Tuesday, January 23, 2007

The Midnight Lumberjack Recommends: City Rock

1) Albert Hammond Jr. “Hard to Live (In The City)” from Yours to Keep - Catchy hipster pop from the Strokes’ guitarist; and I am man enough to admit that I love it. The whole album is worth picking up, but this track is my favorite. Starting off slow and ambient, like a Hot Fuss era Killers song, it then builds with a steady drumbeat and driving bass. Both lyrically and musically I think it can connect with those of you out there who may be feeling a little overwhelmed by the Big Apple. Added bonus: the horn outro is bright and optimistic so you don’t get too down on yourselves.

2) Beck “Strange Apparition” from The Information - With that classic jingle-piano and midtempo feel that harkens back to the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Mainstreet, and some introspective lyrics that remain firmly Beck-ish throughout, he’s got himself a hit here. It may seem like a departure from his idiosyncratic indie roots, but it is in reality a perfect compromise between the edgy sounds he created on Odelay and the emotions he channeled on Sea Change. It’s a great morning/mid-afternoon streetwalking song.

3) Rod Stewart “Italian Girls” from Never a Dull Moment - The first iTunes Store recommendation I have really enjoyed. You get classic sounding Rod with busy guitars and his four-scotches-deep vocal growl in full force. It’s fast, fun, sloppy, loose, and manages to capture the feel of a loud pub when everyone is enjoying a few pints after work. It’s funny to think that the guy who fathers children with supermodels in his 60’s and sings “American standards” written for Sinatra was once the court jester of rock and roll with a cigarette and half empty glass in his grips at all times. If you like this, come find me, I’ve got some Faces and Humble Pie albums you’ll die for. Molto Bene.

4) Jet “Jane Jones” from Shine On (Single) - Another Exile on Mainstreet-esque B-side from my favorite pet band. I don’t care what any of you say; they rock AND roll. It’s mellow and easy-going, soft on the ears, and perfect for a crushing Sunday afternoon hangover.

5) The Strokes & Friends “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)” from You Only Live Once (Single) - What friends these guys have. Eddie Vedder rolls in with lead vocals, and Josh Homme pulls a Grateful Dead and sits in as a second drummer. It's an offbeat tribute to Mr. Gaye and an ironic protest song from a band nobody thought had a social or political opinion. A great song to listen to while thinking of all this weird weather we’ve been having, or while going out in your skinny jeans and Chucks to be as hip as possible.

Bonus) Cake “War Pigs” from Rarities - A mailing-list exclusive that is slated to appear on the upcoming album of live cuts and B-sides, this retooling of the eternal Black Sabbath classic is surprisingly as pertinent now as it was in the 70’s. There is no need to swap anything out to change it from a Vietnam to Iraq song, and so the masters of unusual covers have another hit (if it ever gets radio exposure, which it wont). The sirens and horns really add a lawless feel to echo the situation abroad. Or at least that’s what you would say after you read their world-weary blog at www.cakemusic.com. Oh lord yeah!

Monday, January 22, 2007

Auditions this Friday


First I want I highly talented jew harpist/theremin player, preferably able to perform on both simultaneously. I also am looking for someone who can play modal soft-jazz on an electric sitar and would be willing to sing baritone, Mazurka-inspired, folk songs through a vocoder at 7/13ths time. I'm in need of a highly talented gong player who understands the subtleties of the music of the Maori and is not afraid of being electrocuted occasionally. Second, for some of our Everly Brothers covers I will need a castrati whom is capable of maintaining a piercing F sharp for over 45 minutes using circular breathing and amphetamines. Must be comfortable with long, breakneck improvisations on early Dru Hill songs and experience with Microsoft Excel is a plus.

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Reasons no one should take anything I say seriously

I thoroughly enjoy:
The Donnas
Rooney
Loggins & Messina

What Fucking Ian?

On a most wintry night in Toronto, Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant was asked what he thought of his opening act that evening, Jethro Tull. "If all this snow was cocaine, Jethro DULL could do a winter season." he replied.


Jethro Dull? Who the fuck do you think you are Plant? Nice fucking hair douchebag.

Nice line really, but comedy isn't your thing...it's Jethro Tull's thing, sort of. The classic "Locotmotive Breath" became the unintentional vehicle for one of recorded music most hilarious instances. If you're not familiar with the band you're a fucking screwhead, but no matter. You don't need to know much about them, just that the frontman, Ian Anderson, played lead flute for the band.


About 3 minutes and 2 seconds into the song (at least thats what my iTunes is showing,)



in the middle of a most impressive flute solo, Ian cracks. I don't want to ruin it for those of you who haven't heard it. Seriously, go check it out. Listen to the solo and just think of what this man's face must have looked like right before that glorious noise.

Monday, January 15, 2007

My faves

In my first post I listed several highly unpalatable songs in order to establish some musical cachet. With my reputation now solidly asserted I can now freely talk about songs that I actually like . . . like:

"Give it to you" by Jordan Knight

If you don't like this piece of bubblegum pop from former New Kid on the Block you're probably gay

"Silly Love Songs" by Paul McCartney

You think this song is for silly little bitches? Suck my dick bitch.

"Water Runs Dry" by Boyz II Men

Fuck you.

Five biggest and gayest...

I'm far too lazy to craft a legit answer to my own question, or at least one that could possibly answer brannen's contribution to the Great Conversation (this is a reference not to the Western tradition, but to the increasing importance and obvious intellectual heft of this here Victorious Triads Blog). That being said
1. Red, poor form with the send-up to Sean Lennon. He's not even the best hack musician to come from the Liverpoolian blood lines.
2. Red, excellent form with the banana phone reference
3. From now on I'll post correspondence with specific bloggers in the comment section, where they belong.

A. Anywhere I Lay My Head, Tom Waits; this one's for bloggers with an innate knack for keeping time and particularly pedagogal backing bands. It's a gem of the Waits cataloge, in which he adds half a pound of gravel and at least six shots of grain alcohol to his already haggard vocal chords, then tries to scream as loud as possible into a tin-can microphone backed by some off key horns. Half-baked and half-assed genius, pure and simple.

B. Our Faces Split the Coast in Half - Broken Social Scene; Stain turned me on to this stuff. Great shit, and I like that the band is essentially a bazillion-tet, including frequent appearances by female yodeler Feist, which leads me to my next entry...

C. Mushaboom - Feist, Postal Service Remix; I'm a pussy and have been listening to a lot of stuff by chick singers lately. Also because I am a pussy, I really... really like the Postal Service. Hence, this electronic re-hashing of a simple, eccentric pop song is right up my alley, or birth canal, as it were.

D. The Funeral - Band of Horses; This band is a poor man's My Morning Jacket, who are a poor man's continuation of the Country Rock that saw its best days at the close of the 21st century. Never the less, it's a welcome addition to a genre for which I have a particulary affinity.

E. Back in the Day - Erykah Badu; Someone I've been meaning to start listening to for a long time. Finally took myself up on my own offer about three months ago. I like her voice a lot, and her band can lay down a pretty solid groove.

Stain, I'm excited to see your list. Newtonian, I don't care about yours.

iPod Update

Songs recently discovered on my iPod thanks to Shuffle (shame on shuffle for not cluing me in earlier):

1. Steely Dan: Time out of Mind (rocking, probably cause you were out chasing the dragon again)
2. The Beta Band: She's the One (so incessant you'll certainly be bouncing along, and it absolutely breaks you down at the end, well worth every minute)
3. Elvis Costello: Watching the Detectives (Bouncy reggae stuff, the Brits love that)
4. Gomez: Silence (formulaic rock song with some sweet electronic undertones)
5. J.J. Cale: The Problem (nice bluesy rock, with Cale's understated vocals carrying you along)

Now I bet you want me to talk about these 5 songs in more depth, but hey I'm no Proust scholar.

Disclaimer: Don't take my word for it (Thanks for all the recommendations LeVar). Go out there and listen.

Beck's Latest


Ok, I'll admit, I freaking love Beck, but his last effort while at first wildly entertaining has left me wanting more. I wonder why I liked it so much in the first place. It has all that I want in a Beck album; driving grooves, funky electronic distractions, inappropriately catchy lyrics (the kind you wonder why sing out loud), and enough diverse genres to make your head spin.

Don't get me wrong, I'll listen to this album as long as I live (much like Odelay from beginning to end). The songs I like don't sink deep enough into my oft compromised memory banks to warrant their place there. The self-titled track, "The Information", might be the best this album has to offer, but it doesn't stack up to my other favorites from every other album (excluding sea Change, because I think we all agree we don't know how that happened).

Listening to music is an inexact science, but I think this album lacks the punch of previous efforts. Of course you can throw this review out the window if you like the bootleg videos.

A couple of instrumental songs you probably won't like


I hate music blogs, but not as much as I hate self-important playlists on music blogs so here we go:

"Wave" by Antonio Carlos Jobim

The song and album that launched bossa nova in 1967 sounds like a glass of wine colored by a Brazilian summer-breeze. When I bought the album the (surprisingly knowledgeable) cashier remarked, "Wow good choice, this album sounds like what the cover looks like [pictured above]." He was right. Play this song if you are ever trying to fuck French supermodels in the 60's.


"Three Places in New England: III from 'The Housatonic at Stockbridge'" By Charles Ives, performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra

This dreadfully sad classical piece has no place on anyone's playlist but oh well. Inspired by an unremarkable river in western Massachusetts, I imagine this aching song would more appropriately narrate a more cataclysmic natural phenomenon like the eventual heat death of the universe. At times anarchic and elegiac the piece swoons with decaying nobility before eventually succumbing absolutely into typical Ives-ian atonal chaos, at which point it's not really listen-to-able, like most experimental turn-of-the-century classical music.


"Since You Were Gone" by Chromeo

Here's a song you actually will like. It's a distillation of the current ironic fascination with the 80s and accomplishes as much to hilarious effect. As a badass synthesizer double-billing, listen to the track "The Game Begins" from the soundtrack to the movie Wargames starring the eternally boyish Matthew Broderick.

"Love is Love" by the Blackbyrds

This is the dumbest, tackiest song I've ever heard. Skip it.

Baby Shins in the deep blue sea.


I'm not impressed, but people fucking love them. I think it's the "Garden State" thing, which is a whole other post. All I want to point out is the resemblance between the lead singer and Raffi.

Hip Replacement: "Friendly Fire" by Sean Lennon

Sean Lennon's new album, “Friendly Fire” is arguably the hippest thing I own. In my fifth month of New York City residency, not only did I buy this EP, I bought $135 jeans and decorated my apartment with nothing but framed black and white photos. So suffice to say I’m wearing the white Nikes. But anyways, back to the Beautiful Boy. It’s not his first album, but my hip friends tell me the ones preceding it don’t matter (which means they have to be REALLY bad because usually time makes things hipper). The title track is the single, and it’s well put together, but as an album “Friendly Fire” is kind of bland.

It’s not a bad album. On the contrary, I think the songwriting is complex but catchy, emotional but real, derivative but unique. It sounds good, it plays well in track sequence, and it definitely has an album-wide tone. But it’s just nothing I’m going to rave to all my friends about and obsess over. I never felt any connection to him. Which sucks because I want to. I am a rabid Beatles fan and since there is no new Beatles material, I figured he could fill that void. But he can’t; no one can. I know that but stupidly refuse to accept it.

Short of being the one to bring credibility back to politics and bringing sexy back (for real this time), being “the next Beatles” might be the most daunting thing anyone could be labeled. I mean look who has been called that over the years: Badfinger (because they were on the Fab Four’s record label), The Bay City Rollers (mind you Howard Cossell gave them that title), and Squeeze. Squeeze? Are you sure? “Tempted” is an alright song that is only popular because it can be played on both Top 40 and Classic Rock radio. “Pulling Muscles from a Shell” will always excite you when your driving a long distance with nothing but static and Five for Fighting playing across the dial, and you catch it from the beginning (which I always have. I honestly don’t know what it would sound like from halfway through the chorus. I can imagine not that good). But name one other Squeeze song. Name one Squeeze album. And name what decade they were from. That’s what I thought.

[“Is That Love”; “East Side Story”; late 70’s-early 80’s]

Returning to Sean, he may be John’s heir, and trust me the songs show the Lennon genetics (even without the Liverpudian brogue), but they are all missing something. The hooks are incomplete, the chord progressions regress into mediocrity, and the melodies are standard. Maybe he’s missing his McCartney, maybe he has too much Yoko in him, and maybe he just isn’t as good as his father. Maybe he doesn’t care. I hope he doesn’t care. That’s really the only way to silence critics and Beatle-maniacs like myself who rip into him for not being John enough. When if he were John v2.0, we’d rip into him for being predicable.

I'll tell you what the problem is also. I keep waiting for Dad's cameo. I can't get over it. On "Headlights" you hear a doubed over recording of Sean singing, and in a perfect world I know that Johnny Boy would be singing that backup if he was around. And I want it so badly. Unfortunately this isn’t a Marvel comic book, so we can’t see into an alternate reality on a mirror earth two galaxies away.

Do I recommend this album? Sure, go ahead and buy it if you have an iTunes giftcard. It’s musically good, but you’re going to listen to it through, give it the “it’s alright” because you don’t want to say it’s bad and seem uncool, and probably never listen to it again. If you’re anything like me, you will wait for the drumming of Ringo to kick in, which it doesn’t. You’ll comment on how the guitar solos (which are few and far between) sound a lot like something George recorded before he outsourced them to Eric Clapton. You’ll never get over how he sounds like John sans accent, and you wont listen to the songs as closely as a result. You’ll be amazed at how this one sounds like “Working Class Hero,” and that one has a hint of “Julia” and that slow one reminds you of “Yesterday,” which isn’t John’s song at all. And all the while you and Paul will have a quick chuckle at Jude.

The album obviously has the motherly influence of Yoko Ono woven throughout it. So here is a really theoretical and irrelevant question I’ll leave you with: would “Friendly Fire” sound different if he'd have had John around growing up, or if John hadn’t been shot, would John have soaked in more Yoko influence over the years, as would have Sean, and therefore this album would be the same?

Na nah nana.

Top Five...

Because I finished reading High Fidelity last night and am likely to watch the movie this week.
Top Five songs, ranked in order of personal fancy and enjoyment, SINCE graduation. Go.

What This Is All About

The font and slogan scream, "I take myself way to seriously... just kidding... ok, I'll be honest, I take myself pretty seriously." So we apply that to our musical opinions, and you take it as you will.

"Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream."