The Walkmen - A Hundred Miles Off

The Walkmen - A Hundred Miles Off
by Ian Mathers




When I pitched a defense of this record, Dan asked if I wouldn’t rather knock Bows + Arrows down a peg. I politely declined, partly because I want to mostly talk about their best album, the only truly great one they've recorded yet, not the others. And I simply don’t have much to say about the Walkmen’s other albums. The new You & Me keeps inviting the “return to form” tag, but it seems draggy and formless to me. So maybe the problem is that I don’t like their normal form. Their ostensible peak is actually from Bows + Arrows: “The Rat,” is still a blistering example of I’m-getting-too-old-for-this-town self-loathing. But beyond the rather graceful “Hang On, Siobhan,” the album fails to maintain the intensity and slips past me.

By contrast, I love red-headed-stepchild-by-acclamation A Hundred Miles Off for its confident, muscular ugliness. It’s the rare album that soundtracks the joyously intoxicated night out as well as the next morning's headache. It's frequently atonal, smeared, trebly, possibly overcompressed, and so on. And it is one of my favorite recent rock albums. Hamilton Leithauser pushes his sneer upwards into a painful semi-falsetto and into almost Dylanesque territory, while Matt Barrick absolutely murders his drums (that drumroll in the middle of “Tenleytown” goes on and on until it hurts). This is the album where Peter Bauer and Walter Martin switched instruments (to organs/keyboard and bass, respectively), possibly why they sound fresher here than they ever did.

If you're keen to this manic slop of an aesthetic, the thing's astoundingly solid–no filler in 41 minutes but for a few hazy blobs that advance the post-booze comedown feel. “Louisiana,” the most “accessible” track, eases the flow of caterwaul until Leithauser announces “I got my hands full!” and the horns start parping away. But the echoing “Danny’s at the Wedding” is more indicative of where things are going. The tempo remains distorted (if it exploded, we’d be in “Tenleytown” territory, not the last time this record will circle back around on itself) in a dead, ugly groove, building to Leithauser shrieking out “I really tried my best! I really tried my best!” His voice really is a thing of wonder here; without his piercing vociferation, these songs wouldn’t impact. I can understand why it might only have niche appeal, since that target sound is so messy and difficult.

“Good for You is Good for Me” ups the tempo a little, and brings up the first of several near-thematic mentions of dreaming (“Maybe I'll stop by/ You weren't in the dream I had last night”). The guitar is mostly a rhythmless background blur that gathers momentum as Leithauser croons, “I don’t get some people/ I don’t even try.” The approach bears fruit in “Emma, Get Me a Lemon,” which opens with such a perversely unappealing call for booze-related fixings that only that far-away guitar buzz and Barrick’s circular work make it bearable. We’ve gone from a song about moving in with someone from sheer inertia to something more twisted, impermanent and doomed (“It’s a long way home, let’s enjoy the ride” is as happy as the Walkmen's narrators get).

The fuzzier, indistinct half of the record comes to a head with “All Hands and the Cook,” and the most explicit summing up of the record's perverse belligerence: “Stop talking to the neighbor’s dog/ I got a temper when it’s late/ Break all the windows in my car
Burn down the room when I’m asleep/ Break out the bottles when I go/ I’ll dig a hole for all your friends.” Leithauser sings with less malice than just offhand menace and blustery afterthought. “Don't Get Me Down (Come on Over Here)” is even more direct, Barrick shoving the track forward to give some thrust to Leithauser’s wailed demand to “come on over here.” It’s a song of curdled lust and genuine affection soured by time and ennui.

And it leads right into the impossibly strident “Tenleytown” with a middle break where Barrick does his best to imitate a migraine. The guitars are still kind of distant, albeit doing this great almost-rockabilly figure, as the song makes like the Stooges during the more straightforwardly manic bits of Fun House. I haven’t looked at the waveforms to see how hot they are or anything, but A Hundred Miles Off has a cohesive, distinct sound that would be inadvisable for most artists, yet works wonders for this usually unremarkable unit, shoving the brash unpleasantness of their record right through your ear canal.

Ian Mathers has written for Stylus Magazine, Village Voice, PopMatters and the world's biggest Philip K. Dick fan site. He is currently finishing his Master's degree in Philosophy at the University of Guelph and wishes he had more time to write about music.

µ-Ziq - Royal Astronomy

µ-Ziq - Royal Astronomy
by Ian Mathers




If I wondered whether this generation's getting a proper grounding in the Smiths, I worry even worse if they’ve even heard of Mike Paradinas. An important component of my listening when I started getting into music was investigating what was then the “hip” “and new” trend of, well, in those days they called it electronica. Thanks to, and in conjunction with, my friend Pete, we started on Orbital and Underworld and then ventured further afield until we were digging up things that made Aphex Twin sound like pop music. Heady days, and half of the stuff we rhapsodized over appealed to us in terms of weirdness and excess more than anything else.

But not Paradinas’ records as µ-Ziq. One of the relatively few discs from that period that I still kept around, Royal Astronomy should particularly stand as a classic, one of the few proper LPs of what they used to call IDM that actually provides an interesting, intelligible listening experience today. Arguably better assembled and composed than even Richard D. James’ work (excepting maybe …I Care Because You Do), you can’t say Paradinas started many trends, but he did make the kind of album that should have ensured lasting repute.

Except he went away. Partly not his fault; after the Chemical Brothers, Prodigy, etc. failed to supplant grunge or whatever as the new pop, the press visibly backed off on all flavours of “electronica.” Coupled with Paradinas’ adoption of a four-year wait time between albums after 1999, people just ceased talking about the guy anymore. Royal Astronomy received good reviews (the few I’ve found), but that’s never enough to keep anyone in the public consciousness (especially someone whose page at Astralwerks seems unduly proud of having sold “in excess of 60,000 world-wide” copies of his debut, before the days of file sharing). If we’re talking about greats of electronic music in the late 90s, you’ll hear James, probably Tom Jenkinson, teams like the Hartnoll brothers, possiblysome populists like Oakenfold (err, depending on who you’re talking to), but probably not Paradinas.

Obviously I feel that’s a shame, but why? After the memorably dense and creepy drum-and-bass soundscapes of 1997’s Lunatic Harness, Paradinas toured with Björk. Paradinas was influenced by her work with a string section during her live sets so much that he appended it to parts of his new album, as well as just heading in a relatively poppier direction. I'm guessing he also started listening to a lot of hiphop. Sound like an unholy brew so far?

The range of Royal Astronomy is best summed up by its first two tracks: “Scaling” starts the record all strings and bells and odd little synthesizer fillips, for four minutes it sounds unconcerned with any of the practical considerations that touch music made by humans. A timpani thuds away softly, the strings soar, the same little melodic figure calmly repeats—the result is sublime. Then “The Hwicci Song” dopplers into view with rapidly sawing strings and a more determined melody, only to be interrupted by turntable scratching (which does kind of sound like ‘hwicci’) and a sampled MC repeating “you want a fresh style, let me show you” until it frays. There’s a beat poking under it rather than just some percussion and it’s a fantastically busy one; Paradinas, like a lot of his peers, often suspended free-floating melodies above knotty, driving drum patterns, but does it so well he makes it fresh again.

“The Hwicci Song” alone is such a bizarre and yet pleasing collision of rough and smooth, frantic and calm, that it’s trouble to categorize. Much of Royal Astronomy does a similarly great job of combining these disparate elements: Paradinas’ experience in crafting complex drum-and-bass/abstract showcases, the strings and other orchestral elements, a canny pop sense, and rap’s sense of braggadocio and aggression.

The pinnacles of the latter are the two longest productions on the album, “The Motorbike Track” and “Burst Your Arm.” Both are hard as fuck and drop the strings entirely, deploying MCs to tell us, “That is some greedy-ass fake bullshit, know what I mean?” and “Keep on faking the funk” over wild rides of squelchy, distorted synthesizers and Paradinas’ hardest beats ever. They’re exhilaratingly brutal tracks, and only moreso given their surroundings.

One surprising peak is “Carpet Muncher”, a brief but incredible track that in three minutes shows off little bits of all of the facets Paradinas was working at, and is as close as this music can get to a killer pop. Elsewhere, Paradinas throws nearly everything at the wall—the horror movie soundtrack of “Gruber’s Mandolin,” the queasy synths of “World of Leather,” the reflective choirs of “56,” “Mentim”’s far-off explosions, the peaceful-village-on-acid video game “Slice”—and it all sticks. Part of this is cunning sequencing, opening with a string of immediate and ingratiating tracks, rationing out the harder/longer tracks over the course of the album to give some balance and heft to proceedings, throwing you just enough curves to keep you interested.

And then there’s Kazumi. A Japanese fan of Paradinas’ who mailed him a VHS tape (ah, nostalgia!) of herself singing to some of his tracks, a near impossible feat in the abstract. But she was good enough at it that he asked her to sing on a few tracks here. The closing “Goodbye, Goodbye” is nearly flawless, with Kazumi repeating the same line over and over on one of Paradinas’ most touching productions. It’s a perfect way to end the record and justifies the decision to enlist her help. But it doesn’t even come close to touching her other contribution to the album, the mighty “The Fear”.

I could write another entire essay just on how “The Fear” is one of the few truly great singles of its era and genre (as opposed to dancefloor tracks and the like) and dissecting why (plenty of which has to do with Kazumi’s performance, and plenty more to do with the music that Paradinas sets up around her), but you should really hear for yourself. It’s an utterly deranged moment of genius in the way only pop can be so weird, transmuting disparate, non-poplike attributes into something magnificent and lasting. “The Fear” comprises this strange woman muttering something you don't quite understand over a surprisingly bouncy, endlessly rising melodic figure, that develops into something else altogether and towers over its unlikely parts. It's always put me in mind of grand, heroic quests for some reason; both the feeling of setting out in a wide and dangerous world, and the bittersweet ending, when you've succeeded, but in the back of your mind regretting that it's all over.


Ian Mathers has written for Stylus Magazine, Village Voice and the world's biggest Philip K. Dick fan site. He is currently finishing his Master's degree in Philosophy at the University of Guelph and wishes he had more time to write about music.

Butthole Surfers - Electriclarryland

Butthole Surfers - Electriclarryland
by Ian Mathers



Maybe they just should have changed their name? The one common thread I've heard or read in fans' reactions to Electriclarryland is that they find it wanting compared to the Butthole Surfers' earlier, crazier material. Which is fair to an extent, I suppose; Electriclarryland is a rock album (albeit a weird one), as opposed to the band's roots in weird music (albeit with rock tinges). I didn't have the opportunity to check out the Buttholes' lengthy discography until years after my "Pepper"-loving teenage self bought Electriclarryland (and initially found it off-puttingly “difficult,”). I’m still not sure what I think of all that, but it's hard for me to fault this album for not being something it was never meant to be.

I mean, yes, if you were a diehard fan of the insanity that Gibby Haynes, Paul Leary, King Coffey and whoever else they could rope in produced on a regular basis, and you were expecting Electriclarryland to be more of the same, I could see it being a nasty shock in 1996. But get over it. Unless you're going to claim that bands just shouldn't change or try on a more conventional sound, it's kind of invalid to criticize this one from being different from the rest of the band's discography. I don’t expect diehards to like it, but isn't it more interesting to look at whether the album succeeds on the terms the band chose? Don’t fault the terms.

I don't care if Gibby and co. made this record because they bowed to pressure or not, actually; I like parts of the rest of the Buttholes' career (“Whirling Hall of Knives” and “Cherub” are the kind of menacing, fog-machined stomps I can really get behind), but too often their weirdness feels tossed off for the sake of being difficult or making inside jokes or general goofiness I can’t get behind. On Electriclarryland, Haynes still spouts nonsense, scatology and shaggy dog stories, he just does it over a relatively concise, heavy and tuneful set of songs. Real songs. With choruses.

And the thing about Haynes, guitarist Leary and drummer Coffey; during their years creating "Gibbytronix" vocal effects and spotwelding fantastically weird and often evil sounds together, they turned into pretty shit-hot musicians. Haynes in particular has a perfect rock singer voice in a way the first Butthole Surfers EP way back when would never lead you to believe was possible. Hearing him scream, bellow, howl, hiss, moan and rave about solving all of his problems with a gun or wanting to fuck his brother in the ass or how much he hates cough syrup (or hell, being in lust with Christina Applegate) is bracing, hilarious, creepy, fucking awesome. He's probably the only guy who could make me revel in lines like "Well, I met her on the street where she beat me like a poodle / Then she got me accepted to an Ivy League school." On that song, the indelible "The Lord is a Monkey," Haynes stream of consciousnesses some doggerel while occasionally the track erupts into greasy torrents of guitar on cue. The cue is the line “and a dope up her ass.” It's much closer to mid-period, ‘classic’ Buttholes than most partisans would be willing to admit, and like many others here, proves that Electriclarryland isn't a sellout really, just the band assfucking hard rock until it turns into something strange.

Electriclarryland is also impeccably sequenced, to both fuck with old fans and lure in new ones: “Pepper,” the heavy-Beck mutant that unexpectedly went to #1 on the Modern Rock charts on the strength of some drum machines underpinning Leary's guitar scree and Haynes ranting deadpan about drugs, mutilation and people being assholes (plus an all-time non-sequitur chorus) doesn't come until track three, cushioned two deep on either side with blistering, hooky sprints. In one corner, “Birds” sounds like a band finally updating the Stooges (keep in mind this was 1996, half a decade before Is This It would repopularize garage), and “Cough Syrup,” some deranged mix of roots- and indie-rock with a cello coda (I kind of want “they can have my legs/ just leave my mail alone” on my gravestone). And bookending, the kind of gutbucket stomp that only the ‘90s would imbue with echoed guitars (“Thermado”) and something that could probably pass for basic ‘90s alt-thrash if not for the fact that Gibby Haynes is growling in your ear “ever felt a gun for the trigger? / ever gone so fast you could die?" (“Ulcer Breakout”). So far, relatively conventional, and at least internally consistent; even the dancey, zen “Pepper” fits into the milieu.

Which is why the next song, “Jingle of a Dog's Collar,” is so hilarious. Gibby croons—croons!—“what do they know about love, my friend?” over a sunny jangle-pop arrangement, with random haunted organ interjections, sounding like he just popped a couple Valiums. The only time the mask slips a little is when he lets a little strain of urgency into the chorus: “the jingle of a dog's collar would be good right here/ the jingle of a dog's collar would be fine.” It's a bit like the old Surfers song that Orbital sampled on “Satan,” only the ‘50s domesticity never shatters, the other shoe never drops. The song even ends with the sound of a friendly dog. And it goes into the pedal-steeled, Eagles country of “TV Star,” which at least lets Haynes' libido back into the proceedings. But the whole thing is curiously placid.

Those two tracks, much hated even by people who seem to like the heavier parts of Electriclarryland, sound genius once you get used to having the rug pulled out from under you. It's interesting to find out that the Butthole Surfers could have been a catchier, cleverer Cake if they ever wanted, and while you never wish they'd taken that route, the way they dip into it here as a detour to the weird part of the album is masterfully done. When “My Brother's Wife”—a Gibbytronixed slab of zooming atmospherics, martial drumming and bad acid coveting scenarios—gurgles to life, the album drags hard to the left. As a teenager looking for more “Pepper” or at least “Birds,” it confused and unsettled me; now I can just enjoy it the same way I do “Whirling Hall of Knives,” only done on the fancier equipment those label bucks bought the band.

Perversely enough, they leave “Ah Ha” lodged between that slice of hell and “The Lord is a Monkey” (which could be an old track like “John E. Smoke” if not for the drum machine), as “Ah Ha” is both the most conventional thing the band has ever done and perversely, one of the best. Even the lyrics are relatively straightforward and normal. But it's… anthemic. Even as a kid who only knew the band by reputation, this seemed weird. I mean, it's no “Jimi,” but listen to “Ah Ha” in a speeding car on a highway in the middle of summer with the windows down. It's unexpectedly incredible. And while anthemicity is hardly a quality to expect from this band, that only makes it any less glorious.

After the hobo apocalypse of “The Lord is a Monkey” and the gentle comedown of "Let's Talk About Cars,” the band wraps up with “L.A.” and “Space.” The former is another surging, metallic rocker (the band is surprisingly adept with those here), but the latter starts out sounding a bit like Mogwai with Gibby laughing like he's on Dark Side of the Moon before gathering speed and really sounding like Mogwai. It's a fittingly off-kilter end to Electriclarryland. Given the band's oddball credentials, it's not surprising the album is one of the more confounding semi-breakthroughs by one of the most cult of cult bands. I guess it's technically a shame it got that way just by virtue of good songs in the traditional sense, in having their previously idiot-savant-like sense of songcraft meet their shit-disturbing tendencies halfway. But let’s take it on the band’s terms, not against them: if you're looking for nothing more than a catchy, funny, occasionally dirty album—and you can get past their name—the 90s offer few better candidates. Oh, and weird. You need to be looking for weird.

Ian Mathers has written for Stylus Magazine, Village Voice and the world's biggest Philip K. Dick fan site. He is currently finishing his Master's degree in Philosophy at the University of Guelph and wishes he had more time to write about music.

The Dandy Warhols - Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia

The Dandy Warhols - Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia
A conversation between Theon Weber, Dan Weiss and Ian Mathers





Dan: STUD
WHO'S DEEP

Theon: i like your babydoll tee

Dan: and off to the fucking side
i only wear babydoll tees
the best thing that ever came out of dating linda
she bought me a shirt from a dandy warhols show she went to with tracy
that can only fit like a toddler
and says on it
YOU DRIVE FAST, I'LL DO THE DRUGS
in trippy 60s font
with a car

Theon: hahahahahahahaha
oh the dandy warhols
they're almost endearing
everyone here hates them so much

Dan: ok group. i like when they do full-on reed impressions

Theon: thirteen tales is in many places great.

Dan: if these many places are nearly all on side B we're talkin

Theon: actually they're pretty evenly distributed sidewise
like, godless is great

Dan: "shakin" "get off" "bohemian like you" "sleep"

Theon: one or the other of mohammed or nietzsche is great, i can never remember

Dan: godless is good
i'm not big on the slow intro songs after godless

Theon: shakin is good. sleep is good. bohemian like you... god, the brown sugar thing bothers me so much but it's good.
big indian is pretty good.
i like horse pills.
that "country" "song" sucks incredibly.

Dan: wow holy shit, i never noticed brown sugar thing until you just said it
bad rockcrit

Theon: good, now try to enjoy the song again

Dan: "horse pills" is great

* * *

Theon: this album has become funnier for me since moving to portland
this "urban bohemia" shit
ok courtney
i live in your fucking city

Dan: taylor-taylor
what an asshole

Theon: i mean in one sense it really is perfect

Dan: i just assumed they were from new york

Theon: because portland is to new york exactly what the dandy warhols are to the velvet underground

Dan: HAHAHA
ok, can we just do this
i don't feel like editing ned raggett's piece at 2:47 am
can we just make this convo an OST for the dandy warhols

Theon: you're always threatening to do this

Dan: i'll leave all this in, even the part about not wanting to edit ned's piece
it was supposed to be fucking hutlock anyway
but he's somewhere
probably in line for fucking space mountain

Theon: hahahahaha

Dan: don't stop talking about the album now!
you were on a roll
portland : new york :: dandys on with it

Theon: i'm listening to it now. see the thing about "country leaver" is
you wouldn't think a parody having contempt for its subject would be bad but it totally is
like these fucking rooster noises

Dan: haha

Theon: is naming the song "country leaver" and also having it be a country song not enough to get the country thing across

Dan: bad country jokes beat bad rap jokes

Theon: would you classify "solid" as a bad rap joke or is that just a lou reed bite
by the way i have listened to that song while "walking around Old Town"
and i had to stop it because i felt like an asshole
someday i'll go back

Dan: why don't we split the difference and say it's an impression...a bad one...of lou doing that rap song of his
what's it called
"the original wrapper"
hahaha

Theon: now that i know we're being watched i can't tell if you're making shit up

Dan: no, i swear
holdon

Theon: is it like christmas wrapping

Dan: christmas wrapping is classic
this is not classic
in fact, it's pretty humdrum
which is odd
because lou reed rapping shouldn't sound like business as usual

Theon: you really don't have to sendspace me this

Dan: no i'm not
just looking for the lyrics

Theon: so that stuff in dig where the dandies are painted as eagerly appropriating the brian jonestown massacres Real Druggies thing
having a photoshoot in their trashed hotel room, etc
like, i don't want this to bother me
and what's more i'm sympathetic towards it because i have exactly the same poser's hangups about drugs!

Dan: this is so bad...i've owned dig for years and haven't watched it yet
although
i appreciate you italicizing dig for me now that we're being all meta

Theon: i do that anyway
i used to IM very properly
Hello, Dan. The Dandy Warhols' 1997 (whatever) album Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia etc
but i atrophied
now i just send text messages like that
god you're right, this opening triptych sucks.
i bet he calls it a triptych too

Dan: isn't it just like the worst paced thing?

Theon: emphasis on the TRIP

Dan: like, HAI WE'RE ON DRUGS, WATCH THE FIRST UPBEAT COME IN ON TRACK FIVE
that's supposed to be "upbeat song"
but i like how abstract it came out

Theon: it's just so cheap making fun of the dandy warhols for thinking their drugs are cooler than they are
can't we take the dandy warhols on their own merits
let's talk about "sleep", that's a good song

Dan: the dandy warhols think everything is cooler than it is

Theon: hmm!

Dan: "sleep" is beautiful
but it's lazy!

Theon: oh my god that's portland

Dan: it loops the same thing for five minutes right? i'm not playing the album right now but i should be

Theon: my ex-girlfriend is with a bike snob and has gone into bike overdrive
portland thinks things are cool that aren't
sonic youth is not going to emerge from a town that recycles

Dan: who's that guy just hanging at your pad
yeah he's lookin pretty bored yeah you broke up that's too bad

Theon: song's so mean.

Dan: they're real snots
i mean
are they on drugs, mocking drugs, mocking themselves on drugs, too smirky to give us a hint
there's a word for this
arch

Theon: "horse pills" is a good song because there's these backup vocals that just yell "PILLS" every measure, and you feel like that should happen in all of these songs
arch implies a certain urbanity that really isn't here.

Dan: hmm

Theon: like, they're at their best when they realize they're this close to the bloodhound gang
"horse pills" has the line "in your itsy bitsy teenie weenie riding up your butt bikini" and in the background someone yells along with riding up your BUTT!

Dan: that sounds like cake!
UP! YOUR! BUTT!

Theon: but see cake is

Dan: take it to the trumpet

Theon: well this is possibly true.

Dan: now cake is arch.

Theon: cake is arch.

* * *

Dan: you know what's strange about this album?
the production is fucknomenal.
like so undeservingly
where did they get this money?
for the space and depth and oddball instruments

Theon: do you know about THE ODDITORIUM

Dan: the most recent album?
or an actual odditorium?

Theon: yeah but it's named after
their giant studio here
THE ODDITORIUM

Dan: who gave these people a studio?
oh, guess what this is from :
I was sittin' home on the West End
watchin' cable TV with a female friend
We were watchin' the news, the world's in a mess
the poor and the hungry, a world in distress
Herpes, AIDS, the Middle East at full throttle
better check that sausage, before you put it in the waffle
And while you're at it - check what's in the batter
make sure that candy's in the Original Wrapper

Theon: herpes
oh my god that could be great
see if that were a dandy warhols song, it would be better!
"a female friend"

Dan: he calls a vagina a waffle

Theon: does "the gospel" suck as much as it did last time i didn't stop after "big indian" which was like three years ago when i had a burned copy of this and my friend brian and i were driving silently back from filming some scene for some movie in the middle of nowhere
and after it trickled into silence brian said "is it over yet"
and put on classic rock radio

Dan: i don't even remember it, that's the final track?

Theon: yeah it is
get this
a gospel takeoff

Dan: snap

Theon: you're right about the production. i really like how clean the beat on "sleep" sounds, between the cracks of all this pseudovelvet hiss.

Dan: yeah!
and the harmonies just lazily pile onto it

Theon: actually you know who's into this
hold on

* * *

Theon Weber has invited you to a group chat. Click here to join the conversation:

In the chat room: Ian Mathers, Theon Weber

Theon: ian can sing the praises of the opening triptych
Dan: haha
Theon: and about the production in general, i think.
Dan: hey ian
Ian: what
Theon: okay this should be explained really. ian we're having this involved conversation about thirteen tales from urban bohemia that may or may not be edited into a thing for dan's blog
Ian: oh god
guys
it's 3 am
i have to go to work tomorrow
Theon: awww iiiiiiiiiiiiian
Ian: also i am drunk
any other time I would be on this like brown on rice

* * *

Meanwhile…

Theon: julia also signed on for like ten seconds then vanished

Dan: hmm

Theon: i was going to invite her in as a Representative Of Portland Cool
no i'm lying, i wasn't actually

Dan: i was gonna say
i really hope ian can join in because i'm setting up the blog entry now
and for the bio
i want to just put that we're the three stylus writers who know how to eat pussy
that that's our thing

Theon: i am not sure i am behind this

* * *

Dan: ian! quick! just give us a sound bite!
Ian: uh uh uh
Theon: i actually like the "guys, it's three am. bye."
Dan: as long as we can complete the triptych of oral pleasers
Ian: i really love the first three songs, but i'm disappointed that they didn't herald the dandy warhols' first shoegazer album
Dan: ian that statement is way too cogent for a drunk fellow
Ian: well
i've been dancing for the last three hours, which clears the head
Dan: neither of us can remember
does "the gospel" suck
Ian: no
it's lovely
Theon: it's rather gauzy, i think, ian might -
yeah, there we go
Ian: i think, anyway
i didn't keep it
it should have ended with "sleep", really
Dan: the whole album should've been "sleep"
and don't think they couldn't
Theon: but with godless interjected occasionally for the sake of the druggy mariachi horns
Ian: well, sleep, godless, mohammad and especially nietzsche
that track is a beast
Theon: that stuff i was saying earlier about not being very comfortable in portland - i feel like i'd have more definite feelings about this album if i did.
i've never met anyone who likes this album.
here, i mean.

* * *

Theon: take out the more irrelevant bits
i mean, don't be seduced by Wacky Banter cause it won't be funny in the morning

Dan: right
i'm thinking i'll save it now
and read over again in the morning and publish

Theon: good call
i'm going to bed.

Dan: yeah same
later

Theon: let's leave the cunnilingus thing alone though
dan

Dan: hahaha
that's already handled
you'll see
well, this is off the record now so i'll show you:
Theon Weber, Dan Weiss and Ian Mathers are like the Three Musketeers of Critillingus

Theon: hmm

Dan: that way it just sounds like clever wordboxing
but we know the truth

Theon: that way it just sounds really gay

Dan: gay like kelly polar gay?

Theon: i am laughing
christ on a crutch

Dan: yeah i'm laughing too honestly
a good sign
ian won't even remember this
he's gonna be like what the fuck
i'm starting it with my stud pic

Theon: yeah i was going to ask about that

Dan: i'm clipping out korey and "better black days"
so it's just "linda bought me a shirt"
fuck how do i ditch the time
before like every line

Theon: HAVE FUN

Dan: ugh

Theon Weber, Dan Weiss and Ian Mathers are like the Three Musketeers of Critillingus.

The Smiths - Strangeways, Here We Come

The Smiths - Strangeways, Here We Come
by Ian Mathers




So what is the reputation of the Smiths like these days? I once read a theory (of whom I can’t recall) that the Cure had mysteriously turned into one of those bands that all budding music fans make their way through eventually, via old reviews and older kids, but do the Smiths receive same? Has Louder Than Bombs been pressed on anyone you know?

I'm genuinely curious, because they certainly didn't make up part of the milieu I began to get introduced to in high school, and because if the store I work at is any indication, there's not a lot of turnover in Smiths albums. The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Neil Young, AC/DC, Depeche Mode, and yes, the Cure, all have high turnover here in Guelph: people selling the albums once they're older and have less use for music, replacing them with new remastered copies. Young people snatch them up out of duty rather than devotion.

Part of it is that Smiths fans don't part with Smiths albums. Maybe if I worked in HMV I'd think the band was more a part of the current ad hoc canon, but as far as I’ve personally witnessed, the Smiths aren't much of a touchstone for generations past mine. This could be due to the fact that most of their albums nearly suck.

I'm not knocking the Smiths as a band; their Singles collection is one of the more perfect discs on my shelf, the true and lasting corpus of one of the great British bands of the 20th century. Anyone wondering what I'm on about would do well to check out Mark Simpson's faintly outrageous Saint Morrissey, which in addition to being entertaining correctly and lucidly posits the Smiths as the last in a particular lineage of British band. Among other things (and I know What Was It Anyway? uber-editor Todd Hutlock is with me on this), this entails that the Smiths were among the last bands whose the singles were the really important bit – at least as consumed objects. The albums weren't bad, but they're definitely cases of frustrated potential.

The Queen Is Dead seems to be the canonical choice, but to my mind it's the hardest to sit through because it indulges the Smiths' worst tendencies. Morrissey is so interested in being clever that he forgets to be either funny or touching: “The Boy With the Thorn in His Side” and “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out” tower strikingly above the rest of the album (both singles, naturally), and if the Smiths had never released “Frankly, Mr. Shankly,” “Vicar in a Tutu” or “Some Girls are Bigger Than Others,” I would like the band much more. This is the tic that would go on to swallow Morrissey's solo career whole, and the reason his solo albums tend towards the insufferable (True Fans bleating about the lack of Marr notwithstanding). The Smiths is promising, both a great debut and very uneven, despite boasting “Still Ill,” one of the few truly great Smiths deep cuts, and the less said about Meat Is Murder, the better.

Strangeways, Here We Come, the one that even Wikipedia disses (“had this not been the band's final album, it would have been considered a transitional effort”), actually holds fine. Fittingly enough for such a perverse band, their finest record is also their most atypical.

The glaring thing that rarely gets mentioned, is that this is the least “Smiths-sounding” Smiths album. Again, Marr does all the synthesized heavy lifting under a dumb pseudonym, but those keyboards, synth strings and faux saxes make up a much larger chunk of the sound, to the point where the main sonic interest of “The Death of a Disco Dancer” is the vertiginous one-finger keyboard riff that grates through the back of the track.

Not that the sound is the only appeal; Strangeways, Here We Come is the album where Morrissey is at his funniest mainly because he takes all the songs straight instead of trying so hard to be witty. “Paint a Vulgar Picture” is more than glib record company shenanigans; coming directly after a song where the protagonist commits suicide, the beginning of the track appears to indicate a from-the-grave Morrissey imagining his reception after he's gone, before the rather bravura perspective shift halfway through. The Wiki-ilk must have missed the genuine anguish (some of Moz’s finest!) in “I touched you at the soundcheck / you had no real way of knowing” and the knowing venom in “This was your life, and when it fails to recoup / well, maybe you just haven't earned it yet, baby.”

It's an album chock full of death, a subject Smiths records hardly shrink from (“I Know It's Over,” “Suffer Little Children”), but it's never pervaded like this before. The survivor's/cad's guilt of “Girlfriend in a Coma,” the queasy, broken “Death of a Disco Dancer,” with it's devout hope for peace and love “in the next life,” the romantic homicides of “Unhappy Birthday” and “Death at One's Elbow” – it winds up infecting the rest of these songs as well, so that Morrissey's panicked assertion that he never lied to her in “Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before” feels like the same backpedaling exhibited on “Girlfriend in a Coma.” The immortal “Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me” (covered to great effect by Low) would have sounded deathly in any circumstance (and still does on Singles) but here it's positively funereal. Even the two more active tracks that begin the album that feature some of Moz’s campiest growling are more dour than the band’s usual.

And that's the key to my affection for Strangeways, how successfully it sustains mood. The singles here, “I Started Something I Couldn't Finish,” “Girlfriend in a Coma,” “Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before” (unreleased in England, due to a reference to mass murder and unfortunate timing) and “Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me,” don't stick out in the egregious way they do on other Smiths albums; I didn't hear Strangeways until long after Singles was assimilated and yet the whole thing flowed from first listen. There's a little sonic variety, some short up-tempo numbers, some lugubrious ballads, dissonances, consonances, and whatever the hell “A Rush and a Push and the Land Is Ours” is. But the deaths and leavings strewn throughout resonate in odd ways, rendering Strangeways, Here We Come bigger than the sum of its parts, a difficult mastery that the Smiths sadly learned only as they themselves broke apart.

Ian Mathers has written for Stylus Magazine, Village Voice and the world's biggest Philip K. Dick fan site. He is currently finishing his Master's degree in Philosophy at the University of Guelph and wishes he had more time to write about music.

LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver

LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver
by Ian Mathers




We have a weird love-hate relationship with our artists' maturation processes. In James Murphy’s case, “we” indicates...I don't know anymore, man. The “blogosphere”? Pitchfork? The Stylus diaspora? If you're reading this, you probably have some inkling of who “we” are, because you're one of “us.” Murphy gets it coming and going; his debut was too immature for some of us, and now I'm going to tell you Sound of Silver is too staid. There's a joie de vivre coursing through LCD Soundsystem that no longer exists on Sound of Silver—not even the good tracks. Even the Eno and Lennon rips, yes; if you had a problem with “Great Release” for sounding like an outtake from Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy), you should probably just stop listening to music altogether before you run into more examples of shameless aping and hurt yourself.

Murphy probably believed his own press. LCD's eponymous debut, still the best thing Murphy’s done, won positive but curiously lukewarm reviews. It’s now apparent that one of the big contentions was that nothing on that LP seized the hipster zeitgeist—sorry, Made A Statement, like “Losing My Edge.” Maybe it didn't, but Sound of Silver is packed full with more attempted “statements,” from “All My Friends” (not actually a bad song, but blown way out of proportion by pretty much every writer out there) to the bad show-tune finale of “New York I Love You, But You're Bringing Me Down,” they all fall flat to some degree.

In fact, the only track that really attains a significant portion of the affect that Murphy seems to intend and critics seem dead set on assigning him is the one that's been shoved aside in favor of “All My Friends” (Internet critic consensus pick for track of the year! Including Stylus! Man, sometimes we just all get it wrong). “Someone Great” has both the best sonic texture of the album—a fuzzy, sliding pulse arcing through it that sounds like the world's best headache—and lyrics that actually approach the mighty “Paint It, Black” for their devastated ambiguity. Except that, it being 2007, Murphy substitutes puzzled postmodernism for Mick's blank anguish and somehow makes it work. “Someone Great” is as much about how we're weirded out by grief as it is actually is about grief.

Yes, “All My Friends,” is a reasonably good song. I'm even willing to acknowledge a kind of minor greatness to it. But it's not about you. I don't mean that in the trivial sense that James Murphy wrote it and you didn't; go read the lyrics again. It's another song about the perils of losing your life to a career in music, which is something most of the people busily clutching the song to their hearts have no idea about and never will. Most accounts of “All My Friends” speaking to anyone sounded more aspirational more than anything else. If you’re James Murphy or at a similar level of fame, sure it’s as good as the song you've read about (which is why quasi-famous John Cale's version is so fucking great). I’m not saying a song can’t have emotional reach beyond its original scope, but the gap between what is competent and effectively moving and some sort of beatific vision that deeply touches us all and makes a statement about our lives is gaping enough that, at best, healthy portions of wishful thinking clouded the reception of “All My Friends.” At worst, it is willful ignorance.

That's the thing: For those two tracks, Murphy has made a personal, effective album that maintains his ridiculous success streak of marrying his schlubby, semi-protean vocals to well-refined beatscapes that are both more and less interesting than they first seem. The rest of the album, though, is a complete write-off. “North American Scum” is even more eye-rollingly stupid than I feared it would be, from the combination of title and early press reports overwhelmingly approving its “political” stance, the same kind of risible bullshit* that permeates, say, Sleater-Kinney's “Entertain.” Acknowledging in the song that you're talking bullshit doesn't excuse said bullshit, dude. “Time to Get Away” and “Us V. Them” bring an unpleasantly condescending air to Murphy's repertoire, giving off a whiff of unearned condemnation. I can't really remember “Get Innocuous!!” or “Watch the Tapes,” which isn't promising given how many times I listened to this album hoping it would coalesce.

For the last two tracks, Murphy really fails to end on a high note like the debut did. Unless you really hate Brian Eno, “Great Release” was a pretty beatific way to send off LCD Soundsystem. Here, “Sound of Silver” itself is only kind of tolerable, in a “nice beat, shame those endlessly repeated lyrics aren't nearly as interesting as you think they are” kind of way. But “New York I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down” is everything the title promises (and more!)—the kind of bullshit that has Murphy working so far out of his emotional, sonic, and vocal range that it's painful to hear. But it sure does sound Significant, and that's obviously important to the man. Or at least what gets you kudos these days. And that, sadly, is what might be causing him to actually lose his edge.

*maybe it's easier to see this from Canada.

Ian Mathers has written for Stylus Magazine, Village Voice and the world's biggest Philip K. Dick fan site. He is currently finishing his Master's degree in Philosophy at the University of Guelph and wishes he had more time to write about music.