I’m now occasionally contributing to a new PopMatters mp3 blog called Sound Affects. Check it out if you are getting tired of the whole dancing about architecture situation — given that pictures are worth a thousand words and all, songs must be worth a cool million, and I get to actually post mp3s there.
Thankfully, these posts are automatically aggregated by my author archive.
My most recent PopMatters assignment was a review of The Slip, the second major digital release of 2008 from Nine Inch Nails.
“The Slip” is a curveball of a release that whips around and still solidly connects with the temple. Even the most devoted Nine Inch Nails fan couldn’t possibly have seen this coming less than two months after “Ghosts,” and Reznor is the first high-profile musician to demonstrate that being best buds with the internet, even to the point of giving away major releases, actually facilitates continued creativity. If “Ghosts” illustrated the ways in which technology can shorten the distance between the studio and the hungry ears, the moral of “The Slip” is that jettisoning the red tape and bullshit shortens the distance between one project and the next. It’s not just a step forward artistically, it’s a triumph of logistics. More
My latest bit at PopMatters is a review of a recent performance by Blue Man Group. They have also introduced cool new author pages where you can see all my articles at a glace.
They’re surprisingly dark, and I hear Tracy Bonham’s lyrics anew thanks to touring singer Adrian Hartley’s ability to straddle exuberance and downright creepiness. “Persona” starts with everyone wearing gas masks, finally removing them only to reveal others beneath; “Shadows, Part 2” shows the protagonist repeatedly devolving into a generic stick figure as she wanders around the city, dwarfed by intimidating skyscrapers. All the while, I’m racking my brain trying to connect the dots and come to some grand conclusion about the message they’re trying to send about emotional isolation and modern technology, but it’s hard to stay reflective when the guys on stage are squirting toothpaste at one another and barfing up marshmallows on some poor girl’s head. More
PopMatters has my review of Kaki King‘s newest album.
In trying so desperately to diversify her artistic portfolio, King may be growing up too quickly, like a pre-teen wearing shorts with “JUICY” printed across the ass. Along the way, she might end up robbing her undiscovered audiences of the chance to watch her evolve—and worse yet, robbing herself of the chance to do it a little more naturally. Every record thus far has contained a handful of songs demonstrating her continued development as a composer, and more often than not, they’re the ones where she just cuts loose like she did five years ago, not those in which she makes a deliberate grab for some contrived new musical hat. More
Binge, part three: apparently disliking Lucinda is a contentious position. PopMatters now says I’m their “resident fan rankler” and even ran a counterpoint essay!
Williams somewhat redeemed herself with “Honeybee”, an unreleased song stuffed with reckless anthropomorphism that puts her quirkiness and general lack of shit-giving on the same level as Pixies frontman Black Francis. In general, though, she spent too much time fighting with her overbearing guitar players, who continued to heap blues runs upon her by the bushel, scaring off what little poignancy hadn’t already departed in a huff. More
PopMatters binge, part two: Tim Reynolds.
You’d think that the opportunity to see a master up close as he works his instrument in the raw would be a transcendental experience. With all due respect to Reynolds’ spacey wobbles and echo-laden swirls, that wasn’t really the case; he seemed to do best when he wasn’t saddled with duties of pulse, rhythm, or harmony. When he put his fingers on autopilot and let them free-associate on the fretboard, it made for a stupefying display, but his talents were ultimately wasted on rhythm guitar.
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PopMatters binge, part one: Bill Callahan.
“Woke on a Whaleheart” was the first record he released under his own name, and, ironically enough, his return with a larger ensemble came only after dropping the band name. The logical inversion, of course, is that it can be a bit harder to see the man beneath the songs at times, but they’re still put to good use—Callahan’s songs are fattened up as much by the violin and bass as by the drum fills and counterpoint. “Cold Blooded Old Times”, in particular, is driven by biting octave dyads on a violin which, given its aggression, might as well be a distorted guitar. Eighth notes aren’t swung, they’re bludgeoned.
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PopMatters seems to think this is a concert review, but I’m not so sure. Judge for yourself.
Syncopated mind games culminated during “#41”, when opener John Mayer turned up for his guest spot with staccato blues-guitar runs that answered each dotted sixteenth note in kind. In what I thought was bound to be the emotional climax of the evening, Mayer closed his solo by echoing the central sax riff, then stepped up to the mic and sang harmonies for each note, eyes wide and head shaking as if to convey his dismay at the circumstances that had brought him there. I was wrong: DMB was about to up the ante.
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PopMatters just posted my review of last month’s Charlottesville performance by the B-52’s.
Their moves were still outlandish: frontman Fred Schneider seems to have decided to split the difference between Screech and Carlton, displaying kinetics that threatened to degenerate at any moment into snorkel dancing or walking like an Egyptian. Schneider has been getting short shrift for decades, and it’s time we finally gave him his due: he is, without a doubt, the whitest rapper ever. A sort of Pat Boone for New Wave, he yaps on about shellfish with the same inept rhyme scheme your eighth-grade science teacher used when he decided that a rap would be a cool way to teach the kids about plate tectonics.
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My review of last month’s Battles show at the Satellite Ballroom has just been published on PopMatters.
At any given moment, the three musicians might be working six instruments—including guitars, keyboards, bass, and electronics. Braxton and Williams are armed with everything from Echoplexes to Moogerfoogers, and Konopfka spends half the show down on his knees twiddling knobs on God knows what else. But at the end of the day, Stanier is the heart, and all the gadgetry is just a Rube Goldberg machine for him to destroy with his drumsticks.
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It’s kind of a long story, but this was originally slated to be a Monkeyclaus article, which means I also got to do a live recording. Unfortunately, the guys later decided they don’t want us to release it. That’s too bad — the show was awesome.
Well, the material in question has been pulled from the DMB web site — probably because The Hook decided to put that little blog news blurb into last week’s print issue.
In what I suppose might be construed as the latest good news in my continued feeble attempts at building a writing career, I’ve been plagiarized by the Dave Matthews Band. It appears that they decided to flesh out their overview of the local music scene using an article I wrote for The Hook way back in 2005.
Since I grew up in Blacksburg, the recent Virginia Tech murders hit close to home, and I wrote the closing essay in the current issue of The Hook. Please take a moment to read it or reflect; either will do.
Monkeyclaus has posted an article I wrote about the recent Antibalas performance at Starr Hill. One unique aspect of this particular writing gig was that it also involved getting a live recording of the show. Be sure to check out the audio, even if it’s just for the first few minutes — the intro riff is fantastic.
I have an article on lossy audio encoding formats in the latest issue of Electronic Musician. How awesome is that image?
I have finally been published by McSweeney’s. Twenty-seven twenty-six more things to do before I die.
(As more are added, you’ll need to scroll farther down to read my submission, or else you can search the page for my name to jump right to it.)
The article about Greg Howard which I wrote for KyndMusic continues to rampage across the internet like a digital Kong: it was their most popular article of 2005.
I missed the boat as far as updating this to include the interview with Chapman Stick player Greg Howard which I wrote for KyndMusic, but an email I just got from Big Boss Man Dave gives me a good reason to revisit it: as it turns out, that was their most popular article of the entire summer! We beat out Bonnaroo, the North Mississippi All-Stars (take that, Red Light!) and Victor Wooten, among others.
The Hook’s annual music issue hits today. Go get it. (Also available in the real world.)
