I first heard Franklin Bruno when I picked up an album from his band Nothing Painted Blue (ØPB). I'm not sure what led me to the purchase; perhaps a good review in a fanzine or simply the visual appeal of the album cover, but it was a fortuitous purchase. A Baby, A Blanket, a Packet of Seeds started what has been a 20-year streak of dependably outstanding releases.

My look back was precipitated by Bruno's own. He just released a collection of his solo odds and ends from 1992-98, dubbed Local Currency. Listening to all of these songs in one place rather than on the scattered pieces of vinyl or compilation albums, I'm struck not by the consistency, but rather by the variety. While there are plenty of pop gems like those Bruno has sprinkled throughout his career, I had forgotten the noisy, more obtuse experiments. Just when you think you have a guy pegged, he surprises you.

This trip down memory lane had me pulling out a lot of Bruno's back catalog, and I was glad for the excuse. Too long had elapsed since I had spun some of the earliest ØPB releases, and they deserve to be back in rotation. The band broke no new ground musically, but the territory it traversed it did very well, melding a very slight punk attitude (though more in the "let's make our own records" vein than anything sonically) with pop smarts and the most erudite lyrics around. Bruno cites the Go-Betweens as an influence, and I'd bet that Stephen Malkmus would cite Bruno and ØPB as one, too.

It has been difficult to keep up with Bruno's output, released as it has been on albums, 7" singles, cassettes (long live Shrimper!) and various compilations. Thankfully, Local Currency helps to fill in some gaps and makes listening to some of his less readily available work note quite so arduous. In addition to his work with ØPB and his solo recordings, he has worked with the Mountain Goats' John Darnielle as the Extra Glenns (whose lone disc, Martial Arts Weekend is superb) and with Jenny Toomey (of Tsunami, et al) on the disc Tempting. A new group, Human Hearts issued the disc Civics on Chicago's Tight Ship Records a couple of years back as well.

In addition to the music, Bruno is an accomplished academic and an insightful music critic. He has kept a handful of blogs, Nervous Unto Thirst being the latest (his recent look at Brad Paisley's "American Saturday Night" shows you how entertaining the reports from an enlightened critical ear can be). He has written for many publications, including the Believer, which in its November/December 2009 issue published a great interview Bruno conducted with musician/artist Peter Blegvad. He wrote a book on Elvis Costello's Armed Forces for Continuum's 33 1/3 series and, in the first thing I read that showed me his talents beyond music, he wrote a scathingly funny (and spot-on) review of the horrid indie rock novel Our Noise that ran in Matador Record's shortlived newsletter, Escandalo!

Bruno reports below that there is more in the works. So, catch up with Local Currency, then get ready to dive back in.

TIRBD: Any surprises or revelations when you heard all of the material gathered on Local Currency?

FB: I always had in my head that that group of songs -- especially the one on my first 3 7"s -- were a kind of album-by-other-means. (That's part of the reason there were four or five short songs per single/EP.) So I knew that they would hang together, somehow. That said, on going back to the original recordings, I was surprised that so many of them include some "experimental" element, whether it be low-rent sound collage or some kind of noisy intrusion (or alongside) these formally tidy little songs. I guess my ideas about recording were a little stranger than I realized at the time. Beyond that, I'm pleasantly surprised that some of my guitar playing still seems interesting, to me at least, and less happy to find that I could have taken more care over the vocals. I shouldn't apologize too much -- that diffident attitude towards getting certain things "right" could also be heard as a kind of immediacy. Either way, that approach was part and parcel of the '90s indie scene. Also, since I've been playing some of these songs live again for the first time in many years, I'm relieved that some of them stand up -- with a rhythm section, "Cat-Scratch Fever" (not a Nugent cover) has turned into a full-on Smiths pastiche.

Any thought of putting out more of your hard-to-find material on CD or digitally? Your Shrimper cassettes and the first Nothing Painted Blue LP in particular...

I'm more interested in my current projects (see your later question), so it isn't a priority. There are also practical problems: I've never been a good archivist, and there may not be "master" versions of the material from the Shrimper tapes, in particular, that would merit digital release without a lot of clean-up work. We still have the half-inch masters and multi-track tapes for the first ØPB album (all-analog as matter of necessity, not ideology), but that record was pretty under-realized owing to our lack of studio experience. It's a document of where we, and I, started, but I'm not sure I'd make people spend money to hear it. (The other side of this is that I don't object if that material is distributed, ahem, unofficially.) All that said, there's probably a CDs worth of post-Emotional Discipline ØPB singles/compilation tracks/unmixed songs dropped from other records that I wouldn't mind assembling at some point -- we were fairly prolific in out day, and there are some buried songs that (perhaps) deserve a wider hearing.

I've always found your music criticism and analysis fascinating but I wonder, does the penchant for thinking so deeply about music have an adverse effect on your ability to listen for pleasure? Can you turn it off?

I don't find that it's a matter of "turning it off." I don't experience myself as having any trouble marveling at the music that I love, whether that's realized in composition (songwriting) or performance or both, and I think it's possible that my analytical side opens me to an appreciation of craft and structure, which I think have as much aesthetic potential as, say, "intensity." (I suppose I'm often looking for the place where mere craft and skill transcend themselves, if that makes any sense.) Generally, I've never held with the idea that critical analysis "destroys" what's valuable in aesthetic experience. First of all, I'm not sure what the metaphor is supposed to convey. I mean, what's there is still there whether someone purports to account for it or not, so I don't see what's actually "destroyed." And also, if you truly believe that there's something genuinely ineffable or inexpressible about how a piece of music (or poetry or film or what have you) works, then all the language in the world won't touch that. (I'm sorry if this is the kind of "intellectual" sounding answer that people might expect from me, but there you go. Trust me, this answer could be longer.) On the other hand, having been around for a while does probably make it harder for me to be enthusiastic about some new bands -- a revival of some style (neo-psych-folk or angular dance-rock or whatever) is less exciting when you were around for what's being revived. (Though there are always individual remarkable exceptions.) None of that is a function of being a critic as such -- it's just a matter of age.

Do you put the same thought into your own music, or rather, do you become your own harshest critic? Does that ever limit what you are willing to release?

These are tough questions, John. Given some of what I've seen written about myself, I'm pretty sure I'm not my own harshest critic! And, while I'm certainly aware of the failures of craft or execution on just about everything I've released, I can't believe that most artists don't feel the same way, and what I find dissatisfying in my own work is probably not the same as what outside listeners, critically inclined or not, might find lacking. As for "thought," I do sometimes have critical or mildly theoretical ideas that guide a particular recording. For example, on the Human Hearts album I'm working on now, I've decided not to use any strings (even though I'm friends with some wonderful players and arrangers), as a kind of push-back against the tendency in indiedom to use "orchestral" instruments as a signal that something is to be taken more seriously than a "mere" rock band. (I find the implied hierarchy here a bit undemocratic, or undemotic -- even though I have this rep as "brainy" or "quirky" or whatever, I'm still much more interested in music that retains some tie to vernacular traditions.) I could go on (I'm more interested in horns), but it's just an example.

I do think that being a critic, or at least trying to be a widely-informed listener, does make it harder to be a "true believer" about one's own music. When you're, say, 20 and involved in a tight-knit local scene, as I was, it's easy to have the conviction that you and your friends have found the way, and to reject other possibilities out of hand. (Consider the asceticism of Fugazi, which wouldn't really be possible if they had been "open-minded.")

Lastly, while I certainly drop songs or recordings for various reasons (like, they suck, or they're too evidently derivative), I'm not a perfectionist -- no one working in any artistic medium who actually intends to put something into the world more than once a decade can afford to be. (Okay, I'm a perfectionist, or nearly so, about one thing -- though it works when the Minutemen or Stereolab do it, I mostly can't abide lyrics that violently distort the conventional syllabic stress of a word in order to fit a melody, and avoid this at all costs.)

Are the people in the academia side of your life aware of your musical career (and vice versa) and what is the reaction from those who are?

My sense is that the criticism and journalism puzzles academics more than the music does. And I suspect other musicians may not care one way or another what I do outside of that realm. But, ultimately, you'd have to ask them.

Your entry in Continuum's 33 1/3 series is on Elvis Costello's Armed Forces. Could you imagine a book-length look at one of your own releases, and if so, what might be the approach?

It would be flattering, but I'm too close to the records to imagine how (or why) someone would do this. What made it possible for me to do the EC book was my interest in connecting the record to the political context of its moment (Rock Against Racism, the National Front, the run-up to Thatcherism) and some of its deeper roots in earlier British fascist movements, and also as a way of working through - though not to any kind of final conclusion - some of the thorny issues around, well, rock and race, using the so-called "Columbus incident" and EC's subsequent career as a case study. I hope all that gives the book a richness that wouldn't be there if it were all just formal commentary on the song-structures and performances. It's not clear that any of my records could be convincingly tied to their social context in a similar way -- but then again, it's not clear that they couldn't. From my own perspective, the second Nothing Painted Blue album, Power Trips Down Lovers Lane, was very much affected by being in Southern California at the time of the uprising following the Rodney King case, and by reading Situationist polemic (especially Raoul Vaneigem on the earlier Watts riots -- he's quoted on the back of the "Swivelchair" sleeve) while watching the riots go down. (I recognize that it's perverse to filter all that through a musical vocabulary that rests more on the dB's and the Go-Betweens than on, say, Public Enemy.) And then those concerns were connected in vaguer ways to ideas about architecture, the suburbs, and my own experiences doing white-collar temp work. (And, yes, all of these things recur on later records.) But how someone should go about writing about these connections, or how they relate to their musical realizations, isn't for me to say.

What is the status of your various projects (Nothing Painted Blue, Extra Glenns, Human Hearts and your solo work)?

Nothing Painted Blue: We're all still friends, so there's never been an official breakup, but we're geographically dispersed, so there's nothing on the horizon. I've played with both Kyle and Peter separately in the last few months -- Peter is on the Human Hearts album-in-progress, and I played a duo show with Kyle in L.A. last November. Never say never.

The Human Hearts: I'm playing under this name around New York, usually with drummer Matt Houser, and whoever I can rope in for a few songs for a given show. (We've also gone to Boston and D.C.) I wouldn't mind finding a more permanent bass player, but it's intended to be more of a fluid "project" than a stable band. There will be a 7" on Fayettenam later this year, and I'm about halfway through recording a new album with various guests, which will be done when it's done. I'd say the next record after that is at least half-written already.

The Extra Glenns: John Darnielle and I have changed the name to The Extra Lens (for private reasons I won't go into), and we've finished a new album that should come out late 2010/2011. That will probably be the next thing to see the light of day. Pretty sure we'll tour a bit -- possibly just John, myself, and Peter Hughes (who's releasing his first solo record in years soon). I'm excited -- John and I sometimes manage to be more than the sum of our parts.

Solo -- Well, I still play under my own name when it's genuinely just me and a guitar, but I don't really plan to release new material "as" Franklin Bruno anymore. As much as I admire many artists who use "bandonyms" for their one-person projects, I've always felt uncomfortable with the practice, probably because I don't attempt to construct a performing persona distinct from the one I project in day-to-day life.

I should also mention two other projects: My partner/spousal equivalent/squeeze Bree Benton performs a cabaret/theater act as "Poor Baby Bree," doing vaudeville and parlor songs from the late 19th c. through the 30s, and I'm the pianist/arranger ("musical director," in theater parlance) for that. We just did our first shows with additional musicians, a fantastic violist and trombonist, and we should be doing more later in the year. Also, Jenny Toomey and I have just started talking about doing something new in the vein of Tempting -- that record had her covering some old and new songs of mine, but this one we'll probably co-write.

Labels: books, Monday Interview, music

For any number of reasons, I'm not a big fan of memoirs. Take your pick: too much information about childhood, too little insight to leaven the recounting of exploits or tales simply too tall to be true. In the case of Patti Smith, add in the flake factor, as well as my lack of knowledge (or, I'll admit, interest) in Robert Mapplethorpe and his work, and the result is a curious but reluctant reader.

All of this is by way of saying that Smith had a considerable barrier to scale when it came to winning over this reader. But win she did. Just Kids is a fantastic, fascinating book. While the hook for most will be the recounting of Smith's relationship with Mapplethorpe -- it began as a romance and then, after Mapplethorpe discovered he was gay, an intense friendship and artistic partnership -- the way she chronicles the creation, nearly from the ground up, of two of the late-20th century's most enduring artists, is the real draw.

Smith's fans likely know some of the story already, and anyone who watched the illuminating documentary Dream of Life, has seen Smith tell some of these stories. But the bulk of this was new to me, and it was conveyed in such a clear-eyed, detailed and passionate way that it inspired at the same time it informed. Smith and Mapplethorpe were ambitious kids who had the fortune to run into each other in 1967 New York, and the tenacity to hook up with and cultivate the right people to push their dreams forward. Each ended up somewhere they didn't expect -- Smith as a rock 'n' roll star and Mapplethorpe as a revered photographer -- and without each other, it's unlikely either would have been more than a footnote.

The reader has the value of hindsight, knowing that Smith would be a star, that Mapplethorpe would die before his time from AIDS, that some of those they rubbed shoulders with would soar and others would fade. Smith knows this too, of course, but it rarely intrudes on her story. It's clear that the William Burroughs in the book is the William Burroughs, for example, but elsewhere, casually mentioned acquaintances like Janis Joplin or Sam Shepherd are rendered contemporaneously, their eventual starpower not overshadowing their pre-stardom selves.

While the focus is on Mapplethorpe, a thread running through the book is how Smith aligns herself with men that help propel her forward. There is never the sense that she is an Eliza Doolittle with a series of Henry Higginses, but rather that each man teases out something within and sends her further along her journey. It begins with Mapplethorpe, but Shepherd, Blue Oyster Cult's Allen Lanier, Todd Rundgren and others each seem to give Smith a valuable nudge.

Speaking of the men in her life, it's fitting, given that Smith writes often in the book about his influence, that her's is the best book about the creation of art since Bob Dylan's Chronicles vol. 1. Writing about the debut of the Patti Smith Group with drummer Jay Dee Daugherty, she says of learning that Dylan was at the show, "It seemed for me a night of initiation, where I had to become fully myself in the presence of the one I had modeled myself after."

In the end, the book made me want to listen to all of Smith's music, read all of her poems, look at all of her sketches and watch ever frame of film taken of her. The same goes for others in the book. I long to read Burroughs and Gregory Corso, thumb through Mapplethorpe's work and even listen to Joplin. For what Smith has done with Just Kids is to make art come alive, to give it a pulse. Hers was a life lived immersed in art. Late in the book, she writes about Mapplethorpe on his deathbed, asking, "'Patti, did art get us?' I looked away, not wanting to think about it. 'I don't know, Robert. I don't know.' Perhaps it did, but no one could regret that. Only a fool would regret being had by art."

Labels: books, music

OK, I'm going to pull together some disparate thoughts about Autechre, the Album Leaf and Midlake to make a bigger point about the validity (or lack thereof) of album reviews.

I'll start with Midlake because this whole thing started with Pitchfork's trashing of the band's new album, The Courage of Others, saying it "is a step down on songcraft, atmosphere, and apparently, even self-awareness." Writer Paul Thompson said the album "just feels so monochromatic, so flatlined, even the tiniest signs of life have no power to resuscitate."

I had heard the album early, finding a download back in December that I was eager to cue up. I liked it a lot, the songs reminding me of what I liked best about The Trials of Van Occupanter, the band's breakthrough sophomore disc. The review surprised me. I was expecting the typical fawning Pitchfork "best new music" tag, but instead found a dismissive 3.6 rating.

The review made headlines elsewhere. Stereogum commented on it, saying "Forget what you've heard: The '60s Brit folk-nodding The Courage Of Others is a beautifully downcast, pleasingly oddball trip." Of course, the only thing a Stereogum reader would have "heard" about the album was the Pitchfork review posted earlier in the day.

So, who is right? No one and everyone, of course. Music appreciation is subjective. That's clear even within the confines of Pitchfork. While one reviewer can't get past Midlake's consistency and monochromatic sound, another is willing to tolerate it in the Album Leaf. A day after the Midlake takedown, Ian Cohen gives Album Leaf's new A Chorus of Storytellers a 6.3. This despite the fact that "the beauty LaValle conjures is effortless but ultimately less impressive for not having any sort of contrast" (that's another way of saying "monochromatic, kids) and that "Album Leaf should never have to apologize for not rocking enough" (could that be something akin to "flatlined?").

Pitchfork can't even agree with itself on Midlake. Van Occupanther, the album that The Courage of Others is seen as a step down from, earned a 6.8 upon its release. Does that mean that Courage is only half as good as Van Occupanther? Of course not.

This brings me to Autechre. I have been getting into some electronica (or IDM or whatever else it's called), and have been grabbing everything the local library has in a bid to make up for a lot of lost time. I've read a lot of praise for Autechre, including comparisons between its work and that of Radiohead at its glitchiest. OK, I'm in. So, I picked up Quaristice, the band's latest album. I'll admit, the 7.5 rating on Pitchfork intrigued me. What would I give it? Maybe a 3.6. It just did nothing for me. And I can't fault anything more than the rating in Mark Richardson's review, for he was spot on: "Even while Quaristice is in some ways the most listenable album they've created in a decade, it's ultimately no easier to parse, and can be very rough going indeed if you're not in the mood for their peculiar world." Count me among those not in the mood.

So, what's the point? If you've read reviews at all, you already know it: They're the opinion of one listener, nothing more. A handful of people were disappointed by the Midlake album, giving it a negative review in part, it seems, because they expected a leap forward instead of a look back. Others of us really like it because it's more of what drew us to the group in the first place. My worry is that the negative reviews are shouted much more effectively than the praise. There is value in reviews all along the spectrum, no question. Here's hoping that people are savvy enough to take them as one input in the decision-making process and not ascribe them the power of arbiter.

Labels: criticism, music

Joshua Ferris seemed poised to take up the mantle as the best of the country's young literary satirists. His debut novel, Then We Came to the End, was a critical hit and a National Book Award finalist. It was the rare modern novel that was funny and spot-on in its depictions of the workplace. It even took stylistic chances thanks to Ferris' use of a first person plural narrator (the book opens with the wonderful lines, “We were fractious and overpaid. Our mornings lacked promise.”).

Instead of following that path, however, Ferris has gone in a completely different direction. His new book, The Unnamed, is a much darker tale. It tells of Tim Farnsworth, a successful, hard-charging New York attorney, who suffers a peculiar affliction: He is compelled to walk, with no seeming provocation, until he can walk no more. He will get up from a hearing, excuse himself if his body is pointed in the right direction, and head out of the courtroom and onto the street, stopping only when his body is no longer able to carry him. He'll then drop and sleep, waking in any number of situations. A call placed to his wife, Jane, alerts her to his location, and she drives to retrieve him.

All of this has a predictably negative affect on everything in Tim's life: his career, his marriage, his relationship with his daughter and his health, both mental and physical. Ferris offers a fascinating look at that impact, but that evidence doesn't add up to a diagnosis. Ferris leaves much to the reader's interpretation. Is Tim suffering from a mental illness? Some unknown physical ailment? The jury is still out (and a look at the many reviews of the book reveal an emerging spirited discussion on the topic as well as about whether the book is an allegory for something else).

If nothing else, the Unnamed shows that there is much more to Ferris than a gift for satire. He mentions below that he has no interest in repeating himself, which, based on his first two books, means we're in for quite a ride. His third novel, he says, is well under way.

Ferris, who earned an undergrad degree from the University of Iowa and an MFA from the University of California at Irvine, reads from the Unnamed Tuesday at Prairie Lights Books in Iowa City. I'll be hosting the event, which will include ample time for a Q&A with the in-house audience. Ferris granted me the opportunity for a dry run below. To hear the reading live, Listen online at 7 p.m. CST.

TIRBD: There is a lot of speculation among reviewers and readers about whether Tim’s affliction is mental, physical or spiritual, and whether it is an allegory for something larger. Are you surprised by any interpretations, or has your own view of the work been altered by any of them?

JF: My view of the book hasn't changed. "Interpreting" it, I think, is a generous way of describing what some reviewers do (I had one review, for instance, which read in its entirety: "Joshua Ferris' WTF tale of a successful man who walks out on his wife, kid, and career." Not a lot of care there). I didn't write it as an allegory -- allegories don't interest me as a reader, far less as a writer. Speculation is certainly part of the book -- a mental disease? or physical? and what might answers to those questions imply for what it means to be human? Reviewers kind to the book -- those that have read it with sympathy and sophistication -- have touched upon them.

I have seen mention of Emily Dickinson poems, a Poe short story, John Cheever’s “The Swimmer,” Forrest Gump, White Noise and other works as being precedents/influences. Regardless of whether they’re right, it puts you in good company. Were you aware of similarities between these works and your own, and did that knowledge steer the story in any particular direction?

Never consciously aware. How what a writer reads and assimilates might affect what he or she writes is an alchemy no one will ever fully diagnose or understand. Cheever, Dickinson, DeLillo, Poe -- these writers have all been important to me at various times.

The direction of the story, however, was always in my hands.

Was there any actual shoe leather research done on the book so you could bring some verisimilitude to the sections where you describe what happens to Tim on his long walks?

Yes, with a couple of trusting and intelligent doctors, as well as some old-fashioned reading. My conversations with friend/doctors were particularly helpful. They have all the hard facts about the body, about sickness, about death -- and when I asked them to start dreaming, all that knowledge opened up into fantasy. It was a rewarding experience.

You were seen as daring with the publication is Then We Came to the End. Now, you’re seen as daring (or to some, foolhardy) for not following the path suggested by your debut. Was there a conscious decision on your part to not do the same thing twice?

No, not conscious, if you mean by conscious "calculating" or "shrewd" or "career-centric." I'm not nearly as interested in how my books are received as I am in writing them. I write what's next down a long line of preoccupations and obsessions. What might be seen as daring or foolhardy is a momentary referendum that quickly passes and luckily happens long after I've started on the next thing.

That said, I do think I'm constitutionally incapable of doing the same thing twice. Part of a writer's thrill -- and duty, too -- is to throw the gauntlet down every time, and give yourself no excuse for phoned-in, half-hearted measures.

The Unnamed is one of the first books on your editor’s new imprint, Reagan Arthur Books. Does this put an added burden on your shoulders?

Oh no, no burden. Only pride, happiness, and hope for the beginning of a successful imprint for a loving and important editor.

You sold film rights to the book well before you were finished, after just 120 pages. The book takes some curious turns after that point. Did you worry about delivering on what was promised in those earlier pages when writing the rest? Did you think about the book cinematically as you were writing given the knowledge that it was destined for the screen someday?

If I don't write for critics, or even those who might constitute a readership, I'm not going to write for a producer whose desire for how the book concludes is out of my grasp. If I had, I would have certainly written a more straightforward story, to increase the odds of production, which is always a long shot. In fact, it's part of the reason, that long shot, never to write with a film in mind.

You now have a young son, so I’ll ask a two part question: Are you at work on your third book, and has the writing life changed for you because of this new addition either in terms of your schedule or your worldview?

I'm at work, and -- with the exception of promoting The Unnamed -- pretty steadily, despite the little guy. The worldview changes, of course, but it'd take forever to describe all the ways. Perhaps it's sufficient to say he's lying on the bed right now making farting noises with his hand in his mouth. That's a lot of fun.

Labels: books, Joshua Ferris, Monday Interview

A member of the Iowa legislature has proposed a bill that would make it unlawful to advertise or produce a concert by an act claiming to be a classic group if it didn't have at least one original member.

Bob Dvorsky said he introduced the legislation after talking about the idea with Jon "Bowzer" Bauman, a former member of Sha Na Na, during a recent tour stop.

Similar bills have passed in 33 other states. The bills differentiate between "performing groups" and "recording groups," with the latter being seen as legitimate because at least one member appeared on a recording under the group's name. All bets are off if the performing group has a right to the name through trademark.

The Iowa bill would block performances that don't meet the standard and administer a civil penalty of up to $40,000 per incident.

That's all well and good, and from a legal standpoint it makes sense. But it in no way ensures a level of quality even in groups that pass that test. There are many bands on the road with just one original member, or even less in the case of some, where a latter day drummer or bassist carries on under the name. Having covered my share of fairs, holiday celebrations and such as a newspaper critic, I can assure you that plenty of acts would be deemed legal but yet be criminal in the court of taste.

One of the worst offenders I have witnessed is Creedence Clearwater Revisited (pictured above). Yes, they altered the name to indicate their "tribute"status, but original CCR drummer and bassist Doug Clifford and Stu Cook give the group a cachet that leads listeners to expect something special. It's not just that the group's singer does a sorry impersonation of John Fogerty, but that the band doesn't understand its own music. Introducing Fogerty's poignant anti-war song, "Who'll Stop the Rain," Clifford said, "This is one that goes down smooth, like a good brewski." Such cluelessness ought to be against the law, but sadly, it's not.

Then again, if these acts were forced off the road, every county fair in the country would be left with little more than karaoke as an entertainment option (unless, of course they ponied up for the real thing... highly unlikely). So, we're destined for festivals with marquee acts anchored by the third drummer or second bassist of an act we once knew and loved, pale imitations of the real thing.

Still this bill and those like it already on the books are a start.

Labels: concert, legal, music

While I love checking out the hundreds of best of the year lists (and Largehearted Boy is the best aggregator I've found), all of that pales in comparison to the rush afforded by release of the Village Voice's annual Pazz & Jop poll. I have voted in the poll the past couple of years, and find it interesting to see where my pick fall on the overall list, and what kind of support my favorites garnered from other critics.

This year's list was topped by -- surprise, surprise -- Animal Collective's Merriwether Post Pavilion. The disc seemed to top everyone's list... but mine. It didn't even make my top 20, mostly because initial listens did little for me and I never spent much time with it. Lately, spurred by its appearance on so many other lists, I decided to listen more carefully to see what I was missing. This time, it clicked, and would definitely have found a place in my top 10 (though I'm not sure what I would displace to get it there).

My ballot can be found here; it is identical to the top 10 I selected back in December here at TIRBD (so read that post if you're curious why I picked what I did).

Much of my ballot aligns with those of the rest of the critics. My No. 2 disc, Neko Case's Middle Cyclone, was No. 3 overall, while six of my picks were in the Top 20 of the P&J list. The rest of my picks were somewhat spread out. U2's No Line on the Horizon came in at No. 32, while the rest were in the lower reaches. Deer Tick's Born on Flag Day, which topped my list, was at 188 (only seven other critics picked it at all, and only a few of those put it in their top 5). Nirvana's Live at Reading placed at No. 111, while DJ Spooky's The Secret Song, was all the way down at 1,586 (I was the only one who voted for it).

Seeing the cluster of groupthink at the top of the list, it's amazing that 1,934 albums could be nominated. But for every Animal Collective or Neko Case that caught so many ears, there are albums like DJ Spooky's that caught only one or two. With 697 critics participating, if each has a pet favorite or two, that expands the list significantly very quickly, allowing for mass consensus at one end and complete diffusion at the other.

It's a great way to learn about what might have been overlooked (or in the case of Animal Collective, avoided) during the year. When I see an artist on other ballots that include albums that I loved, it makes me want to seek them out. Am I missing something? There's no better time to find out.

Labels: lists, music, Pazz and Jop

I'm not a fan of OK Go. That's not backlash against the band's impossible-to-avoid videos from a few years back, but rather a reaction to the band's music, which I find cloying, and it's stage presence, which is annoying. A slot opening for Fountains of Wayne several years back left me aggressively hostile toward the band.

But this week it offers another of those benchmark moments in the shift from tangible plastic to intangible bits in the world of popular music. This might not hit the history books the way Radiohead's pay what you want model did (or even OK Go's viral marketing model did), but it's certainly instructive.

In an open letter on the band's message board, singer Damian Kulash explained why the band's new video for the song "This Too Shall Pass" is not embeddable on blogs and other web sites. At least, why the version on YouTube is not. That's strange, given that the very act of embedding YouTube videos for "A Million Ways" (the backyard dance) and "Here it Goes Again" (the treadmill dance) is what made the band big enough to deserve making a third album in the first place.

It comes down to money, of course. The band's label, EMI, has a deal with YouTube, as do other labels, to pay a fee each time one of its videos is played. The catch? The plays aren't tabulated on embeds, so EMI wants everyone to watch on YouTube. Kulash understands, enumerating the various ways the label has funded his band's efforts, but also is frustrated because its success is largely predicated on the band's own actions and the way fans spread those actions around the globe.

Kulash finds a workable solution that does undercut YouTube and EMI, but adheres in principle to what both parties want: He sends fans to Vimeo, where they can find a legit embed code. So, they end up with a higher-res version that cuts YouTube out all together, and the whole thing might just help the band to duplicate -- on a much smaller scale -- its success with the previous two videos.

You can see the video below. The song is catchy, showing the band making some real strides (literally, as you'll see, and figuratively). The problem is that the video version of the song is altered to mesh with the marching band theme, and that version is significantly better than what the band came up with for its album. The marching band drums, the swelling horn section... it's an inventive tune. On record, it feels like the same old thing.

Labels: label woes, music, video