Square Coke bottles.
Author: Matthew Eilar
Just a dude with a stereo, a computer, and a brain.
A couple essays…
1. Tom Bissell writes about being addicted to video games and cocaine.
I’ve never tried cocaine. I wouldn’t, at this point in my life, dismiss the possibility entirely, however one of the things that goes through my mind when I think about it is that I am afraid that I would like it very much.
Tom Bissell writes about being a functional user of cocaine, but in a way that I’ve never heard before. Most description of functional substance users (from alcohol to weed to everything else) emphasize how little their substance use changes the day to day aspects of living. Bissell embraces the changes that have come to his life; he writes unblinkingly about playing video games for days at a time, going weeks without sleeping, and losing completely the motivation to complete writing commissions. The other half of this essay are Bissell’s ruminations on the unique way that video games are art.
I found this essay really challenging and somewhat disturbing. What I find hard to deal with is the fact that Bissell is obviously an intelligent and talented person, and yet he seems to have no problem with the way that he lives his life. I couldn’t live like he does. I highly recommend reading the essay.
2. Steve Almond writes ambiguously about the uselessness of music critics.
I’m not sure what is going on in this essay. Most of the evidence that Almond uses to argue that music critics are useless is that Steve Almond was a bad music critic.
Almond wraps the essay up with a sappy “all that matters is the fans” message (and how can you argue against that?), but I think he makes some assertions that I wouldn’t agree with. He says that [after a fun concert by a “bad” artist], “The very idea of music criticism — of applying some objective standard to the experience of listening to music — suddenly struck me as petty and irrelevant. I spent several more months as a critic, but my essential belief in the pursuit evaporated.” I understand that, and to some extent I agree with it, but I don’t think that’s what the value of music critics is. I think, by and large, music critics write opinions based upon facets of music that are more or less objective. While there is no objective answer to whether one album is better than another, the styles that the band is playing in, their instrumentation, the complexity of their lyrics are all things that a music critic can write about without touching the subjective experience of listening.
He also writes about how music and cultural criticism has become too snarky. I just don’t understand how this is an argument against music criticism. One, blogs and the internet have allowed bad writing of all stripes to be more easily accessible than at any time in history (look at what I’m doing right now!). Second, in an environment where critics are not trusted because their opinions are being influenced by things other than the music, an opportunity arises for another critic to build a base from people actively looking for high-value criticism.
Sida Cheng
I had the privilege of attending Sida Cheng’s senior piano recital at Reed College this afternoon. It was a wonderful program, and, after the week I’ve been having, the perfect way to decompress. The program:
Aaron Copland
Variations
Philip Lasser
12 Variations on a Bach Chorale
Johannes Brahms
Six Pieces for Piano, op. 118
Ludwig van Beethoven
Piano Sonata No. 32 in C Major
His technique was flawless, and none of the pieces on the program were easy. It was nice to revisit the Copland Variations, I had heard it once before and didn’t think much of it, but I like it much better now. It’s Copland like you’ve never heard him before, working with sets and quasi-atonal themes. Copland being Copland, however, every once in a while there are resolutions to pure triads. Instead of being cheap or gimmicky, it becomes transcendental. The Lasser variations were, I thought, a little pedestrian, but Sida did a great job with the tricky Vivace variation, and came off as a real pro.
One of my music professors is a hardcore Brahms fan. I’ve never really connected with that because I just don’t have very much experience with his music. In his Six Pieces, he’s in full-on Romantic Piano mode, and I could have listened to them all afternoon. These days, between schoolwork and getting ready for recitals of my own, I’ve been missing pure listening experiences; listening with out being distracted by the internet or scores or assignments. It was magical.
After the Brahms, the Beethoven seemed a little unnecessary, however Sida acquitted himself well, and the last movement that he performed ended with a twinkling, very difficult passage in the high register of the piano.
Broken Bells
My music listening habits have greatly changed in the last couple of years. I last blogged about it almost one year ago to the day. At the time, I was expressing frustration with the internet culture that values acquisition over appreciation, and consensus over quality. Although I didn’t know it then, I was expressing the same frustration that prompted Michelangelo Matos to form the Slow Listening Movement. We don’t agree on everything, for one, I am much more attached to the album as a form than he seems to be, but we seem to have the same root frustration, and are dealing with it in similar ways.
At the time that I wrote that post, I pretty much stopped paying attention to buzz bands/reading fare like Pitchfork, Stereogum, etc. Sometimes, this works against me; for example, I just got around to listening to the Cold War Kids’ set on KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic and was pretty blown away. But in the intervening year, there have been a few artists that I follow to the extent that I listen to whatever new promotional material or albums that they release. It’s a very short list: The National, LCD Soundsystem, maybe a couple others. And Brian Burton, AKA Danger Mouse.
Danger Mouse is one half of Broken Bells. The other half is James Mercer of The Shins. I don’t carry many preconceptions about Mercer, or The Shins. I’ve never seen Garden State, and although for a time “New Slang” was too omnipresent to miss completely, I’ve never heard any more of their music (though this is a good time to link to Steve Hayden’s essay on the decline of The Shins). I recognize the elements on Broken Bells that seem like they come from Danger Mouse, but I’m not sure what exactly Mercer is bringing to the album (except, obviously, singing).
Whatever the split is, I like it.
Broken Bells is Danger Mouse at his most pop-comfortable. With every project that I listen to that he’s involved in, I become more and more convinced that he’s one of the true pop geniuses of the world. Everything he does has a high-quality pop sheen, he’s great at structuring music around a hook, and he tastefully incorporates unusual music elements such that there is always something interesting to listen for while remaining part of a coherent whole. One of the things that I appreciate as a musician is that he’s a true master of the synthesizer: not using it as an easy tool for real-instrument samples but bringing out it’s voice to create lines and hooks that are only possible on a synth.
It’s a pretty relaxed record. There’s not much of Gnarls Barkley/Gorillaz-style craziness (a notable exception is the fantastic track “The Ghost Inside.”). Perhaps that relaxed, party/study/driving music vibe is James Mercer’s contribution. One of the most fascinating things about Danger Mouse’s production is the way that he adapts conventional music tropes into his futuristic pop sound. In Broken Bells, I hear a lot of conventions and rhythms from ’50’s rock and roll carefully hidden under the deceptively complex production.
Broken Bells is another fantastic collaboration from Danger Mouse, and great music to spend some time with.
Key Tracks: The High Road; The Ghost Inside; Trap Doors; October;
I just found out…
…that WordPress.com supports embedding Vimeo clips. Wow. That’s good news.
In honor of my discovery, here’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen:
Description of the project is here.
hammer & jack 