After taking my second class with Salim Washington at Brooklyn College, I finally convinced myself to swear of music criticism. I stopped reading album reviews (for the most part as old habits die hard), didn't renew my subscription to Paste, and have made a lot of efforts to not be such a dick about other people's tastes when different than mine. I have been fairly successful in this quest to purge myself of the world of negative and/or uninformed response to other people's art, but we all fall down every now and again. I only mention all of this because, while the title of this post does indeed contain the word "review", I am no way hoping to levy criticism or pass any judgment on the Flaming Lips upcoming album or their catalogue as a whole. The fact is, I am only eight songs in and feel the need to celebrate this album's accomplishment in making all of this l'il Lips fan's dreams come true.
Like so many people my age, I was turned on to the Flaming Lips via the lone hit single in their 20+ year career: "She Don't Use Jelly" from 1994's Transmissions from the Satellite Heart. At the time, it seemed something of a novelty and I didn't even get into the band proper until I picked up a cassette copy of the aforementioned album from the "cutout bin" of a local record store during my sophomore year in college. (During the cassette tape's last gasp, you could often find many fairly contemporary and even classic albums on cassette for as little as $1.99. Being as I was in a sort of "hording" phase for music and, as I did live in the 'burbs and only had a tape deck - as opposed to a CD player - in my oft-used vehicle, I loved rummaging through these "cutout bins") While it wasn't exactly love-at-first-listen, I was very drawn to the rather ramshcakle or homemade aesthetic. Raunchy guitars, raw natural drums, and Wayne Coyne's less than stellar (by "conventional" standards) vocals seemed to mesh seemlessly not only with the mid-90's slacker ethos I bought into, but also with the psychedelic element present in this music. All of these modifiers, however, never overpowered the great songcraft and universalist/world saving vibe that made this a fun listen - but, for at the time, only a fun listen.
I finally got wrapped up in their world a few years later. While working at a shitty chain record store during the summer after I graduated (college), I decided to grab a copy of 1999's The Soft Bulletin. Critics had been raving (it was around then that I started my aforementioned dirty habit) about it since it dropped, so that in concert with my earlier casual, but enjoyable, relationship with their music and the cover art that made the whole thing seem somehow cinematic, was enough for me to take a copy home at the end of the summer (with my employee discount). It was nothing short of life-changing. It was beautiful, majestic, exquisitely produced, and, most importantly, incredibly human. There was life in these songs! Roughly conceptual (in both production value and lyrical content), this album seem to tap into many of the things I wrestling with as I stepped out of the sheltered world of the music conservatory and living on my parents' dime and into the real world. It was a mixed bag of louder-than-hell drum beats, chiming guitars, purposefully-phony-sounding string patches, pianos, organs, and the melodic (but always structurally supportive) bass playing of Michael Ivins - and all in the context of the inimitable Wayne Coyne singing about the one thing that matters more than the humdrum drama of daily life and the loftiness of science and the supernatural: love. I was hooked on the music and on the message. The only that seemed to have gotten lost in the shuffle was the reckless "homemade" qualities I found so appealing on that old cassette I had.
My best friend and now ages-old musical conspirator, Lucas, began drinking the Flaming Lips Kool-Aid, at my urging, around the same time - and he took a considerably larger dose, delving into their back catalogue and seeing them live. First the back catalogue: Despite our both loving The Soft Bulletin in a very big way, he was equally drawn to their preceding album, Clouds Taste Metallic. More in tune with the record which had gotten my initial attention (the aformentioned Transmissions...), this record seemed purposefully messy and organic from an instrumental and production standpoint, but seemed to be lyrically grappling with some of the larger issues that got me hooked on their then more recent release. In addition to the role that lyrics about love and whatnot began to play, the musical stylings of Steven Drozd (who plays almost all of the instrumental tracks in the studio) and the sure-handed and imaginitive bass playing of Michael Ivins really took centestage on this record. But, as I was a sucker for slick (and often overdone) production at the time, I didn't give too much thought to Clouds Taste Metallic 'til much later when, in a twist of fate, I found myself interested in it largely due the presence of that more youthful and raw (some would called it "sloppy") vibe that seemed somehow lost on later Lips releases. Luke also got to see them on tour in support of "Bulletin". I look back in horror at my having missed it as this was when the whole Flaming Lips "thing" really came into being. In addition to coming to the shows to sing along to the new and uplifting songs, fans around the country (as opposed to a more localized fanaticism in their Oklahoma City home) started showing up in costumes ranging from large animal getups to chracters from the Wizard of Oz. There was a gong. There was confetti. These concerts were no longer just musical performances, they were becoming "happenings". But let's be clear: the musical stuff was important too! In order to bring their new larger-than-life recordings to... uuh... life with only a three-piece band on stage, they starte encouraging their fans to bring small FM radios and headphone to concerts so that while the band was playing some (as much as they could) of the music live onstage, the remainder of what one would have heard on the album was transmitted via FM to those with headsets on so that they could get the "full" experience.
These changes were really only a stepping stone for the Flaming Lips. After this, things seemed to get even bigger; and as said wideing of scope transpired, my world was getting a big bigger at well. In August of 20002, three important events to this story coincided:
1) I moved to Brooklyn
2) The Flaming Lips released their follow up The Soft Bulletin, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
3) I went to my first Lips show
I was excited to just to find out what the new Lips record would sound like after hearing how things had progressed over their previous three releases. I was also excited to buy it from the indpendent record shop downstairs and next door to my new apartmenet; and while their inventory was made up of mostly hip-hop and R&B records, they were happy to special order it for me and I had it in my hands just a few days after the release. Man did it throw me for a loop. Programmed drumbeats? Synth bass? Synths in general? Breakbeats? Something about a young black-belted girl attempting to battle Pink Robots that have been sent here to eat us? There was just sooo much to digest. Frankly, I wasn't sure I liked it at all. While the inspiring lyrical palate that they had been drawing from over the previous two records (perhaps prefected in Yoshimi's "Do You Realize??"), the sonic landscape had completely changed. I mean: sure, they were moving towards this sorta sound on The Soft Bulletin, but this was completely over the top. The solid songcraft was ever present, but it seemed as though the heavy drums and organic and majestic mess from earlier in their career was all but forgotten.
Their show, however, was a completely different story. Billed as the Unlimited Sunshine festival, Prospect Park was beset by thousands of concertgoers to witness a lineup that included The Flaming Lips, Modest Mouse, De La Soul, Cake, and a few others I cannot remember at the moment. A bunch of Jersey peeps came in for the show (and to see my new digs) and after a few hours of "pre-gaming", we hoofed it down to the park's 9th st. entrance and found some spots. Generally overcast, the day came to something of a screeching halt when the inevitable rain decided to start falling in the middle what was already a rather paltry set from DeLaSoul. The entire enterprise was for shit. One of my favourite rap groups was doing a lame show that some of my friends came (at my behest and to the tune of $40 a pop) to see and now it was raining... blah. But wait! Now it's only drizzling! Maybe the Lips' set won't be delayed. Indeed it was not. The lips opened up (as pretty much always at this point) with "Race for the Prize" (opening track from Soft Bulletin) and the crowd went berserk. Singing and dacning ensued. There was confetti. There were people flanking the stage in animal costumes. The Lips' entire world of sound was blaring from the PA. There was a giant screen behind them showing cool images of god knows what. Down front stood their lead singer, Wayne Coyne: part manic-preacher, part Wavy Gravy, part stereotypical rock frontman. His energy was inspiring and infectious. To make matters even better, he proceeded to create what is, far and away, my greatest concert memory of all time. As the band headed into their second tune ("A Spoonful Weighs a Ton") and Wayne opened with the line "And though they were sad the rescued everyone, they lifted up the sun...", the rain came to a complete halt and the sun let itself be seen in all its glory for the first time in hours. Wayne had literally lifted up the sun. If there was any doubt as to whether or not I was ready to hand over a little piece of my soul to this band, it disappeared with the rain that august afternoon. *whew* In addition to this transformative experience, this show helped me in gaining more appreciation for Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. The songs off of the new album translated much better and felt somehow less electronic and sterile with actual humans at the helm. The standout, by far, was "Do You Realize??" which so moved us that it has since started a tradition whereby if Lucas, our friend Chris, or I are at a Lips show that the other(s) can't attend, we will call the non-attendees on from our cell phones during that song and hold them up in the air in hopes that those not at the show can at least get a little taste of the Lips and their fans group performance of this uplifing anthem.
As time passed, I did start to dig that record for what it was rather than what it wasn't. Each time I saw the band live (which, btw, is my favourite place in the world: a Lips show. seriously: imagine being at gigantic birthday party celebrating the birthdays of every one of the thousands of attendees simlutaneously. yeah.), I dug into "Yoshimi..." a little deeper, and began wondering what they would do for their next record. How would they, if at all, reconcile aesthetic of their earlier work with the new paths they had forged on the last two albums. The answer came in the form of 2006's At War With the Mystics. To be honest, I feel like this record is kinda mediocre. It's something of a hodgepodge of a band looking to rock out and have fun with a band trying to continue along and avenue that looked to be something of a dead end. Some of the more "rock" elements of their earlier work were present, as were many of the more "digital" sounds from Yoshimi, but the album sounded like, at best, a collection of b-sides, and, at its worst, crude demos. Much like the tunes on their last album, they were a little more interesting when played live, but I was still never able to sink my teeth into "Mystics". Perhaps the facts that they continued to tour using the same stage set as they had used for Yoshimi and chose to include several older songs than ones from the new record spoke to their own lack of confidence in the material. Who knows? No matter how you slice it, I was disappointed.
Luckily, their being significantly low profile in the last three years gave them a chance to finish their movie and me a chance to delve into their back catalogue - and I am glad I did. Hearing their entire ouvre really put all of the aforementioned sonic and lyrical choices in the context of a much larger progression than I had realized. It also set me up to full appreciate their new album, Embryonic. I will be honest with you, I am still one song shy of listening to the whole thing, yet I am already prepared to name this one of the best albums of 2009 and, perhaps their career. Without getting too detailed (after all, I want you to dig it for yourself), I guess the best way can sum it up is by saying that they have finally found that balance. It's trippy, it's loud, it's spacey, it's synth heavy, it's got loud drums, big guitars, beautifully deep and moving lyrics, silly lyrics... it's really everything. It's like looking at Transmissions from the Satellite Heart or Clouds Taste Metallic with the scope of The Soft Bulletin (18 songs!!!) through "Yoshimi's..." lense - with just a hint of the intensity of their pre-"She Don't Use Jelly" stuff.
Yes. I know: all that backstory for a lousy four or five sentences about the title of the friggin' post. Well... either I am getting shittier at writing about music or better at not being a lousy music critic. Which one doesn't matter much. If you want to know more about the new record, go and find out for yourself, and check out this video for the album's first "single" (bullshit term as this will never get played on the radio) here. The record drops on Oct 13.
24 September 2009
09 September 2009
Running Down... in Circles.
At some point during my junior year in college, I made the decision to NOT go home for the summer and, instead, get an early jump on moving in with some friends in a house off campus. Whether it was a something of a lark, some way of exerting my independence from my family and old friends, or some combination of both, I cannot remember, but I count the summer of '98 as one of the best of my life. I am still not quite sure why my mother agreed to let me do this, but, as I recall, she had little issue ponying up the paltry $273 per month for May, June, July, and August provided that I cover all of my other expenses. In what, in hindsight, was a surprisingly responsible move for 21-year-old me, I got two, count 'em - TWO jobs: one working at "media center" (read: CD, LP, and VHS library) - which was really just my NOT taking the summer off from my regular work-study gig - and one at a local Ice Cream Shoppe/Cafe called Halo Pub.
I had frequented this place since my freshman year and there seemed to be a revolving cast of students from my school behind the counter, so securing employment was quite simple. As most of the other college-types were home for the summer, thus necessitating the establishment's hiring of several local high school and/or community college/live-at-home kids, I was one of the oldest people on staff, so I progressed fairly quickly from lowly ice cream scooper to barrista (making coffee and espresso beverages) to shift supervisor. I was pretty proud, to tell you the truth; but my rising up the in-no-way-corporate (this joint was family owned and operated) ladder was really only a nice perk. The real fun at Halo came from the people I worked with.
Be it this girl Nicola who I took out on one date, my college friend Constance (who got me the gig), another girl who's name I can't remember but about whom I wrote a really great but as-of-yet-unfinished tune, or our hippy manager (and the big boss's son-in-law) Tom, there was always an interesting cast of characters that took an otherwise thankless and mundane job and made it fun. The ones that had the biggest impression on me were the North Brunswick emo kids: Mark and Robyn. Now I know what you're thinking: "EMO?!?!... yuck! Isn't that the adjective used to describe 13 year olds who wear their hair in their face a pretend that their rather pleasant suburban existences are far more dramatically terrible than they actually are to the point where they cut themselves?! Isn't emo some shitty music with screaming and/or whiny vocals about melodramatic teenage bullshit with vague references to the gothic or gorey all set over annoying clichéd punk guitar playing?!" The answer to these questions is a bit complicated, but that's why we're here.
To be fair: the only reasons I remember Robyn Tesauro is 'cos I have for years been trying to write a song in which I rhyme her last name with the word "bureau", she was cute, and was friends with Mark - and he's the important one here. I wish to god I could remember Mark's last name, but it completely escapes me at the moment. He was a skinny kid from North Brunswick who shaved his head and looked like a skater and seemed to be really hip to what was going on in the world of below-the-radar punk music. I was pretty hip to all sortsa other genres at the time, and since we seemed to dig talking music with one another, we agreed to make each other mix tapes. I spent some serious time on his, making sure to include some Phish, some Moondog, some Stravinsky, some Tom Waits, some Monk, and (I am guessing) some Barenaked Ladies and Ben Folds Five, but I really don't remember if he liked it at all. Again: not important. What is important is how lifechangeingly great the tape he made me was.
He said the the tape was made up of songs by all of his favourite punk and "emo" bands - a term he defined for me as "short for emotional punk". Boasting early tunes by soon-to-be-famous bands like Blink 182 and Jimmy Eat World along with seminal proto-emo artists like Sunny Day Real Estate and masters of texture The Jazz June, this tape instantly changed my life and remains one of my favourite compilations ever. (I still have it!) Knee deep in the world of classical music and very arty and/or bubbly pop, this tape full of angry and emotional young men and women playing music that combined the energy and drive of punk with the guitar orchestration skills and attention to texture that really got my brain working, I was in serious need of a reminder as to what first excited me about music. This cassette, called "Chuck's Oh So Political Tape #1", was just what the doctor ordered. It not only forced me to immediately rejigger my values and tastes, but also changed the way I approached contemporary music. I thought Emo was just about the coolest thing in the world.
The knowledge I gained from that tape, in concert with the fact that many of the bands whose music was included were still "underground" also gave me a certain amount of caché when it came to the occasional cultural pissing contest I would often engage in. A few years later, when I started a band that was made up of me and three professional music critics who were always three steps ahead of me in terms of new tunage, my knowledge of emo, which was not even a word in the general public's conciousness yet, allowed me to tread water in the inevitable "what's next" conversations we always seemed to get into. As it was indubitably a young people's music, it also made me seem just a little hipper to my first group of middle schooler students when I taught right out of college. So not only was this tape awesome, but it was helpful too!
Over the course of the last few years, "emo" became a dirty word. Riddled with my aforementioned assumptions about your reaction to the word, it hardly carries any of the weight it did ten years ago. It's become a name brand of sorts - and one that seemingly no one wants to wear. BUT WAIT!! What is that I see?! Someone looking to remedy and explain this in a way that is much clearer than my babble? Indeed. While I have something of a love/hate relationship with Paste Magazine, I still read its online content fairly dutifully, and I couldn't let one today's articles pass without being linked to and commented on. I freely admit that what I have written here is most likely longer than the article itself, but I seriously suggest you give it a read and give the musical examples a listen, because these guys seem to want to rescue the term emo as much as I do.
You can read it here.
I had frequented this place since my freshman year and there seemed to be a revolving cast of students from my school behind the counter, so securing employment was quite simple. As most of the other college-types were home for the summer, thus necessitating the establishment's hiring of several local high school and/or community college/live-at-home kids, I was one of the oldest people on staff, so I progressed fairly quickly from lowly ice cream scooper to barrista (making coffee and espresso beverages) to shift supervisor. I was pretty proud, to tell you the truth; but my rising up the in-no-way-corporate (this joint was family owned and operated) ladder was really only a nice perk. The real fun at Halo came from the people I worked with.
Be it this girl Nicola who I took out on one date, my college friend Constance (who got me the gig), another girl who's name I can't remember but about whom I wrote a really great but as-of-yet-unfinished tune, or our hippy manager (and the big boss's son-in-law) Tom, there was always an interesting cast of characters that took an otherwise thankless and mundane job and made it fun. The ones that had the biggest impression on me were the North Brunswick emo kids: Mark and Robyn. Now I know what you're thinking: "EMO?!?!... yuck! Isn't that the adjective used to describe 13 year olds who wear their hair in their face a pretend that their rather pleasant suburban existences are far more dramatically terrible than they actually are to the point where they cut themselves?! Isn't emo some shitty music with screaming and/or whiny vocals about melodramatic teenage bullshit with vague references to the gothic or gorey all set over annoying clichéd punk guitar playing?!" The answer to these questions is a bit complicated, but that's why we're here.
To be fair: the only reasons I remember Robyn Tesauro is 'cos I have for years been trying to write a song in which I rhyme her last name with the word "bureau", she was cute, and was friends with Mark - and he's the important one here. I wish to god I could remember Mark's last name, but it completely escapes me at the moment. He was a skinny kid from North Brunswick who shaved his head and looked like a skater and seemed to be really hip to what was going on in the world of below-the-radar punk music. I was pretty hip to all sortsa other genres at the time, and since we seemed to dig talking music with one another, we agreed to make each other mix tapes. I spent some serious time on his, making sure to include some Phish, some Moondog, some Stravinsky, some Tom Waits, some Monk, and (I am guessing) some Barenaked Ladies and Ben Folds Five, but I really don't remember if he liked it at all. Again: not important. What is important is how lifechangeingly great the tape he made me was.
He said the the tape was made up of songs by all of his favourite punk and "emo" bands - a term he defined for me as "short for emotional punk". Boasting early tunes by soon-to-be-famous bands like Blink 182 and Jimmy Eat World along with seminal proto-emo artists like Sunny Day Real Estate and masters of texture The Jazz June, this tape instantly changed my life and remains one of my favourite compilations ever. (I still have it!) Knee deep in the world of classical music and very arty and/or bubbly pop, this tape full of angry and emotional young men and women playing music that combined the energy and drive of punk with the guitar orchestration skills and attention to texture that really got my brain working, I was in serious need of a reminder as to what first excited me about music. This cassette, called "Chuck's Oh So Political Tape #1", was just what the doctor ordered. It not only forced me to immediately rejigger my values and tastes, but also changed the way I approached contemporary music. I thought Emo was just about the coolest thing in the world.
The knowledge I gained from that tape, in concert with the fact that many of the bands whose music was included were still "underground" also gave me a certain amount of caché when it came to the occasional cultural pissing contest I would often engage in. A few years later, when I started a band that was made up of me and three professional music critics who were always three steps ahead of me in terms of new tunage, my knowledge of emo, which was not even a word in the general public's conciousness yet, allowed me to tread water in the inevitable "what's next" conversations we always seemed to get into. As it was indubitably a young people's music, it also made me seem just a little hipper to my first group of middle schooler students when I taught right out of college. So not only was this tape awesome, but it was helpful too!
Over the course of the last few years, "emo" became a dirty word. Riddled with my aforementioned assumptions about your reaction to the word, it hardly carries any of the weight it did ten years ago. It's become a name brand of sorts - and one that seemingly no one wants to wear. BUT WAIT!! What is that I see?! Someone looking to remedy and explain this in a way that is much clearer than my babble? Indeed. While I have something of a love/hate relationship with Paste Magazine, I still read its online content fairly dutifully, and I couldn't let one today's articles pass without being linked to and commented on. I freely admit that what I have written here is most likely longer than the article itself, but I seriously suggest you give it a read and give the musical examples a listen, because these guys seem to want to rescue the term emo as much as I do.
You can read it here.
08 September 2009
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