I’m embarking on a project that entails reading through a selection of the many popular nonfiction books on music and the human brain. Bio-determinism is *so back*, you guys!
Most of the literature is out to prove that the grammar and aesthetics of pop (yes, pop) music are part of a genetic package we’ve inherited from our late, great homonid ancestors.
The thing is, I’m not sure that this is Big Science getting all knowledge-bully on art; after all, music has been the bearer of that Platonist/Hallmark-card banner of universal meaning since our well-evolved brethren of the Enlightenment severed the formal distinction between Art and Science. If anything, Big Science has tended to affirm cultural clichés by taking them for hypotheses, and I suspect the neuroscience of music is out to discover that oft-proclaimed “universal language” in our genetic code.
To me, bio-science has more to offer in the way of explaining the experience of sound than enshrining our cultural aesthetics in genetic eternity. One thing I’ve always been especially curious about is the obvious difference between physiology and experience. For example, I’m always perplexed by the idea that listening to music through headphones at high volume can damage your hearing even if you’re in an environment where the music only becomes audible at an elevated volume. When you’re in the subway, say, and the surrounding noise of a passing train makes it impossible to hear the music in your headphones at its normal volume, you turn it up to make it audible against the outside noise. The total volume of the train and the additional decibels are working together — balefully — on the eardrums, but the music doesn’t actually *hurt* your ears at all the way it would hurt them if you kept the music at that high volume after the train has passed and the station is quiet again. The difference between physiology and experience here is the difference between what *damages* your ears versus what *hurts* them, i.e., what is physically painful to experience; pain is an experience or symptom of physical damage that is somehow subject to camouflage.
Huh! I always have E with green (and the number 5, too. E is the 5th letter of the alphabet, and that spurious association with green can’t be accidental). D is definitely yellow; there’s nothing brighter. To me, though, that kind of pink belongs on F (or, really, F#). B is definitely blue for me, too, and it’s kind of gratifying to see that here, since I always suspected the association to be a lazy alliterative one. The strange thing is that for my ear, C and A would have their respective colors switched, with C being a royal purple (somehow more navy-purple, indigo) and A being red. Anyway! Video below.
Despite the historic inauguration of America’s first black president, white people refuse to take the MLK Jr. weekend off and continue to embarrass themselves and the nation. Jaoquin Phoenix raps, above, at LAVO in LA. Another YouTube clip shows him falling right off the stage, but I’m too nice to post that one. Go find it yrselves, joiks.
Unlike the nostalgic Americana of Fleet Foxes, Jenny Lewis, Sufjan Stevens et al, Animal Collective arguably represents something like a contemporaryAmericana. This isn’t something I could ever have said confidently before — though critics have tended to dance around it by designating them “Freak Folk” — because their psychedelic sound tends to distract from the folk aspect of their work. We only have to point out that great Vashti Bunyan collaboration they did, though, to see AC take an explicitly folk direction. And I’d argue that MPP in particular is a culmination of that folk content. As a coherent album, it’s about family, everyday working life, the fetishism of taste, fashion and appearances in general, and, ultimately, the struggle to cultivate an inner life that is rich, real and impervious to those draining banalities. I think if you listen to it on those terms, it becomes a deeply relatable record that describes the content of American life not just in general or even in the aesthetic context of Americanas past, but in the context of the objective conditions of American life today.
That said, I also think that if you’re patient enough with many of the songs on MPP to let them evolve (they do tend to flourish into their full form rather slowly), you’ll find some pretty rewarding pop-melodic composition that turns out to be more hypnotic and addictive the more you listen. AC really is, shockingly, one of the only bands I can think of that is so unique-sounding in the whole indie-pop universe. The vocals, of course, are incomparable, to say nothing of the percussion, songwriting and studio antics that make their albums such great, slow-burning recordings.
a thought that just flashed across my mind: “whose music would i be able to sit through longer: fleet foxes’ or the pussycat dolls’?”
trying to figure this little battle of the hegemonies out should be fun.
I meeannn … Fleet Foxes, but that’s a conclusion drawn strictly on the basis of the temporal criterion “longer.”
The popularity of Fleet Foxes surprises me because their music, falling as it does under the costumey Indie-Americana trend (see also: Jenny “I’m the new Emmylou Harris” Lewis and Sufjan “voice of my grandparents’ generation” Stevens), isn’t really as relatable as Jenny Lewis’s clever, witty songwriting and lacks the lulling prettiness of Sufjan Stevens.
The fact is that these guys are from Seattle, not the Ozarks. All the Hank Williams influence in the world doesn’t necessarily add up to a convincing, let alone compelling, Americana record. And while I wouldn’t at all call Fleet Foxes pretentious (on the contrary, their earnestness is the hallmark of Indie-Americana’s strange penchant for innocence and nostalgia at a time of unprecedented American vulgarity, corruption, cruelty and crisis), it’s hard for me to stick with something so stylized long enough to evaluate anything like, say, lyrical integrity.
Most pop music writing comes with a past-due date on its phraseology, but the cliche that stands out as the most consistently irritating to me — not to mention bizarrely physiological — is the phrase “album drops,” as in “the album drops this month.” Why does a record release share a category of action with testicles, placentae and excrement?
From Simon Reynolds’ blissblog (I know, kiiind of a cringe-inducing name), the good old Eff-You to mediocrity in a series of pithy little reviews of the pop critics’ 2008 favorites:
Bon Iver A voice like shredded wheat with no milk. Nothing about the sound or the backstory made me want to persevere long enough with this to find the vaunted brilliance.
Deerhunter Someone somewhere described this as like a bunch of Chapterhouse B-sides. Unfair, but this does strike me as an overly meticulous collation of borrowed bits and bobs (the sources all things I like, but what’s the point?). Not so much blissed out as prissed out.
Hercules and the Love Affair C.f. McAlmont, this kind of capital ‘S’ Singing from a capital ‘S’ Singer always seems like a good idea on paper. Otherwise this is just Faze Action all over again, no?
Lil Wayne I was all set to put Tha Carter III in my list, remembering having enjoyed it a lot when it came out, but in the end just opted for “A Millie” in top tunes (and that mostly for its brain-evacuating voice-loop rhythm, which is only a notch about the drivel Swizz Beatz Mk2 was peddling last year, or was it the year before?). The rest of the record I barely remember, and nor can I summon any desire to revisit. Sadly I’ve come to the conclusion that I much prefer Lil Wayne circa his debut album to the Noughties version with its crabwise flow and allusive density. Lil Wayne, he’s the John Sessions of rap, really. Sort of funny; very nearly entertaining.
Cut Copy This is New Pop revivalism, essentially—the next logical step from the interminable postpunk revival, but drawing on New Pop’s wetter side—OMD, China Crisis. Nice blurry/yearn-y sound. Will anyone care in a year?
The Bug Commendable, well-executed, most effective when it relents a bit from being so unrelenting. When it’s on I can’t fault it, exactly. But I’ve gone back more to Dusk + Blackdown: as an audio-essay about London, Margins Music has a more seductively sensuous and varied sound-palette. It also seems significantly more up-to-date than London Zoo (isn’t an album largely based around dancehall really kinda early Noughties?!). And it doesn’t hammer the getting-somewhat-fatigued London=darkness notion so hard.
Flying Lotus Highly listenable, quite impressive, the best of it makes me think of Sa Ra sans the kosmigroovy sexiness and goofadelic humour. The least of it is a bit… Prefuse 73-y.
There’s plenty more in the consensus-overlapzone that leave me cooler still (Fleet Foxes, TV On the Radio,Santogold, etc), I’d happily accept that the problem is me, I need to put in some more work (but whoever said you had to work at listening to music?), I seem to have fallen into a kind of simpleton mode of assessment, which is that if after a couple of listens I can’t remember anything about a record or find the urge to listen again, then… goodbyeee. Life is short and there’s too many other fish in the sea of sound.
Jamie Thompson is giving me and any other music lover with the good sense to visit his amazing website a virtual musical (re)education. The Small is Beautiful shares a name with Jamie’s own musical project, a beat laboratory located in an abstruse and hermetic part of his miraculous cerebellum. I’m reposting a playlist of his newer work here, but if you’re a music head bored by the stories on Zoey Deschanel’s engagement to Death Car to the Cute Side or whatever, you should definitely explore the website yourself. One of its particularly great features is the Make Sounds page, where Jamie documents his experiments with sounds and music technology. Along with recordings of his results, he includes fascinating explanations that are accessible enough for the less music-geeky (which, you know, includes most of the rest of the human race). On the Small is Beautiful discussion forum, Jamie elaborates:
The idea is to describe the process itself, and to find a new way of producing the sound each day…My hope is that people will read it and develop an interest in sounds themselves that goes deeper than an appreciation for their ability to be organized into music…it’s for anyone who wants to start thinking about what sound is, and that should hopefully be everyone.
Stereogum rushed the gate and is calling it the likely best album of the year, a “masterstroke” of pop genius.
Spin and Pitchfork agree, calling MPP both a new direction for Animal Collective and a refined culmination of the band’s musical progress. Has anyone heard it yet? Thoughts?
“Every generation throws a hero up the pop charts,” I guess. It’ll be interesting to see whether Animal Collective can really secure that kind of status. From the looks of these super early reviews, they’re on their way.
Unlike the 
