Month:
July
2009

I watched this live when it first aired on CNN on Sunday, and have been camping out on the website to snag the video. The entire thing is fantastic, because Fareed Zakaria is probably the most intelligent man on cable news, hands down. His show is a faint glimmer of what the media (and, I guess by proxy, the medium) is capable of, and what I hope it will tend towards.

The show, GPS (Global Political Square) with Fareed Zakaria, focuses on foreign affairs and takes a really analytical look at them, getting at details and nuances that are skimmed over for the sake of crappy graphics (FOX), liberal-slanted punchlines (MSNBC), and attractive male anchors (CNN). I’ll also throw Andrea Mitchel’s daytime program in with GPS because I get about ten times as much information from her show as I do CNN or FOX’s daytime crap.

Below is the video of his interview. Watch the whole thing; I promise it is worth your time. (If you’re gonna skim like a jerk anyways, the beginning and ending are the best parts)

Oh man. I’m really excited. Over the past few weeks I’ve stumbled across a handful of tracks by Florence and the Machine, and have become really taken with them. For the record, I’d like to say that Florence is one hell of a looker, even if The Machine is less so (pictured, right; it was hard to find an image with the dudes in it too. Photo Credit: Foxy Roses).

That aside, the music is fantastic. I first caught wind of them playing a really good cover of Beirut’s ‘Postcard’s From Italy‘, which is no small task to pull off (take it from me; I’ve heard it botched), especially if you abandon the horns that are the emotional backing of that song!

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I really wanted to wait until I’d had a chance to grab a copy of Lungs, their album that dropped just earlier this month, but I really wanted to share the music, and I had some time. Simply put, her (Florence Welch) vocals are hell-of-powerful. Not quite as finessed or lilting as Neko Case (who hails from the New Pornographers, recall), or as wispy as Imogen Heap, Florence has a good deal of force behind her singing. You can hear it in ‘Howl‘, particularly in the final build-up, around 2 minutes, 30 seconds into the song.

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To give credit where credit is due, though, The Machine deserves due props as well. Vocals alone can’t carry a group. Just ask the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Karen O can belt and squeal all she wants, and do a good job of it, but a lot of their stuff (for me anyways) still falls flat. The example I want to use here is ‘Cosmic Love‘: Listen to the grandeur they paint with this track; they have to, with the subject matter being something as big and expansive as the universe!

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So anyways. I’m gonna grab Lungs as soon as I can. It shows tremendous promise from the above two tracks (‘Postcards’ isn’t on the record), which is more than enough to convince me to give it a try; I’ll report back with the final verdict.

PURCHASE:
Lungs – Florence + The Machine

Not that this is much of a revelation, but apparently the NRA is not too hot on Judge Sonia Sotomayor. Sheesh.

They’re including a given senator’s vote on the Sotomayor confirmation in their ‘ratings’ of senators, and I guess that’s fair. I just kinda feel like that’s kinda cheap. You only decide to include it after you’ve found her to not love guns to the extent that your bloodlust is satisfied? NRA, you should have been on top of this a long time ago. It’s the supreme court, for crying out loud! That should be in your stupid little evaluation thing either way.

From my read on the situation, these ratings the NRA arbitrates seem to carry a good deal of clout in getting people elected. That stands to reason, given the funding and resources behind the gun lobby. I guess it just makes me sad. I’ll go on record saying that I don’t like guns too much, and I wish nobody had ‘em, and also:

Confession: This post was supposed to have more analysis, but I lost an hour and a half watching Eddie Izzard clips on YouTube after looking for that clip. Oops.

Recap from May

Earlier this ‘summer’, I made a command decision to got see the Killers in concert back in good ol’ KC. A few caveats, though:
1) it wasn’t summer, it was the weekend before finals. oops.
2) They were in Bonner Springs, KC. ick.

Oh well. It was way worth it. Every time they release an album, they hit basically the same place at the same time; I know this because I saw them in 2004 (at the Uptown for Hot Fuss), and 2007 (at City Market for Sam’s Town) both on or around my birthday, May 10th! This cycle is apparently no different, and so on May 2nd, Allison and I saddled up to head out to the Verizon Wireless Sandstone Some Other Corporate Sponsor Maybe Amphitheater to go see the Killers! Ahhhhhhhh! I was really excited, despite the impending pile of work I was leaving behind in Kirksville… or maybe rather because of it.

One of the most pleasant parts of the evening, I’m surprised to say, was the warm-up act. Normally these groups are not terribly well known, and are warming the crowd up for a reason: they aren’t as good as the people you came to see. For me in particular, I have a hard time warming up to music on the first (or 5th) listen-through. The opener for the Killers, Wild Light, managed to get me pretty pumped though. I see why they were touring with Flowers and Co.; if you like one, you’re pretty sure to enjoy the other.

It’s standard new-wave revival fare, but well-polished, and with lots of good hooks! Their one big song which everyone seemed to know is a catchy antithesis to Phantom Planet’s ‘California’. It’s called ‘California on My Mind’ and has mad cussing in it! They played it off with just enough angst that you kinda wanted to go, “Yeah! Fuck California.” You think they play that out west? Who knows.

Anyways, I wanted to post a few tracks that people don’t know, but should. They basically filled a set taking the most engaging material from their 2009 album Adult Nights. Of the 13 track, they must have played 8 or 9, because I snagged this album a few weeks later, and all the song titles seemed familiar. A particularly good one that I feel like sums up the best Wild Light has to offer is ‘Call Home‘

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It isn’t quite as electronic as a Killers or the Bravery, but certainly more up-tempo than an Editors or an Interpol. I’d also say it’s a good deal more accessible than similar sounding artists, the Killers excluded from that, obviously.

It was tough to pick the second track; I had it between the song which follows ‘Call Home’ and the closer. I put of the following track, ‘Heart Attack’ because I’ve seen the closer, titled ‘Red House’ online elsewhere. I highly encourage you to find that song, it’s fantastic [and another point for Noble on the Tom Hates Closers front...]. ‘Heart Attack‘ is another stand-out track that gives you a good idea what Wild Light is going for.

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All-in-all, I was glad to pick up the record. It’s not explosively fantastic, nor is it revolutionary, but it’s mellow enough listening that you can just kinda chill to it without it being so brooding that it depressed you on an otherwise-pretty-good-day. Highly recommended.

Now, as you may have guessed from my album rankings of 2008, and the fact that I’ve seen them twice live already, the Killers would have to basically kill my family to ruin my evening. In the absence of such an event, I thought the show was fantastic. The set list was as follows:

Human
This Is Your Life
Somebody Told Me
For Reasons Unknown
Joy Ride
I Can’t Stay
Bling (Confession of a King)
Shadowplay (Joy Division cover)
Smile Like You Mean It
Spaceman
Change Your Mind
A Dustland Fairytale
Sam’s Town
Read My Mind
Mr. Brightside
All These Things That I’ve Done

Encore:
Bones
Jenny Was a Friend of Mine
When You Were Young

Opening with Human was a shrewd move, because everyone instantly lost their shit. It was kinda funny to watch. I was surprised by the number of Sam’s Town tracks that persevered, like ‘For Reasons Unknown’, ‘Read My Mind’, and even ‘Bones’ in the encore, of all things! Not that I dislike any of these, but for me Sam’s magic was in the opening and the closing, with those songs just kinda holding the line in the middle.

With 5 tracks from Hot Fuss, 7 from Sam’s Town, and 6 from the album they were touring, Day & Age, the spread was pretty dead-on; they even played their cover of Joy Division’s ‘Shadow Play‘ which the crowd stumbled on because a lot of them had never heard it. First, shame for not knowing your Joy Division. Second, they released it on their b-sides, so I’ve no sympathy.

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Again, I’m surprised that their sophomore effort was so heavily represented, but whatever. I got to hear ‘When You Were Young’ as the final closing to the set, which was pretty awesome; there were explosions and fire and a whole meaner of visually stimulating things going on there. They Day & Age material they picked was great, mostly because I get really into ‘A Dustland Fairytale‘ and when the real-deal is drowning out my own poor rendition of this superb track, it doesn’t get much better than that.

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One gripe? They didn’t play ‘Losing Touch‘, the opening track [ergo I'm predisposed to think is the best song on the record], which I love to pieces. I kept kinda waiting, but they didn’t play it. Sad! It’s posted here so you will not have to endure a similar stress…

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The show was great! I bought a t-shirt and everything. We (where we = Allison, intrepid photojournalist that she is) even took a few pictures, which are posted right below:

NOTE: The images themselves are pretty big; just a head’s up.

So it was a good show. I usually only make it to one or two concerts a year, and so I’m glad this one lived up to / exceeded expectations.

PURCHASE:
Adult Nights – Wild Light
Day & Age – The Killers

I am having a hard time not completely loving this debut album by White Lies. There was a spot of destiny in it though: TWF put up a few tracks by these guys recently, and so I threw them into the rotation. They were growing pretty well on me, and I hadn’t gotten any noteworthy new music as of late (see: beginning of the summer), so I made a mental note to look for the album.

On my way to somewhere downtown with my family we cruised by a billboard for one of my favorite local DJs’ program. The advertisement incorporated an artist that had been getting a lot of airtime on the program, and low and behold, there was the cover for White Lies’ debut album:

So I caved and grabbed it from Target under the “Artists on the Verge” that I like so much. It is as hipster as you’re gonna get at the ol’ Target (colliq. ‘targhetto’ due to its location in the Ward Parkway mall…), so I try not to complain. The two tracks that I’d already heard, thankfully, were not the singles. TWF had posted ‘From the Stars’ and ‘The Price of Love’. The singles, as near as I can figure, are ‘Death’, ‘Unfinished Business’, ‘Fairwell to the Fairgrounds’, and the title track, ‘To Lose My Life’.

When I first got this record, I couldn’t stop listening to it. There’s something about the Interpol-esque deep, dark, throaty vocals that I love, but unlike Interpol, which tends to wallow endlessly, pulling you into a depression, White Lies put some drive behind their melodies. ‘Unfinished Business’ is a perfect example, with the the slow buildup, maintaining composure until the refrain, where they betray a little emotion:

So get up, get up! Let’s dance like we used to!

The percussion on that track is also fantastic, so fantastic, in fact, that you should listen to it yourself!

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I could keep drawing the Interpol comparison, but once is enough, and past that I feel that this work is probably a notch or two above the New York band’s most recent effort. With the wrong approach, you might be tempted to accuse ‘To Lose My Life…’ as repetitive. That’s fair: there isn’t a great deal of variation in texture, tone, or subject from track to track, but it you pay attention, there are some fun details that make each song unique: for example, there’s a chime effect on ‘Fifty on Our Foreheads’ that is reminscent of Joy Division’s opening to ‘Atmosphere’, which I thought was kinda cool.

It’s an album to brood too, I won’t argue with that. ‘From the Stars’ follows the story of a man who makes advances on a the new widow of his former acquaintance, driving home the man’s strange philosphy with booming, resounding guitar chords. ‘The Price of Love’ is a hectic, even frantic, tale of a staged kidnapping by an unfaithful wife and her lover to extort money from her unknowing husband. The twist in that song, which took me a while to pick up, makes for an eerie closer to the entire album (Ian scores a point here, with me breaking my habit of hating the closing track of a given record).

Finally, I save my favorite song for last. ‘Farewell to the Fairgrounds’ is the best song on the record, hands down. Nestled deep in the track list, it starts the final stretch to the end. The tempo is quick, the guitars on chorus pulse, and then midway through, you get a second to catch your breath. They build it back up, and push it home with such energy! I love it.

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It’s a great record! I can’t say it enough. If you like Interpol, the Editors, Depeche Mode, or Joy Division, then this album is worth your time to at least look at. If you enjoyed the tracks posted here, it’s a lock!

ALSO: People really like ‘Death’. I didn’t mention it, for some reason. I like it… but then I love pretty much every opening track ever created, so, take that with a grain of salt.

NOTE:
It occurs to me that I have no clue how to write a review of a record. I know what I like, and I know what it sounds like, but I have no criteria upon which to evaluate or grade it. Maybe that’s OK? I’ll think more on it. From a housekeeping perspective, I’m going to use the ‘tags’ feature to track artists, if that’s alright with everyone.