Here’s my review of the new Sonic Youth album I’ve been listening to on and off for a couple weeks:
The first line of the new Sonic Youth album The Eternal is “I want you to levitate me.”
The last line of the new Sonic Youth album The Eternal is “I want you to sign my neck.”
Kim Gordon spurts out the first line like the first line of a good whiny punk song.
Kim Gordon whispers the last line. Then the word Sign is sighed. Or the word Sigh is sighed, which would be better.
The first song is 2:11. Fast. Loud. Fuzzy. Loud.
The last song is 9:43. Slow. Loud. Drony. Soft.
The immediate and fast Sacred Trickster begins with an open ended desire. The line could mean a lot of things on its own. In context, it’s the narrator asking music lift them up, get them dizzy, and like a Noise Nomad, levitate them and spin them around. Sure. That’s very pleasant.
The spaced and slower Massage the History ends with the narrator’s very blunt, realistic, desire to have their neck signed.
The album narrows its scope from first to last line.
The album starts with music as a savior, a noise savior maybe, that will lift you off the ground and get rid of all your problems.
The album ends with the downside of music. In context, it’s about the failures of the music industry. No money. Committing suicide. Not everyone makes it out alive. It says maybe a new song can erase all these bad things of the past. There is a hint of the saving power of music, though a much more realistic one. The last line leaves us with a very brutal view of the power of music. I want you to sign my neck. Is this a fan? Is this how sad some people will stoop to remember their heroes? Washed up heroes? Here’s a song to massage the history. I think this means the song’s power lies in rearranging the past with a more positive spin. This song doesn’t do that, though. It’s very sad. Though it is about sweet songs that have the power to temporarily erase problems. But the last line itself is a problem. The 4th wall has fallen down and has not exactly been broken, it falls under it’s own weight. Kim is whispering, not spurting. And she leaves us with that last line and that sigh. I like that very much. Music’s innards are exposed. They are calling themselves out. Music does have the power to lift us, spin us, and erase bad things, but it doesn’t last forever, album title aside.
To end: From the first song championing the supernatural powers of song to the last song poking holes in that exact argument, this is a great fucking 16th Sonic Youth album.
I was giving the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest another try the other day and I couldn’t come up with the last line of the book, which flipped my wig in high school. The first line is easy. They’re out there. But the last line I blanked on. Mike came back with it: I been away a long time. A very good last line. I started thinking about this last line/first line business in music. It should be looked at. So, I’ve decided to fight the dead hours coming up with my favorite last lines to albums, and even a couple songs because they are that good.
The first last line I want to look at is the last line of a song you know. “Life is but a Dream” is the last line to Row, Row, Row Your Boat. What a fucking great last line to a song. By far the best kiddie song ending lyric. A lot of people know this song/sing this song, but few look at the implications of that line. It’s not like the other, I would say, one dimensional popular nursery rhymes (twinkle mary rock a bye mice). Yea, they have social implications like Ring Around the Rosy being about the plague, but none of them are as complicated as the line Life is but a Dream. Here we have an image of a regular dude, rowing his boat, gently down a stream, merrily on his way somewhere, but then BAKOW- Life is but a dream. What? The rhyme hides the fact that this line is very fucked up, summing up a very complicated feeling of the world. The first three lines are about the physical world, the third line is about his happy feeling with the physical world and the last line jumps off the boat, off the stream and lands you inside the man’s head where the pleasantness of the world has caused the man to disregard reality and feel as if he is living a dream.
The most interesting word of the last line is But. Life is BUT a dream. The mind over reality hogwash is one thing, but that word But is even more interesting to me. Life is but a dream could also be understood as life is merely a dream. Merely. Only. It’s not as if he’s saying that life is a dream la la la, how pleasant. The narrator, because it might be a narrator- not the main character speaking this line, is saying life is merely a dream. That’s it. Just a dream, completely disregarding the very concrete reality of the first three lines. A concrete reality that exists in all the other nursery rhymes, but is destroyed here. And then, because the song’s a round. We start it again and build up the reality, only to destroy it with every concluding line. When others join in and starting points and ending points are fuzzed, reality is being built up and destroyed on a cycle. It’s beautiful.
Now, one could argue the last line is not actually the last line because the song is a round and is supposed to go on forever, disturbing the mental functions of first those listening (to annoyed angry madness) and eventually to those singing (to a more blissful braindead madness). This, however, is a different battle. It does end and this is the last line, but why fight? This is America. If you have a problem with this, take your copy of Finnegan’s Wake, begin reading and never stop til you die. Killed by Joyce it can say on your sad little gravestone.
There is another way of looking at it that is a little different. If we take the line as the rower’s thought on the world, not the narrator’s thought on the rower, we have to think bout what type of man would say that. The man’s life must suck balls. He must have a very shitty life, because he can appreciate it when things are good. He may have gone thru monsoons and rapids to get to this point, so he is grateful and is so grateful he really thinks it. He doesn’t just say this is nice, he says this is but a dream. Again, if we look at the word But, we find out more. Thinking about the word But pushes this interpretation further. Life is But a Dream because this is not really life. Life is harsh. Life is not merrily rowing your boat down a stream. That’s fuckin’ work and he’s smart enough to know that and say it.
One last way which is outside this entire realm is the existential listening. Life is insignificant. It does not matter what you do. What you accomplish. How many streams you row down merrily, it does not amount to anything in the end. A phantasm. Delusion. Hallucination. Phantasm. A fuckin’ dream.
I will end this with this: This post has 46.34 (rounded) times more words than the entire song.
I enjoyed my track by track experiment yesterday. I did it again today. PJ Harvey’s Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea.
1. “Big Exit” I’ve only seen one shooting star in my life and it was while listening to this album. I was driving my truck home from dropping Evelyn off at her house. I was in my green Nissan truck XE. That was the model. Truck. Very basic. I was winding around the backroads of Wallingford Connecticut with a huge smile on my face and one arm out out the window and my other arm drumming the stick shift. It was the second or third or fourth time I saw Evelyn without a group of people and I liked her a lot.
2. “Good Fortune” Pretty mushy, I know. Don’t worry, it gets worse. So it’s probably just after 1 because that was her curfew. I just happened to be looking up at the right moment and there it was: a star, shooting, just like they say, across the sky.
3. “A Place Called Home” It was a sign: this music, this truck, this girl. It was all right. A lot of people will tell you this album is not as good as PJ Harvey’s earlier stuff but they are just being cool. A place called home. Some PJ Harvey is very bleak and angry and you can tell she hates the world and there is some guy who is really fucking with her. This album is not like that. She’s in the city and she’s got someone and it’s all great. This is probably why most people don’t like it that much. Happiness? She’s supposed to be this coldhearted bitch, moaning all the time. What is this upbeat acoustic piano shit? We want the low chords, the flats, the step downs, not the up up up happy chords! Well, sometimes, I know its hard to admit, the world is pretty good. And this album makes me think of that- when it was all going all right.
4. “One Line” Lyric: “Stars shooting across the sky.” Not making that up. I’m really not. I don’t think I was listening to that song at the exact moment, but it was on that trip. And I remember I had a shitty copy of the CD that kept skipping. I installed the CD player myself and it didn’t play real CDs only burnt copies and it scratched the shit out of them when you played them. I made copies of the CDs I wanted to listen to. I did own this one. I bought it used at Record Express or at that place on the Silas Deane Highway- Strawberries- yea, I think it was there. Weird. I just remembered that this exact CD 3 years later was in Evelyn’s car when her car was broken into next to my school. Window smashed- radio gone- but the guys had the heart to eject the CD and leave it on the seat. They also left their screwdriver the morons, but leaving a burnt Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea was very nice of them.
5. “Beautiful Feeling” Here is your slow one. But it’s called beautiful. I didn’t write anything just then because I was just absorbing it, sitting here in the Bronx with a little light and a couple mosquitoes. All my roomates are asleep and Evelyn is away.
6. “The Whores Hustle and the Hustler’s Whore” This is my second favorite song on the album because of the 1:15 yelp. She’s got a wonderful yelp PJ Harvey. Lyrics: “The whore’s hustle and the hustler’s whore. Too many people out of love…city’s ripped right to the core.” I like when the bottom drops out in the middle of the big chord change. No bass and then it comes right back then it goes away and just drones on with the reverbed guit. Drumming comes back with her building up- heroin and speed- then we are all back- listen to those pipes- 3:21- damn. I should lower it its 1230 on a weeknight for these people. I don’t, don’t worry.
7. “This Mess We’re In” This one has Thom Yorke in it. I like him doing his droning thing while she sings and then talking and then singing and mixing it up. I know they probably didn’t record it at the same time, but I can picture them in some nicely rugged and tapestried studio in Manhattan singing to each other and each of them swinging their heads back when they start droning on. PJ Harvey reading a letter and Thom Yorke in his own little world, spinning in slow circles, the mic cables and headphone cables wrapping around his whole body.
8. “You Said Something” Here’s the song I remember most from that drive home. It is very cheesy but it’s one of those songs I will listen to one thousand times and it will still make me feel like the world is awesome. I had been to New York a bunch of times before this but I didn’t start living there ’til 2 weeks after the shooting star thing, so that was August 2003- it’s June 2009- how did I get here to this point of living? Very perfect just there- it’s odd how sometimes I feel like I am Pink Floyd’s Dark Side and the music is the Wizard of Oz, or I guess it would be the exact opposite of that, but either way, this album is mathching up with my head and my writing a lot, and the shooting star thing. It makes me think maybe this album is horrible, but I was listening to it at the right time. Man, I’m glad I wasn’t listening to Creed or something and it stuck with me as one of my all time favorite albums just because I was feeling awesome 5 years ago in a truck driving home at 2 am.
9. “Kamikaze” This one seems forced, let’s get out of the rut. She can rock, build it up and kill it. I think there are probably 5 guitar tracks on this song, but its OK. I’m trying to write so fast to keep up with it my hands are slipping off the keyboard. OK there I go I got through a page. That’s always my goal before I give it all up and go to bed- 1 page on my good old friend Microsoft Word. OK back to the music. Kamikaze! Kamikaze! Space here we come…
10. “This is Love” The single and the hap hap hap hap happy song. This is the one evelyn says she remembers most because after that night I was so much in love with PJ Harvey I listened to this album while driving around in my truck for 2 weeks. And in CT there ain’t much to do but drive around… so we drove to parks and made out and got pulled over 3 times, one time for blowing thru 3 stop lights at 1:05 and the guy let me go…if I was listening to PJ Harvey it was probably kamikaze on that night, but for some reason “This is Love” falls flat for me at this point in the album. I don’t think it stands out enough. “You Said Something” is the climax of the album for me, and then “Kamikaze” is just balls to the wall happy smashing. “This is Love” comes a little too late I think, and I don’t like the way it ends, but we shall move on because it just faded.
11. “Horses in my Dreams” This is depressing. OK I guess there needed to be something middle ground between kamikaze and horses, but I don’t know. Let’s fuck the past and listen: this song does slow the world down. The Bronx, This room, My head…. I have pulled myself clear and I have… this song has my head spaced and my arms heavy. It does make me sleepy, but not in a bad way. It’s been a long day…I’m seeing a big concept in this whole thing, it is called Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea.
12. ” We Float” But just now was the first time I really got the ending. “You said Something” is the early stages of falling in love, “Kamikaze” is the happy run amock bliss of thinking you are in love, “This is Love” is really knowing it’s love, and then “Horses in my Dreams” is the looking back on how shitty it all was and realizing you’ve beaten it, you’ve beaten the world. “We Float” is pretty weird. Weird lyrics, but it’s an extension of horses, the almost psychedelic and calm understanding. Not getting too far ahead of yourself, but being comepletely and completely at ease with the world. It’s where I used to be, mostly when I listened to this album and told everyone about how great this album was, but most people didn’t really like it or care to listen. They weren’t at the place I was at. Evelyn really dug it, which is fitting because it was, at least I think, the same for the both of us. This is kindof about you, this is kindof about me. Wait, are they broken up now? Now I’m not so sure. Maybe the whole thing was falling in love with the city and forgetting a man. Maybe. Well it’s got me floating, even with a cranked neck and broken wrists from writing while keeping up with an album. A nice fadeout. One day…
Since beginning my one album review a day last week, I missed a few days. I will catch up tonight and tomorrow and Wednesday. I hope. After being completely addicted to Wire for the past 6 months, I felt I was well versed enough in Pink Flag/Chairs Missing/154 I thought I would check out last year’s Object 47 that was so acclaimed and hailed and written about. This was my first listen. These are my notes. Albums deserve more than this, but fuck it, I think it’s a damn good review.(note: I just listened to Pink Flag and it is very British, but it doesn’t get in the way. It does for some reason for me on Object 47.)
Thoughts:
Track 1- One Of Us: Were they always this British? Their Britishness seemed less before. Man. I can’t stand this British singing-long-drawn-out accent thing. Too much chorus: One of us will live to rue the day we met each other. Is music really this bad these days that THIS is considered good?
Track 2- Circumspect: Repetition of unglorious riffs and chimes. That’s right. Chimes. Echoed out vox. Too British! Horrible horrible breakway with the line: Always dark and circumspect. Instead of breaking from things, they are breaking in cliches.
Track 3- Mekon Headman: Something better already. Good bass and guit, pounding WIRE drums finally. Some good weird WIRE lyrics finally.
Mekon Headman.
Good verse:
Surgeon General’s
Package warning
If you persist
Your time is up!
Still a bad bad chorus:
Please let me
Help you remember
Your memory’s shot
You’ve lost the plot
Please reveal
Your whole agenda
Your time is up
The chorus sounds like a song off Pink Flag being played by some horrible 80s new wave band. Slowed down and too British. Good tangent guitar breakdown riffing. Something a lot of bands learned from WIRE.
Track 4- Perspex Icon: Where’s the balls? This band had balls. Weak shit man. High-pitched no ball singing. Mike walks in, (lover of old Wire) and says, “This is Wire?” Sounds like all this shit today. He says Decemberists.
Track 5- Four Long Years: I like Chairs Missing. I think it did a lot for synths in rock music. I take it seriously. If this is what it’s like to get old, I’m gonna suicide early. I think 27 maybe. A hallmark year. I can’t even think of what shitty bands this sounds like. No wonder the critics fell head over heals for this thing. It sounds like all the other shit today. And if you applaud it, you look smart for your knowledge of the ole seminal BRIT band’s story and it justifies a lot of the shit music that’s out there today. I hate the fucking word seminal. Semen.
Track 6- Hard Currency: What is forward thinking in rock music? I mean, you’ve got the same basic instruments played the same basic way. I mean it ain’t jazz or classical. There’s a repetition of a basic mixture of these sounds. The vocals of most rock musicians are about the same in the large scheme. So, forward thinking? Break up the repetition. DO something different to keep the listener on his/her/its toes. Yea, this doesn’t do that.
Track 7- Patient Flees: The first time you hear WIRE vocals on this album. This goes against my previous argument about forward thinking, but, umm, let me work my way out of this. Wire sang funny. A lot of bands to follow Wire tried to sound funny, mostly punk bands found it a very interesting style of singing. Stressing every syllable. Make words matter. It’s not a passive style of singing at all. I argue forward thinking is continuing to attack while all others sit back and let it all slide by. This is the only song so far with attacking vocals. Wow. Big words.
Good WIRE words. This is a good song. I like this song. Good guit riff. Good bass. Good build at the end. The only studio artificial effect that’s paid off at all on this album.
Track 8- Are You Ready?: Did WIRE feel like they missed out on the late 70s (?) early 80s new wave warehouse dance scene? This song is the old guy who didn’t party enough in high school so he’s still going to high school keggers and asking the sixteen year olds if they are eighteen yet. OK OK. Toss in Iraq and Jesus and it’s a song you’ll dance to and occasionally turn your head and say, “What the fuck is all this about Iraq and Japan and Apple and Dell and Jesus?” I love the disparity. OK I just looked up disparity and Merriam and Webster say it’s definitely the right word to use. I like the idea, but I don’t like the song. Maybe it’s because 1. I can’t dance and 2. I don’t give a shit about politics. OK just read the lyrics again, and they are pretty good. I take it back, but won’t delete what I wrote. It was written.
Track 9- All Fours: At 2:20, this song is kick ass WIRE. Killer moment. Drums pound. Guitars squeal more than ever. I turn up the volume. Am not embarrassed at all about listening to this song. (Was when Mike came in before- see Track 4) Great lyrics. Good background vocals:
Lowest counts since moonman walked on all fours.
Good build in background. Nice halted WIRE ending.
I’ve been sitting here listening to my new copy of Dark Meat’s Universal Indians I got at the Cake Shop show on Friday while looking up stuff about the band online. I came up with this:
That’s right, a Death Star grill. The headline that led me to this was:
Sixto Rodriguez. What a great name. This guy from Detroit made a couple records back in 70 and 71. His record name is simply Rodriguez, though he has been credited as Jesus (Hey! Zeus) Rodriguez. I just got his 1970 album Cold Fact. My first listen was 3 hours ago. I am on my 6th listen now. It runs 31 minutes so I am rounding, but let me tell you, it’s a killer 31 minutes. His style is a little bit folk a little bit psychedelic and a lot-a-bit blow off your head lyrics. I’m very psyched he has the complete lyrics on his website. I’ve been sitting here pondering track 4, “THIS IS NOT A SONG IT’S AN OUTBURST: OR THE ESTABLISHMENT BLUES,”
Adultery plays the kitchen, bigot cops non-fiction
The little man gets shafted, sons and monies drafted
Living by a time piece, new war in the Far East
Can you pass the Rorschach test?
It’s a hassle it’s an educated guess.
Well, frankly I couldn’t care less.
I do read poetry. I like a lot of the heavy hitters: Whitman, WCWilliams, Buk, Lawrence, Neruda and some of the more lucid Beckett. I have a huge crush on Emily Dickinson. I do continue to read new poets, though I am usually disappointed. Maybe there are too many. Karl Koweski is fun to read, but overall none have really stuck. I just read the entire lyrics of Rodriguez. Words alone, this shit’s better than most of these boring fucks now:
The sun is shining, as it’s always done
Coffin dust is the fate of everyone
Talking ’bout the rich folks
The poor create the rich hoax
And only late breast-fed fools believe it
So don’t tell me about your success
Nor your recipes for my happiness
Smoke in bed
I never could digest
Those illusions you claim to have going
And it’s rhyming! Cheap rhyming poets (not like my Emily’s slants) populate one of the lower rings of hell where they hang by hooks thru their tongues. And yet, Rodriguez pulls it off. I am converted. For anyone interested in one of the best lyrical singer/songwriter kindoflike-Arthur Lee/Syd/Bob, but a little more down to earth (yes, Dylan included), albums of all time, get Cold Fact. A working class guy from Detroit pointing out the wrongs in the world. Not oddly enough, the lyrics have not aged a day. Rodriguez still ain’t no establishment blues.
Thanks for your time
And you can thank me for mine
And after that’s said
Forget it
I’m not sure if I’ve ever written a record review before, so why start now? What I am going to do is listen to a different album every day and write on it. There is no reason for this, I just think I need to do it. A while back, Michael T. Fournier- the guy who wrote the 33 1/3 book on my favorite album of all time Double Nickels on the Dime- reviewed his record collection alphabetically online. This won’t be as nice as that, it won’t be in any ABC or 123 order and the albums might not always be albums.
Anyways, here goes.
The first record I ever owned was not a record, it was a tape. I think it was Meat Loaf or possibly Ray Charles. I remember having both when I was very little. The first CD I ever owned was Mellon Collie & the Infinite Sadness and Foo Fighters- Foo Fighters. I got them for my birthday. I don’t remember the first album I downloaded, though I do remember sitting watching Napster download Soulfly early on. That’s right! Soulfly! Today, I downloaded my first album from iTunes as it was unavailable in physical form for buying or illegal form for downloading. What a fucking world. So after figuring out how to set up my iTunes, registering and all this other shit, I downloaded my first iTunes album, an EP: LITE- Live in New York for the hefty price of $3.99. One giant leap for mankind.
This record (am I allowed to call it that?) kicks ass. It’s five songs from their first U.S. show ever last month at the Mercury Lounge opening for the man Mike Watt. I was one of the many people there who never heard the name LITE til they got on stage and blew my head off.
As for the music, let’s dig into it. Instrumental band, meaning no VOX, not boring like instrumental can sometimes mean. Immediately people around me at the show started making references to Explosions in the Sky and I unfortunately made one to Godspeed! You Black Emperor, though both fail horribly at sticking a reference point. Lite does not let sound happen like those two bands seem to do. I won’t knock them, they aren’t bad, but they do require the right mood and that mood is usually not found in me. I like fast crazy shit. I like energy. More than anything, I like excessive input. These guys put a lot into every song. My problem with a lot of music is people seem to let the sounds happen. Holding your guitar up to your amp after its gone thru 18 pedals of noise reducers/amplifiers/twisters/digitalizers does not make you experimental. It makes you a lazy gambler. Doing something different with the same shit as everyone else is experimental. These guys do that.
Every bass line is nothing short of amazing. Opening for Mike Watt and using Mike Watt’s bass rig can’t be easy for a bassist, but the little Jun Izawa does a kick ass job. The bass and guitar melding is very unique. They will come together for certain lines, then break away into tangents, never really stop to let things cool down. There are two LITE modes: fast and complicated and louder and complicated.
The best song to show this is “Contemporary Disease.” Here’s a video from the show. In the end, the live EP does fail a little bit in bringing the energy of their live show to tape, but I find most bands have that problem, so if you weren’t at the show, I would buy the studio albums. Listening to them live might be good to listen at how tight they are, but it won’t win you over. Go to Japan. They’ve got tour dates all summer.
-ADAM
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