Simple Pleasures Strike Like Lightning

If I were the sort of smug-fuck reviewer who likes to call everyone who likes bands I’ve never heard of (or just don’t like) a “hipster,” I’d probably suggest that, by producing Thurston Moore’s new Demolished Thoughts, Beck has achieved some sort of “old hipster” singularity. Surely, I might say, Demolished Thoughts will suck in all the kids who wear those clothes I hate and they’ll collapse under the weight of their own perceived coolness.

But I’m not that kind of smug-fuck reviewer; I’m an entirely different kind of smug-fuck reviewer, the kind who really really likes the three or four Sonic Youth albums I own, but mostly because I think Kim Gordon is a total fucking badass and I would listen to her shout her grocery list at me over a blender full of i-Phones. And if loving Daydream Nation is smug, I don’t want to be whatever is the opposite of smug.

I suppose there are people who might get their expectations way up for Demolished Thoughts because it pairs Beck and Thurston Moore, but my only expectation was that it would be mostly good and have a few songs that were too goddamn long. My expectations in this case were about three-quarters correct – Demolished Thoughts is a largely beautiful album with really only one song that’s too goddamn long. Each of the nine tracks is over four minutes long, but “Orchard Street” is too long at seven minutes because it spends a lot of time at the end just being noisy (how much is “a lot”? Three fucking minutes, that’s how much). But honestly, I don’t mind it all that much – “Total Trash” is one of my favorite Sonic Youth songs and it gets inexplicably noisy right in the middle. It’s just that you have to know you’re going to get that from a Thurston Moore album (Beck is not immune to wallowing in unlistenable dissonance either – check out Stereopathic Soul Manure if you don’t believe me. It’ll send you begging for your Mellowgolds and Midnight Vultureses).

I have to admit, the word “beautiful” isn’t something I associate with even my favorite Sonic Youth songs (okay, “Do You Believe in Rapture?” is somewhat sort of beautiful. Sort of), so it’s a bit of a surprise to hear Moore craft an album of nine songs that are all at least a little bit beautiful. Demolished Thoughts is an acoustic affair, with lots of lovely string bits here and there. For some reason, it strikes me as the sort of album lots of elder statesmen of rock are inclined to make, but I don’ t think anyone will mistake it for, say, Johnny Cash’s American series.

Opener “Benediction” showcases Moore’s guitar playing skills, which are formidable (if anything, Thurston Moore is a bit underrated as a guitarist), and it sets the tone for the rest of the album. Yes, the guitars will drone here and there, but the overall album is actually really straightforward and – like the best Sonic Youth stuff – gets better with repeated listens. There are lots of subtle textures to take in and if the phrase “subtle textures” turns you off when used to describe music, I suspect I’ve just saved you the twelve bucks you might’ve spent on Demolished Thoughts. You’re welcome.

I suspect some Sonic Youth fans might balk a bit at Demolished Thoughts, but that’s okay with me. I guess I’m the kind of smug-fuck reviewer who doesn’t care if other people like an album or not. I like this record and that’s all that matters here at Bollocks! (awesome new contributors notwithstanding). There are some really nice melodies and it’s nice to hear Moore’s voice in such a simple setting. I’ve always liked him as a singer and his voice fits wonderfully around all the flitting string bits and softly brushed drums.

Lyrically, Moore keeps his Demolished Thoughts pretty abstract and occasionally abstractly pretty (I like the line “Simple pleasures strike like lightning” from “Benediction” – hence the title of this post), but it plays better to me that way. A lot of your standard acoustic folkish music is “I love my baby” or “my baby left me” or “I have a burgeoning social consciousness.” For Thurston Moore, “In Silver Rain with a Paper Key” is his “My baby left me” song, but the leaver in question sort of disappears the way things do in dreams. In fact, a dreamlike quality permeates Demolished Thoughts and it would probably wear thin if the album were any longer.

Was anyone worried that Demolished Thoughts would sound like a Beck album just because he produced it? I can’t imagine someone would have been, but if the Thurston Moore album does sound like a Beck record, it’s Mutations, which is my favorite Beck record. I read a review (I think it was the Onion A.V. Club’s review) that thought Sea Change was the obvious analogue to Demolished Thoughts, but it actually reminds me more of Mike Doughty’s Skittish than any Beck album. Doughty’s solo debut was probably a little more lyrically direct, but there’s a sense in both Skittish and Demolished Thoughts of two singer-songwriters stripping their aesthetic down to the bare essentials. In Doughty’s case, it’s something he kinda had to do in the wake of Soul Coughing’s acrimonious demise. Moore might just be taking a nice vacation from Sonic Youth and everything it means – both to the band and their longtime fans – to have been in that group for the last thirty years. Whatever his aim, Demolished Thoughts is a pretty lovely listen when you’re seeking something a little softer around the edges than, say, Goo.

A probably fair(ish) criticism of Thurston Moore (and Sonic Youth in general) is that he too often experiments for the sake of experimenting. I can see how you’d arrive at that conclusion, but I offer Demolished Thoughts and the rest of his body of work as evidence that perhaps the dude just has an amazingly diverse record collection and the synthesizing of all of these sources of inspiration can occasionally be a bit obnoxious. But I’m far more interested in someone who tirelessly seeks to push their sound than I am in someone who just quietly strums out the same few chord progressions and sings about their myriad romantic misadventures. See, that’s my biggest beef with strummy, acoustic singer/songwriter stuff – a lot of it tends to sound exactly the same to me. If Thurston Moore’s relentless experimenting (if that’s even what it is) occasionally leads him to make something terrible, it also led him to make Demolished Thoughts, which is a fairly sublime departure from the usual acousti-troubadour stuff.

This Time of the Season

Since the very first time I heard them, I have believed that Belle & Sebastian are one of the most overrated bands of all time. Cutesy, self-amused bullshit. So I admit that I had some trepidation back in 2006, when I discovered that an ex-Belle & Sebastian member, Isobel Campbell, was teaming up with Mark Lanegan (the voice of the Screaming Trees, a sometime Queen of the Stone Age and occasional Soulsaver) for an album called Ballad of the Broken Seas. To my surprise, the album was great and the Campbell/Lanegan partnership has become a reliable source of excellent country/murder-folk/indie music (I make the distinction between “regular folk” and “murder-folk” because I believe that there should be a hint of darkness in really good folk songs and not all folk artists share this belief. Not every murder-folk song has to literally be about murder, but it should have just the slightest hint of despair to it – not too much though, because then there is a risk of the song becoming emo, in which case it has to be shot with a silver bullet). What’s more, Campbell has proven to be quite adept at paying homage to American folk/country/roots music without butchering it – the Brits have a mixed track record in this department, largely because of Elvis Costello, who set the bar really high with King of America but then turned around, knocked the fucking thing over, and broke it in half with Secret, Profane, and Sugarcane.

I lived in Boston when Ballad of the Broken Seas came out and it was the perfect accompaniment to the dark, cold winters in that city (it’s a great place to listen to murder-folk). For Campbell and Lanegan’s subsequent releases, 2008′s Sunday at Devil Dirt and this year’s Hawk, I have lived in Los Angeles, where it is almost always sunny and almost always at least seventy degrees (bad place for murder-folk, too. People out here don’t wanna know from folk songs unless someones sings ‘em on Glee. I cant’ say with any certainty whether someone has or has not sung a folk song on Glee because that show is Auto-Tuned up to the eyeballs and is thus spiritually abhorrent to me). Sounds like paradise to a lot of people, I know, but it creates a certain amount of frustration for yours truly. So I’ve had a hard time listening to Hawk this year, even though I’ve had it for months. But now, the clouds have come to visit the so-called City of Angels and rain is in the forecast for possibly the next week. Now, at last, I can get down to business with this record.

Turns out Hawk might be the best offering yet from Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan. There’s some newfound country and rockabilly stomp to break up the brooding, murder-folk ballads that have populated their past efforts. There’s still plenty of darkness on Hawk – the Lanegan-led “You Won’t Let Me Down Again” is basically a threat and Campbell’s “To Hell and Back Again” and “Sunrise” are beautiful but deeply depressing, just the way I want them to be. I get the sense listening to this album that Campbell and Lanegan are just starting to find their feet in this musical partnership,which should mean that their best stuff is yet to come.

I’ve always had a thing for bands that feature both male and female voices (I’ve remarked on that plenty of times in this space) and Campbell and Lanegan’s voices compliment each other perfectly. An entire album of Isobel Campbell’s wispy whisper would probably get old, but Lanegan’s baritone growl (I’ve probably also said this before, but it bears repeating: Mark Lanegan is one of the most underrated vocalists in the history of rock ‘n’ roll) lends weight to the proceedings. They don’t necessarily harmonize on the scale of, say, the Living Sisters, but they’re also not trying to be as cute. The best Campbell/Lanegan tunes, like all great murder-folk songs, reek of sex and death, even if they’re singing about taking a walk in a garden.

The other new wrinkle in the old Campbell/Lanegan dynamic is a dude named Willy Mason, who appears on the Townes Van Zandt cover “No Place to Fall” and the Campbell original “Cool Water.” Both songs are down-tempo, pretty tunes. One might be tempted to surmise that Mason was brought in to handle the pretty stuff for which Mark Lanegan is too menacing, but I would caution against that conclusion – Lanegan has been downright charming in the past, never more so than on “(Do You Wanna) Come Walk with Me?” from Ballad of the Broken Seas. Anyway, Mason performs his part admirably and the two Townes Van Zandt covers that appear on Hawk (the other being “Snake Song”) have awakened in me a desire to listen to Van Zandt; plenty of musicians for whom I have profound respect seem to dig his music and it’s high time I saw what the fuss is all about. Just scanning the dude’s Wikipedia bio is pretty entertaining.

Since Christmas is almost upon us, I guess I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention “Time of the Season,” one of Hawk‘s many highlights. The tune perfectly captures the bittersweetness of a holiday season full of romantic turmoil. Winter is a helluva bad time to be lonely, even in stupid-sunny Los Angeles, and it’s nice to hear a song that captures that with some dignity instead of just bitching about it. The line, “We all do what we have to do/ at this time of the season” sums it up pretty nicely, I think.

So if you’re lucky enough to need a fire by which to warm yourself during this holiday season, why not consider a nice bottle of red wine (there’s a fine and affordable Pinot Noir from Oregon called Firesteed. They are not paying me to endorse their product, but if they read this and wanna ship a free bottle or two, I could probably mention them more in the future) and a spin through Hawk? Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan might not melt the ice on your gutters, but they can maybe do something for that chill in your heart (although that “something” may be “turn your thoughts to murder” but your mileage may vary).

So now that I’ve reached the end of my review of Hawk, I’d like to mention a word that is used too often in reference to Isobel Campbell. I have intentionally eschewed the use of that word in this review because I don’t want to give people the impression that Campbell, a very talented musician, is one-dimensional. The word I’m talking about, of course, is “sultry.” It’s not that it’s a bad word for the way Campbell sings (sometimes) but literally every review I’ve read of a Campbell/Lanegan album has worn the word into the ground and rendered it meaningless. Now it reads like shorthand for, “I have nothing new or creative to say about Isobel Campbell so I’ll just call her ‘sultry’ and take an early lunch.” So I am pledging to never use that word to describe Campbell’s singing ever again and I am also calling on all other music critics, professional and amateur alike, to do the same.

Dulcet Wainwright Innuendo

The holiday season is a good time of year for pleasant music. I’m not a Christian, but I celebrate Christmas because most of my friends and family celebrate it and honestly, I can’t find fault with a holiday that provides me with a handy reason to give gifts to my loved ones. Also, Christmas is the only time of year I can find mint M&M’s and eggnog in ready supply (though I am not Jewish, I might have to start celebrating Hanukkah if only so I can get my mitts on some latkes. You might think latkes are just potato pancakes, but that’s like saying Van Gogh was just a painter or Glenn Beck is just a moron). I find some Christmas music to be pleasant indeed (the traditional carols tend to be the prettiest), but let’s face it:  there is plenty of fuck-awful Christmas music out there and an alarming amount of it is performed by Mariah Carey. Anyway, Christmas puts me (me, of all people!) in the mood for warm and fuzzy music, whether it’s Christmas music or not. And this year, I’ve been getting all the warm and fuzzies I need from the Living Sisters’ debut album, Love to Live.

The Living Sisters are Inara George, Eleni Mandell, and Becky Stark (who is in the band Lavender Diamond and who also sang the part of Margaret on the Decemberists’ The Hazards of Love album). On their MySpace page, the Sisters claim that their raison d’etre is the “sheer physical joy of singing,” which is probably why Love to Live is positively laden with harmonies that quite rightly garner comparisons to the Carter Family. To describe the tones on this record as “dulcet” is somehow still an understatement (although I have to love any record that justifies my use of the word “duclet” in a review). Love to Live is simple, pleasant, and pretty much always satisfying (like a healthy dose of eggnog in my coffee, topped with just dash of cinnamon).

I already mentioned this week that blatant retro fetishes are dangerous things, but the Living Sisters (like Earl Greyhound) put on no airs about their desire to wrap themselves up in the past like it’s a soft blanket, fresh out of the dryer (are my analogies causing you to question my sexuality today? That says more about you than it does about me). For the Sisters, they’re paying a reverent homage to those oldie girl groups (and the aforementioned Carters). And, like Earl Greyhound does on Suspicious Package, the Living Sisters keep Love to Live brief enough that the act doesn’t wear thin. The other thing Mandell, Stark, and George have going for them is that their particular flavor of pastiche lives or dies on strong vocal performances – and these three women can fucking sing. I don’t care if you don’t like the lilting instrumental arrangements or the Wes Montgomery-aping guitars, you can’t hear this record and say with any credibility that the Living Sisters lack vocal talent.

In fact, the weakest moment on Love to Live comes when they stop singing and indulge in an ill-advised spoken-word interlude during the otherwise lovely “Cradle.” It’s too cute for its own good (a problem I sometimes find myself having with Inara George’s other band, The Bird and the Bee) and it makes me cringe every single time I hear it. Of course, I’ve never liked spoken word interludes in songs because, well, if I wanted to hear some asshole talking, I wouldn’t listen to music, would I? (And yes, hip-hop gets a special dispensation here because hip-hop is rhythmic – and sometimes melodic – whereas the type of thing that the Living Sisters do on “Cradle” just takes me right out of the song and drives me fucking nuts.)

Of course, the other great thing about early country and what we now think of as “oldies” (a genre that has basically been pop and rock music from the 50s, 60s, and very early 70s for as long as I’ve been alive. Someday, they’ll have to call that stuff “really fucking oldies” because all the stuff I grew up listening to in the 80s and 90s will be the new oldies) is that, while many of the songs are lyrically kind of dull and unsurprising, you occasionally encounter a slick little innuendo. The Living Sisters present a few of these on Love to Live, and all of them are wrapped up in the loveliest of harmonies. On “Ferris Wheel,” the assertion that there’s “something soft/ that you need to feel” may not explicitly invite the slight brushing of thighs with hands (or other thighs), but it certainly doesn’t discourage it. Pretty much all of “Double Knots” sounds like innuendo to me (I love that word because, if you say it just the right way, it is an innuendo all on its own)- the song’s narrator is way too happy to be tied up and I’m unwilling to dwell on or analyze the intention of the phrase “He’s gonna loosen me up” that follows the chorus.

Sometimes, though, what might seem at first to be an attempt at innuendo ends up being just plain silly. Take “Good Ol’ Wagon”, for instance. I don’t get the metaphor and what’s more, they tell their guy (who was a “good ol wagon” but apparently, he “done broke down”) he “better go to the blacksmith shop” and get himself “overhauled.” Ladies, this is just ridiculous. What your man-wagon clearly needs is a wainwright. A blacksmith might forge and shape the iron parts needed to get your man-wagon “overhauled”; but, because wagons are not just made of iron, only a true wainwright can perform the task at hand. It never hurts to do a little research, Living Sisters.

All kidding aside, if you just listen to tracks like “This Mountain Has Skies” and “How Glad I Am”, it’s very easy indeed to be transported by three voices that work incredibly well together. If the Living Sisters’ goal was to celebrate the “sheer physical joy of singing,” even a curmudgeon like me can honestly say that they hit their mark. Love to Live is quite simply a gorgeous album and its musical beauty is enough to outweigh (by far) its silly, indulgent bits (I was mostly trying to be funny when I mentioned the wainwright thing from “Good Ol’ Wagon”, but those kind of errors in songs bother me a lot more than I’m comfortable admitting) (I just admitted it though) (shit).

 

True Love Casts Out All Evil But Not All Crazy

From what I’ve read in articles and interviews, there is little doubt in my mind that Roky Erickson is legitimately batshit crazy. Not like the amusing/annoying kind of crazy where he believes the internet is a government conspiracy (looking at you, M.I.A.) or doesn’t believe in the germ theory of disease (Bill Maher and a whole host of other celebrities whose scientific credentials make me look like Albert fucking Einstein), but the kind of crazy where the circuitry is definitely damaged, where thoughts disconnect just enough to make you simultaneously uncomfortable and deeply grateful that your mental processes seem to proceed smoothly enough from one moment to the next. That is, Erickson is not funny crazy, he’s “show some fucking compassion” crazy. Dude’s life story is equal parts Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and that would have anyone trippin’ balls for all eternity.

Erickson’s life has apparently reached a modicum of stability in the last couple of years – he’s married and living in Austin, Texas, a place Patton Oswalt once called “a little bubble of sanity” in the middle of a bunch of bullshit (I’m paraphrasing, but the joke is all Oswalt’s – some horrible asshole recently stole a bunch of Patton’s act, so I want to be extra kind about crediting the man with the stuff he came up with. Patton Oswalt is funnier than I am, he’s funnier than you are, and we should just trust that his funny is better than ours), which may or may not be ironic since it has been Erickson’s home for most (if not all) of his life. Which is kinda cool, since Erickson is exactly the sort of mad local legend I’d want in my neighborhood (Van Nuys doesn’t have local legends – we need the space for our 24 hour bail bond places).

Erickson was joined on stage by Okkervil River for a gig in 2008 that led to the band backing Erickson up on this year’s True Love Cast Out All Evil, which Okkervil vocalist/songwriter Will Sheff also produced. The album is widely understood to be Erickson’s masterful, redemptive comeback album, which can sometimes be a bad thing (Bad Brains made a sort of “comeback” album a few years ago that wasn’t great, for instance.) but Erickson’s heartache is genuine and his love is about as hard-won as it can get.

I mentioned all the stuff about his mental health earlier because I believe it’s crucial to your understanding of True Love Cast Out All Evil, which sounds like a series of flashbacks into Roky Erickson’s deeply troubled past, interspersed with musings on love and death that are downright stunning. The feedback and noise (something I guess Erickson’s 13th Floor Elevators were into back in the 1960s, though I’ve never listened to them) throughout the album is never obtrusive, but its presence creates some of the chaos and tension that I have no trouble imagining has been a part of Erickson’s consciousness for longer than he deserves. Obviously, not all of theses songs are about Erickson’s madness (on “John Lawman,” Erickson manages to project some madness onto Texas law enforcement, making what could be a somewhat trite derivation of the Beatles’ “Taxman” blossom into a sort of menacing rocker that might be the song you sing right before you end up as the central character in a murder ballad), though it’s hard to separate the songs from the man’s story. This is not entirely a bad thing, as it renders the title track a stunning prayer – when Erickson sings “True love, cast out all evil”, you get the sense that this is his mantra in his darker moments, even as it is a sentiment one could wish upon the entire world.

That, in essence, is the gift that Erickson and Okkervil River have given us on True Love Cast Out All Evil. These 14 songs (I got the deluxe version) traverse the deepest valleys of madness and come out the other side to say that it is highly unlikely that everything will be okay but, on a good day, if we’re kind to one another, things can be pretty all right. I realize that’s not the easy sloganeering of Christina’s Aguilera’s “We are beautiful/ no matter what they say” (by the way, that song was written by Linda Perry of 4 Non Blondes and was covered brilliantly by Elvis Costello on the House M.D. soundtrack),  but it also has a lot more depth.

Musically, Okkervil River brings their A-game to True Love Cast Out All Evil, providing wafting pedal steel lines and soft horn parts here and there and generally framing Erickson’s lyrics in exactly the sort of musical accompaniment they each seem to require. As a band, they seem a little more inspired than they were on their last album, The Stand-Ins (which had some great songs but seemed to lack the tight focus of 2007′s stellar The Stage Names) and I can only hope they carry that into their next proper Okkervil River album. Although – and this is a compliment, whether or not it sounds like one – it is a testament to Will Sheff’s ear as a producer that it doesn’t matter much that it’s Okkervil River backing Erickson up on True Love Cast Out All Evil. What I mean is, if you didn’t know Okkervil River played on this record, you could still love it.

I don’t know if Erickson would write the way he does if he hadn’t been in and out of the nut hatch throughout his life, but his lyrics are pretty excellent in one respect: they’re never fully coherent enough to get cloying when he’s being sentimental. The songs make a certain lyrical sense, mind you, but when he sings “I love my family always” on “Be and Bring Me Home,” he doesn’t belabor the point with heaps of sugary lyrics and “True Love Cast Out All Evil” is so simply and earnestly stated that you’d have to be a heartless fuck indeed to hate it. It helps that his voice is so perfect for the material: warm and yearning, weathered and weary, with just a dash of humor where it is needed.

At the end of the day, it’s hard not to root for Roky Erickson because of all that he’s been through, but I wouldn’t bullshit you about this music. It’s good and kinda old-timey and kinda trippy and kinda country and kinda rock. The title track is fucking amazing, and the other tracks range from good to great, with a little weird thrown in for good measure. If we can divide 2010′s music into tiers of quality, the top tier would contain two albums I’ve already mentioned to death (if you don’t know what they are, ask and I’ll tell you), and the second tier would certainly contain True Love Cast Out All Evil. It’s not transcendently amazing, but it is simple and beautiful and sad and lovely and somehow exactly the kind of music I think good musicians from Texas ought to make (anything good from Texas is probably bound to be a little melancholy because Texas is… well, Texas).

Broken Bells and the Magic Touch of Danger Mouse

If I had bothered to count down, sometime near the end of last year, the best albums or songs or people or whatever of the first decade of the 21st century (I’m thinking of referring to this as the Last Century of My Life, not out of any sense of morbidity but out of deference to the statistical likelihood that I won’t see the year 2100), I most certainly would have named DJ Danger Mouse as one of the finest artists of the last ten years (I have briefly and quietly asserted that “All My Friends” by LCD Soundsystem is probably the best song of the last decade). After rising to prominence by doing two things I like – producing a compelling hip-hop record and pissing off Jay-Z – on The Grey Album and producing excellent collaborations with Gemini and MF Doom (another artist who would top my I Love  the Aughties list), Danger Mouse really took off, working with Gorillaz, the Black Keys, and Mr. Cee-Lo Green in the simultaneously under-and-over-rated Gnarls Barkley (their brand of crazy-ass pop is a lot of fun. But “Crazy” was overplayed. That said, “Crazy” is still kinda the jam and their cover of the Violent Femmes’ “Gone Daddy Gone” is pretty badass too). So what dazzling new projects does Danger (or Mr. Mouse, if you’re into the whole formality thing) have in store for the second decade of the Last Century of My Life? For starters, a collaboration with James Mercer, a.k.a., the dude from the Shins (a.k.a. the band that did that song that your girlfriend loves on the Garden State soundtrack*. That is, the one that’s not by Frou Frou).

I don’t mean to imply that Broken Bells will succeed or fail entirely on Danger Mouse’s considerable talents. James Mercer is a pretty good songwriter himself (people who listen to the Shins only for “New Slang” are robbing themselves of great songs like “Young Pilgrims,” “Mine is Not a High Horse,” and “Gone for Good,” among many others) and should be considered on equal footing with his fellow Broken Bell. His voice is a little high for some people’s liking, but it’s never really bothered me. My biggest concern is that the second half of the Shins’ last album puts me to sleep almost every time. But I had high hopes for Broken Bells based on what Danger Mouse did for the Black Keys on their Attack & Release album. If a dude can breathe some fresh air into a group, that dude is Danger Mouse and essentially, my feeling that maybe Mercer was stuck in a rut is balanced by the knowledge that Danger Mouse is great at getting people out of ruts.

Though it offers compelling evidence that James Mercer is no longer (if he ever was) stuck in a creative morass, Broken Bells is probably not best described as, “gob-smackingly awesome.” Not to say it’s not good – it is. But it’s a subtly beautiful album and as such, isn’t served by hyperbolic language (as much as I love it. To quote a Mental Floss T-shirt of mine, “Hyperbole is the Best Thing Ever”). Broken Bells didn’t really grab me on the first listen. It took about three trips through it before the album’s charms began to work their magic on me. But – and this is key – I like the album more every time I listen to it (between the Hold Steady’s Heaven is Whenever and the National’s High Violet, albums are really having to fight for my time. Perhaps knowing that they can wrest my ears – occasionally – away from those other two bands is all the praise Broken Bells need. Just in case, though, I’ll praise them more). Though the album is only ten tracks, there’s not a miss among them and a couple (“Your Head’s On Fire” and “Citizen” come to mind) are downright gorgeous. Mercer gets the most out of his voice, both the familiar high end (“The Ghost Inside,” which I think is about a stripper in a dead-end town) and his very nice lower range as well. There are subtle background harmonies and an almost dreamlike instrumentation that gives Broken Bells a nice, balanced feel from start to finish. For some reason, I just thought of a good beer. That’s hardly a bad thing.

In general, I have high expectations for Danger Mouse’s work, but it was hard to calibrate those expectations for Broken Bells because James Mercer wasn’t on my fantasy list of Danger Mouse collaborators (sorry, Mr. Mercer. It’s not personal – I just didn’t see it coming). That said, Broken Bells feels like the most fully integrated band of any of the non-hip-hop things I’ve head Danger Mouse do. With the Black Keys, it felt like Danger Mouse producing a rock band (which is what it was and it was awesome) but if the two guys in Broken Bells were just a couple of anonymous schlubs, their debut would still be quite praiseworthy. The Black Keys needed Danger Mouse’s magic touch and Broken Bells have it without sounding like they need it. Does that make sense? It’s not important. Look: James Mercer and Danger Mouse sound like they’ve started a band that could have some longevity to it, which gives Broken Bells the advantage of not sounding like a one-off or a side project. If there’s three more Broken Bells records and no more Shins records, I could be quite content with that.

In the end, Broken Bells doesn’t feel all that earth-shattering. It hasn’t infiltrated any of my local radio stations (I think NPR has thrown a couple of  its songs on every once in a while), I haven’t heard these songs in ads for teen dramas, and it definitely isn’t going to enjoy the massive success of Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” – and I say none of those things with the intention of disparaging Broken Bells. This album almost feels like an overlooked treasure, a secret bit of loveliness for those of us who were lucky enough to catch it. Long after Justin Beiber** has faded into obscurity (and/or rehab), we’ll still have Danger Mouse and James Mercer and the weird, lovely fruits of their labor.

*a.k.a. “New Slang,” or “The Song Your Aspiring Troubadour Friends Are Fucking Up At Open Mic Nights All Over the Country.” Seriously, though, I like this song and I like the Shins, so no hate mail about that. Any aspiring troubadours who wish to send hate mail, however, are more than welcome. Anything that’ll take away from the time you spend writing songs that compare life to a river or your girlfriend’s eyes to deep pools or your broken heart to shattered glass or whatever the fuck it is you like to sing about.

**Okay, I know nothing about this kid other than his name. And the fact that a lot of people, publications, and various media outlets for whom I have zero respect are all spooging in their breakfast about him. I get the sense that he’s another adolescent product marketed as a prodigy – I’m willing to entertain contrary evidence, but I defy you to find any.

Brain Damage

I hope, if my brain ever tries to kill me and I survive, that I can sing about it. If you’ve read any other review of Charlotte Gainsbourg’s IRM (that’s French for MRI – you know, the thing where they stick you in a big machine and it takes pictures of your brain), you’ve read about how she had a massive brain hemorrhage after what was thought to be a relatively minor water skiing wipeout. It’s worth repeating in every review, though, because Gainsbourg’s head was filling with fucking blood. That’s not a small reminder of your mortality – that’s the Grim Reaper using your brain for a bathtub and, after a good soak, punching your ticket. That is, to use the most appropriate phrase I can think of, fucking terrifying. Paralyzing, even.

So an album named for a brain scanning, hemorrhage-detecting device is bound to trend a bit toward the thematically grisly. It takes all of one song for Gainsbourg to sing about drilling her brain full of holes, though the overall feel of the album is thankfully less dour.  Beck apparently wrote, produced and played just about everything on IRM and it’s the best thing he’s done since Guero. He adeptly tailors the music to Gainsbourg’s limited (though charming) vocal range and even lends a little vocal help to “Heaven Can Wait,” a tune that wouldn’t have been out of place on his stellar Mutations (come to that, “Dandelion” would have been right at home there too. Perhaps this means Beck’s next album will be more like Mutations and less like Modern Guilt).

Staying on the positive side, Gainsbourg sings in French quite a bit on IRM, and women singing in French will almost always be sexy as hell, not to mention beautiful (I’m suddenly kind of sad that I don’t own any Edith Piaf albums). Sorry, red-staters: like it or not, French (or Freedom, if you’re feeling a little 2003), when spoken well, is a dead sexy language. And Gainsbourg often sings it in a seductive little whisper, which helps brighten the plateau that IRM hits almost immediately.

Which I guess means it’s time to talk about the negative stuff. There isn’t much. In fact, my biggest criticism of the album is going to seem, to say the least, a bit abstruse. But bear with me (or fire up the hateful comments now – it’s free [French?] country). The thing is, I feel like IRM is a bit superficial. Considering its back-story (brain full of blood, remember?), I feel like this album should reach higher and dip lower than it does – that is, I feel like Beck and Gainsbourg could stand to raise the stakes a little (not to the height of My Chemical Melodrama, mind you, but just a bit higher than they are on this record). I don’t know if Gainsbourg’s limited vocal range is partly to blame or not. Maybe it’s the fact that Beck wrote most of these songs, meaning he was writing about what must’ve been a very personal (and existential crisis-inducing) experience for Gainsbourg, who merely sings. Granted, not all these songs are about almost dying – the album would probably be terrible if they were – but the atmosphere of IRM’s 13 tracks is pretty stagnant. I’ve listened to this album literally a hundred times at this point and I feel the same at listen number 100 as I did at listen number 1. Which you may think is great, but for me, it makes me feel like maybe I might as well have never listened to it all. See? I’ll admit my abstrusity (and that I made that word up just now) and I’ll further admit that I like IRM just fine. It’s a fine album just like cotto salami is a fine lunch meat, but I almost never eat it. There are so many things that are “fine” or “merely okay” out there (musically and otherwise), that I don’t have the time or inclination to sift through them all. For some reason, I felt like IRM should be somehow more amazing that it is. It feels safe, which I realize will be an unpopular opinion (and, speaking of those: the only thing I hate more than Portugal. The Man’s The Satanic Satanist is the seemingly endless tide of fuckwit fans that keep coming here to try to insult me over it. Get a life!) but that’s how I feel. It’s a well-known, highly regarded (despite a couple of really mediocre recent albums) musician writing an album for a lovely, enchanting vocalist who happens to have been nearly killed by her own brain. It’s completely accessible pop music and, like I said, there’s nothing wrong with that. But other than some French lyrics (the two years of French I took in high school – and subsequently forgot – tell me that all of the French-language songs on IRM are about publicly removing Mitch McConnell’s testicles), there’s not much to distinguish IRM from the very crowded pack that makes up pop music today. Like a lot of other perfectly “fine” pop, IRM is more safe than fording the L.A. River.

I guess if I were Pitchfork, I could end the review there, give IRM some arbitrary number score that might reflect the fact that I somewhat liked it (they gave it an 8.4, which means they really liked it), and call it a day. But I don’t operate that way. I have run out of things to say about IRM and that’s not a good sign for an album I’ve listened to as much as I’ve listened to this one. But I can’t give it a grade. Grades are stupid and you can tell your teacher I said so. Look: if you like pop music, Beck, and women singing breathily in French (and who doesn’t?), you’ll find something to like here. And, if you’re like me (you’re probably not, you lucky bastard), you’ll find yourself wondering why you don’t like the album as enthusiastically as you feel like you should. And then “La Collectionneuse” will close the album and its simple, elegant beauty will make you think maybe you do like this album a lot. Or maybe that’s just your blood-filled brain talking. You might want to get that looked at.

A Fairly Unfiltered Reaction to Beach House’s Teen Dream

First off: it’s 2010, and that means wedding planning is gonna fuck with my posting schedule a bit. So be it. For some reason, people are still dropping by, even when I haven’t posted in a while. Thanks.

Anyway, I wanna talk to you about the new Beach House record, Teen Dream. The Pitchfork review of this album uses phrases like “shadowy dream-pop”, “dark and blurry resonance,” and “Mazzy Star” in the first paragraph alone. After reading the Pitchfork (or P4K, as those pretentious twats abbreviate it. I feel like it’s been a while since I’ve abused a parenthesis, so I’m just gonna vent here for a minute. I don’t know who is to blame for changing “you’re” into “Ur”, “your” into “yr” or thinking abbreviations like P4K are acceptable, but I want them found and I want them killed. Our country is already hemorrhaging intelligence at a horrifying rate [check this shit out if you don't believe me. Kirk Cameron actually talks about convincing people God exists by bypassing the intellect. This is probably the same way you convince people to eat shit.] and this needless pruning of already short words is not helping things at all. I don’t know if people who do it think it’s cute or convenient or what, but knock it the fuck off. If you’re texting a message to somebody and you can’t afford an extra three letters, just fucking call them. Whew. That’s some good parenthetical abuse right there) review, I was all set to hate Teen Dream. It’s called Teen Dream, for fuck’s sake.

I sought this album out to despise it. Not just because I’m an asshole (but I’ll cop to that), but because I learned a little lesson a year or so ago about a really shitty “band” from San Diego called Wavves. Pitchfork ejaculated a spoogey river of praise onto Wavves’ album, Wavvves (I still refuse to see what they did there), and, based on their review, I decided to check that album out. And it was dog shit. No. Dog shit still sounds better to me than Wavves. Now, to be fair, there are bands that I like that get pretty good marks from the Pitchforkers, but there are certain Pitchfork reviews, like the one for Beach House’s latest, that signal to me that this is overblown praise for a complete turd of a band. The word “droning” shows up in the Pitchfork review for Teen Dream and that’s a big red flag. The whole review conjures up analogy after analogy to light and darkness – also a huge red flag. The review also praises the use of a cheap drum machine, which is not encouraging. And the review contains this sentence: “Hearing her voice in such a spare setting reinforces just how rich, earthy, and, dare I say it, soulful it really is.” Yes, Pitchfork Managing Editor Mark Richardson, you dare say it. So just fucking say it, you giant pussy. If something is soulful, you can say it’s soulful. Saying Jeff Buckley is soulful only makes sense. Saying Wavves is soulful means you probably have a brain tumor.

But enough (at last!) about everything to do (even tangentially – it’s great to be back here, making parentheses my bitch) with Teen Dream but the music. Because this album is mostly fucking gorgeous. Victoria Legrand is a soulful (seriously, Mark Richardson, why is there a problem with saying that?) vocalist, her voice fits the instrumentation like a glove and, if that’s a cheap drum machine they’re using, good on them. Sounds great to my ears. Given how much I expected to loathe Teen Dream, I have to say it strikes me as nothing short of stunning. I’m listening to it right now on headphones and I am not infrequently getting chills.

So I think I’ve learned something here today. No, I haven’t learned to give Pitchfork the benefit of the doubt – I’m still right about them 9 times out of 10 (although, to be fair, they point me to a lot of good music. I read their site, wading through their mostly pretentious prose [cue someone saying this about me in 5, 4, and so on] to decide whether or not I will like the band they are reviewing) and they still give high praise to stuff a brain-damaged monkey could do with his ballsack, a laptop, and a MIDI-ready Stratocaster that so far from in tune that you have to measure the distance in megaparsecs. What I’ve learned is that I like to be surprised. The one time out of ten that I’m wrong about something Pitchfork likes is a moment of serenity for me. In this fucked up world, the fact that even Pitchfork and I can agree on something gives me a shred of hope (an admittedly small one) for humanity.

There’s another lesson here, one that is very important to remember, especially when Pitchfork or Bollocks! is bagging on something near and dear to your heart (although, come on, that never happens here): the music is what matters. It doesn’t matter what I think of an album if it moves you and it doesn’t matter that Pitchfork was blind to the beauty of My Morning Jacket’s Evil Urges because I sure as fuck understood that album for the hulking slab of awesome that it was. I’m telling you what I think of an album in a given moment – in this moment, I really dig this Beach House album. I’m not getting paid for it (the Pitchfork guys are, but I don’t begrudge them that. They’ve achieved the American Dream: getting paid to masturbate) and I am comfortable with my complete lack of influence (which is what it is, at least until 400 motherfuckers come here to vehemently agree with me about something). There’s some reason you read music reviews and that’s for you to sort out. I write music reviews because, well, I love music and I don’t sleep much.

But seriously, Pitchfork was – dare I say it? – correct about Teen Dream. And while I am pretty happy when we agree on stuff, I’m still perplexed at how much I hate how they praise albums. They take their shit waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more seriously than I take mine. Of course, “criticism” is their job and what I do here is more Free-Floating Hostility, to borrow a phrase from George Carlin (if I’m funny, ever, it’s because of George Carlin or Kurt Vonnegut. Either by lessons learned or jokes blatantly stolen). You can decide which you prefer and adjust your reading habits accordingly. But do yourself a favor and at least listen to Teen Dream. I’ve listened to it like four times while writing this (I took a lengthy detour on the Way of the Master website, where I took their quiz to see if I’m a good person. You can guess, by their criteria anyway, how that went) and it is still fucking gorgeous.

Can a Band with “Brothers” in the Name Be Good?

The reason I ask is because, when I think of bands with “Brothers” in their names, I can’t think of any I like. I don’t like the Blood Brothers, I hate the Jonas Brothers (because I’m a grown-up), I don’t even like the Blues Brothers. I’ve never listened to the Palace Brothers, but they’re a Will Oldham project so I’ll assume I like them. That’s three to one against. But I’m not going to judge last year’s coffeehouse kings, the Avett Brothers, on name alone. Nor will I judge them based on how ready they are for a Grey’s Anatomy montage (or worse, some shitty CW teen soap opera. Wait, is that worse than Grey’s Anatomy? How are the two things different?) – and believe me, songs like “I and Love and You,” the title track to the Avetts’ latest record, are a little too ripe for the melodramatic plucking.

But I don’t blame the Avett Brothers for that because “I and Love and You” is a simple, lovely, refreshingly earnest tune. Also, to my knowledge, the Avett Brothers haven’t taken any annoyingly public pledges of abstinence. So they’ve got that going for them. But I and Love and You, produced by Rick Rubin (who is rumored to produce albums entirely with his beard these days), never again reaches the heights it achieves with its title track, which – helpfully or not – opens the album.

Which is not to say the Avett Brothers aren’t good. I and Love and You is Actually Pretty Lovely, which I kind of didn’t expect. I expected it to be Actually Pretty Irritating. But it managed to top Paste’s (I trust Paste more than I trust most magazines) Best Albums list for Twenty-Oh-Nine and it’s been generally well received everywhere, if you can get past the the fact that almost every review I’ve read of this record drops the “Their Old Stuff was Better” bomb on the poor, unsuspecting (or are they? The Rick Rubin production, the move to NYC, they suggest to me a conscious effort to reach the much-coveted Next Level. I’ve got no beef with bands trying to do that, but I can see why it might prompt critics to say that the old stuff was better if the old stuff wasn’t being made with a bigger market-share in mind) Avetts. I’ve read that old Avett Brothers stuff is a little more shambolic, which is something I think I and Love and You could use. It’s too clean, too neat, almost too nice. And when it tries to let its hair down (“Kick Drum Heart”), it gets a little goofy.

I and Love and You‘s fatal flaw – and it’s significant – is that it seems like it’s often trying way too hard to be infused with meaning. Like when this line pops up in : “I want the pride my mother has/ and not like the kind in the Bible that turns you bad.” If you didn’t cringe reading that, you’re a better person than I because I find that line wholly unworthy of the Avett Brothers’ considerable musical capabilities. But I can tell, every time I hear that line, that they’re aching for depth with that one. In baseball parlance, we call that a swing and a miss. One reason “I and Love and You” works so well as a song is because it doesn’t contain any attempt at a Big Meaningful Statement. It has a solid emotional core with which the listener can identify and for which the listener can provide their own meaning. The experience of moving on and not being sure what’s next, of hoping that the new city (or job or girl or guy or whatever) will embrace us is an experience that 98% of us (maybe 100% of people who will find this album on the counter at Starbucks) have had and because “I and Love and You” isn’t striving for Monumental Importance, it becomes important by connecting with its audience. Incidentally, this is a skill the Band possessed in spades – I’ve read favorable comparisons between the Avett Brothers and the Band but I submit to you, my 20-30 readers (new average!), that the Avetts won’t really earn that comparison until they master the art of real emotional substance. “Real emotional substance” should not, under any circumstances, be mistaken for being emo. When I say “real emotional substance”, I mean that feeling all reasonable people get when they hear the Band sing “The Weight”: a feeling of simultaneous joy and heartache, and/or a nostalgia for something you have never experienced and might never experience (I’m paraphrasing Edgar Watson Howe here: “When people hear good music, it makes them homesick for something they never had, and never will have.”). “The Weight” doesn’t lay out a keen and effective new immigration policy, but it solves our problems on – dare I say it? Fuck yes, I do – a spiritual level and therefore has value (as does 99% of the rest of the Band’s output). The Avett Brothers are palpably close to understanding this and it causes I and Love and You to vacillate between sublimely rewarding and downright consternating. I find myself rooting for this album every time I listen to it, but nearly half the album has me shaking my head like a disapproving father. This band has undeniable talent – great harmonies, a sharp ear for melody, et cetera – but I and Love and You‘s blemishes squander that talent a little too frequently for my comfort.

Ultimately, whether or not I and Love and You‘s beauty is worth its beastly bits is in the ear of the beholder. You might hear it and decide it really was the best album of last year. If you do, I suggest you go back to the Band’s Music from Big Pink and give it a good listen. Then, stand in front of your mirror, look yourself square in the eye, and ask yourself, “Really? Really?”

There Is No Enemy

Before I was on the Built to Spill bandwagon (which I firmly jumped on with2006′s stellar You in Reverse – an album that was maligned by critics but, for me, is mostly wall to wall sonic goodness. “Conventional Wisdom” has one of the ten best guitar riffs of the decade. I’m not sure what the other nine are but at least two are by the Hold Steady), I was a big fan of Doug Martsch. His Now You Know was the first album I’d heard by anyone in Built to Spill and, if you haven’t heard it, you really need to check it out. As amazing as Martsch is with an electric guitar, Now You Know shows his acoustic chops and has some really excellent songs on it to boot. But I don’t just like Martsch for his guitar pyrotechnics (although the Indie Guitar Mt. Rushmore would certainly feature his mug along side J. Mascis, Tad Kubler, and Nels Cline) or for the fact that he looks eerily like Jim Henson. I like the way Martsch sings and writes – he’s a very contemplative dude and it makes his songs sound like he’s really working some shit out with them. On There Is No Enemy, Built to Spill’s latest and greatest album, there’s plenty to suggest that Martsch has had a lot on his mind lately. On “Oh Yeah,” Martsch uses the entirety of the song’s lyrics to say that God, if he exists, will forgive Doug Martsch for doubting he exists because God will understand how unlikely God’s existence seems. It’s a thought I’ve had myself in the last few years, but I never attached such a badass guitar solo to it. Or to any other thoughts, for that matter.

Martsch is also to be commended for the way in which he builds his songs (ironically, they aren’t built to spill, har har) – true to his contemplative nature, the songs often work their way to gorgeous climaxes (there’s a band name for you, aspiring musicians) from simple, melodic guitar lines. There Is No Enemy is full of great examples, but the one I’ll focus on is “Life’s a Dream,” which has a fairly standard (if uncommonly beautiful) guitar solo that meanders into a nifty bridge of guitar noodles and horns that surge up from nowhere. Everything settles down so Martsch can drop a few of the album’s many great lyrics: “Destiny’s vulgar/ so I might as well resist.” If you change the tempo every so often, rinse, and repeat, you pretty much get the gist of There Is No Enemy. That’s not to say, however, that the album is dull or repetitive. One of Martsch’s many gifts is his ability to make really beautiful music that is never boring. It’s the kind of thing you might describe as “pretty indie” or “pretty rock” if those phrases didn’t conjure up images of sensitive man-children in secondhand sweaters, hunched plaintively over acoustic guitars in coffee houses full of people who are writing up the show on their Live Journal pages in real time. Whatever you call it, There Is No Enemy is a fucking masterpiece, a cheerfully resigned album that might go well with a dark beer, a Kurt Vonnegut novel, and some really shitty fall weather. What other context fits a song like “Nowhere Lullabye,” where Martsch declares “this waste, it shines in every way”?

Even when Built to Spill picks up the pace on There Is No Enemy, Martsch is still a bit of a rock ‘n’ roll Eeyore. On “Good Ol’ Boredom”, an uptempo celebration of those times when “not so bad/ seems so great”, Marstch takes stock of his situation like so: “Nothing hurts and no one’s dying” (I’m going to start using that phrase when I’m feeling just okay about life, but I’m usually a pretty happy guy, so I probably won’t get many opportunities to use it). It’s certainly no “we’ve gotta stay positive”, but whatever positivity exists in Built to Spill’s music is extremely hard won. No, they’re providing a meditative catharsis, something that exists on the flip-side of the sort of relief some of us get from early punk records. Martsch comes off as the kind of guy who doesn’t get pissed off the way the rest of us do – like maybe he gets really quiet when he’s furious. I’m just extrapolating from the music here. If you happen to be Doug Martsch and would like to clarify this and any other issues in an exclusive interview for a blog no one reads, hit me up. I’ll make you a burrito.

Among its many fine moments, There Is No Enemy’s finest is probably “Done,” a nearly seven-minute opus that offers clear evidence that Doug Marstch should be only the second guitarist legally allowed to use a wah-wah pedal (the first being, of course, Jimi Hendrix). The song starts with this nifty, low-end wah-wah lick which carries the song along as Martsch sings, “It’s already done” with some soft harmonies in the background. The song is too long for the radio, too beautiful and fatalistic for a montage on Grey’s Anatomy, and one of the best songs of the year. Like much of There Is No Enemy, “Done” rests soundly on Martsch’s gift for subtlety; regardless of the subject matter, the man seems physically incapable of histrionics. That’s pretty refreshing in the age of My Chemical Romance and Doucheboard Confessional.

I’ve read a couple of reviews that raise up There Is No Enemy by implying it’s some kind of return to form after You In Reverse, but I see the former as a fairly logical extension of the latter, though I have to admit that You in Reverse does have some saggy bits. However, any fan of Built to Spill is going to have room in their hearts for both albums – “Conventional Wisdom,” from You in Reverse, is Built to Spill’s best song and There Is No Enemy is their best album. Every song on it is great and it’s one of those wonderful albums that becomes more rewarding with each listen.

An Attempt to Discuss Riceboy Sleeps Without Sounding All New-Agey and Stupid

Because I like a challenge, I will now attempt to articulate why I like the Riceboy Sleeps album (I’ve sometimes heard the artist referred to as Jonsi and Alex, the names of the two dudes in the band – one of whom is in Sigur Ros – but I first saw them listed on the Dark Was the Night comp as “Riceboy Sleeps” and that’s what I’ll call them. If they don’t like it, well, they probably won’t do anything about it because, if this music is any indication, they are two exceedingly mellow people) without sounding like some sort of mystical new-age weirdo who likes to lay in bed listening to CDs of flutes and whale-fucking on repeat. And I feel like I have to put that kind of disclaimer up because Riceboy Sleeps (the eponymous album by the band that consists of Jonsi & Alex) is a really lovely album that is almost entirely unlike any other thing I like at all. If this is your first time reading Bollocks!, you might want to skip around the archives a bit; you’ll find that liking subtle, beautiful music is not a common event ’round these parts.

But I do like Riceboy Sleeps. I also like Jonsi’s other band, Sigur Ros – though the latter does not necessarily dictate the former. After all, Riceboy Sleeps makes Sigur Ros sound like the fucking Ramones. I’ve heard the album described as “ambient”, a word I don’t like to use when discussing music because, for me, it conjures up the image of music that is intentionally boring – but I suppose, in terms of strict dictionary definitions, I’ll allow that there are some ambient qualities to Riceboy Sleeps. Pitchfork’s biggest dickhead, Ian Cohen, bashed the album for sounding “indecisive” about how ambient it is, which… no, wait. I’ll let you decide. Here is the exact quote from Cohen’s review: “But what struck me as most frustrating about 20 minutes in was just how indecisive it sounds about its ambience…” I tend to trust that people who have bothered to find Bollocks! in the massive pile of porn and…well, whatever else the internet has on it, are pretty astute readers. So how fucking stupid is it to accuse an album that you yourself have declared “ambient” to be indecisive about how ambient it is? That Cohen is so hung up on how on-again/off-again Riceboy Sleeps gets with the ambience says more about the way he labeled the album than it does about the album itself. But, to work at Pitchfork, you have to give everything an irritatingly pretentious label (like “post-rock”, another meaningless label that makes me want to go on a killing spree. I mean, what the fuck does that even mean? Rock music still exists, so it can’t mean music that came after the end of rock music. So does it mean any music that was made since the birth of rock music? And if so, isn’t nearly everything post-rock? And isn’t rock itself “post-blues”? Seriously, if someone out there can provide a substantive definition of post-rock, I’ll stop complaining about people using the phrase. Wait. No, I won’t) so Cohen is really just protecting his job there. Cohen also complains about the album being too loud to work as background music and, as you read the review, you sort of get the feeling that Cohen’s inability to categorize Riceboy Sleeps is really the reason he dislikes it so much.

But maybe he just never found the right context in which to listen to it. I first listened to the album in my car, which is entirely wrong for an album like this (and potentially dangerous – you might nod off while driving with music like this on). Then, earlier this fall, I happened to be house-sitting for one of my bosses when I popped the disc into his home stereo system, turned the volume up pretty loud, and let the sound spill out into the empty house. That turned out to be the right move. Now, I’m not saying you need a big house in the hills and a nice stereo to enjoy Riceboy Sleeps. I’ve since blasted it in my tiny apartment and on my headphones and found it very satisfying. What you need to enjoy Riceboy Sleeps is volume and time. It’s the kind of album you have to let wash over you. And I know that sounds kinda like new-age hippie bullshit, but I assure you it’s not. People who are familiar with the works of Gavin Bryars (whose beautiful Jesus’s Blood Never Failed Me Yet features a cameo by none other than Tom Waits, whose music has never failed me yet) will probably get what I’m talking about here. There’s a certain amount of stillness required to take in Riceboy Sleeps and, when put in the proper context, the album is stirring and gorgeous. Is it a little pretentious? Yeah, but so is Sigur Ros and I’m willing to forgive so long as the sonic beauty outweighs the pretension.

Of course, I am not daring to suggest that anyone who puts on Riceboy Sleeps at top volume and really tries to digest it will like it. Far from it. Probably very few people will really dig this record – I’m guessing people who are more into mainstream pop music and who read words like “ambient” and “post-rock” for the first time ever in this review will probably find the album kind of dull or annoyingly slow-paced. But there’s real treasure to be found in it for people who are able to give it a chance. I hate telling people to listen to an album nine or ten times before they decide if they like it and I’m not going to tell you that about Riceboy Sleeps. You’re big kids now, you can figure out for yourselves if you want to listen to an album more than once. But I can say with all certainty that this album is deserving of that first time through your speakers.

Next time, I’ll get back to basics and review a nice ambient/no-wave/pre-punk/alt.country/post-rock/neo-ska/shoegaze record (“shoegaze” is a real genre – it’s for people who like to do heroin). As soon as I can find one.