When the Cactus Are In Full Bloom

Franz Ferdinand by Franz Ferdinand

Insound

I only remember Franz Ferdinand being played on the radio. Coming out in 2004, I was in the middle of catching up with the entire decade of 90s music. Because of this, Franz Ferdinand always seems much older than they really are in my mind.

Listening to the album now, it's hard to remember that this probably came out when I was in high school. I can't help but think "This sounds like it was released alongside Oasis and Blur". In the haze of my memory, Franz Ferdinand blends with Interpol and Arctic Monkeys, dance-able rock musicians that I only ever heard on the radio. They all just feel old.

Out of boredom I will link to Pitchfork's review, simply because I don't want to think right now. This will just be edited at the end of the month, when I have time.

I'm Sorry, Nick

Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

Insound

I'm sorry, but no. Just no.

It's my own fault, really. I can't get past the first track, let alone force myself to get through the whole thing. So I have no idea if it's really as bad as my screaming brain says it is.

To read about this album from someone who has probably listened to it, Pitchfork.

I Need Some Video Games

It's been a very long time since I just wrote crap, just put down my crappy thoughts here. Not the less-crappy thoughts that I dress up in sloppy metaphors, but the real verbal crap, like what I'm spewing out right now.


I simply cannot attempt another album review, because I feel that my last three have been pretty sub par. My mind feels like mush, I've been bruising my brain, beating it against these impenetrable albums that I want to say something brilliant about.


Why am I just blathering like this? Because I worry that the blog is getting further away from me. Further away from the reality of me. 90% of everything I say on any given day is verbal garbage. In most conversations I have (online, of course, because I rarely have real human interaction) I am either laughing or screaming "aaahhhhhhh". And in reality, that is pretty much the same inside of my brain.


On nights like this, when I'm bored to death, I kind of wish I had some video games.


Okay. In order to validate this being published, at all, here is a little playlist of the songs I've been enjoying.


Animal Collective - "Daily Routine (Phaseone Remix)"
Casiokids - "En Vill Hest"
Cults - "Go Outside"
Cults - "Most Wanted"
The Russian Futurists - "Precious Metals"
Vampire Weekend - "Giving Up The Gun"


And for laughs: RAAAAAAAANDY and Dave Sitek - "Baby Baby (ft. DJ Ol' Youngin')"
Watch the video for this on Pitchfork.




So here ends the reminder that I am just a crappy little person eating my crappy little peanut butter and jelly sandwich for dinner, bored out of my mind.

Summer Hymns, You Need Some Luvv

Voice Brother and Sister by Summer Hymns

Insound

Really, I don't think I've ever been more thankful that I started this project. Because otherwise I simply never would've known about Summer Hymns, or that I needed to hear them. As the bulk of their good music happened to take place before 2003 (and they haven't released anything new in four years), I might have gone my entire life without ever hearing about them, as I'm sure a lot of other people will.

Summer Hymns, you really need some luvv.

The first half of the album is probably the stronger half, with tracks like "Beginning To See" and "Mr. Brewer (Cackle, Cackle)". "New Underdressment" would be the center of the album, a long 7 minutes of psychedelic folk.

What exactly makes them so good? Really not much. They're just enjoyable; while other psychedelic folk bands focus on making layers upon layers of noise, Summer Hymns doesn't sacrifice happy and warm music for the genre. And if you're really curious, just ask Pitchfork, they've loved Summer Hymn's first three albums.

Lonely Leered

Figure 8 by Elliott Smith

Insound

I've been an Elliott Smith fan for a many years now, though unfortunately I'm one of those people who only began to listen to Elliott Smith posthumously (the first song I ever heard was "A Fond Farewell" when it first came out). And if anything, one of the greatest things about his music is that it continues to grow on you, whether it is the first time you've heard it or the 18th.


Figure 8 is a deeply personal album for me; songs like "Somebody that I Used to Know" or "Easy Way Out" just deeply resonated with me (who could ever ignore the lines "I had tender feelings that you made hard/But it's your heart, not mine, that's scarred" or the lines "There's no escape for you except in someone else/Although you've already disappeared within yourself"). And so before starting, I sat myself down and read each lyric, I looked up some interviews of him discussing the album, and I read Pitchfork's review. And with such a scathing review in mind, it seems a strange wonder that Smith's album should show up as one of Pitchfork's favorite albums of the past decade.


And the only reason is this: it takes a while for it to sink in. Elliott Smith intended for the songs to have a lack of regard for musical styles, influences, reactions, or anything else -- they were what interested him, and pigeonholing-be-damned, they were on this record. Naturally upon first listen, songs like "In the Lost and Found (Honky Bach)" might have come off as simply strange, random songs with retarded instrument choices.


But the most interesting part of Figure 8 is its immediate intimacy and subtle distance; the warm guitars and an absence of over-production makes the songs inviting, while impressionistic and somewhat less personal lyrics work to make the lyrics less autobiographical and personal and more mass appeal.


Listening to an album many years after the artists' death is much different from experiencing it the first time (which is why I can understand Pitchfork's original review). It's easy to get caught up in the tragedy of his death, or the hardships he faced while he was alive -- but I don't think he ever wrote his songs with the view "I'm going to commit suicide, and after I die, these songs are going to be how people understand my death". It's frustrating that a lot of the original intentions of these songs are overshadowed simply because of his death. My experience with Elliott Smith has been much different: if anything, Elliott Smith songs only seem to get better the longer it has time to grow on you.


When I first listened to Figure 8, immediate favorites were "Son of Sam", "Junk Bond Trader", "Wouldn't Mama Be Proud?" and "Stupidity Tries". But literally every song on the album has grown on me; as Smith said it himself, "When people talk about how I'm all gloom, it makes me feel bad. Nobody wants to be described as depressing. Sometimes I'm depressed and sometimes I'm not, just like everyone else. Usually songs, and not just my songs, are true for certain times, but they're not true to what you're feeling all the time. They're about how you feel sometimes."

Peacebone

It's been a week since I started my project, which means only 51 more to go. I reviewed five of the albums on my list thus far, a barely negligible dent on this massive project.


There are more albums than I thought I wouldn't be able to find, such as Max Tundra's Mastered By the Guy at the Exchange. I'm looking forward to actually putting an effort in finding these albums, whether it be at the library or going out to buy these albums.


Surprisingly, the project has actually improved my life; I think people rarely pay enough attention to embrace the things in their life. The lyrics and the music has definitely saved small pieces of me that I've tucked away in the past three years.


It's been a better week than I thought it would be.


On the other hand, the project has been kind consuming. I haven't exactly had a chance to talk about the things I want to, like sharing the newest Animal Collective music video for "Brother Sport", which as far as I can tell is still only on Pitchfork.


There have been a couple albums I've been enjoying, not necessarily because they're works of art but because they're just easy to listen to, such as Island's last release, Vapours. The songs aren't necessarily the deepest, or most beautiful lyrically, but the songs are pretty synth-friendly and upbeat. Another would be Junior Boys' Begone Dull Care, which, again, is a very easy to listen to album. My favorite track would probably be "Dull to Pause", and I feel that it peaks at "Hazel" (after which the songs kind of seem to burn out).


And if anyone knows a better way to convert FLAC to MP3s, please tell me. Currently the only truly free program is WinAmp, which is a really annoying program. I tried some other programs that exclusively convert FLAC to MP3, but most of them were only trial versions, and it gets frustrating when, after every button you push, it pops up a question if you'd like to upgrade. So help! I have too many albums stuck in FLAC!

And the Cold Continues

I was really hoping to have kicked this cold by the time Monday came around (about three days to recover seems pretty reasonable) but no such luck. And I really thought that half mile I ran until I almost fainted would really help...Even OD-ing on herbal pills to the point that my stomach starts twitching; 'twas all to no avail. This cold officially is the biggest jerk ever.


Tomorrow is supposed to be the end of my not-until-finals-are-over ban on life, as well as the start of the Best of 2009 list. I don't think I'm that late for it, considering the fact that Pitchfork is revealing their list this week too (yeah, that's right. I'm competing with Pitchfork). They've already published half of their Top 100 Tracks of 2009. Yeah, I'm confused by Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi" (placed 83) and Taylor Swift's "You Belong With Me" (placed at 69), but overall the tracks are pretty good. And at the very least they defend them pretty well.


Maybe it's not a very noticeable difference from what I normally write, but I feel like I'm completely frazzled and it's coming out in my blog posts. I even went so far as to go back and revise them myself, though it's hardly an improvement. 


I went out and bought a book by Milan Kundera, Laughable Loves, which is supposedly a collection of seven short stories of sexual comedies. Aside from the somewhat offputting cover, the stories themselves are fairly standard Kundera; stories told on both sides, philosophical meanderings and general tragic-comedies. I honestly find them more tragic than comedic. I am planning on reinventing the cover art in the days to come, as well.

Everyone Is Guilty

I woke up this morning with probably the worst cold I've had in two years. My throat feels like someone sandpapered it while I was sleeping. Actually, I'm pretty sure that's what happened, because I was never sick enough in the days leading up to this to warrant such a horrible-feeling throat.


Unfortunately I still have one more final to finish before my life can stop being on hold. I'm not even allowed to do anything for my mom's birthday until after my final! I plan on baking her a two layer sponge cake with pastry cream filling in between the two layers of cake, and a layer of sliced bananas on top of the pastry cream. I think it sounds good, but who knows. Sponge cake and pastry cream aren't very hard to do, just so long as you know a couple of tricks. I do plan on sharing the recipe, but only after I've actually made it.


I haven't really been engaging in listening to my music, at least not the last two days. Sometimes it all feels a little bit too much; I now have 10,164 songs in my iTunes library. I read the interview Ed Droste did on Pitchfork (I know that I'm really lazy, don't rub it in!) where he comments on this "download culture", where every album and artist is pretty much all replaceable.

Pitchfork: The record leaked online before its release. Was that a disappointment?

ED: Well, it happened, literally, maybe five days after we mastered it. That was a really huge shock because it came from a really sort of shady-- no one ever confessed to it, but something sketchy happened. It was a really huge bummer that it happened so soon. We knew it was gonna leak and we were prepared for that, but really, the biggest bummer for us was that we spent a lot of time and put a lot of effort into making sure that it's a really rich recording-- recording it to tape and doing all these nice sonic details-- and then it leaked and I remember listening to it and it sounded like an underwater YouTube stream or something. It was really, really bad. And so it's just a bummer to think of everyone's first impressions of this album being this horribly compressed, terrible-quality version of the album.

But that said, the excitement behind it and everyone's reaction was really encouraging and exciting for us to see. I think people find their own way of showing support, whether it be through an album sale or coming to a concert or even just telling some friends about it. Obviously, the leak didn't hurt us because we debuted in the Top 10. You've gotta be sort of Zen about it. I would never be angry at someone for downloading the album. Sometimes people just wanna listen to it first to see if they like it and that's totally fair. I'm as guilty of that as anyone else. The only thing I find a little strange about the download culture now is that people have so much music at their fingertips that it's really easy to dismiss an album quickly. I'm speaking from my own experience, where I've caught myself downloading a bunch of albums and then I sort of listen to one and I'm like, "Eh." And I wasn't really giving it my all or listening to it in the right order. I caught myself one day where I was like, "What am I doing? This is so not how this artist intended it to be."

Pitchfork: It's definitely not the way I listened to music when I was a teenager-- I memorized every album I bought, whether I liked it or not.

ED: Remember that feeling of buying an album? And you didn't have a lot of money so you bought one album and you had that album for like, two months or something until you bought another album? This really cool thing that would happen where you would be forced to only have that album because you couldn't just download a million more, and you may not have liked every song on it, but then as you started listening to it more and more you'd be like, "Oh wait, I do like track nine." You lived with an album, and that doesn't happen as much anymore. I'm sure some people do have that experience still, but it's a little bit harder to get to that place because you can easily just switch gears and go off to something else if it's not tickling your fancy at that moment.

I haven't had that kind of experience with an album for awhile, either. And I sort of miss it-- that feeling of not necessarily settling for an album but just of having an album and having your initial favorites, then listening to it and listening to it and discovering new things and being like, "Whoa, I really like this part now." Just the feeling of "This is what I have for the next six weeks or so until I can buy another album."

Pitchfork: There was time to develop that relationship. Now I feel like it's so hard to develop a relationship with anything because music moves so fast.

ED: There are so many more releases that people have access to. I don't know, maybe there were this many releases when I was growing up and I just didn't know where to look for them. That's probably very much the case. But it just feels like there are a billion [new records] every year. A lot of people are curious and excited about stuff, and one of the great things about the Internet is that people are excited about music and wanna hear a random album from a band somewhere in Romania or something, and to listen to all sorts of stuff from around the world. They have access to new stuff that they would have never had access to [before]. But sometimes I feel like it's a total overload. Where you're like, "I can't even focus anymore." You know?

Pitchfork: Sure. Everything feels disposable.

ED: It is definitely much easier to feel that an album is disposable-- to dismiss an album or delete the tracks you don't like or to just throw it into shuffle or whatever. But that being said, it's a case-by-case situation and that's the way it is and there's nothing we can do about it. People digest and process music differently, and I'm sure that was the case even when I was a kid. I'm not critiquing the general public, I'm speaking from my own experience of being guilty of deleting a track that I didn't like. Then I'm like, "Wait a second, that's not fair. Why am I doing that?"

Pitchfork: We all do it. I do it all the time. Do you read reviews?

ED: When we were smaller we read much more than we do now. We get updates from the label or from our manager but I think reading too much of that stuff can be a little bit unhealthy. You just sort of have to go with it and be like, "If people like it, they like it and if they don't, they don't." I remember thinking, like I was talking about the situation with everyone being able to stand 100% behind every song, I remember being like, "Well, I can stand behind this album. If someone hates it, I can stand behind it and be like, 'Well, I'm proud of it and I love it and sorry that you don't like it.'"

So I think that might actually be what's going on here. I'm definitely not tired of music, but I am feeling a little bit spread thin. My Best of 2009 is going to happen in about four days, and there were so many fantastic albums to come out this year that it's kind of hard to think about. I don't think that a year is enough time to really explore every album, and though I am looking forward to 2010, I honestly wish for a little pocket of time so I can fully explore every album I like. But that's simply not possible. 


The worst part is that you have to acknowledge that there are good albums basically every year since we started recording them; there are albums that are truly worth listening to. My secret project of 2010 (I refuse to call it a resolution, because it isn't one) is to go through all the albums worth listening to (all the albums that people have been hyping up for the past few years on their blogs) and actually understand why they're so great. It's a grand undertaking, but fortunately I have a pretty good starting point; most people have been putting lists of best albums for the past decade. I don't know what I'm hoping to get out of it, but it won't hurt anyone -- at least my project isn't listening to the last decades' worst albums ever. Who knows, maybe I'll document the entire project.

You're Not the Only

So I guess I'm kind of a lazy cheater, at least when it comes to finding new music. But really, Pitchfork makes it much too easy. Not to say that I buy every single thing that they say. But...I have to say that I am a reformed Pitchfork hater. And aside from that, I love their best new music section, especially best new tracks.

I may have jumped at Animal Collective, and overlooked Beach House's new song, "Norway". (Well who wouldn't, it's Animal fucking Collective).

Oh, and if I can expound on Animal Collective some more, the lyrics to "What Would I Want? Sky" are just too amazing.

What would I want... Sky!

Is everything alright?
You feeling lonely?
You feeling homely?
You're not the only
Is everything alright?
You feeling moany?
you feeling stoney?
You're not the only
Do you get up up up?
I stop and go above me
Too bad they can't help me
Here in the right way
Do I get up up up?
I stop and look around me
Green, where the color should be
What is the right way?
Old glasses clinking and a new board is blinking
and I -
I should be floating but I'm weighted by thinking
That I got on the river
Really can't make it change
And the sky got filled up too fast
and the taxi man's saying, "You betta
give him your money;
stop daydreaming, dude!"
When the point of horizon is hiding from you
What would you want? sky?

Are you taking it lightly?
Lost in the flurries
You start to worry
You will be buried
Taking it lightly
and so I hurry
I start to worry
Here come them flurries

Do you get up up up?
I stop and go above me
Too bad they can't help me
What is the right way?
Do I get up up up?
I stop and look around me
Green, where the color should be
What is the right way?
Old glasses clinking and a new board is blinking
and I -
I should be floating but I'm weighted by thinking
That I got on the river
Really can't make it change
And the sky got filled up too fast
and the taxi man's saying, "You betta
give him your money;
stop daydreaming, dude!"
When the point of horizon is hiding from you
What would you want? sky!
What would I want? sky!
What would I want? sky!