#ok where's the version where it's just paul on a piano playing along with the edited demo

[leapinarmadillo]

did i like it from a purely musical sense? eh. i think it's way overdone. did it make me cry and do i understand why it's that way? yep. much love to all 4 of the guys as always.

[idkmanilovethebeatles]

hey guys! once i read a fanfic about the Sgt. Pepper launch party but i never found it again! so i just made my own version, based on what i remember from that other story and adding some things to the plot as well. if you wrote the original version, i'd love to read it again!

so here's my first paul mccartney x reader fic, hope you enjoy!

-----------

Abbey Road Studios, 9 am.

You and Paul have been seeing each other for quite a while now. You got along pretty well, but he never properly asked you to be his girlfriend. It never really bothered you, you don't really cared about labels. You knew he really like you and you liked him too, so what was to worry?

You worked near Abbey Road so sometimes you'd hang around the studio with Paul before the other guys came around, playing some tunes and enjoying each others company for a bit longer before you two had to work. They were working on their next album, Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, finishing up some songs. Paul had been really tense lately, worried about the album and being really bossy with the guys.

Paul headed straight to the piano. You sat in front of him and grabbed his left handed guitar and started playing with him. The fact that you were left handed as well was a perfect excuse to play his beautiful guitars. You two started playing some little tunes and some improvisation as well. Some time later, the door opened and John came in dancing to the song you were playing.

"Oh, what a nice surprise!", he greeted you, "She can even play with you! Are you replacing me, McCartney? After all these years?", he said joking, sounding like he had just been cheated on.

"Mornin! You don't have to worry, he's all yours Johnny boy!" you laughed at him.

Paul blushed his cheeks and kept playing the piano, while John started tuning his own guitar. George and Ringo came right along.

"I guess we have a new guitarist!", George said jokingly, "Can I go home then?"

You laughed and smiled at the man. "Hey, Geo. Good morning!"

"Good morning, kiddo", said George giving you a kiss on the forehead.

"Good mornin, love", said Ringo as he pets your head kindly messing up your hair and making his way to his drum kit.

"Alright, fellas, I'll just grab some tea and we'll start recording ok? Tune up!", said Paul while leaving the recording room.

You stayed chatting with George and Ringo while John followed Paul out of the room.

"She's a really nice bird, y'know?", he said to Paul.

"Yeah, I really like her", said Paul while looking down to avoid eye contact with John.

"Oh yeah? So why are you being such a bastard? C'mon, man! Ask her hand!", John said teasingly. "Or else... You're gonna lose that girl..." He said jokingly and singing the lyrics to their own song.

John headed back to the recording room, leaving Paul alone with his thoughts. Maybe John was right, he was done messing around with all the girls, he just wanted to settle down. Better than that, he just wanted to settle down with you.

Paul made his way to the recording room and was surprised to not see you playing his guitar anymore.

While the boys chatted, John grabbed his guitar and started playing the chords to "You're Gonna Lose That Girl" in the background.

"Where's y/n?", he asked confused.

"She just left, she was late for work", said George while tuning his guitar.

"Maybe you can catch her if you run, I don't think she left the building yet", said Ringo.

"If you don't treat her right my friend you're gonna find her gone...", John sang laughing teasingly at Paul.

"Oh, fuck off!", he said and made his way to catch you before you left.

Paul ran as fast as he could when he saw your figure just crossing the front door.

"Y/n! Wait!", he ran to you and managed to grab your hand.

"Oh, hi Paul. I'm sorry I didn't kiss you goodbye, I lost track of time and turns out I'm really late", you said surprised that he came after you.

"Don't worry, love. I just wanted to ask if you'd like to come to our album launch party? As a date, I mean", Paul asked you. He didn't think he would be so nervous to ask such a simple question.

"Well, yes! I'd love to, really.", you grinned at him. "I was beginning to wonder when you would ask me out properly", you said teasingly.

Paul laughed. "I know, I've been so stressed lately that I end up not giving you the attention you deserve. I'm sorry. But hey, it's a date! A real date.", he said and gave you a peck on the lips.

"Ok Mr. McCharmly, I'll see you then! And I hope I don't lose my job because of you", you said laughing and made your way to work.

Paul headed back to the studio with a stupid grin on his face. He had it all planned out. The boys were warming up, playing some tunes in the recording room.

"Ok boys, no more joking around, let's record 'Getting Better', shall we?", he said to the boys. Deep down, he knew it was all getting better indeed.

--

Sgt. Pepper launch party, 8pm.

You came into Brian's house and was immediately greeted by George.

"Hi, Y/n! I'm glad you came", he hugged you, "Can I help you get something to drink?"

"Hey, Geo! Yes, please! I'm in real need of a drink tonight. Have you seen Paul?"

"I didn't see him yet. The man has been so crazy lately, how can you deal with him?, he said jokingly.

"I've got some tricks", you answered winking at him. He laughed.

"Good evenin fellas, how are you in this fine night?", John said in a heavy british accent and approached you two. "I see Mr. Bossy is not around." He wrapped an arm around your shoulders.

"I was just asking her how she can handle him like that", said George.

"A kink for dominance, I suppose", John joked. "He really misses you, y'know", John said in your ear.

"I know how moody he's been. I'll look around for him. Thanks, John".

You excused yourself and went looking for Paul. He was outside, a cigarette in his mouth.

"Need fire?", you asked him.

"Y/n! I'm so glad you came!" You could see the relief in his eyes. He hugged you tight.

God, he was tired. You could see he hadn't sleep well for days. You lit his cigarette for him.

"Thank you, ma'am", he said cordially, "So, what do you think?"

"Everyone loved the album, you know that? You can see how jealous Mick Jagger is of your made up band", you joked.

He laughed. Paul was really nervous about the reception the album would have from the public. It really was something new, a concept album, The Beatles not being The Beatles. Maybe an unconscious escape from himself.

The music was loud inside the house and it had just started playing "The Way You Looked Tonight" by Frank Sinatra.

"God, I love this song", you said and started humming along the melody.

"May you concede me this dance?", Paul asked for your hand.

"Yes, sir. But I don't really dance, so don't blame me if I step on your feet".

You took his hand and Paul embraced his arms around your waist, while you put yours arms around his neck and rested your head on his shoulder. He started signing the lyrics to you, right in your ear: "Yes, you're lovely, with your smile so warm. And your cheeks so soft... There is nothing for me but to love you and the way you look tonight".

His voice was calm, he really meant what he sang. You really looked stunning that night with your black dress that suited so well for your body. The moon was bright and made such a beautiful contrast with your eyes.

Paul spinned you around and lead you two to the corner. He pressed you on the wall and looked deeply into your eyes and then to your red lips. He kissed you tenderly, slowly, moving his hands down to your waist. He already knows this path really well, but everytime you're together he explores your body like it's the first time. He just never gets tired of touching every part of your curves. He'd been waiting for this moment for so long, he couldn't wait to be in your arms again. You broke the kiss and started to make a path of kisses to his neck. He was wearing a grey scarf that night.

"Excuse me, sir", you gently untied the knot on his scarf and sucked on the exposed skin of his neck. "So you'll see this mark and remember to call me tomorrow for a next official date."

He laughed to himself. He knew he would never forget that night, the way you looked and the way you danced. And the best was yet to come, you just didn't know yet. He looked deep into your eyes and whispered close to your ear:

"Marry me."

[musicmixtapes]

September 26, 2018 Mix

This week as I was curating the playlist, I got to thinking a lot about the way that our mood at a particular moment affects the music we choose to listen to. Some people say that they pick music the opposite of their mood to counteract a bad day, some choose to delve into that feeling and get in touch with it. I, being the latter, am having a memory ridden, reflective sort of week, so I chose songs that talk about the past a little bit and how they can influence the present/future. I hope you enjoy and find something that suits your mood. 

Spotify Playlist 1. Planet Hunter by Wolf Alice - This song is all about trying to recreate memories of something or with someone that happened awhile back, events which were really positive, but they cannot be rehabilitated. The artist reminds me of if Taylor Swift had not become a pop music sellout and instead taken a dark moody indie music route, and well, the results are stunning because she creates a depth of feeling to the music that most pop cannot do, in my opinion. The part I relate to the most that struck me was the repeated phrase of "I left my mind behind in 2015" which reaches a point where we, as listeners, realize that there are peaks in our lives that we wish to return to, especially at some of our valleys. I love this because it is an upbeat song about feeling out of place in the present, which is really fascinating. 2. St. Paul by Ritchy Mitch & The Coal Miners - Honestly, the piano that tinkles into a wonderful melody/rift in the beginning has to be the most alluring part of this song, which eventually becomes a much bigger feeling as it continues on. There aren't many striking piano-driven songs these days, so I was impressed with that along with the fact that this song clearly disses a saint, yet doesn't seem offensive in the slightest because it is so personal and not an attack on anything but oneself's feelings. The instrumentals and their uncertainty directly correlate with the restlessness of the lyrics and the crunchy sound of the singer's vocals; we love to see a parallel of the sound of the music to the actual meaning behind the song. All the literary techniques used to write a song is the reason why our ears are so attuned to it. 3. Window by Nana Grizol - Going along with the recurring theme of memories and the past, this song is literally a metaphor for a window looking into the past of what something once was. The defining line of this song comes when the singer refers to the window of the past and saying that "we can lift them/and focus on the moments that we lift in" which is a beautiful shift in tone from a reminiscent tune to one that look towards changing for the better and leaving the memories (whether good, bad or ugly) behind for someone else to revolve around. The artist, Nana Grizol, often covers really broad topics, such as negative feelings, the passing of time, moving on in a really succinct way that reaches an audience who needs to hear mantras in a refreshing way. I like to think of this song as a meditative yoga for the ears, please practice daily. 4. Solitary Daughter by Bedouine - I found this song in the most interesting way, so here it is: I was in the Mcnally Jackson bookstore on Prince Street in the city, rifling through the poetry section (as one does) and stumbled upon a book that transcribed songs into poems and included commentary from other writers and from the artists themselves, in a lot of cases. Reading these lyrics as a poem in a book was so thrilling because I often talk a lot about how some songs are really just poetry set to music, and in this case, other people must have thought so too. This piece is incredible in its way of speaking about a woman not needing someone to rely on or anything to sustain her, except for her own self, her home is herself, which is so liberating to both hear and read. I highly recommend reading the lyrics alongside listening. 5. Chemicals by Gregory Alan Isokov - Off of his brand new EP "Dark, Dark, Dark" which was released not but six days ago, is this peaceful and meaningful acoustic folky ballad by a personal favorite of mine. This piece is especially interesting because it plays off of the notion of the different ways in which chemicals can affect a person's body, kind of like the way a person who is really important in one's life can do the same. An image that I love to see showing up in art is the trope of hands trying to reach one another, whether it be in the "Creation of Adam" or an old film. This song plays with this lost hands imagery, in the line "how my hands can't seem to find your hands in the dark", which if I wasn't already in love with the song, sealed the deal for me 100%. Definitely check out the other two tracks off of the EP, they are wonderful as well. 6. Slipped by The National - This week's mix all began with this one sad ballad by my current favorite group and it just built off of this. I cannot express with words, on paper or in person, how much I am tethered to the lyrics of this song. Something about the raw and honest way that this was strung together speaks to a person who is done with being vulnerable to someone who has no intention in showing hidden parts of themselves back. In this narrative song, the speaker is talking to a girl who left the city to go to a more rural area in the South, thus separating the two, and telling how tragic it is to break away from something when he could not be what she wanted him to be. This is a solemn and intense vow to oneself that they will not break down and fall apart because of a love ending, this is another mantra. 7. We're So Lost by Voom - Upon first instinct, I would like to classify this song under tracks I would listen to whilst laying under the stars and thinking about our existence in such a big place or while slow dancing with someone and contemplating what is going on. But now, even in a good mood this song makes sense because no matter how you feel in terms of being in this world, everyone can agree that we have no idea what we're doing most of the times and are mere beings that are floating through time and space, trying to determine why we were placed here in the first place. In some ways, this can be thought of as a slow rock philosophical crisis song, or you can just love it because of the waltz like beauty of it. Your choice. 8. Fuck Love by Lalić - I definitely expected a cynical, bitter, anger driven song when looking at the title, but if I can say any cliché here, it's don't judge a song (book) based on its title (cover). If anything, it's more of a love song, explaining that the speaker has no real reason to be saying things like "fuck love". I think this is interesting because oftentimes, people don't like to be honest with themselves about their emotions, so instead they put up their walls immediately and turn to sarcastic, defensive comments like "i hate everyone" "love suck" or.... "fuck love". Being one of these people, this song opens up that term and exposes us hate poseurs who are very sensitive and truly love to love. The low fi rock sounds with a strong guitar line is nice to hear as well. 9. Blood Bank by Bon Iver - He is so detailed in his description of bags of blood, I have to believe that he actually had a conversation with someone he loved at a blood bank, discussing the differences between people's blood... which is... interesting. It is also vital to this song to understand that the two separate memories he tells about are very closely related because he is explaining the variability of relationships and how to decide whether it is prudent to enter into an affair or to be your own person and indulge in lonely behavior. Of course, it never hurts to be told really emotional things like this with Bon Iver's delicate crooning and layered harmonies that build throughout with such simple complexity, unmatched by other singers in his genre. 10. How It Gets In by Frightened Rabbit ft. Julien Baker - Your first question after listening may very well be "how what gets in?" as my first question was this exact thing. Maybe what gets in is this undeniably wonderful call and response song along with angelic harmonies. But maybe, what gets in, at least in terms of this song, is the literal healing of an open wound and how to properly dress it and make sure it doesn't get infected, or at least that was what was accounted by the singers in question. I interpreted the song to be a recounting and lesson on how love can come into one's life in unexpected places, and how just because there was hurt and pain in the heart for a long time, does not mean it has to stay that way forever. 11. NFWMB by Hozier - This acronym is probably the smartest thing I have experienced in a song's title in a long time: NFWMB is really Nothing Fucks With My Baby, expressed in a classy way, courtesy of the forest prince and love of my life, Andrew Hozier-Byrne. As always, there are several biblical references and apocalyptic death metaphors, which always leaves me feeling very confused and inspired at the same time. The very jazz and blues influenced low key rock song is so different from other love songs that it kind of creates its own category in that sense. It is described by others as "the love song for the end of the world" therefore going back to my feelings of apocalypse, decay and biblical tellings. 12. One In A Million by Hudson Taylor - "You gotta be cruel if you wanna be kind" ok this just hit me way too hard and true. The only way I even discovered this artist is actually because they are opening up for the Hozier concert I am attending tonight and now I am super excited to see them perform as the opening act as well. They remind me of a toned down version of The Kooks in a lot of shared vocals and chord progressions and upbeat instrumentals, except they are a duo hailing from Ireland and they classify themselves a folk band, though the punk/alternative rock influences found in this song are undeniably present. Also present is the message of knowing someone doesn't care about you the way you care about them and needing to be released from that sort of madness... cool. 13. Into The Mystic by Van Morrison - I'm probably not introducing anybody to this song for the first time right now and certainly not the last, but something about the changing of the seasons and the shift of weather from summer to autumn calls out to the mystical and slow dance vibe that this classic and iconic folky rock song inspires. There is absolutely nothing better than the buildup from quiet lull to the horn heavy chorus and interlude that just makes you want to stop and dance wherever you are in your day. Another musical aspect that is highly appreciated by yours truly is the intricate acoustic guitar rift that is taken and shifted into a lot of newer acoustic based songs that we hear all the time these days. The past influences the present and the present is heard in the past all the time, especially in music. 14. Size Of The Moon by Pinegrove - Shifting into a more heavy punk, angst themed style of music is this memory driven song which tells us about a time where the speaker is thinking on the communication issues that occurred in a relationship and how they could have easily been remedied, but there was no effort on the other half's side. From an interpretation of the song, one person smartly said, "It’s really easy to indulge in nostalgia when you’re at a rocky part of a relationship. Suddenly everything appears better than the present, no matter how imperfect those times were." I have to concur with this notion because our perception of the past changes over time and when we miss someone, at times, we look at bad memories and they even start to seem better than being alone... but they are not. 15. Kathleen by Catfish and the Bottlemen - Another song geared towards a relationship not working out the way it's supposed to is from a band that is one of my all time favorites. Their comical British style of lyrics is so appealing to my American way of thinking of things and the heartfelt honesty heard in their songs play along quite nicely with the super power rock style in which they are written. This tune in specifics, is not about the past, but the present and trying to reflect on what is going on in the "now" which is a really complicated thing to try and do, when you are infatuated with someone. The instability is heard not just in the lyrics, but also in the interchanging chords of the electric guitar and the fast paced anxiety ridden drumbeat, which is awesome.. 16. Holland, 1945 by Neutral Milk Hotel - This band is one of the weirdest, coolest ones that only the people who love grating vocals and intense lyrics can truly appreciate to the desired capacity. The whole album, from the 90s, "In The Aeroplane Over The Sea" depicts the story of Anne Frank and the tragedies behind what happened to such an innocent person, along with her youthful romance and how it all devolved in such a short time. A lot of fans of this album have also speculated that there is a second layer of meaning between the World War II references, being that is expresses the kind of tension and tragedy that occurs when you lose some so important in your life, and how the mourning of this loss can only be remedied through appreciating this person afterwards. 17. I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You by Black Kids - Okay, so I'm pretty sure that we can all understand the meaning of the song strictly through the title of this song, negating my opinion before on how you should not judge a song based on its title... well in this case, you can absolutely do that. Not only does it have the best dance tune in the world, but it is also so adorable that the singer's only common connection with the girl he is speaking about is their affinity and adeptness with dancing. Although I definitely have "two left feet" as the singer describes the boyfriend having in this song, I relate to this in terms of music. If there is a person who I really care about, the connection I automatically have is usually in a musical sense, and I am greedy about this relation. We all have something we won't teach someone else's boyfriend/girlfriend if we care about them. 18. 123 by Girlpool - I love this so much. It depicts a relationship where the speaker is asking the partner/SO to tell them everything that is wrong with them in a really sarcastic and aggressive way. It's comical and honest and vulnerable all at once which I have to give a hand for because mixing comedy with painful relationships is something that I always attempt in my writing. The song deals with an interpersonal relationship that is simultaneously “toxic and loving" as described from a contributor on Genius Lyrics, which is a website I often refer to on advice and other commentaries on music I really enjoy. The girl rock power that is disseminated with this track is so strong and empowering, for any gender, so please don't hesitate to sing this when you're feeling angsty about someone. 19. Million Years Ago by Adele - I don't think I ever really talk about my deep appreciation for Adele on here, because I try to branch out from popular artists and focus on more under-appreciated and undiscovered types; but I'm making an exception because although she is one of the most iconic voices of the modern generation, this specific song is so underrated in terms of her best songs. It sounds so french/spanish acoustic ballad inspired and makes me feel like I am transported to a black and white film from the 50s with the sadness and depth that it gives me in such a simple way. It ALSO follows along with my theme of the week, which is looking back in order to look forward, because she sings about the troubles of missing things from the past and dealing with the issues of transforming into a different person. 20. Apocalypse by Cigarettes After Sex - Finally, one of the best mixes of every song I have spoken about previously, is this moody sad love tune by the moodiest, saddest, love bands of the modern generation. There is an unspoken cheesiness of Cigs After Sex songs that for some reason, I am completely enamoured with because I feel like the notion of expressing things in a hyperbolic way has been tossed by the wayside. This group brings back the feeling of needing to tell someone how much they care and not caring about what anyone else thinks, which is important in a world that so often ridicules the ridiculous emotions that love brings about. In particular this song speaks to the feelings of needing to get someone out of a feeling they are trapped in, so to be with them fully, and telling the person they will be there in their lowest and darkest times. 

Hope you enjoyed listening with me, see you next week!

[wigwurq]

WIG REVIEW: AVENGERS - INFINITY WAR

OH GURL, I finally saw Infinity War! Yes, I’m a full week late to this party but y’all know I had to wait that long to see this with MoviePass. Was it worth the wait? Decidedly: no. I mean, it’s the Marvel Universe and and the wigs are always terrible! But the twist here is: SO WAS THE ENTIRE MOVIE. LET’S DISCUSS.

SO MANY SPOILERS AHEAD.

Straight up: this movie is about jewelry. The only other movie I have wasted so much time at that devoted so much time to jewelry was Titanic and it’s hard to say which movie I hated more? I guess still Titanic but I honestly don’t know. They are both really long, cost way too much money, and involved deaths that didn’t need to happen. So that’s the whole thing with Infinity War, right? We were promised that beloved (?) characters would die and they do but also NOT REALLY. BUCKLE UP FOR THE MOST EXHAUSTING RECAP OF NONSENSE EVER.

So blah blah blah Thanos is this intergalactic psychopath “played by” Josh Brolin but mainly played by a computer, as with most characters in the Marvel Universe. Anyway, he needs to get all 6 infinity stones to complete his blinged out Dr Claw from Inspector Gadget hand. 

That is basically the entire plot of the movie. Thanos is basically Liberace but slightly less gay and with no apparent piano playing abilities who I guess hates overpopulation and is a complete psychopath? You do the math on this one.

The movie starts exactly where my beloved Thor: Wignarock left off with Loki’s increasingly terrible Disaster Artist locks billowing in the space wind as Thanos demands some effing bling. Tessa Thompson is somehow not there because she has much more important things to do. Loki delivers some infinity stone he just had laying around someplace because sure and promptly dies (?) All deaths in this movie are highly questionable but this one seems possibly legit and I’m fine with it because this wig is terrible and Tom Hiddleston can do better. Same goes for Idris Elba who also dies (?).  I’m very happy that these two handsome men have been freed from the shackles of the Marvel Universe and the bad wigs that go with them. Thor and The Hulk are also there but are somehow spared by Thanos because his deal seems to be only killing HALF the good guys but only sometimes and don’t ask why because you certainly will get no answers. 

Moving on, the Hulk crashlands into Dr. Strange’s olde curiousity shoppe and gurl I can’t even with this lewk. I’m all for capes ALWAYS but this HAIR. There are many jokes about Dr. Strange being a wizard and he does look like a very bad magician always. Anyway he gets the 411 on this bling situation from the Hulk which is troubling since possesses some of that bling. It should be noted that the bling he possesses can alter time and space so you’d think the bling could just protect itself and everyone around it but I guess that is too logical for this movie? So instead he decides to go ask another mad genius with a goatee for help!

OMG GOOP IS BACK. HAHHAHAHAHHA. LOOK AT THIS EFFING WIG. 

YOU CAN SEE THE LINE OF THE WIG WITH HER REAL HAIR UNDERNEATH. Ok, I understand that building entire characters and planets out of computers is $$$ but for the characters that are played by people, could we maybe get a wig assist? MARVEL UNIVERSE FOR SHAME.

But this wig is not long for this Marvel Universe since Iron Man decides to form a goatee alliance with Dr. Strange because of course. Look at these weirdos! Side note: these are absolutely the kind of dudes who always go to see movies at Film Forum. Anyway, Robert Downey, Jr’s dye job alone is very upsetting but THOSE GLASSES. NO.

Anyway, the goatee alliance proves terrible at protecting NYC streets despite the fact that DR STRANGE’S NECKLACE CAN CHANGE TIME OMG JUST USE THE NECKLACE. Instead, Dr. Strange is beamed aboard a spaceship where he is given the worst acupuncture treatment this side of Hellraiser. 

Iron Man and Spider-Man somehow save the day by literally stealing a plotpoint from Aliens and then all three make a lot more stupid movie references while also completely failing at doing anything productive involving highly important timeshifting bling.

Meanwhile, somewhere in Scotland, a Transilvanian Witch and a robot twice her age with a flashlight in his forehead have found love outside a kebab shop. 

BUT NOT FOR LONG because WWII wet rag Chris Evans who inexplicably has given himself a butch makeover and ScarJo in the best hair she’s ever had in the Marvel Universe show up to tell them that they need to destroy said forehead flashlight because it’s one of the bling Thanos needs for his bling claw. This is where all logic really goes out the window. The Avengers refuse to sacrifice the “life” of Robot Paul Bettany for the good of, well, THE UNIVERSE so instead to go find help in extracting the bling AND saving a robot’s life in Wakanda because apparently the only capable person in this entire movie is our gurl Shuri.

Anyway, back in space, The Guardians of the Galaxy save Thor who has just been floating around half dead since Thanos left. This means that Chris Pratt and Chris Hemsworth meet face to face and they’re definitely the best looking and funniest in the Marvel Universe so fine. Still, Gamora’s upsetting Halloween Adventure wig continues to exist. Look at these guys looking at it. NO. Anyway, the Chris party is shortlived as Thor needs to go get a new hammer.

But who could make a new hammer? PETER DINKLAGE OF COURSE. The episodic nature of this movie already feels like a sci-fi version of Game of Thrones so why not? He’s the best part of that show and this movie, obvs. He plays a giant dwarf (?) created through highly questionable photoshop not unlike my #2 favorite character in Thor: Wignarock - that GIANT EFFING WOLF. Anyway, this is the best picture I can find of his insane mountain man wig which is very awful. Regardless, he makes Thor an axe with an assist from Groot and also an assist from Thor getting a really terrible sunburn to make it all happen. Whatever? OH: also that raccoon gives Thor a new eye which somehow matches his other eye. Bye, eyepatch!

Anyway, The Guardians go to see Benicio del Toro in his batshit crazy space wig which is so terrible as to maybe be amazing. He definitely has given Thanos some bling that alters reality and they fight and blah blah, Thanos ends up stealing away Gamora, aka his adoptive daughter but not before she tells Chris Pratt she loves him! Yay?

Oh but then in order to get the soul bling (which is not what I imagined), he DEFINITELY throws her off a cliff. But is she dead? DEATH IS NEVER CERTAIN ANYMORE BECAUSE OF THAT REALITY BLING SO EVERYTHING CAN BE CHANGED AND WHY ARE WE EVEN STILL WATCHING THIS NOW SINCE THERE ARE NO ACTUAL STAKES.

Anyway, Chris Pratt and co meet up with the goatee/Spider-Man party and everything devolves into “witty” repartee and terrible decision-making. Thanos shows up and that insect chick puts a spell on him but for some reason they don’t use this magic slumber to kill him, just to try to get his bling claw off and they fail because Chris Pratt can’t control his DAMN TEMPER BECAUSE GAMORA IS MAYBE DEAD BUT PROBABLY NOT SO JUST EFFING CHILL DUDE. Anyway, to save Iron Man, Dr. Strange ends up giving up his bling so Thanos only has one bling left to get...dun dun dun.

Back in Wakanda, Paul Bettany’s bling is being extracted by Shuri but meanwhile, they are totally under attack by some horrible space dogs because obvs. Fighting alongside Wakanda’s already awesome fighters are Chris Evans, ScarJo and the Winter Soldier hisself. GODDAMN THAT IS A TERRIBLE WIG. I mean, truly truly truly outrageously bad.

Also outrageously bad? The fact that all of Wakanda is under attack JUST TO SAVE ROBOT PAUL BETTANY. SO MANY INNOCENT WAKANDANS HAVE TO FIGHT AND ARE KILLED BECAUSE THEY DON’T WANT TO KILL A ROBOT AND WHY DID ANYONE IN WAKANDA AGREE TO THIS INSANE PLAN EVEN MICHONNE FROM THE WALKING DEAD. WHAT IN THE VERY HELL. It should also be noted that Black Panther is the only movie in the Marvel Universe that wurqs wig-wise so truly, this is all really plummeting their stock.

So Thor shows up and almost saves the day but then Thanos shows up and then everyone realizes that they have to just destroy this robot anyway to destroy the bling and this was all a huge and terrible waste of time because OBVIOUSLY.

This makes that Transilvanian witch in a horrible horrible horrible red wig that Robot Paul Bettany loves very very sad because somehow a witch is the only person who can destroy bling in this movie which is a plotpoint I appreciate but then she has to also destroy her robot lover but like: IT’S THE ONLY WAY WHY DIDN’T YOU JUST DO THAT BACK AT THE KEBAB SHOP. WHAT IN THE VERY HELL, AVENGERS?!

So then everyone just keeps fighting Thanos even though he is completely unstoppable but like...maybe just fighting him hand to hand will work? (It doesn’t work). Nothing works! Nothing wurqs! The Avengers are completely useless and Thanos just peaces out and then things get completely mindbogglingly stupid:

HALF THE POPULATION OF THE WORLD INCLUDING HALF OF THE AVENGERS JUST DISAPPEARS INTO SMOKE LIKE AN OFFBRAND EPISODE OF THE LEFTOVERS WHICH I’VE NEVER SEEN AND DEFINITELY WON’T NOW.

Huh? Yes, this was Thanos’s plan all along! But obviously, these deaths are not real! I can’t even tell you who got whisked away and who didn’t because one of the people blown away was Black Panther and THERE IS NO WAY IN HELL THEY ARE ACTUALLY KILLING OFF BLACK PANTHER. Also before he’s blown away, Dr. Strange says something about how this was the only way (after earlier doing like 14 million calculations) so clearly: they win in the end.

But not the end of THIS movie. No! No! The Marvel Universe refuses to be self contained to one movie. So the whole thing just...ends! For now! Like one big hanging chad of death until the next Avengers movie (A YEAR AWAY) when definitely everyone will live again. THE MARVEL UNIVERSE JUST MADE DEATH NOT A REALITY AND WASTED ALL OUR TIME IN THE PROCESS. There has not been a more ridiculous cliffhanger ending to a movie since The Empire Strikes Back and absolutely both endings are true garbage filmmaking THERE I SAID IT. 

At this point, I ask myself: HOW MANY DAYS HAVE I LOST TO THE MARVEL UNIVERSE? How many overlong movies have I watched to prepare for other overlong movies THAT DON’T HAVE AN ENDING? HOW DOES THIS CYCLE CONTINUE? WHEN WILL WE BE DONE? NEVER! BECAUSE WE’LL KEEP SEEING THEM BECAUSE WE DON’T VALUE OUR TIME AND BECAUSE WE’RE GARBAGE PEOPLE. THE END.

VERDICT: DOESN’T WURQ

[mogagarin]

Interpol (self-titled): 'Success' and 'Memory Serves'

Album: Interpol (self-titled), 2010

(bouncing back to Matador, from Capitol's Our Love to Admire release in 2007)

I'm starting with this album because I think it gets very unfairly overlooked.  As far as I can see, critics (and perhaps many fans?), listened to it way too quick, and didn't let it sink it.  Mea culpa: I was a fan who initially 'didn't get it' in the first few listens.  I think I was expecting OLTA II.  I'm pretty astounded at my past self, because now Interpol ranks up at either second equal (on a good day) or a healthy third favourite out of all their albums, and so therefore I'm out to punt for it, bigtime.

Since I'm starting with this album, there's gonna be a lot of context as I build my methodology, and get my keywords straight.  Other entries are gonna rely upon a bunch o'stuff I say here, but I'll try to cross-reference when it's helpful to illustrate a point.

'Success'

Instrumentation: there's a deceptively gentle, building start to this song.  Mind you, against gentleness is the fact that the kick drum is so subsonic, and I kid myself to think it's mimicking an irregular heartbeat (sort of fits the theme of the lyrics).  Piano notes in the left channel, and guitar notes pick out the peaks and strung-along troughs of this ECG.  Kick drum moves from gorgeously subsonic low tone (on vinyl, SO GOOD) to a more detailed high tone, the slap of the beater hitting the drum skin now defined, matching the high-tone brightness of the guitar (single notes in left channel, strum in right).  Still, there's a lot of space - Sam's in first gear, Daniel's coaxing, taking his time - everything is languid, and Paul's vocals lilt, until "good eye”: these promising words undercut by a slightly sinister confessional-style delivery.

But the song reveals its true self at the 1:09 mark – there's a subtle, urgent and restrained fury to the way the chaps start to play at from this point: a lot of great 'attack' in where the beats land, where the strums shred.  Bass and drums are particularly well locked-in to each other (an Interpol calling card), and for the most part sit on the front of the 'one' beat (first, second and fourth are up-front, but third lags behind, calling you to dance).  The momentum and attitude of the instruments isn't frenzied, but it's no longer languid, and feels on the verge of violence, threat, or despair.  The contrast between the start versus the way the song unfolds has always struck me like the feeling of walking up to the edge of a cliff - view, view, view, vista, vista, vista THREAT!

There are terrifically attractive exceptions to that front of the 'one' beat though – bass (lovely high tone, some tube growl) syncopates in the verse, and the contrast of this dancing against front of the beat draws attention to both aspects.  Same goes for some of the lead guitar – where DK is putting the plucks is nicely counterpointed against the main driving rhythm.  Interpol are so skilled at this – it means you kinda get two or more rhythms for the price of one – you have the main beat, all monumental and driving and inescapable, but underneath you have eddies that pick out a double-beat alongside the main, or syncopate against it.  I think it's my favourite quality of theirs.  Even Paul is going all Sinatra on the vocal phrasing and placement – he croons, and then leans towards a staccato delivery at times, picking up on that shudder-flutter the rest of the band flirt with.  Rhythm guitar and lead guitar interweave, both alternating between the languid note-to-note slide heard in the initial opening guitar, and the staccato that matches that initial kick drum rhythm.  Sam mostly stays on the main driving beat, but adds a gorgeous flutter on high-hats and subtle double and triple hits (almost a shuffle, but with sticks instead of brushes) on the snare.  Where he places them is terrific – contrast his restrained, almost agonized beats in the verse against the straight-ahead release of the chorus.  YUM.  I'm sure I can detect some real subtle hand-claps in the last third (pretty much maelstrom outro) section, but that might just be my imagination :D

Arrangement/structure: Interpol is an album that features a lot of really simple, don't-fuck-with-it ideas – generally the arrangement/structure is one main riff, all the way through, which develops and mutates and evolves, gets more intense, but the band have sagely decided NOT to throw in an arbitrary bridge or startlingly different chorus for the sake of change.  Feels to me as if the songs are leading, or at least the musicians are thinking with their hearts and guts, rather than thinking with their heads and over-intellectualizing it.  The Interpol album songs tend to be organic: the songs feed upon themselves and grow, and the humans stay the fuck out of the way.  Interpol do both modes well, but I prefer the "one riff run into the ground" organic approach that appears in 'Success'.  However, there is a delicate difference between verse and chorus here – just a subtle note change, but nothing as distracting as a key change.  This minor difference between the sections of the song echo the gorgeous counterpoint in beat/momentum, surge and shuffle, monoslab drive and syncopative flutter.  Ah, I love you guys.  There's also a sweet sweet attempt at a late bridge in that gorgeous waterfall guitar transition, around 3 min 5 sec (mostly left channel) - it's gorgeously transcendent, and runs the song out into a sort of negative space for me.

Lyrical content: I love the confessional tone to content/delivery of the vocals.  That initial promise of "good eye" is empty, even if meant with good intentions, and that reneged claim is backed up later with other half-truths, confessions, and appeals for help: "somebody make me say 'no, no, no'".  Paul (in interview, apparently with The Sun on September 10, 2010 - but I've been unable to track this down) talked about basing his lyrics on the topic of people "cracking up and losing the plot”, thanks to a "narcissistic impulse” (ie celebrities, believing their own hype, to the point of destroying themselves as they get more and more disengaged from reality and meaningful connection with others).

Overall context - vinyl version: holy shit the vinyl version of this will blow your speakers, if you have it over a certain volume (and well, it's Interpol, so of course you have it UP LOUD), and I can't think of a better way for speakers to go.  Great full-spectrum sound, from the crystalline trebles, through to lush mids, all the way through to those initial subsonic Sam beats in the opening.  Terrific vinyl transfer (for the whole album).

Overall context, feel/tone: a little risky to put something so dark and doomed right at the front of the album, but then again, it's fricken catchy AF - you want to dance, despite the doom.      I must admit, I almost always listen to albums on shuffle (on my beloved 160GB black iPod, all tracks 320+ bitrate!), when I'm not listening to vinyl, but whenever 'Success' comes along, it does a great job at telling me, "Hey.  I'm the first track.  Take me or leave me."  And I'm like, "OK, then.  BTW, I love you.”       Additionally, the monumental inescapable drive of the song makes me feel as though I'm in the head of someone who's spaced out, who feels stuck on one nihilistic track, a persona feeling divorced from reality.  Of course, I don't refer in any way, shape or form to Mr Paul Banks, which is why I say 'persona' – if you can't tell the difference between vocalist and the words, go read up on the literary device of a narrative persona.

'Memory Serves'

Instrumentation: This is gonna be a long, indulgent, rave of deep love :D  Bear with ...      Gorgeous textured reverb on the opening guitar (mainly right channel), play style leaning towards Dick Dale tremolo picking.  Interestingly enough, this is very slightly heralded in 'Success' - there's tremolo (in play style, not just pedal effect) guitar in the background (see 1 min 25 secs onwards, of mostly left-channel tremolo-played guitar of 'Success').  Back to 'Memory Serves': you might just be able to hear vocals panned over to the left channel - Paul picking out the notes, not pushing his voice beyond talking into singing - nicely spooky (and there are other vocal artefacts throughout this album too, pointing towards quite a "live" recording environment.  I adore how the band often decides to leave these "proofs of life" in the track, especially when it comes to pedal jack noise, or the sound of dirty pots [ie the switches and dials of a beloved pedal, as much a part of the character of sound produced as the main function of a pedal]).

But wow, when the vocals croak in - Paul's deliberately keeping his throat part-closed (vocal fry!), especially on the open vowels at the start of the bars (ie "It ... / I"), giving the impression of weariness, of a character that's given up, despite the content of the pleading that this voice gives in this song.  PB's backing vocal echoes off to the left - what is it with this album, and favouring the left?  The guitar has built up some great tension, and that is released so attractively in the vocals wearily spilling onto the track, the 60± bpm beat which lurches along.  It's hypnotic, and on the verge of tears.  Add pleading content, and you get a sexy AF tune.  I think I'm gonna conclude, after I analyse all the songs, that this album would be shaggable if it was a person :D

Beautifully resonant piano in the verse, picking out the chord notes - oh, how I'd love to hear that piano in that room: makes me wonder if they'd captured a bit of the studio room sound?  First verse has that catchy double-beat bass, almost like a waltz, locked into the double beat of the kick.  The tension is fed by a held bar (about 16 seconds - 4 x 4?), forcing you to anticipate a chorus, but guess what - VERSE.  Subverting expectations.  I've heard this song SO often (I think it's my second or third favourite song on the album, so yeah, I've thrashed it), and love the slow churn apocalyptic beauty of the climax, that I really WANT the chorus at this specific point, after the held bar.  But no, more teasing ....

The bass sheers away in the second verse; it's a little bit more spare, with less fidelity to the double beat of the kick.  It's an unusual choice - usually Interpol amp up the stakes and detail, slowly; but to move away from complexity into something minimal is odd, UNTIL you realise it's done to emphasise what's about to hit - oh yeah baby, it's gonna be a wall of sound, and you know it's coming.  How wonderfully this band build pressure, only to let the listener have release.  (Note also that Sam adds a small amount of further detail in what he's playing, up on the top half of the kit - slightly more snare hits, slightly more hi-hat taps - the converse of what Carlos is taking away with bass notes.  Cool as.)

And, of course, when this third verse comes in, it's more tense than the preceding two, and features a background swathe of a (slightly left-channel) guitar (am guessing Paul on rhythm - I bet you he does this live; must make mental note to check YewToob, and confirm/deny album-based speculation here) which rings out across its strings at the very start of these verse bars.  More is now at stake, and we listeners are told to anticipate incoming ...

Incoming!  Delicious, delicious chorus.  Sam ups the sibilance by cooking the hi-hat beat: it would be jazz, but he opts for a laboured and tortured feel, to suit the lyrics.  The resonant guitar gets more frenetic, choral, and vocal overdubs take the song into wall-of-sound land (my favourite country, I think).  The bass modulates into fifths and octaves, some simultaneously strummed/plucked, and alongside the vocal overdubs and extra guitar, there's just so much lush harmony.  But wait, it's gonna get even BETTER!  Keyboard/organ comes in at the end of the chorus, and carries on through the bridge to the next chorus ... and this is where the song has evolved to.  A good time for me to skip over to structure ...

Arrangement/structure:  There are some conscious decisions in this, such as the held bar, but it does feel to me as if the band lets the song lead them by the nose - we never go back to the verse.  It's done its job.  The song evolves into a new beast, as though the speaker has finished one set of thoughts (compromise, trying to keep a relationship going when it's already over), and finds himself stuck between special memories, and "I'll wait to find / it's over" (gorgeously effective enjambment: notice how one half of that thought is in the chorus, the second half falls in the bridge), to the relationship half-restarting: "why is it so hard to stay / a / way?"  There's a horrifically discordant guitar in the left can here, 2 min 27 secs, through for a few seconds - it's just under the lush harmonies, and Interpol never do anything out of tune.  But here it is, so effectively throwing a spanner in the works.  Doesn't matter if you don't notice it - you know something is wrong.  It's a flicker of pain.

I hate to rush this next part, as the song doesn't, but where we might expect a held bar, or a tease; the song evolves once again, at the transition from chorus to something new at 3 min 5 sec.  What happens isn't verse or chorus; it's stratospheric.  Carlos strums multiple strings, and pulls back to single notes and perhaps the odd fifth or octave, the vocals pile up into a choir of multiple choices and regrets (sorry if I'm getting purple in my prose here), and the whole tune soars again at 3 min 33 sec, the soaring really thickened by immense keyboard chords. 

This is really rather moving if you happen to be listening through headphones in public :D  Two climaxes, two releases, in one song.  Ecstasy, even if at 3 min 47 sec the band tries to corral the song back onto the ground by returning to the verse notes and structure.  4 min 2 sec is another liftoff, and this is where hints of outro start to appear (and I get morose that the song is mortal, and will end): see if you can pick up that slow arpeggio bright guitar - wholly DK in style, with his angular sparkiness - it appears just after this last liftoff, and it signals the last guitar you hear in the song; a sad, solo coda, which fades away, while PB's voice moves from a begging tone, to something resigned and uncaring, and the drum beat goes on.  Life goes on.

Lyrical content: I especially love the lines:

It would be no price to pay I only ever lie to make you smile All kinds of dust are gonna keep me satisfied But only at your place, only at your place ...

It reminds me of compromise, in a relationship, when it's already over.  Tragic and beautiful.

Thanks for bearing with me.  I'll put in more links soon, and a section that does justice to the overall album.  Next up: 'Summer Well' and 'Lights'.

Last week I was in Sydney, seeing a rocking gig, full of feels and musical expertise, and a band giving it full 100%.  Sigh :D (Note: written back in January, 2019 ... just now ported over this content from a blog, into Tumblr. While I'm swamped with wonderful writing jobs at the moment, this abandoned rave was playing on my mind ...)

[projectalbum]

177. “Hail to the Thief,” 178. “In Rainbows,” 179. “King of Limbs,” 180. “A Moon Shaped Pool” by Radiohead

Here we are. At that point where I have to defend my previous assertion that Hail to the Thief (#177) is closer to my heart than the widely-beloved Kid A. And here we go…

There are 14 tracks, far more than any other Radiohead album, and I only dislike one of them. And it’s not “We Suck Young Blood” (it’s “The Gloaming”). Like, “Blood” is a creepy, chain-rattling chiller with deliberately cracked vocals and that cool little jazzy breakdown between the verses. “The Gloaming” is like a ghost taking a nap.

Even stranger, my favorite songs are all in a little clump in the last third. Right after the aforementioned downers, this suite of winners begins with “There, There,” the lead single. Featuring one of the loveliest, slightly gritty guitar lines in the catalogue and a chorus lyric (“Just ‘cause you feel it, doesn’t mean it’s there”) that stings, if not like a knife in the heart, than maybe like a sharpened icicle in the lower abdomen. “I Will” is one second shy of 2 minutes, but there is beauty in the utter simplicity of gently-strummed electric guitar and three-part Yorke harmony. It’s the soundtrack to staring into a dying fire. And it transitions right into “A Punchup At a Wedding,” slinky and pissed-off at once, sitting next to “You and Whose Army?” as the straight-up coolest piano numbers. One of these days, mark my words, I will master it, because it’s just fairly repetitive chords. But the distinct rhythm of the pounding on the keys has always slightly eluded me.

The escalating tension of this killer suite boils over in crunchy, foreboding synth and aggressive drums on “Myxomatosis.” “I— don’t— know— why I— feel so— tongue… tied” is, I believe, the exact cadence of the chorus, and I can identify with those moments when the churning chemical processes make articulate expression impossible.

15 years on, Thief remains hard for people to pin down. Though there are a few “angry” songs, the material is not explicitly about political leaders or Blair or Bush. That title pun was read as a pissy, middle finger salute as on-the-nose as a Banksy, despite any statements made by the band members to downplay that interpretation. Unlike the albums that made their name, this collection of songs lacks an over-arching thematic focus, which may still hurt its legacy. But I will continue to argue passionately for the music’s inherent strength. The follow-up, released four years later, requires no such defense.

In Rainbows (#178) was my introduction to Radiohead. It has and will probably fulfill that same purpose for a lot of others. From 2007-2010, I was in college, majoring in film production and spending a lot of time in a windowless room filled with iMacs. I give you the range of years, because I’m not positive just how fresh the surprise late-’07 digital release of that album was when my friend Seth handed me the thumb drive in that iMac editing lab. College is a time to experiment with new experiences, you see, and I really only followed that credo when it came to dadaist TV comedies and ponderous rock bands. So in that sterile environment, when I should have been working, I put in earbuds instead.

“15 Step” began with clapboard beats played through a glitchy hard drive. Thom lamented another repeat of the vicious cycle. Then Jonny’s guitar came in, soft and inviting as your pillow, bolstered by Colin Greenwood’s nimble bass. A sample of schoolyard cheers, and then we stepped off the sheer drop. The rest of the album was what I saw as I fell and hit the ocean’s surface, a sort of “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” if the man dreamt of the noose tightening anyway. “Nude” is the haughty confirmation of the protagonist’s fear in “There, There”— “Don’t get any big ideas, they’re not gonna happen” is the lilting, falsetto admonishment. It shares DNA with R.E.M.’s “Tongue” from 1994’s Monster, to the point of sibling rivalry. But Michael Stipe’s feminine protagonist on that tune feels like an amusing pose in comparison.

To continue both the R.E.M. connection and the falling man’s dilemma, the split title of “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi” acknowledges the rapid, repeating guitar technique that that band’s Peter Buck made a staple, but here it sounds like water rushing overhead. I’m sinking deeper, but I’ve determined that the way out is through. By the time the clacking boneyard beat and flickering piano of “Videotape” laid the album to rest back in that college computer lab, I felt like I’d been through something. That some synaptic pathways had been rewired by a piece of art in that way that becomes neurologically harder and harder to achieve again as the years go by. The hypnotic draw of this series of songs is impossible to shake even after an ensuing near-decade of revisitation.

By the time The King of Limbs (#179) leaked onto the web in 2011, Radiohead had been taking over my brain one used CD purchase at a time. As I collected the discography, marveling at OK Computer and puzzling at Pablo Honey, the security blanket melodies and instrumentation of In Rainbows wriggled in ever deeper. So the murky production, polyrhythmic grooves, and murmured vocals of Limbs were not immediately arresting. “It’s a grower,” I gently warned people when handing them a burned CD-R. Meaning over multiple listens, not over the course of the album: at 8 tracks and 37 minutes, it’s as fleet as a couple of their EPs.

Opener “Bloom” is like the score to a Biblical epic as listened to through a glass pressed to a hotel room wall, all muted horns and a vocal that sweeps like sun rays. “Morning Mr. Magpie” and “Little by Little” are statements of Limbs’ groove-focused identity, and melody-wise tend to blend into each other with little resistance. Where the guitar on Rainbows was a hand to guide you, here it’s another rhythm component, along with the doubled-up drum kit: as the band took the songs on the road, they enlisted Clive Deamer to join long-time drummer Philip Selway. Four hands were better than two to create the beds these compositions required.

“Feral” jettisons pop song structure completely as a cut-up chord collage dashed against unstoppable train drums.  “Lotus Flower” is 2/3rds floor-rattling bass, 2/3rds hand-claps, and 2/3rds crystalline falsetto: as mathematically impossible as Yorke’s dance moves in the video. The album closes out with three pastorally pretty and almost terminally mellow numbers: the deep embedded roots of “Codex,” the treetop birdsong of “Give Up the Ghost,” the late Sunday morning wakeup of “Separator.” The melodies are sweet invitations, but I can understand if they sound, in their final produced form, like rock n’roll Ambien. The live arrangements, like those recorded for the “From The Basement” special, are generally thought to breathe extra life into the tunes. The recent Hans Zimmer/Radiohead reimagining of “Bloom” for “Blue Planet 2” makes that song’s cinematic ambitions more readily apparent, as well. But I’ve got a soft spot for any and all versions, and don’t feel any sting of disappointment that TKOL wasn’t In Rainbows Part 2.

The 4-5 year gaps between records has proven an energizing practice for the band’s members as they explore their own projects. Jonny Greenwood created an impressive body of work as Paul Thomas Anderson’s film composer of choice, Yorke (with producer Nigel Godrich in tow) collaborated with Flea on Atoms For Peace and indulged DJ-focused electronica on the self-released Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes. Where Rainbows had drawn inspiration for its sonic approach from the close-miked intimacy of Yorke’s solo record The Eraser (more on that next time), 2016’s A Moon Shaped Pool (#180) has Greenwood’s stellar orchestral composition work threaded throughout. 

Any hazy production cobwebs from TKOL are swept aside by the Bernard Hermann stabbing strings and depth charge bass line of “Burn the Witch,” the true paranoid opus of our surveillance state age. “Red crosses on wooden doors, and if you float, you burn,” Yorke hums and coos, deliberately juxtaposing his trademark vibrating falsetto against the dire warnings. “We Know Where You Live,” stated the cryptic postcards sent to fans, and it was true, because we’ve offered our whereabouts freely to whoever will listen. “Daydreaming” follows its own somnambulant trajectory, with piano that ambles along until periodically the notes catch a long wind, to paraphrase the Feist song, swirling like cel-painted animated leaves. The video closes the gap between Jonny’s prestige film work and his longest-running gig with P.T. Anderson helming a low-key gorgeous M.C. Escher puzzle of Thom moving purposefully through an endless series of doors, spaces, environments.

Before the album dropped, I saw a live clip of Yorke debuting “Desert Island Disk,” just he and his acoustic guitar. The studio version does little to distract from that simple backbone: it’s a sweet, dexterous garden party riff bolstered with gentle drumming and subtle synth washes. “Glass Eyes,” the shortest, most melancholy track, has taken hold like an itch in the mind. Watery electric piano and Yorke’s murmured phone message verses slip through like a dream you struggle to remember the details of, until suddenly the exact angle of a cold gray street corner sparks a complete deja vu, and the heart-rending string section swells.

I’ve taken to playing “The Numbers” at inappropriate volumes, lately. Symphonic rock is nothing new, but it’s rare to hear such a mid-tempo acoustic groove be so suddenly opened up by falling stomach cello courtesy of London Contemporary Orchestra. “We call upon the people / The people have this power / The numbers don’t decide / The system is a lie” is the undeniable political exhortation, and the strings are the wielded tools of revolution: if “Burn The Witch” was a warning against mob rule, “The Numbers” is a rallying cry for positive upheaval.

“True Love Waits,” and there’s no better evidence for that sentiment than the official release of this song from the era of “The Bends.” Live performances and bootlegs through the years featured variations on acoustic guitar or Rhodes piano. Repeated attempts in the studio every few years yielded nothing wholly satisfying. In its final version, closing the album, reverb-laden grand piano and Yorke’s ghostly yearning is joined by glittering ice crystal notes that steadily accumulate. In my head I see the scene from A.I. in which the artificial boy, David, patiently and gratefully beholds the Blue Fairy, as his systems freeze into a thousand years of sleep. Melancholy become manifest.

In the next entry, I’ll jump out of alphabetical order to revisit two of Thom Yorke’s extracurricular activities.

[jefferyryanlong]

Fresh Listen - Radiohead, A Moon Shaped Pool (XL Recordings, 2016)

(Some pieces of recorded music operate more like organisms than records. They live, they breathe, they reproduce. Fresh Listen is a weekly review of recently and not so recently released albums that crawl among us like radioactive spiders, gifting us with superpowers from their stingers.)

Even after the lushly arranged, complex orchestrations of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the Beatles got back to where they belonged–they wouldn’t hesitate to dig into a jumpy rock groove, sans strings and French horns, in songs like “ Back in the USSR” and “I Want You.” In the mid-Seventies, the Rolling Stones exchanged their chunky, single guitar riffage for the looser, trickier-to-land electric interplay between Keith Richards and Ron Wood, only occasionally regressing to the dirty-minded rhythm squall found in “ Start Me Up.” And for every “American Radiohead” studio gimmick Jeff Tweedy imbues into his Wilco records, there rises to the surface a tentatively strummed, emotionally vulnerable ballad among the avant garde recording novelties, something gentle that links back to “Far, Far Away,” from the band’s second album, Being There.

As much as we want our rock bands to grow, to turn us on to something new, we resent them when they defy our expectations. An aesthetic based on three chords doesn’t make much room for left turns. Some musical groups, either out of inspirational paucity or an awareness of which side their bread is buttered on, end up doing the same thing record after record (Van Halen, the Ramones), though, arguably, they are the best at that one thing they do. Other bands, Stone Temple Pilots for instance, might make a play at “art” and end up soaking themselves and their music in pretension, alienating those listeners they first cultivated in their unwashed magnificence.

Then we have groups like the Strokes, whose first recorded expressions were so beloved no one will take seriously anything they come up with next, be it a grand departure or a “back to their roots” exercise. Their songs, their sounds, their spirits, their essences are like full grown insects pinned to a board, and they are trapped in the collective memory to that frozen and unliving representation. There will be no return to the chrysalis, no further changing of forms. They are not even what they are. They are, and always will be, what they were.   

For the past twenty-odd years, Radiohead has been consistently resistant to being comprehended through the filter of any kind of rock critic genre appellation. By their third LP, after flirtations with grunge-inflected hard rock and folkier acoustic space sounds buoyed by loud electric guitars, Radiohead had blown up the world’s expectations of how they should sound in the context of traditional rock and roll history. Robot monologues, cut-and-paste drum sequences, graveyard acapella symphonies, and the prettiest guitars imaginable–OK Computer defined a space in the increasingly suffocating universe of rock music that didn’t belong to punk, to prog, to heavy metal, to grunge, to fusion. This space shared some common territory with David Bowie, and by extension Brian Eno and Kraftwerk, and a little Roxy Music without the irony, Queen without the camp. Unlike those artists that came before, though, Radiohead showed no fealty to pop conventions, to either blues, country, or any of the traditional forms of popularized English or American music. (One shudders when imagining Radiohead going “country” or dedicating an entire album to the exploration of American soul music). On successive records, much of the work of grasping where Radiohead were creatively was figuring out how the new LP sat among Radiohead’s other releases, instead of measuring the music against their range of influences or peers. Where were they going all this time? What were they carrying along with them, what were they leaving behind?

A Moon Shaped Pool, Radiohead’s most recent full-length of original material, is an engaging complement of musical emissions from a band willing to go beyond its previous artistic end point and, simultaneously, immerse itself within recognizable phrasings, textures, and feelings as they‘ve been spread over multiple albums. It is essential for all fans of the band–it hints at, but never obviously expresses, the essential qualities that one, after many years of listening, may identify as the “Radiohead sound.”

From early on, A Moon Shaped Pool challenges and rewards. Jonny Greenwood conjures echoes of the rhythmically doomed string arrangements he developed for Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood unto “Burn the Witch,” the first track and single. Powerful riffs by classical string sections deliver an ominous heaviosity that would be hard to generate from just electric guitars and distorted synths. And the tone, woeful as it is, is apropo–in this era of increasing demonization of the other, we are all on high alert for inevitable persecution. Thom Yorke, whose voice has gone from a Freddie Mercury-evocative set of bullet-proof glass pipes to a carefully modulated instrument sometimes as compressed as the electronic noises the band has eagerly employed over the past twenty years, unleashes the power of his yawp as a choral alarm, repeating the resigned, almost comforting “we know where you live.”

Yorke’s singing is much dryer, almost tentative, unwilling to give over to easy melody, more invested in fighting for the meaning of a song in flagrante on this record. And Radiohead proves it still has great facility for making exceedingly pretty music. On “Daydreaming,” Yorke plays a piano against gentle, synthesized murmurings, which are eventually overwhelmed by the soft, snoring roar of the unconscious, identifying all the nice dreams as temporary byproducts of the breathing modulated by our beating hearts. The Paul Thomas Anderson-directed video serves the song well.

There is a note, or series of notes, laid upon a series of Radiohead chord progressions that evokes a kind of anxiety, an uncertainty, in the listener,  audible discomfort present on “Pyramid Song,” the LP version of “Motion Picture Soundtrack,” on “Subterranean Homesick Alien.” This nervy tone is also evident on “Decks Dark,” a song that, despite its R & B rhythmic glide, is almost the sum total of the Radiohead sound up until now: looped snippets of noise to create texture at the foundation of the track, distanced lyrics, an indelible melody,  even some dissonant, clanging guitar parts that hearken all the way back to the strained chainsaw start up of “Creep.” It is a compelling composition, carefully produced, and could have been put across only by this band.

“Desert Island Disk,” if you were to scrub its ambient surrounding sounds from the track, could almost be a buried folk track on Led Zeppelin III, while “Ful Stop” references a Blade Runner phrase from Vangelis over an amped up drum pattern reminiscent of “Idioteque.” The strings on “Glass Eyes” are nearly as affecting as they are on “Burn the Witch,” though much more reflective, romantic, even. “Identikit” begins as a minimalist backbeat, guitar and bass in full rhythmic  accompaniment, before it tribally rises to what sounds like a cult-driven chant in a mutated electro-church. “The Numbers” brings to mind early-Seventies era Neil Young (especially something along the lines of “Country Girl”), and is the closest the band has even come to a Topanga Canyon vibe.

A Moon Shaped Pool concludes with a call back–a cover of their own work, previously immortalized as a live, solo, acoustic performance on the I Might Be Wrong concert album. Though the new version is perhaps fated to be perceived as inferior to the much-loved, heavily emoted track from the live record, I felt a lot of sympathetic interest in listening to Yorke grapple with ideas and feelings from his long ago past, casting them in new colors, sometimes vibrant and distinct, sometimes smeared and unrecognizable. He does not go full Yorke this time around. On the Moon Shaped Pool track, he sounds less like a man ripped by the fear of being left behind, more like a man sharing the pain of a specific experience. It is an old song made older through a new performance. It reminds us that we too have learned through age, and that we’ve grown different as much as we’ve remained incontrovertibly ourselves.

[kwcsoundcultures2017]

JUST DESERTS

1 STOCKHAUSEN: “Kontakte” (1959-60) stereo version with piano and percussion played by David Tudor and Christoph Caskel (WERGO) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhdEUbj0mgQ   I had this on LP and I found it thanks to my high school art teacher who played to me once the LP of the electronic part alone. So I have listened to this piece for more than 30 years and I know it by heart, possibly better than any other piece of music. It took until September 2001 for me to hear it live in 4 channels and in real space. It remains for me the perfect masterpiece of 20th century electronic music and the version with live musicians making “contact” with alien transmissions appealed to me immediately as the two sonic strata are so beautifully related and distinct. The way that so much of the piece puts the completely familiar (piano) against sometimes completely unearthly timbres possibly suggested to me a way of conceiving music as incomprehensible dialogue with non-human sources. Stockhausen analysed the spectra of especially percussion sounds in order to imitate them electronically and to gain harmonic structures from them. These pitch structures seem to my ear at least to be strongly supported by the piano part sometimes even though the latter is also obviously equal tempered and serial in character. The spectralist strand in music so important to me now is sometimes polemically regarded as an "anti-serial" impulse but spectralism also clearly connects to the early Stockhausen of the 1950s at the conceptual and often the sonic levels as well. Many of the more complex timbres were constructed from purely rhythmic sequences of blank impulses edited together, multitracked and sped up so that rhythms become more or less complex sounds with more or less discernible pitch. The rhythms of these micro-sequences are in some cases identical to the rhythms they are later used to “play”. I find its exploration of a self-similarity between different temporal strata of the work deeply interesting. This is a fully serial but not dogmatically applied synthesis technique and this piece is the only implementation I know of in this form, given the nature of the studio of the time. He never used this laborious and unique synthesis method again but I have derived great inspiration from it. Once Stockhausen discovered synthesisers I find his work a great deal less interesting (I sat all the way through the silliness of a live performance "Sirius" just so I could hear the rotations at the very opening and ending which are the only parts of the piece that interest me). My interest in granular synthesis, polyrhythms related by ratios by analogy with the proportions of the harmonic series, and the spatial movement of sound; all these also come I believe from Kontakte, Gruppen and other works of the 50s. It was this piece that repeatedly drummed into me the fact that all elements of sound (except for amplitude and spatial location) are resolvable into temporal structures: rhythm, harmony, timbre and form are all different ways of experiencing/manipulating sensations in and as time. This makes sense given that what we perceive as “sound” is the more or less periodic fluctuations in local air pressure, compressions and rarefactions of air in waves through time: a “noise” is random fluctuations (which is why white noise can be a source of random fluctuations) and, at the opposite end, the sine wave is a perfectly periodic, simple harmonic motion realised as regular changes in the air.

Time beats silently at the heart of sound: all sound is the way the air behaves in time, it is the rhythm of that behaviour, its choreography.

Rhythm therefore colours a sound on the spectrum between noise and the sine tone: the latter would be a simple regular beating whereas the former would imply complete aperiodicity. In Kontakte (Contacts) Stockhausen is clearly working with a kind of continuum between white noise and the pure frequency of the sine tone and this implies a scale of temporal levels as well, expressed here as a conceptual identity between the large scale “phraseological” time-stratum and the “nano-temporality” of the individual timbres conceived as the “deposit” of strata at different speeds corresponding to partials, a technique he applied to notated material in "Gruppen" from earlier in the 50s. This “temporal reductionism” is also a way of thinking about how to construct sound at the microscopic level and this has dominated all of my subsequent musical thinking and probably accounts for habit of determining the timing of events and scale of a piece right from the start. The treatment of rhythm and the timing of large forms is an area of intense theoretical and practical research for me still and nearly everything I’ve ever done, including my visual work, could be traced back to the 13 year old kid from the western suburbs being taken on this alien journey. 2 GAGAKU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoKP-o-cXak I discovered this music again in my teen years. I would spend hours nearly every Saturday morning poring through second hand LPs at the various stores in Sydney in the 80s. Ashwoods had a huge selection of classical music from non-western sources. Gagaku immediately attracted me as it was an obvious source of inspiration for composers like Boulez, Cage, Stockhausen ("Der Jahreslauf" is basically ersatz gagaku) and Messiaen. In gagaku the instruments rub up, grind against one another, few if any notes are left “straight”: it is a music of deviations and nuances in pitch, timing and timbre that I still find very beautiful. This is a world-obliterating sound: not at all a delicate “orientalist” fantasy music but raw, implacable, intense and rough. I still find it influences me, especially the sense of timing, I like the long slow builds of its piercing high chords on reeds and pipes which sound like FM synthesis, or a harmonica, or high harmonics in strings in orchestral works by Ligeti, Penderecki, Xenakis, Haas, Cerha and the spectralist composers generally. You could create an orchestral genealogy of this figure of the “screaming high register string texture” throughout much of the 20th century and compare it to how earlier composers like Beethoven, Mahler, Ravel, Debussy or Wagner represented the spaciousness and timelessness of nature with slow high violin lines, as if comparing the vertical polar space of the frequency spectrum with 3d effects of depth and height and breadth. And then ask yourself what happened? Auschwitz and Hiroshima is what I would respond with. Of course what strikes us as “ugly” and therefore expressive means something very different to the mediaeval Japanese connoisseurs of this music: it would be interesting to know what it sounded like to its audience centuries ago. But I always think of the effect that such a truly “other” music to us here in the 21st century can still have as a goal to strive for: this music still makes sense in a gestural and ritualistic way, where it seems the act of playing is as important as what results, even if we don’t recognise all the resonances, nuances or the harmonies. We hear that something serious is being said even if we cannot understand it fully: along with recordings and scores of John Cage, Sylvano Busotti, Pierre Boulez and others where one never feels fully confident one could ever fully “understand” this sense of joy in confusion or excess is something I aim for. The parts of my own works that I enjoy best are those that appear grotesque, monstrous or even campily excessive in either notational complexity, texture or, increasingly the case, (de)tuning. For me the avant-garde of the post war era, which also I think helped me open my ears also drew me towards music from Asia and Africa and albums of Japanese music or especially african drumming and Balinese gamelan were a big influence on my aural taste. 3 SOLAGE - “FUMEUX FUME” performed by the Early Music Consort of London https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ba3oy2cD-ok Solage is one of the oddest things on this list but hugely important to me at a technical level. Little is known about him, his entire surviving output doesn’t even add up to an hour and few articles are written about this late 14th century music, which I discovered on the David Munrow set “The Art of Courtly Love” again when I was a teenager. I encountered this field of music because Paul Griffiths writing about the late 20th century generation of Boulez and Stockhausen said that the late 14th century court around Avignon cultivated rhythms so bizarre they made “Le Marteau” look normal. So naturally I had to look that up as I loved the Boulez piece (which could have been a 6th on this list). I read what I could find about these composers, who developed the capacity of notation at the time to use multiple simultaneous metres and divisions of a variable unit, to develop things like the effect of three simultaneous, barely related tempi in Perugia’s “Le Greygnour Bien” or the Stravinskyan syncopations of this rondeau. There’s three bass voices which sometimes are all sung but I like best this version with a solo singer and two medieval instruments in the bass. It has a rhythmic precision and quirkiness of timbre which I think suits the frankly camp aspect of the work. I love the outlandish in music. I have decadent tastes for the extreme which I see in much of the music I love: if it is an example of something it is the most forced or exaggerated one, perhaps because those works can be the most memorable for me. I also have a taste for “camp”, I’m not afraid of the obviously unnatural, the stilted, the grotesque or vulgar and I see “unnecessary” intricacy in music as amusing and interesting as well as an expressive necessity: and, let’s face it, if your “brand” at high school is teacher’s pet slash town freak, being able to sing a stupid song in mediaeval French about smoking hashish from the famously decadent and faintly ridiculous papal court in 14th century Avignon is a good look. 4 NANCARROW: PIANO STUDY No. 37 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFz2lCEkjFk Nancarrow is someone I found out about because of my love of Ligeti and he has become an important example for me of finding technical solutions to compositional questions: he imagined and wanted to hear almost un-notatable rhythms in a polymetrical texture that humans could not fully realise so he turned to mechanical instruments, specifically the player piano. In the same way I have made a similar move towards mechanical performance and digital or virtual realisation of musical works even when there is some “live” or “performed” component. The wit and humour, the air of parody (even self-parody) in his work attracts me as well, there the love of intricate design of the smallest details extends in particular to a special kind of comic timing. Rhythmic precision and a delight in surprise come together: in many ways these are like perfectly executed circus tricks. I also love these kinds of canonic textures in much music: medieval and renaissance music of course is full of them (there are works by Ockeghem et al. that are basically Reich’s “phase” works in nuce), as is Ligeti, Reich, Simeon ten Holt, Andriessen, Webern, Stravinsky, Brahms and of course Bach. Canons are elegant and audible ways to build up complex textures from simple elements. Nancarrow invented several new types of canon, many of which I’ve adapted to use at times in my work and some of the new types of canonic imitation (such as the truncation canon) that I have come up with over the years have themselves been highly influenced by those of Nancarrow. My constant use of prime numbers is because of Nancarrow demonstrating how they lead to almost constant subtle variation if used to form the timing of a polyphonic texture. I also love how clear his pieces are. I personally go for a very sustained, harmonically focused texture in my own “player piano” works done with MIDI files and physical modelling software but Nancarrow is always on my mind and in tribute to him nearly every one of my works features a moment where lines moving at different speeds converge ultimately on something very simple and obvious. It also intrigues me that much of Nancarrow's basic material is banal riffs from boogie-woogie or salon-room "jazz", standard triadic chords, short themes without much character or expression and this is a strategy that allows the canonic textures and play with rhythm to come to the forefront of the work, precisely because the melodic/harmonic aspect is negligible: the final composition is a tightly wound knotting together of divergent forces only held in place by technique and texture. 5 BEETHOVEN: DIABELLI VARIATIONS (performanced by Piotr Anderszewski, one of the few good performances of the piece I know of) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp59KCg_DCY This work is important to me for a simple reason: not only is the “classical tradition” a big part of my history but also because what one learns from Beethoven is a determination to wrest every last drop from the slightest aspects of his material. In a sense Beethoven is the first composer to write a truly “critical” music, which takes almost nothing for granted and certainly is not simply about the stimulation of affect in the listener (although it also does that!). This is a quality rare in any previous music: late Beethoven features many works that criticise themselves, that criticise their contemporaries and which take a somewhat ironic, but also historically informed attitude to musical material. There is a wonderful story of Beethoven in a salon piano recital reducing audience members to tears then laughing at them as if to say how easily manipulated they were made them worthy of contempt. Even if false the story captures something about what an ironic/critical standpoint about composition might be. Beethoven pulverises the material to make it his own, making reference to music of the past, inscribing himself in the tradition of Mozart, Handel, the Bach family and of course Haydn. This is a kind of granular composition: the material is atomised and he composes with the dusty ruins. There’s a kind of comic negativity to these works to which I warmly respond and which I've always connected to those strange late paintings by Picasso that offer variations on famous paintings by Delacroix and Velasquez in a similarly violating spirit.   The genius of this work is that the ridiculous is turned into the sublime by means of scale and technical manipulation. Even in his own time the concept of the “sublime” - the (perhaps necessarily failed?) presentation of the unpresentable - has been applied to much late Beethoven and I think it applies here but it is not free of a kind of immanent critique of the means of its production. Adorno rightly points out how Beethoven develops in his later years a critical attitude to music itself, exemplified well by the entrance of the bass soloist in the 9th symphony who enters saying “oh friends not these sounds”. This is as far as I know one of the first instances of a musical work explicitly commenting on its progress, effectively saying ignore what you’ve heard for the last forty five minutes. Beethoven wrote sets of variations for piano throughout his life. Some, like the variations on various national anthems, are hilariously funny given the distortions they enact on the usually banal and stupid material you find in music designed for nationalistic usage, memorisation and consumption (it’s a nice coincidence therefore that to this day one may buy annual albums of “dance anthems”). This idea of critical composition informs nearly all subsequent music that I admire: Brahms, Mahler, the 2nd Viennese School through to the late 20th Century music of Lachenmann, Nono and later still the “New Complexity” of Richard Barrett, Liza Lim, James Dillon and Brian Ferneyhough. These last three composers are contemporary models for me of the tradition originating in these late Beethoven works. Critical composition is stylistically "innovative" but often cites and distorts historical materials, including the materials deposited by a century of modernism: it is a materialist conception of music, understanding it not as virtually telepathic "spiritual communication" but as a kind of ironic re-enchantment of nature through aesthetic framing, which is to say, musical techniques and notation, both understood in turn as “extendible”. If art is made from nature transformed through technique, art which reflects on this process openly and consciously engages the means of its own production is qualitatively different from art which does not: Beethoven takes material from an other and displays how it can be transformed at the same time as actually transforming it, in real time, before your ears. This has been of tremendous importance to my listening and composition but I'm only now discovering just how deeply marked I am by this idea.