There's this John Cusack movie called High Fidelity, and if you haven't seen it you should probably just shut down whatever it is you're doing right now and go watch it. Cusack's character runs a record store, at at one point he puts on this song and says something to the effect of, "I am now going to sell three copies of The Beta Band's The Three E.P.s," and we watch as customers in his store take note of how good this song is.

I wish I could run a record store. The fantasy will be one I'll never fulfill, unlike the grilled cheese sandwich store which I will undoubtedly own some day, because I can recognize that physical media is pretty much worthless. I don't hold any nostalgia for the day when I had to carry around a 200 disc pack of CD-Rs and CDs in my car so I could have my pick. I don't miss having to haul it up into my passenger seat and dangerously flip through it while picking something. Now I can easily scroll through my iPad and then dangerously text while driving and it feels much better. I actually briefly contemplated throwing out one of these 200 disc packs of actual CDs this weekend when I stumbled on it, but the complete discography of Skinny Puppy started whimpering at the thought.

I've never been in a record store where the owner or employees seemed to give any sort of a shit. I've never run into a John Cusack, walking the aisles, eagerly awaiting for someone---anyone---to ask him what the band playing is called. In fact most of the stores I've been in seem to play music that no one could possibly ever want to buy, the kind of obscure pretentious shit no one really listens to except for those people who sit behind record store counters looking at you smugly, which can vary from bizarre ethno world free association jazz to hardcore minimalist math punk. I just made those up but I am sure I've heard both of them being played at Lovell's while I was busy not finding stuff to buy.

Maybe my fantasy is misplaced: maybe people who go to record stores don't want someone like me telling them what they should try to listen to. Maybe when you ask a store employee for help finding something you don't actually want them to help you and instead tell you that the band sucks and they won't stock it.

But if I did run one, it would be awesome. You'd walk in, and "staires_!_ radio" would be playing. You'd perk up your ears: "Hey, this song is good!" and I see that thought flash across your face, so I'm like, "Hey, brother, I saw you perking up your ears, what you're listening to is the latest album by so and so called this and that and boy howdy it sure is rad, I got a couple copies sitting up here if you want it," and you smile and nod and walk into the rest of the store.

The store itself doesn't feel damp at all, unlike most indie record stores. The paint isn't peeling off the walls. There isn't even some random guy standing in the aisles who smells bad who is either going through everything or is possibly an employee of some kind taking stock. Instead there are just rows of carefully arranged CDs, complete with poorly handwritten placards separating the individual bands. I've put little hearts next to my favorite bands, with the "first timer album" suggested on each one.

There's a sign next to the register in block lettering you can read from the back of the store: "STUCK? ASK STUY FOR A RECOMMENDATION!" I'll ask you about the last few albums you've listened to and how you liked them, and from there I'll recommend something. Long time visitors who get to know me learn that they can come in whenever they like with a partial lyric or a hummed melody and I'll pretty quickly name the song they heard and grab the CD for 'em. With every purchase you get a burned copy of a random staires_!_ playlist, to further encourage you to listen to more bands.

My record store would be awesome. That's probably why it'll never exist.

P.S. The Beta Band are pretty cool, and I love The Three E.P.s, but I don't really get them. I saw them open for Radiohead at the Hollywood Bowl back in 2001. "She wrote me a letter on the back of the road" is one of my favorite lyrics.

I know, I know, is this LCD Soundsystem week or what? Two songs... in a row? Am I crazy? It's just that I've been listening to nothing but them for the last three days, so I figure it's only fair that I stick to what I'm doing. At least I have something to write about.

For the last couple months (since October, I think, so we're nearing a year now I suppose) I've been playing around with making music using various software suites. I'll insist I am fairly rhythm-less, and I never learned to play an instrument despite being on my third guitar in my life so far. In my youth, if I couldn't dissect it and learn how to be awesome at it pretty quickly I'd get bored, which is funny because the excuses everyone made for me at school was that I wasn't being challenged enough. I wonder what that's about.

These days I try to learn things kind of the same way, without the giving up part. With unicycling and freeline skating it was all about learning what things should feel like and then just drilling that for hours at a time until I got it. Computers and HTML and it's ilk, it's all stuff I slowly taught myself by doing it over the years.

So when it comes to things that are more about feeling, more about just instinctively knowing what's right, like music (and relationships, and life in general), I'm pretty much entirely in the dark. I've been looking for the "trick" to making music, that makes music sound good and not like flat monotone bullshit, and as far as I can tell there either isn't one, or the trick is actually composed of about five hundred other tricks.

Again, in truth I started this knowing absolutely nothing about music creation. I didn't even really know what keys were or how they apply to music (and I'm still confused: should every instrument start on the root note of the chord you're in for each measure? does it not matter what notes other instruments play, or should they all be within the key? is that what "in key" means? oh, lord). I still don't know how The Beatles turned I - IV - V into songs.

Obviously a lot of this would be helped by, say, tackling guitar earnestly and learning a song or two. Or maybe I could just, say, take a class and get it over with, but I'm really, really stubborn. I feel like if I don't just figure it out on my own I'll deprive myself of the real "Eureka!" moments when they come around, of which I had one last night when I started improvising vocals over the noodling I had going on in iSequence and suddenly the whole thing started to sound more like a song.

LCD Soundsystem has been especially inspirational. A song like "Tribulations" takes my breath away. I'm sure I've listened to it on repeat several times now. I'm generally just floored by LCD Soundsystem's ability to take a relatively simple sounding beat and make it so subtly exciting that it can carry a whole song into and past the 6 minute mark. If you listen to this instrumental version of "Tribulations" after hearing the original, something becomes pretty obvious...

It's not really a song without the vocal. It's got different instruments that come in from time to time to play other instruments (the only signifier of the chorus is that little dingy synth guitar thing, which is interesting since most things you read on the internet say you should change up the beat a bit, throw some cymbals for power and speed in there, open up the hi hats, but Murphy does none of that on this track) but for the most part the song is just one long repetitive beat with a bouncy fuzzy bass line (until the guitar riff breaks in, that is).

But I can make beats in iSequence or Ableton Live that should sound just like this, but they don't, so what is it? What am I missing? Is it really just the flare? Should I tap my hi hats back a little bit, and throw in ghost notes on every snare and kick drum hit? Is that what makes Murphy's programmed beats so exciting, or is it because he programs them, plays them live, then reprograms them again? What's the secret to that bass line? It hits high every third sixteenth if I'm hearing right (and I can't keep time) and low on the kicks. How is it that something that sounds simple (peak valley peak valley peak valley) be so catchy?

Is it the chords that it's playing? What are they? B, F#(Gb), D, A, A#(Bb). What the fuck is that? I'm trying to match it up with anything I know about normal chord progressions and that shit, it is not in there. But it sounds good. It has awesome forward movement. It carries the entire song without the vocal, so it has to.

But that's really the trick to the entire song: the vocal. While "Tribulations" in instrumental form sounds interesting enough, it's not really a song you'd want to listen to. You can tap your foot to it, and probably dance to it if necessary, but it doesn't start to actually affect you until Murphy comes in with the melody in his vocal.

So, what's the secret then? Don't know yet. Seems to me that you find a chord progression that doesn't sound like balls. Then you figure out how to build it over a beat without destroying the beat (pretty simple, really, if you can even compose a decent sounding beat). If you're lucky your chord changes are carried by your bass line, but if it's not you have to come up with a bass line (which is really hard if you don't know how to play bass and don't have any instinctual clue as to how basses should sound). After this you have options: come up with a vocal (scary! but with good chord changes it should come pretty easy because it should just make you want to sing something) or figure out what frequencies you can fill up with other instruments without distracting from the other instruments.

But yeah, that's it, that's the trick. So why haven't I been like "OMFG I just wrote this amazing song!"? Because there is no trick to knowing what sounds good, even years of listening to music hasn't given me an understanding of the nuances of basses and the proper way to program pianos so they sound natural, as if a human is playing them. In truth, I wonder if it's easier to just program something, learn to play it, and then rerecord it so it sounds naturally. I have the sneaking suspicion a lot of artists do this.

As I progress in my attempt to dissect the secret to making good music, I'll do posts like this from time to time. I'll be stuck on this whole "trying to divine LCD Soundsystem's secrets" thing for a while I think.

First up, it's a damn shame the Deluxe Edition of Rated R isn't as awesome as the ten year anniversary deluxe edition of The Downward Spiral which was remastered beautifully and even mixed into 5.1. This is just the album, mastered a little differently but not sounding any better for it, with a disc of bonus stuff. Nothing special. But, with that out of the way.

Truly great albums change with you over time as you listen to them. Early on when you first listen to it, you think: "Wow! These couple of songs are so rad, totally feel like me right now, but these other songs, I kind of don't get them but they're pretty good too I guess." In the iPod age this means you listen to an album a lot, rate the songs you like, and forget about the others. Luckily Rated R came around pre-iPod era for me, but that doesn't change this effect much.

Then you age and you start looking at the world differently, however differently, happier, sadder, optimistic, or jaded, and different songs come at you and hit you in the chest, and you think: "Wow! I can't believe I didn't used to like these parts of the album, but now they totally feel like me right now!" Well, "Auto Pilot" is one of those songs for me.

Nick Oliveri writing about drug use is not much of a surprise, especially considering pretty much all of Rated R is about drugs, and sex, and sex on drugs, but it's the emotion of this song that really floors me. It's like waking up in a car drunk and not knowing where you are and before you realize where you are you realize first that you miss her (or him) and your head lolls and then you're suddenly back in your life and there's wind in your hair and you briefly contemplate drinking more but there's nothing in the car and people are talking to you but you can't hear them because you just don't care to and when you get home you lie down on the floor for a bit but you think that's melodramatic so you crawl into bed with your pants half off and when you wake up in the morning it's like it never happened but you still make sad eyes at yourself in the mirror but that's just how it's been for at least a couple days now.

That's what this song is like.

Years ago when the BLAH BLAH BLAH started about LCD Soundsystem I turned my nose up in the air. "Dance music, you say?" I cried, while putting in my monocle and stick---one in my eye, one in my ass, never to get mixed up thankfully. "Dance music? Only unsophisticunts listen to dance music! Harrumph!"

So, that is to say, prior to This Is Happening, I never got into LCD Soundsystem. I listened to "Daft Punk Is Playing At My House" but all it sounded like to me was a repetitive beat and some guy going "Daft Punk is playing at my house... my house!" in various ways. I didn't get it, and if I listened past it I probably really didn't get it. I come to you as someone unfamiliar with LCD Soundsystem, where This Is Happening is officially my first real listen to them.

And I totally dig it.

While I went through a Bowie phase when I was seventeen, I guess my familiarity isn't very strong because I don't get the David Bowie comparisons, but then again when someone says "Bowie's Berlin triptych" I also have no fucking clue what they're talking about, so I guess I'm just unqualified to comment on that. What I will say, though, is that if you're listening to this album from the other room a couple things come to mind:

1. What year of the 80's did this come from?

2. How do the Talking Heads feel about influencing an album that has obviously time traveled?

If anything I have to give this Murphy guy a lot of credit. At work I'm hounded all day with JackFM, so I get to hear every single popular 80's song at least twice a week, and sometimes I find myself wondering what really separates 80's music from today. Synthesizers are still alive and well, though they don't dominate most music like they did back then (except in the case of Yeasayer, the only band who seems to actually want to use synthesized drums, as unfortunately as it is), so it can't be the synthesizers.

The mix, while not low-fi compared to back then, always has a certain feel to it. You can feel the 80's in certain songs that don't even use the main-stays, but even that might not really be the whole story. Then I tried to think of bands I was familiar with who really evoked the 80's, and one of the few that really does is Yeasayer. So what makes Yeasayer sound like the 80's?

The vocals. It's the 80's vocal. David Byrne, Andy Partridge, Thomas Dolby, Danny Elfman, whoever the hell is in The Human League, they all have this distinct way of singing (in the era, at least), where it sounds like their voices are rubber bands that are bouncing around the inside of the song and they're just about to snap and take out someone's eye. Maybe Bowie started it in the 70's, I don't know, but I do know this: the trick to sounding like the 80's is to sing like it. The rest falls in line.

So, LCD Soundsystem is the first band I've encountered that 100% brings the sound of the 1980's forward. The only thing missing is the shitty mix that sounds like each instrument was recorded on cassette tape. Synthesizers, sing-speak, ADHD-Gene Vincent vocals, and dance beats, it's all here, and it's pretty much totally awesome.

Also, as a side note, it's pretty significant that every song but one on this album is nearly six minutes or over six minutes, and the songs never get boring or repetitive. The song-craft on this album is pretty damn impressive if only for that reason alone. I can only dream of one day making music that sounds this awesome.

I'll be sitting in the middle of the Hollywood Bowl come October 15th seeing Sleigh Bells, Hot Chip, and LCD Soundsystem. I impulse bought the tickets yesterday after falling in love with this album. Big sigh...

Just like how a song can remind you of a period of your life long after that period's past, sometimes music can come to completely embody a person who used to be in your life. Christine Fellows is forever linked to one of my ex-girlfriends. I always saw her as epically sad, in a soft way, like a big sleepy cat---or at least that is the way she liked to project herself and I just gobbled it up, My tall, sleepy-sad cat.

When "Blueprints" comes across my iPod while I'm driving (I left all the Fellows on my iPod after we broke up in order to more easily torture myself with her memory, of course) I'm reminded of all sorts of things: how surprisingly soft her skin was, all over; how I thought it playful when she'd brush me away with disdain when I'd try to rub up on her too often; the way I felt clear-headed and complete when lying in bed with her; how inspired she made me feel to make something of myself; how deeply I wanted to climb inside her head and know what it was really like in there. (And I still remember her voice)

But I also remember the other things: how I wasn't the only guy who got to be surprised by her softness while we were together; how I later realized it wasn't playful when she'd push me away; knowing that when I was feeling complete lying next to her, she'd feel empty and self-pitying lying next to me; that she was a noose upon which she allowed me to hang myself over and over again; and how when I finally got inside her head I found out that I was relegated to the dark corners while others got to play in the light.

Of course, when I hear Christine Fellows, all those other things are pushed to my dark corners, and what I thought of as beauty gets to play in the light. I don't know what she's doing now, and I'd lie and say that I don't care and that I'm not at all curious, but of course I am. It's been two goddamn years and I'm guessing that I'm still not over it. The things I would give to hang myself on her noose again and again. I would give a lot of things.

Is this love? Is this what love is?

I read some blog post on some other blog that wasn't this one (it was scary, I tell you, venturing out there into the music blogosphere) that this song sounded like something out of the 90's and I was like, "Wait, what? The 90's? This is pretty much straight mid-1960's or..." but then I did a little Googling and I discovered that there's this Australian band named Regurgitator (a pleasant name) and that the blog was from Australia and it all became sort of clear to me.

It left me wondering how the rest of the world, the part of the world that used to receive it's music a little bit late in comparison to the rest of the world (I assume the internet has mitigated that), thinks about music history. Are people in the Netherlands of the idea that "Kids in America" didn't come out or get popular until the late 1990's? Do people in Canada currently think that N'Sync is the sickest boy band since The Backstreet Boys?

Also, really, who names a band Regurgitator? "Who's ready to be REGURGITATED!?"

This song is interesting. That's why I'm posting it. It really caught my attention because of the whole 60's girl group vibe type thing at the core of this. The rest is just frosting really, including the break down freak out after the dreamy bridge. I listened to a little bit of The Mint Chick's other stuff and wasn't exactly gripped by the throat, but I'll go back to it some other time and try it out after I tire of the novelty of this song. Oh, novelty, how you ruin me for honest music.

This is, according to iTunes and not Last.FM, the song I've listened to more than any other song. (Fact is, The National is/were one of my favorite bands and I've only ever posted one song by them, not even one I really like very much, on this website. Isn't that weird?) It seems strange to think that the first time I listened to this song was over 5 years ago.

My girlfriend at the time had just broken up with me for the first time, and after I drove to the nearest gas station to buy a pack of cigarettes---thus ending the three month period in which I quit, for her---I put on this album a couple days after it came out. I don't know how I ended up with it (aside from Arcade Fire the amount of "indie" bands that passed my ears were few and far between) but I did, and I don't think I liked it very much. I ended up spending that entire break up (and make up, and break up, make up, break up) listening to The Postal Service and Death Cab For Cutie's Transatlanticism on infinite album shuffle. I'm not too proud to admit to it.

I don't remember how long it took me after that to discover how awesome Alligator was. (According to graphs from Last.FM's data it was only a month later.) I don't think it was until my next break up that "Baby, We'll Be Fine" really hit me like a ton of bricks. I fell in love with this song and I've never been able to fall out of love with it. It describes so many emotions that I used to go through on a daily basis (and sometimes still do). I don't know what to say.

This song has carried me hundreds of miles. Even when it shouldn't have, this song gave me a sense of hope. This song has made me feel like it's OK that it's not OK and that it'll probably never be OK. This song has made me feel sad. It's made me miss the past. It's made me miss myself, or at least who I used to be before I became what I was. All in all it's done more good than bad for me, I think, and even when I listen to it now (when it no longer seems so relevant, when I no longer feel like I'm destined to be a Bukowski and hope that I'll be more of a Moody) it still touches me, makes me pleasantly nostalgic.

Misc: I didn't like The National's new album. Partly because the whole thing sounds so slow and depressing, which has never stopped me before but I suppose I'm just not in the mood, and partly because they're so damn popular now. I mean, Arcade Fire are hugely popular, but I can separate the band from their fan base. With The National, it's harder. I'm starting to feel like they're going to be Coldplay's replacements when it comes to "popular music for adult wimps". It's only a matter of time before my sister (loves Coldplay, saw them live in Paris, total yuppie) says something like, "Oh, The National... they're great," and then I'll just explode, I'll just explode!

We are irrational animals. I make no excuses.

I've been on the fence about this Menomena album for a while now. I am a huge fan of the Friend and Foe era of their work (their, you know, last era). That album is pretty much close to perfect, full of interesting songs that fill me with all sorts of cool emotions and basically forces me to sing along with them. Even the b-sides from that era (one of which I've posted here) are awesome, featuring the same general "Menomena sound".

That's what was initially upsetting about Mines, that they basically threw away their established sound. Mines sounds more like a traditional rock record---the songs here don't exactly follow verse-chorus-verse but they're more conventional all around. The instruments are given plenty of room to breathe---silence and echoes seem to be the major theme musically. Each instrument has it's own space in the mix, clear and concise, just like it used to be, but everything else just feels different.

Rocker "Taos" is the obvious entry point. Upbeat, heavy even, with a vocal and lyrics that just sound like someone is about to get totally all up in your grill. It's a great song, I almost posted it here instead of "Dirty Cartoons", and it's where you can search for a lot of Menomena-isms if you need to: little blasts of brass accenting the break (call and response with the guitar, I'm in love), the near-yelping vocal, and lyrics that sound like they're describing a way you've always felt but have never been able to articulate.

But it's "Dirty Cartoons" raw emotional wailing of "Go home... I'm trying" that really got me. This is one of those hooks that I wish I had thought of. It's so simple, a bass, a shuffling drum beat, and four words and you have full minutes of a song that is emotionally full and powerful. I like this song a lot, but I do wonder what the heck he means by, "I was misled by dirty cartoons." Misled to believe what? The only dirty cartoon I've ever seen was that one with the cat, and I don't know what you could get from that.

I guess now that I think about it, the main difference on Mines from their prior work is that it just sounds more like they have a normal drummer, and aren't just three hyperactive super inventive guys laying out crisp, interesting and dynamic drum beats. It almost sounds like they made a conscious decision to pare back the drums on this record and give the songs room to stretch their legs. As such, Mines is a more contemplative record, which goes in line with the theme of 2010 releases, it seems.

All in all, while I started off initially pretty disappointed in the quiet and almost depressing tone of this album, I've come to recognize elements of the band that I fell in love with in it. I also realize that changing their sound between records is something good bands do, and that I normally appreciate it more than this. It's only bad bands that release similar sounding albums. I guess I just didn't expect Menomena to change their tone so drastically, but I suppose it makes sense. It almost matches the mood of Danny Seim and Brent Knopf's solo projects. So, as always, YMMV.

Reading reviews of this album makes one thing clear to me: I don't know dick about the genre or genres this band technically belongs to. One review started rattling off the names of 80's artists that I don't think I've ever heard of and, man, the 80's phase I went through when I was 12 was intense. Another started going on about electro (a genre I couldn't begin to define for you if you asked me, which goes for most music genres that have a lot of 'eck' syllables in them) and other bands, and the only thing that stuck out to me there was No Age, but Battles doesn't sound like this.

Yet no one says anything about how this sounds a lot like Holy Fuck. Not a one. Except me, of course: this sounds like Holy Fuck, to me, and I like it. I think I picked it up simply because something said it was similar to Holy Fuck. It is similar. I like the band name Holy Fuck. I could just say it a lot. Holy Fuck! Good for any occasion.

Anyway, I think this song is pretty rad. The album as a whole isn't as strong as this track, but it's close enough that you can't really tell without getting into the molecular level. I also wouldn't say their songs are as entertaining as Holy Fuck's, though I can't quite place my finger on why. If I were to guess I'd say HF song's have a better sense of forward movement and stability. Errors songs sound a little like they might hit a sour note at any moment and bottom out, like a lowrider dodging speed bumps, but they always deftly avoid it and we all sigh in relief.

I don't know why I keep saying I'll do things when I should know by now the chance is that I probably won't. So instead of a week of me dissing music, you now get me slathering copious amounts of praise all over the Arcade Fire.

When I find out someone isn't familiar with the Arcade Fire, I normally preface anything by saying that they are the best "indie" band working today. I've never been to an Arcade Fire show; I've never worn one of their t-shirts, but as far as I'm concerned, as of today, they've released three pretty much flawless albums and that is truly something amazing.

The Suburbs might just be their best album yet. It's supposed to be something of a concept album, or at least that's what everyone keeps calling it, but it's not really. (At least not in the sense that there is an actual story to it, like The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, but maybe in the sense that there is a central conceit to the album. Perhaps it's a "conceit album".) It's more a collection of songs united by the anxiety that growing up middle class in the suburbs can do to you. It's also about hating the people who live there, now.

That's probably part of what I like about The Suburbs, that it deals with topics that I'm already concerned with. The whole album is soaked in anxiety, a perpetual dread that it's too late to cure ourselves and that we've wasted our time in the modern world when we could have been doing something... something... what? Something more wholesome? It's hard to know, because we wasted it, and we don't get that chance again.

The other emotional side of the record is Win Butler's apparent anger over the "fan" reaction to Neon Bible, or just the general hipster fanbase in general. "Rococo" (this song), and "Month of May" are pretty much blatant condemnations of the pretentious teens to twenty-somethings who all stand at their shows with their arms folded tight. Listening to Win in this NPR interview from April he makes a sarcastic comment about how nothing on The Suburbs lives up to "Tunnels", totally betraying how wounded he probably is over how so many people trashed Neon Bible. A review I read said they couldn't like The Suburbs because Win spends so much time "flipping everyone off". Well, as far as I'm concerned, it's his right, and anger makes for good music.

But most of all, The Suburbs is just a beautiful album. It's a little down in the dumps, emotionally, which is just great for me right now because I'm pretty much way down in the dumps, but that doesn't take away from the intensity or power of the record. I pretty much love it.

Vinyl vs. CD

The version of Rococo I'm posting here is from the vinyl release of the album. It's worth nothing that the CD version and the vinyl differ in track listing, that difference being that "Suburban War" appears at the end of the vinyl edition while the CD edition ends with "Sprawl II". This change subtly affects the entire record. The CD version has a distinct (I think) two parter feel, with "Suburban War" closing the first half and "Month of May" opening the second half. I listened to the album 10 times this way before moving onto the vinyl. The vinyl feels more straight through, with a slight lull in the middle, and the end feels significantly more contemplative.

"Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)" is worth discussing all by itself. In that NPR interview I linked to above, Win or Will say that this album contains "the best Regine track ever" and they are so correct. I would post Mountains Beyond Mountains but unfortunately someone posted it on Hype Machine just yesterday and I don't want to be like that. Besides, MBM is such a good song that posting it is basically ruining the end of the album for you, which is so epic I feel kind of like it really would be a dramatic spoiler.

The way Mountains Beyond Mountains sculpts the end of the album on the CD in contrast to the vinyl is pretty dramatic. The Suburbs isn't necessarily an easy listening experience (two songs made me want to cry the first couple of times I heard them) but MBM puts a uplifting spin on the whole experience. It actually sounds kind of like there's a weird form of hope found in losing all hope by the end. It's just a beautiful, powerful song and it raises the whole album to an even higher level.

The vinyl loses this kick at the end. The song is still great, but by being followed by "Suburban War" takes a lot of the hope out of the album, and the closing "The Suburbs (Continued)" sucks even more out of it. As a whole the vinyl just seems to be a quieter record (due to the better mix).

If you want me to pick which one you should listen to first, I'm not sure. I think the CD is paced better, and an uplifting ending is better than a tranquil one. Fall in love with the CD, like I did, and then move onto the vinyl?

I decided last night that instead of writing five posts every day this week about how much I love the new Arcade Fire and potentially embarrassing myself I'd do something uncharacteristic and spend this whole week covering music I don't "get". I don't do a lot of criticism on here (unless Mike Doughty is involved) so this'll be a change of pace.

The reverb-soaked lazy surf rock thing that has been going around, I have not been able to get myself into. I enjoy Beach Fossils, and have covered them here, but they sound like the least retarded bunch---like underneath all that unnecessary reverb there are actual songs that are good---so I give them a pass and, still, deep down, they kind of bug me.

A lot of people are wanking themselves hard over Best Coast, even Pitchfork has bestowed them with their "Best New Music" moniker, but I just find myself scratching my head. When I listen to a song like this a number of things come to mind. I'll put it on right now and say what comes to mind, right now.

1.) There's nothing I love more than guitars that sound like mush. (I'm being sarcastic. I love a lot of things more than mushy guitars, like going to the dentist or making clichéd comments about how I like things less than going to the dentist.) Right now in my room back home my only electric guitar, from about eleven years ago, sits unused in the corner because I'm too cheap to buy an amp. The only sound this guitar will make through my existing amp is something like the guitar on this song, where you can't really be sure if you're playing something that sounds nifty on purpose or if just the static drowning it out makes everything sound cool. I wonder if she's playing actual chords in this song. Probably doesn't have to really.

2.) Ugh, how embarrassing for her. I feel like I've just wandered into the back patio area of a small art gallery and there's someone on a little stage reading poetry. Worse than that, it's a fat girl, and she's wearing a Smiths t-shirt. (Admittedly Best Coast has this going for them: she's a cute girl, and doesn't match the gross patheticness of her songwriting, including, of course, "I wish my cat could talk," which I don't find offensive, it's just part of the character I suppose. Why anyone would want to go on stage and sing lyrics from the perspective of the fat girl Morrissey is pretending to be in "How Soon Is Now" is beyond me, but whatever. I'm not Best Coast. You can't expect me to know.)

3.) So is the hook really supposed to be the annoying valley-girl way she raises the last syllable of "boyfriend"? "I wish he was my boyffrrriiIEENNNNDDD" is not a hook. That's a headache.

4.) Where the fuck is Giant Drag in all of this? Giant Drag has been doing the "girl with a guitar singing raw lyrics and a boy dummer" thing for, like, ever now, and you're telling me all they had to do to launch into indie stardom was soak everything in reverb and tap a little tired surf rock formula over their heads and boom! we'd have been seeing Giant Drag marked as "Best New Music"? Is that really what is happening here? Are you listening Giant Drag? Ditch the grunge, get with the Smiths-tinged surf rock! Get with it! That can be the name of your next album.

5.) I just really get the feeling that if you stripped all the effects pedals off of Best Coast you'd be left with something no one would really want to listen to. I'm not really sure how you're supposed to want to listen to this now, with them. I don't hear any hooks (not any good ones, anyway) or anything that makes me think, "Wow! I wish I had thought of this!" which is how I know when music is good. If I had thought of this, I know that I would wish I hadn't.

6.) Usually when I come out against something I find myself, months later, totally in love with it. I wonder if that will happen here. If it does, I am going to be embarrassed for myself right now, because I'm sure I'll drive down the street and I'll have this damn song turned up to 40 and I won't realize people are looking at me going, "Does he really have 'I wish he was my boyfriIIIEEENNNDDDD' blasting out of his car? Oh, he is driving a Prius. What a poof." Ugh, how embarrassing for me. I hope it doesn't happen this way.