Travels With Myself and Whoever Else

2011-08-14T19:21:00.000-04:00

Unitarians take the summer off for church. Then members of the community get together in a lay-led service to tackle the question of, say, why we don't go to normal church in the summer. I do think it's a wonderful thing, though. The crowd tends to be older folk, in crowds from 3 to 20 median 10, people who have known each other for many years. The ministry is very intimate, and very dear, and I think people also get a thrill from getting to forge together readings and musings and...music. That's where I come in. Every Saturday night I sit down at a keyboard in the kitchen (with parents long asleep), and bang out the two hymns I've been asked to perform the night of. It's slightly irresponsible, yes; but I CAN do it if I'm in the right place. More to the point, sometimes I only get those hymns Friday or Saturday. And I inevitably work both days.

Sometimes I'll begin the work by doing a harmonic analysis of the thing. That's fun to do on the train, and gives me the opportunity to flub the inner two voices while hanging on to the bass and melody. Unitarians are notoriously bad singers, so not only do the same hymns we know get repeated time and time again, but as long as you have the melody and basic predominant-dominant-tonic structure, you'll be fine.

For practicing: I go by systems, maybe half systems. Start with hands alone briefly (maybe 5 minutes total) and move on to half or quarter systems or pushing them together. It's a kind of memorization for me, a convincing of each finger that the next motion on the page is the only possible following motion. Playing the right sequence, then, just feels like home, stability, and complicity. And move along, practicing my half or quarter systems plus a chord or two of the next, so when I later graft them all together it feels more natural. A common pitfall is to make the chunk too long, or keep playing a part I know well; good practicing means constantly challenging my comfort with the piece. I can't even think of halting until l I can play it through a few times in a row perfectly. And then I let it sit in my head for a bit while I begin the other hymn.

Returning to the first (and later the second) him, I do run throughs and take care of problem spots, often in quarter-system chunks. I try also to play it through as if performing (i.e. through each of the voices); it's then a matter of hanging onto your continuity, keeping your mind from wandering, and relaxing into the soft crevasses of a piece.

By this point I conk out and wake up, and do a remedial practice. At a certain point there's only so much work I can do. I play without looking at my hands, and the key size and action on the sanctuary's grand is much different than my upright's. I try to arrive around 9:30, make pleasantries, and bang things out.

In addition to the two hymns I'm asked to play a prelude, offeratory, and postlude. These are very short, and end up being snippets of pop songs, or most often sections of things I've already written. I sometimes debut things there, taking the postlude to perform something for longer. If I'm working on a classical piece I'll play a section, but that's always less fun than getting comments on that "interesting thing you just played." And the hymns? They'll fly or they won't, and if the sextant's there he'll probably get very critical, and he can go away.

Pit falls: twice I have had even a small amount of alcohol before attempting this. Both times have been terrrrrrible.

The Suburbs: Reviewsing Pt. 1: Structure Porn

2011-01-27T02:30:00.000-05:00

This post is a continuation of this intro, mostly the theory behind the album's structure, and some of how it lends to the listening experience. Structural tricks like these give me, at least, some sense of arrival, both from song to song, with doubling/grouping, and overall, in the splitting. They also allow an artist a more complete control ("ok, this pair will be 9:27, this will be 9:55, but this will be 6:02! ha!") over the frame of their work. If you're going to handle a concept as general (and as blasé?) as suburban life. The record can take its time and be deep without boring, by placing an idea between two songs (beginning, modern, emptiness/without...).

This split in half thing, it's definitely a convenience, but as I'll note it adds a theatricality to the work; more consequentially, it frames the transition from a more optimistic first half to more pessimistic second half (or at least, more peppy to more somber). Pairing gives us two sides of one idea and illustrates all the muddy paradoxes living within these suburban paradoxes. Elsewhere, gapping accentuates how each song tries to get off the ground so earnestly, and seems to fade and need a restart (fadeout then tutti). "I can finally begin" at track 12? Despite all yearnings to hold on to something, we drive past it instead, and the spectacles get further apart. The shortest distance of all is between arguably the most contrasting tracks, Sprawls I and II, as if a last hurrah to save something totally broken.

Splitting. Take the album in two halves of 8 tracks: each takes a bit over a half hour (33:04 and 31:10); each begins with a "Suburb" song with the "in the suburbs I..." vocal lick; each is flanked by a Pt1/2 set of songs. In good Act 1 / Act 2 fashion, the first is longer, and the second has a coda/restatement to the ideas presented throughout. Separating the acts is an 18 second fadeout, the longest by far after Modern Man's 12 second fadeout and Half Light's 13 second fadeup. I do also think that the first half is more musically boisterous, while the second is more clearly depressed (as fuuuuck).

Doubling. For the most part, the songs fit very well into pairs or groups (themes mine):

1 and 2 (begin): by a 9 sec violin tone, and also by "first"/expository style. 9:27.
3 and 4 (modern): by the word "modern", starkly. 9:55.
5 and 6 (without): by a 9 sec string tone. 6:02.
7 and 8 (half-light): by name and 9 sec synth tone. 8:40
9: an interlude and underture, marking the transition between halves. 4:45.
10 and 11 (destiny): by 11 sec synth tone, and by "first they built the roads...". 7:10.
12 + 13 + 14 + 15 (shadow): linked all by themes of light and dark. 17:48. Also:

12 + 13: theme of technology and communication (weak, I think)
13 + 14: listen for the 12 sec rumbling sound effect between these two
14 + 15: title.

16: postlude and coda. 1:27.

Gapping. Unlike Neon Bible building to No Cars Go's climax, the Suburbs deliberately reduces the energy of its songs by increasing the length/use of fadeouts and gaps as time passes (measures based on track divisions; fadeouts are grooves while dying away is a riff or note):

1 to 2: transition; 9 sec
2 to 3: silence, then fadeup; ~5 sec
3 to 4: 12 sec fadeout, then tutti; 12 sec
4 to 5: tutti; ~0 sec
5 to 6: transition; 9 sec
6 to 7: dies away, then fades up; 20 sec
7 to 8: transition; 9 sec
8 to 9: fadeout, then tutti; 18 sec
9 to 10: dies away, then tutti; 15 sec
10 to 11: transition (within a fadeout); 11 sec (24 sec)
11 to 12: fadeout, then tutti; 15 sec
12 to 13: dies away, then tutti; 32 sec
13 to 14: faint transition (within a dying away); 12 sec (32 sec)
14 to 15: silence, then tutti; 3 sec.
15 to 16: fadeout into silence, then tutti; 35 sec
16 out: fadeout; 20 seconds

Heartland: How to Move

2011-01-14T20:19:00.000-05:00

I wrote this essay almost a year ago. I'm proud of parts of it, but virginal stuff like "fully intentioned concept record" grosses me out, as does the writing. But I like the model I developed, it felt good in writing, and it had a lot of good citations. I stand by it. It's audience is an unfamiliar listener.

The violinist Owen Pallett released his third LP [1], Heartland, on January 12^th 2010. Following the rushed yet elegiac Has a Good Home (2005), and the string-quartet song cycle He Poos Clouds (2006), Heartland is a firmly intentioned concept album, following the journey of the farmer Lewis through the world of Spectrum. However, this concept is not removed from incisive implications on life. Pallett’s second release used the format of a string quartet song cycle and the rough concept of the eight schools of magic of Dungeons and Dragons to explore how atheists approach death [2], and Heartland works similarly. His latest work folds in love (from the perspective of the loved), violence, masculinity, and the limits of creative expression, all within the journey of his protagonist.

Some background on Pallett and his work provides useful background for understanding Heartland, both because the album contains a character name Owen, and since his music is self-referential: “Even though while I was writing about [the character of] Lewis...when I’m writing about him, I’m still writing about me...I felt a little laid bare” [3]. One of the major threads through his career has been his love of geek culture [4]. Has a Good Home both idealizes and bemoans fantasy novels and games as escapes from reality, and He Poos Clouds uses Dungeons and Dragons as a proxy for religion. Although Heartland's concept is less apparently nerdy, it is important to recognize that Pallett is again playing with the boundary of fantasy themes; in the case of Heartland, the character Lewis will rebel against the limits of his reality. In the spirit of playful geekiness, Pallett will spice the lyrical and musical structures he creates with puns and references [5]. Pallett is also gay, which adds a subtext to the nearly homoerotic love between Lewis and the deity Owen, between creator and fantasy, and the place of the singer in this fourth-wall-shattering mess. In the end, Heartland is a progression of a man who follows his desires, but whether that man is the subject matter Lewis, the god Owen, the singer Pallett, or some combination of all three has to be decided.

[1] A list of relevant discography is available in the Addendum.
[2] http://www.youaintnopicasso.com/2006/04/18/qa-with-owen-pallett-of-final-fantasy/
[3] http://www.thelinknewspaper.ca/blogs/link_newspaper/2297
[4] Until very recently, Pallett recorded and performed under the name Final Fantasy, a reference to the video games series of the same name.
[5] As a perfect example: “Heartland” was a 1986 video game for the ZX Spectrum 48K. Owen would have been seven years old at release time. Tip from therethere on Dec 29 2009 from fanforums, also http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=000226

Midnight Directives [7]: the march

The first piece on this album begins in ambiguity: a loud electronic organ shifts back between a solid perfect fifth, the cornerstone of tonal music, and the tritone, the devil's interval. Not only will the piece build across this highly unstable foundation, but it will do so using suspended notes and a heavy amount of accidents and chromatic movement. The effect is tamer at first; the voices shift between comfortable thirds and slightly dissonant seconds, and the strings glissando a diminished ninth up from B and E, the most dissonant of notes within this F Lydian (raised fourth) key to C and F.

Despite this entrancing yet uncomfortable dissonance, the voice rings out like a horn, declaiming bravely, almost foolishly. The voice sings of distance from some feminine figure, or femininity in general, in favor of the freedom of red blood and burned connections to the past; the percussion gives tempo and insistence to this ambition. On the other hand, his path is set for him, by the power and violence of nature itself; the chirping wind trills and chromatic descents mirror that “tornado,” or the frenzied wings of a bird. Somehow the vocal line ends up in Bb major at the same time, furthering the ambiguity behind this ambition. It is the strings, moving across notes and creating the greatest dissonances, which mark the beginning of a new section; strings will soon exemplify the exact kind of atonal ambiguity that is presented here, in the first song.

Once the chorus begins, the vocal approach changes significantly. His seductive descriptions of his future, of cutlasses, of a clear purpose in “service,” and lack of responsibility (or femininity, in his family) do not match the tentative stepwise rising and falling of the line. A snare/bass drum rhythm is added which accelerates the song, yet it seems to fill the chorus measures randomly, the snare roll ending after an awkward twenty-one hits. The bass moves as well, changing the chord structure to include accidentals from Bb major...regardless of the insistent organ. The singer is unsure, and is dismayed at his circumstances, and yet insistent on continuing.

Yet adding to the glitz of the song comes a rhythmic pizzicato violin figure, and on cue Lewis begins a discussion of the deity Owen, and his own youth. The two are related by Lewis' sense of belonging, and returning to a “Saturday night” world with adventure, and some sort of “Midnight Directives” to complete. Owen seems to grant that, yet at the same time seduces Lewis into rejecting marital bonds, into a “trick with a prick of a pin,” as a sex figure, quite possibly. The creation is playing into the whim of the creator, a moral subtext that Lewis seems determined to ignore at the moment in his ever-the-more confident delivery; in fact, after the second chorus, the singer buoys his rising melody on the swelling violas and violins (Owens’s trademark), and reaches a falsetto climax about the worthlessness of all souls, as just food for men and food for fire. The repetition of this line ad infinitum is important; the violent spirit and repetition of this piece has seduced Lewis into a military march, right into the hands of Owen.

[7] "I fully expected to recycle and change the order of the songs... the flow of the album is far more important to me than the cohesion of the narrative.” (Owen from Final Fantasy on Jan 3rd 2010 on Fanforums) Although the order was altered from its "original" state, some sequences have been left in order. See the Addendum for commentary on tracklist continuity and the lyrics of the B-Sides and Spectrum, 14th Century.

Keep the Dog Quiet / Mt. Alpentine: walking in circles

Whereas Lewis was seduced by the preceding track's mad ambition, this understated piece focuses heavily on its own repetition: a figure of piano and low strings modulating between the relative minor and major, laced with dissonance to add emphasis to the already booming parallel fifths. Much like the preceding piece, wind lines accent and force notes onto the beat, horn lines mirror Lewis' ambition, and string lines, or in this case ghostly improvising between two notes, represent ambiguity and Owen's hand. Lewis spends the song in his own head, sifting through dreams and memories of what he left. The voice's mourning tone contains many more descending than ascending figures, and works across many dissonances of its own; there is some regret or nervousness in both of these qualities. Moreover, its rhythm either moves across the holes in the main riff or follows it blindly, marking a sort of indecision about where to commit himself. The second verse (“When will you...”) widens in orchestration as Lewis' imagination spreads to question the entirety of Spectrum. The repeat of “sequential, sequential...” builds to a terrifying major-key climax twice, and the second time breaks free into action.

Lewis broke free from questioning the story he's placed in for the first time. He doubts the trust of Owen and notices all the violence and terror he causes, his violin playing on despite his absolute control of Spectrum. Lewis realizes the extent of Owen's control, and sees Owen's lie in promising so much satisfaction (instead, “this union is a cage about a cage about a cage”). Whatever the story around him is, he claims, “this place is a narrative mess.” To escape this, Lewis skates into the Mt. Alpentine sequence, with score written in B and vocals in Bb. Furiously dissonant like the wind itself, Lewis gives himself up to his sense of “satisfaction.” To drive the implications of his spiritual brooding, Lewis goes from walking in circles to jumping forward into the breach [8], embracing the tonal ambiguity which Owen so represents, even in Lewis' attempts to escape.

[8] In the original lyrical order, this sequence was followed by Tryst With Mephistopheles, although not too much lyrical continuity is lost if Lewis decides to, instead, Take Action.

Red Sun No. 5: heartbeat

Lewis has espoused night as the cover for his actions, and the arrival of sunlight reveals the exact nature of what he fears most: the transiency of his own life. The pulse of the song is begun by two electronic instruments of opposite types: the ARP 2600, contributing a buzzing octave and bass-drum note, and the Wurlitzer, contributing sweet broken chords. This pulse is Lewis' pulse: caught between the wail of war and the caress of peace, Lewis can shout thunder from his chest to reject his station in life, and comfort his wife with a touch to her heart. Once Lewis has recognized his spiritual problem in the fragility of his body, he tries to both escape and maintain this pulse.

The musicality lends immediately to Lewis' humanity. While the winds distract and pivot away from any central order or tonality, percussion and timpani lines put emphasis on those regular downbeats. The voice, between these extremes, cascades down, signifying resignation. The voice's high point is when the pulse cuts out, and he is lost only in the lilting and moaning of the strings and winds, away from that pulse and its requirements. The "cover of night" is enough for Lewis for now, as Owen wants. But the created has now questioned both his world and himself; where could his doubt go next?

Lewis Takes Action: strutting

After more serious, weighty, and atonal pieces, the bouncy drum line that begins this piece is out of place, something not suspect or double-meaning. It emerges from the mush of foreboding wailing horns. The piece is further augmented with some strange his on snare and violins (direction: "turn to random pitches, descend and die away"), creating more tonal chaos, while the sweetest melodies of the wind section, like a triumphant birdsong, eventually is corrupted. One can trace this piece as a palatable pop song imploding, showing all the cracks and misses in Lewis' supposed "satisfaction." Even the baseline, which does not start on the tonic, and which frustrates the typical C to Db movement common in tonal music, ruins the bouncy goal of this piece.

Lewis has a reason to be proud in this piece. His success against the Cockatrice No-Face proves him a hero of Spectrum. But in his faith to the "bidding of the singer," Lewis engages in frighteningly violent behavior: bludgeoning to death, breaking a bird by its beak, having some sort of "amber whip, and the fire from my fingers." This man is the red-winged bird come to life, but for his own satisfaction. The final moments of the piece have a near-comical voice gliss leading to strong dissonance in the wind trills, adding tension and confusion. Lewis and Owen are satisfied, but in the following series of chained songs, this too shall pass.

The Great Elsewhere: sailing crashing

Cutting in quickly with two startling chords, this piece replaces the artifice of its predecessor with more visible cracks in the pop structure: backwards piano, glitch-like insertions (which fit rhythmically into the faster portion of the song), and a stuttering synth line. Something has changed significantly in this piece: vocals are almost entirely descending lines, and atonality is limited to ornamental 7ths and 9ths; there is an actual chord progression without atonal mishmash frustrating it (e - FM7 - Gdom7 - Gsus4); and a jarring tempo switch. In only the first bars of this tune, so much has changed. Owen's smug atonality is gone, and in its place are softer, more painful, more sincere chords.

The melancholic 3/2 groove morphs, after some laments by Lewis about his inability to prove Owen's love, into a much more aggressive percussion. Horn blasts and percussion and flashes of light from the violins put us firmly in 4/4, but it feels so jarring, recontexualizing everything we assumed about the song in the first place. It's a betrayal of expectation, just as Owen betrays Lewis' in the song's story. Sailing out to see to colonize, Lewis realizes more and more about Owen's lust for him: "and every time I show it I feel your eyes on me." As the swoops and flashes of the orchestra increase, eventually gaining the momentum to play eighth notes alongside the drums, Owen's love seems absent, and while Lewis is still engaging in his violent missionary campaigns, he finds the meaning absent when he tries to convert one native: he is attacked, lanced through the shoulder. Owen's indifference finally appears to him in the full orchestra climax of every instrument, and with that we return to 3/2, left to mourn with only a few violins. The song fades out into chord movement across a minor seventh arpeggio, losing all of its momentum to solemnity and indecisive tonality.

Oh Heartland, Up Yours!: plodding

If Lewis Takes Action set up the expectations to destroy, and The Great Elsewhere destroyed them, this piece plots how Lewis, the ultraviolent former farmer abandoned by god, reacts. Sure of Owen's betrayal yet unsure of how to go on, the song begins with the third beat removed from every measure, like a halted pace. The bass drags itself from it's i chord to its iv, and the horns, reminiscent of Midnight Directives’ starting thirds in the voice, follow sullenly. Everything's done: "seems there is nothing more."

The piece's simple tonality is striking after the complexity of The Great Elsewhere. The orchestration remains lush, yet restraint is showed in the verses. The vocals dither about upper or lower movement, but in the chorus firmly descend while Lewis laments the power of his god. The brushes make those shuffling footsteps visceral, and their place in the second verse gives the piece a bit more focus. Other melodies begin intersecting with Lewis' as he critiques how Owen tried to pigeonhole him into some gay stereotype, and rebels: "doesn't work, doesn't fly, doesn't handle." "Satisfaction," instead, becomes the focus, and under its rule the song becomes a full-on quarter note groove, with a syncopated baseline, military percussion, and the steady gait of someone in control. Lewis finishes with an upward melody line, a decision to strive against Owen's designs. Atonality enters here and only here, to accompany this disturbing ambition of Lewis: to reject his Homeland, and to embark on a journey to kill Owen.

Lewis Takes Off His Shirt: galloping

Ending the cycle started by Lewis Takes Action for a two-song interlude by a piece of Paper and Owen, Lewis here shows the full extents of his violent and energetic capability. Yet, fed up with all of the themes and implications and betrayals he has reduced himself to a mathematical movement, a being driven by only satisfaction and his energy. During his ride he questions motives and life and expression, but comes back to his refrain: "I'm never gonna give it to you." Shirtless and sexualized, this is Lewis at his simplest, as exemplified by the simple, striving chords and clarity of the arrangement (besides those pesky violin swells, representing the pursuit of his fate).

The song begins with a different kind of hum: not a violin or horn, but an electronic swell, crescendoing, wailing and breaking into electronic double-time synth playing. With only the tempo and the hihat to sustain it, these chords must be the driving force. The violin swell does come like an angel of fate, but Lewis strives onward. Much of the piece has melodies that end on the on-beat, and the rest are descending; the melodies either mark Lewis' sense of loss or drive him faster and faster, like an internal dialog. The snare click pushes it even further. Winds play their stereotypical chirping trill which, although random, later becomes as frequent as the snare drum itself. Enough has been built to break through the second violin swell, and Lewis continues with a societal critique of a false governing power. On and on and on, clarinets begin to double the melody and violins sneak their way into the arrangement. In the final verse the horn joins in to declare its bombast, as "the vector" continues on his ever-blinded way. The last chorus adds in all the 9ths and 7ths and sixteenth notes that it can handle, even with violins providing more punch. Lewis has achieved his most pure ignorance and devotion to his task; and the stage must be set for the confrontation on Alpentine.

Flare Gun and E is for Estranged: interlude montage

Shifting gears to a piece of Spectrum propaganda, biting and bitter atonality returns to this major-key piece flirting with minor-key definitions and notes. The random percussion would imply some sort of carnival around it, and yet this song is a call to war. The nearly-drunken tempo changes and bleating horns add an element of self-absorbed frenzy. The pamphlet gives us promises of exactly what Lewis left, exactly what never satisfied, returning the atonality of Owen's rule back into focus, closing in on Lewis and his purpose. With a cued-by-conductor series of amazingly dissonant hits, the deal is sealed: Spectrum is insane.

After so much angry and energetic climax, Estranged gains great weight and should evoke surprise in a listener, especially considering that Owen is likely the speaker. The score contains little for winds and horns, but violins create nearly all of the tone and energy. This piece is Owen's elegy for the ways of the world, the themes which Lewis is rushing blindly towards looked at from a wider perspective of men everywhere, committing acts of violence against each other, running like water. Its first act is to bend the resolution of Flare Gun into a long hum of quarter steps, every string on every instrument screaming its lament. A sad waltz figure for the piano cuts through, setting up a very long progression to follow, and very slowly enticing the strings to double it. Even when the strings tremolo on two wildly dissonant notes, the motion is kept, which foreshadows the insatiable groove of Tryst With Mephistopheles to follow. The lyric descends with more regret than Lewis ever could muster, beyond his obsession with his desires. After the first chorus, a melody emerges, a sort of example to follow, and on cue a morbid 25-year old son becomes the focus of the piece. Owen feels frustrated at the boy's inability to express himself, much like his father: the "liar," the "flightless bird.” That melody gets so many additions and plays off it that the piano riff changes during the next chorus, without disrupting the flow at all. Another melody, after the percussive breakdown, intersects with the first, and the cage of sounds is complete. Even though the "pathos" of Lewis and of everyone else is useless, Owen will play, Owen will sing; the people, unbeknownst to them, need Owen. The final question of the album, the line between creator and creation, is set.

Tryst With Mephistopheles: sprinting

The final conflict begins between the wailing of strings and the pulses of a bass and drum rock beat. The strings play randomly with a motif, tossing it around and modulating it, while the beat continues on blindly, with the occasional shift. Owen’s power and Lewis’ determination are mixing, building off each other: for example, the strings and piano take an atonal melody which seems to pivot around the central beat, even mixing with the vocal line later. The first sounds of the voice, not surprisingly a descending line, are accompanied with muted horns: the bombast of Lewis’ ambition has been muted itself, as the vocals suggest. Lewis focuses on his own imperfection and his former love for Owen, mourning his inability to understand how Owen fits into this world, accompanied by a temporary halting of the beat: “I don’t know what your devotion means I don’t know what your devotion means.” The phrase could mean either Lewis’ religious devotion to Owen, Owen’s erotic devotion to Lewis, or the devotion between creator and created. Piano and unmated trumpet blend into the flow of the beat, as do the horns in triumphant octaves; even through uncertainty and regret, everything is decided.

As Lewis calls out to his “Great White Noise,” the beat morphs subtly: the drums place the bass drum note on the second beat of the measure and snare on the third, removing emphasis from the downbeat but creating a cascading effect on the flow. Nearly random insertions of horn notes and glistening syncopation contribute as strings fuse further with the beat, swirling across that melody. Yet when the beat begins to fade, Lewis has to face all the consequences of his actions: as he stabs Owen (you could even say penetrates), the melody moves neutrally and the tension of the beat is slowly defused, like a fog clearing. A few sad melody notes, arpeggios, and scales punctuate it and with a last punch of dissonant horns we arrive in a new key. Winds and strings cycle senselessly in the air as Lewis describes…urinating onto Owen’s course. It’s a ridiculous gesture, and the absurdity of the whole situation continues with a feeling of “Now what.”

The main groove returns with less density, but the largest mystery is why the song hasn’t ended. Lewis does his best to recast killing Owen as his self-determination, and staying uninterruptable removes all guilt from him, keeping him under the “cover of the night.” As if descending from the peak and reaching the body, Lewis sees Owen finally as the author, and everything changes: horns take downward scales, the drums shift, the bass adds a pattern. The last synth plays a prior string/wind melody, but it takes a minor twist as a mass of strings arrive, driving the narrative down to the quiet hell of the next song.

What Do You think Will Happen Now?: standing.

The musical part of the last track is simple. Broken fifths ascend up and down the scale, vocal melody moves back and forth chromatically. Added to the mix is the random percussion of the prepared (or more poetically, predestined) piano, giving the piece an ambiguous sort of meaning. Eventually high notes with doubled vocals add a melody, culminating with doubled words and a last manifesto; yet the song ends on an unresolved chord descending into nothingness, like hope of deciphering has itself died.

The main purpose of the song is the vocal manifesto of Lewis’ state of mind, the mind of a creation without creator. “Despite myself” and his doubts, “I reaffirm my endless devotion” to a world of communal brotherhood and optimism. From the strife of Midnight Directives to the nonsense of Flare Gun and the regret of E is for Estranged, this claim is beyond false. Lewis keeps his doubts in a movement to “debilitate us, delineate us, repackage our words, demystify us”: to stray us from ourselves into the world of clear-cut, scholarly definition. He hides within obscurity and ambiguity and rejects all objective truth. A creation could never know his purpose as a well-defined concept, except…

Except by opening his eyes. Lewis dreamily wanders around the world of Spectrum for examples of dereliction. References to the Norse figures Loki and Surtr suggest the coming end of the world [8]. The sun of reality washes over Lewis, and manages to give him some motivation: “This morning I must get up to see the world around me, what I forgot in seeing ourselves as words upon a paper.” Acceptance fills him, reconciling the sun and the world, leaving behind his dark world, to be “yours.” Yours, meaning both the audience’s and Owen’s, in the darkness of that unresolved final chord. The trials of Heartland have lead to this piece of unmoving, tortured morning, of movement leading to stasis and darkness. Ultimately the creation cannot be divorced from the creator, and Lewis embodies Owen as much as he rejects him. Connection, with oneself and the surrounding environment, is the only hint of a savior.

[8] Interestingly, Midnight Directive's original title was "The End of the World."

Sources

White, Shelley. "Owen Pallett Wears His Heartland On His Sleeve." spinner 14 Jan 2010: n. pag. Web. 1 Apr 2010. .

Hiedemann, Jason. "Fantasy World." Out and About: Chicago 16 Jul 2009: n. pag. Web. 1 Apr 2010.

Chafin, CL. "Blissfully Nerdy." Popmatters 4 Feb 2010: n. pag. Web. 1 Apr 2010.

Carew, Anthony. "Interview: Owen Pallett." About.com: Alternative Music n. pag. Web. 1 Apr 2010. .

Culloty, Shane. "Interview: Owen Pallett." slate 18 Mar 2010: n. pag. Web. 1 Apr 2010. .

Pallett, Owen. Owen Pallett - Heartland. Recording andPrint

Addendum

Pallett focused more heavily on musical flow and symbolic meaning, rather than a distinct narrative; not surprisingly, the order of songs was changed multiple times, lyrics rewritten and recycled, and tracks swapped in and out. Here is the original tracklisting, and the US released version. From Owen from Final Fantasy, Jan 3rd 2010 on fanforums.

4	Red Sun No.5	Midnight Directives	1
X	Wella-Balsam Reverie (aka The Man With No Ankles)	Keep the Dog Quiet	2
X	Scandal at the Parkade	Mt. Alpentine	3
5	Lewis Takes Action	Red Sun No. 5	4
6	The Great Elsewhere	Lewis Takes Action	5
7	Oh Heartland, Up Yours!	The Great Elsewhere	6
8	Lewis Takes Off His Shirt	Oh Heartland, Up Yours!	7
2	Keep the Dog Quiet	Lewis Takes Off His Shirt	8
3	Mt. Alpentine	Flare Gun	9
10	Tryst With Mephistopheles	E is for Estranged	10
1	The End of Time (aka Midnight Directives)	Tryst With Mephistopheles	11
12	What Do You Think Will Happen Now?	What Do You Think Will Happen now?	12

HEARTLAND TRACKLISTING AND LYRICS

Midnight Directives

Cross her off the shortlist.
My blood is a red-winged bird.
The way will be lit by the bridges we burn, oh.
And come, tornado!^¹
Carry me away from the croft.
Ruffle my hair, bear my body aloft, oh.

As the cutlass came down on a Saturday night,
Left an un-planted field, left my daughter and wife.
Called away into service, for a clerical life.
Left an un-planted field, left my daughter and wife.

Thought I was a sad-boy.
Now I know, I know, I know I was wrong.
Since you came along, I can see how content I had been.
It'll drive a man crazy to age from the outside in.
But I have a plan, it's a trick with a prick of a pin.

And as the cutlass came down on a Saturday night,
Left an un-planted field, left my daughter and wife.
Called away into service, for a clerical life.
Left an un-planted field, left my daughter and wife.

For a man can be bought, and a man can be sold,
And the price of a hundred thousand unwatered souls
Is a bit of meat and a bit of coal.
It's a bit of meat and a bit of coal.
It's a little bit of meat and coal.

Keep the Dog Quiet

My body is a cage^².
This union is cage about a cage about a cage.
And this, and this town too.
I'll see you once in a while but I can't be seen with you.
This place is a narrative mess.
The floor a tangle of bedsheets and battered sundress.
The ink has dried in the well.
The journey once was consequential,
Now: sequential, sequential, sequential, sequential.

When will you silence your hounds?
The eldest sons to the altar of the Eternal Sound.
Their blood is spilled at the dawn.
A nation bound to your will, still, the violin plays on.
Plays its devotional song.
Once it was, once it was so essential,
Now: sequential, sequential, sequential, sequential.

Mt. Alpentine

Lead on, oh horse of mine, we will climb the side of Alpentine.
Lead on, oh horse of mine, we will voice our satisfactions.
Karma is the concatenation of your actions.

Red Sun No. 5^³

I'd been living through days
Carrying no burden
But the shit of cattle
And my resignation

Until the sun rose crimson
Crept across my limbs and
I saw that they were earthen
That they decay and worsen

And from my ginger chest, there
Came the sound of thunder
I am not a father
I am not a farmer

I tremble to speak of it.
Held her in my arms and
Pressed her to my heart and
Pressed my hand o'er her lips

I murmured words of his love
I will be his baron
With him I have an ending
With him I have completion
And the cover of night

Lewis Takes Action^⁴

I got a message for the acolytes.
I am your man for a wifey fight.
I got a thirst for liquid gold.
I'll bludgeon 'til the body's cold.

The stony hiss of cockatrice has cast us into serfdom.
I close my eyes, and spur Imelda down the mountainside
For a liberated Spectrum.

I took No-Face by his beak and broke his jaw, he'll never speak again.
I took No-Face by his beak and broke his jaw, he'll never speak again.

My every move is guided by the bidding of the singer.
The night is split by the whistle of my amber whip
And the fire from my fingers.

The Great Elsewhere

Talking, what's it good for?
Absolutely nothing.
Wrestle, let's wrestle.
You can pin me to anything.

Thought I saw you in my tea leaves.
Thought I saw you in a forest flame.
I'll fill up the silence with the sound of your holy name.

Knowledge of the sea-ways, knowledge of how the water flows.
Whoever coined the phrase has never had to brave the snow.
I climbed the shroud to the top-sail and I peeked through the glass.
The curvature bisected by a wintry mizzen mast.

The scar upon my stomach, I call it my Flying V^⁵.
And every time I show it, I can feel your eyes on me.
How many islands will surrender to the blunderbuss?
And how long must we sail before you show your face to us?

Followed him out to the end of the pier.
"Don't come any closer," he cried, "I am afraid
Of the man I'll become if I lay my
Life down for a people who I don't even care for."
Face to his face, I put my
Hand into his and I tried to tell him, "No,
I've seen his work upon the panes of cathedrals,
In the sweat of the workers and the flight of the seagulls."

My words were drowned out by the sound
Of the motors and rowers, the ship as it ran aground
And from the trees came a thousand soldiers.
I went down on my knees with a spear in my shoulder.
About face, about face, I swam back
To the Victoria^⁶. I shiver with the
Memory, memory of the island dwellers
And the indifferences of the Storyteller.

Oh Heartland, Up Yours!^⁷

The stars collected.
Each world accounted for^⁸.
Freed all the children.
Seems there's nothing more.

If I only had a rowboat, I would row it up to heaven^⁹.
And if heaven will not have me, I will take the other option.
I will seek out my own satisfaction.

From the wight lying in the barrow^¹⁰,
To the priest with his broken arrows.
There's a method to the madness^¹¹.
They will feign an expression of sadness.
A concatenation of locusts,
And the farmers are losing their focus.
On the pitch of the Avenroe grasses
I will sing, sing, sing to the masses
Oh Heartland, up yours!

The hollow voice of our 14th century.
Too much assumption to be taken seriously.

Oh, you wrote me like a Disney kid, in cut-offs and a beater
With a feathered fringe, it doesn't suit a simoniac breeder^¹².
Doesn't work, doesn't fly, doesn't handle.

From the wight lying in the barrow,
To the priest with his broken arrows.
There's a method to the madness.
They will feign an expression of sadness.
A concatenation of locusts,
And the farmers are losing their focus.
On the pitch of the Avenroe grasses
I will sing, sing, sing to the masses
Oh Heartland, up yours!

My homeland.
I will not sing your praises here.

Lewis Takes Off His Shirt

As soon as I got on the horse, I forgot about the math.
Forgot about the odds against an adolescent standing up to all of Owen's wrath.
The heat of prairie summer, impossible to take.
I grab the hem and lift the fabric over my sweet head.
I know what you're looking for, and I'm never gonna give it to you.
I'm never gonna give it to you.
I'm never gonna give it to you.

Government rule established by a dazzling light show.
A hegemony armoured with a thousand-watt head and seven inches of echo.
I keep up my velocity, my spurs are in her sides.
I don't know what I'm doing, and it is the only way.
Toward the range I'll ride, singing, I'm never gonna give it to you.
I'm never gonna give it to you.
I'm never gonna give it to you.

"I am overrated," said the sculptress to the sea.
"I've been praised for all the ways the marble leaves the man,
And I was wrong to try and free him."
And as for me, I am a vector, I am muscle, I am bone.
The sun upon my shoulders and the horse between my legs,
This is all I know.

My senses are bedazzled by the parallax of the road.
I concentrate to keep contained the overflow.
My knuckles grip so tightly, my fingers start to bleed.
If what I have is what you need,
I'm never gonna give it to you.
I'm never gonna give it to you.
I'm never gonna give it to you.

Flare Gun^¹³

The wella woods of Belvedere.
The peat and moss of Avenroe.
St. Germain's canaries.
The fortress of Alpentine.
Oh my soul, my loyalty is to the East
And Spectral man, and bird, and beast.

Red soil for the taking.
Ruddy women for your brides^¹⁴.
All good men of valourous heart,
Consider a new start and sail today for the Heartland.

E Is For Estranged

Boys run like water from the barrel to the trough.
They'll never stop their running.
Gunning for their brothers.
This house is a hostel.
It is peaceful, but it's always emptying.
Boys all want to be someone.

Haven't you heard? I am a flightless bird.
I am a liar, feeding facts to a false fire.
If pathos is borne, borne out of bullshit--in formal attire,
I'll score you a string ensemble^¹⁵.

I saw my son at seventeen,
The shutters made projections on his naked frame.
Now at twenty-five,
He simply cannot stay away from the ketamine.
With makeup on his sores,
He spends an hour a day composing little eulogies.
Sometimes he sends me letters,
But it's mostly garbled phrases and apologies.

But haven't you heard? I am a flightless bird.
I am a liar, feeding facts to a false fire.
If pathos is borne, borne out of bullshit--in formal attire,
Cue the Bulgarian men's choir.

Tryst With Mephistopheles

I stumbled on the summit's path.
Clumsy, clumsy.
No paragon am I.
I can't even keep my shoes tied.

I've been in love with Owen ever since
I heard the strains of Psalm 21^¹⁶.
Standing between the choirs,
As they sang, "Laudate Dominum, Laudate Dominum".

Damn, I wrote it down, but I left it in the pocket of my other jeans.
Scrawled across the foolscap: "I don't know what your devotion means,
I don't know what your devotion means."

And up, upon the summit I can see
The one I worshipped as a boy.
The Creator, The Great White Noise.
The Great White Noise.

Charged and charging up the ridge.
The chests are empty, the coffers too.
They float in the flood, and so will you, I swear, so will you.

"Your light is spent! Your light is spent!" I cried,
As I drove the iron spike into Owen's eyes.
The sun sped cross the plains like that cinematic moment where
Humanity and nature collide.
When you think, "Everything's gonna be all right,"
Just before the hero gets a bullet in his side.

Whizzing off the clifftop,
Listening for the spatter, thirty floors below.
Down come the vultures.
I will not be your fuel anymore.

Now the author has been silenced, how will they ever decipher me?
I hope they hear these words and are convinced
You never even knew me.

I draw a bruise on your brawny shoulder,
Scratch my fingers over your tattoos.
The author has been removed.

What Do You Think Will Happen Now?

The difficulties of my story:
Despite discomforts, despite myself, I
I reaffirm my endless devotion
To the belief that we're all of value,
We're all of virtue, and so inclined we
Fill up our cups and toast to each other,
And though I listen to the arguments
That most divergent systems employ to

Debilitate us, delineate us,
Repackage our words, demystify us,
I unceasingly affirm my love can
Cannot be measured, cannot be altered.
I know, I know it, I do affirm it
With overzealous obscurantism.
With every word and with every gesture,
I must express it. I can't define it,
But all the same I know I can describe it:

I walk o'er bridges and see the river.
A marble statue the sun has weather'd.
The stubbornness of the overgrowth and
The old memorials covered in snow. We've
Written the way the universe will go.
A righteous white horse^¹⁷, a man with a bow^¹⁸.
A sharpened bit of the mistletoe^¹⁹.
Scissors of fate^²⁰ or the fire of Surtur^²¹.
Though we're divided, the force of nature
Will put us all in the ground together

This morning I must get up
To see the world around me.
Right away, what I forgot
In seeing ourselves as words upon a paper.

The sun is up.
My arms are wide.
I am a good man, I am yours.

EXTRAS AND B-SIDES TO HEARTLAND

Wella-Balsam Reverie (aka The Man With No Ankles)

Somewhere between a window and my doorstep
I remembered what it was to play, to play, to play
Don't tell me you can't remember
A time before carnal needs
Turned us all into employers and employees

The future is a constant in the world everywhere
But if humans aren't predestined, the future is variable
Well I don't even I don't know what it means, don't know what it means
But a fine figured wife isn't how I'm gonna end my teens

I'll do, upon, upon, your beauty
I'll do, d-do, d-do, my duty
I'll do, I'll do, I'll do my duty
I'll do, d-do, d-do, my duty

I stopped by the river to fish out a fiver
I couldn't stand to see my countenance there
Oh, as the water hit my calves and my ankles
To the back of my legs, to my neck, to my head

Woo. hoo.. ahh....!

I'll do, I'll do, I'll do, my duty
I'll do, d-do, d-do, my duty
I'll do, I'll do, I'll do, my duty
I'll do, d-do, d-do, my duty

Lewis' Dream

Benito was fifteen when he went off to college
I stayed home and tried to go with his best friend
He told me he was gonna cut my neck right across
Then he read Rousseau
Where did he go?

Master comes to me while I'm sleeping
Gives me hell for my overeating
Tells me how I should cut my hair
You think I am only dreaming

But I've arms of bronze and bone
I was born into a loving home
And of all the promises that I have made
There's one I'll never break

Write his name on your chest in a fever
Sing his song to the boats on the river
Heaven's number is seventy-one
Our work has only just begun

With our arms of bronze and bone
We will set our shoulders to the stone
We will lift it, we will bear it 'til our bodies
Our bodies break

A Watery Day

The day I lost my virginity
I made a pot of chicken noodle soup.
Cracked the eggs into a swirling mess.
I ate half and I chucked the rest.

The day the doctor gave me pills
I smirked like a kid with chewing gum
As if the plague was a college acceptance
Or the memory of a brilliant threesome

A letter came in from St. Germain
My mother washed away by two weeks of rain.
The Singer took away my family
But all I felt were his glowin' arms around me

During Easter dinner, the dog died
And I failed, I failed, I failed
And I couldn't even lift the spade

1 Possible reference to the video games Super Mario Bros. 3 or the Legend of Zelda Series. Suggested by scarychips on Dec 25 2009 on Fanforums

2 Pallett arranged strings for Arcade Fire’s second LP, Neon Bible, the last track of which is called My Body is a Cage.

3 “Called ‘No. 5’ because, like Chanle No. 5, it was the fifth version that made the cut.” http://drownedinsound.com/in_depth/4138861-owen-palletts-track-by-track-guide-to-heartland?relevant-artist

4 This song contains reference to almost every track on the Spectrum, 14^th Century EP. “Cockatrice,” “Imelda,” and “No-Face” are both titles/characters, “Spectrum” is used to name the setting, and “The Singer” is used to reference Owen (as in The Butcher). Suggested on the fanforums.

5 A Flying V is a model of electric violin. Suggested by Peter Heke and joebonte on Feb 15^th 2010 on Fanforums.

6 The Victoria is the name of Ferdinan Magellan’s ship. He was killed on an expedition much like Lewis’. Suggested by ben on Feb 15 2010 on Fanforums. See also: “As a kid I was really into Magellan and this song re-imagines that bit when he was killed by a Filipino chieftain” http://drownedinsound.com/in_depth/4138861-owen-palletts-track-by-track-guide-to-heartland?relevant-artist

7 In October 1977, the English punk group Xray Spex released their game-changing single “Oh Bondage, Up Yours!”

8 Collecting stars and traveling between worlds is a constant game mechanic in the Super Mario series. Suggested by Peter Heke on Feb 15 2010 on Fanforums.

9 On Radiohead’s June 2001 album Amnesiac, Track two, Pyramid Song, contains the lyric: “We all went to heaven in a little rowboat.” Suggested by Alyssa on Feb 15 2010 on Fanforums.

10 Very direct reference to a sequence in JRR Tolkein’s The Lord of the Rings.

11 Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Act 2 Scene 2.

12 Slang in some queer communities for heterosexuals. Suggested by emlyi on Feb 17 2010 on Fanforums.

13 Each of these song titles is in some way derivative of some other fantasy-related or fantastical concept.

Belvedere is “beautiful view” in Italian, and is often used as an architecture term, and for various brands.

Avenroe shows up in this poem about truth and action: “But such deep secrets willingly I leave / To grand philosophers. I'll forward go / In my proposed way. If they conceive / There's but one soul (though many seem in show) / Where in these living bodies here below / Doth operate (some such opinion / That Learned Arab held hight Aven-Roe) / How comes't to pass that she's so seldome known / In her own self? In few she thinks her self but one.” A Platonicall Song of the Soul, translated by Henry More.

St. Germain is a chateau in France.

Alpentine takes the adjective alpine, meaning mountainous.

14 See Blue Imelda for Owen’s thoughts on the relationship between farming and women.

15 Pallett is one of the foremost arrangers on the classical/indie circuit.

16 The psalm contains these words: “Though they plan evil against you, / though they devise mischief, they will not succeed. / For you will put them to flight; / you will aim at their faces with your bows.” Notice the double meaning of bows, and Owen’s face wound later in the song. Suggested by joebonte on Feb 15^th 2010 on Fanforums.

17 Horses show up in Lewis Takes Off His Shirt and Lewis Takes Action (through Blue Imelda), possibly alluding to his sexuality (“the horse between my legs / this is all I know”)

18 Violin bow?

19 Loki used mistletoe to kill Baldur. Suggested by ren on 16 Feb 2010 on Fanforums

20 The weavers of fate, Atropos. Suggested by ren on 16 Feb 2010 on Fanforums.

21 Surtr commanded fire in Norse mythology. Suggested by ben on 16 Feb 2010 on Fanforums

APHM 3: (1/14) Twee Bullshit

2011-01-14T20:13:00.001-05:00

Algernon Cadwallader - "Algernon Cadwallader"

"Katie's Conscious" is a perfect statement: it feels exactly like the rush you hear when a friend has woken up, it's like a door opening over you as you're lying on the floor journaling about a sadness like the grains in the wood. It's punk, but with the distortion down and a few more melodies on top, maybe pandering to indie acessibility, or maybe moving punk's sonic roughness into some acoustic noodling in favor of a purer tone. It's still optimistic, kindly-old-badass-grandfather-vegan, and tight as hell.

Rory McIntyre - "Au Revoir Les Elefants"

Thematically, it tries to summon all of the pictures it can of childhood that it can and sidestep it slightly and humorously: enfants to elefants, cheerios and cheerio, snow soup and stone soup, puppet show to muppet show. How do we say goodbye, how do we reminisce? An experimental rock/ambient record seems to be a not-too-bad place to do it, but I'm never totally satisfied after finishing a listen. Individual tunes are nice, "Elefants" and "Clec" especially. Fucking daliks yo.

Skygreen Leopards - "Gorgeous Johnny"

Inviting, in the sense that it's fun to sit down at a piano and jam along too. Fun like an inside joke. The whole Johnny thing feels like a red herring, though, never actually gets you anywhere as a concept. "Dixie Cups" is nice, but the storytelling isn't that great. Good party music.

Ascended Essence - "The Grand Unification"

Benefit of the doubt can only take you so far with a rap record about epistimelogical metaphysical models joining relativistic physics with stock Eastern philosophy: it sounds like an idea that broke your consciousness while stoned. I was very, very turned off on my first listen, but the album isn't just one man's blown-up zeitgeist. There's too much trade-off between rappers, too many catchy lyrics, too many welcome and different facets to their argument. Maybe they dumb their rhymes down to reach the public, maybe the cartoonishness of the culture they're countering bleeds into them, maybe I'm too unfamiliar in the territory of pop rap to really "get it." But the beats are really nice, and the rhymes range from subpar to pretty sweet; that's not so bad, right?

Deerhoof - "Green Cosmos"

Twee bullshit is more accessible for me in indie rock records, I guess. But there's so much brilliant contrast! Slight touches of broken tempo, chord changes that don't feel quite right, really gross bass and that gorgeous voice. It works because the band can pick up anywhere and go with it, and with that skill and versatility decides to push the limits of any conventionality they were trained in. See above. Byun byun byun.

The Suburbs: Reviewsing, Intro

2010-10-26T00:04:00.000-04:00

I think it's safe to say that Arcade Fire have moved out of a baroque pop idiom and into one of arena-rock. They're still big, still wildly awake onstage, and still subtle in their craft. They've expanded their sound, though, and added shitloads of bass and guitars, wrapping their still-lush instrumentation in the tradition of the Great Western Rock Group. And that's fine, y'know. But it made listening to The Suburbs a disorienting experience for me. The voices, the subject matter, the mythology, the strings were all there, but sprawlingly and disturbingly configured over 16 tracks...

I've come to see the record as a rock opera for our times. Its largeness (sonically, literally!) is the product of an ambitious goal: to create a very dense, contained, self-referential bushel of themes, and reorient them in as many ways as possible. The suburbs are their focus, and by building up a web of lyrical and musical material and wrapping it in a formal structure, they can try to pick apart the implications therein. You could say The Beatles did it with Revolver, and that The Who did it with Tommy. The last one I like, and I think it has the most comparisons; while Tommy is more clearly a narrative, at its core it tries to link turns of phrase, progressions, and musical-theatre-structural-devices to talk about the social implications of one weirdo situation, one thing to try and figure out. The suburbs is our blind/deaf/dumb messiah.

9/24: THOMAS + Owen Pallett Concert Review, Part 1

2010-10-13T01:00:00.000-04:00

A blog is only worth the voice of its speaker; softspoken, hardtyping folk will suffer a hardsoftmind. Lots of my thoughts about this show will need to find another home than an outpouring over a setlist. This is true: the intimate environment, the genesis of a long tour, the retooling of much new material, and Thomas' greater role made the experience...something else, something else. Something new. SOMETHING FUCKING FANTASTIC.

THOMAS: 1) Betty Carter cover ("Music can come from nowhere...")
2) ??? ("...dusty Springfield...")
3) Gwen Stefani cover ("It's hard to remember how it felt before...")
4) ??? ("Jenny's gone home again...")
5) Justin Beiber cover ("Everybody's laughing in my life...")

Talking with Thomas is just a generally good idea. He's an open dude, and you get a lot of cool tidbits in conversation (invite-only record stores, preference for baritone guitar, status of his EP). Being asked to perform on the fly seemed to jar him, and so the transitions between the lovingly-daubed guitar chord cycles were unclear, cut off at the first verse, or just felt unfinished.

But the man rose to the occasion and did a beautiful job transmuting pop/alt-pop covers into new spaces of multifunctional chords and a soaring, tender voice. The way he crafts harmony and melody is a lot less clear than Owen's writing, and his use of motive is either non-existent or highly hidden, peeking out of the density of his movements.

Yet that density, and that attention to harmony and melody, are things that Owen embodies in his music as well. They're great patners in that light, and Thomas' inspired skills on bass, guitar, and percussion are an incredible and increasing asset. Also: Thomas' voice over his sound caves is incredibly vulnerable, often inaudible or only mouthed or whispered. Owen, in his turn, takes an incredible risk in the placement of his melodies within the structure of his tunes. He sings with it. In any case, these covers resembled "Love Is the Candle" most from Self Help, but the experience was much more expansive.

Interesting to filter it through a cover medium, too. Thom mentioned how it allowed him to place meaning into a song without being bound to it. It also allows someone to connect to the song in a new way, giving him the strong power to, as he did genre-wise in the weirdo pop of Self Help, redefine the terms of engagement for these pop songs, and pop at large.

In sum: Thomas' music seems to be about insertion into a structural void, in the way that chords don't necessarily follow from each other, but in recognizing the fact and consequence of their general out-of-place-ness, strive to give meaning and turn to a phrase. It's a timidly sort of constantly trying music, flitting beautifully around his vocals which somehow teeter on the edge of whispers and words. Ethereal isn't the right word, since there's so much purpose in it: so much melody! and some emergent harmonization! and so much...pop! What a perfect fucking compliment for Owen's music.

Owen Pallett
1) E is for Estranged
2) Don't Stop
3) This is the Dream of Win and Regine
4) Midnight Directives
5) Flare Gun
6) The Butcher

In the sketch of it, a pretty standard set. 3/4 "new" songs, and the typical strong songs from all of his records. Don't Stop in spot 2 was a great choice, I think; the energy of the quiet opener drew out over this dance tune, climaxed over Win and Regine, and balanced out with Midnight Directives, effectively setting a diverse and inclusive 4-song opening bit.

The set was almost entirely segued, except for necessary instrument changes; even then, Owen took an extra verse on Scandal to allow Thomas to finish tuning up. Maybe that's just Owen's tendency to rush, which could be corroborated by how quickly he's playing older tunes. It creates a string of performances whose effect is powerful, and whose segues were often perfectly executed, without grace cycles to correct mistakes or gain momentum/confidence.

That didn't mean that their weren't mistakes, including a "wrong button" moment here or there. I hastened to compare to the last show I saw them on, where they had just come off a break, embarking on a long tour, and the last song had some sort of huge breakdown which was really ok by the audience (then a performer error (?) on a This Lamb Sells Condos encore, and here some sort of broken sound device which cut out the polyphony on the climax of Lewis Takes Off His Shirt), in reasonably intimate venues. And yet this show had some sense of...comfort. Maybe it was the not-official scheduling, the acceptance inherent in a college show, the small and beautiful venue, the lack of pressure to open especially to a Rock Band's Set in a Rock Band's Venue with a Rock Band's Crowd. To be fair, Thomas was freakin' a bit from the sudden opener-ship himself, but Owen was so smooth, man. So smooth.

Smooth a lot like the new pop textures that treated the new songs, beginning with Don't Stop. What struck me most was the accompaniment: somewhat how comfortable, in this song and others, Owen is with killing tonality; but mostly how mature the harmonic textures were. The recorded version definitely added some new harmonic structure, and so it sorta stuck out by being "new." But...I feel Owen as a melodic composer, someone who could look at any texture and write a beautiful, expressive, complex melody over it. To go even further, I'd argue that his musical harmonic textures are often really, really basic; that's a good deal of what makes him a pop artist. But even these "poppy" cuts rejected from Heartland have wildly inventive harmony, and many of the songs tonight had new or just newer sounding harmonies (Estranged being one, and beyond the beautiful dynamics and harmonization I have little else to say on it).

Taking this harmony thread a little farther...Thomas' bass addition on This is the Dream of Win and Regine is just another way of giving the accompaniment more power, more flexibility in the hands of (a) a skilled guitarist, (b) an often harmonically ambiguous songwriter, and (c) a non-looped, highly adaptable musician. But what is melody to Owen? Is it...does it change from a simple expression of statement to a more complex yet brilliantly clear movement across textures? Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaat.

Just like the dynamics in Estranged or the climax of Dream, the fucking pizzicato on Midnight Directives was extraspectacular, drawing catcalls from all across the audience. Still don't like the sound-clutter that the organ introduces, but yeah. I paid far more attention to the bass and rhythm in this song. Thomas follows the Bass pattern very closely and sophisticatedly on the wood blocks, and helps to create a jerky sort of syncopation...or maybe just increasing density, another noble goal.

Flare Gun: Owen bows the riff like a hawk descending on whatever upon which hawks descend. The sonic/atonal/rhythmic density of the piece, which is characteristic of Heartland I guess, was a thread that I struggled with a lot during the concert but could never flesh out. What does it mean to have dense music? The effect was at least stunning, and major fucking hell yes on the basswork on that tune.

The Butcher: and all the ways he uses that bow, how he seems to have explored all the possibilities that one can explore in sounding a violin. Sonic experimentation is present everywhere in quiet ways around his music, in a way: looping itself, repatching certain taps on the violin to sound like snares, bowing on the bridge, glisses and pizz, hitting and smacking, shouting into the pickup...it at least betrays the curiosity of an ambitious musician, who strives constantly to bring new character to his music and live performance (ex: the throwaway mellotron-voice riff that he added to LTOHS in Boston, after not using the patch on LTA, seems to have stayed...why?). Thomas is such a great cushion for that, in following the cycles of the music, adding chords and picking Owen up. Or, being picked up. Hehe.

Concert Review: Arcade Fire + Young Galaxy (8/1)

2010-08-03T01:41:00.000-04:00

Young Galaxy

I was distracted with my letters, but I liked this band. It takes balls to start off your set with an expansive rock ballad, and it is with balls that they hopped around their country, post-rock, punk, and country-influenced tunes. Rhythmically they were fantastic, with an ambitious but solid drummer meshing with a great bassist and one of the few people who realize its not easy to play tambourine, and do it well anyway. Their harmonies were sweet as well, although the sweetness almost took away from how hard they were, wrapping it in puffy thirds, fourths, and fifths. Regardless they were a great energy-boost for the evening, with some nice character on stage. Worth checking out in a few months.

Arcade Fire

Setlist:

1) Ready to Start

2) Month of May

3) Neighborhood #2 (Laika)

4) No Cars Go

5) Haiti

6) Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)

7) We Used to Wait

8) Intervention

9) Modern Man

10) The Suburbs

11) Deep Blue

12) Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)

13) Rebellion (Lies)

14) Half Light II (No Celebration)

15) Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)

---

16) Keep the Car Running

17) Wake Up

A quick inventory over that setlist reveals a lot. Almost all of their established live heavy hitters are played, taking up 9 songs; 4 of the songs were the pre-released singles, making, and what's left are three tracks that not enough people knew. It's perfect: be everything people remember or are used to in the band, walk onto sort-of-covered material to start and restart the set, and fill in with interesting material to look forward to on the record. Not many risks, but then Arcade Fire doesn't have to take many risks: the audience trusts them to come back, to tolerate even the new stuff: "sorry to confuse you with all these new songs," Win blurted at one point. I don't blame them, either. I'm not sure whether it was me and my memory of what an AF set should be circa 2007, or the audience's knowledge and enthusiasm for the material they knew, or the grooves that hadn't yet been worn into the new songs to make them their own, (or maybe the weight of a strict, vanilla, corporatized venue) but some electricity was lost during the middle part of that set. I wouldn't say there were any real quiet moments, but moments that were more "shuffle" or "tango" than "jump at a rock concert."

Wisely, Ready to Start was placed at the beginning. It rocks hard, has a strong synth melody on the high-end and a frantic and clear chorus. We all went nuts for it, and felt its guidance into the rest of the set, and we knew it, as we did Month of May. Or at least enough of us did to regenerate the electricity. Or maybe they felt better about it. Anyway, MoM balanced out the baroque arena rock with some baroque...punk, I guess. Just as RTS was accessible for its subject, MoM was accessible for that punk styling, for its repetitions and frantic syncopated lyrics.

But they knew what we wanted, and so they drew out the drums, and as the applause and excitement petered away the vague outlines of Neighborhood #2 (Laika) appeared, at which point shit hit the fan. I do think that the group does the old songs better, that they are spaces in which they know the contours and can vault boldly into the sky with all of their enthusiasm, as they did on the opening tunes but with less...comfort? Maybe what I'm critiquing is the new flavor of The Suburbs, that I see in these tunes, with their shufflesteps and slower builds and lack of catharsis (by the way, I lost my pitchfork bet :< ) in arcingly glistening statements in favor of the quiet and common modernity that forms a slow black choking inevitable tide over us. "The last kiss on the coffin of youth . . . the hard drink after a day's work" . . . and now the family, 10 years later, remembering their parents? The fact that The Suburbs takes the subject matter of Funeral from a different perspective freshened, I think, the approach to the old material. Anyway, it kicked ass and blew everyone's mind, cementing in us the expectation of a machine-gun heavy-hitter kind of night. Disco and all.

And so the culmination of the Arcade Fire style, the ultimate (and penultimate) cry of Neon Bible, the old song which was made new, with a bridge that contained one of the few rhythmless moments of the entire night, with two of the most powerful and extended crescendos in all of music, the one, the only, No Cars Go? Similarly, with the call of the horns, light flashes and fist pumps and abandoned shouting, we found trust. The group played it slightly downtempo but no less powerfully. It takes power to drag the thrill of an opening out for 4 songs, and they certainly managed.

Haiti was one of the top moments of the night. Cascading past a four-on-the-floor bass-drum, the rhythm and melody manage to hit every sixteenth note without sounding frantic, creating two levels of access: the melody's elegaic loss made only more compelling by Regine's impassioned stylings, and the rhythm's frantic, cycling need. The wordless and spoken parts seemed new and surprising, unexpected tunnels through the face of the song into new territory of improv and excitement. This band reps their care for Haiti a thousand times over, and it was a real gift to hear that in their music. Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains), which apparently does take after the Tracy Kidder book, had a similar wealth of spirit but was entirely new, entirely different. It grabbed less quickly than the other tunes, but it had a certain glisten to it, a fascinated transluscence which the simple scalar melodies and happy chord patterns only lended to. Subtle, definitely subtle. But Regine was screaming, so it was accessible. And, oh right, beautiful.

We Used to Wait was probably the lowest energy moment of the night, which was kind of a shock after the grab of the last two songs. It was a "tango" sort of song, with a brooding that didn't really take off. Shuffling around to it, though, you could feel the space they were crafting. In the background were shots of various papers and letters which, I assume, belonged to Alvino Rey, grandfather to Win and Will. Is his memory accessible to an audience, beyond the rarity of "My Buddy" and a vague link in the musical chain to AF? Maybe. As with this song and the others, the album as got to get known first.

Intervention was just lovely. The musicianship was a bit rough, notably on the marimba, but whatever. The spirit was everywhere. Also special to hear was not the LP-style full-force organ, or the demo-style acoustic guitar, but a strong mix of the two. With a better soundsystem that could absolutely destroy, but instead a certain sensitivity got lost in the sweep of the drums. Ah well. I wish I could say more about Modern Man, and later Deep Blue, and even later Half Light II (No Celebration), but I really don't remember.

However, The Suburbs shines brightly. One of the things I loved about the tune is how the darkness slowly chokes it, through layers that are added, rhythms that are changed, melodies which flare off, by degrees you enter a more anxious, even desperate space, but always quietly, always. Of course that effect is hard to replicate live, but even so, there was less punch last night, less sureness, less power into that downbeat stomp on the chorus and less soaring off into a new verse rife with more loss every word.

Which wasn't permanent, of course. Because there is only one other thing as exciting to me as the promise of the groove Neighborhood #3 (Power Out). A tune like that couldn't exist on The Suburbs; it's too simple in its statements, too complex in its weavings, too orange in hue (?), too young. Maybe the youngest song on Funeral in its supernova frantic pathos-laden punch. Or maybe not. But only one other thing can move my body like that, can hit so deeply the face of what this band has meant to me like that song. I can't say anything less personal about it.

And the other thing is a drumfreakout which morphs, little by little, into the realization that they're about to play Rebellion (Lies) and you should already moving. It fits the arena amazingly well, and while not as intimate as some of the earlier tracks, in its firey grandeur and towering irony (Lies! Lies! Lies! Lies! Lies!) it's immediately there for everyone. Shit continued to hit the fan. More fist-pumps per second seconds, more voice cracks per note on a wordless melody, more feet left the ground per song than anything else.

Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels), though...it was not arena rock. It had a dancing power that people went nuts with, and came in second on the voice cracks per note sung, yeah. It was infinitely personal, tender and young even after its composition 6? 7? 8? years ago. The Arcade Fire returns and manages, like no other song on the set, to pack in all of their many-layered pathos. A cosmic Sfogliatella. Their loss and their optimism in equal and magnetically charged parts drawing towards each other in their stage presence, their musicianship...I'm descending, but if you've seen them live, you get it. They just touch you and it's nice. And in LP3-era AF, they only get better at it.

I was pleasantly surprised with the choice of Keep the Car Running, and even more surprised with how they pushed at it, letting it breathe on the "when it's coming" parts, a brave move for an encore. The density just shot up on those choruses as the drums doubled the beat and the vocals shout, and that was done with such care. Goodness.

I'm tired, but Wake Up was Wake Up. It was the world and distant arena rock and shimmering sentiment. It was magnificently performed and also just had to happen. There is no way that this song, this set, this band is done budding over this tour. The later, the better.

Looking back, the show feels in part contrived, a deliberate attempt by the band to limit themselves and what they said on stage by planning it so carefully, fitting it with the necessities of an (shiver) arena band still kicking off their new-album tour. But what can you do at the Pavilion, on the second show of a long tour of a new disc? Personally it didn't matter at the time. Everybody, it seemed, felt welcomed enough to clap along when they felt like it, and not let the band decide. Me, I fucked up my elbow and my knee and my voice and the attitudes of a few haters behind me and it doesn't matter. That was, if I dare, the wildest, deepest show I've ever seen.

I Made A Demo

2010-07-09T02:26:00.000-04:00

This was for my senior project, a 5-week endeavor marked mostly by the transition from classes to no classes, grades to no grades, work to a nearly guaranteed pass, and lots and lots of time we still had to spend going back to school to do fucking...whatever. So the work, while meant and conceived and lengthwise an album, is more of a fuckoff demo, with a bit of good shit goin' on. Part of me wants to do it again, but it's a stab, an attempt, with a few good things that I want to take elsewhere. But yeah, Owen Pallett covers only sound good live, Woody Guthrie America covers cannot be done under stress, and you need to plan your shit for 7 minute songs. Tracklisting, with my favorites bolded. Enjoy "Stabs." Heavy critique appreciated.

1) "Prelude (to Shitty Days)" by Alyssa
2) "He Poos Clouds" by Owen Pallett, arr. Matt Winkworth
3) "Martha My Dear" by Lennon/McCartney, arr. Alyssa
4) "Woody Guthrie's America" by Akron/Family, arr. Alyssa
5) "Accidents" by Arcade Fire, arr. Alyssa (better version here)

6) "Shampoo, Fresh Laundry, and Sweat (for Blu)" by Alyssa
7) "The Fragrance of Dark Coffee" by Noriyuki Iwadare, arr. Alyssa, feat. Bekah, Jack, and Mia
8) "Like Someone in Love" by Van Heusen, inspired by Bjork and Jerry Englebach, feat. LEFCS
9) "This Lamb Sells Condos" by Owen Pallett, arr. Owen Pallett
10) "The Tyrrany of Lists" by Alyssa
11) "We All Have to Save a Little Love For Ourselves (for Kevin)" by Alyssa

Link

Concert Review: Islands + Active Child + Steel Phantoms (6/28)

2010-06-29T09:24:00.001-04:00

I almost didn't go to this show.

Steel Phantoms
The friend I went with had a very good point: these guys could be huge in 5 years. They've only been together for one year, and this was their second show on their first tour. Nuts. The drummer from post-RTTS and Arm's Way, Aaron Harris, was the "frontman," which is always cool to see for a drummer. He's really good, as he showed during the Islands set, but he picked beats that were simpler and did their job (to make a weird reference, the band sounded like Arm's Way Islands with the crap cut away). Their guitarist had a lot of enthusiasm, the bassist was tight, and the keyboardist played fine and sang ok (bit off-tune in parts that needed more oomph). On record these guys are a lot better, with music that turns the gas on and moves within and beyond it, but the show felt like we were getting our bearings, trying to build something, like a workshop. The results were exciting, and some of the best of the night.

Active Child
One bassist and one harpist/keyboardist and one macbook with synth wails and 80's-style-drum-machines in the back. It was a weird show. Cool stuff included the harp, especially, which could be both a percussion/swell instrument and a very sharp melodic one, and the beautiful tenor harmonies between the two. They were on different energy levels, though; the bassist would be drinking water while the keyboardist was frantically trying to wrap up a tune. Not a good recipe when you're walking the line of "live music" in the first place. Not the most articulated act, but they're probably great on record.

Islands
Setlist from memory:
1) Switched On
2) Creeper
3) Devout
4) Vapours
5) Heartbeats
6) New Song #1
7) Whalebone
8) Tender Torture
9) New Song #2
10) Rough Gem
11) Don't Call Me Whitney, Bobby
---
12) Swans

So Jamie fucked off again, this time not as nicely. He was at the Middle East gig I saw with them, back in the fall, and I had a few problems with that show: all the songs were downtempo, the musicianship seemed spotty, and people just weren't all that happy playing their instruments. But now the lineup is the Arm's Way crew, which would predispose the band to sound harder. Beyond that, though, they trusted this drummer to fill in the important spots, to follow the written and unwritten tides of the songs.

When the band first Switched On, Nick's vocals weren't coming through the mix. It seemed like the night was going to continue, as earlier: a bunch of people on stage trying stuff out, with only a tentative concept of a "band" between them. But when the mic worked, it was clear how much the songs relied not only on the words of his speech, but the tone and cadence; they wrapped up the tune nicely, and moved on to better things. Creeper was fucking steel, each "right from the start" feeling more frantic and more energetic. It was a perfect early song: give the drummer a song he knows and feels well, from an album filled with brazenly rough energy, and put it out in this new, tighter ensemble.

Their tightness and energy were clear, but with Devout they just radiated creativity. The song is filled with synth swells and drum machines that doesn't lend to a melodic synth and drummer and otherwise harder-rock (weird to say for synth-pop) instrumentation. They allowed the drummer to create these changes in intensity that turned one of the okay songs on Vapours into this near-anthemic automatic-ear-fucking machine. The riffs on Nick's guitar spun light all over the place.

A lot of the songs were unrecognizeable at first from their new treatment, or at least their feel, especially Heartbeats, a song about making electronic music, but the results were always positive. Whalebone was great. Tender Torture wasn't everything I wanted it to be, but it wasn't bad at all.

The two new songs were strange and fun. Unlike a lot of the songs that night, the first song didn't have the stops or cut-outs or clear changes in directions that others did; its main component was a distorted guitar riff, which chord changes on the chorus. It was also longer, and the lyrics were unintelligible, and of course we didn't know it! It worked, but not as well as the second, which sprung on and off its hard-rock with tightness and sensitivity, like a very small muscled dog.

Rough Gem, Whitney, and Swans were all fucking transcendent. Even though the crowd was small, enough of the diehards had come out for us to get excited at the thought of one of those earlier songs. Rough Gem wasn't introduced, so its starting swell gave the the chills. The bass and guitar took over the cello lines, the synth sounded even better, and that drummer just sent everything spilling over the top with both the irreverent joy of the video and the hard rock of the entire night. Because the song has so many distinct but related parts, the trip through it felt like an odyssey. It wasn't just that it sounded so much like the record; it sounded like everything the record had hoped for. Whitney was annouced as a crowd favorite, and the band really couldn't pull out the creepy looseness of the recording, so they tuned themselves down a bit and sent their energy out in other places: psychotically perfect fills, pregnant pauses, and a tendency to shove the rhythm of the vocals farther back in the measure, giving this playful anticipation to the crowd, who literally couldn't sing along with Nick until "open your eyes, look around you, fuck what you heard, you were lied to." Fun. Swans was played uber-down tempo and roughly at the Middle East, but...it was faster last night. The synth/piano did its job, with the player later switching into guitar for the hard rock portion. Just like Rough Gem this song felt like an odyssey, the parts impeccably played and tight (I was admiring the bass player the entire night, his devotion to the riffs was incredible). It felt good that a song about musical freedom from The Unicorns was done with a new drummer, with a new spirit. Words fail me on this one.

Album Playlist of the Half-Month 2 (6/15)

2010-06-15T01:29:00.001-04:00

"Making Orange Things" by Venetian Snares + Speedrancher

Not as trial-by-fire-rage-transcendent as some people might tell you. The title track begins promising and turns into one of the worst beats Funk has ever let his hand touch in ownership. But the turns of invention come back strong: "Tushe Love"'s clarion call to pure sex dirty freakout beat insanity, "Unborn Baby"'s strong commentary and invention, "Cheatin'"'s strange dance of need, and the following need FUCKED with "Meta Abuse," the "Russell" tracks' hate and unpredictable rush, and my favorite: the mushed out washed out drugged up fucked over melodies of "Halfway" that would sound like classical if the style of the last 10 tracks hadn't forced this into this sad role. Wowie.

"Calla" by Calla

Crazy and wonderful noise/rock record, with pure creep and texture mixing with spot on drumwork and vocals. It's very deliberate music, and despite its many faces (the slow grasping clutch of Tarantula, the simple walking bliss of "Only Drowning Men"), it feels controlled, like, well, an album. A connected album of half-noise music that really does focus on its noise is a special thing, and it's well-done to boot.

"The Book of Heads" by John Zorn

Oh I dunno. It's avant-garde and I can enjoy it for that. I wouldn't say there's a progression, but I can enjoy it for its inventiveness and commentary.

"Blind Light" by Anton Fier

Hear the Bjork on "Blind Light," it's title track, feeling like the explosion of "Pluto," and a lot of other similarities are there: dance influences, out-there female focus, noise and swelling motives, and a not-insignificant amount of artistry. But the album feels distended in its own trip-hop self, straddling over tracks the line between ambient chillout triphop and...well, music. Bass work is fantastic.

"Bjork Gudmondsdottir" by Bjork

After I stopped freaking out from how little Bjork was once upon a time, I got to enjoy the ups and downs of this heavily mixed (true) Debut. "Musastaginn" is pure cleverness and genius; I hear both some Sugarcubes songs and "Venus as a Boy" in it. "Arabadrengurinn" is also good, with punchy harmonies and a lot of wonderful dance flow. It feels like both a regurgitation of its time and a quiet prelude to Bjork's later work, and that explanation makes it easy to blame the album's many flops and pointless gestures on its time. But no, she's figuring it out. Good on her. It's the question posed by "Alta Mira": can she ever write beautiful music that isn't trite? Yes. Yes yes yes.

"As the Eternal Cowboy" by Against Me!

For me, the album flips between the epic and the not bad but forgettable. T.S.R., Sink Florida Sink, Potatos Rice and Bread, and Cavalier Eternal definitely stick along for the ride, and none of the other songs are bad or memorable. The only song I get frustrated on is "Raised Fists" It's a belabored point without any reward to it.

"Moonglow" Venetian Snares

Both of the venetian snares albums were heavily out of alphabetical order, but I wanted to revisit them. The A-side of this caught me immediately with its flashy jazz-punk tone, but in a lot of ways that flash is so important: these two songs are Funk confining himself to a certain vocabulary and being as creative as possible within it. And it isn't even something really self-indulgent like songs of fucking his then girlfriend, it's these wildly mixing beats and swells that appeal to more than just the beatnik than me. This Bitter Earth, especially, has this near-symphonic quality as its descending themes and samples swirl inwardly around the drums, sax, and most importantly the negative space. Restraint, something that Funk usually doesn't deal in, or only when there's an assured freakout later, lives here. It's a magical shot.

Quick Thoughts on those Two New Arcade Fire Single

2010-06-15T01:27:00.001-04:00

If that is starting Suburbs I will be so happy, but...I hate the double-tracked vocals and slow vocal phrasing right now. The bassline feels ugly, just going along on its own. It...this is arcade fire's new direction, I follow, but I'm not getting the same sense of invention that I did before. It feels like a radio bite. When the drums re-enter around 2:25 I feel them, but then I lose them again. The songs on Funeral took the entire track to reach their climax, but never lost their strong energy, which derived from simple parts mixing in complex and beautiful ways. On first listen this song lay down on the table, took its clothes off, and screamed at me for a bit, and then fell off.
On second listen the groove feels more like a baptism. I guess the simplicity of it is jarring me. The instrumentation is like a punk band with a synthesizer, that's part of what throws me off. Still, this feels too processed to me, it's swells and falls back on its noise, not the spirit that was so clear on the last two LPs. Black Mirror, by contrast, swelled in slowly and then hit you over the head with its power. I'm not sure this more...sideways, punky, radio-conscious, simple startup really speaks to me like I was hoping it to. This is the first time I've had any concerns about the new LP. I'm liking the song more as it goes on, especially that breakdown has a lot to it. I'm just...concerned.

This is also different, more punky and radio in its production, but this is more welcoming in its lyrics. There's more going on under its simple groove; the bassline doesn't feel flaccid or pudgy (...), with the other parts with it. The disco stuff seems weird at first, but that four-on-the-floor drumbeat was always present in their music. This makes a lot more sense to me as a sequel to the rest of their music: innovative, creative in its themes and entrances, and powerful. I still don't "get" the production style, which feels blown out in ways that even Neon Bible wasn't. This electropop vocabulary will take more getting used to. Regine's interjections bring me right back to Funeral, eeee. I just realized part of the problem is my bass-heavy speakers, but still that last buildup didn't have everything I expected it to.

Again, though, this I can give more of a chance than that first track. Also, this album seems to be able music a lot, so the level of commentary about music by enacting either what they're hoping for or fighting against is important.

Overall, I hope I'm able to change enough to appreciate this promise.

Some Things I'd Like to Try

2010-06-09T10:07:00.000-04:00

Infinite Jam. An idea I had for a while. Get a space with a crapload of different instruments and tech, and have there be music constantly, all the time. Songs and jams spinning around a wildly varying roster. I'd imagine it'd require a group of 20 musicians subbing in and out, and needs money for rent and food for the performers. Rules: instruments must be playing at all times, although stop-time is fine in context; the constant repetition of a certain figure might help the band talk about the music while it goes on, but that shouldn't go on for too long; always 2 people at the setup at any given time. I just read an article about Victor Wooden's style of learning, and this seems like an embodiment of that: practice feeling, not strictly playing something sensible. Practice trusting and evolving with people. Moreover I like the feeling of gathering a bunch of people together in an insane and taxing project as this, and turning it into pure communication, or telepathy across sounds.

Word Album. Oh, I know it's been done, to make symphonies or sounds out of words spelled with the musical alphabet. Even when those words are shaped into poetry. But the concept still fascinates me, as just another screen through which creativity is distilled. I think it'd be best if the album wasn't explicitly said to have this characteristic, because it's not meant to be a gimmick that gets it published. It's just a method to experiment with.

A Pop Drummer's Companion to John Zorn's 'The Book of Heads'. I don't know a lot about the record, but John Zorn released this crazy album for a solo guitar with all sorts of effects and gimmicks across 35 etudes. Listening to it felt like a view askance at the history of pop and guitar music, trying to filter through its traditions with free improv and a touch of humor. Because of its commentary and the yawningly open use of space, it would be interesting to score a companion to it for rock drum kit, matching the guitar's free improv with snippets and stabs at grooves.

Live Performing. I'd love to try playing at venues, seriously. I can certainly play discrete songs, but my favorite thing to do for people is to string a lot of songs together in some sort of epic soundtrack art-rock thing, and end violently. A lot of the songs I'd like to cover (below) have those capabilities. Other ideas I've had included playing piano with a bass drum and hihat at my feet, or to try looped clarinet (Accidents and Halfway Up The Stairs of Mucus would really lend to that).

[Solo Piano] Gloomy Sunday by Rezső Seress, also known as the Hungarian Suicide Song (bullshit publicity ploy...). It was hard to find the sheet music until I searched the name in Hungarian and got a pretty hi-def scan of it (to be given to whomever wants it). I got into this through the Venetian Snares adaptation of the Billie Holiday cover, both of which are beautiful. It's haunting music, I'd like to play with the score a bit.

[Snippet] Take a Bow by Muse is something I've played with as an exercise. The chords could be good for something.

[Snippet] Hey Dad by Owen Pallett. Aarrrgggh, love those chords so much.

[Solo Piano] Flare Gun by Owen Pallett, arr. Matt Winkworth for Piano and voice. Matt over at the fanforums made this arrangement, which is really just an adaptation, since the things is goddamn impossible, but quite impressive. If I'm ever good enough to handle the jumps, it could be a powerhouse.

[Solo Piano] The Miner Becomes Forgetful by Owen Pallett. There's a bit of a piano score adaptation from the fan forums, but I really want to see if I can turn a solo piano piece out of it. The hardest part will be arranging the violin line in the chorus to intersect and move past the rhythm part...and those damn chords at the end.

[Solo Piano] Bucky Little Wing by Islands is my favorite party cover. Rollicking and simple. The version I play is slightly adapted to add some depth to the sound, filled on record by doowops and rain sounds. In some ways, not worth the time, but so much fun.

[Solo Piano] Sulk by Radiohead. I use this in worships a lot, my adaptation has morphing arpeggios in the left hand and octaves, occasionally spiked with a third or a sixth to deepen the sound. I could never fold in the chorus part, though, and so what I play now is usually just a vamp. I'd like to change that.

[Solo Piano] Paranoid Android by Radiohead is something I often segue into from another song I do, an original. I only ever do the middle section, never a verse or the descending bridge, but the bridge especially should turn into an arrangement.

[Solo Piano / Ensemble] Vito's Ordination Song by Sufjan Stevens. This song gets me on the simplicity of the chord structure, the genius of the parallel-fifths-unresolved-leading-tone-horn-line, and the parallel sixths of the vocal harmony ("rest in my arms"). I use both of these things for worship preludes, but I'd love to turn it into an actual arrangement.

[Solo Piano (2 clarinets?)] Flint by Sufjan Stevens fits into all the other cyclic Gm stuff that I do, and adds a really wonderful melody. Great for segues.

[Ensemble (bass, 2 clarinet, drums, voice)] Winter is Coming by Radicalface. I tried covering this for my senior project, but the result, for two clarinets, drums, voice, and bass, was just awful awful awful. Out of tune and without point or depth. I want to try a song with a melodic bass guitar pattern, but it requires a good amount of thought to balance out the sound. The finished product excites me.

[Ensemble (drums, piano...?)] Contrarian by Future of the Left. I want to do an ensemble cover to this strangely tender tune which caps off a punk/indie album.

[Ensemble (kit + 2x clarinet] All the Children Are Dead by Venetian Snares. My dream is to take the moaning bass, snare, and hihat as given, and condense the other effects into toms and things, and put it under two clarinets to scream out the melody.

[Ensemble (Clarinet Quartet] Halfway Up The Stairs of Mucus by Venetian Snares. The song has so much power in rising out of the muck of its own beats, and these really elegaic melodies spiral out of that. In some ways it'd be a crime to remove them without some noise, which is why if I scored it for clarinet quartet, I'd have some noise action going on one of the horns.

Suburbs/Month of May and Album Playlist of the Half-Month

2010-05-28T23:03:00.001-04:00

I'll start with the small news:

Just like I've had the same playlist stuck on the "Now Playing" thing on my Zune , I like to switch it up every so often...like every half-month. So I'll pick a random point in the alphabet and harp on it, giving short thoughts or longer ones maybe baby.

This week:

Wilco: "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot"

My dad was the first one to get me into this group/album, so my first memories of it are from a few long car rides, and listening to orange-tan colored rock music tinged with something I couldn't recognize. Second was drumming on "Jesus, Etc." and not realizing it was from this album, and then I started getting into it again. For the last instrumental concert of the year I played drums on "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" with 6 kids from the Jazz Band...it was hard, but really special. The entire album is easy to listen to but hard to pick apart, not only lyrically but in musical motifs beyond the trite "music/noise." What I feel in it, though is a hotel filled with resting anticipations and wishes, trying to free themselves and taking weirdly-lighted trips out into the "real world."

Wrecked Machines: "Worried World"

It's...good trance? I didn't give it too many listens but I felt like I was listening to something more artful than a lot of dance music can do for me.

Dosh: "Wolves and Wishes"

Probably the favorite stuff on the playlist. I first got suggested it asking around on /mu/ for music that used music boxes, and heard it again at a religious conference. Some of the rhythms and energy remind me of Akron/Family, or some of the hip but none of the hop of Avalanches, or none of the catharsis and all of the energy of Explosions in the Sky. Hooah. Beautiful rambling instrumental music, I could dance to this for ages.

Patrick Wolf: "Wind in the Wires"

I'm not a fan. I enjoyed it at first when I was able to follow the drama of it. And it's all about drama, the kind of suspension of disbelief that an album about Gypsy Kings and the Shadowsea and all sorts of fantasy characters to take place. But really, once you take all the sexy club-style bass out of "Libertine" (which I had to do, on the train), what I'm getting is a lyrically freewheeling musically dry set of stuff. Like, listen to Tristan with the bass low. That's what the album is for me, funky but dead. Then set the bass way up and rock out to it.

The Unicorns: "Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone?"

I think there are only two songs in the world that are perfect, fully perfect, that nothing could be done to them to make them better. "Tuff Ghost" is one of them ("Swans (Life After Death)" is the other, heheh). I either see this album as a half-assed concept album or a pretentiously thrown-together set of songs trying to be about death, but some of the songs just kill. What's weird about it is that even though I feel the album's concept teeters a lot, the songs are so strange in form (the abrupt ending of "I Don't Wanna Die" or the long unbalanced jam of "Child Star") that they lean on each other a lot to make sense, so there is a flow. I'm overharshing the concept, too, it's not that...argh....I guess just like Islands' first album, this is really about making music, musical death and creative death and life, and I should just feel the flow. And I do. Oh I do. You can't cause I'm already dead.

Lunar: "Wall of Sound"

Is it sad that I can say that this is one of those "classical/electronica bands who don't do much for publicity and release all their music online for free" and not be alone? A lot of their music feels tired, especially when the instrumentation strives to give the music a "classical feel" in an otherwise techno song. But in terms of soundscapes and crafting...pillars of sound...they do a nice job. Some of the songs have creative strokes of real weight, too. It does happen. Just...overproduced blagh.

OK OK OK BUT NOW even though the news has broken ARCADE FIRE'S NEW SINGLE TIME.

The first thing that identifies The Suburbs as an AF song is the rolling saloon-style piano chords over the bass and drums, with maybe a distant wail of strings, in an airy sort of production style that you can't mistake from Neon Bible. More archetypes in the lyrics: suburbs, driving, mother, bombs, lost feelings, kids, family. And the suburbs! Didn't we spend a whole album on that one?

Stuff's different, though. In Funeral AF did all they could to show the reasons to paint and reject these suburbs, from the dysfunctional relationships to war and loneliness and lots of driving and water and leaving places. In coming back to this topic, though, we're breaking through the stark and wildly colorful funeral picture into something even stranger: the dead body of youth, after it left. We're exploring what Neon Bible seemed to have so strongly left behind, to travel into realms of political commentary and loss in an ocean of negative media influence.

Instead we're right into the memories, not the present or the future but the past.Moving in your mom's van, what Funeral implied is now facing us in The Suburbs: we can't escape this past, and even if the feelings go past the memories stay and kids are still screaming screaming screaming. Who knows what it means now. It was all about the childhood gestures of drawing lines between us and them, screaming and yelling, getting hard, and getting bored with it all. Did it mean anything? Ever? The loss of Funeral was the idea and meaning of youth, but surfacing from the hard-life torment of Neon Bible, they look back and the loss has mutated into something else. Something else. Something else. Still screaming.

That's exciting fucking territory to travel to. What excites me even more is that even though AF released the title track of the work, we know from Neon Bible that the title track is only an exposition, a quick look into what an album is doing. I'm not sure that there are musical frontiers here, but it reminds me most of a slowed-down verison of "Poupee de Cire / Poupee de Son" cover from the Split 7" with LCD Soundsystem. Maybe some of "Cold Wind," actually a whole lot of "Cold Wind." Usually Arcade Fire songs can be thought as pure crescendos from A to B, but with this cut the beat's always on the same, and what gets added is a bit more melancholy. The descending electric guitar, synth wails, and strings that lay suspended in the air crying out under the harsher electric bass and (really well done) drums. Acoustic guitar thoughout is a great touch, adding a folky touch. The piano always plays the same progression diatonically, but it morphs it into more spaces...the weirdo major turn earlier in the song becomes a morning pedal point, drilling drilling drilling already past already past. The song breaks maybe a lit of mold, but mostly it takes everything Arcade Fire has done so well and puts it into a 5 minute romp/funeral march. Maturity is here, and also a lot of confusion.

If Month of May had xylophone in it, you could tell it was an Arcade Fire song. I...I can't even...not right now...maybe later...

Concert Review: Flobots (5/25) and other things

2010-05-23T23:28:00.001-04:00

Hey! So this show wasn't just Flobots, but I didn't get to catch the openers. I have no experience with the group beyond "Handlebars," and had never been up to Allston, or specifically to Harper's Ferry. It's a beautiful hole-in-the-wall with, yes, cheap beer, which is apparently why a lot of people were there. But the whole setup was casual, with no biggie ticket check even though they were a little on the pricey side ($20?). Dedicated to the band? Maybe 150. But that made it all the so much bigger.

I know shit about Flobots, but that stopped me. Stopped nobody; you could feel people gravitating in off their barstools to be here. Musically I'm into what they do, I guess. Start with: a very tight drummer, who knows when to kick on and kick off, and how to throw in double-time on the snare and hihats to funk up a beat without derailing it. The jittering mass of their songs couldn't have gone along without their bassist, who not only was tight, but creative and clearly into it. The violist did some beautiful work, with her vibrato and attention to tone, but she wasn't always able to get beyond her role and character as "contrast." Especially in a show without horns, you need to find ways to add melody, and she could've been more outgoing and stabilized some of the grooves. The guitarist was a huge geek, but I loved him dearly. Both as frontmen and as skilled musicians, though, the two rappers stole the show.

I think of rap as three things only: rhythm, tone, and beat, in order of importance. I'm going to use Busdriver's solo on Islands' "Where There's a Will, There's a Whalebone" to illustrate what I'm talking about. Rhythm and cadence are just the same as in drumming; I think that any good rap line should be able to double as a snare solo on drums. Finding ways to find those cracks in the song where offbeats, syncopation, or (favorite!) triplet runs push it forward. Here's what I'm talking about, to the right: it holds up on its own, just as music.

The manipulation of those rhythmic elements and motives has to be married to the tools of poetic words: rhymes, masculine and feminine lines, assonance, consonance, all of those simple tools of language. Sounds need to link to other sounds: in rhyme with another, in contrast with a line before it, in a pun that links back to another syllable. You can listen to rap like it's scatting.

I'm worst with the meaning. Even if that "Whalebone" song doesn't really say much that's sensible (or audible), you get the main themes pretty clearly and cleverly: being lost in a swirling realm of media, fame and fantasy, corruption, etc. Good rap can rally even if it's not specific; it can paint a picture through association, not literal words. I'm a sucker for instrumental music, but the power of a Flobots song couldn't be the same with out its lift. Decyphering their lyrics in real time was a treat, "Panacea for the Poison" especially, but everything! "Drop the debt and legalize weed" called to the crowd as much as the music behind it did, and both of them were amazing at all three things.

The two rapper added their interplay to the mix. They pushed each other in their friendly yet intense trading of lines, they spoke together and varied their tone to vaunt the whole song up, they melded their personalities against the characters that every other performer was in and blew it up with a word. Chain reactions across the floor. It was beautiful.

They wanted you to put your hands in the air and you put your hands in the air not because you felt like you had to but because you wanted to because together you could do something really exciting. They gave you messages scaled to a human level: not "overturn the Arizona immigration law now" or "equal rights for people of all sexualities and gender-identities now" or "troops out now", but prayers, wishes, conversations, and questions, meant to open our soul to what really matters: "standing up in a room. that's when change happens. Stand up, stand up, stand up..."

Kate Miller-Heidke's "Curiouser," and Concert with Ben Folds (April)

2010-05-17T19:10:00.000-04:00

I picked up the album to your left during her tour with Ben Folds, a concert that I was very abruptly and very happily invited to at the House of Blues. More on that in a bit. In a bit of boredom, I threw a few albums together in a now playing list wtih this on it (also including Evelyn Evelyn's "Love Will Tear Us Apart" track which continues to blow my mind and The Avalanches' "Since I Left You" which is just perfect to play for friends and is not well known despite being lauded a thousand times over by Kitchfork and Antony's "The Crying Light" which is just too self-indulgently melancholy for me right now and Sufjan Steven's "The BQE," which continues to FUCK MY BRAIN but anyway). I've gotten a few chances to listen through it and I guess I'd like to say some things about it.

The album is a vein of gold. There's so much clear strength and power, and yet impure or...unrefined wouldn't be the right word, since the album's production sheen is flawless.

Despite her trademark voice abilities, I'm disappointed with the melodies she uses, which range from the unimaginative ("I Like You Better When You're Not Around") to the trite ("Caught in the Crowd"). Yet as an instrument weaving in with other, it gains an incredible amount of power ("God's Gift To Women"), catchyness ("Can't Shake It" and "Motorscooter"), and just presentation effect ("Politics in Space") . I say without irony that she would make an incredible backup or group singer, as I even saw with Ben Folds on "You Don't Know Me."

Lyrically, the album is very mixed. Her style tends to torrent along a theme or a rhyme scheme, and the effect is either stunning or falls flat on its face in a magical explosion of trite pop (..."Caught in the Crowd"...) . She's never just saying things, but she does get caught up in how smart she's doing, maybe? Or less venemously, getting caught up in the momentum that you get when you have a really good riff you like, or a pattern, and just throw it out as much as you can because you're excited. A lot of great excitement, and honesty and clarity, I don't feel bullshitted. But at the same time...I wish she listened to fewer of her pop bands and heard the songs the sex pistols made. She could focus more on energy and less on her really nice articifice.

In terms of grooves...again, mixed. There's a lot of invention going about, especially in chord progressions, song forms, and choice of instruments. But she gets caught up in it, despite all artful manipulations, and certain songs are just doomed to fail (..."Caught in the Crowd"...ok, another example: "Last Day on Earth"). But sometimes she's spot-fucking on, and the groove aligns with the words and the melody doesn't detract and and and and and the results are fireworks, "Politics in Space" and "God's Gift to Women" and "Can't Shake It" (my copy of the album also has "Words" and "Are You Fucking Kidding Me," both of which are mindblowing and were played live).

And live? She tours with an acoustic guitarist and uses a keyboard occasionally. And I think that's AMAZING. Without the tools to create a full pop artifice, she strips down the the pure energy and focuses on her strengths: insane torrents of words, radical manipulation of tone and pitch, inventive and surprising song structures over focused grooves. Kind of like Amanda Palmer touring vs. Amanda Palmer recording these days.

To sum up: I would love a panel of very, very deliberate artists and musicians and arrangers to come together and listen to this over and over, and put out a cover album of it. Mean title for it? "We Make Kate Miller-Heidke Songs Better Than Kate Miller-Heidke Can." Nice title? "We Tap Into the Inspiration and Genius of Kate Miller-Heidke."

These Days of Grey Summer

2010-05-07T15:35:00.000-04:00

A few musical-related things that excited me have started to happen, or are sorta nearing the realm of completion and finality.

I found my old Casio Portatone, a sampling keyboard which I first learned how to plan on. As a sampler it's a pretty primitive tool, and I'm none to happy with it, but with the flute setting on it doctored a bit, it could sound like a legitimate synthesizer. Using a 4 mm cable and a converter I can actually feed it into the DP-01 and record it, which will feature heavily in my next project. There are also adorable little midi-drumbeats to play with.

I am out of classes, and for my senior project I am making an album. By time, half and half covers and originals. Covers are: "He Poos Clouds and "This Lamb Sells Condos" by Owen Pallett, both for piano and voice; "Accidents" by Arcade Fire, for clarinet quartet; "Like Someone In Love," the arrangement performed by Bjork on Debut, for piano and voice; "Woody Guthrie's America" by Akron/Family, for piano, clarinet, voice, bass, drums, flutes and recorders; "Martha My Dear" by the Beatles for piano, clarinet and voice; "The Fragrance of Dark Coffee" by Iwadare from Phoenix Wright/Gyakuten Saiban 3 for piano and sampled voices; and "Winter is Coming" by Radicalface for bass guitar, two clarinets, drums, and voice. Should be "done" May 25th...um...

I have finished my run of spring concerts, especially dense this month with Ben Folds, Evelyn Evelyn, Owen Pallett, and Jonsi, with Neutral Uke Hotel tonight for fun. I fell out of the habit of writing about music because I was worrying about too much else, but I'll be posting for the latter four pretty soon.

I am performing the entirety of Beethoven's Piano Sonata, Op. 26 (Theme and 5 Variations) early next month. I'm freaking out a little, especially since I haven't gotten into a good practice rhythm like I thought I would. I'm in control of the notes for the most part, so I think it should turn out alright...but when you forget to practice for a week...I have purchased a dayplanner and hopefully I can pick things up.

I'm online! My version of "Woody Guthrie's America" is the first cut of the Northeast division of WGA v.2. It's more of a demo than anything, and I'm redoing it for the album above.

Stupid little status updates remind bored musicians to keep to what keeps them on.

Concert Review: Jonsi + Death Vessel (5/5)

2010-05-07T14:34:00.000-04:00

This concert...

Death Vessel was a great opener. He's the kind of performer that is better suited to a seated venue, but I think he did a great job keeping his energy going. He took a sort of bluesy "1-5-1-5" "I'm playing every sixteenth note" kind of rambling folk and really used silence and very good voice leading (across such simple chords!) to...call out emotions. Not evoke them, and not portray them, but to call their names in the crowd, have them stand up and stare outward, as a slightly confused yet strangely willing performer, as the spotlight shines on them and fades. Someone told me that his songs were all pretty similar, and I guess to a certain extent you could make the claim. Despite that, I enjoyed how deep he got into each soundworld he created, how chords seemed to spiral out of each other seamlessly like water, or like the crazy videography from later in the show.

Jonsi was nothing I ever expected. I hadn't listened to Go (the SE was waiting for me when I got home) at all, and all I knew was to expect the similar energy behind Gobbledygook. On the surface, the show was simple. A set of loose soundscapes with limited percussion, and a set of heavy drum songs. Below the levels, though, things were vibrantly changing. The brilliant videography was the first clue. The main structure was two scrims facing the audience, each with a bunch of projectors, with a window-like structure in between them. The linking structure was that beginning piece of paper with the animals on it, but what spiraled out of it worked between screens, without screens, with and without proper color, without shape and form. Lines and essences spiraling together in a dance of life so articulated, not just an empty platitude but an illustration of a point so heavy that the morphing forms it took seemed all new, special...just as the songs did.

First off, the five-fold deep bow at the end, like stage performers, was completely deserved. The sense of a wandering life was articulated by these five performers across...10 instruments? Main microphone, looping microphone, keyboard, vibes/crazy I'm going to drag two violin bows across this thing, other super weirdo key device, tiny upright piano, two drum kits, bass, guitar, acoustic guitar and ukelele, little lightup pad which controls swell....they all had these skills, although I think Alex did the most wandering, sagan bless his tiny head. There was generally a designated two guitars and drums and Jonsi, with Alex finding his place.

All of them did their work to meld sound together. The bassist worked mostly with the little lightup thingie, and he was responsible for the outisde shell of the song, the sheen which along with Jonsi's typical bowed les paul (no-showing at this show) is sorta the trademark of their sound. Both the bass and the guitar were heavily looped and pedaled over themselves, and that guitarist spent his time on the keyboards as well. He drew the links between that huge outer shell, I felt, drawing connections across textures to leave a space for the others. Alex elaborated on those tightly-strung lights, across his keyboards or strange devices, taking those threads together for a web. Jonsi was the heartbeat from every end of this, using his role as melody-maker very very responsibly and team-orientedly. The drummer, though...this man created these fantastic flashes of light, refracting and reflecting every other part back out of the whole. It wasn't just the incredibly loud HOB bass speaker I was sitting next to, it was the force of his ability to tie everything together and shoot it at you until it explodes in your heart. Right in your fucking heart.

I can't even get into the technicalities of the show, partially because it was almost a week ago now, and partially because it was so mind blowing that I was too busy dry sobbing. Grow Till Tall, though...I can't wait until I can hear it in a special place. Like an attic room with a slanted tiled ceiling, surrounded by bookshelves and piles of multicolored clothing, scarves arcing over the room, small glow in the dark stars and galaxies and sheep thrown into relief by a blacklight, quilts and pillows dusting a sprawling mattress. That kind of place.

I am forever smitten. Thank you a thousand times, Jonsi. Love, your friend Alyssa.

Concert Review: Owen Pallett + Snowblink, 4/20

2010-04-22T20:41:00.001-04:00

I saw my first Owen Pallett concert on November 22th 2009, and followed that almost exactly three months later on February 20th 2010, and long before I left I had tickets to see another show three months later, on April 20th 2010. Now some peace, right? No more plans, right? Except I get home and the Montreal festival I was already planning to go to for Arcade Fire will also be hosted the fabulous Mr. Pallett and the impeccable Thomas Gill on August 1st 2010...about three months and two weeks from the last one. I feel blessed.

There were a few funny circumstances surrounding the show. Supposedly Owen and Thomas slept for four hours and then drove up seven hours to get here. They played on the 15th in Washington and the 18th at Coachella, and then supposedly went to Palm Springs (where your ears change?) and then came up here. They talked about it like they were starting fresh, even though many of the elements from the earlier shows, including some of the highlights of this one for me, are becoming a pretty rigid order. Hell, Owen appears to be repeating some of his banter, like the stuff while Don't Stop On My Account begins or "We're only going to play new songs now, because they're better." which is a total lie in two ways. Also...Owen chose to have it inside. The ICA has a fine inside venue, but fuck they have a wonderful platform overlooking the ocean that's great for concerts (Black Moth Super Rainbow aaaa). I believe I saw Owen reading some sort of book while I wandered around (or assessed the perimeter)...and Thomas got there 45 minutes before doors, and came through the main entrance past all of us waiting in line. Hmm hmm! Glad they're still selling scores, too. Aaaaaanyway.

Snowblink actually showed up on a reddit discussion of alt-country groups. I don't know if I would go that far, but they definitely aren't just your hippie folk vibe, if the Michael Jackson cover didn't tip you off. I loved the power of the sound without percussion at all. They were the kind of band that would make no sense for a standing venue, but are also maybe a bit too much for a sitting venue. No drums to rouse the crowd, but clearly so much spirit rising through their music. I liked the atmopsheric additions, but it sounded best when they were just straight-ahead groovin'.

Ok ok ok ok ok so: on the back of my copy of Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man lies the setlist and a few frenzied scribbles (I can't read these...):

E is for Estranged was as good as I've heard it...I always compare it to the rather scratchy and tuneless intro to the FM4 Recording in Vienna, but that's an unfair bar to set. This is the Dream of Win and Regine was really the taking-off point for Owen, with him shouting over an especially boisterous bass. In a lot of ways this was a high-point of the show, since Owen seemed confident and renewed in himself. But my favorite moment came during Scandal at the Parkade, a once-rare track now a cornerstone of the setlist. "Tight as all hell," I wrote, and I remember all of his lines coming together across the song. Instead of cabbages and butter, the forums finally got some insight here:

All that they know'd of cottages, cottages buttoned 'em down, buttoned 'em down.
Once they got into cottages, cottages buttoned 'em down, buttoned 'em down.

It felt like a piece in the style of Has a Good Home, i.e. somewhat written to be looped in the first place, and thus not having the occasional redundancies or difficulties that the looping has (such as the lack of a contrasting section and extra pickup measure in Many Lives -> 49 MP ), and yet so so so so so so modern, to be almost included on Heartland. Anyway to hear it was just... and even though he's been playing it more often, I felt intensely blessed when he started off on That's When the Audience Died. Definitely my favorite song from Has a Good Home, with it's lashing web of intersecting melodies, and I got a wish come true as well: Thomas accompanied, walking in halfway through in his semi-tranced way. His guitar accompaniment made a much wider sound, adding to the climax near the end of the song, and giving Owen more freedom to adventure outward into confidence and excitement. This setlist has become the prototype for the rest of his shows, and especially after Coachella and the island break, it felt like a coming home.

"Pitchfork called it a slam dunk." "Shut up. I've never heard of that site."

Midnight Directives was one of those "new songs" that they said they'd play because they were "better." They did a fine job. Keep the Dog Quiet + Mt. Alpentine was a strange performance, but I don't exactly remember why. Thomas' percussion was more creative than usual, I think. The Great Elsewhere rose from the muck, and it was mostly spot on, but I remember some cracks starting to appear in the face of things. The nervousness continued with Lewis Takes Action which, although the performance was fine, Owen forgot his "wurlitzer version of his voice," which he cutely added back before the encore as a leading tone. I love that he's adaptable like that, but certain things do seem to shake him. The song had a new intro that bewildered me, but I loved it dearly. Thomas left, and...

...and then there was a little monologue about prerecorded songs, and I knew we were going to be the third or so audience to enjoy Don't Stop on My Account. Even though he and Thomas (!!!) are apparently going into the studio pretty soon, I doubt anything will come of this in time...it sounds like the kind of thing like "wouldn't it be cool if we had a huge drum machine part under all this?" Thomas came in part way. Like a lot of the music of Arcade Fire and Radicalface, the whole song pivots around that 4-on the floor, here used to more poppy and bouncy effect. It was a really fun result, but it's the poppiest I've ever heard Owen, and I'm not sure I'm a fan. He followed it with He Poos Clouds, which is always tight and well-memorized, making both a sincere and arresting performance. No looping, I think? It's just belt it out, and also a chance for Owen to gather himself in comfortable territory.

"What are you drinking?" "Harpoon IPA Pale Ale. Thomas got he hooked on it." *cheers* "Oh, is that a local thing?" "How do you like Boston?" "It's nice! When I was first here I only liked the architecture."

Welcome back Thomas to a really delightful version of Flare Gun segueing to The Butcher. They followed it with a really really really especially specially done Many Lives -> 49 MP. They closed with Lewis Takes Off His Shirt. The song was especially interesting to me because I heard how Thomas was changing the way he used percussion (Wilbur: no snare click; Outremont: all snare click; ICA: some snare click) to keep the beat moving. He reserved the good stuff for the end (I think he called it a "piece of work").

The encore was kind of sad. It was a botched version of This Lamb Sells Condos, which fell apart once or twice, and Owen didn't have the graces to not launch into a short monologue about it. I chatted up Thomas after, and he said he wasn't satisfied with it as a whole, especially as a jumping off point to the rest of the tour. As a fan I loved it, and the whole venue was with me I think. The strong moments of a band who knows themselves and their set really well can't be overshadowed by mixups and fuckups, and I do not feel cheated in any way shape or form. Plus, I heard three songs I'd been dying to hear, and strong performances of many others. How can I go wrong?

I'm worried that the Osheaga setlist is going to suck, like the Coachella setlist did. But I think the performance will still be vibrantly spot-on. Long Live Owen and Thomas.

Concert Review: Muse + Silversun Pickups 3/6

2010-03-07T18:31:00.000-05:00

I say there are two paradigms which concerts find themselves in between: physically energized and musically energized.

The musically energized concerts revolve around the emotional arc of the pieces, the dynamic range of the songs, the attention to form and detail and control. The participants are seated, and most audience members sit and listen (or stand, even, although that's more uncommon) to the conflicts and resolutions presented on stage. They live through it, in it, wrapping their minds notes by note over the conclusions that a piece represents, statements and questions and the eternal striving to express.

The physically energized concerts orbit around the physical involvement from the crowd, the force and frenzied power of the songs, attention to the crowd's energy and how to compliment it, and lots and lots of movement. Standing participants get into moshes of various kinds, or just sway around like some form of lava. If you're far enough into the spirit, you get into a place of ecstasy in the meaning and power behind a single motion, a single gesture to a neighbor. "Just give me a scene where the music is free, and the beer is not the life of the party, and there's no need to shit-talk or impress, 'cause honesty and emotion are not looked down upon." is the ideal.

The Flaming Lips are a perfect example of how fucking magical it is when a band can straddle the two. You can have a heartwrenching version of "Taps" to commemorate the loss of life in Baghdad, to immediately segue into a song about "We got the power now, motherfuckers it's where it belongs." You can start with Race for the Prize, which despite its amazing energy manages to be tacit vocally during its chorus, and follow it with applause-driven, slow-and-plaintive-ballad versions of hit songs. Fucking nuts.

Muse aren't that great. In my opinion their new record sucks more than the rest of their catalog, but if you can get behind the irony of 3 upper-middle-class guys from Devon singing about social unrest and third eyes (especially since concerts are the closest thing we have to a Two-Minute's Hate, festivals a Hate Week, in their power to transport and warp) you can revel in all sorts of very very pure energy. That's just their record that puts them so far in the Physically Energized column, but their live shows play on that tenfold.

Silversun Pickups, who opened, didn't strike me that much. Their drummer was solid in what he could do, and so kept a wonderfully steady backbeat, but I learned how to play those licks, those exact amen-break like riffs, in Freshman year. Because he drummed open-handed, the ride was appropriated to the crash position, and the crash was set up in the ride position...6 feet off the ground. He could reach it, sure, but all it allowed him to do was a few flamboyant stick tricks. Beyond him, the keyboard player was good when I could hear him, which was never. I liked the bassist a lot. The guitarist's strum work seemed all-or-nothing: either straight 16ths or sparse hits. Despite all that, they had a very sincere and grateful bent on stage, and so they did their job and played their set and got off. That feeling was helped along a great deal by the lead guitarist, who was swaying his axe back and forth, playing with climax using an echo pedal, and saying "very" about 60 times in "thank you very ... very much" I didn't enjoy their act much, especially when the drummer decided to be the last one to go off, but hell it was fun, and I appreciated them.

As I figure it, the golden age of Muse touring was post- Black Holes and Revelations. They were comfortable enough to reach far back into their catalogue, to start (and NOT end) a show with the bombastic glory of Knights of Cydonia, and then kill everyone with Take a Bow at the end. For a lot of reasons the Resistance album had a large amount of control over the show, which means LESS AWESOME but still cool energy. Setlist from the fanforums:

1. Uprising
2. Resistance
3. New Born
4. Map of the Problematique
5. Supermassive Black Hole
6. Guiding Light
7. Interlude + Hysteria
8. Nishe
9. United States of Eurasia
10. Feeling Good
11. Helsinki Jam
12. Undisclosed Desires
13. Starlight
14. Plug In Baby
15. Time Is Running Out
16. Unnatural Selection
Encore
17. Exogenesis: Symphony Part I (Overture)
18. Stockholm Syndrome
19. Man with a Harmonica intro + Knights of Cydonia

So Resistance tracks make up about 37% of the show, and most of the rest are either greatest stadium hits from a few years back, or instrumental jams from various sources. My main problem with the setlist is the lack of tension. The only song that really held the crowd hostage was the Exogenesis performance, which was brilliantly done...far too late. We were theirs long before that. None of the quieter songs from earlier albums to create tension and release, just BASH BASH BASH loud song loud song loud song. As a crowd we could take it, and we felt well-handled, but they've lost their touch so clear after Black holes and Revelations, to really take us on a journey somewhere...not playing a bunch of songs in an arena.

Not much else, I guess. What a shitty venue, most of all.

Concert Review: Secret Society 2/25

2010-03-01T16:20:00.000-05:00

Apparently, buying furniture gives you passes to the Regattabar, one of the best Jazz clubs in Boston...and even more mind-blowingly, tickets there only cost $20. For the kind of shit they got comin' in there...we were looking through acts like Trombone Shorty, and they attract a lot of talent. It's amazingly cheap! But Shorty got canceled, so we decided to go to a different show, that of Secret Society. A very special performance in a lot of ways.

The band themselves is a collective of about 20 people. Pianist, electric/upright bassist, drummer/percussionist, guitarist, 6 horns, 3 trombonists, 6 or 7 reed players, and one conductor. The size was such that may have led, at least slightly, to a big-band style, but instead they functioned as a Jazz orchestra. That's in part because of the composing style which was, obviously, composed; although there were (beautiful) improvisations, most of what occured was heavily scripted intersection of lines. It had to be; that was extraordinarily complex music.

Two songs in common time the entire night, the rest ranging from 7 to 9 to (I think) 19. Ridiculous! And it's not like you could throw the chord sheets in front of the group. What chords? These players were working from full scores, highly impressive oversized tomes, each with heavily dense and contrasting lines. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful music, very raw and well orchestrated, but definitely not typical Jazz fare. It teetered on the edge of musical jargon sometimes: stuff that only musicians could appreciate and had little value as art. But you could get the arc of it.

They add fun bits of history into their work, which are explained by their conductor/composer/"ringleader". A nice discussion on fear and the fate of the inner of Mars' moon (and possible Martian Rings) led to Phobos, whereas a discussion on the most influential secret society led into Jacobin Club. A human rights discussion about unjust and unwarranted detainment resulted in Habeus Corpus, whereas Obsidian Flow was named because... "it sounds cool." Redeye (sleep deprivation), Zeno (Zeno of Elea) and Tranist (Fung Wah buses) all worked in there as well. I have less to say about the tracks themselves, which were long and fascinating and musically brilliant. I guess the group dynamic is more what stuck out at me.

In the first place, the ringleader is a creepy man. Darcy James Argue is sorta hunched over and unkempt with a fire in his eyes. He leads his anecdotes while looking off into the distance, and indulging in awkward tangents. He simply doesn't have the charisma to be a center of the group; yet he is an amazing genius. A couple of friends must've gotten together and started a small collective, which eventually grew into 20. These people are musicians for the sake of their art and the prospect of this amazing art.

The soloists who played (at one point, two at a time) had to work themselves into the grand structure of the ringleader's music, while at the same time playing the role of a contrasting soloist. Players stopped playing, sure...but usually to switch instruments. There was always some line working under, and although the fantastic drummer smoothed the edges and kept the form together, the soloists had an incredibly tough job. That they demonstrated their own genius within and without the genius of the piece amazed me the most. Virtuosic both in technique and in sense of melody.

I don't have a lot more to say about the group, I was kind of tired at the time. In sum: their album is really good.

Oh, and I saw John Pizzarelli play a few days later. What a badass.

Concert Review: Owen Pallett + Diamond Rings, 2/20

2010-02-27T14:49:00.000-05:00

So this is the concert where I verified that I am, in fact, a fangirl. Yes I could make the excuse about me turning 18 and being a Senior and wanting to do something wild and fun, but really, there is no rational reason for spending a 14-hour round trip out of the country to see a concert, especially when I got there two hours before doors, especially since I saw the guy 3 months earlier almost to the day, and was seeing him again 2 months later to the day, especially since I was sick at the time. What can I say; I love what Owen Pallett does.

It's only after listening to it so many times that I've been able to appreciate the differences between Heartland and the live shows he does. The guy has progressed from the (mostly) solo or looped or layered violin for Has a Good Home, to the centrally string quartet and also some other orchestrated stuff on He Poos Clouds, to a fully orchestrated fully realized concept album for Heartland...and yet his shows, though expanding slightly with the addition of the stellar and sweet Thomas Gill, are still really in the spirit of Has A Good Home's elegiac construction of a song before your eyes. Thomas has the harder role of the two, I believe, since he has to accompany that spirit, and he doesn't get the chance to redo his mistakes over the loop like Owen (often) does. He has to mold himself around Owen's presence, both because Owen is the songwriter, and because Owen has that looping privilege. It's Owen's force out there. In this particular show, Thomas played the snare clicks on Lewis Takes Off His Shirt, something which only happened on-album and which I've never heard recorded live before. Just that little bit of independence really changed what that song did, what it felt like.

So we can listen to the St. Kitts orchestra all we like, and hear the contours of what he's made for people to perform for him, but when we're live we hear what he does for himself. I was privileged to buy the Heartland Orchestra Scorebook, which is in limited edition of 300 and too heavy to bring on tours, so is shipping for $80 rather than the normal price of $40, and the performers were given an absurd among of independence. That opening, swirling mass of strings at the beginning of Tryst With Mephistopheles? Improvised: "ponticello, play around with this motif, no player the same". The subtle creeping around on Keep the Dog Quiet? Improvised: "with loose bow / ponticello, durations of trills improvised" . On Lewis Takes Action: "arco / with lots of air / turn to random pitches, descend and die away" Every song as at least a few glissandos, in voice or violin or otherwise.The wailing to start off E is for Estranged walks the line between a trill and "like a wide vibrato." Owen can't control any of that, but he controls everything in his live shows. So they become a lot more personal, since he's not just speaking through an orchestra. That would explain why he's never recorded Honour the Dead or Else: too intimate, requires too much of his own spirit.

Anyway, let's jump in. After spending 2 hours waiting for doors, talking to a Junior from McGill and a crazy lady named Sheila, and 1 hour waiting for the opener, here we go:

Diamond Rings

I had listened to "All Yr Songs" quite a bit beforehand, but I didn't know anything else he was going to play. His shows walk the line between musicianship and performance. He sets up his beats and bass beforehand, and then either sings, sings and plays guitar, or sings and plays keyboard over what he has. Usually that kind of stuff makes me uncomfortable: I feel like musician really isn't, xe isn't displaying per talent or anything. But...god, the guy at such Charisma. He clearly put effort into getting everything ready, choreographing himself, and plus he was just...so energetic! Dressed in his denim jacket, zebra-print chaps/leggings, purple socks and sneakers, with all sorts of sparkles and makeup, he was able to be over-the-top dramatic without killing his dignity. He's a pretty good player with a great, great ear for melody, so even his sometimes awkward piano playing yielded exciting results. He's a fine guitarist, as well. Great, great, great voice, very deep and uses it well. I guess what it made me think of was a 90's throwback: synthesizers and purple sneakers and raising two fingers to rhyme with "too" or "to" and falling over when saying how he's "losing balance." Lotsa fun.

Owen Pallett (and Thomas Gill)

The setlist is via Scarychips, a member of the fan forums who was also in attendance, and who decided not to say hello to me even though he recognized me and I was pretty sure who he was, and didn't feel like asking people if they were scared of chips or something. Anyway, he was a sweetheart and posted this:

Théâtre Outremont, Montréal - February 20th.

1. Love Song to an Empty Room
2. Midnight Directives
3. This Lamb Sells Condos
4. Flare Gun
5. The Butcher
6. Many Lives > 49 MP
7. Took You Two Years To Win My Heart
8. E Is For Estranged
9. This Is the Dream of Win and Régine
10. Keep the Dog Quiet + Mt. Alpentine
11. The Great Elsewhere
12. Honour the Dead or Else
13. Lewis Takes Action
14. Lewis Takes Off His Shirt.
Encore #1:
15. The Man With No Ankles
16. Fantasy
Encore#2:
17. He Poos Clouds.

That's right, motherfuckers. Two encores.

Love Song To an Empty Room is a track I'd never heard before, although I'd heard he'd been playing that, as well as Independence is No Solution, The Arctic Circle, That's When the Audience Died, and even Better than Worse. We didn't get any of those, but we did get a slew of rarer/unrecorded cuts like this one. Much less a song than a swelling feat of choreographed accompaniment.

I love when Owen starts stuff with Midnight Directives. It's a baptism on-album, and off album it starts with that incredibly impressive run of pizzicato. The shift into This Lamb Sells Condos was a bit atypical, since he usually goes there from The Great Elsewhere, but I liked it. I feel badass that I can play everything he does now. His arrangement is a bit strange, in that the incredibly noticeable melody line that starts off the live reciording has to wait until after the first voice. That's one of the consequences of the looping style: you have to set up your accompaniment first sometimes, and then fill in melody and bass later. But the freedoms it gives you are wild and clear, and it was put to great use much later in Two Years. Back to chronology: Flare Gun and the Butcher were fine, as always, and that segue always works very well. I was kind of dropping off from fatigue at this point. What I was constantly noticing, however, is how Thomas interacts with what's going on. He's spasming, walking around the stage, inserting percussion hits where randomly appropriate. What he's doing is pretty scripted, I think, but he takes and approaches it with a hugely profound amount of sincerity and devotion.

Many Lives > 49 MP demonstrates two things about the performers: Owen Pallett is a melodic genius to be able to a craft a song which has a progression and emotional arc to it even though it's essentially a single melody line with some minimal bass later on; and Thomas Gill is an extraordinary skilled guitarist.

Took You Two Years to Win My Heart: it was requested back in Vienna last August, and Owen responded with a medium-length monologue about how she was "walking on his cookies." I thought it would never see the light of this decade, but wow. Raw and solo, it was a glorious performance. Thomas left, which is interesting; there are spots where accompaniments would've added a new dynamic. But most of his earlier material was intended, and is then played unaccompanied. That doesn't mean he doesn't add stuff to it: just as the improvisings he does over That's When the Audience Died instead of glissing up to the final note, Owen was taking more liberties with rhythm. It was also cool to see what he did at the end: cascade down and hold the notes for a little bit, record and repeat so it goes down further, and repeat that twice more until it sounds like four strings playing 2 note chords. Eeeee.

E is for Estranged was really the turning point for me in the concert. I actually felt myself falling asleep a bit, just letting the arcing melody lull me off. It was a beautiful and tender performance, and Owen managed to get some actual tone out of his strumming this time, which pleased me. This is the Dream of Win and Regine: he fucking nailed it. No messups on those octaves. Absolutely beautiful and energetic, wildly intimate too. Keep the Dog Quiet + Mt. Alpentine I've never understood why he chooses to keep the backbeat of Dog while Alpentine comes on. It creates some nice tension, I suppose, and I guess since Alpentine requires a certain..."suspension of disbelief," as it's not as jarring as it tries to be, especially on album. Do I really need to talk about The Great Elsewhere? Most amazing song on-album is religious live. Augh.

Honour the Dead or Else was wild on so many levels. Since Owen didn't have to do all the percussion himself, he got to do his violin-drumming parts (which is amazing, btw) but leave the bulk of the work to Mr. Gill. Better balance. The build off of "selfish selfish sleepy boy" gets better every time I listen to it, and it was the moment where I snapped and started really enjoying myself. Very well-executed.

Lewis Takes Action is not my favorite of his songs, but the live version appeals a lot more than the album version. Thomas always pulls out these really killer harmonies, which for some reason sound a lot clearer than those on-album. We knew that Lewis Takes Off His Shirt was coming up eventually, but what he gave us was something quite special: snare clicks. As someone who really knows Owen's live routine pretty well, that was jarring...and extraordinarily sexy, driving the spirit along.

The Man With No Ankles was slated and then removed from Heartland, and Owen played it solo. Highlighting moment: "Woahoahoahoahoh!" Fantasy, which followed, comes out of Owen's past, and it's a strange choice otherwise; no other song has that pop glitz to it. The two worked marvelously with it, as if they were satanically happy to be playing pop for a moment, just reveling in how "sweet" it all was. Maybe there was a note of irony in there too: RIP Final Fantasy. After a riotous round of applause, a second encore came though (the third I've seen: legally by Arcade Fire and illegally by State Radio), of He Poos Clouds. Solo. Oh dear, yes. He doesn't do the atonality on the second verse but keeps to the main lick. It's a remarkable song to play solo, in that the climax at the end of the "chorus" section ("move him with my...") has to be played first entirely unaccompanied, and then with maybe a little bit of harmonic power. It's a song that can't just ride on the dissonance of the chord or the volume of the player, it requires a very intent amount of control which Owen pulled off wonderfully as I struck an imaginary piano. Oh dear.

In sum: Owen has a sister?

Stuff I've Been Spinning / The Hope of Being Spun

2010-02-18T21:21:00.000-05:00

I've been trying to get out of my Arcade Fire/Bjork/Owen Pallett/Sufjan Stevens loop that tends to take up 2/3 of my listening time. I've been listening to a conveniently (or mostly) alphabetical set of albums:

Venetian Snares - Rossz Csillag Alatt Született

Kaki King - ...Until We Felt Red

Incredible String Band - 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion

Basia Bulat - Heart of My Own

Beach House - Teen Dream

Bela Fleck - Flight of the Cosmic Hippo

The Venetian Snares is positively religious, I got addicted to Gloomy Sunday from the cover of the Billie Holiday cover. I'd listened to the Kaki King before and was unimpressed, but it's become a much more emotionally intense experience. She knows how to craft a compelling emotional arc, even if her musicanship can be kind of boring. "You Don't Have to Be Afraid" is one of the more beautiful things the last decade saw, I think. Incredible String Band is a new favorite: musically loose, yeah, and not always deliberate, sure, but very spirited, narratively fun, and if you're able to wade through the mess of twanging: well-thought and well-imagined music. The Basia Bulat seems to be blah generic folk...reminded me of Goldfrapp's 7th Tree, but it deserves another listen. Same with the Beach House, which had a lot of interesting licks...it's probably more headphone music. But oh god, Bela Fleck. So worldly. So 80s.

I had one of those "7 hours of recording and mixing - > 150 seconds of music" moments with the Akron/Family contest: cover this song and we'll try to find a gig in your area. It sounds ok, and the two people who I know listened to it have given me positive reviews. Vocals (badly recorded; not the proper mic, and too far from the mic), flute and clarinet doubling vocals, drums and melodic bass, piano (could stand out more), and backup winds (two ocarinas and a recorder; say it with me: awww!). Now that I realize we have 2, count them 2, micraphones, I'm thinking of rerecording my piano with more...deliberate (read: loud) recording. My only two songs that actually exist are my Song for Kevin and Song for Rachel, the rest are idle musings which could be turn into songs. There's also a medley of my own stuff that I want to do with accompaniment...and shitloads of covers. Lots to do! I've especially been digging into my Beethoven and working on a new Owen Pallett cover from Matt Winkelworth the genius transcriber. Flare Gun!

And stuff!

Piano / Stuff I'm Sad I'm Missing / Fucking Martha

2010-01-15T20:08:00.000-05:00

Just worked through the theme and first variation of Beethoven's Sonata 12. Part of the reason I love Beethoven so much is those "what the fuck" moments: "Stacked fifths over here?" "Stacked fourths over there!?" "How long must you wait before throwing in accidentals and why do they make so much sense?" "Ocatves of Eb to D, then E, then F, G, Ab...in Eb major?" "This chord contains the top three notes of the Schoenberg chord..." "Is that a d diminished flat 9 over F!?! Passing dissonances my ass!" And yet even after plunking through a few sight-reads, it all finds its context in place. Fun stuff, although I kind of wanted to try for the tempest...heheh.

Because of a really really cool solo daytrip up to Montreal to see the big OP on Feb 20th, and a following rather expensive ticket to see Muse on Mar 6th, and a trip with friends soon after, I can't really justify any new concerts until like midapril. Which sucks, because so many good acts are coming through, even to the 18+ shows that I'll be able to head to now:

1/15 - Drug Rug
1/17 - Camper van Beethoven
1/27 - Of Montreal
2/10-11 - Magnetic Fields
2/13 - Tegan and Sara
2/18 - Editors
3/11 - Balkan Beat Box
2/20 - Fucked Up
3/27 - Spoon
3/27 - Toro y Moi (for $9, I'd do it, guy was sick on the Islands tour)
3/31 - Japandroids
3/31 - Miike Snow
4/3 - Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
4/4 - Wilco
4/10 - Xiu Xiu
4/17 - Kaki King (eep)

1963
Aaaand Coakley is ruining everything because Brown knows how to appeal to the 30- and 40-somethings who were barely alive when Kennedy got elected, never had a sense of legacy about the Kennedy family, and are more pissed about their lost job or home than anything else. Fuck me.

Listening to Arcade Fire is both a Euphamism and a Literal Truth

2010-01-12T22:49:00.000-05:00

And I'm avoiding Funeral like the plague because I only listen to that once a year, and I might break down entirely if I hear it. So I'm going through Neon Bible, Us Kids Know EP, Christmas EP, just finished a Glastonbury show...I'll queue up the White Session and the early Demo, and then play my rather large and redundant b-sides playlist ("brazil!").

I'm partway through a lyrical analysis post, and I'm really behind on a bunch of mixtapes. Gotta keep up, Aly.

Content: what I condsider to be my Arcade Fire "discography" (I never could find those rarer Neighborhood tracks:

LPs:

Funeral
Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)
Neighborhood #2 (Laika)
Une Annee Sans Lumiere
Neighborhood #3 (Power out)
Neighborhood #4 (7 Kettles)
Crown of Love
Wake Up
Haiti
Rebellion (Lies)
In the Backseat

Neon Bible
Black Mirror
Keep the Car Running
Neon Bible
Intervention
Black Wave/Bad Vibrations
Ocean of Noise
The Well and the Lighthouse
(Antichrist Television Blues)
Windowsill
No Cars Go
My Body is a Cage

EPs / Singles:

Us Kids Know
Old Flame
I'm Sleeping in a Submarine
No Cars Go
The Woodlands National Anthem
My Heart is an Apple
Headlights Look Like Diamonds
Vampire/Forest Fire

The Arcade Fire + LCD Soundsystem Tour 7"
Poupee de Cire, Poupee de Son (Serge Gainsbourg cover)

Rebellion (Lies)
Rebellion (Lies)
Brazil

Neighborhood #3
Neighborhood #3 (Power Out) (Album Version)
Neighborhood #3 (Power Out) (Alternate Take)

Keep the Car Running
Keep the Car Running
Broken Window

Christmas EP
Chestnuts Roasting
Oh Holy Night
Jinglebell Rock
A Very Arcade Xmas
It Clouded Fully (Brendan)
The Spartans (Brendan)
In the Attic (Boston)
Asleep at the Wheel
Old Flame
Submarine
In the Backseat
Headlights

Older Demos

2001 Demo (Boston?)
Winter for a Year
My Mind is a Freeway
Accidents
Goodnight Boy
Asleep at the Wheel
In the Attic
Can't Let Go of You
You Tried to Turn Away my Fears
Instrumental
The Great Arcade Fire

Demo Tape
Sonata
The Flood
Winter for A Year

Soundtracks

Six Feet Under Sountrack
Cold Wind

Assorted Collections

B-Sides (Collection)
Brazil (Live)
Virgin Mary Highway (Live)
Burning Bridges, Breaking Hearts (Live)
Asleep at the Wheel
Surf City Eastern Block (Live)
Alligator Mine (Live)
William Pierce (Live)
Cars and Telephones
Intervention (Live)
Intervention (Studio)

Covers (Collection)
Maps (Live Lounge)(Live)
Age of Consent (New Order)(Live)
Born on a Train (Magnetic Fields)(Live)
Guns of Brixton
Five Years (Bowie)(Live)
State Trooper (Springsteen)(Live)
Naive Melody (Talking Heads)(studio)
Naive Melody (Talking Heads(live)
Heroes (Bowie)

Live Shows

Download Festival 2005 (Live '05)
Intro
Wake Up
Laika
No Cars Go
Haiti
I'm Sleeping in a Submarine
State Trooper
Crown of Love
Tunnels
Power Out
Rebellion (Lies)
In the Backseat

Emo's in Austin, Texas (Live in '05)
Wake Up
Laika
No Cars Go
Headlights Look Like Diamonds
Une Annee Sans Lumiere
Power Out
Rebellion (Lies)
Born on a Train (Magnetic Fields Cover)
7 Kettles
Crown of Love
Tunnels
Naive Melody
Haiti
In the Backseat

KCRW Morning Becomes Eclectic ('05)
Intro
Wake Up
7 Kettles
Vampire/Forest Fire
(Interview)
Intervention
Born on a Train (Magnetic Fields Cover)
In the Back Seat
Outro

White Sessions ('05)
Intro
Wake Up
Laika
No Cars Go
Une Annee Sans Lumiere
Power out
Rebellion (Lies)
7 Kettles
Crown of Love
Tunnels
Outro

Live at the Orpheum Theater, Boston (Live in '07)
Black Mirror
No Cars Go
Haiti
In The Backseat
Neighbourhood #2 (Laika)
My Body Is A Cage
Windowsill
The Well and The Lighthouse
Ocean of Noise
Neighbourhood #1 (Tunnels)
(Antichrist Television Blues)
Keep The Car Running
Neighbourhood #3 (Power Out)
Rebellion (Lies)
Intervention
Neon Bible

Live at T.T. the Bear's, Cambridge (Live in '04)
Wake Up
Neighborhood #2 (Laika)
Une Annee Sans Lumiere
Neighborhood #3 (Power Out) / Rebellion (Lies)
Naive Melody (Talking Heads)
Haiti
Headlights Look Like Diamonds
Burning Bridges, Breaking Hearts
Crown of Love
Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)
No Cars Go
In the Backseat

Missing

Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)
Neighborhood #1 (Tunnles)
My Buddy (Alvino Rey Orchestra)(also available on the single for Neighborhood #2)

Intervention B/W Ocean of Noise
Intervention
Ocean of Noise (Calexo)

No Cars Go
No Cars Go
Surf City Eastern Bloc

Live EP with Davoid Bowie (iTunes release)
...

The Box (score)

Do They Know It's Hallowe'en?
Neighborhood #5 (Hockey)

Concert Review: Amanda Palmer with the Boston Pops

2010-01-01T23:39:00.000-05:00

Sappy Yew Beer, everybody. I spent last night at the Pops with my ladyfriend. Amanda had played a show there in the past which my friend David saw, and he said it was amazing. Having been one of the folks who had tickets to her cancelled House of Blues show, we got express notice and a place in the VIP party. So after traversing Boston trying to keep warm in the parades, we made our way to symphony hall. Hoorah!

It was fun enough just sitting in line, waiting for people. The draw that Amanda has is intense and so deliciously eclectic. The goth idiom, the victorian idiom, the steampunk idiom, the fuck-organized-society idiom, and the do-crazy-shit-and-be-beautiful-and-creative idiom all melded together smoothly. Thankfully people got dressed up this time (as was not the case at shows of the Onion Cellar, for example), and so it was nice looking at the crossdressers and the subtle cosplayers and the generally wild and expressive folks in semi-formal, semi-distorted attire (the only full tuxes I saw were on those of the female sex). And that was all just the public! Amanda had all sorts of crazy art acts hopping about, including a coin operated cabaret act, a crazy rock group or two, and others. There was a surprisingly number of the fur-coated regular concertgoers as well, and even more surprisingly, I think only a small number of them walked out in the end. All of this was covered in a healthy dosage of party hats, noisemakers, and general badassery.

Amanda played two ukulele songs with Miss Tess' band at the VIP thingie, which was great to see. Musically it wasn't mindblowing, but she's a fine player, and more importantly she was clearly far, far, FAR into the "let's have a joyous paaaaaarty!" kind of place of mind. So it served to get me pumped up.

Pops went on at 10. I didn't realize that "a night at the pops with amanda palmer" meant "40 minutes of the pops, a 10 minute film, and then an hour of amanda," but they did a fine job. I've always likened the pops to a very serious prostitute who thinks he's an artist; that being said, if they are a very skilled prostitute. Their renditions of "The Imperial March," "Mack the Knife," "All That Jazz," "A Fifth of Beethoven," 3 tunes from Carmen, and an absolutely impeccable and heart-wrenching rendition of Bjork's "Overture" (to Dancer in the Dark, and with lyrics called "New Day," but never "Selmasongs," Keith). And then it was done. The songs were festive in nature, had a bit of nice flourish, and functions just as the pre-show festivities had: riling up and entertaining.

At around 11:00, a film directed by Neil Gaiman (five feet away from whom I was twice that night...I love that he's dating Amanda, they're perfect) came on, Statuesque. It's under the "10 Minute Tales" name, and a bunch of "illegal" (read: unlicensed) copies are floating around the internet (to Amanda's joy) to see. A fine piece of filmwork, Amanda does as fine a job as she did in With The Needle That Sings In Her Heart (such a good fucking show: pics and stream) and some of the highest resolution jam I have ever seen. More than one of the folks in that crowd had done living statue work before, and the theme was all a part of the anarchic creativity of that night. Niel gave a really heartwarming New Years wish all about dangerous dreams and unexpected invention and ambitious creativity (as well as kindness and wisdom, ha...a few moments later I got called a fag by some ruffled fiftysomething). So we were all in our "WILD THOUGHTS AND URGE TO MAKE ORGIASTIC CREATION" mode when Amanda popped on.

Started with Missed Me, beginning with the orchestra building it (and everybody going nuts) while Amanda readied herself in the back. In the recording, after she finishes a vocal progression ("If you...that must mean...etc.") there's a high minor second before the piano and drums jolt back into action. On each and every one of those (and a few other moments), a musician from the crowd (trumpeter, violinist, guy with duck beak, trombonist in the first balcony, and then Keith Lockhart with a moocow) started chasing Amanda around, and then she started leading them on. It was all very very sexual, which I think was mostly for the good. Amanda knows the shock value of sexuality, and so she plays shoes essentially in her underwear; I wish she was more expressive with her view of her body than just shock, but it really gave the air a spark. Song continued, all around well done. Very good showwomanship, fine playing.

Amanda's been talking about her Tchaikovsky piece for the pops that she'd been planning, and I didn't expect her to add any theatrics. But she had some guy's cell phone ring, made him come up and pretend to me not in the know, and then hop into full swing while she danced around. The piece did make clear her musical limitations. She is not a subtle pianist. She is a highly expressive musician, but she doesn't seem to have very many shades between piano and forte. Nevertheless, she and her slightly inebriated self (there was a small table with wine glasses and champagne on it...a good running gag) did a fine job. Interestingly, I know the man who was going to teach her that piece, and who was going to be the man in the crowd.

The same entrance to "A Fifth of Beethoven" served as the entrance (again, to riotous applause) for Coin-Operated Boy. The arrangement felt a bit contrived, but the percussion was very very good, as it was the entire night (even if the slight echo of symphony hall wasn't made for hihats). Amanda and Keith were on good enough terms that she messed around with the cues for the hits at the end of the bridge: "I....want.........a, I!...........want a I want....a...I.....want.....a...................coin-operated boy." During the record skip part, she had Keith give her a glass of champagne. Mr. Lockhart really is the sanity of the pops, and only between his collaboration with Amanda did the energy keep going while the players, bemused, played their parts.

Gets fuzzy from here, but somewhere in the mix was Astronaut, Runs in the Family, Farewell (or some song or other from Cabaret), Hurt (an amazing NIN cover), Poker Face (aided by the ladies from The Slutcracker and mixed in with a poststructuralist academic discussion of the implications of the song: "Has Lady Gaga, in attempting to free herself from the ties to femininity and its requisite habits and presentation, trapped herself in the poststructuralist chains of fame and its necessities?"), a late night night countdown to We Are the Champions (with a touch of bombastically joyous irony...turns out the countdown was actually at 11:58, but nobody cared), and a pretty ok version of Leeds United. Everything was punctuated by Amanda's lack of clothing, lack of propriety, and lack of sobriety. Champagne was imbibed and the new year was described.

To sum up: faux-fur coats with fake baby heads whose eyes were fake baby heads whose eyes where pudgy baby hands. That was my night.

Heartland: Keep the Dog Quiet + Mt. Alpentine

2009-12-21T18:13:00.000-05:00

A second part. Wooohahahah.

Keep The Dog Quiet

My body is a cage.
This union is cage about a cage about a cage.
And this, and this town too.
I'll see you once in a while but I can't be seen with you.

There are a few references here and there that I can pick up on, and a lot I can't, but if I don't know my Arcade Fire references then I shouldn't be writing in the first place. Perhaps another paralell: both albums' penultimate track is an energetic, cathartic, wild beautiful mess of a piece with strings by Owen Pallet and drums by Jeremy Gara, and the ultimate track is postmodern strangeness, the opinion on which varies with the listener. But that's neither there nor anywhere.

The subject can't be anything but Lewis' wife. Able to directly talk to her last time, he can only draw a reference to her and his misgivings. Think of Midnight Directives the grandest of all images and directions. It's the grandest of all tottering, delusional, wild images that a man thinks is enough to drive him to a purpose. It's a false image of the utmost grandeur, of resolution in a decision that Lewis doesn't even understand. This quiet address, weak and yet insistent, is Lewis' discussion on the darker and weaker parts of his will.

"The union" seems to be explicitly their marriage, and perhaps implicitly Lewis' ties to anything at all, the ties he's breaking by leaving (but of course, does not have the courage to burn bridges and run away). The 3 cages could be taken literally: Lewis' cage surrounded by his wife's cage surrounded by the requirement of their union, but it doesn't need to be that direct.

More importantly, Lewis is trying to assuage a feeling of personal entrapment in his life by blaming his marriage, and even "this town" and this life. It's not as pretty a lie as in Midnight Directives, but it certainly has its irony. A man leaves his hometown to find god and salvation? Lewis'll have varying feelings about a homeland, but we'll see that his idea of what is intolerable starts from his wife, to his marriage and town, to Spectrum, to the whole fucking world, and eventually to the creator of this world, the god-author Owen.

Back to textual stuff: "I'll see you once in a while but I can't be seen with you" It's fun to play with who Owen is hiding from here, and it's not exactly clear. Perhaps his "clerical life" has consequences of who he's trying to impress? A lot of his thought later in the album is about being public: "voic[ing] our satisfactions," "on the pitch of the Avenroe grasses / I will sing, sing, sing to the masses." But his purpose is between he and god...right? There's not some human authority he's trying to plead. I'd read that more as a desire to be viewed as complete: to have no one be able to say "this man is not symbolically whole." He wants to obey his purpose, and is only able to make secret compromises BECAUSE he has such a purpose, and wants to be seen as whole, unironic, and complete. There's also an element of active vs. passive: "I'll do this, but I can't have this done to me" would be an accurate paraphrase, implying that his future will be all action action action, un-capitulating. This fits with his violent persona.

This place is a narrative mess.
The floor a tangle of bedsheets and battered sundress.
The journey once was consequential,
Now: sequential, sequential, sequential, sequential.

This stanza is key, in that is shows the cracks in reality. I could see two possible meanings to the first line. The first relates to Lewis himself. As the narrator, he (ironically) is our view onto the world; he could be describing the chaos of his own view and his place in it. He could also be mentioning the cracks in his desperate attempt to put meaning into things. But the second interpretation relates to Lewis' dissatisfaction with the whole story itself, created by Owen. He wants to, possibly, escape or entirely reshape the structure of everything in his own image. We'll see that he does just that.

"This place" is exactly what Lewis is distancing himself from, so it's cool to look at what those nouns mean and represent about what he's escaping, and why. The basis of his life, "the floor" consists of tangled sheets and a worn-down sundress...implying sexual activity with his wife is bringing him down, with a slight play on "undress"? Or that fabric, the way we cover ourselves and protect ourselves, is in some way against what he wants to base his life on? (Lewis Takes Off His Shirt becomes an awesome parallel then) A sly and esoteric reference to "Shake, Rattle and Roll" ? His distance from summery femininity? And battered...as if there was some sort of inherent conflict in her wearing it, or that there was conflict in their relationship? Sundresses weren't common 1300s fare, and perhaps the point is to put a crack in the chronology of the period to show a breakdown of the whole story (happens so much at later points). Rather then untangle and clean up the stuff on the floor, is Lewis simply running from the more complicated problems and fleeing into his dreams? It's one of the most poetically evocative lines in the entire album, and the possibilities are endless.

The last two lines are a bit easier: "My purpose used to matter, and now it's predictable." I see two possible meanings in that. The first, that Lewis thought that by marrying and starting a farm he could create the convenient concept of a life to bear. But the second is more prescient: that the purpose I just declared is placing me in a totally expectable role. I am reacting exactly, totally, and unequivocally as one would expect my archetype to. I am trapped in a story.

When will you silence your hounds?
The eldest sons to the altar of the Eternal Sound.
Their blood is spilled at the dawn.

The earlier analysis focused on Lewis' wife as the subject, but these lines start to make reference to Owen. I'm of the mind that the subject shifts, representing Lewis' total unsureness about what the fuck he's fighting for/against. But in the end: "when will you silence your hounds"; when will the shouting stop, when will the noise stop? There's a possible reference to hounds of hell, but I see mainly in this line (and in the title) a desire to keep things in control, and keep the inevitable out of the way. "Keep the dog quiet"; keep that loyal beast of nature away from my dreaming, keep his bark away from my singing.

Lewis continues his questioning of the higher power with biblical allusions: the last plague of Moses, and the Passover. It's cool that Owen picks out of the old testament, filled with images of a highly anthropomorphic and patriarchal god. It's the power and masculinity that Owen wants in his life, something that he praises in "Psalm 21" in Tryst With Mephisopheles. But here, he thinks on the cruelty of it: they are sacrificed as bidding, not unknowingly like in Egypt, but in a sort of death march toward inevitability. Yeah, Lewis embraces Owen, but that kind of death march is exactly what Lewis does not want with his life, the inevitable "sequen[ce]."

The sun, represented here in the "dawn," is made reference to throughout the work, but it's most relevant against the night of Midnight Directives. If that night was exciting and made for plans and plots, the day is for harsh truth. A cool structural part of the album is that is oscillates over day and night, which gives a sense of (a) the grand cycle of nature eternally at work, and (b) the short time frame Lewis takes to become transformed.

"Eternal Sound" is an interesting turn of phrase, not a reference that I can tell. Owen uses a similar turn of phrase in Tryst with Mephistopheles, in the context of "great white noise," and makes references to "seven inches of echo" in ~~Oh Heartland, Up Yours!~~ Lewis Takes Off His Shirt (thanks Thomas) The theme relates to a musical motif in the album: what is music, what is sound, and what is noise? That in turn ties into what words are, and what they can mean, and what they can pretend to mean. Lewis is mostly comfortable in his sense of Owen (hence, "sound"), and his reverence and vision of him is still of being "eternal" (which changes later); but cracks are starting to appear, urges and views that conflict each other, brought out in the light of the day.

A nation bound to your will, still, the violin plays on.
Plays its devotional song.
Once it was, once it was so essential,
Now: sequential, sequential, sequential, sequential.

This is a bit tricky. But: "music praises you." If music and sound are distinct things, one being the method of the story (In the musical allusions, in the words, in the references to singing and playing, in the whole damn medium of the album; and notice how most of the songs are somewhat upbeat, as if there's a manic clinging to music as expression which peaks at Tryst With Mephistopheles and breaks down at What Do You Think Will Happen Now?), and the other being Owen himself...true and open expression is bound to the more conflicted concept of the author. Music willingly has itself under the authority of God, and Lewis does not like that. Even though Lewis had praised god before, over the course of this song his opinion seems to dwindle to Owen himself being the subject of past essentially, now sequentiality. It's not clear, but I hear Lewis as saying, over the course of this tune "The stuff around me is derivative and trite and controlled, the whole place is derivative and trite and controlled, God and life are derivative and trite and controlled."

Such praise to God, Lewis asks, is it worth it? Why must one praise God? Although Lewis' purpose was immediately "clerical," the next few tunes drag him back to a heightened sense of reality. He refuses to ask the question of God, because such a vision is contradictory (containing the destruction of the masculine ideal in the "first borns," or being labeled as "sound"). So he pushes it all away, and leaves all the forshadowing and contradictions behind in this dark and frightening tune. A string crescendo, perhaps mirroring Lewis' mental progression, builds, halts as if taking a breath, and then:

Mt. Alpentine

Lead on, oh horse of mine, we will climb the side of Alpentine.
Lead on, oh horse of mine, we will voice our satisfactions.
Karma is the concatenation of your actions.

The most important bit of analysis in this song is that it is short, shouted, and ANGRY AND WILD AND MINOR AS FUCKALL. It's a clusterfuck of a lot of strings, vocals which barely manage to get out, and some synthy thing echoing in the background. It's practically noise, interesting if we accept music vs. sound vs. noise as a theme (it's kind of a weak point, but I think if it's an album about stories, it can be a story about an album): to escape the consequences of Keep the Dog Quiet, Lewis shrouds himself in pure noise and purpose, putting one goal in front of him: climbing a hill.

The climb has other implications to it. The choice of "Alpentine" is a funny thing; it's a very derivative name for a mountain, derived from the adjective "alpine." Certain aspects of Spectrum, especially the place names (as manifest in Flare Gun) are deliberately derivative; Owen makes deliberate cliches in order to enforce his commentary on the nature of stories and of fantasy.

The horse comes back a few times in the album, and is called Blue Imelda in Lewis Takes Action. I'm not very well acquainted with Spectrum, 14th Century, and what's more it is not contained in the scope of the album; but neither are all the allusions, and in the grander depiction of spectrum, it helps to grab from varied sources. So, an abbreviated run to Blue Imelda off of Spectrum:

Blue Imelda, She's the saddest bitch in all of Spectrum
She can't rely on business to keep herself satisfied
For we are only farmers, and the love of a farmer
Has one hand on the headboard and the other hand in the soil

Oh Lord, I'm yours forever, I will never take a lover
I'll keep myself as pious as my body will allow
For I am just a farmer, and the body of a farmer
Has one eye on the pussy and the other on the plough

I bow, I bend deeply
I'm sheepish and barely
Able to say it from beginning to the end
(Your shirt is torn to ribbons)
Woman, can I take you as a friend?

Sex and animals. Farmers don't care about the women but they care about the sex, farmers have natural urges and natures. But Lewis is leaving his farmership, right? (as suggested earlier, and articulated in Red Sun No. 5) He's a friend and a partner, I guess. Point is: Lewis can't get as far away from femininity as he'd like, or as he claimed he wanted to do. He'll have this horse. Yeah. Enough of that.

In the context of Mt. Alpentine, Imelda matters little, only as an echo of a subverting femininity on Lewis that he can't even recognize. Instead, Lewis focuses on a direct and concrete task, and then applies another value to it: "we will voice our satisfactions." What matter they? But the way that Lewis speeds down and attacks in Lewis Takes Action, Lewis is finding a way to exact his influence, to shape his world. If voicing his desires means making an ultimatum at the entirety of Spectrum, it would be a way for him to control. "Satisfaction" shows up in Red Sun No. 5 too, so it's important to look at what it means and implies: Lewis wants to declare what is enough for him, what make sense and is complete for him. Farmership can't, and apparently god can't but Lewis doesn't want to totally recognize that. So, just like through violence, Lewis is finding a way to make things definite. And so he climbs the mountain because he is insecure.

"Concatenation" is a programming term meaning to link two string variables together, and general word for connecting ideas. Lewis sees karma as a connecting force in his life, a grander order and sense, the assumption that what he is doing will be generally repayed, in some way, in some lifetime. Lewis is praying to some grander sense of justification, because his actions don't make sense to him. Maybe. But it's "your actions." Whose? That pronoun gets thrown about in life. Maybe it's the audience, and the phrase is a cry to us to try and see the order in our lives, as we're watching Lewis' crumble away. Or it could be Owen. Owen's storytold reality must have order to it, right? We hope? So if I Take Action, or climb Alpentine, it'll be ok? Right? Right?

HEARTLAND JUST GOT LEAKED

2009-12-21T02:21:00.000-05:00

OWEN PALLET'S NEW ALBUM WAS JUST POSTED FOR SALE ON ITUNES

FORGIVE ME OWEN

IF YOU'RE GETTING IT FROM TORRENTS PLEASE BE SURE TO BUY IT

Physics: Proving Neutrons Exist (or Why Chadwick Got his Nobel Prize) (1/9)

2009-12-21T01:40:00.000-05:00

Back in the 30s, the Joliot-Curies discovered a very high-energy radiation from polonium-emitted alpha particles to beryllium. The radiation shot out protons in a proton-heavy substance, parrafin wax, and so they suspected it was a high energy photon. Chadwick calculated the photon would have 52 MeV or so. Verify that.

Eg1 + Ep1 = Eg2 + Ep2
Eg1 + mp = Eg2 + mp + KEp By E = m + KE
Eg1 = Eg2 + KEp
Eg1 = Eg2 + (mp)(γ- 1)

pg1 = pg2 + pc
pg1 + (-pg2) = pc
Eg1 + Eg2 = pc By E^2 = p^2 for photons
Eg1 + Eg2 = (mp)(v)(γ) by the definition for momentum

Eg1 = [(mp)(v)(γ) - Eg1] + (mp)(γ- 1)
Eg1 = (mp/2)[γ(v + 1) - 1 ]
Eg1 = 52.67 MeV , by my plugging in, based on given data

A photon with such energy would cause a 410 KeV recoil in nitrogen. Show it.

Eg1 + EN1 = Eg2 + EN2
(Eg1) + mN = Eg2 + mN + KEN
KEN = (Eg1) - Eg2

pg1 = pg2 + pN2
pg2 = pN2 + (-pg1)
Eg2 = pN2 - (Eg1)

KEN = (Eg1) - [pN2 - (Eg1)]
KEN = pN2 - (2Eg1)
KEN - (2Eg1) = ((EN2)^2 - (mN2)^2 )^-1/2
(KEN)^2 + [4(Eg1)^2] - 2(2Eg1)(KEN) = (mN2)^2 + (KEN)^2 + 2(KEN)(mN2) - (mN2)^2
[4(Eg1)^2] - 2(2Eg1)(KEN) = 2(KEN)(mN2)
2(KEN)(mN2) + 2(2Eg1)(KEN) = [4(Eg1)^2]
2KEN[mN2 + (2Eg1) ] = [4(Eg1)^2]
KEN = [2(Eg1)^2]/[mN2 + (2Eg1)]

The right side is all constants, and Eg1 = 52 MeV gets me about .41 MeV.

Heartland: Lyrical Analysis: Midnight Directives

2009-12-15T13:20:00.000-05:00

Owen Pallet just announced that he's giving up the FF name, because squeenix finally made the ":/" face long enough to convince his label that continuing under that name would be "unwise," specially for the album's release in Japan. "My name is Owen Pallett." Yes it is.

I guess that might represent a new direction in his songwriting style. The lyrics for heartland have been released for ages, and they definitely show a distance away from some of his past themes. Has a Good Home and He Poos Clouds both had heavy fantasy influences while being starkly, often disturbingly, realist, but the later album, plus the 3 EPs since then (counting X) showed even more wild imagery while being even darker; yet the video game references have died away. Yeah, I shrieked when I heard the Link's Awakening in "He Poos Clouds," but the "Into the mouth of Final Fantasy" was the last direct reference I've heard and can decipher. He is a tricky man, quiet in an aggressive way.

Anyway, my purpose is to do a post by post lyrical analysis of Heartland, anticipating it's 2010 release. I'm happy to say I'm daytripping up to Montreal to catch the end of his release tour. I bet I could find a bridge to sleep under, but I'll find a 10 dollar hostel near the Outrement and stick around after the show. So to the lyrics: let's go line by line

Midnight Directives

Cross her off the shortlist.
My blood is a red-winged bird.
The way will be lit by the bridges we burn, oh.

A lot of the album's themes have to do with masculinity, in relation to violence and sexuality, and they start planting their seeds here. The "her" to remove, very likely Lewis' wife, floats in and out of the narrative, like a specter of conscience or the like. But just as in the narrative, the violence supersedes that femininity: you can imagine the sharp movement of the pencil (a la Death Note) cutting her off from his "shortlist," an odd choice of word that probably highlights the way he's objectifying her into a list in his life.

He sees his life as dull, grounded; only through cutting her off and steeping himself in violence ("red") can he obtain any sort of freedom ("bird"). Lewis' blood boils and takes flight away from her, like a grand adventure. There's a paradox in the third line: "by burning the path behind us, we light the path before us" or even more directly, "kill the past to open the future." Lewis is making huge gestures that isolate himself from what he has, going through some darkness (otherwise, what need is there for light?) on his wild purpose. Burning, killing, trying to create light in what he sees as a dark world.

And come, tornado!
Carry me away from the croft.
Ruffle my hair, bear my body aloft, oh.

Speaking of the world about, it's the 14th century land of Spectrum, and apparently there are...tornadoes. There are two kinds of violence in Lewis' world: that within him, and that without him. The call upon nature to bear him up and treat him personally is a prayer to nature, to a cosmic unity and sense. But the world is already dark, the world already has tornadoes in him; the cosmic order that Lewis wants is just as violent as he is. "Croft" is an enclosed field area, and it makes reference to Lewis' profession as a farmer, a life he's actively rejecting.

As the cutlass came down on a Saturday night,
Left an un-planted field, left my daughter and wife.
Called away into service, for a clerical life.
Left an un-planted field, left my daughter and wife.

The chorus (repeated once later) sets definitely the thematic stuff in the first verse. Feeling a sense of adventure and youthfulness from (a) romanticized violence in a cutlass, and (b) a romanticized "night" on the Saturday, Lewis abandons his responsibility at home, both to his work and his (female) family. Two interesting notes on that first line: there's no need for the cutlass to have a wielder, all that Lewis seeks is his adventure; and there are possible religious connotations in Saturday.

The repetition of the fourth line only amplifies the leaving as a consequence of what he calls a "clerical life." The God-figure in the rest of this story is named Owen, aptly. Lewis sees his violence, and the violence he's seeking, as ordained from God. It's a duty! There's a solipsism in that. The implications of Owen as god sorta stretch out over the entire work, but there's a little bit of a play on the nature of fantasy (as one who focused his first two LPs on, bore the name of, and seemed to have been influenced by, fantasy works).

Thought I was a sad-boy.
Now I know, I know, I know I was wrong.
Since you came along, I can see how content I had been.

Lewis rewrites his past. The quip about "saturday night" above, implying a sort of youthful debauchery, also implies that Lewis is returning to a previous lifestyle/mindset. You could call it regression, but the main point is that he's rewriting the past. The supposed grown-up development that made him settle down confined him, and he's finding release in something he had already surpassed, or so we think. He needs to repeat the "I know" just to keep the momentum going (or Owen just needs to fill a line...). The "you" can't be anything but Owen, the greater sense of cosmic violence that he's returning to. He calls his pat "content," as if his soul has calm and unity in destruction. That's a bit of a contradiction in itself, but it'll be contested. It's also kind of fun to think of Owen swooping Lewis up romantically, but the role of sexuality/human-to-human stuff comes later. Right now, Lewis is freeing himself from the present.

It'll drive a man crazy to age from the outside in.
But I have a plan, it's a trick with a prick of a pin.

"Age" and youthfulness, yeah. Think of "outside-in" aging as feeling your body crumble and decay, weaken, stiffen, and fade while your mind clings to a past ideal. It's...watching everything fade away from you as you're totally lucid, rather than "inside-out" ing, becoming sedentary in mind and then in body. The former is too much for a man who idolizes his youth, so he rebels not only against the life he's created, but from age itself.

The second line is a bit vague, but has some elements. Lewis' method is destruction and cutting ties with the past; what is the plan? What is his purpose? I see two possible answers: 1) Pain -> reality. I will place a pin through things, create pain to call back to the "real world." 2) Deflating and reducing. I will take a pin and reduce life down to its bare essentials and truths, away from all hot air (haaaa). 3) Gay sex. "Pin" has a long history, dating back to Shakespeare, of meaning the penis, and "prick" has one too. The distance from femininity, coupled with the sense of being swept away and a bit of knowledge beforehand that Owen is putting themes of his own sexuality into the work, all make it somewhat plausible that Lewis is finding his youth through some sort of interaction with a penis. The artistic implications of gay sex here aren't exactly clear, especially in the strange context of religious life; but it could symbolize a return to pure masculinity (think the Greeks).

For a man can be bought, and a man can be sold,
And the price of a hundred thousand unwatered souls
Is a bit of meat and a bit of coal.
It's a bit of meat and a bit of coal.
It's a little bit of meat and coal.

A "man" (always a man) can be reduce down to his barest elements and controlled by his fuel. Lewis recognizes, in some capacity, that his trip back to his past through god/Owen. Just as he made his wife into an item on a "shortlist," he's just an input/output machine. This part is a bit tricky, but the second line help. For those who are wilting and "unwatered," needing sustinance, give them the objects to fuel fires and animals. Lewis is becoming an animal, I guess. Or equating himself with one, because he sees no worth in man beyond this. Everything in his current life is stale and objectified; so in his escaping, there's an ironic element of becoming the ultimate animal or object. Again, a little bit of outside information: the last three lines are sung like flute trills, like a wild and giddy curse.

I'll try to finish this over break, to escape my grandmother.

Concert Review: Final Fantasy + Mountain Goats

2009-11-30T00:05:00.000-05:00

I'm kind of sick, so my thoughts aren't that organized, but that was a very good show.

Owen opeened. I have a live recording of him at Vienna, and he's...awkward and shy, usually. But he was really branching out in a bashful sort of way. No self-deprecation, no confusion...some exhaustion, but also quite a bit of energy. So his playing was top fucking notch, like amazingly. I knew everything when it came, mostly because the show was a lot like the vienna concert. I felt kind of alone there up front (JMV had a later ticket...I wish I had bought you that section 2 ticket the lady had), among a bunch of Mountain Goats fans(I only knew one song Guff had sent me; my summary of the period when they came on is that they were good but not what I wanted at that mentail state and I was also sick and restless so I didn't listnen to all of it, they did a fine job) being there for Owen.

He played a lot of very, very ambitious stuff from his new record, and that came along very very well. It's shaping up to be amazing, from what I've heard live and on demo. Across the board, though, he approached each song with as much vigor as he could muster. He plays with his boyfriend now, and they make a very good team. It's hard to find a guitarist that can finger pick the same line of a bowed violin doing 16th notes, but Owen's dating one. Nice, huh? They're all cute and shit (I wanna take 'em home).

Owen was on synth and violin and voice, with his loop pedal and his exactness. Thomas was on guitar and percussion and vocals + whistling. Just...goddamn, hearing some of those songs live are religious. His records are pretty good, yeah; but the joy of seeing him life is connecting with the process of musing, evolving right there in front of you with every push on the loop pedal. It helps for me that I've done so much research / fangirling on the guy (for Arcade Fire and Great Lake Swimmers, I've listened to it) that I can connect to him personally as well as through his music. So I got to enjoy his personality and process, as well as the beautiful music he let out. He's a very sincere musician, skilled and exact.

I got to meet Thomas right between the acts. I had been trying to catch owen and failed, so I sort of waved at Thomas saying "Goodbye," but he actually came over and we had a conversation. I talked about the Vienna show, and I would've liked to have talked more about his musicianship and their interplay, because it was so effective. But it was just light wonderful chatter. He's a lot more open and amiable than Owen (who clearly has a lot of pathos and shyness going on, bless him)...yeah, I think he pitches. Anyway, very nice conversation. I told him my name.

Mountain Goats set: above. It was really nice, but I wasn't looking for loud guitars at that point in time. However, anyone who said they're bad live are exaggerating. They're ok live.

Afterwards I was sort of wandering about when I, at the help of others, found their tour bus. I sat down near it and struck up a conversation with a guy about the music and about percussion as well. Someone tapped me on the shoulder and said Owen was walking by (unaccompanied by any adoring fans, the absolute SHAME!) and I gave him my love. It was more awkward and fangirly than I would've liked, but I felt I expressed what I was feeling. He hugged me and said he couldn't stop looking at my hair. I left in all smiles. If I am more lucid tomorrow I am going to feel gooooooooooooooood.

Stream of Consciousness First Impressions: Kaz's Pack, pt. 2

2009-11-21T10:30:00.000-05:00

John Vanderslice - Radiant with Terror

I've heard this man's name somewhere before. I love the build here, the hypnotic sway of "back and forth back and forth" lends to a greater swelling, punctuated by the slightly distorted acoustic twang and those...glockenspiels? That takes courage, to use glockenspiels. Great sense of rhythm to grow, it's understated but very very grand. Nice chords, I guess. Why double-track those lyrics, really? Still, to get so much flow and build out of such a simple, radiant (ha) intro is quite the feat. Percussive weirdness is sorta strange, not as effective as he'd like it to be. Still, this song soars really really far. Wow, he's tight, those quickstops are nice. I'm glad it's as short as it is; he knows that you can't drag that on too long. The brightest star must flash for the shortest time, right? Unless you're a quasar or something. But this is wonderful! Great, hypnotic build, quite a lot of variation on a simple theme.

Mando Diao - The Wildfire (if it were true)

To be honest, Mando Diao is awesome and wonderful when I manage to not listen closely to it. I love his grooves death, and this song is no exception. The synth part, stretching past everything, really rounds out the song. But the acoustics and drums make a fine set of percussion. I wish the rhythm electric did more then arpeggiate chords; it's those kinds of things that could give his songs the variety and inspiration which I'm looking for in him. Really nice bass notes in the pre-chorus part. The chorus soars really well, and from a non-analytical perspective this is fantastic. But it's not fulfilling, sorta like a chocolate cake with crusty frosting. The drums could be fit better into this particular groove, it doesn't flow as smoothly as some of his other things. More onbeats, more melody, etc. Great pop writer, just enough for me forgive the saxophones on the chorus (hehehe). Basslines are really inventive, that's a plus, but not appropriate in many parts.

Manic Street Preachers - Be Natural

Accordion unfolding of a strange jazzy chord, then switching into that guitar progression...I use that one one a lot, I to iv, it creates a sense of sighing and opening. The drum use is sorta typical late-80s use, but they're pretty inventive I guess. Very subtle use of synth. Wow...once things get going, the drums are a huge asset. Occasional subtle doubling of the guitar melody, which is in itself wonderful. Great bass/drum work on the verse part, I like the swirling lyrics especially because they contrast with the guitar line really effective. Is that an accordion? It's a strange but wonderful addition. Nice guitar arpeggiations on the second verse, used in a really growth/melody method. Drums compliment everything perfectly. Woah, beat driven breakdown is surprising and well-executed...this is like the typical epic rock without all the crap about it. It feels more sincere, even a bit smaller. Guitar/vocal/rhythm guitar interplay for this song will be the thing I take away; it's able to soar only because there's such an unfolding and shrouding of a melodic line. It's not really my style, as it sort of borders on classic rock stylings (clearly influenced by the more modern stuff), but I like it a lot for what it is. They just toss in this wonderful bits of brilliance. They know how to vary dynamics too, which is good, hehe.

Mew - Snow Brigade

Oh, sweet, a chance to get into these guys more like you asked . Sonic rumblings and unstated sorts of things going on. There's an interplay in this noise which I like, is all their music so abstract. Those are chords. What's coming ne- OH. Violins and then these guitar lines again INCORPORATING those noise bits. Holy shit, that is fantastic drum work, making a perfect groove. The guitars don't need to overstate anything. They round it out really nicely on the prechorus. They make some strange choices for chords, and it's a bit harsh when that monster groove comes back in, which even the floaty lyrics and the echoey pizzicato can't fix. There's a...self-indulgent sort of melancholy in the lyrics, but whatever. Wow. That's fantastic breakdown, great guitar work and intervals, perfect use of drums to contrast while the guitar does its lyric weirdness. Good hits on that synth, nice swelling noise. They have the best sensibility about noise and what the ear hears that I've heard in a while. I wish they rounded out the vocals a bit, but that's just me. They're good! Am I correct in hearing the Norwegian / northwestern european influence? This song goes on a bit long, and it can't wholly fit together for me. But it's a great tune, great tune. Ahhh, fadeouts. Classic.

Mission of Burma - This is not a Photograph

My dad got me into these guys, they're wonderful. Great basswork, especially with the drums. Great guitar groove, but the groove of the whole feels a bit halting until we get farther in. Wow, great use of noise to keep things going. Very good punk work here. This is not a photograph, etc. Like a lot of punk, all I have to say is that I like it and it's fun and exciting, and in this case pretty artful.

American Music Club - Myopic Books

I love the atmopsheric quality. Very plaintive lyrics, simple acoustic works, quietly glowing, evoking. Like the piano atompshere to...hell, this sorta borders on ambient, or at least has roots there. I love the Dino Jr. reference, but as funny as it is, the guy manages to be almost dull, but not quite. Anyway, nice out there piano intervals. The hand drums fit in really nicely, because hey, we're just walking around this street praying and thinking. But it's ok, I'll find a bookstore. The chords on the acoustic are really nice, getting all the right intervals. There's no chance music going here, just a sort of pure musing, arcing up. Maybe the worst is over...these guys remind me of Bell Orchestre somewhat. Like the breakdown, like a point where you stand still and don't look at anything while your thoughts go everywhere. What is the nature of happiness, is the point, I guess. Flashes on, flashes off, like being visited. I really like this, my girlfriend would really dig this.

Atmosphere - Panic Attack I think I heard some asshole on /mu/ saying good things about this or something, plus a good friend recommended it. I like the groove alright, it's a bit weak in parts. But it's building and getting momentum. Wow, I like his rhymes and sonorities. He knows how to vary things, make syllables shorter to create a tension, all while the guitar held note soars over. He pays a lot of attention to what he's doing. His chorus looses some power for me, because I don't really like the beat as much as other grooves. Drums aren't meant to be that subtle and offbeating in this kind of pattern. Love the noise flying through things. He's making a real statment, trying to make things real. Yeah! He's good. Nice changes under the samples. Um, yeah. Cool.

Unjustness

2009-11-07T20:44:00.000-05:00

the new fuck buttons is wonderful and exciting and open and yes, rooted in the dance stuff, but the music still unfolds, creates, excites, evokes, just like the former noise music, but now through a different medium; forgive me please

Stuff I'm Spinning / Piano

2009-11-07T15:58:00.000-05:00

I've just been idly plugging things in, too reduced by sickness and fatigue to do some honest reviews. I feel cloudy.

Heartbeat Radio - Sondre Lerche. The guy did some fantastic work for "Dan in Real Life," and some of his other records have some interesting parts to them. When he strips away his rock influences for his acoustic focus, or generally turns down the rock for more lounge-style stuff, I'm often frustrated. His songwriting can be frustratingly convoluted, and although he has a pretty good sense of melody, his lyricism can be frustrating . He has a smooth sound, and occasionally his lounge stuff reaches good points, but the most of "Two Way Monologue" was difficult for me. Same with "Heartbeat Radio," except now he's discovered violins. His arranging in certain parts is good, and "I Guess It's Gonna Rain Today" has some wonderful intervals...but damn, he just doesn't know how to create flow and hang with it.

Tarot Sport - Fuck Buttons. I was really excited when I heard they had a new album, and I'm still working through it. However, my first impression is...disappointment. I don't like the dancey aspect to it. They used the 4/4 bass drum as a sort of pivot before, a basis or a spine, around which the song pivoted, struck against, shone with...I'm thinking directly of "Colours Move," but the regularity of the drums in a few other songs from Street Horrrsing provides a similar effect. I feel like they're...letting up a bit. That's just my first impression; I expect it to grow on me blah blah blah.

Fluent in Stroll - Big D and the Kids Table. The newfound cute self-defined "Stroll" genre is an excuse for '50s throwback and childish lyrics spiced with that same, somewhat annoying, female backup. I loved their earlier stuff, but I don't like the direction of this. Shame.

Kasabian. I'm listening to everything I can find, I love it I love it I love it I love it.

My chopin prelude (Db major for Kessler, the name "Raindrop" is highly inapt) is going awfully. I barely practiced and had no lessons ove the past three weeks. I've lost my technical ability over the parts, and I can barely play the second part of the middle section (with those rich, dissonant, tortured chords). Since it's such good music to hole up to and bash away at, in stress or peace, I think I'll spend my free time remastering certain technical aspects.

This totally leaves open all the texture-related and gesture-related and personal stuff that I should be doing. I need adjectives, and I need to stick with them and express them. I've had a few wonderful discussion about the nature of silence in the piece, and about the strange pivot point of the Ab/G# and its importance/relevance. I can barely do roman numeral analysis and I want to entirely split apart the piece and look for those golden gels and glowly liquids undearneath its placid skin. It has an unmatched range of emotion, but because the 3 statements of theme are so simliar (with the rich opportunity for contrast in the ornamentation), flow is so vitally important. How do you lead up to the creeping terror of the B section? How do you surface from it? How can you emerge from the silence, cascading down the piano in that Db major chord, with such expectation of rising again? To what? Where are we going?

I am thus overpowered by the work.

Comedown

2009-11-05T19:49:00.000-05:00

I've been crashing all of today, half because I was up till 2 and got up at 6:30 for classes.

But, the other half is because Prop One passed in Maine, and now a large group of society of people who love each other very very much cannot get the institutional benefits, societal stability, and personal comfort that comes from a marriage. I'm slightly heartened by the small margin of the victory, as was true in prop eight; currently, the activism power of Human Rights' groups aren't enough to unseat deep-rooted beliefs and fictions about homosexuality or about queer rights. We'll always have Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, and soon New Hampshire, but Maine isn't exactly a hotbed of liberalism. So there was a veto.

One of the frustrating things about all this is the strange state of the queer voice in all this. Of all the 10 states with the highest population of LGB (ignoring our Ts and As and Qs, as usual), none of them have gay marriage laws in place; and of the states with the highest percentage population, only 3 do. And then there's fucking Iowa! If Iowa of all places does it, why not Maine, with the 5th highest percent population of LGB folks?

I'd love to take a greater look at other statistical influences here, like religious focus in certain states compared to the results of propositions like Cali's 8 and Maine's 1, but...I'm too busy crying over all of this.

Concert Review: Toro Y Moi + Jemina Pearl + Islands

2009-11-05T01:17:00.000-05:00

First: holy shit.

Second: I spent the entire night in front row directly, Jemina Pearl's head was six inches from my crotch, Nick Diamonds stroked my head and sang the first few lines of No You Don't with me.

It was a wonderful concert! The Flaming Lips concert a few weeks back made me realize that I am never again going to have as wonderful and transcendental an experience as I did then, and that's ok. So I'm coming into concerts more humbly, and there's a lot to like at the show.

I'm in loooove with the Middle East downstairs. It's a dive, the ceilings are slanted, the whole thing is sprawled out, shit just happens there and there's no bullshit in the way of it. Shit without bullshit. Just people playing shows from 9 PM to 12 AM, with 8 AM doors.

I got there at 8:15 or so, after stopping in with my girlfriend. The place has the definition of shitty bathrooms, but I quickly changed into a nifty new tshirt and some nice, simple jewelry. I love the coat check, took a lot of stress of my back. Because I get very...physical at concerts, screaming lyrics and using my entire body as a sort of air instrument, and in this case sort of worshipping the crazy presence of Mr. Diamonds, so it's nice to not have to carry shit. I didn't get to see my friend James there, which sucked and made me feel lonely, but my friend's roomate was there, and we chatted for a while about the music. I'm pretty bad with talking to strangers at concerts, except if I'm pumped and they're inebriated, but I did get into a conversation with one guy. Mostly, I just held my ground and listened to the music while texting in the interim.

Anyway, music. Opener was Toro Y Moi, also introducing himself as Charles. He came on stage in a sweater over a long-sleeved collared shirt, with these really thick glasses, and did his thing for 40 minutes before vacting. A really nice, humble sort of guy, and he did wonderful with the niche he put himself in. That niche was...transamerican synth-pop tinged with hip-hop and a bit of psychedelia, which is a surprisingly fleshed out genre (Rrrrrrrratatat! sorta). But hell, he had really good beats and varied them at good points, was a decent keyboardist, knew how to put a good soundscape (necessary for psychidelia) and good rhythms (necessary for pop) and good beats (necessary for hip-hop). All in all, I was very intrigued and happy with what went on. The guy is also the humblest, nicest guy you'll ever find, if that's a plus. But with his macbook and his korg and a mic...he did quite a bit very well. I was really happy about it.

I spent most of last night diving into Jemina Pearl's newest, and my general opinion of her stuff is somewhat positive. She's agressive and honest, in a refreshing sort of way. Of course she falls so easily into useless cliches, and her powerpop style leads to a lot of undue comparisons (and collaborations) with Iggy Pop. I had no expectations, and what I got was generally good. I knew the songs, and they have a good beat and a few goods riffs, while managing to somehow NOT be total hipster bullshit. I hate to say it, but it was cute. However pissed she is, I still got that vibe: "Aw, here's what Jemina's doing! She's writhing and spitting and kissing her guitar-playing boyfried. how nice" I'll give her a lot of credit for putting all of her spirit out there, even if it was clear that she was...either pissed or tipsy coming into the show. They were tight enough, they were together enough. It was alright. Not my thing. But you know? I think Iggy was there, looking disdainfully at the group. Mighta just been another weirdo with spiky black hair.

There were two disappointments to the Islands show: the fact that their ensemble was so small (no violinist, no bassonist, no freestyler like Bus Driver, just drums, a guitar/synth player, Jamie on Guitar/Synth, and Nick on guitar/vocals; and the sorta obvious fact that they are not the subtle and skilled players that seemed to record Return to the Sea. None of that...really mattered to me. The folks in the front few rows saw the setlist as it was on the floor...and we starting freaking out in excitement.

Switched On [Vap] [Costume]
No You Don't [Vap] [Costume]
Disarming the Car Bomb [Vap]
Tender Torture [Vap]
Creeper [Arm]
Where There's a Will, There's a Whalebone [Sea]
Vapours [Vap]
Heartbeat [Vap]
Don't Call Me Whitney Bobby [Sea]
On Foreigner [Vap]
The Arm [Arm]
Devout [Vap]
EOL [Vap]
I'm In Control [Vap]
----
Rough Gem [Sea]
Swans [Sea]

Parts of this were to be expected. They're still early in touring Vapours, so they're of course going to play the whole damn thing; and since Jamie wasn't around for Arm's Way (and perhaps because its quality is slightly lower), they won't do much from it: so if we're lucky, we'd get some key hits from Return to the Sea. Thus, we get 4 fantastic songs from the album, 2 of the best ones from The Arm, and almost the entire Vapours album (missing The Drums, I think, which is fine), which they managed to make very, very cool live.

I was a bit frustrated at the beginning of Switched On. Yeah, Nick in his white jumpsuit and diamond-studded cape was cool enough, and his batman glasses were even cooler, and his strange and dancey theatricals were nice and all...but I was struck by how...open their sound was. With only 3 guys on instruments (and the drummer on samples as well), there's not a lot of mobility to take everything that was detailed and exciting about their music. They held together well; they had the energy and the synergy, and they played and had fun with it. Nick seems to be a pretty understated sort of guy ("Woo, yeah." "You're awesome, Nick!" "Haha, thanks." "Are we awesome?" "Yes, you are in fact awesome...yes you are. I'd have to say that, though the purpose isn't to compare, that we are in fact more awesome." "Yeah, you're right."), and so it sort of fit. Most of the melodic lines and divisions of part were contained throughout the whole thing; it just took Nick 2 songs to take his cape off and pick up the guitar. No You Don't also showed their limitations, but also their strength of spirit.

It was at this song, Disarming the Car Bomb, that I noticed how every song was being done under tempo, seemingly for the sake of the instrumentalists. Anyway, Disarming annoyed me for the longest time, but live it's pretty nice! Think Ideoteque song become IDEOTEQUE CLOSER. Great beat, great use of drums. The drums were pretty constant throughout the whole thing, he didn't let up much to let things pass, instead just redoing rhythms and going along with a groove. He was on fire, though. It was great. Tender Torture was really good, Nick added in the guitar well, the the versatility of Jamie and the other guy was pretty clear, on synth and guitar.

Creeper was a song that they took a bit of creative liberty with. I think they changed around certain parts, cut out in a few places that weren't cut out, and might've messed with the structure a bit. I expected they'd play it live, and they did not disappoint. What was clear after No You Don't was made abundantly clear now: these guys can do amazing things on simple sorts of beats. Whalebone was great and all...it was sort of a letdown not having any freestyling over the bridge part, but they shortened it and groooved around a bit. All live acts have to face the challenge of muddiness in sound, and they did a very good job at keeping things...lucid. They kept it much more stripped down then Jemina (who is the biggest cause for my current deafness, fuck her boyfriend), but they were so energized that it was easy to get into.

Vapours was all cute and shit, clearly Nick just wanted to be cute and shit too. And so he was. Heartbeat was great, as expected: beat-driven and direct, so great for them (harkening back to the Unicorns, I guess). Don't Call me Whitney, Bobby was fucking religious. I just...everybody knew it, everybody was into it, the drummer made it better, everybody covered the parts of the song, but the sound was rounded out. It was better live. It was short and wonderfully sweet.

On Foreigner, and soon after that EOL, and I'm In Control are all in my mind a) generally bad songs, and b) songs that they did a really good live job in. Think of...Radiohead adding that bassline under The Gloaming in the Hail to the Thief tour. Kinda like that. They just do more with the synths, draw better beats together and make them less...floaty and stupid. The Arm had a few musical fuckups in it, but it had a lot of good pausing and changes of feel, which made it very very seizing and compelling: WHERE THE FUCK ARE WE GOING NEXT WOOO ISLANDDS ARE FOREVER WOOOO.

They left, came back, and played the opening chords of Rough Gem (the fucking tease actually played the opening guitar part for Volcanoes, and then switched. the bastard) and everybody went to and through the roof. It's a classic, it was distributed across iTunes and made famous, and it's just a really good song. They handled the instrumentation well, and let the synth catch a few liens while having hand claps on the quiet "Dun-dun-dun" of the hook. It was slower, but the drums and the synth really fit together nicely. They weren't their best at musicanship

In the few moments that I could actually hear the chords of Swams, I could tell that they were fucking up. A lot. It's a complex and detailed song, one requiring a lot of work and focus, and they didn't have the skill or the composure for their closer. But you know? It was fine. The memory factor was enough. They played it downtempo, making it around 11 minutes, but everything was tthere...fuck, did they add a few beats on the first proggy (major) part after the third statement of the theme, then going into the final (minor) proggy part? I think they did. That fucked me up. But all-around, I was psyched enough not to care about being off by two frets or playing in the wrong key. It was Swans, for christ's sake. It was Swans!

All in all: I loved the concert because I love Islands and Nick's funny and they have a good synergy. Also, Nick has really smooth hands. I think he just wanted to feel my hair.

Anyway, a summary: FUCK YEAAAHHHH

Random Concerting, and Why It's a Sort of Okay Thing

2009-11-02T22:26:00.000-05:00

Although I keep track of my favorite artists through livekick (a wonderful tool; I downloaded iTunes on my windows partition on the pc just to export the xml library into livekick, and I hate Apple!), some of my happiest moments have been concerts somebody has said to be "Hey, shit, wanna come to this concert?"

Best memory like that was Tuesday last November. I was talking with a senior I sort of knew, hanging out in the Chem Lab doing problems and generally chewing the fat. He mentions how he's going to the Of Montreal concert tonight, front row seats. I say I'm happy for him, I know them vaguely. Later in the day, I'm walking down the hall expecting for another frustratingly long night of homework, and passes me by and says "Hey...my friend who bought the tickets isn't here...uh, you wanna go?" I jump on the opportunity...and suddenly we drive into Boston to see Gang Gang Dance open for Of Montreal. Blew my fucking mind, Kevin's a great showman. His wife painted my face and stroked my face with a whip. The senior kid had some vegan cake they were passing about, and got sick. We talked about music, and he clearly identified himself as the kid who jumped on one indie craze and moved to another after a few weeks (modern Flaming Lips, Neutral Milk Hotel, Of Montreal...that's sorta unfair, he had some Lou Reed). But yeah, I randomly got to go to a concert of a group I didn't know. Gang Gang Dance is now one of my favorite artists, and Of Montreal is up there.

I've had a lot of good experiences seeing concerts of groups I didn't know. The OM concert I jumped in was totally out of the blue, and that was pretty fun I guess. The Anti-Flag show was really really great, even though I didn't know much punk at that point. I saw Sigur Ros just when Meo Sud debuted, and it was an amazing show and I was able to connect with it, even if I only knew Svefn-en-Genglar (err) and some of (). The symphony shows I sometimes go to don't really count, I suppose; but there's been a lot of fun to be had from just saying SURE YES I'LL GRAB THESE TICKETS or I'D LOVE TO GO IN PLACE OF YOUR FRIEND! And I make sure to pay it forward by rarely letting people pay for tickets I buy.

But...damn, there's always something lost. The Black Moth Super Rainbow concerts I've been to have been really wonderful, but I'm just not that well-versed in their entire discography. I'll here a cut here, a cut there, and I'm left to admire these wonderful soundscapes that I...really don't have any emotional connection to. I saw Radiohead and that was fucking AMAZING...but I hadn't checked out In Rainbows before going. It's not like I didn't enjoy everything and wasn't transported by it; but I couldn't understand how much of a religious event it is to see 15 Step live. And some shows just fall flat. I try to give music a chance, but it gets hot in clubs, and I get thirsty and it's too distorted to hear. I spent the majority of the Down concert sorta...hanging out in the back, half asleep. There's so much loss in just going in blind; I'm trying to make sure to listen to the headliner, and the last opener, before going, just for context (kinda failed for Jemina Pearl, though. Eh.)

I bring this up because there's the annual Mighty Mighty Bosstones show that my sister and I might like to go to. I guess it's more about if I want to be in proximity to my sister.

Islands

2009-11-01T15:00:00.000-05:00

I've been listening to Islands non-stop for most of the weekend. I'm seeing their Middle East show in Boston on the 4th, and I'm wondering what to expect. I've been reading about the Arm's Way shows, and how much screwing around they did; leaving the stage and gallivanting around the streets, and letting Bus Driver freestyle in the streets before folks dispersed. I have classes the following morning, so I hope things don't go too late; but hell, it could be fun.

I discovered Islands a few years ago through Keat, although it took me a while to plug them in and give them a serious listen. I've been fangirling over them to anybody and everybody since I plugged in "Return to the Sea" on a long car ride home.

"Return to the Sea" struck me in a lot of different ways. Yeah, I liked the creepyness and darkness that their lyrics contain, but once they overdid it in "Arm's Way," that lost its luster. The tone of the album struck me immediately. They put a lot of work into production, like any good pop album, but there are so many small touches that make the album magical for me to this day: the loose snare on "Don't Call Me Whitney, Bobby," the wailing at the beginning of "Swans," the slightly detuned whistling on "Humans," the clicky beginning percussion for "Volcanoes," and the untouched piano of "Bucky Little Wing." They paid a lot of attention to atmosphere and tonality, how the album would actually sound in your ear and how important that was. I apprecaite that a lot.

The songwriting is also topnotch.

The arc of the album was the most compelling thing, for me. I maintain that "Swans" is a work of genius, and part of my reasoning for that lies in how it traces the rest of the album. It begins quietly and evocatively, far away from the noise and bluntness of the Unicorns year (there's a huge biographical aspect here, of course), slowly complexifying. Melody, even in the bass part is vital, and they use the drums to allow their song to unfold and curl back, letting the bits of piano or electric or wailing. The first verse / chorus part is balanced in its parts, not letting guitars or noise become the predominant force. In the second part, the piano gets so much more rhythmic importance, and the crazy wailing and the guitars trade prominance and importance. They keep grooving on those same bits, and have a nice breakdown which bleeds back into so much more noise. We get one last, simple restatement, before everything gets back into full force, turning finally into a flat out prog rocky sort of ending. But just after that, all the parts break away into their parts, holding rhythms and bathing in the same noise without much in the way of direction. Where the hell are we? Where did we go in the last 9 minutes?

The song becomes more and more complex and layered, eventually more noisey and rocky, then breaking down, just as the album does. The sardonic "Humans" and creepily light "Whitney" become longer and more beat-heavy songs like "Rough Gem" and "Joggin' Gorgeous Summer," which in turn culminate in "Volcanoes." They're playing around with what pop does; sit back and hop along, or grab you. The end of the album is a huge decrescendo from "Volcanoes": "If" and "Ones" exist in their own, frightening sort of stripped down universe, and "Bucky" is simple in a way that no other song on the album dares to be. Just like "Swans," we built up to the crazy proggy stuff, and then had to face the consequences and results: this after-noise, this openness and use of silence in "Bucky" or the hypnosis of "Ones."

"Bucky," I think, is the best possible way to end the album. The song is simply piano and some vocal backing, and the structure is simple. There's no subtlty, on one hand, and no noise, on the other. The subject matter isn't creepy, like death or cannibalism, but simply stated and sad: racism and friendship, death and departure. It's the perfect cap on the album: "despite all the places and crescendoes we've gone through, let's break everything down and talk about something incredibly organic for a while. you'll have to wait through 4 minutes of rain to hear it, but it's worth it." And it is! It's a strange and exciting end to the kind of journey we've just gone through.

I highly doubt we'll hear much of "Return to the Sea." Even though Jamie's back, they have better songs to play at concerts. The entirety of "Arm's Way" sort of sucks, but has a better beat and must be easier to play; and of course, there's the new album to tour, and a lot of those cuts are very good for live or for radio. I expect "Switched On" for an opener, and somewere in there: "No You Don't", "Vapours" (maybe a closer), "Tender Torture" (definitely), "Heartbeat" (probably), "Disarming the Car Bomb" (likely), "The Arm" (totally), "J'Aime Vous Voir Quitter" (unless this is really a veiled reference to Jaime leaving, in which he wouldn't like to), "Creeper" (clearly), "We Swim" (maybe), "I Feel Evil Creping In" (yeah), and maybe "Rough Gem." Trust me, though, if they throw in "Swans" or break things down for "Bucky," you can be sure I'll be grasping at Nick and Jamie in lurv. I'll be on the sides hydrating during Toro Y Moi, but I'll be up at the front for Jemina Pearl.

So fucking EXCITED!

My Love Affair With Sufjan Stevens

2009-10-25T14:48:00.000-04:00

So there's been a lot of activity on the Sufjan front. He's touring a bit, and he has two new releases but no new material. It's ironic to me that his two releases are so...retrospective.

Run Rabbit Run is a string version of his strange and wonderful Enjoy Your Rabbit, 14 electronic instrumental songs filled with rhythmic weirdness and fascinating rhythms (for a sample, check Year of the Boar segueing into Year of the Tiger). I think he's referenced a zodiac-themed album as a sort of stepping stone: his use of the names of the zodiac represent his own inability to find names for songs, to define and encapsulate a song in a title. A Sun Came! is weird and very experimental in a sometimes good, sometimes bad way. Despite his maturity in Enjoy Your Rabbit, there was more to do before he could become the "Titles longer than the song itself" master. To have Osso redo the album is to re-recognize that stage in his career: the experimentation, the difficulty to name and to encapsulate, the density and difficult of his works.

Ironically, Michigan and Illinois (I don't know seven swans that well, so I won't talk about it) are all about encapsulation. Using long titles, and a whole state as a concept, subjects filled with both researched and experienced feelings and events. The Michigan project got him going into this vein, and he was so enthusiastic to contain everything in song that he took 3 discs, two from Illinois and one from the Avalanche, to paint everything he could. He wanted to paint the entire fifty states, using his inquisitive and emotional outlook to take everything in, everything. He wanted to put true experience into his melodic, often sparse, often acoustic, often plaintive and simple style: the exact opposite of his early career.

The BQE is a mix of the two. Exploring the subject of the Bronx-Queens Expressway, Sufjan is again trying to contain an abstract in song. But he's not picking such a large subject as New York (he had mentioned New York as the next possible state subject, at one point), but rather something a bit more managable. He is using a mostly acoustic medium to try to contain all of his spirit, but he uses electronic sounds and eschews vocals. He divides things into names, but also relies on classical format and divison: Prelude, interlude, movement. It's less an album than an orchestral suite, a huge undertaking no longer limited by his own skill at his 5+ instruments.

Maybe this was always the fate of his music. One of the most striking things about Michigan to me was the use of electric hums between songs, and the fleeting, highly distorted guitar solos. Illinois ended with a nonvocal track, and had all sorts of nonvocal interludes, with a bit of electronic styling in it. Avalanche was a bit heavier in that respect. He threw in a track on Dark Was the Night that was all electronic...I dunno, seems to me like he's been itching to get back into the instrumental suite style. But will it work? Returning from his highly popular, melodic and environmentally evocative music, will it work?

FUCK YES. It works brilliantly. Unlike perhaps some of his other albums, you really have to devote energy to actively listening, otherwise you might say: "Absolutely nothing happens in this album until Movement 4 when the crazy electronics come in." I'm only halfway through the album and I am seriously in love with it.

The Prelude on the Esplanade is a sonic gem, a tone exploration of shouting cars and difficulties, flitting around tonalities of sort of major keys, enticing us onward and crescendoing, brought onward and onward and onward until this brilliantly tonal fanfare. At first, I was disappointed with the fanfare when compared to, say, The Black Hawk War [yadda], but I'm getting more into it. The chords arc up over the tonal center, and fall back down. He tells us: getting on trains is awesome, yo, but you gotta get somewhere too. Feelings of movement are given a real tonal, and not just crazy noise, center. The horn work is phenomenal.

So we're on the train now, I guess? And we get very quiet and artful pieces. Invaders stands out very strongly against the others, in that those three notes at the end of each phrase are like a horn, or a siren. Throughout the piece, horns and woodwinds take and let go of that carrying call, and the drums stop pausing behind it and time itself seems to stretch a bit. It's a fantastic piece of work, beautiful sense of growth in it. The first few songs I remember less well, but they're in the same vein: melodically genius, sonically enthralling, quiet and exciting.

But hell, Movement III into Movement IV is probably my favorite thing to come out of speakers ever. Seriously. Horns in III take their sweet times, using the space and uncertain time signature to create a sense of...I dunno, a clearing filling with trees that slowly grow and intertwine. You figure out it's in 7/8, certain horns take that little embellishment at the end of a phrase, but there is still so much growth and tension. Those embellishments don't fall on the beat, and it's hard to tell how many horns are playing at the time. Unlike a lot of his Michigan music, the complexity doesn't come from the interlocking of simple, melodic lines; everything is dense as fuck. You get a sense of buoyancy from it, though, a sense of rising to something; those embellishments become a symbol of clarity, those 7/8 phrases get a bit more clear. We're rising, drums and more bass sounds come in, instruments shift to maybe create a hole in those dense interlocking branches, and suddenly, suddenly HOLY SHIT WE'RE GOING LIGHTSPEED. It's like Rainbow Road in Mario Kart or something. It's a totally different sonic texture, choppy and hyperactive, and just like in the best parts of Enjoy your Rabbit, oboes and beats mix really well. I imagine myself speeding down a highway at like 125 km/hr dancing and running and rolling and all sorts of things. It's a huge climax, but strangely he's not afraid to put on the breaks and take away density. He understands that the sounds themselves make the tension here; so he'll through in off-color notes and bits of strange tonality that create excitement and direction, and POOF it'll go back to that part with the oboes. Incredible stuff.

I'll post more when I have a greater opinion. I got inspired to listen to Sufie because of a road trip through Illinois and Michigan.

Also: NEW FUCK BUTTONS ALBUM, MY DEAR GLORIOUS CLOUDS YES.

Stream of Consciousness First Impressions: Hiro's Pack pt. 7 + Kaz's Pack pt. 1

2009-10-24T22:34:00.000-04:00

Midlake - Roscoe

Cool synth+electric, setting up a circular groove, and around which that perfect bassline spreads, and the rhythm gutiar works, adding...well, rhythm to the drum line as it comes in. Really good growth and introduction, that. The drum fills help create ebbs in the flow, perfect and creative addition of ride cymbols which creates a feeling of surfacing to air. Once again through...vocals are nice and all. Harmonies expand and contract, making even more flow. Flow like water. The harmony for the chorus-like part is especially badass...awoooo...now a creative rhythm and melodic acoustic on low and high frets. Gosh, these guys know how to write a song and put the bits together. Nice solo, descending lines, calmed with those double-tracked vocals after. Bass shifts surprisingly, again ebbing and flwoing. Now a rising, not descending line into the solo, which reaches farther than its counterpart while being borne into the past. 1891 must be an epicly deep, percussive yearh. Soaring, shouting, all still cyclical and excited. Ride sticks along for the last verse. and so you can just here the beginning cycling line there. Woooo!

Supergrass - St. Petersburg It's encrypted.

Yeasayer - Sunrise Yay!

More strange harmonies. Textured and creepy piano, screeching and striking. The crying and noise evolves into a beat, distrubted...maybe a bit ineffective but very cool. Nice bass, great use of vies to evoke and string things together, but the rest of the groove keeps on behind it, for better or worse. Beats get more interesting, but omsething's off...there's no...basis. Listening more to the percussive entrances/exits make it cooler/more interesting, but something isn't going right. Nice touch on the chorus. Doesn't feel like a breakdwon after it, though..wasn't in it to break, you know?Vocals build nicely but never did make for the the epicness of the start. It's denser...and not much else. Looking pack, the percussion deserves a lot more credit, but it's all too choppy to have flow, that's it. The flow doesn't work for me. The bass and voice and vibes just aren't enough. I sort of want to say "Too artful," but what I mean is that they should clear away the crap and really do what they do well. Simplify, simplify, simplify. Nice, though.

Camper Van Beethoven - Take the Skinheads Bowling

Hops into a solid groove. Like the balence: held notes on the top electric, some shift in the lower electric, and nots of good shhift in the bass. Drums is a good balence of simplicity and interestingness...oh screw you Hiro. I am laughing so hard. Thi is just...lul.

Peter Bjorn and John - The Chills

Cool fuzz-bass and good drum groove under that vibes shit and the shhhing. Breaks down nicely. The drum work is really good...even if it's a loop. Love the haunty shifty vocals. Great reintroduction of material into the verse. An unexpected breakdown...buildingand receding with drums. But once everything roars in...there isn't much actually there. It's a sweet groove, but it's just sorta burning, having some stuff thrown in. His reedy voice is less soulful, stirring, and evocative then needed...that's one of my bigger problems with PB&J, they have great hooks and great beats, and then things just sorta sit there and feel less interesting. I could see this being wonderful for dancing. Most of this stuff is wonderful for dancing, dear.

Ratatat, Slim Thug, T.I. & Bun B. - Three Kings

Again, great beat on their part. That electric is a bit annoying, but the drums and synthy moanings are really good, vary nice with the voice. Again, no discernable point in lyrics besides misogyny and hubris, great breakdown as we get closer to the chorus form, adding and removing things. Some of the rhymes are nice, but neither rapper so far is really impressing me. I like this kind of stuff, rap with a bit more variation in the beat and change as things continue on. It's quite the challenge to make a hip-hop beat and hide it an sorts of other percussion, and still have it flow, which this song acheives. But this Slim Thug man just strikes me as an asshole. Third guy I like a bit better, plays with rhythm more. Some of my favorite rappers, mostly Doesone and Subtitle, use crazy rhymes and sonorities along with rhythm and subject. But none of them are particurally inspiring. Good, but not my thing. Rhyming a bunch of things with "ug" is also pretty stupid in its own right, I'll say.

Midlake - Young Bride

Builds, emerges out of the silence on violin and octaves on the acoustic...staging, setting. The violin plays on a blues scale solemnly and reflectively, the acoustic builds up, and these drums which are simple yet really compelling, and easily and effectively altered. Like a tired old woman. They know when to stop speaking to make it awesome. Adding in bass creates more flow, and then they cut it in half by adding the second, stronger snare. Builds together for the chorus, the crazy shimmering over all that we've created, that we now receede. Drums and bass start it back off, drums starting off and become slightly more complex, more exciting and dense. Nice throwaway double and triple tracking for effect. It still feels organic and natural, even though that electronic wailing and sorta bright synth tone sits over everything. Great second set of vocals on the chorus, which is a tapestry of sounds in the most exciting sort of way. Awesome. Nice breakdown to violin solos, now building and mirroring each other so as to evoke...more of that natural growth, despite the fact that we've gotten so much energy. Third chorus is just ten times more badass because of this, and because of the extra vocal work going into it. Oh man, oh man, oh man. Wonderful! Great intervals on that vocal line, reminiscent of the violins. That's smart, that's friggin' smart. I love it! Keeps going, perhaps a bit less exciting, but there's a good solo over it so I don't care. Midlake is amazing, amazing. We're drowning in more synthy winthy wonderful hundred-fold intensity then further dying away into its source, grasshoppers. Oh boy that was fantastic and wonderful. LOVE.

Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter - Birds over Water

Unfolding in an arpeggio, to those violin notes flittering about the dominant, ready to resolve...wow. Evoking, pulling. Electric is simple and really fantastic, manages the same thing. Percussion moving little, but not needing to. Electric builds more, allowing the violins to really push what's going on. It's slowly, it's somewhat bluesy, but that's great. Rumbling of a snare, I think?, in the background. Nice chromatism, everything, the rhythm and the flow, rest on that guitar. But now it's secondary, jumping in with piano to frame each vocal line, adding all this drama. Vocals fit perfectly, descending and bridging those two chords. More activity on violins and guitar and piano, plus vocal harmonies, make more tension. We're almost, but not quiet, at a regular percussion, not just epic frames and throwins. Rides and snares jump in and create it. Here we are. Shit, man. Voilins create tonality, electric frames and creates rhythm and tension, resolved by the nature of the chords itself. Piano is really percussion. A really good balance and mix exists here, how amazing. Gosh. Like birds over water, such a buildup, after we've had all of this. The chords are changed to awkward counterparts, needing even more resolution and care, and the piece meets that requirement fantastically. Oh wowie. Love it, love it! How wonderful! The formula is getting old but I don't care. Acoustic is just...so damn pretty, evocative. Breaks to a solo part, she really knows what she's doing and how to achieve it. I love everything follows the path of the guitar, even though the guitar is the supported one: all of the emotion lies there, and thus brightens everything around it. How...that's just impossible. Impossibly done. Fall down on me. I can't even hear everything because I'm on this fucking plane and this is just making me feel warm inside. Fall down on me. Second solo, holding on notes and then descending, using piano to vault back up to the tonic. Each resolution to that tonic is such a sweet release of pain, like she's holding back very subtly and then bringing us home. I feel carried, loved, appreciated, welcomed in in this respect. She's speaking to me. Secondary acoustic is simple enough to really enhance everything. Such damn good use of violins. Like seriuosly, holy shit Kaz. If the rest of this pack is that good you should win a Nobel Fucking Peace Prize. I love you so much.

Stream of Consciousness First Impressions: Hiro's Pack, pt. 6

2009-10-16T23:00:00.000-04:00

PNAU - Embrace The opening builds nicely, as that one bass/synth note arrives out of nowhere and, along with slight percussion, creates a beat out of those chords. Great beat, nice electric riff. Pacing is nice and slow. The vocals sit on that major second, creating a sort of pivot, but it's not that effective. Chorus is awesome, good high notes bringing the progression into awesome land. I do really like the beat, and it's very danceable, which is a huge merit. New synth chords, broken down bassline, and 16th notes on the hihat all create a a sense of achieving, but again...it doesn't impress me or astound me much. Nice bridge, it's a sense of restraint that hasn't been present before. Builds back up again very well, they're influenced by techno tradition without succumbing to it. Strange choice of becoming a verse after that, but it's ok. Ok third chorus is badass with the drums. I turned up the volume and it got better. A lot of their music is lines sticking around the same few notes, and using deviations from that to create material: the vocals in that one interval in the verse and the high notes on chorus; repeated bassline; that same guitar riff on the verse, and a few other things. That's where the techno part comes in for me, since that's what a lot of techno is. This song doesn't really do it for me, but it's pretty cool. It doesn't need a real hook that it comes back to, which is an achievement.

PNAU - Freedom Acoustic and echoey sorta progression is SUPER COOL. The echoes create some nice syncopated / offbeat rhythms, and the acoustic texture adds a lot to the song: each 2 measures starts rough and ends soft. It was a good decision to have the vocals be softer, and start their line towards the 2nd measure. Really good balance...and then they send this strange falling vocal line over it. Nothing else is really changing interestingly, but that vocal line does quite a lot to sustain a piece. They're so groove oriented, which is a really cool thing to be doing...nice droning in the background, but it's sort of a cheap trick to fill in the parts where the percussion cuts out. Small bits of echoes here and there do the same thing. It's great and all, but I'd prefer they invest their energy in making a bit more happen. They're great at flow, and great at groove, but the song is missing a lot for me...direction, maybe. Or a hook. Then again, it's fine how it is, moving along nicely. It's not really my thing, but it's good!

Midlake - Head Home Flute and synth! Awesome. They're dancing around each other, one repeated and one orbiting it. Great sense of build when the drums come in, but it doesn't stop there; the progression has this strange chords that don't quite resolve, giving a greater sense of growth. Nice piano, but it's a bit obnoxious once the vocals come in. Vocals are sparse and subtle enough, like the basswork, to make it interesting, while the piano forms the real bass of things. Chorus brings intro-y part back. That's some good bass work. That bass pattern feels a bit too country-style for this song, but it creates a bit of a bluesy effect. Is that a bit of Thom Yorke in the vocals? I'm starting to love the way the piano keeps driving along. Great vocal harmonies. Nice drum cutout. Their form seems to breakdown a bit, and I don't know where I am, but it's cool! Great tonalities and playing and all. They keep on building things, although the drum fills under the guitar solo might be a bit over the top. Guitar solo is a bit self-indulgent as well, but it uses held notes nicely. I just noticed the synth part on the chorus (?), it's pretty sick. I think I'll head hooooooome. Hypnotic, and notice how so much of the complexity has been reduced for clarity? They're paying really good attention. This part, with vocals and piano unison is just fantastic. Sort of a breakdown / outro that refuses to die, just keeps building and evolving. Another guitar solo which sits nicely over everything. It had to end with a fadeout, with that kind of momentum. Really nice, I'll be glad to hear this again.

The Futureheads - Hounds of Love Great, more strangeness. Oh man, that's fun and also really cool. Intersecting lines which are inverses of each other sketching chords which the guitar takes and turns into awesome. Really effective drumming. I like how the vocals just keep going over the verse part. The 3-3-2 split for drum beats doesn't really drive me, but it's growing on more. When the electric really starts humming, that's really badass. I'll take my shoes off and I will be really enjoying this stuff. The drum builds nicely, to the ride and to these much larger beats. Vocals are interesting, I like it. Great rhythm and tone. Short and really cool!

Wolf Parade - It's a Curse Yay wolf parade. Love the rising noise going into the serious drums. Piano one measure vs. dropping guitar line is very cool. Wonderful flow. Vocals are really good, using strong notes to accent the beat. Bass notes are really cool chords, grunting and driving. After the chorusish part (which is strangely loose), they mix everything a bit more. Synthy bass takes more focus, and it's awesome. I see why these guys are compared to Arcade Fire a bit, the way they build is very simple but very well thought. I'm not feeling the chorus, until oh major key stuff. Piano finally fits in nicely. Still love how the vocals drive the beat along. It just stays on the place they've gotten to...they're all about this really cool build and just making it more awesome and different and nice. Synthy stuff in the last 4 measures even, and even though I don't exactly where we went, it was really fun and I liked going there!

Peter Bjorn and John - Let's Call it Off Nice beat. Drives forth. Nice rhythm guitar, really smooth and creates a nice chord structure. It's a strange choice to have steel drum and echoey guitar mimicking their line. Very good use of drums to drive into the verse. Vocals are strange, and don't really fit in the tonality of the song. But it's exciting because of the bassline, which is nice. They throw in this great hits, just like at the beginning of the verse, and now into the chorus. I love the chorus, very nice chords. Great songwriting, it all fits together wonderfully. Great offbeats on the acoustic in the chorus, that's why I love it so. That set of three beats at the end of some drum beats really drive things forward nicely. Haha, referencing the intro with all this momentum now. It's fun, I realize; even though the verse is heavy and all, this lick is really light. And then that one part of the intro is the chorus, oh man! I'm not being too clear, but I guess suffice to say I love their tone, the way they build, and their songwriting. Good call.

My Morning Jacket - Lay Low There's a really good flow in the drum beat: the bass is at either side of it, so the middle part of it is like coming up for air. Great guitar work, setting up the rhythm, and then working a melody off of it. It's a simple, really great grove. Vocals float along, perhaps a bit out of place. Bass rounds things out, piano is cute. It took me a moment to realize what time signature or whatever. But it's polyrhythmic and cool and bright and energetic...while still maintaining a really good beat. It doesn't need to be hypercomplex, since they have such great attention to detail already. It's so damn tight. Bluesish, I guess. Rising chords at the end of the chorus are really great, supported well by drum hits. They play only as much as they need to. That's a pretty good guitar solo, actually relating to the flow of the song. The solo just goes on. Those piano chords are like...arches in a cathedral, I dunno. But the groove keeps on hopping along, getting more creative, sometimes adding doubled solos, changing drumbeats and flow. It's exciting, it's energizing. What are they going to do next? And even if the solos just go on and on, they're wonderful to listen to. Nothing about this is boring, and that's real feat.

Peter Bjorn and John - Nothing to Worry About The opening vocals are creepy but hypnotizing...took me a while to realize they're English. Nice beat to draw it off, and then they put a few sonic hits and goodies over that one groove for a few measures. And you know? That's fine. I love their pacing, they really know when to slow down. Nice bass work. Great groove, they put a lot of stress on the onbeats and it's awesome. I've got nothing to worry about just drives down to one of the drum hits...that's really exact. I love all the little stuff they throw in, it's interesting...but it's not like they're substituting for material. And behind all that, that...what's the adjective for that guitar line, wavy, wiggly? The one behind the entire song that comes in after the intro? Nice. Cuts out and only the guitar and some goodies. Short and tight and really cool.

Ratatat and The Notorious B.I.G. - Party and Bullshit Nice buildup to add in the guitar. Whole thing is a good beat, nice and syncopated, cuts out nicely. I don't really like BIG's rhyming, but I like his rhythm. Ratatat is paying a lot of great attention to the beat, so it all flows nicely. They do cool creative things with the aabaabaabaab pattern that is modern rap. I love ratatat's little touches, the tiniest cut-out riff really adds to the flow. They're really creative. BIG does great work too. All around, a good track...BIG's narrative is a bit flat, a bit stupid, and his rhyming isn't that creative, but it has its moment. But the pretty good rapping with the very good beat work make this a really good cut. Gotta love Ratatat.

Classical Music: Fuck Yeah!

2009-10-16T18:59:00.000-04:00

My teacher and I were delving into a Chopin piece I'm working on, the raindrop prelude (awful name), and not just technically either: we talked a lot about singing, about weight and the transfer of weight, about tone and pulsing tones, about direction, about syntax (holy shit "tempo rubato actually means stolen time...what a wonderful imagery), and most of all about silence. The use of silence which surrounds a piece in the beginning and the end, and the way pieces flow from that: does it break the silence (Polonaises)? does it flow from it (Db prelude)? And even more vitally, how does the piece interact with silence over its course? Tempo is a means of pushing away silence, but the composer can interlace silence with the pattern of notes notes, but the color, the tempo, the everything! So much of 20th century experimentation, like the concept of color-tone melody or Klangfarbenmelodie, was about redefining the nature of the way notes interact, and silence plays a huge role! I thought of Webern, among other composers...and my mind turned to the likes of Grouper and Lichens, and the way they play with silence and repetition, with only a guitar, a sampler, and a voice.

That in turn got me thinking about the role of classical music in society. In American culture, at least, there's such a sense of...elitism attached to it. People are astounded at the high prices of good Symphony seats (I'm going tomorrow ftw), and yet shell out so much more for front-row concert tickets. There are a lot of explanations for why...because of the elitists who claim it as the only true form of music?...because of America's desire to overthrow what was a very European culture, and attempt to redefine it with jazz (huge goddamn irony) and rock'n'roll and pop and all?...because of all the intellectual pressure some music puts on its listener?

And this isn't the modern period of "classical music" that's typically referenced, it's your Baroque, Renaissance, Romantic, and slightly post-romantic stuff that's focused on! All the big names of the past ages. Mozart noticed, Wagner peeked into, and Schoenberg blew wide open the peak to all this atonal shit that can clear out concert halls. The sometimes super-intellectual and dense and distant, the sometimes ugly, the sometimes rapturous and jaw dropping and terrifying sets of sounds that can be passed over, so quickly, as experimentation and junk. And that's not just Europe! Starting with Ives and going into Cage, music feel deep into experimentation far beyond anything in Europe: in the '50s, the aftermath of WWII left dozens of huge names in California, and in the '60s electronic music created a generation of musicians like mathematicians or scientists. There were pieces written that were silence (and motionless Dance accompaniments to them), pieces that comprised of fists smashing keys, music that was all made on tape reels, compositions based on Chinese divination techniques, music scores that were a sentence or two, music that consists of 40 or so violins playing the same note, and slowly, one by one, diverging until a 40 note chord fills the speakers. It's unbelievable! It's horrendous! It's exciting! It's experimental! It's American! It's so rich and can be so amazing! But nobody notices!

Even as folks like Gershwin and Copland tried for the popular feel, there was a retreating faction of composers who retreated into their darkened studio-laboratories. Minimalists like Steve Reich and Phillip Glass, who tried to reduce all of music to its corest elements, are despite their attempts still far away from the popular stream. Thus pop music became the norm, and

I'm not saying that any sort of musical degeneration has occurred. That's a bullshit deconstructive useless thing to say! I have a lot more Beatles, or Islands, or Sufjan Stevens, or Bjork, or Ry Cooder, or Anti-Flag, or Sun Ra, or Nine Inch Nails, or mine and my girlfriend's stuff combined than I do Schoenberg or Mozart.

But man, doesn't the stereotypical maniacal, calculated, unemotional, sadistic villain enjoy a dash of classical music while he's slipping on his stereotypical black leather gloves? Isn't the classically-focused elite so often, so joyfully, and so enthusiastically satirized or rejected by pop music, folk music, punk music, metal, noise...despite the fact that the language they use is so similar? Cadence, rhythm, tonality and all that...they're the same!

What I'm saying is, classical music has a really unjust stereotype. Not every band you hear on the radio is worthwhile or interesting; not every one of Mozart's symphonies are amazing transcendent automatically beautiful pieces. That's nostalgia. People have never, ever stopped making good music. But I wish people would search a bit more, and just find certain pieces that really speak to them. To find a way to ignore all the criticism and analysis of classical pieces, as you've learned to ignore that reedy 20-something who runs the counter at your local record store.

There's just so much richness to be found! Why hold yourself back?

Stream of Consciousness First Impression: Hiro's Pack pt. 5

2009-10-13T19:32:00.000-04:00

Velviter - The Swimming Song I love banjos. Sufjan and Le Loup both make fantastic use of them. Good cadences on it, I like it. The bass just sorta does nothing once it comes in, but the banjo creates all continuity that's needed. Acoustic rounds things out nicely, voice just floats (lol) along. There's something...Eastern, in the way the guitars pivot around that bass note. I like the way he occasionally repeats a line, just to emphasize and cadence on it. It's not like your other stuff, at all. It hops along nicely, good fiddle solo. Hopping, that's the word. I can't say the drummer does a good job, but I like the cadence of it all. Nice tune.

The Futureheads - Worry About It Later Guitar chords, loose, go over the piano and drums, creating something...exciting...random harmonies, and now building kit. It's a loose sort of way to start a groove on a song, and even when the drums switch, it messes around on the toms. But the voice really helps create a rhythm, creating rhythms where other notes are held. Guitar work is strange but exciting. I like the use of the intro in a chorus fashion, it's exciting. The whole thing has an energy, which is so exciting since it gets pretty sparse. They're pretty exact, they have to be. It creats a precision, and like I said, an excitement. That guitar right before the chorus plays some damn strange intervals. With tambourine adds a nice touch. Um, that guitar breakdown after the chorus is just weird. They don't play there instruments in a normal...tonal sense. It's always somewhat dissonant, and the bass creates that feeling too. The drums are echoey and in the back, as in the guitar, so we follow the voices and get pushed along by the bass.The voice work is fantastic, but the actual notes that each instrument is playing are strange. It's not bad, it'll just take some getting used to. I think I like them.

The Futureheads - Favours for Favours Again, high strange guitar. Nice bassline, creates great percussive rhythm. Great drums to work with it. I like the held note by the guitar once things start escalating, compliments everything well. Part of why this group seems so floaty to me is that the recording is pretty echoey, and the songwriting is...random. It shifts interestingly, and fun...and there are great complimenting parts and strange lines, but it seems to just flop down like some sort of groovy whale on the beaches of my ears. I mean, it's groovy and all, but it's a fucking whale. Vocals in chorus section, including backup, really do it well. Bands rarely use vocals this well, I think. Great bass work, rhythm guitar too. Drums are still just sort of there, however apt they are in parts (i.e., verse/intro). Nice short songs. I like them, but they'll take a while to get used to.

Caesars - Fun and Games That's really beautiful, great use of acoustics, one melodic and one rhythmic. Stupid lyrics, and stupid bongo. Nice harmonies. Not the smoothest transition to the drum heavy part. It's...unexciting, man. Nice synth solo, but this groove does nothing for me. It's...one-dimensional. It has some good parts, I'll admit.

Kasabian - Secret Alphabets Cool, more Kasabian. Lovely dones, tonal and then just rhythmic, switching between the two to create an uncoiling feeling helped by the cymbol, and acoustic twills. That's a bass, wow! That's some great bass work. Sonically, it's a bit strange, but it's like...red dusty room. Nice vocal line, very nice; descends over the progression really elegantly. Great rhythm. Guitar bits are nice, that one sitar was nice. Later in the verse, guitar plays for a little bit on 8th notes, and fades out. They just throw wonderful things in and take them out and put other songs in, while the song goes on like a train. I like that about them. That's the same guitar part in the breakdown, then synth goes on top of it. Now electric things. They have a fantastic sense of rhythm, how to make it memorable, and the notes and lines support each other well, like that wailing synth over the unison descending synth line, with vocals and backups under that too. That's just elegant. Beautiful, orchestrated, well-though, well-executed. I really love this band!

Del tha Funkee Homosapian / Dinosaur Jr. - Missing Link Good groove, nice bassline. Screaming guitar works with the spoken word line. Ok solo...man, it's just sitting there. The two guitars are having a cool conversation, trading of lines, which I like, but it's nowhere near the front. Eh, not varied / exciting enough for me, and the production isn't great.

Caesars - Strawberry Weed That's a brilliant baseline, great use of acoustic guitar, and finally you're using the drums right. It all flows brilliantly. Nice melody over everything, it gives a similar call which we can come back to. Vocals somewhat reference it. Love the cycling strawberry weed line. Cute clapping, but they're doing a few subtle things to keep the line going: guitar bits, bits of backup vocals, and yes, clapping. It hasn't gotten boring yet. Nice harmonies, subtle but creating cool new tones on the verse. Like the synth introduced for strawberry weed part. Great bassline, still, man. Hehe, chromatic bubbly synth line there, in and out. Just cool bits. Drums get better to support the guitar + drums part, and bass and claps move it up. Great, great sense of growth there. We're back home in this riff that, unlike a lot of electropop, doesn't get repetitively irritating. A lot of the stuff you have in here borders on irritating electropop. Fun, man.

The Clientele - Bookshop Casanova Cool percussion, really tight, using both bass, guitar, and drums. There's a sense of tension, which the violins then release, in that rising and falling line. Great sense of flow, in that decision. Bassline supports everything well, violins play an atmospheric role. Vocals could do more than ride a few convenient eighth notes. Part after chorus is nice, going back to the first versish part, and now the second versish part with swelling synth. I hope they use it to create more anticipation for the chorus...which they do. Violins and bass, and drums, rise to the chorus, but then...it's just more material. It's not fundamentally different, I don't feel like I've arrived anywhere until the descending part. It's not bad, but I'd prefer something at the top of the mountain I was just carried to the top of. Nice solo. Very tight though, very beautiful and well-thought. I like it a lot, I do!

Caesars - Soul Chaser EXCITING SYNTHY STUFF WOO it's so poppy and wonderful. Vocal line creates continuity, when it goes to the minor in the verse, that's a good thing to do. Bassline does...jackshit. But the genius lies in the synth and guitar use, as well as some vocality. A million leaves are falling into vocal harmonies. Seems to get more serious the second time around for the verse. Great vocals, wow. Vocals and guitar do a great, but subtle, job on the million leaves part. It's another one of those songs that just goes to the top of a hill and goes to the bottom just to do it again, and there's a steep breakdown on the other side that you then travel up to get back to the top of the mountain and it's awesome because you've achieved something. Classy vocals + drums. I'd prefer if things were more clearly stated, as the sound and form is a bit mushy, if you know what I mean. But it's still great and fine. Now I get it, so NO MORE CAESARS.

Beck - Burro Cute unison between trumpet and...strings? Acoustic sets a great rhythm, as good as any drum. Hits by strings, and a bit of trumpet, add a lot to an otherwise silent verse. There's a symmetry in the unison line: held notes to rhythmic notes to held notes, low to high to low. His voice is fine, I guess. The echo is a good effect. He varies the acoustic nicely. It hops along. Simple and nice. Well executed, subtle in parts. Just a nice groove, in all.

East Side Boyz/OutKast/Lil Jon/Mello/Slimm Calhoun - Last Call Oh man that's a great groove just from the voice. Just...great rhythm and syllables. That's a pretty awful beat...but they play with percussion a bit, which makes it better. But the horns...ugh ugh ugh! It's made up by the voice itself. It's just...a few different artists using their techniques to make a series of very different, but each really exciting, voice lines. That's saying nothing of the rhymes themselves, which are great, if sort of meaningless. It's a fun ride, and there are moments of real genius. And end it with a guitar on that horn line. Pretty nice.

Yeasayer - 2080 oooh, nice noise. Cycling guitar line, added percussion and voices and overarching noise movements. It's exciting, it's pregnant. The drums give it a direction, and the guitar lines give it a rhythmic purpose, but this all chugs under the soaring noise. It's a great effect. Voice line is pretty good. Great basslines and guitarlines, if a bit overcomplex. Cello is classy, man. That bit of percussion on the e and a of the beat fade in and out, like a bit of the noise which has come down from the sky to play. They're great musicians, definitely. Chorus is a bit muddy, and a tad abrupt. Breakdown...where have I heard this before? Anyway, that's exciting, really exciting. Lines of...a clarinet? under that yeah! yeah! dadadadadadad etc. vocal line (nice symmetry and flow in that, like a waterfall). Did someone I know cover this? The chorus is unremarkable, which is sad. I just don't get anything out of it, but it's mostly genius in other parts. Really cool.

Stream of Consciousness First Impression: Hiro's Pack pt. 4

2009-10-12T00:14:00.000-04:00

This is getting ridiculous. Another guy just posted a set of 69, and I still have to get to a 12 set and a 15 set. Still, this is the kind of stuff that gets me through the week. I'll use it to survive classes next week. She battles on, etc.

The Whigs - Right Hand on my Heart There's a lot of potential in that drum line. In the abstract, it's bass heavy towards the beginning and snare heavy towards the end, creating a sense of imbalance and flow, but that's a bit out there, even for me. Moreover, it's a straight-ahead I-am-going-to-fuck-shit-up kind of drum beat. Letting the guitar line sometimes rest, and sometimes play in unison with that energy, is pretty brilliant. It's flow control; how hard are we going to rock this shit? Vocals sit nicely over everything, adding another level of sound. The interverse parts are just a culmination of everything we were building up to, but within the chorus they just get glorious meaning. I'm headbanging to this, and this isn't headbang music. Even if the verse parts aren't too different, there's such a sureness that we're going to flow back into this awesome fucking place that we get to in the chorus. The irony is that within the chorus are chords meant to resolve away, down to the 1 again, making it so much deeper. That bridge / extended jam (Right hand on my heart) is all the more awesome because of that. Fills and a sick guitar solo augment all of that. Such a wonderful sense of build. It breaks down and gets just straight-ahead, just restating and re-expressing all that fabulous energy that they built up in the first 3 minutes of the song...and then it fades away to another quiet verse with that same watery verse.. May I be the first to say holy shit, because that was amazing.

Doves - Sea Song Speaking of the ocean, Doves! Lessee how they do in another context. Great rhythm and chords across those two acoustics, and the piano rounds out everything really well. I like the intro so much...and then it gets percussion and ahhhing set over it. You get drawn in, and they vary the acoustic lines and it all makes sense, because they put all that effort into building up. When it goes into the minor, the ascending progression just makes perfect sense, like we're not just cyclical any more; we're trying to reach something. there's an abrupt, but still compelling, shift from that to the vocals. That's glorious. We go through it again, and to be honest it's not as good the second time. But the extra sonic goodness is really nice, and when the second ascending part comes in, there's a greater sense of meaning, now that all this prose about the sea and these atmospheric sounds have been thrown in. But again, that abrupt switch to the intro part, which isn't a natural progression from the ascending part. Nice solo over it, it fits together nicely. I wish they weren't afraid to introduce some more complexity under the vocals, but it does give a sense of clarity. The basslines under all this are hard to hear, but they work well at creating flow: not too complex, but just varied enough. There could be more acoustic variation. Third time through the whole damn thing, a few new things, and then another strange and exciting non-resolution. It's lagging in the complexity aspect a bit, but that's ok. It's clear, it's beautiful, it's soaring like a bird over the cyclical ocean that they've created. Fades out, like...echoes in an ocean? Cute. But I really like this cut.

White Denim - I Start to Run I love the crispness of the drums and bass, and the lines fit together really well...but is something up with the tempo? Anyway, percussion fills out and that's holy shit nice. Voice soars over it, helps create connectivity and build, and then the acoustic pops in with a few hits, but I'm not really getting a sense of build. STill, the groove is just hopping along and doing really well. The extra sonic stuff around the "chorus" is a bit unnecessary, and that guitar and bass part is still really groovy, wow. They're good, but I feel like they're throwing strange things in for interest. Yeah, that solo part but now with the wakawaka texture is great and all, and I love the use of drums under it all, but it doesn't really follow from any other parts. I don't know where the hell I ended up listening, and it was a fun ride...but I really don't know what hit me.

Akron/Family - There's So Many Colors Yes yes yes, I am excited to hear another Akron/Family track. Ok ok, here we go, um. Entrancing lyrics, I like the harmonies. It goes on and on, but that's ok. It's cyclical and all. Ok, guitar finally came in, as the harmonies fall away but wow that's pretty epic. It's just shining over everything and there's some trippiness in the background. It's playing a riff referencing that lyrical line and holy shit there's more of them! They're everywhere, and now the vocals are coming back, giving it real tonality and stuff. It's unfolding right in front of me. Now real unison, over that vocal line which faded away at some point and suddenly drums! Oh man oh man oh man. Beats not exactly fitting together, but bits of energy shot off, not yet resolved, but preparing, under this high-fret guitar solo and a bit of string wailing. And now the solo is referencing that vocal riff again and now there is an acoustic guitar and tamborines and it's sexy and totally different, just grooving along in a sort of bluesy way, far away from the chaos. Is that a banjo? Shades of purpose mainly. And a bit of drums, and something about mountains and plains and pictures of environments and the exact sense of reality that the vocal line was describing before, and there's not quite a clear link between that line and this very simple but very compelling lines. Very good guitar work, good lines, the drums are just perfect perfect perfect, sitting under everything. Gets more energetic, some good lines, but not too complex or repetative. Sunrise, sunset. They keep shifting the guitar lines to be more prominent, shouting louter, sometimes taking melody, sometimes not. As they go into a solo section which flaps all over itself like a thousand walruses on speed or something, and the drums follow through. I mean, you pick up a riff and you're like holy shit that's great, and then you listen to the vocals, and you come back and it's all different. They just all fly like birds around the main progression and now it's fading away to some acoustic strangeness? Nice harmonies. We finish in the dark, totally unlike the so many colors, right? Will you go back there? That chemical mountain chaser? Why reduce it all like this, why is there all sight? Or did that already happen with those wonderful guitar lines? God shit that was amazing.

Hot Chip - Look After Me Hot damn, more Hot Chip. I was interested in seeing these guys in a different setting, and this is more loungy and quiet, maybe a bit of a Latin percussion influence. The acoustic work is a bit spotty, but that's alright. Love the drums when it comes in, a very good understated percussion line with great bass supporting it. Great bass, great bass. Interverse part is just sonically beautiful with that synth and the hihat...I am drawn in. I'm noticing everything referencing and fitting with this line, from the vocals to that strange end-of-4-measures chirping. Nice harmonies. Pizzicatastic, man. They just keep the jam going, and throw things in, but it all makes sense over the course of the song. Like, in the second verse, how the violins play a greater and greater part, and the backup vocals and that synthed buzzing become greater parts. It all is restated in this really redemptive way in the chorus, look after me and I'll look after you. Love the vibes and organ and sparse guitar in the breakdown. They can change things up and still have the same momentum as 2 minutes before. It's the opposite of the quick changes of the Akron/Family song; you're listening to a growth on the same thing for however many minutes, not just a shifting panorama centered at the same point. Beautiful. I'm sort of into these guys now.

Elbow - Mexican Standoff More Elbow, cool. You've got a lot of repeats, Hiro dear. Oh, hello, clapping and things turns 3/4 groove that is really nice. Beat is kept along really well by tambourine and open hihat hits. Really good bassline drives everything along. Great chords, great chords, and acoustics in the background filling in the spaces. Vocal line floats by. This song feels sway-ey, with everything jumping in and around and off of that sick bass line and drum bit. Nice guitar solo, there's a wonderful sense of repetition in what they do, like they know to not be too shit-crazy. Buildup is even more awesome with vocals and guitar crunching. Breaksdown with holy shit the handclaps again! That's exciting, and it makes it...eh, a bit more linear, a bit less floating. But it's exciting, ain't it, especially in that rising bassline / chord part. Oh mexican standoff, I wish I was something bah dum badum and all. Growling / singing right through everything. I just realized that the drum part got more complex to support all this. It's pretty glorious and then poof! Stops. These guys are tight and their songs are like automobiles.

Caesars - Paper Tigers 3rd Caesars cut? Echoey guitar line paralells vocal line, while rhythm electric provides support. But even those noise additions and one-note lines can't support it until we get into every single one of us: oh. That's nice, that's really nice. Well put together, drives along well. Beautiful. I still don't...get...the verse, it just doesn't fit together for me. It's not just the looseness, it just sort of sits there, and nothing mixes. But the chorus is just great. Nice unison solo line, but still...this is not one of their better cuts, I think. I like the anthemic aspect, but it's too loose. The vocal line in the chorus really lends to it, in how often it's sounding. It's relentless, that's it. But towards the end the ride comes in way too strong, and I'm getting a greater sense that this song is just a detached sum of parts. I'm not excited, man. Sorry.

Ratatat - Shempi Heard you talking about these guys, what're they like? Sonic messarounding. I like the beat. Shows how you can create a steady backbeat with no kick, and then add the kick and have it be awesome. Noise swells and trills really fit and drive it along. The wailing lines...oh man, it feels like I'm going on this escalator and things just start swooping in and taking away some of the darkness over me. Those guitar lines are cycling across channels and I love it, such great repetition, really drives it forwards. That's a brilliant synth line, so brilliant. And now they're varying the beat! You've already showed me what the other side of reality is, now you change and build the ground I stand on. My words can barely keep up with this. It's so self referencing, the structure is just glorious. And then a no-drum synth line, then with that sick minimal percussion and now bass and great chorus again. Perhaps not as cool the second time. But still, oh man. I'm not just a sucker for percussion. This is sonic glory, pure and simple. Well engineered and planned and played and put together. That's just perfect. Bongos are a bit over the top, but it's forgivable. Synth line with the cycling guitar part already there, trying to find another way to fold us into that awesomeness that is the chorus. The bongos are just one bridge to that, as are all the trills and "OH"ing. I love it, I love it, I love it! Fabulous!

Iggy Pop / Teddybears - Punk Rocker This is pretty...generic synth punky stuff. It's...I mean the parts are introduced interestingly, but everything just sits there. That really simple synth line that was in the intro, and now is in the chorus, isn't enough to create flow. There's not much...going on. Skipped the rest of it.

Wolfmother - Mind's Eye I didn't know what to expect here at all. Shining synth line, unfolding tones and guitar lines unassuming, dragging us into that descending progression, in minor key. It's so pretty. The two toms just drive it on, and then the kit and bass makes it anthemic, but with the long holds, it still feels like the beginning, organic and radiant. They're not scared to use silence or just lack of movement, it's a part of movement, I like that. Vocals are ok, not exactly fitting with the rest of it, but that's alright. Synthy anthems driven back upwards (gloriously, and reversedly) by that bass and oh my god. Nice hits, nice hits. Come and see the mind's eye. Kit makes it even more anthemic and awesome. Great hits, damn. Then fades away again. Wails, bits of sound, still pushing back into the verse that we just came down from, like the worst comedown. They don't let it sit, they're ready to hop back into that hugely anthemic, shouting, bombastic, beautiful Mind's Eye part. This rivals Queen. Uh HOLY SHIT THAT SYNTH LINE in triplets, that's how you build tension and a beat. TIGHT HITS! That's great. Tension. Preparedness. Drive. Drive. Fill. YESSS YESS YESS YESS YESS YESS YESS Oh good Carl Sagan that is wonderful. It's everything that it was in the intro, that softness back into this total fucking glory. Oh man, yes. A little wrapup looks at the intro again, and fades out. Fucking amazing. Lovely.
Hot Chip - One Pure Thought More Hot Chip, ok. More lackluster guitar work, great production...this intro pre-beat impresses me a lot less. Again, this a great beat, wonderful to dance to and to just bop along to...the I'll help you on your way part is great, though. It hits the holes in the beat just right...damn, I mean it's a great groove, but there's not much to mine here. I could dance away the hours to this...and in parts there are moments of genius, like that first part of the first chorus, and the part right before the versey part (trip I'd never want to take again), but mostly I'm not impressed, man. They can do better than this. Skipped.

M83 - Teen Angst Awesome synth start. 3-part synth line, containing these strange intervals which just set everything else up. With vocals and kick, starts unfolding. Doubled kick and snare is over the top, but I like where they got. The soaring, the tonal, and the roughly noisy all fitting together. It's a bit, dull, maybe, but then they break it down again. It's exciting, preparing for something greater. New synth lines are added in, harmonies needing to find meaning and resolve and another pretty good buildup into this nice section. I decidedly like these guys, but I wish this was a bit more exciting. Great buildup, more kick, but a different approach; just tones, and rhythm, no catalyzing factor yet, until the silence right before the buildup. That's good stuff. Exciting. They can vary the beat, the texutres, and it's all ok. The muddyness of the sound works against them, but that's ok. Still really good stuff.

Louis XIV - All the Little Pieces Love the quiet tonality, of the piano and violin and tamborine. Understated, unfolding. Hehe, nice bit when the drums come in. It's quiet, but beautiful. The voice line drives it wonderfully. Why is it focused on one channel, though? Anyway, nobody knows. There's still tension when all the little pieces come back, with the violins, and still tentative drums, very much on the . When it shifts to center...it's a bit too loud, things fade away. Not well mixed, in that I can't hear everything. They're willing to make a buildup and take it away, that's good, and then put its elements back slowly. But there's...no fitting together. The lines on their own are nice, like when the violins get more frantic. Maybe it's the earbuds, but I want to hear these guys in a different context. I could really like this, maybe a tad reminiscent of Dresden Dolls in approach, or p'raps Rasputina. But this wasn't that great, sort of strange and floaty in its own world. No credit for artsy endings, either. Only Amanda can do that.

Mando Diao - Ringing Bells Another one, ok. The guy does great guitar work. Everything, all of the echoey parts, are contained nicely by the clear vocals and drum line. Acoustic line helps, that very slight rhythm electric muds things up. Nice shaker, sets it along nicely. Bassline is faint, but good I guess. This goes a few places, but doesn't excited me much. He does a great thing, but it's not my thing.

Flaming Lips - The Gash Fantastically amazing song is fantastically amazing, let me just leave it on so I can fangirl about it. The opening chords sketch the rest of the song (awesome descending line), just in minor modes. Wall of sound, vocal destruction and apocalypse comes down to one jaunty piano line. One of the best drum grooves I've ever heard in my life sits under the immense power of that voice. They know just when to put in those hits to drive everything forward. Such a powerful line, like a grand fucking church to awesomeness. Guitar hits frame it like a painting of said church. Drums make it awesome like the best fucking building which is hopping up and down because of the energy. When the solo line comes in, tension and unsurety arrives...can we really stick with all this glory? Is it ok? YEAH! Violins frame everything. Keep an eye on the piano, friends, for that is the key to the entire piece. I love the way the chords just pop along. And that wall of voices is so damn tight, and versatile. Battles on, battles on. And then...piano chord over ok awesome yes bye

Stream of Consciousness First Impression: Hiro's Pack pt. 3

2009-10-11T11:45:00.000-04:00

White Rabbits - The Plot Great energy, great chords, great use of rhythm on the vocals. I feel drawn into their energy, they're good at there. Piano is a strange aspect, but it works. I was worried if the chorus / culmination of the buildup would be worthwhile, but they did a great job of it. They kept up the beat while shifting the instruments, which is the only way you can use that kind of rhythm. Going to half-time would be stupid...anyway, love the bass work, harmonies are really nice. He's not impressed! Second chorus: doesn't really change things up, but you still get a great feeling, because you recognize material from the last chorus, and then the claps, and then a sick breakdown. This is really good songwriting, but also really good thoughts on how to create a beat. It's a great cut here. He's not impressed...but she is. Great great great great great stuff.

Thurston Moore - The Shape is in a Trance Really, really beautiful chords. Very precise acoustic work. Drums are sort of an afterthought, but they do their job. Violins compliment very well...they're really arranged, not just placed there. The drums...are sort of irritating me. They're trying to act as a bridge between the opening and verse parts, but they aren't...fitting. I dunno, this is just me. Beautiful chorus. I'm...getting it now. The drums can fit, it's more of a balance issue. They do fit. It's simple in its parts, and it doesn't make any attempts to soar extra-far for the chorus parts, or really change material. But the acoustic does its work, and everything pivots around that. It's not active listening for me, but it's very pretty, and very well done. Um...electric guitar solo! Ok. That's, um...actually, not so bad, even though it's going on forever. Definitely worth another look, this man.

Empire of the Sun - Walking on a Dream Yessss, another chance to look at these guys. I was hoping that they'd be more...interesting, and not just have a great sound and great production. Great use of beat, almost disco/funk-like. Great use of voice. We are always running for the thrill of it...the chorus is really brilliant. They're not actively engaging, and in some ways they just sit back on their fantastic grooves. But that's ok! That's really ok here. They do it quite well. Nice buildup towards the end...they really are creative musicians!

The Ponys - Double Vision Punkish straight ahead alt rock, with a healthy touch of reverb. I really, really like the basslines, and not much else. It's not bad, but it's pretty derivative...it gets better, lessee. I'm getting more into it...oh, when the hihat comes in, it's pretty sick. Pretty good, but it's not my thing. I've heard crazier punk and better alt-rock.

Elbow - Fugitive Motel Sweet, more Elbow. Um, I'm liking the chords. They're well detached in terms of rhythm too...it just bleeds decrepitude and distance. The vocals work into it...I love the soft hits, over the bass and drums. But they really know how to swell, damn. Good use of harmony, great use of chords from the intro. Such tenderness to it, really. Great use of violins, both atmospherically and melodically. They help in shaping the epic scope of the chorus, which really does work! I got a bit of a chill, there. Nice bridge. Fades out nicely. Really good cut, these guys are geniuses. Um...vocal thingie at the end? Like a mixture of a harmonica and a voice. That's cool, man. That's cool.

Outkast - Atliens That's a good beat there. Uh, a bit silly use of words ("polar bear's toenails" ?), but the bass and drums is just sick. Great atmospheric stuff behind it behind these really good use of lyrics. I'm listening less to the words, and to their quality: their rhythm, when he double-tracks them, etc. I'm missing out, it's true. From what I do hear, he's a bit...wrapped up in himself. He's not really talking about anything. For rap, I really prefer more...substance, I guess (see Subtle, Nas, Tech N9ne, Cunninlynguists, etc. ) But it's not bad, by any means.

Flaming Lips - Sound of Failure Strange choice for a lips song. Not a bad song by any means, but nowhere near my favorite on At War with the Mystics. Vein of Stars was sick on record, and sick live. But this is still a really good cut. I know I love it. This reminds me, I gotta pick up Embryonic.

Ween - Transdermal Celebration I've heard Detachable Penis, and I guess that's not all of what they do. But I don't see a lot of originality. The basslines and rhythm guitar lines are really great, but I don't have much to say about this. It's not my thing. I skipped past the rest of it.

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Ain't No Easy Way Nice blues acoustic. Good octaves...great use of drums to frame it. Wonderful groove, I love it. Nice chorus, that's really creative. Holy shit, and then the harmonica and extra hits, all with those acoustics going. This is fantastic, it really is. It's blues with a rock pacing, or maybe rock with a bluesy feel...either way, it's really good. Really creative and even artful, but most of all it's a great groove and great sound. It doesn't get fatiguing at all...although it is short. I really really like it.

Kasabian - Fast Ruse You sure like Kasbian, don't you Hiro. Good chords, nice texture for the opening, going into sort of ok grooves (like before). But the guitar work is really good. They really fill out the song, then add the vocals and the aaaahhhhhing. First verse is sick that way...and then why cut all that out? Why? I mean, the other parts are still good, but I don't know why you would do that. You had such great energy. But then there's a chorusy breakdown and another buildup, and it just keeps chugging on. I'm not the biggest fans of what they do...I don't think their songwriting is always that great. But they do a really good job here. Tick, tick, tock! That's energy, there. Lightning in the skyyyy. Really good groove to it. Dance and spirit to it.

Concert: Thisquietarmy + Litchens + OM

2009-10-11T01:12:00.000-04:00

I'm up in Montreal for the weekend, and I wanted to see a show before I left. It's the Ska festival this weekend, and just walking by a few clubs gave me the willies, so I resolved to see a show...and it turns out OM was playing. On the entire chalkboard of groups coming through that venue (Casa Rosa), there were only two groups I knew, and one of them happened to be playing tonight. So I grabbed a ticket and jumped in.

Let me say that I don't actually know OM. They're on the same label as Joanna Newsom, so I know of OM, and that they've released a new album, and they do some sort of metal-like thing. I got a bit of introduction by getting there at door, and sitting next to the drummer. He was talking about the spiritual influences on the music, and how legitimate what they do is and how sincerely they can call songs "To a Shrinemaiden" and "Flight of the Eagle." I was pretty skeptical of all that, especially when I saw some guy in a Tool hoodie come in. To quote Andy Falkous:

So anyway, we're gonna do this song, and then, rather falsely on our part, we're gonna fuck off through there for up to 45 seconds, depending on the reaction- Just play another song! - Ah, fucking hell man, just let me finish this sentence. I know- just play another one! - I know you've got things to do! You've gotta go home, you've gotta use the word "vexed" inappropriately. That, that comes across, I can see it in your callow eyes. But, but for this moment, I - Just one more song! - I, I realize that, but you're wearing a tool tshirt, so your opinion is invalid...I enjoy Tool as much as anyone who never listens to them does! At the end of the day, they're a bunch of hippies who dress up like the cast of the matrix. And I applaud you, you have the balls to listen to that kind of lackluster music, but I don't, you see. So... - This was my only tshirt, the other one was in the wash! - I know, I know, I can tell. I can tell.

Call it bias, call it a recognizal of the glorious way he deals with hecklers. I've never listened to Tool, sadly, so I can't judge them. Still, I had an expectation for a crazy sort of show. And it was, and I enjoyed the kind of crazyness it was, for the most part. I'll dive in.

thisquietarmy

Both this guy, and the next guy, had the same approach as Grouper, whom I saw a while back: take an electric guitar, sample the fuck out of it, and make interlocking waves of noise and really dense sounscapes. I loved it with Grouper, and I loved it even more here. The guy had a perfect sense of buildup; he started his one 45-minute song going from the 1 to the 5, setting up some other intervals within that as time went on. He made sure to take the time and energy to craft a really good sample, and then a really good riff over it. He would cycle around something, play a slight melody that just fades away under this wall of sound which is seemingly static, but then changes and grows, in both volume and complexity. It was so organic at its core, though. Very simply played and stated. When he put drums in for his climax parts, they were always very simple, often sparse lines with only kick and snare, but they were just perfect. Somehow, it was much easier for me to get lost in the sound. It helped that he had a video accompaniment, a genius cinema project that really, really drew me in; all sorts of overexposed, fleeting figures among a grey and white background, raindrops falling upwards, two scenes rendered very close together but offset randomly...that kind of stuff. Very artful, very direct. I could tell the guy wasn't just feeling it (though he clearly was), but he was thinking about where he would go next. It started to drag towards the end, but to be honest the opener was the highlight of the night for me. Very, very, very good stuff.

Litchens

This guy was actually the keyboardist / backup guitarist / backup vocalist / tambourinist for OM, but I loved him much better on his own. He didn't use the guitar as well as thisquietarmy, and the parts tended to just sit there, with the ocasional inspired riff over it. No, what set him miles apart was his ovoice. He has this amazingly fluid, versatile, really high voice that he used to add to so many parts of a song. Most of his earlier samples were chirps and some wailing, but after 15 or so minutes he got to mostly wailing. He was clearly into it, in the most spiritual / physical sense possible, to the point of rolling his eyes and twiching a bit. I loved it, I loved seeing him play with mic spacing, and with the quality of his own voice, as these suddenly epic sample lines washed over me. He would open his mouth as wide as possible, as if to get all of what he had within him out there, but his restraint in his voice was fantastic. His energy and spiritual connection to the music didn't go into volume (Fuck Buttons), but into a heightened sense of place within his lines. Perhaps it was because I was getting tired and had to stand, or perhaps because his guitar lines weren't all that good, that I still rate the opener above him. But he had a fantatic, inspiring act, and it showed me how many things you can do with just your body and a guitar. Fabulous stuff.

OM

So...hippie metal? One bassist, who did all the singing and was generally underwhelming; one crazy fucking music artist who was so into what he was doing that he didn't notice how under-miced he was; and one crazy ass, idiot drummer. Members would occasionally pop offstage for 5,10,15 minutes while the other two droned on. Songs got to the length of 20 -25 minutes of the same damn thing. Meditative my ass, it was an excuse to be proggy and artful and all. They did do the metal part of it really well, and the bassist was good at driving the beat along. I loved listening to the drummer play across lines, and I loved hearing whatever I could from the crazy guy...but in the end, I didn't know what communication there was between them. They added in metal-like energy and took out all the development of sound. Well, not all of the development. They had a few really good cuts in the middle of their set, where the bassist slowly changed what he was doing to compliment the drummer and crazy dude, and those went really well. But then the drummer would jump off the stage, or the bassist would hang back and get a cigarette, or the crazy guy would just be vibing out a little too hard. I dunno. I'm going to listen to them recorded to get a better sense, but I was pretty underwhelmed in parts. The first two acts were much better.

Stream of Consciousness First Impression: Hiro's Pack pt. 2

2009-10-10T17:43:00.001-04:00

Black Mountain - Angels I like the way the drum compliments everything. IN its lumbering forward, its still really driven. There's not much of a spark to it, but the guitar is really good. I don't have much to say about it, sort of like Great Lake Swimmers, but then oh look a postchorus with this interesting tonality. It doesn't really fit with the rest of the song, but it's good. It's growing on me, the way it hops forward. I don't listen much to stuff like this, Oooh, synthy. Nice blusyness. It's ok.

Doves - Black and White Town Ok, this is cool. Again, me being a sucker for production, which is coming through in the piano and intro. It's not too interesting yet...I like the unfolding in the prechorus, and the way it reintroduces that whole first verse thing with that piano lick. I'll be 10 feet underground. Hey, I like it. Could be a bit punkier. If other songs that are...y'know, more interesting with all this wonderful sonic stuff and rhythm, I could be really really into these guys. Lame guitar solo, ok...eh, can't discount them too much for that. Nice breakdown, you should follow me down. That's good there, that's good. I mean, i love a lot of stuff that doesn't exactly shift amazingly, but for some reason, this touches me less.

M83 - Don't Save Us From the Flames Felt's been trying to get me into this group. I love the sound of it. Energy and feeling to it and then falling away to those vocals with that strange, mechanized piano noise. This is cool, someone 80s throwback, but that's mostly in its energy; in its approach it's modern and excited and wooooooo. After second verse, takes time to buildup, which only puts more energy into that huge sonic wall that I'm expecting and loving so much. This is awesome, this really is. I can't think of anything to change it. It's exciting and brilliant and shining and plaintive and simple and honest but still skilled and able. What a good song, damn.

Broken Social Scene - KC Accidental Soup was going on about this. Sparse and exciting, tension and texture....and holy shit nice drum hook and noise going on here, only to fade back away. That's bold. And it goes again and will they stop it again, no! Blast on through, with even more sense of direction, and then take it away for more. It's like each bit of drum-induced joy framed by the noise parts is varying. It's exciting in that way. It then gets deeper fleshing out the new territory it already went over. That's pretty damn sick, hoo dear. VOCALS! Oh man, that's pretty. Not up to par with use of strings, but still pretty good. Such a cyclicality about it, so pretty. Then more noisey, with a tint more of wisdom, maturation and more insanity in the drums and then YES with horns. That's perfect shit there, that's so damn well done. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Dammit Hiro I do love you, yes. Hoo dear

Cold War Kids - Mexican Dogs I have this record, just never plugged in. Sick polyrhythms, love the ascending line. It's bluesy, somehow, exciting exciting. I just love the groove. It doesn't really go places, but it's so good where it is. That's nice, there. Oh, it is changing about. That's even better. Second chorus gets pretty sick. Cool bridge. All around a great cut, I'd like to see them in different situations, but this is cool as it is.

Mando Diao - Never Seen the Light of Day Didn't we already have a cut by them? I love the harmonies and the energy. Really cool energy, like the cello to go along with it. I don't have a lot to say, but I like it. Good solo. It's somewhat derivative, but it just does what it does really well. I could get into this.

Elbow - The Bones of You Ok this is awesome. Lovely rhythm, great sense of putting lines together, melody is great, love the use of voice. It's hypnotic, because of all that he creates and puts together. And then awesome rockiness. And you're a thousand miles away. So cool, man! The percussion could be more complex, but that's like asking the Empire State to get taller. Love the bass, man. Such great use of lines. Great use of acoustic, the texture only gets denser, and fades out. Great shit here.

A Word on Muse's "The Resistance"

2009-10-10T11:53:00.000-04:00

Most of the reviews for Muse's newest album are pretty bad...mixed in some parts, but mostly very derogatory. Many focus on how much they steal, from sources as wide as Chopin, Queen, Jeff Buckley, Thom Yorke, etc. Many focus on how goddamn ridiculous it is for 3 white kids from Devon to be wailing about social unrest and rebellion. Many focus on the degree to which you need to have your head up your ass to write a "symphony" called, of all things, Exogenesis.

There is a new song in three parts, more of a symphony than a song, which I have been working on sporadically for many years [...] As a large percentage of the composition is orchestral, I have never wanted to collaborate with a string arranger as they may make it 'theirs'. So I have been arranging the orchestral elements myself, which is taking a long time. It should hopefully make the next album as the final three tracks.

For one thing, a symphony has such a nobler history, and much more rigidity than they dare to touch (most symphonies use Sonata form). Calling it orchestral is bullshit, as it's just the normal ensemble plus a few strings putting up a melody line. Continuing:

["Exogenesis: Symphony"] is influenced by Rachmaninov, Richard Strauss, Chopin and Pink Floyd. It looks at the concept of 'panspermia'. It is a story of humanity coming to an end and everyone pinning their hopes on a group of astronauts who go out to explore space and spread humanity to another planet. Part 1 is a jaded acceptance that civilization will end. Part 2 is a desperate hope that sending the astronauts to find and populate other planets will be successful alongside the recognition that this is the last hope. Finally, Part 3 is when the astronauts realise that it is just one big cycle, and recognise that unless humanity can change it it will happen all over again

That's a pretty strong list of influences, and I can't say I hear anything besides Chopin in it. The thematic underpinnings that they talk about are, themselves, pretty ridiculous, and starting part 3 with a broken major chord in second inversion played over and over and over and over does not imply cyclicality. I could get deeper and deeper into the way that their approach irritates me, but let's just say that I don't feel that any of them are musical geniuses, or geniuses at all.

But y'know what? I love this album. I love it with all my heart.

I listen to Muse because of what they feel, not what they say or what they intend to mean. The whole damn album is suffused with their energy, taking all sorts of different forms; the hopping 12/8 of Uprising, the dystopic yet hopeful soaring of Resistance, the detached percussion (I had trouble wording this) of Undisclosed desires, the holy shit I am absolutely fucking soaring United States of Eurasia, etc. etc.

Two words on Eurasia: holy shit. For some reason, this piece just pushes my classically-trained buttons in the best possible way. The quiet piano, and very subtle increasing of complexity and crescendo leading to the first guitar chords like some sort of sound orgasm. Those chords in the beginning reference the chorus part, where the chromatic lines ascends and receds over a conserved baseline before the whole thing shifts into unison Eastern scales. That's brilliant, right there, that's balence. The second verse only does that more, using diffent chords and overpinnings to give the same sense of balence and slight modulation, and then creating total balence with all sorts of modulation in the chorus. The swirling drum riffs, rising piano chords, and string lines all pivot about that held bass note, giving this huge sense of reaching and achieving, and then....Eur-aaaaayyyyy-SIA! SIA! SIA SIA! It's Muse's bombast at its best, and in my mind, it's surprisingly artful.

A lot of the songs are like this. Exogenesis deserves a blog for itself and I'm not going to get into it, but it does have some classical integrity as well as that beautiful, compelling, totally self-absorbed bombast. It's an epic, really. The whole album is epic and scope, and for these guys to do that while being 3 white guys from Devon takes a certain amount of stupidity, and a certain amount of skill. I think it's possible to appreciate the album while reconciling both.

Stream of Consciousness First Impressions: Hiro's Pack Part 1

2009-10-10T11:51:00.001-04:00

Hiro uploaded 71 songs, so it's taking me a while to get through them. Here's the first 9.

Belle and Sebastian - Act of Apostle Good choice for Belle and Sebastian song, I don't need to listen to it to love it. But thanks for reminding me of them.

Akron/Family - Everyone is Guilty I have a few cuts by them, and have heard their name everywhere, but never actually listened to them. This funky, awesome. Even if it doesn't go places, it's wonderful where it is. All sorts of wonderful grooves, building and receding. Then lyrics, and wonderful. Shit, this is insanely good! Everyone, everyone, everyone, everyone...violins, hot damn! Oooh, baby, this kind of stuff gets me metaphysically wet. Damn, that's intense, with just the drums and vocals and synth, and then the bits in. Why have I never listened to these guys before, this is amazing!!! Fucking shit Hiro much love for pushing me into them. Hahahahah, yes! It even gets better and more interlocking and wonderful, it's like I've walked into a gigantic fucking festival filled with awesome and signing and hitting things. Hitting things! This music is like hitting things in the best way possible. It's so percussive in its tonality, the sense of rhythm is just spot-on. Slow breakdown! I don't believe it! What can't you do? Fucking yesssss, amazing amazing amazing. This is one of the sexiest, most wonderful things I've ever heard. Hoooollllyyyyy shiiiiiiiiiiiiiit I looovvveee youuuu hiiiiirooooo. It's like music and everything. AND NOW A RESATEMENT OF FUNK WITH VIOLINS AND WHOLY WIEOTHWEOF YESSSSSS AND NOW VOCALS AND EVERYONE EVERYONE EVERYONE EVERYONE EVERYONE EVERYONE OHHH YESSSSSS I am getting this when I get home, getting it like weed gets you high. So damn beautiful. So damn...god god god god god yes yes thank you thank you thank you

Tom Vek - C-C (Set me on Fire) Interesting synthy punkish pop. Nice cyclicality to it, well done percussion. I just want to sway along to it in very many ways. Nice, nice. Good stuff.Solid solid solid.

Kasabian - Club Foot Nice resonance, sounds together. And then...punkish guitar and bass and drums and I am displeased as this is just floaty bullshit. The beat isn't enough, guys, there's art to be done. This is like the Chemical Brothers without the real focus on the beat or the songwriting talent, which is the only reason I listen to the Chemical Brothers. Ok, it's not that bad. But there's nothing special to it...wait, let me turn it up. Oh. That's better. Still not great, but it's ok.

Kasabian - Empire Ok, that's how you write a song. Real texture, really percussion. Real sounds, really drives along. Sickly! Oooh, nice tempo thing. I can get into these guys. We're all wasting awaaaayyyy. Nice riffs. I like it, I love it!

The Flaming Lips - Fight Test Don't need to listen to it, if anything.

Mando Diao - If I Don't Live Here Today, I Might Be Here Tomorrow It's pretty cool, but the guy doesn't know how to set a beat for the chorus. Still, really nice use of the violins and acoustic in creating textures. I guess the chorus isn't that bad, it does soar really cooly and stuff. Furi coory, man.

Caesars - Spirit So, are Caesars good? Let's find out. Pretty good, nicely rhythm and movement. Nice echo and feeling and noise and push. It's not really my thing. But it's cool, I guess. O-oh, drums. That's pretty nice. I like the feeling now...ok, the Caesars are pretty good. Problem solved.

Empire of the Sun - Standing on the Shore Uh uh uh holy crap, that's cool. That's cool. That's how you do it. Fuck, man. Perfect beat to it, lovely rotation about it with the guitar. It's like a breath of sun. This is lifting my heart and bringing tears to my eyes. Wow. Wow.

Fugazi - Waiting Room Lounge punk? Or whatever you'd call these guys. It just floats along. Sort of like Stroll, maybe. Well done beats, hehe. Hehe!...NOT MY THING

Hot Chip - And I was a Boy from School This is cool. Good beat...I'm a sucker for good production, but this isn't just that. Good use of rhythm...that vocal line is just perfectly harmonized and placed. Really cool, almost old and new, hard and soft at the same time. Very much in its place, and doesn't go too far, but I like the place it's in. That's just preference, not aesthetics. But it's still...I dunno. Like I said, I'm a sucker for good production, but this isn't just that.

Stream of Consciousness First Impressions: Echo's Pack

2009-10-10T11:47:00.000-04:00

On a forum I frequent (yes) we're in the process of trading packets of songs. There are a few floating about now, and the number's getting bigger. So, I guess I'll just post them.

Opeth - Hope Leaves. I know Opeth, I have Hearse, and I enjoy them, but never really got into them. I was really surprised by this song; at first I thought "Man, this is just too floaty and depressed for me," but I started getting really into it. They do a lot of really skilled, unexpected, and well-done things. It's beautiful music, really. The way it comes back to that strange, hypnotic guitar riff, and then builds continuously into a strange...I don't want to call it a crescendo, but things just start falling into place. Everything works so well together, and then when they work on it more you're like "Man, that's worthwhile." The major chords toward the end really give it depth. Such wonderful sonic texture, and use of melody without being overcomplex...it takes great songsmiths to do this without overdoing it. Not exactly intense, but a somewhat enthralling listen.

The Sounds - Midnight Sun. Never heard them before in my life. Dancey at the beginning to the point of being silly, but it's catchy. It flows nicely. The lyrics are...sort of stupid. I like where it goes, but I don't like how it gets there...there's only so much special things there. Then again...it is well done. I'm starting to like it more by the second verse...but it feels very mechanized, in some way. It doesn't...go far, I guess. This is of course a first impression, as all of these are, and I could see myself getting into the chorusy parts...I gotta say it tries to create a harder sound without really putting the energy in....but that guitar solo is pretty awesome. I like that part...I guess I could like this. Why do I hear Cocteau Twins in this?

Something Corporate - She Pains Me Blue Holy shit, I love it. Texture, tone: the piano and the drum rhythm and the wailing guitar...man I wish your voice wasn't so reedy...but shit the piano works so well! Man, that and the drums...this started off so promising, but they aren't doing anything with having the lyrics...in fact they're layering the vocals, which isn't cool...but I could see awesome things coming from this group, if they got a bit punkier. On second thought, it all is pretty cool. I wish it just made more of an effort to drag me in...which it totally does in the bridge oh my fucking god, that's perfect. That's perfect, the second chorus is perfect. Goddamn. That's some hot shit. Very beautiful.

Blind Pilot - The Bitter End Nice acoustic. Quiet and pretty, evocative lyrics...uses the guitar really well to reflect everything. It unfolds wonderfully. Ooh, drums, too. I guess it helps. Oooh, vibes. It's not totally fitting together for me, but I'm bopping my head around to it. It's really beautiful, it grows and draws me in, and that acoustic is just fantastic. The drums could help it out more, but how harsh can I be? That's really cool. Oooh, nice choruses. I'm gettin' this shit.

Birds of Avalon - Think This is cool! Psychadelic, cool intervals, classy sitar. Nice vocal line working over it. It just chugs forward, echoes and soars without really changing. The creepy lyrics enhance it. The unison part is strange, but the bass + drums make it more strange and interesting, and it really builds, balancing between unison and soaring. The bass and guitar get more complex, same as drums. It almost...doesn't fit together...but then it does. It's so well put together, in fact ,that you sort of realize it while you're focusing on how it doesn't make sense. I really really like this. So cool man, I'm glad it's as long as it is. It builds and shrinks and regrows so ingeniously. Solos aren't really solos, but developments to get to somewhere else...hot damn! I could love this. Holy shit, I almost got the chills there. That rarely happens. Oh man it only gets more beat-drivenly awesome, this is like the harder version of Gang Gang Dance, somehow. Love love love. I fucking love you echo, this is hot stuff! I love it! That's going on the fuck yes list, yes. Awesome. Woooo. This is now my jam.

Slow Club - Christmas TV Builds and goes along nicely. Quaint and pretty and glowing. Nice lyrics, and they have nice voices. It's great, great. Pretty cool thing. I feel like singing along, just falling into their world. Good stuff, feels good man.

Keane - This Is the Last Time Electronic strangeness + piano + falsetto voice. It works, I think. It holds, I'm getting into it, if it's a bit overdone- but that doesn't make the buildup any less...not just catchy, although it's boatloads filled with that. And then...falls into ballad cliche...it's well done, and it builds nicely, but this just isn't my thing. I skipped the last half. It...doesn't shine at me.

Pink Floyd - Have a Cigar I can't say I know Wish You Were Here very well, but I don't need to listen to the whole of this song to know I love it. Good choice.

The Rapture - I Am Complete This is the best kind of emo-ish harder stuff. I love the two guitar lines. Drives along nicely, I love the beat. Maybe lags a bit under the vocals...the lyrics are sorta stupid. But the soundscapes are full and filling and wonderful! Lotsa good yes. Cool album art, hey. The chorus just keeps modulating, but y'know that's ok. I wish Sick Puppies did stuff more like this. There's even good development around the guitar lines. Second chorus / pre-chorus cycle is pretty sick, man. P-piano? That's a bit much, even for me. But let's see what they do with it...nice buildup with bassline and the drums, but will it fit in here...that fill's too long...and all you did is make the chorus muddier...but then again it's pivoting in this coolish way. I'm on the fence about this piece, and I'm coming out on the positive. Nice.

The Bravery - This Is Not The End The Bravery has never really disappointed me, from the various cuts I've gotten. I'm gonna spend my time on other things, but the Bravery are pretty good, solidly, somewhat engrossing music. Well-put together, if a bit overdone.

My Twin - Katalonia I just got a wave of fatigue so this isn't gonna be unbiased any more. It's cool...but it's weird. I don't know what to think about it. It's good, it's strange and just sort of paralell to my line of thinking. Tight as hell. I think I like it. Nice melody lines, not too much relience on screaming chords (except in the chorus a bit, in that way it falls into boxes), and for the most part these guys are really creative. Bridge is sick shit, especially with the electric line put in. Oooh, nice cut out, I bet this coming-back part'll be awesome. Yep. I like it, I'll like it more in the future.

Pink Floyd - It's Gold In The ... I don't have to listen to the whole thing

First

2009-10-10T11:43:00.000-04:00

Being as that my main focuses in life are in music critique, music composition, various academic things, and other matters, I guess that's what I'll write about. Write what you know, I guess.