I'm not a Regina Spektor fan. I can't be: I lack the necessary equipment, namely a vagina, and I am far too self-aware to not feel silly when I listen to the majority of her music. Years ago, when I was barely a teenager and spent a lot of time hiding under my comforter contemplating the never ending pit of sorrow manifesting itself in my navel, I probably would have loved her a lot. As it is, though, she just makes me feel kind of silly. If someone caught me listening to a Regina Spektor record, say, my mother or father came in the room without knocking first, I would feel the same amount of shame that I would if my cock was in my hand and I was pounding at it with the utmost furvor while clown porn lit up my face with whites, reds, and pinks. Hell, perhaps Regina Spektor would bring me more shame.
Regardless, I gave her live show a very nice review, and mentioned in it how this was the song that really got to me, really pulled at my heart strings, and for about a month or two afterward hearing it was enough to bring tears to my eyes. It still kind of does.
I don't have much to say about this song. It is oblique and sad sounding. I was contemplating reposting something I wrote on my personal site, because the mood between them is similar, but I won't paste it here. If this post isn't enough reading for you, I recommend that you check out what I wrote last night in defense of suicide and Andrew Koenig.
Years ago (how many doesn't matter) Delta Spirit drummer Brandon Young was buying a pack of cigarettes at 2:30 in the morning and heard some guy singing and playing guitar down by the trolley tracks, but what was unusual about this guy was that he actually sounded pretty good, so he got the guys phone number. That guy was Matt Vasquez, the guy you hear singing on this song. When Brandon's band broke up, he contacted Matt, who was living with five other guys in a two bedroom apartment. It seems like when most people on the internet retell this story they embellish it a little, saying Matt was homeless, but he wasn't, but I guess it's fun to think of the story that way if you want.
This song obviously alludes to this history.
It's also obvious why I like this song: it's joyous, loud, inspirational, and tugs on that place in your chest that makes you want to stand up and sing along, or at least just pay attention. However, this is one of those albums that suffers from that typical album tradition of putting the best song on the album as the second song. The rest of the album never lives up to the promise of this song, and that is too bad, because an album full of songs this good would have made this album an instant classic.
As it is, this is the one really good song, and now you've heard it.
Site Note: Due to having issues with my websites showing up in Google search results for things I do not want my websites showing up in Google search results for, I've removed all of them from every search engine. This means that search box that was over there on the side won't work anymore, but you don't really need it anyway, so I've removed it. Eventually I'll add it back with a normal search function.
In it her first sentence is, "The year I graduated high school was also the year that Zaire became the Democratic Republic of Congo: 1997" like I give a fuck or that it is even relevant to anything. Is this interview about your music or what a pretentious 'tard you can make yourself out to be just in the first thing you say?
"I went to a camp in Massachusetts, where my mom taught music and played for folk dancing. It wasn’t a camp for kids, mostly, but for adults" and that sounds like the kind of place where kids get molested and used in bizarre sex rituals their brains sympathetically force them to forget.
Then there's "When I was 21 I lived in Kenya and became friends with some hip-hop musicians who lived in Dandora, one of the bigger slums in Nairobi," who the fuck IS this chick? Were her parents filthy rich or something? We're just going to fly our child all over the world so she can have this rich bohemian lifestyle and grow up to make indie records after hanging out in slums with black people even though she is a white girl!
As part of that experience she adds, "I would wake up in the morning and go to get these donuts, fried fresh. They were delicious little golden puffs of dough. A whole bag of about 12 for 2 shillings, so like maybe 30 cents. I don’t eat doughy fried things anymore."
OK, I'm sorry, but there is only one thing I can take away from all this babble: This chick is obviously completely fucking insane and is making all of this up. When you throw that kind of detail into a story when you're talking about yourself casually to an interviewer there is only one option: you are completely full of shit. Again, I'd hate to come across as super jaded and cynical, but seriously, even Barack Obama doesn't tell stories this pretentious about himself and he probably has the right to 'cause he's the fucking President.
Also: "I don't eat doughy fried things anymore"? So you're probably a chronic liar and you're joyless for no reason at all. Fried food is bad! No one eat it! Nevermind that you can eat it and then you can exercise and, you know, keep enjoying fried things because they are tasty and delicious! I mean, if it's good enough for people living in slums why isn't it good enough for you?
I would make up some elaborate back story about my awesome bohemian life just to have an example here, something about how I lived in some small country you're not even sure really exists but you assume it does 'cause I am talking about it, and how I made friends with some of the natives even though I was white and I was sure they were going to give me AIDS if they even touched me, and they played the most bizarre form of jungle hip hop dance music and it was so influential on me when I was 16 and living here by myself because my parents thought I needed to experience what it was like to build houses in impoverished countries and after the first week or two I didn't even miss running water and there is just something spiritual, you know, about having to boil all your water before you even use it to brush your teeth 'cause they don't even know what the word potable means, you know, and then I hid in the woods for two years when I was eighteen deep in the forests of Montana with some mountain people, really secluded stuff you know people don't even you know know these people exist but I sought them out 'cause I am JUST THAT FUCKING COOL so please listen to my music buy my album it's on a major independent label.
As an aside, I like this song a lot, I think it feels cool and it makes me want to sing. The rest of the album sucks ass. There is no emotion in it, it's kind of like someone really boring just talking in your ear for an hour and when they're done talking you realize that even though you were listening you can't remember a goddamn thing they said. She also rAnDoM CaPs eVeRy SoNg TiTlE wHiCh Is SoMe AnNoYiNg AsS lItTle KiD sHiT sHe ShOuLd Be SlApPeD fOr.
To quote that blog post again: "This leads to an intimate experience, as you get the feeling that you’re listening to some unearthed cassette tapes found in your grandmother’s attic, discovering a lost gem from the past." Oh fucking please. Any time you listen to an album like that sure it's all like WOW the first time but then you listen to it a couple more times and you realize why that shit was hidden in your grandmother's attic never to be heard by anyone ever again: it sucks ass.
Austin-based White Denim is pretty much awesome. This was the first album I listened to this year (released last year) that truly excited me, and it took me twelve straight listens to finally feel like I had over-saturated myself on it. The best way I can describe it is to steal a comment I read elsewhere on the internet: Fits sounds as if the greatest, most talented garage band in the world showed up at your house, set up all their gear in your garage, and all in one take recorded an entirely improvised album right then and there.
They'll rock your face off. In the first two tracks they are all over the place, at one point pretty much shredding a sick ass riff on a sitar, or at least on something that sounds a lot like a sitar. Since I don't know shit about music I can't really say for sure, but I do know one thing: it is pretty much awesome. The song Sex Prayer descends into a lovely stoney groove. El Hard Attack DCWYW pounds your face off. Regina Holding Hands makes you feel totally blissful.
In short, it seems like White Denim can do just about anything they put their mind to, and do it well. This is an album to check out just to see how one band manages to cover so many different styles all on one record without it being overwhelming or annoying. There's at least five tracks on this album that belong in your shuffle for sure. Blah blah blah.
It's four years ago and I'm sitting in my room trying to keep myself calm. I'm telling myself that I'm just being insecure, that my my two prior relationships with women I couldn't trust even before I got into relationships with them set me up for this kind of insecurity, that I'm doing this to myself because I can't trust myself because in this situation I'm the one who cheated on her the first time around, so of course I assume she's evil because everyone says she's so much like me, and why would she be hanging out with some guy from the internet if it wasn't to try to find someone better than me? And what if he is better than me? What will stop her from fucking him right then and there without giving me any notice? Of course he's better than me, who isn't better than me, and if I were her, I'd do it, I'd fuck him if he was even only a little better than me because after eight months of this even a little better is better enough. I'm driving myself crazy. It's four years ago and I'm text messaging to see if they're on their way to the movie they're supposed to go see.
They're not, she says, since her mother and grandmother aren't home they've decided to just stay alone in her house and watch a movie and I said, hey, I'm not really OK with that, and she says she doesn't care if I am not OK with that and that I should relax and be cool because I already said I was cool with it, but when I said that I was lying because I wanted so desperately to be cool with it, not so that she would feel good or think I am cool but because I just wished I was cool with it because it's not fun for me to be panicking that my girlfriend is going to fuck some other guy from the internet and perhaps if I lie to her I'll believe the lie myself and just enjoy a night by myself and besides these days I mostly kind of hate her but without her I'll just be alone and it's four years ago and I don't yet have the confidence necessary to realize that finding another woman isn't hard at all. It's four years ago and temporarily all my hatred for her drains away into an explicable need and even though I calm down for the couple of seconds it takes me say whatever do what you want I'm cool as soon as I hang up I am heading outside and getting into my car and driving over to house and for what purpose I don't know but maybe it'll show her that I love her so much she doesn't need to hang out with some other guy and she'll kick him out and instead we'll sit on her couch and watch a movie and be a happy couple again. It's four years ago and I'm still lying to myself not even in an attempt to make myself look better in her eyes and it still isn't working.
I see his car outside her house and I briefly contemplate keying it or maybe taking a shit on it or something else that doesn't really make sense and I later learn the guy was smart and that wasn't his car at all and his actual car was parked several houses down the street but I do nothing anyway because that is what I do. It's four years ago and this guy is younger than I am now and the perspective I have now makes me not feel like blaming him necessarily because tail is tail and he didn't really know what he was doing and even if he did I can't blame him because I probably would do the same thing now if I had never changed from being the asshole I was four years ago, the asshole he is now four years ago sitting inside my girlfriend's house on the couch watching television and I can see him through the blinds and they're sitting on opposite sides of the couch and I feel relieved but I walk back to my car and I call her anyway. She calls me crazy and I say that it's not crazy to be upset when your girlfriend is locked in her house alone with some guy and won't come outside to talk to her upset boyfriend who she is supposed to love. She says she wont come outside and that I need to go away and what do I hope to accomplish and I say I just want to know that she loves me and it's obvious she doesn't but she tells me she does, she tells me she loves me and she won't do anything to hurt me and she's just going to watch a movie and leave and she hangs up.
It's four years ago and this still isn't enough for me so I drive down the street a bit and park where I can still see her house and I wait and talk to a girl living in Tennessee through my phone and she tells me over and over again that if she were me she'd just walk away and not even bother, that it's obvious what is happening and I say I don't want to believe it, that I want to be wrong, that I want to be crazy and paranoid and I want to see him leave, but two hours later when the movie is surely over and my phone is dead and I am simply feeling like a creepy guy sitting on a street late at night he still hasn't left and at this point I've already pissed into a plastic water bottle and now I'm starting to feel like I am going to shit myself so my head clears for a moment and I think: I'm being silly. I'll just walk up to the house and knock on the door and say, I'm sorry for being silly, but can I use the bathroom and then I'll go home, oh and by the way why hasn't he left yet, what is going on in there?
It's four years ago and when I get to the door before I knock I think I better look in through the blinds again and I see that the living room is completely empty and my heart drops into my stomach and my body starts to shake so I walk around behind the house and the dog that always barks at me and everyone else doesn't bark but sniffs me in an unusually friendly way as I open the gate and walk around the back of the house, over to the side yard, and up to her bedroom window. It's four years ago and when I peer through her blinds I see her lying in bed with him.
It's four years ago and he's shirtless and she's not wearing any pants or underwear and he's kissing my girlfriend and he's got his hand buried between her legs and it's four years ago and I knock on the window and it's four years ago and I'm completely alone in this and it's four years ago and sometimes when a sad song comes on I relive all these feelings all at once and it's four years from now and I still won't forget what it feels like to be so betrayed but it's right now and I don't blame anyone or dwell on it because in the end everyone gets what they deserve even if there isn't any God or Karma to make sure it happens, it just happens, because bad people invite bad things into their lives and what is what it really is so if you're tired of bad things happening to you the only solution is to stop doing bad things to other people and if you're too stupid to figure this out then you're only getting what you've been asking for all along. It's right now and bad things do not happen to me anymore.
If you've been following my personal accounts on Buzz or Twitter, I've been talking about how I am absolutely addicted to Yeasayer's new album. I didn't care for their first one. I listened to it once and never felt like listening to it again. I thought 2080 was a good song, and included it on one of my mixtapes but I didn't care enough for any of it to post anything about it here. My main problem with it was that it struck me as boring (I hardly remember any of it) and the "world music" pastiche seemed incredibly insincere, like I was listening to a group of kids trying to emulate Peter Gabriel if Peter Gabriel was influenced strongly XTC, and they were failing horribly at it.
Luckily, Odd Blood strikes me very differently. This is a beautiful album. It covers such a broad range of emotions that it's hard for me not to get sucked in (and Pitchfork saying "Their lyrics may not say much of anything..." are way off base) because they cover a lot of things I've experienced simply in the last year or two.
Ambling Alp, the song everyone has probably heard and if you haven't then you should, with its inspirational father-to-son chorus ("You must stick up for yourself, son, never mind what anybody else done!") hits me right where it counts, because my father never bothered to say anything like this at all to me. I was never taught to stick up for myself. Whenever I did, I got in trouble at school, and then I got yelled at and scared by my parents. The one time my dad saw me getting picked on, he yelled at the kid himself, and when that kids father got in his face, he walked away without even trying to explain himself... which was the bigger thing to do, I realize, but at the time it just made me feel sad. "My dad's willing to stick up for me as long as he's doing it by shouting at someone a fourth of his age." What would my life had been like if I had a father that made me feel like I had no choice but to defend myself, and that walking away from your problems the second the going gets tough isn't actually the right solution?
Madder Red, about how it's hard to feel like you're worth loving when you feel like a spineless coward and what it is like to spend a lot of your time in a relationship wondering when your lover will tell you the truth that is so obvious to you: that you're not worth loving. I Remember is about remembering what it is like to be in stupid love with someone. O.N.E. communicates the feeling of being in denial about loving with someone you can't have anymore because you couldn't control yourself and had to be with other people and won't admit it could have been any other way. Love Me Girl, the other side of that situation, where you've damaged yourself by behaving so badly that you can't imagine the person you love isn't the same way you once were or are, destroying any chance you had at trusting them.
Supporting all these songs is music that is emotional and jaw-droppingly beautiful. Pitchfork, again, is way off the mark by saying these songs need editing, because they don't. If being lushly layered with instrumentation and effects in order to heighten the emotionality of a song is what they mean by "need editing" then, sure, I agree with them. Every song on this album is meant to be turned up loud, danced to, and allowed to fill you with joy. Maybe I am crazy, and maybe the fact that I am on my tenth listen in three days makes me seem a little fanatical, but I just can't get enough of this stuff. There is just so much going on that each listen reveals more layers that I missed the first time around. Is it overwhelming? No.
I am posting Rome, not even the best song on the album (and it has nothing to do with the rest of it, being basically "watch the fuck out 'cause I'm gonna fuck shit up" song), because it makes me want to dance more than any other song on the album. For some reason the rhythm of it reminds me of black girls dancing, specifically a loop of a couple of teenage black girls dancing that I saw on a screen behind Bobby Birdman during his live show. Rome makes me want to shake my shoulders back and forth, surging forward and jumping backward, leading with those possessed shoulders. I know nothing about dancing---I am just an awkward white guy after all with no natural rhythm of my own---but this song makes me want to stand up and make a fool of myself, even when I am here at work.
Instead, I'll probably just turn it up loudly at some point this weekend while I am home alone and dance by myself, alone in my room, because that is what self-conscious people do when no one else is around. Maybe that is the best compliment I can give Yeasayer's Odd Blood: it makes me want to dance around in my room like a teenage girl when no one is around.
Site Note: Yesterday when I said Ryan would be posting today I was lying.
I saw Bobby Birdman open for YACHT when I saw them in San Diego last year but I didn't write anything about him because he struck me the same way most opening acts do: largely forgettable. The funny thing is, though, that I wasn't able to forget him at all. In fact, I'd say I've probably thought of him once a week over the last four months since. I didn't think much of it, though, because his live act was interesting even if I only vaguely remember the details.
Much like YACHT, Bobby Birdman's live act consists of his laptop, a projector, and himself standing alone on stage dancing and singing while his music plays out of his laptop and projects interesting videos on the wall. When he started, he started talking about himself and asking the audience questions, and if I remember correctly he kept repeating himself, kind of in time with the music, and repeating what I can't remember, but it was all very odd. I stood in the back of the crowd and was smiling the whole time, novelty usually floors me and this guy was definitely novel. It seemed like he kept staring into my eyes, but I usually always think all performers are constantly making direct eye contact with me because I am usually taller and odder looking than anyone else in the crowd.
When he started into his songs, he started dancing in a way that is probably all his own. He's got "awkward white guy" down pat, but he owns his awkwardness with confidence, and I can appreciate that. His video loops accompanying his dancing are also kind of awkward, with looped clips of people dancing, 50's diner waitresses from old commercials shaking around, and kaleidoscopic patterns abound.
After a couple songs, which had interestingly danceable beats and definitely made me want to do an awkward white guy dance of my own, his material started to get kind of boring. At the time I figured, "Oh, just another lousy opening act, let's just go sit down," and that's what me and my friend did. We walked away and sat down a good distance from the stage and mostly tuned out what was going on. I appreciated this guys courage and commitment to his craft, as I myself couldn't imagine standing in front of a group of college students dancing awkwardly to my music that no one seems to be responding to without running off the stage with tears streaming down my cheeks, but over all I felt pretty meh about his whole routine.
That was until I heard Yeasayer's new album and the song Rome reminded me so strongly of Bobby Birdman that I just had to buy his latest album.
...and for the most part I am glad I did.
Bobby Birdman has little to no concern for hooks. Normally this sort of thing makes me want to tear into an album: I mean, come on, what is music without hooks? If I don't want to sing along with it, why am I going to want to listen to it? Maybe Mr. Birdman can write hooks and he just doesn't care to, or maybe his mind just doesn't work that way and this is the music that exists in his heart, and based on the quality of the music on New Moods, I'm inclined to believe it is the latter.
Instead of hooks, Birdman trades on interesting beats that make you want to dance, or at least think about trying to dance to them, even if you don't really know how. When the songs lack awesome beats, which starts a little after this song on the album, he starts to make you feel like this would be a good album to fall asleep to. The lack of hooks and the lack of lively instrumentation combine into something that is so relaxing that I am pretty sure driving late at night while I was tired the first time I listened to this album was probably hazardous.
Do I like the album? Kind of. I don't tend to like music that makes me want to fall asleep, unless I am looking to fall asleep. If I was to judge the album by the amount of songs on it that I think I will listen to from this point onward, there's maybe three or four. Other stand out tracks include Only For A While, Bloody Mess, and Weighty Wait.
The best thing I can say about Bobby Birdman is that I am looking forward to seeing him open for YACHT again come March 26th when they will be playing at the Echoplex here in LA. If you want to see a really interesting live show that is mostly entirely unlike anything else you'll stumble upon, see YACHT when they come around, and as an added bonus you'll get to see Bobby Birdman.
Site Note: You might notice that some things have changed around here. Tomorrow there will be a post by a new writer on the site, a young gentleman by the name of Ryan. He's got different taste than I do, and if you don't like it, just ignore him, or berate him in the comments on his posts. For the sake of easily identifying that he and I are two different people, my posts will appear in red from now on, and his will appear in blue. If the colors aren't clear enough on your screen, post a comment tomorrow and let me know. If anything looks funny on the site, I'll fix it eventually.