Tag: music

Male Bonding — Daytrotter Session

There are plen­ty of albums Pitch­fork likes that I nev­er both­er check­ing out. It’s a long­stand­ing prac­tice that goes back to my days at Sty­lus. Not nec­es­sar­i­ly con­trar­i­an for the sake of being dif­fer­ent, but real­iz­ing that there’s so much more ground to cov­er that it’s not real­ly worth adding my two cents to most Pitch­fork-approved releas­es. Let the rest of the blo­gos­phere chime in.

I’m eat­ing crow this morn­ing thanks to my friend Marc Mas­ters. He’s men­tioned them a few times in his Twit­ter feed (fol­low him here) and I’m final­ly get­ting around to check their Daytrot­ter ses­sion out. I’m also lov­ing eMu­sic’s Best Albums of the Year…So Far list, which takes me once again through the musi­cal under­brush to dis­cov­er stuff I haven’t even heard about until now. Which is all to say that I do some­times miss the man­ner in which I was exposed to a fright­ful and delight­ful amount of music when I was a strug­gling free­lance guy that I just don’t hear now that I’m pay­ing more atten­tion to the tabloid news media.

As an aside, I have to admit that since Lala.com shut down May 31st, I’m com­ing around to the var­i­ous legit­i­mate ways to hear new music. Every­one’s record­ing peo­ple now, whether it’s places like Daytrot­ter or it’s an NPR stream and I’m okay with that. Instead of feel­ing as I once did that putting a full album stream at MySpace was an invi­ta­tion to pira­cy, I’m hope­ful that more peo­ple are okay with the idea of just lis­ten­ing and enjoy­ing what’s out there and sup­port­ing the artists they tru­ly enjoy.

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Erykah Badu — “Window Seat”

Helen and I are going to see Erykah Badu June 8th at the Tow­er The­ater. Janelle Mon­ae is open­ing. Am I excit­ed? Hell yeah! Just picked up Erykah’s lat­est LP at AKA Music. Love her music so much. She’s also one of my favorite enter­tain­ers these days. Does­n’t hurt that she’s play­ing fast and loose with the great sounds Par­lia­ment Funkadel­ic intro­duced either.

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Free Energy — “Bang Pop”

[myspace]http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=105056239[/myspace]

I know I haven’t post­ed any­thing music-relat­ed here late­ly. I got myself wrapped around the axle there for a bit about the future of music and could­n’t find a way to unwind. Pret­ty sure I’ve put that behind me and will hap­pi­ly be post­ing more stuff that I like here.

So Free Ener­gy? I’m real­ly into their lead sin­gle, “Bang Pop.” I know it got a whop­ping 8.1 on Pitch­fork, yet it’s failed to real­ly catch fire online, at least from where I sit. Does it rein­vent rock music? Nope. Is it still a ton of fun? Yup! If I weren’t on baby duty tonight I might’ve snuck over to the First Uni­tar­i­an Church tonight to see them in per­son. If you were look­ing for a sum­mer jam that’s not by Ludacris or Katie Per­ry, you’ve prob­a­bly found it in this gem.

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Mark Linkous R.I.P.

I was lucky enough to see Sparkle­horse dur­ing that fate­ful CMJ fes­ti­val that got past­ed togeth­er in the wake of Sep­tem­ber 11th. He per­formed in front of a gigan­tic Amer­i­can flag the own­ers of the Bow­ery Ball­room hung at the back of the stage. He seemed real­ly uncom­fort­able with that. I’m sure at least some por­tion of the audi­ence did, too. I know I did.

I’m sor­ry to say I don’t remem­ber much of the set. It was­n’t par­tic­u­lar­ly long. He opened with ‘Home­com­ing Queen,’ but for­got the words. The audi­ence jogged his mem­o­ry by chim­ing in. He played the hits pas­sion­ate­ly. I’m remind­ed that he cov­ered GBV’s ‘Smoth­ered in Hugs,’ which you can lis­ten to over at Chrome­waves. It was amazing.

I have to admit that I expect­ed some of the guests from ‘It’s a Won­der­ful Life’ to join him onstage. I don’t know what I was think­ing. I had only been in NYC for a year and I tru­ly believed that that sort of thing might hap­pen. He did­n’t tour much. He was in New York. What else was Nina Pers­son doing that night?

I did­n’t think much of ‘It’s a Won­der­ful Life’ at the time. I had fall­en in love with Vivadix­iesub­marine­trans­mis­sion­plot and Good Morn­ing, Spi­der over a few trou­bling sum­mers, work­ing jobs I hat­ed while sav­ing mon­ey for school in the fall. Those songs were anthems to my ears, the per­fect sound­track to any­one who’s shuf­fling along in the twi­light of job­less­ness and underemployment.

I’m not sure why I nev­er real­ly got his next album, It’s a Won­der­ful Life. The guy made a liv­ing off of wild­ly uneven albums, but some­thing about this one did­n’t quite con­nect. I loved songs like ‘Piano Fire’ and ‘King of Nails,’ but some of the cameos just did­n’t work for me. I shelved it.

I haven’t lis­tened to Sparkle­horse much since. I went back to those records after news broke of Link­ous’ death and found them to have the same amaz­ing qual­i­ties they did when I first lis­tened to them almost a decade ago. I can still pic­ture myself mak­ing a 120 mile roundtrip com­mute in my decrepit Dodge Shad­ow, blast­ing Good Morn­ing, Spi­der at top vol­ume and it still makes me shiver.

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The New Spoon Album

I’ve been lis­ten­ing to Spoon’s Trans­fer­ence for the past cou­ple weeks. They’re on of my favorite bands. Britt Daniel has become a great lyri­cist and the songs have got­ten catch­i­er with every album. That is, until now.

I heard an inter­view with the band last night that made Trans­fer­ence more appeal­ing than it is. Daniel and Jim Eno made the album’s weak­ness­es sound like strengths. There’s no hid­ing the fact that their efforts to make an “ugli­er” record suc­ceed­ed, so why not embrace it?

They knew what sound they want­ed and pro­duced the record them­selves, but that’s not the issue. Trans­fer­ence is imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nize­able as a Spoon record; the prob­lem is that it’s not a very good one. You’d have to go back to the dar­ing, equal­ly uneven Kill the Moon­light to hear some­thing as infu­ri­at­ing as this. Sequenc­ing, not pro­duc­tion, stops Trans­fer­ence in its tracks.

Spoon buried the best songs in the mid­dle third of the album, start­ing with “Writ­ten in Reverse” and end­ing with the plain­tive strains of “Good­night Lau­ra,” a song that veers dan­ger­ous­ly close to maudlin which would­n’t be so bad if this weren’t a Spoon album.

We’ve come to expect great things. Their sound might be best described as Bil­ly Joel songs as reimag­ined by Wire. Songs like “Sis­ter Jack” and “The Under­dog” bur­nished their rep­u­ta­tion as a band on the cusp of great­ness. There’s noth­ing of that cal­iber here. 

Trans­fer­ence should’ve been Spoon’s mag­num opus, the prod­uct of two decades worth of hard work from a band at the height of its pow­er. Instead it’s the album you can tell the unini­ti­at­ed they can safe­ly ignore.

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