spawk

this has had an unfair slagging in some quarters for not being more like two of the EP's tracks, which suggested something significantly different.

I think Spencer started the SunRub thing, but now goes with "Sunset"

is Florence *shock* more palatable for Metro-readers?

what gives?

...i am never going to have lunch at this rate. or get dressed.

good stuff. Spencer from SunRub was holding up Constellation as the epitome of non-classical music he admires, in his interview that i only just finished...

ALL of p4K's reviews and articles, for instance, wring their hands over whether we should or shouldn't listen to the music at all, without specifying an era. I only meant to suggest that it MAY be problematic if you're looking at very early stuff, but even then it's a matter of taste - some people love the minimal (or non-existent) tunes, and general squelchiness, regardless of the writer's bio. See SunRub's Snake's Got a Leg for example. Then again, I'm suspicious of my own reasons for owning waaay more Jandek than a sane person needs.

It's also possible that some words ("may" "could be thought", etc.) went missing. But hey, thanks for a thoughtful response.

sure enough. but the B-sides referred to sound like they're solo, and Thom's spoken about producing lots of loop-based music for Kid A / Amnesiac, largely on his own.

national + socialist = nazi

i feel so much better now

...was that really the only Passion Pit photo?! that was one of the wildest crowds i've ever seen, and the frontman spent most of the time waggling his afro, or bending over backwards to warble to the rafters

...not the rating (it's an 8 - no more, no less) but the lack of attention to details in the songs that hadn't been played live over the previous 2 years.

Thing is, it's a very understated - very consciously understated - record. It's also the most musically and thematically varied record in Molina's canon (eschewing the formula of 4 chords, and 4 symbols, re-shuffled over 7 or 8 songs, until they've expended their meaning).

That first 'working men's blues record' (as Jordan put it) "What Came After the Blues" disappointed because the lyrics were the most prosaic, and least detailed; this, however, extends Molina's horizons further than most.

The details are subtle, but often exquisite: the combination of cornet and piano in 'Song for Willie' has the wistful prettiness of Mojave 3 or Belle & Sebastian; 'Whip-Poor-Will' sounds like those times when singing at church was actually fun; the harmonies on most tracks aren't exactly the Beach Boys or Beatles, but they're always heartwarming; the organ that appears on the line "O Grace / don't stop believing" is so un-recherche it's charming; the drum-sound on 'Map of the Falling Sky' has the weird growling menace of the drums on 'The Lioness'... but there's deliberate restraint here, as on the distant thunder guitar solo of 'Knoxville Girl' and 'The Handing Down' (by comparison with the "Apocalypse Now" axework you can imagine if you've heard the MECo live album.

That restraint may be frustrating for some - longtime Molina fans can imagine exactly how they'd mix certain tracks to resemble Codeine or Come or "Mi Sei Apparso"-era Songs:Ohia (there's a steady pulsing two-note guitar-line buried deep in one track that should be overpowering... the opening riff&drumcrash of 'Josephine' could set the tone for the whole song), but MECo chose to make this a varied, solid, well-crafted record within the parameters of AOR, and you know what? It works.

...Will Johnson. They have a session on Daytrotter that might give some indication.

PPS - 'Rock of Ages' really is one of J-Mo's prettiest songs. It always makes me think of 'Earth Angel' from Back to the Future...

tho I'm not sure how long Rory was in them (on drums), or Scott for that matter (on bass). there were masks. and sometimes Speedoes. the world was not ready for them. and may never be.

KASMS were fun at Latitude, but it's not the same as a gig where the ceiling is only 4ft higher than the stage.

...they save the best for last.

However, for all this talk of the economic calculi stifling creativity, maybe the journalists themselves (with their electronic soapboxes) need to start proposing some solutions for the state of the music industry, so as to protect themselves as symbiotes of it (or remoras, in the nicest possible sense)... or actively endorsing the ones that do get proposed. This isn't an undergraduate seminar anymore(where we get to discuss aesthetics at their most abstract), much as I wish it was. So...

International legislation to effectively, and proportionately fine server owners who permit unlicensed transfer of music files (bear in mind, music contributes to a higher proportion of the UK's GNP than any other country in the world; in their desperate populism, the government might actually listen if a lot of journalists pointed out they could headline-grabbingly support a big industry that The Kidz actually care about.)Note "proportionate punishment" because fines for individual file-sharers tend to be demented, and only embitter users.

A more aggressive musicians' union taking-on the "Pay-to-Play" system that operates in so many UK (esp. London) venues.

An end to this Free-conomics bullshit. Yes, free MP3s have justifiably replaced singles, because the cost of physically making and distributing the latter tends to mean that you rarely break even, as a new band. FINE. Advertising cannot pay more than a few people's wages at a website or magazine, however, so let's have more subsciption-only content. And...?

Blurring the boundary between artist & (independent) record company. Why not pool the talent, and business acumen, and general manpower across the label's roster? At least you all know where the money's going...

MEANWHILE, when it comes to making these arguments about how the assumptions of marketeers feed into music:

...recognition of the fact that there are simply MORE bands than ever before. The cost of living is HIGHER. Individual debt is HIGHER. Bands themselves are more conservative & risk-averse - not just the record companies. Many of these problems are metonymic of general socio-economic problems.

...et enfin, recognition of the fact that many of these secondguessing practices have only partial relevance to the core of the music consumed by us, the Early Adopters who write these articles, and read them. Records by fashion-magazine-approved bands (I dunno... Foals?) are simply beyond the pale - too mersh to consider, and ever be suckered by - and the likes of Late of the Pier & TV on the Radio are only worth a burn because it's so quick to do, but they wouldn't have got the sale, otherwise. Yes, we Early Adopters (that 2.5%? 1:40...? who act as a conduit between The Industry and The Mass) have an important role to play in spotting whether the likes of Animal Collective & Fleet Foxes will be the next crossover... hence we're targeted, via our clothes-shops and magazines, but in many cases those aren't the bands we love anyway, and they sell far fewer records than the Keanes of the world who are rammed down the throat of the Mass, with no role for the EAs to play. It's okay to be lazy about accepting the best of the buzz-bands being foisted on you (thanks! I wouldn't have known that second Horrors album would be any good... etc.), because you'll still spend time hunting down, or mail-ordering the Jandek & Xiu Xiu & Sunset Rubdown records you actually love.

What do they do? How is it different from putting bands on the cover likely to shift units / bring in web-traffic / etc., and how much does this differ from "good business sense"?

Are you talking about lazy journalists who simply don't like that many new bands? Why read them? Not being argumentative, just not sure what you mean...

anyone with an ounce of musical knowledge knows that certain chord progressions are more pleasant, and so on...

...on a physiological level we recognize harmonic resolution, and actually kinda want it...

...this is why the same chord progressions crop up again and again, in hymns and hits alike...

...take that to it's logical conclusion and there are (sickeningly effective) programmes to calculate the likelihood of a hit, before offering a demo to Beyonce (or whoever), although anyone who shuns commercial radio is unlikely to come across songs that have been subjected to this process...

For the not-wholly-passive-consumer (i.e. those who choose their source of information, get to know the idiosyncrasies of the writers, read interviews before they've heard a note, etc.) "Taste" is - Yes - a personal preference for more or less discord in your music (Coke vs. Ale); for more or less musical and instrumental surprises before harmonic resolution ("Transformers" vs. Tarkovsky); for a more or less ingenious fit between the content of the lyrics and the structure & arrangement of the music (Oasis vs. Sunset Rubdown)

Without specifying the cleverness of the "shift from 4/4 to 6/8" etc. (arf - good point, well made), writers can tell you quite helpfully whether a band does all of the above (pointing towards an objective opinion, even if they don't quite reach it) AND compare it to "a herd of wildebeestes toppling out of an elevator" or the "Princess Diana Fistf***" (...surprisingly useful information itself, yer choice of metaphor)

maybe not enough been said on this bit...

...I had an unpleasant glimpse of the Big Beast running the show a few years ago. In the basement of a pub opposite that very same big building where the Guardian live (many of them KCL grads by the way; Oxford grads go to the Sun, where they can have more influence).

The basement. A little band of scatmunchers were playing trite piano-ballads. Towards the end, the pugly tosser singing announced "a song by someone you may not have heard of... Nick Drake". Cue cries of derision almost drowning out said tosser. How cocking dare you imply... etc.

That was January 200?; basement of the Betsy Trotwood. Never thought we'd hear from them again. In December 200?, Keane were topping the charts both sides of the Atlantic. How? What fiendish machinations got them where they were so quickly, against the glaring evidence of their musical and personal inadequacy? What armies of radio-pluggers and PRs, targeting the laziest, most taste-bereft journalists and schedulers?

On the other hand... I'd watched Mogwai becoming the most exciting band in the world through 96 - 98, getting all those singles-of-the-week; getting the support of John Peel; I'd ordered Ten Rapid from Chem U, who sent an apologetic letter when it was delayed; remember the day Young Team came out, and how it was the first 10/10 album I felt like I'd discovered for myself (as exciting as OK Computer, 6 months before). It all felt right; Mogwai deserved it... sometimes I just thought maybe we didn't.

So... yeah. There are countless bands you can watch finding their place in the world, and be pleased for them... and there are others you can see having the velvet ropes unhooked for them (Gentlemen, please, if you'd step this way... your coke and hookers are waiting for you...)

Of course people need a shove towards many of the bands they come to like or love... but when it comes to the music being marketed at the mediocracy, it can be frightening the scat they're fed.

production means nothing if you don't have the songs...

it's like being an undergrad again - getting trapped in front of a fractal-based screensaver, after one too many

...and am seriously pondering whether it's my favourite album EVER

Dirty Projectors' 'Stillness Is the Move' may be the best indie-pop-song of the year that ain't by SunRub

...makes you picture it, dripping with honey (like last night's one, as viewed from N16)

...through Drag City! huzzah!! probably need a news story on this...

Am so excited about this - I had the cartoon "What Is the Natural Bridge?" on my wall for years. it's still a personal touchstone for writing...

PS - not sure TNB can be compared to USH20 (as it should geekishly be called), but I love'em both. His lyrical peak takes in both, but music-wise it's mopey country versus quirky indie, which don't relate much

jolly good

...but gawd do i miss Glastonbury. splendid scene-setting, Lukowski

...also impressed there was an eeeven more eeeevil image to use than KDA-as-skellington

...how broad the term has come to be, in popular parlance. Never fear: this is as far as we're going, from what you might think of as the centre.

See the piece on "From Country to Alt Country", tomorrow...

(AT)

...has been tweaked slightly.

(Alexander Tudor)

PS - loving the fact that the comments manage to be so heated... and yet so civilized.

...probably for the best, for now, though it's good to see peeps are keen to delve into it all ;)

Good to see consensus about 'Silver Moons' - it's my song of the year, easy - old review quoted it from start to finish, then gave a much more detailed reading.

Hard to agree with SSC_06 that 'Black Swan' is poor - it's a simpler lyric, fersure, but there's classic SK humour in the way "there was a black swan outside the palace" gets followed by "The King said 'I ain't afraid of no black bird!'"; the final verse is very sweet ("my heart is king!"); plus, those guitars really are evil, even next to Blood Brothers' 'Giant Swan'.

Yes, a Barthelme comparison is high praise, but SK does have metrical constraints, and if you compare Silver Jews lyrics, David Berman's poetry (i.e. the goooorgeous "Actual Air"), and SK lyrics, I think you'd agree that SK manages to get more across before he has to force a rhyme... not to diss Berman, but a Joos comparison is high praise in itself.

PS Shame that my own space-constraints made the review sound so dismissive about "Dragons' Lair" - the lyrics are some of SK's best.

...was expecting more bile here, AL. C'mon, it's an easy target! :)

good point about lack of wall-of-noise stuff. Maybe I should have said "we're still missing Jim", who indeed left a while ago, but the cadence of the sentence had a certain appeal.

re: completism. I guess being a "completist when it comes to important stuff" is a separate issue people don't talk about. I own a dozen-or-so SY records, and a dozen-or-so Fall, but that's nothing compared to some. sometimes you hafta say Denied to assert your fandom, as the corollary of all the times you say NO! I ignore critical consensus: I SHALL endeavour to like this one!

as Lukowski says: enjoyable. but that's all.

JDB doing the duckwalk, and spinning around on one foot was truly something to behold

click on picture 3, and scroll up and down rapidly... you might get an impression what he looked like

Tautological, true, but implicitly: NOT "recommended for Completists only". Bah. Tautology isn't semantically incorrect, any more than a split-infinitive; it's a form of emphasis, presuming the depletion of one or both terms.

Yep. It's enjoyable.

surely?

yrs,

Hal Incandenza

the guy gargles with his own filth. and likes it.

oh, and the new Patrick album is genius.

intrigued to hear what the other songs from the projected double album are like...

typo? not sure what happened there. checked all the other dates...

'sheeldz': i agree; it's best considered as an album, for now... but the vocals are so prominent that (B&S fan or not) you find yourself listening to the story. it's probably best not to be harsh, right now, because it sounds like it's in development, but there's a way to go...

intrigued...

that's reassuring - had read it sucked - guess the reviewers didn't take much time over it. last two are in my top 20 or top 10 post-rock records, easy

still, doesn't Aaron seem incapable of escaping genre expectation, vis-a-vis lyrics? Oceanic seemed to be a violent myth of god's F***ing the world into being (or something) as if that's what he should be doing. from his allusions across the records he always seemed too smart to do sub-LedZeppery indefinitely

fair enuff

that was meant as a description of the general impression, rather than the actual lines of influence. if they've been going much longer, and already had their basic sound (wow! usually I read Plan B features more attentively...) then it's a double-diss, no?

still, band start-dates have little bearing on how much their sound takes shape...

PS - thee Kick? enjoyed this month's Void

nice to hear someone saying it for a change

shall check'em out

Sigur Ros, pre- ()
GYBE!, just after 'Slow Riot'
Low, Christmas gig circa 2004
Mark Kozelek
Kimya 'Moldy Peach' Dawson (just like an AA-meeting...)

See "The Shoegaze round-up" with Jordan (due Friday). I did a poll of guitarists on How to Shoegaze

If it doesn't go up (Dom Gourlay's managed to get looooads of good content already), I could post the instructions in a thread

trop vrai

awww. looking forward to Pt. 2...

to be fair, though, Florence was pretty damn entertaining when I saw her last year... not enough to excuse the cynicism of gathering 6 people onstage (including harpist) who would never otherwise be in the same room, but enough to entertain, non-stop

the kids down front went mad for it, and you could almost envy them having the happy excuse that they're young. of all the manufactured fake-indie around, it'll be hard to begrudge Flo whatever success she has...

...still, Holy Bible (1995) > Pygmalion (1995), by miles

why Easter? why did you have to come between me and this gig?!

a live-album should (or can legitimately) be about milking your big moments

as for recorded ones, re-visiting Separation Sunday to compare notes reveals some horribly dated guitar-effects; the Boys & Girls songs mostly sound much the same, although 'Massive Nights' is much less Bon Jovi

was that a Nought out of Ten, then? or a generous 2...?

DiS don't seem to rate books...