One Word Review: Mystic Pizza

24: Cheesy

Top 50 Albums of the 00s - #16: Andrew Bird - Armchair Apocrypha

Yep, we're counting down the top 50. Click here for overview and criteria.

Of all the albums I've "first blushed" here, this is the only one that ended up in the Top 50. Others were very close, but couldn't quite make the cut. When I did the full digestion, I said the album is "easily Bird's most complete," and that statement still rings true. My appreciation of this record has only deepened since it was released. There is no mediocre track on it.

After removing most of his collaborators in favor of percussionist extraordinaire Martin Dosh, Andrew Bird uses Armchair Apocrypha as a chance to evolve yet again. It's not quite as dramatic as the shift seen a few albums earlier when he left behind the rustic, gypsy-inspired folk in favor of rustic avant-garde indie folk, but there's a shift in tone. From the album's opener, "Fiery Crash," it's clear that he's gunning for atmosphere instead of highlighting again his earlier flair for solos and winking irony. I'm still into his previous records. That's not a dig - just an observation of his evolution. At the same time, once we get deeper into the record, he shows a level of enthusiasm that he hasn't displayed before or since. While in other releases, he seems to approach the peaks just to take a quick look at the view, on this one, he's not afraid to linger in the dynamism.

Also at the same time, Bird delves deeply into harmonies with only himself. Songs that would have previously needed to play in layered tones with the vocals of Nora O'Connor now live in triplicate overdubs on their own. Hence we continue with the dynamism. And the other aspect he has added is some open space. His earlier records skipped from song to song, with each one eager to make its point. But a song like "Cataracts" leaves the listener filling in the gaps on his own, making the peaks all the more significant.

I could go on and on here, but don't want to bore you. My favorite tracks have changed many times, a sign of the strength of the record. But the three that always seem to be floating near the top are "Armchairs," "Dark Matter," and "Spare-ohs." I highly recommend purchasing this record. I still sounds new to me almost four years after its release.


And because everyone has come to this site a million times looking for the definition of "imitosis," let me give it my best shot. First of all, let's look at the background. It is clear that Bird is making a play on words, combining three of them together: I, Imitation, and Mitosis. Why did I include I? Because he is covering his old song by that name. Hence the concept of imitation in the first place.

In the new version, the point of view of the song has changed completely. The original has very few lyrics, but they are in the first-person plural. Now we are in third-person singular, talking about Poor Professor Pension, who is busy studying why so many things in nature are set in opposition to one another. Yet the overall theme is the same. Every person on the planet is so busy trying to figure everything out, we never come to the conclusion that we are inherently "alone."

But where does mitosis come into it? Mitosis refers to cell division starting in the nucleus of a cell. Its result is two cells that may be very similar but not necessarily identical. And this phenomenon is crucial to how all living things grow. So one could rightfully say that Bird is taking the nucleus of his old song and creating a new, similar song as he grows his very oeuvre. Bird's lyrics in the song seem to indicate that mitosis doesn't necessarily mean these "copied" cells have any reason to get along with one another and therefore we remain "all basically alone." Given that Bird is known for becoming tired of his own music, it is safe to assume that Imitosis has completely replaced I in his on-stage repertoire, further indication of these "split cells" not hanging out with each other.

So, in sum, the definition of Imitosis, as I can best approximate it is as follows: a process by which one personal output is built directly upon a previous work by the same entity, thus rendering the previous work less integral to the creator's overall body of work while, at the same time, improving said body.

Please feel free to comment on how this can be improved...







Previous Entries:
#17 - Jens Lekman - Oh You're So Silent, Jens
#18 - Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
#19 - Band of Horses - Everything All the Time
#20 - The Lawrence Arms - Oh! Calcutta!
#21 - Amy Winehouse - Back to Black
#22 - Mission of Burma - The Obliterati
#23 - Don Caballero - World Class Listening Problem
#24 - The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
#25 - Tapes 'n Tapes - The Loon
#26 - Kings of Leon - Aha Shake Heartbreak

Merry Christmas from Fighting The Youth

Some nostalgic Christmas cheer. Kinda.



A new song from The Futureheads released just for your holiday enjoyment.

The Daily Show Ten Years Ago

Ten years ago this past Sunday:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Headlines - Transition Impossible
www.thedailyshow.com
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Top 50 Albums of the 00s - #17: Jens Lekman - Oh You're So Silent, Jens

Yep, we're counting down the top 50. Click here for overview and criteria.

Well, I must admit I made a mistake. It's not the first one I've made in this process, but underestimating albums on this list is a very reconcilable problem. I just bump them up and get to them later. Overestimating, on the other hand, leaves you no outs. We're all the way up to #17, so I can't just grab some replacement album that didn't make it. And it's not like this album deserves the boot, either. Let me explain what happened.

There are a few albums that merit placement on this list based on one song alone, though the rest of the album can't be garbage. Hence Hard-Fi doesn't get in on the strength of "Cash Machine." When I put my overall list together, I was very torn between Jens Lekman's second and third releases, knowing I loved them both for various reasons. Well I should have committed right at the beginning. Between their best tracks is one amazing record and then another one that would be so-so. Individually, I must admit that Oh You're So Silent Jens should be slightly lower on our list. But we're still talking Top 30 for sure. I'm being too hard on myself. Enough with the apologies, let's get to the praise.

When I saw Jens Lekman perform he mentioned that he has a problem telling stores. When he recounts sad tales, they come out funny, and when he tries to tell a humorous anectode, it comes out sad. I don't know on which side of this quandary the album opener, "At the Department of Forgotten Songs" is supposed to reside. It's clearly meant to be sad, but so calm it's comforting. Either way, it's not exactly a way to burst out of the gates on a record. But our patience will pay off.

Things proceed peacefully until we get to "Pocketful of Money." This is the song that brought Jens to my attention. I can't remember where or when or how it was that I came across it. The song seems overly simple at first, but then, out of nowhere a brilliantly placed sample of Beat Happening's Calvin Johnson crashes in, and the song has our complete attention. Suddenly you are moving to the beat and what seemed like a light pop tune reveals a bedrock of real soul. The song exemplifies how one arrives at Lekman's music on the whole. At first, there's no real reason to be interested. But quite quickly, Jens wins you over completely. Listening to his records, there's no way you can't like this guy. Seeing him live will only cement your attention.

Technically this isn't an album. It's a collection of songs that Lekman had available to make an album-length release. But you wouldn't really know it. The tracks flow into one another and seem to have been recorded in the same session. Some are better than others, but they work together to occupy a unique space in music today. There's nobody else in the Top 50 that I could compare to Lekman. His style is his own, or at least he does it much better than anybody else.

I mentioned that sometimes one fantastic song is enough to consecrate an album, and that's absolutely the case here. "Black Cab" is one of those songs. The lyrics are inherently dejected, but instead of being goofy or funny, Jens has turned his misery in to pure sweetness. Like an adorable puppy that just needs a good home, you can't help but take the tune with you. It is perhaps the most perfectly crafted pop song I know. Check the video below and tell me you don't adore it. I know I'll be keeping it with me for the rest of my life. You know what? This song is so damn good that Jens deserves #17. Besides, the rest of the record is really solid. I rescind all previous apologies. Give these a spin and tell me I'm right...






Previous Entries:
#18 - Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
#19 - Band of Horses - Everything All the Time
#20 - The Lawrence Arms - Oh! Calcutta!
#21 - Amy Winehouse - Back to Black
#22 - Mission of Burma - The Obliterati
#23 - Don Caballero - World Class Listening Problem
#24 - The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
#25 - Tapes 'n Tapes - The Loon
#26 - Kings of Leon - Aha Shake Heartbreak
#27 - Idlewild - 100 Broken Windows

The Alternative 90s: The AV Club's Retrospective: 1994

Here we continue to react to the Steven Hyden's take on the Alternative 90s. Click over yonder to review Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.

Without a doubt, the biggest event in the Alternative Rock movement in 1994 was the suicide of Kurt Cobain. In the latest update of his retrospective, Hyden devotes the majority of his time to this event, starting off with a candid and self-deprecating explanation of how it went down for him. I hadn't realized it, but Cobain's demise certainly was a "where were you when" moment. We don't have so many of those our generation, and this one is easily more trivial than the Challenger explosion, Columbine High School, or 9/11. But I suppose I will always remember riding around in a girl's car on North Campus while my buddy Ken announced on the college radio station, "Kurt Cobian blew his brains to Brooklyn," before spinning "Rape Me." We turned up the volume and drove along. At that moment, Cobain's death clearly wasn't all that important to any of us. We weren't Nirvana fans. Beyond noting the significant newsworthiness of the event, we were unaffected. Or maybe it was Ken's fault for joking about it in the first place.

The only Nirvana album I've ever really cared about was Incesticide, which isn't an album. But it is easily the most interesting collection of songs they released. A recent review of their discography only confirmed this notion. Our flippant reaction perhaps wasn't warranted, but we were 18 years old and to us it was just another news item that had little bearing on our lives. All we knew was that Nirvana was about to see a spike in record sales. Sometimes, when you're in college, you can be surprising isolated from the rest of the world. Even Lewinskygate a few years later was not big news compared to things we were actually busy with. While this may have been an international event, to us, it was just one day's news, driving around.

Hyden took it far more personally, as did almost everybody else. He delivers an excellent piece of research, laying out all kinds of details and interpretation surrounding Cobain's tragic demise. Perhaps the most interesting (but also the most heavy-handed) is his interpretation of the band's famous Unplugged set as a self-thrown funeral for Cobain.

In light of Cobain’s suicide, MTV Unplugged In New York was commonly heard as the work of a man committed to the idea of being dead as soon as possible. I know I’m not the only one that hears Kurt Cobain performing his own burial rites whenever the record plays. It’s not just a matter of the music’s close proximity to Cobain’s death; the suicide simply brought what was already there into greater focus.

To be sure, his suicide was not a surprise at the time. Hence our lack of drama in hearing the news. And maybe Cobain planned the Unplugged performance that way, but only he really knows and he's not around to tell us. To me it's more of a Rorschach test. I see a guy in a lot of anguish, Hyden sees a guy who was deliberately tell us he was going to kill himself through song.

Hyden then steers the direction to Soundgarden's breakthrough album, "Superunknown." Had Chris Cornell died at the time, then I would have been a lot more affected. As they hit the big-time, I went through many of the same conflicts as I had with Smashing Pumpkins earlier, though with a few differences. At least with Smashing Pumpkins, the hit songs were good. Soundgarden's most successful tracks were also their worst. The first time I heard Black Hole Sun, I was overwhelmed by its banality. I couldn't believe this was the same band that had created Jesus Christ Pose on their previous record. That said, there were plenty of good songs on Superunknown, even if the band had backed away from the heaviness that had made their Badmotorfinger so successful (for me).

And with all this important news, there is no room for the other tragedy involving a Georgia band called Collective Soul. A band of mediocre talent and lesser songwriting was packaged as alternative and went platinum. Seriously, this was their hit single. It pointed alternative music in a new direction that soon became a tailspin from which the genre would never recover. At least Cobain wasn't around to see it.

In the end, Hyden's narrow take on the year leads him to make some conflicting conclusions:

Kurt Cobain was not a martyr, and I’m not going to dehumanize him by turning his life and death into a crushed velvet painting. But I’m also not going to let Nirvana be reduced to a load of hype signifying nothing. Yes, I was one of the mourners. Kurt Cobain's music made my life better, opening me up to new worlds that enriched my existence immensely. I’m extremely grateful that Nevermind came into my life when it did, because I was a lonely kid that really needed something to connect with. Just because I’m fortunate enough to no longer be 13 years old doesn’t mean I’ll ever set aside my gratitude for what Cobain once gave me, or my grief for where he ended up. I can only speak for myself...here; maybe you didn’t give a shit. But to me, you’re goddamn right Kurt Cobain fucking mattered.

In Nick Hornby's "About a Boy," he uses Cobain's impending suicide as a clumsy plot vehicle. It was wisely removed from the movie. I guess I feel similarly about Hyden's latest article. Of course he can't possibly have ignored Cobain's death. As I said, it was the biggest event that year. But in the end, did it really do anything to music? Nirvana would have had more albums, and so that's a loss. But the way things were moving, with the onslaught of more and more crappy, knockoff alternabands, what Nirvana stood for was doomed either way. Cobain could have been a dead martyr or a living one. He chose the way he had to. And we can have whatever opinion we want about it, but those opinions don't matter.

It's another solid output from Hyden, but one that I'm afraid doesn't move me quite as much. But his next post should be up tomorrow!

Top 50 Albums of the 00s - #18: Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes

Yep, we're counting down the top 50. Click here for overview and criteria.

Of course it starts off a capella. Anything else would simply be wrong. But it's the most rustic thing you've ever heard. Like a moment from the O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack that didn't make the cut because it sounded a generation too early. That initial tease only lasts 20 seconds, and as we really get into that first track, the band patiently adds layers throughout its three minutes. At this point, they are simply a bird showing its plumage - a display of capabilities. If the rest of the songs were to continue this way, we would say "this is a group of extremely talented singers who harmonize as well as anyone in the history of music" and leave it at that. But by the time we get just one minute into "White Winter Hymnal" it's clear that we're here for something amazing.

Fleet Foxes certainly fit into the neo-folk movement that became a fixture of the indie circuit in the second half of the decade. Bands like Grizzly Bear, Beach House, and The Shins each put out their version of modern harmonized beauty, and though they came close, weren't quite compelling enough make the Top 50 list here. Fleet Foxes' take is not as revolutionary, and maybe it's because they stayed more true to their roots that they achieved so much in their debut self-titled album. Or maybe they're just that freaking talented.

"Ragged Wood" is perfectly named, a light, rambling piece of music that builds on what the first two tracks started. It may not be conceptually profound, but the sonic teamwork calmly soars above the slight guitar notes. "Tell me anything you want. Any old lie will do. Call me back to, back to you." It's the way they say it. Despite all the praise I've doled out, the second half of the record is even better. "He Doesn't Know Why" (video here) has all the potential energy of a building tilting ever closer to the ground but never quite collapsing.

"Your Protector" uses a driving rhythm and vocals peaking to set up the bombastic harmonies in the chorus: "You ruuuuuun with the devil." The record climaxes with the absolutely shimmering brilliance of "Blue Ridge Mountains," a song befitting the landscape it deals with. Listening to the record as a whole, I can't help be struck by two things. The first is just how incredibly together the band is, and everyone who saw them at 2008's Pitchfork Music Festival witnessed how well they can pull it off in concert. The second is that the band (and production team) clearly put in a ton of attention and effort in making this record. This is not garage rock. Each note seems cared for like a child.

I have no idea where the band will go from here. If they put out the same kind of record again, I will not be upset, but it seems hard to imagine they can outdo themselves while keeping the exact same style. All I know is that every time I play this album I find myself singing its songs out loud for about two weeks, especially in any place with a decent echo. I suppose it's not for everyone, but I wouldn't have thought it was for me, either. The music is too good not to adore it. But you can judge for yourself.






Previous Entries:
#19 - Band of Horses - Everything All the Time
#20 - The Lawrence Arms - Oh! Calcutta!
#21 - Amy Winehouse - Back to Black
#22 - Mission of Burma - The Obliterati
#23 - Don Caballero - World Class Listening Problem
#24 - The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
#25 - Tapes 'n Tapes - The Loon
#26 - Kings of Leon - Aha Shake Heartbreak
#27 - Idlewild - 100 Broken Windows
#28 - Common - Be