Transistor Blast

Jicks & Stones

Apologies for the lame title. Anyone got any ideas for a better one?

Anyway.

Stephen Malkmus, formerly of some band called Pavement, has had a wonderful career since that band dissolved. He has served as the front-man for Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks. Their first two albums are excellent, their third pretty good and the fourth, out a few weeks ago on Matador Records, is pretty damn excellent.

Real Emotional Trash. Buy it.

Pavement is so massively influential and beloved, they cast quite a shadow. Malkmus has carved a comfortable niche for himself with his new band, developing a new style that is dissimilar from Pavement and at the same time suites the particularities of his style. (Lazy, ramshackle nuance with playful lyrical non sequiturs that resonate despite their cryptic quality.)

I had the pleasure of seeing SM & the Jicks at Mass Moca, and amazing facility I would emphatically recommend even to people as unsophisticated as myself. (Contemporary art, bah.)

I was particularly enamored with the works of Spencer Finch. The following piece is a colored glass mural that recreates the effect of candle light when the sun passes through it.  Lofty and pretentious? Sure. Nonetheless, this, and many of his other exhibits, provided me with a sense of serene tranquility. The two hours I spent exploring the museum were not nearly enough.

The company I was in spent the majority of their time in Jenny Holzer’s projection instalation, which was pretty awesome too. Imagine yourself there:

But we didn’t drive three and a half hours on the dirt path that is route seven to gawk at conceptually ambitious art, we came for Malkmus. A chili-cheeseburger and two beers after our museum visit, we returned for the main event.

I was surprised and pleased at the start by the number of people I recognized at the show, people from Burlington and pasts walks of my life, including fellow Pure Pop blogger Adam “The Blog” King, whose take on the show can be found here. I have to agree with Adam, who gives the show an enthusiastic thumbs up.

Malkmus has no interest in resting on his laurels, and there were no Pavement songs to be heard that night. Instead, the band played every song off the new album, a new, as-yet-to-be-released track that I really hope we’ll see on the Record Store Day 10″ SM & The Jicks are putting out this month,  and three tracks (I think) off Pig Lib, the Jicks second album and the most sonically similar to Real Emotional Trash.

Malkmus was in good spirits, joking around with the crowd and giving the impression that he was enjoying himself. He and the rest of the band were in excellent form, which isn’t to say they delivered note-perfect  renditions of the songs as they appeared on the album. False starts, abandoned harmonies and less-than-deft deliveries characterized the set, but not to the detriment of the performance. Rather, these factors contributed to a feeling of authenticity and proximity to the music.

My love for the Jicks music grows and grows. Seeing them live was a highlight of my 2008 thus far. I love the way Malkmus writes songs, the way he and his band play them and the atmosphere when nearly a thousand of his fans converge in the middle of nowhere to check him out.

Bye Mass Moca. See you soon. 

Southland Tales is an engaging, beautiful mess of a movie I had the pleasure of seeing in the theater. Today it is being released on dvd, where I hope those who were previously dismissive of this notorious piece of cinema will give it a second consideration.

It is guilty of many things. It is convoluted and unfocused. It is frayed at its many edges. At the same time, it contains moments of striking brilliance. Some of the performances are among the worst I’ve seen (or brilliantly calculated to serve the tone of the narrative.) It is a film one can watch just to marvel at the ambition of a director who would try to put together such a sprawling and bizarre story. Ultimately, I found it very moving and beautiful.

Southland Tales invites many comparisons. Like the similarly synth-supplemented Blade Runner, its dystopic future is a cynical reflection of our tumultuous present. Basic philosophical ideas are explored in a society that seems have lost its humanity. In Blade Runner and Southland Tales, the characters Roy Batty and Roland Tavener serve as a sort of beacon within the bleakness. Their struggles and experiences are relatable, as opposed to those of the cold-blooded and sedate Deckard or the hapless and uncharismatic Boxer Santaros.

I get the feeling unraveling the mystery of the narrative, which the film invites you to do, would be disappointing.  The winning move with Southland Tales is to relish in its atmosphere, marvel at its successes, and gape at its failures.

The Future Marjane van der Poll

I saw Persepolis last night, the animated adaptation of Marjane Satrapi’s comic memoir series. I was a huge fan of the original works. I’ve given them as a gift to several friends and relatives on various Christmases, graduations and the like. Overall, I was impressed with how well Satrapi and her co-director Vincent Paronnaud translated the story to the animated medium.

Persepolis tells the fascinating story of the nightmare of Iran’s Islamic Revolution and its after-effects as experienced by Satrapi, who was merely a child at the time. To me the best parts of the film and the original memoirs are the parts that concern the initial effects of the revolution on the daily lives of ordinary Iranians.

Islamic fundamentalism is vile and oppressive. Persepolis triumphs in its raw portrayal of just how insidious the oppression is. The story balances bleak tragedy with hope, and although it is at best bitter-sweet, the film does seem to suggest that the human spirit endures, if not triumphs, and at the very least Satrapi, the narrator we become so attached to, escapes.

I do have a gripe with the film, however. The film’s narrative thrust evaporates in the third act. I wish Satrapi had found a way to structure her story to allow for the sort of poignant, moving ending it deserves. Instead, it peters out. A good fifteen minutes after the film started to lose me, the credits began to roll.

Nonetheless, I recommend this movie. I look forward to the day when American animation achieves this sort of depth and sophistication.

In Iran, much of western popular culture has to be smuggled into the country and sold on the black market. This child is a criminal in her country for having an ABBA record. 

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This is my first blog entry in a while. I’m going to try to get back on the train here. This one’s a little quick and rushed. I promise I’ll labor more over the next one.

This is in no way an indictment of Daft Punk. They are on of my favorite contemporary bands. That said, check out this video. I had no idea how much of their music came from samples. It doesn’t bother me. They work miracles with them. Anyone that can turn a fragment of Barry Manilow into greatness is a genius.

There aren’t enough albums from the psychedelic era that define their genre to my satisfaction. Sgt Pepper is simply a Beatles’ album with psychedelic flourishes. Among the most celebrated of the genre are albums I find too conventional in certain respects to completely capture my conception of psychedelia, for example Forever Changes or Moby Grape. (Both are fantastic nonetheless.) Others, while also excellent, are a little to esoteric for a pop-loving populist such as myself to champion as any sort of epitome. (See anything by Franco Battiato.)

Their are plenty of individual songs that serve as anthems of the genre. Anyone with a Nuggets box set knows that. But albums? They are few and far between. To my mind, shining examples include The Zombies’ Odyssey and the Oracle, Pink Floyd’s Piper at the Gates of Dawn and, surprisingly enough, the 1985-1987 output by XTC alter-egos The Dukes of Stratosphear.

Following principal songwriter Andy Partridge’s nervous breakdown and a gradual loss of creative focus that culminated with 1984’s limp The Big Express, XTC decided to have a little fun. The went into Chapel Lane Studios with producer John Leckie and recorded a six song EP, 25 O’Clock. A sort of tribute to 60’s psychedelic pop, the band decided to release it under the alias The Dukes of Stratosphear on April fools day in 1985. It was marketed as a lost relic, and went on to sell more than either of their two prior proper releases.

The Dukes of Stratosphear

The fact is that 25 O’Clock is as good as the music it attempts to evoke. It’s not mockery, it’s not parody, it’s simply excellent. I dare say the throwback-production of 25 O’Clock better suited XTC’s songwriting then the “modern” production they were embracing with their previous albums. 1983’s Mummer and ’84’s Big Express were made following the bands retirement from live performance. Like The Beatles before them, XTC became a studio band, but unlike the fabs, Partridge and company had to stumble a bit before they found their footing. While both albums still contain enough great material to justify a place on your record shelf (at least according to xtc-sycophant like me), they lacked they vitality and poignancy of Drums and Wires and Black Sea.

Clearly, the digression served the band well. Their follow-up to 25 O’Clock, 1986’s Skylarking, proved the ambitious stylistic missteps that preceded it were leading up to something that would surpass the excellence of their former glory. (Many would dispute this, even me on the right day. The point is, they were great again.) Skylarking was an album informed by the kind of sophisticated production employed for 25 O’Clock. However, as the Dukes the band evoked that sensibility, as XTC, they set their sights beyond it.

At about this time The Dukes revealed their true identity and recorded a follow-up, Psonic Psunspot. Psunspot, unlike 25 O’Clock, sounds like XTC. The anonymity they aspired to with their debut was no longer necessary, their identity known. Still, there’s something so impressive about the way the band seems to completely abandon itself on 25 O’Clock that makes Psonic Psunspot seem a bit deflated. That said, it’s still a great record. Brainiac’s Daughter, Vanishing Girl, Have You Seen Jackie? and You’re a Good Man, Albert Brown (Curse You Red Baron) are as good as anything on 25 O’Clock.

The band’s entire output is available on a single-disc anthology called Chips from The Chocolate Fireball, save for a single song recorded in 2003 for The MS Society. Completionists can snag the track, Open a Can (Of Human Beans), on Fuzzy Warbles 7, the seventh collection of Andy Partridge demo recordings. Of course, if you’re a completionist, you’ll have to pick up 8-disc Warbles box set to get the exclusive Hinges mini-album. *sigh*

Just watch this if you don’t believe me. One song. Go on.

I’m so lame. I just love Prefab Sprout’s Steve McQueen. It was reissued back in May. Pure Pop’s very own Michael Breiner instilled me with excited anticipation for its release, assuring me that it represented a rare moment in 80’s synth pop where the critics and mainstream audiences stood in united support of a work that was both an accomplished artistic achievement and palatable to broad sensibilities.

Breiner brought in a copy of the original US vinyl pressing (titled Two Wheels Good because of a dispute with Steve McQueen’s estate.) Initially, it struck me as mediocre, dull and vacuous, a bit too smooth and complacent. May rolled around and I gave the album four or five attentive listens, attempting to penetrate the veneer and probe the meat, so to speak. Alas, I just couldn’t wrap my head around it and ultimately decided the album just wasn’t for me. I walked away.

Then a funny thing happened. Certain melodies and refrains from the album began to pop into my head, very sporadically at first. This phenomenon snowballed, and within a few weeks, bits of “Faron Young“, “When Love Breaks Down“, “Hallelujah” and “Desire As” were blaring in my ears. Just as Pavlov’s Dog would salivate upon the sound of a bell, I would hallucinate audio excerpts of Steve McQueen with much less discriminating required stimuli. Hunger, fatigue, joy, sadness; these things and more would cue the effect, creating an urgent imperative: listen to the album as much as possible.

We’re still in our honeymoon period. I love Steve McQueen with a wide-eyed, over-appreciative sense of infatuation. It’s like a hipper version of Roxy Music’s Avalon, or Style Council with out the soap-boxing. Lyrically sophisticated, well-constructed and sincere. I dare you to dislike this album.

(not the best quality video, and the live synths grate a bit, but you get the idea)

I’ll put a proper post up in the next day or two. In the meantime, enjoy this:

These guys should not be remembered as a one-hit-wonder novelty act. They were a wonderful band. Their debut album is a masterpiece. A triumph of songwriting, lyrics, and production. Buy it!

I finally caved in and picked up the Rhino reissues of Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures and Closer on vinyl knowing full well I’ll probably buy the cd’s too at the end of the month because those will come with bonus live shows, and live Joy Division is amazing. (Grab Les Bains Douches 18 December 1979 if you don’t believe me. It’s phenomenal.) I’d only owned a pretty busted copy of Closer on record, and it has to be said, Rhino, as always, had done an excellent job with the sound on these reissues. The production nuances really come through. Will Rhino go on to give the New Order catalog the same treatment? A man can dream.

I’m really on the fence about picking up Still to round out my collection. It’s pretty unnecessary. The odds and ends on the first half of the album are mostly available elsewhere, and the final show that comprises the second half is a piss poor recording. The show it self pales in comparison to superior shows that have been released since. Whereas Pleasures and Closer retail for about $18, Still costs about twice that. Has Rhino cleaned it up enough to make it worth it? hmmmm….
(Spitting Out Teeth and Contrarian both have recent Joy Division-themed posts here and here. Not trying to step on your proverbial Richards guys, just chiming in.)

I was talking Bowie with two folks yesterday. One seemed incapable of naming a single title in his catalog while the other thought Ziggy Stardust was his only good album, apparently unfamiliar with anything post-Young Americans. Come on People. Here’s a break-down, beginning with The Man Who Sold the World (F*ck You, I’m not going further back.) All albums are rated on a scale of one to four Bowie-Heads:

The Man Who Sold The World (1970)

A solid effort. The title song, Width of a Circle and The Supermen are all early Bowie triumphs. The infamous cover photo is a bit hard on the eyes, the visual equivalent of the convoluted mess that is Diamond Dogs, which actually has a great cover. You can’t judge a book.

Hunky Dory (1971)

Bowie’s first perfect album. Every song is great (although none of us ever need hear Changes again.) Witness the rise of Bowie the Paradox. Folky and Rocking, Epic and intimate, non-sequitur-ial and nakedly candid. Highlights include Quicksand, Kooks, Andy Warhol, The Belway Brothers and Queen Bitch as well as the singles Life on Mars and Oh! You Pretty Things. Here’s a game, go through the song titles on this album and see how many existing band names you find. Lots!

The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars (1972)

Bowie’s second perfect album. It may not be as eclectic as its predecessor, but the songwriting is just as great, maybe better. Bowie is in full-blown glam-mode. Don’t be fooled by the rock posturing and straightforward musical aesthetic, there’s a haunted quality to the album, sophisticated thematic threads and landmark production work, all of which still influence bands to this day.

Aladdin Sane (1973)

A Return of the Jedi to Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust’s A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back. As would happen with the Berlin Trilogy, Bowie follows up two masterpieces with an album that falls just short. Aladdin Sane is a great album, but in the wake of Ziggy Stardust and Hunky Dory, it feels a bit safe. Still essential. Who can live without Watch That Man, Panic in Detroit, Time or Bowie’s better-than-the-original Let’s Spend the Night Together?

Pin-Ups (1973)

The trajectory of decline suggested by Aladdin Sane is confirmed by this release, the final of Bowie’s Ziggy era. It’s a collection of covers, and while it’s not as indulgent or superfluous as something like Duran Duran’s Thank You, it’s quite dull.

Diamond Dogs (1974)

Adrift, Bowie’s next foray into mediocrity was born out of a failed attempt to turn 1984 into a musical. The singles are great, proving that Bowie wasn’t depleted, but it would take another mis-step for Bowie to find his creative footing again. Certainly more interesting than Pin-Ups, its really only an album of interest to Bowie devotees.

Young Americans (1975)

Bowie’s worst album of the seventies. A testimony to the dangers of cocaine and other excesses of the rock n’ roll lifestyle. The titular song is amusing and, when the mood strikes, enjoyable, as is Fame, co-written by John Lennon. For the most part this album is just a piece of shit. A song co-written by Luther Vandross? A cover of Across the Universe that makes Christina Aguilera’s Mother sound like Jimi Hendrix’s Sgt. Pepper? Legend has it Bowie doesn’t remember recording the album, I’m still trying to forget ever hearing it.

Station to Station (1976)

An almost complete return to form. Station to Station is an excellent album. Bowie is no longer hiding his torment, he is channeling it to make wonderful music. There are flourishes of Young American’s white-soul sound, but as an element of a richer palette, it works much better. To us another cross-medium comparison, Station to Station is The Hobbit to The Berlin Trilogy’s Lord of the Rings Trilogy, offering a glimpse into the world Bowie would subsequently immerse himself in. Bowie becomes the Thin White Duke, Bowie pioneers once again.

Low (1977)

Bowie’s third perfect album, and my personal favorite. Retreating to Berlin to clean himself up, Low represents the first of a three-part trilogy of albums recorded in the German city. Aided by pioneers of the cutting edge, most famously Brian Eno, Bowie creates a timeless and beautiful album. Half the album is instrumental. On the other half, his lyrics evoke desperation, isolation and despair. The production is bold, unique and profound. To my mind, this album is the perfect complement to any emotional state one may find one’s self in. People who listen to and appreciate Low are better people than they would have been if they’d never heard it. Every song is a highlight.

“Heroes” (1977)

Bowie’s fourth perfect album. The quotations around the title suggest an ironic employment of the word. Oh, David. The song itself would become an anthem, and rightly so. Like Low, “Heroes”is half-instrumental. The songs, while evoking a similar mood, are a bit less bleak and more driving. The production represents a sort of evolutionary side-step from Low’s. It’s a bit thicker, a bit rawer, equally sophisticated. The instrumentals are slightly less satisfying than Low’s, but that’s hardly a criticism. Buy this and Low at the same time and live for the first time my friend.

Lodger (1979)

Although it’s not considered one of his worst, I still think this album tends to be neglected in the Bowie pantheon. This is likely because, like Aladdin Sane, it follows two undeniable masterpieces. However, unlike the former album, Lodger’s comparative weakness to its predecessors is not the result of its similarity to those albums, it simply doesn’t achieve their level of genius. That said, the songs here are great. Fantastic Voyage, Move On, Yassassin and Look Back in Anger are all fantastic. There’s not really any filler. An excellent album capable of providing enjoyment even to a casual fan.

Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)

I blogged extensively about this one here. Love it. Check it out.

Let’s Dance (1983)

The pros: Stevie Ray Vaughan plays guitar. Modern Love is a great song. Uh…

The cons: Marks the beginning of Bowie’s longest creative lapse. For the next decade, Bowie would wallow in mediocrity.

Tonight (1984) & Never Let Me Down (1987)

I’m sorry, there’s just no reason to ever listen to these albums. Ever. The worst parts of Let’s Dance distilled and concentrated. Ugh…

Black Tie White Noise (1993)

Not exactly a return to form, but Bowie’s first album in a decade with redeeming qualities. Hurray! The single, Jump They Say, is Bowie’s best song since anything of Scary Monsters, and the Morrissey cover is over-the-top enough to be listenable. The production sounds very dated, and a lot of the music is terrible, but hey. It’s better than Young Americans.

The Buddha of Suburbia (1993)

A forgotten little gem. Bowie himself laments its generally being seen as existing outside his proper catalog. It’s unfair. The name of the album is taken from a song featured on the album that was used as the theme for a BBC mini-series of the same name. (Ha! My train wreck sentence of the week.) The other nine tracks appear exclusively on this disc. It’s a step in the right direction for Bowie, an improvement on the promise of Black Tie White Noise. It’s been recently reissued. Check it out.

Outside (1995)

With Outside, Bowie continues his awkward transformation into a sort of amalgamation of his 70’s and 80’s personae. He went on tour with Nine Inch Nails to boost his ticket sales and enlisted Brian Eno as a collaborator, inspiring a hopeful association with their earlier triumphs. It is a dense and ambitious album. There are some great moments on here, but the whole thing is a bit of a mess. Like Diamond Dogs twenty years earlier, Bowie is biting off more than he can chew. Worth having for the highlights, but beware those valleys.

Earthling (1997)

I’ll tell you why I like Earthling better than Outside. 1 - It’s Much shorter. 2 - About half the songs are great by the standard Bowie was setting at this point in his career. (Outside’s success ratio is about 20%) 3 - The lesser songs aren’t all that bad. 4 - The cover’s cool. 5 - I saw Bowie live for the first time on tour for this album, and he was phenomenal.

‘hours…’ (1999)

Ugh. The first single “Thursday’s Child” is dismal, and it’s downhill from there. Tacky, inept production, shoddy songwriting and a lumbering pulse characterize this album. Co-produced by Bowie’s most over-rated collaborator, Reeves Gabrels.

Heathen (2002)

It seemed like the end for Bowie as the 90’s drew to a close. What could invigorate this man’s exhausted creative spirit? Bringing Tony Visconti on as a producer was an inspired idea. The two hadn’t worked together since Scary Monsters twenty-years prior. The result is his best album since then. Heathen has great songs and a compelling production. In almost every way that ‘hours…’ fails, Heathen succeeds. Perhaps Bowie should work with Visconti more often…

Reality (2003)

…or not. With the same production team, Bowie fails. Reality is a disaster. The cover is hideous, and it might be the most redeeming part of the whole package. This album sounds like a sequel to ‘hours…’. What went wrong? Is Heathen an unexplainable anomaly within Bowie’s late canon? All my criticisms of ‘hours…’ apply here. Minus an extra half a Bowie head for failing to live up to the promise of the previous album.

The American adaptation of The Office is for sure an exception that proves the rule in the world of ill-advised tv adaptations. Who saw any of the three attempts to remake Fawlty Towers? How about the American Men Behaving Badly, or Coupling? Garbage and more garbage. And let’s not forget Three’s Company, a remake of England’s Man About the House. No disrespect to the late John Ritter, but it’s a piece of shit.

The American version of The Office, however, is excellent. This season, like last season, it’s getting off to a slow start, but the most recent episode was strong and had some amazing moments. Let’s hope they can keep the momentum.