It's Friday. This "week off" turned into really only one and a half days off. Not sure why that is. I guess I've just been doing this too damn long now that when I hear a song, like this one, that really makes me feel something, I just have to say something about it. Besides, I can't really pass up all that hype machine traffic, can I? And what of this band, whoever they may be---it took me three Google searches to finally bring up their website---being deprived of you, listening to this song, right now? And what of you, not getting to listen to this song right now? (And what of me, not getting to dump all this on you?)
How can I do that to so many people? I just can't. Not this week anyway.
Over on their website you can download this song for free, as well as listen to a few others which also sound just as good. Not sure what the vocalist is sending his voice through but it sounds pretty rad, and seems to actually heighten the emotion of his music. The other three songs they have up are pretty rad too. They really have kind of an Arcade Fire texture to their music. I like it.
Will eagerly look forward to future releases from this band. I'll keep you posted as best I can.
I know it was just, like, a few days ago that I posted "Alligator Bop", the first track off the debut album by A Great Big Pile Of Leaves, but since that posting I have fallen so thoroughly in love with this band that it's pretty much insane.
In the last 9 days I've listened to this album over 15 times. I don't think there's a bad track on the album (even the meandering/filler instrumental "Race Car Driving" is simply a nice interlude, serving to pace the album) and I'm almost ready to declare that most of the songs are really really good. There's a lot of good moments: the chorus to "We Don't Need Our Heads"; the live audience cheering ("Wooo!") right before "A Few Screws Loose" breaks back into the raucous revival of the chorus... the list could really go on and on. ("Dearest... pumpkin-innn... why do you have to leave?")
The point I'm trying to make is that this is a damn fine album. If you enjoyed Ted Leo's release this year I can't imagine you wouldn't enjoy this. Admittedly it took me about three or four listens to really get this album, but now that I have I think this is probably going to end up as one of my favorite new artists of the year and it's definitely secured itself a spot in my Top 10 of 2010.
What a damn good way to start off the decade, you know? 2010 is turning into one bitchin' year for music, and it's barely half way over. We still have so many great new releases to go this year...
I've always had a problem on the internet, and that problem has always been excessive honesty. It worked pretty well about ten years ago when I ran a different blog, and my honesty combined with my teenage angst created a torrent of traffic from other websites linking to me after I insulted them in some way. That's always been my second problem: I've never really liked other blogs, personal/web/music or otherwise. I usually think most people should just shut up or at least turn their site over to someone with some design sense.
So of course, when I got an email from another music blog---the first in a year and a half---asking me to link to them, I was apprehensive. Most music blogs I've landed on, that aren't already big and huge (like the word on the wall that the man made with the circle and line*), tend to follow these very specific guidelines toward being as garish as possible. It's not enough to just have a link that says, "Hey, follow me on Twitter!" you have to have, like, eight of them, with a thing that bothers you when you first get there, plus some sort of bar stuck at the bottom. On top of that they can't ever just have images that are a normal size, they must be huge, with sidebars so long they stretch on for thousands of pixels, full of other images and links to god knows what and it all just makes my head hurt.
I was right to be apprehensive as the site fit this bill exactly, complete with a title image so large you have to scroll even in 1280x1024 to get to the post content, and even then the images on the posts themselves are so large you have to scroll to read it after you see the title. I groaned and archived the email. There was no way I was going to link to that from this. (Though days later I'd bite the bullet and take one for the team.)
I don't want to say this site here is uniquely attractive among the rather dreadfully designed standard that is the norm among music bloggers, but I don't have to: we just know it's true. Notice how I don't have advertisements trying to sell you purses? I don't have some weird "Twitter bar" that tells you how many people follow me and begs you to follow me at the bottom of every page. You know why I don't have that? Because I don't have advertisements, so it doesn't matter all that much to me if you come back and click on them. This is also the same reason I don't really link to other blogs (aside from that most hurt my eyes) and only just started recently. The 'traffic' doesn't matter to me. What matters to me is that you trust my opinion and enjoy what you hear.
I was thinking the other day about what makes music bloggers want to blog, and I had a small epiphany where I realized that, at least in my case, I'm writing about the music and trying to spread it to you because this is how I involve myself in the musician's work in some minor way. When I thank someone for linking to my website, I thank them for helping promote the song they linked to, not for exposing my writing. In some way I am co-opting the song for my own self-esteem building ways: I like this song, and if I can make other people like it, then I've done something good for both someone else (the musician whose music gets heard) and myself (the person with taste who gets to feel like they made a good recommendation).
I'm really into music. When I saw Harvey Danger live, Sean Nelson prefaced this song, which I always assumed was about a girl addicted to cocaine, by saying that it was about "someone who likes music a little too much," and then I felt really stupid listening to it and realizing that it is about that. The line about how "someone who takes what they make twice as seriously as they could ever hope to do" is at the center of it. Now, am I at that point? Maybe when I was 12 and had just discovered Nine Inch Nails and to be apart from my CDs was to be dead inside, but now? No, I don't think so.
But it's a romantic way of thinking about it: I post this music here because I have to. After doing this for as long as I have now it's almost an automatic, necessary reaction. Look, I said yesterday that I was going to take the week off, and here I am, typing away at the internet about a song (and myself, natch, which is the true motivator here but shhh don't tell anyone). This chocolate milk tastes like shit. This much is the truth, not the romantic notion of it all.
So when I see a website like Ohhh So Famous!, who I insulted for being ugly on Twitter and has since posted a rather incoherently snarky semi-rebuttal or something (the big joke of which seems to be that Parker is the same last name Spiderman has), which is covered in social media widgets, banner advertisements (which seem to revolve around telling women to be skinny and to buy purses, totally music related), images that are about 30x larger than they need to be, and centered post titles, I just kind of wonder what their angle is.
Is this person really a fan of the music they're posting? They never really say they are. Who is this person, even? I don't know. I can't find a name or any personal info. Everything written on the site sounds like a re-worded press release or copy from the band's website. I just don't know the purpose of this sort of thing: if you just wanted to advertise the band, you could just link to their website. It doesn't seem like there's any passion, here, and I suppose maybe there isn't. Maybe the banner advertisement gives the whole con away.
By regurgitating the same copy, posting huge flashy images and plasting social media widgets everywhere, it becomes pretty clear that the site is no longer a labor of love and fandom---and sure I guess there's nothing wrong with that---but an attempt to gather advertising dollars. Link to a hundred blogs, and hundred blogs link to you. Post a hundred nondescript and unoriginal blog posts and you've got a hundred pages to post advertisements on.
But doesn't this all seem rather disingenuous?
For a brief moment I had advertisements on here a little over a year ago, but then I felt dirty: I'm here to expose the music to people, not to make money off of it. The money should go to the musicians. So I took the advertisements down and I've felt better ever since (though, I do have an affiliate ID code on the Amazon links, and have made a total of $3 in the 19 months I've been doing this). I pay for this out of my own pocket. It's a labor of love. I don't mean to say that it being that way makes my website better, but at least I'm sincere. I shoot from the hip, even if it's embarrassing.
And I will never, ever bother you to follow me on Twitter in a hover-over fade-in pop-up window thing.
Another track from PDX Pop Now! 2010, which is also awesome. Man, I don't have a lot to say about this song. It stands on it's own, without needing any of my words to explain to you why it's cool, or why it's powerful, or even how it relates to me, because a song like this can relate to everyone.
Apparently Typhoon is a 17-or-so member band. Unfortunately I haven't grabbed their album so I can't say anything about whether this song is representative of what the whole album sounds like, but: Listen! How could the band that made this song not put forth an album full of awesome, awesome songs? I just don't think it's possible. I mean, I've heard a lot of shit songs by bands that made good songs, but not a song this good.
I'm really big on the hyperbole for these PDX bands.
THIS IS THE MOST AWESOME SONG EVER. It's just as awesome as yesterday's most awesome song ever, and the one before that. There's just so much awesome in the world.
Last night I started listening to the PDX Pop Now! 2010 compilation and I'm utterly floored by how many good songs are on it. Normally compilations (especially label compilations) are full of crap songs, maybe two out of every ten songs is worth listening to. I don't know why this is, it's just that way. However, this PDX collection is awesome; just in the first twenty tracks there are twelve good songs I might end up posting on here. This one, so far, being the awesomest.
I'm not sure exactly how this song is so awesome---it's a candidate for "Stuy wants to pick your brain and find out how you wrote this song" for sure, if I was ever to be famous and could, at short notice, interview any musician I wanted about whatever I wanted---but I am exactly sure that it is so awesome.
Namely I think the lyric "I know I can't see you like that 'cause I know you don't see me like that but tell me you see me like that because I see you like that-aht-aht-aht-ahht" is the most amazing thing I have ever heard in my entire life and I am so annoyed that I didn't think of it first, and the way she sings it, her voice, it's just perfect. This is pretty much an absolutely perfect song.
When I saw the name The Angry Orts I didn't expect this song, you know. I expected something different. Something that sounded like, say, Paul Revere and the Raiders. I don't know why, that's just how it is. Instead I got this song that makes my chest feel all tight: I'm jealous of the lyrics, want to move to the music, and I fall in love with her voice every time I hear it. Does a song get any better?
Relationships are a funny thing. It's only once you're far enough removed from them that you start to see aspects of them in a different light. I thought I was on top of my last one as far as interpretation goes, that I was reasonably safe from fallout and trauma: I was the one who caused all the grief, not the victim so much, right? Everything went better than expected...
But after finding a good amount of my stuff cut through with scissors (thirty condoms, twelve shirts, six DVDs, two books, two jackets, one camelbak) a few weeks after she left my house, plus her continued insistence on showing up wherever I want to go (simple case of common interests, or her stalking me like crazy---my paranoia insists: it must be obsession), has left me feeling a little like I should have got the hint a long time ago, like, sometime around the time I dumped her the second time. It should have stuck.
(I find out later that she didn't cut these things up right before she left in one last violent act of aggressiveness, no, she actually cut up things I wouldn't notice while we were together. Since she lived with me she had a good survey of shit I didn't ever touch, so when she'd get angry at me and running didn't quell it, she'd take scissors to my things. I don't know how long this went on for before she left, but it makes my "Please don't stab me in my sleep" jokes I told her in our final weeks seem a lot less funny now.)
In the end a lot of my problem with her was just that she never gave me enough space, not in the relationship, and now out of it I still feel like she's all up in my grill, clogging my pores. If I'm not masturbating over memories of our sex life, I'm getting angry in my head over what a rude cunt she is. My body can't take this much stress, all this dissonance between mind, heart, and cock!
On top of that it's complete bullshit that she's the female in this relationship, with the tits and the ass, because when it comes down to it any mutual friends you made while together, especially if they're guys or older single women (the "unmarrieds", as it were, of the internet), are going to stick to the tits and the ass---familiarity and desire are two things a guy trying to get people to choose sides can't possibly compete with. "Choosing sides" is obviously not the 'solution' but I don't think there is a solution in these situations.
In the end, us men, we fight a losing battle. We're doomed to failure to begin with, by extension of being men in this modern world---can't look at kids without worrying people think we're pedophiles; can't look at women without worrying about being accused of sexism---so when it comes down to a social battle between you and your ex-special lady, we're just screwed. The bitches will always win, and we'll skulk off licking our wounds, declaring ourselves gentlemen because instead of showing up and making a scene, we took a powder, ran and hid, and just handed the whole world over to her.
Blue Giant is the other band the husband and wife team (of Anita and Kevin Robinson) formed a while back, and they just released their full length album the other day. It features, I think, all the songs off their Target Heart EP which I posted about back in September, with two songs that are also on this album and improved. I'd post those two songs again because I still love them, but unfortunately I don't want to repeat myself, so I'm posting this song.
My ex-girlfriend liked this song, and I don't particularly like it, at least not more than any other song on the album so far, but I figure that since she liked it, maybe you'll like it, because she liked stuff other people liked that I don't like, you know, like most people, so it makes sense then that I should expose it to you.
I saw Blue Giant open for The Builders and the Butchers and Blue Giant is awesome. Can't wait until they come around again. Both shows I've been to involving the Robinsons have been good times, so here's hoping they keep on keepin' on. Just be sure to alternate between Viva Voce albums (because the VV sound has become incredibly awesome and a perfect companion to BG) and Blue Giant albums, please, A & K.
This song kicks ass for a lot of reasons. One, the bouncy folksy verses paired with the vocally explosive chorus (which could be inspired by either Ted Leo or We Were Promised Jetpacks' live shows). I don't know what it's about, but I like to imagine that he's singing about friends in youth going adventuring with beer in the woods and having an awesome summer day not thinking about much and just dicking around.
You know, innocent days like they have in movies but never happen in reality except for very rarely. Maybe that's just the glasses I wear that color my world, that it's not that someone always fails to have a good time or gets uncomfortable, it's that I am generally a douche and I just don't like doing things with other people.
Maybe there is some place out there in the world where there's a group of friends who laugh and smile all the time and they never argue, and when they do they quickly realize it's silly and share a manly hug and then drink beer and talk politely about women they'd like to bed. Do they have this in Omaha? Kansas? Or do we need to go deep into Real America territory? Then instead of discussing women they discuss Obama's Kenyan birth certificate?
I don't know. I've never been friends with many people who didn't seem to subtly dislike each other under it all. Can you have a group of more than four mutual friends who don't end up talking shit on each other and building up animosity until you can no longer have fun as a cohesive unit? Does it happen? I'm rambling...
This song is good! You can download almost all of their album for free over on their website. It's a pretty good album. The guy has a good & unique voice, and that's like the most important thing.
I don't know anything about The Glitch Mob (except that one of them wears a black shirt) or dubstep or whatever genre this might be. I know that it sounds like something I could make using iSequence or Ableton Live if I really knew what I was doing, which I don't, so I can't, but if I could, maybe I would, because this song is interesting and fun.
I dig the intro, with the acoustic drums (oh, lord), and then all of a sudden it's like, "BLOWN OUT KICK, RIGHT IN YOUR FACE!" and you're like, "Ooah!" and then you're like, "Shit, that's why the guy names his work that!"
Sigh.
I'm realizing that learning how to make cool stuff using music programs is going to take a while. I actually rather accidentally came up with something quite cool yesterday in iSequence for iPad (which is totally awesome by the way) while sitting in the air conditioned library (thank you, taxes and big evil government, for the free AC) over the course of an hour and a half, but then I pressed a button, I am not sure which button, but it caused the program to crash. I had yet to save. It sucked.
But what was cool was that what I came up with sounded like pretty good dubstep. This doesn't really sound so much like dubstep, maybe it's more 'glitch', whatever that means. I really don't know anything about either so I'm not at all qualified to say, but the rumor is that dubstep is supposed to sound 'gritty' and 'grimy' or something (Like oily sand? Lots of that in the Gulf now). This is only kind of 'slimy', but with some 'friction' from the 'blown out' kick if you 'know' what 'I' mean.
Is it absurd to be upset about not being sadder than you are? I've been doing a lot of longing for emotional peaks lately---oh woe is me, why can't i fall in love with girls who blow me all the time_? am i broken? where have all my capitals gone?_---but just now, listening to this Cloud Cult song and trying to brainstorm things to write about, it occurred to me that this song used to be familiar to me, and it doesn't feel like it any longer.
I used to be able to listen to a song like this and feel like I identified, like I understood the pure passion to feel that fills the singer's voice on this track. In this moment, seconds ago, I felt nostalgic. Somewhere in my drug-addled brain I felt wistful for the feeling of being completely lost, of knowing how far I'd come but not feeling like maybe I could go on any further but still going on because suicide is some scary shit when you get to a-thinkin'-a-bout-it real hard-like, of being totally gutted because something real bad just happened!
But no, now I just feel kind of, you know, shrug, about everything. I guess just because not being an emotional wreck isn't what I'm used to doesn't mean it's a bad thing. It's probably a good thing. It probably means something like... like... I'm building a self-image that doesn't rely entirely upon the status of my external life! How cool is that? No longer does my life have to fracture to bits every time some girl waltzes out of it.
Man, if a girl ever literally waltzed out of my life, I just don't know what I'd do. Take waltzing lessons or something. Isn't that something you'd have to do with old people to get cheap lessons? I'm going to the adult school down the street, and I'm going to learn to waltz. Not now, but later, when I have to go waltzing after some girl who tries to waltz out on me. You know how sometimes a word starts to look weird, like, really, that letter goes there_?_ Waltz. Look at that word. Waltzes. Waltzing. Waltzed. Who the fuck is Walt? And isn't Zed dead, baby?
Vote yes on Prop 19! Ensure future posts like these.
I first listened to this album years ago, huddled in the near dark of a walk in closet with a window that was passed off as a bedroom (but for $300 a month in Chula Vista at short notice I wasn't going to complain), and I really didn't know what to make of it, but I liked it and I listened to it a lot. Way too much, in fact, until I decided that what confused me about it was also ridiculously annoying and I had no interest in listening to it anymore.
Fast forward six years and I've "rediscovered it", and fallen in love all over again. I still don't know what to make of it, but that confusion makes me love it even more now. It's just got such an interesting sound across all the tracks. A track like "The Second Line" might be 90% gibberish but it has such a fantastic feeling I can't help but be able to sing it. I can remember the gibberish and sing along with it. What the fuck does that? DICKY DICKY MENOMENA DICKY DICKY MENOMENA...
Even back when I was initially infatuated with this album I never managed to listen to any of Clinic's other work. I believe I tried Winchester Cathedral (I hope I check later to make sure that's the actual title) but it just wasn't the same. I fear that Internal Wrangler is one of those albums that is just so perfect that even the band that made it couldn't possibly make a record that would measure up to it.
But that's OK, because this album is worth like eight albums of awesomeness. For serious. Normally I say YMMV, but if you don't like this album you probably just suck.
You know earlier this year I was foolish enough to think that Yeasayer's Odd Blood would be the pinnacle of albums that sound like they were imported from some bizarre self-aware period of the 1980's, but alas, no, it was not be. In one track, ceo (the moniker of Eric Berglund, some Swedish guy who was in some other band that I know nothing about yet) single handedly out-eighties Yeasayer (in a way that almost reminds me of In A Big Country, at that)---and get this, ceo actually features acoustic drums, a phrase which causes me to cringe every time I say it.
Or at least these drums were programmed by someone who knows how to play the drums. It could go either way these days.
I try not to listen to hard to the lyrics because the one time I did, on this song, I heard something like, "highway to reality / rising on the wings of honesty" and I puked in my mouth a little and had to swallow it. Luckily I had just eaten a chocolate donut so it wasn't like my puke wasn't kind of delicious, in a gross kind of way. I mean, there are worse things that you will be forced to swallow in your life, than chocolate upchuck, right? Right?
The rest of the album is similarly upbeat, with good beats, that general 80's vibe, lyrics that are better felt than listened to, and there's even a track or two that are semi-experimental fun tribal Out of Africa "gotta stay aboard the Vampire Yeasayer Weekend bandwagon" intro and interludes that are enjoyable. It's all pleasantly lo-fi---and not the kind of lo-fi that sounds like crap on a nice stereo (hello Beach Fossils) but the kind of lo-fi that sounds better through a good rig.
So, go forth, and play this. I have a feeling I'll be listening to it a lot all summer.
Sympathetic Note: You should link my website to someone today. I'd appreciate it. I'm sure they would, too!
P.S. In my searching I discovered this review of this album and man, now I understand why I don't sound completely full of shit. He never mentions it sounds like the 80's, someone in the comments asks what it sounds like and he says "it's electropop" like that would help anyone, ever, actually imagine what this album sounds like. One quarter of the review is spent talking about the other band this guy was in... I just don't get it! I'm just so much more in touch, you know. You know? It's 7 a.m. and I need a nap. I also really don't like how he's like "download these five tracks, but ignore the others", it's just like, wow, how big a douche are you, really? That big? OK, I get it.
The Neins Circa has put out two pretty damn good albums of... of... it's... it's like the Beatles with a modern day Californian Buddy Holly backed by a super group composed of Dr. Dog and The Owls, and this Buddy Holly guy, he writes songs heavy with people's names, caricatures, and abstract set pieces. If the voice sounds familiar, it's because I posted three songs by this guy's new band, Pineapple, on Friday.
I don't know if The Neins Circa are broken up or if they're still together, since there is a new band and all, and I can't find anything on the internet suggesting either direction, but who cares since Sleeves and Wigs is a pretty good album. For some reason when I first heard this song, "The Bentley Hills", I took immediate notice. I think I even rewound it and played it immediately after hearing it the first time. Since that first time, I think I've listened to this song about 12 times now. That's 1 hour, 2 minutes, and 36 seconds of my life I have spent listening to this song. That says a lot. That's a big chunk.
On Last.FM this band only has 300 listeners. That makes me feel sad inside.
I don't really know what the song is about. There are Bentley Hills all over the US, but since this band is from Canada I don't know if it's a reference to somewhere in Georgia. I assumed Bentley Hills was a two syllable change up for Beverly Hills, with the allusions to wealth and all. Whatever, what I do know is there are a lot of things I like about this song.
1.) Super long first syllables to every verse! "AAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIII seeeee" Love it. Dunno why.
2.) Two changes in the rhythm of the vocal! One seconds it's like, oh, I'm tapping my foot faster!
3.) And then it's like, "Yes, sir, I am! Yes, sir, I am!" and you're like dancing a fucking jig or you're at a church singing in a black choir or something.
I like this song a lot. Don't know why. I don't know what they're chanting at the end. I don't know a goddamn thing today.
I don't want to blame marijuana necessarily, because blame makes it sound like something is wrong, but I will tell you that ever since I started smoking regularly I've mostly lost the ability to get angry about things. It's like I'm utterly unable to sweat the small stuff, and even when presented with a situation in which I can choose to get angry, I usually just end up feeling sad and resigned.
Is this a perk? I'm not sure. Sometimes I wish I could get angry, and I search for it, like how sometimes you have to search for tears because they don't just come naturally but you need the release, but the anger never comes. There might be a glimmer, a single hand slammed down on the steering wheel, but for the most part I'm just an emo little shit.
Maybe I'm just overstating my case. I've been angry in the recent past, it just took a lot. The main example of me failing to get angry just recently involves a situation in which anger wouldn't solve anything, and the thing that could have caused the anger was really just meant to make me feel bad, and it did. So, bad I felt, not angry, just sad. How do things go so wrong?
Back to music related rambling tomorrow. I don't have much to say beyond vagaries about my personal life. STEVE HOLT!
I usually write these things first thing in the morning when I get to work, and this usually has the side effect of giving me a completely clear mind totally devoid of inspiration. It kind of sucks, because I distinctly remember yesterday that I had a really good idea for a post to write today, but I was stranded with my hands full and I had no way to note it down. "Shit," I thought. "There's no way I am going to remember this." Sure enough, all I remember is that I thought about how much it'll suck to forget it.
Broadcast are a band that plays music. This is a song by them.
Goddamnit. I'll get better at this some day. Maybe after four years.
Sometimes I feel like I shouldn't write too much about my personal life on here. This is about the music, and if my personal life doesn't relate exactly to the song I'm posting then I should probably just shut up. So, I guess I just answered my own question, I'll just shut up.
But then I can't just shut up. That's kind of the problem. I'm forgetting that important lesson: constantly talking isn't necessarily communicating. I'm always explaining myself into corners. You can't explain the way you feel away. You can't make someone understand how you're crippled by choice. It's just not possible to make someone believe that they love you more than they should.
A lot of the bad things I have done to people in my life have been attempts to do good things, or at least this is a lie I tell myself so often that I almost don't feel guilty to repeat it here.
Just yesterday I did a marathon reading session (for me, a couple hours) and finished Bret Easton Ellis' "Imperial Bedrooms". In it, the character Clay from "Less Than Zero" returns to us middle aged. While his younger self was simply an indifferent zombie, this Clay is selfishly driven by past indiscretions to fulfill every whim he has. He has no apparent interest or care for anyone other than himself, and has no qualms with vaguely faking it if he has to. At the start, he plays victim, like the story isn't really about him, and that's kind of the mystery of the novel---because the actual mystery itself is basically handed to you, and Clay, by characters. Clay never figures anything out on his own, because he doesn't give a fuck---because from the start Clay knows it's all about him.
I don't know what any of that has to do with anything.
I'm worried. Sometimes I worry. Am I, deep down, just an indifferent blond-haired blue-eyed California boy like Clay? Will I always insist that the shit storm of bullshit I invite on myself is simply the result of me breaking a few eggs to make someone else an omelet? How the fuck do you make an omelet without any eggs? Can you tell me? Do you just not eat?
First: the beginning of this song doesn't make sense because it's the end of another song. Second: this song is about 12 minutes long, but it's not overlong. How is that possible, that an 12 minute electronic dance song doesn't overstay it's welcome? Well, hopefully if my highness doesn't interfere too much with my memory of everything I thought about over the last 15 minutes while driving home after eating some tasty tacos, we'll explore that in the following paragraphs.
"Escape Velocity" is a nearly perfect example of how you pull off a song that is in excess of, say, 5 minutes. The fact that this song is 12 minutes long and actually remains entertaining and doesn't feel repetitive despite using the same beat and only a single lead instrument for the majority of the thing is something that I realize takes a massive amount of skill.
Or, at least in the wake of my suckiness I feel like I understand better how a song like "Escape Velocity" could go terribly wrong. There isn't anything in this track I someone armed with a copy of Ableton Live couldn't possibly pull off---the instruments and sounds used might as well come as presets as far as I can tell---but not just any regular joe could finesse so much out of it all.
The initial lead that changes every bar or two is a good example of what this song does right, by changing up the main riff and keeping the movement of the piece on its toes---and oddly enough elsewhere on this album The Chemical Brothers seem to forget this and just play the same riff repeatedly, exactly the same, for the entire song, which will quickly even turn a good riff into something kind of annoying. A shifting but similar riff throughout the song is great: when a riff is static throughout a whole song, it feels a little like you've been dancing the same way the whole time; the feel stays pretty static despite shifting instruments and the like. With a constantly shifting lead you keep the piece moving around---it keeps you, the listener, on your toes.
The Chemical Brothers also play with builds (or crescendos, whatever)---the song starts with one---quite a bit. There are so many that I don't really want to bother counting them. There's at least four, and then there are a couple fake out ones that seem to just build and vanish, or just turn into another instrument in the background playing yet another shifting riff. It's actually... well, now that I've sat here and listened to it and figured it out, it's pretty cool. The build is a utility: they use builds to introduce new instruments to the mix. They make your head expect something to happen, and then it does, except it's a little subtle so you almost don't even notice it but you can feel it.
Holy shit, this song is like 800x more awesome than I already thought it was.
You know, I don't even know if I can keep writing about this. This song is too awesome. There is no way I am ever going to understand how awesome it is. Is there a formula? Because if so, they fucking broke it after this song. Don't get me wrong, the rest of Further is pretty rad, and I'd be doing The Chemical Brothers a great disservice by writing a proper short review of the album here. So, here goes.
I haven't listened to anything by The Chemical Brothers since Surrender came out back when I was in high school. Ever since then I've never felt like TCB was relevant to my life: I started listening to neo-psychedelic and started listening to indie and it just seemed, to me, that shit like "Block Rockin' Beats" and (to switch bands) "Smack My Bitch Up" was no longer really relevant to me. For the most part I turned my back on most dance music from this period of time, because a lot of it sounds really similar. Be honest, who the fuck still listens to Orbital? No one. No one listens to Orbital. How about Sneaker Pimps? No? So, then, I can't be blamed.
But I guess the truth is, The Chemical Brothers themselves started to suck, or at least that's what everything else on the internet says, so maybe it's OK I skipped out on them. Besides, these days us kids, we have MGMT, we have Passion Pit, we have heard and fallen in love with dance music that doesn't deliver "Block Rockin' Beats" but does deliver music that we can feel while we dance to it. MGMT's dancey songs all contain chord progressions that are decidedly melancholy, and Passion Pit's general mood feels to me like "there's a raincloud over my head but I am going to sing in falsetto and dance my heart out". I can't recall a Chemical Brothers song that really made me feel something.
But I feel kind of like Further is The Chemical Brothers realizing that good music isn't about, ahem, beats, that perhaps rock blocks, and is more about creating something that makes you move your body not just to the music but to what the music makes you feel. Not all the songs are like this, there are formulaic Chemical Brothers songs (like the single "Swoon", which tries to dull you into submission with a squelching repetitive riff), but something like the combo of "K+D+B" and "Wonders of the Deep" that shifts the mood around between all sorts of different feelings I can't even describe almost make me... make me... make me do something hyperbolic and over the top.
This is a dope album. Listen to it. I say this as someone who didn't expect to say this about this album.
