Miss Piggy Lunchbox

I went with this meme just a few posts ago, but what the hell, if it works I’m going to use it. The last time I reviewed something by Norwegian electronic- and film-composer Kaada, it was his collaboration with Mike Patton. Therein, I said:

[T]his CD holds its own for what it is. This is great early morning listening, particularly a lazy Sunday morning when memories of your prior night are still coming back to you in waves. It goes down easy and yet has a lot of nuance to delve into when you want to forget….

The same goes here, with this slow, dreamy set of “film music” that wasn’t composed for any film in particular. You won’t find any catchy tunes per se, but you will be willfully hypnotized by the rich-but-not-dense layers of artfully arranged and composed pieces. There isn’t a lot that will fit on a mix, but it’s perfectly self-contained. Its low points (the lowest of which is “Birds Of Prey”) aren’t as low as those of his debut Thank You For Giving Me Your Valuable Time or Romances, but there’s also nothing as good as Romances’ “Seule” or even the best moments of Thank You. In the end, none of that matters because this album absolutely nails what it intends to do.

And that is actually kind of special, because Kaada’s gone out and formalized the genrefication on a non-genre that had been genrefied. I mean, on the surface, “film music” is music used in a film. And a healthy percentage of film composers will still insist that’s what it is. And they have a point…film composers shouldn’t feel constrained to write in a certain style that is a style of film…they should write what fits the film. (This ignores the gesamtkunstwerk ideal that the relationship be more symbiotic, but whatever.)

But honestly, when I say “film music,” you get an idea of what that sounds like. So despite some composers’ most strident theoretical insistence, film music has become a genre. And what Kaada’s done here is gone and thrown away any presumption that it’s not a genre, accepted the most obvious sonic parameters given the non-genre’s history, and turned it into a film-less, enjoyable listening experience.

As such, this album represents evolution. Evolution from the first generation of film composers in the “golden age” of film who were the pioneers, through the second generation of film composers, like John Williams, who defined it and made themselves stars of film in their own right while struggling to define it by not defining it, and onto the third generation, of which Kaada, born in 1975, is directly a part. This kind of evolution can only happen generationally, when what previous generations created is accepted as a given, only then can it be redefined.

Or something like that. Just be glad this review didn’t take the “what’s a ‘moviebiker’?” angle.

Rating:

Mixers: “Mainstreaming”
Keepers: “Smiger,” “Julia Pastrana,” “No Man’s Land,” “Daily Living,” “The Small Stuff,” “Celibate,” “Retirement Community”
Filed Between: Thank You For Giving Me Your Valuable Time and Kaada/Patton (Romances)

MPL: Hey, KEN

KEN: Hey

MPL: So what gives? A while ago you take some time off completely to concentrate on your studies…that was explained…but after you came back there were hardly any album reviews…and suddenly the album reviews are flowing out of you again. Why is that?

KEN: I stopped watching baseball.

MPL: What?

KEN: I came back to writing this blog during baseball season. Having baseball on while I work doesn’t leave much time for listening to new music. Now that I’m not watching baseball I have more time to listen to music.

MPL: So you just stopped watching baseball recently?

KEN: Yep.

MPL: Why?

KEN: I don’t know. I just wanted not to watch it.

MPL: Are you going to start watching it again?

KEN: I don’t know.

MPL: …

KEN: I don’t know. The fact that the Twins are underperforming their talent level had something to do with it. Other factors were missing music; the Seattle Mariners’ announcers are the second-worst team in the game (Chicago White Sox), making every game seem like drudgery; a general long-term lessening of interest in sports as I age; a feeling that baseball was a to-do and not a relaxing way to pass time; a long-term desire to push aside things in my life that I don’t see as core to who I want to be, like video games and baseball, and to increase the amount of time I spend on things like my studies, my work, music, playing piano, and family and friends, all things I’ve neglected in the past because advertising has made me feel like I can’t possibly miss the next baseball or video game…just realizing that that’s a fake community foisted on me at the expense of a real community. And finally, a general trying to make space in my life…

MPL: Make space for what?

KEN: Life, I guess

MPL: You’re making space in your life for life?

KEN: Yeah, living…you know.

MPL: Okay, well, the album reviews that came out earlier in the summer were pretty bad, but you seem to be getting your stride back. Why is that?

KEN: I stopped watching baseball and stopped cluttering my life so much. See above.

MPL: Interesting. How is the not watching baseball going for you?

KEN: So far, so good.

MPL: Miss it?

KEN: A little.

MPL: Is this a permanent thing?

KEN: I don’t know. I mean, I’m sure I’ll watch baseball again. It’s not like I’m punishing myself or anything. I just took it off my to-do list.  In fact, just last night I saw that the Mariners were tied in the bottom of the ninth, so I turned that on and loved Ichiro’s game-winning hit.  And I’m still following the construction of the Twins’ ballpark and checking scores from time-to-time.

MPL: But do you think at some point you’ll come back to full-scale baseball intake again?

KEN: I don’t know. I guess I’d put the chances at 50/50. The odds of me watching the playoffs sit at about 99/1.

MPL: Many of your friends and acquaintances only know how to talk to you about baseball. Are you worried about losing them as friends?

KEN: A little, but I hope they can take the opportunity to learn something else about me. Maybe we could talk about music, go to a concert together, make mix CDs for each other, or just sit around and make music the event together. I always wanted to start a listening club, like a book club, only we’d pick a CD or make a mix CD for each other and get together, listen, and talk about what we liked and didn’t like.

MPL: That sounds awesome!

KEN: Yeah.

MPL: You should do it.

KEN: I don’t know. It sounds kind of lame to bring up.

MPL: I’d do it.

KEN: You would.

MPL: So fess up, you just chose this format for this post because it’s super easy to write about a big change in your life, without having to come up with a lot of prose, an intro, a middle, etc., right?

KEN: Hey, whatever works.

MPL: Right? Anyway, thanks for this exclusive interview.

KEN: You’re welcome, but it really wasn’t that exclusive. If anybody else wants to interview me I’d probably grant it.

R.E.M. released Monster in 1994 and my one-liner about the band for several years that followed was something like, “What I wanna know about R.E.M. is…when did they hold the meeting where they decided to suck?” I’d never really followed R.E.M. that closely, but I respected their early work, loved the singles off of Automatic For The People, and hated the singles off of Monster (with the exception of “What’s The Frequency, Kenneth?”). Therefore, I thought this line summed up what was seemingly an intentional plunge off a cliff for such a successful band.

It turns out, there was such a meeting. According to Wikipedia, it was…

Early in 1993, the members of R.E.M. convened a four-day meeting in Acapulco, Mexico, to devise a plan for the next two years. The group settled on a plan for 1994 through the end of 1996, which included recording a new album and touring behind it. Drummer Bill Berry was particularly eager to tour (which the band had not done since 1989), and was insistent that the album “rock”.

Apparently Berry was misunderstood and everybody else in the band heard “suck.”

Actually, if I may, I have to say that given a more considered listen, these 12 tracks don’t all suck, and some of them are quite good. And the album does “rock” in the sense that most of the songs are upbeat rockers with distorted guitar (though they tend to have a same-key, same-tempo problem). Of course, the biggest violator of this trend is “Strange Currencies,” which I still can’t differentiate from Automatic’s “Everybody Hurts” until it gets to the chorus, and only then if I’m paying attention to the lyrics.

The band seems to have enabled the rocking by discovering the wonders of a delay pedal. It’s used heavily on “Crush With Eyeliner,” “Bang And Blame,” “I Took Your Name,” and “You,” and by allowing the repeat delay to re-strike each chord several times, they’re able to pick up the pace of their songs without actually having to move their hands any faster. Except for the drummer, of course, who, as mentioned above, was dead set on this “rocking” thing.

Even though I may have been too hard attaching the “suck” tag to this album, there is plenty of mediocrity (and some suck, too) to go around. The most obvious suck symptom is they do that thing that huge bands past their prime do, where they stop writing great songs but instead focus exclusively on their sound fidelity and timbres, because they can pay for that kind of work, then go and talk to the press about how it’s an “intentional stylistic shift,” how it’s “their favorite album of theirs,” and how now they’re really doing the kinds of things they want to do, when it really amounts to putting lipstick on a pig. “I Took Your Name,” an otherwise mediocre song, is a good example of this, where cool sounding bells enter from crisply-defined space around your speakers mid-song.

But I love “Let Me In” and “What’s The Frequency, Kenneth?” and the first five tracks can be listened to straight through without a single bad thought about the band or album entering your head. After the first track (“Frequency”), you might not notice that anything’s playing if you’re not paying attention, but at least you won’t be annoyed. And even if my assessment back in the day was too harsh, I can’t even tell you how excited I am to have got the meeting part right.

Rating:

Mixers: none “Let Me In”
Non-keepers: “Crush With Eyliner,” “King Of Comedy,” “I Took Your Name,” “You”
Filed Between: Automatic For The People and Radiohead (Pablo Honey)

Do you remember that 1993 Johnny Depp movie Benny & Joon? (By the way, pack it up imdb, you’ve been completely surpassed by Wikipedia.) I was spending the summer in Norway when it came out there. That’s when I saw it, and when we were looking through the paper for movies to see, my friend listed it off, pronouncing it “Benny og Yoon,” because that’s how it would be pronounced in Norwegian. I still find that amusing and actually think of the movie by that title and not by the Anglicized pronunciation.

Anyway, that movie had the 500 miles song (“I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)”) from this album on its soundtrack, which explains why I can distinctly remember hearing this song on the radio and wondering what the hell “haver” meant in 1993 despite this album coming out in 1988.

So it seems American radio was a bit late to the party (and this would have fit in great in 1988 alongside UB40’s cover of “Red Red Wine”), and it also seems we left early. I thought The Proclaimers were one-hit wonders, but Wikipedia has them, despite an extended break that saw only one album released between 1988 and 2001, releasing a total of seven albums, with the eighth due in the U.S. next month. I don’t know if any of those other albums are any good, but I’ll put the MPL seal of approval on this one.

The lyrics of these Scottish twins cut a broad swath, ranging from protest of English rule of Scotland (“Cap In Hand’) to a hangover-protest song (“It’s Saturday Night”). Musically their working range is a bit more concentrated. Everything is firmly planted in an American roots tradition with conventional song structures, pentatonic scales, and a palpable backbeat. They even cover Steve Earle’s “My Old Friend The Blues” as they take turns between upbeat and slow.

In a bit of a surprise, “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” checks in as only the second best song on the album. The honor of number one goes to “Then I Met You,” which is damn near the Best Song Ever, and was somehow, criminally, not released as one of the three singles this disc produced. It begins with an anthemic, arena-worthy guitar ring that heads into a jangly, hi-hat- and tambourine-backed ass-mover. By the time the second guitar comes in with its persistent, muted, syncopated sixteenth-notes you’ve already been convinced that you yourself waweres the world’s biggest loser until you met the angel you’re currently with. And when the song climaxes and the guitar solo hits, oxygen just tastes better as you can’t stop thanking the spirits for this gift of life. A couple more of these treasures and this would have easily been a four-lunchbox CD.

Rating:

Mixers: “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles),” “Then I Met You”
Non-keepers: “My Old Friend The Blues,” “Come On Nature,” “What Do You Do”
Filed Between: Prince (Musicology) and Prokofiev (Alexander Nevsky/Scythian Suite)

I’ve written about Andsnes, a Norwegian himself, playing Grieg’s pieces before. I didn’t remember being as disappointed by that CD as I was until I re-read the review just now. It’s hard for me to believe I ever wrote anything so detailed, but here’s the essence of where that disc failed me:

…the lack of sonic brilliance is a bit of a let down. Andsnes’ liberties with the tempo are not ones I would take, but I can live with those. I’m more disappointed by the heaviness of his left-hand….

If I had read that review before adding what is probably Grieg’s most popular piece to my collection, I may not have bought this performance of Andsnes’. In this case, at least, it’s good I didn’t get reference value out of this blog, because I find none of those problems on this excellent album.

From where I sit, Andsnes’ performance is flawless. The flashy, brilliant first movement is dynamic enough to potentially earn a spot on a classical mix CD. Led by Mariss Jansons conducting the Berlin Philharmonic, the second movement is so lush I can feel it. It’s synaesthesia, as I can hear colors I’ve never seen nor heard before and the cadences melt deliciously in my ears. The second is the most challenging of the three movements in this concerto, which is one of the most accessible pieces in all of classical music, but it is oh so rewarding to just a fair amount of attention. If you’ve got six minutes to give, you could do a lot worse than devoting them to this movement.

I’m less thrilled with the Schumann concerto that follows (as an aside, both composers only wrote one piano concerto and they were both in A minor…they’re presented here in reverse chronological order as Grieg was inspired by Schumann’s), but not through any fault of the personnel. The liner notes contrast the two by describing them as a young man’s exuberant piece (Grieg’s) and a more mature man’s at-times schizophrenic piece (Schumann’s). I can’t disagree: there’s more emotional and compositional complexity in Schumann’s concerto, but I still prefer Grieg’s. It’s fantastic, though, and it gets better as it goes, and by the time I hit the third movement bumping this up to 4.5 lunchboxes is an easy decision.

Rating:

Mixers: Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A Minor, Movements 1 and 2
Keepers: everything else
Filed Between Grieg (Lyric Pieces) and Gruntruck (Inside Yours)

After a test drive of a Corolla and a Prius, which costs about $8k more than a Corolla.

Me: So what’s the financing again on a Prius?
Sales guy: Pfft. If you’re all about the financing, then you want a Corolla [at 0.0% APR]. But come on…what car did you like best? It’s too much money to settle for your second choice.
My Baby: We would like a new salesperson, please.

Your right to own a fighting breed ends where my balls begin.

The Presidents Of The United States Of America (The Presidents) were always the Seattle band that wasn’t. Breaking through with this album’s “Lump” a few years after the whole Seattle thing broke and faded, bearing a gruesome name, and reeking of novelty, even their drop-tuning didn’t endear them to me. I never listened that closely, but based on radio play of “Lump” and “Peaches,” I knew they weren’t for me, even though those songs had some appeal beneath the silliness.

Of course, the band was always self-aware about their limitations, primary among them their complete lack of virtuosity. Theirs is a sloppy aesthetic, and they approach it in the right way, with loads of kitsch. Nowhere, though, did they display more self-awareness than in “We Are Not Going To Make It,” which only seems half-sarcastic:

We’re not gonna make it/
‘Cause there’s a million better bands/
With a million better songs/
Drummers who can drum/
And singers who can sing

Somewhat ironically, that’s one of their best songs. Maybe that’s part of the sarcasm.

It turns out they’re better than I thought. I used to hate “Peaches,” but if you can get past the inanity of the opening section (“I’m moving to the country, gonna eat a lot of peaches” [x4]), it’s actually a pretty rockin’ song. And when I saw this description of the video on Wikipedia, I knew I had to see it.

During the song’s instrumental break, the band is attacked by a group of ninjas attempting to capture them, who they fight for the remainder of the video and eventually defeat.

And that’s about how it plays out:

The presidents of the united states of america – peaches

It’s a long way from “better than I thought” to “good,” however, and spending a few days with “Peaches,” “Feather Pluckn,” and “Body” going through my head was not a pleasant experience. Despite finding a few tracks here I want to listen to again, and a few others that don’t drive me crazy with either extreme annoyance or extreme boredom, this isn’t a CD I’m going to be reaching for very often.

Rating:

Mixers: “Kick Out The Jams”
Keepers: “Lump,” “Peaches,” “We Are Not Going To Make It,” “Candy,” “Naked And Famous”
Filed Between: Poster Children (Tool Of The Man) and Elvis Presley (30 #1 Hits)

I can’t think of this album without thinking of my 1995 girlfriend, to whom I gave this as a birthday gift if not on the day she broke up with me then like the day before. Not that I can blame her…looking back at the 20-year-old me, it’s amazing I even got laid. Still, the album comes with a lot of unhappy associations.

And this is just a stubby, informal review anyway, since I’ve only got the first of the two discs.

It’s pretty good, though. One of the biggest problems with Phish, in my opinion, is that there compositional style grates and stays in a rut too long, particularly in the sterile studio environment. It’s more fun live, though, with that extra energy, and the grooves are more on the hypnotic side, as opposed to the boring side.

Non-keepers: “Stash,” “Montana”
Keepers: everything else
Filed Between: Phish’s Hoist and Billy Breathes

When your “band’s” polished releases are just you and a guitar, it’s not very far from that to demo, and so Iron And Wine fans won’t be disappointed by this two-disc set of demos, rarities, and b-sides. You can definitely tell these are not finished, A-cut products (there’s a barely-audible buzz on most of disc one), but that degradation in sound quality isn’t going to do much more than keep these tracks off of a mix of radio-ready tracks.

In fact, in many cases, the rawness works for Iron And Wine’s only member, Sam Beam. The naked, exposed quality serves to make his gorgeous melodies and the vivid-but-dreamlike quality of his lyrics all the more potent. And on another level, the fact that his demos are of a quality this high says a lot about the talent flowing out of this guy. It’s like he has good-song-diarrhea, like he can’t even hold in the rich, catchy tunes.

The good songs are worthy of 4.5 lunchboxes, and there’s only one clunker in the mix (a cover of Sterolab’s “Peng! 33”). However, there are a few too many places, especially near the end of disc two, where he seems to get stuck in a merely mildly interesting groove and rides it out too long. That’s to be expected in a collection of this type, though, and I’ll generously chalk those up to something like “insight into the creative process.” Really, even with the non-keepers, this a sweet, emotional listen from start to finish.

Rating:

Mixers: “Morning,” “Waitin’ For A Superman,” “Such Great Heights,” “Communion Cups & Someone’s Coat,” “Belated Promise Ring,” “God Made The Automobile”
Non-keepers: “Peng! 33,” “Friends They Are Jewels,” “Hickory,” “Sinning Hands,” “No Moon,” “Carried Home”
Filed Between: Iron And Wine’s The Shepherd’s Dog and Iron Maiden (Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son)