You Should Read This

recordreviews.org contributor Dmitri jr. has a very compelling rant about a recent
Sasha Frere-Jones piece in the New Yorker up at his other home, barber-college.org.

Frere-Jones says indie rock is racist, Dmitri jr. says bite me.

Good stuff. Please to enjoy.

Pitchfork Festival
Chicago July 13, July 15

editor's note: Thanks to Dmitri jr. for making the long trek from his day job with "the company" "regulatin' imports" across the Laotian/Burmese border to journey to Windy City and brave the public transit, hipsters and heat to cover the Pitchfork Festivities.

I wasn’t roaming Union Park all weekend scoping every band and scribbling down setlists. I’m not really capable of the maximum attention that Pitchfork Media preaches. I skipped Saturday and didn’t sweat snagging an elephant ear during acts I didn’t know.

Friday was ATP’s “Don’t Look Back” night and saw three acts playing their “classic album” in its entirety. The Ashland 9X bus was running slow, but we walked through the gate right as Slint hit the first notes of “Breadcrumb Trail.” Spiderland is an acquired taste. As good as certain moments sounded, it just wasn’t made for an outdoor venue. Moreover you have a defunct band, under-rehearsed, trying to pull off giant dynamic swings and extend spoken word monologues over a chatty just-arrived crowd. Add a so-so PA, and you weren’t quite sure if the band was tuning up or playing. For the devoted in the first 50 feet, it seemed to all come together, but we opted to go have a look around the rest of the park.

GZA tore on stage for his fierce run through Liquid Swords. But by “Cold War,” he was leaning on his pose, including Cappadonna, to cover rhymes. Genius also wasted a lot of energy admonishing the hipsters for not being more animated and starting fights with his poor white rented DJ. I have no idea where the kid was from, but it was pretty clear he had never spun for a Wu affiliate before. GZA nicknamed him “Shitty” and Cappa almost took a swing at him when he dropped a beat. Everything almost spun out of control, which is exactly what I hope for from a Wu-Tang set. GZA closed with a little “Shimmy Shimmy” for ODB.

Sonic Youth came up quickly (gotta love a festival where everybody starts on time). Daydream Nation has never been my record, but it sounded implausibly good considering Kim Gordon is two years younger than my mom. They were, at least for the evening, everything everybody always says they are, and their loose take on the record was full of more than enough power. I never knew drummer Steve Shelly was so good. It must have been a long time since I went to an outdoor concert, but I was unprepared for the people passing out right next to me, almost fights and comic hippie/meathead antics of the crowd. It didn’t really hurt my enjoyment any, but there was 50 or so people behind us chanting for Sonic Youth to turn it up. Thurston looked pissed. Touring bassist Mark Ibold of Pavement came out and did three songs with the group off “Rather Ripped” for an encore.

OK Saturday was Bastille Day and I don’t rock on Bastille Day. I sit around and contemplate Fraternity like my man, Krzysztof Kieślowski.

Sunday. Buses were running slow again. Guys next to me almost got in a fight. So I missed Dearhunter. Chicago’s own Ponys were on and they gamely played on through sound problems. The sax-fueled experimentalism of Portland’s Menomena went over well, but we didn’t listen to closely to local pop heroes Sea and Cake. We kicked back with a pack of dark Michigan Cherries from the Whole Foods tent and walked around the poster fair (fuck yeah, Aesthetic Apparatus).

Across the park, Brit Jamie Lidell was going on, but we moved into to a good spot to wait for Malkmus and watched Lidell’s one man soul machine on the big video screen. He was dressed like a gold lamé genie, so this is as good a time as any to talk about bad fashion. Now you see one or two guys in a vest without a shirt underneath and you let it go, but when douche after douche is walking around with a bandana neckerchief and a little bicycle racing cap, it wears on you. They weren’t all bike messengers and fake or real they were pissing me off.

OK so Stephen Malkmus was about to come on and play without his band the Jicks, but somebody set up a really small drum kit off to the side of the stage, but it didn’t seem to register with people. Steve came out in preppy pink and khakis, a fuck you to the homeless chic crowd. Right away he kicked into “Heaven is a Truck.” Now you might say no big deal, but SM has played Pavement songs at only three or four shows since breaking up the band in ’99. I was beside myself with glee. He played through a few more Pavement tracks, b-sides, and solo stuff. It was sloppy acoustic strumming, but you couldn’t have found a more forgiving crowd. Pavement’s hype man and second drummer Bobby Nastanovich came out to play “Trigger Cut” and “In the Mouth of a Dessert” off Slanted and Enchanted and everyone lost it. It wasn’t too impressive if you didn’t care, but I do and I was a happy bastard for the rest of the night. Bob took off, then came back with some gum for Steve and preformed a lovely ballet number for the closer, Wowee Zowee’s “We Dance.” Killer.

We opted to stay in our spot and watch Of Montreal on the big screen while we waited for New Pornographers. It might seem like a huge sacrifice to Elephant Six obsessives, but honestly it worked out fine. The setup at Pitchfork is pretty great, kinda hard to explain unless you look at a map, but we could hear and see much of the madness. You wouldn’t believe how many befuddled people were actually unable to take the costumes and props. “I like the music, but why is he wearing a leather thong?” I was completely won over by Kevin Barnes’ Bowie meets Flaming Lips meets Pulp routine.

New Pornographers were the day’s crowning moment. Not enough can be said for how everything, not the least of which was the sunset, came together for a heart stopping performance. While it was a little weird not to have Neko Case there considering we were in her backyard, but Kathryn Calder is now stellar in her own right. Tight, thumbing “why aren’t they huge” tune after tune, they band played loud. You might chalk it up to experience playing outdoor venues, but without a doubt they were the one act, save for maybe Sonic Youth, that I didn’t wish I was watching in a club and I think it was more the songs than the mix. Maybe Challengers has leaked more than I know, but I’ve never seen a crowd drool over new material like that. I’ve never seen white people clap along with such diligently. Carl Newman was a star.

Unfair for anybody to follow that, but when you’re De La Soul, you deal. The crowd was tired and sunburned, but Pos, Maseo and Trugoy wouldn’t settle for anything else than a party and they rallied the crowd out of indifference. But even when Prince Paul was brought on to DJ and trade a couple verses, you couldn’t help noticing people were starting to get exhausted; too much beer, too little sleep. Mase reminded the crowd no fewer than three times he was, “37 years old and still in the hip hop game,” and so we tried to wave our hands and keep ‘em up as he commanded. We finally had to shuffle out before it all ended and hop the train home.

-Dmitri jr.

Battles -- Mirrored

Do you know that James L. Brooks line? The one about "the Simpsons theme"?

No? OK, well some us couldn’t get a date in High School. Lay off.

Story goes that executives from FOX are standing around listening to music for the first episode of the Simpsons and no one likes Dan Elfman’s theme: no warm, memorable easy-to-sing-along-too words ala Cheers, a weird tempo that’s jaunty and sweeping at once—ratings poison, right? So they’re getting ready to ax it and in walks Brooks and he goes, "Oh my god! This is great. It’s like lemmings-marching-to-their-death music." And so they stick with it.

Underground electronica rockers Battles make lemmings-marching-to-their-death music. It’s not the dense, dour prog of black-clad Germans. It’s buoyant, dashing math rock for Xbox addicts and the pedal-obsessed space-rock faction of the Lollipop Guild.

Maybe that sounds terrible to you. Be warned, the potential annoyance factor here is pretty high. If the idea of Can or Tangerine Dream covering "the theme from the Smurfs" horrifies you more than it fascinates you (which admittedly it should), then this record might be "too hot for your chinchilla".

The vocals are all filtered yelps and keening nonsense—no actual words anyone seems able to pull out. They seem incidental and absurd until you get to the final moments of "Rainbow," when singer Tyondai Braxton finally sounds like a human, even if he still isn’t singing a single real word. It’s oddly touching, one of many little ghosts in the machine.

My passing, uninformed opinion of Bjork and the people who make music to rip-off and/or impress Bjork is they aren’t enjoying themselves these days, like they feel they’ve evolved past it. To quote an old SM t-shirt. "Fuck Art, Let’s Dance." If there’s a place on your hard drive for the crushing beauty of Sigur Ros or paranoid builds of Godspeed, You Black Emperor, then maybe there’s a spot for this record.

It’s experimental music that’s pulling listeners in, instead of shutting them out. Raymond Scott, the unsung genius of Warner Brothers cartoon soundtracks and an early electronic instrument pioneer, would be proud.

Rating: 3/5

-Dmitri Jr.

Wilco -- Sky Blue Sky.

Riding north along Lakeshore Dr. on the 146 express bus, wearing a fake cowboy shirt and listening to Sky Blue Sky, it’s easy to think of Jeff Tweedy’s legacy here in Chicago.

Over the course six albums, nine for you sticklers, Wilco has served as an unofficial urban cultural education program for the suburban kids that crowd into the city in regular batches. What’s alt-country except rural music for city folks and those who aspire to be? How many metropolitan relocations, let alone ill-advised beards and dulcimer purchases, did this band inspire?

Yankee Foxtrot Hotel didn’t actually come with brochures from the Cook County Chambers of Commerce, but god, with how sexy and daunting the Marina Towers look on the cover, who could settle for a condo outside St. Louis, Des Moines, St. Paul or the D? You could be living in a mutherfucking moon colony, making crazy future moon rock and using assassin as a verb.

Kids are still crowding into the Northside, but it’s hard to imagine Sky Blue Sky inspiring their pilgrimages. At best this record might sell a couple sailboats.

I’ll try to lay off the gentrification semiotics in a sec, but I will point out Lincoln Park, Lakeview, Bucktown and Uptown are full of more strollers than ever. Fewer people are moving (back) out to the burbs to start their families. They’re renovating duplexes into single-family homes. They’re tending lawns. They’re getting respectable and becoming their parents. Your scary, exciting city goes soft and your crazy moon rock turns to mellow mush.

It’s not worth ragging on Tweedy’s domestication or sobriety. Good for him right? But if your kid is already rocking harder than you (go Blisters), what’s left except to pick through Steely Dan and Christopher Cross records and 12 step your way through 12 songs about acceptance and patience.

The tracks are nice enough, uniformly beautiful and peaceful, but are you ready to sit still through them all? Sandwich something focused and fiery between "Either Way" and "I Hate It Here," and they’d be great moments. Personally I don’t need a record that won’t wake the baby. I don’t want to be reminded to breathe and wash the dishes.

P-Fork has been calling Wilco "dad rock" for awhile, but Sky is as much about becoming our dads as for them. Yeah, yeah we should be so lucky. Still Father’s Day is right around the corner: Are you buying this for somebody or is somebody buying it for you?

"Impossible Germany, Unlikely Japan," Jeff sings. Enemies become friends I think he means. I’m just not tucking my shirt in yet.

Rating: 2/5

-Dmitri jr.

Dinosaur Jr. -- Beyond

Why were Jeff Lebowski and Walter Sobchak friends?

Walter remarking he “once dabbled in pacifism,” presumably before he knew the Dude, leads me to believe they’re not childhood pals … but whatevs.You could spend all day equating The Big Lebowski to the Our Band Could Be Your Life mythology of Dinosaur Jr. Mascis = the inexplicable slacker/hippie leader of the group. Barlow = the emotional militant unable to let anything go. He converted to Judaism for a girl right after the second Folk Implosion album ... well, probably. Murph = Donnie.

Except straightedge J. was just as uptight as the pot-smoking Lou, who was too passive aggressive to ever flash a piece out on the lanes or bite off a nihilist’s ear. The dynamics are off.

But the same basic analogy can be stretched to fit Dinosaur’s sound.

So how did Hardcore get to be friends with Classic Rock? Seemingly they have lots in common (loud = Polish, guitars = bowling) and nothing in common (Frampton Comes Alive = Vietnam, The Port Huron Statement = CBGBs, Creedence = Creedence, more or less).

As much as anybody, Dinosaur Jr bridged the divide. Show me somebody else who pulled it all together before “You’re Living All Over Me.” Show me anything better than their live cover of “Just Like Heaven,” which I believe is the last thing the original line-up released and possibly the greatest three minutes of balanced power trio perfection ever.

What’s frustrating about “Beyond” is it should be aware the band was fueled by that tension of influences, rather than internal soap opera dynamics. But it’s not.

Although it’s getting strong reviews elsewhere (what do you know, people are sick of New Wave again), put aside proto-grunge nostalgia and this is record short on excitement.

It’s not just that the band is older. Their reborn live show captures plenty of their old raging tornado power, It’s still the loudest fucking thing you will ever hear. J.’s brilliantly detached solos are still phoned in from Saturn.

If it’s not that everybody now gets along or lack of talent, maybe it’s that after 20 years, treating Rock ’n’ Roll as a swirling, united whole is no longer novel and a band who sounded like everybody and nobody is now content trying to sound like Dinosaur Jr.

If you believe Azerrad, behind his cationic savant shell, J. Mascis is a pretty calculating fella'. He obviously still knows how to write a Dinosaur Jr song and can crank them out at will. Almost every track here could be retrofitted to the soundtracks of any number of Gen X “Big Chills."

Like Frank Black going into zombie mode for kids who won’t touch his solo records, the Dino men have a “give the people what they want” indifference that sours even the better stuff like "Almost Ready” and the heartbreaking “I Got Lost."

Still there’s plenty of foggy banality and going-nowhere wanking. Musically, it’s as if the Dude married Maude and took up Hinduism, and Walter reconciled with Cynthia and entered anger management. Mozal Tov, but who cares about middle-aged guys with their shit together?

Rating: 2/5

-Dmitri Jr.

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists -- Living With the Living

For reasons I only 70% understand, Living With the Living, the new album from Indie sloganeer Ted Leo takes me back to Full Moon Fever and a dozen other records I stole from Gorilla in middle school. It’s not the content so much as the temperament and execution: Half a dozen front loaded anthems, a few of which are impossibly great, and a padded second side of genre workouts, ballads and throwaways.

When you’re young, you’re willing to put up with “Zombie Zoo” because of the majesty “Running Down a Dream,” and I’m sure there are plenty of folks willing to deal with the obvious “Bomb. Repeat. Bomb.” and British hooligan ode “Bottle of Buckie” (a tin whistle solo?? the 13 year old me would have shit his pants) for the perfection of “Sons of Cain” and “Who Do You Love?” Despite knowing better, somehow I still like all those ridiculous tracks, but that’s as much about the astonishing affability of Tom and Teddy.

That’s why you can’t fault this record for its earnest, well-crafted filler (even when it pushes past the sixth minute). It’s like (if I may throw in another emotional, rather than sonic metaphor) cheering for your best friend’s terrible prog band—that five-string bass solo rules because your buddy rules. (See Sufjan’s musings on “friend rock” and/or the raves of his
last record.)

Flipping through the reviews of Living you get the idea people aren’t mad at Ted Leo for not self-editing, but maybe they’re sick of him being so reliable. “Consistent” is backhanded, passive-aggressive rock scribe code for “boring us.” Hence, admiring well-made records more than swooning over them.

And when this album draws that kind of pleasant indifference, it’s because Ted Leo is the archetypal "Reasonable Liberal."

Despite the consequences on his career, Ted Leo is a levelheaded, smart 30 something-guy's guy, who sits around wondering where the rude boys are, instead of going out and fucking shit up. He’s never gonna be banned from Holiday Inns and he’ll always offer you a vegan cookie, instead of slapping the burger out of your hand. He might occasionally slice his forehead open
on a mike stand, but he’s a polite enough punk not to bleed all over the first row.

In other words, he’s us—sensitive, well-meaning, if wimpy, former (and former wanna-be) punks trying to get through the world without blowing up any more dark-skinned foreigners than we have to.

Rating: 3/5

-Dmitri Jr.

The Stooges -- The Weirdness

Our man Bill McGraw points out in The Detroit Almanac, where once stood a big white farm house in which the Stooges lived, screwed and did mountains of drugs on the corner of Eisenhower and Packard in Ann Arbor, MI, there now sits a bank.

A LaSalle, I believe.

Now if you’re 15 and all angsted up, you might read all sorts of depressing insights into this: The commoditization of art, the temporariness of rebellion, the Man holding us down with his jackboot zoning laws.

But it’s just a bank. They hold on to your money and let you buy a house when you promise to pay them back. What the hell can you really have against a bank?

Iggy Pop doesn’t hate banks either. Sure they tore down his old pad, but he’s hardly the sentimental type. And he’s perfectly coolio with raking in (much-deserved) cash helping cruise lines hit that key junkie, male prostitute demographic. You assume a smart guy like Igg would be down with diversifying all his funds and shit.

Yet on the Stooges comeback, The Weirdness, Mr. Osterberg, out of seemingly misplaced obligation, lashes out at modern finical convenience with a track called “ATM.”

Laying into automated teller machines is idiotic. Despite all his efforts over the years, we know Iggy Pop is not an idiot. Still he’s compelled to keep pretending here, hoping to recapture a bit of the glorious gold-sparkled stupidity of his less gnarled youth.

On Weirdness Iggy hits a whole series of “compulsory” topics. Druggy sex song? "Trollin"; War song? “My Idea of Fun”; Fuck American society at large song? "Free and Freaky"; Condemning greedy awful people song? uh “Greedy Awful People”: Each with dumber lyrics and more “your-dad-made-a-punk-album” guitar than the last.

Iggy’s straining in some places and listless in others—more than anything he not having fun, not in control. I know Steve Albini’s MO is keeping everything stripped down and this is the Stooges, but please, please let the Ig-uana take another pass at “My Idea of Fun”. What’s worse is Pop, whose psychotic brilliance raised a less than average garage band to frenetic genius so long ago, now drags everybody else down.

If you get mutherfucking Mike Watt to be in your band and don’t let him go crazy on the thud staff, maybe you are the ’tard you want us think you are. Only Ron Asheton, still bitter about being demoted to bassist near the end of the group’s original run, makes any effort to prove himself. His spitfire little licks try to fill any dead air—a noble, if ultimately grating gesture.

Let’s be clear, it’s categorically unfair to waste any serious effort comparing a reunion album to the old stuff. It’s obnoxious to chalk up the record’s flatness to a lack of drugs as well. If you saw the boys live recently, you might feel disappointed, but if you picked up “Skull Ring,” no doubt you’ve braced yourself in advance.

Still two things are worth pointing out:

Uno—By most accounts, the Stooges were universally reviled during their heyday, even in Detroit. [Of course they were never from Detroit, they were from Ann Arbor, 50 miles west. Of course they grew up outside A2 in Ypsilanti (the outskirts of Ypsi no less). That’s the outside of the outside of the outside…that’s how you get to be the kings of alienation.] Now we’ve been listening to people ripping off the Stooges for 30 years and it is not completely infeasible that we’re just too cynical to recognize the real deal anymore. Your grandkids might love The Weirdness and curse your bones for dismissing it.

Dos—“Mexican Guy.” Not just a decent Stooges song, one of the better things Iggy has done in years. Unlike the rest of the record, it doesn’t try to go anywhere near “Search and Destroy” or punk. It’s got a weird Bo-Diddley beat that Iggy squats right in the middle of and owns like only Iggy Pop can. It’s funny and menacing all at once and instantly reminds us this is where the Ramones started—not the other way around. It’s a song you can’t write when you’re 20—not until life has kicked the shit out of you on a global scale—and I’d kill to here nine more just like it.

Rating: 2/5

-Dmitri jr.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah — Some Loud Thunder

First, a point of procedure.

So you know, when our pale simian editor started this site, he made a point of outlawing half star ratings¹. You don’t care, but for us writers, it’s a might maddening. It means we’re denied doling out our fail-safe three and half stars to anything we’re unsure about. Spare me your “These amps go up to 11” jokes, I know it was designed to keep us honest, keep us from pussying out. Deprived of our precious middle ground, we have to take a stand: three stars — bearably average, four stars — untainted aural pleasure.

If you’re hunting for the real-deal Holyfield litmus test on Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s second album, skip ahead to track five, “Satan Says Dance.” It’s not the best song on Some Loud Thunder (“Emily Jean Stock,” ask anybody), not the worst (maybe the endless five and half minutes of “Goodbye to the Mother and the Cove” that stop the record dead, barely to recover), but you’d be hard pressed to find a clearer line drawn right down the middle of the follow-up to a much loved, much hyped debut.

It’s not hard to think of Issac Brook doing something far more compelling with the goof-ball theatrics of “Satan,” or for that matter David Byrne selling it as a real barnburner back in the day with all his fidgety Asperger’s certainty.

Certain isn’t how singer/ songwriter Alec Ounsworth sounds on any of these tracks. He’s picked up a fierce mumble to go with his divisive yelp; if he starts to stutter he can send away for the free Clark Kent action figure. On the last record, his Brooklyn compatroits could barely keep up with up with him, delightfully failing just behind his howl on “The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth” and “Tidal Wave of Young Blood.” After months upon months of touring and the audio boost of Dave "Fucking" Friedman, the band is taut and Alec is the one falling back. Where are his witty, witty remarks about David Bowie look-likes or the growling pleas for some salt?

Well forget it. This record’s not as good, I won’t lie to ya’. Why would anybody in their right mind would miss 2005's, I don’t know, but here we are? We gotta take our fun where we can find it. Which brings us back to “Satan Says Dance.” If after three listens you’re annoyed beyond comprehension, just walk away. But if like me, you start giving into to the space-invader keyboards and kraut rock beat, then everything falls kinda into place. Suddenly you can wait to pile into a dirty club with other dorks in cowboy shirts and screaming the “SAID DANCE” call-and-response.

You start the record over and hold on to that little moment, others come soon after. Nothing grabs you by the throat this time, but given the choice you decide to enjoy it.

Rating: 4/5

- Dmitri Jr

_{¹Ed. note: We work on a strict 1 to 5 scale, where 5 is the best, in case you hadn't noticed yet.}

Unnamed Supergroup — The Good, the Bad & the Queen

Why is this automatically a “Damon Albarn project”? I’m not saying the fussy Blur frontman isn’t the driving force here, but why isn’t this touted as Danger Mouse’s next joint with vocals by that guy the Gallaghers' hate. Why isn’t press raving about Paul Simonon’s much-delayed response to Big Audio Dynamite?

That Albarn consistently gets “mastermind” billing is astounding, in part ‘cause he might actually deserve it over his orchestra mates. Kiddies, if you’re looking for a career template for surviving in modern rock, Damon is your man. That he remains relevant longer after Noel and Jarvis doesn’t surprise me — I am Blur man, always was — but that the reinventions keep coming is amazing in the most-important-band-of-the-last-five-minutes world of English rock.

Still even the most dedicated fan has to admit a pompous untitled world-music supergroup coming together to rage against war and the gentrification of greater London has “suck” written all over it.

So why the hell does it work so effing well?

It’s a decidedly dour, self-consciously “important” record that consistently wrings out more delights that has any right to. The terrible title revisits the Gorillaz’s Clint Eastwood fixation, and sonically you might say the record merely lobs off most of the hip-hop edges of that project — a pensive 2D solo record if you will. Yet anchored by the sophisticated slink of Simonon’s bass and the refreshing understated blips and tweaks of Danger Mouse’s production, it all holds together as a perfectly listenable, worthwhile side project.

Unlike everybody else I’ll admit I know nothing about drummer Tony Allen, but I assumed things would get funkier under his watch. Outside of a few minutes on “Three Changes,” it never really happens though. DM has processed so much of his work it often sounds like it was cobbled together on the laptop (not a knock, just a point of fact). The mournful interplay of Albarn’s carvival keys and the haunting guitar of the Verve's Simon Tong is what most often takes center stage.

I haven’t gotten around to listening to this back to back with last year’s Eraser, but I get the feeling that’s what Damon was shooting for. The album’s filled with weak-ass attempted Yorke-isms, “Emptiness in computers bothers me” on “A Soldier’s Tale.”

Still as a discerning organizer of collaborators, Damon convinces you to ignore the pretense and indulgence. His last sane man in London shtick works here because you believe outlasting his Britpop peers and even his real band (at least the classic Coxon line-up) has left Albarn as genuinely lonely as he sound on GB&Q — hence all the young and not-so-young dudes he keeps convincing to play on his records.

So bottom-line, modern life is still rubbish, but at least the company’s nice.

Rating 4/5.

-Dmitri Jr.