2K7 in Review: My Favorite Albums, #9

Hey, how ya been? I've been typing like a fiend. In addition to the following, check out my recent interview with local popsters 1997. And let's get on with it.

9. Marnie Stern, In Advance of the Broken Arm (Kill Rock Stars)
Traditional guitar shredders deserve respect for their dedication to their craft, but many simply can't put a song together to save their lives. Instead, they typically offer an array of string exercises, noodly atmospherics and other sonic wallpaper that nobody except other guitarists can enjoy. Take Steve Vai, who sounded great playing with Frank Zappa and Devin Townsend, but whose average solo material is pure wank, or Yngwie Malmsteen, whose brand of cock rock is all Eurotrash flash and no heart. Then there are the guitar god grandpas of the indie rock world, dudes like Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore, Dinosaur Jr.'s J Mascis or Built to Spill's Doug Martsch. Each an artful and creative player, yes, but the ramshackle cerebral aesthetic of their chosen styles often leave someone craving precision wanting. Somewhere between those disparate schools lies the shadowy post-hardcore outgrowth known as "math rock" because the practitioners' wacky flurry of notes and rhythms seems mapped out by a freaking calculus major. While this seems like odd company for a thirtysomething lady guitarist, that's about the only place Marnie Stern really fits. She does such unusual things within the realm of guitar wizardry, that fact that she's a rare female shredder is simply overshadowed by her vibrant music.

On this, Stern's debut LP, the New York native toes the line between formal experiments and off-kilter indie rock, coming up with a fresh and singular style in the process. With influences cited as including Sleater-Kinney, Don Caballero and Melt-Banana, that's bound to be the case, and the result - a blend of energetic grrl-rock and twiddly math-punk - is giddy and easy to like. Stern literally recorded Arm in her bedroom over a two-year period, with drums provided by Zach Hill of noise rockers Hella. Her densely layered guitar lines often loop, build and crash together like a less metallic, more enjoyable version of experimentalists Orthrelm. "Precious Metal" begins as a nearly formless racket, gradually morphing into a strident, off-time spy theme. When tracks like "Grapefruit" or "Put All Your Eggs In One Basket and Then Watch That Basket!!!" threaten too much repetition, Stern's often-multitracked vocals add another attraction, like an unapologetically girly gaggle of stoned, candy-crunching cheerleaders. Even more ponderous tracks such as "Logical Volume" and "This American Life" offer plenty of interesting shifts and buried sonic surprises. An unabashed oddity runs throughout, culminating in the first half of closer "Patterns of a Diamond Ceiling," which consists of Marnie intoning bizarro descriptions of the musical track beneath her. She calls out the changes as if she's reading instructions for emergency evacuation procedure; it's kind of eerie and very neat. Arm probably wouldn't be as bracing without Hill's wild percussion (check out his furious attacks during "The Weight of a Rock" for proof), but its finest moments such as the squalling shoegazer detours in "Absorb Those Numbers" or the brightly shifting patterns of "Healer" all belong to Stern. It's too active, noisy and plain-out weird to please everyone's palate, but for the audio equivalent of neon fireworks, Marnie Stern is the lady to see.

As far as I know, there is only one official video from Marnie Stern's In Advance of the Broken Arm... see below.

"Every Single Line Means Something"

2K7 In Review: My Favorite Albums, #10

At long last, I'm gonna give you my ten favorite albums from last year. As I've hinted before, I've found motivation rare to write about some of these. But what the hey, it's damn April. The best way to finish this is to do it one at a time, and that is what I intend to do. Obsessive readers may notice some cannibalization of previous scribblings I did about a few of these, but since those are my opinions, I believe I'm allowed to recycle them. As each post appears (hopefully in quick succession), I'll add samples from the record in question to the ol' streaming player so you can get a taste of the magic.

Gang, let me preface by establishing that I listen to a lot of music. A LOT. Traditionally, I have my preferences, but I also like trying out new things. As I get older, I find that while I get a lot of joy out of the old standbys, they don't typically deliver the sort of mind-melting moments a less familiar act can. I admit it, at this stage I'm sort of hooked on novelty. I can't understand why anyone wouldn't want the music coming into their ears to be fresh, inspired, unique and surprising. I certainly do.

I want every record I hear to send that crackle up my spine, the way I felt it in the old days when I was completely unfamiliar with the inner workings of the record biz, when I had no idea what "subculture" meant and music was either good or bad. I want to be mesmerized and confounded by it. I want mysteries to unravel, treasures to discover, terrains to explore, zeniths to ascend, even pitfalls to circumvent. I want chops to admire and hooks that I can't banish from my head. I want an album that goads me to play it over and over again, never fearing burnout, until I can recite its track listing in my sleep, yet by which I can be startled six months or a year later when I pull it back out and hear something I never noticed before. Each of the records I'm writing about fulfilled for me some facet of that impossible dream. They got me through the relatively few rough spots and buoyed the many high points of 2007, and will thus be inextricably linked with that time in my memory. I implore you to give each a try.

10. Interpol, Our Love to Admire (Capitol)
I was kind of shocked that I liked Interpol as soon as I heard them, considering how cynical I was about the Big Apple's crop of celebutante rockers. Yes, all that NYC hype a few years ago was a bit much. The Strokes always seemed like corny industry fodder to me (still better than, say, Wolfmother - barf!), The Walkmen leave me cold (as in, I saw them live in '06 and don't remember a second of it) and I find the Yeah Yeah Yeahs abrasive in a bad way (I concede that this actually helps their live show). But Interpol was what I wanted from regular old non-metal rock music: understated where others were pointlessly overblown, sincere where others hid their emotions behind cryptic shields, dark and tense where others strove to evoke sunlit pastures or hipster-packed sports bars, yet not so bleak as to become maudlin sad-rock caricatures. In these ways and others, they remind me of my favorite band, Katatonia, albeit in an alternate universe where the Swedes dropped their metal influences, got more into post-punk and acquired a singer who was a huge Ian Curtis fan. And they're on the radio! Even showcased during the few early-morning minutes MTV deigns to show music videos! In my mind, Interpol was mainstream well before this, their major label debut, was written, yet they still feel so unlike anything else radio listeners are currently subjected to that in their case, I can accept the sticky "indie" tag.

Interpol's first and second albums each have distinct personalities, and I think that helped ease me into the band since a friend gave me copies of both of them at the same time. Turn On the Bright Lights heralds the atmospheric onset of evening, dizzy from a wealth of possibilities and awkward starts. Antics, on the other hand, is the after-hours comedown, jittery and regretful, still wired from the thrum of humanity and heartbreak. Given this strained metaphor, their third disc should necessarily fill in the gap. Our Love to Admire should theoretically feel like the meat of the evening, the parties and decadence and love and drama. Yet, the closest Interpol comes to such a conceit here is in acheiving a strong synthesis of those moods. Our Love to Admire contains some of the most lush and enveloping musical blankets the band has yet to conjure, yet thumps as hard as anything they've done before. Take the impossibly picturesque opener, "Pioneer to the Falls," which floats in on Daniel Kessler's shimmery U2-on-downers guitar plucking and twinkly piano flutters by bassist (and Joachin Phoenix look-alike) Carlos D. It's fairytale pretty until Paul Banks opens his gloomhole, moaning his usual incoherent but incredibly grave melody like an undead 1940s pop idol... when this dude sings "we'll be fine," you can't help but doubt him. I mean, he spends the ickily anthemic following track, "No I in Threesome," trying to talk his girlfriend into a ménage à trois. "Who Do You Think?" pulses with poppy paranoia, while the jarringly jaunty tone of lead single "The Heinrich Maneuver" masks a bitter lyrical kiss-off. Drummer Sam Fogarino helms the old Interpol nocturnal groove on the moodily suffocating "The Scale" and the jazzed/jaded fluctuations of "Pace Is the Trick." By the time "Wrecking Ball" and "The Lighthouse" close the disc with twin post-rockish ebb-and-flow creepers, the experience feels complete, a comprehensive display of the band's strengths. The only downside I can see to this is the plateau effect: unless they attempt a risky stylistic change, the rest of Interpol's albums will probably sound very similar to this one. Whatever happens, I think I'll maintain hope that they'll continue to put out good work within this paradigm. If not, Our Love to Admire offers enough decadence and drama to last for years anyway.

Three music videos from Interpol's Our Love to Admire exist to date... see below.

"The Heinrich Maneuver"


"Mammoth"


"No I in Threesome"

The sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick

So, March actually turned out fine, but so far, April has been a real kick in the nuts. In a small way, it's feeling like 2005 all over again. I mean that the winds of change are blowing fiercely, my friends. As firmly as I've tried to plant my roots, some gales are simply too vicious to withstand. I don't mind telling you that I'm as spooked as I am curious about where I'm gonna land.

I got stuff in the works. Expect a bevy of posts sometime soon. You'll see. In the meantime, here are some amusements...

Which "Dark Crystal" character are you?

You are Kira. One strong little Gelfling, you thought you were alone for much of your life, only to find you were wrong when you met the man of your dreams. You are full of surprises and fear very little. You are selfless, brave, loyal and loving.
Take this quiz!

+A selection of absoludicrous quotes about musicians, which I've collected from actual promotional materials:
-"America’s biggest, loudest and hardest-hitting band of all time, Aerosmith..."
-"Brett Dennen doesn’t think outside the box. That’s because he never believed in boxes and boundaries to begin with."
-"If you have never seen Bobby Vinton, you have never been entertained!"
-"Referred to as the 'Richard Pryor and George Carlin of original comedy' within the Hispanic community, Paul Rodriguez..."
-"We are extremely honored and excited to have Hinder represent the MadPackers lifestyle brand... they truly represent how rock music should be played, just as MadPackers represents how college shipping should be executed."
-"[Ex-Fuel/current Riders on the Storm singer Brett Scallions] wears leather like it's licorice..."
-"...'Soldier of Love,' Donny [Osmond]'s first smash hit in more than a decade, heralded in the press as 'THE comeback of the '80s'..."
-"Ronnie Rice picked up a guitar when he was 16 years old and hasn't put it down yet!"
-"Lina Koutrakos wrings more emotion out of her songs than Barbara Stanwyck and Ida Lupino ever managed in a prison flick."
-"[Biffy Clyro] are a true rock n' roll band by definition."
-"Uncle Milty, an 18 year veteran of the Chicago nightlife scene, is known for being a complete madman for fun."

You Are a Cadbury Creme Egg

You're the type that stole your little brother's Easter basket so that you could have MORE CANDY!

What Easter Candy Are You?

+Here's a clip from a movie I want to see real bad. Anyone looking to get old non-bloggin' SoulReaper a Memorial Day present would be warmly thanked for ordering "The Devil's Sword," an Indonesian fantasy/action movie from 1984 that stars Barry Prima, the mulleted martial arts master you see kicking ass all over a bunch of dudes in cheesy reptilian suits. The film apparently includes a horny crocodile queen, a flying guillotine, laser beams and a sword carved out of a meteor, so you can imagine why I would be enthused. It was released a few years ago by Mondo Macabro, the awesome DVD label devoted to fucked-up cinema from underrepresented corners of the globe. (I believe MM spawned from the book of the same title by international sleaze guru Pete Tombs, an invaluable tour of crazy foreign movies which I highly recommend.) You totally have to watch this clip. Tell me "The Devil's Sword" doesn't look better than "Speed Racer."

+We got reviews a-poppin. Quite a backlog here... let's see, there are four movies ("Doomsday," "Shutter," "Flawless" and what is easily the worst movie I've seen in ages, "Prom Night") and four CDs (Poi Dog Pondering, Lair of the Minotaur, The Dino-5 and Yakuza). Hope you enjoy. I bid you adieu for now. Love and nostalgia call!

Sophia's choice

An excerpt from my forthcoming tome of "Golden Girls" fan fiction, to be entitled "Zbornaks in Space":

III
Rose was especially famished the next morning. As she entered the kitchen, she glanced down at her green, blue, purple and red silk blouse, which shimmered slightly in the early Miami sun, its jeweled buttons glittering across her shoulder like pomegranate seeds. How she loved when her clothes sparkled in the morning light! In fact, Rose was so enthralled by the twinkling colors that she almost ran smack dab into Blanche, who was furtively stuffing perfectly manicured handfuls of Cracklin' Oat Bran into her mouth.

"Oh, Blanche!" Rose hollered, stumbling against the counter.

"Ooh, Wose!" Blanche hollered simultaneously, showering Rose's shiny blouse with bits of brown cereal. She swallowed and dug her hand into the box, offering, "I was just looking for the prize in the cereal! Someone must have taken it already." Blanche jammed the box back into the cabinet, shutting the door quickly and smoothing the lace ruffles on her peach terrycloth tunic. Rose headed for the refrigerator, not wanting to draw further attention to Blanche's "secret eating."

"Boy, after all of Dorothy's and Sophia's arguing last night, I hardly slept a wink," said Rose as she extracted fixings for toast and jam. "I don't think I've had such little sleep since Charlie took in that boarder. When he said he was in the philharmonic, we didn't think he was a kettle drum specialist."

"I knew a kettle drum specialist," Blanche replied dreamily as she took a seat at the table. "I didn't sleep very much when he was in my house, either."

"Yeah, thump, thump, thump all night," said Rose.

"You don't know the half of it," said Blanche with a lascivious grin. "He completely wore out his mallets by morning!"

Just then, Dorothy came through the kitchen door. From the sharp clacks of her slouch ankle boot heels and the way her iridescent shawl was hastily arranged over her brocaded mauve sweater, it was clear that she was in a stormy mood. As Dorothy plopped her lanky frame upon the chair opposite Blanche, Rose decided that she should try to cheer Dorothy up.

"Good morning, Dorothy," she chirped hopefully. "Do you feel like eating something? I'm making toast."

"Oh, good," barked Dorothy, fixing Rose with a withering glare. "Then I could get dysentery on top of no sleep."

"Lighten up, Dorothy," cooed Blanche, "it's a new day and the sun is shining. Why, on days like this, Big Daddy always told me, 'You can't frown when the sun is smiling for you.'"

"Yeah, well, I don't feel like smiling," sulked Dorothy. "My mother is driving me crazy! I should have sent her back to Shady Pines when she tried to mail that horse to Italy."

"People mailed horses to St. Olaf all the time," Rose said as she sat down and spread jam on her toast, her thoughts sailing back to her Minnesotan childhood. "Of course, the most came in around Hestkjærtegne."

Dorothy considered Rose for a moment, her mouth hanging open in incredulity. "Should I?" she asked herself out loud. "Oh, why not? Rose, what's Hestkjærtegne?"

"Well," Rose brightened, sitting up straight and shoving her toast aside. "Hestkjærtegne was an old Norwegian tradition that celebrated our love for horses. All throughout the month of April, friends and relatives sent the finest mares and stallions to their loved ones in St. Olaf, and we would groom and feed them in preparation for Hestkjærtegne. It continued every year until poor Sven Torbold, the postmaster, got so mixed up by all the horses that all of the Sears catalogs ended up at the glue factory."

"Oh, that's preposterous, Rose!" Blanche chortled.

"You're telling me," said Rose. "Have you ever seen a horse in Tuff-Skin jeans? Once they ate their fill of coconuts, we could hardly fit the saddles on them!"

"I'm sorry I asked," Dorothy hissed coldly. She leapt up and stalked over to the teapot, her heels clacking angrily all the while.

Rose fidgeted, glancing at the clock. "Oh," she exclaimed, "I still have an hour until Miles comes to pick me up. He's taking me to the mall to shop for walking shoes."

"You know, I was thinking about going down to the mall myself this afternoon," Blanche said to Dorothy, who fussed with a bag of decaffeinated orange pekoe. "I hear there's a new security guard stationed outside Thom McAn. Maybe you'd like to come with and do a little window shopping?"

"I have to find a way to stop Ma from going on this ridiculous lark, or I'll be shopping for a coffin," Dorothy retorted.

"Can't you just talk to Sophia's doctor?" Rose asked. "I'm sure if you explained to him that your mother isn't fit to be sent into space, he'd do something."

"It was the doctor's idea!" sputtered Dorothy, slamming down her teacup. "Some sort of nonsense about staving off aging and cognitive deterioration. NASA just wants a civilian senior citizen for a public relations stunt, and for some reason they think Ma is their best option."

"I would think that Sophia would say no," said Rose. "I know I couldn't stand to be so far away from my home and the people I love, even if they let me bring Fernando."

"I know," intoned Blanche, pressing a stiff-fingered hand to her leathery bosom. "Just think about being up there, all alone with those lonely astronauts. Brave, intrepid men in peak physical condition who are boldly going where no man has gone before!" Blanche shuddered.

"Oh, they'd be going where plenty of men have gone before," Dorothy cracked dryly, returning to her tea. Blanche looked embarassed, then slightly proud.

"Maybe she'll change her mind when she sees how much she'll have to go through to be on the space shuttle," Rose mused. "Why, with her arthritis, she'd have a heck of a time getting into one of those space suits."

Just then, a loud voice boomed from the living room, "3... 2... 1... LIFTOFF!" The women turned to see Sophia enter the kitchen, wearing what was obviously an astronaut Halloween costume. Her rheumy eyes glistened behind her giant glasses, which themselves seemed magnified behind the domed plastic helmet. A plastic bag dangled from one silver-gloved hand.

"Ma! What are you doing in that ludicrous get-up!" Dorothy shrieked, putting a giant hand to her forehead.

"I wanted to practice for my big space flight, so I picked it up at the costume shop," replied Sophia, shuffling toward her housemates. Arriving at the table, she held out the bag to Dorothy. "Here, they had a two-for-one special. All they had in your size was cavewoman or flapper. I figured cavewoman was more believable."

"Well, practice all you want, because you are not going on the space shuttle!" fumed Dorothy. "At your age? Do you want another stroke?"

"Dorothy, we've been over this already," Sophia answered, softening. "Dr. Rubenstein says I am not at risk for any medical problems. Can't you see that this is something that I've always wanted? Picture it: Sicily, 1913. A beautiful olive skinned girl stood on her roof overlooking the alley behind her father's house. Up there, she could see further than she ever had before, and not just the drunk passed out under the neighbor's window. No, there she could see the stars, the moon, the great expanse of space. How she longed to be up there. But she was stuck on Earth, dating a man who could never satisfy her. Dorothy, that girl was me. And that man was Neil Armstrong."

"Come on, Ma," groaned Dorothy. "You expect me to believe you dated Neil Armstrong? He wasn't even alive in 1913!"

"Not Neil Armstrong the astronaut," Sophia said. "Neil Armstrong the fishmonger! We had a whale of a time, but I had to send him up the pike."

"I had an affair with a fishmonger once," Blanche piped in. "It was sweet but brief. I loved the feel of those rough hands, but I just couldn't take the smell of him."

"He smelled of the sea?" asked Rose.

"No, English Leather," replied Blanche.

Sophia removed her helmet and looked at Dorothy. "Look, Pussycat," she cajoled. "I'm an old woman. I don't have that long to live. This is my dream. Can't you let me have my dream just this once?"

"Ma," Dorothy growled impatiently, "you said starting a spaghetti sauce company was your dream. You said going back to Sicily was your dream. Now going on a space shuttle mission is your dream? I've given in on a lot of your so-called dreams, but this one is out of the question."

"Well, you know I'm going to go anyway," Sophia retorted.

"If you do, don't expect to come back here when - if - you get back down to Earth," Dorothy spat, standing up violently and clacking out of the room, her shawl billowing imperiously.

"Well, what are you going to do," Sophia sighed. She turned to Rose and Blanche. "Do we have any cereal left?"

"Uh, I think there's some Cracklin' Oat Bran," Blanche said sheepishly, looking at no one.

"Perfect!" exclaimed Sophia. "I've been blocked up for three days!"