Sunday, February 27, 2011

Music Recommendation #4

2/27/11-3/5/11
Alright, music time is back on my priorities list and I'm getting some stuff from 1190 that I can share with you.  The first two albums I have for you this year are Paris Suit Yourself's "My Main Shitstain" and The Posies "Blood/Candy."

“My Main Shitstain” is the debut album from Paris Suit Yourself.  Paris Suit Yourself is a French-US collective rock band, the first ever rock band to be signed to Big Dada Recordings.  The combine aggressive, yet funny aesthetics and are a bit like a mix between Public Enemy and mid-period Bowie which is clear by their unique sound.  Lead singer Luvinsky Atche brings his French roots into the album on more than one occasion making for an interesting clash of rock instrumentals and French lyrics.  The album definitely has a unique feel to it: one minute it's very fast passed and has an almost Latin feel to it ("Craig Machinsky") and the next its very minimalist with only echoing lyrics and a slow, steady, repeating bass line ("Soliloque").  What is maybe most exciting about this album is the French lyrics.  While most listeners may not be able to understand what Atche is saying, the way in which he sings the lyrics convey a gradient of emotions ranging from excitation to anguish.  When I was first listening to this album, I almost thought it was going to be FCC clean, but PSY does an incredible job of slipping in uncleanliness in the most surprising ways.  Upon a second listen I realized that every single song has some sort of swear or vulgarity in it, which isn't to say that it's spewing them left in right, but that they're used strategically and almost secretively; you really have to listen to catch them.  Overall, Paris Suit Yourself's "My Main Shitstain" is a very unique and interesting album.  They creatively juxtapose various sounds and melodies without sounding sloppy and the album is definitely a fun listening experience.

“Blood/Candy” is The Posies’ seventh LP, coming from a band that first found its sound in 1988 with their debut album “Failure.”  The band has switched between various labels, but may have found home with Rykodisc, the same record label they released “Every Kind of Light” with in 2005.  Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow (both on guitar and vocals) are the only remaining members from the original Posies, but, thanks to Matt Harris (bass) and Darius “Take One” Minwalla (Drums) taking control of the rhythm section, managed to have a revitalizing comeback in 2001.  At first listen, "Blood/Candy" didn't seem much different than any other alternative rock/pop group, but as I listened to it a second time, I found myself digging it more and more.  What's awesome about The Posies is that their songs fluctuate in meaning.  One minute a song could pump you up and get your blood boiling, but that very same song could be very relaxing and calming in another circumstance.  It's noticeable that the vocals of Auer and Stringfellow are the backbone of the group.  More so than any of the instrumental melodies, the vocals convey the most most complexity and versatility throughout the entire album.  On another note, the album artwork has to be one of the coolest I've seen in a long time.  I would highly recommend snagging this album if you get a chance.  They started back in the late '80s, but have managed to keep their sound fresh and definitely give any contemporary alternative group a run for their money.  My top picks from the album are "Plastic Paperbacks Feat. Hugh Cornwell," "Notion 99," and "Cleopatra Street."

And thus concludes the first music recommendation post of 2011.  More will be coming in future weeks and lookout for other album reviews outside of what I get from the radio.  Currently I'm listening to Destroyer, Braids, and Radiohead, so watch for reviews for any and possibly all of those.  Thanks for reading!

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Arcade Fire Winning Best Album of the Year at the 2011 Grammy Awards

Now, I originally contemplated writing a little bit about the Grammys, but decided against it.  However, after a friend of mine revealed to me the inane flood of bullshit spewing onto the internet about Arcade Fire's "The Suburbs" (not The Suburb's "Arcade Fire") winning Album of the Year, I decided I should say a little bit about it.

Why everyone is mad

People are confused and as has been the case with history, people don't like to be confused.  No one likes the unknown; no one likes the unfamiliar; no one likes to think they don't know something about anything; no one likes someone they have never heard of winning an award that has a seemingly great deal of importance.  I can honestly say that I have been victim of this sort of ignorance.  A few years ago before I got into the movie scene, I never liked watching the Oscars because I had never seen any of the movies and I had only heard of some of the actors.  If I had ever actually seen one of the movies nominated, it never won, and god knows there isn't an Oscar for Best Comedic Performance, possibly the only award I would have appreciated.  However, this year I can satisfyingly say that I have seen nine out of ten of the Best Picture nominees and am eagerly looking forward to the Oscars.  The problem with the Grammys is that there is so much to cover: there's tons of genres, artists within those genres, and various produces, labels, etc.  For one award show to accurately pick out which albums were the best of a select year is neigh impossible.  

People were worried about Communism too and that tuned out not to be a big deal.
Communism: it's for free
The Grammys had a choice to make: either side with the main stream audience (a large percentage of the TV viewing population) or the large underground community of audiophiles who illegally steal billions of albums and songs from the music industry every year.  It's safe to say that they sided with the main stream audience.  With that being said, these people are unfamiliar with more obscure artists such as Arcade Fire, Esperanza Spalding (both winners from last night), and various others; I wouldn't be surprised if a good number of people said "Bob Dylan, who?" or "Mick Jagger, who?" when they were performing.  Therefore, when the artists they know don't win, they get confused and mad.  They say the Grammys were rigged; they ask how much The Suburbs paid for their album "Arcade Fire" to win; they ask whose d*** they sucked to best Gaga (in all honesty, I'm curious too; no one tops Katy Perry, let alone Lady Gaga).  People are mad because someone they have never heard of (who has an immense amount of musical talent) won something they see as important.  You'd be shocked if in this year's Super Bowl the '72 Dolphins won (Who the hell are the '72 Dolphins?!  I've never heard of them, so they can't be important).


Why everyone shouldn't be mad, but probably will be anyway

While it's clear that most of America has never heard of Arcade Fire (probably because they're from Canada), that doesn't mean that they aren't deserving of Album of the Year.  Okay, maybe who YOU wanted to win didn't win, but that doesn't mean they didn't deserve it.  Most of the people who are complaining think they know good music, and to them it may be good music.  I'm not going to sit here and say that the rest of the nominees aren't talented: everyone knows I love Eminem and to this day he's still one of my favorite rappers; I hadn't heard of Lady Antebellum before last night, but then again I don't listen to country, so I can't say much; no one can deny the creativity of Lady Gaga; and Katy Perry is "meh" musically, but I will say this, she's a great performer.  Arcade Fire had the unfortunate circumstance of being nominated into a huge category with several main stream giants and, although being a complete underdog, actually winning.

While I don't know about Lady Antebellum (although I'm sure they're big among country fans based on how much they won) Eminem, Gaga, and Perry have had numerous Billboard chart toppers.  Unfortunately, what people don't realize is that the Billboard charts don't count for actual ratings in terms of reviewers.  Billboard ranks its albums and songs based on radio play, record sales, and internet streaming play; in a nutshell, Billboard ranks its albums and songs based on popularity.  Whoever sells the most and gets the most air/internet time is going to have the #1 spot.  I can think of off hand a song by Eminem, Gaga, and Perry that was at #1 at some point in time in 2010.  All this means is that those artists are the ones people have heard of, those are the ones that people want to win.  Honestly, I was expecting Lady Antebellum to win with how it was sweeping what seemed like every applicable category.  I think that even if Antebellum won less people would be upset because they had already won three awards prior to the announcement for Album of the Year.  Unfortunately for Arcade Fire, they were an evidently no name band that hadn't won any awards that night (being nominated for only two others, Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals and Best Alternative Music Album, losing to the Black Keys on both occasions) and I think it's safe to say that it was a shock to everyone that they won.  

What people need to realize is that just because Arcade Fire won doesn't mean the Grammys are rigged or that you should go on strike from the Grammys, if anything, the Grammys are the least credible major award show in terms of actually honoring their communities respective accomplishments.  For anyone that reads this and is baffled that Arcade Fire won, go to Metacritic and see how your favorite artist's last album did.  Then see how "The Suburbs" did.  Then see how many albums scored higher than both your favorite artist's and "The Suburbs;"  I promise you it will be a good number of albums.  There's a whole world of music out there and not one of us is able to scratch the surface.  Do yourself a favor and start listening to something that isn't played on the radio, I promise you that you'll find something you like whether it be rock, hip-hop, pop, or something else.  Just remember, just because who YOU wanted to win didn't win doesn't mean that who won wasn't deserving.  If anything, out of everyone at the Grammys, Arcade Fire was most deserving of Album of the Year and I for one am glad Taylor Swift didn't win two years in a row.

Congrats to Arcade Fire!  Win Butler: cut your hair.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Hey, it's 2011!

I'm Back!
I promise my month long hiatus wasn't due to laziness (not entirely at least).  This whole "future" business has slowly been creeping up on me and I enrolled myself in an LSAT class to get ready to go to law school, err whatever.  Thanks to Jeremy for snapping me back into a music groove.  To give you an idea of how little time I have to do things, I've reviewed one CD this year for 1190 and by this time last semester I'm pretty sure I had reviewed about five.  No bueno.  Just because that has been the case with 1190 though doesn't mean I haven't been picking up some new music on my own.  On the contrary (forgetting how much music I get when I go on a downloading binge) I have downloaded too much music.  Now, some of you may be saying that isn't possible, you can never have too much music.  It's possible when you download something and NEVER listen to it; I hate doing that.  I'm making my way through as much music as I can that I've snagged, but it's tough keeping up some times especially when a couple albums in particular ensnare me for days on end.  Over the past couple of weeks I have picked up Aloe Blacc, Iron & Wine, Cage the Elephant, Professor Green, The Decemberists, J. Cole, The Dears (1190), Cake, Yuck, and Zonoscope.  I've listened to maybe about three or four of those albums out of the ten in total.  Well, time to get on my horse and get to work!

First, I need to talk about the two albums that I haven't been able to stop listening to in the past week or so, the first being Aloe Blacc's Good Things.  Recently I've become infatuated with Conan O'Brien and a week and a half ago he exhibited Aloe Blacc, a tall, lanky, well dressed man with a silky voice.  While on the show I wasn't terribly impressed by Blacc's performance, I really liked his sound and style.  He definitely has a heavy jazz and blues background in his music and it shows throughout the entire album.  Some of the songs fall into a similar theme as a lot of the others, but others stand out in bright red bow ties among the mob of monotonous music.  Blacc's single "I Need a Dollar" may be the best song on the album, with an upbeat melody, but somber song content involving sorrow, alcoholism, unemployment, and, of course, the blues.  Blacc manages to juxtapose upbeat melodies with counter intuitive lyrics in several of his songs, "Loving You is Killing Me" being another standout favorite.  "Miss Fortune" (possibly my favorite track) has a decidedly darker tone than the rest of the album and the guitar scratching in the background is almost hypnotic.  While most of the album isn't terribly impressive or ground breaking, something about Blacc's voice keeps drawing me in; it's not the best, but it just sounds right.  Check him out here.

The other album that sucked me in is Professor Green's Alive Till I'm Dead.  I get bi-daily newsletters from this college info site that sends me updates about cool websites, events, stores, and the like.  A little while ago they told me about a website called We Are Hunted (possibly a Pandora challenger?).  The website essentially takes name drops of various artists from all over the web and tallies which ones are the most frequent.  You can look at the most popular songs, the most popular artists, and divide it up by genre along with several other options.  One night I was strolling around the Hip-Hop section and found Professor Green, a young, fiery UK rapper.  The rapper's subject matter at times is very reminiscent of Eminem and even his flow mimics Eminem's at times.  However, Green's album is aimed at more of a party crowd with the first three songs of the album having more dance oriented beats and more light hearted subject matter.  The rest of the album is much more rough and dark.  "Jungle" in particular has dark subject matter mixed with a heavily synthesized almost dubstep like beat.  "Monster" is maybe where listeners will hear Slim Shady the most, Green starting out by saying "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde/ Saw a chick walk in with a big behind/ Now I'm stalking my victim out/ Unrecognizable 'cause I'm in disguise," although noticeably more tame.  While it's clear that Green has a little polishing up to do, he definitely has a strong start with his first LP (he's reached #2 on the UK charts).  I would definitely check him out if you're looking for someone fun and a little different to listen to.  Check him out here.

Alright, I got my feet moving and that post didn't take too long.  Maybe I'll get a more formal review for something up here in a bit, but until then I'll try to keep updating you with the stuff I'm listening to and hopefully after posting this I can pull myself away from Blacc and Green.  See you soon and thanks for reading!