AM I MAKING ALL THE RIGHT MOVES?

Let me remind you that I am the king of R&B.
Jeffrey Lewis: Moving

Justice - Essential Mix

Linger & Quiet - Nightclubbing Mix (for a Portland club night with Mike Simonetti of Italians Do It Better)

The Washington Post's Emily Yoffe (and Fred Hiatt) have been scaring children.

Look for a Simian Mobile Disco review in the Village Voice this week (I think -- maybe next). Doesn't seem to be online yet. UPDATE: Here it is.


You never told me that you were anybody.
Vanessa Paradis: Be My Baby

MY DOUBLE THOUGHTS ARE CLEARER NOW THAT I AM SEEING DOUBLE

The string section's screaming like horses in a barn burnin' up.
Josh Ritter: Rumors (clip)

Got soap in my eyes yesterday. Stang like a pissed-off hornet. I half-remembered the reason pain probably hurts so much more when you're very young. It's because you're not old enough yet to know it won't last forever. Cue the waterworks! Now there's just a grimace and a few blinks, maybe a "fuck". Fuck. No more tears.

It's gonna be hard to believe if you know me today, but there was a time in college when I swore I didn't believe in love. Naw, man, it's just, like, a fantasy people make up to rationalize sex. Or, like, a brand the advertising firms and Hollywood sell us now that God is only friends with Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson. I just believed in John Lennon.

I count myself lucky to know one dear friend, in particular, who would not let my bullshit on this stand. He'd already loved and lost, hurt like hell, knew of what he spoke, and my words must've been salt in his wounds. Soap in his eyes.


You're free to push me, and I'm free to fall.
Chromatics: In the City

Of course, everything changed when I met a girl who could put up with me. Belief is funny like that. I'll never forget my friend saying, even early on, something like, "So, do you still not believe in love?" Haw haw.

Now I'm getting married in, OMG, about three weeks. Love is real, and there's no way I deserve it more than this guy. I don't want to get exploitative here and go into too much detail, but: I'm sorry, man. Bro grabs.


The worst crime that I ever did was play some rock 'n' roll.
Bird Names: Damnation

The New York Times' Patrick Healy can eat squirrel poop. (Irish! Good man, Chris Matthews would say.)

The Washington Post's Alan Ehrenhalt can eat Healy's squirrel-poop poop.

My Spin review of Swizz Beatz. (Better than squirrel poop!)

THE CREME OF THE DE LA CREME

Sorrow at the thought of man's mortality accompanied by a fugitive sense that the moment is immortal.
The Professor Brothers: Fliff Night, Part 1

Totally by accident, I ended up becoming the wrong kind of R. Kelly fan. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only guy who, when I was young and irresponsible, held a (young and irresponsible) negative opinion of Chicago's self-proclaimed "King of R&B." Like a good product of demographic marketing, I preferred the Smashing Pumpkins' Batman and Robin song to Kelly's "Gotham City"; I probably still do. I'd mostly stopped listening to Michael Jackson after "Black or White", so I never spent much time with his Kelly-penned No. 1 "You Are Not Alone". But even though I can see why those songs were hits-- just as I can see why Kelly collaborator Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" was a hit-- I still don't much want to hear them. If Kelly's 1993 debut, 12 Play, had come out a few months earlier, I might have played it between my (in retrospect for an 11-year-old in the Sierra Nevada foothills kinda strange) tapes by horny loverboys Silk, H-Town, and Jodeci. Instead I discovered the alternative rock radio station.

Perhaps like many of you, I was utterly blown away in 2003 by Kelly's "Ignition (Remix)", which remains one of my favorite recordings of the, um, 21st century. Unlike the following summers' hip-hop/indie crossover hits, Outkast's "Hey Ya" or Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy", I can still listen to "Ignition" even though I played the hell out of it. I didn't go nuts for what I heard of Happy People/U Saved Me, but I loved loved loved TP.3 Reloaded-era B-side "In the Kitchen (Remix)" (in retrospect a sign of the weird scenes to come inside the Kelly gold mine). I enjoyed the silly "Trapped in the Closet" saga with everybody else, even if my thoughts about it were complicated. Johnny Rotten: "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?"

This year, I've found myself astounded again and again by Kelly's many inspired guest appearances. At their best, Kelly's cameos rival those of famed scene-stealers Ludacris and, more recently, Andre 3000. Kelly, whose own songs often feature rappers like Snoop Dogg or T.I., has used his string of guest appearances as if he were one, too-- showing up the actual emcees on Young Jeezy's "Go Getta" or Fat Joe's "Make It Rain (Remix)", and hyping his larger-than-life persona. On Swizz Beatz' "It's Me Bitches (Remix)", Kelly even vanquishes the shit-hot Lil' Wayne. Pitchfork's Dave Maher once suggested to me that perhaps an outsize character like Kelly or Dre feels more natural being weird in these one-offs than over the course of a full-length album, where those eccentricities can pile up until both dudes seem all too human. Makes sense: The only Kelly guest spot I've heard this year that underwhelmed was on Twista's unfortunate Mims parody, "This Is Why I'm Cold".


We mustn't misunderstand on purpose.
Fanfarlo: You're One of the Few Outsiders Who Really Understands Us

So what's the problem here, you ask? Forgive me, Boss Schreiber, for I might not be as different as every hipster-basher imagines himself or herself to be from these douchebags. In a highly perceptive Pitchfork review, Ryan Dombal defines R. Kelly's current persona as "Singing Comedian," citing ridiculous concert footage and viewing the album as an attempt by the singer to spoof himself better than Dave Chappelle or Weird Al. In an equally great read at the Baltimore City Paper, fellow Pitchfork writer Jess Harvell takes aim at the kind of people who actually enjoy Kelly in this guise, i.e., "rubberneckers who couldn't have cared less about the lung-busting slow jams and ballads that were his bread and butter in the '90s." Ouch. Harvell also quotes the Mountain Goats' John Darnielle-- the singer-songwriter who just happened to write my favorite piece of "Ignition (Remix)" criticism-- giving the Kelly-as-comedian angle its inevitable racial twist: "I oppose the critical Buckwheatification of R. Kelly..."

The problem is that on one level they're right. Dombal correctly dings Double Up for occasionally being not very good as comedy and for lacking more pop songs as re-playable as "I'm a Flirt (Remix)" and "Hook It Up". Harvell mostly agrees about the album's flaws, and he's right that people looking to enjoy Kelly by laughing at his (to them) unintentional hilarity are missing out. To Darnielle's point: If there are white people who like a black artist only because they think he's missing his own jokes, that's pretty shitty. (Then again, Wesley Willis was awesome. Moral complexities are complex.)

On another level, they're talking about... people like me, fuck! Except I'm sure Kelly is well aware of how funny he is; anybody who has watched past the first few "Trapped in the Closet" videos would have to be able to see that. While I agree that Kelly's latest album is a disappointment and that many indie-oriented listeners might not be getting all they could out of his music, I'm not nearly as opposed as Harvell or Darnielle are to Kelly-as-comedian per se. Couldn't we just as easily imagine that, rather than white hipsters being even dumber than everybody (especially white hipsters) already thinks they are, maybe instead R. Kelly is actually even smarter than we give him credit for? (There, now you've got me ending sentences in prepositions!)

Your memories become fantasies if they are not shared, and your life in all its triviality becomes a legend.
Cousin Cole: Party Like a Rock Star (Remix) (also, here) (Dombal has this too)

I'd like to be more familiar with Kelly's '90s catalogue. But when people who are bigger Kelly fans than I am tell me why that stuff was great, it's invariably for the same reasons you might say, I dunno, Japanese automakers are great. Harvell again: "One question you'd hope those who appreciate music for its camp or ironic qualities--or fans of 'outsider art'--occasionally ask themselves is at what point appreciating an artist more for their musical and personal eccentricities than for their craft becomes an insult." We should be enjoying Kelly's songs, it seems, for their "craft" and "formal excellence". Certainly not because they're funny. By that standard, though I'm pretty sure Jess wouldn't go this far, Kelly's more recent escapades-- "Sex Planet", "Real Talk", or even "Trapped in the Closet"-- are an insult to his own talent. Plus, nobody's even discussing R. Kelly TV yet.

What if Kelly's talent is bigger than all that? Part of his genius, from where I sit, is an ability to win the love of different audiences for entirely different reasons. There are people who listen to "Bump N Grind" ironically, and there are (were?) people who listened to it unironically. There are people who listened to R. Kelly's No. 1 collaboration with Celine Dion and found it inspirational, and there are people who didn't listen to it. There are people who want to hear him sing about the tragedies of our time, Hurricane Katrina or the Virginia Tech shootings, and there are people who want to laugh at his jokes.

A true entertainer, Kelly delivers to all of these audiences and more. Another thing: Smart people have pointed out the sublime craft of some of Kelly's early songs, such as "The World's Greatest", and helped me hear them in new light. But craft isn't the end-all, be-all, of course, or else we'd only listen to Brill Building songwriters or, like, Randy Newman. In a Rolling Stone review of Newman's 1977 Little Criminals, Greil Marcus once spoke of "craft without vision." The implication: Some things (vision, apparently) are more important than craft. In other words, there can be defensible reasons-- try wit, humor, verve, or at least one of the threadbare synonyms for catchiness-- why I might enjoy "Ignition (Remix)" or "I'm a Flirt (Remix)" or, fuck, "Make It Rain (Remix)" more than I do Kelly's biggest ballads. So I'm not an asshole. Am I?

One of my favorite bands in the entire world is London's Art Brut, who have another great album coming out this year, It's a Bit Complicated. These guys strip me of my critical pretensions and reduce me to a gibbering, incoherent fan-- in the end, the funnest thing for a critic to be. Many people like to call them "ironic." Other people, myself included, insist singer Eddie Argos (who also writes a sharp blog for the Guardian) is being completely sincere. The catch: Art Brut can be both at the same time; they may truly be as stupidly excited about having "Formed a Band" as they sound, but they know how clever it is to sing a song about it, too. I contend that this ability to be (or seem) ironic without being insincere, more than any sonic similarities, is what Argos has in common with the Modern Lovers' Jonathan Richman.

By the time I heard Double Up's "Having a Baby", in which Kelly sings about childbirth both 100% banally and 100% hilariously, I realized that Kelly might be a second heir to the legacy of Richman songs like "Pablo Picasso", "Government Center", or the acoustic pop that got the ex-Modern Lover into There's Something About Mary-- songs where Richman's voice sounds totally heartfelt, but still somehow leaves you feeling as if you're in on (or missing) a secret joke. "In nine months a child will be born/ Baby you're pregnant in April, which means we're having a Capricorn," Kelly deadpans, and/or sings straight. On Modern Lovers' "I'm Straight", doesn't Richman sound at least a little, um, stoned?

Maybe I'm the wrong kind of Jonathan Richman fan. Bro grabs.

When y'all get 80, 70, 60, 55 years old, Michiko Kakutani gonna be sittin' in a rockin' chair by herself.
Twa Toots: Please Don't Play 'A Rainy Night in Georgia' (via Skatterbrain)

THE CHAMP IS HERE

Justify all your phases.
Indeep: Last Night a DJ Saved My Life

The "Draft Alan Keyes" movement is totally on. From a right-wing mailing list to which I happen to subscribe:

Dear Friends of Alan Keyes,

Several times a week, we at RenewAmerica receive messages from moral conservatives and concerned citizens encouraging Alan Keyes to run for president in 2008 (messages we pass on to him).

Typically, these messages express dissatisfaction with the current field of candidates and ask Alan to enter the Republican primaries--the most wide-open presidential race in 60 years...

In response to these expressions of confidence in Alan, we've launched a new website--AlanKeyes.com--to rally support for Alan's possible candidacy.

Alan believes that the American people are the key to restoring and sustaining a renewal of the values that are essential to the future of our nation. He has therefore assured us that if enough grassroots support exists for him to run, he is prepared to run.

The bold and italics are both theirs. Music fans may remember Alan Keyes (who unsuccessfully ran against Barack Obama in his 2004 Senate bid) as the 2000 Republican presidential candidate who dove into a mosh pit at a Rage Against the Machine show. An even more conservative candidate, Gary Bauer, later criticized Keyes for supporting an "anti-family" and "pro-terrorist" band called "The Machine Rages On."

Good news for David Broder, would-be Xgau of all political pundits, who won't have to be bored anymore. But bad news, too, because the good Dean might have to wake up from his long multi-decade nap.

Plus: Wingnuts react!

ONE FOREVER AT A TIME

I'm in the building like the audience.
UGK: International Player's Anthem (feat. Outkast) [cross-posted from Pitchfork]

Tom Breihan puts it best: ""This is going to look ridiculous, especially if Bridget's reading this, but I've been engaged for a little more than a year now, and in that time no piece of pop-culture ephemera has made me more excited to be getting married than this video. Even if Pimp C is almost certainly not showing up to my wedding in a giant white fur hat, this thing looks like a whole lot of fun."

And the kids say there's no summer banger.

P.S. My Dan Deacon review in SPIN.

IT'S WEIRD THAT CHAIRS EVEN EXIST WHEN YOU'RE NOT SITTING IN THEM

Just for the record, "nonplussed" doesn't mean "not impressed."
Kermit the Frog: The Rainbow Connection

In an e-mail, a smart acquaintance recently likened modern politics to independent rock's big grunge payday. The Democratic party is an embarrassingly wimpy, centrist organization, the friend says; he's an indie dude who came up in the 1990s, so there's no use talking about "participating to change it from within." Seeing as we were probably in agreement about our ideals if not our politics, I decided it would be better to post my thoughts here than to shoot back an annoying e-mail. No point debating someone with whom you already pretty much agree, after all.

There are plenty of ways the parallel makes perfect sense. Obviously, yes, on an individual level a deep-pocketed political organization funded by interest groups will be nearly as hard for one person to change as one of the humongoid, incomprehensibly stupid major record labels. More importantly, though, in both cases good-hearted people shoot themselves in the fucking foot.

Indie rock is defined by its "independence", so its fans are reflexively contrarian, notoriously backlash-prone. Liberals can be the same way. Where part of the point of American Idol is that everyone (even indie-rock fans) watches it, and Republicans have been only too glad to line up behind the wealthiest village idiot, indie-rock fans volubly dismiss later albums by their favorite bands, and liberal politicans and pundits make it a point of pride to shore up their nonpartisan cred-- which for Joe Lieberman (and the previous editorship at The New Republic) essentially means becoming a Republican. For many individuals, and certainly hotshot center-left columnists like Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd, this independence means sighing, "A pox on both houses." In 2000 it meant Ralph Nader. And John McCain.


Also, the whole "comprises" the parts. A band is not "comprised of" anything.
The Crayon Fields: Do It Right/Helicopters (live)

I guess I'd kind of unwittingly assumed everyone else had the same epiphany as I did during the post-9/11 phase of the Bush Administration: Sometimes, it's OK to take sides, because one side's actions are clearly hurting people. It's less "lesser of two evils" than "the perfect is the enemy of the good." I forget that for people whose first election wasn't Bush v. Gore, particularly those who reached political maturity when the post-Nirvana sweepstakes was laying waste to independent scenes, this road to Damascus might be less evident. And for good reason, too.

Here's the thing. I write all the time about both politics and music on this blog, and I've clearly devoted my career to the latter over the former, but what's at stake in these issues is, I'm sorry, a whole lot more important than the loss of some really great bands. The analogy includes a flawed assumption; democracy isn't the same as business (apologies to Larry Kudlow). Kids in schools, old people who need medicine, families in whatever countries some chickenhawk wants to bomb, young women who aren't ready for a baby, gay couples who want basic civil rights, working folks who deserve a basic living wage, etc., etc., are all affected by who is in charge in the White House. It hasn't been particularly cool to care about these things in my lifetime, but it's true.


I know a place where diamonds never fade away.
Fabolous: Make Me Better (feat. Ne-Yo, produced by Timbaland)

And stuff won't magically improve when Bush leaves office. The next generation of Republican presidential candidates is even worse, writes Newsweek International editor Fareed Zakaria (via Brad DeLong). The race for the nomination has turned into "an exercise in chest-thumping," according to Zakaria. "The competition to be the tough guy is producing new policy ideas ... that range from bad to insane," he opines.

Typical, naturally, of the conflicted indie/left relationship with both politics and commerce is the Arcade Fire. Like John Mayer, the Montreal indie-rockers make lots of allusions to politics on their newest record without ever coming down conclusively on a side; they "don't want to live in America no more," but they're not so much participating in a debate as opting out of one. Artistically defensible, of course, but if extended to a personal level fairly selfish, given the way democracy works (i.e., not like a major label -- i.e., what separates democracy from other forms of government is people voting, even occasionally for a turd sandwich).

Neon Bible benefits from major distribution and boasted a marketing campaign so good it was ripped off by R. Kelly. But the Fire have it both ways (neither way) on this, too: "Marketing campaign?" Win Butler laughs when asked about it in a Pitchfork interview, prompting Amanda Petrusich to seek a different phrase. The band debates even doing publicity at all, according to Rolling Stone, which quotes multi-instrumentalist Richard Reed Perry: "We're trying to navigate a culture where people manufacture a lot of garbage. The goal is not to sell the most records or be the most famous. I think everybody in our band thinks we're trying to do something that's real and has some lasting value to it."

...OK, I'm basically just jealous of Win's recent sinus surgery. Like I said, my friend and I were probably pretty much in agreement to start with. Pass the Claritin-D.


It's a clumsy image but it encapsulates the playfulness of that record and its blend of sexuality and emotionally stunted yet self-aware infantilism.
Billy Bragg: Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards (via Steve Gozdecki)