Good Morning

This is probably the definition of a great Saturday morning listen. Light cracking through the slits in the blinds, with a cup of tea in hand and heavy, cold clouds on the horizon. I mean the music's great too, but lately I've been wondering about my own taste in songs. I'm not sure if what I love is as much a product of the sounds themselves as where my head is at the time I hear them. I haven't been very excited about music in any context for months now. There hasn't been much redemption in playing, writing, or humming along to anything I've heard, and maybe that's just because a large part of me doesn't care about finding perfection in some created thing. Reading that, I realize how little sense it makes. I guess what I'm trying to say is that there is so much subjectivity to being creative, and yet it's amazing the number of ways we manage to try and quantify it. This song is good, this song is bad, this song is predestined as un-cool. I snub that attitude and yet I feel myself steeped in it constantly. It's too hard not to subconsciously sum up what I feel about art in a soundbite or a mental thumbs down.

What I want is to be excited about music because it meets me where I'm at. I'm looking at the sky, my friend's face when he laughs, the movement of gravel under my shoes and I realize this song completes an experience I'm already having in my head. Caught in the Trees is absolutely doing just that this morning...without being an altogether amazing album or showcasing some jaw-dropping set of musicianship and vocal prowess. It's simple and just what I needed. Plus it's albums like this leave leave me with the feeling that I have some hope left as a musician.

Albums That Take You Places

Let's face it, sometimes we need an "escape" from reality, and what couldn't be more assistive and innocuous than an album that reaches higher places.

I am currently listening to Hvarf-Heim, Sigur Ros's new release of alternate versions of previous recordings and B-sides. I have been enjoying this two-disc set at times after work when I need to unwind, as backround music when I'm reading a good book, and as my audio-backdrop when I'm engaging in one of my newest hobbies, painting. It has proven to be a very engaging, stimulating, and curious album. It invokes thoughtfulness, creativity, peacefulness.... it's album that "takes you somewhere else". A very limited number of albums can do this, but for many, that's not its purpose. Listening to a Strokes album might just make you just "feel cool", and even make you want to smoke a cigarette or where your coolest shades or something. I am on a constant quest for music that can do what Sigur Ros can do: give you a short vacation from reality, in hopes that when you return, you will be in better form.

Here's a short list of albums that have provided escape, inspiration, a one-hour vacation:

Sigur Ros - Hvarf-Heim and Ágætis Byrjun

R.E.M. - Reveal

Joseph Arthur - Nuclear Daydream

Appleseed Cast - Two Conversations

Death Cab For Cutie - Plans and Transatlanticism

Iron and Wine - The Shepard's Dog

Neil Finn - One All

A Buzzless Year

Who's really behind all the excess of buzz that many, in my opinion, undeserving bands get? Somebody must be paying off Spin magazine to push some of the most watered-down, substance-lacking groups I've heard in years. I read music publications in hope to to get a better idea of what is out there, maybe discover a band that I might not otherwise have heard of. I usually leave mostly unsatisfied after checking out the many suggested bands, the "must-hears".

Buzz has fucked over the industry in many ways. Bands have learned to rely on it; fans have looked to it. Buzz builds up anticipation, evokes curiosity, than, more often than not, drops you and leaves you hanging there with musical frustration. Perhaps the greatest bands out there have a sense of integrity and are avoiding this thing called "buzz" and are trying to pave their own way; let the music speak for itself, let the fans do the praising, never allowing press to dictate what they will do next.

I propose a Buzzless Year. I'm not sure how this could happen... it's more of a fantasy than reality, but bare with me. Imagine this:
2009 arrives and MTV is silenced, all major music magazines are banned (except Paste perhaps) and small, music-loving indie zines and blogs take the forefront. Record labels are in a frenzy and don't know what to do with all this extra money that they used to spend on assuring that their bands get plenty of buzz in the press... we no longer have to filter through music magazines trying to find two good articles, skipping past what musicians are wearing these days, what parties they were at, countless ads, what they think the top 50 albums were... you get the drift. Small, genuine, music-appreciating publications start to get attention, than maybe we will hear honest, buzzless, non-paid-for opinions on music of all sorts - not just the "next U2", or "the saviors of rock 'n' roll". We might find our new favorite bands; bands who are working hard, making great music and not conforming to something that would give the guys at Pitchfork a boner.

We could all use a little less buzz and a little more music. The reason all the bands sound the same is because if they want a piece of the spotlight they feel they have to fit in the boxes that the press has crudely fabricated. They have to be "the next U2". The world doesn't need another U2. And please, we don't need a savior of rock n roll. We need to move forward to a future where musicians can genuinely feel the freedom to make the best possible music they can. That could end up being something completely different than what rock n roll ever was.

On Music

As i type this i'm sitting at my computer right now listening to Easy Tiger by Ryan Adams for the umpteenth time. Ryan Adams is most often criticized for not allowing himself to be edited, for putting out too much material too quickly. It's true he is incredibly prolific almost to the point of being overwhelming to a fan like myself. However amidst such calculated albums from bands like Radiohead and Coldplay i find myself listening to Ryan Adams again and again. What i hear in his music is a passion. Not a passion to reinvent himself with every album but a passion to play music with friends for friends. His sound hasn't changed significantly from his first solo outing to his latest with the exception of of the "Fuck you record label" album Rock and Roll. He has worked with different producers and even different bands over the course of his nine released solo albums(He's planning to release a box set of unreleased albums sooon) and yet every time it sounds like him. He plays and records what he feels when he feels it and it gives every recording something special whether it's Jacksonville City Nights with its traditional country feel(i recommend playing it back to back with Sweetheart of the Rodeo) or the all over the map Love is Hell.

I won't deny that Coldplay and Radiohead are great bands and i do anticipate each release. I wish that they didn't think so much about their music though. I understand the concept of putting an album out as a whole piece of art and wanting it to be perfect before the masses snatch it up, but i can't help but think that they are missing out on something. The Beatles released 12 studio albums between 1963 and 1969. How's that for prolific. What i think is missing from many major recording artists work is something that was a necessity for bands in the early 60's. It's what causes people to get interested in music in the first place - that stirring in your stomach when you hear the rhythm and the melody and the chord changes. Music should come from the gut. It's the reason i'd rather listen to old Coldplay B-sides and unrleased tracks than anything off XandY. Often B-sides are the throwaways, the point in the studio when the calculating ended and the goofing off started. People want to hear music when it's fun. An audience can always tell when a band is having a good time whether it's on a stage or a CD.

The stories i'm most excited about hearing are the ones in which an artist or band decided to keep that song that was written and recorded in an hour because the feel of the tune was undeniable. A song means something to a fan because they recognize themselves in the music. When the song finally reaches the audience after months and years of fine tuning the artist often doesn't feel it anymore. The context of the song is forgotten. I think that's why there are such general lyrics these days. The songs are meant to be for a generation to sing along with, to graduate with, to be married to. At the same time music is being stripped of it's power to the individual in favor of reaching the masses. We musicians need to be careful that our over-reaching goals for our songs don't make us forget what really matters. The power of music to make a fan want to get up and shake their ass, or shout in protest or profess their love still exists. It's still what moves people to love music, it's still what moves me.

Lord Don't Slow Me Down

Despite what the press would have you believe, Oasis is actually a very, very good band. No one has successfully made as much money posturing as the "new" Beatles as these guys have. And despite this fact, they unarguably create very catchy tunes with at least some hint of originality (even if they are becoming cliches of themselves..) . In a time when we complain that certain bands try too hard to reinvent themselves time and time again, Oasis are happy to rewrite the same song several times over.

The band has a new single and a docu-DVD coming out Oct 21st called Lord Don't Slow Me Down.

mmhmm

Good beer, good friends....seriously, what more does a guy need?

Why In Rainbows is better than HTTT even though I haven't heard it yet.

I'm going to be honest here. I'm a rabid Radiohead fan.

If the title of the new album is any indication, then I'm probably gay for Radiohead. Like any fan, I await each release with eager anticipation, and this is probably one of my most anticipated. People attach memories to historic events - as with the "where were you when such and such happened?" questions. I do that, only with Radiohead albums. I remember staying up all night on my 56k modem connection downloading a pre-release of Amnesiac. I remember sitting in Regan's car after he finished a long day at the Brewhouse, listening to an entire leaked, unmixed version of Hail to the Thief.

Recently I've come to realize the genius of HTTT. For a while I had only seen its flaws - some of the songs are based around reoccurring, monotonous progressions and a lot of the lyrics seemed somehow unfinished or obvious in their delivery. Looking at the album now though, I see HTTT as quite an accomplishment. Myxomatosis and Go to Sleep are both amazing compositions, with complicated time structures and great melodies. Perhaps the largest weakness of the album is that it is in fact not an album at all, but more or less a collection of songs. HTTT's length and strange tracklisting have always presented a challenge for me. There's songs I skip and songs I wish were shorter. There's very little about the disc that's fluid, especially in light of albums like Kid A, which demand one, solid listen all the way through. It's disjointed and unforgiving in one sense. On the other hand, HTTT taken as a kick-in-the-face rock-record works much more in favor of the disc'c challenging dynamic. The cd has more energy than a lot of the more modern works the band has done. It has attitude and energy that makes Amnesiac seem like an auditory Vallium.

With the advent of In Rainbow's release however, I think we'll soon see a new shift in Radiohead's sound and feel - perhaps not dramatic, but certainly new in many aspects. The reason I know I'm going to love this album lies partly in the fact that after having heard most of the material, my love for these new songs has only grown stronger with time. The rest is, well, my gut. And my gut never lies. Boosh.