Grading "Glee" -- Season 02, Episode 03

Plot-wise, I appreciate that they tackled the very serious issues of G-d and grilled cheese, and I even appreciate the variety of music that was on display (a number of genres spanning several decades). But the performances themselves? Uh ...

"Only the Good Die Young". B-. Like all of the Puck-led songs, this was another of his solid but unspectacular attempts to channel Jason Mraz.

"I Look to You". C+. Just average, just Amber Riley trying to show off her voice in the same way she does on every song. Wake me up when she tries something different.

"Papa Can You Hear Me?". B. Lea Michele can knock it out of the park when she's allowed to go full-tilt on Barbra (like in last year's mid-season finale). This was good, but sleepy, and I was actually kind of glad when it was finally over.

"I Wanna Hold Your Hand". B-. By far the most interesting experiment of the week. Re-configuring the Beatles' giddy boyish fantasy into a ballad about treasuring childhood memories with one's father was ... a bit creepy and ghoulish, TBH. Teenage lust remixed into pastry parties and walks through the cemetery to the grave of Kurt's mother? It was brave, I'll give them that.

"Losing My Religion". D-. Things I hate about "Glee" -- using songs out of context based around the title of the song and not its content. "Losing My Religion" has nothing to do with religion, it's southern slang for (approximately) "I'm at the end of my rope", in case you didn't know. So it was ridiculous to have the glee club stage a minor rebellion over Finn singing an "anti-religion" song. But the worst part of the song was the tuneless, lifeless, shapeless vocals. "Losing My Religion" doesn't have a strong vocal melody, Michael Stipe's singing is all about the tone of his voice and his enunciation. "Glee" should never attempt these types of pop songs. At least Puck knows not to extend himself by not straying beyond Billy Joel and Neil Diamond.

"Bridge Over Troubled Water". C. This song has been covered in a million different ways, and this was no better or worse than any of them. The definition of average.

"One of Us". F. Let's finish the show with a dab of spiritual revelation and waste of the few might-have-been-really-touching Sue Sylvester moments by soundtracking it with one of the worst songs of all time. The fact that someone took Joan Osborne's puerile lyrics seriously and used them to close a religion-based episode of a major TV show makes me worry about what's going through the brains behind "Glee" sometimes.

Grading "Glee" -- Season 02, Episode 02

BRITNEY SPEARS FANTASY FUN OH WOW

Whose idea was it to focus an entire episode of "Glee" around the entire cast starring in remakes of Britney Spears videos brought on by hallucinations from generous doses of nitrous oxide given by John Stamos? Can we give this person a prize, something like an open-ended contract to keep writing for this show until it goes off the air or until they actually "deliver" on the shark-jumping Christopher Cross tribute episode?

Maybe I was wrong last year when I wrote that they'd better not overdo it with tribute episodes this season.

"I'm a Slave 4 U". A. What better way to use Heather Morris (an amateur actor/singer but a great dancer) than to doll her up as Britney and turn her loose to dance the bejeezus out of Brit's best ever single (complete with iconic snake dance from the 2001 MTV Video Awards). Finally, an episode of "Glee" where the dancers get to actually do something instead of being background characters who are rarely heard from. Wat better way to pull it off than during a Britney Spears week (i.e. real singing talent optional)? This was HOTTT. It doesn't get an A-plus because then I'd be claiming that this basically a perfect performance and one of the best two or three songs in the history of the show, and I'm not ready to do that yet because let's face it, it's still the start of the season and we wouldn't want everything to be downhill from here onward, would be?

"Me Against the Music". B. The chemistry between Madonna and Britney c. 2003 is difficult to pantomime, even with two hot make-believe cheerleaders. This was efficient and professional, but the sexuality felt somewhat forced.

"Hit Me One More Time". B. Lea Michele is a bit lost when she has to sing something as simple as this, and let's be honest, there is NO room for vocal calisthenics on most Britney Spears songs (and most definitely not on this song). Small bonus points for going against type with the not-so-innocent schoolgirl look.

"Stronger". C-. All the soap opera storylines from last season have vanished without a trace -- Quinn's pregnancy, Rachel's search for her mother, Mr. Schue's marriage falling apart, all of them are gone, undone. With the exception Rachel and Finn as a couple, we're back to where we were one year ago -- Artie likes Tina, Quinn is a Cheerio again, Finn is back on the football team, Mr. Schue likes Ms. Pillsbury, etc. And in yet another throwback to the start of last season, here's "Glee" grasping for novelty points by doing a dance number with the football team. There were a few interesting dance sequences, but that's about it. Surely they can think of something better to do with Artie than having him join the football team, which is a storyline I don't think anyone is buying.

"Toxic". B+. Remaking the song as a mid-tempo rock number = big win (I never did like the plastic production style and frantic pacing of the original). Any performance with Mr. Schuester tends to be great, especially if he's doing something embarrassing and/or inappropriate within the story (both apply here). And don't forget about the Charlie Chaplin hats! Well done, Glee.

"It's a Britney Spears sex riot!!!!". A+ line. Jane Lynch is taking it to another level this season.

"The Only Exception". B-. I'd never heard this song before (by the band Paramore), and it sounded OK I guess. I didn't understand why they tried to pass it off as some big weepy moment to end all weepy moments. That massive overstatement kinda ruined the song for me.

Chrissy Murderbot's "Year of Mixtapes" -- Week 21, "90's Dance Pop"

Fifteen years ago, the idea of me writing a post like this would have been unthinkable. Ten years ago, even.

The 90's were a weird decade for music. Plenty of people were saying this years ago, I only came to accept it fairly recently.

For me, the 90's were the decade of rave/techno, Britpop, shoegaze, and postrock, roughly in that order. When they were happening, the 90's seemed great. On the side, the industry was undergoing a major overhaul as "alternative became mainstream", spearheaded by grunge artists selling tens of millions of records. I wasn't a huge fan, but for the most part I respect and even liked some of the music. In any case, an environment where Nine Inch Nails was suddenly a big seller had to be a change for the better.

Arguably the biggest stinkbomb left behind by the 90's was the artificially inflated CD album sales. The single was led into a dark alley and shot (therefore forcing consumers to buy the entire album whether they wanted to or not) and the baby boomers hadn't finished re-buying all their favourite albums on yet another format. Luddites and run-of-the-mill industry apologists haven't stopped complaining since, because of those inflated numbers from the 90's we had to tolerate a million dumb arguments in the 00's about how file sharing was the worst thing to ever happen to music, even after most of the holdouts had begrudgingly accepted the idea of legal downloads in the latter half of the decade. In the past couple of years, Lady Gaga and BEP have been inescapable despite struggling to sell a few million albums. In the 90's horrible bands like Smashmouth would barely scrape the top 20 with turgid songs like "Walking on the Sun" and ride that one minor hit to multiplatinum album sales. And in a sequence of transparent attempts to create easily pre-packaged and auto-marketable musical trends, tankloads of ink and A&R money were spilled in trying to force feed new breakthrough genres to a listening public who couldn't have cared less ("electronica", swing, ska).

With the exception of the peak of grunge sometime in 1992, everything that was (and still is) defined as "serious" or "canonical" music by the North American music press was massively out of step with what was actually popular. This was inescapably true for singles, whereas for albums the situation was a bit different, but not so much). Look over the lists of songs that topped the Billboard Hot 100 and you won't see Pearl Jam and Radiohead and late 90's electronica (Prodigy, Chemical Brothers), hell, you won't even see U2 and REM or virtually any major hip hop artist (with the exception of Puff Daddy and Notorious B.I.G. in 1997-8 in the wake of Biggie's murder. Remember, Jay-Z and Snoop didn't hit #1 in the 90's, but Kris Kross, Snow, and Sir Mix-A-Lot did). Instead, you'll see a bazillion R&B slow jams, plenty of limp power ballads sung by white guys (Michael Bolton, Bryan Adams, Mr. Big), and approximately 645 Mariah Carey songs. You won't catch any of these hit songs near anyone's "Best of the 1990's" list, not the original list, not in the Nostalgia List 2004, or the Redux List 2010, nowhere.

In 2009, Chicago DJ Chrissy Murderbot started a blog called "My Year of Mixtapes", and countless fans, writers and DJ's groaned "damn it, I wish I'd thought of that". Every week for one year, he uploaded a mix of songs based around a specific theme, usually a marginalized, underappreciated, or somewhat exotic genre. His Week 27 entry, "Quebecois Disco", hasn't left my iPod in months. Montreal was a disco hub in the early 80's? I had no idea.

Week 21 was entitled 90's Dance Pop, which is a bit misleading. You'd be hard-pressed to claim that all of these songs fit into a single recognized genre (although CM never claims that they do) except that they all fit some loose description of "dance" or club music as it was defined at various points during the decade. But most of these songs are more commonly known as Eurodance. And during the 90's, I fucking hated Eurodance. It was an affront to the "real" techno music that I valued. Other people talked dismissively about how "dumb" techno music was -- that's exactly what I was hearing when I heard Eurodance. I flipped the channel to avoid seeing these videos on TV, I tried my hardest to avoid being stuck anywhere near student pubs that played these songs. Both of these things were impossible if you wanted to watch much TV or go out anywhere.

And yet somehow, I came around and started to really like the stuff. The turning of the tide started when I admitted to myself that Haddaway's "What is Love" is one of the best songs ever (and this was before "A Night At the Roxbury" turned it into a punchline), and it basically progressed from there, albeit slowly. It wasn't until many years later, for instance, that I bought this compilation.

There's virtually no filler on this mix, nearly every song was a huge hit -- even in the US. "Gonna Make You Sweat" and "Vogue" were #1 hits. Countless Eurodance songs went to #1 in Europe, and although none of them managed to do so in the US, there were a number of huge, inescapable hits -- "Rhythm is a Dancer" was #5, "Barbie Girl" was #7, "Run Away" was #3, "It Feels So Good" was #8. Ace of Base's "The Sign" was #1 (and the album went nine times platinum in the US), but isn't featured on the mix -- "Beautiful Life" only made it to #15. "What Is Love" has to be one of the most recognizable #11 hits of all time.

This music was huge in the US, even huger in Europe, and had incredible longevity when measured against virtually any other musical trend. Eurodance was big at the start of the 90's and was still big at the end of the 90's. One reason why the genre gets no respect is because, paradoxically, careers tended to be short (or rather, a brief period of meteoric fame followed by an indefinite period on the club/revival circuit) but the genre itself was somehow indestructible. The musical canon is not only album-oriented, but tends to shut out artists who didn't have longevity. Still, the sales numbers of many Eurodance groups are mind-boggling. Aqua, for instance, are still the biggest selling group ever to come from Denmark, with over 30 million sales worldwide.

And yet, more than ten years later, not a single song on this mix comes within sniffing distance of the music establishment's 90's musical canon. Even Madonna's "Vogue" is considered an outlier within her catalogue. People wasted their time talking about the apparent novelty (and irony) of groups like the Prodigy and Chemical Brothers taking techno from Americans and then selling it back to them as something foreign and exotic. Eurodance artists from Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands had been doing that for years, and continued doing it long after everyone forgot about the electronica fad. Not to mention that Todd Terry (an American) and Everything But the Girl (from the UK) had a massive breakthrough pop hit the year before the electronic craze hit ("Missing" went to #2 in the US).

The influence of 90's dance pop, and Eurodance in particular, is all over 21st century pop music. It's in Katy Perry's bubblegum hedonism, in Timbaland's productions, in Usher's "Yeah!" (see also: rave). Simon Reynolds wrote about the 80's revival in the Guardian earlier this year, and inexplicably claimed that "everything about Gaga came from electroclash, except the music, which wasn't particularly 1980s, just ruthlessly catchy noughties pop glazed with Auto-Tune and undergirded with R&B-ish beats." Say what?? I'm hard pressed to think of a sadder critical trend that giving undue credit to Electroclash. So many damn critics are desperate to assign some long-term meaning and significance to Electroclash for reasons that I'll never entirely understand. Basically, we're supposed to believe that Lady Gaga, who was all of fifteen years old during the three or so months that Electroclash was mildly popular, was so profoundly influenced by the style and fashion surrounding the music that she filed it away in her memory and insisted on dragging it into the mainstream eight years later. Why make up such silly stories instead of going with the bleeding obvious? It makes a lot more sense that a self-described club kid freak like Lady Gaga would be influenced by the music that was actually popular in the 80's and 90's. And what exactly is "noughties pop with R&B-ish beats", is it an attempt to link her to the critically acceptable Timbaland instead of the critically unacceptable Ace of Base? Don't take my word for it, listen to what Lady Gaga herself has said in interviews. Of course she was influenced by industrial (yet another critically maligned genre) and Ace of Base! Just spend five seconds listening to the beats on "Bad Romance" and "Alejandro", respectively.

Anyway, be sure to check out this mix, leave the bad memories behind and just enjoy the music.

Grading the season premiere of "Glee"

"Empire State of Mind". Grade: D. Who thought that it would be a good idea to give all the glee club guys turns at aping Jay-Z's flow? How many more times will I need to put up with Mercedes' melisma diva act at the supposed "climax" of songs this season? (answer: far too many)

I'm still not sure if this performance was just supposed to be cool for the characters or also for the viewing audience. If it's the latter, then someone needs to tell the writers and producers that stealing hip hop poses and mannerisms from 1984 isn't cool in 2010.

"Telephone". Grade: B+. Take two great singers, give them one of the year's biggest songs (one that happens to be really easy to sing), and add a dash of dueling divas flavour to it. Nothing but fun!

"Billionaire". Grade: C+. I hate this song. So Freaking Bad. It's like Jason Mraz (who I like) with the Barenaked Ladies' sense of humour (both of which are awful). The song is a fail, but I guess if you like the original then you'd also like this note-for-note copy of it. So the grade at least reflects that.

"Listen". Grade: B-. Would have been higher without Sunshine's Celine Dion-ish habit of acting out all the song's words and accents with her hands.

"What I Did For Love". Grade: B. I love me "A Chorus Line", and Lea Michele knocked this one out of the park according to the pre-show buzz. I think the show's plot got in the way here. Needless to say, Rachel isn't at her best when she's wandering the halls of the school feeling sorry for herself. She needs to go completely OTT, and the storyline didn't let her do that.

Pretty good episode overall though, nothing too memorable, but I like how they kept the storylines SIMPLE, at least for now.

Jonsi, "Go"; No Age, "Everything In Between"

One really nice thing about writing random reviews on your blog is that you can choose to write or not write about something for all sorts of stupid and illogical reasons. No assignments, no deadlines, everything happens according to my own whims. This explains why I avoided listening to Jonsi's new (well, months old now) solo album because of its hideous cover. Seriously, that cover image frightened me, I thought that only Billy Corgan would be pretentious enough to pose as an angelic messiah. Although I imagine that Corgan's cover would be photoshopped with a sharp, metallic sheen and not the pastel-like shades that Jonsi used for his album.

Other reviews and postings about "Go" had led me to believe that it was a rustic ' folk experiment, sprinkled with a bit of Sigur Ros' pixie dust, which didn't really sound like my kind of thing. But apparently, some of those people skipped over the last Sigur Ros album, because "Go" picks up where the first half of that album left off, forgoing some of Sigur Ros' standard OTT pomp in favour of something that approaches a straight up pop record, Icelandic self-styled messianic angel style. All that plus "Grow Till Tall" -- sometimes, even on your more stripped-down solo record, you still want to pull off something BIG.

No Age's newest album isn't as immediate as "Nouns", which is to say that it's less punk-ish, less energetic, and less frantic than its predecessor. Sometimes its a criticism to say that a band hasn't yet figured out what sort of band they want to be, because bands suffering through identity crises tend to make scattershot, unfocused records. In this case, I'm having a blast just sitting back and watching No Age evolve. They've moved past their "Isn't Anything" phase and might be onto their "To Here Knows When EP" phase, I'm not sure (the ambient parts of "Everything In Between", and there are a lot of them, imply that they're jamming to "Moon Song" instead of "Feed Me With Your Kiss" these days). The "Losing Feeling EP" implied that they were enamoured with their FX pedals more than ever, and I can even imagine them doing a beatless ambient album one of these days, maybe as a one-off side project. The punkier tracks on "Everything In Between" aren't quite an afterthought, but they might not be challenged by writing tracks like "Depletion" and "Fever Dreaming" anymore. They probably won't ever give up those types of propulsive rock songs completely, but I hear a band that wants to write more songs like "Katerpillar", and to give those songs 5-6 minutes instead of a scant minute and a half next time.

Rapid fire comments on Pitchfork's Best 200 Tracks of the 90's

First of all, I'm not here to hate on the list (that's a link to the top 20). Overall I liked the selections and enjoyed the blurbs that I've read so far. It's more of a "bands" lists than a "tracks" list, that is, rather that select the best 200 tracks of the decade, it's as if they tried to select the best 200 bands and then tried to pick a representative track from each of them. They definitely picked a good bunch of bands though, and tried to cover a wide variety of stuff -- pop, hip hop, indie rock, grunge, dance, American groups, British groups ...

-- I'm tired of the whole stigma around "1979" that canonizes it as the "Smashing Pumpkins song that it's OK to like".

-- "Only Shallow"? "Say it Ain't So"? Why did they taint the top ten by going out of their way to make controversial choices and anoint a new canon? Why not just make the obvious choices, "Buddy Holly" and "Soon"? When you go out of your way to choose surprising songs from unsurprising bands, then you're not trying to make a list, you're trying to start an argument and spur discussion. It partially defeats the purpose of compiling the list. Ditto their #1 pick, "Gold Soundz", which flat-out acknowledges that they went out of their way to NOT make the obvious choice of "Cut Your Hair".

-- Matt Perpetua wrote the blurb for NIN's "Closer". Let's just let that one sink in for a moment. Try not to burst out laughing. Whatever, I've got no comment here. Oh yeah, the blurb is shit.

-- The Elvis version of "Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space" ... great song, but yet another challopsy pick. Was there anything wrong with picking one of the singles from that album? You know, the songs that Spiritualized would regularly play live in their concerts? The songs that fans actually got to HEAR in the 1990's without having to track down bootlegged versions or paying a fortune for one of the few pressings of the album that were made before the track was removed?

-- attention bloggers and wannabe critics: "Hyperballad" and "Windowlicker" are not the best Bjork and Aphex Twin songs. And those rankings ... #12 and #11? (yeah, I remember that they also ranked high on ILM's 1990's poll from a few years ago, and I didn't understand it then either)? Somehow "Post" went from being the misunderstood Bjork album to being her "Blood on the Tracks". Video aside, what does "Windowlicker" offer that you can't hear in 3920 other Aphex Twin songs from the 90's?

-- you read Scott Plagenhoef's (great) blurb on "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and you come away thinking that it has to be at least in the top 5. So why was it #13?

-- "Enjoy the Silence" at #15. We win!

-- isolating a single track from KLF's "Chill Out" for a "best tracks of the 90's" list is not only ludicrous, it shows a complete misunderstanding of what makes that album tick. "Chill Out" isn't a classic because of any one track. Nobody who hasn't heard the album is going to listen to "Wichita Lineman Was a Song I Once Heard" and have a revelation about "Chill Out" where they suddenly understand what all of the fuss is about. You can't excise a three minute slice out of what is essentially a 45-minute one track album and claim that it's representative of anything. What if someone claimed that the section from 25:32 - 29:04 from "D|P 1.1" on Basinski's "Disintegration Loops I" was their #80 track of the 00's? Would the stupidity of it be more obvious?

"Berghain vol 4" compiled by Ben Klock; Ladytron, "Live at London Astoria 16-07-08"

This is an excerpt from the release notes to "Berghain vol. 4": "Literally, Ben Klock's debut mixed CD is a cornucopia of new, unreleased and exclusive pieces. Without any sign of hectic or nervous breaks, but not without thrilling moments, peaks or valleys, turning points ..."

It's true that there are no sign of hectic or nervous breaks -- technically, it's a very well mixed CD. But of course there's shouldn't be any abrupt, nervous, or sudden breaks, it's a mix CD. That's a basic requirement. The fact that they felt the need to advertise this is unusual, it's as if they're saying "give the mix a chance, don't be put off by how slick and smooth this is, it's not completely on an even keel, there are peaks and valleys here too". (and they shouldn't have to advertise that either -- it's a mix CD, of course there should be some sort of rise and fall as part of its flow)

So the release notes basically tell us nothing interesting. Unfortunately, much the same can be said about the mix. Yes, it's well mixed, but no, it's very much without thrilling moments, peaks, and valleys. It starts slowly, reaches a mild plateau about 10 minutes in (during Marcel Dettman's remix of Junior Boys), but never moves on from there, never letting loose like great mixes should. The two Ben Klock tracks in the second half are arguably the highlight, so in the big picture this isn't much of a setback because he's still a fantastic producer and on a great DJ in most instances. This just wasn't one of those instances.

This is the second time this week where a mix really let me down (the other was Shed's RA podcast) and all of 2010 feels like a down year for great mixes. Only Donnacha Costello has been consistently overachieving. Speaking of which, get yourself to the Electric Deluxe podcast (which might be the best podcast around these days) and grab Costello's latest effort.

Ladytron's self-released live album is taken from a London gig just before the release of "Velocifero". The band comes off as exceptionally focused and determined to show off their new songs, but despite the strong start, they start running out of gas in the second half. The energy slowly drains away until the final track before the encore ("Last One Standing"), where they take their stand and gamely give it whatever they have in reserve. They had nothing left for the encore, but overall the night was a success.

The encore was "Klevta"/"Burning Up"/"Destroy Everything You Touch", so be warned -- if you buy this expecting to get blown away by this mouth-watering encore (on paper), you'll be disappointed. So let's forget about this gig and just talk about "Burning Up". Maybe we can agree that "Burning Up" is one of the best goth songs ever recorded? Especially the lyrics -- what more could you possibly ask for from goth lyrics? Just look at this monster of a chorus:

I set myself on fire without you
I wrote a protest song about you
That not a soul was meant to hear, except you

I mean, it's ALL there ... "I set myself on fire without you" ... an overemotional, melodramatic reaction to a fairly trivial thing. Very serious, very goth. It fully captures the pain and hopelessness of desiring another human being. And of course there's fire motif. No goth song can be without it.

"I wrote a protest song about you" ... I sat in my room and composed something that was dedicated to you and you only, I invoked your name and bared my soul from the emotions it stirred in me. The fact that the composition was a protest song only amplifies the OTTness that is essential in a proper teenage goth drama. Goths are anathema to politics, when was the last time you saw hundreds of goths marching in the street? She wrote a fairly innocuous concoction that felt like a rebellion (in her soul) but is really nothing more than a silly little poem.

"That not a soul was meant to hear, except you" ... this is the key line, the betrayal, the world now collapses because he showed that silly little poem to someone else. Listen to how Helen Marnie sings the word "soul" on the studio recording (on the live album she's too exhausted and blows the emphasis on the syllable), it's acerbic, haunting, I feel like repenting just hearing it sung, there can be no mistake that this was supposed to be a SECRET that NO ONE was to know about.

Wavves, "King of the Beach"; Arcade Fire, "The Suburbs"

Sometimes you press play and you know within seconds that you're listening to a great album. That couldn't have been more true the first time I heard "King of the Beach". Previously, Wavves' music had left me a bit dazed and confused. Its basic building blocks were easily extracted from the lo-fi din -- the manic energy of surf-punk, the fuzzed-out guitar squalls of JAMC, the high frequency crush of great noise music. But I couldn't assemble those pieces into a unified whole. What was Wavves' second album ("Wavvves") supposed to be? To me, it had a lot more in common with metal than with pop or punk music, largely thanks to the distorted vocals and blankets of guitar noise. And where were the tunes? Perhaps they were buried too deeply to be heard properly, or perhaps they were never supposed to be there to begin with (I wouldn't bother searching too hard for melodies on a noise record).

I didn't know what to make of some of the advance press surrounding "King of the Beach" ... Nathan Williams went and got himself a real producer? So you're saying that the record won't sound like shit? Wasn't that the entire essence of Wavves, to tear the needle off the record and to sound like shit?

Nope. I finally get Wavves, and while the same building blocks are still there (surf's up, JAMC, etc.) , they've been merged with a bunch of irresistibly addictive rock n roll melodies. Back to front, it's the most consistent collection of tunes I've heard on a straight-up rock album in who knows how long. Every song won me over in less than fifteen seconds. It's as if Williams knew exactly how to press my buttons (in a good way) -- the sample of "Da Doo Ron Ron" on "Mickey Mouse" was just the icing on the cake in that respect.

There are plenty of great 10-track, 40-minute albums. There are plenty of great 70-minute double albums. There are plenty of great 60-70 minute albums with long, epic tracks (especially in ambient and techno).

There's an inbetween category that has always been something of a nuisance ... how many great, 15-20 track, 60-65 minute albums can you name? There's usually one word that best describes an album with that many tracks in the 3-4-5 minute range -- dragging.

Arcade Fire's "The Suburbs" really drags toward the end, before "The Sprawl II" rescues the album's second half. I don't know why they didn't make another 45-minute album like their first two, especially because the best ten tracks from "The Suburbs" would have made for one hell of an album. And yeah, I too am a bit tired of having to sit through yet another Arcade Fire album about bored teenagers looking to escape the shackles of their cookie-cutter lives. But there are a number of solid tracks here, and in particular, the "synth" songs ("Half Light II" and "The Sprawl II") offer a spectacular glimpse at how the band's sound might mature into something even more wonderful in the future (any indie rock collective that wants to take more cues from Blondie is making the right move in my book).

The rapid cycle of praise and backlash that's come with "The Suburbs" has been hilarious to watch. After the ink had dried on a series of glowing reviews, news broke about their debut at #1 on the album charts, which was followed by a bunch of "what does this mean for the future of indie rock and indie labels?" handwringing and acrid reminders that a #1 album doesn't mean as much, sales-wise, as it once did. Arcade Fire have long since been lauded as the indie band laying golden eggs, even from before the release of "Funeral". Even back then, they had a number of famous fans in their corner, such as U2 and David Bowie. Nevertheless, five years ago, was ANYBODY predicting they'd have a #1 album in their future? Jeez, let's all sit back and enjoy it for a few weeks.

Dixon, Matthew Dear: House/Techno all-nighter @Haoman 17

Sometimes, you time things just right.

It certainly didn't seem that way at first. After having flown in from abroad the previous day, and having only found out about the party hours later, I was really just in the mood to relax and do nothing -- particularly on a Thursday evening. But who could pass up this pairing?

I saw Dixon only briefly at this year's MUTEK. Yet another case of bad timing. It felt as though his set was taking a bit of time to really get going, but after thirteen hours on my feet, most of it spent listening to music, having already gotten drunk and sobered up hours before, I didn't have any patience or energy left. It's 4 AM, don't ease into the set, hit me with your best shot or I'm out of here. That's how I ended up capping my night with Konque and their spaceman helmets.

The timing couldn't have been better this time. I arrived maybe 45 minutes into Dixon's set and the club was right on the verge of filling up. Within minutes, the dancefloor went from mostly empty to nearly full, the volume level rose and the music became more intense. Dixon straddles the lines between techno and hard house with ease, and by the time Matthew Dear hit the decks past 3:30 AM, there was already a sense of finality to the night, as if the afterparty was set to begin.

Matthew Dear sent the early birds home with an hour and a half of techno was nearly too hard and too relentless. Few people could keep up with him, and there wasn't enough variation to engage the people who might have otherwise taken a short break. The energy seeped slowly from the room. But in the last hour and a half, once it was down to the hundred or so diehards who absolutely refused to go home, the music became slower, deeper, and more euphoric. The nerve of the guy, saving his best stuff for well after 5 AM! I figured I'd be out until five at the latest, but yet again, the timing was perfect -- Matthew Dear dragged me back at exactly the moment when I thought I'd had enough.

Was this the best party so far in 2010? I'm hard pressed to think of a better one ...

Arcade Fire Live at Madison Square Garden

This concert was streamed live on Youtube earlier this evening. Is it an exaggeration to say that the size of the potential viewing audience and the timing of the gig (the week that their wildly anticipated third album is released) make this the biggest gig of their career?

The first time I heard the Arcade Fire, I thought of Blondie. I put on "Funeral", and the first track ("Neighbourhood #1 (Tunnels)") sounded like a straight up homage to Blondie, specifically, a faithfully xeroxed version of their track "Under the Gun". This was hardly a popular opinion, in fact, it put me in a minority group, population = 1. I still stand by my first impression as being not altogether crazy, although in general, of course, Arcade Fire don't sound like Blondie.

I've still never seen Arcade Fire live, but I've heard a number of live recordings. And although tonight's set never drags, it never seems to build to anything either. The setlist doesn't tell a story like all the best gigs tend to do, which is especially frustrating coming from a band that does nothing but tell stories about escapism. The new tracks don't carry the drama and flair of the older ones (which did NOT seem to be the case for "Neon Bible" ... that album came perfectly into focus for me after I heard some of their early live shows in support of it). There's a lot of motorik rock going on, and several weeks after the title track to "The Suburbs" made its way online, I still don't understand what that track is trying to accomplish (Odd foray into lounge rock? Elton John pastiche? "Why Does It Always Rain On Me" meets "Frankly Mr. Shankly"?)

All is forgiven in the encore -- "Neighbourhoods #1" and "Wake Up" sandwiching a new song, "Sprawl II", that screams Blondie so unmistakably that they might as well play the video for "Heart of Glass" on the video screens during their upcoming tour. Nobody can deny it -- Arcade Fire gave into their inner Blondie, finally, and what's more, they're REALLY really good at it! If the rest of "The Suburbs" can come close to being this good, then they've got their hands on yet another classic album.