Sunday, May 3, 2009

MGMT, a summer (almost) too late

Well, I'm not sure how wise it is to read too closely, or closely at all, into the lyrics for the immortal (clichéd term, but I think they've earned it) Time to Pretend, but these days, wondering how long I can make it in the technicolor jungle of Williamsburg / Greenpoint, I do find myself missing Mom, Dad, sis, and the silences and ruminative rambles of home, even if they did take place on not-too-far city streets, on the way to clubs and bookstores that led, I guess, to NYC. Good for MGMT to address, however couched within a tongue-in-cheek song, the need to leave behind home and family for, um, vomit.

Lemonheads 4-Eva

A simple, summary, and summery thought that this lapsed Boston boy had this afternoon while organizing his (okay, let's ditch the self-referential second person and just keep it really real) cds: If I liked all my cds as much as I liked the Lemonheads's It's a Shame about Ray, I wouldn't get rid of a single one. Hey ya.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Comin' around to Animal Collective

Here's a thought on the last Animal Collective album, Merriweather Post-Pavilion (do I have that right? Lemme check itunes...oops, no hyphen). The music is kind of like the framework for an F. Buckminster Fuller (do I have that right?) geodesic dome: very impressive, structurally, and certainly overarching, but where's the material inside the hexagons? Where's the warm stuff inside these interesting shapes?

Well, there's certainly some of that. Earlier, I thought I'd make the point that a framework geo-dome is not where you'd want to be during, say, a rainstorm, which I wanted to use to suggest that when the emotional chips are down, one might reach for music with more pathos or soul. I don't mean to be a hater; there's definitely something about a band that seems so committed to music-making and yet inspires so many grimaces, nonetheless. But is this music for smarty-pants liberal arts kids, and S.P.L.A.K.'s only? One thing's for sure: I have whiffed, and whiffed hard, at creating any kind of memorable acronym here.

We (my roommate, his girlfriend, and I) saw them somewhere in Midtown, and the sonic scene (just wanted to use the phrase) was like a be-in in Golden Gate Park, 1967, filtered through a million smashed pieces of vinyl and poured into a rave. I appreciated it, it was cool, but I wasn't swooning. When you notice that you're appreciating, more than, say, genuinely enjoying, you can feel fatigued almost right away. But now Summertime Clothes is playing on my itunes, and I am enjoying, babe. Feel that chorus.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Weird Owl bring le rock

Yo! Well, it's too late for an exclamation mark: a simple "Yo" will have to do. I just wanted to say that my friends' band, Weird Owl, have made an album that I would like to magically transform into a spinning tab of acid and let settle on my tongue. (I'm thinking that the tab would resemble the 2-dimensional square that served as a prison for Superman's enemies in Superman 2, and that the transformation/miniaturization could happen with the same technology utilized in The Cars's video for You Might Think--man, it's been a while since I've heard that tune.) Okay, um, their album, "Ever the Silver Cord Be Loosed" (check the semantic reverb on loosed/lucid) is heavy, thoughtful, and just shakes with energy. Plus, the album is inspiring some great writing: Weird Owl have provided some links to select reviews on their MySpace page, which is at, um, yeah, you guessed it. Once you've determined that url, check out Keith Boyd's review from Blog San Diego, and just note the seriousness and commitment of these writers to the music--they can hear that something awesome is afoot. Dudes just got written up (and described as "hirsute") in Mojo!

Monday, February 23, 2009

on acid

Man (first of all, hello! This is my first post, and I'm quite excited), those were the days when the comparative phrase "like ______ on acid" had a vivid, shocking effect on people.

Here's what I mean: My roommate's girlfriend just gave him the Stella Season One Box Set. (Why I Capitalize Each Word I Do Not Know.) Stella, for those of you (like me) who didn't know, was a series on Comedy Central in 2005 starring the guys who created The State. On the back of the box, back-of-box perusing gentlefolk like me are treated to the following quote from The Hollywood Reporter:

"Like the Marx Brothers on acid."

And man, I'm just seeing yellow flowers (like the ones on the inner sleeve of Neil's On the Beach?) jump into the clear blue sky of my mind, recalling the innocent days when saying that something-was-something-else "on acid" actually meant something!

Is there a word or a term for when, in the midst of the almost exponentially multiplied world of descriptive possibilities in which we reside, a vestigial phrase parts the thick language branches like, um, the nose of a dinosaur emerging from the woods, and, uh, bellows (maybe?) before withdrawing back into the trees?

This weekend, see how rudimentary you can make your descriptions of random stuff. It feels kind of weird to reach back for old matter, like your tongue is slipping down your throat and into your stomach for linguistic compost.

I guess it's just refreshing when "on acid" does the job, historically or contemporaneously. Contemporaneously, by the way, might be my least favorite adverb, like generality is my least favorite noun, and like orientate(d) is my least favorite verb. But this post is about (like) being on acid, y'all, and the wonderful simplicity of such a statement.

The Magic Man

Walking up Rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud in Paris’s 10th arrondissement in mid-October, I saw a man who was working in the doorframe of Ô   Lieu ...