Lizt

I’ve been infected with the flesh-eating bacteria known as the desire to compile year-end lists. Because I am not qualified to produce one, this should be a pretty silly exercise, but what the hell.

I am no longer swimming in the flowing stream of college radio and music snobbery, so it gets a little harder to keep produce ten records, but I’ve really found some gems lately, so I figured I’d share. And I’m cheating a little bit, because I’m adding some stuff that I got into this year, but didn’t come out this year. Gotta pad the stats.

Cex- Bataille Royale. This was the first new local release I heard upon moving to Baltimore (though, to be fair, it wasn’t like I just picked it up in a record store. It came from Soundcloud, via Facebook). My previous exposure to Cex was during his IDM-meets-party-rap period, and it wasn’t my cup of tea. But I did some investigating, and he has had a pretty interesting, chameleon-like career, constantly reorienting and reinventing. For this release the billing is IDM-meets Baltimore-club, an inviting prospect for me considering I have much greater fluency in the former. The skittering, aggressive rhythms blend well with the robotic squelching and come roaring out of your speakers. Its both invigorating and meditative and, I think, a pretty neat trick.

Daniel Francis Doyle- We Bet Our Money on You. This is probably far and away my favorite release of the year and it so strongly soundtracked my days that I didn’t really listen to anything else until the summer. Because Dan is my friend, it’s a little suspect, I know, but rarely do friends produce such musically inventive noise while subsequently composing lyrics both tightly economical and yet far-reaching in their imagery. I made a mix for a friend of mine with the track “Learning Things at School” and my friend thought it was some sort of classic post-punk band he’d missed out on until he looked at the track listing.

Black Milk- Tronic. Okay, this came out in late 2008, I think, but it feels like an ‘09 record, so I’m counting it. It’s so futuristic and dense, yet bubbling over with great rapping and wit. Hip-hop may be splintering and losing its grip on the cultural vanguard, but it heartens to see stuff like this, blending something as simple as James Brown beats with piles and piles of synth.

Atlas Sound- Logos. I guess stuff like this and Animal Collective is where we are headed. Not such a bad place to be, but it feels generationally distant to me. Nevertheless, I like this project more than Deerhunter. It feels like sweetly organic experimental music. Like if a minimalist composer tried to write songs.

Devin tha Dude- Jus Tryin to Live. Yeah, this didn’t even remotely come out this year, but I can’t stop listening to it. I finally got into Devin this year and now I can’t stop. It’s just so refreshingly weird. Like, someone said “We’re going to take all the things you like about underground rap, like odd time signatures, flows and subject matter, and add the things you like about mainstream gangsta stuff, like songs about weed and huge beats. ” I don’t know why they never played this on Texas hip-hop radio. People don’t know what they are missing.

Bill Callahan- Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle. You can refer below to a deeper exposition of some of my thoughts on this, but it’s becoming increasingly clear to me that Callahan is one of the best songwriters of this generation. There is such painfully personal detail and scrutiny in these words, you can’t help but find the linkage to your own experiences. And the fact that he could make a record like Woke on a Whaleheart, a song cycle so full of strange joy, and then return to earth a sadder, but wiser Smog is a revelation to me. I am right there with him and look forward to what’s next.

Tim Hecker- An Imaginary Country. I’m really enjoying this release right now, as well as his older Haunt Me, Haunt Me Do It Again.  It’s all warm crackles and the slow creep of bittersweet. I feel as though he’s found a way to make electronic music that overwhelms the way Stars of the Lid does, but with a broader palate than drone. I don’t really have the words for it, honestly. It’s just magical.

R. Kelly mixtape. I mean, it has it all, doesn’t it?

Shearwater- Rook. At this point, my enjoyment of Shearwater is somewhat diminished by my wonderment over how this must compare to Talk Talk, the group they are constantly compared to and supposedly enamored with. I’m only vaguely familiar with them, but I’ve been a fan of this band ever since I played their first record on my radio show at KVRX. And this record didn’t come out this year either, but it dominated my mood in the late winter and spring. As I contemplated moving to Baltimore, songs like “Century Eyes” were both motivational and discouraging. Jonathan Meiburg makes me feel like it is almost medievally ennobling to get emo, and damn your jerk-ass for thinking you’re weak. “Galloping into the void,” and rising bravely to the chorus to show his wounds. Sure, that sounds pretty silly, but I know what he means.

Well, I guess that was only 9. And maybe even half of them didn’t come out this year. But I tried. I guess I could have also included Animal Collective, but I feel there’s nothing else to say about them. I would love to have some sound off, though. What were you into? It was more interesting than Grizzly Bear, right?

Hearth

I’m sure you probably haven’t heard any different, but its not easy to pick yourself up from your designated place of birth and plant yourself somewhere new and foreign. Some are probably more cut for it than others, and since moving to Baltimore a few months ago, I am often questioning in which phylum I might find my classification.

Today, on this very cold morning for a native Texan, I left my brownstone apartment in Mount Vernon to go to a job interview in Towson, in Baltimore County. I am currently reliant on public transportation, and so I hopped on a bus I have taken a few times before to go north. Even though I experienced my first real snowfall this weekend, I was still shocked to see snow remaining on the ground as we got farther north. In fact, I found myself staring out the window, mouth agape at the white and wintry surroundings. Snow just doesn’t fall in South Texas, and even if it does, it does not stay on the ground. I found myself thinking “I am not on vacation here. This is not a ski resort. This is your city and there is snow everywhere.”

And then I had the interview, the location of which I walked quite far from the bus stop to find and endured frozen feet in hard, narrow dress shoes, an experience predictably new and painful as well. In my interview, I was questioned by a panel of three officers with fairly standard questions, and my answers were short and somewhat nervous. And its likely that I was wrong to say that nothing could have stopped me from leaving my last job because I wanted to be with my fiance in Baltimore. God knows they can see where my loyalties lie there.

I left the interview feeling relieved and lonely. Less cold than before, but feeling bare with the isolation that comes with being the only person in a suit walking down a suburban sidewalk. The suit is a hollow concoction for me. I can never fill it out with the confidence it demands, and I often want to add a caveat to any passersby to let them know that I know it. The bus driver looked shocked today when I did not have enough fare to get an all day pass. I wanted to clarify that yes, I have a tie on, but actually, I am the kind of person that thought he could and should save thirty cents by only getting a round trip ticket.

So I walked through Towson, cold and lonely, and found the number eleven bus again for my return home. I fumbled through my deep jacket pockets to find my iPod and turned it on shuffle, feeling a little weary of choosing music and unhappy with my anxiety producing choices from earlier in the morning. It went through a few good songs here and there, and another depressing choice in Shearwater’s “Snow Leopard.” But then it pulled up “All Thoughts Are Prey to Some Beast” by Bill Callahan, a song a little too deep on his most recent release that I had yet to hear. And I almost skipped over it, seeking as I was to feel less melancholy, but I paused enough that a persistent bassline emerged behind the acoustic guitar and strings, and I slowly gave myself over to this amazing song.

At first, the slowly picked acoustic guitar deceives you into thinking it might be a sort of pretty pastoral piece. But the bassline lays below with sinister persistence and the strings start to strain. Doesn’t feel like a sunny day in a grassy meadow, and the lyrics clarify quickly exactly where we are:  “The leafless tree looked like a brain, the birds within were all the thoughts and desires within me.”

Yes, that is exactly where we are. We are cold and lonely, inside a weather-stripped tree with thoughts and desires buzzing about. And I think I can divine where this is going:  “An eagle came over the horizon and shook the branches with its sight, the softer thoughts, starlings, finches, and wrens, softer thoughts they all took flight.” Yes, yes, yes. It is all tumult. This treebrain cannot stop the bleeding, can’t keep the soft thoughts from flying away for winter. But Callahan gives me some hope with the eagle: “The eagle looked clear through the brain tree, empty he thought, save for me, maybe I’ll make this one my home, consolidate the nests of the tiny, raise a family that might like me.”

And I have to admit that at this point it gets a little uncannily familiar with my own feelings, because how does he know that underpinning my current desire for my old home is the need to make a new one, with the a snug space for all my soft thoughts and finches? But then the eagle knows the jig is up, realizing that with “sweet desires and soft thoughts all gone… i’m alone.”

Bill Callahan is the most vital artist of any that I find passing through my stereo in the recent years. I say this because he is vital to me, and also because I know that he understands vitality both as a quality in music and as a personal commodity. In an interview with Pitchfork, he commented on Devin the Dude’s music, saying, “It is rooted in Good. I like Devin the Dude– there’s vitality in his music. That’s my only requirement that people have to meet in music.”

And he’s right. Vitality is all there is. Does it remind you that you are alive? I think I needed that reminder today, else I become a wandering shell of frustration. Bill Callahan has done this for me on other occasions, and I know this is a very long winded description, but it was a moment where a song found me at the right time. It is rare when this happens and worth documenting.

One quick note: Kind of strange, but after writing this I remembered that John Darnielle had a similiar experience with a different Smog song once and wrote about it on Last Plane to Jakarta. Its a testament to how powerful Bill Callahan’s words are.

VH1 Hip Hop Honors

Just some quick thoughts I’m jotting down before I get too Hengsty and edit myself.

-Rick Rubin seems to be rubbing his nipples in the long, thoughtful expository shots between him and Russell Simmons. I didn’t realize he could get any weirder.

-I’m such a nostalgically oriented person that I can enjoy alot of this, even when its clearly a little weak. For example, Travis Barker and KRS-One doing “No Sleep Till Brooklyn.” I mean, that’s patently ridiculous, especially considering KRS penned “South Bronx.” But I just can’t hate on the man. As a person who is almost paralyzing in their rush to self-judgment, I admire his ability to go with this flow.

-Scarface! So underappreciated. He got to do his verse from “Guess Who’s Back” before they let Ludacris roll. I thought that was a little unfortunate, but I won’t hate on Ludacris either. I really think he is kind of underappreciated because no one will ever take him seriously, but why does everything have to cleave into serious or not? Ludacris has made some of the best hip hop tracks on this decade. Not the very best, but certainly worth considering.

-Warren G. deserves better than a performance with Trey Songz. I’m not sure how much better, but where is Nate Dogg. They couldn’t scare him up? Another west coast guy like The Game maybe? That guy loves nostalgia.

-Ok. This guy doing a DMX impression is hilarious. I hope DMX is getting a paycheck from this, but more importantly, I hope he’s also taking a field trip from rehab or a group home or something. No MC of the modern era has fallen farther.

-The Roots talent’s are often wasted, but I love their working class musician ethic, even in regard to crap like Jimmy Fallon’s show. Other than backing up Ghostface, their finale was not great, but it had its moments. The saddest thing is that Black Thought is often MIA. I don’t care what people think, he has gotten better with recent records.

Alright. There’s some really half-baked thoughts. Btw, NBA is almost back. Thank god.

The Importance of Iverson

Dangit, people, I’m sorry to do this. Its not that I don’t care about music anymore, its just that I’m not actively thinking about it lately. But the brain never stops thinking about basketball, and this topic has really been occupying whatever leftover space I have after subtracting thoughts of moving and finding a new job.

Over on FreeDarko, there was a pretty good discussion going about Allen Iverson and what he means, both in relation to new media (eh) and the new basketball landscape. I’m interested in both of these somewhat (the latter more than the former), but what nobody seemed to be talking about, aside from maybe Shoals in a vague way, was how Iverson’s passing as a relevant player aligns perfectly against the new cultural-political landscape.

I recently finished reading Young, Black, Rich and Famous: The Rise of the NBA, The Hip Hop Invasion and the Transformation of American Culture by Todd Boyd, and Iverson is somewhat of the central figure in the narrative that traces the evolution of the black nba player from magic to isaiah to jordan and back to AI. On this arc, we see how Magic marked the beginning of racial barriers breaking, but still the prevailing attitude was that he was lucky to be there. Isaiah smoldered and was deeply resented for it, and Jordan was seen as the perfect anoydyne antidote. Plenty of style to go around, but not enough to freak out the mainstream. Iverson brought the hip-hop style and attitude finally to the fore, and his style was unapologetic. However, as the book ends there, we are now left to write the next chapter and it seems clear to me where it has gone.

If we look at the idea of Iverson as he stands from both his own creation and the media’s, what we’re usually talking about is a self-made, extremely self-determined and possibly self-centered player. He is legendarily tough for a guy his size, and has professed both a belief in his own abilities such that he did not feel the need for practice. Also, he was the most identifiably “hip-hop” player in the nba until Carmelo (more on this soon).  All this seems to add up to a player that should still be relevant, right? I mean, America hasn’t become less hip-hop, has it? If anything, we are knee-deep in it.

But I think the Obama era has fully eclipsed the Iverson era, and there was no more illustrative moment than when Obama won and Carmelo shaved his rows in celebration and a toast to responsibility. Shortly thereafter, AI was traded away from the Nugs and Carmelo and Chauncey went on a tear playing a much more balanced, team ball. No one feels that they can build a team with Iverson anymore and perhaps that is because it is clear in the NBA and perhaps also in America that there is shared responsibility in winning. Self-reliance is wonderful, but the Obama’s message has been more like “We’re all in this together.”

The sad irony is that the very people who are most often praising self-reliance and responsibility and personal liberty are the same ones that were blasting Iverson when he was playing. He was one of the best players of all time and was often genuinely funny and thoughtful. But unfortunately, Iverson’s time has passed.

Ponytail

Its difficult to put into words why I love this band right now. Its so early in the going, but I know that its great to see a band bring unbridled joy to music with no self-conciousness. I know its reflective of how I am feeling and want to feel lately. It might even be indicative of the national mood. Obama, hope, et al. Just watch this video and try not to smile. Actually, try not to have a seizure. But try not to smile while you are doing that.

Back (for realz)

So maybe you’re inclined not to believe me, but this time, I’m back to blogging. And taking it to the hole. Not Content is now my newly christened music blog. I was inspired to get back on the horse after enjoying my friend Alyx’s Feminist Music Geek. So hold me to the fire, friends, so I don’t fall back into laziness again. See you soon.

lil wayne, general life shit

I had a thought today upon hearing “Lollipop” for the n-th time on the radio. Has anyone else noticed that, despite how annoyingly overused the vocoder effect is currently in hip-hop, it actually does something interesting to Lil Wayne’s voice? With most other rappers, its there merely to gloss or shine or drag the voice over another bar or two. But with Lil Wayne, it actually increases much of what makes him such an interesting MC. What I’m talking about is the frailty of his voice. Ironically, as he turns pop, this effect enhances his weirdness. In that Shorty Lo song, when he sings “blue seats white paint / wetter than new rain/ like a white person with blue veins,” its almost haunting. Wedge that shit in between some crazy Mortal Kombat references and you can see why, even though I have no idea what the fuck drugs he is doing, I remain a Lil Wayne fan.

As for non-Lil Wayne blogging, its been a strange month. It started off with a crazy bloody fight between my neighbors that ended with us getting a cat, and it has continued to deliver the goods in weirdness. I was happy to see the Celtics win the title, if only to insure Kobe did not. Though I came to sympathize with Matty’s Celtics hatred earlier in the playoffs, it wore off and I decided that I was happy for KG and, yes, even Pierce. He played his ass off.  I’m missing basketball really bad, but luckily the NBA draft is coming up Thursday, and in August we get the Olympics. So I’ll make it.

Oh, and also weird, but weirdly good and probably the best thing going for me right now is our band, Snake Farm. Klint, Blair, and I have some shows coming up at 710. here’s the myspace link. its kinda like every other band i’ve sang in, but its also fresh and new because klint and blair are adding something really good. i’ll check back again soon, i promise.

my blogging aspirations

so i haven’t been super active on this site lately. it seems like i mostly get riled up to write when there’s some political flare-ups. but i’d like to give you a better handle on where i’ve been lately, so i’ll do some bullet points.

-i’m engaged to my longtime girlfriend jenny. its awesome and also a little crazy.

-obama’s speech on race was great. really one of the best speeches i’ve ever heard. i wasn’t on the fence before, but i’m going into uncharted waters soon with an obama bumper sticker on my car. we need this guy.

-basketball is taking over my spring as usual. between march madness, nba western conference madness, and my nba fantasy playoffs (despite my consolation bracket showing), i’m pretty much a slave to bball. in fact, i’ve probably made more comments and posts to matty and reid’s basketblog than on my own here. i’ve decided to give in and make some basketball posts when i feel like it, but i’m not feeling anything particularly right now, except my shaq rant, which you can find here.

-i’m struggling with career options lately, and am trying to decide whether to go back to school or teach high school. i can’t shake the feeling that it might not be my calling (i don’t have a lot of experience teaching, but i do have a lot of patience), but i think i’d like to try it and see if it suits me. if not, i can always go back to school.

anyway, i’ve decided that this blog will not be successful if i require it to be well-planned and thoughtful every time. but i don’t want it to be a straight diary blog, either. so hopefully i can find a point in between. your comments are very welcome and i promise i will have something good to say next week. at the very least, i can give a first person report from the spurs-suns game that i’m going to on wednesday. go spurs. go san antonio bexars. go obama. go me.

Texas Two-Step

So I didn’t caucus. I did early voting. Even though I work in the courthouse and I knew several people that were adamant about caucusing, I knew firsthand from working elections how crazy it could be and I was proven correct. Why we have to have this crazy, double-voting system I’ll never really know. I was a little surprised that Hillary won both Ohio and Texas, but not surprised at all that Barack took the caucuses. Where this is leading us I still don’t know. I guess we’re headed for a unsatisfying stalemate. Yay.

Oh, but I would like to pass along this link to any Hillary supporters that are reading. Rush Limbaugh wants Repubs to cross the line and vote for Hillary so they can demolish her in the fall. This was one of my first concerns when I began to imagine a Hillary Clinton campaign. She will invigorate and motivate the Republicans who are still stuck in the 90s at a time when their party has really lost its identity. As long as Obama can weather the slop they are throwing at him right now and show he is as strong and substantive as we believe he is, he is imminently more electable than Hillary.

Obama Time

 

I have been pretty mentally occupied with the election lately, and have been saving my thoughts for a monster post. Then I roll across this item today, which really solidifies my outrage and gets me off the fence, completely for Obama.

This is the oldest tactic, and they did the same thing to Jesse Jackson in the 80s. Its bullshit and, coupled with the supposed leak of the above photo by the Clinton camp, I feel like Obama is running against a Republican smear campaign. Check out this quote:

“There’s a difference between denouncing and rejecting,” Clinton said. “And I think when it comes to this sort of, you know, inflammatory — I have no doubt that everything that Barack just said is absolutely sincere. But I just think, we’ve got to be even stronger. We cannot let anyone in any way say these things because of the implications that they have, which can be so far reaching.”

Isn’t that some classic, reductionist crap? The litmus test for black representatives always seems to involve denouncing some other black leader. But painting Obama as a radical by papering him to Farrakhan seems hopelessly outdated. Farrakhan is hardly relevant to contemporary politics, and those who are still aware of him probably realized how beneficial he has been to the black community. Barack doesn’t need to denounce his praise. He should be courting it.

You know, the funny thing is, I have harumphs and umbrage to sound on both of their behalves. I’m getting kind of sick of the sexist words people attach to everything Hillary does.  Lacey blogged about this Gloria Steinem article in the NY Times and it really pushed me back into the undecided category for a while. I think Clinton would do a good job and I hate that anything aggresive she might do is painted as catty or bitchy. Conversely, even though people are always trying to get her to reveal her humanity, most of her rare emotional moments are said to be weak or whiny. But I think this election is about a real change from the norm, and I don’t think she provides it. I’d like to believe Obama does, and that’s why I cast my vote for him.