"Picto-view!": Robyn - Body Talk pt. 1

Quirky pop star Robyn released her new, wonderful, eight song, mini-album Body Talk pt. 1 recently, and it seemed like an exceptional candidate for a pictorial review. Without further ado, then, here is what the new Robyn album sounds like (again, if any of these pictures are yours and you have a problem with their use, please let me know and I'll remove them immediately):

Songs that Changed the Landscape of Human Thought and Understanding: Osmonds' "One Bad Apple"

Apples are weird! No other fruit has had such a vexed existence as this red and/or green-skinned orb. Good apples contain antioxidants that can help prevent colon and prostate cancer. Why else would they say "an apple a day keeps the doctor away"? Apples can also refer to the lumps in men's throats (the Adam's Apple) or to those expensive computers marketed towards hipsters. None of these facts, however, can help explain why apple juice tastes so awful. However, in The Holy Bible by God, Adam is described in Genesis eating the forbidden fruit, ushering him and Eve into the world of original sin. This was very bad. This fruit has since been characterized as an apple. Though the powerful apple lobby has tried for years to rescind this appellation, it has unfortunately stuck. In their monumental 1970 recording "One Bad Apple," the Osmonds further revolutionize the symbolism of the "bad apple" by comparing it to a big jerky jerk of a man. In doing so, they manage to suggest that the number of bad apples is relatively small compared to the quantity of tasty apples in the "whole bunch," effectively minimizing the symbolic tyranny of the bad apple. Their convoluted argument can be reduced to three words: men are awesome!

Making this sound-document all the more impressive is its lineage. The Osmonds consisted of a group of religiously pious brothers from Utah. Seventeen year-old Merrill Osmond sings the lead vocal atop a apple-flavored Bubblicious confection of cavity-making pop sweetness, including strings, horns, chimes, and flutes. The lyric relates the tale of a "girl" who is about to "give up on love" because "some guy brought sadness into [her] happy world." Fearful that another man will "come along and sock it to [her] again," she needs to be convinced that this was just an aberration. Then thirteen year-old Donny Osmond chimes in, during the chorus, belting out the following line: "Give it one more try before you give up on love." Donny's soulful, soaring, pre-pubescent voice is almost unfair. How can any woman resist this line of argumentation coming from a boy this damned cute-sounding? The confident and persuasive Merrill continues, "I could make you happy, baby / Satisfy you, too." This sexual hellion doesn't stop here, telling this girl, who has "messed up his mind," that he's willing to be masochistic to prove his love to her, as he sings, "I'd rather hurt myself than to ever hurt you." The rest of the Osmonds, including the precious, cherub-cheeked Donny, completely support and concur with Merrill in his brave attempt to convince this "girl" that, in essence, all the other apples in the bunch are worth eating.

One of the reasons "One Bad Apple" is so astoundingly brilliant is that it is so true. Most men are clearly awesome and women should never forget that, especially when one misguided male randomly turns out to be a "bad apple" who might be physically, emotionally, or psychologically abusive to women. Just look at how this group of young brothers, ranging in age from 13 (Donny) to 21 (Alan Osmond), are willing to step up to the plate and vouch for the pious honor of each other. So what if the song is a psychoanalyst's buffet of sexual neuroses, including the vaguely incestuous and homoerotic "make me proud son" approval the other Osmond brothers heap on lead singer Merrill in his valiant attempt to not only win the love of this "girl," but to also prevent her from leaving her heterosexual shores for a life of exile on the Isle of Lesbos? No, there's nothing shady about that at all. By implying that the "bad apple" is merely a distraction to be instantly discarded, this group of seemingly harmless brothers prove that even they are totally willing to subvert their religious principles in an attempt to procure some ass. How precious is that? With "One Bad Apple," the raw force of manhood never again sounded so damned CUTE!

Here's a YouTube clip of the song:

Book Review: 33 1/3 #65 Big Star - Radio City

Despite their long standing reputation as rock critical darlings, Big Star are still a sorely underrated band. How do I know this? Because, even though everyone I know is familiar with "In the Street," only a handful have any idea who Big Star are, or that the theme song for That 70's Show was an actual song from the actual seventies. I also know because, while playing Rock Band with friends, very few of them have any idea who Alex Chilton is whenever The Replacements song named after him works its way into the rotation. So, what I'm getting at is, even though Big Star's music currently enjoys the biggest audience it has ever known, I can count on my fingers how many of my friends actually knew what I was talking about when I spent a week listening to #1 Record for a week after Alex Chilton's death. As irritating as Big Star's long time anonymity is, however, I guess it's not surprising. The band's entire career, after all, only spanned a few years, and pretty much established that Big Star would always be one of the best bands that not enough people knew about. Bruce Eaton, in his entry into the 33 1/3 series chronicling the creation of Big Star's Radio City, effortlessly cobbles together a fractured narrative of how, exactly, Big Star managed to make such great music that not many people cared about.

From a historical stand point, then, Eaton's take on Radio City is one of the most fascinating and engaging entries in Continuum's 33 1/3 series. By piecing together bits of interviews with band members and other key players in the album's creation—including Alex Chilton, and the late Chris Bell's brother David—we get a compelling picture of how Radio City sprung from Big Star's workman-like desire to keep making music even through a tumultuous period in the band's brief history, and how the record, like its predecessor, failed to find an audience outside of rock critic circles.

The most surprising—and welcome—aspect of Eaton's work is how little the author does to sensationalize this period of the band's career. Despite Chris Bell's strange departure, inner turmoil and frustrations at poor distribution and marketing efforts, the book sticks to the facts of Radio City's creation so as to inform us, without ever coming off as scandalous or overly dramatic. While the book's format—Eaton largely relies on blocks of quotations from interviews from dispassionate parties who seem to have reached peace with the past—certainly lends itself to such a straight forward, but engaging presentation, Eaton's own commentary only serves to tie pieces together, or provide additional context.

The only truly frustrating element of Eaton's volume on Radio City is that it is the single most poorly proofread published book I have ever read. Most of the typos and editing glitches do little to hamper the books readability, but for a volume of around 129 pages (144 if you can't the great pictures at the end) I suspect there are no fewer than 200 editing errors in the book, ranging from missing words (mostly "A's" and "It's") to under-editing interview segments to leave in distracting, unnecessary "likes." While I don't think I've yet to read an entirely error free 33 1/3—hell, I doubt an error free book exists, anywhere—the overwhelming editing issues were certainly frustrating and distracting.

Still, despite the alarming number of glitches in the prose, Eaton's take on Radio City is fascinating and compelling. As a fan of Big Star's music who knew little about the band coming in to the book, I found the book to be quite informative, and, as is often the case, it allowed me to approach a much loved and listened to album with fresh ears.

This is Shitty/Awesome

The drive to The Conservatory--a small, dank, but charming club in Oklahoma City--on Tuesday (May 25th) sure was one vexing omen. Recent inclement weather inundated the area with massive orbs of hail. Seemingly every car in the area had its windows absolutely destroyed, and the same can be said, sadly, of some of the apartments in the area. I was going to see Nobunny, who, later that evening, delivered one of the most downright fun concert performances I have ever witnessed. Decked in only a borderline creepy bunny mask, a ridiculously short jean jacket (clearly tailored for a woman), and his sexy underwear, Nobunny frontman Justin Champlin commanded the stage like a slightly more sane version of Iggy Pop during the last days of The Stooges. Though only fifty people or so were there, I guarantee you nobody in attendance will ever forget their performance. But it wasn't Nobunny who decided to slice away parts of my ear drums this night; no, it was their opener, the Norman, Oklahoma act Shitty/Awesome, who audibly delivered on the hailstrom whose carnage I witnessed on my way to the club.

My first experience with Shitty/Awesome came in mid-March. They were opening for one of my favorite new groups, the Vivian Girls, as well as recent Pitchfork darlings Male Bonding, at The Opolis in Norman. I only arrived at the show early because I just HAD to see a band called Shitty/Awesome on general principle. Much to my pleasant surprise, I quite enjoyed what I heard. Will, the group's lead singer and guitarist, has a voice instantly reminding me of Alan Vega from Suicide or David Thomas from Pere Ubu (Will tells me he has The Cramps' Lux Interior in mind as well when he sings). Musically, the group was a slightly accessible throwback to New York's late-1970s' No Wave scene with goth, shoegaze, and rockabilly overtones. In other words, this was music totally geared for me! The group was selling a cassingle at their merch-table for a mere pittance ($3 maybe?). Despite my extreme dislike of cassettes, I bought it anyway (and, hell, it was limited to only 50 copies). And, as an added bonus, I think it made me say the word "cassingle" out loud in public for the first time since the early 1990s, when I purchased DNA (no, the other DNA) featuring Suzanne Vega's cassingle for "Tom's Diner." Since I actually drive a car from the early 1990s, which still has a tape deck in it, I threw that puppy in the player and loved what I heard. Both songs ("Say So" and "Shreds") were practically inaudible and quite hard on the ears. I mean this in the most complementary way!

In the song "Heavy Duty" by Spinal Tap, David St. Hubbins sings, "I just want to make some eardrums bleed." Well, Shitty/Awesome damn-near made mine explode Tuesday night in The Conservatory, a cavernous place where, in October of last year, The Melvins made sure my tinnitus would never go away by making it twice as bad. What makes Shitty/Awesome so shitty or awesome (at least they give you the choice!) is their unusual stage presence and their blend of musical influences. Lead singer Will rarely looks at the crowd, his microphone titled down at a forty-five degree angle, insuring that he looks up. He jabs at this guitar like he is trying to swat a fly. Their drummer, Travis, immediately reminds one of the Bobby Gillespie era of The Jesus and Mary Chain; well, that is if Bobby's heroin had been switched to crystal meth straight outta Perry, Oklahoma. He plays a small kit, his bass drum positioned behind him (which is a fairly unusual drum kit set up), allowing him the freedom to bang away at the snare with a piston-like precision. Their guitarist Derek also rarely faces the crowd, his back generally toward the audience. The most exciting member of the group on stage is the bassist Joey, who plays with the energy of an NFL middle linebacker tackling The Who's John Entwistle. Together, their look is as dissonant as their sound. Derek is pure indie-rock, Will a less-sequined Elvis Presley, and the rhythm section, some ten minutes into their set, are costumed in pure sweat.

Musically their set resembles air slowly being leaked out of a massive balloon. Anchored by the rhythm section, who are actually quite tight, Will's spikey guitar and manic vocal approach, combined with Derek's purposefully noisy lead lines, pack quite a punch. Their microphones have an inordinate amount of echo on them, so even when they talk between sets, or try to help you out by telling you the names of their songs, there is little chance you will pick them up. So I cannot report to you that "this song" was epic or "that song" lagged. Simply put, their entire set must be taken as a one wall of dance-able white noise jam-packed with old- to middle-school rock n' roll fury. As Will tells me, "All of our songs are about sex or killing yourself." And, really, that's all you need to know about how AWESOME Shitty/Awesome is.

They are slated to release their first 7" this summer. It will contain four tracks and will be released by Guestroom Records.

Links:
Shitty/Awesome on myspace
Shitty/Awesome on Facebook

Songs that Changed the Landscape of Human Thought and Understanding: Daniel Powter's "Bad Day"

Has there ever been a pop hit that anybody could relate to more than Daniel Powter's chart-topping 2005 masterpiece "Bad Day"? I mean, how many times have you opened your Facebook page and read the following update status from one of your friends?: "I forgot to set the alarm and now I'm stuck in traffic. Already having a bad day." These minor setbacks at the beginning of the day--though hilarious to read on Facebook--really can affect the way each one of us proceeds through the next new day. The more embarrassing bad days are never made Facebook Official though: waking up to discover that one is out of clean underwear and will have to go the whole day with that "not-so-fresh feeling" of walking around in public in yesterday's smelly knickers; accidentally bad-mouthing your prospective employer's product during a job interview; or getting a promotion at work only to find out, after being plied with martinis by your bosses and co-workers, that your spouse waited for you to get home to tell you he or she got laid 0ff. Now these sorts of bad days reflect the sort possible only in developed countries. In some parts of the world, a bad day means another day without water or food, having more severe pains in your distended belly, or losing three limbs and being the only survivor in your family of an armed attack by a ruthless state-sponsored militia. Daniel Powter's "Bad Day" reminds us that all of these things are possible with an empathy recalling Walt Whitman's line from "Song of Myself" (1855): "I am the man...I suffered...I was there."

More impressive is that several of the rather ambiguous lines in the verses allude to some of the worst "bad days" in the history of mankind. When Powter sings, "You kick up the leaves and the magic is lost," he is clearly alluding to the Biblical fall of man, when Adam ate the forbidden fruit and became ashamed of his own nakedness. A bad day indeed. "You're faking a smile with a coffee to go," though topically referring to our contemporary culture's NEED for gourmet coffees, obliquely refers to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain having to tell his wife Anne, in the early hours of September 30, 1938, that he had signed the Munich Pact to appease Adolf Hitler and his forces. Easily one of the worst days of the 20th Century. Powter's intertextual brilliance is even more apparent during the chorus, in which he repeats the phrase "bad day" 529126 times, recalling the monotonous ending to The Beatles' "Hey Jude." In that song, Paul McCartney sings, "Hey Jude, don't make it bad / Take a sad song and make it better." Powter pays homage to the ultimate "gets-stuck-in-your-head" song by similarly singing, "You sing a sad song just to turn it around." Powter's grasp of the universality of the "bad day" and the proper way to cope with one--the art of post-modern meditation or chant through repetition in verse--reveals an artistic depth rarely matched in the post-World War II era. While a few of the song's cynical naysayers would have you believe that Powter's utterance of the phrase "bad day" 529126 times inevitably gets stuck in the listener's head--subliminally suggesting that they will indeed have a bad day each time they hear the song--Daniel Powter's "Bad Day" is a testament to and acknowledgment of these kinds of moments in our lives. It also provides us access to the closure we need to get past these "bad days." Oh, and one more thing: bad day.

Late to the Party: Parry Gripp's "For Those About to Shop, We Salute You" (2005)

Far too many fans of underground music are obsessed with the notion of "selling out"; or, the artist they love, with the small but loyal following, signing with a major label or making calculated moves to increase the popularity of their music. In a capitalist society, few, if any, artists are able to make music simply for "the love of music." Instruments are expensive, traveling is expensive, producing T-shirts, CDs, and vinyl records is expensive, life on the road is expensive (and rarely pays that well for all but the most successful acts). Inevitably, concessions will be made. Sure, some groups are better at maintaining a facade of artistic credibility. But believe me you, Fugazi and Crass were just as concerned with the bottom line as The Rolling Stone are. In other words, the notion of "selling out" is a given for 99.99% of all musicians. The Who pursued this logic, however briefly, on their critically acclaimed 1967 LP The Who Sell Out, creating snippets of mock-jingles, linking their songs with excerpts from Radio London to illustrate how they were merely a commodity themselves. That being said, the LP's tracks (like "Armenia City in the Sky" and "I Can See for Miles"), for the most part, are autonomous creations independent of its rather tenuous "concept."

And this is why Parry Gripp's debut CD, For Those About to Shop, We Salute You (2005), is so refreshing and fun. Gripp, the former front-man of the mildly successful pop-punk act Nerf Herder, according to his liner notes for the CD, was asked to produce a few jingles for a waffle-related product after the dissolution of his former group. Though his submissions were rejected, he decided to pursue this path on For Those About to Shop, which has 51 songs and clocks in at a mere 36 minutes in length. It features tracks with titles such as "Great Nachos, Great Price," "This is One Hell of a Truck," "Do You Like Waffles?" "You Need a Beer," "This Sale is Going to Blow Your Mind," "More Blades = Better Shave," and "You Aint Never Drank No Soda Like This One Here." Unlike The Who Sells Out, For Those About to Shop is fully committed to the premise. I mean, nothing sings "sell out" more than actually writing songs to sell products, right?

Gripp's album is a both a celebration and a critique of advertising and conspicuous consumption. It acknowledges advertising's ability to make people feel inadequate so they will be persuaded to buy products that they most likely do not need. It acknowledges how empty this entire process is. However, it is also aware of the rhetorical brilliance of advertising as well as its breadth of artistic influences. On the CD, which draws its title from AC/DC's 1981 LP For Those About to Rock (We Salute You), Gripp's faux-jingles appropriate the styles of a diverse population of musicians, including Al Jolson ("Say Hello To Your Brand New Favorite Pizza" and "You Ain't Never Drank No Soda Like This One Here"), Judas Priest ("Muffler Shop"), Rage Against the Machine ("Health Food Store"), Jerry Reed ("Big Mamma-Jamma"), Johnny Cash ("That Aint Fresh," which advertises a feminine hygiene product!), The Strokes ("Everyone's Dipping"), The Trashmen's "Surfin' Bird" ("You Need a Beer"), Weezer ("It's the Greatest Deal" and "Hooray for Santa Claus"), doo-wop group The Marcels' version of "Blue Moon" ("Big Sale"), 1990s electronica ("Got to Dip It!"), Yo La Tengo ("This Sale is Gonna Blow Your Mind"), and R.E.M. ("You Need Our Cough Medicine"). Helping make the CD even more entertaining is how convincing Gripp is at tackling this diverse array of musical genres.

Clearly a CD like this isn't made for excessive repeated listens. Hearing fifty different forty-five second long songs for a little more than half and hour can test some listeners' patience. Furthermore, Parry Gripp's voice, in many of these tracks, sounds very similar to "Weird Al" Yankovic, which, for some listeners, may incline them to believe there is no critique here, only blank parody. Clearly, because advertising is such an empty form, only concerned with surface, its emotional content solely existing as an unwieldy and overwhelming delivery of pathos, these songs undoubtedly come across the same way. Woody Allen once said, "Sex without love is a meaningless experience. But as far as meaningless experiences go, it's pretty damn good." To a certain extent, this is a well-suited analogy for For Those About to Shop, We Salute You. It is a fun and infectious musical challenge as empty as the generic products it advertises.

Here is the video for "Great Nachos, Great Price":

Great Nachos, Great Price music video

Dandan | MySpace Video

Review: Band of Horses - Infinite Arms

If I were Ben Bridwell, I'd want an identity change too. Throughout their history, Bridwell's Band of Horses has drawn comparisons to My Morning Jacket, which makes sense. Neither band has a stable, identifiable sound. Instead, both bands sound like several other bands in a schizophrenic back-and-forth between the spacey experimentation of the Flaming Lips to the alt-country-pop of early Wilco. Band of Horses' debut record, Everything All the Time (2006), drew comparisons to My Morning Jacket from almost every reviewer of almost every music magazine and blog. But what many of these reviews didn’t quite mention was that Everything All the Time sounded like only certain My Morning Jacket songs: The spacey, dream-popesque indie sound laced with a little southern rock and Americana. The follow up, 2007's Cease to Begin, reversed this equation, moving the southern rock and Americana elements to the forefront and pushing the spacey dream-pop to the background. Unfortunately for Bridwell, this sounded a lot like certain other My Morning Jacket songs.

Hence, the need for an identity change. Hence, 2010's Infinite Arms.

While this album will draw fewer obvious comparisons to My Morning Jacket's sound, in a lot of ways it reminds me of the direction MMJ took with their most recent album, Evil Urges (2008): With the exception of a few riskier songs, Evil Urges is a predominantly safe record dominated by a 1970s sound and vanilla songwriting. In a word, dad-rock. Regrettably, the same holds true for Infinite Arms.

On first listen, I was drawn in by Infinite Arms’ two opening tracks. “Factory” begins with a drum roll into swelling strings and acoustic strums that would almost find a place on a Belle & Sebastian record. The minor key hook of the chorus showcases Bridwell’s Americana influences and, though it feels trite to say, the influence of Jim James. “Compliments” is one of the only stomping numbers on the album. Unfortunately, this is one of the few up-tempo moments in an otherwise plodding album. Here Bridwell’s smoky South Carolina voice comes through clearest, though it doesn’t quite fit with the sound of the song. Still, “Compliments,” the first single, is one of the few highlights on the album.

After those first two songs, I had high hopes for the album. I thought, maybe, just maybe, Infinite Arms would live up to the hype from mainstream music reviewers. But then the next eight tracks move us into the vanilla dad-rock sound that dominates the album. The choruses are all catchy but safe and bland. Many of these songs—“Blue Beard,” “On My Way Back Home,” “Dilly”—even transcend dad-rock and begin to approach mom-rock. It’s not Sarah McLachlan, but still the type of music you could play in the car without your mom objecting.

“Older” is the one shining moment in this stretch of dull songs, and it is possibly the strongest song on the album, though I can’t help but think it would be nothing more than a forgettable role player on many albums, including Band of Horses’ first two. At the very least, “Older” is the catchiest song on the album, with crunchy southern rock guitars blending well with Bridwell’s Jim-James-meets-the-Beach-Boys vocals. Here his voice sounds most country, though there’s something unconvincing about it. Sadly, this boy from South Carolina sounds less authentically southern than California-bred John Fogerty ever did.

Just as Infinite Arms begins strong, so it ends, with four of the stronger tracks creating a solid frame around the blandness of the middle bulk of the album. “NW Apt” returns us to the up-tempo stomp of “Compliments,” a welcome return after so many safe down-tempo tracks. Here we get a sense of urgency and a sense of soul the album seemed to lack. Following “NW Apt” is the closing number, “Neighbor,” a slow piano ballad that eventually builds into the only true cathartic moment on the album. This catharsis is a solid way to end an otherwise forgettable album because it leaves us wanting more. But what we want is more of this—more of the album’s highlights, but they are few and far between. Literally.

And that’s the biggest problem with Infinite Arms. While there are a handful of strong songs spaced throughout the album, we have to wade through so many vanilla numbers to get to them, and so many of them seem to run at the same slow tempo with the same songwriting formula. Sure they’re catchy, but they’re predictable. They’re safe. And if I had to sum up the album with one word, it would be “safe.”