Onefinemess » TV on the Radio

Album Review: Airborne Toxic Event – All At Once

onefinemess — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 20:00:11 +0000

This was one of two albums that I was actively looking forward to this year – the other being TV on the Radio’s Nine Types of Light which, while good, was not what I was hoping for. So far, I’m finding this album more satisfying (blasphemy, I know). I’m still not sure if it’s as crazy awesome as their first album (which I’d now rank at least a 9), but it is solidly good. Good like “in the running for best album of the year” good.

The opening single, Changing, I love:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=59bLUwYONEI

I really dig the scene & the dancing in the video – the first version I saw of the video was this one, and the whole time I was like “Come on, director, pan back to the dancing dudes!” So, when I found the official one (just now) I was/am/are/will be pleased.

Also, bits of the herky-jerky pace always remind me of Ted Leo’s Bottled in Cork (skip to 1:45ish to start the music)… /tangent …back to ATE. Anyway, one thing that kind of bums me out about the album is that it seems to have more mellow material than the previous, but I’m not sure how valid of a complaint that is when the mellow stuff is solid.

Here’s a track, Half of Something Else, that’s pretty similar in feel to their earlier stuff:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=baUx1yjbGR0

It’s crazy for me to actually be watching videos again. I usually I just hit play and listen to it and tab out and continue working on whatever, but these “bombastic” videos are fucking great. Seriously, search them up on youtube – you can hear the entire album (albeit, not the same versions, but it will give you a good idea how awesome it is) – and watch them all. They are semi-acoustic versions, sometimes with others – like the string quartet above – and they shot one for every song on the album, and included high quality versions with the extended version of the album. So, the sound in these videos is not exactly like the album, it’s a completely different cut. Totally awesome, and a great example of a band going the extra mile.

Check out the singer’s face when he turns to listen to the quartet… I don’t know why he’s smiling, but my guess would be because he realizes how fucking awesome it is to be shooting a video on a carousel with a string quartet.

Here’s the bombastic/acoustic version of one of my favorites, The Graveyard Near the House:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBMnE3sWaFA

Check out the lyrics (googled, seem fairly accurate):

The other day, when we were walking by the graveyard near the house, you asked me if you thought we would ever die. And if life and love both fade so predictably, we’ve made ourselves a kind of predictable life.

And so I pictured us like corpses, lying side by side in pieces, in some dark and lonely blood under a bow. We looked so silly there, all decomposed, half turned to dust, in tattered clothes, but we probably look just as silly now.

Bye bye bye bye, bye bye to all this dogged innocence. I cant pretend that I can tell you what is going to happen next, or how to be. But you have no idea about me, do you?

And it left me to wonder if people will ever know each other by just stumbling around like strangers in the dark. ‘Cause sometimes you seem so strange to me, I must seem strange to you. We’re like two actors playing our parts. Did you memorize your lines? ‘Cause I did. Here’s the part where I get so mad, I tell you I cant forget the past. You get so quiet now, and you seem, somehow, like a lost and lonely child. And you just hope that the moment wont last.

Bye bye bye bye, bye bye all the dogged innocence. I cant pretend that I can tell you what is going to happen next, or how to be. But you have no idea about me. You have no idea about me, do you?

So there’s always a way around. There’s something tying our feet to the ground. A moment passed, we hate how it sounds.

And it seems a little less profound. Like we’re all going the same way down. Yeah we’re all going the same way down. I’m just trying to write it all down.

‘Cause I write songs, and you write letters. We are tied like two, in tethers. And we talk and read, and laugh and sleep, at night in bed, together. And you wake in tears sometimes, I can see the thoughts flash across your eyes. They say “Darling, will you be kind? Will you be a good man, and stay behind if I get old?”

And then the letters all pass through my head, with the words that I was told. About the fading flesh of life and love, the failures of the bold. I can list each crippling fear like I’m reading from a will.

And I’ll defy everyone and love you still. I will carry you with me up every hill. If you die before I die, I’ll carve your name out of the sky. I’ll fall asleep with your memory and dream of where you lie.

It maybe better to move on, and to let life just carry on. And I may be wrong.

But still, I’ll try.

‘Cause it’s better to love whether you win or lose or die. Yeah, It’s better to love whether you win or lose or die. It’s better to love, and I will love you ’til I die.

Shivers.

The album plays like a really smart mix tape; styles vary between tracks, and it’s nowhere near as stylistically consistent as the previous one – but that obviously wasn’t their intent. There are faint echoes of Nebraska and Joshua Tree and maybe bits of Pulp and some other stuff I haven’t quite put my fat fingers on yet stacked on top of the “modern/indie rock” vibe that just is.

The album as a whole, I’ll give at least an

8.8+

I want to give it much higher, but there is one track that has a chorus I’m not particularly fond of (yet? – but I like it better in the acoustic version), but I don’t want to taint your opinion so I won’t say which. Plus, I’ve only had it for a week, we’ll so how it ages. After a couple years, if I still love an album, the numbers goes up…. and up :).

If this sounds like your thing… pick up the album. These guys work for the money they are asking you to shell out for their sounds. Yes, I linked to the special version (the one I grabbed), because it comes with a bonus track and all the bombastic videos… which you can then rip the audio out of for a second, acoustic-ish version of the album.

[update: It looks like you can stream the entire album from their site here.]

evangelism, turning on, and compression

onefinemess — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 16:49:10 +0000

Go go oxford comma!

Ahem. Anyway. So! I’ve always been somewhat of an evangelist – but not in the religious sense (although I did go through a phase that could be said to approximate that O.o). I’ve always been maybe a little too motivated (at least internally) about sharing the music & books that I enjoy with others. Not so much TV & movies – I just don’t care enough. But music and books… those are two things I’m way into.

I’m sure some of it is born of the standard loner desire to have others to actually enjoy your interests with – people you can shoot the shit with about your favorite bands or books and know they won’t be out in the cold. But, there’s at least a touch of genuine altruism in there. If I really enjoy something, I want to share that in the hopes that it will make someone’s day the way it made mine.

NOW. I couldn’t tell you what the exact breakdown is between the two, but I’d wager it’s pretty close to 50/50. If you’ve known me long I’ve probably tried to turn you on to some band or another, or maybe even a book. The funny thing is, for all the time invested, I don’t think I’ve succeeded much. I’ve had the most headway with music I guess, but I can only think of one or two instances where someone has read a book on my recommendation. I’m not sure that says anything about me so much as I tend to hang out with people with very different reading tastes than myself. Which does get lonely I admit, moreso than differing tastes in music.

So maybe that’s why I still blog about books and music (and anything I can’t find someone to yak about with really)? Talking to the air beats talking to nothing, or so I’ve heard.

In light of all this, I decided to make a nice, compressed list of things that I enjoy recommending to folks, just in case anyone ever happens to be open to that kind of thing. Not complete of course, but a nice cross-section.

Some of these are my “favorite” things to one degree or another, others are just things that I enjoy talking about, or think deserve more exposure.

Books:

The Illuminatus Trilogy – The only book(s) I still re-read every 18 months or so. Probably too weird for most people. If you like weirdness, drugs, sex and a little violence and more weirdness…

The Dune series, particularly if you can make it through to my favorites – books 4-6: God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune, and Chapterhouse Dune. Most sci-fi fans read Dune, but for some reason they stop there. This baffles me as Dune, really, is not even the strongest book of the series (for me). It’s the most simple, direct and “sci-fi-ish” though, so maybe that’s what does it. After that, shit just goes off the rails in a way that a lot of casual sci-fi fans might miss, or be pushed back by.

Atlas Shrugged & The Fountainhead – The closest thing to classics I will touch. No, I don’t agree completely with Rand’s Objectivism, but I still find the books enjoyable reading and great conversational fodder (when I’ve recently read them, I forget things FAST).

Night’s Dawn trilogy – Absolutely brilliant “hard” sci-fi. The best written in the last 20 years (ie about the bounds of my sci-fi reading lifetime) IMHO. Just, just brilliant really. Lot’s of pages, lots of text, so you’ve got to have a love of the long works to enjoy this but man is it worth it. I’ve re-read these a few times as well. I’ve bought the entire series maybe 3 times as I’ve moved and lost (then re-found) older copies and even given the entire series to a friend once. He has not yet read it. Some “science” hero he is ;p.

Mistborn trilogy – One of the best new fantasy series that I’ve had the pleasure of stumbling across. A far cry from the simplistic lands of Tolkien this series asks a couple of interesting questions: What if the bad guy (Sauron analogue) won? What if the bad guy winning wasn’t the worst that could have happened?

Serious fantasy fans already have their minds made up about the Wheel of Time series and the Song of Fire and Ice. I say both are must reads, but the latter may appeal more to non fantasy fans.

Bands:

Starflyer 59 – The old stuff at least, I can’t really get behind the last 3 or 4 albums. If you’re reading this post you probably know me (?sadly? in 6 years of blogging I haven’t picked up any non friend/family readers), so you’ve probably heard of and heard these guys. I’m just putting them here (and at the top) for the sake of completion and history – them being the first band that made me want to share music with others and all.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=csPEitRRfuM

Gaslight Anthem – Awesome (but with room to grow) modern rock and roll. I’ve extolled their virtues on a number of blog posts, so if you haven’t checked them out by now (at least to decide that you don’t like them), you probably don’t think very highly of my opinion, at minimum.

Airborne Toxic Event - Another band I’ve pushed a bit on this blog. A little like the National in genre/sound, but a bit more energetic.

The Crush & Death on Wednesday – two long defunct bands, both of which I really loved and tried to share with others. The Crush is alt/punk/rock in the grand Twin Cities tradition and DoW is rockabilly/rock/punk a la nothing quite like it at the time. Both bands that I think had enough commercial appeal to blow up (but never did), and enough chops and genuine flavor to appeal to the rest.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzZwHbxWV28

Elvis Costello – the early stuff mostly. Hard to try and describe a guy who’s worn so damn many shirts. His first 4 albums are where most of it is at, although there are many, many later tracks that I love as well – I just don’t find the complete albums as enjoyable to listen to. Here’s a video of one of my favorite EC classics. The video is from the year I was born…. which is crazy.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j7JFP6ZOCI

Joe Christmas – another favorite dead band of mine that never really got any kind of recognition. Sadly, the singer’s later bands well, sucked.

Hum – Yep, another dead band. Post shoegazer droney wall of distortiony awesomesauce. Albums 3 & 4 should be on any alt music aficionado’s shelf (or iPod) IMHO.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTl8HcvYRqg

Morphine – What is it with dead bands? Well, not many had a dude playing 2 saxs at once and another on two string slide bass. Don’t let that scare you off though :). The saxophonist (?) is only playing one in the vid below, sorry. Ahh, found one, second vid has the double sax action.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=985JGeGq_tc

www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6naQ195c_k

The National – NOT a dead band! A band a certain Science Hero turned me on to that is chock full of awesome nuggets. Not even sure what to call the sound other than some flavor of indie.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhA9ARZ6pjk

Tiger Army – Pyschobilly! Like, faster rockabilly basically. Except they’ve got a groovy little goth theme going on with songs about beautiful death and violence and the like. Here’s one of their mellower songs:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=–NyHw8rQ3I

TV on the Radio – Another not dead band. One of the pinnacles of alt/indie “rock” at the moment I think, quality and creativeness wise. Past Arcade Fire imho, by quite a bit. Not that there’s any reason to compare the two BUT I keep hearing references (still) to AF as “it”. TVotR is also “it”. QUITE.

Here’s an older one of theirs:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHrTOQ18yzU

Let’s call that enough for this post. Hopefully this was interesting to someone. If you’ve got the time, and you haven’t already formed an opinion about a given band, at least check out the various song videos. Good for background noise if nothing else.

songs that “mean something” to me, part 2

onefinemess — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 20:10:19 +0000

Part 2:

I Can’t Be With You - Cranberries – This one should be in the last list, as it reminds me of my whole Cuesta period, what I can remember of it anyway. I was still struggling, trying to stick with the religion thing, I was depressed because I had put off “real” college to stay back with my friends (stupidly), then many of them left, or changed, or whatever. Another in the long line of idiotic decisions I’ve made regarding my education for completely the wrong reasons… I had several opportunities to make new friends, and I pursued a few of them, but not enough. I also passed up some good chances to reconnect with old friends too. I spent most of this time being dumb.
Sidekick – Rancid – This one reminds me of living out on …shit, whatever street I lived on with Kailen, Devo & the rest. Tim & I used to play together, and I *think* this was one of the songs we jammed on. Plus, it says “Tim” in the lyrics, so it always reminds me of him.
Heartspark Dollarsign – Everclear -Ahh, Everclear. Man do you suck ass now. But back in the day they put out two solid rock albums. And this little gem was on one of them. This, I think, was one of the first songs Jen & I bonded on. If we ever had “a song”, this would probably be it. Some of the reasons should be obvious. O.O
I Drive a lot – Starflyer 59 – The listlessness of post-college graduation, trying (and failing) to find a job in Santa Barbara. This came out a few years before this period, but this is where the memory deposits me when this song kicks in.
Anodyne – Uncle Tupelo -This one reminds me of working at Borders in Santa Barbara. I met some good people there, two of which I’m still in contact with from time to time. Thanks to one of them (Wayne), I found out about all kinds of new music. I’m not sure if Uncle Tupelo came out of that, or just from me finally backtracking from Wilco, but I know I bought the CD there with my employee discount :).
Baby, I Know what you’re thinking – The Mendoza Line – Another song Jen & I bonded on together. No idea where we heard this – I think it was ..shit I really have no idea. But we heard it, then tracked down the band, and consumed. It reminds me of our first place in LA – pretty sure we were in the living room when we heard it. So – the radio maybe? NPR?
Underneath - Starflyer 59 – Driving on the empty streets of Phoenix on a warm night. Jen and I drove out there from LA once…and at night we just drove forever, probably in circles, on these wide open empty streets. They were laid out in such a nice grid it was nigh impossible to get lost. The air was wonderful.
Staring at the Sun – TV on the Radio – Our second place in LA, the one in Hollywoodish. I think I heard about them on NPR or something, then a Rolling Stone comment reminded me, so I walked up to Amoeba and picked up the album. Hearing it reminds me of listening to the album in that tiny little place, and of some of the better times we had in LA in general.
Mission Viejo – The Crush – In trying to find something that has hit me since Portland…this is what I get, and I’m not even sure why. It just reminds me of life here. I heard this, a cover of a Lifter Puller song that I still don’t think I’ve found the original version of, while trying to hear Lifter Puller after discovering The Hold Steady. I thought this cover was sick, and indeed it is, and grabbed the entire album, which is also awesome.

Edit, forgot to link to the first part. HERE.

music lately, mine – and you?

onefinemess — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 06:30:47 +0000

The new TV on the Radio is good. Different. I like it. Suggest you check it out. Worth buying.
Bah, I didn’t know there was a deluxe version with bonus tracks! I hate that bullshit. GRRrr.

New Bloc Party…not so much. Glad I checked it out before buying it. One song I hate, a few are decent, and the rest just run together.

new Gaslight Anthem is interesting, considering buying. It really does sound like Bouncing [Souls +] Springsteen.

Rise Against sounds like this Christian band whose name I’ve forgotten. I was thinking of a different band (Against Me maybe?) when I checked them out, not what I was expecting.

The new Raphael Saadiq is fun and entertaining in that current retro-motown (??) way. What is this genre called anyway? Neo-town? For the most part I dig it (Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings being another great group in this genre).

Did I already mention that the new Hold Steady is awesome? If so, I say it again. Stay Positive.

What else have I been listening to lately…Sugar – a now defunct, previous project of Bob Mould, of Husker Du fame – you can find some tracks at a myspace fan page here. A bit of the Dismemberment Plan (Emergency & I & Change are great!)

I was listening to Rilo Kiley today on the bus. For being the project of an ex-child star, they have some great songs.

The Raveonettes showed SO SO much potential, then very rarely ever hit that plateau. I think they could be a band I really dig, but the albums fall pretty flat IMHO. The sound though…the sound has serious potential and a couple of gems shine through.

I’ve had a weird craving for some strange chunk of country music from my childhood that I can’t place a firm grip on lately. I went through Garth Brooks’ No Fences the other night…and that wasn’t quite it…still looking. I know what’s wrong with me rigHT?? Nostalgia or something I think ;).

Anyway…looks like myspace is the new easy link of choice for music. That amuses and saddens me. I’d link to their main pages, but for the most part it takes too many clicks to get to the sample music (if any exists).

So, that’s me – what is everyone else listening to lately?

Two Songs for the Day

onefinemess — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 23:20:21 +0000

from my Vox blog, click on the images to be taken to the play:

Today brings you two songs (via me), separated by 27 years and without much in common.
The first:

The Blasters – So Long Baby Goodbye

It’s just an all around fun song. Great to sing along to, “blast” in the car, etc. It also turns up at odd moments in modern media (I believe it drifted through a funeral scene in 6 ft. Under at some point, and I hear it every so often in random movies & TV).

I can’t remember where I heard this the first time…it’s one of those songs that just gets buried in your/my subconscious and always feels familiar.

And the second, much more current and fairly different sounding track:

TV On The Radio – Family Tree

It’s one of my favorite songs off the new TVoTR album…which you should definitely consider picking up if you’re into whatever classification they fall under (indie of some sort I suppose). It’s not as aggressive sounding as previous album, and more sonically varied I think.

It sounds intensely personal, and I wonder if it was specifically about the writer’s experiences, or if it’s just a standard songwriter’s “putting themselves in position X” type of thing.

It took a few plays to grow on me, then I played it basically nonstop for a few days & now I’m taking a break.

Good stuff.