Romance is Boring

Well, let’s see if the soft spot in my heart for Los Campesinos! (the Welsh band with the Spanish name) has grown any since they dominated my 2008 with not one but two totally awesome albums.

Nope.

The soft spot is about the same size that it used to be, which is still reasonably large-ish. The new Los Campesinos! record, Romance is Boring (I disagree with the assertion, but that’s a great title nonetheless), is probably my first big Expectations Test of 2010 (it will be followed shortly by second albums from both She & Him and Titus Andronicus). Their first album, Hold On Now, Youngster, made me pretty giddy, with its acerbic lyrics and bouncy, twee-pop music (I personally wouldn’t call it that, but a friend of mine used it to deride the band not long ago and I’m stealing his words because I confess I’ve never known what people meant by “twee”. My friend went on to compare Los Campesinos! to the Go! Team [on exclamation points alone, he's got a point] in a way that suggests he has about as much regard for both bands as he would have for a grilled shit sandwich with a side order of deep-fried herpes). Of course, it caught me in the early part of 2008, when I was feeling like I didn’t have much besides a Hold Steady album (Stay Positive, which turned out to be the best album of that year) to look forward to.

So what, exactly, is the trouble here? Romance is Boring isn’t bad. It’s certainly not boring. It’s got the clever lyrics (so far, my favorite is “we need more post-coital/ and less post-rock”, a sentiment with which I heartily concur, “post-rock” being right up there with “twee” on the list of Bullshit Styles that I Think Pitchfork Made Up), the music is actually better (more guitars, fewer chimey bits) than in the past. And yet…

And yet…

Well, I’m kinda stunned that I don’t like this album more than I do. And don’t get me wrong (or do), I do like it. It’s just… hmm… Here: have you ever had a friend talk up a favorite dessert or something – say, tiramisu – and they take you to this place where they think the world’s best ever, you’d-kill-your-mom-for-a-slice, perfect tiramisu is made and you try the tiramisu and it’s got all the essential elements (for you non-culinary types, any good tiramisu has, in my estimation, two essential elements: coffee and rum), but it just doesn’t quite deliver for you the transcendent, orgasmo-religious (how’s that for a made-up word, Pitchfork? I can do this shit too) experience that it clearly does for your friend? Well, replace your friend with “me”, yourself with “also me” and the tiramisu with Romance is Boring. I think I’ve reached a point where I no longer believe my own rhapsodizing about how fucking awesome Los Campesinos! are. This probably won’t create a problem for other listeners of their music, but it’s kinda bumming me out.

To prove that I was still inexplicably ga-ga over Los Campesinos!, I revisited their debut. Hold On Now, Youngster is still awesome, but I’m now skeptical that I would list it among my favorite albums of 2008. It’s still good, but it doesn’t grab me the way it used to. Fearing the onset of some kind of complete desensitization to great music, I decided to test myself on another band, Titus Andronicus. I was pretty awestruck by their debut, The Airing of Grievances. In anticipation of their second album, The Monitor (which is coming out next month and which can’t come out soon enough for me), I listened to Grievances again. Funny thing: I probably love The Airing of Grievances more now than I ever have. It’s a great album, still one of the more cathartic records I’ve ever heard (when you feel like beating the shit out of the whole world, put on “Joset of Nazareth’s Blues” and “Titus Andronicus” and you’ll feel better in no time. Or at least you’ll have an invigorating soundtrack for that steep climb up the book depository stairs).

So what’s changed between me and Los Campesinos!? Was I so eager for Romance is Boring that I ruined it with my own admittedly high expectations? No. I think it is exactly as good as I expected it to be. Los Campesinos! are doing what they do best, and they’re doing it pretty well. I think I’m just less excited by what they do best than I used to be. Now, bear in mind that I’ve only had this album for a couple of weeks and I could be orgasming over it by year’s end, but I don’t feel that way now. I felt sort of obligated to listen to Romance is Boring and that’s never a good sign. Having fulfilled the obligation, I don’t regret anything, but I do feel like I was just going through the motions a little (yes, I realize I’m dangerously close to a “faking it” analogy). 2010 is a weird year so far – there’s stuff I’ve been sure I would hate that has blown my mind and stuff I’ve expected to blow my mind that has been… well, so far, merely adequate. That I haven’t been utterly disappointed by anything yet is actually a rare and encouraging sign.

At the end of the day, I think the problem I have with Romance is Boring is that I expected it to blow my mind and it didn’t. It was merely good, possibly even great (maybe. Nah, probably not), but entirely unsurprising. I’m not gonna sell the album back or anything and I’ll probably keep listening to it, but I feel like I might end up feeling like I’m in love with an image of this album that exists only in my mind. In which case, I guess I will have proven that my romance with Los Campesinos! has become boring, at which point I will wait until they are dying of cancer to cheat on them. (Too soon?)

Why I Don’t Hate Vampire Weekend

I don’t believe Americans invented the ill-informed, knee-jerk reaction, but I know we’ve perfected it. Ask yourself if people who have the time to go to D.C. for a week and wave (often misspelled) signs are actually working enough to make enough money to be “Taxed Enough Already.” Just a for-instance. Politics is an easy field to which I can point and say, “Behold, y’all: ignorance abounds.” But fans of music are not immune, as I have found out on more than one occasion. Sometimes, if you don’t like a band that other people like, they’ll hate you for it. I don’t understand this myself, but it happens. And sometimes music fans like to react to things before they’ve heard them. I didn’t want to write too much about how people hate Vampire Weekend for their Ivy-League pedigree, their elitist references to “kefir” (goes good with arugala, Tea Partiers), or their globe-trotting sound because every Vampire Weekend review discusses that shit ad nauseum. But every review discusses that shit because there are more than a few people whose knee-jerk reaction is to dismiss Vampire Weekend as privileged posers, allowing their perception of the band as people to color their perception of the band as musicians. (It should be noted that plenty of great musicians are/were horrible people. Ask John Lennon’s kids what kind of father he was. Ask Joey Ramone what kind of friend Johnny Ramone was*. And so on.)

But here’s the thing: I didn’t want to like Vampire Weekend at first either. I felt snob-guilt for liking “A-Punk,” which I heard for the first time (gasp!) on a non-NPR-affiliated radio station. And I still listen to their first album and it’s still fun and interesting. And I wanted to cut myself off there and resist the urge to purchase Contra on the day it came out (I did read an NPR review of the album before I bought it. Cred restored? I don’t care). But who was I kidding?

I just can’t quit Vampire Weekend, to borrow a phrase from a vastly overrated film. The reason I can’t is because Vampire Weekend makes very – very - compelling pop music. That is due in no small part to the arranging abilities of a multi-instrumentalist whom I affectionately nicknamed Batman when discussing their first album. Batman punctuates Vampire Weekend’s hyper pop music with flourishes of wind and string instruments, while Ezra Koenig yelps his sometimes-clever lyrics (he’s no Isaac Brock, but he scores his share of points) and strums his usually-clean guitar. Their sound is not like the sound of other popular acts and I believe they come by their world-music inclinations honestly. So I like them and I like Contra and if you write a review where you say it’s the worst piece of shit you’ve ever heard, I promise I won’t post comments on your blog telling you to shoot yourself or trying to simultaneously abuse you and the English language. The reason I won’t do that is simple: I’m a fucking adult (looking at you -but certainly not all of you – fans of Portugal. The Man).

But enough peripheral bullshit. Let’s talk about Contra, can we? The songs are not drastically different from the songs on Vampire Weekend’s eponymous debut – which is to say, the songs are good. There are one or two slower, more ballady numbers, and Auto-tune rears its ugly head on “California English”, much to my dismay. While I understand the aesthetic choice and there is compelling evidence that Ezra Koenig doesn’t need Auto-tune, I cannot state clearly enough that I loathe Auto-tune at all times under all circumstances. I think it sounds like shit. If Joe Strummer came back to life and told me that Auto-tune cures cancer, AIDS, poverty, and stupidity all at the same time, I would counter that it still sounds like shit and has no fucking business in my music. Ever. Also, Kanye West used Auto-tune on his entire last album and he doesn’t seem to be less stupid from where I sit. My gripe about the Auto-tune is smaller than it sounds, though – it (just barely) doesn’t ruin “California English” and certainly doesn’t ruin the rest of the album. Contra is similar to Vampire Weekend, but Contra is musically smarter. This is analogous to how I feel being newly 30 – it’s like being 20 again, but I’m smarter. I hope.

The only real question I have for Vampire Weekend is, can they pull this music off live? I might have to see them at Coachella to find out, but it looks like I’m headed back there this year, so that won’t be a problem. It doesn’t sound to me like Koenig sings anything particularly challenging for his vocal range, so what I’ll be looking for his how they pull off all of the nifty little instrumental flourishes. I predict heavy sequencing.

The bottom line is, if you liked the first Vampire Weekend record, Contra will probably also please you. If you didn’t like their debut, you’re probably not going to find much to change your mind here. If you don’t like Vampire Weekend because of where they’re from or what college they attended, or how “privileged”** you think they are, I think you’re cheating yourself out of some great pop music, but that’s your business.

*A bit of explanation for those of you who have, for some reason, not seen The End of the Century: Johnny’s wife was, at one time Joey Ramone’s girlfriend. Johnny Ramone wooed her away from Joey who, by way of passive aggressive vengeance, wrote “The KKK Took My Baby Away”, ostensibly about his guitarist Johnny. I honestly don’t know how the Ramones stayed together as long as they did, given how little they seemed to like each other.

**Anybody who gets to make music for a living is privileged, as is anyone who can go to the occasional (or frequent) concert. If you have time to troll the internet to defend the bands you love and dis the bands you hate, you are also privileged. To my knowledge, the dudes in Vampire Weekend are not the sons of cable TV moguls or oil barons or former pop stars. Even if the guys in Vampire Weekend were born rich, it makes no sense to hate them for it. They clearly used their privilege to hone what is, all else aside, remarkable musical talent. On the other hand, it does make sense to hate Paris Hilton because she’s famous for being born rich and has used her privilege to simultaneously attract new and exotic STDs, launch an abortive acting career, and launch an even more abortive (if possible) musical “career.”

Avoiding the Q-Word

I have a confession to make: I watched the first couple seasons of Grey’s Anatomy. It started out kinda interesting, kinda funny, kinda offbeat. I thought it was gonna fall between Ally McBeal and Boston Legal before numerous shark-jumps propelled the series really far up its own ass and into a morass of melodrama. Also, Grey’s has perpetrated the worst inaccuracy in the history of televsion. I know, plenty of medical shows are inaccurate (House would never be able to keep a job in a real hospital, but who cares? That show is fucking awesome) but none besides Grey’s Anatomy has committed the crime of having one of its whiniest, pussiest characters say that The Clash is his favorite band. Unlikely, Patrick Dempsey. No one who loves The Clash could be such a snivelling weiner.

I bring up your girlfriend’s favorite TV show because one of the things that began to piss me off as the show got worse was that they still would feature really good music. I’ve heard TV on the Radio, Band of Horses, and Regina Spektor (a couple of times) on that show, in episodes that were subpar to say the least. I’m not sure how much having a lot of Begin to Hope featured on ABC’s biggest show (is it still their biggest? I don’t care; they cancelled Pushing Daisies so they can go fuck themselves) pushed Regina Spektor into the national spotlight, but I also don’t care. Regina Spektor deserves to be successful and if having her music featured on the shlockiest show ever helps, that’s  all right with me.

She’s successful enough now that the Pitchfork people have decided to stop liking her, though they used to find her… (I’m not going to use the q-word, because everyone does to describe Spektor’s music and it’s just lazy at this point) eccentric, Pitchfork has decided to find her new album, Far, annoying. Incidentally, if you’re ever arguing with a Pitchfork staffer, I think a good thing to say when they turn their nose up at something you like (and they will) is, “You like Wavves.” That should pretty much invalidate whatever they’re about to say. (Am I saying Wavves is objectively terrible? I guess so. And also, I’m glad that dumb fucking kid had a massive meltdown at that festival. Maybe now that “band” can go the fuck away.)

Their loss. Spektor’s lyrics are whimsical as ever, her particular gift being the ability to go from childlike innocence to a world-weary absence of innocence in the same song (kinda how life goes, yeah?). Far really isn’t much of a departure from Begin to Hope, which might turn off some people, but I find that it’s just a really catchy, well-crafted pop album. Spektor isn’t afraid to sound a little silly, and she has a penchant for taking syllables of lyrics and turning them into tiny refrains (“Eet” is a good example of this) which are infectious and goofy. God forbid the woman have fun while she’s performing.

The strength in any Regina Spektor song is her voice, an instrument that goes from low dolphin impersonations (on “Folding Chair,” she impersonates a dolphin. It’s just barely not-annoying) to lilting high notes (like on the album opener “The Calculation,” where, for some reason, she kinda reminds me of a young David Bowie) on a whim. It’s not enough to call Spektor “quirky,” (that’s the only time I’m using the q-word), especially because the people who do it seem to be doing it in place of calling her “good.” As if they want to look at Spektor and say, “Aw, isn’t the little girl with the piano cute?” It strikes me as an almost dismissive term. Yes, Regina Spektor plays with syntax and plays with her voice to a degree that many singers do not (by the way, Pitchfork loved Fever Ray’s album, and that chick manipulates the fuck out of her voice. How come that‘s not q-riffic?) and she chews up syllables and laughs and sputters her way through songs, but rather than focusing on the unusualness of all of that, why not talk about the musicality? Like all good singers, Spektor uses her voice as an instrument and any instrument used well is going to have a wide range of sounds.

There are several really choice cuts on Far, perhaps the best of which is “Dance Anthem of the 80s,” which features all the things that Pitchfork hates about Regina Spektor. It’s a little repetitive, but it’s fun and I like any song that talks about boys and girls at “a meat market down the street.” “Dance Anthem” indulges all of Spektor’s musical weirdness, with stops and starts and those syllable-refrains, and it all manages to work because Spektor’s voice is so compelling, singing in the middle of the tune, “I am one of your people,” and showcasing one Spektor’s other talents: finding the beautiful in the middle of the silly, the sad underneath the happy, the… oh fuck, I’m running out of comparisons. Point is, Spektor’s songs are all wonderfully human, often encompassing everything that can mean in one song. The q-word just doesn’t do for stuff like that. (By the way, earlier Spektor tunes that are examples of what I’m talking about: “Us” and “Poor Little Rich Boy” from Soviet Kitsch and “Samson” from Begin to Hope.)

The first single from Far, “Laughing With,” is probably my least favorite song on the album. It’s not a bad song, but it strikes me as a little too easy. Spektor says, “No one’s laughing at God in a hospital” and I get what she’s going for, but I should like to point out that some of us aren’t thinking about God at all in a hospital. The last time I was in a hospital, God was the furthest thing from my mind (in fact, God is usually the furthest thing from my mind, despite which fact, I’m a very happy person whose life is quite meaningful, okay-thanks-g’bye). A lot of people will dig the sentiment of the song (it ends on the line, “We’re all laughing with God”) and I bet you it makes it onto an episode of Grey’s Anatomy this season, but it’s far less fascinating to me than album closer “Man of a Thousand Faces” which shares its title with a biopic about Lon Chaney Sr. but – because I didn’t Google the title until this morning and an not familiar with Oscar-nominated pictures from 1957- the subject matter of the song reminds me of Joseph Campbell (author of The Hero with a Thousand Faces, one of the best books ever written – I literally read it once a year) because it talks about a guy going to a place, “that no religion/ has a found a path to or a likeness” and looking at the moon “like he knows her.” Even if the song is not about Joe Campbell (I don’t think it is, but it’s not impossible), it always makes me smile when one awesome thing reminds me of another awesome thing – in this case, I can listen to Regina Spektor and read Joseph Campbell and not have to bottle either of them up into boxes labeled with single words that don’t really do justice to their respective talents.

In summary, some instructions for good living: read Joseph Campbell. Listen to Regina Spektor. Don’t watch Grey’s Anatomy. Do listen to The Clash. That should just about do it.

Oh, and, whatever you do, don’t listen to Wavves.

Metric Fantasies are Easier to Convert

Normally, if you sang, “Everybody just wanna fall in love,” in the chorus of your song, I would probably want to punch you in the face and then pee on you while you’re down. It’s just how I roll.

Clearly, you’re not Emily Haines. Because she’s sung those very words on “Sick Muse,” from Metric’s Fantasies album and… goddammit, I really like that song. I think I’ve mentioned a number of times recently that I don’t normally go for slick, poppy sounding stuff, as if it’s somehow the exception to whatever musical rule it is I follow (I’ll give you a hint – I don’t follow any musical rules). Metric is gonna make me look like a liar. Because Fantasies is a ridiculously poppy album with shimmery guitars and pounding drums and Haines’s cute-as-a-button voice (I believe she supplied the vocal to Broken Social Scene’s standout track “Anthems for a 17-Year-Old Girl”). So, given my addiction to the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs record and now the aural candy that is Fantasies, what are my options? Am I a hypocrite of some kind? Probably not. Then what? Underneath all the scowl and snark and sn0bbery, am I just one big goddamn teddy bear?

Who cares?

The point is, when you say “pop music”, you might mean Chris Brown or Mariah Carey and I really do hate that shit. I guess what it boils down to is that when I say, “pop”, I start with The Beatles and go from there. The New Pornographers, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Metric; these are great pop bands, I don’t care how few people have heard of them. The fact is, just in time for me to roll down the window and crank up a great driving album, Metric has delivered Fantasies. Too bad some crooked fucker did a hit and run on my poor Corolla last weekend. Guess I’ll be waiting a few weeks for that windows-down, rocking-out thing. (Dont’ mourn, loyal Bollocks! reader<s> – my car is going to pull through this. And I got a witness, so the afore-mentioned crooked fucker is in for a legal smackdown as well).

Fantasies is a whole lot of fun, though it might be too sugary sweet for some people. When I said it’s ridiculously poppy, I was indulging in not one jot of hyperbole – listen to “Stadium Love” and tell me it’s not ridiculous. But I like it. I can’t help liking it. Just for fun, I tried to hate this album after I’d heard it once. Couldn’t be done. Granted, Fantasies isn’t going to change your life, but that’s not Metric’s goal. I’m pretty sure they just want to dance. That might not appeal to some brands of humorless indie dickweed out there, but for those of us who like joy, there’s lots to be had on Fantasies.

Haines has a good ear for 80s style pop tunes (like “Gold Guns Girls”) but isn’t afraid to be a bit subversive here and there (she sings about hearing you “fuck through the wall” on “Satellite Mind.” You should maybe quiet down a little) – her voice sounds cute, but the songs don’t hit you over the head with it. They’re not like, say, the novelty songish shit that you get out of Britney Spears and her herpes-addled ilk. Where your average teenage pop princess telegraphs the “Hey, look at me, I’m coy and sexy,” thing (Britney, and I hate myself for knowing this, has a single called “If You Seek Amy”. As with Wavves, I refuse – refuse! - to see what she did there), Haines makes more organic use of her voice, especially on the good-natured breakup (or is it?) song “Gimme Sympathy.” “Who would you rather be:/ The Beatles or the Rolling Stones?,” she asks her lover, and it’s an intriguing question. Would you rather stay together for forty years and know that your relationship was way better twenty years ago or stay together ten years and be regarded as legendary? I know which one I’d prefer, and when Haines sings, “Come on, play me something/ like ‘Here Comes the Sun’”, she tips her hand quite cleverly. Around the time of Exile on Main Street, you could have had a substantive debate about whether the Beatles or the Rolling Stones were the best band or whatever, but the Beatles quit before they could make a bad album and the Rolling Stones have now put out more bad albums than good ones. This analogy/diatribe will not, for those of you who are curious, be written into my wedding vows. At least I don’t think so.

Pitchfork praises the slower moments on Fantasies for revealing some sense of vulnerability that isn’t there on the faster tunes, but I (big surprise) don’t really see what they’re driving at. None of these songs seem particularly revealing  – I don’t listen to Fantasies and go, “Oh. Now I know exactly who Emily Haines is.” And that’s not the point. The slow songs are fine, but the fast songs are fucking fun, and while Pitchfork staffers have this idea that fun = listening to that tool from Wavves masturbate onto a distortion pedal, I happen to think listening to Emily Haines sing about burnt out stars (“Front Row” is my current favorite track on the album”, partly because Haines sounds eerily like Emma Pollock on that tune) is a better bet.

There’s a deluxe edition of Fantasies that has acoustic versions of a couple of the songs, but I can’t imagine why you’d want to hear them – they’re not bad at all, but this album (kinda like It’s Blitz! by The Yeah Yeah Yeahs) needs no unplugging, especially not right after ending on the awesomely silly “Stadium Love”. It needs to be cranked up and enjoyed in all its fully electric, poppy glory. Which I’m gonna do right now.