Review: Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts I-IV (physical disc release)

by Kevin Eagan

I have to be honest, it came as a big shock to me when I first read that Nine Inch Nails would be leaving Interscope records, opting instead to release their albums independently. Don't get me wrong, Nine Inch Nails has always been a band willing to try new things and branch out into new experiments, but they never struck me as the type of band that would leave behind the marketing machine.

Trent Reznor's creative energy has defined the so-called industrial sounds of 1990s metal. At the same time, his marketing genius (yes, it still exists in music today) created a brand that goes beyond the music. From NIN's popular symbol to the concept of halo (a system that numbers each NIN album that's before its time, the halo series of computer games seeming oddly reminiscent), Reznor's marketing abilities and the label that supported it was a rare breed.

However, Reznor's frustration with his label had nothing to do with the past or his wild success throughout the '90s, it had to do with his rejection of a broken system, a cause many musicians have taken up with the same fury Reznor has displayed. 2007 was the year that many artists sought independence, leaving the major labels wallowing in their own incompetence. Music historians will look back at Reznor's decision as part of a major turning point in the record industry, seen as a time when musicians were taking control and the indie market thrived like never before as a result.

So I won't go over it again or continue the comparisons between Reznor's decision and Radiohead's or any other bands or musicians. The fact is that Nine Inch Nails - the brand, the artistry, and the artist himself - is now free to do whatever it wants in more ways than it ever has nearly twenty years after it broke through with 1989's wildly successful and artistically revolutionary Pretty Hate Machine. Reznor does so with his most ambitious project yet, Ghosts I-IV, an experiment in instrumentation and soundscape that isn't weighed down by political messages or philosophical debates, but is instead out there for the listener to do with it what he or she pleases.

Revolving around four movements, Ghosts I-IV takes all of the electronic noise of 1999's The Fragile and 2007's Year Zero and throws it all together in a random mix; Reznor swears there's no overall theme to Ghosts, but there is plenty of musical beauty that replicates the arid deserts and the fluid oceans in one long breath.

Within Reznor's lengthy and expansive soundscape are some moments of pure bliss, the moments where listeners of NPR's World Cafe can hold hands in unity with the tattooed punks that once defined Reznor's marketability. Ghosts begins with a sublime piano played so quietly that you can hear Reznor's feet shift on the open pedals, and even though the riff he plays sounds oddly familiar, it's haunting enough that it brings you in and keeps you hooked. Electronic choirs hum around the piano as Reznor reveals what haunts him at night, and we're left feeling the presence of something not of this world.

From there, Ghosts starts to sound a bit too familiar, and by the end of its first movement it feels more like the leftover instrumental samples from 2007's Year Zero. Reznor ends this movement with the distorted guitars of his past, excoriating the "ghosts" of his heyday to come back down into the piano and electronic noise of beauty that has solidified his standing as a mature and welcoming musician.

However, by the third and fourth movements of Ghosts, Reznor has you convinced that something has changed, that artistic experimentation is possible without the controlling force of a major label. At the same time, Ghosts doesn't forget the structures and sounds that made NIN what it is today, and Reznor's experiment won't alienate the majority of his fans. If anything, he's brought in new fans, since many listeners now see Nine Inch Nails as an important part of rock music's changing face instead of a flash in the pan.

By the second disc (movements III and IV), the remaining tropes and figures that have defined this record come to the forefront, and even with the masking of industrial noise, a positivity takes over the music. It's as if the listener has finally made it over the arid wasteland to discover an oasis of life, and Reznor is ready to give them something in return. As movement III transitions into IV, the band takes on a fully fledged distortion of sound with beautiful melody, and as IV begins, everything seems to come together and it's no longer about pitting disparate noises against each other, it's about finding some type of coherence in the soundscape, some type of beauty that transcends the sound itself.

Through a completely instrumental experiment, Ghosts I-IV has fully solidified Reznor's standing as a musical pioneer of our time. Even as he sometimes falls into his own bubble of marketing, Reznor has shown that it's all about the music and less about the fans' tastes. Those who have wanted something new from this band should take note: Ghosts I-IV signals that Nine Inch Nails is not interested in the hype, but rather the substance of independent music, and it's willing to yell "fuck you" to the establishment - not because it sounds cool, but because it's necessary. With that, I hope Ghosts I-IV continues the expansive creativity Nine Inch Nails has pioneered over the years, and I look forward to hearing whatever they provide in the future.

Mix Bag #3: Real Change in the Air, Ghosts Among Pyramids, and a Fictional Rock Bio

Mix Bag is a regular feature that brings together a random collection of media and highlights why it all matters to you.

I can't begin this week's Mix Bag without mentioning a very important and historic moment in American history: the Democratic party electing the first African-American presidential candidate. It's not only significant because of its symbolism -- after all, we've struggled for generations in America to transcend racial boundaries -- but it's also significant because of the candidate itself. When Barack Obama started his campaign, most people said he didn't have a chance. Party insiders favored Hillary Clinton, and the other candidates could never break through to the American peoples hearts (or wallets). While Clinton's campaign operated as the presumptive front runner and controlled the candidate in a robotic, corporate PR bubble, Obama gained the trust of voters in Iowa, and from there, Clinton was in trouble. Knowing that Obama was the popular candidate, the Clinton people scrambled to put together ways to discredit him, often in very negative and divisive ways.

By the time Obama wrapped up the nomination, the damage had been done among many of Clinton's core demographics, especially white women, who have been so adamantly opposed to Obama because of perceived misogyny and his lack of connection with working class people. Of course, the Clinton camp was all too eager to play up these perceived biases, and it helped divide the party up among differing demographics.

But among young Americans, Barack Obama was their candidate. Obama had difficulties winning among older whites, especially blue collar workers and those over 40. However, the enthusiasm among young Americans suggests that we are finally emerging from the past battles over civil rights into a post-racial America, an America that can't remember a time when race actually mattered but instead judge a person by their character, not the color of their skin. I will not for a minute sit here and naively pretend that America no longer suffers from racism; indeed, the racial wounds are still fresh, but for many Americans who grew up in an integrated society, race is not the determining factor. Barack Obama is the candidate who is prepared to bring America out of its racist past and into a new century that respects people for who they choose to be, not what they look like.

This is especially important for how America is perceived around the world, and thanks to the Bush administration, we are perceived as aggressors who have no decency or respect for the true rule of law and wage unnecessary wars under the guise of freedom. Barack Obama represents an America that is open and forthright, and an America that is inclusive and respectful, not brash and arrogant. I often read The Huffington Post for my political information, and for a perspective on how the world perceives an Obama administration, read this article, which suggests the world is ready for real change.

Also, Clinton's run for the White House was one full of many missteps and outright hypocrisy (i.e. Michigan and Florida), and to be honest, Bill owes her big time. Much has been said about her poorly managed campaign and mounting debt, and CNN currently has an article up explaining what Clinton should do next.

At this point, I'm willing to throw in my support for Barack Obama, because I see him as our only hope to reinvigorate America's standing in the world. On the other hand, McCain represents more of the same and plans to keep our disrespectful policies intact. Culturally, Obama represents the future of America; young Americans are energized and ready for a civilized discourse about our future.

With all of that politics behind us, let's look at what's going on in music and literature right now. I'm not really sure where to begin, considering we've missed out on a lot since our last Mix Bag (yeah, sorry about that). However, there's plenty going on right now, especially in the world of music. Taking on the cacophony of sound and turning it into art, the Pyramids' latest self-titled album has given me a new perspective on how beautiful sound can be found underneath lots of loud noises. The album takes a lot of the traditions of death metal and combines it with the electronic experimentation that's revived the modern indie underground. They even take on the presidential election in their chaotic song "Hillary."

Equally, Nine Inch Nails has come off their wildly successful break from Interscope Records with Ghosts I-IV, an excellent denouement from the fairly standard NIN styles of Year Zero. Ever since Reznor branched out on The Fragile, he's consistently shown that he's more than another bonehead Marilyn Manson-esque industrial rocker, and Ghosts I-IV is the perfect example of this. At times, the album seems pastoral and reflective, and at other times, anarchic and unpredictable. It's definitely worth purchasing or downloading, and we'll have a review of it up here soon.

In the literary world, I'm currently enjoying Andrew Foster Altschul's Lady Lazarus. Following in the footsteps of many 20th Century authors, Altschul has crafted an ironic account of a fictional rock star's daughter/poet Calliope Bird Morath, and makes use of all sorts of pieces of pop culture and literary history to keep it all together. It's an excellent novel, one that is both a convincing satire of rock biographies and a heartfelt story; you feel connected to the characters in a similar way to how fans get connected to their rock idols.

Well, that's it for now. Of course, we can continue this conversation in the comments section if you're interested...

Review: Radiohead concert in St. Louis (5.14.08)

by Matthew Ryan




Before it even got off the ground, it was obvious that the show was to be taken seriously. On the left side of the stage were rows of banks of crates, arranged in store-esque aisles. One of these crates bore the spray-stenciled name: RADIOHEAD. An arsenal of 20-ish guitars lined one of the aisles, ready for battle. Wires stuck out of metal crates like a network of nerves from a DaVinci anatomical sketch. From a light platform suspended above the crowd, rope ladders came down. Three stagehands climbed to the top of the platform and sat in customized seats, manning lights, pointing cameras, setting the trajectory of laser beams and whatever alien technology Radiohead was about to throw at the crowd. Yes, they meant business.

When it came time, the musicians, sans Yorke, came on and took positions in short order. The crowd -- a mix of pimply high schoolers, highbrow college nerds, polo shirt-clad frat boys, girls in towering high heels and dangling dresses, folks with mortgages and kids -- examples of every kind of live, breathing people -- started hollering in a way that couldn’t be one-upped, until Yorke finally came on stage, then it reached a new kind of loud.

Yorke came on, a bit like a nobody and a bit like an alien. He wandered back and forth at first, hands in pockets, occasionally looking at the ground, perhaps waiting for a train at a station. Or maybe he was waiting for the mother ship. He looked a bit tickled as he examined his St. Louis audience, as any average human being looks at another human being doing something odd, or maybe it was the look that an extraterrestrial observer gives when examining the human race.

This was all very strange, yes, but strange for both parties. The crowds didn’t seem to make sense of it either. Here was the band they’ve rocked-out to, toked up to, screwed and had babies to, a band built into a Beowulf-like mythological construct (Did you hear these guys didn’t even charge for the last album? No way! I heard he’s got an actual radio stuck in his head that receives all sorts of interstellar frequencies? Whoa, freaky!). Considering the hype, perhaps it was a band that wasn’t supposed to exist at all. Yet Yorke cometh, and was putzing around on a stage before all. On top of that, you could see his maligned eye from a camera feed as it shone on a display in the back of the stage. And this bassist fellow had an oddly-shaped nose and an eye that looked punched-in. And then there was Jonny Greenwood, with his bony face. What was going on? The crowd went with the flow. Beeps and boops trickled in the background and the evening began with “All I Need.”

Yorke talked after the second song, “Jigsaw Falling Into Place,” something about smelling donuts??? And how anybody could eat donuts at a time like this??? And now donut sales would dive??? He was talking about the smell of Elephant Ears stands, but it was barely intelligible through his British accent.

In quick succession, Radiohead played song after song from the catalog (but conspicuously nothing from Pablo Honey and only one from The Bends), not wasting any time in-between. Light effects came into full bloom, with LED tubes that hung from the rafters like neon streamers. One song they’d twinkle like ice crystals, flash like lightning and flow like rain, and the next they’d glow purple and otherworldly. Green washed down the length of the tubes like goo flowing from the sky, all very high-end and hypnotic. This was the backdrop that Yorke spazzed out to, head jerking, mouth moaning, arms and hands snaking along like he was embracing a first-time acid trip. The crowd fell in line and clapped to his beat.


Tricks were en masse. For “You and Whose Army,” Yorke made use of a piano rigged with a camera, which made for an extreme close-up blasted on the massive screen at the back of the stage. In Crayola green, the audience witnessed Yorke get closer and closer to the camera, until a massive Yorke eye took up the entire screen. Backing off the camera, his face then became distorted in the screen with a fish-eye effect, before being multiplied over and over.

For “There, There,” he ran around on stage with drumsticks as the crew plopped a small drum set in front of the mike. After sitting down, Yorke said “I wonder what this thing does.”

In his second and final address to the crowd, Yorke told of a song from Amnesiac that was “lost sight of.”

“It seems very pertinent now,” he said, the “P” popping through the sound system, and played “Optimistic.”

A little over an hour of songs rapid-fire and the band rushed off. But the house lights stayed off and stagehands still ran around, preparing for who knows what. It didn’t fool any of the crowd, not for a second, so some went ahead and shouted encouragements while others sat and waited for the inevitable encore, which came in about two minutes. As the band came back, they waved and clapped. Colin Greenwood smiled big, and Yorke looked at the ground and scratched his head. They knew we knew it was all for show. There may have even been a bit of an ashamed blush on Yorke’s cheeks. He thanked the crowd and took up an acoustic, at which point the amphitheater became quiet and attentive, and “Exit Music” flowed through the PA. Little flames began cropping up in the crowd up front, people flicked on lighters. From under the stage covering, the stars couldn’t be seen, but when people in the lawn seats held up lighters, it created an eerie similarity.

When the five-song encore came to an end, Radiohead left as quickly as they did after the first set, but stagehands were still messing around with equipment, so the shenanigans were busted again. It was apparent to the audience that a second encore was inevitable, so with further encouragement, the band came out for another round. Three songs resulted (the double-encore was repeated at other concerts on the same tour), and in one last splurge of energy, going out supernova-style, the band hit the crowd with a green and purple light-strobing, video screen pixilating, uber freakout to “Paranoid Android.”

After that, it was done. Honest.




Setlist:

FIRST SET
------------
All I Need - (In Rainbows)
Jigsaw Falling Into Place - (In Rainbows)
Airbag - (Ok Computer)
15 Step - (In Rainbows)
Nude - (In Rainbows)
Kid A - (Kid A)
Weird Fishes/Arpeggi - (In Rainbows)
The Gloaming - (Hail to the Thief)
You and Whose Army? - (Amnesiac)
Idioteque - (Kid A)
Faust Arp - (In Rainbows)
Videotape - (In Rainbows)
Everything in Its Right Place - (Kid A)
Reckoner - (In Rainbows)
Optimistic - (Kid A)
Bangers + Mash - (In Rainbows)
Bodysnatchers - (In Rainbows)

FIRST ENCORE
-------
Exit Music (for a film) - (OK Computer)
Myxomatosis - (Hail to the Thief)
My Iron Lung - (The Bends)
There There - (Hail to the Thief)
Fake Plastic Trees - (The Bends)

SECOND ENCORE
-------
Pyramid Song - (Amnesiac)
House of Cards - (In Rainbows)
Paranoid Android - (OK Computer)

Review: Shy Child - Noise Won't Stop

by Kevin Eagan

The indie underground has always thrived upon borrowing from the past to create something new, discovering new styles that can't be easily defined and have not yet been exploited by the mainstream. In music, as well as in art, indie artists try to reject modern approaches by tearing apart the sounds and actions that make up the current pop culture.

It's an approach that is not new by any means. In fact, it's an approach that sparked the high modernism of early 20th-century art when Ezra Pound so famously urged artists to "make it new," sparking a revolution of new approaches that may seem tame now, but caused riots at the time (see Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring for an example of the power of the new).

Modern indie musicians continue to revolutionize sound, and even as they become a part of the mainstream, many of them continue to try new things. Beck's 2005 EP GameBoy Variations is a great example. By re-mixing some of his most recent hits using a Nintendo Game Boy, Beck connected his music to the sounds of an emerging generation while taking a completely new approach to his songs.

It's with this concept of modern indie music that I approached Shy Child's latest LP Noise Won't Stop, an album that takes the electronic noises of the modern world (cell phone beeps, game consoles, MacBooks, whatever) and mixes it all into some beautifully composed songs. At the same time, Shy Child borrows heavily from 1980s pop and modern dance music to create something oddly familiar, yet far out in space.

Noise Won't Stop begins with "Drop The Phone," a song chocked full of beeps, buzzes, and dial tones. Using synth noises on top of a driving drum beat, singer Pete Cafarella adds in situational lyrics to accentuate the cell phone theme: "Then I just lost the signal / the signal's gone." It's a powerful start, but there are better moments on this album.

The album continues with "Pressure to Come," a song more in tune with modern dance and electronica than anything from the past. Drummer Nate Smith adds some complex drumming on top of sirens and Cafarella's keytar riffs. On "The Volume," the electronica takes on a more vintage tone, and Smith uses a drum machine to keep with the '80s mood. While "The Volume" has a straightforward sound, the syncopation is complicated, and Cafarella's vocals summarize the band's lifestyle: "The volume's turned up too loud, but we don't cover our ears / Because they're already numb, from damage already done." Indeed, Noise Won't Stop is an album designed to be enjoyed at high volume.

Noise Won't Stop takes a turn with "Generation Y," a song that nods to the generation that will make or break the band. Cafarella makes generational distinctions that suggest the changes ahead, and since "change" has been the buzzword of the year, it seems to be something Shy Child embrace as well; while the band declares "We got it, we got it," Cafarella sings "Generation Y can't get things off their mind / Generation X can't get things off their chest." And in "Murder Capital," Cafarella waxes political, singing "Everybody is looking over themselves...Selling things to get the means to get what they want," a telling sign that Shy Child's music has more depth than the music alone can suggest.

Yet the music on Noise Won't Stop is still highly successful, and it's packed full of beautifully synthesized orchestration. On title track "Noise Won't Stop," the band creates a beautiful new anthem for us Pitchfork readin' Millennials, and on "Summer," the band bangs out some beautiful poetry that contrasts a carefree lifestyle with a Lennon-esque "war is over": "Just in time for summer / And the war is over and the fighting overseas / Teenage sex and yoga, marijuana, I can hardly breathe / Underground communities are overflowing with possibilities."

Without a doubt, Shy Child are a band that's attuned to the here and now, and express the hope for the future that so many feel is just around the corner. At the same time, Shy Child operate on the cusp of the indie underground, creating some new and experimental sounds while borrowing heavily from the past. At a time when the indie underground is truly thriving, Shy Child certainly aren't cramping anyone's style, and Noise Won't Stop is a great example of what can be done when artists choose to "make it new."

Originally Posted on Blogcritics.org

Review: Magnetic Morning - Magnetic Morning EP

by Kevin Eagan

Out of all the critically successful new albums coming out this year, a theme seems to be emerging: many of the best albums have come from side projects and supergroups. From The Gutter Twins' Saturnalia and The Raconteurs' Consolers of the Lonely to Destroyer's Trouble in Dreams, the supergroups and solo projects have reigned supreme, and there appears to be many more of these albums to come.

Magnetic Morning have come along to add to the ranks with their self-titled EP, released in conjunction with Record Store Day to show their support--and roots within--the indie underground. The group consists of guitarist Adam Franklin of Swervedriver and drummer Sam Fogarino of Interpol, and although the short Magnetic Morning EP only gives listeners a taste of things to come, the EP boasts some beautifully lush, ambient compositions.

Magnetic Morning starts off with "Cold War Kids," an atmospheric and layered song that loops around situational lyrics ("You and me / Cold War kids"). "Cold War Kids" starts an album that will verge on the edge of experimentation, but won't quite get there; if anything, Magnetic Morning are too subdued for a band that slabs on the reverb and noise. Nevertheless, "Cold War Kids" is a great beginning, and hearkens back to a time when slow and methodical meant dreamy and beautiful. I suppose we can thank the Swervedriver influence for that, because there's certainly a shoegaze ambience to this album that is not afraid to borrow from the past.

The EP continues with "Yesterday's Flowers," a bombastic song with reverberating piano chords, pounding drums, and Franklin's lazy-yet-conscious vocals. "Yesterday's Flowers" is spacy, but still seems grounded; although the piano parts float around in the background and barely hold the song together, the drums and acoustic guitar riffs come to the forefront and take over.

"The Way Love Used To Be" is a tight and accessible Kinks cover that the band revisits in an exciting way. The guitars and percussion take over the dreary backdrop of reverb, and Franklin sings "I know a place where we'll be alone / And we'll talk of life / The way love used to be," suggesting a postivity that puts the ambient noise in a completely different context. "The Way Love Used To Be" is certainly the EP's strongest song, giving the band a potential single and a worthy addition to a future full-length release.

On the rest of the short EP, the songs aren't nearly as tight and accessible as "Yesterday's Flowers" or "The Way Love Used To Be." On "Don't Go to Dream State," Franklin's vocals get drowned out by the strings and sliding guitars, and Fogarino's drums are powerful but overwhelming. "Don't Go to Dream State" shows a band so enamored in noise and experimental studio excess that they ignore the basic elements of a potentially good song, and the listener is left trying to make sense of it all. The rest of the album tapers off in this way and doesn't offer anything new, only two pointless remixes of "Cold War Kids" that fall short.

Although the album has been available via iTunes for a couple months (it was originally named The Setting Suns EP before the band changed their name), the Magnetic Morning EP is now available on CD at your local record store. It's still available via iTunes as well, but as far as I can tell, it's not available via Amazon or any other online stores yet (they must not like this Record Store Day celebration too much, I guess). Despite its shortcomings, the Magnetic Morning EP is still a nice little sample of this side project's musical capabilities, and hopefully we'll see a full length LP from the band soon.

Originally posted on Blogcritics.org

Review: Brian Jonestown Massacre - My Bloody Underground

by Kevin Eagan

There's something to be said about experimentation and noise. Even the most simplistic rock band can transform themselves into something much more complex by adding a few guitar effects and background clamor; just look at The Beatles or The Rolling Stones -- both bands pulled it off well, and their songs have become legendary.

Anton Newcombe's The Brian Jonestown Massacre, an odd collection of musicians that have mixed the experimental with the accessibility of modern rock, have been doing this experimentation thing for a while now. With a diverse collection of albums that move from 1990s pop excess to the grounding of folk rock, Newcombe's band has been fairly successful with experimenting over the years.

The Brian Jonestown Massacre's thirteenth album, My Bloody Underground is just as experimental as anything else in their past, but this time around the band doesn't feel nearly as tight as they once did. As their "best of collection" Tepid Peppermint Wonderland: A Retrospective reveals, this band has tried practically everything, but have done so within the confines of succinct pop songs. Now, the band's sound seems like it's been released into some other realm and allowed to dissipate into the stratosphere.

With that said, My Bloody Underground does have some great songs, and the band's surrealist humor and tone still shines. The album begins with "Bring Me the Head of Paul McCartney on Heather Mills' Wooden Leg (Dropping Bombs on the White House)," a hilariously titled song, although jarring and low-fi. In terms of album openers, this one summarizes the rest of the album well: it's accessible enough to listen to over and over again, but has an off-color quality and is rife with experimentation. The guitars jangle along, as Newcombe sings, "so grab your silver bullets and your wooden stakes / And lock your fuckin' doors for Jesus sakes" with a beautiful melody as the drums and electric guitars drown out everything else. This is essentially how the rest of the album goes, although some moments are much better than others.

As the album continues, the band starts to sound like they're just randomly jamming, enjoying every second and seeing what happens. "The Infinite Wisdom Tooth / My Last Night In Bed With You" starts of with low-fi guitars, as the band stops so someone can tune the guitar. The rest of the song has a demo tape feel to it, and it's sometimes hard to follow, but a beautiful jam nonetheless. Equally on "Who Fucking Pissed In My Well?," the band jumps right into a far out mystic jam that includes acoustic guitar and sitar.

The album careens around like this until the fourth track, "We Are the Niggers of the World," a straightforward piano jam that feels more like a junior high piano recital than a song worthy of Newcombe's far out antics. Nevertheless, "We Are the Niggers of the World" provides an intermission in an album that's about to get even more trippy, and the title also seems to allude to more deconstruction of The Beatles and their post-Beatles antics (possibly a nod toward John Lennon's song "Woman is the Nigger of the World"?) .

The rest of My Bloody Underground -- indeed, the bulk of the album -- spaces out, comes back for one more drag, then finally goes comatose. "Who Cares Why" is a spacey epic full of distortion and noise with an acoustic guitar riff thrown somewhere in there, and "Just Like Licking Jesus" takes some of the bending guitar riffs of bands like Modest Mouse and bends them even further through discombobulated amps. Right between these two tracks are "Yeah - Yeah" and "Golden - Frost," which provide a sense of some direction as the band sticks to some straightforward songwriting. It's still fucked up, though.

As the band continues, there's more punk rock parody in "Automatic Faggot for the People," mocking R.E.M. and killing political correctness along the way. The song centers around a driving beat, screaming vocals (filtered through a lot of reverb) and ecstatic guitars. It's something we've heard before, but original enough to keep The Brian Jonestown Massacre fresh in our minds.

The album ends with "Black Hole Symphony," a loud white noise epic. I suppose this song marks the end of music itself, summarizing the dark moments of this album as one large destruction of rock music as we know it best. That, with the band's knack for irony in their lyrics and song titles, makes the album worthwhile.

Even though My Bloody Underground careens far into the unknown, and almost risks alienating listeners before it finally takes off, The Brian Jonestown Massacre have, once again, reinvented themselves. It's definitely not an album for those unfamiliar with the band, and at times, the album lacks flow and connection. But in the end, those who understand the band will finally come to terms with what's going on, and My Bloody Underground starts to make sense in some odd, demented way.

Originally published on Blogcritics.org.

Review: Psychic Confusion - The Sonic Youth Story by Steve Chick

Sonic Youth have always been a band shrouded in mystery. Spanning a career that's about to finish off its third decade, the band have carried with them both the avant garde and experimentation of the indie underground, as well as the commercial excess of the 1990s "Alt-rock" scene. With over 15 studio albums and countless EP's, solo, and side projects, the band is still strong today -- and not only strong, they're still influencing young indie rock acts and bucking the trends of commercialism. Even though band members are now in their fifties, they exude an energy not seen in many aging rock bands, and they continue to seek out new trends and sonic explorations.

My first experience of Sonic Youth came, as it did for many Americans, when The Simpsons did a parody of the band and the scene that made them a mainstream success in the episode "Homerpalooza." The Simpsons nod was the ultimate 1990s compliment of success, and for many of their young fans (like myself), it was an opportunity to seek out the band's back catalog, especially their most successful albums up to that point, Dirty, Goo, and Daydream Nation. As the band continued to inspire and mature beyond the confines of the grunge era, albums like 1986's EVOL and 1985's Bad Moon Rising were also cited as influences on many burgeoning indie rock acts.

Psychic Confusion - The Sonic Youth Story by Steve Chick tracks Sonic Youth's career from the dirty New York venues of the early 1980s to the band's recent resurgence in the 21st Century, and everything in between. Chick's exhaustive research and ability to connect the band's musical evolution to cultural changes makes this book an excellent read, one that would interest both fans of Sonic Youth and casual music lovers.

Psychic Confusion starts off with back history of where, why, and how Sonic Youth came about. Chick gives a background of some of the bands and movements within the punk rock community that go back to The Stooges and The Velvet Underground, tracing everything up to the New York punk movement No Wave, which bred Sonic Youth. From there, the book goes in chronological order, covering every major album release along with the band's personal and professional side projects.

While Sonic Youth relied heavily on bizarre alternate tunings and mind numbing effects (including an amplified power drill, of all things) on their early albums (Sonic Youth and Confusion is Sex, specifically), the band would go on to fashion these bizarre sounds into veiled political messages (Bad Moon Rising), accessible melodies (EVOL), and commercially accessible "grunge" rock (Goo and Dirty). As Sonic Youth forged their sound into the 21st Century, they'd take a slight detour (A Thousand Leaves and NYC Ghosts & Flowers) only to come back with their tightest and most familiar sounds since their early to mid career (Murray Street, Sonic Nurse, and Rather Ripped).

Chick's research shows that he is not only concerned with giving an exhaustive biography of the band's successes and failures, but also with putting everything in its social context. Chick reveals the social forces surrounding the band in America and around the world, and how Sonic Youth remained socially conscious without being obnoxious or preachy. In the midst of the Reagan era, the band, like many in the punk and hardcore community, felt disillusioned by the politics of the time. 1985's Bad Moon Rising (the title a reference to Creedence Clearwater Revival's socially conscious song of the same name) would be the album that revealed the most about the community's disillusioned feelings. Later, as the band experienced New York's lock down in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the band's 2002 album Murray Street would express some of their most intimate thoughts about the attacks. Equally, the band would tap into pop culture through their lyrics, and although the band has remained distinctly "alternative," they have always used pop culture and mainstream attitudes to shape their songs.

Psychic Confusion also reveals a band not afraid of the latest trends in the indie underground. Throughout their career, Sonic Youth always brought young indie bands along with them on tour, giving the band a reputation for being the "Godparents" of indie rock. Some of the bands they helped nurture have had their place in rock history, such as Nirvana, who always cited the band as a main reason for their success (Nirvana was signed to Geffen records on the advice of Sonic Youth, for example). Although the band are practically the grandparents of many young new bands, they continue to inspire; musicians like Devendra Banhart and Cat Power owe their success to Sonic Youth's influence and support. While many fans of the band may already know of their influential status, Chick is able to show that their influence continues and may not waver for a long time.

Although Psychic Confusion is exhaustive in its approach, there are times where Chick's historical account digs deep in the cultural history while forgetting to reveal much about Sonic Youth. For example, Chick spends part of the book discussing the grunge movement of the early 1990s, and even discusses the profound influence of heroin on some of these young acts. But in the process, he fails to mention that Sonic Youth was moving away from this scene, a rock scene that had morphed into everything they once railed against. Chick only briefly mentions the band's purposeful move to the art underground, but doesn't go into the profound changes going on in their perspective, even as they continued to release albums on major label Geffen. At the same time, Chick does a great job of explaining Sonic Youth's latest anti-Bush projects, but doesn't give enough background information about the many bands who feel disillusioned by current events, or how these bands are influencing the indie community and spurring activism.

Either way, Psychic Confusion is an excellent biography of Sonic Youth that is both exhaustive and entertaining. Chick not only covers Sonic Youth's many changes over the years, he also reveals a band that's thriving and alive. Although 2006's Rather Ripped was the band's last release on Geffen, Chick taps into the band's profound indie connections to show that they'll still thrive, even if they choose to return to their indie label roots. Even though Psychic Confusion summarizes everything the band has done so far, it leaves open the possibility of many more years of Sonic Youth history, and I'm sure Chick would be just the music writer to continue the story in the future.

Originally published on Blogcritics.org.

Mix Bag #2: Fictitious Non-Fiction, Cake, and a Bloody Massacre

Mix Bag is a weekly feature that brings together a random collection of media and highlights why it all matters to you.

After an extended weekend off and a handful of other things to write, I haven't had too much time to peruse what's interesting out there this week. Usually, I'd say it's disappointing to put off a feature for a few days, but then I remind myself that with only a handful of readers to brag about, There There Kid is still too little of a start up for anyone to complain about Mix Bag coming out late. But I digress...

Anyway, we might as well jump right in and examine the world of cultural activity that I've found interesting lately. First, The New York Times' literary blog Paper Cuts has an interesting article up about yet another fabrication coming to light in a major non-fiction book. This time, it's not one of the infamous memoir fabrications marketed for mass appeal. Instead, it's a work of journalism that takes some liberties at truth or, as Stephen Colbert would put it, truthiness (that word makes a lot more sense now than it did when it came out). It's a book called Bringing Down the House, and it's the book that the latest blockbuster 21 was based on. But as it turns out, many sections were exaggerated to the point of being completely false; at one point in the book, for example, the team of gamblers supposedly strapped thousands of dollars to their bodies before boarding planes, which apparently never happened. There are other dramatic scenes that the real-life characters of the book deny ever happening, and this is all coming out right when 21 is out in cinemas across the country. Ouch.

There's also a collection of essays that just came out called I Was Told There'd Be Cake by Sloane Crosley. They sound quite interesting, blending comedy with the mundane parts of daily life. Sloane works as a publicist for Vintage/Anchor books during the day, so her understanding of the absurdities surrounding literary publicity and the 9 to 5 office job could make an interesting read. I've ordered a copy and hope to read it soon. Sloane's Web site is also a lot of fun, adding art and excerpts/blurbs for her book.

There's also a book coming out in May that takes our current generation to task, called The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupifies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future by Mark Bauerlein. Despite the pretentious sounding title, the book actually looks like it smartly dissects exactly why, with more and more information at our fingertips, we keep getting dumber. Is there really a reason, or is this guy just a cranky old man? I hope to find out, and I'll probably have a review up later on.

In the world of music, things keep getting more and more interesting as the year continues. People seem in awe of R.E.M.'s latest (I'm still on the fence, personally), but most reviews seem to recognize that it's just about the best you can get from a band that's become increasingly less relevant over the years.

In jazz, I like Pete Robbins' Do the Hate Laugh Shimmy, and the album title gives the vibe of the album away. It's quirky and experimental, yet rooted in something whole and tangible. It's an excellent album that comes out later in the month.

And there are a lot more albums coming out this week. I've been on a Sonic Youth kick lately, so it's nice to see that Thurston Moore is releasing another solo album called Sensitive/Lethal. The Microphones and Man Man have new albums out as well.

Next week, the eclectic weirdos that make up Brian Jonestown Massacre are releasing their 13th album called My Bloody Underground. It's very experimental, and gives off a different vibe from some of their past work; to be honest, it sounds more like a collection of demos than a full-length LP. But there are some gems, and the experimentation is more in line with TV On the Radio than some of the blues influences of past albums. It took a few listens for me to get into it, and I'm still not fully convinced. But that doesn't matter, it's still a lot of fun.

That's about it for now, I'd love to see what everyone else finds interesting out there in the internet world.

Review: Nick Vayenas - Synesthesia

Nick Vayenas is a jazz musician who, at first listen, sounds straightforward and conventional. A closer listen, however, reveals some intricate and complex compositions, and Vayenas is anything but another jazz musician; he's a musician that's willing to cross bridges into new musical territory, and doesn't hold anything back.

Vayenas' debut album Synesthesia offers a mix of synthesizers, horns and percussion that ties together around a central theme, one that Vayenas describes in his liner notes as a "type of stimulation [that] evokes the sensation of another, as when the hearing a sound produces the visualization of a color." With that far out explanation, Synesthesia is an album that is multi-dimensional, forcing the listener to participate with all of his senses. That's an adventurous claim, something that Vayenas pulls off well.

The album begins with "Voyager," and the opening synth noises suggest a sci-fi epic voyage--possibly a voyage "where no man has gone before?"--until Vayenas breaks in with steady, triplicated beats, piano and bass. It's an opening that hints at the larger things to come, and as the album moves forward, Vayenas sprinkles the music with synth motifs and moments of pure jazz.

Synesthesia continues with "Assembly Line," giving the album its first feeling of exploration. The song starts off with another synthesized riff, bringing in a trumpet and organ to keep it grounded. It's not quite like prog rock, or overly experimental jazz, yet it has a vibe of experimentation that leads the listener into the title track "Synesthesia." In "Synesthesia," Vayenas slows down a bit, adding his smoky background vocals as he hums along with the horn section. He fills the band out with keyboards and a guitar, and although these parts are subtle, they seem necessary.

Other times, Synesthesia feels like a conventional modern jazz album. On "Odeon," a swinging jazz drum beat plays on while the horn section takes turns improvising solos. Equally on "The Essence," Vayenas lets the band loose to forge new paths while the keyboard parts accentuate and direct the horns into these new territories.

Vayenas also changes the mood of the album several times. "Along The Way" has an eerie vibe, almost like the backing track of a scary movie. The pianos climb as the strings build the tension, and then segues into "Circuit Dialog," another eerie track that uses synth noises once again. "Circuit Dialog" breaks up the album, and Synesthesia mellows out for "Staircase," another straightforward jazz song that focuses on the piano and bass.

As the album comes to an end, Vayenas turns in a different direction once again. On "Gone From Me," he fuses keyboards with horns and strings, and guest vocalist Gretchen Parlato adds a sultry sound to an album that, up to this point, has remained strictly instrumental. Parlato sings "why have you gone from me now? / you never said you'd go," suggesting loneliness, but also suggesting the overall theme of Synesthesia: that adventure can be both exciting and abandoning.

Synesthesia is a great debut album, and it should establish Vayenas as a serious jazz musician. Even though it strikes out into the territories and forces the listener to use all of the senses, it also stays well grounded in the roots of jazz. With its changing pace and unique style, Synesthesia is an album that won't lose you.




Originally published at Blogcritcs.org.

The "Fake Empire" of Joshua Ferris' Then We Came to the End and The National's Boxer

"We're half-awake, in a fake empire."

So declares singer Matt Berninger of The National in "Fake Empire," the song that kicks off their latest album Boxer. The entire album continues in this vein, suggesting that American life has become a life "half-awake," one of suburban efficiency and catchy marketing.

And that's essentially where the members of The National are coming from, having endured the life (career, rather) of catchy marketing; most of the members gave up the high life of a career in marketing to form a band that tackles the issues facing our "fake empire." There's something wrong with us, and it's kind of ironic that those who once helped with marketing the things that supposedly will make us feel better are now the ones trying to warn us that we are about to collide into a brick wall.

Boxer is an album that digs deep into the upper middle class life of corporate America, the guy who is stuck, but has a numbing acceptance of it all ("I can tie my tie all by myself / I’m getting tied, I’m forgetting why"). The National have tapped into a sentiment that simmers on the surface, but rarely gets discussed directly: that conformity becomes numbing, and none of the quick fixes we give ourselves will work. It's an essential question that goes to the heart of what it means to be American: to conform -- chasing the elusive "American Dream" -- or not to conform, and transcend societal expectations.

Equally, Joshua Ferris' latest novel Then We Came to the End speaks to the essential questions of conformity and what it means to be American. In the epigraph, Ferris quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson, who urges against being "reckoned in the gross, in the hundred, or the thousand, of the party, the section, to which we belong." This quote shows what we face within our society: we celebrate independence, but expect conformity. It's both the essential elements of human nature and what makes corporate America tick, yet we put up with it all, accepting it as reality and popping pills along the way.

Since this lifestyle is so deeply embedded in the American consciousness, it was only a matter of time before a novel would attempt to tap into the reasons why we've let ourselves become obsessed with work. Ferris' Then We Came to the End is such a novel. Chronicling the office lives of a marketing agency in Chicago, Then We Came to the End is both a hilarious and heartwarming account of how and why we endure such work-focused lives.

Ferris' novel follows the copywriters and art directors of the agency as they endure cutbacks in the wake of the dot-com crash, and as they watch their colleagues get the ax -- or, as they coin it, "walking Spanish" -- they huddle in the corners of offices speculating why, how, and who is next to go. In the midst of all these layoffs, the agency takes on a mysterious pro bono breast cancer awareness case at the same time they discover (through office rumor, of course) that their supervisor Lynn Mason has breast cancer. Their task is to create ad copy that will make a breast cancer patient laugh, but the group is experiencing an extreme case of writer's block.

The novel is written in first-person plural to reflect the collective "we" of modern corporate culture. As each character goes through his or her own personal conflicts, the group experiences these as a whole, or so it seems; Ferris' "we" is actually an ironic critique of the groupthink that pervades throughout corporate America. "We were corporate citizens," Ferris writes, "buttressed by advanced degrees and padded by corporate fat...What we didn't consider was that in a downturn, we were the mismanaged inventory, and were about to be dumped like a glut of imported circuit boards." So essentially, this "we" is nothing more than a commodity, the worker bees whose only goal is to keep the colony alive and fed.

Ferris uses two characters in particular to stress these distinctions between independence and conformity. Tom Mota, a disgruntled office worker who tries to shake things up through pranks, tries to find a level of transcendence but is eventually fired and doesn't handle it too well. Although those at the office have termed him the office Emerson scholar (he quotes him throughout the novel), Tom never actually transcends anything, and eventually falls back into conformity (albeit in a completely different way). Even though Tom can never bring himself to fully reject societal pressures, he does introduce his office friend Carl Garbedian to the words of Emerson. Carl suffers from depression, and the pills designed to level him out never work, so he takes matters into his own hands, resigning from the agency and starting a successful suburban landscaping company. He ends up transcending the politics of corporate groupthink by returning back to nature, so to speak. Essentially, these two characters represent something profound about America: that conformity is difficult to understand, but even more difficult to break away from.

The National's lyrics, like Ferris' novel, don't tell us how to live -- rather, they show the parts of society that are numbing and inconsequential. In their song "Apartment Story," Berninger sings about the apathy of a society that is "tired and wired" and "ruined to easy" where "we’ll stay inside 'til somebody finds us / do whatever the TV tells us / stay inside our rosy-minded fuzz for days." And fuzz is a good way of putting it; it's comfortable, but not entirely exciting. It's shopping at Target and golf at the country club, but not life to the fullest, or the elusive "pursuit of happiness" promised to us.

It seems relevant that in 2007 -- in the midst of a war with no end and the glut of a sub-prime mortgage meltdown -- two works of art come out and to the same concerns about society. And here we are in 2008, our politicians promise "change" and our artists recognize that this numbing groupthink is hurting America (Then We Came to the End was nominated for the National Book Award and The National's Boxer was voted album of the year by Paste magazine), and we still don't have any definitive answers. Just like Emerson didn't advocate changing society, but rather, removal from society, so to do artists in the 21st Century point out the absurdities and inconsistencies of our society and hope that someone out there is listening.

Don't buy EMI's upcoming Radiohead release, The Best Of

I wouldn't usually advocate not purchasing an album that has Radiohead on it, but this is too much.

Radiohead's former record label, Parlophone/EMI, plans to release a greatest hits compilation to coincide with Radiohead's upcoming world tour.

Now, this wouldn't be a problem, except that it reflects the ongoing rivalry between Radiohead and its former label. Radiohead left Parlophone/EMI after the two could not come to terms on renewing their contract (which have been controversial and mysterious). Radiohead subsequently released their latest album In Rainbows independently, first as a name your price download on their Web site, and later through TBD Records.

The rivalry has continued because EMI still owns the rights to Radiohead's back catalog, and continues to milk the Radiohead buzz for their own corporate gain. First, there was the Radiohead box set, which included their entire discography (minus In Rainbows).

Now comes this, a "best of" collection that exists only to profit from Radiohead's growing success as an independent act. True fans will see through EMI's attempt at profiteering from Radiohead's back catalog, and lets not forget that EMI isn't doing so well right now.

Frankly, I'm tired of the major labels trying to catch up to the success of independents, and Radiohead's success is just one more reason why going independent is better. The best musicians out there are already on independent labels anyway.

So don't buy this best of collection. EMI doesn't need your money, and Radiohead is doing fine without them anyway.

Mix Bag #1: Elbow, Books on the Music Industry, and Games to Waste Time and Sharpen Your Mind

Mix Bag is a weekly feature that brings together a random collection of media and highlights why it all matters to you.

Mix Bag #1: Elbow, Books on the Music Industry, and Games to Waste Time and Sharpen Your Mind

Since this is our very first Mix Bag here at There There Kid, we'd like to explain the purpose for this weekly feature. As you may know, There There Kid distinguishes itself from other entertainment related blogs by attempting to connect otherwise disparate works of art or media through central themes. Since there's so much going on out there, Mix Bag is our opportunity to just throw everything we find interesting out there, allowing you to find something new or make your own connections. So, this first Mix Bag might be a little rough, but as we get going, we hope it will develop into an important event on its own.

Let's get started...

The first thing of interest involves music, and there are (finally!) some interesting albums coming out this year. First, Elbow have finally released their third studio album, The Seldom Seen Kid. It's been four years since we've seen this band release new material, so this is nice to see. The thing is, the album's only out in the UK, and won't be released in the US until April 22. However, I have a copy of the album in hand, so expect a review soon (trust me, it's good). Cloud Cult will release their latest, titled Feel Good Ghosts (Tea-Partying Through Tornadoes), on April 8. Plus, there's been a lot of buzz surrounding R.E.M.'s latest Accelerate , which comes out tomorrow. Will Michael Stipe and crew actually wow us, or will Accelerate be as stale as its predecessors? We'll know soon enough. Other interesting new releases include Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks' latest Real Emotional Trash -- which is much more upbeat than the albums that came before it, even if some of the tracks (especially the title track) feel a little stale -- Destroyer's Trouble In Dreams, She & Him's Volume 1 (which has actress Zoey Deschanel on vocals), Spoon's Don't You Evah EP, and the good albums just keep coming. Which is great, because 2008 started off with a lot of disappointment.

On the jazz front, I've had a chance to listen to Dave Douglas & Keystone's Moonshine, and it's a great album, albeit a little weird (but I like weird).

Speaking of all of this great music, I can't help but notice how a majority of it comes from indie label acts. Is there a reason why all of this great music comes from indie labels, while the major labels eat each other whole? According to Dan Kennedy's latest memoir Rock On, the reason is because the music industry is still completely oblivious to what people in the 21st Century still want. Ever since that whole Napster debacle, the RIAA has imploded on itself, causing the rise in indie labels that snatch up the good acts before the "man" gets them. Just take a look at that little Radiohead experiment, or the recent move by well established artists to the Starbucks label. According to the New York Times Book Review, Kennedy "doesn’t expound on the music industry’s decline; instead, he simply lays out reams of damning evidence," and although that seems fairly obvious, Rock On is here to hilariously confirm our worst fears and further the music lover's move to indie.

All of this music industry talk reminded me that Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins is suing his former record label, Virgin Records, for using the band's music in an advertising campaign the band did not approve. We'll see how that one turns out.

In other books news, Owen Shears' Resistance is a novel that, like Phillip Roth's The Plot Against America, revises the history surrounding World War II and Nazi Germany. Shears' novel has the British losing against the Germans in the D-Day invasions, and as German forces attempt to establish themselves, a secret movement against the Germans forms in Britain. I haven't yet read this, but there's supposedly a love story thrown in there as well. Also, I've just discovered Stephanie McMillan, an excellent graphic novelist and comic writer. Blogcritics.org has an interview with Stephanie McMillan up on their site right now, where she explains how she connects comics to the larger good of society: "I think many people want more art that challenges the status quo, and they appreciate it when they find it." True True.

Even if art isn't specifically challenging the status quo, can't it at least challenge the mind? According to the makers of Guest House, there are games that are challenging, yet seem simple on the surface. Of course that seems kind of obvious, until you've played Guest House, then you'll understand that this game is much more complex than it seems. What seems like a simple flash game turns into a real difficult challenge that moves from the surreal to the sublime.

There's so much more we have to cover, but for now, that's it. Next week, we'll dig through a couple more CD's, take a look at some new books, do some critiquing of the media, and find some new time wasters.

Review: The Gutter Twins - Saturnalia

Before you even open the disc or listen to a single second of the album, The Gutter Twins' debut release Saturnalia speaks to you through its striking album cover. The cover is a photo showing classic urban prairie, an abandoned lot between two shotgun houses, where the greenery only grows as weeds between the cracks of a neglected sidewalk and life seems to have gone underground. Two chairs sit in the center of the photo, and behind that, a dark, cloudy sky looms over the scenery and reflects off a dead tree.

Yet, there's something alive about the album cover. It draws you in and forces you to face the realities of humanity, and that life is not always beautiful and serene.

It's been a while since I've seen an album cover so succinctly describe the mood and tone of the music on the album itself. Even the two chairs — which are probably empty because the two members of The Gutter Twins are off recording this excellent album — speak of something profound. Is it abandonment? Poverty? A political message, possibly conjuring the images of destruction in the wake of Hurricane Katrina? Who knows...

Fortunately, the album cover is only one small aspect of why this album moves me. The Gutter Twins have created music that, at every listen, reveals some minor nuance I missed the time before. It's an emotionally and musically complex album, and one of the best to come out this year (so far).

The Gutter Twins are composed of two former '90's music powerhouses — Mark Lanegan of the Screaming Trees and Greg Dulli of The Afghan Whigs — and, I have to admit, I was initially skeptical that this combination would work. While I enjoyed The Afghan Whigs back in the day, I was never a fan of the Screaming Trees, and these two lead singers seemed worlds apart to me.

However, Saturnalia shows that these two musicians are a perfect match. While the album moves through many different styles and genres, it remains a unified collection of songs that speak to many different emotions and situations. Plus, it's a musically strong collection that flows from track to track, and hints at what's to come on future releases.

Saturnalia kicks off with "The Stations," a great starting point for this album, as it seems to summarize the mood of the entire album. Dulli and Lanegan share writing credits and vocals for this song; on most of the other songs, Dulli and Lanegan have split up the song writing and recording. "The Stations" captures an airy atmosphere through its reverberating guitars and backing strings, suggesting a maturity in sound as these two grunge masters have grown up. Lanegan sings of a blended religiosity and hope for the future ("I hear the rapture's coming / They say he'll be here soon / Right now there's demons crawling all around my room"), but he also sings of confusion ("Don't know what they mean").

"The Stations" transitions well into "God's Children," and the album's first half starts to take shape. It's full of melancholic ambiguity, and the Lanegan/Dulli mashup expresses this ambiguity best. "All Misery/Flowers," for example, expresses the need to "hold on" while it also suggests an end: "Let's ride suicide / Say what you want, but you make it, don't lie." The religious ambiguity is also used for stylistic effect, and the blues/R&B influences of these two artists shows through, both in their vocal styles and in their lyrical themes.

Saturnalia takes a turn with "Circle the Fringes," another Dulli/Lanegan composition rife with strings and growing atmosphere. The album becomes more inward looking, suggesting inner turmoil rather than social concerns. On "Who Will Lead Us?" Lanegan moves through a spiritual ballad that leans on the musician's blues influences. The call-and-response between the guitar and the vocal styles is pure blues, but it's still tinged with the loud guitars brooding in the background. Lanegan calls out, as if to God, saying: "I think the chariot is coming / And if it should please you Lord / I give this trumpet up to Gabriel." Other tracks, like "I Was In Love With You" (a Dulli composition), focus more on personal relationships rather than spiritual concerns.

The album ends by tying up the loose ends left at the beginning of the album. Stylistically, songs like "Each to Each" and "Front Street" bring back the loudness brewing beneath the airy atmosphere that defines this album. Equally, there is more partnership between the two musicians, and on "Front Street," the album ends with the same thoughts that the album cover initially brings up: "Front Street ain't a place for a boy who / Likes to talk ways that boys do / Unstrung, young, dumb, comfortably numb." It conjures up an image of a boy in the street behind the camera who has yet to grow up and face the world, yet it also speaks to some of the most basic human concerns of adulthood.

There's no doubt that The Gutter Twins have something going for them, and Saturnalia is an excellent start. Don't expect these two '90's stars to stick to old clichés. Instead, expect an album that both reflects originality and a reflected sense of maturity. I have a feeling we may be talking about Saturnalia for years to come.

Originally published at Blogcritics.org: http://blogcritics.org/archives/2008/03/11/193631.php

Review: Drew Gress - The Irrational Numbers

Unlike many other musical styles, jazz stands out as a genre that can easily tap into the deep crevices of the mind, digging up deeply held emotions and feelings. Stylistically, it is ready to express many ideas at once, to reveal the subtle feelings and nuanced thoughts that aren't always seen at the surface.

Most modern jazz musicians recognize this, and with this knowledge comes the challenge to move listeners in deep, meaningful ways. Any true jazz fan knows that jazz is not just here to entertain or create pretty sounds (in fact, a lot of jazz isn't too pretty), but that it is here to express and reflect the inner movements and expressions of the mind.

Which brings jazz musician Drew Gress into the conversation, a man who truly knows how to use each instrument and every improvisational technique to the greatest emotional effect. In his latest, The Irrational Numbers, Gress knows that his bass-driven jazz digs deep into, as Jack Kerouac said in his novel On The Road, the "pit and prune juice " of the human experience. The Irrational Numbers does just this, taking its listeners on a complex journey of highs and lows experienced at the peaks of mountains and the crevices of caves.

At first listen, The Irrational Numbers is hard to take in, bringing in equal amounts of dissonance and beautiful melodies. Every musician goes off on their own improvisational techniques, digging deep into their own personal feelings in order to bring together the group as a whole. At times, Gress' sound becomes jangled and discordant, but just as he goes off on a tangential riff, he brings the group back to a more unified, conventional sound.

The album starts off with "Bellwether," a short introductory song that highlights the more subdued elements of the rest of the album. With Ralph Alessi's muted trumpet and Gress' bass motifs carrying the rhythm and melody, "Bellwether" is a way for the band to say "we're here" and for the listener to wake up.

Once Gress has us listening attentively with "Bellwether," he gets right into it with "Chevelle," a fast moving and, at times, dissonant song that brings in the whole band. "Chevelle" begins with pounding beats and discordant piano chords. When the horns come in, there is a frantic pace, as each musician improvises on top of the riffs holding the rhythm together, including Gress' bass (here, Gress takes a step back, letting the other musicians take solos). Eventually, "Chevelle" breaks through the madness, and comes to a more conventional jazz technique. At the end, the piano (along with Gress' electronic instruments) brings the rest of the band back down to a beautiful, ethereal moment on the album.

The rest of The Irrational Numbers continues in this way. On "Your Favorite Kind," alto saxophonist Tim Berne riffs along with Alessi's trumpet, juxtaposing each other with fast, technical solos. Gress also reasserts his bass prowess, moving his fingers along the fingerboard as fast as he can. On "Fauxjobim," the band starts off with the same subdued sound of "Bellwether," carries that to the end while drummer Tim Rainey improvs all over the place.

The Irrational Numbers has a way of drawing the listener in, as if the album is one continuous stream of sound. In fact, this is the type of album you can get lost in, not realizing there's a new song every few minutes. By the end of the album, Gress has you wanting more. Throughout the album, Gress also hearkens back to the motifs at the beginning of the album, like the subdued chorus of "Bellwether" and the chaotic moments of "Chevelle." In this way, the whole album feels like it's telling a story through sound. As "Blackbird Backtalk" fades out to the next track "By Far," for example, Gress has taken you into a fiery chaos and then left you in an icy sea, and you must find your way out. And then, on "That Heavenly Hell," you are back to chaos and confusion, as the saxophone and piano fight each other for your attention. It builds to a climax and then leaves you with "True South," a slower track that rounds out the album and goes back to the control and beauty of "Bellwether."

Gress also shows off his bass skills when you least expect it. On "Mas Relief," a short song that lulls you into the bombastic "That Heavenly Hell," Gress riffs along on his bass with a few keyboard effects in the background. It's a beautiful song that shows Gress doesn't always need to fall behind his band; his powerful talent on bass alone can hold a song together.

The Irrational Numbers shows that Gress is willing to delve deep into the recesses of the mind to move listeners. At times, the music moves into chaos, and then within a split second everything seems back to normal. Gress displays a strong command of jazz while showing that the bass can still reign supreme when everything is done right. Overall, The Irrational Numbers is a great album that is worth every second.

Originally published at Blogcritics.org: http://blogcritics.org/archives/2008/02/20/164619.php

Best Song of 2007

Narrowing down the year's best songs into a fashionable list is a difficult task to take on. It's bad enough trying to figure out this year's best albums, and it's even more difficult to pick out individual songs, especially picking a single song that makes the whole year shine.

As we wrap up 2007, however, there's one song that sticks out to me more than any other. It's a song that's meant more to me than any other this year, and it's a song that I feel summarizes the reasons why I fell in love with music. For some reason, all of the pieces to this song just fit so well.

Appropriately enough, Radiohead's "Jigsaw Falling Into Place" is my choice for 2007's song of the year. It is, in my opinion, Radiohead's climactic peak artistically and musically, a song that ties in everything Radiohead has done and everything Radiohead has yet to do. It borrows from the past while reveling in the present, and suggests what is to come: a band that has recognized a new musical phase and is ready to reach new heights.

My first experience with Radiohead goes back to the summer of 2001. I was seventeen and, thanks to my Dad's job that took our family overseas, I was living in England. The escape from my mundane life in Central Illinois was a welcome change, but I was experiencing constant culture shock and felt particularly isolated and alone that summer. Luckily, I had my guitar and a four-track recording system I borrowed from a neighbor friend, and tons of time after school to write and record various songs I had written over the years. It was a time in my life where I finally started to take music seriously, enjoying bands like Pink Floyd and Pearl Jam (my favorite at the time) with more depth and understanding than ever before. I finally saw rock music as more than just a release from the mundane or a call to social rebellion, but as a true art form, and one that can entirely move the soul.

It was around that time that I borrowed a taped recording of Radiohead's sophomore release The Bends, and it completely changed my view of the band that, at the time, was making computer noises on Kid A and Amnesiac (I have since fallen in love with these two albums, but at the time I couldn't stand them). The Bends was different: its combination of loud guitars and atmospheric noise stuck with me, and I couldn't have enough of the album. I spent the rest of that summer writing bad ripoff songs that sounded too much like "My Iron Lung" and "Fake Plastic Trees," but it wasn't the music itself that got me through that melancholy summer, it was the act of discovery--finding something completely new, something I'd never heard before, that I could call my own.

Since then, Radiohead has become one of my favorite bands. With their incredible mix of visual art with atmospheric noises and orchestral compositions, Radiohead has become a band that goes beyond genre restrictions and fan expectations. They are a band willing to try new things, to forge new paths, and stay completely accessible to discerning music listeners.

Radiohead's In Rainbows has been all over the place recently. It took the number one spot for several prominent music year end lists, and for others, it stayed within the top ten. The best part about the album is that, despite the unconventional pay-what-you-want marketing, In Rainbows is better known for its incredible music, which of course is what all the hype is about. At the beginning of the album's opening track, singer Thom Yorke declares "how come I end up where I started," suggesting that the band has finally come full circle and is ready to step out to newer ground.

Buried towards the end of the album, In Rainbows reaches a climax with "Jigsaw Falling Into Place," and it's at this moment, when the acoustic guitars come in and drummer Phil Selway holds the strong rhythmic beat together, that Yorke's earlier declaration finally makes sense: the pieces all fit, the jigsaw has truly fallen into place.

The best part about "Jigsaw Falling Into Place" is its amazing syncopation. The acoustic guitars give way to a tight drum beat, which bring in Yorke's airy vocals and guitarist Johnny Greenwood's stratospheric electric guitar riffs. It's a style that brings us back to Radiohead's early days, when they were seen as just another '90's "grunge" band with their debut album Pablo Honey. Yet, at the same time, the band is tighter, more mature; age and the musical diversity of their collective works have brought the band to this moment when they can look back at it all and throw it at the wall to see what happens. Of course, it all just fits so well.

Lyrically, "Jigsaw Falling Into Place" seems to tell two stories at once: a narrative about lost love at a bar and the subjective feelings that the music brings. Like a poem by Frank O'Hara, the lyrics show desperation, happiness, and confusion surrounding an otherwise mundane moment in time, and it is this poetic "swirl" that makes the lyrics come alive fully. Yorke sings: "Before you run away from me / Before you're lost between the notes / The beat goes round and round" as if everything is "blurring into one." And, of course, the music seems to blur everything that Radiohead has done together into one place, one exceptional moment in time. At one point, everything becomes "lost between the notes," something that Radiohead has done for years with their minimalist musical compositions (think "How to Disappear Completely" from Kid A and you'll see what I mean).

The guitar work on "Jigsaw Falling Into Place" is also significant because it is the first song I've heard since OK Computer that makes full use of Radiohead's three guitarists. Back in the Pablo Honey days, having three guitarists was seen as an unnecessary excess, but on "Jigsaw Falling Into Place," three guitars are exactly what is needed. While the first acoustic guitar comes in with a complex, finger-picked riff, the second acoustic guitar comes in to carry the rhythm while the bass guitar fills in the gaps. It builds from there, and by the time Yorke is letting the beat go "round and round," the atmospheric electric guitars have taken over, flinging the song out into its own orbit. By the end of the song, Radiohead have created a song that has the same musical effect that Led Zeppelin's "Song Remains the Same" did to restore their musical bravado at the beginning of Houses of the Holy.

When the song finally comes to an end, you don't feel that it's been overdone, or that the band has struggled through it. Instead, the song feels like an organic work, and there's not a single moment that drags with boring interludes. It builds up to a climax, and leaves you wanting more. In Rainbows then fades into its own denouement with "Videotape," bringing you back down and resolving all that had built into a frenzy before it.

Even if this was all I had to say about "Jigsaw Falling Into Place," it would still be one of my favorite songs. But what makes it stand out as the best song of 2007 is the same feeling The Bends gave me during that lonely summer in 2001: it renews my sense of wonder for music. "Jigsaw Falling Into Place" truly moves my soul in ways that most music never can, and every time I listen to it, I never find a dull moment or a single way to criticize it. It will, for years to come, remind me of 2007 and all of the joy this year's new music gave me. For that reason alone, "Jigsaw Falling Into Place" is my pick for the best song of 2007.

Originally published at Blogcritics.org: http://blogcritics.org/archives/2008/01/01/211645.php

Review: Happy Apple - Happy Apple Back on Top

There is much debate about whether our universe is ordered and purposeful or just a random, chaotic mess. At face value, our lives seem to have a purpose, and everything seems to happen for a reason, until everything comes crashing down. And then we are forced to either see these failures as a life test, some weird thing we call "fate," or just another step in a completely random system of life experiences that inevitably lead to death and suffering.

OK, wait a minute. This is getting way too heavy for a music review. But I say all of this because we can use these two opposing views of the universe to try and figure out how music works. For example, those who accept the verse-chorus-verse, three-chord pop-song structure of music probably believe in an ordered universe, since their music is ordered and predictable. When a musician comes along to challenge this song structure, they can be easily tagged as poor musicians or too "experimental." However, those who accept music that goes beyond the predictability of most pop songs probably don't see much order in the universe, and are willing to try new things since there's nothing to lose anyway. This view of the universe works especially well for jazz, since most jazz musicians are willing to improvise around a single song riff, and just let loose.

Minnesota-based jazz trio Happy Apple are certainly not afraid to experiment with chaos, and their free-form jazz style breaks through almost all possible genre barriers. Happy Apple's latest album, Happy Apple Back on Top, takes some of the best aspects of rock, punk, jazz, blues, and funk (and about every other possible genre) and throws it all together in a complete improvisational package.

In fact, there is hardly a moment of complete sanity on Back On Top. Once Happy Apple lulls you into thinking they're going to stick with one thing for the rest of the song, they'll switch gears, leaving you with either a headache or some serious admiration. For most jazz ensembles today, you get a fairly predictable mix between song structure and improvisation, but with Happy Apple, it feels like complete improvisation. Back On Top is just a complete grab-bag of the trio's favorite musical styles, and it isn't afraid to abandon its jazz roots every now and then.

Happy Apple Back On Top kicks off with "The New Bison," a song that immediately establishes saxophonist Michael Lewis as the central player in this band. But there is also a heavy presence of drums and bass; in fact, the song starts with a muddled bass riff, and breaks into a fully synthesized drum jam before making way for Lewis' sax arpeggios. Since the album is completely instrumental, the dynamic between bass guitar and saxophone seem to work as the melody and harmony of each song, propped up by drummer David King's great sense of rhythm. Even then, it's still hard to make sense of any melody or harmony, since every member seems set on improvising every riff in their own way.

Even though Back On Top is a heavily improvised album, Happy Apple still show that they are excellent musicians. The band feels as tight as possible, and on songs like "1996 A.D." and "Density in Dan's Fan City," the band doesn't miss a beat. Like their previous albums, such as 2003's successful Youth Oriented, the band is not afraid of lengthy jam sessions that are hard to re-create. But since this is one very talented group of musicians, everything feels planned out and methodical. Certainly, Happy Apple are able to mix the best parts of jazz improvisation with one or two motifs that hold each song together and create a unified (albeit chaotic) theme.

If there's any complaint for Back On Top, it's that it seems much more subdued than their previous work. For example, 2003's Youth Oriented had some louder sax moments and didn't shy away from some excellent electric guitar work; in fact, the inclusion of a distorted electric guitar is partly why Happy Apple got lumped together with other indie rock musicians. Including drum machines and synthesizers is certainly a step forward for the band, but it doesn't have the same punch as their previous albums.

Happy Apple Back on Top is an excellent album that will attract fans from all sorts of musical genres, but it remains true to its jazz roots. Certainly, Happy Apple love to mess with your head, and their music is a bit chaotic, but it seems to work. Instead of accepting the inevitable decline of the universe, Happy Apple seems to just let it be, and as a result, they are here on this earth to create some excellent music.

Originally published at Blogcritics.org: http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/11/17/110305.php

Review: Stars - In Our Bedroom After the War

Canadian indie pop darlings the Stars are one of those bands that always seems on the verge of something huge. 2004's "Set Yourself on Fire" was so well received amongst critics and fans, you can only expect something even more amazing for the next release.

And then the band released "In Our Bedroom After the War" to online retailers two months earlier than the official release, and fans were left confused: was this it? And why the early release? Reviews from both fans and critics were mixed, some saying it lacked the bravado of "Set Yourself on Fire" and wouldn't have the lasting power of its predecessor.

Granted, "In Our Bedroom After the War" had some large shoes to fill. "Set Yourself on Fire" was a huge artistic success, and any album coming after it would be like comparing Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" to "Darkside of the Moon." Basically, it doesn't have a chance in hell.

But despite the mixed reviews, "In Our Bedroom After the War" is an excellent album, portraying the love and loss that comes with the end of war. This theme is spread throughout the whole album, with lyrics stemming from the opening line: "Will we wake in the morning and know what it was all for? / Up in our bedroom, after the war?" After this, the album continues this theme, showing the ambiguity of love and personal identity after the turmoil of war.

Although the narrative of the album sometimes lags behind its grander theme, it seems a relevant theme in our modern times, and fits within Stars' aesthetic of emotional turmoil and loss. And sure it may not be as biting or nihilistic as "Set Yourself on Fire," but it does the job. In "The Ghost of Genova Heights," the sense of loss in war is at its strongest: "He hoped to be remembered as the one / Who told his men to turn back ... Roses are the flower he would prefer / Scatter all his ashes on the pier." Clearly, war is devastating, and this album takes it on directly.

Of course, the lyrics are only one small part of this album. The music certainly builds upon the indie pop aesthetic the Stars have developed over the years. Vocalists Torquil Campbell and Amy Millan continue their boy/girl vocal styles, playing dueling vocal roles. In "Take Me to the Riot," the best blend of male and female vocals portray the brewing relationship within the narrative of the album. In comparison of "Set Yourself on Fire," "In Our Bedroom After the War" displays the dynamic between Campbell and Millan in a much more diverse way; instead of splitting vocal duties song-by-song, "In Our Bedroom After the War" shows that the two vocalists blend together exceptionally well.

Stylistically, "In Our Bedroom After the War" makes use of synthesizers and traditional instruments, but with a more subdued sound. Gone are the samples and lengthy synthesizer riffs of the past; instead, Stars rely more heavily on strings, piano and drums. The opening track ("The Beginning After the End") suggests an album heavily layered with synthesized drums and lead riffs, but by the end the most dominant instrument seems to be a basic piano. Even with this more subdued sound, the music just works.

Right in the middle of this more subdued sound comes the fast rocking but oddly named "Bitches in Tokyo." The song represents the climax of the album. Sung by Millan, "Bitches in Tokyo" brings in the desire and carpe diem feelings of these post-war lovers: "The time when all our mistakes made sense / You needed it ... Well I can't take it / 'Cause I just want you back." And at this point, the album reflects a more positive tone; in "Today Will Be Better, I Swear!," well, the song title speaks for itself.

The album's shift toward a more positive outlook of love after war is where most fans and critics seem most upset. But within this, Stars have shown their lasting power through a positive love, not just loss. Unfortunately, the album's worst moment is in the final song, the title track "In Our Bedroom After the War." Campbell sings "It's us - yes, we're back again / Here to see you through, 'til the days end / And if the night comes, and the night will come / Well at least the war is over," but the lackluster song doesn't wrap up an otherwise complete and beautiful album. Instead, it leaves the listener confused; there is no longer the possibility of irony or menace lurking in the background. It is a grand exit that feels more like the end of a broadway play than a indie pop album.

Despite its flaws, "In Our Bedroom After the War" is still a great album. And even though it doesn't seem to hold up to Stars' past albums, it certainly shows an extremely talented band enjoying the fruits of their creative peak. Who knows, in a few years time, this might be the album everyone talks up the most.