I twittered a couple of things (really, only two, but I’m not going to adjust this paragraph retroactively) over the course of listening to this album, as I normally do, but I figure I’ll consolidate them here and elaborate upon them, because this is an interesting album and it’s getting a lot of attention, so I’ll jump on the bandwagon and give it my attention.

Grizzly Bear’s new album will make great quiet background music in the bedrooms of hipsters. Mine, too, but this ain’t driving music.

My initial listen to Veckatimest left me feeling sleepy. So sleepy, in fact, that I passed out shortly after writing this tweet. It left me with a certain image in my head inspired by my youth. About six years ago I went with my friend to visit this goth girl, and in her bedroom, VAST’s self-titled debut was playing quietly on the stereo and it was such perfect mood music. I played perfectly at low volumes and really set the mood of her bedroom.

This album feels like it could set the mood of any number of indie chick’s bedroom. It’s got this dreamy feeling to it, like sun filtering through the trees on a Sunday morning, or just filtering through the blinds, you know, and there’s some girl in plaid lying there in bed with no pants on, all smooth pale leg flesh stretching on for miles. That’s how this album feels for the first five tracks.

When I approach Veckatimest from the assumption it’s an 80′s goth album by way of Wilco and The Shins, then it makes way more sense.

This is an odd album overall, the style and sound of it is pretty unique as far as my experience with music goes. This Twitter sums up how I work it into my musical spectrum: vocals from Christian Death mixed with a Wilco and Shins mix of music.

Pitchfork’s review of Eminem’s latest album makes a couple of interest statements about musical fidelity and Dr. Dre’s new expensive headphones:

But ever since “In Da Club” (and probably because of it), Dre has treated production like a test run for his very expensive headphones, concerning himself with only the most inert, stainless steel sounds. But you don’t have to be an audiophile to find fault with the music here

And I bring this up to say the nicest thing I can about this album: it sounds incredible. This is not an album of electronic beats and synthesized bloops, this is about the rich sound of instruments layered on top of one another and used to make marvelous music. You remember when Radiohead used real instruments and recorded real music that you could listen to and feel the people playing the music? This album is like that. It is sonically rich and textured.

In a time when so many great artists are relying on excessive studio polish to remove all the soul from their music (cough, Metric, cough) or are forgoing traditional songwriting and creation in order to facilitate their artist excesses using bullshit electronics (Radiohead, here, again, under my blade), it’s such a relief to hear a band that actually plays their instruments, and isn’t scared to let people hear how fucking awesome and alive they sound.

It is a shame that from “Dory” onward the album takes this long slow graceful nosedive into the ground. It’s on purpose, but for what purpose I don’t know, but all I know is that we’ve got an album of six really strong songs and then three songs that suck all the energy the first half the album gave you right out of you and then stomps on it.

It’s OK: I am not the “album listener” I once was. Those tracks will fall away and my memory of Veckatimest will be untainted by the meandering the closing tracks do. Regardless, this is a beautiful album, musically, that should be listened to through the highest quality gear you can muster. Enjoy!

This is a fun song to try to parse. People on SongMeanings seem to be split between it being about a guy getting cheated on by his girl, or a guy who got over-dramatic and dumped his lady only later to realize his mistake. What do I think? I think it’s about how love is a fucked up mess, and how Jack White can occasionally write really incredible lyrics.

I had a friend for a while who attached himself to this song while he was feeling all emo over some girl he hadn’t even kissed or slept with. She decided she liked someone else more, or something, liked him less, anyway.

I don’t have a lot to say about this song. For a while I thought it was about cheating women, but for a while I thought everything was about cheating women, so I’m not really a good judge. Now I just think it’s got a good mood to it, and the lyrical gymnastics are inspiring. (Though not on par with some of the literary stuff Harvey Danger does on occasion…)

It’s Saturday! My week has been fuckin’ wild. I dig it. It’s like a rollercoaster: the climbs are suspenseful with great views and the drops are exhilarating. Rock ‘n roll.

Tremendous Dynamite

To sum up everything I am going to say, and to do it in advance, I’ll say it this way, so you can just listen to the songs and ignore the rest of what I write:

If you listened to “Fresh Blood” expecting that Hombre Lobo would contain tracks of a similar nature to it (that I’ll describe as “sinister dance floor throb”), then this album is going to disappoint you. If anything, Hombre Lobo is a return to the form of Shootenanny! and Souljacker where E decided that he wanted to craft an album full of songs that all share a certain tone of voice. This is an album full of ‘Eels songs’, with a few standout tracks that mix things up a bit. If you sound interested, (and you should), then go forth and be merry.

Now, to get down into it…

If you’re listening to this first song, “Tremendous Dynamite”, then you already know half of the truly fun tracks on the album. It’s unfortunate then that the song is so short, but it’s definitely one of the two tracks (the other being “Fresh Blood”) off the album that I would want to watch a Suicide Girl twirl around a stripper pole to. It’s only downside is that it is so good that I wish the rest of the album was this way. This and “Fresh Blood” left me feeling like I was going to get a whole album of sexy, dangerous sounding music, that I would want to fuck to, that girls would want to fuck me to, the music that sticks in your memory and makes you horny even when there’s no one around, because just hearing it summons memories of carnal things done to it.

But, no. E did not give us an album full of sexy, dangerous music. He gave us an Eels record with a couple songs that are sexy and dangerous. I decided I was going to do a track by track review because there’s so much about this album that just seems a bit off in a few ways.

Opener “Prizefighter” sets us up for an album all about sex, a three minute bluesy stompy groove about being a man who’s willing to please, but then “The Look That You Give That Guy” lands us nearly solidly in Beautiful Freak era territory, with drums that sound straight from the understated tracks of that era, and a little fiddly guitar combined with lyrics that are nearly twee in their sweetness, and mostly I was just confused at this point.

One second the album is saying, “I am going to fuck you relentlessly,” and then the next track is basically, “I’m a wimpy dude who mostly just wants to hold this girl’s hand, but she won’t give me the time of day, I’m going to sit here and grow my hair out long and mope about it.” What’s that? How does that work?

“Lilac Breeze” continues that theme with a Souljacker style frantic pace, complete with a chorus that sounds so much like an Eels’ chorus (let’s say, from, eh, Daisys of the Galaxy) that it almost seems like parody. Definitely a fun song, but not particularly listenable.

“In My Dreams” takes us into an area reminiscent of Souljacker & Blinking Light‘s quieter moments. It’s got a “Fresh Feeling” mixed with a slow-tempo “Sweet Lil’ Thing” feeling to it. It’s a sweet sad song of longing, and I can see myself learning all the words just to sing the whole thing because it feels like a lot of fun.

Then we’ve got “Tremendous Dynamite”, which I’ve posted here for your pleasure, which makes me feel happy inside when I hear it. “The Longing” I’ve already skipped twice, a dreary “If You See Natalie” sort of song but without any redeeming qualities. “Fresh Blood” is the sinister dance floor throb I have grown to love, a song that begs to be fucked to, that begs to be turned up loud on a good sound system with the bass turned all the way up, an absolutely brilliant song that is 100% unique in Eels’ repertoire.

“What’s A Fella Gotta Do” feels directly inspired by their last hard rock inspired tour, being a straight rock song with catchy lyrics and a shouted chorus that makes you want to shout along and wave your arms around in the air amid a crowd of other people.

…and then, of course, we’re dropped back into typical Eels canon with “My Timing Is Off”, basically “In My Dreams” Part 2 but without a catchy, singable set of lyrics. “All The Beautiful Things” is much the same, beginning with a “Packing Blankets” guitar (seriously, it’s probably the same guitar from the Daisies of the Galaxy sessions because it sounds exactly the same), complete with backing instrumentation that sounds lifted from a variety of songs on that record.

And then there’s…

Beginner’s Luck

“Beginner’s Luck” leaves me feeling excited and giddy. This is what this album should have been about, if not relentless hard fucking, then it should have been this: pop rock songs with a gruffy E’s shouting through a static-filled microphone, singing about exciting young love and passion, with backing vocals in just the right spots to set my mind ablaze (because I love me a little “WHOA-OH-OHHH” in my songs) and a chorus that is infectious not in just mood, but in meaning, in music. This song is E at his very best.

“Ordinary Man” is back, again, to normal Eels canon: a dopey closing track making allusions to the hard life E has lived, which, after reading Things The Grandchildren Should Know is a lot less mysterious and, thusly, a lot less sympathetic. At this point it almost sounds like he’s trying to convince himself that the road he’s traveled was hard, because he won’t shut the fuck up about it.

We get it, E, we get it, life is hard, and we love you, now will you do this one thing for me?

I know you do nothing but sit around and write albums, so go through your collection and find me an album that sounds entirely like “Fresh Blood”. I want dirty music to fuck to, alright, I want music that makes me think of naked women gyrating in my lap, slowly getting naked and whispering awful things in my ear.

While you’re at it, write an album full of songs just like “Beginner’s Luck” and “Tremendous Dynamite”. I want a bunch of songs that make me want to dance around and think about how lovely women is and how exciting it is to meet someone who sets your mind all ablaze.

I love you, E, if you happen to read this, and I am probably one of those fans who will love anything you do (and so far, it’s true, regardless of what I am about to say, I love Hombre Lobo and will probably listen to it a lot), but seriously this album is schizophrenic. It’s not even an album, really, it’s more like a retrospective of your variety of styles all crammed into one record. The only thing that is missing is a track with a sample choir (ala “Old Shit/New Shit” and a variety of all my favorite songs) really, and a few other Eels touchstones (like tinny pianos and xylophones, songs about animals).

I guess it makes sense, then, that the album is titled Hombre Lobo: 12 Songs of Desire because E is a bit of a werewolf, he’s a shape-shifter, and over the course of his career he has never been scared to change the general style of his music, but the insides always stay the same. At the heart of every Eels song is… an Eels song. Every album has had a different aesthetic up until this point, with songs that sound good in every style used previously. Hombre Lobo feels a little like he trolled his catalog of unused songs from all his prior albums and assembled 12 tracks all centered around a central topic: desire. The tracks come from nearly every era of E’s music, and sum it all up quite nicely, with a couple little original flourishes set in.

My expectations were disappointed, but overall, I am just happy to have more Eels to listen to. Hopefully E will “see the light” as it were and switch over to just recording great songs and releasing them one by one. Waiting 4 years for 12 new Eels songs seems unfair when they’re not in some grand Blinking Lights style sequence. Eels fans want more Eels music! Give us lots of us. Quickly.

Note: Those so inclined will find that you can stream the whole album on MySpace.

A wise man once told me that kept money isn’t much fun. (I, somewhat unfortunately, can’t remember if this was @leftsider, both wise men who have told me numerous wise things.) That little morsel of wisdom has been sitting in my head for a while now, slowly snowballing into some vast personal mantra I am sure I will unleash on people in terms of stunning polarization. Until then, though…

Last night the absurdity of some of my relationships dawned on me, yet again, in the typical sorrow inducing way it always does, “Why do I continue to become involved with people I know I don’t want to be with for any extended period of time?” Isn’t the point to go out and find the one, in the strictest How I Met Your Mother sense of the word? Isn’t being with anyone else just wasting time until you find that one?

I keep focusing on the desire to expunge myself of expectations beyond the very basics that I need to keep going. I’m reminding myself that the past doesn’t necessarily always predict the future, and a belief in that turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts because we subconsciously manipulate the world around us. So, for the most part, I am trying to forget that it all ends in sorrow, but not expect anything but good times tomorrow.

It’s tough, because it always comes back to this one point: Even if I’m happy, aren’t I just wasting my time if I really know that it won’t last, based on personal reasons that have nothing to do with expectation or past calamity?

I asked myself this, and then thought about time in terms of a commodity, because that’s what it is, that’s how we treat it, time is, well, time is money, and kept money isn’t much fun.

I started thinking about all my friends who don’t do anything with their time. Either they’re scared of the world, or scared of injury, or scared of hurt, or any number of things that they won’t (or will) admit to themselves. People who spend all their time on their own, or saying no to experiences they’ve deemed too out of the ordinary for their realm of experience. People who spend their time talking shit on things they’ve never done. What do all these people have in common?

They’ve got huge fucking stores of time. Days upon days of time that they spend doing nothing with themselves all because they think it’s better that way, safer that way, cleaner that way, happier that way. They don’t realize the folly of it all: at least kept money stays in one place, it’ll be there when you want it, but kept time disappears as soon as it happens.

Every minute you don’t spend ends up being a minute lost. Kept time isn’t any fun at all. Start thinking about your hours in terms of dollars. If you get paid $15 (or whatever) per hour at your job, start imagining that your life is a job, too, and you need to start living hours that are worth $15 each. Stop doing shit that isn’t worth it, and start raping the value from your time. Unlike money, of which there can always be more of if you work for it, your time is finite and nonrenewable.

Go out there and spend some time, people. That’s your lesson for the day.

Elliott Smith wrote love songs, but they weren’t about women, they were about drugs. It’s easy to mistake the two, women and drugs, when written about in songs, because they pretty much cause the same emotions: longing, sorrow, regret, desperate need that eventually drives you to murder or suicide. It’s easy to listen to this song and think that it’s about something other than drugs, which is part of the joy of music, but know this: this song is about doing drugs.

Elliott Smith is a legend. His second album, this one, is legendary. I am not appreciative of his later work, where he gets all swoopy with the string arrangements and everything turns so goddamn grandiose, but this album is probably one of the best ever. It is easily the best album written entirely about drugs, too.

Which is probably why every time I run into someone who is familiar with Elliott Smith (and usually they can even sort of play some of his songs) they are either a former or current drug addict, and not pussy drugs, but Elliott Smith-class drugs, the real shit as it were. Constantina indeed.

I love this song. It’s beautiful, haunting, hauntingly beautiful, like most of Elliott’s work. If you’re reading this site, you’ve probably heard it before, you’re probably familiar and you’ve fallen in and out of love with it… and if you haven’t, then you should. You should have a mad love affair with the whole of the album.

Right now, go.

I don’t have a lot of time! You must listen to me very carefully!

Well, no, I just woke up late so I am in a rush. I will probably stop halfway through writing this and finish it later, unbeknownst to you. That is the magic of writing. Maybe one day someone will invent an entertaining way to write live. Sounds like a stand-up comedy act. Hmm. I will sit on this one. Forget that you read anything!

Twice now I’ve forgotten what I was going to write about. Something based on a tweet that I didn’t twat, twit, whatever. It was about women. Something about women…

Oh, yes, the twitter was going to be: “When I had low self-confidence I felt like I had to sleep with ugly girls. Now that I have high self-confidence, I want to sleep with the ugly girls just because I can.”

See, it’s too long for a twitter.

Also, it’s really succinct, right there, so what could I possibly say about it? Aside from the fact that…

Well, I don’t know.

Men are pigs, we are, and everyone who stands up and goes, “I know a man who is not a pig!” then you are familiar merely with a man who is dishonest with you (or himself) about who he is.

We spend a lot of time assuming that we can take people at face value, and that we assume because we’re all so unique as people that our thoughts and experiences are unique, but they’re really not. Our combinations of them are unique, our life as a whole, but our experiences are only the same colors of paint that a slurring Keifer Sutherland uses to concoct everyone else’s memories just as well. We’re all just pawns, living in a circular city, and there is clearly no way to get to Shell Beach. No one ever gets out. It just goes around and around…

All men are pigs, in the same way that all dogs could very easily rip our throats out with their teeth but choose not to. Some men, like some dogs, are neutered, but even they could still rip your throat out.

I’m not sure what I’m going on about.

I made an interesting discovery the other night while I was under the influence of alcohol. I was kissing this girl, and I felt like I wanted to have feelings for her. It was the strangest thing. I didn’t feel like I did have feelings for her, but that I had an intense desire to, in the future, perhaps feel something for her. (For extra practice I am going to italicize a couple things here, just to make sure I still remember how to close tags.) I think I am screwed up in the head. When I sobered up it went away. Thank goodness. Feelings are scary.

Women are crazy. I mean, crazy delicious. I mean, some of them are, anyway.

Goddamn! I have nothing to say!

I was going on about the variety of women, there are, in the world, and how they’re all different and nothing can be true for all of them. My story was, in short, that years ago I dated a girl who showered “every now and then” and didn’t really believe in deodorant and my general reaction (“General Reaction!”) to it was, “You best wash yourself before I come over to spend time with you,” because she was kind of stanky. And by kind of stanky, I mean, she was damn stanky. Even after a shower she was kind of stanky.

Since then I’ve always been pretty big on hygiene. Ladies who don’t shower every day are gross, was the rule.

But just recently I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing a woman who smells fucking incredible and it turns out she doesn’t show every day. Maybe every other couple of days. I was floored. How? How is one girl stanky shit when unshowered, and another smells fucking amazing?

Point is, women are rad. They’re all so different from one another. I’ve been with a girl with shaky hands. They were nice, etc.

I’m watching John from Cincinnati. This show floors me. I’m going to go ahead and say it’s my favorite bit of television filmed so far. (Though Day Break with Taye Diggs was fucking sick as shit.)

Today is a day of flooring.

Enjoy your holiday!