Monday, June 24, 2013

Sonic Sandwich: Outside Blurred Lines

There's an old line about the film critic, Pauline Kael. Famously, perhaps stereotypically New York left wing, she was stunned that Nixon won re-election in 1972, saying at the time, "I don't know anyone who voted for him." This may never have happened, but I think about it sometimes when I need to make sense out of something I don't like, or don't get. And this time, it's not about Vampire Weekend (or Vamp Wknd.) This is about a song by Robin Thicke, the soul singer and son-of-Alan, called "Blurred Lines," which is currently cutting a swath of destruction across mainstream radio.

It's a kinda-funky trifle of a song. It sounds like it was written in about 18 minutes, while a Casio Keyboard demo was playing and a room full of people pitched cheeky, cutesy lines like "What rhymes with 'hug me?'" It's kinda repetitive, and every time it seems like it's going somewhere, it foresakes a hook and goes on its way until it spins out. When I first heard it, I thought of it as a nuisance: not as objectionable as LMFAO or Bruno Mars, not quirky like Macklemore, not transcendent like Ke$ha or JT or Daft Punk.

But man, somebody must be hearing something in this song. Dunno if there was brainwash signals in those Casio loops, or that weird little Chimp squeal that it occasionally emits, or whatever. But people have been asking about it. As you may know, I work in retail, I sell (among other things) CDs, which are still a thing people sometimes buy, and I've been asked about this song many many times, with the CD not even slated for release until the end of July. There's fervent interest in this song, albeit mainly from middle-aged ladies, and I'm partly convinced that's because they're still pining for his dad. But no, this song has taken off. This is a legit thing, and not a trick, not a "Oh, they just used the same beats and hooks and tricks every other songs uses so of course they had a hit." That isn't what happened here.

This is why I am not making money off of music criticism. I couldn't have seen this one coming. I can't explain it, I can't account for it, I can't even really relate to the people who like it, unlike a lot of things. I can step back and scratch my head and go, "Well, I guess it's a hit," but I can't step far enough outside my narrow worldview to explain or discuss why. I write about a few things decently, and even fewer things very insightfully, and this is far, far outside that. We don't really talk about pop radio here, but even if we did, I still wouldn't have pegged this one as something special. Y'know? Wouldn't have seen it. But it's different, and it's kinda funky I guess, and people like it. Look forward to half the songs on the top 40 sounding exactly like it in 8 months.

I wish I was better. I want to keep getting better. I still don't want to spend a lot of my time thinking about music I don't love, though, so I'll probably still never make money off this site, and I'll still never understand how a song like "Blurred Lines" becomes a huge hit. But it resonates, and you can't fake that shit. It doesn't always last, but when it hits, it's true.

Thursday, June 20, 2013

If/Then: Vampire Weekend/King Charles



Speaking of Vampire Weekend, if they are your jam, check out King Charles: equally foppish and quirky, whilst being very mindful of its genre blending, and retaining the pop sensibility. It's the "pleasure listening" version of the Vamp Wknd (which, again, I hope doesn't catch on, yet will continue to use.)

Now Listening: Modern Vampires of the City

What even is Vampire Weekend's music? Whimsical, creative, cutesy, unpredictable... they can throw any trick or twist on any song and turn it instantly memorable. And yet that same quality, rightly, keeps a lot of people away from them. Sometimes I am just not in the mood for their shit. Sometimes excessive quirk is a turnoff. There are reasons music generally takes the forms it does, and while the Vamp Wknd (as nobody probably calls them) takes that for their backbone - at its core the music is eminent pop rock - they lay on so much extraneous chicanery that every few tracks I need to hit pause, rest my ears, maybe listen to something that I "get" more. At its worst, its best qualities are shrill, annoying, frustrating, confusing, distracting, irritating. Hipness is kind of a shell game in that way: keep it moving so they never figure you out, never label you. Stay ahead of your audience so they never get over you. Maybe, they'll think, they just don't get it. (By they, I mean me.)

Maybe you really love Vampire Weekend! Maybe you're never not in the mood for them. Good for you! I can totally see that. Personally I don't have the energy to keep pace with their relentlessly changing sound. Are they innovators, imitators, curators of the weird? I don't know. I'm actually kind of glad they do what they do, and can safely recommend this album to anyone who's of that mindset. Personally, I'm not, but I get it. Kind of. Maybe. What I do know is that very few things that have a chance of being great are for everybody.

Saturday, June 15, 2013

Now Listening: Bleach

This is my attempt to reconcile my newfound powers of streaming, my desire to write about the music I listen to, and my need to listen to something about a squajillion times before I feel like I can put down my opinions on it. Maybe this format will take off, maybe it won't, but this will be where I write about something, more or less in the moments that I'm listening to it: transient thoughts, but not concrete or final enough to merit a "review."

I've been listening to Nirvana's Bleach all evening. I've always been a huge Nirvana fan, of course, and yet I'm still hesitant to move in beyond the edges of their music. First there's the hits and monumental cuts. Then there's the cuts I really like: "Drain You," "School," "On a Plain," "Been a Son," "Love Buzz," "Breed," "Dumb," "Serve the Servants" to a lesser extent. "Sliver," if it's not considered in the first category. That's more or less by design: the deeper you go, the more abrasive and deliberately unpleasant the music gets: harder, more raw, less pleasurable for its own sake. For the faithful only. There are bits like this on Nevermind, too, and In Utero is practically made of it. Some would probably say that's the BEST thing about Nirvana, and they're allowed to.

I like a lot of songs on Bleach, but it is justly dismissed compared to the other two real Nirvana albums: hell, it could even be the case that Incesticide has more juice on it. I think the distinction Bleach has is that it's the first one, the first piece of Nirvana on record, and it absolutely does not represent what's to come for that band. They sound very undistinguished: raw, and competent, and like they've got something but haven't quite figured out how to show it. Showing it was always the big issue with Nirvana: how, how much, to what end. Easier to make a big noise and scare off people. Coming at the beginning of the discography, even with the benefit of hindsight, you're still squinting a bit to see Nirvana in that mess: it's there, in "About a Girl," and even "Floyd the Barber" and "Mr. Moustache" and all over. But mostly it sounds loud and hard and fast-slow. It's too human to be metal, too sludgy and un-pointed to be punk, so without the context of the grudge revolution, I can see how it was dismissed even by a lot of the small audience it did have in 1989: there must've been more eyebrow-raising acts on the Subpop label at the time. It's a not-great album by a great band that isn't "there" yet.

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Sonic Sandwich: After The Flood

Lordy. What now.

The main structure of this site has always hinged on album reviews. Okay, I've found ways to get around that, by talking about individual songs, various categories, and a silly little tournament now and again. But the real reason I do this is because I want to buy albums and talk about the ones I like. I don't intend for that to change. But maybe it will. And I'm not just because I've been working on other things. Because hey, even when I do, I listen to music.

It's no secret that everything is available all the time. If you really want to experience something, it's usually out there, on YouTube or some other service. I don't illegally download anymore, out of respect for my job, but also out of fear of malware, and out of deference to the fact that the last filesharing program I used got shut down years ago. A lot of the YouTube videos I post are probably not strictly legal, though I try to keep it official because there's nothing more embarrassing than coming back to a post months later and finding the video unavailable. If I hear about something and I want to know what it's like before I spend my hard earned money, the Internet is an incomparable tool in helping that. But recently, the floodgates opened.

I signed up for a streaming site, offered by the store I work for. For a mere $5 a month, I have access to an unfathomably deep library of music. Sure there are holes, but I didn't sign up to listen to the Beatles anyway. Many of you are probably already signed up for services like this, and rightly so. Despite sometimes having issues with artist's rights, and potentially not being viable in the long term (infinite music, $5 a month) this is the best manifestation of the awkward relationship between music and the internet. In theory, I thought, this would really open this site up. I could devour music at a completely unfettered rate. Then two weird things happened.

One is, obviously, that I didn't. In the weeks since I began working this service into my regular music experience, content on this site has ground to a halt, not increased. I made a lengthy list of bands I had meant to check out after seeing their albums on the shelf, but found myself recklessly clicking through them. Had I picked badly, or was the nature of free unlimited music making me less eager to stick with something?

Does constant availability make music disposable?

This excess of choice turned out to be a bad thing for the site: partly, I couldn't concentrate on one thing very long. It didn't help that I didn't opt for the mobile option (as I don't have the right kind of phone,) so my favourite method of experiencing music, while out in the world, was off the table. I had to take it at my desk, where it usually becomes background to a Cracked article or a game of Minesweeper.

The other alternative was that there just wasn't that much good stuff left. Probably, a random sampling, without much foreknowledge (other than so-and-so tweeted about band-X, band-Y toured with Hollerado) can't yield 100% positive results any more than when I was sampling before committing to buy. It could just be the same thing on a bigger scale.

But I did find things to like. Maybe I didn't always sit still for them, but I came back to them, over and over, to get them piece by piece. This is how I experienced the new album by the National, Trouble Will Find Me. I like it, but I can't remember much about it.

So I bought it. That was the other weird thing.

It almost doesn't make sense. I don't know when I'm going to listen to it, besides sitting at this desk. I have already paid the $5, I have that album in my pocket whenever I want it. But still, I walked home from work a few days ago with a copy of that digipak in my bag and a receipt for the $12.99. Along with two other CDs I had only heard one track from.

Why?

Does physically owning something affect your opinion? Or even just mine? Do I feel like, having put down my hard earned cash for this, I am obligated to have an opinion of it, to do my best to like it? Does it just not make sense to bother forming an opinion without having a financial stake in the quality of the album? If I'm just ripping it to my iTunes library, so I can listen to it on a different digital device at a different place and time, what does ownership really mean?

We live in permanent high tide. You never have to pay a cent for music if you don't want, and for as long as this site's existed, that's been true: hell, it's been true since I was 12. That's a fact that I've always been sheepish about addressing, both because of my job, and because deep down I just feel like music sounds different when you feel some sense of ownership, like some decision has been made, even if you got it as a gift or stole it outright. You don't have to agree. You don't even have to make sense out of this rambling. This is just a collection of thoughts-slash-observations that have occurred to me since I made this adjustment.

One thing hasn't changed, though. People need guides. I need a guide, to know what all to find, and while I've never been so full of myself to suggest that I should be everyone's guide, my main point has been that it is important to know what it even means to go out and get a recommendation. To go further than simply looking for what's new or what's selling, or even just ignoring what's new and selling on prejudice alone. To think seriously about where you are getting your recommendations.

To be continued... keep on rockin'

Serious Contenders: The White Stripes, "Fell In Love With a Girl" & "We're Going to Be Friends"





Looking at the Wikipedia article "2002 in Music" brings back a lot of memories. Not always pleasant ones. Looking at the tracks listed under the top hits of the year, you see rock represented by Nickelback, Sum-41, Blink-182, Matchbox-20, Staind, Goo Goo Dolls, Coldplay, Creed, POD, Puddle of Mudd, and Foo Fighters... and while there are two or three bands listed there that I like or don't mind, a pattern sort of emerges.

None of their songs are about girls.

Oh, some of the songs are about relationships: "How You Remind Me," sorta, "Disease" by Matchbox-20, in their Matchbox-20 kinda way... but the one quirk of the post-grunge era was that it was not cool to be in love. It just wasn't. You had to be above it. I feel like the last great rock single about being in love before this was "Sweet Child O' Mine," or maybe "Buddy Holly." Every song about a boy-girl relationship from the 90s onward seemingly had to be about what a headache it was, or how miserable of a person the guy was: alternative rockers and mainstream ones alike had to find ways to circle around the idea without ever really allowing it to speak for itself. And I love the 90s. And there are plenty of holes in this theory, but they're outliers. And really, so were the White Stripes when they arrived on the scene. Even the bands they were bundled with in the so-called neo-Garage movement, weren't really writing about the same things. Jack White wanted to talk about girls. And not about scoring, or fumbling your way through an awkward first date like a pop-punker. He just wanted to sing about the real feeling of being in love with someone. And that's why it was so shocking when there appeared a song literally called "Fell In Love With A Girl." It felt practically like a novelty, but it was for real.

And it's far from an oddity in the Stripes' catalog. That album, White Blood Cells, is steeped in the language of young romance, sincere heartbreak like "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground," wistful recollections of youth like "We're Going To Be Friends." Somehow it becomes a daring statement just to peel back the layers of detachment and irony and reveal, "This is what we all want to say, isn't it?" And for my generation, it was. We had a thing to call our own. I was in Grade 10 when I heard this album, and it felt like I was living out this album a half dozen times a week.

That straightforwardness, in their lyrics, moods, construction, was what made the Stripes so attention-grabbing, a cultural force instead of a novelty. Love was suddenly not just the domain of starry-eyed popstars and R&B seduction artists. It was once again a going concern for grimy white teenage boys. The same way "Smells Like Teen Spirit" taught Gen X that it was time to stop being shallow all the time, these tunes taught my generation that it was okay to give in sometimes. It was a cultural watershed moment.