JAMBlog = Just Another Music Blog, which is, in fact, another music blog (surprise!). But I’m taking the song-by-song approach, for your listening pleasure.
Continuing in the vein of complete girlishness inaugurated in my last entry (see Tirade 7), my love for John Mayer abounds. Specifically, my love for his contribution to Alicia Keys’ “Lesson Learned” from the otherwise unimpressive As I Am (J Records, 2007) abounds.
Oh, John Mayer, when you croon “It’s all right, it’s all right”, I believe you. I believe you.
P.S. Does anyone else think she looks a bit waxy on the album cover? ("As I Am", Alicia? Please, as you were. I'm begging.)
With apologies to third-wave feminists everywhere, who for many years have fought to dissuade the general public of the conviction that there is some essence that all women share by virtue of their biological gender that I will reaffirm in oh, about ten words:
I’m going to be a complete girl for this entry.
How could I forget about you, Amel Larrieux? Ah yes, now I remember. I remember being gobsmacked when I heard For Real on a (don’t laugh) National Public Radio music special in 2004. I remember several frustrating weeks, wherein I was not capable of remembering either the lyrics of For Real to Google, nor of figuring out how in the friggin frick to spell your last name (Larreau? Laroue? Larrue? I will take this opportunity to point out that a more accurate Anglicism of the ostensibly French “Larrieux” would be pronounced “Lar-YEUH” and not “La-ROO”, dammit). I remember wishing acute bodily harm upon whoever is in charge of NPR’s site map, because for the life of me I could not find any record of said music special on the entire bloody website. I remember hunting for Bravebird (Blisslife, 2004) in every CD store near Berklee, for God’s sake, upon finally finding a record of the song’s existence, and coming up time and time again empty-handed.
And how did you repay me, Amel Larrieux? With a more or less mediocre record. Rarely have I been so underwhelmed, which is saying a lot given Larrieux’s imposing vocal ability.
I am also not exaggerating when I say that I do not regret expending all of that energy in pursuit of one song, because I am somewhat enamored of it. Lyrically speaking, it is complete mush. It sort of pains me to confront this, but For Real actually opens with what sounds like a toddler’s effort to pronounce the chorus’ affirmation, “I can live, I can love, I can be better with you”.
I know, I know, the baby voice, the girl, the beach, vomit everywhere. But hold onto your poncey horses, because if you are not awed by the way Larrieux puts Mariah Carey’s sometimes-high-E to shame (see 2:33), you may actually be missing a soul. And speaking of soul, the phrasing is fantastic. It’s not a traditional composition, per se, so much as it is more a conjunction of melodically genius eight-counts, with this swoon-y pause in between that, so juxtaposed, just makes intuitive sense when the song sighs back into progression as such. It doesn’t exactly make you want to break it down so much as it makes you yearn for a pair of eyes to gaze into. (Eyes that are, preferably, attached to an agreeable human being, but I’ll take what I can get.)
Instead of writing one of the three final papers that must somehow be completed by 14 December, I have been grappling with iTunes for the better part of the past hour. The best way I can describe the struggle is that it was similar to a condensed episode of “EastEnders” (I would have said “Coronation Street” but then I wouldn’t be adequately communicating violence and carnage), perhaps without the hackneyed Cockney (oh, but that does look nice on paper), but definitely inclusive of the tears, fighting, threats, physical blows, incoherent babbling, pleading, tantrums, bribes and empty promises.
With that introduction I wish to communicate that a) I hate computers and b) I haven’t actually watched “EastEnders” except for two (one?) episode(s) I saw when I was perhaps twelve.
So after a software update (that initially appeared to have mysteriously deleted the outdated copy of iTunes that was installed on my laptop), multiple restarts and several desperate reinsertions of my dodgy Ethernet cable, I figured I deserved a reward. Of the musical variety, that is. Which is how we arrive at “Raid” from Madvillainy (Stone’s Throw, 2004). (Yes, I am pretty pleased with myself.)
Ironically (or is it coincidentally? Damn you, Alanis Morissette, and your meta word games), JAMBlog has not been extremely representative of the beefiest part of my (admittedly meager) music library. But I love rap. I do. And I also have an enormous soft spot for anything that Madlib has a hand in, given his partiality for vintage funk (or vintage soul, or vintage blues…) samples and my… well, my love of vintage funk samples (post a comment if you, too, are of the opinion that Curtis Mayfield’s “Move On Up” basically made the whole “Late Registration” album, which was already a more than worthwhile endeavor to begin with).
Behold, my favorite YouTube video of all time, which owes approximately five eighths of its greatness to its soundtrack - Madlib's "Slim's Return":
Because I am something of an aesthete (stop laughing), I originally wanted to write about track twelve of Dangerdoom'sThe Mouse and the Mask (Epitaph, 2005), “Vats of Urine”, if only to see its provocatively repulsive title sprawled gleefully across the post heading in no-nonsense 14-point Arial. But all fanfare and no content makes JAMBlog an unfortunate waste of time, rather than the serendipitous one I had hoped to furnish.
I couldn’t resist Wikipedia’s paraphrasing of Madvillain's unusual style: “short songs, obscure lyrics, few choruses and a sound which [is] generally unfriendly to commercial radio”. (Diderot would be proud, rest his French soul.) Would that I were slightly less friendly to commercial radio, because then I could faff about forever with music that actually reflects some semblance of creativity on the behalf of the (gasp!) artist. Ignore this if I go a little further than merely running the risk of incriminating myself as nothing more than a self-inflated poseur, but “Raid” is one of those songs that makes you feel cool just listening to it. It may feel damn good to be a gangster, but frankly I’d be right chuffed if I could manipulate a couple of turntables to come up with two and a half minutes of jazz-laced looping this solid.
William sent me YouTube links to these two vastly entertaining music videos that happened to be on a mix tape we listened to when we were little. They’re pretty dire one-hit wonders, but they’re also dead catchy and pretty irresistible.
The first one is Musical Youth’s “Pass the Dutchie” from The Youth of Today (MCA, 1982), which apparently performed very well on the UK’s Top of the Pops.
How does it feel when you’ve got no food? (Bloody hungry, is how. What sort of a question is that?)
The second is “Walk the Dinosaur” by Was (Not Was), from their (embarrassingly titled) 1990 release What Up, Dog? (Capitol). I’m not sure what walking the dinosaur refers to, although I suspect it has something to do with an obsolete dance move; note the awkward, pigeon-like head bobbing they’ve forced upon the Pebbles clones.
I realize that my last entry is sort of a lot of text, and all you get for putting up with it is a measly 200 x 200 pixel album cover. (I looked, and there’s nothing I could embed from YouTube that was particularly relevant.) So I’m making it up to you.
I have to give credit for this mini-tirade to Rafael. Apparently “No Te Veo” is kind of a big deal, because it’s not exactly reggaeton and it’s not exactly salsa… it’s salsaton. I’m not kidding.
“You should blog about this song,” says Rafael. “It’s a mix of salsa and reggaeton. I’ve never heard anything like it before, and I live in Miami.” Enough said.
I am not going to defend the artistic credibility of this song (because, um… it doesn’t have much), but if we analyze it from an incredibly scientifically accurate, statistical-type stance using, say, the Break-It-Downability Scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being Yawn and 10 being Shake It Like A Polaroid Picture, let’s just say that Casa de Leones pulled a Spinal Tap.
Honestly though, you can’t really go wrong with a salsa melody and good old Dem Bow.
Not to mention that it's mad fun singing along. Te vas, no me dices nada, qué pasa que ya no te veo…
It’s a damn shame that Pandora doesn’t exist in Argentina (thank you, international digital copyright laws), because I miss it. I have Pandora to thank for introducing me to one of my favorite albums of all time: The Heilig Levine LP (54º 40' or Fight!, 2005) (incorrectly labeled "The Heiliq Levine LG" on iTunes; beware), named by North Carolina-based indie outfit Ticonderoga for the building where they recorded the thirteen tracks for free.
That I love the album doesn’t mean it’s not brimming with faults. You will remember that I have an almost pathological problem with hipster culture, but let it be known that a) I listen to what I like and b) I am an enormous hypocrite (that is to say, the extent of my hypocrisy is considerable; I am not, as it were, a large person who is also hypocritical). And I realize that knowing a bad thing is bad does not make it better, especially if you carry on doing it. So basically I have no excuse. And also I am very good at talking myself into corners.
(Get on with it, Claire.)
So I’ll begin with the weaker points of the album, which really all stem from its overproduction. I don’t know why so many people think that artistic creativity requires, or is equivalent to, greater complexity in terms of arrangement, programming and time-signature shifts, but that seems to be a trend that Ticonderoga has not been able to resist. If, figuratively speaking, Muddy Waters is in his underwear, Ticonderoga is trussed up like bloody Marie Antoinette. I remember one Christmas when my parents gave us (my sister, brother and I) a 32-key Casio keyboard complete with preprogrammed, synthesized versions of Ode to Joy and Chopin’s Nocturne. It’s the closest we ever got to a piano, sadly, but it also had this one setting called Computer, I believe, which produced an unnerving electronic tinkling that annoyed the pants off anyone listening. Point being: I swear to God, Ticonderoga uses Computer starting at 6:53 of “Country Mouse” to nothing short of disastrous effect. I have no idea what they were thinking. Add to the list of Overproduction Grievances numerous counts of Intellectual Waffling: Musical, Electronic or Otherwise (see 1:07 of “Centipede” for a tiresome example) and apparently earnest use of Christmas bells ("Why Do You Suppose?"), and it would appear that we are dealing with an album that remains deservedly obscure.
Which is entirely untrue, because the whole project is just so damn classy. It fancies itself a concept album; the tracks fade into one another seamlessly, a detail I neglected to take into account when I burned the CD, resulting in rather harsh self-admonishment upon the first listen for allowing a 1-second gap between songs. Moreover, in spite of the album’s overwrought aesthetic you have gems like “They Can Run”, which is a fantastic example of both my chief musical weakness and generally excellent, intuitive songwriting. When I first heard “They Can Run”, I fell in love with it simply for its warm bass guitar and understated percussion. In less biased terms, the song has a fascinating melodic structure that takes a little getting used to. At first you feel like you’re listening to your run-of-the-mill, minor-key, moody acoustic ballad, but then Ticonderoga hits you with a measure of gorgeous dissonance that takes you completely by surprise. It just makes everything worth it. In short, self-deception has made Claire a (gasp) hipster apologist. For now, anyway.
This is not a nice song: it’s punk-y, scream-y and (to quote one of the better lines from “Ratatouille”) lightning-y. (Indeed, one cannot just “hork” it down.) Incidentally, it’s also about as emo as I get, which is (unfortunately) more than I can say for Seattle’s Blood Brothers themselves, who are impressionable youths subject to recurring abuse of girl pants, scenester haircuts and faux vintage (oh my).
(Below right, note hair, pasty complexions, scraggly beard, obscure t-shirts, wristbands and – shudder – grommeted belt. But I love them anyway.) “Love Rhymes With Hideous Car Wreck” has a pretty approachable beginning. It’s also folded discreetly into the album progression as ho-hum track number three of Crimes (V2 Records, 2004). I remember thinking, oh yes very nice, a little guitar, a little bass… did someone just clap their hands (0:09)? It left me rather unprepared for when the angst hits the fan at 1:46, and then in earnest at 2:14. It also, I think, surprises other people: I burned a mix CD for a friend and included this song, and he told me later that he was listening to it while he was doing his reading or checking his email, and was startled to discover that someone had started screaming into his headphones.
But all cochlear damage aside, the song’s shock factor is why I like it so much. In terms of the words, the Brothers seem to be telling the story of a superficial boy who dumps his down-to-earth girlfriend Jane for a hottie, and is soon thereafter nearly killed in, well, a Hideous Car Wreck: “Back at the hospital / You got no visitors at all / She visits you in your sleep / That newspaper gown is always on fire” (see my custom post-comment link, below). Long story short, karma is a bitch.
Frankly, they lose me at 2:14 (and by “lose me” I mean I’ve had to Google the song lyrics), but I am not bothered because “Back at the hospital”, etc. marks the beginning of one of the greatest and simplest chord progressions in my music library. Really, it gives me chills. This is accompanied by a comparatively understated rhythm section that just suggests the purposeful (to put it lightly) creations for which drummer Mark Gadjahar has something of a penchant. (Turn down your speakers and refer to the more representative Young Machetes [Sheridan Square, 2006] for examples; specifically, “Nausea Shreds Yr Head”, “Rat Rider” and “Johnny Ripper”.) Gadjahar contributes a similar vision to the drum programming on Chandeliers in the Savannah (Dim Mak, 2005), the debut of his and singer Johnny Whitney’s rather more electronic breakaway Neon Blonde.
So while it’s true that The Blood Brothers betray the emo underpinnings of their post-hardcore/No Wave sound slightly more than I would like, and while Johnny Whitney’s disturbingly granny-like whine may be an acquired taste (my apologies to Tamar, who more than once gave me the frightened-earwig look when she walked into our dorm room and found me listening to what sounded like the prolonged torture of a small child), “Love Rhymes With Hideous Car Wreck” is a sophisticated song. It’s tricky and vaguely threatening, but manages to remain completely accessible. So to The Blood Brothers, I would like to present the Best of Songs That You Can’t Listen To While You Do Your Homework Award. Would you like a cookie?
Just to make sure there is no confusion on this point, I really rate drums (see Tirade 2). Technically speaking, I know very little about them. Even though I have entertained an enthusiastic explanation of the intimate details of a drum kit, I still couldn’t tell you the difference between a bass drum and a floor tom (sorry, Matt).
In spite of my musical heresy, however, I still know what I like (really), and Paul Simon’s “The Obvious Child” from The Rhythm of the Saints (Warner Bros., 1990) falls under the category of Songs That Just Never Get Old. I was two and a bit when this album was released (parenthetical pause to allow recovery from holy-crap-she’s-so-young-what-could-she-possibly-know-about-anything shock), and I remember that dancing like a tiny madwoman with my mum and dad to “The Obvious Child” made me extremely happy.
The song’s evolution is perfect and its engineering is spot-on. Paul Simon wrote “The Obvious Child” based on percussion provided by the drum troupe of Brazilian cultural organization Olodum, which, he said in an interview, allowed him to write the song “less symmetrically”. Salvador-based Olodum (Bahia state, Brazil) focuses on providing music and performance-related activities for young people, and basically invented the samba reggae beat as we know it today. “The Obvious Child” not only incorporates the formidable surdos (bass drums), caixas (snare drums) and repiniques (modified snare drums) of samba reggae; it is built around them, so that the percussion takes on a central role (Claire’s favorite), when usually in pop music it is only granted cursory consideration (an enormous mistake).
Take time marker 3:10, for example, where begins a bridge only slightly more exhilarating than Carnaval that leads into the song’s fiery conclusion (see the beginning of the end at around 3:37). I don’t know about you, but I have favorite songs, and then I have favorite parts of favorite songs, which I anticipate with great excitement every time I press play. 3:10-3:37 of “The Obvious Child” keeps me going: when I’m out for a run, I feel a second wind at 3:10-3:37; when I’m having a bad day, 3:10-3:37 makes me happy.
But I’d be hard-pressed, as a know-it-all student, to write a review of “The Obvious Child” without at least a postmodern nod. That’s right, I’m dropping the P-bomb: when the album was released, Paul Simon was criticized for his problematic incorporation of afro-Brazilian music. How he had the guts to go for Brazil after Graceland (Warner Bros., 1986) was smudged for its allegedly Westernized interpretation of South African music and artists, I do not know. Because really, when you boil it down, you’ve still got a white man at the forefront of a whole bunch of black people (see music video, below; which is marginally more inclusive than nearly all YouTube footage of – disappointingly pitchy, I might add – live performances of the song).
Now that I’ve got that out of my system, I’m going to argue that “The Obvious Child” does not actually perpetuate postcolonial power relationships (the operation of the Western music industry is another story), and it all comes back to Olodum. Olodum came up with the beat and only afterwards did Paul lay down his track, which was recorded live and without fancy equipment. And the track, I will repeat, is a thing of beauty. Lyrically, it’s positively poetic: “Well I’m accustomed to a smooth ride / Or maybe I’m a dog who’s lost its bite / I don’t expect to be treated like a fool no more / I don’t expect to sleep all night”. And the lyrics don’t exotify the drummers, or their musical influence, with some awkward, white-and-liberal reference to the Other’s “beauty” or “pride” or “dignity” or whatever; Paul’s talking about a girl, and a baby, and a high school yearbook. The song is brilliantly crafted and a joy to listen to. Why deny the obvious?
I am a percussion girl. That is to say, I believe that a song bordering on complete suckage can be saved by some clever drumming. Thus I begin a post dedicated to the 29 March 2007 release by Rihanna, née Robyn Rihanna Fenty: that Barbadian beauty queen who suggested everyone pon de replay back in 2005, when she was still just a good girl and not a Good Girl Gone Bad (Def Jam, 2007). This album title begs the question: why, in today’s pop culture world, is “artist maturity” nearly always a flattering euphemism for “increased sluttiness”? Bloggers and proper critics alike have praised Rihanna’s efforts on this album as representative of a more “grown-up” sound: a sign that she is coming into her own as a unique and self-designating artist. And it may be true, but it is inevitably framed by a less-than-subtle suggestion that Rihanna is now sexually available. See music video, below, wherein Rihanna appears in little more than silver body paint for several frames. I do wonder.
To return to my previous comment, I will acknowledge that it is unusual to begin a post about a good song by implying that it borders on complete suckage. But let’s be brutally honest here. There is nothing organic about the track, from the carefully layered false pizzicato over a predictable synth line to the unremarkable introductory rap from Jay-Z (We Rocafella / She fly higher than weather / And she rocks it better… yawn). And it’s more than likely that Rihanna is a legitimately talented singer, but it’s difficult to tell in the middle of the digitally corrected sound. And who wasn’t more than slightly thrown at first by the jarringly fragmented chorus (ella… ella… eh, eh, eh)? And don’t even get me started on the pathetic excuse for a bridge (2:45 until about 3:07), which for nearly twenty seconds threatens Rihanna’s credibility and career with its inane octave shift and uninteresting lyrical details. Speaking of which, “You’re part of my entity / Here for infinity”? My dear child, what in the name of pantyhose are you (or your songwriters – I’m looking at you, Terius Nash) on about?
However. “Umbrella” does not completely suck. Frankly, it’s a great song, and it is all thanks to some genius drum programming; namely (according to Wikipedia), Vintage Funk Kit 03 (and please correct me if I’m wrong, because as much as I love Wikipedia, you really never know). If I ran the music world, I would use only real instruments, because they sound better (for a better idea of what I mean, see The Roots and Bay Area hip-hop group Subtle). But I also can’t resist a good beat, live or otherwise, and so I will forgive you, Vintage Funk Kit 03, because you are this song’s knight in shining, audio-codec’ed armor. You may constitute a loop of perhaps three or four measures, but my God, can you bump to this, as they say. So, with my apologies to those affected by the aptly nicknamed Rihanna Curse that flooded major metropolitan areas of the UK in June and July of this year: let it rain.
Note: You'll probably be able to figure this out, but I wrote this earlier (much earlier) and am just publishing it now.
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It’s late, I’m tired, and I should have gone to bed two hours ago because that’s when my eyes began to hurt and now it actually feels as though they’re falling out of my head. But no matter. All this is small stuff in the grander scheme of things and besides, there is music to download, and then you can’t very well just go and leave it sitting on your hard drive. Stated otherwise: it is quarter past two in the morning and out of the murky depths of lo-fi bullcrap (ahem, Arcade Fire and Of Montreal: get a real piano) emerges Joanna Newsom like an indie Loch Ness Monster. With a friendly disposition, and a harp.
The great thing about Joanna Newsom – besides her dead impressive vocal range; she jumps octaves like they’re bloody speedbumps – is her complete disregard for the conventions of synth-heavy neopop that currently dominates college radio airwaves. When are these pretentious hipsters going to figure out that it all sounds exactly the same? Furthermore, when are they going to stop lying to themselves (and the rest of humanity) and just admit that they only like one type of music? I’m sorry (a lie, actually; I’m not sorry at all), but you cannot carry on claiming you like “a little bit of everything” and then show me your iTunes library (likely veritable tens of gigabytes barely contained in the flimsy hard drive of your sleek, black MacBook), which will inevitably be full of bands and avant-garde virtuosos (classically trained on the hurdy-gurdy) from whom no-one else will ever have heard so much as an opening chord (God forbid), and the most mainstream of which will be the earliest Yeah Yeah Yeahs EP or, worse still, Karen O.’s latest side project.
But I digress. This is a review of Joanna Newsom. Recently I saw her in concert and although I had an exceptionally poor view, her presence and talent is more than sufficient that I can safely say she deserves those damn pitchforks. Although continually prodded in various inappropriate places by 80s-era hipster cameras (we get it, you’re indie, you’re artsy, you’re a non-conformist; now, would you like me to tell you what a megapixel is?), I could hardly contain myself when I heard the opening measures of “Colleen”, from her latest EP Joanna Newsom and The Ys Street Band (Drag City, 2007). The entire concert was just Joanna and her harp, and on this song she manages to incorporate an infectious bass line, machine-gun finger-picking, and a controlled yelp at measured intervals. (I may have jumped up and down when I heard the first five or six low notes as I shouted, to both everyone and no-one in particular, “Holy mother of God, she’s playing a freaking bass line on a freaking harp!”) “Colleen” is a work of genius, from the conception to the arrangement to the execution: at once vaguely medieval, with inflections of Appalachian and traditional Celtic influences and archaic lyrics (I came away from the deep blue sea / It picked me up and tossed me ’round / I lost my shoes and tore my gown / Forgot my name and drowned / Then woke up with the surf a-pounding); but also undeniably modern (Down where our bodies start to seem / Like artifacts of some strange dream / Which afterwards you can’t decipher).
But unfortunately I prefer the live version I heard first, which is obviously harder to find on this newfangled thing they’re calling the internet, and so I have had to settle (a harsh word, I know) for the studio version. Which is undeniably good (can’t knock a lack of tracking in light of today’s overproduced-is-better recording strategy), don’t get me wrong, but also adorned with a squeezebox and percussion section and banjo (albeit with Sufjan Stevens-esque mastery of arrangement). If I could choose, I would take the girl and the harp, unembellished, because that way it’s easier to appreciate how she plays melody, bass, rhythm and solo all at once, like she’s the freaking Lightnin’ Hopkins of baroque pop (which she very well may be). So to condense this hallucinatory tirade, kiddies, I’m making it a two-parter (oh, mixing it up!): 1. go and see Joanna live and immerse yourself in the solitary magic of “Colleen” sans instrumental padding; and 2. download “Colleen” from the EP, turn on the “Repeat All” function on your iPod, make a new On-the-Go playlist and go bananas.
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Below you can watch what I believe is the best live version of "Colleen" currently on YouTube. It is the adulterated version, but it's also a lot of fun.
By way of introduction, my name is Claire and I like music. I like it rather a lot, actually, and I have a lot to say about it.
I like to bond with a whole album as much as the next procrastinating college student, but what I really like is breaking down individual songs. I’m the sort of person who will listen to a song on repeat and rack up a play count of more than 100 in less than twenty-four hours, because every time I listen to it I find something new.
I don’t claim to be the first person to do this, nor do I want to suggest that this makes me special, because it doesn’t. But I’m a writer, and this is what I want to write about.
I have a thing for music, and I think you might like the stuff I listen to. Tell me what you think (really, I can take it).
I like beats, loops, and hooks. I like a good bass line, a good melody and more often than not a heavy dose of melancholy. I will always be a sucker for folk-y guitar and singer/songwriters. I can withstand stupid lyrics if the production is brilliant. Occasionally I like to freak out, which may or may not include furious skanking. I'm starting the movement for real musical eclecticism.
