ovticartmy: Mates of State

Showing posts with label Mates of State. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

A Large List of Music I Enjoyed in 2008

Why so early with a Best Of list? I've still got a lot of albums to check out properly, and yet here we are, partially because my hand was forced leading me to post this elsewhere first (though without the lovely YouTube videos), and also because my piece of shit TyTn phone crashed yesterday meaning I lost absolutely everything on it, including yet another Week in TV post, so I've got to reconstruct that from scratch, something I could have spent today doing but instead I stupidly farted around trying to figure out how to append .srt files to .avi files (here's the short answer; you can't because vobsub_vd.vdf and textsub.vdf files are more slippery than the King of Eels and never seem to work even when added to VirtualDubMod plugin folders, meaning you waste hours and hours installing, uninstalling, and reinstalling programs and all you get is much misery).

Where was I? Oh yeah, music. As you can see from my top fifteen album list, it's been another good year (though there is much carping across the internet that dammit, those musicians didn't excel themselves this year, how selfish of them). There are several albums I'm still getting into, and many more I've not even heard at all. As usual, I expect to find more out as soon as I hit Publish (last year I damned The National with faint praise and then realised Boxer was a masterpiece), but for now, let this stand.

Albums of the Year:

1. Re-Arrange Us - Mates of State
2. April - Sun Kil Moon
3.= The Family Afloat - Bound Stems
3.= Lay Down In The Light - Bonnie "Prince" Billy
4.= Real Emotional Trash - Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks
4.= Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend
5. Microcastle - Deerhunter
6.= Með Suð Í Eyrum Við Spilum Endalaust - Sigur Rós
6.= Narrow Stairs - Death Cab For Cutie
7. This Is It and I Am It and You Are It and So Is That and He Is It and She Is It and It Is It and That Is That - Marnie Stern
8.= Gift of Screws - Lindsey Buckingham
8.= Who Killed Amanda Palmer - Amanda Palmer
9. For Emma, Forever Ago - Bon Iver
10.= Only By The Night - Kings Of Leon
10.= Sea Lion - The Ruby Suns

Disappointments of the Year:

Heart On - Eagles of Death Metal
Seventh Tree - Goldfrapp
Caught In The Trees - Damien Jurado
Stay Positive - The Hold Steady
Everything That Happens Will Happen Today - David Byrne and Brian Eno (Yes, I know I blogged about it before, but it never got any better than the first listen.)

Possible Contenders That I've Not Yet Listened To Enough:

Something for All of Us... - Broken Social Scene Presents: Brendan Canning
Dear Science - TV On The Radio
The Stand Ins - Okkervil River
Untitled - Nas
Hold On Now, Youngster... - Los Campesinos

I know, that video's been around for a year and a half but it's so great it needs to be seen as often as possible.

Worst Album of the Year/Decade:

The Bedlam In Goliath - The Mars Volta (Having been forced to listen to a lot of Mars Volta this year, I have to ask: what the fuck is the appeal of this band? It makes me turn into an old fart complaining about the racket, which earns it extra hate points. HATE!)

Best Use of Autotune to Confound Squidbrains Album of the Year:

808s and Heartbreak - Kanye West

Best Posthumous Release of the Year:

Leucocyte - Esbjörn Svensson Trio

I Don't Get What The Big Deal Is Album of the Year:

In Ear Park - Department of Eagles (The hipsters love it but it reminds me of cloying 60s pop filtered through an Americana mindset and as such depresses me greatly.)

Why Isn't This More Popular Album of the Year:

This Is It and I Am It and You Are It and So Is That and He Is It and She Is It and It Is It and That Is That - Marnie Stern (The woman is a musical genius, and has the requisite cute-hipster look to appeal to all of the douchebags. She should PWN the world by now.)

Underrated Album of the Year:

Only By The Night - Kings Of Leon (Yes yes, stadium rock etc. But it's a grower, and even if it's not as good as Because of the Times, it's partially because that was the best rock album of the decade and it's hard to top. Two more albums like this and I might change my tune, though.)

Best Classical Music Album of the Year:

Video Games Live - Jack Wall/Slovak National Symphony Orchestra/Crouch End Festival Chorus/David Temple (I only just found out about it! Tron Medley? Halo? Civ 4? I never knew you cared enough to make this, world.)

Songwriter of the Year:

Amanda Palmer, whose commitment to brutal truthtelling shocked and thrilled me.

Lyrics of the Year:

Gardenia by Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks

~~Richard Avedon. Richard Avedon would.~~ Richard Avedon would surely approve.

Overrated Album of the Year:

Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes (While I love the first half of the album, the second half is just nothing. I cannot remember a single thing about it and I've heard it about 30 times.)

Best Soundtrack of the Year:

Lost Season Three OST - Michael Giacchino
Plus, I've not heard it on CD, but the soundtrack to Snow Angels was lovely, and would probably swipe this spot.

Best Comedy Album of the Year:

Flight of the Conchords OST - Flight of the Conchords

Most Overdue Return of the Year:

Harps and Angels - Randy Newman

Most Welcome Return of the Year:

Mountain Battles - The Breeders

Most Career-Rehabilitating Return of the Year:

Forth - The Verve (Not technically a good album, but even in semi-FAIL mode it's infinitely better than Richard Ashcroft's solo work.)

Most Reputation-Destroying Return of the Year:

Snowflake Midnight - Mercury Rev (They discovered technology! And made an embarrassing hash of it. Bring back David Baker and Suzanne Thorpe.)

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Further To Canyon's Mates of State Post

A couple of days ago Canyon posted about Mates of State, whose most recent album, Re-Arrange Us, is our joint favourite album of the year. It is sheer pop brilliance, seemingly light and fluffy but musically complex (Pitchfork thought otherwise). It has not left my iPod since we got it. However, I was sad that the incredible song The Re-Arranger didn't appear on YouTube. Nothing I can do about that, of course.

However, a day later, I realised there was a technique for creating videos for songs, after seeing this wonderful collage of images culled from public domain films, here used by locke325 to accompany Panda Bear's Take Pills, from my favourite album of last year, Person Pitch.

Surely someone could spend a bit of their time, say two days filled with frustration and error and eventual triumph, sticking together clips from such disparate films as Gamera vs. Viras, Royal Wedding, Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe: Chapter 4, and Till The Clouds Roll By, to create a visual accompaniment for such a wonderful song. Amazingly, and with scarily psychic precision, I was right. It's the same guy who keeps supplying me with Torchwood clips. It's a staggering coincidence.

I know nothing about creating clips like this, and was wondering how difficult it must be. I mean, this guy seemed to make this next clip about a Republican convention from decades ago, in much less time, like maybe a couple of hours, so maybe it's not that bad once you get used to the seemingly infinite amount of free editing programs you have to download to splice it all together.

For the record, I'm disavowing that one for its reliance on a specious comparison that gets made by over-emotional people, and am disgusted by the inflammatory juxtaposition between the audio of the newsreel and the visuals of an evil dictator addressing his followers. I think it's disgraceful that a comparison appears to have been made between the Republicans, who are entitled to their beliefs, their leadership, who represent those beliefs, and the fascist regime on Mongo.

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Hipster Douchebag Music Recommendation Of The Week: "Get Better" by Mates of State

Well, it looks like I've left this so long that Masticator has subverted the formula, leaving the douchebags among us out in the cold. So typical of corporate types like him: stealing our ideas and squashing all the soul out of them for mainstream palatability. And since this week's band is slowly leaking hipster cred by the day, much like a tipping can of Pabst Blue Ribbon in the slackening hand of a passed-out, cardigan-wearing skinny teenager, it seemed time I got back to the job.

So anyway, this ~~week's~~ ~~month's~~ quarter's entry is yet another band we discovered through The A.V. Club. No, wait -- we actually saw them first on Conan's show, which tends to have the most unusual music of all the late-night talk shows (Okkervil River were on the show awhile ago, and Conan seemed genuinely shocked at how good they were). They were playing the first single from their latest album, and when I went to The A.V. Club to see if they'd reviewed it, I found this. I was a bit surprised and disappointed to see such a negative review when I'd enjoyed the song so much, but I ~~downloaded~~ ~~procured~~ legally purchased the album anyway on the strength of the single. Turns out that the writer was just some freelancer they'd gotten in, who's apparently gone through a bad breakup recently, given his seeming hatred of happily married life. At any rate, the rest of the A.V. Club permanent staff absolutely loves the album, and many of them are planning to put it on their end-of-year best-of lists. Sucks to you, freelance reviewer who probably just wanted a paycheck and may have some lingering problems with his parents' divorce!

The two band members, Kori Gardner and Jason Hammel, are indeed married, which gives the band a nice hook for feature writers, but it's not like we're dealing with Raffi-level sentimentality here. Their sound was a little bit spikier on previous albums, but it's still much the same: lots of harmonies, disjointed melodies, and pop songcraft. Take my favorite song off the album, the first single "Get Better":

Yes, there are people dressed as animals, but they're more reminiscent of the bunny from Donnie Darko that freaked me the fuck out than anything boringly suburban (even though the video does have a bit of an Ice Storm vibe). It's not a hard-driving song, but the clarity of the piano, the thump of the drums, and the gorgeous swell of the string section (have I mentioned that I'm a sucker for a string section?) all blend with the counterpointed vocals to create something beautiful, lighthearted, and yet a little bit creepy (maybe I'm just flashing back to Frank here). And yeah, the lyrics "Forget your politics for awhile / Let the color schemes arrive" are a bit hippie-ish, but it feels like a joyful song to me -- not a song cloistered in middle-aged smug, boring contentment but a paean to wary hopefulness ("everything's gonna get lighter, even if it never gets better"). Or at least a very good potential song for an AT&T commercial.

As for my other favorite song off the album, "The Rearranger," it's not available as a video on the intertubes except as a live version, which makes it at least 78% less awesome, because much of its beauty comes from its meticulous, heavily layered production. Thus, I instruct you, loyal reader(s), to go here and listen to the audio alone. The first few seconds should hook you in, as the horns seep in like an aural sunrise (ah yes, I'm a sucker for horns too); after that the harmonies come in, and then come the weird tempo shifts, and then the bursting sun of the chorus, where all the elements come together beautifully, as sunny as a Californian summer day (to drag this dead metaphor a little further).

As usual, the band is starting to get more recognition just after I find out about them -- unfortunate, since I should have written about them months ago when I first heard their albums -- and now they've got a song on an Ugly Betty episode. Is this the end of their hipster coolness? Or was it the AT&T commercial that did them in? Or is it cool to sell out now? The backlash begins. Time to put on my trucker hat and wade in.

And now that I've profiled some good music, it's time for my...

Shameful Non-Hipster Possibly Douchebag Admission of the Week:

This is a new addition in which I admit my not-so-secret, undying love for cheesy pop tunes, thus undermining all the careful hipster-image-building I've done in the previous paragraphs. I'm going to do it quick, like ripping off a Band-Aid ("Right off!").

"Spiralling" by Keane

I'm not proud of it, but come on, it's catchy, right? That retro synthesizer hook, the bizarre football-crowd-witnessing-a-nasty-tackle "Oh!"s in the background, the irresistible chorus, and...the, um, video:

Okay, I don't know what's going on with the aerobicizing "Video Killed the Radio Star" robots, and nothing says high production values like Windows Media Player visualizations, but obviously the director is a very smart man -- namely because he's kept lead singer Tom Chaplin's horrifying visage out of the video as much as possible, and when he's been absolutely forced to show it, he's masked it in so many layers of Photoshop effects and shadows that Chaplin looks more like Mr. Stay Puft than a recognizable human (though actually, this is what he normally looks like -- as brilliant Never Mind the Buzzcocks host Simon Amstell put it, he's a skinny man with the face of a chubby toddler).

But my favorite thing about this song is the lyrics in the chorus:

When we fall in love
We're just falling
In love with ourselves
We're spiralling

Looks like someone's really proud of paying attention in his Intro to Psychology class. Or was this song his end-of-term assignment? I'm really looking forward to the next single, "Cathect My Heart, Mother (Or I Will Project My Neuroses Onto My Lover)."

And with that admission, I take off my trucker hat and slowly back away.

Friday, October 31, 2008

All Hail the Fingers Of Fury!

If a writer has writers' block, then a blogger will suffer from Blogger Clog, and that's certainly the case here. There are numerous reasons for my infrequent posting, perhaps most importantly this goddamn illness, which, while little more than a cold, has been hanging around for weeks. Hard to be prolific when one side of my head feels heavier than the other. On top of that is a much busier than usual week at work which has drained me of much energy, and oh God this election this fucking election it's driving my brain crazy with the excessive checking of the politiblogs, so much so that, even though I've been enjoying his updates, if Andrew Sullivan writes "know hope" one more time I'll either turn violent or cry or cry violently. It's the classic split between his faith and my atheism; he can know hope all he likes, but I'll not relax until Obama's inauguration. People who know me will be very familiar with my fatalistic tendencies. ::takes break from hard minute's blogging to check fivethirtyeight.com::

Another reason, which is probably the main one if I was willing to sit and poke at my ossified brain in order to find out, is my attempt to finish reading Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Though I'm wary of saying anything about it for fear of angering her many many fans/followers/cultists, I have to say it is about to defeat me. No, Randian visitors, her worldview has not dominated mine, as if it had been dismantled and bested by a philosophy of vast strength and power, like the machines that conquer and crush the rocks and mountains of the earth. I'm just, well, really really really fucking bored by now. Her insanely florid prose might have amused me before, but by now, after being shouted at in a self-pitying and mean-spirited tone for 700 pages, I might not be able to make it. But I must! For am I not a human being? Is not my mind the Alpha and Omega, the force that can harness nature and bend it to my will, able to withstand this mighty onslaught, bearing the winds and rains of her ideas and rising, triumphant, like a Titan, like the owner of himself and his destiny, masterful and immortal? Fuck you, book! You shall never defeat me!

However, I do just want to get it over and done with by now, if only because I need a break from it. I'm glad I'm reading it, especially at a time like this, when one presidential candidate is bellowing "Socialist!" and running from person to person like Kevin McCarthy in the first two versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and the world's most powerful Objectivist, Alan Greenspan, is talking about how there is a flaw in the world that makes his free market ideals untenable (I'm totally paraphrasing; please don't correct me, people). Before reading Atlas Shrugged I would have thought his comment rather cheeky, blaming people for the market disaster and not The Market itself, but now I see his point (though I don't necessarily agree with it). If I'm reading Atlas Shrugged right (again, don't comment, I don't need clarification just yet), the Objectivist creed would work just fine as long as everyone was "moral" by Rand's code, but after many many years Greenspan has apparently discovered that people (i.e. traders and bankers and economists and anyone who deals with money anywhere in the world ever) won't abide by that code of behaviour, and will in fact take as many short cuts as possible to fill their pockets with as much Fat Bank as they can. I see where he's coming from. I think he's a bit tapped to be suddenly saying, "Oh, it's humanity's fault for this and not mine for coming up with a system of economics that doesn't take into account actual human behaviour as it really actually exists for reals, but instead bases its assumptions about what people are like on the idealised ramblings of a writer from the 50s who had a weird thing for dominatory industrialists and smokestacks and trains going into tunnels and which therefore cannot possibly work," but I do see where he's coming from. Thanks for the recession, jerkwad.

So yeah, it's been interesting to listen to Republican and conservative thought with a new, deeper understanding of where it's coming from, and to finally comprehend why followers of that creed hate taxation as much as they do even though I think they're wrong, and so I do owe a debt of thanks to Ayn Rand for giving me such a long-winded peek into that mindset. Sadly, my brain is dying from the melodrama and the hate and the victimhood, and I just want to get it over with so I can move onto something fun (I got John Hodgman's new book two days ago and it's begging to be read). Until then, time I would devote to blogging is being taken up with enduring the endless Rand-ting, so it's like another blog slowdown, and one I really don't want to endure but will because I'm stubborn like that and hate leaving books unfinished (especially when I'm 700 pages in). I will get back to the planned post about Mad Men, and some Face/Offs I've been looking forward to as soon as I can, but for now, I must complete this mammoth task.

In the meantime, here is the other thing that has totally possessed my mind over the last week, but luckily it's a thing that is making the brain very very happy. Marnie Stern, super-genius guitarist, has just appeared on my Radar of Unbelievable Awesomeness with her new album This Is It and I Am It and You Are It and So Is That and He Is It and She Is It and It Is It and That Is That (which is a phrase attributed to Zen philosopher Alan Watts, according to AV Club). It is absolutely incredible, easily on my 2008 best list along with Re-Arrange Us by Mates of State and The Family Afloat by Bound Stems and several other lovely works. Stern's guitar playing is unlike anything I've heard before, and strumming along to it would be the most insane Rock Band challenge ever (especially as Zach Hill's drumming is almost as complex and frenetic). This is her new single, Transformer, and it should be number one across the planet.

Even better is her song Ruler, which you can find on her MySpace page. Thank you for keeping the book cooties from smothering my brain, Marnie Stern.