Today Found Me

less one ipod due to miscommunication/the Radio Shack help line sent their smart folks on vacation/getting my earbuds replaced’ll take a little time/so today I had to commute like it’s 1989/with my book the one distraction on the train so grey and silver/and I thought how when I first came to the city, people’d pilfer/all my pocket contents. But that doesn’t matter now of course/because I’ve learned from much experience to get back on the horse/and so I found myself with Snickers in my hand and coffee too/while this song whipped around the coffeeshop and I saw it was true/that all the pretty girls go to the city/pass by when I’m feeling shitty/keep my in their rearview while I wait for lunch to end.

Nah, I’m fuckin’ with you, people/I might wobble but I’m Weeble/so you check the awesome music/and don’t think my rhymes abusive/I can post this song that’s tight/cuz it’s the soundtrack to my night/and when you stretch and watch the sunrise/know I’m watching you with both eyes/and I can’t control the world but I can show you how to step back/and regard the rest with ease because there’s only so much setbacks.

Magic...motherfucker.

Every Tool Is A Weapon If You Hold It Right

Today’s handful of mp3s come courtesy of my enthusiastic friend A.C., who described this song, though not exactly, as the kind of thing you can keep in your sights when the work day builds into such a parade of annoying and taxing shit that the Sorcerer’s Apprentice would find taxing. And this and this are other songs, very quiet and intense songs which made me sit very still, and which A.C. was very happy to play for me knowing that was the most likely reaction they’d elicit. I almost typed “illicit”. Good morning. I hope you enjoy them as much as we do!

 

The Lives Of Famous Men @ Arlene’s Grocery, 11/15/10, 8 P.M.

What I saw last night was a humble testament to the power of poetic justice. See, like, I’d gone and fucked up and recently made the mistake of idly musing out loud about how I felt like life was surprising me less these days. At the time I meant it, but now I’m forced to recant and I truly couldn’t be happier with having been schooled.

Arlene’s is a Lower East Side venue I’ve been going to for a few years, since I became a Bones Royal fan. Last night, and indeed for the Mondays before and after, it’s been the regular gig of The Lives Of Famous Men, a band that hails from Portland by way of Alaska and now, New York City. Described as similarly-minded gentlemen that moved on from playing metal in high school to aspiring toward alternative forms of musical expression, TLOFM could very well be categorized as playing a certain type of music, with influences from other bands of which you may have heard. But that wouldn’t be my purview because their live show was the first introduction The Pirate Slut got to their music. As opposed to my M.O. which is to listen to a band’s albums to death before I eventually shell out the money to a Ticketmaster pimp, I took this engagement on the good faith of my friend the (name of band member and role in band both redacted for purposes of humbly not wishing to put someone on the Internet without explicit permission, and plus, to be mysterious.), who was all “my band’s playing Monday night!” and I’m all like “well then I’m going”, because plans, even fun ones, too ruminated on or too reconsidered are soon to become obligations, but turns out that wouldn’t have mattered at all because…

The Lives Of Famous Men put on a great fucking show.

Let me underscore the context for this if I can. I had never heard TLOFM play before last night. I had never heard their music. I did not know what their music sounded like. I had never seen my friend perform. I had never seen my friend outside of the context in which we always see each other. My feet hurt.

Dylan Mandel, drummer and backup vocalist, stomping a bass drum pedal was the first sound I remember. From then on, TLOFM moved through their set with an infectious, earnest rambuctiousness (rambunction?), and once it was over I was immediately clamoring for the EP I’m listening to as I write this. Augmenting their vox-bass-drum-guitar-keys lineup with glockenspiel, trumpet, supplemental tom, and warmly oozing and weaving backing vocals, the overwhelming impression I was left with was one of true conviction and craftsmanship, not the least via singer Daniel Hall’s impressive performance. Playing a variety of instruments and catapulting a voice from the exuberant “Carolina Boys Choir”, across near-moaning soulfulness on “Love, You Took Me By Surprise” buoyed by Jason Wahto’s vibe work, to bossanova croon on “Marigold Maxixe”, often with his eyes closed, Hall exuded confidence in every note he sang and with Wahto to his left providing keys and trumpet, he never once let the energy or intensity drop. The room wasn’t full, nor was it not a Monday night, but all the crowd was appreciative of TLOFM’s melodic, intelligent set, and you could tell because when they were playing, and even between songs, people were quiet and attentive.

It is hard enough to express the way Ari Katcher’s ukelele lines, or the forlackofabetterword dope entrance of a harmonica on “Leaves Are Coming Off Of Branches”, or how judicious organ swells sound, in words. So this is what I am going to do. I am going to show you this video of the band on Jimmy Kimmel Live:

…and you, you, you, and you will join me on Stanton St. next Monday to enjoy a band that wants you to have a good time and knows damn well how to help your ass out along the way. Because when you too are feeling depressingly certain the way things work, unable to distinguish possibility from cynicism, just will yourself the patience to deflate your own sails with a good time at a good show, and they have Yuengling on tap.

WHY? (Part 5 of a Six-Part Series on Captivation)

To recap: Becoming an active appreciator of music requires a few simple steps. First, remember to ask “why” when you feel the brain juice starting to fizz upon introduction to new music or evaluation of the already-favored stuff. Remember to believe in and respect the manifold and duplex assortment of ways people come to enjoy music, for such experiences are yours to share in and create. Don’t be scared off if it doesn’t click at first, or at tenth, or ever. You are not everyone, nor can you become everyone, but you can always draft in someone’s blissed-out wake. And finally, learn to transcend the mode of thinking which parcels music into Like and Don’t Like. Learn to build your standards around which music gets through the deepest and most longlasting, soundtrack to your life shit, not about keeping certain stuff at arm’s length because you fear being made uncomfortable or bored by it. And never lose faith that a particular song or musician can enter into that pantheon.

Now. I recognize these WHY? entries, as well as the entry immediately preceding this one, veer into the abstract, and in the most recent one’s case, into earnest inquiries from readers as to what the fuck I was saying/which substance I was controlling. So I’m going to keep this one brief. Or at least succinct.

I’m going to briefly go over the semantics you should all be keeping in mind. First, considering all music “likeable” is to be able to listen to any given song or collection of songs in its entirety and to feel something other than distracted boredom. If you feel venom-slathered contempt for it, that’s liking it. If you mildly enjoyed a few songs, that’s liking it. If you want to ink the lyrics on your forearm, that’s liking it. Thinking about how hungry you are or how your sock’s bunched up or when the next flavor of Cheez-It hits the shelves is not liking it. Music created by people (or computers, there’s some of that), even bored people, is the organization and pummeling of unruly air molecules by wood and wire and brass and circuit, by some sort of often-ineffable logic on the part of the player and composers, let loose on the world. If that leaves you fidgeting to be perceiving something else, that is an absence of liking, a dearth of affection, pretty much an aesthetic “go fuck yourself”, and that’s more of a negative reaction than any cringe or jawclench induced by noise music or bubblegum pop or the skillionth repetition of “Fight The Power”. Music’s like Greek and Norse gods. It only dies when people don’t care.

But some music demands more from us than simple affection. When we are compelled to re-listen, to wear out vinyl and test bystanders’ nerves (my former roommate used to demand that I restart this song from the beginning before it had hit the 2 minute mark), when it tumbles into emotion we didn’t know was there and leaves us giddy and bloody, that’s what I call Interest. What keeps you coming back. What makes its way onto the Most Played list. What you offer up to prospective friends and mates as a sampler for who you believe you are. I try to like all music. But interest can’t be hurried. It’s organic and finicky to grow sometimes, but when it does…then it becomes You Captivated, so drawn up in the music that your ego clocks out and your body unweaves into just a breezy hammock, holding just barely the heartbeat and breaths and impulses, rhythm and melody, indistinguishable. And then the train comes to your stop, or you twist your ankle on the dancefloor, or a string breaks, and you’re back.

Everyone with me? Like versus Interest. Like all, be Interested in what you can. Okay.

BUT WHAT ABOUT NAZI PUNK? OR MUSIC MADE BY KILLERS, LIKE PHIL SPECTOR OR CHARLES MANSON? OR ANY MUSIC THAT CLEAVES RADICALLY AWAY FROM POLITICAL OR SOCIAL IDEOLOGIES YOU HOLD NEAR AND DEAR? WOULDN’T IT BE HYPOCRISY TO STUBBORNLY CLAIM TO LIKE IT IF ONE IS TO FOLLOW YOUR PHILOSOPHY? CAN YOU REALLY COMPARTMENTALIZE YOUR OWN PREFERENCES AND A BROADER APPRECIATION OF THE EMOTIONAL AND AESTHETIC IMPACT OF ALL MUSIC? OR IS THAT SOME PERVERSE BULLSHIT IN THE FACE OF INTENTIONALLY OFFENSIVE MUSIC? CAN FERVENT FEMINISTS HOLD TRUE TO YOUR WORDS IF SOMEONE STARTS PLAYING “TIP DRILL“? ETC? ETC?

Opinions are almost sacrosanct in this country. The phrase “you’re entitled to your opinion” as a caveat to pretty much everything rolls with ease off the tongue of anyone trying to make a focused, sober argument. But, as hinted at in parts 3 and 4, opinions aren’t all pulled from the grab-bag and never taken out of the box. They’re subject to change, and perhaps more importantly, they’re reflective of yer inner framework in ways that you might not get if you spent a day trapped in an elevator with you. Your opinion may not seem like a reflex but if it is, believing it to be implacable is to believe the self implacable. And sorry to spoil the ending, but you’re not. So an opinion, though free to have and freely possessed by all, can indeed be earned.

It’s true that certain music is designed to repel certain listeners, or otherwise express an attitude of repulsion. Racial and sexual intolerance. Murderous rage. Sexism. Ugly things, the lot of ‘em, and there’s no rationalizing that away. And then there’s the troubling idea of “supporting”, if not financially then ideologically via one’s refusal to refuse, the musician who does things you don’t agree with. Musicians who kill (that’s William Burroughs narrating!). Musicians who rape. Musicians who would deny others their civil rights. Musicians who probably do a little of all of the above.

I don’t tell everyone who likes the widely-beloved book “Ender’s Game” that its author is a entrenched homophobe (which he so is). If I did, would they all care enough to throw out their copies, letting their distaste kneecap their affection for the book series? Probably not.

I can’t advocate denial of the ugly and problematic aspects of certain unfortunate corners of music. What you gain from a drive to listen to as much as you can is an open mind, a spirit of adventure, a greater tolerance for stepping outside your fascia-deep habits and a taste for risk. With music, this is a relatively innocuous journey, as the worst you can expect is a shock from poorly wired headphones, tinnitus, tired feet, and, well, maybe death by crushing. The engagement of your various political and philosophical beliefs with those of the music or musicians you come across can be truly eye-opening or  reassuring in regards to your preconceptions, and in doing so you have tested the critical rigor of your opinion, bringing me back to my earlier point. Like the music for what it can do (or not do). You don’t have to check your morals at the door when you take on The Pirate Slut’s way. But you do have to believe in them enough to, if necessary, leave ‘em in the car while you run inside, not forgetting them and always leaving the window cracked so they don’t swell up and die with heat, but recognizing that your beliefs and your dogma don’t need to be one and the same. Life’s just too long.

 

Twelve Disappointed People

Twelve disappointed people have walked out of my place of employment. They may have wandered around for a while and checked out the candle displays, turned over a few of the wallet-sized notebooks in their hands, before they exited and headed off to seek their purchase down the block, or on the internet. There might not even have been twelve of them, but it seems like a fair estimate. They wanted “The Perks Of Being A Wallflower”, and it wasn’t in, so they left. But there it is, my copy not six feet away, in my bookshelf. Right there!!

Or, more accurately, my grandmother’s bookshelf. Which was moved into the spot vacated by my old bookshelf. Which is still mine, but being used as a closet in the absence of one in the new apartment, standing sentry by my bedroom and holding an air mattress stuffed tightly into its worn-out box, and the small but sprightly vacuum cleaner.

My day-long furlough is here in what I’ve increasingly grown used to calling “my parents’ house” to allay confusion among people who don’t know where I’m from when I explain where I’m going. “Home” is become this kind of word that balances precariously between the places I keep most of my stuff. But when it comes down to it, it’s not really my stuff. It’s just what stays at home.

I bought a dollar copy of The Big Book of AA the other day. Before I’ll even read a page, it’s mine. But who’d it bring back from, or possibly shove closer to, rock bottom? Not the owner. Former owner. Former reader. But it’s mine now.

That bookcase stood in one spot for years before it got mummied-up in saran wrap and furniture blanket and trucked over sea and land to its new home. That book stood on one shelf for who knows how long before I bought it from Barnes and Noble like six years ago and it’s bounced from home to home depending on how self-conscious I was that people see it, or how much of a desire I had to keep on hand a book I never know whether or not I like no matter how many times I reach the final page.

I left all my music in my apartment before I came back here. Well, not all; I have my Ipod, and here I also have the two massy spindles of burned CDs from which a grand proportion of that music was ripped, years ago. But the Ipod is just a backpack. The computer the CDs were burned on is gone now, and who knows how fucked-up and scratched those spindles have left ‘em. The real collection, the external hard drive, is resting on my desk in New York like “…well?”

For all the discussion about intellectual property and ownership, I don’t own any of the music I have even if it’s lasered into plastic, magnetized onto tape. I can leave it in one place and not be able to get it back for a period of time, or ever, because I can’t reach over state lines and I can’t remember to stuff it into my bag every time I leave it. It could burn in a fire or drown in a burst-pipe flood, and I’d be left reconstructing it from the original scattered pieces. Until we keep everything in multiple servers on multiple continents, accessible via any device or access point, ownership won’t come close to anything resembling possession.

Digital music is a public good for anyone willing to take the steps to retrieve it. That’s got implications, man, implications. But until we have infinite arms clutching with endless strength, the time and energy to wrangle and circulate the expanding city of stuff we cocoon ourselves into, something like a song or a book or a flirty look is still part of the commons, no matter how close you station yourself to it.

OR maybe I’m just in the middle of watching George Clooney’s backpack speech from Up In The Air and I’ve got no mp3s to post.

Sic Transit Gloria Monday

The week begins, so naturally my mind turns to the vaguely morbid and existentially uneasy. Consider the following.

When I was young my parents arranged for a woman named Heather to drive my sister and me from place to place, and watch over us when we needed attending. I remember her car with oddly specific yet patchy accuracy; the crumbed floormats and barely-working air freshener which clipped onto one of the air vents, the massive water bottle that kicked around the backseat, and the knobs of the radio. Heather had a wallet of CDs in her car, and as I was not yet the obsessive musicophile I’m today, they were some of my most primitive introduction to the love of recorded sound that I’d later come to depend on for sanity as well as the judicious underscoring of the more memorable moments of my life. (See: this song, this song, this song. You know who you are.)

The CDs I can remember are: “The Best Of” by Supertramp (check, still listen to “Take The Long Way Home” when I’m smarting on the ride home from blundering into and quickly out of a turned-down kiss), “Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water” by Limp Bizkit (didn’t listen to for years due to the  lingering compulsion to distance myself from the kind of kid in junior high who used to give me shit, but then I started lifting weights in college and it was sort of unavoidable that “Rollin’” would make it onto the Ipod), and “Gordon” by Barenaked Ladies.

“Gordon” is not a perfect album. It’s got an uneven mix of humor and pathos even within the same song, it’s very acoustic-based on some tracks, and if you believe that Barenaked Ladies is a one-hit, two-or-so-joke group not worth more than some hazy summer memories of “One Week” rattling out of schoolbus radio speakers, you’ll be bored by it. But I listened to that album back to front more times than I can count; I’d put it on when I stepped out of the shower and got into my PJs on a school night; I’d play it in Heather’s car and sing along to words I didn’t know until my sister demanded I stop.

And then Barenaked Ladies became not just a record I liked, but a Band I Was Into. I sought out their albums on Amazon and blew through a gift certificate. I ripped one from a former friend. I got one for Christmas and sat there feeling silly when I couldn’t explain to my uncle why the music coming out of my cd player’s earphones meant more to me than, I dunno, jazz standards would mean to him. I didn’t care if none of their other albums were Gordon, because this was a band I knew I appreciated as more than a one-hit wonder, as a group of pop craftsmen with a big beating sense of humor and yes, the ability to be serious if need be. Shit, this song still makes me misty.

And then they fractured and so did my little years-fostered bubble of self and music. One of their lead singer/songwriters, Steven Page, left the band after a public arrest for cocaine possession. And the rest of the band continued on, and everything became confused and hazy. I haven’t listened to the album they did without Page, and not just because Page was my favored of the two main singers (which is not to give the other short shrift, he does wonders). But it shook me.

It’s like when you crush on a girl for years, the way you can in school or some other institution where you can see just enough of someone to ache and idealize and act out of the ordinary (change daily perambulation to pass her in the hall…memorize the color of her shirt at the beginning of the day so you can pick her out of a crowd in seconds…believe that you two are playing a slow seductive dance of barely-caught glances and stares, believe it so strongly that she could state under oath hooked up to a polygraph that she was looking at the clock and you’d swear she was full of it), gradually emotionally hemorrhage to the point where you’re just a fat sack of want. Where nothing but her existence matters, no matter what she does or how many other people in the world there are.

And then her mom dies.

And you know this because everyone knows this. And you’re powerless to do anything because you’ve never had a real conversation. And she is sad and drawn and tired and fucked up because of circumstances beyond your control and even your comprehension. And you realize that not only do you matter extremely little to her, she matters extremely little to you. She was just a small hole in your heart that you forced the entire organ through, sheer force of will and desire, and for what?

For what indeed. Was I some awkward kid who needed a band with a healthy vein of geekery to identify with? Did I need to feel like I was so cool I could see past the silly humor and really appreciate this band like a good little hip kid? And now, would I see Barenaked Ladies play as just a four-piece? Or check out Steven Page’s new solo album? Would it be worth it to keep sifting through the remains of once was to find the core of substance that snagged me in the first place, no matter what state it’s now in?

Yeah, sure.

In The Mood To Love. (A Joint Review: “Taylor Swift – Speak Now” and “Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion”

WHO – wait, what? What is it? Slow down.

No, no, no. Hold up. This review is not your usual Pirate Slut write-up, with the customary detailed and convincing explanations as to why the music I have stolen and listened to is worth all your whiles. It’s not going to gently chide you for your skepticism, nor plead that you just show some sympathy where there’s usually none. It does not follow the same format. No self-asked questions, at least. Because this is not just a review of an album. It is a review of two albums. And it is not just a review. It’s a question. And that question is, “what’s so great about an attitude??” Also, it’s an answer. It’s all those things.

Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion

Taylor Swift - Speak Now

The way these albums came together was by as random a chance as my Ipod usually throws at me. Simply put: the New York City subway is a place where you don’t make eye contact, where you don’t always get to sit and hunch into yourself, and on which you just can’t wait for the ride to end (I make an exception for the elevated trains, which never stop feeling like they’re scored with poignant music and that I’m on the way to something grand like a spike in the narrative arc, and when it pops out of the darkness into sunlight or even overcastlight, oh man, it’s like 3 minutes and 40 seconds into this). The time I spend the most on the train is usually the morning commute, where I try to blot out any lingering anxiety (re: the next nine hours, did I eat enough breakfast?, wait this jacket’s not buttoned right, oh damn I left my GLASSES ON THE DAMN NIGHTSTAND) with some new, hopefully distracting, optimally transcendent new music. And since Taylor Swift’s new album “Speak Now” was available, it so became part of this routine.

The Animal Collective album came about by the vague feeling that I, like the rest of the bloggerati, should check this band out. Hype, hype, hype. But when E.A. frustratingly revealed that he could at the least recommend TWO of their albums to start with, I shuffled Animal Collective down the list of Things I’d Be Best Served By Hearing Now Thank You (TIBBSBHNTY, pronounced the same way it sounds when you blow your nose and it goes through the tissue onto your hand). Then, in a snap decision (the best kind!), built on the chatter that promised this album to be pretty amazing and immediately accessible, onto the Ipod it went. I’d already heard one of the tunes off it, and I’ll be damned if it wasn’t propulsive enough for stoners and joggers alike!

The act of listening to each of these albums, though generated out of two disparate bundles of instinct and reaction, produced a question that’s been dripping away at me, stalagmite-like, and calcified into one rising point of an idea. Specifically, analyzing an album (or artist or song)’s attitude, or Mood, as it relates to its Appeal.

When I say “Mood” I’m not talking about the mood that it provokes in the listener. That’s entirely subjective, with an exception or two. I mean the slightly less indefinable presentational Mood of the album or artist or song, the combined precipitate of the artist’s appearance in visual and popular media, the overall dynamics of the music, the shared lyrical and musical themes from song to song, and how it settles into popular culture, which can often trump all the other variables in determining the overall mood. See: “Born In The U.S.A.” may not be a stirring patriotic barnburner, but that’s just a flywing of a barrier in the way of you wanting to hoist the stars and stripes and start baking apple pies while scoring touchdowns once you hear that opening “dumBAAAAH NAH NAH NAH NAH NAH” salvo. Go ahead. Tell me I’m wrong.

But in the context of “Speak Now” and “Merriweather Post Pavillion”, both albums are by artists who, though still recent additions to American popular music, have become somewhat entrenched in their respective niches. Animal Collective is ten years gone in producing music, and its members’ solo projects makes yearly top 10 lists in independent and alternative music press. Taylor Swift is twenty, and has only been around on the scene for 4 years, yet by now is a household name, and a car-driving-past-you-blasting favorite. She is pretty, and writes her own songs. They are arty and produce dense and experimental music. She has won a Grammy award. Your 17 year old cousin who can’t wait to graduate and who has plans for a tattoo on his wrist that a watch can easily cover but only so his parents won’t freak, well, he swigged cough syrup and went to their show and it was fucking blindass amazing.

I don’t mean to try to say “they’re actually so much alike because all music has appeal so therefore all fans are alike and all music is alike all one! all one!” like some insane writing on a Dr. Bronner’s bottle or like someone trying a little to hard to be interesting (ahem.) But check Taylor Swift, and her new album in all its glory and sheen. Her songs ripple with a mood of childhood innocence shot through with the increasing desperation of a romantic hooked on her own heartbreak. And that can be a criticism some level at her, specifically this person I work with who stomped her foot and went “dammit, why is she making millions off of songs that are basically my Livejournal from six years ago?!” And that’s the Mood right there: a young girl with a guitar and, at times, an orchestra. Though Swift wrote each song on the new album, Nathan Chapman produces the fuck out of them and sands down each possible corner and snag until each song’s like the sonic equivalent of a design student’s apartment. Guitars chime in symmetry, drums lay down a rhythm steady enough to do brain surgery on, vocal overdubs are weaved together and mixed loud enough so even a stadium designated chorus like that of the first single, “Mine” (which explodes into “do you remember we were standing there by the water?/you put your arm around me for the first time!”) You ask: “is that good?” And I say: “somehow yes.” Because Taylor Swift’s voice is a little shrill. A little pinched. A little nasal. And some places on the record it ominously carries an almost autotunedly slipperiness. It would all seem soulless, were it not for the fact that the album’s intense accessibility is only one part of the Mood.

Animal Collective’s album is the musical equivalent of walking through snow-covered woods wondering when you’re going to step through ice and plunge into icy water, and whether or not that’ll be a bad thing. To explain: their music is noisy. Lots of sampled beats and synthesizer washes, echoey vocals, pounding beats. Gurgling, warm-yet-robotic music. Now, I’ve been told that this album sounds like this because their usual guitar player was taking a break from recording, so the three remaining members, Noah Lennox who calls himself Panda Bear, David Portner who calls himself Avey Tare, and Brian Weitz who calls himself Geologist, hit up the sampler and keyboard store. Bleeps and bloops abound, and for all the supposed pop accessibility of “Merriweather Post Pavillion”, it would almost seem like three guys who look like your barista who make music that sounds like they’re on drugs because, let’s face it, it’s weird and they’re young, would be undeserving of all the acclaim. But, of course, all that’s only part of the Mood.

There’s sound, there’s image, and the two together make Mood. Taylor Swift’s sound is one of pop songcraft and lyrical similarity, major keys and earnest delivery. Her image, at least now, is one of sweetness tempered with the pressure of fame, and the awareness of romantic convention yet a swooning draw to it, a context where her real-life dalliance with singer-songwriter John Mayer becomes a dreamy lament about “someone” (scare quotes mine) who should have known that “19 was too young to be messed with”, yet where cynicism and nastiness are not even part of the equation. Love is a candy-coated battlefield. Distilled, that all sounds like this. If you dislike that type of vulnerability, or believe in fact that it’s simply calculated to sell downloads and tickets and not genuine like the way it was when it happened to you, when he gradually let you leave yourself vulnerable until it was too much to scramble back from him and you were left raw and fucked up, when you felt human emotions, then yeah, you’ll turn up your nose to Ms. Swift’s Mood. Her tossed off spoken “next chapter!” on “The Story Of Us”, which describes a relationship’s declining narrative, will sound cheesy. “Better Than Revenge”, where she she states that a romantic rival’s “better known for the things that does on the mattress…whoa-oah!” and the comparison of stealing a boyfriend to “stealing other people’s toys on the playground” will induce cringes rather than jaw-set fist-pumps. The sighing ballads of “Back To December” and “Innocent” will leave you groaning, not nodding. She’s too…just…ugh for you to like. You are locking the door at the base of a staircase to a smile when you do this. So if that is how you choose to live your life, have no illusions: you’re being anti-happy. And you’re not responding the cultural paradigm she exists in. You are not somehow seeing beyond the phoniness. You’re responding to her Mood. Reacting, to be more accurate. Being reactionary, to be more and more accurate.

Similarly, Animal Collective, if written off as pretentious, overly concerned with its own inscrutable knotted musical logic, or indulgent, on “Merriweather Post Pavillion”, is a reaction to their and its Mood, which is so much more than the weird psychedelic graffiti scrawled on its surface, which is what anyone who refuses to give a listen is threatened by. “Don’t go in there! That’s gang territory!” Silly of you to be so withheld! Whether it’s the pathos exhibited on “My Girls” (dude just wants to take care of his wife and daughter) or “Summertime Clothes” (dude just wants to have a constructive messy-fun summer, “We’ll dance to the songs from the cars as they pass/Weave through the cardboard, smell that trash/Walking around in our summertime clothes/Nowhere to go while our bodies glow”), or the jaw-harp (or digeridoo?) skittery psychedelia of “Lion In A Coma”, this music is a bright burble of unstructured minds and a loose set of jaws let loose with keyboards. Even the slower tracks like the album’s parade of a first track, “In The Flowers”, are full-steam-ahead with their fucked up ideas of how a pop song sounds, and can shift from ethereal to rollercoaster in a way that’s only accommodating if you accept the Mood for what it is. And if it takes drugs to make that happen, find a babysitter and let rip, dammit. Band is a bunch of scruffy white boys. Band meets samplers. Band finds success in experimentalism. Is Animal Collective “rock”? “pop”? “Experimental” (which is code for “never heard anything like this before, fuck it, whatever”)? On this album, yes. Is Taylor Swift a confessional singer songwriter? A pure pop goose laying egg after golden egg? Only as country as bare emoting and lack of pretension to something beyond a faithful adherence to hers and others pop conventions allows? And yes I said yes she will, yes, be all those things. You can dance to both. It’ll just be in different venues, wearing different looking outfits.

Something to be said about the lyrics of both albums: this is Animal Collective, “Until fully grown/You got a real good shot/Won’t help to hold inside/Keep it real keep it real shout out.” And this is Taylor Swift, “It could stay this simple/No one’s ever burned/Nothing’s ever left you scarred/Even though you want to, just try to never grow up”.

So yeah.

 

Sleep well, readers.

 

 

 

Kicking Television

Hello, all. As many of you might be wondering, “how does The Pirate Slut find the time to blog, listen, and re-listen during such a busy schedule of full-time employment and bean eating?” and the answer, well, it may surprise you. Simply put, I barely do, which is why I haven’t been keeping to my promised 1-a-day updates. I apologize, and I’m here to address that.

A recent revelation. Simply put, my time is limited, my energy more so, and my days have just as many hours as yours. But as one month ends and another begins, I took a long hard look to my budget and hefted a hatchet. Thanks to M.S. for pointing me in the right direction, but here’s the kicker, the epiphany: I have to stop watching television.

Me, I don’t idly sit in its glow, reading a book or writing a chapter while the words sort of drift and fill the room like so much milkweed. I sit elbows on knees, lower back grumbling, and soak each minute up. Pirated, of course, so no commercials save product placement. I watch it at home, on the train, and rarely, on a television, but I WATCH, and watch with an increasingly self-medicatory attitude that has now provided me the tolerance to sit in one place for 44 minutes of my life, sometimes scratching, sometimes jumping on Wikipedia to check a reference.

Which is not good as a writer trying to be productive, especially when you watch Weeds and The Big C and Mad Men and Rubicon and The Simpsons and Family Guy and The Cleveland Show and QI and Eastbound and Down and The League and Bored To Death and Boardwalk Empire and South Park and Ugly Americans and Raising Hope and Terriers and Friday Night Lights and Gossip Girl and Sons of Anarchy and Dexter and The Office and How I Met Your Mother and Real Time With Bill Maher and Supernatural and…others? Maybe?

I become like that apocryphal rat with the heroin lever. You know, the two rats with the two cages, each with a lever, one that dispenses cocaine, one that dispenses heroin. The cocaine rat presses the lever until it dies of starvation, while the heroin rat presses it enough to stay hiii-ii-igh, but not to the point of zombification…

…crap, that reminds me…

 So I have decided that beginning November 1, aka Monday, I am going almost-totally-cold turkey. With two exceptions, I am not watching any more television when I am alone; not on a train, a bus, an idle moment, a bathroom, my bed, my couch, MY RECLINER, or any other. If someone suggests we watch it together, I’m game. But I won’t initiate. I mean we spend too much time these months and days substituting the promise of a slowly-loading flash video for actual social intercourse, god fuckin’ dammit.

The aformentioned exceptions being: Terriers, the little show that probably won’t. Read up on it, and its scrappiness. I want to see this show to the death, but ideally, to the end of the first of many seasons. 

This is a funny, gripping noir tale. There are many like it, but not on TV.

And then, of course, Friday Night Lights, which I’ll be watching with my boy E.A. (whose nickname should be “Challenge Evvverything”. Anyone who gets that reference, I owe you a penny.)

Clear eyes/full hearts/can’t lose.

Things it should go without saying: 1) I’ll be going through withdrawal, so don’t ask me if I’m caught up on Gossip Girl. 2) You should also watch those two shows. And 3) Expect a new album review soon, albeit not a…conventional one.

Sweeping Up Some Dropped Names

In the spot where I work, I’ve been fortunate enough to run into famous people. Not fortunate because they are famous, mind you; they aren’t famous except in the very specific sense that my insane intake of media allows me to recognize these people as they unassumingly browse around. These are not stars. They are not household names. If you saw them on the street or, in my case, the aisle, you would have to hop on a computer and do some quick Googlimaging to verify that yes, indeed, it’s him/her. The fortunate part is that I can feel like I’ve stumbled onto an easter egg only I and a few others around will appreciate. It’s a sort of rare cousin to one of the major perks of listening/watching as much as I do. Which is that it’s a hell of a way to start a conversation when you ask “so what are you into?” and they answer either “Ke$ha” or “lo-fi folky stuff”*, and I feel fully confident proceeding down either path with enthusiasm and ease.

(*two actual answers to that actual question from the last 2 weeks)

To begin, today there was James Badge Dale. Along with being the owner of a manly middle name, he’s the main actor on this new tv show “Rubicon” that AMC so graciously decided to run up against “Mad Men” after “Breaking Bad” ended its third season. Don’t worry if you don’t watch TV, all you need to know about Rubicon is that I’ve followed it with much nail-bitery and raptness since it, as some of the best TV shows do, hooked me slowly and then incontrovertibly. It’s a conspiracy show about political corruption and espionage; Mr. Dale plays Will Travers, an analyst at a New York think tank.

Or as he's known in Glee-Rubicon fanfiction, "Broody Schuester".

He asked to borrow my ladder. I did a double-take, as his gray tuque made him less recognizable than when he’s frantically running around solving puzzles and looking unsettled, i.e. as Will Travers, i.e. how I’m used to him. Now, as this is New York, the social contract dictates that we proles leave celebrities be. It’s one of the few noble New York cultural trademarks, this ignoring famous people, but we do it, and keep on walking. But I’d always promised myself that if a famous person who was just famous enough for me to have heard of them, but not famous enough so that they’d already be heaving a sigh as I approached them with their name on my lips, I’d say hi.

“You’re James Dale, right?”

“…yeah.”

“Dude. I love your show.”

“Thanks man!”

“It’s one of my favorites of the new season.”

“Thanks man…I…um…love your ladder!”

“Haha.”

“I can just leave it here?”

“Yep.”

“Alright.”

“Have a good day!”

It made my day.

Then there was this guy. Specifically, the one who “wants to sa-ay.” in the first video. Mark Ibold, bass player of two shockingly popular bands.

Pavement: 

Sonic Youth:

He walked up with a baby strapped to his chest, asked my help, and I gave it. I told him to have a good day after I filled his order. I realized something: indie rockers have gotten OLD now. Course, having a baby can’t exactly be youthing him, now can it. Nice fuckin’ guy.

Cause unlike seeing someone media-ravaged and splashed across every 7PM Hollywood gossip show, seeing these minorly known folks allows me the indulgence of thinking: this is my person, they are appreciated by me more than 90 percent of the other people they will pass as they walk out through my workplace, and that there are others like me, dotting the city like sex offenders on an unsettling registry website, some clustered in Billyburg, some slumped in a bar somewhere, others stepping on a bus away from all of it. Indulgent, yes. But reassuring.

Local 269, 9PM, 10/24/10, The Recessionals/Free Association

Firstly:

Secondly:

This.

Thirdly:

Oh Ben Orr, you were so swoonily rocking…oh lower east side, you are so quirky and warm…oh jazz, you make me think of men in mackintoshes and giant S’s…oh evening, why do you just turn into a work morning when it comes down to it?

Sleep well, folks.