(no good lyrics to quote here)

Way cuter than Razorlight

While those damn kids over at the Judy try their damned best to sink the Kristof bitch who may have bit Gourevitch in her essay, the Seat brings you something lighter: a review!

Just like the last blurb, I'm rubbing shoulders with Scott McKeating, always and everywhere. Except you don't get any free mp3s this time, because I deleted that shit from my computer.

Guillemots
From The Cliffs EP
Fantastic Plastic 2006

If you’re not big on strong songwriting, you’ll like this kitchen sink stuff. But don’t be surprised when Guillemots—fat birds that can fly and swim—make like tame bloated rockers, dabbling in creaky orchestras and the nine-minute saccharine organ vamp. “Trains to Brazil,” for one, is thoroughly underwhelming for a calling card single, an overemotive vocal married to an arbitrarily constructed jaunt. This English foursome is no more than the heir apparent to The Beta Band, and, save a timid piano coda (“My Chosen One”), this EP is no more than jam seshes and woozy melodies.
[Sam Bloch]

I mean, if you're really curious, check the MySpace. Kinda like what Tim Burgess said at the Charlatans show yesterday.

The truth in searching is not having found

Left-handed people have an advantage in fighting without weapons, because of the "surprise" factor. This fact is well known to boxers and was employed to world-record effect on Nov. 4th 1947 when Mike Collins, a natural left-hander, emerged from his corner in a right-handed stance before suddenly shifting left and delivering the fight's first and last punch, knocking out opponent Pat Brownson in 4 seconds.

Hey, Stylus Magazine, guess who's back! Sure, you ain't missed me much-- what with my last contributions as a kid set loose in a candy shop-cum-couple of interviews-- but thanks our boy David, who introduced me to Mr. Longstreth, now I'm taking Portland's finest to the big leagues. To run in a week or so, but without all these free songs (though only for a week) and rad hypertext links. Oh, the wonders of the internet-- helping to make music writing the dinosaur that it truly is.

The Dirty Projectors
New Attitude EP
Marriage Records 2006

Instead of the majestic wail at the end of The Getty Address—femme, meditated, scythed, multitracked—Dave Longstreth picks up the pace and opens this record with his single caterwaul, a clarity further expanded by—surprise!—a fluid backing band. Admittedly, Longstreth stills meddles with the collage shit that makes Scott Herren want to call it quits, but it’s compounded with singer-songwriter zen. So we've got drums with momentum, for example, and a near-corporeal guitar twang that’s way more than a motif from Address’ “I Will Truck.” And when Longstreth yells “precious reciprocity!” on live track “Two Young Sheeps," his eight-minute take on Graceland, the audience claps and yells right back. All of which is funny, of course, because even though dirty projectors show us obscured images, this batch is pretty clear.

Edit: rubbing shoulders with Scott McKeating, always and everywhere.

The Terror of the Music Writers' Racial Furor

On Slate, John Cook's buttoned-up, though hardly backed-up riff of a few old blog posts by Sasha Frere-Jones and Jessica Hopper begs two question: can a manifesto (hating rap=hating black) really be gleaned from a few fiery posts by successively influential music writers; and either way, fuck Pitchfork for making music writing the money ticket in recent years. Stick to crackpot adjectives and me-first absolute phrases; leave the social posturing to politicians and athletes.

Still - and not to wax cracker here - Hopper's claim against the Mag Fields "whiteness" is as crass as her, and SFJ's, own projection that Merritt's pooh-poohing of Beyonce, Prince, and others means he hates black people - at least, if either one was ever even saying that.

If SFJ's oft-writerly The New Yorker criticism (his wistful Arctic Monkeys' splurge aside) pumps tunes unfamiliar, let alone unappealing, does that mean I hate Houston? I hope not. The 'Stros do have the Rocket. Better question: do I resent Kanye because I don't own Late Registration, or any rap records released since 2001? However flimsy Cook's indictment of SFJ & Hopper is (the pickings are pretty slim from both blogs' archives), he does expose their suggestions of security, which seek to assure a Talk-O'-Towny readership that at least they're not as white as Stephin Merritt because they read Sasha.

SFJ opened up the field today on his blog, asking some wider questions, which while thoughtfully New Yorker, are pretty frivolous. It's only pop music after all, right?

Maybe not: that I love Pavement does say something about my choice to be a slacker - I mean, SM and Spiral Stairs speak to my liberal-arts college procrastination, right? Maybe they are social actors in my quite-white life, which currently isn't "terrified that entertainment might be tainted by the problems of the social sphere that entertainment is so often employed to block out." I only find that terror in my prep school memories of rich, padded Young Republicans blasting DMX in their newly-leased cars. Meanwhile, I listen to Pavement, Stephin Merritt, and, no offense, not Kanye.