Oh Sees Retrospective #18: Singles Collection Volume 3

What makes a great entry point for an artist? Do you default to their most popular work, their most accessible, their most acclaimed? There is no hard and fast rule about this; some people will always say “start at the beginning”, while others always say “start with a fan favorite, because it's most representative of their work.” As I've been going through their discography I've certainly felt that Oh Sees have a number of great entry points. It's odd, then, that I don't consider Singles Collection Volume 3 to be one. Why odd? Well, one of the things that helps me write my reviews and retrospectives is to go see what others have said. I've always found it very healthy to seek out other points of view because they can sometimes help me crystalize my own opinion. Something I came across a couple times is that Singles Collection Volume 3 is the best place to start. In particular the Pitchfork review belabors this point while spouting off a lot of nonsense, including sloppily saying the compilation ends with “two ten minute pieces.” I guess seven is the same as ten, as long as you're lazy and stupid.


I'll get to presenting my case for it not being a great entry point soon, but let's do the usual rundown. Singles Collection Volume 3 (hereafter simply Volume 3 for sake of ease) came out on November 26^th, 2013. Well, OK, Wikipedia says the 25^th. Whatever. I have no idea why it's so difficult to find precise release dates for music released in the Internet age! Anyway, it's worth noting that if you've only listened to this collection on vinyl, you're missing out. The CD and digital versions contain a live “bonus” track, though even with that added in, Volume 3 is only 46ish minutes long. Yes, that could fit on a record, even if it did cost a little fidelity. I'd even argue they should have, for a reason I'll get to eventually. Let's begin with why it's not a great entry point.

Understand first that my claim is no bearing on the quality of Volume 3. Despite being shorter, it's more consistently excellent than Volume 1 + 2. I would say there isn't a dud in the bunch; I even appreciate the 'Crushed Grass' demo, something I don't normally go for. Now, I do understand what the Pitchfork writer was trying to say with his review. The Oh Sees discography is daunting—I would know—and this compilation is ideal in the sense it has some great tracks and a taste of their live sound. However (and this “however” should be read in a very dramatic, drawn out way in your head) if you're actually familiar with their discography, you'd know this is not a great entry point for these same reasons.

Volume 3 by its very nature lacks the coherence and polish of an actual album. If you sit down and think about these songs, they don't really gel together. The tracklisting doesn't mix the order of the 7”s and label compilations to give it a better flow, so it's literally as though you made a playlist and haphazardly added them in no meaningful way. For example, Volume 3 starts off on a weird note with 'Ugly Man', a strangely mild-mannered and skeletal song that I do love but I don't think outsiders would get. There is also the issue of some tracks being notably more noisy and experimental than the other releases from the era Volume 3 is derived from—the covers of 'Burning Spear' and 'Fbi2' immediately come to mind. And finally, I have to say, the rough audio quality on the live tracks makes Oh Sees seem far more amateurish than they are. Maybe that's not something that would deter all newcomers; fair enough. I find it disappointing, at the very least. We never got a proper live album from the mid-era of the band, something I still wish would happen. Oh, and this recording quality issue is what I was talking about earlier: since the live tracks of Volume 3 don't sound pristine, why weren't they included on the vinyl? Yes I know that the more you try to fit on each side it lowers the fidelity, but if the quality of the original recordings isn't great, who would notice?

While we never got a live album from them, one could view Volume 3 as the final hurrah from the four-piece mid-era lineup of Oh Sees. It's pretty incredible how much they did in only five years—Master's Bedroom feels like a lifetime ago by the time you get to Volume 3! In this way, it also feels like a secret history of Oh Sees, showcasing other sides of the band through covers, two lengthy live tracks (both ten minutes long, remember!), and gifting us one final Floating Coffin leftover (the peppy 'Devil Again') that didn't make it on to the Moon Sick EP. I have to say, while I appreciate how faithful the cover of 'Burning Spear' is, I take issue with it for two reasons. One: it gets the title wrong. I know I'm doing my usual nitpicking thing but come on—the Sonic Youth original is called 'The Burning Spear', not 'Burning Spear.' This may not matter to you, but let me ask you: would you rather watch Predator or The Predator? Anyway, two: it's a boring, safe cover. It doesn't best the original and it doesn't do anything new or inventive with it. Let's get back to being positive though. The two live tracks* are essential listening, not only because it was our first non-bootleg taste of Oh Sees live but also because they're great performances. The medley of 'Destroyed Fortress Reappears' (titled merely 'Destroyed Fortress' because they're trying to give me an aneurysm) and choice Floating Coffin cut 'No Spell' is better than ice cream and sex. Well, alright, that's a bit too far.

It is better than ice cream, though.

Well gang, we solved the mystery of whether Pitchfork has shitty writers....um I mean, we solved the mystery of why Volume 3 isn't a great entry point. In doing so, I hope the takeaway is that this is an essential for established fans. In fact I feel like we need to come up with a new term for this kind of release, the opposite of an entry point, something 'for the fans.' The best I've managed to come up with is “fan fodder”, though there's negative connotations to 'fodder' so I dunno. What's your idea?


*During both live tracks they start singing lyrics I don't recognize. Are they quoting other songs or improvising or am I just not paying close enough attention to the studio versions?

Weekly Whiskey Episode 11 (For Realz)

Well, it finally worked. Hope it was worth all the trouble! I have just had one of the worst 24 hour periods of my life, as if the universe wants to make surviving til my vacation as difficult and painful as possible. Such is life.

Static Of The Gods- Knowledge Machine / Venus Bogardus- Spitting At The Glass

Their name sounds like an Explosions In The Sky cover band, their new album's title sounds like a Kraftwerk reference: truly, Static Of The Gods give an interesting first impression with words alone. Unfortunately, words are also the thing that drag them down.

If I may play the “book by its cover” card: this album's cover is garbage. It's the sort of thing a freshmen in visual arts would likely produce for their friend's band, a clusterfuck of different colored letters that would make House Of Leaves author Mark Z. Danielewski spin in his grave, if he was dead. The fact that they had some little yellow searchlight things spell out the album title, legibly, to the lower right makes it even worse. It'd be like seeing that stylistic, incomprehensible graffiti tattooing the available space on the walls and structures of cities, which is already bad, but someone has also helpfully wrote clearly underneath what it says. It's still ugly even if you know what it says; knowing that a confusing smudge of maybe-letters says “Putter Butt” actually makes it worse.

Anyway, the real word problem with this band is their lyrics. The music is fine if unmemorable; an inoffensive, competently played brand of indie rock that sounds like how the generic version of Coca Cola tastes. It's close, sure, but it's missing originality and that certain special something that makes Coke so good and worth the extra 20% of your cash. They even work in some electronic touches on 'Mean Streak' because hey, Radiohead did that and every else has to, right? Things like that and the band's name make me wonder if they put any thought into what they're trying to say with music or words. Why name your band Static Of The Gods if you just sound like Rilo Kiley Redux? Why have electronic elements sprinkled in to this song instead of that one if they don't mean anything on their own or combined with the lyrics or feel of the song? But I digress. I was talking about words....

Every time I've listened to Knowledge Machine, it always sticks out to me that singer Jen Johnson must have brought in her poetry book to the recording session. There's a wordiness and awkward delivery to the lyrics on this album that belies someone not understanding that, while lyrics can be poetry, poetry shouldn't be lyrics. It's not a one-to-one conversion, in the same way that news writing for a paper is similar to but not exactly the same as news writing for TV. It doesn't help that she seems to sing every song with the same style, inflection, and tone. It's all just kind of...monotonous. I wish she would know when to let the music carry the weight, or to stop trying to sound like every generic, borderline-cutesy female indie rock singer who sort-of-sounds-like-Neko-Case-if-you-really-squint-your-ears (yes you can do that; try it some time).

If I'm coming off as overly mean in this review, I don't mean to. I'm past the days of writing reviews of things I don't like to blow off some steam or to make myself feel superior. But when you listen to as much music as I do, it's hard not to be bothered by the lack of unique ideas and poor songwriting of bands like Static Of The Gods. The music may be competent, but it lacks any personality or distinguishing characteristics; the lyrics themselves aren't terrible, but they're awkward and performed with a poet's style rather than a vocalist. All in all, the problems of Knowledge Machine make the band sound amateurish and as “I'm just doing this for the fun of it, not to make a living” as I hope they are.

2 Poorly Drawn Stars Out Of 5

Though the bio for Venus Bogardus mentions Richard Hell and the band's connection to him, you'd have to be deaf or oblivious not to listen to Spitting At The Glass and avoid tripping your This Band Sounds Like Sonic Youth!!! alarm. From the basic tone/textures of the instruments, to the “male and female couple as main members and vocalists” aspect, to the arty New York feel of the album: it all screams Sonic Youth.

Here's the weird thing, though: it's a really good Sonic Youth rip off. I actually hesitated to use the world “rip off”, since it's a strong accusation and I don't mean it as a bad thing. But there's no denying that fact, especially when the first song, 'Judy Davis Lips', sounds like a Daydream Nation b-side, and the 18(!) minute closing track, 'Brett Smiley Pile-Up', plays like a poor (poor poor) man's version of 'The Diamond Sea' from Sonic Youth's Washing Machine mashed up with one of the languid tracks from A Thousand Leaves. It's one thing to be influenced by another band. It's another thing to sound like another band, a phrase often used in a metaphorical or approximate but not precise comparative way, like saying Visiter by The Dodos sounds like Animal Collective's Sung Tongs. But Venus Bogardus sound like Sonic Youth in a literal, precise way. They outright lift a lot of Sonic Youth's trademarks; I'm dead serious when I say that a few of the times I was listening to this album on the way to work, I forgot I wasn't listening to Sonic Youth. I dare you to listen to the way the female singer sounds and delivers lyrics around the six minute mark of 'Brett Smiley Pile-Up' and not admit that she is trying to sound like Kim Gordon. You can't. Sorry, no. If you can listen to that and argue that she isn't trying to sound like Kim Gordon, you're either a fucking liar or you've never heard of Sonic Youth.

I'm not mad or even disappointed with Spitting At The Glass (despite resorting to the f-bomb just then) because, as I said, this is a really good Sonic Youth rip off. I'm not sure that I wouldn't rather just go listen to Sonic Youth if given the option, but I don't mind a well done copy cat. To go with the Coke metaphor from the previous review, Venus Bogardus are...well, they're not like the Pepsi to Sonic Youth's Coke, but they're at least the RC Cola. They pull off the “we're artsy people who make a lot of references to New York City and obscure-ish references like the Fluxus art movement or Roxy Music” thing convincingly enough, and there's a feel/texture to the production that smacks of late night intensity; think of it as the steamy art-punk club to Interpol's chilly/detached, expensive-clothes-and-drinks/hipster's don't-call-it-a-bar bar. Also, when they diverge a bit from the Sonic Youth formula, like on the post-punky clangor of 'Spitting At The Glass' or the acoustic 'Mouth To Hand', they reveal themselves capable of much better than just clutching at the strands of New York Cities past. Here's hoping they lean a bit more on that and stop going to all tomorrow's parties.*

P.S. I don't know why they bothered with a radio edit of 'Flat Planes.' As near as I can tell, it's not even different from the album version, which is somehow less baffling than the fact that a band at this level of popularity and supposed independent spirit would make such a concession. Unless it's a joke, in which case it's an unfunny, pointless one. Kind of like the awful album cover, really.

P.P.S. That post-script sure went on long, didn't it?

*Yes, that was a Velvet Underground reference. See, I'm New York artsy, too!

4 Poorly Drawn Stars Out Of 5

Video: Sonic Youth- Sacred Trickster

I appreciate the "hand made", digital camera feel of this video. I would also marry any of the three 'paint bomber' chicks in it. I suspect it was made by the daughter of Kim and Thurston, or if not her, one of her friends. Either way, it helpfully predicts the devil may care, "let's just make something, whatever" sound of this song and the album it comes from, which is pretty damn good.

Album Of The Week: Sonic Youth- Murray Street

Murray Street may have a naturalistic, innocent, and slightly surreal album cover--why are they under a net?? are they picking some kind of vegetables??--but if ever there's a Sonic Youth album that feels urban, it's this one. In fact, I'd go so far as to call it their "New York album." The band began recording it in August '01 at their studio located on the titular Murray Street, which it turns out is really close to Ground Zero from the September 11th attacks. Take a gander at that back cover, I'm pretty sure that's genuine dust/debris. More than just a sense of spirit and feeling that resulted from this era, Murray Street feels indebted to much of New York's past punk and experimental scenes. In particular, the influence of Television on the extended guitar interplay is a clear touchstone.

It's still a bit odd to me that of all their albums post-Daydream Nation, this one gets the most consistent praise. At its release Murray Street was met with all sorts of "return to form" review quotes. Looking back, I think the band's 90s output is unfairly looked over; I even find that the roundly panned NYC Ghosts & Flowers is interesting. Ironically, despite its title, that album is less of a "New York" feeling album to me, but I digress. For the average listener, Murray Street is arguably the next most indispensable Sonic Youth release. The band had never really clicked with me until I heard it and bought Daydream Nation afterward, so maybe there is something to this.

When I said "it's a bit odd" earlier, I meant in terms of what Murray Street actually is and sounds like. This album was, after all, Sonic Youth at their most jammy, heading through only seven songs in 45 minutes. This isn't an even split of 7ish minutes per song, either: the album ranges from the noisy blast of the two minute 'Plastic Sun' to the extended skronk section and subsequent psychedelic improv of 'Karen Revisited', an 11 minute journey. Yet despite this unevenness, the album is remarkably well paced and listenable. I suppose this is why the album has found near-universal love. It lacks the visceral impact of some of their more pop and popular songs but there's something to be said for a band making the album they want to make, proving that even as they entered their third decade Sonic Youth were still experimenting and following their vision even if it didn't make sense on paper.

For whatever it's worth, I wouldn't consider any of the albums Sonic Youth released in the 90s as being some of the best of that decade. They're good, even great, but they don't feel essential and vital in the way that Murray Street did and continues to. It may not seem like the most obvious choice for new fans to move on to after Daydream Nation, but Murray Street is a near perfect distillation of and argument for Sonic Youth's jammy, psychedelic, and noise tendencies.

Album of the Week: Sonic Youth- The Eternal

Back on an indie label, minus Jim O'Rourke but plus former Pavement bassist Mark Ibold, Sonic Youth are closing out this decade with an album that may not best their greatest from this decade (2001's Murray Street) but certainly affirms that they still have it. Whatever 'it' is. The Eternal is fantastic noise-pop that is arguably more successful than even Murray Street at splitting the different between noise/lengthy psychdelic improv and pop/melodic songwriting.

If you'll allow me a slight detour, I have to wonder how much having different members has done for Sonic Youth during this decade. Once the band stabilized with now-permanent drummer Steve Shelley around the late 80s, it wasn't until Jim O'Rourke became involved in 200ish that they released their most critically acclaimed and beloved album in years, Murray Street. After two solid albums that followed in the footsteps of that album (reaching a refined, polished, almost noise-less level with 2006's Rather Ripped), O'Rourke left the band to pursue his own projects and the band picked up Ibold as a full time touring bassist and eventual new member. After performing their classic Daydream Nation in its entirety a few times, not to mention going back to the indies after sticking with a major for so long, you have to wonder how much playing their older material along with the fresh blood of Ibold added to The Eternal. Certainly I don't remember noticing the bass lines of Sonic Youth songs before--but that's probably because for a few albums, they didn't bother with any.

So, then, the album. The Eternal sees the band playing all their best cards while adding some new wrinkles to the mix--'Poison Arrow' has the band singing together where normally Thurston, Lee, or Kim solely sang. It's weird to hear their voices together after so long but it works very well. Perhaps the biggest appeal of the album to me is the unforgettable force of Sonic Youth once again playing it loud, heavy, and noisy. While I loved Rather Ripped as much as anyone, it had a little too much drift and lightness, the guitars chiming when they normally ripped and tore. This album still has some of that, but it also brings the 'classic' Sonic Youth guitar skronk and mid 90s psychedelic improv to the fore again. The ultimate effect is an album that, yes, reminds me of my favorite Sonic Youth songs and albums but never sounds like a copy or throwback. Album closer 'Massage The History' has an almost 10 minute run time that makes me think of the Washing Machine/A Thousand Leaves era but has an acoustic guitar(!) and dreamy vocal from Kim that would be more at home on a Yo La Tengo album. 'Sacred Trickster' is probably the most thrilling shot in the arm opening song of a Sonic Youth album in well over a decade, propelling the album to full speed where even Daydream Nation took a few seconds to work up to the full frenzy of 'Teenage Riot.' And 'What We Know' makes excellent use of Ibold's bass, dancing with the always sublime Steve Shelley's drums, revealing what I always assumed about Ibold from his previous associations with Sonic Youth as well as underground in music in general: he was actually wasted on Pavement in a lot of ways. The focus of Sonic Youth has always been the upper registers of noise and atonality, but The Eternal is a refresher course both on how Shelley is and has been their secret weapon along with whoever is pondering the bottom end on bass.

The best compliment I can pay to The Eternal is that it has me curious to see where Sonic Youth will go next. Sonic Nurse and Rather Ripped were good, even great, albums but they didn't leave one wanting more. The Eternal does. It may not end up on my best of '09 list but it's an endlessly satisfying release and probably the best I've heard this year from bands in the "old, established band have still got it" category. Regardless of how I feel about it by year's end, The Eternal will remain an excellent release from a band with no shortage of fascinating and great albums.

Album of the Week: Sonic Youth- Washing Machine

"...Sonic Youth, an institution whose guitars are often emulated and never replicated. As does everything else on a record that will startle no one and sound fresh in 2002."

I sometimes forget how long Sonic Youth have been around, but they're a band of survivors who have a lengthy discography three decades deep. There are a few patches in my knowledge of Sonic Youth so any proclamations I can make about their stuff feels kind of half-cocked. Thankfully there's Robert Christgau, who has had a sometimes acrimonious relationship with the band (specifically Thurston Moore), with the quote above. I'm not sure about the claim that it will startle no one, but it's 2009 and Washine Machine sounds as fresh and interesting as their newewst, The Eternal.

Every Sonic Youth album manages the trick of clearly sounding like a Sonic Youth album yet possessing its own distinct identity. Daydream Nation is a sprawling double album; Bad Moon Rising allows its songs to flow together in a suite-like fashion; Murray Street patiently unfolds into glorious psychedelic and noisy avenues. While I've yet to hear Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star, Washing Machine feels like the point where the band re-asserted their experimental and sprawling tendencies. Sonic Youth spent most of the early 90s/late 80s moving toward stripped down, short pop-style songs, but I would argue that they manage this best when the catchy pop moments bubble in and out of the noise and guitar trances. So with 1995's Washing Machine they began to move back to this approach, leading to the lengthy psychedelic/experimental A Thousand Leaves, all those SYR releases, and their material from this decade, which has expertly twisted the threads of punk rock energy, noise/psychedelia, and indie rock/pop.

I really love Washing Machine. In my book it's a five star album but I'm willing to concede that for most people it's got some problems. For starters, it's a weird album even for Sonic Youth: the band closes it with a 19 minute song (which can be heard in its full 25ish minute runtime on their The Destroyed Room collection) yet caved in to their record company and broke up the opening 'Becuz', moving the instrumental outro to later in the album as an untitled track. At the same time, the title track spins out into a white noise mid-section that would put off any casual listener then follows it two songs later with the Kim Gordon/Kim Deal (of the Pixies/Breeders) duet, a homage of sorts to 60s girl groups. The second problem is that the album has no sense of flow or progression. This isn't essential to have a great album but Washing Machine never builds any momentum or a sense of purpose, wandering about for 40 or so minutes before investing the remainder of its runtime on 'The Diamond Sea.'

The final problem with Washing Machine is that there's nothing here to hook newcomers. There are a handful of great 'starter' albums for getting into Sonic Youth, but there's really nothing on Washing Machine that's poppy or accessible enough to pull neophytes in. 'The Diamond Sea', the song part, anyway, is an excellent psychedelic ballad, but there's at least 15 minutes of noise and improv wrapped around it; 'No Queen Blues' has Steve Shelley's patented bouncy drums and some brilliant guitar sounds but ruins its chances with a noisy outro; even Gordon's straightforward 'Becuz' goes for too much chaos and skronk. As mentioned earlier, Sonic Youth were better at mixing the noise and pop at other points in their career, but Washing Machine definitely (one might say, defiantly) sticks closer to noise and rock force than it does memorable songwriting and pop elements.

...which is why I love it so much. Despite the caving in on 'Becuz', from here on out the band did whatever they wanted to, and Washing Machine has a devil may care, relaxed feel. True, Sonic Youth's 90s output is an uneven, contentious set of albums. Nothing really won them the acclaim and interest that Daydream Nation and 2001's "return to form" Murray Street did. But maybe that's why the 90s are such a fascinating era for the established Sonic Youth fan. To paraphrase Christgau, Washing Machine still sounds fresh, but I would add that it can also startle and surprise, too. You just have to already like the band to enjoy it.

Halloween: Spooky Songs On Otherwise Normal Albums

Well, we're in the home stetch of Whiskey Pie's month-long Halloween celebration. All this week I'll have Halloween themed posts, including a special Album of the Week entry that is fairly ambitious (in that, it'll be ambitious for me not to ramble on for 10,000 words).

But today we're going to talk about scary music. I've already done scary movies and scary games (one more post each on those forthcoming, in fact) so it's time I gave music its due beyond the videos I've been posting. Rather than talk about 'scary albums', because I don't own any I think are scary all the way through, I'm going to explore some songs that are surprisingly creepy considering the majority of the rest of the music from the albums they come from is straightforward in comparison.

Aphex Twin- 'Grey Stripe' (a.k.a. track four of the second disc of SAWII)
Actually, Aphex Twin probably deserves some kind of lifetime achievement award for tucking away scary songs on his albums. In the case of Selected Ambient Works Volume II, the order of the day is mostly free floating texture and mood pieces. But 'Grey Stripe' is a terrifying song that sounds like indescribable echoes through deep space and the howls and shrieks of alien lifeforms as they bound through the corridors and ventilation shafts of some haunted space station. It's unsettling and unforgettable.

The Beatles- 'Revolution 9'
I may have told this story on here before, but the first time I listened to The White Album it was on a Fall afternoon. I just happened to put it on to coincide so that, when I got to the side four of the vinyl version, the sun had gone down and it was dark and cold outside. 'Revolution 9' is an infamous piece of musique concrete that most people hate and skip when they listen to the album. I never skip it, but it's still creepy as hell. Even while listening to The White Album with a friend, it leaves you with an eerie feeling that the final song, 'Goodnight', with its Disney-esque majesty, only partially dispels.

Boards of Canada- 'The Devil Is In The Details'
While much of the music and album artwork of Boards of Canada trades on psychedelia and the darker aspects of the 60s, this song takes things a bit further, with a horrifying female voice talking to you over the sounds of a disembodied child crying in reverse (??) and bizarre tape loops. Eeek.

Brian Wilson- 'Mrs. O'Leary's Cow'
So much history has been built up about the Smile album that it's hard to get past it and put this album in the context of 1967 even though it wasn't finished until 2004. Reportedly, while originally recording this album (and going crazy on drugs, naturally) Brian Wilson thought that this song had caused a fire in his area. True or not, 'Mrs. O'Leary's Cow' forms part of the 'Elements Suite' of Smile representing fire--another tale says that Brian Wilson made the band and gathered orchestra put on plastic fire helmets while recording the song. Its title references the cow that--true story--started the great Chicago fire all those years back. It's intense though short, mostly notable because of its supposed historical fire causing and for helping 1967-era Brian Wilson seem even crazier than he already did.

Can- 'Aumgn'
You could probably play this song in a haunted house and get away with it. 'Aumgn' is the most extreme and experimental song that Can ever produced, a 17 minute monolith that is indescribable. Spooky sounds, tape loops, screeching violin, keyboards, free jazz, free noise, scatter shot percussion...and at the heart of it all, Damo Suzuki saying/singing "AAAUUUUUMMMMMMMMGGGGGNNNNNN" over and over, slowed down, stretched out, treated with effects, or brought back and forth in the mix. The whole thing crescendos with a rising synth chord, frenetic tribal drumming, and a whole lot of studio trickery. Mind blowing.

Low- 'Don't Understand'
This is Low at their most gothic and deliberate, slowly building the tension of the spiralling keyboard atmospherics until the primitive death march led by drums kicks in. Then Alan Sparhawk holds a gun to our heads and relates how he doesn't understand while leading us through the woods to the spot where he'll leave our bodies after offing us. At least, that's what I picture in my head when I listen to this song.

The Microphones- '(Something) Cont.'
The Glow Pt. 2 has an otherworldly vibe that I can't explain. You really have to listen to it on headphones to get the full effect, but it traffics in sonic extremes. There are many quiet moments that linger, with barely audible sounds spread throughout, taunting you. Reportedly there are foghorns from boats at various parts of the album though I've only noticed a few. But on the other end of the sonic extreme, there's noisy storms like this that move in and then off like thunder, scaring the shit out of you before another unexpectedly catchy moment of lo-fi indie rock restores you to your senses.

Miles Davis- 'Rated X'
If you didn't know this song was by Miles Davis before listening to it, you would have no idea. It features no trumpet at all and comes from his late-electric era circa 1973/1974, when he would occasionally play atonal organ blasts during live performances to shake up and/or signal transitions to his band. This track, released on a compilation, is spellbindingly crazy, with a pounding drum/bass beat that predicts all manner of beat driven experimental electronic music to come. Over that we are assaulted with churning wah-wah guitar and ear splitting, Phantom Of The Opera-pissed-off-and-high-on-cocaine organ "chords." There's a remix of this track on an album by Bill Laswell that is actually listenable but therefore not scary. If you need a song to clear guests out of your house/apartment at the end of a Halloween party, here you go.

Pere Ubu- 'Thriller!'
No, not that 'Thriller.' This is a spooky instrumental with incomprehensible vocal samples, a slow, stumbling drum beat and guitars lazily detuning and tuning themselves. Eventually, odd scratching/chewing sounds show up and bury the rest of the mix. A very spooky song and one that, if memory serves, ends side one of Dub Housing in an oddly appropriate fashion.

Sonic Youth- 'Providence'
In all fairness, once you read that this song is simply a combination of an overheating amplifier, an answering machine message from Mike Watt, and Thurston Moore plunking away on a piano, it loses some of its power. But like all great double albums, 'Providence' is an anomalous, creepy track that doesn't quite fit in with the rest of the album but sort of does. Anyway, yeah. Spooky.

Sufjan Stevens- 'John Wayne Gacy, Jr.'
The song itself is actually quite pretty, if a bit sad. When you realize he's singing about infamous clown/child murderer John Wayne Gacy, it instantly becomes creepier than anything you've heard that week. Certain lines from this song give me chills and that's because this stuff really happened and is not just some lame ghost story.

Talking Heads- 'The Overload'
Primarily known for being a funky and vibrant album, Remain In Light leaves us with the intense conclusion of 'The Overload', all oppressive atmospherics, David Byrne's monotone delivery, and zombified drums. Phish took this a step further when performing the album live on Halloween '96 by adding an electric drill (!!) and stage antics (including a random crew member saying "where's my coffee?!") that confused the audience.

The Velvet Underground- 'Sister Ray'
Actually, the entirety of the Velvet Underground's second album is crazy and off-the-rails. But 'Sister Ray' brings the built-up tense atmosphere to its inevitable conclusion, rolling up into one 17 minute ball of evil all the drugs, sex, violence, and terror that marked the songs of the Velvets up to that point. The first time I listened to this song I was genuinely frightened of it because I didn't know what to expect. Now, I find it oddly exhilarating. Sometimes it's nice to just let go and become one with your inner nihilist psychotic drug addict.

Sonic Youth- NYC Ghosts & Flowers

To anyone who was following Sonic Youth's career trajectory, NYC Ghosts & Flowers wasn't quite the sudden controversy that all the negative reviews made it seem. They always had a predilection toward the avant garde and arty fartsy in general, and while this side was mostly kept in check on their main albums or relegated to side projects, you had to expect they'd eventually want to follow their muse someday. If, however, you were following their main albums--as a more 'casual' fan, though that's a loaded term--then I suppose NYC Ghosts & Flowers would appear to be an indulgent misstep.

I didn't hear this album until last year, and even given the things that Sonic Youth has produced since its 2000 release, NYC Ghosts & Flowers still stands out in their discography as an odd beast. Washing Machine and A Thousand Leaves were leading the band down the road of music that was simultaneously more minimalist/improvisational/psychedelic and also more experimental/noisy. Truthfully these things were always in the band's sound, but those releases drew them out further than ever. And while NYC Ghosts & Flowers would initially seem to pick up the loose ends of A Thousand Leaves and run with them, it simply does not feel or sound much like that album.

It helps to have some context, I think. In the summer of 1999, many of Sonic Youth's custom guitars, effects pedals, and other gear were stolen, meaning that NYC Ghosts & Flowers would be recorded with new and newly altered instruments. At the same time, beginning in 1997, the band had been releasing a series of works under the SYR banner. While mostly improvisational, studio outtakey, and long winded, the fourth of these, released in 1999, was a double album titled "Goodbye 20th Century" in which the band performed or reinterpreted the works of many avant garde musicians and composers from the 20th century such as John Cage, Yoko Ono, and Steve Reich. All of this leads one to believe that the band were ripe for an out there, bizarre album that would test even their long time fans. That the result, NYC Ghosts & Flowers, is as enjoyable and listenable as it is speaks volumes for how well Sonic Youth continue to make the inaccessible accessible.

Yet while I liked the album, I wasn't sure why. It took Robert Christgau to make me understand this album. Considered the "dean" of American music critics, I actually find Christgau's reviews to be totally worthless because of their flowery prose and occasionally pun filled self satisfaction. It's worth noting, too, that at one point Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth had a fight with Robert Christgau, but that's neither here nor there. What does matter is that his review of NYC Ghosts & Flowers helped me understand what was going on with this strange yet compelling album. He said of it: "...this impressionistic poetry-with-post-rock is the most avant-sounding of their DGC-etc. product, and either way its avant parts are more listenable--nay, beautiful--than anything on Washing Machine if not A Thousand Leaves." Which is actually true, even though I love those albums. NYC Ghosts & Flowers puts a premium on texture and lyrics-as-another-instrument rather than lyrics-as-a-way-of-conveying-an-idea. If the music seems occasionally too minimalist and flaccid or self consciously abstract/abrasive, if the lyrics can seem insipid, childish, or amateurish, well, then that's part of the risk.

The album begins with its most accessible song and ends on its most, well, inaccessible. 'Free City Rhymes' ripples into life with beautiful, plucked guitar note loops before a surprisingly groovey beat kicks in on the wheels of clean and clear reverb guitars and Thurston Moore's dreamlike mumblings take us on a trip through the city. This 'cityscape journey' feel will persist throughout the album even as we enter the dark grinding of 'StreamXSonic Subway.' Truthfully this is their most cinematic record even if it possesses a paucity of melodies or hooks. Even a more rocking song like 'Renegade Princess' feels more like a song the band might play during a punk rock show in a movie scene rather than the single their record label will release to push the album. 'Nevermind (What Was It Anyway)' is notorious in my mind due to the lyrics as trashed in the 0.0 review that Pitchfork gave it way back, but I've always had the feeling this whole album was done with tongue in cheek, and having the lines "boys go to Jupiter, get more stupider/ girls go to mars, become rock stars" is pretty damn funny when delivered by Kim Gordon. As for that final inaccessible song, well, 'Lightin'' does seem like a pointless indulgence, but its well in line with the things they had been doing on their SYR releases. Maybe I'm being too nice, but I think it's the perfect, "let's make some weird noises and have free jazz trumpets blurt out" ending to this album.

I should close this by making clear that while I like this album, it's no masterpiece, or even a hidden gem. It's simply a misunderstood work that has been unfairly derided and fairly praised on the exact same points. As Christgau pointed out, there are moments of astonishing beauty and languor that go beyond even those captured on Washing Machine and A Thousand Leaves. Anyway, NYC Ghosts & Flowers isn't a misstep but a sidestep, and a fascinating-but-flawed album from a band with a whole backlog of solid-to-amazing albums.

Same Title, Different Song

If you're like me, you probably keep your music organized on your computer by artist and/or album. However, if you arrange your collection by song title...

Song: 'All I Need'
Artists: Air, My Bloody Valentine, Radiohead
The Air and Radiohead songs are relatively close in tone, both being mid-tempo ballads that help anchor the emotional core of their respective albums. Meanwhile, the My Blood Valentine song is a cloud of noise such that no matter how loud you listen to the song, it always feel remote, far away, and up near the sun somewhere.

Song: 'Wildnerness'
Artists: Joy Division, Sleater-Kinney
Joy Division's 'Wilderness' couldn't be more different from Sleater-Kinney's if they had tried. Their's is an almost prototypical Joy Division number with a plodding drum, scrawling guitars, bucking bass, and reverb everywhere. Meanwhile, Sleater-Kinney's is a mid tempo rocker with impassioned vocals and everything redlined except the intertwining guitar during the chorus breaks.

Song: 'Animals'
Artists: Devendra Banhart, Sonic Youth, Talking Heads
Devendra Banhart's song is a short folk piece that reminds one of the time when he was an actual freak instead of someone constantly putting on a show. Sonic Youth's song, at least the one I have, is an early version of 'Mary Christ' from the deluxe edition of Goo. Meanwhile the Talking Heads song is a typically funky and catchy ditty about how animals are dangerous and untrustworthy foes. The line "animals are smart/they shit on the ground" is pretty ace, too.

Song: 'Dark Star'
Artists: Beck, Grateful Dead
I've always gotten the feeling that most people avoid the title 'Dark Star' because it's so associated with the Grateful Dead. In that spirit, you couldn't get much farther and yet closer to the epic, psychedelic, and improvisational Dead version than Beck's, which is a deadpan spacey dirge with all sorts of psychedelic flourishes.

Song: 'Venus'
Artists: Air, Low, Television
While I don't like the album nearly as much, I feel like 'Venus' is one of the best album openers that Air have ever done. I love the warm embrace of the synth washes that float up after the one minute mark. Then there's Low's 'Venus', which I only have on the hard-to-find live album One More Reason To Forget and which I remember hearing for the first time after I had broken up with a girlfriend. It's an atypically energetic number for Low, especially early Low, though it still moves at their usual slow pace. Anyway, Television's 'Venus' is just plain awesome from beginning to end. People tend to associate Marquee Moon with the longer guitar jams, but I think 'Venus' is the secret masterpiece, especially the backing vocals asking and reacting to the main vocals: "Did you feel low?" "No" "HUH?!"


Song: 'Untitled'
Artists: Andrew Bird, Animal Collective, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, Burial, DJ Shadow, Fugazi, Interpol, Panda Bear, Pearl Jam, Sigur Ros, Sonic Youth
Yeah, are you really surprised that so many people in my collection used the title 'Untitled'?? Don't expect me to go through them all, since technically Panda Bear and Sigur Ros released whole albums where every song has no official title.

Song: 'Providence'
Artists: Deerhunter, King Crimson, Sonic Youth
I'll end on this one because I think it's the most interesting. All three of these songs are pretty different, but also pretty similar in an experimental way. Deerhunter's opens with looping guitars and adds layer upon layer of dreamy guitar sounds before descending into an ambient-esque climax with waterfall sounds and birds chirping. King Crimson's 'Providence' comes from the Red album though it is actually a live improvisation from a concert. This is the sort of song that's too difficult to describe. It trades off silence with free form guitar/violin/bass/drums drones and snatches of music and finally gains some momentum in its rollin' and tumblin' second half. Finally, 'Providence' by Sonic Youth is the (in)famous musique concrete piece from Daydream Nation that uses an answering machine message left by Mike Watt, a haunting piano, and errant white noise to produce a spellbinding, indescribable atmosphere that wouldn't be out of place in a David Lynch film.

Reassessing Bad Albums For Fun and No Profit

Though reviews and criticism are ultimately subjective, certain consensuses are often reached. Whether it’s that such and such an album is the best thing a band has yet done or that it merely points the way to better things, if you read enough reviews of an album you begin to notice a collective assessment of it. And so, you often find albums agreed upon as disappointing, sophomore slumps, vanity/indulgence releases, etc. (Please note that I don’t mean out-and-out shitty albums, because there’s rarely much to reassess about them) Some of these are due as much to critical shortsightedness and misunderstanding as they are to the artists themselves.

Anyway, let’s reassess some of the more recent offenders, shall we??

The Album: Some Loud Thunder by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

The Offenses: Being too experimental; sounding too influenced by producer David Fridmann; having songwriting that classifies as spotty and weak.

The Reassessment: Some Loud Thunder is neither a secret masterpiece nor a total failure. It rests somewhere in between the two extremes, though I’d honestly say I liked it a lot better when I came back to it a few months after its release. Yes, it’s not as good as their debut, but it’s still a great album. It’s the difference between an A research paper and a B one, really.

The Album: Rehearsing My Choir by the Fiery Furnaces

The Offenses: Being a kind of radioplay/concept album/autobiography about the Furnace siblings’s Grandmother; being extraordinarily self indulgent; not working as an album or a musical; mostly featuring the vocal stylings of said Grandmother, which could be charitably described as “not very good and not befitting the music.”

The Reassessment: I’ve only managed to make it all the way through the album twice, if that tells you anything. Fiery Furnace albums are sort of like taking a shot of liquor: you just have to jump in and do it. Man up, as they say. Yes, their albums are overlong, complicated, and messy, but if you take the plunge and trust their instincts—as well as giving each album your full attention span for its run time—you are always rewarded. Rehearsing My Choir does not reward you, sadly. It’s more like taking a shot of liquor that you can’t quite get down because it turns out it was moonshine: it’s simply too much. Though every Fiery Furnaces album will inevitably be described as “great but just not as great as Blueberry Boat”, one can also safely say that everything they’ve released since and could possibly release in the future will be better and less indulgent than Choir.

The Album: Do The Collapse by Guided By Voices

The Offenses: Being a slicked up, overproduced GBV album; having weak songwriting; being a failed attempt at a major label debut and subsequently getting released on, oddly, industrial powerhouse TVT records; the-one-dude-from-the-Cars produced it and stipulated that the band couldn’t drink during its creation (seriously).

The Reassessment: The only song I can remember from the album is the opener, ‘Teenage FBI.’ Basically, Do The Collapse is like your least favorite album by your favorite band. There still remains all the things you love about them, but it still feels weak or a like mess or a misstep. And Do The Collapse is all three. And the “no drinking” thing just kind of pisses me off, frankly, because if you’ve ever seen or heard about a GBV show, you know that the drunker they get, the better they get. See their final show, captured on The Electrifying Conclusion DVD, for a good example.

The Album: It’s All Around You by Tortoise

The Offenses: Being a more-of-the-same, diminishing-returns kind of album; increasingly making the band into a Steely Dan-esque perfectionist studio beast without any blood.

The Reassessment: It’s All Around You is more of the same, with one or two twists—wordless vocals on ‘The Lithium Stiffs’, the noisy drum nightmare of ‘Dot/Eyes’—that are worth hearing for fans. Otherwise, it’s an entirely unnecessary and skippable release by a band who seem to have increasingly less ideas. And they desperately need to introduce some spontaneity and grit into their sound, because they’re beginning to sound like an austere museum piece.

The Album: NYC Ghosts & Flowers by Sonic Youth

The Offenses: Being too minimalist and noodle-y in some places, too self consciously noisy in others; having bad beat poetry for lyrics; being recorded after most of the band’s custom gear was stolen; representing the end-of-the-line if you didn’t like their 90s output.

The Reassessment: While being the weakest album the band have released in the past 15 years—actually, it’s more like “weakest album ever”—it’s still interesting and worth a few listens. Some of the lyrics are indeed embarrassing, but the music and overall sound of the album fascinate me in some strange way. It’s another side of a fascinating and still vibrant band that you may or may not like; you can say a lot of things about Sonic Youth and their development over the years, but they haven’t fallen into an old age trap of releasing boring, forgettable crap like, say…REM. Speaking of the devil…

The Album: Everything REM has released since at least New Adventures In Hi-Fi.

The Offenses: It’s sad to think that about a decade ago, people used to look forward to REM albums with the same fervor as they now do Radiohead ones. Yet in the past ten(+) years, the band has squandered their good standing with a string of releases that are utterly boring and unmemorable to the point that I can’t even distinguish them from each other. Sure, there are one or two good songs per album, but by and large, I sometimes forget the band hasn’t broken up already.

The Reassessment: Every time a new REM album comes out, some reviewer or critic will say it’s the beginning of a new creative phase in the band’s life. Or that such and such an album was a secret masterpiece, and we were all wrong to hate/ignore it. But…they’re all wrong. I want to be charitable to the band because they have released some amazing, timeless music, but they haven’t done this since the beginning of Clinton’s second term. My good faith has long since gone. Fuck REM.

Album of the Week: Yo La Tengo-Painful

I'm currently in the midst of a really nasty cold, coughing up my lungs every few minutes and blowing my nose constantly, but the one advantage is that, between my general feeling of being out of it and taking NyQuil at night, I've been in the perfect frame of body and mind to listen to Painful.

The long and short of the Yo La Tengo story is that they're a band of music nerds. Their knowledge and love of the art form is ridiculously encyclopedic, and to top that off, they've been around since 1984 (coincidentally, the year of my birth), so their discography is suitably vast and varied.

Painful falls neatly into the halfway point of their existence, released in 1993, and is something of a watershed for a number of reasons. It was the first album released on Matador after years of casting about in the indie minor leagues, an association that continues to this day. More importantly, I would call it the beginning of the 'modern' Yo La Tengo sound. Though not the first album with then-new bassist James McNew, it is the first that refined the band's sound, perfecting their noise/pop and druggy/psychedelic side with their pastoral, calm ballads and folky moments. Later albums would expand their sound even further, such as the masterpiece I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One, but there is just something special about a moment when a band finally matches their unique sound to genuinely great songs, and Painful is it. Lastly, and this may be the kind of nerdy footnote that the band themselves would love, it marks the first time when the last song on the album is arguably the best.

The early 90s were something of a time when noisy bands tempered their sound to appeal to a more mainstream audience. Yo La Tengo contemporaries Sonic Youth were going through the beginnings of their accessible/classic rock influenced era at the time of Painful so it's interesting to note just how uncompromising the album is, yet it's noise and feedback are not alienating. I've never thought of Yo La Tengo as especially difficult or experimental because their rough edges are rounded off a bit. Even the explicitly noisy tracks like 'Sudden Organ' and the second version of 'Big Day Coming' use distortion and feedback as a textural/melodic device, such that it becomes a blissful, warm sound. In short, this is the kind of thing people mean when they say noise/pop, and while there's a very fine line between the two, when they're balanced just right as they are here, it is glorious. Especially while you're floating around due to illness or cold medicine.

If I were forced name my favorite Yo La Tengo album, it would never be Painful. I don't think that's an insult, really, because their discography is startlingly consistent, and it's hard to displace I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One or And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out in my estimation. All of that said, Painful is a perfectly sublime album in its own right as well as being the cornerstone upon which the modern Yo La Tengo is built. It's that rare beast: an important album and an addictively listenable one at that.