Voices in my head (king shit and the golden boys)

do you love the who?

do you love the beatles?

yeah?

you'd better. regardless, here comes a bit of noise about guided by voices.

there is an earlier, but brief and less than informative, post about rob pollard on this lil' rant repository. rob pollard is guided by voices. there have been any number of permutations of the band, but pollard is the meat of the thing, writing the songs and often recording the majority of the tracks for a given song himself.

i have a near pathological love for guided by voices and, seeing as i've gotten nothing but more self-indulgent this eve, imma give ya'll what i think of as a brief primer for what you should pick up in order to pick up on this band.

first:

under the bushes under the stars
good god, this is a great album. as a point to jump off from this might be a bit tough, but worth the listening effort. it can acquaint you with the low-fi recording quality that characterizes the majority of the band's catalog while still grounding you in catchy songs and familiar melodies. of particular interest for the neophyte are the following tracks:
"man called aerodynamics"
"the official ironmen rally song"
"your name is wild"
"ghost of a different dream"
"atom eyes"
"don't stop now"
"it's like soul man"
"redmen and their wives"

now, a couple records that might be easier introductions, but miss a bit of the spirit of the thing.

isolation drills
a really good album. a pop record through and through, but full of great songs and built specifically for a summer day.
songs of interest:
"fair touching"
"twilight campfighter"
"sister i need wine"
"glad girls"

do the collapse
many people shit all over this album. they are wrong. there are gems on this brute and i've seen many a listener be turned to the good gospel of rob pollard by some of these tracks:
"teenage fbi"
"hold on hope" (i include this because you may have heard it before, but it is among my least favorite on this record.)
"surgical focus"
"much better mr. buckles"

now for a more recent record

earthquake glue
i count this album among my personal favorite guided by voices records for a number of reasons, here are a few:
"my kind of soldier"
"she goes off at night"
"useless inventions"
"the best of jill hives"

now, while those may (at times) feel like musical ideas being stretched into longer songs, here you'll find distilled songs in concentrated (although certainly raw) form.

alien lanes
this is where it's at. this was the record that made me truly fall for this band. to take nothing away from other, truly important, pieces of music like bee thousand, this is what turned my head around. melodies obscured and aided by noisy production and sloppy arrangement. oddball songs with a snore in them. by the way, there isn't a single song on this album that is more than three minutes long. take a listen:
"a salty salute"
"watch me jumpstart"
"as we go up, we go down"
"game of pricks"
"a good flying bird"
"closer you are"
"motor away"
"ex-supermodel"
"always crush me"

after all of that and all of the track listing, i'm actually going to warn you against just listening to tracks. for all of the two minute glory that is guided by voices it is still a band best taken down an album at a time.

if there were only one record that you were to pick up it ought to be alien lanes, but if you were to pick an easier intro and then get another record afterward you should look first to under the bushes under the stars.

worth your time and your limited cash. i swear on any number of graves.

--dan

3 degrees of isaac brock

here's the train:

modest mouse--> isaac brock-->ugly casanova-->holopaw.

you all know modest mouse, i've no doubt. you all likely know that isaac brock is the creative push behind modest mouse (songwriter, singer, blahblahblah). fewer of you may be familiar with a side project brock was involved with called ugly casanova. ugly casanova put out a fantastic record in 2002 titled sharpen your teeth. there is a whole quasi-mythology surrounding that record that, while certainly entertaining in its own right, is not the point right now. the point is that brock managed to get one of his co-conspirators on the ugly casanova project a record deal.

john orth.

john orth is the push behind the band holopaw.

their first record was released by subpop in 2003 (and will likely be the subject of another little rant at some later date). in 2005 they put out quit +/or fight.

these are pretty songs, but to simply dismiss them as such is criminal. orth and his crew manage to blend a sort of soft country construction with a production style very similar to the promise ring's wood/water. these are songs not at all dissimilar to songs: ohia's magnolia electic co., but with much more shine.

largely a quiet record, the extent to which this band is able to exploit (and i do mean exploit) slight dynamic changes to great effect is, at least, impressive, and at best truly masterful.

tracks like 3-shy-cubs move from subtle and catchy shuffle to oddly anthemic with a magician's slight of hand, while the haunting falsetto of the following track, "curious," and it's lockstep rhythm move from repetitive guitar melody back to the same rhythmic vocal and instrumental shuffle left in the track prior.

all in the space of six minutes and eighteen seconds.

of eleven songs there are four that clock in above three minutes, only one of which manages to beat four. there is an admirable economy of music on this record that should serve as a lesson to those bands that feel they need six minutes to get their sound across, specifically, "velveteen (all is bright)." a song that very literally hits its sonic peak at the halfway point in a track that runs just under three minutes, only to offer one last (albeit restrained) explosion just prior to ending.

a somewhat melancholic choice at this point in the evening, but i do believe you should give holopaw a go.

--dan

john henry split my heart

well, he did. his own as well, but that's not the point right here.

songs: ohia is the point. the record the magnolia electric co. specifically.

there are many comparisons to neil young to be made with this particular young man's voice, and while most would be apt and deserved, what is more important is a series of eight songs out of the mind of jason molina.

these are phoenix songs. not the sort that pay attention to the bird rising out of the ashes (although there is a bit of that as well), but the sort that pay close attention to the texture of the ashes and the burn that lead there.

these are often sad songs, but songs focused on the glory and majesty of that particular sort of sad. with a combination of well placed pedal steel slide guitar, flat-picked chords, beautifully awkward and fragile melody and harmony, country the way you want to hear it, and balls-out rock prowess, molina managed to build a record that will burrow into your brain and hold it captive.

with that said, it's only appropriate that he conflates the truly american myths of john henry beating the machine and robert johnson courting the devil in the track "john henry split my heart."

boy what you gonna do with your heart in two?
half i'm gonna use to pay this band,
half i'm saving, 'cause i'm gonna owe them

purely american music.

--dan

i lost my shape trying to act casual

in an alternate universe i like to imagine that our current president and his cabinet listen to "crosseyed and painless" by the talking heads and alternately commiserate and cry:

making a list, find the cost of opportunity
doing it right, facts are useless in emergencies

facts are simple and facts are straight
facts are lazy and facts are late
facts all come with points of view
facts don't do what i want them to
facts just twist the truth around
facts are living turned inside out
facts are getting the best of them
facts are nothing on the face of things

go listen to remain in light right now.

--dan

eXTaCy

honestly, "dear god" by the often overlooked XTC is a truly fantastic little single that slid by during my years of paying close attention to the radio.

i vividly remember the video for this song...some kid in a tree singing the opening verse.

fantastic song.

not sure if it could possibly be more british.

or more fantastically dated. just listen to the production. damn.

--dan

shoulda done, shoulda done we all sighed

warren zevon.

the man shuffled off his coil a day after my twenty-third birthday.

he was a favorite of my father. a sentimental favorite no doubt, as warren's songs were a weird and brutal cross between the comedic and tragic. characters meant to be laughed at in some cases, laughed with in others, but cried with in many.

he had a way with the turn of phrase, able to write as credible a song about werewolves in the uk as he was able to tell us about a fortunate sun wishing for legal council and weapons or a homicidal date to a high school dance.

he was a contemporary and friend to another much missed friend of similar disposition. i say friend because i miss his voice in the same way that i miss hunter. there was a beautiful brutality to them both. he and hunter thompson shared a great many sensibilities and sentiments, savageries and softness.

it's a shame he's gone.

this afternoon i was stopped by the song "accidentally like a martyr." a beatiful song, but what i can't stop replaying is this:

"the days slide by
shoulda done
shoulda done we all sighed"

it loses a bit when typed out, but tied up in that three and three quarter minutes of song it is as powerful as a death rattle and first love.

--dan

it's about to get drunk and sloppy...

to all three of you who may actually read this, my apologies.

tonight done went and got weird on me. as such, i'm going to spend the next hour or so spinning brief missives about whatever music wanders into my head...

information and odd connections

i just found out that i'll likely be teaching english to high school kids in either the south bronx or east harlem...

...and i can't stop thinking about warren zevon.

"mr. bad example."

"accidentally like a martyr."

maybe there'll be more to say later.

--dan

you in reverse

as a convenient and nicely symmetrical re-entry into regular posting on this thing i'm gonna talk a bit about the new built to spill record, you in reverse, that was released this week.

i was wrong.

sort of.

this is a really good record, of that there is no doubt. it has all of the proper builttospillishness i've come to expect and is a welcome shift away from the more polished songs and production on their last record, ancient melodies of the future. at the same time, i'm a bit put off by some of the noodling on this outing. i'm more than willing to indulge two minutes of guitar melodies soaring and crashing against each other (and there is plenty of that), but there seems to be more of a meandering tone to this record, and i'm not sure that i can get fully on-board with that.

one last criticism before i heap on the praise: "conventional wisdom."

ted leo wants his song back (well, at least the good parts).

it's not that it isn't a catchy lil' pop song, because it is. however, around the 3-minute mark (in a song that runs 6:21), it falls into the most insipid b-rate phish jam imaginable. after around a minute of that, you get some big crunchy chords and a single guitar melody...for another minute or so before the song even approaches the sort of glory you would have expected from the whole track on any other built to spill record.

it may seem like i've been piling on here, but it's only because this is such a good record otherwise and the missteps really come to the fore.

now for the shiny parts:

"goin' against your mind" is still a kickass song. it suffers (only ever so slightly) from some of the amorphous noodling i was harping on earlier, but in a way that reminds you of the charming sloppiness of a song like "car", so all is forgiven on that count.

"liar" floats past you on a punchy baseline, some tastefully jangly guitars and a plaintive melody. The sequencing of the record deserves mentioning here, as the transition from "liar" into the brief (2:24) crescendo of "saturday" is especially well done.

"wherever you are" recalls keep it like a secret's outstanding "time trap", but with a decidedly darker turn. where i'm bothered by the wandering on "conventional wisdom," "wherever you are" never loses the plot. the staccato rhythm guitar line punctuates and anchors the instrumental portions of the track, allowing doug martsch's guitar melodies to climb and crash with full dramatic and aural effect.

that's about all i've got in me at the moment. i'm happy to have many of my early fears about this album put to bed, and after repeated listens it does certainly stand up.

--dan

so, it's been a while

a little over two months later, and we're back.

as with any project born on the wings of a heavy red-wine-drunk, this page had a strong start but suffered the inevitable fall.

here's to changing that.

--dan

Bring it Back

There's no easy way to say this nor is there an in depth way to explain this.

The new Mates of States sucks. A lot. Hard. With gusto.

The songs are lame. The few songs that aren't lame you've heard before and they were better the first time.

Ugh.

Rob freaking Pollard

I am at the moment three tracks into Robert Pollard's first proper, post-Guided By Voices album From a Compound Eye.

It's certainly Rob Pollard.

And the song Dancing Girls and Dancing Men? Holy balls grafted to a pogo stick, is that song ever good.

I LOVE YOU UNCLE BOB!

More at the finish.

-Johnny

agreement

here's a fair review of the new built to spill track, "goin' against your mind," from pitchfork's rob mitchum.

Built to Spill: "Goin' Against Your Mind"
genre: rock

Doug Martsch and Built to Spill come to us from another time, a less cynical era that believed in the transcendent power of the solo. While even the simplest guitar bands these days feel the need to have at least one person checking their e-mail onstage, BtS insist on covering "Freebird" unironically, even "While My Guitar Gently Weeps".

Granted, later BtS albums felt compromised, with collapsed arrangements and humbler goals. But rejoice: "Goin' Against Your Mind" signals that You In Reverse is Martsch's return to sprawling Perfect From Now On form, a nine-minute track where the three-way fret conversations start right away and only yield the floor to Martsch's still-pubertal voice after several laps. The singing parts are common but brief, mere islands amidst the jammy seas. Here the soloists, through spacey valleys and trilling peaks, remember there's nothing wrong with sounding epic. [Rob Mitchum]

i'm not sure if mitchum intends to include keep it like a secret with the later, "compromised" records...if so, he's flat wrong. otherwise, i've got to agree with the guy.

still not sure about the rest of the record yet.

here's hoping.

--dan

Setting the Record Straight

Just so we're all clear here, Dan is in fact exactly like a 19 year-old girl all the time.

tri-delta, bitches

okay...i'll admit it, sometimes i'm like a fucking 19 year old girl.

for over a year now i have enjoyed, and continue to enjoy, the song "let go" by frou frou.

i'm not saying i wear my hello kitty tanktop and dance on my bed singing into a hairbrush with all of my fucking sorority sisters...as i do still have the requisite boy parts...but i felt i needed to get this off of my chest.

and there is nothing wrong with singing into your hairbrush in nothing but panties and a pink t-shirt.

DON'T YOU JUDGE ME!!!!

--dan

goin' against your mind

doug and the boys of built to spill have created a myspace page from which you can stream the song "goin' against your mind."

this was one of the songs i really liked on the leaked album. but hearing this, which i will assume is a nearly finished version of the song, and having it sound nearly identical to the leaked version does not fill one with confidence.

eh, what the fuck. ignore me. this record is going to be great. i really want it to be. maybe i can just will it into being.

--dan

general agreement

i do, unfortunately, have to agree with what john wrote.

there are three songs on this extremely rough cut that do stand out as really good songs.

but that's all they are: really good. not great, not ok...they occupy a space similar to that first drawing of your dog that actually looked like a dog. you know, the one your mom put on the refrigerator. it sure was really good, the physiology was correct, the elements of the drawing are placed in correct perspective and proportion, and the color is damn nice for the work of an eleven year old.

i get this same sense from the best moments on this built to spill leak. they are certainly built to spill songs: the elements you expect are there, the thing itself sounds like the map you've created in your head for a doug martsch endeavor, and there are some guitars.

but that's it.

there are another few songs that fall into the "pretty good" category (just above "ok" and a shade beneath "really good"...i know that this system of rating is getting a bit arcane), and one that is out and out awful.

i'm really not able to offer up any formed opinion of what the finished album will sound like, but i can say something about the songs, as they are fully realized songs with defined tone and structure, so i won't apologize for that criticism (granted, there will be some guitar and drum tracks added here and there, some mastering, and hopefully they will fix the abysmal placement of doug's voice in the mix, but nothing that will fundamentally change the songs).

i hope that they prove me wrong, but the only warmth i have for this album as it stands is luke.

--dan

Built to Spill

Well shit, what can I even begin to say about this record. While Dan called me on trying to ease my mind by repeatedly saying, "This is an unfinished album. They're not done with it. It's not mastered. It's not an album yet." it's undeniable that the 8 songs we listened to just weren't that great. They certainly weren't bad and performed live at least 6 of them would be absolutely tremendous rock songs, but here they sound subdued, withdrawn, and limp. These are three words that before yesterday I would have never used to describe Built to Spill songs.

About a year or so ago, I went on more than a few drunken tirades proclaiming that the next Built to Spill album was going to save rock and roll. Doug Martsch really is the last guitar hero in American rock music and I was convinced that his gigantic riffs were going to lead us weary lovers of rock to an oasis of six-stringed milk and honey. I have to soberly admit that right now, it looks like the band's five year hiatus from recording has left them changed, for better or worse. Martsch still writes rock songs just not loud ones, not rock songs to cut your teeth on. They're the kind of rock songs that can be ignored and that ain't good.

You can get yourself a bag of pretzels and bust it open and they're good pretzels. They're crunchy and salty and they taste good with a beer. But at the end of the day, I want big ass Bavarian pretzels. I want big, mean pretzels that hurt my teeth when I bite into them and even when you get to the bottom of the bag and they're all broken and whatnot, they're still freaking fantastic.

Not that I'm comparing Built to Spill to a bag or pretzels. I'm just comparing Built to Spill to a bag of pretzels is all.

-John

Instrumentality

Instrumentality is the bonding of a human being to a song. Not an album that really, really meant something to youu when you were thirteen years-old. Not that single that was on the radio when you were driving to Dorney Park with your gal some swealtering August day when you both legitimately reeked of sweat, poop, and car sex.

Instrumentality is when you, a person, a man, a woman, listens to a song and you cease to empathize with the singer, cease to identify with the song. You and the song are occupying the exact same area of space and experience. More on this sober.

-John ny

caught leak

the songs are here.

new built to spill.

reactions soon.

--dan

file under: the fuck, what?

honestly, i'd like someone to decode this for me.

The Flaming Lips: "The Wand"
genre: psych-rock

No one ever stands up for progressives when they're dead-on-- look at Dean's media-fueled lunaticization. So, fuck it, I dig the Lips' burbly classic-rock riff-copping, "magic stick" trips and now-standard FX'd beats (ooh reverse snare!) plus handclaps. I also dig their winged-thing hope-- even if they're as subtle as Armaggedon: "Time after time those fanatical minds try to rule all the world," Wayne Coyne begins, swathed in falsetto backing, though "we got the power now/ 'Cause it's where it belongs" is either wishful or druggie thinking.

Hooks? Surely Dubya-heads will be pleased there really aren't any, and that these sonically playful foes still play loveable, uni-hit-wonderable Oklahoma acid-heads. Best parallel is Super Furry Animals' equally bilious, equally disestablishmentarian "The Frequency", except wait that one had a hook. "They have their weapons to solve all your questions/ They don't know what it's for," Coyne adds. I also like how "The Wand" fades into Beanie Siegel, but that's only because I mislabeled the mp3 so it has to play through "songs" on the 40-gig and "Flatline" follows Flaming. Lips'll box yr fucking head off. [Marc Hogan]

the guy has two paragraphs to fill with a review of a single song. a review intended to communicate both the style and sound, as well as the quality, of the track.

instead i get to hear about the following (which are completely irrelevant):

-howard dean
-the author's ipod listening regimen

while being tossed a few clues that this is, in fact, a music review:

-mentioning the band
-mentioning what the rest of the band's music sounds like of late
-quoting lyrics

what is even more ridiculous is that the one comparison the writer makes to a similar song (super furry animals' "the frequency") turns out not to be a musical comparison at all.

two paragraphs.
nine sentences.
three sentences actually about the song in question.

--dan

leaks have sprung...and i nearly missed them

okay, so it seems i've completely missed the leaking of the new built to spill record.

i am not happy about this.

apparently this happened about 3-4 weeks ago, and many of the links to the files have been removed.

fortunately, i've found a still extant conduit through which i might pull this forbidden fruit.

it's gonna take about 3 hours though...

more later.

--dan

genres Genres GENRES

The notion of arbitrary genre naming has been on my mind today and I've decided that coming up with a new genre, not just for every different band but every different album, should start working retroactively. For example, I'm listening to Nico's Chelsea Girl right now. Nico is totally post medieval court shazz pop.

-Johnny

the plan? well, fuck that plan! maybe....

ok.

here's the plan:

john and i like music.

unfortunately, we've gotten really tired of reading any number of awful people and shitty writers babble on about what we love.

so we've decided to start spewing bile and praise all on our own. by our own selves, you might say.

if you dig it, we're glad to have you around.

if not...well this is apparently not for you, now is it?

right?

right.

--dan

Talbot, Matt

Yeah man you too. No more pee-wee football. Loud crunchy guitars and faith in the basic decency of mankind.

-JC

mangum, jeff

i am not one of your sycophantic fans for whom your music subs as bible.

i do not believe that you have some magical insight into my soul.

i do not believe that you will save rock music.

I DO DEMAND THAT YOU COME THE FUCK HOME!!!

seriously, more music. much more. you are welcome and needed.

if you see jeff, you tell him to come home.

--dan