I’m back home in Washington for the next week and a half, which means an internet connection about as reliable as Bobby Ayala, which in turn means that I’m going to be posting a bit less regularly and will also do my best to post stuff freely available on the internets so I don’t need to load the songs up myself.
As a sidenote while I’m (loosely) on the subject of baseball, let me just say that as excited as I am to see the Red Sox 10 games up on the Yankees this early in the season, I have every expectation that they will find a way to blow the lead. 2004 was magical, but it doesn’t change the fact that the Sox always seem to blow the Yankees away in the Spring only to suffer through several months of the most frustrating baseball imaginable in the Summer, and then settle into a not-so-comfortable 2nd place by October.
For the music, I was so excited about discovering new stuff from Club 8 the other day that I’ve gone on a bit of a Labrador kick, so how about another one from them…
I don’t actually know too much about Acid House Kings except that their site on Labrador calls them “Sweden’s no 1 guitar pop band” and I can’t really disagree much with that. There’s nothing particularly unexpected here, but why would you want there to be? It’s just pretty melodies and merrily bouncing guitars. RIYL: Ivy, The Field Mice, Camera Obscura, pretty girls, sunshine, and winsome smiles. This Heart is a Stone Tonight is Forever
I used to have purple hair. It was my only experiment in hair-dying, and it didn’t actually turn out too well because the purple didn’t hold very long, so it was mostly just a dirty blond and it took forever to grow out. But even so, purple hair is pretty awesome.
It’s weird because I usually think people look best when they’re just natural. I don’t like piercings or tattoos at all, don’t get the appeal of makeup, and am strongly against bleached-blond hair. But for some reason, I absolutely love hair dyed bright and ridiculous colors. Purple, red, green…take your pick. I think part of it comes from a youthful crush on Claire Danes in My So-Called Life, and perhaps from watching a bunch of Robotech as a very young kid.
Anyways, I finally dug out some CDs I burned three or four years ago with tons of songs that I’ve been doing without ever since my computer got stolen. And one of them is a mix I made while my hair was dyed, with what is indisputably the best song that mentions purple hair:
As a function of this blogging thing, I usually have a pretty good idea months or years in advance of when one of my favorite bands releases a new record. It’s rare that I’ll be totally blindsided, but I had one of those moments yesterday when I stumbled into a post with a new track from Club 8.
Those who read here with any regularity know about my love for the fey sounds of Scandanavia. Well, Club 8 is the band that got me hooked. I discovered them back in college and was absolutely blown away by how something so simple could convey such ethereal beauty. I devoured everything I could find from them, and kept looking for signs of a new record. But there wasn’t anything and as the years went on, I lost track of them, assuming they had broken up or something.
So you can imagine my joy at finding out they have a new album due out in September. It’s called The Boy Who Couldn’t Stop Dreaming, and having only heard one track from it, I’m already ready to declare it one of my favorites for the year.
Karolina Komstedt’s voice is as stunning as ever – a drop of morning dew sparkling from the single ray of sun that peaks through the clouds. They’ve broadened their sound a bit, with a perfect lilting bass line straight out of the best Labrador tracks you’ve ever heard, light handclaps, a few sly whistles.
If all that isn’t enough to make it clear why I’m so excited about new stuff from Club 8, just listen to this song:
And speaking of new tracks from albums I can’t wait to hear, you’ll want to head over to Pitchfork where they have the studio version of Okkervil River’s “Our Life is Not a Movie or Maybe” – though I have to say I think I prefer the live version I posted here a couple weeks ago:
I’m not going to go into detail on this one because just about every other blogger in the world already has, but if you’re into epic Scottish bands who batter you about like a raft in a storm, you’ll definitely want to check out the new record from The Twilight Sad. It’s called Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters (eMusic), and people seem to really like it a lot (including even an 8.6 from Pitchfork), proving once again that there are few quicker paths to the heart of your average music blogger than a Scottish accent.
For as much as I like shoegaze and big atmospheric rock songs (and Scottish accents, of course), the record doesn’t hit me quite as hard as I might have expected. For all the great moments, it’s all just a little too serious, and drags on in places (there’s a lot of 5 and 6 minute songs here) without giving you the payoff you feel that you’ve earned. Perhaps the hard part is that everything that’s great about this record is encapsulated in the first track, so even though the rest is perfectly acceptable, it still feels like a bit of a letdown. But that one song is truly stunning:
It’s a peaceful day, a slightly dissonant beauty, which steadily spins further beyond your control until you find yourself descending inexorably into the maelstrom. Finally, you’re spit out, disoriented, unable to quite remember how you ended up here, or where to go from here.
And maybe that’s what is missing: they don’t seem quite sure where to go after this song either. Still, minor complaints aside, I do find myself coming back more and more, and this is just the type of album that often takes a long time to grow on me. So there’s a good chance my initial hesitance will be long-forgotten a few months from now when I’m raving about this as one of the best of the year. Only time can tell.
Stopping by Can you see the sunset from the southside? the other day, I heard a track by a band called Ruth Ruth which pretty much embodies everything that makes 90s punk great. Grittier than Green Day, more melodic than The Descendents, driving drums, and a bubbly little bass beat that makes you want to get up and jump around. And it’s all over in about two and a half minutes.
Actually, these songs reminds me a lot of the mid-90s Goo Goo Dolls. Now, I know they’re not that cool these days with the indie kids, but they made some pretty fantastic music back in the day. I would even go so far as to say that the three album set of Superstar Car Wash, A Boy Named Goo, and Dizzy Up the Girl matches up favorably with any three consecutive albums from comparable bands (and yes, I’m including The Replacements in that). Sure, I’ve outgrown “Iris” a little bit, but it was my favorite song for a while in high school and it’s still a damn fine tune. And for all their famous ballads, their real strength was crunching guitars and great jangly rockers like “Girl Right Next to Me,” “Stop the World,” “Long Way Down,” and “Ain’t That Unusual.”
As I grow older, some of their later stuff sounds weaker, but this one only gets more powerful. They became pretty famous later, but I have to say that Superstar Car Wash remains a criminally underappreciated piece of 90s rock and roll. Any time I’m feeling a little nostalgic for those days, I can toss that one on and it all comes back with force.
Going back a little further, how about a Prince cover?
If you have not yet encountered the wonder that is Joe Mathlete Explains Today’s Marmaduke (in 500 words or less), you owe it to yourself to go there immediately. I discovered it a few weeks ago and immediately dropped everything I was doing to read every post back through last summer. It may be the best thing ever created.
Some of my favorite explanations are from March 19: “Marmaduke swallowed Sarah’s wristwatch and he’s sick to his stomach. Marmaduke’s owner-girl makes a watch-related pun so asinine it takes at least three months off of my life every time I read it,” from February 8: “Marmaduke prepares to devour a porcine houseguest’s piece of cake, then rape her in the missionary position. His owner-girl explains to the woman that this is all perfectly acceptable, because Marmaduke can have anything he wants, and right now Marmaduke wants cake and non-consensual sex with a pig-lady,” and from May 11: “Marmaduke is a terrible fucking comic strip.”
What? You say this is a music blog, so I should be talking about music? Well, fortunately, Joe Mathlete also happens to be The Mathletes, with some pretty awesome They Might Be Giants v. twee songs, with all the cleverness of the Marmaduke blog, and a bunch more. As someone who thinks far too much about whether humans really have a better claim to moral worth than robots, this song is right up my alley:
This talk of Marmaduke also reminds me of a great scene from Buffy, season 3, when the Mayor and Mister Trick are talking:
Mayor Wilkins: Do you like Family Circus? Trick: I like Marmaduke. Mayor Wilkins: Oh! Eww! He’s always on the furniture. Unsanitary. Trick: Nobody can tell Marmaduke what to do. That’s my kinda dog.
Indeed. Also, while I was exploring internet comics, I also came across this thread at Truth and Beauty Bombs which reveals that Garfield is actually a brilliant comic strip if you simply remove all of Garfield’s thought bubbles. It transforms a silly comic about a vaguely witty cat into a dark comic about John slowly losing his mind and succumbing to his pathetic existence. As one poster says, “now its just a sad man talking to his fat cat.”
Great stuff. And as a number of people there point out, it’s almost impossible to imagine any of these strips with more comments, proving that less really is more, especially with comics. Check it out, and you’ll never look at Garfield the same way again.
And finally, what would a post about comics be without a link to my favorite recent xkcd, on hypotheticals:
I’m several months behind on posting this one, but in case you never heard it somewhere else, this is probably the best stalker song I’ve ever heard. It starts so pretty and tender and you really feel for her, and then suddenly she’s rolling out: “If I find her, I swear I’ll kill her.”
And she’s got that delightful French accent and a pacing that adds to the sense that she’s seriously got a screw loose somewhere.
And how awesome a verse is this:
She’s a bitch you know, all she’s got is blondeness Not even tenderness, yeah she’s clever-less She’ll dump your ass for a model called Brendan He will pay for a beautiful surgery, because he’s full of money
They sure don’t write ’em like that anymore.
Anyways, I know basically nothing about SoKo except that you do not want to get in her way, and if you live in Europe they’ve got some shows over the next month or two. And, they appear to have just released an EP, but my French is not the best, so I can’t really tell you more than that.
Update: And I’m an idiot. If you scroll down on their myspace page, they’ve got an English version of the EP announcement. It’s on iTunes (5 songs for 4 bucks…not too bad), and they’ve got another one coming out soon.
This AP article about the presidential candidates’ response to the question “What is the last work of fiction you’ve read?” A few comments:
Delaware Sen. Joe Biden: “Runaway Jury” by John Grisham.Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd: “The Broker” by John Grisham.
I just can’t imagine ever voting for someone who responded to this question with a John Grisham novel.
Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich: “Einstein’s Dreams” by Alan Lightman.
At least he picked an interesting book.
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson: “The administration’s energy plan.”
Now that’s funny. You gotta hand it to him, he may have bombed in the first debate, but he’s definitely winning the humor race thanks to comments like that and the best set of ads, by far, for the new campaign:
New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton: “Team of Rivals” by Doris Kearns Goodwin
I’ll defer to my friend Scott for his response to this one:
“This is a historical analysis of Abraham Lincoln‘s cabinet and how he filled it with people who disagreed with him
so
a) does Hillary agree with John Bolton that Abraham Lincoln *obviously* surrounded himself with yes men (Bolton made a serious ass of himself on the Daily Show about this)
b) is she making a nod to the Howard Dean playbook, doubling her news exposure by answering a question “almost, but not entirely unlike” the one that was asked (book of Job, anyone?)
or
c) does she not believe in Abraham Lincoln???”
* * *
Speaking of people unable to distinguish between fiction and reality, how about this comment from Mitt Romney:
“In France, for instance, I’m told that marriage is now frequently contracted in seven-year terms where either party may move on when their term is up. How shallow and how different from the Europe of the past.”
How different indeed! As pointed out by Ana Marie Cox, the best guess anyone has about where this crazy comment came from is that such contracts are “a plot point in a novel by fellow Mormon Orson Scott Card…a fictionalization of the Book of Mormon set in outer space.” I read that book, too, and just let me tell you, it’s no Ender’s Game.
“Romney’s spokesman has “clarified” matters by saying that Romney actually meant to say not that the French have marriages that last seven years, which is false, but that they have marriages that last only three months, which is also false.
That’s a relief!”
And while we’re on the subject of weird statements from Romney, how about him declaring his favorite book is Battlefield Earth? For someone who wants to make Mormonism seem mainstream, I have to say that picking a (not even very good) book by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard is probably not really the way to go.
Another silly question with responses that reveal a little more than expected…the AP asks about desert island necessities (via Political Wire). Everyone else has responses of 4 or 5 words (a book, my wife, etc.) and then Obama comes along: “Other than my wife and my kids, an inanimate object I would have to have would probably be a good book.” Now, I love Obama, but can’t someone let him know that it’s sometimes okay to have a short answer?
Also, by far the best, and most pragmatic, answer was from (surprisingly) Tom Tancredo. His response: “boat.” I bet everyone else feels stupid for not thinking of that one.
* * *
Dennis Kucinich sure is goofy looking.
* * *
John Dickerson, from Slate, talking about how to improve the debates: “The MSNBC logo on stage at the first Democratic debate was so large it could have attracted space aliens (and, depending on your view of Mike Gravel, may have succeeded).”
* * *
Finally, from Political Wire, all kinds of fascinating things about the various candidates on the Facebook
Most of the time, I fall in love with music for the obvious reason: how it sounds. But there are millions of songs out there and only limited time to listen, so you need to filter somehow. Blogs, recommendations, etc. are one way, but sometimes there’s nothing so reasonable behind it. Today, I wanted to talk about some songs I encountered in slightly less conventional ways, but which I’ve grown to love.
First, names: of the band, the album, or the song…sometimes it’s just so clever that you can’t help but give it a shot (any reference to Antarctica or robots is certain to win me over, and I don’t even need to go over how I fell in love with “You Are the Generation That Bought More Shoes and You Get What You Deserve”). It doesn’t always work out (I bought a record called Zombies! Aliens! Vampires! Dinosaurs! last winter and only upon actually listening did I discover the monstrosity of sappy emo-faux-punk that I had exposed myself to), but it’s a surprisingly accurate way to find new stuff I’ll enjoy. Perhaps because anyone with a mind capable of coming up with a quirky title that I love is probably well-enough tapped into my wavelength to make music I like, too.
A great example is this one, the reason I first listened to Beulah, and is still my favorite song by them:
It also features another thing virtually certain to win me over: a classical instrumental interlude. Maybe it’s just because I loved it when The Beatles did it, but I really am almost powerless in the face of such things.
Second, great pictures. I read a fair number of blogs, and kept running into people talking about Blair and, without exception, using this picture:
The rainbow of paint on her arm, the colors on the canvas, the Mona Lisa smile…it drew me in completely. And then you find out that she actually has a song called Mona Lisa, and there’s just no chance of resisting.
It’s my favorite record of the year so far, though it’s difficult to really explain why. I’ve never felt completely comfortable writing about all these songs, not having any real training in music or music-writing, and I’ve never found that as true as with this record. I’ve spent over two months listening to The Meaning of 8 by Cloud Cult, trying to figure out how it burrows so far inside me, why I can’t stop listening, and how in the world I can convey these things if I even understood them myself.
After all that, I’m not sure I’m any closer to an answer, so you may be better served simply buying the record for yourself and experiencing it un-mediated rather than reading my scattered thoughts.
Rarely has the feeling of a whole world coming apart at the seams been captured so perfectly. Indeed, I haven’t heard a more affecting record dealing with loss since Electro-Shock Blues from the Eels (one of my all-time favorite albums). Here, the loss is singer Craig Minowa’s son, Kaiden (who is also the missing subject of the wrenching “Your 8th Birthday”), but the message is quite similar. Electro-Shock Blues took the listener deep into the morass of pain and loss before finally acknowledging the hope that is possible when one emerges from the Novocain-infused dream. For all its twists and turns, The Meaning of 8 brings us to the same conclusion: if every day is a good day to die, so also is it a good day to face the pain.
The best moments engulf you with cellos, trumpets and flutes, staccato guitar bursts, waves of sound that crash around you, a caressing dissonance. Your heart rises, you discover a lump your throat and your eyes go distant. This is music that makes you believe in a greater truth, a meaning that transcends our limited experience. Call it God, call it the universe, call it what you will, it is the reason why we continue to struggle, to find ourselves within the madness. Accordingly, perhaps the finest moment on the record is the repeated lines from “Take Your Medicine:” “Remind, remind that it’s bigger than me / Dissolve, dissolve into evergreens.”
Even when the touch is light, there is a choral feel, as if it is a shared experience. Still, for such busy songs, there is a tremendously organic feel. You cannot force yourself onto the music, you must let it reveal itself. If you have the patience, it will blossom and grow. Because each piece fits so seamlessly into the next, you can almost get lost inside them. After hearing “Chemicals Collide” dozens of times, I still could not possibly tell you how it is over 3 minutes long – it feels like a single moment of beauty, an unfolding of sound outside of time.
This is the case with many songs, as they remind me of sonic illusions – a circular chain of notes that appear to rise in pitch but loop back on themselves. But while such illusions are usually linear progressions, The Meaning of 8 is more a test of chaos theory, as jams layer upon each other and buffet back and forth.
Now, I’ve never had much patience with jam-bands, and Cloud Cult isn’t one, precisely. But they are far closer than I ever thought I would enjoy. There’s a looseness, a freedom on a number of tracks, that gives contrast to the tightly wound and delicately balanced songs elsewhere. However, if this is a “jam” it is far more melodic than you’d ever expect – witness the ebbs and flows of Minowa’s voice on “Chain Reaction.”
This is a very weird record, and very emotional. While it has more than enough great hooks and beautiful melodies to be enjoyed simply for that, to truly experience it you must give yourself up to the deaf girl, the Alien Christ, the lamentations and exhortations, the death marches, the numerology, the mythology. In recognition of this, while I don’t mean to exaggerate and you can take this with a grain of salt… I hear more Neutral Milk Hotel here than I have in a decade. I’m not saying we’ve got another In the Aeroplane Over the Sea on our hands, but I’m not quite ready to say we haven’t either.
And while I’ve promised to give up on Arcade Fire references, let me make one here, though in a different sense than most. Everyone and their kid brother tries to mimic the sound instead of the feeling. Not so here. Cloud Cult don’t really sound like Arcade Fire at all. But they possess so much certainty, such a unique vision, that they transcend all easy definitions, just as Funeral did.
As if all that wasn’t enough, they are also perhaps the most eco-friendly band I’ve encountered: buying credits to cover the energy used on their tours, donating a portion of their profits to environmental protection organizations. The record was even put out on the band’s own label (Earthology Records), known as the ‘world’s most environmentally friendly not-for-profit record label.’ And they also have a fantastic live show.
Charles Olney, Associate Professor of Constitutional Law and Judicial Politics at the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley (academic website). This is a blog about music, politics, and the law. I also write about women’s soccer at Backline Soccer and Stars and Stripes FC.
I’m back home in Washington for the next week and a half, which means an internet connection about as reliable as Bobby Ayala, which in turn means that I’m going to be posting a bit less regularly and will also do my best to post stuff freely available on the internets so I don’t need to load the songs up myself.
