this isn't a real post

no one really reads this blog yet, so it's okay that i'm just putting this up to revise later. uh, heard another couple new strokes songs through bbc radio rips, so the quality is shit, but i think i got some ideas (more ways than one).

1) production and arrangement sound a lot like new green day on "heart in a cage." kahne in the studio: "that's hot, man! just let that punky stuff rip!"

2) "ask me anything" sounds like the too-clean, saccharine computer stuff that most modern rock bands end up flirting with anyway, but in many ways the keyboard is just the usual strokes sound -- minimal bass, rhythmic arpeggiation guitar riffs that sound like awesome shit in "the end has no end" -- compressed into one instrument. come to think of it, the song's a serious ode to the magnetic fields:

-sounds like cello flourishes underneath the synth (like the nuanced "all my little words"). roughened mellotron-and-vox (just those!) going it alone, as merritt often does: ballsiness of a great band's even better songwriter.

-inconclusive, woe is me lyrics that i think will be all over the new album (chorus: "i've got nothing to say," over and over, then "i've got nothing to give, got no reason to live / but i will fight to survive, i'll try to get by.") this after the "i hate them all, i hate myself for hating them / so i'll drink some more, and love them more" in "the other side" and the disarming "my feelings are more important than yours ... your feelings are more important, of course" during the choruses of "razor blade." and then there's this one: "don't be a coconut, i'm just trying to talk to you / we could drag it out, but that's for other bands to do." jules mixes candor with self-aware metaphors, and other ones that just don't make sense: sardonic merritt wit. we're used to direct statements from this band!

-that definite baritone, pensive cadence (serious "i thought you were my boyfriend" or "(crazy for you but) not that crazy" stuff). whatta voice. usually jules takes it up a notch or is content burying his tinny voice. but here he's sad as the bottom of the ocean, etc

-oddly uplifting, bittersweet (predictable) chord progression

3) "vision of division" is a nasty blondie mess that slinks into "new york city cops" territory. that was always my least favorite strokes song. unfortunately the last minute and a half teeters on the edge of nu-metal hambonery with big vocals and bigger drums.

but i like them anyway! maybe because it's blind allegiance, but i doubt it. i imagine "heart in a cage" on the local alt rock station, and instead of whining punk vocals, we get sultry jules way up front. and i guess i appreciate their new idiosyncracies on "cage" and "divison." pulling for radio but for some reason they get even weirder arrangements and pay less attention to having truly dynamic hooks.

time to attack!

Like Sam, I take issue with the Arcade Fire, CYHSY, Wolf Parade, and Broken Social Scene. I agree that they their sound is derivative and formulaic, although my concern is extends further. For the record, I'm going to call "bullshit" on these bands; their music is simply not-awesome. I'm upset that Pitchfork has latched onto this bullshit esthetic and I've had enought. This is not a subjective argument.

Awesomeness, as a constituent element, is missing in mainstream indie-rock music today. What is "awesomeness?" Well, awesomeness is anything that makes music exciting and unexpected. It can be flair, uniqueness, style...it's the "motherfuckers" which sets the stage for "Kick Out of the Jams." Now lets talk about The Shins, Spoon, and those other bands everyone has been worshipping in the land of indie-rock. Point to something awesome! Where is the "motherfuckers"?????When was the last time a 8.5+ Pitchfork record could be described as "awesome"? Where has awesomeness gone? Am I the only one who misses it? Rock music ceases to rock without 'awesomeness' and the absence is all I hear anymore. It's like we've rubbed the numbers off the arms of all living survivors and said "everything is going to be fine now; we're in good hands...have you ever heard the Mountain Goats?"

How did this happen? Where did the awesomeness go? Everyone is a fucking poet these days--a fucking poet and a two-string finger-picker. These acts should be pigeonholed to an open-ended genre which begins "alt-". Take alt-rock, alt-country, alt-folk, alt-dancepunk, alt-salsa. Take it all but stay out of rock and roll. And for all those fuck-happy frat boys who pre-game to the Strokes, the White Stripes, and Interpol, you can fucking have them and the Loretta Lynn album which sparked your new found interest in alt-legit-honest-to-fucking-southern-god-country. You can also have the new Limp Biscuit album with the "Bittersweet Symphony" cover--have you heard this yet?

Take the DFA also. LCD Soundsystem is another example of fluff which is painfully un-awsome. This is frat boy music. No matter where you turn on the song, it's "your favorite part" plus all the 7 minutes songs are the perfect length for beer-pong matches. I love how artfully recorded and mixed the records are--honestly, I love when all instruments hit year ear in the exact same place. It makes listening to music really fun. How fun? About as fun as finding out that your new girlfriend's favorite band is CHUMBAWMBA. Fuck this accessibility. Rock and roll needs to get dirty again. It needs to get violent. It needs to get awesome. We need another 'Metal Machine Music' and fast. Maybe Radiohead will save us 2006; a boy can dream.

Pete Doherty is a Sad Sap

His new album, Down In Albion, is a wankerific breeze of shoddy Brit-Pop. You'll pump your fist listening to "Fuck Forever" and all the other songs that have Mr. Doherty playing a sloppy, jangly electric and singing about Kate, or death, or glory - whatever, it's all the same, right? Sam reviewed this album for the illustrious Miscellany News, and wrote that the endearingly cracked-out ex-Libertine was calling on Classic England - hence the romantic name Albion, and, apparently, the numerous Blake references in the lyrics. But I don't hear Blake. I hear a lucky burnout who exhausted his chances, but - thanks to his stoner schoolboy good looks and talent for playing and singing when he's especially drunk, or jittery - still hooked up with the Helen of Burberry and now gets to make records, under a band name as absurd as Babyshambles.

But I've gotten a little off-track. I'm supposed to be arguing that he is less Daft Prick, less Glorious Crack-Head, less rockstar, and more Sad Sap. Here we go: the best song on Down in Albion is the sole acoustic number, "Albion." It's a little cheesy - "If you're looking for a cheap sort/ Set in false anticipation/ I'll be waiting in the photo booth/ At the underground station" - but I like Bright Eyes, so cheesiness is a mute point. It's pretty simple chords and strumming (D mostly?) and shifts to the minors a lot, so it's sad and little emotive. During the chorus part, before Doherty sings "anywhere in Albion," he drops names of places - Liverpool, Scarborough, Catford - where he and Kate presumably had trysts, and fights, and long nights. (Cue in sympathetic audience track). Not only is this song deliciously corny and pleasant, it shows that Doherty, in a glimmer of natural romance, is not all synthetics. Pints and crack and ass and cigarettes - he certainly enjoys all that. But "gin in teacups" and "leaves on the lawn" puncture the crack-boy image just enough. And when you have a figure as monumentally fucked-up as Pete Doherty, the slightest sentimental crack is like an imperfection on a hand-blown Tiffany glass vase: it won't go away, it devalues the piece, which is then also too fragile to stand in the gallery display case. Pete is no vase, but if his burglaries and incarcerations are in any way deliberate (which, the sad addictions aside, might be), a song like "Albion", besides pleasing/placating sad saps who like Bright Eyes, taps - maybe cracks - that image.

Somebody told me

To further riff on Freddy's summary of last night: it's not that indie rock has hit the mainstream, but that its pandering, obvious spawn has. See: The Killers, Modest Mouse, and Death Cab For Cutie's penchance for immediate and over-the-top vocals, but also for retaining the things that made them "quirky" ("indie") in the first place, like violins, synthesizers and moderately untraditional production techniques, replacing, or at times, equally aiding, the beefed-up radio guitars. In short, you can yell Now here's this awesome part! And this awesome part! And another awesome part! and pump your fists, basking in the glory of the obviously mixed awesome parts. Which doesn't make them inherently bad -- they're just not terribly challenging.

But the Arcade Fire, who have not had tremendous radio success, have not given in to the appropriate mixing David suggested. The guitars are barely there, and the driving rhythmic force isn't snares pushed to the front, but (especially on their most poppy songs) a steady bassline, which doesn't translate very well to radio, where you're hearing already low quality (probably) coming out of a shitty stereo.

That's not my main gripe with them. It's what Freddy said about framing the yelps, which the Talking Heads did so effectively, instead of consistently pounding the listener over the head with them. And that's exactly why I'd rather listen to Lindsay Lohan's "First" (or "Razor Blade" (see last week's post) or most any other slickly produced teen pop) instead. Lohan doesn't fuck with the vocals at all until the chorus reprise at the end of the song (for most rock songs, that's the part after the guitar solo, or for radio smash hits, after the guest rap/instrumental breakdown/newly introduced production technique that obscures the main melody). And when she does, it's genuinely captivating and surprising. For a few bars, there's something immediately different in the melody, but I eat it up instead of being jarred and confused. That's what the Talking Heads do, too. And that's why everybody loves David Byrne's melodies. "Psycho Killer," "The Big Country," etc.

So why does the indie rock community grab on so tightly to a band that won't give in to tact and nuance? Why are their melodies so consistently overwrought when, clearly, they don't have to be?

Patchouli Banter

Last night, David, Sam and I sat hazy in my room, engaging in the kind of patchouli-head banter that seems elusive these days. Distracted for too long by archaic, esoteric history books and the Norton Anthology of English Lit, we broke free at long last, our minds focused instead on my old stereo and the tunes (a lot of indie pop) blasting from it at 2am. It was a fruitful discussion, I think. To summarize:

1.) Sam dissected the crass structure of the Arcade Fire, whose songs he thinks are nothing more than pieced-together exaggerations of Talking Heads lines, among other influences. Like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, this band takes a notable part of the Talking Heads - David Byrne hitting a high note for a moment on, say, any song on Talking Heads: 77 - and builds their entire song on exaggerating that vocal style, for minutes and minutes at a time. Lest we forget that David Byrne's jittery singing hit the high notes maybe two or three times in a song, for a second each time; the Arcade Fire and CYHSY craft entire refrains and choruses on some 20 or 30 seconds of aped, shrill singing. Sheesh!

2.) From me: Audioslave is the worst band around today. Awful, awful, awful, wretched, awful!!! Chew on that one for a bit, considering Chris Cornell, fondly remembering "Black Hole Sun," cringing at Tom Morello's hambone fame and goofy, not-hardcore licks, and wondering why, why, why a 90s not-so-bad alt-rocker (Cornell) got a metro/greaser groom and is suddenly hot shit on MTV2. Schwoops!

3.) David hates the mixing of the Arcade Fire - guitars turned way down, drums stale and barely there, lead vocals too shrill and too loud. Everything is soft except for the goddamn fake Byrne-singing. I proposed a conceivable remedy, if you will: the Arcade Fire crossed with Comets on Fire. Think about it: once the Canadiens cool down their boring obsession with More Songs About Buildings and Food, wouldn't their indeed well-penned songs sound so much better infused with the viscious guitar/organ/bass explosions of Comets on Fire, whose music, visualized, looks like a Ralph Steadman drawing?

Maybe the morose Montreal hipsters should fly out to Santa Cruz, become patchouli-heads themselves, and learn that music moves when you can hear more than just aped, shrill vocals. You need guitars blasting crazily, battling with the basslines, charging into a firefight under the cover of a soupy organ and effects pedals that sound like lasers.

The Arcade Comets on Fire. Comets on the Arcade Fire. Fire Comets on the Arcade.

There's No Moment But This One

After a Thanksgiving show earlier this fall, I met Adrian Orange, who David knows from way back when in Portland. At the merch table, they chatted about middle school and Thanksgiving playing in David's basement in the spring, and I bought a Thanksgiving record, The "In The World" EP. I'd been listening to it digitally for some time, but, you know, Thanksgiving is meant to sound scratchy, and somehow pristine iPod fuzz, while warm, has nothing on a turntable needle.
Driving home from the show where I met Adrian, Cave Days & Moments, one of Thanksgiving's newer records - there are a few - played in the car. I had just heard a handful of these songs in concert, except Thanksgiving substituted strumming and drumming on an acoustic guitar for a sparse, erratic electric.
I am a great admirer of Thanksgiving, burrowing up to Welcome Nowhere on a dark night when I've come home late, or haven't gone out at all. Some might shortchange his music as the hectic, or dull, ho-hum of a prolific songwriter who sticks to the soft, the sad, and the grainy. His voice quivers, rising and falling, sometimes nasally, sometimes deep, defeated. He rehashes chord progressions, melodies, rumbling laptop beats - like any good singer songwriter. Or bad one. What's the difference.
Phil Elverum does not understate his affection for Thanksgiving - "the greatest songs ever written are being written right now," so says the P.W. Elverum and Sun website - and Elverum's production is like a weather system over Orange's music, sometimes thundering with target moodiness and sometimes raining, dull, slow, unmoving pitter-patter. Elverum's fickle arrangements aside, he helps bring into the studio - ok, into the cabin in the woods - the amorphous gang of K Records and whoever else is living between Portland and Anacortes and is playing some variation of this folk or roots rock. That's what it is - the nylon strumming and quick songs say folk, the anthemic all-at-once singing parts - "What do you love?""There is no moment but this one" - say roots rock .
All this is a little much, maybe. But wait - what about the mixing: steel drums and eery rhythmic wanders in the woods creep beside Adrian's skinny wisp. His voice carries the songs along in a stumble. He's singing in a cabin. So many of his songs are no longer than two minutes, but many of those that are longer run eight or nine minutes. Electric pause, acoustic pause, drumming pause - in the long songs, there are a lot of these pauses, when the singing stops and the bridge is just low graininess.
Emotional is a tired-ass way of describing music. Somehow it reduces the musician and the listener alike to say blanket "this is emotional music." I don't know if it's because such a phrase is a given, is obvious, or is just a little trite. Bucking the emo label, though, this music does make you feel many things. Phil Elverum wrote somewhere that he loves the way Thanksgiving's music makes him feel. I agree, and will drop a snip of poetry by another singer songwriter, David Berman, that somehow - maybe I'm reaching a little much here - illuminates a listen to Welcome Nowhere or Cave Days & Moments.

It is a certain hill
the one I imagine when I hear the word "hill"
and if the apocalypse turns out
to be a world-wide nervous breakdown
if our five billion minds collapse at once
well I'd call that a surprise ending
and this hill would still be beautiful
a place I wouldn't mind dying
alone or with you.
- David Berman, "Self-Portrait at 28."

songs from the new strokes album are leaking. and please watch the pull between rca/label honcho-cum-producer david kahne and a band clinging to integrity during the album's promotional run. the video for "juicebox" (the song itself a surprisingly pandering attempt at modern rock success: clangy bass, neato avril guitar effects) has all the hallmarks of one ready for MTV: quick editing, video sound effects over the song (like puking, computer clicking, etc), many close-ups of the band and whirly shots of them doing rock band-like playing, mega-saturated color, expensive new technology used by the various characters (v. depressing to watch corporate shilling of cellphones puncture the strokes simulacrum), and wooden acting by a band reluctant to be part of a skit. none of which, of course, were in any of their other videos. that's not to say this is a bad one, despite the less-than-classy "plot" and its "spontaneous" probing of the taboo. it merely retains strokesy hallmarks (like their outfits!) while still begging for a greater audience on the part of the label.

it's very similar to what they've done on "razor blade." instead of swelling synths during the guitar solo, we get equally subtle "ah"s in the background, surely the part of a band refusing to employ extra-curricular production techniques. and during the post-guitar solo chorus reprise, pushing the lead vocals further up front, adding echo to them instead of the industry norm of doubling, and calling greater attention to the melody by pulling it up an octave for a few bars and dancing around the key (which has only happened on "12:51," the other strokes single rca pinned their hopes on).

for what? rca wants increased popularity and probably to best franz ferdinand, post-strokes new wavers whose hooks are anything but subtle -- the worst journalists might say the strokes sound like a light switch between on and off, but at least they'd never install a new bulb in the middle of the song (see: both ff albums' big singles) -- and are unabashedly married to a club-ready bassline. probably. but lest you songwriters lose the track, the very public contrast between artistic vision and the bottom dollar on this album (and the tours, videos, interviews, david letterman, etc) might recontextualize the allegations that the band is highly derivative. tips of the hat to the cars will be ignored and critics will deride jules for not sticking to his guns and his signature sound. ha!