so after writing my review, i've been listening to this mike doughty album nonstop. and i really, really like it for what it is. i think it just wasn't what i wanted it to be. but of course mike doughty, and the rest of the world for that matter, aren't beholden to what i want. except these helpless bagels i'm about to eat.
bwa. ha. ha.
ha.
Mar 15, 2008
random music thought
i would love for mason jennings to cover journey's "separate ways" on the electric guitar he plays on the "use your van" DVD. but absolutely ONLY if chris morrissey could somehow play the synthesizers, or better yet the keytar. and when mason played the solo he would point the guitar at the crowd like he does when he plays "godless" and pretends it's a machine gun.
awesome.
awesome.
Mar 13, 2008
REVIEW - mike doughty, "golden delicious"
so i didn't even know this album was coming out until a few weeks ago. i used to be an avid reader of mike doughty's blog, but i'd slacked off in the last few months. imagine my surprise to find out that there was a whole new album in the post-recording process. being the huge soul coughing fan and slightly-less-huge-but-not-much-less-huge fan of doughty's other work that i am, i snatched up a copy immediately, though i was a little leery of the fact that "27 jennifers", the album's lead single, was being released for essentially the third time on this disc and that the critics generally weren't too keen on the whole 38 minute-long affair.
i have to say, with no small measure of regret, that i agree with most of the criticism. one of the best things about doughty's music, for me, is his lyricism. he writes like a poet (which he is), and the way he twines those words into the flow of his music is what makes his songs so interesting/entertaining/emotional/etc. that excellent lyricism is present on this album, though in shorter supply that in previous releases. i also like the extensive use of scat throughout the album; a lot of people seem to be knocking this (on "i just want the girl..." in particular), but i think it's cool. i think it fits, usually, with the type of music he writes.
what really gets me (or doesn't, i guess, would be more correct) on this album is the lack of intensity. the lyrics are there, the interesting song structures are there, there's even a song that could be a PG-rated soul coughing b-side ("more bacon than the pan can handle"). but it's all delivered (or produced, or both, i'm not sure) in a way that almost forces you to not care.
take, for example, the first track, "fort hood". you pop the CD in (in my case, i'm old school like that) and instantly mike's singing and doing his thing. this was jarring to me. i was waiting for at least a few bars of guitar chords before everything started. but no. instead, the song immediately jumps out of the starting gate. there's no ambiance, no lead-in. it felt really "top 40 radio" to me. the song itself - about fort hood, the military base which has lost the most personnel in the iraq war - is a good-bordering-on-great song. i've heard in-studio versions of this song done solo acoustic on the radio, and i like it. not love it, but like it. on the album it just sounds like pop. mike's singing about complacency complacently. it's frustrating. he's singing about how the soldiers should be at home enjoying their lives instead of dying in a pointless war, but it sounds like the whole thing is being baked in the easy-bake oven of music and that mike is reading off of a cue card. i wonder if the suddenness with which the album was made had something to do with this. i don't know.
the second track is neat. that's pretty much how i feel about it. it's a good song, it's catchy, it's interesting. it's like a piece of candy. you eat it - yum - and then you move on to something else. "27 jennifers" is good if you haven't heard it before; if you have, nothing's been done to it this time around that's going to rock your world.
honestly, the first five songs were songs that were either outright bland to me, or decent but that gave me the impression that they could have been better "if only" this or that. of course, that might just be my expectations getting in the way.
the rest of the album is better. "i wrote a song about your car" is another neat song. it's about liking a girl and stuff, but you get the impression that it's more about the fact that the song is supposedly about a car but actually isn't, and that's a gimmick worth exploring for the next four minutes of your life. everything else on the album is good, serviceable "small rock" with doughty's special lyrical touch. if you liked "haughty melodic" - and i loved it - you'll love this stuff.
i can't figure out what it is about the majority of this album that's throwing me. it almost seems like doughty was looking back at "haughty" and thinking "well, i did all those songs and 75 percent of it was good, but 25 percent of it could have been left unsaid", but then he turned around and took that 25 percent and accidentally built this album around it. i want to like these songs, but i don't like waiting 28 minutes for a 38 minute record to hit its groove. it seems like this album moved away even further from doughty's "skittish" and "rockity roll" sound and more into adult alt-rock territory. the thing about writing poems and then surrounding them with (mostly) cookie-cutter music is that, well, i'd honestly rather have just been sold the lyrics as poems and read them out of a book and said "sweet!"
i like soul coughing. a lot. i like mike doughty. a lot. i'm glad the guy isn't shooting up drugs anymore. this is a trend with a lot of the musicians i really value lately: doughty, tweedy, adams...sobriety is awesome. there is a contingent of music fans, though, who think that drug culture and rock and roll culture are inextricably intertwined: you can't make good rock without good drugs. i don't think this is true. living on the edge of personal destruction might let you make good music, but there are healthier ways to come up with good song ideas. just look at "easy tiger" or "sky blue sky".
my point is, i guess, that i miss the intensity of the songs from soul coughing records, or even from "skittish", or "rockity roll". or even a few bits and pieces of "haughty melodic", and i don't want this attitude to be misconstrued as "mike should be a crack head and make death metal music". he seems to have nearly completed the transition to radio-friendly folk-pop, and that seems to be working for him. he seems happy about it, according to his blog, and that's excellent. but i just find it a bit boring, and it's a little frustrating to get occasional glimpses now of a sound that was once shockingly unique.
mike doughty's "nectarine (part one)" from "golden delicious"
i have to say, with no small measure of regret, that i agree with most of the criticism. one of the best things about doughty's music, for me, is his lyricism. he writes like a poet (which he is), and the way he twines those words into the flow of his music is what makes his songs so interesting/entertaining/emotional/etc. that excellent lyricism is present on this album, though in shorter supply that in previous releases. i also like the extensive use of scat throughout the album; a lot of people seem to be knocking this (on "i just want the girl..." in particular), but i think it's cool. i think it fits, usually, with the type of music he writes.
what really gets me (or doesn't, i guess, would be more correct) on this album is the lack of intensity. the lyrics are there, the interesting song structures are there, there's even a song that could be a PG-rated soul coughing b-side ("more bacon than the pan can handle"). but it's all delivered (or produced, or both, i'm not sure) in a way that almost forces you to not care.
take, for example, the first track, "fort hood". you pop the CD in (in my case, i'm old school like that) and instantly mike's singing and doing his thing. this was jarring to me. i was waiting for at least a few bars of guitar chords before everything started. but no. instead, the song immediately jumps out of the starting gate. there's no ambiance, no lead-in. it felt really "top 40 radio" to me. the song itself - about fort hood, the military base which has lost the most personnel in the iraq war - is a good-bordering-on-great song. i've heard in-studio versions of this song done solo acoustic on the radio, and i like it. not love it, but like it. on the album it just sounds like pop. mike's singing about complacency complacently. it's frustrating. he's singing about how the soldiers should be at home enjoying their lives instead of dying in a pointless war, but it sounds like the whole thing is being baked in the easy-bake oven of music and that mike is reading off of a cue card. i wonder if the suddenness with which the album was made had something to do with this. i don't know.
the second track is neat. that's pretty much how i feel about it. it's a good song, it's catchy, it's interesting. it's like a piece of candy. you eat it - yum - and then you move on to something else. "27 jennifers" is good if you haven't heard it before; if you have, nothing's been done to it this time around that's going to rock your world.
honestly, the first five songs were songs that were either outright bland to me, or decent but that gave me the impression that they could have been better "if only" this or that. of course, that might just be my expectations getting in the way.
the rest of the album is better. "i wrote a song about your car" is another neat song. it's about liking a girl and stuff, but you get the impression that it's more about the fact that the song is supposedly about a car but actually isn't, and that's a gimmick worth exploring for the next four minutes of your life. everything else on the album is good, serviceable "small rock" with doughty's special lyrical touch. if you liked "haughty melodic" - and i loved it - you'll love this stuff.
i can't figure out what it is about the majority of this album that's throwing me. it almost seems like doughty was looking back at "haughty" and thinking "well, i did all those songs and 75 percent of it was good, but 25 percent of it could have been left unsaid", but then he turned around and took that 25 percent and accidentally built this album around it. i want to like these songs, but i don't like waiting 28 minutes for a 38 minute record to hit its groove. it seems like this album moved away even further from doughty's "skittish" and "rockity roll" sound and more into adult alt-rock territory. the thing about writing poems and then surrounding them with (mostly) cookie-cutter music is that, well, i'd honestly rather have just been sold the lyrics as poems and read them out of a book and said "sweet!"
i like soul coughing. a lot. i like mike doughty. a lot. i'm glad the guy isn't shooting up drugs anymore. this is a trend with a lot of the musicians i really value lately: doughty, tweedy, adams...sobriety is awesome. there is a contingent of music fans, though, who think that drug culture and rock and roll culture are inextricably intertwined: you can't make good rock without good drugs. i don't think this is true. living on the edge of personal destruction might let you make good music, but there are healthier ways to come up with good song ideas. just look at "easy tiger" or "sky blue sky".
my point is, i guess, that i miss the intensity of the songs from soul coughing records, or even from "skittish", or "rockity roll". or even a few bits and pieces of "haughty melodic", and i don't want this attitude to be misconstrued as "mike should be a crack head and make death metal music". he seems to have nearly completed the transition to radio-friendly folk-pop, and that seems to be working for him. he seems happy about it, according to his blog, and that's excellent. but i just find it a bit boring, and it's a little frustrating to get occasional glimpses now of a sound that was once shockingly unique.
mike doughty's "nectarine (part one)" from "golden delicious"
Mar 12, 2008
has anyone seen the bridge? oh yeah, it's in middle-earth...
so i was in dissmore's, perusing the Lazy, Poor, Studio-Apartment Guy aisle for something to eat earlier, when "Wind Of Change" by the Scorpions came on. and aside from trying to improvise the harmony part out loud in the aisle, which was my bad, i started thinking about epic ballad-type songs, specifically ones from between the late 70s and early 90s (which is guess covers almost all of them), and how a lot of these songs refer to or take place in some weird alternate fantasy-world or another. in particular, i was thinking about how a lot of these songs take the bridge as an opportunity to explain, in an extremely declarative way, how the fantasy world works. "Wind Of Change" isn't necessarily the best example, as it appears to actually be about Moscow, but the bridge fits my theory:
The wind of change blows straight
Into the face of time
Like a stormwind that will ring
The freedom bell for peace of mind
there's this thing called the Wind Of Change, see? and HERE'S HOW IT FUCKING WORKS!!
i'm currently mining the rush discography to find better examples to fit my theory, but that'll probably take the rest of the night. good thing i'm in full-on insomnia mode again.
i got shot down by the university of iowa yesterday, but honestly it wasn't much of a shock (unlike the WSU thing), so i guess i'm okay with it.
listening to the new vampire weekend album at the moment. i wanted to dislike them, as i do most popular things, but they're really good and, more importantly, interesting. anybody can get good at guitar or drums through brute force or by practicing 20 hours a day for a year, but to actually create something unique with said instrument takes something else, so i guess i'm more intrigued by creativity than chops. though chops help. and there's a song called "oxford comma". how could i be an english teacher and a music fan and not love them? anyway, it's weird music. it's like paul simon meets indie rock meets something vaguely resembling the clash (maybe). and even that doesn't really describe it at all. i need one of pitchfork's audaciously pretentious wordsmiths to jump in here and tell everyone how it's "a confabulation of latinesque serenade, arpeggiated peter gabriel pop-rock, bubblegum-sticky reverb, and a light sprinkling computerfied techno-goth-emo-hardcore-post-punk-neoacoustic-murder-folk". and i like it. even if it is just music, which isn't all that great anyway.
just now listening to that Scorpions tune again. i freaking love the guitar tone at the very beginning of the song. also, i really want to buy a fancy tremelo pedal as soon as i have some money. my fender amp reverb is as silky and perfect as becky's hair at the junior high dance, but i can really only listen to it for...well, like seven months without stopping before i wish i had more effects pedals.
i didn't do much today. for once. i scheduled a car appointment for godawful early in the morning, which should determine whether or not i keep my car and get it fixed or get rid of it and do something else. either way, it'll cost a lot of money i don't really have. but one thing i will finally have is a clear answer about what i'm doing with it. which is nice.
i was also going to do my taxes, and got as far as figuring out that i don't have to use my extraneous form like i thought i did (thanks sarah), then got bored and started burning more of my 8 million shows that i'm trying to get off my hard drive. in the process of doing this i decided that i need to see wilco live, very very badly.
also, if any of you out there are fans of ryan adams, movies, weird poetry, or stream-of-consciousness writing (actually, you probably aren't reading this unless you like all of those things), this site just went up the other day. very very cool.
i also just finished listening to mike doughty's new album, which is sort of a big deal because i'm a huge doughty/soul coughing fan. so i'm gonna do a review of that. but i'll do it in a separate post, because this one's getting out of control. be right back.
The wind of change blows straight
Into the face of time
Like a stormwind that will ring
The freedom bell for peace of mind
there's this thing called the Wind Of Change, see? and HERE'S HOW IT FUCKING WORKS!!
i'm currently mining the rush discography to find better examples to fit my theory, but that'll probably take the rest of the night. good thing i'm in full-on insomnia mode again.
i got shot down by the university of iowa yesterday, but honestly it wasn't much of a shock (unlike the WSU thing), so i guess i'm okay with it.
listening to the new vampire weekend album at the moment. i wanted to dislike them, as i do most popular things, but they're really good and, more importantly, interesting. anybody can get good at guitar or drums through brute force or by practicing 20 hours a day for a year, but to actually create something unique with said instrument takes something else, so i guess i'm more intrigued by creativity than chops. though chops help. and there's a song called "oxford comma". how could i be an english teacher and a music fan and not love them? anyway, it's weird music. it's like paul simon meets indie rock meets something vaguely resembling the clash (maybe). and even that doesn't really describe it at all. i need one of pitchfork's audaciously pretentious wordsmiths to jump in here and tell everyone how it's "a confabulation of latinesque serenade, arpeggiated peter gabriel pop-rock, bubblegum-sticky reverb, and a light sprinkling computerfied techno-goth-emo-hardcore-post-punk-neoacoustic-murder-folk". and i like it. even if it is just music, which isn't all that great anyway.
just now listening to that Scorpions tune again. i freaking love the guitar tone at the very beginning of the song. also, i really want to buy a fancy tremelo pedal as soon as i have some money. my fender amp reverb is as silky and perfect as becky's hair at the junior high dance, but i can really only listen to it for...well, like seven months without stopping before i wish i had more effects pedals.
i didn't do much today. for once. i scheduled a car appointment for godawful early in the morning, which should determine whether or not i keep my car and get it fixed or get rid of it and do something else. either way, it'll cost a lot of money i don't really have. but one thing i will finally have is a clear answer about what i'm doing with it. which is nice.
i was also going to do my taxes, and got as far as figuring out that i don't have to use my extraneous form like i thought i did (thanks sarah), then got bored and started burning more of my 8 million shows that i'm trying to get off my hard drive. in the process of doing this i decided that i need to see wilco live, very very badly.
also, if any of you out there are fans of ryan adams, movies, weird poetry, or stream-of-consciousness writing (actually, you probably aren't reading this unless you like all of those things), this site just went up the other day. very very cool.
i also just finished listening to mike doughty's new album, which is sort of a big deal because i'm a huge doughty/soul coughing fan. so i'm gonna do a review of that. but i'll do it in a separate post, because this one's getting out of control. be right back.
verve earth
just wanted to let everyone know that i just registered at www.verveearth.com, based on an email i got from the people who run the site. it seems like a very neat idea; basically it's just a google map of the world that you can use to locate different bloggers and blog topics geographically. along with this, there's the requisite favoriting-and-messaging interface that you'd expect.
it's a really efficient-looking site and a really great idea (especially for us geography nuts, though it would be awesome as hell to hook up the blogging-network idea with full-on google earth instead of just maps, but i'd imagine that takes cash). so if you're reading my blog and have a blog of your own, take a gander at their site and sign up if you want. there's even a handy-dandy widget in my sidebar if you're too lazy to go all the way back up to the top of this post, or if your inertia is just driving you relentlessly down the page.
everytime i type "widget" i think of ewoks.
also, i'm not being paid for this post. there IS a guy in the room right now holding a gun to my head, but that's less about verveearth.com and more about some other stuff that i probably shouldn't have left in my trunk for 2 weeks...
tomorrow's tax return day for me. the excitement is like an electric current filling the room with energy. but it's actually doing that in a room really far away from here that has nothing to do with me. this room is just cold. and starting to smell like baking pizza. so that's exciting.
it's a really efficient-looking site and a really great idea (especially for us geography nuts, though it would be awesome as hell to hook up the blogging-network idea with full-on google earth instead of just maps, but i'd imagine that takes cash). so if you're reading my blog and have a blog of your own, take a gander at their site and sign up if you want. there's even a handy-dandy widget in my sidebar if you're too lazy to go all the way back up to the top of this post, or if your inertia is just driving you relentlessly down the page.
everytime i type "widget" i think of ewoks.
also, i'm not being paid for this post. there IS a guy in the room right now holding a gun to my head, but that's less about verveearth.com and more about some other stuff that i probably shouldn't have left in my trunk for 2 weeks...
tomorrow's tax return day for me. the excitement is like an electric current filling the room with energy. but it's actually doing that in a room really far away from here that has nothing to do with me. this room is just cold. and starting to smell like baking pizza. so that's exciting.
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