A Whole Lot of Junk Food Analogies Regarding Asobi Seksu

I really don’t want to talk about Charlie Sheen. At all. When I turn on the news, I want to know about Libya and the current federal budget negotiations and what’s going in in Wisconsin (apparently, this is going on in Wisconsin. I don’t know how you feel about unions, but I think you should maybe be upset about the precedent established by politically motivated budget cuts. Also, Sean Hannity is in a union). I don’t care about a clearly mentally ill, drug-addled millionaire who lost his job playing an obnoxious prick on a television show by being an obnoxious prick in real life. But I’ve been listening to the new Asobi Seksu record, Fluorescence, and I keep thinking to myself that every batshit crazy notion that passes through what’s left of Charlie Sheen’s blow-cooked brain is probably soundtracked by music eerily similar to what I’ve been hearing. Of course, that doesn’t mean that listening to Asobi Seksu will send me off on a drug-fueled, uncomfortably public cry for help.

Will it?

Here are some things I learned about Asobi Seksu in preparation for this article – they belong to a genre of music called “dream pop” (it’s kind of fitting) and, when they started out, they were called Sportfuck. I couldn’t find the lyrics for Fluorescence anywhere (my $4.99 used copy doesn’t contain any) and that’s actually okay because it enables me to cling to the fantasy that at least a few of these songs are about fucking unicorns and killing white people (and/or fucking  white people and killing unicorns). So why the hell did I buy this thing anyway?

Well, it was early February, which ain’t exactly a time of shimmering abundance in terms of new music, and I saw that Asobi Seksu had put out a new album. Pitchfork seemed to chide the band for not sounding more like My Bloody Valentine, a band that I view as overrated on a par with the Police. So naturally, I was inclined to reward a band that pointedly doesn’t sound like My Bloody Valentine. And I remembered that I had heard Asobi Seksu years ago, when I worked at Tower Records in Harvard Square. It was just a month or two before I moved to Los Angeles and one of the newish clerks, I want to say her name is Holly (I’ll be a little embarrassed if that’s not the case. I remember she was really awesome and I think her boyfriend was in some kind of swing/steam-punk band) brought in one of their albums. I don’t remember much about it, but I remember thinking it was a nice thing to hear on a sticky, humid Boston summer evening. Probably because it sounded exactly like this Sprite commercial looks. It’s a dumb commercial, and yet so stimulating. This is why I hate commercials.

Where was I?

Oh yeah: so then I found Fluorescence for five bucks at Amoeba. Lo and behold, Asobi Seksu does not sound like My Bloody Valentine. Unlike those shoegaze (it’s a genre; you don’t need to know what it is unless you do lots of heroin) pioneers, Asobi Seksu actually sounds good. Although I get the impression that too much of this stuff will rot my teeth. As I said, “dream pop” is a very accurate way to describe Fluorescence. It’s very pretty from start to finish, with hazy, overdriven guitar bits and Yuki Chikudate’s J-Pop diva vocals riding your dopamine reward pathway like Charlie Sheen rides a porn star. Only with less choking (one more thing on the Sheen-inator before I drop it: why is it that the producers and various network nitwits behind Two and a Half Men watched Sheen perpetrate several episodes of domestic violence – and paid him – without firing him but they kicked him to the curb for badmouthing one of the show’s creators? Is the rule at CBS that you can beat up as many women as you want as long as you don’t talk smack about your boss? Because that’s a shitty rule).

The reason I worry that too much Asobi Seksu will give me auditory diabetes is that I get the feeling that their music doesn’t add up to a whole lot more than its ample prettiness. You might think pretty is great and it is for a while, but it doesn’t stick to your ribs. You can eat all the red velvet cupcakes you want, but if you don’t get some fruits and veggies in there, you’ve got a whole lot of scurvy in your future. That’s why you should get the dark chocolate-covered “powerberries” (a.k.a. “berries with antioxidants”) from Trader Joe’s instead of the red velvet cupcakes, which are a vastly overrated food in my humble opinion (Oh shit. Now he thinks he’s a food critic).

But as much as I think Asobi Seksu is pretty and sugary and all the things you would expect “dream pop” (which must always be written in quotes) to be, I have a really hard time being upset about anything when I’m listening to Fluorescence.  And I strongly feel that sometimes we need to be upset about things. Like when asshole actors beat women up and don’t lose their $2 million-an-episode jobs for it. (Okay, I’m really done now. I promise.) Songs like “Sighs” and “My Baby” are just too much fucking fun; the latter features the cutest refrain you’ll ever hear of “My baby doesn’t love me anymore/ my baby doesn’t love me at all.” That’s the problem with food that’s really bad for you – it is, by a wide margin, the most delicious. I’d love to eat a soup of dark chocolate-covered berries in a broth of Ninkasi Oatis oatmeal stout but, being a responsible adult, I know that would be really really awful for me.

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your perspective), it’s much easier to stop ingesting empty musical calories than it is to stop devouring real empty calories (as I type this, a mostly eaten bag of Cool Ranch Doritos is whispering sexy things to me from the cupboard. Leave me be, Doritos! “Ranch” isn’t even a food). Also fortunately, Fluorescence has its dull moments. “Deep Weird Sleep” is a throwaway instrumental and the only reason I’m glad it’s there is because it reminds me that there are things I definitely don’t like about this album, which occasionally enables me to stop listening to the thing.

You might get the idea from my words that I consider Fluorescence a guilty pleasure. But here’s the thing: I don’t believe in guilty pleasures. You like what you like, you should own it, and that’s that. So this new Asobi Seksu record is a pleasure pure and simple, with emphasis on the “simple.” And I think “meretricious” is probably a more apt modifier for “pleasure” than “guilty” in this case. Fluorescence is the only Asobi Seksu album I own and I think it’s probably safer to keep it that way. In fact, if I’m smart, it will the only “dream pop” album I own, lest I devolve into some sort of insubstantial sonic hedonist.

And starting tomorrow, no more Cool Ranch Doritos.

I Don’t Like Phoenix. What’s Wrong with Me?

Despite being named one of Spin magazine’s 20 best albums of 2009 so far, Phoenix’s Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix has not made a favorable impression upon yours truly. I know the album now comes floating in its own jar of critical jizz, but I don’t see what all the fuss is about. I get that it’s catchy, but that’s not a defense for repetitive songs that say exactly jack shit about fuckall.

But hold on: the wise people at Pitchfork.com had this to say about Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix: “It’s truly universal– everybody live, love, and die.” I’m with ya on the “die” part, Pitchfork. But I’m trying to keep an open mind here. I’ll allow that maybe, just maybe the fact that I don’t like an album that every-fucking-body else seems to like might suggest that I am either 1) wrong this time and/or 2) in need of help.

So I got help. From my good friend and resident musical pathologist Rebecca Mellor (no relation). We sat down over coffee (I wanted booze, but she suggested that drinking makes conversation with me somehow less productive and two or three times as vulgar. Since I’m seeking help here, I decided to trust the professional). I recorded our conversation and transcribed it below; you can judge for yourself if it’s me or the world that’s fucked up here.

Me: Thanks for meeting with me on the weekend.

Dr. M: You’re welcome. Thanks for showing up sober.

Me: No problem. So, have you listened to Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix?

Dr. M: I have. I’m pleased – and somewhat surprised – to report that you are perfectly justified in your contempt for this album.

Me: I am?

Dr. M: Certainly. Let me tell you what’s going on here: every year, sometimes twice a year, an album comes along that is just so outrageously catchy that it seduces a significant portion of the population. You might put MGMT and Vampire Weekend in this category, for instance.

Me: Those records were mostly okay.

Dr. M: Sure they were. But they weren’t great, were they?

Me: Definitely not. They were exactly okay. But this one dude swore to me that MGMT’s record was the album of the year last  year, despite the fact that it actually came out in 2007.

Dr. M: Exactly. People get so caught up in how catchy these kind of albums are that they experience something akin to a mild psychotic break and engage in acts of tragic – though sometimes hilarious – hyperbole in their rush to praise the album in question. The Phoenix album is no different. Pitchfork said Phoenix “discards anything– an outro, a bridge, an extra hi-hat hit– that could be deemed superfluous”, displaying a stunning and willful lack of awareness that the entire five and a half minutes of  “Love Like A Sunset Part I” is musically masturbatory bullshit.

Me: Wow. You sounded like me there for a second.

Dr. M: I’m sorry. But seeing people attribute near Christ-like healing powers to albums of the fluffiest musical stuff – the lyrics on this album aren’t “cryptic,” they’re just awful – provokes a strong reaction in me. Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix represents a disturbing trend among these over-praised pop albums. MGMT had some songs that were a little ridiculous, but they were catchy and still somewhat coherent.

Me: “Time to Pretend” is a great song.

Dr. M: Exactly. MGMT and Vampire Weekend both snuck bits of real high quality music into their albums. Phoenix is cutting and pasting nonsense together into something that is melodically catchy but otherwise entirely meaningless.

Me: So let me play devil’s advocate here. The counterargument you’ll probably get is “What’s wrong with a good melody? The Beatles had melody. Kurt Cobain wrote good melodies. Why do you hate America?”

Dr. M: I’m not sure my patriotism will be questioned for not liking Phoenix, especially since they’re apparently French.

Me: You underestimate the stupid-power of internet comments.

Dr. M: Perhaps. But to address your counterargument, there’s nothing wrong with melody in and of itself. But catchy melodies can be used to make you nod your head to songs that can actually make you a stupider person. Great music, generally, requires a strong sense of melody, but if you’re singing words over that melody, you have to be careful what you’re planting in people’s brains. Consider Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musicals, for instance. While there’s no denying that “Music of the Night” is a melodically lovely tune, there is also no denying that Phantom of the Opera is a puffed up, plotless spectacle designed to rake in the disposable income of middle-aged white women.

Me: So you think Phoenix is trying to use their melodic powers to get people to buy and rave over a completely bullshit album?

Dr. M: That’s my professional opinion, yes. The lyrics on Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix might as well be gibberish – they make Anthony Keidis and Axl Rose look like Allen Ginsberg and John Berryman by comparison. At the end of the day, because there are only so many musical notes at any given musician’s disposal, it is not enough to suggest that the mere arrangement of those notes into a pleasing  – or not pleasing but simply memorable – pattern is some kind of high artistic achievement. On a long enough timeline, any idiot could slap together a catchy melody entirely by accident. You could write a computer program that would make Phoenix songs and, while I don’t want to tell people what they should and should not listen to, I would suggest to you that understanding this album as anything other than a sugary pop confection might be a sign of brain damage.

Me: So, just so we’re clear here: I am not only correct in disliking Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, but it’s a sign that I’m of sound mind?

Dr. M: Yes, though you shouldn’t ignore the many other signs that you, specifically, are not of sound mind.

Me: Such as?

Dr. M: You work in an invisible office with an Imaginary Secretary.

Me: Right. But I don’t like Phoenix. So I’m okay, right?

Dr. M: (long sigh) Yes. Sure. You’re fine. Can I go now?

Me: Yeah. You sure you don’t to come back to the Imaginary Office, maybe have a beer and listen to Captain Beefheart?

Dr. M: I’m sure.

Me: Suit yourself.

And that’s how it went down, folks. You heard it from my own resident musical pathologist: the people at Pitchfork are officially brain-damaged.

Send hatemail and/or questions for the good doctor to askdoctormellor@gmail.com.