Mars Lights – 2012 May 5, Saturday – Kansas City, MO – Czar Bar w/ Sundiver, Modern Arsonists, and Bloody Knives. $5 in advance, $7 day of show, 8 PM doors, 9 PM music (we play right at 9!)
The Sleepover – 2012 March 31, Saturday – Omaha, NE – Accelerando Coffee. Free show for grand opening from 10 AM – 4 PM (we play noon – 1 PM)
The Sleepover in the Daily Nebraskan: “Band experiments with variety of sounds and focuses on stress-free music production“
Saturday, Feb. 25 at The Slowdown in Omaha – The Sleepover w/ Anniversaire, All Young Girls Are Machine Guns
Doors at 8, show at 9. $7.
Tuesday, March 6 at The Zoo Bar in Lincoln – Mynabirds w/ The Sleepover, Son of ’76, and The Watchmen.
Doors at 9, Sleepover at 9:20, Sons of ’76 at 10:20, Mynabirds at 11:20. $8.
The Hunter should be a moment for metal in the musical mainstream like Metallica (“The Black Album”) was for Lars & Co.
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This is a potentially troubling comparison for several reasons: the Black Album, besides spawning a ton of hit singles, can be criticized as a commercial sellout, as an aesthetic betrayal of the band’s sound and identity (and fans’ expectations of such), and for not rocking nearly as hard as Metallica’s earlier work. These points 1) have some truth to them regarding Metallica, 2) could also be applied to The Hunter, but 3) would be absolutely wrong in Mastodon’s case.
The Hunter has cleaner vocals, more straightforward rhythms, and lacks an overall narrative or conceptual structure relative to Mastodon’s previous albums – things fans, myself included, love – but it shreds as hard (dare I claim… harder?), presenting the band’s strengths and signature elements in a new context that happens to be accessible to anyone who likes loud music at all.
In a parallel universe, The Hunter is where radio-friendly metal should be in 2012; pushing the boundaries of what the mainstream can absorb in terms of polyrhythms, weird riffs, and song structure, while also providing immediacy and viscereality that can bring you under its spell on the first listen. Don’t miss it.
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There are a million guitar-pop bands (I’ve been in at least six of them myself), and the tiny variations among bands’ styles can elicit widely varying opinions of those bands. Cory adores Surfer Blood, for example; I think they’re good, but they haven’t struck me as anything special yet.
On the other hand, within the walls of my house, The Stars Are Indifferent to Astronomy is a four-star record, and I’ve listened to it every day since CA gave me the vinyl a couple weeks ago. (We’re also seeing them in Omaha in March; psyyyched!) Nada Surf’s particular spin on catchy, literate, slightly muscular guitar-pop hits me exactly the right way; I just can’t predict if you’ll feel the same.
Case in point; people went nuts for the Yuck record last year which, again, seemed solid but nothing to get excited about to me. So we’re in a weird situation where 90s revivalism is over-hyped (I don’t know why; maybe it really felt that good in the moment), and I’m under-rating a record I love (because of how I imagine some imaginary aggregate of listeners and readers will feel about Astronomy‘s place in the musical universe a few years from now, when it’s not new). Yuck is an 8.1, Astronomy’s a 2/5, I feel the opposite, and I’m half of the issue because I’m trying to bring a normal distribution to my ratings and have chosen to offer them as a guide to readers, and not necessarily a reflection of how I feel about the record myself (which is what these paragraphs are for).
You might find Nada Surf more of a four than a two if you like: subject matter that goes beyond boy-likes/hates-girl, vocal melodies and phrasing that follow more intricate lines than usual in guitar-pop, stellar rhythm sections, and unpredictable harmonic shifts between verses and choruses. I’m not sure why I love Nada Surf and not Surfer Blood, but these are some of the musical differences, for what they’re worth.
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What happened to hip-hop being the black CNN? Hip-hop is much bigger than the conscious stuff, Public Enemy, and black Americans’ experiences, but in this period of national import, as we struggle with economic depression and serious differences regarding what kind of country we will be, I hoped two of our biggest stars in not just music, but culture as a whole, would have more to say.
Nada Surf managed to weigh in on global warming pretty artfully (“No Snow on the Mountain”), which is a concern that’s no less real or acute for being very Stuff White People Like. What about jobs, wages, and working conditions? As I type I realize I’m projecting my own concerns onto this album, but it still seems like an opportunity has been missed. I haven’t written much about those issues either, so I’ll commit to working on addressing them while calling on Kanye and Jay to do the same.
Watch the Throne is a good record because of its constituent parts – beats, especially, but also flashes of lyrical brilliance – but it adds up to less than the sum of them, and is culturally significant as much for what it doesn’t say as for what it does. It’s of its moment, good for what it is, but falling short of its potential to be less time-bound in the way that The Blueprint or Late Registration, in their greatness, are.
| MR|Review directs readers’ limited attention among works via ratings, and within works via prose, focusing on works where our opinion diverges from critical or popular consensus, or we have significant insight that compliments or challenges readers’ aesthetic experience. |
Joe Younglove of Lincoln, NE wrote the following on Panda Face’s “Up in Space,” which Brandon shared with me. Consider it an invitation to revisit PFace’s second album as we close in on a year since its release!
Also, Strawberry Burns fans, stay tuned to the band for some great news – an inside source tells me a big announcement is near. -h
First off, the album cover artwork is fantastic. It’s all green and blue, with some red and white. It looks like a kid’s drawing, but it could have easily been done by Panda Face himself, aka Brandon McKenzie, also a member of local acts Strawberry Burns and Rock Rose. However, I think it says the “F word” on the cover, so it’s probably not a children’s drawing.
Either way, the art makes the album look quite fun, especially with the name Panda Face, and the album title, Up in Space.
The first song, “Always You,” is really good! I quite enjoy its wistful, spacey, and charming essence. The vibe switches gears with the foreboding third song, “Dreamgirl Nightmare.” However, it’s great to hear the continuation of fun space sounds established in the first two songs.
After song four, the bright delight “Fly Away To Your Destiny,” comes “Some Dark Roads,” the first real slow song straying from the established “Casio space organ” sounds. It’s pretty, but the subject matter is pretty grim, with Panda Face declaring that he himself “has been down some dark roads.”
“The Heart of a Lover” has a gothic-tinged, new wave sound. The guitar tone sounds like it’s coming from the tiniest amp, perhaps a toy amp.
“Something Good” features great synth swells in the background, and “That Buzzzz” reminds me of a Ween song, but I’m not sure which one right yet.
At the end, there’s the SSX remix of “Fly Away To Your Destiny.” I don’t know who SSX is, but he sure did a great job “beefing up” the song, and incorporating a more exciting beat.
I sensed a contrast or combo of bright and dark throughout Up in Space, akin to the style of eels or Sparklehorse. The songs sound mostly electronic, but it’s a more vintage electronic sound, as opposed to the highly-polished, pristine and sometimes soulless sound.
I don’t know where the album was recorded, but it seems like a bedroom or basement recording. It’s certainly not your “big-budget Aerosmith or Def Leppard” sound, but that’s OK with me.
Listening to some Randy Newman early this morning; I’ve been getting into his music slowly (there’s a lot to take in). He more- or less-obliquely talks about race quite a bit, and particularly the song “Yellow Man” (“Got to have a yellow woman if you’re a yellow man”) has always been a bit awkward for me to hear. I realized, though, that given his frequent use of irony this is really a song that implicitly supports inter-racial romance by illustrating the absurity of notions of racial purity. I feel better about listening to it, now that I have an answer to the question “What is this?!” if it comes on shuffle while somebody is over.
The DragonForce contest is still open, everybody. https://mrfuriousrecords.com/blog/2012/01/14/ultra-beatdown/
Two Sleepover shows coming up – Feb. 25 at the Slowdown in Omaha, and (just confirmed) March 6 with Mynabirds (!!!) at the Zoo Bar in Lincoln.
Been busy with little things in the studio: Mars Lights demos and writing vocals, Ventura drum practice, Fight Songs EP demos and drums, planning for another EP (Crushed)… and probably more that I can’t think of right now. -h
The other week I picked up DragonForce’s Ultra Beatdown on vinyl, and am not going to use the free mp3 download code. If you’d like to, please contact me via email or comment. First responder gets the album – enjoy! -h
This past week I’ve picked up the Listening Project series (pt.1 – pt. 2 – pt. 3 – pt. 4 – pt. 5 – pt. 6); to mark MFR’s fifth birthday in September 2009 (!), I’ve been listening to every release in order, making notes as I go. It may be for the best that some time has passed between these more recent releases and listening back to them.
MFR028 – Drive-By Honky – Double Live Platinum
MFR029 – Sally Ride – There is Something and not nothing
“Science questions the common assumptions which seem to be true to everyone, to the layman as well as to the average scholar. Then the genius comes and asks for the basis of these accepted assumptions; when they are proved not to be true, an earthquake in science occurs out of the depth. Such earthquakes occurred when Copernicus asked if our sense-impressions could be the ground of astronomy, and when Einstein questioned whether there is an absolute point from which the observer could look at the motions of things. An earthquake occurred when Marx questioned the existence of an intellectual and moral history independent of its economic and social basis. It occurred in the most eruptive way when the first philosophers questioned what everybody had taken for granted from times immemorial — being itself.
“When they became conscious of the astonishing fact, underlying all facts, that there is something and not nothing, an unsurpassable depth of thought was reached.”
— Paul Tillich, from “The Shaking of the Foundations”
Chapter 7, The Depth of Existence“Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, 0 Lord.”
— Psalm 130:1
MFR030 – White Air – White Air
MFR031 – Songwriter Power Rangers on KZUM
MFR032 – Panda Face – Panda Face
18. Feist – Metals. Feist’s The Reminder was the soundtrack to my first road trip with CA (the trip that started us as us), and we’ve waited a long time to hear more from her. Metals doesn’t disappoint; it’s a grower, like her previous records, and the songs reveal themselves to me one by one as I return to it. It’s a self-assured record from an artist whose aesthetic voice becomes richer with each experience. Interesting sidenote; the presence of male backing vocals on many of the tracks give Metals a different gender vibe than the exquisitely, powerfully feminine Reminder (where male voices are saved for the very last track). -h
17. Shabazz Palaces – Black Up. Many of the songs on Black Up bang, but only for a few bars at a time; it’s a tease of an album, in that sense, dancing with my expectations like a seduction, and I like it. It’s hip-hop, it’s post-rock, it’s spoken word, it’s free jazz, and it isn’t like anything else you’ve heard, this year or before. -h
16. Foo Fighters – Wasting Light. Grohl & Co. launched a literal earthquake in New Zeland the other week, and there isn’t a more perfect tectonic reaction to the band and its fans than that. Swaths of rock radio are revealed as the weak tea they are every time Foo Fighters release a record; they’re unabashedly an arena band, powered by Dave’s gee-I’m-lucky-aren’t-I charisma, and to hear them through any other ears at this point is to miss their best side. Wasting Light isn’t a perfect record – there’s the requisite moment of clunky lyrics, and Dave seems a bit spiritually thin compared to some of his other work – but it’s miles better than anything else this year in terms of what it aims for, and I’ve spent hours and hours with it since its release, with no sign of letting up. -h
15. Big K.R.I.T. – Return of 4eva. Character bursts from the speakers on K.R.I.T.’s mixtape. It’s personal in a way I’ve never heard hip-hop be; not confessional, not narrative, but just the stamp of K.R.I.T.’s being infused in every word and beat. The man is going about his day, dropping classic-sounding Southern jams along the way. Maybe I hear a kindred spirit in that sense. Listening to Return of 4eva is like hanging out with one of those friends you meet and feel like you’ve always known. -h
14. Wye Oak – Civilian. Surprise winner of the AV Club’s year-end list, Civilian’s strengths and charms are in its details; judicious layers of guitars and keys that sound more complex together than I’d guess from the individual parts, arrangements tailored to the needs of the song rather than indie conventions, and vocal production that hovers beautifully between atmosphere and lyric clarity. I’m not sure I can say why this album spoke to me, but it has a spirit that I can’t shake. -h
13. The Roots – undun. Two albums in a row, I thought that The Roots had written themselves into a corner. Rising Down was the bleakest, hungriest, most stressed set I could imagine the band making; anything harder would risk becoming caricature, while anything lighter might seem weak. They brought How I Got Over last year, an album whose first half is blacker than black, but then breaks the dawn with “Now Or Never” / “How I Got Over” / “The Day,” creating a redemptive arc that stretches back to the opening bars of 2006’s Game Theory. But where can you go from there?
Into the story of Redford Stephens, it turns out, the fictional (but composite of several of The Roots’ friends and family members) figure whose words and thoughts are the lyrics of “undun.” The narrative isn’t necessary to bob your head to the likes of “I Remember,” “Lighthouse,” and single “The Other Side,” but the care and deft touch the band takes with the story elevate “undun” to the level of a serious artistic statement in the very best sense, detailing Redford’s life while leaving the plot largely in the silences between what’s said and played.
Reversing the track order gives another perspective on Redford. -h
12. St. Vincent – Strange Mercy. Stripped back – guitar, bass, drums, voice – Annie Clark’s work as St. Vincent punches above its weight. It brings compelling songwriting, weirdo guitar tone to kill for, and synth bass sustaining at 100% (giving everything a subliminal claustrophobic vibe) to the party.
That’s a metaphorical party; this is anything but background music. It quietly insists on my full attention, and I acquiesce every time. Hearing Strange Mercy is a bit of an event in any day. It sets off the time it’s on from the time before, and after. -h
11. Bon Iver – Bon Iver. I’m not a For Emma… fan. It was Bon Iver’s Daytrotter session that pulled me in to their sound, all delicate space and surprising strength. Bon Iver continues in the vein of that session as an amorphous, resonating set of songs that convey, or create, emotional depth and complexity as much through the words and notes I don’t hear as the ones I do. This record will age incredibly well; twenty years from now, it will sound both as inviting and impenetrable as it does today, always offering a new sonic corner to explore. -h
10. Fleetwood Mac – (everything besides the Peter Green stuff) (1970’s Kiln House forward). My parents used to play me all kind of Fleetwood Mac when I was a kid, and I don’t remember disliking it, but I always thought of it as “parent-rock.” That is, it didn’t speak to me in the same way that Green Day and Nirvana spoke to me. Then, just in the last few years, I was able to listen to it with a fresh frame of mind. Some of the songs instantly bring me back to, say, 1990 when I hear them, but I no longer think of it as music my parents listened to.
When I listen to some of these songs, I am shocked at how good they are. To me, Fleetwood Mac are right up there with all the other Great Bands. They don’t sounds like the Beatles or Zeppelin or any other band, but they epitomize ‘70s and ‘80s glitter-beard-tambourine rock better than any other act. They’re decadent, they’re glossy, they’re fun, they’re coed, and they’re rife with drama. They sound totally unique, and because of that, they are the proprietors of a very specific kind of magic. I am not sure how one would go about attempting to replicate such a band, although I would try if I thought I could come close!
I recognize that the Mac isn’t for everyone. Not everyone’s going to love a song like “Everywhere.” It’s bouncy and cheesy and maybe even a little bit ridiculous. But if you love it, you REALLY love it. -Cory
9. tUnE-yArDs – W H O K I L L. My entry into W H O K I L L-appreciation was the bass playing. Merrill’s outfit generated a lot of buzz with vocal loops and quirky arrangements, but I wasn’t hooked until I realized that there was soul music bubbling away underneath it all. After that, I was gone, absorbed into the record’s universe-of-sound-unto-itself. -h
8. The Strokes – Is This It? (2001). I almost included this record in my discussion of Surfer Blood, Wavves, and Best Coast (below), since I like it for all the same reasons, but it’s got a NYC-vibe instead, plus it’s like 10 years older, so it’s its own thing on this list. I’m not going to do into detail for this one: suffice to say that it’s something I didn’t “get” when it came out, but it just hit me out of nowhere recently. I think I watched the video for “Someday” on Time Warner On-Demand, and I was surprised at how powerful the song was, and how emotional it made me. The lyrical theme of “I know I’m kind of a dirtbag but I’m trying hard to change and I think it’s getting better” resonates with me. -Cory
7. The Breeders – Last Splash (1993). Probably the best two dollars I have ever spent; I picked it up at HPB in Lawrence on a whim because of the Pixies association, never expecting that Last Splash would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Doolittle and Surfer Rosa (and is a better casual listen than either of those records, to boot). It’s charming, it’s feisty, it’s weird, it’s catchy, and when I put it on in the car, I leave it in for three or four full spins before I’m ready to hear anything else. -h
6. Best Coast – Crazy For You. See Surfer Blood, Tarot Classics. -Cory
5. Wavves – King of the Beach. See Surfer Blood, Tarot Classics. -Cory
4. Radiohead – The King of Limbs. Usually, big records (like Kanye’s) are announced months beforehand in order to build up enough hype, and then the dates are often pushed back. Between the time of the announcement and the actual release, everyone talks about what the band has done thus far and what they might do on their upcoming record. By the time the record comes out, everyone’s expectations are so defined and focused that it’s easy for the record to fall short.
These days, Radiohead avoids the weird and new interactive nature of music by announcing their records about three days before they actually come out. They’ll announce it on a Sunday, everyone flips out on Monday, and then when it comes out Tuesday, no one knows what to expect. As with In Rainbows, The King of Limbs was a surprise for us all.
As per their M.O., this record doesn’t sound a whole heck of a lot like their past releases. It’s got the same Radiohead feel (weird chord transitions, unconventional arrangements and time signatures, crisp production, cryptic metaphors). But it’s different. It’s a lot more subdued and a little darker than In Rainbows: in comparison, In Rainbows was an outright rock record. The King of Limbs is more about textures and atmosphere, and less about big melodies and beats (something like “Idioteque” would sound totally out of place here). This is also one of the most uniform Radiohead records I’ve heard; there’s no “Fitter Happier” or “Hunting Bears” to break up the record. Instead, it’s 37 minutes of densely-packed music that’s creepy enough to be used in a David Lynch movie, but mellow enough to be used as study-music.
Due to personal preference, The King of Limbs isn’t one of my favorite Radiohead records, but it’s not bad at all; in fact, it’s great, and I’m glad they made it. If you’re a fan of Radiohead, you should have it, and while you might only listen to it a few times a year, it will be 100% perfect for those particular situations. -Cory
3. Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues. First, I was thrilled by first single “Helplessness Blues.” Later, I was slightly disappointed by what I perceived as unnecessary fussiness and eclecticism. Then we saw them play.
The show transformed Helplessness Blues for me; after it, I understood. I felt the difficulty of writing something to follow the self-titled debut, the struggle of becoming slightly older young men, and the need to tell some stories other than our own. (Or is it tell our stories through others?) This is still a record for established fans of the band, but please, for your own sake, become one.
2. Surfer Blood – Tarot Classics. I’m grouping these three releases together because they all represent my gravitation toward a certain aesthetic. I’d call all three bands “punk” bands, but that’s debatable. What’s important, at least to me, is that these bands write songs are catchy, simple, and scuzzy. Melody is my favorite thing about music, so that’s the hook. If songs get too brainy and complex and epic and stretched, I tend to tune out, so I’ve always been drawn to straightforward progressions and arrangements. And, more and more, I can’t get enough of reverby, fuzzy production. It sounds cool, and it tempers a song’s sweetness.
Howie and I had a conversation about the Wavves records, and we agreed that, production-wise, the music is somewhat unsettling. It’s not quite balanced, EQ-wise, and you get the feeling that something is missing. Since I love things that throw me for a loop, I’m a big fan of the music’s unsettling nature, but I’m not sure if Howie feels the same way :) But it makes a WORLD of difference; if the song “Post Acid” by Wavves were produced by Brian Wilson or Butch Vig or someone similar, it would still be just as catchy, but it would have the opposite emotional effect. Instead of being slightly alarming, it would be totally sweet summertime fun song that would invade restaurants, radio, and TV shows. But as it stands, it’s in the “uncanny valley” of pop-music: it’s almost an accessible pop song, but there’s a little something about it that creeps people out. Which is why I love it.
Wavves is the most extreme example of this aesthetic. Although all three of these bands are in the same basic genre of music (surf-pop-punk, I guess?), I would guess that Best Coast and Surfer Blood are a lot more pleasing to the average ear. Best Coast is a female-fronted dreamy and eerie pop group, and most of the songs about summer and boys. The record is captivating, but it doesn’t necessarily demand a whole lot of energy from you; it can be a casual driving record or something that’s a little more intense, depending on your mood. The songs are short, sweet, and are saturated with wistfulness.
In my opinion, Surfer Blood are the band that best bridges the gap between this particular genre of music and the rest of pop music. They write some of the most undeniable catchy songs I’ve ever heard, and even though I’ve heard the songs a million times, they never fail to get me all jazzed up. Their new EP, Tarot Classics, take their melodic fuzz-rock formula once step further. Just like Vampire Weekend, they used their second release to add serious emotional depth to their already-successful approach. This EP encapsulates everything I love about pop music: great lyrics, insanely infectious melodies, great guitar hooks, unconventional yet simple themes; the list goes on and on. “Miranda” represents the direction I wish Weezer had taken; it fits right in with songs like “Susanne” and “You Gave Your Love To Me Softly.” These are the songs that make my 29-year-old grown-up heart yearn for the excitement, frustration, and uncertainty of my 17-year-old self. These songs sound like driving around Ventura looking for something to do, and hoping to bump into girls from school that I’d be too afraid to interact with.
That’s another factor, I think: if distances makes the heart grow fonder, I miss California more and more with each passing winter. You’ll notice a common oceanic trend in these bands’ names (Surfer, Coast, Waves), and their music reflects that attitude as well. I can’t always get back home to get rad, but these records help me out a lot, especially when I’ve got to shovel the damn sidewalk and scrape my damn windshield. -Cory
1. TV on the Radio – Nine Types of Light. In five years of making these lists, I’ve never felt stronger about one album as my favorite of the year. It was a disappointment the first time I heard it.
Banjo? Accordion? I couldn’t make sense of the instrumentation; I couldn’t make sense of the songs. I didn’t understand what had happened to one of my favorite bands. I hoped I was missing something.
By the third or fourth listen, “No Future Shock” started to reveal itself as an anthem of the first order. Opener “Second Song” followed, and soon after that Nine Types of Light became my personal soundtrack to 2011. I won’t spill many more pixels over it, because what I can write about it falls far short of what it means to me. If you hear anything this year or next, make it this. -h
Honorable mention
The Sleepover – Believe the Honesty, Bro.
-Cory
Skeletonwitch – Forever Abomination
Mastodon – The Hunter
Halloween, Alaska – All Night The Calls Came In
JV Allstars – Hold On To This.
I’m sure these records would have made the list, had I spent more time with them. As it is, I’ll be enjoying getting to know them better well into 2012. -h
Good records from consistent bands
Ideal Cleaners – Far As You Know
Twilight Singers – Dynamite Steps
My Morning Jacket – Circuitual
There’s a lot to be said about being steadily awesome; these records say some of it. -h
Still goona check out
Wild Flag – Wild Flag
Fucked Up – David Comes to Life
-h
Retro
Nick Lowe – Nick the Knife, The Abominable Showman, Nick Lowe and his Cowboy Outfit, Seconds of Pleasure (with Rockpile)
Nilsson – http://fortheloveofharry.blogspot.com/
Black Sabbath – Black Sabbath, Vol. 4, Sabotage
-h
I was working out earlier tonight, and had a couple egoless minutes thinking about meaning. (In retrospect, they were prompted by thinking about the claymation holiday episode of Community that I caught earlier. It ends with a line something like “The meaning of Christmas is the idea that Christmas has meaning, and is meaningful because we say it is,” and I’m still thinking about whether there’s even a claim hidden in there.)
The phrase “the circle of life” came to mind (with its inescapable Lion King associations – hey, I was drifting, here!) from an image of CA and I and a kid or two having a farewell-to-KC party, Jody was there (I guess I saw her earlier tonight at the food pantry), and I thought “Well, an actual circle of life is kind of bleak – we’re doomed to repeat the past and all – but life isn’t really like that; it’s a spiral of life, with its implications of a direction to history and “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time” (T S Eliot). From that image, I’ve come, for tonight, at least, to the thought that life’s meaning might be what we can do, and know, and be, that our grandparents couldn’t but wanted to, and what our grandchildren will, that we want to.
Then, in the shower, I was thinking about a conversation I had with CA a couple weeks ago, trying to explain what makes Wooden Shjips awesome. How do you explain, to someone who hasn’t felt it yet, how good ten minutes of a single psych rock riff with weirdo echo soloing and a few vocals can be? I was trying to describe how you can’t approach psych or drone music with the same expectations and critical apparatus as you would art music and get an experience that comes anywhere close to the music’s potential. She wasn’t buying it. (Yet.)
I was also thinking about The Roots’ new undun, and how I feel sure somebody, somewhere, is up in arms because its a concept album that tells a story; in some circles this is taken as self-evidently pretentious and indulgent, but I think the album is fighting trim and shows remarkable restraint and self-editing at nine songs, plus an intro and outro.
The fresh insight was in realizing how important it is to me as a listener and critic to approach music on its own terms as much as possible; I think maybe much more than most other people, such as CA in the example here. Yes, there’s also history, various canons, and a whole universe of other music to relate it to, but there should always be dialogue between what a work sets out to accomplish for itself, and its relationship with other works. (And yes, I grok that “what a work sets out to accomplish for itself” is a matter to be debated; that’s fine; simply that we’re having the debate at all carries the weight I need it to carry here.)
The point here isn’t to be heady for headiness’ sake; it’s that the best way to enjoy and get the most out of a work is to focus on experiencing it on its own terms, and letting all those relationships be secondary. I’ve said many times – without convincing many people – that I may actually be a hedonist at heart; I’m just serious about finding the most pleasure in every little thing.
Jake points me to Derek Webb’s “Giving It Away,” on how free-ish music makes good economic sense for Webb. (I say free-ish, because Webb asks for your email address, and that of a few of your friends.) In contrast, Ian McKaye (Fugazi) was interviewed on Pitchfork this week, talking about his band’s new live archive and why they’re recommending listeners pay $5 per show downloaded.
I buy the reasoning each artist makes for his own choice. I’m wary of Webb’s implication – he doesn’t say it, but I read it between the lines (I could be wrong!) – that his choice is best for all, or the vast majority, of musicians. He has a lot going for him: he’s using his own model with some success, he’s built the infrastructure for others to use it too (Noisetrade), and makes good points.
However, in his zeal for giving music away (not a bad thing!), I think the real point of both artists is lost; the relationships among artists, their recordings, listeners, listeners’ contact information, and money, have been completely shaken by the web, and the prevailing assumptions that have held since the invention of the phonograph are no longer valid. Each artist now has to negotiate this terrain in a way that works for them and their listeners, and they’re going to do it differently. Some will trade money for recordings, some will trade information, and some will just put out music and not worry about it, because they’re not trying to be middle-class musicians (in Webb’s terms).
As I think about MFR’s future, I’m looking much harder at Bandcamp than Noisetrade, based on The Sleepover’s experience, my own willingness to gladly pay a few dollars for an album download, and an idea I have for downloads that I haven’t seen done before. (Not sure if Bandcamp will support it tech-wise.)
It will be interesting to see if one major “filter” emerges for digital music. Mobile phone apps might be an indicator here; that field is dominated by the Apple app store and Droid marketplace, along with a healthy underground of other alternatives. That hasn’t emerged in music yet. The iTunes store just isn’t that ubiquitous, Amazon does some mp3 business (which I prefer; no DRM), Bandcamp is pretty indie/DIY, Spotify is slowly emerging in the US, but none of them have the market share of the two big app distribution sources. There’s also piracy to contend with.
There might even be an opportunity here for an info-savvy entrepreneur to develop a meta-filter of sorts, combining streaming and purchasing data from all of these sources into a resource that does the job the Billboard charts used to do. What we’re after is a bottom-up way to find the best music, which is what radio and the sales charts used to do in more of a top-down manner (the charts being largely based on what was playing on the radio). The meta-filter might simply provide information and links to streaming/purchasing sources, or it might become a service or store of its own, perhaps even becoming the dominant filter in music; the New Radio. With the web, there will always be healthy underground, out-of-the-mainstream activity (I hope!), but the curator in me would like to see, and be a part of, something that starts to tie back together the music scene that the web has fractured in a way that’s good for all involved.
Christopher Borrelli, “The trouble with the cloud,” in the Chicago Tribune.
Mom clipped this for me, and Borrelli asks a good quesion; how are iTunes, iPods, and now iCloud and Amazon’s and Google’s cloud-based music lockers changing how we value music?
Borrelli’s concerned that we value digital files less than physical albums. “Each [new digital technology] has undermined how much I actually care about watching, listening and reading … Lately, though I am no less interested in music, excited by movies or anxious to read books, I don’t know what that enthusiasm means when I can access all of those things on a few digital files: Do I appreciate my music, movies and books less when the format is digital? When there’s nothing more concrete than a binary code? If I’ve opted for convenience over shelf space, why don’t I listen to music more often, watch more movies?”
Only Borrelli can answer why he listens to less music than he used to. I listen to much more, and a wider variety, of music since I went fully to iTunes and my iPod. I love using iTunes DJ, making playlists, and running across old favorites, all things I didn’t do with CDs. I also get a huge kick out of digitizing my vinyl LPs, taking that great sound with me on my iPod, crackles and all.
“Ephemeral, that’s how I feel about the media I download … The ease of that download generally lessens its impact and makes it more disposable … ‘Something about the unavailability of stuff, music, art, books, makes me value it more’ [quoting Theaster Gates].” Quoting Gates again, “It’s just fraudulent for people to suggest that … any digital vehicles contain as much historical value or memory or meaning as my things, my books my music, whatever. It’s wrong to say my stuff is being replaced by a things I can’t touch. It isn’t being replaced, because it isn’t the same stuff anymore.”
Gates doesn’t offer a name of anyone who has suggested that digital files have the same historical value and meaning as his own physical books and albums. Perhaps they are in his imagination; it’s a pretty extreme position. It’s not a matter of intrinsically meaningful physical albums being replaced by evil, empty downloads; the questions are what are the tradeoffs between physical and digital music*, and how do we feel about what’s happening and the choices we’ve made? The burden of proof is on Borrelli to explain why so many people have made the choice to go digital that he’s concerned with.
In order to understand Borrelli, I think we should separate how we value objects from how we value music. Mom’s “Meet the Beatles” record means more to me, as a physical object, than someone else’s copy of the record would, but I value the music on the record, as music, the same no matter what source it’s played from. You could replace my “Meet the Beatles” mp3s with identitical copies from someone else’s hard drive, and the music wouldn’t mean any less to me next time I listen to it.
“My long-term fear, I suppose, is that my tastes become nothing more than a clickable line on a file; or as the novelist Zadie Smith wrote in a recent essay, about the way that Facebook undermines, ‘To (Mark) Zuckerberg, sharing your choices with everybody is being somebody.’”
Borrelli takes it as self-evident that his current tastes are something more valuable than a “clickable line on a file” (are they?) (and what kind of file is he grouching about, anyway?), and, I think, implies that sharing choices on Facebook is worthless. Sharing choices on facebook is generally less meaningful than loaning someone a physical copy of an album, but I think it’s worth *something.*
Maybe his fear is that, when everyone’s a critic, his tastes will have to compete on a more level playing field with others’ for attention, which might put him out of a job. In my view, good critics are more important now than ever before, to help us sort through the mountain of media available online. The trick is, having a column at the Tribune doesn’t automatically make someone an attention-worthy critic anymore (as it did before the web made self-publishing so easy); widely-read critics must earn their reputation for finding good media and adding to our understanding of it with their commentary, and they might come from anywhere, including Facebook. (Reputation development and management is an area where I’d like to see huge improvement on the web, but I think it’s coming. Amazon’s Real Name feature is an example of a first step in that direction.)
“The more availability there is, he said, the harder it is to find anything, digital or not, “which leads to the real problem with the Cloud, that there is a threshold to comprehension and you can only have a personal relationship with a certain number of your things anyway … To borrow from Susan Sontag’s 1977 book, ‘On Photography,’ and its prescient essay on collecting, we live in a world ‘on its way to becoming one vast quarry.’ And yet what is the value of a quarry with no bottom, inexhaustible and plundered without much effort and available for mining every day, at all hours?
“There was a time when Laurie Anderson … lamented not having recordings of her early shows … ‘Now I think I’m happy to be the medium myself, that people watch me doing whatever I do and it goes into their memories, and maybe gets lost in there.”
The meaning of physical objects is, in large part, based on scarcity. We like rare, hard-to-find, and one-of-a-kind things. There’s only one “Meet the Beatles” that was my mom’s, so it’s my favorite, but there are an unlimited number of copies available online. I love my copy of Elvis Presley’s self-titled record, because in all of my record hunting it’s the only one I’ve ever seen with my own eyes. Yet, apart from these kinds of heirlooms and boutique items, music is a microcosm of what may be coming for all physical objects, leading our way into a post-scarcity society, which will require a radical re-thinking of how we construct meaning.
Meaning will change, but i don’t think it will be lost. To use Borrelli’s metaphor, the value of an inexhaustible quarry seems obvious in musical terms; we can build anything we want, enjoy any kind of structure, experiment and play and push the boundaries of the art of sound. The value of any given stone is no longer much in its existence as a stone, but has become in what we’ve made with it, what we do there, and how we remember and continue to experience the place. The dimension of meaning that is reduced or lost in the transition to a post-scarcity context is real, but is worth trading for the new possibilities offered by digital music.
* Digital music is, of course, also physical – it’s not immaterial! – but I think you know what I mean.
Updated 2013 Nov 27
Here’s a veg main course dish that I put together today, based on something we had at Sweet Tomatoes this week and some other recipes I looked at, but with my own twists. It’s sweet with a lot of heft, starring sweet potatoes and Granny Smith apples, and can easily be a veggie main course for a holiday dinner. -h
Directions:
Beer pairing: Boulevard Sixth Glass barleywine