3AM Sleepy-eyed American Idol Finale

"So it all comes down to this: Bush vs Kerry for all the marbles. Standard electoral strategy suggests that a successful candidacy depends crucially on making every possible effort to mean as much as possible to as many people as possible, i.e. to carry some appeal for a diverse group of voters, clear across the electorate. One cannot blame Kerry for sticking to this tried-and-true strategy. But what the Kerry camp does not know, and will not understand until all is lost, is that Bush and his campaign architects are planning a complete subversion of the normally accepted strategy. Bush couldn't care less about broad appeal, rather, he has a loyal and devoted base of support, and is working on growing it as much as possible. The Kerry camp underestimates the mobilization strength of the Bush camp in drawing new devotees to their cause, and overestimates it's own power to mobilize people against Bush. That is, Kerry thinks that if people don't like Bush and instead find him (Kerry) palatable enough, then he (Kerry) will have earned new voters. Bush knows that this is false, in the sense that he can trust his own voter base to a far greater degree than Kerry can trust his, and that the only way for Kerry to overcome the odds and draw out enough new voters to put him over the top is for him to put on a virtuoso performance and blow enough minds to the extent that undecided or fence-sitting voters simply have no choice but to vote for him. Bush feels that Kerry doesn't have what it takes to pull that off, and if so, then Bush will be able to cruise to victory while hardly breaking a sweat.

Hopefully it is obvious which of the Davids is Bush, and which of them is Kerry."

I wrote all that a few hours before Tuesday's show, and I'm posting it here to demonstrate how spectacularly wrong I was.

I wasn't the only one. Plenty of people have complained during this season of ups and downs that the show is in desperate need of a major shakeup, and a good place to start would be with the voting. Tens of millions of people vote each week, and yet the exact numbers are locked down tighter than the plot of the new Indiana Jones. Elections for public office don't draw this kind of voter turnout, and those numbers are laced with every statistical and demographic tidbit that the pollsters, press, and public can get its hands on. We've put up with seven years of cryptic clues and unordered "bottom threes" in a failing attempt to extract something -- anything -- about the vote tallies and rankings of the finalists from week to week. I don't just want to know who is going home, I want the actual RESULTS.

I suppose it's within the realm of possibility that Kerry really did impress enough people and inspire a swarm of Bush haters to rush to their telephones to vote for him or against his hated rival (whatever their disposition). But it's a lot more likely that David Cook dominated the voting from day one, which led to panicky AI producers -- fearful of a suspense-less season when ratings had noticeably sagged -- devising a way to convince the viewers that somebody else had a reasonable chance of winning. The judges amped up their gushing accolades for David Archuleta and practically handed him the title after Tuesday's show in order to try to make a contest out of the whole thing. What, all of this sounds like a crackheaded conspiracy theory to you? This is precisely what happened in Season Two, and producer Nigel Lithgoe even admitted it himself. Clay was miles ahead in the voting, so the show directed itself toward concocting a Clay vs Ruben rivalry based around their contrast in styles.

Now, one could argue that the proof is in the pudding vis a vis Season Two, that what could have been a boring season with a foregone conclusion was reshaped into a fierce, months-long battle that is still remembered fondly by fans of the show. On the other hand, we didn't get the season we asked for (and voted for), instead, we got the season that was assigned to us by the producers. Lithgoe's reasoning about people not watching if they knew that one contestant had a big lead simply doesn't hold water. To use another US political analogy, it's like saying that when Hilary had a 20-something percentage lead over Obama in the polls one year ago, then the nomination was effectively secured because nobody would bother supporting Obama when he trailed by so much and seemingly had little shot of winning. Or fine, enough with the politics, if you want an example from the entertainment industry, how about the 1997 Oscars, which was one of the highest rated Oscar broadcasts in recent memory purely on the strength of people tuning in to watch "Titanic" romp over the competition in one of the most obvious Best Picture wins ever. A lot can happen over the course of a season. Sometimes the favourites pick up more steam, sometimes they tread water and the competition steps up, sometimes the backlash kicks in and they wither under the pressure. All those possibilities make for interesting TV. And if it's known that two contestants are close in the voting (no matter where they are placed, but especially if they are on the bubble), the increase in voter urgency can result in plenty of "battles within the battle" and make for *really* interesting TV.

In the end, I couldn't stay awake for most of the finale, but caught the big finish with George Michael's performance and the announcement of the winner. That's pretty much a microcosm of my American Idol Season 7 viewing experience.

American Idol Finale Anticipation

I didn't manage to get hooked by Idol's seventh season. Many times, I simply forgot to watch it (having to catch it on tape delay is an enthusiasm-buster if there ever was one), and news about its bad reviews and sinking ratings obviously didn't do much to motivate me either. I didn't see much star potential at the end of Hollywood week, and the early stages of the top 24 did nothing for me, so I more or less fell off the Idol wagon and just kept up with the weekly results.

However, Star World has been showing an Idol marathon this weekend, allowing me to do some catching up at my leisure. The March 25th and 26th episodes (singing songs from the year of your birth, Chikeze eliminated) was a jewel of an episode that featured a handful of standout performances. This should be the episode to show to nonbelievers in a few years time when they claim that season seven was the worst ever and the one where the show definitively jumped the shark (wrong on both counts in any case -- season three was the worst, and the show jumped the shark last season at the exact moment that Sanjaya Malakar went home and the ratings tanked).

Syesha's success is reminiscent of Nikki McKibbin's from season one -- her place in the top three doesn't make any sense now, and will make less sense in a few years time when nobody has the slightest memory about her or anything that she sang. She is far and away the least deserving top three contestant the show has ever had. Every other top nine finalist from this year is more interesting and unique than her "female R&B diva with a passable voice" persona, which is a style that AI has beaten into the ground and no longer represents what viewers want to see based on the talents of the rest of this year's field. Sure, Jason Castro sucks but at least with him I get his crusty dorm room freakshow appeal. David Archuleta is a Disney doll who was essentially deemed as the Anointed One from the start of the competition even though he has limited appeal to anyone over the age of fifteen. But again, with him, I "get it". Syesha is completely forgettable, and I'll never understand how she survived so many trips to the bottom three.

The March 25th episode had a bit of everything, from Kristy Lee Cook's blonde country girl patriotism, to Simon Cowell's eerily prescient comment re: Archuleta's svengali dad when he said that he had trouble believing that David picked the song because it simply "wasn't him" (although "You're the Voice" is a brilliant song that I've always felt was madly underrated), to Michael Johns pwning Queen and possibly guaranteeing himself a Constantine Maroulis Career in the process, to Brooke White's simpleton Joni Mitchell act (a more consistent performer who didn't screw up at the start of every song could have won the competition). David Cook's jaw-dropping version (of Chris Cornell's arrangement -- the spirit of Chris Daughtry lives on and lives well) of "Billie Jean" made me a believer out of me and there's no justice in the world of Idol string-pullers if that version doesn't see release as a single.

NEWS FLASH: DJ Spooky in "Nature"

First it was L'il Louis appearing "Science" (sort of), then came a review of a Spooky-edited collection of essays Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture. All this, and the Jenna Bush dancing to Taj Mahal at her wedding! In which other surprising contexts and media might music appear next, especially as it pertains to science? Someday, it is possible that we'd see a nine-part essay series in "Nature" about scientific theories of music? Oh wait, we already have!

Old Flames

A few nights ago, I was walking home from the train station at night, along a dimly-lit street with sidewalks covered by low-hanging tree branches, and a live version of Godspeed You Black Emperor's "Gathering Storm" popped up on my iPod. I had just added it earlier that day, but was using the shuffle function so the timing here was not premeditated. As the song built up over the opening minute, I happened to walk past an electric pole, and on its concrete base, scrawled in black paint, were the words "KNOW HOPE". It was pretty much a perfect moment in music.

Anyone who never liked Godspeed surely just rolled their eyes and has stopped reading this by now. Anyone who was ever a fan has probably had a few moments like these, in which their music has fit the mood of the surroundings perfectly -- a quick, meaningless moment in life abruptly crystallized into a memorable opening scene of a sad movie set to exactly the right soundtrack. At the same time, I understood what was missing in the music of A Silver Mt Zion (Thee Memorial etc.), or essentially, what they subtracted in sacrificing kitchen sink drama for lyrical sincerity and raw vocalized emotion. ASMZ don't create these types of moments. GYBE still can, even if, as in this case, I hadn't heard this particular Montreal live recording in years. The new ASMZ songs reek of a band that has already said everything they have to say. On their last tour, they regularly played 30-minute versions of "Ring Them Bells (Freedom Has Come and Gone)" that ended in dark, sludgy drone and suggested a more haunted direction for the band's usual worldly paranoia. But instead of drawing future inspiration from that song's final fifteen minutes, they drew it from the first fifteen minutes, continuing with a style that now feels exhausted.

One month ago, I honestly couldn't have cared less if Portishead ever released another note of new music. Now that they've created the best album of 2008 thus far, what do I have to say for myself?

Ten years is a long time to wait for a band whose first two albums never fully clicked with me, albums that I wanted to like as much as other people did but couldn't. The golden days of trip-hop now feel as quaint and outdated as Beatlemania, so what was there to feel excited about in 2008?

Even the most sombre moments on "Portishead" didn't suggest that they were capable of making something like "Third", an album that's as offstandish and mechanical as it is beautiful. Like all the best ideas that are floating around and waiting to be picked out of the air, it all feels so simple and obvious, not least because the entire album has a raw, lo-fi feel that makes it sound as if if was recorded for a few hundred dollars. Why haven't more bands made torch songs like "The Rip" that abruptly shift gears into the motorik rock of early Kraftwerk or Cluster? Why haven't more bands pillaged the idea of sounding like a mashup of Joy Division's "Heart and Soul" and Silver Apples' "Sunlight Serenade", like Portishead do on "We Carry On"? Why didn't Xiu Xiu record "Machine Gun" before Portishead did? Trent Reznor should be taking cues from that track and using it as a springboard for the major sonic overhaul that his most latest albums so desperately needed. And "Threads", which is heavier (more in a black metal way than a blues-y way) than anything on their first two albums, clatters toward it's bleak conclusion as everything sinks to hell while Beth Gibbons finally becomes unrestrained and wails us down with the ship.

"Third" is an outstanding achievement that gives me new hope for the prospect of formerly great bands returning from the dead and coming back better than ever (crossing my fingers with the MBV reunion) (fortunately, I have heard a bootleg of "The Coral Sea" and it definitely all that and a big bag of chips).

Depeche Mode, "One Night In Paris", "Live in Milan"

I am years behind on DVD purchases. Give me some time to catch up.

I saw concerts on both of these tours, and the differences between the shows were considerable, not to mention my levels of enjoyment. So it goes with the associated DVDs.

The "Exciter" tour was the band's first in support of a "proper" album in eight years, but sadly (for those who had waited so long to see them live -- I'd like to pretend that the "Singles" tour didn't exist for my own reasons) the album turned out to be one of Depeche's weakest. The mellowness of the music mirrored the, ahem, maturation of the fan base, as the energy level on stage and in the crowd was ramped down several notches from past tours. On the other hand, "Playing the Angel" was one of the strongest albums of the band's career and proved to be more suited to anthemic singalongs than any of their albums since "Violator". A few more songs were rescued from mothballs ("Shake the Disease", "Policy of Truth") and the resulting tour setlists were arguably the strongest of any tour the band had ever done.

"One Night in Paris" is unmistakably Corbijn. He uses long, steady camera shots and a minimum of camera angles for each song. These shots are angled to provide maximal attention to the details of lighting and shadowing. When the camera focuses on one of the band members, it usually remains there long enough to permit intimate study of virtually everything that person is doing. In several instances, the angle and duration of the shots felt almost like an intrusion of Dave Gahan's privacy, picking up everything from his strained, in-the-moment facial expressions, to the slow drip of sweat falling from his body. The show gives plenty of time for reflection on the band's music, on the words they are singing, and on the personality of the performers. The slow pace of the "Exciter" songs certainly helps in this respect. The show feels more like a documentary than a rock and roll show.

"Live in Milan" is like Depeche Mode performing on the MTV Video Awards for two straight hours. The camera rarely stays still, constantly jumping through rapid-fire cuts, fast zooms, and extreme close-ups. The generous use of fuzzy, blurred effects and grainy video has the look and feel of handheld camera footage. This, along with plenty of crowd shots (which are *very* rarely used by Corbijn), and the ADD-editing, are intended to communicate the feeling of "being there" among all the frenzy and disorientation that one expects from a great concert. There are occasional pauses to focus on crotches, tattoos, and fingertips, seemingly in an all-out effort to portray the band as sex symbols and legendary rock stars. Once the DVD was over, I realized that I could remember very little about the stage design, lighting, and video displays (the stage was designed by Corbijn, incidentally) -- with all that jumping and cutting, there wasn't enough time to get a good look at any of that. The "scenery" vanished from my memory, but the way the songs sounded remained perfectly clear.

All in all, when each DVD ended, "Live In Milan" made me want to be back at the concert I saw in 2005, while "One Night In Paris" made me want to watch the DVD again. The high quality of the "Playing the Angel" tracks and the energy of the performances made that tour exceedingly special, particularly for a band in its 25th year of existence, and when it really comes down to it, the music matters most and everything else is window dressing in comparison. This implies that I had a strongly negative view toward "One Night In Paris", but it shouldn't be construed exactly as such. In a sense, the "Exciter" tour *needed* to be expertly captured on DVD in order to make up for the various weaknesses of the "Exciter" tour and album, thereby elevating "Exciter" to a greatness that it couldn't achieve on its own. As a viewing document to be enjoyed with the lights down at home, "One Night In Paris" is easily superior.

Quick and to the point

These news items are all about a month old, but let's tackle them anyway:

-- The full lineup for MUTEK 2008 is AWESOME, probably the best in the history of the festival. Christian Fennesz and Tim Hecker playing back-to-back? A dubstep picnic? Underground Resistance?!?? I won't be there for the fifth straight year, but someday ... I will.

-- I kept away from it for a few weeks, but upon viewing the new Black Kids video once again, I'm still disappointed that they didn't understand that so much of the warped magic of the song was wrapped up in burying the vocals deep into the mix with a generous helping of echo. So I guess the sound on the demo was just a case of being too poor to record and mix the vocals "properly" (read: a radio-friendly manner).

-- If it was possible to place and enforce a worldwide ban on cover versions of particular songs, "Heroes" would rank near the top of my urgency list. The Magnetic Fields' version is great, but every other version I've heard tries to turn it into a straight-up rock song instead of an FX-laden ambient prog-rock song, and is thereby embarassing and an insult to the original. The latest offenders: The Arcade Fire.

Portishead return

They went missing for ten years, and have returned as a completely different band. As it was with Tricky and his third album, they've returned in an angrier, dirt and grime-covered incarnation. The fact that I had to reference a Tricky album that nobody remembers (even if it was a massively underappreciated record) really highlights 1) how long Portishead have laid dormant, 2) how much more interesting it would have been if they'd returned with this sound several years ago. In 2000, this would have been an original and unexpected shift. In 2008, "Portishead goes goth" doesn't sound nearly as exciting.

Even the camera work in this live-in-studio performance gives it the feel of an old Kraftwerk (pre-1974) or Joy Division TV appearance. The neo-industrial percussion and twangy, distorted guitar lines make this closer to a late 1970's Cabaret Voltaire gig than anything you'd associate with electronica or hip-hop (in this or in any other year). The key problem is that Beth Gibbons' voice is completely unsuited to this style of band. Portishead have transformed but her voice remains the same, wailing out anguished blues over tunes that call for a more gravelly, frenetic, determined, and possibly even male voice. Even so, I've heard enough to be fairly certain that "Third" is the best Portishead album to date (yes, I know it has leaked but I haven't gotten a copy yet).

Spiritualized, "Songs in A&E". M83, "Saturdays = Youth"

On one very memorable night in the fall of 2001, I listened to new albums by two groups, both of whom were inner-circle heroes of mine. Both were releasing their first albums in years, and I listened to them back-to-back on the same night. On paper, that Orbital vs Spiritualized battle looked even, but it turned out to be a huge mismatch. "Let It Come Down" turned out to be the masterpiece we all know and love, while "The Altogether" was easily the weakest album of Orbital's career, even bordering on embarrassing in spots as they went way overboard on the goofy samples and rave throwbacks. That evening's verdict turned out to be oddly prophetic for me because it symbolized the shift that my listening tastes would take from the 90's to the 00's. Melodic techno was out, and, um, wall of sound emo was in (Godspeed, Hollowphonic, Sigur Ros, and I'd even lump Eluvium in this category).

Seven years later, we have a worthy sequel. In some sense, the Spiritualized comeback is already a blowaway success, seeing as Jason Pierce literally cheated death and returned to touring less than two years later. Had it just been any ordinary tour, it already would have been cause for celebration, but this one was simply sensational, completely overhauling the band's typical live set with acoustic reworkings of old songs mixed with high quality new ones. In the other corner stands M83, synth-blasting MBV torchbearers turned overwrought cinematic 80's kitschmeisters, and the creators of possibly my favourite album that didn't rank at #1 on one of my year-end lists ("Before the Dawn Heals Us"). I don't feel secure with bands until they put out at least three brilliant albums in a row -- up until then, anything can be a fluke, any band can crash and burn and destroy my confidence in them. Three is a magic number that secures a godlike status and likely makes me a fan for life and a true believer in virtually everything the band chooses to do from that point forward. So I'm really putting M83 to the test with "Saturdays = Youth". Spiritualized passed that test way back in 1993, after I heard the "Electric Mainline EP". I broke my own "rule" at the time, since they had only released one proper album at the time, but what can I say, Spiritualized were (and are) special.

The initial round of listening took place not in my bedroom, but on the beach on a day that was so windy, it left nothing to do other than watch kite-surfing while listening to my iPod.

"Songs in A&E" is the very first Jason Pierce solo album. Yes, you could say that every SPZ album since "Ladies and Gentlemen ..." was a J Spaceman solo effort, if not every SPZ album, period, and I wouldn't put up much of a counterargument against you. But even though Jason pulled all the strings on those records, the music has plenty of jammy/improv moments that rely on close interplay between actual musicians who trust each other in a live setting. Other than the odd squall of S3-ish feedback, "Songs in A&E" has none of that. Only "Sweet Talk", the epic-sounding opener, connects this record to the larger-than-life symphonic rush of the "Let It Come Down" era. This is Jason the folkie, the outlaw, writing songs in his bedroom for himself. The band is gravy.

The brilliance of the Acoustic Mainline shows made me crave an all-acoustic SPZ album, and the arrangements on that tour (for both the new and old songs) offered far more surprises than anything featured on the proper album. The electic formats don't hurt the new material (for example, Soul on Fire really comes alive in its electric form, piling on sound in a way that the acoustic version can't hope to match) but consider that right now you can go to SPZ's myspace page and hear an acoustic version of "Goodnight/Funeral Home" that kills virtually everything on "Songs in A&E". Listen to that song and ask yourself how essential "Songs in A&E" can possibly be.

"Saturdays = Youth" completes M83's drive toward blueprinted 80's kitsch and distancing themselves almost totally from their synth-y shoegaze beginnings. The album sounds uncannily like something written and produced in the 80's. The attention to detail in that regard is truly something else. Picking up where "A Guitar and a Heart" left off, the last bits of Loverboy have been stripped away, making room for synth-y retrofuturism more in line with what Styx were doing in the early 80's. This turns out about 1000X better than you might expect based on a decontextualized reading of the previous sentence.

The dreamlike "You, Appearing" is not so far removed from the feel of one of the many short interludes on "Before the Dawn Heals Us", but it soon makes way for the almost unbearably good power ballad "Kim and Jessie" (even the song title reads like something that could have only been released during the 80's!). It comes complete with gated drums that would make Mutt Lange cry and want to produce "Hysteria" all over again, an intricate array of sighing synth lines accenting the oft-repeated chorus of "lurking in the shadows" and by the end you get that lump in your throat that comes with the realization that you're only on the second track but you already know you're listening to a great album. Many broken hearts and drive-ins later, the album fades to grey with the eleven minute (if anything, it is far too short) "Midnight Souls Still Remain", whose anodyne moods could have shown up on any Stars of the Lid album without much complaint from that band's fans.

Score a huge victory for M83 with what will surely wind up being one of 2008's best albums.

NEWS FLASH: L'il Louis cited in "Science", plus more cool stuff that you won't believe ...

In Diana Dabby's short perspective entitled "Creating Musical Variation", she cites L'il Louis' "French Kiss" as an example of music that adds variation by gradually adding layers of rhythm and melody to the song's melodic backbone. I'm not sure why she picked this particular track, since countless other tracks could have illustrated her point just as well. Her goal may have been to highlight how this track stands out compared to then-contemporary house ("French Kiss"'s use of repetition was probably a bigger influence on trance and techno than for house). Or maybe we should simply gawk at the surprising and wonderful fact that L'il Louis was cited in one of the world's elite scientific journals. Never before have I been able to listen to faked orgasms and claim "I'm simply catching up on the literature". I'm not sure how much of that article is accessible without a subscription, but she links to this version of the song on youtube, so now you too listen to one of the greatest house tracks ever, all while keeping in touch with the scientific vanguard!

What's more, skating might be the new dancing, and I welcome the change. Skating parties hosted by Moodymann? Just when you think that there aren't any more brilliant ideas out there ... along comes another one. Skating in circles requires less coordination than dancing in place, so imagine the ramifications for the rhythmically challenged. Georgio Moroder said that Germans needed the basic 4/4 beat because they were clumsy and it was the simplest possible beat to dance to, so are skating parties the next logical progression for people who can't dance? Ah, but what happens when fancy spins and twirls become the required moves on the rink? I'm loving all this.

Would this fly in Canada on an ice rink? I can only dream.

Choked Up

Like many people, I'm sure, I delved into the music of NEU! this week as a reaction to Klaus Dinger's death, because death brings out a natural human reaction in most people and forces you to revisit music that you've regrettably neglected. I needed to be reminded of the funkiness of a motorik beat, of the way that "Hallogallo" builds unstoppably and imperceptibly -- it's possibly the most striking example of the magic of minimalism. Dinger also knew how to tweak the formula to deliver something more explosive, such as on "Lila Engel" from "NEU!2" (which has always my favourite NEU! album, in no small part due to that track). It's a cliche to note that the drummer is the most boring, not to mention invisible member of a band, but Dinger is a huge exception. In the bands he co-founded, he and his drumming were the true stars of the show.

I actually got a bit choked up with joy when I was waiting for a train and Black Kids' "I Don't Wanna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance" popped up on my iPod. I hadn't heard it in a couple of months, and promptly caned the shit out of it during the rest of the week and diluted its power (which is exactly *why* I had had to give it a rest for two months in the first place), but nothing can destroy the vividness of those thirty seconds on the train station platform once the opening chords kicked in. The way that even the most familiar music can spring out of nowhere and still surprise you might be the #1 reason for being a music fan.

Finally, six months after the release of "Hauff/Heim", I have changed my opinion on the new track "Hljomalind". I used to like it a lot, but now really "get it". Obviously inspired by the massive, sweeping scenery that was presented in the "Heima" film, "Hljomalind" marks a shift from the fairy tale music of "Takk" into something more expansive, meant to be shouted from tops of mountains instead of whimpered a dim, claustrophobic bedroom.