This city is an architectural utopia, albeit an intimidating one with imperial splendor staring you in the face at virtually every street corner in the central downtown area. Unfortunately, Vienna cannot boast the musical pedigree to match, as alas I was disappointed to discover that the likes of Fennesz do not play live sets here every night.
1. The Irish pub near my hotel played bloody Jet's "Are You Gonna Be My Girl" almost as soon as I walked in. I am deathly sick of after hearing it roughly ten billion times on all those German handy ads. I can only imagine how Germans and Austrians feel about it -- those ad campaigns are five years old? Memories of Berlin ....
2. I hear Fergie and Christina Aguilera on the radio every morning, at virtually the same hour, almost without fail. See: Memories, Berlin.
3. No time to shop at, e.g. Patrick Pulsinger's Cheap store as of yet. There is a cool-looking shop that I pass on the bus ride into work every day, from the outside it looks like any one of a million classic rock stores in Toronto, complete with 70's style design and mimimalist black sign. That means it's probably not such a cool place after all, but somehow I find it cool to find such a place on the way to Vienna's industrial sector.
4. Laser geeks (like myself) who are also big fans of goth and techno can only be found in German-speaking countries.
5. Tomorrow's plans may include trying to finagle a ticket to the sold-out Cure concert. Plan B includes heading to the very likely not sold-out Earth show instead.
6. Icke Micke has hosted a mind-blowing roster of guests over the past couple of years, but will not be throwing a party while I am in town. Fuckers.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Monday, February 11, 2008
Control
"Control" contains countless little plusses but a small number of elephant-sized flaws. Overall, it more or less breaks even.
The attention to detail is consistently remarkable. Plenty of camera shots down long Macclesfield streets brilliantly captured the suburb in all it's drab non-glory. The product placement -- old concert posters, music weeklies, etc. -- was very well done. The scene with Joy Division performing in the Granada TV was eerily accurate. They even shot the scene using the odd camera angles that were used in the actual broadcast.
Every major role was well casted and well acted, however nobody really stood out, which is a sizable weakness in a character-driven movie about a man's life falling apart. Tony Kibbell (as Rob Gretton) was awesome in capturing the crassness of the character while also encapsulating the boisterous unprofessionalism of everyone in and around Factory. Samantha Morton has received plenty of praise for her portrayal of Debbie Curtis, and I can see where it's coming from as she's the only character required to show the least bit of genuine human emotion. That's a heavy load to carry, but Debbie Curtis is frankly not an interesting character to begin with. She's a nondescript, shy, awkward girl who gets married too soon and cries a lot. Debbie portrays herself quite honestly in that regard in "Touching From a Distance", and the movie captures that "this is a mistake" feeling almost right from the beginning of her relationship with Ian. She may be genuine, but that doesn't necessarily make for a compelling character that you'd want to see in a movie.
And that's the biggest issue I have with "Control" -- virtually none of the characters themselves are in any way compelling. The drama that unfolds is worth seeing only if you are familiar with most of the details and are jonesing for all those Joy Division photos to animate themselves. The music is prominently featured, but the blossoming of the band's career is vague at best, leaving no reason for a casual viewer to care about who these people were or why they are still revered for doing what they did nearly thirty years after the fact. I had similar criticisms of "24 Hour Party People", but with that film, someone with zero prior knowledge could still harness the key points -- everyone was having a good time, a good number of them were basically nutters, and lot of great music was made. Those are easy concepts to get across in an essentially plotless movie like "24 Hour Party People" that is little more than forty or so unrelated scenes strung together. So, what happens in "Control"? The singer in an underground band is depressed and kills himself. Is this particularly notable?
For example, in a few scenes we see Ian alone in a room with his notebook. Debbie knocks on the door and he ignores her. From "Touching From A Distance", we know that this was Ian's "blue room" (the movie is in black and white so of course the colours don't come across in the film, but that's not really the point). The book explains how important it was for Ian to have a writing space of his own, a place where he could feel comfortable, a place that would relax him and bring out the best in his writing. This is not so unusual -- lots of writers operate in this way. The movie simply portrays a man being an asshole to his wife. The fact that countless legendary Joy Division songs were birthed in this very room is central for understanding the maturation of the band. This is barely even implied in the movie. This doesn't excuse Ian's behaviour, not in the least, but this is one example (of many) of the way the movie short-changes the character by ignoring the band's development.
In "Control", the key witness, so to speak, is dead. The most reliable source of information, his wife Debbie, barely spent any time with him toward the end. The people who actually saw him most of the time, namely his bandmates and manager, have gone on record countless times to say that they didn't suspect anything was wrong with Ian beyond his epilepsy. Ian was partying right along with them, and in any case they were all having too good of a time to notice if anything was wrong. So nobody really knows what thoughts resided in his head, particularly during the last few months of his life, and the movie admirably tries to cover Ian's slow descent by externalizing almost everything. He speaks very little for a character who is nearly every scene, and there is almost nothing in the form of letters or monologues that might offer insight into what he was thinking. Scenes revolve around him but hardly anyone interacts with him, leaving him to pout and stare blankly into space. That virtually sums up the second half of the movie. But when you remove the Joy Division Story and strip everything down to simply the Ian Curtis Story (externalized version), you're left with a movie about an epileptic guy in an unhappy marriage who had fairly unremarkable problems to deal with. There's not much of a movie to be made about a guy with a nagging wife who walks around Macclesfield with a sad face all the time.
We know that depressed people don't walk around looking blue all day long, which has been largely confirmed by the people who were closest to him in the final months. Are we supposed to believe that Sad Face Ian 1980 really existed or was that merely artistic license used by the movie? After all, without Sad Face Ian, and with very little insight into what is inside that character's mind, how would his suicide be at all believable?
It's easy to praise this movie based on the vividness of the scenery, of seeing all of those iconic B&W pictures of Joy Division come to life. I also think that a lot of fans wished they could have been there during Ian's final days, at the very least to see him with their own eyes and to figure out if the signs were there, or if they could have done something. In that way, this movie fulfills many people's longtime wishes by taking them back to a time that they are too young to remember.
If "Control" really is our generation's "La Bamba", then we're lagging far behind. In "La Bamba" you could feel Richie carrying the weight of his family's expectations, struggle along with him as he wrestled with his torchbearing role in the Mexican-American community (a role that was pushed into his lap that he certainly never asked for), and sympathize with both him and his overbearing, well-meaning but profoundly jealous brother. That movie is a rollercoaster, and Richie's death comes off like a major tragedy not least because it's clear that he was on the cusp of something big. It's truly a shame that "Control" portrays Ian Curtis' death as being largely inevitable, and yet gives us so few reasons to care about him.
Minor notes: 1. The character of Peter Hook is billed simply as "Hooky" in the credits. Ha! 2. The Killers' version of "Shadowplay" during the end credits. I like the Killers but the last thing this movie needed was interpretive covers, and this one sucked. 3. If it was my movie, I roll the credits immediately after the sound of the cord pulling taut. Nothing was accomplished in the final two minutes other than Samantha Morton's final pitch for acting accolades. Alternative ending: Ian dies and we see the remaining three band members dicking around in a rehearsal studio a couple of months later. The subtext is that Ian is gone but they've long since decided to carry on. There's a hint of sentimentality but these are essentially the same fiercely creative goons we've been following during the movie. They pick up their instruments and launch into the opening bars of, I don't know, "Dreams Never End". But I guess that wouldn't have left room for one more brief shot of the smoking hot Alexandra Maria Lara and for "Atmosphere" playing over the film's final moments (something that Corbijn quite obviously wanted to do quite desperately).
The attention to detail is consistently remarkable. Plenty of camera shots down long Macclesfield streets brilliantly captured the suburb in all it's drab non-glory. The product placement -- old concert posters, music weeklies, etc. -- was very well done. The scene with Joy Division performing in the Granada TV was eerily accurate. They even shot the scene using the odd camera angles that were used in the actual broadcast.
Every major role was well casted and well acted, however nobody really stood out, which is a sizable weakness in a character-driven movie about a man's life falling apart. Tony Kibbell (as Rob Gretton) was awesome in capturing the crassness of the character while also encapsulating the boisterous unprofessionalism of everyone in and around Factory. Samantha Morton has received plenty of praise for her portrayal of Debbie Curtis, and I can see where it's coming from as she's the only character required to show the least bit of genuine human emotion. That's a heavy load to carry, but Debbie Curtis is frankly not an interesting character to begin with. She's a nondescript, shy, awkward girl who gets married too soon and cries a lot. Debbie portrays herself quite honestly in that regard in "Touching From a Distance", and the movie captures that "this is a mistake" feeling almost right from the beginning of her relationship with Ian. She may be genuine, but that doesn't necessarily make for a compelling character that you'd want to see in a movie.
And that's the biggest issue I have with "Control" -- virtually none of the characters themselves are in any way compelling. The drama that unfolds is worth seeing only if you are familiar with most of the details and are jonesing for all those Joy Division photos to animate themselves. The music is prominently featured, but the blossoming of the band's career is vague at best, leaving no reason for a casual viewer to care about who these people were or why they are still revered for doing what they did nearly thirty years after the fact. I had similar criticisms of "24 Hour Party People", but with that film, someone with zero prior knowledge could still harness the key points -- everyone was having a good time, a good number of them were basically nutters, and lot of great music was made. Those are easy concepts to get across in an essentially plotless movie like "24 Hour Party People" that is little more than forty or so unrelated scenes strung together. So, what happens in "Control"? The singer in an underground band is depressed and kills himself. Is this particularly notable?
For example, in a few scenes we see Ian alone in a room with his notebook. Debbie knocks on the door and he ignores her. From "Touching From A Distance", we know that this was Ian's "blue room" (the movie is in black and white so of course the colours don't come across in the film, but that's not really the point). The book explains how important it was for Ian to have a writing space of his own, a place where he could feel comfortable, a place that would relax him and bring out the best in his writing. This is not so unusual -- lots of writers operate in this way. The movie simply portrays a man being an asshole to his wife. The fact that countless legendary Joy Division songs were birthed in this very room is central for understanding the maturation of the band. This is barely even implied in the movie. This doesn't excuse Ian's behaviour, not in the least, but this is one example (of many) of the way the movie short-changes the character by ignoring the band's development.
In "Control", the key witness, so to speak, is dead. The most reliable source of information, his wife Debbie, barely spent any time with him toward the end. The people who actually saw him most of the time, namely his bandmates and manager, have gone on record countless times to say that they didn't suspect anything was wrong with Ian beyond his epilepsy. Ian was partying right along with them, and in any case they were all having too good of a time to notice if anything was wrong. So nobody really knows what thoughts resided in his head, particularly during the last few months of his life, and the movie admirably tries to cover Ian's slow descent by externalizing almost everything. He speaks very little for a character who is nearly every scene, and there is almost nothing in the form of letters or monologues that might offer insight into what he was thinking. Scenes revolve around him but hardly anyone interacts with him, leaving him to pout and stare blankly into space. That virtually sums up the second half of the movie. But when you remove the Joy Division Story and strip everything down to simply the Ian Curtis Story (externalized version), you're left with a movie about an epileptic guy in an unhappy marriage who had fairly unremarkable problems to deal with. There's not much of a movie to be made about a guy with a nagging wife who walks around Macclesfield with a sad face all the time.
We know that depressed people don't walk around looking blue all day long, which has been largely confirmed by the people who were closest to him in the final months. Are we supposed to believe that Sad Face Ian 1980 really existed or was that merely artistic license used by the movie? After all, without Sad Face Ian, and with very little insight into what is inside that character's mind, how would his suicide be at all believable?
It's easy to praise this movie based on the vividness of the scenery, of seeing all of those iconic B&W pictures of Joy Division come to life. I also think that a lot of fans wished they could have been there during Ian's final days, at the very least to see him with their own eyes and to figure out if the signs were there, or if they could have done something. In that way, this movie fulfills many people's longtime wishes by taking them back to a time that they are too young to remember.
If "Control" really is our generation's "La Bamba", then we're lagging far behind. In "La Bamba" you could feel Richie carrying the weight of his family's expectations, struggle along with him as he wrestled with his torchbearing role in the Mexican-American community (a role that was pushed into his lap that he certainly never asked for), and sympathize with both him and his overbearing, well-meaning but profoundly jealous brother. That movie is a rollercoaster, and Richie's death comes off like a major tragedy not least because it's clear that he was on the cusp of something big. It's truly a shame that "Control" portrays Ian Curtis' death as being largely inevitable, and yet gives us so few reasons to care about him.
Minor notes: 1. The character of Peter Hook is billed simply as "Hooky" in the credits. Ha! 2. The Killers' version of "Shadowplay" during the end credits. I like the Killers but the last thing this movie needed was interpretive covers, and this one sucked. 3. If it was my movie, I roll the credits immediately after the sound of the cord pulling taut. Nothing was accomplished in the final two minutes other than Samantha Morton's final pitch for acting accolades. Alternative ending: Ian dies and we see the remaining three band members dicking around in a rehearsal studio a couple of months later. The subtext is that Ian is gone but they've long since decided to carry on. There's a hint of sentimentality but these are essentially the same fiercely creative goons we've been following during the movie. They pick up their instruments and launch into the opening bars of, I don't know, "Dreams Never End". But I guess that wouldn't have left room for one more brief shot of the smoking hot Alexandra Maria Lara and for "Atmosphere" playing over the film's final moments (something that Corbijn quite obviously wanted to do quite desperately).
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Super Bowl XLII Halftime Show Comments
The build-up and anticipation for Tom Petty's performance was decidedly ... well, absent (I regularly forgot who was performing right up until the day of the game, and I know I'm not the only one who did). So it's only appropriate that the post-show buzz has been similarly subdued.
Then again, most of the post-game talk has been about the game itself, so it turned out that Petty didn't stand a chance. Prince had the good fortune to perform during one of the most boring SB matchups of the decade, a game in which the outcome was never really in doubt heading into the game or during it. Afterward, it was only natural to talk about him -- after all, Prince had a better day on the field than any of the players did.
But let's not talk about the game on Sunday. My local channel re-broadcasts football games on Monday nights, so I watched most of the game a second time. I suppose it was a form of catharsis. Like banging your head against a brick wall, most of the hurt is felt on the first strike. Numbness sets in for all subsequent hits and the pain subsides. The consensus on Petty is that he gave a Perfectly Acceptable Performance, but nothing more. He delivered the radio-friendly working-class rock that he's known for, but there was nothing distinctive or particularly memorable about it. Everything I would have mapped out in my head beforehand was exactly what we ended up seeing, right down to the faux-cigarette lighters "spontaneously" flaring during the opening verse of "Free Fallin'".
It all amounts to damning with faint praise, although I will easily side more on the "praise" side of the argument, mostly because the songs themselves are excellent and I always enjoy hearing them (except for possibly "Free Fallin'" -- I am beyond sick of that tune). The problem is that they were "Superbowl sized" tunes, i.e. crowd-stirring anthems that will rock a stadium (and TV audience) of casual listeners and spit them out the other side of thirteen minutes all revved up and ready for more football. "American Girl" was a treat for an opener, but cryogenic cooling of the energy in the stadium set in with "I Won't Back Down". Fantastic song, yes, one of Petty's best, and a personal favourite of mine by *any* artist. But as SB halftime show entertainment, it was deflating. I completely understand the need to play hits that are known to a maximum number of males under 40, but that doesn't make it any more suitable for the context. The arcing fireworks at the end of "Free Fallin'" were a feeble attempt to create a U2 moment, and "Running Down A Dream" seemed to rock a lot harder when I was fifteen.
It looks like I was more long-winded that I expected to be, but again, I'm trying my best to avoid thinking about the game.
Then again, most of the post-game talk has been about the game itself, so it turned out that Petty didn't stand a chance. Prince had the good fortune to perform during one of the most boring SB matchups of the decade, a game in which the outcome was never really in doubt heading into the game or during it. Afterward, it was only natural to talk about him -- after all, Prince had a better day on the field than any of the players did.
But let's not talk about the game on Sunday. My local channel re-broadcasts football games on Monday nights, so I watched most of the game a second time. I suppose it was a form of catharsis. Like banging your head against a brick wall, most of the hurt is felt on the first strike. Numbness sets in for all subsequent hits and the pain subsides. The consensus on Petty is that he gave a Perfectly Acceptable Performance, but nothing more. He delivered the radio-friendly working-class rock that he's known for, but there was nothing distinctive or particularly memorable about it. Everything I would have mapped out in my head beforehand was exactly what we ended up seeing, right down to the faux-cigarette lighters "spontaneously" flaring during the opening verse of "Free Fallin'".
It all amounts to damning with faint praise, although I will easily side more on the "praise" side of the argument, mostly because the songs themselves are excellent and I always enjoy hearing them (except for possibly "Free Fallin'" -- I am beyond sick of that tune). The problem is that they were "Superbowl sized" tunes, i.e. crowd-stirring anthems that will rock a stadium (and TV audience) of casual listeners and spit them out the other side of thirteen minutes all revved up and ready for more football. "American Girl" was a treat for an opener, but cryogenic cooling of the energy in the stadium set in with "I Won't Back Down". Fantastic song, yes, one of Petty's best, and a personal favourite of mine by *any* artist. But as SB halftime show entertainment, it was deflating. I completely understand the need to play hits that are known to a maximum number of males under 40, but that doesn't make it any more suitable for the context. The arcing fireworks at the end of "Free Fallin'" were a feeble attempt to create a U2 moment, and "Running Down A Dream" seemed to rock a lot harder when I was fifteen.
It looks like I was more long-winded that I expected to be, but again, I'm trying my best to avoid thinking about the game.
Sunday, February 03, 2008
Can Anyone Top This? Best of 2008, So Far: M83
Last year's stopgap release for M83, the pleasant but inessential "Digital Shades Vol 1", reduced my expectations for the daftly-titled upcoming album "Saturdays = Youth". They'd been away for a couple of years, out of sight out of mind and all that etc., and a bunch of ambient noodlings only reduced anticipation for the official follow-up to "Before the Dawn Heals Us".
What me worry? New track "Couleurs" (stream link via Pitchfork) is superlative, a retro-dance throwback that instantly rendered Junior Boys to the irrelevance pile (as if they weren't already there); recalling everything from the swirling synth washes in New Order's "The Perfect Kiss" and the post-Summer of Love II headrush of Cabaret Voltaire's "Hypnotized". All of this should be far above and beyond what will be necessary to change the minds of dance music pluggers who dismissed M83 as nothing more than handy remix fodder for Superpitcher and Jackson (although seeing Ewan Pearson and Ken Thomas's names in the production credits might be convincing enough).
This should have been Flowchart's post-90's house-y direction. Instead, they dropped the ball and went for a classic-but-boring sound, dropping nearly all the kitchen sink variables that made late-90's Flowchart so unpredictable and beguiling. We had to wait another ten years for it, but finally, we have a near perfect house/shoegaze mindmeld, courtesy of this week's hero(es), M83.
What me worry? New track "Couleurs" (stream link via Pitchfork) is superlative, a retro-dance throwback that instantly rendered Junior Boys to the irrelevance pile (as if they weren't already there); recalling everything from the swirling synth washes in New Order's "The Perfect Kiss" and the post-Summer of Love II headrush of Cabaret Voltaire's "Hypnotized". All of this should be far above and beyond what will be necessary to change the minds of dance music pluggers who dismissed M83 as nothing more than handy remix fodder for Superpitcher and Jackson (although seeing Ewan Pearson and Ken Thomas's names in the production credits might be convincing enough).
This should have been Flowchart's post-90's house-y direction. Instead, they dropped the ball and went for a classic-but-boring sound, dropping nearly all the kitchen sink variables that made late-90's Flowchart so unpredictable and beguiling. We had to wait another ten years for it, but finally, we have a near perfect house/shoegaze mindmeld, courtesy of this week's hero(es), M83.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
More Year-end Round-ups: The Polls
In case you haven't seen the results yet, here are the final tallies in the Idolator and Pazz and Jop polls. For anyone who had perused even a fraction of the other 947389 lists and polls from the usual websites, bloggers, and message boards, these results were hardly surprising. That's not a knock against these two larger, more comprehensive polls, it's just an expected consequence of publishing close-to-last. As expected (based on the voter makeup of the two polls), Idolator gave more weight to indie, blog, and underground tastes (ascribe whatever meaning you like to those labels), e.g. Panda Bear (#9 albums), of Montreal (#10), and Burial (#15), all of which performed significantly better than on the P&J list. Old fart rock (ascribe whatever meaning to like to that label, but it doesn't have to be derogatory unless you force it to be so), e.g. Robert Plant and Alison Krauss (#8) and Bruce Springsteen (#9), ranked significantly higher on the Pazz and Jop poll than on the Idolator one. Otherwise, just like last year, the results were remarkably similar, although that's hardly shocking considering the near-50% voter overlap between the two polls.
Year-end burnout probably contributed to the dearth of Idolator comments this year compared to last. I know it contributed to me not getting around to sending comments for P&J, although that's really no excuse considering how some voters managed to say so much with so few words. Todd Burns' essay for the Voice probably caused the biggest stir, as popist sensibilities went into reactionary overload at the suggestion that Justice might be crap. OK, OK, I know that Burns went a lot further than that and pissed people off by looking down his elitist nose at people who might dare to enjoy Justice without also taking the time to flip through crates of obscure German techno records. All right, that summary is also a bit too harsh, after all, it's hardly extreme to suggest that critics gain a bit more perspective about a genre before casting votes for that year's crit-anointed house or techno fad just because the mass consensus is collectively convinced that said album is cool. The difference between me and Burns is that no matter what my personal feelings were toward a consensus favourite, I would never tell anyone that they should be ashamed of liking any kind of music. To hell with the boundaries of taste -- let people like what they want to like. All I can really do is try my best to convince them to like the same things that I do. This is what distinguishes Burns' essay from my own rant in defense of Sean Kingston on my Top Albums of 2007 post.
Glenn McDonald compiled his fantastic annual voter ratings, which are always more fascinating to me than any year-end poll could ever be. This year I ranked 542nd (out of 782) in Voter Centricity, in the bottom 31st percentile. That's higher than each of the past two years, but lower than where I expected to be based on my votes for overall faves Arcade Fire and Panda Bear. Then again, virtually none of my eight other picks got much support, and in fact I cast the only vote for Horseback, Paul Hartnoll, and Sean Kingston in both polls. None of the "similar voters" had ballots too similar to mine -- I had no more than two albums in common with any of them -- although I did learn about an odd niche of voters who like both Panda Bear and Stars of the Lid. And finally, I may have voted for two very popular albums, but the voter pools for each were highly dissimilar. Very few people voted for both Panda Bear *and* Arcade Fire, which means that the particular *combination* of albums on my ballot helped punt me down the similarity rankings.
Year-end burnout probably contributed to the dearth of Idolator comments this year compared to last. I know it contributed to me not getting around to sending comments for P&J, although that's really no excuse considering how some voters managed to say so much with so few words. Todd Burns' essay for the Voice probably caused the biggest stir, as popist sensibilities went into reactionary overload at the suggestion that Justice might be crap. OK, OK, I know that Burns went a lot further than that and pissed people off by looking down his elitist nose at people who might dare to enjoy Justice without also taking the time to flip through crates of obscure German techno records. All right, that summary is also a bit too harsh, after all, it's hardly extreme to suggest that critics gain a bit more perspective about a genre before casting votes for that year's crit-anointed house or techno fad just because the mass consensus is collectively convinced that said album is cool. The difference between me and Burns is that no matter what my personal feelings were toward a consensus favourite, I would never tell anyone that they should be ashamed of liking any kind of music. To hell with the boundaries of taste -- let people like what they want to like. All I can really do is try my best to convince them to like the same things that I do. This is what distinguishes Burns' essay from my own rant in defense of Sean Kingston on my Top Albums of 2007 post.
Glenn McDonald compiled his fantastic annual voter ratings, which are always more fascinating to me than any year-end poll could ever be. This year I ranked 542nd (out of 782) in Voter Centricity, in the bottom 31st percentile. That's higher than each of the past two years, but lower than where I expected to be based on my votes for overall faves Arcade Fire and Panda Bear. Then again, virtually none of my eight other picks got much support, and in fact I cast the only vote for Horseback, Paul Hartnoll, and Sean Kingston in both polls. None of the "similar voters" had ballots too similar to mine -- I had no more than two albums in common with any of them -- although I did learn about an odd niche of voters who like both Panda Bear and Stars of the Lid. And finally, I may have voted for two very popular albums, but the voter pools for each were highly dissimilar. Very few people voted for both Panda Bear *and* Arcade Fire, which means that the particular *combination* of albums on my ballot helped punt me down the similarity rankings.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
More Stuff I Slept On: Burial, "Untrue"
One problem with not living in a major music hub is that it's not so easy to go out and find music, rather, I have to wait for music to come to me. Opportunities for "discovering" something myself are simply far less numerous, and in it's place, I find myself reacting to the music that other people track down, promote, and write about. I don't relish this more passive role. A couple of years ago, I might have sincerely argued that anyone with a high speed internet connection would have the resources at the their disposal to discover, acquire, evaluate, and promote all the music they would ever need. It *is* possible to do all that from the comfort of your desk at home, but it requires a lot more time and effort compared with making trips to quality music stores, reading the new release lists, flipping through CD and vinyl racks, and checking out new bands at live shows. Not to mention that the stay-at-home process is a lot less fun -- not really surprising, since most people prefer to leave the house than to stay at home.
I used to hate opening newspapers and seeing writers dismissively refer to some new band or scene as the latest dud in a long line of overhyped British fads. I haven't turned into that curmudgeonly type (at least I hope not) but more and more, I find myself shying away from hype, and not for any good reason. It's a lot easier to do that when you're writing in relative isolation, away from any place where said music would be unavoidable. The only way to actually hear that music is to spend the time to track it down yourself, and sometimes curiosity is trumped by simply not wanting to open up new musical cans of worms, and sticking with whatever is already on your plate.
I know slightly more than jack about dubstep, but I've been hesitant to get involved with it because there are too many similarities to drum and bass -- a genre that I have never been able to embrace. For similar reasons, grime never resonated with me either. I love dark, twisted, psychotic sounds, but once intimidation and roughness is added to the mix (and not even necessarily through lyrics), I start losing interest. "Urban decay" = good, "cornered in a dark alley while somebody yells at me" = not as good. I want to feel a sense of tension in the music, but not stemming from external fear imposed on me. I'm more interested in internal fear, the feeling you get from being lost in the dark as your mind plays tricks on you even if nobody else is around.
Burial's "Untrue" is virtually a sequel to one of my favourite albums, Plastikman's "Closer". It's not menacing or intimidating, but it grinds you down all the same by suffocating you in a slow, deliberate manner. The mood is enhanced by many beatless, ambient interludes, although they occur so frequently that perhaps that word is misleading. The ambient parts are central to the bleak outlook of the album as a whole. They draw out the misery, enhancing it to the point of near-saturation. When the album finishes, it's usually these ambient, deceptively gentle parts that stick in my head, as opposed to any of the beats. In grime and dubstep, I often conjure up images of people (lurking in rain-soaked alleys), but Burial's version of slime-drenched loneliness is devoid of humanity. The walls around me are crumbling, disintegrating before my eyes but it turns out that nobody was ever on the other side, except for more thick dust and musty air.
Like with "Closer" ("I Don't Know"), "Untrue" concludes with one final, 4/4 flourish ("Raver"), pumping out a beat so groovy that it almost spurs a sense of optimism, before one pauses, remembers what album you've been listening to, and understands that it's all going to fall apart by the end.
I used to hate opening newspapers and seeing writers dismissively refer to some new band or scene as the latest dud in a long line of overhyped British fads. I haven't turned into that curmudgeonly type (at least I hope not) but more and more, I find myself shying away from hype, and not for any good reason. It's a lot easier to do that when you're writing in relative isolation, away from any place where said music would be unavoidable. The only way to actually hear that music is to spend the time to track it down yourself, and sometimes curiosity is trumped by simply not wanting to open up new musical cans of worms, and sticking with whatever is already on your plate.
I know slightly more than jack about dubstep, but I've been hesitant to get involved with it because there are too many similarities to drum and bass -- a genre that I have never been able to embrace. For similar reasons, grime never resonated with me either. I love dark, twisted, psychotic sounds, but once intimidation and roughness is added to the mix (and not even necessarily through lyrics), I start losing interest. "Urban decay" = good, "cornered in a dark alley while somebody yells at me" = not as good. I want to feel a sense of tension in the music, but not stemming from external fear imposed on me. I'm more interested in internal fear, the feeling you get from being lost in the dark as your mind plays tricks on you even if nobody else is around.
Burial's "Untrue" is virtually a sequel to one of my favourite albums, Plastikman's "Closer". It's not menacing or intimidating, but it grinds you down all the same by suffocating you in a slow, deliberate manner. The mood is enhanced by many beatless, ambient interludes, although they occur so frequently that perhaps that word is misleading. The ambient parts are central to the bleak outlook of the album as a whole. They draw out the misery, enhancing it to the point of near-saturation. When the album finishes, it's usually these ambient, deceptively gentle parts that stick in my head, as opposed to any of the beats. In grime and dubstep, I often conjure up images of people (lurking in rain-soaked alleys), but Burial's version of slime-drenched loneliness is devoid of humanity. The walls around me are crumbling, disintegrating before my eyes but it turns out that nobody was ever on the other side, except for more thick dust and musty air.
Like with "Closer" ("I Don't Know"), "Untrue" concludes with one final, 4/4 flourish ("Raver"), pumping out a beat so groovy that it almost spurs a sense of optimism, before one pauses, remembers what album you've been listening to, and understands that it's all going to fall apart by the end.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
New Casualties of the Format Wars
While back in Canada for a short while, I've been taking the time to reunite with the music that I left behind, most of which I haven't laid eyes on (or ears) in a year and a half. In this case, the hearing is secondary to the seeing. Obviously there isn't enough time to listen to it all, or even a tiny fraction of it. Instead, I've been gazing at CD's in giant holding cases that haven't been opened in a long time, musing over CD's covers and vinyl labels like they were photos of long lost relatives. A picture tells a story by replaying the scene in your head, just like seeing a music label replays the songs in your head. I can sit in front of a computer all day long and will happily download and rip music all day, month, and year long, none of it can snap the physical connection I feel for the music I buy. For most of my life, I bought and listened to physical objects. These soft spots will always be there.
Maybe this is why I was particularly affected by this report about the decline of the vinyl format in Jamaica (many thanks to Idolator for the post and the heads up). Vinyl has defiantly outlasted CD as a viable long-term music format, there is no longer any doubt of this. Vinyl is likely the last bastion of "physical", as opposed to "digital" music culture, and the 7" single has been entrenched in reggae for so long that I figured it would remain immune to the fallout from the format wars.
Paradoxically, sales of actual records are propped up by international buyers, who buy them to increase their physical connection to the music -- essentially compensating for not "being there". The people who "are there", who have the easiest access to buying the singles, prefer the convenience of mp3s!
In ten years, music shops will only sell used vinyl, won't they? It'll all come down to used vinyl and tour CD's from merch tables ...
Maybe this is why I was particularly affected by this report about the decline of the vinyl format in Jamaica (many thanks to Idolator for the post and the heads up). Vinyl has defiantly outlasted CD as a viable long-term music format, there is no longer any doubt of this. Vinyl is likely the last bastion of "physical", as opposed to "digital" music culture, and the 7" single has been entrenched in reggae for so long that I figured it would remain immune to the fallout from the format wars.
Paradoxically, sales of actual records are propped up by international buyers, who buy them to increase their physical connection to the music -- essentially compensating for not "being there". The people who "are there", who have the easiest access to buying the singles, prefer the convenience of mp3s!
In ten years, music shops will only sell used vinyl, won't they? It'll all come down to used vinyl and tour CD's from merch tables ...
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
I Staked My Reputation On Gabriel Ananda
That might be overstating things a tad, but a bunch of people did follow me to a club in the middle of nowhere, only to be met with a larger than expected cover charge and without knowing exactly what type of music they'd be subjecting themselves to. Fortunately, Ananda came through for me in spades.
I used some of my time in the club to think about the Perlon label, and how I had never really shown it the respect it deserves. After all, if it hadn't been for Perlon, I wouldn't have been in that club dancing to the sort of jacking minimal techno that Perlon had spearheaded (albeit more euphoric variants of the kind, favoured by Ananda). Perlon seemed to infuse the mellowness of M_nus and Auch with the aggressive pulse of a mid-90's Dave Clarke record, and at the time I didn't know what to make of it. I excitedly welcomed a future that featured techno pared down to its barest elements. Plastikman's "Closer" perfectly encapsulated everything beautiful and horrifying about minimal, pointing the way forward in a direction I wholeheartedly approved of. I was partly right -- minimal became far bigger than I ever would have imagined in 2002-3 -- but records like Pantytec's "Elastobabe" (the "Soul Capsules Cosmic Warrior" mix, in particular) left me totally bewildered. I almost didn't buy it solely because it didn't fit in amongst the other records I was buying at the time, which were either slamming, fire-breathing Mills-ian tracks or sparse, dubby ones. I had almost nothing in between, not to mention that vocals were a big no-no for me at the time. I came to my senses and convinced myself to buy the single, not because of any desire to adapt or change my attitude, but because it was obviously such a mindblowing record that I knew I'd be stupid to walk out of the store without it.
Eventually, my tastes did change, and so did those of a lot of other people. The "hard" records basically faded away, and were even shunned in some circles. Tastes converged on the Perlon-esque middle ground, with names like Villalobos and Luciano leading the charge. But Gabriel Ananda, in his DJ sets as well as his own records, is nudging back toward the harder stuff, and as you might have guessed, I couldn't be happier about it.
I used some of my time in the club to think about the Perlon label, and how I had never really shown it the respect it deserves. After all, if it hadn't been for Perlon, I wouldn't have been in that club dancing to the sort of jacking minimal techno that Perlon had spearheaded (albeit more euphoric variants of the kind, favoured by Ananda). Perlon seemed to infuse the mellowness of M_nus and Auch with the aggressive pulse of a mid-90's Dave Clarke record, and at the time I didn't know what to make of it. I excitedly welcomed a future that featured techno pared down to its barest elements. Plastikman's "Closer" perfectly encapsulated everything beautiful and horrifying about minimal, pointing the way forward in a direction I wholeheartedly approved of. I was partly right -- minimal became far bigger than I ever would have imagined in 2002-3 -- but records like Pantytec's "Elastobabe" (the "Soul Capsules Cosmic Warrior" mix, in particular) left me totally bewildered. I almost didn't buy it solely because it didn't fit in amongst the other records I was buying at the time, which were either slamming, fire-breathing Mills-ian tracks or sparse, dubby ones. I had almost nothing in between, not to mention that vocals were a big no-no for me at the time. I came to my senses and convinced myself to buy the single, not because of any desire to adapt or change my attitude, but because it was obviously such a mindblowing record that I knew I'd be stupid to walk out of the store without it.
Eventually, my tastes did change, and so did those of a lot of other people. The "hard" records basically faded away, and were even shunned in some circles. Tastes converged on the Perlon-esque middle ground, with names like Villalobos and Luciano leading the charge. But Gabriel Ananda, in his DJ sets as well as his own records, is nudging back toward the harder stuff, and as you might have guessed, I couldn't be happier about it.
Monday, December 31, 2007
More year-end lists + surprises of 2007
There was no shortage of great music released in 2007, but it did seem like a weak year for memorable singles. It was the year of "Umbrella" and "No One" and "Big Girls Don't Cry" (note the song quality heading rapidly downward) and "Irreplaceable" (now we're reminiscing about the spillover from 2006). Rihanna had the summer jam that seemed to stay ubiquitous throughout the entire year, so in the long run "Umbrella" sticks out as the Sound of 2007, not so much by its quality, but by getting noticed when there wasn't anything else to challenge for the crown.
More than ever, Best Tracks of 2007 lists are leaning more toward what the title says -- tracks, not necessarily singles. In past years, songs like "Hey Ya" and "Crazy" topped polls in a laugher, and the response ranged from passive nods of agreement/understanding to outright applause. This year, it feels more like there was a concerted search to identify some song, any song that could meaningfully challenge "Umbrella". Cue the Pitchfork list stocked with plenty of album tracks, including some that are ranked ahead of actual singles from those albums.
In 2000, Spin magazine named "your hard drive" as its album of the year, and their choice was met with what we can diplomatically term "polite ridicule". Yes, it's a huge copout to print a year-end list and not choose a #1. It's also stupid to publish a prominent music magazine, where one expects to see intelligent and non-trivial criticism, and make a non-insightful comment that can be summed up as simply "the internet is important". Even if there was a good point lurking beneath the ridiculousness, it was simply an obvious, uninspired take on things (no, Spin's attempt to justify it in hindsight doesn't make the decision any better at the time it was made). Nevertheless, it's been seven years, and "your hard drive" is reaching progressively higher levels of influence when it comes to shaping not only individual music tastes (obviously) but also in defining the "hits" independent of whatever MTV or radio might be playing. At one point, "you" compiled the album of the year by downloading your favourite hits, but now the internet is so entrenched in musical culture that "you" choose the hits yourself.
I tried hard to identify ten singles I truly cared about, but it was an impossible task, particularly when there were so many non-singles that meant infinitely more to me this year. Shoehorning something like "No One" or Gui Boratto's "Beautiful Life" onto the list and not including "Windowsill" because it wasn't a single? I couldn't do it. Unfortunately, I will admit up front that these decisions led to a fairly boring list. There is a a lot of overlap with my album choices (lists are boring when there isn't enough variety) and the inclusion of obvious, if indeed fantastically great, mainstream artists (Justin Timberlake, Nelly Furtado) is hardly distinctive. I made a point of including as many singles as I could, hence the inclusion of "Beautiful Girls" when it probably wouldn't crack the top 25 if I fairly and honestly ranked all tracks from 2007 as equals. So, in all, this list doesn't deserve a fancy graphics-laden rollout, so here it is, along with some brief comments:
Top Ten Tracks of 2007
1. Jichael Mackson, "The Grass Is Always Greener"
Mind-warping track that only gets better once the Chris Issak samples come in.
2. Arcade Fire, "Windowsill"
All of "Neon Bible" is building toward this track, and I have no idea why I'm the only one who knows it.
3. Nelly Furtado, "All Good Things (Come to an End)"
Best Chris Martin song ever?
4. Panda Bear, "Bros"
Most joyous track of the year.
5. Justin Timberlake, "What Goes Around ... Comes Around"
Another great single from an album that finally won me over in 2007, with a fantastically sexy and engrossing mini-movie/video to boot.
6. Rihanna, "Umbrella"
You may have heard this song once or twice.
7. Go Team, "Doing It Right"
"Sesame Street Theme 2007"
8. Low, "Violent Past"
Far and away the best track on an otherwise uninspiring album.
9. Substance and Vainqueur, "Resonance"
It's like they never left (except less awesome than before they did)
10. Sean Kingston, "Beautiful Girls"
Fun summer jam. Isn't it weird how "Stand By Me" makes a comeback in 21-year intervals?
That was the list I finalized in mid-month and sent off for the critics polls. But all month, I've been imbibing lists and catching up on music that I didn't pay close enough attention to during the year. Every year it's the same thing. All the supposed best music of that year gets unceremoniously pushed aside the second after the ink has dried on your own year-end list because you've been playing the hell out of that music all year and particularly in the previous few weeks and you're bored shitless of all of it. Then you cane the hell out of albums and tracks that you discovered too late in the year to warrant inclusion on your list, or simply stuff that you discovered while browsing through everyone else's lists. Then you question which of these albums and tracks should have made your list, had you known/heard about/appreciated them earlier, which is an interesting exercise that probably deserves a year-by-year personal breakdown, which I'll get to if I ever get around to completing the year-by-year look back on my actual year-end lists that I promised to work on in January(incidentally, to anyone who actually might care about it, the project became derailed not because of laziness, but from indecision about the best way to quantify the review process. If that doesn't make sense now, then it will if I ever get around to completing it).
So here are some December 2007 surprises (an incomplete list):
Spoon, "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga". Spoon's "less is more" approach to music is very much at odds with the music I normally like, particularly in regards to indie rock. Guitar/drums/piano songsmithery that hangs the melodies out to dry -- it's not really my thing unless the music is unbearably depressing. Spoon didn't hit on any kind of newfound magic formula here, except that the tunes are exceptionally good, particularly "The Underdog" and "Finer Feelings". The former catches you from the start, trumpets blazing (literally), and the latter gets hookier as it progresses, straight through to the finish that arrives far too soon.
Of Montreal, "The Past is a Grotesque Animal". Although capable of greatness in fits and spurts ("So Begins Our Abalee" was one of my fave tracks of 2005), Of Montreal tend to bore me over the length of a whole album. There are only so many tinny, lo-fi dance dance beats and smart-ass lyrics a person can take ... or so I thought! With this epic track, Of Montreal not only rock ass with twelve captivating minutes of simple yet infectious beats, caustic lyrics that spawn a million spiraling verses, and a cooing chorus that you hope will never end -- oh no! it's more than that, it's "This Corrosion 2007"!!!
And you know what ... I *still* haven't heard the entire album, just a (very good) track here one month, a(nother very good) track there in a different month. But "The Past is a Grotesque Animal" was the tipping point. I messed up by not believing the hype sooner.
Black Kids, "I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You". This popped up on Pitchfork's list, and along with a bunch of other songs on that list that I wasn't familiar with, I dl'ed them and road-tested the bunch on my iPod. This kind of music-sampling arrangement is perfect for producing those magical, revelatory moments when you get blown away by a spectacular song by a band you've never heard of while you're standing on street corner or sitting on a train. *This* is what the Go Team need to sound like in order to jump from being party kids making rough-and-tumble sugary anthems, to being full-fledged Bomb Squad/Spectorian teen-opera makers. A shoegaze Go Team, I mean, that's such a simple and obvious combination to make, but the best ideas are always the simple and obvious ones that nobody else was smart enough to come up with.
More than ever, Best Tracks of 2007 lists are leaning more toward what the title says -- tracks, not necessarily singles. In past years, songs like "Hey Ya" and "Crazy" topped polls in a laugher, and the response ranged from passive nods of agreement/understanding to outright applause. This year, it feels more like there was a concerted search to identify some song, any song that could meaningfully challenge "Umbrella". Cue the Pitchfork list stocked with plenty of album tracks, including some that are ranked ahead of actual singles from those albums.
In 2000, Spin magazine named "your hard drive" as its album of the year, and their choice was met with what we can diplomatically term "polite ridicule". Yes, it's a huge copout to print a year-end list and not choose a #1. It's also stupid to publish a prominent music magazine, where one expects to see intelligent and non-trivial criticism, and make a non-insightful comment that can be summed up as simply "the internet is important". Even if there was a good point lurking beneath the ridiculousness, it was simply an obvious, uninspired take on things (no, Spin's attempt to justify it in hindsight doesn't make the decision any better at the time it was made). Nevertheless, it's been seven years, and "your hard drive" is reaching progressively higher levels of influence when it comes to shaping not only individual music tastes (obviously) but also in defining the "hits" independent of whatever MTV or radio might be playing. At one point, "you" compiled the album of the year by downloading your favourite hits, but now the internet is so entrenched in musical culture that "you" choose the hits yourself.
I tried hard to identify ten singles I truly cared about, but it was an impossible task, particularly when there were so many non-singles that meant infinitely more to me this year. Shoehorning something like "No One" or Gui Boratto's "Beautiful Life" onto the list and not including "Windowsill" because it wasn't a single? I couldn't do it. Unfortunately, I will admit up front that these decisions led to a fairly boring list. There is a a lot of overlap with my album choices (lists are boring when there isn't enough variety) and the inclusion of obvious, if indeed fantastically great, mainstream artists (Justin Timberlake, Nelly Furtado) is hardly distinctive. I made a point of including as many singles as I could, hence the inclusion of "Beautiful Girls" when it probably wouldn't crack the top 25 if I fairly and honestly ranked all tracks from 2007 as equals. So, in all, this list doesn't deserve a fancy graphics-laden rollout, so here it is, along with some brief comments:
Top Ten Tracks of 2007
1. Jichael Mackson, "The Grass Is Always Greener"
Mind-warping track that only gets better once the Chris Issak samples come in.
2. Arcade Fire, "Windowsill"
All of "Neon Bible" is building toward this track, and I have no idea why I'm the only one who knows it.
3. Nelly Furtado, "All Good Things (Come to an End)"
Best Chris Martin song ever?
4. Panda Bear, "Bros"
Most joyous track of the year.
5. Justin Timberlake, "What Goes Around ... Comes Around"
Another great single from an album that finally won me over in 2007, with a fantastically sexy and engrossing mini-movie/video to boot.
6. Rihanna, "Umbrella"
You may have heard this song once or twice.
7. Go Team, "Doing It Right"
"Sesame Street Theme 2007"
8. Low, "Violent Past"
Far and away the best track on an otherwise uninspiring album.
9. Substance and Vainqueur, "Resonance"
It's like they never left (except less awesome than before they did)
10. Sean Kingston, "Beautiful Girls"
Fun summer jam. Isn't it weird how "Stand By Me" makes a comeback in 21-year intervals?
That was the list I finalized in mid-month and sent off for the critics polls. But all month, I've been imbibing lists and catching up on music that I didn't pay close enough attention to during the year. Every year it's the same thing. All the supposed best music of that year gets unceremoniously pushed aside the second after the ink has dried on your own year-end list because you've been playing the hell out of that music all year and particularly in the previous few weeks and you're bored shitless of all of it. Then you cane the hell out of albums and tracks that you discovered too late in the year to warrant inclusion on your list, or simply stuff that you discovered while browsing through everyone else's lists. Then you question which of these albums and tracks should have made your list, had you known/heard about/appreciated them earlier, which is an interesting exercise that probably deserves a year-by-year personal breakdown, which I'll get to if I ever get around to completing the year-by-year look back on my actual year-end lists that I promised to work on in January(incidentally, to anyone who actually might care about it, the project became derailed not because of laziness, but from indecision about the best way to quantify the review process. If that doesn't make sense now, then it will if I ever get around to completing it).
So here are some December 2007 surprises (an incomplete list):
Spoon, "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga". Spoon's "less is more" approach to music is very much at odds with the music I normally like, particularly in regards to indie rock. Guitar/drums/piano songsmithery that hangs the melodies out to dry -- it's not really my thing unless the music is unbearably depressing. Spoon didn't hit on any kind of newfound magic formula here, except that the tunes are exceptionally good, particularly "The Underdog" and "Finer Feelings". The former catches you from the start, trumpets blazing (literally), and the latter gets hookier as it progresses, straight through to the finish that arrives far too soon.
Of Montreal, "The Past is a Grotesque Animal". Although capable of greatness in fits and spurts ("So Begins Our Abalee" was one of my fave tracks of 2005), Of Montreal tend to bore me over the length of a whole album. There are only so many tinny, lo-fi dance dance beats and smart-ass lyrics a person can take ... or so I thought! With this epic track, Of Montreal not only rock ass with twelve captivating minutes of simple yet infectious beats, caustic lyrics that spawn a million spiraling verses, and a cooing chorus that you hope will never end -- oh no! it's more than that, it's "This Corrosion 2007"!!!
And you know what ... I *still* haven't heard the entire album, just a (very good) track here one month, a(nother very good) track there in a different month. But "The Past is a Grotesque Animal" was the tipping point. I messed up by not believing the hype sooner.
Black Kids, "I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You". This popped up on Pitchfork's list, and along with a bunch of other songs on that list that I wasn't familiar with, I dl'ed them and road-tested the bunch on my iPod. This kind of music-sampling arrangement is perfect for producing those magical, revelatory moments when you get blown away by a spectacular song by a band you've never heard of while you're standing on street corner or sitting on a train. *This* is what the Go Team need to sound like in order to jump from being party kids making rough-and-tumble sugary anthems, to being full-fledged Bomb Squad/Spectorian teen-opera makers. A shoegaze Go Team, I mean, that's such a simple and obvious combination to make, but the best ideas are always the simple and obvious ones that nobody else was smart enough to come up with.
Friday, December 21, 2007
It's December 15 December 21, so that can only mean one thing:
TOP 10 ALBUMS OF 2007
The list has been in the can for a week (since before December 15, naturally), it's this post that is embarrassingly overdue. The combination of a few factors (incl. hectic, self-imposed deadlines at work; new apartment) not only figured into my tardiness, but created the welcome feeling of a tidy conclusion followed by an imminent new beginning. These are the sorts of feelings that one should, but rarely does have heading into a new year.
In terms of the variation in quality (or the "quality standard deviation"), this is the most closely matched Top 10 I've ever done. For #4-#9 in particular, you could have picked the order by drawing names from a hat and I wouldn't have argued too strenuously with the results. The #1 album was a late bloomer like no other from past years -- mildly appreciated during the spring but never considered to be a great, or even very good album, mostly ignored over the summer, and coming on strong over the past couple of months as the brilliance of each and every song (even the very short ones) became evident to me.
I hate all-encompassing year-end statements, but it's hard to shy away from certain changes in the industry that will, in the not-so-distant future, come to define 2007. Music sales continued their downward plummet (which isn't news) and the year's best-selling album might not clear three million sold in the US (which is news, sorta). The year's biggest sellers are the Josh Groban holiday album, the soundtrack to High School Musical II, and "Daughtry". Again, we have a novelty record that was bought exclusively by women over the age of forty, a tie-in to a TV-movie/phenomenon by Disney, and an American Idol reject. None of these can be thought of as "conventional" star-making models for musical success. For decades, the formula has been: artist gets noticed by A&R men after years of work (this even applies to Britney Spears-type teen stars), label puts out record, everybody buys record on account of massive radio/music video exposure. There's been a shift in the notion of who can sell records and how to market those artists to the consumers. The crucial role of television in all three examples (for Groban, it's the Oprah endorsement) is obvious.
The retailing shift is now complete, with Tower Records shut down for good, Wal-mart entrenching its spot as the #1 music retailer (which it has been for a few years now), and Starbucks developing into a recording and retailing force, to name three examples. Exclusivity deals and cross-promotional tie-ins have led to the retailers taking a sizable role in deciding who the stars are, rather than simply selling the records of the most popular artists. Wal-mart played a big part in returning the Eagles to the top of the charts in 2007, if there was any doubt as to that chain's continuing power and influence in the music industry. Again, that in itself is not new, but there is surely a causal link between the now-entrenched retailing shift and the "star-making" shift. *Some* records sold quite well this year, they just weren't the ones that the industry was expecting, and several others that were supposed to be massive turned out to be duds. [It can be said that 50 Cent's "Curtis" was one of those flops, but then again, the "Curtis" vs "Graduation" throwdown turned out to be a huge success, for it was only the second time in chart history that two new releases sold over 600K copies in the same week. The only other time was in 1991, with "Use Your Illusion" I and II.]
Basically, I'm not sure that anyone knows how to market music anymore. I sure as hell don't have any idea what will sell in 2008. The internet is still an untapped marketing resource that nobody knows how to deal with. The TV writers strike has brought this issue into sharper focus, given that the biggest point of contention is the issue of internet revenues. Everyone knows that the money will be there, both sides want a piece of it, but nobody has any clue how to package and sell the product. Whoever can figure it out successfully is going to make a hell of a lot of money. In music, we're seeing sales breakthroughs by people with an eye and an ear for cross-media marketing, and I see no reason why that won't continue.
10.
The Angelic Process, "Weighing Souls With Sand"
The tremendous swarm of guitar noise this band makes must be heard to be imagined, and if all metal records sounded this overwhelming, I'd have to give up listening to some other genres to make room for more Angelic Processes.
9.
Paul Hartnoll, "The Ideal Condition"
If he wants to, Hartnoll can trot out tunes like "Please" and "Nothing Else Matters" all day long, using a succession of famous guest singers and riding the formula into the UK Top 40 whenever he wants. On the other hand, if that was Hartnoll's long-term plan, then he could have filled up this entire album with songs like that, instead of devoting at least half of "The Ideal Condition" with highlights from his probable audition tape for future soundtrack work. "The Unsteady Waltz" is begging to be thrown into a Wes Anderson movie, and it's this type of effort that fills me with curiosity as to what Hartnoll will do next.
8.
Stars of the Lid, "And Their Refinement of the Decline"
The phrase "floating on a cloud of titties" was invoked on ILM, which is pretty much all the description you'll ever need regarding this album. So how does an album that consistently reaches such ecstatic, blissful, lofty heights for two hours rank "only" at number eight? SOTL make beautiful, mood-altering music. It's nice. It's too nice. "Nice" doesn't stir up fanboy admiration, it doesn't bring out the passion I feel for my favourite records. I crave basking in their aura when I play their records, but in between listens, I don't crave their records, if that makes sense.
7.
Sean Kingston, "Sean Kingston"
My favourite bite of harmless pop in 2007, it's been dismissed this as juvenile, watered-down reggae by people who seem to have missed the point (dissing J.R. Rotem's occasionally amateurish production, or the way the album is compressed to all hell, comprise two much more relevant points). It's supposed to be a fun album, a summer album, one that Will Smith might have made if he'd been born in Miami instead of Philadelphia. "Sean Kingston" is to reggae what Justice's "Cross" (2007) and Vitalic's "OK Cowboy" (2005) are to house, to name two recent albums that were highly praised by people with widely diverse tastes in club music, to the point that they practically became the token dance music album on most non-dance music critics lists. In fact, there is and always will be albums like these performing well in year-end critics polls, because many critics enjoy consensus and even feel inclined to reach consensus on the canonic way to have fun.
The Vitalic and Justice albums are light, flimsy, but ultimately enjoyable albums of music that make no serious attempt to represent the vanguard of house music. Sean Kingston's album bounces energetically through one's speaker system, requires no listening brainpower, and puts forth a series of fantastic summer jams -- almost any one of which could be released as a single.
With all the year-end poll results flooding in, there's been a lot of talk about reasons for the success of MIA and LCD Soundsystem. It is said that each of them fares well in the difficult high-wire act that is condensing one genre of music and selling it to fans of a different genre, i.e. James Murphy makes indie music more palatable for dance music fans (and vice versa), while MIA saves indie fans the trouble of catching up on what's new in reggae and certain Eastern musics. What is this horseshit? First of all, will anyone claim that Sean Kingston is doing anyone a favour by dumbing down reggae? His beats are even more kicking than the wack, wannabe-highbrow crap that MIA churns out, but you don't see anyone claiming that Sean Kingston is a creative force, do you? As I've already argued, Sean Kingston is not a creative force. Neither is James Murphy, but he makes entertaining records, bordering on great sometimes. MIA makes astonishingly bad records with the occasional decent track.
At times like these, I worry that writers care more about writing than they do about applying self-consistent theories to the music they write about. Sometimes, there are discussions about an article in a noteworthy publication, such as the New York Times, where people become incensed that the author dared to dumb down the topic a little bit. I tend to err on the side of the Coles Notes version in situations like these. The writer is penning the article for non-specialist readership, so I can tolerate a bit of creative licence in the interest of presenting the relevant background information in a succinct way that doesn't disturb the narrative flow of the rest of the article. Many others disagree, by which I can conclude that a writer can't dumb down his subject and still produce good art, but MIA can.
Don't get me wrong -- it's plenty possible to make a dumbed-down record and still be fiercely creative. Lily Allen did it just last year, working in exactly the same genres we're discussing here. But sometimes I feel there's a gaping logical disconnect between the language of music criticism and the music that is being criticized. MIA is supposed to be a genius, whereas Sean Kingston is called a fat loser teenybopper, even though critics will readily admit that both are trying to do the same thing.
6.
Panda Bear, "Person Pitch"
"Person Pitch" is the next-level shit that The Beach Boys "SMiLE" probably resembled when it was first conceived, that is, if it had been conceived and recorded in Brian Wilson's bedroom (or sandbox) instead of in pricey LA studios. Wouldn't the actual "SMiLE" have been a million times cooler if it had been recorded Panda Bear style, in a bedroom on a tiny budget, most of which could have been spent on harmony arrangements?
5.
Arcade Fire, "Neon Bible"
I had serious reservations that their formula (dream big, sound big, mythologize everything) wouldn't hold its own for a second go-around, and I definitely wouldn't have bet the farm that they'd multiply their fame many times over. I definitely didn't foresee them actively spearheading the return of Springsteen to the circles of indie, fluidly sucking in fans, critics, and magazine covers along the way. Whether all this will seem embarrassing a year from now remains to be seen, but Arcade Fire are a band that's best enjoyed in the moment, and 2007 provided plenty of opportunity for experiencing that.
4.
Horseback, "Impale Golden Horn"
You can overdose on almost anything. You can have too many minimal techno records, too many stoner rock records, or too many fluffy ambient records. I can never have too many records that sound like, e.g. Fennesz at his blistering best. Horseback has his own take on guitar drones", opting not for the coarseness of Fennesz, but a more mellowed, stoned stare, closer to SunnO))) minus 85% of that band's testosterone. The final track, "Blood Fountain", with it's gentle pulse and piano-led melody, nicely fills in the void left behind by six years without a new Labradford record.
3.
Matthew Dear, "Asa Breed"
In a future universe, where minimal techno rules pop radio, we'll look back and say that Matthew Dear was the Ramones.
2.
Explosions In the Sky, "All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone"
Their past albums are marred by nagging flaws, particularly the band's reliance on long interlude segments that presumably build up to a noisy, dramatic crescendo. The noise blasts can't possibly live up to what those slowly-building interludes suggest, particularly when I find myself losing the plot midway through each slow section. But "All of a Sudden ..." is seamlessly cohesive, flowing by in a brisk 40 minutes, its volume rising and falling it's way through a fascinating narrative that is not unlike a three part symphony. First, the big brash overtures ("The Birth and Death of the Day", "Welcome Ghosts"), a slow middle third ("It's Natural to be Afraid", "What Do You Go Home To"), and the uptempo, blowaway ending (kicked off in the opening notes of "Catastrophe and the Cure"). If the album has a flaw, it's that the middle third tends toward their old, meandering habits ("It's Natural to be Afraid" can't justify it's 13-minute runtime), but it works in the context of the whole album, as the calm before the closing storm.
1.
Eluvium, "Copia"
Is there a better combination of triumph and melancholy than the stately closing track, "Repose In Blue"? And just to prove that writing about music is like dancing about architecture, couldn't you say the same thing about the best moments on the EITS album?
The list has been in the can for a week (since before December 15, naturally), it's this post that is embarrassingly overdue. The combination of a few factors (incl. hectic, self-imposed deadlines at work; new apartment) not only figured into my tardiness, but created the welcome feeling of a tidy conclusion followed by an imminent new beginning. These are the sorts of feelings that one should, but rarely does have heading into a new year.
In terms of the variation in quality (or the "quality standard deviation"), this is the most closely matched Top 10 I've ever done. For #4-#9 in particular, you could have picked the order by drawing names from a hat and I wouldn't have argued too strenuously with the results. The #1 album was a late bloomer like no other from past years -- mildly appreciated during the spring but never considered to be a great, or even very good album, mostly ignored over the summer, and coming on strong over the past couple of months as the brilliance of each and every song (even the very short ones) became evident to me.
I hate all-encompassing year-end statements, but it's hard to shy away from certain changes in the industry that will, in the not-so-distant future, come to define 2007. Music sales continued their downward plummet (which isn't news) and the year's best-selling album might not clear three million sold in the US (which is news, sorta). The year's biggest sellers are the Josh Groban holiday album, the soundtrack to High School Musical II, and "Daughtry". Again, we have a novelty record that was bought exclusively by women over the age of forty, a tie-in to a TV-movie/phenomenon by Disney, and an American Idol reject. None of these can be thought of as "conventional" star-making models for musical success. For decades, the formula has been: artist gets noticed by A&R men after years of work (this even applies to Britney Spears-type teen stars), label puts out record, everybody buys record on account of massive radio/music video exposure. There's been a shift in the notion of who can sell records and how to market those artists to the consumers. The crucial role of television in all three examples (for Groban, it's the Oprah endorsement) is obvious.
The retailing shift is now complete, with Tower Records shut down for good, Wal-mart entrenching its spot as the #1 music retailer (which it has been for a few years now), and Starbucks developing into a recording and retailing force, to name three examples. Exclusivity deals and cross-promotional tie-ins have led to the retailers taking a sizable role in deciding who the stars are, rather than simply selling the records of the most popular artists. Wal-mart played a big part in returning the Eagles to the top of the charts in 2007, if there was any doubt as to that chain's continuing power and influence in the music industry. Again, that in itself is not new, but there is surely a causal link between the now-entrenched retailing shift and the "star-making" shift. *Some* records sold quite well this year, they just weren't the ones that the industry was expecting, and several others that were supposed to be massive turned out to be duds. [It can be said that 50 Cent's "Curtis" was one of those flops, but then again, the "Curtis" vs "Graduation" throwdown turned out to be a huge success, for it was only the second time in chart history that two new releases sold over 600K copies in the same week. The only other time was in 1991, with "Use Your Illusion" I and II.]
Basically, I'm not sure that anyone knows how to market music anymore. I sure as hell don't have any idea what will sell in 2008. The internet is still an untapped marketing resource that nobody knows how to deal with. The TV writers strike has brought this issue into sharper focus, given that the biggest point of contention is the issue of internet revenues. Everyone knows that the money will be there, both sides want a piece of it, but nobody has any clue how to package and sell the product. Whoever can figure it out successfully is going to make a hell of a lot of money. In music, we're seeing sales breakthroughs by people with an eye and an ear for cross-media marketing, and I see no reason why that won't continue.
10.
The Angelic Process, "Weighing Souls With Sand"
The tremendous swarm of guitar noise this band makes must be heard to be imagined, and if all metal records sounded this overwhelming, I'd have to give up listening to some other genres to make room for more Angelic Processes.
9.
Paul Hartnoll, "The Ideal Condition"
If he wants to, Hartnoll can trot out tunes like "Please" and "Nothing Else Matters" all day long, using a succession of famous guest singers and riding the formula into the UK Top 40 whenever he wants. On the other hand, if that was Hartnoll's long-term plan, then he could have filled up this entire album with songs like that, instead of devoting at least half of "The Ideal Condition" with highlights from his probable audition tape for future soundtrack work. "The Unsteady Waltz" is begging to be thrown into a Wes Anderson movie, and it's this type of effort that fills me with curiosity as to what Hartnoll will do next.
8.
Stars of the Lid, "And Their Refinement of the Decline"
The phrase "floating on a cloud of titties" was invoked on ILM, which is pretty much all the description you'll ever need regarding this album. So how does an album that consistently reaches such ecstatic, blissful, lofty heights for two hours rank "only" at number eight? SOTL make beautiful, mood-altering music. It's nice. It's too nice. "Nice" doesn't stir up fanboy admiration, it doesn't bring out the passion I feel for my favourite records. I crave basking in their aura when I play their records, but in between listens, I don't crave their records, if that makes sense.
7.
Sean Kingston, "Sean Kingston"
My favourite bite of harmless pop in 2007, it's been dismissed this as juvenile, watered-down reggae by people who seem to have missed the point (dissing J.R. Rotem's occasionally amateurish production, or the way the album is compressed to all hell, comprise two much more relevant points). It's supposed to be a fun album, a summer album, one that Will Smith might have made if he'd been born in Miami instead of Philadelphia. "Sean Kingston" is to reggae what Justice's "Cross" (2007) and Vitalic's "OK Cowboy" (2005) are to house, to name two recent albums that were highly praised by people with widely diverse tastes in club music, to the point that they practically became the token dance music album on most non-dance music critics lists. In fact, there is and always will be albums like these performing well in year-end critics polls, because many critics enjoy consensus and even feel inclined to reach consensus on the canonic way to have fun.
The Vitalic and Justice albums are light, flimsy, but ultimately enjoyable albums of music that make no serious attempt to represent the vanguard of house music. Sean Kingston's album bounces energetically through one's speaker system, requires no listening brainpower, and puts forth a series of fantastic summer jams -- almost any one of which could be released as a single.
With all the year-end poll results flooding in, there's been a lot of talk about reasons for the success of MIA and LCD Soundsystem. It is said that each of them fares well in the difficult high-wire act that is condensing one genre of music and selling it to fans of a different genre, i.e. James Murphy makes indie music more palatable for dance music fans (and vice versa), while MIA saves indie fans the trouble of catching up on what's new in reggae and certain Eastern musics. What is this horseshit? First of all, will anyone claim that Sean Kingston is doing anyone a favour by dumbing down reggae? His beats are even more kicking than the wack, wannabe-highbrow crap that MIA churns out, but you don't see anyone claiming that Sean Kingston is a creative force, do you? As I've already argued, Sean Kingston is not a creative force. Neither is James Murphy, but he makes entertaining records, bordering on great sometimes. MIA makes astonishingly bad records with the occasional decent track.
At times like these, I worry that writers care more about writing than they do about applying self-consistent theories to the music they write about. Sometimes, there are discussions about an article in a noteworthy publication, such as the New York Times, where people become incensed that the author dared to dumb down the topic a little bit. I tend to err on the side of the Coles Notes version in situations like these. The writer is penning the article for non-specialist readership, so I can tolerate a bit of creative licence in the interest of presenting the relevant background information in a succinct way that doesn't disturb the narrative flow of the rest of the article. Many others disagree, by which I can conclude that a writer can't dumb down his subject and still produce good art, but MIA can.
Don't get me wrong -- it's plenty possible to make a dumbed-down record and still be fiercely creative. Lily Allen did it just last year, working in exactly the same genres we're discussing here. But sometimes I feel there's a gaping logical disconnect between the language of music criticism and the music that is being criticized. MIA is supposed to be a genius, whereas Sean Kingston is called a fat loser teenybopper, even though critics will readily admit that both are trying to do the same thing.
6.
Panda Bear, "Person Pitch"
"Person Pitch" is the next-level shit that The Beach Boys "SMiLE" probably resembled when it was first conceived, that is, if it had been conceived and recorded in Brian Wilson's bedroom (or sandbox) instead of in pricey LA studios. Wouldn't the actual "SMiLE" have been a million times cooler if it had been recorded Panda Bear style, in a bedroom on a tiny budget, most of which could have been spent on harmony arrangements?
5.
Arcade Fire, "Neon Bible"
I had serious reservations that their formula (dream big, sound big, mythologize everything) wouldn't hold its own for a second go-around, and I definitely wouldn't have bet the farm that they'd multiply their fame many times over. I definitely didn't foresee them actively spearheading the return of Springsteen to the circles of indie, fluidly sucking in fans, critics, and magazine covers along the way. Whether all this will seem embarrassing a year from now remains to be seen, but Arcade Fire are a band that's best enjoyed in the moment, and 2007 provided plenty of opportunity for experiencing that.
4.
Horseback, "Impale Golden Horn"
You can overdose on almost anything. You can have too many minimal techno records, too many stoner rock records, or too many fluffy ambient records. I can never have too many records that sound like, e.g. Fennesz at his blistering best. Horseback has his own take on guitar drones", opting not for the coarseness of Fennesz, but a more mellowed, stoned stare, closer to SunnO))) minus 85% of that band's testosterone. The final track, "Blood Fountain", with it's gentle pulse and piano-led melody, nicely fills in the void left behind by six years without a new Labradford record.
3.
Matthew Dear, "Asa Breed"
In a future universe, where minimal techno rules pop radio, we'll look back and say that Matthew Dear was the Ramones.
2.
Explosions In the Sky, "All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone"
Their past albums are marred by nagging flaws, particularly the band's reliance on long interlude segments that presumably build up to a noisy, dramatic crescendo. The noise blasts can't possibly live up to what those slowly-building interludes suggest, particularly when I find myself losing the plot midway through each slow section. But "All of a Sudden ..." is seamlessly cohesive, flowing by in a brisk 40 minutes, its volume rising and falling it's way through a fascinating narrative that is not unlike a three part symphony. First, the big brash overtures ("The Birth and Death of the Day", "Welcome Ghosts"), a slow middle third ("It's Natural to be Afraid", "What Do You Go Home To"), and the uptempo, blowaway ending (kicked off in the opening notes of "Catastrophe and the Cure"). If the album has a flaw, it's that the middle third tends toward their old, meandering habits ("It's Natural to be Afraid" can't justify it's 13-minute runtime), but it works in the context of the whole album, as the calm before the closing storm.
1.
Eluvium, "Copia"
Is there a better combination of triumph and melancholy than the stately closing track, "Repose In Blue"? And just to prove that writing about music is like dancing about architecture, couldn't you say the same thing about the best moments on the EITS album?
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