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(04/30/03 2:35pm)
Xiu Xiu takes on the American pastime of going over the top, being so immediately commercial and recognizable that the emotions expressed are undeniable. It's new album plays in this aesthetic, but with a grain of salt. Though the songs rush up from quiet, folky strumming beginnings to the unadulterated crescendos of techno beats and gizmo flailings, they all include a deconstructive element of what Lester Bangs once called "horrible noise." This punishes the passive listener, leaving only those with the heart and the stomach to deal with the ultimate pain that A Promise is dwelling in. \nAnd that promise -- it's the American Dream, as declared in Xiu Xiu's cover of Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car," to "buy a big house and live in the suburbs." Like the movie the band stole its name from, "Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl," in which a young Chinese girl gets taken from her home, raped, taken advantage of and then dies, Stewart sees the betrayal in inherited ideals. Spliced with equal doses of folk, goth, trip-hop and crooning, Xiu Xiu is influenced from genres where truth and lie are not opposed, but co-exist secretly.
(04/30/03 2:34pm)
Three on the Tree's debut album could be a recording of Wayne Coyne and Townes Van Zandt sitting in front of a nighttime fireplace trying to beat each other in a snoozing, country songwriting competition. So, obviously it's pretty music.\nThree on the Tree's songwriters, Zeb Gould and Sam Crawford, croon to the moon together as only suburban kids can, without much motivation, substance or political concerns. Is it too much to mention that Crawford speaks softly and without the syrupy drawl available on the album? Retreatism is a popular feeling these days, and Three on the Tree's brand of it is so earnest and the backing music interesting enough as to beat out any arguments one would bring up about non-action being a corroboration with evil. The only thing that feels contrived is the album's own compressed sound, but that can be blamed on cheap editing tools. It's been common now for country music to come out of urban landscapes, not to mention northern urban. Perhaps an increasingly technological world finds the disenfranchised looking for aural as well as mental safe harbors. Maybe that's science fiction though, and girls and friends are really the most important things in life.
(04/17/03 4:00am)
As those gritty little philosophers like Jean Paul Sartre or Soren Kierkegaard would have you believe, the option of free will exists multilaterally. Which is to say, a myriad of choices will come up in just about any situation and the result is a combined effort of arbitrary heads making arbitrary decisions. The only thing you really have to do in life is die.\nThis is the kind of resolution the two bands playing at The Bluebird Monday night understand. Brokeback and Califone, two noise/roots rock outfits from Chicago, played for themselves as much as the sparse crowd of the regular Bloomington scenesters. \nOpening the night, Brokeback played a quiet set of music concrete-infused jazz rock, typical for labelmates at the Chicago-based record company Thrill Jockey. Led by guitarist Douglas McCombs of the ubiquitous experimental instrumental group Tortoise, Brokeback displayed dexterity and flexibility. McCombs plays his guitar graciously, exploring the lower ranges of the notes available to the human ear. This makes the group sound like late era Sonic Youth as led by Johnny Cash's guitarist Luther Perkins. \nDespite the fusion leanings of its recordings, Brokeback sounded necessarily folksy. The Environments-style soundscapes were brought in courtesy of a laptop computer, errant guitar riffs and synthesizer excursions by Califone multi-instrumentalist Jim Becker. \nAs with Brokeback, Califone was plagued or dominated or escorted (it fits to whichever way you lean) by incidental noise. When Brokeback closed its set with one last ambiguous, faceless song, a plastic cup hit the cement floor of the Bluebird. It sounded so fitting that it would have been planned by anyone else. Though similar moments would be as lovely for Califone, it tried to build a sound around insistent, unwavering polyrhythms. \nOriginally, Califone rose up from the ashes of the dear, departed blues-rock group Red Red Meat. Fronted by singer/songwriter/guitarist/keyboardist Tim Rutili, Califone presents rock as atmospheric. Such is the modern atmosphere that a banjo doesn't sound out of place when juxtaposed with a guitar or an organ fed through innumerable foot pedals and delay effects.\nThe group displayed a dizzying arsenal of instruments to keep itself and the crowd amused. From the two percussionists' tabletops of rhythmic toys and whistles to Becker's banjos, guitars, beat up fiddle and bells and Rutili's own guitar stash and droning organ, the band was constantly searching for the perfect moment of effortless cohesion.\nLike Rutili's vocals, which never sound more than mumbled, Califone is a band that speaks in muted or whispered tones. Bordering on sad bastard music can be a tedious affair, but the band still seems able to induce freak out proportions with endless rhythm at any time. \nCapricious is really the right word to use for the evening. Seeing two mystical bands swoop in on Bloomington Monday night, playing to an exasperated crowd, was quite a random experience. The decisions we made and those the band found itself making were all part of the same astral feeling. It's comforting to know that intellect, beauty and succor can still be found in the same room from time to time.
(04/17/03 4:00am)
Damien Jurado is a big man, something like a retired offensive lineman. Hearing such a wee voice and painful tales come from such an obvious oddity makes me want to give the guy a hug. In return, his latest unassuming album turns around and gives me a pat on the back, as if to say, "You think you've got it bad…" His voice, a slowly drawled falsetto, tries to be Neil Young, but lacks the edge and the vision of the unfortunate godfather to this post-grunge (zits and all) confessional songwriting movement. Jurado's another one of those indie fellows who's happy when no one's looking, but tickled when somebody cares. His stories of misfits and eccentrics, though slightly amusing and charismatic, fail to be transcendent mostly because they're so quiet. Bands who pull off quiet are also evocative, but Jurado is simply tedious. Where Shall You Take Me? sounds as if the non-existent beat should be filled by tears hitting his pillows and bedroom floor. For example, in a song like "I Can't Get Over You," Jurado fills the space of three minutes with weak melismas and variations on the title phrase. Jurado is filling space, but he's easy to miss.
(04/16/03 8:13pm)
Damien Jurado is a big man, something like a retired offensive lineman. Hearing such a wee voice and painful tales come from such an obvious oddity makes me want to give the guy a hug. In return, his latest unassuming album turns around and gives me a pat on the back, as if to say, "You think you've got it bad…" His voice, a slowly drawled falsetto, tries to be Neil Young, but lacks the edge and the vision of the unfortunate godfather to this post-grunge (zits and all) confessional songwriting movement. Jurado's another one of those indie fellows who's happy when no one's looking, but tickled when somebody cares. His stories of misfits and eccentrics, though slightly amusing and charismatic, fail to be transcendent mostly because they're so quiet. Bands who pull off quiet are also evocative, but Jurado is simply tedious. Where Shall You Take Me? sounds as if the non-existent beat should be filled by tears hitting his pillows and bedroom floor. For example, in a song like "I Can't Get Over You," Jurado fills the space of three minutes with weak melismas and variations on the title phrase. Jurado is filling space, but he's easy to miss.
(04/16/03 8:00pm)
As those gritty little philosophers like Jean Paul Sartre or Soren Kierkegaard would have you believe, the option of free will exists multilaterally. Which is to say, a myriad of choices will come up in just about any situation and the result is a combined effort of arbitrary heads making arbitrary decisions. The only thing you really have to do in life is die.\nThis is the kind of resolution the two bands playing at The Bluebird Monday night understand. Brokeback and Califone, two noise/roots rock outfits from Chicago, played for themselves as much as the sparse crowd of the regular Bloomington scenesters. \nOpening the night, Brokeback played a quiet set of music concrete-infused jazz rock, typical for labelmates at the Chicago-based record company Thrill Jockey. Led by guitarist Douglas McCombs of the ubiquitous experimental instrumental group Tortoise, Brokeback displayed dexterity and flexibility. McCombs plays his guitar graciously, exploring the lower ranges of the notes available to the human ear. This makes the group sound like late era Sonic Youth as led by Johnny Cash's guitarist Luther Perkins. \nDespite the fusion leanings of its recordings, Brokeback sounded necessarily folksy. The Environments-style soundscapes were brought in courtesy of a laptop computer, errant guitar riffs and synthesizer excursions by Califone multi-instrumentalist Jim Becker. \nAs with Brokeback, Califone was plagued or dominated or escorted (it fits to whichever way you lean) by incidental noise. When Brokeback closed its set with one last ambiguous, faceless song, a plastic cup hit the cement floor of the Bluebird. It sounded so fitting that it would have been planned by anyone else. Though similar moments would be as lovely for Califone, it tried to build a sound around insistent, unwavering polyrhythms. \nOriginally, Califone rose up from the ashes of the dear, departed blues-rock group Red Red Meat. Fronted by singer/songwriter/guitarist/keyboardist Tim Rutili, Califone presents rock as atmospheric. Such is the modern atmosphere that a banjo doesn't sound out of place when juxtaposed with a guitar or an organ fed through innumerable foot pedals and delay effects.\nThe group displayed a dizzying arsenal of instruments to keep itself and the crowd amused. From the two percussionists' tabletops of rhythmic toys and whistles to Becker's banjos, guitars, beat up fiddle and bells and Rutili's own guitar stash and droning organ, the band was constantly searching for the perfect moment of effortless cohesion.\nLike Rutili's vocals, which never sound more than mumbled, Califone is a band that speaks in muted or whispered tones. Bordering on sad bastard music can be a tedious affair, but the band still seems able to induce freak out proportions with endless rhythm at any time. \nCapricious is really the right word to use for the evening. Seeing two mystical bands swoop in on Bloomington Monday night, playing to an exasperated crowd, was quite a random experience. The decisions we made and those the band found itself making were all part of the same astral feeling. It's comforting to know that intellect, beauty and succor can still be found in the same room from time to time.
(04/10/03 4:00am)
The Midwest collective led by singer-songwriter Jason Molina, Songs: Ohia, speak softly. Eschewing the bombastic heartland country-rock of Mellencamp, the group sounds like Gram Parsons dying up at Joshua Tree after his lethal dose. It's death, man. Song titles like "John Henry Split My Heart" and "Just Be Simple" point to dire consequences and troubling choices that Molina would rather just not face. Of course, all of this pompous self-importance (and self-degradation) can be a bit much. The cover art of an owl with a tear rolling down its face is a laughable heart-on-sleeve moment. Songs: Ohia is constantly going for the classic, epochal rock song on The Magnolia Electric Co. by reiterating soft guitar melodies and Molina pushing his restrained delivery just up to a whine for extended lengths of time. What Songs: Ohia has proved to be good at is consistent mood, so problems arise when Molina's vocals are replaced by a Tim McGraw-sound-alike and then a woman on "Old Black Hen" and "Peoria Lunchbox Blues," respectively. With the tracks placed side by side right in the middle of the album, it disrupts another fine, cold, country night setting by Songs: Ohia.
(04/09/03 5:45pm)
The Midwest collective led by singer-songwriter Jason Molina, Songs: Ohia, speak softly. Eschewing the bombastic heartland country-rock of Mellencamp, the group sounds like Gram Parsons dying up at Joshua Tree after his lethal dose. It's death, man. Song titles like "John Henry Split My Heart" and "Just Be Simple" point to dire consequences and troubling choices that Molina would rather just not face. Of course, all of this pompous self-importance (and self-degradation) can be a bit much. The cover art of an owl with a tear rolling down its face is a laughable heart-on-sleeve moment. Songs: Ohia is constantly going for the classic, epochal rock song on The Magnolia Electric Co. by reiterating soft guitar melodies and Molina pushing his restrained delivery just up to a whine for extended lengths of time. What Songs: Ohia has proved to be good at is consistent mood, so problems arise when Molina's vocals are replaced by a Tim McGraw-sound-alike and then a woman on "Old Black Hen" and "Peoria Lunchbox Blues," respectively. With the tracks placed side by side right in the middle of the album, it disrupts another fine, cold, country night setting by Songs: Ohia.
(04/03/03 5:00am)
"Pussy said to the Owl, 'You elegant fowl/How charmingly sweet you sing!/Oh! let us be married/too long we have tarried/But what shall we do for a ring?'" Edward Lear wrote that back in 1871 in his bedtime-classic Owl & the Pussycat, and the band Owl & the Pussycat is just about as pleasant as the book. A duo consisting of Greg Moore and Lois Maffeo from Olympia, Wash., they reflect the ex-hippie-beatnik-hipster side of indie pop. Like the similar minded Elliott Smith, they play with the conventions of standard pop-rock via folk. Coming off like Sonny and Cher's "I Got You Babe," as done by slow-core figureheads Low, Owl & the Pussycat is a charming effort. Though such gentle reflections and self-reflexiveness can often become tiresome, Maffeo and Moore's shared vocal duties carry the album on love -- the kind of love that shuts out a world of calamities by the simple virtue that two lovebirds just don't care about anything else. There's room in this world for all sorts of variations on this story. As learned from Bachelard's Poetics of Space, everyone's got a unique house of their imagination.
(04/02/03 3:05pm)
"Pussy said to the Owl, 'You elegant fowl/How charmingly sweet you sing!/Oh! let us be married/too long we have tarried/But what shall we do for a ring?'" Edward Lear wrote that back in 1871 in his bedtime-classic Owl & the Pussycat, and the band Owl & the Pussycat is just about as pleasant as the book. A duo consisting of Greg Moore and Lois Maffeo from Olympia, Wash., they reflect the ex-hippie-beatnik-hipster side of indie pop. Like the similar minded Elliott Smith, they play with the conventions of standard pop-rock via folk. Coming off like Sonny and Cher's "I Got You Babe," as done by slow-core figureheads Low, Owl & the Pussycat is a charming effort. Though such gentle reflections and self-reflexiveness can often become tiresome, Maffeo and Moore's shared vocal duties carry the album on love -- the kind of love that shuts out a world of calamities by the simple virtue that two lovebirds just don't care about anything else. There's room in this world for all sorts of variations on this story. As learned from Bachelard's Poetics of Space, everyone's got a unique house of their imagination.
(03/27/03 5:00am)
Califone is a band containing four holdovers from the infamous Chicago country-blues group Red Red Meat. Doing country-blues in the city without being a Luddite not only means including piercing electric guitars, but synthesizers. Surrounding its backwater acoustic instruments with synth burps and errors allows Califone to sound quaintly psychedelic in an egalitarian manner, but whereas 2001's masterful Roomsound sounded so improvised, it bordered on drunk, Quicksand/Cradlesnakes sounds more thought out. Perhaps this is a result of working on film scores in between the two records. Tim Rutili's vocals are still near indecipherable and his plain acoustic guitar patterns are still the centerpiece for the environmental experimentation, but songs like "Vampiring Again" skirt pop- single territory. The tracks that resonate are those that play up the country-boy-goes-to-the-city bleakness, the fellow who, despite mastering his new scene in necessary manner, still misses home -- though the story could also fit the other way around. Rutili's words connect these dichotomies in mind-bending ways. "Northern feel basement light/milk black killing/green inside like sour young fruit/counting every edible shade of red," he sings on "(red)"
(03/27/03 5:00am)
Dirty Three is what one would call post-rock, whatever that means. The group which formed in Melbourne in 1992 features Bad Seeds' violinist Warren Ellis and famous session and touring musicians Mick Turner on guitar and Jim White on drums. In fact, the group's sustained crescendo feels like the instrumental versions of a Nick Cave record. White and Turner are really mantels for Ellis' scratchy, restrained violin, which always takes the place of vocal duties on Dirty Three albums. To get comatose, side one of She Has No Strings At The Apollo beats out ambient bands Sigur Ros or Godspeed You Black Emperor! by issuing repetitive patterns to calm even the most nervous folks. The fact that The Dirty Three constantly sound like they might fall apart at any moment keeps the listener's attention. The violin has always been the most beautiful instrument precisely because it sounds as if it could never be tamed, and one can only hope a horses tail will keep the grating nature of the little piece of wood to a minimum. So, yeah, post-rock, well I guess what that's all about is high-brow pretensions and that sort of thing. The Dirty Three aren't the Stooges or Chuck Berry, maybe Velvet Underground with Stravinsky.
(03/26/03 8:37pm)
Dirty Three is what one would call post-rock, whatever that means. The group which formed in Melbourne in 1992 features Bad Seeds' violinist Warren Ellis and famous session and touring musicians Mick Turner on guitar and Jim White on drums. In fact, the group's sustained crescendo feels like the instrumental versions of a Nick Cave record. White and Turner are really mantels for Ellis' scratchy, restrained violin, which always takes the place of vocal duties on Dirty Three albums. To get comatose, side one of She Has No Strings At The Apollo beats out ambient bands Sigur Ros or Godspeed You Black Emperor! by issuing repetitive patterns to calm even the most nervous folks. The fact that The Dirty Three constantly sound like they might fall apart at any moment keeps the listener's attention. The violin has always been the most beautiful instrument precisely because it sounds as if it could never be tamed, and one can only hope a horses tail will keep the grating nature of the little piece of wood to a minimum. So, yeah, post-rock, well I guess what that's all about is high-brow pretensions and that sort of thing. The Dirty Three aren't the Stooges or Chuck Berry, maybe Velvet Underground with Stravinsky.
(03/26/03 8:36pm)
Califone is a band containing four holdovers from the infamous Chicago country-blues group Red Red Meat. Doing country-blues in the city without being a Luddite not only means including piercing electric guitars, but synthesizers. Surrounding its backwater acoustic instruments with synth burps and errors allows Califone to sound quaintly psychedelic in an egalitarian manner, but whereas 2001's masterful Roomsound sounded so improvised, it bordered on drunk, Quicksand/Cradlesnakes sounds more thought out. Perhaps this is a result of working on film scores in between the two records. Tim Rutili's vocals are still near indecipherable and his plain acoustic guitar patterns are still the centerpiece for the environmental experimentation, but songs like "Vampiring Again" skirt pop- single territory. The tracks that resonate are those that play up the country-boy-goes-to-the-city bleakness, the fellow who, despite mastering his new scene in necessary manner, still misses home -- though the story could also fit the other way around. Rutili's words connect these dichotomies in mind-bending ways. "Northern feel basement light/milk black killing/green inside like sour young fruit/counting every edible shade of red," he sings on "(red)"
(03/25/03 4:24am)
Anthony DeCurtis is the most visible face of rock criticism today. As a frequent contributor to VH1 programming, a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and a Grammy award winning writer to boot, he has established himself at the forefront of his field. At 7:30 p.m. tonight at the Buskirk-Chumley Theatre, the Union Board will present "Anthony DeCurtis -- The Beatles: Yesterday and Today," in which DeCurtis will lecture and answer questions from the audience.\nDeCurtis is a native of Greenwich Village in New York City. After completing his undergraduate work at Hunter College, City University of New York, he then attended graduate school at IU. He stayed in Bloomington from 1974 to 1979 and received a Ph.D. in American Literature. He also worked as an associate instructor in the English Department during his time at IU, after which he taught at Emory in Atlanta.\n"I set out to be an English professor," DeCurtis said, "and by that point, which was in the '70s, I was assuming that one way or another I was going to be writing about popular music." \nEven after all of the success he has garnered in his chosen field, DeCurtis can still be found teaching. Currently it is creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania.\nDeCurtis describes his entry into rock criticism as literally falling into it. \n"I got into it kind of by accident in a way," he said. "A friend of mine had been doing it at the newspaper, The Bloomington Herald Telephone it was called then, and it just seemed like fun. I always loved music, and as a graduate student in English, I was preparing to write literary criticism and it wasn't that much of an adjustment."\nIn the early 1980s DeCurtis began writing for Record magazine, a music monthly put out by Rolling Stone. He began writing for Rolling Stone in 1986. He was a regular contributor and editor to Rolling Stone until 1995 and continues to write for the magazine today as well as a handful of other publications including The New York Times and Book Magazine. \nHis literary style and natural grace as a writer has given a certain professional and belletristic atmosphere to current rock criticism. Previously, it had been an infantile arena where writers like "the noise boys" (Nick Tosches, Dick Meltzer and Lester Bangs) attempted to write in the style of rock 'n' roll, so to speak. For all these specific personalities' gifts, a crop of other less talented music writers following the same muse had kept the field in traction for years.\nDespite the high-brow aesthetic one might assume DeCurtis would extol, he has tried to keep his writing simple and accessible. \nChicago Tribune rock critic Greg Kot said, "The guy's (DeCurtis) a genuine music fan. I was in New York and he said, 'Let's go back to my apartment and listen to some music.' So we just went back there and listened to music for a few hours, and the new R.E.M. record was about to come out. We just sat and listened to it from end to end a couple of times and talked about it, how excited we were about it. It was just two music fans talking. That approach carries over to his writing, that enthusiasm."\nHaving DeCurtis here to discuss the Beatles is not only interesting because of his position and talent but because these qualities have allowed him to gain exclusive access into the lives and minds of the band's members. \n"His many interviews with Paul and George point to the trust they had in him, especially George, who essentially granted Anthony his official 'comeback' interview after many reclusive years," said "Music of the Beatles" professor Glenn Gass. "He also assembled the John Lennon CD box, sifting through tapes at the Dakota building with Yoko Ono, again a remarkable display of trust from a notoriously guarded person. Phil Spector granted Anthony his only interview focusing on his work with John and George, and Dhani Harrison with Anthony on the posthumous release of his father's Brainwashed album in 2002."\nAs far as a pop culture critic goes, DeCurtis is at the top of the respected heap. His experience and knowledge of the Beatles' work and beyond should be enlightening at the least, and of course their music and celebrity has virtually saturated the crumbling culture we live in anyway.
(03/06/03 5:00am)
It was once written, in the Book of Ecclesiastes to be exact, that, "the thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun" (1:9).\nAs the reviews editor of this magazine, I get to feel the full girth of this statement in all of its prophetic glory. In the past few weeks our writers have been flooding me with variations of sentences like, "_____ (some band) come on like a cross between Weezer and Blink-182" or "though this is nothing new, they add sincerity to a hackneyed genre." \nAs rock enters its seventh or eighth "comeback," is it true that the wind has gone out of the proverbial sails? Isn't this a question that was asked as far back as 1959? According to the reviewers of the IDS Weekend the apocalypse has fallen upon rock music, though no one is dropping to their knees to pray or has even offered to pick up a shovel to cover up the rotting corpses.\nWe can all think of excuses or an exception to the "Rock is Dead" theory, obviously it will never totally become extinct. After all, there are still bluegrass festivals and I'm told that somewhere among the flatlands of central Indiana one can still find bagpipe music being played with gritty earnestness. \nMy problem and skepticism arises when people who love music, such as our reviewers do, have problems feeling enthusiastic about modern music. \nPerhaps the burden falls on new bands because rock has been canonized so well over the past 50 years. They teach classes about it in college, there are a myriad of books, entire television stations dedicated to its mythology, etc. Elvis sounded vital in 1955 even though his schtick was almost completely borrowed. When the Beatles recorded "Roll Over Beethoven" in 1963, fans thought George Harrison had wrote it. So why can't Sum-41 get away with sounding like Green Day?\nThese are battles for someone else to fight, because I've been waiting to burn this thing down, torch in hand, all year long. Popular or mass culture hardly ever has personal sentiment in it, mainly because personal sentiment is anathema to mass sentiment. Whether we admit it or not, we like our music to be private. I've met a lot of people who relish in the amount of obscure band names and album titles they know (I may even be one of them). \nRock and roll has not only ceased to be a form of rebellion, but it has ceased to be a form of expression other than nihilism and indifference. A few weeks ago, I damned a local band for being apolitical and conservative. Out of the various letters I received damning me for my rhetoric, somebody wrote to me saying they thought it was OK for music to be mindless and fun. Though the good mindless rock always came out of some sort of insufferable circumstance, and it still hinted at a more serious and dire problem at hand. Today's kids are existentialists without even understanding why.\nNowadays when hip rock music is being commandeered by television commercials, the youth music has also become a prosaic expression of commerce. Like movies, which long ago became a ground in which the bourgeois ideology was not only supported but celebrated, music has stopped challenging the American (read: Capitalist) state of being. In a sense, rock music has been castrated and rather than trying to help repair its splitting seams, we ought to turn our attention to the more vital forms of musical youth expression such as hip-hop or techno music.\nSo, when rock enters it eighth or ninth comeback, I don't want to hear anyone saying they told me so, because I'm telling you so now. Like I believe I will wake up in the morning, I believe that rock and roll will come back, again and again. The situation isn't anywhere close to being too far gone, but the dogma behind it has become static. A good idea (directly or indirectly borrowed), a pretty melody and a spot-on lyric will always endure the test of time, but unchallenging and unflinchingly "normal" music will always sound synthetic, and hence hopelessly pathetic.
(03/05/03 6:43pm)
It was once written, in the Book of Ecclesiastes to be exact, that, "the thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun" (1:9).\nAs the reviews editor of this magazine, I get to feel the full girth of this statement in all of its prophetic glory. In the past few weeks our writers have been flooding me with variations of sentences like, "_____ (some band) come on like a cross between Weezer and Blink-182" or "though this is nothing new, they add sincerity to a hackneyed genre." \nAs rock enters its seventh or eighth "comeback," is it true that the wind has gone out of the proverbial sails? Isn't this a question that was asked as far back as 1959? According to the reviewers of the IDS Weekend the apocalypse has fallen upon rock music, though no one is dropping to their knees to pray or has even offered to pick up a shovel to cover up the rotting corpses.\nWe can all think of excuses or an exception to the "Rock is Dead" theory, obviously it will never totally become extinct. After all, there are still bluegrass festivals and I'm told that somewhere among the flatlands of central Indiana one can still find bagpipe music being played with gritty earnestness. \nMy problem and skepticism arises when people who love music, such as our reviewers do, have problems feeling enthusiastic about modern music. \nPerhaps the burden falls on new bands because rock has been canonized so well over the past 50 years. They teach classes about it in college, there are a myriad of books, entire television stations dedicated to its mythology, etc. Elvis sounded vital in 1955 even though his schtick was almost completely borrowed. When the Beatles recorded "Roll Over Beethoven" in 1963, fans thought George Harrison had wrote it. So why can't Sum-41 get away with sounding like Green Day?\nThese are battles for someone else to fight, because I've been waiting to burn this thing down, torch in hand, all year long. Popular or mass culture hardly ever has personal sentiment in it, mainly because personal sentiment is anathema to mass sentiment. Whether we admit it or not, we like our music to be private. I've met a lot of people who relish in the amount of obscure band names and album titles they know (I may even be one of them). \nRock and roll has not only ceased to be a form of rebellion, but it has ceased to be a form of expression other than nihilism and indifference. A few weeks ago, I damned a local band for being apolitical and conservative. Out of the various letters I received damning me for my rhetoric, somebody wrote to me saying they thought it was OK for music to be mindless and fun. Though the good mindless rock always came out of some sort of insufferable circumstance, and it still hinted at a more serious and dire problem at hand. Today's kids are existentialists without even understanding why.\nNowadays when hip rock music is being commandeered by television commercials, the youth music has also become a prosaic expression of commerce. Like movies, which long ago became a ground in which the bourgeois ideology was not only supported but celebrated, music has stopped challenging the American (read: Capitalist) state of being. In a sense, rock music has been castrated and rather than trying to help repair its splitting seams, we ought to turn our attention to the more vital forms of musical youth expression such as hip-hop or techno music.\nSo, when rock enters it eighth or ninth comeback, I don't want to hear anyone saying they told me so, because I'm telling you so now. Like I believe I will wake up in the morning, I believe that rock and roll will come back, again and again. The situation isn't anywhere close to being too far gone, but the dogma behind it has become static. A good idea (directly or indirectly borrowed), a pretty melody and a spot-on lyric will always endure the test of time, but unchallenging and unflinchingly "normal" music will always sound synthetic, and hence hopelessly pathetic.
(02/27/03 5:00am)
Bonnie 'Prince' Billy (aka Will Oldham) wants to know what love is. "What is love?" one might ask. Well, according to Oldham, it's acoustic guitars and funereal singing. Though the spare sound might recall Beck's latest record without all the electronic gizmos and grandiose string sections, Oldham has been an introspective guy for years. Through his days with Palace, variations and the recordings done under his birth name, he's been searching for his soul while trying not to get in your way too much. Unfortunately, on his latest release Master and Everyone, he has followed Beck down the road of referring to love as a vague cliche. "And even if love were not what I wanted/love would make love the thing most desired," he sings. Prose writers from Robert Frost to Bob Dylan will say geography is essential to painting a picture with words. Fortunately for Oldham, he is a master songwriter and knows how to sound pretty away from the microscope. Master and Everyone will be one of those records to put on the turner when nights of gentle love-making and caressing your baby are in order.
(02/26/03 10:20pm)
Bonnie 'Prince' Billy (aka Will Oldham) wants to know what love is. "What is love?" one might ask. Well, according to Oldham, it's acoustic guitars and funereal singing. Though the spare sound might recall Beck's latest record without all the electronic gizmos and grandiose string sections, Oldham has been an introspective guy for years. Through his days with Palace, variations and the recordings done under his birth name, he's been searching for his soul while trying not to get in your way too much. Unfortunately, on his latest release Master and Everyone, he has followed Beck down the road of referring to love as a vague cliche. "And even if love were not what I wanted/love would make love the thing most desired," he sings. Prose writers from Robert Frost to Bob Dylan will say geography is essential to painting a picture with words. Fortunately for Oldham, he is a master songwriter and knows how to sound pretty away from the microscope. Master and Everyone will be one of those records to put on the turner when nights of gentle love-making and caressing your baby are in order.
(02/13/03 5:00am)
As a boy, with a boyish imagination, I spent my nights in bed listening to readings of "Moby Dick," "The Chronicles of Narnia," "The Red Badge of Courage" and many others on my mini tape deck. As I think back on those romantic days now, I imagine hearing that famous first line of "Moby Dick," "Call me Ishmael," and I swear that I hear the sound of seagulls swarming around the docks for scraps from the enormous wooden ships and the narrator saying "Argh!" before he delivered his most personal information.\nLou Reed's new album, The Raven, takes me back to those days when my reverie was given a voice to stories so resplendent and profound that it was a wonder I ever fell asleep. Originally, it was conceived as a stage presentation of Edgar Allen Poe's writings with new Lou Reed music and direction by Robert Wilson called "POE-try." Now the music has been released upon the world in two versions. There is a double-CD with two hours of music and Reed's rewrites of Poe delivered by some famous actors, and a single disc, which eradicates much of the spoken word material. \nSo is Lou Reed's rewriting of Poe blasphemy? Hardly, though the language is denser than what Reed usually works with. Since his days in the Velvet Underground, he has been an expert of conveying the stories and images of the little dark corners of the world. Poe, with his lecher limp, strange sexual history and serious drug issues is an easy fit to the world of Lou Reed. The actors, which include Willem Dafoe, Steve Buscemi and the incorrigible Elizabeth Ashley, deliver their lines with fervor and precision, making Reed's words sound effortlessly ancient. \nReed had once said that he wanted to take the idea of a novel and present it within the fun of rock and roll. The Raven is similar to that idea, but like the 1990 album Songs for Drella which he made with John Cale about the life of Andy Warhol, this is something more like a biography. Reed is attempting to educate, shed new light and to once again make the words of Edgar Allen Poe radiate with the intensity they had in the late-19th century.\nWith the spoken word parts alone this album would be a treasure chest of stimulus, but interwoven throughout is some great rock music and a collection of talented musicians to help out. David Bowie shows up to sing with a joyous buoyancy on "Hop-Frog," Ornette Coleman honks along rhythmically with "Guilty" and The Blind Boys of Alabama sing their hearts out in a call and response with Reed on "I Wanna Know (The Pit and the Pendulum)."\nThe album ultimately succeeds because Reed's music does not sound out of place as it exchanges passages with the spirit of the dear, departed Poe. When the unknown Antony sings the Reed classic "Perfect Day" as if someone had gutted his lovers heart and then flows into Dafoe's inhabiting of "The Raven," it seems just right.\nThough the concept screams out with the vain pretentiousness Reed has been accused of in the past, it ends up being a very warm-hearted, yet frightful affair. As he sings with typical bluntness on "Edgar Allen Poe," "We give you the soliloquy the raven at the door/flaming pits the moving walls no equilibrium/No ballast, no bombast/the unvarnished truth we've got/mind swoons guilty cooking ravings in a pot/Edgar Allan Poe/not exactly the boy next door," Reed is aching for his fans to feel the same passion for the writer as he does.
