Are any of you keeping up with the YouTube experiment Rivers Cuomo of Weezer is doing? Back in March or so, Rivers called on YouTube viewers to come up with a song title (originally "80s Radio") and then led them through the process, inviting would be rockstars to offer up chord structures, lyrics, bridges and adjustments. The result isn't so much music by committee as it is, "Rivers picks what he likes and you all go with it", which means the result, now called "We're Turning Up the Radio" doesn't totally suck. In fact, it's sort of rad.
But what's more rad is the sort of master class/ throw the baby bird from the nest aesthetic the experiment's taken on. Hundreds of people each week audition their ideas before Prof. Cuomo through YouTube videos, which people then comment on themselves. It's sort of Darwinian, with each new generation of the song spawningmutants. But it's all collaborative in the best sense of the word; that the song sounds sort of like a Weezer song isn't much of a surprise, but it has no one author who can claim credit. Cuomo actually makes a great, if eccentric teacher. He's unafraid to say when something doesn't work and quick to praise when it does. This is the kind of stuff that makes the Internet such a cool place to live in.
Shortly, Rivers promises to "offer the song up to the lions", whatever that means. Stay tuned.
Weezer Gives Chris Crocker an Extra 15 Seconds of Fame
Which should be enough for me to dismiss them forever, but c'mon! It's Weezer. It's the You Tube-eriffic "Pork & Beans", the first single from the Red album, out June 3rd. I hope Rivers deloused after giving Crocker a hug. That kid doesn't need a hug. He needs a nice long stay in a sanitarium. Think I'm being mean? Here's what the kid's been up to lately.
Your editor says, "Hey, here's all the downloadable music from SXSW. Write a review. By the way, that's 48 hours of music. Have fun!" What do you do? Well, if you're Paul Ford, you make each review just six words long. Check out Ford's minimalist music reviews here. They work brilliantly. For Seeing Things' "Eat Skull": "But I'm not hungry for skull" and People Person's "Pissed Jeans": "Claims adjusters secret noise side-project." Ford also keeps his Twitters to only six-words each.
Any writer worth their salt will tell you it's far easier to write more than less. The game is to score the biggest punch in the fewest words. Though, Proust's In Search of Lost Time sort of proves me wrong; reduce it to six words-- A Madeline! Holy shit, I remember" and you lose-- something.
Music Exclusives: Real Tuesday Weld (and "Mixtales")
I've been playing around with Muxtape, the roll your own mp3 mix tape site and it's inspired me to do a project I've long wanted to do: Write a series of short stories--each inspired by a different song. I've always been a big fan of using musical structures in stories and the idea of a creating an "album" of tales really appeals to me. Starting in June, I'll launch "Mixtales" here on the site, with a new short story and Muxtape each month.
In the meantime, check out my May's start of summer-ish muxtape at japhy.muxtape.com. Put it on with your first pair of sandals for the season. As a special treat, it's got an advance track from The Real Tuesday Weld's newest album The End of the World, out in May. Also, one of the songs is the first track for the Mixtales. If you've got a guess which it is (or a suggestion for a song to write a story about), stick it in the comments
Click here to go to May's Muxtape. Sorry-- there's no Fall Out Boy here. I just think a photo of Pete Wentz crowd-surfing socialites is pretty rad.
Imagine for the moment that instead of being a bloviating, gossip and porn-filled time sink, the Internet were a giant game with teams creating and re-appropriating content and services to find new and novel ways with connecting with strangers and you'll get an idea of what ZeFrank's latest venture, Colorwars 2008 is all about.
I've been trying to figure out how to explain Colorwars for a week or so now. Users sign up by following "teams" on Twitter and then engage in various contests. Games so far have included a virtual game of rock, paper, scissors, bingo and a nerd rap. Upcoming challenges include a Gogle Earth scavneger hunt and smack talk haikus. And there are prizes; Jet Blue gave out free tickets in a recent contest. But the point of the game, already a darling of Web 2.0 types is to get people to play with each other and instead of developing elaborate new tech to do it, use exisiting tools like Twitter and GarageBand.
That's the wonky explanation I've been trying to avoid. So let me just walk you through it.
Then I started playing games. For instance, there's a game called YoungMeNowMe where you take a picture of yourself when you were young and restage it. Here's my entry.
Another game invites you to design your own merit badge, which as an Eagle Scout, I couldn't pass up. Presenting the Irony Merit Badge:
And finally, one of the contests going on right now is to create remixes of the Nerd Raps. I was aiming for a Gnarls Barkley-sound (that's me doing an embarrassing falsetto), but sort of wound up with Moby. Someday I'll graduate to Cee-Lo. Click on the photo below to listen:
Not all of the contests are this involved, but while I love that my work requires me to use my creativity, it's a lot of fun just play around and goof off now and then. At the same time, I'm connecting to other like-minded people and seeing how they respond to the challenges. The YoungMeNowMe photos, for instance, are amazing.
Colorwars is ongoing and you can join with no commitment. If this sounds super-rad (it is!) I would love for you to join Team IKB, but you can join any team here. All you need is a Twitter account (which you should have anyway--it's this month's Facebook).
Here's some of what I've been working on this week:
An interview with Arthur Dong, director of Hollywood Chinese, a fantastic documentary about the Chinese-American experience in Tinseltown. I could have talked to Arthur for hours-- a really funny, fascinating and thoughtful guy. (The Advocate)
A QnA with photographer Paul Mpagi Sepuya. Sort of got me thinking about how the media's job is to define and label things (this is a trend, it is about these kinds of people, it fits into this category) and fine artists are all about introducing ambiguity and challenging the nature of the boxes we stuff things into. Not that any of that shows up in the piece. (Popnography)
The 400 pound gorilla this week is my big feature story on "The Boys of Buzznet", Jeffree Star, Clint Catalyst and Matthew Lush. I'll probably write another blog soley about the backstory to this piece. For the moment, I'll just say I'm pretty proud of it and really thankful for my editor, Shana. (Out.com)
Ryan Adams has a blog. It's called "Foggy". He started the blog, it turns out, because he's very lonely now that everyone he's ever loved has rejected him. But he's okay with it. "I hope I die alone and under a lot of work" he writes, adding "I am better for myself and other alone." Other tidbits include the fact he never dated Alanis or Winona, that he's pretty sure he's going deaf and that he's been two years sober. As far as awkward self-confessional blogs, it's pretty good.
Unfortunately for us, blogging only made Ryan's loneliness more acute and yesterday, he decided to say goodbye to Foggy, and to us in the video message above, about how miserable he is, how he can never be loved, set to slow piano and intercut with barren trees in Rockefeller Center. Now, I love Ryan Adams' music. I love that he's pretty fucking sure he's the best rock star on Earth and I myself have been known to engage in some maudlin public self-excoriation from time to to time. But Ryan Adams really needs to learn the power of chocolate chip oatmeal cookies.
A fantastic video of a panel discussion on Britney, but especially on the difference between the regular media and bloggers. Perez haters will enjoy this, the rest of you will find it interesting. I love that the NYU School of Journalism is having serious conversations about the journalistic ethics of the paparazzi and the "parasites" who "steal" stories. The interesting thing for me as someone with a foot in both traditional media and blogging is that a real distinction is made between reporting, which involves gathering, researching and verifying a story and blogging, which is almost exclusively commenting on the work of others.
What with Hillary Clinton winning the gay vote 2 to 1, you'd think by now somebody with design sense or taste or style would get this woman a decent inspiring music video*. At least she has a lock on the Up With People vote. *special thanks to Eric for this one.
I'm off to Boston in (looks at clock) 38 minutes for cold and snow and my Mom's cookies and concerns about my life. I'm loading my iPod up with carols. Here are some of my favorite free Christmas treats on the internet.
Sufjan's Christmas Exchange. The winner is called "Everyday is Christmas", but the folks at Asthmatic Kitty have decided to stream a bunch, ranging from songs about toy shopping to something called "A New Empire is Underway, Even the Kids Will Agree!"
I Heart Christmas. I Heart Lung's free Xmas Ep features the instant classic "Santa Claus vs. Dracula".
A Familyre Christmas. The Danielson Familie and company bring you a very merry freak-folk holiday.
To close out the year (and to give you folks something to read while I finish up scripts), tMR is listing the "Top 20 Trends of 2007". But I need your help putting them in order. Starting Friday, you'll be able to vote for the trend you think is the most important. Somehow, there'll be a prize involved. I've got to figure it out. If you have a suggestion for a trend, email me.
2007: The Unconcert -- Daft Punk's Alive 2007
Two words: Robot. Humanity. You can barely make the words out as they're slowly pronounced on a heavily digitized vocoder. Then they speed up until they blur into each other, the crowd goes wild and two motorcycle-helmet-wearing Frenchmen start playing music inside a giant pyramid on stage. There are no instruments, only computers. A lot of ink had already been spilled about Daft Punk, an electronica group known for it's love of repetitive lyrics (if you know the title "Around the World", you've memorized the song's lyrics) before this year's Alive 2007 tour. But in figuring out a way to present totally synthetic music in a live setting, Daft Punk's reformatted everything you knew about concerts.
Strictly speaking, there's no music-making to see at a Daft Punk concert. The elaborate electronics which allows the duo to manipulate the pre-recorded tracks they use are all hidden from view. Instead the audience witnesses shear spectacle-- two robots in a pyramid surrounded by lights. It's iconic, but devoid of meaning, much like the music itself. While most concerts are about seeing your favorite live, a Daft Punk concert is all about you. It's an old stage-saying that the audience makes the show, and by polishing their stage presence into a high-gloss mirror, Daft Punk's creates a show that reflects the audience's energy right back onto itself; creating an adrenalin-induced feedback loop.
The contradiction here is that the spectacle makes for a more genuine musical experience. Without visible ego's and personalities on stage, you focus on the music-- and by "focus" I mean "dance your ass off". While Gen X searched everywhere for ways to "keep it real", Daft Punk celebrates a generation whose reality is an artificial and digital landscape. As our identities dissolve, morph and expand across social networks, text messages and Google searches Daft Punk's robotic vision reminds that we're still "human after all".
So, in the "How Totally Awesome is Sufjan Stevens?" department, we have news that instead of doing his usual limited edition Christmas LP, this year the maximalist folkie is holding a contest where you write a song and send it to him. The one he likes the best will receive a Sufjan-penned Christmas song. That is, he'll swap legal rights with you. You can keep the song forever to yourself (Mr. Grinch), sell it to Pepsi or give it away for free. It's totally up to you.
Also, he's giving away his Christmas music free online through Dec 25th. Fro more details and for Sufjan's music, click here.
But before you listen, if you're in L.A., you might want to check this out:
"We are thrilled to announce the opportunity for fans to attend a one-of-a-kind Josh Ritter performance. On October 26th, Josh and the band will be bringing their live show off the stage and into an exhibit hall of L.A.’s Museum of Natural History.
It will be filmed for the upcoming television series “Live from the Artists’s Den,” and we’d love it if a hundred or so of our fans joined us. This is an invite-only, closed to the public evening of live music and television cameras – but with martinis and extinct mammals abound.
To attend, you must be among the first 150 people to RSVP at the link below. AND if you’re among the confirmed attendees and you bring your ticket stub from the previous night’s show (at the El Rey Theatre), you get special privileges (at least moved up to the front of the line!).
Frequent tMR readers know I have an inexplicable obsession with Bob Fosse's choreography for "The Rich Man's Frug" from Sweet Charity. At karaoke on Monday, they played Beyonce's "Get Me Bodied" video and I sort of went off on my pal Kyle about my "Rich Man's Frug" love, which he obviously had no interest in, but he's nice enough to humor me. So, not knowing when to stop, I planned on sending him both videos for comparison, only to find that somebody's gone and made a mash-up video, already. Check it out. It's sweet.
Because if you've just seen Ellen break down about her puppy on air, you might be considering suicide. As a nation, we're grief stricken by Ellen's pain and shame shame upon animal rescue shelters for enforcing rules designed to prevent puppy trafficking! But we all have to soldier on. There are things still worth living for. For instance- here's something that should cheer both Ellen and America up a bit:
My laptop's on my kitchen table right now, some tea lights glowing beside me. I spent the last hour helping the old folks and Russians in my building to not freak out since we don't have any power. I calmed Sheila, my next door neighbor down by telling her about the New York blackout and how the whole city came together and a friend of mine stuck a bunch of boomboxes in a pickup truck and had a roving street party in the East Village. I guess I could go out, but it's nice and quiet and I've had a long day.
I had a talk with my friend Nick today about this guy I was in love with a while back and who I saw last night and well, I basically ignored him. Nick was trying to cheer me up and then he stopped, and said "Do you know this song playing on the radio?" I did my usual "Obviously I know (insert cultural reference here)", but he called me on it and made me listen. It's "The Heart of the Matter" by Don Henley, though he grabbed his iPod and played the Indie.Arie version instead ("Because it's more gay--after all, we love black women", Nick said). The chorus says that "it's about forgiveness". Nick said, "I don't really need to say anything" and we sat in my driveway listening to the words and well, they were embarrassingly on point.
It was a messy break-up and neither of us showed our best selves in the process. Determined as I am to make good come out everything and realizing that there's nothing I can do to change anyone but myself, I set out to change myself. At first I did it because I wanted to be so amazing, so good, so attractive, strong, understanding that he would look at me and realize all he lost. I was so angry with him. And people would tell me, "You have to find a way to forgive him." And I would say, "I do! I do! But he won't let me forgive him. He won't even talk to me. How can I possibly forgive him?" Forgiveness is tricky. It's wicked cousin- moral authority is always close behind, ready to convince you that feeling that you're better because you "forgive".
And the truth is, since then I've not let go of my anger. You know the scene in An Affair to Remember when Cary Grant explains to Deborah Kerr, that ever since she stood him up at the Empire State Building, he's met lots of pretty girls, but he asks each of them "Where will you be on December 8th at 6pm?" Not sure if that's the actual date, but you get it-- that's when they were supposed to meet. Well, that's been me, lately. In a lot of ways I'm a better, wiser person-- I've learned to take care of myself, to be compassionate, but every time something resembling a shadow of what I had comes along, I say "Yeah, but where will you be when it matters?" I don't want to take out my anger at one person on another, so I've just given up on dating for now.
And now that I'm determined to get comfortable being my own person, on my own-- the feelings I had for this guy resurface. And it's unfinished work. In a way, all the things that happened between us have made me a better person, but if I don't forgive him, that anger, that fear, that loneliness will eventually defeat me. And that's why this treacly little song matters, Till now, I imagined coffee with him down the road, where I'd tell him how I felt, how I both loved him and was hurt by him deeply and that once he heard how I felt, he would say "I'm sorry" and I would forgive him. I've been waiting for "I'm sorry" for so long; I felt entitled to it. I even feel deep down he knows he owes me an apology. But that's not forgiveness, that's negotiation.
I walked by this guy last night, pretending he didn't exist. But I loved him and I loved him deeply and I don't regret that love. Does he deserve forgiveness? Yeah, because we all do. If a hostage can forgive his captors, if victims of war can forgive their aggressors, if a woman who lost both her daughter and her mother in a drunk-driving accident can forgive the driver, in our own tiny lives, we can (and must) forgive each other and ask for forgiveness.
You know, I was raised in a very Episcopalian family and I was an acolyte (read: "altar boy") and I took a lot of it to heart. I don't think I will ever believe in the idea that Jesus was the son of God or in the idea that you will be judged by your actions and rewarded appropriately in the afterlife, but I believe in the idea of grace. It seems we live in a time where we are constantly pulled apart from our friends and family and that we have to devise new methods of coping with the massive change we seem to all be experiencing in our lives. And a lot of those coping methods mean closing ourselves off to pain and hurt; to become calcified to the pain that life seems to constantly offer. Maybe I'm just predisposed to seeing the sadness of life. But I think all of us, the worst among us included, can change. No matter what we've done, none of us are ruined. None of us are broken. The least we can do is allow those in our lives, and more importantly, ourselves, the opportunity to start anew.
What with Hot, Hot Heat, The New Pornographers, Arcade Fire and Rufus Wainwright having all played L.A. in the last week or so, I got's to thinking-- is Canada taking over the U.S. music scene, eh? The thing is they're sneaky. Long gone are the days when you could peg a Canuk rocker by the number of love ballads about moose or institutionalized health care. Here's a quick cheat sheet to that Canadian sound:
How many members are in the band? If the answer is more than 7, chances are they are Canadian. Like goose, Canadians move in big flocks. See: Arcade Fire, New Pornographers.
Is somebody playing an organ? Canadian bands often look more like orchestra's than rock bands. Sure there are American's who throw in the kitchen sink, too, but is it any wonder that Sufjan Stevens is from Michigan-- a border state. See: Rufus Wainwright, Arcade Fire.
Is that a political song? Oh sure, Madonna did "American Life", but when it comes to pointed political commentary you can dance to, the Canadians have us beat. See: All of Neon Bible, and well- all of them, actually.
Can they make L.A. audiences actually move? When I first moved to L.A. I really hated going to concerts-- because, let's face it-- L.A. crowds suck. They don't move, they sort of stand and bob their heads if they're in a good mood. Maybe it's because Angelinos don't have any experience in being in large crowds, but last week, both Arcade Fire and New Pornographers managed to inject a little bit of locomotion into the crowd- admittedly, not until they were halfway through their respective sets, but for this city, that's something.
Pirates everywhere breathe easy: Misshapes, America's longest running hipster bacchanal, ended last night. No longer will Davey Jones and his crew have their clothes mercilessly deconstructed into glad rag chic by the barbarian hordes of Billyburg. The weekly NYC party ran for almost half a decade, gaining the dubious distinction of being the cultural touchstone for a crowd which scorns the idea of cultural touchstones as out of date and unhip. As for what the disaffected unwashed masses will do now, the NY Times quotes one former pirate-beater as saying that the new thing is "dinner parties". That's so three years ago.
I am "walking" in the Jimmy Fund Marathon this weekend. My Dad has had two heart attacks in the last year and to celebrate his comeback, our family is walking/running/virtually walking (that's me-- I can't make it back to Beantown, sadly) to raise money to fight cancer. If you'd like to donate, click here.
Shocker: New condo not as cool as it's next-door neighbor, classic icon of early Modernism, The Schindler House.
Seminal (tee-hee) queer-punk band Pansy Division is going on tour for the first time in four years this October.
I keep meaning to mention this: I have an interview with Dan Kurtz of Dragonette in the current issue ofInstinct. It's probably one of my favorite interviews. It doesn't hurt that they're a fucking awesome band.
If you're in San Diego next week, I'll be speaking on a panel at the National Gay & Lesbian Journalist's Association (NLJGA) Conference. The panel is called "Surfing Tips: Avoiding Online Riptides" and is about the whole "Is blogging journalism?" debate with forays into what sort of standards traditional media should set for freelancers, etc... It's moderated by none other than Nietzschean superman Ben Patrick Johnson. It's on Thursday at 10:15 a.m. My plan is to blog while doing he panel, because you gotta have a gimmick. I'll be covering the conference throughout next week.
You've heard me go on about Josh Ritter's latest album for months and now, you can finally get your hands on it. I just listened to it again yesterday and yup, pretty much the best album of the year. Available everywhere.
So, I'm putting this Snark Week thing to bed with a look ahead and shows that you ought to get yourself to. I'll be doing concert reports on here as part of my whole- "personal blog that's actually useful to the casual reader" initiative-- or PBTAUT2CR as we call it at the Japhydome. Here are the shows I'm planning on seeing soon.
9/20Arcade Fire @ The Hollywood Bowl - Holy fuck a duck. After the concert the night before, off to the Bowl for apocalyptic rock...oh, and the AF is playing with LCD Soundsystem. I have to go clean myself up now.
That's right, I forgot to post today. I've got more stuff planned for Snark Week (and a half, maybe?), but in the meantime, check out this classic David Bowie video. Not to sound like a hopeless cynic (it is Snark Week, though), but this one video is more transgressive than every "gay music video" (though I do love this one) I've seen, combined. It's creative, sexy, unmistakable without being sophomoric or pedantic.
One of the problems with having a "gay identity" is that it's by definition, limiting. If gay is this, then it's not that. Culturally, the idea of sexual "orientation"-- straight, gay, bi, whatever--is brand-new new. For most of history, there were just sexual "acts". Now, I'm not advocating returning to that time, but I think lately I've been very aware that my idea of what being gay is, isn't necessarily the same as other gay people. Put more simply, my values and outlook are not the same as every gay man out there, and vice versa.
The problem is, I think the gay community is too narrow in its vision of what it means to be gay. I don't think it's internalized homophobia to not want to be associated with a community who regularly demonize those who don't agree with them and who show a provincial tendency to fight voraciously for their own rights, but who casually segregate themselves racially and economically all the time. It's frustrating to be told by straight people that being gay means liking Madonna, feather boas and loving musical theatre. It's downright infuriating to have other gay people tell you that. Its not that there's anything wrong with those things, it's just self-limiting to say that's all you can be. It's something I've tried to do as an editor at Frontiers; I understand that these things are important parts of what is historically the gay identity (hell, I like my share of musicals), but I think it's vital to punch holes in that identity: To not just state who we are, but to ask what else we can be.
Bowie is a great example. He went from being an iconoclast who changed the world by shattering it, to a bland self-parody of all that. I look around parts of the gay community and I see people who are afraid to venture into new territory, to leave the safety of their own comfort zones. Identity is a tricky thing: it can be the glue which binds you and gives you resolve, but it can also be a trap, limiting your vision--and thusly, your reach.
August is the biggest month of year for the music industry. Albums drop like pennies from heaven/flies. Because there's so many frikkin' albums out right now worth talking about, all week long, tMR ill be all music-all the time.
First: a story. In High School, my friend Sarah and I were obsessed with Savage Garden, the Australian pop duo responsible for 'To the Moon and Back' and 'The Animal Song'. We would play Truly Madly Deeply in art class while imagining creating an elaborate mosaic mural for our school of Darren Hayes, the band's lead singer. I was visiting a friend in Los Cruces, NM when I bought Darren's first solo album Spin. I actually really liked it and imagined one day I would direct a music video for 'Carry on Dancing' with dead animals waltzing. Basically, the guy wanted to be the white Michael Jackson, but like most of the world, I haven't thought of him since.
Then, in 2006 he came out by marrying his boyfriend, Richard Cullen. and left his Columbia label. The result of all this independence is *This Delicate Thing We've Made, a 25 track independently produced double album. I saw Hayes at the Roxy a month ago and the first thing he said to the audience was that he had been "Justin Timberlake'd" and he's right--Timberlake's the white Michael Jackson. But while The Wardrobe Malfunctioner is Jackson circa Off the Wall, Darren Hayes is the Michael Jackson who made 'Black or White'; grandiose, self-serving, and a little creepy. It's worth checking out Jackson's video again and comparing it to Hayes' video of his first single, On the Verge of Something Wonderful. Also, if you poke around that link, you'll see that Darren Hayes wants you to fold origami birds and leave them for people to find thereby helping to bring beauty and surprise back into the world--but be sure to put the web address of Darren's site on the wing!
'But how's the album?', you ask. Well, it's the sort of thing you would expect from a two-disc Darren Hayes album. Only when the music deviates from cooing slow ballads is anything worth talking about-- and then the songs are only noteworthy for being mawkish parodies of 'edginess' or painful or delusional self confession. I was going to write more, but I'll just give you a sample lyric from How To Build a Time Machine: "Velocity equals distance traveled by time." It's followed by a falsetto squeal. Out Aug. 20.
August is the biggest month of year for the music industry. Albums drop like pennies from heaven/flies. Because there's so many frikkin' albums out right now worth talking about, all week long, tMR ill be all music-all the time.
You're looking at the best album of the year. Already a critical darling for the song 'Wings' and last year's Iraq War-tinged The Animal Years, Ritter decided this time out to craft something less serious, lest he wind up America's answer to David Grey. So he hauled up to Maine, put down the guitar and created a piano centric album recorded in the kitchen of his trumpeter. So what happens when you deliberately aim for the unpolished? Well, if you're Josh Ritter, you go supernova. Listening to Historical Conquests must be like what it felt for people who liked Springsteen and then heard Born to Run. It's that moment where you stop thinking of an artist as a "cool singer" and say, "This guy is the voice of something. Something I want in on."
If The Animal Years was out on the plains, Conquests has the feel of an impromptu concert thrown at a roadside stand on some forgotten stretch of Rockies highway. It opens with To the Dogs or Whoever, a Whitmanesque yawlp of a reel that's part ska, part sea shanty and references Joan of Ark, Christ, The Maid of Orleans, Jonah's whale, Casey Jones and a pair of underwear. Mind's Eye is one of those songs you stumble home drunk to, with purpose, right before you decide to set it on fire. Right Moves is very likely to be the single that will turn Josh Ritter into a superstar. It's an upbeat tune about being broken-up and wanting to get back, that's a declarative fanfare. Sample lyric: "I said that we are like the Northern sky/ There are things that come between us that we can't take back and we can't make right/ And you said, I don't know darling, but I'm here with you and we're coming to the chorus now".
This song segues into a piece called The Temptation of Adam, a ballad about a guy and a girl trapped in a nuclear missile fallout shelter that implies the end of the world and also the beginning. It's also a wonderful love song. Open Doors has a great bass and drum line. Rumours is a full out synth and piano that basically renders a large part of the Billy Joel oeuvre irrelevant (in so much as it's styled as the music of angry working folk-- which, you know, it was--once upon a time). It's as driving as a Jack White tune, but where White sings with swagger, Ritter's style is coolly menacing.
Wait For Love takes Ritter back out onto the Plains with his guitar, just to remind you he can. Real Long Distance is the one really goofy song on the album and really the sleeper of the piece. I ignored it the first dozen or so times I heard it, till one day, on the 12 billionth refrain of "It's the real long distance call", I started grinning like crazy. Next to the Last True Romantic is basically going to be the the theme song of The Modern Romantic. Sample lyric: "He's stolen hearts like they're horses and horses when hearts can't be found." It's probably the coolest Western Swing song you will ever hear.
The album nears the end with Empty Hearts, which is really just a plain ol' country song, only by this point it's obvious that Ritter has rediscovered/ saved country from itself. The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter is cowboy music, to be sure, but it's more than that: It's the sound of America. Out Aug. 21.
August is the biggest month of year for the music industry. Albums drop like pennies from heaven/flies. Because there's so many frikkin' albums out right now worth talking about, all week long, tMR will be all music-all the time.
It's tempting to just lay on you a bunch of lyrics excerpts from their 4th album. It'd be enough to convince just about anyone. 'Adventures in Solitude', with a harp backing and the same inventive dual vocal technique used in 'The Laws Have Changed', is a major departure for the band, but also my favorite song on the album. Sample lyric: 'Balancing on one wounded wing/ circling the edge of the never ending/ the best of the vanished marvels have gathered inside your door'. It's elegiac, graceful and playing on repeat over and over on my iPod. It's the sort of thing this band does better than anyone else, hovering just beyond the cotton candy sphere of saccharine pop, but still basking in its glow. A nod to The Move, 'All The Old Showstoppers' is upbeat and road-trippy. 'Unguided' runs 6:30 and A.C. Newman uses the length to craft a rock song that not just builds, but expands, twists and finds interesting moments to settle before the requisite epic climax required of really-long-songs. Newman says that 'Mutiny, I Promise You' is "the most Bacharach/Wilson/Webb" of the bunch, but honestly, I hear Belle & Sebastian. If it weren't for tomorrow's album, I would call this the best album of the year so far. Get it. Out Aug. 21.
Not for any good reason. This is from Sweet Charity and was the inspiration for Beyonce's 'Get Me Bodied' video. Though the editing is far more varied in Beyonce's video, Fosse's dancers don't need a lot of cuts to make them interesting. Don't get me wrong: Beyonce's great and all, but as someone who is a big fan of quick-action-cutting, it's interesting to see the difference between composing in the frame vs. composing with the frame. Fosse's really good at creating multiple planes of people and groups, so your eye never stays one place on the frame, which in itself is cool, observational and detached and fits the scene.
Take a look. Tell me how I'm wrong. What are yours?
If you were to make a Japhy Grant box-set it would include:
1. Josh Rouse - 1972 Carol King gets a name check in the title track/ 'James' has the best flute solo in a pop album ever/ Blind Boys of Alabama make an appearance/ 'Flight Attendant' is the story of my life.
2. The Beatles - The White Album The thrill of parodies of the Beach Boys/ Bob Dylan/ themselves being better than the real thing/ Despite Corky, 'Ob La Di, Ob La Da' is still as fresh and happy as the day it was cut.
3. The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds The perfect pop album/ 'God Only Knows'/ The car horn in 'I'm Waiting for the Day'/ Did I mention 'God Only Knows'?
4. The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots The robots say 'I'm getting really angry'/ 'Do You Realize?' was the song in my head the entire time I wrote my half-anime/half live-action pilot/'It's Summertime' proves Wayne can hold back-- also, kinda my jam right now.
5. Sufjan Stevens - Seven Swans Because I have to pick one Sufjan album and while Illinois is frikkin' fantastic this one gives me chills- especially on 'The Transfiguration'.
6. Josh Ritter - The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter It's not even out yet (Aug. 11) and is already being hailed as a classic (by me)/ The lyric - ' 'What five letters spell apocalypse?' she asked me/ I won her over singing W-W-I-I-I and smiled and we both knew she misjudged me/ 'Right Moves' is the first Ritter song you can boogie down to.
7. The Decemberists - The Crane Wife The Crane Wife 1 & 2. They could have filled the rest of the album with owls shrieking and it would still be on the list/ Fortunately, the rest of it is pretty great, too.
8. Old Crow Medicine Show - Big Iron World Topics: Cocaine, WTC, Woody Guthrie/ 'Down Home Girl' makes me want to go straight for a day/ Proves that big city boys can go all hayseed now and then.
9. Nina Simone - Anthology 'Funkier than a Mosquitos Tweeter' and 'My Baby Just Cares for Me' on the same cut.
10. Arcade Fire - Neon Bible In spite of/ because I associate this album with bad times, it's so fucking vital to right now that I can't look away/ 'the planes keep coming two by two'/ 'Black Mirror' sounds like the universe being ripped apart and reconstituted into something new.
So, in the "How Totally Awesome is Sufjan Stevens?" department, we have news that instead of doing his usual limited edition Christmas LP, this year the maximalist folkie is holding a contest where you write a song and send it to him. The one he likes the best will receive a Sufjan-penned Christmas song. That is, he'll swap legal rights with you. You can keep the song forever to yourself (Mr. Grinch), sell it to Pepsi or give it away for free. It's totally up to you.
Darren Hayes
Josh Ritter
The New Pornographers