Meet Me in the Bathroom: Rebirth and Rock and Roll in New York City 2001-2011 - Lizzy Goodman (2017)

Meet Me in the Bathroom is an oral history of the NYC rock scene in the early 2000's.  It is about the Strokes, Interpol, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and DFA Records/The Rapture/LCD Soundsystem.  To a lesser extent, it is about the White Stripes, Kings of Leon, TV on the Radio, Vampire Weekend, Fischerspooner, Franz Ferdinand, the Killers, Ryan Adams, the National, Conor Oberst, the Vines and the Moldy Peaches.  And there are even more incidental references to other bands of the era.  It starts off with Jonathan Fire*Eater, as a precursor to the Strokes.  I had never heard of them before and I thought the Walkmen (which 1/2 of the band eventually became) were a bigger deal.

Jonathan Fire*Eater is positioned in the kind of Velvet Underground role in Please Kill Me, the first band to get mentioned out of the gate, the primary influence from which the scene sprouts.  Everybody that listened to the Velvet Underground started their own band.  Admittedly, it is a tall task to match up to VU, but JF*E do not directly influence the sound of many of the bands that are later written about, in quite the same way.  Regardless, it is an interesting way to the start the book, because it is really more about the scene in the late 1990's.  It goes right into the Strokes from there and never lets go.  This is really the Strokes book, at least in terms of myth-making and cementing their status as icons.

I am really conflicted about this but I cannot quite put it on the Best Books list.  It is really, really good, but it would basically equate it to Please Kill Me and Lexicon Devil.  And obviously, Please Kill Me is a classic, and Lexicon Devil was just a blistering experience for me.  This book was extremely entertaining though and I loved it.  I was sad when it was over, and that to me is one of the signs of a great book.  Whatever, I change my mind.  It belongs on the list with that qualification.

It is perhaps worth noting that I went to NYU in 2001 and so was the target at which so much of the buzz of these bands was aimed.  My friend Danielle burnt me a copy of Is This It.  Interpol was a band of NYU graduates (Paul Banks met Daniel Kessler at NYU in Paris, where I would be 4-5 years later).  Also in Paris, I went to see the Rapture at some festival type thing at a club in the Bois de Bologne.  We would sometimes go out dancing at Favela Chic and I remember my friend Tommy talking about them.  One night the DJ played "House of Jealous Lovers" and he was like, that's them!  It was pretty awesome, so we went to the show, and afterwards we saw the band and walked up to them with our third friend, Sarah.  We were like, "We're from New York too!"  And they were like, "Um, cool."  They weren't very interested in talking to us, so I always had kind of a weird feeling about them after, but I still got Echoes.

A fair number of the bands featured in here played $5 NYU shows, and I went to almost all of them.  I also miraculously got a press pass to the CMJ Music Marathon in the Fall of 2002, and saw many there as well.  I was there as the scene shifted from Manhattan to Brooklyn.  I read Our Band Could Be Your Life and gave it to my friends.  I  recruited about twenty of them to join a potential band, with which we had two very tentative practices.  I took guitar lessons and wanted to learn the drums.  Finally I convinced my friends to let me manage their band, and got them their first gig.  Even though I had no musical talent and could not (and still cannot) play any instruments, I wanted to be around people that did, and I wanted to get involved any way I could.  My point is, it wasn't just the Strokes, but the whole scene, that made people want to start their own bands.  That kind of situation lends itself well to an oral history.

The atmosphere of New York circa 9/11 also influenced us all.  One of the things about this book that elevates it into Best Books territory is chapter 30.  I would say that it is the finest piece of writing I have read, to date, on the subject of 9/11.  Nothing else had ever so perfectly encapsulated my experience:

Andrew VanWyngarden [MGMT]: "I was a week into my freshman year at college and that's such an impressionable stage.  I was a virgin and I was meeting all these new people and was just bright eyed and wow.  Then September 11 came and I got so deeply freaked out, paranoid, and just knocked off of my foundation of what reality was that it just totally fucked me up." (203)

There are also a ton of journalists that supply the oral history.  The book is dedicated to Marc Spitz, a voluble presence, who recently passed away.  Marc Maron is also a contributor and I have been listening to the WTF podcast a lot recently.  One of them was with Ryan Adams and my friend actually asked me to go to a Ryan Adams concert in Milwaukee right around when he dissed the Strokes on Twitter.  So this is really still topical.  Apparently Marc Maron is also putting out a book in October that follows a similar format to this, so I'll probably check that out.  Perhaps he was influenced by his experience participating in this, and realized that it is a pretty interesting way to construct a book.

David Cross also hangs out with the Strokes and there are a couple embarrassing stories that I won't recite here.  But the stuff about Ryan Adams is too funny to pass up:

Ryan Adams: "One night I was hanging with the Strokes guys and Ryan[Gentles].  We were really stoned because we were basically always smoking pot.  It was very late.  Fab would always play me a song that he had written, some beautiful romantic song.  So one night, jokingly, I'm also certain Fabby said, 'Dude, what if John Mayer was playing that guitar right now?'  And I said, 'I can make that happen.'  And they all said, 'You're full of shit.'  I said, 'Give me three fucking beers'--because there were only so many beers left at that late hour--'and I'll make it happen.  I'm a goddamn genie in a bottle.'  And we died laughing.  Now, I lived down the block from John Mayer and he'd been talking to me about his new song for a while.  So I texted him, because he was always up late back then.  I said, 'Come to this apartment.  Bring an acoustic guitar.  I really want to hear your new song.'  I didn't tell them that I'd done it.  So everyone is sitting there and I was like, 'Let's all take bong hits.'  I really wanted it to get crazy.  We smoked some bong hits; I probably did some blow.  I started to drink my three beers.  The doorbell buzzer rings and I open the door and John Mayer walks in with his fucking acoustic guitar and they were all slack jawed.  John sat down and played the fucking acoustic guitar--three or four songs that probably have gone on to be huge--while those guys just sat there staring at me like ,'Oh my god, you're a witch.'  The next day John was like, 'Hey man, next time maybe less cigarette smoke?  That really hurt my throat.'  That apartment was like an airport smoking lounge." (379)

In short, I could understand why Ryan Adams might not like the way he comes off in this story, but I finished the book more interested in him.  He's basically one of the greatest characters in the story.  He comes up in his own way, as he arguably peaked in his popularity with the video for "New York, New York," which was released at almost the exact same time as Is This It, basically on 9/11, or maybe a week or two later.  But he mostly comes up as a friend to, and a potential "bad influence" on, the Strokes.  Most others are candid about their drug use, and also use the excuse that 9/11 bestowed upon the city a kind of desperate party-because-we're-going-to-die atmosphere.  One reads a book like Meet Me in the Bathroom because it has the kind of gossip that you don't usually read about except in really unguarded stories in Spin or Rolling Stone or on Pitchfork.  It is also good for correcting inaccuracies that are awkward to kind of mention out of the blue, but fit perfectly with the subject matter.  One of the most striking is about the LCD Soundsystem song "Someone Great."  Now, many people really love this song, and I think most consider it the second best song off Sound of Silver after "All My Friends."  It also supplies a sizable piece of "45:33" (which I actually bought).  Everybody says that this song is about mourning a lost lover.  But I found the truth even more touching:

Tyler Brodie: "Do you know about the therapist?  I never met him, I don't even know his name, but I do know LCD's "Someone Great" was later written about him."

Tim Goldsworthy: "That's not about a love affair.  That was written the day that James's therapist died." (265)

James Murphy apparently did therapy three times a week.  The book also touches on "Beat Connection," which gave me occasion to play it just now, and I have to say it is a really great song.  I think Murphy sounds more like Mark E. Smith on it than on "Losing My Edge," though he is more on rant mode in that song.

The book is just filled with interesting stories and I think it would appeal to a general audience even if the reader doesn't know very much about the bands themselves.  There are also little tidbits about the realities of life as a musician that is yet to "make it" that are particularly amusing.  Take, for example, this nugget of truth that I appreciated as the purveyor of MEP:

Chris Taylor: "When I first moved to Brooklyn, Chris Bear, who plays drums in our band, moved into the same loft as me; we built it together.  We were in this band, and at that age when you really have the energy and ambition to do all of this.  There's just things that you don't care about that allow you to be free and experimental and take big risks and live in a dirty place and you don't give a shit.  Rent was really cheap, $600 a month.  Chris and I were vegetarians because it was cheaper--we cooked rice and beans so many nights.  We priced it out.  We knew the cost of the beans and the cost of the rice and we bought the onions and we're like, 'Okay, cool, this whole food element of life is under five bucks.'  We can buy a Yuengling, which was like a dollar fifty, which was definitely a choice beer at that time, and that was enough.  You find a cheap bike, so you don't even have to take the subway.  That and some money for weed, that was your budget.  That was all you needed."

Dave Sitek: "It was so cheap that you could afford to take risks and fail.  If you failed at what you were doing it didn't matter because you were in Williamsburg.  If you failed in Manhattan, it was different."

Eleanor Friedberger: I rode my bike everywhere.  I got all of these amazing jobs that were so easy and stupid.  I would work these office jobs, then go out every night, and I could afford to pay my rent" (310-311)

Speaking of Eleanor Friedberger, she really only has one revealing story, which involves the period when she was dating Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand.  I don't know if there will be a "deluxe edition" of Meet Me in the Bathroom that comes out in 20 years (the way Please Kill Me was later supplemented), but I would read it if there were chapters on the Fiery Furnaces, and other bands like Liars and !!!.  That is one of the primary criticisms I have of the book.  It could have been even bigger and better.  Actually there is a brief mention of the Fiery Furnaces record deal.  And this classic bomb she casually drops:

Eleanor Friedberger: "It only seemed weird that bands like the Strokes and Interpol were around at the same time as us when they started doing so well and I thought they were so bad.  I just didn't give a shit about that stuff." (315)

Oh snap, Eleanor lays it down!  Of course no one is obligated to like everything, but she is pretty much the only one in the book that says she didn't like those bands.  It would be nice if Julian Casablancas tweeted, "Sad @eleanorfriedberger, I love your music :(," and if she replied, "Okay I guess Room on Fire is pretty okay :)."  But I doubt that will happen. 

Vampire Weekend signals the beginning of the end of the book.  There is a special place in my heart for them, as the subject of one of the earliest posts on Flying Houses.  I think that review is a little bit harsh, and I partially disavow it.  And actually I think they have gotten better with each album and believe that they delivered on their early promise.  Nevertheless, I am not the only one who cannot resist poking fun:

Laura Young: "I was there [at the Strokes' Madison Square Garden show in 2011].  I had seats but I traded with somebody so I could be in the pit.  I thought, 'I know I'm a little bit too old for this but I'm going anyway.'  I remember seeing these kids that were fifteen years old.  I was either talking to them or overhearing them and they were saying, 'This is the first time I'm seeing the Strokes.  I listened to them all through elementary school and middle school.'  It was so cool to see them there and so excited.  I don't know, maybe somewhere, somehow, years from now Vampire Weekend will do some kind of reunion show, but I can't imagine young kids being there saying, 'I love Vampire Weekend so much.  I'm so excited about them.  I've been listening to them since elementary school.'  And if they are, they should be punched in the face." (589-590)

The story of their band is one of the most boring in the book, primarily because they all seem to have their lives together.  The reason why I think I hated them so much before is because everything just seemed sort of effortless and easy for them.  I doubt that was true, and the story of how Ezra Koenig lived with Dave Longstreth of the Dirty Projectors and all these other people in this quasi-bohemian house-studio is pretty interesting.

I haven't really talked about Interpol and they are a major part of the book as well.  Paul Banks is quite entertaining in almost everything he says.  Even though he sounds like he's really serious and kind of weird from his lyrics and singing, he is extremely self-effacing and claims to have no talent.

Paul Banks: "...'Like now to college kids, we're old people?!  How the fuck did that happen?'  I don't feel like I look that different but apparently I'm an old guy now.  You know, I'm the guy trying to pick up eighteen-year-olds.  'Hey, kids, want some reefer?'  Just kidding." (575)

The gaping hole in this book is Carlos D.  He is often talked about--many myths are made about him--so his absence as a contributor feels all the more striking.  He maintains an air of mystery.

In almost every other dimension, however, Meet Me in the Bathroom feels very complete and authoritative.  On third thought I don't think I'm going to add it to the Best Books list--but it was definitely the best book I read in the past year.  I'm not sure I'll read it again, but I think everyone should at least read it once.

These New Puritans - Hidden

When we last checked in with These New Puritans, they were putting out their debut around the same time as Vampire Weekend, and I was claiming that they were the better band. Proof? http://flyinghouses.blogspot.com/2008/04/these-new-puritans-beat-pyramid.html

Quote #1 from review of debut:
"TNP won't necessarily be for everyone...."
It may have been clear after Beat Pyramid that TNP did not cater to the masses and did not aspire to radio airplay. But the album still had a very accessible streak running through it. This is not the case with Hidden.

Hidden is arguably the most "difficult" album I have ever heard. It has its moments of accessibility too, but overall it is a very imposing album indeed. Most notable, however, is the degree to which this doesn't even sound like the same band.

It's like a novelist trying to do something completely different (the quick obvious example is Dave Eggers moving from AHWOSG to What is the What, but those were not consecutive releases, both were successful on their own terms, and Dave Eggers is way more visible than TNP in the literary-musical analogy) with their next book so they can prove they can write about more than one topic. I don't think TNP needed to prove anything after Beat Pyramid.

Quote #2:
"...I think it shows that TNP is more interesting than TNV (Times New Viking) or VW (Vampire Weekend), but I don't think they'll get as much attention as either."

Duh. Putting out an album like Hidden will not get them any more attention either. OK. Hidden is a very ambitious album. Maybe it's Kid A in disguise. There. That is the comparison I was looking for.

Except Beat Pyramid wasn't OK Computer. I don't know what fans of TNP are making of this album. I am assuming they trust Jack Barnett and now look towards him as some sort of demi-god. I think he is crazy. There was a great feature on Pitchfork where he said he doesn't think he'll sing on any more albums and where claimed one of his favorite songs was an ultra-obscure selection from Pocahontas. I am assuming he still wears his chain mail armor onstage. In my last post, I mentioned that Kevin Drew is becoming more iconoclastic, but Barnett is way ahead of him, and at this point beyond M.E.S. himself.

I may claim their soon-to-be-former singer/frontman is crazy, but there is a method to it. It does seem to be a concept album about the end of the world. Or global warming. But Hidden is an album you could talk about for hours in trying to assess its meaning.

Not that anyone would--and this is the album's chief defect: it's so different from anything that's come before it that the listener has no bearings. Much mention is made of the lack of guitar on this album. Throw even less lyrics than before into the mix and you have a very moody, largely instrumental and atmospheric album with occasional doses of vicious noise. But unlike Sisterworld, the music is primarily orchestral, and it never veers into anything resembling punk rock.

KEEPING ALL OF THAT IN MIND, "We Want War" contains a beautiful moment or two, "Hologram" is the closest thing to a fully-pleasant experience, "Attack Music" and "Fire-Power" go back-to-back as the most straightforward stuff on the album, "Orion" has a moment or two of greatness, and that "Drum Courts..." song is definitely something, alright.

Quote #3: "However, if they imitate the Fall more on their next album, they will probably deliver album of the year and will be a buzz band two years from now and no one will remember their debut coming out or else they will drop off the face of the Earth and no one will remember them in three years."

Neither happened, but few know who TNP are, and putting out an album like Hidden could be akin to dropping off the face of the Earth (particularly if the album is about the end of the Earth), so it is possible that TNP will become a cultural artifact by 2011 and no one will know they ever existed.

OK. That's not true. They're well-documented. I document them because I care about them. I don't know if Hidden will make my top 10 of 2010--but I doubt it. I just don't think I'll listen to it enough to figure it out to be able to blast it incessantly and gain some kind of pleasure from it. This is a very moody album for moods that almost don't exist--or moods that aren't advisable: ultra-depressed, evil, intellectual, portentous, and (forgive me) pretentious.

If they had listened to my advice, they could have put out a top 10 contender along with their inspirational predecessors on Domino Records, but I have a lot of respect for making a statement like Hidden. I spent money on this album--I'm crazy--and maybe it will sell as well as it needs to--but the only kind of music like this is made to accompany strange and scary movies. Perhaps there is something of Fantomas in here too.

Vampire Weekend put out their sophomore effort too, and while I haven't heard it, I'm assuming it doesn't sound too different from their self-titled. Apparently they experiment a bit, but obviously it's not as ridiculous as the experiment that is Hidden.

I've got my own prediction for the next couple years: in (or by) 2012, if the world isn't already over then Vampire Weekend will put out their third album--their Merriweather Post Pavilion masterpiece that will finally win me over--and TNP will release an album of ambient music as they transform themselves into an artier version of the Kronos Quartet.

In the meantime I will listen to Hidden, probably more often than Beat Pyramid, solely in an attempt to understand its message (and I will emerge from my underground lair with an apparatus that will bring humanity to its knees).

Maybe time travel has something to do with it too.

If there are such things as secret recordings hiding in plain sight....well there are, and this is one of them. The question is whether you think the secret will be worth hearing or not. My opinion is that I can't tell. It should be fairly easy, though, to guess how consumers will react.

Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned - Wells Tower

To believe the hype, or not to believe the hype? That is the question all of us bloggers face when reviewing a new book or album or movie that carries an enormous buzz. The Vampire Weekend debut album comes to mind. I think it is fair to say that Wells Tower's debut collection of short stories, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned is the literary equivalent to that piece of cultural history from 18 months ago. Except that, in the case of the former, I disagreed with the general consensus, and in this case, I agree with it. The hype is deserved; Wells Tower will be here to stay for a while.

I saw him speak at a panel discussion entitled "Short and Sweet" at the Printer's Row Lit Fest this year. He was definitely one of the biggest celebrities in attendance this year, though he has only recently become a known name. I think he is about 36 years old. Apparently he went to college and is friends with one of the guys in Les Savy Fav. He used to write for the Washington Post, or something? Then, he got his MFA from Columbia University (like the author posted about previously, whom he may surpass in fame in the coming years) and he published stories in all the right places (The Paris Review, The New Yorker, Harper's, McSweeney's) and here finally is his collection. I have to say it is the best short story collection I have read since Richard Lange's Dead Boys, and it is hard to say which is better. Lange's is dear to my heart because of its L.A.-centricity, but Tower's seems to cover more human territory. Not that all of Lange's protagonists are the same (as at least one review, in the San Francisco Chronicle, assumed, which I found weird) but they do all seem genetically, if not socio-economically, similar. Tower's protagonists are of a much wider variety, and because of this, his book appeals to the least common denominator (or would greatest common factor be a more appropriate mathematical term?). I don't think this book will make Oprah's Book Club, nor do I think Tower would want to become a part of that institution. I think this book lacks a specific "issue" focus that Oprah's books always seem to project. Nevertheless, I still can't help but think of this as an Oprah-style-book because it's something that is practically impossible to denounce or discount. Uniformally positive reviews are the rule here.

I did read it very quickly, and I enjoyed it very much. As much as I would like to be cool and slam it and affect the pose of a sophisticate hipster who is above consuming anything that has generated a "buzz," it would be a mistake. I got it out of the library on Tuesday and finished reading it on Friday. Story-by-story analysis? Alright, but don't expect too many quotes. Tower may have established himself as one of the best young writers working today with this volume, but he is nothing compared to Mann--not yet, at least.

"The Brown Coast" opens up the collection with one of the few third-person perspectives it contains. It is about a guy (Bob) who has been sent to make some repairs on the summer home of his uncle (Randy) in Florida, or somewhere. He captures some fish and puts them in an aquarium. He makes friends with his neighbors and goes skinny-dipping with them. He is separated from his wife but wants to get back together with her. Later, there is a destructive act, and it is only in this kind of denouement that Tower's stories seem to inhabit thematically similar territory. This story did remind me of Richard Lange.

As did the next one, "Retreat," which is about two brothers--one a real estate entrepreneur and the other a musical therapist. One brother has recently bought a mountain with a cabin on it, and has invited the other one over for a weekend of bonding. They go hunting with another man, bag some serious game, and then later, something destructive happens. This story was probably better than the first one.

"Executors of Important Energies" is about a kid who patents crazy inventions and makes a pretty good living off it (which made me think of "Shark Tank") whose father is starting to succumb to Alzheimer's, or some variant of it. His father is a chess guru and lawyer, and married to a much younger woman. The kid lives in the West Village, and meets his father in Washington Square Park, where he is taking on another hustler in a game. They befriend this person and take him out to dinner. This is a very good story but arguably not as good as the second one.

"Down Through the Valley" is about a recently divorced guy who has to pick up his daughter and his wife's new lover, a spiritual guru, from some new age camp and drive them home, because of an injury. It's complicated to explain. They stop at a roadside bar to get some dinner, and a fight breaks out. This story does have some nice moments, potentially even great moments, but is one of the less memorable of the collection for some reason.

With "Leopard," the collection veers into new territory, describing the miserable existence of an 11-year-old boy who fakes being sick to avoid going to school because his classmates are so mean to him, only to be stuck at home with a seemingly worse stepfather. He is asked to get the mail, which is no small task at their house, and he fakes fainting on the walk back. In the mailbox was a flyer asking for help to find a lost pet leopard. A cop stops by and tries to help. The ending is really messed up. This was definitely a highlight, but still slight in comparison with what is to come.

"Door in Your Eye" is about an 83-year-old man who has moved in with his daughter and been told by her that a woman across the street from their apartment is a whore. This story is hilarious and sweet and while also slight, another highlight in the collection.

"Wild America" signals the beginning of the end, the final trilogy of stories that I think should be considered the strongest overall part of the collection. If "Wild America" is not the longest story, it is the second longest. It is about one day in the life of Jacey, who is hanging out with her cousin Maya, and a boy named Leander. All are in high school. Maya is a model and aspiring ballet dancer who smokes and Jacey is plump, athletic, and might one day consider a future in pharmacy. Leander is a boy that Jacey necked with once in a planetarium, and now has been invited to come over and watch Jaws. A trip to a convenience store with Maya veers off into the forest for a pot smoking excursion, which ends in Jacey flipping out and turning her attentions towards an older man who is sunbathing on a rock in a creek nearby. This is a really weird story and I didn't think I was going to like it at first but is just paced very well.

"On the Show" is probably the best story in the collection. It is about a group of people brought together by a carnival and a despicable act in a portable toilet. It is something of a mystery story, a whodunit that seems almost secondary to the entertaining description of what it is like to be a carny. It may be longer than "Wild America," or vice versa, but these are the two longest stories, and this is definitely the more elegantly composed of the two. It is almost like a short novella, and it could have gone on indefinitely, it seems, following any of the characters. But as it stands, the length is perfect, the material is pure page-turner, and the characters are wonderfully evoked.

"Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned" is the notorious title story that I feel like most people consider the single highlight of the collection. It could also be known as the story about Vikings. It does end the collection on a great note, a lighter note for sure. After all of Tower's deep and often unsettling observations on contemporary America comes a piece of historical fiction that is absurd, depraved, and just kind of silly, if harmless. It's not especially long, but it is not the slightest of the lot either. It is probably the most comic of all stories but it also contains the most grotesque imagery. One could easily be cynical about this story, or what it represents (which is open to debate), but I don't think it's meant to be taken all that seriously. Take an exchange between the two main characters, on their voyage to the land they are set to pillage, as an example:

"We had less light in the evenings out here than at home, and it was a little easier sleeping in the open boat without an all-night sun. Gnut and I slept where we rowed, working around each other to get comfy on the bench. I woke up once in the middle of the night and found Gnut dead asleep, muttering and slobbering and holding me in a rough embrace. I tried to peel him off, but he was large, and his hard arms stayed on me tight as if they'd grown there. I poked him and yelled at him, but the big man would not be roused, so I just tried to work up a little slack to where he wasn't hurting my ribs, and I drifted back to sleep.
Later, I told him what had happened. 'That's a lot of horseshit,' he said, his broad face going red.
'I wish it was,' I said, 'But I've got bruises I could show you. Hey, if I ever come around asking to be your sweetheart, do me a favor and remind me about last night.'
He was all upset. 'Go to hell, Harald. You're not funny. Nobody thinks you're funny.'
'I'm sorry,' I said, 'Guess you haven't had a whole lot of practice lately having a body beside you at night.'
He rested on the oar a second. 'So what if I haven't.'" (224-225)

At the "Short and Sweet" panel, Wells Tower mentioned that he was at work on a novel. Whatever it is, it will probably be worth reading. Maybe it will not be as good as this collection, but he seems to know what he is doing, and I would put odds that his star will only continue to grow. Whatever he releases, I'll be paying attention.

Ed: It is perhaps worth noting that Oprah released her newest book club selection--a collection of short stories titled Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan--also a debut collection. True to form, it is more issue-centric than Tower's collection, and it will probably appeal to Oprah's audience and Akpan will now become more famous. This is only worth noting because it was funny that I mentioned her book club and that only a few days later, she picked her next book, a short story collection. I would like to think that Oprah is a reader of this blog (I would love to become her friend) but I highly doubt that.

No Age - Nouns

No Age and Times New Viking are different bands. Pitchfork recently gave No Age's LP its best new music listing, not long after TNV's, and in it briefly mentioned how they, "like TNV, employ a layer of fuzz." We have to be a little more specific about what layer of fuzz means. For TNV, it equals unlistenable. For No Age, it equals Deerhunter approximating My Bloody Valentine, or, if you still want to call this "lo-fi," this is what really good lo-fi sounds like.

No Age is an L.A. band that is apparently made up of two militant vegans obssessed with truth and not setting restrictions on the age limits at their shows. They're a serious indie rock band that seems to have worked their way through the system before their big buzz arrived with this album, and it is complementary for them that the lady who sold me my copy said she had sold three in the last hour. Rip it Off is not going to win TNV any new fans; Nouns is one of the best albums of the year, and I feel comfortable saying that in May. They're not going to get talked about like Vampire Weekend or be as big a band as Arcade Fire, but they're going to be big enough that they can sit comfortably alongside Lightning Bolt or Battles. That is not to say they are instrumental heavy--they are positively pop-song oriented on at least two tracks ("Teen Creeps" and "Sleeper Hold," best song on the album). They sound like what TNV would sound like if they had better production. Or, if their recording was more bass heavy than treble heavy. The "muddled" production on Nouns works to excellent effect, burying the vocals beneath the sound, but always so that they and the music are mutually complementary.

A track-by-track analysis of the album is too hard for me now. The album runs along like one huge song, with the more individual one sticking out from the rest (the previously mentioned two). I'm not saying there's only two good songs on the album and it's a masterpiece. It's complicated. It's not far off the mark to compare them to TNV; it's just far off to NOT ADMIT that they know how to make good music and TNV knows how to make it seem like they know how to make good music.

One final note: Nouns is great, but it's not a masterpiece. There will probably be 10 better albums than it this year, but it is damn good, and if their next album is a more fully-fleshed out pop album, then they will be hard to top. For now, there is too much formlessness, too much noise, it all blends together. It blends together nicely, and those two songs are really sweet, so yeah, they're a really good new band.

Vampire Weekend - S/T

preface:
JK said: April 18, 2008 at 1:33 pm
I am going to post an anti-VW rant on Flying Houses. I have not listened to them, really. Maybe i will buy their album and review it. they seem like the shins to me.

prologue:
I bought the album that night, amidst a rather bizarre encounter that never necessitated words. Vampire Weekend is the #1 seller at Amoeba Music. It was the night before Record Store Day. Jello Biafra was at the Amoeba Music in San Francisco, but nothing all that interesting appeared to be going on at the L.A. Branch, but maybe I am vastly mistaken and went shopping 12 hours earlier than I should have.

I also bought These New Puritans debut album Beat Pyramid and Superchunk's self-titled debut, which will be reviewed next for reasons of comparison. Superchunk are a legit indie rock band. Vampire Weekend could very well be the next Arcade Fire, though I do not think they are going to catch on in such a big way. These New Puritans are probably better.
Without futher ado...

review:

Okay, you can now officially add my name to the list of people that thinks Vampire Weekend sucks. Or, you can add my name to the list of people that is jealous of them. Or, the list of people that thinks they are insanely lucky. Or, the list of people that thinks they are o.k., and kind of like their single, but aren't exactly blasting it out of their car and relishing every line that can be sung along to. Someone posted a comment in Justyn's blog calling it "the sound of cowardice," and I feel that is in apt description--you wouldn't want to blast this music out of your car for the same reason you shouldn't put an NYU bumper sticker on your car--someone will key it.

There are like three or four songs I like on this album more than the other six or seven, but of those three or four, two of them might mention Cape Cod. Now, I am going to take issue with the Cape Cod theme of this record because I spent three summers on that elbow-like peninsula during the heart of my adolescence. I took sailing lessons there and tried to work on an ambitious piece of writing and played many video games and went to the beach and my parents had a house there and they did nothing there except eat lobster and sit outside in the warm summer air. Now, in an environment that is as close to a hypercultural "void" as can exist (Nantucket being the only greater example of this locale that is, overrun by the fiscal elite, outsnobbing every bourgeois town in the country, and completely devoid of worthwhile contemporary culture), Vampire Weekend has established themselves as the first band of preppies to wear their image on their sleeves.

I grew up with these people and they are probably perfectly nice but they are certainly not punks! Maybe they are punkish in their everday life, but it is highly possible that I may have been in the same sailing school as any of these band members and nobody (except for the one kid who used to sing "Lake of Fire" over and over while we were out on the water) had any anti-establishment aspirations whatsoever! If you are in a band, you must be interested in destruction. "A-Punk" is an interesting title. It goes without saying that it is the best song on the album, but it is calling attention to the word "punk," thereby equating their generic indie pop sound with its earlier and more nihilistic punk roots. But the music supposedly has "African" roots! What, do they want to be like Talking Heads part II or something? While listening to this album, a friend pointed out that they were playing with Paul Simon in Central Park this summer, and then pointed out that the next track was a total "Graceland" ripoff. Now, I don't listen to much Paul Simon, so I don't know about that, but if Paul Simon is even a more obvious referent for this band than Os Mutantes, they really should not be calling any of their songs "A-Punk."

There's a million ways you can diss this band, and I think I've done enough. They're not offensive. They're pleasant music to play in the background as you invite friends over for a drink to catch up on the recent happenings in your lives. But they are not music I want to blast, or sing along with, or learn to play along with (maybe I will try to learn how to play "A-Punk" just so I can "rip it off" and have a radio-ready single for my first album), and maybe I am just crazy but that wasn't the case with any of those other 2002 buzz bands I mentioned in earlier post about TNV.

I continue to love !!! and would prefer to seem live any day over Vampire Weekend. Both will play the Pitchfork Festival, and that is shaping up to be the premiere concert event of the year. I must go, and I will try to see VW and review their set (along with everyone else's) and I'll be able to stand through it without getting too bored, I think, but I'm way more excited to see Dinosaur Jr., Mission of Burma, Jarvis, Atlas Sound, Spoon, Les Savy Fav...I think Vampire Weekend will stick around and all their band members will be able to make a successful career out of it, but I think they're getting off rather easy.