Today's Song Over Which I'm Obsessing Is...

Yeasayer's "2080." It just sucked me right in. And it's a good thing, because I've been listening to that Donovan song from Zodiac like non-stop for a week now.

Is It Too Late to Change My "Best Songs" List?

I picked this up from Stereogum after I noticed that the band has been mentioned a bunch in Pitchfork's roundup of musician Top 10 lists.

HOLY CRAP THIS SONG IS AWESOME:



The band is High Places, and they don't have a proper album out yet, but that Stereogum post has a four songs, all very good-to-excellent. This band will likely have an amazing 2008.

A Considerable Weekend

Did lots of stuff I had no chance to blog about this weekend. So here we go, in brief form:

American Gangster

Okay, so I watched this last week...um...illegally. But I didn't get a chance to review it. It's a pretty good flick, with some solid performances and a great soundtrack full of '70s soul. (I knew Jay-Z's latest album is a tie-in with the movie, but none of those songs actually appear in the film. It's weird from a marketing standpoint, but the decision not to go with anachronistic hip-hop in the background was a smart one.) I think the only thing that kept me from loving the movie was its familiarity.



There have been a lot of other movies about real-life drug dealers from this era, and all the stories are fairly similar. Resourceful criminal finds a way to obtain cheap narcotics from a foreign supplier, quickly rises to the top of his profession and eventually falls from grace, with the very ambition and aggressiveness that initially won him a fortune bringing about his downfall. There's nothing American Gangster really brings to that formula, and its one kind of unique element - the switching of perspectives between kingpin Frank Lucas (Washington) and the policeman chasing him (Russell Crowe) - kind of bogs the film down rather than adding anything new to the mix. It also could stand to be a bit more entertaining; the movie starts slow, and never really finds its rhythm, exactly.

Neil Young at the Nokia Theater

Caught Neil's show on Friday night with my brother and father. His wife Pegi opened with kind of a bland collection of throwback country songs. Granted, this isn't really my genre to begin with, but the set was, I hate to say it, kind of boring.

Neil then came on stage alone and played about a 45 minute acoustic set that was pretty stellar. The highlight? "A Man Needs a Maid." I never really imagined he'd pull that one out, and the performance kind of blew me away. There was this obnoxious hillbilly couple sitting directly behind me (they must have driven in from somewhere in Central California, because they had that drawl you just don't get from Los Angelinos) talking through the entire show (and always with ridiculously folksy, stupid comments), and even they shut up during "Man Needs a Maid." Although immediately afterwards, they had to comment. "I think he's got two keyboards on that stage. Sounded like two keyboards." "What was he talking about in that song? Gettin' a maid? That's hee-larious." Ugh.

Then, Neil returned for a 90 minute electric set, which includes about a half-hour's worth of jamming on "No Hidden Path," one of the songs off his new record, Chrome Dreams II. It may have gone on a bit too long, and my brother absolutely loathed this portion of the performance, but I enjoyed seeing the band get deep into spaced-out jam mode. I used to see a lot more jammy kind of bands (including, yes, Phish), and I guess I'm just not bothered it the way others seem to be. For me, the music isn't more or less boring because there's no vocals and it lacks traditional structure. If it sounds good, I'm fine with it. Not trying to put down people who don't see it that way, and there are certainly jams I've seen that have gone on way too long. (Built to Spill once played a version of "Randy Describes Eternity" that was so long, I had time to forget what song they were even playing, then remember, then forget again.)

Here's the full setlist:

From Hank To Hendrix / Ambulance Blues / Sad Movies / A Man Needs A Maid / No One Seems To Know / Harvest / Love In Mind / After The Gold Rush / Mellow My Mind / Love Art Blues / Love Is A Rose / Heart Of Gold // The Loner / Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere / Dirty Old Man / Spirit Road / Bad Fog Of Loneliness / Winterlong / Oh, Lonesome Me / The Believer / No Hidden Path // Cinnamon Girl / Cortez The Killer /Tonight's The Night

I mean, "After the Gold Rush"? "Everybody Knows This is Nowhere"? "Cortez the Killer"? No complaints here...

Here's playlist from some of the best Neil songs I could find on Seeqpod:



V Lounge

So, that was Friday night. I went to work Saturday for a few hours. Hey, somebody's got to cover the "Dog the Bounty Hunter is a Racist/Moron/Obnoxious Star of a Terrible Reality Show" case, am I right? Right? Am I right?

Then, Saturday night, I headed out with Adam from Mahalo to the birthday party of our co-worker, Jenny at V Lounge, which is a Hollywood-style nightclub in Santa Monica. Which, in case you're not from LA, is kind of strange. Anyway, we had to wait about 45 minutes outside V Lounge to get in, and during that time I actually saw one of my few close friends, randomly. (She, having boobs, naturally walked right in.) This was highly awesome, because nothing makes you look cooler in front of people you don't know that well than running into random friends outside of nightclubs. Like a Man About Town or something.

I know this may be hard for all of you to imagine, but nightclubs are actually not my scene at all. In a bar, I actually have a chance of possibly getting to know someone. That place encapsulates all the benefits of inebriation (like confidence and seeming a lot more witty) without the thunderously loud music or need to demonstrate some level of physical coordination you get in a nightclub. A club simultaneously robs my of the ability to converse (my only real asset in these kind of social situations) AND provides me with a primary activity - dancing - that's essentially an invitation to make a serious asshole out of myself. Bad news. (Also, I don't own any real club-appropriate clothing. There was a guy there wearing a half-opened shimmery black shirt with a dragon embroidered over the left shoulder. I couldn't live with myself if I paid money for something like that.)

Elizabeth: The Golden Age

Went and saw this today in Long Beach. This is the second movie in a row I've seen in a theater in Long Beach where the sound was fucked up. When I saw The Kingdom at the Marina Pacifica 12, there was a blown speaker that messed up all the low-end rumble (considerable in the film's action-heavy final act.) Today, during Elizabeth: The Golden Age at the UA Marketplace, one speaker would randomly cut in and out, totally screwing with the surround sound. It got really bad during the climactic battle versus the Spanish Armada. Seriously, am I just spoiled living in a film-conscious town like LA? Are most movie theaters around the country incapable of screening a film without these kinds of irritating technical glitches? No wonder people are just illegally downloading this shit and watching it on the computers. Relatively little chance that a quality DVD rip is going to have screwy sound issues.



As for the film, it's pretty entertaining and slickly made. I haven't seen the original Elizabeth in a while, but I recall being kind of bored during that film's midsection, so I'm tempted to say this one's better paced. Blanchett and Rush are great as always in surprisingly physical performances. (Blanchett performs a lot of the film in extreme close-up, which can't be easy to do, and Rush believably plays a weakened and frail old man). Samantha Morton was perfectly cast as Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, and has a few terrifically imperious, almost frightening scenes in which to shine. (If she had just a bit more screen time, I'd think her a natural pick for a Supporting Actress nod.)

The conclusion of the film - the 1588 attack of the Spanish Armada on England - feels a lot like a throwback historical adventure-romance with Clive Owen (playing Sir Walter Raleigh) in the Errol Flynn role. These scenes are actually kind of fun, and rather inadvertently highlights the staid dryness of the film's earlier passages.

Golden Age is also teeming with historical inaccuracy. I'm not particularly well versed on this period of English history, but even I could tell they were straining to retell all the major events of the Anglo-Spanish War within 2 hours with a minimum of excess characters. This is a shame, because I sense that most Americans know very little about the events portrayed, and they will most likely fill in these gaps in their knowledge with the inaccuracies of the movie. (A guy sitting behind me at the theater talked a lot during the film, and seemed to have very little background on any of these figures. It took him a good long while to even get his bearings. I sense wouldn't have been able to identify the country in which the movie took place if it hadn't appeared on screen at the beginning.)

It didn't really hurt my enjoyment of the movie as a movie, and I understand why a little unrequited love may have been needed for the sake of drama.

But the story of the Tudor/Stuart showdown, of the Spanish fleet's attack on England's significantly weaker Navy, of the clash between Protestantism and Catholicism that essentially defined hundreds of years of European history, has some innate drama as well, right? Do we really need to change so much to make this story work?

Fans

For whatever reason, I've never been all that into Kings of Leon. They're okay. I don't dislike the band. But I'd only heard a few songs, and they never made any sort of lasting impression. So I'd just never bothered to really give them a decent.

But this song, "Fans," from their latest, "Because of the Times," totally floored me today.



So, two questions from anyone reading who's in the know...Have Kings of Leon always been this good? And if so, what album should I check out?

Widow City

Two days, two ridiculously great new CD's. 2007 has already been a terrific year for new music - Panda Bear, Bat for Lashes, Patrick Wolf, White Rabbits, and even a few bands that aren't named for animals.

Yesterday, I raved about the new Radiohead (despite the complaints of high-strung audiophiles everywhere). Today, I'm on the new Fiery Furnaces, Widow City. It rules. I'm a huge fan of this band - who put on one of the best live shows I've seen, maybe ever, a few years ago at the Echo - but their last two albums have been really frustrating.

2005's Rehearsing My Choir could have been great, but the frankly bizarre idea of having the brother-and-sister duo's grandmother speak-sing over all of the songs just ruined the experience. Honestly, this was kind of interesting the first time I listened to it, but the thing has absolutely zero re-listen value. I'm rarely in the kind of mood where I feel like listening to someone's grandmother blather over a 70 minute rock album. Listen for yourself:



I'm all for experimentation, but come on...that's just not going to work for the entire length of a CD. It's certainly not very musical...

2006's Bitter Tea was somewhat improved, but again, a single wacky decision prevented me from ever wanting to actually listen to the thing. Eleanor and Matt decided to loop much of the music and vocals backwards, and to fill up every spare inch of space in each of the songs with loud, overwhelming synths. It's just way way way too much, and only a few songs (like "Police Sweater Blood Vow" and "Benton Harbor Blues") come out unscathed.

Widow City sounds like a total return to form, like a slightly more reigned-in Blueberry Boat. It's the Furnaces' least cutesy CD to date, I think, ditching a lot of the playful ditties for more grungy, robust guitar rock. It still sounds definitely like the Fiery Furnaces, and is thus extremely weird, but more approachable and immediate than anything they've done since their debut, Gallowbird's Bark.

Here's a sample...

In Rainbows

I'm loving this new Radiohead album. The music's great, of course. That's pretty much a given. Pablo Honey aside (hey, it was their debut!), every Radiohead album's been stellar (though I'm still don't feel enamored of Hail to the Thief the way I should).

But I just admire the band setting this kind of an example for their industry. Thom Yorke & Co. have mouthed off for years about the evils of massive international media conglomerates. (I have a bootleg concert in which each song is snidely introduced by Thom with corporate sponsorships. "This next song is brought to you by the good people of AT&T and the Walt Disney Corporation...")

But being such an epically-huge, massively popular band (Kid A debuted at #1 in the US! Think about that! Kid fucking A. Is that the strangest record to debut at #1 in America in my lifetime?), Radiohead's had no choice but to work in tandem with some of these very corporations they've spent years fearing and despising via rock music. Now, finally, technology has allowed them to side-step the entire system and bring the songs to the fans with maximum ease and convenience.

I have no idea if this project will work. After all, it's theoretically possible to pay about $1 in transaction fees (.45 pounds, to be exact) and download the album. I'm sure many, many individuals would make that choice. I paid 4 pounds, and happily, because I want to see Radiohead succeed and inspire more bands to release albums this way. (Nine Inch Nails and Madonna, of course, will both attempt similar feats for their next album.)

Also, I just really appreciate the level of respect for their audience this move demonstrates. Not only trusting people to pay them for their work when it could be obtained, legally, for free, but actually delivering a complete, kickass album. I can see other bands, even major labels, pulling this kind of stunt for an EP or a live album or some kind of B-side/oddities collection...but 10 songs of this caliber?



These are great songs. Every Radiohead album has that one brooding, mellow, creepy, near-perfect song that gets in my head and never leaves. The Bends: "Street Spirit (Fade Out)." On OK, it was "Exit Music (for a Film)." On Kid A, "How to Disappear Completely." On Amnesiac, "Like Spinning Plates." Hail to the Thief doesn't really have a song that fits ideally in this category ("I Will" is close, but I don't like it as much as those other ones.) In Rainbows' "Nude" alone, a variation on live Radiohead staple "Big Ideas (Don't Get Any)," is worth way more than 4 pounds (which hopefully comes to about $8.50, unless I got my conversion rates screwed up...)

Blade Runners and Black Kids

I was going to write up a whole review of the new digital Blade Runner restoration, to which I rolled exceptionally deep last night with a contingent of Mahooligans. But it's a Saturday evening...no need to get all heady.

[[UPDATE: I eventually did write a full Blade Runner: Final Cut review. It's posted over at The Aspect Ratio.]

I'll make this as quick as possible:

The film remains visionary, provocative and fresh to this day. It's clearly one of the greatest American science-fiction films ever. Ridley Scott used to have a remarkable ability to combine conventional genre material - in this case, the trappings of detective noir and crime cinema - with thoughtful, even cerebral, contemplation. Somewhere along the line, he lost the ability, and now seems only intermittently capable of even providing moderate entertainment. (I mean, A Good Year? Matchstick Men? White fucking Squall? I mean, seriously, what the hell?



Also, this new digital restoration is unbelievably stellar. If you're not in one of the major American metropolises in which Blade Runner: Final Cut is playing...awful sorry...Check out the DVD when it hits in December. But if you are in one of those special, few, civilizated cities, you really owe it to yourself to check this out somewhere with digital projection. This is one of the best-looking film restorations I've ever seen. I've seen this movie on DVD on a plasma TV and it had nowhere near the clarity of this new version. You could make out details that have probably never before been visible - the architecture in Sebastian's '30s-era apartment building, the feathers on Tyrell's replicant owl, the gauzy reflection of neon signs in pools of rainwater. It rules.

I was just going to go on and on like that for a while...but who cares? Better to just throw together a Seeqpod playlist of the stuff I've been listening to lately and start drinking. It's the weekend.



I've really been getting into M.I.A.'s new album, Kala, which is interesting because I wasn't one of those people obsessing about her breakthrough record. But this one's a lot of fun. I'm listening to it right now, in fact. Even though it's loud and noisy and distracting, for some reason, I find it easy to write along to. Perhaps it's because I have no hope of actually understanding what she's saying half the time, even if I'm paying close attention, so I feel comfortable just leaving it on while focusing elsewhere.

Then, two songs by Black Kids, the mp3-net's obsession du jour. These two songs were on everyone else's blog about two weeks back, so I'm hardly blazing new ground when I say this, but both of them are really freaking awesome.

After that's another track plucked straight from today's hipster-geist, so I feel kind of like a poser just for including it, but I can't get it out of my head. (And why do I feel like there was already a band called Whalebones? I know there was a Preston School of Industry album with that name...maybe that's what I'm thinking of. Anyway, with that name, I thought they'd sound like The Decemberists, but they don't. They're probably more like Midlake, if Midlake can be said to have a "sound." It's really just Crosby Stills and Nash's sound. But now I'm rambling...

Then, there's a new Robert Pollard track that sounds exactly like a new Guided by Voices track would. So he really just retired the name Guided by Voices and is continuing to make the exact same kind of music. Which is fine by me. This is a great song.

Then, Calla's "Bronson," which I've been listening to for months now. I feel like I've posted this song before on here, but I checked the archives and didn't see it in there. So if you've already heard this one, feel free to skip it.

I have no idea how this particular David Bowie song made it into my iTunes, but I can't get enough of it lately. It's got that saxophone that David insisted on so frequently in the '80s and that I almost always dislike, but the effect almost sort of works here. [UPDATE: As I do so often when writing about rock history, I goofed here, implying that the song "Jump They Say" is from Bowie's '80s catalog, when in fact it appeared on 1993's Black Tie, White Noise. Oops.]

This is the only song by Misha I've heard, but it makes me want to check out more. Maybe I will some time this week. A great, laid-back kind of song that sneaks up on you; I really dig the oddly quavering vocals, like the singer's freaked out by the microphone or something.

The last three songs are female vocalists creatively reinventing old songs. M.I.A.'s "$20" isn't really a straight cover of The Pixies' "Where is My Mind," per se. It sort of slips in and out of The Pixies. My favorite song from Kala at the moment.

Frequent readers have already heard about my devotion to Bat for Lashes' debut, Fur and Gold. Here she is redoing Bruce Springsteen's classic "I'm on Fire," one of my favorites from The Boss. (I'm not really a huge Springsteen fan, but having grown up in Philadelphia, I'm required by law to like a few songs from his catalog. So I'll take this one, "Glory Days" and "Atlantic City.")

Years ago, my friend Nathan and I discussed The Beatles' overlooked masterpiece "Dig a Pony," and why it didn't seem to get the kind of recognition and respect as other Beatles tracks, even other "Let it Be" tracks. (Perhaps people don't care for the non sequitur lyrics?) That's why it was particularly gratifying to hear St. Vincent do an awesome cover of the song while opening for The National at the Wiltern last week. This medium-quality mp3 doesn't really do that performance justice, but I felt compelled to include it all the same.

The In Rainbows Connection

Radiohead will release their latest full-length album, "In Rainbows," in 10 days. And as if that wasn't cool enough, they're going to let you pay whatever you want to download it from their website. Which basically means they're just going to give it away for free, because most people would probably prefer to just pay nothing.

So cool. You've gotta love the Greenwood-York Experience. And not just because of their unique online marketing experiments that let me obtain their newest stuff with maximum inexpensive convenience. Also because they're the best band on Earth right now.

I've seen a lot of amazing live shows recently - Dinosaur Jr. and The National, both at the Wiltern (though not on the same night) both pop immediately to mind - but I've still never quite seen anything to match the intensity of a Radiohead show.

They played several of the new songs from "In Rainbows" at the Greek Theater in Berkeley when I saw them last here. Here are two of them - "Bodysnatchers" and "Bangers and Mash." Enjoy.

Dinosaur Jr at the Wiltern

Just got home from the Dinosaur Jr. show tonight at the Wiltern. Unbelievable show. Really incredible. Their new album from earlier this year, "Beyond," was impressive considering how long it has been since these guys played together, but the show tonight still blew me away. Seriously, you'd think this band hadn't taken a break since the glory days - they're still incredibly tight.

The opening act was Band of Horses, a well-regarded indie outfit best known for the single, "Funeral," a really solid song.



Unfortunately, the band's just intensely dull live. They didn't seem very into their own music. Very distant, even during the up-tempo songs and solos. At one point, I remarked to my friend Dave that they sounded like a not-at-all-fired-up My Morning Jacket, and the guy in front of my turned around and agreed. I think that's all that needs be said on the matter.

But Dinosaur Jr. was just non-stop, in-your-face intensity from minute one. They played a bunch of cool songs from "Beyond" as well as some of the old-school classics, and everything souned great - blazingly-loud noise-rock at its best, and the guys were clearly taking joy in performing. When the band's having a good time, it's just infectious.

I was actually a fan of Lou Barlow before I got into Dinosaur Jr. (I got very into Sebadoh my freshman year at college), so it was great to see him play some of his own songs, but the real treat was J. Mascis on guitar. His voice has completely held up, don't get me wrong. I guess it helps that his singing was almost more quirky and idiosyncratic than pretty, even on the classic albums. But the guy just fucking shreds.

Did I mention this concert was incredibly loud? My ears are still ringing. Seriously. But it was all worth it. Here's just a sample of the great Dino Jr. songs I heard tonight:

All Your Sunday Songs

Here's sort of a grab bag of songs I've been listening to a lot this week, thanks to the fine, upstanding individuals at The SeeqPod Corporation:




The first song is off of the new Okkervil River LP, "The Stage Names," and the second is off Blitzen Trapper's latest disc, both of which were passed on to me by my brother. The third is one of my favorite tracks off of The Boggs' disc, "Forts." They're from New York and I read somewhere that they're part of the same scene as the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The Walkmen, I guess, but it actually reminds me more of '80s British rock than anything else. Like Echo and the Bunnymen with less realistic British accents.

Then there's two really weird songs, the first one by Jesca Hoop and the second by a French collective called Malajube. The Hoop song's in English but I have no idea what it's actually about, and the second one's in French, so I really have no idea what it's about, but they're both good songs. Finally, a great bit of comedy from Patton Oswalt's latest CD, "Werewolves and Lollipops," which I actually went and purchased for myself in a real store! Hey, whatever will get the Bronfman's that extra island they've been itching for, that's my philosophy...

Why did this randomly pop into my head today?

Just weird. Haven't heard this song in years...