rant

People say let God into your heart. I say God is too small for my heart. My friends don't have to pray, sacrifice their children, or toast in my honor to earn my love. Although a visit is nice, the people in my life don't have sit in attendance and listen to me ramble every Sunday. There are no special rules you have to follow in order to be my friend other than don't be a dick. My friends can eat all the bacon they want. They can love who they want. My friends can leave their foreskin intact.

señor coconut y su conjunto plays the robots

for your listening pleasure. check comments for bonus.

fuck off grizzly bear

here is a link to my friend stephanie nilles. she writes very funny and very good songs in a kinda jazz, lounge , anti-folk style. she's releasing the album in rainbows style so drop some bills if you like her tunes and nashville people check her out when she plays the basement on march 31st.

here is her equally funny press release for your reading enjoyment:

New Orleans-based jazz/punk musician Stephanie Nilles' fourth album, Fuck Off Grizzly Bear, is generating a substantial amount of buzz after it surprisingly climbed to the top of Pitchfork's Album Title of the Year year-end list, an astounding feat considering it's March.

Nilles and her upright bassist, Matt Wigton, took a loose DIY approach to the album, recording in Nilles's childhood home, which she studio-nicknamed The Hell House as its surrounding town boasts more churches per capita than any other town in the United States. The duo recorded 3 hours worth of material over one weekend, and originally planned to release 7 separate e.p.'s, but a last-minute decision to "go green" halted the duplication of the project in its tracks.

According to the exhaustive liner notes, Nilles opted to record the entire album directly to a vintage Fisher Price cassette recorder, employing sound engineer Mike Judeh to use only its built-in microphone. After wrestling with the tape machine placement "for hours," Judeh decided to surgically implant the recorder inside Wigton's upright bass (resulting in a broken G string that had to be replaced with a bit of fishing line), illuminating a resonance and warmth lacking in today's mainstream recording industry. Upon mixing the record, Nilles was unhappy with the "sound" of the opus, and so recruited mastering engineer Brian Lucey to digitally render additional analog hiss.

Why Nilles opted to title the album Fuck Off, Grizzly Bear is unclear. The cover alone is sure to enrage a number of environmental activists. I can only hope that the depiction of Nilles flipping the bird at a member of a soon to be endangered species was a digital composite. Why musicians think that they can abuse defenseless animals to help sell their albums (think the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds or Joni Mitchell’s Dog Eat Dog) is a mystery that only they and their therapists can answer. In any case, the title track is nothing more than a list railing against the absurdity of the digital age, spouting such jarring lines as "Facebook is just the gateway drug to stalking." But apart from a vague reference to Grizzly Bear's Two Weeks in the song's opening piano riff, the darling band of the indie-rock community is left out of the equation. One is left wondering if Nilles even knows who Grizzly Bear is.

Stand-out tracks include For a HiLife Commercial, which is a vivid character study of a wall street frat boy. For it, all of the instruments were painstakingly tuned down a quarter-tone so that Nilles could occasionally utilize auto-tune (she sang into her iPhone's T-Payne auto-tune app), which ironically serves to make her voice sound slightly and intentionally off-pitch throughout. Dark Matter is an original poem set to music by Mexican folksongwriter Jose Alfredo Jiminez. In order to write it, Nilles spent months holed up in her grandparents' basement in Northern California, watching YouTube videos of Mexican rancheras.

With the exception of an achingly heart-warming version of Mike Bloomfield's 1974 blues ballad Love Me Or I'll Kill You, Nilles steers clear of love songs altogether, touching instead on such predictable subjects as the 2008 presidential election, the BP oil spill, pornography, and the integration of American public schools circa the 1950's. All make this eclectic but disparate collection of originals and covers seem, at times, verbose bordering on pedantic.

Although the record's piano work is nimble and intricate, it leaves the listener wanting more. Nilles began playing the piano at the age of 5, and, a child of the 80's, she quickly set her sights on learning to play every musical instrument [that Prince plays]. It should be noted, then, that she is only 22 years into her career; it is possible that her craft will hone itself over time. That said, Nilles' fourth record is a solid and inspired effort. A super-senior effort, however, just might be something for listeners to get excited about.

colinstetson

this guy is a monster on the sax.

comments for bonus.

slackass

Oh yeah.


I have a blog.


I've been a total slacker lately on this thing and life. I don't know if it's the change in weather, some degenerate bug eating my brain, or just general malaise but all I seem to want to do lately is sleep. I have been working (slowly) on a comic book adaptation of a couple of my short stories.


Anyhow this is my reproach to the blog all be it a short one. As you can see I changed the layout a bit. I hope to do a complete overhaul soon and have this place looking pretty and shiny.


Oh yeah, how come no one told me about Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains? A must see for fans of the first wave punk and riotgrrl. It's had me listening to The Slits all week and bonus it's on net flix streaming now so check it out. Also check comments for bonus.

a mix for winter

its snowing and i'm trapped at home. the car is still on the fuzz and chanda is at work. i made a mix for any of you in similar situation. hope you enjoy.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/7xxz87l9pv4epb0/amixforwinter.zip

Out At The Pictures - Hot Chip
Mystereality - Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark
Winter Time - Drug Rug
Fake Palindromes - Andrew Bird
Waitin' For A Superman - The Flaming Lips
We've Been Had - The Walkmen
5 - 4 = Unity - Pavement
Weekend Wars - MGMT
Plateau - Meat Puppets
Save It For Later - English Beat
Web In Front - Archers Of Loaf
Cherry Blossom Girl - Air
The Second Line - Clinic
Running Up That Hill - Kate Bush
Black Cab - Jens Lekman
The Chauffeur - Duran Duran

please listen to the sirens

i've never understood why tubeway army's self titled doesn't get the play it so richly deserves. maybe it's been overshadowed by their lead singer's (gary numan) success but why the hell listen to cars when you can have my love is a liquid or my shadow in vain?

the album kicks off with glam/punk infused listen to siren painting the dystopian backdrop for the album. numan's synth bobs along forebodingly as he sings "flow my tears the new police song / the slogan of peace is you must live / they've got me and i'm one of them." living in economically depressed england probably wasn't a far stretch from the 1984esque world numan was writing about. the band continues build up until numan sings "but i dont mind/ i don't mind" and then they let bottom drop out of the whole world only to spring back to life with a machine gun burst from the drums and primal grunt from numan. this is really the point when you should know you're listening to a really good album.



a few songs like the life machine and friends don't really stand up on their own so much but really make the album flow. the previously mentioned my love is a liquid and every die i die are proto-new wave classics but it's really the closing track that is the record's strongest.

starting with gentle acoustic strumming jo the waiter tells the story of a man's love affair with a waiter he employees at his bar(i always felt the man may be a robot but wikipedia says i'm wrong)". one of numan's only songs to feature acoustic guitar the track eventual gives way to a manic and wiry guitar. the song builds to a crescendo before stopping on a dime without warning. it gives the album a sudden jarring end that plays well with the dystopian theme of the album. it always leaves me feeling kinda like numan's letting his own little world self destruct and self destructing in this case is what rock and roll is all about.

check comments for bonus!

jose goddamn gonzalez

i've been listening to jose gonzalez's in our nature. like listening a lot. the whole album through at least three times a week for the last two months.


gonzalez is swedish by way of argentina and a former bio-chemist (how cool is that?). apparently the record was inspired by the richard dawkin's the god delusion and peter singer's practical ethics. which is cool (if you ask me the world needs more ex-scientist writing songs about atheist manifestos) but that's not really why i dig it so much. if you asked me i really probably couldn't tell you why i like it so much. it's not really the kind of album that usually hits me hard like this.

the album is really sparse. just this guy and his guitar. every once and a while you get some hand claps or some female back up but for the most part its just mr. gonzalez strumming along forever. my favorite albums don't tend to be this straight forward (taking tiger mountain, street hassle, sandinista!) but here it works. there is something really beautiful about this kind of simplicity.

the first track "how low" starts with this low chugging guitar riff. gonzales's voice fits very well with stark instrumentation. he's very plain spoken and intimate without coming off as schmaltzy. he sounds very much like a man here do a job and one that both knows and does it well. the second song "down the line" is also a highlight. the track show cases his classical spanish guitar style. one of the few tracks to have any real sense of urgency. when he sings "don't let the darkness eat you up!" he actually sounds worried that it might.

it would be stupid not to mention the wonderful cover of masive attacks's "tear drop". i know people may give me shit for this but he may have actually improve on the original. it sounds much more organic and full of life with out the dated trappings of early 90's trip hop. he makes the song his own and i'm sure it will become mix tape fodder for any one who gives it a listen.

the last track "cycling trivialities" sums up what i believe is a wonderful world view. the narrator is pleading with a friend or lover to ignore the small problems in life and enjoy what you have or as my mom used to say "don't sweat the small shit." i call it happy nihilism. both this song and album plead with us to slow down enjoy life. in our nature reminds us the real tragedy of life is how much of we miss while busy with little things that really don't matter.

check comments for bonus!