Leonard Cohen is a Genius

That is all.

Kill For Metal

I have often been engaged in the discussion as to what music would best serve as a soundtrack to my life. Inevitably when I think about it for awhile, and am entirely honest with myself, I come to the conclusion that it would have to be something low key and comparatively boring like Tracy Chapman (no disrespect to her, just sayin', she probably isn't going to be storming any castles any time soon). All in all my life is pretty standard, not much happens and I have come to terms with that.

That being said, I am infinitely jealous of the person whose life would be perfectly accompanied by Iron Fire, particularly the music on their new album To the Grave (and I have to believe that such a person exists or else my faith in the potential for awesome in mankind will be altogether shattered). That person's life must consist entirely of driving an exceedingly fast and cool convertible with a beautiful woman and slaying dragons.

You see, Iron Fire play power metal of the purest sort, in the way of 3 Inches of Blood and Manowar. However, were I to compare the relative power inherent in a typical power metal band to that of the power contained in Iron Fire I would employ a ridiculous analogy such as the following:
A standard power metal band receives their power from the electrical grid of a small town.
Iron Fire on the other and gleans their power from the collective electrical power of the entire United States. In fact while I would describe a band like Manowar as power metal (again no disrespect, this is just for the sake of comparison and to support my claim as to how awesome they are) I would call Iron Fire POWER METAL!!!!!!!!!

Perhaps Iron Fire's greatest strength are their ability to cleanly include aspects of death metal into what might otherwise have been a relatively weak sounding album. Fear not, Iron Fire still consists of the shouted group choruses, the soaring vocals, and the searing guitar solos we all love- the simply reference death metal at opportune times in order to give the music a little extra shot of adrenaline.

Seriously, there is not a single dud on this album- they all have me revving my engine and clanging my sword in its sheath. God forbid the day I actually listen to this while driving- I might just end up looking for something to ramp off of.

i am a poet

All you need is

love

joy

love

julia

love

rocky raccoon

love

yesterday

love

sgt. pepper

love is all you need
when your soul is feeling
like a rubber ball

are you looking through
the looking glass
mr. mustard?

are you?

all you need is love

Paul Baribeau

Paul Baribeau - Chelsea Hotel No. 2 from If You Make It on Vimeo.

I'm not sure it is possible for me to overstate how much I love Paul Baribeau. Listen to his music this instant if you have not heard it yet.
His self titled album, according to the liner notes, is a compilation of demos that he recorded over a very short period of time. The album "Grand Ledge" is a bit more... focused at only 9 songs in length and it sounds like he spent more time on it. Both albums have their individual strengths and it is truly a difficult proposition for me to try to pick my favorite between the two.
You can buy both of them on the cheap here.
Also look at him on Myspace if you want to hear some recordings of him doing his own songs (although for some reason that Leonard Cohen cover tears me up).

The Voices Ride Again

Lost. You let me down last night. No new footage. No new information. An hour long recap episode? In the immortal words of Tom Petty, "Don't do me like that."

In other news, Hellboy is unequivocally the best comic book movie ever made. It is positively unoutdoable.
I now offer unto thee a youtube video of scenes from Hellboy set to a Slayer song.

Goregrinding Rollercoaster Ride

Oh. My. Decapitated. Head.
I just got the new Cattle Decapitation record and I am positively speechless. Is it in the running for my favorite album of the year so far you ask? Unarguably yes.

This album will probably be derided in a lot of circles for precisely the reasons that I love it. Cattle Decapitation used to be more grind than death, an equation that seems to have been resoundingly flipped with this album. The songs are longer ("The Gardener's of Eden" tops five minutes) and they've injected a little bit of (shock! horror!) melody into these songs. Some might call this selling out, I call it developing. "The Gardener's of Eden" is perhaps the best example of this development. This song is still pretty brutal, but at the same time it is a dynamic ride of a song. The best analogy I can think of for this is a rollercoaster. Most of the time you are being whipped around and flipped upside down, but every once in awhile you get a bit of a breather while you're being pulled uphill. A breather which we all know ultimately makes the coming onslaught even more intense.

There is not a single bad song on this album (except for maybe "The Harvest Floor" which is less a bad song and more a breather that lasts too long) and there are some really truly great songs. Like I mentioned before "The Gardener's of Eden" is like a precis of the entire record, it really does a great job of distilling everything that makes this album great in one song. Then, there is of course "Regret and the Grave" the epic and headcrushing closer.

What's more, all of this awesomeness is crammed into an easy to take package. Clocking in at under 40 minutes, the album doesn't stick around long enough to get stale or entirely wear out the listener, but it's long enough to satisfy every gorey and grindy desire you might have.

The only complaint I do have is a minimal one. It seems like in moving from their grindcore roots CD might be heading in the direction of virtuosic noodling for virtuosic noodling's sake. While this isn't a major turn off in the context of this particular record because it doesn't really overtake any of the songs, it's more of a shadow of things that may be to come. What's more, this virtuosic noodling isn't even a necessarily a bad thing, it just isn't my cup of tea.

A final note, I included the album art for this record in the post because I think it is entirely awesome in it's ability to completely encapsulate the band's central message. (It of course gets nowhere near topping the artwork for "Humanure" which was a revelation in it's glorious disgustingness, incidentally, that link is not for the faint of heart).

"Ya Got a Sunburn Under Your Eyes"

Hindsight is 20/20 they say. Whoever they are, they seem to have a pretty good grip on reality. This last Saturday in Dunn Meadow at Indiana University an event to remember went down called Culture Shock. Basically it was a free music festival with all sorts of bands and all sorts of people and all sorts of dogs put on by IU's student radio station, WIUX. It was a good day to say the least. Now, if I were anything approaching a decently respectable blogger I would have posted about this event awhile ago, but of course I didn't. So, hindsight being what it is I would like to give you all something of a "greatest hits" of the day.

Found Objects:
Self described "Experimental/Pop/Shoegaze from right here in Bloomington could more accurately describe themselves as "noisy bangy melodic nonsense with laptops" but probably haven't yet because that simply doesn't look as good on paper. Also to be fair that could just as likely be a description of Apple Computers' headquarters as a two man band (give or take the word "melodic" depending upon your opinion of Steve Jobs and his posse).

All discussions of their relative genre aside, these guys were great. It's always impressive to see a band who doesn't fall into what I will describe as the "blog haus sinkhole" in which a band's smugness and relative level of boredom inducement is directly correllative to the number of laptops they use. Found Objects does a great job implementing all sorts of sounds with a mixture of loops, live instrumentation, and feedback, all while maintaining a respectable level of melodicism. All of this while putting on a thoroughly arresting show- I am a big fan of watching bands that you can really see how much they are totally psyched to be there and Found Objects are definitely one of those bands.

Originally I was going to include a metaphor about the band's sound here but have since thought better of it. Trusting me, you aren't missing anything, it was probably inane and barely related to the subject at hand.

Tremendous Fucking (aka TremFu):
This band, also from Bloomington, strikes me as one best served by brevity of description and an attempt to compel the reader to see them live if at all possible. Thus:

A little bit of Les Savy Fav. A little bit of Jesus Lizard. A whole lot of fun. Go see them live if at all possible.

CYNE:
Possibly the best rapper I had never heard of before this festival. I initially heard him from a distance and assumed that it was a recording- it sounded that good. Without going to deeply into a technical discussion of his style and ability and making myself sound like a fool, the lead rapper in this group was absolutely fantastic. In terms of sheer technical impressiveness he rivaled Lupe Fiasco. This is truly a group that I was glad I got to see and fully intend to check out some more.

Extra Golden:
Afropop? Yes! Are they awesome? YESSSSSSS!!! Did I dance throughout the entire course of their set? I must admit I did.

Destroyer:
Dan Bejar is a great songwriter, that fact is well established. He commands respect like no other with his tremendous output in the various entities known as Swan Lake, The New Pornographers, and of course his solo endeavors, Destroyer. Despite the tendency for his records to be filled to the top with all sorts of musical layers, he played a relatively low-key solo acoustic set. This is not to say however, that the songs did not translate well. Quite the contrary in fact. Until this performance I was never truly struck how much he sounds like Bob Dylan, but he doesn't do Bob Dylan in the Way Tallest Man on Earth does him. If Tallest Man on Earth has internalized the Bob Dylan from "Freewheelin'" era, Dan Bejar has similarly internalized the "Highway 61" era.

All in all, it was good day. I did get a sunburn under my eyes which was a little bit less than pleasant, but I got over it. I also had the chance to play with an inordinate amount of dogs which threatened to pull me away from the festival altogether.

In Which I Do Something Only Slightly Self Aggrandizing

If pressed I think I would have to say that my favorite thing to do is record music. Basically, whenever I've got a bit of free time I will invariably try to record something. This creates a pretty constant stream of musical creations, some of them good, some of them bad. Sometimes I make things that I don't particularly feel would fit into the context of my band The Elegant Bachelors. For a long while I wasn't quite sure what to do with those. Over spring break, I experienced a particular glut of free time and recorded an entire album. Because of this I decided I needed to do something with all of this nonsense that I was recording.

Thus The Margins were born.


I am not going to front, The Margins are sort of bizarre and often sound more than a little like Jandek, largely because that is mostly what I have been listening to lately and I wanted to see if I could do that. I suppose if I were to start listening to a lot more Ted Nugent these songs would start moving in that direction. In spite of this I am rather proud of the album that I made called "El Que Nace No Se Logra" and I figured posting it to my blog was less of a high risk endeavor than trying to sell it for real money.

This album is a concept record of sorts with nine songs titled as follows:
1. Hands to Touch
2. Lungs to Breathe
3. Legs to Walk
4. Mouth to Speak
5. Eyes to See
6. Heart to Beat
7. Ears to Hear
8. Arms to Hold
9. God to Thank

However, the download for this album consists of only two tracks. You see, I recorded the album to cassette and thought it would be nice to maintain the cassette/LP feel of the album.

So, if I haven't lost you by now with the comparisons to Jandek and the inevitable low quality because of the medium onto which it was recorded you can find a download for it here.

If you like it let me know. If you don't, hold your peace, I have a very fragile psyche.

Bad Poetry For Good Bands

Blink

all the angst and all...
the joy of youth in packages fair and sweet
what IS my age?
who IS the girl at the rock show?
and if i take my toaster in the bath, will you be my new girlfriend?

though profane
on surface light appears
profound arrives on closer looks
closer looks
closer looks

why wouldn't you pun
enemy
enema
we all wish we had thought of it, we all can wish but never live

take
off
your pants and
jacket

never looked so close at break of day
never came so close to perfect revelry
never died in minds of middle school

one hundred
eighty
two

Slayer of Goats

Right here right now I have decided that I will be starting a metal band in the very near future. I have not entirely decided on a number of important criterion for this band (the name, the instrumentation, the songs, etc.) but I feel that these things will fall into place when the time is right.

While I can't be certain, again I intend to allow things to simply fall into place, I feel particularly attracted to the genre of black metal and not only because I don't think I am good enough at guitar to handle the solos and such that are symptomatic of other genres. My band will be brutal, evil, and it will invariably involve corpse paint of some sort.

The first purpose of this post is that of a call out of sorts. Are you interested in playing guitar or drums or singing in a black metal band? Seriously email me.

This decision has grown out of my recent realization that black metal as a genre is vastly superior to all others, not only all other genres of metal but to all genres of music in general. I realize this is a grossly reductive statement, and one that will prove difficult to defend but I don't really care. Black metal is all that I want to hear.

I lieu of an explicitly cogent defense of my genre of choice, I will present a number of metaphors that I hope will clearly explicate my effusive love:

Black metal is the wood chipper through which all other forms of music must go.

Black metal is like a giant meat tenderizer that crushes anyone who tries to confront it and turns them into a pulpy mess of ineffectuality.

Black metal is a massive sword with poison on every edge.

Black metal is a flame thrower so big that it could consume your house in a single shot.

Black metal is the calm moment in the early afternoon when you see a mushroom cloud in the distance before you feel the shockwave.

Black metal is the dude that broke into the Huxtable's house in the Cosby show and screamed all of the evils of the world at them for 3 days straight.

Black metal is a black eagle that has the ability to shoot heat seeking missiles.

Black metal is a stealth bomber covered in corpse paint.

Black metal is your mother, if she were dead and still trying to ground you.

Black metal is your father, if he were on fire.

Black metal is your dog, assuming of course that your dog is giant, has three heads, and guards the entry way to hell.

Now We Can See

The new Thermals record is killer. Killer. This album is the sound of a band that knows what they are about, and have known what they are about for awhile. If there were a competition for most consistently awesome band in the world The Thermals would definitely be in the running. Out of their four albums there is not a single bad one, weaker ones sure but it would probably cause a tear in the space time continuum if a band were to constantly make unbelievably good albums one after the other. I mean, the tide has to go out sometimes.

What's more, if you get the chance to hear the B-Side to the "Now We Can See" Single, "My World," do it. This album is such a zinger that even the B-Sides slay me.

Eeeeek!

Last night was the night. The Mountain Goats, John Vanderslice, and the Tallest Man on Earth came to town and said their piece. It was a great time.

The Tallest Man on Earth opened and I was immediately struck by the irrelevant fact of his relative shortness. False advertising? I think so.

Nevertheless, he put on a great show reaffirming my love for "Shallow Grave" rather handily. Perhaps the best word to describe the way he performed was charming. The way he played, it seemed that he was a guy that was used to playing in his bedroom that had accidentally wandered on to a stage, found an audience, and decided to keep on playing. When he wasn't singing, he was constantly nonchalantly walking around the stage- a practice that was nothing if not endearing. Even though he didn't really speak beyond saying "thank you" at the end of a few songs, he was completely involved with the audience. I like that. I would imagine that most guys who accidentally wander onto a stage and start performing would tend to ignore the audience and look at the floor. A top notch performance from a seemingly top notch dude with some top notch songs. Top notch. Ton potch. Top notch.

As a side note my friends and I noted among other things that he had a great mustache and that he looked like a mix between James Franco and John Mayer. What this means is anybody's guess.

Next came John Vanderslice. While I have enjoyed his music in the past I have never been particularly grabbed by him, so to speak. I can safely say however that his performance won me over once and for all. The first sign that this was going to be the case was when he invited the audience that was previously seated to join him on the stage. He did not ask them to come towards the stage, but to get on the stage with him and sit in a circle around him campfire style. A request that the audience of course obliged with a great deal of tenacity. Endearing? Yes. (If you have been paying attention you may have noticed that I have already used that word to describe the performance of The Tallest Man on Earth, my money is on my using it to describe the Mountain Goats as well).

Immediately during the beginning of his first song I remembered how much I like his voice. There is something about it that simply appeals to me (do I find it endearing? I suppose I do) and it reminds me of something I can't quite put my finger on. The songs he played from his new album "Romainian Names" were very good shifting me from comfortable ambivalence about that album to "very excited."

Also, If The Tallest Man on Earth was engaged with the audience, Vanderslice was superangaged (another word of my own invention). At various times he gave out water bottles to audience members as he had too many, chastised himself to for not having better gifts to give to the audience, and offered to divvy up the extra food in the tour van amongst any audience members willing to meet him in the parking lot after the show to make up for the lacking nature of his water bottle gifts.

The final performer of the evening was of course the Mountain Goats. While I thoroughly enjoyed the first two artists, I will admit that I was primarily there for tMG. I think that is fair since as I have mentioned, the music of this band is the primary focus of my obsessive nature. When John Darnielle walked on to the stage I was reminded how simultaneously cool and goofy he is, and when he started playing I was reminded (as if I needed anything of the sort) how much I love his songs.

As an added bonus he played one song that he had never played live before ("Treetop Song") and another rarity ("Cutter" a special dedication to Bloomington I suppose) and was generally very entertaining. In fact, probably the highest non-musical point of the set was his extensive explanation of the story behind the newest release and how people who harvest organs on the moon are not allowed to have close relationships with other people (as they might divulge secrets) and are rather made to live alone in Colorado in very lush, if solitary, accommodations.

Also, exciting news, Darnielle made mention of the fact that he would be going back into the studio soon to record a new album. Of course when I hear more I will immediately write about it.

Almost last, but certainly not least, upon my perusal of the Mountain Goats forums I found someone who had recorded both of the John's sets and posted them to archive.org and I feel that I would be quite remiss if I did not post them here.
John Vanderslice
the Mountain Goats
Thanks to Craig on the forums for these great recordings.

Sadly I did not get any good pictures as my camera is MIA and my friend's camera does not react well to being politely asked not to flash. It is sort of testy that way. Hopefully the audio can help to create a bit of a story for you. If it helps, just imagine three men of varying heights wandering around a rather large stage in a rather large theater singing songs about the many degrees of love and hate. I think that about sums it up.

Pure Unadulterated Nonsense

The Days Are Green and filled With Green

international
superhits, an entry point
to infinite joy

as a sixth grader
nothing seems quite so awesome
as longview played loud

the poetry of
welcome to paradise and
she- beyond compare

bass riffs abounded
so thundering and perfect
from nimble fingers

power chords were used
better than ever before
to pummel the ears

and drumming power
without worthy opponents
fills the air with sound

also i have heard
that a musical will come
soon, how cool is that?

News From the Front

I have often been described as having a short term obsessive personality (a term, if you must know, of my own invention). I tend to flit around from obsession to obsession in relatively short phases. The flavor of March was Xiu Xiu, who knows what will be next. For about two months last year I was threatened within an inch of my life to drop the High Places nonsense or else by a few of my very dearest friends. Throughout the entire month of June in 2008 I categorically refused to watch any movie not called "Wonderboys."

That being said, there has been one obsession that has remained quite constant. That is my obsession with a certain band called the Mountain Goats. For those of you unfamiliar with the Mountain Goats I will refrain from explaining them too thoroughly as I would sincerely like to avoid pathetic fanboy drivel. Suffice it to say, the Mountain Goats play relatively simple folk pop music with a tremendous focus on the lyrical content. To say that I love them would be a gross understatement.


I simply present this information as something of an apology for the behavior I will exhibit from time to time on this blog. While my goal is to write about the broadest number of topics possible, the Mountain Goats will likely be a frequently recurring topic. In fact, I must say that I am surprised with and proud of myself for refraining from writing about them up until this point.

Now however, is a time to break the silence.

You see, within a month or so (this is likely however not for sure as there has been no specific date set as of yet) John Darnielle (the primary songwriter for the Mountain Goats) will be releasing an album with John Vanderslice. This album will invariably be awesome. How do I know this you ask? I have three reasons:

1. Look at the album art here. When you see it you will certainly agree that any music contained therein must without a doubt be awesome.

2. It will be called "Moon Colony Bloodbath" and it is apparently a concept EP about people who live on the moon in some capacity (also, likely a great number of them die making the use of the word bloodbath in the title quite fitting). While I will readily admit that I do not know the details of this story and I could in fact be wrong, the pure fact that the album is called "Moon Colony Bloodbath" is, in my humble opinion, the definition of badass.

3. It involves the collaborative work of two of the greatest songwriters out there today, Johns Darnielle and Vanderslice.

So, you now see why wait with baited breath for the release of this album. As a side note, I am seeing both Darnielle and Vanderslice next Monday- expect pictures, commentary, and school girl-esque screams to follow.

And they asked him, "Why You Be Foolin'?"

Trent Reznor has just given me one more reason to love him.

Happy April Fools day from Nine Inch Nails, me, and president Obama.


UPDATE: Oh my lord, I just found out that Bjork is touring with Led Zeppelin. That is another thing I did not know about them.

Skye= Cracked

And there was great joy throughout the land.
I have finally come into possession of the long awaited new album by Mastodon. While it is quite clearly indicative of a somewhat new direction for our Atlantian boys, it rocks no less hard than previous releases. Well, to be fair it rocks a little less hard than previous releases but mostly because of the production (the low end in all of its previous mother punching glory is slightly less predominant) and the pure fact that it seems Mastodon is moving in a slightly more melodic direction.
Now, let me be the first (or rather probably the hundredth) to say that this is in no way a bad thing. In fact, it really serves the album well. One description I have always hated but yet seems fitting here is "mature." Now I don't mean mature like how Ben Folds got mature and stopped singing about how he wants his black t-shirt back and started singing about his kids. I mean mature in the sense that they simply seem more comfortable than ever doing what they do. But they aren't "getting comfortable" and slacking off, they are still quite great. Basically every avenue I go down to describe this record ends up sounding like a left handed sort of compliment. In order to head this potentially harmful path off I will close by saying this- if you already like Mastodon you will probably like this record. If you did not like Mastodon in the past because you wanted more melody you might like this record. If you like music that is loud you will probably like this record. If you are my roommate you will make fun of this album's artwork.

On an entirely unrelated note, I heard a bit of the new Yeah Yeah Yeah's record and I am disappointed. However, I must qualify my disappointment with the fact that I will almost invariably be disappointed with any Yeah Yeah Yeah's release that does not regain the awesomeness of "Man" from Fever to Tell. Updates will be forthcoming on whether this disappointment is fleeting or permanent.