Where Did All The Music Go?

Alright, let me clarify here. Music hasn’t gone anywhere. If anything, there’s more music around today than ever before. Anyone can get an audience these days, whether you’re another bubblegum clone or some guy sitting at a computer idolizing Aphex Twin. A regular tsunami of tunes drenches me every time I pop open my laptop. I have over ten thousand songs without owning more than two hundred CDs. Every single step of the musical process has become so ridiculously easy…that is, every part of the commercial aspect. The production, selling, purchasing, and thievery of music are as simple as can be, thanks to those newfangled computers. You don’t need a label; just put your album on Myspace. You don’t need a record shop; just get a decent torrent site. And what’s the only thing that hasn’t gotten easier with this new wave of technology? The art of songwriting.

Had you talked to me last year, I would have said that in August, I would have listened to more excellent albums that I could have gotten my hands on. Sometimes it kills to be an optimist. But just looking at the lineup this year…Arcade Fire, the National, Wilco, Dinosaur Jr, the Shins, Modest Mouse, Interpol, Smashing Pumpkins, Bloc Party, Spoon, the New Pornographers, Queens of the Stoneage, White Stripes, Porcupine Tree, Stars, Arctic Monkeys, the list seems endless. And some of those albums were excellent (Arcade Fire, the National, Dinosaur Jr, Spoon) but the rest? They ranged from good to bland.

Criticisms aside, with so much music floating around these days and the ease with which such music can float from the creator to the listener, why is it that I can’t honestly say that there’s been one record this year that’s blown my mind? Where’s this year’s Return to Cookie Mountain, Boys and Girls in America, or Come On! Feel the Illinoise? For that matter, where’s this generation’s Nevermind, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, Zeppelin IV, Dark Side of the Moon, or Revolver, where is that brilliant album that nearly everyone can toss into their stereo and feel as if they’re experiencing not just music but something with a greater feel and scope than ears and speakers? The album that hits at the hearts and minds of not just the hardcore who lurk around music blogs waiting for the latest leaks, but the mainstream as well? It might be ridiculous to expect something remarkable to come out in the first eight months of the year, but did you see the lineup hat was in the previous paragraph? One would have been foolish not to expect a masterpiece.

Perhaps, because indie has become so big, with Modest Mouse and the Shins debuting at number one on the charts (despite the dying CD format, it’s still something) and with so many artists latching onto major labels nowadays maybe it’s just the hype machine that has led me to such disappointment this summer. When you’re going to stereogum every day, when you go to hype machine and can’t help but grabbing that leaked track off of so and so’s newest album, when the album itself has become a disjointed assortment of tracks rarely held together by a singular emotion or theme (just because the songs sound similar doesn’t mean they’re necessarily ‘together’), isn’t a bit of the magic lost?

Not to be an old sentimentalist, since I’m not particularly old or sentimental, but there’s still something to be said for going to an old music shop and sifting through dozens of CDs trying to find that long-forgotten EP that you just have to own, or that out-of-print classic that everyone has recommended to you. Sure, going on iTunes and buying an album certainly makes you a customer and a purchaser of music, but do you down the music? There’s nothing physical there, you can’t hold mp4s and admire the album art. Buying the actual album as opposed to downloading it brings a certain amount of risk to it. In fact, for many, it contains too much risk. Much of the appeal for me lies not in having the album spoiled, instead, it’s like a virgin tomb, the legacy of a forgotten Pharaoh, and you’re either rewarded with a ridiculous amount of gold, or some sort of curse. A friend of mine and I once made a habit of going to Borders (the only place nearby that sold music that wasn’t Wal-Mart) every Tuesday or so to actually purchase an album. One week, he bought Stadium Arcadium and I bought St. Elsewhere. Of course, we all know who got the better album (Chili Pepper fans can leave at this point) but we still laugh about it until this day. Listening to Stadium Arcadium during the car ride, not knowing a single track off of the album save for Dani California, it gave the mediocre, bloated, and often stupid misstep a sort of bizarre charm, a charm that wouldn’t have existed if I had just nabbed it off of some illegitimate website. When you buy an album, you invest in the album, and if it’s good, you appreciate it more…if it’s bad, you appreciate those good discs in your collection with all that much more intensity. Everyone remembers the first album they bought…no one remembers the first album they downloaded.

I guess it’s those albums you discover with little to no hype, which completely blindside you, which have the greatest effect nowadays, since there really isn’t a such thing as an ‘event’ album that gets huge media coverage anymore, and since many of the artists that were once at the cutting edge of creativity have lost some of their luster with few artists genius enough to step up and take their place (Jack White? Rock god? Please) it’s those albums that you go into with no pretenses that are the ones that please the most. When I first listened to the National, Hold Steady, and Sufjan Stevens, I knew next to nothing about any of them, just that there was some buzz attached to them and there was a vague memory of someone I knew speaking well about them.

But nothing like that has happened so far this year. The closest thing to that has been Blitzen Trapper’s latest. If anything, this year has been one filled with disappointments both in regards to a lack of quality and a deceptive illusion of quality. Zeitgeist? Mediocre, a commercial album with no soul. An album that was mostly panned. But Feist and Of Montreal? Two acts whose albums were nearly unanimously praised to high heaven? Neither were anything groundbreaking. Feist’s voice isn’t even all that good, whose best song is only great when mixed with Daft Punk, and Of Montreal is a band that tosses out two or three songs on each album that are brilliant, but the rest are just a mishmash of eccentric pretension that blogs and message board goons gobble up.

Maybe my standards are set too high. I am, after all, the guy who came out of The Bourne Ultimatum thinking, “Meh…it could have been better.” And I was honestly ridiculously excited about this year’s musical possibilities. I’m not quite sure whether or not it has to do with artistic difficulties, heightened expectations, a general weariness, the declining bee population, alterations to the arctic ice caps, I dunno what it is. All I know is that I can’t help but look at a 2007 playlist and think, in a monotone, “Oh…that’s nice.” Well, maybe not that bad. But when one expects perfection, anything less is a bummer.

-Morgan

Wolves and Horses and Mice (Oh, My!)

Hey folks, Clang here. Saturday marked the Download Festival in my hometown of Mansfield, Massachusetts. The all day concert featured sets from the aforementioned Wolf Parade, Band of Horses, and Modest Mouse, as well as the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Guster, Neko Case, Apollo Sunshine, Bang Camaro, and the Adam Ezra band. All day is a long time to be at any concert and by the end I was quite exhausted. In between sets, naps, and trying to find free food (which was nearly impossible - nearly), I organized a series of Download Festival awards that I will give out at this time.


Best Set:
Easily Modest Mouse, who closed out the festival and are all kinds of awesome. The perfect blend of old and new songs. Honorable mention goes to Neko Case, whos voice sounded amazing and could relax me on day of the week.


Biggest Disappointment:
Guster, who appeared to be sleepwalking through their set of new crappy songs and didn't play any of their older more awesome songs. Honorable mention: Wolf Parade, who despite sounding fantastic, had a set that consisted of songs off of their upcoming album that the public hasn't heard yet.


Biggest Surprise: (Tie)
1. When Bang Camaro's set began, I thought that I had magically been transported back to 1984, and they were the opening act for a Quiet Riot/Warrant double bill. Then the band's twenty (yes, twenty) or so 'lead singers' took the stage. By the time their last song came, which happened to be "Push, Push, Lady Lightning" from Guitar Hero II, I was hooked.
2. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Usually, I am not a fan. But Karen O. and company actually put on a very theatrical show that the crowd really got into. They closed out with a melodic (?!) acoustic rendtion of "Maps" that made me rethink my opinions about them.

Go Team? More Like...No Team?

Yeah, weak joke, I know.

You know that feeling when you go into something, expecting to enjoy it, and then you come out with a blank face and a brain furiously trying to pinpoint why you weren’t the least bit pleased? It’s like when I saw the Simpsons movie…the buzz was great, the previews were funny enough, but after watching most of the 6th and 7th seasons over the summer, the entire movie could be described as, “meh.”

So after having played Thunder, Lightning, Strike to death, and Junior Kickstart an embarrassing amount of times, I’ve been excitedly expecting anything new from the Go! Team. And when Grip Like a Vice and Wrath of Marcie came out, I nodded my head and thought, “This is pretty good, no complaints here.” And then when I heard the album had leaked (a few days late actually, Kohls has a knack for sucking out one’s sense of time and events) I immediately jumped onto my favorite completely legitimate downloading source, and of course, went about all of the most polite and proper ways to get a hold of the album. Immediately I jumped to the unknown songs, and that sinking feeling began to creep in. I’m not going to lie, my favorite aspect of Thunder, Lightning, Strike was the strange mix of 70’s retro, cheerleading, and the theme from Charlie Brown (c’mon, just listen to Feelgood By Numbers and you’ll know what I mean). So after listening to Fake ID, I wondered why my beloved Go! Team sounded like a boring Japanese chick-rock band. On Titanic Vandalism, I wondered what the point of rapping is if no one, and I mean no one, will ever be able to understand whatever it is you’re saying (and whether or not the vandalism is indeed titanic).

Every time I listen to the album, a voice in the back of my head is constantly wondering, “Why aren’t I enjoying this more? It’s the Go! Team, the creators of some of the catchiest tunes in the last ten years…there must be something I’m missing.” But in the end, I’ve come to terms with the fact that Proof of Youth is the very definition of a sophomore slump. The Go! Team tries to go into a few different directions, what with the heightened emphasis on rap and political themes, or at least I think so, given titles like Universal Speech, Fake ID, and Keys to the City. And they try to hold onto the old instrumental numbers that worked so well in the past, like on Patricia’s Moving Picture, but it sounds half-assed to be honest. It just doesn’t click. It’s not like the entire album is a disaster, as previously mentioned, Grip Like a Vice and The Wrath of Marcie work because they’re catchy, and because the production isn’t a disaster, like it is on most of the album. I can actually understand the lyrics and the music itself doesn’t devolve into a convoluted mess of notes and chords without any defining structure. Doing It Right has a great chorus and it retains the kooky kinda-70’s vibe that borders on the edge of parody but works so well in the end.

So in the end, because I still love the Go! Team, I’ll give the album a 60 out of 100. Think of it as a D…it’s still passing, but just barely.


Please, oh please listen to this instead.