Sunday, January 28, 2007

American Idol Season Six -- First Thoughts

My mom watches the audition episodes religiously, mainly to laugh her ass off at the putzes that audition despite lacking any semblance of talent. I hesitate to call them "unfortunate putzes" because most of them are hamming it up in order to get on TV, so they simultaneously get exactly what they want AND what is coming to them, so everybody wins. Distinguishing the genuinely crazy people from the "look at me, I'm on AI" crazies would make for a fun drinking game if anyone out there wants to invent one. Or even the simpler "Simon makes incredulous bug eyes: One Drink; Randy laughs and hides his face behind a piece of paper: Two Drinks" kind of drinking game.

I watch these episodes, uh, "distractingly" (not always catching every episode, making dinner or talking or reading while they're on, etc.) and mainly to get a first look at future stars. It's a near certainty that one of the top three or four contestants, if not the eventual American Idol, will appear on our TVs during the audition episodes ... can YOU spot a breakout star amidst hundreds of pretenders? It brings out the closet talent scout in all of us. Here's where I conceitedly point out that I flipped out over Taylor Hicks right off the bat*, as opposed to svengali-man Simon "Westlife" Cowell who passed on both Hicks and Clay Aiken for the trip to Hollywood. Besides duping the no-talents into singing bonus songs for the show-ending clip chorus (e.g. Lionel Richie's "All Night Long" from last week) and rolling the cameras on their semi-deranged auditions for far longer than in past seasons (let's pass this car crash at 20 km/h instead of 30 km/h), this season hasn't distinguished itself from the others yet. After a dull Season 3, Seasons 4 and 5 rejuvenated the show by infusing it with country, rock, and blues Idol wannabes. This year, they're back to cycling through R&B melisma-obsessives as their bread and butter. We've seen all this before, but next week they travel to Alabama so maybe there's still hope.

* Kat too!

Friday, January 19, 2007

Low, "Drums and Guns"

First of all, it's a crap title (Meatloaf's "sex and drums and rock n roll" line, anyone?).

Second, it seems we have another mixing/mastering controversy on our hands, as rumours swirl as to whether or not the iffy mix currently making the rounds (in which nearly all vocals appear in one channel) is the final version or not. A lot of people complained about the fuzzy mastering of "The Great Destroyer", but I had it on vinyl and heard nothing wrong with it, so I'll let the CD owners argue about that ... the stereo separation on "Drums and Guns" is very difficult to ignore, and I sway between annoyance and obliviousness depending on the day.

Third, "Violent Past" is an ear-bleeding masterpiece -- one of the best five or six songs they've ever recorded.

Overall, this album sounds too much like a band trying to distance themselves from every inch of how they sounded up to "Things We Lost in the Fire", and not enough like a band writing the great songs they're capable of. They're pushing this sonic departure down our throats -- I believe it's no coincidence that the most "90's Low"-ish track is only one minute long, cutting itself off just as it begins blossoming into something memorable. The ongoing guns + violence theme wears thin once you get past the best three or four songs on here, and although some tracks have really grown on me (especially "In Silence" and "Dragonfly"), I think "Drums and Guns" is a curio at worst (hey! watch them use drum machines and beats and shit!) and a creative mis-step at best.

Tuesday, January 09, 2007

Jackin' Pop Results (from Idolator)

I was a bit disappointed with the results of this poll, mainly due to the utter predicabilty of the results, which carried a frightening ressemblance to Pitchfork's poll except with bonus Dylan, because that's what happens when people over 40 years old are participating. The entire top 50 was so ... expected, with not a single album or placing that could be considered truly suprising (in either a good or a bad way). Exceptions ... maybe the low placing for the Liars? Arctic Monkeys nearly cracking the top ten? The wonderfully bizarre 23-24-25 triplet of Scott Walker, Mastodon, and Tom Waits?

Organizationally speaking, Idolator did a fantastic job. Browsing the results is simple, intuitive, and they put the whole ensemble together in a very timely fashion. For statheads, there are options for sorting the data by age, race, region, or primary writing outlet (but unfortunately not by gender -- this yielded intriguing results in past P&J polls). As a card-carrying stathead, I really enjoyed Maura Johnston's essay, which listed all thirty albums that received only one #1 vote but not a single other vote from any other contributor. Out of 497 contributors, it means that a full 6% of #1 album votes fell into that category, which to me is a startlingly high number. Album winners TV on the Radio drew a little over 25% support (comparable to what P&J winners have gotten in recent years), but only three albums earned 100 votes, and only four others earned over 60 (12%), indicating a distinct lack of consensus among the contributors.

I nearly figured into Maura's essay (only one other vote -- for 6th place -- was submitted for "Ticket Crystals"), and would have qualified if she'd done the same for the singles list, as I was the only person to cast a vote for Jesu's "Silver". A comparable list for top singles would likely comprise more than thirty entries (or perhaps not, considering the degree to which the top four singles dominated the competition and particularly the astounding amount of consensus around the #1 pick) but strangely enough (taking non-consensus to the next level), nobody else cast a single vote for my top three singles (along with my #6, #9, and #10 singles). I must continue to state my surprise at the complete anonymity of "Mighty Girl", which, considering the generally high profile of DFA/LCD Soundsystem clones these days, is looking like one of the great forgotten singles of the past few years. And I continue to be baffled by the never-ending stream of accolades for "Return to Cookie Mountain", which is choked with the exact same faults as their debut (most notably that every track is two minutes longer than it needs to be) but I don't remember anybody lauding "Desperate Youth Blood Thirsty Babes" as an album of the year contender. Unabashed love for American indie rock somehow came back into crit-fashion this year, but that genre has always fallen on the outskirts of my personal taste, so it's no shock that I mostly ignored it yet again this year (stay tuned for the ongoing chinstroking of YEAR-END LIST REVIEW MANIA and you will note the decade-plus pattern).

Finally, Glenn Mcdonald's alignment rankings are now available (see here) and I'm in the bottom 9th percentile, which is more or less where I figured I'd be. This number stands to get even lower for P&J, unless perhaps there's a massive deluge of Yo La Tengo votes.