In other words, "It's Blitz!" is incredibly good, much better than I would have ever expected. Before this album, I'd pigeonholed them as the prototype three star band, you know, a band that you can count on for five or six great songs per album (including a couple of absolute scorchers that ensure you'll stay faithful to them for the next couple of albums at least), plus some filler that will round out the album, style-wise. Rank that album at 3/5 stars, not great but certainly solid.
This album has been acclaimed as a drastic departure from the sound of the first two YYY's albums, but really it's just natural evolution for the band, provided you assume that they were meant to evolve along the same path as Blondie (and it makes perfect sense, doesn't it?) That means we're entering the "Autoamerican" era, as shown by the outstanding one-two opening punch of "Zero" and "Heads Will Roll". But they haven't just taken the same old gutterpunk numbers and disco-fied them, they've also become a great ballads band, and no, I don't mean mid-tempo rockers like "Maps" or tongue-in-cheek efforts like "Modern Romance", I mean real, gutwrenching power ballad tracks. "Runaway" is fine, albeit a bit cloying and OTT, but "Skeletons", "Little Shadow", and "Hysteric" are flawless, with a screen composer's sense of dramatic build and sweet release.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Saturday, April 04, 2009
J. Viewz @ Barby
My first thought, as I chugged down some beers during the long wait before the start of the show, was that it takes some balls to play a weekend gig without an opening band. Only a band that was fully confident in their frenzy-making abilities would do something like that, I thought while waiting for the venue to slowly fill up.
J. Viewz are a tight, slick outfit, with Jonathan Dagan (aka J. Viewz) and drummer Yoni Halevi acting undoubtedly as the co-captains of the performance. Dagan operates the laptop-driven wizardry that sequences the set, and also handles lead guitar, turntables and cheerleading duty, while Halevi's powerful, seamless drumming anchors the complex array of rhythms and sounds in the band's music. I personally prefer J. Viewz's more downtempo, house-influenced material, but it's clear that based on their live setup and more recent releases that they prefer to go the jazz/funk route. Although the songs leave plenty of room for improvisation, I feel that the sequencing holds them back a bit, because naturally it's hard to improvise while also relying on pre-programmed backing tracks.
The makeup of the audience was also suspended between a couple of extremes, mixed between people who came to dance and get with the funk, and people who came to observe and appreciate (i.e. jazz fans). J. Viewz are getting away with a perilous but fascinating balancing act and so far they're succeeding, but it'll be interesting to see how long they can keep this up.
J. Viewz are a tight, slick outfit, with Jonathan Dagan (aka J. Viewz) and drummer Yoni Halevi acting undoubtedly as the co-captains of the performance. Dagan operates the laptop-driven wizardry that sequences the set, and also handles lead guitar, turntables and cheerleading duty, while Halevi's powerful, seamless drumming anchors the complex array of rhythms and sounds in the band's music. I personally prefer J. Viewz's more downtempo, house-influenced material, but it's clear that based on their live setup and more recent releases that they prefer to go the jazz/funk route. Although the songs leave plenty of room for improvisation, I feel that the sequencing holds them back a bit, because naturally it's hard to improvise while also relying on pre-programmed backing tracks.
The makeup of the audience was also suspended between a couple of extremes, mixed between people who came to dance and get with the funk, and people who came to observe and appreciate (i.e. jazz fans). J. Viewz are getting away with a perilous but fascinating balancing act and so far they're succeeding, but it'll be interesting to see how long they can keep this up.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Depeche Mode Live 1990
One of my long-standing music-related mini missions has been to track down a quality live recording from Depeche Mode's "World Violation" tour. It was the tour for the album that's usually cited as their best, and yet it produced relatively few bootleg recordings. Then again, it's not too difficult to speculate on the reasons for this. They were now firmly in place as a stadium-only band, and the larger the venue, the harder it is to make a half-decent sounding recording. The "Music For the Masses" tour produced the famed "101" tour film and the legendary Rose Bowl concert, the "Devotional" tour produced the concert video of the same name (and the finest of the band's career), and the subsequent four-year gap stretches to the DVD/internet/filesharing age, where concerts are far more easily recorded and distributed. "World Violation" ended up being the neglected middle sibling of Depeche Mode's history.
Pay a visit to this webpage and you'll find not only a pristine soundboard recording of DM's July 1990 concert in San Fransicso, but a load of other rare electronic music gems, such as a few Scion + Tikiman gigs and one of the very first Autechre shows from 1993. The DM recording is actually a bit too pristine, as you get all of the sound with none of the atmosphere, for all the crowd noise is completely eliminated with the exception of leakage into Dave Gahan's microphone. And the recording only proves what I have long since known from other, crappier-sounding bootlegs -- that this tour represented something of a creative nadir for DM. Without the benefit of hearing the music in a stadium packed with tens of thousands of freaks going apeshit in their long black coats and skintight black leather pants, the musical arrangements sound too crisp, too sparse, too sterile. Most of the songs remained frozen in time since the "Music For the Masses" tour in that the versions they play sound nearly identical. While it's nice to hear the live debut of the "Violator" tracks, most of them have been staples in live sets ever since, and newer versions are far superior versions to the ones from "World Violation". But beginning with the "Devotional" tour, the band overhauled (and dismissed) the 80's setlist, changed up the arrangements, started relying on guitar/drums/percussion to augment their live shows, and became a even more exciting live band in the process.
Of course, part of me couldn't care less about any of this analysis because Depeche Mode are my favourite band ever and I saw their Toronto concert about a month before this and have long since sought a way to help relive those amazing memories with the help of a quality sounding bootleg.
Pay a visit to this webpage and you'll find not only a pristine soundboard recording of DM's July 1990 concert in San Fransicso, but a load of other rare electronic music gems, such as a few Scion + Tikiman gigs and one of the very first Autechre shows from 1993. The DM recording is actually a bit too pristine, as you get all of the sound with none of the atmosphere, for all the crowd noise is completely eliminated with the exception of leakage into Dave Gahan's microphone. And the recording only proves what I have long since known from other, crappier-sounding bootlegs -- that this tour represented something of a creative nadir for DM. Without the benefit of hearing the music in a stadium packed with tens of thousands of freaks going apeshit in their long black coats and skintight black leather pants, the musical arrangements sound too crisp, too sparse, too sterile. Most of the songs remained frozen in time since the "Music For the Masses" tour in that the versions they play sound nearly identical. While it's nice to hear the live debut of the "Violator" tracks, most of them have been staples in live sets ever since, and newer versions are far superior versions to the ones from "World Violation". But beginning with the "Devotional" tour, the band overhauled (and dismissed) the 80's setlist, changed up the arrangements, started relying on guitar/drums/percussion to augment their live shows, and became a even more exciting live band in the process.
Of course, part of me couldn't care less about any of this analysis because Depeche Mode are my favourite band ever and I saw their Toronto concert about a month before this and have long since sought a way to help relive those amazing memories with the help of a quality sounding bootleg.
Friday, March 27, 2009
But what would the Mafa make of The Arcade Fire?
There are about a million things wrong with this study that lays claim to Western music's innate ability to convey emotion. I haven't read the academic journal article but on the basis of the Nat Geo report, I have about a million questions, starting with "where is the control study?" How exactly does Western music convey emotion in ways that, say, traditional Japanese music doesn't? I probably should track down the tracklist they used for this experiment, but a simple formula along the lines of "slow tempo = sad music, fast tempo = happy music" seems to apply itself quite well to music from radically distinct cultures, so how was this study able to distinguish the affectations of rhythm/tempo from those of melody?
Maybe they should have used the new movie trailer for and asked the Mafa if it represented a happy or a sad movie. Maybe they could help me figure it out, because I watch that clip and swing through a superposition of highs and lows that leave me essentially wrecked at the end of two minutes. The clips around 0:45 are the parts that suck out my heart the most, where Max is peering around the doorway in his animal suit, a lonely boy who wants nothing more than to vanish in the night and escape to a world that's his and his alone, and using Arcade Fire's "Wake Up" is the perfect choice for capturing all this childlike brooding and wonder, and do I ever want to see this movie after viewing the trailer and no, I couldn't give a crap that the book is like thirty pages long and so how are they possibly going to extend that into a full-length movie. I think the only way to ruin it completely would be to choke the movie with too much dialogue, because the book's magic lay in the wonderment of its images. Any convoluted plot that invents some sort of diabolical evil for them to vanquish could turn into a disaster because the book isn't about the conflict between good and evil, it's about the conflict between fantasy and reality.
Maybe they should have used the new movie trailer for and asked the Mafa if it represented a happy or a sad movie. Maybe they could help me figure it out, because I watch that clip and swing through a superposition of highs and lows that leave me essentially wrecked at the end of two minutes. The clips around 0:45 are the parts that suck out my heart the most, where Max is peering around the doorway in his animal suit, a lonely boy who wants nothing more than to vanish in the night and escape to a world that's his and his alone, and using Arcade Fire's "Wake Up" is the perfect choice for capturing all this childlike brooding and wonder, and do I ever want to see this movie after viewing the trailer and no, I couldn't give a crap that the book is like thirty pages long and so how are they possibly going to extend that into a full-length movie. I think the only way to ruin it completely would be to choke the movie with too much dialogue, because the book's magic lay in the wonderment of its images. Any convoluted plot that invents some sort of diabolical evil for them to vanquish could turn into a disaster because the book isn't about the conflict between good and evil, it's about the conflict between fantasy and reality.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
The Week in Music
Unfortunately I've been badly falling behind on my writing lately, except as it concerns Alexis Grace's completely non-shocking elimination seeing how she's been on autopilot since the semifinals, Megan Joy's ongoing laziness notwithstanding the flu, Anoop Desai's return to awesomeness, and Adam Lambert's latest crime against good taste (btw, Simon, criticizing Adam for being too indulgent is like criticizing grass for being too green).
I have been listening to a lot of music though:
Best DJ mix so far this year is Surgeon's RA podcast, and it's not even close. It's quite a bit tamer than other, rawer, more aggressive sets I've heard from him, but toning down the maximalism is actually a benefit here. You're not always in the mood to have your ears blown off for an hour, which is why a milder set like this can stand up better to repeat listens.
Another reason to improve my Hebrew: so that I can read what might be the Israeli "Generation Ecstasy", Nissan Shor's new book "Dancing With Tears in Their Eyes". It's a history of the past 50 years of Israeli club culture, and examines the connections between the nation's club-going hedonism and it's turbulent political/security situation. Says Shor, "I think Herzl would have preferred endless partying to endless war." 1. DUH. 2. Words to live by. Thanks to RA for the reading tip.
Suede were awesome, and I have to say I'm surprised at how well their version of retro-rock has held up over time, compared to say, Blur's. In other words, "Animal Nitrate" is still spectacular and I can hear without thinking "Bowie theft", whereas anything from "Parklife" feels quaint and precocious. None of these criticisms are new, but perception is everything, and these days I'm ready to chalk up Suede's superiority to them having stronger, more memorable singles. Relive the fun more introspectively with this clip from a Brett Anderson solo gig that finds the ex-Suede singer in remarkably fine voice after a few rough years in the late 90's/early 00's.
Props to J. Viewz ... I don't like a lot of downtempo stuff, and some of the vocal tracks are a bit weak, and the album drags on a bit long, there's a lot of quality smoothery going on here too.
Stereolab's "We're Not Adult Orientated" reminded me of how untouchable that band used to be. This is why I tend to curse "Dots and Loops" and can't identify at all with the people who think it's their best album, because Stereolab used to be FIERCE and that album marked the moment when they became wimps and never looked back.
I have been listening to a lot of music though:
Best DJ mix so far this year is Surgeon's RA podcast, and it's not even close. It's quite a bit tamer than other, rawer, more aggressive sets I've heard from him, but toning down the maximalism is actually a benefit here. You're not always in the mood to have your ears blown off for an hour, which is why a milder set like this can stand up better to repeat listens.
Another reason to improve my Hebrew: so that I can read what might be the Israeli "Generation Ecstasy", Nissan Shor's new book "Dancing With Tears in Their Eyes". It's a history of the past 50 years of Israeli club culture, and examines the connections between the nation's club-going hedonism and it's turbulent political/security situation. Says Shor, "I think Herzl would have preferred endless partying to endless war." 1. DUH. 2. Words to live by. Thanks to RA for the reading tip.
Suede were awesome, and I have to say I'm surprised at how well their version of retro-rock has held up over time, compared to say, Blur's. In other words, "Animal Nitrate" is still spectacular and I can hear without thinking "Bowie theft", whereas anything from "Parklife" feels quaint and precocious. None of these criticisms are new, but perception is everything, and these days I'm ready to chalk up Suede's superiority to them having stronger, more memorable singles. Relive the fun more introspectively with this clip from a Brett Anderson solo gig that finds the ex-Suede singer in remarkably fine voice after a few rough years in the late 90's/early 00's.
Props to J. Viewz ... I don't like a lot of downtempo stuff, and some of the vocal tracks are a bit weak, and the album drags on a bit long, there's a lot of quality smoothery going on here too.
Stereolab's "We're Not Adult Orientated" reminded me of how untouchable that band used to be. This is why I tend to curse "Dots and Loops" and can't identify at all with the people who think it's their best album, because Stereolab used to be FIERCE and that album marked the moment when they became wimps and never looked back.
Sunday, March 08, 2009
American Idol Wild Card Round: The Passion of Tatiana del Toro
The top 12 13 is set, and I hate only a few of them, so let's chalk this top-36 crapshoot + wild card round experiment up to experience and move on. I think I'm ready to take back most of the positive things I said about the format last time, because at least when they chose to eliminate the lowest four each week until they were left with 12 finalists, it was the viewers at home who were making the decisions. This season, the path to 12 13 was full of homerism, with the producers and judges manipulating everything in their power (performance order, comments, dubious choices for the wild card round) to get their personal favourites and pet projects into the finals by hook or by crook. Danny Gokey, Adam Lambert, and Lil Rounds were given the show-closing spots while plenty of others were left to die midway through everlasting two-hour broadcasts, ensuring that they'd be forgotten by the time people had the chance to vote. Scott MacIntyre drew huge praise from the judges that was based not on the quality of the performance he actually gave, but on the quality and style of performances that they hoped he'd do in the future. Similarly, Matt Giraud got out of jail free after blowing his big chance by stupidly choosing to sing Coldplay, and was brought back for the Wild Card because the judges liked the talent he'd shown previously. Plenty of other contestants made dumb song choices too, and were appropriately penalized by the voters. Why the preferential treatment? Why are some stupid song choices forgivable and not others?
Simon Cowell made a comment about "casting" for the finals, i.e. wanting to pick an interesting variety of people instead of twelve copies of the same singer. I mean, everybody knows that this is what they do but I was still surprised to hear him admit it, live on the air. How else to explain the inclusion of the horrible Megan Joy Corkrey, who might be the laziest singer to ever make the finals of AI? At the end of every phrase she sings is a fugly half-spoken warble that isn't even remotely in tune. "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree" never works on AI, it wasn't good when Katherine McPhee sang it (both times!), and it wasn't good here. Megan doesn't break new ground for AI, she's just a drugged-up Brooke White.
"Casting" is what put the completely unremarkable Jasmine Murray into the finals. She was awful in her semifinal performance and there were probably ten people more deserving of a second chance. On one hand, we hear that the show needs "current" personalities like Megan, and on the other hand, the producers collectively panic at the thought of an entire season without a cute, young, black R&B diva to pick up where Jordin Sparks left off.
The treatment that Tatiana del Toro received was inexcusable, bordering on nasty. Yes, her sudden change of accent was completely O_o and everybody knows she's kind of crazy. The judges already knew all this months ago, so why string her along only to belittle her every chance they get? They put her through several rounds of Hollywood cuts, into the top 36, and into the wild card round after she did a damn good job in the semis -- since it's clear that there was never any intention of picking her for the finals, was there any point to any of this other than a shameless ratings ploy?
Since when has performing a song for a second time been some kind of major detriment? We've seen repeat performances countless times on past seasons. But more to the point: how many times in the past three weeks have we heard criticism along the lines of "you tried to do something different, but this isn't the person we fell in love with during Hollywood Week." The current semifinal format is "one strike, you're out", so why wouldn't somebody go with a safe choice that had worked for them in the recent past? Tatiana argued that with only one day's worth of preparation, she would not have been able to learn a new song and sing it any better than the one she'd sang for her first performance ("Saving All My Love For You"). Sure, other contestants had the same prep time and managed to do it, but some of them had made terrible song choices to begin with, which is a mistake that Tatiana, to her credit, had not made. Not to mention that Anoop Desai also repeated a song (albeit from Hollywood week) and was not criticized for it.
The good: Anoop's priceless reaction when he was given the surprise 13th spot, everyone getting up in arms at when Simon compared Matt Giraud to Taylor Hicks (the kiss of death?), making this a one hour show and not stretching out this mess for two hours.
I won't hazard any detailed predictions right now, seeing how we've barely seen anything from most of the finalists, but I think I can see the Danny Gokey/Lil Rounds final coming down the pipe.
My personal feelings aside, right at this minute I can envision Lil Rounds, Danny Gokey, Megan Joy Corkrey, and Allison Iraheta actually selling records (and maybe Kris Allen -- I think he's more versatile than most people realize, search his Hollywood Week version of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" if you need evidence). As for the rest, forget it.
Simon Cowell made a comment about "casting" for the finals, i.e. wanting to pick an interesting variety of people instead of twelve copies of the same singer. I mean, everybody knows that this is what they do but I was still surprised to hear him admit it, live on the air. How else to explain the inclusion of the horrible Megan Joy Corkrey, who might be the laziest singer to ever make the finals of AI? At the end of every phrase she sings is a fugly half-spoken warble that isn't even remotely in tune. "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree" never works on AI, it wasn't good when Katherine McPhee sang it (both times!), and it wasn't good here. Megan doesn't break new ground for AI, she's just a drugged-up Brooke White.
"Casting" is what put the completely unremarkable Jasmine Murray into the finals. She was awful in her semifinal performance and there were probably ten people more deserving of a second chance. On one hand, we hear that the show needs "current" personalities like Megan, and on the other hand, the producers collectively panic at the thought of an entire season without a cute, young, black R&B diva to pick up where Jordin Sparks left off.
The treatment that Tatiana del Toro received was inexcusable, bordering on nasty. Yes, her sudden change of accent was completely O_o and everybody knows she's kind of crazy. The judges already knew all this months ago, so why string her along only to belittle her every chance they get? They put her through several rounds of Hollywood cuts, into the top 36, and into the wild card round after she did a damn good job in the semis -- since it's clear that there was never any intention of picking her for the finals, was there any point to any of this other than a shameless ratings ploy?
Since when has performing a song for a second time been some kind of major detriment? We've seen repeat performances countless times on past seasons. But more to the point: how many times in the past three weeks have we heard criticism along the lines of "you tried to do something different, but this isn't the person we fell in love with during Hollywood Week." The current semifinal format is "one strike, you're out", so why wouldn't somebody go with a safe choice that had worked for them in the recent past? Tatiana argued that with only one day's worth of preparation, she would not have been able to learn a new song and sing it any better than the one she'd sang for her first performance ("Saving All My Love For You"). Sure, other contestants had the same prep time and managed to do it, but some of them had made terrible song choices to begin with, which is a mistake that Tatiana, to her credit, had not made. Not to mention that Anoop Desai also repeated a song (albeit from Hollywood week) and was not criticized for it.
The good: Anoop's priceless reaction when he was given the surprise 13th spot, everyone getting up in arms at when Simon compared Matt Giraud to Taylor Hicks (the kiss of death?), making this a one hour show and not stretching out this mess for two hours.
I won't hazard any detailed predictions right now, seeing how we've barely seen anything from most of the finalists, but I think I can see the Danny Gokey/Lil Rounds final coming down the pipe.
My personal feelings aside, right at this minute I can envision Lil Rounds, Danny Gokey, Megan Joy Corkrey, and Allison Iraheta actually selling records (and maybe Kris Allen -- I think he's more versatile than most people realize, search his Hollywood Week version of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" if you need evidence). As for the rest, forget it.
Friday, February 27, 2009
American Idol Season 8 -- random thoughts following Semifinals, Part II
At first I couldn't see the reason or logic behind expanding the semi-finals from 24 to 36 competitors, only to give them one chance to prove themselves or go home. Two weeks in Hollywood, several stages of cuts, and many an agonizing decision in order to trim the pool to 36, only to toss out two-thirds of them on the basis of ninety seconds of singing in front of a live audience. It seemed unfair. At least with the old system (eliminating two guys and two girls each week for three weeks), there was wiggle room for mistakes and second chances, opportunities for dark horse candidates to emerge through slow and steady improvement, and time for the favourites to build extra momentum heading into the finals.
This week, I started to see the light and appreciate the new format. It puts the focus squarely on the strongest performers. The long odds of moving on (ostensibly 25%) make the prize that much more prestigious. It's like a sports league in which only a small number of teams advance to the playoffs, versus a league where half of the teams make it. But with the old semifinal format, the focus was on the worst contestants and the mediocrities who were barely good enough to scrape by from week to week, whereas the strong performers simply advanced each week with relatively little fanfare.
The hit/miss ratio in this year's semis have certainly helped justify the switch, as the strong singers have really stood out among a fairly sizable pile of terrible competitors who were swiftly and decisively outclassed. The people who were just on the bubble will get their rightful second chance at making the finals, provided the judges and producers are smart about choosing their picks for wild card week. They'd have to be idiots to screw up those choices, considering how much total crap we've seen from the first two groups, but stranger things have happened.
Paula Abdul is right: with four judges, the show starts to drag with 33% more chit-chat and post-song analysis. Although with two hours of programming to fill up each week (plus the even-more-stretched-out hour long results show), they've got to fill the time somehow. We'll see how they manage when we hit the one hour episodes. It's worth noting that other talent-based reality shows are able to handle the four-judge panel just fine, although it helps (such as with Canadian Idol) if they all repeat themselves (and each other) each week and make no attempt at serious criticism.
The judges sound foolish in criticizing people (e.g. Kris Allen, Matt Giraud) for "not being the same guy/girl we fell in love with during Hollywood week". I mean, what do they expect -- musical instruments are off-limits during the semi-finals, so they're in fact prohibited from being the performer they were doing Hollywood week. What a dumb rule that is. Why put them into the top 36, only to prevent them from showcasing the talents that got them there? Then again, this is the same show that encourages everyone to take risks, work on developing as an artist, and collaborate with the band on their arrangements every week, only to force the eventual final two to sing shlocky ballads for the finale, i.e. the most important show of the year.
Allison Iraheta may have advanced in a walk, but of course that's not saying much since she was the only girl whose performance didn't border on embarrassing and/or nearly unlistenable. Megan Corkrey has the look of a star but was horribly out of tune, something that the judges inexplicably failed to notice although I'm willing to chalk that up to ear fatigue and/or the need to say something halfway nice about somebody eventually. Allison has plenty of stage presence and I do love me the rocker chicks on American Idol, but the performance was nothing special. Her voice was badly strained during the chorus and the song seemed to overwhelm her. Maybe one-third of it was actual singing, the rest of it was lungs-blown screaming, and out-of-tune lungs-blown screaming at that. Still, I like the idea of a sixteen year old stoner chick wandering her way onto the set of American Idol and rocking out in hilariously bad clothes, so I'm happy she's in the finals.
If you still need convincing, compare Allison's version with Carrie Underwood's from Season 4. Listen to how her voice slams into the chorus and soars almost effortlessly above the band compared with Allison's overloaded effort. It was after this performance that Simon Cowell famously commented that Carrie would win AI and sell more records than any other Idol. His boldness was even more notable given that the finals had barely just begun -- it was the week of the top 11! Watching at the time, I was less surprised that he made that comment than I was at the fact that it was so obviously true, even at that early stage of the competition. To that point, she was the comely country singer with the best voice in the field, clearly headed to the top three or four and a serious threat to win. After she steamrolled her rock dude competition by slaying them at their own game, the it was simply a question of "what CAN'T she do??" and the other ten were simply along for the ride for the rest of the Carrie Underwood Show. Rock singers are now commonplace on Idol, but remember, that was the first season with actual rockers in the finals (Bo Bice, Constantine). The show was a lot more homogeneous in the first three seasons compared to now, sticking mainly to pop and R&B tunes, and the contestants rarely strayed outside their comfort zones. Then along came season four, with actual variety among the finalists and proper rock songs being sung among the glut of Mariah and Whitney impressions. A farm girl who had never flown on a plane or visited a big city in her life had absolutely no business pwning the rockers on their own turf and becoming the Mistress of All Genres. It was inexplicable, and yet it happened.
Speaking of Constantine Maroulis, Adam Lambert is merely his second coming, albeit with better hair and makeup. His voice drives me nuts, although I don't discount that he has the look of a star. The producers' favouritism this season couldn't be more obvious -- as it was with Danny Gokey, he's been given loads of TV time and a better-developed personal history compared to the average semi-finalist. Then he received the attention-grabbing show-closing time slot, and an inventive song arrangement that was perfectly suited to his talents, while everybody else had to settle for standard Wedding Band Muzak arrangements.
Nick Mitchell is simply the bomb, but as is usually the case whenever a new kind of performer appears on AI, he is ridiculed and dismissed as "not what we're looking for" or something to that effect. You know the drill -- Clay Aiken didn't look like a star, Taylor Hicks was a drunk uncle at a wedding, etc. Nick's closest precedent is probably Blake Lewis, who was also frequently told that he was a gimmicky performer and not a real singer. Blake had a good voice and was perfectly capable of doing straight-ahead singing when he wanted to. However, when you can showcase talents that nobody else can pull off, guaranteeing that you'll stand out from the crowd, why be conventional?
This week, I started to see the light and appreciate the new format. It puts the focus squarely on the strongest performers. The long odds of moving on (ostensibly 25%) make the prize that much more prestigious. It's like a sports league in which only a small number of teams advance to the playoffs, versus a league where half of the teams make it. But with the old semifinal format, the focus was on the worst contestants and the mediocrities who were barely good enough to scrape by from week to week, whereas the strong performers simply advanced each week with relatively little fanfare.
The hit/miss ratio in this year's semis have certainly helped justify the switch, as the strong singers have really stood out among a fairly sizable pile of terrible competitors who were swiftly and decisively outclassed. The people who were just on the bubble will get their rightful second chance at making the finals, provided the judges and producers are smart about choosing their picks for wild card week. They'd have to be idiots to screw up those choices, considering how much total crap we've seen from the first two groups, but stranger things have happened.
Paula Abdul is right: with four judges, the show starts to drag with 33% more chit-chat and post-song analysis. Although with two hours of programming to fill up each week (plus the even-more-stretched-out hour long results show), they've got to fill the time somehow. We'll see how they manage when we hit the one hour episodes. It's worth noting that other talent-based reality shows are able to handle the four-judge panel just fine, although it helps (such as with Canadian Idol) if they all repeat themselves (and each other) each week and make no attempt at serious criticism.
The judges sound foolish in criticizing people (e.g. Kris Allen, Matt Giraud) for "not being the same guy/girl we fell in love with during Hollywood week". I mean, what do they expect -- musical instruments are off-limits during the semi-finals, so they're in fact prohibited from being the performer they were doing Hollywood week. What a dumb rule that is. Why put them into the top 36, only to prevent them from showcasing the talents that got them there? Then again, this is the same show that encourages everyone to take risks, work on developing as an artist, and collaborate with the band on their arrangements every week, only to force the eventual final two to sing shlocky ballads for the finale, i.e. the most important show of the year.
Allison Iraheta may have advanced in a walk, but of course that's not saying much since she was the only girl whose performance didn't border on embarrassing and/or nearly unlistenable. Megan Corkrey has the look of a star but was horribly out of tune, something that the judges inexplicably failed to notice although I'm willing to chalk that up to ear fatigue and/or the need to say something halfway nice about somebody eventually. Allison has plenty of stage presence and I do love me the rocker chicks on American Idol, but the performance was nothing special. Her voice was badly strained during the chorus and the song seemed to overwhelm her. Maybe one-third of it was actual singing, the rest of it was lungs-blown screaming, and out-of-tune lungs-blown screaming at that. Still, I like the idea of a sixteen year old stoner chick wandering her way onto the set of American Idol and rocking out in hilariously bad clothes, so I'm happy she's in the finals.
If you still need convincing, compare Allison's version with Carrie Underwood's from Season 4. Listen to how her voice slams into the chorus and soars almost effortlessly above the band compared with Allison's overloaded effort. It was after this performance that Simon Cowell famously commented that Carrie would win AI and sell more records than any other Idol. His boldness was even more notable given that the finals had barely just begun -- it was the week of the top 11! Watching at the time, I was less surprised that he made that comment than I was at the fact that it was so obviously true, even at that early stage of the competition. To that point, she was the comely country singer with the best voice in the field, clearly headed to the top three or four and a serious threat to win. After she steamrolled her rock dude competition by slaying them at their own game, the it was simply a question of "what CAN'T she do??" and the other ten were simply along for the ride for the rest of the Carrie Underwood Show. Rock singers are now commonplace on Idol, but remember, that was the first season with actual rockers in the finals (Bo Bice, Constantine). The show was a lot more homogeneous in the first three seasons compared to now, sticking mainly to pop and R&B tunes, and the contestants rarely strayed outside their comfort zones. Then along came season four, with actual variety among the finalists and proper rock songs being sung among the glut of Mariah and Whitney impressions. A farm girl who had never flown on a plane or visited a big city in her life had absolutely no business pwning the rockers on their own turf and becoming the Mistress of All Genres. It was inexplicable, and yet it happened.
Speaking of Constantine Maroulis, Adam Lambert is merely his second coming, albeit with better hair and makeup. His voice drives me nuts, although I don't discount that he has the look of a star. The producers' favouritism this season couldn't be more obvious -- as it was with Danny Gokey, he's been given loads of TV time and a better-developed personal history compared to the average semi-finalist. Then he received the attention-grabbing show-closing time slot, and an inventive song arrangement that was perfectly suited to his talents, while everybody else had to settle for standard Wedding Band Muzak arrangements.
Nick Mitchell is simply the bomb, but as is usually the case whenever a new kind of performer appears on AI, he is ridiculed and dismissed as "not what we're looking for" or something to that effect. You know the drill -- Clay Aiken didn't look like a star, Taylor Hicks was a drunk uncle at a wedding, etc. Nick's closest precedent is probably Blake Lewis, who was also frequently told that he was a gimmicky performer and not a real singer. Blake had a good voice and was perfectly capable of doing straight-ahead singing when he wanted to. However, when you can showcase talents that nobody else can pull off, guaranteeing that you'll stand out from the crowd, why be conventional?
Monday, February 23, 2009
The forgotten gig part II
I said I couldn't believe it could happen even once, but one fine day, I browsing through some of my blog archives, and there it was: "oh f*** me, I saw Torche?!?!?"
What is happening here? Are there other, similar surprises that lay in store for me (I guess I'd be stupid to bet against it)? How can I turn this negative into a positive? OK, here's a nice little distraction to show that plenty of others suffer from acute forgetfulness.
Suede star attacks revival trend. Choice quote: "I'm obsessively opposed to nostalgia. I hate the idea of it. It doesn't work. And it doesn't interest with me at all."
Um, Bernard, you were in SUEDE for three years. The band that would have had little to say if not for a healthy dose of theft from early 1970's Bowie records. Then you tried to go prog. And what would you call The Tears? What about helping to kill the Black Kids' career dead by doing a sloppy production job that was all too similar to the sound of those early Suede records? I suppose Butler's comment makes some sense if you define "nostalgia" as "never playing one's older material", which would be quite the radical redefinition of the word, but regardless, he comes off sounding kind of stupid in this interview.
What is happening here? Are there other, similar surprises that lay in store for me (I guess I'd be stupid to bet against it)? How can I turn this negative into a positive? OK, here's a nice little distraction to show that plenty of others suffer from acute forgetfulness.
Suede star attacks revival trend. Choice quote: "I'm obsessively opposed to nostalgia. I hate the idea of it. It doesn't work. And it doesn't interest with me at all."
Um, Bernard, you were in SUEDE for three years. The band that would have had little to say if not for a healthy dose of theft from early 1970's Bowie records. Then you tried to go prog. And what would you call The Tears? What about helping to kill the Black Kids' career dead by doing a sloppy production job that was all too similar to the sound of those early Suede records? I suppose Butler's comment makes some sense if you define "nostalgia" as "never playing one's older material", which would be quite the radical redefinition of the word, but regardless, he comes off sounding kind of stupid in this interview.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Kenny Larkin @ Barzilay; Contempo Festival Part I @ Levontin 7
This post is to document the most eclectic night out, music-wise, that I've had in quite a long time. It's an evening that began with avant garde solo violin played to a hushed seated crowd and ended with L'il Louis' "French Kiss" played at 6AM to a beer and adrenaline fueled dancefloor and a thunderstorm raging outdoors.
Nils Auckland squeezed a dazzling array of multitonal sounds from his violins, wrenching layers of drone from his instrument that would normally have no business leaping out of its strings. At times he played the violin almost as a percussion instrument, slapping his bow hard enough to knock both the frame and the strings of his violin, producing a half-wood block, half-staccato tone. At other times he played so quietly that the gentle hum of the air vents was threatening to drown out his playing. The venue staff turned the vents off. You'll never hear a crowded room get so quiet.
I wasn't really feeling Yoni Silver's solo bass clarinet performance, but the lo-tech light and shadow show helped to make up for it. Standing with his back to a white wall, illuminated by nothing but a hanging bulb to his right and a simple desk lamp on the floor in front of him, the gradual dimming and illuminating of these lights cast a playful array of shadows on the wall behind him. Just a man swaying with with his horn, both projected comically large on the surrounding walls.
Things got even better. Hilde Sophie Tapioord (sp?) took the night's prize for the most unexpected use of her instrument. She makes noise music that is partly constructed in real time from the processed sounds of her voice and her ... French horn! During her 30-minute onslaught, I had time to think about a lot of things, and one of them was the sadly underrated Ben Neill, who made some pretty cool ambient and downtempo music in the 90's with the help of his processed, specially prepared trumpet.
And then there was ZU, possibly the world's only sludge metal band that features baritone sax in place of guitar. Even though the band passed off their short set as a simple soundcheck for their proper gig the following night, you wouldn't believe the amount of Stooge-y primal sludge rock that can be constructed out of drums-bass-sax.
One hour and one venue change later, the scene for Kenny Larkin's highly anticipated set looked nothing like I expected. It turned out that there was some spillover from the concert that took place earlier in the evening, for the crowd was a mix of club kids and glammed up guys and gals who were dressed for a somewhat fancier evening. These strange juxtapositions resulted in a fairly subdued and confused mood on the dancefloor, almost right up until the moment that Larkin started to play. But finally, the riff raff was cleared out and techno mayhem began in earnest, as Larkin worked a masterful three hour set that was classic Detroit, a set that kept the entire club nearly full right up until the day's first light.
Nils Auckland squeezed a dazzling array of multitonal sounds from his violins, wrenching layers of drone from his instrument that would normally have no business leaping out of its strings. At times he played the violin almost as a percussion instrument, slapping his bow hard enough to knock both the frame and the strings of his violin, producing a half-wood block, half-staccato tone. At other times he played so quietly that the gentle hum of the air vents was threatening to drown out his playing. The venue staff turned the vents off. You'll never hear a crowded room get so quiet.
I wasn't really feeling Yoni Silver's solo bass clarinet performance, but the lo-tech light and shadow show helped to make up for it. Standing with his back to a white wall, illuminated by nothing but a hanging bulb to his right and a simple desk lamp on the floor in front of him, the gradual dimming and illuminating of these lights cast a playful array of shadows on the wall behind him. Just a man swaying with with his horn, both projected comically large on the surrounding walls.
Things got even better. Hilde Sophie Tapioord (sp?) took the night's prize for the most unexpected use of her instrument. She makes noise music that is partly constructed in real time from the processed sounds of her voice and her ... French horn! During her 30-minute onslaught, I had time to think about a lot of things, and one of them was the sadly underrated Ben Neill, who made some pretty cool ambient and downtempo music in the 90's with the help of his processed, specially prepared trumpet.
And then there was ZU, possibly the world's only sludge metal band that features baritone sax in place of guitar. Even though the band passed off their short set as a simple soundcheck for their proper gig the following night, you wouldn't believe the amount of Stooge-y primal sludge rock that can be constructed out of drums-bass-sax.
One hour and one venue change later, the scene for Kenny Larkin's highly anticipated set looked nothing like I expected. It turned out that there was some spillover from the concert that took place earlier in the evening, for the crowd was a mix of club kids and glammed up guys and gals who were dressed for a somewhat fancier evening. These strange juxtapositions resulted in a fairly subdued and confused mood on the dancefloor, almost right up until the moment that Larkin started to play. But finally, the riff raff was cleared out and techno mayhem began in earnest, as Larkin worked a masterful three hour set that was classic Detroit, a set that kept the entire club nearly full right up until the day's first light.
Monday, February 16, 2009
The 33 1/3 Shortlist
The list is here, and my proposal for one of my favourite albums of the 1970's, "Free To Be ... You and Me" by Marlo Thomas and Friends, is not on it. This was hardly a surprise for me, as I was fairly dissatisfied with what I wrote and knew that my ideas weren't fleshed out with enough clarity to make for a high quality proposal. But it's 2009, the year in which I try to stop micromanaging my writing and return to being more loose and spontaneous, so I really wanted to submit something, at least to put my conscience to rest. I can easily tolerate trying and failing (even with what was far from my best work), as opposed to not trying and not failing (which of course, means that you don't succeed either). But never mind me ... congrats to all whose proposals are still in the running, and best of luck to everyone!
I wanted to write about why so-called "children's music" is almost completely absent from all serious music criticism. Obviously this has a lot to do with the fact that people grow out of that music and never revisit that it again when they are older, but I see no a priori reason why this should be so. People grow out of music and can learn to love it again (and in a different way). This is actually fairly common! I really believe in this idea, or at least some idea about this much-loved but rarely mentioned album, so maybe next time (if there is a next time), or maybe I'll write about it elsewhere (such as here).
I wanted to write about why so-called "children's music" is almost completely absent from all serious music criticism. Obviously this has a lot to do with the fact that people grow out of that music and never revisit that it again when they are older, but I see no a priori reason why this should be so. People grow out of music and can learn to love it again (and in a different way). This is actually fairly common! I really believe in this idea, or at least some idea about this much-loved but rarely mentioned album, so maybe next time (if there is a next time), or maybe I'll write about it elsewhere (such as here).
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