Racecar Brown

An Epic Journey of Amazing Self-Discovery, or Finding Old Shit

2011-03-31T22:18:00.000-05:00

I logged onto my Tripod account for the first time in years today. If you're unaware, Tripod is a free web hosting service. If you remember Angelfire and/or Geocities from back in the day, that's much like what Tripod was. I was doing this because I felt like re-teaching myself some HTML and CSS, skills that I've long since forgot. Kind of a disappointment, because gotDAMN there are a lot of coding/development/etc. jobs out there at the moment.

Anywho. I logged into my old Tripod account and found two things, one was the website I created on Adobe Dreamweaver for my old band Downtown Owl. Very basic, but looked pretty cool. Whatever.

But I also stumbled upon an old site I had created called Infinity Over Infinity. It wasn't particularly well designed or anything. Instead, it was very much like Racecar Brown: a place where I had decided to write down every thought that came into my head, regardless of topic.

More after the jump.

The first thing that I noticed was that I had organized the different topics, so that if a person wasn't interested in one topic, they could simply bookmark a topic they were interested in and sort out the superfluous information. This was before blogs came with built-in search features, see, and I don't know if I thought the move was genius so much as I thought it was a cool excuse to have a lot more pages.

I wanted pages, I think, because I liked the idea of starting at me and then burrowing into the minutiae more and more, and it would tunnel seemingly into infinity before looping back to the beginning. I designed the pages of the site so each topic would be broken down several times and once it had been broken down completely, the next link would be to the main page. Infinity, get it?

The second thing I noticed was that a lot of the writing was incredibly-- incredibly-- emo. There were a lot of posts where I didn't even bother really making sense, shooting and falling short of a ee cummings-style surrealism and impressionism. It was also pretentious in its stylings, with posts dated as "oh-three/thirty-one/oh-six."

I could forgive myself, though. See, this was 2006, the year where my friend Eric killed himself, the year where my grandpa killed himself, the year where I was homeless for two months, and the year where I was first fired from a job. Reading it was painful because it was trite, but it was also painful because it was true, an accurate representation of a kid attempting to sort through a mess of a year.

Just to hammer this infinity point home one more time, I noticed with some amount of irony that I had posted the lyrics to a song I had written here, and the song was about finding things you had written years ago and feeling both the nostalgia and cynicism that comes with that feeling. It felt like I had looped myself. I had found things I had written five years ago, including a thing that talked about how it felt to read things I had written five years before that.

And then we end up back here, at Racecar Brown, and it's like I got to the end only to come back to the beginning again.

It made me realize that I had always been a person who had Things To Say, with intentional capital letters. And it also made me realize that, for just as long, I have not particularly had a voice that made people want to listen. I mean that in the sense of influence, not the sense of actual voice.

It's hard to be a Things To Say dude, especially on the Internet where every voice has exactly the same amount of sway until an audience decides what to listen to. I've been trucking away for about a decade now, Saying Things. That's the way that I've attempted to do it.

Will it work? Probably about as well as Infinity Over Infinity did.

But the important thing is, in the words of Finding Nemo's Dory, to just keep swimming.

Embracing a Hole in the Ground

2011-03-24T19:40:00.000-05:00

The only person close to me that I've had pass away was Eric, who I wrote about earlier this month, on the fifth anniversary of his death. I'm not trying to pish-posh his death, but it's not the same as a parent or sibling or child dying, obviously. And I've never had someone with that sort of closeness, someone who was truly a part and parcel of who I was as a person, pass away.

I bring this up because I feel like it probably has some sort of influence on how I feel about death and how I view it.

See, I've always struggled to understand people who were profoundly affected by death. That probably comes off as cold and/or callous, but it's true.

Watch me try to justify this after the break.

Fear is going to be a theme on the blog this week, it seems. Because I believe that all of this profound affectation regarding the death of loved ones is a product of fear. People fear death. It's routinely in the top three fears of people in the world. But they don't only fear their own death, but also the death of others.

It's this fear that drives two seemingly contradictory things: first, a moral nose in the air toward physician-assisted suicide and a deep conviction toward keeping the death penalty. See, in a world where death is a fearful thing, it becomes the one thing most in need of avoiding by the good people of the world and the greatest punishment that people who have done wrong can face.

But that doesn't necessarily make either of those things true.

I've written before about the ultimate pointlessness of spiritual beliefs before, and they need reiteration here as they're an important point of the argument I'm making. Essentially, I don't know if we need to believe in anything spiritual-- be that an actual religion or the idea of atheism or agnosticism. Spiritual beliefs were created to give their believers a template of how to live their lives. In a modern society, where those rules have been formalized, spiritual beliefs become unnecessary to the continuation of the population.

See, spirituality counter-intuitively gets in the way of viewing death as another part of normal life. By giving death a special Before and After type of definition, by marking things as "life" and "afterlife" it necessarily separates people who have died from those of us who have not, and this makes us seem lonely; if someone is not with us, so to speak, we feel disconnected from them. But in a world where death is seen as a natural thing, they are still always with us.

Spirituality also dilutes the power of memory in regard to death. By telling people they will see people in the afterlife, or giving "life after death" a certain weight, it tells us that our memory is insufficient to pay proper homage to people who have passed away, that their histories are incapable of being properly chronicled by our own experiences with them.

All that, basically, leads to fear. As much love is insisted upon in the New Testament in particular, most spirituality seems to actually be a breeding ground for fear.

And this is, ultimately, why I don't understand the typical human reaction to death. Like I acknowledged, it could be due to the fact that I've had no personal proximity to it, but death's inevitability seemed less like a problem and more like... Well, if it's something that's going to happen no matter what, then what's the big point of worrying about it?

To me, I've often followed that maxim from Peter Pan: "To die will be an awfully big adventure."

Good Arms Vs. Bad Arms

2011-03-23T13:10:00.000-05:00

At what point do we stop being afraid?

Wait, let me back up.

A few days ago, I posted that Bill Hicks video and, in it, he talked about the choice between Fear and Love. The choice between locking your door and helping a stranger. The choice between buying a gun and pulling over to help someone change their tire.

If you pay attention to the news-- local, national, or 24-hour-- fear is a pretty constant thing. Play this game some time: watch the local news and count the number of stories where the intent is not to make you afraid. If you get to over five, well you're in luck because you live in Canada.

Feel the love after the jump.

Odds are, there are less than five stories on your hour of local news that make you feel good about the community you live in. There's a reason for that. One is that the stuff that makes us afraid is usually the Big stuff, with an intentionally capital B, and it deserves greater attention. If dude is running around raping urrybody up in here, then it deserves a spot.

But part of it is because fear is easier than love.

If you've ever been in a relationship, you know love is hard. During rough patches, we all experience fear. Did I pick the right person? I never went after so-and-so and now I regret it. This thing drives me crazy up the wall and is that enough to leave someone? And it's always easier to give in to these questions than it is to fight through them, remember why you're with a person, and work through it.

We're willing to do it for the people we're with, but often we don't think it's worth it when it comes to society as a whole. It's easier to be afraid of Muslims than it is to realize that, for every violent extremist there are hundreds of normal people. It's easier to yell that a specific policy decision by the government is going to bring about the Biblical End of Days than it is to try to debate its actual merits in a reasoned environment. And it's easier to cross the street to avoid the homeless guy asking for some change than it is to buy dude a Big Mac.

Too often we make the choice of fear.

When I was in college, I was told by a fellow student one day that "My parents taught me that to make it in this world, somebody else has to be taken down."

I'm going to put that on a separate line so you get the full impact of that statement.

"My parents taught me that to make it in this world, somebody else has to be taken down."

How much blind fear is in that statement? Fear of others being successful. Fear of failure. Fear of not having money. Not only that, but it isn't even remotely true. The best way to be successful is to work together with others in a successful manner.

As Bill might say, we're all on the same ride.

We're asked periodically while we're on the ride to sacrifice someone else in order to save ourselves; it's a haunted house ride. It threatens to take you off the ride every so often unless you give it someone else. Too often, we allow the fear to overtake us and we readily give that sacrifice. We forget that the ride really can't do anything to us.

I fall into the trap, too. I accuse and I sneer and I'm sarcastic and mean when it's not necessary, when I'm only doing it to avoid something about another person or myself, when I do it just because I'm afraid.

But I'm trying to fight it.

At what point do we stop being afraid?

How about right now?

Demo: "Midwest Winters"

2011-03-21T22:04:00.000-05:00

This needs a little something in the bridge, but whatever. Check it out.

It's Just A Ride

2011-03-18T14:58:00.000-05:00

Been listening to a lot of Bill Hicks lately.

Here's the thing about Bill Hicks that a lot of people know: Bill Hicks came off often as an angry individual. Here's a thing that may have been less obvious: Bill Hicks didn't want to be an angry individual.

Hicks saw a lot of beauty in the world, or at least he tried to. If his act is anything to go by, he found it hard to deal with the things he didn't find beautiful.

Now, see, that's a viewpoint that I can feel a kinship with.

There's a lot of wonderful stuff here in the world, but I've been having a rough time trying to engage with it.

So I watched the following clip. It's just a ride, folks.

My History With Final Fantasy/Fate as a Storytelling Device

2011-03-16T22:22:00.000-05:00

The very first video game I fell in love with was Final Fantasy VII. It's one of the very vivid memories of my childhood. I was maybe twelve or thirteen, and I was over at a friend's house and he happened to be playing it. I had played video games before, had owned a NES and a Sega Genesis and played the basics: Sonic, Mario, Aladdin, Lion King, etc.

Now, see, I didn't have an SNES, and one of the things the video games of the Super Nintendo introduced was storytelling. Look at Star Fox, at Final Fantasy IV and VI, just for a trio of classic examples. These games brought plot into video games in a more real way and I had missed it. I was probably playing soccer.

More after the jump.

So, to get back to the story, when I watched my buddy play Final Fantasy VII, I was kind of enthralled. It was the first time that I saw video games-- something I liked-- mixed seamlessly with storytelling-- something I also liked. Put together, I became kind of obsessed. I actually sat there and watched a Final Fantasy game, something that many people will tell you is one of the most boring activities a person can engage in. I have logged literally hundreds of hours playing that game over the years.

I still play the Final Fantasy games, even as they've progressively become very hit-or-miss both thematically and in terms of gameplay. Some of it is nostalgia; the ridiculous epicness and overly complex leveling systems still bring me back to saving the world from Sephiroth while trying to level up Ultima to Master level (for fuck's sake I still haven't killed Ruby WEAPON). And some of it is because I still do enjoy at least a portion of all of the single-player Final Fantasys since.

But I've noticed a curious consistency of the last few Final Fantasys, and for clarifications sake, I am only referring to the single-layer games, I have never played XI or XIV, the multi-player games. The constant thing has been in the themes of these games.

Final Fantasy IX, X, X-2, XII, and XIII have all framed the idea of fate as a malevolent force.

In all of those games, the main character has had to fight against fate in some fashion. In IX, Zidane had to fight his fate as a destroyer of worlds. In X, Tidus had to fight the fate that summoners and their guardians were destined to. In X-2, Yuna had to fight history being fated to repeat itself. In XII, Ashe had to fight the gods, who determined the fate of people's lives, and in XIII Lightning had to do essentially the same thing. In all the cases, destiny and fate were presented as chains that shackle our choices, chains that must be cast aside despite their consequences.

Final Fantasys utilize Eastern storytelling; they're written in Japan. And, when I spoke with other video game fans about this phenomenon, they told me that many Japanese animes and other Asian movies portray fate in much the same way. So this difference, it's interesting, not least of all because of how fate is often portrayed in exactly the opposite fashion in Western storytelling.

Fate in American movies is usually a communal force. It brings people together. Look at any romantic comedy and you see this in the form of a deux ex machina bringing the two main characters together at the end. The interjection of action by a God or gods is often treated in a similar fashion, where they intercede in a way to save or protect a character.

This implies a certain different viewpoint of fate in Eastern and Western cultures, and it's one of the boldest dividing lines I think I've come across in society. I've traveled to a small handful of places in the Western hemisphere, and the one thing I've noticed is that for the most part people view the world in very similar ways, and that they work toward the same goals. About the Big Things, they often view them the same way. But this view of Fate is such a fundamental difference that it's kind of shocking to me. I am amazed that such a large portion of people could be so divided on such a major idea.

These are the things I learn from video games.

Weird.

An Extended Metaphor, or Scott Walker is a Douchebag

2011-03-14T23:19:00.000-05:00

This is an extended metaphor, so bear with me. I admit fully that the situation I'm about to present to you will take a little stretching of your imagination, but we'll get there in the end, I promise. I'll take you down to Mordor and then right back to the Shire. So keep that in mind when examining this hypothetical, okay?

So let's say that you're in elementary school. Let's say that you're in fifth grade, the highest of the high, the mightiest of the mighty at that young age. Let's say, too, that there are just a ton of kids in your school, a couple hundred in each grade. There's a huge playground, with tons to do; there's four square, there's a baseball diamond, a soccer field, a football field, hell even a separate kickball diamond. There's a playground and a swing set and hey even a rugby pitch, a teeter totter and some monkey bars. Maybe even multiples of each. It's a fantasy, let's go with it.

Silver Linings: How the Internet Istantly Came Together to Help in Japan

2011-03-11T18:36:00.000-06:00

There's not much to say on a day like today aside from acknowledging the tragedy of the earthquake in Japan, a tragedy that now has over 400 confirmed deaths, and a sea-faring vessel of at least 80 crew lost. If you haven't been following along, I'd suggest meandering over to your favorite news outlet and taking the time to look into it.

There's not much to feel positive over the disaster, of course, but there were a few things that buoyed my spirits.

Hit the break to find out what.

What the Internet can be, at its best, is the catalyst for a global community. In the moments this morning as the news broke, Twitter-- which can often highlight the absolute worst of communal groupthink-- had rallied together to not only talk about the tragedy, but also offer condolences, bring individuals together, and form a support structure for everyone affected.

Like: Google almost immediately launching a Japanese version of their Person Finder, which had first been launched following the Haiti earthquakes, to help people locate family members.

Like: Options for aiding the upcoming, assuredly massive Tsunami relief efforts, popping up all over Twitter and Facebook, aggregated handily here by CNN.

Like: Celebrities using their status to positive effect, ranging from Dave Chappelle to Justin Bieber.

I've written a lot about the problems the Internet has, and how it can negatively effect our global consciousness. But the tragedy in Japan, and all the places throughout the Pacific feeling the continued after effects, allowed humanity to show its very best through the Internet.

The problem isn't over. There are still massive aftershocks (up to 6.3 on the Richter scale) rocking Japan, the death toll is still only in its initial stages, and the infrastructure of those areas most heavily hit will take awhile to stabilize. But what we have is a global community that immediately took to assistance, and must continue to help Japan.

Some Writing Ideas

2011-03-10T00:56:00.000-06:00

I'm on vacation, as I've been saying. This takes a lot of time out of your day, counterintuitively. So, I figured I'd just do something that is essentially my own bookkeeping. This is a list of some writing projects I've either undertaken or am planning on undertaking. If you're at all interested, comment and tell me which of these you'd be most interested in seeing.

Hit the break to see.

A novel, as yet untitled: This story would follow a young man whose place of residence keeps disappearing, in manner ranging from the coincidental to the astounding to the fantastical to the supernatural. His house disappears at ten years old, and when his family buys a new one, it does the same. They spend years jumping from hotel to hotel, as they never can seem to stay in one too long before something bizarre happens. When he gets to college, he loses his key and his new one never works no matter how many times the college changes the lock. He ends up homeless, then he meets someone in a homeless shelter who has not had a home in a much more "normal" way. They have difficulty getting a place to stay, but eventually do it. Huzzah.

A comic book, as yet untitled: This would be based on a writing game I played with a large group of people online called Mercenary. The world and ancillary characters would be changed so I wouldn't be stepping on anyone else's toes. The basic premise would focus on three characters, all contract criminals. One would be a cocky, but in-over-his head kid, one would be a badass chick and one would be a bizarre guy known as Glass. Not sure on specific details of the plot, yet, but I have an idea for the ending. Not gonna give that away, though.

A TV show, Status: The idea for this TV show would be that it follows three or four college freshman, exploring the new social dynamics of the information age; how does Facebook/Twitter/information overload affect young people who used to use (and are still trying to use) college as an escape/catalyst for life change. There are specifics involved, but again I'd rather not get into them.

A movie script, as yet untitled: This would be a fake documentary based on a superhero character I have named William Stevenson. The "filmmaker" would be interview Stevenson's family, and it would be interspersed with news reel footage and pop culture clips of Stevenson's antics, as well as family-shot footage of Stevenson as a kid. The ultimate point would be how perspective influences opinion.

A movie script, as yet untitled: A film with a young female main character. It opens with her walking through her house, which is filled with flowers. She is in a very nice family. The family dynamic begins to crumble when her father loses his job; the flowers die and are removed as her family life begins to as well. The family doesn't have enough money to get new flowers the next year and everyone is depressed. The girl meets a new boy in her class who is mute, and he kind of teaches her that you need to make your own happiness. She gets a part-time job and makes enough to decorate her house with flowers by herself. As she puts them in, the family dynamic begins to improve. Holy extended metaphors, Batman!

As far as serious ideas go, I believe those are it.

Mardi Gras

2011-03-08T21:03:00.001-06:00

No post today. Spent the day in New Orleans at Mardi Gras. See you tomorrow!

03/05/06

2011-03-07T11:40:00.000-06:00

Saturday marked the five-year anniversary of the death of Eric Suurmeyer.

That's not going to be a name common to all of you; maybe not to any of you, but it's a name that I'm familiar with and it's a name that's important to me. See, Eric was a good friend of mine in college. During my sophomore year, he was a freshman who lived in the dorm room immediately adjacent to mine. We played video games, watched movies, visited the Mall of America and Ikea; we did all of those typical things that college kids who are friends do with each other.

More after the jump.

One particular memory I have of him is around Valentine's Day. About a week and a half prior to that day, Eric got drunk and disorderly enough to require a visit to the local Detox center. My girlfriend and I, we went to pick him up. When we got there, he told us that he had-- hilariously-- met a girl. It was amusing, in one of those "Really? In Detox?" sort of ways.

He wanted to take her out on a date for Valentine's Day, so he made plans with the help of me and my girlfriend. He didn't have money, as he couldn't find a job within walking distance of campus (and it needed to be within walking distance; Eric's car broke down the first day of school) so his money was all borrowed from his parents or earned through pawning stuff off. To have enough money for all the romantic things-- the flowers, the dinner, the whatever-- he was planning on pawning his Playstation 2, as he now mainly played his XBox 360.

So he called the girl about a week prior to Valentine's Day, all ready to pawn off his stuff to pay for a nice date for her, and asked her out.

She told him that she already had plans with her friends.

Things like this, they happened to Eric a lot.

On the fifth of March, in 2006, my girlfriend and I ate an early breakfast in the dorm's cafeteria. When we were coming back up to our dorm, we saw Eric's room mate flying down the hall, his phone in one hand. He got to the door and tried two or three times to open it. I started laughing a little bit; who had trouble opening a door? As soon as he got into the stairwell, he ran down the stairs and, as I heard his voice retreating, it became apparent that he was on the phone with 911.

My girlfriend and I dropped what we were doing and ran to Eric's room.

Just from seeing his feet hanging off the end of his bed, you could tell he was dead. He had taken cyanide tablets during the night.

It was sad. I don't entirely know if it was surprising. See, things that would make a guy consider suicide, they happened to Eric a lot.

This was maybe four days before Spring Break 2006, and my girlfriend and I had made plans to go down to Florida for Spring Break, the same place where I am as I write this. We decided we'd leave early, skipping work and class due to the tragedy, just so we could get away-- at least for a little while-- the idea of Eric; we were asked by a reporter about Eric while we were packing up our car.

On the highway I drove almost on auto-pilot. But after a while, I noticed something odd: a flock of birds was following my car. And not only for a moment, but for an extended period of time. The birds actually followed my car for five miles down the road.

Now my left forearm is covered with the silhouettes of birds, just like I saw following my car.

I miss Eric. But I'm glad I'll always remember him.

Revenge of the Earnest: Fighting Snark and Sarcasm in Indie Music Journalism

2011-03-04T12:41:00.000-06:00

Some time last week, Chaz Bundwick-- the South Carolinian behind Toro Y Moi-- released a Toro Y Moi remix of Odd Future member, and the recently Racecar Brown reviewed Tyler, the Creator's song "French." That probably shouldn't have been a big deal, but then Chris Weingarten, the man behind 1000 Times Yes who famously reviewed 1000 albums in single Twitter posts, took Bundwick to task, accusing him of bandwagoning.

Chris Cantalini, purveyor of indie blog Gorilla vs. Bear shot back, starting a war of the 140-character tweets that the Daily Swarm covered here. It's interesting, to be sure, but not precisely the point I'm getting to, merely the catalyst behind it.

I get to the point after the jump.

I tweeted this last week, and reiterated the essential point during the backlash over the admittedly unentertaining Oscars, but I'm fucking tired of people being snarky and sarcastic. And as a dude who is often snarky and sarcastic, that's saying something.

There's an essential difference, though. I'm fully willing to admit that this may be me deluding myself, but I think the snark and sarcasm that I utilize is different because I use it not as my essential point, but as a humorous allegory to reinforce an idea I've already presented. It's not the foundation of an argument, it's a single I-beam.

But there's a disturbing trend in indie music journalism, and that's using snark as the definitive statement on an argument. Look at sites like Weingarten's Twitter feed, or Hipster Runoff, and you'll see the same thing, a general sense of snark and/or winking irony, a nod toward those who are presumably "in" on the "joke." But what it's short on is earnest evaluation of the content that's being judged.

I was always taught, in both science class and in mock trial (high school shout outs, ya'll), that to prove an idea, you have to do so in a step-by-step process. First, you create a hypothesis, then you test that hypothesis, then you form a new conclusion based on your testing. But that middle step, the one that's the most important step, is often absent from these snarky asides. They jump straight from their opinion to making a joke about their opinion in conclusion, without allowing for argument of the point in between.

It's cheating, basically.

Sadly, not only is this behavior accepted, it's often lauded. IndieHulk's Twitter feed was recently called "the best music writing since Hipster Runoff." Which has to be a huge slap in the face for anyone who has tried to make their point honestly and with justification.

What makes me the most depressed about this is that the critical thinking necessary to come up with these jokes betrays an intelligence and ability with the written word to earn their snarky asides. See, it's easy to be snarky something you don't like-- who can't do that?-- but it's harder to write about it in a way that's reasoned and interesting. The people behind these things have the talent to do so, but they've decided to do away with that portion, hiding it behind the veil of a pretty good sense of humor.

For some, that's good enough. If they laugh, it's enough for them to endorse something and enough for them to ignore the fact that an actual argument isn't being made.

Here's the thing about snark: it usually makes an assumption about the material it's talking about, but instead of honestly relating it to the audience as an assumption, it presumes it to automatically be true.

I'll give you an example, here's a tweet from DrunkHulk on Radiohead's new album, The King of Limbs: "LISTEN TO NEW RADIOHEAD ALBUM! IT TOO EARLY FOR LENT! SO DRUNK HULK NO UNDERSTAND WHY RADIOHEAD GIVE UP!"

The assumption that this makes is that the King of Limbs is boring, and it presents this assumption as a necessary truth; to enjoy the joke, you have to accept the premise. It's funny, to be sure, I laughed when I read it. But it also doesn't bother to actually prove it's premise. Now, DrunkHulk doesn't have to and, in a way, Twitter users don't have the space to do so in 140 characters. But, at some point, if we're supposed to take your opinion seriously, you need to make a reasoned argument about it. DrunkHulk doesn't, and it's a pattern sadly imitated by many music critics.

I don't have to listen to these peoples' opinions and, really, I don't. I don't follow 1000TimesYes or Hipster Runoff or whatever. But I think it's a sad state of affairs when their unreasoned arguments are what qualify in the court of public opinion as "the best music writing."

This is a call to arms for the earnest. Let's put making a point back en vogue.

National Enormity, Actually Not About Fat People

2011-03-03T18:31:00.000-06:00

I didn't post yesterday because I was traveling (I don't have an excuse for Monday other than bad memory).

I drove from Minnesota to Florida yesterday, a trip that took about 21 hours. Afterward I determined that I had traveled to or through 20 states in my life. A decent number for a person who has only lived in three.

It was about 70 degrees in Florida today, and I spent much of a day in early March laying on the beach, reading my Kindle next to a pool. For a kid who grew up used to seven foot piles of snow on his front lawn, this is kind of like a Big Deal. Capital letters intentional.

See what that got me thinking about after the jump.

Often I'm struck by the enormity of the country that I live in. The United States is, if you know your geography, the third largest country in the world, behind Russia and Canada. But it's significantly more densely populated than either of those countries.

When I travel to Florida, I always do so by car. In this way, I travel through a variety of cultures before I arrive. The Midwest is the "all business" area of the country, states like Indiana and Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee make up the early stages of the south in terms of atmosphere, but still have the workmanship often associated with Midwestern culture. Alabama and Mississippi, as well as the outlying Floridian towns, are the South with a capital letter, from polite Southern gentleman and southern bells, to the stereotyped Simpsons character Cletus, the Slack-Jawed Yokel.

It takes 21 hours, as I said before, to get to Florida from Minnesota. And despite the variety of cultures encountered, we speak the same language, we participate in the same cultural zeitgeist, we work under the same government. This is reassuring in a way, as it shows me that despite all of the 24-hour news networks saying otherwise, we're all fundamentally the same people: we want the best for ourselves, our friends and family, and our country.

If you drive that same 21 hours in Western Europe, not only do you end up in a country that speaks a completely different language, you end up in a country with entirely different values, a different government, different goals and different belief systems.

I've said before, that based on sheer square footage, it's a goddamn miracle that we all speak English, have similar feelings about our country, are engaged in the same traditions. And, like I said, it makes me think of us as less apart. Despite our differences in dialect, in terminology, in politic beliefs, in regional pride, there is something undeniable that ties us together.

And that gives me hope.

Oscars vs. Grammys

2011-03-01T09:32:00.000-06:00

The Oscars were last night.

I, like most of America (if Nielson ratings are still to be believed), prefer the Oscars to the Grammys. There are a few relatively obvious reasons for this. The spectacle itself is a bigger event, in terms of scope and spectacle; movie stars are on average more charismatic than musicians; people aren’t afraid to poke fun at the Academy, or each other, or themselves, which makes for more engaging television; and people are more aware of the number of people watching, making them more likely to use their platform in an intriguing way.

But all of that, in my opinion, is ancillary. The biggest reason the Oscars are bigger than the Grammys for people of all demographics is because the Oscars seem to nominate and award the art they’re evaluating based on merit in a more significant manner than the Grammys.

That is to say, Oscar winning movies are typically more respected– by critics, by viewers, by art buffs– than winning Grammy winning songs or albums.

More after the jump.

I don’t know if I understand what the reason for this is. On one hand, I’m sure the award committee of the Grammys do not want to award a song or album that no one has heard of, probably even less so after the “Who is Arcade Fire?” meme that popped up almost immediately. But it seems like they’re completely unaware of the simple fact that they are the only award body that routinely hands out awards to musicians that are among the least critically acclaimed of the year.

Back in 2000, Radiohead’s Kid A and Emineim’s The Marshall Mathers LP were nominated for album of the year, and the Grammys seemed relevant. At least until the actual award presentation; the album of the year ended up going to 70s group Steely Dan’s comeback album that no one knows the title of without Google.

Last night during the Oscars, I was rooting for David Fincher for Best Director and The Social Network for best movie of the year. Both lost their respective nominations to The King’s Speech. And my immediate reaction was to be upset about this.

When Arcade Fire, a band that has received critical acclaim, a band that had released one of the most impressive and widely loved albums of the year in critical circles, won a Grammy, my immediate reaction was to be snarky and unaffected.

The difference ultimately comes down to recognition. Seeing a sticker for “Oscar winner” on a movie means something to people outside of the voting committee. People are more likely to rent, watch, and even talk about movies that have won or been nominated for Oscars. When it comes to songs, though, the words “Grammy winning” rarely if ever influence anyone into listening.

Is there a fix? It seems like the board of voters for the Grammys tried to infuse a bit of relevancy into their selections this year, between Arcade Fire and Best New Artist winner Esperanza Spalding’s victory over Justin Bieber. But it will need to continue, especially in the face of so much criticism and so many conspiracy theories. The only way to pull the Grammys into relevancy is to recognize the music that is making an actual impact on listeners.

Will that work? It’s hard to say. It could be that mainstream viewers, the Grammys’ bread and butter, would leave in droves when non-mainstream music began winning major awards. But at this point, changing the formula is probably the only way to engage actual fans of the musical art form. The question then becomes if being watched by a smaller demographic of devoted music fans who are ultimately satisfied with the award show trumps a larger demographic turning the show on and off when records that no one– not radio listeners or music critics– care about win these awards.

The Oscars were last night.

Let’s make the Grammys the same kind of event.

The Blog as Masturbation

2011-02-25T19:14:00.000-06:00

What do people want?

That's a question I've been thinking about lately, for a variety of reasons. Partially because I'm not gainfully employed in a full-time career, partially because I've always felt myself to be capable of creating praise-worthy content, and partially because I watched The Social Network again.

But no, this won't turn into another piece on that movie.

Hit the jump for more.

I write this blog, and I think I write things worth reading. But that, however, is distinctly not for the audience. Like most blog writing, it's for the writer. It's a way of demonstrating my talents, exposing the wide range of topics I'm capable of exploring to a wider audience. It's a line on a resume, sample pieces to send off to potential employers.

It's certainly not what people want.

People don't want to read, and they really don't want to read other people's opinions. They have their own-- thankyouverymuch-- and the last thing they want to expose themselves to is another often pretentious, occasionally self-righteous and ridiculously egotistic twenty-something thinking that he knows everything about, um, everything.

Audience is important when considering art. When creating a painting, the painter must look at it with the eye of someone who is unaware of the advanced techniques needed to create it. When writing a book, one must not let a mastery of language distract from the plot. When filming a movie, one must not let camera angles and editing tricks dominate at the sacrifice of accessibility.

But in the blog world, accessibility is often a dirty word. I've written about this before, but in a very real way writing a blog is like preaching to the converted. And often it's like preaching to yourself. Without feedback, a blog posts exists in a vacuum. When a blog post exists in a vacuum, its point becomes meaningless to all but its creator.

No joke, writing a blog post is a lot like masturbating.

When I was posting my live-tweets of the TV show Chuck on this blog, if you were a regular follower (are there regular followers? I have no idea) you might have noticed that my tone for those tweets was significantly different than the tone for most of my posts on the blog. That's because I knew the audience for those tweets, and they knew me, in a way. My persona in those tweets is silly and snarky, fun and (hopefully) funny.

It's not a side that the blog sees a lot, because I think I take the blog more seriously than I take my "critiques" of Chuck. On here, I'm far more earnest. And I think some of that is because this blog seems to exist in a vacuum. Because I lack the fear of reprisal, I'm not afraid of being too vindictive or too corny, too pretentious or too political.

I'm interested in what people want (I'm interested in sex, so to say). But, for now, with the eyes of the world turned away, I don't really mind saying that I kind of like masturbation.

Demo: "Thirteen Years"

2011-02-24T14:50:00.000-06:00

This is a track I wrote relatively recently. It was recorded with some aid from my friend Bennett Selchow and it's called "Thirteen Years."

The Fictions of Reality

2011-02-23T21:26:00.000-06:00

I've been watching a lot of movie-length pieces about real people lately. By that I don't mean fictional movies based on real events, I mean documentaries and stand-up comedy specials, mostly. I use the term movie-length because I wouldn't necessarily call stand-up specials "movies," but for the sake of brevity, let's just assume that from here on out when I refer to these pieces of work as "movies," I'm talking about both documentaries and stand-up specials.

I couldn't tell you entirely why I've been feeling this particular kind of movie lately, but I think it has something to do with the tangibleness of it, the almost accidental complexity of real people. So often, our own motivations are so garbled and unintelligible that when we see movie characters whose goals are effortlessly defined it rings less true, no matter how properly unfurled those motivations are.

Basically what I'm saying is that the most well-written fiction doesn't hold a candle to real life.

More after the jump.

That sounds obvious, but it's kind of a big deal coming from someone who consumes as much art and fiction as I do. Like most nerds, I spent a lot of my time alone diving into worlds of fiction, using them as escapism from a world I didn't have much in common with.

I still don't have that much in common with it; that much hasn't changed. But what has changed is how I view the world around me. Now, when I'm choosing something to watch, I find that I'm more intrigued by the idea real people, real situations, real problems. I'm sure that, for those who regularly read my blog, it's readily apparent how interested I am in social politics. It's in that vein that I have been devouring these pieces and truly enjoying them. They're social politics either stated outright (documentaries) or as humorous stories (stand-up), and seeing the way these diverse people have come to accept the world that we live in is fascinating to me.

But I started thinking more about both of these genres, and I realized that as much as the social politics of both forms interest me, the reason why I truly enjoy them is how fiction infiltrates them. In documentaries and stand-up, the parts of them that are the most intriguing are not necessarily their blatant realities, but rather how they craft reality into a narrative, into a fiction.

Stand-up comedy is the most obvious culprit of this. Jokes are often exaggerations of real-life stories. And, while a Patton Oswalt bit has its basis in a real world situation, the comedy aspect comes in usually when fiction is interjected. As hilarious as a story can be, it requires a storyteller's tilt to craft it into something beyond mere anecdote.

Documentaries do this, too, which is a weird thing because documentaries are supposed to expose truths about our society that we are ignoring or are being pushed into the background. But, just like stand-up, the stories of life that need telling aren't ready-made. They require an author's pen to shape into something universal. They require an editor's shape to be molded into something that speaks to our soul.

So, really, I've been delving into an in-between, a purgatory, between true fiction and true reality. Because it's along that line that the truths of culture that so often elude us walk. It's along that line that I discover the most about myself.

Young Hearts Spark Fire

2011-02-22T11:36:00.000-06:00

A lot of the things I write about on this blog are capital letter Big Ideas. They look at social politics and sometimes normal politics, they examine art in a big picture way, they poke into portions of modern society that we are beginning to take for granted, they attempt to highlight what I often believe to be intentionally avoided truths so we can continue ignoring their often harmful implications. It's often pretentious, but I try not to present it as such. It's often confrontational, though I try to look at all sides of an argument before I make it. It's often ignored, even if I think it's pretty worthwhile. Sometimes it's just about music or television, though I'm usually examining it critically.

Here's the thing: sometimes all of that Thinking gets in the way of Living.

Hit the jump for more.

No matter how much I think something, even if I'm presenting that thinking in a logical, understandable way to the rest of the world, none of that is going to matter much without actually going out into the world and practicing it. All the best of intentions mean nothing if they end when this sentence does.

Even that's missing the point, in a way. Essentially what I'm trying to say this: higher brain functions often get in the way of living our life. When we worry about our own mortality and the Issues of The World so often, we forget that sometimes the best thing we can do is try to find a pretty girl to kiss.

It's easy to forget that, especially when you're the kind of person I am, the kind that thinks incessantly to the point of paralysis, the kind who feels the need to write down a new idea every day. And, sometimes, it's tough to believe, when you've got a governor arrogantly ignoring protesters in Madison, Wisconsin, when you've got Middle Eastern leaders arrogantly ignoring rioters in Libya and Egypt.

But it's the truth. There's a reason why love stories compromise some of the most famous of all time, why they're the emotional core of most dramas in any medium, why paintings and sculptures of the human body are so unendingly intriguing.

There's a reason why one of most important photographs is of a kiss.

So, go ahead. Instead of reading this, find a pretty girl.

(Not Quite) Midweek Music Review - Radiohead: The King of Limbs

2011-02-21T21:30:00.000-06:00

Radiohead
The King of Limbs
[self-released]

Rating: 8.0/10
(This review originally was posted on Audiosuede)

Hit the jump for the review.

It will be a week ago today that The King of Limbs, seminal experimental rock act Radiohead’s eighth record, was announced. Their last record, the lush and sensual In Rainbows, received similar “Holy crap Radiohead has another album finished” / “Oh my God it’s out like right fucking now” fanfare in 2007, when Radiohead finished the record and then quickly released it as a pay-what-you-want download. The King of Limbs received a much more traditional self-release, with the band releasing the record for purchase on their website, starting at nine bucks; there will be no great “Did Radiohead change the music industry” think pieces built into King of Limbs reviews. That’s a good thing, probably. At times, In Rainbows‘ release strategy overshadowed the actual content. Because of the comparably “normal” method of The King Of Limbs‘ release, one would think the actual songs will be allowed to stand out on their own.

But here’s something interesting: People were able to see the critical reaction to The King of Limbs almost immediately upon its release a few days ago. With Twitter, everyone of certain subgenre interests can gather together and come up with a consensus on something within hours. What that means is that anyone who cares about Radiohead probably had already heard someone’s opinion on it before they had heard that. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, of course, but it’s far different than how people are used to consuming an album, especially from a band with the kind of cultural pull that Radiohead has.

Radiohead has a history of doing this. In 2001, when the band released Amnesiac, they were just on this side of the Napster revolution. In many ways, Amnesiac was the exact wrong record for the Napster generation. It demanded patience and thorough front-to-back listening to truly get a sense of, while Napster’s long download times meant that fans wanted immediate payoff for the hour or so they put into downloading each individual song. The King of Limbs operates in a very similar way to today’s culture. Twitter and Facebook, Tumblr and the blogosphere have created a shout-to-be-heard atmosphere, where the loudest, most outlandish voices demand the most attention. But The King of Limbs refuses to cooperate. At every turn, the latest Radiohead record is more whisper than shout.

This is apparent from the very beginning. The opening cluster of “Bloom”, “Morning Mr. Magpie”, and “Little By Little” all operate on subtle, small shifts. Their dynamics very rarely reach toward either extreme. Instead, innovative and artfully rendered rhythm sections operate in stopwatch gearwork, melodies and harmonies are considered more for how they build and release tension than how well they relate an emotion or convey a lyrical idea. Consider the “Pull/Pulk”-esque “Feral,” wherein it sounds as though individual grains of sand are being dropped next to the microphone. Or de facto single “Lotus Flower,” where sometimes Phil Selway’s drums are supplemented not by a chorus of children shouting, like on In Rainbows opener “15 Step,” but merely by a single person clapping along to the off-kilter rhythm.

The entire first half of the short (eight songs, thirty-seven and a half minutes) record is dominated by tracks of this nature. Skittering, insect leg percussion pulls and pulks against Yorke’s tortured, anxious chatter. In many ways, Amnesiac is most cloesly analogous to the opening half of The King of Limbs, specifically Amnesiac’s “Knives Out” and “Dollars & Cents.” Adding the kitchen sink rhythms prevalent on The King of Limbs‘ first half to either song would net you something akin to “Little By Little,” and if you added a little bit of song structure to Amnesiac opener “Packt Like Sardines In a Crushd Tin Box,” you could certainly end up with “Lotus Flower.”

But like many of those classic vinyl records, The King of Limbs is a tale of two halves. The last three songs on the album, “Codex”, “Give Up the Ghost”, and “Separator”, subvert the formula of the first half, turning in three tracks that are among some of the most devastatingly beautiful in the Radiohead canon. The biggest weakness of the Limbs‘ first half is its tendency to sound too Radiohead-y. That is to say, the innovation and singular styling that made them so striking and instantly classic has become almost predictable at this point. Truthfully, no one would put up too much of a fuss calling “Bloom” Radiohead by-the-numbers. But on the second half, Radiohead sounds about as straight-forward a rock band as they have since The Bends, and by freeing themselves of their experimental confines, the last three songs on The King of Limbs sound completely revitalized.

Consider “Give Up the Ghost,” which may be the greatest Neil Young song ever recorded; for the first time since “Fake Plastic Trees”, Radiohead uses acoustic guitars as a tool for melody in earnest, as opposed to using the bare-bones sound of the instrument’s steel strings as a method to induce tension. Even Yorke’s voice sounds indebted to Young, as he turns his typically tortured yowl into a swooping croon, pulling hope out of the song’s rustic, yearning sentiments. “Codex” is a gorgeous, contemplative piano ballad in the vein of “Pyramid Song”, where thick modulations threaten each note’s stability, and the underwater chords pull Yorke’s powerful voice down like an anchor. And closer “Separator” is about as frills-free as Radiohead gets, and about as cheerful as they get, too. Jonny Greenwood’s and Ed O’Brian’s guitars dance joyously around Yorke’s delicate meditations.

While the first handful of songs on The King of Limbs may seem like Radiohead’s bag of tricks has finally run dry, that closing trio reminds us that Radiohead is still– has always been– a very, very good rock band before all else. They don’t do it by shouting a new, instant Greatest of All Time record down from their metaphorical mountain peak. Instead, they whisper it in your ear, delicate and subtle, but just as powerful. In a world dominated by the loudest voices, it may seem like a record this unassuming is a failure. But, as Yorke sings on “Separator”, “If you think it’s over, then you’re wrong.”

Midweek Music Review - Tyler the Creator: Bastard

2011-02-16T19:11:00.000-06:00

Tyler the Creator
Bastard
[self-released]

Rating: 8.5/10

Hit the jump for the review.

Even in his heydey, Eminem was always more terrifying to overprotective mothers and melodramatic conservative protesters than he ever was to the people who listened to him. There was a sense, when listening to a song like Marshall Mathers LP opener "Kill You," that we were "in" on the "joke." There was an implied fiction to the Detroit rapper's violence, and it was illustrated by the schizophrenic depictions of Eminem's characters, by cartoon sound effects mixed into the background, by friggin' soap opera references. All of it meant that Eminem's dangerous edge was at most an uncomfortable nuisance; the closest Mathers got to cutting truly close to the bone was Marshal Mathers' penultimate murder fantasy track "Kim."

19-year old Tyler the Creator hails from Los Angeles, California, and heads the Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All collective, and the most immediate influence on the OFWGKTA group is definitely Eminem. They rap against ugly, grimy beats reminiscent of Marshal Mathers' darkest moments, they talk about rape and murder and anal sex with candor, and they spit words like bitch and faggot with vitriol and impunity. Hell, OFWGKTA member Earl Sweatshirt spits on a track "I'm the reincarnation of '98 Eminem." They don't shy away from the comparison, they invite it. But, here's the thing, on Bastard, Tyler the Creator's debut LP, he's just as terrifying to listeners as he is to the uninitiated. Hell, knowing the kid's story might even make him scarier.

Fear seems like a weird thing to mention in regard to a musician, especially in a complimentary fashion, but fear is a big thing for Tyler and the Odd Future gang. On Bastard especially, it seeps into the music and drips out of it, like a wild animal with blood dripping from its jaws. The production on Bastard is stark and bone-drenched, where dissonant piano chords dance with ugly synth lines or where drum samples trip over themselves around Halloween score atmospherics. It's purpose is nothing less than putting you in the middle of Psycho's shower or Carrie's prom.

But the truly terrifying thing about Bastard is its absolute lack of levity. Eminem's rape threats were easy to shrug off because of their Bugs Bunny scope, but when Tyler spits "When I rape I bitch I hold her down and get my best nut" on "Assmilk" there is no wink and nod to the audience like Em would have given us. Instead, it's the opposite; the fractured synth arpeggios and close-mic'd vocals say in no uncertain musical terms: "This shit is real."

I'm not trying to argue that Tyler and his Odd Future buddies actually kill and rape women. But Bastard's entire purpose is to make what Tyler's talking about seem true. Race relations get mutilated perfectly down into "Got all the black bitches mad 'cause my main bitch vanilla" on "French" or "Drunk white girls are the only way I'll get my dick sucked" on "Bastard," and the way Tyler presents them makes their truth seem self-apparent. It's when Tyler turns that critical eye to horrifying subject matter that things get fucking uncomfortable. On "French" Tyler kidnaps Goldilocks, steals the three bears' porridge, then locks Goldy in a basement and rapes her and records it. The sheer wordplay that Tyler rocks to tell this little tale is otherwordly impressive, the sheer detail that Tyler drops into his messed up fairy tale is distressing.

Listening to Eminem, listeneres never really got the impression that he hated with quite the fervor he was projecting. It's what made him eventually palatable to the mainstream. But Tyler's hate seems genuine. His rape and murder fantasies are a sick joke, but they come from a place of true anger, at a rap blog world that ignores his crew, at an absentee father (about whom he raps Bastard's finest line: "Fuck a deal, I just want my father's e-mail/ So I can tell him how much I fucking hate him in detail"), at just fucking everyone. It's that hate that makes Bastard such a difficult listen. But it's also that hate that makes Bastard so engaging and, ultimately, what demands everyone's attention.

I will NOT write an essay about Arcade Fire winning Album of the Year.

2011-02-15T16:15:00.000-06:00

The title of this, that's what I said to myself Sunday night after seeing Twitter explode (both positively and negatively) regarding Arcade Fire winning the Grammy for Album of the Year for their 2010 record The Suburbs.

It's going to be too overdone. There will be nothing left to say. All of my music critic friends are already making snarky jokes about it. Those were the justifications I whispered to myself.

See, on Sunday night, I live tweeted the Grammys without actually watching the Grammys. Part of this was because I like live-tweeting, part of it was because I don't like watching the Grammys, and part of it was a sort of social experiment, devised to see how much of the pomp and circumstance can come through in a parade of like-minded people speaking in 140 characters about the same event.

Hit the break for more.

Not that this is the point, but I got a surprisingly accurate picture of what happened at the Grammys. I might as well have seen the shock and disappointment on Justin Bieber's face when he lost Best New Artist, from what I heard in Retweets from Bieber fanatics and what I saw they did to that catagory's winner Esperanza Spalding Wikipedia page. I figured out how old Bob Dylan looked and how comparatively fresh Mick Jagger looked. I heard about Lady Gaga's egg and BMX bikes with cameras and Eminem being pretty damned intense.

I also heard the explosion of the indie scene when Arcade Fire won their Grammy.

But this isn't about them winning the Grammy, or my thoughts on that album or what it does for indie music or whatever. I got a tweet from Marissa Nadler (an amazing musician who I unfairly snarked on when she celebrated Spalding's victory on Twitter) saying that she felt a true sea change was coming for music, and maybe it is. But what I'm more interested in has been the fallout.

* * *

Within hours of The Suburbs, the website Who Is Arcade Fire??!!? launched, highlighting tweets and Facebook comments of people indignantly asking who the band was, and how they won the Album of the Year Grammy when-- obviously-- no one had ever heard of them.

And on Billboard, Okkervil River frontman Will Sheff posted a live diary that ended on this scalding quote regarding the manner:

"On my flight home this afternoon, I scrolled through [Who Is Arcade Fire??!!?]. I read pages and pages of people shouting in all caps "I'VE NEVER HEARD OF THEM!" as if that's a valid musical critique, as if that's anything but a braying declaration of proud ignorance. As if somehow the prefab pop royalty whose handlers dropped the most money on promotion are promised a Grammy as a kind of birthright, the way that Will Smith's kids are guaranteed hit singles and blockbusters if they want them; the way that Gwyneth Paltrow is apparently allowed to show up anywhere at any time and sing, whether or not we want to hear her. I've never heard Esperanza Spalding either, but now I'm excited to. It was fun to watch the losers win for a change."

He's got a point.

* * *

What I like best about that Sheff quote is the line "... as if that's a valid musical critique, as if that's anything but a braying declaration of proud ignorance." Shouting that you don't know something doesn't devalue that thing's worth, which is something that too few realize. And I thought it was worth mentioning.

But it also made me sad that he mentioned it, in a way. And the whole Who Is Arcade Fire??!!? site made me sad, too. After all, what is the purpose of such a site other than to make fun of the people who-- obviously-- don't have the kind of enlightened music taste that we do? What's the point of such a website other than to be the smart kid sitting in the back of the class, making cutting remarks about the popular kids?

The site, and Sheff's article, made me sad because they reiterated this divide between pop and indie, between world renowned and critically acclaimed, that doesn't have to exist. Like so many countercultures, there are those within it that embrace the counterculture's otherness more so than its actual content. What's important to them is that it stands apart.

The existence of something like Who Is Arcade Fire??!!? doesn't actually help Arcade Fire's case for a Grammy at all. It actually creates an even larger barrier between the people who didn't know the band and those who do. It's not constructive, it's not enlightening. It's the versus in "Us versus Them."

* * *

I love pop music. I've written about Lady Gaga and Lil Wayne, Kanye West and Britney Spears, all in a positive way. I think that's the biggest reason why it makes me sad when I see something like Who Is Arcade Fire??!!? Because it's unnecessary. It's possible to like Eminem and Radiohead, to embrace Beyonce and Band of Horses.

Barriers between genres, between cultures, between people, are more hurtful than helpful. Too often we allow those barriers to become definitions of who we are. But they aren't. Those of us who feel good about knowing who Arcade Fire is, who go to that website and laugh at the tweets of others, were probably just as confounded when Esperanza Spalding won her Best New Artist Grammy. In another situation, we'd be the ones whose tweets ended up on whoisesperanzaspalding.tumblr.com.

These self-imposed barriers are not definitions of ourselves. In fact, if we care to tear them down, it's possible to find quite a bit of common ground with those on the other side.

Taking a Week Off

2011-02-08T09:17:00.002-06:00

Having a mentally draining week, so I have decided to take it off. Thanks for understanding!

Government Intrusion: Its Necessary Dichotomy

2011-02-03T17:03:00.000-06:00

I was watching the local news on television the other night, and heard two consecutive news stories that had me taking a deeper look into personal politics.

The first news story was about the Republicans and their most recent attempt at overturning the Health Care Reform legislation (Please, for the love of God, don't refer to it as ObamaCare because the only thing that means is that you're either a buzzword-spouting sycophant or an intentionally misleading malcontent). It noted how the most common objection by politicians regarding the health care bill is that, by allowing the government to take a greater stake in how health care is paid for, our level of quality health care will decrease and, ultimately, the cost of our health care will rise.

Hit the break for more.

I disagree with position on a number of levels. Firstly, our level of health care in comparison to the global average is not that good, so the idea that we have the best doctors of the best medical facilities or whatever is pure nationalist fantasy. Secondly, some of the best hospitals in our country are military hospitals-- it's been attested to by the U.S. Daily News, fer chrissakes-- and they're government run. Thirdly, by divvying up the costs between all working members of the population, unless the cost of actual medical procedures rises exorbitantly, it mathematically has to reduce the cost of health care.

Now the Republicans in Congress are trying increasingly convoluted methods in attempts to repeal the legislation. It's going to be inherently difficult, as they don't control the Senate and hold a slim margin in the House of Representatives, but they're trying almost more as a gesture than as applicable action. But, then again, that's a lot of politics: more posturing than execution. Even so, I'm hoping that continued attempts at the repeal fail.

But, ultimately, that's not the reason I'm writing this piece.

After the piece on health care, the piece that immediately followed was about a pair of Minnesota teenagers who were allowed to walk as part of their high school's winter pep fest. This wouldn't be that notable, save for the fact that both of the students were female, and openly lesbian.

As the story goes, this pair of students was elected to the royalty court and requested to walk together during the traditional walk to the podium during the ceremony. The school board, claiming that they wanted to avoid the students being teased, changed the rules to require the students walking with a parent or favorite teacher. Immediately, civil rights groups stepped in and the long story short version is that the girls got to walk together.

On the local news, it was pointed out that many conservative groups want the government to step in and put restrictions in place regarding homosexuals: from whether or not they can marry, to the legalities of them co-owning property and assets, to their options for children.

It occurred to me then, the hypocrisy of the opinions held by conservative groups. In regard to the matter of social decorum, with the gay students, conservative groups were standing there asking for the government to step in and say that this wasn't okay. But in the matter of national interest, with the health care reform, those same groups were telling the government to keep their filthy hands off.

The same moment that thought occurred to me, however, I was struck by the coin flip of the idea. I, as a liberal, wanted the government to keep its filthy hands off the issue of the gay students, human rights and freedoms being what they are. But, at the same time, when dealing with the national level issue of health care, I wanted the government to lay down some rules.

The conclusion I came to is this: despite the rhetoric, both liberals and conservatives want government to intervene at some location. The only difference is where on the map that location lies.

And if that's the truth, well, we're one step closer to understanding each other, aren't we?

Midweek Music Review - James Blake: James Blake

2011-02-02T18:01:00.000-06:00

James Blake
James Blake
[Atlas/A&M]
Rating: 9.0/10
(This post originally appeared on Audiosuede)

Hit the jump for the review.

As a kid, and I guess even now, I was interested in how things broke but still sort of worked. Like, when my Super Mario Bros. cartridge would glitch and I would be playing world triangle dash two, where there were random blocks in the air and enemies that walked in one place. Or like when a computer monitor’s VGA input was dying and the display would wobble and discolor, creating modern art shapes out of your desktop. It’s accidental deconstruction. In that spirit, I’ve always been very interested in deconstruction– accidental or intentional– in music. James Blake, the self-titled debut from the astoundingly multi-talented producer/songwriter, traffics in deconstruction, and comes out the other side, paradoxically, with one of the most coherent albums of the young year.

In 2010, Blake rocked three disparate yet similar, individual but spiritually-connected EPs in The Bell’s Sketch, CMYK, and Klavierwerke. Each focused on a different touchpoint of Blake’s sound, giving tantalizing views of exactly how talented Blake was as a complete artist. On James Blake, the Londoner has synthesized his gifts– rich gospel drama, highly emotive R&B melancholy, woozy dance rhythms, harmonically engaging chord structures that challenge both the mind and the ear, and striking vocal manipulations– into one astounding whole.

What’s immediately noticeable about Blake’s debut LP is its fearlessness. Take for instance Blake’s voice. The man isn’t the strongest singer, and you can notice how it breaks as it strains for certain notes, but he unabashedly makes it the centerpiece of several tracks here, like the two-part “Lindesfarne” suite, or the heartbreaking gut punch of closer “Measurements.” Listen to how silence isn’t just used in Blake’s music, it’s embraced. The cavernous spaces are used brilliantly as transitions on “I Mind” and “Limit To Your Love,” and as sucker punch surprises on tracks like “I Never Learnt to Share.” Multiple seconds can pass between individual notes, and each moment invites further emotional investment, allowing the listener to fill the spaces with their own hardships.

And Blake isn’t afraid to manipulate any sort of source material. He takes Feist’s “Limit To Your Love” and both captures its punishing sadness and changes its tone entirely by reducing the verses to bass wobbles and lonely percussion; he distorts the instrumentation on “Lindesfarne II” to the point that it takes almost the entirety of the song to realize it had acoustic guitar in it; he warps and splices vocals like a surgeon on “To Care (Like You)”, lending it an immeasurable sense of distance. And on tracks “I Mind” and “Wilhelm’s Scream” he uses an exacto knife to splice together an appetizer platter of tones– pitch shifting coos, hand-played percussion, dollops of keys, wobbling synths– with a sense of relative abandon. And through his immaculate rearrangement, his talent for deconstruction, those tunes come out the other side with genuine and undeniable impact.

Where Blake is the most fearless, however, is in his rendering of human emotion. This is downtrodden music, handled in such a way so as to lend the downtrodden a sense of catharsis. A choir of Blakes sing, “You’re not on your own” at one point on closer “Measurements.” While the soulful melodies that populate Blake’s masterful first LP may sound contradictory, the man’s artful interpretation of heartfelt emotion causes James Blake to sound hopeful, even when it speaks of defeat.

Subtlety of Meaning vs. Extended Metaphors

2011-02-01T16:54:00.000-06:00

I saw Black Swan recently, which is a supernatural pseudo-thriller set in the world of ballet with lesbians overtones. Which, yeah, is a mouthful as far as genres go. Darren Aronofsky, the director of Swan, previously knocked out movies like The Fountain, Requiem for a Dream, and Pi. So the man's pretty familiar with every subsection of that aforementioned genre, except maybe ballet.

I loved Black Swan. Natalie Portman's performance was out-of-her-mind good. If you ever watch sports, they like to use the term "in the zone" to describe a fantastic sports performer playing at a near-perfect level. I'm a Packers fan, and the perfect descriptor of "in the zone" for a sports performer was Aaron Rodgers in the Atlanta Falcons game. Natalie Portman in Black Swan was the cinematic equivalent. She's always been an excellent actress, but Black Swan was so far beyond anything she's done previously that it was like seeing her for the first time.

Hit the break for more.

And, as always, Aronofsky is a truly excellent director. He's always had a gift for translating an emotional idea into a visual one: check out Requiem for a Dream's pupil dilation close-ups for one great example, and that fantastic prologue scene in Swan for another.

But in terms of movies that I liked in this Oscar season, I still have to give a nod to both Inception and The Social Network. Inception is a completely different kind of movie for this argument, however, so I'll reduce the discussion to just The Social Network.

The last time I discussed The Social Network I talked about how it took me a few separate viewings for me to discern an underlying meaning, and how I appreciate there being an underlying purpose to the art that I consume. But Black Swan was much the exact opposite: I discerned a purpose (I won't be arrogant enough to call it the purpose) to the movie's existence as soon as the movie's finale scene faded to black.

Essentially the message I inferred from Black Swan was this: Creating perfect art will kill you every time.

That's a heady message to communicate, to be sure, but the fact that I picked up on it-- and I'm sure many others did too-- so quickly and easily, made it seem to be indescribably less than The Social Network.

I think this is essentially because of effort. I had to put time-- and wonderfully enjoyable time it was-- into The Social Network. I kept coming back to it in my mind, turning around the characters' actions and ideas, and just thinking about that movie. But until the idea for this blog post struck me, I hadn't thought once more about Black Swan.

By offering me an understandable answer immediately after its conclusion, Black Swan ruined its own rewatch value. By making itself essentially one long, easily-understood extended metaphor, I didn't visit the idea any further. By contrast, The Social Network's meaning was subtle and hidden, and I had to plumb its depths to dig it out, an experience both rewarding and satisfying.

Instant Reaction: Chuck vs the Push Mix

2011-01-31T21:34:00.000-06:00

Tweet: #SarahConnorBitches #Chuck413

Addendum: You know who Linda Hamilton was all of Season 4? Sarah Connor. That's it. She wasn't Chuck's mom. She wasn't Ellie's mom. She wasn't Stephen Bartowski's wife. She was Linda Hamilton. That led to some certainly badass moments. But it also meant that she felt ultimately disconnected from everything else happening during the season. And, ultimately, I think that was the biggest failing of the first part of Season 4: We never felt as though Mary Bartowski not coming back to the rest of the Bartowski clan was a horrible thing.

Tweet: Morgan inspires Casey's grunts like no other. #Chuck413

Addendum: What an epic bromance, you guys. Seriously. Morgan brought Casey back from the BRINK OF DEATH.

More after the jump.

Tweet: What. The. Frick? #SpidersAreTERRIFYING #Chuck413

Addendum: Did they blow their entire special effects budget on that thing? That thing that looked like the cover of the Dismemberment Plan's Emergency & I record? For what? Basically a lockpick? Most expensive lockpick ever.

Reply Tweet, from ladycat713: Where does Frost get her tech? Did Volkoff steal some of Orion's work too or was Frost using tech her husband gave her.

Addendum: Everyone steals from Stephen Bartowski. Ted Roark. Alexei Volkoff. His wife. His son. DUDE IS THE GREATEST INVENTOR NO ONE KNOWS. And all because of pancakes.

Tweet: @ladycat713 She obviously got it from my darkest nightmares.

Addendum: Seriously I am terrified of spiders.

Tweet: ...off a thirty story building #ThenKissyFaces #VolkoffBiPolar #Chuck413

Addendum: I AM GOING TO EAT THIS BABY BUNNY AND THEN MAKE CUDDLESIES WITH MY LADY.

Tweet: Bocci? #InTHISWeather? #Chuck413

Addendum: There is SO MUCH SNOW YOU GUYS.

Tweet: They shoulda done this on the back of the Tron poster. #Callbacks #Chuck413

Addendum: Am I wrong? I'm not wrong.

Tweet: OHSHIT! #Chuck413

Addendum: Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion Orion

Reply Tweet, from rheadagnalan: OHSHIT indeed. Indeeeeeeed.

Reply Tweet, from BDaddyDL: best opening ever? #Chuck413

Reply Tweet, from ladycat713: Hee! Always fun watching the bad guy go batshit!

Addendum: Orion.

Tweet: @BDaddyDL Nah, that goes to the Pilot still. Prolly now and forever.

Addendum: There is honestly no better beginning to a Chuck episode than the Pilot.

Reply Tweet, from BDaddyDL: Truth!

Addendum: #Truth

Tweet: Orion's ghost's ghost could probably hack Volkoff's system. #RealTalk #Chuck413

Addendum: The man is a GENUS. Yes I intentionally misspelled genius. What of it?

Reply Tweet, from Frea_O: I'd buy Orion's ghost hacking the system before I would a giant spider robot.

Addendum: Frea your cynicism is ill-suited. Everyone knows you're the adorable one.

Tweet: @Frea_O You have obviously never seen Will Smith in Wild Wild West.

Addendum: Or heard the song "Spider in the Snow."

Reply Tweet, from Frea_O: I have. Point still stands. :)

Addendum: Does it? DOES IT?! Okay it does.

Tweet: Delivery room Jeffster is THEBESTIDEA. #OppositeDay #Chuck413

Addendum: That was an absolutely classic idea, in the worst way possible.

Reply Tweet, from rheadagnalan: I'm scared for the baby. And for the rest of the world. #Chuck413

Reply Tweet, from ladycat713: Somehow I don't think Ellie will agree with that.

Addendum: But... that's why I said opposite day!

Tweet: @rheadagnalan OHGODTHEHORROR.

Addendum: What's scarier: Salt N Pepa Jeffster? Or a robot spider?

Tweet: It's clearly hell. #LikeThisScene #Chuck413

Addendum: Seriously that interrogation scene was just painful, painful filler.

Tweet: Floating Fortresses need more ice cream parlours. #AlsoMoreLightJazz #Chuck413

Addendum: And maybe some more wallpaper.

Tweet: Yoga Seal is almost as terrifying as Robot Spider. #Chuck413

Addendum: I still go with Salt N Pepa Jeffster.

Reply Tweet, from rhedagnalan: At least if it will attack you'll hear squeaks.

Addendum: Unless you're ALREADY UNDERWATER.

Tweet: Timothy Dalton is still scary with ice cream, you guys. #Chuck413

Addendum: I am pretty sure I would be terrified of Volkoff even if he was giving me chocolate pudding with a puppy.

Tweet: Lightsaber lasers? #IAMOKAYWITHTHIS #Chuck413

Addendum: I AM ALSO OKAY WITH TERRIBLE SPECIAL EFFECTS.

Reply Tweet, from ladycat713: Morgan is the smallest one so he actually had the best chance of fitting through the holes.

Addendum: I was honestly hoping for a moment where Morgan's hair would get singed off into a terrible haircut.

Tweet: @ladycat713 ....Is that a double entendre?

Addendum: Because if so that's really inappropriate. I AM APPALLED>

Tweet: OHGODMYEYES. #UnderwearMorgan #Chuck413

Addendum: So.... much.... body.... hair....

Reply Tweet, from ladycat713: At least he's wearing undies.

Addendum: Thank God for small favors.

Tweet: Is... Is that a Gazelle? #Chuck413

Addendum: Like, a Tony Little Gazelle? It is isn't it? I never knew Devon had a thing for informercials.

Tweet: That's not ominous at all. #Chuck413

Addendum: He might as well have said "I AM BECOME DEATH, DESTROYER OF WORLDS."

Reply Tweet, from katsumaro: Went from not carying about MamaB to caring marginally.

Addendum: Hahahha best reply tweet of the night.

Tweet: @katsumaro #SarahConnorBitches

Addendum: She sneaks up on you like that.

Tweet: This episode is trying to do too much at once. #Chuck413

Addendum: BABY! Also, MOM AND SARAH! Also, MORGAN HEROICS! Also, CASEY FLUFF! Also, VOLKOFF BADASSERY> Also, OKAY YOU GET THE PICTURE>

Reply Tweet, from Frea_O: Welcome to a #Chuck finale. :)

Reply Tweet, from katsumaro: Agreed. :/

Reply Tweet, from crystalelements: Agreed. The pacing is...really erratic.

Addendum: There... there was pacing? Also I disagree with Frea. Every other Chuck finale-- especially Season 2-- was at least only dealing with like two ideas at once.

Tweet: I honestly don't know what to make of this Orion thing. #Chuck413

Addendum: It started out so promising and then seemed like it went nowhere. That was actually most of this episode, come to think of it.

Reply Tweet, from crystalelements: I saw that coming!!!

Addendum: HUZZAH! Okay that sounded sarcastic. It wasn't supposed to be. I'm sorry.

Tweet: @crystalelements I more meant I don't understand the setup. But that's this whole episode.

Addendum: THAT IS THIS WHOLE EPISODE>

Tweet: Casey as Mal at the end of Trash. #Chuck413

Addendum: You guys are still gonna be here when I wake up, right?

Tweet: That was the best scene. #AlexAndAlex #Chuck413

Addendum: We sure are, captain.

Reply Tweet, from ladycat713: Now we just have to let Kathleen know he's alive. Hopefully that will come soon.

Addendum: Kath...leen? #EveryoneInTheChuckWritingRoom

Tweet: @ladycat713 Yeah that'll never happen.

Addendum: What was her last name again? #SchwedakQuotes

Tweet: Chuck pwned Volkoff's systems. #Chuck413

Addendum: Because they actually remembered he knew how to use computers!

Reply Tweet, from ladycat713: Yep! And now he's gonna do the same to Volkoff.

Addendum: #TrueTweets

Tweet: Oh God I missed Badass Chuck. #Chuck413

Addendum: This is what Season 4 seems like at times: Okay this is what all the fans are complaining about in the forums, so we'll make one big moment that deals with that issue and then forget about it completely until the rumbling about it becomes loud enough again.

Tweet: That was AWESOME. #WishItHadBeenBetterSetUpThough #Chuck413

Addendum: Seriously Chuck can wreck some kids when he feels like.

Reply Tweet, from crystalelements: IT WAS. BUT I ALSO AGREE WITH YOUR HASHTAG.

Reply Tweet, from tropetweeter: I love his plans.

Reply Tweet, from ladycat713: Yes it was. Volkoff didn't even suspect that the knots weren't tied right. Plus Casey , Frost and Sarah were great.

Reply Tweet, from katsumaro: Awesome plan was awesome?

Addendum: Awesome plan was awesome. Thank you Internet memes.

Tweet: Choppers are rewards for good behavior? #BestIncentivesEver #Chuck413

Addendum: If you sell the most Girl Scout Cookies you get a TANK>

Tweet: Devon that was NOT AWESOME. #Chuck413

Addendum: Casey bitchslapped him into shape.

Tweet: Hahahahaha. #THEBEST #ALSOTHEBESTEVER #Chuck413

Addendum: I honestly will never get over that.

Reply Tweet, from ladycat713: That was a hilarious use of Jeffster. Including the look on Ellie's face and the way some people were getting into it.

Addendum: Best Jeffster performance? It's got to be right up there with the wedding. Though Season 2's felt way more organic, so maybe we have to give it to them?

Tweet: Okay. I actually love that last shot. #Chuck413

Addendum: I think what I really liked was how they contrasted such a huge moment with the cleaning equipment and dying lights in the foreground. It really hammered home Casey's point about there not being a perfect place or perfect time, about how all it mattered was having the perfect girl. It gave a singular epic beauty to the mudanity of normal life, reminding us both of Chuck's previous domesticism and how far he's come. All without a word. The writers just need to watch that scene over and over and try to make every scene that good. Geez. It was enough to make me think fondly of this episode.

Reply Tweet, from crystalelements: I partially forgive them for all the previous botched proposals in Balcony. Partially. Because that was love. (Heart)

Reply Tweet, from katsumaro: That scene at the end gave me goosebumps D:

Reply Tweet, from Frea_O: I feel better not knowing what he said. :)

Reply Tweet, from crystalelements: Yeah, me too. We didn't need it another time. The silence was what really made it work this time. :)

Reply Tweet, from katsumaro: and obviously Sarah's reaction. I WONDER WHAT SHE SAID.

Reply Tweet, from tropetweeter: no words needed.

Addendum: No words need.

Final Thoughts: There's nothing more that I can really say, you guys. While the episode was one of the weaker ones of Season 4, that final moment was so excellently done that I'm willing to forgive quite a bit of it. I stand by my earlier statements, specifically that Mary was one of the seasons secret weak links and that too much of it was hodgepodged together to make a coherent statement. But there were some absolutely spectacular moments that made me remember how much I love this show, and that last scene was one of the best.

Demo: "Consequences"

2011-01-28T19:49:00.000-06:00

This is an old track that I've recorded about a billion times. Here's another mix of it, it's called "Consequences."

Playing Roles in Role Playing Games.

2011-01-27T14:42:00.001-06:00

I'm a nerd.

Geek, dork, whatever term you want to use, I'm it.

In recent years, of course, nerd has become cool, in a way. Zac Levi, the titular nerdy star of the show Chuck runs a website called the Nerd Machine, and the Nerd shirt that they sell has been seen on plenty of people you wouldn't necessarily consider nerds. Even Miami Heat star Dwayne Wade.

By owning the title "nerd," it's become more acceptable. At Best Buy, the Geek Squad proudly owns its title. Levi and his compatriots wear Nerd on their chests like badges of honor. Video game tees populate not only Hot Topic but American Eagle. In ways, the counterculture has been turned into pop culture.

But there are still facets of the nerd subculture that haven't been fully integrated with the pop culture whole.

I recently played and finished two different games. The first game was Mass Effect 2, and the second game was Dragon Age: Origins.

Mass Effect 2 is set in space, in a far-off future. You use guns, you travel to different planets, you encounter alien species. One of the neat things about the game is how different it allows each play-through to be, and how your actions from Mass Effect 1 can affect what happens in its sequel. It's an extremely popular game across all demographics.

Dragon Age, on the other hand, is pure Tolkien fantasy: dwarves, elves, mages, swords, bows and arrows, the whole thing. It's set in a specific section of a single world, so the scope of its geography is microscopic compared to the former game. It's as close to old-school, pen and paper Dungeons and Dragons as you can get in a modern video game. Dragon Age is pretty popular, but pales in comparison to Mass Effect.

What's interesting, though, is how similar the two games really are. Aside from Mass Effect's main character speaking the dialog choices the player picks and Dragon Age's main character letting the player's dialog options speak for themselves, the settings are really the only difference in gameplay. Politics between different species play out in similar ways, romantic entanglements with other characters are conducted in the same manner, even the camera angles are similar. It's not much of a surprise, then, that both were developed by the same company: BioWare.

It's not so much the setting, however, as the role that separates counterculture nerds from pop culture nerds.

It may seem like a small thing, but that dialog choice difference I brought up is really what makes the real difference between the feeling of the two games. The first game has a classic hero in main character Commander Shepherd, who speaks and acts with authority, with the player's choices merely dictating the manner in which Shepherd gets to the same endpoint. But Dragon Age is different, the character you create as the hero can be a variety of different races, and specialize in different things, making each play through unique, but also robbing it of having a game-defined main character. To be the hero, the player must decide to make him one.

There's a certain escapism in that kind of mental creation of a character that is at the heart of counterculture nerdism. You have to be thinking of a whole separate person in a way that's actually believable, necessarily limiting yourself from thinking about your own actions in the same way. Mass Effect 2 dictates your characters personality by giving them a voice and a method of behavior. Dragon Age leaves the role completely up to you, forcing you to inhabit it to feel any sort of emotional impact with the story.

It's not a bad choice, in either direction. Like I said, I put a lot of time into each game because I liked playing both of them. In that way, I think I'm kind of both a pop culture nerd and a counterculture nerd. I've played pen and paper RPGs and I watch football. I work on computers and I work on houses.

But I'm proudly a nerd.

Of every level.

Midweek Music Review - Iron & Wine: Kiss Each Other Clean

2011-01-26T19:16:00.001-06:00

Iron &; Wine
Kiss Each Other Clean
[Warner]

Rating: 8.0/10
(This review originally appeared on Audiosuede)

Hit the jump for the review.

It’s important to remember that this wasn’t mandated. Before he was an indie folk superstar, Sam Beam just used to be a professor of cinematography in Florida. A dude who picked up a four track and recorded some beautifully contemplative tracks that were given to a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy until someone from Sub Pop heard it and then– bam– Beam had a nationally acclaimed record called The Creek Drank the Cradle. Even then, it wasn’t really until the Woman King EP that people really got a sense that, well damn, this guy was here to stay. Even when his tracks lacked the simple surprise of his early material, it was far from formulaic, making even his lows much better than many other artists’ most solid efforts. Kiss Each Other Clean, the latest Sam Beam release, marks both an excellent continuation of Beam’s showcase of talents and an engaging new direction for an artist who had oft been painted into a corner.

Hearing the name Iron & Wine, the most natural sonic touchpoints that come to mind include Bob Dylan, Elliott Smith, and Neil Young, with the way he used acoustic guitars to weave soft, heartfelt soundscapes, patiently decorated with dollops of banjo and strings. All of those artists that influenced Beam at one point made a musical turn, Young and Dylan going electric, Smith going eclectic. On Kiss Each Other Clean, Beam does both, spiraling off into different directions that were only hinted at on The Shepherd’s Dog, appeasing his obvious thirst for new directions. Check out the devastatingly gorgeous opening track “Walking Far From Home,” which switches gears at least four times, ratcheting up the emotional intensity with each change, or the scattershot instrumentation of “Monkeys Uptown,” which sounds as divided as its character feels.

Of course, Beam still has an indefinable it factor when it comes to his country-folk wheelhouse. “Half Moon” is a perfect example, where a rustic guitar riff and ramshackle shuffle form the backbone of some soaring vocal melodies and crystalline slide guitars. Later, “Godless Brother In Love” finds Beam and some tasteful vocal reverb taking the closest thing to a ballad that Iron & Wine has ever released and straight knocking it out of the park, especially when Beam syncopates the words in the chorus.

But Kiss Each Other Clean is an album about new directions for Beam, and building off of the new layers he built onto his solid foundation over his last LP. The experimentation is strong for the most part, but I’ll admit that it can occasionally feel inexplicable. I still don’t understand the Santana-esque breakdown that closes “Rabbit Will Run,” while at points “Monkeys Uptown” feels aimless, and the mish mash that is “Big Burned Hand” tries to rock gospel, spaceship funk, and collage pop, only to come out of the oven sounding a big half baked.

Still, those moments are nothing compared to the wealth of interesting new material here. “Walking Far From Home” alone has enough material in it to play with for another two or three albums and still remain incredibly interesting, and “Glad Man Singing” is a spectacular synthesis of all of the album’s tones and timbres. And maybe the biggest new strength of Beam’s is his taste for excellent backing vocals; listen to any track on this record and you’ll notice the gentile, distant vocals bring an entirely new element to even the traditional Iron & Wine moments. And all of this, the experimentation, the classic folk-rock heroism, the new vocal affinities, all coalesce on the seven-minute closer “Your Fake Name is Good Enough For Me,” where 70s AM radio pop gives way to an epic slow-build of a coda, where guitars and saxophones squeal, thick layers of vocals reach toward the sky, and Beam stands above it all. “We will become a whisper and a shout,” Beam sings, justifying just how sure we are now in how well he can pull off both.

Instant Reaction: Chuck vs the Gobbler

2011-01-25T15:28:00.002-06:00

Tweet: Live tweeting of #Chuck412 starts now.

Addendum: I feel like I need my own theme music. Can I get my own theme music for Instant Reactions? I'd like something epic, that makes you think that another Rocky movie is going through a badass training montage, but with enough maudlin backing strings to make people realize that I also look adorable in turtlenecks.

Tweet: #DOUBLEAGENTWALKER #Chuck412

Addendum: Didja see her guys? Didja? Didja?

Check more after the jump.

Tweet: Poor Casey. #HeAlwaysLoses #Chuck412

Addendum: Even when they're only pretend fighting he loses! Poor guy.

Tweet: It's cheeseBALLS not CheeTOS, Morgan. #GetItRight #Chuck412

Addendum: You have no idea how upset this next reveal made me. I feel cheated on.

Tweet: Fritos?! #WhatTheHizzeck #Chuck412

Addendum: I feel like I don't even KNOW you anymore, Chuck. I thought you could be counted on to devour root beer barrels of cheeseballs and cheeseballs ONLY. And now you're throwing Cheetos and Fritos at me?! This is like finding out your girlfriend doesn't like your favorite television show HEY WAIT A MINUTE>

Tweet: Sarah Walker IS Miranda Lawson WITH Timothy Dalton IN I Like To Paint A Lot. #Chuck412

Addendum: On Lifetime.

Tweet: ....Art of Massage? #CreepyJamesBond #Chuck412

Addendum: Did I hear that right? I honestly don't know if I heard that right.

Tweet: Somehow I totally buy that Volkoff would think that was AWESOME. #MostlyBecauseIDo #Chuck412

Addendum: BACKFLIP KUNG FU GUN STEAL ACTION. This is what every Sarah Walker action figure should have. What? There aren't Sarah Walker action figures? WHAT THE HELL IS THIS CRAP>

Tweet: #SarahConnorBitches #Chuck412

Addendum: "You know the name, God damnit!" No it's not Rob Dyrdek, it's Sarah Connor. Oh, and if anyone can name the episode of Rob & Big I'm referencing with that quote, I will give you a kiss on the cheek.

Tweet: Yeah, how DO you define betrayal? #Clintonesque #Chuck412

Addendum: Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. It's important to remember that.

Tweet: Also bending people in half. #AlsoJustBendingPeople #Chuck412

Addendum: OH GOD HES BENDER FROM FUTURAMA>

Tweet: Oh my God Timothy Dalton makes everything better. #Chuck412

Addendum: Seriously can we have an all-Volkoff spinoff? With, like, random murderous rampages paired with him teaching his plucky, but clumsy protege about the ways of being a raving madman? It can be called All My Russians and it'll have a laugh track! TELL ME HOW THIS WOULDNT WORK.

Tweet: Like Klingon? #Chuck412

Addendum: EXACTLY like Klingon. Except you can ignore it.

Tweet: My little Beardo is growing up! #SOPROUD #Chuck412

Addendum: Is Morgan the first character in television history to sport a beard and not be evil? Yes. Yes he is. Don't tell me differently, you're wrong.

Tweet: Is it just me or do they have, like, the same TERRIFYINGLY INTENSE eyes? #SarahAndSarah #Chuck412

Addendum: It's scary. Please don't ever have them look at the camera at the same time because I might spontaneously fearbust.

Tweet: Oh God that was close. #NearDeathExperiences #Chuck412

Addendum: How many bruises do you think Morgan's shoulder has right now? 115? 3223253? I say an even hundred thousand.

Tweet: Oh my God Leather Sarah. #Drool #Chuck412

Addendum: Okay seriously I need a moment.

Tweet: Oh my God Leather Sarah. #Drool #Chuck412 #ITNEEDSREPEATINGYOUGUYS

Addendum: I SAID I NEED A MOMENT GOSH>

Tweet: Stabbings like clockwork. #Chuck412

Addendum: Stabbings are scheduled for 4:32PM every evening. Maulings take place at 1:19PM. Headbutts are every hour on the hour. If all you need is a really good slap across the face, Fernando gives those out at 10AM. GET THERE EARLY YOU DONT WANT TO MISS IT. ALSO IT GOES GREAT WITH THE CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST.

Tweet: Morgan. #WorstHypeManEver #Chuck412

Addendum: FLAVER FLAV>

Tweet: Hahahahaha. #MissingFingersAreHilarious #Chuck412

Addendum: Seriously what's not funny about missing fingers aside from everything.

Tweet: EVERYONE LOVES CAKE. #Cake #Chuck412

Addendum: Oh, sky cake. Why are you so delicious? Name the reference for another ten points!

Tweet: Sarah has really perfected that "holding on to moving vehicles forever" trick. #Chuck412

Addendum: This is a trick not used often enough in fanfic. Someone, write that fic now.

Reply Tweet, from tropetweeter: Hasn't she?

Addendum: TROPETWEETER I CHOOSE YOU> #Pokemon

Tweet: I seriously cannot get over Leather Sarah. #RidiculouslyHot #Chuck412

Addendum: I will probably be talking about/thinking about/dreaming about this for, like, at least 1029750195 months.

Tweet: Some of my favorite Chuck scenes are set to the National. #ThisSongIsAmazing #Chuck412

Addendum: There's that scene in Season 1 where they set a scene to "Slow Show" and it is THE BEST SCENE. Okay not the best but it's really good.

Reply Tweet, from DWNACrumb: Hoping for "Runaway"!

Addendum: Well my preference from High Violet has always been "Terrible Love," but if you read my blog Racecar Brown you already know that. OH HEY LOOK A LINK.

Tweet: Okay Volkoff is the best thing ever. #Chuck412

Addendum: "So my job is basically just to do the thing that nobody expects me to do, right?" Next thing you know he's just going to shoot Mary in the FACE. Oh God I just gave Schwedak some Joss Whedon ideas.

Tweet: This season just needs Timothy Dalton in every scene. #Chuck412

Addendum: Everyone just steps there game up for the man.

Reply Tweet, from ladycat713: Crazy doesn't mean stupid. My mother and grandmother are proof of that.

Addendum: So am I! Seriously I am not okay in the head.

Tweet: The fact this episode is astounding only makes it mind-boggling how ho-hum the last episode was. #Chuck412

Addendum: This is Chuck vs. the Balcony: "Oh hey I already knew everything that's happening in this episode since the Pilot. But this is going on for forty minutes. Oh hey that ending was vaguely sorta interesting" And this is Chuck vs. the Gobbler: "HOLY CRAP SARAH JUST PUNCHED CASEY AND SHE HAS BLACK HAIR> OH MY GOD DID VOLKOFF REALLY JUST SHOOT THAT GUY? HES FRAKKING CRAZY> CASEY JUST FELL OFF A GORRAM BUILDING AND BROKE HIS F'ING NECK>"

Reply Tweet, from katsumaro: I know, right? And Timothy Dalton's Volkoff.. "CLEANUP!"

Reply Tweet, from Frea_O: Word. And another word: WORD>

Tweet: @Frea_O #Word

Addendum: Word.

Tweet: Saddest game of Risk ever. #Chuck412

Addendum: Even sadder than that one Napolean played against the Russians. Oh wait that was real life. #HistoricalFunny

Reply Tweet, from katsumaro: "Oh..it's my turn."

Addendum: Dude if he touches that game board without the other players there he is getting drawn up by his Underoos. You do not mess with the Risk game board under PENALTY OF DEATH. #THIS #IS #SPARTA

Tweet: OHMANTHATWASAWESOME> #Chuck412

Addendum: DID YOU GUYS SEE THAT IT WAS SO CRAZY> DID YOU? DID YOU?

Reply Tweet, from crystalelements: DUDE IKNORITE I WAS LIKE "NOOOOOOOOO!!!!"

Addendum: ME TOO OH MY GOD>

Tweet: Best Ellie episode ever. #HandsDown Also kind of glad they balanced such a lighthearted story with this drama. #Chuck412

Addendum: Because seriously I could not take that all in one chunk I am pretty sure my head would have exploded.

Reply Tweet, from katsumaro: Agreed. Finally she was smart again!

Addendum: As opposed to being all "I AM SO FRAZZLED DO YOU SEE HOW FRAZZLED I AM LOOK AT MY BABY BUMP AND ALSO MY HAIR"

Tweet: That tone text read: "WTF!?" #Chuck412

Addendum: Or maybe it was "Sext with me?" Either way.

Tweet: G.O.A.T.? #CallingIt #Chuck412

Addendum: For those not aware, G.O.A.T. stands for "Greatest of All Time." And yes, I am calling it in favor of Chuck vs. the Gobbler.

Final Thoughts: Gobbler wasn't perfect but, as I said to someone before, the idea of a "perfect" Chuck episode is a fallacy. This isn't The Sopranos or Boardwalk Empire or Mad Men, shows that are really developed to be enjoyed in sequential fashion, delicately building up and tearing apart their characters over extended story arcs. Chuck is popcorn television that strives to mix together action, emotion, romance, and comedy into a cacophonous blend. It's difficult, but Gobbler nailed all of those aspects almost pitch-perfect in my opinion. It has officially become my favorite Chuck episode ever, a huge win for a show that had me bored to tears last week.

The Art of Limitations, the Limitations of Art

2011-01-24T20:39:00.000-06:00

Bill Simmons is hands down my favorite sports writer. He's funny, he's irreverent, he's topical, and maybe most importantly, he speaks the vernacular of the fan. The "eye test" is a big one when you read Simmons' writing or listen to his podcasts. That is to say, if a sportsman looks like he sucks, he probably sucks, no matter what the media or basic statistics claim. At the same time, he's a big proponent of advanced metrics, which are statistics that take a lot of context into consideration, creating statistics that are often more in line with those "eye tests."

Last week, Simmons held a podcast with Patton Oswalt, who is easily one of my favorite comedians. Oswalt was on to hype his book, Zombie Spaceship Wasteland. One of the topics the book covered, and that Simmons and Oswalt went on about at length, were the struggles of the comedian in the 80s and 90s, and how niche comedy has found a place thanks to the Internet and Twitter. The pair agreed, the open nature of consumption of art is a capital letter Good Thing.

To an extent, I agree.

We'll come back to this after the jump.

Like I said last week, Mondays are my television day. As I type this, I'm prepping my weekly live-tweets of Chuck. I fully admitted last week that Chuck and my other Monday show, Gossip Girl, are not terrific works of art, but I still enjoy them. Last week I took that base and talked about how we grow with our serial art. But there's another aspect to why we forgive the flaws of things like Network TV and summer blockbuster movies.

Let me give you one more example before I just jump into it.

I had a college professor who took a moment to speak with me about songwriting. He said that there are essentially two schools to writing lyrics: there is the classic method, where you try to write something poignant but universal, and then there's the intensely personal school, where you are trying to appeal to no one but yourself.

There's a purity to the second form, of course. Writing or painting or movie making or songwriting for no one but yourself can give you the freedom to determine what directions you find to be your own strengths or weaknesses and, maybe more importantly, the freedom to determine what kind of art makes you proud of creating.

But when you force yourself to try to create something that communicate with others, you're doing something special: You're imposing limitations. Like when you write music that speaks to everyone, like when you tell comedy that appeals to pop culture and counterculture, like when you create television for the networks instead of for cable.

Limitations are the great secret weapon of art. They cause you to think about the art you're attempting to make in more innovative ways and, perhaps more importantly, they give you unique problem solving skills; in that Oswalt/Simmons podcast, they talked for a long time about how Steven Spielberg's best movies have come when he had strict limitations (technologically on Jaws, time-wise on Catch Me if You Can).

Thinking of my own work, I realize that when I was younger, I moved towards self-serving art. I tried to create art only for myself. It was a Good Thing: it helped me realize the kind of art I wanted to create, the kind of art that would be satisfying for me. But by viewing the idea of commercial success and universal appeal as an artistic limitation rather than as "selling out" or some other such nonsense, I've realized that I am attempting to create something that will ultimately be more satisfying, both to myself, and to generations to come.

Taking Blame For a Shitty World

2011-01-21T08:21:00.000-06:00

Courtesy a tweet from Patton Oswalt, I came across Buffalo Beast's Top 50 Most Loathsome People of 2010. You can check it out at the following link. It is one of the most scathing societal indictments I've encountered in a long time. It's unashamed and completely full-speed-ahead in its relentless fervor. It shred the likes of Glenn Beck, Jenny McCarthy, Barack Obama, and Kim Kardashian, rightfully placing them together in a world that too often disassociates the different aspects of their world.

The number one most loathsome person of 2010, according to the Buffalo Beast?

You.

Here's the quote, word for word, from the article.

"Your brain’s been cobbled together over millions of years of blind evolution and it shows. You’re clumsy, stupid, weak and motivated by the basest of urges. Your MO is both grotesquely selfish and unquestionably deferential to questionable authority. You’re not in control of your life. You wear your ignorance like a badge of honor and gleefully submit to oppression, malfeasance and kleptocracy. You will buy anything. You will believe anything. You believe that evolution is a matter of belief. You likely scrolled down to #1, without reading the rest, because you’re an impatient, semi-literate Philistine who’s either unable or unwilling to digest more than 140 characters at a time. You think Epic Beard Man is a national hero and that Bradley Manning might be Eli and Payton’s brother. You believe in American exceptionalism despite the contrary, compelling and overwhelming evidence. You tacitly partake in all manner of atrocity without batting a lash. You’re actively participating in our species’ extinction and you’re either in denial or you just don’t give a shit. You escape into every sort of mind-numbing distraction and ridiculous, convoluted fantasy, so you don’t have to face the bitter, terrifying fact that your life is utterly meaningless."

The utter disdain drips off the page, but the most notable aspect of the above paragraph is just how true it reads. We're all-- myself included-- to blame for the general malaise, the utter apathy with which we seem to be approaching modern life. We've allowed Paris Hilton to gain and retain fame. We've allowed politicians to govern unchecked, ignoring their actions and taking only into consideration the ugly pundit spin and doublespeak when attempting to "educate" themselves.

As I sit here, my girlfriend and her friend are watching Teen Mom.

In my opinion, this show is one of the most disgusting portraits of modern American society; where we not only enumerate but venerate thoughtless and overprivileged youth, putting them on the covers of magazines and interviewing them on talk shows, giving some of the most ignorant among us a voice of import. Teamed with the likes of Kate Gosselin and Jim Bob Duggar, they form an overexposed trio of damaging petulance.

The type of behavior that these people demonstrate is utterly reprehensible, yet we've allowed it to be material for national television. No matter the context of their national display, we've made these people into role models; and of the worst kind.

Considering these types of fame, I can't help but agree with the Buffalo Beast article. We-- and I absolutely include myself in that number-- are the most loathsome people of 2010.

Here's the thing, if we own up to it, if we accept it, we can change it. If we acknowledge the terrible behavior we've made virtuous, if we question the choices of the people we've given power, if we take a moment out of our days to actually think about that which we are accepting into our lives, we can make ourselves less loathsome-- and hopefully the rest of the world as well.

I've owned up. Join me.

Sorkin as an Adjective: A View of The Social Network

2011-01-20T11:44:00.000-06:00

I watched The Social Network for the third time recently.

Firstly and most pertinently, that movie is beautiful. I feel as though I understand its purpose more with each subsequent viewing. The first time I saw the movie, I enjoyed it, thought it was funny and poignant and scathing and engaging, but I was ultimately unsure why it was written. To paint Mark Zuckerberg as a douche? To expose the kind of seedy aspects of Facebook's creation?

The latter seems more likely. Aaron Sorkin's writing history has been one of exposure. A Few Good Men exposed dark military secrets. Sportsnight and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip were startling views behind the scenes of struggling television programs. The West Wing was the closed doors inner workings of politics. Considered in that vein, The Social Network becomes a movie about the man-behind-the-curtain of Facebook.

Still, despite that, I don't know if that's the purpose of The Social Network.

Hit the break for more.

The word "friend" and its derivatives appear a lot in the movie. That's partly because the film itself is about friends, but it gains a certain depth-slash-profundity when you consider it in the context of Facebook. Friends in the context of Facebook doesn't necessarily refer only to the people you know, hang out with, drink beers with, interact with.

Your friends on Facebook are just as often a girl you don't really like but you made out with at a party and she friended you immediately and you accepted because you felt guilty, or a coworker who friended you after the first day and then you both realized you actually hated each other, or a person you went to high school with who inexplicably friended you and then never has seemed to use Facebook again.

When Eduardo Saverin says to Mark Zuckerberg, "I was your only friend. You had one friend," it's sad because-- in the context of the movie-- it's true, but there's a bizarre ironic poignancy; after all, as the tagline for The Social Network alluded to, Zuckerberg's company gives him 500 million "friends."

Ultimately, the purpose of The Social Network is to use the story of Facebook's idea of connectivity to show just how fractured we've become as social beings. Zuckerberg created the greatest bridge between people of the world, but in The Social Network, he struggles to keep from burning every one of those bridges from his own island.

I think The Social Network is in my opinion Sorkin's finest work, and it's probably because it's the piece of Sorkin writing that you see the least of Sorkin himself in.

Let me explain that. Watching Sorkin's TV shows (Sportsnight, Studio 60, West Wing), Sorkin's own opinions and worldviews show up coming out of almost every character's mouth. Or, opposing intelligent viewpoints that show up are obviously Sorkin coming up with his own arguments. But, in short, you see a lot of Sorkin when you watch things written by Sorkin.

That's fine. Sorkin is an intelligent man, who considers all of his opinions thoughtfully and with great care. But, after five seasons of The West Wing, at some point you can predict where these ideas are going to go. This isn't a knock, but there's that idea that familiarity breeds contempt. I'm not necessarily contemptuous of Sorkin, but it's hard to watch another episode of Sportsnight, because I understand Sorkin's view of the issues.

That's part of what made The Social Network so surprising and engaging; I didn't see as much of Sorkin in it. Instead, I saw Sorkin doing what he does best: pulling back the curtain from something we didn't know we wanted to see. And because this issue is so far from that which is near and dear to Sorkin, it allowed him to instead create a story that spoke more universally.

Midweek Music Review: The Dismemberment Plan's Emergency & I (Reissue)

2011-01-19T08:35:00.001-06:00

The Dismemberment Plan
Emergency & I (Reissue)
Barsuk Records
Rating: 9.5/10
(This review originally appeared on Audiosuede)

Review after the jump.

Emergency & I, the 1999 indie rock classic from Washington D.C. post-post-punk band the Dismemberment Plan, will be turning twelve years old this year. Twelve fucking years old. This prior Tuesday, Barsuk Records released the seminal record in an double LP Special Edition version, full of comprehensive D-Plan stories and unreleased tracks. The whole package serves purpose for completionists, die hard fans, and newcomers alike. And hell, that seems like as good of an excuse as any to take a retrospective look back at one of this generation's formative records.

For a kid who went through some of his teenage years with the album as a guidebook, it makes me feel old, but it also makes me feel a little special. Yeah, there's a special edition coming out now, but there was something about living with this music in and around the time of its creation that-- elitist as it seems-- it made you a member of some exclusive club. It was a club where we took these songs too seriously and not seriously at all, laughing at the parts that weren't jokes and nodding sadly along to the ones that were.

There's that whole cliche about how "Album X would sound as fresh coming out today as it did when it first blah blah blah." I don't know if that's necessarily true with Emergency & I. Part of it is simply fact; the proliferation of the Internet, the melting pot approach to even the simplest genres, means Emergency no longer sounds as wildly foreign as it did when it was released. Part of it is probably the emotional connection I share with the record, and how inextricably it is tied to a very specific time in my life.

But make no mistake, when people first heard the Dismemberment Plan's third record, it sounded like future music. The way it threw together Bad Brains and Television with funk and old-school hip-hop, the balance it struck between wild frenzies of energy and maudlin meditation, how Eric Axelson's bass was as much R&B as it was indie rock, and Joe Easley's mind blowing, polyrhythmic attack of the skins was both D.C. indie muscle and East Coast rap groove, all of that combined into something that sounded both comforting and alien, but understandable and inconceivable. Ten years ago, when I first heard "Memory Machine," I thought it sounded like it came from the future it was describing.

I dusted off my Emergency & I mp3s recently, and what I hear now isn't that futurism, or anything particularly groundbreaking in regard to current musical context. Instead what I hear is a band who had an undeniable gift for melody, a love for both augmenting and dissecting those melodies with tension-wire guitars and keyboard phasers set to stun. I hear a band that was subtly genius at arranging a pop song; listen to the climaxes of "The City" or "A Life of Possibilities" again, they hit with the kind of power that every big name pop producer hopes to find. I hear a band that wasn't afraid to splice their cotton candy melodies with explosions of nervous anxiety; how "Gyroscope"'s time signature never stays in one place; how "8 1/2 Minutes" ping pongs between its anthemic chorus and its frenetic verses; how all that melancholy comes to a furious boil in frenetic eruptions like "I Love a Magician" and "Girl O'Clock."

One thing that's lost in this out-of-context reminder of the Dismemberment Plan's '99 record is just how unexpected the album was. The D-Plan's first two records were impressive, with their angular, dissonant guitar riffs and unhinged-- sometimes to the point of (intentional) comedy-- wild man kineticism, but they always seemed to be ashamed of their pop sensibilities and their weary worldview. Emergency & I saw them accepting both with open arms, and becoming a stronger band for it. Gone were the petulant "Academy Award" condescensions, replaced with brutal honesty, arranged by Travis Morrison into funny, mature, painful, and poignant allegories.

Morrison on Emergency & I is the master of the allegory. "A Life of Possibilities" is ostensibly about a man digging through the Earth to find an unfamiliar land on the other side, becoming a universally familiar story about moving away from what you know only to be frightened and uncertain by the new world you encounter. "You Are Invited"'s subspace party invitation for anyone to do anything for all time reveals a man who has been to a few parties too many, and is tired of what he sees. "I Love a Magician" is simply a tale of a man in love with a girl who uses that love to control him. They're not advanced ideas, but the absolutely original way Morrison presents them makes them more affecting and more harrowing.

The last track on Emergency & I is called "Back and Forth," and it features Morrison basically rocking spoken word poetry over probably the most uplifting Dismemberment Plan backing track ever written. It's appropriate and it's necessary. The horrific sinking feeling of songs like "The Jitters" and "Spider in the Snow", the anxious energy of "8 1/2 Minutes" and "What Do You Want Me To Say?", the doomsaying of "Memory Machine" and "You Are Invited," all needed some form of release. "Back and Forth" is that, the light at the end of a tunnel that wasn't necessarily dimly lit, but the graffiti on the wall wasn't even worth looking at, the fluorescent tubes hurt your eyes, the huddled hopeless masses saw you as one of your own. But even being through all of that, you can still raise your hands in the air and wave them like you just don't care.

Instant Reaction: Chuck vs the Balcony

2011-01-18T13:01:00.000-06:00

I've been live-tweeting Chuck all through Season 4, and posting it over at another blog. Since I'm moving to daily content here, I figured it would make a good addition to the Racecar Brown collection. Check it out.

Tweet: Not gonna front; super excited for #Chuck411

Addendum: I still feel excited about Chuck being back, though I will say up front that the episode was meandering and slow and kind of disappointing and didn't really go anywhere until the end. These are still some of my favorite characters, so much so that I'll forgive what was essentially a prologue masquerading as a full episode.

Tweet: France? Romantic. #Chuck411

Addendum: Vineyards? Also romantic. Wine cellars? Romantic again. Fancy wine? Still romantic. Being shot in the back? Okay you got me there.

More funnie after the jump. Yes I intentionally spelled "funny" with an ie.

Tweet: Also, least threatening guard dogs ever. #SoFluffy #Chuck411

Addendum: Seriously I just wanted to go up to those dogs and cuddle with them and have them lick my face and go OHMYGODYOUARESOCUTE> forever.

Tweet: I missed Mister Adorkable. #Chuck411

Addendum: On second consideration, I chalk that tweet up to just missing the show. I now think that stuttery nervous Chuck has become, like, ridiculously overdone at this point. What happened to the guy who stared Shaw down and was all like "Bring it, bitch."

Tweet: Sarah's mom? She exists? #SheDoesntReallyExistRight? #Chuck411

Addendum: There's no way she's actually real. She's like an elaborate illusion. She is Harriet Houdini.

Reply Tweet, from crystalelements: HOMG SHE EXISTS. OUR EARS HAVE BEEN EXPOSED TO THE IMPOSSIBLE.

Addendum: Stop stealing my all caps tricks. THAT IS MINE AND MINE ALONE>

Reply Tweet, from ladycat7136: We were wondering about that.And look at that , Sarah opened up about something without a gun or a bomb to her head. Progress!

Addendum: Look, sometimes you just need a solid threat of death to understand that you might actually want to jump Zachary Levi. Wait what am I saying? I want to jump Zachary Levi just normally.

Tweet: Ah, nostalgia. #SoEndearinglyDumb #Slapstick #Chuck411

Addendum: Little did I know that they were trying to build THE ENTIRE EPISODE ON THIS PREMISE>

Tweet: Did Beckman really say "manservant"? #Chuck411

Addendum: Like, seriously. Why not butler? Assistant? British guy? Season 1 Casey would have went Beast Mode at that.

Tweet: I see what you did there Chuck. #Puns #Chuck411

Addendum: That was clever. Actually it was the exact opposite of clever. What's that again? Oh yeah, kinda dumb.

Tweet: OH GOD I EVEN MISSED JEFFSTER. #TooFar #ThingsIWillNeverSaySeriously #Chuck411

Addendum: I think I missed the idea of you, Jeffster. But I didn't actually miss you. It's not you, it's me. No okay it's you.

Tweet: Arranged marriage? #ProbablyBestForLester #Chuck411

Addendum: Like this episode proved: there is just no other way that Lester is going to get a girl. Which, I guess, basically means that Lester is never going to get a girl.

Tweet: Chuck's face just said: How do I manage to deal with you, you silly bastard. #Chuck411

Addendum: There was some "How do you take yourself seriously?" and "Josh Gomez you are kind of adorable" in there, too.

Tweet: Losing the top button is turning me on. Oh and Sarah's there too. #SeeWhatIDidThere? #Chuck411

Addendum: The joke is I noticed the guy before the girl. GETIT?

Tweet: This episode: An elaborate cell phone commercial. #ATTLoses #Chuck411

Addendum: Did anyone else expect a "Can you hear me now? Good." reference in that scene? I couldn't be the only one.

Tweet: Dude looks like Malnourished Eric Bana. #Chuck411

Addendum: Or Hot Skeletor.

Tweet: Not gonna front, this episode is sloooooooooow so far. #NeedSomethingToBlowUp #Chuck411

Addendum: Like, a bunch of grapes? Or a wheelbarrow? Or a Frenchman!

Tweet: What DID you just say? #SoundedDirty #ImOkayWithThat #Chuck411

Addendum: All those tongue twisters mean you have a talented tongue, Zac. Rawr.

Reply Tweet, from ladycat713: It references Danny Kaye's The Court Jester. Look up "the chalice with the palace"

Addendum: *plays the NBC The More You Know theme music*

Tweet: Sarah leg.. #JustLostMyTrainOfThought #AlsoMyBrain #Chuck411

Addendum: Just... give me a few moments. I just... Okay I think I'm almost ready to continue.

Tweet: Did... Did Chris Fedak only learn rhyming last week? #Chuck411

Addendum: WHAT DOES ORANGE RHYME WITH SCHWARTZ?

Reply Tweet, from ladycat713: Possibly, look how long it took him to learn no Pli's.

Addendum: Some people just never learn.

Tweet: What the hell is going on in this episode? #Chuck411

Addendum: I AM CONFUSED.

Reply Tweet, from crystalelements: Totally agree. I mean, I'm happy the show's back, but...seriously?

Addendum: SHE IS CONFUSED

Tweet: @crystalelements This is all like "Yeah we have no idea what to do without Linda and Timothy." #Chuck411

Addendum: WE ARE ALL CONFUSED

Tweet: The CIA flight expenses must be astronomical. #Chuck411

Addendum: Fly them from France to LA then LA to France then France to LA then LA to France then LA to RUSSIA>

Tweet: That was... cryptic of Beckman. #Chuck411

Addendum: Sarah I want YOU to prevent forest fires.

Tweet: A Lester love story? #TheyreJustNotEvenTryingAtThisPoint #Chuck411

Addendum: OH GOD WE NEED TO FILL TIME> DOES ANYONE HAVE ANY IDEAS> YOU I DONT CARE IF YOURE THE JANITOR WE NEED SOMETHING>

Reply Tweet, from ladycat713: Oh why not. The wierd need love too.

Addendum: I would have honestly rather have had a Jeff love story. #SharpasamarbleDidIt

Tweet: Morgan/Sarah is my favorite inteaction of S4. #Truth #Chuck411

Addendum: I think it's because it's something we haven't seen much of before, so it feels fresh and new to have these characters conversing in a genuinely emotional way. Has this show done everything it can do with the Chuck/Sarah/Casey dynamic? I hope not but I'm beginning to feel that way.

Reply Tweet, from mf_lenz: I agree wholeheartedly.

Reply Tweet, from crystal elements: Hee. Gotta love their threatversation. <3

Reply Tweet, from N_Reinoehl: True statement

Reply Tweet, from ladycat713: I am someone deadly. *snicker*

Addendum: I had no idea how popular this opinion was. YOU SEE THE METRICS I GET FOR YOU SCHWEDAK THIS STUFF IS SCIENTIFIC>

Tweet: For the sake of disclosure, my favorite interactions for the other seasons are S1: Chuck/Sarah, S2: Casey/Chuck, S3: Morgan/Awesome.

Addendum: Season 2 is actually kind of up in the air between Casey/Chuck, Sarah/Chuck and Jill/Chuck but you can't fit that in 140 characters.

Tweet: I'm now officially bored with France. #HowIsThatPossible #Chuck411

Addendum: Seriously I don't need another five minute scene about how beautiful the moon is.

Reply Tweet, from DWNACrumb: Bored with Lester!

Addendum: SAY IT AINT SO>

Tweet: @DNWACrumb Not possible. #Chuck411

Addendum: If you look at Lester's story in the context of the rest of the episode, yes it was stupid and boring. If you look at it as a mini episode of awesome Lester moments, it is less boring.

Tweet: "Fatherly" advice? #ActuallyOnSecondThoughtItsKindOfTrue #Chuck411

Addendum: #SadTweets

Tweet: That IS the real Lester. #LeatherAndThe80s #Chuck411

Addendum: #SadderTweets

Reply Tweet, from ladycat713: What was her problem. I would at least give him a chance!

Addendum: #SaddestTweets

Tweet: @ladycat713 Not everyone appreciates bad 80s pop and faux leather vests. #Chuck411

Addendum: Okay pretty much no one appreciates that.

Tweet: Chuck requires an entire CIA spy team to get a girl. #KindOfSad #Chuck411

Addendum: WE MUST ALL WORK IN CONJUNCTION TO GET HIM LAID OR ITLL NEVER HAPPEN AND THE INTERSECT WILL EXPLODE FROM SEXUAL TENSION. That's the real reason they let him get with Jill and Hannah.

Reply Tweet, mf_lemz: It's a joint CIA/NSA task force!

Addendum: More evidence that I'm right.

Tweet: @mf_lemz And it still goes wrong!

Addendum: Next time there'll be a giant bird that swoops down and STEALS THE RING and then drops it in the hands of YUGOSLAVIAN TERRORISTS>

Tweet: MANUFACTURED DELAAAAAAYS. #HULKSMASH #Chuck411

Addendum: And then those Yugoslavian terrorists will SELL IT to a PAWN SHOP to fund their NUCLEAR CAPABILITIES.

Tweet: IDONTUNDERSTANDWHATSHAPENING. #Chuck411

Addendum: AND THEN SOMETHING WILL FINALLY EXPLODE.

Tweet: If they work in a What Fates Impose reference I'm done. #DoubleAgent #Chuck411

Addendum: Actually if they work a Twist of Fate reference I'll just poop myself.

Reply Tweet, from crystalelements: Hahaha, @mxpw999's gonna be...uh...yeah. My brain just stopped working after watching that promo, so...yeaaaaah.

Reply Tweet, from Frea_O: Uh, they might have unintentionally.

Addendum: Both of these tweets made me really excited. The former because, okay as much as this episode kind of sucked, god DAMN that promo looked sweet. And the second because that just gives me a better chance of being referenced on Chuck eventually.

Tweet: That episode continued the trend of feeling like two half hour episodes smashed together. #Chuck411

Addendum: Should the show turn into a half hour show? I'd be okay with this right now I think. It'd tighten things up. Also I feel like they should blow up the BuyMore and just LEAVE IT BLOWN UP. We don't need it. Really, guys. We don't.

Final Thoughts: So this episode was not great. Let's not front. It was plodding, way too silly, went nowhere, and was essentially a five-minute prologue stretched to forty-two. All that being said, God I am glad Chuck is back. I can't wait for this new story arc with Double Agent Sarah, and I'm just NOT going to get over calling her that, either. I will actually make Mxpw sick of it. I promise you.

See you next week, everyone!.

Growing With Art

2011-01-17T08:37:00.001-06:00

Monday is my TV day, for whatever reason.

There's only one show I watch every week, NBC's Chuck. Occasionally, I'll follow that up with some CW action in the form of Gossip Girl.

Now, neither of these are astounding shows. The former is a somewhat convoluted, somewhat aimless mish mash of genres that relies on the immeasurable charisma of its actors. The latter is complete early-20s melodrama that people watch because it's a new-school soap opera, with prettier people and somewhat better actors.

So, I know these shows aren't the best, so why do I watch them?

Find out after the jump.

The truth is, I'm not entirely sure, other than force of habit, I suppose. But there's also the fact that I started watching these shows at their onsets, essentially from the pilot on, though with both it took me until later to add them to my regular viewing schedule. I liked the pilots of both shows right off. Chuck was funny and nerdy and still had some sweet action and there was definite chemistry between the two leads right off. Gossip Girl was less trashy than it would become, and far more scathing; there was a self-awareness to each character's awful actions that gave it a (maybe false) sense of depth.

My point is, I think that becoming indoctrinated to these shows early has caused two things. First, a sense of kinship or a bond with the show, where it changes as I change. Second, a tendency to forgive its grievous shortcomings because of that kinship.

We grow attached to the art we grow with. Look at the Harry Potter series as an example, both the books and the movies. For many, Harry grew up with them in an almost literal sense. As they aged, he aged with them, and as their concerns changed, so did Harry's. The kids who read were wide-eyed with wonder at the existence of Sorcerer's Stone's magical world were old and less naive by the time Deathly Hallows rolled around, and the book and movie reflected that change. It was a symbiotic relationship.

It's a thing only possible with serial art forms. Television has the most consistent shot at this type of partnership, closely followed by comic books, then trailed by movie series' and book series'. If a work hits us at the right time, the passage of time necessary to creating the next piece of art in the series ensures that the author of the work-- and thus the work itself-- will grow much like our own lives are. And that bond is pretty unbreakable.

With that in mind, I'm going to sit down and watch Chuck. It won't be great, but it'll be mine.

The Blog Post To Restore Sanity

2011-01-14T16:06:00.000-06:00

My friend Arden is much smarter than I am.

At this point I would like to cut to a scene of all the people who know me personally with shocked expressions on their faces, looking at each other and mouthing "Did he really just say that?"

See, I'm very smart. And, usually, I think I'm even smarter than I actually am. So for me to admit someone might be even close to as intelligent as I am is a pretty big thing. For me to outright say they're smarter is rare. And for me to state that they're "much smarter," is like seeing a complete lunar eclipse.

See why I'm bringing this up after the jump.

Here's the rub of that. On the political spectrum, Arden and I are diametrically opposed. He was all about the Ron Paul in 2010, whereas I was Barackin' the Vote. We debated the merits of the bracketed tax system, and he decried it, while I embraced it. And don't get us started on social politics; we'll bring knives to gunfights on it.

Here's the thing, though. We could actually talk about all of this stuff, not only without getting pissed at each other, but even managing to agree on a few topics.

That's the idea that's left out in the cold in our modern political debate. We've become so used to being placed on opposing sides of the playground that we've turned politics into a competition rather than a method with which to govern the people. Political leaders in Washington and political activists on the street are more concerned with the number of seats each side has in Congress than with the day-to-day problems of living, breathing people.

Arden and I didn't agree on abortion, but we did agree that kids needed to be educated on the consequences of unprotected sex. We didn't agree on bracketed taxes, but we did agree that loopholes needed to be closed and the tax codes simplified.

The counterargument is that we would have disagreed on the specifics of these issues, and that's true. However, even within those disagreements there are certain areas where we would agree, and we could use those as a touchpoint from which to view our disagreements.We didn't shout the other one down for being a heartless Libertarian or an elitist Liberal, though both phrases have been used to describe Arden and I respectively. Instead we found a reasonable place to work from, a place in the middle, simple universal truths that almost everyone could agree upon. And we used that middle place to discuss the rest with mutual respect and understanding.

A few months ago, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert held the Rally to Restore Sanity. They spoke out about how the heated, hateful dialog in our country was tearing people who really ought to be together apart. Unfortunately, since then, the rhetoric has only increased in spite.

So here's the Blog Post to Restore Sanity.

I doubt it will have any more of an effect, but hell, I have to try.

Arden and I proved: we can disagree respectfully, we can argue peacefully, we can stand apart together.

Demo: "Red Junior Prom Heels"

2011-01-13T14:59:00.000-06:00

Just thought I'd take today to throw a demo I'd recored a few months ago at everyone. It's called "Red Junior Prom Heels.

Sexism, Racism and Individualism

2011-01-12T07:59:00.000-06:00

People-- normal people, people I engage in everyday conversation-- doubt the validity of statistics far more now than I can remember happening at any point in my life. Some of this may simply be the nature of the conversations I'm having now, but I think some of it is the nature of the times. With the Internet, it's possible to find studies finding contradictory facts on anything, and the way that people design their statistical surveys can be arranged specifically to find an expected outcome.

Check more after the jump.

I'm not a huge fan of statistics myself, but for an entirely different reason. As opposed to thinking the statistics I find are made up, my problem with statistics is that people give them context that might not necessarily be accurate.

I don't doubt the validity of statistics that I hear, for the most part. I think that people typically do this only to statistics that are in contrast to their own personally held beliefs, but then choose to accept the validity of statistics that support them. It's the sociological equivalent of only listening to your peers who listen to you, or preaching to the converted. The doubt I have in statistics is that they have to mean something.

I'll give you an example. There are loads of statistics detailing the presence of far more males than females in the business world; there are only a small handful of female CEOs. I don't doubt that this is the case, but when asked what it means I say: "I think it means there are far more male CEOs and than female CEOs. And nothing else."

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying sexism doesn't exist in the business world, and I'm not saying that sexism doesn't exist in general. I just don't know if an enumeration of the genders of national CEOs is a proving factor in determining the answer to that question.

To fully disclose: I do think sexism happens in business and in life in general.

See, I'm an Individualist. I believe that any case of -isms, be it sexism, racism, ageism, etcetera, has to be determined on a case-by-case basis. A white kid beating up a black kid could be a hate crime, inspired by racism. Or it could be a case of one person getting into a fight with another person, and race had absolutely nothing to do with it. Without looking at the details of the individuals involved, it's impossible to say.

I think part of this is our mass consumption model of obtaining information. News reporters need to be able to make complex situations simple enough for millions of people across the nation-- across the globe-- to understand, but in pandering to that method of consuming the details of what, the why is often left unsketched, and people fill in the blanks based on the labels of these -isms. In same cases, it's appropriate, but in the moments when it's not, we demean the individuals involved by claiming it to be so.

Not every multi-racial crime is racially motivated. Not every promotion of a man over a woman is gender-biased. Some of them are, yes, but to make the claim effectively, we have to examine the merits of an individual case on its own basis. Otherwise, we're just scribes and the Pharisees, casting the first stone.

Top 20 Albums of 2010: Part Two, the Top Ten

2011-01-11T11:03:00.000-06:00

NUMBER TEN

BATHS: CERULEAN

While some music sounds timeless, as if it could come from any era (see: Cosentino, Bethany), some music is inextricably linked to the time it was created. Cerulean, the debut LP from Will Wiesenfeld's Baths project, could only have been conceived, written, and created in modern music. Brian Eno and Aphex Twin and J Dilla and the Postal Service and Flying Lotus before we can get to the point of "Hall" or "Maximalist," where ambient, hip-hop, melancholy electro-pop, and killer breakbeats come together in the service of fragile love songs that still make your shoulder lean back and your head nod. Wiesenfeld has been doing this damn thing for awhile, and the experience in a group like [Post-Foetus] shows through on Cerulean. The strange conjecture of styles and emotions isn't a happy accident, it's a labored, intensive process that somehow still pulls off sounding wrought and relaxed, tense and cathartic.

Peep numbers nine through one after the jump.

NUMBER NINE

ZOLA JESUS: STRIDULUM EP / VALUSIA EP

In some ways, Nika Roza Danilova's two 2010 Zola Jesus EPs couldn't be more different. On Stridulum, the Madison, WI resident crafts dreary nightmare synthscapes, where turbulent keys battle over death march drums. Her voice, a force in its own right, is like a lighthouse on the distant horizon, or through a thick fog. It's there as a landmark, but the environment around it is so violent, it's less a balm and more a tease. Valusia, on the other hand, was an EP of songs, where structure and verses and choruses appeared out of nowhere, where melodies were formed out of piano riffs as opposed to cascading atmosphere. The clouds broke on Valusia, and it became the contemplative sail to shore after a long, rough night at sea. What they shared in common was Danilova's passion, the common thread of her outstanding vocal performance, tying together the travel from darkness to light. While Stridulum and Valusia were certainly different EPs, they marked a single artist's journey.

NUMBER EIGHT

JAMES BLAKE: THE BELLS SKETCH EP / CYMK EP / KLAVIERWERKE EP

The question "So, where do you go from here?" is asked of a lot of artists. Usually, it's posited after a particularly stunning album, like ...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead's Source Tags & Codes or Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. The implication of the question is, "How do you follow up such a singularly impressive piece of work?" But when the question is applied to producer James Blake's trio of spectacular 2010 EPs, The Bells Sketch, CYMK, and Klavierwerke, the implication of the question becomes "Which of these individual, similarly influenced but decidedly different, and fully realized sounds do you actually carry forward to a full length?" That and, "Can you synthesize these sounds together?" "Would you want to?" "Would it be better to let CYMK's brutally and beautifully spliced R&B samples stay on its own?" "Should Klavierwerke's self-sampling be a work unto itself?" "Are there, like "Measurements" might suggest, even more directions you can cultivate a stunning work from?" Those are the questions for Blake's upcoming 2011 LP. For 2010, we get three stunning works, definitely the work of one artist, but so unique that it's amazing to consider that one guy pulled all of this off.

NUMBER SEVEN

FREDDIE GIBBS: STR8 KILLA NO FILLA

Freddie Gibbs was once on Interscope, the big kahuna of rap labels. But as all too common with major labels, be they rap or rock or pop, the truly unique talents who have their own uncompromising vision are pushed to the side. They don't know how to present them to the world. Is Gibbs a spiritual Midwestern successor to Bone Thugs & Harmony, given the ease with which he switches to and from verbose double and triple-timed rhymes? Or is he a 90s revivalist, rocking blunted West Coast beats that Tupac would have loved to slaughter? Or is he the new Nas, painting hopeless, downtrodden pictures of the life that he sees around him? Gibbs' 2010 mix tape, Str8 Killa No Filla, displayed him as all three, often all at the same time and on the same track. Check "National Anthem (Fuck the World)" that rides the chillest beat Snoop Dogg never rode, or "Oil Money"'s ugly Chronic 2001 sneer. Songs like that illustrate the fact that Gibbs is too complex to be categorized by any one label. He never stood a chance on a major.

NUMBER SIX

BIG BOI: SIR LUCIOUS LEFT FOOT: THE SON OF CHICO DUSTY

How do you listen to Sir Lucious Left Foot, the oft-delayed album from Outkast and Goodie Mob alum Big Boi, and think that it won't make money? From the moment that the beat of the "Feel Me" intro kicks into full gear, with its slammed piano notes, subwoofer demolishing bass, porno guitars, western whistles and robot R&B voices, it should have been immediately apparent that despite its aversion to traditional rap tropes, it would explode in clubs, causing asses to drop down to the dance floor. The murderer's row of tracks from "Shutterbugg"'s mechanical a cappella bass to "You Ain't No DJ"'s extraterrestrial spaceship funk represent one of the greatest four song sections on an album in recent memory, with Big Boi playing Zed to the rap game's Marsellus Wallace. "Your DJ ain't no DJ, he just make them fuckin' mixtapes/ Your DJ ain't no DJ, he just hit that instant replay," Big Boi concludes on "DJ," challenging rappers and producers alike to step their fucking game up. Sir Lucious Left Foot demanded both.

NUMBER FIVE

SLEIGH BELLS: TREATS

When "Crown on the Ground" came out late last year, it was fairly uncertain whether or not former Ruby Blue teenpop singer Alexis Krauss and ex-Poison the Well hardcore vet Derek Miller would be able to match that track's voluminous audacity for another single, much less an entire full length album. But Treats, the band's debut record, did just that. "Crown" is still the unfuckwithable crown jewel of the Treats crown, sure, but check out "Tell 'Em," the greatest Jock Jams track never made, or "Infinity Guitars"' absolutely wicked rhythmic stomp, or "Riot Rhythm"'s destructive boom bap. Treats does nothing but explode from first note to last, even in the relative calm of the excellent "Rill Rill." It claws together dissonance and distortion and overblown power and pop hooks into one violent, vibrant package of something that surpassed even the most generous optimist's opinion of what the first Sleigh Bells album would be.

NUMBER FOUR

VAMPIRE WEEKEND: CONTRA

If you don't know by now, here's a little bit of a history lesson. In 1983 a very pretty blonde girl posed for a photo in a yellow polo t-shirt. In 2009, Vampire Weekend bought it from the alleged photographer, Tom Brody, for five thousand dollars and used it as the album cover for their Contra record. Ignore the lawsuits that have followed, and instead just think about the image in representation of what Vampire Weekend are accused of representing themselves. Contra was a re-up of the band's mission statement, a stand that said they were going to remain smart, remain upper-middle class, remain Ivy League, continue pulling from Afro-pop and Western classical and American indie and they weren't going to apologize. By ignoring the backlash against their character, it freed the band to craft immaculate arrangements that synthesized all of their strengths, from Christopher Tomsen's impeccable drumming, to Rostam Batmanglij's Discovery side project electronics, into one impressive piece of music.

NUMBER THREE

TITUS ANDRONICUS: THE MONITOR

Patrick Stickles, the front man of New Jersey band Titus Andronicus, can't really sing. Check out his covers of Pulp's "Modern People" or Weezer's "Say It Ain't So" sometime. The man can barely carry a tune to save his life. Even on the opening of "No Future Part III: Escape From No Future," Stickles has a hard time staying in resonance with the simple guitar chords, but when that song upshifts into its unhinged "You will always be a loser!" coda-- which somehow becomes a triumphant rallying cry for losers everywhere-- Stickles' ability, or lack thereof, to stay in tune doesn't matter. At all. Because his voice is the perfect compliment to Titus Andronicus' music and attitude. In many ways Titus is the antithesis of Vampire Weekend. This isn't carefully arranged, even if it is carefully planned. Instead, it's sixth-gear the whole way, rocketing down the freeway with reckless abandon, shouting "The enemy is everywhere!" and "You will always be a loser!" at the top of your lungs, and believing in every word.

NUMBER TWO

THE NATIONAL: HIGH VIOLET

There's something beautiful -- triumphant, even -- in the deep sadness that proliferates High Violet. There's something defiant in its helplessness, something powerful when its characters are at their most powerless. These types of contradictions are all over High Violet. The music is alternately towering and downtrodden. Immaculately arranged string sections and horn charts create swelling ascensions and crushing declinations that decorate the band's moribund brand of indie rock. What makes these contradictions universal are the people who inhabit High Violet. They're people we see every day: college students with cousins off at war, suburbanites who have borrowed too much money, red Southern souls waiting in the New York rain and wanting to leave. Described in singer Matt Berninger's confused and obtuse language, High Violet and its inhabitants become an epic anthem for the mundane driftings of the white-collar lost, a rallying cry for the traffic-ridden morning commute. (from my Prefix Mag blurb on High Violet)

NUMBER ONE

KANYE WEST: MY BEAUTIFUL DARK TWISTED FANTASY

Every year in this post-Napster age, the blogosphere blows up with a new, exciting indie sub-genre. This year, it was witch house; last year, chillwave; 2008, lo-fi revivalism. They’re all reactions to each other. Chillwave took the production values of the lo-fi revival and turned them from 70s garage rock to 80s synth pop. Witch house found chillwave too chilly or too new wave-y, so it darkened the corners and evaporated the structures, focusing on haunted house melodies and ghostly sketches of atmosphere. The point is that these sub-genres spring up like clockwork in the indie music landscape, with the response times to each new label progressively dwindling.

Sub-genres in pop music, though, are an entirely different beast. Pop and jazz dominated the American music landscape until the 1950s, when rock music came in. Digital instrumentation’s seeds were planted in the 60s, providing the fledgling backbone for dance music. Then, in the 70s, punk bloomed as a rock and roll offshoot. A decade later, rap’s roots were taking shape. Of course, there have been tons of sub-genres involved that encouraged these maturations. Miles Davis alone practically invented a dozen of jazz’s offshoots. But in the macro scope, those are the capital letter Big Changes.

This year, one album marked another Big Change; with My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Kanye West has essentially created post-rap.

The “post-” genre prefix has kind of an ambiguous meaning; post-punk and post-rock have little to do with each other, for instance. The one constant of that particular addendum has been a forward movement. The basic tools of the genre are still distinguishable, but the “post-” genre takes those tools and creates something undeniably different. Post-rock used the instrumentation of rock to create pocket epics, expanding the structures and annihilating the verse-chorus-verse form. Post-punk turned punk’s attitude and velocity as fuel for more advanced chord shapes, counterpointing the anger with dissonance. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy has taken rap’s basic tools and used them in the service of something enormous.

Rap’s had a very basic and traditional form, essentially since its inception: a back and forth between verse and chorus, with music that mirrors that and bounces between two simple melodies. In the case of some rap songs, it’s only one. Lil Wayne is the first rapper who really fucked around with this structure, most notably on Tha Carter III, but even his beats often rode a single hook. On Fantasy, Yeezy has almost completely abandoned the traditional form, and the consistently all-star producer has used his talents to create music that rap has never heard before.

The most logical way to think of Fantasy is as a stage play, written and directed by, and starring, Kanye West. It uses a variety of characters not for their own attitudes, but for how their characters reflect a facet of the author’s personality.

Each voice on Fantasy speaks to a lesson West himself has learned. Nicki Minaj stands in front of the album cover’s grand red curtain, playing an omniscient narrator, then later shows up as a monster in the dark, mirroring West’s journey from unsuspecting hero to public villain. Jay-Z becomes a disdainful elder statesman, looking down his nose at the rabble beneath him, and West use’s Jigga’s long-standing respect to speak down to all those he considers beneath him. Pusha T is untouchable and arrogant, as uncaring about public perception as West wishes he could be. On “Blame Game,” West manipulates his own voice to create a litany of characters, all wronged in the same way, but each pitch shifted modulation views it with a different amount of bile.

These morality plays are highlighted by the production, which ranges from enormous orchestral bombasity to 808s and Heartbreak-style drum machine minimalism, and the emotional moments aren’t just accompanied, but intensified by the depth of the music. The drumbeat on “All of the Lights” dances like buckshot over the layers of vocals, highlighting the anxious freneticism of the song’s main character. The orgasmic chorus of sighs that ends “Hell of a Life” undercuts West’s depressed sighs, turning meaningless porn star sex and intense depression into the same thing. And in sampling Bon Iver’s “Woods,” West lends a sense of heartache to an otherwise relentless disco-influenced beat.

Slate Magazine’s Jonah Weiner pointed out that West’s biggest strength and most glaring weakness has been his passion against perceived injustice. In that way, Fantasy’s lyrics find West at his most passionate. On “Gorgeous” alone he threatens to choke a South Park writer with a fish stick, compares his black Beatle status to being “a fucking roach,” and sneers about his Polo ads somehow making him palatable to white people, “but they would try to crack me if they ever see a black me.” “Hell of a Life” finds West’s porn star girlfriend trying to get an Oscar de La Renta dress for Oscar night, only to have the designers snatch it off her back. “How can you say they live they life wrong/ When you never fuck with the lights on?” West incredulously asks.

Every play’s hero learns a lesson. On Fantasy, as it always is with West, the lesson is less certain, more ambiguous, and more interesting because of it. What West’s character seems to be wrestling with over the course of the album is how to how to come to term with his own flaws. On “Power” West throws down his most massive boasts, but they ultimately prove empty; Yeezy actually views jumping out the window as a better option. On “Runaway” as West attempts to accept his problems at face value, the song’s three-minute, wordless outro communicates the suffering that entails. “Devil in a New Dress” finds West extending his ire outward toward a romantic interest, only to find that unfulfilling. It’s only on “Blame Game,” when West experiences firsthand the consequences of his denials, that he finally seems to come to terms with himself. “Lost in the World” finds West admitting his fears, but still being “down for the night.”

Over the course of the last year, Kanye West faced some of the most intense public scrutiny that a modern pop music figure has encountered. After Taylor Swift, West took a Hawaiian sabbatical. Given time to meditate, West came out of his seclusion with an album that represents two things: Firstly, a spiritual journey that mirrors West’s own, from hero to villain to a man who has to accept the fact that he’s both. And secondly, the first post-rap album, where the essential basics of rap have been warped, distorted, melted and scraped into an incomparable epic. (from my Audiosuede feature on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy)

Top 20 Albums of 2010: Part One, 20-11

2011-01-10T08:22:00.002-06:00

NUMBER TWENTY

CRYSTAL CASTLES: CRYSTAL CASTLES

Crystal Castles want to fuck you up. And then they want to make sweet, back alley love to you. Just check the duality of the one-two opening punch of "Fainting Spells" and "Celestia." The former packs mind-melting synths, discombobulating channel-jumping and the most abrasive vocal performance this side of an early Blood Brothers album. The latter goes in completely the opposite direction, rocking epic gothic melodies and Alice Glass' hauntingly seductive voice to create one of the greatest ballads this year. That kind of dichotomy is what makes the 2010 version of Crystal Castles interesting. Yeah, Alice Glass can destroy your brainpan, but she can also make you melt. Yeah, Ethan Kath can attack you with walls of blown-out noise, but he can also rock you to sleep. Not bad for a band once derided as a one-trick pony.

Peep numbers nineteen through eleven after the jump.

NUMBER NINETEEN

DRAKE: THANK ME LATER

So, you're Aubrey Graham. You've got a pretty solid gig on Canadian teenage melodrama Degrassi: The Next Generation as popular kid turned paraplegic Jimmy Brooks. But you think you're meant for greatness as a rapper. So you do what rappers for generations have done: go by a nickname (In this case, your middle name Drake) and make a few mix tapes, until one blows you up. In this case, So Far Gone found a solid, if unspectacular rapper singing earworm hooks over impressive beats. You get the Young Money seal of approval and get hyped by Lil Wayne. Now you've got expectations, and not only that, you've already got haters. You grew up in Toronto, you don't hustle, you can't really freestyle, so you're facing accusations of illegitimacy, too. To answer, you just have drop an absolutely, top to bottom solid album for your debut. Thank Me Later isn't the Next Great Rap Album, but it heralded Drake as a confident star-in-the-making. While his highs weren't mind-blowing, he had virtually no lows; the kind of feat that won't get you to the Pro Bowl, but you can still Trent Dilfer a Super Bowl.

NUMBER EIGHTEEN

THE TALLEST MAN ON EARTH: THE WILD HUNT

Kristian Matsson does nothing but craft delicate acoustic ballads, given teeth by the energy of Matsson's strumming, given attitude by the vibrancy of the arrangements, and tempered with a gentle soul. He's either the new acoustic Bob Dylan, the spiritual successor of early Elliott Smith, or the stripped down contemporary of Bon Iver. Or all three. It's as impressive a resume of influences as any, but Matsson more than lives up to them, he uses them in service of his own distinct voice. The Wild Hunt finds Matsson doing things much the same as he did on 2008's Shallow Graves, but just inexplicably moreso. The decision to double time the sturms at the end of the opening title track, and the subtle, syncopated giddyup of "King of Spain" are both sneaky extra touches that add an extra dimension to Matsson's incredibly strong songwriting.

NUMBER SEVENTEEN

BEST COAST: CRAZY FOR YOU

Bethany Cosentino has listened to a lot of music. If interviews talking about the variety and scope of pop music she was exposed to as a youngster don't clue in that fact, then just listening to Crazy For You makes it abundantly apparent. Shades of Loveless can be found in opener "Boyfrien." Doo-wop pokes it head out of "Our Deal." "Goodbye" is something that would have blown up alternative radio in the grunge era. And "Summer Mood" is something Phil Spector would have been salivating over. It makes it even more impressive that Crazy For You sounds as singular as it does. Despite its innumerable and occasionally obvious influences, Cosentino's debut album sounds remarkably inimitable. Seeing her at Pitchfork Music Festival, Cosentino owned the stage with her laid back beach tunes, a feat pretty impressive for a set of mid-tempo songs, no matter their excellency. That performance was indicative of Crazy For You as a whole: a surprising underdog triumph.

NUMBER SIXTEEN

CEO: WHITE MAGIC

Eric Berglund's full-time band is Sweden's the Tough Alliance, oft-cited as Scandinavian troubadour Jens Lekman's favorite Swedish band. But it's clear from the opening moments of his album under the ceo monikor, White Magic, that Berglund had something he straight had to get off of his chest, something just uncommunicable within the confines of the Tough Alliance's brand of tropically influenced pop rock. White Magic is a burst of bright, white light and wide-eyed energy. It's certainly Balearic, trafficking in the club-friendly beats, the airy, vaguely tropical instrumentation, the powerful major key hooks ever present within that genre. But it's also all at once more vibrant, more wide-eyed, and more confident, and each note threatens to explode with emotion.

NUMBER FIFTEEN

DELOREAN: SUBIZA

Like Best Coast earlier on this list, Delorean first really grabbed my attention at 2010's Pitchfork Music Festival. Taking control of the emotion of an outdoor festival in the afternoon is a difficult task. Closers, they have it easy, what with the bright spotlights, the cooler temperatures, the fact that many people in the crowd have showed up specifically for that moment. But when Delorean played, you took notice, even if you weren't wading through their crowd. The energetic technicolor energy of their performance is all over Subiza, as neon synths and otherworldy vocal samples lay the base for insatiably catchy electro-pop tunes. This is a band that deserves a night time stage, if only to hear a song like "Real Love" in its rightful place, as a dance-inspiring, closing epic, as opposed to a mid-afternoon perking of disenfranchised ears.

NUMBER FOURTEEN

JANELLE MONAE: THE ARCHANDROID

Everything about Janelle Monae's 2010 album The ArchAndroid should be a cartoon or a comic book. See: her ridiculous pompadour, her semi-psychotic album concept, and her bonkers cover art. Even check out aspects of her music, from the hyper-modern R&B/soul that takes a page from the Gnarls Barkley playbook to her outlandishly oversized voice that leaves her mouth with all the power and bombast of an old-school Batman "Pow!" That "ten gallons in a five gallon container" attitude is what makes The ArchAndroid appropriate both for mass entertainment and relentless popcorn consumption and intense critical scrutiny and investigation of the Big Artistic Statement. It's the musical equivalent of a Pixar movie, putting equal import on engaging the audience and advancing the art form, and usually succeeding at both.

NUMBER THIRTEEN

EMERALDS: DOES IT LOOK LIKE I'M HERE?

Explaining the appeal, or even the general premise of drone and ambient music is an inherently difficult task. The formlessness, subtlety, delicacy, and patience that make the genre so engaging to actually listen to often come across on paper as simply describing the same sound for 40 minutes. With some ambient music, of course, that explanation applies. But Does It Look Like I'm Here?, the second album in as many years from Cleveland trio Emeralds, makes it easy. This is beautiful stuff, with burbles of arpeggiated synths, rife with color and timbre, forming the kinetic backbone, and splashes of electronic and organic instrumentation pushing and pulling these twelve contemplative tracks. Does It Look Like I'm Here? sounds a bit like looking out your rainy window at an impossibly large city, both feeling distanced from and connected to the proceedings.

NUMBER TWELVE

HOW TO DRESS WELL: LOVE REMAINS

In your body, your skeleton is what keeps your muscles and organs upright and in one place. It allows each human body to have structure and form. In a musical piece, what's usually referred to as the backbone of the piece serves the same purpose: a drum beat dictates the rhythmic cadence, or a guitar riff determines the ebb and flow. On Love Remains, the debut full-length from Tom Krell's How to Dress Well project, the fully-fledged genre that Krell is working in is R&B, but the man's ripped the backbone out, causing all of that other stuff to fall into a formless mush on the floor. Songs like "Ready for the World" or "Decisions" drift in and out of consciousness, barely held up by any sort of form, but made into some sort of avant-garde beauty by Krell's rearrangements. He takes the extraneous bits and pieces them together with a sort of heedless care, intensely devoted to the final product, even if its source material has been gene spliced into something (beautifully) unrecognizable.

NUMBER ELEVEN

MAGIC MAN: REAL LIFE COLOR

In the summer of 2009, two Boston university students-- Sam Lee and Alex Caplow-- took a sabbatical to France, recording at locations as diverse as an elegant chateau and decidedly less elegant circus. During that time, they crafted Magic Man's debut album Real Life Color, a criminally underlooked piece of indie pop that took the burbling keyboards and melancholy twee of the Postal Service and mutated it with blown-out drums and straight up rock song structures. A song like "Monster" battled its own demons to come out defiant and victorious over them, or a track like "Daughter" bounced through morose subject matter with the lyrical detail of a participant, but the joyous musical energy of a third-hand storyteller. Real Life Color was the best record of 2010 that almost no one listened to.

Top 50 Songs of 2010, Part Five: The Top Ten

2011-01-07T08:22:00.001-06:00

NUMBER TEN

The National are a band that exist within a single idiom: sad man's mid-tempo indie rock. While their talents are enormous, their arrangements immaculate, their lyrics suggesting a upper-middle class profundity, and just generally a band of pretty great musicians, their albums from Alligator to 2010's High Violet have been crafted in that singular vein. That sounds like a bad thing; it's not. The reason why they've been able to get away with traversing that singular path throughout their entire career is because of just how fucking good they are working in it. It's been almost 12 years since the band formed, and High Violet's opening track "Terrible Love" might just be the finest example of their illustrious career. It starts out National-y enough, with a workman's guitar riff and metronomic bass drum thwomp. But it doesn't take long for its depths to reveal itself, as delicate acoustic guitar notes, splashes of aching piano, and just the faintest notes of contrapuntal violin. And then, by the time we find out that it takes a fucking ocean not to break, the song has exploded with the type of energy only held by the perpetually downtrodden, with the drums completely unable to hold together, the guitars ripe with dissonance, and Matt Berninger's passionate tenor acting as the song's lone anchor. The loneliness of the Monday morning commute has never sounded quite so epic.

Hit the break for the top nine songs of 2010.

NUMBER NINE

Titus Andronicus are not the Last Remaining Rock Band. They're not the Last Remaining Punk Band or even the Last Remaining New Jersey Rock Band. We've still got the Gaslight Anthem. We've still got Ted Leo. Hell, the original New Jersey working man, the Boss himself, is still kicking around. But it's easy to get confused, if only because of how raw, how vibrant, how explosive, and how singular Titus Andronicus' latest album, The Monitor sounded. "A More Perfect Union" kicked the album off and immediately positioned itself as Rock-Out Song of 2010. Part of the reason for that is sheer length. At seven minutes plus, "Union" had the benefit of being able to cram enough guitar heroics to rival an average-length Marnie Stern song. More indicative, though, are Patrick Stickles' throat-tearing yalps and the brutal guitars with melodies plucked straight from 19th century American classics-- appropriate for an album loosely influenced by the Civil War. It's strong enough that when Stickles references Springsteen by shouting "Tramps like us, baby we were born to die!" not only do you not blink, but you actually shout along. Titus Andronicus are not the Last Remaining Rock Band. It's important to remember that, so as not to disqualify a whole bunch of great rock music. But the Glen Rock band does its best to make you think they are.

NUMBER EIGHT

Every so often, usually about once a year, there is one pop song that hits the charts and stands so far, head and shoulders above the rest, that to ignore its ubiquity becomes a public disservice. Last year, it was Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance", and I'm still kicking myself for its disclusion. That won't be happening this year, as Rihanna's "Rude Boy" was just too powerful to ignore. Rihanna has endured a lot of personal hardships over the past few years, particularly with the Chris Brown situation, and she's endured scrutiny for her brief return to that relationship, and her spots in Eminem's "Love the Way You Lie" and Kanye West's "All of the Lights", both of which feature lyrics about abusive relationships. But taken on its own merits, "Rude Boy" is the natural progression Ri's string of hits like "SOS" and "Umbrella," moving from the former's 80s-influenced dance and the latter's slick R&B pop to modern club music. It's almost hard to believe that sensual sweat of the original could be topped, but British producer TC managed it, leaving the opening of the track much the same, and then blowing the whole thing to hell, bashing just about every dance trend of the past year into the song's three and a half minutes. When ambitious production is paired with an insta-classic pop track in such an effective way, it's impossible to ignore.

NUMBER SEVEN

It's fucking hard to defend a band like Salem at times. From being associated with a witch house genre often decried as gimmicky, to the legendary atrocity that was their 2010 SXSW performance, to the occasional, horrendous rapping that appeared on their songs that justified every white rapper stereotype, to the barely decipherable lyrics that seemed to speak favorably about-- gulp-- rape, saying anything good about the band is just hard to do. But it's important to keep these things in the context of the music. An analogy I like to make is that of the 1915 film Birth of a Nation. Yes, that film was completely racist, portraying African-Americans as savages and heroizing the Klu Klux Klan. In that way, it's indefensible. But it also was the first film to employ a variety of storytelling techniques that still are fresh today. Salem isn't quite that bad, but then, they also aren't quite as important to the medium. But a song like "King Night" is important to the medium. It doesn't do any of the things that have invited bad press upon the band. Instead, it throws down the kind of ominously destructive synthesizer jam that transcends all the talk, taking overblown Bristol dubstep, straightening the rhythms, and pushing the volume into the red. Oh, and sampling "O Holy Night," then subverting it into what could be the soundtrack to some demonic summoning, or at least Voldemort's return.

NUMBER SIX

It's hard to qualify any Broken Social Scene record as a disappointment, because that implies some sort of normalized expectation of what the band is going to do next. If the 375,981 members of the Toronto band can be expected to do anything, it's to fold so many new influences and different styles into their yearning epics that any preconceptions of what any given new album is going to sound like from song to song become straight irrelevant. So this year, BSS came out with Forgiveness Rock Record and decided to make the most focused songs of their careers, attacking each idea with the type of precision normally reserved for the Interpols of the world. And "World Sick" was the shining example, fading in and out of the ether, serving both as the album's opener and its centerpiece. The rising guitar hook that serves as the track's chorus, the thunderous Carribean drums, and the yearning vocals are the type of things that make you want to lift up a fist (or both fists) in defiance. And defiance is "World Sick"'s calling card, with Kevin Drew crying "I get world sick every time I take a stand," punctuating the hopelessness of good intentions.

NUMBER FIVE

I'm ready for Clifford Harris to get out of jail. Again. Because as engaging and honest as Paper Trail was, I really didn't need him to get tossed in jail again, just to record Paper Trail: The Leftovers and call it No Mercy. What I wanted from Atlanta's T.I. was the angry, incredulous growl of "I'm Back." What Tip does best is rap. That sounds obvious for a rapper, but it's not always the case. Lil Wayne's biggest strength is his audacity; Jay-Z's his relentlessness; Nas' his experimentalism with content; Kanye West's the acceptance of his own strengths and flaws. But Cliff Harris is a rapper in the traditional sense, spitting almost without breath, spinning through dizzying internal rhymes, assaulting foes both real and perceived with boasts and threats audacious, but made believable through Tip's gritty realism. "I'm Back" is a ground floor view of Harris' return to rap life from prison, with enough detail and casual familiarity with both worlds that whoever T.I. is accusing of not being themselves most assuredly ran back to ATL's local scene with their tail tucked between their legs. "I'll never let you down/ I'ma shine on sight," Tip told me on "I'm Back". And I believed him. Unfortunately, it seems a jail sentence belays even an A-list rapper's best intentions. Thankfully, we have the early 2010 leak of "I'm Back" to fondly remember just how astounding T.I.'s verbal skills can be.

NUMBER FOUR

I have never spent an entire day just having sex. Robert Kelly-- if we are to believe "Echo," the best song on his 2010 Untitled album-- has. Thinking about the thing practically, it seems impossible. Surely by the time you get "to round ten," as Kelly sings, both parties would be just straight worn out. Frankly, the whole endeavor sounds ridiculous. But, as is often the point with Kelly, it kind of is. Earnest ridiculousness is practically his wheelhouse. For fuck's sake Kelly yodels to represent orgasms on this track. But he does this all completely straight-faced, not even hesitating to try to make the line "Wash your face/ Get something to eat/ Then come back to the bedroom" a genuinely sensual sentiment. It's the fact that Kelly is completely unabashed that makes "Echo" rise above its own audacity and actually become genuinely sensual. So, yes, yodels and yes, insanely earnest, and yes, completely lacking in self-awareness. It doesn't matter. Because when Kelly sings about wanting to hear your orgasmic cries echo "like you're singing from a mountain peak," you want to have this sex. Preferably immediately, probably with the first attractive person you see, and definitely for the entire day.

NUMBER THREE

"Fuck You" plays on a couple different levels, which is probably the best thing about it. There's that initial surface level, with Cee-Lo spitting the titular curse at the song's antagonist. Then there's the communal level, where the listener commiserates with Cee-Lo's story, empathizing with the main character, and allowing the song to speak for similar situations in their own life. And then there's that commercial level, where Cee-Lo has crafted one of the funkiest, most soulful, and goddamn catchiest pieces of music of the past few years, and has made the mother of all curse words its title. Not only is Green saying "Fuck You" to the lady who has wronged him, he's saying "Fuck you" to all the FCC officials who think that swearing is destroying America's youth. Is it really possible for a track this universally appealing to be destructive? Take another listen to the pure, classic 70s soul, the way Cee-Lo's voice roars through those high notes with equal amounts of passion and pain, that bridge that both throws an engagingly weird monkey wrench into things and makes the song undeniably Green's. This song wouldn't destroy the fragile minds of the youth, instead it would inspire them to stand up on their own, throw a middle finger at the non-believers, and then keep working to make them regret it. Fuck you, haters.

NUMBER TWO

(Note: There is no YouTube stream available of James Blake's "Measurements." You can hear the song at this link.)

I wrote about the James Blake song "CYMK" earlier this year. If you go back and check that out, you'll hear a song that spliced and modulated vocal samples, broke down beats into their composite parts, and then rearranged the whole mess into soulful bursts of shattered electronic music. That piece came from the CYMK EP, which was flanked in 2010 by The Bell's Sketch EP earlier in the year and the Klavierwerke EP later. And each showcased a different facet of the producer's massive talents. "Measurements", strangely enough, came from none of the above. But, like all of Blake's works before it, it fractures the James Blake persona further, adding another reflection of the man and his music. "Measurements" is almost completely a cappella, only a plaintive organ drone ever giving any sort of accompaniment. Instead, Blake forms the rich chordal harmonies by layering himself, vocal on top of vocal. From the first moment of "Measurements", it's clear that Blake isn't going to win any Pop Idol contests. But what he lacks in traditional vocal strength, he makes up for with morose passion. With each passing note, with each subsequent chord change, Blake's vocal performance turns even more sorrowful and heartbreaking. By the time the song's final note hits, its hard to imagine ever recovering.

NUMBER ONE

(Note: You can find a stream of the album version of "Runaway" at the bottom of this post.)

Here's the simple fact: if you're not sold on "Runaway" as the song of the year from that video, then nothing I can say in this space is going to convince you otherwise. Everything that makes "Runaway" transcendent is on display in that clip. Like, the way that it represents, defines, and dispels the myth of who Kanye West is, on the stage where that myth was created. The way it attempts to buy into, justify, deny, and accept the asshole attitude of its central character and its creator. The way Pusha T comes in to throw down G.O.A.T. bravado, and Kanye lets him only because every voice on "Runaway" (even the blasted samples) are really West's. The samples, for that matter, that both humanize and distance the song from its emotional core. The intro, those lonely piano notes that burn holes through floor until the that deceptively laid back beat kicks in. And that coda, which spans almost three minutes exactly on record, and how not a word of it is decipherable, but yet every emotion that makes "Runaway" is on display with the fragile peaks and broken lows of West's Auto-Tuned and distorted voice. If you don't see that in West's VMA performance of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy's brilliant centerpiece, you never will.

Top 50 Songs of 2010, Part Four: 20-11

2011-01-06T09:56:00.002-06:00

NUMBER TWENTY

Let's not kid ourselves, people. You have to go back to Madonna to find a female pop star-- hell, a pop star of any gender-- who has captured the public consciousness so thoroughly, who has brought attention to really bizarre matters in such a borderline crazy way, who has cultivated such an insane yet relateable public image. Oh, and who has pushed pop music so much further beyond its borders. Fame Monster single "Telephone" came out at the beginning of this year, and while its music video garnered all the attention, with its Kill Bill pussy wagon, telephone wig, and general fucked up-ness, the song was little more than overdriven, meticulously crafted pop music, with one of the biggest earworm choruses of the year. "Telephone" is pop music for the modern age, loud and in-your-face enough to break through our obsession with Facebook, cell phones, techonlogy in general, while simultaneously embracing the very technologies its attempting to overcome.

Numbers nineteen through eleven after the break.

NUMBER NINETEEN

No joke, if Treats track "Crown on the Ground" hadn't stomped out tweeters all over the world last year, it would for sure have claimed the number one spot this year, the same spot it occupied on this list last year. "Crown on the Ground" was the Audacity of Huge, destroying headphones by mixing heavy metal, hardcore punk, blown-out hip-hop beats, and sugar-sweet pop at the highest fucking volume possible. What makes "Rill Rill" the next best song on Treats is how much it plays against the type that "Crown on the Ground" cultivated. Sampling Funkadelic's "Can You Get to That", "Rill Rill" is still all Alexis Krauss attitude and explosive beats, but slowing the proceedings down just a hair allows the latent emotion behind Sleigh Bells' Dr. Strangelove bombs to come out. "Wonder what your boyfriend thinks about your braces?" A girl sneers. "What about them? I'm all about them." The defiance of Sleigh Bells in two sentences.

NUMBER EIGHTEEN

Why oh why does this song spell "you're" as "ur"? That has got to be one of the lasting musical questions of 2010, right? It may not seem like it, but looking at Contra itself provides at least the vagaries of an answer. While most bands would look at the type of backlash VW received and try to distance themselves from the Ivy-league snobbery, Ezra Koenig and company instead embraced it. They open their album with the lyrics "In December, drinking horchata/ I look psychotic in a balaclava," for fuck's sake. They weren't going to apologize for being upper middle class, they weren't going to apologize for being modern. They put an "Ur" in there to distinguish themselves as being a band for the 21st century, and then belayed the inherent foolishness of such a statement with a broken glass elegy. With the line, "Don't call me a Contra 'til you've tried," Koenig essentially sings the 21st century equivalent of "walk a mile in my shoes." It's not all walks across the campus, people.

NUMBER SEVENTEEN

"In media res" is a Latin term referring to the artistic choice to begin a story in the middle, rather than at the beginning. Less "Call me Ishmael" and more "Holy shit, there's a huge fucking white whale in my face." Cleverly, it was the track "In Media Res" that opened Los Campesinos! 2010 LP, Romance is Boring. More cleverly, when the band released the All's Well That Ends acoustic EP, they ended with the same track, with the amended title "(All's Well That Ends) In Media Res." In its original form, "In Media Res" suffered from the same problems as many of the songs on Romance: its dissonance seemed forced, the power dissolved by inelegant craft. On the acoustic version, the noise breakdown gets reduced to single piano notes, and it allows the highs of the aching violins to soar, nailing the depth of emotion and strength of melody that made Los Campesinos! great.

NUMBER SIXTEEN

(Note: "Six Foot Seven Foot" ends at the four-minute mark, another song was tacked to the end to avoid YouTube removal)

"Six Foot Seven Foot," the first single from Lil Wayne's Tha Carter IV, dropped very late in December fucking up the year-end lists of those of us who wait until the new year to actually make these lists. "Six Foot," though, is totally fucking worth the effort. In fact, the way Lil Wayne has been rocking his post-prison swag has been so ridiculous that even estranged producer Bangladesh came out of the woodwork to give Weezy another track. Rocking a sample of the classic Jamaican track "Banana Boat (Day-O)," "Six Foot Seven Foot" is Wayne's triumphant return. After the disappointment of Rebirth and the malaise of the I Am Not a Human Being EP, "Six Foot" erupts with joyous power, with Wayne snapping out punchlines and ridiculous statements ("I got through that sentence like a subject and a predicate.") with all his pre-prison fervor. And Cory Gunz turns in the rapid-fire verse of his life, nailing double and triple timed verses as if he's auditioning for his role on future Lil Wayne tracks. If they turn out as hot as "Six Foot Seven Foot," I'm all for it.

NUMBER FIFTEEN

Madison, Wisconsin's Nika Roza Danilova released two Zola Jesus EPs in 2010. Where in 2009 the haunting power of Danilova's songs were hidden in the murk of basement production values, the Stridulum and Valusia EPs repainted her as a wailing siren, bringing down mountains and raising turbulent waves just with the sound of her voice. And yet, "Lightsick" is probably the most understated of Danilova's nine 2010 songs. But it's precisely for that reason that "Lightsick" stands apart in the Zola Jesus catalog. When Danilova holds back, it seems like she's internalizing the enormous power of her voice, giving strength to "Lightsick" fragility. The hesitant staccato bursts of piano conjure up just the right amount of tension, adding a sense of ambiguity to Danilova singing "When the lights go out on us." Is it a threat? A hope? A fear? Either way, "Lightsick" is the closest Zola Jesus comes to a ballad. What makes it stand apart is its differences both from a traditional ballad and a traditional Zola Jesus song: too tense and powerful for the former, more delicate and beautiful than the latter.

NUMBER FOURTEEN

"Cashflow" is a track from Diplo and Switch's Major Lazer album Guns Don't Kill People... Lazers Do. Like most of Guns, "Cashflow" rocks traditional Jamaican genres like dancehall and reggae, mixed with hints of house and hip-hop. Switch gears for a second. Not to get too technical, but there are four basic types of sound waves: Sine waves, triangle waves, sawtooth waves, and square waves. They look much like you would expect when graphed out on a sheet of paper, and their sounds correspond pretty accurately to their shapes. This year, Los Angeles producer Subskrpt got a hold of Major Lazer's "Cashflow", placed a square wave bomb in it, and lit the fuse. What resulted was an intense explosion of blown-out, abrasive synths that still captured the reggae feel of the original, ratcheting up the intensity from blunted grooves to dance floor madness. Yeah, it took purple cues from the new wave of Joker-influenced Bristol dubstep, but Diplo and Switch's laid back original tune lent just enough hammock-swinging head bobbing to separate Subrkrpt's remix from the pack.

NUMBER THIRTEEN

Back in 2008, the Scotsman of Frightened Rabbit dropped The Midnight Organ Fight, one of the most harrowing records of the past decade. If it hadn't been for the fact that I caught the record two years too late, it would have assuredly made my list of top fifty albums of the last decade. This year, the band put out The Winter of Mixed Drinks. Compared to Organ Fight, Winter was decidedly a disappointment. The bold and dark line that Scott Hutchinson sang about on Organ's "My Backwards Walk" was diluted on Winter, turned into a gray blob on the page. The big exception was "The Loneliness and the Scream," which captured the sad bastard indie rock of Frightened Rabbit at least as effectively as anything on Organ. Lyrically, it's pain is painted in vivid technicolor, as Hutchinson's scream is only effective "to prove to everyone that I exist." At about the half way point, the band kicks up the tempo, trying to find catharsis through willpower, as wordless, defiant vocals personify the song's titular scream.

NUMBER TWELVE

One of Vancouver band Japandroids' greatest strengths has been their vitriol; all rock & roll piss and vingear, an attitude born of love for hardcore punk music, and playing their emo-influenced brand of indie pop at actual hardcore venues, taking thrown bottles until they convinced the crowds through sheer effort. "Younger Us," one of the singles Japandroids released as part of their 7" series this year, both plays to and against that type. Check that blistering guitar solo in the song's second half, which is only a few notes strummed at warp speeds, or the absolute passion in Brian King's wordless vocal cries in the coda and you'll see the power that the band can deploy at any moment. But then pay attention to those lyrics, where King remembers vividly nights where "You were already in bed/ Said fuck it, got up to drink with me instead," but still has to cajole the other nameless party to remember those same moments. Really, "Younger Us" is as vitriolic as Japandroids gets, but its self-directed. "Give me younger us" is both a demand and a plea, an angry explosion and a mournful cry.

NUMBER ELEVEN

It's absolutely inexplicable why "Jump Up in the Air and Stay There" was kept from neo-soul singer Erykah Badu's New Amerykah Part Two (Return of the Ankh). "Air" is one of the strongest songs of this-- or any-- year. The synths vamp through the growing horror of the strings, Badu's wail slowly devolves into an otherworldly howl on the chorus, the beat is ground into an angry powder, and fades into some ghostly background on the verses. This is funky R&B through a paranormal lens, cutting away all the unimportant ish from the traditionally Top 40 genre. It only makes sense, then, for this track to feature not only Lil Wayne, but hands down one of Lil Wayne's most bizarre verses. "I'm shallow. And when you're this high everybody else is ballow. Oops, I meant below" and "I go nuts like a danish" are two feats of logic weird even for Wayne. Both through Wayne's verse and Badu's tension wire vocal performance, R&B's latent background of sex and fear and grooves all become one thing, until jumping up in the air and staying there seems like probably the best option.

Top 50 Songs of 2010, Part Three: 30-21

2011-01-05T08:45:00.001-06:00

NUMBER THIRTY

I have not been quiet about my distaste for the last two Arcade Fire records relative to their debut masterpiece Funeral. Like Neon Bible before it, 2010's AF release The Suburbs was too mid-tempo, too quiet, too slow, too ho-hum for me to really connect with it in a meaningful way. More troubling are the songs, littered across both Bible and Suburbs, that call to mind Funeral's towering highs. "Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)" is one of those tracks. Though only carrying a little more shuffle than most of the humdrum album, "Sprawl II"'s engaging synth lines and vivacious Regine Chassagne vocal painted the suburban escape as somehow epic, where looking past the retail mountains beyond mountains was a glance through the looking glass.

Go beyond the click for numbers twenty-nine through twenty-one.

NUMBER TWENTY-NINE

I missed out on Freddie Gibbs last year, to the point where I almost felt like redacting my year-end lists just to give the Gary, Indiana rapper's tour de force mix tapes their due. This year, I'm making up for it. With both the Str8 Killa No Filla mix tape and the Str8 Killa EP dropping this year, Gibbs had a banner year both in terms of his own personal output and in commercial standing. The highest point of which was his, um, anthemic breakthrough "National Anthem (Fuck the World)". While not as verbose as some of his double-timed offerings, and not as dark as any Midwestgangstaboxframecadillacmuzik tracks or as tuneful as his The Miseducation of Freddie Gibbs mix tape, "National Anthem" instead was the synthesis of Gibbs' talents: a peerless verbal artist, who knows how to choose and destroy a beat.

NUMBER TWENTY-EIGHT

The Wild Hunt, 2010's release from Tallest Man on Earth, didn't offer us anything particularly new from front man Kristian Matsson. He still spun delicate weaves of heartbreaking acoustic guitar melodies, he still sang with the passion of Blood On the Tracks-era Dylan, his lyrics were still obtuse, almost indecipherable, but obviously borne out of genuine emotion. So, it wasn't anything particularly surprising. But Matsson does his thing with such an undeniable excellency that even when he's at his most predictable, it's impossible not to be moved. When his throat tears singing "King of Spain"'s titular line, and the furiously strummed guitars fall out, everything else in your life just disappears.

NUMBER TWENTY-SEVEN

Whoever the man is behind Dawn Golden and Rosy Cross, he's got the whole "mysterious artiste" thing down pat. Despite a few interviews, and a few songs posted here and there on the Internet, nothing much is known about the Chicago enigma. That's okay; a song like "Blacks" rises above the mystery. Definitely indebted to 2010's witch house movement, the smoky vocals and synth thwomps provide an engaging background that draws you in, only to knock you back with horror movie keys and some blown out drum runs. Like its title implies, "Blacks" is the sound of the power of darkness.

NUMBER TWENTY-SIX

It's hard to understand anything of those beyond spliced vocal samples that run through London producer Gold Panda's "You". But, after repeated listens, a very simple message unfurls: "You and me" are the words that make up much of the song's first half. By the coda, however, the "you" is gone and all that's left are multiple repetitions of the word "me." There's no more efficient way to find the core of a break up song than that. And make no mistake, "You" is a break up song, packed as it is with dense, forlorn emotion. It's Prefuse 73's One Word Extinguisher packed down to four minutes; heartbreakbeats.

NUMBER TWENTY-FIVE

Da Vinci is far from the only rapper on "The Beginning". The epic track also includes earlier list-inductee Big K.R.I.T., as well as Webbz and J. Rockwell. As packed as the billing is, as epic as the very title of the song is, as long as it is for a verse-chorus-verse rap track, "The Beginning"'s absolutely monstrous beat more than lives up to it. Featuring the greatest radio music sax solo since "Born to Run", and a earworm sample that's impossible to remove from your brain parts, the killer verses almost become icing on the cake. The fact that the insane double-time vocal performances, Big K.R.I.T.'s undeniable swagger, et. al could be considered mere window dressing is a testament to how solid "Beginning" is across the board.

NUMBER TWENTY-FOUR

2010's buzzword genre witch house kind of started with "See Birds (Moon)". There had been oOoOO noddlings and Salem whispers around the blogosphere, sure, but when Pitchfork track reviewed "See Birds", talking about this new "drag" thing, the genre seemed to bloom overnight. It's not hard to see why. "See Birds" is immediately unique on its first listen, with its huge swells of layered vocals, the metronomic synths that manage to keep the otherwordly atmospherics in some semblance of order, the 8-bit explosions that provide an emotional anchor. "See Birds," as much (or, more accurately, as little) as it had in common with the rest of drag provided a spectacular first step for the haunted house genre.

NUMBER TWENTY-THREE

There's nothing particularly difficult about "OOOO", a slice of relaxed ear candy from Australian producers Russell Fitzgibbon and Doug Wright. While tension makes some of the most interesting music, "OOOO" is all about lack of tension, providing immediate and accessible major key melodies, joyous beat making, and an island groove that engenders nothing but smiles and maybe the occasional bad dance move. If Star Slinger was the most consistent "Post-Dilla" beatmaker of 2010, Fishing's "OOOO" was its most enduring "Post-Dilla" track, waving its hands in the air unabashedly, swimming through warm tropical oceans and cloudless sunshine. Deep thinking is nice, but sometimes a hammock is even nicer.

NUMBER TWENTY-TWO

Single piano notes haven't been this emotionally effective sine Death Cab for Cutie's "Passenger Seat". And, while it's difficult to imagine, "Automatic" from cosmopolitan group Yuck, is even more distressing than Ben Gibbard's lonely night on the road. "I was always in automatic/ Don't assume I'm in control," is the song's central line, painting pictures of people staring straight forward and dead-eyed, unaware or unconcerned with the world going on around them. The impassioned vocals, those broken pianos, even the static buzz of the recording quality seems to have a purpose here, reminding us of the false pretense of impeccable recording quality, the false pretense of trying to appear perfect at all times. Pretty impressive for single piano notes.

NUMBER TWENTY-ONE

"USA Boys", the lone original track off of HEALTH's second remix album DISCO2, has the greatest synth line of 2010, and it fucking knows it. It rides that thing almost to the point of exhaustion, dropping it out right when we want to hear it just one more time, and bringing it back just before we're ready for it again. While HEALTH typically traffic in more punishing noise rock, the fact that they let off the gas just a bit on "USA Boys" gives it an even harder punch. You can hear the sinister undertones that the band usually pushes to the foreground of their songs burbling just under the surface, creating an American Pyscho sketch of someone holding it together on the outside, but falling completely apart underneath.

Top 50 Songs of 2010, Part Two: 40-31

2011-01-04T10:17:00.001-06:00

NUMBER FORTY

The "K.R.I.T." portion of Mississippi rapper Justin Scott's stage name stands for "King Remembered in Time." If dude keeps on rolling out jams like "Country Shit," K.R.I.T. will be remembered right this moment, too. A lot of Southern rappers go for porch stoop communal tracks or maximalist crunk. On "Country Shit," K.R.I.T. splits the difference, throwing in a little bit of Dilla-esque spliced vocal samples for good measure, and creates something that expresses the pride and depression, the dreams and the reality of Southern living.

Hit the jump for numbers thirty-nine through thirty-one.

NUMBER THIRTY-NINE

Much of the Gaslight Anthem's 2010 album was lackluster, a disappointing bout of aimless experimentalism. On the title track, though, the New Jersey band went with their standard blueprint: huge guitar licks, throat-tearing yelps, and blue-collar stories. The comparisons to Bruce Springsteen are obvious, as that's what the Boss made his living on for decades, but the Gaslight Anthem are a modern take on the Boss' universal camaraderie. "American Slang" in particular is pure goddamn rock and roll track that's both timeless and of the moment, an all-together-now moment for the defeated masses of all generations.

NUMBER THIRTY-EIGHT

The day Drake's debut album Thank Me Later dropped, the Internet exploded. It was easy to see why; Thank Me Later was the most divisive rap debut since Kanye West's The College Dropout. Twitter erupted with debate over the album's merits. One song that's pretty unfuckwithable, though, is "Over." Drake isn't the best rapper, but his workman flow works with the military precision of the verses and provides a great contrast to the orchestral flourishes of the chorus. Debate all you want, but "Over" transcends the argument.

NUMBER THIRTY-SEVEN

Technical proficiency is one of those things that, while a point of pride and a matter of respect for many musicians, is often frowned upon in the indie world. Often it's viewed as being at the expense of songwriting. Marnie Stern is an insane guitar player, and drummer Zach Hill is equally talented behind a drum set. On "For Ash," the pair obliterate the stereotype as effectively as they obliterate speakers. Not only are their instrumental inventions impressive from a technical standpoint, but the melodies are as emotional affecting as anything this side of a Death Cab song. Kudos, Marnie.

NUMBER THIRTY-SIX

"Shutterbug," the biggest single off of Big Boi's epic Sir Lucious Left Foot record, doesn't have a bass line. That's pretty weird for a rap song. Instead, Big Boi has digitized and modulated a chorus of deep voices, pairing it with spaceship keys, '70s guitars, and some straight boom bap. It's the perfect example of where Big Boi's priorities lied: with moving rap music forward and turning in some badass robo-spaceship funk, not with making another Outkast record.

NUMBER THIRTY-FIVE

The very first thing that happens in "The Mighty Sparrow" is an explosion of cafe doors. It's an appropriate opening for a Ted Leo song, as the man has always been at his most vital when at his most aggressive. "Sparrow," the first track off of 2010's The Brutalist Bricks, is definitely aggressive. It's all full throttle energy: chugging bass riffs, scattershot drums, and furious guitars dancing around the catchiest Pharmacists melody since Hearts of Oak, and pulling the classic Leo trick of making the frenetic seem personal. The cafe doors may have exploded, but Leo is reacting to you.

NUMBER THIRTY-FOUR

The enduring image of "Cold War" will be that "Nothing Compares 2 U"-style music video-- the close up on Monae's face, the sudden break from lip synching, those inexplicable tears. But listening closer to the breakneck bpms of "Cold War" reveals a mission statement, an act of defiance, a stand against something. "I was made to believe there was something wrong with me," Monae shouts, shortly before her voice devolves into passionate yowls and wordless cries. Forget about the ridiculous concept, "Cold War"'s message is fucking universal: "There's nothing wrong with me," sang with just the right amount of doubt.

NUMBER THIRTY-THREE

Last year, the Sleigh Bells track "Crown on the Ground" made the overblown palatable again, pairing absolutely slamming beats with the loudest fucking guitars you've ever heard. On "I Was Thinking..." the Denver duo in Gauntlet Hair took the basic formula laid down by "Crown on the Ground" and appropriate it for indie rock. The drums are mixed loud and unabashed, pummeling everything they encounter, and the guitars burst with volume and energy, but Gauntlet Hair come at the melodies through Pavement filters, creating a jangly, blown-out pocket epic.

NUMBER THIRTY-TWO

Fuck you, Age of Adz. This-- this-- is the Sufjan Stevens I fell in love with. While Stevens' epic LP strayed from the formula the man perfected on his Fifty States Project albums, the All Delighted People EP was reminding those of us who wanted to cry during "Romulus" of Sufjan's gift for transcendent arrangements in simplicity. There's little more than layered acoustic guitars and layered vocals on "Heirloom," but it communicates more than the schizoid synths of anything on Adz, reveling in downtrodden beauty.

NUMBER THIRTY-ONE

It takes about thirty seconds for "Hall," a track buried in the middle of Baths' excellent Cerulean LP, to find itself. The layers of pitch-shifted vocals and dying synths seem to skitter aimlessly about until finally the woozy beat comes in to bring everything together. Those disparate elements coalesce into something undeniable, pulling at heartstrings as easily as they kick out beats. When Will Wiesenfeld uses the gorgeous backing track to go all Jonsi on us, it becomes a beautiful homage to some of the most moving music on the planet, a place where "Hall" fits right in.

Top 50 Songs of 2010, Part One: 50-41

2011-01-03T00:01:00.002-06:00

2010 was a weird year. In the beginning, we had the last remnants of chillwave turn dark, morph into witch house, and create something kind of wholly unsettling, but pretty awesome. We had Vampire Weekend, Titus Andronicus, and the National all releasing stellar and completely different views on indie rock. During the summer, we got glimpses or full servings from rap heavy hitters like T.I., Big Boi, Kanye West and Lil Wayne. Now we're into 2011, and like last year, Racecar Brown is taking a look back at the year that was to determine the best songs and albums of 2010. Without further adieu, let's open the proceedings with Part One of the top 50 songs of 2010.

Hit the jump to see 50 through 41.

NUMBER FIFTY

Dominique Young Unique is seventeen years old. That's important. Not because her age recontextualizes the emotions of her music, but because only a seventeen-year old could get through "Show My Ass" without being fucking exhausted. There's barely a moment's pause over the track's three minutes. Unique spits machine-gun style over the beat, which seems determined to explore every electronic music genre of the past ten years, but still is unable to contain the young prodigy.

NUMBER FORTY-NINE

If Pigeons, the second record from Luke Temples' Here We Go Magic project, was a remarkable bit of forward movement from his self-titled debut, then "Collector" is the microcosm of that same effect. That spindly, circuitous guitar riff, those ramshackle drums, Temple's own voice which plays the line between genuine emotion and twee rather spectacularly. And that outro, where everything comes together, but never-- never-- stops moving.

NUMBER FORTY-EIGHT

Indie rock is not yet dead. If PS I Love You's Meet Me At the Muster Station proved anything, it was that. "2012" in particular explodes with guitar riffs, caterwauling vocals, and relentless percussion. The song is an exercise in struggling to contain your own intensity, with guitar riffs and Paul Saulnier's vocals barely restrained by the band's innate melodic sense. It's good to know guitars and drums can still do this.

NUMBER FORTY-SEVEN

Forget for a moment that this is a ghostly pseudo-cover of 1986 Ready for the World jam "Love You Down." It's only context; its only a background story about Tom Krell's fascination with R&B. In practice, it's like watching your own romantic failures play out on television, or finding out about a breakup through a Facebook status update: disconnected, but still emotionally evocative. Ethereal and beautiful, this is heartbreak music for the modern age.

NUMBER FORTY-SIX

That first line of "Pop the Trunk" is such a surprise: "Meth lab in the back and the crack smoke peels through the streets like a early morning fog." Words like that immediately transport you into Yelawolf's world, and that bone-rattling bass and those single piano notes serve as the minimalist black frame for Yelawolf's stark storytelling. Here, carrying guns in your trunk has its own shorthand and blood spilling is a daily occurrence. 'Bama.

NUMBER FORTY-FIVE

Evan Voytas' main musical gig is as part of Flying Lotus' live band. "I Took a Trip On a Plane" does little to reveal this, except to obtusely shine a light on the track's hidden depth. Check how the off-kilter drums sink into the emotional crevices, or how the bass' lag illustrates an underlying sadness in the melody. Some musicians stumble across melodies this timeless. With "Planes", it's equal parts serendipity and Voytas' deft songcraft.

NUMBER FORTY-FOUR

In a just world, the fact that Amanda Warner sings over sparse, slow-burn electronics wouldn't stop her from becoming one of pop music's leading ladies. The back alley synths and ugly drum machines that prevent Warner from stardom also counterpoint her sugar-sweet breakup talk in such a beautiful way that you almost want to keep her buried in the underground.

NUMBER FORTY-THREE

"Post-Dilla" became a buzzword in 2010, shorthand for wobbly drums and chopped up vocal samples. The best of the bunch was Manchester's Star Slinger, who was probably the one least concerned with staying within that wheelhouse. A song like "Mornin'" hits all of the major "post-Dilla" touchstones, but rises above that tag with the absolute clarity of the boom bap backing track, the beauty of those spliced strings, the passion of those girl group vocals.

NUMBER FORTY-TWO

It's not hard to hear Titus Andronicus when you listen to Andrew Cedermark's music. The brick wall production, the sneaky-good guitar leads, the balls-to-the-wall intensity, they're all hallmarks of Cedermark's former band. What the man adds in breaking away is a sense of rustic charm. In allowing rural melodies and front porch finger picking to creep in, Cedermark has created a New Jersey record less for Newark and more for Cape May County.

NUMBER FORTY-ONE

Making punk music sound fresh in 2010 is a difficult prospect. The very nature of the genre is simplicity, and it's been around now for roughly 40 years. There are only so many three chord punk songs one can listen to. The fact that "I'll Stand By Her" isn't just fresh, but goddamn vibrant, is a testament to the power of mile-a-minute guitars, the community of shout-a-long choruses, the beauty of economic bombasity.

Don't Call It A Comeback

2011-01-02T09:58:00.000-06:00

Or, you know, you probably could call it a comeback. Sorry, LL.

2010 was a wacky year for me personally. Moving, finding jobs, gaining jobs, losing jobs, working jobs, having no money, begging for money, actually having some money, making friends, losing friends, becoming disconnected from friends.

These things, they happen.

2011, on the other hand, looks like the year of me having a plan.

Those of you who know me know that's scary; I rarely have a plan. But, as far as Racecar Brown goes, I know how I want to move forward, and I know how to do the actual moving forward. Half the battle, as the saying goes.

First order of new business: check out this fucking new design. Gotta give massive credit to miss Ashley Elson on this one. She did amazing work putting all of this together.

Secondly: the first content of the new year. Just like last year saw my top ten albums and songs of the year, and my top fifty albums and songs of the decade, I've decided to kick this year off with my favorite albums and songs of this year. I upped the ante on this one, going for fifty songs and twenty albums. I'll start posting them tomorrow, starting with songs #50 through #41.

Thirdly: With the new improved Racecar Brown, I've decided to change up my schedule. As opposed to writing one big-ass post every week, I've decided to do smaller posts every weekday. It's ambitious, but I think it's important for me. I may end up repeating myself, but only when I've found a better way to make the same point. I hope those of you who read will take the time to share with me your thoughts, so we can get some genuine dialog going, talking about the issues we're faced with.

Lastly: Welcome to the new Racecar Brown.

I was probably right the first time; don't call it a comeback.

Monologues and Dialogs in Shakespeare and Facebook

2010-10-06T00:54:00.002-05:00

There are times I think I like reading Shakespeare more than I like seeing it performed. Part of that is language, of course. Fired at you by modern performers, all quick-witted like they actually know what they're saying, it's easy to get lost in the archaic language. The man's references and double entendres were intelligent, but without the benefit of having his version of English being as clear to me as my own, I won't notice them unless I have the time to read the words on my own. Some of Shakespeare's best double entendres actually need research, such as the title of one play, "Much Ado About Nothing," that seems innocuous until you realize that "Nothing" was a Elizabethan slang term for sex.

One thing I notice reading Shakespeare, though, aside from those phrases rife with double meaning, is how pure a form of writing it is. That's not speaking to the characterizations or the plot, but simply the format. There are only two things you'll find in reading Shakespeare's plays, dialog and monologues. You either find two or more characters speaking to each other, or one character speaking to the crowd. When reading the plays, the two formats tend to blend. They are both, after all, simply characters speaking words. On paper, it wouldn't seem to matter if there was only one character or multiple characters speaking. In person, however, during the performance, the differences between dialog and monologues becomes abundantly clear: viewpoints.

A dialog offers multiple viewpoints. One of Shakespeare's greatest talents was playing these multiple viewpoints against each other, with one or the other coming out on top. Lady MacBeth convincing her husband to take up the throne in her own lust for power comes to mind. A monologue, converserly, offers one in-depth look at a single viewpoint. Hamlet's "Sleep, perchance to dream" speech is famous, but it only persents one side of the idealogical argument. Ophelia, before she goes mad, would probably have had something to say about Hamlet's infamous rant of internal suffering.

Shakespeare's plays don't end with monologues, and there's a reason for that. Any story worth telling, any idea worth paying attention to, needs objective assessment. Often the topics that Shakespeare's characters spend their monologues droning on about are the very topics which end up ending their lives, or at least spiraling them into tragedy, either dramatic or comedic in nature. Shakespeare knew that no moral he was trying to present could be adequately told from only one perspective, it was either through dialog or action that the point was driven home.

This past weekend, I went to see The Social Network. Starring Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, and Armie Hammer, directed by David Fincher of Fight Club, Se7en, and Zodiac fame, and written by A Few Good Men, West Wing, and Sportsnight writer Aaron Sorkin. It's a fascinating portrayal of the roots of maybe the most ubiquitous thing of our modern times: Facebook.

But to say The Social Network is a movie about Facebook is a bit of a misnomer. It's not about the website Facebook, it's about the creators of Facebook. Their tale is expertly woven together, and through their sordid web we see all sorts of sub-stories that are implied but never revealed. Through the story of the people who created Facebook, you can see a story about the people who use Facebook, you can see a story about Facebook as a concept, and you can see a story about the pitfalls of modern society.

The roots of Facebook are grounded-- like many great ideas from men-- in the base objectification of women. And, in a way, objectification is still the name of Facebook's game. People use it to reconnect with lost acquaintences and plan gatherings, yes, but they also use it to ogle attractive members of the opposite sex and creep on the recently single. For all its genuinely useful aspects and respectable manner, Facebook even in its most current incanation still owes most of its popularity to the same things that garnered FaceSmash 22,000 hits in one hour.

Still, you can't deny the social impact that Facebook has had. I've talked about its ability both to help and harm the modern marketplace of ideas, and thats only the tip of the social iceberg. What Facebook has the ability to do is become the most massive dialog every constructed. It has connections to one twelfth of the world's population, crossing continents and spanning the globe.

Of course, what it's meant for and what it is are two different things.

This is a blog post. I hope that's obvious. What's less obvious is that this is a monologue. This is one voice giving you a single set of ideas. Every time I post I strive to present my viewpoints in an objective manner, one with the perspective necessary to make it worthwhile. But the truth of any monologue is that it requires dialog around it to make it powerful. Shakespeare didn't write extended monologues, because he knew that a cast of characters, with a myriad of viewpoints, coming into a specific situation is what created the most affecting message. What I say doesn't-- can't-- have any power without dialog around it, without an exchange of opinions taking place. A monologue is essentially preaching to the converted. It's of no practical use.

I still do it, of course, in the hopes of engendering dialog. I like getting other people's opinions. I like being wrong. I like being right, too, but mostly I like the multiple viewpoints involved in both options. I may be preaching to the converted right now, but the Internet means that the message can get out there to those who aren't converted. There is every opportunity for this monologue to become a dialog, even weeks, months, years later.

What gets me about Facebook, hell social networking in general, is that its a parade of monologues masquerading as dialogs. Every status update, every Tumbler post, every tweet is a monlogue of some type. Even replies to posts are at least 75% monologues. The posts that get the most replies-- celebrity Facebook pages, mostly-- rarely engender discussion, but rather are a series of people giving their own opinion to the post in question. The original poster rarely comments, and subsequent posters give their own pocket opinions. It looks like a dialog, but it's instead a series of monologues tacked together, a spotlight that flits around the room from voice to voice, without ever revealing the scenery, or even the fact that the actors are on the same stage.

Our society has become one of monologues. Bill O'Reilly takes callers and guests but doesn't engage them in meaningful discussion. Keith Obermann pontificates without context. C-Span shows our political system as one that allows each person their own say, but then involves no civil discussion or discourse of what was said. Watching a session of Congress is an exercise in vanity, with each person offering their own monologue, their own version of reality, to attempt to serve as the ending of the political play. All of this serves as symptoms of a society more concerned with saying something than with hearing anything.

The thing we forget is that those who spoke Shakespeare's best monologues were the ones who died the most tragically.

Shameless Self-Promotion #10 and #11

2010-09-30T20:52:00.000-05:00

My review for Cloudland Canyons' new record Fin Eaves.

My review for Teengirl Fantasy's new record 7AM.

Who Is Kanye West?

2010-09-13T20:48:00.001-05:00

"I've hurt, I've bled, I've learned. I only want to do good. I am passionate, I am human, I am real."

\\\

I live-tweeted the MTV Video Music Awards last night. To do this, I had to watch them. A few random notes: Chelsea Handler was nigh unwatchable, none of the skits were funny, Deadmau5's popularity is fucking inexplicable, Robyn showing up to do twenty seconds of a dubstepped "Dancing On My Own" remix was fucking awesome and MTV shouldn't have cut to commercial, Justin Bieber should be slowed down 400% all the time, and seeing Linkin Park, N.E.R.D. and Ciera perform throughout the night-- but not at the VMAs-- was really, really weird.

Disguised as a vain awards show, the practical purpose of the VMAs is to act as a pop-culture cotillion. The whole thing can seem ridiculously of-the-moment, with buzz bands popping up, never to be seen from again, but take a look at the past Video of the Year winners and you'll see a list short on one-hit wonders and big on pop icons. It's a bigger barometer of the status of pop culture than many are willing to admit, but its usually pretty clear: if you're a big deal at the VMAs, you either are or will be a big deal outside of the VMAs.

And, you know, for not winning a single moonman over the past two years, Kanye West has been a pretty big deal, both at the VMAs and not.

I've already talked about "I'mma let you finish" on this blog, and it's goddamn ubiquitous now. You saw references to it pop up a lot if you watched the lead-up to the VMAs this year, and you saw a lot more references to it at the 2010 VMAs themselves. From Taylor Swift opening her brand new song-- rumored to be about the incident-- with clips from last year's awards, to Chelsea Handler and Aziz Ansari making jokes about it, from reminders of the President calling him a jackass, to commercials prodding audiences with "What will he do next?" type advertising, there were a lot of reasons to remember-- after let's say six months of quiet-- why the man had to cancel his tour with Lady Gaga, which would have assuredly been the greatest live spectacle ever, and worth whatever price you would've had to pay to see it.

So, what did West do?

This:

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"My music isn't just music, it's medicine."

\\\

I'm not going to sugar coat my opinion: I think West is this generation's most important pop music figure, and maybe its most important pop culture figure. Like the Beatles of his time.

Comparing anyone to the Fab Four is always kind of ridiculous, of course, but there are some interesting parallels. This past year has been a rough one on West, but you have to think that it wasn't anywhere near the post-"Bigger than Jesus" backlash that Lennon and the Beatles went through. His records weren't burned and steamrolled in the streets, instead he dealt with more talk about his ego and an instant-hit Internet meme.

I bring that up because it's important to remember that not even the freaking Beatles got through their career without major controversy, without a major portion of the American public turning on them, without having to appear penitent in front of a mass audience. It's possible to be the biggest thing in pop culture at the moment and have everyone hate you.

And it's different, being the biggest thing in pop culture in 2010 as opposed to 1966. It was possible 44 years ago for one story to dominate people's lives, for one big band to be the big band that people listened to. It was possible to have a central focus on one thing. Pop culture in 2010 is fractured-- because its possible through current technology to limit yourself to your bubble and live your life ignoring everything outside of it-- and its constantly overturning, moving from one new thing to the next-- because in an age of 24 hour news networks and Twitter, focusing on any one thing for two long is a surefire way to be left culturally behind.

So, when I say that Kanye is the biggest pop culture figure, I'm not trying to say he'll have the same cultural impact as the Beatles. He can't. It's too easy to either forget him because of culture's constant overturn or ignore him because of culture's fractious nature. But he has an impact-- music, fashion, Web 2.0-- that is undeniable.

\\\

"In America, they want you to accomplish these great feats, to pull off these David Copperfield-type stunts. You want me to be great, but you don't ever want me to say I'm great?"

\\\

The other reason why West is important to current pop culture is because of what kind of public figure he is. He is loud and obnoxious, sure, but he's also completely honest and unabashed. Check his Twitter or his blog and you'll see a man who is not putting on any kind of a public face. He is completely accepting of himself, not only of all his successes, but also of all his failures.

That kind of honesty makes his music intriguing. Writing music is always about storytelling, and even if you're talking about other people in your songs, even if you're writing about inanimate objects, the public will see the main character in any song as you. Taking the rules of storytelling, people always prefer a flawed protagonist to a perfect one, and its part of the reason why West is so popular as a musician. But it's also why it's so easy to hate him.

One of the biggest gripes on West is his propensity to acknowledge the quality of his own work. To a certain extent, I get it. When he talked about spending a million dollars on his video at the MTV Europe VMAs, or when he bitched about losing the Best New Artist Grammy to Gretchen Wilson, or when he left the VMAs in 2007 when he didn't win a single moonman, those actions seemed a lot like sour grapes from a guy who thought too much of himself.

At the same time, I understand where West is coming from. Who do you hear from now, Wilson or West? What other single musician from the 00s can you think of whose every work has at least one song that has seeped its way into the nation's collective consciousness? Aziz Ansari has an entire ten minutes of Kanye West jokes. South Park ripped him a new one. Using a sped-up sample isn't West's alone, but damn if hearing one doesn't make you think of the man. And Solange Knowles might be dragging Beyonce and Jay-Z to Grizzly Bear shows, but Ye is actually recording songs with Bon Iver that are fucking awesome.

You can't deny that, as much chest-thumping and smoke-blowing as West does, he has the resume-- both complimentary and insulting-- to prove what should be hyperboles true.

///

"I have sacrificed real life to be a celebrity and to give this art to people."

///

Watching that VMA performance that I've posted above, it felt important.

It's hard to say exactly why. Watching the video independent of context, there's nothing particularly striking about it. There are no dramatics, there is no hugely impressive light show, there's very little aside from West, his MPC, and a trio of ballerinas.

But, of course, it's impossible to disassociate anything-- least of all something so interconnected with West's life and art. Thinking about Taylor Swift playing her song earlier in the night, remembering that this is where Kanye nearly killed his own career, hearing those layered samples and morose piano notes, there was a sense of everything coming together. Without Swift, without 2009's VMAs, without West's theatrics, or his mother's death, or his distressing breakup... you can hear and see all of it in that performance.

Comparing it to some other iconic television moments in musical pop culture-- Elvis on Ed Sullivan, the Beatles at the same place-- is only applicable in the sense of what it meant to the careers of those stars. It was a widely televised moment, on a high profile program, proceeded by light but exciting build-up, that clearly marked a before and an after.

I wouldn't be surprised if, a decade from now, West's simple, affecting performance of "Runaway" will be used as the mark between the first phase of his career, the phase that died at 2009's VMAs, and the second, surely to begin just as spectacularly as his first. If the new West album is anything but the album of the year, I'll be surprised.

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"I'll say things that are serious and put them in a joke form so people can enjoy them. We laugh to keep from crying."

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Throughout this post, I've been placing quotes from Kanye West himself, and in them West is talking about himself. Some of them are ridiculous and overstated, and some of them are morose and self-sacrificing, but all of them are true.

Because if Kanye West is anything, he's true.

Diffusers and Funnels: An Examination of Music Criticism

2010-09-06T21:29:00.001-05:00

Paste Magazine is dead.

The website is going to remain running, but the paper-and-ink, blood-and-guts actual product-- the thing that you hold in your hands and experience, that's gone forever.

This isn't a treatise bemoaning the changing landscape of printed journalism, nor a RIP piece on Paste. Truth be told, I've never purchased a copy. But despite the reports I'd heard from freelancers claiming that they weren't getting paid in a timely fashion, despite other iconic music periodicals going out of business, the news of Paste this year was kind of shocking. And because of it, I started thinking about this music criticism thing that I do, that I try to do well enough to get paid for.

The music industry changed with Napster. That's undeniable. It was one of those Pandora's Box moments. Free music, available for download over the Internet, was out of the box, and despite the continuing efforts of the RIAA and copyright enforcement agencies across the globe, it's impossible to put that back in the box. What's perhaps less understood is how Internet music piracy has changed the music journalism industry.

A digression: I'm not saying I'm against music downloading. In fact, quite the opposite. I think the solution to the piracy/downloading issues lies not in stopping people from downloading, but in finding a way to make downloading paid for. But, hey, that's a whole other blog post.

Now, see, piracy changed music because it opened up avenues between music and fans, musicians and fans, fans and fans, musicians and musicians, genres and genres. It was this great criss-crossing highway that made South Africa as close or as far away as the person next door. Afro-pop rubbed elbows with techno, country knocked boots with classical, hip-hop danced with ballroom. At this point, this genre-crossing has become so ubiquitous, it's not even surprising when Britney Spears sounds like she's been digging through vinyl in Bristol. In fact, it's almost expected that it sounds like she has.

And this same phenomenon changed music fandom. A site like Pitchfork, for all the heat it takes as a homogenizer of indie culture and taste, started out as a simple gathering spot for a growing subculture. There were maybe only one or two kids in your high school who had even heard of Pavement, much less listened to their records fifty times over, but suddenly there was this increasingly legitimate website saying not only, "God damn but "Cut Your Hair" is an amazing song," but also, "You're stupid if you don't think so." It became a gathering place, and as more gathered, those whose tastes were covered by Pitchfork in only anecdotal fashion began talking about experimental hip-hop, or dubstep, or even pop. Just as genres of music melted together, so did fans and their tastes. It's not weird to listen to Beyonce and Band of Horses anymore.

And that's a good thing.

Now, if you're a music fan, there are literally thousands of blogs to satisfy your tastes. If that's straight pop, there's Popjustice. If it's dance, there's Discobelle. If it's hip-hop, you can peruse 2DopeBoyz. And, hey, if you like all of it, there's nothing to stop you from picking and choosing what you like from each of them and the hundreds more. If you're a fan of music, the only limit to what you can find is the amount of time you want to spend looking.

That ease of access has enacted a profound change in music journalism. Prior to it, the job of a music critic was that of the discoverer. He went to shows with twenty people at clubs no one had heard of, to get a scoop on a new group he had remembered the name of from a half-heard conversation along a street corner, then came back and wrote a glowing piece about that band, exposing them to a larger audience and, in a way, playing a role in their ascension. The duties of the music critic were that of a diffuser; take something from a single point, and spread it out to a wider audience.

There's no need for a diffuser now. There's way too many avenues to patrol, and with the very nature of the Internet and social networking, there's no reason why a fan can't get the scoop long before a critic has even a sniff of it. So, given that, what's the point of a music critic?

The answer I've come with is stupidly simple, and I say that meaning that it's probably an oversimplification of a more complex problem. But, if everyone is able to see everything before the critic, then the critic simply can't function as a diffuser. It makes more sense, then, for the critic to act instead as a funnel.

Instead of spreading one thing to a wider audience, the music critic has to take a lot of information in and filter out the extraneous, the useless, the pointless, the unnecessary, and the just plain bad. If a person on the Internet has an infinite number of possibilities, then the responsibility of the critic to say, "You know, you don't really have to pay any attention to this."

The most interesting question the funnel idea raises is this: "Well, how the hell do you determine what to filter out?" Subquestion-- and the most basic query regarding criticism in general-- "How do you say what's good and what isn't?"

One of the points I've made on this blog before is that objections that are arbitrary are meaningless, and I think that idea finds an interesting home here. A lot of critics don't like certain genres, or certain tones, or certain sounds. They won't review a dance record positively simply because they don't like digital instrumentation, or they'll badmouth a country song because they can't stand nasally vocals. The decisions of these groups to play that sort of music, or to sing with that sort of voice isn't necessarily arbitrary, but the idea to say that one set of noises is okay and one set of noises isn't... well, that certainly is arbitrary.

So, in a way, that says we as critics shouldn't reject a certain genre of music or any music just because of the tones it uses, and that makes the question of what is "good" much harder to answer.

I've struggled for awhile with this answer, and its only recently that I've come up with one that I think satisfies most people, both lay persons and those involved in criticism: In any art form, personal taste is one of those things that's completely subjective. What people like and don't like can't be explained away but a critic. But that doesn't make music criticism pointless, because how we determine what's good or isn't has nothing to do with personal taste.

Rather, what we're critiquing is how this piece advances its art form.

Maybe you like Nickelback. I can't say that your taste is wrong, because what you like is subjective. But Nickelback offers nothing particularly interesting to the art form of music, not in song structure, not in lyrics, not in chords or tones or attitude or ideas. It's not a subjective idea that, "Nickelback just sucks, okay?" Instead, it's an objective evaluation of what Nickelback brings to the musical table.

As far as I can figure, that's how the funnel thing is supposed to work. Yeah, there's a lot out there, and it can seem pretty futile to try and say this lo-fi, hazy, 80s inspired dream pop band is better than that one, but its in examining how one pushes boundaries in comparison to the other that we can take a stab at becoming effective filters.

A week or so ago, Zach Baron wrote an article for the Village Voice entitled "How Kanye West's Twitter Killed Music Magazines." And he came to a pretty similar conclusion in his article about what social networking and the Internet, et al. has done to criticism. Attempting to adventure to brave new musical worlds no longer works, because everyone has the tools to get there first and plant their own flags.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that flags are being planted everywhere. The new job of music critics is to point out whose colors are worth noticing.

The Reality of the Digital Experience

2010-08-31T11:11:00.001-05:00

All the work I do is on computers.

That's not that strange, in this year, in this decade, in this millennium. A lot of jobs require people to spend nearly all of their time on computers in one way or another. And it's not that strange on a personal level, either. With all of the handy, technologically advanced communication methods that computers offer us, more and more people interact socially over their computers.

As I've mentioned before, I started working with computers at a fairly young age. I've discussed how I think being in-tune with those devices at such an early age had an impact on how I interacted with the outside world. In some ways, it was a positive. I ended up learning social skills in a less stressful environment than your typical elementary/middle school experience. Additionally, I learned a lot of skills that serve me today, from typing to basic web design to writing to computer repair. I use most of these skills today to make money. I don't think it's a stretch to directly attribute my upbringing to that.

I was watching MTV recently. It's not something I normally do, save for when I'm lying in bed, unable to sleep, and the only thing that seems interesting on television is J-Woww's cleavage. This commercial came on, featuring a young woman reciting lines from what a new work from the author of The Vagina Monologues. The passage that the girl was reading from brought into stark contrast the dichotomy of being a friend with someone online and being a friend with someone offline. "I want to walk next to you on a mountain, not friend you on Facebook," goes one line.

It's a topic that I-- as a person who has spent so much of my own existence online-- think about often. Seeing this commercial, it brought me back to the belief I've long held regarding this situation:

This disparity between the offline and online experience, this precedence we give the "real," is an illusion.

I think part of it is the fact that the online world is a new technology. Society is always hesitant to come around to new methods of communication. Telephones were once a luxury that people could do with out, then cell phones were only for emergencies. Now we text and call each other constantly, never far from contact if we need to be. Another part of it is a long-ingrained distrust of technology moving too quickly. Think of any sci-fi movie, television show, or book that you know that includes robots, advanced human technology, or both. Dating back to Asimov, we've had the idea drilled into us that letting technology run amok leads to-- um-- Skynet. And another possible reason is that there is a physical inactivity inherent in the online experience that could lead to health problems.

But while those might be the underlying issues, that's not the face presented. Instead, there's a false idea that the discussions we have, the points we make, the ideas we come forward with, the people we communicate with, and the things we learn are of diminished value because we're not experiencing them in the real world.

I've seen this in particular applied to debate online, where one debater brings up a valid point, and the other dismisses the entire conversation, as it's "arguing over the Internet." It can even happen if both people in the debate are going along with it-- a third party will jump in and drop the always hilarious line, "Winning an argument on the Internet is like winning at the Special Olympics." Or it can occur from those who have never involved themselves with the online experience, who don't understand it has having the same inherent value as the offline one.

In some ways, that may seem like the opposite argument from the one I presented a few weeks ago, regarding Facebook and social networking. But, in fact, the ideas are more similar than they might first appear. In both that argument and this one, what I'm calling for is neither a retreat from nor a march towards the online experience. Instead, I want an acknowledgment of forward-moving experience. Period. Whether that comes from discovering an astounding piece of online writing that makes you think differently about the world around you, or it comes from standing on the edge of a hill on a sunny day shouldn't matter. What should matter is what the experience has meant to you.

In any case, the fallacious conclusion that's often met is that standing next to me on a mountain is worth more than friending me on Facebook. But if we don't talk on the mountain, and we say something that changes each other's lives online, then what's the experience that's more worthwhile?

Shameless Self-Promotion #9

2010-08-31T08:18:00.000-05:00

Shameless Self-Promotion #9: My review of All's Well That Ends, the stopgap EP from Los Campesinos!

A T-Shirt Changed My Life: Introspection on J Dilla's "Donuts"

2010-08-16T18:46:00.001-05:00

My first experience with the name J Dilla was in the summer of 2006. That year, I went to both Pitchfork Music Festival and Lollapalooza. At both festivals, and particularly at Lollapalooza, I saw multitudes of people wearing the same t-shirt. In varying colors, it said in white print: "J Dilla Changed My Life."

There's an interesting story to the origins of the shirt, actually. In December of 2005, German producer DJ Deckstarr was to appear on a bill with Dilla, at Unique Club in Dusseldorf. At the time, Dilla was already in the throes of the blood disease TTP. He was playing shows from a wheelchair, after having for years downplayed the severity of his illness. There was talk that he should stay home, that he shouldn't be globetrotting to play shows.

To hear Deckstarr tell it:

"I have been a hardcore Dilla fan for years ... I can't think of any other artist that was able to touch me with music like he did. I have been waiting for years to get the chance to see this man perform and I was so happy that Dilla would come in December. I was reading all this stuff, "This man should stay at home," and so on. I was thinking to myself, "Why can't these people appreciate what Dilla is doing right now and just support him?" I wanted Dilla to see that it is more than just music and that I support him from the bottom of my heart no matter what, because he has been there for me all these years."

So Deckstarr created his own shirt, white lettering on black print. "J Dilla Changed My Life."

By the following summer, the shirts were near ubiquitous at the Chicago music festivals. And I, unaware, could only ask myself one question: "Who the hell is J Dilla?"

Then I took the time to find out.

He was a man who, back in February, released his final album.

He was a man who, three days after the release of that record, had passed away at the age of 32.

That show in Dusseldorf, where the "J Dilla Changed My Life" shirt first appeared would end up being Dilla's last.

* * *

J Dilla was born James Yancy in 1974 in Detroit, Michigan. And, as cheesy-autobiography-opening-line as that is, it's important to know that before you even listen to a note of Donuts, that final album of his released in February of 2006. Because Donuts is an record that, in a very unique way, spans the breadth-- and breath-- of J Dilla's life. It's also not an album that should be your first introduction to his work. Without digesting not only Dilla's career as a producer, but also Dilla the man, it's almost impossible to hear Donuts the way it was intended.

Progress has always defined Dilla's work. He moved forward, often away from the very things that he had just found commercial success doing. Dilla's style in the mid-to-late '90s was all at once an homage to old-school '80s hip-hop and incredibly futuristic rendition of where the genre could lead. Peep Dilla's work with A Tribe Called Quest, the Pharcyde, the Roots, even Janet Jackson, and what you'll notice across the board are those tape-deck quality drums and simple, memorable melodies that were a direct send-up to rap's roots. But look beyond the surface and you'll start to hear his unique, disruptive and woozy take on sampling, you'll notice how his drums-- sampled and spliced-- seem to lag behind the beat, then try to catch up, then fall back again, inevitably making you put your ear just a little closer to the speaker.

In the early '00s two producers jumped onto the scene, mostly due to their work on Jay-Z's seminal 2002 record The Blueprint. Kanye West and Just Blaze's styles both were hyper-modernizations of the old soul-sampling records that Dilla was doing in the '90s, which were themselves hyper-modernizations of the the hissing tape-deck splices that birthed rap music. What Dilla did when he came up, West and Blaze cannibalized, recontextualized and displayed to the world. But maybe more impressive than that pair's reappropriations of Dilla's sound was the way Dilla himself was doing the exact same thing at the exact same time.

When the new digital techniques of producers like West and Blaze entered the hip-hop producer's lexicon, he not only embraced it, but took it as a challenge. His drums stayed much the same, but his sound palette expanded, and on a record like Common's Electric Circus he had the freedom to go stratospheric and sometimes extraterrestrial with his productions. He found himself taking crazier risks with his samples, layering them upon themselves, splicing them into unrecognizable fragments, then reconstructing the core melody. If the first half-decade of Dilla's work was equal parts homage and progressive, then the last half-decade was categorized by Dilla taking massive risks with his sounds, seeming not to care when-- just like on Electric Circus-- the public didn't quite catch on.

Now take into consideration the man. His work was astounding, but it was the man himself that inspired the ones he worked with-- Erykah Badu, Busta Rhymes, Common-- to call up Maureen Yancy, Dilla's mother, on a regular basis, to check in on Dilla's two daughters. It was the man who, despite his health having been deteriorating since the first days of 2002, traversed Europe, playing shows in a wheelchair, who had his mother massage his fingers in his hospital bed so he could make the beats that would become Donuts. It was the man who wrote in his will to divide up his estate between his mother, his two daughters, and his brother Johnny.

The fact is, you need to know all that to even begin to understand Donuts.

* * *

In an interview for Pitchfork, Roots drummer ?uestlove said this regarding Donuts:

"In 2006, the project that affected me the most was Dilla's swan song. Though I didn't understand it at first. I was thinking it was about how Kanye's the new kid on the block and he's bringing soul samples back so Dilla was trying to say, "Nope, my dick's still bigger than yours, son." But it all seemed to make sense towards the end. I got to talk to him three weeks before he passed, and I was like, "Yo, what was on your mind with Donuts?" He said, "It's a message." I was like, "Hm, OK." Once he left, I started to clearly see all the subliminal messages. Like "Don't Cry", and him mangling the shit out of "Johnny Don't Do It" by 10cc on "Waves"-- that's a message to his brother John."

Those subliminal messages that ?uest talks about are why you need a basic understanding of the man and his music before tackling Donuts. On a first listen, the record can sound garbled, difficult, maybe even aimless or incoherent. It jumps from track to track abruptly, a strange move from such a smooth producer. Only one song on the album eclipses the two minute mark, and most of the 31 tracks pass by in under 90 seconds. It's difficult to get a read on. There are few traditional hooks. Samples, when they're used, are either so long as to border feeling uncomfortable, or so screwed up that they're unrecognizable. Even paying close attention, it's hard not to discard the thing as a discombobulated mess, until you consider just how careful and intentional a craftsman Dilla was.

It's only when you start listening to Donuts in the context of Dilla's life and past-work that the "message" of the record begins to unfold. Then you notice that the inclusion of 31 tracks on the record isn't an arbitrary choice, but rather individually represent one year that Dilla expected to live. Or how all the Motown samples on the record weren't just wonderful throwbacks, but a dedication to his Detroit hometown.

Then you notice how, if you leave the record on repeat, the ending of the last song loops back into the beginning of the first song, allowing Donuts to function literally as a musical circle, a piece with no beginning or end. Then, if you leave just a single song on repeat, you notice that the same damn thing applies. Not only did Dilla create a seamless album, but a seamless infinite loop with each track.

Dilla also used Donuts to talk to his friends and family. As ?uestlove mentioned, the absolute deconstruction of the sample in "Waves" still manages to sound vaguely like an otherworldly voice saying, "Hey, Johnny," as if Dilla could use the track as a ghostly extension of himself, reaching out to his brother after he had gone. Other messages are more direct, like how Yancy uses Dionne Warwick to accurately assert that "You're gonna want me back." Or the entirety of "Don't Cry," where the Escorts' "I Can't Stand (To See You Cry)" plays like a message to everyone listening not to let mourning over Dilla's death consume them.

Then there are the more ambiguous messages. Does the siren noise that periodically shows up throughout Donuts represent the constantly noisy medical equipment that surely surrounded Dilla when he was staying in the hospital? Is the reason for the shortness of the tracks an allegory for the cut-short nature of Dilla's own life? Are there hidden messages to friends and family, as rumors suggest?

Was Donuts "a message" to everyone? To those who could decipher it? Or was it more private, like the man himself?

* * *

I like this story about Dilla, told by Q-Tip, regarding when A Tribe Called Quest's 1996 LP Beats, Rhymes, and Life was nominated for a Grammy:

"I was like, "Yo, this is a good opportunity for you, you should just go." He was like, "Hell no, I ain't going. Fuck that!" I said, "You got nominated for a fucking Grammy. You are going to go." He said, "I ain't got nothing to wear!" But he went. He was so mad and disgruntled and angry about that. He was much happier doing it his way. That's who he was. He didn't really want to fuck with none of that. And I don't blame him."

I like it because it's an accurate representation of James Yancy. It shows the man's desire to stay out of the commercial aspect of his business in how he wanted to avoid what for many is the music industry's biggest night. And it also shows how loyal the man was to the people around him-- loyalty returned over and over again-- in how, at Q-Tip's behest, he still went to the show. But mostly, I like how it illustrates that there was something enigmatic about James Yancy. When people told him he'd been nominated for a Grammy, he was nonplussed. When people told him not to perform in Europe from a wheelchair, he ignored them. When one of his closest friends asked him about his most deeply personal album, he merely replied by calling it "a message."

While knowing the man is the only way to honestly wrap your head around Donuts, the truth is, I don't need to know all of the secrets that the record no doubt contains.

Even without them, J Dilla changed my life.