album

It’s past the midpoint of 2010 by about a month.  A lot of great music has been released in the past 7 months: Joanna Newsom’s Have One on Me, Pan Sonic’s Gravitoni, Flying Lotus’s Cosmogramma, Frank Bretschneider’s EXP, Emeralds’ Does It Look Like I’m Here? Dolphins into the Future’s The Music of Belief, and Autechre’s Oversteps, to name just the stuff I’ve been listening to.

But one work stands above all these, has invaded my listening space like on other…and it came out in 2009.  It’s Leyland Kirby’s Sadly, The Future Is No Longer What It Was.  I’ve reviewed it already, but I thought I’d reassert the magnitude of this work again.  It’s easily the best album of the current decade, even if it was released in the tail end of the last.  It’s a long, difficult album, but it overwhelms me at every turn.

Absolutely essential listening.

Top 10

1. iPad (software still iffy but device is amazing.  Watching Netflix in my office between classes is awesome)
2. M.I.A. (new album should be interesting)
3. Sly and the Family Stone’s Fresh (have been listening to this a lot–forgot how awesome it is)
4. Wind (hey, in the desert, when the wind goes away, the heat arrives–and stays)
5. Vernor Vinge’s A Deepness in the Sky (even better 2nd time around)
6. Emeralds, Does It Look Like I’m Here?
7. Mutek 2010 (damn–I’ve been wanting to go to this for 10 years, and I haven’t made it yet.  Perhaps next year…)
8. BBC America (has replaced Comedy Central as my default channel)
9. Steak (mmmmm)
10. John Scalzi’s Whatever

Bottom 3

1. Lost finale (massive cop-out to turn the flash-sideways into purgatory.  I never thought I’d say this, but Star Trek: The Next Generation kicked this show’s ass as far as complex, intelligent finales)
2. Angels (Kowbell’s broken leg encapsulation of the season)
3. Oil

It’s here!  It’s Joanna Newsom’s brand new 3-CD, 2 hour opus, Have One on Me.  Her last album, Ys, was one of the finest works of the last decade, and I’ve been waiting and waiting for new music from her to come out ever since I first heard “Emily.”  And now my wait is over, and now the listening begins.  Hopefully, I’ll have something to say about the work in a few days.

Go buy this now!  Now now now now now now now now now now!

When The Commitments came out in 1991, I was a 23 year old English grad student obsessed with both James Joyce and soul music (especially Otis Redding and Bobby “Blue” Bland), so you know that Alan Parker’s film (based on Roddy Doyle’s wonderful novel) would be a big hit for me.  I saw it twice in the theater, I believe, and each time I had to pinch myself.  How did they know?  I asked myself.  How did they manage to create a movie just for me?

The thing that struck me at the time about the film (I’m talking the film’s narrative now) was the fact that, at the end, all the characters seemed successful (singing in bands, having girlfriends, so on) except for the two guys who started the band in the first place–the guitarist and bassist.  In the final montage, we see them singing for loose change on the streets of Dublin (they call those guys “buskers” in Ireland).  No fair, I thought then and now.  Those guys deserved better than that.

Well, turns out the happy ending would come for at least one of those two buskers, played by real-life musician Glen Hansard.  He had already started his own band, The Frames, at that point, and after the film that band went on to dominate Irish music for over a decade.  They had some popularity in Europe and America, but it wasn’t until 2007′s film Once that Glen Hansard became known to a truly wide audience when his little film won him an Oscar for Best Song.  He and his co-star in the film, Marketa Irglova, developed the songs for Once (which was directed by former Frames bassist John Carney) and began touring as a duo, calling their collaboration The Swell Season.

I should say, first off, that I absolutely loved Once.  Yes, it’s Irish, so that’s no surprise.  In fact, I’m probably more interested in Ireland now than I was back in the early 1990s when I only had a vague understanding of Joyce and why I liked Joyce.  Now that I have a strong grasp of Joyce and the larger picture of Irish literature and history, and now that I have actually visited Ireland on several occasions and seen Dublin for myself, I can say that my enthusiasm for the country is richer than it ever was back in 1991.  Seeing Glen Hansard walking along O’Connell Street just brings back a ton of wonderful memories.  On top of all that, however, I thought the film was an enormous artistic success, as it’s one of the few musicals to actually take the music part seriously enough to dispense with the stupid dancing and simply show the role that music plays in the lives of musicians who would rather perform for each other than talk.  It’s a film about the development of a close, musical friendship, with the focus on the creative process first and foremost. It’s a great film.  I’ve seen it a dozen times, and I never get tired of it.  It doesn’t help that the music in the film is phenomenal.

Well, a lot of other people liked Once, too, and a lot of people bought the soundtrack and became interested in the duo, especially after it was revealed that they were romantically linked.  So the follow-up was bound to be a big deal, and it certainly is.  It’s called Strict Joy, and it comes in a regular version (just the one disk) or a deluxe edition (with the album, a companion concert CD, and a live concert DVD).  I’ve been listening to the album and concert CDs for the past few days, and I have to say…I like the new album, but I really love the concert CD, and its worth getting the deluxe version just to get that CD.

I always felt The Frames had their moments (“Revelate,” “Lay Me Down,” to name a few), but their albums as a whole seemed weighed down with too many mediocre songs.  The Once soundtrack contained mostly wonderful material, but even that work had its clunkers, too.  I’d say Strict Joy is similar.  There are some incredibly strong songs, such as the opener “Low Rising” (in which Hansard channels his inner Van Morrison better than Van Morrison himself), “In These Arms,” and Irglova’s standout track “I Have Loved You Wrong,” among others.  And while there are no real clunkers here, there are also a number of songs that really don’t grab me for one reason or another.  So I like it, but I’m not overwhelmed by the experience of listening to the music.

But the concert CD is an entirely different story.  True, a lot of the songs in the concert are from Once, along with some standout Frames songs like “Lay Me Down” and “Fitzcarraldo,” so the material itself stands on its own.  But the content here, I think, is less important than the presentation.  Glen Hansard is an incredible singer, and I think this comes through live in a way that really can’t be captured in a studio.  There’s a dynamism, a force, behind his voice when he’s in front of an audience that transforms decent songs like “Say It To Me Know” into epics.  He sings like the world is on fire and only his voice can put out the blaze–it’s a fierce, strong, barely-in-control megaphone that only works when it’s a bit out of tune.  That sort of chaos just doesn’t fit on a conventional studio take, where the tunes are modified and the cracks and grit of a real voice is limited and compressed to better fit to a perfectly-designed score.  And the audience knows it, too; listen to the roar of love that bursts out when the crowd cheers after the opening number; that’s an audience that understands exactly what it has heard.

But his singing voice is only part of it. Hansard is also a storyteller, like a lot of musicians.  And like a lot of musicians, he is very comfortable telling little stories before the songs.  Some of the stories are funny (like the one about the kid buying the grave for his girlfriend), and some are truly bizarre (about the “ghostbuster” couple who talk to the souls of 500-year-old children), but the stories all lead to a brief explanation of what each song is about emotionally and the messages that he, as the songwriter, sought to convey when composing it.  That’s different.  Musicians are generally fearful of prose; they want their music to speak for itself.  They’ll tell a story about the song’s origin, but they won’t usually follow it up by stating “this song means x” because that declarative statement limits the power of the song.

Rather than cheapening the songs (by telling us how to listen to them), however, Hansard provides an emotional framework that helps direct our understanding of the songs.  Think of Sister Wendy describing a painting at the Louvre; we can see the painting without her, but she draws attention to details we might overlook, allowing us to seen and appreciate the work in a whole new light.  Hansard does the same thing; we can enjoy his songs without the introductions, but those introductions draw our ears and our minds to ideas and to emotions that make the experience of listening to these songs that much more meaningful.

Here’s an example.  Before the song “That Low,” he tells a funny story about his last visit to Milwaukee (where the concert took place) and then says,

This song is about an idea that you’re in a rut, maybe in a relationship, and you’ve got each other but it’s not great.  The song is about the idea that this one person has to go and walk a new road, and this song was written from the perspective of the person who realizes that they’re about to be left.  It’s for a good reason.  It’s like a double-edged sword.  It ups the ante for you and makes you go, “Okay, what am I doing?”  So this is about the whole idea that a rising tide lifts all boats, and if somebody has to go walk their way then it kind of forces you to think about yourself.  The whole idea of this song is “thread the light, walk the light, speak the light, seek the light, crave the light, brave the light.” The whole idea is “be in the light” because if you’re in the dark, then it’s no use to you.

Songs, like poems, often need a frame of reference before they can be fully understood.  Before I heard his introduction, I thought “This Low” was a sad song about a couple breaking up.  Of course, I didn’t really pay too much attention to the song when I first heard it on The Swell Season’s debut (which came out before Once).  Once I heard Hansard’s introduction to this song, however, I was forced to consider the “light” part and what it meant in the context of the breakup, and I realized that, yes, it’s a sad song about a breakup, but it’s more than that.  The idea he’s conveying here (which is conveyed musically better than it is conveyed lyrically) is the sudden realization that a part of a person’s life has just ended but that this is as much a moment of possibility as it is a moment of despair.  That is, she’s gone, which means that what happens next has yet to be written.  The “shine a light” part is the speaker’s mind opening up to explore the possibilities that have suddenly emerged (rather than retreating into the darkness of despair and sadness).  It’s a beautiful song and a beautiful idea, and Hasnard’s introduction allowed me to better understand and appreciate it.

He does something similar to this with many of the songs, but he’s not alone.  Irglova also introduces several songs, providing her own take on those she has penned.  Sorry I haven’t mentioned her much here, but her role in this group is definitely a secondary one to Hansard; she performs a few songs here, and she shines whenever she sings, but he seems to be the focus of the group, and he’s the one directing things and arranging things and singing most things.  But when she shines, she shines brightly–and in a similar way to Hansard.  Her voice warbles and hems around just like his.  It’s not a powerful voice, but it’s an equally passionate one.  Heck, there’s enough grain in those two voices to fill several beaches.

In all, Strict Joy is good, but the concert CD is a wonderful document of the true power of this musical duo.  So if you’re going to get this, get the deluxe edition.

Update (10/2): The CD version of the deluxe edition doesn’t contain the entire concert, so if you want to hear all the cool stories and stuff from that concert, buy the deluxe edition on iTunes.

I’ve always enjoyed carrying a book around with me everywhere I go.  It’s something I picked up when I was younger, after reading Zorba the Greek and watching the movie of the same name.  Both have a main character who is an intellectual.  The intellectual carries a copy of Dante’s Divine Comedy with him everywhere he goes.  Zorba, the anti-intellectual, mocks the intellectual for carrying the book, declaring that not everything can be learned from books (or something like that–it’s been ages since I read the novel, so the details are sketchy).  And while I’m sure Zorba had a point, I was more interested in the idea of a man carrying a copy of Dante with him everywhere he went.  That was cool.

I’ve always considered books to be magical objects.  They invent new worlds, and they change our current world.  Growing up, books (along with albums and, later, CDs) captivated me like nothing else could (until the Internet came around).  It’s no wonder I became an English major, huh?  Besides, the United States is filled with Zorbas who look down on reading and thinking as though they were diseases from another planet (but minus the celebration of life that makes Zorba such a compelling character).  If nothing else, I wanted my life to embody a rejection of the anti-intellectualism that I see on an everyday basis in my country.  Carrying a book around with me was a silent embodiment of that rejection.

I understand this now, as a 40 year old, but at first, when I was 18 and reading Zorba, I just thought that carrying a book around was cool.  I even found a nice, old copy of Dante in a rare books store and started carrying it around too, though I eventually gave up on it when I realized (after actually reading the book) that the translation I had purchased was pretty dreadful.  I moved on to Maupassant, then to Flaubert, Kafka, Joyce, Deleuze and Guattari, Fredrich Kittler, Philip K. Dick, and so on.  I’ve had a lot of books in my hands and in my backpacks, to be sure.  But while the books have changed, the initial inspiration, the initial impetus for putting a book in my bag when I go out, has not.  I want to be cool, and I want to set myself apart from those around me.

So what’s the latest book in my bag?  Well, there are three, actually.  One is a notebook with ideas for a story I’m writing (though the notebook itself is pretty awesome because my wife gave it to me and because the cover is from The Book of Kells).  Another is Haunted Weather, David Toop’s interesting account of experimental music from the past 25 years or so (which I purchased in Dublin because it wasn’t available at the time in the US).  And the third?  It’s the one you see at the beginning of this post: Jonsi & Alex’s Riceboy Sleeps.

Jónsi Birgisson & Alex Sommers are partners and collaborators.  Both in groups of their own (Jonsi in Sigur Ros, of course, and Alex in Parachutes, an interesting band whose music sounds an awful lot like Sigur Ros), they have been collaborating on a few artistic projects over the last few years.  Their first release was a tiny book of abstract drawings called Riceboy Sleeps.  I picked one up last year at the Sigur Ros show in San Diego.  It’s beautiful but a bit hard to figure out, like all good art.  There are no words, just pictures and drawings that have aged and withered through the decades.  Sepia tones wash through it all, and there’s a hint of Xerox residue there as well.  It’s a document of decay and memory, if it’s anything at all.  One picture is of a little girl walking through a grassy field, but the photo is dim from age and there are scribbles and thumbprints on the corners.  Another shows a drawing of a bird with another drawing of a girl inside the bird.  A third shows a decaying wall with some indecipherable text and a drawing of a boy. It is, in short, the illustrative book equivalent of Boards of Canada’s Music Has the Right to Children or William Basinski’s The Disintegration Loops.  It’s like a journal by some unknown artist that has been locked away in a closet for 100 years only to be rescued out of obscurity by Jonsi and Alex.  Or something like that.

I enjoy this book.  It has a magic to it that I have a very difficult time putting into words.  It’s not making any sort of statement, and it doesn’t even really evoke any specific image or impression about the past or about memory.  But it is engaging, enveloping me as I turn from page to page, picking apart each photo or drawing or random scribble.  I have no idea what the work is trying to express, but I get it all the same.

And that takes me to  Jonsi & Alex’s new album, Riceboy Sleeps.  The deluxe edition of this album (which I did buy–I’m such a Sigur Ros whore) contains extra music, a coloring book, crayons, and the Riceboy Sleeps book.  So, obviously, there’s meant to be a connection between the book and the music, apart from the title.  And, to be sure, the music itself is, like the book, hard to figure out.  I have read some negative reviews of this album, and most say the same thing: it sounds like the boring parts of Sigur Ros.  So anyone hoping for big guitar sweeps and more Jonsi ethereal vocals will be disappointed by Riceboy Sleeps.  But complaining about what isn’t in a work of music is like complaining about the absence of sound in a silent film.  Forget about what isn’t there.  Focus on what IS there.

Musically, it is a lot like the “boring” parts of Sigur Ros, but since I’m someone who actually likes that side of the band, I see that as a strength and not a weakness.  The band is known for its big, swelling, orchestral pieces (like”Popplagið” and “Hoppípolla”).  But there’s a repetition of form evident in those works, as their songs often (too often, if you ask me) start off slow and build, over time, into a giant wall of big, beautiful noise that crashes over and around the listener.  It’s great; it’s epochal stuff.  But it’s a formula, and I sensed that on their last album Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust part of that formula was growing rather stale (which is why so many people prefer songs like “Gobbledigook” over the big numbers like “Festival”).

But there’s always been another, quieter side to Sigur Ros, and that side is all about atmospherics, ambiance, and silence.  Listen to a typical Sigur Ros album (like Takk…) and the big, booming moments stand out.  But surrounding those big moments are tons of little moments, moments when the music ebbs and flows along in all sorts of interesting an inventive ways.  It’s that element of their music that traditional music critics dismiss as so much art school noodling–as if that’s a bad thing, as if atmospheric music that lives and breathes but doesn’t necessary result in an orgasmic release is pointless (as if art needs a point).   And while it’s true that atmospheric, abstract moments can be every bit as formulaic as anything else (hence, New Age), this side of Sigur Ros generally manages to avoid those cliches, in part because the members are incredibly good musicians able to create something interesting and unique out any instrument, both physical and computer-based.

Riceboy Sleeps, created by two very good musicians, exists in this “pointless” realm of musical experimentation.  There’s remarkably varied collection of sounds here, from traditional piano and strings to processed samples of who knows what to (yes) Jonsi’s voice (though as a floating, decaying sample buried in the mix, not standing in the forefront) to Chris Watson-like field recordings.  All of these blend together to create an odd, hazy tension between running and standing still.

Listening to a track like “Stokkseyri,” which begins with chittering string lines that seem to stretch on for ungodly lengths (longer than a string player can possibly play one note, at any rate), I feel this tension in my legs, and it reminds me of those moments late at night when I’m in bed and my body is telling me to sleep but my mind keeps thinking about what I need to do the next day.  At this moment, I feel stretched out.  My legs twitch and I can’t stay still.  It’s painful, in a way, and that pain continues until the body wins out and my mind shuts down.  The music here, a combination of very long (and often beautiful) notes coupled with random bits of noise and digital decay, completely overtake me when I listen.  I get sucked in because the music begins and then keeps beginning, stretching out and out with no end in sight–until, at last, there’s a quiet ebbing.  The music slows, and then it ends.  It’s a “formula” in the sense that each work here contains the same tension followed by more tension followed, eventually, by a half-hearted release.  Or, to put it another way, the music begins, it builds and grows, and then it dies or falls asleep (as in “Riceboy” sleeps).

A lot of music fans will hate this album.  That’s fine.  Musical taste is quite personal, and I’ve long ago given up trying to change people’s minds.  But I think they will hate this work because it doesn’t seem to have any direct referent, no focal point or conclusion that ties everything together.  However, I think it does have that referent.  It’s Riceboy Sleeps, the book.  Listen to this music while studying the decaying, dying objects found in the book.  Take “Daniell in the Sea.”  It contains an angelic choir (which is probably Jonsi and Alex themselves, though I could be wrong) humming nothing until they are overwhelmed by a wash of digital waves.  Then look at the sepia-toned, slowly dissolving photograph of the little girl in a field with big trees in the background, all fading away slowly and not so gracefully.  There’s a direct connection here: photographs and journals grow old and die just like sounds grow, build, and disappear.  It’s life, of course, but the two works seem to be fascinated by those last few moments of life, the final traces of memory as they float through a journal or bounce around in errant corners of a child’s mind.

This is definitely not Post Rock or whatever Sigur Ros’s music is called.  It’s far closer to the experimental work of someone like William Basinski or Jim Haynes (whose work Sever touches on similar decaying themes) or Peter Wright or The Caretaker or any one of a number of musicians experimenting with rendering into musical form the very real concepts of death and decay.  Riceboy Sleeps is prettier than those works, but it’s also not as complete a work of art as something as monumental as The Disintegration Loops.  Then again, Jonsi & Alex are rock musicians first, experimental artists second; by contrast, someone like The Caretaker has spent a decade imagining and perfecting his own world of memory and decay.  So perhaps it’s not the best work Jonsi has ever created (that would be ( )).  But it’s a great side-project, a great experiment into bringing an aesthetic idea to life both visually and sonically, and a great addition to any Sigur Ros fan’s catalog.

I bought Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea years ago and have enjoyed it for most of those years (took a few listens to get it, but I got it fairly quickly).  Still, I never really LISTENED to it until about two months ago.

By LISTEN, I mean actually sitting down, not doing anything else, just LISTENING to it listening, the kind of listening I reserve only for the absolutely greatest music I’ve ever heard in my entire life.  Now, I love music and have for a very long time, but albums I will drop everything to LISTEN to are rare.  There was Bob Dylan’s Biograph, a few Stones albums (definitely Exile, possibly Beggar’s Banquet), the first Tricky album, Richard and Linda Thompson’s Shoot Out the Lights, Arvo Part’s Tabula Rasa, most everything by Boards of Canada and Sigur Ros and William Basinski, The Conet Project, and Joanna Newsom’s Ys.  And now Aeroplane.

A LISTENING experience is an intense one.  It will dominate my life for a few days, as I play the album over and over again, studying each nuance, each lyric.  When I’m not listening to the album, I’m thinking about it or singing it (either aloud or in my head, depending upon whether I’m alone or not).  I’m still in the midst of the Aeroplane experience, and I thought I’d share my thoughts about the album while I’m consumed by it, perhaps as a way both to understand its hold over me and as a reminder for future me why I spend this particular week in 2008 falling over myself about an album from 1998.  To do that, I’ll need to back up a bit–and return to something I started writing last year, a summary of my personal musical history.

I first got into music seriously in 1983, and all the stuff I described in the earlier “In Search of Lost Sound” posts) took place in late 83 and the first part of 1984.  My musical education really accelerated later that year, however, when I spent two months in Iceland as an exchange student.  The music that Iceland listened to that summer actually turned out to be the music that would be popular in the US later that year and the next year–stuff like Depeche Mode, Wham!, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, and so on.  But what made Iceland unique for me was that it gave me a chance to learn that the pop music that I had been listening to was only part of a larger and more interesting musical universe.  It was in Iceland that I learned about REM and other, more interesting bands that would dominate my musical experience later on.

Actually, I didn’t listen to a lot of REM or similar music while in Iceland (I was more into Wham and that other crap), but once I got back to the USA in the fall I started paying closer attention to music and started experimenting with new and interesting artists.  My first real find in this avenue of exploration was REM’s Fables of the Reconstruction, their third album.  Yes, I got the 3rd album first and then went back and got the first two.  Actually, I still think Fables is pretty great, even though it was dismissed at the time as a letdown.  From REM (actually, from reading articles about them), I learned about The Replacements, The Minutemen, Husker Du, and Richard Thompson (Joe Boyd, who produced a lot of Thompson’s work–starting with the Fairport Convention years–produced REM’s Fables).

The years 1984-86, then, were stellar ones for me (and for music–awesome stuff released during that time).  I spent a lot of time and money learning everything I could about what would be called “alternative” music.  But those were also the years that I discovered the great music of the 60s–both rock stuff like the Stones and Who and Stax/Volt soul music.  By 1988 or so, I was almost exclusively listening to the past.  What I remember of late 80s, early 90s music is Nirvana, Sonic Youth, and Public Enemy (not necessarily in that order).  Really, though, I was living in the past for much of that time, fairly confident in my belief that music had already peaked.  Heck, my favorite album of the early 90s was Bobby “Blue” Bland’s Two Steps from the Blues.  Oh, I was also a grad student then, so you know I was a bit of an asshole.

Fast-forward a few years to 1995.  At this point, my interests started moving ever so slowly from classic rock and soul to electronics and computers.  I started designing web pages at this time, and my musical taste slowly moved towards things like Nine Inch Nails and Industrial stuff (like Boyd Rice and Throbbing Gristle), then Tricky and Massive Attack, and then Boards of Canada and their ilk.  This all coincided with my first forays in writing about music (my 25 site, my article on NIN, and my now-defunct Tricky site–which was the first Tricky web site, btw).  It also coincided with my first forays in creating electronic music, as well–mostly crap, but creating music (however crappy) is a really liberating, deeply satisfying experience.  And who cares if anyone hears it or not, right?

From there I started going down stranger and stranger roads, looking for the most experimental and interesting sounding music I could find.  Pan Sonic and Pole were my first forays into this world; they would be followed by the 12k artists, Mille Plateaux and Ritornell works, then even further afield stuff like Central Asian music, Jamaican dub, Chris Watson, Tim Hecker, and the Conet Project.  My focus during all this time was on sound, not music.  I was bored with the cliches of most popular music, fed up with the commercialization of art.  I wanted to hear something new, and I searched the web far and wide for just such experiences.

Which leads me back to Neutral Milk Hotel.  Does it?  Well, yes, it does.  For the past year or so, I’ve gone full circle and returned to the music of the mid to late 90s–your Trickys and Boards of Canadas.  I see this period as my own personal nostalgia period, in the same way that the 80s music is my wife’s nostalgia.  Yes, most people get nostalgic for the music of their high school years.  For some reason, the music I am nostalgic about actually came out 12 years after I graduated from high school.

1998, in particular, is a special year, both for me personally and for the music I love.  That’s the year I got my PhD, the year I got married, and the year I got my first decent job.  It’s also the year of Boards of Canada’s Music Has the Right to Children, Air’s Moon Safari, Bola’s Soup, Massive Attack’s Mezzanine, Tricky’s Angels with Dirty Faces, and, of course, Neutral Milk Hotel’s Aeroplane. That’s a damn good year in music, by the way.  The late 90s was a critically under appreciated period.

Now, unlike all the other works I just listed, I didn’t hear NMH for the first time until probably 2001, and I didn’t LISTEN to the work until recently.  So it’s fresher for me than those other works that I LISTENED to so long ago. So what am I hearing while I LISTEN to this album over and over again today, 10 years later?

I hear a voice, first off.  Jeff Magnum’s voice is amazing.  If his voice were a color, it would be a pinkish-red, like a skinned elbow with a trickle of blood oozing out from a raw, wet wound.  His voice is all emotion, completely removed from irony and critical distance.  Everything he sings, no matter how weird (“tomatoes and radio wire”) or how real (“I loooooove you Jeeesus Chriiiist”), is sung with pure, unadulterated honesty.

I also hear a guitar, an acoustic guitar that is so fuzzily distorted that it sounds as though the strings will break at any moment.  Those two things–Jeff’s voice and his fuzzed guitar–are the core of the album’s sound.  They mesh together beautifully, as if the guitar itself were embedded in Jeff’s belly or something.

For a long time, that’s ALL I heard on this album–a voice and a guitar.  As I started LISTENING, I started to pick up on the intricate production here, like the wonderfully moribund horn sections on songs like “Fool” and “Holland, 1945″ or the really amazing electronic effects that float in and around songs like “Untitled.”  All those people who think this is a folk album just don’t get the awesome production at work throughout.   There’s some amazing drum work here, some wonderful electric guitar, some rather fascinating use of odd and obscure instruments (like the euphonium) that provide essential touches to make each song memorable in a uniquely different way.  Oddly, when I would just casually listen to the album, the rockin’ “Holland, 1945″ was my least favorite song, even though it’s most people’s favorite.  Only when I started listening to the lyrics did I realize how wonderful the song actually is.

And yes, the lyrics.  That’s what I did when LISTENING to this album, study the lyrics.  As a rule, I find lyrics overrated.  It’s not a coincidence that most of my favorite music is either sung in another language (Sigur Ros or those Central Asian artists) or contain no lyrics at all (Boards of Canada, Pan Sonic, Chris Watson).  I’m a sound guy first and foremost.  But Aeroplane is no ordinary album, and these are not ordinary lyrics.  There’s a deepness to the lyrics that is as close as popular music can come to resembling the power and impact of actual poetry.  The lyrics to most rock songs (even great ones) don’t hold up when read on a page.  Lyrics get their power not from how they read but from how they are sung.

Jeff Magnum sings his lyrics wonderfully–about as well as anyone since Bowie.  But the lyrics themselves are really, really fantastic.  It’s a quasi-concept album about Anne Frank (most familiar with NMH know this), and the references to Frank throughout are haunting, touching, and perplexing–but also far richer than the idea of a Frank-centered album would suggest.

Take this stanza from my favorite song on the record, “Oh Comely”:

Your father made fetuses
With flesh licking ladies
While you and your mother
Were asleep in the trailer park
Thunderous sparks from the dark of the stadiums
The music and medicine you needed for comforting
So make all your fat fleshy fingers to moving
And pluck all your silly strings
And bend all your notes for me
Soft silly music is meaningful magical
The movements were beautiful
All in your ovaries
All of them milking with green fleshy flowers
While powerful pistons were sugary sweet machines
Smelling of semen all under the garden
Was all you were needing when you still believed in me

Read it again.  The imagery is truly impressive, from the alliteration of “fat fleshy fingers” and “flesh licking ladies” to the connection of music (plucking “silly strings”) with sexual imagery (“powerful pistons…smelling of semen”).  There’s a true sense of a character stuck in despair (a father out screwing the neighborhood while child and mother are stuck at home) and seeking a release both in music and in the budding awareness of his/her own sexuality.  There’s probably some incest in there, too.  I don’t exactly know what it has to do with Anne Frank, but I’m guessing I’m not supposed to be able to read it literally anyhow.  It’s mood, evocation, inspiration, not logical connection.  That’s what makes it such good poetry.

Still, reading it is not nearly as interesting or as powerful as hearing the lyrics blow out of your speakers, hearing Jeff Magnum cry out “flesh licking ladies” with a mixture of disgust and resignation or hearing him cry out “I love you Jesus Christ” without a hint of irony or self-consciousness.  In the end, that’s what makes this work so great: Magnum’s voice singing these wonderful lyrics to pitch-perfect accompaniment and inspired production.  In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is a perfect combination of poetic inspiration and musical interpretation.  It’s brilliant, essential music that hasn’t aged a second in ten years.  I’m guessing I’ll be able to say the same thing in 2018.

Originally published 9/25/08

Okay, explain this to me: Tricky’s latest album, Knowle West Boy, came out a week or two ago in the UK and Europe.  It comes out in the US on September 9.  Between now and September, how many people in the US will be downloading that album from file sharing sites because it’s not available in the US?  I’m guessing 100%.

These sorts of release schedules were probably acceptable ten years ago when Maxinquaye came out, but they are simply not feasible in today’s iTunes music-on-demand climate.  Someone at Tricky’s label needs to be slapped on the face with a herring.

Originally published 7/17/08

So I went crazy with the new Sigur Ros album.  Not only did I purchase the deluxe edition of their new CD (which includes a downloaded copy that came out a week before the general release, a physical copy, AND a deluxe edition to come out in September that will feature not only a making-of, etc., DVD and a booklet with photos from the making of the album but also an actual physical strip of film from the movie), but I also bought the album (pre-ordered) on iTunes so I could get the bonus track “Heima.”  All told, I will end up with four different versions of the album: 2 physical CDs and 2 digital.  How’s that for obsessed.

Oh, and I am dying to get tickets for their October 1 show in San Diego (my brother and I are planning to attend that one).  I got up at 6 AM my time to purchase tickets last week only to discover (after checking the site for 2 hours) that the show’s tickets weren’t going to go on sale for another week.

As my wife says, I’m an obsessive sort.  When I focus on something, I REALLY focus on it.  That goes for everything I do–writing, creating music, reading, watching TV, travelling, and so on.  I jump into things head first and don’t look back.  It’s a good way to live, actually, as you end up enjoying lots of things, but it’s also a bit costly when you don’t stop to ask yourself whether I can afford the stuff I want.  When I was making nothing as a TA, it was a problem (got into debt).  Good thing my salary is higher now!

Originally published 6/23/08

I got my downloaded copy of Sigur Rós’s new work on Monday when I was in Florida on a family trip.  I got it a week before the official release date because I pre-ordered at Sigurros.com (got the deluxe edition, which includes the download, a CD copy, and a deluxe copy of the album to be released in September and which will include a bunch of extras, including a DVD).  I’ve been listening to it off and on these past few days (I was traveling, so my active listening has been sporadic).  But I absolutely love it.  It’s brighter, cheerier, and more vibrant than their earlier works, and but it’s still Sigur Rós–operatic, emphasizing mood and tone over everything else.

On Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust, the focus is less on the drone (as in earlier works) and more on the beat.  It’s not commercial, but it’s definitely more accessible to those who are turned off by the singer’s voice or the length of some of their tracks (there are two long tracks, but the rest are short) or by the rather melancholy nature of their earlier music.

For an example, check out the first two tracks.  “Gobbledigook” is a wonderful pagan song with lumpy beats, wails and cries, and a rush of energy and celebratory noise that was such a shock when I first heard it on BBC’s Radio 1 that I wasn’t even sure it was Sigur Rós until I downloaded it and listened again and again.  But it’s definitely SR, only with a very different focus: celebration, not contemplation.  I said it was a pagan song because that’s what it feels like to me–the rush of rhythms and emotions building across the song until it’s abrupt three minute end, like a mini pagan ceremony on the summer solstice.  It also doesn’t seem to follow traditional rock song formats–it seems to possess a form all its own, conducive to the odd rhythm (drums hit by sledgehammers) and the “lalalalalas” that flit like birds around the Jonsi’s vocals and the dueling acoustic guitar interplay.  There’s something very elemental about the song, that’s for sure–like it floated into our world from a very distant time.  The video–with its naked people running in the woods, reminiscent of the pagan scene in Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev–is also a giveaway for the pagan focus.

The second track, “inní mér syngur vitleysingur,” is perhaps the best song (emphasis on that last word) Sigur Ros has ever recorded.  At the very least, it possess the catchiest melody, with (again) a thumping beat playing with a keyboard-lite ditty that mixes with vocals and choirs and strings and a whole mess of other stuff that all builds into a crashing burst of joy at the end (like all good Sigur Ros songs are supposed to end).  This one’s four minutes long–so taken together, the first two tracks on this album are about the same length as most of the songs on ( ) and Takk…

What this album tells me, more than anything else, is that Heima changed the band for the better.  The free concerts they did in Iceland brought a ton of positive vibes to the band in their native country.  The film also forced this naturally shy band to open up and discuss themselves, their music, and their ideas.  Finally (and most importantly), the acoustic performances at some of those concerts (along with other acoustic performances which were the featured in the film) allowed the members of the band to look at their own music in a new light.  Their music has always been beautiful and haunting, but I think playing songs like “Voka” in an acoustic setting revealed a lot of the joy that is at the heart of their music.  I’m not saying the band didn’t know their music was joyful–I’m sure they did.  But it’s easy to get lost in the passion and the power of this music when there is an emphasis placed on feedback and amplifiers.  Slowing down, quieting down the songs allowed them to breathe and be reborn in a way on Hvarf — Heim, and it’s this breath that I sense in Með suð. The acoustic renditions must have inspired the band in an immense way–particularly considering that this whole album was conceived, recorded, mastered, and released in the first six months of 2008 (and just after Heima was released).

And now I hear they’re coming to my neck of the woods in San Diego.  I can’t wait to hear the band live and experience all facets of their music, from the blistering noise to the quietest whispers of Jonsi’s wonderful voice.  They are one of the great bands of our time; this is one of the great albums of the year; and their live sets are truly events (as anyone who has seen Heima can attest).

Bonus: for those of you who are having trouble pronouncing the title of the album, here you go: the “ð” letter is pronounced “eth,” so “Með suð” is pronounced “Meth sueth” (and not the “Med sud” spelling I’m seeing on a lot of web sites).  “í” (with the accent) is pronounced like “ee” (as in peel).  “Eyrum” is pronounced “a-rum” (the “ey” is pronounced like the “a” in “pale”).  “við” is “vith” and the rest is pretty much just “spilum endalaust” (except the “au” is pronounced like the “o” in “pole”).  All together: “Meth sueth ee a-rum vith spilum endalost.” At least, I think that’s it.  It’s been a long time since I’ve spoken Icelandic to anyone, so I’m probably screwing something up here.

[Thanks, BBC.]

Originally published 6/19/08

There’s a brand new Sigur Rós album coming our way in June, entitled Með suð í  eyrum við spilum endalaust (in English, With a buzz in our ears we play endlessly).  Apparently, the band just finished the album a month ago and they wanted to release it immediately.

As a teaser, you can now download the first single, “Gobbledigook,” at their web site–and if you do that you HAVE to check out the video, which is a wonderful complement to the song (plus, lots of nudity!).

I’ve been a big fan of Sigur Rós for a very long time.  Their music is ethereal, oblique, powerful, and [add more cool adjectives here].  I listen to them all the time–much to my wife’s consternation (though she can’t talk–she’s obsessed with Depeche Mode).  When I first heard the new single (earlier today, when it premiered on BBC Radio 1), I was amazed how different this song (and, ostensibly, the album) was from their previous music.  Their earlier music is, to me, very elemental–kind of a soundtrack to their native Iceland and its geysers, glaciers, volcanoes, fjords, and empty, open spaces.  I visited Iceland when I was 15 (spent two months there, as I noted in a previous post); that experience (over 20 years ago) permanently burned Iceland’s beauty and emptiness into my thoughts and dreams.  What shocked me most about the new single is how alive it feels–how human, warm, earthy, and even playful it is.  These elements are evident on earlier songs (especially on Takk…), but there’s a messiness here that is pretty new.  That’s messiness in a good way–in a Rolling Stones kind of way.

I’m still not entirely sure what I think about the new song–can’t say it’s the best thing of theirs I’ve ever heard.  But it is new and is very different from anything else in popular music, so I am excited by this direction and look forward to hearing the whole album so I can put the song (and the emotions that came with it) into their proper context.

I encourage you to download the new song, check out the video, and let me know what you think.