Annals of the Completely Unneccessary (Part One in an Infinite Part Series): Westlife

Exclusive! Live! Performance!! Their new single, tonight, on the Miss World 2006 telecast!

In fact, they got to perform two songs, meaning that in total, they were onstage for roughly twice as much time as the finalists in this pageant. But that's another matter, because thanks to the efforts of boy band svengali Louis Walsh (conveniently one of the pageant judges) their hard work and boundless popularity, we're treated to a world premiere performance of their new single, "The Rose".

Was the world clamouring for a cover of "The Rose"? Even the Backstreet Boys rocked out a bit on their most recent album, getting all gritty and dusty in the video for "Incomplete". But "The Rose"? Will the British public ever grow tired of shmaltzy ballads covered by boy bands? What's their next single, "Unchained Melody"? Oh hang on, Boyzone already went there in 1999, but I think there's a seven-year statute of limitations on this sort of thing. Once seven years have passed, pillage away. BTW, Westlife aren't looking so boyish these days, I suppose that's what happens when real life, i.e. kids, marriage, and coming out of the closet entrenches on a career of selling aural molasses to ten year old girls.

Yeah, their cover of "Mandy" was one of my favourite singles of 2003 ... what about it?

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Robin Gibb's sloppy performance at the very end of the show, singing "Jive Talkin'" as the credits rolled and the girls tried to get down and party in the most ladylike way possible. The sight of Gibb (easily the shortest person on stage), surrounded by international beauties, looking extremely distracted, warbling in and out of tune and rhythm, brought obvious comparisons to the man, the myth, the legend, Michael Sandecki -- far more so than any ressemblance to a member of a legendary chart-topping band (but let's face it, Robin Gibb is as relevant to the Bee Gees as the non-Joe Perry/Stephen Tyler members of Aerosmith).

Random Play Disasters (Part One in an Infinite Part Series): The Art of Noise

The iPod era is just the latest chapter in my never-ending fascination with random play. Lately, I haven't even been queuing up entire albums, preferring to sample just a few songs from them instead. But there are a lot of albums (or more commonly, artists) that defy the random play format, usually because some or most of the tracks flow together (Spiritualized, Tim Hecker, many more).

The Art of Noise recently released a four-CD box set of material from their time on the ZTT label from 1983-1985, entitled "And What Have You Done With My Body, God?". I have been a huge fan of this band since high school, so naturally I was excited about the prospect of such a collection. Although their most well-known tracks all stem from this period ("Moments In Love", "Beatbox", "Close To The Edit", all of which have been sampled more than just about any songs from the past twenty years or so -- if you're not sure if you've ever heard these songs, don't worry, you probably have), they arguably reached their prime during the China Records era that followed. It was a more prolific time for the band, for one thing, stuffed with experimental oddities ("Instruments of Darkness", "Opus 4"), proto-ambient ("Camilla"), and Yello-ish minor chart hits ("Paranoimia", "Kiss"). "(Who's Afraid of) The Art of Noise" is their most fascinating, twisted, and iconic album by far, but 1990's "The Ambient Collection" (a pseudo-remixed collection assembled and sequenced by Youth) is their best record. Long before "ambient" became a buzzword, this was a landmark chillout album filled with years worth of album tracks that were eons ahead of their time, anticipating just about every piece of downtempo dance music released during the 90's. I wore out my cassette during 1990, listening to it for hours upon end, second only to the Stone Roses debut (yes, ahead of Depeche Mode's "Violator", which I didn't even own until late 1991, but that's another story).

The problem occurred when I put this box set -- unheard -- on random play with a bunch of other stuff. One sitting later, I'd heard maybe a quarter of the total set but was completely baffled as to what I had or hadn't already heard, thereby complicating subsequent listening sessions. This is what happens when a band throws six or eight versions of "Beatbox" onto a box set. Although the concept of a "Pet Sounds" Box for the AON makes for an interesting prospect, I have to question whether anybody (even this band's most devoted fans) (even ANY band's most devoted fans) needs to hear the same four or five tracks being jammed out over and over and over again. I'm lost as to which versions are the best ones, and the working/alternate titles don't help matters.

Of course, it's always wonderful to revisit this stuff, and by putting the whole box on random play for about 45 minutes, you too can create your very own alternate mix of "(Who's Afraid Of) The Art of Noise" -- one of a kind, every time! There are plenty of previously unheard gems, such as "Diversions 3", a greasy, funky take on "Beatbox" that distinguishes itself from the other versions by stripping away nearly all elements of the track other the backbeat. Ditto "Close (To Being Compiled), which does the same to "Close (To the Edit)". The title track and "The Long Hello" pile even more drama onto their source track "How To Kill", adding church organs and choirs to the heartbreaking and unsettling original. A twenty minute version of "Close (To the Edit)", charmingly entitled "That Was Close [Diversion Eight / Diversion Two / Closest / Close-Up / Close (To The Edit) / Closed]", somehow flies right by, psychedelically bumping and grinding its way through several linked variations on the original song.

All in all, there's plenty to like here -- a little too much, in fact. Consume in rationed doses!

Tim Hecker, "Harmony In Ultraviolet"

Tim Hecker likes to stick to a formula. Sometimes that's shorthand for "stuck in a rut" but this particular rut (whoops, I'm not calling it that) is one that I never get tired of. Sure, he broke from the formula on my favourite release of his, "My Love Is Rotten To the Core", i.e. the sound of hair metal riffs shattered into a thousand pieces, swept up, and reassembled hastily (and sloppily). The typical formula rarely fails to awe me with its beauty, in which he goes from sparkly, fuzzed-out noise (perfect for stargazing) to darker, fuzzed-out noise (perfect for stargazing ... IN HELL). It's fascinating how those dark endings just keep getting darker with each new album. This time around, it seems as though Hecker's been listening to the likes of Sunn0))), judging by the quaking, rumbling, bass-heavy distorted tones that fill up the latter third of "Harmony In Ultraviolet". This album is typically great for Hecker, but here's hoping for something a little different next time. My personal choice: an entire album of pitch black darkness, featuring one long, slowly shifting deathdrone piece with perhaps a slight peek of happiness to alleviate the mood at the very end.

Strange voices in my head

It had been a while since I'd heard REM's "Automatic For the People", but three songs into the album I could effortlessly remember the main reasons why I love(d) it so much. Sometimes you can look at just one photograph taken during a two-week vacation, and even though you haven't looked at or thought about that picture for months, you suddenly remember everything you did that day, what you did immediately before and immediately after it was taken, or what you were thinking about that compelled you to make that goofy face. I think that's the mark of a fun, memorable vacation.

I never thought much of Michael Stipe as a vocalist before this album came out, to me he was always the nasally geek from "Superman" and "Shiny Happy People". I was awed to hear his voice carry nearly all of "AFTP", dominating and conducting nearly every track like few albums I've heard before or since. Make no mistake about it -- Stipe's weathered, gravelly voice is the lead instrument throughout the record, making 100X more of an impact than any guitar lick or bassline on every one of its twelve tracks. Fourteen years on, all this jumps out at me immediately, far removed from the spectre of grunge-era seriousness (when for a split second, it seemed as though mopey, depressing albums might be 10M sellers on a routine basis) and all the "REM aren't touring, ergo, Michael Stipe has AIDS" faux-poignancy rumours that made headlines at the time.

In a similar way, I found it easy to write off Daniel Johnston's voice as a gimmicky curiosity. He was the guy who sang the demos that other artists would polish up and sing properly. Johnston sings like a twelve year old pubescent kid, so there's a sizeable adjustment period when first hearing him, during which his voice progressively grates less and less. It's one thing to hum along to his pained thoughts about love, but learning something about love from Daniel Johnston is another thing entirely. He had to complicate matters by writing and singing one of the most beautiful love songs ever. "True Love Will Find You In the End" neatly sums up most of what you need to know about the subject (in less than two minutes, amazingly enough) by confidently assuring you that Your Special Someone needs you as much as you need them, so get off your ass and go find that person before it's too late. A song with such simple, childlike words could only be sung by someone with a simple, childlike voice; which is why the cover versions (e.g. Spectrum) get it completely wrong. Johnston's characteristically sloppy musicianship is entirely appropriate here, because what is the search for true love if not sloppy, disorienting, and occasionally fruitless?

A moment of clarity with Flowchart's "Cumulus Mood Twang"

Somehow I managed to not listen to this album for about six weeks, probably since my last plane ride. It is far and away the best Flowchart album, nestled gently between the Stereolab mimicry of "Multi-Personality Tabletop Vacation" and the semi-deep house junk they'd do later on. The album's first few tracks play around with some two-dollar beats (they upgraded them to more expensive models on later records, to detrimental effect) while adding all the coos and "aaahh"s and "whoa"s you can handle. But in the middle, it makes its push into greatness by settling into a woozy sort of eazy listening shoegaze (in the Tim Hecker/M83 stargazing sense of the word, not in the decibel-crunching guitar attack sense. It peaks, as all albums should, in its final 20 minutes, starting with "Rust a la Glare", a kind of Fila Brazilia/Jimpster late-90's downtempo-d'n'b thing filled with flutes and shit, and yes, you have to namedrop when talking about Flowchart because all their stuff is so ridiculously derivative but it WORKS, in this case spectacularly. The final two tracks, "Icicles and Clipboards" and its intro (more or less) "Grain of Apology", might as well have been titled "To Here Knows When Part II" because that's obviously what they're trying to recreate+remodel, and it's eight minutes of foggy beauty, of holding hands in the rain, of not worrying about anything, and it has to be one of the best dozen or so album closers ever.

Near the end of "Rust a la Glare", at around 8:30 AM on Monday morning, I realized that we have the tendency to be angry at people or upset with them when they don't act the way you want or expect. Sometimes these feelings last for one day and are quickly forgotten (because you never see that person again) and sometimes they last for weeks or months or years. There are people in Israel that I've only known for a few weeks and they're wonderful guys and gals but part of me is already starting to resent them for things they have or haven't done (things that don't necessarily have anything to do with me). And for what? For stupid reasons, that's what.

I feel better now. This music is good for that.

Kokhav Nolad Season 4 Finale Anticipation

Admittedly, I haven't watched all (or most) of the episodes, I don't fully understand the show's format, and I understand virtually none of the language. But finale time = fun time, the ads run on TV all the time, and I'm getting excited.

The final three are Maya, Jako, and Raphael. We'll ignore Raphael for the time being because I have no idea what he brings to the table that makes him deserving of the spot he's in. Maya is playing the Katharine McPhee role to a tee right now. She's a good, but not great singer who happens to be very pretty and has a great body (Katharine is a better singer when she's at the top of her game, but she was prone to the same bouts of inconsistency that Maya has been experiencing). Naturally, these are the sorts of qualities that make you stick out early in the season. Then comes the tendency to start coasting on that early momentum. Once the season reaches the midway point, the pretenders are essentially gone and you need to pull off some blowaway performances to stay ahead of the pack. Instead, we are treated to middling -> good (bordering on very good) outputs, at which point you can see the uncertainty in their eyes -- they know they need to work some magic (and fast) but aren't sure how to do it, and aren't even sure that they're capable of doing it. Katharine's apex in this respect happened during the final four of AI Season Five, with the not-so-shocking shocking elimination of the profoundly overrated Chris Daughtry. Maya's point of no return happened last week, when Zahbit (who shouldn't have stood a chance against Maya) was sent home, even though Maya had that dead, completely resigned look in her eyes and had a scarily striking resemblance to Ally Sheedy's character in "The Breakfast Club".

Jako has a look not unlike AI Season Four runner-up Bo Bice -- he looks like a rocker but is really a big softie and that's why all the girls love him. He also carries himself with a macho swagger and can be a very gritty performer when the song calls for it. In this respect, picture Chris Daughtry minus his air of entitlement and all of his arrogant shithead qualities. He's on a major roll right now and seems to be the clear favourite from my perspective, but we'll find out this Thursday.

Amos Corman, Uzy Feinerman @ Levontin 7, T.A. (Wed., August 30)

The intimate, basement space in this eerily quiet neighbourhood (which reminds me of T.O.'s Kensington Market once the sun sets) is actually perfect for this guitar/tabla show. It's billed as a tribute to Indian musician Amir Hussain Khan and American blues guitarist Elizabeth Cotton, both of whom I know absolutely nothing about until this evening. The first half of the show consists of one meandering, disjointed improvisation in which the musicians play circles around each other without ever finding themselves on the same page. The second half is a somewhat sloppy but very enjoyable bit of country tabla blues versions of Elizabeth Cotton's songs. Feinerman's studied, country-tonk accent shows that he's a devoted fan of country, and Corman's droll, unpolished singing actually adds to the performance because he clearly enjoys straying off the beaten path in tandem with his instrument of choice.

The Wonderful Sounds of NIN

"The Fragile" didn't come close to meeting expectations, but the tour was a hit and so was the eventual DVD. Nobody bothered to listen to all 893 hours of that double album, but overall, the CD was still something of an event (expect essays in approximately 20 years that hail it as a misjudged masterpiece, the alterna-generation's very own "Tusk"). But one year later, it feels as though "With Teeth" didn't even happen. This tends to happen when you insist on spending five years between album releases throughout your entire career. Sure, the long wait builds anticipation and turns the eventual release into a big event, but the shtick gets old after fifteen years and the law of diminishing returns rots into the picture. You can only make so many grand comebacks and expect people to keep caring.

But no matter what he does, Trent Reznor always finds a way to make his music sound great while doing it. He's our very own Eric Clapton, sort of. Everything he touches (outside of the Marilyn Manson crunch-rock portion of his career) sounds fantastic, filled with layers of moody chords, sizzling distortion, and hummable melodies. It all sounds so big, so cavernous, so meant to be played on gigantic speakers. "With Teeth" is an underrated record that could have been a classic if Reznor hadn't tried to ruin significant parts of it with underproduced crap like "Only". I can only assume that he felt like dabbling in blues and wanted to make the most of Dave Grohl's drumming talents. But the best tracks on this record, most notably the pulsating, mind-numbing "Beside You In Time" easily rank high among his back catalogue.

Admittedly, that may be damning Reznor with faint praise -- I haven't even felt the need to listen to "The Downward Spiral" (sans the indispensible "Closer") in years.

Songs in heavy rotation ...

Sometimes the brilliance of certain songs doesn't hit for you months, or even years. Everybody is familiar with this concept, right? Here are some songs that fit the bill for me, all of them are currently in heavy rotation on my iPod:

Broken Social Scene, "Ibi Dreams of Pavement (A Better Day)". "You Forgot It in People", as great as it is, feels like a time share, where each member's former (or current) band gets their proper allowance of recording tape. The songs could have carried subtitles straight out of "Friends", i.e. "KC Accidental (The One That Sounds like Do Make Say Think)", "Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl (The One That Sounds Twee, like the Cranberries Back When They Were Good)", and "Shampoo Suicide (The One That Is Supposed to Sound Like Reggae, but not Rocking in that Zeppelin-y Way)".

Finally, here is a song that justifies the need to have five guitarists among the twelve people onstage from seven different bands. It truly sounds like all those bands mashed into one song, with guitars wailing like vacuum cleaners over what passes for the tune, a vocal that demands for you to shout along with it, and just when you think they can't throw any more madness into a five minute track, along comes a horn-driven ending that kicks everything up a level (the ending could use another two minutes, one of the only weaknesses of the song). The loudest and best thing they've ever done, possibly. Too bad most of the album that followed it was indulgent, overly long, similarly overproduced junk (note: this is probably the reason that it took me so long to come around to this song -- I couldn't bear to sit through the entire album).

Michael Jackson, "Billie Jean". One of my all-time growers -- I didn't start liking it until I dunno, the late 90's? What was I thinking? All the child molesting allegations in the world can't dampen this song's funky sheen. Even the notion of Michael being slapped with a paternity suit in 1983 can't make this the least bit laughable (although I suppose the sex is implied, not confirmed, in the song's lyrics).

Bangles, "Manic Monday". For those who don't remember the 80's, Prince was essentially Pharrell + Radiohead + Christina Aguilera. He needed an airline hangar to contain his critical acclaim, he could rock, he could funk, and he could raunch. He played, wrote, and performed on big hits for several other artists, all of which owed a large part of their success to him. I heard "Sexy MF" a couple of weeks ago for the first time in ages, and while thinking about how easily its lyrics could be incorporated into contemporary hip-hop (why haven't the Ying Yang Twins covered this yet?), I realized that I'd forgotten that Prince, when he wanted to, could write 60's-style girl group songs with the best of them. Of course, this being Prince, there has to a line about getting busy ("He tells me in his bedroom voice / C'mon honey, let's go make some noise) but otherwise this is bittersweet pop at its finest.

Bardo Pond, "From the Sky". Most often, one isn't in the mood to sit through a 31-minute song. That's what kept me at arm's length from the final track on the "Cypher Documents" compilation, but the song absolutely crushes, like the vocal-less middle section of "Destroying Angel" stretched out for another half hour.

Lisa Germano, "In the Maybe World"

Her 1993 album "Happiness" starts with more than a minute of shredding, echoing guitar noise that could have been lifted straight off a Cocteau Twins record. Well, the album *was* released on 4AD so maybe it was all part of her plan to make herself feel at home on the label. Fifteen years into her solo career, those hazy, otherworldly qualities can still occasionally appear in Germano's music. But it's not much more than window dressing on the devastating, heartbreaking feeling one gets from listening to "Too Much Space" on her newest record. Neo-shoegazing = window dressing? Yes, it's just that damn sad.

In the morning without a sound
And the stirring of dreams around
then you wake up -- he wasn't there again

Of course, it's the slight pause before the word "again" that strikes the final, unrecoverable blow.

On the way home you feel it there
cuz your heart needs to be somewhere
but you wake up to too much space again

There's an even subtler pause before the world "somewhere", but I'm sure it's mainly my imagination (wishful thinking, perhaps).

Drugstore's Isobel Monteiro makes a strong case for the sexiest female voice in contemporary music, but Drugstore haven't made a record in five years so I'm tempted to hand over the title to Lisa Germano. There are a lot of similarities between the two -- the soft, husky whisper and the way they seem to purr instead of sing when they're performing at their best. With their penchant for semi-acoustic ballads/lullabies, they're even similar as songwriters. But even though either one of them could convincingly sing the other's entire ouevre, the overall tone of these switcheroo works would be strikingly different. That is, these two singers might be similar, but they are far from interchangeable. Pixie-like Monteiro is the naughty sex kitten, the girl whose voice you lust over but whose heart you can tolerate breaking. Sure, you might feel bad about it eventually, like if you heard "All the Things A Girl Should Have" a few years later. You would trick yourself into thinking that she was a sweetheart all along, but then you'd hear the vindictive "I Know I Could" and quit feeling sorry for her altogether. One minute she's moaning your name and the next minute she's that crazy bitch who made a voodoo doll of your likeness and plans to put it on her album cover. Who needs her? But Lisa is the starry-eyed quiet girl next door, the person you want singing you to sleep every night.

"Happiness" is a schizophrenic record. Half of it is caught in this weird suspension between early-90's teenaged alt-rock and late-90's adult-oriented wannabe alt-rock. Semisonic and Matchbox Tw20enty would have been thrilled to have some of these songs on their first hit records ("Energy" or "Anyone's Victim"?). The other half consists of charred, fragile beauty, epitomized by the gorgeous closer "The Darkest Night of All"). But "Geek the Girl", released the following year, feels like an overreaching stab at fitting in with post-grunge, post-"Loser" slackerdom. Despite some fantastic songs ("Cancer of Everything"), only in 1994 could a song try to pass off "Oh no, I'm not too cool" as a credible chorus. In 1996, she inched close to her forte with the gentle "Excerpts From a Love Circus" and with 2003's aptly named "Lullaby For Liquid Pig" she perfected her "lullabies for adults" formula (bedtime stories about alcohol, loneliness and depression). She continues to exploit this formula in fine fashion with this year's "In the Maybe World", and I'm selfishly hoping that she never stops being miserable (or sounding like it on record).