back to “Of Noise and Data, Pt. 1: ‘Noise’“

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01.25.07

Of Noise and Data, Pt. 1: “Noise”

Posted in Bands, Music, Society and Culture at 10:37 am by Moody

Merzbow: Metamorphism

Noise — true and unadulterated noise — is not the chaos from which order emerges, it is the great annihilator that devours all order. The television, the radio, the movie, the CD; the text, the word, the letters; emotions, senses, thought; in the end, noise consumes them all, consumes everything but itself. Noise is the yawning void, the infinite string of random ones and zeros tangling and raveling in a blinding light of overload and feedback, simultaneously attack and decay. It is the amorphous and indefinite haze of shattered alphabets, all babble and insentient glossolalia wrapped, bound and layered over and over in and by and with discordant choral voices saying nothing. It is the utterly unstable, timeless, roiling destruction of all alphanumeric and otherwise information-bearing codices. Noise cannot be reasoned with; it neither hates nor loves, fears nor desires, hopes nor despairs, laughs nor weeps; it is not simply illogical or irrational, it is nonlogical and arational. It lays all composition to waste, and no composition may overcome it.

So it may seem odd, right from the start, to discuss a “noise composition” like Merzbow’s Metamorphism [iTunes link]. Then again, the four tracks that comprise this release are not only or not simply noise — there is, in fact, some recognizable instrumentation — although anyone who’d deny that they each attain a level nearly tantamount to ultimate noise (and for almost unbearably sustained intervals) has apparently not yet listened to Metamorphism. What instrumentation there is is ultimately broken and violently obliterated. But what should be considered here is that Masami Akita, like minimalist electronic music composer Ryoji Ikeda (see “Of Noise and Data, Pt. 2: ‘Data’”), is the composer of the sound we finally hear and interpret for ourselves. The point is that however thought-numbingly anti-harmonious or deafeningly destructive/deconstructive each song is in-itself, it was an ordered mind that made it and laid it out before us. So, then, let’s ask a useful question. What motivates Masami Akita; why does he make noise?

What drives Akita is of course best summed up by him, and in his answers to the questions posed by Perfect Sound Forever, the following exchange is illuminating:

PSF: Your work has little connection with what we think of as music- melody, rhythm, chorus- [what] are your thoughts on this?

I like melody and rhythm and I was listening to many different types of music. But my project is in a very different way. My music is not only my reaction against other music. It’s just my way.

PSF: What are you trying to communicate through your music?

My own sensation. I don’t see it as something that I’m communicating. I’m not of any special opinion about this. I’m just doing my work. Of course, I need listeners to hear my work but I have no control about how they hear it.

How does one hear Merzbow? That depends on a number of factors more or less obvious. For instance, what are the presuppositions at the point of exposure? Let’s assume two things: assume that 1) whatever Akita’s intentions/reasons, you alone shall hear what you hear, and 2) whatever you think or feel about it, whatever you’ve presupposed, the noise that Akita has created/composed shall defy you — it will persist as noise regardless of your or my or his interpretation or attitude regarding it.

As to why one would want to listen to Merzbow, I am sure there are any number of reasons. One that comes to mind — and perhaps it has come to yours, possibly colored by sarcasm — is masochism. This is not at all a bad answer. But let’s remove any ambiguity by providing the straight, general definition: masochism is “the enjoyment of what appears to be painful or tiresome” (source: Apple Dictionary). Masochism is also “the tendency to derive pleasure, esp. sexual gratification, from one’s own pain or humiliation” (source: ut supra). In short, control issues lie at the heart of the matter. There is, in listening to Merzbow or to noise compositions generally, a risk of losing control, consciously engaged in, or a willing relinquishment of control. The subject may be further illuminated by pointing out that early Merzbow releases were frequently wrapped in pornography and images of bondage (taken by Akita). However, by presenting a triad of masochism-bondage-noise, important as it may be, I am opening the door to a subject too abstruse to be comprehensively taken on here. Caution must be taken. And in the end I can do no better, pragmatically speaking, than to recommend “Full With Noise: Theory and Japanese Noise Music” by Paul Hegarty, who tellingly said,

Noise music becomes ambience not as you learn how to listen, or when you accept its refusal to settle, but when you are no longer in a position to accept or deny.

and then cite at length from another interview with Akita:

You have been quoted as saying, “There are no special images of ideology behind Merzbow”– unlike the early Industrialists such as Throbbing Gristle, SPK, and Whitehouse that used shocking imagery. Yet you have repeatedly used pornography. Isn’t pornography a shocking image that creates a certain ideology, whether intended or not?

I have two directions in the use of pornography. In my early cassettes and mail art projects I used lots of pornography. I made many collages using pornography as it was a very important item in my mail art/mail music. I thought my cheap Noise cassettes were of the same value as cheap mail order pornography. These activities were called “Pornoise”. In this direction, I would say that I used pornography for it’s anti-social, cut-up value in information theory. I soon started to release Merzbow vinyl which was very different from the cassettes of this same time period. I think my vinyl works concentrated more on sound itself because I think vinyl is a more static medium. So, Merzbow went in two separate directions in the ’80s- a cassette direction and a vinyl direction. In the ’90s, these directions were mixed for one Merzbow. I know you’re thinking I’m still using porn images like bondage but these images are not porn to me. I use bondage images only for the release of connected works like Music for Bondage Performance I and 2 and Electroknots. My reasons for using bondage images are very clear- not for shock element but for documentary value. In fact, all bondage pictures I use are taken by myself. I know who the models are and who tied them up. I know the exact meaning of these bondage pictures. This is very different from people using Xeroxed bondage images from Japanese magazines. I know that there are many bondage images associated with Merzbow releases. But many of these releases use stupid images without my permission. I should control all of them but it is very difficult to control all products abroad. I don’t like the easy idea of using images without the knowledge of the image itself. So, it’s meaningless to create ideology by using pornography without the correct knowledge of the image itself.

I don’t wish to stray too far afield, here. What I am driving at is simply this: one submits to Merzbow, one submits to noise. There is, in Merzbow, a distinct BDSM quality and an implicit association with it. Fans of W.S. Burroughs and J.G. Ballard will immediately get this. In listening to Metamorphism, all that is allowed, in a de facto sense, is the experience of hearing. One’s conscious attempts to find order or sense in the extremely cacophonous assault are beaten down over and over, one’s thoughts sheared off at the root. The apparent order that on occasion arises in the four “songs” comes not as a false hope, and not in bad faith, but as a prop made for destruction that, in its destruction or in the process of destruction, brings about a more profound submission by the listener. It is, or it can be, a liberating experience, even if most people would not find it even remotely pleasurable per se.

It can also point to a more subversive understanding of control structures generally, structures which noise inherently undermines. For example, what is more patriotic than a march (vide “The Military March Form”)? Here we see structure with intent. In the military sphere, the uniforms (uniformity, homogeneity), the discipline of order, the very specific patterns displayed in a myriad of ways, all serve to strengthen the military structure, and this structure reflects the implicit goal of maintaining an ordered, harmonious society. The march is the heartbeat of the structure. It is the celebration of order opposed to chaos. That it may also become dangerous, especially when left unchecked to pursue its own ends, is apparent to anyone with some knowledge of the history of fascist, imperialist, communist, dictatorial and totalitarian regimes. In these may we see how the circle runs round. Consider the following: order needs structure, which in turn needs discipline, which in turn needs submission. In submission we have returned to bondage, which noise destroys (as it destroys everything but itself). Noise is, in terms of the discipline of the march, the war. It is no small point that all discipline, structure, and order eventually fails in a war, just as stone succumbs to the sea. But noise is not simply, militarily speaking, war, any more than it is, politically speaking, anarchy, any more than it is, medically speaking, cancer, any more than it is, sexually speaking, BDSM. One may submit to noise but, unlike the submission to order, that submission will ultimately be annihilated. The listener (the body reduced to being an ear) will be left to wonder about the realities of submission. In the submission to order, so long as it is maintained, so long as the march is kept up, there is no allowance made for asking questions or for self-reflection as such would be perceived as indicative of indiscipline and disorderly conduct. Thus it can be concluded that the submission to noise, however flawed, is or leads to the act of subverting the rule of order, discipline, structure, and society, if only in oneself. Put another way — in the tyranny of the mind, noise is the act of terrorism itself.

– — – — – –

On to “Of Noise and Data, Pt. 2: ‘Data’“

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01.21.07

A Window’s Haze of Sunlight

Posted in Bands, Music at 9:25 pm by Moody

Grizzly Bear: Yellow House

Edward Droste’s Grizzly Bear seems to have sprung almost fully formed from the lo-fi bedroom studio scene into the world of well polished lo-fi wonders. On Yellow House, the music of Droste’s band — including members Christopher Bear (the last name is coincidental), Daniel Rossen, and Chris Taylor — induces shivers of heightened emotion and varying inner states of calm by turns as it evokes respectful comparisons, sometimes broad and sometimes specific, to the likes of Radiohead, The Beach Boys, Arcade Fire, and Iron and Wine. Once you’ve listened to just a few songs from their new album, this is not at all surprising or eyebrow-raising.

The new material that comprises Yellow House (released on Warp Records on September 4th) puts the band at the vanguard of contemporary song writing. The album was self-recorded during an idyllic summer. The makeshift studio was provided by Droste’s mom’s living room in a yellow house just off Cape Cod. Magical, haunting melodies are still their mainstay. Grizzly Bear always craft their songs from start to finish - meticulous instrumentation and arrangements are their specialty. On Yellow House, Grizzly Bear still flex their lo-fi connoisseurship, but with a better recording - DIY embellished with Taylor’s fine sonic engineering acumen. Droste and Rossen share initial song writing duties, although the entire band collaborates to breath life into the tracks. [Source: Bio.]

Magical, haunting melodies, indeed. As in “Plans”, when the layered voices croon in your ear “Every option I have costs more than I’ve got…”, as the song’s odd beat (like a slow waltz performed from a burro’s back) dances you forward through time grown oddly syrupy, as the choral voice rises and falls (à la the aforementioned Beach Boys) and is finally cut-up among the odd electronic noises…. And also in “Marla”, with its nude-descending-a-staircase echoing piano and its strangely Seussian lyrics…. But, then again, “On a Neck, On a Spit” winds up with a much more straightforward alternative rock association in the end, shifting gears as it does into a slowly careering wall of sound that would, at the peak of the song (close to the four minute mark), be at home at Lollapalooza even as the initial 2:50 of the song puts me in mind of Pink Floyd’s “San Tropez”. “Reprise” follows all this up with banjo and a folky structure. And yet nowhere on Yellow House do you ever feel lost or snagged by a nagging sense of disjointedness.

Grizzly Bear hold together in their varied compositions with a refreshing musical vision that, for all the comparisons that could be made, is absolutely their own.

See two videos from Grizzly Bear: “Lullabye” (live), from Yellow House, and the more experimental and lo-fi “Deep Sea Diver”, from Ed Droste’s first effort, Horn of Plenty.

Thanks are due Pitchfork, whose review turned me on to the band.

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11.16.06

Elfin Bard in a Mythical City

Posted in Music at 7:45 am by Moody

Joanna Newsom: Ys

Okay, let me put it simply: buy this album, because it is, perhaps, the one album you need to buy this year. I know, I know… I know what some of you are thinking, and I understand. Her previous album, The Milk-Eyed Mender, though often glowingly reviewed, was made for eclectic tastes; pop accessibility was not its selling point, its genuinely quirky and innocent beauty was. Joanna Newsom is, after all, a beautifully eccentric denizen of Faerie, and her brand of folk music is never less than enchanting. When Kisha and I saw her at the Troubadour as an opening act — we went to see her and not the headliner — we were blown away by her sheer talent, but we both understood that many people would not be able to get past her singing style no matter how much they appreciated her words and harp. A shame, that last bit.

But the songs on Ys are not only more accessible. Joanna Newsom has expanded her vocal range and her music exponentially, managing to create on this new work a level of intimacy epic in its range. She has added strings, horns, backing vocals, and other instrumentation, using them judiciously and precisely, in much the same way as Fiona Apple did on the pre-release version of Extraordinary Machine. Vocally, there are complimentary comparisons to Björk’s voice on Vespertine, though they are positively distinct. Lyrically, her poetry has matured and developed in step with her voice’s ability to express it. Her themes are magically intricate tapestries, filled with heady and fresh breezes, touching realms enigmatic and crystal clear by turns, sweet and poignant, filled with sad systole and joyful diastole in the tradition of high literature. She manages to make you feel as if you are sharing in a secret moment, but that moment is the world itself.

Named after the mythical city built by a king for his daughter and drowned beneath the sea, Ys comprises five long tracks — four of which are over 9 minutes long (the fifth track is over 7 minutes) — that pass, alas, too quickly. They are each epic in scope, yet they seem to fly by as quickly as a joyful, meaningful holiday filled with merry meetings, a long dinner with wine and dessert, and great conversations that slowly fade as such conversations do. In other words, at just over fifty-five minutes long, Ys is a treasure for the heart.

With arrangements by Van Dyke Parks, engineering by Steve Albini, and production by Jim O’Rourke, you might think that the album would be more a product of their concerted efforts than her’s. But a first listen will dispell that idea. Their talents have served rather than subsumed Joanna’s work, allowing Ys to remain wholly her own. Which leads to this bold statement: Joanna Newsom’s Ys is worthy of more than a Grammy; it is worthy of becoming one of those works that remains on “Top” lists for decades to come, worthy of being referenced as a watershed moment in music history, worthy of taking its place among the stars whose work has periodically redefined for the better the artistic heights music might attain to.

Buy Joanna Newsom’s Ys and cherish it forever.

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10.08.06

Stories, Fables, and the Crafting of Songs

Posted in Music at 12:16 pm by Moody

The Decemberists: The Crane Wife

I am beginning to suspect that Colin Meloy and the rest of The Decemberists are incapable of doing anything wrong, are even capable of making things you might think would be wrong all right. Now on a major label, the band have demonstrated with The Crane Wife that they are still themselves even as they try out some pretty radical new ideas. Case in point, the 12′42″ track, “The Island”, which — believe it or not — is a prog rock epic à la Yes, Marillion, and older King Crimson. The song is in three parts: i. “Come and See”, ii. “The Landlord’s Daughter”, iii. “You’ll Not Feel the Drowning”. Musically, if you’ve not heard The Tain (the 2004 EP), it is nearly unlike anything you might imagine the band doing — “there’s a lot of exploration about where British folk met prog in the early 70s, late 60s”, says Meloy — except that it sounds like you’d hope it would sound, noodly organ and occasionally romping pace notwithstanding. Lyrically, it is exactly what you’d expect from the band. The mention of “Sycorax” in the song ties it, at least distantly, to Shakespeare’s The Tempest, while the mention of “Patagon” in the next line seems to tie it to a legendary tribe of South American giants reported by Magellan and his crew in the 1500s.

Thus so with the title track, which makes a beautiful, bittersweet, poignant three part song from a famous Japanese folk tale. Briefly, the story goes something like this:

a poor man finds an injured crane on his doorstep (or outside with an arrow in it), takes it in and nurses it back to health. After releasing the crane, a woman appears at his doorstep who he falls in love with and marries. Because they are in need of money, his wife offers to weave wondrous clothes out of silk that they could sell at the market, but only if he agrees never to watch her when she is making it. They begin to sell them and live a comfortable life, but he soon makes her weave them more and more. Oblivious to his wife’s diminishing health, his greed increases and he eventually peeks in to see what she is doing to make the silk she weaves so desirable. He is shocked to discover that at the loom is a crane plucking feathers from her body and weaving them into the loom. The crane, seeing him, flies away and never returns.

The Decemberists made the third part the first track on the album and put the first two parts together as the penultimate track. The third part deals with the loss of the crane wife and the shame of the man who in his oblivious greed abused and spied on her. It is not until we reach the ninth track that we hear how the story began, knowing already how their fate will be sealed. It’s a clever idea. It serves to make the instrumental arrangement all the more heart-tugging. When Meloy reaches the lines (in the second part) — singing them with such sadness — “But I was greedy, I was vain and I forced her to weaving / On a cold loom, in a closed room down the hall”, your heart feels torn in half.

It was also a good idea not to end the album on such a sad, sad note. The final track, “Sons and Daughters”, though lightly touched with a wistfullness defined by what isn’t said, is an uplifting, hopeful piece. If it is the ultimate statement of the album, then what it says is this: life is prone to tragedy, love is hard and doesn’t always overcome the folly, but we can always try, because we still might make it in the end. We need to remember the stories, and we need to keep trying. The Decemberists have given our effort a new soundtrack, and it is very, very good indeed.

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07.22.06

Chalk Dust on a Sound Board

Posted in Music at 12:02 am by Moody

Thom Yorke: The Eraser

The first don’t-call-it-a-solo album from Radiohead frontman, Thom Yorke, could be considered fittingly titled. It is apparent — based on reviews of recent performances by the band — that Radiohead’s sound is in some sort of transition. When it comes, fans may expect a new direction or some form of evolution from the band. But The Eraser is in keeping, directionally, with the last three albums the full band have released.

This is not a failing, per se. Yorke has provided a solid album of pretty much exactly the kind of music you’d probably like to hear from him (though minus Jonny Greenwood’s more distinctive marks). His work falls between and is reminiscent of Plaid’s and Lullatone’s, and, as noted by another reviewer, there are elements of Autechre in the mix. Sounds are chopped up, sliced, diced, mixed in a big bowl, and served with dry wine and vinegar attitude and the silky goat cheese dressing that is Yorke’s unmistakable, now-plaintive/now-wry voice, though certainly Yorke stretches his voice this time around, which is a welcome thing. His voice is lovely, ethereal, pained, bored — and, regardless of the mood, always on cue, even when the mood drifts into the realm of the droll, which it does infrequently.

All of this to say that The Eraser is a good album, a nice addition to the Radiohead collection you’ll never sell, but it is not an obviously innovative or bloody brilliant album. No, it is simply better than anything that, say, Chris Martin could put out.

Perhaps what we are hearing is Yorke erasing the solid line of progression Radiohead were following, the formula that they had been working with for some while. Perhaps The Eraser is here to sweep away what we’ve previously heard from the full band. If so, it is a fitting way to close a chapter in the band’s career, leaving us all ready and hungry for the next.

I leave it to others to discuss the merits of the cover art (and jigsaw puzzles), the somewhat typically (if not pretentiously) “clever” official site, and why it is that iTunes carries Yorke’s don’t-call-it-a-solo album but none of Radiohead’s. Such (potential) issues don’t add anything to the enjoyment, value, or quality of the album, so far as I am concerned, and did not affect my review.

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05.11.06

Fave Playlist @ Work

Posted in Music, Personal at 7:50 am by Moody

This playlist gives a pretty fair representation of what I’m listening to lately, if I’m not listening to death metal or dance music…. It’s also rather consciously put together, an especially appropriate playlist for work when I’ve been overhearing the crap monkeys chatter too long.

1. “Your Heart is an Empty Room” — Death Cab For Cutie
2. “Take It Easy (Love Nothing)” — Bright Eyes
3. “Off the Pedestal” — Wheat
4. “The Way Love Talks” — Devics
5. “Mourning Glory Story” — Jen Trynin
6. “Love’s Lost Guarantee” — Rogue Wave
7. “Take Your Love Out On Me” — Tracy Bonham
8. “Cheap Honesty” — Skunk Anansie
9. “Zero” — Smashing Pumpkins
10. “Mechanical Animals” — Marilyn Manson
11. “Amnesia” — Swans
12. “Low” — Darkest Hour
13. “Sunflower” — Low
14. “More Yellow Birds” — Sparklehorse
15. “Hold On, Hold On” — Neko Case
16. “Church In Calhoun” — Boxharp
17. “Black Heart” — Calexico
18. “Love And Communication” — Cat Power
19. “Almost Home” — California Oranges

Running Time = 1:14:41

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05.04.06

Minor Feast, Motley Album

Posted in Bands, Music at 12:57 pm by Moody

Rogue Wave: Descended like Vultures

There’s a lot of good music out there these days. Sometimes the sheer volume of choices can seem positively overwhelming. Not that that’s a bad thing. But every now and again it would be nice just to know who’s star is really set to rise. Okay, then… Rogue Wave is one band that presents music fans with an easy choice. Like other indie-pop bands, their work refines a standard/style set by successfull garage bands and other talented independents. In this they succeed, though it will take a third album, I think, to fully prove whether their mettle is on a par with the likes of, say, Spoon, or The Shins. For now, they have earned the benefit of the doubt.

Descended Like Vultures, the sophomore offering by the band, starts out slowly with “Bird on a Wire”, an often downright tipsy bit of psychedelia (à la The Sunshine Fix, Robyn Hitchcock) featuring lightly sprinkled xylophones, a dash of backmasking, a minor key seasoning, and a sing-along choral fromage that may make you overlook the wistful turns of the lyrics even as your ears consume the song, which somewhat sets the tone for the rest of the album, although the musical thrust ultimately (mostly) leaves the initial psychedelic recipe behind for more traditionally indie (à la The Breeders, California Oranges, Spoon) and folksy fare (à la Winterpills, Decemberists, Nick Drake).

Lyrically and vocally, Descended like Vultures is a smart album. The layering is well done, the choruses are not overbearing or clichéd even when they are “simple”, and the words are fitted nicely with the music. In terms of the actual mixing, the songs are variable: rough and jangly sometimes, tightly produced at other times. The mixing is, like the lyrics, fitted to the tone and message of the song, which is to say that it seems to be a conscious product and not a non-professional one.

I agree with some reviewers who’ve said that Rogue Wave sound as if they are yet coming into their own sound. There is enough variety in the songs for the album as a whole to border on showcasing une affaire de disparité. But based on this effort, I’ll certainly expect good things from them in future. In other words, I have a lot of praise and no substantial complaints.

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04.02.06

Life balance… and a couple reviews…

Posted in Music, Personal at 2:07 pm by Moody

The world is restless, unceasing in its motion, never still even in its longest moments of apparent stillness, and forever creating and raveling out patterns. Life is myriads on myriads of patterns, some so great as to be unknowable in their full extent, even when they are inferred by our meagre intuition from our personal experience of life. Put more simply, although we may know ourselves as existing along some threads of the web of life, we shall not ever see the whole web as it is.

Of late, I’ve not been able to talk of anything through the medium of a keyboard and Internet connection. My blog has been languishing for what seems to me like millions of years, drifting like a ghost ship or the space-bound fragment of a planet with a lone handprint on it. I’m not trying to be melodramatic, maybe just the tiniest bit poetic; these are simply the images that come to my mind to describe how it feels.

Though I’ve been reading a lot (mostly online), and working a lot, and Kisha and I have been sharing our lives with each other, my ability to string words together in a meaningful fashion, and the gumption and steadfastness to act on that ability, have been sorely lacking. Numerous times I’ve sat here and tried to write something, only to delete or abandon the result (if any). I honestly don’t know why this is the case. I suspect that it has something to do with my current job situation, especially as that relates to my debt situation. But I think I’d be less than totally forthcoming, if only to you, dear reader, if that was what I pinned my writer’s block to, because there is certainly more to it than money worries. There is, in fact, something existential to it, something of the existents-forhold ( the ‘condition of existence’). I’ve been caught balancing between two opposed points, and the strain of being so balanced has nonetheless become rooted in inertia. Perhaps it even grew from the inertia of just living day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month, paycheck-to-paycheck.

All entirely unsatisfactory as any kind of real explanation, this. Perhaps it’s not writer’s block at all. Perhaps it’s that I have nothing, really, to say. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps…. But let’s leave that at the quay for the time being. Let me, instead, address something more illustrative of the “opposed points” I mentioned.

Music, as ever, has been a major component of my daily life. What have I been listening to lately? What have I recently put on my iPod? Two recent additions spring handily to mind, which will also serve here as handy reviews for those so interested.

A band that is no stranger to controversy and vehement disparagement over their awesomely graphic, ultra-violent, perverse lyrics, Cannibal Corpse are most parents’ nightmare. The cover artwork for the majority of their albums (done by Vince Locke) has been, in itself, frightful enough for many. Bob Dole went so far as to blame the band (along with two other groups) for contributing to the moral decay supposedly ruining America’s youth, and Germany banned outright the group’s first three albums, Eaten Back to Life, Butchered at Birth, and Tomb of the Mutilated (disallowing even the performance of any song from those albums). Many would assert that, thematically, Cannibal Corpse far exceed what would usually be called “going too far”.

Their newest release, simply titled KILL, is another exercise in high-speed hardcore metal mayhem, saturated with staccato bursts and prolonged growls of “cookie monster” vocals and replete with ear-splitting shrieks of demonic cacophony. It can but hardly be called music, honestly. The blistering pace almost never slows throughout, from the first track (”The Time to Kill Is Now “) to the last (”Infinite Misery”), and if you can catch any of the lyrics along the ride then you are sure to wonder how you’re going to get to sleep that night.

I love it.

I also love the second recent addition, Cristina Branco’s Sensus, which is an album of beautifully sung and gorgeously played modern Portuguese fado. Recently interviewed on NPR’s All Things Considered, she proves herself to be a shy, friendly, gifted artist and loving parent. Her voice is phenomenal, exhibiting a clarity and delicacy that are intimate and immediate. Sensus is a work of loving, passionate, sensuality, and Branco easily touches all those points whose presence makes us blush not with embarrassment but with anticipation and desire. If the music is the strawberry, she is the pure gourmet chocolate it is dipped in. Her work is not simply a dessert treat, however, it is nourishment for the yearning heart and energy for the mind.

I love it.

So what does that say about things? What does that say about where I stand? Oh, well. Whatever it says to you, what I know is that I am managing to live my life, and I’m doing better than I ever have in the most important ways.

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02.19.06

(Possibly) The Best Power Pop Ever

Posted in Bands, Music at 10:55 pm by Moody

For much of my life I could not tolerate pop music. Although I grew up in the ’70s listening to the likes of Van Morrison, Marvin Gaye, Jefferson Airplane, Al Stewart, and all that era’s most popular stars, I developed in my adolescence a disdain for anything that looked even remotely pop. I turned my attention to so-called underground bands and/or “darker” music: Sisters of Mercy, :zoviet*france:, Christian Death, Siouxsie & The Banshees, Pink Floyd, Soft Cell and the like (bands I still have fondness for). While others were extolling the virutes of Tom Petty, OMD and The Thompson Twins, I was wallowing in heady reverb, Grand Guignol theatrics, industrial noise pollution and distortion box vocals.

I mention all this because it still matters to me. Perhaps it’s because I am nearing forty years of age now, but my musical tastes have broadened vastly. I’m proud of that. A look at 7000+ songs on my iPod will tell you that my tastes are eclectic and yet nearly all-inclusive. What you still won’t find a lot of, though, is pop. I may begrudgingly nod my head to Beyoncé’s “Crazy in Love” or Britney Spears’ “Toxic” now and then, but — and make no mistake here — it is begrudgingly, and I usually have to listen to Carcass or A Life Once Lost for an hour afterward. Some things never change — or don’t change much. If it’s pop, for me to like it requires that it somehow transcends the genre. More often than not, it’s only one song that makes it through the filter, and often then it’s simply a matter of the artist having had a particularly great producer behind the song (e.g., such is the case for the two previously mentioned songs). Rarely, rarely, rarely do I wholeheartedly embrace a pop band’s entire oeuvre.

But there is one group who manages to grab all the stars for me, and they are the Canadian power pop supergroup The New Pornographers, made up of Destroyer’s Dan Bejar (who does not consider himself an official member), the highly talented Neko Case, Thee Evaporators’ John Collins, Limblifter/Age of Electric drummer/vocalist Kurt Dahle, Fancey’s Todd Fancey, A.C. Newman and Blaine Thurier. Never before have I heard a band pull together all those elements that make music so fun, so compelling, so danceable, and so compulsively, repeatably listenable both musically and lyrically.

Lyrically, Mass Romantic’s “Letter from an Occupant” gives a solid example of the band’s pop prowess, making emotional sense even as it skirts the hem of the poetically enigmatic:

I'm told the eventual downfall
is just a bill from the restaurant.
You told me I could order the moon, babe,
just as long as I shoot what I want.

What the last ten minutes have taught me:
bet the hand that your money's on.
Where the hell have the '70s brought me?
You trade me away long gone.

For the love of a god, you say,
not a letter from an occupant.

The time that your enemy gives you,
good times are not the ones you want.
I cried five rivers on the way here,
which one will you skate away on?

The tune you'll be humming forever,
all the words are replaced and wrong,
with a shower of yeahs and whatevers,
you trade me away long gone.

For the love of a god, you say,
not a letter from an occupant.

Where have all the sensations gone?
It's the song, the song, the song that's shaking me.

The New Pornographers liberally spice their songs with lyrics that get stuck in your head and flawlessly implement the kind of catchy hooks that you inevitably catch yourself humming throughout day. In other words, they are in good company with the too often overlooked Big Star, as well as Super Furry Animals, The Sunshine Fix and Imperial Teen. They are clever like Arrested Development was a clever sitcom that should never have been cancelled.

And they are maturing. Twin Cinema, their third effort, proves that they are a superband with real staying power. They have expanded and simultaneously tightened their sound. If their first album was a little unfocused (though not detrimentally so) and their second album an affair of finding their groove, then their third release is a solid expression of the band’s collective sound. You can read more about the album at the band’s official Website, and I recommend checking out the review over at Pitchfork.

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