Stuck in His Head

I've missed you

2009-05-29T05:11:00.000-07:00

If you've missed me, you can do something about it.

Read my new blog at www.davehuge.com

Follow me on Twitter @davehuge .

Love,

Dave

Interview with Roisin Murphy

2008-10-23T12:01:00.000-07:00

It's pronunced "Ro-Sheen."

She's fucking fabulous.

She's playing NYC tomorrow night and I am dying inside that I won't be there.

I talked to her for Slant. You can go read the whole interview - this is my favorite bit, though:

Slant: Any sense of what's playing on your tour bus, as it were?

RM: No, because I've been listening to lectures on my iPod.

Slant: Oh? Lectures by whom?

RM: I download economics lectures, and philosophy lectures, and sociology lectures and such. There's an American site called the Teaching Company, they have the best professors in the world making lectures for them. Y'know, downloadable audio lectures. I haven't been listening to much music honestly.

Slant: Since you're listening to a lot of philosophy, then, I'm curious what place you think pop music has in a world like ours that's so full of bad news.

RM: Well, "pop music"? I don't really separate music out into those kind of…I mean, obviously people say what I've made is pop, but I would kind of disagree. I would say that I'm more fascinated with-on this record, more with disco, house, with emotional dance music, really, than just "pop." I don't think I've ever aspired to make pop music. That doesn't interest me in any way. If it becomes popular by default that's fine. So what can pop music do? I think, very little. I think that music is a great escape for people. And my music is obsessed with night culture, which is in turn a great escape for people. I love the notion of being in a nightclub dancing beside a plumber and an electrician who knows every word of some old soul record. And they're the best person they could possibly be in that moment. They have that belief in a nightclub, you know? I find that very romantic.

A letter to family and friends in California

2008-10-22T11:29:00.000-07:00

Hi Friends and Family in California,

I'm sorry that in some cases I haven't been in touch with you in some time - I hope all is well in your lives.

I'm writing to you today to urge you to vote No on Proposition 8 on November 4th. Though most of you know that I am very opinionated about politics, I rarely make personal entreaties to friends about the causes I support. This time is different because Proposition 8 is extremely personal to me. I hope you'll hear me out, and encourage you to let me know if I can answer any questions on this subject for you.

I have lived a very lucky life. One of the most profound ways in which I am lucky is that I have two wonderful, supportive parents who are in a loving and strong marriage. And while I have not always been the most traditional person, it is certainly true that I hope one day to follow in their footsteps - to be married to the person I love.

Moreover, I hope that the young gay people of California (and elsewhere, but for our purposes, California) will soon live in a place where their love is admired and supported - where their lives and loves are equal in the eyes of the government. I believe that kids who grow up and come out in such a legal environment will be better-adjusted and more productive members of their society. And I believe that those kids will be more likely to grow up and create the sorts of stable, loving families that are the building blocks of a healthy state.

Proponents of Proposition 8 are running ads talking about how gay marriage will be taught to school children, and flaunting the fact that San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom is kind of a jerk. I hope that you and your friends will not be distracted by these tactics - and they are distractions - and will remember the fact that the question before Californians on November 4th is a matter of civil rights, and of equality under the law. Defeating Proposition 8 will not result in churches being required to conduct gay marriage. It will not change what is taught in California's schools. It will result in your neighbors and coworkers and friends, like me, being treated as equals - for the very first time - under California law.

Another way in which I am lucky is that I have been blessed to be surrounded by intelligent and passionate people - like you. I hope that on November 4th you will think of me and vote No on Proposition 8.

Thanks and love,
Dave

PS - Also, please consider donating to Equality for All's No on 8 campaign. Or consider volunteering with the same organization. Time and money are of the essence - the campaign against Proposition 8 is critically underfunded and outmanned. Your support will make a difference.

Lions and Tigers and Corporate Liberals, OH MY

2008-10-11T17:01:00.001-07:00

When Michael Barone, in his charmingly titled "The Coming Obama Thugocracy," writes:

Corporate liberals have done their share in shutting down anti-liberal speech, too. Saturday Night Live ran a spoof of the financial crisis that skewered Democrats like House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank and liberal contributors Herbert and Marion Sandler, who sold toxic-waste-filled Golden West to Wachovia Bank for $24 billion. Kind of surprising, but not for long. The tape of the broadcast disappeared from NBC’s Website and was replaced with another that omitted the references to Frank and the Sandlers. Evidently NBC and its parent, General Electric, don't want people to hear speech that attacks liberals.

He calls the rest of his argument into question, because as New York reports:

pparently, as we initially suspected, NBC's lawyers took issue with an onscreen caption that ran under the names of real-life billionaires Herbert and Marion Sandler (portrayed on SNL by Darrell Hammond and Casey Wilson): "People who should be shot." As it turns out, you're allowed to sue any late-night comedy show that advocates your murder on live television. Lesson learned!

.

Oh, National Review. You little scamps.

Thoughts on Aquemini, after 10 years

2008-09-29T10:01:00.000-07:00

It's unclear why rappers never make a big deal about living up to OutKast's legacy. Granted, Andre 3000 and Big Boi are blessedly still with us, unlike the legends most often name-checked as anxious influences. Maybe up-and-comers feel illegitimate trying to lay claim to a throne that's still ostensibly occupied. Then again, maybe the band's most defining aspect, its winning teamwork, rightly strikes young turks as essentially impossible to replicate. Nevertheless, you'd think that a few more people would mention Aquemini, released 10 years ago today, while slobbering all over Ready to Die and Illmatic. Living legends deserve some saliva too.

More on a Slant.

Live every day like it's Shark Week

2008-08-26T21:04:00.001-07:00

boyfriend: I think your debut onto the DC social scene may be [CATO Institute's] Salmonfest
me: uh.
me: will it be a faux pas to arrive dressed as a shark?
boyfriend: actually it's required, if you're not a libertarian. it represents the predation of coercive government.
me: http://www.costume-shop.com/images/products/cs107b.jpg
boy: if you buy that suit, you may wear it wherever you like
me: LIVE EVERY DAY LIKE IT'S SHARK WEEK
boy: hehe
me: wow, it is only $750
sorry baby
i want travertine coffee table more
boy: yeah, or two medium-quality actual suits
me: well i could wear the shark suit to [New Job] right? i mean, you could probably dress it down with a graphic tee or some jeans. it's really versatile. the concern would be,
what if i wear my shark suit on the same day that [New Boss] wears his shark suit?
would I be fired?
boy: hahahaha
me: Would I have to humiliatingly change out of my shark suit in the bathroom?
Alternatively, would he praise my initiative?

The world's best wedding band

2008-08-15T21:00:00.001-07:00

This is the National playing "Apartment Story," probably my favorite song on Boxer.

I saw them last Monday night and they were pretty solid. The context and stagecraft (given that they were playing Summerstage in front of an enormous photosensitive painting) was more notable than the music, generally. This song was, as might be expected, a big highlight of the set. The way it gradually rolls towards its big melodic crest and then subsides played very nicely in a crowd full of people singing discreetly along. The kids behind me thought the band could easily have stretched the song-ending breakdown out a few more minutes, which I think was correct.

I was supposed to see the concert with a good friend, but her fancy-pants consulting job called her away at the last minute and since the passes were in her name I went by myself. It wasn't the greatest move. I like seeing movies by myself, but concerts are for me much more social experiences, and I really missed the companionship. I kind of thought I might run into some people I knew but apparently I've lost track of the scene. Overall the experience made me feel like some sort of corporate ghost. Certainly the weight of leaving New York - the sense that I'm disinvesting from the social life here in preparation for moving on - weighed heavily. I did see one person, a guy I used to chat with and cadge smokes off of back when I was the youngest kid at the Dugout, but he didn't recognize me and I didn't approach.

"You get mistaken for strangers/
by your own friends/
when you pass 'em at night/
under the silvery, silvery citibank lights."

Indeed.

The Marquis St. Evremonde

2008-07-25T12:31:00.000-07:00

Noted Prince of Darkness Robert Novak ran over a pedestrian in a crosswalk in Washington DC on Wednesday. Novak, who's been noted for his "aggressive driving" in the past, was driving a black Corvette convertible and had to be confronted by a bicyclist before stopping after the accident. As it turns out, the guy he hit is an 86 year old homeless person, and contrary to initial reports indicating that he had only light injuries, he remains hospitalized (although he's now talking to reporters).

This morning I was thinking about the kind of noble scorn Novak's behavior - specifically, the serial disregard and hit-and-run aspects of his conduct - describes and the Marquis St. Evremonde came to mind. Granted it's a stretch. But there are some parallels. In A Tale of Two Cities, the Marquis St. Evremonde is, like Novak, an asshole aristocrat with great disregard for the peasantry who runs over a similarly helpless person in his chariot and nearly gets away with it.

Okay, so Novak's accident is hardly comparable to St. Evremonde's willfull attack. But hey, the parallel struck me.

Environment fearmongering I can get behind

2008-07-23T07:00:00.001-07:00

I think I like this because it comes across so strongly, initially, as the sort of ad that ends with the words, "And that's why we must drill ANWR and bomb Iran," but instead tries to sell us wind turbines. It's just such a tonal curveball (T. Boone Pickens comes off as a slightly less nutballs Ross Perot) that I think it's really effective.

Goddamned

2008-07-22T12:05:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you can tell a lot about a record by its thank-you list. Does it read like the label's org chart? Is it typed or handwritten? Are there typos? Does it, like the one included in gay troubadour Jay Brannan's debut Goddamned, begin by insisting that the artist not be held responsible for any omissions, as it was coerced "at gunpoint," before launching into a conspicuously alphabetized cascade of friends and influences?

Don't let the innocuous intro fool you: I haaaaaaaate this record. Explosions and criticisms at Slant.

Claude Von Stroke is hot

2008-07-18T10:25:00.001-07:00

This RA interview is not that thrilling, but it does contain multiple hot pictures of him and his hotness.

Also, "Chimps" is the hot shit.

Waterboarding is one thing...

2008-07-10T09:15:00.000-07:00

But being forced to listen to David Gray* is clearly torture, no?

Oh, Guantanamo. You make self-righteous musicians enforcing overly restrictive copyright laws seem downright cuddly.

According to Mother Jones, other songs on the "Torture Playlist" include:

Eminem - "White America" (Irony much?)
Eminem - "Kim" (Somehow I feel like the discomfort of this song probably transcends language barriers).
Drowning Pool - "Bodies" (At last someone acknowledges its essential truth).
Bruce Springsteen - "Born in the USA" (That this song is being used for torture makes me want to vomit with shame).
Don McLean - "American Pie" (On the other hand, this song kind of always did).
Rage Against the Machine - "Bulls on Parade" (Kind of the torture equivalent of playing "Every Breath You Take" at weddings? Zach de la Rocha's gonna be so... stoned that he won't do anything about this outrage!)
Prince - "Raspberry Beret" (I don't understand how this song could possibly torture anyone).

Argh.

*I quite like "Babylon," actually. And about that photo: those ain't Grados.

Confidential to John M.

2008-07-02T15:58:00.000-07:00

(Perhaps it's best not to remind the folks back home of the other endless moneypit unwinnable war).

Golden Age

2008-06-23T08:31:00.000-07:00

New Yorkers miss the '70s. Even many nuevo New Yorkers, the post-Giulianis, the ones who have never seen a freshly graffitied subway train or gotten mugged, the ones born in the hinterlands, the ones from the '80s—they all miss the '70s. Specifically, they miss the myth and mystique of the blasted city that was—the war zone of boundless creativity where punk and disco were born kicking and screaming, covered in leather and glitter and glory. Many transplants came to the city to touch the hem of those garments, to grasp at and maybe one day understand or perhaps even capture the city's history of artful rebellion. These are possibly laudable intentions; at the least they are deeply felt ones. So it's worth asking: Why, in the context of popular music, does this passion for historical rebellion so often translate into a sort of time-warped generic straitjacket? And why does said straitjacket feel so right?

Read the rest of my totally non-autobiographical review of Hercules & Love Affair's awesome and troublesome debut over there.

Today in great corrections

2008-06-23T08:13:00.001-07:00

Thanks, Slate.

The Devil, You + Me

2008-06-20T16:00:00.001-07:00

How best to describe disappointment? And how best to justify it? Now that beloved German laptop-indie act the Notwist has finally released a follow-up to 2002's sublime Neon Golden, what to do with all this wasted anticipation? Those of us who regard that warmly inviting record as one of the decade's best must now sadly reckon with such questions. It's not that The Devil, You + Me is particularly bad; it merely and consistently recalls the band's more emotionally satisfying earlier work, while rarely equaling or surpassing it. We waited six years for this?

Find the stunning answer to my rhetorical question on a Slant.

[Re: photo - for some reason it seems that all the mediocre records have the best covers this year].

DEY TOOK ER JUBZ!

2008-06-12T09:44:00.000-07:00

The AP reports on a timely reminder that Republicans can be protectionists too, as long as the jobs involved are sufficiently 'merican and jingoism can be part of the fun.

Web sites have sprung up opposing the deal on patriotic grounds, arguing that such an iconic U.S. firm shouldn't be handed over to foreign ownership. One of the sites, called SaveAB.com, was launched by Blunt's former chief of staff, Ed Martin.

"Shareholders should resist choosing dollars over American jobs," Martin said in a statement Wednesday night. "Selling out to the Belgians is not worth it - because this is about more than beer: it's about our jobs and our nation."

As I am a card-carrying liberal beer snob, I think it probably goes without saying that I support the sale of Anheuser-Busch to anyone, of any nationality, who knows how to make beer.

UPDATE

SaveAB.com is truly hilarious.

My Fellow Americans,

Like baseball, apple pie and ice cold beer (wrapped in a red, white and blue label), Anheuser-Busch is an American orginal. Founded in St. Louis, Missouri, AB represents the spirit of our country, giving millions of Americans "the pursuit of happiness" through its high quality products and thousands of great paying [sic] jobs. Generations of Americans have grown up loving AB products and have appreciated its commitment to our communities.

Now, our city, our state, our nation and our workers are being threatened with the loss of A-B to foreign investors.

With your help we can fight the foreign invasion of A-B.

In case you were wondering: I've been unable to substantiate the claim that ice-cold beer did not exist before America.

Your morning Kathryn Jean Lopez

2008-06-12T06:41:00.000-07:00

Kathryn Jean Lopez, usually no slouch when it comes to proving herself the stupidest person with typing skills, really outdoes herself this morning.

The whole post is enjoyably reasonably incoherent (framed as a response to something else with no linkage) but this part really goes to the heart of the NRO sputtering over Obama:

But Obama hasn't proven himself a leader (I'd give him points if he supported D.C. school choice now or met with Ward Connerly or...), just a candidate for president.

Ward Connerly used to be a University of California Regent. Aside from lacking any sort of meaningful national profile, he's most notable in this context as the right's go-to black anti-affirmative action guy. What does Ward Connerly's pet project have to do with the issues that voters consistently identify as the election's most important? (Those would be: the economy, the War, and oil and gas prices). Oh, you know, nothing. In this post, he essentially functions as KJL's byword for "Obama is a big mean liberal!" A less charitable reading might be, "Only minorities who oppose affirmative action are leaders!" Note that Connerly's granted magical powers, as Obama would get some "points" in credit towards being perceived as a leader if he would just meet with him. Perhaps if Obama curtsied to him, he'd get more points? His people may want to look into this.

UPDATE
I just noticed my second favorite part of KJL's post.

And I'll want an apology from him when he gets in and — mercifully — gets the briefings and realizing he can't and shouldn't do such a thing.

More emoting about Obamevitability from the far right, please. Kthxbai.

Scatterbrain

2008-06-10T08:27:00.000-07:00

As he'll be happy to tell you, New Orleans's Lil Wayne is the best rapper alive. He has been for some time—probably since his 2006 mixtape Dedication 2, though there's some debate on the length of his reign. Few, however, dispute the self-evident truth of his dominance. Jay-Z and Kanye West both show up on his latest album, Tha Carter III, and their appearances read like kings paying tribute. When Jay appropriates Weezy's stumblebum free-association on the resolutely kick-ass "Mr. Carter," which features a beat by Just Blaze that would be right at home on The Blueprint, it sounds like a tardy passing of the torch.

More thoughts on Lil Wayne's non-classic are just a click away.

Spiritualized Alive!

2008-06-04T09:55:00.000-07:00

Jason Pierce, the singer-songwriter responsible for Spiritualized, claims that his funereal new album was largely composed before the bout of life-threatening pneumonia he suffered in 2005. The claim sounds credible, especially because the album traffics in Pierce's typical themes: addiction, withdrawal and recovery, and agonies and ecstasies both physical and spiritual. But listening to Songs in A&E, which is named for the British equivalent of the ER, it's also sometimes hard to believe. The record's focus on matters of life and death is deepened by Pierce's felt knowledge of the subject, and the overall effect is eerily prescient. Whether you're walking toward or running away from the grave (hey, that's life), the themes Pierce addresses here will resonate.

I'm glad he lived: learn more on a Slant.

This Is Not the Future

2008-06-04T09:51:00.000-07:00

On their often charmless third full-length (their first since being dropped by their label), the Futureheads jilt subtlety in favor of balls-to-the-wall rawk. For listeners who initially found them appealing for their Wire-esque off-kilter approach to pop-punk, all the bludgeoning riffage on This Is Not the World might be a tad overwhelming. It's too bad, because the knack the band once displayed for constructing precisely modulated rave-ups was a rare one, but this record is full of bull-in-a-china-shop posturing.

Oh, Futureheads, why? More at Slant.

Today in great typos

2008-06-03T13:39:00.000-07:00

I think we can all probably agree that Obama is going to wipe the floor with McCain on fun-raising, no?

When concepts attack!

2008-06-03T12:28:00.000-07:00

The answer is no. Thanks, Slate!

The Great Satan

2008-06-02T07:59:00.000-07:00

Sometimes polls make me happy. Or, at the very least, give me hope that this country of ours hasn't completely lost its marbles.

Then I remember who is still president.

THEY HATE OUR FREEDOM!

Or maybe they just hate the cavalier attitude our Commando in Chief displays towards murdalizing them?

At least the Democrats have a can't fail shot at the presidency this cycle.

Oh wait.

Not Lost

2008-05-30T11:46:00.000-07:00

[New York Magazine's loss = Your gain!]

Hey, "Lost" fans - since you love hyper-intelligent, philosophically bent, diabolically elusive and fantastic serialized narratives so much, you probably bought Grant Morrison's "Final Crisis #1" yesterday, right?

No?

Well, if you didn't, you've missed out on the week's sub-prime opportunity to be baffled, teased and yet vaguely satisfied by a piece of storytelling. Morrison is noted by funnybook fans for his historic runs on X-Men, JLA, and Animal Man, as well as for being batshit insane. DC Comics (they publish Superman and Batman) has given him the keys to their summer "event" - a sequel, of sorts, to the company's ridiculously confusing continuity-fluxing "Crisis on Infinite Earths" and "Infinite Crisis." And if you're one of those people who finds themselves perversely thrilled by not understanding what's going on, the resulting pamphlet is an E-ticket ride.

Not for Morrison the simple pleasures offered by Marvel's "Battlestar Galactica"-aping paranoid allegory "Secret Invasion." No, "Final Crisis #1" does not feature gigantic spy satellites exploding, large groups of spandex-clad superheroes hurting each other, or a great deal of respect for last week's continuity. Instead, we get a police procedural about the death of one kind of obscure Jack Kirby character as investigated by an obscurer Kirby creation, framed by a nearly wordless, time-hopscotching flashback/forward that suggests that one of Kirby's New Gods played the role Greek mythology assigns to Prometheus. This device also implies that that the First and Last Boys on Earth (in DC's take on things) are about to get to know each other.

Morrison's single concession to the tropes of mainstream comic "events" is that one of the company's most popular characters gets murdered by a brand-new bad guy. Altogether, it's kind of a trip. No, it's not set on a desert island - but it will screw with your head.

Tracks v. Songs

2008-05-28T13:22:00.000-07:00

Dance music fans know the drill. An oddly named act arrives from nowhere or Germany with a freshly pressed slab of peaktime and suddenly it's triggering flashbacks on dance floors and headphones around the globe. The producers release an LP full of the same snap, and now they're on otherwise rockist Top 10 lists and heralded as accessible figureheads of a movement. There's a brief pause, time enough for some composure and composition, and then the same knob-twiddling favorites start making press noise about how their new record is going to feature "proper songs." Cue heads, panicking.

Watch me watching Booka Shade not fall on their faces at Slant.

Marionette

2008-05-19T19:28:00.000-07:00

Scarlett Johansson has a bit of a daddy complex. It's been obvious at least since she became Woody Allen's newest nubile muse, though you can make a strong argument for her Billy Murray-baiting performance in Lost in Translation as an early warning sign. Because her debut album, Anywhere I Lay My Head, is also a curiosity of Tom Waits covers Svengalied into existence by producer David Sitek, it fits perfectly into a psychosexual reading of her body of work as being (over?) determined by her older, hipper, maler collaborators. That it features David Bowie on background vocals is just icing on the cake.

You can find the rest of the mean things I have to say about this record at Slant.

Size Queens

2008-05-19T11:48:00.001-07:00

"It's this big."
"No, it's this big."
"Queen, your cataracts must be interfering with your depth perception. That threat don't top six inches."

In which unfounded Drudge Report speculation gives me a heart attack

2008-05-15T10:51:00.003-07:00

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

A proposition

2008-05-13T11:44:00.001-07:00

Hiccups are the cutest form of suffering.

Discuss.

What will Gossip Girl DO?

2008-05-12T10:17:00.000-07:00

On the surprisingly tepid Narrow Stairs, the sensitive indie boys of Death Cab for Cutie seem to have tired somewhat of being themselves. Perhaps the thrill has gone out of providing lushly emotional soundtracks for the nation's brokenhearted? Pity, they were excellent at it. Lead singer Ben Gibbard and guitarist/producer Chris Walla used to seem more than typically attuned to the peculiar sensations associated with young love. Here, the band only glancingly employs its felicitous ability to wrest emotional significance from the most treacly of melodies and sentiment. As it turns out, they're quite a bit less adept at Can-referencing krautrock, like the meandering lead single/stalker anthem "I Will Possess Your Heart," or Eastern-inflected statements like "Pity and Fear." And they should certainly refrain from ripping off the Beach Boys, as on the drably bouncy "You Can Do Better Than Me."

More thoughts on a Slant.

(Also, re: photo. This is clearly the best album cover of the year so far, no?)

Tell us how you really feel, New York Times

2008-05-09T12:51:00.000-07:00

Seriously though, let's all take a moment to be incredibly pleased that we do not live in Burma. The US has its issues, but they are not as life-threatening as the issues that many people worldwide face.

Keeping it bottled

2008-05-06T09:01:00.000-07:00

Matt Yglesias has been really stellar throughout the primary process. I particularly like (and agree with) his Official Prediction about the outcomes of tonight's primaries in North Carolina and Indiana. I would further like to associate myself with the general air of barely-restrained madness his tongue-stapled-to-cheek tone implies.

Fight the Power

2008-05-06T07:57:00.000-07:00

The final track on the Roots' latest full-length, Rising Down, is conspicuously cheerful. "Rising Up" features the '70s-funk synth pads and super-solid Tropicalia rhythm section you might expect from the first track on a Kanye West record. In the album's only nod to jazziness, it also includes a raspy hook sung by newcomer Chrisette Michele that tells a familiar story: "Yesterday I saw a b-girl crying/I walked up and asked 'What's wrong?'/She told me the radio's been playing the same song all day long." On past Roots records, this kind of lyric might have read as a typical don't-call-me-a-backpacker plaint about homogenized airwaves. Here, though, it comes across as something more. "Rising Up" is a sucker punch of sweetness and light that punctuates the most urgently malevolent modern funk record the band has assembled to date. And after 40 minutes of unrelenting doom, a lyric about repetition on the radio doesn't have to stretch too far to conjure the specter of Radio Raheem.

Who is Radio Raheem? Only Slant knows.

Late to the Party: Bat For Lashes - What's a Girl to Do?

2008-04-29T20:22:00.001-07:00

Bat for Lashes is pretty.

This song and video both remind me heavily of Donnie Darko, in the best way.

Space time continuum

2008-04-28T20:04:00.000-07:00

The first thing that consumers ought to know about British soul technician Jamie Lidell's second full-length solo record, Jim, is that it was, indeed, created in the 21st century. Although its production, arrangements, vocal approaches, and songwriting all variously and completely resemble that of any given classic American '70s soul record, it was in fact created last year, in locations including Berlin and Paris. Aside from the album itself, there is no hard evidence that Lidell is now, or has ever been, in possession of any kind of device enabling time travel. Consumers may also wish to note that there's no evidence to indicate that Lidell is anything other than a white boy, despite the Redding/Green oomph his voice displays throughout this album. Jim's eyes are blue, and his soul is blue-eyed. A pasty Limey hasn't channeled black America this successfully since, um, Amy Winehouse.

How is Jamie Lidell not like Amy Winehouse? Read on, dear, for the answer.

Don't blink

2008-04-22T12:52:00.000-07:00

Canadian yelpers Tokyo Police Club map out the crucial difference between cursory and terse on their debut full length, Elephant Shell. The whole shebang clocks in at several minutes shy of half an hour, and it might seem cheap if its brevity wasn't so full of wit. These songs are as complex as they are short, and they're riddled with well-conceived zigs and zags. The first six, in particular, whiz past as a paradoxically memorable blur of sharp guitar figures and precision-cut rhythms. The album's first half is so tight that it's difficult to parse; even after dozens of spins, every song sounds like a single. Actual singles "In a Cave" and "Tessellate" feature wry keening and densely knotted melodies, just like the songs at their shoulders; "Juno" distinguishes itself with a slower pace and some mordantly tense piano chords, but its effect is no more or less incisive.

Whoo alright yeah uh huh.

A grounded galaxy

2008-04-15T11:00:00.000-07:00

The artwork for M83's excellent fifth album, Saturdays=Youth, features photos of sun-dappled teenagers trying on a half-dozen varieties of rebellious Caucasian beauty. The girl in the picture paired with the lyrics for lead single and album standout "Graveyard Girl" is a dead ringer for Molly Ringwald circa Pretty in Pink. The photo provides support to M83 auteur Anthony Gonzalez's description of the song as a tribute to John Hughes movies—support that comes across as slightly gauche, since the song is perfectly capable of speaking for itself. An ode to the precocious self-involvement of that sweetly storied stereotype, the goth chick, it's awash with post-punky electric guitars and a curiously not irritating children's choir cooing "yeah yeah yeah" at the edge of the mix. It's the kind of work strong enough to be bolstered by a breakdown featuring a female voiceover that concludes, "I'm 15 years old and I feel it's already too late to live. Don't you?" And it's certainly the most typically, successfully pop moment this difficult, often transcendent act has ever produced.

More thoughts here.

Fun with Household Products

2008-04-12T10:39:00.001-07:00

There are only a few different types of songs on Crystal Castles' intermittently exciting self-titled debut. For fun, and in honor of the fact that the band's unique sound is derived from a synthesizer into which they installed an Atari 5200 chip, let's classify these song types with names that relate to some of modern teenagers' favorite timewasters: Wii, Xbox, and Huffing Paint Thinner.

Enjoy the rest of this extended metaphor over here.

Stockholm Syndrome Strikes the Antipodes

2008-04-12T10:35:00.000-07:00

It's been four years, one Fabriclive mix, a half-dozen singles, and countless remixes since Cut Copy released their debut, Bright Like Neon Love, and frankly, it actually does seem like it's been that long. Given the Aussie trio's strange and ongoing omnipresence in hipster dance circles, it's almost surprising that they're only on their second full length. In Ghost Colours finds them teamed up to shake some skinny asses with the less famous half of storied production team the DFA, Tim Goldsworthy. Given each party's previous output, it seems like a match made in heaven, or maybe Studio B. Sadly, the end result rates just a few bars above a prototypical sophomore slump: overproduced and underwritten, with tons of sonic experiments that don't pan out satisfactorily, and which contrast glaringly with the few isolated glorious moments of the sort that made people pay attention in the first place.

Yo, Slant Magazine Raps.

Magpies win

2008-04-03T14:43:00.000-07:00

By reveling in pastiche, London electronic duo Groove Armada lives up to expectations on their fifth studio album, Soundboy Rock, and exceeds them by genre-hopping and idea-grabbing so effectively that the overall effect is occasionally transcendent. The group is no longer the poor man's Fatboy Slim or the pensioner's Jaxx. The music they make isn't ambitious enough for such comparisons, and they are not, and never will be, groundbreaking formal experimenters. Instead, they are exceedingly competent craftsmen, and here they demonstrate that they're capable of channeling convincing, if not very inspiring, takes on a baker's dozen of dance music genres and trends in quick and dirty succession. In a way, they're best compared to the session vocalists who sing most of the hooks on this record: reliable and relatively anonymous. No notes are out of place, and few choices glare as mistakes, though the exclamation of "Funk you too!" on the otherwise reasonably funky single "The Girls Say" might qualify. There's also very little to set the soul ablaze, though "Lightsonic," which adheres to the reggae vocals and sweeping electro-house synth-rush formula the group established with their 2001 hit "Superstylin," is a standout. The death-defying verve with which it defies the law of diminishing returns is, in its subtle way, astonishing.

Over here, ladies and germs.

The soft bigotry of low expectations

2008-03-25T09:20:00.001-07:00

The press kit for the B-52s' first album in 16 years depressingly mentions LCD Soundsystem, the Rapture, and the Killers as sonic touchstones. It's kind of gauche that Astralwerks feels the need to compare a long-awaited record by veteran hitmakers to a bunch of young turks who, shiny and exciting though they are, have not yet proven that they're capable of anything as pop-redefining as the Dadaist wedding staple "Rock Lobster." Sure, "Mr. Brightside" is a great song, but it probably won't be rocking bar mitzvahs 30 years from now.

You can find additional thoughts about the B-52s' boring yet peppy Funplex on the same bat channel.

Ice princess

2008-03-25T09:18:00.001-07:00

I wonder if Kelley Polar likes figure skating. The sport speaks to the kind of challenges he seems interested in—the technically agile, flamboyant, self-consciously eccentric kind. To extend the metaphor, it's possible to view his second album, I Need You to Hold on While the Sky Is Falling, as a most respectable, but ultimately unstuck, sort of musical quadruple salchow. In figure skating's weighted scoring system, it's conventional to give someone who attempts a really difficult, interesting new trick some extra credit. Let's give it some points for trying anyway, shall we?

The rest of my review of Kelley Polar's delightfully weird second record is just a triple loop away.

Beware the company you reside in

2008-03-25T08:53:00.000-07:00

About halfway through "My Favorite Year," the gentle anthem at the emotional heart of Canadian singer-songwriter Dan Bejar's predictably strong ninth album as Destroyer, he abruptly shifts gears, briefly abandoning the song's gradual climb toward tremulous guitar-pedaled bliss for a moment of punk. "Beware the company you reside in," he barks eight times over a muffled yet discordant riff before the drums kick in and he steers back toward the stratosphere. In an interview given to New York Magazine, Bejar characterized this moment as "a pretty obvious part of the song to hate." It also happens to encapsulate all of the essential excellence of the Destroyer project, typifying Bejar's historical willingness to irritate or offend his audience to a productive end. In context, the gambit initially seems bratty and provocative, the lyric's obtuseness amplified by the abruptness of the shift as well by the fact that it's over so quickly. Repeat listens reveal that it's the cornerstone of the song—the complicating facet that makes something otherwise perfect into something unique.

Th rest of my review of Trouble in Dreams is over here.

I went to SXSW

2008-03-18T08:53:00.000-07:00

It was pretty fucking awesome.

I wrote about it for Slant! Post one deals with Friday, and post two deals with Saturday.

Sunday and Monday summed up in one sentence each, respectively: Hangovers are worse in motels. Austin is not a walkable city, but its airport has excellent BBQ.

(Not) Selling the Drama

2008-03-04T07:39:00.001-08:00

Mark Lanegan and Greg Dulli, the caterwauling former frontmen of Screaming Trees and the Afghan Whigs, respectively, have both earned a good measure of maturity. Now that they're at least 10 years past their prime, you can hear hard living and the burden of experience in their voices: Lanegan's has taken on some of Tom Waits's nicotine snarl, and Dulli's soulful quiver stumbles off-key a bit more than it did when he was supposed to be the next big thing. Their long-anticipated collaboration might have been an intriguing document about the second acts of America's alt-rock elder statesmen; judging from the album's fairly unrelentingly doomy compositions, they probably have some (not altogether surprising) things to say on the topic. Unfortunately, though, Saturnalia raises the question: At what point does one cease sounding mature and start sounding old?

The rest of my review of the Gutter Twins' Saturnalia is just a hop, skip, and a jump away.

Then We Came to the End

2008-02-26T07:03:00.000-08:00

It is the nature of parties to end. The keg gets tapped, the speakers bust, the drugs run out, the girlfriend calls, the cops show up, the market crashes — it doesn't matter how. Sooner or later, the festivities come to a close. And usually, at least a few revelers are left to survey the wreckage and pick up the pieces in the cold light of day. If they're lucky, either it was worth remembering or they can't remember a thing.

The rest of my review of Goldfrapp's Seventh Tree is over here.

Grandmas and gold lame

2008-02-20T09:49:00.000-08:00

Aging gracefully is hard work, especially for international mega pop stars. Just because Madonna makes it look easy does not make it so. The tension between artistic choices that flatter a star's abilities and history and ones that help them remain creatively vital and contemporary is pronounced. Kylie Minogue has historically performed better on this score than most — taking time off in the '90s to do some legitimately strange, commercially unfriendly yet fantastic work before returning to form and breaking America with shiny robotic disco was commendable — but her 10th album represents a bit of a misstep. Of course, since the dame turns 40 this year and was just awarded an O.B.E., and since this record is her first since a scary and public battle with breast cancer, audiences should probably cut her some slack. And provided you're capable of looking past the fact that some of the new crazy sounds of today look about as good on her as a gold lame tube top looks on your grandma, this record is plenty likeable.

The rest of my review of Kylie Minogue's X is yonder.

Sweaters

2008-02-20T09:47:00.001-08:00

Let's be clear: John Darnielle (essentially, the Mountain Goat) is a monstrously talented guy, and his prolific output and willingness to revisit past themes are unquestionable virtues, at least for those (like this critic) who enjoy his skewed perspective. There are few lyricists working today who have anything approaching his facility with a phrase, and since his Dylan-at-Newport lo-fi apostasy in 2002, he's gotten a lot more adept at translating his compositions in the studio. Taken on its own merits, Heretic Pride is a success, anchored by some surprisingly assertive rock moments (the awesomely angular "Lovecraft in Brooklyn") and featuring all the hyper-literate nasal passion we've come to expect. Some people would kill to make this record, and if it came from an artist who hadn't already recorded eight jillion variations on this sound, it wouldn't bring to mind the old, worn, incredibly comfortable sweater that you no longer wear but keep around for nostalgia's sake. But it does.

The rest of my (actually rather brief) review of the Mountain Goats' Heretic Pride is over here.

The poles of grace and squalor

2008-02-11T08:55:00.000-08:00

It's possible to take the title of British Sea Power's latest LP, Do You Like Rock Music?, as a sort of veiled threat: "Well do ya, punk?" seems like a natural subtitle, and not without reason. The loud Brighton foursome have always known their way around a chivalrous intimation of violence, as exemplified by the lyric, "I wrote elegiac stanzas for you/I hope and pray that they come true," from their last record. Similarly, their music charts a course between the poles of grace and squalor—an intricate tonal balance that pays off most satisfyingly on this, their most complex and accomplished album.

Go here to read more.

Coke-bottle glasses, calculus, and Prince

2008-02-05T09:06:00.000-08:00

English dance-rockers Hot Chip have always seemed like the kind of nice boys who you might feel comfortable bringing home to Mom, provided that your mom likes coke-bottle glasses, calculus, and Prince. Sure, the title track of their breakthrough album, The Warning, suggested that "Hot Chip will break your legs/Snap off your head," but the song was so coy and burbly that it never really sounded threatening, evoking a nerd's under-breath schoolyard mutterings more than actual violence. Made in the Dark, on the other hand, means its menace.

You can read the rest of my review of Hot Chip's excellent Made in the Dark at Slant Magazine.

An epically distracted pigeon rising from the ashes

2008-01-28T09:29:00.000-08:00

Given the decidedly pharmaceutical bent of the Mars Volta's output (their first two full-lengths were both concept albums inspired by the separate overdose deaths of two of the band's associates), it's a wonder that no one at their record label has tried to slip them some Adderall. Alternatively, maybe they're just taking wayyy too much of America's favorite amphetamine. In either case, the song remains the same: If any band ever cried out for focus, blessed focus, it's this one. The differences between the Mars Volta and its magesterial, seminal predecessor, At the Drive-In, from whose ashes they rose like some sort of epically distracted pigeon, have been documented to death, but that doesn't make them easier to get past. It's no longer news that where ATDI rocked, Mars Volta wanks, but that's no reason to stop with the ridicule.

You can read the rest of my review of The Mars Volta's The Bedlam in Goliath at Slant Magazine.

Worn-in, comfortable blues

2008-01-22T08:34:00.000-08:00

The one criticism that might be accurately leveled at Chan Marshall's second album of covers (after 2000's Covers Record) is that it's just a bit too well put together; the arrangements are coy and crisp, the productions are by measures spare and lush in a way that makes contextual sense, and the song choices, from classics like Joni Mitchell's "Blue" and Sinatra's "New York, New York" to also-rans drawn mostly from country and soul, are all pitched perfectly down the center of Marshall's vocal strike zone, allowing her to strut through these brief versions in full consciousness of command. There's little sense of the strain and struggle that are at the heart of the songs' general concern with longing and loss, which makes the collection seem a little too Starbucks-ready for uncomplicated appreciation. Nic Harcourt will likely play the ever-loving crap out of this record, which is either a blessing or a curse depending on your perspective.

You can read the rest of my review of Cat Power's Jukebox at Slant Magazine.

Warm chameleons and rigid threats

2008-01-16T08:37:00.000-08:00

One of the most curious things about the commodification of art, music in particular, is the way in which certain kinds of sounds are assigned utility, cast in the role of aural furniture to accomplish mental décor. To wit: elevator music, "lite" radio, and, y'know, atmospheric British street music, which is best known in America as the perfect beats to boutique by. Though it would probably pain him to no end, enigmatic dubstep producer Burial (he's still otherwise anonymous—paging Banksy) fits comfortably into the tradition established by his fellow moody, drum-machine-wielding countrymen like Tricky and Geoff Barrow of Portishead.

The rest of my review of Burial's difficult and excellent record Untrue can be found at Slant Magazine.

Ferraris on cruise control

2008-01-14T14:15:00.000-08:00

About halfway through Ghostface Killah's latest album, rap's most loved mad culinary professional takes a most earned moment to reflect on his place in the zeitgeist by throwing himself a party. Framed as it is by the ambient noises of red-carpet door policy enforcement ("You guys smell like weed, forget it" being a notable sample) and featuring Ghostface in the guise of an awards-show host spieling off a list of the current stars of contemporary black music, pausing for witty commercial breaks instead of choruses, "White Linen Affair (Toney Awards)" is marvelous fun — and a nifty metatextual trick as well.

The rest of my take on Ghostface Killah's The Big Doe Rehab can be found at Slant Magazine.

A place to bury memories

2007-12-18T18:03:00.000-08:00

Remember A Place to Bury Strangers? The (nigh-unlistenable) Brooklyn noise-rock/JAMC-tribute/guitar-pedal-marketing group that got incredibly fawning coverage from Pitchfork all summer and fall (to the point of being covered an incredible fifteen times for one single and the LP it's on)? The album that Nick Sylvester memorably called a "songless one-trick turd"?

Well, the results are in - the Pitchfork year-end lists are, that is - and the band is nowhere to be found. They didn't place anywhere - not in the singles, not in the albums, and not even in Ryan Schreiber's or Marc Hogan's individual lists, despite the fact that Schreiber and Hogan were the band's main boosters at the site. The record got an 8.4 from Hogan and didn't place in his top 25 for the year? Seriously?

WTF?

Some of that old pharmaceutical majesty

2007-12-11T20:54:00.000-08:00

Do we need the Wu-Tang Clan? In August, Clan sensei RZA begged the question with a self-justifying statement promising that the Wu's fifth studio album, 8 Diagrams, would "revive the spirit and the economics and bring in a wave of energy that has lately disappeared," thus saving hip-hop. Provocatively, he also asked a question that gave 8 Diagrams a heavy burden to bear: "How could hip-hop be dead if Wu Tang is forever?"

You can find the rest of my review of Wu-Tang Clan's 8 Diagrams at Slant Magazine.

Touched

2007-12-11T07:06:00.000-08:00

At last, the Times reports on the real problem that defines today's GOP. What voter doesn't love a good grope?

UPDATE: You know when you think of the necessary comeback six hours later?

Anyway, this is the reason why Arnold Schwarzenegger really needs to get into this race.

DJ Dave Huge is Large & In Charge

2007-12-07T09:55:00.001-08:00

In honor of my gig tonight at The Pull Out Method, here's a Simon Reynolds-esque post about my feelings:

Feeling:
Zoot Woman - "Gem"
Feist - 1234 (Vanshe Technologic Mix)
Chromeo - "Tenderoni" (MSTRKRFT RMX)
The Sounds - "Much Too Long"
Bloc Party - "Flux"

Really Feeling:
Calvin Harris - "Acceptable in the 80s" and "The Girls"
Matt Pond PA - "Emblems"
Phil Collins - "Invisible Touch"

Really Really Feeling:
Daft Punk - "Television Rules the Nation/Crescendolls (Live)," and Alive 2007 generally. Obviously.
Muscles - "Sweaty"
Gui Boratto - "Matroyshka"

Not Feeling:
Kylie - X

Hurting My Feelings:
Supermayer
The Bush Administration. (Obviously).

Oooooh, Shiny

2007-12-07T09:03:00.000-08:00

Pitchfork kicks off its year-end coverage with a gallery of photos of all their favorites. Even though photos like this one of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs would look a lot nicer in a big glossy print magazine, they're still pretty, so go look.

Grammys = Death

2007-12-06T11:50:00.000-08:00

And so the silly season is once again upon us. Unfortunately, though unsurprisingly, the Grammys have not decided to stop being monumentally idiotic in honor of their 50th Awards program.

It's really a struggle to determine the one thing that most drives me up the wall about the Grammys. There's so much wrong with them that it boggles the mind, while at the same time confirming the fact that the music industry is dying a self-imposed, long-deserved death. Is it their inability to accurately define and enforce their regimented genre definitions, as exemplified this year by Beck's nomination in the "Solo Rock Vocal" category, instead of the "Alternative" category in which he would seemingly clearly belong, as well as by (reggae/hip-hop/Pop-with-a-capital-P artist's) Lily Allen's inclusion in the "Best Alternative Music Album"?

Is it their ever-predictable nomination of musicians who released their best work decades and decades ago to a deafening orchestra of awards-show crickets, as in the case of Herbie Hancock, nominated for Album of the Year for his album of Joni Mitchell covers? (One imagines the voters positively slavering over the opportunity for a twofer on that one).

Is it the show's basic inability to understand that musicians who have only recently established a mass-market public identity, such as Feist and Amy Winehouse, are not necessarily "New Artists?" (Both are nominated in the category this year.)

After much deliberation and hand-wringing, I think that the worst thing about the Grammys is the fact that albums and songs that are generally critically accepted to be awful, or at best mediocre, get nominated for what seems like no reason save that the artist's name won't make television viewers go "Huh?" See: Daughtry's "It's Not Over" being nominated for Best Rock Performance and Best Rock Song. The Chemical Brothers' "We Are the Night" being nominated for Best Dance Album. The Shins' "Wincing the Night Away" being nominated for best Alternative Album. For this reason, the Grammys are what the Oscars would be like if Spider-Man 3 were to be nominated for Best Picture. Every year. It's enough to make you wish to be deaf.

The boy with the dulcet foghorn

2007-12-04T20:15:00.000-08:00

Many gay men of the Stonewall generation worshiped the ground Judy Garland walked on, fully aware of the fact that it was littered with empty prescription bottles. Garland—perhaps the very first human being to transmogrify into pure camp before an adoring and judgmental public, though clearly not the last—became an icon through her indomitableness, her boozy courage in decline, and her occasional grace under duress. The queens who took note of this quality, and who nourished it through ritual and oral tradition, are the people we have to thank for the canonization of Garland's superb 1964 document Judy at Carnegie Hall. Who else could have kept it on the pop charts for 95 weeks even while its star self-destructed?

It's also fair to credit these fore-fairies with inspiring the winkingly reverent, every-note-in-place, song-for-song celebration of Garland's original that Rufus Wainwright—himself no stranger to the tempests and temptations of celebrity—presented to sold-out madhouses of gay glitterati at Carnegie Hall this summer...

You can find the rest of my review of Rufus Does Judy at Carnegie Hall at Slant Magazine.

My Daemon's a tiger. Grrr.

2007-12-03T08:15:00.000-08:00

So The Golden Compass is pretty disappointing. I have been reading the books in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials saga recently (I still haven't started Amber Spyglass, so don't spoil nothin), and have quite enjoyed them. Frankly, anything William Donohue hates, I love. However, the film is a (nice to look at) trainwreck. While the casting is mostly awesome (Nicole Kidman is perfect as Mrs. Coulter, and the girl who plays the main character Lyra is full of spunk and verve, as she should be) and the look of the movie is really densely imagined and faithful to the books, the script is a piece of horrible dreck. The dialogue goes mostly like this:

"Exposition exposition exposition."
"But no! Exposition exposition!"
"Fine. Exposition exposition exposition exposition. Clunky stupid platitude. Our target demographic is retarded."

One of the best things about the book is how densely plotted it is, as well as how the incidents all flow together in a logical and forward-rushing way. The movie scraps all of that, so that major events that actually make sense in the book are completely unexplained coincidences. It's really too bad - although given the relative unlikelihood of the film being a business success, I guess it's nice that the filmmakers won't have the opportunity to muck up the other ones.

In any case, my Daemon (in the world of the books, peoples' souls are embodied as animal companions) is a friggin Tiger. Take that!

Dirty Sexy Brian

2007-11-28T20:06:00.000-08:00

"Dirty Sexy Money" chronicles the life and times of the exorbitantly eccentric American Royals the Darlings, and their as-yet-briefly suffering attorney Nick George, and it's my favorite new show of the season. Frankly, it's outpacing most television as far as I can tell. I especially loathe and enjoy Brian, the middle Darling, a minister who has spent much of this season trying to convince his wife that his extramaritally-sired son was an orphan from Sweden.

Tonight, Brian had a very heavy conversation with Nick (Peter Krause), who found him in a church. Their relationship is pretty complicated and I don't want to ruin it for anyone. Suffice it to say that Brian is predictably a dick and Nick George calls him on it, to which Brian responds by asking Nick to sit with him, like so:

This is what church is for…dragging the ruined past through the messy present into the perfect future, and ruining it together.

It just got picked up for the full season. Definitely worth your time. (If the rest of the season happens).

Slanted & Enchanted

2007-11-27T13:54:00.000-08:00

So I'm now a contributing writer for Slant Magazine. Click the link to see the first review I wrote for them. Also, check them out generally - a very interesting cultural magazine with an intellectual vibe.

The Village discovers Costco

2007-11-25T21:08:00.000-08:00

A number of the liberal bloggers I read (Atrios and Digby, primarily) use the term "The Village" to describe Beltway DC insularity in an unflattering way. This New York Times article illustrates this issue in a way that makes my skin crawl:

Ms. Baldrige said she saw no problem shopping for dinner parties at Costco.

“I would say bully for you, get the best deal you can,” she said. “Just don’t make that the main topic of conversation. Know a little bit about foreign affairs as well as how Costco is doing. Be able to be a little more scintillating other than being able to discuss the cost of your food.”

I guess it's nice to know that people involved in government are cost-conscious. But really, New York Times? Meanwhile, Rome burns.

Manhattan is No Country for Men with Canes

2007-11-25T17:06:00.000-08:00

The boyfriend and I went on an adventure to see "No Country for Old Men" last night. I fractured my upper tibia playing soccer about six weeks ago, so I'm trying to stay off it as much as possible. We reasoned that taking a Zipcar to Long Island would require less walking from me. Actually, since we ended up having to take a Zipcar from Manhattan (as our car was not returned by the previous user on-time) it was actually not more convenient. But we did get to go frolic in the wilds of Long Island. So much hair gel.

The movie is kind of good. Not quite the world-destroying masterpiece it's been sold as, sadly. Javier Bardem is definitely just as scary and psychopathic and flippant as advertised. And the action sequences and charitable offerings to thriller pacing are all spot-on. One scene, which dials up the pressure on our hero relentlessly, both sonically and visually (the nigh-unrecognizable Josh Brolin cuts the lights and then hears the beep of an approaching transponder, and then the hunt is on), is particularly stunning. The photography is uniformly beautiful, and it's definitely a tighter-edited document than most of the stuff out there (including slack Coen offerings like "The Man Who Wasn't There.")

Sadly, though, the whole enterprise gets bogged down by Tommy Lee Jones' character's faux-meaningful, arthouse-Serious and Mature critique narrative. Jones plays the lawman whose pursuit of Bardem and Brolin offers audiences a perspective through which they can feel morally and intellectually elevated as bystanders to murder. I think I prefer my exploitation less leavened.

I think I finally understand New Rave

2007-11-20T11:32:00.001-08:00

Turn up your speakers for "Sweaty" by Muscles.

When people started throwing the term "New Rave" around, this is what I was expecting. Things that were neon and helium and punkily obnoxious. The vocal tracks here are just about as annoying/wonderful as the lyric "Peace Love Ecstasy/Unity Respect," and when the very very French Touch synth line ricochets between the discopunk bass and Balearic drums at the end, it's very nearly the best thing 2007 has on offer. Blog house can basically pack up and go home now.

Pity the video plotzes all over the place, though.

No alarms and no surprises, please

2007-11-19T13:29:00.000-08:00

I guess it's not shocking, per se, that the bids for the West Side Yards redevelopment all remind me of Stuyvesant Town. Granted, the build quality on the structures looks like it will be quite a bit nicer, but the anti-street-grid development model still sucks. Le Corbusier strikes again, et al. It's not shocking. But it's definitely sad. As a commenter on Curbed noted,

"The thing that gives new york , and most great cities, thier character is the street.im really happy all of these designs chose to ignore that and go with the tower in the park idea that has been so successful in the past."

Phooey. At least the bids give my friend Katie Lorah the opportunity to make snarky comments as the voice of Friends of the High Line.

What a world, what a world.

2007-11-19T11:09:00.000-08:00

Tom Tomorrow really nails it on torture. Happy Thanksgiving, ya'll.

Delicious

2007-11-13T22:14:00.001-08:00

Renders words useless.

I need new pants

2007-11-12T09:06:00.001-08:00

I would apologize for posting about Radiohead twice in a row, but isn't that what blogs are for? Anyway, my favoritest band did their level best to ruin my wardrobe this weekend by performing a cover of one of the best songs by one of my other favoritest bands, The Smiths. Thom Yorke starts everything off with a kind of bad Morrissey impression, but by the time he works around to the closing yelps that (bizarrely) are some of my favorite Moz lyrics, he's doing something new and particular to him. Otherwise, the cover is reverently faithful - genuflective, even. I can't say that I object; this is so up my alley that I find the lack of applause at the end physically jarring.

(PS - If you ever want to render my boyfriend completely and utterly powerless, play this version of this song and watch him curl up in agony. It's like his version of Kryptonite).

The Pot of Gold at the end of In Rainbows

2007-11-07T08:33:00.000-08:00

I haven’t blogged at all about Radiohead’s new record In Rainbows because plenty of other people have done me the courtesy of exploding all over it. (For the record: no, I don’t think it’s their best work, although yes, I do like it quite a bit. It’s a little easy-listening for my taste, generally. I also don’t understand the allegations that it’s a return to accessibility for them, but I am perhaps not a good judge of music’s accessibility).

Anyway. Now that all that critical reception is out of the way, I want to talk a bit about the article that Drudge has up about it now. You know, the one that’s headlined “Most Fans Paid $0 for Radiohead Album.” (If that isn’t a headline custom-designed for Drudge, I’ve never seen one. If the article were biased in the other direction, the headline would be “Radiohead Pocket 100% of Profits From Album”).

Putting aside the fact that I’ve never heard of the company (comScore) responsible for the press release that was clearly gobbled up and regurgitated by the AP, the story leaves a lot of the critical questions about the album’s release (and its success or failure) unanswered.

For example: It’s pretty difficult to do any real calculations from the numbers in the article to determine a rough idea of how much money Radiohead made from sales of the record (which is the real relevant question underlying this whole discussion, which nevertheless goes unasked here), because the study doesn’t say what portion of the 1.2 million people who visited the website actually purchased it. It also, for what it’s worth, does not provide a margin of error. Other reports have calculated that 1.2 million people actually downloaded the record in the first month; since Radiohead is not talking, it’s at this point impossible to say what proportion of that number is actually correct. (That being said, if you lowball it and estimate that 50% of visitors did in fact download In Rainbows, that means that 600,000 people got the record in the first month, which is about twice as many people as bought Hail to the Thief during its crucial first week). It’s probably also worth mentioning that artist royalties for major label releases are generally acknowledged to hover around $1-2 per unit shifted, although the article does not do so.

An aside: Let’s assume that of the 600,000 assumed downloads, 300,000 of them are to American consumers. Keeping the article’s numbers, if 40% of the American downloaders paid an average of $8.00 for the record, then Radiohead made $960,000 on first-month album sales. Compare this to $450,000 - $600,000 in probable first-week earnings on Hail to the Thief, and then remember that this doesn’t include the $82 discbox that probably moved in decent numbers too, as well as the fact that the band didn’t have to jockey with a label at all. Seems like a great deal for the band to me, even with numbers that I think will probably be proven to be conservative.

The other major flaw with the reasoning in the AP article is that it fails to actually reckon with the nature of the release. Other reports to the contrary, it’s really not fair to think of the digital release of In Rainbows as directly analagous to the retail release of their other records, since the band will (in direct contradiction of the article) release the album on CD on a major label sometime soon. I think that it’s much more accurate to perceive the digital release as a band-sanctioned leak that cannily allowed them to profit from the initial pre-physical-artifact-release downloads that are a real part of how the music business works now. (Another alternate headline: "Most Fans Pay $0 For Albums"). As Radiohead’s spokesman says here, the band is really thinking of this as a promotional stunt - a way of whetting appetites for the retail-purchased object. In my view, Radiohead have essentially acknowledged that digital previewing of recorded music is now the industry standard, at least amongst the tech-savvy consumers who are probably a majority of their fan-base, and made their bid to get in on that action.

This is all conjecture at this point. Since there aren’t any real institutions analagous to or as reliable as Soundscan set up to guage sales of this sort, and since Radiohead is keeping mum (for now), it’s going to continue to be unclear whether this release was a business success in itself. Furthermore, it will not be clear whether the release was a good promotional gambit until the actual compact disc has been in stores for a few weeks. In any case, I doubt that the band much cares - with the album in a safe perch as the second-best-reviewed record of the year and plans for a tour in 2008 (where bands historically make all their profits anyway) underway, I imagine they’re counting their blessings instead of their ducats.

If this doesn't melt your brain...

2007-11-03T16:49:00.000-07:00

...perhaps you should check to make sure that you still have one.

Wide Stance

2007-10-04T13:51:00.000-07:00

*

I'd say that some gay graphic designer is playing a cruel trick on the Republicans here, but the fact of the matter is that this is much too amateurish to have been made by a gay.

*Totally Real.

Probably the coolest thing ever

2007-09-19T06:35:00.000-07:00

CLICK TO EMBIGGEN/START.

Peter Parker is a whiny bitch

2007-09-18T20:14:00.000-07:00

"Hi, Peter Parker? Yeah, hi, it's me, Dave."
"Hi Dave. Uh, what's up?"
"Well, Peter, I have been thinking. I know that your life is really hard and stuff, but I think that you might be less poor and broke and unhappy all the time if you used your awesome super-powers to hold down a job other than 'cub photographer for newspaper run by raving lunatic who hates my alter-ego.' Or at least joined the paying Avengers."
"But that runs entirely counter to all of my principles. When my uncle died I realized that with great power comes great responsibility, which is why I live my life in service to community, science, and family."
"Which is why you're constantly unhappy."
"My happiness is unimportant."
"Oh, I beg to differ my friend - "
"Besides, I am happy! I love being a scientist. I get to fuck Mary Jane Parker. My Aunt May is much less boring than she is in the movies. Well, okay, not *much* less boring. But she's pretty cool for an old broad."
"And your best friend, who happens to be the son of your greatest enemy (who killed your first, kind of hotter girlfriend, if only because she was pre-JMS less slutty) went crazy and became your fifth or sixth worst enemy. And then your new best friend (who might be a Skrull) turned out to be a megalomaniacal "futurist" who decided for mostly incoherent reasons that a superhero registration program was totally not fascist, and then convinced you to give up your heretofore precious secret identity. Which led to your still totally boring Aunt getting shot. Wow."
"You know, I'm beginning to wonder what the point is of listening to you go on and on about how crappy my life is, Dave."
"Well, that isn't how I meant for this to go. I meant to let you know that you should cheer up. That your life isn't actually as bad as it seems. But you know what?"
"What, Dave?"
"You do actually totally need a reboot."
*Click*

I am a pretty bad person

2007-09-18T08:18:00.001-07:00

Because I think that it is kind of hilarious that Robert Jordan died before finishing The Wheel of Time.

For those of who are not really into fantasy books, The Wheel of Time is a really long series of books (so far there are 11 in the actual series, averaging something like 700 pages each of harder-than-Harry-Potter prose, and a few side projects) about dragons and knights and magic and shit. I haven't actually read any of them, but I know people who have. My first boyfriend had actually read all of them, as I recall. I bet he's pretty sad today, because Robert Jordan died well before finishing up the 12th book (which was supposed to have been the final one - even if it had to be 1500 pages long, he claimed).

Like I said: I'm a bad person. But I have actually long wondered what would happen to the pure geeks of the world if Jordan never got around to finishing the series (which, not so incidentally, kind of reeked of a shell game to me - "Sure guys, I promise this will have an ending. Really, totally! Just wait for the next book"). I guess now we will find out.

RIP Robert Jordan. I bet a lot of people are hoping that members of your family (to whom you allegedly disclosed the ending before your death) are passable writers.

I'm going to hell.

The science of sleep

2007-09-17T07:41:00.000-07:00

I'm really tired today. Like bleary, feel like I took speed yesterday and spent all night chewing on filters tired. Which is weird. Because I didn't. I had a glass of wine and copulated and watched some silly television, all of which would indicate Sleep Like Baby. But no. Tossing and turning and waking up and watching the sun rise, watching the buildings across the river light up delicately until they became hot gold and left oxidization stains on my eyelids. Almost worth it. But yeah, I'm not going to be very productive, I don't think, today.

Burrito!

2007-07-02T19:51:00.001-07:00

My Chipotle Burrito:

Chipotle Fan.com

Take that, Gehry!

2007-06-15T07:41:00.000-07:00

In which Julian Schnabel proves that there are ideas "worse" than the Atlantic Yards project and his neighbors freak the fuck out.

I actually find this incredibly amusing, and I find the middle-finger-upraisedity of the building to be so conceptually pure as to be beautiful, in a way that only acid-hot pink in the midst of jillion dollar brownstones can be.

Pirates of the Carribean: At Wit's End

2007-05-30T11:21:00.000-07:00

A lot of the criticism I’ve read of “Pirates of the Carribean: At World’s End” fixates on the movie’s length and convolution in a way that makes me suspect that critics have deliberately decided to judge it by standards other than its own. Having formed a set of expectations about the (high) disposability and (vast) simplicity of blockbusters, critics are objecting to the “Pirates” films simply for failing to conform to their preconceptions. As he so often does, The New Yorker’s Anthony Lane makes for a suitably pretentious example:

The people making these sequels are so drenched in the saga that they commit the fatal error of presuming that we are in the same boat—that we have spotless recall of every twist in the earlier films and can barely breathe because of our desperation for more. What they fail to realize is that big summer movies, even the successful ones, are designed to be forgettable, passing through our system at precisely the same rate as a pint of Pepsi. Nothing is left but fizzing nerve ends and a sugary soupçon of rot.

This sort of criticism of “Pirates,” which was also whizzing about with regard to “Dead Man’s Chest,”
strikes me as essentially the throwing up of hands and exclaiming, “Too confusing! Wanna be condescended to! Waaaaaaaah!”, in this case embellished with a soupçon of poseur.

Handily, it also doesn’t hold up. While it’s true that the movies feature constantly shifting allegiances and that its characters are continually betraying one another, if you actually hold said betrayals up to scrutiny they not only make sense on a character level but also operate, on a macro level, as the trilogy’s overt theme. Namely, that Pirates Are Not to be Trusted. Of course, the critics who marshall the “too confusing” argument never once specify what, exactly, they find so baffling. They just complain that they don’t know what’s going on. But given that the movies operate under zero pretense of standing alone, and are meant to be digested as one broad, involved story, this critical fascination seems a little much, and perhaps bespeaks a certain laziness with regard to the press kit. Also, am I the only one who thinks it’s alarming that the film critic in the New fucking Yorker is intimidated by the amount of incident at play in a summer blockbuster? Jeepers.

Go see "Pirates." It’s fun, if you have an attention span.

Neologism of the week

2006-10-28T07:39:00.000-07:00

fagnant - adjective. The state of being gay and boring.

For example: "Reminiscing about the Saint and the Flamingo in 2006 is pretty fagnant."

Scenes from a Cell

2006-09-25T16:49:00.000-07:00

The facade of my favorite octopus balls merchant.

The play button at Lucky Slack's.

A forgotten friend.

Enjoying a beautiful day in Queens.

The ongoing atrocity across the street gets bitchy.

Snakes on a Wall!

An amazing large-form mosaic in the City of Brotherly Love.

And finally, my boss's dog humps my leg.

Neologism of the week

2006-08-26T17:14:00.000-07:00

"Smartenify" - To inform in a terrifying manner.

Thanks go to Joseph Stern on this one.

Violet Haze

2006-08-24T14:13:00.000-07:00

Congratulations are in order to the hard-working, dedicated students at my alma mater, New York University, for once again placing in the top ten - eighth to be precise - in the Princeton Review's annual rankings of pot-friendly schools. Since we also placed eighth on the list of "Dodgeball Targets" (an aggregation of questions concerning intercollegiate and intramural sports and the popularity of the Greek system) and thirteenth on "Intercollegiate Sports Unpopular or Nonexistent," this is one of the few opportunities NYU ever gives me to say: Go Violets! Fight [Smoke?] on!

Felix Jaxx: Maximalist

2006-08-23T07:31:00.000-07:00

There is a new Basement Jaxx album coming out in a few weeks. As Pitchfork was kind enough to report [I have to say that I perversely miss the days when Pitchfork wrote defensive, nasty, irrational things about Remedy instead of fawning over Felix & Simon's every beat], the new record is now streaming at their album website.

The album kind of sounds like it is going to be a return to pop form in comparison to Kish Kash, for what it's worth.

Because I am a crazy Jaxxaholic and can't get enough of being marketed to, I subscribed to the Crazy Itch Radio podcast. The first episode features a good number of high-quality long clips from songs from the record, as well as excerpts from an interview with the band. The interview contains the following unsurprising, if Sherburne-baiting, snippet:

Interviewer: "It's definitely more blissed out, and more mellow as a whole, as an overall sound."

Felix: "Well I think it's probably generally... with music that's around at the moment, with electronic music, it's all very kind of minimal and trying to sound dark. So it's really a reaction against what what everyone else is doing, probably. Just to have something nice and warm that you can get into, and hopefully kind of maximalist rather than minimalist."

Snap!

2006 in iTunes, so far

2006-08-22T10:00:00.000-07:00

This is quite a bit late, but since I haven't posted about music in quite a while, I figure I can get away with it.

Now that 2006 is more than half over, here is a playlist I made in iTunes of some of my favorite tracks of the year so far.
For the record, this list obvs includes none of my favorites from albums that have yet to drop or that I did not buy on iTunes. It is pretty representative of the year nevertheless.

1. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Phenomena
2. Wolfmother - Colossal
3. Arctic Monkeys - I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor
4. Cut Copy - Going Nowhere (Digitalism Remix)
5. Coldplay - Talk (Thin White Duke Mix)
6. Ellen Allien & Apparat - Jet
7. The Knife - The Captain
8. Booka Shade - In White Rooms
9. Justice v. Simian - We Are Your Friends (Edison Remix)
10. Hot Chip - Over & Over
11. Joakim - I Wish You Were Gone (Vocal Edit)
12. Gnarls Barkley - Smiley Faces
13. Ghostface Killah & Ice Cube - Be Easy

Lots of big loud classic-ish rock and kind of icy but still immediate electronics, and barely any hip hop at all. Sounds like 2006.

Underfoot in New York

2006-08-21T06:24:00.000-07:00

A conversation betwixt several expensive-looking sandaled New Yorkers in their fifties, in the interminable line at the Eckerds at 20th & 8th Avenue:

Posh Gentleman 1: Well, he has a foot fetish, right?
Posh Lady 1: Actually, no, I have a foot fetish.
Posh Gentleman 1: Oh, well that's different. Do you ever suck her feet?
Posh Gentleman 2: I do, right honey?
Posh Lady 1: [Looking somewhat bitter] Only a couple of times.

People are really stupid

2006-08-19T16:49:00.000-07:00

I don't want to come across as too much of an elitist, but this sort of thing helps me to understand our current democracy problems a little better.

Respondents were far more familiar with the Three Stooges -- Larry, Curly and Moe -- than the three branches of the U.S. government -- judicial, executive and legislative. Seventy-four percent identified the former, 42 percent the latter.

No wonder we're tumbling headlong towards fascism.

Bias Schmias.

2006-08-19T07:27:00.000-07:00

Much as I might agree with the snarky aside I have emphasized:

What is clear is that the war on drugs, the original open-ended war against an elusive and ill-defined enemy, has moved inexorably onward, propelled by decades of mostly unflagging political support on both sides of the Congressional aisle.

I'm not entirely sure that it belongs in an ostensibly objective front page story in the Times. This is probably what conservatives so enjoy complaining about, no?

I feel like James Carville [only cuter]

2006-08-15T10:17:00.000-07:00

It has come to my attention that the boy I have gone on several dates with over the last few weeks once interned for GROVER bleeping NORQUIST [pictured above] at Americans for Tax Reform.

Some of Grover's more delicious quotes include “My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub” and "Bipartisanship is another name for date rape."

My head is spinning. I feel faint. Dirty. Cooties!

The Dixie Chicks are totally metal

2006-08-10T10:49:00.000-07:00

This song appeared on my iPod without my knowledge, although I'm not discounting the possibility of Drunken Hijinx™!

I have now had it in my head for like three days.

I'm not ready to get involved in discussions about whether it is a good Dixie Chicks song, or whether Taking the Long Way is "a complete failure of an album and as hatefully sold a product as [some Slant guy has] ever encountered."

But:
1. Bitch has pipes.
2. Video is artful and pretty and also makes points.
3. How can this song possibly be necessary?

Purgeapalooza

2006-08-09T01:12:00.000-07:00

Whoa! Look! Connecticut cashiered Joe Lieberman!

Sore Loserman

2006-08-03T13:18:00.000-07:00

A few thoughts on the race of the summer.

If Joe Lieberman loses, he will do so because he has conducted his campaign in the same haughty tone that characterized his infamous assertion in 2005 that

it's time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge that he will be the commander in chief for three more critical years and that in matters of war we undermine presidential credibility at our nation's peril.

He will also lose because his self-serving decision to gather signatures to enable a run as an independent operates as handy shorthand for his distate for the icky process of standing together with other Democrats. He will lose because his constituents are no longer willing to swallow his condescension and inaction on the most pressing issue of our time: the war.

Current polling suggests that primary voters in Connecticut who are likely to vote for Lamont are doing so for a variety of reasons, with the war being only the primary example of the multiplicity of ways in which Lieberman fails to represent the views of his constituents. Lots of Democrats, including DemFromCT at Kos, seem to be interested in playing this forward as a way of emphasizing that this election is not only a referendum on the war, and on Lieberman's rabid-puppy-like devotion the Bush party line on Iraq. I am not really certain why this is the case. Democrats seem totally, constitutionally incapable of realizing that the public - 55% of whom want to leave Iraq entirely within a year - is calling out for leadership in this direction. I don't know if it's just because they're afraid of being torn to shreds in the echo chamber (which mightn't happen if everyone would decide to grow a pair together) or if they're all just angling for Donny Rumsfeld's job, but whatever is keeping incumbent congressional Dems from articulating a coherent agenda for ending the war is also going to keep them from winning. 55% is a fucking lot of people, and I would assume that the number of people in Connecticut who want out ASAP is even higher.

People who are calling Connecticut's little exercise in democracy a "purge" and bemoaning a leftward shift to Democratic politics are mistakenly conflating the widespread horror at the conduct and progress of W's Middle Eastern adventure with "leftism." There is no inherent political orientation to the process of taking steps to reverse an incompetent series of decisions, or that of removing from power the people who have enabled the people making the incompetent decisions.

Also, it is hilarious that the National Review can run a cover of Arlen Specter calling him "The Worst Republican Senator" and effectively campaign on the behalf of Pat Toomey as they did in 2003, and it's regarded as simply hardball politics, but a bunch of bloggers call Joementum some names and make a float and it's a "purge." Those crazyyyyy leftists, always with the purging!

If Lieberman loses, I will toast to his downfall and pray that he has the dignity to respect the decision of his constituents. And the staff of Rockstar Games will probably join me.

Why Al Gore invented the Internet

2006-08-01T11:14:00.000-07:00

HotChicksWithDouchebags.com

Gay lib as (selfconscious?) minstrel show mk. nth

2006-07-28T15:09:00.000-07:00

First, let's agree that the Scissor Sisters' journey from this:

To this:

is not a journey forward.

Then, let's acknowledge that Pitchfork is on the money and that "I Don't Feel Like Dancing" is retread MOR pap.

With those premises established, the question becomes: what is any self-respecting modern urban homosexual to do about this most distressing development?

Anyone?

My apartment is a weird place sometimes

2006-07-27T15:10:00.000-07:00

Jack Cafferty rocks

2006-07-27T14:17:00.000-07:00

A few minutes ago, Wolf Blitzer went over to Jack Cafferty on The Situation Room after a bit about the fact that 20,000 troops in Iraq are seeing their tours of duty extended , and Cafferty, unblinking, said "It's a shame," and distinctly ruminated on that fact for a minute. It was kind of the most human thing I've seen on television news for a very long time.

The problem with Wikipedia

2006-07-08T12:42:00.000-07:00

In a word: Skeletor.