Story Archive (Page 174 of 202)

Weather Forecast

It was autumn, and the Indians on the remote reservation asked their new Chief if the winter was going to be cold or mild. Since he was an Indian Chief in a modern society, he had never been taught the old secrets, and when he looked at the sky, he couldn't tell what the weather was going to be. Nevertheless, to be on the safe side, he replied to his tribe that the winter was indeed going to be cold and that the members of the village should collect wood to be prepared.

But also being a practical leader, after several days he got an idea. He went to the phone booth, called the National Weather Service and asked, "Is the coming winter going to be cold?" "It looks like this winter is going to be quite cold indeed," the meteorologist at the weather service responded. So the Chief went back to his people and told them to collect even more wood in order to be prepared.

A week later, he called the National Weather Service again. "Is it going to be a very cold winter? "Yes," the man at National Weather Service again replied, "it's definitely going to be a very cold winter." The Chief again went back to his people and ordered them to collect every scrap of wood they could find.

Two weeks later, he called the National Weather Service again. "Are you absolutely sure that the winter is going to be very cold?" "Absolutely," the man replied. "It's going to be one of the coldest winters ever."

How can you be so sure?" the Chief asked.

The weatherman replied, "The Indians are collecting wood like crazy."

Perhaps their best work to date, The Black Heart Procession's fourth album, Amore del Tropico is an impressive collection of brooding and macabre songs of love and loss that defies traditional notions of independent rock.

A prayer for the potentially dying, that's what "Yesterday Once More" was - an extremely political song when you think about it. "Every sha-la-la-la..." as if they are desperately clutching at signifiers like a lifebelt. This all still means something, DOESN'T IT? TELL ME IT DOES!

It's also yet another album that is going to make my always-difficult year-end best-of list an even more obsessive and solipsistic exercise this year than it is by definition. Never mind what I wanted this album to sound like, I'm mesmerized by what it does. Finding ways for minimalism to progress, if the unscientific survey of bands I like who have tried it is at all representative, is extremely hard. ... This is one of the lost records Nick Drake never made, or Richard Shindell crossed with Jeff Buckley, or what Chris Whitley might have done without such deep blues roots, Richard Thompson without folk stature and guitar virtuosity as crutches, Steve Earle without prison or drink.

The band should be proud of Yanqui U.X.O. -- it proves that they're not hopelessly married to the fine-print details of their formula, and that they can still wring fresh ideas from familiar territory.

The reissue boasts an hour and a half of extra material that tidily compiles the band's post-"Slanted.." activity, including the "Watery Domestic" EP.

From the technical point of the reader there are four kinds of weblogs I know of:

If your weblog supports RSS feeds and is about music I would be very thankful if you told me so that I can add you to my news feeds.

I wrote about Beck's new album Sea Change just yesterday that it is very much influenced by two songwriters from the 70s. But when I heard Round the Bend on the radio tonight I couldn't believe my ears. I had heard a string section playing that understated atmospheric tune before. Though it was less pronounced and not as thickly arranged as here. It was in Nick Drake's River Man from his first album Five Leaves Left. Beck even tries to sing like Drake. I like his version of Drake's song especially the cosmic radiance it has, the wide space it conjures up. But I find it extremely shameless by Beck to pretend it his song. He should at least have written in the liner notes by whom it was inspired. By the way the radio deejay had also noticed that those two songs were very similar and played them next to another.

Beck's new album is a cover album. The ~~first~~ second song Paper Tiger is a take on Melody Nelson by Serge Gainsbourg. The overall mood is very similar to Neil Young's Harvest though the album lacks the gorgeous melancholic melodies. Another good song on the album It's All in Your Mind also sounds familiar to me though I cannot yet nail by whom it is. Have you got an idea? Two hints: search in between 1969 and 1972, maybe +- two years and check Beck's iPod (New York Times, I am not sure if registration is still required).

Don't get me wrong. I don't think it is a bad album and I would love to hear it played in a pub by chance. But probably not more than two songs as the album doesn't seem to have enough substance to be listened to in one sitting. Many songs just meander along and fail to catch my attention.

I still can't exclude that I will change my mind tomorrow and that the record is a grower but up till now I am not too convinced. The best song is the Nick Drake cover and that says a lot about the originality and honesty of Beck. In a way it makes me doubt how much he actually feels the songs he performs. He seems a great actor and pretender but I am not sure anymore if he is a great artist.

...There’s another aspect to all this, what you could call anticipatory nostalgia: when you’re in a Moment, and suddenly think "will I remember this fondly one day?". With music, I’ve found that this question never raises itself when you actually are living through a period that turns out later to be regarded as a Golden Era. During post-punk, or late Eighties bliss-rock, or hardcore/jungle, I never thought about posterity: I was too fully immersed in the here-and-now, it felt like this Moment would extend itself in perpetuity. But when you’re actually ambivalent about a contemporary pop phenomenon, not wholly convinced or seduced (see: electroclash), I find the question becomes irresistible: you can't imagine who could possibly look back on this one day and feel an ounce of nostalgia.

Yesterday the CD coming with the German Rolling Stone was a sampler on post-punk (which I know I like but don't know too well) including tracks by the Au Pairs, Modern Lovers, Teardrop Exploders, Fall, Slits, X-Ray Spex, Fat Gadget, Gene Loves Jezebel and someone I had never heard of called Reininger. I found this early new wave stuff so much more original, powerful and challenging than any of the bands hyped today which I won't mention again. It clicked with me immediately and now I am not sure if this is because of the quality of that music or a kind of diffuse nostalgia. I write diffuse here as I didn't know most of the tracks and even the ones I knew like It's Obvious by the Au Pairs had a complexity and diversity about them I hadn't noticed before.

I ask myself the question why this is so. Is it my age, I am approaching 40, and do I settle for calmer music now? Or is it the fact that I have listened to a lot of rock music of the last forty years and therefore only hear the rip-offs in the new music? Or could it be that my nostalgic feelings are hurt by bands who do more or less the same as bands 15 or 20 years ago? Don't I listen closely enough to the new stuff to detect the hidden qualities? Or aren't there any and are the new bands really bad pale copies of the past heroes? In one question: is it me or is it them?

Listening to Loveless in 1991 or Heaven or Las Vegas in 1992 (as so often I was late) were revelations which haven't been matched for a long time. I'd like to know if there are other people out there who feel the same.

By the way I am really happy that I do not have to live on writing about music I don't like.

Finally I ordered the following albums from Glitterhouse, my favourite mail order in Germany. It will probably take a week or so before I get them, they are not Amazon.

I came up with this quiz tonight. First I asked myself how to describe a band in three words most strikingly. Then I thought why not turn the thing around and make a game out of it:

You can brush up your knowledge on some astronomical questions your kids (or you yourself) could ask you at Spacewatch (via mosaikum)

A lazy day today to do some audio link recycling. Tomorrow I probably won't post as I am in Birmingham on the motor show.