MP3 MTV HAS ADD

Really brief overview of all the new music I am feeding my ears lately:

M.I.A.: vaguely terrifying primal beats sparsely swirl around her talk-singing baby British accent ranting about boys, riots, her rapper friends and her country. All at once the most important music I am listening to, and the hardest to listen to. Recommendations: “Jimmy” and “Hussel”

Kill Hannah: a light, high voice. generous guitars and perky electronica melodies. emo-tinged lyrics. all in all, it sounds pretty typical, but this band may just rise above all the countless others in their genre for originality, perhaps overcoming the unabashed pettiness of their songs. Recommendations: “Kennedy” and “Believer”

MIKA: exactly what Freddie Mercury would sound like in a bubblegum pop world. thuroughly enjoyable, if you allow him his moments of silly elf-soul-singer falsetto. Recommendations: “Grace Kelly” and “Relax, Take it Easy”

 

 

 

My iPod got stolen at school a few weeks ago. I have been surviving on CDs in my old, clunky, red CD player. As a result, I am allowed less experimentation and preference as to what I listen to. Gone are the days where I can jump from The Cure to Gracie Fields with the whirl of a wheel and a click of a button.

I will tell you, though, I have been listening to more music in full-front-to-back album format as a result as well. “Pretty Odd” by Panic at the Disco has been the most common of these. I recieved it lukewarmly when it first came out, but now I think it may join the line-up of My Favorite Albums to Disappear Into. The progression from song-to-song is flawless, and sometimes it seems perfectly impossible to have one without the other. Now I understand what my dad tells me about this kind of thing.

 

 

reflection/rant (it’s a thin line)

The job of a critic is by no means an honorable one… to take the very stuff of a person’s soul, bravely thrust out onto the world to experience, and deconstruct it with a process much like marking answers wrong on a test. We make a business of being hard to please, and claim to only patrons of real quality (whatever that means). Distainful and a constant skeptic, we are all at once indispensible and a nuisance to society. A nuisance because no one wants to read about how the band who plays their favorite song sounds like “the same old churned-out over-and-over artsy garbage that this critic has heard all too many times before”. Not only do they not want to read it, they don’t need to know it! Do we really want to change the way people consider certain musicians? Everyone has a particular taste, and is entitled to it – the ones that choose to write about it do not always have a more important taste than others. More refined, maybe. But not any more superior.

Critics are indispensible because we set the standards for the music that people really should be hearing, to keep up with the way modern music is going and to fully appreciate what these people have shown the world. Without us, nobody would care about music nowadays beyond their own personal taste. That way there will be no discussion, no difference of ideas, and altogether no reason to distinguish one band from another (if they’re all artists and all to be respected, which they may be…. they’re not all meant to be publisized, however). Continuing on with the idea of “no more critics”, bands would never get any feedback to take seriously; for anyone who goes out of their way to somehow tell a band what they think of them is either going to deliver extreme praise or extreme criticism. Imagine never knowing what your art is actually worth, so to speak. It would be a blow to your motivation for one thing, and your confidence for another.

This can all be condensed into one phrase, I just felt like writing it out for you: IF PEOPLE ALL AGREED, LIFE WOULD BE BORING AND SOONER OR LATER, NO ONE WOULD HAVE ANY OPINIONS AT ALL BECAUSE THERE WOULD BE JUST NO REASON TO.

christmas w/ Saddam

This is the most delightfully weird fact I think I have heard all day: ”I Will Always Love You” by Whitney Houston was Saddam Hussein’s 2002 campaign song.

“IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII WILLLLL ALLLWAYS LOOOOVVVVVE YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-OO-OO-OOOO*BOOM* *crash* *gunshots* “my leg!! agggg…” *sirens* -OOOOOOOH!”

have yourself a merry little christmas.

actually, come to think of it, have yourself the biggest, best, jolliest and most preposterously over-the-top Christmas you’ve ever had. Since when has America been a nation of self-restraint? Give cookies to everyone on your block! Buy your dog a swing set! Buy all of those amazing-looking new CDs you listen to in the Borders Music Section but never actually buy and probably won’t for at least a few more months. Careen down the street in a sparkling silver Corvette, blasting operatic arrangements of “The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don’t Be Late)”…

and then, when you have drained all the money from your funds, you can wander door to door, swishing your way through piles of delicate feathers of snow, romantically seeking chestnuts roasting on an open fire.

or maybe marshmallows….. 

bewitched, bothered and bewildered

am I….

THE HISTORY BOYS

and I’m sorry, to the little pixels that are my friends, that I haven’t posted in a while. I have not lost interest, I have no tlost anything, in fact. I have just not had much to say. Perhaps because musically I have been melting brain cells listening to metal lately. There’s this band called H.I.M. (it stands for “His Infernal Majesty” and yes, they’re completely ridiculous), with an immaculately beautiful frontman who sings like Jim Morrison (only in a metal way) and writes the most awful, goth-cliched lyrics you’ve ever heard.

but it sounds good! And that withstands all of their other shortcomings. The melodies are sparkling and lovely, if hidden under a quagmire of dirty guitar swipes…..the singing sounds intensely romantic, with little words that pop up every now and then to hint at that as well (“love’s the funeral of hearts” “serpentine love’s thighs” “the adored and beloved” “just look into my eyes”, etc, etc, etc.).

as to my title….I got the chance yesterday to see an excellent movie called The History Boys. At the beginning, it seems like a lot of sharp-tongued, priviledged British college boys doing charmingly rotten things, but by the end it questions success, education, homosexuality (undercurrent theme to whole movie) and death. The characters are endearing, the plot is rich, the dialouge is witty, but not obnoxiously so.

And I bought the soundtrack!

1: “Wish Me Luck (As You Wave Me Goodbye)” – a nice little showtune from the ’40s (by the sound of it…). Wonderfully exotic to the kind of music one hears nowadays

2: “Blue Monday” – an extended dip into self-pitying longing, all lost in a marching order of synthesizers

3: “This Charming Man (New York Vocal)”- SMITHS REMIX! Sort-of….the song kept a nice beat to begin with, so they didn’t change it that much. Just a little echoing quiver on Morrissey’s moans, and a bass solo they uncovered in the middle.

4: “L’Accordeoniste”  – a dizzying, ecstatic piano ditty, with lyrics all in French (I know, isn’t it wonderful?). The end is one final note, and a one-beat slamming of many keys (“ARRETE LA MUUUSIIICAAAAAA” *bang*)

5: “Mustapha Dance” – they call it that, but it’s really “Rock the Casbah” by The Clash, with a few layers of beats stacked on its head.

6: “Bewitched” – the old standard (which I happen to have quite a soft spot for), taken from a scene in the movie when one of the boys is singing it (along with “L’Accordeoniste”, for that matter).

8: “A Forest” – by the Cure…nice, subtly dark throb……but it gets a bit dull

10: “Bye Bye Blackbird” – a painfully gourgeous almost-entirely-a-cappella rendition of another old standard, done by the boys at their teacher’s funeral.

11: “Bewitched” – same song, only this time by Rufus Wainwright, so therefore the best song on the soundtrack.

the snow sparkles and there are so many sounds to be had.

go out and enjoy yourselves.