notes - archives - july 2004

7.1.04
I used to know for an absolute certainty that the Replacements' Let It Be was their best record, but I've been re-listening to Tim for the past couple of days and now I'm not so sure.

7.2.04

Mixtape: 1987

Track 4
"We Love You Carol and Alison"
Lolita Nation
Game Theory

Lolita Nation was the first album I bought by Game Theory, following my then tried and true method of finding new artists using the college music top 10 in the back of Rolling Stone. I got it right before my family and I left for our annual vacation to go skiing in the mountains, figuring the double album would give me a lot of new stuff to listen to on the all-day, 11 hour drive from our home in North Carolina to Snowshoe Mountain in West Virginia (I can't read in the car without getting nauseous, and since, as a typical teen, I wanted nothing to do with my younger siblings or my parents, pretty much all I did on long family drives was listen to my Walkman in the back of our Suburban).

I really wanted to like this album——it was produced by Mitch Easter, whose work I tended to enjoy (he produced R.E.M., the Connells, and Waxing Poetics among many others, and he was also the frontman for Let's Active)——but I still hadn't really learned to love loud, distorted guitars, and Lolita Nation starts out with a bunch of those. The first track, "Kenneth, What's the Frequency?" (which gives a pop culture nod to Dan Rather's infamous encounter with a mysterious stranger years before Michael Stipe reused the reference on the dreadful Monster), is nothing more than a series of song and spoken word fragments that abruptly lurches into skipping-needle opening bars of "Not Because You Can". This 3 minute mini-opus, which has two distinctive movements and only a smattering of lyrics, is followed by "Shard" and "Go Ahead, You're Dying To", two song fragments that together total less than a minute. The next track, "Dripping With Looks", is the first fully realized song on the album, and it's also the darkest and slowest, laden with distortion and feedback.

I'd had just about enough at this point. I just wasn't in the mood to have to think this hard about something I was listening to, and the heavy guitar sound didn't really appeal to me, either. So I reached for bag to get out another cassette (remember those, kids?), only to realize to my horror that I had packed the rest of my tapes in my main bag, which was now firmly cemented under everyone else's bags in the back of the truck, and there was no way I would be able to convince my dad to unpack it before we got to West Virginia. I was stuck with Lolita Nation for the whole trip——I had to listen to that or listen to nothing.

This turned out to be a good thing, because of course I chose to listen to a record I disliked rather than interact with my family, and on about the third time through I finally started to get it (it might have taken me months to give it that kind of chance otherwise based on my initial negative reaction to the first few songs); during our week of skiing and our trip back home, I don't think I played another record, even after I regained access to the rest of the music I'd brought along.

Despite some of the artsy, purposefully inaccessible aspects of Lolita Nation——lots of haiku-like song fragments, rapid shifting of styles, and sound collages composed of monotone spoken-word phrases and snippets from previous Game Theory releases (including a still-baffling track with an undecipherable title which seems to be an attempt at a philosophical treatise written in computer code)——it's actually crammed with lots of pop hooks and melodies that lodge forever in your cortex.

"We Love You Carol and Alison" is one of the more upbeat numbers on this record, musically and lyrically, with shimmering guitars and toy keyboards sprinkled with bells tinkling like raindrops on a summer day, all giving a sunny backdrop to one of the most optimistic choruses frontman Scott Miller has ever written:

Will you take on our age's dream?
We love you Carol and Alison
And will you take us
Cause it's still a green land
And it still works as planned

It's yet another ode to our eternal American obsession with newness and possibilities (in fact, the title of the album, Lolita Nation, which is a jab at our youth-obsessed culture, comes from a line in this song), but Miller's not being ironic or insincere; despite the city-on-a-hill, morning-in-America visions that have been promoted by our politicians while they were busy preventing most people from being able to fulfill those aspirations personally, Miller, like most of us, hasn't given up hope. He still believes in the dream, no matter how many times that vision has been used as a cover for an ideology. And our collective ability to believe in this dream, so much that we can almost make it real despite all the obstacles, might be the most powerful thing about the American people.

I might be wandering a little far afield, but hey, this entry's already ranged a little farther than it should, and if you were still with me by that paragraph, I'm sure you made it down to here. So to sum up: Lolita Nation is one of the most brilliant records of the 80s, Scott Miller is a pop genius, and "We Love You Carol and Alison" was a good fit for this mix between Julian Cope and the Smiths. Is that concise enough for you?

7.6.04
It's been nearly a year since anything was posted to Plug, which was my primary outlet for music-related writing before I started this blog, and I had decided that if I couldn't motivate myself to write anything for it after a year, I would let it die. With that deadline approaching, I decided to give formal review writing a shot again this weekend, just to see if it still held any interest for me, and to my surprise, it did, and so today I can present to you a review of Wilco's A Ghost Is Born, the first new review on Plug in 11 1/2 months.

I've already started to sketch out ideas for three more reviews, and I'm pretty sure I can stick to a schedule of publishing at least one review a month, but I'd really like to have other contributors to the site again. I'm guessing that most of you who are regular readers must have similar tastes to mine and I'm hoping that a few of you are writers/bloggers yourselves. If that's the case and you would be interested in becoming a reviewer for Plug, please drop me a line. In the meantime, I'm going to try to soldier on alone for at least a few more months and see how I feel about the site at the end of 2004.

7.7.04
I picked up the Cure's new self-titled disc last week, along with Sonic Youth's Sonic Nurse and a used copy of Band of Susans' Hope Against Hope. The Cure album was a little grating at first, but it's definitely better than Bloodflowers and it has been growing on me quickly.

But let me tell you, I fucking love Sonic Nurse. This is the album I've been waiting fifteen years for Sonic Youth to make, and it's my pick for album of the year so far. I don't care if you hate Sonic Youth, if you love them, if you've never heard them——whatever. Go get this record right now. The only other time I've heard forty-somethings sound this good and rock this hard was on the Screaming Blue Messiahs' debut album, Gun-Shy, and even though that's one of my favorites from the 80s, I'm not at all uncomfortable putting Sonic Nurse in the same category. It's like the best parts of Daydream Nation, Goo, and Murray Street all on one record. Even Kim Gordon's songs are great, easily her best since the band's first few records, and a far cry from the annoying bark that her voice has become over the last decade.

7.8.04
I've been letting the iPod run on random album selection at work, and yesterday it dialed up Mermaid Avenue Vol. II, the second album that resulted from Billy Bragg and Wilco putting unused Woody Guthrie lyrics to new music. I remember not liking it nearly as much as the first volume, and relistening to it yesterday didn't change that opinion, but I did find more to love than I did when I first bought the album. I don't think it will make its way into my heavy rotation any time soon, but some of the songs will definitely be added to my four star list (which includes all of my iPod tracks that have ratings of four or five stars).

7.9.04
I've finally burned through the $20 iTunes gift certificate that Doug gave me for my birthday back in April and I'm back to giving my own money to Apple. I finished off Doug's money by purchasing Iron and Wine's four song exclusive iTunes EP (named, conveniently, iTunes Exclusive EP) and the three b-sides that were bundled with P J Harvey's single "The Letter". And then just for good measure, I spent 99 cents of my own on an instrumental outtake from Sonic Nurse, Sonic Youth's new record, called "Kim's Chords". I came very close to buying Rufus Wainwright's Waiting for a Want EP, but after digging around on the web for a bit I figured out that these tracks will eventually be included on his upcoming album Want Two, and I'm not that diehard of a fan that I need to purchase his stuff twice.

7.12.04
Ashlee Simpson only seems marginally more intelligent than her braindead sister Jessica, but at least the younger one actually participates in the songwriting process. I hate all those fakey wanna-be-tough-and-top-40-at-the-same-time chicks that we have been deluged with since Avril Lavigne infected the airwaves, but no matter how much I hate the genre, I always give a little more credit to people who can write their own material, no matter how much that material sucks (I know Avril does, too, but I still hate her more than any of the rest of them——anyone who mispronounces David Bowie's name during the Grammy nominations deserves to be banned from the craft of music forever).

7.13.04
I have not been able to get "Afternoon Delight" out of my head since seeing a promo for Will Ferrell's new movie Anchorman where the main cast members sing it a cappella.

7.14.04
Why do I always get my iTunes "New Music Tuesdays" emails on Wednesday?

7.15.04
Too tired to write much today (or the rest of this week, for that matter), but I grabbed the debut from Architecture in Helsinki, Fingers Crossed, yesterday, and I really love it. Somewhere between the Books and Belle & Sebastian's early stuff with a good smattering of lo-fi electronica that's reminiscent of the late 70s/early 80s experimental pop (a la Brian Eno) without feeling like it's trying to sound like that. The main male singer reminds me of someone, too, but my brain is too muddled to figure out exactly who.

Anyway. If that sounds at all appealing to you, give this record a listen. I can already tell it's going to be my listening material of choice for the next couple of weeks.

7.16.04
Badly Drawn Boy's "Year of the Rat" (from his upcoming One Plus One Is One) is certainly an odd choice for a first single, especially in America where he's not the chart mainstay like he is in his native England, but what's even stranger is that MTV has for some reason decided to add it to their playlist and air it during the precious few minutes they devote each programming day to actually playing videos. Despite his Beatle-esque pop leanings, Badly Drawn Boy has alwyas been much more of an album artist for me, and listening to clips from the new record, I'd have to say that I don't hear a single track that is an obvious candidate for singlehood.

I'm sure there's some inexplicable corporate synergy/media conglomerate marketing plan responsible for this, but whatever. It's three fewer minutes when they can play one of the seemingly dozens of new videos from members of 50 Cent's G-Unit.

7.21.04
I picked up a few things last week: U2's sophomore record, October (I've been looking for their first three records used for years, and out of nowhere I've found them all in the last few months for less than $7 each), the Church's first full-length, Of Skins and Heart (which was only $5 used), and Belle & Sebastian's new EP, Books. Not quite sure why I picked that one up, as I'm not a real Belle & Sebastian nut and I don't often pick up their EPs and CD singles (which is really what this one is), but I guess I just wanted something new to complement the older stuff I found in the used bin. It's not too bad, but probably not worth the money I paid for it, as it only has two new songs on it (the other two tracks are a song from Dear Catastrophe Waitress, which I already own, and a remix of one of the new songs).

Next week will see the release of new discs from Rilo Kiley and Badly Drawn Boy, but after an initial burst in May, this has been a pretty slow summer for new material. And the fall isn't usually a good time for the bands I like, either, because the conglomerates are busy loading up the release schedule with crap from their mainstream multimillion sellers and they don't want to have to divert resources from those albums so they can promote lesser known artists (that's why Modest Mouse's surprisingly successful Good News for People Who Love Bad News was pushed back from last September to this April). There are still a few new things scheduled for release later this year (or not——both Rufus Wainwright and Fiona Apple have completed new records which haven't been given a release date by their labels), but by and large, I think that we've probably seen the release of 70% or so of the stuff that has a shot of making it onto my best-of list for the year.

7.22.04
Wow. Modest Mouse's new record has gone gold and is quickly on its way to platinum. Who'd a thunk it?

7.23.04
My recent trip to visit a friend in Birmingham has reintroduced several records into my listening palette. When she was playing mix CDs in her car, I heard tracks from records I haven't listened to in a long time, mostly because they don't rank very high with me. The first was a track from BRMC's Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, a record that I thought was okay but which never grew on my like similar early 80s ripoff artists such as the Rapture, the Faint, or Interpol. Next was a song from Throwing Muses' Hunkpapa; I'm a huge fan of Throwing Muses, but this is my least favorite effort from them. It just feels like they were trying too hard for a mainstream audience. Finally there's the Streets' A Grand Don't Come for Free, which is one of my favorite records so far this year, and which I got an itch to listen to again after trying to describe it to my friend.

Also: for some reason, Pearl Jam's "Jeremy" has been in my head since I was waiting to board the plane for my trip home, so Ten is also back in the rotation.

7.26.04

Mixtape: 1987

Track 5
"Girlfriend in a Coma"
Strangeways, Here We Come
The Smiths

I remember when I first discovered that the Smiths, who were my first true musical love, had broken up. It was the summer before they released Strangeways, which was to be their premature swan song, and I was visiting my mother in her new, temporary apartment in Miami, where she was living with her boyfriend and my sister while they looked for a house in the suburbs. Though I was still technically in her custody, I had decided to stay in North Carolina with my father and attend NCSSM instead of going to Florida with her and finishing my last two years of high school there, so I had not participated in the move with my mom and sister and I was seeing them for the first time in a couple of months. It was a terrible building, more like a cheap motel than an apartment complex, but their unit was on one of the top floors and it overlooked the ocean. I remember mostly sitting out on the porch late at night by myself, drinking water with lemon, listening to New Order and the Replacements on my walkman, and writing in my notebook.

I would read sometimes, too, mostly science fiction novels, but with the occasional magazine thrown in for a change of pace. I read Rolling Stone religiously in those days, though I knew even then that it mostly sucked. But every now and then they would have a nugget of news on one of my obscure favorites, or they would review a band that would encourage me to try something new. So I was reading a new issue of Rolling Stone on the porch, flipping through the first few pages looking at the brief news items, and there it was: a tiny paragraph, no more than two or three sentences, saying that the Smiths had called it quits.

I was devastated. My heart dropped out of my chest. I didn't know what to do——I had no fellow fans to commiserate with; hell, I didn't know anyone at that point who had even heard of the Smiths, much less who loved them as much as I did. I stumbled inside and told my mom, whose response was, "So?" I tried to explain to her that it was like if she had just found out Bruce Springsteen (who was her favorite artist at the time) had decided never to make music again, and although that offered some perspective, she never had that same passion for music that I did, so it still didn't mean that much to her. I was distraught, and spent most of the rest of my time there staring morosely at the sea and listening to Power, Corruption, and Lies on my headphones at a volume that likely contributed in some small way to the now-constant ringing in my ears.

In the Smiths' catalog, Strangeways is probably superior only to Meat Is Murder, but that's like saying that the second circle of paradise is superior only to the first circle. It's still a brilliant album, and although it occasionally glances in the direction of the more pointed and preachy lyrics that were to become a hallmark of Morrissey's solo career, it's still a genuine Smiths album, equal parts Morrissey and Marr. "Girlfriend in a Coma" is a hummable little ditty that catches you off guard twice: first, when you think that Morrissey might actually be writing a sincere (if somewhat morbid) love song, and second, when you realize that his narrator is really not such a nice person after all. It was Seinfeld-ian before there was Seinfeld. When I was at NCSSM, I would spend a couple of weekends a month with my grandfather, who lived nearby and who was newly single after my grandmother died from a five-year battle with cancer the year before I started attending school in Durham, and I used to play Strangeways for him all the time when we were driving back and forth between my school and his house. "Girlfriend in a Coma" used to really annoy him (along with "Death at One's Elbow"), but I always secretly hoped he could see the humor in it.

Anyway. I loved this album and I loved this band. I'm still sad they're gone.

7.27.04
This is William Shatner and Joe Jackson covering Pulp's "Common People" (bonus celebrity involvement: the song was produced by Ben Folds). Weird, I know, but it's my new favorite song. Seriously, I've listened to this thing an ungodly number of times in the last 24 hours. Don't be too quick to write it off before you hear it for yourself.

7.28.04
Sleater-Kinney's All Hands On the Bad One made a very negative first impression on me, especially coming on the heels of Dig Me Out and The Hot Rock, two of my favorite records, but I think I've finally acheived some sort of equilibrium with it. Listening to it again today (several times, in between wishing I could hook my iPod up in the new car so I could listen to William Shatner's "Common People" cover over and over again), the songs seemed catchier than they ever had before, and I couldn't for the life of me remember what I didn't like about it when I first bought it four years ago. Now if I can just reach some sort of peace with One Beat...

7.29.04
Have I mentioned how much I love being able to randomly play a library of over 5000 songs? Today I was listening to iTunes on shuffle while I was doing my video editing, and I got to hear everything from Robyn Hitchcock's "Uncorrected Personality Traits", "Dolphins" from Beth Orton, "Standing in the Rain" by Hüsker Dü, "That Was Your Mother" by Paul Simon, "Misery" by the BoDeans, and "Tractor Rape Chain" by Guided by Voices, plus dozens more that I can't remember right now (although iTunes helpfully remembers, so I can remind myself tomorrow when I get back to my desk). When you have a CD collection as big as mine, you're in constant danger of forgetting great songs or even great albums, but being able to consolidate a large chunk of my music in a single location that's instantly accessible makes it so that all sorts of wonderful stuff that I've neglected for one reason or another is constantly popping up and giving me new reasons to go back and re-listen to lots of older material that sometimes gets overshadowed by the more recent additions to my CD shelves.

7.30.04
It's amazing: the iTunes music store now has more indie releases than my local indepent record stores. For whatever reason, releases from bands like the Decemberists, the Fiery Furnaces, the Helio Sequence, etc., either never show up on the shelves or don't show up until weeks after their release, but there they all are, waiting to be downloaded on iTunes the day they're released. I'm still not ready to start downloading non-exclusive material from iTunes until I know that in the future, as download speeds and hard drive sizes continue to increase, I'll have the option to download uncompressed versions of any songs I've purchased, but if that day ever comes, it's going to be hard to continue my stubborn policy of supporting the local record stores and buying everything on CD.