I Had a Goal

I had a goal for where this post would go, but I haven't followed one little bit of it.

I'm very much enjoying the videos over at Ill Doctrine, a media/cultural/political vlog from a hip-hop background. The political commentary is decent, it's delivered in short, to the point, simple videos of a guy talking to a camera, but the guy is something of a hip-hop artist who's skill with words makes the whole thing worth it. On the media end of the spectrum, I found the idea in this video compelling. The idea is that we are so focused on creating media and documenting our lives that we lose focus on the events themselves. We're so focused on taking facebook pictures at x historical site that we don't stop to take the time to revel in the moment and just be. I saw the very paragon of this idea on my recent trip to Israel, where I took around 1600 pictures in the space of a month and a half, and the total number of pictures taken by the 300-odd participants in the program probably numbers somewhere in the 40,000s, if not more. Everyone - and I do mean everyone - appeared to me to be more concerned with how the pictures would make them look on facebook, more concerned with telling people what an incredible, moving experience they had at the Kotel, the Western Wall, the most holy site in modern Judaism, instead of experiencing those overwhelming emotions that flooded me as no other flood of emotions ever has because I didn't expect a drop of it, more concerned with the social theater of telling your friends why your summer was better than theirs, than they were concerned with staring history in the face, confronting the past as only a site like the Kotel can, and wrestling with who they are as a Jew and as a person. Why even go to a historical site, if you're only going to take a picture and brag to your friends? What does that say about a person's priorities, if the picture means more to them than the visit? 

Sure there's something to be said for the practice of photography, and photography is something I happen to very much enjoy. It can capture a specific moment much more truthfully than a painting ever could, and with the advent of cheap digital cameras, it seems like everyone's into photography. I have to ask though: when does taking pictures of your friends stop and portrait photography start? Last weekend I saw a book purporting to be a book of Allen Ginsberg's photography, and when I opened it up, what should I find but pictures Mr. Ginsberg took of his friends having fun. Then one day Mr. Ginsberg and his friends got famous, and those pictures went from being a memento from an enjoyable afternoon when Misters Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, and Williams hung out and smoked weed in somebody's apartment, to reputable photography published by a reputable publisher of photography books and sold in a bookstore owned by a respectable university. Sure there are some lines you could draw - staged portraits, photos taken "like a real photographer would," whatever that means, or whatever you like - but eventually there's got to be a line. When does the picture that I took of John sitting on a low wall talking to Matthew about what Luke and Mark said last night become something someone else would *ahem* pay me for the right to hang on the wall of their dining room in their 4 bedroom house in an affluent suburb?

It is for this reason that I am interested in a film camera. A film camera would make me consider every picture before take it, lest I waste a shot- an impossibility with a digital camera. 

Or maybe I'll just not take my shitty old point-and-shoot with me on any more vacations because it's distracting me from the matter at hand? I hate that camera anyway.

Quick thoughts...

A few quick thoughts on the new (to me at least) albums I've heard lately, from the most distant to the most recent:

Amon Amarth - Twilight of the Thunder God

The latest from Amon Amarth, an old standby of the melodic-death/viking scene is more of the same, but that's no complaint. Though no immediate standouts from one listen, there are plenty of top-notch, distinctly Amon Amarth riffs and a plethora of Norse Mythological goodness. This is no Fate of Norns, but nonetheless an excellent release. The Valkyries are still riding!

The Dresden Dolls - Yes, Virginia

Much more interesting than their first album. The self titled has some GREAT songs (Coin Operated Boy, Missed Me, Good Day, Girl Anachronism) but the second half of the album didn't hold my interest. Yes, Virginia is much more consistent and overall I liked it more. It needs another listen to really show me what it's got.

Blackmore's Night - Shadow of the Moon

Yes, Blackmore's Night as in Ritchie Blackmore of Deep Purple and Rainbow. Turns out he's got a neofolk/Renaissance music project he's been working on for years, and it's damn good. Neofolk is proving to be one of my favorite genres lately (check out A Darker Shade Of Pagan, a glorious podcast showcasing the genre) and finding a band with such a respected name as Blackmore attached is a welcome easy find in a genre operating under the radar of most music press. The album sounds great, with great production values and a heaping serving of Renaissance Good Cheer. 

The second bit of Moby - Play

I'd not finished the album the first time around, so I listened to the second half and it was really great. Not much to say, it's Moby. Delicious, delicious digital tunage.

Johnny Hollow - Dirty Hands

My friend Josh (who is not my co-blogger, but a different Josh) showed me this band just the other day. My first impression 10 seconds into the song on their myspace: "Excuse me? The Dresden Dolls? Is that you? Where did you get the cello?" Damn good dark atmosphere, a haunting female singer, and a melody driven by piano and cello. No chance of mainstream success, but that's ok. It's not the most interesting album I've ever heard, although it managed to hold my interest all the way through. I don't know if I'll go back for more though.

The Doors - The Very Best Of...

I mentioned to the same not co-blogger-Josh that I'd never been much of a Doors fan, but then realized that I made the statement without ever having really listened to them. I'd heard their big songs (Touch Me, Light My Fire, Riders on the Storm, Break On Through, etc) but the rest of their catalog had escaped me. So I listened to this to see if my opinion was the truth. Turns out it mostly wasn't. I now realize why everyone made such a big deal about the Doors (Hint: It's not because Jim Morrison is pretty). Their music is very good, and I found the organ, one of my main complaints about the Doors, to be unexpectedly unobtrusive, and I realized the greatness of many of their songs. Some of them didn't stick in my head (Soul Kitchen? The Crystal Ship? Peace Frog? Did I even listen to those ones?) but the majority of the album rocked like you'd expect a drug user like Morrison to rock.

7 Seconds - Walk Together, Rock Together

The Hold Steady referenced this band on their latest album, the sublime, majestic, incredible, godlike release "Stay Positive;" on the title track the singer waxes nostalgic about "back in the day, back when things were way different, when the Youth of Today and the early 7 Seconds taught me some of life's most valuable lessons." Well, I don't know if 7 Seconds second album taught me any lesson beyond "hardcore punk from the 80s can actually be really good," but I guess that's valuable enough for the Hold Steady. And if it's valuable enough for them, it's valuable enough for me.

The Libertines - The Libertines

I liked this album. I dunno. It's good. I recommend it. It doesn't inspire writing. 

Iron & Wine - The Shepherds Dog

I wish I could write about this album, I'm really enjoying it. Unfortunately, I'm only halfway through, and I don't have a good sense of the album yet. Josh, the same Josh I mentioned before, told me that he was "More proud of [me] now than [he's] ever been in [his] entire life" that I'm listening to it. I really like it though, and if that makes me goddamned hipster scum, then I'm ok with that. I&W and Sufjan Stevens are two of the Indiest of the Indies, as far as I, an outsider (gasp) can tell, and so far The Shepherds Dog is far more entertaining than Illinoise was.

So those are my quick thoughts. I'll try to do a post like this every so often. "Recently Played" on itunes is invaluable. 

The only girl I've ever loved..

I'd like to welcome my blogging companion back to the blogosphere, as well as reintroduce myself. I have a returned!

I, too, have had a little bit of change since the last time I've posted: I've gone to college. Now, unlike my amigo below, this has not changed what I listen to. Instead, I can be more open about it. It's not as if I can talk about music in a way that I couldn't talk about it before: my friends will tell you that I was always a pretentious fuck. Here, I can be a pretentious fuck WITH OTHER PEOPLE.

College is awesome.

Change Frightens Me

 First off, I'd like to say hello to this blog again - I've been away for a very long time and unable to post. I hope to breath new life into this blog now that I've got a computer every day. Without further adieu, the post:

I'm moving away from metal, and that scares me. It scares me a lot. Metal meant everything to me for several years now, and now, to watch myself scroll through the piles upon piles of metal on my ipod and settle on Bob Dylan or the Talking Heads or Ladytron I can't help but feel a pang of regret for not picking Aborym or Death or Sarcofago. What makes someone change musical tastes? Is it their environment? Their social surroundings? Their mood? I think all three of these things contribute to why I listened to so little metal this summer. I was in Israel, surrounded by completely different friends, and free of all the stress of school and home life. I'm sure that affected the music I wanted to listen to, but for a month and a half to be completely devoid of the sort of mood which prerequisites the listening of metal - whatever mood that may be. 

I can say this- one of the friends I met on this trip told me that he was still in the indie closet, and I told him that I guessed I was too except that I had my hand on the doorknob and was beginning to turn it. I suppose since indie and metal are two sides of the same coin (underground [in theory at least], individualistic [in theory at least] and driven by the doctrine of ars gratia artis [in theory at least]) I can understand why in a situation such as a pilgrimage to the Holy Land would necessitate a less angry, blasphemous style of music that maintains an ideological connection to a previous interest. 

I just don't believe that those three factors are the only that influence a persons change in musical inclination. Musical taste is buried so deep in the heart of people's emotions that simple outside factors cannot reverse them. I have started listening to metal again since I came back home (Nachtmystium's new album SLAYS, by the way), and I am no longer worried that I have moved away from metal permanently. I just don't know why all of a sudden I want different music. 

Epiphanies suck.

If I Could Take The Fire Out Of The Wire...

I may have just experienced the single greatest concert of my entire life.

This is not a statement I make lightly. I have been lucky enough to experience great show after great show after great show, from a The Secret Machines/Kings of Leon double bill to the Decemberists, from Beirut to Ted Leo to Sufjan Stevens, but Spencer Krug and Don Broeckner blew them all out of the water. From the opening salvo of "Language City" through a redonculous encore (which included a very much shouted for "I'll Believe In Anything", a standout in a show filled with standouts) Wolf Parade proved that they may very well be the best live musicians in existence. They don't put on a show like the Flaming Lips, and it was by no means a perfect concert (some of the slower songs disrupted the energy and 'Kissing the Beehive' got a little self-indulgent in the middle, but we'll get back to that in a second) but the unbelievable energy that they poured into almost every single song is, in my experience, pretty unique. Some shows have come close, but I don't think I have EVER been as winded as I was by the time the encore came around. There wasn't enough air in my lungs to both dance and shout, and so I had to economize. Luckily for me, I managed to make it through some of the best live songs I have ever, well, experienced. I had no idea 'Grounds for Divorce' would become a seminal concert moment for me, like seeing Sufjan play 'Chicago' IN Chicago or being hugged by a complete stranger in between encores at the aforementioned Flaming Lips show. Even the songs I had expected would become branded into my memory seemed better than I could have possibly imagined.
Surprisingly, I even enjoyed most of 'Kissing the Beehive', a song which usually begins to bore my by minute 4. While there was a stretch in the middle that seemed a little self-indulgent, the song translates much, much better live than it does on record. Part of the reason for this may be that it is a unique piece within the Wolf Parade canon. While the best Wolf Parade songs are very much Wolf Parade songs (One of the major complaints leveled at the band's newest record, At Mount Zoomer, is that several of the tracks sound very much like they belong to one of the group's many [also wonderful] side-projects , although every song on the album is excellent), most of them are either 'Spencer' or 'Dan' songs. This particular jam, however, uses the vocal talents of both the gravelly Krug and the smooth Broeckner, and after seeing one or the other take the lead on song after excellent song, 'Kissing the Beehive' is a statement of band unity like no other. It's as if they knew what charges were going to be brought against them, and they prepared a perfect response, a response which allowed them to charge into the encore of three tunes from their first album in a way that may not have been possible otherwise. And it was brilliant. All of it.

(Perhaps I'm being slightly hyperbolic. But only slightly)

Mp3 Language City- Wolf Parade
MOV I'll Believe In Anything - Wolf Parade

War, Inc. Makes a terrible movie...

but, it would be a great porno.

Seriously, it was awful. Don't go. It's only redeeming quality was that it allowed me to practice my Mystery Science Theater 3000 skillz. The really sad thing was that it COULD have been an excellent satire. It just wasn't. Seriously, it SUCKED.





You've been warned.

Stay Positive

I started thinking about the first half of the previous post on repetitive listening because I heard an album so good that I've listened to it all the way through ten times since I got it just a few weeks ago. The album, Stay Positive, by the Hold Steady, comes out the second week of July, but leaked in early June and is already available on the iTunes store (Remember to buy all of it! Not just one song!). The Hold Steady shot up into my top ten list of bands as soon as I heard them a few months ago, starting with their album Separation Sunday. When The Hydrogen Jukebox offered me the new album, I leapt on the chance. It was late at night when the file transfer finished, so I listened the next day in a state of shock. It was undoubtedly the best Hold Steady yet.

The Hold Steady have always been a riff based band, and they have done it well. The riffs on Stay Positive, whether played on guitar, organ, or even harpsichord, are some of the most memorable riffs since Amon Amarth's album The Fate Of Norns. (Did I really just compare The Hold Steady to Viking themed Melo-Death? I guess I did.) Some of my favorite riffs come from the opener, Constructive Summer, the ultra-catchy organ part in Navy Sheets, the intro riff from Yeah Sapphire, though every song on the album has at least one riff that sticks in your head and blows your mind.

Lyrically, The Hold Steady are at the top of their game. While I found the stories on previous albums to be somewhat loose and general, Stay Positive tells a specific story and it tells it well. As far as I've been able to tell, Holly and Charlemagne, characters from past albums, have returned, though they're not mentioned by name, instead by indirect references, such as the reuse of the line "and there's gonna come a time when she's gonna have to go with whoever's gonna get her the highest" from the opening moments of Separation Sunday, though instead of the first person used on that album, this time the words appear in third person, as though there is another observer. I have not yet been able to figure out whether the narrator is Charlemagne or if he is just another character referred to in the story, though I think he is. The plot opens with a declaration that "we're gonna build something this summer," setting the stage for a group of college students with nothing to do, hanging around and getting into trouble. From there the scene shifts to a deposition, Charlemagne - or a different male character - is being "interviewed" about what happened with him and a girl, where they were, what they did, what sort of car she drove. We then find out that a girl, Holly, has given a murderer a ride, without quite knowing if he did anything. Over the course of the rest of the album, Charlemagne struggles with his relationship with this girl who seems to be uninterested in him. 

In keeping with the Catholicism of The Hold Steady, each character has a crisis of faith, Charlemagne's come on the track "Lord, I'm Discouraged," a plea for God's help with his failing relationship: "Lord, I'm discouraged/she ain't come out dancing for some time." The girl's crisis follows two tracks later, on "Both Crosses," an incredible song, with some of the best symbolism I've heard in music. The plot element of the song is the girl seeing video of the killing, and finally realizing that yes, the boy she gave a ride to was the one who committed the murder. Meanwhile, in her head, all she can see is "visions" of the crucifixion, flashing back and forth with visions of the murder: 

And she saw all the footage right before it got cut

and she saw all the bodies and she saw the blood

she saw the angel put a sword in his side

and baby that's how we got canonized

and she saw him gushing blood right before it got cut

and she saw him put a body in a bag in the trunk

and she saw the guys coming in from the sides

and baby that's how we get energized

The song is unquestionably my favorite on the album, I've even joked that "It's almost good enough to turn me Catholic." 

Stay Positive cements The Hold Steady's position in my mind as one of the best rock bands making music at this time. Stay Positive gathers everything good about the previous two records, weeds out some of the more annoying bits such as the shouted vocals on Separation Sunday, and packages it all together in 43 glorious minutes.