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Friday, December 19, 2003

Sorry kids: I had plans for at least three more fairly substantial posts today, but work intruded. Which I am now kind of bummed about after I saw the size of my xmas bonus and, well, let's just say that I wish I'd taken a longer lunch today.

Anyway, I have to go try and scam Guitar Center now, but I'll type more pointless witticisms come the morrow.

posted by Mike B. at 6:20 PM 0 comments

Dear Radiohead:

Could you please make a bad record? It doesn't even have to be that bad, just, I don't know, a Let It Be to your usual Revolver. Because Hail To The Thief--well, we can't really tell how good it is right now, because it's not like OK Computer or Kid A--it's neither a surprising leap in quality nor a stylistic contrast with the previous album. But if you make a bad record, then a "triumphant return to form" will feel great for all of us. OK?

Oh, and I'm talking to you, too, Miss PJ Harvey.

...oh, OK, I'm not really talking to you, since I get indescribably excited about a new PJ Harvey album no matter how good the last one was, so carry on.

But seriously, Radiohead, four perfect albums in a row and we've got no context! Throw us a bone here, guys. Two in a row, that's OK, but four? We're dying here!

posted by Mike B. at 5:36 PM 0 comments

Sometimes I feel kinda weird about hating on Pitchfork so much, but then I read that some people really, really, really hate Entertainment Weekly, which seems, amazingly, even more trivial, so I don't feel as bad.

Speaking of the 'Fork, what's up with that top 50 list, eh? OK, the no Yeah Yeah Yeahs makes sense, as they hated the album (although I didn't see "Maps" in the Singles list, which is inexplicable), and of course there's no Liz Phair or Fountains of Wayne. But the White Stripes thing is objectively weird, even if they did give it a negative-in-tone review (which I had a few things to say about). But the real oddity is the omission of the New Pornographers album. They liked it, we liked it, and it just sounded better over time. Surely they could've found one album to bump to make room for Electric Version? I mean, what happened? Did you guys just forget it was put out in 2003 or what? I'm not going to even get into the ones you do continue to hump...

That said, William Bowers' entry on Radiohead is probably the best thing I've ever read about Hail to the Thief (although why they didn't let Bowers write the My Morning Jacket Entry is a mystery to me). But seriously, even if you've sworn off PF, go read that Bowers thing. It just nails it.

Incidentally, I once coughed all the way through a production of Krapp's Last Tape featuring John Hurt in the titular role. Presumably it was very good.

CORRECTION: The folks in question, in fact, like Entertainment Weekly. They just hate three particuarly writers, especially this one guy, which is, amazingly, even more creepy.

One of the writers in question is named Jessica Shaw. They suggest you write her editors and complain about her apparently unfunny column. Coincidentally, she has published a selection of her hate mail on McSweeneys, a page which for no good reason is no longer on the interweb. (See the link on the bottom of the page here for "Hate Mail To A Writer For A National Magazine." The feature is also referenced here, and other McSweeneys-EW conspiracy theories are noted.)

posted by Mike B. at 5:28 PM 0 comments

Fairly amusing VR post about Michelle Branch's recent appearance in Maxim. I'm not necessarily the biggest fan of this particular poster, but he nails it here:

In what I hope is the final gasp of pop stars unaware of what irony is, she has the interview full of quotes about what a "pervert" she is, how she watches porn all the time and wonders what's in some jock's pants and then bagging on Liz Phair and Jewel's latest efforts for reasons that I believe she believes are related to artistic integrity.

That's right...the ol' SH disses Liz and Jewel right next to pictures like this.

Pop stars will always be unaware of irony, in America at least--that's part of their charm, eh?

posted by Mike B. at 8:56 AM 0 comments

Thursday, December 18, 2003

Speaking of "The Message," man, that's a great fucking song. The production is great, which doesn't seem to get remarked on much. I'm especially crazy about that great triplets hi-hat thing that comes in at the end of some measures.

The lyrics are great, too, of course--"she used to be a fag hag" and "I might hijack a plane!" Surprisingly un-cheesy, even today.

Yeah, I know, that's obvious and all, but the track's always been one of those things I knew was good and enjoyed listening to but never quite caught the full brundt of before.

posted by Mike B. at 5:26 PM 0 comments

I just wrote this about Ghost Exits:

"They want to sound like Suicide backing Africa Bambaata--they even cover the Pop Group--but these Vice-magazine-humping trendhoppers really sound like Beck's developmentally disabled cousins cutting instructional demos for Yamaha circa 1986. Their local fame stems from drunken gig antics, which is like being renowned for being date-raped, so please, please don't buy this; it'll just encourage them further."

And I read it and thought, now, is that going too far? And then I reread and thought, eh, not really.

Links:

Description of the show in question.
Free Williamsburg interview in which you can see one member's horrible fauxstache and understand why I called them "Vice-magazine-humping":

Is there anyone in the public eye you want to say "you suck" to?

Chris: Right now the scene is pretty boring. Ghost Exits are probably the
only group around making any kind of serious music. It's all about money
everywhere you go. Listen to any record today, it's all just mindless drivel. Even a lot of Hip-Hop is getting this way. But at least these people are making some kind of discernible communication. Maybe I'm just wasting words, I guess most people would rather remain asleep. So yeah, I'd like to say "you suck" to everyone. Hollah.
Ivan: It's money that is really fucking things up. All these bands are so concerned with record deals and getting their record in the NYU dorms that they are forgetting that music can be a viable art form to express ideas.
Chris: No one has anything to say, or even a decibel of emotion. Maybe some of this will change soon.
Ivan: Well it has to change, really. The city is broke and the people are getting antsy for entertainment again. It seemed to me like the only people that go to shows of these groups are people who work in the music industry anyway. I think it was in Rolling Spin -- there was an article about some Bowery Ballroom show featuring interviews with concertgoers. The article showed the people's pictures with captions beneath singing the band's praises, as if it were taken from their press kit. As it turns out, 3 out of the 4 people interviewed actually did work in the music industry. Its kind of fucked up that all these bands are complete fabrications.

And what is the fascination with English music? We live in New York, why pretend we live in London. Even the softest NY bands from the past could beat up Interpol. Even Blondie. So basically every one is going to have to sharpen up and better music will soon follow.

Is there anyone in the public eye doing everything right?

Chris: I like Marilyn Manson and Donald Rumsfeld. Any kind of Hollywood,
children's story type of villain. They play their parts very well. But it's all a joke isn't it? Is there really a war right now? Or is it just something in between the commercials? I can't tell. I guess that's the way they want it. That's why they hire such good actors!
Ivan: Tammy Faye, and Snoop Dog are really great in the public eye.

"getting their record in the NYU dorms"?

Another interview with a different view of the 'stache.

Normally, as you know, I don't want to resort to harsh negativity, talking about the members' bios, or ripping on hipsters, but here, it's really just begging for it. And there isn't a whole lot else to talk about, since the music just sort of sucks and that's it. It's not good, not funny, and not interesting. Ah well.

posted by Mike B. at 4:33 PM 0 comments

MOCHIPET - COMBAT

Capsule review:

Mochipet's Combat comes from the Violent Turd label, which has put out, among other things, Soundmurderer's mind-melting mix of jungle songs and Kid606's set of fucked-with pop hits. Similarly, this is an MP3s mashup collection, and its mission statements is in the song titles: "Johnny Cash vs. Cash Money Millionaires," "Barry White vs. The White Stripes vs. White Lion," etc. But this isn't quite the normal mash-up set, as instead of simply combining unprocessed samples from disparate tracks, it's all mixed in with Tigerbeat6-style drill 'n' bass. So we hear Cash's cover of "I Won't Back Down" over a hip-hop loop, but then a stutter-blast of rapid-fire beats and sampled vocal bits is laid over it, so there's not only the song-spotting thrill, but the more traditional pleasures of non-referential electronic music. I love that crap, so I'm inclined to like this disc, but I think the song "Yes vs. NoMeansNo" endears me to it as well, as I didn't think anyone remembered NoMeansNo. The whole set is just a lot of fun, with a lot more replay value than most mashups. And really, it's worth the purchase price just for the They Might Be Giants track, which recognizes the hip-hop nature of "Ana Ng" and throws in the best accordion crunk ever committed to plastic.

Further thoughts:

The Nelly track is pretty awesome, too. That shit gets destroyed. They (the pronoun I've decided to refer to Mochipet by) rip the chorus out of "Country Grammar" and just take it on a goddamn burning airplane ride around beats already pretty harsh (it's paired with Venetian Snares aka Kakarookee) and then twisted into its own fucked-up beats. Those little shards of melody keep popping up in various guises throughout the track, and the chorus as a whole gets passed through every filter on the laptop, it seems. The interesting thing is that it really does seem melodic to me, although maybe to people less familiar with the genre it would sound far too noisy. Regardless, it's one of the best tracks on there, and it's maybe indicative that this is one of two cuts on the album whose mashed-up artists share no elements of their names.

The faux-Atari cover art is pretty goddamn good, too.

I couldn't quite tell if this was Kid606 or not under a different guise. It seems unlikely given that I think this is a newish release and he just dropped a (so-so) proper album, and when compared with the admitted doppelganggery of The Action Packed Mentallist Brings You the Fucking Jams, the Mochipet album seems far less weird, missing anything like the more abstract intro track and the fuck-you 15 minute slow decay of the Radiohead a capella of the latter album. So I'm guessing this is some Tigerbeat associate or other. Any suggestions?

At any rate, they're similar enough that it's useful to rope the two together when making broad comparisons. And the one that struck me while relistening to this last night is how different they really are from regular mashups, especially in terms of song forms: your usual mashup either stay true to the original's form (like the brilliant Metro Area/Eminem mashup Oh, Manchester posted a while back) or uses an existing pop form, or just sort of keeps going in a linear way toward the end (thinking here of Osymyso's mashups). These, however, start, double back, throw in a few totally unrelated bits, loop the chorus, take a two-second detour, and then, uh, just kinda end. But they still make sense, and a lot more sense than, say, any of Kid606's more abstract stuff. I don't know why this is, although I guess it probably has something to do with the aforementioned bits of melody floating through the mix that give us something to latch onto immediately. Still, I think it's really neat that they've essentially created these mostly new pop songforms that are eminently workable, even if I personally can't get my head around it for the life of me. Would that I could! But this sort of abstract use of hooks in the context of beat-heavy but rhythmless compositions somehow comes together in a really viscerally graspable way.

As for the Mochipet thing, it's pretty complex, and I'm finding interesting new bits every time I listen to it. Definitely worth a listen.

posted by Mike B. at 11:58 AM 0 comments

I guess I still owe a follow-up to the Stelfox/Tufluv dancehall NIIMBYism debate I commented on, but for now, let me just make one small point that occurred to me the other day.

Dave writes in his response: "It all goes back to the dilettante/purist debate carried on in the blogosphere a few months back." Now, this reminded me of that whole thing, which itself sort of goes back to a great Simon Reynolds essay. The problem is, though, that the enemy (so to speak, heh) is defining the terms. "Dilettante" is not a word with a positive connotation in most circles, whereas "purist" is, I think. (Although I note that Simon doesn't think so in that essay.) So maybe we need something else to call the former category.

How about "musical libertine"?

(Alternately: epicure, gourmand, pleasuremonger, rake, sybarite, voluptuary.)

Hey, someone should name a band "The Dilettantes"!

And wow, I had no idea "pleasuremonger" was an actual word, but holy crap, what a word!

Me? I'm a pleasuremonger. Or libertine. I haven't decided yet.

posted by Mike B. at 11:32 AM 0 comments

New business plan?

I won't comment too much, as I know most people aren't as interested in the practicalities of music-making as I am, but suffice to say the strategy described is an interesting and possibly workable one. The idea is that if you've racked up significant self-made sales a la David Gray or Damien Rice and can go to the next level of sales, exposure, etc., you can just take out a loan from a bank instead of effectively doing the same thing from a record company. This would help people avoid major labels.

posted by Mike B. at 9:37 AM 0 comments

And speaking of NYLPM, here's a great Alex Thompson post about Belinda Carlisle (good call man!) and post-hipster elitism (another good call!), all tied up in this ILM thread which would seem to sort of tangentially address issues I and others raised two months back in response to a response to a great Freaky Trigger article by one Jim Robinson. Check out that original claps post for a classique comments debate.

(Note: ILM article features a Dan Selzer post making the argument that the dance-punk scene springs directly from a bunch of 90's hardcore kids who knew each other, which is a kinda depressing revelation. Check it out.)

posted by Mike B. at 9:20 AM 0 comments

Tom Ewing gives an ambivalent take on "Hey Ya."

He's probably not referring to my earlier assessment of the song when he says: "I'm also sympathetic to the idea that if 'Hey Ya' is the start of something then it's the start of something lame: I'm no more looking forward to everybody doing a wacky guitar track than I am to checking out the Darkness clone bands." He could very well be referring to some ILM thread which I haven't read, as, um, I don't read ILM, but regardless, I can honestly say I'm not sure I've read anyone yet who hates it. Well, I guess that shows that you shouldn't listen to me on inter-blog feuds, and why I've generally stopped participating as much as I should...

But anyway, yes, I said that I think "Hey Ya" could be the start of something, but I, being I, thought this would probably be something good. But if I'm reading Tom right, we're suggesting two different paths. He (and apparently others?) seem to be assuming that "Hey Ya" will breed a bunch of hip-hop artists doing guitar tracks, which, I dunno, seems so obvious that it would mostly work out bad that I don't even know why you'd have to bring it up. Hip-hop guys have little talent for writing a rocky song like "Hey Ya," and indie folks have pretty much no talent for writing hip-hop songs. One of the great things about Outkast is how readily their songwriting can slip convincingly into other genres and songforms. But: I think "Hey Ya" is much closer to indie than hip-hop, honestly, and were (God forbid) a good indie songwriter to try and do a Prince- and hip-hop-influenced song, in the right hands it could go very well. I'm still interested to see someone try it. It's a good model.

Then again, I'm not so sure it'd be horrible for hip-hop folk, as long as you take out the "wacky," and really, is "wacky" really a prized asset in hip-hop these days? Guitar's been used productively in any number of great hip-hop songs, and maybe this is just a different way of doing it. But yeah, I have to admit that "Hey Ya" ripoffs would be pretty bad--so much of that song is being carried by Andre's charming personality that I can only see, eh, Eminem doing something like that well.

...ooh...

posted by Mike B. at 9:07 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, December 17, 2003

Good catch by QV: the new Courtney Love single is now available. You can download it and get a 15-day license or something.

I like it! It's nice and loud, which is refreshing. It's not as good as "Violet" or "Awful" upon first listen, but the lead single often isn't as good as the deeper ones when it comes to Court.

...er, OK, I suppose the riff is oddly similar to "Celebrity Skin," and she does ride it too long and too hard, but I really like the chorus. Really like it.

UPDATE: Eric E. says:

And this business about enabling. Take it from someone who knows, if you are in Courtney's life in any capacity, YOU ARE AN ENABLER. i'm talking website mod, recording engineer, producer, record label, nanny, chauffeur, guitar tech, drummer, etc. etc. etc. And you're going to get yours. I know. Cuz I did. I don't care how much money or glory you're getting from it now. The poor girl will not be Ok until you stop. Stop it all. Or you will have blood on your hands. You will have blood money in your bank. And you will get yours.
This is the way of the world.

Learn a lesson from Elliot Smith. Pray for him. Pray for Courtney. She needs that right now much more than gossip or enabling.

Peace.

Hmm.

UPDATE 2: Lyrics (may have to register).

Hey Yeah we had everything
Vinyl in mono
And we looked the other way
Man we were so dumb
Is this the part in the book that you wrote
Where I've gotta come and save the day??
Did you miss me??
Did you miss me??

Well they say that rock is dead
And they're probably right
99 girls in the pit
Did it have to come to this??

Oh God you owe me one more song
So I can prove to you that
I'm so much better than you
Oh god please listen fast
Here comes the crash
We're gonna rise above
We've gotta smash it up
You won't abandon us again

Give us brilliant boys that we wanna fuck man
Full of ecstasy, hard drugs and bad luck
Yeah yeah yeah
Turn the lights...back on
You burn so hard
But you won't burn long

Three chords in your pocket tonight
Are you, you the one
With the spark to bring my punk rock back now?
(I donâ€™t think so)

Oh God I wanna hear you say
I wanna hear you say, that you're sorry again
Oh God you owe me one more song
So I could prove to you
That I'm so much better than him
Oh God I'd give you anything
To hear you say that I was right
And you were wrong
Oh God before I leave this life
Now enable us a lover
Hookerâ€™s never gonna cum
Just give it back to me
Blow out all of the lights tonight

Two million miles down the PCH
And now he's gone
I slashed his tires, I bled his brakes
(It had to be done)
Their hand-job lives were just too cruel
You merciless villian
We drowned them all in their swimming pools
Run away, run away, run away yeah

Now God I wanna hear you say
I wanna hear you say that you were wrong again
Now God I wanna hear you say
I wanna hear you say that
I am so much better than him
Now God you owe us one more song
Get out of my life, See this world as it really is
Is it just a sad slide show
Can't make a hooker cum
Enable us a lover
I need one thing thatâ€™s divine
I wanna hear it tonight
Let me hear it tonight
I've gotta hear it tonight
You're gonna let me hear those chords tonight

Court's description of the song back when it was recorded:

there are FOUR that i would allow in the box- one working title "mono"
about the state of rock-
onl;y its far more graceful than dakota olympia or awful- in terms of its thematic structure0

arguing with god about girls raped in the pit and a fred murder fantasy about drowning them in thier pools and bleeding the brakes and slashing the tires and three chords in your pocket being futile-

i think its very evolved lyricallya bnd begins with the line we had everything- vinyl in mono

th elyrcis took me over 24 straight hours- there was pen all over when iw ent into the booth- and i went ina ty eight or nine am - after a long night- and only recorded three takes- with diofferent lyrical catchphrases etc
(snip)

we write what we know and here i am with the two best songs one a state of Rock where is God song and a 'crusing downt he sunset strip and theres nothing thats not within my grip tonight"

but fuck it- Springsteen writes about cars.

Ah, C-Lo-speak.

posted by Mike B. at 5:47 PM 0 comments

Don't stare: she is just like us.

posted by Mike B. at 2:59 PM 0 comments

Just had the in-office company holiday party. The food was good, but when we all sat down someone put on the Rolling Stones, who, needless to say, are not our artists. After a few verses of "Start Me Up" this was remarked upon and some Christmas jazz music was put on.

I hate my job.

"Is this [our artist]?" I asked the PR person next to me. She turned her palms upward in a way that indicated that she probably should know, but didn't. "I assume it's [our artist]," she said, "but I technically wouldn't know. I'm not proud of that, but you reach a certain point in being a PR person that you don't really need to listen to the music to promote it." I told her it was just a sign she'd attained a higher level of PR skill.

Later, a new signee came in and played for us. It was extremely elementary-schooly. There we were in a small room with the chairs cleared from the middle, in the early afternoon, with flourescent lights overhead and food and paper plates scattered about, sitting patiently while an earnest man with an acoustic guitar sang to us. No one really looked like they were enjoying it, and we did a lot of looking around at each other awkwardly. We didn't have to be told to clap at the end, but of course, that's sort of the point of a job: you just know you have to clap.

posted by Mike B. at 2:23 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, December 16, 2003

Tom Ellard has a brainstorm:

I got an idea - a web cam chick with an antiwar blog. She'd be blonde with the chic glasses etc. etc. but maybe she could smoke a pipe. She'd always have something rude to say about Bush, but flash her tits. THAT would be the Internet summed up in one site.

Kind of like http://maddox.xmission.com/cam_whore.html

Heh.

posted by Mike B. at 6:41 PM 0 comments

What the hell? Did some Freshman Comp class get assigned to write letters to PF letter writers as a final project?

From: Josh2Face@aol.com
To: eppy@grendel.org
Sent: Tuesday, December 16, 2003 3:44 PM
Subject: Xiu Xiu Rules - says 19 yr. old fan

Dear Mike,

In your open letter to Pitchfork, you mentioned that you believed Xiu Xiu's music could only be considered "brilliant" by adolescents who are living through the "tortued teen years" of high school. Unfortunately, I can't agree with you one bit.

I got into Xiu Xiu almost a year ago to the day when I purchased their first album, an album I think is the best example of quality Xiu Xiu. While the lyrics are the most talked-about aspect of the band, I think many reviewers miss out on how good the musicians actually are. Mixing industrial techno (a genre that's been repulsive since Trent Reznor's third album) with easy-to-swallow melodies, heavy doses of sonic experimentation, Joy Division-esque backbeat, and yes, even intriguing and thoughtful lyrics, Xiu Xiu are a band with few peers. Sure, Suicide did most of this stuff years ago, but c'mon, EVERYTHING's been done these days a million times over. Hell, Radiohead's first 3 albums (OK Computer moreso than even the first two) were retreads of the early 80's Australian indy rock scene.

I, for one, don't believe the lyrics are corny. I'd recommend seeing Xiu Xiu live to clear up that whole mess. Jamie Stewart is not only a hell-of-a-guitarist with a unique minimalist style, but he's got a very powerful voice with immense range. To see him pull off all the blips, bleeps, loops, and hisses using only his vocal cords is definitely something special. Also, if you happen to meet Mr.Stewart, you'll be surprised to know that he IS the real deal. He's extremely open about his past, one riddled with abuse and divorce. When he yelps about taboo sex and shouts about his tortured soul, at least he's delivering these messages first-hand, and not faking them like so many other goth rock stars.

I'd also like to say...Xiu Xiu is not for everybody and definitely doesn't seem like its up your alley. If a Joan of Arc album is as emotional as you like to get, I wouldn't recommend ANY Xiu Xiu record at all. This is stuff that is meant to be listened to only by those who believe in its sincerity. Jamie Stewart is not trying to reach out very much, he's well aware that the awkwardness expressed is going to leave some listeners confused. To the rest of us, though, that don't doubt for a second the emotion and honesty he brings about in his lyrics, Xiu Xiu have been immensely successful at being consistent and prolific. Their full-lengths, as well as their EPs and splits, have featured quality music that, in my opinion only, has steadily advanced from post-punk to post-electronic. Jamie Stewart is an excellent songwriter, one who uses many influences to craft music that has remained largely unheard by anyone, regardless of age.

This is not high school music, unless you go to a high school in SoHo or something. Crappy punk rock, nu-metal, brainless hip-hop, and shitty emo...all these things are popular in high school. But to try to argue that Xiu Xiu is meant for 16 and 17 yr. olds is absurd and completely unfounded.

Thanks,
Josh Goldberg

My reply:

Josh-

Thanks for your letter.

I'm a little unsure where you're getting this from my letter...it is this letter, right? From, er, August?

Anyway, the words you've got in quotation marks don't appear anywhere in my letter, assuming it's that one, and neither does anything implying the paraphrase you've got there. Here's the closest thing:

"The problem with focusing on all this shock and transgression stuff with Xiu Xiu is that it's super unconvincing to me and, I hope, anyone over the age of 17. (Not to say anything bad about them, but I know from, er, personal experience that this kind of stuff has more coin when you're suffering through adolescence, and that's cool.)"

So there's that "I hope," which clearly means "I hope but my hopes are cruelly dashed" since PF seems convinced by them and all their critics are over 17, as far as I know. It just surprises me, still, that it works. I guess I forget the whole extended-adolescence angst thing a lot of indie rockers go through. The point being that you didn't have to write me to let me know that non-adolescents like Xiu Xiu: I clearly knew that already. However, I still think the lyrics are at the emotional complexity of Nickelback (if at a certainly higher artistic complexity) and nothing I've been shown to date serves to disabuse me of this notion. I wasn't saying that actual high schoolers listen to it: I'm just saying that with an acoustic guitar and a rock beat behind it, they probably could. Y'see, unlike the PF folks, I'm not confusing my conception of others' reactions with others' actual reactions.

As for the content of your letter, no, I would not be surprised to learn that Mr. Stewart is "the real deal," as unless he's an alien or a cyborg or a cleverely-disguised conglomoration of ants, he'd pretty much have to be the real deal, wouldn't he? He's just as real as David Lee Roth, believe it or not. And yes, I know he means those lyrics, man, and I'd even be willing to admit that they're probably real, although I'd also want to make clear that I could give less of a shit whether someone's lyrics are "keepin' it real" or not. I care about passion and talent, not authenticity, and while Mr. Stewart clearly has an excess of the former, he's eschewing a wee too much of the latter in search of that vaunted realness. If I wanted to hear confessionals about someone's sad youth, I'd go read some freshman poetry, or read any of the innumerable sob story memoirs that populate bookshelves and which we all pretty much agreed suck, I think. It sickens me and seems like nothing more than the aural equivalent of jerking off in public.

As for the music? Eh, it's noisy and fine, I guess, but I've heard better. That you can like or not like, and I won't really care. But lyrically, and I don't do this too often, I'll insist that people who praise Mr. Stewart's lyrics are wrong. Not just wrong in their beliefs, but wrong in their methods. You and the PF writers seem to think that everyone who dislikes Xiu Xiu either doesn't get them, is intimidated by them, or has bad taste. No, no, and no. I can listen to it same as I can listen to Merzbow, and I'm bored. Just flat-out bored. (Or amused.) In other words: I know what they're doing, and I don't give a shit.

Sincerely,
m.

ps "post-electronic"? Like, organic computing?

Joan of Arc?

posted by Mike B. at 4:21 PM 0 comments

Monday, December 15, 2003

Listening to Yo La Tengo's "You Can Have It All" off And Then Nothing... while finishing up the 7 hours of so of billing I did today, and it's impressing me in a way it hasn't before, maybe because I'm listening to it out loud--and singing along--instead of running it through headphones.

What most impresses me about it is the restraint. I used to regard it as a nice little trifle, a pretty, inconsequential thing, background noise, makeout music. Nothing like the kind of balls-to-the-wall pop songs I write about most of the time here. But in listening to it this time, I heard what it could be--heard the pop song behind it somewhere, and I appreciated it a lot more. But that's not something I'm used to looking for in music.

Not so with visual art. There's the theory there that high-art primitivism or reductionism is only permissible once you know how to do perspective, anatomy, shading, light, all those trompe le monde things. In other words, it's only OK to look sloppy once you could actually do it perfect, and this acknowledgement of the perfect lies hidden at the back of your studied mistakes.

This rarely holds true, though, for pop music, where the glorious innocence in a lot of indie music results not from conscious choice but from lack of experience, knowledge, technical skill, or technological resources. It's not that Malkmus et al could have made Slanted & Enchanted in a 48-track studio with pristine Mesa/Boogie amplifiers and a session drummer but didn't; it's not that Liz Phair could have made Exile with crisp digital production and soaring vocal lines but chose not to; it's not that John Darnielle could have made All Hail West Texas with a full band and, uh, something besides a boombox but chose the lo-fi route instead. What makes these musicians distinct is the way they embraced the limitations that had been forced on them, but all of them also chose to make records in this "higher" style when given the chance. This is perhaps a good thing, a sign of pop music's energy and youth compared to the visual arts' self-absorption and decrepitude, but it also seems to cause some problems, causing both lo-fi and hi-fi to fall short of their true potential.

But this is not true for "You Can Have It All": it is not a pop song compromised by circumstance. You know this just from Yo La Tengo's bio, with their status as music geeks and their mastery of the pop cover song unquestioned. There's no way to think these guys haven't done their homework, and their technical skill and experience is in evidence over the course of their 15-year, 8-LP, multi-single/EP career up to this point. Plus they're recording at a tricked-out Nashville studio with an expert producer, and the overall sound of the album is hardly lo-fi, excepting a few of the drum machine beats and organ sounds. So the potential's there. And if you have any further doubt that Yo La Tengo knows how to write a great pop song, you need only skip to the next track, "Tears Are In Your Eyes," for my money the most beautiful song ever recorded.

The biggest clue to the pop restraint of this track, I think, is the vocal line in the chorus. The melody there is certainly catchy, but it's more the rhythm. The line is very simple, two notes descending a step to a resolved third that mirrors the chord progression. However, when listening to it out loud and singing along I found myself adding a higher vocal harmony (wshew, good thing Georgia's an alto) that hit one note, went a step higher, and then returned to the original note, and when coupled with her line, this sounded perfect, like it should have been in the song all along.[1] With the harmony it sounds like a great pop chorus, really, really killer. But then without Georgia's vocal, the harmony line starts to sound like the lead. Which means that, I think, she was singing the harmony line all along.

And that's hard to do; it takes restraint. You hear the restraint in the arrangement, where it stays on the same two chords ad infinitum until the chorus, where it throws in, well, a third. You can hear it, too, in the way the perfect string arrangement doesn't come in until halfway through the song. But mostly, I think you can hear it, again, in the vocals. It's no accident that the whole song is built around a never-changing vocal loop that all the chords and lines work with, but when everything starts to get blended together at the end, there's really a near-infinity of other lines you could put on top of there. "You Could Have It All" as arranged by Carl Newman could be the same song but sound very, very different. There are a whole lot of hooks just waiting to be sung there, three-part harmonies in cascading double-time, harmonies above the harmonies, more vocals used as percussion. Could be done. But YLT goes for restraint.

Does this make it a better song? The band thinks so; I probably don't, in my heart of hearts, no matter how much I do like the song.[2] Restraint is admirable, but not necessarily rewarding. Still, the track is a great example of what can result when the anti-pop move is one choice among many instead of a nervous knee-jerk reaction.

[1] And trust me, with my harmony skill, it has to be obvious.
[2] Of course, one of the wonderful things about pop music is that Carl Newman, or Billy Corgan, or me can all rearrange the damn thing as we hear it. If you want it to sound like a full pop song, go arrange it that way!

posted by Mike B. at 6:15 PM 0 comments

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