Note to self: download the new Charlatans record when you get home tonight. It's Free!
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Friday, April 25, 2008
Lost - The Shape of Things To Come
If you want to read a witty recap of last night's Lost, you can go here. I just want to get this out there before I read it somewhere else:
Charles Widmore must be Ben's "constant."
I'll also second everyone's reactions to Alex's fate, the smoke-opalypse, and the morse code business.
Charles Widmore must be Ben's "constant."
I'll also second everyone's reactions to Alex's fate, the smoke-opalypse, and the morse code business.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Something To Look Forward To
A good "All Songs Considered" with a few new records to look forward to:
- Death Cab For Cutie - more guitar-y, but I'm still skeptical
- Wolf Parade - sounds just as good as the debut
- Eef Barzelay - I don't know much about Clem Snide, but "The Girls Don't Care" is a very nice song.
- Fleet Foxes - yeah, maybe.
- My Morning Jacket - epic and spacey. I'd just like to hear more frenetic guitar, a la "One Big Holiday."
Monday, April 14, 2008
The Sundays
Via the A.V. Club:
Somehow, in the 18 years since this album came out I have never shelved it or taken it out of regular rotation. Top 10, desert island, etc.
I cynically, cynically say the world is that way, surprise, surprise, surprise....
Somehow, in the 18 years since this album came out I have never shelved it or taken it out of regular rotation. Top 10, desert island, etc.
Anxiety of Influence
From a book review for a couple of new novels I'm not all that interested in:
Become David Foster Wallace?
No thanks.
It's especially difficult not to think of Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man when reading these novels, because both depict young men of burgeoning literary sensibilities. With Stephen Dedalus, Joyce set the agenda for any writer who sought to style his own coming of age as a journey both personal and literary, a sexual awakening that mirrors growing political consciousness. Striving to "forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race," Stephen is neither sentimental nor calculatedly ambitious as he becomes the colossus against whom a writer may rebel, but can never escape. It's hard to think of an American novel other than Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man that attains the same level of personal integrity and national import. Today's young guns have set their sights considerably lower than Ellison and his mid-century peers.The Joyce stuff is great. And well, if writers have had to set their sights lower, what else is there to do?
Become David Foster Wallace?
No thanks.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Easy Listening for Gen Xers
Indie music has hit another one of those annoying lulls where I'm pretty unimpressed with what's going on. Established bands are fading into obscurity, and the newer groups aren't providing fans with much to grab onto (Fuck Buttons?)
So instead of getting into anything new, I've been dipping back into the recent past to collect downbeat records (Zero 7, Morcheeba, Air, etc.). Music that's good for chilling out and relaxing. Music that you can work to. Music that's good when you're sitting at a computer for 9 or 10 hours a day.
In other words, it's easy listening music.
It's smooth jazz. It's yacht rock. But unlike those boomerish vices, it is at least music with history and ideas and a sense of urban(e) coolness, so I can rationalize it. A little.
(Unlike my recent fondness for Estelle and Kanye West, and Madonna with JT and Timbaland which I find impossible to rationalize, but I digress).
And hey, I probably should have seen this coming.
Unlike the rest of the hipster world I actually like Yacht Rock and have enjoyed it unironically for years - probably because my parents' record collection inexplicably stopped sometime around the break-up of the Beatles so I have no nightmarish memories of drunken boomers drinking pina coladas and singing along to What a Fool Believes. Besides, you can start making fun of Steely Dan when you've mastered those freaking jazz chords, so there.
Anyway, with my recent un/employment adventures, all I want is a little peace. Something smooth. That doesn't suck.
And a glass of wine.
OK?
So instead of getting into anything new, I've been dipping back into the recent past to collect downbeat records (Zero 7, Morcheeba, Air, etc.). Music that's good for chilling out and relaxing. Music that you can work to. Music that's good when you're sitting at a computer for 9 or 10 hours a day.
In other words, it's easy listening music.
It's smooth jazz. It's yacht rock. But unlike those boomerish vices, it is at least music with history and ideas and a sense of urban(e) coolness, so I can rationalize it. A little.
(Unlike my recent fondness for Estelle and Kanye West, and Madonna with JT and Timbaland which I find impossible to rationalize, but I digress).
And hey, I probably should have seen this coming.
Unlike the rest of the hipster world I actually like Yacht Rock and have enjoyed it unironically for years - probably because my parents' record collection inexplicably stopped sometime around the break-up of the Beatles so I have no nightmarish memories of drunken boomers drinking pina coladas and singing along to What a Fool Believes. Besides, you can start making fun of Steely Dan when you've mastered those freaking jazz chords, so there.
Anyway, with my recent un/employment adventures, all I want is a little peace. Something smooth. That doesn't suck.
And a glass of wine.
OK?
Klaxons Raid My Bookshelf
I'm a little late to the Mercury Prize winning Klaxons' 2007 album, "Myths of the Near Future", but no matter. It's pretty great.
The fun of the record though, is not necessarily the music, but the literary references, most of which are cribbed from postmodernism's paranoid school: Thomas Pynchon, William Burroughs, J.G. Ballard, as well as Aleister Crowley and the Mayan calendar, all get name checked, and I'm sure there are more than a few others I've missed (there must be a Lovecraft story in there somewhere!). The Klaxons bring to their music the same fun you experience reading stories of secret societies, lost civilizations, mysterious books, curses, symbols, and signs of the apocalypse only those who know can read.
As for the tunes, you can call it dance rock, or new rave, or whatever you want. It is occasionally noisy, intermittently dance-able, and sometimes the album manages to reach levels of pop greatness as on "Golden Skans" and "Gravity's Rainbow." Had I not been so slow to pick this one up it definitely would have made my '07 top ten.
The fun of the record though, is not necessarily the music, but the literary references, most of which are cribbed from postmodernism's paranoid school: Thomas Pynchon, William Burroughs, J.G. Ballard, as well as Aleister Crowley and the Mayan calendar, all get name checked, and I'm sure there are more than a few others I've missed (there must be a Lovecraft story in there somewhere!). The Klaxons bring to their music the same fun you experience reading stories of secret societies, lost civilizations, mysterious books, curses, symbols, and signs of the apocalypse only those who know can read.
As for the tunes, you can call it dance rock, or new rave, or whatever you want. It is occasionally noisy, intermittently dance-able, and sometimes the album manages to reach levels of pop greatness as on "Golden Skans" and "Gravity's Rainbow." Had I not been so slow to pick this one up it definitely would have made my '07 top ten.
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