Lis­ten: The Nation­al — “Mis­tak­en for Strangers”

While my review of Arcade Fire’s per­for­mance Sat­ur­day night at the Tow­er The­ater will be show­ing up some­where on Sty­lus in the next few days, I thought I could write a few words about the Nation­al here. They’re got­ten a lit­tle U2-ier since I saw them close for Clap Your Hands Say Yeah at the Khy­ber a cou­ple years ago, and that’s all for the good. Right now I’d say they’re my favorite embod­i­ment of New Earnest­ness in pop music. Since that time they’ve also got­ten the hang of arrang­ing the setlist so they don’t open with a sleepy, grav­el­ly track any­more. It’s fair to say that Box­er will be one of my favorite albums of the year [and I still regret not find­ing room for Alli­ga­tor in my year end list back in ’05.]

Psy­chic Para­mount. I can only sum­mon a holy wow every time I see them play out, which has been now 2 or 3 times [I’m devel­op­ing a Pazz ‘n’ Jop mythol­o­gy about the num­ber of times I’ve seen them, I guess.] Even through earplugs things get a lit­tle dizzy, but maybe that’s just the delay ped­al con­cate­na­tion that’s blow­ing my mind.

Zom­bi and Trans Am were both firsts for me. Some­how I missed the fin de siècle dot com pleas­antries of Thrill Jock­ey and the Gob­lin-esque synth rum­blings that Relapse have had on offer for a few years now. The for­mer was by choice, the lat­ter by acci­dent and now in the hazy pre-dawn of ’07, nei­ther seems to be what they were. Sure, Trans Am are still tight metal­lic slum­lords, but it’s just so rote. And now that actu­al met­al is back on the scene to the books and glass­es crowd, it’s not as high falutin’ as it once was either.

Zom­bi were a sor­ry dis­ap­point­ment in their cur­rent incar­na­tion. Too bad because I real­ly liked one of their records that we used to play at the video store when we were on a Gob­lin binge around Hal­loween and we’d decid­ed that it was­n’t exact­ly kosher to throw an impromp­tu Argen­to ret­ro­spec­tive on the store mon­i­tors with the sound on. I’m not say­ing we did­n’t ever do it any­way, but we were at least clear that it was­n’t kosher no mat­ter how edgy we were expect­ed to be. And seri­ous­ly, most of the edge came from Star­bucks even if cus­tomers liked to tell them­selves that movie store clerks are twitchy, impo­lite savants for whom self-right­eous­ness is their stock-in-trade. Now Fulci…

Cor­mac McCarthy’s Pulitzer-win­ning, Oprah-approved new nov­el The Road is almost com­i­cal­ly bleak. I hope that he keeps remind­ing us how ashen and black every­thing is, and that the night is always the dark­est night in his­to­ry. Also there are no birds. There’s a mimet­ic point being made, sure, but man is it ever being dri­ven home. It’s real­ly fuck­ing bleak. I get it.

[Book­slut’s note about Niall Grif­fith’s max­i­ma mea cul­pa still cracks me up. Try self-fla­gel­la­tion dude. It’d be easier.]

I saw this sec­ond on Obtusi­ty, a place I first learned about when han­dling most of Paper Thin Walls bull­horn duties. I think the first stuff I checked out there was their ret­ro­spec­tive of Bjork’s entire videog­ra­phy. Pret­ty cool stuff, if you ask me.

But the review that is spot-on at a dead run belongs to Mark Richard­son, a Pitch­fork vet­er­an who’s some­times in the mix in the Fork­cast too. The make­up is an obvi­ous homage, but Richard­son drops that sar­to­r­i­al note about Robert Palmer — wow — col­or me impressed. [Dude­man also reviewed the same Von Sü­den­fed track I did yes­ter­day, which was a fun coincidence.]

My review of Von Südenfed’s “The Rhinohead” is up today at PTW. Short­ly after I filed it, my copy of The Wire arrived with Mr. Von Pseud Mag Edi­tor and MoM on the cov­er. Yikes. To be com­plete­ly hon­est, I’m more con­vinced now that fea­tur­ing Mark E. Smith any­where is a sim­ple ploy to sell mag­a­zines, albums, any­thing real­ly to lure the throng of rabid fans who’ve held on through the years, the wives, what­ev­er. It’s pret­ty sim­ple real­ly, or at least it seems that way. It’s kin­da sad too because since Coun­try on the Click I think that Smith’s been fad­ing fast, and as fun as Von Sü­den­fed’s Tro­mat­ic Reflexxions is, it’s not the return to grace I’d hoped for.

If noth­ing else, this album ought to con­vince folks new to the Fall that those albums after This Nation’s Sav­ing Grace are pret­ty good too, up ’til a point. I con­sid­ered adding this extra-musi­cal bits and edi­to­ri­al­iza­tions in the review, but I felt that it would be a dis­ser­vice to the song to clut­ter the review with even more detri­tus about the Fall. There’s plen­ty out there. Explore that mighty abyss!