someone tried to convince me that interpol was clever, charming even, but i can't help but think i'd rather listen to the cure or the smiths. the lead singer's four-note range and endless babble over weird, almost U2 guitar haze is novel until two songs in, when you realize, 'hey, this guy really can't sing.' and, listening to his lyrics, maybe he shouldn't. ' the subway, she is a porno.' no. the subway is transit and your voice is a lead weight on my head.
today, against my rebellion against troubleman (follow?) i picked up the milky wimpshake and loved it entirely from almost the first second. well, i like television personalities and sarcasm and self-depricating/secretly egotistical indie-pop only when it comes out of the undertones/dirty punk and leftist university-isms so how could i not? makes me want to fire up the four-track and start a hand-stitched fanzine.
listening to the zombies still like a disease. the route of all true indie pop is not the beatles, but them with their tireless attention to the backspin, to sentimental reflection and weirdly dusty melodies strung over warm walking/soul-fueled bass lines. time of the season is such an afterthought, it is the best argument for not trusting oldies radio. who ever did?

forgotten radio stations play forgotten things - the guess who's first album after bachman left - share the land. can't say i enjoyed it that much although after my introduction into the world of the boogie rock via the James Gang last weekend I at least began to understand where they were coming from. Unrelated, I think that Music from Big Pink is a terribly overrated album and if I hadn't sent my bs into Chunklet on the matter, I would add that to my list. anyway, the first song is this totally bizarre dis on people who ride public transportation called 'bus rider' which had this crude visciousness to it that, 32-years later, seems hilarious in its childish attitude. c'mon man, what's wrong with the bus? especially in fucking manitoba or wherever they're from. anyway, one of my least favorite oys of the piano is in gratutious honky tonk chatter thrown down under bands like this to give texture - it works in great rolling stones songs, is fabulous in early spiritualized and all over where layered with care. but this shit was awful. not that anyone reading this doesn't know deep in their hearts that the guess who sort of suck.

conceptualist v. concept driven...annoying distinction, but needed. john cage, a man i wish i knew more about than the sort of exploded cliches i've adopted for party chatter about idea over action. of course, others did it at the time - stockhausen and his om - but cage really explored it with all types of compositions - from radios, speaking, silence (argh, i'd love to bring a boom box to 4' 33" and get kicked out...oh, another of my musical audience annoyance pranks has been hatched), and of course, tape loops. ahh, to live in california in the '40s. all that concrete, all those pinko minds.
nina nastastia - good stuff - sort of like a country rasputina sans annoying super-fake vibrato. always trust touch and go, even in the promo. very inoften do i approve of extended jams where the strings, usually cello, is allowed to come out from the mix and have melodic dominance, but the song 'ocean' really gets me. she's not even country, she's just cat power without the twirled-hair ignorance and coy downplay, tory without the stigma or harpsichord (or overuse of breathy delivery)...
also, the new pop writer for the new york times who covered nelly today is trying to do some sort of 'larger commentary' on society with his bs about mr. cornell (i love finding out the real names of monikered stars, guilty pleasure) being a posterchild for the mundane, army-brat midwest existence. st. louis is everywhere, and nelly the every man. let's take off all our clothes.

britney spears should be horsewhipped for her cover of 'rock n' roll.' i'm not a fan of the bust mentalitiy 'wwjjd' what would joan jett do pseudo rock girl thing but fo real, man, that just put the nail in the coffin. luckily we're all up in the alicia keys funny hats and acid wash mismashed denim era + native american accent so i don't have to think about it anymore.

got the neko case album today and listened to it excitedly. as indie rock sputtered and died, so many defected to alt.country. case is the real deal, if a canadian can be country, which thinking about marlboro ads of big mountains glistening, moose, etc makes total sense. the music, unfortunately, is saccrine, overprocessed and borderline cliched. her voice lacks the sincerity that makes smaltzy country music okay - maybe i'm the cliched one thinking that sound needs a little dusk or gravel, world wearyness. it's hard to have a good balance, it only happened once for edith frost and then she lost it, wilco has it by sheer overattention to the empathetic quality of each tune, and guys like jason molina or oldham only use it as a touchpoint. does music need to push always? no, but neko seems to settle in production, songwriting and even in her own inflections...i'll listen more and maybe understand differently.

listened to aspects of physics, one of those amorphous acoustic-electronic bedroom style projects that everyone who 'has a friend who's really great/creative/into his computer' will be forced to like at some point in their lives. it's like mice parade sans the late '90s chic or badly drawn boy merciless pop sentiments. these albums are always prompting the question ' why do we need so much music' and why isn't this person just taking the time to actually do something real with the project instead of sending the dat off to be mastered and never thinking of it again? wouldn't the indie world be much better if people consolidated their efforts, pulled their bedrooms together and put out only the best? or is this one of those mountain goats scenerios, where documentation is synonymous with creation. does he even remember all of the songs he's written?
i'm playing devil's advocate in a way because i am all about documentation and believe in the semi-inspired whirlwind of lo-fi or singular, uncritically or commerically motivated music making. but is it meant for a general, disinterested or uninitiated audience? isn't the beauty of proliferation that individual scenes can have actual, solidified objects associated with it, a sound coming from a group, a locale, a membership...or has computerland destroyed that physicality entirely, or does that even matter? viritual communities, labels as communities (warp, aethestics, young god, mego)...
can publications have communities? the wire may, internationally...there seem to be for things like mc sweeneys or basement life (he he), even sound collector even if its more social then philosophical. hmm. it's hard to imagine publications like tiger's eye, creem, early nme - things people HAD to read to stay in touch with their communities. then again, at the nation everyone EVERYONE read certain pubs and you could jump into the next level of any author's argument virtually w/o having to reference the pub (the new yorker, nytimes, the guardian, salon, slate, the post, in these times, etc).