Times New Viking at the Rock and Roll Hotel, D.C.

My friend Jason and I drove two hours each way to catch this band’s half hour set.  I loved their last album, Rip It Off, which served to remind me of what I liked about indie rock when that label meant something (Pavement, Sonic Youth, Sebadoh, Pixies, etc.)–loud guitars, vocals that seemed to say something, a general sense of not giving a fuck, ambitions that outstripped the bands’ means and their talents.  The band played loud, and they played all the songs I liked, but I honestly think they could have turned it down a bit.  Even the band seemed to get lost in some of the noise, and these aren’t super-complicated songs.  The set length was perfect, and the sense of purpose was there, but a more straightforward presentation would have made the point better.

The opening band, Titus Andronicus, was a pleasant surprise.  Jason hinted that they were the flavor of the week before they played.  They certainly were young.  I’ll give them that much.  And they didn’t seem to be faking their punkiness, especially one of the guitarists who dropped an “ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated” a couple of songs into the set.  I’m not sure if he  understood the weight of those words.  If he did, he must have had an axe to grind.  Either way, they played a good set.  Loud, but not too loud, and energetic.  What I would have hoped for from Times, really.  I didn’t catch many of Titus words.  They just seemed angry about something, frustrated.  Who knows why? If it mattered, I’d like the music even more.

Actors as Musicians

I was just driving in my car, and I heard a snippet of Terry Gross’s Fresh Air interview with actress Zooey Deschanel.  Deschanel was promoting her new musical project, She and Him, with ‘indie rock’ singer M. Ward.  I don’t want to hear anymore.

 

Actors should not become musicians, or at least, once they become musicians, they should stop acting.  I’m reminded here of the Minutemen’s dictum that they did not rehearse, they practiced.  In the few clips of Deschanel and Ward’s music that Gross played, the actress engaged in frightening acts of vocal mimicry, melismatic swoops and divebombs, fake smokiness, and too real country twang.  It was all a rehearsal for something else: making real music.

           

I become more and more convinced everyday that ‘indie rock’ musicians, singer-songwriter-types, bandleaders are all just minstrels – in the bad, blackface sense, not the important, medieval sense.  Who was the last troubadour? Phil Ochs, probably.  He was the last one who could do it ‘for real’ or with any ‘real’ authenticity.  And Dylan does it too, to some extent, and gets away with the ‘to-some-extent’ because he’s self-conscious about what he’s doing.  Another interesting case here would be Will Oldham and what he does, how his mask enables him to wrest some real meaning from a dead discourse, something like the protest song or labor ballad, etc.

 

All music should be instrumental and all musicians should be rappers.  

Back in the Swing

When you haven’t written on a blog in awhile, it’s hard to get back in the swing (of things).  In fact, I’d thought of starting a new blog, called Culture and Politics, to replace this one.  But somehow, in my absence, people have kept looking at Grundrisse, so I’ll just keep posting here. Right now, I’m listening to the new Tinariwen album, which I just downloaded. It’s pretty incredible.  I just want to learn more about this band.  They remind me of my idea for a big band that plays global rock in a Clash-like style — hip-hop and soul influences, the whole nine yards — touring the world and playing anywhere people will let you set up — playing for food and water and drugs, not money.  It’s the wave of the future, along with covers of old rock n’ roll songs and lots of horns. I also think that new Sun Kil Moon album, streaming on MySpace, is just fine. Mark Kozelek has my undying respect and admiration  – music to make love to. Reminds me most of all of what Neil Young has been doing since at least the early-70s — meandering romantic riff-rock, except in this case at least one song is about the Jersey shore, which is going to win me over anyday. I’m trying to write a long poem/essay about the existence of music after all the humans are gone — working title, “No Melody.” 

“Across the Universe”

The first half, about up to the “Mr. Kite” sequence, is great because of the Beatles songs, the novelty, and the production values. The second half blows because of the Beatles songs and the slippage into the most abyssmal sixties cliches. The plot sinks into sub-TV-mini-series-type material, and eventually all of the entertaining dialectics between sound and image evaporate. It’s obvious early-on that the producers could have chosen any music to accompany the image and narrative, and by the end, it’s offensive that they chose the Beatles (if you’re a Beatles fan). Still, the first half impressed me, especially the “I’ve Just Seen a Face” sequence (great tune that I’d forgotten about!) and I actually hope that Julie Tamor continues to do work in this vein. She should just find her own songwriter.

Very Excited about Everything about the New Radiohead Album

Not to be a dick, but I called pop albums as fine art even before filesharing. Imagine walking into an art gallery, putting on a pair of headphones, listening to the most heartwrenching pop song you’ve ever heard and never hearing it again. Or being the guy that bought the Velvet Underground acetates on EBay a year or so ago. I support everything about the new Radiohead album and I might even shell out the $80 or the boxset after I donate for the internet release next week. Our Sgt. Pepper’s? More details here.

Up there with Damian Hirst’s “For the Love of God” as the artwork of the millenium.

Billy Bragg vid

Just heard this new version of Bragg’s anthem “Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards” today. Something inspriring for Sunday.

Jens Lekman, “Night Falls Over Kortedala”

Especially given the spate of press coverage that suggested that Lekman had gone off the deep end, this new album comes as a pleasant surprise. It’s by far his most consistent and entertaining full-length effort so far. The debut “When I Said I Wanted to Be Your Dog” seemed underdeveloped to me at points, like Lekman hadn’t really learned his craft yet, and the EP collection “You’re So Silent, Lens” featured some real standout tracks, “Black Cab” especially, which is one of my fav songs of the past five years, but neither kept me satisfied from start to finish.

“Kortedala” does so in spades, which is something I never expected. Although I’ve loved a lot of Lekman’s music, I always saw him as a half-jokey byproduct of the indie hipster scene. Maybe it’s because I loved so many of his influences already. The Jonathan Richman references, Left Banke and Magnetic Fields samples were all uber-exicting, clever, and at times, down-right funny, but I always wondered whether everyone else was in on the joke, whether they were laughing with Lens or at him. Or just crying crocodile tears.

Unlike his past efforts, I can listen to “Kortedala” straight through every time, and I’ve been doing so a lot these past few days. I would almost go so far as to say that their are no clunkers on this disc, which is pretty goddam rare these days, and probably the simplest main ingredient in producing an all-time classic album. My fav tracks are “The Opposite of Hallelujah” (here is a really pretty version that pitchfork featured a couple days ago, but you can also find a bunch of live versions if you search google vids), “A Postcard to Nina” (again, lots of other versions if you search google vids), “Shirin”, and “Friday Night at the Drive-In Bingo” (which you can listen to here; play Lost Service Classics #1 feed and skip to track 3 (annoying, I know)).

My fav verse redeems the otherwise minimally underwhelming “It Was a Strange Time in My Life:”

People seem to think a shy personality equals gifted,

But if they would get to know one I’m sure that idea would have shifted.

Most shy people I know are extremely boring

Either that or they are miserable from all the shit they’ve been storing.

Take that Morrissey, art school, and most of the Amerindie hipster subculture. Damn. Bitter, certainly, on Jens’s part, and now mine, but what a great way to put something that is simultaneously banal and incisive. Witticisms like this one occur throughout the album, there’s usually two or three per song, and a lot of them are due to Lekman’s outsider approach to the English language. The “legs/eggs” rhyme in “Postcard to Nina” in particular makes me wish I had English as a Second Language. It’s the sort of rhyme I would never dare make, but which Lekman makes work through shear naive ebullience.

Strangely, I think that this album might actually alienate some of Lekman’s earlier fans. It is by far his most “produced” album, and when it comes to music this sweet and simple that can be a turn-off for some. But I also think it looks forward to some even greater things in the future. Get this guy with a full-time band and start practicing!

Second Song on Kanye

Has a cool Steely Dan sample. Cool.

New Kanye

The new Kanye’s on-line here, and even though I’m afraid it might not be very good, it’ll probably still be worth listening to. I am listening to it right now, though, and I like the first track. I think it’s on filesharing services now too.

Latticework

Ever since the new Spoon album, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga came out pretty much everyone I talk to about music has either asked me for my opinion of it or tried to play me some of it. Truth is, I’ve never been a big Spoon fan. I don’t have any major ideological qualms about them, and I always randomly liked the song “Everything Hits at Once,” but I just never spent a lot of time with them, did enough exploration. I am sufficiently intrigued now, though, and I dug Sasha Frere-Jones’s review of the new album in the New Yorker, although more from a rock-crit, writing, compositional perspective.

So I downloaded the new album with the intention of writing up some comments here (which I will do eventually . . . maybe). But listening to it, I was struck again by how much the stand-out track on the album, “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb,” reminds me of Kelly Clarkson’s “Since U Been Gone,” especially the lilting opening lines, sung in a falsetto, like a girl! Melodically, to me, they sound most like the pre-chorus to “Since . . .” I.e. “How come I never hear you say . . . etc.” But the whole overall structure and feel of the song evokes the comparison for me as well. Am I the only person who hears this?

At least one other blog says the Spoon track rips off a fellow “indie rock” band. And Wikipedia tells us that Clarkson’s track self-consciously bit the Strokes’ “Barely Legal” and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “Maps.” (The bass guitar breakdown, which borders on being a sample. Is it?)

Ultimately, these comparisons mean nothing, except that all these songs might mix well together in a DJ set. I’m not accusing anyone of plagiarism. It’s all rather creative if you ask me. I appreciate liberal and creative borrowing and stealing according to Picasso’s dictum, something like, “Good artists borrow. Great artists steal.” And I wonder if Britt Daniel, the songwriter in Spoon, isn’t being self-conscious about his borrowing. From a songwriting/composition standpoint, that really turns me on. Well, Spoon fans, is he?