For Winter '07/'08
Oh, blog, it has been too long. It feels like I don't even know you anymore. I guess Summer was the real reason I stopped writing in here so much; I tried multiple times to update (in earnest, almost every time some kind of minor Radiohead-related news tidbit surfaced), only to find myself staring at a blank page for five minutes before giving up completely. Maybe it was the lack of schoolwork and other scholarly responsibilities this blog serves to distract me from that deterred me through the hotter months, but now it's cold as fuck outside, I'm grounded on Halloween, and I feel like writing again.
New Radiohead
Believe the hype; or, in the case that you're reading Pitchfork, don't. The new Radiohead album is good - but is it their best? Not by far. Although the cyborg space-pop of OK Computer has, somewhat understandably, begun to fade into obscurity the farther we creep (heh) from its tenth birthday, Kid A still sounds better every time I listen to it (although conversely, I don't think I'll ever be able to replicate the feeling of hearing "The National Anthem" for the first time, back in my grunge days). One of my biggest concerns with the In Rainbows before it was even named, especially after listening to the bootlegs as they came of of the woodwork, took the form of a question; "will Radiohead ever really be relevant again?"
Radiohead has been my favorite band for a long time, and an burning passion for discussion of so-called "Radiohead Theory" has been an obvious side-effect of my sometimes unhealthy obsession. So when the first bootlegs of confirmed LP7 (as it was known at the time) tracks popped up on the web, I instantly directed my browser towards the nearest Radiohead messageboard to talk it out. The new songs were exciting and promising, but, with the exceptions of a couple songs (Bodysnatchers, Videotape), they weren't amazing. Yet. But then again, they weren't finished, either - "Down Is The New Up" was skeletal, "Nude" was still boring, and "15 Step" was too clean.
So flash forward to October 10th, 2007. According to pretty much every major music publication in the modern world, music as we know it is scheduled to fall victim to an untimely death within hours. I waited for the moment I had been anticipating for a little over 3 years, feverishly refreshing my tabbed email inbox every five or so seconds. And then it happened.
One mind-blowing, longest-five-minutes-of-my-life download later, I had imported the ten tracks of the greatest album of all time into iTunes. I dramatically paused for all of .003 seconds before pressing play. To my surprise, what hit my ears was not the filtered, tempo-bending drum machine intro to "15 Step" that I had expected; instead, my shitty rummage-sale computer speakers nearly buckled under the electronic belch of the dirtiest Radiohead beat this side of Amnesiac. So began the first run through of what is, all things considered, my #1 most anticipated album of all time.
The first listen was good, but it didn't persuade me. I liked it, but it was still somehow a disappointment. It sounded bare - and there was that annoying, disgustingly slick drum beat in "Arpeggi" that somehow seemed to drag down the entire album. And, to put be frank, they totally botched Videotape in the studio; it was fucking terrible. A second listen, inevitably, went much better. Hey, maybe "Bodysnatchers" sounds like a home demo for a reason after all. There was still that nagging "Arpeggi" hanging around the middle of my Radiohead dream-world, shattering my hopes, but being sandwiched between the stunningly gorgeous "Nude" and "All I Need" didn't exactly give it a fair chance anyway.
It's becoming increasingly obvious as I write this that if I don't stop soon, I will simply continue to drone for another five paragraphs, to no discernable effect. SO, IN SHORT: It's not Radiohead's best, it's far from their worst, it's free if you want it, so buy it but it buy it.
PANTHER - ROMANCE (Tour CD)
New Radiohead
Believe the hype; or, in the case that you're reading Pitchfork, don't. The new Radiohead album is good - but is it their best? Not by far. Although the cyborg space-pop of OK Computer has, somewhat understandably, begun to fade into obscurity the farther we creep (heh) from its tenth birthday, Kid A still sounds better every time I listen to it (although conversely, I don't think I'll ever be able to replicate the feeling of hearing "The National Anthem" for the first time, back in my grunge days). One of my biggest concerns with the In Rainbows before it was even named, especially after listening to the bootlegs as they came of of the woodwork, took the form of a question; "will Radiohead ever really be relevant again?"
Radiohead has been my favorite band for a long time, and an burning passion for discussion of so-called "Radiohead Theory" has been an obvious side-effect of my sometimes unhealthy obsession. So when the first bootlegs of confirmed LP7 (as it was known at the time) tracks popped up on the web, I instantly directed my browser towards the nearest Radiohead messageboard to talk it out. The new songs were exciting and promising, but, with the exceptions of a couple songs (Bodysnatchers, Videotape), they weren't amazing. Yet. But then again, they weren't finished, either - "Down Is The New Up" was skeletal, "Nude" was still boring, and "15 Step" was too clean.
So flash forward to October 10th, 2007. According to pretty much every major music publication in the modern world, music as we know it is scheduled to fall victim to an untimely death within hours. I waited for the moment I had been anticipating for a little over 3 years, feverishly refreshing my tabbed email inbox every five or so seconds. And then it happened.
One mind-blowing, longest-five-minutes-of-my-life download later, I had imported the ten tracks of the greatest album of all time into iTunes. I dramatically paused for all of .003 seconds before pressing play. To my surprise, what hit my ears was not the filtered, tempo-bending drum machine intro to "15 Step" that I had expected; instead, my shitty rummage-sale computer speakers nearly buckled under the electronic belch of the dirtiest Radiohead beat this side of Amnesiac. So began the first run through of what is, all things considered, my #1 most anticipated album of all time.
The first listen was good, but it didn't persuade me. I liked it, but it was still somehow a disappointment. It sounded bare - and there was that annoying, disgustingly slick drum beat in "Arpeggi" that somehow seemed to drag down the entire album. And, to put be frank, they totally botched Videotape in the studio; it was fucking terrible. A second listen, inevitably, went much better. Hey, maybe "Bodysnatchers" sounds like a home demo for a reason after all. There was still that nagging "Arpeggi" hanging around the middle of my Radiohead dream-world, shattering my hopes, but being sandwiched between the stunningly gorgeous "Nude" and "All I Need" didn't exactly give it a fair chance anyway.
It's becoming increasingly obvious as I write this that if I don't stop soon, I will simply continue to drone for another five paragraphs, to no discernable effect. SO, IN SHORT: It's not Radiohead's best, it's far from their worst, it's free if you want it, so buy it but it buy it.
PANTHER - ROMANCE (Tour CD)
Panther is back, baby! He's released a couple tour CDs since the his last LP (released on Portland's Fryk Beat back in March), but none of them have come close to matching the deliciously waterlogged, brilliant freak-out that was Secret Lawns (save 8-bit beatcruncher Copy's unimaginably deep remix of the warbling, super-catchy "Black Baby"). Since then, he picked up a live drummer, went on tour in Australia, and revised his entire musical direction. The result, assumably, is this record.
Romance, taken at face value, is thus far the least bizarre venture in Panther's repetoire; given the oddball ambition of his earlier works, however, it sticks out like a sore thumb. The opening track, "Satellite," is a highly melodic guitar-based jam born from the same freak-island-goddess mother as Dirty Projectors' recent work. Rather than an identical twin, however, the rest of the album works like the less enigmatic younger brother; independant, but less sprawling and focused in scale and practice. It's not perfect - we could still do without the super-messy, arty and dissonant mid-album tracks (a-la Secret Lawns' black sheep art project, "Tennis Lessons"). But Romance isn't an album - it's a tour CD, and god damn good tour CD at that. Download it.
Romance, taken at face value, is thus far the least bizarre venture in Panther's repetoire; given the oddball ambition of his earlier works, however, it sticks out like a sore thumb. The opening track, "Satellite," is a highly melodic guitar-based jam born from the same freak-island-goddess mother as Dirty Projectors' recent work. Rather than an identical twin, however, the rest of the album works like the less enigmatic younger brother; independant, but less sprawling and focused in scale and practice. It's not perfect - we could still do without the super-messy, arty and dissonant mid-album tracks (a-la Secret Lawns' black sheep art project, "Tennis Lessons"). But Romance isn't an album - it's a tour CD, and god damn good tour CD at that. Download it.
