LOGANMIX2008: The Best Revenge

2008 was a consensus year for critics.

Looking from list to list, I noticed a lot of the same -- which is not necessarily a bad thing, it most likely reflects websites becoming indie M.O.R. as they try to escape their respective music niches.

Personally, I find myself a little out of touch with this consensus: whether it was due to personal taste (Fleet Foxes and the entire NW Americana scene), age (Vampire Weekend. LOL!), bands I don't get (I find myself strangely unmoved by Portishead; more of a Massive Attack fan), or bands I got once upon a time (TV on the Radio's glossy production was a major turnoff).

And this consensus tends to ignore what an amazingly strong year it was for indie electronic music. It is like a hydra, for every head you cut off - electroclash and dance-punk - more sprout out: disco-punk, electro-house, new rave. Just look back at the reception of #1 and Is This It? - the latter was heralded as the salvation of rock'n'roll while the former was seen as the musical equivalent of Sodom and Gomorrah (isn't that the way it always is in the eternal rock vs. pop deathmatch?) - and trace the respective genre trajectories. I think it is clear who had the last laugh.

And isn't that the best revenge?

1. Out At The Pictures - Hot Chip [Made In The Dark]
2. Can't Go Back - Primal Scream [Beautiful Future]
3. Yippiyo-ay - The Presets [Apocalypso]
4. The Best Revenge - Fischerspooner [The Best Revenge Single]
5. If I Can't (feat. Jake Shears) - Luomo [Convivial]
6. A&E (Gui Boratto Remix) - Goldfrapp [A&E Single]
7. Satellites - Kelley Polar [I Need You to Hold On While the Sky Is Falling]
8. Couleurs - M83 [Saturdays = Youth]
9. The Simple Life - The Juan Maclean [Simple Life 12'' Single]
10. Far Away - Cut Copy [In Ghost Colours]
11. Take To Take - Subtle [ExitingARM]
12. Golden Age - TV on the Radio [Dear Science,]
13. What New York Used To Be - The Kills [Midnight Boom]
14. Versus - Ladytron [Velocifero]

Happy New Years Everybody!

















If the million internet posts about Merriweather Post Pavilion are any indication, 2009 is already the year of the Animal Collective. No seriously. If Radiohead hype is a 8.9 on the Internet richter scale, this new Animal Collective album has to be a 9.4. I have never seen so many internet denizens get so hot and bothered by an album release. On the Radiohead forum there is a post devoted to the album that is 1050 pages long. I had no idea the band had gotten this big.

I still have only listened to one Animal Collective song: the Pantha du Prince remix of Peacebone (highly recommended!), mostly because I figured noise folk wasn't my cup of tea, and part of me wants to continue on that way. But to use Radiohead as an example, I would be an asshole not listen to OK Computer solely out of principle. I just need to sit down at some point in January, with Mason holding my hand, and give this band a fair listen.

To the future! Huzzah!

2008: Of all my regrets one feels the worst...

Albums/Reissues/Compilations/Whatever Honorable Mentions -

Fennesz - The Black Sea
Sea and Cake - Car Alarm
Luomo - Convivial
Beach House - Devotion
The Clash - Live at Shea Stadium
Hot Chip - Made In The Dark
Sascha Funke - Mango
Sigur Rós - Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust
The Kills - Midnight Boom
Wire - Object 47
Santogold - Santogold
Shed - Shedding The Past
Neon Neon - Stainless Style
Move D & Benjamin Brunn - Songs From The Beehive
Benoît Pioulard - Temper

Top 10 Albums (scroll slowly for maximum suspense!) -

10. School Of Seven Bells - Alpinisms

Since I am now a mere five minute walk away from the Doug Fir, I rarely catch opening acts anymore. Maybe I am just getting old, but standing for four hours has lost some of its glamour. So it was rather serendipitous that I caught the School Of Seven Bells priming the crowd for M83. I dug the Deheza twins during their On! Air! Library! days, but School Of Seven Bells explores a slightly different genre: that nervy marriage of dream-pop and shoegaze that seemed to begin and end with Curve. Alpinisms has multiple tributaries - My Bloody Valentine and Cocteau Twins, to name a couple - but also manages enough inspiration to avoid feeling too derivative (the dangerous flip-side of nostalgia). This was a lucky find and extra motivation to get to the concert early in the future.

9. Subtle - ExitingARM

When last we left Hour Hero Yes; left one part endless - two parts death. Or something like that. The narrative has become so dense and sprawling - now encompassing an entire almanac and corresponding website - I think I might have lost the plot somewhere along the way. What I do know, is that ExitingARM reveals Doseone as a true Heideggarian: from the compound nouns to the his obsession with the metaphysics of objects.

The clearest influence on the latest chapter of the Hour Hero Yes trilogy is Subtle's recent tourmates TV on the Radio, but Doseone can never seem to decide how to resolve the tension of being a more mainstream indie rock band with his simultaneous desire to be completely inscrutable -- thus the lack of catchy hooks and the baiting "Unlikely Rock Shock". Really this album sounds like the dialectical synthesis of A New White and for hero: for fool -- which might make it a perfect logically conclusion, but still a little bit of a disappointment emotionally. And unfortunately, except for SmallFear Souvenir, it looks like this is the end of the road -- as of this tour, the band is calling it quits. At least we will always have The Terrible Great Nothing Much.

8. Ladytron - Velocifero

A few months ago, I heard "Ghosts" playing in the Pioneer Place mall. It is amusing that Ladytron, a band which spent its early career wryly critiquing department store culture, would inadvertently score a muzak hit. Not to mention the band spent months during the Light & Magic tour unsuccessfully trying to break into the American market, including a baffling Americanized club version of "Evil" with a music video director who seemed to think the band would top the charts if they looked like more like mid-'90s Republica.

Velocifero starts off with an ferocious opener by Mira Aroyo, largely forgotten in Witching Hour, and continues unflaggingly - much like its name sake - for its duration. One of the largest critiques of the band (one that I hear a lot with the Doves) is that it simply mines the same genre with little variation. While "Deep Blue" might be the most prototypically Ladytron with its aggressive industrial synth lines and technoeroticism, "Versus" - a spaghetti western duet featuring male vocals - might be the band's most adventureous song to date.

7. Deerhunter - Microcastle / Weird Era. Cont.

I am going to make this slot a general Bradford Cox entry (including Atlas Sound - Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel) because the dude released so many quality jams this year, intentional or not.








6. Lindstrøm - Where You Go I Go Too

Electronic artists always seem to be at least a little apprehensive about releasing full length records. Unlike 12'' singles, albums have the rockist demand of being "coherent" and by the time the record hits shelves, the electronic world has already ditched neo-balearic disco for deep arthropod-house. If Lindstrøm has any sort of anxiety, it doesn't show. I mean just look at that cover - he is such a bro. Where You Go I Go Too is about as patient as can be. The titular track is 29 minutes long and has a deliberate pacing that recalls Manuel Göttsching's E2-E4 and LCD Soundsystem's 45:33. And that repeated ping! (you will know it when you hear it) at the end of "The Long Way Home" is so unabashedly untrendy and awesome.

5. Deadbeat - Roots and Wire

Generating an end of the year music list is a completely arbitrary exercise but I have tried to develop a ritualistic structure to make the process as precise and as scientific as possible. After putting all of the year's music through my centrifuge critique, I usually find that it is the albums that I listened to the most, for better or for worse, than end up making their way to the top. But every once in awhile, there is a record that appears at the 11th hour that makes an immediate impression.

Dub Techno is certainly not a genre I would have ever imagined raving about. Like Scott Montieth, I tend to get bored with the Burial-style “minor key, sad, dark shit.” Yet here I am trying to describe an album without using cringe inducing terms like dubscapes. Probably the closest musical touchstone I can think of - particularly in regards to the bookending vocal tracks - is Blue Lines era Massive Attack, but while "One Love" practically crawls at a glacial sub-100 bpms, "Grounation (Berghain Drum Jack)" features blistering dancehall percussion. The whole album has a real dynamic flow built around creative beat structures. It also features some of the best cover art of the year.

4. Max Richter - 24 Postcards In Full Colour

"April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain."

The opening lines of T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland come to mind when I listen to Max Richter. While some minimalist composers are aggressively anti-contextual, Richter has always been haunted by that unwanted reawakening of memories -- real and imaginary. And like his other works, 24 Postcards In Full Colour is fairly conceptual -- hell, it might not even been considered an album at all. Originally intended as 24 separate ringtones, the work can be digested in multiple formats: on the web with accompanying photographs or as a traditional album, where the pieces hang together surprisingly well. It can be a little disorienting listening to it as a record as the tracks cut off fairly abruptly, but discreteness is also a virtue. The term postcards works particularly well in this context, not merely because the songs act as small emotional snapshots, but also because each piece feels rooted in a particular location and time. Even the titles feel incredibly thought out. These little vignettes add up to an astounding mosaic, and are all the more daring and wistful for their fleetingness.

3. M83 - Saturdays = Youth

Leadoff single "Couleurs" was a complete red herring. Despite the Molly Ringwald dead ringer on the cover, the 8 1/2 minute slow burner gave no hint at the unabashed Eighties love affair that was to come. And while "Kim & Jessie" (those Tears for Fears drums!) and "Graveyard Girl" (the spoken word narrative!) seem to reap the most laurels for their John Hughes nostalgia, "Skin of the Night" (the wind and the rain!) strikes me as the most authentic 80s track on the album -- that epic slow ballad that has all but disappeared from the radio.

2. Kelley Polar - I Need You To Hold On While The Sky Is Falling

Most of my techno/house friends can't stand Michael Kelley's voice. Unlike most electronic artists who bury their vocals under blankets of synthesizers, Kelley foregrounds his voice atop the sea of ping-pongy sine waves. To make matters worse, he has a very stylized delivery -- musical theater is probably the best way to describe it, all emotive and breathy. "Zeno of Elea" is the main offender, which is unfortunate because it is the second track of the album. If you manage to survive the opening vocodered new-age gambit, you will hit one of the best runs of tunes this year, including the Human League-esque duet of "Entropy Reigns (In The Celestial City)" and the strangely compelling "Chrysanthemum" that might be the best paean to the A-bomb since OMD's "Enola Gay." The entire album is held together by a running celestial motif, where the surrounding universe mirrors the characters' interiors (and vice versa), perhaps best personified by "Satellites" -- a simple but achingly beautiful metaphor for unrequited love.

1. Cut Copy - In Ghost Colours

Kaleidoscopic. Is there a better way to describe this record? How about indie electro-pop perfection. Every song on the album is ebullient and alive, filled with unbelievably catchy choruses and dancefloor breakdowns. At first, it took me a little while to get through this album -- not because of any steep learning curve, but because I had "Light & Music" on repeat for at least 20 plays. Beyond the obvious singles, this record has some incredibly deep cuts, like "Far Away" which sounds like Mark Hollis if he had performed at the Hacienda instead of going off the post-rock deep-end. Even the samples (ranging from C&C Music Factory to E.L.O.) are subtle and unpretentious.

I am still not sure whether the credit goes to the band (probably not after Bright Like Neon Love) or Tim Goldsworthy (probably after Echoes) and his amazing production. To get a real idea of how glorious the production is, which sounds equally perfect on headphones as on the dancefloor, listen to the over-compression on the latest album from Cut Copy's Australian labelmates The Presets.

In Ghost Colours is glorious and - dare I say it? - Rapturous.

This is not a Synecdoche for football.

The Patriots have been losers for so long, I don't know if I can even classify them as my bête noire anymore. But since NFL commentators keep mentioning Belichick for Coach of the Year and Brady just got engaged to Gisele, it bears worth repeating:

Damn the Patriots! Damn everyone that won't damn the Patriots! Damn every one that won't put lights in his window and sit up all night damning the Patriots!

You have received a holiday eCard!

Pop Quiz II

Without looking at your notes (tattooed or otherwise), please answer the following:

What is the world's busiest airport in terms of passenger traffic?

[Partial credit will be offered for just the IATA airport code.]

2008: Meditations in an emergency.

Last year it was the writers' strike. This year it was Jay Leno moving to primetime.

It will be fun to look back on this decade and try to pinpoint the true harbinger of scripted network television's demise. Was it TiVo in the Living Room with the Wrench? Or YouTube in the Den with the Candlestick?

Lost is going be an anachronism when it reappears in January. It managed to single handedly resurrect and bury the long-form narrative on network television. Although that term "network" is going to become increasingly irrelevant: as media distribution modes continually converge, the distinction between network and cable is going to disappear. Goodbye Sweeps Week! We will miss your gratuitous celebrity cameos and ridiculous plot contrivances.

In this end of days, how did the 10 series fare in the eternal struggle for my limited attention? Once again, ranked in order of ennui.

Reaper: Didn't air a single episode. Second season supposedly starts up in March -- doesn't sound like a promising premier date. Then again, this is the CW. It is not like it has a lot to lose.

Pushing Daisies: Didn't watch a single episode. And it was cancelled. I would feel bad, but I am not a Nielson household and the series was torpedoed by the writer's strike. Adding insult to injury, ABC didn't even give Fuller the chance to do a proper finale for the series. Talk about bad karma. I would use this as some sort of representative of the larger atrophying of network television, but I think Fuller is just cursed.

Heroes: Mark and Ben have both hinted at a more promising season, but EW begs to differ. I never got around to giving it a second chance, but I might drag myself through in preparation for the next story arc (kind of like I might for the Battlestar Galactica finale). Recent interviews with Fuller, who is now officially back on staff, has given me hope that the show might be able to right itself. What say you? Should I give this bloated series another shot?

Entourage: I didn't get any farther in the series, but I probably will over the holidays. It may not be anywhere near as good as it once was, but at least it is still mildly entertaining. Probably the same reason most people watch network sitcoms.

It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia: What a bizarre season. It featured some quality episodes, but too many just never quite added up. Its taboo-busting centripetal force might finally be spinning to a halt.

Survivor: Another fairly good season. It always amuses me when the contestants wax philosophical in the finale about how Survivor changed their lives forever. It is like the show fosters this Jüngerian belief in crisis as the true crucible of human development. Hate to break it to you d00ds: it is just a game show.

The Office: I know. The show is still great. But replacing Holly with Toby and reuniting Pam and Jim (once again), not to mention bringing back Ryan, just confirms in my mind that there is only so much room for narrative development on a network television series.

30 Rock: Sorry for fronting a couple of months ago. This is still the best show on network television. But the overwhelming number of guest stars has been a bit, well, underwhelming. Is Josh still on the show? For that matter, are half of the other supporting characters? I need to start an online petition. Free Hornberger.

Dexter: Dexter has developed a great formula for the series. Step One: Establish a set of rules of behavior for a character. Step Two: Find a new way to test said rules each season. Repeat. Like 24, this series is masterful at building and maintaing tension. Unlike 24, it actually has a sense of humor.

Mad Men: The best show on television. Why lie.

wait. . . what?

Twelve-year-old Galveston girl hospitalized by cops with black eyes and ear drum and throat damage, arrested for assaulting a public servant. Really?

Her trial starts in February.

Oh and P.S. The police were looking for three white, adult prostitutes. The girl is black, but in the officers' defense she was wearing "tight shorts." Obviously a hooker.

P.P.S. The police officers (three of them) were in plain clothes and jumped out of an unmarked van.

P.P.P.S. The officers were investigated, but turns out they used appropriate force. Cuz three grown men can't detain a 12 year old without beating her about the face and neck.

A brief thought on escalation

Okay. It’s pretty well covered in The Dark Knight. But I’ve been thinking about escalation.

For the MTV generation, escalation is a fact of life. Progressively, since the first Real World, (reality) television teaches us that the only way to solve a problem is a confrontation. Preferably, a confrontation with screaming, crying and maybe—if we’re lucky—some hitting and kicking.

Unsurprisingly, you rarely see the consequences. That is part of what makes The Dark Knight unique. The entire movie is set within the boundaries of what happens after a confrontation (of Batman to Gotham’s criminal element). And it's pretty dark.

But, you know, I think the better example is the exception to the reality TV rule.

The Hills, by virtue of its being on for four seasons, has actually shown the consequences of the reality TV show confrontation.

Heidi and Spencer, with all their misguided confidence, confront Lauren every chance they get. Has it solved anything? No.

Nobody likes Heidi and Spencer.

Heidi and Spencer suck.

Whiteout.

Portland gets like four inches of snow and the entire city shuts down.

Weaksauce.

"It really, really, really could happen..."

It's time to break out the champagne: blur has reunited.

Yesterday, the greatest band of all time - okay, maybe just the 90s - sent out an e-mail to its fan club (including yours truly!) announcing the first gig as a full band in almost a decade: Hyde Park, July 3. Although I have exclusive access to tickets, given the dollar-to-pound exchange rate, I think I am going to have to pass.

I'll keep my fingers crossed for Coachella.

Besides, who knows what the setlist is going to shape up like. Damon and Graham look like a pair of lugubrious blokes these days. It could very well be two hours of "Battery In Your Leg" -- then again, probably not. I have a feeling Think Tank is going to end up as the apocryphal album in the canon. And adding to mystery, Alex was waxing nostalgic over a couple of old-school b-sides ("Luminous" and "Threadneedle Street") in the announcement video. A rarity or two wouldn't be unprecedented - the band played an entire gig of them in 1999 - but it probably owes more to the band's attention deficit than any sort of placation to the fans.

Anyway. Enough blur talk, for now.

But for those unfortunate souls out there, who still only know blur from "Song 2" being blasted out of stadium speakers during a timeout or "Girls & Boys" being mistakenly played during 80s night, I have prepared some essential listening for you.

blur: a modest sampler

1. Pop Scene (Modern Life Is Rubbish)
2. Stereotypes (The Great Escape)
3. There's No Other Way (Leisure)
4. Girls & Boys (Parklife)
5. Sing (Leisure)
6. Universal (The Great Escape)
7. End of a Century (Parklife)
8. Coping (Modern Life Is Rubbish)
9. Coffee + TV [Radio Edit] (13)
10. Beetlebum (Blur)
11. Song 2 (Blur)
12. Death of a Party (Blur)
13. Ambulance (Think Tank)
14. Tender (13)
15. I Know (She's So High Single)
16. Trouble In The Message Centre (Parklife)
17. This Is A Low (Parklife)
18. For Tomorrow [Visit to Primrose Hill Extended Mix] (Modern Life Is Rubbish)

[Mark, you get nothing done. You Beetlebum. Because you're young.]

Saturday Morning Cartoons

Along with Animaniacs, Tiny Toons Adventures probably had the most profound impact on my sense of humor.

Any given saturday.

What makes a team better than another team?

At the most elementary level, it is all about wins and losses. A playoff is structured, for example, to advance teams that win and to eliminate teams that lose, with the goal of eventually determining the best team. While possibly flawed, the playoff structure is fairly uncontroversial.

Given this, I don't understand why college football still has the worst possible method of determining which team is "better" let alone "best".

Take the Big XII controversy.

Texas and Oklahoma have identical 11-1 records. Since Texas beat Oklahoma on a neutral field, possibly the best indicator of which team is "better", you would think Texas would be advancing to the Big XII conference finals.

Wrong.

The tiebreaker is determined by the team with the higher BCS rankings. Ironically, it wasn't the Harris or USA today polls, which seem more prone to realpolitik and shady backdoor dealing, which pulled Oklahoma ahead. Instead it was the six computers that placed a premium value on Oklahoma's "strength of schedule."

To me, that is the equivalent of handing the Patriots the Super Bowl trophy because of the team's overall season.

If the NCAA can't even come up with a sufficient means to select a conference champion, why should we entrust it with selecting a national champion?

Are we human or is we deaf?

If The Killers release an album and Logan does not make a post bitching about it, does it still make a sound?

"Richard Littlejohn doesn't pay rent."

That was what my downstairs neighbor renamed his Wifi network last week.

Passive aggressive, for sure. But it got me thinking.

Instead of simply giving your network a vaguely geographical-technical network ID like "1226net" (or not giving, for you "linksys" ballers out there), why not use it as a limited means of broadcasting with your immediate neighbors.

Sort of like Twitter meets Shortwave Radio. A way of generating local ambient awareness.

Giants Wide Receivers and Guns, Oh My!

So most of you have probably heard about how Plaxico Burress shot himself in the leg in a New York night club. And how he'll likely be charged with unlawful possession of a firearm, and if convicted he'll do a mandatory 3.5 years.

Let me preface my thoughts by saying he's a dumbass. However, NFL players are frequently targeted by criminals. Darrent Williams of the Broncos was shot and killed about a year ago outside a club, Sean Taylor of the Redskins was killed during a home invasion almost exactly one year ago. And a few days ago Burress' teamate Steve Smith (not the former Ute) was robbed at gun point outside his home. Let me say that I don't think having a gun really helps in situations like this, but, I can see why players decide they want to have guns.

The problem is that all these people who want to pack heat to the club or rob an NFL player don't seem to see the difference between badass and dumbass.

Latin is the root of all romantic evil, or: 7 reasons to hate football

Football is boring and stupid. I hate it more than any other sport, and more than a lot of other things. For example, I hate football more than I hate herpes. Granted, I don’t have herpes, but I still hate it. And I hate football more. Why?

1. For starters, football is a BCS supporter. For the uninformed, the BCS is a monopoly by a group of Universities to ensure they get to go to the biggest money bowl games every year.
2. Culturally football has finally matched ancient Rome in its level of violent, homoerotic spectacle. Thanks to our high school English teacher, we all know that homosexuality and violence was responsible for the fall of the Roman Empire. Ergo, the fall of the U.S. Empire is next. Thank you football.
3. Football is under investigation after allegedly failing to report money invested to organize phone banks, send out direct mailers, provide transportation to California, mobilize a speakers bureau, send out satellite simulcasts and develop Web sites as well as numerous commercials and video broadcasts for California’s “Yes on Proposition 8” campaign.
4. Football has surpassed the United States to become the number one polluter in the world, putting off roughly 7 billion tons of carbon dioxide annually.
5. You may also have heard that football, an entity that was allegedly “too big to fail,” is the latest recipient of a Government bailout. To the tune of $20 billion plus in exchange for some equity.
6. Football is a sexist, traditionalist upholder of hetero-normative gender roles.
7. Football created HIV/AIDS in a lab for the Russians during the Cold War. It then “tested” it on the population of Africa. It also introduced crack to the inner-city.
   

But football’s biggest crime against humanity is that it’s boring. Outside of the last two minutes of any given quarter, the game moves at a snail’s pace. A boring, repetitive snails pace. During the last two minutes the action speeds up, but there are five million timeouts and commercial breaks.