This isn’t a review; it’s just some random collected thoughts. As such, I’m not going to be recording myself reading it, that bit of fun will be reserved for bigger posts.
Anyways, where was I?
Seeing as how it is the nature of this blog to talk about music I like, I thought I’d share with you something not strictly a record review. One of my very favorite bands (if not my favorite band) is Nine Inch Nails. Last year Trent Reznor (the man behind it all) announced that the upcoming tours that year would be NIN ‘s very last. At first this brought dismay as I’d only seen them live once and they put on an incredible live show. But you learn to accept things eventually and I got to see the band for my second and last time at Sasquatch Festival last year and say goodbye as it were. This, coupled with the fact that Reznor has said that he’ll continue in music, allowed me to get over the whole thing. So here’s the deal. While we’re waiting for Reznor to drop the next NIN record or his possible up-coming collaboration with Gary Numan (!!!) I thought I’d turn our attention to some cool things to come out in recent years under the NIN banner.
-The Slip
NIN’s most recent album, The Slip is a superb record that Trent released for FREE and you can still get it for FREE. The album is split into three sections: Three aggressive songs, three downbeat songs and three experimental songs. If you are at all curious about NIN or already a fan, there is no reason not to click the link and download this excellent record right now.
At 36 tracks and 110:09, Ghosts I-IV is by far the longest NIN release out there. It’s also entirely instrumental and Reznor’s most collaborative work, featuring such luminaries as Adrian Belew (of King Crimson) and Brian Viglione (of The Dresden Dolls,) among others. For $5 you can download all 36 tracks. That (while not being quite as nice as FREE) is a deal.
This One Is On Us is website dedicated to releasing high quality fan produced NIN live material. They’re responsible for bringing us audio of the Lights In The Sky Tour as well as The Downward Spiral Live at Webster Hall. For being entirely fan run, the stuff they release is pretty fantastic. They’ve just recently finished up work on The Gift, the live video of The Lights In The Sky Tour. Here’s a link:
For those from of you who’ve been living under a rock for the past five years, The Lonely Forest are a guitar-based Indie Rock quartet who’re the best damn thing to come out of Sound Off! in… ever. Centered around lead-man John Van Deusen’s blissfully energetic guitar and earnest vocals, the band has been creating a steady following since their formation in 2005 and are poised to take over the world. This isn’t the first time I’ve tried to write about this album either. The first time I tried to write about The Lonely Forest’s We Sing The Body Electric! I was confounded. It was an odd situation, I’m not normally faced with an album that I can’t seem to find anything to say about and I’m an opinionated putz, so what was the big deal? The big deal is that there isn’t much to say about The Lonely Forest’s We Sing the Body Electric! because it’s really, really good. That’s the big secret and the reason this review is giving me something of a headache.
What do you say about perfection? Or near perfection I suppose. OK, so it’s not perfect, but it comes so close that it gives you shivers. Actually, the whole album gives off this “shiver up and down your spine” feeling that you get when music is really that good. It’s the perfect combination of Indie Rock, piano balladry, Pop sensibility and energetic guitar power. Each of the musicians, Van Deusen especially but also bassist Eric Sturgeon, drummer Braydn Krueger and guitarist Tony Ruland are fantastic players whose sheer musicality is sharp as a tack. The synergy between these musicians is astounding considering how the band has only been around about five years now. Some bands take a long time to really get it together, The Lonely Forest play like they’ve been doing this for decades.
Listening to the music of The Lonely Forest is like infusing your body with light drawn directly from the heart of the sun: a warm, crackling river of fire that makes you feel like you’re made of electricity. So effectively, when The Lonely Forest talks about “singing the body electric” they’re also singing about anybody who hears their music. And really, that’s the mark of good music is something that you can form a strong emotional connection with and while The Lonely Forest’s music can be depressing sometimes (see their album Nuclear Winter for details) it’s on the whole fairly uplifting. I was just discussing with a friend of mine the other day how Marilyn Manson’s Antichrist Superstar makes me physically sick when I listen to it. It’s not that the music is bad, it’s simply the combination of sound and subject matter coming together to make me feel like I’m going to die and therefore, I turn it off. The music on We Sing The Body Electric! While not always “happy” has the exact opposite effect. I listen to it and I feel like, not only am I going to live, but I’m going to have an awesome day, climb to the top of the tallest building, jump off and go flying for a few miles before I land causally in Discovery Park. Then, I’ll do a jig, because I just defied the laws of physics. Just so we’re clear, I’m not on anything, the music is really that good.
With all the good that We Sing The Body Electric! brings to the table, there has to be some kind of catch right? Kind of. It is a testament to the album’s brilliance that the catches are so small. Catch 1: “Golden Apples Of The Sun pt 1” feels to me like it could have been a longer song. But it’s made up for by the fact that there’s a part 2. Catch 2: The albums most famous song and therefore probably The Lonely Forest’s most famous song is the 3rd song on the album, “We Sing In Time.” The only conceivable problem with this is that the album deals its ace way too early. Some people will not acknowledge after “We Sing In Time” that there are other songs on the album that are just as good as that. But there certainly are. “Blackheart Vs. Captain America” is the true beginning of the album after the short intro of “Two Pink Pills” and it gets us rolling out of bed on a really good note. “Centennial” is another prime example of The Lonely Forest’s anthem making prowess. Both “Centennial” and “Blackheart Vs. Captain America” cause the metaphor train to ground to a halt, they’re both powerful rockers that’ll bring your soul out of hiding and make it feel nice and shiny. Huh. Maybe I was wrong. The Lonely Forest Doesn’t make the metaphor train grind to a halt, it just turns it into the overly optimistic metaphor train. Nothing wrong with that.
It’s bands like The Lonely Forest that makes me ridiculously proud to live in Seattle. They’re proof that we’ve got a lot to offer in the Pacific Northwest and that we’ve nowhere to go but up. I do fear though: with society moving away from the full album experience faster than rats abandoning a burning ship (cliché metaphor ahoy!) I fear most people are going to just listen to “We Sing In Time” by itself. Don’t do that, take in the rest of this album, you’ll feel fantastic. Sure sometimes the situations bleak and we’re all going to die, but I can’t help but feel that the overall direction we’re headed in here is one of triumph over the darkness the corrodes us. At least, that’s how I feel listening to The Lonely Forest.
This just in! Through the miracle of modern technology, I have found a way to record myself reading my reviews to you. I’m going to start posting these recordings along with the written version of my posts so you can listen and read at the same time if you want. Or you can just listen. Or you can just read. Do whatever you want. Just be on the lookout for the media players at the bottom of the reviews. Exciting!
Hello, hello. It’s good to see all of your smiling faces. Well, OK, I can’t see anyone’s face. I can see my computer screen and I'm assuming that upon reading this, your face will change from its sullen wilt into a beaming smile. So. I’ve decided to start a new blog for music stuff. A place where my thoughts, opinions and rage can find a home seeing as how they’ve been without one for sometime now. I thought for my first post I would outline the Five Year Plan for you. Don’t worry, the only casualties of this plan will be a few people’s egos and they’ll probably never read my blog anyways. So on to business.
What Happened To The Old Blog:
At the end of my senior year of high school I pretty much thought I’d run out of things to say and was confusedly trying to divide my time between writing for my blog and writing for Three Imaginary Girls. I found I couldn’t really do both very well at all and eventually just stopped writing all together. This didn’t make me happy but it freed me up to work on other projects and getting into college (which turned out to be successful.)
Meanwhile, I was further distressed by other friends of mine whose writing seemed to be taking off while mine felt spent. I also started questioning whether or not my opinions were relevant. I can’t keep up with all the new music coming out and people have already written about everything else so what the fuck am I supposed to do? Turn to Pitchfork? No. While I searched for an answer the writing continued to not happen.
I’m in no way, shape or form blaming other people for my problems. I stopped writing because of my own self-doubt. I feel really stupid about that now. 2009 was a great year musically speaking and I missed my chance to throw my opinion into the mix. But I’ve come to some realizations about my writing, music and people that factor into the creation of this new blog.
What The Blog Is and Isn’t:
This new blog is going to be a place for me to do what I want whenever I want with my writings in relation to music. It’s not going to be a news feed, meaning I won’t simply be talking up what’s current. I could do that if I really wanted to but I don’t, and besides if you want to know the latest you can always go read Pitchfork or Pretzel Logic or something. This blog is going to be for me to express my opinions on things I think should be talked about (like every blog ever.) I hear tons of music everyday that most people overlook or that simply needs more attention. Not everything I listen to is obscure, but I’ve recently realized just how fringe a lot of my taste in music is and how much I hate mainstream music… OK, that last part was hardly a revelation but you get the point.
I have hundreds of albums, artists, shows and ideas I want to share and I figure I should start doing that again. I guess that something I’m trying to do is get back to something purer. I feel my music writing isn’t very good when put under pressure and so I’m going back to a realm where the stakes are low to say the least. Another important thing of note: I’m going to be doing this mostly alone and by that I mean without an official editor. This doesn’t mean the work will be sloppy. It just means it’ll be a bit rawer than it was near the end. I’ll still do my best to edit pieces and make sure that they’ve been given the once; twice or however many times over I feel they need. Due to my schedule I will most likely be publishing pieces only once a week and probably on weekends because that’s when I have the most time. Above all else, I need this to be fun for me because I need something that relaxes me and makes me happy.
I’m not trying to be a professional music analyst right now (I’m trying to be a professional actor… I know, pretty insane huh?) I just want to share my two cents and have some fun doing it. There probably isn’t going to be much introduction to the blog besides this mission statement, I’m just going to pick up where I left off in May 2009.
So be prepared.
Facebook will function as a way to alert people when there’s a new post but aside from that I’m not going to be sending out alert e-mails like I did with the last blog. That got really annoying really fast. I’ll probably start out by publishing some pieces I wrote over the summer that never found a home, which also gives me time to write up some more stuff. I’m going to continue my policy of no rating systems and full reviews, but I’m going to use this as an opportunity to try some new stuff. And just so we’re clear, this is a blog for writing, not Mediafire. If you want the music you’ll have to get it yourself. I will try to link to places where you can listen to the music sometimes though. OK, I think I’ve successfully covered what this blog is and isn’t.
What I Want You To Do:
Be prepared. Read the blog. Listen to the music. Comment. Ask questions. Tell me if you think I’m right; tell me if you think I’m wrong. Don’t be a jerk. Love everybody. Make them feel good about themselves. I know I can’t make you do those last three but I can always ask.
Outroduction:
Ready? Let’s Go.
Special Thanks:
Sean. Sasha. The Heckler. Alex. Murren. Jessa. Ben. Simon. Liana. Anyone who read the last blog, even if you only read it once. If you'd like to see the old one, here's a link to it: The Third Rail.
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