Day 181: M83 – Before the Dawn Heals Us

28 Aug

Teen Angst

As you may have expected, I care a lot about sound quality.  Nothing makes me happier than a high bit rate and my Sennheiser HD 595s.  But, as you also may have expected, I’m a pretty busy guy.  Sometimes, I’ve got to multitask.  In terms of Swole Ear, this means that I have to listen to a record out of my laptop speakers every now and then.  Believe me, this always causes great amounts of distress.  As I found out tonight, it can also cause me to misjudge music.  We learned something today: high audio quality isn’t just an OCD thing, it actually matters for effective music listening!

So I was walking around my room, probably putting clothes away or something, and  just not getting Before the Dawn Heals Us.  It sounded like a big mess of static and synthesizers.  I got to the sixth track (Asterisk) without my headphones, ready to write an angry post about how weird =/= good, when I plugged my sennies in.  It sounded like a big, glorious mess of static and synthesizers.

Looking back, I probably plugged my headphones in at the perfect moment.  I can’t think of a place for a better transition from crap to good sound quality on this record.  That’s not to say that makes Before the Dawn any less impressive, though.  It’s an odd grab bag of indie electronic, with something that’ll probably please, as well as piss off, every music listener out there.

What am I going to take away from this?  Always, always, listen to music on a system that doesn’t sound like crap.  It’s very easy to misjudge something heard through crappy speakers.  You can turn that into an analogy for life or something; just make sure that you give me credit.

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Day 180: NRBQ – At Yankee Stadium

27 Aug

Shake, Rattle & Roll

I like weird music.  I think I’ve made that fairly clear over the course of this project.  Well, that’s not entirely true.  I don’t like music just because it’s weird.  I like good music, and if it happens to be something that I consider weird, it gets some brownie points for that extra creativity.

Okay, I’ve obviously confused myself a bit…slow down Jacob, small words…simple thoughts.

Anyway, the off-the-beaten-pathiness that is NRBQ (New Rhythm and Blues Quartet’s) At Yankee Stadium is the inspiration for that rambling introduction.  It’s not weird like what I normally mean by weird, though (oh man, here we go again).  Bear with me for a second.  When I describe music as weird, I usually just mean something of the indie variety that doesn’t conform to the standard rock band setup.  tUnE-yArDs—weird, Panda Bear—weird.  NRBQ—shouldn’t be weird.  It’s 4 guys playing conventional instruments.

They’re weird, though.  On At Yankee Stadium, NRBQ drags you through about every genre in music, and you’ll love every minute of it.  Heartfelt ballad? Check.  Standard rock?  Yup.  Johnny Cash cover?  Indubitably. A little jazz? Fo shizzle.  Hell, even some rhythm and blues gets thrown in, believe it or not.

It’s this strangeness that’s so appealing, though.  You never have any idea where this band is going to go next, which really adds to the intrigue of the record.  I know that I’ve hated on bands that can’t stick with a single sound, but that’s because I’ve never heard a band pull it off.  NRBQ is the exception.

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Day 179: The Microphones – The Glow Pt. 2

26 Aug

Map

Well crap.  Look at what I just stumbled upon.  It turns out that I’m not so creative or original after all.  Sure, these guys have multiple writers, are quite possibly English majors, and write more about the records that they review than, say, similar music blogs or something like that.  It still stings, though.

Anyway, the album that I listened to today is to blame here.  I went to The Glow Pt. 2’s last.fm page, as I often do for records I’m listening to, and I saw a link to that site.  It hurts.

Oh well, I’ve got a pending patent on this thing.  I’m not going to worry.  Can you get these amazing insights and commentary from any other music blog on the internet? I think not.

So, I’m going to try and write about today’s record now.  I hope y’all don’t mind.

If you’ve spent any time on the web’s various music forums or in an independent record store over the past decade, you’ve undoubtedly heard or read something about The Glow Pt. 2.  Everyone in the music-listening world seems to love Phil Elvrum (the man behind The Microphones) and his strange blend of folk, fuzz, and solid songwriting.  Who am I to go against that trend?

All sarcasm aside, I genuinely did enjoy this record.   Sure, it’s indie rock, but it’s far enough away from all of the other stuff that I’ve listened to with its sound to make it not absolutely predictable and boring.  Interesting, choppy acoustic guitars are often nearly drowned out by fuzz and feedback, with almost-amateurish piano serving as a twinkly backdrop.  In other words, it sound gewd.

You really get the feeling that you are an elephant tending to a campfire while listening to this record.  Well, you do if you’re a music blogger who has just discovered that he’s been ripping off another blog for half of a year.

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Day 178: Disappears – Lux

25 Aug

No Other

Here’s something that I haven’t written about in a while…

Back in the early days of Swole Ear, I was listening to—and complaining about—a fair amount of lo-fi indie rock.  It’s been a while since I’ve listened to a feedback-heavy record.  Don’t worry, though, nothing’s changed.  I still find most distortion-heavy indie rock monotonous and boring.

Disappears are playing at that AV Club Fest that I wrote about a few posts back.  At this point (three negative band reviews in), you may be wondering why I’m going at all.  Don’t worry, there are plenty of bands that I knew of pre-Swole that I’m very excited about.  And who knows, maybe one of the bands that I don’t like on record will impress me live.  It’s happened before.

Unless some crazy crowd involvement gets going, I can’t see that happening with Disappears, though.  There’ll probably be a whole lot of hipster head bobbing going on, as some audience members attempt to convince everyone around them that they’re down with the scene and get the deep, deep meaning behind songs like Not Nothing or No Other, a meaning which must be going right over my head.

I guess this album is more than anything a reaffirmation that music taste is completely subjective.  I can’t stand lo-fi, hi-feedback, avg.-talent, but there are tons of people who actually like this stuff.  I just wish I saw in this the same thing that Disappears’ fans do.  They can’t possibly all be pretending to get it.  Can they?

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Day 177: They Might Be Giants – Join Us

24 Aug

In Fact

They Might Be Giants have not aged well.  Join Us, the band’s latest record, is kind of depressing, actually.  What we have here is a group of guys that just doesn’t know when to call it quits.  They’ve accomplished everything that they could ever hope to with this project—it’s time for them to move on.  Something tells me that they won’t be doing that anytime soon, though.

At this point, it’s almost as if The Giants have become a parody of themselves.  Join Us is contrived.  The offbeat lyrics are forced, compared to Flood, at least. They’re trying to be kooky now, while this just happened naturally in the past.  Look no further than the cover art, and you’ll see what I mean.  You’ll also save yourself 47 minutes if that’s all that you invest in this record.

Fortunately for The Giants, in their two-plus decades of record releasing, they’ve gathered a huge fan base—a very supportive one, at that.  If they’re playing shows, there will always be fans  to buy tickets and merch.  It’s hard to justify continuous tours without continuous releases, though.

It’s time for the fans to wake up.  You’re living in a nostalgia-coated cloud if you say that this record has any redeeming qualities to it.  The lyrics are weak, the instrumentation is lacking—the strange attempt at minimalism just comes off as lazy—and it’s undeniably boring.  There isn’t one catchy or single-worthy track on here.  Sorry, with a band like They Might Be Giants, you need a few of those.  Even Weezer has If You’re Wondering…

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Day 176: Dire Straits – Making Movies

23 Aug

Romeo and Juliet 

7 tracks, 38 minutes…sounds perfect for a day that I forgot was Dad-Rock Tuesday until about ten minutes ago.

It’s currently eleven o’clock.  I want to go to sleep.  I went ahead and got the post that you’ll be reading tomorrow done; I was about to upload it, too.  Then, for some reason, I thought to myself “when was the last time I listened to a dad-rock record?”  The answer: exactly one week ago.

Yeah, I’m cranky.  Usually, that mindset leads to a negative record review—we’ve seen that happen on many a DRT, actually.  I can’t do it with Dire Straits, though.  Which is weird because I’m actually seething with anger as I write this—I just can’t direct it at Making Movies. 

This is some relaxing, borderline-jam rock right here.  Mark Knopfler, in addition to having a hilarious last name that makes me grateful for my two first names, has some great lyrics.  Or maybe it’s his delivery, actually.  I don’t know, there’s something about this guy that’s just relaxing.  The easy-going guitars and slow beats only aid in this record’s groovy relaxation capabilities.  If the tracks were shorter, we’d have a really awesome album here, instead of just kind of awesome.

I’ve learned my lesson.  Never listen to and review two records back-to-back.  Especially after the first album gets you in a terrible mood.  So thanks to my half-conscious dad, who I’m sure I awoke from a deep slumber with a phone call requesting an album choice.  Also, thanks for staying away from Funkadelic.   Tonight is not the night for that.

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Day 175: Fountains of Wayne – Sky Full of Holes

22 Aug

The Summer Place

Yes, these are the guys that made Stacy’s Mom.  Can we move on?  Please?  That was eight years ago.

Sorry, it’s annoying that a band with so much great material is still stuck with and known for a single overplayed song.  Sure, it’s great, but they have so much other good stuff.

Fountains of Wayne go way back with my family; perhaps that’s why I’m a bit defensive.  Welcome Interstate Managers—which yes, I’ll admit, my dad did purchase because it was the record with Stacy’s Mom on it—became the soundtrack to countless road trips, and to my preteen years in general.  If I’m reminiscing about being an eleven-year-old for whatever reason, Mexican Wine or All Kinds of Time will always start playing in my head.

Somehow, I’ve made it through the rest of my life without listening to anything else by this oh-so-important band.  Is that a little hypocritical? Perhaps.  Haters gon hate.

But, I figured that the time had come.  Last.fm informed me that Fountains had recently released a new record, and now we find ourselves here.  Guess what?  They still kick ass.

That trademark upbeat power-pop hasn’t gone anywhere, and front man Adam Schlesinger’s almost-obnoxious nasally voice still has the power to put anyone (well, me at least) in a good mood.

I did notice that the band isn’t genre experimenting anymore.  There’s no ill-advised country song (although Road Song gets uncomfortably close) or trippy attempt at 60s rock on this record.  All I have to say to that is thank god.

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Day 174: Kanye West & Jay-Z – Watch The Throne

21 Aug

Niggas in Paris

My room is filled with posters that rep my love for things like Entourage or The Pains of Being Pure at Heart. After taking a glance at my limited edition White Stripes turntable, something hit me: I have no idea what I’m talking about when it comes to hip-hop.

I’ve dabbled in the genre with this blog before, but I admit, I’m fairly uncertain when it comes to what I’m supposed to look for in a hip-hop record.  I’m only writing about this now because I’ve stumbled upon the first hip-hop record that I don’t really like.  For those who are completely oblivious to the world around them, and are most likely living under a rock, Watch The Throne is a collaborative record made by Jay-Z and Kanye West, two of hip-hop’s—as well as music’s in general—biggest names.   That deadly combination might be part of the problem with this record, though.  I’ll be blunt; both of these guys are filthy rich.  If for some reason you didn’t know that, The Throne will burn that fact into your brain.

There’s a track called Niggas in Paris.  They rhyme about clubs, prenups and Maybachs.  Oh, but don’t worry, it’s all good, because they rap about the problems that come with being rich, too.  Sorry, this just doesn’t appeal to someone like me.  Maybe they should have just distributed this record to their secret billionaire rapper society, (you know, the one that runs the world.  Kind of like the Elders of Zion, except it actually exists).

Oh, and if we’re on the topic of Judaism, I’ve got to tell you something Kanye.  Whatever it is that you’re referring to in Who Gon Stop Me (awesome grammar in that title, by the way) isn’t “something like the Holocaust.”  I promise.

Anyway, maybe this is good hip-hop.  If you look past the obnoxious rhymes, the beats are pretty solid.  My point is, I really don’t know what I should be looking for here.  What it’s going to come down to, though, is that if there’s a problem as glaring as bad lyrics, I don’t think there’s any way that I can enjoy the record that they’re a part of.

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Day 173: Dr. Dog – Fate

20 Aug

The Breeze

What the hell is “psychedelic rock?”  What does that even mean?  Images of tie-dye, mushrooms, and dirty hippies come to mind when I hear that descriptor—not the idea that I got at all from listening to Dr. Dog’s Fate.

 But for some reason, that term is often applied to this band’s music.  I’m not making this up, I’ll even back up my claim: “Dr. Dog is a psychedelic rock group from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania which formed in 1999.”   That’s the first sentence of the group’s last.fm bio.  I don’t get it.

Anyway, I’m glad that this group doesn’t make music like I thought they would.  This is indie rock, but it’s not indie rock like everybody else is indie rock.  The carefully chosen and good lyrics call a little folk to mind. My favorite outside influence, though, might be the big band sound that I hear every now and then.  On Army of Ancients, for instance, I’m pretty sure that there’s a brass section, and the overall feel of the song just screams 20’s.  It’s a nice break from all of the standard indie that I listen to.

My favorite part about this record, though, I’m having a little trouble putting into words.   Fate really put me at ease, almost.  It just feels like all the people in this band are nice and easy to get along with—no, that’s not completely it…I think it’s that this record has a very homemade feel to it.   It’s not that Fate is amateurish, but welcoming.

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Day 172: Cut Copy – In Ghost Colours

19 Aug

Out There on the Ice

Hahaha I love it when Australians use unnecessary u’s.  This band should have been named Cuuuuuut Coupy.

 Yes, I’m writing at one in the morning again, how’d you guess?  You ready for a flashback to mid July?  Because I’m sure that the quality of this post will be at that leveul.

Catchy.  As.  Hell.  In Ghost Colouuuuurs kicks a lot of ass, in my humble opinion.  As good as it’s been so far, though, it’s got a length of 50+ minutes.  Staying up through this one may prove to be a challenge.

 Anyway, I picked this record because people cannot shut up about how awesome Cut Copy is.  They’re playing a show in September, so I figured I’d give a record of their’s a listen before I decide if I will be attending or not.  That has proven to be unneeded.

This Cut Copy show will be a dance party of awesomness, and I think a familiarity with the material will prove to be unnecessary.  While this is definitely indie-approved and hipster-friendly, it is without a doubt dance music.  Echoy vocals, sick beats, and reverby synths bounce all over the place, coming together to make a fun, easy-to-listen-to sound.

I’m really glad that Amurricans dropped that whole extra “u” thing.  It just looks silly.  C’mon, rest of the English-speaking world, there are some things that we got right. Screw the metric system.

 I’m about to die of exhaustion.  It has been nice writing to y’all. Real nice.  For serious.  250.

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