I hope everyone is enjoying this time with their family and an abysmal Detroit Lions game (I'm assuming that will be the case). Here's a little diddy by The Broadways (ex-Slapstick; pre-Honor System; pre-Lawrence Arms) about how Thanksgiving is really just a disguised celebration of genocide and white European hegemony. Whatever. Who wants more turkey?

The Broadways - "Everything I Ever Wanted To Know About Genocide I Learned In The Third Grade"

It's been six long years since Max Tundra released Masted By the Guy at the Exchange. That record made it to the top of my list that year and it's still there. Last week came the new record and it's glorious. In the first half of the record he picks up where he left off. This is the strangest pop music around. As the record progresses we get stuff we've never heard from Max Tundra before. There's his version of a metal track that contains no metal chords but plenty of spirit. The final track moves from Al Green to the Beatles to Max Tundra pure and simple. There's even one of the best glitch/cut up track I've ever heard. There's much more music packed into everything three minutes than you can possibly digest in one sitting, but there absolutely not to listen to this to every day for weeks, so there's no danger of not getting the most out of it.

This is the kind of music that I'd rather folks here than read about. If you look up reviews and interviews you'll learn all about his archaic process of making music, but before you do any of that, you need to get this record. Right now. Stop reading and go shopping.

But not before you listen to this to whet your appetite.

Has anyone ever noticed that listening to music is WAY more fun than studying for finals? Am I alone on this one?

Anyway, my study breaks are going to have to be increasingly shorter as I approach my test dates. That makes Mirah's "Recommendation" the perfect prescription. Weighing in at a little less than 90 seconds, it is essentially a really cool verse for a poppy indie rock song that doesn't exist. File this one with Lil Wayne's "Fly In" and Rich Boy's "Buried Alive" except, you know, without all the macho boasts and, in Rich Boy's case, without comparing the color of your car interior to cum. Whatever, I can deal.

Cool shit alert: there is some serious pounding and echoey drums that take charge in the final few seconds of the song. They completely overpower the new wavey electronic bounce that controlled beforehand, but they play second fiddle to Mirah's voice and thus are a really nice accent to the song's playful aesthetic.

Mirah - "Recommendation"

William Elliot Whitmore plays folksy americana without any pretense, which is not something that I need but is certainly something that I appreciate. There's no sense that he is trying to cram in other influences or styles and thus the end product is kind of a pure, updated version of, well, folksy americana. It's a cool sound and his raspy voice makes him sound tired and grizzled, which works really well here. Then again, maybe this is just the South influencing my taste in music.

William Elliot Whitmore - "Old Devils"

I don't know if anyone caught this, but the AV Club has a really great review of Guns N' Roses' "new" album Chinese Democracy written by Chuck Klosterman. It's worth reading and I find it especially engaging because Klosterman seems to be as amused by the process as the product, although for entirely different reasons. It's an album I think most people are going to have to listen to, but it's hard for me to believe that the band will be able to release anything that sounds relevant after 15 years of sequestering themselves in a studio. Oh, and by band I actually just mean Axl Rose, who is fucking insane. Anyway, you can read the interview here.

I should be studying. Seriously. And Pelican's City of Echoes is kind of old news. I liked it, but on my first listen I didn't think it sounded as sludgey and atmospheric as their earlier stuff. I decided this was for the worst and kind of moved on. My bad. Thanks to Late Night Wallflower for bringing this video to my attention. Yes, it is certainly less atmospheric and dense than their earlier stuff, but that's fine. If Pelican wants to release albums of these uptempo metal jams, I am completely down with that shit. The shorter song length works for me as well. Sometimes you just don't need a nine minute instrumental stoner metal anthem.

Also, it is kind of nice to see a music video for a metal band where the musicians just kind of look like regular dudes rocking out and having a good time and there isn't massive amounts of blood or ridiculous skulls or other things to bolster street cred. That stuff can be fun, but it has a tongue-in-cheek appeal to me and it eventually gets old.

Pelican - "Lost In The Headlights"

Somehow I missed Randy Newman's first album of new material in nine years. Now, months later, I learn about it only because Pitchfork Media of all people had an interview with one of my favorite musicians. They didn't review the record, I guess he's too old (though they give Lou Reed a pass), but it got me informed and I was so excited I bought it on iTunes because I didn't want to wait to go to a record store.

The record is called Harps and Angels and it's mostly a blues record. At sixty-five Newman's voice has gotten a bit deeper. He hits almost all his notes these days, but you all know this if you've seen a Disney movie in the past 15 years. He's a better singer than he's ever been. His writing here is the best it's been maybe in thirty years. His writing is also as sarcastic, cynical, and so close to mean-spirited it nearly collapses in on itself. You'd be depressed if you weren't laughing so hard. There are some mostly throw-away love ballads here (the closing track "Feels Like Home" gets a too much praise (though it was originally written as a piece for a version of Faust where it's used to trick the devil, which if you think of it in that context, you've got something very interesting). But the bulk of tracks here are about things no other singer-songwriters write about, and here it's mostly done in a blues idiom with some show-tune rag time embellishments thrown in here and there. Newman our greatest orchestral composer singer-songwriter, manages to make everything here sound intimate, even when he's writing for a dozen instruments.

The title track/opener finds Newman offering maybe the finest vocal performance of his career. He tells a story to his band of a near-death experience. He avoided the afterlife due to a "clerical error", but in the mean time he hears an authoritative voice that was "a voice full of anger from the Old Testament/a voice full of love from the New one." The voice gives him a stern warning and leaves the narrator hearing what he can only identify as French, but the only French he knows is "encore" and "tre bien." And this is what Newman does so well. He speaks in so many voices with such authority that you're able to find something to love or at least understand in even his most awful, ignorant characters. He does it again on "Korean Parents" where he sings from the voice of a spokesman for a company that sells Korean parents for American parents who need help getting their kids to do well in life. It's so close to offensive that it's uncomfortable. But Newman has the uncanny ability, similar to Dave Chapelle, to be so honest about his characters, so convincing in speaking in their voice (even when, as in "Rednecks" the voice can't belong to any individual), that he manages to distance himself and the art from the things that make the characters so repugnant. He's a satirist certainly, but he's also an artist opening up characters for us to see a bit more clearly, allowing us to reject their viewpoints and decide a bit better about whether we want to reject them as people.

I have a hard time listening to Young Jeezy. His glorification of drug dealing and violence places in me in the position of active encourager. Not only do his stories not repulse me, but I go out of my way to hear them.

I had this conversation with a friend not too long ago and he insisted that buying an album from someone like Lil Wayne was not a sign of support for the sorts of things Lil Wayne raps about because: (1) he is not currently selling drugs, shooting people, etc.; (2) this is a form of creative expression and I am supporting a finished work of art, in whole, not exclusively or primarily the lyrical content; (3) Lil Wayne and similar rappers are just sharing the experiences of their youth or of impoverished urban living and are not necessarily condoning it. My primary argument was that since there are any number of alternatives to rappers who primarily promote drug dealing, violence, and misogyny, to choose someone like Lil Wayne over a more "conscious" rapper (I hate the phrase) is a sign of support for their art but is also a fairly clear acceptance of their subject matter. As repulsive as I think some Biggie songs can be, he's still on my iTunes.

The popularity of violent or misogynistic artists disincentives lyrical diversity in the hip-hop marketplace. It becomes clear what sells and what doesn't and certainly record labels are aware of as much. Further, we see a disproportionate allocation of resources going to these artists. At the end of the day, the new 50 Cent record will always be pushed harder than the newest Roots album and huge name producers like DJ Kahled are never going to work with people like Rhymefest. From a financial standpoint, it is surely a smart move. Gangster rap has long found an accepting and spend-happy home in suburban white kids and their dollar vote has consistently gone for the more upsetting elements and artists in the genre. Three 6 Mafia have released some good songs, but I think it's indisputable that they move records on their lyrical content and image. This is one reason why that reality TV show featuring them living in the suburbs was supposed to be so outrageous.

I'm a white male and I can't help but feel guilty when I listen to old 2Pac songs or someone like Birdman. A lot of popular music has voyeuristic appeal. Bands like Guns 'N Roses and the Misfits staked their career on it, but there was always a sense that these were more like rowdy kids with a microphone than actual menaces. No one in the Misfits ever killed anyone and the most brutal act of violence associated with the band is this video of Danzig getting knocked the fuck out.. The same can't be said for an artist like T.I. He has committed a lot of the crimes he raps about, although the nature and extent of those crimes are likely exaggerated. Regardless, the stigma surrounding acts like selling coke in the projects or killing snitches is far more damning than that associated with getting into bar fights or being pre-occupied with death and sex. Combine that with the defacto racial segregation produced by class privilege and I think we wind up with a bunch of white dudes listening to music about a lifestyle they would never live, people they'd never associate with, powerful displays of violence and sexual prowess they've only fantasized about, and all told by a guy that they'd probably cross the street to avoid. So I can't help but feel a bit guilty, as if I'm encouraging something for my immediate entertainment, fully conscious of its destructive nature and the implicit hypocrisy of accepting something coming through my speakers that I would never be OK with in the newspaper.

So I really do have mixed feelings about Young Jeezy, but maybe not that mixed. He's a talented rapper and when he's being human, like in "Talk To 'Em," or just boasting about how sweet he is with that trademarked delivery and self-produced laugh track, like in "I Luv It," he's actually pretty charming. His snowman alias aside, Jeezy comes across as someone pretty psyched that he isn't living the hellish and dangerous life that has become the primary subject of his raps. That doesn't make his choice of subject matter any more comfortable with me, but it makes him, as an artist, much less offensive.

"Circulate" is a brilliant track off the latest Jeezy album and it offers a pretty good argument that he doesn't need to rap about selling drugs to write a good song. That is, of course, something I'm completely down with.

I've wanted to write about this song for a long time, but I never know what to say. I mean, it's Lucero, so I guess I should talk about heartache and whiskey by the pint, but that's a very tired approach. I was going to mention how I love to drive down these long, deserted Atlanta roads at night and listen to this, with my windows open just enough to let in the fall air without thoroughly chilling me, but that looks lame in print. Frankly, I've started writing about this song so many times I'm not likely to find an approach that I haven't already rejected.

But I can't pass this song by. It's one of those bare bones, last-call alt-country anthems that should pour out of the jukebox at some windowless dive. It's the product of purposeful drinking and destructive emotional investment, the kind of stuff that bleeds romance when put into story and song. It's beautiful and just a little bit sad. How can you go wrong?

Lucero - "When You've Gone

Black Lipstick’s second album, Sincerely Black Lipstick, has become one of my favorite records in the last six months or so.  I initially found the band based on a misunderstanding when my cousin recommended that I check out the Black Lips.  I still haven’t had a chance to listen to the Black Lips.  I do think, however, that Black Lipstick is a better band name than the Black Lips. 

 

Black Lipstick draws heavily on underground rock influences like the Velvet Underground, Sonic Youth, and, especially, Television.  And you are probably thinking: didn’t The Strokes do that?  Well, yes and no.  I think that The Strokes were adept at taking certain elements from the sound of classic art-rock bands and making these elements sound new.  Their contribution was, I believe, quite original, even though the influences are pretty easy to detect.  But The Strokes were missing some things that Black Lipstick has in spades: ideas, real coherence, and experience.  There is a song on one of the later Strokes albums in which the refrain is “I’ve got nothing to say.”  And, as Willie Nelson put in “Shotgun Willie,” “You can’ make a record if you ain’t got nothin’ to say.” 

 

Sincerely Black Lipstick is, simply put, a great rock album in a day when very little of the “alternative” music people listen even qualifies as rock music at all.  The lyrics of Sincerely Black Lipstick are interesting, and there is a refreshing amount of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll in them.  There’s also beautiful song about lost love; but it’s somewhat aloof at the same time -- as Black Lipstick’s songwriting and singing technique couldn’t be farther from the over-the-top sincerity of the modern Emo schlock that permeates the airwaves.  Thanks to Black Lipstick from bringing some irony back to rock music!  Most of all it is the sound of the album that does it for me: Phillip Niemeyer’s voice; the ugly-beauty of the fiercely rhythmic guitar and bass lines; and the crack of the drums.  It’s a sound I find highly addicting and extremely well done.  It envelopes you, and all the registers seem to find the sweet spot.  I hope they put out more albums like this, and I hope they make it to Atlanta on tour soon.  

Band Website: http://www.peekaboorecords.com/artist.aspx?id=17

I can't say for sure when I first heard The Danielson Famile, but my guess was it was around 2000, when my friend Patrick and I were crazy about all things rock and falsetto. The music was almost too strange even for us (and were slamming to Braniac at the time). It's no stretch to say that by 2001 my favorite song of the year was "Good News for the Puss Pickers."



I've been watching a documentary about Danielson this week on Pitchfork.tv. It's broken up into 9 parts, so it's convenient to watch a chapter a day. It might be coming down after today, but you can get it on DVD (it's on netflix). It's called Danielson: A Family Movie.

It's a really great documentary. Danielson just happens to be one of those rare great artists who is almost as smart and thoughtful as he is creative. He's got a Bob Dylan ability to see the shallowness and silliness of his critics. He's smarter than they are and so conversations between him and people who want to focus on his religion are always uncomfortable. But unlike Dylan he's an impossibly nice guy and much more comfortable in his own skin (of course, he isn't famous like Dylan). So when he's forced to deal with his narrow-minded detractors he does so with an air of confidence and love and ambivalence toward their inability to feel the same things he does. He's much more generous to them than they are to him.

The film also does a great job capturing the comradery and love that plays out in his family/band. And you get lots of great footage of performance. You get to see Danielson recording alone. You even get to see his visual art and how he incorporates that in with his music. And it traces the relationship between Sufjan Stevens and Danielson (though it leaves hanging questions about why Stevens is allowed to be Christian without much comment but every critic writing about Danielson has to include qualifier ("I'm not a Christian myself, but . . .")).

So check out the film and then check out the records. You won't be disappointed.

BRMC is one of the few rock bands that consistently keeps me from abandoning current rock music. While most other stuff that I hear has all been sounding about the same to me over the past three or four years, they can consistently write interesting, creative music that reminds me of what I really like about rock'n'roll.

So, when I heard that they had released a new, digital-only record, I immediately forked over the $6 they asked for it. What I got surprised the hell out of me.

The Effects of 333 wildly different from everything else that BRMC has released. They are a band that had been releasing rock that could typically be considered shoegaze, psychedelic, or blues/roots since 2001. It came as a surprise that two or three songs of the ten tracks on the record have sounds that are immediately identifiable as guitar. As the record is mostly ambient, there's a lack of consistent rhythm or melody in most songs and I don't think that there are any original vocals (the last track includes a lot of samples, though).

While I was very surprised by this complete change from anything they've done before, I think that I really like this one. After letting it sink in, I just can't stop listening to it all the way through. It feels like music that tells the story of whatever you're seeing at the time. It plays like a soundtrack. There is also some pretty interesting spacializing that goes on with this release. Most of the time, you have sounds traveling around you. It's going in circles or from close to far and back to close. The sounds mostly have a pretty warm quality, like they came from an old Moog synth. But their origins aren't always as clear.

The Effects of 333 marks a serious change in direction for what I feel is one of the better bands out there. It is definitely worth your time. Check out the two tracks below and tell me what you think.

And With This Comes
Sedated With Sterilized Tongues

P.S. On their website, BRMC mentioned that this record was about three years in the making. I'm curious about how much their ex-drummer, Nick Jago, contributed to it. He's had an on and off relationship with the band, usually depending on whether or not he's on the junk. While the music that they write seems to be pretty different without him there (Howl's rootsy folk vs. the shoegaze/psychedelic feel of their first two LPs), the band continues to release great music without his input.

Vultures United were giving out CDs at the No Idea bbq at Fest. I know NOTHING about them, but their cover of Op Ivy's "I Got No" is pretty fucking sweet and hardcore. Vultures United - "I Got No".

I'm at the Fest in Gainesville, Florida, sitting in some shitty budget hotel waiting to head the No Idea records BBQ and kind of feeling like a giant pile of fast food and PBR tall boys. It's not especially pleasant and, word to the wise, don't start mixing beer and whiskey at 5:30 in the afternoon. That said...

1. I finally got a chance to see Ringers live. Detention Halls was one of my favorite albums released last year and their set was everything I had hoped it would be. They were tight, energetic, and sold those sing-along punk songs about the drudgeries of everyday life. Despite that a 6:00 PM crowd is largely sober and probably preoccupied with who they're going t see later that evening, people moved, danced, and even did some stage diving (which was weird considering how small the venue was). Anyway, I've been meaning to write about Ringers for a while, but until I can, everyone should check them out via Myspace.

2. I saw Ann Beretta's final show last night. They were amazing, although the vocals were mixed too low and they play live as a three piece, which doesn't allow those songs to really fill out the way country and folk inspired punk rock demands. That's fine. The set largely featured songs off their first album, Bitter Tongues, which has always meant a lot to me. I remember walking from my father's apartment in Chicago down to the Clubhouse, the Metro's old record store, and buying a copy because I had heard "Forever Family" on WNUR's Fast and Loud and was floored. That album frequently found its way into my CD player over the following few years. Despite being pretty popular within my circle of friends, Ann Beretta never got the attention they deserved and played in front of small crowds, at least in Chicago, for much of their run. Last night was much different. The crowd was alive and the Fest crowd of loyal (perhaps obsessive and awkward) punk fans from around the country paid the band the kind of respect they deserved. Too little too late, sure, but it was nice to see. Here's "Forever Family."

3. I'm not in love with A Wilhelm Scream, but DAMN are they good live. DAMN. They've been constantly touring and playing these same songs for years, but they put everything they have into it and, although it looks completely exhausting, it pays off. I've found myself wanting to go back to those records and try to rediscover what initially drew me in. I'm starting to think that the "poor man's Thrice" analogy is a bit unfair, especially now that Thrice isn't the band they once were and A Wilhelm Scream has kind of found their own niche. I don't know if I need more skate punk in my diet, but if I'm going to add any, it's going to be skate punk with sweet metal guitar playing. A Wilhelm Scream - "The Rip".

4. We were all too tired and drunk to see the Paint It Black late show and way too sleepy to catch the Measure [SA]'s 6 AM show at the record co-op in town. They're both on the list today, so that's good.

Oh yeah, and it's cool to be at a giant punk rock festival that has consumed all of downtown Gainesville. I think it's something like 8 venues having shows all day all weekend. Cheap merch, overpriced beer, and nasty food. What more could you want?