Cerebral Decanting

Listening Notes, Ultra-Brief (Pt. 80)

PICKS 

Bilal, A Love Surreal     (eOne)

The neo-soul label frustrates this multifaceted Philadelphia-born singer-songwriter, and with good cause  - those Erykah Badu and D’Angelo comparisons barely brush the surface. Rather, think Fiona Apple, an equally idiosyncratic vocal talent fond of messing with genre and traditional songform who’s suffered similar record company woes amid bootlegged unfinished products. Having exorcised nine years of label-induced inactivity with the rather piebald likes of 2010’s Airtight’s Revenge, this follow-up is where the loveman indulges in both daisy age vibes and classic rock signifiers. The former can be felt all over the meandering, bottom-heavy production, in the harpsichord tinkles, skanky beats, and moog interjections, along with the burbles of a drum machine seemingly lifted out from under 1971 Sly Stone. The rock power registers not only via the electric guitar swing of “Astray” but through the alt-country shadings of “Lost For Now” and a chorus on “Winning Hand” one can almost hear Donald Fagen delivering. Bilal’s chameleonic activities will no doubt exhaust some, and a few tracks meander without due cause. But he’s the rare hippie visionary adept at steaming up windows, offering to “lick you and roll you” between demands his paramour strip at the front door and ride it to the bathroom. And if his vocal delivery is at times suggestive of the jazz phrasing he studied at the New School, he’s equally comfortable going sanctified, enlivening the spacey “Slipping Away” with hints of Holy Ghost fear before stepping aside to let the electric church guitar climax alongside him.

Serengeti, Saal     (Graveface)

Probably not the best place to start with this hip-hop talent - even committed fans might require a few extra spins before the hooks and beats sink in. A twenty-seven minute EP so heavy on the talking it at first comes off like a public reading, these eight character sketches reveal their depth gradually, relying upon the restrained production techniques of Berlin-based Sicker Man to deliver epiphanies no less devastating for their economy. Over strings and synth swirls and guitar plucks, various guises have their say: the happiest man in Glassell Park settling down to watch “a nice rom com / set in a southern state,” a people pleaser so non-confrontational a smashed favorite coffee mug gets shrugged off as “only stuff,” some sociopath threatening/promising to wear false noses and bring bed sheets to an ex’s wedding. Such alternately creepy and endearing personas are offered up by Dave Cohn sans judgement, whether he’s moaning like Moz on “I Could Redo” or sounding so frail on the chorus of “Day By Day” one fights the urge to assure him it’ll all be okay. So a jocular Sherwood Anderson is what he remains, gamely rhyming “ghost dance in Oregon” with “find the Lord again” even while detailing a spilt wine bottle on an L.A. bus ride framing the sobbing abortion clinic patient shrinking away from her tennis-despising pimp’s hard gaze. One refuge from the madness: “Home is the best place / tending to fish tanks”. Another: “Don’t get too excited / and don’t get a heart attack”. If such advise seems lachrymose, consider the alternatives, baldly chronicled on an opener that’s easily the most affecting child abuse number since Kimya Dawson’s “Hold My Hand”. What’s that our bard is saying? “I’m betting on myself again”.

 

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Kool A.D., 19     (self-released)

It’s quite simple, really. Either the sound of a grown man loudly exclaiming “Bieber!” makes you laugh or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, little in these seventeen tracks of admitted outtakes and first-drafts will strike you as anything other than wank-off shenanigans. Also: it’s too goddam long. But if you think “Bieber!” is as inspired an interjection as any, you might find plenty of other jokes to savor inside Victor Vasquez’s third of four mixtapes named after Bay Area bus lines. The NorCal placing is no accident - throughout, Vazquez is as spaced and based as Lil B himself. Yet the ex-Das Racist MC unsettles people precisely because he never once plays down his intelligence even while basking in rhymes and delivery so stupid they get misconstrued as contempt for his audience. Kool seems too elysian to be contemptuous, with an appetite for food and intoxicants outweighed only by his zest for culture high and low. Who else would name back-to-back tracks after Jaleel White (Steve Urkel to you) and conceptual artist Jenny Holzer? Who else might take a self-described “dinky” beat from Ad-Rock and mutter entire bridges stolen outright from Beck and Notorious B.I.G. over the top of it? Who else might boast a compendium of favorite Daves that includes Bowie, Bryne, Foster Wallace, and Thomas (“square burgers” he footnotes drily)? And when he’s finished flipping through his Bobby Seele cookbook, he takes the time on “All Skreets” to quote Toni Morrison and ponder the way weapons move from object to image to symbol. Contempt? “A lot of people say / ‘Kool A.D., I’m a fan of you’ / well, damn, that’s cool / thanks, really, really, thanks”. 

Tracks: “All Skreets,” “Eroika,” “NPR,” “Beautiful Naked Psychedelic Gherkin Exploding Tomato Sauce All Over Ur Face, Flame Grilled Painting”

Jamie Lidell, Jamie Lidell     (Warp)

The cool kids will tell you this is where the UK-born, Nashville-habituating singer/producer gets back into the groove after fruitlessly pursuing normality. The cool kids will insist that Jim and Compass failed because their “traditional” “soul” “songcraft” compromised an artist best left unfettered. They may push back gently against suggestions that the real reason both albums failed is because neither recognized the inherent limitations of Lidell’s vocal capacities, and they will point with gusto at an admirably convoluted attention to production detail drawing out every last slap bass and synth flutter from a mythic 1984. We uncool kids might hazard how sonic details alone can’t light up a block party, that many of these tracks are actively unpleasant when they aren’t merely overburdened, and that proceedings lighten noticeably the few times Lidell doesn’t seem embarrassed when caught standing near a hook - both “Do Yourself A Faver” and “Blaming Something” are minor club gems. The cool kids will counter (have countered, actually) that Lidell conjures memories of vintage Prince. At this point, it might be helpful to introduce Midnite Vultures into the conversation. This is more soulful, but just as jive, not least because it perpetuates the myth that last year’s state-of-the-art flourish is always today’s avant-garde. 

Tracks: “Blaming Something,” “Do Yourself A Faver”

BOMBS

Sasha Go Hard, Round 3: The Knockout     (self-released)

What a relief to discover that even in such reactionary times, the mavens and virtuosos of Chicago’s drill scene seem perfectly comfortable sharing the semi-national stage with up and coming female rappers - Katie Got Bandz is at least as consistent as YP or King Louie, and Sasha Go Hard here proves she’s as well-equipped as none other than Chief Keef when it comes to dispensing anthems of prideful self-sufficiency. Appropriating Toni Basel was an inspired move, and she’s got a fine sense of humor when she wishes to deploy it (rhyming “porn star” with “do me in a foreign car” - well, I laughed). But the droning minimal crawl that defines drill seems emblematic of the limitations of regionalism, bringing aboard Le1f for a guest verse can’t erase earlier “fag” musings, and making room for Kreayshawn is a myth-of-sisterhood bad joke. What a bummer when the ladies prove they’re as prone to bombast as their uglier male counterparts.

Tracks: “Blow My Mind”

Trinidad James, Don’t Be S.A.F.E.     (Def Jam)

There’s actually something kind of charming about this guy, from his old-fashioned nom de plume to his malleable metal-worshipping video for monster hit “All Gold Everything,” here offered in remixed (and subpar) form with help from 2 Chainz, T.I., and Young Jeezy. And he’s got some cheek presenting Def Jam with the same thirty-three minutes that was last year’s mixtape for his “official debut”. But his goofy simplicity eventually wears out its welcome - if “you thought this track was over / ‘cause the hook so long” is worth a smile, it’s unclear whether he’s aware of the maudlin nature of a line like “what happens in Vegas…….stays in Vegas,” since an entire song circles around the refrain.  And his anti-bitch standup comedy attempt is 1.09 you’ll never get back. 

Tracks: “All Gold Everything”

Post-Oscar Dispatch: Kevin B. Lee On The Failings Of Argo

1. Now that Ben Affleck’s Iran hostage drama Argo has garnered seven Oscar nominations to add to its mantel, upon which already sit $110 million in domestic box office, near unanimous acclaim from critics, and even a whisper campaign for Affleck to run for John Kerry’s soon-to-be vacated Senate seat, it needs to be said: Argo is a fraud.

Sure, Argo’s an easily consumable mashup of well-worn genres (exotic adventurer, political caper flick, derelict daddy redemption movie, Hollywood insider satire) whose geopolitical themes make it feel smart and important. One could even say that it’s good at what it does: giving these old Hollywood formulas a fresh coat of vintage 1970s paint (color: avocado). But this tactic is what makes the film not merely overrated, but reprehensible. Its modest achievements point to larger failures both in the film and in Hollywood’s ability to regard the world honestly.

2.  Perhaps my disgust wouldn’t be as intense if it weren’t for the potentially great film suggested by Argo’s opening sequence: a history of pre-revolutionary Iran told through eye-catching storyboards. The sequence gives a compelling (if sensationalized) account of how the CIA’s meddling with Iran’s government over three decades led to a corrupt and oppressive regime, eventually inciting the 1979 revolution. The sequence even humanizes the Iranian people as victims of these abuses. This opening may very well be the reason why critics have given the film credit for being insightful and progressive—because nothing that follows comes close, and the rest of the movie actually undoes what this opening achieves.

Instead of keeping its eye on the big picture of revolutionary Iran, the film settles into a retrograde “white Americans in peril” storyline. It recasts those oppressed Iranians as a raging, zombie-like horde, the same dark-faced demons from countless other movies— still a surefire dramatic device for instilling fear in an American audience. After the opening makes a big fuss about how Iranians were victimized for decades, the film marginalizes them from their own story, shunting them into the role of villains. Yet this irony is overshadowed by a larger one: The heroes of the film, the CIA, helped create this mess in the first place. And their triumph is executed through one more ruse at the expense of the ever-dupable Iranians to cap off three decades of deception and manipulation.

3. Argo makes the Iran hostage crisis, one of the most cataclysmic episodes in U.S. foreign affairs in the last 50 years, a mere backdrop to a silver-lining subplot—one that even Robert Anders, one of the Argo hostages, admitted was a “footnote.” The film thus distorts and belittles an event that transformed U.S. history. Ironically, the larger narrative of the hostage crisis would make for a more compelling movie from both a plot and action standpoint: A great filmmaker could make an amazing sequence of Operation Eagle Claw, a failed rescue mission that resulted in two helicopter crashes, several dead U.S. soldiers, and a subsequent overhaul of U.S. military operations. 

 But apologists will argue that a film like Argo is the best we could hope for in depicting this episode of history, which makes the film less about history than about our national addiction to happy endings in movies. Argo is ostensibly about how a fake movie saves lives, and thus about the redemptive power of movies at large. But since it’s about a fake movie, it’s not really about moviemaking—it’s about the power of Hollywood bullshit. Instead of a real filmmaker, we get Alan Arkin’s wise-guy hack producer dispensing chestnuts over how to create hype and attention to make it seem like a film is important— lessons Argo’s promoters no doubt took to heart.  Arkin’s remarks may very well be an accurate insight into how Hollywood really works, but they reflect the movie’s smug complacency over its ability to pull its gilded wool over our eyes. 

4. Looking at the runaway success of this film, it seems as if critics and audiences alike lack the historical knowledge to recognize a self-serving perversion of an unflattering past, or the cultural acumen to see the utterly ersatz nature of the enterprise: A cast of stock characters and situations, and a series of increasingly contrived narrow escapes from third world mobs who, predictably, are never quite smart enough to catch up with the Americans. We can delight all we like in this cinematic recycling act, but the fact remains that we are no longer living in a world where we can get away with films like this—not if we want to be in a position to deal with a world that is rising to meet us. 

Late in the movie, Affleck’s CIA agent dazzles Iranian soldiers at a checkpoint with storyboards from his fake sci-fi production. The scene plays into the hoary sentiment uttered at every Academy Awards ceremony, one surely to be repeated with each Oscar Argo wins: People across the world are movie fans at heart. But like Oscar night, the scene is really a reflection of Hollywood’s hubris in trumpeting its own power. This moment, of course, is more bullshit, a self-serving fantasy concocted by the screenwriter. But it reminds us of Argo’s opening sequence, when it was us dazzled into submission by a series of storyboards. A razzle-dazzle con job worthy of its CIA subject, Argo thinks of you just like it thinks of those buffoonish Iranian soldiers: too easily impressed with a flimsy fabrication to see beyond it.

—- Kevin B. Lee, from “This Year’s Worst Best Picture,” Slate, re-published Feb. 25 2013

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2013/01/down_with_argo_ben_affleck_s_iran_hostage_movie_is_the_worst.html

Oscar Preview: Jonathan Rosenbaum On Spielberg And Lincoln

1.  ”My suspicion that Steven Spielberg can’t really do historical films isn’t anything new, although the fact that he keeps trying shows at least how ambitious he can be. Conversely, the fact that he keeps failing, at least in my opinion, may point to a wider incapacity on the part of his audience, meaning you and me — a failure to grasp and sustain Abraham Lincoln as a myth the way that John Ford and his audience could when Ford made “Young Mr. Lincoln” with Henry Fonda in 1939.

Some of this, of course, can be accounted for by the radical changes in mainstream film-going over 73 years: an audience that has been subdivided by targeting strategies and ancillary markets, reduced mainly to kids, artificially inflated by advertising budgets and split among homes, computers and theaters on screens of different sizes, shapes and textures. But it’s also a sign that in “Lincoln,” we’re much further away from our historical roots than American moviegoers were in 1939, even when a master storyteller and myth-spinner is in charge.

Leaving aside “The Adventures of Tintin” and “War Horse” (neither of which I’ve seen), the diverse cavorting of Indiana Jones and the cartoon extravagance of “1941,” I think my troubles with Spielberg as a historian started with his ignorance about Jim Crow prohibitions in the Deep South involving the front seat of a car in “The Color Purple” (1985). And they weren’t exactly mitigated by “Empire of the Sun” (1987), which includes the boy hero’s glimpse of an A-bomb blast in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp without bothering to clarify whether this comes from Hiroshima or Nagasaki. (In J.G. Ballard’s novel, it’s clearly the latter.) Maybe this is because narrative clarity and fluidity always count for more with Spielberg than historical precision — which is also perhaps why the character of Emilie Schindler, who played a major role in saving Jewish lives, gets skimped in Spielberg’s version of “Schindler’s List,” a film that focuses almost entirely on her husband, Oskar. More generally, it might help explain why (and how) Spielberg correctly calculated that the easiest way to get a young audience interested in the Holocaust was to get the people to identify first with a glamorous and handsome Nazi war profiteer.”

2.  ”I don’t mean to disparage Spielberg’s storytelling gifts, only to suggest that they often depend on a ruthless catering to what we already think we know about a given subject. Significantly, his rationale for shooting “Schindler’s List” in black and white —“Virtually everything I’ve seen on the Holocaust is in black and white” — presupposes a determination to honor our unconsidered prejudices. So when it comes to Abe Lincoln, this necessarily means not stepping too far away from the audio-animatronic version in Disneyland, which is arguably what many of us already have to start with, crossed a bit with the equally archetypal Uncle Sam.”

3. “Based in part on ‘Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln,’ by Doris Kearns Goodwin,” the final credits say, and “in part” is the operative term here. Indeed, out of Goodwin’s title team of former (and in some cases continuing) political rivals, whom Lincoln appointed to his Cabinet — William Henry Seward as secretary of state, Salmon P. Chase as secretary of the Treasury, Edward Bates as attorney general — Spielberg’s “Lincoln” retains only the first, casting David Strathairn in the part. On the other hand, Thaddeus Stevens, introduced on page 302 of Goodwin’s 916-page book as “the fiery abolitionist congressman from Pennsylvania” and played here by Tommy Lee Jones, receives only three fleeting references after that, but in Tony Kushner’s screenplay for Lincoln he figures as a major player, and in terms of quotable lines and all-around Oscar-mongering he clearly comes in second after the title hero.

Surely Lincoln and his cohorts didn’t experience their everyday surroundings as if they were silhouettes in a pretentiously underlighted art movie, but this Lincoln and these cohorts do. It’s obvious that some form of symbolism in which darkness equals slavery and light equals emancipation is at work here — so that the light pouring through the window of Lincoln’s office just after the House of Representatives passes the 13th Amendment is made to seem like some sort of divine orgasm. But since actual slavery and actual emancipation aren’t really depicted in this movie, only bandied about as abstractions, an abstract and clichéd visual design seems woefully appropriate.”

4.  ”This is preceded by the movie’s only real set piece: the suspenseful and climactic House of Representatives roll-call vote on the amendment. Spoiler alert: Slavery does get abolished. And this does allow Thaddeus Stevens to reward us with an epiphany of sorts that I won’t divulge. But the fact that Ulysses S. Grant (Jared Harris) is shown following the count vote by vote while Lincoln himself is too austere to be shown engaged in such a vulgar activity is painfully indicative of the film’s approach.

Ironically, this comes after the film has devoted much of its running time to demonstrating how Lincoln had to lie and scheme in order to get the votes for that amendment — one of the points made by Kearns, as well as by Gore Vidal in his novel about Lincoln. Kearns and Vidal both maintain that this president was ultimately more pro-Union than he was anti-slavery. These writers also view their subject largely through the viewpoints of others who helpfully kept diaries or wrote more letters than Lincoln did: Vidal does his best to tweak and confound our more idealized notions about the man, and Kearns does more to accommodate at least some of those notions. But both authors, as scholars, are ultimately more concerned with how we think about Lincoln than how we feel about him. Spielberg, as usual, is more concerned with how we feel, and the factual material can only provide him with mixed signals.

Spielberg showed in “Saving Private Ryan” that whenever he had to combine contrary points of view about this country into something palatable as well as marketable, shots of the American flag waving in the wind remained the easiest way to drown his contradictions in torrents of rhetoric. Trying this time to combine revisionist details with familiar images of Lincoln as well as with an allegorical lighting scheme, he fails to find any equivalent form of unifying rhetoric. “Lincoln” remains at war with itself, seesawing relentlessly between the image of the clever conniver who knew how to manipulate others, which emerges from his contemporaries, and the inscrutable anti-slavery demigod brooding alone in his chambers, the quasi-religious image that we already had of a martyred saint. As long as the saint looks familiar and the lighting remains dark, maybe we won’t notice that such a composite portrait doesn’t add up to a single individual.”

— Jonathan Rosenbaum, from “Spielberg’s Portrait of Lincoln Is A Bust,” Jewish Daily Forward, November 9 2012.

http://forward.com/articles/165443/spielbergs-portrait-of-lincoln-is-a-bust/?p=all

Listening Notes, Ultra-Brief (Pt. 79)

PICKS 

The Miles Davis Quintet, Live In Europe 1969: The Bootleg Series, Vol. 2     (Columbia / Legacy) 

The “lost” quintet, and indeed a lost phase in the mercurial leader’s frenzied dash towards decade’s end, no less cohesive a unit as that captured on Columbia’s previous vault dig even if the personnel had largely changed in the two years since 1967. A particularly forceful Davis and the tenor/soprano of a Wayne Shorter always more assertive in concert settings make room for the new kids - twenty-eight year old Chick Corea taking Herbie Hancock’s place at an electric piano so discordant it brings to mind Cecil Taylor’s excursions on a wobbly rail, twenty-three year old Wolverhampton native Dave Holland swapping out Ron Carter’s spot on a stand-up bass not yet gone electric, and twenty-nine year old Jack DeJohnette furiously filling the space vacated by wunderkind Tony Williams. If the ’67 quintet hinted at electricity, this band embodied it, even if fusion landmark Bitches Brew lay nine long months away from the two Antibes appearances captured here. The mindfuck comes in hearing Davis and company straddle two distinct eras most of us long ago assumed were strictly segregated, as when DeJohnette helps Davis slam directly out of “Miles Runs The Voodoo Down” into 1958’s modal bop anthem “Milestones” or Thelonious Monk’s 1944 “‘Round Midnight”. But the mindfuck also comes when Corea gives up on a malfunctioning electric piano spewing out excess distortion midway through a Stockholm set-opening “Bitches Brew” and switches to acoustic piano for three numbers, briefly reengaging on “Paraphernalia” and “Nefertiti” with the kind of peerless modern jazz catalogued on 1965’s famed Plugged Nickel archive. Within a matter of weeks, “No Blues” and “‘Round Midnight” would forever fade from Davis’ repertoire, with only “I Fall In Love Too Easily” periodically surfacing as a ghostly snippet of a past life. Not one for nostalgia, Miles Dewey Davis III. 

 

Wayne Shorter, Without A Net     (Blue Note)

First, the caveats. As a fellow critic and friend remarked, all this talk of “greatest living jazz composer” seems reckless so long as Ornette Coleman and Henry Threadgill walk the land. I’d note a preponderance of Shorter’s merely great soprano sax to the detriment of his magisterial tenor. And despite the horn man’s much-heralded return to Blue Note after a career-length absence, this remains a cobbled-together live document of the working unit he’s leaned upon since 2001, aside from the quite lengthy Third Stream number “Pegasus,” in which the Imani Winds lend their highbrow talents. Only that Third Stream track really is pretty great, blessed with one of Shorter’s most sprightly melodies, sweetened with quotations from Sonny Rollins (“Oleo”) and Shorter himself (“E.S.P.”), and going out on a memorable vamp that swings hard. And even if John Pattitucci will never be my bassist of choice, he acquits himself admirably, while drummer Brian Blade and (especially) Panamanian pianist Danilo Perez burn as brightly as their leader. With the kind of sixth sense that only comes after a decade-plus of anticipating one another’s every move, the quartet darken the strands of Miles Smiles opener “Orbits,” strip away the fusion distractions of Weather Report artifact “Plaza Real,” and milk the fake exotica of 1933 Astaire/Rogers vehicle “Flying Down To Rio” before fearsomely deconstructing its pleasant theme. And despite my instrumental preferences, Shorter’s soprano technique would be a marvel - blithe, soulful, rigorous, transcendent  - even if he wasn’t a musician still touring at age eighty.

 

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Bettie Serveert, Oh, Mayhem!     (Second Motion)

“I need to get my tough skin back,” Carol van Dijk avers midway through, although the evidence at hand hardly suggests strengthening is in order - rare indeed is the indie outfit facing down twenty years of semi-popularity with songs as short and punchy as these ten slightly skewed pop tunes. Aside from brief feedback-breather “Monogamous,” their Dutch industriousness and Peter Visser’s siren wail muscle over proceedings with such glee one’s tempted to overlook occasional lyric sheet clumsiness: “move to Timbuktu,” “double double / too much toil and trouble,” “carpe your diem”. But even those lines have their attractions, just as “LoserTrack” is a Pavement rip so effortless is suggests van Dijk and crew simply rifled through Stephen Malkmus’ reject pile. Besides, this ESL crew comes up with some notably winning lines, like “Tuf Skin’s” cheer/chant “some need / a high five / in the face / with a chair”. And at 2.21, “Had2Byou” is some kind of pop perfection, as great as Gerry and the Pacemakers until you realize those Merseybeat wimps never once wrote a song half so charming.

Tracks: “Had2Byou,” “Shake-her”

Pissed Jeans, Honeys     (Sub Pop)

It’s no mystery why folks are bouncing car doors off boners over this album. It’s on Sub Pop! It sounds real great! “Vain In Costume” is primo hardcore! They write better songs than Fucked Up! They, uh, have a really goofy name! I’d note that their original monicker (Unrequited Hard On) was even goofier, and either name helps explain why women are not flocking to their Jesus Lizard grindcore (seems worth pointing out earlier full length Hope For Men, plus EP Throbbing Organ). Not that this Pennsylvania crew advocates anything untoward - I swear there was a promo photo floating around boasting a female band member, and a song like “Male Gaze” actively grapples with the heavy damage wrought by decades of punk rock misogyny. But raging about one’s woman confusion over aggressive music is always going to seem, well, aggressive to us more gentlemanly types. And unless the Jesus Lizard was your go-to 90s pop outfit, Matt Korvette’s hectoring bluster won’t make you swoon. Best lyric: the “yaaaaaaaarrrrrrgghhh” in opener “Bathroom Laughter”.

Tracks: “Vain In Costume,” “Male Gaze”

 

BOMBS

Darkstar, News From Nowhere     (Warp)

Imagine an honorary member of the Elephant 6 collective discovering the existence of underground dance (in a magazine, perhaps), and giving it the old college try. Aside from late 2012 proggy single “Timeaway,” there are no songs here, really, unless the meandering “A Day’s Pay For A Day’s Work” counts, which one notable media source compared favorably to the Beach Boys and another media source compared favorably to Grizzly Bear. They wish. Lothar & the Hand People, maybe, although Darkstar lack the pop smarts required for even the dubious likes of a “L-O-V-E (Ask For It By Name)”.

Tracks: “Timeaway”

Jim James, Regions Of Light And Sound Of God     (ATO)

At the very least, this head injury-sparked spiritual journey will help raise the profile of wood engraver and graphic novel pioneer Lynd Ward, whose six groundbreaking long form tales (both implicitly and explicitly referred to within these nine songs) may be explored at length in a lovely two volume Library Of America set. Retailing for $60 or so, it’s a decidedly steeper investment of both your cash and time than this under-$10 thirty-eight minute album. But the returns are greater, too, unless you seek big answers from such theosophists as George Harrison, the last artist to spark Jim’s solo musings.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, “Push The Sky Away’

“The gothic predilections of Nick Cave have always betrayed a Southern tinge. Perhaps it was the vast spaces of his native Australia or the literary household of his childhood, but the easy scares of Bela Lugosi or Horace Walpole seemed not for the lad of Warracknabeal. Far more prevalent over his remarkably consistent 30-year career are obsessions shared with authors such as Flannery O’Connor and Carson McCullers: detached eroticism, prophecy, salvation, the grotesque, the uncanny, and the folly of man. Foremost among his traits is a fascination with the past that avoids nostalgia even while ransacking a global cultural heritage, from the blues and Appalachian folk to Weimar cabaret and chanson balladeers. If and when this borrowing works, it’s thanks to hard-sell techniques the artist in question has exploited since first stunning Melbourne audiences with the Birthday Party’s junkie-preacher-from-hell shtick…..”

This is from my just-published SPIN review of Nick Cave’s new album. You can check the rest of the article out at the actual site here -

http://www.spin.com/reviews/nick-cave-the-bad-seeds-push-the-sky-away-bad-seed-ltd

Listening Notes, Ultra-Brief (Pt. 78)

PICKS 

My Bloody Valentine, m b v     (Pickpocket Records)

It’s been twenty years since Kevin Shields last directly engaged with an anxious public, and what were you expecting, Finnegans Wake? Nevertheless, these forty-six minutes of music do offer some kind of departure from the woozy albatross that is/was Loveless, no less impressive for an ostensible lack of ambition manifesting itself through sketchy, half-formed, quasi-compositions. Note that use of “ostensible”: the notion that a perfectionist like Shields didn’t carefully cull his bounty to assemble a distinctive triptych seems absurd. And a narrative does emerge - three opening volleys so familiar they might have been nestled safely somewhere between “When You Sleep” and “I Only Said” since 1991; the crystal clear synth walls, wah-wah pedals, and retro beats of a middle section so hazily Madchester one expects to hear Shaun Ryder garbling over the top; and the punishing jungle throb of a concluding act far denser than anything these closet softies have ever offered. One can dissect this thematic construction to your heart’s content, just as one can focus on the many extraneous details (those bagpipe guitars throughout “in another way,” the oversized Beatles hooks of “only tomorrow,” the thrashy skein of whipping boy “nothing is”). But it might be wisest to ignore the historical context and simply bask in the rough grooves of a dance band finally returned to the fold.

Kitty, D.A.I.S.Y. Rage     (self-released)

So many humorless types are getting pissed off by this sweet-voiced hip-hop party crasher you gotta figure she’s onto something. Charges of cultural slumming are ridiculous, accusations of narcissism mostly rockist - apparently grousing about one’s anti-rash meds represents the height of amour-propre, but Leonard Cohen can detail Janis Joplin giving him head because, well, that’s just art. If her Facebook Generation concerns seem too caught up in the art of literal self-promotion, such are the times we live in, with the blog heartbreak of “UNfollowed” an acknowledged risk for somebody who admits they “like to be the trending topic”. But she’s nothing if not self-aware, and that “UNfollowed” bit quickly reveals itself as a chronicle of obsession taking place in an offline world, just like the jokey title of “$krillionaire” obscures its purpose as a bedwetter’s list of grievances. If you’re still not convinced, the decidedly un-dope beats probably won’t transport you. But consider her fresh approach to rhyme, with taunts and boasts a-plenty and no less clever for all her detached, self-amused delivery. Her efforts crumble like feta, that klonopin won’t be shared anytime soon, her books are thicker than Tolstoy, she’ll piss on your bike just to watch it rust. And what are you gonna do it about? You’re just “crab with a k / at the back of every China Buffet”. 

 

NEAR PICK

Veronica Falls, Waiting For Something To Happen     (Slumberland)

If My Bloody Valentine’s storied history helped flesh out many a rushed m b v thinkpiece, these well-meaning Londoners could use a little in the way of backstory. It’s typical of the cautious thinking predominant among the Wedding Present set (please, not “Horror Rock”) that cutting back on the reverb from their 2011 debut will likely strike fawning supporters as an epoch-defining shift. All I hear besides a few charming sides of guitar pop is proof of the old saw that a weak lyricist’s best friend is a heavy handed producer: “Everybody’s changing / I remain the same”. Weakest link - a drummer mistaking oafishly placed cymbal smashes with spectacle. In that jingle jangle morning they’ll come wallowing through.

Tracks: “My Hearts Beat,” “Teenage”

 

BOMBS

 

The History Of Apple Pie, Out Of View     (Marshall Teller)

A few casual asides from smart friends had me briefly worried I’d be forced to offer praise unto the pop smarts of a band with as ludicrous a name as The History Of Apple Pie. Luckily, a few spins of the album in question rendered the point moot. 

Mike Oldfield, Tubular Beats     (EAR Music)

Oldfield always sipped from the dregs of prog, impressing entire dorm corridors with  straining attempts at Reich Lite, even if his ultimate accomplishment was to bankroll Virgin Records and make the world safe for Mannheim Steamroller. For thirty years, he’s returned again and again to the well of Tubular Bells, herein referred to as T.B. for brevity’s sake - Orchestral T.B. (1975), T.B. II (1992), T.B. III (1998), Millennium Bell (1999), Best Of T.B. (2001), Complete T.B. (2003), T.B. 2003 (2003 complete re-recording), T.B. Reissue (2009), The Mike Oldfield Collection Feat. New Mix of T.B. (2009). To this slag heap of ruin we may now add T.Beats, eleven remixes between the maestro and Torsten “York” Stenzel from the original hallowed tracks. Better rhythms than T.B. itself ever claimed, yes. But you’d be wise to bet that his conception of remixing is as soggy as his conception of minimalism. And what do you want to bet that today’s undergrads are far too smart to be fooled again?

Rogue’s Gallery: Or, Q: Who Would Do Such A Thing?

Blasphemous Rumors: Rocking & Rolling With The Holy See

1.

(Stir it like coffee)

The Pope

(Stir it like muthafuckin’ coffee)

The Pope

(The hell)

This is the Pope

So u can be the President (U can be the President) [Kick it]

I’d rather be the Pope (Rather be the Pope)

(I’d rather be… so happy)

Yeah u can be the side effect (U can be the side effect)

I’d rather be the dope (Rather be the dope)

(I ain’t scared of u mutha fuckers) [Kick it]

— Prince, “Pope” (The Hits / The  B-Side, 1993)

2.

Fire for the Vatican.

- Look at that!

Blood for the poor man.

- Who say?

Revelation say.

- Who say?

So the prophets say.

- And what they saying now?

Fire for the Vatican.

- Look at that!

Blood for the poor man.

- Who say?

Revelation say.

- Who say?

So the prophets say.

- Oh yeah!

- Max Romeo, “Fire Fe The Vatican” (Open The Iron Gate 1973-1977)

3.

The pope smokes dope, God gave him the grass

The pope smokes dope, he likes to smoke in mass

The pope smokes dope, he’s a groovy head

The pope smokes dope, the pope smokes dope

- David Peel and The Lower East Side, “The Pope Smokes Dope,” [The Pope Smokes Dope 1972]

4.

I shot the barbecue pit!

I shot the pope, yahoo!

They shot the pope!

They shot his ass!

It’s over now!

That’s what I said!

I wet my bed last night!

I woke up sad, whoo!

They shot the pope!

They shot the pope’s ass!

They shot the pope!

And I said Good Night!

- Butthole Surfers, “Bar-B-Q Pope” [Butthole Surfers EP 1983]

5.

Give me that Church of the Holy Spook

Church of the Holy Spook

Church of the Holy Spook, it’s good enough for me

It was good for me dear old Daddy

and my dear old Mammy too

Give me that Church of the Holy Spook

I don’t need nothin’ new

- Shane MacGowan & The Popes, “The Church Of The Holy Spook” [The Snake 1994]

War On Dregs: The Women’s Petition Against Coffee of 1674

1.  Our men in former ages were justly esteemed the ablest performers in Christendom, but to our unspeakable grief, we find of late a very sensible decay of that true old English vigor, our gallants being every way so Frenchified that they are become mere cock-sparrows. Never did men wear greater breeches or carry less in them of any mettle whatsoever.

2.  On the occasion of this insufferable disaster, after a serious enquiry and discussion of the point by the learned of the faculty, we can attribute to nothing more than the excessive use of that newfangled, abominable, heathenish liquor called coffee, which rifling Nature her choicest treasures, and drying up the radical moisture, has so eunuched our husbands and crippled our more kind gallants that they are become as impotent, as aged, and as unfruitful as those deserts whence that unhappy berry is said to be brought. For the continual sipping of this pitiful drink is enough to bewitch men of two and twenty and tie up the codpiece point without a charm.

3.  Certainly our countrymen’s palates are become as fanatical as their brains; how else is it possible they should apostatize from the good old primitive way of ale drinking, to run a whoring after such variety of destructive foreign liquors, to trifle away their time, scald their chops, and spend their money — all for a little base, black, thick, nasty, bitter, stinking, nauseous puddle water.

4.  Yet (as all witches have their charm) so this ugly Turkish enchantress by certain invisible wires attracts both rich and poor, so that those that have scarce twopence to buy their children bread must spend a penny each evening on this insipid stuff; nor can we send one of our husbands to call a midwife or borrow a clyster [enema] pipe, but he must stay an hour by the way drinking his two dishes and two pipes.

— From The Women’s Petition Against Coffee pamphlet, London, 1674. Reprinted in Lapham’s Quarterly, Winter 2013

http://www.gopetition.com/famous-petitions-in-history/232/the-women-s-petition-against-coffee-1674.html

http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/voices-in-time/nauseous-puddle-water.php