Well, now that everybody's got it, we can start talking about it, right?

In general, there's nothing with the kind of hands-in-the-air energy of a "Devil's Haricut" or "Where It's At," but there's nothing as pastichey as much of the (very good, but definitely pastichey) Midnite Vultures album. There is something that tries to be "High 5," but it doesn't quite make it. At this point it just sounds like Beck, and while it's not Sea Change (which I really liked), it's certainly the same Beck we heard on that album, except produced by the Dust Brothers, if that makes any sense. Overall, he's found something that worked and really went for it: a laid-back, bass-and-drums driven sound that he sings or raps along to, and by and large the best songs on the album stick, wisely, to this formula. (Beck has always been good at identifying what he does well and then doing more of it, which is certainly to his credit.) At least half of the songs stick to this sound, which I'll call Dyanetics-hop, because I'm a dick.

It remains to be seen if this'll be the actual sequencing, of course (although if it's going to be released in February and this leaked January 7, there definitely existed a final version--I know my production timetables), but if he does end up starting with "Brazillica" (a maybe overly-obvious nod to "Tropicallia," which it's actually less energetic than), it's a good move, because it explicitly makes a slow slide out of his recent stuff, from the Mutations reference to the could-be-sampled-from-Sea-Change string section parts that come in, and are really nice. Overall, though, it's not particularly representative of the album, and I hope it doesn't, contrary to rumors, get released as a single.

Next is "Guero," and it's sort of an early prototype of the Dyanetics-hop sound, but a lesser version. Beck raps here and it's not fantastic. Much better is the next track, "Go It Alone," when he fully hits his stride, singing along with the bassline to surprisingly powerful effect. There's a very simple sampled, loping breakbeat and a bassline that's joined by a distorted guitar playing basically the same part in the chorus, but with a less syncopated rhythm. It's a very simple song, but all the parts are incredibly strong. This was when I really started liking the album; while initially the simplicity of the beat annoyed me, it does a hell of a lot with what it's got in an almost Prince-esque way, which we'll get to later, unless we don't. The song ends with a "Where It's At"-esque electric keyboard part. If you were a quippy rock critic you could call "Go It Alone" the breakdowns from "Where It's At" strung together to make a full song, but that would be stupid.

Then "Chain Reaction," the one that sounds like "High 5," and it's just OK, although it would be hard not to get a little bubble of happiness from the return of the distorto Beck voice. Then "Nazarene," which annoys me because I know exactly what plug-in the Dust Brothers are using on the beat. ("Buffer Interrupt," which is also prominent on a song MFR posted the other day, Mylo's remix of The Egg's "Wall." I was going to do a whole post on this fact, but meh.) It's too damn low-key, but maybe I'll warm to it. There is a very nice bridge, but let's move on, because three of the next four songs are absolutely fantastic.

"Black Tambourine" comes in full-on with the Dyanetics-hop sound, extremely hottt in its capacity to make your butt move back-and-forth of its own accord. You could make an argument that Beck is sing-rapping/speaking here, but let's be honest: this is what we call the vocals of people who we like but who just can't sing, like Mark E. Smith or, um, me. Beck, on the other hand, can fucking sing if he wants to, and the strong tonality here actually works very well: again, this is a track that is similar to but has distinct differences from the Odelay! sound, and it benefits from it.

"Earthquake Weather (maybe)" is noisier than most of the D-hop songs, but it largely works, and by "largely works," I mean that the verse is so-so but the chorus makes me want to run up to passerby and hug them. It's just absolutely gorgeous, a wonderful melody married to a great beat and accompanied by a processed guitar line that sounds like an organ at first but then turns into a nice little hyperchorused solo worthy of, dare I say it, Ween. But in a good way. And as the track goes on, you come to appreciate the verse for the way its more downcast mode contrasts with the major-key, unbeat chorus. Also nice and worth highlighting would be the way his voice glides up into a falsetto in the chorus. I would lobby hard for this to be a single, although a remix to pep up the breakdown might be nice.

"E-Pro," like "Chain Reaction," is something of a misstep in that it tries a bit too hard to be like Odelay, being noisier than where Beck's head is actually at these days, I think. But then it's all forgiven with "Summergirl," which, again, could totally be a single. Now, it's hard to tell how much of my affection for this song stems from the fact that for the first 30 seconds it sounds exactly like the kind of music I've been making in my spare time these days, all 8-bit and square wavey, but then it just seamlessly transitions into this great little sunny acoustic pop song, and then goes into a bridge that's in yet another style. The verse plays off Beck's old affection for low country-blues songs with blurred acoustic guitar parts, except works it into something not entirely unlike, ironically, "You Get What You Give." Then there's a chorus with gorgeous harmonies, and a nice little slide-blues breakdown, and oh, it's great. He repeats the chorus a bit too much, but hey, that just means it'd make a good radio single, and good for that.

Then "Scarecrow," which is noisy and bluesy and has the loping-jaguar bassline from "Billy Jean," more or less. The KLF were right! Oh, and it has a little bit to do with John Mellencamp, but not as much as I'd like it to. I think I need a bit of time to process this, especially since it's 7 minutes but the groove doesn't really seem to change much within that timespan, so let's move on.

Track 11 and 12, both untitled, are good counterpoints to "Scarecrow." 11 uses a similar guitar sound to "Devil's Haircut" but not as good a chorus, but is poppy and nice, and the chorus is very good anyway. 12 is built around a very nice octave-heavy guitar riff, but doesn't really go anywhere terribly interesting. Again, I might get more into these later in my relationship with the album.

The final track, "Hell Yeah," is, again, really fantastic, despite featuring rapping, because, I think, it's hard to think of anyone besides Beck rhyming over the beat, plus there's a female backup singer! Sampled or otherwise, it adds a really lovely little thing to the track, which otherwise is sort of like Timbaland in his Bubba mode with looser, liver beats, sort of herky-jerky but using loose acoustic guitar and harmonica samples. Beck is also genuinely and outwardly funny here, which helps a lot, and maybe points toward something to come. This track fits in with the rest of the album but is also not like any other track on it, and it's a great closer in a Beatles or Blur kind of album-sequencing way.

Overall, as I've been alluding to, I think the album is best when it goes somewhere different from where Beck's gone before, which is, in fact, one of the reasons so many people like him. It's not really a party album--only three or four of the tracks really make me want to get up and dance--but it is a play-in-your-car-with-the-windows-down album, and that's a lovely little thing, too. There is context here: Sea Change was both his quietest and slickest album yet, and on tour, he was extremely reluctant to do his more partyish songs. And while Wayne Coyne did successfully needle him into doing "Where It's At" and "Loser," and while it was good and the crowd went for it, just because he can perform those songs doesn't necessarily mean he can write those songs anymore, or that he should. That "Old Grandpa Beck" voice is the one he's got now, and he has to write material to go with it, which the best songs on the new album undoubtably are. It is more low-key, but it has to be, I think, to sound good: his voice would not sound right hitting that top note on the run up in the chorus of "Loser," say, although he can get away with it live because everyone knows the damn song already. Not everything on this album works, but when it does, it absolutely kills. "Summergirl" and "Go It Alone" are as good songs, in their own particular way, as any of the highlights on Beck's other albums. If there's a fault here, it's merely that the album is uneven; if you can't find a good 6 songs to really love here because "it's not good like his old stuff," man, I dunno, just take a look at your expectations, you know?

UPDATE: Aha: "Speaking of, as some of you may have seen, the new Beck album, tentatively due out March 28th, has unceremoniously been leaked onto the masses. This is NOT the final album. It is an early unmixed, unmastered version that is not the final sequence, so please be aware this is not what Beck intended to happen or bestow onto his fans." (Thanks for the pointer Jesse, not to mention the damn album itself.)

Well, this is actually kinda cool--same deal as with Hail To The Thief, and I very much enjoyed being able to compare the early and finished versions.

posted by Mike B. at 10:45 AM 0 comments

Saturday, January 15, 2005

Allow me to translate certain parts of this NYT article for you.

How did indie rock become the voice of emotional sincerity? Ten years ago,
in the heyday of Pavement and Liz Phair and Beck (the old, funny Beck), indie
rockers were supposed to be at least a little bit prickly. The genre was known
for its urbane disinclination to perform any icky operations involving hearts:
pouring them out, for instance, or affixing them to sleeves.

Somehow, indie rockers became EVEN BIGGER PUSSIES.

"Digital Ash in a Digital Urn" is a bold response to the myth of St. Conor: the
icon of unplugged authenticity goes not just electric but electronic, letting
the mythology melt away in a solvent of flickering rhythms and chirping
synthesizers.

In a bold move already done successfully by another sensitive indie-rock singer-songwriter two years ago, Conor's made a crappy "electronic" album! In the studio, he was heard to say, "Gotta get me some of that Postal Service money!" And so he did what anyone would do in this situation: he went out and got one of the guys from the Postal Service.

The happiest surprise on these two albums is the absence of hand-wringing about
the price of fame. Once upon a time, cult heroes who earned even a dash of
mainstream success were expected to release a tortured (or, alternately, snarky)
album about how awful (or, alternately, hilarious) it all was. But on these two
discs, Mr. Oberst doesn't bother to grouse about the mainstream, not even People
magazine.

This album by someone not even remotely famous or mainstream-successful sure doesn't have much complaining about being famous and mainstream-successful!

ADDENDUM: As Bright Eyes pieces keep showing up in my major-media reading fodder, like Newsweek and New York (maybe he will be famous!), I keep reading lyrics they quote as being great. And they're all just really unnoticable. I mean, what's up, guys?

posted by Mike B. at 10:23 AM 0 comments

Friday, January 14, 2005

Do You Feel Loved? alerts us that M.I.A. is playing at the Knitting Factory on February 5. Go buy tickets now. I am happy she is playing, but very sad it is at the Knitting Factory, rather than somewhere that doesn't make me want to kill all my fellow concert-goers if it's crowded, which this will doubtless be.

Oh, and both of my bands are playing tonight at Siberia, on 40th Street between 8th and 9th. I know this is kind of late notice, but you should come out, if you're not doing anything already. Noisy indie at 9 and dancey hard pop at 11.

posted by Mike B. at 5:35 PM 0 comments

Two addendums to the below:

1) I'm trying to move RNRBMs closer to what they were originally intended as, i.e. bite-sized aphorisms largely sans explanation, rather than "random shit I thought up," which will now just be ensconsed in regular blog entries.

2) If Kael is sort of the alpha and omega of modern pop-cult crit, then apparently she's the source of one of my biggest pet peeves: pretending like your opinion is objectively true, i.e. "how is it that the immense audience for The Bridge on the River Kwai, after all those hours of watching a story unfold, didn't express discomfort or outrage or even plain curiosity about what exactly happened at the end--which through bad direction or perhaps sloppy editing went by too fast to be sorted out and understood." Well, I dunno Pauline, maybe they actually understood it...

There's a difference between having strong opinions and acting as if the very strength of your personal subjective judgments causes them to have any validity in an argument. They don't. They just make you far more annoying to argue with.

posted by Mike B. at 1:34 PM 0 comments

ROCK 'N' ROLL BON MOTS #026

It is pointless and lazy to complain about the current pop culture. The only pop culture anyone really likes is what you experienced as a youngster, which you've convinced yourself is somehow the same as the pop culture that came before it, unlike current pop culture.[1] This is true for everyone, and you simply have to admit it rather than trying to find some justification for disliking "what the kids are listening to" besides "I just don't like it." (I.e., television made them stupid, irony made them stupid, stupidity made them stupid, etc.) The only legitimate response to disliking pop culture as a whole is to go out and make something better. Anything less is a cop-out.

(this being an early response to Kael's I Lost It)

[1] Important note: this is not true. Do your best to remember this.

posted by Mike B. at 1:26 PM 0 comments

For a long time, I have wanted to produce a Tori Amos album, largely to correct the problems that seem to have cropped up in her body of work since she started producing herself. (The first self-produced album, Boys For Pele, notwithstanding, although that has its problems too.) Lately I've been thinking about it more specifically, and as such, have come up with a set of ground rules that I would lay down were I to produce a Tori Amos album. So, without further ado...

1. There will be exactly 12 songs on the album. Not 11, not 13, and definitely not goddamn 19. If there are more than 12 songs produced, the extras will be b-sides, or leaked tracks, or a whole separate album. But this album will have exactly 12 songs.

2. At least 10 of those 12 tracks will have drums. And not those pussy-ass "trip-hop" drums you keep using. If I wanted a track to sound like that stupid "Sunscreen" song, I'd put on a pair of khakis, cut a hole in them, and fuck myself with an LL Bean catalog.

3. If Steve Caton tries to enter the studio, I will punch him in the face. This will probably result in me getting beaten up, because it looks like Steve could take me, but nevertheless, that wanker needs to be kept away from a guitar, for the love of all that is holy.

4. Songs about babies = bad. Songs about getting really drunk and you and your best friend beating the crap out of each other until you collapse on the street and have to be taken to the hospital and wake up the next morning not remembering any of it: good.

5. You will not use any of the following words in your lyrics: butterfly, Jesus, sweet, ahAHow, boy, c'mon, he, you, light, honey, heaven, Tuesday (or any other day of the week), man, coffee, ghost, dove (or any bird name), champagne, learn, snowflake, hand, neil (OK YOU KNOW NEIL GAIMAN WE GET IT), religion, girl, bed, athena (or any other name of a pantheistic god), woman, body, tree. A special exemption is granted for "blood" and "song" but don't abuse it. In general, if you write a line that would get a freshman women's studies major excited, delete it.

6. There will be no A/C ballad on the album. The closest we will get to an A/C ballad is something that sounds like Avril's "My Happy Ending." In fact, why don't we just cover that? It would make things easier. Plus, hey: good song!

7. The first single will be the harshest song on the album. This song may or may not feature the sound of Flava Flav tearing the shit out of a small stuffed animal and screaming after we've locked him in a lightless room with no food for a few days.

8. Pre-recording regimen: one week of nothing but ABBA, one week of Britney/Xtina/Pink/Beyonce. And have you heard the Scissor Sisters, Tori? I mean jesus christ.

9. If a song is about someone, it will have consistent, named characters. Furthermore, you may no longer use the "one specific thing and three highly unspecific things" rule. Now it's more like "three specific things for one vague thing, except you really have to justify the vague thing." Also, 3/4 of songs should have a coherant narrative line.

10. In 4 of the songs, you will only be able to use 8 notes on the piano. In 4 of the songs, you will not be allowed to improvise. In 4 of the songs we will sample small piano riffs and construct the song from that as well as outside instruments. Any individual song may incorporate any or all of these restrictions, but all of them must be satisfied in the 12 songs that end up on the final album.

ADDENDUM: Matthew gives his version of these ground rules for an R.E.M. album in the comments to a DYFL post.

posted by Mike B. at 10:38 AM 0 comments

Thursday, January 13, 2005

Sweet Jesus. Fucking Wall Street guys. Dude, you don't negotiate something like this...

posted by Mike B. at 1:59 PM 0 comments

In answer to Sasha's question: I think I can only answer unkindly, and the unkind answer is that critics' cocaine is a new genre that is also a harsher or more worldly or more knowing version of the music you liked when you were younger. Evidence of this: punk as cocaine to critics who loved 50s rock, grime as cocaine to critics who liked rave/d&b/garage, Prince as cocaine to critics who liked funk, etc. None of these are actual new genres, but then the original genres weren't new either, since we're talking pop music here. But I think new genres are the coke, and the more you liked the preceding genre and the more vital the new genre is, the more effect it has on you. (Here I'm assuming he's using cocaine as something that makes you more talkative, more focused, and more crazy, sort of hyperaware, and not a little paranoid too, since after all passionate genre lovers become passionate genre purists...)

UPDATE: Sasha compiles mine and some others' responses.

posted by Mike B. at 1:23 PM 0 comments

So the label I work for has acquired, as per its present business model, another label, which label has a rather large catalog as a result of its own previous acquisitions of other labels. It also has as one of its divisions, whether through acqusition or not I'm unclear, a gospel label. So I'm currently going through and setting up a bunch of stuff and inputting some things and just generally reconciling their catalog with ours. The problem is that we set everything up by catalog number, and some of the documents I need to classify don't have catalog numbers on them, just bits of titles. And since the only thing I knew about the label before this morning was that, er, we own them now, I've been familiarizing myself with the catalog piecemeal via allmusic and amazon searches. The funny thing is that I've been able to classify each project as gospel, classical, or other with total accuracy based solely on little fragments of the title. It's remarkably easy.

But the reason I am writing this is because of the name of one of these gospel groups, which is pretty much the best name ever. It is: THE MIGHTY CLOUDS OF JOY. Yes! Awesome! I want to be in The Mighty Clouds of Joy! Those are three such good and unlikely-to-be-combined words: mighty clouds! Clouds aren't mighty, though. Clouds of joy! Well, what the hell is that? Mighty joy! Huh? But MIGHTY CLOUDS OF JOY: awesome.

posted by Mike B. at 1:09 PM 0 comments

ROCK 'N' ROLL BON MOTS #025

I can't actually think of a DJ for whom this knowledge would be useful, but just in case, let me notify you that the Dictator's "Teengenerate" ends with exactly the same sound--same tone, more or less same timbre--as Neutral Milk Hotel's "King of Carrot Flowers 2&3" begins with. Use it wisely.

posted by Mike B. at 1:06 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, January 12, 2005

Tonight's episode of The Road to Stardom didn't have a moment quite as classic as last week's did, but there was still a lot of great stuff. First off, a bit of old business: one of the judges is Teena Marie! Ohmigod! I had no idea, but that's so cool.

The main great moment came when they all stopped at a crab shack in Maryland (!) and Frank B started in on Nic. It was just your usual reality-show tiff, but then all of a sudden the tour manager barges in and says, "LET'S HAVE AN MC BATTLE RIGHT HERE!" And Frank's all "Yeah!" but Nic's all, "Uh, I don't do MC battles." But Frank starts going, and Nic sits there and takes it, but when it's over, he says, "Yo, you compared me to Nelly!" in much the same tone of voice you'd say, "You compared me to that homeless guy who smells like pee!" Which was kinda fantastic. I like a world where disputes really are solved by MC battle.

In the judging, Missy had a few great lines:

1) "Ima tell you what Teena Marie said..."

2) "That's so nineteen and seventy-nine!"

3) To the "rock chick": "That sounds a little Britney to me."

Also, she's still working the lollypop thing. Also also, there was this one weird, random shot in between the two folks pleading their cases of one unnamed member of Missy's posse carefully but awkwardly readjusting her studied "cool" lean in the bus.

My two favorites so far are Marcus, who's a Sam Cookey crooner who's still got somewhat of an edge (his song this week revolved around the line "hump in the back," and was fantastic), and Deltrice, who hasn't really shined so much in the challenges but has total star quality. When she walks up to the mic she's totally self-composed, totally controlled, and she really draws in your gaze. Plus, she's hot and can sing well, so that works for me.

The worst by far is Akil, who is about as much a tool as you'd guess from the fact that he's white, has dreadlocks, and is from New Jersey, which is actually equivalent to saying that he's a homeless guy who smells like pee and strangles cats.

posted by Mike B. at 8:41 PM 0 comments

SONGS I LISTENED TO THIS YEAR THAT I LIKE A LOT (SILTTYTILAL) #4-2005: KIMYA DAWSON, "LOOSE LIPS"

This was the highlight of her set opening for the Danielsens last month, but in recorded form its charms are even more distinct. Specifically, the thing that makes this song really great is that it could be like twelve different songs, and then it all comes together to be gloriously what it is. When it came on this morning I honestly thought it was Buddy Holly's "Rave On," which is fantastic, and then at various other points in the song it could be Billy Bragg or Andrew WK. And for the first few listens I didn't even catch the degree to which it really is a protest song, in some ways as strident as the ones that really get on my nerves, but it pulls it off in this fantastic way.

What's important here to notice is the mapping of the song. (Lyrics are here.) There's the first verse, which is short, and more or less nonsensical, and then a blast of the chorus (although "blast" is relative in a song that only has acoustic guitar and voice and very sparse bells), which we'll get to later, before we slide into the second verse, which is sort of the greatest thing ever. It goes on for four sections before we get back to the chorus, and not only does it work, it packs more in here than a song with a very simple melody and the same 3 guitar chords over and over has any right to. First there's a joke ("i'll drop kick russell stover / move into the starting over house"), and then, two lines later, a fairly serious line about Bush ("all this shit our president has got us in will go away") and a straight-faced ending to the section. Following this, we have this little section that kinda makes me cry when I hear it, in a very happy/sad way, Kimya listing off these bad things you can to do yourself followed by "remember that I love you," which in some people's hands could be cloying and self-important, but in hers it's nothing but honest: she does love you, really, and while the actual impact of that might be small, she knows that, and she's cool with that. It's a simple thing but really touching and lovely, especially when she ends it with this sort of comic understatement of "call me up before your dead, we can make some plans instead / send me an IM, i'll be your friend." Then we sort of ease out of this with a bit more seriousness and hopefulness, and then another just totally straightfoward political line, "i'll say fuck Bush and fuck this war," followed immediately by a poop joke: "my war paint is sharpie ink and i'll show you how much my shit stinks," followed by another sort of cheesily earnest line, "your thoughts and words are powerful", followed, again, by a leavening monkey joke, and then ending on a bit of nonsense, before we launch into the chorus.

Now, this chorus. This chorus is insane. This chorus is totally and wholly happy. It is about being happy and being with your friends and getting crazy and then getting sane and then getting crazy again. It would sound great like hair metal or like pop-punk or like disco, but it's just someone with her guitar, singing along with herself, and that is what it's chosen to be. But coming after this fantastic verse, with its series of earnest statements undercut by banalities, it becomes even more powerful, because you really do think Kimya wants to have a defiant good time, not just be defiant. Just as the "remember that I love you" section contains an admission of how little that means, so do the politics sections ring infinitely more true coupled with an acknowledgment of its own inadequacy. It is a song that knows its limitations but insists on its own loveliness, and it is lovely, and it does so many things so quick that you have to listen to it again and again, and you should, you should. This is exactly why I wish I could turn in my (admittedly meaningless) lists later, because man, this is best of 2004, no question about it. I would very much like to hear it covered. I would also like to hear it with a crowd that knows all the words and sings along as loud as it can.

posted by Mike B. at 6:34 PM 0 comments

Hey, so remember how I was talking about critical authority? And how I'm declaring that I have it now? Well, it doesn't just apply to music, no no no. it also extends to politics. And with this in mind, let me present the first in what might be a series, which will be called assume the position, in which I will explain how you should think about a certain political issue. This one will be about retardedly anti-Israel professors.

As is seemingly always the case when it comes to Israel, both sides are being idiots. On the one hand, as is suggested by the way I put the topic, the professors are just being stupid, basing their positions in a kind of kneejerk anti-Americanism, and then presenting them based on a (I hope) consciously innaccurate view of Israel, blaming the country as an entity where it's far more sensible to say, "maybe we shouldn't be quite so strenuously supporting quite so murderous a particular political leader." And we won't even get into the whole romantic notion of the PLO issue right now, because that's not really the point. There seems to be more than enough evidence in the film of professors saying things that are just straightforwardly wrong, and beyond that, of taking an extremist position in a situation where neither extreme seems like a particularly sensible place to be; that there's no moral center anymore in that conflict is a huge part of the problem.

On the other hand, the students need to stop being such goddamn pussies. Look, folks, argue back. If you don't have the courage to oppose stupid ideas, you don't really belong in college. And beyond that, don't say the professors should be fired, because then you're saying someone should be fired for their political beliefs, and you realize that's a bad idea, right? There's a reason we have tenure, and as soon as you start getting rid of it, it will very quickly go the opposite way, and you'll end up in a situation much like the one we seem to have in public schools right now where talking about politics is verboten, and that seems like just a really bad idea for an institution of higher learning.

So should you want to assume the position, here's what it is:

The professors are/were being morons. Not only are their positions wrong, they are expressing them in highly unprofessional and anti-intellectual ways.

But they should not be fired, because that would be firing someone for their political beliefs, and that's a bad idea.

In the future, hiring and tenure committees should be aware of this problem, and try not to hire and/or give tenure to professors that have dumbass political beliefs and express them in ways that are dictatorial rather than open to debate. [REVISION: They should do this if students at the particular university can convincingly, intelligently, and calmly make the case that the committees should do this, or course, not just reflexively. Also, this is not to say that professors should be rejected for their political views, just that if they're bad teachers or lazy thinkers--which behaviors it sure seems like some of the professors at Columbia are exhibiting--they probably shouldn't be hired or retained, because that ain't good no matter what the subject. While ideally a professor would take a moderate view of the situation, certainly both the mainly pro-Israel and mainly pro-Palestinian cases can be made with a modicum of intelligence and respect, and as long as they can do this, fair enough.]

Students should be aware of these tendencies in certain profs and should avoid their classes if this bothers them.

Remember that there is no place in the entire universe more sensitive about difference than colleges, and if you can't cut it there, you delicate little flower, do you really think you're going to be able to change the world? [REVISION: Plus, both sides could really stand to remember that students aren't brainless automatons, either, and are fully capable of not agreeing with their professors, no matter what crazy-ass beliefs they espouse. I know a few professors who can attest to this, although in their cases it would be nice if the damn kids would actually learn something.]

Future topics include malpractice insurance and, oh I dunno, cucumbers.

posted by Mike B. at 1:49 PM 0 comments

Ohmigod, I just got an e-mail from L*st N1ght's P*rty saying that I had been added to their e-mail list. Which I did not ask to be on. Which means that they added me to it on the basis of my post regarding their charming little website. Uh, hello, dumbasses, did you miss the part where I called you an ugly version of Girls Gone Wild? Did you think that was a compliment? Because it wasn't, OK? Numbnuts.

posted by Mike B. at 1:13 PM 0 comments

This will presumably be a SILTTYTILAL at some point, once I catch up a bit, but for now all I'm going to say is go download the Salt 5 song "Get Up! Rapper" and listen the hell out of it, and notice particularly how much it does, weirdly, sound like the Gwen Stefani album. (Why does everyone keep saying it's 80s retreads?) We'll discuss more at some point, but if someone (Deric?) wants to point me to some more stuff, especially a good compilation, I'd be incredibly grateful. This is so obviously my kind of stuff that I'm like pre-obsessed. If that makes any sense.

posted by Mike B. at 11:35 AM 0 comments

Four new Flagpole reviews: Eminem, Aloha (you can stop bugging me now, Caroline!), Gwen Stefani, and Vanessa Carlton. I think I'm happiest with the Carlton one right now, actually, although that may just be because of the Tori Amos joke. Follow-ups to, er, follow on ones that I want to follow up on, but nothing overly likely in this batch.

posted by Mike B. at 10:34 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, January 11, 2005

I've only been able to catch half of one episode of The Road To Stardom, i.e. Making the Band but with Missy Elliot instead of P. Diddy and in a bus instead of in a house, but one segment of it was just amazingly classic. The way the elimination works on this show is that there's a challenge, then the judges deliberate and pick two people to "go before Missy," who then chooses one person to "kick off the tour." (Neither of these may actually be quotes, but they're in the spirit of the show, at least.) So in this particular episode, the two people who have to plead their case are a white girl rapper and a white guy rapper. White girl goes to Missy first (and, charmingly, her judging takes place not in a carefully-designed set but at one of the dinky tables in a tour bus--Missy doesn't have time to go to a set, she's got more hits to make!), and says that the judges were wrong to say that she seemed fake, that this is how she's livin' it. Missy says OK, well, why don't you show me what you can do. White girl launches into a verse, at the conclusion of which Missy starts dismissively but very cooly sucking on her lollypop. (Which, yes. I could do like 1500 words just on that, man. We'd get into PJ Harvey, Prince, oh, it would be great. Too bad I'm busy at work.) White girl finishes. Missy says, you were talking about hip-hop. You like hip-hop? White girl says yeah, I love hip-hop, it's my life. Missy says OK. Can you name a Big Daddy Kane album.

White girl freezes. Swear to god she was like half a second away from saying, "Who?" but stopped herself. Kind of stutters something. Missy says, OK, OK, you're young, right? When'd you start listening to hip-hop? White girl says, when I was 13. Missy says, OK. How 'bout an early Jay-Z album? Can you rap me some of that? White girl freezes again. She's got nothing. She's done.

So then white boy goes in, does a verse, but all he'd have to do at this point to survive is not, like, punch Missy in the face. So he's in.

It was fucking fantastic. Certainly the most embarassing thing I've ever seen on TV. OK, admittedly I'm a music nerd, but if Missy Elliot revealed me as a total fraud on national TV, I don't think I'd ever show my face in public again. It was also just generally great. I'm hooked. And I might write some more about it later.

UPDATE: Orbis Quintus has some follow-up comments.

posted by Mike B. at 3:45 PM 0 comments

"Even leaving it at that, this would seem to imply that blogs are still going to be strong competition for record reviewers. Maybe so, but think about this weird symbiotic relationship that's been going on recently: many bloggers hit the big-time when they cross over into other media like print..."

Uh, that's cause then we get paid, dude. I'm not just selling my mix tapes out of the back of a car anymore, which is nice, but the hustle just changes, it don't go away. On the other hand, I'm not entirely sure my audience is actually bigger...but then, I live in a li'l bubble, don't I?

Anyway, the link comes via Nate and has links to some very good articles, the intro notwithstanding. I'll be picking through it by and by.

ADDENDUM: I'm not even going to get into "more conservative music criticism will be coming our way," even though I might like to. Does that include meeee? And what the fuck would conservative music criticism be, anyway? Modest Mouse reviews that want to cut corporate taxes?

posted by Mike B. at 1:19 PM 0 comments

Whoa, they're talking about me over at the Saddle Creek message board. I feel kind of dirty.

posted by Mike B. at 11:02 AM 0 comments

Monday, January 10, 2005

This is going to be kind of vague, but nevertheless...

I just got a call from my former doctor, who is apparently doing some sort of presentation on people with my condition who are involved with music. I answered his questions politely, though it was somewhat awkward given that I am at work and, as should be obvious from this post, it's not something I'm entirely comfortable talking about in public. But I was helpful and reasonably friendly.

What I really wanted to say to him, though, was something more along the lines of, "Fuck you, asshole. You're supposed to be some sort of goddamn expert, and it came through in this conversation, in your tone of voice, in the way you asked me questions: you are a Very Important Person and Know Lots Of Things About This Subject. But you wouldn't listen to me back when I was actually your patient; you wouldn't take me seriously, and it wasn't until I got to New York and started seeing a doctor whose main clientele was cute old Chinese ladies in for PT that I got a medication that actually worked and didn't fuck me up. You refer to it as 'very unusual,' but I've met other people on it, and it works really well for them, too, and if you were a real doctor instead of an egotistical dickhead, you would be offering it, too. But I gather from the way you phrase the question that you are not. You asshole. You wanna ask me if my condition has impeded my career in music? It hasn't. But you know what impeded my life? Your treatment, motherfucker. I hope you get eaten by a marmet, and I don't even know how that would work."

This is not what I said, of course; but still.

posted by Mike B. at 6:10 PM 0 comments

Saturday, January 08, 2005

Women of the world! Should you be at a party and see a photographer for a party-covering website, it is your responsibility to flash your tits so that people who were not at that party, and especially people who are not in a big city, can feel like they are really missing out on something[1], even though most parties are, in fact, kinda boring, and there's very few parties with actual titty-flashing, which, thank god, because then I would want to flash my titties, and don't no one want to see that. Trust me.

I mean, on the one hand, titties: yay, but on the other hand, titties: huh? It's girls-gone-wildism outside of the usual context.

In an only semi-related note, being sex-positive in NYC sure is a lot, well, uglier--or, I guess, dirtier--than it is in certain other places, but that's for another time.

[1] In the TimeOut article, they say: "When people come to the site, I want them to say, 'Man, I wish I had been there, because it looked like so much fun."

posted by Mike B. at 2:00 PM 0 comments

Very interesting piece by Douglas on the responsibilties of auteurs to their audience. It's something I know I've discussed before, but nothing springs to mind right now; generally, though, my feeling is, "creatively, do whatever you want, and as an audience member we'll try and give it the benefit of the doubt and maybe it'll lead us to a wider appreciation," but this is mainly based in a reaction to widespread "the early stuff was better, man"-ism, which I rarely find myself agreeing with. (Like I think REM's mid/late-period stuff is waaaaaay better than their early stuff.) And it also brings up my "it's too bad Kevin Shields didn't die" thing. But just go read, we can discuss later maybe. Right now I seriously need to do some mixing.

Also, I note that he says "this is ridiculously long" but it's still about 500 words shorter than my P&J comments. That should tell me something, huh?

ADDENDUM: I left a comment, in response to his first dictum:

It's the duty of people who want to be serious about making stuff, &
already have the necessary basic skills, to:

1) Plan projects that are realistically within their abilities (mantra
for this stage: "I get to talk it up when it's mostly done, and not before"
a.k.a. "don't let your mouth write a check that your ass can't cash");

I understand that failing at #1 is frustrating to fans, but I'm unclear why it's a problem for the creator. Does it have any actual effect on whether or not they end up putting out good work, whether or not it has anything to do with what they've previously announced? For instance, the two post-Kid A Radiohead albums have been preceded by advance notices that had little if anything to do with how the albums actually sounded, but that doesn't make them bad albums, and if Beck's new album turns out not to be a party album, I'll be annoyed, but not because he said it would be a party album, just because I'd like a new Beck party album.

I think what's being suggested is that for certain creative types, the act of disclosing their plans sometimes suffices in their heads for actually carrying them out--that they get enough satisfaction from telling people what they want to do that they don't feel the need to actually do it. Is that a fair read? Is this defensible, and is it applicable to most artists, or just a certain subset? (I.e. "neurotic white guys"?)

UPDATE 2: This is also interesting as another angle to the career-watching-as-pop-pleasure stuff I was talking about in the pop biographism post. It's a very important point that this is also a source of pleasure for cult artists, and in fact is at the heart of the cult appeal: all the stuff surrounding the music becomes highly important. Being excited about there being a Pixies reunion tour or a new MBV album provides a key source of enjoyment and participation, as does arguing with other fans about what it will sound like and whether or not it will be any good; tracking down new tidbits of information and tracking the album's progress; and evaluating it from a careerist standpoint after its release--all these are as important as the music at a certain stage of fandom.

posted by Mike B. at 1:59 PM 0 comments

SONGS I LISTENED TO THIS YEAR THAT I LIKE A LOT (SILTTYTILAL) #4-2005: BAD COMPANY, "FEEL LIKE MAKIN' LOVE"

Everybody's always talking about critical authority. Who has it, who doesn't, if it should exist, if it's reinforcing prejudice. What gives you the right to blah, and who decides that this is good or bad bloo. Well, I have come upon a solution to this problem, and I would like to share it with you today. Who has critical authority?

Me.

That's right, me. Doesn't that make things easier? So from now on, if you have a question about something, if you need a critical issue resolved (i.e., the second Sponge album: sucks or rocks?), just come to me and I will resolve it, and it will be definitive, because why? Because I have critical authority! Isn't that easy?

So for my first proclamation, I offer this: no one is allowed to pretend anymore like the Pixies invented the concept of dynamics. OK, that's a bit unfair. Let's put it more generously: no one is allowed to say that the Pixies invented the concept of a sudden dynamic shift between the sections of a pop/rock song, i.e. you are no longer allowed to say "the Pixies soft verse-loud chorus shift" or any variant thereof. (In a correlary, you will also stop taking Cobain seriously in his joke that he ripped off "Smells Like Teen Spirit" from the Pixies.)

As evidence of this, I give you, first, the "Jailhouse Rock" entry below. (If they could have turned But I will also give you, because I am a just dispensor of critical authority, another example, which revealed itself to me at breakfast this morning. It is, of course, "Feel Like Makin' Love." I've always liked this song, I suppose, at least in the sense that if it was mentioned I would go in my head "dah-duhn, DAH!" Plus, being a young'un, my only exposure to it had really been via TV ads for best-of-the-70s (or "Guitar Rock!") compilations, where they'd play a little snippet of the chorus. And, you know, I liked it enough.

But in much the same way that Grand Funk Railroad's "Some Kind of Wonderful" does, upon full inspection the song reveals itself as something really great. Because the damn thing's two songs in one! And both are totally great pop hits! Now that's efficiency, my friend. And actually, now that I think about it, if this was an obscurity Tenacious D could drop it into their set and easily pass it off as a new track, although, no offense to Jack or Kyle, this is much better than what they come up with. It's passed through self-parody and came out the other side, covered in a kind of sleazy goo that smells musky but appealing, and you are drawn to it like unto a busted leather mama with saggy tits and wrinkly tatoos. Wait, wasn't I saying something about metaphors? Damn.

But so yes (oops! Two straight paragraphs starting with "but," sorry dad), the first song (aka "the verse") is this great pretty little acoustic white-boy loverman number with sort of 70s SoCal harmonies, and then there's a transition not that far removed from the "snhick-snhick" muted distorted guitar whangs that introduce the chorus in another quiet/loud masterpiece, Radiohead's "Creep," and then all of a sudden we're in the midst of this great Southern boogie-rock number, all whump-whump-SCREEEE! And it's great. And and and, the beginning of this riff is basically a half step added to the "Jailhouse Rock" hook, and then you throw the "SCREEEEE!" in afterwards because it's the LOUD part of the song and so it has to be DENSER. (Someone talked about the way AC/DC inverted this sparse-quiet/dense-loud dichotomy at one point, but I can't remember who, or what the point was, so I'm just going to mention it and move on.) And then--woo!--back to the quiet part, i.e. "an entirely different song." But they make it work, and they make it sound good, even though I'm not sure how much that sounding good has to do with the juxtoposition; I think it's more that each individual part is great, and they switch between them just as each is starting to get boring. Plus, the lead guitar in the chorus is fantastic--"totally killer!" report 14-year-old boys. Although I guess it is veeeeeeery similar to the Guess Who's "American Woman," but I don't know the chronology and quite frankly am too lazy to find out. Incidentally, the Guess Who are the source of a great family moment. We're driving by the casino near our town and my dad reads the sign and says, "Hey, the Guess Who are playing." My mom says, "Who?" My dad says, "the Guess Who." My mom says, "No, tell me!" Ah, hilarity.

Finally, a brief note to Life Cafe 983: folks, Q104 was killing it this morning! I mean, "Don't Fear the Reaper"? You gotta be kidding me! The bleary 70s rock was totally going with the rain-soaked ("cats and dogs!" as a guy passing me on the way to breakfast said) day outside. So why'd you have to put on some grating techno CD, huh? If you wanted electro, you could at least put on Phoenix or something. I mean jeez.

posted by Mike B. at 1:56 PM 0 comments

Friday, January 07, 2005

SONGS I LISTENED TO THIS YEAR THAT I LIKE A LOT (SILTTYTILAL) #3-2005: AMERICAN ANALOG SET, "THE POSTMAN"

Again, I've been listening to this song for a while (it is, in fact, the only American Analog Set song I like, and I downloaded it as an MP3 some 3 years ago, I think), and again, my attention was drawn to it recently because of one particular line: "leave for work." Aha! See, the problem with this, and thus the reason I'd only regarded it as something pretty but not like super-extra-good, is that I'd only listened to it at work, but it was, in fact, a song specifically made for not being at work. In fact, it was a song made for me in my short-ceilinged but otherwise very nice room in Ohio, getting ready for the day and listening to music on my stereo (often, actually, Mass Romantic). That I can no longer do this is too bad, but it still extracts the feeling of that particular experience, and presumably one day in the future I will be able to do such a thing once again.

This room--well, first off, I was only in it for like 4 months, and admittedly they were good months for outside reasons, but it sure didn't start out promisingly, with me having to move out of my by-now-miserable former living circumstances in all of six hours, due to general irresponsibility on the part of the person I was exchanging rooms with (long story). Though it had denegrated into a sort of pit of despair, the room had a lot of promise, from my weird little fountain I had set up around the walls to the killer recording setup I'd wedged into half the space. (Got this great sub-bass noise from a mixer feedback loop.) And actually, the new place wasn't so great at first--I was kind of alone in the middle of a dark winter, we couldn't find the thermostat so the house was really cold, the room was, in addition to being short, covered with powdery stubbly plaster that would come off if you brushed against it, my bed was really uncomfortable, and I was just generally miserable. But this wasn't the room's fault, and we'd set it up in a very efficient way that allowed me to keep it clear, although the fact that it was pretty big helped this a lot. As the seasons changed, the real glory of the room came into play: its wall of windows, which let in just an obscene amount of light in the morning, which was actually very nice. By the time late February rolled around, I was very happy to be there, and even happy to get ready to leave, because it was just so lovely in there, with my music playing and the sun shining.

Unfortunately, if you actually read the lyrics, the song's a sort of trite tale of an obsessive mailman. But it sounds like it could've been something much nicer, and it's polite enough to allow you to forget that.

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

Oh my god! The red alert riddim, which "Hot Like We" is based on, is the goddamn salsa nuevo beat! I can no longer like that song! Fuuuuuck.

posted by Mike B. at 4:04 PM 0 comments

OK, I have to admit this intrigued me.

Hello New York Friends,

I wanted to let you know about the upcoming Edie Sedgwick show on
Wednesday, January26th at Northsix...Perhaps you've heard the name: after all,
Edie was a Sixties It-girl, Warholhanger-on, Dylan muse, and all-around
drug-addicted poor-little-rich girl. Sadly,she OD'ed in 1971, leaving Spaceship
Earth without the benefit of her generalvacuousness. Happily, she was reborn at
the dawn of the new millennium within the body of Justin Moyer (alumnus of the
Dischord bands El Guapo and Antelope). The purpose behind her reincarnation? The
only relevant activity available to an artist seeking stability on our era's
shifting sands:

TO SING SONGS ABOUT CELEBRITIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But why? Why sing songs about Molly Ringwald and Tom Hanks? Because Edie
Sedgwick knows the world is tired of both meaning and its absence. Because Edie
is equally sick of activist anthems and insipid, I-inspired irony. Because Edie
offers a Third Way: the substantial song about the substanceless celebrity. Edie
does not serve a lame political cause du jour, but serves and cares for
Sigourney Weaver and Arnold Schwarzenegger the way Woody Guthrie felt for Sacco
and Vanzetti or John Lennon felt we should "Give Peace a Chance." For this is
what Edie is: the beautiful blank; the long-legged, saucer-eyed savant that is
nothing but her culture's mirror; an eloquent ghost in the machine. She is the
Campbell's soup can of the Britney Spearsdecade.

Ah, you Haverford kids.

posted by Mike B. at 10:41 AM 0 comments

Thursday, January 06, 2005

I wanted to reply here to the comments Todd made on the criticism post, just because I think they'll stretch out and I want to give 'em their due. Todd wrote:

Although the Slate movie club has been terribly disappointing, I don't
think it's emblematic of serious criticism in general. Your point about TV
coming already debased and thus providing more lively (detached) criticism is
apposite, but I don't want to read criticism about debased forms. The reason
they're debased is that they're readily accessible and I don't need a gatekeeper
to show me the way. I need a gatekeeper for slow Iranian films. I think that
comparing movie/book criticism to tv/pop music criticism doesn't really work.

Can a pop song be "great" in the same way a movie can be "great"? I don't
think so. 4 minutes of beats and vocals isn't going to illuminate the human
condition for me. (that's not to say that's all movies should do). But the
limitations of the pop form seem to preclude the kind of criticism I enjoy
reading about movies or books.

Dude, are you trying to bait me? Pop songs aren't as good as movies my sweet aunt fanny. Well, no sense getting into that, really, as I doubt I'm going to convince anyone on that, at least not today.

Instead, let me try and clarify something I thought was sorta the basis of my original post, although I guess it didn't come through, and to make a distinction clearer. What I was talking about was specifically criticism, not reviewing. Reviewing tells you "this is good" or "this is not good." But honestly, I'm not too interested in that, and quite frankly I don't need a gatekeeper, or at least not a gatekeeper that takes itself this goddamn seriously. I like critics who are there to sort of talk about things afterwards, to discuss what the movie's about, but I don't really need someone to explain things to me beforehand--I'd rather the work itself do that.

Now, if you want to talk about curatorial functions, that's something else entirely. Certainly I appreciate some pointing out things that are good to me, or warning me away from things that are bad. But look: David Brooks and I agree on pretty much nothing. His value as a critic is worthless, and to a certain degree what they were all bitching about is correct: critics make their judgments in a very public way and inevitably have something at stake besides their simple opinion. I'm much more likely to see a movie if someone I know, and whose tastes I'm familiar with, tells me to go see it. This is for movies. For music, well, I'm confused as to why people don't regularly call MP3blogs criticism, but they surely are, and indeed are probably the best form of reviewing ever invented, because they're actually giving you the thing they want you to hear, framing the context, and letting you go at it. This is not that far removed from being at someone's house and having them say, "Watch this show, I think you'll like it." You can't really top that. So in terms of gatekeeper functions--meh. Reviews are interesting as criticism, but in terms of pointing me towards things, a three line e-mail from a friend is much more valuable to me.

Now, you could say that reviewing was exactly what the movie club was about, but this was part of what was so annoying: given this opportunity to have a sort of grand debate about movies, they instead resorted to squabbling about whether X was good and why people who like X are bad. This is criticism? Who friggin' cares? This is not interesting to read except as gossip, and even then we all know that wordy gossip is bad gossip.

What I'm talking about is criticism as art, a separate form, able to be enjoyed on its own, and equal to any of the other forms of art we're familiar with. (This is not a new concept, I don't think.) So ideally it shouldn't matter what you're talking about--good criticism can be as easily about bad movies (Sontag, the only good thing she ever wrote, god rest her soul) as it is about Shakespeare. That good crit seems to coalesce around genres we're not currently taking seriously seems less about criticism and more about the way it's currently being practiced. I would be happy to read good criticism about highbrow stuff--I don't give a shit what it's about, as I've said. But I'm just not seeing it.

posted by Mike B. at 6:46 PM 0 comments

SONGS I LISTENED TO THIS YEAR THAT I LIKE A LOT (SILTTYTILAL) #2-2005: ELVIS PRESLEY, "JAILHOUSE ROCK"

(Yes, these have been old songs so far; I don't know why. So it goes.)

Reason number four trillion why you should pay more attention to novelty songs, suckas. This started off as a goof for superproducers-of-their-time Lieber and Stoller, a pastiche written for an Elvis movie which began as a sort of campy homage on the music they loved very seriously--check the walking bassline and the Count Basie (?) piano in the chorus. A joke, in other words, about rock 'n' roll's lowbrow take on their highbrow style. But it works as a song, and today we take it fairly seriously, or as seriously as you can take a song featuring dancing prisoners. One reason, of course, is that L&S were so on fire at the time that they couldn't help shoving whole legions of hooks in there, from the now-canonical half-step walkup-boom-boom pattern in the intro, to the actually kinda Pixiesish transition between sparse verse and big, loud chorus.

But the main reason is because Elvis takes the joke and tells it totally straight-faced. He was certainly capable of smirking at his songs, but on the recording, he is singing his guts out, just shredding the shit out of this stupid little tune. The main place to hear this is in the slightly flat, pentatonic-blues single-note business at the end of every verse (and, ps, we should remember how well short verses work) where his voice just seems to be wanting to break free of his throat. It's also there in the way he ends notes in the verses, crescendoing and pitching up and then choking them off suddenly, cutting the sound short. And, of course, there's the "run run run!" right before the solo, a precursor, maybe, of The Scream, in "Hard Day's Night."

This is what I'm saying about taking things unseriously, because someone else is always taking them very seriously, and it's this combination, of telling a joke like it's the truth, of taking a thrown-off little thing and performing it with everything you've got, that can make for greatness.

posted by Mike B. at 6:10 PM 0 comments

Blog-I-did-not-know-before-today Silence Is A Rhythm Two [sic] has posted a very good beefed-up remix of the Scissors' "Comfortably Numb." Well worth a listen. And apparently there's a whole remixes EP, of which I was (perhaps embarassingly) unaware of. What's "The Skins"? Is that one new?

posted by Mike B. at 5:49 PM 0 comments

ROCK 'N' ROLL BON MOTS #024

This is returning briefly to an old subject, but I figured it out: the reason I don't like Chromeo is because I heard Opti-Grab first, and they're just miles and miles better. Now, in all honesty, this might merely be because they have a female member or because I've seen their awesome choreographed dance routines, but nevertheless, I think Opti-Grab spoiled me...

posted by Mike B. at 3:06 PM 0 comments

SONGS I LISTENED TO THIS YEAR THAT I LIKE A LOT (SILTTYTILAL) #1-2005: NICO, "I'LL KEEP IT WITH MINE"

(from this)

Or, "reason number two million why everyone performs Bob Dylan's songs better than Bob Dylan does." I've liked this song for a while, but I didn't even know it was a Dylan song until I went to look up the lyrics this morning, because one line grabbed me, all of a sudden: "come on, give it to me," which comes directly before the "key line" that lands on the tonal resolution Dylan is so fond of. (I'm no Dylan fan, and just off the top of my head I can give you "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall," "Tangled Up In Blue" and "Highway 51 Revisited" as examples of Dylan songs that use this trick. It's a folk trope, but Dylan sure does like it.) I just hadn't caught it before, because it seems so out of line with the tone of the rest of the song. It was the first thing I listened to this morning, because it is so warm and soothing and nice, "Pale Blue Eyes" if Reed had fully gone for it and given into the warmth lurking beneath Nico's cold facade. That rhythmic acoustic guitar! Those gorgeous strings that her voice throws out before it like a penumbra! The way it just holds on chords for like quadruple the number of bars it needs to!

But "give it to me"? The first thing that brings to mind is Jay-Z's "I Just Wanna Love You," not Nico. It's confrontational and brash in a way the song just doesn't suggest sonicly, much more reminiscent of hip-hop or modern R&B than folk-pop. In the grand Dylan tradition, the lyrics don't actually say anything, and my attempt to puzzle out a concrete character or narrative failed, because I just don't think it there--it's maddeningly unspecific, and the creative writing tutor in me wants to put a bunch of big red circles on it. But it does have a feel, and that feel shifts very suddenly with the line in question, from something supportive to something much more desperate or agressive, depending on how you want to take it. It's the "come on" in particular: it's insistant, nagging, pulling at your sleeve, demanding something. The sentiment "I'll keep it with mine" is very sweet, but the way the offer is being made suggests that the song's object of address does not want to give it up, and that turns the song into something much more akin to obsession than love.

posted by Mike B. at 1:55 PM 0 comments