A Quandry

The Apparitions, "God Monkey Robot" - There's been a recent development with this blog in the last couple of weeks which is pretty much awesome and horrifying in equal measures, namely that I'm starting to get emails from bands about checking out their music for this site. Obviously, this is at least a little cool; I'd be lying if I said I wasn't pretty flattered every time it happens, and I do genuinely enjoy attempting to address my musical blind spots every so often. The problem, however, is that contrary to everything you've read on this blog so far, I really don't want to be a shill (this is what happens when you pay an ass-load of money to study film criticism for four years and then realize that all the paying jobs go to people like Gene Shalit), and so far I've had a hard time talking about the music that gets sent to me without feeling like (a) a super-shill, or (b) a snarky-ass knee-jerk rock-crit megadork. However, a few nights ago I randomly decided to check out the Apparitions, and in light of how many times I've played "God Monkey Robot" since then I figure it's time to come to terms with that.

My favorite definition of a hit song comes from, unsurprisingly, Chuck Klosterman, who offhandedly described a hit as being a song that sounds like it should be consumed in public. It's not a perfect definition, of course ("My Humps", for instance, shouldn't be consumed anywhere), but it's a pretty remarkably useful one, insofar as it lets me call a bunch of songs "hits" in spite of the fact that they'll sell a hundred copies worldwide as long as they make my friends lose their shit when I throw it on a mix CD or a party playlist. At the very least, it sure lets me call "God Monkey Robot" a hit - my guess is that if the Apparitions were coming out of New York instead of Lexington, Kentucky, we'd be hearing a bunch more about them, seeing as how it's among the most arresting and immediate singles I've heard coming out of an American band since Voxtrot and the Harlem Shakes and Colored Shadows started making me pay attention to my own backyard again. Those aren't just names I'm picking out of a hat, either - right now there seems to be a concerted movement in American indie-pop towards making fully-realized singles jam-packed with insane new-wave-jangle hooks, like everyone got signed to Postcard all at once. If you like the process of keeping track of pop music - that is, if you check Allmusic at work like most guys check ESPN - then congradulations; you're living in a heady time indeed.

The problem, at least from where I'm sitting, is that as an American, I don't have a choice but to deal with the actual meat of the songs, a task I can gleefully swear off when it comes to all that UK indie pop nonsense I tend to post. I mean, I have (let's say) serious doubts regarding the "reality" the Rakes tried to address on Capture/Release, but not half as serious as my insane man-crush on the way all those songs sound - a Paul Epworth hi-hat washes a lot of sins away. Unfortunately, when it comes to Americans, I've been around American indie for pretty much my whole life, seeing as how I could have practically thrown a rock out of my bedroom window as a kid and hit Merge HQ, and as such I have a pretty acute ear for when people are trying to (musically) put me on, or at least when they sound like they're putting me on, and I have to say that "God Monkey Robot" suffers mightily for it. Admittedly, there's personal biases at work here too (I'm generally not all that big on "storytelling" in songs, and "God Monkey Robot" basically goes "This happened, then this happened, then this happened"), but the bottom line is that the song spends an awful lot of its cool capital on a chorus that goes "First there was God/Then came the monkey/Then came the robot". I mean, even taking into account my notorious thick-headedness when it comes to interpreting lyrics, would you want to howl along with that in your car or drunk as fuck on the dancefloor?

Again, though, I'm bringing this up pretty much because it's the only thing you have to watch out for in this song; it's certainly a measure of the song's success that I find myself chomping at the bit to get over something that's put me off a thousand bands in the past. I'm pretty sure most people won't have that kind of problems with it; "God Monkey Robot" is the kind of song that seems to speak volumes just going by how it sounds and how efficiently it crawls into your brain, complete with one hell of a nice little bridge that should answer any lingering questions quite nicely. As for me, at least I got one keeper of a song from them; in a just world they'd be setting up talks to work with Ian Broudie, a producer with a damn firm grip on how to direct my attention away from the lyrics if ever there was one. Or they could, y'know, get better - any band that can come up with a song this immaculate certainly has a future ahead of them. (Click here to visit the Apparitions' website and pre-order As This is Futuristic through Machine Inc)

ES, "Sateenkaarisuudelma III" - I spent all afternoon yesterday trying to write about ES' Sateenkaarisuudelma, but ended up throwing in the towel after realizing that I'd only succeeded in writing four pages about country music and surface noise, neither of which really have a goddamned thing to do with the album itself. Admittedly, this is partially due to the album itself; Stylus really did hit the nail on the head when they characterized it as being more than a little new-age-y, and at least part of the fun of listening to that stuff lies in letting your mind wander. But I just felt like I was doing a disservice to an album that won't seem to let me go - make all the jokes you want about how I'm heading down a path that ends in me Seriously Appreciating some white dude in a turtleneck playing a vibrophone with painful sincerity, but Sateenkaarisuudelma sure sounds beautiful to me - I've listened to this album so much by now that I can spell it without even checking my iTunes anymore. I'm pretty sure this track, the third part (b'dur) of the record's first cycle, should tell you everything you need to know; in addition to being vast and sedate like the rest of the album, it's also probably the most effective example the arrangement at work on Sateenkaarisuudelma - I've probably heard this track a thousand times by now, and that hanging, ringing key that comes in towards the middle can still catch me off-guard. It is, of course, not for everyone - if you weren't right there with my on my Delia & Gavin fix last year, for instance, this probably isn't your record - but good god, if it's down your alley, you're going to be listening to this album for a damn long time. Now let's convince Kraak to put it out on CD. (Click here to buy Sateenkaarisuudelma from Boomkat)