In Utero - Nirvana

'Teenage angst has paid off well, and now I'm bored and old' proclaims Kurt Cobain - and in fact his final album with Dave and Krist drops most (but not all) of the angst from Nevermind. In Utero is a far more abrasive, angry and far less hooky album than Nevermind - in part fueled by Cobain's increasing frustration with fame. No doubt nobody else in the history of music itself has been so thoroughly traumatised by fame as Cobain was, and on this album, it shows terrifically - in Cobain's terrified shrieking on 'Tourette's', his glue-sniffing persona on 'Dumb', his repeated scream 'GET AWAY' on 'Scentless Apprentice'. 

This is an album permeated with horror, and the effect must have been immense when it came out in the 90s because prior to this rock and roll was very much a macho affair - all big hair, poncy arrangements and misogyny. Nirvana castrated rock and replaced the big hair macho men with angry, scared shitless teenagers. The world would never trust the music industry quite the same way again when Cobain shot himself, and legions of imitators would go on to spawn alternative rock, for better or for worse. 

In Utero ends on a slower, softer note with 'All Apologies', a song widely considered to be Cobain's masterpiece. Hinting at REM and Sonic Youth, Cobain opens with a snaky, sad guitar riff. 'What else should I be? All apologies' he sings, 'Everything's my fault' and when he hits the crashing chorus it is with self-destructive abandon and an almost prophetic premonition of doom.

More than 10 years ago Frank Black of the Pixies sang 'If all in all is true, won't you please run over me' on his song 'Levitate Me'. On this album, Cobain's last release, on the last bit of the last song, he sings, almost as if answering Frank Black - 'All in all is all we are.'

adam

I don't want to get over you (by the Magnetic Fields, written by Stephin Merritt)

I don't want to get over you
I guess i could take a sleeping pill and sleep at will
and not have to go through what I go through
I guess I should take Prozac, right
and just smile all night at somebody new
somebody not too bright, but sweet and kind
who would try to get you off my mind
I could leave this agony behind
which is just what I'd do if I wanted to
but I don't want to get over you

cos I don't want to get over love
I could listen to my therapist, pretend you don't exist
and not have to dream of what I dream of
I could listen to all my friends and go out again
and pretend it's enough
or I could make a career of being blue
I could dress in black and read Camus
smoke clove cigarettes and drink vermouth like I was 17
that would be a scream
but I don't want to get over you.

Rather Good Poetry By Some People Who I Happen To Know

Writer's Blog: I've collected some of the non-crap that we've accumulated over the years and put it all on one post, check it out. I think it's pretty neat.

adam

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp5eBxU248Y

Frou Frou - Details

A souffle. Some questionable lyrical choices, and Imogen Heap isn't a terrific vocalist but manages a sort of mangled schoolgirl innocence at her best. Still, properly catchy electronica beats, intelligent arrangements - solidly likeable.

adam

John Coltrane - One Down, One Up: Live at the Half-Note

Where 'One Down, One up' is urban, discordant: 'My Favourite Things' informs the old sound of music tune with enough apocalyptic fire and brimstone to bring down a church.

adam

edit: props also for detailed, well-researched liner notes. Nothing converts me like liner notes.

I guess more fanboyism of mopey alternative bands? This is what my life has come to. Doo-dah.

I must resist the urge to keep saying 'but seriously' and then degenerate into loopy-speak.

This week is radiohead week: that may explain the disjointedness.

Robert Christgau said (and he is my bible really when it comes to music, except of course for the pleasure centres in my brain, which are severely overworked now) that Radiohead has two modes: a more electronica-y, texture-y mode, and a rock-y, structure-y mode. The key i think to understanding this joyful dichotomy is that in the former they have layered guitar accompaniments: in the latter they have layered guitar solos. Get it? OK computer is the latter; In Rainbows is the former. Honestly i prefer them when they're fucking about with the tape loops and the stuff, but OK computer is still good honest music that you can get behind (and that solo on paranoid android, whoa?). In Rainbows is a nice album. Nice of them to give it away free too, otherwise i'd be twenty dollars deeper into my third-world-nation-crippling budget deficit. The first track, in particular, is good rolicking fun in 5/4 time.

Although I am definitely out of touch with what the world is listening to today (I still think jimi hendrix is pretty hot stuff, remember) I hope the present trend towards slightly silly punk-pop music goes away (although blink 182 has some(but not that many) things going for it, and so does Green Day) and I can only take heart that the 5-years-ago trend towards impossibly bland MOR songs about the most generic love affairs one can imagine has by now progressed into the realm of kitsch.

The two bands I have heard who are going places now, today, and not 40 years ago:
Arcade Fire and Radiohead

I hope U2 and RHCP, both stalwarts of the 80s, keep going without starting to suck (stadium arcadium? what were you thinking). I hope John Mayer scrapes some of his songwriting mojo together, with his guitar prowess, and gives us an album worthy of his idols rather than Michael Learns to Rock. I hope Nickelback dies in a fire. I hope the reunion bands - Pixies, Sonic Youth, Breeders - do justice to their illuminated past. I hope the memory of Nirvana never dies, although those who remember Nirvana often should. I hope people will let jazz die so the extremely talented performers who feel guilted into playing it by some sense of tradition will finally move on and make new, exciting music. I hope asia will finally (or have they already?) start contributing to rock music, which has become international in most senses of the word, but without needlessly co-opting american culture. If some of the newer japanese bands are any indication, we have hope (MELT BANANA. MELT BANANA.)

I hope hip hop will live up to its ideal, and become to the 90s-2000s what punk was to the 70s-80s. Outkast and Eminem - yes. 50 cent - no. I hope Eminem will be remembered like I said he would - otherwise I would've been wrong. I hope indie music will live on without the awful pretensions of its fans and practitioners.

That's all hope though. What I know is that music will live on regardless. Humans need it around.

adam

more rock n roll.

Found a new joy surfing the web last week : The Breeders.
Basically Kim Deal (who is the sexiest person alive) decided to have a side project and The Breeders turned up. You can hear what she tried to do with the Pixies only was sidelined by Frank Black. It's angry, loud stoner rock and her abilities as a lyricist are nothing to be scoffed at.

When I was a painter, I painted you well
Too bad I have to die
You brought the essentials - perversion, appeal
and many lovers at one time.

On the more philosophical note, could it be the reason music fascinates me is that it represents an impenetrable system? My thinking is largely rooted in the idea of systems, an internally consistent set of logic and rules. I interpret science, math and much of the arts according to systems. Yet music, if delved deeply enough into, never reveals a system - the flaw is obviously in my own thinking, but I guess what I can't know intrigues me intensely. What system governs artistic appreciation? What about artistic merit? I insist there must be one for any kind of quality to be measured (art is not subjective, although taste is), and instinctively, 'quality' as a parameter DOES exist (there is good art and bad art). Yet the system for 'art' has never been adequately quantified in a way understandable by more than a few specific people. Despite this fact, high-quality art has been produced almost consistently over the centuries by every culture. Does this imply a subconscious system? I believe it does, but that doesn't mean that logical thinking will not reveal it. And if it is ever revealed, I am sure it will not be trivial enough to devalue art.

adam

Look, I've written a strongly worded email but I'm still very miffed about this. No offense to Jon at all : but whoever started the hoax is a very poor approximation of a human being.

received email:

'My mum told me about this when I arrived home from Mass earlier this evening, and right now I'm very afraid:

About the Large Hadron Collider

It's this machine that involves two beams of extremely high energy colliding just so scientists can recreate the scene of the Big Bang. A number of scientists have fears over this experiment, given that it's carried out underground and that it involves a high amount of energy, but still some others have declared it safe. The first beam of energy was launched today, with the second beam set to be launched in a month's time. Why this experiment is being carried out is so that scientists can see a particular which is called the Higgs boson, otherwise known as the "God-particle". My own personal take on this is that some scientists are using this experiment and playing God; trying to see for themselves that the existence of God can be proved by science and not by His wonders. I've included the following video.

YouTube: Did Nostradamus predict that the LHC will create a black hole?

I guess the best thing that we all can do is to pray. Pray that something goes wrong during this launch of the first beam, and that the scientists will be forced to discontinue with this experiment. I ask you to pray not for yourself, but for the conservation of this earth that God so lovingly created for us 2000 years ago. Please pass this on.

Regards'

This is entirely tosh. The LHC will create a black hole? The faintest beginnings of any putative threat to our planet's existence were immediately squashed by an entire panel of experts who are, I like to think, rather more qualified on the matters of theoretical physics than anybody who believes that the earth was created 2000 years ago. Get out much? Either you tell me you're scientifically credible OR you tell me you're a new earth creationist. Can't have your cake an eat it.

Okay nevermind that, let's leave aside the wrongheaded scientific fear-mongering and get to the religious manipulation. God-particle? Yes, the nobel guy did say that. It was because the Higgs Boson will be, if discovered, the cornerstone of an entire theory of gravity. That doesn't give anybody any leeway Whatsoever to claim some sort of hokum spiritual thingum that scientists are trying (once again) to prove whether God does or does not exists and hence bringing down Eternal Damnation on our poor misguided heads. Obviously a ploy to manipulate the ignorant, of which there are a Frightful Lot.

Please. Hoaxes are funny. Fucking about with religion, and especially your own brand of rather loopy creationism, is not so funny. Do not spread this email.

adam

notable songs

Just to remind myself.

John Coltrane - Giant Steps
The only way I can describe this is elemental. Coltrane's playing is prismatic, joyous, beautiful, fiery. I have never been tired of this piece.

Sonic Youth - Turquoise Boy
The crowning achievement of the album Rather Ripped - solidly and beautifully written. Rather Ripped showcased the very loud band's capacity for restraint, and this song shows that restraint put to rather good use, I think - everyone keeps to a simple beat and simple lines, to brilliant effect.

U2 - Kite
Opinions on the album this came from are mixed. I think this one's a success though. Simple, if a bit sentimental, but hey it's U2 and Bono can pull it off.

Arcade Fire - In The Backseat
The arrangement and the lyrics are impressive. Rather than fall to a guns-n-roses smashy crash fest (which a lesser band would totally have done) the climax actually gets quieter at its peak, invoking the melancholy of a funeral procession. A fitting end to the album.

Hole - Teenage Whore
Teenage angst dissected with canny perceptiveness by whore queen Courtney Love. 'I said I feel so alone and I wish I could die'

Husker Du - Pink Turns To Blue
Probably about Bob Mould's homosexuality. But scathingly written, depressing urban wasteland at its best. Husker Du always turned out good melodies, which distinguished them from a lot of hardcore bands.

adam

Courtney Love saved my soul.

I guess only a particularly nasty day at SISPEC, having run 10km in the hot sun, would leave me lying half-naked on my bunk wondering about the various natures of destruction. It also led me to a pretty cathartic appreciation of Hole's two albums - Live Through This and Celebrity Skin.

Live Through This as I've mentioned is largely about blowjobs, although obliquely so, and with far more gravity than my glib post would have suggest. It is a record held together mostly by Courtney Love's incoherent rage and self-loathing, and bits of less-than-proficient guitar noise (Kurt Cobain wrote better music, but Love is at least his equal at singing...). At least one song was definitely written by Cobain himself ("Plump"), and is also about blowjobs. 'Hold you close like we both died/My ever present suicide/My stupid fuck, my blushing bride, oh tear my heart out'.

If Live Through This is constructed on rage, Celebrity Skin is made out of a comparably almost clinical destruction (I don't dare say 'deconstruction' - this might be mistaken for a book review.) Sure, the subject matter is blah blah humdrum Hollywood bitchin' but the real showcase is Courtney Love herself : she wields her rock queen/whore punk persona like a scalpel, crashing through a seething pop ditty like 'Awful' with all the ditz of the REAL dumb-blond-sellouts, but twenty thousand times the intelligence. When she's sincere, it works too - check out 'Malibu'. 'When I wake up, in my make-up, it's too early for that dress.'

adam