I wasn’t as happy with this review for the new M83 album as I’d like to be. While it’s pretty insightful and decent about its prose, I shoehorned it into an unkind, reactionary stance, and didn’t have the time (or courage) to recast it in a more satisfying way. It’s a problem reviewing albums by bands that I’ve already decided to love: such loyalties, in the context of would-be journalism, inspires a compensatory sternness.

With that qualification, more stopgap content!

More recycled Soundcheck content. Look, I’ve just moved to NYC. I’ll be going to plenty of shows real soon. I’ll have proper content on here in a bit. I swear I’m good for it.

**********

Johan Agebjörn, the proverbial wizard behind the curtain, is a dude who keeps it real: in spite of Sally Shapiro’s rapid rise to musicblog prominence, his personal website has refreshingly candid Top 10 lists devoted to his heroes and inspirations. While a catalogue of his favorite classic Italo Disco tracks comes as no surprise, experimental pioneers Aphex Twin and Squarepusher (and even his top ten drum machine sounds) get their shoutouts too. Agebjörn remains explicitly aware of his roots, and Disco Romance benefits immensely from his respectful and detail-oriented hand.Few “modern” albums so successfully assert a retro authenticity: snares and handclaps ring out into a snow-damped soundscape which is at once expansive and hushed. Precise synth stabs and driving basslines provide an anchor without overpowering the mix, exemplifying the muted crispness that points both to the album’s eurodance origins and to the analog warmth of Agebjörn’s ambient-informed production. The album’s diffuse, lo-fi haze is, in effect, its savior: were this album treated with modern studio gloss, it would immediately parody itself. The production even manages to save “Anorak Christmas” — a Scandinavian twee-ballad reworked into a disco Christmas carol — from a campy death.

Ironically, if anything threatens to intrude upon the album’s windowside introspection, it’s the very vocals that initially inspired the project. At its most sublime, Shapiro’s down-soft voice disperses like frostbreath, echoing into the perpetual background of keyboard choirs and strings. However, at times it rasps with inadequately compressed sibilance, growing downright punishing at bop-out volumes. Disappointing, given the attention paid to the instrumentation: one would figure that if Agebjörn is willing to saddle tracks like “Jackie Jackie (Spend This Winter With Me)” with front-and-center dramatic monologues, his treatment of Shapiro’s touted vocals would follow suit.

As passionate as Agebjörn is about Italo Disco (very), it bears noting that most of his musical output falls in the minimalist, ambient vein: in spite of the driving bass and the punchy snares, the album’s tone remains pensive and wistful; it explicitly conjures a sense of wind-blasted solitude. Simply, this isn’t dance music. Disco Romance is less a dancepop album than an ambient tribute to Italo Disco. Granted, ambient tracks don’t modulate a half-step or drop a vocoder to get in One More Chorus, but pop songs rarely stretch out to six minutes without growing unforgivably dull.

Ultimately, though, the album supersedes such concerns as the minutia of musical history and genre lines. In the same fashion as would-be cratemates Air & Stereolab, open celebration of Sally Shapiro’s connection to past electronic acts amounts to retro-driven remodernization, rather than self-dating graverobbing. For all the perverse joy Disco Romance affords hair-splitting historians, it offers significantly more as a well-composed electronic album than an anthropological study; rare are the albums that so effectively inspire emotive contemplation and foot-tapping in equal measure.

…though, truthfully, I’d have said a good bit more had I the space.

*********

The band’s first full-length album finds them experimenting with more varied instrumentation, though often at the cost of overall songcraft. While the band strives to their familiar celestial sweep and crash, the album lacks the strong thematic development necessary for satisfying instrumental rock. Even if E-bow drones and laptop flourishes are welcome additions to their sound, they’re not justifications for songs unto themselves: without adequate grounding in musical tension, dynamic shifts seem obligatory, and instrumental risks come across as gimmicky.

But, I nitpick: ultimately, This Will Destroy You amounts to an ambitious, rewarding album, occasionally plagued by stagnation and inconsistency.

*********

(Originally written for Soundcheck Magazine. Feel the shoehorn.)

Can I be serious for a moment? Usually I use this space to yell about music, but did you kiddies also know that Auntie Rachel has a degree in yelling about politics? It’s true!

Guys. Don’t Laugh. I’m serious.

As is my duty as a blogger, I’m going to talk about something seemingly insignificant that will turn out to be Of Importance. And as anyone who has heard of the internet knows, Facebook is the thing the kids are on about these days.

Facebook has its creepy, all-knowing finger on the pulse of… basically everything. So it would seem natural and beautiful that Facebook would try its hand at helping The Kids stay involved with politics. Among its pursuits to this end: a near-daily poll on (sometimes) relevant political issues. Usually, it’s an opportunity for thousands of people to yell about Ron Paul or cheer on Barack Obama. But this poll really caught my eye (excuse the screenshot):

(results current as of 2/10)

There are lots of implications I could draw from this, but for not-wasting-your-time purposes, I’m going to stick with what was most striking to me, besides the glaring grammar error in the title of the quiz.

Facebook is doing an interesting thing by asking us this question: by breaking down “liberal” and “conservative” into categories describing the social and the fiscal (notably, “moderate” was not thrown into the mix, which itself has implications, but not ones I’m going to discuss now), Facebook is not only taking away our comfy party labels, but is asking us to know what the hell we’re talking about.

And here is where we come to the eyebrow raiser, at least for me: the category “Fiscally liberal, socially conservative” was only entered by 3% of respondents. Now, I don’t have data for this, really, but I do know this: “Fiscally liberal and socially conservative” describes –we’re told by the teevee and the politicians– the largest and most special-est group of voters in the country.

Yes, here are your NASCAR Dads, Soccer Moms, Security Moms, swing voters, and really what I would imagine to be a huge percentage of Americans. Often described as moderates, these are people who, for instance, cain’t abide by no homos, but who depend on social programs like Medicaid, Social Security, Welfare, and so forth. These are blue-collar workers whose livelihoods rely on subsidies and tariffs, but who feel that abortion should be outlawed or restricted. (Heck, it’s even what some people would consider the “most Christian”– that is, being charitable and providing for the poor, but legislating what you feel is immoral or ungodly– and indeed of the few Facebook respondents who chose this category, many of them expressed this belief.) That’s a lot of people. Now, it could be that this elusive demographic belongs almost exclusively to an age range not really represented on Facebook, but I think the answer is a little less statistically improbable than that: to have only 3% of respondents identify this way shows what seems like a deep misunderstanding of the terms “liberal” and “conservative” as they relate to social and fiscal issues.

And really, I think the misunderstanding here relates to mainly to fiscal matters. The media do a great job of distilling for us what liberals and conservatives believe socially- conservatives love Jesus and hate The Gays, whereas liberals hate fetuses and love violent video games- as America (The Book) puts it, “the bichromatic rainbow that is American political thought.” “Liberal” and “Conservative” have thus become highly charged words, and we’ve come to feel as though it’s a tiny act of bravery to label ourselves as either one. Certainly, each group feels as though its label has been perverted at the hands of the other group to become a “bad word” in the media and the political sphere. So we all know where we stand socially- or at least we know whom to hate. But because of (what I perceive to be) a general lack of real discourse on most of our media outlets, coupled with the fact that Democrats and Republicans in our government often generally agree on fiscal issues, fiscal beliefs aren’t sexy, and aren’t important. And when “Liberal” and “Conservative” have taken on the definitions they have, suddenly someone who is only familiar with the terms as they relate to polarizing social issues might have some trouble extrapolating that to his or her fiscal viewpoints.

So, then, the least desirable option is going to be the least represented. Those of us who identify as either “socially liberal/economically liberal” or “socially conservative/economically conservative” have already come to terms with being called these things. And those of us who described ourselves as “socially liberal/economically conservative” feel okay about it because we know “conservative” sounds like “saving” and, hey, saving money is good. But if you know that “Liberal” means “the opposite of how I feel about deeply polarizing things” and you don’t have a good sense of how to apply it to fiscal matters, then you’re not going to be so quick to label yourself “Socially conservative/Fiscally liberal”.

I could go on and on. And I’m not calling the Facebook generation (as loath as I am to call it that) stupid- just lazy, and with a larger burden to be proactive. While I do feel that the media and our representatives in government have their hands in simultaneously dumbing down and polarizing our political landscape, I think the ultimate onus is on my generation. Kids, get off your asses and learn about what you believe. Only if you really understand what you believe can you really stand for anything. If you don’t bother to learn, you’ll always be a member of a percentage to be thrown around by pundits and political candidates, and hell, bloggers.

[Insert amateur blogger's uncared about apologies for not updating, "shit has been busy"s, and the like here.]

Actually, most of the recent news here in the Fortress of Suckitude (Heh, you like that, kid? No, not very good, is it?) has been actual-life-and-not-really-snark-except -to-the-extent-that-snark-is-all-around-us-related. And also Magic: The Gathering-related. But we ain’t here to tell you about our sweet new Wurm-Elf decks. We just wanted to let you know that the (literally tens of) people who visit this page are still in our daily thoughts.

As far as music goes, basically all we’ve got is that Lyn-Z, darling of Azizsucks Google Analytics and frustrated 15 year olds everywhere, has married a douchebag. No, really, I’m sure he’s a nice guy. His band is unspeakably terrible. They are seriously like Simple Plan plus screaming a lot. And Lyn-Z has publicly ridiculed Simple Plan. But love, I suppose, can make you do strange things. Hell, I write in this blog. But seriously folks, we really have no news. And we especially have no news about Matthew Bellamy*.

Oh, and I guess Chad Kroeger did a Rob Thomas. I’ll let you figure out what that means because my eyes and ears have just about reached their shirted-Kroeger saturation point. He’s just been too shirtful lately. But ladies: he straightened his hair!!!

We just can’t stop blogging about him. Can you blame us?

But even more than we like bitching about terrible music; more even than we enjoy gettin’ all Jean Teasdale in your shit, we like writing about good things. And I’ve not got much to say. So I’ll peace out. Hope you all are well.

*Refer to my last post. We’ve since made a compact to mention one or both of those individuals (Lyn-Z or Matt Bellamy, that is) in each and every post to keep the sweet, sweet hits pumping into our e-veins.

(Two posts in one night! The triumphant return of Aziz lies below my inarticulate wailings.)

So, fun fact: as moderators of this blog, Aziz and I can see which search terms people use to reach our humble cache of suckiness. Usually, we’re just someone’s disappointing pit-stop on their way to ogling Attractive Music People Matt Bellamy (lead singer of Muse) and Lyn-Z (bass-candy for Mindless Self Indulgence). Those two names probably make up just under half of the Google search terms that cause people to click on links to this very blog. And for added buzzkill, my having written those names just now will make those search terms even more likely to bring you here! Enjoy not-what-you-were-looking-for, everyone who was looking for those guys!

My point is, we can see you. We often sit around in my mom’s living room giggling about people’s inability to spell or their mind-boggling unfamiliarity with Google. For instance, some poor kid probably read all our delicious, forbidden cuss words and later wept at the staggering plethora of hyphens herein when he found our blog through the search terms “info on sharks”. Now, I’m not going to call that stupid, because I’m giving the searcher the benefit of the doubt and assuming that he or she was under the age of four. Why else would you click on a blog about basically Queen and made-up words looking for pertinent information on sharks? And let’s not even talk about someone who came to our blog after searching for “gay boys penis”. That search term basically makes up for the other half of the clickthroughs to this site, what with all the gay boys penises up ins.

But even that was not as simultaneously grotesque and confounding as the person who found our site after searching for (I shit you not) “Chad Kroeger without his shirt on.” Google illiteracy aside, this person clearly knows where to go for his or her shirtless sheeprock. Longtime readers of AzizSucks know that we loves us some Kroegs. Not only do we love His Chadliness, we love ourselves a little band called what? oh yeah, NICKELBACK. Those of you who were here at ground-level may even recall that we even ran into some legal trouble when the blog’s original name- NickelBlog - was found to be already in use. But a picture of Him shirtless? Man, what we wouldn’t give to see those rippling pecs. Sorry, man/lady. If you find such an image, send it our way, because as I mentioned, we love Chad Kroeger, and his semi-clad image is all that’s missing from AzizSucks- and our lives.

(Téodor, how did you find our blog!?!?)

The short answer: these guys. Soundcheck Magazine guys!

I’ve sallied forth and gotten a gig writing for this small, mostly-print music publication based in Austin, Texas with a pretty unsightly website (they’re fixing it up) and a finger on the pulse of what could be called the most important city in American Indie. The latest issue is up in PDF form, and certainly deserves a looking over. Tell your friends! (I’m on page twenty!)

For the sake of vanity, my two reviews are here and here (also below in de rigeur linked image form). The online version of the Octopus Project review was mistakenly printed with my track notes, which while not worthless, are not proper content. (NB: this was fixed in the “print” version which is better looking anywhoo.)

I’ve been lucky enough to have chosen two pretty excellent albums, and while I feel like my reviews are decent (if indulgent, if you can believe that), I still feel as though I’ve gotten the better end of the bargain. No, I’ve not been paid a dime for my work, and I honestly don’t mind a bit.

So, sorry everyone: I really did mean to call back. I’ll link to articles I’ve written for Soundcheck from now on. For now, everyone thank Auntie Rachel for admirably holding down the fort and keeping it scalding.

(…also I got a new MacBook and while it is extremely lovely the keyboard perplexes me and the file structure is still unfamiliar and I miss MS Word.)

Music-nerdiness-merger ladyboner: It appears Wu-Tang is sampling the hott lixx from “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” for a new song (tentatively titled “Gently Weeps”). The hott lixx will be played by none other than Dhani Harrison (George’s son), and also John Frusciante (whatever). George’s son, despite looking disarmingly like his dead dad, doesn’t really play guitar like his dead dad, so he’s actually playing the rhythm part on acoustic. Frusciante (of RHCP- I guess that annoying part of “Scar Tissue” qualifies you to stand in for George Harrison?) will be performing aforementioned lixx (Czech the last link there- I guess Prince’s heart-stopping shreddery was not “this band has tattoos but my mom likes them” enough? … whatever). Apparently, though, Dhani is down with the Clan. Quoth RZA: “He knew all the kung fu shit [we reference]! That’s deep! I told him I would be honored if he played his father’s song.” Oh man. I cannot wait to listen to this in my car real loud and get stared at by startled old people and confused urbanites who don’t yet know that white people get to listen to rap too (this has happened to me).

Now you may not have known this about dear Auntie Rachel, but as much as she loves the Fab Four, she completely sweats her some beatzz. Ask Aziz. In fact, I toyed with the idea of a feature for the blog called “Auntie Rachel’s Hardcorner”; so deep is my slightly-puzzling-for-a-rural-white-girl adoration for the hip-hops. And the Wu-Tang are among my favorites- they are intelligent, articulate, relevant, mad sweet, and videogames. Additionally, the nerd in me is excited because it’s the first time a Beatles song has been legally sampled for a recording. I heard that while listening to NPR’s broadcast of the BBC World Report. Nerd.

So, due to my unique blend of nerdinesses, this is pretty much the best news I’ve heard today and almost makes up for the fact that I’m in a coffee shop whose radio station of choice has played a new Bon Jovi doucheballad, Nickelback, Avril Lavigne, Kelly Clarkson (no, hipsters- it wasn’t “Since U Been Gone“, calm down) and that terrible “Meet Virgina” song. All in the last 20 minutes.

Anyway. This is so rad. All the kung fu shit, indeed.

Apologies, loves, for the long silence. Z and I have been on many adventures indeed since last you saw us. So there’s a lot with which to try your blogtention spans, but the first thing I promised was Yelling About Muse. So here goes. A very long post you probably won’t read. It’s nearly a million words long and some of those words are ludicrously hyphenated and still others are made up.

This will take a thousand hours.

Anyway. We went to a Muse concert in like, oh, the beginning of August. (As I type this sentence, it’s October first. And yes, I’m still fat and I still haven’t done anything with my life.) We had a blast, staying with old friends and giggling our way around Beantown with our own particular brand of savoir-’tard. And of course, Muse rocked our faces right the fuck off. But well, of course I’ve got beef. I usually do. In a few major ways, Muse disappointed us, but it (kind of) isn’t their fault.

Lemme ’splain.

Their setlist followed a transparently precise formula: they opened with The First Song Off The New Album (”Take A Bow”), played most of the playable songs from Black Holes and Revelations interspersed with playbacks of The Good Songs from their older albums. They ended the show with Their Most Famous Song (”Time Is Running Out”) followed by That Upbeat Song We All Love But Wasn’t The Single (”Bliss”) and, after making us all clap for a stopwatched minute, returned to play The Best Rockout Song They Sing followed by The Loudest Song From Their Current Album (”Plug In Baby” and “Knights of Cydonia”). The whole thing clocked in at a neat-n’-tidy hour and a half. Wipe hands on pants, done, on to Baltimore (or Columbus, or Toronto, or whatever) to play exactly the same thing tomorrow night.

But really, the origin of my umbrage was not the predictability of their setlist. In fact, they did it Right™. All Polish. No banter. Zero surprises. Giant screens behind them showing technicolor, real-time close-ups of Matt Bellamy destroying a piano (in the good way) and sexy dancing lady robots. With the exception of the dangerously-close-to-douchey “Invincible”, they avoided playing any of their ballads (which, according to an ancient curse brought on the Bellamy clan in exchange for the exclusion of their ancestral lands from a Norman invasion, have to suck so bad). They put on a DVD-worthy (both in its duration and its degree of production) show with wide appeal. But doing it Right™ comes at a price. The crux of my beef (dear reader) lies in the fact that Muse seem very willing to pay that price.

What I mean is, it seems like Muse is trying to be Big in the US. Now, I have to qualify this. “Auntie Rachel,” you may chortle, with a self-important snort; wiping Vitamin Water off your Che Guevara t-shirt, “um, they’re not exactly unknowns if they headlined Saturday night of Lollapalooza and their last album went gold.” Excellent point, though you shouldn’t have been such a jerk. I know I’m not breaking any new ground with this, but in the US, there’s big, and there’s Big. Gwen Stefani is Big. Kenny Chesney is Big. Justin Timberlake is Big. Capital-B Big means flash. Style. Pyrotechnics. The question in the US is not whether The Kids are listening to you, but whether they’re wearing your T-shirts, whether they’re buying the clothing line in whose commercials hot models bop around detachedly to your latest single, whether John Q. Timbaland has heard of you, even if he’s never heard you. Sure, you have an enthusiastic, sincere fan base and you can play arenas, but do you believably drink Pepsi? In short: being Big isn’t a measure of your album sales, it’s a measure of a musician as a commodity.

And Muse are certifiably little-b big: they have a solid following in the US, Everyone Who Matters has heard of them (Hell, even JT himself said they were the bees’ knees at the MTV Europe awards- according to Muse’s Wikipedia page, that is. Careful- it’s exceptionally bad.), and they’re getting nauseatingly excessive radio play. Not to mention, they’re HUGE in Britain. No, I’m not sad that Muse want to be Big because as a Tortured Indiekid, I’d have to stop loving them if The Kids could hear their songs on Razr commercials. Some people (ahem) might have that tendency, but I don’t: I still fucking love Eminem (which has reduced my indie cred for several reasons). I’m sad about it for a more simple and less sophisticated reason: I already love them. I wanted banter, fuckups, and deep tracks and got a polished, prepackaged American Version. Aziz and I, though we didn’t know each other then, both came into Muse in the summer of 2004. They are only now starting to be noticed by The Kids. And in order to be Big, they have to keep feeding the fire with easily digestible, glossy, flawless, just-edgy-enough nuggets of rock. And so, for being ahead of the curve on this side of the pond, we were rewarded by having to watch a band we love fork over their character in order to purchase wider appeal in a country that wants soundbites and not banter.

But I think maybe Muse should settle for little b. They’d be in unparalleled company. You know who else sells out huge concerts in the US but has never been Big? Radiohead. You know who else sold out London’s Wembley Stadium in a matter of hours but never got Big in the US? Queen. Not only that, but Muse truly merits the numerous comparisons they have drawn to those bands in terms of skill, style, popularity, and fucking rockouts. And they could go on to join the Pantheon of All-The-Best-Rock-Comes-From-Britain; their marble-hewn fauxhawks glistening under the pale moonlight that once lit the Druids‘ way as they built that timeless Henge. Or they’ll just make it Big.

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Post Script: The Cold War Kids opened for Muse. I think they are pretty okay- their debut album begins with a blistering indie rock one-two punch of radness (not-coincidentally the two singles from the album) and continues with a bit of a nap for the next eleven tracks. Still, solid jamz for boring people, and a little something for those of us who like dynamic facerockoffs.

Point is- they put on an amazing show. At least, I think they did. It certainly seemed like it. Their sound engineering was absolutely for crap. It was horrible. It was like i was in a tank of water and on the other side of the glass was someone rocking so hard. Very sad. They seem like an excellent up-and-coming album-take-or-leave-but-do-see-them-live group o’ guys. So if you get a chance, check ‘em out- hopefully they’ve fired their sound people.

Next time: I Yell About Politics (or Ani DiFranco).

I am working on a post about the Muse concert we saw like two weeks ago. As with most things, it became A Thing about Stuff. It has like a thesis n’ shit. Or maybe I’ll just talk about Matt Bellamy’s hair. Dude has some hair.

Bonusland Tiger Beat Frame of Dreaminess!

In the meantime, here is a fun game for you and your snarky, pretentious, self-important friends to play. It’s called The Jet Game. Now, Aziz has vowed never to sputter about Jet again, so I’m gonna turn in my token. The game goes like this: when you hear a song on the radio, and the artist sounds familiar, you and your asshole friends will start guessing who the artist is. After each naming of a possible songwriter, you must say “or Jet”. If you want to know why, read aforelinked rant. If you already know why, well, come and feel smug with us.

And we have been listening to the radio more than usual lately. Luckily for us, there’s a pretty good indie radio station right here in tiny Manchester, Vermont. Their website was designed by a one-armed six-year-old with Front Page, but you can get it to let you listen online. They play up-and-comers, bands your hipster friends like, and even the occasional Radiohead and (indie-friendly) hip-hop– but because of what I can only assume are Dark Forces within the radio industry, they have to play filth as well. It’s pretty sad. One minute we’re all “oh yes Karma Police” and the next, “this song is terrible.” And I’m not going to go into it, because I’ll deal with it extensively in the Muse post, but all music sounds like all other music these days. Is this what people want? When we hear that fucking Fratellis song with the doot-doots do we say, “oh yes, this could be one of six bands I could think of right now (or Jet) but I want the next song to sound like this also”? Does my beloved indie radio station think that this is what The Kids want right now, or are they required to be uncreative, unchallenging, and uninspiring? Aziz could probably rant about this much more articulately than I can, and I’m sure he will, but for now I want capture my tired, exasperated feelings about The Radio, however you-kids-and-your-long-hair I may sound in so doing.

Music seems to be getting worse, and it’s not because I’m getting more pretentious about it. I just honestly think people don’t realize they have to listen to this crap. I don’t want to misunderestimate people, but I really believe that some people feel their only option is the shit they hear on the radio. In such a world, your friend might give you a Rad Mixtape of Nickelback, Puddle of Mudd, Daughtry, The Fray, Breaking Benjamin, and New Weezer* (Weezer is to New Weezer as Coke is to New Coke.), and you would say “thank you this is the sound of Rock and Roll.” I just want proverbially slam down my lunch tray, climb to the tallest church steeple, and manically cackle at anyone who can hear me: LISTEN EVERYONE YOU DON’T HAVE TO LIKE P.O.D. All the bands I just listed (minus Weezer; the only band of that group that once was good) have the same cookie-cutter, template produced sound. And the tragedy is that the elements people like about that music are expressed more skillfully and more creatively by other bands that aren’t played on the radio.

Though it does afford more and more opportunities to play the Jet game.

In short: Fuck you, Jet. I guess this post became a Thing about Stuff too.

———————

Best “X… or Jet” Xs so far: Vivaldi, The Presidents of the United States of America

*Actual mixtape through which I have actually had to sit recently.