Monday, October 31, 2005
So people really like that new Madonna song "Hung Up" eh? They don't think it just sounds like the brilliant JLC remix of "What You Waiting For" with a melody stolen from four or five other songs? I mean, it's not bad, but I'm having a hard time hearing it without just wanting to hear the Gwen remix instead.
posted by Mike B. at 11:56 AM
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Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Two new reviews in Flagpole: Franz Ferdinand and Richard Hawley. Both albums are very good and worth your time and money. I think I am going to start referring to Franz Ferdinand as "The Franz," as I did on a CD I burned yesterday. I also am unclear why people think they are a singles band. The last album was one of the few that year I enjoyed listening to most of the way through! As for Richard Hawley, it sounds especially good on a Sunday morning. Give it a back-to-back with the new Rosebuds album. Perhaps more notably, here is an article about what various musicians would be like as zombies, written by Mr. Chris and myself. Accompanied by a drawing of zombie Mike Mills eating human Chris Buck, which should really be a t-shirt.
posted by Mike B. at 11:40 AM
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Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Just in case you missed 'em, a few choice cuts from my MP3blog rounds: First and foremost: Roman's "I Found Love" at MFR. It reminds me of one of my favorite overlooked tracks, Dykehouse's "Chainsmoking," but is a bit more rock, despite not having a very rock feel. Sort of New Romantics with a touch of 70s country. (Also worth checking out: Who Made Who, though not as crucial.) This one's going on repeat for a while. The new Girls Aloud song, "Biology," is available at Fluxblog and is mind-meltingly good and pretty much ungraspable, in the best possible way. It's like one of those really happy babies who appears to be doing something shouldn't so you grab it to stop it but it just totally ignores you and gets free and wobbles over to the ashtray or drill press or what have you. White Stripes blues adds a glam beat then goes house then goes straight euro-pop and then goes somewhere else and you've lost track. Finally, the writeup for OK Go's "Invincible" over at the redesigned PopText is more about Smallville than the song itself, but also applies, and you should go read it.
posted by Mike B. at 5:07 PM
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Tyler at Le Fou nails it about Rehearsing My Choir (again) and you should go read what he has to say, if you are interested in this sort of thing. If at any point in the past I've intimated that it's not necessarily a fun album to listen to, I apologize. This morning it was just right in a way no CD's been for me for a few weeks now.
posted by Mike B. at 2:29 PM
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Monday, October 24, 2005
I knew I liked Jacques Lu Cont before, but I never knew he was so cute! I especially like how his looks compares with all the other boys there. Madonna at Mis-Shapes seems like the kind of cultural moment about which one (and by "one" I of course mean "me") could write several thousand words, but since I don't think that's necessarily the best idea, let's just let this post serve in its stead.
posted by Mike B. at 2:50 PM
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And so it begins. There's certainly lots to argue with here, mainly the idea that the way in which she thinks the album's enjoyable--as a subject to examine--isn't as legitimate or immediate a source of enjoyment as anything else, but I don't know if it's worth it. I do notice that both Amanda and The Modern Age consider it somehow necessary to have a clear idea of the narrative of Choir to enjoy it, which I fear may be my fault in some way; certainly this is leagues more transparent, narrative-wise, than Blueberry Boat, but because of the way that album's come to be perceived, maybe it's now impossible to regard any Fiery Furnaces album as superficially straightforward with a complex underpinning, which I think is the way Blueberry Boat was consumed. I just got into that album for fun, for more fun, and I think the songs still worked whether or not you really had any idea what was going on. The lyrics sounded good, and they sound good on Choir, too. I have absolutely no impulse to seize on the chronological through-line here, because each track is a great example of the kind of rambling, self-contained anecdotes grandparents are so good at. I think we may have gotten the wrong idea here. Don't stress the comprehension too much; it's a good enough album to be enjoyable no matter how much attention you're paying to it.
posted by Mike B. at 1:00 PM
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Wednesday, October 19, 2005
I give the Go! Team a middling review in Flagpole today. I'd never actually heard the full album until it got released stateside, but since that was due to me not liking the songs I'd gotten enough to want to download it, this is legitimate, I feel. Another one of those albums I'm like "be better! I know you can!" Maybe next time.
posted by Mike B. at 11:29 AM
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Tuesday, October 18, 2005
In 10 years, someone is going to write a great piece where they go through all the OC mix CDs track-by-track. It's really hard not to do right now, honestly.
posted by Mike B. at 3:06 PM
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Monday, October 17, 2005
Hello there New York Times readers. My Blueberry Boat pieces can be found at the following links: Intro What the series will be about. o ne "Quay Cur" two "Straight Street" three "Blueberry Boat" four "Chris Michaels" five "Paw Paw Tree" six "I Lost My Dog" seven "Mason City" eight "Chief Inspector Blancheflower" nine "Spainolated" As you can tell, I've never actually finished the series, which at this point I'm going to write off as a reflection of the album itself and its deliberately unclosed nature. Alternately, I am lazy. If you want to try a summary, though, you could always go with The High Hat. ADDENDUM: For the record, Choir seems notable to me for the ways in which it avoids the narrative obfuscation of Blueberry Boat. Letting the vocals roll in free verse instead of rhyming couplets (as was generally the case with BB) allows much more of the story to come, and since the presumption here is that it's a reflection of an individual's life rather than a delibrately constructed epic story (of a sort), the kind of linkages that proved so fruitful with BB will probably be less notable on Choir, at least from the lyrics I've seen. [NOTE: I know somebody has helpfully transcribed some of the songs, but I can't figure out who. Anyone?] Still, there's lots more we could do with BB itself, really: The Face Knife himself recently pointed out that the refrain from "Straight Street" is actually a quote from the Hitchcock film The Lady Vanishes. I can't lie: I haven't spent that much time with the album. So all of this could well prove wrong. If you're interested, you could also ask Matos and James Rabbit what they think. Also, one regular clap clap reader says she likes it better than Blueberry Boat. So there you go. I've been meaning but unable to put up a tripartate live show report, but since we're talking about the Town Hall show anyway, let me just say that the new album parts reflected the Furnaces' tendency to drop the goodness level in the middle of their sets; I noticed myself drifting off at roughly the same chronological point in the Choir medley that I did in the megamix that dominated the last tour. It was very well played, but too loud to hear the lyrics and too samey to let the hooks come through. The rest of the show, though, was full of geekboy delights: "Quay Cur" all the way through! Blancheflower and Blueberry Boat with just Matt on the keys and Eleanor singing! Etc. etc. It was interesting to see them with the new rhythm section, especially the way Bob was playing the basslines for the new songs much the same way I remember Toshi playing them for the old songs; apparently that's just the way Matt likes his bassists to play. The Furnaces are a fun band to get geeky about because they really reward that; I would have enjoyed hearing this version of "Blancheflower" even if it was my first Furnaces show, but knowing how they'd done it before made it especially enjoyable. Finally: woo, Bitter Tea!
posted by Mike B. at 12:58 PM
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Friday, October 14, 2005
Hi ho--my band is playing the Knitting Factory Old Office tomorrow night, but one of the bands we were going to play with has had to drop out at the last minute. If you have any suggestions for who we could get to fill the slot, like, right now, please post them here and/or e-mail me. The Old Office is a very nice venue but has a somewhat small stage and not necessarily the best PA in the world, just FYI. Also: uh, hey, my band's playing tomorrow! You should totally come.
posted by Mike B. at 10:51 AM
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Thursday, October 13, 2005
I have a number of items in the Voice's 2005 Best of New York issue, but the big thing is an essay about piers. I'm very happy with how it turned out. There was a very funny little typo in my "Best Karaoke Bar" entry, but it has since been fixed, so I won't be a jerk and point it out. More content here shortly, unless I get too drunk while playing video games. I mean, while getting forgiven for my future sins. I mean...
posted by Mike B. at 2:56 PM
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Saturday, October 08, 2005
Carl expounds a bit on my Liz review: I think the more salient one has to do with the fallout that festers when fans treat artists as their jesters and slaves, as their aesthetic performing ponies, and basically think like consumers buying tastee-freezes rather than people trying to take in an artwork. (Not that it's un-okay to enjoy music like a frozen treat, but hating it is more complexicated.) Also, USE live: holy shit, you guys. Everybody's coming next time they're in town.
posted by Mike B. at 5:54 PM
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Wednesday, October 05, 2005
At the prompting of a certain editor, here's the "director's cut" of the Liz review. Imagine, if you will, a room filled with the excesses of a teenager who has suddenly gotten more money than they could ever use. This room has video game machines, movie theater screens, a full bar, a deep fryer, huge in-wall speakers, and, hey, why not, a dirt bike track. One day this hypothetical teenager moves out, and before the middle-aged couple that's going to live there move in, they do a renovation. And so all the toys are removed and replaced with tasteful, solid wooden furniture, the carpet is torn up and tasteful oak floors are put down, and the disco balls are removed in favor of tasteful filigreed metal light fixtures. Where there was a bar there is now a divan; where there was a dirt-bike track there is now an exercise room. As you can probably guess, Liz Phair's last album, which was self-titled and included production work from the Matrix, is the first room, and Liz Phair's new album, Somebody's Miracle, is the second room. And where the first room might as well be painted in a shade of Manic Panic nail polish called "POP," the second room uses a color of paint Martha Stewart has decided to call "Adult Contemporary." Maybe the second room sounds better to you; that would certainly be fair. I'm not sure I'd want to live in a room with a dirt bike track, either. Thing is, though, this isn't a living situation we're discussing here, it's an album of music, and that's a whole different set of standards. Liz Phair gleamed and smiled, yelled and whispered, lost its breath and jumped before it looked, and it was an absolute blast, the funnest fun ever. Her new album walks calmly down a pedestrian mall, hands in pockets, talking in even tones about its day at the office, backed by unobtrusive production: tasteful slide guitar, chiming electric guitar, drums blending smoothly into the mix. There are few effects. None of the song titles include the word "cum." This is not to say it's bad, or even wholly mediocre. There's nothing obviously awful here, and on a few tracks it even distinguishes itself, generally the ones that sound most like the Rolling Stones: "Can't Get Out of What I'm Into"'s guitars ape the horn-imitating riff on "Satisfaction," and "Why I Lie" sounds not unlike "Honky Tonk Women." But overall, while it's not horrible, there's also no real reason to listen to it. I loved Liz Phair as a whole, loved it more, much more, than any of Phair's other albums, loved not only the Matrix's giddy radio-pop, but the propulsive pop-rock of the other tracks. Phair's gift had always been for lyrics, and on that album the music rose to the occasion, too. But on Miracle, numerous tracks are basically "Divorce Song" without interesting lyrics and structure, and that's not much at all. Phair famously took a lot of flak for making a "sellout" pop album, partially from fans but mainly from critics, who were savage in their strangled j'acccuses, and as of press time, there's been no reevaluation, even though the album deserves it. When she sat down to make this new album, then, all she knew was that not only did she fail to have a hit album, but she also pissed off a large portion of her fanbase. (She may not have realized that she gained a whole new crop of fans, like me, or she might have decided that we're not worth it; either way, it didn't seem to enter into the picture.) And so she backed off from the teen-pop thing, to try and win back the newly-relevant indie nation, while simultaneously maintaining a pop sheen that allow her songs to sit comfortably next to Cheryl Crow's. (I'm not saying this was calculated; if anything, Miracle is closer in sound to her previous albums than Liz Phair, so this is presumably more her style. If anything, the self-titled album was calculated. But sometimes being calculating pays off artistically, too.) But Miracle is so boring, it's the classic case of trying to please everyone and actually pleasing no one. Who to blame for this? I blame you. You, the cowardly, narrow-minded little shits that constitute the oxymoronically-named "listening public," who heard Liz Phair and turned up your noses, who saw the half-naked press photos and exclaimed, "How can she do such things, when she has (gasp, faint) a child to think of?" Well, now she's made an album that won't embarrass anyone, and guess what? It's as interesting as baby food. Liz Phair was a masterpiece, and we could have had another one. Instead we got, well, Somebody's Miracle, and what do you really need to say about that besides the title? It seems antithetical to the dictates of art to ask someone to make music that isn't disreputable, that won't bring shame upon their family, but that's what we asked for, and Liz delivered. So keep it up, kids, keep raising your voice in indignation when an artist ventures outside your tiny circle of acceptability; keep it up, and we'll get more shit like Somebody's Miracle, like Funeral, Picaresque, I'm Wide Awake It's Morning, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, You Forgot It In People, Paw Tracks, more boring, boring, boring music. Don't change a goddamn thing. Things are going great.
posted by Mike B. at 11:42 AM
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Three new Flagpole reviews: the Frames (dislike), the Rosebuds (like), and Liz Phair. I was going to take this opportunity to apologize for the Liz review, and say something along the lines of "I was very grumpy that night, apparently," but Hillary (who also has two excellent reviews this week) seems to like it, so I will point you toward it. I had a sense there would be some sighing over the new one, so, I don't know, I decided to just let my inner record nerd out of his cage. There was more shit I meant to talk here, but duty calls.
posted by Mike B. at 10:59 AM
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Saturday, October 01, 2005
I will admit to being a bit suspicious about the Voice's review of the Bratz: Rock Angels album at first, but it gets good, even if it can't bring itself to actually endorse the album. (Yes, yes, the lyrics are horrible, but really, do they matter?) Give it a read. And get yourself that album already!
posted by Mike B. at 4:27 PM
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Saw Electric Six last night and it was pretty fantastic; "Rock 'n' Roll Evacuation" might be my concert moment of the year, not only for The Moment, but for the anticipation of The Moment, plus the fact that the rest of the concert (like the rest of their songs) tended to employ pretty uniform dynamics, so when there was that brief break, no one was prepared for it and it was able to cut through without the usual intrusions of cheers and "woo"s that break up any attempt at a quiet moment at live shows. Alternately, I was rocking out so hard that there was some huge animal rampaging through the room and I failed to notice. Miss Clap and I were, we were told, the only ones rocking out to "Jimmy Carter," but we were seriously rocking out, so it's OK. Before the third verse I yelled, "Now tell us about Ronald Reagan!" and then when he did the kind of toolish guys around us gave me high-fives, which made me feel bad. But then he said the slouching toward Bethlehem line and it was all OK. Man that song's good. Dick Valentine didn't look anything like I expected him to. Kind of looked like Rob Thomas in my recollection, but I don't think that's right. Anyway, go see 'em. Now the question is: do I brave the Knitting Factory to (finally) see USE?
posted by Mike B. at 4:15 PM
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