So The Coffee Girl Withdraws to the Taiga - More Thoughts on Music
Alright, so instead of packing up my place in Santa Cruz or working on a script that's supposed to theoretically air in - *checks clock* - three hours and forty-five minutes, or even doodling the giant robots and spaceships I got "commissioned" to work on, I'm here wasting time. I figured I may as well try and get something useful said, so I shall ramble about the music I've been incessantly listening to again.
First on the chopping block is the new Tragically Hip album. I've been a passing fan of these crazy Canuks for a few years now, although I always seem to like the really obscure tracks and albums. It isn't an attempt at indie cred, it's just that b-sides like "Gus the Polar Bear From Central Park" and "One Night in Copenhagen" seem to fall in my lap, and I fall in love with them and then don't see the need to go dig up more of their stuff. The new album, We Are the Same, is pretty catchy. I can't actually admit to having listened to it all the way through yet, as I got grabbed pretty hard by track four, "Coffee Girl," and she hasn't let go yet. It's a simple enough story: indie girl goes to work (at a coffee shop, hence the name) hung over, spends the day listening to an indie mix tape ("old Cat Power and classic Beck") and being mad at indie boy. Yet somehow the song grabbed me by the lapels and throttled me with its catchiness. Maybe it was because I was digging around for songs about mix tapes and relationship problems and it just fit the bill perfectly. Maybe it's because I'm one of the guys who sees the girl at the coffee shop is in a bad mood, but I'm too awkward to try and start a conversation to be nice so I just imagine what the story is.
Next on the list is the Decemberists' Hazards of Love. If I know what's good for me, I should stop listening to this album - specifically "The Rake's Song" and "The Wanting Comes In Waves/Repaid." But I can't. It's been in my car for maybe a month straight now, and it doesn't look like it's leaving any time soon. The Decemberists always have very varied albums that jump around from one theme to another, but it feels new here. They've never done a concept album before. Sure, The Crane Wife had the title track as a framing device, and "The Tain" is a twenty-minute EP, but Hazards is a single story from start to finish, and manages to touch on fear, love, hope, infanticide, malevolent fairy queens, murdering bodies of water, and of course, REVENGE. The only thing it lacks is a generically upbeat, ironic pop number, which they've done enough of (see "16 Military Wives," "The Legionnaire's Lament," "Billy Liar," and "O Valencia!" ad nauseum), but there's need for catchy vivaciousness when the album makes you want to throw the goat and slit throats half the time. I saw them perform it live in Oakland a few weeks ago, and before then I would have never thought shuffling shoegazer indie kids would be that close to moshing. Thank guest vocalist Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond for that - I've only seen that level of magnetism and stage charisma in opera singers or Oscar-winning actors, not a five-foot-nothing indie girl in silver tights, but now that I've seen it I'm hooked and star-crushing as hard as my mom did on Paul and George back in '67. Worden's jaw-dropping voice is used for the character of the Queen, which she does with dynamic, dynamite dexterity, going from an angry, soulful growl that makes me quiver to a shrieking belt that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. The instrumentation throughout is also excellent, with awards deserved for Best Indie Use of Creepy Harpsichord as a Leitmotif and for Best Percussion-Based Celebration of Infanticide. Like I said, I should stop listening to the album at this point before the CD melts in my car stereo... but I can't help it. I'm hooked.
Hm. Maybe next time I want to waste some time writing I can do something with plot instead of just being a musical hobo.
- Z
First on the chopping block is the new Tragically Hip album. I've been a passing fan of these crazy Canuks for a few years now, although I always seem to like the really obscure tracks and albums. It isn't an attempt at indie cred, it's just that b-sides like "Gus the Polar Bear From Central Park" and "One Night in Copenhagen" seem to fall in my lap, and I fall in love with them and then don't see the need to go dig up more of their stuff. The new album, We Are the Same, is pretty catchy. I can't actually admit to having listened to it all the way through yet, as I got grabbed pretty hard by track four, "Coffee Girl," and she hasn't let go yet. It's a simple enough story: indie girl goes to work (at a coffee shop, hence the name) hung over, spends the day listening to an indie mix tape ("old Cat Power and classic Beck") and being mad at indie boy. Yet somehow the song grabbed me by the lapels and throttled me with its catchiness. Maybe it was because I was digging around for songs about mix tapes and relationship problems and it just fit the bill perfectly. Maybe it's because I'm one of the guys who sees the girl at the coffee shop is in a bad mood, but I'm too awkward to try and start a conversation to be nice so I just imagine what the story is.
Next on the list is the Decemberists' Hazards of Love. If I know what's good for me, I should stop listening to this album - specifically "The Rake's Song" and "The Wanting Comes In Waves/Repaid." But I can't. It's been in my car for maybe a month straight now, and it doesn't look like it's leaving any time soon. The Decemberists always have very varied albums that jump around from one theme to another, but it feels new here. They've never done a concept album before. Sure, The Crane Wife had the title track as a framing device, and "The Tain" is a twenty-minute EP, but Hazards is a single story from start to finish, and manages to touch on fear, love, hope, infanticide, malevolent fairy queens, murdering bodies of water, and of course, REVENGE. The only thing it lacks is a generically upbeat, ironic pop number, which they've done enough of (see "16 Military Wives," "The Legionnaire's Lament," "Billy Liar," and "O Valencia!" ad nauseum), but there's need for catchy vivaciousness when the album makes you want to throw the goat and slit throats half the time. I saw them perform it live in Oakland a few weeks ago, and before then I would have never thought shuffling shoegazer indie kids would be that close to moshing. Thank guest vocalist Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond for that - I've only seen that level of magnetism and stage charisma in opera singers or Oscar-winning actors, not a five-foot-nothing indie girl in silver tights, but now that I've seen it I'm hooked and star-crushing as hard as my mom did on Paul and George back in '67. Worden's jaw-dropping voice is used for the character of the Queen, which she does with dynamic, dynamite dexterity, going from an angry, soulful growl that makes me quiver to a shrieking belt that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. The instrumentation throughout is also excellent, with awards deserved for Best Indie Use of Creepy Harpsichord as a Leitmotif and for Best Percussion-Based Celebration of Infanticide. Like I said, I should stop listening to the album at this point before the CD melts in my car stereo... but I can't help it. I'm hooked.
Hm. Maybe next time I want to waste some time writing I can do something with plot instead of just being a musical hobo.
- Z