Heartache With Hard Work

Pluto has been declared to be a “dwarf planet,” and the list of real planets is back to eight. As I posted a couple of days ago, this was a change that needed to be made. And thankfully, those crazy astronomers in Prague agreed.

Here’s a great article from MLB.com on the subject, Pluto Sent Down to the Minors. A quote:

Relatively speaking, it only had a cup of coffee in the big leagues. It was discovered in 1930 by a birds-eye scout named Clyde Tombaugh. But Pluto had its chances, coming back year after year just like a Major League Baseball season.

It could never be Mercury, leading off and constantly hot. Venus was all about love and self-sacrifice, a natural 2 spot in the order. Earth, the prototypical No. 3 hitter, the ultimate fantasy pick, the people’s choice. Mars, the oft-feared big red machine. Jupiter always had the sweet spot in the lineup. Having Saturn in the order always meant a ring. Uranus, always the team prankster and playing jokes to keep it fun.

Year after year, Pluto tried to leap past Neptune at the end of the order. Because of its eccentric orbit, Pluto actually was able to reach closer to the sun than Neptune during a portion of its orbit. But again and again, Neptune, the savvy veteran (discovered in 1846), would deny the kid. Pluto never really had a legitimate chance.

Ha ha!

Around the blogosphere…

Check out Stereogum’s post on Bookeaters. I’d pay $20 for a hug from Dave Eggers.

Or Music For Kids Who Can’t Read Good for a Supergroups project. I love the Wilbury’s.

Something quick today from the “new to me, even if it’s not actually new” category.

The Zookeeper’s Boy – Mew

Mew has apparently been around forever and even this song was released last year, but I only heard it a few days ago and it’s great. I’ve read comparisons to Sigur Ros and My Bloody Valentine, and they’ve been touring with Bloc Party and the Secret Machines. And really, I think if you combine those four bands, you’d get something pretty close to Mew. Also, they’re from Denmark and you know how I feel about Scandanavian bands. Not sure how it took me this long to even acknowledge their existence.

I guess my excuse can be that it wasn’t released in the US until last month, so this is still somewhat timely. The album is And The Glass Handed Kites, and while nothing else is as good as “The Zookeeper’s Boy,” it’s certainly worth a listen. “Apocalypso” is also quite good.

I spent most of today wandering around DC, which was pretty nice. In particular, I spent a bunch of time at the Air and Space Museum, where I wondered how they’ll make the space to include displays on all the new planets.

And the new Modest Mouse album finally has a release date. December 19, just in time for Christmas.

I have to admit that I didn’t get into I’m From Barcelona until the last week. I had heard a few of their songs and wasn’t overwhelmed. I kept meaning to listen to some more, mostly just because I loved the name (as Linda Richman would say: “I’m From Barcelona is neither a single person, nor are they from Barcelona…discuss.” In fact, not only are they not a single person, they are 29 people from Sweden, all with names like Henrik Olofsson, Julie Witwicki Carlsson, and Anna Fröderberg). Still, it was only a few days ago that I heard the following song, and have been hooked ever since:

This Boy

Catchy as all get-out, like an amalgamation of every good Polyphonic Spree song, and about as fun as a song could imaginably be. The lyrics consist of only 6 lines repeated over and over, but with such enthusiasm and with such aural accompaniment that they never get old. This is by far my favorite song on their record, but the whole thing is great. They just got an 8.4 from Pitchfork, which might be a little higher than I would go, but not by a whole lot. This is the kind of album that deserves to be listened to, and enjoyed with a couple dozen of your best friends.

The album is Let Me Introduce My Friends, which has been out for a couple months internationally but is still unavailable except as an import in the States. However, it’s on iTunes, so get clicking! And check out their myspace page or the Hype Machine to hear a few more songs.

Oh, and check out the delightfully absurd video for “We’re From Barcelona.”

Things will be a little spotty here this week. I’m going to DC for a few days to visit some friends, see the sights, etc. I’ll probably post once or twice during the week, but certainly not every day.

Some of the things I’ve been distracted with the last couple days…

The Red Sox got swept by the Yankees in a five game series this weekend. It was truly awful, as they found pretty much every way imaginable to lose. Pretty much the only bright spot was the insane series that Manny Ramirez put together, including an on-base percentage of .850 (!!!) over the five games. But even that is clouded over since he was pulled from the game today with an injury. The Sox are now 4 games out of the wildcard and 6.5 behind the Yankees, which means they most likely played themselves out of the playoffs with one pathetic weekend.

Oh, and while I’m rambling about baseball, can I just point out that FIVE teams out of 16 in the National League have a winning record. Five. And four of them are within 40 points of 500.

In TV land, I just finished watching the second season of Battlestar Galactica and I have to say I was pretty disappointed. I was incredibly hyped about this show up through the first half of the second season, but the last 5 or 6 episodes have ranged from mediocre to terrible. No direction, plots seemingly spun out of thin air, characters behaving like idiots simply because the writers couldn’t seem to figure out any other way to generate the plots that they wanted…

I was worried from the beginning that (unlike Babylon-5, for example) they really had no idea how to wrap up the plots they were generating and the questions they were raising. The last few episodes suggest I was right to fear it. I’ll still watch season three, but if it stays this bad, I may have to jump ship.

On a happier note, Jeremy Enigk (of Sunny Day Real Estate and The Fire Theft) has a new album coming out. World Waits is scheduled for release on October 17, and I’m pretty excited. The two songs that I’ve heard are up there with his very best work (especially “Been Here Before” which has Enigk putting those fabulous vocal chords to work)–if the rest of the album stacks up, it’ll be one of the year’s best.

Been Here Before
River To Sea

Listen to them here, or at his myspace page, and mark October 17 on your calendar.

I hope no one minds, but I’m going to get a little bit political today. I usually try to keep that sort of stuff off the blog, but I cannot ignore the great injustice which is being done.

Next week the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union will meet in Prague to discuss what it means to be a planet. They assembled a panel to provide advice, and they have basically blown the walls down, recommending that the number of planets be upped to 12, including Ceres (the asteroid), Charon (Pluto’s largest moon), and…get ready for this…2003 UB313 (affectionately known as Xena, named after the warrior princess).

Lest you think that the madness will end there, recognize that Pluto, Charon, and 2003 UB 313 are merely three out of what could be thousands of Kuiper-Belt Objects (KBOs). The Kuiper-Belt is the area immediately outside Neptune’s orbit, stretching from around 30 AU to 50 AU from the Sun. That space contains a large number of minor planets bearing a striking resemblance to Pluto. 800 have been discovered so far (almost all in the last 15 years) and more are found every year. Most are significantly smaller than Pluto, but Xena is actually larger, and a number of others are over 1000 km in diameter (Pluto is around 2300).

These “planets” are quite different than the 8 regular planets. They are far smaller than even Mercury (around 4900 km). They have orbits far more eccentric than any planet, tilted almost 20 degrees off the plane the rest of the planets stick close to, and with orbits that (in the case of Pluto and others) actually bring them closer Neptune and then shoot them far back out. They suffer from the same slow erosion by solar wind that characterizes comets – if you moved most KBOs closer to the sun, they would have tails.

In the end this was a political decision – they felt it would cause discomfort for people to face up to the fact that Pluto should never have been classified as a planet, and now that other objects had been found to demonstrate that point, the only “solution” was to let them in, too. Ultimately, it just cheapens the whole thing – being a planet used to mean something, y’know? If this IAU change goes through, soon there will be dozens of planets and the whole concept will be meaningless.

Anyways, since this is a music blog, let’s bring this back to some songs. First, a couple educational ones, to help us understand our place in the universe:

Galaxy Song – Monty Python
Why Does the Sun Shine? – They Might Be Giants

And a couple others on the subject of extra-terrestrial bodies:

Galaxies – Laura Veirs
Stars – Hum
Randy Described Eternity – Built to Spill

Finally, a portion of the BBC radio series of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy with the computer which was built to finally answer the Ultimate Question of life, the universe, and everything.

Life, the Universe, and Everything – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

I cannot recommend strongly enough that you obtain for yourself a copy of the original 12 episode radio series, the origin of all things Hitchhiker and still by far the best version. If you’ve read the books, seen the movie, seen the play, read the comics, or played the game but have never heard the radio series, you have no idea what you’re missing. In fact, if you’ve only seen the movie, please understand that it is NOTHING like the radio series. Speaking of, there’s a great (though perhaps a little too intense) review of the movie here.

Any other Hitchhiker fans out there: what are your favorite scenes? The Deep Thought section is one of my favorites, but the seance/”why does the Earthman like tea” scene is probably my favorite.

What’s the news around town? Pitchfork counted down the top 200 songs of the 1960s. As with all such lists, there’s only so much you can say about it. 200 songs for a whole decade (one of the most musically rich decades ever, no less) will leave hundreds, even thousands of well-deserving candidates off.

That said, there were a number of interesting decisions. A number of experimental, jazz, etc. tracks made it into the 150-200 range and then completely disappeared. Pitchfork wants us to know that they’re hip, but not too hip.

And was anything more obvious than them picking “God Only Knows” as number 1? Don’t get me wrong–it’s my favorite Beach Boys song and would probably make my top 10. It just felt 100% inevitable. And while we’re on the subject of the Beach Boys, 3 songs in the top 13? Really? And two of the top 7 from Pet Sounds? It’s another example of the problem with the collective identity of Pitchfork, since when it was reissued a little while back, the reviewer gave it a 7.5 and declared “If this were not the Beach Boys, but some indie pop outfit on Parasol Records, it might make a few critics’ Top 10 lists, if it didn’t just vanish into obscurity.”

And, how could such a list get made without me talking about the Beatles? They limited it to five per band, and the ones they chose carry no big surprises: “I Want to Hold Your Hand” HAD to be on the list. And “Eleanor Rigby” and “I Am the Walrus” are both pretty canonical and representative of different periods. Mainstream enough to be safe picks while great enough that no one can really complain. And “A Day in the Life” making the top 5 was just about as much of a foregone conclusion as “God Only Knows” and “Like a Rolling Stone.” My one real complaint is with “Tomorrow Never Knows.” Revolutionary, yes. Influential, yes. Best? No. Apart from Pitchfork, how many people would really say it’s one of the 20 best songs of the decade?

But these are consensus choices, which means they stayed away from anything poppy after the requisite one early tune. Ultimately, it’s because they love the Beatles as pyschedelic artists, and their choices (and comments) reveal that they consider the Beatles to have been the John Lennon show, with Paul just along for the ride. I mean, it’s okay to pick the “obvious” ones. So what if “Hey Jude” was their biggest hit? It really was that good. And don’t bail on “Penny Lane” because you’re worried it’s too poppy.

Or, if you want to stay away from those, surely you can dig a little deeper into the catalogue: take “For No One” instead of “Eleanor Rigby” – the emotion is all there, and may even be the better without the gimmick of the strings. Or you want a trippy song, why not go with “Rain” or “She Said She Said?” And do we really need three pyschedelic songs? How about “In My Life” or “Yesterday” or “Something” or “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” or “Let it Be” or “Across the Universe” or the Abbey Road medley? I guess it just seems weird when you have a band that transcended genres like no one else ever has that the five they picked seem so similar.

All that said, I’m obviously ascribing too much motive to these selections. Like I said above, any list is going to leave off far more worthy candidates than it will include. And, all things considered, they did a great job of mixing things up, while trying to cull 200 songs out of a great decade for music.

So, on that note, here’s a couple choices they made that I love, with the link to the page where its discussed and a short excerpt from their comments:

Crimson and Clover – Tommy James (this is the shortened version, unfortunately, since I lost the extended version in the great iTunes meltdown of aught-6 and haven’t re-added it)
#57
This song– quite possibly the closest white pop musicians have ever come to approximating how making love actually feels– is meant to be an afternoon roll in the hay, not an alleyway screw.

Waterloo Sunset – The Kinks
#29
This was supposedly the first track he produced on his own and every detail works to reconfirm a sensibility: The sporty intro sidesteps into the unmistakable vocal melody played first on guitar, then sung by Davies. Throughout, a scrappy rhythm guitar abuts an angelic harmonic web, balancing vicarious experience with the gorgeous hands-on pageantry of the city.

Runaway – Del Shannon
#64
Despite lacking the “yeah, well fuck you too” vitriol of garage groups like the Seeds, hundreds of punks and proto-punks heard, for better or worse, a whole aesthetic universe in “Runaway”. It’s one of the most coverable songs of all time.

Okay, I’m going to say it. I don’t think people will like it, but it needs to be said: I’m just not that into the Long Winters.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t dislike them, nor do I think those who do are wrong. I just can’t get excited about them. And I’ve been trying for years. Back in 2002 and 2003, when pretty much everyone NEAR Puget Sound was in love with these guys, I gave them a listen and (with one exception) just didn’t see what the fuss was about. However, that exception was so good that I went to see them live, and bought When I Pretend to Fall, just so I could hear it:

Scared Straight

It starts with that goofy organ riff and then the drums kick in. And then, the horns and its off to the races. The call-and-response chorus is pure bliss and the 30-second section that starts at 3:07 is absurdly good. All told, this is one of my favorite songs of the past few years, which only makes it more frustrating that I can’t seem to enjoy anything else by the band.

Part of it is that John Roderick’s voice, while perfectly suited to a limited type of song (such as “Scared Straight”) grates on my nerves in a lot of other contexts. And part of it is that I get this claustrophobic feel about a lot of their songs. By which I mean the tone and beat tend to be very repetitive and live within a very narrow band. And I just keep waiting for the song to bust free and it never does. Which is very unsatisfying. Finally, their lyrics are often great but sometimes make me cringe just a little.

For a little more context, here’s my second favorite Long Winters song:

The Commander Thinks Aloud

This song, about the Columbia shuttle disaster exemplifies my mixed feelings about the band. Some of the problems I talked about above are dealt with extremely well here. Roderick’s voice is almost perfect, especially when it almost breaks (at 40 seconds “from here I can touch the sun” and at 1:08 “the Tropic of Capricorn is below” for example). As for my concern about dramatic and melodic arc, it could hardly be better. It slowly builds from the peaceful and joyous imagination of returning home until it peaks at 3:06 with one of the finest moments in music the last few years: “can you feel it we’re almost home?” The optimism, the hope embodied in his voice is heartbreaking, since we the listeners know all too well what is about to happen.

So what’s the problem? Well, it sounds a little silly but I just can’t get past the way Roderick sings “yay” after every line. Why “yay?” Who says “yay” that isn’t 5 years old? It just…sounds wrong. If he would just say “yeah” instead, it would be so much better. It’s neurotic on my part, but I can’t help it.

My other complaint is that it doesn’t go anywhere after this. The final two minutes are simply a repetition of the line “the crew compartment’s breaking up.” I’m not sure how I wanted it to end, but I know that this isn’t quite right. No reflection, no life-flashing-before-your-eyes, nothing? It’s a little weird for me because I actually met one of the people on the Columbia. Only in passing (he was the father of a friend), but I shook his hand only a month before the flight.

That doesn’t mean I know anything about it of course. It’s just that this is a real person, a real memory for me. I can’t let it be so depersonalized (“the crew compartment’s breaking up”). Maybe it’s asking too much, or maybe I’m coming at it wrong and the line works perfectly for others. All I can tell you is that it doesn’t feel right to me.

So anyways, their third album Putting the Days to Bed was released last month. Like most of their other work, I can perfectly understand why other people really enjoy it but just can’t quite get there myself. It’s enjoyable and I’ll certainly keep listening to it as the year goes on, but I’m still waiting to get it.

As a sample, this is my favorite song on the record and a pretty good representation of what they’re about:

Pushover

On the agenda today: “an indie-rock comic-book story about an energy drink made from fossilized human corpses.” That’s how one of the members of Griddle describes their third album Klimty Favela, a record which emerged out of a series of improvisational takes, and was created by splicing together “the good bits” from many different sessions, and adding percussion, synths, vocals, mellotron, etc. As such, “experimental” is the watchword here. There are certainly tunes, but there is some weird stuff going on, too.

But seriously, “fossilized human corpses.” I’ll quote from their myspace page:

It’s a comic book and an album all wrapped into one phantasmagoric whirl of mindfuck. Think of it as a people’s history of the Olympics, with chunks on dentistry and fossil fuel. Or a people’s history of dentistry, in which human corpses are compressed into an energy drink for athletes.

Um, yeah.

They say it is “recommended if you like: Flaming Lips, Fiery Furnaces, Super Furry Animals, or Dungen.” I agree strongly with this. As with all four of those bands, some songs really work for me – others do not. A number of tracks (“Pickett Fence Grille” for example) sound far too stuck in the 70s, with the falsetto voices, beats that almost sounds like it could be Cheap Trick, or vaguely spacey music that would fit on a Pink Floyd knock-off. When they do it well (as on “Porpoise Song”) I enjoy it, but it often feels overdone. And there are a few places where it just seems like they’re adding sounds and effects for no reason whatsoever except because they can.

That said, this was in large part my complaint about the new Flaming Lips album and everyone seems to disagree with me on that one. So I’ll break a little bit from my normal reviewing approach (only talking about bands I really like) to give a guarded recommendation. Griddle is never going to be one of my favorite bands, but they are pretty darn good at what they do, and certainly deserve some attention.

So, if you like the new Lips album, or the weirder Fiery Furnaces stuff (or any of the out-there prog experimental stuff), you should probably check out Griddle. If you (like me) are interested in this genre, but only in small doses and only when it doesn’t completely divorce itself from indie-pop, Klimty Favela has a few songs you’ll enjoy a lot but may not quite be your cup of tea.

Two songs that I particularly like:

Dr Becky Bolanty
Theme From the 1984 Olympic Games

And, I have to admit, the more I listen to this record the more I get into the weirder stuff. One example that I originally didn’t like at all, but have found myself returning to quite a bit:

City Made of Teeth II

I had never heard of The Headlights until yesterday, when I noticed that two of my favorite blogs (Music For Kids Who Can’t Read Good and Good Weather for Airstrikes) mentioned them, both going out of their way to gush about them as something special. I downloaded TV and was hooked. Within 20 minutes I had bought the album Kill Them With Kindness and now, less than 24 hours later, I’ve listened all the way through a couple times.

Aren’t moments like that great? When you hear something you like and can immediately click a few buttons and get the whole thing – it makes me think that human civilization just may be headed in the right direction after all.

Anyways, the band they remind me most of is Stars, both because they trade off between male and female vocals to great effect and because the album is a glorious mixture of shoegaze, new wave, and shimmery pop. It’s also one of those great records that can sound like a cohesive whole without each song sounding too similar. Seriously, how is everyone not raving about this band?

As I said above, TV is a clear standout, with an insanely catchy melody and angelic vocals that rival the best of Amy Millan, all packed into two minutes and forty seconds of pop perfection. Still there’s not a bad song, and a number of other great ones. You can get a couple at Music For Kids Who Can’t Read Good, and here’s two more:

Words Make You Tired
Pity City

It’ll take me a little while to really soak this one in, but first impressions give it a pretty good shot of ranking among my favorites of 2006.

Kill Them With Kindness comes out in stores next week, but you can buy it on eMusic right now. And, you can head over to their myspace page to listen to a few more songs and check out tour dates. I’m planning on going to the October 30 show in Boston, but they’re on tour for approximately 17 straight months so it’s almost certain they’ll be coming somewhere near you.

Is the Boss over the hill? Dan Bern thinks so.

You know the story about Woody Guthrie on his death bed handing over the reigns of the folk movement to a young Bob Dylan? This song by Dan Bern (from the album Smartie Mine) suggests that Bruce Springsteen ought to do the same with him.

Talkin’ Woody, Bob, Bruce & Dan Blues

In fact, he goes so far as to imagine breaking into Springsteen’s house in the middle of the night:

Well, I found the Boss asleep in bed
Pillows piled up round his head
I turned on the light took off my coat
Stuck a theromometer down his throat
Said don’t talk
You look pale, Boss
Not at all well

Highlights include an increasingly hilarious progression of the story as Bern tries to convince Springsteen that he is sick and dying, a shockingly good impersonation (both in terms of voice and lyrics), and the conclusion when Springsteen tosses Bern out of the house and Bern mutters “surprising strength for a dying man…”

Why bring this up? Well, as you most likely already know, Springsteen has released yet another album this year (surprisingly prolific for a dying man). If you read my list of Best Albums of 2005, you know that Devils and Dust was #17. And if you read my post about Reason to Believe you know that I love Springsteen a whole lot.

So, when I heard that he had another new record (We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions) coming out, I was very excited. When I found out that it wouldn’t include any Springsteen originals and was merely a bunch of songs from old Pete Seeger albums, I was less excited. I’ve always thought that Springsteen was at his best when he wrote songs that transcended (rather than dwelled in) the traditional folk genre.

That said, I still had to get record. And I have to admit I’ve been pleasantly surprised. Most significantly because it calls attention to the fact that while the Boss is a great songwriter, at heart he’s still a performer more than anything else. And on this record, he and the Seeger Session band perform their heart out.

If the Born to Run era Springsteen was a wide-eyed kid, the current incarnation is a grizzled veteran: battle-hardened but unbroken, and with the same fundamental optimism. Many of these songs I’ve known since I was a little kid (John Henry, and Erie Canal, for example) but I’ve always thought of them as quiet banjo-tunes to be sung around a campfire. Springsteen reinterprets them as rambunctious musical assaults.

“Old Dan Tucker” is the clear highlight, kicking things off with a bang as the band romps through a song over 150 years old, giving it new life. “Mrs. McGrath” is another standout track, an old Irish song focused on a mother who welcomes her legless son home from war. An anti-war song to be sure, but like most truly great Springsteen songs, it is a story about people rather than simply concepts. “O Mary Don’t You Weep” has an extended gospel closeout, and “Shenandoah” is quietly beautiful.

The whole record was recorded in two days. No overdubs, no adornment, no frivolties. This brings to mind Nebraska, almost 25 years old now, when Springsteen tossed out the produced recordings and simply released the raw acoustic demos. In doing so, he created a significant split among his admirers between those who appreciate the realism as he delves into the madness and pain of life and those who are suffocated by the bleakness.

Something similar may happen here, which I think is fitting since I see this album as a bit of a mirror image to Nebraska. Both are stripped bare, but while Nebraska was sparse and quiet, here that stripping-down creates a gritty and triumphant sound. And, most importantly, it just sounds fun. Which is refreshing since the pure joy of music and life have always been implicit in his music, but rarely does he just let it all out. And it’s important to show that an album of folk songs can also be full of in-your-face rock and roll.

All that said, it does suffer from the fact that someone else wrote the songs. I think a compelling case could be made that Springsteen is one of the greatest songwriters of all time and while a part of that shows up here in the arrangement and approach to the songs, I can’t help but think that if he strove to write his own songs, they would be even better.

But ultimately, that project would miss the point. We Shall Overcome is not about creating a folk masterpiece – it’s about paying homage to the folk tradition that nurtured him, and having a chance to give his own interpretation of these songs of tremendous historical importance. It will never be one of my favorite Springsteen records, but it is nevertheless an important milestone for an important career.

So is the Boss over the hill? No way.

A couple songs:
Old Dan Tucker
Mrs. McGrath