SO/SN/SB/SB Wk. 2

Something Old
(an album that came out before 2016 that I’ve been listening to)

An old friend suggested that I give Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation another shot. Not that I haven't given it many shots in the past, and not that I necessarily disliked it. It's a really good album! It has one of the best songs of all time on it—"Teen Age Riot"—and a bunch of other rippers. Two problems, I'd argue. One, the pacing is thrown off by the fact that "Teen Age Riot" is the first, and by far best, song, so the album really has nowhere to go but down afterward. It's not a huge dip in quality, but it's a dip nonetheless. Two, some of the songs stretch for way longer than they should. When it's hitting the gas, the songs on Daydream Nation are going full-throttle. When it's in neutral, however, it stays there a little too long. Still, despite its flaws, this album is a classic, and warrants at least a few tries. Glad I gave it another spin today.

Something New
(an album that came out in 2016 that I’ve been listening to)

I only got into Andrew Jackson Jihad last year via their 2011 hit Knife Man. Since then, they’ve changed their name, and also... well no, that’s about it. AJJ's The Bible 2 is still the same cutting folk/indie rock that we all know and love. The album’s lyrics are witty as hell, and often times hilarious, and other times depressing as shit. The opening "Cody's Theme" is a great opening showcase for the band, combining a catchy chorus and a story about violence and hallucinations. Another stand-out is "White Worms," which, given the title, you can probably guess isn't sunshine and rainbows, and yet still, you can tap along to it. Something tells me I should dig into this band a little more.

Something Borrowed
(an actual music critic talks about an album better than I can)

Pitchfork’s Stuart Berman reviews Thee Oh Sees' A Weird Exits. And yes, this is Pitchfork, so it's pretentious as fuck, but in this particular case I agree with what they are saying—Thee Oh Sees are a one-trick pony, but shit, that trick is pretty neat:

"In stark defiance of pop music's "don’t bore us, get to the chorus" maxim, John Dwyer believes the best antidote to boredom is getting rid of the chorus altogether. Rather than introduce a rousing, anthemic melody to elevate a song to the next level, Dwyer takes the shortcut to ecstasy: after riding a relentless robo-punk rhythm through a couple of creepily cooed verses, he simply screams "wooo!," and uses his fuzzbox as a springboard into the stratosphere. At this point in the band’s 11-album run, you can pretty much set your watch to this maneuver—A Weird Exits’ pulsating opener, "Dead Man's Gun," dutifully triggers its strobe-lit squall at the 40-second mark. But the trick never fails to exhilarate, because Thee Oh See’s blast-off moments never feel like smooth, assured ascents—they’re more like riding a whirling fairground attraction and realizing your safety belt has come unlatched."

The full review.

Something Blue
(an album I will NOT be listening to this week, or probably ever?)

I apologize if it feels like I’m piling on. I honestly don’t know if I am. The diehard fans said her VMA appearance was pretty good, and the critics panned the hell out of it, so I'm not really sure if it was a true comeback or a weak attempt at one. Still, I know enough to stay away from aging pop star Britney Spears' Glory. It's currently sitting at 73/100 on Metacritic, which is... actually a lot higher than I expected. As I learned with Nick Jonas this week, it's childish and wrong to shit on a pop album just because it's a pop album, but that doesn’t mean I'm going to waste my time looking for something to like here. Let's just trust that it's in there somewhere and move on.

Last Year Was Complicated, Joe

Last Year Was Complicated

Nick Jonas

June 10, 2016

I’m 27 years old, and I’ve been listening to music seriously for long enough that not every record is made specifically for me. It would be stupid and childish to shit on an album just because I'm not in its intended audience. Unlike the neckbeards that complained about the new Ghostbusters, or grown fucking adults reviewing, say, the new Madagascar movie, I know that certain pieces of art are for certain people. I get it.

All this burying the lede to say: no, I did not like Last Year Was Complicated. But why would I? You honestly think Nick Jonas was sitting in the studio, crafting these shiny pop ditties for a snobby sarcastic 27-year-old male? Nah man, no way. Just listen to the lyrics a little bit, and it's pretty clear who the audience is—any girl who finds him attractive, and who can place herself in the song, imagining that she is that girl he is crooning about.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with that! I'm taking the high road here. I am not going to keep this album on my iPod forever, but there are some good things on here!

Let’s start with the bad though.

We can start with those aforementioned lyrics. Hoo-boy, are they corny. I feel like a lot of it is Nick Jonas trying to create a new meme or hashtag or something. The most egregious example is #champagneproblems. No, wait, I changed my mind. #bacon is the worst one. Check out this chorus:

"Late night, doing what I wanna do,
I got sleep eyes, I woke up like this,
Feelin' like, aw shit, put some bacon on it,
One thing I love more than being with you..."

I mean, this is bad right? Are they really bad lyrics, or am I wrong? Because again, this shit isn't meant for me.

Oh my god, I just googled "nick jonas bacon" and discovered that he performed this song at the VMAs on Sunday night. This is his hit single! I honestly didn’t know. But let’s reflect why this was the song he performed, and why people enjoy it. Because it is definitely not the lyrics.

I will give him credit, I listened to "Bacon" twice more, and I... kind of get it? The chorus, as cringeworthy as it is, is kind of lifted up a bit by the music. I like how the subsequent choruses escalate each time, and more instrumental music is added, so that by the end of the song, we're bumping along to a jam. Forget the lyrics, and it's not bad!

Yes, I praised the music, but unfortunately, as a whole, I just don’t find a whole lot to appreciate here on the album. I feel like every time I’m dragged out to a bar with loud Top 40 music, I hear music exactly like what is on Last Year Was Complicated. It follows the standard template of any Q102 shit you'll hear. It's unoriginal. It's cliché. But yet again—it's not for me!

Throwing a dart at random songs on the playlist, and I can find some good things, sure, like...

..."Close," which is a song I totally recognize (I think?!), and it is pretty catchy. I like the subtle steel drum flourishes, they tickle me in the right spot.

..."Comfortable," which features a totally bizarre interlude in which Nick Jonas, I’m pretty sure, is comparing himself to Allen Iverson and his disdain for practicing? It's silly and nonsensical and strangely works.

..."Chainsaw," which features Nick Jonas dropping the F-bomb, which I can totally appreciate; on another level, it feels edgy to have the pop star sing the F-bomb (if only because the bar for edginess with these people is so goddamn low, but I appreciated it all the same).

..."Good Girls," which totally overcomes "Bacon"-level shittiness in the lyrics by being pretty darn catchy as the chorus shuffles along. That Big Sean bridge sounds like it should be in a Rebecca Black song though, amiright?!?

Alright, that's enough. You get the point. I can sit here all day and examine each song on a subatomic level and somehow convince myself that this album is a worthwhile endeavor for me. But I'm not going to do that, and you know why?

Because this is a cookie-cutter collection of songs created by a Jonas Brother and an army of paid collaborators. This isn't what I do!

I’m glad I listened to this album, I really am. If someone tries to claim that Last Year Was Complicated is a shit-heap of garbage, I will now have the power to rebuke them. It is not all garbage. There are some individual moments worth listening to. I would know. I listened to it.

I wouldn't recommend this to anyone, mainly because the people that ask me for recommendations usually share some part of the Music Tastes Venn Diagram with me. People who listen to Nick Jonas don’t care enough about music that they would ever ask anyone for recommendations. Why would you need to know if you should listen to Nick Jonas when you're happy to have MTV spoon it down your throat?

I’m going in circles now. I'll stop. Is this album terrible? No. Is it good? No. Goodnight folks!

GRADE: 1.5 pukes out of 5

BEST SONG: “Close”

Why Don't We Get Drunk: A Jimmy Buffett Concert

The camera zooms in from atop the highest Camden structure, the Ben Franklin bridge, at exactly 3 PM, and it zooms in on a little parking lot along Martin Luther King Dr., and it zooms in through the checkerboard of brightly colored canopies, and finally spots our protagonists, eight young heathens, preparing for an event that, if you google it, turns up nothing but pictures of middle-aged cougars with their tits hanging out.

Yes, this is a Jimmy Buffett concert tailgate.

Cut to the concert itself, and we’ll see the stadium packed, but the energy low. Jimmy Buffett doesn’t pump you up, he cools you down. There’s no question why he only plays his tunes in the summer, because this is summer music. The steel drums, the congas, the gentle strum of an acoustic guitar, this is music that requires you to put down your PBR and pick up a margarita.

We cut to the concert, then, because this is a music blog, but really, to focus on the concert itself would do a disservice to the experience that we tried to cultivate (and I'd argue were successful with) back at the party. The stage was a blip in the distance from our lawn seats, and the music was soft and blended together because most of the songs sound the same to my novice ears. The heart of the day was back on the concrete down the street from BB&T.

And so, we pan the camera back to the tailgate. It’s 6 PM now, and everyone is four Landsharks deep already (unless you're pregnant, of course). Setting the scene here: one canopy, decked around the circumference with Hawaiian-themed cardboard characters and flowers; two tables, the first loaded with Margarita mix and every liquor you could fathom would also be found at a beachside bar, the second with food. This is Philadelphia, so there are soft pretzels present. This is temporarily NOT Philadelphia also, though, it's the Florida Keys, so next to the pretzels there's a watermelon carved in the shape of a shark.

The camera is in first-person view now, from my sitting position on a low Tommy Bahama beach chair, and the camera pans from side to side. We see tiki torches and beach umbrellas and blenders plugged into extension cords tumbling out of car windows. We see milfs in bikinis swimming in a baby pool filled up in the bed of a pickup trucks. We see grills about every seven feet. We see a drink in every hand.

To say that we, the patrons of this parking-lot-turned-tropical-island are a group of like-minded individuals would be disingenuous. Survey 100 flower-print-clad people in the lot, and I bet you 90 would argue that we need to "Make America Great Again," and boy oh boy do I find our country as a whole embarrassing because of that shit.

But to say we were all alike isn't the point that a Jimmy Buffett concert attempts to make. The point, I'd argue, is this: we come from all corners of the city, and we are decent to each other. That dude who looks like an obese South Philly plumber, who is sweaty and obnoxious and loud and crude? When he walks past our tailgate, he is my best friend, and we laugh and joke and wish each other the best.

This is a music blog, so I am sorry when I say that I can't critique Buffett's music. I can't and I won't. That's not the point. How can you critique something that is meant to be, not heard, but felt?

So we pan the camera one last time, to a group of eight young adults. It’s 8 PM now, and the sun is mostly down, and the crowd is picking up their lawn chairs and starting the exodus to the stadium. There are eight smiles on camera now. This wasn't a day that will change any of their lives. It was just a day that affirmed that life is good. Life is fun. Life is worth living.

Sorry, I know, that's probably hyperbole. It was just a nice fucking day, alright? Music is a pretty great reason to have a good day sometimes.

Top Five Musical Fucks

Some day, if I have children and they are growing old enough to listen to music, I’m gonna have to comb through my iPod and try to pick out all the coarse language. I know there’s a lot of it, it's just that I don’t really notice. I live my life unrestrained from society's ban on cursing. I swear a lot. I'm numb to it. It takes a lot for me to stand up and take notice at someone saying the word "fuck." Here’s my top five favorite songs where the Fucks that really stood out.

5. "Demons" by the National

"When I walk into a room, I do not light it up... Fuck." (around 2:40)

Matt Berninger could have a Top Five all to himself for well-placed curses, with that silky baritone of his. "Demons" takes the cake though, because the lyrics are so depressing, as if he's almost listing the reasons he's a fuck-up, and the bridge continues it (though an octave higher now), and when the Fuck finally comes, you can just feel the resentment and disgust in his voice. Plus, that pregnant pause kills me every time.

4. "Positive Tension" by Bloc Party

"So fucking useless!" (around 3:18)

Bloc Party used to be a really tight band. Like, every instrument was on point every step of the way. That tension really showed in, um, "Positive Tension," especially in the climactic ending, the one that starts at 2:34, when the guitar is strumming and the drums—goddamn that drummer was good—and everything just starts crashing around them, higher and higher, and finally collapses to just the vocals, singing that great glorious swear. The song quickly fizzles out, because really, there’s nowhere to go but down.

3. "Fear and Loathing in Mahwah, NJ" by Titus Andronicus

"FUCK!! YOU!!" (around 1:12)

As the first song on Titus's first album, It’d be too easy to say that it was the opening thesis statement to their entire discography, but I honestly believe it to be true, so we’re gonna stick by that. Titus Andronicus, throughout the eight and a half years since this song’s release, has never stopped fighting "The Enemy." The enemy is everywhere. Call it a blank slate for whatever is pissing you off today. Well, guess what Titus Andronicus responds to these very things that make our lives miserable. You got it, man. Fuck you!

2. "I Want to Be Well" by Sufjan Stevens

"I’m not fucking around!" (first one around 3:42, many repeats)

Sufjan wears many hats as a performer, from banjo-toting historian to church-going choir boy to sad quiet orphan. I can’t really say anyone expected, however, when he released Age of Adz in 2010 and revealed his new persona as a suicidal synth machine. Adz is as thick in length as it is in reverb and computer wonkery, but goddamn, Sufjan’s emotions shine through just as hard as if it were just him and his guitar. And like I alluded to up there, Sufjan isn’t particularly the type of singer you'd expect to curse in his music. So when he starts yelling "I'm not fucking around" over the absolute wave of synths, punctuating the curse itself ("I’m not fucking around," almost snarling), it felt so cathartic. It felt like Sufjan was finally himself.

1. "Point/Counterpoint" by Streetlight Manifesto

"Fuck it, thank you, I love you all!" (around 4:53)

Chalk my number one song up to nostalgia. When I was seventeen years old, with a fresh driver's license, we would blast this shit out of my parent's Toyota, and sure enough, when the band stops and the singer curses the world, so would we: windows down, fists in the air. Ska is juvenile, sure, but so were we. In my mind, there was no better expression of our youth than the climax of this tune.

SO/SN/SB/SB Wk. 1

Something Old

(an album that came out before 2016 that I’ve been listening to)

Not sure how I went my whole life without listening to The River by Bruce Springsteen, but man, it really gave my stagnating opinion of Bruce a swift kick in the ass. I think I’ve avoided it because I made unfounded assumptions based on the three songs that are in the WMGK canon—"Independence Day," "The River," and "Hungry Heart"—the first two are bummer slow songs, the third, corny as fuck. But someone should have told me what a banger this album is! Almost 3/4ths of the album is the E Street Band going balls to the wall. It’s a party album! And even those quiet moments make more sense in the context of being a breather between the rest of the hot takes. Born to Run be damned, I might have a new favorite Springsteen album.

Something New

(an album that came out in 2016 that I’ve been listening to)

Every year, I hope that Of Montreal puts out a great album. I have the opportunity to hope this every year because the band literally almost puts out a new album every damn year. But I know Kevin Barnes has greatness in him. I’ve heard it. 2016’s jaunt is Innocence Reaches, and it probably comes closer to greatness than any other of their other efforts in the 2010s, even if it doesn’t quite get there. But it honestly reaches that balancing point between psychedelic maximilism and grounded rock 'n' roll better than Of Montreal has in a while. Songs like "gratuitous abysses" and "chaos arpeggiating" are still weird as shit, don’t get me wrong, but they are at least anchored to the goddamn ground, unlike the pile of beige noises they put out last year. If you like Of Montreal but are growing weary like I am, maybe give Innocence Reaches a shot. It’s either going to be mildly refreshing, or you’ll swear them off forever. At this juncture, I’m feeling the former.

Something Borrowed

(an actual music critic talks about an album better than I can)

Chris Deville of Stereogum, in his Album of the Week column, describes Connections’ Midnight Run, a neat little album that kind of reminds me a bit of Titus Andronicus' The Airing of Grievances, if they toned it down and polished the hooks ever so slightly:

"Midnight Run is this band's finest collection of unpolished gems. As ever, they've delivered a batch of churning, physical power-pop songs topped off with ripping guitar leads and the kind of buried vocal melodies that sneak their way into your consciousness. The music inhabits a sonic space somewhere between Cheap Trick and Flying Nun, populist in style yet boutique in scope. You’ll get a similar Camaro-blasting vibe from Diarrhea Planet, but rather than blast you across the face with over-the-top theatrics, these tracks are stripped to their raw material, letting the songwriting outshine its aesthetic container.

And if you give them the chance, these songs really do shine."

The full column.

Something Blue

(an album I will NOT be listening to this week, or probably ever?)

Listen, folks, Stranger Things on Netflix was pretty damn good! It was the perfect Summer Popcorn Series, if you will. Despite the heavy sci-fi, it was a simple A to B story. It was thrilling! But holy moly, it’s becoming way too overhyped! At least once a day on Facebook, someone claims it was the best series they’ve ever seen. Slow your rolls, friends. I liked it, I didn’t LOVE it, and I certainly do not want to listen to the soundtrack. The alien music was really neat in the context of watching television, but damn I could not listen to that shit for an hour straight by itself.

Real, Pam

I have to admit I did not like this album on first listen. I literally knew nothing about Lydia Loveless before we decided to start this album review thing and Joe suggested checking her album out for the first week. I first noticed the very cool twang about her voice. She almost sounds like a Midwestern country version of Neko Case. For me though, the style of her album was not very interesting. Then I read the AVClub interview with Lydia Loveless (that Joe posted) and I wanted to listen to the album again, this time with a more critical ear because I liked what I read about her as a person.

I remembered a quote from a movie that I always think of when I listen to music—"A melody is like seeing someone for the first time. The physical attraction. Sex. But then, as you get to know the person—that's the lyrics. Their story. Who they are underneath. It's the combination of the two that makes it magical." I won’t say what movie it’s from, because that might discredit this whole review... okay OKAY, it’s from the 2007 rom-com Music and Lyrics starring Drew Barrymore and Hugh Grant. Judge away—whatever—I still love that movie AND I do seriously think of that quote when I listen to new music for the first time. The melody needs to grab me and pull me in. This album did not do that for me right away. This album is THAT guy—you wouldn’t look twice at him in a bar, but turns out he’s really funny and cool.

After reading the AVClub interview, and listening with a more critical ear—intently listening to the lyrics—I heard a deeper, darker side to Real and Lydia Loveless. Her lyrics are cool, and thought-provoking. In "Heaven" she writes "I thought I would be okay / But everything just happens / Everything is an accident, man / No one goes to heaven." This resonated for me. Life is short, there is no "God’s will"—everything is an accident and just happens—and, as she also writes "Paradise is only for the weak." I interpreted that as how believing in paradise and heaven is easy to do because it's a happy ending for everyone. I'm not shitting on anyone's beliefs or anything, but she captured this sentiment really perfectly for me.

"Midwestern Guys" was a solid song about solid guys from the Midwest. The more I listened, the more I liked Real. "Longer" sounded like my favorite high school angsty band—Saves the Day—meets Shania Twain... haha but it works, I swear. The guitar in "Bilbao" was compared to Death Cab’s The Photo Album in AVClub’s review (give me a break this is my first album review I’m EVER writing, I needed a little inspiration to see what album reviews entail) and I totally agree. It was beautiful and a little depressing and a darker expression of a story that's been written about a lot—think of Adele's “Hello.” Everyone has an ex that creeps up into their thoughts every now and then... what if we had ended up together? That’s how I heard "Bilbao."

The song on this album that DID pull me in by the melody alone was "European." FUN. Making-out-with-a-stranger-in-an-alley-way-in-New-Orleans FUN. "Clumps" was a lovely and sad acoustic account of the disappointing feeling of potential new love turning to shit. "Real," the last song and title track, was, again, depressing and honest, with more of an Americana sound that the rest of the album. Does she play slide guitar (it took my ten minutes to look this type of sound up on YouTube)? She sings about a dude who is so good she believes he's the real deal. But he's not real at all. There's more I could say about this album, but we have to leave for Monday Beer Runners (and if you know Joe... we have to be the first ones to arrive).

Bottom line: Our girl Lydia has gotten burned. This album was emotional and honest and she writes about REAL shit that we all go through... see what I did there? I really enjoyed this album after a few more listens than I would typically have given it. There’s a lot beneath the layers wrapped up in some seemingly benign country twang.

Lessons learned: I need to listen to an album at least five times before I make any kind of judgement call. This is why I'm a nurse and not an album critic. Girls, go talk to THAT guy at the bar. Give him a chance you may be into him after getting to know him a little better.

Will I listen again? YES.

Real, Joe

Real

Lydia Loveless

August 19, 2016

If there's one thing that Lydia Loveless has different with her music, compared to the rest of my iPod, it’s the voice. Southern twang is the name of the game when it comes to the vocals. Naturally, this makes the music sound like part of the "country" genre.

Really, though, that's about all it has in common with country, as far as I can hear. Otherwise, the music is pure female-driven rock 'n' roll. And Real is all the better for it.

Yes, this is an extremely subjective way of thinking about it, because, yes, I am irritated by "country" in general. I usually think about that YouTube video that had a bunch of country songs layered on top of one another, and it all sounded the same. (I also think about how most country fans are also voting for trump.) I do not like this type of music.

Lydia Loveless is just straight rock and pop here, though. Nothing too complicated. 4/4 drum beats, rhythm guitar. There's the occasional flourish, such as the funky bass on "Heaven," but mostly we barrel straight ahead. I could maybe see Katy Perry singing some of these songs.

Look, this isn’t anything that’s rocking my world. GREAT music chokes me up, makes me lightheaded. GOOD music, I dunno, maybe I could see putting it on at a barbecue or something, nothing too crazy. This is good music.

Overall, I appreciate what Loveless is doing, and I’m glad I broadened my music tastes a bit and made room for this little nugget of comfort.

GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5

BEST SONG: "European"