The new Octopus Project album is sublime. I'm just going to turn this into a habit where I blow my critical load right at the start of the post, so those of you who just want to know whether or not an album is good or not can just skip everything else I say here. To be honest, when it comes to this album, I don't have much to say outside of the fact that it is sublime.
Most of this album sounds a bit like this song. Some parts are dreamier, less Deacon-y, but every song is great through and through.
Hexadecagon originally came into this world as an 8-channel audio, 8-projector video live act that they performed outside a Whole Foods at SXSW this year. They set up the eight speakers circling the audience, with the audience circling the band at the center. Doesn't that sound crazy? Crazy awesome? Just imagine this song swirling around you. It'd be like being high without the being high part.
They're playing locally here in Los Angeles at The Echoplex on the 23rd. I'll be there. I don't know whether or not they're going to do the 8-channel/video version of Hexadecagon, but I can be hopeful. Knowing the Echoplex, though, I don't think the size of the venue (and the amount and arrangement of support columns) would be suitable for that kind of arrangement.
This new Sufjan Stevens album is terrible. I didn't want to start this review just saying it outright like that, but I can't help it. If you're a fan of it, for some unknown reason I will never be able to understand, you can safely stop reading now, because I'm not going to be very kind.
When I'm attempting to make music in iSequence for iPad, or in Ableton, or in any form at all, I tend to stay pretty in tune to what sounds appropriate. If I make something that sounds too busy, or has too many sour notes in it, I tend to erase it and start over. If something sounds so bad that it might be entirely broken through and through, I blank the entire slate and start the song anew.
It sounds like Sufjan Stevens didn't care to delete anything he did on this album. Songs that start off pretty ("Too Much") descend into glitchy, poorly programmed and poorly thought-out electronic sections that seem to serve no purpose at all. The title track, "Age of Adz", featured here, starts you off on the precipice of annoyance and then pulls back---"Wait," you think aloud. "Is this song actually going to be pretty all the way through?"
No. It's not. "Age of Adz" quickly descends into what I'll not-so-lovingly call the "flute trill freak out", where we're treated to an electronic influenced psychedelic breakdown composed almost solely of repetitive, endless, up and down flute trills. And why? For what reason? Does it sound good? I don't think so. Does it mean anything? Not really. It's just noise to me, and I find that myself and anyone else listening to the album around me wants desperately to skip through it.
The whole album is like this. It sounds like Sufjan created an album of genuinely good and pretty music---I'm being very polite by ignoring the song that's composed almost solely of the lyric "You gotta get good, get right with the Lord" which would normally inspire me to go off on a three paragraph tangent about how people who blindly devote themselves to religion are morons and I have a hard time respecting them in the first place but then they make horrible albums and it just makes it even worse---but then decided, "You know what? Let's make this all really ugly. Let's do it. I'm just going to click on a bunch of random notes in Ableton or Pro-Tools right now. Let's see what happens. Oh, this sounds simply terrible... how divine!"
During my second listen (my first listen lasted up until "Age of Adz", at which point I got a headache and turned it off---I swear I am not exaggerating, I literally got a headache) by the time I got to track eight, "Vesuvius", I was relieved. Here's a pretty song that isn't overwhelmed by glitches and unnecessary electronic beats. It actually feels restrained, on an album that lacks any restraint at all, but it doesn't last. After about three minutes (of people chanting "Sufjan, follow the path!") the electronics come in and basically ruin it, but then it's made even worse 45 seconds later when his choir of high school kids (or whoever they are) start singing like their voices are slowly detuning themselves...
And at that point I'm just left scratching my head.
Why would someone do this?
Why would no one tell Sufjan Stevens that he was making something that sounded bad? Is that the joy of indie music, that you can safely hang yourself and your label will tell you that it's A-OK? Did too many people get wrapped up in the myth of Sufjan Stevens being a musical genius? Was the pressure of creating a suitable follow up to Illinois just too much for Sufjan? Did he pray to his Lord and then his Lord told him, "Make really bad music, then no one will expect anything from you ever again and you can go back to comfortably making music without all that critical pressure weighing you down?"
I wanted to like this album. Despite how I feel these days about Illinois (namely that it's overwrought, self-indulgent, and my memories of my friends holding mini-"listening parties" to listen to "Casimir Pulaski Day" just to agonize over how sad that song is---despite the fact that none of them could possibly relate to it---just heightened the over-self-indulgence of the whole record), I was hoping upon hearing that this album was "heavily electronic" that a new (or a return to a) direction would be the thing I need to restore my former love of Sufjan Stevens.
But, no. This album is an awful mess. I keep reading the opinions of people who love it (they say things like "I am willing to sit through the parts of this album that are terrible for the parts that are pretty") and I just have to shake my head. Are these people merely "true believers", willing to drink the Sufjan kool-aid and follow him into the great Lord-filled beyond? Or are my ears just configured wrong? Is there actual music somewhere on this album, buried under all the glitch and hyperactive yet totally stiff and unnatural beat programming?
If there is, I can't hear it. After three listens, I'm not going to try again.
I wrote about a page of stuff about how men need to treat their women better, but it sounded kind of blah. It's what I have on my mind though.
Being a man is hard work. You'd think that falling in love with a woman would make you man up even more. "I've got a woman now, I better be a good man to her because I want to hold onto her," but more often than not this doesn't seem to be the case.
I feel like I'm surrounded by men who act like their women should be grateful that they even have a man in their lives. This seems to turn the men into self-centered aggrandizing disrespectful and condescending little cunts.
My neighbor talks to his wife like she's a piece of trash. The only times he says her name, he sounds like he's talking to a dog who just took a shit he stepped in. When she tells him she understands something, he responds with sarcastic skepticism. He doesn't even talk to his dog that way. When he says his dog's name, his voice is soft and kind, even a little happy. When he talks to his wife it sounds like he's ordering a incompetent slave around.
There's a couple I follow on Twitter, and it seems like once or twice a week there's a tweet coming out of the female half about how her boyfriend has decided that he's been slighted in some way. Yesterday it was because her brother needed help with something, and it was making her late to a dinner date. Not only did he whine about this on Twitter by calling it "rude", but he also crossed the line further by repeatedly saying "nigga should hurry up" in regards to her brother.
Here's a break down, guys, since a few of you don't seem to get it.
If you have a girlfriend or a wife, you should be thankful you even have one. Some of you, with your acne scars, your oddly effeminate stature, and your apparent obliviousness to the fact that capris are something Mary Tyler Moore wears and not something men wear, should be especially grateful that you're not dating some gigantic wart covered fatty like you probably would be if there was any justice in the world.
You should hold onto this thankfulness, this gratefulness, and let it carry your through every situation you encounter. "My girlfriend is going to be late for dinner! ...oh well, at least I have a pretty girlfriend, and we'll get to eat dinner eventually, so who cares. I mean, if I love this girl and want to spend my life with her, I guess I can tolerate this 1 hour of waiting without turning into a bitchy little child throwing a tantrum on the internet."
Secondly, family is pretty important to women, especially Mexican women, and you're a fucking retard if you ever think you will be more important. This took me some time to learn, personally, because I'm full white (think "full retard") so I don't even really know my family, and when it comes to prioritizing I'm pretty sure "family" falls somewhere below "crustaceans" on my list of things I give a shit about. But women love family. They're all about it.
It makes sense when you think about it. I mean, family has always been there. If your girlfriend is in her 20s, that's 20 goddamn years that her family has been in her life. How long have you been in her life? A year or two? How could you ever possibly imagine that you could be more important than her family? Maybe after you've been married to her for 20 years, and you become her family, then you can feel like you're near-equally important, but you'll never be her blood, and you have to be respectful of that.
To carry that onward, a man never has any right to talk shit on his woman's family. You can, sure, but unless you're actually justified and do it in a calm non-insulting manner, you're just going to look like a dumb asshole. There are no exceptions to this rule. Even if her grandfather punches you in the face, you need to apologize to her grandfather for getting your face in the way of his fist. Or, if you're one of the guys I'm talking about, you should thank her grandfather for even wasting his time punching you because you clearly don't deserve the attention.
Now, women, if there are women reading this, you're also to blame for this. You need to stop tolerating this kind of bullshit. You're the victim of your boyfriend's spineless, bitchy rage. You need to act like it... and I don't just mean by playing the sad victim, you need to get pissed off. You need to recognize that your man is disrespecting you by putting his feelings and needs first, ahead of yours.
When he stamps his feet like a child (verbally or physically), you need to stamp yours right back. If your boyfriend has the nerve to abandon you and disappear for the night, you need to do the same thing right back to him. If he says you're being rude, you need to tell him that he is the one being rude.
When you love someone you should strive to be the ideal for them. We can't be the ideal perfectly, of course, but we can try really hard. Us men, especially those of us who have been hurt in the past by women, can have a lot of emotional baggage that we carry around with us. When you fall in love, you need to put that shit down, and if you feel the weight of it creeping up your back, you have to fight it. You have to fight it hard.
I have a lot of anxiety and paranoia issues. I get antsy when I don't hear from my girlfriend for a while. I worry: "Oh no, is she tired of me? Is she making out with some other dude? Did she die horribly in a car accident?" But then I grab a hold of myself and I think: "Oh, you're silly, you silly silly boy. Your girlfriend loves you and she'd never cheat on you or die in a car accident without letting you know first." Even that isn't really enough, though, and I still have to vent either to friends or on Twitter... but I always acknowledge that my emotional problems are not her problem and I try very hard to not make her feel bad when I make myself feel bad.
You can get upset all you want, but a man keeps it on the inside. A man keeps his cooler head, and gets upset when it's really warranted. A man doesn't just explode with bitchy rage every time something doesn't go exactly his way. A man recognizes that he is lucky to be experiencing the love of a woman; motivated by how grateful he is for that, he strives to be an even better man for her.
But I guess some boys just want to be little boys. They want to act like spoiled children, yelling at their girlfriends like they are broken toys. These boys don't recognize that they're the broken ones. All those problems that seem so real in their heads are actually the machinations of their own personal anxieties, and they have absolutely nothing to do with their girlfriends. These boys will ultimately end up alone, sitting somewhere in their Mary Tyler Moores, completely oblivious to how they dismantled their relationship by acting like bitchy little girls.
Real men will search the whole wide world for the woman they love, and when they find her, they'll battle the whole wide world---even if it's just in their heads---to treat her right and hold onto her. It might be an ideal, but it's an ideal worth striving for.
Be a man to the woman in your life. It's an honor and privilege to even get the chance.