I use music in this space to give insight on shit only for which I have concern, as this is the ultimate in intellectual masturbation. There’s a small method to this particular madness in that I always considered myself a “music guy,” whatever that means. In fact, in previous times, that was called “pretentious,” a “music snob,” a music nerd,” being into “indie rock,” being into “underground music” and the like (some people use “hipster,” but that’s a young man’s game and it is unidentifiable [this is one of my pet peeves.]). My Rolling Stone blog project sort of shows that definition to be true. Music is a thing for me. 

The Internet has changed a lot of that stuff, in the sense that there isn’t really an underground anymore. Bands like Wilco and the Arcade Fire blow up the Billboard and Soundscan charts. “Mainstream” rock is completely dead — does anyone even listen to that stuff anymore? — and the major/indie label difference is almost nothing.

Which isn’t to say that the circumstances around my definition of myself have dictated said definition; I am still intensely interested in finding new music and exploring said music. I’ve recently gotten into Norwegian black metal, albeit on the most shallow level. Most black metal sucks.

The point remains that curiosity is the first and most important factor in this stuff. I like to use the technology to my advantage in exploring and discovering new music. Services like Last.fm and Spotify make these things much easier, so a ton more music is at my fingertips.

With all of that said, I have become a “movie guy” in the last few years. This started a long time ago because I dated a beautiful girl in high school — she was one year my senior — who ran our school’s film club. She was an actress and had been in movies and found film to be an important part of her life. I was doing the radio and being all music-interested, but she showed me a bit of a love for the different movies, the punk rock of filmmaking.

This urge laid dormant for a long time until the past few years, when I decided I was going to see every movie nominated for the Academy Awards’ Best Picture honor before the show.

Like so many awards, people enjoy debating the Oscars and the nominations. Like voting, I wanted to have some skin in the game and say that I could make a rational, educated judgement when the winner was announced. It’s easy to say that some movie isn’t the best of the year when one has only seen one other movie; I like to have seen all the contenders nominated in order to ascertain whether or not I agreed with the outcome of the awards.

In fact, I remember the point wherein I decided I wanted to do this. It was after the Oscars were awarded for 2007 (so, early 2008) and a friend of mine bitched and moaned about the lack of The Dark Knight getting any recognition for anything other than Heath Ledger’s portrayal of the Joker. His notion was that The Dark Knight was a million times better than anything nominated that year (The Departed won, for example).

I asked him how many of the nominated movies he had seen and he’d only seen one. This seemed, to me, akin to complaining about the president when one had not voted. If one is going to complain about a comparison competition, one should at least have sampled those being compared.

(Yes, I realize this analogy isn’t really all that great of an analogy. No one can see all the movies from a year — film critics, maybe — and having seen a movie does not make one an expert. But, you know. It connected in my mind.)

At that point, I decided that I was going to see all the 2008 films nominated for the next Oscars. And I did, partially to my detriment.

(2008 ruined my notion of what a good movie is. That year contained three of my favorite films of all time — Michael Clayton, There Will Be Blood and, especially No Country for Old Men — and I constantly compare films for each year to those ones.)

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One of the reasons I’m late this week and didn’t post last week is because I work for a living and I’m busy there, but another is because I’ve not been thinking about music as much as I’ve been thinking about movies. In the past month, I’ve seen a bunch of movies currently in theaters. This is because I’m trying to expand my judgements to the actor categories and would like to see anything nominated for an acting Oscar. With the Golden Globe nominations having been announced, I take those nominations as a template.

All of this is a runup to say that I saw The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo this week. Holy everloving shit. That movie is amazing.

Not that anyone cares, but I tend to think The Tree of Life was the best, most interesting film I saw this year. It’s introspective and challenging, shot through a dreamy, memorable lens. Terrence Malick created a plotless prayer of a film that explores the nature of existence in a way that Darren Aronofsky failed in The Fountain. It’s eye candy, it made me think and it’s powerful. It challenged me in ways film does not and has not in a long time.

With that said, I don’t know that I enjoyed it as much as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. That film, all 158 minutes of it, took me to another place and had me riveted in the story. Like a well-written Dan Brown book, the movie was paced beautifully, darkly shot and acted well by Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig (and Stellan Skarsgård and Christopher Plummer and everyone else in the film).

The music for the film — the thing which I am ostensibly writing about — works so well. As well as the Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross soundtrack for Fincher’s The Social Network succeeded in setting an atmosphere (it won them an Oscar), this soundtrack better fills the movie’s spaces. Like the Swedish landscape in which the movie is set, the soundtrack moves slowly and sparsely, with piano notes playing sporadically over dwelling codas.

This is all said without the beautiful notion of the film’s title sequence, overlaid by a cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song.”

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Along with the sublime Bridesmaids, David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was my favorite time spent at the cinema this year. The soundtrack helped propel that long, of course.

We’re coming up on the time of the year wherein everyone releases their “best of the year” lists. These lists, of course, are nonsense. They seem to always include whatever schlock Wilco has produced in a given year — despite not having released a truly great album since 2002 — and a representative from all of the possible genres of music (save, of course, for metal).

Nevertheless, it’s fun to make lists and it’s fun to having something about which to argue. No one cares what my favorite album of the year was and I’d be all too hastey in asserting that 2011 wasn’t a great year for records (note: it wasn’t). I tend to not see these things in the long haul; I make a quick reaction because blogging isn’t my life and I’m kind of a terrible writer and many many other reasons. For example: We’re coming up on Oscar season and I have movies to see.

(Notably, I just read Neil Strauss’ The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists and it has thrown me into a mini existential crisis about the state of the world. It’s a truly upsetting read. I don’t think Strauss intended this.)

This is all a roundabout way of referencing Paste Magazine’s selection of Bon Iver’s self-titled album as the best of the year. The amazing hockey writer Ryan Lambert — who also writes about music sometimes, though he and I disagree on those things — said, of the rating “how on earth is bon iver bon iver the no.1 album of the year. it’s not even the best bon iver record.” This, of course, is improper logic. Wish You Were Here was the best album of 1975, but it’s hardly the best album of the band’s career (ditto for OK Computer being the best album of its year, while In Rainbows is my favored Radiohead album).

—

This is all to say that I don’t think Bon Iver is the best album of 2011, but I’ve already written about my two favorite albums of this year a few weeks ago and earlier last week (spoiler alert, it was Chelsea Wolfe’s Ἀποκάλυψις and PJ Harvey’s Let England Shake). Take this for what it’s worth considering I’m making a hastey snap judgement, but 2011 seems wildly disappointing, in terms of records. Radiohead’s King of Limbs wasn’t much and certainly lost its bearings in regards to the band’s previous output. Mastodon’s new record is the proverbial letdown record, though still fun as hell and a joy to see done live (well, some of the songs). Tha Carter IV was complete dreck and Drake’s album is being praised simply for being some sort of poorly done and ineffectual sing/rap copy of a Kanye West record. Watch the Throne was well-done, though short in memory and nothing compared to Kanye West’s last record (more on that below). A bunch of magazines will try to talk about Lady GaGa or Adele or whatever. The PJ Harvey record was sublime. That’s all fine, but they’re not the best records of the year. People like the Washed Out record, but I don’t like Air France copies that much. The Fleet Foxes record was pretty amazing and it touched me, but that’s one of the few I loved this year.

Which brings us to Bon Iver. Justin Vernon’s star has never been higher with his inclusion on Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.

(It should be noted that I cannot write or talk about that album in a reasonable way. It is among my favorite albums. I wanted to write about it on this site, but I already sound like a fawning idiot for a lot of records and to completely digest a record like that, I’d have to completely submit to my idiocy. No thanks. Just take it from me: If you don’t like that album, I don’t want to know you.)

I don’t know if Vernon’s songwriting changed because of his working with West; Bon Iver is certainly more produced than both the first Bon Iver record (not hard to do) and the Volcano Choir record. Dotted with pianos, pedal steel, bass sax, reverb and a lot of the Bon Iver-whispery vocals. The falsetto is there, but in a seemingly smaller context.

Largely cited in the record’s reviews and fan reactions, the Bruce Hornsby-esque keyboards on the record are a departure from the band’s first record, but are welcome. “Calgary” has a early 1990s feel, though sounds better than I remember my youth sounding. “Best/Rest” does, really, sound like it could come off A Night on the Town.

—

I was going through a particularly tough period when I picked up Bon Iver around its release in June. As is the way with depression, I often wasn’t able to find a source/figure out a road out of said feelings and my rut were largely compounded by some personal stuff and a pretty hectic work schedule.

The irony of the experience of the record, though, is its atmosphere as compared to the first Bon Iver record. For Emma, Forever Ago is a record written largely about a breakup, a bloodletting of sadness written largely in isolation. It’s a musical tribute to hurt feelings in many ways. Bon Iver was written at the height of Vernon’s success and is hardly a study in melancholy. But, for me, they flipped. Maybe it’s the upbeat nature of For Emma, Forever Ago — and specifically “Flume” and “For Emma” — as compared to Bon Iver lead single “Calgary.” Or maybe it’s simply the place in my life. But, overwhelmingly, I look to Bon Iver and sulk. I look to For Emma, Forever Ago when I don’t need to sulk.

This, of course, speaks to the nature of arrangements against the lyrics of a song or where the artist is coming from. I have no idea of the nature of the intentions of Bon Iver. I don’t know if Vernon and company wanted to garner a feeling of loneliness on For Emma, Forever Ago, though the lyrics certainly speak to that.

—

It’s all a place of where one is at a time. I’ve mentioned this before, but so much of our experience of culture is based on where we are in our lives, at the time. There is no, for example, critical or fan consensus as to the best Death Cab for Cutie album. But, in my own mind there is only one great, wonderful DCFC album and that’s We Have the Facts and We’re Voting Yes and that’s because I was going through a breakup when it came out.

—

Bon Iver is a wonderful record. It’s affecting and I have no real issue with a bunch of places naming it best record of the year. But, it’s not. Ἀποκάλυψις and Let England Shake are.

A note: In a fit of real goal making, I had intended to write about Let England Shake soon after writing about the Kinks’ Arthur (or some other of the Kinks’ similarly Anglocentric records [which is probably all of them]). But, life intervened and I wanted to spotlight my favorite albums of 2011. So, here is the first. I already wrote about the other. Maybe I’ll get to Arthur soon. But probably not.

There’s a notion that the pro-gun lobby normally lobs involving having everyone armed. It would be “safer,” they say. It is, essentially, a small scale M.A.D. policy.

(M.A.D., for those who never took PS 1 in college, is “Mutally Assured Destruction,” wherein two nuclear powers would not bomb the other into the stone age, for fear that a bomb was coming its own way soon thereafter. Thanks, University of Missouri Political Science Department, for educating me 10 years ago.)

I find this patently foolish. For one, the concept of M.A.D. was only realized after the United States used the atomic bomb on Japan, demonstrating what sort of carnage could be wrought with the bomb. Second, the large scale actors of the Cold War (the United States and the Soviet Union), for the most part, acted rationally. Individual actors, however, do not act rationally. Which is to say that human beings act hastily, no matter how trained in combat.

To put it in a somewhat pithy context, almost everyone in a war is armed and that shit is not safe at all. Certainly not “safer” than when fewer people have guns.

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All this is the backdrop to the sublime Let England Shake. Polly Jean Harvey, the person, sometimes get too self-serious and obtuse in her songwriting and her band can let her down. White Chalk, for example is hardly the record that To Bring You My Love and Uh Huh Her is mediocre, at best.

But, Let England Shake is a strikingly wonderful record. It’s focused, thematically and musically, while variously tragic and gruesome. Like the decade that preceded it and the history of the nation she chronicles, Let England Shake can be stiff and cold — and can be powerful and emotional — while hitting emotional subjects and telling the stories that built an empire.

—

It’s no surprise that I would fall in love with a concept album, albeit a somewhat loose one. I’m no history buff, nor am I a particular fan of political music. But, Let England Shake is able to overcome its political nature by painting sonic portraits (sorry. I know that sentence is tortured.). Harvey’s lyrics are, as English literature teachers like to say, there to show and not tell.

A midtempo dirge of “In the Dark Places” recounts the English marches across continents at the expense of young men and women (Sample lyric: “And some of us returned/and some of us did not.”) “Written on the Forehead” hits the U.S./U.K. entanglement in Mesopatamia subtly by reference local symbols and sounds. “The Last Living Rose” echoes the lovely self-hatred that so many have about their own homeland — especially in connection with the West’s imperialism (I am defining “the West” as the U.S. and U.K.). Harvey’s distinctly British, but often despises her own upbringing and her land’s legacy. “On Battleship Hill” is a slow historical tome that finds Harvey exploring her vocal range, then coming back to a nice rock rhythm that is unseen on the rest of the record. Eventually, the violence is imply referenced as “cruel nature” and it has “won again” in its need to progress (in this case, in trench warfare).

Harvey utilizes wonderfully detailed and rhythmic songwriting in a three-song triad examining the horrors of war. The first song in the triad, “This Glorious Land” may not be the most concrete track on the record, but it also likely the best song. With a military bugle rolling — off-tempo, I might add, to augment the strange dischord in the topic — the song opens with the open question of the West’s overwhelming legacy:

How is our glorious country ploughed?
Not by iron ploughs
Our lands is ploughed by tanks and feet.
Feet marching.

With a distinctly single-tempo line, the song keeps going like a military march, mentioning the unnecessary recent exploits of the former and present superpowers. It’s catchy and terrifying as I find myself singing “What is the glorious fruit of our land?/The fruit is deformed children,” despite my knowledge of the U.S.’ role in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

In “The Words That Maketh Murder,” she uses a wonderful example of showing and not telling, Harvey’s use of truly moribund imagery — sample lyric: “soldiers fell like lumps of meat” — as she echoes the true horrors of even the most noble of pursuits (well, war-wise). The song’s timeline appears to echo that of either of the World Wars, with the coda’s use of “Summertime Blues” lyrical irony: “What if I take my problem to the United Nations.” Bitingly smart, Harvey takes on the world power structure and the down-and-dirty notions of war.

Finally, the post-climax song of the triad, “All and Everyone” is blissfully dotted with french horns and low brass. Resigned to fate, Harvey waxes lyrically on death being “everywhere and in the air” and death being “now and now and now.” Finally, the troops feel it important to sing “death to all and everyone.”

—

I write this with the knowledge that Harvey collaborated with Seamus Murphy to put together short films for each of the songs on the record.

—

War is nasty. We like to look at the two great wars as something less than nasty, as compared to those we have fought more recently. But, they weren’t. We just didn’t photograph them as much and TV didn’t exist in the same way. Harvey’s ability to impart this — much of the record references England’s role in the first World War — is what makes Let England Shake so achingly beautiful, affecting and powerful.

You know, in writing about supergroups in my bit about the Amalgamated Sons of Rest record, I never really stopped to contemplate about the indie/underground nature of the band. The term “supergroup” mostly exists for the purposes of bands like Blind Faith, Derek and the Dominos, the Dirty Mac, Damn Yankees, Zwan and other such bands that include stars as large as Eric Clapton or Billy Corgan. Ultimately, who — outside of people like me — gives a shit if Ali Roberts and Jason Molina record some songs with Will Oldham.

Not many. Which is a shame, because when Drag City released the Drag City Supersession record, it is an obvious homage to the origin of the word. And like the Kooper/Bloomfield/Stills collaboration, the record mixes covers and originals that showcase the participants’ great strengths. Of Drag City’s roster, it would be difficult to find better representatives than Edith Frost, Smog and Royal Trux.

In the Drag City case, it’s the ability to leverage the label’s lofi aesthetic and cater it to each member. For Frost’s songs and covers, there is a strength in her voice that also speaks to a vulnerability (which, not surprisingly, makes for the best songs on the record). The Lou Reed cover “Charley’s Girl” has Frost’s voice at its best, while “Leaving the Army” may be her most well-constructed song. Bill Callahan works the misanthropy angle — shocking! — is perfect for “Nothing Rises to Meet Me,” while a violin ending is well-orchestrated as a guitar doubles it. “Zero Degrees,” another Callahan original, opens the record in lovely fashion, as well. The song is perfectly suited for his low growl and the Neil Michael Hagerty loose guitar work. And, as a sucker for covers, I am completely in love with the Hagerty-sang cover of Sabbath’s “N.I.B.” It fits perfectly in with Hagerty’s Royal Trux thing, with a blues riff and a recklessness that borders on beautiful.

If supergroups are, indeed, a tribute to the original, the Drag City Supersession is a loving and fun one.

Let’s get this out of the way. Pink Friday isn’t much of a record. It has its ups and downs, certainly. But, for whatever reason, Nicki Minaj’s first proper release is a forgettable album.

Why does this matter? Because, in her limited career, I’ll put Minaj up against any rapper as the best going today. That’s the tragedy. Unlike her mentor, Lil Wayne, Minaj has no album upon which to hang her “best in the game” hat. Like Lil Wayne, many of her best work is done on mixtapes and guest spots, but nevertheless, she is as skilled as anyone, if not more.

—

You know that stutter/rapid-fire rap thing that’s been around for quite a while? You know, the thing Busta Rhymes does (most recently, as it’s his thing) on that dopey Chris Brown song (later covered — and made safer — by a pretty white lady and her milquetoast husband). Yeah. That thing.

Nicki Minaj does that on “Blazin’,” (going through “I catch wreck on recreation, so I exceed all your expectations/because I got it in ‘em, I kill ‘em and then I skin ‘em/the contract is on but I am the addendum” in the span of about a second and a half) better than those jerks and idiots.

Few people would mistake Kanye West as a great rapper, but Minaj destroys him on “Blazin’.” Like, it’s not even close.

—

Another example: Do you remember how, when writing about Tha Carter III and Lil Wayne’s abject destruction of every other all-star on the “Make It Rain” remix (Listen here)?

Well, Nicki Minaj does that. On several guest tracks. Her verse on “Hello, Good Morning” is not just distinctive for having a lady voice on a Diddy record, but also for smoking big fat Rick Ross, T.I. and Diddy. Now, sure, the counterargument is multifaceted.

1. The song isn’t much. Rescuing it is easy. I cede this some. It’s a pretty stupid song. But, nevertheless, being the best thing on a bad song is worth something.
2. Her company on the song blows. I also cede this, to a point. Yes, Diddy is a shitty rapper and Rick Ross is a one-trick pony, but TI doesn’t suck at all. Besting him is something.

But, moreover, that’s not the only song on which Minaj is the highlight. Like Lil Wayne’s appearance on the “Make it Rain” remix, DJ Khaled’s remix of his own “All I Do is Win” is an all-star game of rappers. T-Pain, Rick Ross, Busta Rhymes, Diddy, Fabolous, Jadakiss and Fat Joe all appear on the record, with decent bits from Fabolous and Jadakiss, and a wonderful Busta Rhymes bit. Nevertheless, Minaj goes through slight and broad metaphors in a barely 20-second verse.

—

It’s no coincidence that I have a playlist in my Amazon cloud player (I highly recommend it, by the way) simply called “Nicki Minaj – featured.” It is, not shockingly, her best guest spots from her bit on Britney Spears’ “Til the World Ends” remix to her sublime verse on Gucci Mane’s “Sex in Crazy Places” reminds me of Ludacris’ “What’s your Fantasy?”

(It’s worth noting that “What’s Your Fantasy?” is my favorite song of its type.)

In fact, she goes toe-to-toe with Luda on “My Chick Bad” and sounds better, oddly. She’s syrupy-slow on Birdman’s “Y.U. Mad” and submissive and downright sensual on big fat Rick Ross’ “You The Boss.” Hell, she appears on nearly the best song on the Lonely Island’s pretty clever Turtleneck & Chain record (I prefer “Motherlover,” as far as LI songs go).

—

Which brings up the confusion inherent in the lack of quality of Pink Friday. It doesn’t really add up. Nicki Minaj’s record should be outstanding. Hell, she can make a stupidass Sean Kingston record song decent, why can’t she do her own work well?

Her mixtapes don’t shed a particular light, either. Like Lil Wayne, her best overall work are mixtape songs — “Go Hard,” on 2009′s Beam Me Up, Scotty and her appearance, not surprisingly, on Lil Wayne’s “Sweet Dreams” on his No Ceilings tape — and there’s not much of a dispute about that. Its not a timing thing, either; her work on early 2010′s “My Chick Bad” is just as good as her more recent (as in, released this month) appearance on Drake’s “Make Me Proud” (pretty mediocre rock-y live version here). Not a huge surprise, but that song is the best on Drake’s latest record.

—

Pink Friday does have some highlights. As mentioned, “Blazin’” is a quality song, as is “Fly,” complete with hook sung by Rihanna. “Roman’s Revenge” has great Minaj bits on it (the remix is better, as it subs in Lil Wayne for Eminem, who can go pound sand, for all I care).

“Roman’s Revenge” is the thing that makes Minaj so interesting. Roman, of course, is her “gay boy” alter ego (one of her many vocal alter egos), as she explains here with Chelsea Handler:

The song’s aggression is a subtly interesting thing. The song is hard, crazy and striking, all stereotypes that do not follow the usual gay stereotypes. “Roman” is a tough dude, following Minaj’s ultra-aggressive lyrics.

It’s her, general, dedication to gay rights that is kind of striking (she made an “It gets better”-type video and has pledged to want to “eradicate” homophobia). Yes, it’s more palalatble. Gay women are more acceptable to a mostly male rap audience, but nevertheless, Minaj stays, as she said in an Out magazine profile, outside of the gay/straight labels:

‘I don’t date women and I don’t have sex with women.’ Nicki Lewinsky laughs at the resemblance and adds almost tauntingly, ‘But I don’t date men either.’ Her bottom line: No labels. ‘People who like me — they’ll listen to my music, and they’ll know who I am. I just don’t like that people want you to say what you are, who you are. I just am. I do what the fuck I want to do.’

Minaj’s great strength is her fullness, of course. And part of that is the sexuality that is so part of her image.

—

Which brings us to, of course, an elephant in the room.

I’ll put it in some context. Having a conversation with someone recently about Karmin and their minor fame, my companion noted that Karmin’s popularity remains in “a safe, pretty, very made-up girl rapping.” And, no doubt, there’s something to this. Watch the video.

Which brings us back to Nicki Minaj and the fact that she’s a good-looking woman. That’s not without its value, of course; much of the rap game is image and Minaj’s image is striking. I don’t doubt that a lot of her popularity is that she’s pretty and talented.

For what it’s worth, I’m OK with this. It’s 2011 — externalities are in play. Drake’s former life on on Degrassi get people in the door, no question. It’s part of the reason people want to hear if he’s any good. And there are, for some reason, people who find him to be physically attractive. I find him dumpy, personally.

But, I digress.

If image didn’t matter, as Patton Oswalt would possibly say, we’d all wear sweatpants. It’s not that easy. Nicki Minaj’s multiple personalities in her rap persona are part of her image construction, with the Barbie thing being the operative one, which makes her similar to a lot of dude rappers.

Again. That’s of value and it’s certainly better than the alternative. As she told Out in its profile:

“It’s interesting that people have more negative things to say about me saying ‘I’m Barbie’ than me saying ‘I’m a bad bitch,’ ‘ she says, getting a bit heated. ‘So you can call yourself a female dog because that’s cool in our community. But if you call yourself a Barbie, that’s fake.”

Indeed, it’s Minaj’s realness that spans all her alter egos. She spans the aggressively violent Roman to the intern-inspired Nicki Lewinsky to the ultra-Katy Perry-esque Barbie. There’s a fullness there that goes beyond the normal

And that flow. There’s also her superior ability to make nearly every other rapper look silly.

I wonder if Kelly Rowland, barely a week younger than I am, ever gets really jealous of Beyonce? I have no idea if they’re friends or not, but I have to think there’s a jealousy in the difference in the amount of attention the two of them get.

I don’t know if all popular singers think they’re the best around — it seems to be true for rappers, that’s for sure — but do you think that Rowland goes to bed thinking “Goddamn, if only I’d gotten more face time in Destiny’s Child, I’d be headlining the Grammys.”

After all, Beyonce’s records are h-i-t-s. She gets to work with the best producers. She gets great guests on her records. She ends up in movies.

—

I’m 30 years old — again, the same age as Ms. Rowland — and I have had the various timeline points that a regular guy gets, looking at others who’ve surpassed me (often by miles, it seems). The easiest example of this is the baseball player thing: Most men (at least baseball fans) die a little inside when there is a major league player older than they are. As in, sometime in college, it’s a sad day when some shortstop is younger than you are, at the time.

Rafael Furcal was that, for me. Turns out he’d forged his birth certificate and was a little older, but, the premise holds. Since then, there have been many players younger than I am. It’s… upsetting.

—

But, ultimately, that success threshold is defined by our peers. I’m not a baseball player; I didn’t really even play past age 15. The same holds for actors, musicians and titans of industry. I play a few instruments very poorly and I can sorta carry a tune in Rock Band, but, ultimately, I’m not a musician. Mark Zuckerberg is younger than I am, but I don’t really know how to code much — save for what’s required of my job, aka html, javascript, Flash, etc. — so I’m not the type to have created Facebook.

It’s easier to discern for peers. To quote the amazing “Marge Gets a Job” episode of The Simpsons, “I’m used to seeing people promoted ahead of me: Friends, coworkers, Tibor… I never thought it’d be my own wife.” I’m similar; I’ve seen plenty of people I know (including a few former coworkers) get to be in positions I would’ve envied, in a former life.

And that’s the key: I don’t mind. I am not wired for that stuff. I’m not a striver in any particular way. I’m sure a lot of it has to do with the self-satisfaction of being raised in affluence; my parents told me from a young age that I was special, so my efforts toward making myself special didn’t exactly manifest. Rather, I’ve been pretty happy with the way things were — I never really wanted for anything in my life. Looming similarly large, of course, is whatever factor genes, brain chemistry (wooooooo depression!) and the like play into this. My sister, though not a striver, is not a step and a half removed from Burnoutville, like I am.

Yes, I’m past the age that David Eggers and Jonathan Safran Foer wrote their great debut works. Yes, I’m not blogging for anyone other than a few people who check my Twitter feed. Yes, I never made the majors.

But, all of this is good enough for me. I have referenced the great — probably sarcastic, at the time — advice my dad gave me (“Don’t ever get married, Ross. Get a dog and an apartment.“), but the fact is that I’m living that advice. I have a decent group of friends. I have hobbies I enjoy. I love my dog. My apartment is kind of small, but it’s in a great location.

Living the dream, man.

—

I wonder if Rowland thinks that way? As in, has her jealousy ceded to accepting reality. Kelly Rowland is, after all, a pretty accomplished singer with a record deal. She was engaged to a professional football player. She gets Lil Wayne to do a verse on one of her tracks (“Motivation”), however lazy said verse is.

Here I Am is, in many ways, paint-by-numbers R&B. There are some sultry slow jams, some club songs, etc. “I’m Dat Chick” has the stutter step reminiscent of many a Rihanna song, only less so. “Feelin’ Me Right Now” has snares popping and the sheen of R&B of three years ago (which is when it was recorded, so, sure), complete with a lyric about picking someone up at a club. “Down for Whatever” is zippy and exciting, but it’s hard to really ignore that it would be a mediocre Jennifer Lopez song. By Rowland, it’s not a ton better. Though, the concept — she’s down for whatever in the sex department, including making “love on the floor” — is tantalizing.

The big single, “Motivation,” is a lovely song that’s wildly enjoyable… until Lil Wayne comes in. The song’s tempo is perfect for Rowland’s voice and the R. Kelly-esque sexy countdown of the things happening in her bedroom, but it loses itself when Lil Wayne starts recounting his sexual moves. Too slow. Too many drugs.

But, it’s a successful record. Is it as good as Beyonce’s recent work? Probably not. But, if Rowland is anything like I am, she’s perfectly OK with that.

Part of the issue with listening to music in a language/culture I don’t understand very well is that I don’t get the entire gist of the music’s place in said culture. I have no idea if, say, Dente is the Italian equivalent to Jack Johnson, Brendan Benson, Matt Nathanson or Bill Callahan. I really don’t know.

It’s somewhat freeing; I don’t know the Italian music industry, so I can listen to the music entirely on the merits of the way its recorded. I certainly don’t read much Italian music press — Panopticon writes an awful lot about American bands — so I really don’t know anything about the records I get recommended on Last.fm.

I came by Dente, for example, because I have an Italian penpal (shut up) and she likes an artist Carmen Consoli (the subject of this piece), whom I looked up on Last.fm. The site recommended Consoli and I fell in love with Elettra.

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I’m no Italophile, but I do take a fair amount of pride in my Italian heritage, specifcally that of Sicily (not to discount my Jewish heritage, either. I take pride there, too.). Though Consoli hails from the other side of the island than my family does — she from Catania, my family from Palermo and its environs — Consoli shoots l’isola della trinacria a couple of notes in the Sicilian language “‘A finestra” and the ode to il mezzogiorno “Sud Est.”

At the onset of her career, Consoli was seen as something like an Italian PJ Harvey, thanks to her early guitar-fueled, harder stuff. Elettra is more subdued, largely taking an acoustic feel. The album’s first single, “Non molto lontano da qui” is an ode to regret and the need to be in two places at once (the title is translated to “Not far from here”). The idea of the video, on the other hand, is, uh, brothel-y.

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Nevertheless, Consoli has a lovely voice that stands up to different arrangements — check the acoustic version of “A finestra “, for example, against a regular live version — of her songs. “Mandaci una cartolina,” the album opener, is lovely as a soft-rock ballad. Or my favorite song on the record, the moment-in-time seafaring tome “Sud est,” is lovely and meaningful and even holds up to an annoying Roman crowd:

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Consoli’s writing is also a strength. Coming from the nation of Silvio Berlusconi and the stereotype of sexism, Consoli’s decidedly forceful in her writing and the politicism of her persona (even taking to TV to speak against Berlusconi or explaining how she blew people’s minds in Sicily when she sang at 8:00 here). “Mio zio” is a song that highlights the horros of child abuse, over a shuffling little beat. Her arrangement on “Col nome giusto” speaks to the uneasiness of finding the right words, while “Perturbazione atlantica” uses the sea as a metaphor for the relationship troubles.

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But, ultimately, I don’t know if Consoli is just self-absorbed or a completely nonsense pop star. Maybe she’s Kelly Clarkson in Italy, as opposed to Cat Power or Julie Doiron or something. I have no idea.

Which, really, is kind of freeing. I don’t know much of the scene stuff in Italy; I like Teatro Degli Orrori and they have an At The Drive-In thing going on. But, for the singer/songwriter stuff, I simply can enjoy it. And for someone like Consoli, it gives me the opportunity to listen to the vocals without having to deal with stupid lyrics. Ultimately, I don’t speak Italian well enough to know if the lyrics suck.

Everything in Italian sounds great, after all.

I’m not sure I’ve outlined my feelings on lyrics in this space, but I did do a little bit of it on my old site. In a review of one of my favorite albums, Elliott Smith’s Either/Or, I wrote:

Elliott Smith is probably my favorite songwriter, largely for his ability to translate a rhythm of everyday speech into song. Too many lyrics are simply love/above or one/fun or play/day. You know, it’s the sort of thing you find in a rhyming dictionary or in an *nSync song or something. The kind of thing Swedes write.

It doesn’t fully explain why I like instrumental music so much, but it gets to the core of it. Lyrics can be amazing, as Smith’s are, but are often simplistic and facile. The dynamics of instrumental music are easier to enjoy, identify with and often have the ability to evoke emotion better.

Which brings us to the Dirty Three. Not to quote myself too much — I am wildly self-centered, but you already knew that — but I’ve written about my first exposure to the band when I was in high school. Long story short, I was in a band and one of the most influential people on my musical life got us to try and cover some Dirty Three songs. I then went out and bought Horse Stories and fell in love.

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Music like the Dirty Three’s is hard to categorize. At the time of my first exposure to the band, I thought them to be post-rock (though, in my defense,  Allmusic.com has it as “post-rock”). Unfortunately, this was my move; all music was post-rock when I was 16. Genre is stupid, of course.

But, there’s emotion in the Dirty Three’s records. Unlike the unparalleed Mogwai (a band that names their songs with inside jokes, random things, etc.), the Dirty Three’s songs do have evocative names. “Warren’s Lament” is more melancholy than other songs and Jim White’s militaristic drumming on “Horses” resembles a gallop. The album’s only cover song, Arleta’s “I Remember A Time When Once You Used To Love Me,” similarly echoes the original’s sadness in the way Warren Ellis’ violin screeches and sings.

“Hope” is the album’s other highlight. Based around an easy Mick Turner guitar line, the album ebbs and flows with a dynamism reflected in the most accessible mainstream music. However, with the violin playing the only vocal-type track, the record is anything but accessible mainstream music. Instead, it falls somewhere between optimistic and downtrodden, with a minor key sadness that is easy to digest.

Some records don’t need vocals or lyrics. Horse Stories is one of the best of these records.

Band: Burzum
Album: Fallen
Best song: “Vanvidd” and “Budstikken” are the best songs on the record.
Worst song: “Valen” is pretty bad.

Separating artists from their art is one of the most difficult things for a consumer/appreciator of said art. There are scores of wonderful pieces of art made by terrible, awful people. Moreover, loads and loads of art is distributed by terrible, awful organizations. The problem with music, it seems, has not been solved.

Nevertheless, this conundrum goes to the nature of art and its place in consumer culture. Art, as a commercial commodity, has to be commoditized. Artists, after all, should be compensated for their work by someone and the NEA only has so many grants. This is why actors, writers and such have unions and should.

But, ultimately, my purchase of art-as-product means money — even if its a small bit — goes to someone I might find to be a terrible person. I’ve touched on this before, but I do have some trouble knowing that I’ve contributed money to the Ted Nugent cause. He and I are not on the same level, I’d say. Nevertheless, the alternative is to go without certain art, and a life constrained by such things is not one I want to live.

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The other issue, of course, is not about money, but rather about the overwhelming nature of encouragement. Because I bought Nugent’s first album, does that mean I’m endorsing, non-monetarily, his viewpoints on politics? I don’t think it does, but I would certainly say that’s the case if I were to go to a Nugent concert. From what I understand, he does a lot of political between song chatter. Being a face in that crowd probably encourages him.

My general compromise has been like that. I listen to plenty of music made by people with whom I disagree; Lil Wayne’s got the f-word (not “fuck,” but “faggot”) I despise in his lyrics, but his overal musical ability has it such that I do adore his music (and I find him to be a tragically fascinating figure, even if Tha Carter IV mostly blows). David Bazan’s early work in Pedro the Lion goes against all my atheist tendencies, but I certainly adore those records.

Moreover, who knows what kind of crazy politics the members of bands I love have? What if Chelsea Wolfe is a birther? What if the dudes in Mastodon think gay people should be shot on sight? What if the Tortoise guys were strict Neocons? Maybe it’s best that artists keep their political views to themselves, for the most part.

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Which brings me to Burzum.

No one has ever accused Varg Vikernes (aka Count Grishnackh) of keeping, well, anything to himself. He’s an outspoken opponent of all things post-AD 0, basically. He is a pagan originalist, it appears, coming from Norway and apparently having done all he can to bring his homeland back to the time of vikings, Sigurd the Volsung and such.

He, for example, decries the American commercial imperialism that’s taken over places like Bergen, Vikernes’s hometowm. Bergen now has a McDonald’s and a Starbucks, for example. Vikernes appears to see everything as imperialism — he calls Christianity “the Middle Eastern plague” — and, well, he’s not entirely wrong on some things.

(In Until the Light Takes Us, Vikernes explains that Christianity, basically, erased most of the cultures it came with which it came in contact. He’s not wrong on that point, though Christianity has been a world force for good in more ways that even I, an atheist, can admit. It’s also been a force for terrible evil.)

He also is an anti-semite, homophobe, racist, arsonist and murderer. This dude spent 20 years in prison for killing his friend and for burning down churches, many of those years in isolation. He once suggested raping the king’s daughter to get a pagan in the royal family or something.

(Feel free to Google Translate any of his writings. They are not pleasant. )

I don’t tend to consider people as “bad” or “good,” but Vikernes is kind of a bad dude.

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Fallen, for what it is, is not a bad record. Indeed, for one of the fathers of Norweigian black metal, it’s remarkably listenable. The guitar work gets repeptitive in a way that runs thin after the third track and the production is thin. But, songs like “Budstikken” are driving and interesting, with Vikernes’ voice — I can’t believe I’m saying this — as an incredibly interesting element.

And, moreover, his lyrics are of the weird mystical Norweigian pagan thing. Nowhere — that I can tell, at least — does any track on Fallen call for the extermination or expelling of the non-Pagans from Norway. Rather, the lyrics seem to tackle some very high school “death poetry” (“Valen” has the lyric “Mørket har senket seg for alltid/Hva mer kan jeg vite?” translated to “Darkness has descended on forever./What more could I know?”) that doesn’t work in any language. But, it’s black metal. I wasn’t expecting to hear a dissertation on existential dread in a meaningful way.

It’s black metal, but it’s interesting and it’s one of the better black metal records I’ve heard. Even if it was written and recorded by a terrible, horrible person.

I, like most reasonable people, adore The Onion. Not AV Club, which I also love, but rather the proper Onion. My relationship with it goes back, of course. In high school, one of my friend’s siblings went to University of Wisconsin, where it had begun and my friend would get copies of The Onion and laugh at it. This was, of course, before the Internet. I believe, its first foray outside of Madison was into Chicago, where we’d pick up free copies from newspaper boxes.

I have two favorite stories from The Onion. The first is the impossibly great “New Ted Nugent Cologne Tested On ‘Every Goddamn Animal We Could Find’.” Of course, this one came out when I was in high school and my later animal rights-y tendencies have just reminded me of its brilliance. It’s very hard to convince me of a funnier written sentence than “Then we ran out of cologne and just started punching the duck,” especially considering the context.

The other favorite story is “Marilyn Manson Now Going Door-To-Door Trying To Shock People.” This one came out while I was in college, but remains just as clever and outstandingly apropos.

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The concept of “cutting edge” isn’t all that concrete, is it? Before my time — well, when I was a little kid — Madonna was cutting for singing “Like a Virgin” in a wedding dress and writhing around on a stage at the MTV Awards. Hell, way before my time, the idea of “spend the night together” was too titilating for Ed Sullivan in the 1960s.

And that’s where we have Marilyn Manson. I actually think he’s not a moron just in business to shock people — which, really, is the thesis of The Onion‘s brilliant takedown — but rather a half-smart guy who uses shock as a way to get people into his atheist (a nontheology to which I subscribe)/anti-authoritarian thing. That’s not without its value; if enough people hear “I’m not a slave to a god that doesn’t exist” and think “Hey, maybe this is all a silly fairy tale,” that’s probably for the best.

On the other hand…

To say that Manson’s oeuvre is an overreach is a little bit of an understatement. Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death) is the third in a trilogy of concept albums in reverse chronology.

Yes, you read that right.

Music — especially popular music — doesn’t translate that sort of thing well. Pop music necessitates choruses and short(ish) lyrical phrases, which leaves little to nuance. As such, to try and populate an even mildly complex story is virtually impossible. This is why haikus are either very open-ended or very simple or both. Short literary spaces don’t make for anything other than lots of bad intrepretations (example: Manson’s work) or overly simple idiocy (Green Day’s American Idiot).

Don’t get me wrong. I adore concept albums and rock operas. But, the way to produce such things needs to follow any of four avenues to be effective:

1. Use the actual music genre and arrangements to reinforce the lyrical concept. The best example of this is the “intrusive security/paranoia” concept of Isis’ Panopticon. The intensity and building anticipation of the record mirrors Rear Window or The Conversation, two brilliant movies about surveillance.
2. Use an existing work of art to build from. Pink Floyd’s Animals and Mastodon’s Leviathan work from this concept. In the case of Animals, Floyd puts together a modern use of the characters Orwell created, whereas Mastodon’s use of Moby-Dick is more allegorical of the band’s journey.
3. Leave the album open-ended as to be far more in the “concept” than in the “rock opera” genre. OK Computer has this down pat, as does Panopticon. It’s more “feel” than “plot,” being abstract. In fact, when loose rock operas fail to be concrete rock operas, they might be really awesome concept records. The Downward Spiral is a lovely example of this. There’s a plot, but it’s hard to follow, so the album just becomes a love letter to nihilism.
4. The concept is weird and deserves drugs to appreciate. This works, too. Tommy, for example. Or Thing-Fish

Of course, the only perfect piece of art is, basically, all these things, save for not being based on a previous work. It is wholly original and wholly open-ended.

Marilyn Manson, thanks to his inability to say no to any interview, talks a lot about his concepts and his process in trying to put out his records. And he certainly uses the iconography associated with his records to augment his music.

He is not subtle.

It takes away from the concept, on some level. If Manson’s message was simply to shine a light on American society via the Columbine massacre — as much of the record does in a surprisingly effective way — the record might speak for itself.

But, like the kid with the jean jacket covered in patches, Manson gets his signals crossed a little. He’s too post-modern, in some ways, trying to ape The Wall and Ziggy Stardust at the same time as being some sort of horror rocker.

If he picked a route, this trilogy, while still too ambititious, might be a reasonable critique of ultraviolent American society. But, instead, Manson tries to hit every target on the map with his music and it all ends up in a sloppy mess.

(Supposedly, there’s an unplublished novel that’s supposed to accompany the record, presumably explaining some of the more complicated parts of the concept. There is no release date for said book and, really, we’re ten years out on this thing. I’m confident that it’s not happening.)
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Which is too bad. If the three albums in this trilogy and, specifically, Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death) were simply albums, they’d have some highlights. And, as such, “Disposable Teens” is a fun little track. “The Fight Song” lampoons and echoes the concept of a pep rally shockingly well. “The Nobodies” isn’t a bad song itself.

But, that’s where the album falls off. The rest of the record, again, is a jumbled mess. Manson’s voice gets very old very quick and the metal tendencies of the band are wasted within the first half of the record.

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As I got older, I learned more about really insane people in music and not just half-smart guys who’d read half of Thus Spoke Zarathustra and decided that “God is dead” is a mantra on which to hang one’s hat. I mean, look to Norway to see shocking anti-Christian music and characters. A dude from Emperor murdered a gay guy for being gay. Varg Vikernes killed a bandmate and burned down churches because he calls Christianity “the Middle Eastern plague.”

You will not see these dudes trying to shock you. They just are shocking.