Pretty Goes with Pretty

Assessing the Assessments (More Best Ofs)

As previously noted, I've been clicking through Largehearted Boy's exhaustive collection of best-of posts, downloading samples of many albums that have been on my radar all year but for one reason or another I never pulled the trigger on. I've been doing this slowly but steadily since the Boy started compiling lists back in November. Feeling I've now surveyed the 07 pop landscape a little better, I thought I'd offer some further opinions on what I'm viewing as the general consensus/usual suspects that didn't make it onto my own best-of list. Some of these I've heard the entire album, some I haven't. I leave it to you to defend them and/or to push me to the point of (gasp!) paying money for the complete albums. And of course, if I've still left out what you consider the best album of the year, let me know in the comments.

Animal Collective, Strawberry Jam (listened to 7 of 9 tracks)
Encountering these guys very, very early on in their career (at which point I made numerous negative associations), compounded by previously hearing only the god-awful Campfire Songs in full, I gotta say I've been absolutely resistant to jumping on the Animal Collective (and affiliates) bandwagon. Finally in the last few months I've recognized my biases as irrational and I've begun to listen to tracks from Strawberry Jam on their own merit (here's one: "Peacebone"). I totally get why these guys are so talked about; as someone at another blog said (sorry, can't remember which one), there's a pretty good chance that this moment in music history will be identified by the sound of Animal Collective and the many bands in their sonic universe (Grizzly Bear, Yeasayer, Panda Bear, etc.)—reverbed-to-fuck, often harmonizing vocals; unpredictable song structures and dense layers of instrumentation and sounds; and a hodgepodge of influences ranging from psychedelia to folk to spastic hardcore to electronica to first-generation emo to Zappa, 13th Floor Elevators, and... no, not the fucking Beach Boys. That said, perhaps I just feel too familiar with the things influencing Animal Collective to shit myself over how original they are. Or maybe those negative associations just haven't entirely gone away.

Ultimate verdict: accolades deserved. Once I get over myself, I will likely purchase this (and one or two previous) album(s).

Arcade Fire, Neon Bible (purchased/listened to entire album)
I love Funeral to death. I think it will go down in history as one of the albums of the decade, and will influence innumerable young kids to start bands and change the world and all that. But Neon Bible? I'm shocked it is getting as much love as it is. This album is boring; this album is really boring. The lyrics are mostly idiotic and the production is muddled from beginning to end. I had mixed feelings on the album when it first came out, trying to find the goodness wherever I could out of love for their debut. But the fact is this album gets worse the further away I get from it. I'm going to bet that everyone showing love to Neon Bible was converted by a live show and not by the recording itself.

Ultimate verdict: accolades undeserved. Don't believe the hype.

Battles, Mirrored (listened to 6 of 11 tracks)
Best math rock album I've ever heard, though coming from me that could be damning with faint praise. In truth "Atlas" is easily--easily!--one of the best songs of the year, though the rest of (what I've heard of) the album does not ascend to the same heights. "Atlas" works so well because the virtuosity of the players never gets in the way of the fact that this is a party jam. But suppressing the sheen of virtuosity can be a difficult thing to sustain over an entire album.

Ultimate verdict: accolades deserved, though I trust lists that put it in their top 20 more than those that put it in the top 10.

Josh Ritter, The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter (listened to 5 of 14 tracks)
Ritter seems like a pretty straight-down-the-middle songwriter. He's never been on my radar before, but my ears perked up once I started seeing this on so many people's lists. He seems like a strong, if not totally distinctive, songwriter.

Ultimate verdict: undecided.

The National, Boxer (listened to 5 of 12 tracks)
Why does the National make me feel so unsure about myself? I can't figure them out; better put, I can't figure their fans out. What I've heard of Boxer is fine, just fine, but what are you people hearing that is making you lose your shit for them? Occasionally I'll hear a spark of something interesting in their songs, but the general tone seems a little one-note and not very engaging.

Ultimate verdict: accolades undeserved, until someone explains otherwise.

Of Montreal, Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? (listened to 8 of 12 tracks)
Of Montreal has a discography I've yet to truly navigate; I have an early, lo-fi album (Cherry Peel) and a later album (Satanic Panic in the Attic). But whenever I check their bin at the record store I see many other albums and I have no clue as to their chronology nor their quality. All I really know is that Satanic Panic is brilliant. Hissing Fauna... is pretty good. There's nothing bad about it but I can't find a toehold. Ultimately that has to count against the album, doesn't it? For a band that is so aggressively pop, I'm just not getting hooked. Then again I've only heard half the album. Does it work better as a whole? Do some songs need to work in context?

Ultimate verdict: undecided. I want to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Okkervil River, The Stage Names (listened to 6 of 9 tracks)
I have many Okkervil River songs on my iTunes, though no complete albums. I sense that that is where I go wrong with these guys. I find that I either really like or am really ambivalent to their songs. That's why I never did purchase Black Sheep Boy (despite "All the Latest Toughs") and why I've yet to buy The Stage Names (despite "Unless It's Kicks"). I have the strong suspicion that the majority of their songs are the ones I'm ambivalent to. There's something very mid/late-90s Drag City about Okkervil River, calling to mind also-rans like Appendix Out or Lullabye for the Working Class (remember them?). Those bands were (rightfully) regarded as second rate compared to Smog, Palace, Silver Jews, etc. I've yet to feel with confidence that Okkervil River transcends.

Ultimate verdict: undecided. Willing to be convinced.

Panda Bear, Person Pitch (listened to 4 of 8 tracks)
See above about Animal Collective, as all my reservations can be repeated here. I've had this album's virtues shoved down my throat by nearly every blog I read, which of course makes me rebel. Ultimately, however, I can't deny this album: it is unique and sophisticated and ambitious. But please, please, please, let's not mention Brian Wilson. Panda Bear is not fucking influenced by Brian Wilson, not in any substantial way (unless it's evident on the songs I haven't heard). Just because there are multiple vocal parts on "Comfy in Nautica" and "Bros" does not mean we've got the second coming of "God Only Knows." In terms of both melody and harmony, it's an insult to Wilson to put Panda Bear in the same room. PB has plenty of other virtues as a songwriter, but few if any which correlate to the Beach Boys. That I've heard, at least.

Ultimate verdict: accolades deserved, if misguided.

The Shins, Wincing the Night Away (purchased/listened to the entire album)
Like Neon Bible, I'm surprised to see this album popping up on lists (though thankfully, at least, not at the top of anyone's list). It's a pretty good album, sure, but it lacks real ambition. The band made a few minor adjustments to their approach on a couple songs in an attempt at setting Wincing apart from their previous work, but none were terribly refreshing or successful. Unlike Neon Bible, however, Wincing redeems itself the further away it gets from critical ears. I like most the songs when they show up on my iPod. I don't skip them, and I even sing along. But that compliment hardly qualifies Wincing for best-of-the-year status.

Ultimate verdict: accolades undeserved. A good album but not a great album.

Vampire Weekend (listened to 7 tracks)
Allergic to most blog hype, I ignored VW (along with Black Kids, et al.) when they came up earlier in the year. Listening to them now, without attaching any sort of Next Big Thing expectations, I actually like this a lot. There's nothing really groundbreaking here—it's just indie pop with a refreshing sound (example: "Oxford Comma"). Actually, that's how I would have described the Shins a few years ago!

Ultimate verdict: accolades deserved.

White Stripes, Icky Thump (purchased/listened to the entire album)
This album is a turd.

Ultimate verdict: accolades undeserved! Do not trust any list with this album anywhere on it—top ten, top hundred, whatever. If it's on someone's list then they didn't listen to enough music this year.

Wilco, Sky Blue Sky (listened to 8 of 12 tracks)
I consider myself a fan of Wilco, yet when mp3s started surfacing for Sky Blue Sky I was underwhelmed. "Impossible Germany" was wanky and a little boring. And I could've sworn my reaction was mirrored by many tepid reviews upon the album's release. Yet when it started showing up again and again on best-of lists, I gave it another chance and sampled more tracks. It's certainly growing in my estimation, thanks to songs like "Either Way" and "What Light." It's straight-down-the-middle mild country-rock, but it grows.

Ultimate verdict: accolades deserved, though I'm not convinced it should be placing quite as high on everyone's lists as it is.

Have I left anything out (other than MIA, who I just can't get excited about, sorry)? What was your favorite album of the year? What am I wrong about above? (I'm willing to be corrected if you've got a convincing argument.)

Albums of My Life

Last week I referred to Paul Simon’s Graceland as an “album of my life.” Coincidentally, this thread at Last Plane to Jakarta took a brief tangent into what constitutes a “life-changing album.” Two different concepts, and I’ve had both on my mind in the last few days. The first is a lot easier to find examples of: albums that I played intensely during some period of my life, to the point of becoming something other than good or great albums; rather, they're the soundtrack to memories. The second category, life-changing albums, is harder to figure out. Before I try to sort that one out, I want to think about the other.

Albums of my life. Going back as far as I can, my childhood was filled with Simon & Garfunkel, Cat Stevens, Jim Croce, Ry Cooder. I have strong mental associations with all those artists, and in retrospect they all must have set some kind of foundation for what I’ve come to like today.

George Michael’s Faith might have been the very first album I ever viewed as wholly mine: an cassette I kept in my own room, played on my own walkman. INXS’s Kick and Run-DMC’s Raising Hell, too. In elementary school I would walk laps around the track during recess with Danny Casares as we tried to piece together the lyrics to “You Be Illin’ from memory. By sixth grade I was transfixed by Appetite for Destruction—probably the first album I’d ever associated with danger. This led to junior high and high school, where Master of Puppets, Rust in Peace, and Persistence of Time set the template for my taste in metal. By my junior or senior year I was transitioning out of metal and into something else: Rollins Band (particularly the early stuff), Tool, and a band I’d discovered through a blind purchase at Tower Records, Craw, all made music that was heavy but was more dynamic musically and more sophisticated lyrically and emotionally.

Somehow from there I stumbled into indie rock without any real guidance (which I’ve written about before). By then I’d lost interest in heaviness but was actively looking for music that shifted dynamically. Slint, Fugazi, Rodan, Codeine. I vividly recall moving to college and trying to describe the kind of music I liked to a kid I’d met in the dorms. “It can be really loud and really screamy, but it can also get really quiet, and it’s not heavy like metal.” He just looked at me and said “what, you mean emo?”

Another dormmate gave me a dubbed cassette full of songs by what I thought was some friend of hers; the recording quality was exceptionally poor and all the label said was “Elliott Smith.” I played the hell out of the tape but was embarrassed to tell the girl I dug it so much because it seemed a little weird to be really into her random friend’s music. Six months later I was in a record store and saw the album in the bin—a real record by a real guy on a real label, and best of all that was another album (Roman Candle) in the bins as well!

The rest of college was Tortoise, June of 44, Blonde Redhead, Unwound, Superchunk, the Pernice Brothers. After college, when I met my wife: My Morning Jacket’s The Tennessee Fire, Cat Power’s Moon Pix, Rufus Wainwright’s first album, Ryan Adams’s Heartbreaker.

We got married in September 2001: she walked down the aisle to Sigur Ros’ “Sven-g-Englar” and we danced to Low’s “Two Step.” We moved to New York not long after. If you asked me to soundtrack the winter of 2002, when we lived in a spacious but empty loft above a functioning sweatshop in a shitty part of Williamsburg, I’d have to hand you Pete Yorn’s Music for the Morning After. When we moved to Boerum Hill it was Chutes too Narrow, Michigan, and Radio Dept.’s Lesser Matters. We bought Feist’s Let it Die in Paris in 2004. We moved to L.A. in 2005 and in the last two or three years it’s been Funeral, Antonio Carlos Jobim & Elis Regina, Midlake, and most recently Andrew Bird.

These are albums of my life. And really I’m just scratching the surface—this is what I can come up with just thinking about it in the time it takes to write these words. Were I to focus on one period of my life, other albums would come into view, sort of like staring at the night sky and seeing the stars reveal themselves the longer you look.

But not all of these albums are my all-time favorites, necessarily. Some I haven’t listened to in years, either because my tastes have changed drastically (everything pre-Spiderland), because I associate them too strongly with my memories (Moon Pix), because they’ve just not aged well (sadly, Spiderland), or because they’re frankly not that good (Music for the Morning After).

Thus we come to the difference between an album of my life and an album that changed my life. More on that later this week.

Bring In Da Noise, Leave Out Da Funk

There’s been a good deal of discussion this week about Sasha Frere-Jones’s article in the New Yorker, “A Paler Shade of White,” in which he laments the lack of black influence in indie rock. Yes, his claim is truly that dubious. Many other blogs have already dissected this article and its many flaws—most notably Status Ain’t Hood, the Existence Machine, and Clap Clap—so I won’t go into too much detail, other than to list the article’s three most significant flaws. As Richard Crary says at the Existence Machine, SFJ’s points are either “too vague and, as a result, largely dubious,” or “too specific, and hence sort of silly.”

First, as nearly everyone else has pointed out, SFJ is being too selective in his examples, picking on Arcade Fire but ignoring !!!, the Rapture, Battles, Amy Winehouse, Cold War Kids, White Stripes, Spoon, My Morning Jacket (check the reggae influence on Z), Tortoise (an egregious omission, coming from a guy who was in Ui), and of course the official (as of last week) biggest indie band on the planet, Radiohead. The percussion on at least half of In Rainbows is heavily influenced by jungle, which itself is based on sped-up hip hop beats.

Some of the bands I’ve mentioned there aren’t technically indie, though they do play to the indie audience (among other people)—and I didn’t even mention Beck or Bjork or Gnarles Barkeley (am I allowed to note actual black people or does that ruin the game?)—but that’s the second flaw in SFJ’s argument: he is arbitrarily lamenting the loss of black influence on “indie rock,” a term notoriously ill-fitting as a descriptor, as it can be applied to an aesthetic or to a business decision. SFJ himself doesn’t seem to hold himself to a concrete understanding of the term. He picks on Wilco, a band on a label owned by Warner, but then dispatches the entire genre of rap-rock in one dismissive statement.

Finally, most problematic for me is that SFJ deigns to draw these lines at all. By now—i.e., the twenty-first century—music has already passed through its postmodern stage and come out the other side. To say that concepts as broad as “rhythm” or “swing” are purely the forte of black music at this point is a little ridiculous. The sound of modern music is like the outcome of a game of telephone. For instance, many people are holding up LCD Soundsystem as an example refuting SFJ. James Murphy's act is obviously dance music, but his direct influences sound to these ears more European than African-American. Brandon Soderberg, in a comment to the Status Ain’t Hood post, made a similar point:

For example, James White & The Blacks were taking from James Brown and free jazz as well as punk-ish, nowaveish contemporaries. Now, one gets the sense that bands get their rhythmic influence from only stuff like James White and the Blacks.

My question to SFJ, then: is that necessarily a bad thing? Is a band inherently wrong in the execution of music-making to “only” be influenced by James White, and not James Brown? If the end result is good, it doesn’t really matter.

SFJ seems to implicitly acknowledge that the black influence is so ubiquitous that it’s nearly pointless to try and identify, for he doesn’t go after modern-day groups that incorporate elements of jazz or blues or gospel (the Killers!) in their music: he only goes after the one genre of music that is still explicitly tied to black culture: hip hop. And frankly that is where his whole argument finally derails. There is an entire genre of music dedicated to the white co-optation of hip hop, and SFJ himself notes that it fucking sucks. He further digs his own hole at his blog, where the conversation continued. A reader pointed out the ludicrous attempt to “devote an entire section of your article to white rappers without mentioning any of the successful indie/underground examples… like Aesop Rock or El-P.” SFJ’s response was that he ignored those acts—get this!—because they weren’t popular enough!

Eminem is the rapper known to people all over the world, just as Zeppelin was the rock band that everyone knew. What struck me was how many good blues-derived rock bands of the seventies there were and how few white rappers (really only one) are big, good, and important. I have lots of time for Atmosphere and El-P and MC Chris, without thinking hard. I was simply trying to outline the pop landscape against which indie rock is working.

Which brings us back to just how SFJ is defining his parameters. Indie rap is covered fairly extensively by indie rock outlets (just yesterday Pitchfork ran a news item on the possible reunion of Company Flow), so how are these artists not working against the same pop landscape? Why exclude independent white rappers, yet attack an alt-country band on a major-label subsidiary, and try to use that as an example of how “indie rock” has lost its soul?

Update: my brilliant wife read the New Yorker article last night and made three excellent points.

1. Did he really ask why Devendra Banhart doesn't rip off R. Kelly? I'll tell you why: he's too busy mining Latin music. Miscegenation lives!
2. Where would Brian Wilson be if doo-wop (and choral music) didn't come first? Viva miscegenation!
3. Seriously, the guy makes a lot of interesting, possibly valid points—but why does he place a value judgment on them?

My Listening Hours: The State of 2007 So Far

No, the albums here are not my tops of the year; they're just what I have to choose from. These are the nine albums made in 2007 that I've so far purchased or acquired, and/or completely processed as albums.

If I were pressed to make a top ten list, I'd stall at four. Here's my ranking:

1. Andrew Bird, Armchair Apocrypha
This one leads the pack, easily, as the most rewarding album of the year.

2. Peter Bjorn & John, Writer's Block
This album has remained in my iPod for a surprisingly long time. When I got a little burned on the record as a whole, the songs kept popping up on random plays and I never skipped 'em. Lately I've come back around to playing the record straight through again and I'm reminded of how layered and thought-out the album  is.

3. Feist, The Reminder
For now this occupies the number three spot. By the end of the year there's a good chance it will still be in the top ten, but I don't know how high. I'm just beginning to burn out the record and am ready to put it aside for awhile. The question by the end of the year will be whether it ever makes its way back into my rotation. Sometimes albums have a way of surprising you the second time around and all the nagging feelings you had just evaporate.

4. LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver
As I said earlier this week, this is an album that I'm only now realizing is better than I first gave it credit for. As with Feist I don't really know how I'll feel about six months from now. I don't really know how I'll feel about it six weeks from now! Sometimes I embrace the record, sometimes I'm exhausted by it.

The rest? None are truly bad but none are essential, either. The Sea & Cake committs the worst sin - it's boring. While the Shins, Arcade Fire, and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah all have their strong points but honestly I haven't consciously chosen to put them on since the last time I wrote about them - a good three months ago.

There are a few albums out now that I still intend to pick up--Battles and Rufus Wainwright, in particular. What about you? What's on your best-so-far list? Have I missed anything totally worthwhile? There was a lot of buzz around Panda Bear and the National, among others, in the last few months. Did you pick them up? Have they remained in your rotation? What has occupied your listening hours? Let me know in the comments.

Meanwhile I'll be looking ahead to the next three months of releases for albums I'm looking forward to. Check back here later today.

My Listening Hours: The Spring's Rest

(If you missed yesterday’s posts, you may want to start here, then here.)

The Shins: Wincing the Night Away
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah: Some Loud Thunder
Arcade Fire: Neon Bible
These were the three heavily anticipated albums of the season, wouldn’t you say? (Maybe some of you would include Modest Mouse in there too… not me.) They all more or less fared the same as far as I was concerned, each succeeding and failing in their own ways. I gave CYHSY and Arcade Fire their own lengthy reviews, so won’t really go into more depth again. I’d meant to write a longer piece on the Shins too but just never got around to it. You might say that sums up my feelings on the record. It’s good but I don’t really know that it’s worth talking about. It didn’t help that I bought Peter Bjorn & John on the same day and that album pretty much shoved everything else out its way.

As with Arcade Fire and CYHSY, I kept listening to Wincing, trying to force myself to love it, or at least give it the fairest shake I could considering how much I liked their earlier stuff. At worst, there are tracks that are severe misfires. “Sea Legs” sounds like Morrissey trying to cash in on early-’90s trip hop—that first impression could be overcome, except that the band then carries the song out with two minutes of the limpest jam I’ve heard in years. Other songs, like “Phantom Limb” or “Girl Sailor,” are solid Shins songs; they’re easily as good as the best stuff from their other records—my complaint is that they’re not better. On the flipside of that coin, I do enjoy most of the Wincing songs whenever they come up on shuffle, now that the burden of expectation has worn off. As time goes by I think I’ll come to appreciate these songs the same way I appreciate many of their others, as a testament to James Mercer’s craft, even if I can’t ever claim to love the album as a whole.

Mates of State: Bring it Back
This album found its way to our stereo via a co-worker of my wife’s who burned a copy for us. It didn’t stick with us right away—my wife thought the woman’s voice was a little too Plain-Jane, a common malady for indie rock girls; I didn’t mind it so much, but whenever the husband-and-wife duo sang the same notes together I thought, in the immortal words of Descarte—or was it Stalin?—“gettin’ a little pitchy, dawg.” Nevertheless, like the Little Ones, the melodies and harmonies sunk their teeth in and I kept listening. One thing that really struck me was how ballsy their opener was. It was so much longer than the rest of the album’s tracks, and it had this really sort of epic outro (“I’m tired of singing,” over and over). I appreciated that they’d open with that when the rest of the record is pretty immediate pop tunes (my current favorite is “So Many Ways”). When I started writing this post and I went over to Amazon to get the cover art, however, I discovered that our copy of the album was burned in reverse order! So it was the closer, it wasn’t as ballsy as I thought, and now I’m not sure how I feel about the record. I plan to try it over again. Last year I had the Zutons’ first album and thought it was really inconsistent and only good in spots, until I discovered that it was out of sequence on my iTunes and when I ordered it correctly the whole album got way better. Here’s hoping for the Mates.

Beirut: Gulag Orkestra
Again, had to turn the Cynic Switch off before I could pull the trigger on this album. Too many people were a) heaping ridiculous love on them and b) comparing them to Neutral Milk Hotel. The combination set off major warning sirens in my head—false idols, and all that. Turns out that Beirut is good but hardly deserving the amount of hype given or the NMH comparisons. There are some bright spots on this album—I really love “Scenic World” and “After the Curtain”—but the whole thing gets a little too overblown after a while. The singer’s delivery doesn’t really vary that much, and by the end of the album the whole thing starts to feel really bloated. But he’s got his own vision happening, and he’s young. He’s got a lot of potential and I’ll be keeping an eye on what he does next. I think if he can rein himself in a little he might produce a really focused, possibly perfect album. Or, he could make a sprawling mess. Time—or the record he put out this year that I haven't heard yet—will tell.

Lou Reed: Transformer
My sole blind spot purchase of the year so far. Last year I was acquiring older albums at a far greater rate than this year—not coincidentally, I had a job that placed me in the library on a regular basis. Guess I need to skip over to the library if I want to continue filling in my gaps. Transformer’s been on my list for a while now, ever since I bought the third VU album and fell in love with Reed all over again, plus the local radio station had put “Satellite of Love” in rotation and it was making me so happy every time it came on. I like most of this record but I have to admit I still haven’t really sat down seriously with it. It’s one of those albums where I realize that I know probably half the songs (“Perfect Day” and “Wild Side,” among others, are both here too), just never listened to them in the original sequence before. Truth be told, I really just listen to “Satellite of Love” over and over again. Ba ba ba.

Tomorrow, a look forward to the summer releases keeping me hot with anticipation.

Simple Pleasures: Melody and Harmony, Hiss and Hum

A month or two back a friend of mine, who I’ve known since college, read my year-end post on the musical blind spots I filled in during 2006. “Your blind spots are like my top ten of all time,” he said. Not that it was his intention, but I knew when I made that post that I’d be subject to some degree of shame—how can I be thirty years old and consider myself a music nerd and not know Marquee Moon? I worked in a record store the entire time I was in college, ferchrissakes!

His email made me reconsider—what the hell was I listening to back then, when I wasn’t discovering Television, wasn’t listening to the Byrds, Big Star, the Kinks? I was busy buying up Fat Cat 12”s, clicky electronica, and krautrock. When I worked in that record store a co-worker and I would have “space rock Fridays,” where we would just listen to stuff distributed by Forced Exposure—records full of tones and buzzes. We’d scour the promo racks for anything that looked vaguely experimental and if it turned out to have—gasp!—song structure, we’d fall over each other on the way to the eject button as if a seven-year-old had just walked in while Wu-tang was on. Verse-chorus-verse, harmony, melody—it was anathema. Give us sound, no more.

Jump ahead ten or twelve years and, while I can still appreciate and adore a great ambient record, true joy at the record store comes when I pick up an album, new or old, that I can sing along to. It's not sudden; I've been singing along for years.  But lately I'm particularly aware of the simple pleasures to be found in simple tunes. I'm not rejecting the wish—need, in the best cases— to experiment with form or sound, but right now I find the most enjoyment in songwriters that possess the confidence to not use deconstruction or abstraction to make some larger statement, particularly if the songwriter in question has the talent or ability to do so. Employing the right flourish at the right time, in a way that enhances the song but doesn’t draw attention to itself, that’s craft. This is the element that’s been missing, in one way or another, from a lot of new records I’ve been buying lately, for instance Clap Your Hands, Arcade Fire, or in a smaller way the Shins. Each album seems burdened by overcompensation, a misguided lack of confidence or an irrational need to self-rebel.

I'm getting a little bit off track. I didn’t begin this post with the intention of figuring out what’s “wrong” with these bands. Frankly they may not think anything is wrong, other than with me. And in fact that’s closer to what I’m trying to ascertain. The emails my friend and I exchanged about blind spots was just one of many conversations I’ve had with him, with my wife, and with other friends, all about different things but all adding up to my own perception of how my relationship with music, indeed with other artforms as well, has changed in the last ten years. I’m fumbling around a point here; more tomorrow [here].

Further on the New Arcade Fire

Little babies? Let’s go!

Women and Children? Let’s go!

Old folks? Let’s go!

I don’t know where we're going!

I listened to the whole thing straight through this morning as I walked to work (it’s a long walk). I think I can narrow my beef with this album down to the string of songs toward the end, “Antichrist Television Blues,” “Windowsill,” and “No Cars Go.” I think the fact that they come in succession, severely weighing down the whole second half of the record, is what bothers me about the album as a whole. It gives the impression that the whole album is more flawed than it actually is. As I walked I was making a little checklist in my mind: “I like this song, I like this song, this song’s okay, this song’s growing on me,” etc. Not until “Antichrist...” did I really start lamenting the lyrics, not to mention I was starting to feel bogged down by the overall sound of the record. By the time I got to “My Body is a Cage,” which has fast become my favorite on the disc, I almost feel sorry for it, since it has to follow the dregs.

Arcade Fire: Neon Bible

I was all set to write my own review of the new Arcade Fire, but David M. Goldstein over at Coke Machine Glow pretty much hit every point I wanted to make. So I encourage you to read his review instead and just know that I agree with nearly everything he says. By the way, it’s funny that he should start his review off recollecting when he last namechecked the Violent Femmes in a review; coincidentally, the last (and only) time I used a Coke Machine Glow review as a jumping-off point for my own was when I went on about Belle & Sebastian’s The Life Pursuit. Go figure, that was Goldstein talking about the Violent Femmes curse.

The only point on which I’d quibble is that “No Cars Go” is not even close to a career highlight; I actually find it to be one of the more laughable portions of the album. First verse: “I know a place where no cars go, I know a place where no planes go”; second verse: “I know a place where no spaceships go, I know a place where no subs go.” What is this, kindergarten? Do you know a place where no helicopters go? How about catamarans? Then, to top it all off, the last line of the song is “I don’t know where we’re going!” Meanwhile, again contrary to Goldstein, I think the album closer, "My Body is a Cage," is the most arresting song on the album.

But otherwise, like I said, Goldstein’s got it pretty much spot on. Funeral was a nearly perfect record and in retrospect it had a lot to do with the play between personal despair and rallying optimism. It’s apt that the first half of that album was about “neighborhoods.” Win Butler and co. did a great job of making a record that roused the community. But Neon Bible is the equivalent of the City Councilman making a bid for the  presidency. Awkwardly, though, it’s a Councilman from Montreal running for President of the United States.

The paranoia and anxiety running through this War on Terror–obsessed album fits Butler like a thrift-store suit. He can almost make it work but it doesn’t quite fit. When Butler laments in “Windowsill” that he “don’t wanna live in America no more,” I want to remind him that he never lived here in the first place. (Incidentally, there are a lot of things Butler “don’t wanna” do on this album, to the extent that his list of things he don’t wanna do annoyingly carries from one song to the very next.) That's not to say you have to be an American to criticize America, but nevertheless when Butler says he doesn't want to live here "anymore," or later that he "don't wanna work in a building downtown" because "the planes keep crashing always two by two," it sounds like dress-up. He's not taking on American policy from a perspective he can truly own. [Update: my brilliant wife has schooled me. Apparently Butler is originally from the U.S.; so in fact he's walkin' his talk!]

At any rate, like Goldstein I find myself only capable of writing a lopsided review; it’s easier to find the faults than to highlight the great moments, perhaps because when they are good, it’s the same way they were good before, and it feels redundant to praise those aspects over again. If I handed out grades with my album reviews, I'd probbly give Neon Bible a B, B-. Arcade Fire are nothing if not rousing. And while I personally might find some of the lyrical content here a little heavy handed, there’s a sixteen-year-old out there who may not know just how to articulate his or her feelings about the state of the world and their place within it, and maybe this is the album they’ll blare out of their boom boxes—er, cell phone ring tones—the same way I got off on the righteousness of Rage Against the Machine or the paranoia of Radiohead. To that end this album may yet be a classic for a generation. Just not my generation.