pretty disappointing results i think

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very icky... as in sick... in a good way

I think this may be my first post by request. J.R. emailed me and admonished me for not doing a review of the new White Stripes album. Admon taken. Here we go. And begin.

As usual, I'll just be doing it by track listing.

1. Icky Thump
We've all heard this one, so we know how good it is. If you're reading this right now and haven't actually heard it, I'm really surprised. Who are you? How did you discover my blog? Please comment. Anyway, I heard Jack used a synthesizer for some of that weird trilly instrumental work between verses. That was strange to type. Even though I love synth more than anybody in the world, it's the last thing any real White Stripes fan would expect from them. I guess it helps to know that it's some kind of relic synthesizer from the 40s. I suppose it's sort of a dream come true for me: White Stripes AND synths. Maybe next year Depeche Mode will go all acoustic. Oh well, who can even tell it's a synthesizer; and more importantly, the sound isn't heard on subsequent songs anyway. The Stripes have a tendancy to do that. When "Blue Orchid" came out I was ecstatic about the sound. It was the first track on the last album, but the rest of the cd was completely different. Ok, enough about the song everybody should have heard by now anyway.

2. You Don't Know What Love Is (You Just Do As You're Told)

Verrrry Country. Jack lives in Nashville now apparently and you can hear it on this album. He seems a bit obviously down on love here. I think he can be very poignant with his anti-love songs. It helps that he writes very poignant love songs too. Seeing both sides of his thoughts on love actually buoy the overall meanings. I wouldn't like the love songs as much without the anti-love songs and vice-versa. The twang in this one is fun, but the guitar gets a bit tired. Singing along is great on this one and if anything actually gets me into country music, this is it.

3. 300 MPH Torrential Outpour Blues

I think this sounds like a good deep track from White Blood Cells. They have a really good heavy/soft contrast goin.' The steady groove beat complimented with the light rock riff throughout keeping my intense interest shows that Jack has just about every form of musical control

4. The Conquest

This one is probably the most different album track I've heard. I believe it's a cover, but I don't happen to have my liner notes with me right now. A few weeks ago Corey O'brien played a short interview with Jack where he discussed why he chose to include this song and the importance of its meaning. I caught the last ten seconds, so I still have no idea. Oh well, Jack's obviously relishing in the the brilliant Mexican horn section. This song sounds like it would fit in very well on the Kill Bill soundtrack. That's a compliment. Besides the horns, it's straight-up White Stripes minimalism. It actually sounds a lot like "I Think I Smell a Rat" of White Blood Cells again. Jack does a wonderful job of channeling more energy into these minimalist odes since he knows there's more room for it.

5. Bone Broke

This will be my favorite song six months from now. This is exactly what Jack was talkin' about when he said the new album would be their hardest yet. Strangely, most of the abrasiveness is achieved through his voice alone.

6. Prickly Thorn But Sweetly Worn

Welcome to the Renaissance Faire! This one didn't really give me enough time to really revel in "Bone Broke," but fortunately both songs are very cool for what they actually are. This song sort of reminds me of the video for "Safety Dance." Actually if someone were to dub in this song over the "Safety Dance" video, that old 80s video would be way better.

7. St. Andrew (This Battle Is In The Air)

I actually thought this was just the end of track

6. They are connected though. I guess it's the White Stripes' "Need You Tonight/Mediate." The little rap is a bit strange. I'm not sure who does it. Don't have my liner notes.

8. Little Cream Soda

The intro guitar is a bit tired until the bass (or at least basser parts of the guitar) comes in with Jack's vocals. For some reason, the same initial guitar refrain suddenly becomes a part of the groove when it returns. One thing this album seems to do better than the last one is instill a sense of relentlessness.

9. Rag and Bone

Rag and bone! Rag and bone! I'll be honest. According to me, this song sounds A LOT like "Hot For Teacher." That is no insult. Not at all. Meg and Jack's theatrical dialogue throughout is totally delicious. Meg almost, ALMOST sounds like she's coming up on her tranquilizers. Listen for her snaky whisper say "This fits me perfect!" Jack does a better Jesse Jackson than Jesse Jackson. Speaking of relentless, "Rag and Bone" leaves "Little Cream Soda" in the dust.

10. I'm Slowly Turning Into You

Hmmm. Maybe this cd isn't as country as I originally thought. Is that a Beatles organ? Heavily overdubbed voices? Swiping stereo panning? This is very unique for the White Stripes -- an extensively produced noisefest. It's not like Jack is completely isolated in his own rulebook, but when he changes things up, they work.

11. A Martyr For My Love For You

"Dust In the Wind." Are there ANY actual love songs on the album? Man, this one's menacing.

12. Catch Hell Blues

Straight blues with some kind of psycho arpeggio riffs deadly set to convert any non-blues believers. Mission accomplished.

13. Effect & Cause

Ahh, back to country. They played this on Conan a day before the cd came out. I loved seeing them milk so much entertainment out of this simple acoustic tune. Once again we've got Jack venting about relationships. Makes me wonder if marriage to a Brazillian model has its share of communication and (based on this song) logic issues. Ahh. The light-heartedness of it all is a wonderful cleansing sorbet to finish the album.

My final grade:

NINE THUMBS UP.

In other White Stripes news I read today on the White Stripes site that Cold War Kids will be opening their upcoming tour. This leaves me giddy as all get out considering Robbers & Cowards was probably the best album I bought all year up to the point I picked up Icky Thump. I heard that The Raconteurs would possibly be the opening act, but I imagine that would be physically impossible for Jack to pull off (way cool though). Anyway, with Cold War Kids on the bill, this could be shaping up to be the best concert ever. I've seen some pretty sweet shows in the past: Depeche Mode '94, Oingo Boingo '95, Weezer '95, The Cure '04... but here's hopin.' Of course this is different from my standard synth concert taste... or is it?

and knowing is half the battle

Apparently Jimmy Chunga's real name is Brett Smith. The bitter blowhards on X96 revealed it this morning.

muggle racing against time

The new Harry Potter movie opens in a little more than a week. I've never been much of a fan, but especially after viewing the last two movies, I know that I won't be able to really enjoy this social phenomenon without reading the books. The problem of course is that the books are longer than scripture (and comparing them to scripture is fitting for many would-be-witches around the world). I've burned several bridges by borrowing Harry Potter books and not giving them back for years at a time because I'm borderline illiterate (which I've previously mentioned). Hopefully I'll be able to get through the fifth one, which was graciously borrowed from Reagan (I'd link to her if she had a blog, but I don't think she does).

I'm still in a quandry though. If I really want to enjoy the series I may have to wade through the sixth one before the seventh one comes out. I think it comes out within a week of the fifth movie. Since the seventh is supposedly the final book, I doubt the final ending will be properly kept from me before I get around to reading it ten years from now. I have three options: 1) hurry and get them all done to achieve maximum enjoyment and minimal spoilers, 2) read them at my usual slow pace and hope they're enjoyable long after everybody talks about them for years, 3) just wait for all the movies, since there's a better chance they all come out before I read all the books. Obviously the first option is the best, but should I really do that when I don't even consider myself a fan in the first place? If anything, I want to read them all because I'm a big believer in cultural events. It may be bad to say, but I do some things because I enjoy the social party that comes with them. I didn't watch Friends so much because I thought it was so funny (even though it often was). I mostly watched it because sometimes it's fun to be plugged into phenomenons that touch millions of people. This is opposed to Simpsons, Star Wars and ABBA; all things that are/were incredibly popular, but that I legitimately enjoy.

Anyway, just sayin' I want to be one of you, I really do. It's just that these books are like War and Peace up in here yo.

flossed horizon

I ran out of floss a couple of days ago. I don't know how many years it took, but it finally happened. I remember yonks ago on The Arsenio Hall Show, Arsenio did a monologue about how nobody ever gets to the end of their floss. I don't remember anybody laughing. I'm sure they all just realized that Arsenio probably doesn't floss as much as he probably should.

the saddest day of the year

Today is the Summer Solstice. It's the saddest day of the year because from now on, all the days are going to get shorter.

Some may say, "Hey! Since the sun is out longer, doesn't that make it a happy day?"

But then all that knowledge brings is the realization that there is only ONE happy day in the whole year, which is very very sad. Sorry everyone. Try not to get a sunburn while you're hangin' your heads.

i read a book!

Bright Lights, Big City, by Jay McInerney. Been meaning to read it for a long time. One of the only novels ever to be written in second person. It started off pretty strong, but kind of petered out toward the middle. I sort of wish the whole book was more like the opening sequence which was fairly trippy. Chuck Klosterman once asked the question "Which do you consider a higher form of art: the riff from "Barracuda" or the opening statement from Bright Lights, Big City?" There is a good sequence near the middle that paints a claustrophobic nightmare of a horrible work day.

Anyway, I hope this helps cure my recent illiteracy.

enz of an era

I should talk about music more. I listen to music nearly all the time, but I hardly ever talk about it with people because we use music as background noise for our conversations and it's long past the time of high school when we formed most of our musical opinions anyway. Maybe, during the television summer repeats (and no Rockstar: INXS or Supernova), now would be a good time to start a pop music dialogue. Maybe this could be the first in a series.

What musical act's work do you think I relate to the most?

If you said Depeche Mode... you'd be wrong. They've got a ton of relatable stuff out there. Every song is broadly about life, love and lust. Officially, my favorite song ever is "Halo." They also have some unspoken gems. "The Bottom Line" is an obsessive love song with impact every bit as powerful as "Every Breath You Take." Yes, they come very, very close and on some days Depeche Mode would be the right answer, but not today.

The White Stripes is a pretty good guess too. Where Depeche Mode put the the emotional emphasis on coldness through programmed blips and confident lyrical negativism, The White Stripes re-injected popular music with the wondrous use of blues. There's playing loud and wailing to get your point across, then there's playing loud and wailing with soul. There's something I can't quite explain about the exuberance I have with screeching along to the words while not just head-banging, but bopping to the syncopated beat. Needless to say, I'm very excited that The White Stripes are coming, but they're not who I'm thinking about right now.

The musical act I most relate to, at least today, is very obviously Split Enz. They aren't some underground indie phenomenon or anything. Unfortunately, they don't exist as a band anymore. They're actually quite old -- late 70s, early 80s. They had some brilliantly whimsical pop delight tinged with a sort of cynicism-in-denial.

Growing up I had heard a couple of their songs, but I didn't really get into them until I went on my mission to New Zealand. On the way over, one of the in-flight audio channels was playing a little special on Tim and Neil Finn -- the two brothers in the band. I learned that they were actually from New Zealand and the show played me a few clips that were in my head my whole stay there. On the way out of the country I picked up a few Split Enz cds that I still keep close today.

I started thinking of them more recently when we were all driving to Lagoon. I got out my iPod and attempted to find the most Lagoony music. I came up with Split Enz because lots of their music sounds like carnival music. This is the case especially with songs like "My Mistake." The music sounds like a marching band on a carousel. The words are simply self-deprecating.

I went out to see if I could fall in love again
That was my mistake
That was my mistake
I went out to see if I could raise a laugh again
That was my mistake
That was my mistake

You may have heard a couple of their new wave pop hits from the early 80s. Their most famous was probably "I Got You." That's the one that's really monotone during the verses, but then the chorus kicks up with the gleeful chant "I don't know why sometimes I get frightened!" Pearl Jam covered this one. It's sort of about obsessive love (again, like "Every Breath You Take").

Another semi-hit from them with a very similar gumshoe down-beat sound is "One Step Ahead," which holds a place in my heart as the only song I really sat down and learned on the guitar. Just like "I Got You" the song starts off steady and calm but then builds to a subtle anxiety attack both musically and vocally. It's also famous for one band member's use of a forward moonwalk in the song's video a couple of years before Michael Jackson made the moonwalk famous.

When they wanted to, they sometimes dropped the upbeat musical mask. The tragic song "Charlie" seems to be about a brute pleading forgiveness from the victim of his horrendous and possibly fatal abuse. "The Devil You Know" seems to be about the futility of doing good in the modern world. Both songs employ sad, desperate instrumentation.

For the most part though, they were a pop band. I've only noticed their miserable side from many many listens. There could be many reasons for all the negativity. They never really achieved huge mainstream success. For a short period they actually had to go on the dole. Perhaps their moving from New Zealand to Australia to England never really got rid of their sealocked cabin fever.

I'm probably reading too much into it. Just listen to "I See Red" and "History Never Repeats." Both are about anger over failed love affairs. A minority would hear them as tragedy. Most would hear them as comedy.

It wasn't all pretense and veiled gloom. One of their very last songs was a straight-up beauty of a ballad called "Message To My Girl." I'd reprint the lyrics, but they'd sound too cheesy without Neil Finn's harmonious and simple piano and strings. I suppose it was telling of the band's future. Neil formed the pretty successful Crowded House. You may remember them as the guys who sang the "hey now hey now don't dream it's over" song. I'll always relate Crowded House with being a band that Parker Lewis buys concert tickets for in that old tv show (anyone remember Parker Lewis Can't Lose?). Neil's brother Tim joined crowded house from time to time inbetween his solo projects. Strangely, a couple of years ago, the last drummer for Split Enz committed suicide.

I would recommend picking up the Split Enz 2-cd greatest hits compilation called Spellbound. The title is very strange considering the band has a song called "Spellbound" but it doesn't actually appear on the collection (maybe the record company was going for a Doors sort of mystique). Or I guess I could just burn you some really good songs. If you feel like sampling a bit, listen to all the tracks I've mentioned above and also "Six Months in a Leaky Boat," "Poor Boy," "Stuff and Nonsense," "Walk Away" and "I Hope I Never."

*sigh* It would have been really great to see them live.

lagoon '07 (part 1 of many)

We went to Lagoon for Maria's birthday. No sense in describing it all, so here are some pics and vids. We got season passes, so I imagine there will be more to talk about later.