Cor Limey

2008-03-24T20:18:00.000-05:00

I'm temporarily moving to livejournal

Concept Snowman

2008-03-15T01:48:00.001-05:00

Concept snowman. Consider this a challenge Damien Hirst, you skeletal knob.

2008-03-13T02:33:00.001-05:00

Why look at that! 'Looks like I've reached my Blogger sad-sack quota for the week. "Waah, I'm penniless!" "Waah, writing hurts my delicate, puny hands!" "Waah, vital, life-giving blood is spewing from my head!".
Always the same.

Well I have a veritable FEAST of the senses here for you today at least.

1.) Suzie Templeton's Dog: Fancy dying a little inside? Then you're in luck because now you can experience Suzie Templeton's awesome fucking powers of stop motion and become a deadened shell of your former self! All at the same time!

1. B.) Technically speaking it's not half as good as Templeton's Oscar winning Peter and the Wolf however Youtube only has clips of that one, making it ever clearer that copyright infringement is a damned eternal tease : \

2.) Sex Guide - Dolphins: FAQ on Mating by Dragon-Wolfe Dolphinn: Do you ever feel rife with internal conflict? Like only one side of you is capable of action and the other can only repeatedly scream "Not during visiting hours"? Like one moment you're howling "SEA LICE. SEA LICE." but before you know it you're an arm deep in bottle-nose? Come friend, join Dragon-Wolfe Dolphinn in this wild and bile-inducing ride through an aquarium lifestyle that guarantees shame upon your family for generations to come.

3. Finally, Garfield Minus Garfield. This has been making the rounds lately but I can't tell you the misty-eyed awe I feel when I read it. I tell you, it's like looking in to some sort of cruel truth-mirror.

I was going to end this with a clip of my dog and I, but apparently my dog-talking voice sounds inexplicably like Moaning Myrtle.

Series of bloody tubes

2008-03-07T22:27:00.005-06:00

Ah, lovely March weather. The sun is shining, birds are singing.

Oh yes, and I HEMORRHAGED today in class. A classmate was struggling to tell the story of the Townhall.com debacle in which a Republican journalist reviewed Mass Effect, evidently using the Ted Stevens Guide to the Internets.*

After he kept repeatedly calling it "some alien game" like some sort of n00b I replied to him in the way of "haha, yes it was called Mass Effect" followed immediately by a glorious fountain of blood streaming down my face from my nose. I must've looked like some deranged clown because it took at least twenty seconds to realise what the hell was happening, and during all that time I was still grinning like an idiot, blood pouring down my smiling cheeks. And on to my STAR WARS t-shirt that I was wearing just in case I felt like I was due a good beating outside after my class decided I was some sort of troglodytic freakshow who's been waiting for the mention of Mass Effect with baited breath. The sheer excitement of the conversation undoubtedly causing my nasal cavity to rupture in such explosive glee that my body could only relieve itself in the way of SPURTING BLOOD FUCKING EVERYWHERE.

But no, it wasn't that bad. In other news, I finally have a plotline! It only took three-to-four weeks! <3

Taken during my short trip to the 1970s last fall.

*A few gems:

It's called "Mass Effect" and it allows its players - universally male no doubt - to engage in the most realistic sex acts ever conceived. One can custom design the shape, form, bodies, race, hair style, breast size of the images they wish to "engage" and then watch in crystal clear, LCD, 54 inch screen, HD clarity as the video game "persons" hump in every form, format, multiple, gender-oriented possibility they can think of.

And because of the digital chip age in which we live - "Mass Effect" can be customized to sodomize whatever, whoever, however, the game player wishes. With it's "over the net" capabilities virtual orgasmic rape is just the push of a button away.

2008-03-07T22:26:00.000-06:00

Much like how all of my attempts at a #1 smash hit sound suspiciously like fucking Prodigy , I've resigned myself to the fact that every time I try to write my disaster of a book I end up accidentally writing the first quarter of Slaughterhouse-Five.

Unfortunately the only other career possibilities my qualifications leave me with is as some sort of maudlin hippie vicar who reads Eliot in parks like a twat.

That, or be Bez.

Travel Plan

2008-03-07T22:25:00.000-06:00

Despite my sweeping success as a waster, the countless hours I spend online and the exhausting effort I put in to Facebook Scrabble, for some reason my intention to get funds together for my five-month stay in England just isn't happening. What more can I do?! Even my half-assed attempts as a freelance music journalist just don't seem to be helping me find bags of money mysteriously placed in front of my house like I had expected. How do you all expect me to pay for the cache of weapons I'll inevitably have to buy to ward off feral London kids without supplying me with an infinite reservoir of cash? By actually working? Ho ho!

But if traveling to other countries penniless is anything like my Scrabble ability right now then I'm sure it'll be just fine.

TransRatFashion

2008-03-07T22:03:00.000-06:00

Look what I've found:

Finally, something I can wear to chapel.

Crafted by genuine madmen, every one of these extraordinary works will be sure to make you the belle of any Tijuana prison.

Guaranteed to be the talking-point of every Jehovah's Witness you invite into your home, don't let this one slip you by.

The Thrills - Teenager

2008-02-23T14:25:00.001-06:00

I write for a website which sends me free music, most of which crap. So when I can't be bothered to drone on about my miserable existence or how I've run out of Tetley or the state of my cat who vomits hourly because of his stupid ancient little body then I depend on reviews I've written to get the job done.

Apologies, dear readers, for the filler. Both of you.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

2.18/5 = A bit crap.

A black and white photo of two teenagers locked in a sprawling, open-mouth embrace is featured on the cover of The Thrills album “Teenager”. The single still captures them permanently fused together in fully-clothed pretzel contortion as plush toys watch on in a fixed, dead-eyed stare. Who are they? You might ask. Are they in the throws of love or rather is she resuscitating him from the shock of entering what appears to be a 3-by-4 foot recreation of Peewees Playhouse? The lack of any narrative payoff is fitting, since like the album itself, the music contained within Teenagers contains little to no actual conclusive revelations of being a teenager.

The nostalgic content of the album can be summed up as a bevy of mind-numbing adolescent platitudes mimed by men in their mid-to-late twenties. This might have not been so noticeable had the album not been written by grown men in their mid-to-late twenties, called “Teenager” and described in their press kit as “an interior narrative exploring…the emotional world of [vocalist Conor] Deasy”.

With lyrics that near the prosaic depth of a Livejournal, like

“But now I know I’ll never be someone else. Well, not for a long time. I came all this way just to say my feelings have grown. No longer a good friend. I long to hold you in my arms.”

I would like to interpret this as self-awareness in an album which might be ironically pointing toward Deasy’s emotional stagnation since High School. But the absolutely humourless tone says otherwise. Maybe even after Conor Deasy’s emotional spelunking there simply are no conclusions to be made. Maybe even after High School it’s still about High School.

But if you can look past the lyrical and conceptual banality of the album then you’ll be greeted by surprisingly mature pop instrumentation that effortlessly interprets the lush sound construction of Phil Spector and the perfected harmonising of The Beach Boys: a silver lining on a trite cliché of teenagedom.

Valentine's Day

2008-02-14T22:22:00.001-06:00

I'm exhausted. Having spent most of the day sorting through all of the doting fan-mail and love letters I had written myself, I could barely find the energy to begrudge Valentine's Day as I usually do: by creating life-size effigies of everyone in my graduating highschool class who didn't ask me out and spend the afternoon crushing their facsimile paper faces. I considered the countless hundreds I would have to make and decided to bus to town to watch Jumper instead.

On the way I met the Ghost of Valentine's Yet to Come. He was standing on the pavement, blowing his nose literally in to his open palm. Then he stood for a minute to inspect what came out.

Happy Valentine's Day, every one.

World: Win. Man: Zero (Episode 1)

2008-02-09T22:27:00.000-06:00

In honour of an overall uselessness at maths and The Guardian's insistence that 2008 marks the bicentenary of Darwin's On The Origin of Species (it doesn't), I'm beginning a series pitting man against nature entitled: "World: Win. Man: Zero." Where through a series of empirical tests and shiny weighy devices that go Ping! we can finally get an answer to that age old question "Does Emily Gera simply sit in her house all day constructing doomsday scenarios via Youtube links?" Survey says yes : \

The first contenders in this edition of World: Win. Man: Zero. are:
World: Massive Fucking Wasps, and

Man: Friendly, portrait-drawing Robot

While dually impressive characters, Friendly, Portrait-Drawing Robot would invariably be owned in battle because of his inability to secrete acidic fucking venom from the immense exoskeleton crushing mandibles that he doesn't have. On the other hand, while his sensor system is being harvested by wasps he can draw you a quill and ink picture of a David Bowie with no eyes.

Tune in next week for: Parasitic Brain Worms versus my absolutely pointless Bachelor's degree

February

2008-02-05T20:52:00.001-06:00

Overall it wasn't worth selling my soul in exchange for a Kodak Z612 digital camera. It's all fine and well that the 6x zoom option can perforate the lewd and corrupt scurvy of mankind's souls and sure the instant flash makes it simpler to take pictures of my dog in silly hats. But I think I must have beset my neighborhood with some sort of plague because last week it started snowing and now it JUST WON'T FUCKING END.

Here I am taking a stroll outside of my house but wait, what's this? Snow! Lovely, fluffy snow! So fluffy that my leg has been lodged solidly in between its lovely compact sides and I now can't move at all! Gangrene ahoy!

And there! A giant pile of snow for me to drown myself in! Because nature has decided to make a turn for the absurd and give me a fucking whirlpool abyss of snow right in my front lawn in case I was beginning to think the first seven inches immediately outside of my doorstep was getting a bit lukewarm. Thanks lawn! You're a gift that keeps on giving.

Even when you're physically consuming my dog's torso while I've been stricken with a severe case of down syndrome!

I'll see you in Hell, ridiculous February weather.

Dating Videos

2008-02-03T05:15:00.000-06:00

For some reason I've forgotten about the internet's glorious knack for archiving the entirety of the 90s. Here I am spending night after night mourning the festering shreds of my social life, face glistening with condensation of a thousand cups of instant noodle, when I could have been meeting Danny: the 42 year old lawn care worker.

His vestal sweater is but sick and green
It is the east, and Danny is the sun.
Arise, fair Danny!

"I would like a woman who would like me for who..I am for. Because I have sensitive feelings. I can get my heart broken easily."

Why Danny I am mildly, if not completely, emotionally shattered at all times! It's like you're saying the words that I only think!

"My dream date is a romantic dream date, if I got the met the special one, would be a table on the beach. With roses..."

Danny, can you hear that? That's the sound of the stars aligning: to the tune of Us. Not only do you share my dream of dream dates that are romantic dream dates, but also my deep affinity for tables of all kinds.

"The most thing I love about women is that they got a nice attractive legs, nice body, and nice hair, eyes, pretty smile..."

It's too bad I lost my legs in The Nam :( And then there was the horrible night I lost 86% of my face in that car fire. You can hardly see the scarring anymore because my mother knit me a faceplate out of tin. It used to hurt, but now I have the morphine. And you.

And the cats.

Year Long Disaster 1/5

2008-01-29T02:22:00.000-06:00

1/5
[Volcom; 2007]
Styles: Battle of the Bands
Others: Please, No.

“Anything that does not spring from tradition is plagiarized. Begin drawing and painting like the old masters; after that always do as you wish, you will always be respected.”

– Salvador Dali

Dear Year Long Disaster,

Can I trade a quote with you? For years I misinterpreted the Kate Bush lyrics “You had a temper like my jealousy, too hot, too greedy” as “You had a temper like my gelatine, too hot, too greasy”. I mention this because misinterpretation is a common problem. So when you quote Salvador Dali as your album’s mission statement, I have to assume it was all a big misunderstanding. After all, plagiarism isn’t only something that “does not spring from tradition”. Sometimes plagiarism is recreating an almost note for note, dive bar reincarnation of The Rolling Stone’s “Gimme Shelter” and naming it “Leda Atomica”.

In fact, let’s take a closer look at “Leda Atomica”. Let’s listen together, right now.

There are two discernable influences at play within the first minute. The first will be familiar to anyone with even the most basic knowledge of Hard-Rock-by-numbers, as you’re greeted with a chugging power chord for the first thirty seconds of the song known to every intermediate rock song world over. Then, like a musical melting pot, Leda Atomica gives us our second musical reference of the night. Catapulting in to even more 4/4 heavy banality, vocalist Daniel Davies attempts to attach himself every single vocal inflection heard on “Gimme Shelter”, through verse and in to chorus. Only to be met again with our old friend Droning-Chug Guitar for yet another thirty seconds when he’s inexplicably given a solo before meeting up again with a lacklustre Rolling Stones-copying approach to vocal melody.

It’s a fair point that tradition is a necessary didactic base. Every musician has some kind of musical roots that you can trace back to. But rock-revival isn’t only about the act recovering genres; it’s about modifying them as well so that you don’t inevitably begin emulating other formulaic, identity-less revival bands. Because if you begin sharing more similarities to a godforsaken High School “Battle of the Bands” by churning out reheated, derivative rock then, Year Long Disaster, you have to ask yourself: Am I in a 1970s hard rock cover band?

Dog - Karmageddon 3/5

2008-01-20T17:43:00.000-06:00

3/5
[Self-release; 2007]
Styles: Convoluted, semi-psychedelic
Others: T-Rex, Flaming Lips

There’s a reason why music reviewers utilise band names as adjectives in their reviews instead of extended metaphors and Karmageddon is it. When reviewing a band that has as diverse a set list as Dog there’s a certain amount of pride that comes with not being the guy who inevitably uses the phrase “An aural excavation of melting pot rock” to explain the fact that Dog’s songs can only be described in terms of incongruity to one another. If of course that happens to be the one quote taken away from this to put on the album’s liner notes alongside “Cor Limey, TMT” then I’ll qualify it with a more succinct version: it sounds like a lot of different things, all together.

At times the range of influences in David Hyman’s solo effort, Dog, pours out like a high-pressure hose trying to put out a match. Karmageddon isn’t exactly a neo-psychedelia album, nor is it consistently a folk-rock album, nor is it exactly dream pop. On some songs you can hear the echo of The Flaming Lips only to be followed by a thoroughly T-Rex infiltrated set of songs, only to be followed by spoken word, in French. Dog’s third track “Caroline” is part of a long line of songs that couple odd musical bedfellows, incorporating what sounds like the first measure of Tears For Fears’ “Head Over Heels” in to an unabashed Southern Rock jam session.

Karmageddon doesn’t exactly have any establishing context for itself but it is surprisingly successful as an experiment to forgo the failures of pop aesthetic which typically finds itself identified with terms like “radio friendly”, “light” or “complete tripe”. Instead Dog cross-breeds pop sensibility with an experimental ethic, fusing sound manipulation and shuffling drum beats with an altogether 1960s Americana image.

This is essentially the showcase of David Hyman’s talent as a multi-instrumentalist, with the help of producer Dougie Browne (Iggy Pop, Sean Lennon, Cibo Matto, Jack Bruce, Marc Ribot). As a solo album it’s incredibly ambitious. As an album alone it can get a bit lost. But even when it’s not sure of what kind of album it wants to be, it’s incredibly intricately put together and genuine musical ability is more than enough to even out the lack of coherence.

1. The Ocean

2. Caroline

3. Second Chance

4. Tremuloy

5. The Dark End

6. Je T’aime

7. Jam or Marmalade

8. Pluto

9. Fun Machine

10. Air

King of Prussia - Save the Scene 3/5

2008-01-13T18:49:00.000-06:00

3/5
[Kindercore; 2007]
Style: 1960's nostalgia pop, indie pop
Others: Elephant six

Dear newly formed independent labels of the future,

I would like to begin my correspondence by congratulating you on securing your new business! It’s an exciting time for a record label entrepreneur. With a little perseverance you too will be on your way to the world of industry standard competition, cutthroat capitalist strategies to eliminate the little guy, and Rock ‘n’ Roll! But it’s not all hard work. Hold on for a wild ride of recreational drugs to politely turn down! Make room on your calendars for crazy parties of reasonable length! Tempt gorgeous women with such phrases as “In eight years I may have a six digit salary, if we’re not inevitably bought out before then.” Intrigue them with statements like “No, I’m not technically in the band”. Wave at them coolly as they walk away from you.

Remember, as an independent company you are always in the crosshairs of those awful “Goliath” major labels. One wrong move and that little David of a business plan can expect to experience its first inverted Indian deathlock of the business world. Lucky for you, with the advent of the “internet” anyone can make a record label—and they do! So while they are all being pinned to the ground by corporate pressures you can indiscreetly hop your way to the finish line of success.

Don’t worry, it’s all part of the business world’s circle of life. Much like how the rabbit population is dealt with by the invisible hand of nature in the form of dogs and supper in the Ozarks, independent labels are sorted by the invisible hand of the market, which forces successful companies to make highly unethical decisions to take down their smaller competition.

Be aware: there are variations of just this kind of natural outcome which may or may not work in your favour. Athens, GA.’s independent label Kindercore became almost completely defunct after a sour business deal with their financial backer, only to regain its enterprise with the intervention of the law. This caused a shift in their business paradigm to include more forward thinking approaches, primarily through a partnership with the Independent Online Distribution Alliance to develop a solid digital distribution focus and avoid the negative environmental aspects of manufacturing CDs. King of Prussia is essentially the fruit of that labour if only because they’re one of the chief headliners of the now semi-successful label.

Don’t forget, getting a band on your label that sounds nearly identical to a more successful band is just as good as having that successful band. This is the same approach used by Kindercore in signing King of Prussia. They may be going to impressive lengths to help haul the music industry in to modernity but they aren’t above “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” music distribution. As a throwback to Elephant 6’s throwback to 1960’s pop, King of Prussia do surprisingly well: varying Beatles harmonies with the traditional foray of layered indie pop and socio-political lyrics that only sometimes dribble in to the cheesy consistency of processed Velveeta (“Tony Danza’s/On the run”). Although it’s hard to gauge whether they’re only derivative clones to the stem cell of Neutral Milk Hotel, the Elephant 6 fan base will welcome them with open arms. For a semi-successful label this signifies the inevitability of a semi-successful band.

Good luck as you pursue your dreams, future stars of the industry! You’re on your way to making it big!

Corilyn Limeyelle,
Financial Analyst
Dreamweaver
Consultant to the stars

4 Bonjour Parties: Pigments Drift down To the Brook 3/5

2008-01-05T05:32:00.000-06:00

3/5
[Mush; 2007]
Style: chamber pop
Others: The Books, Cornelius, listening to glaciers melt

Among the list of instruments 4 Bonjour's Parties make use of in their debut album are a vibraphone, multiple flutes, glockenspiels, an acoustic guitar, an accordion, bongos, a laptop, whatever "noise" is and best yet someone is given the esteemed duty of playing a key which I'm assuming is managed by continuously thrashing them on their forehead while imagining what their musical career could have been. Yet even while Pigments Drift down To the Brook could have easily become an example of throwing any possible instrument, synthesizer module and languages in to a senseless aural goo they actual maintain a surprising sense of cohesive arrangement.

The majority of ambitious debut albums suffer through similar complications, a band will read “artistry” and understand that to mean "convoluted". This is the kind of misunderstanding that spawns bands which ramble through songs with an EBow piled on top of underwater gongs and swarms of dub effects like loyal sons of Marcel Duchamp after being told to "just play whatever". And this is one thing that 4 Bonjour Parties well avoid. Each song is meticulously structured and stays far away from the aimless chaos that plagues many multi-instrumentalist bands: both acoustic and electronic instruments continuously alternate as focal points in every composition, reacting in each bar with slight variations while being tied together by the locked repetition of whatever principle instruments happen to be in that song. Every instrument has a purpose.

Too bad they seem to have a near-complete aversion to melody. Actually, you’d be hard pressed to find any very noticeable change in pitch at all through out the album which is strange considering how heavily orchestrated this debut clearly is. Instead they choose to totally sedate each song, letting it apathetically sludge toward the outro as slowly as it can while safely neglecting to acknowledge any kind of significant tune. This is almost forgiveable considering how well-arranged the album happens to be, and near-impressive in how well they keep any apparent melody hidden beneath many structural layers or possibly stored away in a vault. But compositional talent doesn't make up for the regrettably packaged banality of the album.

Celebrity Death Pool

2008-01-03T14:17:00.000-06:00

Welcome to Celebrity Death Pool! Slightly more fun than a poke in the eye.

Here's how it works:

Each player chooses nine celebrities which he or she deems likely to die in the upcoming year. Celebrities must be confirmed as being 'alive' prior to the start of the game, and must be recognised as being alive by each contestant. While some celebrities may appear dead, don't be fooled! Even the most miserably doddering celebrities can take YEARS to die! Prime examples of this are Peter O'Toole. Equally relevent but unnacceptable answers include the career of Tom Cruise and Emily Gera's social life (:( )

Answers will be calculated on December 31st, 2008 at midnight. The winner of Celebrity Death Pool will be based on how many deaths he or she has guessed 'right'. While there are no prizes in Celebrity Death Pool, the victorious player will be named superior to all other contestants in all ways and may feel free to beat us with reeds.

Murcof: Cosmos

2007-12-16T00:28:00.001-06:00

3/5
[Leaf; 2007]
Styles: musique concrete, electronic composition
Others: Gyorgy Ligeti, JLIAT

The holiday season is here once again. Snow is settling quietly outside, stockings are being hung, kitchens are thick with the smell of mince pies. Lists are checked and gifts are bought: it’s a time for giving, while we grind our teeth in to a fine powder, dredging up the willpower to maintain selfless affection for three sanctioned weeks.

My December is being spent as usual: rounding up waifs and vagrants on the street and ushering them into my beautiful manor where I can sing carols at them and wash their feet with my hair.

But only after being invited into the dining hall for an afternoon meal as Wentworth lifted the pewter covers from each platter did one of the little wretches pipe in, “What…what [is] that?”

The audacity! The cheek! The [nerve] of the boy! As I was uncovering my bejewelled walking stick to administer a beating the likes he would never forget, Wentworth began to describe what lay before them. “Cosmos, sir…” he began with a sneer.

“Drained from the melodic juices of previous works, Cosmos is left to bubble atop of a seething pan of sharp shards of metal, to be later buttered with a mechanical hum. It is then combined with the corpse of Hungarian composer Gyorgy Ligeti and left on a light simmer, shucking the traditional use of samples for a variation of Musique Concrete as organic sounds and original classical instruments are fed into the meal. We then make sure to thin all acoustic elements until they become an almost unrecognisable porridge of lock grooves and mathematical precision. Strings are layered overtop of a vast recess of humming silence: a conceptual interpretation of the cosmos that is occasionally sparked to life with the sloth-like passing of a pebble curving with gravity, only to be plucked back in to a black pool of space minutes later, leaving you to dip your toes in to the sucking whirlpools of yet even more echoing silence. When fully cooked in polytonal vibration this is to be served as a giant, faceless black monolith. Not to be eaten, of course, but to stare down at you forebodingly until you begin to cry.”

The look of doe-eyed panic befell them as they recoiled in terror and bolted in to the white afterglow of the frozen streets.

It’s the same thing every year.

1.Cuerpo Celeste

2.Cielo

3. Cosmos - (I)

4. Cometa

5. Cosmos - (II)

6. Oort

The Mekons: Natural

2007-12-14T01:08:00.000-06:00

3/5
[Quarterstick; 2007]
Styles: literate, Spinal Tap-ian Stonehenge
Other: Hank Williams, Gang of Four

I hope that none of you ever experience the agony of reviewing a band whose discography rivals The Fall. Beginning with their first release Fast Product and straight through toward their most recent album Natural is approximately twenty-eight years worth of music to overview. Twenty-eight years. Eighteen albums. There’s some cruel irony in the semantic history of their name (based on the 1950s comic character The Mekon whose minuscule, atrophied body was punctuated by a massive, swollen head) and the throbbing headache felt after eighteen consecutive albums. Actually, twenty-eight condensed years of music is just about enough time for the cells to start collecting in your brain; ample time for thousands of them to form spongy white tumours overlapping strategically in to a cantaloupe-headed comic book homage. Send me through a CAT scan. Show me that my skull has deteriorated into a perfect representation of “I (heart) Mekons". Tell me my ribosomes have been replaced by the first quarter of lyrics from “Never Been in a Riot.”

Analysing something this contextually heavy becomes a process of eliminating useless information. After all, what can really be said about prolific bands? They grew up, their style changed, band members left, they grabbed new instruments. Now and then I do wish you readers could come on this side of music journalism. It’s baffling how easily reviewing can degrade into something woefully similar to a liner-notes biography. As you read this a lost writer has introduced their ten-page The Mekons press release to a Cuisinart. Press “On” and keep a glue stick nearby. Paste and dry. The review you’re glancing through right now is very likely the result of that process. This is a process of erroneously stacking information, and leaving only a single thread of actual critical opinion in this compost of literary crap.

Is this the tradition a reviewer is meant to follow? Let me cut your reading to a bare minimum and condense Natural in to a sentence:

[Analysis]: A 1 ,2 bit3 c4l5oy6ing.

It’s a nebulous statement that most prolific bands will suffer significantly from comparisons to its previous work. With the weight of multiple releases, new albums become the sum of its past: that’s the typical process of hermeneutic interpretation. But the significance lies in the extent that it can be simplified. Most reviews I’ve read of Natural drown the critical aspect in statements like “punk going country” and “celebrating over 25 years of Pop.” But this isn’t contextualising a genre, this stenches of biographical platitudes.

Journalism shouldn’t become as formulaic as the music it often criticises. Yet elements of this kind formulaic tendency seep in to The Mekons newest album. The overriding element of Natural is the band's sense of experimentation, merging punk with semi-transcendentalist folk. But while The Mekons are a punk band which has reached toward country roots, the merging of genres has becomes a standard expectation of the band and the act of "experimental" merging alone becomes as persistent a structure as the critical banalities of its reviews. The criticism devolves in to a sentence of actual analyses with every strum, while words are sporadically thrown on the literary scaffolding of press kit factoids.

1. Dark Dark Dark

2. Dickie Chalkie And Nobby

3. Old Fox, The

4. White Stone Door

5. Shocking Curse Bird

6. Give Me Wine Or Money

7. Diamonds

8. Burning In The Desert Burning

9. Hope And The Anchor, The

10. Cockermouth

11. Zeroes And Ones

12. Perfect Mirror

1 Referring to their album “Natural”: the first CD of new material since the 2002 critically acclaimed “OOOH!”

2 Came in to being during the musical reign of groups from The Clash and Joy Division to Gang of Four

3 Signed by Virgin based primarily upon their 1977 single “Never Been In A Riot”, an astute reply to The Clashes “White Riot”

4 Exemplifies an indie aesthetic in their aptitude for experimentation, utilising diverse instruments and disinterest in rabid commercial success. The Mekons refused to tour for a period of time, only to return to live gigs in support of a miner’s strike.

5 Natural sinks in to its roots as punk/folk propagators as exemplified in their 1985 album “Fear and Whiskey” in which they broke from their original brand of structurally standardised punk with the use of steel guitars and an overall Hank Williams inspired aesthetic.

6 Finding a thematic comfort zone in something that can be best depicted by a Spinal Tap-ian jig around a miniature Stonehenge, The Mekons would make Thoreau proud with their echoing hillside chants about rustic heartlands and dark druid homelands.

Year End List 2007

2007-12-10T21:19:00.001-06:00

1. Deerhoof: Friend Opportunity
2. Go!Team: Proof of Youth
3. Klaxons: Myths of the Near Future
4. New Young Pony Club: Fantastic Playroom
5. !!!: Myth Takes
6. Fiery Furnaces: Widow City
7. Simian Mobile Disco: Attack Decay Sustain Release
8. LCD Soundsystem: Sound of Silver
9. Liars: Liars
10. Of Montreal: Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?
11. Electrelane: No Shouts No Calls
12. Deerhunter: Cryptograms
13. The Long Blondes: Someone to Drive You Home
14. Kitsune: Maison Compilation 4
15. Bat for Lashes: Fur and Gold
16. Boris with Michio Kurihara: Rainbow
17. Animal Collective: Strawberry Jam
18. Digitalism: Idealism
19. Black Kids: Wizard of Ahhhs
20. The Brunettes: Structure and Cosmetics
21. Foals: Live EP
22. Girls Aloud: Tangled Up *
23. Justice: t
24. Skeletons & the Kings of all Cities: LUCAS
25. Herbert: 100 Lbs (re-release)

* Before you begin to stone me, I'm including this mostly as a commentary that this is genuinely more well-structured, well-composed and done with more gusto than most of the so-called "art" albums of this year, as well as part of my ongoing quest to legitimize good pop references.

Donny Hue and the Colors

2007-11-19T03:04:00.000-06:00

2.5/5
Styles: Psychfolk?, tripe, creative writing 101
Other: Apples in Stereo, Syd Barrett

Many terrible ideas were once passable on paper. Some misguided case somewhere will wonder to himself “What if?” and unknowingly unleash a factory of bile-inducing creations on to the world.
What if in a hilarious new reality show viewers at home telephone in and have their collective voices projected live to mentally unstable prisoners in isolation for three side-splitting weeks?

What if we pitch a musical in which the cast are informed of the death of their beloved household pet mere minutes before stepping on stage?

What if we, Donny Hue and the colors, combine indie-folk tendencies with the surrealism of psychedelia?

What if we stop for a moment and try to define psychfolk? Really, how are we qualifying this? Because if Folkmote successfully depicts the genre then I can only assume the going criterion is Creative Writing 101 prose based on a mosaic of drug-hazed refrigerator magnet combinations. Join Donny as he wears out his rhyming dictionary/thesaurus and travels “hand in hand” with “piano dreams”, meeting “dissonant capriccios” which brag “of their families” and then later “wait for a year by a tiny marble stone” but not before creating “makeshift parallelograms”. At least I think that’s what’s happening.

Folkmote is laden with ideas that just don’t quite work. This is essentially an act of trying to steer a ship made from towels as Donny Hue fulfills his “what if” of making musical surrealism serviceably flat. One of the unfortunate truths about being in a band whose overriding characteristics are based around propelling sonic oddities and an off-kilter atmosphere is that it has to actually be an overriding characteristic. Instead, Folkmote follows the route of using the concept of a surrealist gypsy jamboree as an aimless extension of their Apples in Stereo indie-reproduction.

Among the check-list of things that are diluted in to near-complete irrelevance are the 23+ band members and the massive quantity of instruments which range from autoharps and theremins to organs and horns. But Folkmote’s instrumentation quickly becomes a process of piling instrument upon instrument with no perceivable pattern of arrangement. Instead it transforms in to a musical porridge where glockenspiels wade deep in the watered down psychedelia while fist-pounded organs try to divide through the thick, cloying syrup of Hue’s vocals.

“Humming with the Flowerbirds” and possibly “Real Long Time” exist immediately outside of the platitudes of the rest of the album and successfully make use of the 1960s misfit-sensibility that Folkmote never seems to fully own up to. If the album in its entirety is successful in any way it’s as a reminder that acting less as a lush, psychedelic jam and more as a predictable and repetitive cycle of indie folk song archetypes featuring an infinite number of instruments wedged unreachably in the crotch of every song is [not] how to make psychfolk.

1. in the excellence of the autoharp
2. piano dreams
3. real long time
4. paint a picture
5. humming with the Flowerbirds
6. mountain piece
7. for the last time beatrix, it’s toast!
8. peter and his puzzle
9.
10. in the excellence of the autoharp (reprise)
11. folkmote

Eulogies - Eulogies 2/5 (A flow chart)

2007-10-15T19:57:00.000-05:00

2/5
[Dangerbird; 2007]
Styles: introspective rock, mope pop
Others: early rock ’n’ roll played at half speed

1. Inward

2. One Man

3. Life Boat

4. If I Knew You

5. Under The Knife

6. Can’t Relate

7. Compromise

8. Running In The Rain

9. Useless Amends

10. Little Davie

11. Can’t Relate Reprise

12. Big Eyes

13. Blizzard Ape

International Falls - Achievement

2007-09-29T21:57:00.000-05:00

3/5

Most mediocre indie pop can be traced back to a single cause and reaction. Like a Rube Goldberg machine of second-rate formulas, a verse will be flung out in to a cavity of clumsily repeated power chords, spiral down through a knit-wool chorus of nasal congested sighs, be channelled in to a stream of diluted verses that somehow justify rhyming 'girl' with 'girl', until it finally flops in to a pit of acoustic outro strums: a lifeless corpse of AABA pop refuse. Somewhere in Middle American a fifteen year old has placed his sebaceous little fingers in to G chord and begun this cycle. Somewhere in Chicago an electro-acoustic trio will have created the second of five successful Pedro the Lion tribute albums based on this formula. Somewhere in my soul, a little piece of me will die.

But what’s interesting about International Falls isn’t the aspect of musical formula. It’s how they both act according to {and} subvert standardised indie pop simultaneously. This slight revision of melodic stock is conveniently packaged in to two categories: semi-nostalgic balladry and pop experimentation. At points you can trace chalk between either section mid-song.

The ballads rely on accepted signifiers like acoustic guitars and brushed cymbals that sway in the doorway like little brother to Dan Bejar’s Destroyer after coming clean about stealing his tape deck. I predict amateur zine writers across the country will hunt-and-peck their way to the following line: "{Achievement} achieves ______." {Achievement} achieves chamber pop percussion. {Achievement} achieves earnest boy-girl harmonies. {Achievement} achieves spider-fingered acoustic strumming. Yes, they do this. And yes, many bands do this equally as well.

But if the album does anything extraordinarily well, it’s give a strong case that similarity isn’t redundancy. While there is still a looming presence of typical indie formula in {Achievement}, International Falls manages to leap out of the purgatory of superfluous pop. {Achievement} is in this case the story of associating a familiar overarching indie pop style with the far less common mechanism of subtle gestures, in which International Falls responds to their own analog indie behaviourisms with well-produced structural tangents. Strobing bass lines cut through the customary acoustic strumming, synth-drenched outros straddle industrial drum beats and hand claps, and all moves together in a succinct and winding cogwheel of pop hooks. While their slight experimentative tendencies aren’t about to create a revolution, their combination of pop aesthetic and fresh indie rock arrangements raises them to a higher grade of interest.

Response regarding Eric Copeland Opening for Animal Collective Concert

2007-09-27T22:48:00.000-05:00

Lisa Thomson, somewhere on campus Eric Copeland's SFU fan base of three are groaning a "raaggh!" of frustration at your article "Live Music: Strawberry Jam Band"; in which you criticised the former Black Dice member’s opening act for Animal Collective. You'll probably mistake this sound as a syllable-for-syllable imitation of Copeland’s performance but let me point out the few obvious differences to make it easier for you: The former would be a bunch of kids groaning like a wounded pig and the latter is one guy groaning like a wounded pig at 150 decibels.

I'd first like to commend you for mentioning Black Dice and the line “Why does it feel like my ears are bleeding?” in the same sentence. Them's fightin' words. I'd also like to warn you that when armies of angular-banged indie kids come after us with torches and pitchforks in hand, I will be using your body as a human shield. But really, what in the hell was happening there? The dentist drill tempo, the industrial clatter, the vocal squelching. Oh I get it, it's art because it's unlistenable. Black Dice is always a tricky listen but at the very least their brand of noise rock has some element of rhythm. What Copeland was doing was just the vanity of convoluted noise making.

Emily Gera

Greatest Hits

2007-09-23T03:59:00.001-05:00

I'm either completely inept at gaining a proper audience who consistently visit this thing or I'm surprisingly great at getting three hundred random, faceless strangers to glance at a blog that's being completely misuse as some sort of horrific archival experiment. Three hundred random, faceless strangers nearly all of whom finding me from my Facebook apparently.

So yes. Hi, all of my middle school peers who scarred me for decades to come. It's been so long! You look different, have you lost weight? I'd ask you to come in and sit down but y'know. So little time, so much therapy.