Heartache With Hard Work

Regular readers know that I don’t regularly talk about hip-hop. It’s partly because I don’t tend to be a particularly big fan, but also because it’s so far outside the zone of what I feel confident discussing that I don’t really know how much I could add. I don’t know the history, I don’t know what is original and what’s derivative. But one thing I can tell is when a song absolutely blows me away. And in those situations I’m happy to post, even if I don’t really know any of the context for the discussion.

Feel Alive – Metermaids

This song, off the new record from Brooklyn’s Metermaids, easily passes that threshold. In part, this may be because they are a self-described “hip-hop (but not really hip-hop) group” which really just means they combine the power of rhythm in hip-hop with the harmonies of soul and the strong melodies and big choruses that always keep me coming back to pop music.

It’s really a bit of an untapped market, I think. The hordes of indie rock fans who want to dabble in hip-hop but are turned off by a lot of the more unsavory aspects (in terms of the misogyny, homophobia, and general glorification of violence, sex, and hate – but also in the discomfort generated by the mass-marketing of this stuff).

There is a lot of progressive hip-hop to be sure. But in my experience at least, a lot of it misses out on one crucial fact. In order to attract a lot of the theoretically available audience, you’re going to need a hook. Get their attention with keyboards that could slide right into a synthy dance track or a fusion jazz number. And then, once you’re set there, open their eyes to a whole new way of getting sucked into the beat.

For a clear reference of how to get the job done, Metermaids are a great place to start. “Feel Alive” is the most clearly melodic track on Nightlife, but there are plenty more that work with the same material. “Come Home” is buoyed by punchy guitar riff and chorus. “No Matter What” has a distinctly choral feel. And “Fingertips” melds an 80s keyboard line with a jittery, funk-infused beat. Elsewhere, tracks like “Never Far” and “Life is Easy” are seriously in debt to classic R&B and soul singers. And “Funk Terrorist” sounds exactly like name suggests.

Life is Easy – Metermaids

There’s a thin line between dabblers and those who can successfully mine a wide range of genres. Metermaids clearly fall in the latter category. This is a group constantly seeking new ways of expressing old ideas, both lyrically and musically – looking for ways to channel the complicated and conflicted feelings of anger, love, depression, solidarity, and community into a form of music that builds up rather than tears down.

Given that, it should be no surprise that Nightlife is a record that screams New York, with people of all colors, from all walks of life live side by side. Not always in harmony, but with a common identity that transcends any single group. It’s the sound the subway at 3 AM, of kids in Central Park, of hipsters on the Lower East Side, of the afternoon in Harlem. Most of all its an expression of joy, tempered by the recognition of hard times and tough places, but still resplendent in spite of it all.

Today’s “you can’t be serious” moment brought to you by Robert Thurman (Father of Uma), professor of Buddhist studies at Columbia, in an interview with New York Times Magazine:

As a Buddhist, how do you reconcile your pacifism with the roles your daughter Uma has played in films like Quentin Tarantino’s bloody “Kill Bill”? Quentin is kind of obsessed, he’s a wild guy. But he is very brilliant. We trust that his motive is to show people the foolishness of violence rather than to glorify it. I hope that’s true.

If I could pick one defining characteristic of Quentin Tarantino it would be his obsessive glorification of violence, materalism, and junk culture (see A Dream of Perfect Reception: The Movies of Quentin Tarantino by Gary Groth). It would be like saying “I really enjoy the new Star Wars films because of their subtlety and attention to character.”

Anyways, I swear this is still a music blog – I’ll be posting some songs later today. I just had to get that off my chest.

Do You Hear What I Hear? – Bodies of Water

Okay, small digression here, but I’m hoping there are some readers out there who can help me understand something.

Namely, what is the big deal over this FISA thing? I mean, sure, it’s a bad bill. And sure, I’m against expansive wiretapping and am not in love with the idea of total amnesty for the companies who helped it happen illegally. But honestly, if I made a list of my top 100 political priorities, this wouldn’t even come close.

And yet, I’ve rarely seen the internet-Left more angry over something. They are just seething, bringing out all their threats, and generally throwing a huge tantrum. But every time I try to get someone to explain why this is such a big deal I get arguments that don’t make much sense to me. Most of them seem to be virtually textbook cases of a logical fallacy.

“It’s an example of how the Democrats in DC are willing to sell out principles.”
“It justifies doing anything. If the Constitution can be thrown away for this, they could do anything they want.”
“It proves they aren’t willing to stand up to Bush and Cheney – they’re just going to let them get away with this”

These all rely on the idea that FISA is not just a representative example of a larger phenomenon, but rather is something that by itself breaks open new possibilities for severe state intrusions. But I just don’t see any reason to believe that’s the case. It’s easy to post hysterical analogies, but the claims are thin as tissue-paper, as far as I can tell.

We live in a democracy, an imperfect one to be sure, but a democracy nevertheless. And there are very clear lines of where the American population is going to tolerate, or not tolerate, certain actions. Obviously, those lines will shift depending on a variety of factors, but I there are a lot of things that are simply so obviously unpopular that they would never even be suggested. And most of the hysterical claims about what FISA will lead to fall easily into that category.

Which brings me to the real point. I think the big issue with FISA is much more about the backlash than it is about the Democratic senators. Sure, hold their feet to the fire when they make silly and bad votes (as they did here). But at the same time, take a look in the mirror and try to watch out for the trap of the netroots echo-chamber effect.

Because on this issue, I just don’t see any real traction with the general population. They simply don’t see all that much to be worried about in wiretapping. If they are concerned, it’s a much more vague distaste than the hysteria of folks on the blogs. Which means that the general approach of freaking out at folks in Congress for not being “good enough” Democrats puts the cart well before the horse. When you find yourself incredibly disagreeing with not just the Republicans but also with a huge percentage of the Democratic caucus, it might be a good time to ask whether your political goals are realistic enough to merit serious consideration. After all, there is a lot of truth to the old axion that “politics is the art of the possible.”

To be sure, sometimes you have to buck the trends no matter what. The Iraq war, for example, was a terrible idea and deserved being named precisely that in spite of the large support by Democrats in Congress. But these need to be exceptional cases. Otherwise you’ll quickly find yourself in the hazy nowhere of Naderland, angry all the time and losing the capacity to distinguish the baby and the bathwater. Which brings me back to my original question. Is there anyone out there who can convince me that this FISA bill deserves anything close to the same response as the war? Why should I consider FISA to be so egregious to merit my legitimate and sustained outrage at the betrayal of Congressional Dems?

Absent a good answer to that, it seems like a far more productive route would be to refocus some of the reaction on persuasion. That doesn’t mean abandoning the idea that our politicians ought to be held accountable, or giving up on the pressure for bills which align with the Constitution. But combine those with a much bigger outreach program to explain to folks like me why this issue deserves so much attention.

In short, if you can’t make people believe that this is the big deal that you think it is, there’s no reason to expect anything to change. It’s easy to talk to like-minded folks about how angry you are, but I tend to think it would be more productive to put some of that energy into trying to get potential allies on your side. Because frankly, if you can’t succeed at the latter task, you’ll have pretty conclusively demonstrated the futility of the former.

Cop Light Parade – High on Stress

What can I say? I’m a sucker for this sort of song. Like Wilco before they decided they were too cool for this sort of thing or like Whiskeytown in the moments when Ryan Adams manages to keep it all in check, High on Stress have produced that sort of song that seems to glide effortlessly, like it just emerged fully formed and complete. It sounds easy to do, but like most things, it’s not as simple as that. When you’re working with simple ingredients you have to exercise special care. If you’re not careful, you end up producing schlocky, overly obvious, boring songs. But when it all works, it comes out like this, twangy and relaxed and heartfelt.

Oh, and they’re from the Twin Cities, so insert obligatory Replacements and Soul Asylum references.

Turkish Song of the Damned – The Pogues
Turkish March (Rondo Alla Turca) – Oleg Gitlin

My mother’s side of the family is Turkish, which I have to admit doesn’t have a particularly big influence on my daily life (apart from providing me with a Turkish chin dimple), and I certainly don’t identify as Turkish. That said, I do feel a little bit of nationalistic pride when it comes to soccer.

So you can imagine my excitement that the plucky Turkish side which no one thought would amount to much of anything in this tournament has progressed to the semifinals of Euro 2008, where they will be facing Germany later this afternoon. And it also doesn’t hurt that they’ve done it in absolutely spectacular fashion, with three come from behind wins. In one they scored three times in the final 15 minutes to pull out a miracle against the Czech Republic and advance to the quarterfinals. And then, in that game, they held Croatia 0-0 for 119 minutes only to give up a goal in the waning moments of extra time. They looked done and dusted but somehow managed to snatch an equalizing goal with literally seconds remaining, and then went on to win in penalties.

It’s all the more astonishing given the injuries they’ve suffered and the players they’re missing from red and yellow cards. All of this comes to a head today as they’ll be playing Germany without their first string keeper, their best player (Nihat), the guy who almost carried them singlehandedly at moments in this tournament (Tuncay), and a number of others. It seems impossible to imagine they could beat the Germans. And yet…nothing that’s happened yet has seemed all that probable either.

If you like soccer and haven’t been watching this tournament, you’ve missed some absolutely stunning games. Not just the Turks. Across the board, this is easily the best (in terms of quality of play and in terms of story and excitement) tournament I’ve seen.

There’s something strangely enthralling about a tethered dissonance. For proof of this, look no further than Rip It Off, the new record from Times New Viking. It’s the sort of album that will drive many listeners away holding their bruised and battered ears. And it’s certainly an acquired taste. But there really is something here that draws you in – something that you can’t experience with the traditional clean sounds of most music.

Because it’s not just that Times New Viking are loud – lots of people are loud – it’s the way the sound envelops you and cuts off all sight of everything beyond. To listen is to be trapped in the midst of a storm with no clue whether it stops just beyond your sight or goes on forever. It’s full of crackling energy and guitars that attack you from all sides at once. And yet buried in all that is a strangely pure melody.

And for about 15 minutes, over the first seven tracks, it all works to perfection. Where the traditional, classical approach to dissonance is to resolve it by following it with a period of consonance, Times New Viking employs an altogether more satisfactory approach. Instead of intervals it all comes together at once. The tension, the instability, the buffeting harshness…these are all put into dialogue. And what emerges is a deeper smoothness that keeps the whole delicate mess channeled.

Unfortunately, this trend falters with the eighth track “Relevant: Now,” which breaks up the whole flow of the record. At 3:39 it is two or three times longer than virtually every other song. And once you finally reach the end, you’ve lost your feel for the discordant harmonies of the first half. The second half contains a number of fine songs, in particular the excellent “Times New Viking Vs. Yo La Tengo” but the conceit is now revealed. Like a visual illusion that you finally crack but then find yourself completely incapable of shifting your vision back, once the trick is resolved there’s no going back.

It’s a shame because for a little while they do about as good of a job of navigating the treacherous paths as I can remember. And still, if it fails to break genre boundaries in quite the fashion that it initially promises, it nevertheless remains a very solid and enjoyable record.

(My Head) – Times New Viking
Times New Viking Vs. Yo La Tengo – Times New Viking

I became a big James McMurtry fan a few years ago after being turned onto his “Choctaw Bingo,” a stunning “song about the North Texas-Southern Oklahoma Crystal Methamphetamine Industry” which chugs along a biting rootsy rock guitar riff and features some of the most clever (and dirty) lyrics you’re likely to hear. It was only much later that I realized James was the son of Larry McMurtry, the author of (among other things) Lonesome Dove. Which makes you wonder if the McMurtry family reunions might possibly be close to as interesting as the one at Uncle Slayton’s.

This is all currently relevant thanks to his new record Just Us Kids, which is probably his best. It features more than a few of his (always good) honky-tonk blues-rock inspired songs, but as has been the case usual) the gritty frontman finds his muse most perfectly on the more gentle tracks. Among these, one standout is “Ruby and Carlos” which hits you in the gut, like a great Townes Van Zandt song. There’s a line in the song that references a “waking dream” – which to my mind is as perfect a characterization of how it feels to hear this track. You fall into the speakers and inhabit these chipped and fading souls, wondering about lost loves and bitter hearts.

Another highlight is “Ruins of the Realm” which is probably his most beautiful song to date. It’s the sort of song that comes to you as a series of vignettes. You see a man driving in a broken pickup truck, you see a man dancing in the twilight, you see the entire South. It’s a triumphant sadness, a memory of faded glory that translates into a crooked smile.

Ruins of the Realm – James McMurtry
Ruby and Carlos – James McMurtry

New York City – They Might Be Giants
The Only Living Boy in New York – Simon and Garfunkel

Hey all, sorry for no posting for the last week. I made an impromptu trip to New York which left me without computer access for several days. Normal service will resume this week, and in the meantime, here’s an assortment of random thoughts I’ve had over the past few days.

* I love Shakespeare, and there’s no better way to experience it than in the theater, especially if it’s Hamlet and the theater is in the middle of Central Park. Seeing Hamlet again, and watching the Doctor Who episode about him have both helped me to re-acquaint myself with the astonishment I often feel when pondering how so much genius could come from one man.

* I had never heard of Olafur Eliasson until yesterday, but I am now a huge fan. If you get the chance, definitely stop by the Museum of Modern Art before the end of the month to see his exhibition. It’s an absolutely stunning display of color, texture, and atmosphere.

* Am I the only one whose mind immediately turned to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy when I read about the way John McCain has tried to back away from his support for Social Security Privatization? Matt Yglesias puts it nicely: “he stridently denies that he wants to favor privatizing Social Security. He just favors policies that are the same as the policies that were called “privatizing Social Security” before the GOP found out that privatizing Social Security is unpopular.”

And the relevant section of the Guide is of course the scene from the radio version discussing the Lintilla problem:

The problem of the five hundred and seventy-eight thousand million Lintilla clones is very simple to explain, rather harder to solve. Cloning machines have, of course, been around for a long time and have proved very useful in reproducing particularly talented or attractive – in response to pressure from the Sirius Cybernetics marketing lobby – particularly gullible people and this was all very fine and splendid and only occasionally terribly confusing.

And then one particular cloning machine got badly out of sync with itself. Asked to produce six copies of a wonderfully talented and attractive girl called “Lintilla” for a Bratis-Vogen escort agency, whilst another machine was busy creating five-hundred lonely business executives in order to keep the laws of supply and demand operating profitably, the machine went to work.

Unfortunately, it malfunctioned in such a way that it got halfway through creating each new Lintilla before the previous one was actually completed. Which meant, quite simply, that it was impossible ever to turn it off – without committing murder. This problem taxed the minds, first of the cloning engineers, then of the priests, then of the letters page of ’The Sidereal Record Straigtener’, and finally of the lawyers, who experimented vainly with ways of redefining murder, re-evaluating it, and in the end, even respelling it, in the hope that no one would notice.

* Finally, I spent a lot of time while in New York making a mental list of all the places mentioned in They Might Be Giants’ “New York City” and checking items off as I visited them. Is that weird? I think it’s probably weird.

Today I want to discuss about the simple-but-sweet 3 minute pop song. As a talking point, here’s the DC-based Julie Ocean, with a track from their just-released Long Gone and Nearly There.

#1 Song – Julie Ocean

I have absolutely no problem believing that contemporary popular music is every bit as meaningful as classical music. Sure, the more people out there producing songs the more dreck you are going to get, but at its pinnacle, any form of music which inspires people, gets them dancing, or gives them some happiness is worth remembering.

The Beatles were immensely popular and are every bit as deserving of a place in a conversation about history’s greatest music as Mozart or Bach. But it’s more than just that. We don’t need to fall back on The Beatles for this. Take “Toxic” from Britney Spears. Set aside all the sad tabloid covers and drama of the past decade and just listen to the song. It has a quality that is absolutely transcendent – like it or not, you can’t deny it’s there. And there’s a reason why songs like “Umbrella” and “Paper Planes” were so popular last year. They tap into that same magic of pop music that can occasionally turn a few simple chords into something incandescent.

But that invites another question. What of all the others, the songs that don’t glow in the same way? The song linked above for example, is perfectly nice, but doesn’t really go anywhere not already perfectly tread by hundreds of other bands who grew up loving The Ramones. That certainly doesn’t make it bad, but should we glean anything more than that? I say yes, but perhaps not for the most obvious reason.

It would be easy to just say: “well, the 999 duds are a necessary field that we wade through in order to discover the occasional true gem.” But I don’t think that’s really what it’s about.

Because for me, the real joy of music is in the idiosyncrasies. The communal experience of a summer pop song that everyone in the country knows is neat, but when push comes to shove I’m more into the idea that there are people who absolutely LOVE some band that virtually no one else has ever heard of. That’s part of what got me interested in music blogs in the first place: the chance to talk about some of my hidden bands and to hear about hundreds of others.

Now, that’s that uncommon of a thought. But the slightly different place I want to go is to say that I think this idiosyncratic experience is far more interesting in regards to straightforward pop music than anything else. There are lots of folks who get bored with mainstream stuff and then wander off into experimental stuff, or pysch-rock, or whatever. That’s cool and all, but I get very bored very quickly with almost all of that stuff.

What I’m far more interested in is the way that a genre that’s totally mainstream, where we’ve presumably discussed ad infinitum what goes into making a perfect pop song, can still contain so many diverse opinions. I absolutely love that even if they’re not quite what I’m looking for, bands like Julie Ocean can still have absolutely passionate fans.

So while it’s relatively easy to pick a few standards that will gain common acclaim, I think it’s often a lot more interesting to ask someone to pick 4 or 5 songs they adore in a mainstream genre which don’t tend to be commonly recognized. You’ll often end up with songs that to your ears sound completely standard. You’re tempted to call them Ramones knockoffs or U2 retreads. But then you stop and ask yourself what does this person hear that I can’t?

It makes me happy to think that something as seemingly uncomplicated as a straightforward 3 minute guitar-pop song might not actually be as simple as it seems. Maybe it’s just me, but I like the unpredictability.

So along those lines, here’s a couple tracks that occupy that weird space between “guilty pleasure” and “unheralded genius” that often characterizes this type of song. These are all clearly “popular” in nature, though none of them was ever actually all that popular. And they’re all lacking in that unknown spark that could have made them universal favorites, but for whatever reason they work for me.

Charm Attack – Leona Naess
Mirage – Mack Starks
Tape It – Winterkids
Einstein on the Beach – Counting Crows

Leona Naess was briefly popular about 10 years ago with this track, but I can’t say I’ve anything about her since. And this is probably the best song Juliana Hatfield never wrote, and it’s almost the perfect example. I know it’s cheesy. I know it’s totally obvious. The lyrics are silly. But it’s just too tasty to resist.

Mack Starks is the vaguely country, soulful, radio-ready pop version of the same phenomenon. Sure, it’s totally telegraphed, but somehow I don’t care.

The Winterkids are clearly a C+ version of British New New Wavers, and yet this song gets me every time.

And the Counting Crows are a slightly different take on this effect. Obviously, they are/were tremendously popular, but the thing I’ve never been able to understand is why this song – by miles and miles their best, in my opinion – was never big.

Anyone else got some songs along these lines they’d like to share? I do love hearing the answer to this question.

It’s funny that when summer comes and you suddenly have nothing but free time, that you find yourself with almost no free time at all. What with frisbee, planting a garden, watching Doctor Who, cooking, and celebrating two close friends getting engaged, there’s just no time to post on the blog.

So, in honor of all the wonderful things about summer, here’s a track that was my absolute favorite song in the world for several years when I was growing up. I would sit in my room on rainy Washington days watching the streaks run down the window and dreaming of a time when I could experience something this bittersweet. Sure, that’s a little weird, but the song is so beautiful and heartbreaking, surely you can understand why.

A Summer Song – Chad and Jeremy