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june 2005
6.1.05
I've been wanting to get Spoon's Gimme Fiction since it came out in early May, but I've been pretty busy since then and I had new material from the Eels, Nine Inch Nails, and Ryan Adams to keep me busy (plus I've been enjoying getting reacquainted with Radiohead's OK Computer). But over the past couple of weeks, the number of new discs I wanted to hear hit the breaking point and I finally headed into the record store to get caught up on recent releases.
The must-haves were Spoon's Gimme Fiction, Demon Days from the latest incarnation of Gorillaz, which features Danger Mouse in place of Dan the Automator, and Sleater-Kinney's The Woods. My friend Jeff recommended Chin Up Chin Up, a Chicago outfit I'd never heard of before, and I liked the clips on iTunes so much that they got added to my list pretty quicly. I also wanted to pick up the new Belle & Sebastian, Push Barman to Open Old Wounds, which is actually a compilation of all the non-album tracks they've released over the past few years collected onto a two disc set. And, just because I wanted to listen to something completely new, I also picked up the Hold Steady's Separation Sunday, which got glowing reviews in Pitchfork and elsewhere.
As you can tell from my post yesterday, the Hold Steady disc is my favorite so far, but this actually a pretty strong crop of releases. Chin Up Chin Up has been elbowing its way into the playlist fairly frequently even though I am so obsessed with Separation Sunday that I still have to force myself to choose to listen to something besides that record. The Belle & Sebastian is classic Belle & Sebastian, but not being one of the fanatic completists that make up the bulk of their fan base, all of this material is new to me, and the Sleater-Kinney is an ass-kicking return to the power and rage of their first couple of releases. Spoon and Gorillaz are probably the most disappointing so far, but that doesn't mean they're bad, they just might not be as good as the previous releases from these groups (or it might be that I haven't listened to them enough yet). But Spoon's Kill the Moonlight and Gorillaz' eponymous debut both grabbed me the way that Separation Sunday is grabbing me now, and these new discs don't do that, and I can't imagine that this will change. They seem decent enough, and may turn out to be quite good once I get a chance to give them a serious listen, but they're likely going to rank lower than their predecessors. |
6.2.05
Not to keep harping on the Hold Steady's Separation Sunday, but "hoodrat" is my new favorite word ever. |
6.3.05
I don't know what the song title "Why Is My Sleeping Bag a Ghetto Muppet?" (from Chin Up Chin Up's We Should Never Have Lived Like We Were Skyscrapers) means, but I know that I like it. And the song's pretty good, too. |
6.6.05
Almost every review I have read of Gorillaz' Demon Days have singled out "Fire Coming Out of the Monkey's Head", which features Dennis Hopper doing a spoken word piece set to Gorillaz' music, as the most annoying song on the album, and all but unlistenable. And I have to admit I'm not a huge fan of projects like this (like Allen Ginsburg's work with the Clash and Cornershop or the studio storytelling of Loretta Lynn that Jack White set to music on "Little Red Shoes" from Van Lear Rose), but as these things go, I didn't find this track that annoying, especially in the weird and wonderful world of Gorillaz eclecticism. In fact, I think that maybe everyone else hating it so much makes me like it a little bit more than I normally would. |
6.7.05
I don't like the Grateful Dead all that much, but I like American Beauty a lot (thanks in no small part to its featured role in an episode of Freaks and Geeks). And Ryan Adams' new disc, Cold Roses, can be a little hit and miss (although its definitely growing on me), but the title track reminds me a lot of the things that I love about American Beauty. |
6.8.05
I was watching Primary Colors on A&E this weekend, and I happened to catch that part where Kathy Bates is riding in her pickup truck singing along to Olivia Newton-John's "Please Mr. Please", and now I can't get that song out of my head. More specifically, I can't get the chorus ("Please Mr. please/Don't play B-17/It was our song, it was his song/But it's over") out of my head. Damn it. Damn it, damn it, damn it. |
6.9.05
On every Spoon record I own, there's always been one song that grabbed me immediately that I fell out of love with. On Girls Can Tell, it was "Fitted Shirt", on Kill the Moonlight, it was "The Way We Get By", and on Gimme Fiction, it's "I Turn My Camera On". |
6.10.05
I think "Beside You in Time", from Nine Inch Nails' With Teeth, is the song Trent Reznor really wanted to use as the centerpiece of The Fragile. I don't know if anyone else is going to know what I mean by that, but I'm trying to say something good about the song. |
6.14.05
You know, I've been thinking more about the severe negative critical reaction to Gorillaz' "Fire Coming Out of the Monkey's Head" from their latest, Demon Days. It's not really a great song, but I'm more convinced than ever that if it had been William S. Burroughs or some other alt-culture literary luminary reading the spoken-word portion of the track instead of Dennis Hopper, it would have been praised rather than derided.
But anyway. The record isn't nearly as good as the debut album, which surprises me a little. The first one caught me off guard with the compulsively hummable "Clint Eastwood", which was the main reason I purchased the album, but there were plenty of other good tunes on there that didn't just sound like Blur with some samples. With Demon Days, I expected more of the same, except maybe even better because Danger Mouse (whose work on The Grey Album I love) had joined the collective. The thing is, they decided to forgo all samples on the record, which seems a really stupid thing to do given that samples are kind of Danger Mouse's thing. As a result, the record doesn't really sound like any of his previous work, and it fact mostly sounds like a bunch of Blur remixes that aren't nearly as good as you would imagine the originals would have been if they actually existed.
In fact, it doesn't have even one single that's even half as compelling as "Clint Eastwood", which is a major disappointment, because up until now, Damon Albarn hasn't released an album without at least one song that gets its hooks in deep. Demon Days is pleasant enough to listen to in the background when you don't really want to think about what you're listening to, but...well, I already have plenty of CDs like that in my collection (Stereolab, I'm looking pointedly in your direction). I didn't need to pay $12 to add another. |
6.15.05
I've been a little depressed recently, and when I'm depressed these days, I like to listen to the Unicorns' Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone? I think the reason is because the Unicorns are more depressed than I am but, well, they're okay with it. And they have that kind of dark humor that I think you can only appreciate when you're feeling a little maudlin. |
6.16.05
The music of Chin Up Chin Up is a really cool amalgamation of Modest Mouse, Bright Eyes, Spoon, and Sleater-Kinney, but their vocalist doesn't sound like any of those singers for those bands. Even though his subdued, low whisper works for them on most songs, it may be the weakest part of the band in terms of gaining a larger audience: people love to sing along, and his voice is so quiet and buried that his vocals end up being another instrument in the mix rather than establishing themselves as a distinct entity. Like I said, it kind of works for their style of music, but I also know audiences well enough to know that there are lots of folks who won't appreciate it the way I do.
Oh, and "Get Me Off This Fucking Island" is a great song title. |
6.17.05
For the past few weeks I've been listening to a mix of about 10 recently purchased albums, but yesterday I switched back to a larger list of my highest rated songs from the last 15 years. And let me tell you something: the iPod sure did miss playing Sufjan Stevens, Modest Mouse, and the Fiery Furnaces. |
6.20.05
Picked up a few new things this weekend. I went mainly to buy the new White Stripes, Get Behind Me Satan, but while poking around the shelves I also found Life Begins Again from Jimmy Chamberlin Complex (featuring ex-Smashing Pumpkins drummer Jimmy Chamberlin, collaborating with various and sundry guests) and Golden Ocean from 50 Foot Wave, the newest band from Throwing Muses frontwoman Kristen Hersh.
The White Stripes' new disc is decidedly different from the raw rock and blues feel of their last couple of records, but I don't really mind it. I've resisted for a long time calling Jack White a genius, despite some brilliant records and his work with Loretta Lynn last year, but now that the mainstream critics are starting to turn on him, maybe it will be a little easier for me to trumpet his greatness. Not completely there yet, but this might be the album that pushes me over the edge.
The drumming on Life Begins Again is, as you would expect, completely amazing, but the record as a whole has a little bit too much of a jazzy feel for my tastes. Still, there are some keepers on here, and it may grow on me more after a few more listens. Even if it doesn't, this is likely the best record that will be released by an ex-Pumpkin this year; the newest from Billy Corgan is out now, too, and even though I really liked his stuff with Zwan, I'm not yet even slightly tempted to purchase this one based on the clips I've heard so far.
Golden Ocean is probably the most interesting of the three: Throwing Muses was one of my favorite bands for a while during my teens and early 20s (House Tornado remains one of the most incredible records I've ever heard), but I'm far from a completist when it comes to her solo work, which can lean towards the Sylvia Plath side of unbalanced angst. When that comes with loud guitars, it's not so band, but angry acoustics get a little tiresome after a while. Luckily, 50 Foot Wave is a full band, and a pretty loud one at that; the song structures are as complex as anything she's done in the past (with the possible exception of the aforementioned House Tornado), and as far as I'm concerned the more complex, the better when it comes to Hersh's songs. Her voice is a little more ragged than it was in her youth, but the guitars help drown out the roughness a bit. I'm looking forward to getting to know this album better, especially because I think it will be a good match for the frustration and irritability that I've been feeling at work recently.
I also bought Novena On a Nocturne from The Good Life, but it's not really new——Tom gave me a copy years ago. I've always loved it and always meant to buy my own legitimate copy, but I never got around to it, and when I saw it new for $11, I figured I should make good on my intentions. |
6.21.05
Why isn't Radiohead on iTunes? Seriously, what's the deal? I would have expected that by now they would have released one of those big all-inclusive online-only box sets like U2 did last fall. Instead, the only Radiohead-related tracks in the US store are classical covers of their material by some guy named Christopher O'Riley. |
6.23.05
I didn't think the White Stripes would ever top "Fell in Love With a Girl", but "My Doorbell" is right up there. "Little Ghost" is pretty cool, too. |
6.24.05
It's a good thing most of the Ramones are dead now, or else I'd be pretty pissed at them for letting "Blitzkrieg Pop" be used in a fucking Diet Pepsi commercial. |
6.29.05
After a long drought of not going to live shows, I've ramped it up in the last year and I have now been to five shows since last September. Of course, two of those were Decemberists shows, one was a solo Colin Meloy show (the lead singer for the Decemberists), and the other two were Wilco shows, including the one we went to down at Merriweather Post in Columbia.
One thing is abundantly clear after seeing Wilco twice in one year: they fucking rock. They really are a band that need to be seen live; as brilliant as their albums are, the records just have a different vibe than the live shows. There's an energy that gets unleashed when the band is together on stage that transforms their music into something too powerful to be captured in a recording studio.
This concert wasn't quite as good as the one last fall (here's a setlist), although our seats were better and the sound was better. I didn't think the drummer was quite on point, especially in the opening to "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart", and there was even one song where Jeff Tweedy stopped the band and made them restart because one of the guitars wasn't plugged in right. The second encore was also pretty weak, ending with two covers that weren't really that strong and dissipated the emotional energy of the rest of the concert. It was still a great show, though, and I'd go to see them again in a heartbeat. |
6.30.05
I had a nice little entry written up in which I quoted one of my friend's emails where he detailed two previously-unknown-to-me bits of trivia regarding U2's The Unforgettable Fire, but just as I was about to post it, I noticed he wrote "don't quote me" at the top of his missive. So out of courtesy, I won't, but I will relay these new pieces of information to you in my own words:
- In the opening bars of "The Unforgettable Fire", you can hear drummer Larry Mullen clicking his sticks together to count off a beat, but then the clicking stops and you can hear him mutter "Oh shit" after he drops one of his drumsticks.
- The percussion on "Elvis Presley & America" is actually just a slowed down drum loop from "A Sort of Homecoming", the opening track on the album.
So there you go: you get the information without me directly quoting my friend. But I have to tell you that his write-up was better than mine.
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