As I Come Back

So I was all set to do a big-ass post yesterday, but then Shanna Moakler bitch-slapped Paris Hilton and I had to work late (yes, I am officially writing for three people now); hence random crap today. But it's good random crap. The musical equivalent of pooping a bouquet of daisies, even.

Datarock, "Fa-fa-fa" - By now, of course, the cat's pretty much out of the bag on "Fa-fa-fa"; I'd really been hoping that I'd be the one to brighten the blogosphere with its introduction, but then again I never really thought I'd have a chance to do so seeing as how Jamesphonesex has only been pimping Datarock since like the Iron Age. But Jesus Christ, I don't care if I'm the last person left on this planet to not go on the record as to "Fa-fa-fa"'s exemplary nature; I realize that I can be given to making impossibly arcane comparisons to describe a band and then quickly stepping back with my hands over my head and the HA HA HA, NOW YOU FIGURE IT OUT face set in place, but this one's real easy, people - in one stroke, Datarock have basically made exactly the song that the Rapture just spent a whole album trying to make, and I say that as someone who LOVES like five songs on that CD. Granted, it's a lot easier to see "Fa-fa-fa"'s virtues when it's not saddled with carrying my attention over through not one but TWO DangerMouse tracks (and rest assured that the body of Pieces of the People We Love is exponentially stronger than that of Datarock Datarock), but the bottom line is that both of these bands seem to be at their very best when they wear their influences on their sleeve, if not tattooed directly onto their forearms, and given that both Datarock and the Rapture seem to be cribbing from the same song here (the Talking Heads' "The Great Curve"), the question simply becomes one of who stuck the pin in deepest. That's not to say that the Rapture don't do extraordinarily well by "The Great Curve", mind you (because uh no), but rather that it's just not fair to put them next to Datarock's unpolished, unchecked, unhinged admiration for the song; there's a certain level of enthusiasm for the genre into which the Rapture are attempting to step that simply doesn't have a prayer of making it through All The Layers Of Ass-Kicking Stuff heaped on top of "W.A.Y.U.H.", and without that enthusiasm, influence-sporting songs like these can quickly turn into three minutes worth of trainspotting fugue-time. Which is, y'know, fine; Name That Influence songs might not be completely salutary for your cultural health, but at least you can actually engage wtih them, and that does count for something. Until, of course, you run into a song like "Fa-fa-fa", a song which obviously refers back to a specific point but, by virtue of being resource-poor in any of a billion areas (no budget to record, nobody either super-talented or super-idiomatic fronting the band, no hot-shit producer behind the decks - none of which, I might add, apply to Datarock or "Fa-fa-fa" generally, but all of which fit like a glove when compared to the indiestravaganza of Pieces of the People We Love), can't really trot its referential value out like a show pony, and is consequently forced to fill in gaps in the song that could be covered up by studio fancy-pantsery with moments of genuine affection for the form they're co-opting - not even necessarily anything too mindfucking, just a nice lil glistening guitar line or a searing gutterlly howled chorus, or basically anything else to let the audience know that you're alive and enjoying playing this music for them and that you aren't, in fact, soulless automatons whose switches have been set to Unknown Pleasures mode for all time (HI DERE BATTLE). Basically, "Fa-fa-fa" is fi-fi-five minutes (sorry) of that - five minutes of a bunch of Norwegians having an absolute blast setting shimmering guitar lines against each other or helping out with the background singing during the chorus just because it's fun or riding a cymbal like you're just sober enough to realize just how ugly the girl under is going to look when the sun comes up. For all the attention paid in tribute to the source material on an album like Pieces of the People We Love - and again, I want to make it unmistakably clear that this attention is about as far from wasted as you can get - I gotta think that Datarock come a lot closer to the mark of how something like Remain In Light actually came to be. (Click here to buy Datarock Datarock from Amazon.co.uk)

Dead! Dead! Dead!, "George Lassoes The Moon" - One of these days, you're going to unfold your morning paper and see a headline reading "MP3 Blogger Of Little Consequence Arrested Following Assault On Billionaire MySpace Proprietor", because I am totally going to kick Tom right in the nuts for downgrading the audio quality of all tracks available through his site to pretty much nil. Shit like this is why I have a hard time buying into all this OMG MYSPACE IS GOING TO REVOLUTIONIZE THE WORLD OF MUSIC CAN U ADD ME PLZ stuff; the bottom line is that you're staring at an uphill battle if you want to convince me that the future of music involves presenting it to its intended audience in a form so wholly disrespectful to the artists' original idea. I mean, I have a feeling that Dead! Dead! Dead! had bigger plans for "George Lassoes The Moon" than what's contained in this mp3 pulled straight from their site; it's this huge, swelling, shredding indie-Queen number, certainly worthy of being included in any discussion involving bands like Dogs or Mumm-Ra, but it's also got all these quirky little touches which just get lost in the 96kbps mix, not least of which has to be the music box in the last ten seconds which you're unlikely to even notice with all the compression. The real tragedy, of course, is that this stuff practically doesn't exist anywhere but on MySpace; there's probably going to be a lot of people out there expecting all of Dead! Dead! Dead!'s songs to sound either this loud or this...un-nuanced?, simply because there's no option to hear the whole song on iTunes, let alone CD. Needless to say, when it comes to a band with as much potential as Dead! Dead! Dead!, this simply will not do. WEAR A FUCKING CUP, TOM. (Click here to visit Dead! Dead! Dead!'s MySpace page to download more songs, or click here to visit Tough Love Records and buy their single or What Will Survive Of Us, a Tough Love compilation featuring another quite good D!D!D! song)

Letters & Colours, "Confrontation" - YEAH, MORE SHIT THAT SOUNDS LIKE JOY DIVISION. Geddoverit. It helps that Letters & Colours happen to be a rather excellent JD-ripoff band well worth investigating in their own right; by now, I've come to accept that suspiciously echoing Interpol is just going to be an occupational hazard for listening to music like this, and frankly I'm even willing to accept Interpol aping as long as it keeps the song in question that much further away from motherfucking U2 territory. And to their immense credit, Letters & Colours seem to sidestep the whole U2 conundrum with astonishing deftness; "Confrontation" may pack the pure destructive disco force to get one Wembley's worth of white folks doing the Stand Very Actively In One Place dance, but it earns its power through the way it spends itself teasing the big moment rather than beating you over the head with it - it took me a few listens to decide whether or not I gave even one shit about the chorus, and by the time I decided I liked its rather incremental nature (basically, imagine that the chorus of "Banquet" was that "I'm on fire" bit towards the end rather than the huge, bombastic chorus it actually sports), I'd already unknowingly signed on full-stop to all the attendant charms of "Confrontation"'s angular, snarling ways. Gimme that over a thousand opportunities for earnest Christ-poses any day of the week. (Click here to buy the "Confrontation"/"Bigger Than Life" single from Rough Trade)

es, "Kaikkeuden kauneus ja kasittamattomyys" - Part of me, of course, knows full well that a big reason why I started getting into all the contemporary classical stuff that seems to have utterly taken over my listening life these days has to be that I like explaining them so much; there's really no reason for anyone to start listening to Phillip Glass in the first place (and he's almost invariably the first step on this journey to the crystal citadel of pretense) except to call attention to the contrast between your listening habits and and those of everyone else. It's just that I hate listening to music like that, and it drives me crazy when I have no recourse except bludgeoning people with my dense, unwieldy brain, especially when it comes to the stuff of this nature that I basically enjoy as pop music. That's not to say that I expect hear people bumping es like it's Daddy Yankee or anything; as much as I enjoy his work, I can't deny that the market for ambient, spacey, nu-age drones like his is actually probably even smaller than I think. But the facts of the matter are that I really like the way this stuff sounds, and I really like the way it moves (even if it takes ten minutes to move two inches), and most crucially, I like it in the same way that I like something like "What You Know" or "Crazy Boys" or whatever - it's the same mechanism, just set to a different purpose. I mean, when that wall of voice suddenly showed up two-thirds of the way through the song, I literally sat up in my chair in surprise - I've heard friggin' DFA mixes that only wish they could disrupt themselves so artfully. And yet, unlike with a DFA mix, I still have to defend es' right to epistemologically exist, because people hear ten minutes of drone and think it's just ten minutes of drone. I guess the only solace I can take from this is that I used to have to make the same arguments in favor of DFA stuff, and though I hardly think that's the path that es can expect, at least there's hope. (Click here to buy Kaikkeuden kauneus ja kasittamattomyys directly from Kraak, the label - you do have to email them to order, but the prices are fair and the music is unimpeachable.)

Middle Distance Runner, "Naturally" - When you name your mp3 blog after an exceedingly (yet unfairly) obscure line in a mid-90s throwaway animated vehicle for Jon Lovitz, you're pretty much guaranteed to get some emails from people who've gone berzerk in the face of simply encountering someone else on the planet who recognizes the source; the internet may afford humanity more Springfield Milhouse Meets Shelbyville Milhouse moments than ever previously conceivable, but that doesn't diminish their power in the slightest. That being said, I fully expected it to be a one-way street until an email from Middle Distance Runner showed up in my inbox, frothing and wailing over rose-tinted memories of the line's unimpeachable delivery before slipping so casually into band-shilling mode that I figured I ought to check out their stuff just on general principles. And thank fuck for general principles, because this stuff is damn good - the band's PR compares them to Snow Patrol and Radiohead, but whatever merits Plane In Flames may have as some ornate rock construction really pale in comparison to its immeasurable value as a relic of the days when you discovered new music by buying a copy of CMJ for the CD. I mean, "Naturally" seems to be the track that I can't seem to shake free of (and, incidentally, it's a damn dirty trick putting it first thing on the album), but there's just song after song on Plane In Flames that might as well serve as a promo for what the band can do - the "warm organ sound" thing on "Naturally", or the right-angled post-Bloc Party thing of "Switch It Up", or the Muse-worthy bleepy pomp of "Hooks", or basically anything on this album - there's just song after song that would have had me beating a path to Pointdexter Records a decade ago. Time will have to tell, of course, whether the album's a keeper or not, but in the present tense, it's certainly a want-er, and around these parts, that actually does count for something, especially when we're talking about music found in the Den of Lost Souls known as my email account. So this is what it feels like...when doves cry... (Click here to visit Middle Distance Runner's homepage and stream the rest of the album, or click here to buy Plane In Flames directly from the band [ok, sorta, but CDBaby ain't too far off])