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Tunes for Tuesday: Junior Boys – In The Morning

2006 is so close, it’s on the brink of being a year we are allowed to look back to with nostalgia. I’m getting a bit of a head start, I think, because lately I have been listening to Junior Boys’ So This Is Goodbye and thinking “they just don’t make music like this these days.”

I like this shitty video because it reminds me that no matter how old we get and no matter how dumb our hats look, we are all bound by a fear and fascination with The Secret World of Alex Mack that we’ve held since we were children.

Entered on 19 January 2010 by Richard Craft in: Video.
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A Vampire’s Weekend In His Ikea Coffin

i think you're a contra?

Your friends don’t want to hear you talk about a wide variety of topics. They don’t want to hear about why you like Wes Anderson films. They don’t want to hear about your Twitter friends. Today I will talk about one of these topics: why I like Vampire Weekend.

Yeah, that’s right; Your friends don’t want to hear about why you like Vampire Weekend. Why? Because like all the other listed topics, talking about why you like Vampire Weekend makes you look like a douche bag. Even if your friends like Vampire Weekend, something about explaining Vampire Weekend evokes horrible phrases and adjectives like “lush”, “tight”, “valiant”, “bare”, “head bobbing bass”. Let us all just cringe a little bit together before I move on.

Acceptance heralds the last stage of grief, but in music reviewing it’s where we often begin. That in mind, let’s get something out of the way: Vampire Weekend is a very small band who stands on the shoulders of much larger, dare I say gigantic, bands. They’ve made it pretty clear that they are aware of this. When Ezra Koenig calls Tom Petty a “true fucking poet,” that’s Ezra “I name drop the Futura typeface” Koenig being pretty honest about where he falls on the food chain. [ed. Tom Petty is a vegetarian and he would not eat Ezra Koenig or any other mammal regardless of songwriting ability.] When I think about the popular reaction to Vampire Weekend I remember The Strokes. The Strokes were another small band conceptually who just happened to be in the right zeitgeist at the right time. Pop critics heralded them as the new music for young persons while rock historians spat a lot. Vampire Weekend is really similar; to date they have not reshaped how we think about music, but they have got a bunch of kids buying Paul Simon LPs at Goodwill and that’s all we can really ask for.

Contra itself follows a typical album scenario. We build in from track one to peak around track seven and in the end throw in a few slow dances for the couples. As a “sophomore effort” it is more notable as Vampire Weekend’s first cohesive record rather than the eleven potential singles from the self-titled. “Run” will hold your ear the longest and represents the only real anthem on the album. “Cousins”, “White Sky”, “Holiday”, “California English”, and “Diplomat’s Son” (and most likely in that order) will all keep you moving throughout and stop you from turning on iTunes’ brutish repeat track feature.

Verdict: If you can get beyond the fact that you’re listening to a guy name drop fonts, you’re going to find some really enjoyable pop music. But don’t kid yourself, world beat existed well before Ezra and company packed a bowl together at Columbia University. Personally, this album will probably stick around for a few more sunny weekends at least.

Entered on 16 January 2010 by Michael Craft in: Michael's Featured § Review.
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FRIDAY SPECIAL – CATS AS PETS EDITION

Dan Deacon – Woof Woof.


(Thanks Pitchfork!)

Dan Deacon will always hold a special place in my heart after I lost my virginity on a boombox that was playing his album “Acorn Master”. The thumping beats of “Big Big Big Big Big” covered the sound of me crying the whole time.

This video is about why cats are great as pets!

Entered on 15 January 2010 by Michael Craft in: Friday Special § Video.
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Tunes For Tuesday: Erasure – Chains of Love (again)

This was my tune two weeks ago, but I seriously can’t stop listening to it. I must have played this song close to 100 times in the past few weeks:

Certain people can do this, certain people can listen to the same song over and over for weeks at a time. I’m one of those people. Those who can’t think we are insane, which I guess is fair; I once listened to “One Week” by Barenaked Ladies (don’t click that) on repeat for four hours straight. I don’t expect anyone to understand that, or even forgive me for it. But this is a common occurrence; A few times a year, a song will snag me so hard that I can not actually listen to anything else without feeling disappointed. Every song just sounds like a distant echo of the dance-pop Erasure tune I wish I was listening to. This is where the definition of “hook” comes from, the idea that a little piece of melody can get lodged in somebody like shrapnel. In my case, that shrapnel sounds something like “come to me, cover me, hold me / together we’ll break these chains of love” when the grenade is going off.

What I’ve always wondered, though, is if this quality in people is tolerance for a hook or a complete lack of regard for it. Certain songs can’t survive the kind of obsession that I’m currently experiencing with Erasure. La Roux (a synth pop band that practically worships Erasure, funnily enough. I listened to them before I ‘discovered’ Erasure, but going back now the influence is obvious. It’s like someone wondered “what would happen if Erasure didn’t make people smile? TO THE STUDIO”), as I’ve recently mentioned, is another band that I couldn’t get out of my ear for months. They’re a good band with solid songs, but I overplayed them; Listening to La Roux now, they sound withered and worn out.

Was La Roux unable to handle the stress of frequent listening? Not every album wears out so quickly. That’s why certain songs seem to “grow” on you: they wear you out first, so that you have to keep coming back in order to fully appreciate them.

A smarter listener might have avoided this altogether, pacing themselves to keep the song fresh while still deriving full satisfaction. I can’t do that. I want it all now. I knew I was killing La Roux as I listened to them seven times a day, but I couldn’t stop. What is the quality that makes a song last over time? What is the quality that makes you keep skipping back to the same track for hours? Can they both exist in the same song? Possibly, but I can’t think of any right now. I’m too busy listening to “Chains of Love.”

Entered on 13 January 2010 by Richard Craft in: Richard's Featured § Video.
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The Rest Albums of 2009, pt. 2

They say that hindsight is 20/20, so good news! Everything you are about to read is cold, indisputable fact. Here are more albums that happened in 2009, but were not the best.

I Don’t Get It:
Neko Case – Middle Cyclone
I tried, I tried so hard. I want to like Middle Cyclone, you guys, but it’s every bit as nonsensical as its stupid cover. A complete mess of ideas and poorly constructed melodies that have their moments, but mostly just fall short of sounding like anything other than an excuse for Neko Case to sing. Sometimes that’s enough for me, but for the most part even pipes like hers are not enough for me to tolerate songs like “Never Turn Your Back On Mother Earth,” which is a real title of a real song.

Wilco (The Award):
Wilco – Wilco (The Album)
Ha ha I thought that was pretty clever! But this album was just okay. I’m sure it makes for an exciting press release, but I’m always wary of artists saying they are going to “return” to their earlier sound like Wilco did with Wilco (The Album). This never actually happens, and usually just a warning sign that the band is unsure of what they’re doing. Does anyone really want Wilco to return to their (awesome) early straight-up alt-county albums? Does Wilco even want that? After this, I have a feeling that Jeff Tweedy would just wind up feeling bored.

Every Year, I Like Exactly One Metal Or Rap Album, Only One:
Mastodon – Crack The Skye
I sincerely like a metal album, everyone! The problem, though, is that I have no idea how to talk about it. My taste in metal is completely pedestrian and unrefined. I have no idea how to identify the qualities that make good metal “good.” There is no difference between the way I appreciate metal now and the way I appreciated metal when I was fourteen (when metal was all I listened to), so here goes: Crack the Skye literally cracks the sky and calls down the thunder. The guitars are really good, and I like all the songs.

Annual Lady Gaga Award For Excellence:
Lady Gaga – The Fame Monster
As if she wasn’t relevant enough in 2009, Lady Gaga decided to release her album again just to prove that she can destroy the world with a #1 hit whenever she fucking feels like it. Our Twitter accounts are all simply slaves to her bidding.

I’m Sure I’ll Love This Album Next Year, When It’s Too Late:
Yeah Yeah Yeahs – It’s Blitz!
Zero is a fantastic single. It’s so good that, for the past year, I couldn’t get past it every time I tried to listen to It’s Blitz! I’m the type of guy that will skip back to a song a dozen times in a row if I’m really into it, and “Zero” is that kind of song. I’m sure the rest of the album is good. I’ve heard it a little bit, when I was too distracted to skip back to “Zero” one time, and it sounded alright!

Immediate Correction To My Top 15:
Air – Love 2
The thing about Air is this:

Imagine a world where every James Bond movie was good. A new installment would come out and you would go see it, and it would be slick and fun and exactly as satisfying as you expected. You would leave the theatre feeling a little bit cooler and sexier every time. You would talk to people throughout the year about how the movie is “really good.” You would probably see it again, if you watched a lot of movies. Then it would be the end of the year, and you would think “hmm, what were the best movies of the year?” and your mind would immediately think about which films stood out, and the James Bond film would not be one of them. You have seen so many James Bond films, and they were all, for the most part, just as good as each other, or at least satisfying in the same ways, and now you don’t even really consider them as moments from the past year of movies. They exist elsewhere. James Bond films are now their own niche, mostly removed from the critical year-end film discussion that happens every year.

Re-read the above paragraph and replace the movie with Love 2 and James Bond with two chic-lookin’ French dudes, and there you go. They’re great, almost untouchable. However, though not formulaic by any stretch, Air albums are such a “sure thing” that I tend to undercut the poor fellows more often than I should. So, if you read my list of the top 15 albums from 2009, just replace anything ranked #15-8 with Love 2 and we’ll call it fair.

Entered on 07 January 2010 by Richard Craft in: List.
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Tunes For Tuesday: Morrissey – Everyday Is Like Sunday

I know it’s 2010, I know I am still in the middle of writing about 2009, that’s okay. The pressure to wrap up end-of-year lists has always struck me as pretty stupid. No, I’m not done thinking about 2009. I’m also not done thinking about 1979, so suck my blog.

Despite this, the real reason I haven’t been caught up is that I’ve been out of town. Music takes on some strange new importance for people when they travel, it satisfies something it usually doesn’t. But I’m going to get into that in an upcoming post.

What I’m trying to say is, I have been craving Morrissey hard for the better part of a week and have had no way of properly taking care of that.

Before I even listened to Morrissey, I understood that enjoying his music was something of a duty. I remember talking to Michael Craft online. I think I was 19? We were talking about something internet related when he cut the conversation short, because he had to go listen to The Smiths, because, he said, “when you crave The Smiths, nothing else satisfies.” He was totally right. I would be introduced to Morrissey a couple of years later, and thanks to Michael he would have some weird Snickers-like feeling of appetite connected to him. Hunger is a pretty common metaphor, but thanks to Michael’s groundwork it became some weird kind of physical pang, something that physically tightens in my gut until I can listen to “Disappointed” on repeat for a few hours while I wait for a train back to Chicago. So thanks, Michael, for almost ruining my trip.

Entered on 05 January 2010 by Richard Craft in: Video.
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