I'M ON MY WAY TO THE BANK LMAO

I say confusion is next to happiness.
DAF: Der Mussolini

Burning question in indiepop land is Who the hell do Los Campesinos! think they are? when it should be At what point do we vanish up our own trapper keepers? Not even talking about asymmetrical haircuts! Or exclamation points!!!

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Good taste is the residue of someone else's privilege.
Los Campesinos!: International Tweexcore Underground (cross-posted from Pitchfork)

On their new single, Los Campesinos! name-drop (in order): Black Flag's Henry Rollins, Heavenly/Talulah Gosh's Amelia Fletcher, Minor Threat/Fugazi's Ian MacKaye, Beat Happening/K Records' Calvin Johnson, and Sarah Records. These mentions come in the form of "I never cared about..." or "...never meant anything to me." With last week's release of the video, the lyrics about Sarah, Amelia, and Calvin caused a bit of concern over on an indiepop list where I lurk, and frankly I was a bit taken aback at first as well.

Fortunately, Dave Maher was more diligent in his fact-gathering than I was and dug up a bulletin from the band's MySpace. In their own, disappointingly exclamation-point-free words, the song "is a story of a friendship of two opposites and how they are in the best band in the world, one embracing things that are, shall we say (and you would almost definitely say) 'twee' (yuck) and the other embracing music that is...not so." OK, cool. Parentheses are the new etc.

A little more surprising were comments out there to the effect that "International Tweexcore Underground" was big-budget, would make Los Campesinos! massive radio stars, was MTV-ready, etc. etc. (etc.) I mean for our purposes the budget probably isn't bad, and the video is polished enough for MTV, but MOST PEOPLE DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY'RE SINGING ABOUT. Do they?


What's the meaning of life anything you like.
Shocking Pinks: End of the World (again lazily cross-posted from Pitchfork)

Most people don't know what I'm talking about. Most people don't know what Art Brut are singing about, or Tullycraft, or LCD Soundsystem at least until Jams Murphy started wanting to be with his friends again. Los Campesinos! songs like "You! Me! Dancing!" or Fall Out Boy-sized potential smash "Sweet Dreams, Sweet Cheeks" could imaginably, with proper production, hit home for a broader audience that doesn't spend all its time yet STEALING MUSIC OH NOES.

But "International Tweexcore Underground"?

Oh, it's a really good song, precise and well-crafted and kinda funny once we're in on the joke. What I'm wondering, I guess, is whether we're headed for (or have already arrived at) pop music that only works if you're part of a relatively small group of obsessives, either at a mainstream level-- even knowing what's a hit takes more effort now-- or "underground". Tom Breihan has mused before about how niche-oriented pop is now, and I've probably mentioned how I see the Internet as exacerbating all that, each of us seeking out content that reconfirms the importance of our own narrow interests, like the difference between cable and network TV but on a vastly more personalized level. As MTV circles the drain, a big enough cult and whatever major distribution Arts & Crafts presumably enjoys might be enough to give a Pavement-loving band of clean-looking Welsh kids a hit video, who knows, why not, just beat it.


Don't take five (take what you want)
R. Kelly: "Same Girl (Remix)" (ft. T-Pain and Usher)

I USED TO SAY DUMB THINGS I GUESS I STILL DO

It was a disappointing sunset, only 'cause my hopes were much too high.
Harpo: Movie Star

Via Greil Marcus (again) via Simon Frith's Sound Effects via Roland Barthes: I wonder if part of what attracts me to Jens Lekman's wonderful Night Falls Over Kortedala (9.0 from this schmuck) is the sense of what Barthes called signifiance (not a typo). As Marcus puts it:

"Barthes argued that the thrill of music is not a result of one's consious or subliminal response to 'significance' (the rendering of an important idea, emotion, moment in time, or whatever -- think of how you've tried to make sense of your response to 'Like a Rolling Stone' or 'Gimmie Shelter'); rather, the thrill comes from one's response to signifiance. This odd and intriguing word has baffled Barthe's translators (some, as if to say the hell with it, have rendered it as'significance'), but Frith handles the word best: signifiance refers not to a sign but to 'the work of signification'-- not to meaning, but to 'the making of meanings'. We do not respond to symbols (doom in the dark chords and apocalyptic lyrics of 'Gimmie Shelter,' escape and release in the rising choruses of 'Like a Rolling Stone'), though we seize on such symbols and connect them to historical events or personal situations in order to explain our response; we respond to symbol creation."

Marcus/Frith go on to hold up Elvis Presley as the prime example; who the hell knows what he stood for, but sure as Memphis sits on the mighty Mississippi, Elvis stood for something: standing for something.


If we all decide that there are five pints in a quart, that's objectively true. (And a bargain!)
Jens Lekman: Interview in Paris

So if Elvis stood for signifiance, then maybe Lekman's album stands for the possibility that we can be in control of the process-- that we can make our own symbols, just as he shores these pop fragments against our 21st-century cultural ruins. I don't really have this all pinned down yet. See in the above interview (posted yesterday) how Lekman sort of makes a similar point to the one in my review-- he says the wealth of unedited music on the Web allows us all to edit out our own favorite tracks, decide for ourselves which matter, create our own Jens Lekmans and have them, Whopper-like, our way.

Side note: I love how on "Shirin", he sings, "I won't tell anyone," just as he is telling, um, everyone.

Something capable of revealing that point of access which provides a shortcut to the magical realm behind this spectacle.
Mainly Spaniards: That's What Friends Are For

Here's something worth getting political about. In Vanity Fair, Evgenia Peretz goes on at length about what the indefatigable Bob Somerby calls the press corps' two-year "War Against Gore": the one where the brightest, best-paid pundits at The New York Times, Washington Post, NBC, and MSNBC-- not just FOX or crazy right-wingers-- falsely convinced you that Al Gore said he'd invented the Internet, claimed he personally discovered the infamous Love Canal toxic-waste site, invented that he and Tipper were the inspiration for the novel "Love Story" (the author has said they were), changed into "earth tones" at the behest of Naomi Wolf (Wolf has denied this, the original reports were based on speculation by disgraced former Clinton aide Dick Morris, and besides, who doesn't occasionally wear "earth tones"?), etc. etc. etc.

A sample of the kind of misconduct which, in any other profession, would get someone fired or possibly sued:

"MSNBC anchor Brian Williams went after Gore's clothes at least five times in one week. 'Here is a guy taking off his suits.… This is the casual sweater look—what's going on here?' … 'He would have been in a suit a month ago.' … 'He's wearing these polo shirts that don't always look natural on him.' Williams's frequent guest Newsweek's Howard Fineman later chimed in: 'I covered his last presidential campaign, in 1988. One day he was in the conservative blue suit, the next he was playing lumberjack at the V.F.W. hall in New Hampshire.'

"And Gore just kept going on about issues. Alluding to five speeches he made in two months on education, crime, the economy, faith-based organizations, and cancer research, [the Times's Katherine] Seelye wrote, 'Mr. Gore becomes almost indignant when asked if his avalanche of positions might overwhelm voters.' The Washington Post's David Broder later found Gore too focused in his convention speech on what he'd do as president. 'But, my, how he went on about what he wants to do as president,' wrote Broder. 'I almost nodded off.' As for the environment, while Gore was persuaded by his consultants not to talk about it as much as he would have liked, whenever he did, many in the media ignored it or treated it as comedy. Dowd wrote in one column that 'Al Gore is so feminized and diversified and ecologically correct, he's practically lactating.' In another, referring to his consideration of putting a Webcam in the Oval Office, she wrote, 'I have zero desire to see President Gore round the clock, putting comely interns to sleep with charts and lectures on gaseous reduction.'

"The trivial continued to dominate during the postmortem following Gore and Bush's first debate, on October 3, 2000. The television media were sure Gore won—at first. But then Republican operatives promptly spliced together a reel of Gore sighing, which was then sent to right-wing radio outlets. Eighteen hours later, the pundits could talk of little else. 'They could hear you audibly sighing or sounding exasperated as Governor Bush was answering questions,' Katie Couric scolded him the next day on the Today show. 'Do you think that's presidential behavior?' For the Times's Frank Bruni, the sighs weren't as galling as Gore's familiarity with the names of foreign leaders. 'It was not enough for Vice President Al Gore to venture a crisp pronunciation of Milosevic, as in Slobodan,' he wrote. 'Mr. Gore had to go a step further, volunteering the name of Mr. Milosevic's challenger Vojislav Kostunica.'"


These people are still among the most prominent, highest-paid people in my profession. They are responsible for George W. Bush. They are responsible for the Iraq war. They do not care about you. And they will not do their jobs (John Edwards has fancy haircuts! Rudy Giuliani is Mayor of America! Fred Thompson is hung like a mule!) unless we stand up to them.


Final thought: If anyone knows where to find the "dub" version of Shai's "If I Ever Fall in Love" that Diplo uses on this insanely awesome mix, please, for the love of Christ, hook a writer up.

I SWEAR THAT I CAN SEE FOREVER IN YOUR EYES

I'll take the subway to your suburb sometime.
Super Furry Animals: Hometown Unicorn

Taking a cue from Ned Raggett, I thought I'd atone for my recent silence (here anyway -- lots of me over at Pitchfork in recent days) with a look through the archives. I've written plenty of horrible but possibly interesting stuff, plus some other things that hopefully don't suck too much.

- Ben Folds: Songs for Silverman review, Pitchfork
I'm still getting called out for this one. I don't think it was that bad if you're part of the (admittedly small) audience that knows what "OTM" means, though I do wish I'd made it clearer how much I love and respect Folds' earlier work.

- The Boy Least Likely To: The Best Party Ever review, Pitchfork
My first Best New Music. If you throw a light on something magical, it doesn't have to disappear.

- Bees: Free the Bees review, Pitchfork
During my five-review trial period, I wrote this concept review about concept reviews. Somehow I was not fired. Somehow the site still exists.

- Joan of Arc: Presents: Guitar Duets review, Pitchfork
No wait, here's a concept review about concept reviews. Sheesh.

- Hercules: In the Alleyway review, Pitchfork
Terribly written, and the reference points I use could be refined a lot further, but this is one of the first records I really got behind for Pitchfork. It's still one that people would do well to check out.

- Depeche Mode: Remixes 81-04 review, Pitchfork
Far and away the most embarrassing thing I've written for Pitchfork. I didn't enjoy spending a weekend listening to this Depeche Mode remix double-album, and maybe I still wouldn't, but I'm not sure how you'd read this review and not come away with the impression that my problem with the album was largely my own ignorance.

- The Streets: A Grand Don't Come for Free review, PopMatters
OK, so it's a bit juvenile in retrospect, but I still credit this review for getting me in the door at Pitchfork.

- "Elliott Smith: A Fond Farewell" essay, PopMatters
I like Elliott Smith.

- "Failure Is Victory" post, Whopundit
I dug up here and in other posts an extensive listing of instances where Administration officials said that things turning shitty in Iraq was really a sign that things were turning awesome. Obviously, I was wrong and George W. Bush has been proved right by history, which is why all the major print and TV pundits not named Paul Krugman are people who were still pro-war even at the time I was writing this.

- "Sbarro Opens to Hungry Mouths, Excitement" quote in the Daily Northwestern
I convinced a well-meaning Daily reporter to rush into print a rave review that could potentially damage my credibility. I was, of course, joking.


This has of course nothing to do with anything.
Deerhunter: Fluorescent Grey (live at South Street Seaport)

So that's that for now. Some stuff is better left in the archives-- and will stay there until John Mayer and Kanye West meld into some kind of unassailable Super Frat Boy, laying waste to every lowly music scribe in his/their media-blitzing path and, if I get to the Emerald City before midnight, bestowing upon me both heat vision and the power to erase memory. (Kevin Spacey is the killer.)

P.S. Rap blogger Byron Crawford: Heroic, Lou Dobbs-esque warrior against "political correctness"... or a guy who gets really excited about Tucker Carlson's pee-pee and any chance to talk shit about gay people? Seriously, this is the political issue Crawford thinks is worth taking a break from music to blog about? A debate from last week about whether or not some spoiled preppy who only has his millions-paying job because of his daddy deserves to get publicly castigated for acting like a spoiled preppy?