4.1.13
I don't think Justin Bieber gets the respect from the critics that he deserves.
(Please note the date. I intended this to be a three paragraph long entry praising Bieber and defending his music, but I could barely get through that one sentence without choking.)
4.2.13 Prince has released a slower, heavier, bluesier remake of "Let's Go Crazy":
I still like the original better, but I do like that this redo continues in the vein of other recent preview singles that see him returning to his guitar as his primary instrument and getting back some of the swagger that's been missing from his albums for a long, long time. I'm excited to see the full album that comes out of this latest phase.
4.3.13
At some point in the past few months, last.fm seems to have released what I've been waiting for for a long, long time——an iOS app that immediately scrobbles what you're listening to without having to wait for you to sync your device to iTunes on your computer. I've downloaded and installed it; now it's time for a few days of testing to see if it actually does what it says.
4.4.13
There are some days I think the Faint are the most badass group ever. This week has been three of those days.
4.5.13
I've been in kind of an 80s mood in the last six or so months——listening to the First Wave station on XM and going through phases of listening to bands like Duran Duran, the Cars, Orchestral Manoeuvers in the Dark, John Mellencamp, the Smiths, and Hüsker Dü (along with Amanda Palmer and the Faint who, while not technically from the 80s, damn sure wouldn't exist without the music from that decade)——and so I was pretty excited to see that Orchestral Manoeuvers in the Dark are releasing an album of new material, English Electric, the first release of theirs I've been aware of for more than 15 years and the first one I've considered buying in even longer (although they apparently released their first comeback album, History of Modern, in 2010 after reforming to go on tour performing one of their classic albums in its entirety).
Usually when bands take this long off and
return to the studio with the original lineup, it's to make an album that's solidly in line with their classic material, so I was considering preording the record since I've recently gotten reobsessed with their early to midcareer stuff. But I was on the fence.
Luckily, Pitchfork is streaming the entire record on Pitchfork Advance, and so I got to spend some quality time with it before making my decision. As of now, I think I'm going to order it——it's so thoroughly an artifact from the early 80s, from the music to the artwork, that it should fit in perfectly with my recent reawakening regarding that period.
If someone had released this as a record mocking early OMD and attempting to capture the outdated, often cringeworthy cheesiness of the visual and musical aesthetic of that time, I could completely buy it as satire. But that somehow makes the fact that its a completely earnest and sincere by the original members of OMD all the more appealing.
4.8.13
A friend gave me an iTunes gift card worth $10 for Christmas, and in the spirit of spending it before I forgot I had it, I decided to download British Sea Power's latest, Machineries of Joy. Even though this is a relatively established act, for some reason this album doesn't have an American distributor for the physical copy of the disc yet, so the only option is to buy it digitally from Amazon or iTunes. And since it's the same price on both and I don't have a $10 credit at Amazon, iTunes wins.
I've had a soft spot for this band for a long time——every record has 2 or 3 tracks that are really amazing, and the rest are generally more average than bad, but they just haven't made a great album yet
(2008's Do You Like Rock Music? comes the closest, but it's still a few tracks short of being a great release through and through).
I don't have a lot of hope that Machineries of Joy will be that great album given their evident label problems in the US, but I'm game to find out anyway, and excited to hear the great tracks, even if, as usual, there will only be a handful of them.
4.9.13 Tony Fletcher, the journalist who wrote the book about the Smiths that I just finished (A Light That Never Goes Out), has also written a book about R.E.M. called A Perfect Circle, and the updated edition (which includes the story of how the band members decided to dissolve the group) was just excerpted on Salon.
I'm still not ready to jump back into Game of Thrones (I finished book 3 a month or two back), and by the time this edition is released I will have just finished two science-oriented non-fiction books, so it's highly likely that I'll pick this up. The Smiths book was personal enough not to feel like a dry third person document, but it wasn't so awash with fandom that it was afraid to show some of the uglier sides of the band's processes and personalities. If he can keep the same balance with R.E.M., it should be well worth the read.
4.10.13
My two year old son has become obsessed with the Avalanches "Since I Left You" (currently just the song, although I am thinking about digging the CD out of storege so he can play it on the boom box we keep in his room). We listen to it on repeat whenever we're riding in the car together, and because it's being played on one of my devices, it's counting towards my last.fm scrobbles and my iTunes playcounts.
This track was likely already in my top 100 most played tracks, but his unceasing demand for it whenever we're in the car together has rocketed it up to number 17, and within another long car ride's worthh of plays to reach the top 10. In the past week or so we've listened to it over 20 times, and although it will take another month of this obsession to crack the number one spot (which, since I've been paying attention, has always belonged to William Shatner's cover of Pulp's "Common People"), but if he doens't let this one go soon, I going to have to consider manually adjusting the playcount to get it back to where it should be.
4.11.13
Got two new discs in the mail today: Orchestral Manoeuvers in the Dark'sEnglish Electric and Wire'sChange Becomes Us.
While both these groups were pioneers in electronic music, they trafficked in very different sounds in the early parts of their careers, so much so that people who are fans of both groups would almost never have existed when these bands were in their primes. Because at the time, what music you were a fan of pretty much equalled what you believed in, and the messages and aesthetics of each of these groups would have been appreciated by two very different kinds of believers.
(Indeed, I was a big OMD fan in the mid-80s, but by the time Wire had entered my frame of refernce with 1987's The Ideal Copy, I was almost ashamed to admit I had ever liked OMD. And at that point the differences between the two groups were less pronounced than in the early 80s, when the opposing factions would have been even more strident in their dislike of one another.)
These two records are an interesting pair: with English Electric, OMD are explicitly harkening back to the sounds of their early albums, especially 1983's Dazzle Ships, and they do a pretty good job of it. Their two recent records are a result of the original lineup reuniting to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Architecture & Morality with a tour focusing on that album, and it's clear that the focus on their early material has influenced the songs they are writing as a contemporary group. The sound of English Electric is richer and more indiciative of a modern recording process, but otherwise it oculd be a lost OMD album from the early 80s.
Change Becomes Us, on the other hand, IS in many ways a great lost Wire album from the early 80s: even though these songs have never been recorded in a studio before, they are all tracks whose origins lie in the period immediately after 1980's 154; they were ideas that got some play during Wire's live shows, but which never coalesced into a proper album (although many of them are featured on the 1981 live record Document and Eyewitness).
Instead the band went on the first of many hiatuses from which they later emerged a changed band with a new direction (we're now on version 4 or 5 of Wire despite a relative consistency in the lineup over the years——they were originally a foursome and are a trio now, as they have been in the past, but they've never brought in new members to replace those who have departed, because all departed members have eventually rejoined). And now, 30 years later, they're revisiting those sketches of songs from the early 80s to give us a glimpse of what might have been if they'd been able to hold their intended course on what should have been their fourth record.
4.12.13
Also: when the hell are the Avalanches going to release their sophomore record? It's been 13 YEARS, guys. If you're going to pull a Chinese Democracy on us, at least make it good (unlike the original Chinese Democracy).
4.15.13
The great iOS Scrobbler experiment is over. After playing about 50 tracks on my iPhone while driving, only three of them showed up as scrobbles. So it's back to the tried and true synching method to update my playcounts on last.fm.
4.16.13
13 records and 25 years in and Wire is starting to convince me that they're in a league of their own. Very few bands that stay together that long and/or record that many albums have anywhere near the consistent quality that they do, especially without sounding stale and tired.
The back to back efforts of Red Barked Tree, an album of entirely new compositions, and Change Becomes Us, featuring reworked versions of song ideas from as far back as 1979, brings their career full circle, and simultaneously demonstrates how some of the same threads and ideas that informed their earliest work are still present today, and also how fresh they can make those ideas sound after exploring them for more than two decades.
4.17.13
Got both the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the new Kid Cudi this week. The Kid Cudi I didn't even know was coming out until about a week before it's release——I've heard virtually nothing about it, even though he's stayed semi-active since his last album guesting on Kanye West projects. I have no idea what to expect from him, but I'm hopeful——I loved his debut, and while it took longer for his sophomore effort to grab me, it was a slow smolder that eventually caught fire.
I think the last two Yeah Yeah Yeahs albums have been their finest work, but the cover alone on this one gives me pause. It's just hard for me to believe that the artistic statement I'm expecting from them could come packaged in a sleeve with a cartoonishly gross CGI baby being attacked by an oversized mosquito. I know I'm not supposed to judge things by their covers, but it's just hard to figure this one out.
I haven't actually listened to either of them yet, and I likely won't get a chance until next week. These are two bands who I want to take some time with when I'm listening to new work——I don't want to just have their songs on in the background when I'm doing work before I've gotten a chance to know them a little bit.
4.18.13
The word started to spread today that Scott Miller, the man behind Game Theory and Loud Family, passed away on Monday at the age of 53.
Miller hadn't made a true Loud Family record since 2000's Attractive Nuisance, and the last album of his that I really adored was 1996's Interbabe concern, but his work has never faded from my playlists, and his importance in my view of the musical universe is vastly outsized considering his lack of recent output and his relative obscurity in 2013.
It took me a while to tune into his skewed take on power pop, but once I got it, there was no one else who ever came close. For me it started with Game Theory's classic 1987 double album Lolita Nation. I had picked it up based on a strong positive response from the critics and its presence on the CMJ top 10, but after listening to it once or twice, I was ready to move on - the moments that I found so compelling were overwhelmed by a lot of sonic textures and fragments that I found valueless at best and irritating at worst.
It happened to be the cassette that was in my Walkman when I started a long (10+ hours) car ride with my family to get to a ski resort, but I wasn't in the mood to listen to it again. I looked around for the bag of cassettes I had brought with me for the trip only to discover to my horror that the bag must have gotten buried under all the luggage in the back and that it would be inaccessible until we unpacked everything at the end of our journey. It was Lolita Nation or nothing for the duration of the trip.
Of course I chose Lolita Nation, and by the end of the drive, I was completely in love with the record, the band, and Scott Miller. There's still no finer example of their work, of strong pop sensibilities mixed with distorted shards of noise, of perfectly crafted pop gems interspersed with song fragments and found audio objects. It's because of this record that I have such strong affection for bands that play around with odd noises, weird stops and starts, and random, suggestive snippets of vocals or conversations——artists like Beck, Neutral Milk Hotel, Bright Eyes, the Fiery Furnaces, and especially of Montreal, who traffic in some of the same ideas and approaches.
I only saw Miller perform live twice, and met him once, all in the same day. When Loud Family released their debut, Plants and Birds and Rocks and Things, the support tour brought the band to Charlotte, North Carolina, which was about half an hour from where I was going to school at the time. I had tickets for the show, but I also discovered that he would be doing a solo in-store appearance at one of the record shops I frequented, so I made a separate trip into town for that.
He played two songs, accompanying himself on acoustic guitar, and then hung around for a little while to chat and sign autographs. This was a huge, huge deal to me——at the time, there were very few artists whose worked I loved more, both lyrically and musically——and I never dreamed I'd get to interact with him in person. Of course, I had very little of interest to say, and I'm sure I was forgotten even before I left the store. But it was an amazing experience that left a lasting impression on me (as did the actual concert later that night).
Just as the output of Loud Family was starting to dwindle in both frequency and quality, the internet was emerging, and I forged a whole new connection with Miller. On the Loud Family web site, he started answering questions from fans in an Ask Scott feature (which inspired the Ask Bryan feature on the fan site I had built for House of Freaks). These questions could be about ANYTHING, and Scott would answer them with humor and honesty. He also revealed his deep knowledge of not just the history of pop music, but of literature, philosophy, art, and all forms of pop culture. It became even clearer through this fan interaction just how intelligent, humble, funny, and unique he was.
Over the years, Ask Scott also appeared less frequently, but in 2010 Miller released a book, Music: What Happened?, which was filled with his musings on the best music from each year starting in 1957, written in the same conversational but hyperliterate style that readers of Ask Scott were already familiar with. It was a good read, whether you approached it sequentially or flipped through and read whatever happened to catch your eye, and he supplemented it by releasing new chapters for 2010 and 2011 for free on the Loud Family web site.
I had given up on expecting any new music from Miller, especially any new music that would affect me in the way that his earlier work did, but it was still a comfort to know he was out in the world, doing more than his fair share to make this planet a nicer place to live just by being who he was. Now he's another extinct spark whose absense makes it that much darker.
In order to avoid people paying exorbitant amounts of money to purchase the now out of print Game Theory catalog on eBay, the Loud Family web site posted all Game Theory albums for download for free after Miller's death. I would recommend getting them all while you can, but if forced to, I would rank them in the following order from weakest to strongest:
Distortion of Glory Real Nighttime 2 Steps From the Middle Ages The Big Shot Chronicles Lolita Nation
I'm leaving out the best-of collection Tinker to Evers to Chance, but that's as good a place as any to start if you're unfamiliar with the band (although it's roughly in chronological order, so it doesn't start to get consistently good until more than halfway through).
It wasn't until I read about his death that I realized that Scott Miller and I had the same birthday, the only celebrity that I'm (now) aware of in that category. Another meaningless coincidence, or another cosmic missed connection. It doesn't really matter in the end, I guess. He's gone and he will be missed.
4.23.13 Scott Miller's family and former bandmates have set up a memorial fund for his two daughters' education. You can see progress, read messages from his supporters, and donate here.
4.24.13
Videos for the first two singles from the National's upcoming record, Trouble Will Find Me:
"Demons"
"Don't Swallow the Cap"
"Don't Swallow the Cap" is more instantly listenable, while "Demons" is more of a classic National sound. High Violet took a bit to grow on me, but now I like it almost as much as Boxer. Looking forward to this one based on these two tracks.
4.25.13
Got the new Phoenix record, Bankrupt!, a couple of days ago, and after a few listens, I'm not quite sure what their intentions were with this record and how they were expecting fans to react to it. I'm always a bit wary of albums with exclamation points in the title in the same way that I'm wary of emails with exclamation points in the subject line, and here that instinctive warning of danger seems to hold true. Nothing on here grabs me the way the best material on Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix did, and there's not a single track that I can identify as a potential first single.
I'll keep listening and maybe something worth holding on to will eventually emerge, but my initial reaction is disappointment.
There are only three records that I would classify as must-haves this month: Rage Against the Machine'sBattle of Los Angeles, Animal Collective'sCentipede Hz, and the Flaming Lips' Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (which is the last album of theirs I've been able to stomach all the way through).
In the recommended category, let's start with the White Stripes' Icky Thump. It unexpectedly ended up being their swan song, and while it's not
my favorite record of theirs, it's still pretty good. Other records deserving mention as pretty solid albums: Death Cab for Cutie'sNarrow Staris, Stars' The North, Divine Fits' A Thing Called Divine Fits, and Pearl Jam'sVs.
For those of you with strong roots in the late 80s/early 90s indie/alternative/college radio scene, there are some recent fair to middling offerings from what were likely some of your favorite
artists from that time: Bob Mould'sThe Silver Age (probably the best of the bunch——the sound is similar to the two solo albums that followed his Sugar period), Ben Folds Five'sThe Sound of the Life of the Mind, and Camper Van Beethoven'sLa Costa Perdita. Purchase these at your own risk: I was a big fan of all these groups during their heydays, but the only one I've bought is the Bob Mould, and that's mostly because I was newly reinfatuated with him after reading his autobiography shortly before this record came out.
As for stuff I'm considering buying, there's not a lot: the Shout Out Louds' most recent, Optica, the Men'sNew Moon, Jeff Buckley'sGrace, and Foxygen'sWe Are the 21st Century's Ambassadors of Peace & Magic. The Shout Out Louds record is the most likely purchase; the others are iffy at best.
4.29.13
My two year old son happened to be in the room when I was watching a rerun of the previous night's Colbert Report featuring Iggy and the Stooges as the musical guest. He generally likes loud,
punk-y music, but it's hard to predict the songs he'll really latch onto, so I was a little surprised when he snapped to attention for this rendition of "Job"——by the end, he was singing the refrain, "I got a job", and insisted on watching it three more times before I had to turn off the tv so we could get him ready for bed.
I don't think this will be enough to convince me to buy the new album, Ready to Die, but I DVR'd the show so my son can watch it again sometime.
4.30.13
It's now the end of April 2013 and I still haven't done my best-of lists from 2012. I'm still going to do them, just for the sake of completeness, but it's hard to believe that anyone is going to discover anything interesting on them (which I've always thought was kind of the point of year-end lists——to highlight works worthy of attention that may have escaped your notice).
