christmas in february

4rillz:

"Give Up the Ghost":

"The Daily Mail":

"Mouse Dog Bird":

fuel for the ring

i don't listen to much FM radio. For the most part, only the stations that live at the extremes of the dial tend to deliver music in a manner that is not blatantly fueled by corporations attempting to bend the consumers will to their financial benefit. Not that I'm totally against it. Despite what you might think I think corporate radio has it's place and usefulness. And for christ's sake I'm a fan of the Beatles. I don't think anything says more about my appreciation for pop music than that.

anyways, i get a fairly heavy dose of radio friendly tunes during my day job as my coworker plays her vanilla radio station to break what would be a silence otherwise only cut by the click / clack made by our fingers and the occasional sigh that comes with working in a dead end pointless job.

probably the most interesting part of the daily ritual of vanilla rock is the slice of americana known as the morning radio talk show. it's the typical guy / girl banter and "interesting" news chat. In particular the thursday ritual where they bring in a local artist to play a song in studio. Saved for a rant on another day, there is nothing more telling of rochester's awful awful creative musical vision than the sewage that typically spills out of the speakers on these days.

today in particular was so heinous i decided to write a post about it. in short ... in honor of the release of johnny cash's last volume of american recordings, a multi album compilation consisting of cash covering great songs by other musicians the in studio band played ... johnny cash ... covering soundgarden. it basically shit all over not one, but two of my favorite musicians in one fell swoop. wow ... that was bad, i hope the station posts it so i can link it for all eternity.

when greed is good

completely off blog content topic:

maybe the best part about the US upset over Canada in hockey on Sunday night is all the extra press Ryan Miller is getting. Too often Buffalo sports icons remain icons only in the eyes of the local fans, but not so much perhaps in the national spotlight.

So the victory Sunday did a bunch of good things. First off America is almost never cast as the underdog. The US loves it's underdogs, but we are seldom in that position as a nation. It almost feels a little dirty though. It's not exactly like we put a team of amateurs out there. But that is a topic for another day. The point is that the national attention was definitely more affixed to a sporting event that wouldn't usually garner that much interest. Prodded of course by the fact that we could root for the little guy. Exposure for hockey +1.

Second, Millsy as my friend at work put it "stood on his head" during the game. For anyone who caught the affair they probably came away pretty much amazed by his performance. For us Sabres fans, this was a sight we've been lucky enough to witness on more than a few occasions. It was great to see him rise to the occasion on the largest stage of his career, and come away the hero. As far as what I know about him, he seems pretty great, and deserves all the attention he's getting. After seeing all the press headlines the next day it seems like Miller's name was part of all of them. He went from icon in hockey circles, and icon in buffalo to nationally prominent sports hero.

If the US wins the gold medal Miller might stand to be the biggest name to come out of the Olympics. And with that he stands to make a shit ton of endorsement money. And with that a shit ton of extra exposure for the city of Buffalo and the Sabres organization. At least for as long as the fleeting US attention span can muster. Beggars can't be choosers though ... here's hoping on a buffalo wing and a prayer.

you can pretty much make any statement casting the following what i would describe as "buzz" or "emotion" words:

truth
love
freedom

and come out looking like a philosophical genius. regardless of how pointless the actual statement is. or regardless of how much it would add to the human experience.

at the same time it's odd to feel uncomfortable with these phrases, as their intent is to provide comfort. sometimes i find myself getting annoyed when some philosopher or social commentator comes up with some silly fragmented thought that regards LOVE as the ANSWER ... maybe 'answer' could go in that list. i think you'd be hard pressed to find someone that didn't want all of those things.

propping your intelligence up by keying in on those ideas seems like a cheap way to gain respect and admiration.

base camp

got my dirty little fingers on the latest Lost Campesinos! album. And yes, I'm that douchey that I need to include the "!".

At this point it would probably be safe to say the following

- i would love to see los campys in concert. the unbridled enthusiasm that i've heard / read / see photographic proof of is probably their best quality. their albums (the three i have listened to) provide insight into what I can only imagine is a ridiculously raucous time. i mean shit, if their albums get you lit up with energy then the live show has to be quite the experience.

- i think their live show is pretty much all i have left in hopes for this band. when i heard their first album i became enthralled and engaged by the aforementioned ability to transpose vibrant forces via a studio recorded album. the energy of a live show, but in a sterile electronic format....

the two albums that followed ... yes the energy was there ... but the songs lost their edge a bit. the brooding wasn't quite as broody. and the keyboard synth tricks were played. and at this point i can pick out a los campesinos song from a mile away as they have not done much to stretch the listener's interest arc since their initial foray.

that said ... i honestly would not recommend this for a first time listener. i'd give you the old shit, and if you lost your balls listening to it then obvs you can get your fix on the new album. otherwise it's pretty meh.

yeah, i give it a "meh"

how about this for a proper los campesinos track title:
" ... don't hate me los c's, i still love you wacky brit son's of bastards aka this is how you spell meh meh meh i've heard this tune before but i still think you're sexy"

see if you listened to los campesinos that would be really funny to you .. or not .. but it is to me.

dammit sauce

Basically out of jealous spite I kind of hate danger mouse. Specifically for how wacky and popular gnarls barkley quickly became. Though I'd be a liar if I didn't admit that I was definitely on that bandwagon.

Second grievance being the direction he took the last Black Keys (attack and release) album. Which was kind of cool, but consider myself a bk purist.

Third I just get annoyed by people who have that "everything i touch turns to gold" thing going for them. I suppose I still harbor a little of that high school nerd animosity for the cool kids. which doesn't make sense but whatever, get your trendy beats out of my head already ...

Anyways, from what I can tell everyone should brace themselves for Broken Bells. Broken Bells is the ratty one's latest collaboration project with James Mercer of the Shins.... and yes the new single is predictably kind of cool... check it out.


The High Road

Broken Bells | MySpace Music Videos

booooo-naroo

at long last the bonnaroo lineup was unveiled yesterday. honestly, after an indie heavy festival lineup last year I had my hopes up pretty high for this year. but unfortunately those expectations are far from being met. perhaps because of the quality of festival's past, or perhaps because LA's coachella fest is so exemplary this year, i feel like I would be serverly selling the main goal of seeing a ton of awesome bands way way wayyy short if went. To be honest the bonnaroo lineup seems like what I would imagine the old school classic bonna lineups look like. They are going back to their roots and I can appreciate that.

i'm sure i would have a great time, and there are definitely enough acts i'd be interested in seeing. additionally I could probably take this year as an opportunity to find new bands to fall in love with. but i suppose for my money and time it's just not worth it.

i'd much rather spend a weekend with friends camping much closer to home.

with that said it's time to evaluate the other options. so far pfork is pretty lame, but the problem with that fest is they wait till shortly before the actual festival date to add a lot of their acts. and i have never been anything but sorry i didn't go.

then lollapalooza is shortly after which based on the last two years seems like an almost sure thing, but that is pretty much what i thought about bonnaroo. ATP, APW, Outside Lands, Sasquatch? I just don't know at this point.

Coachella would be ideal but it looks pretty costly, and I'm not sure how many people would be able to join, and i would feel bad about leaving my fellow festival goers behind. It feels selfish and lonely.

here's to hoping this murkiness dissipates and an answer that satifies all my questions becomes clear.

oh my pants!

Lazy tuesday morn,

Ehh so instead of trying to come up with some snappy intro for this brief news update I just did a copzies / pastzies action on the original article (linked for props) but you can just readzies herezies .... zies zies zies

Chroma is a contemporary ballet by choreographer Wayne McGregor that features music by the White Stripes as interpreted by an orchestra. The award-winning piece debuted at London's Royal Opera House in November 2006, and now it's coming to Toronto as part of the National Ballet of Canada's forthcoming season. (Via CBC News.)

Chroma features five pairs in flesh-colored outfits artfully moving to White Stripes songs like "The Hardest Button to Button" and "Blue Orchid", according to a Guardian review of the London show.

The CBC reports that Jack White has been invited to the Canadian premiere, which takes place in November. And the Stripes love them some Canada, so a Jack sighting does not seem completely out of the question. Head over to the National Ballet of Canada's site for more info.

ginger bread

the new beach house album makes me think that the bear exchange have a very long way to go.

i wish i had some bear exchange music to post here. gonna see about that soon.

le butte francois

i have no idea if the blog title means anything, and frankly i don't care. i just thought it sounded fun to say out loud. and also since Phoenix is the topic of this post and they're french I supposed some loose relevance could be found there.

So yeah, Phoenix. I had Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix about a year ago. I listened to maybe one song. Then got annoyed by their tight pants and boringish music when they played SNL, so into the archives it went. But seriously those dudes got a lot of good press and high praise. It honestly wasn't for me though.

Then a like a month ago Buick put out a commercial that used 1901 as the music. I liked the song, looked it up, found out it was Phoenix and decided maybe I had hastily deemed them uninteresting.

Well upon second review more thorough revelations have been formulated. For the most part I'm more of a fan than I was before. I can see why people would like them, and why they probably deserved to win a Grammy (which we all know doesn't mean shit anyways). WAP is, if nothing else a catchy album.

I would recommend Phoenix to anyone who likes the Killers. They are basically a slightly less interesting version of the Killers. Voice, musicianship, sound, pop-iness (??) are pretty much mirrored. I say slightly less interesting because the first killers album is kind of awesome top to bottom in terms of it's pop perfection. Phoenix is close, but I think they suffer from taking the Liztomania / 1901 sound and just repeating it over and over again throughout the album.

I think the killers kind of played around with their sound on Hot Fuss. A good pop album successfully traps the pop sensibilities in a multitude of song types, blues / slow dance / rock / arena epic. Phoenix kind of stick to amalgamate of all those in one song and just repeats and repeats for 40 minutes.

Don't get me wrong. It's not actually half bad. But I think unless something tremendous happens to their sound that this one album will suffice for my enjoyment of the band.

nahsayer

One of my most anticipated album releases of the year was the Yeasayear album Odd Blood. Early last year I became addicted to their dark was the night offering "tightrope", and read subsequent articles that the song was to be on the new album. In my head this formulated to 10 to 12 songs of equally amazing quality.

Further eagerness came from the review of the album's first single Ambling Alp. Unfortunately this remains to me the brightest star in an otherwise less illuminating body of work.

My biggest issues with the album is that yeasayer lost the edge I liked so much in their previous effort. The jagged sentiments that encased songs about love and relationships gave a unique presence to what would be an otherwise typical pop electronica album.

And essentially that is what I see Odd Blood being. Outside of a few tracks most of the work here is electronica infused pop sentimentality. Gone are the deep riffs, and strangled howls, replaced with gimmicky keyboard solos, and honey drenched choruses.

Don't get me wrong. The album isn't terrible. I listened and enjoyed, but almost immediately I could tell the album would get tired quick. And less than two weeks later Odd Blood has already began to collect the metaphorical dust. Looking back I get the exact same reaction that I had to the tapes n' tapes follow up ... which i can't remember the name of off hand, and when I tried to look it up on my ipod only found the loon, and the self titled ep ... which i think pretty much exactly fucking sums up what i'm getting at about odd blood.

Anyways, i still have never succeeded in developing an acceptable rating system, so i'm going to continue to stay away from that, and instead just say not bad, not great.

Also, maybe now I should take the opportunity to suggest other start expressing their thoughts to me about these reviews. Not on my writing, but on the actual albums. Maybe i'm missing something. Maybe I can go back to the album thinking about it in another frame of mind. Help me enjoy this more!!!

turning over a new leaf ... house

despite immersing myself more in music than any point that i can remember since the early early months of '09 (coincidence?) i have been lax in my self imposed duty to inform the public as to my (rather pointless) opinion on my current bevy of new albums. Part of this is caused by my desire to try and provide a thorough and thoughtful review. This comes from a belief that expressing careful thought out ideas would help me to become a more skilled writer, as well possibly provide to a theoretical audience interesting, engaging, and unique viewpoints.

However the result of trying to carefully manage this space to cultivate an ideal blog that both entertains and informs led to a pressurized situation where the basic point became a daunting task, and original insight was lost in the idealism. This all sort of culminated with what has historically been my favorite part of keeping this blog in writing my year end thoughts. Aside from the typical top 10 albums, top songs, and associated information (playlists). This year also provide the spectacle of being the last year of decade. In truth the real world played into adding to the pressure, and the result was probably the most sub par level of involvement that I recall since ever envisioning myself as an amateur music critic.

So with that in mind I've decided to try and start offering up the ideas, without the idealism. More of a stream of consciousness approach. I think this sort of relates better anyways to my media posts. I mean anyone checking recent updates can see that most of the media based posts are simply video or mp3's of bands / songs of the moment to me. My way to quickly disseminate that which I find interesting. So why not try and cover the written opinion aspect of sonic anarchy in the same manner. I think not only will this help knock off the rust, but help to make this blog a more interesting and entertainment viable option.

p.s. inspirations behind this post in order of me remembering

1. the new beach house album - teen dream - expect some thoughts soon.
2. cousin cathie - me and my cousins and you and your cousins ... troof

sonic lamearchy

wildbeasts, the xx, neon indian, muse, hot chip, beach house, yeasayer, sleigh bells, the magnetic fields, jonsi ... fate is giving sonic anarchy the big bone in '10. lame.

april 8