another year, another post
tomorrow's the first day of the new school year, and the reality that i'm going to have to start working again hasn't really sunken in yet. i realize that sounds awful to those of you who work every day, and it probably should, but i've had a strange and long summer which i haven't yet recovered from. i've been back in austin for at least two weeks, but haven't yet adjusted to being home yet - and while home is more concrete than ever, it still doesn't feel entirely natural to be here or to be doing my job. i spent the past few months passing through the lives of others, and through various unexpected rituals of adulthood, and i have a feeling it's going to take a while to catch up.
in the meantime, i have mostly lost the will to write. i did a lot of it this summer, trying to put together a supplemental textbook of readings for my class, and then lost the folder containing those writings on tuesday when i moved to a new laptop. the old one was promptly reformatted, so i'm trying to recreate the previous work from memory - hard to do for 80-some pages of original material.
really, the only thing i actually feel inclined to write about these days is music. i've been working on a larger piece about my favorite fifty albums, and this is probably an excerpt from that - one recommendation, and one defense of a flawed work of beauty.
i first encountered the silversun pickups on the radio, where i mistook them for the smashing pumpkins. part of this was the vague knowledge that the pumpkins were coming out with a new album, and part of it was the fact that the song (lazy eye) sounded like a synthesis of '1979' and 'drown' - chords and feedback from drown, tempo from 1979. i was impressed when i learned that it was a different band; recreating the sound of a beloved band of the past is difficult enough, but writing a song that held up to some of the better material in that band's catalog is noteworthy. still, i had low expectations upon buying the album - i figured that it would end up being mostly derivative filler, in the style of the pumpkins. not such a bad thing, but more 'sixteen stone' than 'nevermind'.
man, was i wrong. i mean, it is derivative, there's no arguing that. but it's also fucking good.
in a sentence, the silversun pickups' 'carnavas' is a perfect synthesis of the better parts of the smashing pumpkins and my bloody valentine. it's as though someone went back to 1993 and taught billy corgan how to sing, or went back to 1987 and gave kevin shields a guitar tuner. essentially, this music smoothes out the greatest flaws of two excellent bands, and while the songwriting isn't as strong as 'siamese dream', it's not bad.
i measure music at least in part by physical feeling - as i've experienced it (and i'm not talking about live music, which is a different category altogether), really great music leaves me with actual feelings, not just emotions. in particular, most of the songs that i respond to most powerfully share one trait - somewhere in the middle, they undergo a tonal shift that intensifies the lyrics, the music, or both. it's usually not a guitar solo, but it's often a powerful set of chords that run somewhere not-quite-parallel to what the song was previously doing. hard to explain verbally, but i often break into goosebumps where that shift occurs - a great example of it is found in the pumpkins' 'soma', and another in catherine wheel's 'heal' (which, incidentally, is not a great song.) most of the songs on 'carnavas' have one of those shifts in them, a physically powerful change that demands the listener's full attention.
discoveries like this one make me wish that my electric guitar skills hadn't all evaporated from disuse.
the smashing pumpkins' 'adore' is an album that i return to regularly, if privately. i don't remember it ever having much success, either commercially or critically, but i believe i was in japan when it came out, so my memory of that may be skewed. it's a much slower, softer, and more understated work than their other albums, and suffers a bit from period-related experimentation with electronica, but its better tracks are worthy of respect - even the electronic ones. stylistically, the two singles (perfect and ava adore) don't fit very well with the rest of the album, and the four tracks after 'perfect' are largely forgettable. however, tracks 8 and 9 (apples + oranjes and pug) both manage to pull off the rock-electronica hybrid that the first half of the album strives unsuccessfully for - i can't really think of anything to compare it to. after a second turn into sad, muted, piano-driven tracks, the album crests in the two tracks before ending, 'behold! the night mare' and 'for martha'. while in some ways, it's easier for a song to be transcendent when the material it's compared to is mediocre, labeling these two songs as transcendent is a fair use of the term. both are musically simple, but contain a tonal shift that feels at once heartbreaking and uplifting. these are the two songs i come back to the album for, and i'm never disappointed. i've found adore to be one of those albums that you can listen to while working - for the most part, it's pleasant background noise, but occasionally something happens that makes you sit up and take notice. i'm not going to argue that it's a great album, but it's a shame that it's an essentially forgotten one.
i'm going to try to post more regularly, but no promises yet.
in the meantime, i have mostly lost the will to write. i did a lot of it this summer, trying to put together a supplemental textbook of readings for my class, and then lost the folder containing those writings on tuesday when i moved to a new laptop. the old one was promptly reformatted, so i'm trying to recreate the previous work from memory - hard to do for 80-some pages of original material.
really, the only thing i actually feel inclined to write about these days is music. i've been working on a larger piece about my favorite fifty albums, and this is probably an excerpt from that - one recommendation, and one defense of a flawed work of beauty.
i first encountered the silversun pickups on the radio, where i mistook them for the smashing pumpkins. part of this was the vague knowledge that the pumpkins were coming out with a new album, and part of it was the fact that the song (lazy eye) sounded like a synthesis of '1979' and 'drown' - chords and feedback from drown, tempo from 1979. i was impressed when i learned that it was a different band; recreating the sound of a beloved band of the past is difficult enough, but writing a song that held up to some of the better material in that band's catalog is noteworthy. still, i had low expectations upon buying the album - i figured that it would end up being mostly derivative filler, in the style of the pumpkins. not such a bad thing, but more 'sixteen stone' than 'nevermind'.
man, was i wrong. i mean, it is derivative, there's no arguing that. but it's also fucking good.
in a sentence, the silversun pickups' 'carnavas' is a perfect synthesis of the better parts of the smashing pumpkins and my bloody valentine. it's as though someone went back to 1993 and taught billy corgan how to sing, or went back to 1987 and gave kevin shields a guitar tuner. essentially, this music smoothes out the greatest flaws of two excellent bands, and while the songwriting isn't as strong as 'siamese dream', it's not bad.
i measure music at least in part by physical feeling - as i've experienced it (and i'm not talking about live music, which is a different category altogether), really great music leaves me with actual feelings, not just emotions. in particular, most of the songs that i respond to most powerfully share one trait - somewhere in the middle, they undergo a tonal shift that intensifies the lyrics, the music, or both. it's usually not a guitar solo, but it's often a powerful set of chords that run somewhere not-quite-parallel to what the song was previously doing. hard to explain verbally, but i often break into goosebumps where that shift occurs - a great example of it is found in the pumpkins' 'soma', and another in catherine wheel's 'heal' (which, incidentally, is not a great song.) most of the songs on 'carnavas' have one of those shifts in them, a physically powerful change that demands the listener's full attention.
discoveries like this one make me wish that my electric guitar skills hadn't all evaporated from disuse.
the smashing pumpkins' 'adore' is an album that i return to regularly, if privately. i don't remember it ever having much success, either commercially or critically, but i believe i was in japan when it came out, so my memory of that may be skewed. it's a much slower, softer, and more understated work than their other albums, and suffers a bit from period-related experimentation with electronica, but its better tracks are worthy of respect - even the electronic ones. stylistically, the two singles (perfect and ava adore) don't fit very well with the rest of the album, and the four tracks after 'perfect' are largely forgettable. however, tracks 8 and 9 (apples + oranjes and pug) both manage to pull off the rock-electronica hybrid that the first half of the album strives unsuccessfully for - i can't really think of anything to compare it to. after a second turn into sad, muted, piano-driven tracks, the album crests in the two tracks before ending, 'behold! the night mare' and 'for martha'. while in some ways, it's easier for a song to be transcendent when the material it's compared to is mediocre, labeling these two songs as transcendent is a fair use of the term. both are musically simple, but contain a tonal shift that feels at once heartbreaking and uplifting. these are the two songs i come back to the album for, and i'm never disappointed. i've found adore to be one of those albums that you can listen to while working - for the most part, it's pleasant background noise, but occasionally something happens that makes you sit up and take notice. i'm not going to argue that it's a great album, but it's a shame that it's an essentially forgotten one.
i'm going to try to post more regularly, but no promises yet.