Tuesday, August 31, 2010

What they are watching...Episode XI

Our look at what the teens and tweens of America are watching. You may have caught some of our earlier episodes, if not follow this link and [scroll down].

In this case what they are watching is Shinee, which according to their Wikipedia entry is pronounced like shiny. They are, if this conglomeration of phrases can hold any collective meaning, a contemporary R&B South Korean boy band. Now you have got them pegged, right? Here is their latest single, "Lucifer."



One thing is for sure, they can dance.

Saturday, August 28, 2010

AR: Radio City


Big Star - Radio City (1974)

Big Star's sophomore effort ultimately suffers greatly from comparison to their debut. Out of context, this is a nice, jangly guitar power pop-rock album, full of hooks and pleasant leads and enough emotive singing to grab ears. In context, though - i.e., against the supremely balanced desperate emotion and glistening harmonies of #1 Record - it comes off as overly ragged and bitter-raw relative to the pop-perfection of which the band is known to be capable. Consequently, Radio City is a bit of a letdown.

None of this is to say that this is by any means a *bad* album. In fact, just like its predecessor, it went on to inspire myriad Byrds-calls in the alternative sounds of the 1980s, and contains some of the classic tracks - the head-boppin' opener "O My Soul," the perfectly melancholy "You Get What You Deserve," the almost ridiculously-timeless soundtrack-of-a-sunny-day staple and critical darling "September Gurls," and the all-time transcendent, simplistic, confessional closer "I'm in Love With a Girl" - that define what the band is all about. Still, the sound of the album grates in too many moments. A prime example is the otherwise solid ""Life is White" - a strident harmonica destroys the track, and this tendency for distracting, trebly lines rears its head enough to damage the experience.

I'd be a moron to dis a power-pop classic, and it's true enough that there's a lot to love on this disc. But Radio City failed to deliver on the band's promise, and whatever inspirational qualities it has are dampened when you hear it, as I usually do, after #1 Record. It's still a staple to own - I'm not going to steer you AWAY from "September Gurls" - but it's a rec that's nonetheless qualified.

Status: Recommended (solid)
Nyet's Fave: "I'm in Love with a Girl"

AR: Paid in Full


Eric B. & Rakim - Paid in Full (1987)

In 2010, Eric B. & Rakim's breakthrough effort sounds like an archaeological dig through a hip-hop tomb. It's an immediate, pleasing album of its own accord, sure, but much of its contextual power lies in its emphatic sense of music-as-museum. Whether you are well-versed in hip-hop history or not (or, like me, somewhere lost in between), this classic is a powerful trip, an essential document for late 20th century popular music.

Throwing this one on the stereo really is a quick course in vinyl anthropology. For one, it smacks of the pared down essence of the hip-hop genre. The super spare beats, samples and record-scratching DJ effort are the minimalist skeleton for music from all over the hip-hop map since; the silk-smooth, multirhythmic MCing is likewise the paradigm for every would-be street-rhyme-slinging poet. Eric B. has legendary, establish-the-art level chops on the turntables, and Rakim is routinely name-checked as a candidate for best MC of all time. These are names whispered in hushed tones when they're not being screamed in admiration, godfathers of the entire community. The production on this album is crisp though still organic and a little raw by modern standards; still, you'll have no trouble discerning the pristine qualities that made these two stalwarts if not chart-topping stars.

For two, the album plainly reveals where the idea of "stealing" James Brown horn and drum breaks came from. It's a move that prompted a lawsuit in addition to dictating the quick-cut / fill-style so integral to rap's sound. But specifically, it centered the sampling library on the ouevre of Brown, Parliament, Funkadelic, and other select artists. I.e., it established major pieces within the canon, and so is a pivotal timbre-establisher, too. But it's not just that it established the proper sources of sampling. The seamless quality of said sampling served key, too. Outside of the record scratching and vocals, most of the instrumentation of the album is plucked. I highly doubt any live drum playing went on. But you'd be hard-pressed to note this - album credits allude to five, six songs sampled per track, and while some elements may leap out, this crediting often reveals how subtly background elements can be worked, too. It's unnecessary to go into the classic merits-of-sampling debate here, but turntablism saw its one of its pivotal popular moments here and crept along its path towards legitimate art.

For three, and perhaps most importantly, the album just *is* the artifacts that are strewn all over the hip-hop landscape. Half the album is an experience of "Oh, that's where that came from!," as major hooks, phrases and lifted lines from numerous modern hip-hop hits pop up in their "original" form*. For a well-after-the-fact listener like me, those iconic moments make the disc. Most famously, the slinky funk number "I Know You Got Soul" contains the lyrical aside "pump up the volume" that was turned into the driving sample of a huge electro-dance hit. "Move the Crowd" should jump out as the bassline from the everpresent sit-com theme "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air." "As the Rhyme Goes On" contains the "why would I say I am" lyric that was checked by Eminem years later. The title cut "Paid in Full" contains a tight, circular bass and drum line that is a hip-hop staple with good reason; it's a perfect pattern that, under Rakim's incredible flow, makes one want to hear the tune roll on forever. This paragraph, in fact, could roll on forever: to see where this seminal album sits within the genealogy of a lot of hip-hop, check a site like whosampled.com - a slew of people have sampled this album which, as mentioned, itself sampled a slew of artists.

* - "Originated," of course - many of the littered elements that can be heard everywhere today are really widespread grand- and great-grand-children. But a lot of them are lyrics lifted as so fundamental to the genre's history that listeners would be expected to recognize the allusion to this classic immediately. So if the newer songs are Simpsons episodes, this album is a collection of classic film and television in monolithic form. The originals are, I don't know, books or something.

All of this history aside, the party disc makes for a great contemporary soundtrack, too. No skits here - that's a convention waiting in the wings at this point - but the album does break down for three (!) instrumental tracks that exclusively showcase Eric B.'s dizzying skills, plus a fourth track that serves as a dub-model karaoke track for one to try to emulate Rakim. All told, twenty minutes of the forty-five minute album are occupied by scratch-wizardry; this is often pointed out as a minor weakness as it starts to feel like indulgent filler after a few spins. This is probably a fair criticism as the magic is really in the interplay between the two artists (plus you can imagine how it would come across if rock bands took up half of their albums with look-at-me guitar solos). Still, the birth-of-the-artform aspect gets those tracks a pass, and there are plenty of highligh duets here to make the album a classic beyond its historicity; "I Ain't No Joke," "I Know You Got Soul" and the title track all smoke today just as well as they did two decades ago.

Paid in Full is, in short, a highly revered album that established numerous elements of the old-school rap motif. It's an historical classic that stands up as a rich listen years later, giving the modern listener a nice little deja vu trip as it displays just how powerful a stripped down '80s hip-hop LP can be. It ain't perfect but it's bad-ass, a must for your collection.

Status: Recommended
Nyet's Fave: "I Ain't No Joke"


Thursday, August 26, 2010

AR: Room Noises


Eisley - Room Noises (2005)

(Cracks knuckles).

Eisley, a quasi alt-country-rock sister group, appears on first, second and third pass to produce music that is best heard from an adjacent room. Their vocals are immediate and pretty, reminiscent of Frente or maybe the country version of little-known Canadian band Immaculate Machine, and hit all kinds of syrupy sweet harmonies with regularity. But were there ever a time for the application of the concept "cloying to the point of irritating," this is it. Good but fairly nondescript pop fills this disc, and there are some tracks that utilize enough of the interesting and off-kilter so as to warrant attention. The opening lilting ballad "The Memories," the strongly country-tinged "Golly Sandra," and the closing, spare and elegant catchiness that is "Trolleywood" hit all kinds of sweet spots. But once that three-part harmony, medium high register motif is established, and they keep going back and back and back to it, it's enough to make me stab my eardrum with a chopstick.

So Eisley embodies a fundamental problem for me - it's probably entirely arbitrary and self-specific, but the resonant frequency of their voices appears to be my tolerance. As in, hearing them evokes nails on chalkboard irritation. Which is strange - if I can get over the effect, I can recognize that this is reasonably well-crafted indie-pop, pleasant stuff even, work with not a whole lot distancing it from that of someone I love, Neko Case. And I can get over it by sitting in an adjacent room instead of near the stereo. But for whatever reason, upon attention paid, their sonic patterns actively hurt my brain. I'm completely serious, the effect is lessened if I read a book across the house and just let them sit as background music, but that of course is hardly a ringing endorsement.

I know what it is - they're too immediate, too vibrant, too trebly. Part of this is probably the mixing. But if I try to be remotely objective, this is just not interesting music - it's a group that clearly has chops, is capable of sounding exceedingly pretty, but a group that has thrown together an album of for-the-most-part middling, good-but-unremarkable stuff that also happens to arbitrarily irritate me. Again, there are some highlights, but nowhere near enough to make me put this in the player any time soon.

Status: Not Recommended
Nyet's Fave: "Trolleywood"

Durham Squirt Gun fight 2010

The first annual Durham Squirt Gun and Water Balloon fight and free-for-all was a huge success. The Splash Mob event was organized by Flywheel design and publicized by word of mouth (and Facebook). It was a smash hit. No pun intended. More than 100 folks of all ages turned out. The Clarion Content's fearless correspondent took these pictures at risk of life, limb and digital camera.


Mayhem, early on...


It was held at the Durham Farmer's Market site, across from Durham Central Park.


Admittedly we were ducking during this photo, but please note the guy in the distance hurling a balloon at various dry (at that moment) photogs.


The action got more intense from here, but we had to put the camera in a safe dry place and take up a vigorous defense.

It is our observation that water ballooners under the age of five are the most dangerous opponent. Too young to have a conscience, they are vicious. More than once our correspondent helped fill and tie a water balloon for an anonymous youngster, only to have the balloon immediately hurled back at us. Fortunately, there were huge buckets under the filling station taps which could be emptied on the offending children's heads.

Special thanks to friend of the Clarion Content, April, for loaning us her extra fully automatic squirt gun. This young lady packs the heat!

AR: Veckatimest


Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest (2009)*

* - (In the continuing battle to keep these reviews short, I will try to keep this short; do not mistake length-of-review as correlated to quality-of-art).

A critically-lauded end-of-2009 list-topper, Veckatimest is nonetheless an album that splits impressions. The gist: it's a stately chamber-pop disc, full of lush harmonies, strings, and echoey, warm, open-room vibes that scream intimacy with every precise pluck of an acoustic and/or crystal clean electric guitar string. Record-level reverb gives it a cabin-composed vibe, and light, mostly-upper range vocals positively haunt. Horns make appearances, synths add flourishes, and sometimes tinkly-key range pianos drive the rhythms, ones that are universally mid-tempo. It's semi-mysterious, delicate, elegant, and borders on precious; it fits the category in my head called "shimmer" music, standing alongside Bon Iver and Beach House in that loose genre. More than anything, it's exacting, painstakingly composed music that feels more chamber than pop, and more than that, it's calming, delicious songs with evolving patterns and subtleties that lend themselves to repeated listens. And the neatest trick of them all: this is a qualified "pop" in the sense that it's imminently followable yet odd, and it does not earworm like a virus but sinks like a vaguely familiar story that maybe you've heard before.

So why does an album described that way split? Apparently precision in composition treads on grounds clinical, and people have gone so far as to call this "boring" due to its "everything in its right place" nature. And that wispy familiarity that intrigues me causes others to yawn. Strengths are weaknesses, and two sides do not understand one another.

While recognizing that samey-ness to the disc, I do NOT fall in the camp that thinks Veckatimest evokes ennui. I rather think that the smoky aura that surrounds the mellifluous tones dripping from this album creates a desire to grasp at the music, a desire to "get at what they're up to." What I mean is that yes, this album sits like a dream, and other people's dreams - "No one wants to hear," etc. - are among the more boring things in the world. Particularly if they seem crafted and meticulous, edited dreams! But this, one, is organic enough to feel like one's own dream, and two, shifts patterns in a dancing-lights way. Even in its samey serenity, even in that predictable late night nod-off atmosphere, it still plays to your curious child-like wants for bedtime tales. The disc may never pay off those wants and leave you in the still-groggy state, but since when were your dreams supposed to teach you anything?

For all that talk of the vague and faintly recognizable, several tracks on this disc stand out. The opening two, "Southern Point" (a jazzed-out, multi-part folk gem) and "Two Weeks" (the Beach Boys meets Orphan Annie summer bliss piece), pulled off the rare trick of grasping me on first listen (I had marked 4 stars on each before they finished!). "All We Ask" is a parabolically dynamic, stomping, epic melodrama; "Cheerleader" and "Dory" anchor the middle of the album with the poppiest riff and swirling moodiness, respectively; and the collapsing chorus of "While You Wait for Others" slays. "Foreground" closes the album with a surprisingly effective simple piano riff under floating vocals. And those are just the ones I feel like writing down - there are ample beaming moments on here, and nary a misstep; in addition to its emphatically great opening, this disc also meets the top-to-bottom quality measure.

If there is anything resembling a flaw, it is that the disc is so cohesive as to be overly homogeneous. I am struggling to describe the songs to differentiate them as they are largely all mid-tempo numbers that flit about the same instrumentations and dynamics (though again, subtle and delicate as they may be, they are upon-further-inspection varied and more than maintain interest for me). This is primarily an admission that there is something to the above-referenced criticism, and I can see why perhaps an ADHD persuasion may disincline you to sit still with this album long enough to detect the differences. So the gripe is a fair one.

There are also parts that, while no-doubt original, strongly echo inspirations. This is most obvious in the waltz outro of "Fine For Now," which - primarily in splash guitar and vocal delivery - distract me by sounding so much like Jeff Buckley. Other moments evoke Reinhold-era Ben Folds Five (of all things). Minor, minor complaints - while I respect the reaction of impatience that others have, if you have an inkling of an inclination toward intricate music, you'd be crazy not to zombie-follow the paths of the Pitchfork / NPR masses and pick up this beautiful, relax-ed/-ing effort.

For sheer prettiness, Veckatimest deserves its accolades. It pulls the neat trick of being very upfront but somehow blocked by a veil, immediate but complex, all the usual juxtapositions combined with expert craft that render albums great. And it maintains this level for the entire disc; no easy feat. It's a je ne sais quoi issue that keeps this one far from the Island (and really, I didn't even consider that, critically high-ranked as it may be). Gorgeous, yes, but its tendency to fade from memory - yes, like a dream - keeps it out of the pantheon. Still, for an immediate, wrap-yourself-in-ephemeral-glow experience, Grizzly Bear's praise-garnering effort nails it and is not to be missed. It may take a few listens to sink in, but it's well worth the investment.

Status: Recommended
Nyet's Fave: "Two Weeks"

Help a documentary filmmaker



The producers of a documentary film about legendary Duke Track Coach Al Buehler are looking for photographs, audio, video, testimonials and other archival materials of track meets at Duke between 1971 and 2000. Buehler's Duke cross-country teams captured six ACC titles and finished second on ten other occasions. He was part of the U.S. Olympic Track and Field program at 1972, 1984 and 1988 Olympic Games.

The filmmakers project entitled, "Starting at the Finish Line: The Coach Al Buehler Story" hopefully will be screened at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival next year. If you have any material or information that might help these folks you can contact Amy Unell at coachbuehler@gmail.com. Check out the film's website here.

Special thanks to our friends at the Community Sports News for alerting us to this story.

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

AR: The Fame / The Fame Monster

Album_Cover-The_Fame The_Fame_Monster

Lady GaGa - The Fame (2008) / The Fame Monster (2009)

The past 24 hours of arch-pop blaring from the windows of the house de fleur have been quite a break from the usual stream of choice '94 "Tweezer" jams and scratchy DIY GBV recordings, Coltrane solos and Steve Reich Phases that I normally allow to publicly escape my sound bubble and craft the public opinion of what-that-guy-in-that-house-listens-to. All in the interest of maintaining the mystique, ya? Um, no. When someone, let's call him "Enter Sandcounty Man," requested that I review Lady GaGa's double album reissue of epitome-of-glitz-pop, he did so with all kinds of "now don't laugh" and "this should be a change" qualifications. But as much as I love me some, e.g., Built to Spill, I also have to throw out that There's Nothing Wrong With Pop. I mean, yes, there's something wrong with a lot of pop, that whole mindless pandering to the masses thing, or more exactly, the mindless acceptance by said masses of half-assed derivation. But pop (or, say, Pop!, said the Erasure fan) as a genre distinction and not just a declaration of album sales, can be brilliant. Not independent artist brilliant, not musical genius brilliant, but brilliant by its own tight-craft standards of the catchy, contained and attention-seizing.

So screw that "guilty pleasure" notion. I'll just ignore the comments of passers-by - "Oh, some thirteen year-old who identifies with Lady GaGa's outsider narrative must live in that house" - and enjoy these tunes de GaGa that I am so clearly enjoying. Those earworms are catchy for a reason, eh, and while the empty calories of a thumping bassline and dance-your-cares-away anthemic choruses may be just candy, well, um, candy tastes good. And ftr, the GaGa is a damn fine confectioner.

On that loosely connected metaphor, it's also worth noting that millions of marketing dollars go into candy packaging, so much so that it almost overwhelms the candy itself*. The packaging, natch, can make the candy, and this is certainly a pretty played notion when talking about pop music acts. But Lady GaGa is one of those cases where it makes no sense to even consider the music apart from the singer/packaging - the artist's work is interlaced with her videos, the albums and songs mere pieces in a larger fashion/idea show, all of it presented by an artist so mixed in the pop culture concept of celebrity that her DEBUT album is called The Fame. The overall Lady GaGa Project is a sort of multimodal affair, where to get a grasp of what she's up to involves taking in the whole scene. All of it, the insane wardrobe choices, the hypersexual-yet-ambiguously-so front, the chameleon aspect of her styles (both musical and iconic), are key. Her much, much larger-than-life gestalt renders melodies not just catchy but emphatic, corporeal statements, completely dominant of the local soundspace (and it doesn't hurt that the industrial disco metallic synth sound - you *have* to know what I'm talking about - is an implicitly overwhelming sound). So while I usually angle these album reviews at the experience of the album, the candy not the package, that doesn't really work for this / these two GaGa entries. They seem much more about the feel of the album blasted in the club, over the car stereo and out in the ether than the particular experience of close-listening over headphones in the study.

* - You could stretch the analogy to point out that the constant formula adjustments of candy products - dark chocolate peanut butter cups, crunchy peanut butter cups, peanut butter chocolate sticks, inside out peanut butter cups* (damn, Reese!) - mirror the attempts to keep up with the fickle tastes of pop consumers.

** - My favorite marketing claim of late? "Now Better Tasting." Think on that for a bit - a claim to superiority over itself, and a claim that tells you nothing. Better how? Saltier? Sweeter? Or just "releases more dopamine upon consumption?" I know it's not much different from the "new and improved" claim of old. But there just seems something about is as a response - "I'd like to eat more your food, sir, but I would like it to taste better/ "Well, guess what? Now it is better tasting!" / "Well, that certainly worked out!" - that cracks me up.

Sadly enough, I am ill-equipped to evaluate the packaging for two reasons. One, given that Lady GaGa is an absolute megaspectacle, I am sure people have covered this angle ad nauseum. I can give you the basics - she's a classically trained music student who attacked the NYC club world, she's very musically talented but also a master of the entire demonstration as a work of performance art, and she (at least claims to) wants to let her freak flag fly sans restriction so as to let the high schoolers out there in the margins know that it's okay, there are people out there just. like. them. It's much more detailed a storied than that, but that's the basic gist - real music first, chic scene second, this pop craft third. And somewhere in there is that she's a huge friend of the LGBT community and embraces a couture aesthetic. A succinct way to think about it is that she's a fairly normal, educated person who acts off-puttingly weird in an intentional way that knows it's patently intentional and comes to symbolize all that is cool, sexy, and weird-kid friendly. While wearing clothes made of dead Kermits. AND on top of all of this, she's a shape-shifter who never shows the same face twice. Got it? See, I told you I'm not qualified. Since that succinct way failed to be succinct, think of this way instead: she's an icon sans features, robotic space age cool with sounds from the future and all, but you'll never pin her down beyond that. Keeping it real is keeping it ever-changing, with the only consistency being that it's BIG, FAMOUS and AWESOME.

That's my impression anyways. Because two, I'm largely not with it enough w/r/t the contemporary pop era to hang with the nuances of every move she makes. Yes, it's true; things are passing me by. I surely get that this reeks of postmodern synthesis - multiple styles, ironic disdain for "the scene" while creating it, insisting on representing the fringes of what is cool and acceptable while simultaneously becoming its center. A pop-star at essence because there is no *real* Lady GaGa, so the act can become whatever pop requires. I get all that, and I *really* get the influences she's milking - Madonna, Peaches, Gwen Stefan, EuroClub, disco diva - those shine through. But as far as trying to keep track of the daily what she's doing, how she relates to the other female artists of her own time... well, this ain't my scene, man. All I can do is throw her hit discs on and enjoy them over headphones in the study. So in a way I am, indeed, not really the target audience. So it goes.

I will latch onto three aspects of GaGa before I hit the albums. They are:

1. Lady GaGa as hero*. Christina Aguilera's "Beautiful" is a lovely ditty that was life-affirming in isolate, but once it became an anthem for the LGBT community and oppressed and/or down-trodden individuals generally, it took on a huge power. There's meaning in the pop sometimes, and similarly, whether "real" or not, LG's approach/message of "be thyself, screw what 'they' say" has positively affected a whole ton of people. It's hardly original - I mentioned somewhere else that this is severely trod-upon, David Bowie and Rocky Horror ground - but it clearly speaks to a certain segment of the new outcasts population. And as a weirder-sympathizer and someone who definitely latched onto music as a means of solace, I fully support that angle. It could be wholly insincere - there's really no telling with an ironic tornado like LG - but the effect is, at least in part, a good one.

* - There's also an aspect that LG is sort of a style hero, introducing all kinds of people who would otherwise never be exposed to high concept fashion, performance art, foreign styles of music, etc. It seems like a weird thing to note, but a lot of reviews say things like "she's unoriginal, but I'm happy she's introducing the masses to couture." Which is a roundabout way of saying, I suppose, that she's an effective mass-marketer?

2. Lady GaGa as chameleon. I already mentioned the personal appearance / style thing, but what's more striking is the lack of an identity in the music - the styles are all over the place (again, the exception being that the synth sound is fairly pervasive), but even the vocals are radically different from track to track. It's a sophisticated twist on the pop notion of identity - not just a refusal to be pinned down, but a refusal to be anything in particular. Again, it's trod-upon Madonna/Britney/Michael Jackson territory, but as Pitchfork reviewer Scott Plagenhoef notes, it's occuring at "internet speed." It makes for a decentered pop act, something that challenges concepts of branding and iconography nicely. I.e., outside of the disc jockey saying "here's the new Lady GaGa song," I'm not entirely sure how one knows it's she.

3. Lady GaGa as derivative. With so many influences on sleeves - and I'll let you play the "spot them" game, but that above-linked Pitchfork review nails the ones on The Fame Monster - the urge to accuse her of sampling-esque unoriginality is there. Indeed, many critics cite "nothing new" as a complaint. In my book, this seems to miss the point. One, this is pop - derivative is the name of the game, at least on some level. Two, this just speaks to the holistic approach one needs to take with LG - the song qua song is just one aspect of the show, and even if it's genealogy is plainly showing, perhaps it hasn't been presented in the particular context before. Three, and this is sort of an offshoot of two, part of the context is that she can pull off ALL of these influences and meld them together. Maybe the only thing that LG shares with Phish is a seamless ability to genre-hop, and even if any one thing isn't particularly impressive, the string of channeled past stars is collectively mind-blowing.

And quickly, the albums. First, just to explain why I am putting them in the same review: The Fame came first in 2008, but 2009's The Fame Monster was originally conceived as a bonus disc for a reissue of the original album. The two pieces were different enough - and indeed, there's something darker and more coherent about the bonus disc than the original album - that LG changed her mind (or someone changed his or her mind) and released them separately. And then released them as a big double album, too, consolidating a lot of the different versions of The Fame (American European, Japanese bonus tracks, etc.). All of this, I have decided, is too much to keep track of, and since I acquired the whole thing as a The Fame/The Fame Monster package, I pretty much think of it as one sprawling entity.

The double album, then, wastes no time getting to the business of GaGa - club beeps and that fuzzy, huge synth sound blow the roof off "Just Dance," an energetic anthem piece that is a BIG HIT about the BIG CLUB life. Its tone matches its subject matter, and as mindless as it is, it deserves its reputation as one of the hugest hits of the year. And that's really (unsurprisingly) the gist of The Fame - several single-ready, huge hit entries about celebrity buoyed by a mixed bag of filler. "Paparazzi" is probably the best concept song on there, a love song about obsession and pursuit (backed by a gorgeous video) that also has a divine, crystalline moment chorus. "Poker Face" is enough of a mind-brander that bands from all over the genre-map covered it; it's more of a Euro-disco meets Peaches piece with some arguably gratuitous sexual lyrics, but it grooves appropriately. "Lovegame" carries that same near-gratuitous label with all its "disco-stick" talk, and imho is not very exciting in its neu-Ace of Bass execution, though catchy enough to get the job done. The single that largely misses the mark is "Eh Eh [Nothing Else I Can Say]," a song that is pure pop sans club beat, almost evoking Cardigan's "Lovefool" or something in that wispy range.

One weird aspect of the LG sound, though, is that even the songs I don't like, I don't mind (or I even enjoy) hearing - that makes no sense, but there's enough interesting going off in each one that even the weaker or flawed entries tend to sit well with me. Some examples of these "bad songs that I still like" include "Beautiful Dirty Rich" (too whiny or something), "Money Honey" (plain riff and annoying chorus), "Boys Boys Boys" (nails on chalkboard grating in moments), and "Brown Eyes." This last one I enjoy almost because it's too ridiculous - it's a retread of the Mötley Crüe hit "Home Sweet Home" and some kind of weird Beatle-esque guitar riff. So it's on face preposterous, and yet I hum it! This is not to say the album is all bad catchy moments - "The Fame" (a cool Basement Jaxx meets Sheryl Crow vibe), "Again Again" (solo piano soul a la Alicia Keys, sort of), and "Summerboy" (which effortlessly channels No Doubt's best hepped up 21st century disco moments) all legitimately kick. So to sum up, the disc is a little uneven and all over the place, becomes frankly annoying in moments, and yet I have no trouble listening on repeat for hours. I like it even when I don't, which is a great sign.

The Fame Monster, if lacking the highest highs of the first disc, manages a more end-to-end coherent vibe. All of the tunes enhance the sophistication of her debut disc, plus the lead single, "Bad Romance," is the type of "sophomore" album effort that doesn't bat a lash in its declaration of here-to-stay. It's darker, more intricate than the previous singles, and gets delivered with a perfect cocky-snarl all the way up to its soaring, pleading, classic chorus. The Fame Monster features, too, some flat-out wacky homage moments - "Alejandro"'s silly melodrama is only lacking a declaration of something in the air that night in terms of ABBA genealogy, and "Speechless" is an awkward ballad that makes you wonder if LG will don a little mustache to sing this Queen ditty in concert. But those questionable steps aside, the remainder is thoroughly solid; "Telephone" is a pulsing, syncopated rhythm-driven club explosion*, "Dance in the Dark" is a sheen epic that echoes of New Order levels of bounce with a Cher-esque supervocal, and "Teeth" is as close as LG will get to a hip-hop stomper (it weirdly sounds like a coked-up chain-gang spiritual with diva attitude). Again, this whole second disc, even including those weird tracks, brings a dark, soupy complexity that strikes as a nice trend toward intricate but still immediate pop.

* - Albeit, again, one whose lyrics are about the club it's being played in? And Beyonce, what with her DirectTV shilling, almost makes this sound like a Boost Mobile commercial.

In a way, LG makes for a really easy review - great enough in moments to unhesitatingly recommend, undeniably an enjoyable experience even when it's bad, but so full of awkward and / or annoying moments that the rec gets qualified immediately. She does certainly sound, in her multi-genre/personality attack backed by supersynths, to be delivering pop from the near-future. And beyond that, it's multi-faceted music that, while often about the club, manages to hit on some of the sinister and complex sides of fame and the modern life. Even if it's only to render them grandiose and make money off of the cool-to-be-odd art concept, it's a lot more engaging and invigorating than your average club anthem. So let this double disc spin in your player for a bit, blast it out to the streets and let 'em know that the same house, the same guy can pump out tunes from both corners of culture and grab what he/she will from both, sans embarrassment.

Status: Recommended (solid)
Nyet's Faves: "Just Dance," "Bad Romance"

Thursday, August 19, 2010

AR: Sung Tongs


Animal Collective - Sung Tongs (2004)

A beautiful example of sweet-spotting, Animal Collective's Sung Tongs nails the middle ground of avant garde experimentalism and broader, pop-melodic immediacy. One could even argue that this is more the experimentalist flashing his under-overcoat wares at a pop/standard-issue audience; these tunes are firmly entrenched in the realm of the weird, merely exposing the sort of memorability required by the mainstream. The result is a gem of an otherworldly disc that deserves as few words as possible to describe its ineffable qualities.

Certain terms were flung about in the 2004 Sung Tongs reviews (the album was a critically-lauded breakthrough for the folk-freak group): timeless, whimsical, romantic, folk, magical, disorder, Beach Boys, campfire, happiness, freak out, child-like, wonder, innocence, spiritual, transcendent, primal. Or, as put more succinctly in the Pitchfork review, "the surreal, manic experience of 'immature' euphoria." To traipse in Sung Tongs is a venture into some beaming kids' imagination-scape, and other than to give the most rudimentary descriptions of its sound - jangling acoustic guitars, cyclically mystic song patterns, woodland chanting that makes this scream for inclusion as the soundtrack to any play involving Puck, and sure, "campfire songs" - it frankly seems silly to textually describe an album that is so entirely about wrapping the listener in the album qua artistic aural experience.

It's imperfect. The album is frontloaded with the most pop of its songs, leaving a jammed out experimental end that by any relative measure lacks that accessible focus. Not to say that the back half lacks songs-as-gems - "College" is a funny, faux Beach Boy classic, and "Visiting Friends" is fantastic oddball recording pastiche. But the "singles" on this disc are obviously, obviously, obviously upfront - the pyramidal opener "Leaf House," the rambling-conversation-with-a-precocious-three-year-old (how's that for an adjective?) "Who Could Win a Rabbit," and the flat out raindrops on a sunny glen-divine "The Softest Voice" all stand as the strong of the strong, rendering the back end an inevitable letdown. Let it be known, natch, that whatever descent comes is distinctly after "Winters Love," a song that cleverly echoes itself en route to delivering a swaying, drum circle lovefest, and is capital R relative. Tipping back and letting this backdrop from start to finish ensconce is the definite way to go.

It's arguable, but I'll go ahead and firmly assert that since 1732, the truly magical moments have been few and far between. Sung Tongs provides one of them. It's hardly music for the masses, and it's strictly for a playful, up-for-anything mood, to be sure. But as ridiculous quasi-escapist vacations go, this is top notch. It should be obvious that this is best approached with an open-mind and a very relaxing drink / drug in hand. Given proper context, though, chalk this one up as an essential folk-mystic exceptional experience; not to be missed, not to be taken remotely literally, just a quick tap in to the fundamental transcendence that's always there. Excellent work; exactly what experimental music should provide.

Status: Recommended
Nyet's Fave: "The Softest Voice"

AR: Siamese Dream


Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream (1993)

Fresh from the tape deck of a Nyetian Youth 1986 Volvo comes the seminal alternative pop-rock opus Siamese Dream. This one wormed its way to the front of the queue by virtue of three little factoids - one, hombre Justin is back in town and all but requested the Ballad to be re-designated an all-Trigger, all-the-Dheintime endeavor. He seriously asked for a new genre of posts dedicated to "good restaurants in the 13th Street and Osborn area" (aka "Yelp for Dummies") and, when promised a post with a list of recs, uttered something to the effect of "I won't hold my breath - I've been waiting a year* for that Siamese Dream review." Ouch.

* - Gross hyperbole. It's been at most six months.

Two, as alluded to in the Volvo memory, SD holds the rare distinction of being a well-remembered constant-car-companion, an album I had to have listened to something like 300 times from 1993-1995. I recorded it from CD onto a Maxell cassette that on side A had Weezer's self-titled blue album* and on side B had this beast, and that tape - I never listened to the radio - was on constant play-and-flip, play-and-flip, rinse-repeat rotation every time I drove that car. And SD served as a soundtrack of choice for walkman-running all through high school, too, which meant that I also listened to it every time I jogged around the 'hood (which, guess what, was often. And yes, the chorus of "I... feel... no pain" was an uplifter on numerous occasions). And that doesn't even count the bajillion times I listened to it on disc in my bedroom over headphones. So we're talking back of my hand familiarity, 100-layered-guitar-track roars the equivalent of a country boy's crickets - it was practically ambient music for my particular niche of the San Antonio suburbs. So it's kinda a priority review independent of Justinian requests.

* - Hmmm - this seems off, as Weezer was released in 1994. So maybe the tape wasn't in the Volvo until fall of 1994?

Three, it was a routine answer from seventeen-to-nineteen year-old me* to the "what are the best, most perfect albums of all time?" question. I remember high school chum Brian Baker specifically asking me this question, and after listing some of the usual suspects (I think I probably gave The White Album and DSOTM as card-carrying-conformist type answers, so yeah, the more things change, etc.), I said "and from recent years it's Siamese Dream - there's no bad track on that album." It helps from a congenial conversation standpoint that BB had attended that previously referenced Pumpkins concert in 1994 and equally become enamored of the band / album of music, so we pretty much concretized the notion right there - SD was a short-lister. Of course, BB followed this up by claiming that some Rush album was also perfect, so it's not exactly an inspiring endorsement. Still, we had at least a fleeting two person consensus, and so it's about damn time I give it the Nyetian treatment.

* - I don't mean to make anything of the implication here that the 31-33 year-old me holds or will hold a different opinion - I think it's true, as I'll note below, that the back half of this album does dip a little bit - but the point of this little sentence is that this is a formative years, everyone knows rock achieved perfection in 1974 type of album for me. So you probably know the rating that's coming, and you may or may not agree on the "most perfect" part of this quote, but, um, what's done is done, and I'm not about to change my opinion on the well-ingrained. So there.

You can read all about the vagaries that made this album historically special in plenty of other locales, but I'll give the quick rundown here. Early nineties alternative rock - and this is unsurprising, given the ages of the purveyors of said rock - can be framed as a reinvention of popular genres from the '70s. "Punk with reverb" pretty much catches Nirvana's Nevermind, "introspective classic rock"gets Pearl Jam's Ten, and even grunge music (e.g., Soundgarden's Badmotorfinger) was largely an antithesis response to '70s-'80s hair-metal sheen and excess, a kind of anti-KISS. And then out of Chicago came the near-emo slacker prog rock revival. Smashing Pumpkins was a bit against the grain, with extended compositions, roaring look-at-me guitar solos, strings in the mix, etc. I.e. they violated some alt-norms, and in doing so carved their own niche well. They also escaped prog-retread territory by being overtly confessional - no songs about Ents and faeries here, just a whole lot fish-in-barrel-shooting depression-for-teenagers*. The combination was great, sort of introverted wrath, even as they walked the fine line of what would become overly woe-is-me emo rock in the coming decade.

* - Nyet Jones, smiling politely.

I keep writing "they" when I should write "he," as the other notorious thing about SD is that perfectionist/egoist Billy Corgan, the singer and rhythm guitarist, basically went nuts and took over the writing, playing, and everything else about the album. It's probably hyperbole, and everyone in the band is credited on the album, but the legend is that the band was at one another's throats, the drummer was in rehab, Corgan was having nervous breakdowns, the album was way over budget, you name it. So Billy, dissatisfied with everything that hadn't been played by himself, played everything - drums, bass, rhythm, leads, and probably those bells in "Disarm." Again, this is undoubtedly untrue, but with an album infamous for its Butch-Vig channels-Phil-Spector wall-of-sound and it's non-exaggerated hundreds of overdubbed guitar tracks, it's kind of darkly hilarious to imagine the band tyrant alone in the studio saying, "alright, this is take number 42 on guitar track 87 on the third track of the album. Dammit, get this right, Corgan!"

So the album's got an important place in alt-music generic history, and it's got a Rumours-esque recording story to give it that much more emotional girth. But the thing I love about it is plainly the way it sounds*: CRYSTALLINE. The ringing clean electrics throughout drip and splash with soothing clarity. The fuzzed out guitar armies resonate excellently, distorted enough to be angry but never so much as to be non-distinct. Acoustics cha-chung brilliantly. The lead vocals are relatively buried in the mix - hard to compete with all of those six-strings - but they pierce in appropriate moments and yield to the instrumental energy in others**. There are drum parts that are so plain as to be formulaic (drumrolls, slowing tom beats into song conclusions, etc.), but they are sitting so perfectly in context that, sorry, the phrase "everything in its right place" occurs subconsciously. To steal a line that I'm sure I've referenced on other occasions, this is another album that sounds round - well-circumscribed bass, juxtaposed lead-back vocals, and blah blah blah you get the point. I *DIG* the aesthetics on the visceral level, and given how overwhelmingly busy this album is - it's one of those headphones-demanding, sounds here and there discs - it's amazing that the clutter is so distinct. And that is the immediate thing I think when I catch that twin-kid-cover - good, complex songwriting that moves with energy and brilliantly never steps on itself.

* - Plus, you know, iconic cover. A title that references a lyric from the album and not a mere track title. These things count. :)

** - This is a point in the album's favor - I tend to not care about lyrics too much unless the music indicates to me I should. I mean, a folk ballad in Bob Dylan's voice is so directly about imagery and content that it would be weird to listen to Zimmerman and not think about the lyrics, right? So the mix on SD has the opposite effect for me - the vocals are buried, so other than latching onto the earworm choruses, I don't pay too much attention to what Corgan mumbles. And this helps, because there are lines that are pretty embarrassing, and that would probably damage my opinion of the work. But since the produced seemed to heavily emphasize sound relative to message, I tend to do the same when I listen, and that tends to emphasize strengths of the disc.

This aesthetic hits from the get-go; SD opens on a snare-drum roll, demonstrates the idea by allowing a clean, simple, flanged electric guitar intro, adds a snare beat, then a rumbling bass, and then... GUITAR ARMY. Thus starts "Cherub Rock," a five star album opener if there ever were one - the intro settles into a more typical rhythm / lead / bass, verse-chorus-verse arrangement, but it explodes with clenched-fist frustration buoyed by an, I don't know, angelic pop-rock-song that fills rooms. It even has the uber-classic anti-sell-out pre-chorus - "Who wants honey? / Long as there's some money," followed by Corgan's dismissal, "LET ME OUT." And if you ever need to restore your faith in the power of the eagle-screaming 16-bar exquisitely tight yet frayed and frantic guitar solo, might I introduce you to the 3:09 mark. A nice gimmick repeat of the song's intro leads this in, and jet engines nod in appreciation as the lead soars on this bridge en route to a final anthemic chorus. Classic album-opening that puts everything out there from moment one. And as a sidenote - it's imminently playable by amateur guitarists like myself. Well, not the solo, but the song proper got many a play-along in an above-garage bedroom, I tell you what. "CR" was, as I recall, the first single off the disc, and legendary friend Christastrophe tried it out for a talent show once upon a time.

Out of the ashes of "Cherub Rock" comes one of my favorite guitar sounds, the Harley Davidson Doppler-roar of the riff-driven scream-song, "Quiet." It's a one-two punch - you are mistaken when you thought that "CR"'s crash ending meant the band was spent - and it rocks so effectively that SP would continue to milk this vibe for albums to come (see "Zero"). The album finally yields to sanity for track 3, the hit single "Today." It's another track that milks quiet-loud dynamics for all they're worth AND features a sing-along chorus with the simple-grin idiocy of "Today is the greatest day I've ever known!" And it has an epic KEY CHANGE bridge, for pete's sake! Inspiring somehow in spite of its on-paper cheesiness, the toy-guitar opening is reminiscent of something the FLips might have done, and the song generally serves as a pop-perfect anthem piece. No shock that it climbed the charts.

With a heavily-edited/chopped, Eastern-sounding riff intro backed by bass and then leading into a single-strand guitar melody, "Hummer" - all 6:57 of it - is a nice example of the guitar splash sound AND the alt-prog vibe to which I referred earlier. Despite its frequent guitar roars, it's a come down tune from the energetic openers. It's long, with many seamless composed sections fusing together (including another delicious guitar solo) on the way to the album's first dream sequence ambient-ish breakdown at 4:30. The song becomes a dream jam of interweaving lines as it slowly fades out - this is the type of thing that surely irked the alt-punks, but it hits all kinds of soothing for me. When the psychedelic dust settles, things pick back up with one of the most overt guitar-hero homages in "Rocket," another single off the album. If you can't hear the guitar solo from Queen's "We Will Rock You" here, I don't know if I can help you. This is another multi-section fuzzed out rocker - the vibe is actually somewhat Bealtey in moments, with a "Tomorrow Never Knows" drone and a quasi-Eastern bridge of Harrisonian ilk - and another one with a fist-pumping chorus "Free - I shall be free." It collapses into guitar cacophony, just to remind that it. is. alt. not. pop. Yeah, right. :)

Speaking of pop, chug-a-chung... "Disarm." This was another huge single off the album (I can't even hear it without picturing that black-and-white video*), an acoustic-plus-strings-and-bells singer-songwriter venture. It's build-up is pretty perfect for this kind of piece, up to and including its over-the-top melodramatic chorus and heart-wringing vocals. Are you sensing a theme here? Interestingly enough, it has practically the exact same chord progression as another hit from the time, The Cranberries' "Zombie." And I can play both of them!

* - For better or worse, I also can't help but remember that Mike NTPB and I wrote a parody-thing of this song for Duke TIP's 1994 talent show. It was horribly stupid - I think it involved the quad and chemicals? - and in one of our more brilliant collective moments, we decided at the very last minute not to play it and avoided embarrassing ourselves horribly. Success.

"Soma" closes side A, and is surprisingly still my favorite track on the disc. On the one hand, it's completely routine, a volume-dynamic song that jolts the listener by exploding midway through. But on the other, it's a space-psychedelic song with hints of piano, synthesizers, an infinity of guitars (acoustic, electric, and dirty-dirty-distorted), and a tranquil, near spoken-word vocal that converts to sinister snarl by the end. It screams "Carpe Diem!" *effectively*, had a mind-melting guitar solo, and manages to crash into water for its outro, giving a second dose of space that sounds as though its bubbling from 'neath the ocean. Great, epic piece on an album full of them.

One strike against SD is that it's a little front-heavy; the mean is definitely on side A. It's indeed difficult to imagine how the intensity could have been maintained. But they certainly tried (and succeeded) with the Hendrix-y guitar freak-out (surrounding another pot-haze soothe-bridge) "Geek U.S.A." This song absolutely sizzles as it maintains the prog aesthetic, giving us another entry in the bleeding-ear frenetic guitar solo category at the 3:00 mark, a meandering spazz-out that drives the song until the whole thing crashes into a grunge -dirge at the song's conclusion. This trails "Soma" as the album highlight by a very, very small margin - it's one of the lesser known tracks from the disc, but it absolutely cooks.

The album definitely steps down a notch from here - not to say that it isn't good, but the minor drop-off definitely occurs between "Geek U.S.A." and "Mayonnaise." The latter is a distortion-ballad that spins more volume dynamics, going all the way down to just Billy-and-guitar for its bridge. Solid, but not up to the quality of the first seven tracks. "Spaceboy" stays in this mid-to-slow-tempo vein to the album's detriment; it's another solid acoustic-plus-strings ballad, and effectively leaves the album in a down mode. Probably my least favorite track on the album.

Fortunately out of the doldrums comes screaming "Silverfuck," a Sonic Youth Lite sprawling tune that juxtaposes tom-tom jungle polyrhythms, extended instrumental howls and a capella vocals. It even opens with studio banter! It is utterly spacious and the height of proggy-indulgence on the disc. The "bang bang you're dead" section teeters on awkward, though the rest of this track maintains an effective sinister vibe. And the sonic explosions are way more than effective, giving off the type of energy that facilitates completing, e.g., laps on cinder Clark tracks. A colossal rock star, feedback and scratch noise-drenched conclusion yields to "Sweet Sweet," a glistening and, yes, saccharine tune that is best described as a shimmery guitar lullabye. It's pretty and over before it begins - one of the more successful abuses of the chorus pedal ever.

"Luna" is the questionable album closer, another syrupy ballad with a sing-along chorus, this time the plain "I'm in love with you." The tune is tinged with strings and Eastern-sounding guitar flourishes. Pretty enough, but again, a little too much of the same trick from the three ballads on side B of this album.

So I'll reiterate a footnote from above and note that my 32 year-old self would probably not say that this is one of those "most perfect" albums. It may be purely the biasing effect of the SP albums that followed, but the qualities that render parts of, e.g., Mellon Collie annoying - the whiny, insincere-and-clichéd BC aspect - are retrospectively evident on the back half of SD. True enough that these tunes feel more direct and visceral than the ones the evoke those accusations, but still, three of the six tunes on side B have this honey-dripping feel to them, and it's just too much. THAT said - I'd be a liar to Nyet's everywhere if I tried to pretend this weren't a DI disc. Fantastic opener, fantastic sound, a wealth of singles, one five star/ three four star tunes and solid throughout, AND a seminal alternative album from when I was fifteen? Please. So pack this one in your Flight 815 carry-on and enjoy - after all these listens, I'll still gladly hit the crystalline sound of Siamese Dream and celebrate the fleeting moment in which prog and emotion, angsty guitar screams and confessionals, stayed just this side of melodramatic excess. Fish-in-a-barrel, sure, but the gunshots in this period ring beautifully.

Status: Desert Island Recommended
Nyet's Fave: "Soma"

An Ecological Believe it or not



We ran across an ecological believe it or not out of Oregon this week for our truth trumps fiction every time files. The Associated Press is reporting that residents of Newport, Oregon and surrounding areas have discovered that shrimp bought from some local stores glows in the dark. Yep, you read that right, it glows in the dark.

Local marine biologists at Oregon State University's Sea Grant Extension say say it's due to marine bacteria that are not harmful. It can, however, apparently cause shrimp and other seafood to appear luminescent. Reportedly, the bacteria can grow at refrigerator temperatures, especially on seafood products where salt was added during processing.

Brilliant?

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

This is Not a Fun Blog, Vol. 7: -Burger Streak Broken for Burritos Instead

It's way too late for this, but I gathered energy after practice and made myself a Beck/Nyet staple: turkey, bean and rice burrito filling* (now w/ corn, minus the tortilla). Good stuff, and I augmented my late night meal with a well-deserved homemade margarita light**:

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* - store-bought "Spanish Rice," a combination of black and pinto beans, corn, browned ground turkey, "Mexican cheese," taco seasoning, garlic powder, smoked Spanish paprika, chili powder, chipotle seasoning, cumin, corriander, oregano. Turkey browned, rice prepared as directed, corn boiled and decobbed, beans and spice added. Sooooooo good.

** - salt rim of glass, add ice, 1 oz tequila, 0.5 oz. triple sec, 3 oz. diet sierra mist, three hefty squeezes of lime juice. Stir, enjoy.

So good culinary times after a good practice. It's too late to comment further - first day of classes tomorrow, so now it's time for bed.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

This is Not a Fun Blog, Vol. 6: Bacalao!

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Perhaps revealing my utterly uncreative nature, I took the opportunity on this, my third night of captivity, to keep the streak alive. My affinity for the -burger suffix is unmatched; in Beck's absence, I am three for three* in that department and tonight made myself codburgers topped w/ mango chutney a la Salt Spring Island's Moby's. I salt-and-peppered the cod, threw in a touch of Penzey's Cajun seasoning, broiled the fish, toasted buns, shucked and boiled corn, cut and steamed broccoli to make a delicious if somewhat formulaic dinner (that, ftr, has SALSA AUTENTICA on the broccoli and some of the corn, not some plebeian catsup. So phbbbbbbbbt!).

* - Through no fault of my own - last night was *going* to be a burrito dinner, or maybe even a breakfast for dinner at a local diner, but as I straggled my way out of practice, Skunk came up and revealed that he had locked his keys in his car. In this age of remote keys, it's fairly puzzling to me how that could even happen, but I suppose it continues to be Skunk's world, and I just take up residence. So I gave Justin a ride home (as planned, and incidentally, homeslice just moved and now lives something like 200 yards from Tuck Shop, dios mio!) and then took Skunk up to his place several blocks north and west of mine, then ran low on gas and got some, then drove Skunk back down to Tempe several blocks south of my place to grab his car, then found myself getting home at 11:30 instead of the planned 10:30. So leftover chicken burgers it was, and they were quick and delicious and hit the spot after sweating out some 13 pounds last night**.

** - I'm not even joking. I weighed seven pounds less when I got home than when I left, despite having drunk half a gallon water and 32 ounces of gatorade during practice. E-freaking-gads, Sunny Azz! And e-freaking-gads Sprawlers, whose poor practice attendance requires me to play at near savage frequencies.

Super-filling meal, and pretty reasonably good for me, too - I went with two quarter pound burgers and low-cal whole wheat buns, so all told this ran a conservatively-high 730 calories with 8 grams of fat and 73 (!!!) grams of protein. Again, subbing fish for your beef is a great way to keep that -burger streak going while preventing, um, other streaks. Like ones in your arteries? Yes, that was terrible.

No real plans for the next couple of night's meals, but I'll keep you appraised. Practice tomorrow night, though, so it'll probably be back to the burrito plan, Pepe Le Kendall's plans notwithstanding. We'll see. Otherwise, things roll along quietly here; a fresh batch of 20,000 lightly-clad freshmen-to-bes have littered campus, making everything up at school a madhouse (I'm pretty sure all 20K registered at the gym today, sheesh). We're adding 9 people to our little department, too, so it'll be nice to have some fresh faces. And I continue to be in a constant state of should-be-reading/writing/doing-more. So it goes - more when it happens.

Monday, August 16, 2010

AR: L.A. Woman


The Doors - L.A. Woman (1971)

With the upfront caveat that I spent more than a few months of my youth as a Best of the Doors-carrying, seven-mile-snake-worshiping disciple of the quintessential self-important American psychedelic poet-band, and I still believe that some of the best musical moments in rock music can be found in ten second bites amongst the epics on this group's albums... Jim Morrison can be pretty hard to take seriously at times. You know, with the self-exposing, the heavy-drinking, the overblown self-important attitude and lyrics, the self-created mystique and litany of general elements of Behind-the-Music quality that somehow found their way into an Oliver Stone film. Oddly enough, three months before he died (and on what would become the last The Doors album), he, too, failed to take himself seriously and consequently delivered some top notch musical irony. Somewhere in between pomposity and self-parody there's a resonant range, and Morrison et al. nailed it here (for the most part) with a winkless knowing-wink of stripped down blues music. Throw in a few pantheon Doors classics, and you've got a great if imperfect album that plainly entertains. Behind the smoke and symbolism sits, what do you know, good music - good for a laid back dark evening, or most famously, a drive down a California highway.

L.A. Woman is a preposterous album. But it's intentionally preposterous, and this manages to save it and then some. Some of the ridiculousness sits in the intentionally self-referential lyrics - Morrison continues to croon about dark rooms, lizards and snakes. And he covers his self-obsession with a famous chant of his own name in anagram*, "Mr. Mojo Risin'." But the main issue here is one of genre selection - the sprawling masters of the napalm epic have largely dropped their organ hymns for a wealth of simpler forms that don't really ring true with the person singing them (though again, the disconnect between singer and the sung is part of the program). Borderline James Brown soul-organ funk ("The Changeling"), garage band organ pop-rock ("Love Her Madly"), British folk-rock ("Hyacinth House"), and ambient-laced lounge jazz ("Riders on the Storm") all jump from the grooves, none of them seeming quite right but nothing really wrong in any way either. The most worked genre here is lean, straight blues - this is not as "foreign," so to speak, as backbone blues guided a lot of their music over the years (obviously enough on songs like "Roadhouse Blues"). But now the shroud is dropped, and it's just straight ahead twelve bar action, whether in party ("Been Down So Long"), late night slowed down despair ("Cars Hiss By My Window"**) or sinister time ("Crawling King Snake"). And when they're not aptly tackling foreign genres, they're sending up their own - "L'america" and "The Wasp" are classic weird-to-be-weird tracks. The former is a melodramatic apocalypse-fest that falls pretty flat and is easily the weakest thing on the disc; the latter is a blues-based spoken word piece with circus frills that ends up seeming a Frank Zappa homage.

* - Fortunately for us all, the lead singer was not named "Jim S. Morrison," as we'd then have "Mrs. MoJo Risin'!" as a possible theme chant for Beck's froyo cravings. Oh the horror... the horror.

** - Incidentally, if you need proof that these are not sincere renditions, "CHBMW" features at its end a vocal guitar imitation that is just about the dumbest thing this side of Peter Frampton. It's mercifully short, so you really only get out "what the" before the song ends and you think that it had to be a joke, because why the hell else...

For the Nyetian album-rating system, the strengths abound. "The Changeling," a fantastic, punchy energy opener, and the rainy "Riders" closer bookend the album very well. There's a small lag in the aforementioned weakspot "L'america," but it's enough of a departure in style that it at least highlights the surrounding blues strength. The meat of the album is very consistent and has a sort of blues theme and a tongue-in-cheek gestalt that unifies the procedure. It's generically varied so as to keep from ever getting samey, even on repeated listens, and is quality stuff top-to-bottom. And then the disc's all-stars are some of my favorites - the actual centerpiece title track is an all-time rip-it-with-the-top-down classic, featuring an exceptionally well paced slow intro. "Love Her Madly," simple as it is, is fairly pop perfect, and again, the closing "Riders on the Storm" toes the razorline of soothing/engaging. There's just a ton to enjoy about this album - even the laid-back left field, pastoral tones of "Hyacinth House" add to the picture.

Sure, it's not perfect. Jokes about one's own pomposity are still, you know, pompous. And the "ha ha we're still being WEIRD" tracks fall well short of grandfather efforts like, say, "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite." That wasn't very fair. :) But this classic '70s career closer lives up to its reputation. I didn't grow up with this one - see the above-referenced Best of compilation if you want the real Nyet-as-teenager experience - but I've come to dig it a ton lately.

Status: Recommended
Nyet's Fave: "Love Her Madly" - largely for sentimental "I can play it on guitar" reasons; the three hits on this disc are pretty neck-and-neck. And neck, I suppose.

Sunday, August 15, 2010

This is Not a Fun Blog, Vol. 5: When the Beck's Away, Chicken Burgers

Beck's in Chautauqua this week, celebrating the iPJ's birthday and learning about alternative energy. She's left me to fend for myself, culinarily and otherwise, so here's my best an imitation.

I think the automatic assumption during the few other times that Beck has left me by my lonesome was that I would take the opportunity to hit up every pizza place in a five mile radius. And, given the pepperoni and bacon orders of years past, that was not at all a bad assumption. But *this* time, much to the shock of any Beck-to-the-Future who may have been asked such a question in, say, 2005, I not only made an attempt to eat semi-healthy but FIRED UP THE GRILL. I am the anti-Nyet.

Grilled fresh pineapple, corn on the cob (plus steamed broccoli) w/ salsa, and chicken burgers* with toasted whole grain half buns made the menu tonight. I am sure I will cave and get take out** at some point this week, but for now it's Nyet 1, Beckless Kitchen 0.

* - I even called Beck to get a spicing consult for the raw chicken patties - I went with salt, pepper, medium hot chili powder, garlic powder, Worcestershire sauce, pizza seasoning, a touch of chipotle, and a scant bit of 2% milk cheddar cheese. Solid! In completely unrelated news, I scorched the pineapple and had some of the juiciest grilled fruit I've had - yum. I think the fast cook time charred it quickly but didn't dry it out. Good to note.

** - I suppose I should confess that my lunch today was some ridiculously good leftovers from Padre's Modern Mexican Cuisine from our farewell dinner last night. Holy new favorite Mexican place, Batman - I had carne adovada with refried beans and rice, and it was awesome yesterday and possibly better today. Beck had duck (!!) tacos; we shared delicious nachos to start. Anyways, I guess I've technically taken out once. Oh, well.

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Full Meal!

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Close up of maize autentica and visual proof that las samonellas son muertos.

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Fairly gargantuan meal to cap the weekend, but I did more than enough running and chasing plastic in 100+ degree weather to make up for it. Here's to a week of good eatings and a happy nth birthday to the iPJ; hope he and the rest of the iPFam have a great week. I'll do my best to get by...

Thursday, August 12, 2010

A Profusion of Dragonflies



Anecdotally, the Clarion Content has seen a massive increase in the amount of dragonflies in the Durham County area this Summer. Always, with one eye open for the decline of the keystone species, either in Gaia, or in micro-local ecosystems, this has stood out. Dragonflies are everywhere. They are born and bred in standing water and we had a rainy Winter, but this seems exceptional. It is unclear what their natural predator in our area might be.

Has anyone else noticed this?

We recall reading just a few short years ago about the year of the missing acorns in Northern Virginia which quite literally drove local squirrels stark raving mad.

On-line gaming


Social City is one of Playdom's leading games...

How big has on-line gaming become? Walt Disney bought social networking games developer Playdom for $563.2 million. Playdom is a leader in games designed for and played on the social networking platforms Facebook and MySpace. Playdom was a start-up founded by a couple of UC Berkeley grads just a few short years ago.

Disney is positioning itself not only to grab a large chunk of the on-line gaming market, but grabbing new intellectual property for perspective future character vehicles: movies, cartoons, toys, etc. According to Disney CEO Robert Iger, "This acquisition furthers our strategy of allocating capital to high-growth businesses that can benefit from our many characters, stories and brands, delivering them in a creatively compelling way to a new generation of fans on the platforms they prefer."

Thanks for the heads up goes to the DailyFinance.

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

All I Ever Wanted (Summer 2010): Part 6 (Salt Spring Island)

  • I was once again awoken by deer, but this worked out well. I got out of bed and ran the same route we had the day before, which enabled me to go at a little quicker pace - remember, I was still getting ready for CO Cup, having not done any real exercise in quite some time - and it allowed me to come back and relax into a silly long bath. Beck woke up and went for a run herself; I packed while she cleaned up, and we both headed downstairs for another five star breakfast of Grand Marnier drizzled French toast with sausage and fruit. I neglected to snap a pic, but trust that it was both beautiful and good.
  • We had covered the bulk of the southern tip of the island (save the vineyards, which we would take care of later) on Wednesday, so we started Thursday by heading northward and seeking out some galleries.
  • First one we hit was Twin-Key Castings, a gallery with starfish castings and, um, lawn ornaments. The former were meh (the live ones we saw the day before were far more brilliant), the latter, well, more interesting than you might have expected:
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  • After a quick conversation with a very enthusiastic man about a poisonous plant, we cut across to the center of the island to visit probably Beck's favorite gallery of the lot, Julie MacKinnon's Ceramics studio that is run out of her home. Beautiful, elegant pottery, some in quasi-traditional Asian and some in modern suburban design. Nice lady taboot. We bought a sugar-pot that is now adorning our shelves at home; great stuff, and highly recommended if you find yourself in the need for pottery:
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  • Julie recommended the Blue Horse Gallery, a hilltop establishment on the north side of the island that also features a B&B. We trekked up there and relaxed in yet another idyllic island setting - I'm telling you, SSI is ridiculous!
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  • Hit up another glass / ceramics shop on the way to lunch:
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  • And then made our way to the recommended Seaside Restaurant on the west side of the island for grilled halibut and chips, diet cokes, and, yes, mussels (and note - a relatively normal CW for the only time of the trip!):
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  • Our hosts at the B&B recommended and hooked us up with a 10% discount at Salt Spring Vineyards, so after lunch we headed down that way for a tasting and a look around the grounds. We ended up getting bottles of their pinot gris, a light cripsy new favorite, and their blackberry port which was excellent.
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  • Went back to Ganges for a delicious mocha coffee at Salt Spring Coffee Co. and looked around the town for a dinner venue. Eventually wound our way back to the B&B where our hosts recommended Raven Street Cafe, a place off the water on the northeast side of the island that we had more or less passed earlier in the day. Headed out there and by our luck drew yet another WCW, this one more just completely inexperienced and unknowledgeable about the restaurant (I'm guessing the island population of 10K puts certain caps on the talent pool). But the food was FANTASTIC - we both got a cheesy artichoke dip, Beck got a fish bowl, seafood bisque sort of thing, and I got a jambalaya pizza that topped the day. Great end to the week, and yt another spot we can recommend sans hesitation. Beck and I took a walk down the dock after dinner and self-snapped a pic:
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  • That pretty much wrapped it up - we went back to the B&B for oatmeal cookies and pinot gris, got our stuff ready for the early AM wakeup, and chatted with our hosts about their move to Canada. Great time, and again, they came through with breakfast sandwiches, which means: 5.5 stars. You know the rest - a trip to Seattle to Denver to Boulder back to Denver and finally back to Phoenix, refreshed and ready to... no, not really. But it was an excellent trip.

All I Ever Wanted (Summer 2010): Part 5 (Salt Spring Island)

Ah, the home stretch...
  • Woke up Wednesday to a crunch-crunch-crunching that was too arhythmic to be human. Indeed, there were deer in the yard chewing on the grass and intermittently stepping on branches. The island is super quiet, so this came in loud and clear (though it only woke me and not the Beck).
  • Beck got up early, and we went on a quick (and unfamiliarly hilly) three mile run down the road. Good to stretch the legs; my knees killed, natch, but I was quite proud that we responded to the super-relaxing setting of a B&B by exercising. Team Beck & Nyet wins.
  • We grabbed luxurious baths and strolled our way downstairs for the first of three excellent Blackberry Glen breakfasts. Now's as good of a time as any to throw in some shots of the B&B; I'll end it with our delicious quiche, coffee cake, bacon and fruit breakfast.
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  • Awakened, cleaned and well fed, and armed with some good recs for sight-seeing around the island, we headed out to Mount Maxwell to get a handle on the surrounding islands. Nice views:
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  • After a brief swing through a pottery gallery, we headed to the first of many serious highlights, Salt Springs Island Cheese. Delicious goat cheese and a wide variety of jams and chutneys, making for a welcome early morning snack. Free coffee taboot. And the presentation was fantastic - here are some highlights of the highlight:
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  • Next stop: Salt Spring Island Bread Co., a home bakery up in the hills with gorgeous views. We bought loaves of rosemary and seed bread and munched on them for the duration of the trip.
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  • We quickly went by Tony's Tarts, a sweet and savory tart countryside stand, only to discover that they were effectively sold out for the day. Still full from our earlier cheese / chutney sampling, we elected to munch on bread for the time being, have a late lunch and head down to Ruckle Park. Home of, apparently, purple starfish:
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  • Swung by another art gallery featuring cool insect sculptures - we grabbed one that complemented our beetle (pictured first) in the Nyet and Beck abode bug collection:
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  • Hit the recommended Moby's in Ganges (the small town in the middle of the island) for a late lunch and had a top meal of the trip. I had a Piper Ale and a halibut burger with mango chutney, and Beck had a pecan burger plus an oyster shot. Our WCW did not disappoint, claiming upon being asked how it was going that she was "mediocrely wonderful," a phrase the meaning of which we have yet to deduce. Excellent meal overlooking the aquarina; here's the beer commercial-esque shot:
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  • We headed back to the B&B for afternoon hot-tubbin' and apple wine sippn' (and yeah, we ate some more oatmeal cookies). There was live music at the Treehouse Cafe that night, so we headed over after a bit for a late-ish meal. A dude named Sean Ashby, former guitarist for fellow Canadian Sarah McLaughlin, provided the entertainment; he was a solid guitarist, engaged in a bit too much cheesy stage banter, and otherwise tore up some covers of hit songs. Our WCW, upon being asked, "what is the Salt Spring Ale like?," responded "It's light. Good. It's won awards. I don't know." Sub-helpful. Anyhoo, another great meal - I got a bean and cheese burrito, Beck got a squash gumbo , and we enjoyed a breezy summer night. Beck also snapped some shots of boats / planes in the bay. Highlight pics:
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  • I had a hankering for some Mack & Jack's after dinner, but the Ganges liquor store was closed, so we headed back and settled for apple wine, tea and hot-tubbing. If I haven't made it clear, we were in heaven. We hit the bed around midnight and got ready for another full day...