Yes, I confess, there are things I hide (ha!): very early on Friday morning, I will be going to Mexico City for eight days to chase the feathered serpent Quetzalcoatl. This, then, will be my last post of 2005. I’ll be back on the 8th; don’t forget about me. When I started this blog in May, I was cross-legged in my bedroom, and now it’s December; I’m sitting on a couch in my living room. I don’t know who reads this save the few commenters and the occasional email exchange, but let me try to gracefully extract myself from the jaws of sentimentality and just say: I appreciate that you’re here.

I was going to waste this space for more Dave Berman exegesis; I’m going to wait until seeing two Silver Jews shows in March. Don’t recoil yet. Anyway, I’m going to do some loose ends work now; consider this a list of a few things I may not have attended to enough this year for whatever reason.

Music is the Weapon, a 1982 film about Fela Kuti

There are plenty of phenomenal things to hear in Fela’s catalog, but what you don’t hear are the sounds of his mother being thrown out of a window by the Nigerian police, the depth of the wounds he incurred at the hands of government thugs, and the fact that this was a man who attempted to harness power through music - a tacky or cliched gesture in the relative security/privileged caution of “the west,” but a well-worked dream in a country ravaged by corruption and in deep political upheaval. For a man with so many scars, he had a fucking sense of humor: I learn later that the album Expensive Shit is a reference to when police planted a joint on Fela and he swallowed it; he was arrested until they could examine his feces. Brothers in bars, his prison mates offered their own waste as proxy; a rebel, leader, and a magician. Incredible.

Konono No. 1 at Joe’s Pub/Amadou & Mariam at Joe’s Pub/XTC, Black Sea

Got to see both “hot” “new” African bands this year, which was thrilling. Konono didn’t sound as good whistling through the wall of 50 people eating plates of expensive brisket and not dancing, but it was great to witness such uninterrupted intensity, songs halting without warning, mid-pant, furious. It took me a little while to get over the pure shock of hearing Congotronics 1 and the residual guilt/uncertainty about the project of exporting such a sound, but in retrospect, it’s really one of the most interesting, well-defined things I had heard this year. (Incidentally, and more on this later, but Congotronics 2 has been quite good to me so far, too.) Amadou & Mariam were charming as all hell; Amadou’s playing is the only thing I’ve heard this year that made me want to pick up the guitar again after a long haitus except for “No Language In Our Lungs” by XTC, a song I had rediscovered after years of half-appreciating Black Sea, an album so ridiculously top-loaded that they could’ve made it three songs long and I still would’ve paid $15 for it.

Crazy Titch, “Singalong”

Honestly, if they sold grime records here, I’d buy them. (I did order Kano’s Home Sweet Home from Amazon UK. Worth it, obv.) Until then I scour, I scavenge; I pick the bones where they lay. It’s not an honorable life, but it’s mine. Still, if I abstained, I wouldn’t have heard “Singalong.” I should say that I realize that this isn’t necessarily time capsule grime at any phase, but there is something maddeningly indelibe about it. Okay, let’s get past the fact that CRAZY TITCH SHOUTS LIKE THE DAY CARE CENTER IS ON FIRE (a style that Dom Passantino from Stylus has cripplingly referred to as “market trader,” which I thought was hilarious). What makes the song is the backdrop: frilly string samples bouncing along on a beat that rocks like a Bar Mitzvah, clarinets winding like garden snakes up your arm. Produced by a team named Imp Batch for fuck’s sake. Crazy Titch doesn’t do the faux-regal chinstroking rogue thing like Prince Paul sometimes did, but “Singalong” masters the kind of music I’ve always felt Americans were barred from making: the nipple-squeezing composure of schmaltz matched with cartoonishly unhinged vitriol, like Felix the cat swinging a mace; the fact that the whole thing is a rally for a gang chorus annihilates everything from Oi to campfire rounds.

Dave Queen’s piece on the Eagles box set in the Seattle Weekly, Nick Sylvester’s riff on S F-J.

I guess it’s natural to love what you aren’t. I probably got more enjoyment out of reading (and rereading) these pieces than any other music criticism this year (though Nick’s is more critic criticism, whoa). Both guys play an insider’s game, but one I’m willing to follow up to a certain point, that point being the point at which I develop hilarity-induced stomach pains and require cool towels and mineral water in order to calm myself down.

My year end thoughts at Stylus, mostly dealing with amnesia, hero worship, and bourbon. I watched all of Freaks & Geeks last week too; it shows. Good year, ready for another.

I wish this article had been better than it is. After trying to trudge through Rising Up and Rising Down unsuccessfully, I’ve had this deep ugly pit in my stomach that says William Vollman is playing the part of the alien whose weird brand of naif-libertarianism has made more excuses than answers. And shit, I watched The Man Who Fell to Earth last week, and Vollman’s not it.

Still, after all the ponderous nights and anxiety I got out of coke rap this year, I’m excited by the subject of narco corridos: drugslinger legends played out in song.

This article on the BBC was a lot better and more informative, particularly the near-perfect resonance of marketing’s rhetoric:

“Mariluz Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for LA-based Fonovisa Records, which represents Los Tigres and several other narco corrido stars, said: ‘They are not glamorising the drug dealers’ lives, they are simply telling a story. They are not promoting it.’”

Endless return!

Somehow, it makes me both more queasy and more excited that this is such a vibrant trend elsewhere; I wonder if we’ll get Pusha on some Los Tigres Del Norte tracks until Hell Hath No Fury finally shows up.

–

Also, it’s tough to hold back the flood of feeling with regards to Zoilus’ ruminations on Destroyer’s Rubies; I’m reviewing it for Stylus in February, and it seems gross to spoil it all here. I will say that I’m largely in accordance with the post, though I can’t help but adding a few things. I think Bejar has fully problematized himself: the relatively straightforward “musicality” of the record belies a kind of coming to terms with formal cliches; he actually sounds like he’s making indie rock and not MIDI-theatre or conceptual rock*, but his lyrics sound more polarized than ever, bumping bitterness against redemption in the same verse.

(*I’m invested enough to think that This Night’s exaggerated looseness is there for a reason and that Streehawk: A Seduction is purposely and purposefully sloppy and one-dimensional, especially after the relatively composed and smoothed-out arrangements of Destroyer’s Rubies.)

In the end, I think it’s a more optimistic record, but only if you buy Bejar’s criticisms that “A life in art and a life of mimicry” are the same thing. When you get down to it, it’s plain Warholian - Bejar’s gesture of originality being a partial rejection of the concept’s primacy to begin with - but OH NO! I can’t dork out for long on that without posting my undergraduate thesis, which would surely be a hoot.

(Also, if you thought this post on Destroyer was too concise, allusive, and clinical, here are my earlier thoughts on the record from a couple weeks ago; like most things infantile, they’re ill-informed, brutish, expressive, and expansive.)

I’m a white kid with a tinny-sounding guitar plagued with a restless mind and a firm belief in the street art of intellect. I am listening to Black Sea and didn’t even realize that it’s the vicennial of mighty D. Boon’s passing; in 1985, I was futzing around fingerpainting on my walls and trying to figure out how long I could keep my daipers on before my parents made me hit the john like the other kids. There was other stuff on my mind, like space. My idols are either dead or dread-locked, literally or metaphorically. More guitar solos Carlos, I’m feeling tender tonight. (Thanks for the tip, Ian.)

Brad Shoup and I both have pieces on evil ol’ TOKENISM up at Stylus today. Please read! Please comment! The robust democracy of the internet is a privilege, not a right!

People liked the first batch
Since we are all prostitues;
A few more haikus

–

VA, RWD The Mixtape, Vol. 1

Give the elderly
Heart failure twice as fast as
Devo chased with meth

–

M.I.A., Arular

Malcolm McLaren
Somewhere reading Pazz & Jop
Laughing heartily

–

Sunn o))), Black One

Hey I found your tape
Of the fan through a fuzz box
Screwed and chopped

–

Fall, Fall Heads Roll

Is anyone else
Starting to wonder if he
Might be immortal?

or

Repetition re
petition repetition
Repetition re

–

Excepter, Throne, Self Destruction, and Sunbomber

I won’t be sure if
This is spooky or stupid
Until I come down

–

Paavoharju, Yhä Hämärää

The lyrics might mean
“Save us from these fuckin’ woods.”
Shame it’s in Finnish.

–

I am done for now
Let’s just piss these syllables
Off this rail right here

I couldn’t resist posting a picture of Coil’s The Ape of Naples; I have never been so utterly compelled to stare at a record cover for quite so long. My girlfriend found the reaction completely predictable. I’m surprised at how much I like the record, being a casual-but-interested-enough-fan to attempt to familiarize myself with A Guide for Beginners, A Guide for Finishers, Horse Rotovator, and whatever the digi-nocturne record with “Batwings” was. It’s strange listening to a posthumous record that doesn’t really sound like a cash-in; perhaps I just like to think that people that manage estates of guys like Jhonn Balance aren’t ogling accounts books and wondering how to extract the last dollar from marginally gnostic weirdos and repressed pervs that dig Coil’s abject meditations. At any rate, the extended prayer of “Cold Cell” is prescient to a point that edges so deeply into eerie it’s almost hard to take (though I have to say that while this version of the songs fits better on the record, I prefer the more stately 6-minute version on A Guide for Finishers). This post is also partially in tribute to the fact that I never knew I had been waiting for a song like “Fire of the Mind” for so long. The kind of record that would cause your mother to suggest you “get some air” if she caught you listening to it on a visit home.

1. I almost didn’t know that Tom Ze had a new record out, and I wouldn’t have known if it hadn’t been for S F/J. It won’t grace the unforgiving ears of North America for a little while (Luaka Bop, eventually), but The Internet has helped me out for the time being. Honestly, I was only half-crazy about Fabrication Defect, but after four or five listenes, I can honestly say I’m really digging Estudando o Pagode. Ze gets tossed off as a hungover Tropicalist; he was undoubtedly a part of the Tropicalia movement, but I’ve always felt that not only did he stretch a lot farther musically than the other likely suspects (Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, Os Mutantes, early Milton Nascimento, etc.), but that his career trajectory has left him in an avant-lonely realm after a lot of his compatriots veered off into more MOR territory at the dawn of the 70’s/Tropicalia’s metamorphosis into “MPB”. I mean, I got to see Caetano in Buenos Aires last year; the theater was packed with 50-year old women singing along to their husbands; while my girlfriend was in Brazil, she asked people about Tom Ze, and they snapped with contempt. It makes sense; while Tropicalia’s idiosyncracies got smoothed out, Ze retained the quirks that had always made him a tough fit anyway: the meshing of several consonant harmonic elements to form an overall dissonance, the incisive wordplay (which is diminished a little by having to sit in front of the speakers with a lyric, sheet, but I’m willing); stumbling onto the feeling of everything about to giggle-burst, but not sure whether the pinata’s filled with candy or daggers, i.e. something wicked lurking there. At least something suspect. Not sure yet. Will be more soon. And seriously, someone tell Beck to hang it the fuck up or get a new gig; Estudando isn’t what Guero could/should’ve been, but if you’re going to make rough-edged postmodern, latin-flavored music, let’s keep it out of Urban Outfitters. Grrr.

2. In other tangentially excting news, I’ve done three Stycasts in the past week or so, which helps explain the slightly meek postage around here. Go listen! More Cambodian pop! A stunted obituary/tribute to Richard Pryor! More hott psychedelic microhouse! John Fahey brushes his fingers on steel strings and immediately, I weep!

3. Confession: I have listened to Joanna Newsom’s The Milk-Eyed Mender once a day since Thanksgiving. The album took a bad rap for being precious, but I think that there’s a lot revealed here lyrically, a lot of great, intense lines hidden in the elfin warrior voice:

Bitter romance! “Even when you touch my face, you know your place.”

The dark curse of Spartan aesthetes! “But what’s it mean when suddenly we’re spent, tell me true? Ambition came and reared its head and went far from you/Even mollusks have weddings, though solemn and leaden, but you dirge for the dead and take no jam on your bread/Just a supper of salt and a waltz through your empty bed.”

The walloping cleverness of synaesthetes! “And the signifieds butt heads with the signifiers/And we all fall down slack-jawed to marvel at words/When across the sky sheet the impossible birds/In the steady alliterate movement homewards.”

Durable loves blossom slowly.

Sorry, I have spent
The morning writing haikus
About some records

–

Vitalic, OK Cowboy

Do you like cocaine?
Tonight, let’s fuck and crash cars
Even shy kids relate

–

Antony and the Johnsons, I am a Bird Now

Model man-child for
earnest, tender-hearted naifs
Fetch me my kerchief

–

Half Man Half Biscuit, Auchtung Bono

Is the gap between
England and America
Only an ocean?

–

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.
Wait, that’s the name of the band?
Ohhhh, this will be fun.

–

Kanye West, Late Registration

Only once a year
To be socially conscious
Let’s make this count, guys

–

Kate Bush, Aerial

A bit new age, yeah
Still gives me an erection
Some loves never die

–

Robyn, Robyn

Because Girls Aloud
Are so last year and Annie
Was only half-good

–

Devendra Banhart, Cripple Crow

If this is a voice
Of our lost generation
We are fucked, people

–

Slim Thug, Already Platinum

He rhymes “boss” with “house”!
Have you ever drank codeine?
Very nice, really

–

Wolf Parade, Apologies to the Queen Mary

There are not enough
Syllables here to express
My distaste for this

or

“Indie” can be spelled
Two ways; there is only one
Spelling for “boring”

–

New Pornographers, Twin Cinema

At least they’re better
Than the Decemberists, damn.
No, really, that’s all.

–

Decemberists, Whatever Album the Decemberists Released this Year

Come on guys, wake up
Loosen your goddamn corsets
Get drunk or something

Destroyer, a.k.a. A Real Lookin’ Future Bible Hero, a.k.a the guy in the New Pornographers who doesn’t get enough attention because his songs have too much flair, allusion, and mystery, not to mention that he’s hardly cute and has neither A) red hair nor B) red hair and breasts is releasing a new album, Rubies on February 21st.

I could wile out for an uninterrupted hour about Destroyer (if you toss six fingers of Jameson into the mix, up that to about 2.5 hours, including time spent getting up and down from desks, climbing fences, breaking windows, shouting unintelligibly, shaking your shoulders, and crying), so I’m going to keep this a little on the short side. Guy’s one of my favorite songwriters ever; clever for miles but with about two tons of care. I’m fond of distance (I confessed to my brother on the train yesterday that defamiliarization was the best skill I’ve ever learned in life), and Bejar’s lyrics often push right on into these open wounds I never got around to dressing: why do we listen to music, how do we create music, etc. Granted, the post-Momus New Victorian Chile element has been stepped up progressively since his first recordings, but it makes a ton of sense: Bejar’s in the cheap seats with binoculars, the OED, and just about every pop/rock record I’ve ever heard, pinching phrases here and there just to mess with the trainspotters, crossing his legs with an analyst’s cool, and telling us just what’s going on on the ground. Sure, this makes him an easy target for people shouting about how he’s too precious or intellectual or whatever, but there’s a visceral element to him too; he’s so steeped in music as a listener/fan that at times it seems like he’s fighting off the desire to just immerse himself. Choice lyric, from 2001’s painfully underrated Streethawk: A Seduction: “When signs become impure again, the crowd doesn’t know where or when/to let it all hang out, BLOODLET YOURSELF STREET STYLE.” Come on! Anyone with half an ear to rock’s confused state should shake like a washing machine at that line.

Anyway, I could go on, but I won’t. Rubies sounds great so far, and a departure from the MIDI phantasies/Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time vibe of Your Blues and back to the sloppy rock of past triumphs, but carries itself much more delicately not to mention independently (of Bowie, etc.) than Streethawk or the sprawl of This Night. More in February, but suffice it to say that I had an almost involuntary consummation of this intense relationship when I realized the first track was not only nine minutes long but is actually self-referential at several points. I’ll be in the dark with a few protein shakes and a blanket to keep warm until I can make some sense of this.

EDIT: Your meager reward! Download “European Oils” from Music Cherry. Love & love & love some more.