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  • “Style is a Product of Your Limitations”

    That’s Loretta Lynn, speaking with Tavis Smiley last fall.  It’s a brilliant, clear insight, and true to my experience.

    I’m afraid to diminish the impact of the quote with too much commentary, but briefly, I think the process unfolds as follows.  As we create – write, sing, record, film, whatever – we naturally discover our limitations; some may be easily overcome with practice or learning new techniques, others are more deep-seated.  We strive to realize our vision in the face of these limitations, and in working creatively with them, maybe by learning something that lets us dissolve them, or avoiding them, or approaching them from a fresh angle, style (or what I sometimes have called “aesthetic voice”) emerges.

    I like limitations.  They don’t need to be simply accepted; I like them because, in discovering and working creatively with them, they provide direction, which is simultaneously productive and a buffer against the paralysis and terror of aesthetic freedom.

    h

  • Diamonds from Sierra Leone Supercut

    “Diamonds from Sierra Leone” is one of my favorite Kanye West tracks, but it’s always frustrated me that the verses are split between the original track and the remix with Jay-Z.  So I dug out my Late Registration CD, edited them together, and you can download the supercut:

    WAV (link expires 10 June 2012 – just click it once)

    m4a (i.e., iTunes native format – right-click and “Save as…”)

    h

  • The Burns

    Fine Lincoln power-pop purveyors Strawberry Burns reached out to us last week to master & release their new record, and we’re tremendously excited about it.  No date yet, but we’re hoping to start work this week.

    In the meantime, you can catch up on their three records plus an EP at their bandcamp.  Enjoy! -h

    h

  • MR|Review – Miguel, “Art Dealer Chic” EPs, Paul Krugman, “End This Depression Now!” Pallbearer, “Sorrow and Extinction,” and Bloody Knives, “Disappear””

    Pallbearer’s Sorrow and Extinction is the best thing I’ve heard so far this year.  Yes, it’s pure doom metal; who knew I’d been missing doom all my life?

    Doom is a metal sub-genre characterized by extremely slow tempos, down-tuned guitars, and clean vocals (no cookie monsters here); for that reason I hope that more mainstream listeners will take a risk on Pallbearer and find it more approachable than the equally good metal albums two out of three of my friends have found to be just too much.  If you can detach and let the blissfully overdriven tones do their work, you can get into this.

    I streamed Sorrow and Extinction based on reading a review, and it spoke to me at a level below words from the first full band entry in the 12-minute opener “Foreigner.”  The band’s glacial tempos turn my mind to questions of time, suggesting both eternity through the monolithic amp tone and riffs, and transience via the linear arrangements.  I feel small, yet affirmed.

    It’s the wide range of emotion Pallbearer reaches through their mostly traditional doom sound that makes this album something I’ll be listening to for a long time.

    Mars Lights played with Austin’s Bloody Knives the other weekend, and they tore up Czar Bar pretty seriously. The trio plays a fractured sort of punk/electronic hybrid with fast, kraut-y drums, bass and vocals reminiscent of the Cure, and a burly guy who triggers samples and dances.  You can grab Dissappear from their bandcamp page for free, and if what I’ve said so far sounds at all good to you, I think it will make your regular rotation.

    Bloody Knives has one speed; hurtling toward the edge of a cliff with no brakes.  Shards of hooks cut through the haze occasionally, but the main sense of Disappear is reckless forward motion.  If anything, the live versions of these songs were even more interesting, in that the samples weren’t necessarily synchronized to the drums, which accentuated their brokenness.  It’s their own thing, they own it, and I look forward to their next visit to KC.

    I’m a giant Krugman fanboy, and there’s no sense in hiding it.  The fact is, I’ve come through this depression in better financial shape reading Krugman than I would have following the Wall Street Journal editorial page’s advice.  This makes the political right’s attempts to discredit him as a socialist, Keynesian (as if that’s a dirty word!), budget-busting liberal all the sillier; they could make more money if his recommendations were heeded*, and history demonstrates it over and over.

    End This Depression Now! is a compilation of Krugman’s best thinking on our macroeconomic trouble, including both diagnosis and prescription.  For readers familiar with his New York Times column and blog, it’s familiar territory, though there are new bits.  For readers who aren’t, if you’re going to read one book about our economy from 2008 to the present, this should be it.

    So why only three stars?  The book isn’t quite the forward-looking plan to end the depression that Krugman claims it is, repeatedly, in the first eleven of thirteen chapters.  Its stated purpose, in the introduction, is to answer the question “What do we do now?” but clear policy recommendations don’t come until chapter twelve.  The background information is vital, but I wonder if it will bog casual readers down.  Perhaps another type of organization – for example, one chapter per recommendation, with the relevant context to support it and explanation of what’s gone wrong right there – would have worked.

    As it stands, End This Depression Now! is a useful text, but, fairly or not, we hold Krugman to a higher standard as progressives’ policy MVP.  He’s been better, and in this election season, we need him working at his peak more than ever.

    * Mostly that the WSJ repeatedly predicted immanent runaway inflation and a Greek-style rise in US borrowing costs, neither of which has happened; if you moved your money around based on one or both of these assumptions, you’ve lost.

    After seeing a couple glowing, high-profile reviews of Miguel’s Art Dealer Chic series of EPs, I tracked them down to see what the noise was about.  “Adorn” started things off well with a nice blend of modern and (dare I say it?) new jack sounds, skillfully deployed; a touch of class, a touch of the club, and a runtime that leaves me wanting a little more made for a jam I’ll be happy to hear on shuffle all summer.

    Unfortunately, “Adorn” is the best thing here.  The rest of the set is mostly standard 2012-edition electro-R&B with a couple arty touches, reaching its nadir with “Broads,” which is a waste of a halfway decent beat and anyone who hears it’s four minutes.

    If you’re into this, pull the highlights (“Gravity,” “Arch n Point”) for summer mixtape fodder and go back and listen to Kenna’s superior Make Sure They See My Face.  If not, skip it, unless you can explain to me what the fuss is about.

    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. MR|Review totals to date:
    Must-hear! 2
    Recommended 8
    Good 7
    Fans only 6
    Skip this 1
    Owww! My ears! 0

    MR|Review meta – I hope you like the minor re-design of the stars and ratings.  It’s a little cleaner to look at, and I’ve added the “totals to date” column (below) to track the distribution of rankings.  I’ll have to look for one- or no-star albums to talk about, just for reference.  The idea is sort of to organize music that’s released into a normal distribution for critical purposes, but that doesn’t mean that the number of reviews at each level will correspond exactly to that.

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  • Mars Lights this Saturday – Cinco de Mayo!

    We have a show this weekend. Six new jams, duo-stylee:

    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!)

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  • ’66 and ’71

    Drew and I have been busy prepping for our show, but in the course of doing that we had a great email conversation this week, along with Cory, about the development of rock & roll; highlights below.

    From: howie@theinternet.email

    I was listening to Roxy Music last night, and got to thinking about how weird it was that the album (Stranded) came out in 1973, just four years after Woodstock, and how totally different the music sounded.  That sent me on a quest through my iTunes library to try and identify where my dividing line is between Hendrix and late-period Beatles on one hand, and clearly 70s stuff like mid-period Bowie, Roxy Music, Sabbath, etc. on the other.  I’m a nerd for the genre tag, so I ended up with three genres for rock:

    1. “Rock & Roll,” which is everything up through about Rubber Soul: early Beatles, Buddy Holly, rockabilly stuff, etc.
    2. “Rock 66-71,” late Beatles, Hendrix, early Zep
    3. “Rock,” some stuff from ’71 and everything ’72 and after, until punk/alternative/indie start splitting off in the later ’70s.  (I start punk with the first Ramones record, indie with the first R.E.M. record, and… I can’t remember what the earliest thing I labeled “alternative” is. I use “alternative” with a wide scope meaning anything post-punk that isn’t twee at all, but isn’t metal (defined broadly) either.)

    What do you think? -h

    From: drew@hishouse.home

    Sounds good I s’pose. How are you handling metal?  How do you categorize Blue Cheer and early Sabbath?  How does the Kinks’ trajectory compare to the ’71/’72 line that you have drawn? I wanna say Lola came out around that time.  Right after Arthur?  I think there’s a noticeable difference between those two records.

    How about the Stones? Ruby Tuesday single was released in January ’67, so I guess I’ll give you that one on the ’66 dividing line.  After that they got more psychedelic, til Beggars Banquet.  Exile on Main St. came out in ’72. Not sure where that one falls. Not exactly late sixties British rock, not exactly distinctly 70s. Just really bluesy and American sounding IMO.

    It sounds like England is defining most of this.  Probably justified, but consider the American artists of those periods.  I don’t even know where to start there. I only listen to the English bands.  I don’t know precisely when Fleetwood Mac started sucking.  They were really good for a while, til that coke freak bitch got involved.

    From: howie@theinternet.email

    For now, I have metal starting with Sabbath’s first. Not quite sure how to handle Zep… for now, I have them split between the Rock 66-71 and Rock genres; I-III in the earlier, IV on in the later.  They could almost be metal instead (like I said, I cast a really wide net for “metal”).

    (I should state for the record that my whole purpose, here, is to use the “Genre” field to organize music into sets that sound good together on shuffle.  Nothing more; it’s just interesting to me how fast music was changing.)

    The Kinks are going to cross all three genres!  On the later side, I’d put “Muswell Hilbillies” with the 66-71 golden age stuff, probably.  Stones are goona cross all three, too. On the later side, you just have to decide where “Sticky Fingers” (’71) belongs.

    (OH! Cory! I heard The Association’s “Never My Love” on Bones last night!)

    I don’t have any early Fleetwood Mac, so I’m spared that decision for the moment… -h

    From: drew@hishouse.home

    I’m not saying that those artists shouldn’t cross periods.  I’m saying that their respective catalogs should influence your historical dividing lines. I don’t know that they all coincide with each other. For a while, the Beatles and the Stones did, because they were directly competing with each other.

    I’ll bet that your theory holds up pretty well, with a tolerance of plus/minus 9 months.

    WHAT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT

    DO DRUGS

    From: cory@probablyhisiphone.texting

    Drew has a salient point about the drugs!

    I love classic rock and classic metal and all sorts of stuff but I am the SHITTIEST music historian, as in I have no idea when shit came out or which songs were on which records. I listen to them, I am just way too much of a lazy space-case to pay attention to any of it.  So I can’t help you out in that dept! Buuuut, intuitively, I can definitely see the time-period dividing lines totally making sense! I especially completely agree with the dividing line between early/late Beatles. It seems pretty stark to me, and I think Rubber Soul is the obvious cut-off record. It hints at what’s to come with “Michelle” and a few others, but the other songs are kind of cheesy in that old Beatles way: “What goes oooooooon, in your heart! I don’t give a fuck, Ringo!”

    I think the most interesting part of all of this is honing in on that 9-month period that Drew mentioned, and try and figure out what was going on in America/England at the time that the music revolved around.  Maybe not even anything big like the Kennedy assassinations or the Civil Rights stuff or whatever, but even just kind of big news stories or controversies.

    I do think Rubber Soul/Pet Sounds/Odessey and Oracle are cool records that sort of represent the switch from old classic rock to weirdo psychedelic sorta fucked up classic rock. I guess those are all about ’68 right?  Who knows!  ‘Nam!

    I fucking LOVE later cheesy Fleetwood Mac! I listen to “Everywhere” at least once a week, probably. That period does just sound like Stevie Nicks doing coke off of a tambourine, though.

    From: drew@hishouse.home

    I understand why people like Stevie Nicks. But I think that the Peter Green era is so much awesomer. Totally different kind of music, I guess.

    Shit I forgot about the Beach Boys.

    From: cory@probablyhisiphone.texting

    Yeah, Peter Green FM and Stevie Nicks FM are two different bands, in my opinion. The Peter Green stuff is more like classic rock, and the Stevie Nicks music is just like… Prom Night Blow-Doing/Getting music.  It’s so glittery, it just sounds like a unicorn fucking a snare drum.

    The Beach Boys are fucking weird. Not just because they’re completely different from every other band, but because of how creepy/out-there the music got in a short amount of time. Songs like “Fun, Fun, Fun” and “Surf on my Dick” sort of make me want to shoot myself, but then “God Only Knows” and “Don’t Talk” and “Good Vibrations” and “Heroes and Villains” are way more complex and moody and stuff. And THEN, you have “Kokomo” from the 80s, which is a completely different thing altogether!

    Come to think of it, “Fun, Fun, Fun” then “God Only Knows” then “Kokomo” sort of represents the three time-periods themselves. “Kokomo” fits right in with Roxy Music!

    Seriously, playing “Barbara Ann” in the middle school band sorta made me resent the Beach Boys to the point where I got into them way too late.

    Finally, Mars Lights should do a song called “Coke Homo,” pronounced like “Kokomo.”

    From: howie@theinternet.email

    Lots of points I want to pick up… but real quick, I remembered a band that isn’t sliding easily into my paradigm; the MC5.  Formed in ’64, released “Kick Out The Jams” in ’69, which seems so early!

    I don’t have much Iggy/Stooges, but without looking at their discography, I think they might present the same issues. -h

    From: drew@hishouse.home

    I figured the Stooges would actually fit pretty neatly into the pre-’71 rock sound. I know they’re “punk” and everything… They had all the hallmarks of the rock bands of that time, they just were technically not great musicians and didn’t give a fuck.

    MC5 is like Stooges, but with face melting chops.

    My “I only listen to the British bands” statement is pretty wrong, I guess.  Stooges are my favorite band of that era. I always kinda considered them to be in an alternate universe. However, for these purposes, I would put them into the ’66-’71 group.  Raw Power came out in ’73, though that was a different lineup.  The record was under “Iggy and the Stooges” and Ron Asheton played bass, while James Williamson played guitar. It fits into that mid-late 70s punk wave in my opinion, but was several years sooner. Kind of a different band.

    Let me emphasize that I DON’T REALLY KNOW WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT. But I like the Stooges a lot and that’s how I’d handle it.

    Also, if you look up some of Iggy’s mid 70s performances on Youtube, then they bare a lot of resemblance to the Raw Power album. There’s a really awesome performance of “Sixteen” somewhere out there. That was on an album he did w/ Bowie, but it’s performed like Raw Power Stooges.  Raw Power is pretty different from Funhouse and the S/T album.

    Also, Velvet Underground.  Not really psychedelic. Pretty damn punk. Then John Cale left and they suddenly fit more cleanly into some kind of 1970s pop rock genre.  Loaded is pretty classic rock. White Light/White Heat sounds like no wave compared to everything else from that period.

    There were other weirdo bands around that time. One’s on the tip of my tongue, but can’t remember.  Also, I wanna say that some German bands were getting super krauty as early as 69. Amon Duul 2, Neu, Can… I know some of that stuff came out before 71.

    cory@probablyhisiphone.texting

    I forgot about VU! I have “VU and Nico,” which came out in 67, which is weird because of how completely weird it is.  T-Rex is kind of an interesting band too, since they were like 67-77, spanning that weird time-frame!

    Drew, is one of those weird bands 13th Floor Elevators? I’ve hardly heard them, I have just seen them mentioned before… Big Star is a pretty cool representation of the 71/71-on rock genre!

    From: drew@hishouse.home

    T Rex is a bit of a wildcard… though I think if you look at the discography there was a bit of a change around ’71, when Electric Warrior came out. Slider came out in 72 or 73.  The weirdo band I was thinking of is The Monks.  13th Floor Elevators fit into the 67-71 psychedelic period, though they had a pretty awesome R&B backbone.

    Yeah Big Star totally represents my mental image of the 70s.

    From: howie@theinternet.email

    I thought there’d be a stronger argument for the MC5’s and Stooges’ music belonging with the post-’71 group due to their sounds, in spite of their release dates…

    Let me reiterate that my starting point was listening to Roxy Music from ’73 and thinking how different it felt from Hendrix or the Beatles from ’69; from there I looked at what was in my library and thought about how I felt about it, ’66 and ’71 emerged as the borderline years to my ears. If I hear Buddy Holly and Sgt. Pepper or Sticky Fingers in the same shuffle, that seems off to me. Likewise Hendrix and, oh, mid-period Fleetwood Mac or Boston or Roxy seems weird together.

    cory@probablyhisiphone.texting

    I am woefully ignorant of MC5 and Stooges: I have heard Funhouse exactly once, and I’ve heard some MC5, buuuut, yeah, I don’t really know much about them. wah wah waaaaaaaaaaah

    From: drew@hishouse.home

    I think of the Stooges and MC5 as “late 60’s/early 70s guitar rock, kinda weird but not weird enough to actually not be called rock.”  It’s rock n roll music, proto punk, whatever. It’s not the Ramones, or even the Iggy and the Stooges Raw Power album.

    Also, I think it’s kinda weird that Stooges and MC5 are always thought of as being out of place in their time period. Their music was an honest reaction to what was going on in their lives, in their late teens/early 20s in Detroit. Can’t they be a natural, though somewhat enigmatic extension of their era? Also, they kinda had a “scene” of their own. Granted, people hated the Stooges and threw shit at them on stage, but they weren’t exactly in a vacuum. Just a counter-argument.

    cory@probablyhisiphone.texting

    Which MC5 record should I listen to if I listen to one?

    Also, this is completely unrelated, but I look at it every year:

    http://cdn3.sbnation.com/imported_assets/666055/ibd_baseball_flowchart.jpg

    Pass the gravy!

    From: drew@hishouse.home

    KICK OUT THE JAMZ MUTHAFUCKAZ

    From: howie@theinternet.email

    So what should I call the genres? I’ve got “Rock & Roll” for the first one, and “Rock” for one of the other two… but the third?

    From: drew@hishouse.home

    Roll

    h

  • People no smarter than you

    I’ve talked about punk off and on throughout MFR’s existence, and probably for longer, and this quote from an old (90s vintage?) Steve Jobs interview I saw as part of a recent PBS documentary seemed to crystallize something about punk that I hadn’t found words for yet.

    Everything around you – that you call life – was made up by people no smarter than you. -Steve Jobs

    He goes on to talk about how, once he made this realization, everything changed; he was freed to re-make life more to his liking, and was unshackled from the expectations of college –> job –> family –> house –> retirement.

    I instantly heard through a DIY filter; if the people who made up life are no smarter than I am, then the life I make up for myself is as valid as theirs.  And this, to me, is punk writ large.  The music I make for myself is as valid as what’s on the radio.

    It also shows why I’ve experienced punk as an affirming and constructive philosophy, instead of the destructive or even nihilistic stereotype it sometimes is given.  Yes, there is a surface-level negation or destruction of the dominant culture as dominant or exclusive, but it’s rooted in the affirmation of the culture we make for ourselves.  Punk’s critique of dominant culture isn’t necessarily annihilation of dominant culture; it just knocks it off its pedestal, down to where we can work it over and choose what bits we can use.  Plus, the critique is launched from the ground we stand on, validating it against what we are critiquing.

    The quote is a nice shot of energy as I try to be bold and brave in making up my life. -h

    h

  • Free Press & Shows

    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“

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  • The Sleepover – Omaha & Lincoln coming up

    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.

    h

  • MR|Review – Mastodon, “The Hunter,” Nada Surf, “The Stars Are Indifferent to Astronomy,” Kanye West & Jay-Z, “Watch the Throne”

    The Hunter should be a moment for metal in the musical mainstream like Metallica (“The Black Album”) was for Lars & Co.

    Must-hear!
    Recommended
    Good
    Fans only
    Skip this
    Owww! My ears!

    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.

    Must-hear!
    Recommended
    Good
    Fans only
    Skip this
    Owww! My ears!

    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.

    Must-hear!
    Recommended
    Good
    Fans only
    Skip this
    Owww! My ears!

    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.
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  • Certainly not your big-budget Aerosmith sound

    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.

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  • Rosemary

    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

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