The King is Dead and Wasting Light

Earlier this year, two of my favourite bands released new albums: The Decemberists, everyone’s favourite Oklahoma-based indie-folk band; and The Foo Fighters, Nirvana’s bastard hard rock child. The albums are called The King is Dead and Wasting Light, one is brilliant, the other is uninspiring. Both of them lean quite heavily on the artist’s previous work.

So let’s start with the brilliant one. The King is Dead is The Decemberists’ 6^th album. After the rather disappointingly absurd and over-the-top rock opera/musical sound track that was The Hazards of Love, their lasts album, released in 2009, The Decemberist have gone back to basics and released an album full of fun, folky, indie rock songs. Nothing extravagant, no songs over 6 minutes, just good, clean fun.

And it really is some outstanding fun. The first time I listened to this album, I was singing along, even though I had no idea what half the lyrics were. Fortunately I was alone at the time, so my dignity was left mostly intact. In any case, all ten song on the King is Dead are incredibly catchy and easy to listen to. Rox in the Box, Calamity Song and June Hymn in particular are really catchy.

The sound of the album is very indicative of The Decemberist’s early work. They musical and lyrical style is much more like their first two or three albums that their last two, which tend to have a slightly harder, more rocky sound. The King is Dead is incredibly folky and has the signature Decemberists nautical references. Some songs especially, like Down by the Water and All Rise would be particularly at home on Castaways and Cut-outs or Her Majesty, the Decemberists; the Decemberists’ first two albums.

Not all of the, however, would be at home on earlier albums. The King is Dead might borrow quite heavily from the early stylings of the Decemberists, but it is its own album with its own sound. It adds to what it borrows and develops it in a very natural and interesting way. Songs like Rox in the Box and This is Why we Fight are indicative of the sound of the albums. Lyrically pretty dark and actually quite rebellious, musically folky, but with some of the rock-and-roll feel of later Decemberists.

The Decemberists have clearly gone back to their roots with this album and it is almost the complete opposite of their previous album, which was very poorly received. But they’ve not just gone back to basics and written a rather bland album, they’ve really developed and explored their early sound and created a fantastic album. You all should go out and buy it, right now.

What you should not buy is Wasting Light by the Foo Fighters. Actually, that’s unfair. It’s not that bad, but there are better Foo Fighers’ albums. Wasting Light is their seventh studio album and is not unlike The King is Dead in that it borrow heavily from their previous work. However, while The Decemberists built on their previous work and made an album with its own unique sound, the Foo Fighters just made an album that sounds exactly like their previous work.

To be fair, the Foo Fighters never have been about innovation and exploration of their sound, they’ve always put making good rock songs ahead of making interesting ones and there are some excellent rock songs on this album. Rope and Walk are both fantastic songs and most of the album sounds pretty good. I wouldn’t have a problem with listening to any of the songs on their own, but the album doesn’t really feel like an album. It really feels like a collection of songs that didn’t make the cut for their earlier albums.

I suppose it is slightly unfair to hold the Foo Fighters up to standards to which they don’t really worry too much about. In terms of music, I value albums as works of art, rather than a way of presenting a collection of songs. An album is more than the sum of its parts; it needs to have a definitive sound that runs through the album. There doesn’t need to be a story per se, although the album is a decent story telling medium when used properly, it just need to hang together as a work of art, rather than a collection of works of art thrown together.

The thing is that the Foo Fighters have managed this with all their previous albums, in particular their more recent albums had a very definite sound to them. Wasting Light just feels like they’ve not really tried to create an album at all. It is little more than a collection of songs without anything hanging it together, so it’s not a terribly satisfying listen.

The main problem with the album, however, is not that it’s not really an album so to speak, but that it doesn’t bring anything new to the table. The songs are all most certainly Foo Fighters songs, but they’re nothing different from what we find on all the other Foo Fighters albums. This album doesn’t do anything new with the sound. The Decemberists took inspiration from their previous work and built on that sound to makes something new, The Foo Fighters just took their previous work and remade it.

I said at the start that you shouldn’t buy Wasting Light. That’s a little harsh. If you like Foo Fighters, then it’s a good Foo Fighters’ album. If you not really a fan, or don’t really know them too well, there are far more cohesive Foo Fighters’ albums you can get. There are some fantastic songs on this album, but it’s most certainly not Foos at their best.

So two albums, one that might have jumped into my top ten list (the song Rox in the Box most certainly has) and one that fits nicely into the Foos Discography without really being terribly inspiring. These albums are, in some ways, pretty similar. They both borrow heavily from the back catalogues of both bands (and why not when both back catalogues are so damn good) and both contain some fantastic music. The King is Dead is a much better album for two reasons: firstly it feels like an album, not a collection of songs. It coheres in a way that Wasting Light doesn’t. Secondly, it builds on the Dacemberists’ back catalogue and develops its own unique sound, whereas Wasting Light just repeats everything Foo Fighters have done to date without adding to it. These are, I suppose, the things that differentiate between a very good album and a mediocre one.

David Koresh Superstar

I don’t think I’ve spend enough time on this blog gushing about how awesome Songs for Swinging Lovers by the Indelicates is, so here goes. Songs for Swinging Lovers is an absolute masterpiece of modern Alternative Rock. Musically incredible, lyrically genius, funny and cutting in equal measure, catchy and incredibly deep at the same time. Simply awesome, and, until recently, you could download it for nothing from http://corporaterecords.co.uk/. Even now, it’s only £5. Go get it.

Why do I bring this up (apart from the fact that you MUST listen to this album)? Because The Indelicates just brought out a new album called David Koresh Superstar, which is not as good as Song for Swinging Lovers, but is still pretty damn awesome. I know, aren’t you lucky, two reviews in as many weeks!

David Koresh Superstar (which will henceforth be referred to as DKS for the sake of ease) is a concept album about the Waco Siege, which took place in Waco, Texas in 1993. For those that don’t know about it, read all about it here. If you don’t care that much, read a much shorter summary here. The album’s hero is David Koresh, the insane leader of the Davidians sect of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, with a host of other characters popping up occasionally, including Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma Bomber, who cited the Waco Siege as one of his primary motivations for his actions.

Now, when you have a story about a bunch of mad cultist holding up in a church with guns and waiting for the apocalypse, it’s very easy to write a concept album slamming religion and about how utterly insane extremism can be. There is a good deal of that in DKS, songs like Gethsemane and A Book of the Seven Seals deal with religious fanaticism and the dangers of extremism, while I am Koresh and Superstar deal with Koresh’s own personal megalomania. However there is a lot more to the album that that.

DKS sets the scene with Remember the Alamo, a country and western style song which sets the heroic stand of the Texans at the Alamo in 1836 as the backdrop of the siege, placing the events of the album firmly in the 19^th century, not the late 20^th. This puts us in mind of the cowboy, wild-west romanticism of law-into-themselves individuals defying the incompetence of the local law enforces to deliver rough justice. It has the effect of lifting the Waco siege above a bunch of gun touting religious nuts holed up in a church and turns the Davidians into sort-of heroes (without actually condoning them or relieving them of the burden of criticism).

This has the effect of turning the attention onto the ATF (The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms), who conducted the initial raid. The song Ballad of the ATF quite brutally slams the ATF for gross incompetence and excess of force. Indeed it is here that we mostly clearly see the brilliance of The Indelicate’s cutting satirical tongue. Not only does it strongly criticise the ATF, but indirectly, and equally effectively, aims at the quintessentially American attitude to world politics. The complete self-obsession and painful self-righteousness that America has displayed through most of the post-war period is brilliantly exposed in scything satire.

The satire does not end there, however. The very next song turn the attention of the ridicule onto the arrogant individualism displayed by people like Koresh and McVeigh, about whom the song is written and after whom it is named. The blinkered conviction that they are right and that everyone else should agree or get stuffed is wonderfully satirised. It is made abundantly clear through the juxtaposition that these two attitudes (so much alike in many ways) cannot be at odds, because neither side it going to stand down.

The consequences of this confrontation are hinted at in the very next song, What if You’re Wrong? The song is a plea from Koresh’s followers to consider the possibility that he’s not the messiah and not to allow the siege to continue towards the conclusion to which it eventually leads. It is telling that the only response to this plea is the song A Book of the Seven Seals, which only highlights Koresh’s religious megalomania and does nothing to answer his critics. This is just one example of the next level of complexity in the album; it is not just a criticism of religious extremism, or a satire of the American consciousness, it also has a sensitive side that considered the plight of the victims of the events; the people caught up in the storm of Koresh’s charisma and unable to leave when things start getting really serious.

Most of these sensitive touches come through Julia, the female vocalism of the band. I’ve said before that I’m not a huge fan of female vocalists, but Julia’s work both here and on Songs for Swinging Lovers has completely changed my mind. A Single Thrown Grenade is probably my favourite song on the album. It’s the story of a girl swept up in Koresh’s charisma. The naïve innocence of it all is tragic when looked at in the light of the terrible consequences of the siege. One wonders just how many of the 80 who died at Waco were likewise star-struck by Koresh and were only there as part of the twisted cult of personality surrounding him.

Likewise The Woman Clothed with the Sun tells the story of Lois Roden, Koresh’s predecessor and lover. It’s importance, and the importance of the sympathetic point of the song is shown by the fact that it is sandwiched between the two songs that introduce is to Koresh’s character; The Road from Houston to Waco and I am Koresh. Indeed A Single Thrown Grenade follows directly after the latter, highlighting it’s importance in the piece.

The last of the sympathetic song actually regards Koresh himself. Superstar, the penultimate song on the album, has an angelic female voice, backed with a violin, address Koresh and puts his death in the frame of a romantic and tragic hero who had the best of intentions, but was just unfortunate to be wrong and to go down in such a blaze of glory. This is backed up by a cover of a Gospel/Blues song by Blind Willie Johnson, called John the Revelator, which ends the album.

While the themes of the story are most important to DKS, it is all put in the framework of a story that is told very well through the music. In particular The Siege, a minimalist instrumental piece that builds up the tension and drama of the fifty day siege beautifully, as well as providing a neat bridge between the middle of the album in which much of the thematic conflict is resolved and the dramatic climax of the story. Another good example of the story telling in DKS is Something Goin’ Down in Waco, a somewhat tongue-in-cheek take on the musical theatre practice of having characters tell the story through speech as music plays.

The Road from Houston to Waco and I am Koresh both work to develop the character of Koresh, the first telling the story of his life up to the siege of Waco, the second detailing his complete megalomania and conviction of his own messiah-hood. This is one of two parts of the album which doesn’t work quite so well for me. Both songs seem a little forced. Rather than showing us Koresh’s character, these songs tell it, the first in particular. It is hard to write a good narrative through song, when you also have to worry about rhythm and rhyme and the music that goes with it. I would have liked a somewhat less heavy handed approach to Koresh’s past to have been taken.

The other part of the album that I have a problem with is the song I don’t Care if it’s True. I actually first heard this song on Songs for Swinging Lovers, because it was included as a bonus track to act as a taster for DKS. The funny thing is that I think it actually feels better on Songs for Swinging Lovers. I can’t place exactly what it’s getting at and where it fits into the narrative. It might just be that I find it’s out of place because it’s a song with which I am very familiar, whereas the rest of the music is wholly new to me, however I have tried without success to look past this bias and slot it into the album, but it just doesn’t seem to fit, both musically and lyrically.

As you have probably guessed I am absolutely flabbergasted by the writing on this album. It is a brilliant mix of narrative, character studies and thematic work that hangs together perfectly. The more you look at the composition of the album, the better it looks. Right down to the order in which the tracks come it’s outstanding. The perfection of the rest of it makes the fact that I don’t Care if it’s True doesn’t quite sit with album even more glaring. It sticks out like a sore thumb in my mind, which is really irritating. Despite this, the composition of the album is still great and the writing on the individual songs is outstanding as well. From cutting satire to sensitive, human tragedy, this album has a lot of variety, but still feels like a united whole.

I’ve not really talked much about the music itself, as opposed to the lyrics, partly because the composition of the album demands a close study of the lyrics, and because I’m far more comfortable analysing and discussing lyrics than I am with music. Nevertheless I will see what I can do.

The music on the album really is good. The acoustic guitar and steel drums on the early tracks sets the Wild Western theme for the album really well. This style stays with the album to an extend, but it evolves into a much more Rock and Roll style by I am Koresh. Through the middle of the album the music turns almost theatrical, sounding as though it belongs in a musical. As with many of the songs in this section of the album, the music it self feels somewhat tongue-in-cheek. The rock music returns in earnest towards the end of the album, with hints of the country and western feel from earlier in the album. The more sensitive and tragic songs are picked out with a very appropriate change down in temp and change to a more delicate style. The music on the album really compliments the composition and ensures DKS sounds and feels right. It’s not as immediately obvious as the lyrics (to me, anyway) but it’s at least as well written and thought through.

I think it should be fairly obvious to all of you by now that I am a massive fan of this album. Seriously, it’s incredible. The Indelicates have done it again! I said earlier that it’s not as good as Songs for Swinging Lovers. Without going into a long discussion of why Songs for Swinging Lovers is such a masterpiece, here’s why.

DKS is a classic ‘grower’. At first listen it’s pretty good, but nothing out of this world. There are some catchy tunes and some really interesting pieces of music, but a lot of the subtly washes over you. As you study the background to the album and really listen to the songs, you get a much greater appreciation for all the nuances and the little things that make this album really special. DKS makes you work for your kicks, it makes you really have to think and explore it in order to get the most out of it. This is not a bad thing at all, but it reduces the instant appeal.

Songs for Swinging Lovers, by contrast, immediately hits home with some really strong, powerful songs that really get the point across with a minimum of effort and complexity. The thing is that the rabbit hole is as deep as you want it to be; the more you explore the album, the better it gets. It hits home instantly, then keeps sinking in and keeps giving.

DKS might not quite live up to its predecessor, but it’s still a fantastic album in its own right. Go get it from here right now. The best thing is that, even if the last three pages (might be a new record) have not convinced you, you needn’t pay a penny for it. Using Corporate Records’ (a company set up by the Indelicates) pay-what-you-like system, you can download the album for as much or as little as you like. If you do pay, at least 80% will go to the artist, so you know your money is going to the right place. I encourage you to pay, the Indelicates are not big, nor are they famous, but they are incredibly talented and deserve to be far more popular that they are. They can only continue to create great music like this with money from sales. If you’re unsure, then don’t pay, but if you like what you hear, then pay for the next album and pay for their other two albums on the site. Either way, you really should get this album, it’s fantastic.

My Top Ten... Songs

A few weeks ago now I listed my top ten favourite bands, having listed my top ten favourite albums before that. I thought it was time to take this particular string of top tens to it’s logical conclusion, so I present to you… my top ten favourite songs, again in no real order

• Shine on You Crazy Diamond – Wish you were Here, Pink Floyd – If this were in any particular order this would probably still be number one. This song is an absolute masterpiece, 26 minutes and 13 seconds worth of pure brilliance. From the very first note it is mournful and inspiring at the same time. If any rock song deserves to be called a work of art, this is it.

• Time – Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd – Pink Floyd are the only band to get two songs on this list, because they are geniuses who, at the height of their powers, wrote undeniably beautiful and brilliant pieces of music. Time may not have the marathon-like length of Shine On, but nevertheless it is every bit as powerful. Waters has an ability to condense even the most profound sentiments about relentless onrushing of time into a relatively short, punchy song, which is addictively easy to listen to and yet at the same time incredibly powerful and intense.

• Here I dreamt I was an Architect – Castaways and Cutouts, The Decemberists – The Decemberists have written some magnificent lyrics in their time, but this wonderful story about a relationship, told through three disconnected dreams in which the narrator is, in order, a Soldier in Auschwitz, an Architect and a womanizer from Spain. This song has some of the most brilliant and delicate lines I’ve ever heard. The music is nothing in Pink Floyd, but the lyrics are something to be admired with awe-struck wonder.

• Savages – Songs for Swinging Lovers, The Indelicates – Speaking of brilliant lyrics, here’s a song by a band that I’ve not mentioned before, but only because I only discovered them a month or so ago. Since then I’ve listened to little but Songs for Swinging Lovers. I said in my review of Someone Here is Missing that it would take something special to beat that brilliant Porcupine Tree album to the best record of 2010 and it seems I was tempting fate, because sure enough, this little gem appears. And do you know the best thing about it? You can download it for absolutely nothing right here. From this album I could have picked any number of songs because they are all absolutely brilliant, but I’ve chosen Savages because it is an absolutely stunning song, questioning the artists’ own value in the society. It is subtle, tragic and beautifully written. The music is pretty damn brilliant too.

• 3rd Planet – The Moon and Antarctica, Modest Mouse – I think I’ve said before that Modest Mouse albums tend to have a couple of fantastic songs, a good collection of good ones and the odd shocker. Well 3rd Planet is one such fantastic song. What makes most of these songs stand out (with the exception of Shine on) are the lyrics and 3rd Planet is no exception. The thing about this song, the thing that makes it so good, is that everyone you ask will tell you that it’s about a different thing. To me it is about a man suffering existential grief and loss of faith at the death of his child, but I have also seen it explained in terms of the story of the Garden of Eden and the coming of Christ. This ambiguity is what makes the song so interesting and enduring – keep listening to it to try to figure out what the hell it’s all about. To continue the theme of music being an afterthought, the riff is superb as well.

• Chrome Plated Suicide – Telepathic Surgery, The Flaming Lips – As a rule Flaming Lips music from after 1999 is better than from before. There are only 2 exceptions to this; the album At War with Mystics and the song Chrome Plated Suicide. The former being a slightly sub par album released in 2006 and the latter being an absolutely amazing song from 1989. The highlights of this song are the chorus, which is catchy as hell! And the music, which is probably the best example of the fuzzy, distorted style that makes The Flaming Lips so unique.

• Dead Flag Blues – F#A#∞, Godspeed You! Black Emperor – This is another song that breaks the mould of having amazing lyrics, because it doesn’t have any lyrics. It is also 16 minutes long. What it does have a pitch black voice over at the start, which is dark foreboding and wonderfully written. It really sets the tone for an eerily dark and depressing song. From the violin that comes in half way through the opening monologue the music is truly wonderful. You will finish the song depressed, but you will not regret it.

• Last Train Home – Start Something, Lostprophets – Finally, a song some of you might know! Easily the most mainstream of the modern music on this list, this is probably one of the first songs I heard by Lostprophets and it made me fall instantly in love with them. It’s not as profound or as interesting as the others on this list, but its presence proves that there is room for catchy, powerful rock and roll in the music world. As you might expect, this is an absolutely awesome live track from a band that really need to be seen live to truly appreciate.

• Shot Down – Everything Is, Nine Black Alps – Again, this is the song that got me into Nine Black Alps. Another really powerful rock song that I imagine would be absolutely awesome live (I need to catch NBA live some time). This song has all of the signature anger that defines Nine Black Alps and this album in particular, along with some really clever lyrics and an absolutely fantastic solo, the only problem with both the solo and the song in general is that it’s too damn short!

• Lazarus – Deadwig, Porcupine Tree – As my regular readers will well know, I am a massive fan of Porcupine Tree, so this list would not be complete without at least one song from them. While I love the heavy stuff that they do, I still think Porcupine Tree are at their best when they slow it down and write a beautiful, quiet little song like Lazarus. It’s just as powerful, but in a completely different way, which is what makes songs like Lazarus, Collapse the Light into Earth and Stop Swimming stand out in some of my favourite albums.

Someone Here is Missing/Together

Do you remember in 2001 when you listened to In Absentia for the first time and it was like nothing you’d ever heard from Porcupine Tree or indeed anyone else before? It was such a brilliant and different album and as you listened to it you just knew that it was something special? No? Nor me, because in 2001 I was 9. Let’s try that again then.

Do you remember when you first listened to the entire Porcupine Tree discography and when In Absentia came on for the first time you sat up because it was such a contrast with what you heard so far? It was such a mature, diverse and ingenious album. No? Just me then? Anyway you get the picture. The point is that this is exactly how I felt when I listened to Someone Here is Missing, the latest album by Pineapple Thief. Yes folks, it’s time for another review!

I’m not saying that Someone Here is Missing is the next In Absentia, but it certainly has some of the characteristics. Pineapple Thief are an English Progressive Rock who have been around for 10 years to so but have not really managed to get anywhere, despite being incredibly talented and creating some really fantastic music. Their music is less diverse and experimental than early Porcupine Tree, but they have produced some really fantastic albums, like Tightly Unwound and Variations on a Dream. Someone Here is Missing is a massive step in a new direction for Pineapple Thief in the same way that In Absentia was for Porcupine Tree. However it is a step in a different direction.

Someone Here is Missing is an incredibly dark album, both lyrically and musically. Songs like Nothing at Best and Barely Breathing are perfect examples of this. The album deals with love, loss and suffering in a way that in beautifully romantic without being emo. Lyrically it has the maturity to deal with serious topics without trivialising them into whiney, personal mopes. However it is the music that really makes this album stand out.

Throughout the music is really dark, just like the lyrics, but it’s also very diverse and experimental, exploring some styles that are not present in their previous work. Preparation for Meltdown for example is reminiscent of early Muse (Origin of Symmetry in particular), whereas Show a Little Love would not be too out of place on In Absentia. While the music is extraordinarily diverse, it hangs together as an album really well, even within the space of a song it can go from fairly slow and delicate to thumpingly powerful seamlessly. The entire album is wonderfully united and yet each song stands up on its own as a really fantastic piece of music. I don’t think there is a weak song on this album and there are a hell of a lot of very strong ones.

So in conclusion buy this album! Well, good luck buying a hard copy, I couldn’t find one, but you can download it fairly easily. While you’re at it you should check out the rest of Pineapple Thief’s back catalogue, it is teaming with wonderful albums. These guys are barely know, I mean Pitchfork don’t even have a review of this album, yet they deserve to be far better known because they are extremely talented. Go and buy their album, you will not regret it.

I don’t usually review just one album at a time, and today is no exception. Together is the 5th album from the New Pornographers and their 4th good one – seriously, Electric Version is terrible. Anyway, as I said a few weeks ago, the New Pornographers are another on of those idiosyncratic indie bands that I really love. What makes them stand out is the female vocalist, well two female vocalists, and two male vocalists. Seriously they have a lot of vocalists.

And it pays off. The New Pornographers are incredibly rich vocally; lots of their songs have fantastic harmonies and interplays between different lyricists. It makes them a really interesting band to listen to. Together is no exception. Silver Jenny Dollar, My Sheppard and Crash Years are all fantastic examples of the New Pornographers is full vocal flow.

Lyrically this album has a lot of very well written songs, but it doesn’t really feel all that unified. It is a collection of very good songs, rather than an album that really hangs together well. Unsurprisingly The New Pornographers don’t really do traditional song structure for the most part, or at least they are willing to play around with the rules so much that they almost become meaningless. As such their songs tend to meander around without really arriving at anything concrete. They’re a load of interesting points which don’t quite reach a conclusion. If their songs were essays I’d disapprove, but they’re not, so I don’t. The ambling and incoherent structure is fun to listen to, but it does make it harder to get to grips with a song lyrically.

Together has a fair bit of very interesting and often rather clever music, but most of the time it is hidden behind all the lyrical excitement that is going on. You have to really concentrate and listen out for much of the really good musical bits, although there are some songs on which the impressive music does stand out, Crash Years, Your Hands (Together) and If you Cant See My Mirrors in particular.

Overall, the complex vocals, ambling song structure and hidden musical gems makes Together a real grower. At first listen it is pretty good, but it keeps getting better and better the more you listen to it. While the previous two New Pornographers albums had really immediate appeal (Twin Cinemas in particular), this one takes a while because it is perhaps a little more ambitious, maybe too much so. Even so it is a fantastic album and you should go and buy it along with Someone Here is Missing.

Both of these albums are certainly worth getting. Someone Here is Missing may well be my album of the year unless something really stunning comes out and Together will certainly be up there. It’s not a brilliant album, not even the New Pornographers best, but it is certainly a very good album that grows on you like a tumour. And on that image, goodbye.

My Top Ten... Bands

A good few months ago I started a series of ‘Top Tens’ with my Top Ten Albums I’ve refrained from continuing this series because I’ve had better things to write about and I see this is as something of a cop out. However I am overburdened with exams next week, so I don’t want to be spending ages on a blog post (sorry guys, but you take a back seat when it comes to very important public exams in which I need to do well). So without further ado, as a follow up to the last one, here is my Top Ten Favourite Bands, again in no particular order.

• Porcupine Tree – One of the best progressive/psychedelic rock bands around at the moment. I’ve raved about how much I love them previously, so I’m just going to tell you to go get In Absentia and leave it at that.

• The Flaming Lips – If you’re looking for completely insane, joy-inducing indie rock then The Flaming Lips are exactly what you need. They’re essentially guaranteed to put you on a fantastic mood. They have a large back catalogue, but if I had to recommend one album it would be The Soft Bulletin

• Muse – Probably the first band on this list that I fell in love with, in fact probably the band that made me fall in love with Alternative music. They’re also one of the more commercially successful bands on this list, probably because they’re less strange, although they’re pretty strange. Listen to any album except for their latest one.

• Pink Floyd – The gods of Psychedelic Rock. Again I got into them before most of the other bands on this list and they’re probably the most well known and successful band on the list. Albums like The Wall, Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here are classics and if you’ve not already heard them then I recommend that you go away and listen to them right now.

• The Decemberists – yet more Indie/Prog rock that most people will not have heard of but really should have done. In terms of raw emotion, The Decemberists are the best band on this list; their music is so charged with emotion and it is conveyed perfectly, both lyrically and musically. The best example of this is Picaresque, which I talked about last time.

• Modest Mouse – I think these guys are possibly even stranger than The Flaming Lips. They tend to be a little hit and miss in that their albums will often contain one or two brilliant songs, a number of pretty decent songs then a few fairly ordinary ones. The brilliant songs make the album worthwhile, but it means that no one album of theirs made it to my top ten. However if pressed I would recommend The Moon and Antarctica, if only for the very first song (3^rd planet) which is superb.

• The New Pornographers – The latest addition to my music library and the only band on this list to have a female vocalist. I’m not normally a fan of female voices, but The New Pornographers do it so well. Twin Cinemas and Challengers are both fantastic albums and you should listen to them both. I plan on getting their newest album at some point and will probably review it, so look out for that.

• Nine Black Alps – The most conventional Rock band of this list so far. I talked about them a fair amount at the start of the year when I reviewed Locked Out from the Inside. Indeed if you want their best album, Locked Out from the Inside is probably it. They’re probably the angriest of the bands listed so far and that is expressed perfectly in their latest album.

• The Foo Fighters – Even more conventional and well known Rock Music. You see people; I do like ordinary Rock Music as well as all this weird Indie and Prog Rock that I continually rave about. I probably got into the Foo Fighters about the same time as I got into Muse, so I’ve liked them longer than most of the bands in this list, even if I don’t like them as much. Again no one album stands out because they’re all pretty good. In Your Honour is the first album of theirs that I got into, so I’ll recommend that one.

• Lostprophets – The most metal of all the bands in the list, which is not saying much. It’s not that I don’t like Metal, I do, but no one band really stand out to make it into the Top Ten, apart from Lostprophets, and many metal devotees would rightly resent the label of ‘Metal’ being attached to them. Lostprophets are another one of the bands on this list that I got into relatively early on. I first really got into music in a big way in 2005 and Lostprophets are one of the bands I got into then. In terms of albums, Start Something is the first album of theirs I got into and remains their best.

My Top Ten... Albums

I pride myself on finding more and more varied way of killing time every weekend; I normally call the result a blog. My latest idea for how to fill a couple of pages of a word document with my opinions is to do a series of top 10s. As you know I like to go on and on and on and on about music that I enjoy, so I thought I’d start off this adventure into a brave new world of procrastination with a list of my top 10 albums and an explanation of why I like them. These are not necessarily in precise order because I find it difficult to order things precisely.

So without further ado:

• In Absentia (Porcupine Tree) I said they weren’t in order, but if I had to name my favourite album of all time this would probably be it. The thing about this album is that is brings together a whole host of different musical styles and genres, without ever feeling overcrowded. Blackest Eyes, the first track of the album exemplifies this; it combines a Heavy Metal-style opening with an indie rock-esc acoustic guitar which plays through dark and disturbing lyrics which echo beautifully. The chorus is almost like a pop song; it’s so memorable and the lyrics are so catchy despite retaining the foreboding of the verses. The pinnacle of the song for me is towards the end when it switches to full on psychedelic reminiscent of their earlier work. The rest of the album continues in the same vein, combining styles beautifully and retaining a dangerous, dark edge to the lyrics. The end of the album bring Collapse the Light into Earth, one of the most beautiful and mournful songs I have ever heard. Overall this is one of those albums which every self respecting fan of alternative music must listen to at some point. I guarantee it will not disappoint.
  
  
• Picaresque (The Decemberists) This album is a true rollercoaster ride of emotions. The Decemberists have a knack for tugging at the heartstrings and with songs like Eli the Barrowboy and We Both Go Down Together, this album is a great example of this. However the tone is not all about love and loss. The Decemberists have a satirical side too, as shown by songs like the Sporting Life and 16 Military Wives, mocking jocks and the arrogance of American foreign policy respectively. Possible most bizarre and ingenious song on the album however is The Mariner’s Revenge Song, and full blown tale of a mariner who hunts down a miscreant who ruined his family when he was only a child. One of the most striking things about the album is the variety of different instruments used, notably the use of accordions and violins give the album (and indeed the band) a unique sound.
  
  
• The Soft Bulletin (The Flaming Lips) I have a feeling I’ve mentioned this one before, so I’ll keep this short. The Flaming Lips are possibly the happiest band I have ever heard, and this album is possibly the happiest album I have ever heard. Right from the start it’s bubbling with pure, unadulterated joy that never lets up until the album finishes. Despite its joyful exterior the lyrics do not always share the same happiness. They can be painfully sorrowful and macabre. A good example of this is Waiting for Superman, which is wonderfully tragic, while still sounding extraordinarily happy.
  
  
• The Wall (Pink Floyd) Probably the best Rock Opera I’ve ever heard. It has everything one expects from one of the best psychedelic band in history. The Rock Opera has always been a difficult thing to take seriously, but Pink Floyd manage to get over this, mostly with the addition of some brilliant individual songs like The Thin Ice and Comfortably Numb, which stand up as song in their own right. The story if the Wall is amazing; a wonderful tragedy which provides a critical examination of society and culture. It’s also musically astonishing. Some of the best psychedelic music ever recorded.
  
  
• Absolution (Muse) One of the albums (and bands) that got me into Alternative Music. Simply amazing. Some absolutely brilliant songs, like Butterflies and Hurricanes and Time is Running Out litter the album, in fact I don’t think there’s a bad song here. Matt Bellamy’s piano playing and brilliant song writing make this album truly outstanding. Absolution has an amazing variety, from warnings about mankind’s effect on the environment to beautiful love songs to song about fear of death.
  
  
• In the Aeroplane over the Sea (Neutral Milk Hotel) Another groundbreaking album in my own personal musical development. This album introduced me to the wonders of Indie Rock, with its acoustic guitars, distortion, impenetrable lyrics and tradition of using as many unusual instruments as possible. Fortunately what this album has, which is sadly lacking in many Indie Rock albums which I have mentioned extensively previously, is raw emotion. In the same way as with the Flaming Lips, you get a real sense of joy from the album, despite the more complex and melancholy nature of many of the lyrics. The album clearly has a sense of humour and, despite what people say, it doesn’t always take itself too seriously; the King of Carrot Flowers II is a prime example of this, as the band professes their love for Jesus Christ. I know this album has a reputation for being Indie Rock Snobbery personifies, but that’s worth ignoring because this is a fantastic album, despite the reputation.
  
  
• Wish you Were Here (Pink Floyd) the first band to get a second album on the list is inevitably Pink Floyd. I said that The Wall had some of the best psychedelic music ever recorded on, but this is even better. I would put this album on the list on the strength of Shine On you Crazy Diamond alone, but I don’t need to, the other three songs are unbelievable as well. Shine On is a wonderful tribute to Syd Barrett, but the rest of the album deals with the difficulties of fame and the tragedy of loss, universalising the trauma that the band felt with the loss of Syd.
  
  
• Stupid Dream (Porcupine Tree) Another band with a second album, but this one is so unlike In Absentia that you’d have difficulty realising that they’re the same band. Stupid Dream is another brilliant psychedelic album (the third of this list). It lacks the variety of In Absentia, but has much more by way of psychedelic experimentation and all round madness. Despite this it is more reserved that some of their earlier, more extreme work. The lyrical quality of the album is outstanding, dealing with death, guilt and drug abuse, themes which seem to be pretty common to this list actually. The highlight of this album probably comes at the end with Stop Swimming, as song much like Collapse the Light into Earth in that it is mind numbingly beautiful and tearfully sad.
  
  
• F#A#infinity (Godspeed You! Black Emperor) Post-Rock, music in the style of classical music, using instruments usually associated with rock music. Godspeed You! do it brilliantly. F#A#infinity is their darkest album and some of the best sampling I’ve ever heard. They use no lyrics, but the voiceover at the start of Dead Flag Blues is heart wrenching, it sets the tone for a wonderfully atmospheric and dark album. However there is a glimmer of hope in the album, especially at the end of Dead Flag Blues, adding to the complexity. The perfect placement of notes, interspersed with samples from all over the place simply cannot be described. Go listen to it; it will blow your mind.
  
  
• Puzzle (Biffy Clyro) If you’re listening to this album skip past the first minute and a half. The rest is pure gold. Despite listening to the album literally hundreds of time, I can barely say why it is I like it so much. As with most of these albums it has astonishing variety and the lyrics are extremely intelligent. As usual the album is searing with passion and emotion. It’s upbeat, while still having a darker side. Those last few statements could apply to almost all of these albums on reflection. I guess that’s just what I like.

Feeling the Music

I mentioned in my review of Locked Out from the Inside and Only Revolutions at the start of the year, that I had been doing some thinking about what I think makes music good. This is linked with my distinct apathy towards the Arcade Fire, which I talked about a bit last June. That apathy has since extended (to varying extents) to Broken Social Scene and Pavement. You would think that, as big fan of indie music who even likes Neutral Milk Hotel, I would love these bands and any more like them that I’ve not discovered yet. I alluded to the reason why in June and I wanted expand on that a little more having given it a bit more thought. Today seemed as good a day as any given that nothing else has happened of note that I want to blog about this week.

The first thing that I feel I need to make clear is that I don’t dislike any of the bands I am going to talk about, or indeed any bands similar to them, in fact I do find their music quite pleasant. I just don’t love them in the same way that people think I should. When I first started listening to the Arcade Fire I thought I was missing something because they simply didn’t stand out in the same way I thought they should. The music didn’t grab me like music from Porcupine Tree or the Flaming Lips does. It took me a while to realise why the music was little more than quite pleasant but nothing special, in fact it took until I listened to You Forget it in People by Broken Social Scene.

One song on that album stood out for me; Anthems for a Seventeen Year-old Girl, the rest was ok, but nothing special. I soon realised that the reason it stood out was because it was packed full of emotion. Perhaps it was technically less interesting than the rest of the album, the lyrics are fairly simplistic and the overall message is pretty obvious, but that didn’t matter. For the first and only time the album made an emotional connection with me. I could feel the sense of loss and of regret, it was heart wrenching and I realised what had been missing from the rest of the album and from most of what I’d listened to from the Arcade Fire. It was what had been there in the Flaming Lips and Porcupine Tree. It’s what made bands like Nine Black Alps and Biffy Clyro stand out to me. Emotion.

Art is all about creating an emotional connection between the audience and the artist through the art. Good art is deeply moving because the emotions that the artist is pouring into the art are effectively expressed. Ultimately this is more important than creating complex, intellectually interesting art; complexity has to be aimed at creating deeper, more complex emotions, it is not an end in itself. A simple painting of a sunset which inspires awe is more effective than a complicated, technically brilliant painting which loses any emotion in the complexity.

This inevitably applies to music; a good song is one which invokes strong feeling in the listener. The purpose of a piece of music is to establish that same link between the artist and the listener through the music, so when I listen to the Arcade Fire and simply shrug apathetically I know that the music has failed. There is no emotional connection, there is no passion, and there is no reason to keep listening. By contrast I can listen to the Decembrists (a band that I have not mentioned yet, but rank alongside Porcupine Tree, Pink Floyd and the Flaming Lips as one of my favourite bands) and feeling the emotions that are surging through the songs. I can listen to the Flaming Lips and get feel buoyed by the sheer joy of their music. The more I listen and the more I pay attention to the complexities of the song, the stronger the emotional connection.

When I listen to a new band I look for this emotional connection. I try to experience the emotions of the artists through the music. I don’t look for the technical quality or the lyrical complexity because that’s meaningless without the emotional connection being established. The kind of indie music which the Arcade Fire exemplifies is simply trying too hard. They over-think the music and end up sounding aloof and disconnected. The music might be technically brilliant, but it’s all for nothing because I simply could not care less. No emotional connection has been established, so all the technical brilliance is all for nothing.

Of course some of the song from the Arcade Fire and other such bands do have emotion and I can connect to them, it’s just that for the most part this is severely lacking. I am making very general statements and there are exceptions. It would also be a mistake to say that this lack of emotion makes these bands bad. I don’t dislike them; I just think they slightly miss the point.

Art is an expression of emotion, once you let technicalities get in the way of that expression; you have missed the point of what you are doing. In trying to be all clever and artsy, this particular brand of indie music has forgotten what art is. It doesn’t necessarily make for bad music, but it does make for bad art.

Only Revolution/Locked Out from the Inside

Having apparently polished off last decade a week ago, I’m now going back to it in the shape of a review of two albums which came out late last year. They’re both albums I bought with part of my Christmas fiscal stimulus package courtesy of family members close enough to feel obliged to give me presents and distant enough to have no idea what I might like. Anyway, the first is Locked Out from the Inside by Nine Black Alps, which came out in October and the second is Only Revolutions by Biffy Clyro, which was released in November.

Locked Out from the Inside is the third album from the criminally underrated Nine Black Alps. Their previous two releases, Everything Is (2005) and Love/Hate (2007) were essentially ignored despite both being superb albums and I fear the Locked Out from the Inside will suffer much the same fate. Despite this I honestly think it’s my favourite album of 2009. There has always been a strong undercurrent of anger in Nine Black Alp’s music, especially prominent in Everything Is, however this time around they have managed to channel is far more effectively than before. Everything Is was a directionless, structure less album with some great songs but very little unity. Love/Hate by contrast tried to impose a theme on the general passion inherent in the sound of Everything Is, but this was too broad and at the same too restrictive; it felt like the emotion was being restrained somewhat.

Locked Out from the Inside manages to do what Love/Hate failed to do; channel the raw emotion of the band without subduing it. If the current economic climate has been a bad thing for most people, it has actually been good for Nine Black Alps from an artistic point of view because it has given the band a clear target at which to aim their general disillusionment with society. This is especially obvious in the powerful anthem towards the end of the album; Buy Nothing. The topic of the song is clear from even the title. The album as a whole has a strong theme of disillusionment at consumerist, materialistic society. Songs like Every Photograph Steals your Soul and Ghost in the Shell have especially strong feelings of disillusionment and distain holding them together.

Musically and lyrically the album shows much greater maturity than previously, as indeed does the more unified and clear direction of the album. Nine Black Alps will never be renowned for writing great pieces of music. Their songs rely heavily on distorted guitars, heavy beats and brilliantly powerful solos, occasionally juxtaposed with a slower, more subdued sound. They lack the musical sophistication of bands like Porcupine Tree, but the simplicity of their songs are part of what makes them so powerful. Song structures are pretty typical and the lyrics can seem somewhat random; they are clearly alluding to something, but lack the sophistication to express it. Nevertheless the album has some incredibly strong lyrics which are at times deep and always enjoyable.

As I said at the start of this review, Locked Out from the Inside is probably my favourite album of 2009, simply because it is so easy to listen to and is yet something far more than a collection of catchy tunes. There is a clear agenda expressed with the full force of the band’s indignation at the state of society. While their previous albums were very enjoyable, they had clear flaws. This one has its problems, but they are insignificant when compared to their album’s strength. In many ways this is a coming of age for Nine Black Alps (to use a horrible cliché), it’s just such a shame that they have not yet achieved the success that this and indeed their previous albums richly deserve.

My second album is Only Revolution by Biffy Clyro. Their previous album, Puzzle released in 2007, remains one of my favourite albums of all time. After such a brilliant and well received album, the follow up was always going to be tricky. When I heard ‘Mountains’ a year or so back I was pretty unimpressed; the singing style irritated me too much for me to be able to really enjoy the song.

Sadly this problem is not just indicative of Mountains, but a good three or four songs throughout the album, especially around the middle where songs such as Mountains and Born on a Horse reside. Fortunately the rest of the album avoids this issue and is actually very strong. There are clear similarities to Puzzle; an album which is listened to ad nauseam when I first bought it and have kept returning to ever since. The Captain in particular echoes strongly the brilliance of Puzzle. The album does differ from Puzzle in some places; it seems to have a lot more anger, and this expresses itself in a much heavier sound. Much like Locked Out from the Inside there is a clear sense of indignation in the album, however it’s not always clear exactly where it’s aimed.

Puzzle had some truly superb lyrics and Only Revolutions is no different. Biffy Clyro have a much different style from Nine Black Alps; their songs are more sophisticated and complex. This is not to say that they’re any better, but the lyrics tend to be far more satisfying when given greater scrutiny. Songs like God & Satan for example contain some truly brilliant lyrics. Similarly the music has a little more to offer than Nine Black Alps. Sometimes the slightly more ambitious music gets in the way a little and makes the songs somewhat too obscure and intangible to be really appreciated. Disappointingly the complexity can detract, rather than add to the album.

Overall, while Only Revolution is a very good album, it fails to capture the genius of Puzzle. It is at times misguided and the sound of Simon Neil’s voice grates too much for this to be one of those albums that you just keep playing. We should not judge the album too harshly simply on the strength of its predecessor; it is very good album and well worth buying, but it has too many glaring flaws to be on the same level as Puzzle or indeed Locked Out from in Inside.

There are a couple of things regarding what actually makes for good music that I have been thinking about recently that I wanted to talk about here, but didn’t want to over burden this entry with yet more when it is easily long enough as it is. I will be putting those thought into writing at some point in the next few weeks depending on what else comes up. In the mean time buy both of the albums reviewed today, they are well worth it.

Like self-indulgent butter spead too thinly over a peice of bread that is far too big

HAPPY NEW DECADE!!!!!

Well technically the new decade doesn’t start until next year, but if you’re pedantic enough to care then I feel sorry for you.

As is inevitable when a decade turns and I have too much free time on my hands, I have spend some time reflecting on the past 10 years, not just in my life (because let’s face it no-one cares) but also on the world in general. Obviously the most memorable (and not in a good way) event of the decade was the terrorist attack in the twin towers in New York in 2001, killing thousands and drastically changing the face of world politics. It was the catalyst for two controversial and politically damaging wars by America (with Britain tagging along in) against smaller powers as part of the uninformatively named War on Terror. Who knows maybe in the decade someone will tell us what that actually means.

9/11 was in many ways a turning point, but by no means a one off. Various other attacks throughout the decade, such as the 7/7 bombings on London and the Madrid train bombing are indicative of the dangers of the decade. The main enemy seems to be Islamic extremism, based largely in the Middle East. So far we’ve had little success in combating it.

The second major political theme of the decade has been climate change. Fears over what all that CO2 and other greenhouse gasses we’ve been pumping into the atmosphere for the last 150 years might do to the planet reached fever pitch this decade, culminating in the Copenhagen conference late last year, which certainly blogs completely failed to cover… Anyway I really don’t know what to think about climate change. I can see that the science has a point, but I’m not exactly sure to what extent the government can force businesses to change. Much has been done over the last 10 years to build up a strong case for climate change; I guess the actual action to stop us all drowning sometime this century will have to come from the bottom up, not the top down, in the next decade or so. Maybe if we stopped dropping so many bombs on innocent civilians that might help.

Politics aside, this decade has seen massive advances in technology; computers have become faster, smaller and more powerful. Technology such as music players, phones and camera have now become something that everyone carries around in their pockets, usually as part of the same piece of hardware. The internet has gown to become a huge part of everyone’s life, in a way that many would not have seemed imaginable in the year 2000. To many the fact that we don’t have AI and space exploration yet will be a disappointment, but to be honest we could do without Blade Runner style Cyborgs running around putting us all to shame and beating Han Solo up (if you don’t get it go watch Blade Runner).

With this massive improvement in the power of computers comes a massive improvement in CGI. This has expressed itself most in video games which have become bigger and more beautiful than ever. Even post-apocalypse Washington DC is looking pretty fine these days thanks to games like Fallout 3. The internet has also allowed people to play against each other across the globe and expose their wilful ignorance to more people than ever. Games like WoW and Modern Warfare have all but dropped the pretence (or dropped it entirely) of a story in favour of getting people to pay through the nose to play for hours online while getting nowhere.

To me this is a great shame. Video games provide a superb opportunity to tell a very unique story because it is much more immersive and involved than a film or a book. The story is no longer being told to you, an independent viewer entirely outside the action, you the player are actually part of the story; you interact with it and possibly even effect its direction. ‘Sandbox’ games like Fallout and, well the majority of games released recently, allow you to fully explore the setting and choose exactly what your character does and says, even what he looks like. The game leads you in a specific direction, but doesn’t dictate how the story flows or even how it ends. However often more linear games rely on cut scenes to tell the story, which is basically like playing a game for 30 minute to and hour, then turning it off to go watch TV for a couple of minutes. I’m sure with the complexity of games these days story telling could become even more immersive. Maybe in the next decade we will see games focusing on storytelling again, rather than simply dumping you in an environment and asking you to explore or even worse just dumping you online with hundreds of other idiots and telling you to go nuts. The technology is there, someone just needs to use a bit of imagination and not jump on the bandwagon of what makes money, which they have done recently (see previous post on motion sensing).

CGI and special effects in general have also served to make films much more visually complicated, allowing for frighteningly realistic animation and stunts. A recent example of just how far we’ve come is Avatar, which I really need to see. The decade has been dominated by high octane action thrillers, with impressive special effects and fun explosions. These have a tendency to get in the way however of what really matters to a film; the story and the characters. Sure a film may look nice now, but as CGI gets better and better, is starts to look a little dated and all you’re left with is outdated animation which fails to impress. Let’s take the Star Wars franchise as an example. The first three films (that’s the three that were made, not one ones that come first in the chronology) are amazing films, with a superb story and brilliant characters. The animation and stunts and all that were good when they were made, but pale in comparison to what is achieved these days. Even so the films still stand out as some of the best ever made because a good story is timeless, it doesn’t matter that it looks a bit shit compared to the more recent Star Wars films because what matters is the story, not the aesthetics. Compare this to the most recent Star Wars trilogy. Looked pretty impressive at the time, lovely choreography, lots of explosions capped with some truly cringworthy one liners. Looking back now however, especially in the light of a film like Avatar, it’s not actually all that impressive any more. It no longer looks that good and all we are left with are a crap story, spoon-deep characters and a bitter taste in the mouth. CGI and special effect cannot compensate for a lack of a decent story.

Of course the film industry is not all terrible films that rely in looking impressive with no depth, films like the Dark Knight, Brokeback Mountain, Gladiator, the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Minority Report and I could go on and on are brilliant films that will continue to stand out even when all rest of the bilge has paled again the slightly better looking bilge of next decade. I’m sure the filming industry will continue to play on gimmicks like 3D and CGI and produce some truly god awful films, but I’m sure there will continue to be some gems as well.

What we can gleam from the last 4 paragraphs and 10 years of visual forms of story telling is that games and movies have not gotten any better in the last ten years, just a hell of a lot prettier. Hopefully the latter will continue to be the case and we continue to get some damn fine stuff mixed in with the inevitable dirge of complete crap.

The latter can also be said for the music industry. This decade has been characterised by some truly dreadful, manufactured abominations, mostly popped out by the X factor poptart making factory run by Simon Cowell. This decade has probably seen more talentless clones singing other people’s songs than any other. Thankfully there have been some genuinely talented musicians trying and in some cases (like Muse and Coldplay if you like that sort of thing) succeeding, but in most cases (like most of the bands I like) failing to get a look in. To be honest this has and will continue to happen for the same reason that crap films and crap games will continue to be released; people are morons. Yes I lost my faith in most people’s opinions long ago and it’s hardly surprising given how popular Twilight and Lady Gaga are between them

Right, so to wrap up the decade, we have only really progressed in that we have found better and more interesting ways of blowing people up and entertaining ourselves. We are no cleverer and our stories are no better. We make the same old mistakes and will continue to for as long as it takes for the ice caps to melt and us all to drown in a flood of stupidity and water.

Before you sigh in relief that this frightening mass of self-indulgent drivel has finally finished, I have a couple of announcements to make.

Because I have decided that I still have too much free time and I got some weird flashes of inspiration, I have decided that in the New Year I will be starting 2 new different but slightly linked projects.

The first is called Project 365, the idea being that you take at least one photo per day all year so that you have a pictorial record of the year. With any luck I will manage to keep it going for longer than a month. The second and more interesting one is inspired by something called ‘postsecrets’, whereby people write shameful secrets on postcard sized images and send them in anonymously. However because I am not nearly as depressed as the people who send in these things (seriously read them, they really heart wrenching), I have decided to do a similar things, just with little sound bites that I enjoy, either from me in my day to day life, or important, intelligent people who have something interesting to say. My first comes courtesy of Wil Wheaton’s twitter (the guy who played Wesley Crusher in Star Trek: The Next Generation)



I shall be putting them up on this photobucket account, the Postcards every Wednesday (roughly) and the daily photos whenever I can be bothered to make an update, probably every couple of days and at least every week with any luck.

Embyronic

Little under a month ago I got the new Flaming Lips album, Embryonic. You would have thought that I’d review it shortly after getting it, and I intended to, but I ran up against a problem. I really like the album, the problem is that I don’t know why. This is not so much a review then as me simply attempting to rationalise what it is about the album that appeals.

I am a really big fan of The Flaming Lips; I have said before that I think The Soft Bulletin is pure happiness condensed into musical form. The reason for my love of them is that they are experts at producing what, on the face of it, amount to pop songs; relatively short, catchy songs which are very radio friendly. These songs however are not the generic, meaningless and talentless dross one normally hears on the radio, they have a deeper musical and lyrical quality to them. They are also completely absurd. These guys have written rock operas about Pink Robots taking over the world, songs full of distorted drums and strange melodies, lyrics about superman and mad scientists. In short they are completely bat-shit loco. Together this means that The Flaming Lips have achieved something very special; their music would be just as at home reverberating around an office at Pitchfork HQ as it would be blasting out of a radio is some kitchen somewhere. They have taken all the pretension and experimentation of indie music and decided that they can do it while still having commercial viability and, more importantly, fun.

That is why I love albums like The Soft Bulletin; it is so packed full of bizarre brilliance and pretentious absurdity that you would think that it would get self indulgent, but it manages to stay away from that. It has some truly wonderful pop songs, like ‘Waiting for Superman’ and ‘A spoonful weighs a ton’. These songs and indeed this album can be understood on so many levels; they are great pop songs, they are also deep, experimental and wholly pretentious. I love it because I can listen to it in pretty much any mood. If I feel happy and want something to match my mood, then I can put the Soft Bulletin on, if I’m pissed off and need something absurd and completely off the wall to take my mind off something, then I can out The Soft Bulletin on as well. If I’m feeling all sophisticated and pretentious I can try to get all uppity about the deeper meanings and experimental genius while I make my way to the closest bridge and throw myself off it. I can literally put all my Flaming Lips (and I have a lot of it) on shuffle and listen to it for as long as I want. It never gets old or annoying. Sure I may crave another band for a time, but I know they are one of those bands that I can always fall back on when I’m at a loss as to what to listen to.

There is one exception to all this. Back in 1997 the Flaming Lips produced the most awful 4 disk mess called Zaireeka. The idea was to put 4 parts of the same set of songs onto 4 different disks, such that in order to actually listen to the album you had to play all 4 disks at the same time. What? What kind of substance do you have to be taking to make that seem like a good idea? I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to have to find 4 CD players, enlist 3 friends and get them all to press play at the same time before fully appreciate an album. I’ve no doubt that when put together you get some pretty decent music, but it’s like giving your fans the drum, guitar, bass and vocal tracks separately and asking them to mix it together for you. Actually it’s worse because having all the different parts to some songs would actually be pretty interesting. When you listen to the album as it comes, ie in four different CDs, it’s just lots of silence followed by occasional snippets of songs. In short, not very fun to listen to. Thankfully they had recovered from this bout of insanity in time for 1999, which brought the release of The Soft Bulletin. And all was well again.

The thing about Embryonic then, after a very long preamble, is that it most resembles Zaireeka in concept; it completely tears down all established conventions about song structure and lyrics. I’m used to lyrics being unclear, but even I still don’t have a clue what half the lyrics actually are unless I look in the lyric book provided with the album. There are no pop songs here; it is solid experimental, pretentious, structureless absurdity. No wonder Pitchfork gave it 9/10. This is the sort of music that I should hate. It represents all the ridiculousness of Indie music that I so ardently stand against. Even The Arcade Fire manage to produce albums full of songs as opposed to what feels like little more than a protracted jam session. It feels like someone shoved The Flaming Lips into a recording studio with a month’s supply of food and E and told them to come up with something. What lyrics there are flirt incoherently between Horoscopes, Evil, nature and The Machine. I should hate this album. And yet I love it.

For some reason, this mess of incoherent, unstructured, confused and wholly absurd excuses for songs appeals to me. It feels like Wayne Coyne (the front man) and co. have just snapped, refused to write any more songs that conform to expected conventions, no matter how sensible they are. Instead of creating an album as such they have simply poured their creative energy unchecked and formless onto a CD in the hope of creating a masterpiece and somehow they have managed it.

I didn’t know at the start of this blog what makes this album so good, and after much thought and many words I still don’t. I encourage you to buy the album because it is an experience that is unique. Few albums that I know of have managed to defy convention is such a stunningly successful way. Sure Rock Operas, concept albums and song which last the length of an album have all pushed the boundaries of conventions, but Embryonic crashes like a speeding train through these boundaries. They have gone so far past what is accepted that they have gone past the point were they can be dismissed as pretentious hipster onto a whole new level. Their album works because is simply refuses to half arse anything. Because of this they have gotten away with what would normally be considered artistic suicide. I’m not saying this album will redefine what is accepted because the very reason is it so outstanding is because it is so unacceptable. In short, it is an album that can only be made once.

A good old rant

Sorry about the total no-show last week, I just didn’t have anything worth saying and not even any filler to distract you from the lack of content. However this past week I have been doing interesting things, if you count listening to music that I hadn’t heard before interesting, which I do. Anyway one of the bands that I’ve discovered recently is called Porcupine Tree, if you like Pink Floyd you should check them out, especially their early stuff which is beautifully psychedelic, if you don’t like Pink Floyd you should go find a beach at low tide, bury yourself up to the neck and wait for the tide to come in. The second band that I have discovered is called The Flaming Lips, whose music is basically just happiness condensed into musical form. You should definitely check out Soft Bulletin because it’s one of the most joy inducing albums I have heard in a while.

So those are the two bands that I’ve discovered and actually liked. While exploring I also decided to check out some of the better known and notoriously awesome indie bands that every indie music fan from here to the moon obsess over. I had a look at some My Bloody Valentine and Broken Social Scene, both of whom I will probably check out more of later because I got a bit distracted by unhealthy amounts of Porcupine Tree. Anyway the one band that I did check out in a big way was The Arcade Fire. I have been hearing for a good while now from everything associated with indie music that The Arcade Fire are god’s gift to indie music and that I should listen to them and then proceed to thrown adoration and unquestioning love at their feet. I downloaded their second album, Neon Bible and to be honest I am distinctly unimpressed. It’s just a bunch of dreary, emotionally devoid mediocrity. It’s not that it’s bad in the same way that rap music is bad; it’s just not that good. There seems to be no musical ingenuity at all and most of the songs lack melody to the extent that it really hard to listen to them for any length of time. I have to concede that there are some quite good songs on the album, like No Cars Go and Antichrist Television Blues, but frankly I have heard nothing that leads me to think that The Arcade Fire deserve any of the absurd amount of acclaim they get from literally everyone. Even bands like Coldplay and David fucking Bowie love these guys; they get perfect scores from every music reviewer on the planet. I just don’t get why, they are nothing more that decent.

Exploring all this new music made me think a little about the culture and trends associated with different types of music. I’ve always found it really bizarre how some people feel the need to identify solely with one distinct group of people to the extent that they neglect all other forms of social interaction outside the specific group. These groups are often associated with music tastes; people group together because they all like the same music, but their music tastes, like their entire lives become single tracked; they listen to one type of music and one type only, refusing to diversify for fear of betraying their group. The most infuriating of these are the ones who claim to be being ‘independent’. They think that somehow being in a group of people who all reject the same social norms like dressing is a way that doesn’t make you look like a have just been dragged through a charity shop or shaving more than once a decade, in exactly the same way is somehow being independent, it’s not; it’s just being different.

Being independent is doing what you want to do, listening to music that you want to listen to, dressing in a way that you want to, believing what you think is right, not jumping on a slightly smaller bandwagon going in a different direction from the rest of us. The problem is that any attempt to be independent by rejecting what the majority do is ultimately doomed to failure because you confine yourself to avoiding certain things because they’re popular, rather than doing things regardless of what other people think about them.

The same is the case for music taste. People get into bands that are unsigned simply because they’re unsigned and not popular. They become attached to this band simply because of what they represent; independence from the popular music industry. When that band gets recognised and finally signed up to a record label so that they can distribute their music to a wider audience they suddenly get accused of ‘selling-out’, as though becoming part of the popular music scene, getting a recording contract and finally getting the credit they deserve for being good musicians is a bad thing and it would have been better if they had just remained unsigned so only you and a few other people know about them. It seems to me that these people don’t actually listen to the music because they think it’s good music, rather because they want to be different, to be independent from everyone else. If they can quote bands that no-one has ever heard of and boast about how many times they’ve seen them live they think that somehow they’re better then everyone else.

The problem is that this happens with all kinds of music, not just unsigned music. People listen to music because they buy into the image that the music represents instead of listening to music because they like how it sounds. People buy into one genre of music to the extent that they only listen to that one style of music, not because they think that that style is immeasurably better than any other type of music, but because it fits with whatever bullshit image that they have unquestioningly accepted because they think it makes them look different.

Obviously I am looking at extremes here and almost everyone I know, and hopefully all of the people reading this, don’t buy into one specific style to the exclusion of everything else. However most people do regard music with a certain amount of snobbery, I know I have done in the past. People regard music solely as an art form designed to convey some sort of message that they can either accept or reject according to personal preference, and the best music will have an element of this, however most music is just there to entertain. Music doesn’t need to have some deeper meaning to be good music; primarily music needs to be aesthetically enjoyable. This is why I found The Arcade Fire to be so overrated; it simply was not interesting or overtly enjoyable to listen to. You can bang on all day about the deeper meanings or the serious and intelligent lyrics but that is all irrelevant if the music is drab and uninteresting. People are far too willing to dismiss music as being generic, manufactured and samey and often I don’t disagree I just contest that this makes it bad music. A catchy tune can be just that, a catchy tune and you should let yourself enjoy it without worrying about the message that the band is trying to convey or the technical quality of the music. Some songs are just designed to make you happy, not to make you think.

This is not of course to say that songs which are thought provoking and do have a better technical quality to them are no better than catchy, manufactured pop songs, that would be absurd; Dark Side of the Moon is far better than anything the Killers could ever hope to write. What we need to remember is that we can appreciate both type of music and everything in between for different reasons. We don’t need to limit ourselves to a small subsection of the music industry for pretentious artistic reasons when there is perfectly good music doing exactly what it is intended to do waiting to be enjoyed by us. Sure sometimes you may be in mood for something deeper and more meaningful, or something slightly less generic, but occasionally pop songs can bed fun to listen to.

So I suggest that next time you happen to hear a song on the radio, don’t worry about who the artists is, or what image is associated with the music. Don’t search for deeper meanings or complicated musical subtleties. Just shut your eyes and listen to the song for what it is. It may be a generic, manufactured pile of crap, but if it isn’t a damn catchy generic, manufactured pile of crap. It might just make you happy.

Empire Total War and some other stuff

Last week I reviewed the demo for Empire Total War and now that the full game is out I guess I’d better review it. I didn’t think I’d have time to play it enough to be able to do it justice by this weekend, but I think I have played enough to form an opinion. I wrote last week about the battles in the game because that’s all there was in the demo, so I wont go back over what I’ve already said, instead I’ll talk about the campaign game, which doesn’t feature in the demo.

For the first time in a Total War game there is a story element as part of the campaign game; The Road to Independence (or RtI for short) follows the colonisation of America and the American War of Independence. This is far more structured than the ‘Grand Campaign’ which is a lot like the other Total War games. While bursting at the seams with Patriotism, RtI works very well structurally and is a good introduction to Total War, however I was under the impression that it was meant to be a tutorial and if I was new to the Total War franchise I think I would have great difficultly working out what’s going on. The story itself is just a rehashing of the American foundation myth, ignoring the fate of the Native Americans and making the British look like a bunch of wankers. Amusingly all the Americans have thick north American accents even though the founding father would not have had an accent very dissimilar from and English accent. Despite it’s shortcoming it’s a pretty decent introduction to the game and is a nice change from the usual campaign.

There are a few changed from previous games, some of which are quite nice, some of which are necessary but slightly annoying, and some are just annoying. The main change is the fact that the game has now pretty much gone global; the campaign map now stretches across the world rather than just including the Europe and the Middle East. Thy have dealt with this really well, introducing different theatres of war which are separate from each other. It certainly adds a new dimension to the game, making control of the seas very important to transport ships and soldiers between different theatres of war.

Some other changes to the game, such as moving some building out of the cities and the introduction of a technology tree and the ability to research new things makes the game feel a lot more like the Civilisation games. To be honest I’m not a great fan of Civ; trying to go from the start of civilisation all the way into the future is just trying to pack too much into one game so it feels rushed. But they’ve really brought in the good bits from that game and left a lot of the crap behind. These new aspects stolen from Civ add more complexity to the game and taking the emphasis away from the warfare element slightly (although that still plays a major role)

There are a few really annoying changes however; the interface has changed massively, in some cases this makes it more intuitive, but for the most part it just makes the game harder to get the information you need. The great thing about the other games is that it was really easy to get the information you want quickly. Another annoying thing is that lots of very trivial parts of the map are not covered by the Fog of War for some inexplicable reason so you have to sit and watch what Northern Europeans killing each other between turns. You also have to watch your own troops ponderously wonder around the campaign map rather than just assuming that we all know how people walk and letting them just get there. These factors mean that there is rather too much waiting around between being able to do stuff.

To be honest this is just nitpicking; the gameplay is still fantastic and provides hours of fun. It has its flaws, but overall it’s a very good game and well worth getting.

Moving away from Video games now I was really disappointed earlier this week when they announced that the final headliner for the Download Festival was Faith no More. I literally have never heard of that band and given that their major selling point is that they influenced Limp Bizkit (who are also set to play the festival, *sarcastic celebrations*). Linkin Park and Korn (who again are playing the festival); I wonder why they had a countdown to the announcement in the Download website. I was expecting a really big band like Guns and Roses or Metallica, instead they hype up some 90’s crap. The line-up for the festival as a whole is pretty disappointing; Marilyn Manson and the Prodigy real fail to get me excited. The combination of Def Leppard and Whitesnake is pretty impressive, but other than that it’s all rather disappointing.

Staying with music and on a slightly betting note I recently discovered a band called Amity in Fame, an unsigned Austrian acoustic rock band, they’re pretty good and you should all check them out here.

A week in the life of

Well I’ve had an interesting week; the main thing was the release of the Empire Total War Demo on Steam, so I’ve been playing that far too much given how little content there actually is. A while ago I mentioned that I would be going to see Rise Against and that happened on Thursday when they played the Carling Academy in Birmingham, and it was awesome. The last addition to my frankly fantastic week was going down to Oxford yesterday for an Ethics conference, which was equally awesome but in a very different way.

But first of all the Empire Total War Demo: I’ll do a full review of the game when it comes out, maybe next week, but probably the week after (my life starts getting a little busy around now, so I don’t know how much time I’ll have to play it), so this will be fairly brief. I know that, given the fact that I have not bought a videogame in literally years, I am not up to date with the latest graphics so I’m not a great judge of these things, but it looks really, really, really nice! I mean all the people don’t all look like really unresponsive clones; they are actually slightly individual and interact with each other in melee combat. You can also destroy buildings on the battle map; yay for physics engines. Leaving graphics behind because frankly they’re pretty unimportant compared to things like gameplay; the battles feel a lot more realistic that previous Total War games. This is probably partly due to the fact that a bunch of people standing in a line shooting one another is far easier to replicate that the slightly more riotous affairs of ancient and medieval combat, even so there seems to be a remarkable high casualty rate; far more than in real life as far as I know (although 18th Century warfare was a pretty bloody affair). The inclusion of naval warfare is completely fantastic and the best idea Sega has had regarding the whole franchise (and that is saying a lot). The naval battles are probably more realistic that the land battles (although I would sort of expect that). They have done the controls really well which means that it is pretty simple to get the basics of controlling a large number of ships, which means you can quickly get down to actually fighting rather than spending many pencil snapping hours trying to master which controls are locked to which keys and how the hell you avoid sitting in the water and giving the enemy firing practice.

The problem is that there in only one sea battle and one land battle, so once you’ve mastered the controls, marvelled at the graphics a little and thrashed the arse off the computer you have very little to do but sit there and kick the arse of the computer in a slightly different way. You may also have noticed that I didn’t mention the campaign game at all. That is because there isn’t any in the demo, which is really annoying because that’s mostly what I play the Total War games for; the battles are nice, but they only really support the main part of the game and the reason why the Total War series is so fantastic. Seems odd then that they would leave it out of the demo, but hey, I’m not a developer, so what do I know? I can still complain that it makes the demo too short however. Now before you inundate me with emails and comments about how it’s a demo so it’s unlikely to be very long let me just say that the demo it literally 2 hours worth of gameplay if you’re new to the franchise, if not It’s probably less than that. You can redo the battles ad nauseam but to be honest repetition of the same thing is not an extension of gameplay, it’s just pointless repetition, like beating a dead horse just slightly more entertaining. I suppose it does a pretty good job if wetting your appetite and making you more likely to go out and buy the game when it comes out in 5 days time. Given that it’s so short you should be able to play through it before then so why not all download it now and then you can pay your money to the faceless corporation on March 4th having been completely won over by it. Go on, off you go. It’s on steam so you have no excuse.

On the subject of corporations, well not really, but I had to try to link this together somehow, I was bombarded with a whole evening of socialist propaganda from a bunch of dirty, unwashed Americans. No I didn’t go to a rally, although there was one yesterday, but more on that later. I am of course referring to the Rise Against gig I went to which, despite the excess of hippies and liberal socialists, was absolutely fantastic. I’m not going to pretend than most of Rise Against is not just a series of power chords with the occasional hammer on; I think I mentioned their chronic lack of variety last time a talked about them. When you combine this with the fact that I find it completely I possible to get behind their message; I think PETA are idiots and I really hate socialism, it is a great testament to their live act that I really enjoyed the gig. Their songs are samey but they’re so energetic and Rise Against play them so well that it doesn’t really matter. It may be somewhat hypocritical of me to really disagree with their world view and still provide it with monetary support, but for me, all they are is entertainment (that was a joke for Rise Against fans).

Of course Rise Against were not the only band to play; they were supported by The Flobots and Anti-Flag; both of whom where distinctly average. If you combined Linkin Park and Rage Against the Machine and turned down the quality considerably, you would have The Flobots. They did have a couple of redeeming features though; they had a really good female violinist. Not only was she probably the best musician on the stage at any time during the evening, she was also by far the best looking. Then again the competition was pretty rubbish; if she wasn’t there I would be giving the award to one of the guitars. Another plus The Flobots had was that some of their lyrics were so painful that they almost made me burst out laughing; then again it was rap, which is just really bad poetry put to music, so I’m unlikely to be impressed. One of their songs was interesting; they had a sign with IRAQ on and every line only had words beginning with I R A and Q (well they weren’t all that strict on the last one…). It was an interesting idea, but to be honest it was never likely to work; there just aren’t enough words that make sense together in that way to make a song than isn’t painfully forced. The other support act was Anti-flag, who get the crowd going and were slightly less painful than The Flobots, but I’d probably not rush to buy any of their music.

Any attempt to lead on from that onto the ethics conference I went to yesterday in Oxford would be as forced as The Flobots lyrics, so I’ll just move on. Yesterday I went to Oxford (which is the most awesome place on the planet or at least in England) for an Ethics conference for A-level students. I mentioned earlier that there was a rally, which there was. It wasn’t much of a rally really; about 5 people standing around with banners one of whom was yelling inane nonsense into a megaphone. There were more police on the street than actual protesters; all told it was pretty pathetic. The conference itself was pretty interesting, but I won’t go into the details because to be honest it I doubt you would care and it would be far too intellectual for a Saturday morning. It was thought provoking and I enjoyed it and I got to go to Oxford so it was a pretty damn fantastic end to a very good week in my life.