Before this incident, I merely viewed Sleigh Bells as one of the more genuinely innovative pop music groups of the 21st century. Their brand of noise pop, rather than dreamy and listless like Mercury Rev or shielded by mystery like Portishead, was as irrestably catchy as it was insanely noisy, with point blank lyrics, point blank music, and an ingenious mix of antagonism and charm. The noisiest, most musically dangerous-sounding track on the album is the provactively titled “Kids,” which combines anarchist-friendly noise with lyrics about forgetting sunglasses and getting sunburned. The Funkadelic sampling hit single “Rill Rill,” which drew inevitable comparisons to “Paper Planes”, is a deceptively sharp satire of the commandeering of indie culture, alluding to leaving behind the nerdy straight A students with braces to cut themselves in the school bathroom. This double edged sword of sweetness and sharpness is usually a one-sided affair in rock music, and Sleigh Bells danced across that line effortlessly.

Yet, the fact is that the band is polarizing. I fully expect the band to be completely inscrutable to anyone over the age of 50, but in a twist unusual for the current landscape of music commentary, it’s also frequently bemoaned by those aged 30-45. The application of artificial loudness and noise is upsetting, often seen as an unnecessary gimmick, or even scary, even to the generation that lionized the awful recording quality of Pavement and Guided by Voices as a battle cry. Sleigh Bells is produced cleanly, albeit with volume levels amped up beyond most limits, and with noise that cannot be counted on as background music. It demands your attention, compels you to either stop in your place and listen or run through a goddamn brick wall (to steal a phrase from Drew Magary, normally reserved for 80s metal).

My writing style is prone me to hyperbole, but please acknowledge that I’ve waited a year to think over what I initially suspected: This kind of musical tone is significant outside of the pop music landscape. There are two major reasons for this; One, it is one of the first critically beloved bands to properly distinguish itself from Generation X. The same generation that were children when Back to the Future came out and were young adults during the grunge era are having kids of their own now, many entering adolescence themselves. Jim DeRogatis, a parent of young children who for better or for worse is one of the critics most keenly aware of the divide between Generation X and their kids, is rightfully scared of Sleigh Bells, which only makes his readers like the band more (FYI, he’s not alone; private conversations I have had with critics a half-decade younger echo his sentiment). The use of “Kids” in promos for MTV’s Skins was ingenious, scaring the parents of children who were born in the 1990s and coming of age in the 2010s, so much so that I watched two episodes of that horseshit.Scaring parents is what rock music has always intended to do, and it’s causing an identity crisis in Gen X, who loudly pointed out that hypocrisy to their baby boom parents, and are now starting to realize that they’re subject to the same hypocrisy themselves. To put Sleigh Bells appeal to people 25 and under in terms Gen Xers can understand: You guys aren’t ready for it, but your kids are gonna love it.

So here we have a band that’s perfect for the don’t trust anyone over the age of 30 crowd, scaring people just by showing up with their volume and persistence. That kind of power, that “my presence here cannot be ignored” sound, is the same attitude that’s driving protests of under 30s everywhere from Cairo to Moscow to Zuccoti Park. The sheer number of bodies of under 30s, which are ignored, mocked, condescended to, and completely misunderstood by ruling classes, suddenly have volume, demanding the attention of the ruling class. That smugness veils a fear of what happens when an overeducated, underemployed, savvy and skeptical sector of society makes its voice heard. That’s as scary to the ruling class of society as “Kids,” “Straight A’s” and “Crown on the Ground” are to the ruling class of music.

I do not know if this effect is intentional, and I doubt it is. I am also certain that Alexis Krauss and Derek Miller would never admit it even if it was. The two are smart enough to keep their intentions close to vest, talking with the restraint and coolness (however feigned) that goes back at least to Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and John Lennon, all of whom were way more self-aware than they’d let on. They’ve said their intentions are to get people laid—something that no on will dispute, other than the 20% of the country that would automatically vote for Rick Santorum.

But nonetheless, the lyrics, while minimal, are full of imagery that is tailor-made to under 30 protesters. Taking down ruling class power, the uselessness of good grades, coddled children suddenly coming to terms with the demonic reality of the military industrial complex, the dumb whores and best friends who somehow still find success (and who the band terrorizes in music videos) and finding a productive, practical way to fight this, (“did you do your best today?” “got my A machines on the table.”) This is revolution rock at its best, subtle enough that anyone with an ass can enjoy it, smart enough that anyone with a brain can pick out some deeper, dangerous meaning, all while the album’s financial success and ad-friendliness keeps it seeping into pop culture.

Reign of Terror (less ironic an album name than you’d think) is not an instant classic like Treats, but it’s no sophomore slump. Rather that try to simply recreate its predecessor or fix what ain’t broke, Reign of Terror is bigger and better. It takes the band’s distinct blend of noisiness and sweetness as makes it even noisier and sweeter. There’s less rhythmic variation, and the album’s front-loaded with the good tracks, but like Treats, it has two top shelf singles in “Born to Lose” and “Comeback Kid,” and a handful of wickedly clever album tracks like “Demons” or “True Shred Guitar,” a mission statement for guitar rock that still manages to recall fake-live openers of Golden Age hip hop classics like “Jimmy James” or “Countdown to Armageddon.” If the noise on Treats was more like Throbbing Gristle or Suicide, Reign of Terror sounds more like the synth-friendly metal of 1984-era Van Halen or Def Leppard.

What’s most impressive is that Sleigh Bells seems to be intent on pushing the envelope of mainstream pop, taking their audience of under 30s and seeing how attenuated they can get to a style of music once reserved for the freakiest of the freaks. The louder they get, the more parents they’ll piss off, and more of the kids who read lyrics sheets will find a generational struggle inside music.

As much as I like to make fun of hipsters, Brooklyn, or other internal bohemian annoyances, the fact remains that pop music is still a polarizing force in America and the world at large, and a large segment of the population has no place for it. With baby boomers aging, rock music will eventually become acceptable, but the status quo still factors that shock value in music is only as good as its ability to win advertisers. Sleigh Bells has sold over a million albums internationally, nearly as much as their label head MIA, and I suspect that at this point mixed reviews for the band can’t sink them, which I wouldn’t say about a critically beloved blog band 5 years ago.

Whatever happens to Sleigh Bells in the future, however, they still produced an album and a half of the most compelling music I’ve ever heard, and more importantly, one that authentically expressed emotional agenda of an entire generation.

On a promotional note, this blog has picked up a couple of sponsors, which you can pick out under the “Friends” section of the sidebar. Audience Rewards Insider provides a points system that will provide you with good deals on theater tickets. I used it when I was a regular theatergoer, and get a kickback on people who sign up through this blog. I’d like to post more, but my creative energies are predominantly going to comedy these days, but if you like what you read, hitting up the sponsors will keep me going.

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It’s safe to say that 2011 was a more event-heavy year than most in my lifetime. For me personally, it was the probably worst year of my life (beating out 2009, with some competition from 1996-1998), but for a variety of personal, familial and professional reasons that had very little to do with the news. Nonetheless, I’ve been keeping tabs on the news as much as ever (it’s in my wiring at this point), and throughout all the domestic and global upheaval, deaths, disasters, revolutions, crises, celebrations and landmark decisions, there have been some that have caused my feathers to get particularly ruffled, events to which I don’t think think many year-end retrospectives will give proper attention, for the sake of space and time. To that end, I will cover them all here, presented in news-style sections that resemble what you would see in something like the New York Times or the Wii News Channel.

Top Stories:

When America Stopped Being America – Arresting Journalists, Assaulting the Peacefully Assembled

After the raids in Zuccotti Park earlier this year I emailed David Nord, a former professor of mine at Indiana University School of Journalism and a historian of the American press. While he was sure to be academically judicious, he had no recollection of there ever, in the history of the United States, being precedent for arresting journalists without cause. There’s precedent for restricting freedom of speech and limiting the rights of the press, of course, from the Sedition Acts to the lack of a proper Shield Laws today. But for mayors across the country to simply say “arrest first, ask questions later,” and for journalists with police-credentials to be arrested for showing them the credentials that they were issued, suddenly America began to resemble the dictatorships they were simultaneously praising the Arab world of overturning.

The lack of a clear agenda (supposedly, more on that later), the class disparities that made Occupy Wall Street less sympathetic for a large part of the country, and the bipartisan hatred of hippies that seemingly transcends anyone who was actually alive to experience the effects of ’60s,  made the cause unable to gain universal support even among those who agreed with its purpose. The media hesitated to beyond rational levels to see if the protests would go too far or not far enough. As it turns out, mayors across the country organized to arrest, pepper spray, assault, and intimidate anyone who demonstrated their right to peacefully assembly, all of whom cited sanitation issues that somehow magically appeared on the same night. This group included journalists from just about every level.

What makes this story so infuriating is that no one in the media, even the watchdogs, thought the arrest of journalists was a priority. Some on the left were upset by Jon Stewart and NBC News mixed-at-best coverage of the protest, but the fact that David Carr, Ezra Klein, or the staff at On The Media, who rather than focus on the fundamental blight to freedom of press the raids signified, decided instead to focus on partisan tactics for the sake of neutrality (and in OTM’s case, perhaps, the fact that they were scared shitless by firings at NPR of anyone remotely associated with the movement).

I’m still not sure if the war of attrition tactics of Occupy Wall Street were the best approach to a clearly problematic set of issues, even if they did get people talking. But whether or not you agreed with OWS, whether or not you saw the point , the arrests and treatment of journalists and non-violent protesters was something that should be unifying Americans against those who ordered the raids.

When The American Left Lost Its Mind – The Internet’s Response To Gabrielle Giffords

I first heard about the assassination attempt of Gabrielle Giffords from the Facebook update of a friend of mine, who decided to phrase it as “The Tea Party has claimed its first victim.” This was within minutes of the news first hitting the wire, and before 30 minutes, friends across my predominantly leftist Facebook News Feed were railing against the right wing, blaming them for inciting violence, showing tangential links to GOP campaigns that they thought indicted the right wing for Giffords death. Soon, we were to learn that Giffords’ death was, in fact, exaggerated, and that the gunman who committed the crime was not so much responding to calls from Republican leaders as he was the grammar Nazi voices in his head.

If the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords has fallen in the backburner in a year of remarkable stories, it’s for noble purposes—her incredible recovery, respect for her right to privacy, and, ultimately, the unwillingness to fit a senseless act of violence into an ideological framework. What scared me about this story was that the people who were going to turn random acts of crazy into a partisan narrative were young, college educated and liberal, the same kids who were outraged when their parents tried to blame South Park and Marilyn Manson for Columbine. If Occupy Wall Street shows how new media’s scattered landscape can diminish the important takeaways on the macro level, Giffords showed how the same landscape can lead one point of view to its most knee-jerk extreme on the micro level.

Alabama Gets Hit Hard

Since most media outlets are based in NYC, Hurricane Irene got a lot of coverage for a little damage. The fact that there had been a few days before also amplified the media’s coverage. The net damage to my apartment, which was in the evacuation zone, was a cereal box that fell on its side during the earthquake (or which I called, national “Oh poor you day” in Japan.) But if you want to cite a textbook case of New York/east coast bias in the news, don’t look at anything political, look at the virtual ignorance that came after about a week or so of the most devastating tornado outbreak in American history. 322 deaths, 229 of which were in Alabama, over thousands of injuries, casuing over billions of dollars in damages to one of the poorest states in the Union (if the tornado of this magnitude hat hit NYC, there wouldn’t be an economy to complain about).

Given the circles I run in, the people who are most pro-secession are northern liberals with a de facto disgust towards the deep South (about as ignorant and hateful as the hateful ignorance they claim is the source of their disgust). The Alabama tornados, the worst natural disater in America since Katrina, has set Alabama back decades in development, something neither Nancy Pelosi nor Richard Shelby seems committed to addressing.

What Occupy Wall Street actually stood for.

Overturning Citizens United? Ending private perks for public employees? Universal healthcare? Student Loan relief? These reasonable, best case plans were all on the agenda that any journalist could find for Occupy Wall Street. Lacking any method of implementing those policies, pending, as one of my friend suggested, going Road Warrior on Congress and K Street, the motivations of Occupy Wall St remained, but the press, just as powerless to fix the problems as the protesters (and in some cases in the pockets of those who would actually be hurt by doing the right thing), did nothing to even report the demands, by the by perpetuating the myth of an unclear agenda. For the record, here it is: http://www.the99declaration.org/read-the-99-declaration/

Occupy Wall Street’s Agenda is big, impractical, and nearly impossible to implement. But it does exist.

Part Two Tomorrow.

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It used to be interesting knock the Baby Boomers. As late as the 1990s, when those in their 40s and 50s still controlled most media channels, an entire media culture was built around harping on ’60s and sugarcoating the hypocrisies of a generation that thought they were enacting major change, but spent more time on drugs and self-mythologizing. The point of view that knocked the Baby Boomers seemingly longed for the attitudes of the 30s and 40s, when Americans rose out of poverty to come together and fight Hitler, a clear danger to the world, and were greeted at home with a decade’s worth of economic prosperity.

Not coincidentally, this point of view favored the grandparents and lashed out against the parents. Times have changed, and the 1990s increasingly seem like 2 decades ago. Bands are starting to sound a lot more like Nirvana, Pavement, and Neutral Milk Hotel than they were a decade ago, when they were sounding like New Order, Duran Duran, and Queen. Bill Clinton is looked back on as fondly (and misguidedly) by the Left as Reagan was on the Right in the last decade. People still seem to care who Newt Gingrich is. Furthermore, the previously powerless children of the 1990s are now in their 30s and their 40s, and thus are increasingly dominant forces in the mainstream media (and there are more media channels than in the 90s, when 56k modems were considered the pinnacles of technological progress.) You could argue that in the context of history, the current American narrative (especially among those in the Left) is the following:

Greatest Generation (white Americans born ~1918-1945): A generation raised under the auspices of the Depression and the sense that the freedoms we now take for granted had to be earned and protected with one’s life. Fighting Hitler was a cause that most World War II veterans didn’t even think twice about before knowing it was the right thing to do. Upon coming home, they experienced one of the greatest economic eras of prosperity in American history. If they failed at anything, it was due to their inability to cope with a world where there wasn’t danger, but one forged out of their earlier successes in defeating an obvious danger.

Baby Boomers (increasingly guilty white Americans born from ~1945-1964): A generation raised under the auspices of the memory of the Holocaust, and more pressingly, the threat of a Nuclear Holocaust. They used early victories in Civil Rights to make up for every later injustice and hypocrisy they saw fit. The first generation raised on TV, and therefore, self-obsessed to an unprecedented level, favoring their friends & family above all rational levels, thus making them just as inclined to nepotism and intolerance as their parents, but in ways they couldn’t imagine.

You can see this dynamic explored on cable news, blogs, and increasingly, mainstream newspapers regularly. A part of this antagonism was forged by the bleak job market for college graduates in the recession of the early 1990s, (something that objectively pales in comparison to the same job market I faced upon graduating in 2008). However, we’re getting to the point where Generation X, now as old as their mid-to-late 40s, have children who are college graduates. As a 24 year old with grandparents solidly in the early Greatest Generation period and parents in the mid-to-late Baby Boomer period (thanks, Jewish breeding patterns), I think this narrative is just as flawed as the previous one, but also one just as easily to manipulate. Through discussions with my friends in their early-to-mid 20s, who like the narrative-definers of all generations, were generally well-educated, raised in middle/upper-middle class households just outside ruling power territory, I’d argue the narrative is shifting as such:

Baby Boomers (still predominantly white people born ~1945-1963): Raised with a frustration with the status quo that they saw in a supposedly serene world, they had the courage to look at blatant injustices that serenity masked, and say “this is not right.” Led the most historically successful improvement in racial relations in over 100 years, in ways that are still taken for granted to this day. Applied the same courage in their convictions to oppose a war they found unjust and senseless, even if it meant sacrificing every level of comfort with which they were raised. If they failed at anything, it was their inability to deal with later failures in the campaign of tolerance, but one forged by their early successes (and perhaps burnout from drug use).

Generation X (slightly fewer white people born ~1963-1980) Nihilist to the point of a complete lack of compassion and sense of responsibiliy. Fears of committing the same mistakes as their parents led them to eschew any sense of personal responsibility ever. They used their changing attitudes of nearly universal (at least in theory) tolerance and early progress in Gay Rights to justify their lack of a commitment to social justice that allowed the same people they went to school with to take power and produce unprecedentedly accepted ethical corruption and occasional pure evil to diminish the very causes they wanted to defend. This  made them just as hypocritical as their parents, but in ways they couldn’t even begin to imagine.

To a large extent, all the narratives I have posited, both positive and negative, are true. While I know some people will have several objections here, these descriptions shouldn’t be upsetting to any member of groups I have just described, or in reality, anyone. Every generation and group defined, however arbitrarily, by when, where, and with whom they were raised share certain strengths and weaknesses, and those strengths and weakness can be juxtaposed favorably or negatively against any other similarly-defined group. I fully plan that the children of people my age will resent us politically and admire our parents politically, and I plan that the grandchildren of people my age will respond in kind. I fully expect there to be flaws in my generation that I can’t begin to imagine. I also think some questions I have now will become clearer: How will a generation that has more college degrees than they ever had previously deal with a job market that is flooded with college graduates unlike ever before? Can Gay Rights take hold in rural America in ways that it has with increasingly success in urban areas outside the coasts? Will America be willing to deal with an increase in taxes ever again? Will Libertarians become the new Neo-Cons or the New Tea Party?

I am not a cynical person; as someone who has spent the better part of his  adult life surrounded by graduate students and comedians; this is rarer than you’d think. I may, however, have gone beyond a healthy dose of skepticism to the point where I’m a skepticism addict. If I was Catholic I would have given up skepticism for Lent this year. But what separates even an overdose of skepticism from cynicism is that I don’t think there’s no hope, that nothing will get better and things will only get worse, and that while Mayan science/Left Behind may or may not be horseshit, the world ending in 2012 sounds like a good idea (and Gen X ignorance towards 2012 apocalypse theory mirrors their parents’ ignorance towards Y2K apocalypse theory). I haven’t defined my generation because it’s too early in the course of history to see what its narrative will be. I do know, however, that like every generation before it, my generation will lack a clear narrative until every member of it is dead. And even then some will dispute it.

Related articles

• Millennials Replacing Baby Boomer Workforce: Meeting Their Unique Needs (via Dr. Diane Hamilton’s Blog) (whistln.com)
• Don’t Trust Anybody Under 65 (reason.com)
• Lorraine Devon Wilke: Generation Wars: Boomer-Fatigue or Gerascophobia? (huffingtonpost.com)

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#9: Cancer Bats – “Sabotage”

#8: Mexicans With Guns – “Dame Lo”

#7 Gorillaz – “Stylo”

#6 LCD Soundsystem – “Drunk Girls”

#5 Of Montreal – “Coquet Coquette”

#4 Sleigh Bells – “Infinity Guitars”

#3 Lady Gaga ft. Beyoncé – “Telephone”

#2 The White Stripes – “White Moon”

#1 OK Go – This Too Shall Pass

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A decade later, when Arizona State denied giving President Obama an honorary degree, SNL and The Daily Show took particular brutal blows:

Then last week, the joke made 30 Rock, to the exclamation pointed-enthusiasm of someone on YouTube:

The (sad?) truth is, these wisecracks probably help Arizona State’s reputation. If people want to go somewhere where they can get a bachelor’s for showing up to a campus and partying for four years, Arizona State has national name recognition (though there are probably a bunch of other schools just as disparate in the education/BAC% ratio). There were at least 2 people I went to high school with who went there for this exact reason. I’m pretty sure they had to be massive Simpsons fans.

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This is Part 3 of my three part review of albums of the past half year, an extension of Tynan’s Record Report, which was retired out of solidarity with it’s inspiration and better, Christgau’s Consumer guide. Monday was the best stuff. Yesterday was the good to okay stuff. Today is the disappointing to not so great stuff. I won’t read your flames.

Here We Go Magic – Pidgin
Here we see the flip side of the problem with Brooklyn’s dominance of newness in America’s white people music: not only do the best bands from anywhere else in the country get ignored by the biggest blogs, but the house party bands still years away from doing anything interesting do get big blog attention, with magazines, newspapers, and TV following. A vaguely pop-rock band with synths would be better off opening anonymously for a national touring act than receiving first billed reviews on Pitchfork; which means that an otherwise solid album with three good songs is elevated above the bar band with keyboards status. And people wonder where backlash comes from.
B-

POS:

Ratatat – LP4

They want to make music on a Casio circa 1989, which is different from LP3’s 1988 Jams. At least SNES game MIDI soundtracks were emotionally affecting.

Best Coast -Crazy for You

When Katy Perry reaches the mainstream with generic pop songs, it’s disgusting. When an indie band limps into the top 40 with the same kind of music, it’s a victory. One of us! We accept her!

Crystal Castles – Crystal Castles II

People like to blame 24 for making something as barbaric as torture as acceptable to mainstream TV audiences. But these kind of soulless synths may be a better link, as the distance and coldness with a handful of melodies sacrifices all the strengths of music for the superficial. Sociopaths can’t relate to human emotion, but they can at least make it to CNN.

Related articles

• Albums of Note Second Half: The Best (tynansanger.com)
• The Kings Of Leon call the Arcade Fire “pretentious dickheads” (hipsterrunoff.com)
• Arcade Fire on Suburban Sprawl (urbanplanningblog.com)

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Recovery is the most inspired Eminem’s been since The Marshall’s Mathers LP, with “Not Afraid’s“ sincere ambition and “Won’t Back Down’s” finely-aged defiance producing flashes of his previous greatness. Most impressive is how Recovery contrasts with Relapse, one of the least inspired comeback albums in music history, just a year ago. If anything, Recovery is too inspired, showing that when Eminem lets his Slim Shady side take over, his hustle and drive can become an overwhelming burden both musically and rhymingly, both areas where he has nearly every rapper alive beat.

At this point, threatening his mother and ex-wife are always going to be a part of his repertoire (some people just hold grudges), and at 37, the age he once declared “too old,” Mathers is too young to have the mid-life crisis that most wanted Relapse to be. But at 37, he’s also already a legacy act, embarrassing himself less than most rock legacy acts and working harder than most hip-hop legacy acts. That he was so huge once has given him something to prove in a way few other artists that accomplished have ever had to prove—the excess here is more in its musical ambiguity than emotional dubiousness. But that’s probably a good thing for Eminem in the long run.
B+

Deerhunter – Halcyon Digest
Last time we heard from Deerhunter, I was comparing the difference between Cryptograms and Microcastle to White Light/White Heat to the Velvet Underground’s self-titled album (or the famed “Heroin-to-Jesus” conversion). Bradford Cox may now be as well known as VU, actually, but his solo work with Atlas Sound, like Lou Reed’s, lacks the Band with a Capital B-factor that puts Deerhunter in a different category. Here we song Cox the songwriter, buoyed by confidence, conflicting with Cox the bandleader, where ego battles are a given and tend to produce the best music. Halycon Digest ain’t Loaded, but it’s got some of the prettiest and best songs in Cox’s catalog. The freak scene that made Microcastle a revelation is now more normal, which makes Cox less interesting, if still not anything but weird, heartfelt, and gifted songwriter. Whether or not he chooses to be angry.
B+

Ugly Casanova & Others – 180 Degrees South Soundtrack
No matter if it’s sincere (as it is in my case), saying you prefer Isaac Brock’s work with Ugly Casanova to his work with Modest Mouse in the past 10 years sounds categorically pretentious. The plight is mostly because Modest Mouse is a #1 band now (something independent of a Smith mucking things up regularly) and in part because Brock’s most prominent non-Mousey contribution to music since 2002’s Sharpen Your Teeth has been making Wolf Parade happen. What makes Ugly Casanova’s work on the 180 Degrees Soundtrack crucial is that it once again lets Brock show off his open-mouth snarl without sacrificing his songwriting chops in a way he hasn’t since The Moon and Antarctica sacrificed the former, Good News sacrificed the latter, and We Let The Ship Sink sacrificed both. Which is not necessarily to say he couldn’t do this on a major label; but I have a hard time seeing how anyone else’s input could improve on “Here’s To Know” (the best single Arcade Fire never released), “Corcovado” (the best indie instrumental in years) or “Lay Me Down” (which finds Jeff Mangum 13 years later, pissed off). It may be something of a throwaway, but don’t let that fool you; this ranks with the best of a 15+ year career.
B+

MIA – Maya
You’ll see this album sold at Target or Best Buy; you’ll never see Suicide sold at those stores in a million years. You won’t see it topping Billboard charts like those who read the New York Times and music blogs had hoped, even if the blog favorite only became Top 10 material by accident thanks to the trailer of a somewhat popular comedy from 2008. That’s an important thing to keep in mind even as iTunes, which does sell Suicide, becomes the top music selling venue, as the majority of mainstream listeners will never complain that they’ve heard it before. The controversy surrounding M.I.A. is new in its mainstream appeal, which means the intelligence filters start to drastically drop. The appropriate increase in ambition and drop in intelligence that this requires for M.I.A. herself both occur: the coarser terms of M.I.A.’s polemics will resonate with more people even as their nuance fades. Those who have hidden secret grudges against M.I.A. for up to half a decade are now free to release them. But the facets that made M.I.A,’s music journo-baiting Arular and Kala are not lost—she still is the all-encompassing globalist manifestation of pseudo-polemical rock that Joe Strummer was reaching for. And this is somewhere between Sandinista!’s self-overburdening ambition and Combat Rock’s self-acknowledging concession to the mainstream. Like both those albums, Maya still ain’t half bad as far as mainstream fodder goes.
B

!!! – Strange Weather, Isn’t It?
For the past odd-decade, !!! has lived in the creamy nougat center between smart and stupid, but all this time they’ve been smarmy, and more importantly, danceable. Their self-titled debut and Louden Up Now erred (smartly) on the side of stupidity, in the process coming up with “Me and Giuliani Down By The Schoolyard,” the song that did to rooftop parties what “Born To Run” did to steel mills. Myth Takes smartly erred brilliantly on the side of intelligent songwriting, but hipsters who hate smarmy and claim to hate stupid were too burnt out to see Myth Takes‘ particular joys. Strange Weather Isn’t It? is probably the definitive !!! album, if not their best, and it’s in large part because of the contradictions of the band that even the band members themselves don’t seem to be aware of. That doesn’t mean the songs are anything less than deeply danceable, but they’re best suited for white guy dancing. The band will never get enough credit for their skills and uniqueness, but any way you spin it, Mark Madsen will never be as good as Shaq.
B

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This is Part 1 of my three part review of albums of the past half year, an extension of Tynan’s Record Report, which was retired out of solidarity with it’s inspiration and better, Christgau’s Consumer guide. This is the best stuff. Tomorrow’s the good to okay stuff. Wednesday is the not disappointing to not so great stuff. You’ll be surprised by what’s leading that one.

Less GarageBand sounding, but still pop songs coming from mom’s Basement Tapes-style isolation, the leap on King of the Beach is astounding, with songs so well crafted that the roughness seems too natural to be designed (but they most probably are). There’s a pirate’s booty of jaw-dropping lyrics like “Idiot”’s blog music-defining “I’m not supposed to be a kid, but I’m an idiot / I’d say I’m sorry, but it wouldn’t mean shit;”  Post-Acid has the post-cynical rallying cry “Misery, won’t you understand, that I’m just having fun with you,” While “Take On The World” features a not-quite-first-person crack at McSweeney’s and Animal Collective, and yet still claims “Cause if it’s our way, to take on the world would be something.” This kind of divine inspiration appears on just about every track of King Of The Beach. Here’s an authentic beach bum—with an emphasis on bum—who’s made an album that blows everything by the fake surfers of Brooklyn out of the water. It’s as prescient to the Internet music world as MGMT is to the liberal arts grad world, and about 20,000 leagues better. With no need (or no venue) to be a rock messiah, he’s just chillin’, like Bob Dylan.
A+

Of Montreal – False Priest
In 2007, when Kevin Barnes was the same age as when James Murphy lost his edge (and just two years older than when Bowie ran away to Berlin), Of Montreal released Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?, and album that more and more sounds like a revolutionary release easily on par with LCD Soundsystem and Low. Like LCD, Barnes combined precocious commentary on indie psychology with musical and lyrical forthrightness. Like Bowie, he found a vehicle with transformational abandon, musical bravery, and self-rediscovery. On first impression I saw Skeletal Lamping as something of a victory lap, but False Priest forms something of a trilogy (the latter two album titles flowing from a lyric on Hissing Fauna). Call it “the Norway trilogy,” the “George Fruit trilogy” or what have you, but it’s at least as fascinating a listen as Bowie’s Berlin trilogy. The scale may be significantly reduced, but not for Barnes, who’s had as much success critically or commercially since the reinvention as ever, or for the remnants of the Elephant 6 collective, who had previously seen their emotional intelligence disappear with Jeff Magnum.

False Priest is a lot better than The Lodger, too, both in and out of context. It continues to find that the swagger of glam doesn’t remove pathos, and in fact reveals dimensions that most contemporary bohemian tight-asses have bottled up, be it the sudden gut-punch of upbeat opener “I Feel Ya Strutter,” the sweetness disguised as the lusty “Sex Karma,” or even a pop single in “Coquet Coquette” which comes a couple of months too late for a serendipitous appearance on the Lost soundtrack. Those who think Barnes is self-aggrandizing are right on; so is every other musician and public performer in the world, whether or or not they can admit that to their fans or themselves. Most remarkably to me, after a few listens to False Priest, concerns about gentrification, cred, and the definition of “indie” or “mainstream” disappear.

Of Montreal now features the progression to mainstream that mirrors Arcade Fire, Spoon, and Shins (and he’s even bigger in Europe, naturlich). It’s taken him much longer to get there, which has only made him smarter and nicer while appearing more heartless. Whether or not he’s a bona fide rock star, the revelation here is how he discovered that he could be one, which given the contemporary music economy, the cred wars and the Elephant 6 collectivist mentality, is no small feat.
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Marnie Stern – Marnie Stern
Soundgarden may be back on the road, but Marnie Stern’s self-titled third album is the best Soundgarden album this side of Superunknown. On first listen, Sternheads will think she’s reverted back to In Advance of The Broken Arm’s Questionable Content pandering anthems. But once those melodies stay in your head after a few listens (it takes fewer than This is It…, which had better melodies) it’s clear that these songs are coming from the place in Stern that has more feelings than brain, which is never gonna be a bad thing. Both Marnie Stern and Superunknown use the awesome majesty of metal for ambitious but unpretentious goals, unprecedentedly consistent songwriting and, most of all, expressing a heartfelt personality and a voice that was rarely if ever heard in rock previously. Someone owes the makers of ProTools a bouquet of roses for recovering Stern’s previously damaged song files, and in some cases, the more distant songs sound the best, making Stern larger than life even as she’s being herself. Less mathy and more Zeppelin-sounding is never a bad thing for Stern or her fans, and Marnie Stern will only spread to a larger audience her particular breed of joy that’s now more than ever unhinged. With her original voice so well constructed, the only thing she needs now is a proper foil; Zach Hill’s drumming, exceptional as always, serves as more of a hypeman.
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Poison Arrows – Newfound Resolutions
Those who think the primary musical instrument of a generation’s muted rage is Matt Berninger’s voice would do well to spend a significant amount of time listening to Pat Morris’s bass guitar. The former Don Cab secret weapon has the biggest credit backing up Chicago’s Poison Arrows, and if their masterful but ignored debut First Class, and Forever was the product of what three great veteran musicians do better together, Newfound Resolutions is more one-sided. The result is one of the best album-spanning bass sessions you’ll hear this century in a pop music context. Considering that the Poison Arrows appeal is all cult/music nerd, that’s probably a better thing for the band, even if it comes at the expense of the process that produced First Class‘ unlikely hit parade. Poison Arrows gets called prog because of Morris’ Geddy Lee-like dominance of the band’s live show, and while Justin Sinkovich easily takes the prize for songwriter and bandleader on both releases, Newfound Resolutions is something of a godsend for Rush-to-indie converts.
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This post will go up on election day, before I have seen the results of the 2010 Midterm elections. It is not affected by the results. It is a post about why I did not vote this election. Obama calls this an enthusiasm gap. I call it a commitment to principle, and opposition to the “50-state strategy” Howard Dean espoused in 2006 that got the current Democratic majorities. Dean’s strategy was in opposition to Rahm Emmanuel‘s strategy, which was more committed to electing candidates based on policy issues. In 2006 I agreed with Dean’s approach. It’s the view that led me to vote for Rod Blagojevich in the 2006 gubernatorial race, and cheer for joy when Eliot Spitzer won a race the same year. That’s just two of dozens of reasons I regret that stance.

I registered to vote in Indiana as soon as I was eligible. It’s a swing state, I told myself, and my vote will be more valuable here than it will in New York. I was right about this. What I was wrong about is whether the increased value of my vote would be applied to things I cared about. Brad Ellsworth was long an underdog in the Senate race once Evan Bayh dropped out, but I figured I’d vote for him simply because I didn’t ever want to rule out a candidate because of what was likely.

More troubling was my congressional district. I’m in a college town, and yet the Blue Dog Democrat who’s been in 50/50 races in this college town for the past decade is risking losing again, this time to Todd Young, a Republican who, like most Republicans, I differ with on just about every issue. I agree with Hill on more issues, but there a more than a handful of issues I disagree with him on fundamentally: abortion, immigration, gay marriage, and even fiscal issues. Hill espouses “Hoosier Values,” an idea that is about as poorly defined as the “Obama-Pelosi liberal agenda.” His campaign ads have featured Todd Young’s positions on Social Security and Medicare, which I oppose Young on too. Still, call me crazy, but focusing on the fears of old people in a college town, rather than issues that matter a lot more to young people enrolled in college–who don’t get polled as often because they have cell phones or live in dorms–doesn’t seem like a good strategy for a House race.

More to the point is this: I don’t expect to agree with a candidate on everything. But I’m done voting for a candidate because he or she is the lesser of two evils, because the result may swing a majority one way or another, or because the candidate may or may not be sincere about the opinions he’s campaigning on. The country’s political landscape has changed far too much for me to trust a single party on anything, and if I’m going to vote for a politician, I better make sure he’s committed to advancing causes I believe in.

Part of the democratic right to vote is the right not to vote; Iraq had elections long before ink stained fingers made the press in 20o5. They just involved one candidate and a 100% turnout. But in the U.S., 20+ years of PSA ads have told me I’m being apathetic and reckless if I don’t vote. For presidential races, this is probably true. But for House and Senate races all involving candidates way more conservative than I could ever allow myself in good conscience to support, I’m considering this pragmatic.

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I have a real problem with The National, but not the problem I thought I had. There’s an adage in rock criticism circles that you never trust a critic who won’t take back his word). With the National, annoyed by Matt Berninger‘s repressed singing voice, and frustrated by the repressed lack of pathos in the National’s previous two album’s Boxer and Alligator (however praised by similarly repressed critics), I didn’t give High Violet the attention that it deserves. Suffice to say, it’s a gorgeous, intense, daring album, and the lyrics are about as psychologically devastating as anything since the demise of Nick Drake. “Bloodbuzz, Ohio,” a song I loved even on first listen (which has never happened beforehand with The National), will now make me weep, and make me homesick pretty much anywhere (and my hometown is the place where Berninger has been trying to make his home (and failing) for awhile. Songs I had resisted at first (“Terrible Love,” “Lemonworld” “Little Faith” “Afraid of Everyone”) now punch me in the gut just as hard. Perhaps the fact that I’ve left home and tried to “make it” somewhere else has added to those appeals.

So my problem is not with the National’s music, or their lyrics. My problem is that they signify something very real, and ultimately, very scary.

What’s separated the band from most Brooklyn fauxhemians is that they are starting, in 2010, to think of the larger picture. Berninger seems to realize that indie music is not an escape from the outside world, and it’s caught up to The National’s music at a rather perfect time, when previous divides between indie and mainstream are now, by default, indistinguishable. Berninger has taken the responsibility very clearly, and the album deals with love, religion, politics, literature, and war in a way that is larger than himself (and Berninger’s ability to talk about that cannot be snarked away, especially when he’s top 5 on the charts). But The National’s success at doing that, which is exceedingly rare in indieland today, shows that the ability of rock to comment on youthful experiences on the world, and the frustration, anger, confusion and emotional toll that come with it—areas rock has generally been one of the only vocal outlets for this demographic—is fading fast.

The National may have started as a blog band, but are not a young band or a non-mainstream band anymore. High Violet was released on a “major indie” 4AD, the band became a staple on the soundtracks of Obama’s campaign in ’08, and they’ve played venues that cannot be considered indie with crowds that are as devoted as Animal Collective, but bigger and more eclectic. It’s interesting to interpret High Violet as a response to the loss of naive optimism associated with Obama’s ’08 campaign, but that’s not the subject of this post. The subject is why few other indie bands feel like they can follow in The National’s path.

Mainstream pop music has been a joke for at least the last 15 years, and most people who are devoted to music don’t even bother with it anymore. Wicker Park, Williamsburg, Austin and West Hollywood have become their own worlds, and to a large extent the mainstream forces—the kind political music use to fight—like to keep them there. But it’s not good for musicians when they stay there. They become closed off, tribal, and self-referential, and ultimately a parody of themselves that made the term “hipster,” once a statement of daring individuality, a slur. And that means that musicians are gleefully poor and detached from the real world into their 20s, until they reach a stage of adulthood where, sure enough, they want family, stability, and to matter to more than a few people as musicians, and realize that they could’ve done it all along, but a mix of cynicism and fear has stopped them. That’s what the National is all about musically, and it’s taken them too long to realize that culturally, they could have been as popular as they are now. But Berninger and his peers been escaping using an outmoded form of counterculture for too long; in many cases for bands of that age, it’s too late.

FunFact:

I chose the blog post title for a reason: Hang on To Your Ego, a track recorded for Pet Sounds, was not-San-Franciso-Giants-closer Brian Wilson‘s response to concerns that LSD would “shatter your ego.” The title scared Mike Love, who thought that debating whether or not you should lose your ego was pointless. The song became “I Know There’s An Answer,” and the original was all but forgotten until the Pixies Frank Black recorded it with the original title and lyrics. Suffice to say, Love’s concern was poignant, but we’re a long way from 1967, and at least in this train of thought, the more depressing variation has won out, whether or not LSD is involved.

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