Neutral Milk Hotel Live 4-18-14

In an Airplane Over the Sea is this generation's Sergeant Pepper's, just as tights are this decade's pants.  Furthermore, we understand that to deny tights are pants is misogynistic slut-shaming, just as to deny anyone the joy of listening to In an Airplane is pretentious snobbery. 

Neutral Milk Hotel has two LP's and two EP's, all of which span from 1992 to 1998.  Karat and I weren't exposed to In an Airplane until 2000.  So we recognize that there are some of you out there more hip to the NMH scene than us.  This also means that we had to wait until 2013 before we got our chance to see a live version of this music.

In March of 2013, we got the opportunity to see Jeff Mangum perform NMH songs as a solo act.  He sat on a chair in the middle of the stage with his long beard and belted songs to a crowd of fist pumping beef cakes, douche bags, brody chops and buff chucks.  We loved the experience, but we were puzzled at the crowd, almost scared at times.  However, it went well and everyone ate it up.

This year we got the opportunity to see the whole band.  The crowd this time contained incessant screaming ladies and testicle popping skinny jeans.  And it was a better experience than the solo show, once we moved to the back of the room.

The combined experience of the Mangum set and the NMH set were something unique and unforgettable.  This year's show started with Mangum on stage alone and the song "Two-Headed Boy."  It was as if we were right back at the solo show from the previous year.  I even looked at Karat and whispered, "deja vuski."  Then the rest of the band took the stage as the song bridged towards "The Fool," and the horn section lit up in the most hair raising moments of live entertainment we have ever seen.  It was as if this year's full band setup was the encore to the solo act of last year's Mangum set.

The combination of both shows is a bit like watching someone jump on Anne Frank's preserved bed in Amsterdam while "Holland, 1945" is playing on full blast.  NMH's cult following is kind of a shame, and a lot of fans weren't even old enough to fingerbang when we came to love these albums.  But who fucking cares?  Let them crowd around and scream.  We'll just move to the back of the room.  We needed to cool down anyway from that horn session.

chop

Liars - Mess

God damn, these guys are cool.  We've followed them for a lot of years.  "Mr. You're on Fire Mr." from They Threw Us All in a Trench... burned down many of the places we've lived.  This album also lead us to another band, Emerald Sapphire and Gold, while EP Fins to Make Us More Fish-Like offered us "Every Day is a Child with Teeth" and deeper love for lyrical inversions, e.g. "dance like a girl/ pee like a boy/ dance like a boy/ pee like a girl."  Mess is back at it with these two forms.  The combustibility is here and the lyrical inversions kick start the album, "Take my pants off/ use my socks/ eat my face off/ take my face/ give me your face..."  Your wish is our command.

We began our obsession with Liars while going through a phase.  We were trying to define for ourselves this term "math rock."  The math rock genre has a lot of facets that lead us to the Liars, but doesn't quite define them.  However, we will try to create a circle that encompasses a few bands we found similar at the time.  The Ex-Models' Zoo Psychology helps fill the circle with their raw energy, especially the medley "Intro"/"Pink Noise" with that consistent note like a touch-tone phone left off the hook, and medley "The Password is Pelican"/"Three Weeks" which bridges one of the greatest tension-release moments we've ever experienced.  Bloc Party, in particular their song "Banquet," also helps fill the circle with their pure angular dance energy.  We'll let you fill in the rest.

But the album is a lot of fun, and we want to demonstrate it for you.  Here is an interactive exercise.  Start these two clips simultaneously.  Mute the second one.  Then simply replay the second clip until the song ends.  We're sure that after the third replay of the second clip, you'll see what we're getting at.  Enjoy.

karat y chop

Broken Bells Live 4-13-14 (spoiler alert)

Do you know what the great pink globe on the cover of the newest Broken Bells album represents?  Is it significant enough to consider?  We recently read an article about the upcoming Wu Tang album called A Better Tomorrow.  Leading member Rza has hatched a plan to tour the newest Wu Tang album as an art installation.  Only one copy of the album will be made.  It will tour the world.  Willing fans will pay an entrance fee, pass through security measures, and have the opportunity to listen to the album.  Once the album tour is over, the single copy will be auctioned off to the highest bidder.

First off, we hope the highest bidder is a competitor like talent succubus Jay-Z.  We hope some sycophant spends the equivalent of the price of college educations for the entire population of New York City on this album and then tosses it into the fire before the rest of us can hear it.  We need to behave in this manner for something so important, in order to make it meaningful.

Second, does anyone remember the box that Thomas Eckhardt leaves Andrew Packard and his sister Catherine Martell in the television series Twin Peaks?  If we remember correctly, the puzzle box contained a second puzzle box.  The second puzzle box contained a third puzzle box.  The third puzzle box contained a metal box.  The metal box contained a safety deposit box key.  When the safety deposit box was opened with this key, it exploded the bank and everyone within it.  Goodbye forever, hip hop. 

Lastly, this is where we get real nasty.  Toting yourself as supreme is only an attempt to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, or culture than is actually possessed.  We loved 36 Chambers because we were young, and Wu Tang was young.  We still love this album.  But upon repeat listens, it's pretty bad.  Come on, face it.  Return to some of the lyrics yourself.  We counted forms of the word "nigger" more than fifty times.  Remember that we read the word "nigger" in Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn to a sickening degree.  And the lesson is that this word was used in history with bad intentions.  The purpose of Twain's realist art is to show us how sick this word is, and show us a part of history that is ugly, a history that we should have overcome.  We get the sense that this word is never used on the 36 Chambers album for right reason, or intentionally meaningful artistic intent.  We would also like to point out that of all the members on this album, our favorite rapper Old Dirty Bastard, the potentially most offensive member of the group, uses the word the least, except for maybe U-God.

So back to the original question.  Do you know what the pink globe on the cover of the newest Broken Bells album means?  If we are going to have a serious conversation about art, we have to discuss things like "right reason" and "intentions."  Furthermore, words are very interesting.  We use some words to identify ourselves, e.g. "nigger."  Other words are said and their meaning is immediately contradicted, e.g. "I am humble."  We get the feeling that both uses of words that we have just described are at work here when Rza describes Wu Tang's next album as "art."

karat y chop

Neko Case Live 4-12-14

Neko Case does something very well.  She takes the southwestern musical tradition and puts it in a bottle that everyone can hold up to their ear and identify.  Echoing in this same bottle are Emmylou Harris, Giant Sand era Howe Gelb, Calexico, Catholics era Frank Black and others of the like.  We suggest that this bottle be plugged, tossed into the ocean, and discovered in the future.  We'll help describe this disparate future for you.

There once was a time when barrooms were filled with the naturally sweet smoke of tobacco.  In the future, metallic sanitary devices will turn nicotine juice into vapor.  Where there once was the flicker of matches and controlled fire, the ambiance will be replaced by people who aim little communication devices at the band and blind them with useless flashes in order to capture the performance, rather than remember it.  Where beer went down smooth and ice cold, it will be replaced with skunky macrobrew at $8 a plastic cup.  In this future, barrooms won't even exist.  Instead, we will pay $40 apiece to gain entrance into crammed ancient theaters where we stand on one another and clap in unison for an obligatory encore.  Bands themselves will quit a few songs early, in order to oblige this requirement.

The authenticity of the music is not the problem.  It's the fact that in this future we will have bred our souls too thin, or we will have bred soul out completely.  Individuals and choice will no longer have any meaning.  Instead, we will be reduced to an electronic page of information, the amalgam of which will define how we are no different from the other drones in our human hive.  We will line up for our prescription Levi Trucker jackets and our mandatory beards.  If and when we uncover that lost bottle of music, our dejected and dismal soul residue will resonate with the steel guitar and we will vaguely wish for a Nashvillian past that will never again return.  

karat y chop

The War on Drugs Live 4-8-14

You can watch the war on drugs every night on your television.  Or you can see it in the eyes of most police officials.  Or you can take part in it yourself by calling up your "man."  We decided to join in it last night live.

The War on Drugs is on tour promoting their latest album Lost in the Dream.  This is their third studio album and does its job to separate itself from original member Kurt Vile.  Enough said about the album itself and the connection to Vile.  If you like them, you already have it.  If you haven't heard it, its good.  And to quote Biggie Smalls, "If you don't know, now you know, nigga."

The band does rely on a drumming technique called Motorik.  This drum beat has never really gone away since its conception, but it has resurfaced with much gusto in the past decade, and in some of our favorite bands.  For originality's sake, check the six armed drummer of Can, the robot drummer of Neu! or newer songs like Wilco's Spiders (Kidsmoke), The Sea and Cake's Inn Keeping, Yo La Tengo's Stupid Things, and anything BEAK.

Motorik has the effect of keeping your head bobbing, and induced puking during morning-after hangovers.  It's also a little bit sexy.  And sex is how we would like to describe the show last night.  We'll only end note Granduciel's awesome little yell in Red Eyes and throughout the album, his Bob Dylan vocal flairs and his, did we say Bob Dylan, momentary spurts of harmonica.  We'd like to get back to the sex.  The set lasted more than two hours.  We're not complaining.  We know you're jealous.  But don't be jealous of the wrong things.

The show went on like a motor.  We bobbed our heads until our knees were weak.  We sweated.  We might have eventually given up.  But The War on Drugs kept chugging along to an initially wild event, which kept moving toward exhaustion.  Then we rode our bikes home and complained in private about our crotches being sore.  Again, we aren't complaining.  We know you're jealous.

karat y chop

OFF! - Wasted Years

No matter how we start a conversation about the role of transgender people around the world, we are going to be wrong about it.  So we have to tip toe around a topic like this, so as not to offend our audience.  But nonetheless, it is better to turn toward a difficult topic rather than turn away from it.  The same goes for opinions on punk rock.

OFF! comes from an eclectic background of some of our favorite bands, i.e. Black Flag and Hot Snakes.  Things are a little different now, but we are happy to report that in a lot of ways things are still the same, like our old grease monkey pal who we used to refer to as "he" and we now refer to as "she."  We feel that a circle has been made.

Our mother didn't like the direction of Black Flag after Keith Morris, and she certainly didn't like celebrity politician Henry Rollins.  We remember her throwing his spoken word cassette tape out the window on our way to school one day.  Don't get us wrong.  Black Flag is the butter to our youth's bread.

OFF! also features Mario Rubalcaba of Hot Snakes, which further reels in our feelings about the transgender nature of the band.  OFF! wants to be something different.  It has transformed many bands of its past into its current identity.  However, all of those bands are contained here.  Nothing has changed.  All is well.  

The best part about this review is that as of this date, the album hasn't even been released.  So we haven't even heard it.  Nor do we want to.  Just like we don't want to hear about your opinions on transgender folks or punk rock.  Fuck OFF!

karat y chop

Psilosamples - Mental Surf

There's something about eating the mushrooms in our front yard that makes sound a little brighter.  As we worked our way through Mental Surf, the birds outside took notice and started to chirp along with the beats.  The ambulance sirens circling our neighborhood found their space for a solo.  The police choppers overhead beat their propellers to the music.

Our mood became a bit more giddy.  We couldn't help but jump around to the skittering loops and electronic beeps and bloops.  Moments from the album are very familiar to groups like Land of the Loops, High Llamas or Django Django.  The territory is familiar, but the experience is under a different kind of influence.

Furthermore, Karat and I are SB1070s.  After we ate the mushrooms from our yard, the language on this album was suddenly unfamiliar, like Spanish being spoken underwater.  The writing on the album, too, started to swim around and multiply in vowels, while the letters themselves began to flourish across the album art.

So here we are, naked again in the front yard of our apartment complex, dancing with the birds, listening to the approaching sirens, banging our heads to the reverberations from the police helicopter overhead, and speaking in a new found tongue.  The biggest coinkydink about all these things converging on our apartment right now is that we only discovered this album as if heaven sent to our doorstep after we ate those yard mushrooms.

chop

The Oneness of Juju - African Rhythms

Hey whistleblowers, we have a track for you.  Check out "Every Way But Loose" by Oneness of JuJu.  Research turned up that this song was used in the video game Grand Theft Auto.  Like most Americans, we live in a small apartment, and our freeloading roommate quit helping us pay the rent when he fell into a paralyzing depression.  Much of his time is spent on the couch playing GTA 5, and we never heard this track.  We also started to think that "depression" is his codeword for "really great video game."

This track was produced in 1982.  Seconds into it, we made connections to bands like OUT HUD and !!!.  These later bands started around 1996, and we always wondered their influences.  We think we can put a finger on this one.

So now we are running naked around the living room couch with the stereo turned up, blowing whistles and kazoos in our roommate's ear.  Then we run back to our tiny bedroom and laugh our asses off.  He just keeps yelling at us from the couch.  We even got our children running around naked with whistles.  Our roomie is a registered sex offender, and he still won't get off the couch.  Must be one great video game or he sure is in one hell of a funk.  Afro funk! 

karat y chop

Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings Live 3-20-14

We realize this world is full on "No." A little girl wants a second helping of dessert, and momma wags her finger, "no."  A young man applies for graduate school, and the director of graduate admissions types a word, "no."  A grown woman smokes pot in her backyard, and the judge bangs his gavel, "no."

Often times this makes us want to scream and shout.  However, negation and affirmation are part of the same question.  When we question something, we work with a judgement that it "could not be so,"...and then we need to go ahead and check anyway.

So was the dilemma on whether to fork out the $6.50 surcharge for Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings last night.  That's actually $13 in fines for Karat and me.  This was 25% of the ticket price.  And we wondered what it would be like if we didn't pay the fines.  If our vague examples from experience have taught us anything, you have to face some challenges.  There is no better assertion of your existence than to place yourself there.  For to deny yourself is a grave misfortune.

Pump your intuition.  Eat a second helping of dessert.  Go to graduate school.  Smoke your pot.  Or don't, but if you want to and you don't, then this is still your definition of self.  We went to the show and we got out our screaming and our shouting, and some twisting, and some mash potato, and some funky chicken, and a little roger rabbit.  So, this assertion of self was a win win.

Chop

Neil Young - Tonight's the Night

Look at this guy!  Tonight's the Night was originally released in 1975, and a tribute to then recently deceased Crazy Horse and Bruce Berry.  Why don't more celebrities die of drug overdoses these days, we're looking at you Lady Gaga; but our eyes are diverted from the ghost of Philip Seymour Hoffman.  Hoffman's death pisses us off too much to fully approach that subject.  Our dad used to sing to us, "You can never come back, when your out of the blue and into the black."  Yes, Chop and I are siblings, and we're married.  People choose their existences.  Accept it.

Long before we put it together that these were Neil lyrics, we were rocking out to Never Mind the Bollocks in our bedrooms across the hall from one another.  We tried to see who could play it the loudest.  But some things come full circle.  Neil realized this when he framed his album with "Tonight's the Night".  So it might make sense that we would attempt a review of an album almost forty years old.  But what makes Tonight's the Night album relevant?  Maybe it's the fact that much of the world existed before Chop and I were born.  Maybe it's just the fact that each of us continues to make discoveries as we grow older.

The minor point is that Neil couldn't have written a song like "Hey Hey My My" without experiencing the death of those good classmates around him.  With the recently departed Hoffman, we realize the loss of opportunity for another celebrity turned politician.  So before we all go out of the blue and into the black, know that tonight's the night.  Take Neil's advice and open up those tired eyes.

Karat