Simple Sounds Through Awkward Words - Reflective Impressions of 100 Works
 

Hello Music Banter.

For a long time now, I have had the privilege of a sensible family with which I can talk about music. Only recently have I come to appreciate just how important these discussions were. Mind-opening and deeply life-affirming, the collective thoughts and ideas of two people discussing what would appear to be merely sounds are in desperate need of catalogue.

And so, in my current state of solitude, I will loosely do so. My writings will not be reviews, but just thoughts. Unorganized, innocent thoughts. They may come in the form of a dialog, an essay, or simply verbal translations of the impressions felt after a fresh listen. Perhaps I may even use the recording in question as a statement about music itself. It could go anywhere, but it will all start with a conversation, maybe just simple badinage, maybe a full-on argument. We'll see.

In the wise words of writer Will Connolly, "It's not what you're listening to, it's who you're listening with".

That said, enjoy.


Contents: (Will be updated with each subsequent entry)

1. Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain: L.A.'s Desert Origins - Pavement (Posted 09-24-2009)
2. The Downward Spiral - Nine Inch Nails (Posted 09-28-09)
3. Smiley Smile - The Beach Boys (Posted 10-4-09)
4. The Soft Bulletin - The Flaming Lips (Posted 10-11-09)
5. Discovery - Daft Punk (Posted 11-21-09)
6. You Are the Quarry - Morrissey (Posted 1-5-10)

Nice. Looking forward to it.

Gotta love the summer hols eh :D

Sounds like this'll be another good spin on the old top 100 idea - I like the sound of already. Good luck.

Sounds interesting. Looking forward to this.

Oh hi people from two months ago! I forgot about this thread like you can't believe once school started, and didn't once remember until Bulldog reminded me. Thanks buddy! Anyway, here goes.

Pavement - Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain: L.A.'s Desert Origins

R.E.M. fans stick together. They are a band that plenty of people tolerate, but one that surprisingly few people love. I swear that finding somebody else who loves R.E.M. like my dad and I do is such a great experience and they always become great friends. Thus, imagine my surprise when the hipster band I never really noticed reissued Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain in 2004, with what was perhaps the most clearly R.E.M. influenced album I had ever heard. Malkmus and company effectively brought the R.E.M. sound into the nineties in a way better even than the way R.E.M. themselves did. The latter went in full strings and high production, dabbling in many styles on Out of Time and focusing it on Automatic for the People, but Pavement created a perfect balance between R.E.M.'s folk influenced I.R.S. years work and the newfound hard edged lo-fi sound of the early ninteties.

Instrumentally, the album constantly alludes to staples that R.E.M. helped to create; the mid-tempo countrified electric bit that is "Heaven is a Truck" is instantly reminiscent of the piano based "(Don't Go Back to) Rockville" from Reckoning, while the repetitive bass riff on "Hit the Plane Down" sounds remarkably similar to that of "Auctioneer (Another Engine)" from Fables. Even under Malkmus' rough power chords are very present arpeggiated riffs that would fit perfectly on Lifes Rich Pageant.






Yet, while the influence is obvious, Spiral Stairs and company are clearly very humbled by their Idols, paying tribute with their version of "Camera" from Reckoning, which is perhaps one of the best covers ever. Malkmus unleashes so much feeling with his horrible voice on that song than I've ever heard anywhere. No kidding. With no lyrical similarities save the words "...a Camera", Malkmus clearly had trouble understanding whatever the hell Michael Stipe was singing, and decided to write his own words instead. Classic! Later on comes the awesomely funny "Unseen Power of the Picket Fence", in which Malkmus talks about what a great album Reckoning was, and how R.E.M. were "Southern boys just like you and me".

"Time After Time... was my Least Favorite Song! Time After Time was my Least Favorite Song!" he wails, in what might be the best joke about an R.E.M. song ever. Pavement loves R.E.M., and R.E.M. apparently loves them back; (Their 1995 album "Monster" features a heavily Pavement-influenced guitar based sound). This mutualistic nature of the two bands is what makes them both so great; that they can effectively take influence from each other without "ripping [anyone] off". That's music at its best, and that's certainly what Pavement is all about.

Well, I'm officially old.
First of all, when I was young (maybe your dad's age?) I couldn't walk two feet without bumping into a zealous REM lover and I hated it. They were one of the first bands that I petulantly thought of as "overrated". So it's kind of weird to me that you think of REM-love as something rare.
Also, Pavement is very important to me and I think they were generally closer in sound and style to PCP than REM. Still, you bring up a lot of good points about Crooked Rain (my 2nd favorite album of theirs - 3rd if you count the Watery, Domestic EP). CR actually got a lot of criticism from fans when it was released for the "polished" sound and the band responded by saying that they knew it was a pop album and they made a pop album because they like pop music (I guess you can insert REM references here) but that it doesn't mean they are not also (still) huge fans of Jesus Lizard.
Anyway, yours is a good analysis that and I'm just glad that Crooked Rain is popular with the kiddies regardless of why..

This is a great thread but shouldn't it be in the journals section?

Anyways I'm looking forward to reading more

No.


In my circles, they have absolutely zero fan base. Then again, my circles are ****.

Excuse my bluntness here but Jesus Christ....so you are actually more than a troll? :p:

Anyway a firm thumbs up for this thread, it sounds like a great idea and i'm very impressed so far.

Thanks for all the well wishes everyone. Expect the next entry this weekend.

Here goes:

Crazy guy

Everybody knows that Trent Reznor is one crazy guy, right? Thus it is no surprise that the Nine Inch Nails mastermind's magnum opus chronicles a perturbed man's fall from some sort of grace to the point of suicide. Conceptually, the idea was not anything particularly new... depression and death had been popular themes in music since god-knows-when, maybe beginning with Hank Williams' classic "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" or even earlier perhaps. What was so genius about this album, intentionally or otherwise, was that it was released at exactly the point when music like it could sell the most records.


In April of 1994, Kurt Cobain blew up his head with a shotgun, and a lot of depressed teenagers became a lot more depressed. However much it pains me to say this, Cobain had become some sort of unwilling poster child of "generation X", whatever that means, and his death carried a lot of weight, even more than his life did for most of those people. Well it just so happens that the very next month, Nothing Records dropped "The Downward Spiral", and hundreds of thousands of those very same people who so mourned Kurt Cobain's death rushed to buy it. It was absolutely perfect timing. The actual quality of the album is irrelevant. It just worked that well.

And that's just pretty interesting.

The link didn't go through. But this album is amazing. And so is the timing, I suppose.

For the picture? Yes it did, it works on my end.

The album itself I think is pretty good... better conceptually than it was executed. I like the overall feel though, and it's cliche but Hurt is such a song.

Not the picture, the video. But now it works, apparently.

Weird.

Nice homage to Francis Bacon. That's what I love about NIN, we feel it's Art. Usually, in music, visuals aren't really worked on, and vice versa. With NIN it's a complete work of art, it's nice.

Moving on.


Is it too much to say that this could have been the best album ever? Depends on who you ask. One can view this album in two distinct ways, so let's look at both. Looking at Smiley Smile in historical context, it is easy to hate it for being the "SMiLE" that never was... that is, Brian Wilson's magnum opus never to be released until 2004... nearly forty years after it was conceived. It is so easy to dismiss this album as studio dickery... citing things like the sped up tape in She's Going Bald as totally useless. It's even easier still to say that had the Beach Boys put less effort into experimentation and more effort into creating the perfect pop album that everyone knew "SMiLE" was going to be, it would have been released on time and crowned the greatest album ever. By the time the Beach Boys got around to releasing Smiley Smile, "SMiLE's" replacement, The Beatles Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band had already been out for a few months, and had effectively taken the place that Brian Wilson sought to claim with "SMiLE". Had he given up hope? Had he cared so much about this that his last ditch effort was to release THIS? This under-produced, overly experimental, effectively unedited piece of ****? THIS wasn't the album that was going to come back and win the popular music war for America!

But is it that bad? Of course not. Viewed out of context, as just another album, Smiley Smile is nearly perfect. Yes, the production is awful. Someone was too lazy to edit out everybody laughing at the beginning of Little Pad. Someone else, probably Brian, says "good!" after they hit a good harmony on With Me Tonight. The drums everywhere sound absolutely terrible. But we don't criticize Bob Dylan for having crappy vocals (He does), because he writes great songs, just as we don't criticize Daft Punk for auto-tuning the hell out of singer Romanthony's voice on One More Time, yet as soon as we hear T Pain's voice raped by the same software on the radio we whine and complain to no end. It's justified, that's all. But even looking at this objectively it's not the best album ever. Even with better production it would probably only graze my top 100, far behind the 2004 SMiLE, which despite taking forty years, definitely paid off. Still, it's a great album. The Beach Boys harmonies are better on Heroes and Villains than anything ever, no kidding. I try not to view this album or the 2004 SMiLE in historical context, because while the production on the latter is top notch, Brian's voice isn't what it used to be. A mix of the two albums simply would be the best album ever, if that makes sense, but again, it's not really right to think like that.

So it goes. Since its release in 1967, despite initial confusion and critical negativity, Smiley Smile has risen to some sort of a cult album. I would recommend listening to this, but don't go in expecting what you've heard said of SMiLE.

Seems we agree on the same 'best Beach Boys' album and the same 'best Beatles' album. Nice review, keep it up.

Haven't heard Smiley Smile in an awfully long time, so I can't remember that much of it. I do remember Surf's Up being just about the coolest thing ever. As for the 2004 version of SMiLe, I loaned it out of a library soon after it came out but never really properly listened to it and kinda forgot about it since. I do love me some Beach Boys though, so I should probably give it a good go sometime soon, if it's anywhere near as good as I've heard it is.

I've got a feeling that I've got a NIN CD somewhere that's been gathering dust for a few years as well. Might be Downward Spiral, not too sure. Same kinda story - I burned it off a mate many years ago and never gave it a proper chance.

So, yeah, thanks for the reminders :D Great thread too - I like your style.

:love:

Oh Bulldog!

I agree about the vocals on Heroes & Villains - marvelous work.

Not to mention the lyrics on the album are so whimsical. I really like that, it suits the music well. I love the half spoken middle bit of She's Going Bald. Such urgency in his voice, despite such a seemingly arbitrary topic, it's great.

A shiver, picked me up and grabbed me by the back of the neck.

I don't know where I am or where I'm going, but I like it.

You're moving faster now, careening of the rails but somehow you stay on board. You see nothing now.

But then a light.

A pulsing heartbeat and a deep piano sound.

"Look into space, it surrounds you!", exclaims Wayne, from somewhere within this blinding whiteness.

The pulsing beat is building now, and the light doesn't fade, only flickers like a hot flame. Synthesized strings gambol on around a distant piano. Lost voices cry out, but to whom? Not you, I hope. Anyone but you.


As soon as it arrived, the light is gone. Vanquished, maybe, but only for now.

Superman has lifted up the sun, and everything is at peace now, for now.

This is the amazing thing about the Soft Bulletin. Reveling in the infinite beauty found in the simplest, most miniscule aspects of life. Spiders bite. Bugs fly in the air. Relative weights; for an ant, a spoonful weighs a ton. That's mind expanding, man!

I guess it's only fitting that the band who wrote Jesus Shootin' Heroin years earlier would attain pop perfection, a phrase so overused that it has nearly lost its meaning.

Oh the irony.


Doesn't matter.

That video reminded me:



Listen to the beginning of that, and then the beginning of this. Similar, no?

Interesting write up as well

I've got this weird disease that makes me to never do anything ever. It's not that I'm not able to, I just don't want to. What's the matter with me? As a young blue-blooded teenager shouldn't I be compelled to do... anything fun at all? Maybe that's the issue; as my idea of fun is a night playing Fallout 3 at home, alone, with a pizza and enough root beer to saturate my sugar necessity for months. The best time I ever had was attending a meeting for my family's non-profit foundation and spending the night drinking vodka and cranberry juice that my 19 year old cousin managed to get from the open bar. Maybe that sounds like fun, but I don't know. I have no perspective.

Out of my Element

Like a child who wanders into a movie and expects to know the plot.

I can quote the Big Lebowski.

That's proof enough.

My life is dominated by a need not to achieve anything at all except to finally be done with goddamn football practice so that I can get home and complete my daily routine. I see each day as beginning at 6 PM and ending at 7:30 AM when I leave for school. That doesn't even make sense actually. Shows what I know I guess. I don't love life, but I certainly don't hate it. I couldn't possibly feel such strong emotions on either end for something so mundane.

Flash forward some months.

I get a recommendation from some guy for some album called Discovery from some band Daft Punk, which I think is a ridiculous name for a band, especially one that looks like robots. I go to my local neighborhood music store (yes they still have those) and begrudgingly handed over my 15 or so dollars in exchange for this album which says the name of the band in big mercurial letters, under which smolder the embers of some sort of rainbow fire. The second the opening, orgasmic, fantastic and incredibly beautiful note of One More Time hits my ears, things just sort of start going right in the conventional sense. I had been happy... no not happy, but content with my current situation for as long as I can remember, but this was something new. This was catharsis by the books. Looking back, Discovery seems a very apt name. By listening, I discovered something about myself, humanity, and life. We are not here to live like I lived: less day-to-day and more just... meh. Instead, we are here to celebrate ourselves as a species and more importantly as a collective of cultures; many single individuals each unique in their way united under the power of FEELING. NOT MUSIC, but what MUSIC makes! Emotion! A Chemical process, maybe, but conceptually it's more than that! It's what makes us human! Believe it. Life changing is only the half of it.

This is not really about the album so much as the effect it has had.

On paper, a fourteen year old American boy should have nothing to do with Morrissey. Forget the Smiths! At fifty years old, the sporadically genius solo artist should, by logic, be remembered if at all only by aging former fans. These were the beta version of the Indie Kids, who clutched their copies of The Queen is Dead like some holy artifact and Sang themselves to Sleep every night. In 2004 this seemed to be about to become a reality, as Morrissey's solo work became worse and far between. Having apparently lost his once resplendent boyish looks and with his audiences getting smaller still, Moz was losing relevance at an alarming rate.

Then.

The Single.

That slinky guitar line... then the drums come in...

The voice of a much younger Morrissey speaks to a new generation of hipsters and indie kids. Or is it? This can't be the same Morrissey who in 1986 declared himself Unloveable! This Morrissey wears suits and wields Tommy Guns and spits upon the name Oliver Cromwell! To think that he would be so daring!

But that chorus. My God... the chorus. With that chorus, "Irish Blood, English Heart" gave the world a reason to like, no, love the wonderful self-deprecating creature that is Morrissey. And love him the world did, with "Irish Blood" reaching number 3 in Britain and 4 in the United States.

But why did this very late career resurgence occur? What reason was their to trust Morrissey to make a good record containing perhaps the best pop song of the past fifteen years, with seven years having passed since the abysmal Maladjusted? Every generation needs an older genius gone unnoticed for them to discover and subsequently worship. In 1986, this was Lou Reed, with R.E.M. releasing the Velvet Underground styled guitar heavy album "Life's Rich Pageant", the Feelies creating the Velvets album that never was with "The Good Earth", and The Smiths themselves channeling the confessional lyrics of The Velvet Underground's self titled album into a little record called The Queen Is Dead.

For Generation Pitchfork, Morrissey was just this.

Six years and two very good albums later, he who was once declared "Unloveable" is the most respected Briton in alternative music if not music in general.

Ironic? Maybe. But I accept the graceful aging of the face of Indie music with open arms.