Heartache With Hard Work

Don’t You Want To Share The Guilt – Kate Nash
Early Christmas Present – Kate Nash

I complained yesterday about some records that I was really looking forward to which left me feeling a bit disappointed.  In an effort to change the tone, I’ll try and talk for the next few posts about records that absolutely lived up to my hopes.

First on the list is the new record from Kate Nash, which is everything that you’d expect from her, and more.  All over the place, full of big pop hooks, a confessional style that is both awkward and endearing, poignant, occasionally over-indulgent, but often charmingly brilliant. In short, it’s a wonderful follow-up to 2007’s Made of Bricks, which featured four or five brilliant songs as well as a couple head-scratchers.  My Best Friend Is You is similarly varied, with some wonderfully high moments and more than a few places that pull you up short.  Which is part of the magic.

Things start out normally enough, with both “Paris” and “Kiss That Grrrl” offering fairly mainstream, slightly doo-wop inflected, pop–with just enough attitude to make it clear that this is Kate Nash and not some interchangeable starlet.

The first big twist comes with “Don’t You Want To Share The Guilt,” which maybe be her most interesting song yet.  It begins quietly, introspectively, and with a bit of distant pain in her voice.  After about a minute and a half the drums join in, and add a sense of disquiet.  The general tone is still quiet beauty but you start to feel an element of urgency.  This is captured perfectly at 2:47 when she whispers “listen…” and the notes are piercingly clear. But things are just about ready to run off the rails, as the deep sadness, pain, loss, and general sense of breakdown gets splayed out before you in a wonderfully mad stream-of-consciousness rant.  As it goes on and gets more and more frantic you feel just how claustrophobic it can get inside the head of someone who has no outlet.  It’s brilliant and absolutely crammed with pathos.

The next two songs provide as clear a contrast as you’ll get about the multitudes contained on this record.  “I Just Love You More” is a grungy bit of riot-girl sludge.  It’s terrible and fascinating at the same time — and is set off perfectly by the fact that the next song “Do-Wah-Doo” is about as pure a piece of straightforward Phil-Spectored-girl-pop as you could want.  This is followed by “Take Me To A Higher Plane” which splits the difference.  It holds onto the pop sensibility but sets her free to flail about.

That’s a theme repeated a number of times on this record. There are a number of songs that aren’t strictly ‘good’ by any reasonable definition.  But the atonal grinding of “I’ve Got a Secret” builds up the reverb in order to provide stark relief to the bubblegum that resides elsewhere. Meanwhile, if the semi-rant to close out “Don’t You Want To Share The Guilt” is a pitch-perfect characterization of a personality under great strain, then the one to open “Mansion Song” is the flip-side.  Where the former exposes the earnestness and simple humanity, the latter is the aggressive and mad and so over-the-top in its littering of bad words and sexual imagery that it’s impossible to take it seriously.  The resulting track is almost impossible to listen to, but perversely (and I use that word advisedly) appealing.

Lest things get too far off the rails, she brings things back to earth with a couple songs that are almost trademark Kate Nash.  “Early Christmas Present” is the logical heir to “Foundations” or Mouthwash” – with the same simple major chord progressions and snarky lyrics (the present is an STI) that made us all fall in love with her in the first place.

Elsewhere, “I Hate Seagulls” is the heir to “Birds” – the deceptively simple acoustic track designed to reveal the significant truths that often lie hidden in plain sight.  It’s not as well done as “Birds” but still packs a punch. After listing off a litany of her other minor dislikes (“I hate burning my finger on the toaster, And I hate knits, I hate falling over, I hate grazing my knee”) she declares out of nowhere:  “I hate all the mistakes I make.”  It’s very affecting.

In the end, this is a record with many flaws.  But that’s part of what makes it so great.  It’s a bit messy and incoherent, but in the end so is life.  And that’s not a bad point to make.  Without the couple standout pop songs to keep things lively, this would be just a mess. But because she gives us the candy, it gives all the rest a bit more stability as well.

Recognizing that the pace of posting here is unlikely to give me a chance to issue full reviews of records that didn’t quite tickle my fancy, here’s a short post to offer a one or two line review of a variety of good records that I just wish had managed to be a little bit better.

Efterklang – Magic Chairs

Their last record inspired dreams of magic and danger; this one reminds me of the kind of dreams you get when sleeping in an uncomfortable airplane seat. You’re happy to be sleeping, but it’s still more a facsimile than the real thing.

Shout Out Louds – Work

Show Me Something New

It’s got 5 or 6 pretty nice songs, but it’s still a disappointment how restrained and tepid it feels compared to their previous one. The whole thing is immaculately constructed, but it feels a bit like a toy train set just going in circles.

The Apples in Stereo – Travellers in Space and Time

What you’d get if you baked a loaf of bread but used sugar instead of salt.

Cloud Cult – Light Chasers

The Mission – Unexplainable Stories

They can still write a great tune, but are quickly falling into an abyss of preciousness. It’s really a shame to see glimpses of what went into making one of my all-time favorite records a couple of albums back strewn in the midst of embarrassing autotune effects.

Eels – End Times

Oh Mark Everett, why have you forsaken me? Eels were one of my all-time favorite bands a decade ago, but it’s getting to the point I don’t even bother to listen to them any more. This one is a bit of a return to form, but it’s just too dreary to give me much. Back in the day, Eels records tore my world apart. This one just makes me glum.

jj – n° 3

I’m so close to getting this one. It’s just a little bit too geometrical for me to process.

Josh Ritter – So Runs the World Away

Folk Bloodbath

He’s got a couple VERY nice tunes but–sort of like Cloud Cult–seems to be getting a bit too enraptured with himself (and an ill-fated pseudo-hard guy persona that ruins a couple tracks) to be able to turn out another record like The Animal Years. “Folk Bloodbath” is right up there with his very best work, though. It’s big and beautiful and scarring in all the best ways. It’s the sort of song that asks for, and deserves, your full attention.

The Kissaway Trail – Sleep Mountain

They went for big and bold. They pretty successfully manage the former but come up a bit short on the latter. The first four tracks are great, but it tails off quite a bit from there.

Ted Leo – The Brutalist Bricks

No real surprises–it’s a Ted Leo record. Maybe even one of his better records. I just can’t get into it. Dunno.

Again, none of these are bad records. I’ve listened to them all a decent amount. They’re just all flawed in some unfortunate ways–because there are elements in each that gestures toward what could have been.  I can see each of them being a big hit for someone who gets a little something different.  So they get a tentative Heartache With Hard Work seal of approval.

That’s kind of been the theme for the whole year, though. Even the records that I’ve really enjoyed (posts forthcoming for many of these) include a ton of not-quite-as-good-as-their-last-one albums. Stars, Frightened Rabbit, New Pornographers, Antarctica Takes It!, Gaslight Anthem, Magnetic Fields, etc. All great albums, but none of them the best from those bands.

Sorry for a slight downer of a post. I’ll try to get some more enthusiastic stuff up here soon!

Little Lion Man – Mumford & Sons

Technically released in 2009, but new to the states, and (more importantly) to me in 2010 comes Sigh No More, a brilliant little record from Mumford & Sons.

My tolerance for this sort of vaguely disconsolate, rootsy by way of an Oxford poetry anthology, coming down the mountain style folk music is usually pretty low.  Checking out their RIYLs, and you’ll get a list full of bands that I’ve never been able to get into–in spite of quite a bit of praise from other corners.  I never found anything inspiring about Blitzen Trapper, for example, and Fleet Foxes left me a bit cold.  Bon Iver was far too wispy for me.  Iron and Wine were only listenable when Sam Beam was getting his rock and roll on.  I love a banjo and all but the whole genre just never quite did it for me.

There’s something about Mumford & Sons, though, that rouses me from my stupor. They’re not afraid to go big and bold.  They don’t shy away from putting it all out there and risking the sneers of post-ironic hipsters.  They see a purpose in music–to inspire us, to fill us with awe, to leave us breathless.  And they go for it!  Not always successfully, but when it works, oh my does it work.

You can get a sense of it on “Little Lion Man.” Where I sometimes feel the finger-picking folks to get a bit precious or lackadaisical, this track comes out with a roar and pulls no punches.  I mean, seriously, who has a chorus like this:

It was not your fault but mine
And it was your heart on the line
I really fucked it up this time
didn’t I, my dear?

Then you get the wordless bridge, and the pace quickens.  You can sense the tension growing…and growing…and then they come back at you with the chorus one last time.  And it all pretty much shatters.

Pivotal – Rai Knight

Self described as “Trip Pop with Soul” and living up to that in every way possible.  It’s slinky and cool, and lodges itself deep in your psyche.  You can feel the beats in the unthinking movement of your fingers–and after a while you start to imagine that your heart has taken to beating in time with the rhythm of the song.

Just listen to how the song glides.  It’s like magic.

Rai Knight signed recently with FrontStreet Records, so hopefully we’ll hear more from her soon.

It Can’t Hurt – Mighty Mighty Bosstones

Things that are aggravating me today

1. People who equate ‘pain’ with ‘correct’ when it comes to political decisions. Slate is full of such people, but it’s a pretty common meme: that you’re not really serious unless you’re willing to inflict some pain. You hear it, in particular, when it comes to the economy. The only serious economic policy is one that asks people to make sacrifices, and so on.

Of course, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with creating a political culture that is a little more aware of the necessity for making tough choices that will involve some sacrifice. Energy policy is a clear example: we have a spate of non-serious solutions that are grounded in the idea that it will be possible to radically reconfigure our energy consumptive patterns without it forces any difficult changes.

So that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about a pundit class that seems incapable of grasping that there can be situations where policies that don’t inflict obvious pain are nevertheless the right ones. Discussion about stimulus, for example, is often afflicted with a sense that just spending money can’t possibly be right because it doesn’t ask anything of anyone.

Matt Yglesias has a good post about this. Key quote: “I think this highlights the extent to which political commentators like to substitute cheap moralism for real thinking about economic issues.”

2. The whole Park51 ‘controversy.’  I hesitate to even bother bringing it up, because the whole thing is so ridiculous, but I think it’s still important to think about it.  A number of people have pointed out that there is vanishingly little chance that this particular issue will have any lasting effects.  I think that’s right.  As much as I hate the current discussion, I don’t think it’s reasonable to claim (as some have) that the attacks on the center constitute a major boon to bin Laden.  I’m sure the radical folks out there are pleased to see the US behaving like a bunch of idiots, but I can’t really see this being part of their large strategic plans.

That said, I think it’s worth reflecting on this particular controversy insofar as it reveals something broader about our political discourse.  Remember that we face a new version of this every couple weeks these days.  Some relatively innocuous thing that gets treated as a national crisis–never for any genuinely good reasons–and then forgotten about.  And each individual issue never ends up mattering that much, but the coarseness of our capacity to collectively consider important issues surely has to be a concern.

Basically: it’s a sad comment how quickly and how explosively a total non-issue can get turned into a firestorm–particularly when the undertone of the entire thing is a message that being Muslim is (in and of itself) a kind of affront to ‘American’ identity.  It’s just sad how willing people are to go along with the whole thing.

3. Speaking of which, the new news is that over 1/6 of the country believes Obama to be a Muslim.

One response to this news from a lot of people has been to issue a caution.  It’s not that 18% of people REALLY think he’s a Muslim.  They’re just using it as a stand-in for ‘different’ or ‘not like us.’

It confuses me why people think this ameliorates our concerns.  That a massive chunk of America feels completely confident in associating ‘Muslim’ with ‘bad’ is a MASSIVE problem–far bigger than some conspiracy zidiots being incorrect about a religion.  The fact that they think he’s a Muslim isn’t bad because it reveals they are ignorant–it’s bad because it reveals just how deep and wide the subtle bigotries of anti-Muslim thought run in the country.

Or, to put it another way, John Dickerson at Slate poses a good rhetorical question: “Why won’t any Republicans condemn the “Obama is a Muslim” myth?” For example, you get Mitch McConnell saying he “takes the president at his word” that he’s a Christian.  Which is about the weakest defense imaginable.  For instance, I take Senator McConnell at his word that he’s not committed to the violent overthrow of the US Constitution.  Why have there been a vanishingly small number of Republicans willing to actually condemn this narrative? As Dickerson writse:

What you didn’t hear McConnell say was that the whole notion that Obama is a Muslim is ridiculous because by any standard we use to evaluate the religious beliefs of our leaders, President Obama is a Christian. Nor did he go on to say that any politician who tries to benefit from this urban legend—by courting either Islamophobes or conspiracy nuts who think Obama is engaged in some kind of systematic deception—should be ashamed of himself.

It’s offensive for what it says about Obama, to some extent. But it’s really offensive for what it says about being Muslim–that it’s a slur to imply that someone secretly is one. And it’s a stain on our political discourse that it’s so easy to mobilize these kinds of attitudes.

Try – S

I’m reading Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals tonight.  It’s a very good book, that doesn’t feel the slightest bit dated despite having been written 40 years ago.

It’s a great book, mostly for the way that Alinsky is capable of demonstrating an undying optimism about the human spirit, while still remaining thoroughly grounded in the difficult and unyielding world of real problems.  He, better than pretty much anyone else I’ve ever read, manages to explain the utter futility of abstract ‘means vs. ends’ debates, recognizing that in any conflict both sides will always believe themselves to have morality on their side.  The important matter, for him, can never be simply sorting out who genuinely wields the moral force–because such an argument presumes that someone standing outside of the conflict is capable of passing judgment–but that third party is always definitionally abstracted from the force of the controversy.

But, very importantly, he doesn’t just say this gives us leeway to think any old thing we want or to use any means we choose.  He asks us to feel a constant sense of anguish at the impossibility of knowing.  He cautions against any system of thought that gives us easy answers to the question of whether the ends justify the means.  We should instead ask whether these particular ends justify this particular means.

Perhaps it’s just a function of academic specialization–where you start to read everything you encounter through the lens of your own research–but I see a lot Schmitt in this book.  And that’s actually encouraging to me.  I’m constantly troubled by what it’s possible to do with Schmitt’s arguments about the essential nature of the friend/enemy distinction and the problem posed by emergency–and it’s comforting to see a thinker from the radical left taking these same problematics and employing them for good rather than evil.

In particular, I like his take on compromise.  It seems to capture what I find most vibrant and powerful about the values of modern liberalism–but it does so from a perspective that is all too aware of the dangers that come from imagining politics to be simply a game of ideas and abstract norms:

If you start with nothing, demand 100 per cent, then compromise on 30 per cent, you’re 30 per cent ahead.  A free and open society is an on-going conflict, interrupted periodically by compromises—which then become the start for the continuation of conflict, compromise, and on ad infinitum…A society devoid of compromise is totalitarian. If I had to define a free and open society in one word, the word would be ‘compromise.’

Compromise here doesn’t mean an acceptance of the other position as right; it does mean, however, a recognition that the churn of conflict is only valuable when it can be translated into tangible gains. What you end up getting is never enough. In part because other people get in the way. But also, in a broader sense, because society isn’t ABOUT perfection; it’s about a lot of individual people doing their best to get what they want, and that entailing a lot of different opinions. Individuals must seek their own desires, but society only works when it finds a balance among them. That doesn’t mean you should ever stop trying–but it does mean that you have to temper your endless struggle with a recognition that the perfect world you imagine can only ever be an idea. But it’s an idea worth striving for–and so you do.

That’s a nice balance of the pessimistic and the hopeful, of reality and dreams, I think.

A Remote View – Sambassadeur
I Can Try – Sambassadeur

Long time, no posting – it’s been a busy summer.  And honestly, time is looking like it’s going to stay relatively compressed for a while.  But I’ll try to knock out a quick post now and then.  Mostly I’ll try to catch up on all the good music that’s come out this year.

I listened to the new record from Sambassadeur – one of best of the many great bands currently coming out of Labrador Records – right around New Years, and it’s been a pretty constant presence for the whole year.  After a couple great records in a row, they’re slowly scaling their way up onto my list of sure-things.  European isn’t the best album of the year – but it’s not far off.

On your first listen, the big and bright tracks will stand out.  While there’s nothing that leaps out at you like their very best work, songs like “Stranded,” “Days,” and “I Can Try” open things up with a deadly combination of an effervescent movement, strings out of the 60s, and that lovely Swedish lilt.  The only real downside is a bleeding together of sound and approach.  As good as “I Can Try” sounds, it’s hard to deny that it sounds a tad less sparkly when dropped in the midst of such similar fare.

“Forward is All” seems like a recognition of that problem – slowing things down a bit in an effort to alter the pace of the record.  Unfortunately, while it’s nice enough, the downgrade in energy leaves it incapable of fully grabbing you.

Far more effective is the duo of tracks that serve as a bridge between the slightly dull middle and the shining finale.  It is perhaps a bad sign for a record when it’s transitionary material is the best thing on offer–but in this case the B-material is still so good that you can’t really find too much fault.

Instead, you just have the chance to experience the quiet majesty of “High and Low” and (especially) “A Remove View.”  The former is as beautiful as any of their tracks but carries with it a dark undertone.  It’s insistent but gentle – like the breeze blowing off the ocean just after the sun has set, but before the cool of the night has set in.

The real magic is in the second of these tracks, though.  “A Remote View” clocks in at just barely over two minutes, is fully instrumental, and may be the most pure song I’ve heard in years.  Gentle acoustic guitars plucked with care, and a sense of fragile possibility.  It’s the sound of falling in love, of knowing that you have to say goodbye, of the sense that you just might not be strong enough. “A Remote View” sounds to me like the bookends on a 50 year relationship.  It’s the time right before: the aching that comes from wanting to touch something more, but never being sure that it will be safe.  It’s also the time after everything is over: when you look back and shed bittersweet tears.

The beauty of the song is that it’s so antithetical to what you normally get from the bad.  If the general feeling conveyed by a Sambassadeuer song is usually movement, this is a song about moments captured in amber.  It’s a perfect counterpoint – and it’s what makes this a great, rather than just a very good, record.

Wide-Eyed, Legless – Laura Veirs
I Can See Your Tracks – Laura Veirs

I’ve had the new Laura Veirs record for more than six months at this point, and I still don’t have a well-developed perspective on it. She, more than almost any artist I can think of, has always struck me as intensely linked to the natural world.  When I think of her previous albums I get very specific pictures in my mind.  An iceberg moving quietly through Antarctic waters, a deep cave illuminated only by a frail torchlight that scatters reflections off a dark pool, the vast emptiness of space and the sense of stasis that comes from a recognition that movement out there only happens on the scale of millions of years.

Her previous record, Saltbreakers, broke from this mold a bit.  It felt more like intentionally-constructed music and less like a purely accidental phenomenon.  This can be both good and bad.  But on the whole, it was a bit of a disappointment.  I think Veirs is at her best when you can suspend your disbelief.

On that scale, July Flame is probably a return to form.  This time around, I can’t help but picture a dense forest, with flickers of the bright summer sun dripping down to the ground, but the dense overhang imposing a severe limit on what can make it through.  There’s something very pleasant about it: the sense of summer and light that can only be grasped in patches, the feeling of a separate world that is dark and close–locked away by the height of the trees.

On the best tracks, this all goes very well. Opener “I Can See Your Tracks” is a perfect example.  It’s quiet and simple, with beautifully plucked guitar accompaniment and her wonderfully singular voice.  “July Flame” continues along this vein.  It’s slightly more dense, enticing you to peel apart the layers.  Both of these tracks are exercises in patience and restraint.  There is no flashy chorus or standout moment.  But they do develop and together provide an excellent summation of what she has to offer.

However, as things continue on, you do start to wish there was a bit more oomph somewhere.  “Sun is King” is a beautiful song but apart from a couple perfectly placed notes on the pedal steel guitar (which are revelatory) it doesn’t move you all that far.  Along the same lines, “Where Are You Driving?” is a great song that nevertheless leaves you wondering if it couldn’t have been something just a bit more.  Elsewhere, “Little Deschutes” is a nice wisp of a song, but stretched out to more than four minutes it can’t really be sustained.  Same goes for “When You Give Your Heart.”

“Summer Is The Champion” is a bit of an exception to the picture I’ve been painting here.  It sounds more like the midsummer night’s festival that happens in the clearing deep inside the forest, full of dancing sprites and the heat of a bonfire.  It pops and crackles and really brings to life the middle of the record, with otherwise would be at serious risk of losing its way.

The other major high note is “Wide-Eyed, Legless” which moves in delightfully obtuse angles and is tantalizingly short.  It’s by far the strangest song on the record, but also manages to be one of the most immediately pleasurable at the same time.  In short, it’s a reminder that when everything clicks, Veirs is one of the finer songwriters out there.

One other (minor) complaint about the record is the male harmonies.  Jim James and Karl Blau both take part–and while I do like their own work–I just don’t like the way their voices work with her’s.  “Life Is Good Blues” is a perfect example of a song that would be better if left alone.  And “Sleeper in the Valley” is a perfect example of a song that is far better for being able to float freely around her pure voice.

She also did a Daytrotter session recently, which includes some very nice versions of tracks on this record.  Well worth exploring.

Spanish Bombs (live at Shea Stadium) – The Clash

Okay, so it wasn’t a final for the ages.  In fact it was a pretty dire game all around.  That said, there was a lot of tension in the build-up even if the product on display couldn’t really live up.

I attach the blame in the following proportions: 50% to the Dutch, 30% to the occasion itself, 15% to the Spanish, and the remaining 5% to Howard Webb.  To elaborate…

The World Cup final is in some ways doomed to this sort of display regardless of the teams involved.  In a game that matters this much, with teams of the sufficient quality to get there, teams are always going to play a lot more cautiously.  What was the last ‘classic’ World Cup final?  I guess you could make a case for 98, but it wouldn’t be much of a case.  Far more often these days you’re going to get cagey matches between teams who are extremely well drilled and capable of executing the game plan.

It’s not a coincidence that the 3rd place play-off involves far more ‘entertaining’ football every time.  When teams don’t really have anything to play for they’ll be a lot more free.  That’s the tradeoff, though.  You get more entertaining when the stakes are lower.  It’s fun to watch high quality teams play that way, absolutely, but I’ll take the cautious 1-0 in the final over the 3-2 goal-fest in the meaningless game.  Others may differ as is their wont.

The 15% of the blame for the Spanish is an admission by me that maybe tiki-taka is a bit more of a problem than I was willing to see in my last post.  Spain is really, really good.  But it’s undoubtedly true at this point that every other country in the world is going to play in a way designed to frustrate the beautiful passing.  The difference I see between Barca and Spain (who share 6-8 players, depending on who is on the pitch at any given moment) is Leo Messi.  Not surprisingly, if you add the best player in the world to the best team you get something virtually unstoppable.  Messi has the incisive eye for goal and the capacity to dribble through a crowd of 6 defenders and somehow emerge free on goal.  Both of those skills are somewhat lacking in Spain.  In fact, it’s the single true flaw in their game.

A fit Torres could have really changed that.  He’s not in Messi’s class, but he’s still one of the 5 or 6 best attacking players in the world when he’s on.  But apart from him, they don’t quite have a player with that nose for the goal.  Villa is ridiculously good, but he’s simply a different type of player–whose immense skill gets him a ton of goals, but who is at his worst when he’s asked to play centrally as the focus of the attack. Most of Villa’s best work came when he was out on the left, for example.

That’s the thing about Spain.  As much as people complain that they’re not willing to take shots…most of their best players are not actually all that good at shooting.  Xavi may well be the best player in the world (non-Messi division), but his game relies entirely on being surrounded by a cast.  He can’t score the goals himself.  To put it another way: stick Messi or Ronaldo on Burnley and they’d still contrive to score 30 goals.  Put Xavi there and he’d be marked into oblivion and only help marginally.  Iniesta always seems to pop up in the biggest moments (see, the World Cup final) but isn’t really a clinical finisher.  He can make the occasional mazy runs into the box but those are notable for their relative rarity.  Alonso can shoot from range but isn’t that impressive in the box. Of all people, Pique sometimes looks to be one of their most composed players in front of goal.  But he’s only there a few times a game.

All of this is to say that it’s not just stubbornness that has Spain playing the way they do.  They recognize the parts of the game where they simply dwarf the rest of the world, and force the game into those channels.  So the efforts by teams to shut down the game is the big part of the problem, but Spain’s dogged insistence that they’ll continue to play the same way (because they would expose themselves to more danger if they changed things) probably does deserve some of the blame.

Howard Webb only gets 5% of the blame.  I thought he did moderately well in tough circumstances.  He made some mistakes, but I don’t think they were the sort of mistakes that ruin games.  While the foul that actually produced the red card was pretty minor, the aggregate fouls from the Dutch were so extreme that virtually anything would have deserved a second yellow for repeated offense at that point.  The only real ‘mistake’ he made that undermined the quality of the game itself was his hesitance to send off a Dutch player early.  De Jong’s karate style kick probably deserved a straight red.  Van Bommel probably should have had a second yellow.  I can see why he was cautious, but as it turns out the administration of endless yellow cards was simply not going to quell the kicking and biting.  Maybe a red would have pulled them up short.  I’ve read a surprising number of people who say that Webb gifted the game to Spain, which seems very peculiar to me.  I think he made decisions that we generous to both sides but on balance the failure to seriously punish the out-of-control play from the orange team seemed far more significant than the non-call on the Robben breakaway or other Spanish-leaning rulings. If anything, he seemed to be treating the game as a problem of two teams playing recklessly, rather than a problem of the Dutch entering the game with a clear plan to foul and foul again.

Which is to say that, despite the blame I’ve already apportioned, the lion’s share of it remains with the Dutch.  They were far more interested in kicking Spanish legs (and chests!) than the ball for the most part.  From the very start, they committed to a strategy of rotational fouling, and counted on Webb to be scared of actually sending someone off. So even though he kept fairly doling out yellows, they never made any effort to change their game. It was a good bet by them, I suppose, but I can’t see how you can play that way and then be angry about getting a guy sent off in the second half of injury time–when you probably should have been down to 8 or 9 at that point.

It was horrific to watch, mostly for the sheer cynicism of it.  And it’s not just the many dangerous or reckless challenges.  It’s also simply the number of niggling fouls, with the clear intent of disrupting the flow of the game.  It’s a bad state of affairs when one team clearly has zero desire for the ball to remain in play for longer than 30 seconds.  It makes for a stop-start game that is not pleasing, even to those of us who think goals are overrated and tactics are interesting.

Anyways, taking a step back: I’m willing to overlook these problems.  I can understand why the Dutch did what they did, and to their credit it almost worked.  If Robben had finished his chance they might well have won.  And they were mighty close to reaching penalties.  But in the end the better team won.

I think Spain has done something truly astonishing in the last three years.  As holders of both the European title and the World Cup they’ve ensured themselves a place among the truly great national sides of all time.  The only real problem there is the impression that they won this World Cup by grinding out dull 1-0s is likely to erase a lot of the good will they built up with their delicious style in the previous years.  It will probably take another top-class performance in Euro 2012 for the general public to talk about Spain as a contender for ‘best team ever.’  In by book, though, they’re already quite close.  They’ve got as much skill as any team through the ages, and they play together as a team.  They’re disciplined, have a style of play that is flexible enough for it to produce stunning 6-0s and boring 1-0s depending on circumstance and necessity.

And they’re young!  Puyol may have played his last truly big game.  And Xavi probably won’t be up to it for 2014 (but may be for 2012), but a lot of the big guys are still in their early 20s.  If Xavi has to go, they’ve got this Fabregas character who can’t even make the starting 11 right now.  Casillas should be a world-class keeper for years to come.  Torres, Iniesta, Ramos, Pedro, Busquets, Pique.  All those guys could still be going strong (some maybe even better than they are right now) for 5 or 6 years.

I got a lot of predictions right in the past month, but I also got a lot wrong. Brazil did not win and Kaka was not even remotely close to the Golden Ball.  Villa did tie for the Golden Ball (though missed out on it due to having less assists).  I was pretty accurate up to the quarterfinals–where I got basically everything wrong–and then after it.

I may post on football again in a day or two.  I’ve got a few more things floating around in my head that may or may not take on a more coherent form.  And now that things are over with, I’m really missing the World Cup.  It seems cruel that we have to wait another 1400 days for the next one.  But I know that part of the magic is that it only comes along so often.  In the meantime, I’ll watch some baseball, and wait for the club season to start up again.  This is the year Reading get back to the Premiership.  I can feel it.

Thanks for everyone who put up with my World Cup coverage for the past month.  I promise to actually write about some music soon.

Sing Me Spanish Techno – The New Pornographers

Two wonderful, wonderful games.  Each had their own tempo and form of entertainment.  The quality of soccer on display in the second one was phenomenal, which led to a game that always looked to be in Spain’s control but remained close throughout.  The former game was a bit less precise, but in some ways this was great because it allowed for a bit more expansive play.  These games also featured some great goals.  Van Bronckhorst’s opener has to rank among the goals of the tournament.  And Puyol’s goal was a thing of simple beauty–about as pure a header as you can hit.

In both games, the team that would have been heavily favored three weeks ago prevailed.  I don’t think this means the brilliance we saw from Germany and Uruguay prior to the semifinals was a fluke or anything.  But I do think this perhaps serves as a helpful reminder that form is always a bit random and the underlying quality needs to be held in mind.  Simply: Spain’s team is a lot better than Germany’s.  That’s no criticism of the Germans who have a fantastic team and might well be considered the favorites for Euro 2012.  But right now, they’re still a bit raw and just not good enough to deal with the overwhelming skill of the Spanish.  Maybe in two years, but not today.

When they’re on (and they were yesterday) Xavi and Iniesta are simply a class above any other central midfield in the world.  Add in Alonso–who doesn’t have quite their vision but is probably among the 20 or 30 best players in the world in his own right (look what happened to Liverpool when they lost him)–and a good (though not world-class) destroyer, and you’ve got a team that is unlikely to lose except on a fluke.  For all the talk of their ’struggles,’ it’s worth remembering that they still have only lost twice in three years, and have only drawn a couple times, too.

Germany could have won the game, no doubt.  Despite the class of Spain, it remained relatively close, thanks in part to some outstanding individual performances from the Germans.  And while the wonderful attacking talent that scored them so many goals was mostly neutralized (because they simply couldn’t get the ball, and when they did Spain was almost never out of position at the back), it still only would have taken a moment of brilliance from Ozil, for example, to change things around.  Still, all things equal, I think 1-0 was pretty fair.  And if another goal had been scored it was probably more likely to have come for Spain than the other way around.

In particular, there is the goal that never was in the final minutes, when Pedro and Torres broke in a 2-on-1.  The defender came at Pedro who then had the easiest task in the world of simply rolling the ball over to Torres who would have had ages to pick out a shot one-on-one with the keeper.  No matter how out of form Torres has been, he would have 99.9% buried it.  But instead, Pedro lost his mind and tried to dribble toward the near post to attempt an unlikely shot–and then was dispossessed before he could even try it.  It was embarrassing, and one of the single stupidest decisions I’ve ever seen.  If Germany had managed to pull back a goal, Pedro might have been crucified.  A full day later I still can’t believe how terrible a decision that was.

Still, all of this is to say that this game seems to confirm what I expected it to: that both sides were going to regress to their established mean–and that Spain remain the better team.  To be clear, I don’t mean this game proves this to be true.  My argument is against relying on small sample sizes.  The long scale of evidence we’ve got tells us that Spain should have been favorites, and that the 50/50 odds that prevailed before kick-off were inspired by over-reliance on the evidence of a couple games.

All that said, things can change relatively quickly in football, even more in international football.  And underlying quality still needs to be organized and held together.  If Spain had been playing like France, for example, I’d have been far more willing to consider them pyschologically unstable and thus seriously downgrade their chances.  But that wasn’t the problem.  A team that is still playing pretty well but is stuttering a bit in scoring goals is not the same as a team falling apart.  It only takes a couple bounces (a goal that goes in rather than hitting the crossbar, a throughball that is weighted just an ounce more and finds the foot of the onrushing striker rather than getting caught up in the legs of the defender, etc.) for the former to click into place and suddenly ‘disprove’ their earlier struggles.  That was Spain, and to a lesser extent the Netherlands.  These were quality teams, dominating their games, forcing other teams to change their styles to deal with them.  That they were winning by one rather than two or three goals is relevant, but ultimately not that big a deal.

It’s become popular to complain about Spain’s style of play.  Frankly, I think this is just a case of football fans being obstinate for the sake of being obstinate.  Obviously it would be fun to see a team so good they could score 3 or 4 goals every game by playing incisive, inch-perfect passes every 15 seconds.  But that is just fanciful.  No such team exists.  To complain about Spain in the real world where actual human beings live means you have to pick a different way.  And the alternatives are pretty much limited to defensive shell, kick-and-rush, or the counter.  No one likes the first, presumably.  The second is rightly mocked as the classic, tactically inept classically English style.  The third creates opportunities for breakaways that make your heart race.  But it also entails long stretches of absolutely nothing happening.  People want a mythical style that involves both teams racing up and down the pitch every second of the game.  It’s just not going to happen.

Which is to say: enjoy what Spain does have to offer.  There is a lot more excitement in the game than watching people run.  The skill Spain puts on display when they’re simply passing the ball around is far more interesting to me than almost anything else in the game. And the brilliance that comes from the moments when they do pick out a hole in the defensive makes for brilliant and exciting goals.  On top of that, I really do appreciate trying to sort out the tactical elements of the game.  I can recognize that this isn’t interesting to some people, but I think they’re missing out.  4-2-3-1 may limit breakaway goals, but it’s fascinating to follow the players and see how their position and connections actually accomplish this.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that the cottage industry of criticizing Spain and the Dutch for failing to destroy teams is aggravating.  They’re in the finals of the World Cup, and it’s not like they got there entirely through luck or by trying to prevent their opposition from playing football.  They got there by being better at the game than the opposition, and taking advantage of the opportunities that were provided to them.  If you want to make a purely aesthetic argument, well, different strokes and all.  I can’t really say that one style is definitively better than another.

But all the complaints about their lack of a plan B, or their inability to play in different ways, probably needs to account for the success they’ve had.  In particular, the reason why Spain has been so good at preventing the opposition from scoring is due to their commitment to hold back a lot of players.  It’s worked tremendously well.  And the reason they don’t get killed on the counter is that they count on their skill to unlock defenses without relying on throwing bodies forward.  It’s a coherent and successful system.

My predictions for the tournament suffered an unrecoverable body-blow with the quaterfinals.  My two finalists both lost there, for example.  But apart from that, I haven’t been doing too bad.  And while Kaka has zero chance at the Golden Ball, Villa is still a good bet for Golden Boot.

The Golden Ball, actually, is a pretty interesting discussion right now.  Villa is the clear front-runner, on the assumption that they’ll give it to a player from the finalists.  And if the Dutch win, it’s probably Sneijder.  But while they each have been very good, they haven’t been magical or overwhelming.  For all the reasons stated above, these two teams haven’t really been about offensive flair–they’ve been about shutting down the games.  Still, unless something crazy happens in the final, you’d have to think it’s between those two.

If they wanted to give it to a non-finalist, though, things would get a lot more interesting.  Forlan has been the best player in the Cup–and I don’t even think it’s that close.   Not only has he scored great goals, he’s also set the tone for the entire game, has torn apart defenses and created space for others, has held up the ball better than anyone (a crucial task for Uruguay when they’ve employed their more defensive approach).  Ozil has also been great, and Schweinsteiger.

Anyways, there’s only two games left.  And only one game that matters.  It’ll be sad when it’s all done and we have to wait four more years…

Final predictions:

• Spain 2 – 0 Netherlands
• Germany 2 – 1 Uruguay

I think Spain is the real deal–one of the best teams ever.  I think the Dutch are a solid outfit with the potential to work some magic, but also a bit fragile.  While I wouldn’t be shocked by a Dutch win, I think Spain has to be the clear favorite.  I see a game fairly similar to the one they just played against Germany, where they control the ball and stifle the opposition.  I just think they’ll get the second goal that they ought to have scored in the semis.

I don’t think Germany will care about the third place game, while Uruguay might put a bit more into it.  But I still think Germany’s class takes them through.