« Album Insanity Sweet 16 Eric B. matchup 2 | Main | Retrohump Day - Buffy Sainte-Marie »
March 20, 2007
I Say Thee, Nay!
In spite of its reputation for bursting at the seems negativity and immediate backlash generation, the music blogosphere is actually overwhelmingly positive. The rationale being that, given complete editorial control over your own little tyranny, why waste time talking about stuff you can't stand? Well, how about to take a stand? A stand against boring music being exalted and revered, so that those poor souls who have been bored (or are downloading right now in anticipation of being bored) can be vindicated (or perhaps saved the trouble).
Yes, I realize that saying that, and then providing the tracks to prove that they are boring, is a little bit like saying, "Hey come smell this milk, it's totally gone bad," but this is the medium in which we work and it's just something you do...
Now, seemingly no one has noticed that Wilco have actually been getting worse since Summer Teeth, but they certainly have. The lucid dream surrealism of career highpoint "Via Chicago" gave way to empty refrigerator magnet poetry on the much loved but overly fussy Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and despite some token krautrock influence and back pills anxiety, Ghost is Born slipped further into irrelevance. Now, with their last chance to capture my attention (surely their most prized secret ambition) we hear material from Sky Blue Sky, and it's boring from the title down.
To be fair, "Either Way" starts out being mostly inoffensive, with an acoustic lullaby strum and harmless piano dragging Jeff Tweedy's "I'm saying absolutely nothing" lyrics into the realm of the ignorably pretty. Then, around the 1:50 mark, with bloated strings acting as rattlesnake warning, comes some of the most horrendous jazz lite guitar noodling I've ever heard outside of an elevator. "Maybe the sun will shine today, and the clouds will roll away" reads Tweedy (presumably off a Hallmark card), while I for one hope they stay long enough for a judicious lightning strike. Some have labeled Wilco's brand of soft nothing, "Dad rock," though "dead rock" might be even more appropriate. If you're excited by this, do an immediate pulse check to make sure you aren't recently deceased.
The quality of Voxtrot's output has been steadily decreasing as well, and at an alarming rate. Their first self titled EP was wildly derivative sure, but at least it was bouncy and fun. In an attempt to create a distinctive "Voxtrot sound" the emphasis has shifted towards sappy over arrangement and increasingly saccharine and clumsy wordplay, sacrificing the sharp dynamic shifts and tasteful appropriation that was the band's only likable attribute. "Future pt. 1" from their forthcoming debut is no exception. Over a terminally mid tempo backdrop, the beaten to bloody death theme of growing up at the cost of precious innocence is kicked again, just to make sure. The point, as cliched as it is, is muddled further by imprecise lines like "I could pretend to think fondly of the summer that I spent in the wilderness/ playing soccer and kissing girls." I mean, if you're positing that we get cruel and hard as we get older, then wouldn't you sincerely look back fondly on a summer like that? Sounds rad, guy. Bad lyrics are epidemic in this sort of dreamy indie nostalgia rock, and maybe we could forgive if the sharp songcraft let them speed by, but the whole point here seems to be to slow down in order for the words to gain some kind of poignancy. It's just wrongheaded, and the result is safe but completely forgettable.
In another of the album's songs, singer Ramesh laments, "I watched the world get boring, there's too much restraint in the mix." Have you no self awareness, man?
Beirut - "Fountains and Tramways"
I almost feel bad slagging off young Zach Condon, whose work I've so far enjoyed. Quality control is an underrated virtue in an enduring artist, however, so a completely unnecessary release, be it eMusic exclusive or no, is worth a quick comment. Coming right on the heels of the lovely Lon Gisland EP and not so far removed from last year's Gulag Orkestar, the two track "Pompeii EP" just seems half baked and unfinished. When trying a new, glitchy electronic flavor to his croon-smanship, it's shocking how much ZC sounds like the similarly middling Thom Yorke solo material that landed with a thud several months ago. Old hand Thom can still wring some dark edge from his beats and bleats though, and Zach's gentility just leaves this texture in search of a tune. I hope this is just a momentary blip.
If you're still looking for an additional Beirut fix, go here for the recently surfaced demo of the pleasingly Beatles-esque "Interior of a Dutch House."
Posted by Jeff Klingman at March 20, 2007 02:50 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.merryswankster.com/movabletype/mt-tb.cgi/786
Comments
I think you're selling YHF a little short, and although I'm sure you're only referring to proper album releases here, Kicking Television is a fantastic release. Do yourself a favor and go listen to the live versions of "I'm the Man Who Loves You" and "Misunderstood".
Nice picture, by the way. Sea otter, right?
Posted by: Randall Monty at March 20, 2007 03:05 PM
Those songs are from before the slide though. I mean YHF has some good stuff I guess, but I don't think they're particularly good at the "word soup" approach, which is what most of the critical fawning was based on. I could be bristling at it because it's so loved though. I tend to be madder at stuff that's just OK masquerading as great. Did you listen to this one though? Yech.
And yes, that's a sea otter who hates jazz guitar. He's going to go start a jug band that will own us all...
Posted by: Jeff K at March 20, 2007 03:11 PM
Wilco's career trajectory does sort of mirror a bell curve: low at the start (A.M), rising (Being There, Mermaid Avenues) to a climax (Summerteeth) and then turning back down like a rollar coaster. You're right that critics obsessively fawn over YHF, but when's the last time anyone's listened to it? I never skip over the tracks when they come up on shuffle, but I havn't dusted off the hard copy in calendar years. I'm sure Wilco isn't the only artist to follow this path of success. You could probably argue that the Beatles' graph would have a similar shape. Wilco's is just more defined.
But my favorite is the Pearl Jam Corollary: every album an artist has ever released has been their worst.
Starting with Ten, their only album at the time and by default their worst (as well as their best). Then Vs. came out, not as good as Ten, and at the immediate moment of its release, PJ's worst record. Then Vitology, then No Code, then Yield... I've been making this claim since '94, and with every successive release, the band keeps proving me right. They almost broke the chain last year, it's probably hard to make something worse than Riot Act, but the s/t sucks, too.
Posted by: Randall Monty at March 20, 2007 04:50 PM
Randy - I think your theory works well for a group that you obviously have no love for, but outside of examples using groups that one has nothing but disdain for, I don't understand how it can ever work. Seems like more of a proof for validating one's beliefs, rather than a real way to judge albums in a critical manner.
I reject the argument behind a single release artist having both their best and worst stuff out. Does logic hold? Yeah, but what does it really mean? Absolutely nothing.
Posted by: Sebastian at March 20, 2007 05:25 PM
BTW, Riot Act is a pretty great album. Possibly the best musical criticism of our Bunghole in Chief and his cronies.
Posted by: Sebastian at March 20, 2007 05:26 PM
What does Pearl Jam have to do with sea otters? Nothing. It. Makes. No. Sense. You must acquit!
Posted by: Jeff K at March 20, 2007 05:29 PM
OH c'mon Jeff. You know Ed must be behind some "save the sea otters" campaign.
Posted by: Sebastian at March 20, 2007 05:32 PM
Yeah the magic marker space on his arm is getting pretty scarce. I was just filling the Yonah non sequitar comment void.
Posted by: Jeff K at March 20, 2007 05:40 PM
Apros pos my PJ comment, of course it doesn't relly MEAN anything, pretty much all art criticism acting exclusively as criticism of art is meaningless. That aside, I think that you (Seb) and I are may be on polar opposites of with-blinders scale here. Our opinions are a statistician's dream: you take the mean of your and my feelings for PJ, and you probably get to the exact point where this beand should be historically regarded.
For my money, (the criminially overlooked by this site) The Body, the Blood, the Machine as the #1 musical criticism of the current presidential administration. Also, I'm pretty sure the Thermals are pro-otter.
Posted by: Randall Monty at March 20, 2007 07:11 PM
I feel compelled to say, I am:
1) pro-yawning otter. And for that matter, pro-any yawning animal. Why are they all so calendar-variety cute when they're on the brink of exhaustion?
2) anti-negative blogging! Men, I ask you: why waste time defacing the things that we hate when we could use that energy to celebrate the things that we love?
3) pro-"mostly inoffensive." (As a word choice, that is.) Well done J.
Posted by: Anonymous at March 20, 2007 09:34 PM
Oops, I also feel compelled to say:
4) the above comment was mine, but I forgot to type in my name.
Posted by: Koren Zailckas at March 20, 2007 09:35 PM
I dunno, it just sort of seemed like all the stuff I love right now, has been well covered, by us or everyone else. Nobody needs another LCD, Of Montreal, Deerhunter, Panda Bear, These New Puritans, Dinosaur jr, Electrelane, etc. post. Until some other love comes rushing in, you gotta feed the yawning otter. And it's a public service to boot...
Posted by: Jeff K at March 20, 2007 10:33 PM
I love how album insanity feuds have crept into other posts.
Posted by: yonah at March 21, 2007 12:44 AM
And taken away from the album insanity vote, jerks!
Posted by: Keith at March 21, 2007 06:44 PM
