Sid Meier's Random Music Talk CIV

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i'm thankful my seat in this room is near yours so i can punch you in the face.
 
I prefer the airing of the grieveances, then the feats of strength.

And I'm thankful I get a front row seat for IWB kicking Mofo's butt at the table.
 
For all you Sonic Youth fans out there, this new Thurston Moore album is pretty good. It features Steve Shelley on drums and Debbie Googe from My Bloody Valentine on bass. The vibe is very Murray Street, which can only be a good thing. Easily the best of the post-divorce records the individual SY members did.
 
I'm with Traviud and Ashley on the listening to albums thing. Personally, I say just listen to whatever the fuck you feel like listening to. For me, sometimes that means listening to at least five new albums a day for weeks; sometimes it means spending months enjoying old favourites. End result always seems to be discovering and appreciating cool stuff.

cobl04 said:
And there have been artists I've become a fan of who I've discovered in a "backwards" way.
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Same here. The idea that there is a "right" way to get into an artist nonsense. So many artists - and, to possibly a greater extent, genres - I've discovered in a way that would not be described as normal, and to be honest the normal way either bores me or does not appeal. I know I wouldn't be a metal fan if I had tried to get into it via the thrash/heavy metal route. I totally get why people think metal is stupid when all they know is Iron Maiden or Dragonforce, because I reckon that sort of metal is pretty lame too.
 
Nick Cave's 'O Children' is scarifyingly good. Spine tinglingly good. Unbelievable.

I say that as not-a-massive-fan of the double album it came from.
 
I'm listening to Reflektor for the first time this year. Going to spoiler a ranty running diary about this one, my least favorite album by one of my favorite bands ever.

Holy fuck this album is a small sonic wonder, thank you James Murphy. Reflektor and We Exist sound like a million bucks (the budget was probably bigger than that tbh). But what the fuck is Win singing about anymore? Is he being purposely vague and condescending? Who the fuck is "we?" Why were your (all) relationships worth a damn before you had to "look at a screen?" So many great influences across these first two songs though. Talking Heads, David Bowie :)heart: that cameo), Fleetwood Mac, The Clash...Arcade Fire must really love rock music!

Flashbulb Eyes starts so well. Too bad about the rest of it. The hook is probably the least catchy part of the song. Guys, you've got it backwards.

Here Comes the Night Time Vol. 1 is actually rather interesting and lyrically sympathetic. I can get into this. It's kind of the Ob La Di Ob La Da of their career, only that song didn't have a mosh section. The electronic parts sound like they were sampled from Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots.

I hate Normal Person. Does anyone like rock n roll music? BECAUSE I'M NOT SURE IF I DO!! Fuck you then, Win. No wonder your interpretation of rock is godawful. This sounds like some Achy Breaky Heart shit. People could line dance to the verses. The chorus is so badly produced that I have to mute it to avoid the track peaking again and again. And once again, I have no idea what he's talking about. No specific details, just us-vs-them garbage.

You Alreadty Know has a terrible chorus but I really like the bouncy Supremes-meets-Smiths verses. Very nice. Let's just ignore that as much as Win despises rock music, nearly every artist they've ripped off so far could be broadly classified as a rock band.

Joan of Arc is a mixed bag. For fuck's sake, you bash dad rock and now you're transparently re-writing It's Still Rock and Roll to Me? Come on. I will say that Regine's sha-na-oooooohhh backing vocals in the chorus are lovely. Very catchy stuff. I stopped giving a damn about the lyrics when it became obvious that Win didn't care either.

Thank God the second half has started. The song is boring as shit, but you can instantly tell the difference in approach with Here Comes the Night Time 2: Electric Boogaloo. It's not a screaming mess and leads expertly into Awful Sound. Straight up, I love Awful Sound. I don't know who the drummer is in Arcade Fire (Napoleon Dynamite? The guy with the straightener?), but I love that Unforgettable Fire-sounding beat. This song is so gentle yet cleverly arranged. It goes through many different movements, but they all fit together very well. My goodness, that outro is heavenly. I'm getting choked up over here.

I can't say enough about It's Never Over. Top 5-10 Arcade Fire song for me. Yeah, it sounds like the Safety Dance and Do They Know It's Christmas there at the beginning, but once that absolutely killer guitar line comes in, I can't help but wonder why the first half was largely so awful. This is a true band effort and they make it sound easy. The snaking shared vocals of Win and Regine have seldom sounded so natural together, the rhythm section is tight as fuck and, once again, they cycle through different movements with no sweat. God, that outro is beautiful. In many ways, this is the perfect Arcade Fire song.

Porno isn't a sexy song. I don't think Arcade Fire has any idea what one of those would sound like anyway. The synthesizers here sound terribly cheesy and it's all so absurdly ominous. What I do love is the chorus, which is just the right amount of release. The Stayin Alive strings post-chorus are cool and hey, this is a (really vague) character sketch! This song could actually describe a living person. Good going.

"You say love is real
Like a disease
Come on tell me please"

Ugh, OK. Baby steps.

Afterlife sounds like an Arcade Fire song. I mean, whatever. They write shit like this in their sleep. It's practically Sprawl III. The closest they come to a real radio hit and it's likable enough. Some great imagery in here and I love that buzzsaw guitar tone. Regine continues to be present on this album just the right amount. I love her backing vocals here, they're ghostly and distant yet earwormy. My one complaint is the chorus. "We'll work it out/scream and shout" is kind of a dud for me. Lazy line. It feels like a shrug. Ooh ooh ooh-ooh.

Last song + an eternity of studio fuckery. Supersymmetry is harmless, very relaxing and would be a great closer, if the album actually ended here. I think the second side of this album is sequenced very well. I have nothing positive to say about the bonus bullshit tacked onto the end. Just another way for the band to make this album a pain in the ass to listen to.

Still not really feeling this album as much as I'd like to. There's a really great 8-9 track album in here that would have lived up to their previously high standards, but too much of the first half is poor for one reason or another. Win seems totally lost as a lyricist here. It's tempting to give him way too much credit and assume the obtuse nature of the lyrics were purposeful, but meh. They come across condescending and ring hollow. Musically, they're on to something here. It was a good idea to tap into the strut no one assumed they had. They just needed more than 45 minutes of good material if they planned to make an 80 minute album.

I'll probably revisit this again in a year and hope the genius has made itself clear by then. In the meantime, I'll start listening to Awful Sound/It's Never Over more frequently. Holy shit.
 
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Well, at the very least, now I kinda wanna give that album another go, but I'm not anticipating much has changed for me.

Also, I still think the vocal delivery, itself, of the Scream and shout bit makes it all worthwhile.
 
The lyrics are a big part of why I've kind of lost patience with that last Arcade Fire record. And no, I'm not clear that Win has any real idea what he's on about a lot of the time, I certainly don't.

It's funny because circa their first three records or so, it didn't occur to me that he wasn't fairly good with lyrics. Not fantastic maybe, but there were definitely some memorable songs over the years. AntiChrist Television Blues springs to mind.
 
I'm off to RYLA, the youth leadership/personal development camp I volunteer on. My third time on the team. Cannot wait. See you motherfuckers in a week.
 
Kieran McConville said:
The lyrics are a big part of why I've kind of lost patience with that last Arcade Fire record. And no, I'm not clear that Win has any real idea what he's on about a lot of the time, I certainly don't.

It's funny because circa their first three records or so, it didn't occur to me that he wasn't fairly good with lyrics. Not fantastic maybe, but there were definitely some memorable songs over the years. AntiChrist Television Blues springs to mind.
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It's funny now how well he used to stumble into good lyrics. They are one of my favorite bands, but he is really an insufferable shit who has written more pretentious lines than I still have admitted.
 
I grew up in the suburbs and found almost all the lyrics on that album unrelatable which really opened my eyes to his patriarchal take on many of the issues he tries to tackle. It seems like he reads some things about whatever he wants to talk about and then just explains it at people. I always find people having personal epiphanies in the midst of swimming way out of their element to be the most interesting protagonists because they represent the most common state of living. Basically, Win thinks he figured it out well before he knew shit.
 
Windowsill broke whatever illusions I had of Win not being a sanctimonious dipshit. He sounds like a 70 year old libertarian.

"Don't wanna hear the noises on TV
Don't want the salesmen coming after me"

"Don't wanna fight in a holy war
Don't want the salesmen knocking at my door
I don't wanna live in America no more"

"MTV, what have you done to me?
Save my soul, set me free!"

Then he wrote an entire album about how much better things were when he was a kid, like, 15 years ago. Reflektor is basically the same shit, only with anachronistic Grecian imagery and a bunch of whining about the music industry. Why the fuck isn't he Amish already?
 
PhilsFan said:
I grew up in the suburbs and found almost all the lyrics on that album unrelatable which really opened my eyes to his patriarchal take on many of the issues he tries to tackle. It seems like he reads some things about whatever he wants to talk about and then just explains it at people. I always find people having personal epiphanies in the midst of swimming way out of their element to be the most interesting protagonists because they represent the most common state of living. Basically, Win thinks he figured it out well before he knew shit.
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I had the exact opposite reaction, for the most part. There were songs that I couldn't relate to at all, all of the suburban war stuff (not the song, the theme), but We Used to Wait, especially rings true for my childhood.
 
It must be hard for them though, having a debut hanging around their neck like that. Nobody ever said U2 or Radiohead spent their careers in the shadow of their debut records.

I don't know if relatability per se is an issue for me, The Suburbs doesn't describe my life but maybe does describe a world I once saw in movies, whatever. It's a pretty good record, but the whole 'us kids' thing was well and truly played out at that point.
 
LemonMelon said:
I wasn't alive when When We Used to Wait was relevant.

Did Win time travel or something?
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Sure you were. (maybe not old enough to remember) Email didn't become mainstream until very late 90s/early 00s. Hell less than 50% of Americans were on the internet as late as 2001.

Win was born around the same time I was, 1980, and the song is very relevant to what I experienced until I was 20 or so. (I think I started emailing in '97 and I was ahead of the curve)

/randomemailtalk


Sent from my iPhone using U2 Interference
 
I guess I got on the internet early so I can't relate to it at all. My grandfather died in 1998 and we were willed a Gateway PC, so my parents were using email around the time I was 7 or 8. Can't remember anything before I turned 3, so that's maybe 5 years without internet.

Coming from someone of gen Y, it's a slightly foreign sentiment, but I get where he's going with it. Neil Young has been writing shit like that for 20 years.
 
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