Top 5 Albums To Change Your Life To

So I was watching the special features on the Control dvd and I watched an interview with the director, Anton Corbijin, who said Joy Division's album Unknown Pleasures had galvanized him into moving to England. I was struck by that. An album picked him up and moved him from the Netherlands to England in hopes of meeting the band and changing his life. (He succeeded, and many of the famous images from Joy Division, including Matt's poster, were taken by him). 

With that in mind I came up with another Top 5. The top 5 albums/songs/artists to change your life to. 

I'm still coming up with mine. I just wanted to put that out there.  

1. Led Zeppelin IV - Led Zeppelin 

2. Greatest Hits - Oasis (Doesn't exist. See Below.)

3. All Things Must Pass - George Harrison (the whole thing as a unit of song)

4. Horses - Patti Smith (specifically, Gloria)

5. London Calling - The Clash (specifically, London Calling)

Oasis' Greatest Hits - specifically designed to make you change your life, because naming one album would be leaving too much out.

1. Some Might Say

2. Rock N Roll Star

3. Cigarettes & Alcohol

4. Live Forever

5. I Hope I Think I Know

6. Cast No Shadow

7. The Masterplan

8. Roll With It

9. Don't Look Back In Anger

10. Wonderwall

11. The Shock of the Lightning

12. Lord Don't Slow Me Down

13. Let There Be Love

14. I'm Outta Time

15. Morning Glory

16. All Around the World

17. The Girl in the Dirty Shirt 

18. Take Me Away

19. D'you Know What I Mean?

20. Champagne Supernova

TOP FIVE (Vol. 4) - Vinyl Records!

I know I'm supposed to keep some sort of regular interval between Top Fives but I just got my record player to work which made me realize my only record is Billy Joel's Streetlife Serenade. So, to help me out, Top Five records you think would be the most worth listening to on vinyl.

1. The White Album - The Beatles

2. The Wall - Pink Floyd

3. Their Satanic Majesties - The Rolling Stones

4. Summer Days (And Summer Nights!) - The Beach Boys

5. SF Sorrow - The Pretty Things 

1) The Wall -Pink Floyd

2). Sgt Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band -The Beatles

3). Return to Cookie Mountain -TV on the Radio

4). Kid A -Radiohead

5). Mothership -Led Zepplin (yea, I know it's a best of!)

Top 5 Songs in Vinyl 

1). Rebellion (Lies) -Arcade Fire

2). Us & Them -Pink Floyd

3). Moonlight Sonata -Beethoven 

4). Hey Jude -The Beatles

5). Holland, 1945 -Neutral Milk Hotel

TOP FIVE (Vol. 3) - Amendments!

Top five amendments you would make IN SONG to ____.

Matt gets the Ten Commandments, Owen gets the Bill of Rights, I get the Constitution.

1. Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 - Bob Dylan (Get it? Listen to it. You'll get it.)

2. The Star-Spangled Banner - Jimi Hendrix (No words, but from now on you have to hum this in the morning at school)

3. Everyone Gets A Star - Albert Hammond, Jr.

4. Not to Touch the Earth - The Doors

5. This House Is A Circus - Arctic Monkeys

Good Top 5 pick, Gabe.

1. Oh My God - Kaiser Chiefs
2. Losing My Religion - R.E.M.
3. Houses of the Holy - Led Zeppelin
4. Neon Bible - Arcade Fire
5. God Put A Smile Upon Your Face - Coldplay

I think I deserve a sexual favor for using a Led Zeppelin song in context.

The Bill of Rights -Think of a timeline as you read the titles

1). Born in the U.S.A -Bruce Springsteen

2). Beautiful Day -U2

3). The Night They Drove Ol' Dixie Down -The Band

4). How to Disappear Completely -Radiohead

5). Wish You Were Here -Pink Floyd

Wow. Owen, man, you're gonna have to spell this one out for me. I'm good till How to Disappear Completely. Unless it's isolationism. In which case, I don't know what Wish You Were Here is.

Hahah. It was pretty obvious but I had fun with it. Every time I thought of a song I giggled a little. 

Also.

I made us a new background.

Whatcha think?

And I changed the layout! Good work, team. Keepin' it fresh.

By the way, Owen, check out the Oasis post on the Spin Editors' Blog to your right. It's about the night we saw them. And it shares my sentiments.

Wonder Twin Powers activate!

Jesus.

Would you look at those walls o' text.

I'll deal with them tomorrow. But first, an amusing anecdote.

I made a very serious Enemy™ once, through a series of events that, in the long run, I do not regret. A friend of mine was showing me her music library, and the neat music that the Enemy™ had given her.

I was surprised. She said he had given her Joy Division. And not just a random-ass MP3 of "Love Will Tear Us Apart", or even Unknown Pleasures. On her iTunes was the full album of Closer and the Transmission single from Substance.

Clearly, my accidental Enemy™ had better taste than I thought.

She continues scrolling down. We hit The Raconteurs, Consolers of the Lonely, which she also said was his. I'm now surprised. Maybe a bit worried. I made an Enemy™ who had fantastic taste in music.

At this point, I'm looking at the "Date Added" tab for other albums that he had given her. An amazing Tegan and Sara album. Two discs worth of The Smiths. And, oh god, oh god, was that The Stone Roses?! I've made an Enemy™ out of a guy who likes both The Smiths, Joy Division, AND The Stone Roses?!

I was on the verge of tears. There were probably a dozen fantastic, classic albums that had been given by this Enemy™, whom would probably resort to violence (or at least unpleasant language) next we would meet. I fucked up big time. I almost started tearing up. She looked at me like I had a pumpkin-sized tumor growing out of my head.

Then, I look at the date again. June 2008. She was in Chicago during June 2008. With me. Not with the Enemy™.

I had given her these amazing albums, and she and I had just forgotten.

The realization was both liberating and shameful.


Also, the new Animal Collective album is great, and you all must acquire it. I'll write about it at length later, but, get this. It's actually listenable.

We are our own worst enemies. So you must be walking on sunshine. Any plans?

Double-Whammy Post

Third Time's the Shit-Show

It's happening everywhere: from Las Vegas to Brooklyn, and all over the South. It devastates every good band it encounters. Gentlemen, I speak of capitalism. 

Kings of Leon, the Killers, and TV on the Radio - this just in the past year - have fallen victim to a masochistic need to make money. Not merely enough money to satiate an indie band's aggressive hunger to take lots of drugs and pick up girls in swanky hotels, but more money than they could possibly need as individuals who decided once long ago to pursue a career in music and get signed to an indie label. 

This disease, as we shall call it, manifests itself in several ways, including manliner and the purchase of lung-restrainingly tight t-shirts that display more nipple than a grown man should be proud of. But what I intend to speak of here now is the degradation of a good band's third album. Yes, that's right. Some, like Kings of Leon, hold it off till their fourth technically (but in such cases no one's ever heard of their first album). Some, like the Killers, started sucking at the second album. But the trend persists: in years past, we see weak thirds coming from Interpol and the Strokes - though arguably only weak as compared to their first two.

Here I command thee, indie rock: shut up, sit down, and write music. For heaven's sake, you're not gonna become rock legends by making grandiose albums with superciliously poppy singles. Why do you think the Libertines are living legends? They never made it to the third, the sons of bitches! 

And for heaven's sake, this must stop before the most hopeful of garage rock revivalists fall as well. I speak of Arctic Monkeys. I know. I know. (I'd say pray to Bacchus but I feel like if there's a God of indie rock, it would have to be Ringo. Or Stimpy.)

The Proof That Love's Not Only Blind But Deaf

In the UK, Kings of Leon have become the Messiah. We must ask ourselves, then, if KoL is the second coming, who was the first?

The answer is clear: the brand of rock n roll that has emerged at the turn of the God-blessed new century, pulling hipsters out of the river Styx that was bubble-gum pop and Nirvana's death-eater following, is due mostly to...the seventies and eighties. Two decades that the Grammy-led musical world seemed to forget had taken place. But sifting through the archives, five men happened upon the truth of those twenty years of punk and post-punk. Those five men were the Strokes. 

Since, Aha Shake Heartbreak, Kings of Leon have rightfully garnered a foothold in the ears of millions. For three albums, they kicked ass in ripped t-shirts and Christ-like hair (for two of them it sounded good). Then came Only By The Night. What happened? Who knows. Maybe Caleb got banned from so many rodeos for banging chicks with cowboy hats in the bathrooms that he forgot how it feels to ride a bronco. Whatever happened, it felt like when the dinosaurs disappeared. A hole developed where before there were four kicks and a taper jean girl. Yet despite all this, the Kings have taken their place at the throne of Britain, and their loyal subjects are forgetting their place. Arguments are running rampant through the indie world: "Who's better?" "Who's more important?" The seeds of these arguments can be found in the Followills' debut when they were hailed as the Strokes of the South. (I always thought that was unfounded in the first place, since Caleb Followill sounds like a mentally challenged child dying from a bee-sting on his tongue and Julian Casablancas sounds like he was inspired to become a singer after hearing the text-voice on iMacs that was featured on OK Computer.)

A challenge: listen to a Strokes song and tell me where they got their melodies. Tell me how Julian Casablanca's already-classic lazy vocals figured out that they should be placed upon Albert Hammond, Jr.'s mechanical strumming; tell me how that playful bass line decided to hook up with drum-machine style rock drumming - a paradox in itself, all to compose the prettiest, catchiest, most orgasmic melodies and rhythms since the dawn of time (by the dawn of time I mean Love Me Do). As a songwriter, Is This It? and Room on Fire are the works of stylistic genius. There's not a bad song on there (and, almost contradictorily, if you tell me you don't like one song, I can easily play you another song and tell you they sound exactly the same, so chill out and enjoy the 3-minute coke-binge). Then, with First Impressions of Earth, they began a dissent into something...else. It was still the Strokes but it was also...different. In any case, this caused many fans to lose interest, some hoping it was a fluke or a Revolver to their Sgt. Pepper's, others believing the era of the Strokes was over. 

Even if the latter group was right, even if Albert Hammond, Jr.'s last good work was Yours To Keep, even if Julian Casablancas hit his head on the ceiling of a hotel room and forgot how to be the embodiment of Cool, and even if Kings of Leon had never released Only By The Night, how do you compare Because of the Times to Room on Fire? Granted, one is a hoe-down that got out of control due to too much drinking and the other is a rain-drenched robot whose circuits got shorted and started dancing like it was 1984, so it's sort of like comparing apples and oranges, except we all like oranges better. Don't fucking tell me you don't know in your heart of hearts that oranges taste way the fuck better than apples! Don't tell me that! Cause you're a fucking liar, so fuck you up the ass!

The TVotR (belated) SMACKDOWN!!

The first time I listened to Dear Science, I admit, I had it playing in the background. However I noticed from the getgo that it didn't sound right. And by "right" I mean "unbridled." Indeed if you asked me how Dear Science sounded I would have to say "tame," which, if you know TVotR, seems impossible. 

A few minutes ago I went back to Dear Science, armed with Bose headphones and metrolyrics.com. I went through each song with a blue-light and a microscope. 

Before I launch into my conclusion I want to take you on a trip back one album to Return to Cookie Mountain, which, in full disclosure, is one of my top five albums of all time. Now, Cookie Mountain was my first experience with TVOTR and I bought the album (the last album I ever got on CD) going solely off the strength of its single Wolf Life Me. When I got home I popped it into my old Sony portable cd player and had a listen. 

Return to Cookie Mountain hits your senses on multiple fronts. The throbbing ambience mixed with a myriad collection of uniquely utilized instruments lays the scene. Next comes the incredible range and power of vocalist Tunde Adebimpe, who plays the role of narrator through your 40 odd minute journey through TVotR's underworld. Last comes the piercing, passionate, absurd, and devastating lyrics which tell a story of love, hate, agony, and lust. 

For centuries artists, writers, and musicians have strived to describe life on the fringe. What always impressive me about TVotR was their ability to take you there. When you hit play you're no longer sitting on your couch, you're confessing love on a street corner in Brooklyn. You're jacking a car to have sex in. You're fighting heroin addiction. 

The album strikes you on a gut level, each song seemingly dedicated to a different emotion. Lust (Wolf Like Me), Agony (Tonight), Absurdity (A Method), Hate (The Blues from Down Here), Hope (Wash the Day). And the music worked in perfect flux with the vocals and lyrics to convey these emotions. 

By the time the last chords of Wash the Day fade and silence floods in you're back sitting on your couch like Alice waking up from Wonderland. 

Now, on to Dear Science

The root cause I found for Dear Science's inability to :cough: perform is the lyrics. They are almost wholly devoid of emotion. You can tell by the fact that both Tunde with the rest of the band don't exactly know how to play them. Compared to Cookie Mountain there is relatively little diversity in tempo, musicality, or vocal fluctuation. Sure, there is some, but nothing eye raising, especially after hearing Tunde go from screeching blood and malice in The Blues from Down Here to croon stoicism and comfort in Tonight in just the palmfull of seconds it took for the tracks to change. 

The reason for this, I think, is that the lyrics are too absurd. 

"Too absurd?" you say. "Absurdity is what these guys are about!!"

True. TVotR has always been incredibly effective at wielding one of the most hit-or-miss literary devices in history. Absurdity makes up their lyrical backbone. But the difference between the absurdity in Return to Cookie Mountain or Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes and Dear Science is that the lyrics in the former use absurdity to augment non-absurd plotline of the song. In Dear Science, its all absurd. 

Whereas Return to Cookie Mountain was dipped in absurdity, like a candy apple, Dear Science was deep fat fried. There doesn't seem to be any coherence or general purpose. I mean, what does "In my mind I'm drowning butterflies, broken dreams, and alibis. That's fine. I've seen my palette blown to monochrome [a black and white photograph]/hollow heart clicks hollowtone, it's time" (Dancing Choose) mean?! 

These lyrics aren't used to augment the primary lyrical thread, like the way "Playhouses/swept away by the river now/confound me/sound me out" (Playhouses) is used to emphasize the loss of innocence felt by the singer as his youth is washed away by the "cigarettes and sugar shit of alcohol breath." 

As it stands the songs are simply composed of absurdist statements that conform begrudgingly to create a vague song meaning. Sure, I can tell you that Golden Age is about 21st century American consumerism, conformity and misguided rebellion, but...so what?

That's not saying that TVotR's lyrics are bad. As poetry there amazing! I mean, over the course of three albums (with emphasis on Dear Science) they've outdone Ginsberg, Kerouac and the rest of the Beat Generation. "Angry young mannequin American/apparently still to the rhythm/better get to the back of me if you can't stand the vision" (Dancing Choose) or "Death is a door that love walks through/in and out/in and out/back and forth" (Stork and Owl). I just feel it would have been better had TVotR taken what they had written and published a poetry anthology rather than try to...you know, sing to them. 

With all that said I have to admit, Dear Science is a really good album. The music is beautiful and the lyrics are still highly poetic (if a bit scatterbrained). I'm not trying to say that Dear Science is a bad album, but I can't deny that it was a severely disappointing follow up to an absolutely perfect breakout. Let me put it this way: had anyone else produced Dear Science I would vehemently argue that they should get the top spot for 2008. But seeing as I know that TVotR is capable of much more I can't help but sigh and love Dear Science less for not being as accomplished as its older brother. 

In the end Dear Science didn't move me. I wasn't aroused or excited in any way. There wasn't even toe-tapping! While Cookie Mountain grabbed your hand, stuffed you in the back of a stolen convertible and took you places, Dear Science showed up with a projector and some slides to drift through. 

That's not saying I'm still anxiously awaiting the next release from (in my opinion) America's best band. 

Nicely done, Dunleavy. Your best post, I think. 

qUiD PrO quO

So earlier on this blog Matt asked what the deal was with Fleet Foxes. I recently listened to their newest album, Fleet Foxes in an attempt to answer it. 

The folk influence is a major part of the indie movement, in fact it could be called a forefather. Folk came to a crawl with the advent of punk, but resurged with the popularity of indie in various alloyed forms (The Shins, Peter, Bjorn, and John, The Mountain Goats, Iron & Wine ect). 

With Fleet Foxes you get a classic incarnation of folk-rock with a modern energy. The music flows in the same vein as the major folk-rock bands of the 1960's, such as the Grateful Dead and the Byrds with some Simon and Garfunkel thrown in. 

I enjoyed the self-titled album far more than I thought I would, displaying its large cross-genera appeal (I'm definitely not who you would call a "folk person"). 

The music has a gentle but energetic flow which mixes well with Robin Pecknold's redolently haunting voice, as he sings about waiting lovers, dead brothers, and the serene passage of the seasons. The various layers of audio add atmosphere in the background, but yield effectively to Pecknold and the guitar, creating an overall unified sound out of a myriad of different instruments and sounds. 

So, Matt, I gave you what you were looking for, now I want something in return. 

Explain the popularity of The Hold Steady and Vampire Weekend. I don't get either of these bands. 

I've listened to Vampire's Weekend's self-titled album about three times now since its release and in the interval I've completely forgotten what they sound like. I'm not even joking. No band has ever given me such a powerful Memento effect before. The reason I've listened to it three times is because every few months I remember their incredible popularity (I was recently reminded by their climb to the top of the Best of 08 charts) and give them another go, only to realize, as the last few seconds of the last song drift away that I've already forgotten what they sound like, which emphasizes my total bafflement at their popularity. Now, I can't say they were bad by any measure, I mean, if they were bad my brain would put a TOXIC sign over the album cover, I just don't think a band as unmemorable as them deserve the clout. But that's just me.

Also, The Hold Steady...

The Hold Steady is generally lauded as America's best "bar band" which, upon examination is totally true. Only THS not the famed tragic dipso poet of Eugene O'Neill fame...he's the guy at the end of the bar who shouts, throws things, is obscene, and usually get thrown out by the bartender to the applause of the bar's inhabitants. 

The HS's new album Stay Positive made it on a number of Best of 2008 charts, including Rolling Stone's. NPR called it one of the "Top Ten 'Smart Albums'" of 2008. They are generally applauded for there revival of classic rock, but the thing is, The Hold Steady doesn't make me want to listen to the Hold Steady, it just makes me miss bands like Bob Seager and the Silver Bullet Band, Thin Lizzy, and Bruce Springsteen which communicate similar themes with much greater impact.

The lyrics follow a dark journey into the drugs/sex/violence of America's youth (totally unexplored territory). I guess I wouldn't get so hung up about this if the singer, Craig Finn, didn't sound like a 50 year old smoker. In reality Finn is 37, which, to me, is still too old to be singing about crystal meth, drag racing, and other teenage shenanigans.  Sure, of all things youth probably dies the hardest, but Finn's lyrics about aging in a youthful scene aren't tragic, they're creepy. It's like if James Dean didn't die but kept making the same kinds of movies. After a while you'd just be sketched out. Also, the lyrics go for shock value rather than slow burn so the album gives away all the surprises early ("sniffing crystal in cute little cars/getting nailed behind dumpsters behind county bars" One of the Cutters).  If you like the first four songs, good, because the other eight are more or less the same thing with varying levels of tempo and volume. 

That said the music itself isn't too terrible. They do succeed in recreating the desperate energy of the working-class rock bands they try to emulate. In this way they're good to have on in the background, if you don't listen to them too closely. I just can't figure out what makes them supposedly "great."

I think I'm going to pop in Darkness at the Edge of Town now

A series of observational queries

I'm sitting here having just read the beginning of A Moveable Feast (thereby creating that mindset of looking at things like on Observer) and now my mind burns with questions that I can't create whole new blog posts for, so I shall list them as they come to me.

What the hell is a moveable feast (yes, besides Paris). More specifically, why those words?

I've never read A Moveable Feast, so give me some context for what that means in the book's context. If I had to guess, though, it sounds scrumptious.

Well, in the context of the book, a moveable feast refers to constant social movement within groups of friends. College is one big moveable feast. Say you started in your room, then called Matt and I, and we'd go to Travis's room, or SMFA, or some such place, collecting people as we went. That's what Hem was referring to, the fact that he was constantly traveling to people's houses and socializing. I like the wording. When you think of a feast you think of one fixed place, but I think he was referring to far more than food, with people you also dine on ideas, laughter, shared experience, ect, none of which are fixed by location but are incredibly filling mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. 

Why are trip-hop/ambient drummers so good/creative - as generally opposed to the average rock drummer - when they don't have to be [as much/in general]? (I just listened to Third by Portishead & now the unpronouncable latest Sigur Ros album).

The drummers in non-rock based genres serve a diferent purpose in their bands. A rock drummer, at his base, is the backbone of a song. Barring the occasional experimental rawk band, no matter how good you are, you're still providing a variation on 4/4 for the rest of your band to follow along to, with their vastly more important instrumentvocals. Triphop and ambient, on the other hand, thrive and survive based on the surreal drum patterns - the drummer isn't the backbone of the band for those genres, they're the heartbeat.

Yea...what Matt said

What is the positive artistic significance of a horror movie (from the perspective of the director and actor, or of the intellectual audience member)?

To evoke intense feelings from the audience that would otherwise be literally impossible to evoke otherwise. It's the artistic equivalent of performance art where someone "murders" themselves, because it triggers that visceral reaction.

On top of that it allows to observe the situation from behind safety glass, if you will. One of the major enjoyments of horror movies (like Zombie flicks) is that you can place yourself in these situations and ask yourself how you would react. Would you be the one who freaks out and splits from the group, or would you be the latent leader to tries to get everyone out alive? It allows a strange type of self-reflection to take place. 

What is the positive artistic significance of a game show?

There isn't. Haven't you heard the opening monologue of Trainspotting?

I've always wanted to see Trainspotting. 

I think it's a shared cultural experience. A passive IQ test (remember, IQ tests test for cultural awareness not actual intelligence) that you can take alone or with friends. It gives a sense of self-gratification. How this is artistic I'm not sure. 

Why is blue so awesome? Is it just me?

I'll talk about the SCIENCE of why blue is so awesome soon.

The real question is, why is green so awesome? And I know it's not just me.