RUDY GIULIANI IS THE ANTICHRIST

Snarky asides help to pay my bills.
The Tough Alliance: Silly Crimes

"Technological change is always a Faustian bargain," the late media theorist Neil Postman often said. For example, the automobile gave us the freedom to travel long distances quickly and independently, but it devastated urban downtowns and created sprawling exurban megalopolises (and robbed us of our legal prerogative to get good and soused). Shit, many people far wiser than I am have already observed how the Internet has not only democratized indie-rock fandom but also diminished its intensity; instead of handmade zines and brick-and-mortar stores, we have right clicks. Groovy.

More subtly, the online medium has also changed how we connect with our favorite bands. Web 2.0 hype aside, "interactive" doesn't necessarily mean a higher level of interaction. You've read this trend piece: To have an opinion on a band, all you need is facility with a search engine. To remove them entirely from your lives, just hit shift-delete. To be a fan...?

Hey guys, there's this Atlanta band called Deerhunter I really dig. Yeah like the movie. No, totally, pick up their CD! Buy that shit from my Amazon link! Instead of limiting themselves to the current (possibly doomed) model of "I make music, and you take it all from me for free and then shit on my memory when the next Joanna Newsom comes along," Deerhunter kinda let fans take their fandom to the next level. No, not like the prom.

Back when Blur were the most important thing in the world (who's going to take over the world when I die?), when I was in high school, I used to go into random record stores with import sections and look for their B-sides. This was before I was plugged into the music discourse that tells it's totally normal for sweaty, peach-fuzzed weirdos all over the country, THE WORLD EVEN, to look for B-sides in record-store import sections. And do you know what I would do? Why, sometimes I would even buy Blur import CD singles without previously hearing any of the B-sides!


I wanted to be an acquired taste.
Echo and the Bunnymen: Show of Strength (h/t: Dennis Cooper)

Maybe it's my blurred perspective as a critic, but it's hard to remember the last time I paid money for new music I didn't already know, from advance listening, I would like. Except, not. Deerhunter are one band that allows fans to return to the aforementioned pre-blogsearch (eff Technorati) fan scenario: People taking a financial risk on a band they like and getting to keep something to remind them of it (to put it crassly). Yeah, I suppose I could sell or throw away my Blur B-sides, but why would I? That would be like throwing away my 1981 Topps Joe Montana rookie card! Steve Albini has a bigger penis than I do!

Most famously, Deerhunter made their "Whirlyball" 7" available at only one store, as Pitchfork's twice-indefatigable Paul Thompson reported. A single, by a popular Internet band, that nobody on the Internet can get. I even have family in Atlanta, and I still haven't heard it (shut up, I don't have a family). So what if it might suck? Plenty of Blur B-sides did, too, though enough were golden to make the quest worthwhile.

More than that, Deerhunter frontman Bradford Cox also has a solo project, Atlas Sound. Now, Deerhunter might be enough for most people, but any great band is also going to have some crazy fans who want to hear even more, so this is perfect. From MySpace listens, Cox's forthcoming Atlas Sound album is gonna be pretty sweet. But he also drops all kinds of 12"s and shit for total fanatics, like this split 12" with Mexcellent on Hoss Records, Fractal Trax. As with my Blur B-sides, once you own something like that, you've made an investment in an artist; you probably still won't like everything they do, but you won't abandon them for the next Zach Braff panty-dropper that gets seven and a half riffs from AllMachineStylusStone. You've interacted.

I finally got Fractal Trax in the mail yesterday. I ordered it with real money, but there was a press release in the box. Is that a standard thing these days? Apparently it's all Cox in his bedroom on four-track tape, playing guitars, percussion, and electric bass, plus manipulating tape. First track is "Axis I (F. Grey)", which perhaps unsurprisingly sounds like an outtake version of the title track to Deerhunter's Fluorescent Grey EP (kind of an inscrutable Excepter-ment to it, too); Cox's familiar vocal delay effects are everywhere, so I still can't tell what he's saying on the song's refrain. "Axis II" slips into some homemade beats akin to the outro of "Strawberry Fields" or that Sebadoh song that rips off the outro of "Strawberry Fields", with a heavy bass groove. I forget "Inhalents" right now, but then fourth track "'I Know, I Know'" seems to pick up the "was not seen again" melody of Cryptograms' "Heatherwood". A helium Battles/Dan Deacon voice goes, "I've seen where you and me part," and then Cox is all, "I know decay could swallow me," and "All your base are belong to us," and, like, Ian Curtis shit, man man.

You can't hear any of it online.

Maybe the RIAA should revert to vinyl.

I prefer my urinals to have dividers, thanks.


Thinking about what a friend had said, I was hoping it was a lie.
Frank Black: I Heard Ramona Sing (live, solo acoustic, 1993)

UPDATE: Yes! It's poppin'.

UPDATE UPDATE: Thnx to the also-indefatigable Brandon Stosuy, you actually can hear one track online. Once again, technology makes me look stupid.