Writer’s Jukebox – Late-Night Two-fer

I just got back from a brief Fourth of July sojourn to a relative’s house where my cousins’ kids educated me in the music of Dora the Explorer and something called Wubbzy.  Suffice to say I was super excited to come home and find passages written about “grown-up” music.

We’ve only got two entries for you this week due to the holiday, but I’m sure you’re too busy nursing a patriotic hangover to get outraged.

Before picking up the new Roots album, Chris took Rob’s advice and went digging through The National’s back catalog.  Andrew rings in the birth of America with an act from New Zealand you may have heard of.

Chris – Endless National Driving

Enough ink has probably been spilt on our site about The National, but let me publicly declare myself as yet another fan. I'd enjoyed their album Boxer ever since I picked it up on a whim from the public library last fall. I picked up High Violet as soon as it came out, and I've been enjoying in immensely. On my dear friend Rob Kunzig's suggestion, I also picked up Alligator in order to fill myself in with their back catalog, which is just as fun as their new stuff, even if it's a little rawer. 

I've been doing a fair bit of traveling in the last couple of weeks, and The National is one of those perfect bands to put on during an endless drive through the rural South in the middle of the night. Cuing up "Fake Empire" as I speed down the freeway, the lights of civilization blurred in the distance through the dense Floridian fog, is an almost transcendent experience. And listening to High Violet's "Runaway" while driving through the Georgian countryside is enough to make me forget how much I hate driving through that state.

When I went to Best Buy to purchase a copy of Alligator (yes, I still buy physical CDs. Yes, I'm old-fashioned. I know.), I also happened to be there on the release date of the Roots' new album, How I Got Over. My past week with the Roots left me a little ambivalent, but the album was on sale for something like six bucks, and I couldn't resist. I'm glad I had that moment of weakness - How I Got Over excises the bloat and pretentious sound collages of some of their previous works. Each track is lean and to the point, which makes it that much more effective. If the anger of their previous albums seems to have subsided somewhat, their cool, jazzy demeanor speaks of maturity and artistic growth. It's hard to believe that they're also the house band for Jimmy Fallon.

Andrew – Flying with the Conchords

About a week ago, I hopped in my time machine and took a trip back to 2007 so I could listen to Flight of the Conchords.

New Zealand's fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo acapella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo has two full-length albums to its name, both showcasing the lyrical and musical adroitness which earned a landslide of accolades for their HBO TV series of the same name.

Their first, the eponymous Flight of the Conchords, is the stronger of the two efforts. It's composed mostly of songs that Bret McKenzie and Jermaine Clement honed in their years on the road as a musical stand-up act - there are performances of the pitch-perfect Bowie spoof "Bowie's In Space" dating clear back to the actual year 2000 (not to be confused with the post-apocalyptic year 2000 mentioned in "Robots"). "Business Time" is equal parts clever lyrics and Barry White send-up. "Foux du Fafa" is catchy, and also taps into the universally held notion that the French language is ridiculous.

Their second album, I Told You I Was Freaky, is less enjoyable, at least in part because its songs were speed-written for the TV show's second season. That's not to say there's nothing enjoyable here - "Hurt Feelings" is about hard-assed rappers whose everyday problems really get them down, and "We're Both In Love With a Sexy Lady" is another great example of the Conchords' back-and-forth wordplay.

Now I'm going to get back in my time machine and go back to before the Internet was invented so that I can prevent this from happening.

Continue...

Writer’s Jukebox – Mozart, Mosshart, and Mr. November

Not much in the way of new stuff.  I tend to mull over albums for months at a time (when I’m listening to whole albums that is), and it seems Rob’s the same way.  Pankin never fails to surprise with his latest listening habits.

I’m still turning to LCD Soundsystem’s new This Is Happening every time I need something to listen to.  Rob simply cannot get over The National.  Pankin, the odd man out, is jamming to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – specifically, his Requiem.

I love how well-rounded we are.

Pankin – The Requiem in Popular Culture

Mozart's Requiem is one of my favorite pieces of music. Ever since I first heard it, I was drawn to the haunting melody of the Introitus, the driving fugal structure of the Kyrie, and the relentless urgency of the Confutatis. There's no Requiem in Popular Culture section of its Wikipedia page, but if there were, you might see that the Dies Irae was used in this scene from X2, and that Kubrick made use of the Rex Tremendae section in a minor scene in Eyes Wide Shut.

I'm not a religious guy by any means, and so far listening to the Requiem hasn't inspired me to go out and learn all the intricacies of the Catholic mass. It hasn't even inspired me to research into all the myths and theories about who's actually responsible for its composition. As of now, I'm still too fascinated by the music itself to do any real analysis involving reading.

I have, however, done some analysis involving listening. I got my hands on two different recordings of the Requiem, and compared them to each other, movement to movement. The one I grew up with was conducted by Herbert Von Karajan, who emphasizes changes in dynamics and big, full orchestrations. It's as if he's making a strong case for later Mozart as the transition from the Classical to the Romantic period in music, rather than early Beethoven. Claudio Abbado's version is much lighter and more rhythmically consistent, likely more in keeping with the musical style of the time in which the piece was composed. The jury's still out on which one I like better, but it's really a question for the musicologists out there.

Craig – Rob Covered This Already

A month or two ago, Rob included The Dead Weather in his Spring album round-up.  Of frontwoman Allison Mosshart, he wrote: “I’ve never been simultaneously attracted to and terrified by anyone quite like Allison Mosshart.”  I agree with him completely.

The Dead Weather possess a frightening sound: ghostly backing vocals, Mosshart’s scratchy crooning, subterranean blues guitar.  I don’t know what the hell is going on most of the time, and I don’t really want to.  I just let their dirty, dusky sound wash over me in songs like “No Horse.”  (Well, “wash” probably isn’t the right word. How about “grime” over me?  That’s a verb, right?)

And my open love affair with LCD Soundsystem’s This Is Happening continues.  The track getting the most play right now is “Home.”  So many beautiful things are happening here.  The wistful vocal harmonies echo back to the opening track on the album “Dance Yrself Clean.”  The bass and percussion demonstrate James Murphy’s ability to make ennui danceable. 

Two lyrics jump out at me every time.  “Night has such a local ring/And love and rock are fickle things/And you know it” kills me each listen with the love and rock line.  Murphy then declares with heartbreaking humanity to the song’s anonymous object: “You’re afraid of what you need/If you weren’t, I don’t know what we’d talk about.”  Way to get me right in the gut, Murph.

Rob – A National Alligator

I'll stop listening to The National soon - I swear. But until "soon," I'm listening to Alligator, the 2005 album that put the Brooklyn band on the map. Fans of Boxer and High Violet might be surprised by Alligator's unburnished messiness. The chorus of fist-pumper "Mr. November" has frontman Matt Berninger shouting "I'm Mr. November, I won't fuck us over / I won't fuck us over, I'm Mr. November" while drummer Bryan Devendorf slams out sixteenth-notes on the snare. Berninger also gets screamy on "Abel," adding a little scratch to his baritone as he howls "My mind's not right, my mind's not right." 

High Violet, released last month, put The National on the larger cultural map, and with good reason: everyone can enjoy the consummate craftsmanship and artistic fussing-over that makeViolet one of the year's best. But it's nice to see the band a little younger on Alligator - a little more unhinged, a little more desperate, a little more experimental. Gator's tracks don't always connect, but when they do...well, listen to "Daughters of the Soho Riots."

Continue...

Writer’s Jukebox – Soccer, Strauss, and Steppin’ Out

In our modern times (some might call them the endtimes), music rarely exists on its own.  It’s an advertisement, a soundtrack, a transmedia collaboration.  Hell, I discovered one of my favorite songs this year, the two- or three-year old “Ali in the Jungle” by the Hours, because of an ad for the Olympics.

Boivin’s listening habits draw inspiration from the World Cup.  Pankin turned to the Strauss piece Kubrick made famous.  And Jordan, well, he actually seems to have found his picks by simply listening to music. 

Way to be an outlier.

Boivin – World Cup Fever

The nation has begun its descent into fair weather soccer fandom, and I have descended right along with it. In keeping with the spirit of the times I should recommend a tune having to do with World Cup fever. 

Weezer frontman River Cuomo is a die hard soccer fanatic, so much so that Weezer's 2002 world tour was named the "World Cup Tour" (and it was awesome, Sparta and Dashboard opened, it was like one of the best nights of my 15-year-old life). In the ensuing disappointment of Team USA's exit after coming so far, Cuomo wrote the bittersweet anthem "My Day Is Coming" in tribute to the 2002 squad. It namechecks just about every starter and serves as the perfect song when you've come so far only to fall short. It has a great, "we'll get 'em next time" feel to it, which is, unfortunately probably the best that the USA can manage. But we'll see...we tied England!

Pankin – Thus Spoke Strauss

Who here would recognize the opening of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey? I can't see you out there, but I'm assuming most of you are raising your hands. It's a simple, five-note motif: octave, octave-and-fifth, two-octaves, two-octaves-and-major-third, which immediately dropped to a minor third. (For those of you who only listen to music, rather than speak it, this might help.)
Or if you're not a Kubrick fan, maybe you've seen Peter Sellers jamming out the Deodato's jazzy version of the motif in the film Being There. (I actually haven't seen the movie, but I hear it's fantastic.)

If you're a music scholar, you might know the motif by a different name - as the Sunrise theme of Richard Strauss's tone poem Thus Spoke Zarathustra. And if you're a philosopher, you might recognize the title of the composition from Nietzsche's seminal work of the same name, on which the tone poem was "loosely based."

I've been listening to this music a lot lately. Not just the iconic introduction, but also the rest of the composition, each movement of which is named after a chapter from Nietzsche's philosophical novel. "Von den Hinterweltlern" (translated variously as "Of the Backworldsmen," "the Afterworldly," or even "the Hinterworldly" as in "the people behind the world") has a sweetly lyrical theme. "Von den Freuden und Leidenschaften" ("Of Joy and the Passions") introduces a second motif that flows throughout the piece. And "Der Genesende" ("The Convalescent") sees a return of the introduction theme with a powerful vengeance.

The character Zarathustra is based on the ancient prophet who founded Zoroastrianism (Zoroaster is an Ancient Greek rendition of the Avestan Zarathustra). His doctrine frames the struggle between truth and lie as the primal foundation of the universe. In the novel, Nietzsche turns the historical Zarathustra on his head, claiming that if he was the first to recognize the concepts of truth and lie, he would logically be the first to recognize that those concepts are false and empty.
Strauss takes chapters from the book out of context to frame a sort of abridged version of Zarathustra's journey. To truly understand that journey would require much deeper and more careful listening than I've embarked on.

Jordasch – Who knew M.I.A. still had it?

The musical gods be praised: the new M.I.A. song doesn't suck! After the WTF-ness of "Born Free" and the spectacular disappoint of "XXXO" (which, admittedly, sounds much better with aguest verse from Shawn Carter), what a relief it was to hear "Steppin' Out" when it leaked this past Friday. A jumpy, schizophrenic mishmash of robot-speak vocals and glitchy metal-shop sound effects, the track is welcome return to form for an artist who never really had a form to begin with.

Other than the stuff I've tackled in my recent reviews, I've settled into a summery groove in these, uh, summer months. There's the explicitly groove-able: Marvin Gaye's Let's Get It On - a better record than What's Going On, if you ask me - has been on near-constant rotation on the iPhone. And I've rediscovered Maxwell's BLACKsummer's Night, a supremely confident slice of dark neo-soul.

You don't often associate Americana with groove, but the ironically Canadian members of the Band manage to craft almost danceable pieces of roots rock that (almost) never sound lame. Tracks like "Up On Cripple Creek" and "King Harvest (Has Surely Come)" strike up a dichotomous balance between cowboy-ready and danceable (not even just line danceable). But for American music that's only at home in the honky tonk, Jamey Johnson's the only game in modern country. His new single, "Macon," sounds soulful and laid-back, but may just be boring. Time will tell.

Continue...

Writer’s Jukebox – The Old is New Again

Sometimes it isn’t what’s new that grabs our ears.  Often it’s a song we’ve heard before but not given its due, or a band we’re rediscovering or simply can’t walk away from.  I have albums from a few years back to which I’ll perennially return, finding new lyrics or interludes to enjoy that swiftly become my favorite parts of the record.

Such is my experience with the Led Zeppelin oeuvre.  My highly disorganized collection of their music dates back to my free-spirited p2p file-sharing days.  Songs don’t have album labels.  Nor are they grouped by track number.  In an odd way, it makes stumbling through my library a little more exciting.

Don’t worry, I won’t just ramble on about Zeppelin for the whole post.  Andrew found a band while working, and Rob can’t stop listening to The National’s album that he loves so much.

Craig – Covering the Zep

Every few months I rediscover the wealth of Led Zeppelin waiting patiently on my iPod.  Like an old friend you only see every other year, I’m always surprised by how much I love this band.  I have extremely fond memories of warming up to them on my parents’ old Led Zeppelin IV LP.  And I enjoy going back and (like my journeys through the Beatles’ catalogue) hearing how much modern music owes them.

Can anyone properly explain why “When The Levee Breaks” is so good?  Is it the fat signature riff grooving lazily under Robert Plant’s wailing harmonica?  Or is it the triumphant interlude led by Jimmy Page’s guitar?  The main riff rocks so hard it’s instantly recognizable in any form.  I once saw the jam band Galactic perform in New York and do a fantastic sax-led rendition of “Levee.”  That’s right: sax-led.  It’s the insistence of that riff, the persistent churning of waves over a wall.  Recognizable and hypnotic in any form.

I first heard “No Quarter” on Tool’s live album Salival.  (Yes, I went through a long Tool phase, and I still appreciate their uber-theatrical, occasionally thrashy evolution of prog rock).  I was pleasantly surprised to find how well they captured the spirit of Zeppelin’s haunting original from Houses of the Holy.  Its watery ambience sprawls over Jon Bonham’s tight drumming.  In keeping with the title, almost every instrument (including Plant’s voice) sounds somewhat displaced – echoey and purposefully overprocessed.  Again, each Zeppelin track is nothing without a killer lead riff, and Page’s fuzzy concoction drives this one from start to finish.

Those on the hunt for more Zeppelin covers should take a listen to Bettye LaVette’s version of “All My Love.”  I checked out her album Interpretations (The British Rock Songbook) after her recent appearance on Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me!  It’s an excellent, eminently recommendable collection of sensuous R&B covers of British rock staples.  That’s right, I said sensuous.

Andrew – Picking Apples

The first time I heard this week's selection I was at work, actually, fixing someone's computer (I won't say who - a gentleman doesn't fix and tell). In fact I don't even remember what song I heard. All I know for sure is that I was digging what was on, and a quick peek at the client's iTunes library told me that I was listening to The Apples In Stereo.

I filed the name away, intending to investigate further at a later date. Months later, jonesing for some new music, I remembered the name and laid down $9 for the Amazon MP3 version of #1 Hits Explosion, a 2009 compilation that serves as an excellent introduction to the group (as compilation albums often do). In particular, check out the John Lennon-esque haze of "Strawberryfire" or the amiable stride and call-and-response chorus of "The Rainbow."

Many of Explosion's best songs come from the Apples' 2007 effort New Magnetic Wonder, which alternates between slickly produced three-minute songs and minute-long throwaway filler tracks. Nothing here is particularly interesting lyrically, but sugary cuts like "Can You Feel It?" and "Energy" please the ear (though they occasionally offend the brain), while the layered harmonies of "Same Old Drag" and the rock stomp of "Sunndal Song" are songs you can like without feeling as bad about it later.

Enjoyable in a slightly different way is the band's 1995 debut "Fun Trick Noisemaker," which has a fuzzier, lo-fi vibe that evokes the sound of labelmates Neutral Milk Hotel. "Tidal Wave," "Pine Away," and "Lucky Charm" are all highlights, and in general the album should appeal to people who find the Apples' later recordings to be somewhat insubstantial.

I don't like it quite as much as what I've already talked about, but since we're on the subject it's worth mentioning that their latest album, Travellers in Time and Space, just came out a few weeks ago. Highlights include "No Vacation," "Told You Once," and "It's All Right."

Rob – Still moping about to High Violet

After laboring in obscurity for more than the decade, The National are finally getting some comeuppance. High Violet, their latest, debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 in its first week (for reference, its predecessor charted at 63). And with good reason - High Violet is about as smart, smooth and refined as indie rock gets. And two weeks after writing the review, I can't stop listening.

Which isn't really a good thing. The National are known for erudite mope-rock, but High Violet is grim stuff. Even the album's most upbeat track, "Bloodbuzz Ohio," is an ode to remorse and entrapment. Despite getting some lift under its wings, "Bloodbuzz" remains weighed down by the soul-crushing gravity of, well, life. The National have never shied away from anyone's private terrors - Am I smart? Am I successful? Am I growing old? - so this won't be anyone's summer soundtrack.

But I'll be damned if "England" isn't the best rock song I've heard in years. Building on a slow-burning crescendo, there's a moment around 3:53 where the drums thud and the horns swell and you know the band's going for broke. Watching "England" live, it's incredible to watch a group of consummate musicians - Guitarist Bryce Dessner collaborates with Phillip Glass and Steve Reich - put their guts into every note and build up something big and dramatic. It's good to the point of being chilling. 

Continue...

Writer’s Jukebox – The Cats Are Away…

Another week, another excuse why there’s no real Jukebox entry.  And that’s a real shame.  I’ve been enjoying this feature, especially how it presents our staff as a cast of characters, not just individuals who take turns posting each day of the week.

That said, some of this cast of characters will be busy this weekend convening in our nation’s capital.  The planning and prep for that has superseded Jukebox planning on my part.

So instead of some music picks to read and hunt down, I’ll give you another way to waste away your Sunday.  A coder over at Music Machinery has created The Swinger.  The code hacks any song by stretching the first half of each beat and shrinking the second half.  It’s stupid simple and stupidly genius.

I can’t get enough of it.

Sweet Child O' Mine (Swing Version) by plamere

Every Breath You Take (swing version) by TeeJay

Enter Sandman- the Swing Version by plamere

Around the World - the swing version by plamere

Super Freak by Rick James (Swing version with Echo Nest Remix) by tfine

[thanks, Gizmodo]

Continue...

Writer’s Jukebox – One Musketeer Short Edition

Athos, Porthos, and…who’s the last one? 

Like the Three Tenors, Dumas’ Musketeers adhere to a common rule of trios: there’s always a guy you can’t remember (it’s Aramis, by the way). 

On the other hand, maybe I made that rule up.  Maybe it’s just that Athos and Porthos are more fun to pronounce.

What’s the point of this trio-focused rambling?  Well, this week’s Jukebox features only two members of our illustrious staff.  Yadda yadda yadda scheduling problems (some mine) prevented me from finding a suitable replacement on short notice.

So you get Boivin, who continues to play up his Minnesota pride for all it’s worth, and Steph, who stumbled into 1998 and found her ears trapped in the sonic embrace of one Jakob Dylan. 

Again, I’m sorry we couldn’t bring you a full three entries this week.  Be happy, however, I didn’t pull a Time magazine.

Stephanie – Car Albums from Twelve Years Past

I recently made a new friend who’s been sharing some of his favorite albums with me. In his enthusiasm, he’s given me so many that I can hardly hope to get through them all in less than a year. Being a very systematic person, I developed the following strategy: starting from A and working down in alphabetical order, I would listen to each artist a single time, just to get a feel. At the same time, I would make CDs for the artists at the end of the alphabet to listen to in my car, becoming more familiar with them during my commute.

My first car-album has been Bringing Down the Horse by the Wallflowers. I feel like everyone in the world has already listened to this album, being that it is fourteen years old and Jakob Dylan won a couple of Grammys for “One Headlight” in 1998. This song resonated from somewhere deep in my buried memories of adolescence -- I was twelve and not paying much attention to popular music on account of my overwhelming nerdiness. But I liked the song quite a bit more as a 23-year old, and it was clearly the standout track of the album. The others, by comparison, were generic and chorus-heavy. That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy them, or the album as a whole, but I had extracted most of what was there within four or five listens. My next few favorites were “6^th Avenue Heartache” featuring Adam Duritz of Counting Crows, “The Difference”, “Invisible City”, and “Laughing Out Loud.”

As a band, it’s unlikely that I’ll pursue the Wallflowers beyond this album, though that’s mostly because there isn’t much to the band besides Jakob Dylan. However I will certainly add Bringing Down the Horse to my skinny little music collection, and listen to it again at some point in the future.

Boivin – The Land of 10,000 Lakes and Hüsker Dü

As a Minnesotan, I am heir to a beautiful musical tradition stretching all the way back to Prince, the Replacements, Hüsker Dü, and countless others. This past Saturday was my beloved state's 158th birthday and through sheer coincidence I've also spent the bulk of the past few weeks listening to the Land of 10,000 Lakes' most recent local boys made good: the Hold Steady.

The Hold Steady recently parted ways with their keyboardist and perhaps that's the reason their most recent album, Heaven Is Whenever, is less anthemic than their previous ones. Now, I love anthem rock, just check the my iPod's play count for Cheap Trick, but I still like Craig Finn and friends' newest stuff quite a bit. It's full of the usual Minnesota name drops ("Sweet Part of the City") and story songs about the Hold Steady-verse's cast of usual characters (Holly, Charlemagne, Gideon) but without the fist-pumping energy of older songs such as "Massive Nights" or the like. That's not to say it's a bad thing, my fist gets as tired as the next guy's after a vigorous afternoon of pumping.

"Hurricane J" the lead-off single on this album probably remains my favorite. It's real good.

Continue...

Writer’s Jukebox – Short Notice Success

I’ve got to thank my fellow writers point blank for this week.  After one of the more hectic work weeks in recent history (not to mention that fancy new interview we just did), I’ve had a lot on my plate.  So much so that I didn’t start organizing this week’s post until…um, yesterday.  I’m quite thankful (and impressed) that these three gents pumped out such solid work on such short notice.

Onto the work!  Chris –as many of us have – took a stab at Animal Collective.  I suppose he wanted to know what all the damn hype was about.  Pankin dove headlong into Muse and emerged intact.  Jordasch attempted to master a number of genres, but he’ll admit it’s never as easy as it seems.

It never is, man.  It never is.

Chris – Something Old, Something New

In my desperate attempts to seem hip, I checked out Animal Collective's 2009 album Merriweather Post Pavilion from my local public library. The album appeared at the top of several "best of the year" lists last December, and I figured that I should see what all the fuss was all about. After a few spins, I still don't quite understand the buzz. I don't have anything against experimental pop music, per se, but it seemed like the group was far too eager to drench some relatively stable musical ideas underneath too many layers of experimentation. Those parts that did work for me worked by accident more than design. The album is different (which might explain all the buzz) and it's catchy in its own strange way, but I don't think it's the masterpiece that all the critics are talking up. I thought about keeping it around for a few more days to see if anything clicked, but instead I just returned it to the library for some other aspiring hipster to check out. Life is too short to waste time trying to like music that I don't.

Instead, I've been shunning the present and looking to the past. Way back in the past. I've been reacquainting myself with the works of the Venetian composer Giovanni Gabrieli. Gabrieli lived around the turn of the 17th-century, when Venice was at the height of its power, and his works (most of which were for civic holidays and commemorations) perfectly sum up the triumphant outlook of a city in its prime. Blending several choirs together with brass and strings, Gabrieli was one of the first composers to stipulate specific orchestrations for pieces combining choral and instrumental performers. But all scholarly interest aside, it's just damn good music, filled with grandiose trumpet fanfares and cathartic choral crescendos. You can keep your modern indie rock, and I'll keep my late-Renaissance Venetian music, thank you very much.

Pankin – The Soundtrack For My Life

Muse. For a long time that's all I've been able to listen to. It was actually a previous Writers Jukebox post that turned me on to their 2003 album Absolution, which - if people still listened to CDs today - would still be in my CD player. As it stands, it was recently removed from my LaLa cue, with the impending collapse of the free listening provider. Everything about that album strikes a chord with me - a perfect balance between epic sensibilities ("Apocalypse Please") and personal, emotional issues ("Sing for Absolution"), a heavy influence from classical music (Matthew Bellamy's inspired keyboard break in "Butterflies & Hurricanes"), and impossibly fast and groove-tastic drums (Dom Howard shows his virtuoso talents on "Stockholm Syndrome").

Whenever I happen across new (for me) music that came out during previous eras of my life, I'm always a little nostalgic about how my life would have been different if I had kept abreast of new developments in music. Because the music I listen to during a particular period in my life defines that period so... definitively. It's strange for me to think that, while I'm only discovering this music now, in 2010, two years out of college, I just as well might have been listening to it regularly in 2003, before I even graduated high school. It's slightly different for music that came out before I was born - I got heavily into Tower of Power (which was a popular band since the 1970s) during college, but although it could have been new-for-me at any point in my life, but it would never have been NEW-new. This is something that occupies me when I think of a soundtrack for my life.

Black Holes and Revelations, while, for my money, a less consistent album than Absolution, includes the ultimate Muse listening experience ("Knights of Cydonia"). Watching them stray further and further into electronica ("Undisclosed Desires") and high-concept prog-esque multi-part suites ("Exogenesis Symphony") on their newest album The Resistance is more interesting from an historical standpoint than fun to listen to. (And Bellamy's god-awful, rudimentary rendition of Chopin's Nocturne No. 2 on "United States of Eurasia" doesn't help their case.) But in general, Muse has a dynamic sound, a relevant message, and (supposedly) an entrancing stage presence. And I'll continue to listen to them for the foreseeable future.

Jordasch - Expertise

I like being an expert.  Problem is, I'm so schizo that the best I can do is appear to be an expert.  Around the time of my last entry, I wanted to be a metal expert.  So I immersed myself in metal.  Easy enough, right?  Metal's a fairly specialized sound, so you'd think it'd be fairly easy to wrap your head around the thing.

I'm wrong, of course.  Metal's got subgenres comin' out its anus (available in shirt form), and, due to the overall (intended) offensiveness of its sound, certain metal heroes are familiar only among a tiny handful of people.  Can't say I'd ever heard of Pentagram before I wrote for a metal blog.  But, in terms of sheer fuck-I-can't-keep-up-with-this-shit-ness, metal ain't got nothin' on electronica.
Sure, it's fairly easy to stay abreast of the electro pop side of electronica.  Last year, for example, people was shittin' theyselves over Little Boots, Passion Pit, and jj.  This year, it's Sleigh Bells, Delorean, and Crystal Castles (just like 2008, incidentally).  But boy howdy is that only the tip of the iceberg.

Electronica's hard to pin down because it's so easy to pump out.  Not easy in the sense of skill (though it is a cinch to slap a four-on-the-floor onto a track and call it a remix), but easy in that it requires little monetary or physical investment on the part of the artist.  You may need a guitar, a rehearsal space, and some forgiving neighbors to put a rock band (or a Rock Band) together, but all you need to make a bangin' remix is a laptop and some free (stolen) software.

All this is to say that though I fail every time to become an expert in one genre of music, I've failed especially spectacularly this time.  My picks, accordingly, are fairly prole-ish (i.e., they represent the big names from the blogosophere and little else).

Scene fixture Sleigh Bells (featuring, of all people, an ex-member of flippin' Poison the Well) has a truly excellent new track called "Tell 'Em," which doesn't quite reach the heights of last year's colossal "Crown on the Ground" but comes damn close.

Crystal Castles just released their new self-titled record (a follow-up to their last, um, self-titled record) to near-universal acclaim.  Everybody's been repping "Celestica," but I'll take the eardrum-exploding skullfuck of "Doe Deer" any day.  The duo is a particularly compelling combination of accessible electropop and willfully abrasive noise rock.  I personally ignored the hype until I heard "Deer."

I've also been digging a bunch of electropop-inflected hip-hop, which I normally can't stand.  But the rapper from Philadelphia club pop duo Chiddy Bang flexes a smooth, gogo-style flow, and the producer is almost absurdly talented.  Their first single, "Opposite of Adults," samples MGMT's "Kids" so much more effectively than I could have imagined.  Treat.

Add a dash of LCD Soundsystem (gotta get ready for that new record!), Childish Gambino (yup, DongLover himself), and some stuff lingering from my metal phase (new records from Twilight, 1349, and Howl), and you have yourself a tasty Jordasch casserole!

Continue...

Writer’s Jukebox – The Very Best and Beyond

Unless you’re willing to fully engulf yourself in an artist, Best Of collections are generally the best way to introduce yourself to their work (especially if they’re a rock group from over twenty years ago).  I once nabbed the Greatest Hits albums for Journey and Rush at the beginning of an eight-hour sojourn to my institute of higher education, and the trip was all the better for it (except when I popped in the second Journey disc – don’t do that).  Compare this to my lackluster time spent with Bon Jovi’s debut album a few years back, a record I’ve since deleted save the chart-toppers.

Andrew’s digesting Foreigner in this fashion, and it seems to be working for him.  On the non-Best-Of front, Rob’s jamming to Mos Def and I’m sampling FantomenK and Broken Bells. 

Could we be any more eclectic?

Andrew – Can’t Outgrow Foreigner

I bought a used copy of Foreigner: The Very Best... and Beyond for a few bucks four or five years ago. At that point my interest in the group was mostly ironic, perhaps spurred by that one episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force with the Foreigner belt.

I've outgrown quite a few things since then. Aqua Teen Hunger Force is one of them, and liking things ironically is another. My love of Foreigner, however, has only bloomed.

Consider the simple-yet-effective dichotomy of "Hot Blooded" and "Cold As Ice," two Foreigner songs which inextricably link love and temperature. Consider party favorite "Jukebox Hero," or the wacky saxophone in "Urgent," or the driving riff of "Soul Doctor." Consider, if you will, singer Lou Gramm's golden pipes. This stuff is some of the best arena rock to come out of the 70s and 80s, and it wipes the floor with Journey any day of the week ("Don't Stop Believin'" notwithstanding).

It also helps that Foreigner's song titles are pretty easy to work into casual conversation - I'm not playing head games. I used to think the band was a joke, but that was yesterday. I've listened to The Very Best... and Beyond plenty of times, but every time I spin it up it feels like the first time.

Rob – Most Definitely Mos Def

The mercury is rising in Southern Delaware. Tourists have come crawling back to their summer homes, and I can’t find a goddamned parking spot anywhere. Must be time for Mos Def.

You might call the association tenuous, but there’s something gratifying about prowling the streets for parking while “Twilite Speedball,” a particularly insidious track from last year’s The Ecstatic, thumps out of my subwoofers. Well-heeled families on their way to a fish dinner have frowned at me. I’ve lauded The Ecstatic elsewhere, and I’ll take my time now to do it again: this album is amazing. It has the rough edges and loose demeanor of an improv session, but all the brains of a more premeditated effort. The overall tone is very post-Bush 2, laden with sonic and lyrical references to the Middle East and the Iraq War. Take “Auditorium,” which closes with a monologue from the perspective of an American soldier in Baghdad.

Besides taking frequent trips back to Def’s 1999 classic Black on Both Sides, I’ve been enjoying him in BlacRoc (see “Nothing Like You (Hoochie Coo)”) and even Gorillaz’s most recent single, “Stylo.”

Craig – A Touch of the Epic

In honor of our new podcast theme, I decided to fire up some FantomenK.  Moments after “CPU Mood” breaks into its frenetic groove, I began to have Audiosurf flashbacks.  I immediately started digging through the back catalogue of my weekly rides, only to come up empty-handed.  Where had I heard this before?  Maybe I hadn’t, but the quality convinced me I surely must’ve.

The key aspect of FantomenK for me is his aggressive interpretation of the chiptune genre.  Every note shares roots with its 8-bit predecessors but isn’t tied down by an adherence to nostalgic technology.  The rich bass tones filled my car’s stereo speakers, and by extension the entire cab.  “The Massacre” follows a similar path.  It’s high-octane, high-fidelity techno with enough buzzing melody and fuzzy bass to satisfy a retro-music stalwart.

I’ve also been strutting around to the angsty beats of Broken Bells, the collaboration between Gnarls Barkley’s Brian Burton (aka Danger Mouse) and James Mercer of The Shins.  I’m not in love with the entire record (some of the songs are a hair too Shins-y), but the duo shines when matching Mercer’s voice with Burton’s moody, swelling beats.  The lilting piano on “October” is catchier than any of the song’s lyrics; I sometimes find myself just listening to the first thirty seconds to hear that little phrase.

And, oh man, the trumpets!  The horn ambles into the end of “Vaporize,” repeating the melody with just enough variation to accentuate the pensive line.  Think Cake’s Vince DiFiore but less showy.  And the slick “Mongrel Heart” wanders into a mini Morricone score towards the end, lending the end of the album a touch of the epic.  My experience with Gnarls Barkley having informed my ear, epic is exactly what I was looking for.

Continue...

Writer’s Jukebox – DMB, Titus, and Nacht

The crew is back on board the Good Ship Jukebox.  I’m bouncing in my chair to the digital stylings of FantomenK.  Should he stick with me, you may hear more about him in coming weeks.

In the meantime, we’ve got three totally unrelated entries this week.  Steph returns to Dave Matthews, specifically his live stuff.  If a band’s going to jam, might as well hear what they’re doing while interfacing directly with an audience.  Gene went to see some Jersey band named after a Shakespeare play.  Jordasch is either talking about a prog metal band or just making up words that look like German – I haven’t decided.

Weigh in after the jump.

Stephanie – Baggo (wtf)

I know I already wrote a jukebox about it, but I’m back on a Dave Matthews Band kick. The weather is changing, and my housemates and I have been spending weekends spring-cleaning, planting gardens, having barbecues, and running late night games of beer pong/ladderball/ and baggo (or cornhole, whatever name you happen to call it). Plus, I’m on this amazing month of paid vacation (don’t be too jealous), and every activity I’m engaged in is my own. I wouldn’t say there isn’t any music better for the occasion, because upbeat reggae has also been absolutely fantastic for my mood, but the vast library of Dave Matthews music that my sister and I combine to own (including over 50 recordings of live shows from the last 15 years) has only enhanced this sort of relaxed, outdoor living that I have been enjoying so much lately.

The aforementioned wealth of live concert recordings certainly contributes to the lifespan of this music. Whereas it might be relatively easy to become tired of the seven studio albums and six live-release albums that we currently own, DMB also supports the recording and sharing of all shows, and many of these recordings are high quality – certainly high enough to sound just fine when playing outdoors on a docked iPod stereo. And each show has its own little quirks. Since DMB is inherently a Jam Band, every song can become a 12-minute instrumental soloing epic at any time. Each year the band chose to add some slightly new avenue to their shows such as the transitional “Anyone Seen the Bridge,” the revival of a certain song that hasn’t been played in years, or a four-minute long drum solo by Carter Beauford to end a 16-minute long finale of “Two Step.”

I realize that I haven’t articulated why it’s so perfect for my situation, but I’m not sure I can. It’s got fantastic lyrics, good beats, and badass instrumentals. It’s laid back and intense at the same time. It’s never let me down and I don’t think I will ever get tired of it; I can’t when it reminds so strongly of such Good, Good Times.

Jordasch – In a Nutshell

Jukebox, you caught me in the rarest of forms: in the midst of a metal phase.

Well, not exactly a wholly inclusive metal phase since I'm pretty much just wearing out my copy of Nachtmystium's prog/black-metal clusterfuck of brilliance, Assassins: Black Meddle, Pt. 1.  And yes, that is a Pink Floyd reference, if you were listening.  Good thing, too; if their prog thing went any farther than Floyd, I'd probably have checked out.  Rush can eat my ass.

Some people debate if the album's truly "kvlt," but I like how songwriter/vocalist Blake Judd tempers what's still a fairly unrelenting black metal assault with some squelchy electronics and fucking saxophone (it works).  I appreciate our black metal forefathers as much as the next sweaty, beardy, dude, but records like Darkthrone's A Blaze in the Northern Sky can be a tad mind-numbing.  Maybe that's the point, though.

But if you want some pummeling, old school shit, you'll still get it in spades.  There's a point at the beginning of "Your True Enemy" where the guitar sounds like a the unsheathing of the saber of death.  The flood of blastbeats and rolling thunder guitar that follows is beyond satisfying.  Stereogum's Brandon Stosuy just premiered "No Funeral," a song from Addicts: Black Meddle, Pt.2, the new album from the Nacht (no one calls them that) due out in June.  That I'm a fan of Judd's experiments is clear, but I like a bit more metal in my experimental black metal.  This one's got horror movie synths and a killer robotic drum line, but it's not quite my cup of tea.  Could be a grower, though.

Other metal-related stuff?  Chicago drone doom duo Locrian put out a new record in March called Territories.  I saw these dudes last summer and wasn't blown away, but this thing sounds like a huge step forward.  Check out "The Columnless Arcade" (featuring none other than Blake fuckin' Judd).
Weirdly enough, my metal phase follows a month-long obsession with Pet Sounds (beloved rightly by my fellow bloggers) and an extended affair with my lady love, country music (Johnny Cash's second posthumous album, released in February, is full of excellent stuff).  That stuff, plus a bit of Arvo Pärt, Guided by Voices, the new Charlotte Gainsbourg, and the Hold Steady's new single, "Hurricane J," and you've got Jordasch in a nutshell.

Gene – Jersey Represent!

Last night, I went to see Titus Andronicus play Maxwell's as the last stop on their 53-day tour.  The band has been getting a lot of praise for the latest album, The Monitor, and being from NJ, they sold out the place.  The band played a 90+ minute set (with only a few breaks) filled with their sprawling hard-rock anthems.  If their pedigree was unclear, they started the set with "A More Perfect Union" which jumps off with the line, "tramps like us, baby we were born to die."  Belted out with anything less than the most sincere vitriol, this would be cheap conjuring, but Titus Andronicus pulls off the reveille without having to wink.  Their energy is incessant and contagious.  On the last stop on their tour, in front of their parents and an audience of loyal NJ fans, they delivered a hell of a show for 10 bucks.

Continue...

Writer’s Jukebox – Dancerock, Memories, and B-Sides

Every week, I feel like starting with a general “We’re back!,” but thanks to the efforts of my colleagues, that’s no longer feeling appropriate.  We have good momentum rolling into the Spring months and I don’t want to let it go.  So without further ado, I present your contributors for the week.

Pankin trolls through the Electric Six catalogue, which is helpful to me since I haven’t even thought of them since I first heard their breakthrough single.  Chris recalls road trips and the soundtracks that accompanied them.  Last but not least, Boivin digs through the lesser-known cuts by Weezer and Morrissey.

Let’s-a go!

Pankin – Dancerocking with the Electric Six

Electric Six burst on the scene in the early 2000's with such manic insane dance hits as "Danger! High Voltage" and "Gay Bar" off their album Fire. No one was really sure what to make of them: they received drastically mixed and polarized reviews. Some of their shtick smacks of a novelty act, like the practice of every band member adopting a pseudonym while they play. (And, also, no one has been able to figure out if that was in fact Jack White singing second-lead vocals on "High Voltage.")

But something about the "lusty growl" of singer Dick Valentine (Tyler Spencer), and the unabashed raw energy and unfettered delight with which they play songs about the decadence of the new fiery disco scene makes it difficult to turn away. I certainly couldn't turn away from their second album, Senor Smoke, which includes such biting commentaries on today's society as "Rock and Roll Evacuation" and "Future Boys," while sticking with their roots in intense dancerock ("Dance Epidemic"). And I've yet to hear a modern song more curiously haunting and poignant than the prophetic "Jimmy Carter," which heralds the rise to stardom of the Backstreet Boys as the first sign of the coming apocalypse.

They backed off a little on their next album Switzerland, as expressed by the neutrality-themed album title and the song "Pulling the Plug On the Party." But a return to form was forthcoming in the appropriately titled I Shall Exterminate Everything Around Me That Restricts Me from Being the Master. (The album's closer, "Dirty Looks," takes the rock ballad to a twisted new level.) They've definitely embarked on a descent into the depths ("Lucifer Airlines," "The Band in Hell") on which not many are willing to join - of the original six members that made up the band, only Valentine remains.

But I'm with them all the way, even if I don't understand their ultimate message or goal. We'll see if their two latest albums (Flashy and KILL, both of which I'm nearly totally unfamiliar with) will shed any light on where this six-piece dance-rock-pop-electronica-alternative-sinning-devil-decadent-gender confused powergroup is heading in the future.

Chris – Down Home Country Nostalgia

I've been experiencing a strange type of musical nostalgia. When I was seven years old, my family moved across the country. The actual trip is rather hazy, but I do remember distinctly the mixtape of country music that my mom made, and that we played incessantly during the very long drive. In the past few weeks, I've collaborated with her to reconstruct that mixtape, and because of this, I've been listening to a lot of country music from circa 1993. 

Some of it is better than I remember, and some of it is worse. There's songs like "Fishing in the Dark" by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, a catchy ballad about love on a hot summer night. But then there are songs like "Working Man's Ph.D" by Aaron Tippin, an embarrassingly kitschy tribute to blue collar workers ("There ain't no shame in a job well done / From driving a nail to driving a tee-ruck").

Yet, for the most part, early nineties country music is pretty good stuff - especially compared to the country music of today. During that era, the genre was in a transition phase; Garth Brooks was a major player on the scene, distilling country into more palatable pop songs, and some of the music of the time reflects that. But there's still the lingering tradition of outlaw country music, and the Johnny Cashes and Willie Nelsons of the world still held some influence. The tension between the old and the new is perhaps best expressed in Toby Keith's 1993 hit "Should've Been a Cowboy". Here, Keith laments that he never fulfilled the dreams of his youth; the song is melancholic and heartbreaking, paying tribute to country's outlaw roots while acknowledging that the era of true cowboys is over.

Alas, country music was doomed. In the early nineties, country artists were still able to release delightfully ironic songs like "Queen of My Double Wide Trailer" with a wink and a smile. But somewhere along the line the joke got lost; by the time Kenny Chesney released "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy" in 1999, country music had imploded, consumed by its own kitsch, and was pandering to the most vile and offensive stereotypes of rural America. Country artists and audiences used to be in on the joke; now, I'm not sure if either artists or audience are even aware of the joke.

In 2010, country music stands in two camps - the tacky Southern stereotype ("International Harvester") and the sickeningly sweet pop song (anything by Taylor Swift).  But country didn't always have to be a choice between gimmicky redneck ballads and bubblegum pop; I'll take my mom's 1993 country mixtape over modern country music any day.

Boivin – Bodacious B-Sides

I think B-sides can be some of the most interesting songs in an artist's catalog. My fascination probably stems from the time I downloaded nearly every one of Weezer's B-sides and outtakes circa 2002. There were quite a few gems buried in there, many of which have gone on to become classics among Weezer fans such as "Jamie", "Mykel and Carli","You Gave Your Love To Me Softly" etc.

The thing about B-sides and their like is that they are a sort of  fun game for musical superfans, you have to research and discover them lurking around the internet or the dark recesses of your local record store. And with the passing of the LP format, we've seen fewer reasons for B-sides to exist (they're on the "B" side of a single, you see). But they're out there.

I recently picked up Morrissey's Swords, a collection of B-sides and outtakes from his post-You Are The Quarry comeback era. Morrissey is one of those artists who for one reason or another have made it very easy for the public to track down their B-sides in the age of CDs. Even before that, the Smiths' most essential album was in fact a B-sides compilation (Louder Than Bombs, do a Smiths"Music Snob", Chris!) and Moz has continued the tradition of putting out such compilations to the present day.

While Swords certainly isn't the sheer awesomeness that Morrissey's previous B-side endeavor Bona Drag was, there are some good ones on it. In particular I like "Christian Dior", "Sweetie Pie", "Munich Air Disaster 1958", and "Friday Mourning". It should also be said that "If You Don't Like Me, Don't Look At Me" deserves special mention for Most Morrissey-ish Title Ever. My absolute favorite on this collection though and the reason I handed over my $14.00 is Morrissey's live cover of one of my favorite David Bowie songs "Drive-In Saturday", because it's Morrissey covering Bowie and how has that not been a dream of yours since you were a child?

Continue...

Writer’s Jukebox – A Series of Unfortunate Events

It’s been a while since the last jukebox.  That’s partially my fault and partially…well, it’s mostly just my fault.  A series of unfortunate events – holidays, people being busy at work, extremely distracting nice weather – prevented me from properly focusing on the task at hand.  Namely, providing you folks with our staff’s listening habits.

Andrew, Rob, and I – fresh off our recent foray into food commentary and toilet humor – kick in some musings and recommendations.  Remember Barenaked Ladies?  Andrew does.  Remember Gnarls Barkley?  I do. What about Jimi?  Yeah, that Jimi.  Rob’s been thinking about him some.

Andrew – Barenaked Blasphemy

Did you know that Steven "the nasally one" Page left the Barenaked Ladies early last year? It happened kind of awhile ago, but I didn't know about it until their newest album, All In Good Time, popped up on my Allmusic new releases feed. The band still soldiers on, but apparently recording a childrens' album and then being busted for doing cocaine in the space of a couple of months was enough to split apart Page and the band he co-founded over two decades ago.

Once acquired, this knowledge sent me on a nostalgic trip through their back catalog - owning every BNL album up to and including 2007's Barenaked Ladies Are Men was never something I intended to do, but it sort of just happened anyway. If you've ever written the group off as a novelty act, you need to give them another try.

The first thing you need to do is procure yourself copies of 1992's Gordon, 1998's Stunt, 2000's Maroon, and 2003's Everything to Everyone. Then, being sure to skip the singles that earn the band its novelty label ("If I Had $1,000,000," "One Week," "Another Postcard") listen to them all, noting the band's consistently excellent musicianship, wordplay and harmonies. Note that most of BNL's work doesn't sit well upon first listen - prepare yourself for a Music Snob-esque listening session in which you give each disc multiple spins.

When I covered the Beatles' catalog as part of our Art of the Album feature, you may have noticed my love of and admiration for vocal harmony coming to the fore, and I submit that some of the Ladies' impressive chords wipe the floor with some of the Beatles'. Disagree?Ask Sir Paul himself.

Oh, what do I think of their new album? Well, surprisingly, it's not bad, but the band definitely misses Page and it's not a great place to start.

Craig – Who’s Charles Barkley?

Remember when you could barely spend ten minutes listening to the radio without hearing “Crazy” by Gnarls Barkley? (Unless, of course, you were listening to NPR.)  That song, with its insistent bass line and moody harmonies, took over the charts – no doubt aided by the duo’s costume antics.

The duo – producer/DJ Danger Mouse and rapper/vocalist Cee-Lo Green – defy easy categorization.  Danger Mouse lives to create outside genres (or in multiple genres at once); his breakthrough releases was his Beatles/Jay-Z mash-up The Grey Album.  Cee-Lo’s melodies soar, cutting through Danger’s beats and making each of their tracks instantly recognizable as a Gnarls song.  He’s definitely hip-hop.  And there’s plenty of soul.  But his voice carries a certain naked honesty that usually gets swallowed up in R&B’s usual “Lemme get you laid” posturing.

My iPod on shuffle, I was brought back to their debut release St. Elsewhere through the excellent closing track “The Last Time.”  It’s fortuitous that a song whose hook reads “When was the last time you danced?” is impossible to resist kinetically.  The guitar riff, the back-up vocals: it massages your muscles into movement.  Other exemplary cuts from the record include “Transformer” (this song is a goddamn kick in the nuts) and a cover of “Gone Daddy Gone.”

I was a little less impressed by their sophomore effort, The Odd Couple, but I chalk that up to the novelty wearing off.  It’s still quality (“Run” and “Going On,” especially).  It’s just not the revelation the first record was. 

Rob – Watch Hendrix light this novel on fire

I'm reading Matterhorn, a stunning novel about the Vietnam War by Karl Marlantes. Naturally, the Hendrix comes out.

I mean, really, have you ever listened to his guitar? Listening to the way "Voodoo Child" crashes and howls, I'm not sure anyone's played the guitar with quite such abandon. It screeches. It cries (it cries Mary (sorry)). It makes rock and roll seem like something that naturally occurs, given a certain unhingedness.

We all know "Purple Haze," "Freedom," "Hey Joe," and "Fire." For some deeper cuts, try "Machine Gun," a rambling, bass-driven blues slouch that (lackadaisically) nods to Vietnam. For those of you not reading a book about our jungle war, try his delightful cover of Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone." Most charming stage banter this side of Jesus Christ: "If you'll excuse me for a minute, just let me play my guitar, right?" Extra points for a shoutout to Dylan's grandmother.

Like TuPac, Hendrix has released an album from beyond the grave: Valleys of Neptune. I haven't given it a listen, but recent spinnings of his old standards have reaffirmed my love. Excuse me while I kiss this guy.

Continue...

Writer’s Jukebox – Potpourri

Each week brings a different musical cornucopia to the table.  Only rarely do the staff’s various listening habits coalesce into some vague semblance of a theme.  Thus, I often spend this preamble attempting to subordinate the collection to my organizing will before throwing up my hands and hitting the Publish button.

This week is no exception.

Gene, despite living in the Big Apple, is high on a Bay Area indie act.  Steph digs through her library and comes up with the handful of songs that remain unskippable.  I’ve been listening to an imperial ton of podcasts. 

Hit the jump to find out more.

Gene – Oh Yoo-jeen

I have been listening to Thee Oh Sees from San Francisco.  They are the Type B to frontman John Dwyer's Type A garage rock band Coachwhips, which doesn't make music as much anymore.  Thee Oh Sees started out that way at least.  Now it is a full-fledged band owing as much to The Kinks as Man or Astroman and The B-52s.  Lots of distortion and nasally choruses.

I am of course, also listening to Jan Terri's "I Don't Want to Lose You Tonight" on a dependable routine.  It gets me in the mood to um, not lose you tonight.

Stephanie – Staying Alive

My music-listening world has been somewhat tumultuous recently. I haven’t had the patience to try new music, but lately my old music has felt sort of lifeless. Even my good ol’ standby favorite has been failing to motivate me. I’ve been seeking solace in audiobook recordings of novels that I’ve already read because they offer a sort of comfort that soothes the piling pressures of my work days, but that’s hardly worth mentioning in this jukebox post.

When I asked myself the question, “What have I really been listening to?” I began to thumb through my off-brand mp3 player for songs that I would never-without-a-doubt-ever get tired of hearing. While these are not songs I’ve actively sought out, they’re the songs that I don’t ever actively skip through either. Many of these are by obscure local bands that no one has ever heard of, and though I tried to find meaning in that trend, none revealed itself.

These songs, in no particular order were “Grace is Gone” and “Grey Street” by the Dave Matthews Band, “Black Hawk” by Misty River, “Flake” by Jack Johnson, “Honey” by The Hush Sound, “Changes Should Come Easy” by Taarka, “The Sinister Minister” by Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, “Limbo” by True North, “Never Give Up On The Good Times” by the Spice Girls, “Take Me Out” by Franz Ferdinand, and the entire Original Broadway Cast soundtrack of Les Misérables. Does this list make me a tool? Probably. Unfortunately – and perhaps the final clinching blow to my case for being extremely lame – I realized that “Still Alive” from Portal is also on that list. I don’t honestly ever get tired of hearing it, even when it’s nerd-overkill. Does the fact that it was available as downloadable content on Rock Band make it more or less lame? I’ll leave that up to you.

Craig – Casting Pods

I’ve been knee deep in podcasts lately, which has meant a decline in the amount of music I can consume on a daily/weekly basis.  Theoretically, I could just keep discussing how much I’ve grown to love the Abbey Road medley, but I do try to keep things fresh around here.

Baseball season is fast approaching, and I couldn’t be more excited to resume fantasy baseball with some of my Charge Shot!!! cohorts.  ESPN’s Fantasy Focus podcast is a great way to get fantasy-relevant headlines, as well as listen to a half-hour of failed screenwriter-turned-fantasy expert Matthew Berry.  Plus, the show’s new theme song comes courtesy of Eric Hutchinson, a kickass songwriter whose music actually deserves and owns its Pop/Rock label (need proof?).

Also, a friend recently turned me on to Daily Show Brit John Oliver’s podcast The Bugle, which he runs with a British comedian I’ve never heard of named Andy Zaltzman.  It’s a delightfully British twist on the faux news format – more Weekend Update than Daily Show.  Two men on opposite sides of the Atlantic Skype about the week’s news, trying their best to make each other laugh with outrageous hyperbole, groan-inducing puns, and witty fact-fudging.  There are drastically worse ways to spend forty-five minutes.

Oh, and the March 20th episode of NPR’s Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! used “Trololo” for transition music.  Epic win.

Continue...

Writer’s Jukebox – From Batman to Han Solo

Yesterday was the first day of Spring!  That means it’s time to go for  drive, roll down your window, and blast your favorite tunes.  I, for one, spent some time with the Abbey Road medley whilst sojourning from workplace to workplace this afternoon.  If you’re tired of what’s on your iPod (or in your car stereo – like anyone has one of those anymore, I mean right guys?), we’ve got you covered.  I think.

Pankin’s rocking Amadeus, Mozart that is, as well as the most recent Batman movie soundtrack.  Chris celebrates Tim McGraw’s movie career by going back to his roots with some 90s country.  And Boivin finally discovers a band that sounds tailor-made for him: Nerf Herder.

Pankin – Scoring the Bat

I've been somewhat obsessed with a certain Mozart piano sonata that I've been trying to play: it's number 14 in C Minor, K. 457. I've played Beethoven's famous sonata in C Minor (the "Pathetique") for many a year, and I was immediately struck by the similarities between the two works. These similarities culminate in the middle of Mozart's second movement, where the melody and harmonic structure is basically identical to that of Beethoven's second movement. But even the general organization of all three movements follows the same patterns in both great composers' great sonatas. Beethoven has admitted how much influence Mozart has had on him, but you don't see it so tangibly reflected in many instances.

All my research on Oscar scores this past jukebox caused me to revisit a score that I think got jobbed in last year's kudofest: Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard's joint effort on The Dark Knight. Listening to the whole thing through, I noticed how they really put in a lot of work writing themes for different characters and specific situations, and then developing them throughout the film. It'll always be hard to follow in the footsteps of Danny Elfman's iconic musical setting of Tim Burton's '80s Batman (a version of his theme played behind the opening credits of the 1990s animated series), but I think this most recent score will go down in history as one of the most memorable and compelling of its types.

Finally, especially now, in light of these recent political wheelings and dealings, there's nothing better to put the cap on a good day than blasting Metallica's "...And Justice For All."

Chris – Good Ol’ Boys and Indian Outlaws

Watching Tim McGraw's moving performance in the Oscar-nominated film The Blind Side, I've been inspired to go back and relisten to the old country music that I enjoyed so much as a kid. I haven't followed contemporary country music since the turn of the millennium, but there was a time in 1996 when the clock radio in my room constantly played this sort of thing.

Alan Jackson was always a family favorite, not the least because my mom has this thing for guys with mustaches. Watching the video for his "Chattahoochee" brings back memories, and is perhaps the perfect summary of what mid-90s country music (or really, any country music) is all about - beer, women, hanging with the good ol' boys out in the country, and lyrical rhymes so clever that they're annoying ("Way down yonder on the Chattahoochee / It gets hotter than a hoochie coochie").

But for all his kitsch, Jackson is a true student of the country greats of the past. He's done a lot to keep old legends like George Jones and Willie Nelson in the public eye, even as the industry of country music has turned more toward pop-oriented music and younger, more expendable stars. He also pays his respect to long dead country icons like Hank Williams in the song "Murder on Music Row", a good old-fashioned country song that laments the death of the genre.

Tim McGraw, on the other hand, represents a lot of what Alan Jackson thinks is wrong with country music. But that doesn't mean he's any less enjoyable. Most of McGraw's music reads like a bad stereotype of a country song - songs like "Seventeen" that begin with the line "Back seat of her daddy's car / Trying not to take it too far". (Many McGraw songs involve him being seventeen years old and engaged in various questionable liaisons with girls in the back seats of cars.)

Modern McGraw is safe, family-oriented, acting in inspirational movies and singing populist anthems about being young and living in the south. But back in the 90s, he tried to frame himself as a country outlaw - a persona that has unfortunately fallen by the wayside in recent years. My favorite McGraw song will always be his most patently offensive - "Indian Outlaw" in which he begins, "I'm an Indian Outlaw / Half Cherokee and Choctaw / My baby - she's a Chippewa" before going through a list of simplistic Indian stereotypes - rhyming wigwam with tom-tom, and singing about peace pipes and totem poles. It doesn't matter that Tim McGraw is white, or that he equates hundreds of diverse Native American cultures as being the same thing - the song rocks, and McGraw is clearly too much of a rebel to be anything but an outlaw.

Boivin – “Why you stuck-up, half-witted, scruffy-looking nerf-herder!”

As you've probably been able to figure out based on previous Writer's Jukebox posts, I'm a pretty big pop punk fan. I'm also a huge nerd. Therefore, it's somewhat astonishing that a band like Nerf Herder passed me by until a few months ago.

Nerf Herder are basically the kings of "nerd rock". They combine lyrics generously sprinkled with geeky pop culture references with badass power pop/pop punk hooks to create something that's essentially the sonic equivalent of Mountain Dew Game Fuel. People often classify Weezer as a nerd rock band (their Blue Album-era stuff, anyway) but Rivers And Friends have always had too many pretensions towards becoming rock virtuosos that no matter how many times they namedrop Kitty Pryde in a song, they'll always be something greater than simple nerd rock.

Parry Gripp and his D&D party of a band do not have that problem. The best way to describe them would be something halfway between Weezer and Blink-182, in other words- the bastard love child of two favorite bands of the 90's.

Nerf Herder's songs run the gamut from unapologetic odes to Van Halen to anthems about competing with Spock for the affections of the fairer sex. I picked up their 1999 record How To Meet Girls because that's the only one my record store had, apparently there isn't too much demand for bands named after insults from The Empire Strikes Back. Who knew?

Fun fact: Nerf Herder did the Buffy theme song, and the now solo Gripp does the theme for my afternoons-of-underemployment guilty pleasure the Super Hero Squad Show. He also releases a new single online every week about something pathetically nerdy. My personal favorite? "The Girl At The Video Game Store", mostly because it's video features geek-goddess Olivia Munn (I am convinced that she is not real and is actually a Replicant created by G4 to get guys like me to watch Attack of the Show, and I do so gladly) and the lyrics basically describe my life, just like most Nerf Herder songs do.

Continue...

Writer’s Jukebox – Oscars? Oscar’s What?

As I write this, I’m watching Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin tear each other (and the entire Academy) a new one at the Oscars.  If you really love Hollywood, take a look back at Pankin’s predictions for the Oscar for Best Original Score.  If you’re just here for the tunes, please keep reading.

Roberto reminds us all that Broken Social Scene’s worth out time and (maybe) money.  Andrew wanted to write about The Hours’ “Ali in the Jungle,” but I wouldn’t let him.  So he bought a Muse album and the new record by “that band Cracker.”  Oh, the 90s.  As for me, I probably listened to “Ali in the Jungle” at least fifteen times this week. 

So…yeah.  You can guess what I’m talking about today.

Rob – Re-coming onto the Scene

We haven't heard much lately from Canadian commune/indie outfit Broken Social Scene. Their last full-length was 2005's eponymous LP.  Broken Social Scene was well-received, but generally considered to be less than 2002's near-perfect You Forgot In People.

BSS need not return to form. They have not fallen from grace. But judging by "World Sick," a free-to-download 8-minute epic, Broken Social Scene will transcend on May 4 with Forgiveness Rock Album.

Fans will recognize the signature sprawl - guitars loop and lace through a chugging tribal beat before exploding into a chorus that stretches to the horizon. The song may be tinged with weariness and disillusion, but BSS sound anything but. They sound in love.

Treat yourself to a free download here.

Andrew – Taking the Information Superhighway back to the 1990s

Craig seems to think that he can just call "Ali in the Jungle," like he owns it or something. I won't write about it, but it's because I don'twant to, not because of him.

After downloading "Ali in the Jungle" from Amazon MP3, I decided I'd dig through the rest of their on-sale offerings to see what I could see. One of my finds was Muse's Black Holes and Revelations. It's a great album if you like Muse's shtick (high-pitched warble, dense guitars, 32nd notes), though it's not going to change your mind about the band if you don't care for them. Highlights include the insistent riff of "Map of the Problematique" and Guitar Hero mainstay "Knights of Cydonia."

Amazon also transported me to the distant past. Remember the 90s? Remember that song "Low" by that band Cracker? Well, apparently they are still around - still! - and they're still putting out albums, and they still sound exactly the same as they did fifteen years ago. Sunrise in the Land of Milk and Honey is by no means an essential listen or a masterful album, but it does showcase Cracker doing what Cracker does, delivering alt-rock with a hint of a twang. Put on "Tune In Tune Out Drop Out With Me" or "Shine a Light," grab some Dunkaroos, and unearth your fullscreen VHS copy of Jurassic Park - you'll feel like it's the 90s all over again.

Craig – Rocking at All Hours

I can, in fact, call “Ali in the Jungle” if I want.  I first heard The Hours’ 2006 single during this year’s Winter Olympics.  Nike ran a commercial featuring the song, and I immediately purchased it from iTunes.

The prechorus “Everybody gets knocked down/How quick are you gonna get up?” is just so damn invigorating.  It’s not quite uplifting.  It’s not just a kick-me-when-I’m-down taunt.  It’s a blunt challenge.  As if that weren’t enough, the chorus then goes on to list people who’ve faced insurmountable odds: Muhammad Ali, Nelson Mandela, Joe Simpson, Helen Keller, Tony Adams, and Ludwig Van Beethoven.  Your problems cannot outweigh what these people dealt with.  And The Hours want to remind you of that.

The music’s decidedly pop indie rock.  A piano sets the mood over the ticking clock of the drums.  Guitars underpin the vocals throughout the first half, and the bass rumbles joyously throughout the second.  I’ve listened to thirty-second samples of The Hours’ other material and I’m not entirely sold.  But “Ali in the Jungle” is exquisite.  Need further convincing?  Watch this:

When not glued to my laptop with The Hours on repeat, I’ve been commuting to a constant soundtrack of The Beatles.  A few days ago “She Came In Through The Bathroom Window” supplanted the entirety of Rubber Soul as my favorite cut of the Fab Four’s oeuvre.  I’m not quite sure why.  Maybe it’s the way it emerges from the Abbey Road medley.  Or how Paul jumps playfully into falsetto on “And though she thought I knew the answer…”  Whatever the reason, I’m happy to keep it on repeat – until I learn all the words to “Hey Bulldog” anyway.

Continue...