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August 27, 2009
Can I Interest You in Walnut, Teak, Ash, or Beech?
Pas/Cal - Cherry Tree (Suite Cherry pt. 2)
I don't know how this record didn't become more popular. What a great title!: I Was Raised on Matthew, Mark, Luke & Laura. What tremendously catchy songs! This album is like an indie pop Ulysses--the band hops from style to style, and all the sounds are so painstakingly rendered and recorded. It's pleasing and rich. Casimer's lyrics are both clever and funny. I will never not love this song, which is pretty close to being flawless, I think. Reminds me in a weird way (via its tiny perfection) of the Joseph Brodsky poem, A Polar Explorer:
All the huskies are eaten. There is no space
left in the diary, And the beads of quick
words scatter over his spouse's sepia-shaded face
adding the date in question like a mole to her lovely cheek.
Next, the snapshot of his sister. He doesn't spare his kin:
what's been reached is the highest possible latitude!
And, like the silk stocking of a burlesque half-nude
queen, it climbs up his thigh: gangrene.
Buy "I Was Raised on Matthew, Mark, Luke & Laura"
Buy Joseph Brodsky's "To Urania"
Posted by Kevin at 01:28 PM
August 24, 2009
Techno Dude-Pop Goes Dada
Not to cast aspersions on this young Minnesotan's artistic efforts, but, wow, is it just me or do these lyrics seem manufactured out of the tossed-off lines and unmetered verse of the past decade's most maudlin emo/meaningfulcore/turbo-earnest songs? To me, it's as if this dude behind Owl City spent a whole lot of time studying and analyzing Hallmark greeting cards, Chicken Soup for the Soul books, Dashboard Confessional albums, and Ben Gibbard's lyrical and vocal 'style,' then wrote some shit down in his Moleskine notebook, recorded some bloops and bleeps, and sang, and whispered, and sang. The first time I heard this, I wondered whether or not this song even meant anything to the guy who wrote it--the lyrics are so nothing, so impersonal and devoid of personality, it's almost as if he were using the cut-up technique of Burroughs or trying to make a lyrical collage, etc. Maybe that is the case and I'm not giving the song enough credit. It's more likely that he's just imitating his favorite artists in the course of trying to find his own songwriting voice, and probably every young artist has to struggle with that.
The more interesting question, to me, is one of substitution. This band's music, right now, seems like it could serve as substitute music for the fans of Postal Service who, by all accounts, will be waiting a long time for another P.S. album. And there are many other bands like this, surely--I remember Muse initially being hyped as a perfect stop-gap for Radiohead fans when that band was in its pre-Kid A cocoon. The Swedish band Starlet was supposed to be a nice Belle & Sebastian replacement. If I remember right, Kingsbury Manx was oddly compared to Elliott Smith (they toured together, but still). Some of these bands (Kingsbury Manx, Muse) have grown out of that pigeonholing, and some have not (Starlet? I don't even know if they still exist). It'll be interesting to see whether Owl City becomes its own thing or just stays on this Gibbard-biting trajectory.
Posted by Kevin at 08:25 PM
August 12, 2009
Avocados of Affection
Down in FL again, momentarily (for a week). Some things on the horizon: Mount Eerie & DFW; Dentist's Office Mix (Prayer Against Cavities); the definitive analysis of Black Eyes ex-members' new bands. For now, check out Donald Barthelme's reading list/syllabus, annotated somewhat for the Believer by Kevin Moffett, a great, funny writer himself.
Posted by Kevin at 03:14 PM