Luke talks about Austin, TX

I think some day soon I'm going to move to Austin. It's been in my blood my whole life, I feel. The music that has always driven me, as well as the family I love, has always come from Texas, and Austin has always been the epicenter of that energy. I recently wrote about Spoon, who sort of inspired this idea of talking about Austin and Texas in general as a hotbed of important music. So here are some bands I want to follow to the heart of the music I've always loved.

Townes van Zandt has only recently become my Bob Dylan. Dylan once inspired me to use my guitar to not just impress girls but to leave my indelible mark on the world without compromise, but then I discovered Townes. He wrote out of an eternal pain that would never be silenced until his death. But he left a mark of beauty on the world with his songs, that as Steve Earle infamously described outweighed that of Mr. Dylan's. When I listen to Townes I think of the sneers and scoffs from so-called intellectuals when they react to my love of my birthplace of Texas. I think of how misguided and stupid they are. I think of "Rake" and how it defines confessional songwriting for generations a million years from now. Townes is my Hank Williams. Townes is my Bob Dylan. Townes is the father I'll never meet, drunk abusiveness and all.



...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead:
This band earned acclaim with their album Source Tags & Codes, and then quickly fell into critical damnation with their next two releases. They have always stood firmly as an inspiration for me, however, and with their last release of Century of Self they proved their detractors fools as their epic pop rock structure gave way to a modern opus of discordant rock and roll that showed the world that Muse had no monopoly on Wagnerian-inflected popular music. Their latest track "Isis Unveiled" changed music for the next 10 years even if no one noticed but me.



Butthole Surfers:
These guys are from San Antonio, but are overlooked Texas originals nonetheless. True, Michael Azerrad has already chronicled the importance of this band in his seminal post-punk tome Our Band Could Be Your Life, but the majority of the national public writes this band off as that "band who wrote that song about death in Texas." Well guess what. The Flaming Lips, and all those bands that "play psychedelic music through a modern lens" would not exist without the ever-important late-80s recordings of Butthole Surfers. They created freak culture for the 90s through the 2000s, and the next person that tells me their name is stupid and they only had the one good radio hit in the 90s gets a punch in the jaw. They invented sludge, modern psych, they transcended their hillbilly upbringings and for my money inspired every band worth listening to in our generation. Listen to "John E. Smoke" and if you still think this is a novelty band on par with Weird Al we can part ways right now, Philistine.



I have more bands for you, but this will do for now. Sleep beckons to me, it is a dire mistress and I poetically shall couple with she.

Clipd Beaks, To Realize

Luke Reviews the New Spoon Album

Artist: Spoon
Album: Transference
Label: Merge
Year: 2010

I didn't like the last three Spoon albums. At all. I felt like a traitor, watching an Austin band rise to prominence and cursing them in hushed tones. I love the music of Austin, I always will. People from the outlaw capital of the US will always have it tough from the private school elite, and too often have great artists been snubbed simply for being from Texas (i.e. "for being hicks"). Spoon, however, lost what I thought was a really solid edge on their earlier work, 96's Telephono and especially Girls Can Tell. They were always a pop band, I had no problem with that aspect of their work, but they were always coming at it from a garage perspective. They had solid hooks but they made a racket locking into them.

The last three albums sacrificed the punch and focused on the pop, and people were generally thrilled about it, but to me I still think of "I Turn My Camera On" as one of the most monotonous songs of the last decade. So I wasn't thrilled about a new Spoon album coming out. I figured them for more of the same. I am dumb.

The first thing I noticed about Transference is that the production is very hot. Like it sounds like all the instruments are sizzling fat off of meat. There are some very Guided By Voices moments even, certain interludes and vocal passages occasionally sound like they're being done over a telephone only to then punch in at full hi-fi volume with all the meters in the red. The stomp of first single "Written in Reverse" for example is snarling and biting at you the whole way through, with Britt Daniels' howl resonating in you like a starving man breaking down a wall for a plate of raw meat. And this is the single I'm talking about!

On other tracks, the pop sound comes through a bit more, but always with sneering menace. On "Is Love Forever" for example, the guitar could have been stolen from the Strokes in their heyday, but the drums stomp on a seemingly completely different beat from the rest of the song and Daniels' voice is always one step behind. I'm not sure if words can explain it much better than that, but the whole track becomes hallucinatory as it all collides together into one cohesive groove.

Spoon - Is Love Forever


Another standout, my personal favorite track, is "Trouble Comes Running," which starts with the most compression-damaged lo-bit acoustic guitar of all time and then takes off on a drunk gallop. The room hiss, the tinny drums, the overbearing bass, these are elements that hark back to the oldest tricks in the lo-fi garage band's arsenal, and yet with the tight 3-part harmony you realize this is rock and roll tapped directly from the vein of the last decade when rock and roll was truly popular. Bands used to sound pissed off and sexed up all the time back when the Stones and the Who dominated the charts. And they'd still make fat paychecks. Spoon understands, and hopefully they will help others understand, that pop music doesn't need to be watered down. Rock and roll doesn't need to be fabricated.

Spoon - Trouble Comes Running

Youth In Revolt: Do you like it better as letters or moving pictures?

Sorry for not posting lately. I decided you were getting a bit clingy. I just needed my space. But, now that I feel like you've been ignoring me, I want you back. You look nice, by the way.

The subject du jour is that of Youth In Revolt - Book Vs. Movie, and if you have taken the time to experience both, please grace us with your opinion in the comment box below. But, seeing as I have the floor, I'll proceed with my commentary now.

If my Kevin Bacon connection to Michael Cera were to let him know that I wrote about him, and he does in fact read this very post, let me clarify a few things: I am a fan. I think your( Yes, I am talking directly to you Michael Cera) subtle humor, and what not, is hilarious. I'd even call it laugh out loud funny. And I kid you not; I will go see any movie you are in. For example, I loved Nacho Libre, but that isn't the point. My point is that Cera is the only redeeming quality of the movie, Youth In Revolt. I'll offer a few sentences more about why this is true later.

You know when you read a book and you are like, "Oh Shit yeah!" Well, I kinda had an experience like that with Youth In Revolt. C.D. Payne exceeded my expectations(which is really easy to do - due to globally having low expectations) with this little manic bundle of joy. Wikipedia uses the word "picaresque" to describe the novel, and it is actually quite accurate (Note to self: No need to revise wikipedia entry on Youth In Revolt. Resume editing political views section of Glenn Beck page. Second note: re-check spelling on Fascist).

Youth In Revolt is the collected journals of Nick Twisp. It is 400 and maybe 60-some pages long - just thought you should know that for some reason. But yeah, this book would be hard to translate into a movie. The book is engaging because the reader follows Nick's inner monologue, which is quite devious, lonely, and vulnerable, which I suspect most of our inner thoughts are. If not, I suppose I just said too much about myself :C (is he joking?)

Therein lies the problem with the movie. Because it cannot possibly fit 4?? pages of journals into one movie, the film skips over the touching elements of Nick's life, all the while bastardizing the role of Sheeni, Nick's gf. They chose to portray her as a bitch, which I think is a major affront to Payne's depiction of her character. I am ready to argue this point if there are any takers. Also, the glorious inner monologue was lost, leaving you to simply watch the mundane events that were made brilliant in Nick's journal by his hyperbole and acerbic wit.

So, you might ask, "Why see the movie?" Well, because, it is fun to watch Michael Cera do his thing. He delivers the movie's punch lines well, and his interpretation of Francois Dillinger is really funny. And that is why, dude.

Yeah, that's all.

"I Hate Cynicism" -Conan O'Brien

I'm not going to touch any of the subject matter already blogged to death about the recent NBC Conan fiasco. I'm not even particularly sad because I think Conan will come back and do even greater things. I do want to discuss something he brought up in his final monologue, though, his hatred of cynicism and his Secret-esque advice about having a positive attitude and getting what you want. Here is a link to the full video:

http://www.thrfeed.com/2010/01/conan-final-tonight-monologue-.html

And here's the quote I want to focus on:

All I ask of you is one thing: please don't be cynical. I hate cynicism -- it's my least favorite quality and it doesn't lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you're kind, amazing things will happen.

I felt this was a sort of attack on a pocket of his supportive audience that, like me, watched Conan for so many years because we were cynical. Letterman, Leno, they were late night for people who didn't care if their late night laughs had any substance to them. They had big guests and made stupid jokes. Actually, a lot of their material was cynical in a way that made fun of the everyday person, going out on the street to interview people and pull one over on them. Jay's derisive chuckle putting on a show of schadenfreud for an audience who instead of going to bed after the credits roll, might actually watch the following infomercials, credit cards in hand. Conan himself wasn't cynical on the surface, always bubbly and goofy in his demeanor, but his approach to late night has always been a reprieve from the Wal-Mart and Target of late night hosts.

Now to rewind a bit. Let's say Conan hasn't misrepresented himself all these years, maybe I've been wrong in thinking that this is a guy who doesn't mind making fun of television and the stupid horrible things on it (not to mention the stupid horrible things happening in the real world). So let's say Conan doesn't have a cynical cell in his body. It would make perfect sense, what does he have to be cynical about? Since graduating from Harvard he went from Saturday Night Live to the Simpsons to hosting his own show, garnering success wherever he went. I know he's brilliant and I know he had to work hard, but he's also been extremely lucky. Look at his two former writing partners, the equally brilliant Robert Smigel and Bob Odenkirk. Sure neither of them are starving, but they've been met with constant struggles and failures since their original glory days. Odenkirk, whose Mr. Show basically defined modern sketch comedy, couldn't even get a pilot sold to HBO even with his original partner in tow (David Cross) and even with the success Mr. Show had on the very same channel. So in a way, it would make sense that Conan isn't a cynical person. Amazing things do happen. To some people. They happened to Conan, what about the rest of us? Forgive my cynicism, but we probably won't lead such amazing lives.

Now I understand that cynicism can't lead our every thought without driving us to depression and despair, and I understand that even if our lives don't work out like Conan (i.e. doing what we love and being paid handsomely for it) we can make the best of it. This is a solid, positive message, but it also pays to see the clouds not just for the silver linings. The world will always be polarized into optimists and pessimists, and the cynics will always be needed. In a world without cynicism we wouldn't be able to progress, we would simply be content all the time. We would not have had Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut, George Carlin, Woody Allen, Leonard Cohen, Kurt Cobain, Black Sabbath, punk rock, all these great creative minds and movements whose drive was to push against and to tear down the veil around us all. It does lead somewhere, in those rare glorious instances, cynicism can lead us to the truth. And what's more positive than that?

The Non-Hardcore Side of Dischord

OR: Making a Seminal Label's Name Ironic

Luke here, and I want to set punk rock aside for a post. Dischord, founded by Ian MacKaye, is most known for its output of hardcore punk in the late 80s. And I love that stuff. Minor Threat's great, Fugazi's great, blah blah blah. Void is amazing, and if you're into punk and haven't bought a copy of the infamous Faith/Void split, you can get it through Dischord for like 8 bucks on vinyl (with free digital download). But what about the other music Dischord put out? The music that gets written off because maybe it doesn't sound as exciting on first listen, but ultimately influenced how the next 20 years of music would basically play out (hyperbole, yes, but I'm trying to make a point).

Shudder to Think started in the late 80s, and still seem an odd fit for Dischord. They have a sound more akin to later bands like Teenage Fanclub, a sort of smart man's guitar pop with some early signs of grunge. Craig Wedren, the band's leader and vocalist, has a distinctly sweet voice and an obvious background in music composition given away by melodies and harmonies too complex for a garage band. The lyrics temper the sweetness a bit, "Red House" deals with overdoses and their boons and consequences, and more experimental tracks like "Ride That Sexy Horse" bring out a paranoid creepiness that sometimes strains through Wedren's otherwise choirboy-like delivery.

This band acted as a bridge between the gruff violent pop of bands like Hüsker Dü and the more radio-friendly sound that would be taken to the great stages of Lollapalooza by Pearl Jam and others. These strains would later mutate into grunge-influenced pop bands that littered the 90s like Marcy Playground and, more unfortunately, Candlebox. Shudder to Think themselves would eventually sign to a major label and meet semi-success (though most of it critical rather than commercial). Eventually, Wedren would disband STT and focus on a career of composition for TV and film (The State's theme song? Yeah he wrote that.) Oh and he'd later marry the woman from the Cardigans.

Seriously, this band took punk rock to the radio with only a handful of other bands, and they did it without ending up sucking (Evan Dando I'm looking at you).

Shudder to Think - Day Ditty


Shudder to Think - Red House


Seriously listen to the harmonies on "Red House," they're insane. Now these songs exemplify what makes this band sound "so 90s." Lyrically, musically, vocally, they sound like a lot of 90s bands. Trouble with this statement is they did it in the late 80s, setting the benchmark for pretty much everyone who followed after.

Gray Matter were definitely more hardcore than Shudder to Think. Rather than the straight-ahead-no-bullshit hardcore punk though they were early purveyors of the dreaded emotional hardcore label. Moreso than Rites of Spring, I think they nailed the emotional part. And they did it first (granted only by a year).

Partially formed out of the ashes of Iron Cross, a brutish hardcore band that basically broke up because half of their fans were nazis, Gray Matter had a more nuanced sound. While most punk bands used energy and emotion (chiefly anger), Gray Matter channeled their pissed off attitude into more complex songs that made for albums longer than 15 minutes. Simpler was not better for this band, and while hardcore's grease fire was basically burning out, bands like GM, aforementioned Rites of Spring, and other Dischord acts Embrace and One Last Wish were moving into a sound that would last the next couple decades. Gray Matter sort of gets lost in the fray of these bands, considering Rites of Spring and One Last Wish both featured Guy Picciotto and Embrace featured Ian MacKaye, both of whom are much more well known for their work in Fugazi. But in retrospect, Fugazi sounds less like the unexpected punk saviors mantle they've since received than a logical endpoint to a path set by bands like Gray Matter.

Gray Matter - Take it Back


Side note: the rhythm of the verses reminds me of Leonard Cohen's panicked breathless delivery in "Teachers."

Lungfish is an even stranger offshoot of the Dischord tree. First off, I have to thank Andrew for getting me into this band. I still never really listened to them until I saw Dan Higgs, frontman of Lungfish, open solo for The Evens at NYU a couple years back. He was playing banjo, letting loose these bizarre sputterances about the devil and God's outer space origins and everything in between. He would also play the jaw harp like man possessed, speaking through it and spitting great volumes. I immediately picked up as many Lungfish albums as I could the next day.

Lungfish are masters of meditation. Each song is more of a drone, the band locked in an unwavering groove, while their lord of chaos Higgs goes off on whatever plane he's visiting at the time. Dan Higgs, minus the street drugs and generally ignorant/violent demeanor, could and should go down as punk rock's Ol' Dirty Bastard. I mean that as a compliment.

Lungfish unfortunately are a bit of an oddity, not just for Dischord but for music as a whole. First of all, they're from Baltimore. They are the only band signed to Dischord that is not from the D.C. area. Considering Dischord's mission statement, to only release music from their local scenes, this is a bizarre (and wonderful) fluke. Secondly, their influence is not widely heard as are the other bands I've mentioned. Maybe some bands like Les Savy Fav have passively absorbed influence from them (although maybe I'm only thinking that because Tim Harrington looks like a fat Dan Higgs) but for the most part it's very difficult to track Lungfish's DNA through the Musical Gene Pool. It's probably for the best, because what you're left with is a pure core of transcendental music that has since its inception been left undiluted. Here, listen.

Lungfish - Slip of Existence


Lungfish - Sex War


Notice the line "I kill you and you kill me" in that last song. Shakespeare used to use the word "kill" to replace what then would then be the equivalent of "fuck." So Higgs is playing with violence and sex on a Shakespearean and meta level. Pretty smart. I'm pretty smart for catching that though, so let's give credit where credit is due.

Xiu Xiu - Dear God, I Hate Myself

I can't really call this a review, because the album hasn't come out yet, but the new Xiu Xiu leaked and it really sort of brings an endpoint-beginningpoint to the circle of my last 5 years.

I found Xiu Xiu through Fabulous Muscles back in high school. I'd read about them before and had no idea what their sound was or who Jamie Stewart was or any of that. Fabulous Muscles has since been sort of the breakthrough for Xiu Xiu where they started to embrace the idea of being a pop band in spite of themselves. Pop music by people who loved the saccharine-styled mopiness of 80s new wave/popular goth but had no real understanding of how to recreate it. The harsh noise bursts and occasional anguished screams kept it experimental enough, but the melodies and other elements going on under them were what drew me in. I later got into Knife Play, their extremely noise-centric debut but I listened to it maybe half as much.

Fabulous Muscles was a true earmark for this band, brought them tons of new fans and really showed off what they'd been working up toward. Then the next few albums, La Foret and Air Force especially, were good but mostly rehashes of the same material. It sounded like it was trying to be groundbreaking rather than breaking ground. I lost interest. Even though Xiu Xiu in high school had been such a major force in my emotional life (first break-up ever, listened to "I Luv the Valley" a lot like everyone else) and in my musical life (I started to play with sound and lyrics in a way that broke away from what was essentially Bob Dylan and pop-punk influences to really try and craft something people would notice). And while singing pained anthems in my living room while clashing kitchen knives together as if it were a threat to whoever actually listened seemed really important at the time, it just sounds immature now. I realized Xiu Xiu was having the same problems following up Fabulous Muscles. It was just not maturing.

All of a sudden, after I stopped caring, I see a leak over at lucidmedia.blogspot.com for the new Xiu Xiu and best of all, it has a bold whiny title: Dear God, I Hate Myself. Something about the now muscular Jamie Stewart staring you right in the face in stark black and white made me want to hear it. On the cover of Fabulous Muscles he has this very silly pose with a stuffed animal. A joke perhaps about the sadsack vocal delivery, but it rang truer than it needed to.



Now check this out:


He can kick your ass now.

The pain is still there, but the hip-hop font and that glare is telling you that Jamie Stewart is now the gay Henry Rollins. People will get choked out. Now the music itself isn't "tough" or anything, but it is a knock-out (yuk yuk yuk).

The opener, "Gray Death," is like the Pet Shop Boys had a rape baby with Death in June. The depth of the production and songwriting never once shares the shaky stumble of earlier Xiu Xiu, but still drags you caveman-like to all of the twisted places it wants you to experience. While it lacks that brash gusto, it shows that there are more effective ways to get under someone's skin than through simply hacking into it.



Then the sound goes even deeper as Xiu Xiu opts for new lows in volume. On "House Sparrow" the hushed accompaniment makes way for some new highs in Jamie Stewart's dramaqueen intensity. Then it goes into what could arguably be called a "beat." The whole song snakes through the same abrasive flirtations that have always made the band raw and emotional, but held back in a way that finally focuses the violence rather than lets it become the song. Sheer violence just doesn't impress me like it did when I was a raw nerve high school kid who'd never been on anti-depressants yet.


So the circle went like this. It came screaming into existence in high school. I was mad and in agony but I still appreciated beauty and sentimentality. Then Xiu Xiu lost me for a bit by using the very same tricks that made me love them. Now all of a sudden, it's a new decade and Xiu Xiu has accomplished the sound I think they have been trudging towards since their beginning. They have again become an advocating voice in the midst of panic and sadness, however tempered with a practicality that wasn't there before. An impression that maybe nothing is the end, everything is a circle.