It seems that everyone’s talking about this years’ release of Bob Dylan’s attempt at a Christmas record. There doesn’t seem to be any middle ground on this one. Journalists seem to love it (with caveats about irony and refreshing awkwardness) or hate it. I’m not going to throw my words onto the pig-pile and write an actual review... but merely muse on the concept a bit. Just take it as a given that my personal opinion of what I’ve heard of the record (I have to be upfront and admit I haven’t heard all of it, but browsing streamed snippets, internet bootlegs and the clips played on various NPR segments have been MORE than enough) falls on the more negative side of the heap. I tend to agree with Phoenix-based musician Brian Kelly (The Twilight Showdown, Borachio, etc.) that “Bob Dylan's ‘Christmas in the Heart’ sounds like someone recorded their drunk grandpa singing along to a Christmas cd in the bathroom.” (via Facebook.) If I thought it SOUNDED like a bad idea, I never would have guessed that it could be WORSE than I expected. But it is.
I have to confess, as a music-snob, that I’ve always been embarrassingly indifferent about Bob Dylan. In general, I have quite a bit of respect for him and like quite a bit of his material, but in small doses. I would never describe myself as a “fan.”
Let’s face it, there’s a heap of musicians out there that are better at writing songs than playing those songs. These are artists whose true value shines best when you hear their songs covered and performed by artists other than themselves. Dylan’s on that list for me... along with Leonard Cohen, Leadbelly (as much as I might personally enjoy both), and Weezer (first two albums only; everything after is garbage when played by anyone). For one reason or another, I tend to even prefer other people knocking-off Dylan’s SOUND and STYLE than hearing Dylan’s original rendition. Sure, I’ll admit to the sacrilege; I would far rather sit down and listen to Conor Oberst blatantly ripping Dylan-isms than cue up an actual Dylan record. And I don’t think that has all that much to do with my age. I just think for some song-writers like Dylan, it sometimes takes the ideas and instruments of others to iron out the kinks, to pull the pearl from the muddy oyster.
Dylan, for me, is a songwriter. And he’s brilliant and influential enough at it that the aspects of his records that I find hard to actually LISTEN to can be taken with a grain of salt most of the time.
But now, with this excruciating Christmas record, he’s taken what he’s good at out of the picture and left us with the rest; we get the muddy oyster-shell, and someone’s already stolen the pearl. This is a SONGWRITER releasing an entire record of covers, standards, classics. Think of how painful the reverse-scenario is... a classic-rock cover-band making the mistake of, after decades banging out recognizable radio-fare, debuting a couple of new “originals” to the drunk crowd that they entertain at the biker-dive. Let’s be realistic; NO ONE wants to hear flat-line, uninspired knock-offs of Credence songs (devoid of the catchy hooks) sandwiched between “I Want to Rock and Roll All Night” and “You Shook Me All Night Long”... and yet that’s what these attempts always inevitably sound like. And the lines at the rest-room and the bar suddenly lengthen at the expense of the dance-floor. Shock.
I don’t honestly know, in retrospect, why I expected this record (which I didn’t even expect to like) to be a bit better than it actually is. When I try to fathom how Bob Dylan doing Christmas songs could possibly NOT suck, the sound in my head sounds more like a Nick Cave or Tom Waits Christmas album than one that Dylan could ever do.
Now THOSE would be records that I would actually want to hear. Sure, they would be just as guaranteed to have their share of queasy, questionable, and cheesy moments... but I have the feeling they would be a whole lot more entertaining.... and at least a bit less painful.
...about...
- Bernard P. Provencher LeVautour
- Phoenix, Arizona, United States
- musician...artist...bartender...writer...quasi-academic-freelance-literary-something-or-other...rabble-rouser... beat-builder...connoisseur-of-crazy-critical-theory...etc.
Showing posts with label music reviews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label music reviews. Show all posts
Friday, November 6, 2009
Friday, July 3, 2009
Dissecting the Idea of “Journalism,” One Admitted Bias at a Time; Civil Vain’s New Retro Industrial.
Phoenix-based multi-instrumentalist/ Industrial conceptualist Wes Hopeless recently submitted to me a couple of tracks and videos from his current project, Civil Vain (a recent combination, or merger, of the material under that name and a prior outfit called Entropy 33) to take a look at and analyze a bit for him. These are demo-tracks that may eventually find their way onto an as-of-yet unplanned but speculated album project, and feature songs that will most definitely make their way into the project’s live-performance debut, tentatively slated for the fall of ‘09.
Bias alert- Wes is a frequent musical collaborator of mine. Together, we were the two primary halves of the Phoenix-based surreal doom-rock outfit The Green Sea, and since that project has been on hiatus per my relocation to the east coast, we have continued to frequently exchange tracks, ideas, bits-and-pieces, feedback, critique, etc. Therefore, keep this in mind, and take this review for what it is; a bit more informed and subjective than a blind listen, yet still striving to give the material its fair and honest due.
With that out of the way… first, a video.
La Femme Diabla
This song has evolved and been posted in various forms several times, and I’ve been keeping tabs on its progress. Wes’ current songwriting tactic seems to involve constructing gradually in sonic layers, like overlaying various screens over each other on an old-school overhead projector, and in the various versions of the song you can hear the colors and textures of each screen that’s been overlaid. What’s fascinating to me is that with each layer of sound and electronic chaos that Wes adds, the finished product seems to become somehow MORE coherent than the last, rather than less. This most recent video is therefore my favorite version thus far.
The latest recorded audio version of this track, unlike its live-video counterpart, features much more of a build-up, a crescendoed gradual layering; starting off almost sparse enough to recall early Depeche Mode or The Dead Milkmen’s “You’ll Dance to Anything” in an awkward-flashback sort of way, then building into the noisy Industrial electronic layering that the song has since evolved into. Of Civil Vain’s currently available audio material, the four newest tracks are definitely the stand-outs, as it’s obvious that Wes’ project has made great strides recently coming into its own in terms of arrangement, production, and songwriting. Of these four, two are original compositions (“Confession of a Killer” and “La Femme Diabla,” the song just discussed), and the other two are “covers” (“Electric Barbarella” by Duran Duran, and “Chalice,” originally by The Green Sea, which I wrote in collaboration with Wes. I‘ve never written a review of a cover of a song that I wrote before… this seems a bit awkward.).
For the two cover-songs, I’m trying to resist the urge to go back and listen to the original versions for comparison. I haven’t heard the Duran Duran song in long enough that I don’t remember what it sounds like, and it’s been a while since I sat down with the E.P. that we recorded with The Green Sea. More relevant, I think, is taking them in the context of the other two songs. Wes made a smart decision to choose two songs for Civil Vain to cover that sound little like his own writing-style in terms of melody and construction, as it frees him up to focus his attention on creating the interesting noise-landscapes that he does so well, and adding grit and creative production to songs that feature a style different from his own trademark. The way that the vocal-parts and song-structures are created on the original tracks smacks of old-school Industrial; There’s plenty of influence from the tried-and-trues here (Ministry, Skinny Puppy, KMFDM, etc) and Wes’ vocal-style and instrumentation often reminds me of The Revolting Cocks. Civil Vain pulls this off extremely well, but the cover-songs demonstrate refreshingly that Mr. Hopeless’ arrangements are still viable when Al Jorgensen has left the building.
On a personal note, I’m extremely impressed by this solo-take on “Chalice;” Wes managed to accomplish a genre-shift without much more than minor tweaks such as toning down my original hair-metal-meets-doom over-played guitar-part (I think Wes even played it on bass on this version?), translating the vocal part from “dark” to “sinister, ” etc; The song has been transformed enough to fit well into a very different sounding set, while leaving its structural integrity intact.
I just realized that with this version of “Chalice” and Tipsy Cougar’s repurposing of “The Plea of Miss Claustrophobia” (“Miss Claustrophobia’s Revenge,” from the forthcoming “Immaculate Conceptions”), two out of the three songs on The Green Sea’s E.P. have been kept in circulation, which makes me seriously tempted to rework a version of “The Evasive Enigmatic” with Swords We Swallow. We’ll see.
Wes’ greatest achievement with this Civil Vain material, I’m well aware, sounds on the surface like a sideways compliment at best. Let’s face it; What we have here is a one-man electronic act, playing Industrial music peppered with unabashed throwbacks to that genre’s bygone heyday, performing songs that are littered with references to robots, vampires, and creepy, sexed-up murder scenarios. On paper, it seems that if there was ever a precise formula for “hard to take seriously,” this would be it; possibly even rivaling The Cruxshadows in that regard. But somehow, in my biased opinion, Civil Vain manages to steer clear of some of the seemingly inevitable cheesiness lurking in this sort of terrain. As for how he manages this…. Honestly, I’m not quite SURE why it works, but it does. Take a listen. Your guess is as good as mine.
Bias alert- Wes is a frequent musical collaborator of mine. Together, we were the two primary halves of the Phoenix-based surreal doom-rock outfit The Green Sea, and since that project has been on hiatus per my relocation to the east coast, we have continued to frequently exchange tracks, ideas, bits-and-pieces, feedback, critique, etc. Therefore, keep this in mind, and take this review for what it is; a bit more informed and subjective than a blind listen, yet still striving to give the material its fair and honest due.
With that out of the way… first, a video.
La Femme Diabla
This song has evolved and been posted in various forms several times, and I’ve been keeping tabs on its progress. Wes’ current songwriting tactic seems to involve constructing gradually in sonic layers, like overlaying various screens over each other on an old-school overhead projector, and in the various versions of the song you can hear the colors and textures of each screen that’s been overlaid. What’s fascinating to me is that with each layer of sound and electronic chaos that Wes adds, the finished product seems to become somehow MORE coherent than the last, rather than less. This most recent video is therefore my favorite version thus far.
The latest recorded audio version of this track, unlike its live-video counterpart, features much more of a build-up, a crescendoed gradual layering; starting off almost sparse enough to recall early Depeche Mode or The Dead Milkmen’s “You’ll Dance to Anything” in an awkward-flashback sort of way, then building into the noisy Industrial electronic layering that the song has since evolved into. Of Civil Vain’s currently available audio material, the four newest tracks are definitely the stand-outs, as it’s obvious that Wes’ project has made great strides recently coming into its own in terms of arrangement, production, and songwriting. Of these four, two are original compositions (“Confession of a Killer” and “La Femme Diabla,” the song just discussed), and the other two are “covers” (“Electric Barbarella” by Duran Duran, and “Chalice,” originally by The Green Sea, which I wrote in collaboration with Wes. I‘ve never written a review of a cover of a song that I wrote before… this seems a bit awkward.).
For the two cover-songs, I’m trying to resist the urge to go back and listen to the original versions for comparison. I haven’t heard the Duran Duran song in long enough that I don’t remember what it sounds like, and it’s been a while since I sat down with the E.P. that we recorded with The Green Sea. More relevant, I think, is taking them in the context of the other two songs. Wes made a smart decision to choose two songs for Civil Vain to cover that sound little like his own writing-style in terms of melody and construction, as it frees him up to focus his attention on creating the interesting noise-landscapes that he does so well, and adding grit and creative production to songs that feature a style different from his own trademark. The way that the vocal-parts and song-structures are created on the original tracks smacks of old-school Industrial; There’s plenty of influence from the tried-and-trues here (Ministry, Skinny Puppy, KMFDM, etc) and Wes’ vocal-style and instrumentation often reminds me of The Revolting Cocks. Civil Vain pulls this off extremely well, but the cover-songs demonstrate refreshingly that Mr. Hopeless’ arrangements are still viable when Al Jorgensen has left the building.
On a personal note, I’m extremely impressed by this solo-take on “Chalice;” Wes managed to accomplish a genre-shift without much more than minor tweaks such as toning down my original hair-metal-meets-doom over-played guitar-part (I think Wes even played it on bass on this version?), translating the vocal part from “dark” to “sinister, ” etc; The song has been transformed enough to fit well into a very different sounding set, while leaving its structural integrity intact.
I just realized that with this version of “Chalice” and Tipsy Cougar’s repurposing of “The Plea of Miss Claustrophobia” (“Miss Claustrophobia’s Revenge,” from the forthcoming “Immaculate Conceptions”), two out of the three songs on The Green Sea’s E.P. have been kept in circulation, which makes me seriously tempted to rework a version of “The Evasive Enigmatic” with Swords We Swallow. We’ll see.
Wes’ greatest achievement with this Civil Vain material, I’m well aware, sounds on the surface like a sideways compliment at best. Let’s face it; What we have here is a one-man electronic act, playing Industrial music peppered with unabashed throwbacks to that genre’s bygone heyday, performing songs that are littered with references to robots, vampires, and creepy, sexed-up murder scenarios. On paper, it seems that if there was ever a precise formula for “hard to take seriously,” this would be it; possibly even rivaling The Cruxshadows in that regard. But somehow, in my biased opinion, Civil Vain manages to steer clear of some of the seemingly inevitable cheesiness lurking in this sort of terrain. As for how he manages this…. Honestly, I’m not quite SURE why it works, but it does. Take a listen. Your guess is as good as mine.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Scatter-Brained Notes, Notes From a Scattered Brain.....
If you read my last couple of entries, you might have noticed mention of a fairly full-slate of planned near-future entries. You may also be noticing that its been a little while since I posted those last entries. So, here's the deal...
Since I posted those last entries, Sara and I (and thus, Swords We Swallow) have moved into a new apartment/ studio-complex in Dover to get situated on the seacoast prior to starting grad.school at the University of New Hampshire in September. We've done alot of packing boxes, loading boxes, driving, unloading boxes, unpacking boxes, decorating, organizing, working to get the dog accustomed to the new surroundings (and in turn, getting myself accustomed to living with a small furry dog) and then trying to find time and patience to decompress after this. At the same time, I've been juggling two restaurant jobs in two different parts of the state (which means more driving...) and it's probably worth noting that the new one that I've started has caused a bit more anxiety than anticipated in several regards.
Basically, what this all boils down to... is that I have more than a bit of communication burn-out at the moment. I'm well aware that over the past few weeks I haven't been nearly as good at answering my phone, responding to emails, writing past-promised reviews, etc, as I would like to be, and I apologize. At the same time, however, I am trying to allow myself to get it out of my system while I can, before school starts.
I still have several entries partially written, and now that we're settled in to the new place, I plan to start regularly posting them again. Look for a Civil Vain review, a Lady Gaga critique, and possibly an entry on the imminent demise of the restaurant industry as we knew it, as well as several other tentatively slated pieces, in the very near future.
In the meantime, Tipsy Cougar finished the recording of our debut record, "Immaculate Conceptions," before Sara and I moved out of the Cougar Pad in Manchester... Here's a video of the last track that we completed for the record, "Manchester Song," that we filmed while recording.
Tipsy Cougar - Manchester Song
If you've been following the band at all, you probably know that we record completely live, with as few overdubs as we can manage. This particular track was recorded entirely on two-track cassette tape, with absolutely no addition tracks added... and I'm still incredibly happy with the way that it turned out; a personal goal of mine (the video's audio is from the camera's mic, not the album-version). I believe that the video was a recording of the take that we ended up using for the record.
We're currently working on brainstorming creative ways to package and distribute the record, bypassing the conventional music-industry as completely as possible.
Tipsy Cougar is now also on Facebook! Visit us, become a fan!
Swords We Swallow has set up our new studio in a room of our new apartment in Dover... We recorded an improvised track and video after we had set up the equipment, but we've decided not to make it available because, well... after a day off of unpacking, decorating, and setting up equipment, we'd had quite a bit of wine... and that's pretty evident in the quality of the material. We're currently debating about posting edited segments of the film, as it's marginally entertaining... but we're also working on turning the material that we improvised into an actual song and recording a better/ more complete/ less annoyingly "abstract" version.
In the meantime, here's a photo of our new set-up...
More such photos are available for your perusal on our Myspace and Facebook pages.
So, basically... stay tuned, peel your eyes. I plan to post more in coming days.
Since I posted those last entries, Sara and I (and thus, Swords We Swallow) have moved into a new apartment/ studio-complex in Dover to get situated on the seacoast prior to starting grad.school at the University of New Hampshire in September. We've done alot of packing boxes, loading boxes, driving, unloading boxes, unpacking boxes, decorating, organizing, working to get the dog accustomed to the new surroundings (and in turn, getting myself accustomed to living with a small furry dog) and then trying to find time and patience to decompress after this. At the same time, I've been juggling two restaurant jobs in two different parts of the state (which means more driving...) and it's probably worth noting that the new one that I've started has caused a bit more anxiety than anticipated in several regards.
Basically, what this all boils down to... is that I have more than a bit of communication burn-out at the moment. I'm well aware that over the past few weeks I haven't been nearly as good at answering my phone, responding to emails, writing past-promised reviews, etc, as I would like to be, and I apologize. At the same time, however, I am trying to allow myself to get it out of my system while I can, before school starts.
I still have several entries partially written, and now that we're settled in to the new place, I plan to start regularly posting them again. Look for a Civil Vain review, a Lady Gaga critique, and possibly an entry on the imminent demise of the restaurant industry as we knew it, as well as several other tentatively slated pieces, in the very near future.
In the meantime, Tipsy Cougar finished the recording of our debut record, "Immaculate Conceptions," before Sara and I moved out of the Cougar Pad in Manchester... Here's a video of the last track that we completed for the record, "Manchester Song," that we filmed while recording.
Tipsy Cougar - Manchester Song
If you've been following the band at all, you probably know that we record completely live, with as few overdubs as we can manage. This particular track was recorded entirely on two-track cassette tape, with absolutely no addition tracks added... and I'm still incredibly happy with the way that it turned out; a personal goal of mine (the video's audio is from the camera's mic, not the album-version). I believe that the video was a recording of the take that we ended up using for the record.
We're currently working on brainstorming creative ways to package and distribute the record, bypassing the conventional music-industry as completely as possible.
Tipsy Cougar is now also on Facebook! Visit us, become a fan!
Swords We Swallow has set up our new studio in a room of our new apartment in Dover... We recorded an improvised track and video after we had set up the equipment, but we've decided not to make it available because, well... after a day off of unpacking, decorating, and setting up equipment, we'd had quite a bit of wine... and that's pretty evident in the quality of the material. We're currently debating about posting edited segments of the film, as it's marginally entertaining... but we're also working on turning the material that we improvised into an actual song and recording a better/ more complete/ less annoyingly "abstract" version.
In the meantime, here's a photo of our new set-up...
More such photos are available for your perusal on our Myspace and Facebook pages.
So, basically... stay tuned, peel your eyes. I plan to post more in coming days.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
A Pair of Past-Related Reviews; Part 4; "You and I... walk by the... sea"; Conclusion.
While reviewing the new records from Jason Hebert and Cameron Audet, and musing on my own musical projects over the past few years, I noticed some interesting parallels between the body of work that our front-stage trio has collectively produced post-Rusted Tricycle. Both the similarities and differences between all of our musical trajectories are somehow coincidental, or somehow a part of the structure that we grappled off of separately after gaining our footing together with that band. Who knows.
Post-Tricycle, all three of us played in rock bands at one point in time or another that had a certain degree of “commercial viability,” and arguably (these comparisons are inevitably a bit subjective) achieved more of that sort of success than we did during our time with the Trike. After that, we have all recorded and performed with an acoustic project, and have all at least dabbled in one form or another of electronic music. I suppose that, musical trends being what they are (as discussed a bit within each of the reviews posted prior), these latter two could be claimed about most of our musical peers from the emo/ pop-punk scene of that time. I don’t really know. Nevertheless, these similarities seem noteworthy to me, considering how stylistically far-removed both of those formats are from the genre that Rusted Tricycle played.
Looking at the acoustic and electronic music that the three of us have produced independently of one another, it’s all very different, and we seem to all arrive at our influences and reasons for gravitating toward those sorts of music from very different junctures. These differences, however, remind me of a running joke that we had while R.T. was around.
I remember that we used to tease each other a bit that the front-stage trio of the band was accidentally similar in structure to a boy-band, where each member has a different “character,” stereotype, and demographic. Jason was the “indie/ emo” guy, with a flair for more serious and dramatic emotional songwriting and stage-presence. Cam reflected the “pop-punk” schtick, sentimental, light-hearted, and endearingly goofy. I was the “punk-rocker,” appearing onstage with liberty-spikes, Misfits tees, and a more rambunctious performance-demeanor.
As we’ve grown up, both musically and personally, in the time since R.T., the differences between all of our projects in both the electronic and acoustic formats are almost startlingly predictable when compared to an evolving and maturing version of our Rusted Tricycle “boy-band” stereotypes. Jason’s music has been consistently emotionally complicated, multi-layered, and dramatic, with almost epic tendencies at times. Cam has honed his pop songwriting skills, playing soft, catchy music with “pantie-melting” tendencies. My own music has usually veered toward the abstract and avant-garde, conceptually chaotic and intentionally inaccessible to most audiences even remotely “mainstream.”
I don’t want to get into too much of a “nature vs. nurture” argument about how much of both these similarities and differences were derived from our experiences with Rusted Tricycle all that time ago, and how much was just aspects of our personalities that inevitably came to similar conclusions that would have been reached regardless of the time with the Trike. I merely thought that these “Where Are We Now” parallels were interesting, and I figured that I’d share.
The next time you see one of us playing out somewhere, yell for a Rusted Tricycle song. It will either get a laugh, or a scowl with a “damn you, Bernie” attached, which would be amusing either way. Who knows, maybe we’ll actually remember how to play one (I know that I heard a recording of Cam doing a version of “Seashells” not that long ago, and I’ve been known to occasionally bust out “Cherry Coke” when playing acoustic… my favorite was an impromptu version once with cello and synth). Hell, yell for “Slit.” That would be REALLY funny.
Post-Tricycle, all three of us played in rock bands at one point in time or another that had a certain degree of “commercial viability,” and arguably (these comparisons are inevitably a bit subjective) achieved more of that sort of success than we did during our time with the Trike. After that, we have all recorded and performed with an acoustic project, and have all at least dabbled in one form or another of electronic music. I suppose that, musical trends being what they are (as discussed a bit within each of the reviews posted prior), these latter two could be claimed about most of our musical peers from the emo/ pop-punk scene of that time. I don’t really know. Nevertheless, these similarities seem noteworthy to me, considering how stylistically far-removed both of those formats are from the genre that Rusted Tricycle played.
Looking at the acoustic and electronic music that the three of us have produced independently of one another, it’s all very different, and we seem to all arrive at our influences and reasons for gravitating toward those sorts of music from very different junctures. These differences, however, remind me of a running joke that we had while R.T. was around.
I remember that we used to tease each other a bit that the front-stage trio of the band was accidentally similar in structure to a boy-band, where each member has a different “character,” stereotype, and demographic. Jason was the “indie/ emo” guy, with a flair for more serious and dramatic emotional songwriting and stage-presence. Cam reflected the “pop-punk” schtick, sentimental, light-hearted, and endearingly goofy. I was the “punk-rocker,” appearing onstage with liberty-spikes, Misfits tees, and a more rambunctious performance-demeanor.
As we’ve grown up, both musically and personally, in the time since R.T., the differences between all of our projects in both the electronic and acoustic formats are almost startlingly predictable when compared to an evolving and maturing version of our Rusted Tricycle “boy-band” stereotypes. Jason’s music has been consistently emotionally complicated, multi-layered, and dramatic, with almost epic tendencies at times. Cam has honed his pop songwriting skills, playing soft, catchy music with “pantie-melting” tendencies. My own music has usually veered toward the abstract and avant-garde, conceptually chaotic and intentionally inaccessible to most audiences even remotely “mainstream.”
I don’t want to get into too much of a “nature vs. nurture” argument about how much of both these similarities and differences were derived from our experiences with Rusted Tricycle all that time ago, and how much was just aspects of our personalities that inevitably came to similar conclusions that would have been reached regardless of the time with the Trike. I merely thought that these “Where Are We Now” parallels were interesting, and I figured that I’d share.
The next time you see one of us playing out somewhere, yell for a Rusted Tricycle song. It will either get a laugh, or a scowl with a “damn you, Bernie” attached, which would be amusing either way. Who knows, maybe we’ll actually remember how to play one (I know that I heard a recording of Cam doing a version of “Seashells” not that long ago, and I’ve been known to occasionally bust out “Cherry Coke” when playing acoustic… my favorite was an impromptu version once with cello and synth). Hell, yell for “Slit.” That would be REALLY funny.
Monday, March 9, 2009
A Pair of Past-Related Reviews; Part 2; Action and the Red Baron
In my last post, I had said that I planned to review Cameron Audet’s new record, and then Jason Hebert’s record with “Action and the Red Baron.” I am, however, going to switch the order, and review the Action record today, and presumably tackle the Audet record next, as information-gathering for one entry has taken a bit longer than the other.
Action and the Red Baron is a collaboration between Jason Hebert (“The Red Baron”- vocals, guitar, tambourine, shaker) and Dan Custer (“Action Dan”- piano, bass, turntables, beatbox, programming). As I said before, Jason has previously played with and fronted several bands, including Rusted Tricycle and Theory of Regret. Action Dan produces quite good electronic music under his own name. They recently released a record called “A Dream Awakening,” which is available through CDBaby, iTunes, and Amazon.com.
It seems a requisite part of an indie-rock singer’s recording catalog at this juncture to team up with an electronics-guru at some point, to release a record of vaguely dancy/ vaguely atmospheric emotional techno tracks to cater to the rock-throwback song-structure-and-melody whims of the current electro-hipster crowd. While I have to admit a certain taste-based bias in favor of this format, I also have some critical reservations about the proficiency with which it is often executed, as with most flavor-of-the-minute recording whims that force us to call the motives of its perpetrators into question a bit. Although “A Dream Awakening,” in principle, fulfills many of these qualities, it proves to be a more concisely constructed, and at the same time more diverse, record than many other such experiments.
Throughout the record, one of the easiest things to note is how startlingly crisp the overall production is. I am amazed by how effortlessly the variety of sound-scapes used spin in, out, and around each other. The sonic depth of these songs is immense and cavernous, and the beats are well-varied, atmospheric, and unusually well-suited to the emotional contents of the songwriting.
Jason’s voice opens the track “Still Standing” in a solo tone that is organic enough for the emotional style of the delivery, yet appropriately processed enough to fit with the electronic format of the project (a balancing-act of production rarely achieved in electro-crossover projects). “I was standing at the top of the world when the news came in.” The melody sounds optimistic and downright poppy, until the beats kick in dramatically on the word “in,” proving immediately that Action’s instrumentation is not merely presented as backing-tracks for Jason’s voice, but as integral aspects of the way that the duo intends to convey the overall statement of the song, a theme that is evident throughout the record, and one of the elements that makes the album shine. As the “news” comes in, the mood is shifted on a dime from upbeat to darkly introspective. Even when a guitar part breaks into the mix that by itself sounds downright doom-esque and like it shouldn’t really work, because of the overall tonal coherency of the track, for one reason or another, it definitely does. Some of the vocal-breaks and refrain-repetitions verge closer to Chester Bennington terrain than I ever thought that I would hear Jason doing, but these work surprisingly well, even to those of us who aren’t exactly in Linkin Park’s stylistic demographic.
On the track “Talking Distant Variable,” Jason lets Action Dan take the foreground. With reverb-drenched piano-lines and textural beat-crescendos, there’s definitely a bit of an Air/ Thievery Corporation down tempo vibe going on. Things get a tad muddy when the vocals try to force harder-edged choruses from the depths of the over-arching chill-out-session, with the sudden addition of guitars that are well executed, but a bit over-played and over-stated in the mix.
Like most indie/electronic projects, this record is not lacking for a couple of dancier groove-based moments. The most thoroughly funky track, and the outfit’s most complete foray into indie-dance-electro, is “The Night is Alive,” which is driven by an infectious bass hook and googly-synth modulation, and features a refreshing tenderness that is not often tapped in this format. It reminds me a bit of something in between a more-organic Postal Service and a more-upbeat One AM Radio, with a melody hook that calls to mind the Folk Implosion’s “Natural One.”
“I Am Gone” sounds utterly lush and emotionally rich, in an extremely cinematic way, featuring string-pads that interplay well with piano tinkling and vocal harmonies adeptly manipulated to fade in and out of the bright, breezy (yet lonely) fields of orchestration. This is the track on which I can hear the most evident footprints of Portishead, the band that Action Dan cites first in his list of influences (a reference that I’m personally pleased with, as anyone who recalls related past reviews and fan-geekery I’ve posted may recall).
The record runs the mood-scape gamut. “Phase and Cancelled” features trippy sonic experimentation, and elements of Pink Floyd, Atari Teenage Riot, Collide, Ladytron, and Metropolis Records fodder all come to mind at various moments in the track. On the other end of the spectrum, “In the Distance“, begins with Jason playing a sentimental acoustic song over washes of nature-sounds, building into a solid groove with more of the lush orchestration and soothing vocal textures that these guys do so well, with a bit of a Death Cab For Cutie vibe.
Overall, I can see any of these songs working extremely well on a vast stylistic variety of film soundtracks, and in this regard the record reminds me a bit of Massive Attack’s “Mezzanine.” If for no other reason (as I can’t claim that it sounds terribly similar or bears the same sort of aesthetic) but that the songs off of that record fit in just as appropriately within the myriad of different sorts of films that employed them. As the cinematic nature of its overall sound would require, this record’s moody diversity manages to transcends the somewhat overplayed format that it otherwise might be perceived to fall within. “A Dream Awakening” reminds us of the original purpose of this collaborative trend; if indie-musicians and electro-wizards are doing really interesting things on their own, why wouldn’t a combination of the two prove interesting? On this record, it definitely does.
Action and the Red Baron is a collaboration between Jason Hebert (“The Red Baron”- vocals, guitar, tambourine, shaker) and Dan Custer (“Action Dan”- piano, bass, turntables, beatbox, programming). As I said before, Jason has previously played with and fronted several bands, including Rusted Tricycle and Theory of Regret. Action Dan produces quite good electronic music under his own name. They recently released a record called “A Dream Awakening,” which is available through CDBaby, iTunes, and Amazon.com.
It seems a requisite part of an indie-rock singer’s recording catalog at this juncture to team up with an electronics-guru at some point, to release a record of vaguely dancy/ vaguely atmospheric emotional techno tracks to cater to the rock-throwback song-structure-and-melody whims of the current electro-hipster crowd. While I have to admit a certain taste-based bias in favor of this format, I also have some critical reservations about the proficiency with which it is often executed, as with most flavor-of-the-minute recording whims that force us to call the motives of its perpetrators into question a bit. Although “A Dream Awakening,” in principle, fulfills many of these qualities, it proves to be a more concisely constructed, and at the same time more diverse, record than many other such experiments.
Throughout the record, one of the easiest things to note is how startlingly crisp the overall production is. I am amazed by how effortlessly the variety of sound-scapes used spin in, out, and around each other. The sonic depth of these songs is immense and cavernous, and the beats are well-varied, atmospheric, and unusually well-suited to the emotional contents of the songwriting.
Jason’s voice opens the track “Still Standing” in a solo tone that is organic enough for the emotional style of the delivery, yet appropriately processed enough to fit with the electronic format of the project (a balancing-act of production rarely achieved in electro-crossover projects). “I was standing at the top of the world when the news came in.” The melody sounds optimistic and downright poppy, until the beats kick in dramatically on the word “in,” proving immediately that Action’s instrumentation is not merely presented as backing-tracks for Jason’s voice, but as integral aspects of the way that the duo intends to convey the overall statement of the song, a theme that is evident throughout the record, and one of the elements that makes the album shine. As the “news” comes in, the mood is shifted on a dime from upbeat to darkly introspective. Even when a guitar part breaks into the mix that by itself sounds downright doom-esque and like it shouldn’t really work, because of the overall tonal coherency of the track, for one reason or another, it definitely does. Some of the vocal-breaks and refrain-repetitions verge closer to Chester Bennington terrain than I ever thought that I would hear Jason doing, but these work surprisingly well, even to those of us who aren’t exactly in Linkin Park’s stylistic demographic.
On the track “Talking Distant Variable,” Jason lets Action Dan take the foreground. With reverb-drenched piano-lines and textural beat-crescendos, there’s definitely a bit of an Air/ Thievery Corporation down tempo vibe going on. Things get a tad muddy when the vocals try to force harder-edged choruses from the depths of the over-arching chill-out-session, with the sudden addition of guitars that are well executed, but a bit over-played and over-stated in the mix.
Like most indie/electronic projects, this record is not lacking for a couple of dancier groove-based moments. The most thoroughly funky track, and the outfit’s most complete foray into indie-dance-electro, is “The Night is Alive,” which is driven by an infectious bass hook and googly-synth modulation, and features a refreshing tenderness that is not often tapped in this format. It reminds me a bit of something in between a more-organic Postal Service and a more-upbeat One AM Radio, with a melody hook that calls to mind the Folk Implosion’s “Natural One.”
“I Am Gone” sounds utterly lush and emotionally rich, in an extremely cinematic way, featuring string-pads that interplay well with piano tinkling and vocal harmonies adeptly manipulated to fade in and out of the bright, breezy (yet lonely) fields of orchestration. This is the track on which I can hear the most evident footprints of Portishead, the band that Action Dan cites first in his list of influences (a reference that I’m personally pleased with, as anyone who recalls related past reviews and fan-geekery I’ve posted may recall).
The record runs the mood-scape gamut. “Phase and Cancelled” features trippy sonic experimentation, and elements of Pink Floyd, Atari Teenage Riot, Collide, Ladytron, and Metropolis Records fodder all come to mind at various moments in the track. On the other end of the spectrum, “In the Distance“, begins with Jason playing a sentimental acoustic song over washes of nature-sounds, building into a solid groove with more of the lush orchestration and soothing vocal textures that these guys do so well, with a bit of a Death Cab For Cutie vibe.
Overall, I can see any of these songs working extremely well on a vast stylistic variety of film soundtracks, and in this regard the record reminds me a bit of Massive Attack’s “Mezzanine.” If for no other reason (as I can’t claim that it sounds terribly similar or bears the same sort of aesthetic) but that the songs off of that record fit in just as appropriately within the myriad of different sorts of films that employed them. As the cinematic nature of its overall sound would require, this record’s moody diversity manages to transcends the somewhat overplayed format that it otherwise might be perceived to fall within. “A Dream Awakening” reminds us of the original purpose of this collaborative trend; if indie-musicians and electro-wizards are doing really interesting things on their own, why wouldn’t a combination of the two prove interesting? On this record, it definitely does.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
A Pair of Past-related Reviews- Part 1: You and I, Walk by the Ocean; Back-Catalog, Back-story.
I recently received a link from Cameron Audet, informing me that his acoustic-project’s new record is complete and currently being released. You may or may not remember Cameron as one of the two singer/ guitarists who fronted Rusted Tricycle, an emo/ pop-punk outfit that I played bass for, the better part of ten years ago. The project that the link featured has existed for a while under the name Audet, but, according to the website, is in the process of being re-titled Armor and Rage.
In recent months, I have heard similar updates from Jason Hebert, the other of the Tricycle’s former frontmen. He seems to be most currently active with a project called Action and the Red Baron, who have also recently released a new record.
By this point, the three of us that comprised Rusted Tricycle’s front-stage trifecta have played with quite a few different projects, and each have a fairly diverse back-catalog, of which our time with the Tricycle provides merely a blip in the far-removed past.
Nevertheless, the Tricycle definitely had its place, and provides an important piece in each of our musical evolutions. And, hey, since returning to New Hampshire last fall, no matter how much time has passed, I’ve received at least a few surprising “I know you from somewhere... Aren’t you the guy from...”’s, about that band, more often than any other from my past.
Reviews of the most recent records from these two of my fellow Tricyclists will follow in coming entries. (Unfortunately, I know nothing currently about the post-Rusted musical careers of Mike 59 or Benny, the two R.T. drummers… do you? If so, be in touch, and I’ll try to touch on that as well.)
In recent months, I have heard similar updates from Jason Hebert, the other of the Tricycle’s former frontmen. He seems to be most currently active with a project called Action and the Red Baron, who have also recently released a new record.
By this point, the three of us that comprised Rusted Tricycle’s front-stage trifecta have played with quite a few different projects, and each have a fairly diverse back-catalog, of which our time with the Tricycle provides merely a blip in the far-removed past.
Nevertheless, the Tricycle definitely had its place, and provides an important piece in each of our musical evolutions. And, hey, since returning to New Hampshire last fall, no matter how much time has passed, I’ve received at least a few surprising “I know you from somewhere... Aren’t you the guy from...”’s, about that band, more often than any other from my past.
Reviews of the most recent records from these two of my fellow Tricyclists will follow in coming entries. (Unfortunately, I know nothing currently about the post-Rusted musical careers of Mike 59 or Benny, the two R.T. drummers… do you? If so, be in touch, and I’ll try to touch on that as well.)
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
“Fasciinatiion” with flavors of moments past, still lingering on our tongues.
iFlavors of the minute, at various moments in time, are not intended to last or taste good on your tongue after their moment is gone. Musical flavors of hipster moments, although “indie” and hypothetically less “intentional” from a marketing stance, usually prove no exception to this idea.
When a past temporary flavor happens to accidentally prove its staying-power, however, the critic and culture find themselves at a crux. The very short-lived couture that made the act or work of art so monumentally popular for a time itself provides the basis for discounting the credibility of the act’s bid for longer-term pertinence.
I can think of a fair number of examples of this phenomenon off the top of my head, within the loose walls of “indie” music of the past decade alone. These are records that self-righteous, fashion-jumping hipsters will grumble and cringe to hear someone playing, with complaints of the listener being slow on the uptake or strangling out the last hold they had on a passed and expired moment, but popping in in their own cars when they know that no on else can hear, or getting a pang of guilty joy inside when a dj at a trendy club spins a track as a “throwback.”
The Postal Service’s “Give Up.” Hot Hot Heat’s “Make Up The Breakdown.” Bright Eyes’ “Lifted, or…” Bloc Party’s “Silent Alarm.” The Faint’s “Danse Macabre.” Just a few examples.
With the recent release of “Fasciinatiion,” The Faint has made my mind presently turn to these paradoxes of past popularity, the “where do we go now?” aspect of being a flavor-of-the-minute of a moment past.
After “Wet From Birth,” the decidedly hit-or-miss follow-up to “Danse Macabre,” I wasn’t sure what to expect from the new record. Like so many of these releases that resonate nearly instantly as every-art-scene-kid’s-temporary-new-favorite-band, many of the aspects that made “Danse Macabre” so popular proved either absent or less accessible on “Wet From Birth,” and the fervour of and for the music consequently diminished. (“Elevator,” the follow-up to Hot Hot Heat’s “Make Up The Breakdown,” seems like an accurate parallel in this regard. Both “Elevator” and “Wet From Birth” are solid records in their own right, but both took a few listens to warm up to, and either altered or removed elements of the records that they followed that were important factors in what made those albums so irresistible.)
“Fasciinatiion” definitely does not come off as The Faint attempting to return to their “Danse Macabre”-era sound as a mere attempt at recapturing the pinnacle of their past moment of fleeting-chic. The band has, however, reinstated some of the elements of past records that were conspicuously missing on the last release. For only one instance, some of the poetic lyrical sensibilities from earlier records are added back to the mix, combined with, rather than completely replacing, the jarringly- honest, realism-to-the-point-of-superficiality material that dominated most of “Wet From Birth” (the “I was standing at the merch-booth putting on maaaake-up” moments in the song “Desperate Guys” are only one apt example of this; I was able to warm up to the record much more thoroughly when I began to wonder if the majority of the songs were written from the perspectives of deeply superficial fictional characters, and, whether this idea is right or wrong, I still have a much easier time listening to the album when I assume that they were).
Instead, “Fasciinatiion” is a well-written and exceedingly listenable record on its own; the current stage of evolution of a band with an actual career discography, not merely the hangings-on of a temporary flash in a proverbial pan that the listener was intended to have forgotten by now. The elements of the act’s prior works combine to form the canvas on which the new elements of the band’s progressing sound are placed on top of as collage-elements. The poetic stylizing and incessant, dirty sexual dance-energy of “Dance Macabre,” the electronics-first focus and club-kid social realisms of “Wet From Birth,” and even some of the vocal-melody stylings that the band hasn’t really revisited since “Blankwave Arcade” are all evident here. Rather than being a mere conglomerate of their past catalog, however, “Fasciinatiion” also adds increasing creativity in the skill of electronics production. Compared to the beats constructed for “Wet From Birth,” which seem at times fairly sterile, The Faint’s techno-prowess has expanded tremendously. Another welcome change comes with the sort of dance-beats chosen this time around. The band has this time nearly forgone the pulsing pogo-robot click-tracks that were the accepted rhythm of dance-punk when their first couple of records were released for something more often like hip-hop-inspired grooves that invite a more break-dance-friendly sort of energy, which seems more accurately in tune with the way that the indie-electro movement has progressed around them over the course of their career. There are moments on “Fasciinatiion” when the influence of electro acts that are closer to the current hipster flavor-of-the-minute seem probable. In certain tracks, I hear production reminiscent of the current Brooklyn scene (a couple of songs have a definite LCD Soundsystem vibe to my ear) and some of the dirty-synth clippiness that makes an occasional appearance reminds me of certain tracks by French acts like Justice.
This isn’t to say that “Fasciinatiion” sounds like The Faint is merely band-wagon jumping to get another shot at being part of the current “big thing.” It sounds, rather, like they are coming to terms with developing a recording catalog with a different paradigm of success, one less concerned with regaining their scenester-chic, and more interested in acquiring a longer-term respect and viability. To do so, they have combined on their most recent outing elements that they have learned to be successful for them in the past, along with present-tense influences of an evolving electronic music community.
If thinking about The Faint makes you reminisce pleasantly about their “Dance Macabre”-era height of popularity, and the urgent sexual-scenester-energy that accompanied it, a pleasurable flavor that you enjoyed in a moment past, “Fasciinatiion” offers the best opportunity since then to take another, and possibly a longer-lasting, taste.
In other news... The Stiletto Formal (whose last EP I reviewed in a past entry) have released two new tracks from their forthcoming LP on their Myspace page. Check them out, I like them... they're mighty eclectic, and make me look forward to hearing the new record quite a bit.
My Metro-Grime/ dirty/noisy electro-rock act Tipsy Cougar recently posted two new tracks to our Myspace site as well. One of them is a track called "USOCS," which I wrote about recently on this blog in another past entry. The other is a song that was previously posted as an acoustic track on my solo music profile. Check them out, let me know what you think, and feel free to download the tracks from the sites for free.
When a past temporary flavor happens to accidentally prove its staying-power, however, the critic and culture find themselves at a crux. The very short-lived couture that made the act or work of art so monumentally popular for a time itself provides the basis for discounting the credibility of the act’s bid for longer-term pertinence.
I can think of a fair number of examples of this phenomenon off the top of my head, within the loose walls of “indie” music of the past decade alone. These are records that self-righteous, fashion-jumping hipsters will grumble and cringe to hear someone playing, with complaints of the listener being slow on the uptake or strangling out the last hold they had on a passed and expired moment, but popping in in their own cars when they know that no on else can hear, or getting a pang of guilty joy inside when a dj at a trendy club spins a track as a “throwback.”
The Postal Service’s “Give Up.” Hot Hot Heat’s “Make Up The Breakdown.” Bright Eyes’ “Lifted, or…” Bloc Party’s “Silent Alarm.” The Faint’s “Danse Macabre.” Just a few examples.
With the recent release of “Fasciinatiion,” The Faint has made my mind presently turn to these paradoxes of past popularity, the “where do we go now?” aspect of being a flavor-of-the-minute of a moment past.
After “Wet From Birth,” the decidedly hit-or-miss follow-up to “Danse Macabre,” I wasn’t sure what to expect from the new record. Like so many of these releases that resonate nearly instantly as every-art-scene-kid’s-temporary-new-favorite-band, many of the aspects that made “Danse Macabre” so popular proved either absent or less accessible on “Wet From Birth,” and the fervour of and for the music consequently diminished. (“Elevator,” the follow-up to Hot Hot Heat’s “Make Up The Breakdown,” seems like an accurate parallel in this regard. Both “Elevator” and “Wet From Birth” are solid records in their own right, but both took a few listens to warm up to, and either altered or removed elements of the records that they followed that were important factors in what made those albums so irresistible.)
“Fasciinatiion” definitely does not come off as The Faint attempting to return to their “Danse Macabre”-era sound as a mere attempt at recapturing the pinnacle of their past moment of fleeting-chic. The band has, however, reinstated some of the elements of past records that were conspicuously missing on the last release. For only one instance, some of the poetic lyrical sensibilities from earlier records are added back to the mix, combined with, rather than completely replacing, the jarringly- honest, realism-to-the-point-of-superficiality material that dominated most of “Wet From Birth” (the “I was standing at the merch-booth putting on maaaake-up” moments in the song “Desperate Guys” are only one apt example of this; I was able to warm up to the record much more thoroughly when I began to wonder if the majority of the songs were written from the perspectives of deeply superficial fictional characters, and, whether this idea is right or wrong, I still have a much easier time listening to the album when I assume that they were).
Instead, “Fasciinatiion” is a well-written and exceedingly listenable record on its own; the current stage of evolution of a band with an actual career discography, not merely the hangings-on of a temporary flash in a proverbial pan that the listener was intended to have forgotten by now. The elements of the act’s prior works combine to form the canvas on which the new elements of the band’s progressing sound are placed on top of as collage-elements. The poetic stylizing and incessant, dirty sexual dance-energy of “Dance Macabre,” the electronics-first focus and club-kid social realisms of “Wet From Birth,” and even some of the vocal-melody stylings that the band hasn’t really revisited since “Blankwave Arcade” are all evident here. Rather than being a mere conglomerate of their past catalog, however, “Fasciinatiion” also adds increasing creativity in the skill of electronics production. Compared to the beats constructed for “Wet From Birth,” which seem at times fairly sterile, The Faint’s techno-prowess has expanded tremendously. Another welcome change comes with the sort of dance-beats chosen this time around. The band has this time nearly forgone the pulsing pogo-robot click-tracks that were the accepted rhythm of dance-punk when their first couple of records were released for something more often like hip-hop-inspired grooves that invite a more break-dance-friendly sort of energy, which seems more accurately in tune with the way that the indie-electro movement has progressed around them over the course of their career. There are moments on “Fasciinatiion” when the influence of electro acts that are closer to the current hipster flavor-of-the-minute seem probable. In certain tracks, I hear production reminiscent of the current Brooklyn scene (a couple of songs have a definite LCD Soundsystem vibe to my ear) and some of the dirty-synth clippiness that makes an occasional appearance reminds me of certain tracks by French acts like Justice.
This isn’t to say that “Fasciinatiion” sounds like The Faint is merely band-wagon jumping to get another shot at being part of the current “big thing.” It sounds, rather, like they are coming to terms with developing a recording catalog with a different paradigm of success, one less concerned with regaining their scenester-chic, and more interested in acquiring a longer-term respect and viability. To do so, they have combined on their most recent outing elements that they have learned to be successful for them in the past, along with present-tense influences of an evolving electronic music community.
If thinking about The Faint makes you reminisce pleasantly about their “Dance Macabre”-era height of popularity, and the urgent sexual-scenester-energy that accompanied it, a pleasurable flavor that you enjoyed in a moment past, “Fasciinatiion” offers the best opportunity since then to take another, and possibly a longer-lasting, taste.
In other news... The Stiletto Formal (whose last EP I reviewed in a past entry) have released two new tracks from their forthcoming LP on their Myspace page. Check them out, I like them... they're mighty eclectic, and make me look forward to hearing the new record quite a bit.
My Metro-Grime/ dirty/noisy electro-rock act Tipsy Cougar recently posted two new tracks to our Myspace site as well. One of them is a track called "USOCS," which I wrote about recently on this blog in another past entry. The other is a song that was previously posted as an acoustic track on my solo music profile. Check them out, let me know what you think, and feel free to download the tracks from the sites for free.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
"Hun, this is just syntax and prowess;" A Literary Look at The Stiletto Formal's "This is My Boomstick."
After more of a delay than I had anticipated (it’s been a pretty strange week), I’ll try to attempt to pick up where I left off in my last entry.
The first time that I saw The Stiletto Formal, I was familiar with their name, the sort of audience they tended to attract, and several of the bands that they habitually played shows with, and based on these alone I was prepared to dislike them fervently. (See my description of the third sort of band discussed in my prior entry and you’ll know what I’m talking about. The whine-whine-scream, slanty-hair bit.) I went to the show at Modified Arts in Phoenix to see TheStart, an electro-rock act from L.A. that they happened to be playing with that I have been a fan of for quite a while. I thought the choice of billing was strange for one band or the other, which definitely peaked my curiosity a bit.
To be brief, what I saw from the Phoenix-based act proved to be far from what I had expected. The instrumentation was diverse, the performance energetic and dramatic in a way that had more in common with an opera than a hardcore show, and the songs were extremely well-written. This was a far cry from what we’re used to hearing 15-year olds who think themselves “fashionable” erroneously calling “screamo” post-Thursday and Blood Brothers. (When I hear the word “screamo” I still stubbornly think of band like Small Brown Bike, The Casket Lottery, Coalesce, etc… which are a far cry from Atreyu from the standpoint of sound…)
I’ll admit, the moment that completely sold me on the act came fairly late into the set… singer Kyle Howard announced that they were about to play a “new” song called “Tastes Like Black Licorice”… to which a white-belt-wearing high-schooler near the front yelled “Yaegermeister!” Mr. Howard looked down at him, with an expression somewhere between perplexion and contempt, and stammered in a ‘Like, duh’ tone into the microphone “Uh, no… absinthe.” I tucked my hands deeper into the pockets of my tweed coat, smirked, and nodded. There was definitely more to this band than a good portion of the trend-jumping facet of their crowd seemed able to process and appreciate. To me, that’s always a positive sign.
Shortly after this show, I picked up a copy of the band’s “This is My Boomstick” EP, which had been recently released around the time.
I would love to be able to take this EP and conduct a song-by-song in-depth analysis, viewing the musical context as creative utilization of objects in the act’s diverse poetic toolbox, but I fear that would prove far too long-winded for this medium; I can only cross my fingers that this band becomes as popular as they deserve to be so that I can someday pitch a longer form of this to some University Press or other as “pertinent” cultural analysis. Pipe-dreams from all angles, I know. But this is a possibility for music crit. that is able to be approached as lit. crit., which is far more rare than I wish that it was. This is what I live for. This record is Literature written without the confines of writing with mere words alone, and this hybridity, to my ear, suggests its staying-power, although as more of a museum-specimen of Art with a capital “A,” (destined most likely, as most of the sort, to be truly appreciated only long after its appearance) than as a commercially-viable object of current “music” alone as it is currently produced, bought, and sold.
In continuation of a past discussion of how a critic’s marginalia can be criticism, and thus Art, itself, I present here a sample-page of my scribbles on a print-out of the lyrics to the record.
Yes, once again, I am well aware that my hand-writing is atrocious.
So, visit the band’s website, pick up a copy of the EP (which, if you haven’t noticed yet, I highly recommend) and give it a few really close listens.
Pay attention to the way that the music is sculpted in such a way as to ebb and flow with the meaning and tone of the lyrics, how Kyle’s voice (which, I will be the first one to admit, takes most people a bit of time to warm up to) rises and falls in intensity and emotion with an operatic sense of melodrama and attention to detail that very few acts would even consider putting the effort into achieving (after getting to know the songs, you’ll find that every time he slips into the falsetto shrieks that will most probably seem jarring at first, it is completely appropriate and necessary to thoroughly express the purpose of the piece). Pay attention to how accurately the overall experience of the song “Tastes Like Black Licorice” captures the foggy lucidity of a good absinthe-buzz, and how the escalation and climax of the song’s plot, the turn from tender to sinister, affection to threat, situates the band as a torch-bearer of a poetic tradition that has been utilized in the past by artists with such names as Poe, Tolstoy, John Fowles, Nick Cave, and hundreds of others. Listen to “The Fall of Ambrose Bierce” with a mind to the work of Bierce himself, who, from what I can gather, the song is written from the perspective of, and replicates the ideas and verbal stylings of extremely well. (For those who aren't familiar with the idiosyncracies of Bierce's biography, and thus the civil war scenarios that lend the song its substance, check here.) Listen closely to “I Sing The Body Electric” and try to figure out what the Whitman connection is that the title implies. I have some pretty good guesses, but I’m not positive. If you have an interesting idea, I’d love to hear it, discuss, and try to piece it together further.
My guess has something to do with this-
The first time that I saw The Stiletto Formal, I was familiar with their name, the sort of audience they tended to attract, and several of the bands that they habitually played shows with, and based on these alone I was prepared to dislike them fervently. (See my description of the third sort of band discussed in my prior entry and you’ll know what I’m talking about. The whine-whine-scream, slanty-hair bit.) I went to the show at Modified Arts in Phoenix to see TheStart, an electro-rock act from L.A. that they happened to be playing with that I have been a fan of for quite a while. I thought the choice of billing was strange for one band or the other, which definitely peaked my curiosity a bit.
To be brief, what I saw from the Phoenix-based act proved to be far from what I had expected. The instrumentation was diverse, the performance energetic and dramatic in a way that had more in common with an opera than a hardcore show, and the songs were extremely well-written. This was a far cry from what we’re used to hearing 15-year olds who think themselves “fashionable” erroneously calling “screamo” post-Thursday and Blood Brothers. (When I hear the word “screamo” I still stubbornly think of band like Small Brown Bike, The Casket Lottery, Coalesce, etc… which are a far cry from Atreyu from the standpoint of sound…)
I’ll admit, the moment that completely sold me on the act came fairly late into the set… singer Kyle Howard announced that they were about to play a “new” song called “Tastes Like Black Licorice”… to which a white-belt-wearing high-schooler near the front yelled “Yaegermeister!” Mr. Howard looked down at him, with an expression somewhere between perplexion and contempt, and stammered in a ‘Like, duh’ tone into the microphone “Uh, no… absinthe.” I tucked my hands deeper into the pockets of my tweed coat, smirked, and nodded. There was definitely more to this band than a good portion of the trend-jumping facet of their crowd seemed able to process and appreciate. To me, that’s always a positive sign.
Shortly after this show, I picked up a copy of the band’s “This is My Boomstick” EP, which had been recently released around the time.
I would love to be able to take this EP and conduct a song-by-song in-depth analysis, viewing the musical context as creative utilization of objects in the act’s diverse poetic toolbox, but I fear that would prove far too long-winded for this medium; I can only cross my fingers that this band becomes as popular as they deserve to be so that I can someday pitch a longer form of this to some University Press or other as “pertinent” cultural analysis. Pipe-dreams from all angles, I know. But this is a possibility for music crit. that is able to be approached as lit. crit., which is far more rare than I wish that it was. This is what I live for. This record is Literature written without the confines of writing with mere words alone, and this hybridity, to my ear, suggests its staying-power, although as more of a museum-specimen of Art with a capital “A,” (destined most likely, as most of the sort, to be truly appreciated only long after its appearance) than as a commercially-viable object of current “music” alone as it is currently produced, bought, and sold.
In continuation of a past discussion of how a critic’s marginalia can be criticism, and thus Art, itself, I present here a sample-page of my scribbles on a print-out of the lyrics to the record.
Yes, once again, I am well aware that my hand-writing is atrocious.
So, visit the band’s website, pick up a copy of the EP (which, if you haven’t noticed yet, I highly recommend) and give it a few really close listens.
Pay attention to the way that the music is sculpted in such a way as to ebb and flow with the meaning and tone of the lyrics, how Kyle’s voice (which, I will be the first one to admit, takes most people a bit of time to warm up to) rises and falls in intensity and emotion with an operatic sense of melodrama and attention to detail that very few acts would even consider putting the effort into achieving (after getting to know the songs, you’ll find that every time he slips into the falsetto shrieks that will most probably seem jarring at first, it is completely appropriate and necessary to thoroughly express the purpose of the piece). Pay attention to how accurately the overall experience of the song “Tastes Like Black Licorice” captures the foggy lucidity of a good absinthe-buzz, and how the escalation and climax of the song’s plot, the turn from tender to sinister, affection to threat, situates the band as a torch-bearer of a poetic tradition that has been utilized in the past by artists with such names as Poe, Tolstoy, John Fowles, Nick Cave, and hundreds of others. Listen to “The Fall of Ambrose Bierce” with a mind to the work of Bierce himself, who, from what I can gather, the song is written from the perspective of, and replicates the ideas and verbal stylings of extremely well. (For those who aren't familiar with the idiosyncracies of Bierce's biography, and thus the civil war scenarios that lend the song its substance, check here.) Listen closely to “I Sing The Body Electric” and try to figure out what the Whitman connection is that the title implies. I have some pretty good guesses, but I’m not positive. If you have an interesting idea, I’d love to hear it, discuss, and try to piece it together further.
My guess has something to do with this-
“4
I have perceived that to be with those I like is enough,
To stop on company with the rest at evening is enough,
To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough,
To pass among them or touch any on, or rest my arm ever so lightly
Round his or her neck for a moment, what is this then?
I do not ask any more delight, I swim in it as a sea.
-Walt Whitman, "I Sing the Body Electric"
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Lamenting a Lack of the Eclectic; A Preface to a Record-Review.
I never would have thought, prior to leaving Arizona, that I would be spending a clear and cold New England winter evening sitting on a spot on the bank of Manchester’s Lake Massabesic familiar to me for mostly forgotten reasons from years past, lamenting the local lack of certain types of musical acts that I had taken a bit for granted for the time that I was in Phoenix.
To be rather blunt, some conversations with varied musician-acquaintances in New England since my return have not proven terribly optimistic. It seems that the musical situation in these parts has stagnated quite drastically; for all my digging around to see what’s new and what various players are up to, it seems that nearly every act falls into one of three categories, none of which I can seem to get particularly excited about.
There’s a peculiar sort of distinctly “American” (*cough* redneck) shout “metal” that doesn’t seem to exist to the same extent anywhere besides here. This sort of thing is mostly perpetrated, apparently, by musicians who were playing in bands heavily influenced by Korn and The Deftones back when that sort of thing was viable, and, in an act of collective panic when nu-metal proved outmoded, added a dose of influence from Slayer and Pantera for the sake of “credibility” so that they could claim (in a naive bout of angry irony) “Hey look, we play real metal now”… this is something that I could rant on for pages, but I‘ll spare you, with just the reminder that, if you look at its history and formative influences, Heavy Metal is a distinctly European phenomenon. I know, to legions of guys who are much larger than I am with Kerry King goatees and tribal tattoos these are fighting words. Oh well.
There seems to be a bizarre revival of mid-’90’s-Boston-style tough-guy hardcore and street-punk, played mostly by guys who were a bit too young to have been terribly involved in those scenes the first time around (I mean, I was pretty young when I was listening to the older guys lament about the good-old-days, and I could have baby-sat most of this new crop…), with some acts and performers who have apparently been hanging on through the last decade and are now seeing their popularity unexpectedly resurface (the number of recent “reunions” that I’ve heard about by bands that I saw at Café Savoi and The Elvis Room when I was fifteen boggles my mind).
…And then there’s the glut of bands playing a cookie-cutter form of “screamo” that passed its flavor-of-the-minute lifespan at least two years ago. You know the type… whine, scream, whine-whine, scream…octave-chords, octave-chords, breakdown, octave-chords, breakdown, breakdown… Slanty-hair, girl-pants, white-belts... you know the cliches, you get the drill.
(Of course, I’m leaving out the “I was on a music-based reality-TV show a year ago and now I play acoustic cover-songs to drunks and draw big crowds who think I’m a ‘celebrity’” phenomenon… This is by far the most disturbing to me of all, but it’s a different cultural animal entirely that needs a much wider scope to tackle adequately)
Add to this what seems to be a near-complete lack of consistent or reliable venues, lack-luster and clique-ish crowds, etc. (sound familiar, Phoenix? These seem to be national concerns right now) and I’ll admit that I’m in no particularly educated position from which to review the state of the “scene” around here, as I have yet to get wind of any shows or performances that sounded even remotely worth attending, or any new act worth giving a listen to and getting excited about. (If anyone in my readership feels able to help me out in this regard, I’m all ears… but I’d prefer to steer clear of anything that falls formulaically within the aforementioned categories, which, I know, makes your task considerably more difficult.)
In short, what the New England music scene north of Boston seems to be lacking right now is the emphasis on ecclecticism that I earnestly felt was in the air in the area when I left a few years ago. There was a time, in fact, shortly before I left Manchester, when I might have even complained that a potential problem with the state of New England music was that everyone was trying a bit too hard to be different, to the extent that most of what was going on was almost "artsy" to the extent of being unlistenably abstract. I am utterly confused as to how things have apparently headed in such a polar-opposite direction in such a relatively short period of time.
These thoughts lead my mind to early scribbles in a “blogs to write” list that I jotted down when I first started posting here.
When I initially thought to review it, “This is My Boomstick” by Phoenix’s “The Stiletto Formal” was a bit closer to being a “new” record than it is now. I kept putting it off, however, as new ideas found their way to my pen, and thus this page, faster.
At this point, it’s a bit late, but seems a pertinent undertaking, if based on my personal present local-music-woes, if for no other reason.
…to be continued.
To be rather blunt, some conversations with varied musician-acquaintances in New England since my return have not proven terribly optimistic. It seems that the musical situation in these parts has stagnated quite drastically; for all my digging around to see what’s new and what various players are up to, it seems that nearly every act falls into one of three categories, none of which I can seem to get particularly excited about.
There’s a peculiar sort of distinctly “American” (*cough* redneck) shout “metal” that doesn’t seem to exist to the same extent anywhere besides here. This sort of thing is mostly perpetrated, apparently, by musicians who were playing in bands heavily influenced by Korn and The Deftones back when that sort of thing was viable, and, in an act of collective panic when nu-metal proved outmoded, added a dose of influence from Slayer and Pantera for the sake of “credibility” so that they could claim (in a naive bout of angry irony) “Hey look, we play real metal now”… this is something that I could rant on for pages, but I‘ll spare you, with just the reminder that, if you look at its history and formative influences, Heavy Metal is a distinctly European phenomenon. I know, to legions of guys who are much larger than I am with Kerry King goatees and tribal tattoos these are fighting words. Oh well.
There seems to be a bizarre revival of mid-’90’s-Boston-style tough-guy hardcore and street-punk, played mostly by guys who were a bit too young to have been terribly involved in those scenes the first time around (I mean, I was pretty young when I was listening to the older guys lament about the good-old-days, and I could have baby-sat most of this new crop…), with some acts and performers who have apparently been hanging on through the last decade and are now seeing their popularity unexpectedly resurface (the number of recent “reunions” that I’ve heard about by bands that I saw at Café Savoi and The Elvis Room when I was fifteen boggles my mind).
…And then there’s the glut of bands playing a cookie-cutter form of “screamo” that passed its flavor-of-the-minute lifespan at least two years ago. You know the type… whine, scream, whine-whine, scream…octave-chords, octave-chords, breakdown, octave-chords, breakdown, breakdown… Slanty-hair, girl-pants, white-belts... you know the cliches, you get the drill.
(Of course, I’m leaving out the “I was on a music-based reality-TV show a year ago and now I play acoustic cover-songs to drunks and draw big crowds who think I’m a ‘celebrity’” phenomenon… This is by far the most disturbing to me of all, but it’s a different cultural animal entirely that needs a much wider scope to tackle adequately)
Add to this what seems to be a near-complete lack of consistent or reliable venues, lack-luster and clique-ish crowds, etc. (sound familiar, Phoenix? These seem to be national concerns right now) and I’ll admit that I’m in no particularly educated position from which to review the state of the “scene” around here, as I have yet to get wind of any shows or performances that sounded even remotely worth attending, or any new act worth giving a listen to and getting excited about. (If anyone in my readership feels able to help me out in this regard, I’m all ears… but I’d prefer to steer clear of anything that falls formulaically within the aforementioned categories, which, I know, makes your task considerably more difficult.)
In short, what the New England music scene north of Boston seems to be lacking right now is the emphasis on ecclecticism that I earnestly felt was in the air in the area when I left a few years ago. There was a time, in fact, shortly before I left Manchester, when I might have even complained that a potential problem with the state of New England music was that everyone was trying a bit too hard to be different, to the extent that most of what was going on was almost "artsy" to the extent of being unlistenably abstract. I am utterly confused as to how things have apparently headed in such a polar-opposite direction in such a relatively short period of time.
These thoughts lead my mind to early scribbles in a “blogs to write” list that I jotted down when I first started posting here.
When I initially thought to review it, “This is My Boomstick” by Phoenix’s “The Stiletto Formal” was a bit closer to being a “new” record than it is now. I kept putting it off, however, as new ideas found their way to my pen, and thus this page, faster.
At this point, it’s a bit late, but seems a pertinent undertaking, if based on my personal present local-music-woes, if for no other reason.
…to be continued.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
More Asbjorn music, and Portishead fan-geek-ery...
Alright, so...
In my last entry, I pretty much blatantly ASKED you to call me crazy. I requested that my readers psychoanalyze a recent dream that I had, and the only responses that I received were from a couple of people that know me personally extremely well. The rest of you are slacking. You almost passed up an opportunity to tell me I'm as off my rocker as you think that I am. But it's not too late. I'm still curious. Let me know what you think is dancing around in my subconscious.
In other news, as more notes of continuation of my last entry...
Shortly after I posted last with recent updates from music projects affiliated with the Asbjorn Poetry and Arts Collective, Nat Ward's Aperture project posted a set of new dark ambient electronic tracks to their page. Definitely solid mood-music and atmosphere and texture tracks well worth checking out.
In broader musical news, after a rather questionable decade, things are starting to look up. Retrospectively, of course... but after cultural situations spend a time falling backwards, sometimes it takes looking into the recent past (a point prior to things going awry) to move into what is to (positively) come.
Yes, I sound like a fan-geek. Yes, this is old news in the music blog-o-sphere.
But, as I see it, this is one of my only massive cultural weak-spots. The only issue on which I AM, admittedly, a bit of the fan-geek.
That's right, I'm talking about Portishead.
If you haven't heard, they're back.
Here are some videos of new songs from their recent All Tomorrow's Parties appearance.
In my last entry, I pretty much blatantly ASKED you to call me crazy. I requested that my readers psychoanalyze a recent dream that I had, and the only responses that I received were from a couple of people that know me personally extremely well. The rest of you are slacking. You almost passed up an opportunity to tell me I'm as off my rocker as you think that I am. But it's not too late. I'm still curious. Let me know what you think is dancing around in my subconscious.
In other news, as more notes of continuation of my last entry...
Shortly after I posted last with recent updates from music projects affiliated with the Asbjorn Poetry and Arts Collective, Nat Ward's Aperture project posted a set of new dark ambient electronic tracks to their page. Definitely solid mood-music and atmosphere and texture tracks well worth checking out.
In broader musical news, after a rather questionable decade, things are starting to look up. Retrospectively, of course... but after cultural situations spend a time falling backwards, sometimes it takes looking into the recent past (a point prior to things going awry) to move into what is to (positively) come.
Yes, I sound like a fan-geek. Yes, this is old news in the music blog-o-sphere.
But, as I see it, this is one of my only massive cultural weak-spots. The only issue on which I AM, admittedly, a bit of the fan-geek.
That's right, I'm talking about Portishead.
If you haven't heard, they're back.
Here are some videos of new songs from their recent All Tomorrow's Parties appearance.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Gimmicks, Grimy Glitz, and Chaos; recalling the strange and short-lived mess that we called “Stych,” part 1.
Fumbling around with my guitar this morning, I stumbled onto a set of riffs that I hadn’t played or remembered in a few years.
A corresponding mental image struck me. I was crouched behind a set of unnecessarily-large speaker cabinets, wearing a big black Stetson-style hat, a black bandana pulled ranger-style over my face, and my matte-black power-strat with glittery silver letters of the word “Doom” propped on my shoulder like a frontier rifle.
A sample from a Rowdy Roddy Piper film spilled far-too-loud over the house P.A.
“I have come to kick ass and chew bubble-gum.”
“du-du-du-dutu-du.” I protruded from my shelter in a burst of silver smoke, aiming the deafening sound-bullets from my headstock into the confused and laughing crowd.
“…and I’m all out of bubble-gum.”
“du-du-du-dutu-du.” I stepped further onto the stage and out of the fogger’s blur, still cradling my musical rifle, targeting now Nat Ward, who stood bouncing and rocking with his fretless bass on the edge of the stage, clad in black besides the giant rubber Woody-Woodpecker head that he wore as a hat, and Ben Spellman, a large man taunting the crowd explicitly with his microphone, bobbing the two giant, multicolored antennas of hair that protruded from the front of his head.
“Oh my god,” a female voice on the sample shrieked.
“du-du-du-dutu-du.” I let my guitar sling itself down to the extent of the strap, and took a backwards dive, chest-level left-foot first (late-’90’s Boston pit-boss fashion) into the front rows of the crowd.
“bang!” I bounced my way back onto the stage.
“du-du-du-dutu-du.” My weapon was faced at Taco Dave this time around, smirking at me from behind a triggered drum-kit, surrounded by absurd stacks of the speakers and sub-cannons that were connected to it, a robot on some sort of audio life-support, as I lunged towards him in time to have mounted the speakers and be romping over the top of his kit by the time he hit his hi-hat twice and I dove back onto the stage as we launched into the frantic verse riff of the song Full Storm.
(…to be continued… if anyone out there happens to have digital-copies of images or videos from this or related "experiments," they would prove appreciated contributions, as I currently have nothing of the sort.)
In other news, I finally have some promotional graphics for this site that you'll start seeing around. Here are some examples, which I am willingly, as always, subjecting to the general criticism.
A corresponding mental image struck me. I was crouched behind a set of unnecessarily-large speaker cabinets, wearing a big black Stetson-style hat, a black bandana pulled ranger-style over my face, and my matte-black power-strat with glittery silver letters of the word “Doom” propped on my shoulder like a frontier rifle.
A sample from a Rowdy Roddy Piper film spilled far-too-loud over the house P.A.
“I have come to kick ass and chew bubble-gum.”
“du-du-du-dutu-du.” I protruded from my shelter in a burst of silver smoke, aiming the deafening sound-bullets from my headstock into the confused and laughing crowd.
“…and I’m all out of bubble-gum.”
“du-du-du-dutu-du.” I stepped further onto the stage and out of the fogger’s blur, still cradling my musical rifle, targeting now Nat Ward, who stood bouncing and rocking with his fretless bass on the edge of the stage, clad in black besides the giant rubber Woody-Woodpecker head that he wore as a hat, and Ben Spellman, a large man taunting the crowd explicitly with his microphone, bobbing the two giant, multicolored antennas of hair that protruded from the front of his head.
“Oh my god,” a female voice on the sample shrieked.
“du-du-du-dutu-du.” I let my guitar sling itself down to the extent of the strap, and took a backwards dive, chest-level left-foot first (late-’90’s Boston pit-boss fashion) into the front rows of the crowd.
“bang!” I bounced my way back onto the stage.
“du-du-du-dutu-du.” My weapon was faced at Taco Dave this time around, smirking at me from behind a triggered drum-kit, surrounded by absurd stacks of the speakers and sub-cannons that were connected to it, a robot on some sort of audio life-support, as I lunged towards him in time to have mounted the speakers and be romping over the top of his kit by the time he hit his hi-hat twice and I dove back onto the stage as we launched into the frantic verse riff of the song Full Storm.
(…to be continued… if anyone out there happens to have digital-copies of images or videos from this or related "experiments," they would prove appreciated contributions, as I currently have nothing of the sort.)
In other news, I finally have some promotional graphics for this site that you'll start seeing around. Here are some examples, which I am willingly, as always, subjecting to the general criticism.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
To Every Medium Its Place...
To anyone who has been awaiting my entries with bated breathe (*cough* dead-metaphor alert *cough*), I apologize for the gap between this entry and the last. To everyone else (alright, then, probably just "everyone"), carry on, and thanks for stopping by. My distractions have been multiplying rather vigorously recently, leaving me little time for frequent blogging.
As this is still most definitely the case, I will present this entry as, rather than a critical essay as many in the past have been most like, a small collection of notes and thoughts that could prove thought-provoking or useful, to me, you, or some combination of us.
First, a quote.
This statement was made by Eric Clapton, in his recently published "Clapton; The Autobiography." I have to admit, I'm not really a Clapton fan at all, so I haven't actually read the book. Ironically, it comes to me by way of another artist that I'm not exactly a fan of, Stephen King. He printed the quote in his review of the guitarist's book, "Slowhand; Clapton remembers his life and his music" in the October 28, 2007 edition of the New York Times Book Review.
It's a pretty simple idea, and really boils down to the same concept as the old "writing about music is like dancing about architecture" cliche, but for some reason it struck me as a more direct and poignant way of expressing the concept. (If I remember right, that quote was referenced within the same review as well. No, I don't have it in front of me at present.) Part of me always wanted to argue about the older quote; the stubborn quixotic part of me that was thinking "Sure, I guess you hypothetically could "dance" about "architecture"... define "dance" and define "architecture"... hell, define "about," for that matter. Clapton's version leaves little ambiguous space for the over-analytical among us to pull these sorts of punches (oh look, another dead metaphor.).
This is no new idea, I'm well aware, but merely one of those sound-bites that struck me as an aptly expressed summation of something that was in need of a more forcible finger upon it. Reading it was one of those "That's it" moments for me, helping to grasp why so many of us are tangling ourselves in our quests for artistic expression by way of so many different simultaneous mediums, and critically fascinated by the interplay, interreliance, and interdependence amongst them. Each medium expresses a different aspect of the thought or concept, and each is self-sufficient in the same ways and for the same reasons that it is dependent on expressions from other angles. When I'm at a loss for the tone of particular scene of a work of fiction, for instance, often only changing my creative mask to "poet" or "songwriter" can appropriately capture what I'm looking for. From there, the resulting mediums must either be combined (in often expirimental ways that wouldn't have been readily thought of by any other means or for any other reasons) or utilized as ladder-rungs to understand the appropriate creative voice that the initial piece requires to be composed in.
Not a bad snippet, overal, especially courtesy of two artists that I don't particularly care for.
In a bit of housekeeping news, I am considering adding a side-bar to the site with links to the blogs of others that I read or find noteworthy or relevant to the topics at hand. If you run a blog or post to a collective site and are interested in pointing me in the direction of your content or swapping links, please be in touch. After a weekend in the Boston area that turned out to be timed with the final couple games of the World Series sweep, a site pertaining to that sort of thing seems knee-jerk appropriate to me right now. See the right column, right below my bio.
On the note of my recent trip home... rest in peace, Memere. You'll be missed.
Lorraine L. Provencher, December 25, 1929 to October 26, 2007
As this is still most definitely the case, I will present this entry as, rather than a critical essay as many in the past have been most like, a small collection of notes and thoughts that could prove thought-provoking or useful, to me, you, or some combination of us.
First, a quote.
"It's difficult to talk about these songs indepth. That's why they're songs."
This statement was made by Eric Clapton, in his recently published "Clapton; The Autobiography." I have to admit, I'm not really a Clapton fan at all, so I haven't actually read the book. Ironically, it comes to me by way of another artist that I'm not exactly a fan of, Stephen King. He printed the quote in his review of the guitarist's book, "Slowhand; Clapton remembers his life and his music" in the October 28, 2007 edition of the New York Times Book Review.
It's a pretty simple idea, and really boils down to the same concept as the old "writing about music is like dancing about architecture" cliche, but for some reason it struck me as a more direct and poignant way of expressing the concept. (If I remember right, that quote was referenced within the same review as well. No, I don't have it in front of me at present.) Part of me always wanted to argue about the older quote; the stubborn quixotic part of me that was thinking "Sure, I guess you hypothetically could "dance" about "architecture"... define "dance" and define "architecture"... hell, define "about," for that matter. Clapton's version leaves little ambiguous space for the over-analytical among us to pull these sorts of punches (oh look, another dead metaphor.).
This is no new idea, I'm well aware, but merely one of those sound-bites that struck me as an aptly expressed summation of something that was in need of a more forcible finger upon it. Reading it was one of those "That's it" moments for me, helping to grasp why so many of us are tangling ourselves in our quests for artistic expression by way of so many different simultaneous mediums, and critically fascinated by the interplay, interreliance, and interdependence amongst them. Each medium expresses a different aspect of the thought or concept, and each is self-sufficient in the same ways and for the same reasons that it is dependent on expressions from other angles. When I'm at a loss for the tone of particular scene of a work of fiction, for instance, often only changing my creative mask to "poet" or "songwriter" can appropriately capture what I'm looking for. From there, the resulting mediums must either be combined (in often expirimental ways that wouldn't have been readily thought of by any other means or for any other reasons) or utilized as ladder-rungs to understand the appropriate creative voice that the initial piece requires to be composed in.
Not a bad snippet, overal, especially courtesy of two artists that I don't particularly care for.
In a bit of housekeeping news, I am considering adding a side-bar to the site with links to the blogs of others that I read or find noteworthy or relevant to the topics at hand. If you run a blog or post to a collective site and are interested in pointing me in the direction of your content or swapping links, please be in touch. After a weekend in the Boston area that turned out to be timed with the final couple games of the World Series sweep, a site pertaining to that sort of thing seems knee-jerk appropriate to me right now. See the right column, right below my bio.
On the note of my recent trip home... rest in peace, Memere. You'll be missed.
Lorraine L. Provencher, December 25, 1929 to October 26, 2007
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