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