The Apple Tree - Peter and the Wolf - Lightness - 2006

Popular music (along with any art, commerce, politics, etc, etc) seems to be in a constant struggle between it's more conservative elements and the promises of a new and technological society. The argument is at least as old as the furor around "Dylan goes electric", and probably reached it's apotheosis during the grunge heyday when Vedder and Cobain (backed by Grampa Neil Young) were shouting from the roof tops that drum machines and studio trickery were soulless and not worthy of being called rock music.

It seems like the current version of this debate takes place between the increasingly collage and sample based electronica that has become more and more a staple of the Pitchfork scene, and this...it's almost diametrical opposite. If Grunge longed for the analog world of late 60's early, 70's metal...this stuff seems to pine for the days before amplification was even invented. A sort of O'Brother Where Art Thou chic. Of course the argument could easily be pushed back even further to state that the music is being "polluted" by the technology of recording. The only truly pure music would be entirely acoustic and performed live...like in the good old days. Hell, maybe we should push back and say musical instruments are themselves a corruption...nothing but acapella music. Viva Bobby McPharin!

But on the flip side, it's really hard to get a madrigal choir to fit in your ear buds...and trust me, I've tried.

Any Place Is Paradise - Elvis Presley - Elvis - 1956

People tend to think there are only two Elvis'...young rock-a-billy Elvis in his black leather coat, and old Vegas Elvis in his white sequined jump suit...but in reality Elvis contained multitudes. There was Country Elvis, Gospel Elvis, Soul Elvis, Beach Elvis, Army Elvis, Gay Elvis, Asian Elvis (okay, I'm making shit up)...but most striking of all, to me, is there was the Elvis who was not drastically different (in the music he made) than Dean Martin...it's so strange, with the benefit of hindsite, to see how little difference there was between the early rock and roll that parents got so upset about, and the very music that they were listening too.

Anyway, not a bad song.

Anti-Anti - Snowden - Anti-Anti - 2006

I remember reading an article on Pitchfork sometime towards the end of 2006. The article itself was not about Snowden, but rather some newer Dan Deacon/Girltalk kinda album, but this record was mentioned of as an example of an album that was not particularly innovative but simply decent. I'm paraphrasing but I believe it said something like "If Snowden's Anti-Anti was your favorite album of last year then you are still stuck in the rockist era of 2002, old man!"

I have an uncle, my mother's youngest brother who is only 17 years older than me. When I was a baby, he was frequently my sitter...and later on, as the oldest child, he was frequently my "big brother". He spent his entire life with severe diabetis that eventually caused him to go blind at 27.

During my Junior High School days, when I was a weird, too-smart, and obnoxious teenager he was frequently my best friend...and one of the things he passed on to me was his love of rock music and thus my encyclopedic knowledge of 60's and 70's classic rock.

The thing is, my uncle had always been a charmer. When I watch the movie Dazed and Confused, one of the reasons to love it, is how much my uncle seems to have been almost exactly like Randy "Pink" Floyd...the smart jock that everyone liked...so going blind at 27 was crushing to him. His life, in effect, stopped. And his only friends were the members of the crazy church he attended, hoping to be cured of his blindness (Note: He didn't just go blind, he had his eyes removed), and a tubby 13 year old without a positive male influence in his life.

I was able to keep my uncle in touch with music for a bit and my brother picked up where I left off...but gradually it became unavoidable that he was stuck in his own heyday. He could take things that were close to his own experience, the obviously 70's influenced stomp of grunge, or the Pink Floyd-isness of Perfect from Now On era Built to Spill, but the glitchy post-Kid A Radiohead and it's ilk were a bridge too far.

I tried making him mixes with bands that were obviously still mired in the music he loved, the southern boogie of My Morning Jacket or the Neil Young thrust of Magnolia Electric Company, but in the end I'd return to see my uncle obsessing over the latest Allman Brothers bootleg he'd found at the Karma. Even a man without kids, without a job, who gets most of his pleasure from sitting in a garage, chain smoking, and listening to rock music, still experienced that same paralysis in time. For him, the best music would always be the music they made in 1976.

The point is, I live in fear of this...the point at which my tastes atrophy. I can already feel it happening, that my tastes have basically locked down somewhere between 2003-2005 with the sweet spot actually being 1998. I continue to like new albums, but I find that the ones I like the best are those steeped in what I'm familiar with. Too much of what is being made now is too referential, too reliant on juxtaposing pop culture I find disposable without really adding anything to the equation...or worse, too gentle and inoffensive, rife with the softness of a suburban generation, and without the nihilist urges I feel to burn to this irreperably flawed world to the ground and start from scratch.

The battle to stay young and relevant permeates our botox ridden society. It's a fight that everyone loses, but I think it's the manner in which you go down fighting that matters. It's all about the manner in which we face our own mortality, I suppose.

Another Planet - The Notwist - Shirk - 1998

Because I didn't travel much until I was in my mid to late twenties, I certainly had a lot of preconceived notions about what other countries would be like. I remember having a mindset (which many of my midwestern friends that still have never left the country seem to have adopted) that being abroad is a lot like being on another planet, but the truth of the matter is that it isn't that different. Sure, weather, topography, language, and culture might be somewhat different...but fundamental human nature does not change...niether about yourself, nor those you encounter.

This is why I find xenophobia so frustrating. The world is sometimes (or often) an indifferent place...but it's rarely as malicious as some would have you believe. But most people that I've met just want the same things I want. They want comfort and respect. They want entertainment and purpose. They want to be surrounded by those that love them and usually they don't wish strangers any ill. Perhaps, I am a bit deluded, living in a place where I'm constantly surrounded by tourists from all over the world...and perhaps I'm just spouting hippy nonesense of the "can't we all just get along" variety...but still, I don't find that...even in places I haven't had the best of times...that people are anything but decent.

But then I've never been to Afghanistan either.

I usually joke that The Notwist are just German Radiohead...but full credit to the Tuetonic gentlemen here...this album came out a full two years before Kid A and certainly shows all of the electronica meets melodic rock tendancies that the boys from Oxford would later make safe for the Luddite indie rock world.

Another One Goes By - Mazarin - We're Already There - 2005

Sorry if updates are even laxer than usual this week. I leave for a little vacation to Mexico Thursday morning, so my mind is most definitely elsewhere. Anyway...

It seems appropriate that I'd be writing about this song today anyway. It's the first really autumnal day we've had this season, and this song just screams fall. Without really sounding in anyway like R.E.M.'s Reckoning it has the same sense of turning leaves and breezes with a hint of frost in them.

I suppose it's fair to say that the fall is the most contemplative of seasons. With the end of the shining summer, and the inevitable approach of cold and gray winter, it's easy to think of the impermenance of everything. Of human life, obviously, but somewhat less morosely of any good thing. From the way that every milkshake has a last sip, to the way that the passion of young love eventually mellows into the warm affection and concern of a relationship, Autumn speaks to both the passing of time, and to sucking the last bit of sweetness from the well.

I've listened to the song over and over to try to determine what it is about the song (which if I haven't made it perfectly clear, I think is damn near perfect) that makes it seem so fall-like. Perhaps it's the general sad yet laid back vibe, or perhaps he combination of the piano and the strummed dulcimer also work well to create the sense of a cold wind through dying leaves, or Quintin Stotzfus' Brian Wilson-esque vocals. All in all, it's a really wonderful construction.

Another One Bites The Dust - Queen - The Game - 1980

Sure, Freddy Mercury is gay as all hell. And this song is basically funk. And it was a favorite of Michael Jackson...but I still kinda like it. Honestly, it's Mercury's vocal that make the song totally work. He doesn't croon or do his usual theatrical melisima shit. He just sings the song with a kind of viciousness, particularly after the first chorus, where he nearly screams. It's a kind of staccato vocal assualt that would be mimiced by countless others down the line. 90's industrial of the NIN stripe would use it a lot. Thom Yorke, an embarrassed but avid Queen fan, apes it in soft/loud songs like My Iron Lung and the second half of 2+2=5. Cobain also was a noted Queen fan, though it would be hard to think of two more different male vocalists, so it's sorta hard to tell where his influence lies...easier to look to Brian May for that.

Anyway....

Angels vs Aliens - Mogwai - Ten Rapid - 1997

Ok, so here is the thing that never made sense to me: you can't feed the Mogwai after midnight...but until when? Dawn? 7AM? 9AM? Is there some kind of Mogwai clock?

Also, if a drop of water made them multiply, what did they drink? Was it just water that produced this response. What if you dropped some Jameson's on them, would you get drunk and surly Gremlins (Suddenly the Leprechaun films make more sense...yes even Leprechaun 6: Back 2 Da Hood). Were Mogwai in fact the only non-water based life form around? Or was the reason the other Mogwai wanted to turn into Gremlins just cause they were freaking thirsty?

Continuing on this line of thinking...the title of this song also suggests a new film franchise to me. Now that the Alien has succesfully faced off against The Predator, perhaps they need to take a shot at God's messengers. Angels vs Aliens: This time it's Holy War! I'm thinking the Rock as Michael the Angel general, with Vin Diesel as Gabriel, and Samuel L. Jackson as God. And of course, as always, James Earl Jones as the voice of the magic taco.

Thoughts for the ages.

And I - Wolfsheim - Casting Shadows - 2003

So I had this weird dream last night where a guy I used to work with back at Moving.com was having a ninja star throwing demonstration at a party and accidentally threw one too close to me slicing open my stomach. Upon examination I realized that the wound was quite severe...but I didn't want to upset my co-worker so I tried to hide the damage and tough it out until my friend Shani could inspect the wound. Shani, in reality, works in advertising, but in my dream she had medical experience.

I'm sure this all means I'm fucked up in immeasurable ways, but you didn't need to hear about my dreams to put that together.

German synth pop with a good size dollop of melencholy to keep it from being too robotic. Managable if a tad wussy.

Always Crashing The Same Car - David Bowie - Low - 1977

For my most recent birthday I made a mix with one song from each year I had been alive. I started the mix with this song (the mix was not chronological).

Between the ages of 16-24 I managed to have 4 moderately serious car accidents. I drive too fast and usually with the radio on too loud, and when you are young and think you are indestructible, this is a bad idea.

The first one was literally my first day out driving by myself, I changed lanes without checking my blindspot and a pick up truck barrelled into the passenger side.

The second I was driving home in the rain, and a bunny jumped out in front of me. Rather than simply saying "tough luck Buggs" I swerved to miss him and fish tailed right into a mail box.

The third is the only one I will debate my guilt in. I made a left turn at a yellow light just as a suburban mom gunned it to make the light. She admitted to having taken cough syrup, but she was a mom with a baby in the car and I was 19 and scruffy. This is also the only wreck in which the air bag deployed...dispite the impact occurring at maybe 20 mph. If this has never occured to you, let me tell you...the explosion that causes the air bag to burst through your steering wheel is basically a shot gun shell. If you are gripping the wheel, be preppared to have powder burn on your fingers.

The forth was actually the scariest. I was driving my father's mid life crisis mobile. It was another rainy night and I was driving the notoriously hilly and windy streets of Cincinnati on balding tires. I took a curve WAY TO FAST and the luxury sedan fishtailed. The entire car swung around and smashed into a telephone poll. When it was over, I put my hand behind my head and felt a telephone poll in the back seat, as if it were the driver's side passenger. As it stood I got away with a broken rib, some cuts from the broken glass, and a yelling at by my father...but another foot further down the hill and I don't know that I'd be blogging right now.

I haven't had a wreck since. Granted, I now rely almost exclusively on public transportation, and have been doing for the past 8 years, but also anytime I have been behind the wheel, I have been very aware of the potential dangers of a car.

Anyway, that was the humor of me starting the mix out with this song.

Oh shit...I've already written about this:
http://ocdipod.blogspot.com/2008/04/airbag-radiohead-ok-computer-1997.html

Oh well...

Along The Banks of the River - Tortoise - Millions Now Living Will Never Die - 1996

Has anyone else noticed the odd trend towards giant men's watches? It's like people are going to start wearing sundials and old school alarm clocks on their wrists before it's all over. Anyone who saw Roberto Donadoni's watch at the Euro 2008 games will know exactly what I'm talking about. If you didn't...Google that shit.

With their obvious debts to Ennio Morricone and Angelo Badalamenti, Scottish post-rock bands like Tortoise and Mogwai always owed something to the cinema. But following Mogwai's work on 28 Day's Later, it seems like post-rock has become the defacto music for edgy, tense soundtracks. The backwards effect of this is to make even post-rock albums that pre-date this trend seem like soundtracks. I listen to this, and I expect to be stumbling upon Laura Palmer's body any second now.

Almost Was Good Enough - Magnolia Electric Co. - Trials and Errors - 2005

It would probably sadden Jason Molina to know that I think this record is the best thing he's ever done. This album sounds like what I thought the bands that played in bars sounded like, before I had ever stepped foot into a bar and heard how ass-y bar bands actually are. Sure it's just Crazy Horse redux...but I find this format so much more interesting than the versions that appear on the proper studio albums...with the edges sawn off. This gritty performance (given in Belgium of all places) just has the right feel for what makes "bar rock" work...the bad boy swagger, the sense of sin and sweat and Calvinistic desperation.

No line probably sums up the appeal of this entire album like "This didn't used to be so hard/it used to be impossible". Delivered with a wail of the damned...a man that knows that his past is bleak, but the future will only be worse, it encapsulates everything that makes this cinematic style work. You can totally hear this as a soundtrack to a film like Blood Simple or One False Move...the simmering southern heat building as a jealous lover walks upstairs with a gun, not sure if he's going to kill her or have mind blowing sex that he'll regret for the rest of his life.

All The Old Showstoppers - The New Pornographers - Challengers - 2007

As I think I mentioned previously, I am not a big fan of the most recent NP album, despite being fairly bullish about their previous records. This song however is one of the standouts. It actually has the dynamics and energy of the Twin Cinema without the weird inertia that takes over so much of Challengers.

I'm also the kind of guy who can spend hours staring into the Rorschach blot that are Carl Newman's lyrics. Unlike other abstract lyricist Newman doesn't really throw Dada at the wall (Like Pollard) or deal in ominous insinuations (Like Yorke)...his songs seem to actually mean something...or at least have the semblance of meaning something...if only you had the appropriate Rosetta Stone.

This song for instance may or may not have a fantastic pun in it...I just don't know. It's possible that this song is actually about the book of Revelations and the references to John and Gabriel and the numbers could all be read at face value. Perhaps the song is about someone who believes the word is ending...or about the falacy of believing the world is going to end in a biblical apocalypse (as oppossed to the rather mundane drowning polar bear apocalypse we seem to be approaching).

Or alternately, the song could be about music. The John of the first line could be bass player/producer John Collins (though this gives no answer to who Gabriel is) and the "numbers" are sales figures. And maybe that line in the chorus is NOT "The Princess of the Paupers" but "The Princess of the Poppers"...which is actually really funny...if that's what he means...but I clearly have no idea.

I'm going to shut up now.

...All The Go Betweens - Silversun Pickups - Pikul - 2005

I got a haircut yesterday (fascinating, I know, but bear with me). As it's summer and my hair tends to grow fast, I went short. My roommate got in a bit later in the evening and as I went out to say hello he greated me with "What's up, Corporal Hicks?"

This brings me to my larger point: why, exactly, did things not work out for Michael Biehn? Seriously, this guy was held a major role in several important entries in the "Dude" movie canon. Not just Aliens, but the original Terminator, and of course as the only badass to give Val Kilmer a run for his money in Tombstone. The guy might not have been a superstar, but he had his charm and a sense of intelligence. He was stunt cast in things like The Rock and more recently Planet Terror...but why exactly did he end up more Mark Hammil than Harrison Ford? A question for the ages.

Silversun Pickups doing their Gish era-Smashing Pumpkins act...which is fine by me.

All My Friends - LCD Sound System - Sound of Silver - 2007

I'm not sure I am going to have anything new to say about this song. So, I'll basicaly cover the same ground Pitchfork did when they voted it best song of 2007 (I don't know that I neccesarily agree with that, but it's a pretty great song) only I'll make the general, personal.

Next month I will have lived in NYC for 8 years. The majority of long time friends that are here still hold on to some of their artistic aspirations (those that ever had any)...most of us still drink more than we probably should. I few of us still do drugs we should have outgrown. We still stay up late, and go to parties, and show, and art openings, and events. We still have meet ups in bars, and act like "rockstars" even into our thirties. It's just the way our generation has handled the "new 30"...our prolonged adolescence that the judgemental Boomers love to belittle us with.

We are all pioneers finding our way in the uncharted future...er, or something like that. It's just nice to be celebrated as such.

All I Need - Radiohead - In Rainbows - 2007

My office is right outside of the entrance to the Holland Tunnel, so I just got to witness one of the protest to the Sean Bell verdict. A throng of protestors stood and blocked the entrance preventing commuters from getting to Jersey...if I wanted to be especially snarky, I would ask "exactly how is this a bad thing?" But more to the point...we are a nation founded on violent protest. The American Revolution was essientially a 6 year protest against unjust laws (and those were mostly just TAX laws) but we've become increasingly intolerant of protests in our modern country. Anti-war demonstrations are written off as "dumb hippies" and these kind of protests are written off as a "racial issue". The response to this protest today, was a lot of honked horns, and a bunch of people being shoved into police vans. My co-workers response "Damn, it would suck to have to go into the tunnel today". If actual change through beauracracy is rendered impossible and protest is rendered a pointless act of futility, what recourse do the wronged have?

Anyway, I'm sure Thom Yorke would agree. Odd that they re-used the intro from "Where I End and You Begin" again...but otherwise this is another lovely song on the surprisingly tender In Rainbows.

All Hands Against His Own - The Black Keys - Rubber Factory - 2004

As I mentioned in my previous post about The Black Keys, I loved the blues as a teenager, but rejected it in the my 20's only to relatively recently re-embrace it. During the heat of the early mid-90's indie rock movement (which pretty much corresponds with the end of my high school/beginning of my college career) there was sort of a notion that we needed to abandon anything that had to do with the corporate beheometh that modern rock music had become. The blues was sort of a part of that. The blues had been co-opted by ageing boomer Eric Clapton, and was the underpinning for all of that flaccid and slick cock-rock that pop metal had become. It was the denizen of classic rock dinosaurs like Zeppelin and God help us all The Doors, or cheesey clothed revisionists like Stevie Ray Vaughn. It was what your middle aged uncle listened to while still insisting he was "cool".

But there is one thing that the blues gets that 95% of mid-nineties indie rock did not, and that is SEX. Put on any Pavement album, any Superchunk or Built To Spill album, and you will find very few songs about fucking. So much overt sexuality had been forced into the music in the 80's and the rise of MTV...combine this with the stringent PC attitude towards traditional gender roles and a generation of kids raised with the belief that the AIDS crisis would turn the future USA into something sort of like Children of Men and you get the almost prudish music of the Alternative Nation era.

I think this is one of the reasons rock lost so many fans to hip-hop during this time. Kids didn't want to hear about how mad we were at corporate oligarchy, or how low our self esteem was cause we weren't cool in high school. They wanted to hear about bumping uglies.

And that's part of why I've re-discovered the blues...thanks in no small part to bands like The Black Keys who can be smart and original in their sound while still working in a style that is now well over a century old...and they don't shy away from the fact that this is music about the things we do late at night with the lights out, or in the back of your grandfather's van in a K-mart parking lot. Really, it's okay to be a little dirty...it's how we all got here...aside of you test tube freaks.

Alarmed - Built to Spill - Ancient Melodies of the Future - 2001

So, I remember the first time I heard this record...It was early 2001 (pre-9/11) and I was living in a one room studio on 14th St. btwn 8th and 9th...back before that area was taken over by Stella McCartney. It was my first apartment in NYC and I was the only one of my crew to live in Manhattan, so my place was a frequent hang out. One of my friends had gotten a hold of an advance copy of the new BTS album and we were all excited to see it. Me and two of my fellow UK alums got together in my little room with a few six packs and sat back to listen. In hindsite, AMOTF is pretty lackluster, but I find this track to be one of the keepers. Martch was clearly trying to recapture a little of his Perfect From Now On mojo, bringing back Brett Netson for some fine space guitar, keeping Sam Coomes keyboard contributions appropriately eerie, and rocking the menacing vibe that made that earlier album so great.

As a history nerd, I also find something particularly evocative about the line "keep your lamps all trimmed and burning/might be alarmed at what you see". It speaks to something primordial in us, from before science had explained to us every creepy thing in the dark. I think leaving in early colonial america must have been terrifying. The darkness must have been positively Lovecraftian...

Yeah, anywho...