I am not afraid of you and I will beat your ass

Yo La Tengo - I am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass

Sorry about the last post - that was for WB. I picked this album up at HMV - I'd wanted to get I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One but they only had this one and Popular Songs and faced with the decision I went for the one with the (infinitely) cooler title. It was also the last copy, so those hypothetical readers who hypothetically listen to my recommendations may face trouble if there isn't a restock.

And that's exactly what this is: a recommendation. This is rock for people who don't need leather and a ten foot tall haircut; it's happy, and full of Georgia and Ira whisper-singing their little melodies all over and their left-of-centre lyrics. It certainly comes across as an album by a long married (and 20 years is a long time) couple, full of affectionate humour and reminiscence.

Yo La Tengo don't have a style per se - they have a number of set pieces that appear in every album with new lyrics and new variations. There's always the long noise jam - that's the first track here ("Pass the Hatchet..."). There's the speedy punk number with the whispered melody. There's always the trance-y electro tune. There's always a clever ballad. There's always some stripped-down rock and roll.

And considering how great every one of the songs appears, it's stunning to note how modest the arrangements are. What they are is settled, stable, confident, and they need no flash-and-bang to impress - they have enough songwriting chops to cover that and hopefully many albums in the years to come.

adam

A letter to Joni Mitchell Re: Tree Museum

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/popsong/17moe18.html

Terror

I was paid a visit by an old friend tonight. I call him terror who used to visit me at night when I was barely a teenager. He brought pictures with him, many of death and disease and old age, but one fascinated me like no other. He showed me a picture of an eternity of oblivion. I remember because for many weeks I was like a shell but for that thought, that I would die forever. I was not even sure then, because I had my faith.

Now I have no faith. I am sure that I will die forever. But I met my old friend with open arms tonight, because I know why I was afraid. I was not afraid of oblivion - death is not fearful, the greek philosopher once said. I was afraid that an eternity of oblivion would devalue everything in my pitifully finite life.

I am no longer afraid. Eternity will not drain the meaning of my life, because I have created it, and as a creator I am greater than all fear. Do you hear that, old friend? I have friends. I have work. I have music. I have hope. You cannot rob them from me.

adam

New York Dolls

I've had a cd sitting unopened on my shelf for almost a year now - Private Worlds, a double album of demo tapes by the New York Dolls. I like these guys a lot.

adam

Laughter

is an evolutionary mechanism developed to rid ourselves of that most deadly of vices - significance.

Late night

Sleepless. I don't think I'll ever renounce feeling confessional at 2am, even if it's only my blog that will listen to my insomniac ravings. I had a good jam session today. I haven't felt this alive for awhile - maybe it's that feeling alive requires copious amounts of amplified noise. At least I can make some on my own. I wonder how people without guitars get by.

I've got 'someday my prince will come' on. It's a nice tune - and to have Miles put his inchoate siren over the changes is almost too much of a good thing.

I'm flying to australia in a week. I need to get my strength together. Goal here is not to come back in a box.

I wonder where all my friends are.

Maybe I need to stop practicing and get out of my room once in awhile. I am starting to feel the effects of social awkwardness acutely. It will be too late soon.

:(

adam

Twilight

It's not the Absolutely Terrible Novel I was hoping it'd be.

Yes, I must note - I have read it. And it's not that I've gone over to the dark side or anything - I accredit the reading to boredom, which shall become the excuse for all evil deeds great and petty.

And this will no doubt void my membership of the Singapore chapter of Auteurs Anonymous. But for what it tries to be, which isn't much, it's not a bad novel at all. It's not Ishiguro for sure, but nobody wants it to be - and Meyer manages somehow to make a vampire story that's well sort of interesting and skips lightly past all the unnecessary emo that the genre's often burdened with.

So there, all you Writers and Poets and Critics and people who Know About Literature, poo on you all. I liked Twilight.

adam

Yo La Tengo!

They've been a bit hit-or-miss with my tastes but the hits are solid ones, and certainly rank pretty high up there in my pantheon of Great Songs. Of slightly more import : They're married. And they're good enough to wield that singularly un-hip social institution like the great electrified warhammer of Rock, smashing aside assiduously, snidely single doubters.

Read: Sugarcube ("Whatever you want from me, that's what I wanna do for you, sweeter than a drop of blood on a sugarcube") What's more married than that? And what is more rock and roll?

Read: Mr. Tough (Hey Mr. Tough, don't you think we've suffered enough?) ("We'll leave our worries in the corner, leave them in a big big pile")

Really, the pile doesn't go away for people living together. But the way they deal with it is rock and roll in every way that matters.

Georgia and Ira Kaplan seem to have incorporated a uniquely scathing form of domestic bliss in their personal myth, and I find it extremely compelling. If I ever get married, my kids are going to be named after them.

adam

Revolver

The Beatles - Revolver

I will not make pronouncements or judgements because I am not worthy. I am less than the dust on the soles of his sandals, I am not fit even to listen and I am only allowed because of his magnanimous grace. In times to come they will say he was only human but in the glory of the spectacle I can only see majesty, purity and perfection.

adam

ONCE AND FOR ALL: THE SECRET TO WRITING

Distance, indifference, dispassion. Writing and music may portray emotions but may not contain: emotions in the writing process should only be accessible as a product not as an ingredient because they shut down the multi level process that art requires. To give way to emotions is to lose coherence, structure, and above all true appreciation - it is the mind that stores the details, not the heart, and the mind must recreate the details to recreate the response in the heart.

adam

Horehound

The Dead Weather - Horehound

Yes, I did actually go out and buy it and I don't regret it at all. The first thing I thought was 'I've never heard anything like this before' and the second thing I thought was 'I've heard this all before, somewhere'. I think the truth probably lies somewhere in between - Horehound is a kind of recombinant album, country/western meets blues meets hard rock meets rap metal. Individually the parts don't sound particularly new - blues licks, banjo sounds, feedback noise, Led Zep, reggae-style delay. But we've never really heard them put together like this, with such facility and with such attitude.

'Treat me like your mother' is probably the best (and cleverest) song on the album, and sounds a bit like Rage Against the Machine grown a sense of humour. 'I Cut Like a Buffalo' has Jack White singing some of the evilest reggae ever made by human beings. 'So far from your weapon' - a sort of far out blues written by Alison Mosshart, but it hits home, which is more than can be said for Frank Black and his parade of weirdness. So Jack White and co have a bit more of a handle on weirdness than perhaps any band that capitalises on the aesthetic have had. And it's good. The rest of the album is just gravy - Bob Dylan cover, instrumental which wouldn't sound out of place on the soundtrack to starcraft 2 (which is a compliment), 12 bar blues, the works.

The truth is the re-tread nature of this album may cause non-discerning individuals to dismiss it as 'jock-rock', or a bunch of over the hill rockers trying to be Limp Bizkit (which it certainly -may- sound like). But give them credit for a sense of irony, which is draped over the album like a good sauce. Jack White never falls victim to his macho constructions - although he never distances himself to the point of outright tongue-in-cheek. There is a sense of revelry in the over-the-top riffs and aggression and macho posture (especially on Mosshart's part) - and this ironic distance gives the album the depth it needs, proving once again that white is a genius and that it is possible to make some headbangin' hard rock without being stupid. Applause.

adam

all the bloody time

http://xkcd.com/642

all the bloody time.