The Homegrown Snob

Music nerds love difficult records.

It’s become cliche: Pick the most obtuse, awkward-sounding combination of sounds and snobs will gobble it up and hail it as “Best Album of the Millennium!” or “Most Fantastical Thing Ever Conceived.”

It’s sad but true.

I’m guessing this began sometime in the 1950s, during the Beat movement. That’s when intellectualism trumped plot and substance, and when over-hyped writers like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg spewed their every thought onto the page to have it snatched up by a nation of think-too-hard-ers. I’m not saying they weren’t innovative or talented. I’m just saying that they were praised for being terribly egocentric and pointing out the obvious in overly difficult ways.

Well, OK, so it probably started way before that (Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Joyce, William Faulkner) but I’m too lazy to trace pop culture back that far.

Back to the point.

Of course there’s the long-standing (not untrue) belief that anything worth having is worth working for. The same goes for music.

I’ve practiced a theory that an album should be listened to at least five times before you form an opinion of it. Some of the greatest songs ever written won’t reveal themselves to you on the first spin (The Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows,” Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” The Smiths’ entire catalogue). Some of the best albums will grow with you.

Given time, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without them. That goes against the foundation of pop music: immediate, digestible, hummable tunes.

Some of my favorite albums have been the “difficult” ones. Radiohead’s OK Computer short-circuited my brain the first time I heard it. It took me weeks to wrap my head around it. Now it sounds tame. Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot sounded like Jeff Tweedy put the microphones inside a vacuum cleaner when he recorded his best songs.

Portishead is among these chiefest of difficult bands.

The band’s music is bleak, claustrophobic and often feels aimless, but it’s oddly beautiful, too.

Quick primer: Portishead sprang out of nowhere in 1994 with the album Dummy and the inescapable “Sour Times,” that sounded like a James Bond theme on lithium. Three troubled years later, they followed that up with an even bigger bummer: their self-titled, scratchily sampled 1997 album.

During those three or four years, they rivaled Radiohead in their sense of paranoia and despair at the world. But where Radiohead turned its frustration outward to socio-political themes, Portishead played it close to the heart.

Beth Gibbon’s fractured vocals (a fun-house-mirror image of Billie Holiday) sat uneasily atop the sampled strings and scratched beats. The three-piece never really changed its modus operandi, just tweaked it a bit as the ’90s came to a close.

Then they disappeared.

A couple weeks ago, the band released its most troubling record to date, simply titled Third.

Portishead recorded this album in fits over the last 11 years and it sounds like it. Glacial splices of synthesizer interrupt melodies. Songs abruptly end. Tempos change without warning. Some songs seem nearly unlistenable.

But at the same time, there’s a compelling bleakness to the mix.

When Gibbons sings about being rescued by white horses on “The Rip,” (a contender for best Portishead song ever) you can’t tell if she’s praying for it or dreading it - as if the other place they’d taker her to would be worse than this one.

About a month ago, they released “Machine Gun” as the album’s first single.

If you ever wondered what it sounded like to drown in a Russian submarine, you’ve got your answer. After four minutes of an undending barrage of a repeated sample of a skull-crushing beat, almost anything seems sunny.

Anything but state meetings about the Jordan Lake Rules.

Spinning this album for several hours in the car, to and from the state government complex in Raleigh, this album touched me in a way not dissimilar to state legislation: Cold and calculated. Removed from normalcy. A miscarriage of sanity.

I can’t say I love this album, but I’m certainly intrigued by it. I’ve definitely never heard anything quite like it.

All three of you regular readers who aren’t spam-bots might have noticed that this blog is looking a little spiffier lately.

That’s because it’s no longer on a B2evolution template (a.k.a. the suckiest blog templates ever created). I want to take a moment and thank Roger Creasy, web guru, for switching me over last week. I’ve never had so much fun on the interwebs.

In celebration of my new capability to post video, I thought I’d give a run down of some of my favorite (and mostly forgotten or ignored) music videos. You won’t see Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer” or The Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” in this list. That’s because you still see those from time to time.

Let’s go chronologically:

1. “Smalltown Boy,” Bronski Beat (1984)

One of the best early videos you’ve likely never seen. The song itself is surprisingly serious and open about its socio-political message; the video moreso.

Talk about guts: Jimmy Somerville had the gall to be openly gay at a time when AIDS had taken the spotlight and raised the stigma on gays.

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2. “Boys of Summer,” Don Henley (1984)

Folks in my office might poop bricks because I’m including a Henley song/vid in this list, but really it’s one of the best marriages of a song and a video ever.

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3. “Cloudbusting,” Kate Bush (1985)

This song and video are based on Peter Reich’s “Book of Dreams,” a memoir about growing up with his scientist-father, Wilhelm Reich. Wilhelm was working with nuclear science and a machine that could supposedly make it rain by busting clouds - hence the name of the song - before he was arrested.

Basically, it looks like a film and stars Donald Sutherland in the role of the father. Not only that, it’s an amazing video.

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4. “Beethoven (I Love to Listen To),” The Eurythmics (1987)

Crazy song with a crazy video. Annie Lennox as an oppressed housewife driven to insanity.

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5. “I Feel You” (live), Depeche Mode (1993)

For doubters that DM could fill arenas and rock out. Check out Dave Gahan in full-on messiah posing.

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6. “Parklife,” Blur (1994)

My favorite song on Parklife is also a terrific video that almost never got played over here. I still don’t know what exactly parklife is, even though a Brit told a friend that “it’s just what the song says.”

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7. “Just,” Radiohead (1996)

 Before they became known as art-rock gods, Radiohead made some great videos.

This was one I remember everyone talking about.

Why does the man lie down? What does he say at the end? What could be so terrible that everyone lies down? (My personal theory is that he revealed the actual ingredients of school cafeteria burgers.)

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8. “The Perfect Drug,” Nine Inch Nails (1996)

 Gothed-out, Edgar Allan Poe-wannabe Trent Reznor sucks down the absinth and plays his lute.

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9. “Discoteque,” U2 (1997)

 Back before U2 retreated to ’80s bombast, they pretended they were The Village People on amphetamines for their first promo to the much-hated, underrated Pop album.

I guarantee you this song - and all those crazy guitars - are better than you remember.

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10. “This is Hardcore,” Pulp (1998)

The song’s all about sour relationships and porn, but the video is more about showgirls, Hollywood technicolor drama and Jarvis Cocker prancing about.

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11. “All is Full of Love,” Bjork (1999)

Creepy, creepy, creepy but oddly erotic robot sex.

If it gets too much, just close your eyes and listen to that great song.

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12. “Walking in the Sun,” Travis (2006)

Who would want to kill Fran Healy and why???

The world’s nicest man is stalked by Death in this hilarious showdown video promoting their 2006 singles collection.

In another surprise move, Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor has released yet another FREE NIN album.

The Slip is available for download at NIN.com.

It contains 10 tracks, including the surprise single, “Discipline,” that went to radio stations two weeks ago.

The track listing includes:

1. 999,999
2. 1,000,000
3. Letting You
4. Discipline
5. Echoplex
6. Head Down
7. Lights in the Sky
8. Corona Radiata
9. The Four of Us are Dying
10. Demon Seed

The Slip comes just a month after Ghosts I-IV, an all-instrumental suite of tracks, hit stores. That two-disc set was originally available for free through NIN.com.

And for those of you keeping score, The Slip marks NIN’s third album in about a year. That’s equal to the amount of music Reznor released in his first decade of recording (1988-1998).

It took him three years to complete 1994’s The Downward Spiral, another five years to complete The Fragile and yet another five to release With Teeth.

It’s a big Tuesday in the music world today:

Madonna’s new plastic posse

Portishead’s dour trio

and Tom Petty’s first band all put out albums today.

But forget all that.

Today is the day that Coldplay, that British-stock-exchange-affecting monolith, reveals new material.

“Violet Hill,” the Brian Eno-produced first single, is out for a free download through next Tuesday. You can get your copy via the band’s Web site.

(This vid will go down fast. EMI is cracking down.) 

For those of you who were underwhelmed by the over-cooked, under-written X&Y in 2005, this should be a sign that Eno put the lads back on track. ”Violet Hill” is much more groove-oriented and darker than anything on the last album. It’s also noisier than anything there, even if the crazy reverb makes Chris Martin sound like Phil Collins via “That’s All.”

Plus, the chorus isn’t obvious.

If you’re like me and you agree that 2002’s A Rush of Blood to the Head is one of the best albums of the ’00s, this will please you. The new album, Viva La Vida, is out June 19.

Moving on, everyone is screeching about Prince covering Radiohead at Coachella this weekend.

I mean, people have been covering “Creep” for years. It’s a good song. Prince’s version is OK. But his guitar playing is incredible.

If you haven’t heard his version of “Creep”yet, I’ll embed a video of it for you. Picture is bad. Sound quality is good.

And how about Hulu.com? What, haven’t heard of it? Well, it’s time you go poke around the NBC-sponsored TV site.

Archives of shows, new and old (Alfred Hitchcock Presents!) and some random shorts to go along with ‘em.

I’m giving you the first installment of “Gaytown,” the town where everyone is gay - except the main character. Further episodes are a bit naughtier and not safe for work.

The nearer I get to 30, the more I notice couples around me in unhealthy relationships.

You know the kind: They fight constantly over nothing at all, ruin social gatherings with unnecessary drama and seem bent only on destroying each others’ lives. Ah, love.

It’s best for outsiders to avoid these people (not invite them to get-togethers, decline their invitations, etc.) until they’ve fought it out for a few years and totally killed the other’s will to live. Only then, mission accomplished, will they end the relationship.

Most sane people would agree: it’s not worth the trouble.

I’ve been fortunate enough to avoid these kinds of self-destructive relationships with people, but not with music.

I have a long list of songs and artists whose music I have to be careful of becoming too close to. Yes, the songs are wonderful - many of them beautiful - but they will devastate me if I let my guard down. I just wallow in them too much.
I started noticing as a teenager that I was attracted to a gloomier side of pop music. Tears for Fears, Depeche Mode and Nine Inch Nails were never far from my Walkman (remember those?).

In college, I was so immersed in music that I never went anywhere without a CD player and headphones in my backpack, much to the chagrin of friends who would yell my name across the quad and wave until they were blue in the face trying to get my attention. Who knows how many good times I missed out on because of my love of the new Super Furry Animals album?

A good friend once told me, “I don’t think it’s that you like being depressed. I think it’s that you like music that can make you feel.”

The more I’ve thought about it, the more accurate that seems. And since then, I’ve tried to be careful about what I listen to and when.

Usually that means I follow what I call The Gremlins Rule:

1. Avoid direct exposure to sad, baritone-vocaled piano ballads (i.e., Nick Cave);
2. Don’t let spill any UK post-punk albums circa 1978-1984;
3. Absolutely no Aimee Mann after midnight.

 Every so often I can break these rules and it’s fine. But sometimes, during late-night quests for new music on the internet or just popping in a record for background noise while I’m up reading, I’ll stumble upon a song that hits a nerve somewhere.

This happened last night.

It was about 11 p.m. when I decided to download the new Nada Surf album. It should have been harmless: Nada Surf are mostly known as a kitschy one-hit wonder from the mid-90s for “Popular,” an ironic diatribe on the rules of being liked in high school. During this decade, they’ve focused smartly on bittersweet, sunny power pop.

I went on my way, surfing through music news sites and chatting with friends until the second track and single, “Whose Authority,” came on.

Nothing on the surface warned me that this song was going to mess with my head. Sunny harmonies, incomprehensible mid-tempo verses, a nice defiant “on whose authority?/ I have none over me” chorus and then back into those harmonies I could listen to forever.

But in my messed-up head, something snapped. That chorus morphed into something creepy and anxious. Is the singer saying he has no self-control? Is the singer saying there’s no God? I had to listen again and find out.

Second listen. Still the same questions. So I put the song on repeat and let it play for an hour while I went about my work.

By the time I was ready for bed, my mind had circled and warped around this little song. I was filled with spirals of unexplainable dread about the future and life and the planet and other unhealthy thoughts.

This is what anti-depressants are for. And thank God I’m on them. Five years ago, this would have been catastrophic. I would have stayed up all night chain smoking and rocking back and forth like a catatonic.

Luckily I was able to turn out the light and close my eyes and only oversleep by four or five hours.

And now, I can get back to listening.

That’s the terrific bike-messenger video starring the older brother from Nickelodeon’s pinnacle, “The Adventures of Pete & Pete.”

Earth Day came and went yesterday so now we can start fonking up the planet again.
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I found it slightly ironic that the top news story yesterday was another record oil price, now $118 or thereabouts. Finally the oil companies have found a way to rape both the planet and our wallets simultaneously.
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Well done, Exxon/Mobile, BP, Shell, Haliburton and Hess! Well done!
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Anywho, I ran across these satellite images of Earth on Wired Science Magazine’s website last night. They’re truly amazing. You can download them as wallpapers if you like.
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Here’s a sample:
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It’s hard to believe that these are of the same world we live in. Some of those colors and shapes look alien.

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Here we are in mid-April.
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It’s beautiful outside, but I’m stuck at my computer thinking about new music.
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That’s just fine with me. It’s been a good year so far.

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April 1 marked the end of the year’s first quartile, so let’s look back at the best releases of 2008 so far.
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I’m a little late getting this to you, so I thought I’d tack on another couple weeks of releases to make up for my absence. Work has been kinda crazy these last couple weeks.
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Tift Merritt - Another Country

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This one will be hard to beat for best of the year.
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No doubt, Tift’s in top form here. Her vocals are great. Her songwriting is great. The more I listen to it, the better it gets. Especially “I Know What I’m Looking For Now,” the title track and “The Tender Branch.”
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Go get it if you haven’t.

British Sea Power - Do You Like Rock Music?

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Though it’s harder to find the immediate standouts of their last couple albums, this U.K. band’s newest is their most cohesive and satisfying overall.

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That said, it’s best to start with “No Lucifer,” “Lights Out for Darker Skies” and “Waving Flags.”

Liam Finn - I’ll Be Lightning

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I still consider this the quaint album that could.
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Finn’s just starting to find his footing as a songwriter, but he’s well on his way with a proggy-Elliott Smith vibe. He strikes the right balance of sweetness and grit on songs like “Second Chance” and “Remember When.”

R.E.M. - Accelerate

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Woo! R.E.M.’s new album is very good. Very good. Also very angry, but still very good.
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Check “Living Well,” “Supernatural Superserious” and “I’m Gonna DJ.”

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Dig Lazarus, Dig!!!

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I was slow to warm on this one (rare for a Nick Cave effort) but this one’s really grown on me.

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It’s his bluesiest in about a decade, and also more uptempo than the band’s been since the 1980s. Cave brings his usual lyrical wit to “We Call Upon the Author,” and the Bad Seeds revel in the weirdness of “Night of the Lotus Eaters” and the doo-doo-doo vocals of “Albert Goes West.”
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If you need a place to start, this might be the place. Start with “Dig Lazarus, Dig!!!”

Moby - Last Night

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Who knew?!
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Who knew Moby was still a viable musician?! The return to his club roots is a relief. His vocals are almost nowhere to be found.
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The thing flows seamlessly, but you can start with the heavier groove of “Alice.”
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And we’re not done yet, folks!
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Still comin’ up:
Elvis Costello - Momofuku (Apr. 22)
Portishead - Third (Apr. 29)

Elbow - The Seldom Seen Kid (Apr. 29)
Madonna - Hard Candy (Apr. 29)
The Roots - Rising Down (Apr. 29)
Death Cab For Cutie - Narrow Stairs (May 13)
Cyndi Lauper - Bring Ya to the Brink (May 27)
My Morning Jacket - Evil Urges (June 10)
Jakob Dylan - Seeing Things (June 10)
Alanis Morrissette - Flavors of Entanglement (June 10)
Martha Wainwright - I Know You’re Married but I’ve Got Feelings, Too (June 10)

Coldplay - TBA (June 17)
Weezer (June 17)
Ben Folds - TBA (August)
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PHEW!

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Today’s the day, folks! Who’s excited?
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Pitchfork Media - the great bastion of internet music snobbery that makes this blog look like TigerBeat - unveiled today its latest outlet for bands who try too hard: PitchforkTV.
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What, you mean you DON’T want to watch pretentious bands with names like Tapes ‘n Tapes, Does It Offend You, Yeah? and Holy F#ck 24/7? Whyever not?
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No matter your opinion of the site’s increasingly irrelevant opinions, they did get Radiohead and some other big names to perform exclusively for the channel. There’s guaranteed to be something moderately entertaining there every once in a while. We’ll just hope they keep the streams of F#ck Buttons, Why? and Neon Neon to a minimum.
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For those of you with more mainstream music-video tastes, there’ve been quite a few much-hyped videos to not be played on MTV lately.
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The first is Gnarls Barkley’s first video from its new album which apparently didn’t pass the siezure test. MTV won’t play it for fear that mindless 12-year-olds everywhere would finally have a legitimate reason to froth at the mouth and flail uncontrollably during TRL.
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Kanye West is getting his ego stroked over a violent and disturbing video for “Flashing Lights.” It’s created a stir, though not for the model’s amply bouncing bosoms (which is actually the focal point of the video).
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Lastly - because we’ll all be sick of it in a week - Madonna released her new video and single “4 Minutes” late last week.
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It will probably be huge on radio for its Timbaland and Justin Timberlake duet, but it’s one of the worst songs she’s ever done. Ironically devoid of any urgency (her chorus claims she has “four minutes to save the world”) or any kind of personality, I hope this one sinks and takes the over-cooked, over-priced Timbaland production with it.
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Oh, one more thing: Something Awful has a Hillary Clinton Tall Tale Generator. It’s good for a few minutes of laughs.

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This is supposed to be a significant week for R.E.M. fans. Accelerate came out Tuesday, their first album to come close to rocking since Monster. This is the fourth time I’ve mentioned the album on this blog, and I promise not to talk about it for awhile after this.
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But I have to get this off my chest first:
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Yes, Accelerate is a very, very good R.E.M. album, especially considering this is about 27 years after they started giving voice to American independent music and college rock in the 1980s. It’s nice to have the band back in fighting form with proof that Peter Buck still does own an electric guitar.

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But a lot of reviews for the album are reading as if R.E.M. hasn’t done anything worth a damn since 1992’s Automatic for the People.
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That couldn’t be further from the truth. Sure, 2004’s Around the Sun was pretty abysmal, but there’s a whole generation of R.E.M. fans (like me) who came of age in the 1990s.
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We generally don’t remember when “The One I Love,” “It’s the End of the World As We Know It” or “Orange Crush” set the college/alternative scene on fire, let alone “Fall on Me” or “So. Central Rain.” A lot of us have never heard those last two songs on the radio. About as far back as we can reach is when “Losing My Religion” was the biggest song in the country, with one of the strangest videos ever filmed. And then we heard “Man on the Moon” until we were blue in the face.

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You see, we were never accustomed to the non-stadium-ready R.E.M., so it didn’t bother us at all when the band went all electric glam on 1994’s Monster. That album sold gagillions - thanks to “What’s the Frequency Kenneth?,” a cracking-good single and one of the best of the decade - but now populates more used-bin space than just about any other album (except the Primitive Radio Gods and Melissa Etheridge’s Yes I Am).
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We were as hurt as anyone when Bill Berry left in 1997, following the cobbled-together road album New Adventures in Hi-fi. That album wasn’t received with the same fanfare accompanying most R.E.M. albums, but it’s better in hindsight (”Bittersweet Me,” “The Wake-Up Bomb,” “Electrolite”).
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That’s about when everyone quit paying attention, though in 1998, the three remaining members - Michael Stipe, Mike Mills and Peter Buck - offered us Up. It’s still one of my favorite R.E.M. albums because the band was experimenting. The looseness in the sound and odd loops in the production sounded expansive and fresh and still like nothing else in the band’s catalog.

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I often regard Up as one of a clutch of records that saved my life (along with Nick Cave’s The Boatman’s Call, Pulp’s This Is Hardcore and Remy Zero’s Villa Elaine) in the winter of 98-99. When I close my eyes, there’s sometimes a loop of “Lotus,” “At My Most Beautiful,” “Daysleeper” and “Falls to Climb.”

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And then in 2001 R.E.M. gave us Reveal. If you call yourself an R.E.M. fan but you can’t find at least three or four songs to love on Reveal then I have to question why you’d call yourself a fan at all.
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“Imitation of Life” is one of the band’s best ever songs with a huge, huge chorus. Ditto that to “All the Way to Reno” and “The Lifting.” They were summery and gorgeous and fun, though not in the goofy way “Superman” or “Stand” were. There’s also “I’ve Been High” and “Summer Turns to High,” that roped in the free-range sound on Up better than most other ballads on the album. Yes, “Saturn Returns” and “She Just Wants to Be” were dead ends. Everyone knows that.

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There were even redeeming moments on Around the Sun: “Leaving New York,” “Electron Blue” and “Final Straw.”
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So to everyone wanting to gloss over the last 14 years of R.E.M. as if they never happened, you’re missing the point.
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R.E.M. will never be the same band they were - or make the same brand of music they did - in 1987. We all wish we could hold on to those years, but they’re past.
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If we’re honest, we’ll see that Accelerate is a more focused album than any since Automatic for the People, but it’s from the same careful and considered band that put their hearts into Up and Reveal and told us Around the Sun was worth paying money for. This is the same band of late-40s guys with families and lives and commitments they never had in 1987.

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Accelerate isn’t a loose album. It’s not a particularly fun album beyond “I’m Gonna DJ” or “Supernatural Superserious.” It’s not a light-hearted album: filled with thinly veiled references to the Bush Administration, Hurricane Katrina and global warming.
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We should enjoy Accelerate for what it is: the work of a veteran band cutting the fat (and the running times) to show people they can still deliver what’s expected. That’s 10 or 11 good songs in one sitting.

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Never been to Scotland?
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Well, in honor of our forecasted un-spring-like weather , Homegrown Snob Travel Co. is offering for a limited time the Scottish Experience package.
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It will only cost you two things: 10 days and your sanity. All you have to do is put on a knee-length wool skirt, go outside and walk around in some tall grass for awhile. When your nether regions get damp and chilly, close your eyes and just imagine you’re surrounded by sheep, chimney smoke and a bunch of snooty Brits who won’t recognize you as a nationality.
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We’ll even throw in a delicious, steaming bowl of haggis for you! MMMMM MMMMM!
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If you’re a seasonal depressive like me - dependent on sunlight for your mental well-being - it’s going to be a long 10 days of cloudy, drizzly, mostly chilly weather. Time to pull out the sun lamps.
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To help get me through this mess, I’m counting on a few things:

1. The new R.E.M. album, Accelerate

It hits stores tomorrow, but it’s been available for a week on Facebook. It’s pretty awesome, as far as latter-day R.E.M. albums go. This will be enjoyed by more people than anything they’ve done since Monster.

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2. Sacha Baron Cohen.

Tales of lashbacks against Cohen, now filming Bruno - the second spinoff film from Da Ali G Show, on the heels of the highly successful Borat - have begun in earnest. He and crew were arrested in Kansas for stripping in an airport. Now Ben Affleck (the Afflecktion, himself) has already revealed a huge amount of ignorance by admitting he didn’t know he was being interviewed by Cohen - performing as the gay, Austrian fashionista - for scenes in the film.
Yep. I have a feeling that Affleck is about as bright as we all surmised a few years ago when he did “Reindeer Games.”

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3. A new Raconteurs album!?!

It hit stores in a sneak-attack last week. I have yet to hear it, but as a dutiful Jack White and Brendon Benson fan I will have to pick it up this week. I hope it will brighten my mood a little bit.