Wood­stock Jazz Fes­ti­val, 1966.

Son­ic Youth w/ Be Your Own Pet @ Starlight Ball­room, 8 p.m. Tonight!

Son­ic Youth’s lat­est, Rather Ripped, does­n’t exact­ly rehash their last two albums, but it’s in the same vein: a mix of the pure­ly poet­ic and the pos­si­bly polit­i­cal. Case in point: “Do You Believe in Rap­ture?” reminds me of how lib­er­als find cre­ative ways to pick up horny con­ser­v­a­tives — just when you thought that scene was all sarged out.

What Rather Ripped does bet­ter than their last two albums is com­bine the grunge-inflec­tions that made them “famous” [see above] with the breezy and gor­geous melodies they redis­cov­ered on Mur­ray Street and Son­ic Nurse. Brood­ing and por­ten­tous, “Pink Steam” anchors the record with patient vio­lence. It’s a great sum­mer storm album, cloud­ed with ambiva­lence and sweaty with unre­quit­ed love.

[Else­where: Peanut But­ter Words vs. A Grand Illu­sion in: Mutu­al Admi­ra­tion Soci­ety!]

Snort more tour sup­port and then have a drink…

It goes with­out say­ing that The Streets’ appeal can be summed up in Mike Skin­ner’s lacon­ic deliv­ery, recount­ing with stul­ti­fy­ing clar­i­ty the banal details of his life as an ascen­dant celebri­ty. Unlike Beck­’s primed-for-prime-time demeanor thin­ly dis­guised by his care­less what-me-wor­ry veneer, Skin­ner engages in auto-cri­tique to decon­struct his unhap­py con­scious­ness with a meta-con­cept album.

Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Dun­gen’s third Amer­i­can tour sup­port­ing Ta Det Lugnt did­n’t go off with­out a hitch. Thanks to an equip­ment fail­ure, we were treat­ed to a beau­ti­ful, stripped down ver­sion of “Du är för fin för mig” with Gus­tav play­ing keys solo. The need for new mate­r­i­al becomes clear­er as Dun­gen con­tin­ue to flesh out the nascent Deep Pur­ple, Procul Harum and Gen­tle Giant strains in their long­form, impro­vised material.

Unlike their last vis­it, which was lush, com­plex and fea­tured well-rehearsed, new arrange­ments, Dun­gen’s per­for­mance seemed a lit­tle uncer­tain and ten­ta­tive at times. The near sell­out crowd was nev­er­the­less enthu­si­as­tic for “Pan­da”, “Ta Det Lugnt” and “Fes­ti­val”, but the cool recep­tion to a new pop-psych song high­light­ed the del­i­cate bal­ance between those gen­res and sen­si­bil­i­ties that set Ta Det Lugnt apart from more eso­teric psy­ch­folk, yet locat­ed them with­in that scene. It’s inter­est­ing that their last two Philadel­phia shows had them min­ing pro­to-met­al mate­r­i­al: in fact, the last time they played they hint­ed at Deep Pur­ple’s “Hush”. If Est­jes choos­es to fea­ture more flute and keys, they could begin to incor­po­rate heav­ier ele­ments and appro­pri­ate Jethro Tul­l’s sound too.

But com­mer­cial pres­sures, com­bined with Gus­tav Est­jes’ inter­est in mak­ing more com­pli­cat­ed, mul­ti-lay­ered melodies, may make Dun­gen’s next move unpredictable…and hope­ful­ly more interesting.

Under monop­oly all mass cul­ture is iden­ti­cal, and the lines of its arti­fi­cial frame­work begin to show through. The peo­ple at the top are no longer so inter­est­ed in con­ceal­ing monop­oly: as its vio­lence becomes more open, so its pow­er grows. Movies and radio need no longer pre­tend to be art. The truth that they are just busi­ness is made into an ide­ol­o­gy in order to jus­ti­fy the rub­bish they delib­er­ate­ly produce.

T. Adorno, from “The Cul­ture Indus­try: Enlight­en­ment as Mass Deception”

A dis­qui­si­tion on how a busi­ness mod­el that once made beau­ti­ful music became a col­lec­tive of data aggre­ga­tors that formed crit­i­cal mass and shaped taste. Or, how skep­ti­cism met “poptimism”…and lost, foment­ing inter­na­tion­al mar­ket­ing blitzkrieg that results in cul­tur­al amne­sia. As the indus­try strug­gles to remain prof­itable, the recon­sti­tu­tion of val­ue and expec­ta­tions is cru­cial to survival.

Also, how the use of tau­to­log­i­cal mar­ket­ing expe­ri­ences such as SXSW sup­plants any need for A & R, yet main­tains the busi­ness-suit­ed trap­pings of cul­tur­al inter­me­di­aries, while some­how wear­ing a straight-face to talk, Dea­ni­ac-style, about the cur­rent state of the net­roots [via Riff Mar­ket]. Love­ly mys­ti­fi­ca­tions aside: mis­sion accom­plished? [Viz., I half-agree, if imput­ed puri­ty were, say, “tawdry” with cash and prizes.]

In short, you are not only the quar­ry, but also the street team, which was the quar­ry in the first place. This time it’s Thorstein Veblen ver­sus T. Adorno in a streetfight!

[This isn’t meant as a judge­ment on the state of pop music itself, rock­ism, etc. — although that may come into ques­tion — more impor­tant­ly, it’s an attempt to refine a dat­ed argu­ment to suit the needs of a more sophis­ti­cat­ed, and often cyn­i­cal, process.]

Required read­ing: Chris Dahlen’s “Bet­ter Than We Know Our­selves”